The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1882-06-24
A Glance at Progress.

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photographic, photo-lithographic and
to produce in few hours fac-similes to
any scale OF the most deliberately lined
drawing. By the aid of the camera we
can reduce the proportions of the ele-
plant to those of a mouse without dis
torting line, and enlarge those of
microscopic animalcule to the scale of
mammoth without disturbing the ap-
| parent relations of the most minute
parts.
Equally astonishing is the increase in
the facilities for communicating with
distant places. The mail rider was sue
ceeded by the coach, the railroad train
and steamboat. But people had been
| dreaming of a realization of the old
Jesuit's prophecy, uttered in the fif-
teenth century, that in time people could
communicate their thoughts to great
distances by means of cords or wires
stretched from place to place. A
wire was laid to Washington
and needles, whose movements
were arranged to indicate the let
tiers of the alphabet, were operated by
the electrical impulse, so that men COM
municated their thoughts and expressed
their desires over two hundred and forty
miles. Invention followed invention
until we find many messages going over
one wire at the same time. Can any,
thing excel this? Is it possible that dis
lance is to be wholly conquered? The
bottom of the Atlantic has been made
the bed on which are stretched mighty
cables. Wires network continents.
Calcutta and San Francisco are brought
within an hours communication.
Pshaw! this is nothing. We talk now
with as much ease through five hundred
miles OF wire as across a parlor. The
next discovery may be one that will en-
able us to see things hundreds of miles
away, by some curious teleoptic appara-
tus operated by the electric wire that will
at once bring men visibly face to face
while they converse through the tele-
phone. Distance is no more. 1t is Time
that remains unconquered.
But surely Time, the destroyer, will
remain supreme. Nothing of human
fashioning will survive his assaults.
Even the mountains bow their crumbling
heads before him and the great rivers
hide themselves in his presence. There
is nothing so enduring as time. The
fleeing sounds of the song of merry
music, of signs and laughter-these are
the contrasts in endurance to time. They
are heard and are dead forever. That
might be said before Edison discovered
the photograph. Now sounds are fixed
for all time in enduring metal.
They are heard and sleep to awake
again in a succession of utterances whose
sameness proves that the chords or words
held chained in that metallic prison have
become immortal in their alliance with
the imperishable. Darkness, first assaulted
with the pine torch, was followed up by
the rudge grease lamp, the candle of
tallow, sperm oil and wax. Finally coal
gas was discovered by the interchangeable
searchers. and light shone on many parts
of the realm of darkness. Gas was re-
garded as the light of the future. II has
come in year or two to be regarded as
an old-fashioned light of the past. What
will replace it? We cannot preserve sun
light as we do sound for future use. We
do not want it. The earth, the air, all
matter is the servoir of our light, and
L
mysterious essence of force and action,
electricity is our prisoner.
In ancient days disturbances and
clashings of terrestrial forces We're re-
garded as the struggles of contending
gods. and helpless man stood awe-struck
by the warfare which threatened him
momentarily with destruction. How
bravely we have got over all that now!
Our stately steamers pillow the domain of
Neptune with cOntemptuous disregard
for his powers. We can tell when, how
and whence the storms are coming. and
by our control of electricity we send the
news away in advance of the tempest,
bidding all prepare for its coming. As
tronomy is revealing new spheres in the
immensely of space, satellites of planets
and new stars revolving within the burn
ing radius of the suns immediate in
fluence. The spectroscope is telling us
what these distant worlds are made of.
and speculative science is penetrating
where the ordinary calculations of dis
lance cannot follow. Chemistry reaches
the elemental base of matter and solidi-
fies gases. Physiology anatomises I'm
fusorie from the awful depths of the
ocean. Perhaps the day is not distant
when the surface of the earth will be as
familiar in all its details as that of Union
Square, because geographers are indie
fatigable in their researches. Over the
wide, wide world of civilization there is
an active warfare being pushed against
the unknown, and many and glorious
are the trophies won in the contest.
Right, left and center the DICTIONARIES of
science are marching onward, cutting
down with the swords of keen intelli-
gence the obstructing forests and under
growth ofignorance, fording the swamps
and rivers of doubt and battering the
citadels of prejudice. The newspaper,
the great educator of the masses, is lead
ing the van, and the music of the march
ing hosts is given by the concert of
printing press, locomotive, telegraph
sounder, loom and sewing machine, saw
mill and steam-drill, ringing anvils and
clinking hammers. american Register.