The sun., 1900-12-30

Of history. The Japanese have shown them
selves capable Of taking up and using what
ever the white civilization has developed.
The part which this nation will play In the
twentieth century Is an interesting problem.
| THE CgNTURr's INVENTIONS.
| To enumerate even the most important
inventions Of the century. such as have
changed the conditions Of mankind. Is hope
| less task They enter into every detail OF
daily life doing everything that human hands
| could do with immea surably greater speed
and strength and accuracy. The sewing
machine. the shoe machine. the jacquard
| loom the blast furnace, the reaper. harvester.
binder and thresher. the Hoe press, the type
writer. the friction match. Illuminating gas.
nitro-glycerine celluloid. the coal tar products.
india rubber, aluminium. the telegraph the
telephone, the electric light the electric
furnace. the stethoscope, the spectroscope.
the compound microscope-the list would
run on for pages
The hero of the century Ia the steam engine.
ready to supply almost limitless power. and
| to its aid In the last third of the century came
| the DYNAMO which may some day supplant
| II Whatever electricity may accomplish
| hereafter. the work Of the nineteenth century
has been done by steam Statisticians have
computed that the world IL now using i0o.-
100000 horse power: the equivalent OF the
| labor OF the whole Of lie population that is
| capable OF work
| By the side ~ the steamship, the loco
| motive and the factory engines. the steam
| hammer. the steam dred9es, the steam drill.
! the steam pump and the steam plough are at
| work Fulton's little Clermont has grown
| into the big Deutschland with its So. 900 horse
power quadruple expansion engines driv-
| ing its mass OF $4,000 tons AT 23 knots
| an hour In Ave days across the Atlantic.
| and into the viper with its turbine engines
| making its forty miles an hour In the
| seventy five years since Stevenson's loco
| motive started on the first railroad journey,
| $4,000 miles of track have formed net
| work round the earth. and giants have been
| constructed that can drag loads of nearly
| 5000 tons at IA speed Of ten miles an hour
while others maintain speed Of sixty miles
an hour for hundreds Of miles, and at pinch
make eighty or one hundred miles an hour The
idea of distance has been well-nigh obiterated.
~ that Of time has been by the telegraph
| # il but fOrty-two years since the first
Atlantic cable was laid, and the earth has
been girded by cables and wires, save for
the width of the Pacific Ocean,
MaGvErs OF ySGISEERING
Unexampled feats Of engineering have
been performed The ship cann through
| the Isthmus Of Suez has short ened the road
10 India and restored the old trade route
through the Mediterranean The Baltic
and North seas have been ioined. and ocean
vessels can now reach the Great lakes The
great ctntilever bridge across the Firth
| Of Forth and the suspension bridge over
| the East River show what the nineteenth
| century bridge builders could do Tunnels
| have been dug through the Alps, az the Mont
| Cents and the 81 Gothard. the latter wind
| L.. tn ha mo
/ nels have been driven too. under the ST.
| Clair River the Mersey and the Thames
| A new architecture in steel has heen devised
| which erects buildings twenty and thirty
| cries high and towers that rise a thousand
| feet in the air
! The output Of minerals has been enormous,
| Since the di covery o. gold in California and
| Australia the worlds stock Of the precious
| metal has baen trebled, and silver has almost
| ceased TO be regarded as precious metal;
but this production Ia exceeded In value by
the coal the iron. the copper, that have been
mined In the same period.
! IMprovEpsocIAL CONDITIONS.
A remarkable result of the food ~ inven-
tions on social life has been the establishment
| of practical equality among men 1t was
| Inevitable that their products or their ehect7
| sbould become common and within the reach
Of all The average of welfare and Of COM
| fort throughout the civilized world Is incom-
parably higher than in any early century.
and the Improvement consists mainly In
| what has been added to the power OF each
individual. Little distinction letween per-
| sons l. possible in the use of rapid transporta-
ton. Of abundant and cheap clothing or fuel
or food, of public and private sanitary ar
! rangeuents 81 books. of the discoveries OF
medical science. and 50 on. II l. an equality
| that has been made by raising the weaker,
| not by lowering the stronger
An equally notahl. result l. the extraor-
| dinary DEVELOPMENT of ORGANIZATION among
| large bodies of men, and the spirit OF dis
| cIuline without which II would "" impossible
| To carry on any large industrial undertaking.
| The working Of railroad depends as much
on every employees doing his allotted task
| nj the right moment As IL does on the action
Of every piece in the mechanism Of the loco
| motive Men work together for common
| purpose NJ they never did before.
MEDICAL SCIENCES ADVANCE
| Greatest Of all blessings in the saving of
| suffering to mankind was the discovery of
| an@sthetics In isii, and NJ the end OF the
century, instead of the total UNCONSCIOUS
| ness produced by ether OF Chloroforn meth
| ods have been found to render sensecss to
| min only those parts of the body on which
| the surgeons knife must act. The finding
| Of minute animal and vegetable organisms
In the body brought forth Past"ur's solu-
| tion 81 the progress ~ fermentation the
examination of micro-orcanisms and Of their
action on the body established the science
ot hacterioloRy with its twofold results. the
discovery Of the microbes of specific dis
eases with the process Of inoculaiion ms
means Of cure. and Listers elimination of
gangrene from surgical operations by the
use 81 anti-eptics. an Improvement that has
thrown open to investigation every part ~
the living body
Tho microscope has removed the boundary
between animal and vegetable life. IL has
been demonstrated that all organic tissue
il built up II cells, that is, ~ bits of pro-
topasm supplied with nucleus" and II is
generally accepted among biologists that the
pro-oylasm is for all purposes Identical in
PLANTS and animals that IL il the phyt ical
basis Of life. and TINT every cell ~ rings from
another cell. The synthc-is of organic
products from chemical elements In the
laboratory demolished the theory ~ a vital
force nrd prOved that only natural elements