MECHANICAL ENGINEERING. 145 



difference in value and efficiency to be observed between work of brain 

 and work of muscle alone. 



Meantime the worker receives larger wages; each dollar will buy 

 more of the necessaries of life, vastly more of its comforts. Clothing is 

 better, cheaper and more plentiful; food is better, of greater variety and 

 is easier obtained; w^ages have gone np and prices have gone down; the 

 average citizen finds it easier to secure employment at remunerative 

 wages; he secures a larger and a larger proportion of the earnings of 

 capital and labor, and he obtains more opportunities for incidental 

 profit and for paying investments of his more easily acquired savings. 

 The savings banks of the country are now finding difficulty in caring 

 for his accumulations, while the larger capitalist is finding no less dif- 

 ficulty in securing a fair return on invested capital in large amounts. 



Twenty years ago, when preparing the second annual address of the 

 then President of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, I 

 wrote:* 



"I have sometimes said that the world was waiting for the appearance of three 

 great inventors, yet unknown, for whom it has in store honors and emoluments 

 far exceeding all ever yet accorded to any one of their predecessors. 



"The first is the man who is to show how, by the consumption of coal, we may 

 directly produce electricity, and thus, perhaps, evade that now inevitable and 

 enormous loss that comes of the utilization of energy in all heat-engines driven 

 by substances of variable volume. Our electrical engineers have this great step 

 still to take, and are apparently not likely soon to gain the prize that may yet 

 reward some genius yet to be born. 



"The second of these greatest inventors is he who will teach us the source of 

 the beautiful soft-beaming light of the firefly and the glow-worm, and will show 

 us how to produce this singular illuminant, and to apply it -with success prac- 

 tically and commercially. This wonderful light, free from heat and from conse- 

 quent loss of energy, is nature's substitute for the crude and extravagantly waste- 

 ful lights of which we have, through so many years, been foolishly boasting. The 

 dynamo-electrical engineer has nearly solved this problem. Let us hope that it 

 may be soon fully solved, and by one of those among our own colleagues who are 

 now so earnestly working in this field, and that we may all live to see him steal 

 the glow-worm's light, and to see the approaching days of Vril predicted so long 

 ago by Lord Lytton. 



"The third great genius is the man who is to fulfil Darwin's prophecy (1759), 

 closing the stanza: 



"Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam, afar 

 Drag the slow barge or drive the rapid car, 

 Or, on wide-waving wings expanded bear 

 The flying chariot through the fields of air." 

 Of these three inventors none has yet appeared, and their coming 

 may prove to be the great events of the twentieth century. The task 

 set for the first has been often attacked by later men of science, and 

 especially the chemists; but, while some real progress has been made, 

 the purpose of this inventor is not accomplished and seems little, if any, 



*Trans. Am. Soc. M. E.— 1881. 



VOL. TJX.— 10 



