190 SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION OF MECHANICS AND ARTISANS. 



tnitli, tbongh by the law which I have specified the right was Morton's. 

 Jacksou conceived the idea, for which Morton's scientific knowledge was 

 inadequate. Morton contrived means for the successful experiment, for 

 which Jackson's practical skill was inadequate. Had Jackson been a 

 practising dentist as well as a chemist, or had Morton been a scientifi- 

 cally educated man as well as a dentist, either might have borne the 

 undisputed honor of discoverer and inventor. 



In a certain sense inventions are said to be the work of their age 

 rather than of individuals ; but they have generally been a little behind 

 their age. A new and fruitful idea has commonly been current in the 

 scientific world for a generation or more, before it has been actualized, 

 and tbis for the simple reason that the scientific men have not had the 

 skill requisite for successful experiments, and the men of practical skill 

 have not had science enough to recognize and welcome the dawning of 

 any new light. Thus, an invention of prime importance has often hov- 

 ered long within the near reach of both speculative and practical men, 

 waiting for that conjunction of science and skill without which it could 

 not assume an available form ; and when it has been at length brought 

 forth, many had approached so near it and had so distinctly antici- 

 pated it as to claim with entire honesty the merit of its inception. 



The history of steam-power aflbrds numerous illustrations of the prin- 

 ciple which I have enunciated. A full century of experiments by sj^ec- 

 ulative philosophers on steam as a working force had elapsed — with the 

 construction of various forms of machinery, which demonstrated its 

 potential efScacy, yet were too cumbrous, or too frail, or too restricted 

 in their range of work to be put to any use, except for pumping water 

 from mines — when the steam-engine, with its cylinder and piston sepa- 

 rate from the boiler, came from the hands of JSTewcomen, the blacksmith, 

 and Cawley, the plumber, about the beginning of the last century. 

 Some sixty years later. Watt conceived theidea of a separate condenser, 

 to save the loss of i)ower and the waste of fuel by the alternate heating 

 and cooling of the cjiinder — a contrivance which alone and at once 

 placed steam in advance of all other mechanical agencies, and gave sure 

 presage of its enduring and world-wide supremacy. But he, though a 

 mechanical genius of the highest order, was hardly more than a self- 

 taught workman, having had but a single year's api)renticeship to a 

 London mathematical-instrument maker. His conception and foresight 

 of his great invention were clear and vivid ; but his own working-power 

 was very limited, and in all Glasgow he could not find artisans capa- 

 ble of the delicate workmanship required, the collective skill of the city 

 not sufficing for the casting and boring of a cylinder, while a hammered 

 cylinder left fatal interstices between its inner surface and the piston. 

 After fourteen years of speculation and experiment he had got no 

 further than to show that he ought to have succeeded, and was yielding 

 to despair under the pressure of poverty and repeated failures, when he 

 entered into partnership with Boulton, a trained and skilled manufac- 



