Invention: The Master-key to Progress

Under the stimulating influence of the quick communication given by the art of printing, literature had blossomed especially in Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy; but in 1800 one has to notice the same fact as in previous years – literature had not improved. The literature of 1800 A. D. was no better than the literature of Greece or Elizabethan England – to state the truth politely; and no such poet lived as Homer, Shakespeare or John Milton. It seems to be a characteristic of literature, and of all the fine arts as well, that each great product is solely a product of one human mind, and not the product of the combined work of many minds. To the invention of Watt's steam engine, numberless obscure investigators and inventors had contributed, besides those whose great names everybody knows: but how can two men write a poem or any work of fiction, or paint a picture or carve a statue? It is true that each of these feats has been performed; but rarely and not with great success.

For this reason, it is not clear that mere literature as literature, or that any of the fine arts as such can exert much influence on history, and it is not clear that any of them have done so. That they have had great influence in conducing to the pleasure of individuals there can be no question; but the influence seems to have been transient. History is a record of such of the doings of men as have had influence at the time, or in the future. Of these doings, the agency that has had the most obvious influence is war, and next to war is invention. War, next after disease, has caused the most suffering the world knows of; but out of the suffering have emerged the great nations without which modern civilization could not exist. The influence of invention is not so obvious, but it is perhaps as great, or nearly so; the main reason being that invention has been the agency which has enabled those nations to emerge that have emerged. Without the appliances that invention has supplied, the civilized man could not have triumphed over the savage.

Now literature and painting and sculpture and music, while they have made life easier and pleasanter, have contributed little to this work, and in many ways have rather prevented it from going further by softening people, physically and mentally. This statement must not be accepted without reservations of course; for the reason that some poems, some works of fiction, and some paintings and (especially) some musical compositions have tended to strengthen character, and even to stimulate the martial spirit. But a careful inspection of most works of pure literature and fine art must lead a candid person to admit that the major part of their effect has been to please, – to gratify the appetite of the mind rather than to inspire it to action.

The author here requests any possible reader of these pages, not to infer that he has any objection to being pleased himself, or to having others pleased; or that he regards the influence of literature and the fine arts as being detrimental to the race. On the contrary, he regards them as being valuable in the highest degree. He is merely trying to point out the difference between the influence of inventions in the useful arts and those in the fine arts.

A like remark may be made concerning inventors and other men; the word inventors being here supposed to mean the men who make inventions of all kinds. These men seem to have been those who have brought into existence those machines and books and projects of all kinds that have determined the kind of machine of civilization that has now been produced. These men are very few, compared with the great bulk of humanity; but it seems to be they who have given direction to the line along which the machine has been developed.

This does not mean, of course, that these men have been more estimable themselves than the men who kept the machine in smooth and regular motion, and made the repairs, and supplied the oil and fuel; but it does mean that they had more influence in making its improvements. Naturally, their work in making improvements would have been of no avail, if other men had not exerted industry and carefulness and intelligence and courage, in the countless tasks entailed in maintaining the machine in good repair, in keeping it running smoothly, and in receiving with open minds and helping hands each new improvement as it came along. And it was not only in welcoming real improvements, but in keeping out novelties which seemed to be improvements but were not improvements that the work of what may be called the operators, as distinguished from the inventors, was beneficent. Nothing could be more injurious to the machine than to permit the incorporation in it of parts that would not improve it. There has been little danger to fear from this source, however; for the inertia of men is such that it is only rarely that one sees any new device accepted, until it has proved its value definitely and unmistakably in practical work.

Possibly the greatest single impetus given to progress about the year 1800 was that given by Lavoisier shortly before, which started the science of chemistry on the glorious career it has since pursued. As a separate branch of science, chemistry then began, though it had been the subject of investigation for many centuries, beginning in Egypt and the other ancient countries of the East. In the Middle Ages, it was known in Europe by the name Alchemy. Originally, and in all the long ages of its infancy, the investigations of the experimenters were carried on mainly to discover new remedies in medicine, or to learn methods to transmute base metals into precious metals; though there was a considerable degree also of pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. As a result of the investigations, many startling facts were developed, and many discoveries were made; but, for the reason that the investigations were not conducted on the mathematical or quantitative lines that had led to so much success in developing physics, alchemy or chemistry did not rest on any sure basis, and therefore had no fixed place to start from. It was in the same vague status that some subjects of thoughtful speculation are in today, such as telepathy, which may (or may not) be put on a basis of fact some day, and started forward thence, as chemistry was started.

