846 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mysterious benefit in it for a certain 

 class of minds. If it pleases them, 

 it does not do much harm to Science, 



which, as The Nation says, has such 

 an army of workers at its disposal as 

 the world never saw before. 



SPECIAL BOOKS. 



WE often see allusions to the triumphs of the inventor, and descrip- 

 tions of single achievements are constantly being presented by the peri- 

 odical press, but it is a long time since a goodly number of them have been 

 brought together systematically as in the volume now before us.* The 

 author has undertaken to present in popular language the chief results 

 obtained within recent years by the arts of engineering and mechanics, 

 together with suggestions as to what the future may bring forth, these 

 suggestions being based upon the lines of research on which great minds 

 are known to be pushing forward. When one stops to enumerate the 

 notable inventions which the average city dweller makes use of in his 

 daily life, a feeling of wonder at their array can not be repressed. On his 

 breakfast table is sugar which has been extracted and purified by ma- 

 chinery ; if it is warm weather, perhaps some of his food has been kept 

 overnight by machine-made ice ; either during or after the meal he reads 

 a newspaper that may have been put in type and was certainly stereotyped 

 and printed by machinery ; he sees by a watch whose parts have been turned 

 out by delicate machines that it is time to take a car propelled by a ma- 

 chine in a power house several miles away or by a storage battery and ride 

 to the towering steel structure in which his office is. If he is a sub- 

 urban dweller, he may cross a bridge of imposing span, and wish for the 

 time when flying machines are practicable enough to shorten his journey. 

 He ascends by an electric elevator to the 'teenth or twentieth story of the 

 office building, which is perhaps partly lighted through glass containing 

 wire netting. His business involves the sending and receiving of many 

 telegrams which are printed by the receiving instruments. He goes home 

 in the afternoon early enough to take a spin on his stanch nineteen-pound 

 bicycle, or a trial ride with the agent of a motor carriage, or a sail in his 

 electric launch; for a submarine boat he does not yearn. In the evening 

 he reads his magazine, illustrated with photo-engravings, by light from 

 electricity, or from enriched coal gas in an improved burner, or possibly 

 from the product of the oil well. Other inventions, with which he does 

 not come into immediate contact, prepare articles for his use or aid in 

 transporting them to him. Among these may be mentioned mining, ore- 

 concentrating, and coal-handling machinery, the steel converter, the spec- 

 troscope, the testing machine, various machine tools, compressed-air mech- 

 anisms, the plant utilizing power from Niagara, tunnels, canals, and the 

 ocean steamer. All these and more are described in Mr. Cochrane's book, 

 and the author is quite resigned to the idea of a reader of some future gen- 



* The Wonders of Modern Mechanism. By Charles Henry Cochrane. Pp. 402, 8vo. Philadel- 

 phia : J. B. Lippincott Company. Price, $2. 



