Invention: The Master-key to Progress

In the following year, 1852, Channing and Farmer invented the fire-alarm telegraph, an important contribution to the safety of the Machine, though it did not come into general use for several years. In the same year, Fox Talbot made another of his epochal contributions to photography, by inventing a process by which photographic half-tones could be produced. In the following year, a process was invented for making from wood a pulp that was very valuable as the basis of making paper, – and Faraday made three important discoveries. These were the laws of electro-magnetic induction, the relations of the dielectric to the conducting bodies in electro-static induction, and the laws of electrolysis.

These discoveries of Faraday were all inventions, in the sense in which the word invention is used in this book. Each one was the outcome of a series of careful and mathematically guided experiments, and the outgrowth of an idea. In the following year, Melhuish invented photographic roll films, and Herman invented the rock drill. The latter invention has been of the utmost practical value in blasting operations of all kinds, and must be regarded as a very distinct addition to the Machine.

In the same year, appeared the Smith & Wesson revolver; not a great invention, but an improvement in many ways over Colt's; Mr. A. B. Wilson brought out his four-motion feed for sewing-machines, and R. A. Tilghman invented his process for decomposing fats by hot steam. In the following year (1855), Lundstrom made the highly important invention of safety matches. When one reflects (as every one must at times) how great and absolutely irretrievable are the losses caused by fire each year, how the amount of possible destruction grows each year exactly as fast as the Machine grows, and realizes how large a fire many a small match has caused, he feels inclined to give a mental salute to Mr. Lundstrom of Sweden.

In the same year, iron-clad floating batteries were used in the Crimean War. This was not the first time that iron-clad vessels had been employed, for vessels protected on the sides with sheets of iron and copper had been used by the Coreans in their victorious war against the Japanese about three hundred years before; but it was the first time that such vessels had appeared in Europe. Cocaine was invented the same year, and one of the most valuable anæsthetics yet known was then produced.

But the most valuable contribution to the Machine in 1855 was Henry Bessemer's epochal invention of making steel by blowing air through molten cast iron, until enough of the carbon had been burnt off to leave a steel of whatever quality was desired. This invention reduced the cost of making steel, and the time required, in so great a degree as to place the manufacture of steel on a basis entirely new, and to extend its field of employment greatly. And, as with many previous great inventions, this one paved the way for still other inventions, by indicating the possibility of still wider fields. The Bessemer process is not in the class with the typewriter or the telegraph, but in the class with the gun; for it does things itself. It would be difficult to specify any invention (except one produced at a much earlier time) that has had more influence, and more good influence, on history than Bessemer's. No one can look out of his window in any town or city, without seeing some of the innumerable products of Bessemer's idea.

Our record has now brought us to the middle of the nineteenth century. The conditions of living in 1850 were greatly different from those of 1800. In fifty years, the physical conditions of living and of carrying on business of all kinds, had improved more than in the century between 1700 and 1800, more than in the two centuries preceding 1700, and more than in the ten centuries from 500 and 1500. Rapid transportation over the land in railroad trains for both passengers and freight had largely replaced the slow transportation methods of 1800; and, in an almost equal degree, steam transportation at sea had replaced transportation by sails. The printing press had been developed from a crude and slow contrivance, worked by a hand, to a magnificent mechanism worked by steam: the electric battery had been improved into an appliance of the utmost reliability and usefulness; telegraph lines stretched over the continents, and messages were sent surely and instantaneously over hundreds of miles of land; and the science of chemistry had arisen from the ashes of alchemy. As a result of this, the science of photography had been born, and had already begun its work, so varied and so useful. Physics had grown so surely and so greatly, that it had been divided into the separate but allied sciences of heat, light and electricity – including magnetism: the science of engineering had expanded so widely, that it also had been divided into other sciences – civil engineering, mechanical engineering, hydraulic engineering and electrical engineering: the science of medicine, because of the advances in chemistry and physics, had advanced at an equal rate: the gun had been so greatly improved, and gunpowder also, that such a degree of precision and range had been attained as to make the gun of 1800 seem crude indeed; and the improvement had been inevitably caused by the greater knowledge placed at the disposal of ordnance officers, by the advances in chemistry, heat, light, electricity, magnetism and the various engineering arts. The introduction of illuminating gas, the improvements in forging, casting and turning metals, had made possible the building of edifices, and the fabrication of better and cheaper utensils of every kind: improvements in the means and methods of spinning, knitting and weaving had bettered the materials that people wore upon their persons: improvements in rubber manufacture had made possible the use of waterproof garments; crops could be gathered more quickly and surely: safety from fire had been increased: methods of heating houses had been vastly improved: and the discovery of anæsthetics had relieved civilized man in great degree from his most distressing single enemy. As a result, the people of every civilized country lived under conditions of comfort far greater than had ever been known before in similar climates.

