606 THE BIRTH OF INVENTION. 



suit, and to a very limited extent can originate. But it is the spark 

 of originality which underlies every thought or device in this world. 

 As Oiie man invents a machine and others by thousands fall into the 

 use of it, as tbe musician composes a song and millions sing it, .so was 

 it in the cradle-land of humanity the inventor, touched with fire from 

 the divine altar, set new examples to be followed. If we were to inter- 

 rogate our five witnesses, particularly with reference to the ancestry, 

 the family tree of the notable inventions of the nineteenth century, 

 their answer would be somewhat as follows:* 



The ancestor of the steam plow is the digging stick of savagery, a 

 branch of a tree sharpened at the end by fire ; the progenitors of th^ 

 steam harvester and thresher were the stone sickle, the roasting tray, 

 or, later on, the tribulum. 



The cotton gin and ])ower loom are among the wonders of our age. 

 Yet in that day of which we are speaking human fingers wrought the 

 textile from first to last. They gathered the bark or wool, colored 

 them to suit the primitive taste, spun and wove them with simple 

 apparatus, and left upon the fabric ])atterus that are the despair of all 

 modern machine-makers — patterns that arc a pleasure to the eye by 

 their infinite variety, re|)laced in modern fabrics by a dreary monotony 

 that aAvakens pain instead of pleasure. 



The first sewing machine was a needle or bodkin of bone, with dainty 

 sinew thread from the leg of the antelope, and for thimble a little 

 leather cai) over the ends of the fingers. Coarse, indeed, the appara- 

 tus, but the hand was deft, the eye Avas true, the sense of beauty was 

 there, and so that needlewonmn of long ago wrought in fur from the 

 mammals, feathers from the birds, grasses from the fields, shells from 

 the sea, wings from the beetle, and skins of snakes with tasteful 

 geometric figures. You do err who think those ancient needle- women 

 had no taste. It would be hard to invent a pattern now that was 

 unfamiliar to them. 



The first engine was run by man power, then man subdued the horse, 

 the ass, the camel, and invented engines for those to propel. He next 

 domesticated the winds, the waters, the steam, the lightning, but the 

 first common carriers and machine power were men and women. The 

 first burden train was Avomen's backs; the first passenger car was a 

 pai)0()se frame. 



The poetry of to-day is the fact of yesterday ; the dream of yesterday 

 is the fact of to-day. When the savage woman a century or two ago, 

 upon this very spot, strapped her dusky offspring to a rude frame, hung 

 it upon the nearest sapling for the winds to rock, or lifted the unfor- 



*We ought to rcnicnibcr, however, tliat .'in invention is not always a thing; but 

 that it may be any series of actions conducing towai <1 some new end. We should keep 

 in mind, also, tliat all our activities in^'ol^'e materials and their (jualities; human, 

 animal, and physical forces; tools and machines; processes, and products; and that 

 invention may take place in any or all of these. 



