SCIENCE, IMPROVEMENTS BY
“The inferiority of the human sense organ to the instruments of science is pointed out by Dr. Carl Snyder,” says The American Inventor. “He says that whereas the human eye can see but little more than 3,000 stars in the heaven on the clearest of nights, the photographic plate and the telescope can discover countless millions. It is difficult for the eye to distinguish divisions of the inch if smaller than 1-200 of that unit of measure, yet a powerful microscope will make an object 1-1,000 of an inch in diameter look comparatively large. It would be a delicate ear which could hear the tramp of a fly, yet the microphone magnifies this sound until it sounds like the tramp of cavalry. The most sensitive skin can not detect a change in temperature less than 1-5 of a degree, but the bolometer will register on a scale an increase or decrease of temperature of 1-1,000,000 of a degree and can easily note the difference in temperature caused in a room when a match is lighted one mile away.”
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SCIENCE PREVENTING CRIME
Manufacturers of safes will be impelled to fight the scientific burglar with his own weapons. In somewhat the same fashion by which time-locks prevent the opening of the lock of a safe during certain hours, it will be comparatively easy to introduce into safe-construction chemico-mechanical devices which, during a limited time, would render it either fatal or physically impossible to remain in the vicinity of a safe or vault, were the walls or doors tampered with to such an extent as to allow access to the interior. By use of a very simple form of apparatus containing potassium cyanid and sulfuric acid, a robber would expose himself to the deadly fumes of prussic acid.
Less dangerous, through possibilities of accident to those regularly using a safe, would be the employment of substances crippling a safe-blower or forcing him to an instantaneous retreat. The volatilization of a few drops of ethyl-dichlor-acetate would cause such profuse and persistent weeping that one in the neighborhood would be temporarily blinded if he persisted in remaining. The breaking of a tube of liquid ammonia would render immediate withdrawal imperative under peril of suffocation.—Thomas H. Norton, Machinery.
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SCIENCE SHATTERING SUPERSTITIONS
There are large numbers of people perpetually bemoaning our degeneracy, and sighing over the departure of the “good old times” of our early American life. The reason of the present distressing state of affairs I heard explained not long ago. One man thought it was because all the “good old doctrines” were nowadays not preached at all, and the other was equally sure that it was because they were preached all the time. Never was a grander fallacy than this whole idea. Never was more ignorance of the past displayed than by those who talk of the falling away of modern times. Never was the Church so bright and fair as now, and never did the sky of the future redden with a more glorious promise of the coming day. In those “good old times” men lived under the horrid shadows of frightful superstitions. Now it is to modern science only that we owe our emancipation from the yoke of this awful tyranny. Scientific explorers have been over the earth; and finding no mouth of hell, that is gone. Science has explained earthquakes and volcanoes, and now devils fight no longer in the bowels of the earth. Etna and Vesuvius are no longer vent-holes of the pit. Astronomy has shattered the follies of astrology; and people have found out that the stars are minding their own business instead of meddling with theirs, and eclipses are no longer moon-swallowing monsters—are only very natural and well behaved shadows. Since psychology is studied we know that witchcraft is folly, and insanity only a disease to be treated and cured. Thus science—like a mother going up-stairs to bed with her frightened boy—has been with her candle into all the old dark corners that used to make us creep, and cringe, and shiver with terror.—Minot J. Savage, The Arena.
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