Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1900-02-02
ONE HUNDRED YEARS
MARvELS ACCOMPLISHED DUR
ING THE CLOSING CENTURY.
Tho steamboat, Locomotive. Telegraph.
Telephone, the Electric Motor, tho
Electric Light and Other Great In
ventions a

q return to the world a hundred years
later to see the changes which would
take place In the interval. But even
Franklin's trained powers Of observa-
ton, his wide knowledge Of the past
and his vivid imagination could not
conceive Of changes so numerous and
striking as those which have come In
the century whose closing year began
January /. The steamboat, the loco
motive, the telegraph. the telephone,
the electric street car, the electric
light, the machinery for sewing, now
Ing, blowing, printing, for tightening
all sorts of labor known a century ago,
and performing other kinds Of work
which were unthought Of then, are all
rendered commonplace to us through
familiarity, but to the contemporary
of Washington and Franklin, who
should be suddenly transported to the
world today, they would seem to be
marvels as stupendous as those which
greeted Lemuel CULVER on his arrival
in Brobdingnag. The political changes
would be almost as wonderful as the
social and industrial, but the latter
would strike the average eighteenth
century parsonage first.
The railroads, the locomotives and
the immense trains of cars whirled
through forests, across the plains and
over mountains, with speed that would
seem to them to be lightning-like in
its swiftness, would be more of mar
vel to Washington, Franklin and the
others of the eighteenth century than
even the steamboats,. 1t took Wash
ingtc1 just six weeks to make the trip
of 600 miles, in 1853, from Williams
burg, then the capital of Virginia, to
Fort lie Boeuf, on French creek, few
miles south of Lake Erie, to carry the
message of Dinwiddie, the royal gov
ernor of Virginia, to the French COM
mander of that post, warning him that
he was on British territory, and telling
him to evacuate immediately-Wash
| ington's embassy on this occasion
marking the beginning of the French
and Indian war, which expelled the
| French from the American continent,
and which gave Washington and the
other Americans the experience and
the confidence that were turned to
| lood account in the conflict a dozen
years. afterward, by which England
was driven out, and the United States
treated. Washingtons six weeks trip
of 1853 could now be made in less than
"a hours. At the time that Franklin
made his last trip to Europe, thirty or
thirty-five days was considered reason
ably fast time for the ocean passage.
When Russia's Siberian railroad is
completed a year hence the entire
globe can be circled in 33 days.
Jacksons battle of New Orleans,
over a dozen years less than century
ago, was fought two weeks after the
treaty of peace had been signed at
Client, but intelligence of the treaty
did not reach the United States until
more than a month after that fight.
Tire was no telegraph at the time,
either on land or under the ocean, and
news messages had to be carried across
the water by the same slow convey
ances which transported passengers
and merchandise. 1t is now little over
forty years since the first Atlantic
cable was laid, but it is thirty-four
years since the first cable was laid
which remained workable Not many
years earlier than that time, however,
telegraph on land was as much of
tho
bed then.
These were the three great mechani-
cal inventions of the first half of the
century-the successful employment
of steam on water by Fulton on the
Hudson in 1907, when his Clermont
made the trip to Albany; averaging
About five miles an hour; the Liverpool
& Manchester railroad, begun in 1926,
and formally opened for traffic in 1880,
and the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, the
first line designed expressly for trans
porting freight and passengers in the
United States, begun in 1928, and the
first in the world to project road Of
$50 miles or more; the first electric
telegraph in the United States, and
the first in the world employed for
long distances, that between Balti-
more and Washington on the Morse
system, which was used to report the
proceedings of the two conventions
held in Baltimore in the closing days
Of May, 1874.
The telephone, the electric light, the
phon0lraph and the Roentgen rays are
among the inventions and discoveries
which are to be credited to the second
half of the century. But this, of course,
Is only small part of the important
achievements which belong to the rec
ord of the past 100 years. The inven-
ton of labor saving machinery, of
which one of the earliest instances was
the granting of patent to Howe for
his sewing machine in 1886, would
make long list. Then, too, there are
the inventions of photography, of the
friction match, of gas Illumination, all
of which were revolutions in their par
ticular field. The use of anaesthetics
and antiseptics in surgery made not
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