11^ — ^THE RISE OF SCIENCE IN INDUSTRY 



oxygen in the presence of heat enough to ignite them, the Siemens- 

 Martin process, both in its calorific and in its metallurgical aspects, was 

 as purely unpractical as the direct utilization of sun-heat is to-day, until 

 after years of patient observation, not chiefly by scientists but by men 

 unacquainted with books and knowing nothing at second-hand, innumer- 

 able small increments of improvement at last produced a sufficient tem- 

 perature in a durable furnace. 



In the development of machinery, the same history is repeated. The 

 proportions of parts, in fact, the modern formulae themselves, are de- 

 rived from the study of innumerable experiments. The adaptation of 

 machinery can only be perfected by him who, as it were, enters into 

 it, making it an incarnation of himself. This enlargement of a man's 

 organism is most strikingly illustrated in the locomotive. Oliver Wendell 

 Holmes has happily described this putting of his life into his "shell" boat, 

 his every volition extending as perfectly into his oars as if his spinal 

 cord ran down the centre of its keel, and the nerves of his arms tingling 

 in the oar-blades. The thoughtful locomotive-driver is clothed upon, not 

 with the mere machinery of a larger organism, but with all the attributes 

 of a power superior to his own, except volition. Every faculty is stimu- 

 lated and every sense exalted. An unusual sound amid the roarinsf ex- 

 haust and the clattering wheels tells him instantly the place and degree 

 of danger, as would a pain in his own flesh. The consciousness of a cer- 

 tain jarring of the foot-plate, a chattering of a valve-stem, a halt in the 

 exhaust, a peculiar smell of burning, a sudden pounding of the piston, 

 an ominous wheeze of the blast, a hissing of a water-gauge — warning 

 him respectively of a broken spring-hanger, a cutting valve, a slipped 

 eccentric, a hot journal, the priming of the boiler, high water, low water, 

 or failing steam — these sensations, as it were, of his outer body, become 

 so intermingled with the sensations of his inner body, that this wheeled 

 and fire-feeding man feels rather than perceives the varying stresses upon 

 his mighty organism. 



Mere familiarity with steam-engines is not, indeed, a cause of im- 

 proved steam-engineering, but it is a cojiditioji. The mechanical laws of 

 heat were not developed in an engine-house, yet without the mechanism 

 which the knowledge derived through this familiarity has created and 

 adapted, the study of heat would have been an ornamental rather than a 

 useful pursuit. So in other departments. When one can feel the comple- 

 tion of a Bessemer "blow" without looking at the flame, or number the 

 remaining minutes of a Martin steel charge from the bubbling of the 

 bath, or foretell the changes in the working of a blast-furnace by watch- 

 ing the colors and structure of the slag, or note the carburization of 

 steel by examining its fracture, or say what an ore will yield from its 

 appearance and weight in the hand, or predict the lifetime of a machine 

 by feeling its pulse; when one in any art can make a diagnosis by look- 

 ing the patient in the face rather than by reading about similar cases in 

 a book, then only may he hope to practically apply such improvements 

 as theory may suggest, or to lead in those original investigations upon 

 which successful theories shall be founded. 



These are the conclusions of the "practical" man, and they are none 

 the less true because they are not the whole truth. That they are too 



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