Clarksville evening chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn) 1886-1890, 1888-11-19
INVENTION AND DISCOVERY.
A vast Sea Of Distinction Between tho
TwO--NosahIe Hnstanoes.


Two words which ghbly enough fall
from the lips Of the average man in
careless sort of indiscriminati9n as II they
we're Synonymous. But there Is vast
sea of distinction between Them Liter
ally, they are not SO widely separated;
but they have come to represent two to-
tally different aspects of human action.
To the writer's thinking, the terms have
boon 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 q continent there, and he
plo6ded 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 laboriolls methods of clean
ing out cotton and shredding it, intui-
lively felt 1t 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 needle may be said to
have been discovery. 1t unfolded
picture to his mind prophetic Of good to
almost countless millions, but invention
had to be invoked to give the picture life.
and the sowing machine, in all its beauty,
came slowly forth from the chrysalis of
Howe's discovery. The irregular lathe
and the modern harvester were inven-
tions; their dim, indefinable forms doomed
I'D in the mists of their inventors minds,
they felt tho 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 revivifed, many Of them-now
appliances and systems laboriously
worked out the midnight oil unspar-
ingly sacrificed, until at last perfected
and practical system and apparatus were
given to the world.
1t is hard to say whether the dynamo
was invented or discovered, considering
it's prototype, the magnetic machine. Tho
probabilities are it was an accidental dis
covery. The arc light was q discovery
pure and simple. Electric incandescence
was discovery, but tho incandesccnt
lamp in its commercial form stands forth
as one of the most beautiful examples Of
man s ;nventivc faculty. Tho countless
experiments on material the bulb, tho
seal, the standardizing, the pumps, and
all the appliances that go to provide us
with tho beautifully glowing luminary,
all are ineradicable proofs of inversion 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 dis
covery, happy thought of Edison's, but
invention of high order was necessary
to produce the beautiful instrument of
the present day. It was like Howe's
needle-the germ was there, but the ma
chine had to be devised to make it prao
ticable. The undulatory telephone was
discovery, brilliant one, but still q 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 discoycrcr rcaped rich harvest.
The pneumatic process Of Bessemer was
an invention Of high grade and far reach
ing Importance, and the Semens regen-
erativo furnace has proved its equal in
merit rs methodical and logical inven-
ton beautifully carried out.
The inventor sees his goal, and consls-
tentfy strives for it. He knows the object
is there, and he goes energctically after
it, sometimes straight to it, but Oftener
is many times lost in the wilderness Of
deluded fancy. He sees light ahead
signs relief and darts after it, only to
find it 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, on 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 it
up and adds it to the galaxy of the
worlds diadem, but he as often fails to
note the scintillations that betoken its
preciousness, and spurns it back into the
deeper dust, to lie unseen ard unknown
perhaps for ages. Which of these two
promoters of the world's welfare merits
the highest praise, it is needless to Osi
Electrical Review.