408 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 402. 



The 'next great problems of science,' as I 

 have called them, involve some which are 

 extraordinarily important and curious, 

 genius-provoking and talent-utilizing : prob- 

 lems which can presumably be only solved 

 through the cooperation of all those forms 

 of native talent, perhaps combined in the 

 one man, perhaps in all — the engineer, or 

 the man of science, or the inventor and the 

 mechanician. 



"The progress of the race and the ad- 

 vancement of civilization, whether in the 

 direction of industrial improvement or of 

 intellectual growth, depend, the first 

 mainly, the second largely, upon the ex- 

 tent and the success of man's utilization of 

 the four great natural forces, or ' energies, ' 

 as the man of science calls them: heat, 

 light, electricity, mechanical or dynamic 

 power. 



"The engineer, to whom is confided this 

 duty of utilizing all the forces of nature 

 for the benefit of his fellows, has, however, 

 now apparently reached a point beyond 

 which he can see but little opportunity for 

 further improvement, except by slow and 

 toilsome and continually limited progress. 

 He seems to have come very nearly to the 

 limit of his advance in the directions which 

 have, up to the moment, been so fruitful 

 of result. 



"The living body is a machine in which 

 the ' law of Carnot, ' which asserts the neces- 

 sity of waste in every heat-engine, and 

 which shows that waste to be the greater 

 as the range of temperature worked 

 through by the machine is the more re- 

 stricted, is evaded; it produces electricity 

 without intermediate conversions and 

 losses; it obtains heat without high-tem- 

 perature combustion, and even, in some 

 cases, light without any sensible heat. In 

 other words, in the vital system of man 

 and of the lower animals, nature shows us 

 the practicability of directly converting 

 one form of energy into another, without 



those losses and unavoidable wastes charac- 

 teristic of methods the invention of which 

 has been the pride and the boast of man. 

 Every living creature, man and worm alike, 

 shows him that his great task is but half 

 accomplished ; that his grandest inventions 

 are but crudest and most remote imitations ; 

 that his best work is wasteful and awkward. 

 Every animate creature is a machine of 

 enormously higher eificiency as a dynamic 

 engine than his most elaborate construction, 

 illustrated in a 10,000 horse-power engine. 

 Every gymnotus living in the mud of -a 

 tropical stream puts to shame man's best 

 efforts in the production of electricity ; and 

 the minute insect that flashes across his 

 lawn on a summer evening, or the worm 

 that lights his path in the garden, exhibits 

 a system of illumination incomparably su- 

 perior to his most perfect electric lights." 



Here we have a single example of the 

 opening of a new field of research of tre- 

 mendous importance to the human race, yet 

 unexplored and hardly recognized. 



It seems more than probable that it is 

 to the mysteries and lessons of life that 

 the chemist, the physicist, the engineer, 

 must turn in seeking the key that shall 

 unlock the still unrevealed treasures of 

 coming centuries. These constitute na- 

 ture's challenge to the engineer. 



Nature in each of these cases converts 

 the energy of chemical union, probably of 

 low-temperature oxidation, into just that 

 fonn of energy, whether of mechanical or 

 of a certain exactly defined and required 

 rate of ether vibration, that is best suited 

 to the intended purpose, and without waste 

 in other force, utilizing even the used-up 

 tissue of muscle and nerve for the produc- 

 tion of the warmth required to retain the 

 marvelous machine at the temperature of 

 best efficiency, whatever the environment, 

 and exhaling the rejected resultant carbonic 

 acid gas at the same low temperature. Man 

 wastes one fourth of all the heat of his 



