The Findlay Jeffersonian. [volume] (Findlay, Hancock County, Ohio) 1870-1881, 1874-11-13
from the yel0 York Hs1 add
TAE ACQUISITIONS OF SCIENCE.

Wendell Phillips said. In q recent
cpeech. that the time was coming when
/ We might communicate instantly with
! San Francisco without wires or operator.
The audience laughed at him. Per
hapS iIis statement is not so extravagant
as it seemed. Had the ordinary work
| now done with the telegraph been pre-
/ dicted 10 years ago. il would have been
received with the same incredulity The
truth is not that science, like politics and
love, always develops in unexpected di-
rectiOns. No sooner are men fixed in
their scientific opinions than some start
ling discovery reveals their ignorance
and shows the world that all things are
possible under the sun. Ever since the
invention of the use of steam, men have
agreed that only hot vapOr had the great
est power; but quite recently Philldel-
phia machinist exhibited an iron globe,
no larger than gallon jug, full of cold
vapor, showing pressure of 20, 600
pounds to the square inch, and neither
time nor temperature could diminish its
tremendous power. TIE discovery is said
to be accidental. The inventor was ex-
perinenting with an engine run by COM
pressed air and a vacuum, when to his
profound aStonishment he stumbled on
the cold water secret; and it was some
time before he could make a gauge
strong enough to test its power Until
then he had not imagined such a dis
covery possible.
Nature seems to coquet with the in
quiring intellect of man until he is sure
of some great secret, when she con-
founds him with disappointment; but in
his less inquisitive moments she reveals
what he never dreamed of Modern sci
ence is a paradox. Water, which was al
ways considered the most incombustible |
matter in nature, produces the greatest |
heat known. Watch springs burn like |
pitch. The chemist prepares delicate |
muslin so that it can be cleansed with |
fire. Arsenic is prescribed for dangerous |
diseases. Frozen feet are saved by |
plunging then into snow. Children are |
told to keep away from iron during a |
thunderstorm, yet hardware stores are |
never struck with lightning Persons |
suffering with hydrophobia go into con-
vulsiOns at the sight of water A French |
physician, however, has cured fifty cases |
of this awful malady with hot baths
An editor of New York newspaper lost |
his sight until a surgeon put knife in
to his eyeballs, whereupOn the man re-
covered and went about his work
The widest imagination is unable to
predict the discoveries of the future
For all we know families in the next cen
tury may pump fuel from the river, and /
illuminate their houses with ice and cleo !
tricity. Iron vessels, properly magnet |
lied, may sail through the air like bal |
looms, and a trip to the Rocky Noun |
tains may be made in an hour. Perhaps |
within fifty years America grain may be |
II, -, 4 y.
iron pipes laid under the sea. By means
of condensed air and cold vapor engines,
excursion parties may travel along the
floor of the ocean, sailing past ancient |
wrecks and mountains of coral On |
land the intelligent farmer may turn the |
soil of one thousand acres a day, while |
his son cuts wood with platinum wire, |
and shells corn be electricity. The mat |
ter now contained in New York daily |
may be produced ten thousand times a
minute, on little scraps of pasteboard,
by improved photography, and boys may
sell the news of the world, printed on
visiting cards, which their customers
will read through artificial eyes. Five
hundred years hence a musician may
play piano in New York, connected |
with instruments in San Francisco, Chi |
cagO. Cincinnati, New Orleans and 9TH |
er cities, and when fashionable audien- |
ces in San Francisco go to hear some re- |
moved singer, she will be performing in |
New York or Philadelphia.
In 1900 a man may put ON his inflated |
coat, with IA pair of steel wings fastened |
to his arms, and go to Newark and back |
in an hour. All the great battles will |
be fought in the air; patent thunderbolts
will be used instead of cannon. A boy
in Hoboken will go to Canada in the fam
lily air carriage to see his sweetheart, and
the next day his father will chasten him
with magnetic rebuker, because he
did not return home before midnight.
The time is coming when the Herald will
send reporter to see a man reduce one
of the Rocky Mountains to powder, in
a half q day. SkillfuI miners will ex-
tract gold from quartz as easily as cider
is squeezed from apples. A compound
telescope will be invented on entirely
new principles, so that one may see the
planets as distinctly as we now see Sta
ten Island. Microscopes will be made so
powerful that the particles of dust on a
gnat's back will appear larger than Pixies
Peak. And marvellous progress will be
made in psychological and mental sci
ence. Two men will st in baths filled
with chemical liquids. One of them
may be in Denver and the other in Mon
treal. A pipe filled with the same liquid
will connect the two vessels, and the flu
id will be so sensitive that each man
will know the others thoughts. In these
coming days our present mode of tele-
graphy will be classed with the wooden
plows of Egypt, and the people will look
back to steamships and locomotives as
we now look back to sail-boats and stage
coaches.