CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



steamship off the sea, it will be apparent that no 

 review of recent progress would have even a 

 semblance of completeness that did not pay full 

 tribute to the gas or oil engine. 



The definitive improvements that gave the gas 

 engine commercial value were made by a German, Dr. 

 N. A. Otto, as long ago as 1876, but the development 

 of a compact, high-speed type of oil engine, largely 

 through the efforts of Herr G. Daimler, is much 

 more recent. 



As finally perfected, the internal combustion motor 

 is responsible in our generation for an industrial rev- 

 olution comparable only to that effected at the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century by its prototype 

 the steam engine. 



We have just been introduced to the newest type 

 of oil engine, the Diesel motor. Our further con- 

 cern is not so much with the gas engine itself as with 

 the space-conquering mechanisms that it has brought 

 into being. The most obvious and universal of these, 

 and the one that up to the present is the most signifi- 

 cant as an economic factor, is the automobile. It 

 would be quite superfluous to describe the mechanism 

 or the method of operation of this vehicle, but a few 

 statistics as to its recent development may not be out 

 of place. 



AUTOMOBILE AND SUBMARINE 



It was estimated that there were 677,999 auto- 

 mobiles in use in the United States in the summer of 

 1912. It is further estimated that more than 200,000 

 of these machines were manufactured here in the 



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