INGENUITY AND LUXURY 



of miles away in the sun, even before the same sub- 

 stance is found on the earth, and helps in a hundred 

 equally wonderful ways to make possible the modern 

 science of physics. In the form of lenses, glass has 

 enabled men to solve some of the riddles of the firma- 

 ment to detect a sun-spot and predict with some cer- 

 tainty a famine in India from its effects, or to foretell 

 the coming of a comet or an eclipse. The same lenses, 

 combined somewhat differently in the form of the com- 

 pound microscope, throw open to man that other world, 

 whose minute inhabitants influence the destinies of 

 man and races much more than all the savage beasts 

 and savage men have done throughout the ages. 



Scarcely less in importance are the revolutionary 

 effects of glass when applied as man's direct helper 

 in the form of spectacles. Imagine for a moment 

 what would become of this reading, print-devouring 

 world to-day, without glass. Abolish lenses, and a 

 large proportion of men and women over fifty years of 

 age would be unable to read ordinary books, news- 

 papers, and correspondence. Another vast army of 

 persons who suffer from astigmatism would be con- 

 demned either to perpetual headaches, or to abandon 

 reading and writing after the age of thirty or there- 

 abouts. While still another army of children who 

 suffer from congenital optical defects, that even in 

 childhood must be corrected by glasses, would never 

 be able to learn to read and write at all. 



In the discovery of electricity and in nearly every 

 phase of the development of electrical science, glass 

 has played an important part. For years the only 



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