448 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



more or less appropriateness, to occupations remote from those of the 

 military or civil engineer, as for example, the "illuminating engineer, " 

 the " efficiency engineer," the " public health engineer," etc. We may 

 soon expect to have added to these many others, such as the agricul- 

 tural engineer, the forest engineer and even the fishery engineer. 



An historical sketch of applied science and engineering would ob- 

 viously include the work of Archimedes, Vitruvius, Frontinus, and 

 Leonardo, and proceed with the applications made of the discov- 

 eries and inventions of the Renaissance and modern times. Some of 

 this ground is covered in the present volume, and more of it in the 

 series of books by Smiles entitled Lives of the Engineers. 



There is scarcely a department of science or art which is the same, or at all the 

 same, as it was fifty years ago. A new world of inventions of railways and of 

 telegraphs has grown up around us which we cannot help seeing; a new world 

 of ideas is in the air and affects us, though we do not see it. 



Bagehot. Physics and Politics (1868). 



Only since continental ideas and influences have gained ground in this country 

 (Great Britain') has the word science gradually taken the place of that which used 

 to be termed natural philosophy or simply philosophy. One reason why science 

 forms such a prominent feature in the culture of this age is the fact that only 

 within the last hundred years has scientific research approached the more intricate 

 phenomena and the more hidden forces and conditions which make up and govern 

 our everyday life. The great inventions of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth 

 centuries were made without special scientific knowledge, and frequently by persons 

 who possessed skill rather than learning. They greatly influenced science and 

 promoted knowledge, but they were brought about more by accident or by the prac- 

 tical requirements of the age than by the power of an unusual insight acquired by 

 study. But in the course of the last hundred years the scientific investigation of 

 chemical and electric phenomena has taught us to disentangle the intricate web of 

 the elementary forces of nature, to lay bare the many interwoven threads, to break up 

 the equilibrium of actual existence, and to bring within our power and under our 

 control forces of undreamed-of magnitude. The great inventions of former ages 

 were made in countries where' practical life, industry and commerce were most 

 advanced; but the great inventions of the last fifty years in chemistry and electricity 

 and the science of heat have been made in the scientific laboratory: the former 

 were stimulated by practical wants; the latter themselves produced new practical 

 requirements, and created new spheres of labor, industry, and commerce. Science 

 and knowledge have in the course of this century overtaken the march of practical 

 life in many directions. Merz. 