The facts and conditions detailed above relate almost wholly to the material conditions of living, and show that, for most people, they had been enormously improved: though it is noteworthy that for the very poor, they had not improved in many cases, and had been altered for the worse in other cases. The unfavorable changes were mainly those produced by "factory life" which in 1850 must have been worse than country life for the same class of people. These cases were so greatly in the minority, however, as not to affect the main proposition that the advance in civilization from 1800 to 1850, caused by new inventions, had improved the material conditions of living for the great majority of the people affected by them.

That it was desirable that these conditions should be improved, some people may be disposed to deny; pointing out that the improvement tended to develop "luxury, thou cursed of Heaven's decree." One of the effects of increasing material prosperity is undoubtedly a tendency toward luxury. But the number of people thus affected was so very small in the period from 1800 to 1850, and the degree of luxury attained then was so slight, that this question need hardly be discussed, at this point.

But the mental condition of the people had changed as greatly as the physical conditions of their environment. The immediate cause of this change was, of course, the printing press, which disseminated the thoughts of thinking men broadcast, and told of events that were occurring not only in places near, but also in places distant. This gave an enormous stimulation to the minds of the people by exciting their interest: and it also gave to their minds both "food for thought" and almost unlimited opportunity for exercise. Before this period, only a small part of the population had a wide range of knowledge, or a large number of subjects to think about. Their lives were exceedingly monotonous, and would have been exceedingly dull, had it not been for the continuous necessity of combating the inconveniences of every-day life by continual toil of one kind or another. There were very few subjects of conversation.

But the printing-press told the people of other things besides the events that were taking place; it told them also of new discoveries and inventions that were being made, and of the effects they would produce. The news of a great discovery or invention must have created more excitement in 1831 when the discovery of chloroform was announced, than almost any discovery would now, because we are so accustomed to new discoveries as almost to be sated. We know what excitement the first successful railway trips created. The coming of these new discoveries and inventions gave mental exercise in four ways: – first by stimulating the imagination with a picture it had never seen before, and whose possibilities reached no one could guess how far; second by stimulating the logical powers to reason out and understand the principles underlying each discovery or invention; third by stimulating the memory to engrave upon its tablets certain new and important facts; and fourth, by stimulating the inventive faculties, to carry inventions further.

Thus, the influence of new inventions was to change a man's environment, both physical and mental. Now every man is said to be the product of his environment and his heredity; so that the influence of these new inventions was to change men to a degree proportional to the degree by which they changed their environment. This does not mean that inventions have changed man biologically, or even changed him so much that he will act very differently from a savage, under abnormal conditions. It does mean, however, that they have caused men so to adapt themselves to the new environment which inventions have created, that, while in that environment, they will for all practical purposes, be very different from savages. It means that under nearly all the conditions of living, a gentleman in civilized society will be a gentleman – courteous, refined, law-abiding and moral. It does not mean that he will be perfect, but that he will be very much more courteous, refined, law-abiding and moral than a savage; and it means, in consequence that the society of civilized people in general will possess these characteristics much more than any society of savages does.

Not only, however, have these inventions changed the environment of civilized man, they have changed his heredity also; because they had previously changed the environment of his parents, grandparents and other ancestors. The graduate of Oxford of 1850, the son of an Oxford graduate who was also the son of an Oxford graduate, though he was biologically the same as his barbarian ancestors of ten thousand years before, was nevertheless a much more refined, intelligent and courteous gentleman. Under certain abnormal conditions, such as intense thirst, hunger, jealousy, passion or unlooked-for temptation he might act as badly as a savage: – in fact such men sometimes do. But nevertheless, the fact that in 99 % of the conditions under which he lives he acts as a gentleman and not as a savage makes him 99 % a gentleman, and only 1 % a savage, during his mortal life.

Thus inventions, while originating (or seeming to originate) in the minds of men, change the environment of men, and this changes the men. Of the two changes, it would be easy to say that the change made in the men is the more important; but would it be truthful to say so? We have already noted the curious fact that inventions have the faculty of self-improvement to a degree far greater than men have it; for the reason that each new man must begin where his last ancestor began, whereas each new invention begins where his last ancestor finished. This suggests that the changes produced in environment are more profound than the changes produced in men; that in fact the changes in environment are very profound, and the changes in men quite superficial. That this is really the case is indicated by the very long time needed to build up the environments of civilization, and the very short time needed for men to adapt themselves to those environments, or to any changed conditions. The fact has often been noted (sometimes with chagrin) that highly refined gentlemen adapt themselves with extreme facility to the often primitive environments of hunting or campaigning, and history shows in many instances how quickly barbarians have adapted themselves to civilization.

This leads us to suspect that the Machine which inventions have built up may not be of so much permanence as we are prone to think, and makes us realize that it is not a natural production but one wholly artificial. Now nothing that is wholly artificial can reasonably be expected to be permanent, unless adequate and timely measures are taken to insure it.