Nearly all our manufacturing processes are full of imperfections; thus the loss of gas by a single large provincial gas company, after that substance has left the works, amounts to nearly one hundred and fifty millions of cubic feet per annum, and to a value of about £18,000; and the soil of all our large cities and towns is permeated and rendered fœtid by coal gas. And it has been stated by an eminent authority in such matters that we might save 500,000 tons of coal a year by economizing the waste heat of furnaces, by purifying the coal, coking it, etc. In a single chemical manufactory, out of about two thousand tons of hydrochloric acid used per annum, about eight hundred tons have been allowed to flow away as a polluting substance, because it was not possible to utilise it. The loss of material from a single large glass works equals fourteen hundred tons per annum, and a value of £8,000. Similar grave defects might be pointed out in nearly all our large manufactures, by those acquainted with the subject.
Inventions are wanted for quickening the process of vinegar making, and diminishing the percentage of loss of the acid. For bleaching discoloured fats. For quickening the process of converting cast iron into malleable iron. To easily separate nitrogen from the oxygen of the atmosphere. To economically convert
the nitrogen of the air into valuable products, such as nitric acid and ammonia. To find uses for the immense quantities of minerals which abound all over the earth; to utilise wolfram and find applications for tungstic acid; to apply titanic acid to great industrial purposes; to produce aluminium on the large scale, as we now produce iron. To tan leather more quickly, and without detriment to its quality. To prevent the rusting of iron. To more perfectly prevent smoke. To collect and use the sulphuric acid of the salt cake consumed in the glass manufacture. To make window glass by means of common salt. To deodorise offensive substances. To find larger uses for phosphorus, sodium, magnesium, and common salt. To remove phosphorus and sulphur from iron ores, and sulphur from coal and coke. To obtain a good white alloy as a cheaper substitute for German silver. To convert white phosphorus into the red variety by a less dangerous process than the present one. To prevent the putrefaction of "peltries" in glue making. To obtain better and cheaper materials for colouring glass. To more perfectly prevent animal food from change. To obviate or prevent explosions in mines. To perfectly purify ordinary red lead for making flint glass. A cheaper process for converting common salt into washing soda; and so on without end.
We also very badly require a method of recording our thoughts in readable forms upon paper, without the slow and laborious process of writing. An incalculable amount of brains and of intellect, especially of
the greatest thinkers, would be saved by such a discovery. The curative arts also are permeated with empiricism, and thousands of lives of persons of all classes of society, are annually lost in this country through want of a more perfect scientific basis of medicine, attainable only by means of experiment and observation.
In this country, such great practical results have been obtained by means of invention, that many persons suppose a sufficiency of inventive skill will enable us to effect every possible scientific object, and are surprised that no one can invent a plan of utilising the entire heat of coals, or a mode of overcoming the sewage difficulty, or prevent the great leakage of coal gas, or arrest epidemics, or produce a steam engine which shall work without waste of power. The progress of invention however depends upon that of discovery, and these various inventions, etc., wanted by manufacturers and others probably cannot be perfected until suitable new knowledge is found. Every new invention has its own appropriate discoveries, by means of which alone it can be perfected; it was not possible to perfect the idea of an electric telegraph before the discoveries of Volta and Oersted were made. According to scientific laws, out of everything proceeds everything, and out of nothing, nothing can come, even ideas are not created. An unlimited number of inventions cannot be made by means of a limited amount of scientific knowledge; and our present stock of such information applicable to
invention, is very insufficient. One great reason why only a small portion of patents are of practical value; and so many useless ones are taken out is, that in consequence of our so-called "practical" spirit, we overestimate the power of invention and under-value the discovery of new abstract truths; because also invention has done so much, we think it will continue to do so, but the latter depends upon a continued supply of discoveries.
Nearly every manufacturer is aware by painful experience of the great and almost incessant variation that occurs in the quality and properties of the materials used in his trade, and the frequent risk of failure of his process. In the manufacture of iron, for example, the presence of much phosphorus, sulphur, or silicon in the ore is liable to be very detrimental to the quality of the iron produced from it; in the manufacture of glass, the least quantity of iron in the materials will seriously injure the colour of the product; in the selection of copper for telegraph wire, if it contains the least trace of arsenic, the wire will not conduct the electricity properly. The difficulties experienced in procuring suitable materials for a manufacturing process are in some cases very great; and when they are procured, additional difficulties arise from the inability of the manufacturer or his manager to analyse them.
Every manufacturer is also aware that the difficulties encountered in manufactures are not limited to the substances employed, but extend to all the different
processes and stages of processes through which these substances have to pass, and to all the forces, tools, machinery, and appliances employed in those processes; in the manufacture of glass, for example, the greatest care has to be exercised in the making and gradual heating of the pots in which the glass is melted, the proportions of the materials, the construction of the furnaces, the management of the heat, and a whole host of minor conditions too numerous to mention, all of which must be attended to with the greatest care. In the manufacture of iron and steel, the smelting of copper, the refining of nickel, the preparation and baking of porcelain, and in many other trades, innumerable difficulties, all having their origin in the properties of matter and forces, continually beset the manufacturers. In some cases difficulties occur which perplex both the workman and the scientific man called in to his aid, and so far from an unscientific workman being able to overcome them, even with the aid of the scientific man, he is unable to do so.