The Progress of the Century

by Unknown

Morse made use of the scientific discoveries and inventions of Henry, and by his indefatigable labors and persistent faith the commercial value of the enterprise was really established. In the mean time considerable progress was made in Europe. Baron Schilling, a Russian Councillor of State, devised and exhibited a needle telegraph. The two illustrious German physicists, Gauss and Weber, established a successfully working line two or three miles long in 1833, and this system was commercially developed by Steinheil in 1837. In England, Sir Charles Wheatstone made many important contributions, although using the needle system, which was afterwards abandoned. Before the middle of the century the commercial success of the electro-magnetic telegraph was assured, and in the matter of the transmission of messages distance was practically annihilated.

Oersted, Arago, Ampère, Sturgeon, and Henry had made it possible to convert electricity into mechanical energy. Motors of various types had been invented, and the possibility of using the new source of power for running machinery, cars, boats, etc., was fully recognized. Several attempts had been made to do these things, but the great cost of producing the current by means of a battery stood in the way of success. Another epoch-making discovery was necessary, namely, a method of reversing the process and converting mechanical energy into electricity. This was supplied by the genius of Michael Faraday, who had succeeded Davy in the Royal Institution at London. In 1831 Faraday discovered induction, the key to the modern development of electricity. He showed that while Oersted had proved that a current of electricity would generate a magnetic field and set a magnet in motion, this process was reversible. A magnet set in motion in a magnetic field by a steam-engine or any other source of power would produce, in a conductor properly arranged, a current of electricity, and thus the dynamo came into existence. In this brilliant investigation he was almost anticipated by Henry, who was working at Albany along the same lines, but under much less favorable conditions. Indeed, in several of the most important points, the American actually did anticipate the Englishman. Nearly half a century elapsed before this most important discovery was sufficiently developed to become commercially valuable, and it is impossible in this place to trace the steps by which, during the last quarter of a century, the production and utilization of electricity as existing to-day was accomplished, as a result of which the century closed, as one might say, in a blaze of light; and it is unnecessary, because most people have witnessed the spread of the fire which Faraday and Henry kindled.

Faraday’s discovery of induction furnished the basis of that marvellous improvement upon the telegraph by which actual speech is transmitted over hundreds and even thousands of miles. In connection with the invention of the telephone the names of Philip Reiss, Graham Bell, Elisha Gray, and Dolbear will always be mentioned, each of whom, doubtless independently, hit upon a way of accomplishing the result with more or less success. To Bell, however, belongs the honor of having first practically solved the problem and of devising a system which, with numerous modifications and improvements, has come into extensive use in all parts of the world. No other application of electricity has come into such universal use, and none has contributed more to the comfort of life.

While it is doubtless true that since Faraday’s time no discovery comparable with his in real importance has been made, the past twenty-five years have not lacked in results of scientific research, some of which may, in the not distant future, eclipse even that in the value of their practical applications. Among these must be ranked Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electric waves and its beautiful verification in 1888 by the young German physicist, Hertz. This brilliant student of electricity succeeded in actually producing, detecting, and controlling these waves, and out of this discovery has come the “wireless telegraphy” which has been so rapidly developed within the last few years. Many other discoveries in electricity of great scientific interest and practical promise have been recorded in the closing years of the century, but the necessary limits of this article forbid their consideration.

No account of the progress of physical science during the nineteenth century would be even approximately complete without mention of other investigations of profound significance. For instance, the study of the phenomena of sound has yielded results of great scientific and some practical value. The application of the theory of interference by Thomas Young; the publication of Helmholtz’s great work, the Tonempfindungen, in which his theory of harmony was first fully presented; the publication of Lord Rayleigh’s treatise; the invention and construction by König of acoustic apparatus, the best example yet furnished of scientific handicraft; all of these mark important advances, not only in acoustics but in general physics as well. The phonautograph of Scott and König, by which a graphic record of the vibrations of the vocal chords was made possible, was ingeniously converted by Edison into a speech recording and reproducing machine, the phonograph, by which the most marvellous results are accomplished in the simplest possible manner.

The century is also to be credited with the discovery and development of the art of photography, which, although not of the first importance, has contributed much to the pleasure of life, and as an aid to scientific investigation has become quite indispensable.

The wonderfully beautiful experiments of Sir William Crookes, on the passage of an electric discharge through a high vacuum, and other phenomena connected with what has been called “radiant matter,” begun about a quarter of a century ago and continued by him and others up to the present time, laid the foundation for the brilliant work of Röntgen in the discovery and study of the so-called “X”-rays, the real nature of which is not yet understood. Their further investigation by J. J. Thomson, Becquerel, and others, seems to have revealed new forms and phases of radiation, a fuller knowledge of which is likely to throw much light on obscure problems relating to the nature of matter.

Concerning the “Nature of Matter,” the ablest physicists of the century have thought and written much, and doubtless our present knowledge of the subject is much more nearly the truth than that of a hundred years ago. The molecular theory of gases has met with such complete experimental verification, and is so in accord with all observed phenomena, that it must be accepted as essentially correct. As to the ultimate nature of what is called matter, as distinguished from the ethereal medium, what is known as the “vortex theory of atoms” has received the most consideration. This theory was developed by Lord Kelvin out of Helmholtz’s mathematical demonstration of the indestructibility of a vortex ring when once formed in a medium possessing the properties which are generally attributed to the ether.

Perhaps the most remarkable as well as the most promising fact relating to physical science at the close of the nineteenth century is the great and rapidly increasing number of well-organized and splendidly equipped laboratories in which original research is systematically planned and carried out. When one reflects that for the most part during the century just ended the advance of science was more or less of the nature of a guerrilla warfare against ignorance, it seems safe to predict for that just beginning victories more glorious than any yet won.

T. C. Mendenhall.