424 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIV. No. 1401 



every one knows who ever operated an air com- 

 pressor or had to deal with a badly lubricated 

 axle. 



But motion, whether it be furnished by water 

 rushing from a waterfall, or by a steam or gas 

 engine, or by a windmill, can be made to turn 

 a dynamo and produce electrical energy. The 

 latter, in turn, can be changed into motion, 

 heat or light. Or again, we can bridge directly 

 that jump between a chemical reaction and 

 light by simply burning oil, gas, acetylene, or 

 magnesixim, and thus produce any range of 

 even the most intense light. Or, in other cases, 

 we use heat or electricity to decompose the 

 most refractory substances in their elements, 

 and some of our largest electro chemical indus- 

 tries in Niagara Falls are based on this. Or 

 we may use either one of these forms of energy 

 in chemical reactions which build up; which, 

 in other words, bring about chemical synthesis. 



But when it comes to transforming light 

 energy into chemical synthesis, we have left 

 thus far the monopoly of this agent to Nature ; 

 we have been acting as Rip Van Winiles. 



In the museum of the Franklin Institute in 

 Philadelphia exists an electi'ical machine which 

 was used by Benjamin Franklin for his experi- 

 ments. It was one of the very best electric 

 machines of his day. Yet, at that time, it was 

 a mere clumsy toy. When the weather was not 

 too damp and all other conditions were propi- 

 tious, the operator, after turning that glass 

 globe until he was red in the face, could draw 

 some insignificant sparks, or charge a Leyden 

 jar, or give a harmless shock to the person who 

 touched it. All this was not so very long ago. 

 Yet that toy was the forerunner of our enor- 

 mous electrical industries, and all the astound- 

 ing modem applications of electrical energy; 

 our electric generating stations which give us 

 light, power and transportation, which move 

 our trains, our ships, our factories, which gen- 

 erate power far beyond anything which un- 

 scientific man of antiquity, or of a few years 

 ago, was able to dream of. That same elec- 

 tricity which gave us wireless telegraphy and 

 the wireless telephone; which has made the 

 world bigger, and, at the same time, smaller, 



by rendering every nook and corner more acces- 

 sible. 



Let those who at present lay off their re- 

 search chemists, their physicists, their researeli 

 engineers, remember that the tremendous gap 

 between that toy electric machine of Franklin 

 and the present electrical industry, would never 

 have been bridged but for research, invention 

 and good engineering. 



L. H. Baekeland 



Columbia Untoersitt 



HERBERT HAVILAND FIELD 



On April 5 there died in Zurich, Switear- 

 land, from heart failure following influenza, 

 one to whom science and especially zoology 

 owes a great debt. Herbert Haviland Field 

 was not only a man of marked ability and 

 personal charm but he also possessed unusual 

 breadth of vision as well as the power to 

 make his visions realities. By virtue of 

 these traits he made contributions of funda- 

 mental and permanent value to the progress 

 of science though he was known to relatively 

 few because of his modesty and self-elimina- 

 tion. 



Born in Brooklyn, N. Y., April 25, 1868, 

 of Quaker ancestry which included some of 

 the prominent citizens of that municipality 

 a century ago, young Field had his early 

 education in that city, was graduated from 

 the Brooklyn Polytechnic and went to Har- 

 vard. There he took his bachelor's degree in 

 1888 and kept on until he had won his M.A. 

 in 1890 and his Ph.D. in 1891. His doctor's 

 thesis, a masterful study of the early develop- 

 ment of the urogenital organs in Amphibia, 

 gave him at once a high place in the esteem 

 of workers in zoology. 



On going to Europe in the following year, 

 he met a cordial reception at the Universi- 

 ties of Freiburg in Baden, Leipzig, and Paris, 

 at each of which he was given the doctor's 

 degree. Even at the start of his studies he 

 was impressed with the failure of investiga- 

 tors to give due attention to the work of the 

 past and recognized that this neglect was due 

 in large part to the lack of means for ob- 

 taining an adequate record of the volumi- 



