Januaet 1, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



vised and admirably designed machinery 

 been made to supplement and supplant 

 hand labor so successfully; we have indeed 

 a passion and a genius for invention. But 

 it is one thing to contrive clever mechan- 

 ical combinations based upon simple prin- 

 ciples long since established and familiar 

 in every machine shop and quite another 

 to possess the combination of profound 

 chemical knowledge and technical skill that 

 have yielded such extraordinary results in 

 the glass works at Jena, or the mathe- 

 matical ability to develop the theory of 

 lenses to the point which has made it pos- 

 sible to desigTi the wonderful optical in- 

 struments that have made the same little 

 German town famous. 



Many inventions that did not originate 

 with us have foxmd their widest field in 

 this country. Many foreign ideas have 

 first obtained practical form for general 

 purposes here. We were among the first 

 and continue to be by far the most ex- 

 tensive users of the electric railway. In 

 Davenpoi't, Page, Farmer, Green and 

 others we count pioneers of the pre- 

 dynamie period worthy to be named with 

 Davidson, Pinkus, Jacoby, Bessolo and 

 other European inventors of their day. 

 Nevertheless it was Pacinotti, Gramme and 

 Siemens who gave us the electric motor; 

 it was at Sermaize in France that the 

 classical experiment of plowing by elec- 

 tricity was performed; it was at the in- 

 dustrial exhibition in Berlin, in 1879, that 

 the first electric road in the modern sense 

 was operated. The first roads for ordi- 

 nary everyday public service were the 

 Berlin-Lichterfelde Line and the Port Rush 

 Electric Railway, in Ireland, a third-rail 

 system supplied with water-power. Buda- 

 pest had the first successful underground 

 trolley road. The most advanced type of 

 electric traction by the use of alternating 

 currents, as exemplified in Switzerland, 

 northern Italy and elsewhere has only very 



recently received serious attention in this 

 country. 



We transmit a larger amount of energy 

 over greater distances and at higher volt- 

 ages than any other people, but the prac- 

 tical possibility of such transmission was 

 first exemplified by the sending of power 

 from the waterfalls at Laufen 100 kilo- 

 meters away, to the electrical exhibition at 

 Frankfort-on-Main, in 1892. 



It is not a question of American versus 

 European skill, but of the conditions under 

 which useful applications are likely to 

 originate. The history of technology 

 shows the essential condition to be scien- 

 tific productiveness. 



A country that has many investigators 

 will have many inventors also. A scien- 

 tific atmosphere dense enough to permeate 

 the masses brings proper suggestions to 

 many practically inclined minds. Where 

 science is there will its by-product, 

 technology, be also. Communities having 

 the most thorough fundamental knowl- 

 edge of pure science will show the 

 greatest output of really practical inven- 

 tions. Peoples who get their knowledge at 

 second-hand must be content to follow. 

 Wliere sound scientific conceptions are the 

 common property of a nation the wasteful 

 efforts of the half-informed will be least 

 prevalent. The search after perpetual mo- 

 tion, the attempt to evade the second law 

 of thermodynamics and the promotion of 

 the impracticable are all simply symptoms 

 of a people's ignorance. 



Modern invention is a very near neigh- 

 bor to the pure science of the laboratory 

 and the relation becomes daily more inti- 

 mate. Nothing could apparently be more 

 academic in its early development or 

 further from the practical workaday world 

 than the subject of electric waves. For 

 j'^ears it was regarded as a fine field for the 

 speculations of the mathematical physi- 

 cist. Then at the hands of Hertz and his 



