The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1878-04-18
Patent Ages.

In the telephone and the photograph
we have touched the extreme limits of
human invention. This is what a good
many persons are saying. 1t is easily
to be demonstrated that scarcely any
thing further remains to be discovered
or invented, precisely as it always has
been easy to show that there was moth
ing further to invent or discover.
Every age has regarded itself as the
age of invention, and the men of every
age have thought that their discoveries
and devices pretty nearly exhausted
possibility.
Solomon was very positive as to the
perfection of things in his day when he
declared that There is nothing new
under the sum-" meaning, of course,
that nothing remained to be found out
or made. The Mortimer thought that
they were great sailors and that navi-
CATION in their hands had reached some
thing like perfection; and yet they
knew only how to sail before the wind.
When q later race of navigators learned
to tack and to sail very nearly in the
direction from which the wind comes,
they no doubt would have been ready
to laugh down a suggestion that any
thing more than Improvement in de-
tails was possible in navigation.
Byron wrote, in Don Juan, ''This is
the patent age of new Inventions" and
he went on to show the perfection of
his time in this respect, and yet steam
ships, railroads and electric tclegraphs
were not in operation then; our "pat-
ent age of new Inventions had not be-
gun.
A few years ago able essayists en-
tered into critical study of details for
the purpose of showing that the sum-
nit had been reached finally; they said
that, having made telegraph which
would send intelligence without appre-
ciable lapse of time between the send
ing and the receipt of the words writ
ten, we could not hope to improve in
that direction, because we had already
reduced the time of transmission to
nothingness. In like manner they
showed that in the matter of locomo-
ton, and in a good many other
things, we had reached the ex-
IRENE limit of possibility, and be-
cause they could think of nothing
more to invent they concluded that fur
Their invention of a noteworthy kind was
not to be expected. Yet men have gone
on making marvellous devices and dis
covering marvellous things as rapidly
as ever. With the passenger elevator
we have practically doubled the area of
all our cities. With electric bells we
have simplitied the business of signal
ing. The telegraph has been put to
constantly new uses, particularly in
domestic life. Improvements have
been wrought in it which work revo-
luton in its use. We have learned how
to use electricity for purposes which.
five years ago, we should have thought
impossible, by reason of physically in
s1perable obstacles; purposes for which
electricity was supposed to be in its
very nature unfit. We have the tele-
phone and the phonograph-and here,
as some of the newspapers are dis
posed to show, we must rest upon our
labors.
The fact appears to be that there is
no discoverable limit to invention.
Every new invention tends directly to
suggest others. The telephone grew
out of the telegraph, and in its
turn the telephone bred the phono-
graph. Whenever men have thought