, 1888-10-19
INVENTION AND DISCOVERY.
A Vast Sea of Distinction Between thu
Two-NotabIe Instances.

n tAbA o VI Dibt1lCtloh " 49,
Instances
Two words which glibly enough fall
from the lips of the average man in a
careless sort of discrimination as If they
were synonymous. But there is a vast
sea of distinction between them. Liter
ally, they are not SO widely separated;
but they nave come to represent two to-
tally different aspects of human action.
To the writer's thinking, the terms have
been greatly confused. Columbus hardly
discovered America, he invented it-that
is, as to its cognizable existence He
studied, figured, applied the laws as he
knew them, and determined that there
must be a continent there, and he
plodded on till he proved the fact, and
reduced his invention to practice.
Newton discovered the law of gravity,
one might say, without either mental or
physical effort. Watt invented the steam
engine and Stephenson invented the loco
motive. They felt and knew the goal was
ahead, but how to reach it was the ques-
ton which required invention of the
highest order. Eli Whitney saw the
painful and laborious methods of clean
ing out cotton and ~shredding it, intui-
lively felt it could be done by machinery,
went to work and gave the world one Of
his great inventions, the cotton gin.
Howe's great inspiration to place the eye
at the point of a needle may be said to
have been a discovery. 1t unfolded q
picture to his mind prophetic of good to
almost countless millions, but invention
had to be invoked to give the picture life.
and the sewing machine, in all its beauty,
came slowly forth from the chrysalis Of
Howe's discovery. The irregular lathe
and the modern harvester were inven-
tons; their dim, indefinable forms doomed
up in the mists of their inventors minds,
they felt the impulse of improvement,
the value Of the goal gained, and they
went to work and at last succeeded, and
the wood carver and reaping hook lost
their usefulness to that extent.
The electric telegraph was never dis
covered; it was consistently invented.
Countless devices and methods were de-
signed, tested, thrown away-to be after
wards revivitied, many of them-new
appliances and systems laboriously
worked out, the midnight oil unspar-
ingly sacrificed, until at last a perfected
and practical system and apparatus were
given to the world.
1t is hard to say whether the dynamo
was invented or discovered, considering
ats prototype, the magnetic machine. The
probabilities are it was al accidental dis
covery. The arc light was a discovery
pure and simple. Electric incandescence
was q discovery, but the incandescent
lamp in its commercial form stands forth
as one of the most beautiful examples of
mans inventive faculty. The countless
experiments on material, the bulb, the
seal, the standardizing, the pumps, and
all the appliances that go to provide us
with the beautifully glowing luminary,
all are ineradicable proofs of invention Of
the very highest order. Midnight oil and
monday sun, mornings vigor and even
ing's reposeful nominations, were all
called into requisition to complete the
work. This is true invention.
The monograph was originally q dis
covery, a happy thought of Edison's, but
invention of a high order was necessary
to produce the beautiful instrument of
the present day. 1t was like Howe's
needle-the germ was there, but the ma
chine had to be devised to make it prac-
ticable. The undulatory telephone was d
discovery, a brilliant one, but still a dis
eovery. A happy thought supplied the
missing link in an incomplete chain, and
when the weld of that link was accom-
plished the whole world was enchanted
in admiration, the wonderful utility of
the device was quickly recognized, and
the discoverer reaped a rich harvest.
The pneumatic process of Bessemer was
an invention of high grade and far reach
ing importance, and the Siemens regen-
erative furnace has proved its equal in
merit as a methodical and logical inven-
ton beautifully carried out.
The inventor sees his goal, and consIs-
tently strives for it. He knows the object
is there, and he goes energetically after
it, sometimes straight to it, but oftener
is many times lost in the Wilderness Of
deluded fancy. He sees a light ahead,
signs relief and darts after it, only to
find it a will o'-the-wisp. Undaunted,
he starts again, only perhaps to meet
other and worse misfortunes. But he
struggles on hopefully, and at last
reaches the shrine of his alteration and is
for the time content.
The discoverer walks along calmly
toward some goal, or lies on the roadside
meditating, and happening to cast his
idle eyes downward, sees a gem spark
ling at his feet, and he sometimes picks 1t
up and adds it to the galaxy of the
worlds diadem, but he as often fails to
note the scintillations that betoken its
pr~eciousness, and purns it pack into the
deeper dust, to lie unseen and unknown
perhaps for ages. Which of these two
promoters of the worlds welfare merits
the highest praise, it is needless to ask.
Electrical Review.