76 SCIENCE REMAKING THE WORLD 



wide scale and a trainer of taste as well. It used 

 to be said that only the few could appreciate the best 

 music but we know that this is not true. For the great- 

 est of composers are represented by some disks in the 

 poorest collection. They may have been bought in 

 the beginning for the looks of the thing and may at 

 first be brought out only for high-brow visitors, but 

 some of the family are likely in time to like them better 

 than the flashy trashy tinkling tunes that first caught 

 their fancy. This is the first time that good music has 

 had an even chance in competition with poor music for 

 popular appreciation. To rural communities, where for- 

 merly the only music to be heard was that of a painfully 

 played cabinet organ or of a self-taught fiddler, the pho- 

 nograph has brought at least a hint of the possibilities 

 of all instruments and of the characteristics of various 

 compositions and of the peculiarities of varied players. 

 With the phonograph has come into vogue its comple- 

 ment, the motion picture, and soon the two are likely 

 to be made one. As the telescope brings to us happen- 

 ings distant in space, so the phonograph and the motion 

 picture bring to us happenings distant in time. The 

 motion picture film is produced with coal-tar developers 

 so this too as well as all photography might be included 

 among the beneficiaries of benzene. In short there is 

 no end to the ramifications of the influence of coal-tar 

 compounds on our daily life. 



GUIDE TO FURTHER READING 



"Chemical Discovery and Invention in the Twentieth Century," 

 by Sir William A. Tilden. (Dutton.) Chapters XXI and XXIL 



