236 



DISCOVERY 



on. 



application of it to diphtheria by Behring and Kitasato ; 

 spectrum analysis began with Newton's observations of 

 the decomposition of light by a glass prism, and became 

 a means of discovering the constitutions of the sun and 

 stars by the work of Fraunhofer, Wollaston, Kirchhoif, 

 Lockyer and Huggins ; and X-rays were discovered by 

 Rontgen as a natural consequence of previous investi- 

 gations of Crookes, Hertz and Lenard. 



We are aware, of course, that Marconi made wireless 

 telegraphy a commercial undertaking, that Graham Bell, 

 Edison and others perfected the telephone, and the 

 Wright Brothers constructed the first man-carrying 

 flying machine ; but these developments represent 

 applications or extensions of new knowledge and not the 

 creation of it. A scientific investigator working in a 

 laboratory was in every case the originator of the fact 

 or principle utilised in the production of what a consensus 

 of opinion considers to be the seven greatest achievements 

 of modern times. 



The history of science shows that the greatest advances 

 Eave always been made by men who undertook their 

 inquiries into Nature without thought of proximate or 

 ultimate practical application or pecuniary reward. 

 The best kind of scientific research cannot be carried 

 on in an atmosphere of commercialism, or where personal 

 profit is the end in view. Few people outside purely 

 scientific circles have any clear idea as to the meaning 

 and object of research. 



The object may be purely visionary, as was the object of the 

 early chemists and alchemists, whose operations, extending 

 through the dark centuries of the Middle Ages, left behind 

 practically nothing but an extensive, though barren, literature, 

 the witness of the credulity and ignorance of those times. The 

 lesson to be derived from the whole of this strange history is 



