Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-12-29

oped. The part which this nation will play
In the twentieth century 10 an interesting
problem.
Important Inventions.
To enumerate even the most important
inventions Of the century such as have
changed the conditions Of mankind is q
hopeless task. They enter into every detail
OF daily life, doing everything that human
lands could do with immeasurably greater
speed and strength and accuracy. The
sewing machine, the shoe machine the JAG
guard loom. the blast furnace the reaper.
harvester. binder, thresher, the Hoe press,
the typewriter the friction match illumi-
mating gas, niroglycerine, celluloid the
coal tar products, India rubber, aluminium,
the telegraph. the telephone. the electric
iight, the electric furnace, the stethoscope,
the spectroscope, the compound microscope
the list could run on for pages. The hero
OF the century is the steam engine, ready
~ suppIy almost limitless power. and to its
AID In the last third Of the century came
the dynamo, which may some day supplant
Whatever electricity may accomplish
hereafter the work Of the nineteenth cen.
fury has been done by steam Statistical ms
nave nay, computed that the world is now using
!VooU.ooo horsepower; the equivalent Of
"a. .he lapor OF the whole Of its population
steamship, the locomotive and the factory
engines, the steam hammer, the steam
oredges. the steam drill, the steam pump
ana am the steam pillow are at work Fulton's
I.le vermont has grown into the big
deutschland with its $4,000 horsepower
quadruple expansion engines driving its
mass OF 1900 tons, at % knots an hour in
hve days across the Atlantic and into the
Viper with its turbine engine making it's
forty miles an hour. In the seventy-fve
years since Stevenson's locomotive started
on the first railroad journey. 10000 mics
OF track have formed a network round the
earth, and giants have been constructed
that can drag loads of nearly 5000 tons at
speed of ten miles an hour while others
MAINTAIN speed of sixty miles an hour
ior hundreds of miles. and at pinch make
81 or 100 miles an hour. The idea of dis
taEce has been well nigh obliterated, as
that or time has been by the telegraph 1t
Is put 1orty-tWo years since the first At
ianuc cable was laid, and the earth has
been girdled by cables and wires, save for
the width of the Pacific ocean.
Feats of Engineering.
unexampled feats of engineering have
been performed The ship canal through
the Isthmus of Suez has shortened the road
to India and restored the old trade route
through the Mediterranean. The Baltic
and the North sea have been Joined, and
ocean vessels can now reach the great
lakes. The great cantilever 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, at the Mont Gents and the st. Goth
ard, the latter winding over itself within
the mountain Tunnels have been driven.
too. under the ST. Clair river, the Mersey
and the Thames. A new architecture in
steel has been devised which erects build
ings twenty and thirty stories high, and
towers that rise thousand feet in the air
hps
nous. Since the discovery of gold In Califor-
MIA and Australia the worlds stock of the
precious metal has been trebled, and silver
has almost ceased to be regarded as
precious metal; but this production is ex-
ceeded In value by the coal, the iron, the
copper that have been mined In the same
period.
Equality Among Men.
remarkable result Of the flood of in
ventions social life has been the es-
Establishment Of practical equality among
men. 1t was inevitable that their products
OF their effects should become common and
within the reach Of all. The average Of
welfare and comfort throughout the civil
lied world is ncomparably higher than in
any earlier century, and the improvement
consists mainly in what has been added
to the power of each Individual. Little dis
tlnctfon between persons is possible in the
use Of rapid transportation. of abundant
and cheap clothing fuel or food, of pub
lie and private sanitary arrangements. of
books of the discoveries of medical science,
and so on. 1t is an equality that has been
made by raising the weaker, not by lower
ing the stronger An equally noticeable re-
suit is the extraordinary development of or
ganfZation among large bodies of men and
the spirit Of discipline, without which 1t
would be impossible to carry on any la1 ge
industrial undertaking. The working of a
railroad depends much every en-
ploye doing his allotted task at the right
moment as it does the action of every
piece in the mechanism Of the locomotive
Men work together for q common purpose
as they never did before.
Greatest of all blessings in the saving
Of suffering to mankind was the discovery
OF anaesthetics in 1914, and at the end of
the century, instead of total unconscious
ness produced by ether choroform,
methods have been found to render sense
less to pain only those parts of the body
on which the surgeons knife must act
The finding Of minute animal and vegeta-
BILE organisms in the body brought forth
Pasteurs solution of the process of fer
of Heterogeneous and of their
action on the body established the science
of bacteriology with its twofold results,
the discovery of the microbes OF specific
diseases with the process of incubation
as a means of cure, and Listers elimina-
ton Of gangrene from surgical operations
by the use Of antiseptics, improvement
that has thrown open to investigation
every part of the living body.
The microscope has removed the bound