Inventions in the Century Part 1

Inventions in the Century.

by William Henry Doolittle.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY--INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES--THEIR DEVELOPMENT.

In treating of the subject of Inventions it is proper to distinguish them from their scientific kindred--Discoveries.

The history of inventions is the history of new and useful contrivances made by man for practical purposes. The history of scientific discoveries is the record of new things found in Nature, its laws, forces, or materials, and brought to light, as they exist, either singly, or in relation, or in combination.

Thus Galileo invented the telescope, and Newton discovered the law of gravitation. The practical use of the invention when turned to the heavenly bodies served to confirm the truth of the discovery.

Discovery and invention may be, and often are, united as the soul is to the body. The union of the two produces one or more inventions. Thus the invented electro-telegraph consists of the combination of discoveries of certain laws of electricity with an apparatus, by which signs are communicated to distances by electrical influence.

Inventions and discoveries do not precede or follow each other in order.

The instrument may be made before the laws which govern its operation are discovered. The discovery may long precede its adaptation in physical form, and both the discovery and adaptation may occur together.

Among the great _inventions_ of the past are alphabetical writing, Arabic notation, the mariner's compa.s.s, the telescope, the printing-press, and the steam-engine. Among the great _discoveries_ of the past are the attraction of gravitation, the laws of planetary motion, the circulation of the blood, and velocity of light. Among the great inventions of the nineteenth century are the spectroscope, the electric telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the railways, and the steam-s.h.i.+ps. Among the great discoveries of this century are the correlation and conservation of forces, anaesthetics, laws of electrical energy, the germ theory of disease, the molecular theory of gases, the periodic law of Mendeljeff in chemistry, antiseptic surgery, and the vortex theory of matter. This short enumeration will serve to indicate the different roads along which inventions and the discoveries of science progress.

By many it is thought that the inventions and discoveries of the nineteenth century exceed in number and importance all the achievements of the kind in all the ages of the past.

So marvellous have been these developments of this century that, not content with sober definitions, men have defined _invent_, even when speaking only of mechanical productions, as "creating what had not before existed;" and this period has been described as an age of new creations. The far-off cry of the Royal Preacher, "There is no new thing under the sun: Is there anything whereof it may be said, see this is new, it hath been already of old time which was before us," is regarded as a cry of satiety and despair, finding no responsive echo in the array of inventions of this bright age.

But in one sense the Preacher's words are ever profoundly true. The forces and materials of Nature always exist, awaiting man's discovery, and at best he can but vary their relations, re-direct their course, or change their forms. In a still narrower sense the truth of the Preacher's declaration is apparent:--

In an address before the Anthropological Society of Was.h.i.+ngton in 1885, the late Prof. F. A. Seely, of the United States Patent Office, set forth that it was one of the established laws of Invention, that,

"Every human invention has sprung from some prior invention, or from some prior known expedient."

Inventions, he said, do not, like their protectress, Pallas Athene, spring forth full grown from the heads of their authors; that both as to modern inventions and as to those whose history is unrecorded, each exhibits in itself the evidence of a similar sub-structure; and that, "in the process of elimination we go back and back and find no resting place till we reach the rude set of expedients, the original endowment of men and brutes alike."

Inventions, then, are not creations, but the evolution of man-made contrivances.

It may be remarked, however, as was once said by William H. Seward: "The exercise of the inventive faculty is the nearest akin to that of the Creator of any faculty possessed by the human mind; for while it does not create in the same sense that the Creator did, yet it is the nearest approach to it of anything known to man."

There is no history, rock-record, or other evidence of his existence as man, which discloses a period when he was not an inventor.

Invention is that divine spark which drove, and still drives him to the production of means to meet his wants, while it illuminates his way.

From that inward spark must have soon followed the invention of that outer fire to warm and cheer him, and to melt and mould the earth to his desires. Formed for society, the necessity of communication with his fellows developed the power of speech. Speech developed written characters and alphabets. Common communication developed concert of action, and from concert of action sprung the arts of society.

But the evolution of invention has not been uniform. Long periods of slowness and stagnation have alternated with shorter or longer periods of prolific growth, and these with seasons of slumber and repression.

Thus, Prof. Langley has said that man was thousands of years, and possibly millions, in evolving a cutting edge by rubbing one stone on another; but only a few thousand years to next develop bronze tools, and a still shorter period tools of iron.

We cannot say how long the period was from the age of iron tools to the building of the pyramids, but we know that before those stupendous structures arose, the six elementary mechanical powers, the lever, the wheel, the pulley, the inclined plane, the wedge and the screw, were invented. And without those powers, what mechanical tool or machine has since been developed? The age of inventions in the times of the ancients rested mainly upon simple applications of these mechanical powers. The middle ages slumbered, but on the coming of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the inventions of the ancients were revived, new ones added, and their growth and development extended with ever-increasing speed to the present time.

The inventions of the nineteenth century, wonderful and innumerable as they are, and marvellous in results produced, are but the fruit of the seed sown in the past, and the blossom of the buds grown upon the stalks of former generations. The early crude stone hatchet has become the keen finished metal implement of to-day, and the latter involves in itself the culmination of a long series of processes for converting the rough ore into the hard and glistening steel.

The crooked and pointed stick with which the Egyptian turned the sands of the Nile has slowly grown to be the finished plough that is now driven through the sod by steam.

The steam-operated toys of Hero of Alexandria were revived in principle and incorporated in the engines of Papin and the Marquis of Worcester in the seventeenth century; and the better engines of Savery, Newcomen, and more especially of James Watt in the eighteenth century, left the improvements in steam-engines of the nineteenth century--great as they are--inventions only in matter of detail.

