PROGRESS DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
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for making paper - in endless webs (the invention of Louis Eobert, 
a Frenchman) was started at Frogmore Mill, Hemel Hempstead, so 
that our county has a good record in the matter of paper. In 1800 
the total quantity of paper made in Great Britain was 8,000 tons, 
and there were about eighteen paper-mills in this county; at the 
present time there are in Hertfordshire only five mills, which 
produce annually about 14,000 tons; in fact, Croxley Mill alone 
makes more than was made in Great Britain a century ago. The 
importance of this great increase is obvious when we consider that 
the consumption of the ‘ Daily Telegraph ’ alone is from 35 to 40 
tons per day, or about 11,000 tons per annum. 
With all these conveniences for transport and communication, and 
for the publication and dissemination of knowledge, and with steam- 
power to make every mechanical and engineering process easy or at 
least practicable, progress in all branches of science has during the 
last hundred years been unprecedentedly and ever-increasingly rapid, 
and this acceleration of progress is likely to be continued during 
the present century. And whereas a hundred years ago it was 
still possible for one man to know all that was known either in 
natural history or in physical science, it will in the future be 
necessary for each scientific man to confine his energies to the 
mastery and elucidation of some one line of research, and probably 
to specialize on one small branch of one subject. 
The year 1801 found Chemistry still quite in its infancy. The 
suggestion of Lavoisier had indeed recently discredited the existence 
of that mysterious combustible part of matter which had been known 
as “ phlogiston,” and the new century was marked by the discovery 
or isolation of various bodies as elements; a few years later the 
theory of atomic weights for the elements was established by Davy 
and others, thus completing the foundation on which modern 
chemistry has been built up. It is, of course, impossible to give in 
a few words any clear idea of the century’s progress in any branch 
of science, but I wish for a moment to show how much the increasing 
knowledge of chemistry has done to help the study of other sciences, 
and to facilitate trade and travel in all parts of the world, by making 
the production and distribution of light cheap and easy. 
In 1801 the flint and steel with the tinder-box was the only 
method of obtaining a light. In 1805 came sulphur matches tipped 
with sugar and chlorate of potash, which ignited when dipped in 
sulphuric acid, not a pleasant liquid to carry in one’s pocket. In 
1816 Derosne, a Frenchman, made friction-matches to be used with 
phosphorus carried in a bottle. In 1827 John Walker, of Stockton- 
on-Tees, introduced lucifer-matches or “ Congreves,” of which 84 
