Electricity 



itself where once anarchy alone . appeared. 

 When the investigator now needs a substance 

 of peculiar properties he knows where to find it, 

 or has a hint for its creation a creation perhaps 

 new in the history of the world. As he thinks of 

 the wealth of qualities possessed by his store 

 of alloys, salts, acids, alkalies, new uses for them 

 are borne into his mind. Yet more a new 

 orchestration of inquiry is possible by means of 

 the instruments created for him by the electrician, 

 through the advances in method which these 

 instruments effect. With a second and more 

 intimate point of view arrives a new trigonome- 

 try of the particle, a trigonometry inconceivable 

 in pre-electric days. Hence a surround is in 

 progress which early in the twentieth century 

 may go full circle, making atom and molecule as 

 obedient to the chemist as brick and stone are 

 to the builder now. 



The laboratory investigator and the commer- 

 cial exploiter of his discoveries have been by 

 turns borrower and lender, to the great profit of 

 both. What Ley den jar could ever be con- 

 structed of the size and revealing power of an 

 Atlantic cable ? And how many refinements 

 of measurement, of purification of metals, of 

 precision in manufacture, have been imposed 

 by the colossal investments in deep-sea telegraphy 

 alone ! When a current admitted to an ocean 

 cable, such as that between Biest and New York, 

 can choose for its path either 3,540 miles of copper 

 wire or a quarter of an inch of gutta-percha, 

 141 