What gave chemistry its basis was the methods introduced by Lavoisier who was a practiced physicist. He introduced the balance into the study of chemistry, and raised it instantly from a collection of speculations to an exact science, capable of progressing confidently and assuredly thereafter, instead of wandering in a maze. Lavoisier gave chemistry a mathematical basis to start from, and sure beacon lights to guide it; and though many changes in its theory have been made from time to time, they have been due only to increase of knowledge and not to departure from fundamental principles. Finding that a substance was not an element, but was a compound of two elements, or more than two, did not require any rejection of accepted principles, but merely a readjustment.

We now see that it was impossible because of the exact nature of the way in which the various elements combine, that chemistry could have become a science until the balance had been used to weigh the substances investigated; and we also see that it was impossible that the balance could have been so used until physics had been developed to the point permitting it, and men skilled in exact measurements had been brought up by practice in physical researches. Lavoisier himself had served a long apprenticeship, and his earliest claim to fame was his mathematical researches on heat, embodied in an essay, written in connection with Laplace, and published in 1784. Even after an enormous mass of facts had been collected and announced, chemistry could not take her place by the side of physics, and Bacon's teachings could not be followed, until those facts had been mathematically investigated, and their mathematical relations to each other had been established. This Lavoisier and his followers did.

No better illustration of the influence of invention on history can be found than the fact that chemistry hovered in the dim twilight of speculation, guess-work and even superstition, until Lavoisier brought to bear the various inventions made in physics. Then, presto, the science of chemistry was born.

We must not let the fact escape us, however, that Lavoisier would have left mankind none the wiser, if he had merely brought mathematical research to bear and discovered what he did, and then stopped. If he had stopped then, his knowledge would have remained locked inside of his own mind, useless. The good work that Lavoisier actually did was in actually producing an invention; in conceiving a certain definite method of chemical research, then embodying it in such a concrete form that "persons skilled in the art could make and use it," and then giving it to the world.

The first important effect of Lavoisier's work was the announcement by Dalton about 1808 of his Atomic Theory, which has been the basis of most of the work of chemistry ever since. Dalton's earlier work had been in physics, and its principal result had been "Dalton's Laws" in regard to the evaporation and expansion of gases, announced by him about 1801. These investigations led his mind to the consideration of the various speculations that had been entertained concerning the nature of matter itself, as distinguished from the actions and reactions between material objects that physics studies; and they brought him to the conclusion that there are certain substances or elements which combine together to form compounds that are wholly different from each of the elements (oxygen and hydrogen, for instance, combining to form water); and that those elements are made up of units absolutely indivisible, which combine with each other in absolutely exact proportions. The units he called atoms. He built up a theory wonderfully convincing and coherent, that explained virtually all the chemical phenomena then known, and supplied a stepping-stone following Lavoisier's, from which chemists could advance still further. Dalton classified certain substances as elements which we now know are not elements, because they have been found since to be compounds of two or more elements; but this in itself does not disprove his theory, because he himself pointed out that means might be found later to decompose certain materials that seemed then to be elements, because no means had then been found to decompose them.

It may be instructive to note here that Dalton was not the first to imagine that certain forms of matter were elemental, or that matter was indivisible beyond a certain point, or that substances entered into combination with each other in definite proportions. Speculation on all these points had been rife for many years, but it had not produced the invention of any workable law or even theory. Similarly, many men later speculated on the possibility of devising an electrical instrument that would transform the mechanical energy of sound waves into electrical energy, transfer the electrical energy over a wire, and re-convert it into sound; but no one succeeded in producing such an instrument, until Bell invented the telephone in 1876.

History is a record of acts, and not of dreams. And yet the greatest acts were dreamed of before they were performed. Every process, no matter how small or how great, seems to proceed by three stages – conception, development and production. Most of our acts are almost automatic, and the three stages succeed each other so quickly that only the final stage itself is noted. But the greatest acts, from which great results have followed, have begun with the conception of a picture not of an ordinary kind, such as a great campaign, a new machine, a novel theory, a book, painting, statue or edifice: – then a long process of development, during which the conception is gradually embodied in some concrete form, as, for instance, a statue, a painting or an instrument; – and then production. Finis opus coronat, the end crowns the work; but the work is not crowned until it is finished, and a concrete entity has been brought forth.

Lavoisier finished his work. Not only did he dream a dream, but he embodied his dream in a definite form, and gave it to mankind to use. Dalton did similarly. This does not mean that their work was not improved upon thereafter, or that they invented the chemistry of today. They merely laid the foundation of chemistry, and placed the first two stones.

