44 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



his discoveries in astronomy. He suggested the pendulum and 

 its application to the measurement of time. The Marquis of 

 Worcester imparted to the world its first knowledge of the power 

 of steam. Sir Christopher Wren was no less distinguished for his 

 mechanical inventions than for St. Paul's Cathedral — the imper- 

 ishable monument of his genius as an architect. Newton gave 

 an importance to astronomy it had never attained by the applica- 

 tion of mechanical laws to the phenomena of the heavenly bodies. 

 Coulomb discovered the nature and law of friction. The cluster- 

 ing stars have no brighter lustre than the undying names of those 

 "who have applied the discoveries of these founders of mechanical 

 science to the inventions of modern times, as Watt, Fulton, Whit- 

 ney, Morse, Hoe, Adams, and many others. It may seem adven- 

 turous to connect unlettered mechanics with the fathers of the 

 science, or with the successful inventors of modern times. Eut 

 they are not separated by ideas or purposes. Their aspirations 

 are in unison. It might have been easier for the philosopher to 

 explain the cause of his success or failure; but the demonstration 

 of the mechanic and the philosopher is the same. Invention is 

 no dainty goddess. She dispenses her bright thoughts wherever 

 she finds the patient observer. She is the same to the alchemist 

 who wastes a life in fruitless endeavors to fuse a new metal, and 

 to the boy who gives new powers to the steam engine by coupling 

 its detached parts with a string, that he may escape for a moment 

 to his play. Mechanical invention is necessarily antecedent to 

 every form of successful industry. It precedes agriculture in its 

 most primitive development, and modern field husbandry is prac- 

 ticable only through the aid of machinery. Seed sown by such 

 help in one or two days, which could not be sown in twenty, and 

 crops harvested in a week by the same aid, that could not be ga- 

 thered in a month, if at all, by manual labor, make a difference 

 in the products of a farm equivalent to the fruits of a whole sea- 

 son. It must also precede all successful commerce, as it is by 

 machinery alone that a surplus is obtained which affords to com- 

 merce opportunity for employment. The influence of mechanical 

 invention upon social life is inappreciably great; and, as an agent 

 of civilization, all other pursuits fade before it. Who can mea- 



