APRIL 26, 1901.] 
century. From the refuse of the mine it 
extracts millions of dollars worth of the 
precious metals. It surfaces the common 
metals with those more beautiful and 
precious, and copies infallibly the engraved 
plate of the map and the type-set page. In 
the electric furnace it creates new com- 
pounds, calcium carbide the source of 
acetylene gas, carborundum the abrasive of 
the future, and calcium nitrate, which 
promises a new source of nitrogen to fertil- 
ize and renew exhausted soils everywhere. 
It aids in the synthesis by which the 
chemist builds out of the inorganic the dye, 
the perfume, the essence, and soon perhaps 
the food, which nature builds only by the 
processes of life. Such are some of the 
functions of the new muscular system with 
which electrical science has equipped the 
body social. 
It is not claimed that pure science is the 
only factor in industrial progress. Inven- 
tion, business sagacity, and many other 
causes cooperate. But the work of science 
is essential, fundamental, creative. How 
far unaided invention can go may be seen 
in China. Here is a people once pliant of 
intellect and inventive. As artificers they 
still are given high praise. But Chinese 
invention, destitute of all scientific foun- 
dation, stopped with the fire cracker, the 
movable type and the directive loadstone. 
It could not possibly go on to the Lyddite 
shell, the Hoe printing press, and the com- 
pass of Lord Kelvin. Invention is applied 
science, and as has been well said,"science 
must first exist before it can be applied. 
Between the scientific investigator, the 
‘discoverer of principles, and the inventor 
who applies them, there need be no) ‘jeal- 
ousy. If the last has the popular fame 
and the financial reward of the present, it 
is often to the first that the future be- 
longs, and, inany event, in the words of the 
generous Schley at Santiago ‘There‘is glory 
enough for all.’ And aftewall, why should 
SCIENCE 
647 
the name of science be refused to that vast 
body of knowledge, classified and tested, 
which is in daily use in the laboratories of 
the industries of the world. 
But to science even in its most restricted 
sense the debt of society is incalculable. It 
has evoked those good genii, steam and 
electricity. Watt was led to the invention 
of the steam engine, not by a boy’s glance 
at his mother’s tea, kettle, but through the 
discovery by Black of latent heat and after 
two years of profound study of such abstruse 
problems as the specific volume of steam 
and its law of tension under varying temper- 
atures. And the improvements in the 
steam engine, which since the fifties have 
more than doubled the speed of the piston, 
while saving at least one-fourth of the fuel, 
have been made under the guidance. of 
Joule and the mechanical theory of heat. 
In the matter of the advantage of super- 
heated steam and high pressure, theory still 
seems to outrun practice. 
In electricity the mechanic can take 
no important step beyond the scien- 
tific discoverer. How happy was the 
thought which designates the various 
units of electricity by the illustrious 
names of the masters of research: volt, in 
honor of the professor in the University of 
Pavia, who, one hundred years ago, gave 
the world in his crown of cups its first ef- 
fective reservoir of the new power; am- 
pére, the name of the professor of physics 
in the College of France, founder of the 
science of electro-dynamics ; ohm, in mem- 
ory of the professor of experimental physics 
in the University of Munich, discoverer of 
the law of the strength of the electric cur- 
rent; and farad, in honor of the greatest of 
them all, Michael Faraday, professor of 
chemistry in the Institution of England, the 
prince of experimenters, whose researches, 
resulting in the dynamo, connected the in- 
dustries of the world- with the first eco- 
nomical source of electrical energy. 