It has been said that electrical science began with the labours of Dr.

Gilbert, published in 1600. These, with the electrical discoveries and inventions of Gray, Franklin, Galvani, and others in the next century, terminating with the invention of his battery by Volta in 1800, const.i.tuted the framework on which was built that world of flas.h.i.+ng light and earth-circling messages in which we now live.

The study of inventions in any one or all eras cannot proceed intelligently unless account is taken not only of their mode of construction, and of their evolution one from another, but of the evolution of distinct arts, their relation, their interdependence in growth, and their mutual progress.

The principles adopted by the ancients in weaving and spinning by hand are those still in force; but so great was the advance of inventions from hand-operated mechanisms to machines in these and other arts, and especially in steam, in the last half of the eighteenth century, that it has been claimed that the age of machine production or invention then for the first time really began.

When the humble lift became the completed elevator of to-day, the "sky-sc.r.a.per" buildings appeared; but these buildings waited upon the invention of their steel skeletons, and the steel was the child of the Bessemer process.

The harp with which David stirred the dead soul of Saul was the prototype of the sweet clavichord, the romantic virginal, the tinkling harpsichord, and the grand piano. The thrumming of the chords by the fingers was succeeded by the striking keys; and the more perfect rendition of tones awaited the application of new discoveries in the realm of musical sounds. The keys and the levers in the art of musical instruments were transferred to the art of printing, and are found to-day striking a more homely music on the type-writer and on those other and more wonderful printing instruments that mould, and set, and distribute the type. But these results of later days did not reach their perfected operations and forms until many other arts had been discovered and developed, by which to treat and improve the wood, and the wire, and all the other materials of which those early instruments were composed, and by which the underlying principles of their operations became known.

Admitting that man possesses the faculty of invention, what are the motives that induce its exercise? Why so prolific in inventions now? And will they continue to increase in number and importance, or decrease?

An interesting treatise of bulky dimensions might be written in answer to these queries, and the answers might not then be wholly satisfactory.

s.p.a.ce permits the submission of but a few observations and suggestions on these points:----

_Necessity_ is still the mother of inventions, but not of all of them.

The pressing needs of man in fighting nakedness and hunger, wild beasts and storms, may have driven him to the production of most of his early contrivances; but as time went on and his wants of every kind multiplied, other factors than mere necessity entered into the problem, and now it is required to account for the multiplicity of inventions under the general head of _Wants_.

To-day it is the want of the luxuries, as well as of the necessities of life, the want of riches, distinction, power, and place, the wants of philanthropy and the wants of selfishness, and that restless, inherent, unsatisfied, indescribable want which is ever pus.h.i.+ng man onward on the road of progress, that must be regarded as the springs of invention.

_Accident_ is thought to be the fruitful source of great inventions. It is a factor that cannot be ignored. But accidents are only occasional helps, rarely occurring,--flashes of light suddenly revealing the end of the path along which the inventor has been painfully toiling, and unnoticed except by him alone. They are sudden discoveries which for the most part simply shorten his journey. The rare complete contrivance revealed by accident is not an invention at all, but a discovery.

The greatest incentive in modern times to the production of inventions is governmental protection.

When governments began to recognize the right of property in inventions, and to devise and enforce means by which their author should hold and enjoy the same, as he holds his land, his house, or his horse, then inventions sprung forth as from a great unsealed fountain.

This principle first found recognition in England in 1623, when parliament, stung by the abuse of the royal prerogative in the grant of exclusive personal privileges that served to crush the growth of inventions and not to multiply them, by its celebrated Statute of Monopolies, abolished all such privileges, but excepted from its provisions the grant of patents "for the sole working or making of any manner of new manufactures within this realm to the true and first inventor" thereof.

This statute had little force, however, in encouraging and protecting inventors until the next century, and until after the great inventions of Arkwright in spinning and James Watt in steam-engines had been invaded, and the attention of the courts called more seriously thereby to the property rights of inventors, and to the necessity of a liberal exposition of the law and its proper enforcement.

Then followed in 1789 the incorporation of that famous provision in the Const.i.tution of the United States, declaring that Congress shall have the power "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

In 1791 followed the law of the National a.s.sembly of France for the protection of new inventions, setting forth in the preamble, among other things, "that not to regard an industrial invention as the property of its author would be to attack the essential rights of man."

These fundamental principles have since been adopted and incorporated in their laws by all the nations of the earth.

Inventions in their nature being for the good of all men and for all time, it has been deemed wise by all nations in their legislation not to permit the inventor to lock up his property in secret, or confine it to his own use; and hence the universal practice is to enact laws giving him, his heirs, and a.s.signs, exclusive owners.h.i.+p to this species of his property for a limited time only, adjudged sufficient to reward him for his efforts in its production, and to encourage others in like productions; while he, in consideration for this protection, is to fully make known his invention, so that the public may be enabled to freely make and use it after its exclusive owners.h.i.+p shall have expired.

In addition to the motives and incentives mentioned inducing this modern mighty outflow of inventions, regard must be had to the conditions of personal, political and intellectual freedom, and of education. There is no cla.s.s of inventors where the ma.s.s of men are slaves; and when dense ignorance abounds, invention sleeps.

In the days of the greatest intellectual freedom of Greece, Archimedes, Euclid, and Hero, its great inventors, flourished; but when its political _status_ had reduced the ma.s.s of citizens to slaves, when the work of the artisan and the inventor was not appreciated beyond the gift of an occasional crown of laurel, when manual labour and the labourer were scorned, inventions were not born, or, if born, found no nourishment to prolong their lives.