540 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE RELATIONS OF ABSTRACT RESEARCH TO 

 PRACTICAL INVENTION.* 



By F. W. CLARKE. 



A HUNDRED years ago. just after the first American patent 

 was issued, two other events, fitly to be mentioned here," be- 

 came a part of history. In 1791 Galvani published his famous 

 book on animal electricity ; and at about the same time the Royal 

 Society gave its highest honor, the award of the Copley Medal, to 

 Volta. Between these events and the passage of our first patent 

 law no connection was then apparent, nor for many years after- 

 ward did any relation become obvious. The patent system dealt 

 with affairs of practical utility, while Galvani and Volta were 

 mere visionaries, prying into matters of only speculative interest, 

 and of no real value or importance to anybody. Indeed, Galvani 

 was ridiculed throughout Europe as " the frogs' dancing-master," 

 so remote from all material considerations, so useless to all out- 

 ward seeming, were his investigations. 



In spite of ridicule and indifference, however, the unpractical 

 researches went on, from step to step, from discovery to discovery, 

 until at last they ripened into invention. Galvani and Volta had 

 worthy successors Oersted, Ampere, Ohm, Faraday, Henry, and 

 others all devoted to knowledge for its own sake, and caring little 

 for any reward other than the consciousness of achievement. The 

 voltaic pile, the galvanic battery, and the electro-magnet were 

 added to the resources of science ; facts, principles, and laws came 

 into recognition; and suddenly a relation of the work done to 

 the work the great world was doing became manifest. Nearly 

 half a century was passed in these preliminaries, and then came 

 the inventions of electro-metallurgy, of the telegraph, and of all 

 the hurrying swarm of wonders that mark this " age of electrici- 

 ty." Suddenly the Patent Office became a center of interest in 

 what at the date of its foundation had been apparently remote 

 from its purposes ; and to-day, grown from the germs of a century 

 ago, we see one of the chief objects of its activity. All now know 

 the merit of Galvani's work, and yet its lesson of history is far 

 too seldom realized. Every true investigator in the domain of 

 pure science is met with monotonously recurrent questions as to 

 the practical purport of his studies ; and rarely can he find an 

 answer expressible in terms of commerce. If utility is not im- 

 mediately in sight, he is pitied as a dreamer, or blamed as a spend- 

 thrift of time ; for the questioning man of affairs can recognize 

 only affairs, and to him speculations not convertible into coin of 



* An address delivered at the Patent Centennial in Washington, April 9, 1891. 



