GERMANY IN SCIENCE 9 



oplane. The great fleets of aerial vessels which sweep the 

 skies today may be said to be the outcome of the thought of a 

 former Pittsburgher, and in this connection let me remind you 

 that the first transcontinental flight in an aeroplane was ac- 

 complished by Calbraith Perry Rogers, a Pittsburgher, whom in 

 his infancy I remember once to have carried to his home * 'pick- 

 a-back" through a snow-storm, little dreaming as I turned the 

 rosy-cheeked boy over to his mother, who met us at the door, 

 that I had been bearing on my shoulders a child who later "on 

 the wings of the wind" would fly across the continent from sea 

 to sea. 



Thus far I have been thinking mainly of devices intend- 

 ed to effect transportation of masses or of force from point to 

 point in space. Let us turn to another set of instrumentali- 

 ties, which in many respects are no less important. 



' 'Wherewithal shall we be clothed ?' ' This important ques- 

 tion was answered by Arkwright, an Englishman, who invent- 

 ed the power-loom. A close study of the basic improvements 

 in the art of weaving by machinery, which enables a peasant 

 today to wear clothes which six centuries ago a king could not 

 afford, reveals the fact that the inventions which are domi- 

 nant in this industry are the product of the ingenuity of Amer- 

 ican, English, and French mechanics. Eli Whitney of Westbor- 

 ough, Massachusetts, invented the cotton-gin. Without it, 

 how small would be the production of cotton goods! The 

 weaving of damask-patterns in linen, the w saving of velvet, 

 and of velvet tapestries are arts, which were chiefly devel- 

 oped in France. It always interests me to recall the fact that 

 King William III of England in 1698 invited one of my own 

 Huguenot kinsmen. Louis Crommelin, then a refugee in Hol- 

 land, to repair to Ireland to establish the linen industry in 

 that country, made him a grant of lands in Antrim, at Lis- 

 burn, promised to pay him eight percent upon the ,10,000 

 sterling which Crommelin agreed to put into the industry, and 

 made him ' 'National Manager of the Linen Trade. ' ' Some of 

 you know the part played in commerce by Irish linens today. 

 Germany had nothing to do with this development. 



