INFLUENCE OF INVENTIONS ON CIVILIZATION. 



479 



blunt instruments with which his ancestors had to be content before 

 they came into contact with the white man. What an acquisition the 

 white man's fish-hook must have been to the Indian ! 



Fifty years ago a large part of the people of this country had no 

 other resource for artificial light than the tallow-candle. I remember 

 it, and the vexations attending its use, the difficulty of lighting it by 

 a coal of fire, the constant snuffing it required to make its light toler- 

 able, and its constant tendency to melt and besmear everything in its 

 vicinity. I venture to say that any of you would consider it an intol- 

 erable hardship to be compelled to use it and nothing else. Those 

 who used oil-lamps got a little better light, but not much less discom- 

 fort. Gas was used only in the large cities. But the inventors have 

 been busy in providing a new material for illumination and the means 

 for using it and in cheapening their production ; and now in kerosene 

 and in kerosene-lamps, both of which have been called into existence 

 within thirty years, the poorest people can enjoy, at the most trifling 

 expense, a light better far than anything which anybody could com- 

 mand at any price before the invention of gas less than a hundred 

 years ago. 



Can we estimate the comforts of the homes of the country due to 

 these inventions ? Can we estimate the greater value of the evening 

 hours for work, or study, or reading, which these inventions have 

 given them ? 



I remember that my mother had a vial of what she called rock-oil, 

 which she thought very good for sprains or bruises. It was said to 

 have come from "Western New York. I now suppose it to have been 

 petroleum. Petroleum has been known to man for a long time, but it 

 had no value till it came under the hands of the inventor. He has 

 made a worthless article a blessing. Invention marks every step of its 

 history. Petroleum in this country lies deep in the earth. By the 

 aid of recent inventions man reaches it. By their aid he stores it, for 

 it is a dangerous and difficult article to keep and transport. By in- 

 vention, man has changed its character. And now, not only this 

 country, but the whole world, is lighted by this new material. Yet all 

 the invention which has been bestowed upon it would have been 

 wasted but for another class of inventors and another line of inven- 

 tions. The lamps had to be invented or improved, and hundreds of 

 men have been engaged on their improvement for years. 



And now inventors have entered a new field and given us a light 

 for our homes and streets almost as brilliant as that from the sun itself, 

 from that agent which, since the world began, has lighted up the sky 

 in angry flashes only to alarm timid and superstitious man. 



It is a curious and interesting exercise to take any common article 

 of daily use and inquire how much invention has been involved in its 

 production ; what inventions have preceded it ; what ones, if any, it 

 has supplanted, and what ones it gave birth to ; what consequences 