A remarkable exemplar of the meaning of this declaration was Benjamin Thomson, who was an American by birth, but who entered the Austrian Army after the War of the Revolution, and made an unprecedented record in the application of physical and chemical science to the relief of the distressed and ignorant and poor, especially the mendicant classes. For his services he was made Count Rumford. His researches were mostly in the line of saving heat and light, and therefore saving food and fuel. He ascertained by experiments of the utmost ingenuity and thoroughness that the warmth of clothing was because of the air entangled in its fibers; he investigated the radiation, conduction and convection of heat, analyzed the ways in which heat could be economized, and invented a calorimeter for testing the heat-giving value of different fuels. In 1798 he had noted the fact that heat was developed when cannon were being bored. He immediately conceived the idea that the heat developed was related to the amount of work expended driving the boring tool, and invented a means of measuring it. This consisted simply of a blunt boring tool that pressed into a socket in a metal block that was immersed in water, of which the temperature could be taken. To get a basis for his investigations into the problem of lighting economically the dwellings of the poor, Rumford invented a photometer for measuring illumination. No man in history shows more clearly the co-working of a high order of imagination, and a careful and accurate constructiveness; and no man ever secured more intensely practical and beneficent results. In the hospital at Verona he reduced the consumption of fuel to one-eighth.

In 1827 a valuable improvement was made to the machine of civilization by Ohm, who announced the now famous Ohm's Law, that the strength of an electric current in any circuit is equal to the difference in potential of the ends of the circuit, divided by its resistance. This is usually expressed by writing C = E/R.

Can anything be less inspiring than C = E/R? Yes: – few things have been more inspiring. Few things have inspired more zeal for work than that simple formula. That simple formula evolved order out of chaos in the little but super-important world, in which physicists and chemists were trying to solve the riddles that the utilization of electric currents presented. It gave them a basis from which to start, and a definite rule to work by. No oration of Demosthenes, Cicero or Webster has imparted more inspiration, or supplied a greater stimulus to high effort, or done more for human kind than C = E/R.

In 1827 Walker in the United States invented friction matches. It seems strange that someone had not invented matches before. The usual way of getting light was with the flint and steel and tinder-box, – a most inconvenient contrivance. It was quite well known that certain substances would ignite when rubbed, and yet men waited until 1827 to utilize the fact in matches!

In the following year Wöhler succeeded in reducing aluminum, thus contributing a valuable new factor to human knowledge and a valuable new metal to human needs. In the same year Neilson took out a patent in England for "an improved application of air to produce heat in fires, forges and furnaces," in which he proposed to pass a current of heated air through the burning fuel. His invention met with opposition of all kinds, but eventually proved its usefulness. Another invention produced in the same year was Woodworth's machine for planing wood. Still another, was the tubular boiler for locomotives.

In 1829 the first steam locomotive was put into use in the United States. No especial invention seems to have been expended on this device; but there was considerable invention of the kind that I have ventured to call "opportunistic" involved in conceiving the idea of getting the locomotive, and then in actually getting it, and then putting it to work. In the following year Braithwaite and Ericsson in London brought out the first portable fire-engine. There was a great deal of invention of the practical kind involved in the design, construction, production and successful employment of this novel device; and an important step was taken in the means of protecting life and the material products of civilization from destruction by fire.

In 1831 Faraday in London made one of the most important discoveries in physical science ever made, the discovery that if a current of electricity is changed in strength, or if a conductor carrying a current be moved, an instantaneous magnetic effect is felt in the vicinity; and that this magnetic effect will cause an instantaneous current in any closed conducting circuit that may be near. Faraday also discovered that a similar instantaneous current will be set up in a closed circuit if a magnet be moved in its vicinity. This discovery is usually spoken of as the discovery of electro-magnetic induction; and the instantaneous currents are said to be "induced."

About the same time Professor Henry in Princeton discovered that an electric circuit will act not only on other circuits in its vicinity, but on itself; that the fact of being increased or decreased will set up instantaneous currents that tend to oppose the increase or decrease. Thus, while Faraday is credited with the discovery of electro-magnetic induction, Henry is credited with the discovery of self-induction. It has been claimed by some that Henry discovered electro-magnetic induction before Faraday did. This question is of great interest but it is outside the scope of this modest volume.

While both discoveries were of prime importance, and were also analogous, that of electro-magnetic induction has played the more conspicuous part. With it began the endeavor to develop electric currents by the relative motion of coils of wire and magnets, that resulted in the invention of the dynamo, and the later invention of electric lights and motors.

In the same year the discovery (or was it the invention?) of chloroform was made by Guthrie in America, Soubeiran in France and Liebig in Germany. A curious fact connected with the early history of chloroform is that, although its anæsthetic properties were known in general, and although the idea of using gases and vapors and medicines to deaden pain was many centuries old yet nevertheless, chloroform was not put to practical use until about 1846 when Dr. Morton, a dentist, of Boston, adopted it as an anæsthetic. Of all the single inventions ever made, chloroform has unquestionably done more than any other, invented till that time, to give relief from agony.

In 1832 the electric telegraph was invented by Morse, though he did not patent it until 1837. The influence of the electric telegraph on subsequent history has been so great that the influence of no contemporary invention can reasonably be declared to be greater. As with many other inventions, one is tempted to wonder why it had not been invented before; for the fact that electricity could be sent along a conductor and made to cause motion at the other end had been known since Guericke had demonstrated the fact in the closing years of the seventeenth century. The original invention of the electric telegraph is claimed by some for Henry, who had a wire run between his house and his laboratory at Princeton, over which he sent messages, by opening and closing the circuit and thereby actuating an electro-magnet at the receiving end.

The first machine to put Faraday's discovery of magneto-electric induction to practical use was invented by Pixii in France in 1832, and exhibited before the Academy of Sciences. It consisted of a powerful magnet that was made to revolve with great rapidity before a bar of soft iron that had wrapped around it a coil of insulated wire about 3,000 feet long. The north and south poles taking position in succession in front of the coil, currents were induced that alternated in direction, twice in each revolution. If a man grasped two wires in the circuit he received a series of sharp electric shocks; but such effects as decomposing water that were produced by the continuous currents of Voltaic batteries could not be produced by these alternating currents. To secure such effects, Siemens and others made machines in which the magnet in the form of a U was stationary, two coils of wire revolved in front of the poles, and a two-part "commutator" was used. When this was placed on the axle, and the axle was revolved, the change in direction of the current was obviated, though a smooth and uniform current was not produced. The reason was that the current fell to zero twice in each revolution.

The magneto-electric machine, as it was called, remained virtually in this form for many years. It was not sufficiently effective or efficient to be of much practical usefulness in any art, and was considered more of a scientific toy than a machine of serious importance. Still, the probability was realized by many investigators that a new discovery or invention might be made at any moment, that would put it in the forefront of the useful inventions of the age. (The invention was not made till 1862; it was made by Pacinnotti in Italy and will be mentioned later.)

The influence of the magneto-electric machine, therefore was not direct, but indirect. It was a basic invention; and like many basic inventions, it formed the hidden foundation on which a conspicuous superstructure was later to be reared. One of the lessons of history is that it is the men and the methods and the other things which are in evidence when some important occurrence happens, that are identified with it in the minds of people not only at the time, but afterward. An invention that may have cost its creator the toil and struggle of a lifetime may not gain success simply because of some existing unfavorable conditions of some kind. Suddenly the conditions become favorable. John Doe takes advantage of all the work that other men have done, adds some slight improvement, achieves "success" and dons the laurel wreath.

We see at this time (1832) very clear signs of an increasing number of inventions per year, an increasing speed of invention. We see an acceleration in invention which we cannot help associating in our minds with the acceleration which any material object gets, when continuously subjected to a uniform force, like that of gravity. One almost feels that there must be a continuous force impelling men to invent; so clear is the increase of the speed of inventing.

Following the magneto-machine in 1832 came the invention of a rotary electric motor by Sturgeon, the discovery of chloral-hydrate by Liebig, the production of the first large American locomotive by Baldwin and the invention of link motion by Sir Henry James. The last was an exceedingly important and ingenious contribution to the steam engine, especially in locomotives and ships; for it gave a very quick and sure means of reversing its direction of motion, and of regulating the travel of the valve and the degree of expansion of the steam. In the following year came Stephenson's steam whistle; and in the year following (1834) came the McCormick reaper. Few inventions have had a greater or a more immediate effect on the trend of modern progress, which is to influence men to live in large communities. For the McCormick reaper could do so much more work, and so much better work, than men could do without it, that the cultivation of extensive areas of land could be undertaken with the assurance that large crops of grain could be secured. This not only secured more grain for the country, but liberated many men from toil on farms, and permitted them to migrate to the cities.

The author does not wish to be understood as meaning that migration to cities is wholly desirable; for he is familiar with its disadvantages and dangers. But whether it be desirable or not is beyond the scope of this book. This book is merely a modest attempt to point out the influence of invention in making the world what it is today. Perhaps it would have been better if men had had no invention and had remained in a state of savagery. Some men say so sometimes; but even those men (or most of them) like to sit by a warm fire in a cozy room when it is cold outdoors. The consensus of opinion seems to be that civilization in the main has been a blessing to men, though not an unmixed blessing, and though men must keep on their guard against certain manifest dangers which civilization entails.