The Honolulu republican. [volume] (Honolulu, T.H.) 1900-1902, 1901-01-27

the telephone, the electric light the
electric furnace. the steeaOseope. the
spectroscope. the compound micro
scopeshe list could run on for pages
The hero Of the century is the steam
engine, ready TO supply almost limit
LEGS power, and to its aid in the last
third Of the century came the dynamo,
which may some day supplaut II
Whatever electricity may accomplish
hereafter, the work Of the nineteenth
century has been done By steam Sta
tisticians have computed that the
world is now using 100. 600 coo horse
power: the equivalent Of the labor OF
the whole of its population that is
capable of work. By the side OF the
steamship. the locomotive and the fac
tory engines, the steam hammer. the
steam dredges. the steam drill. the
steam pump. and the steam plow are
at work Fulton's little Clermont has
grown into the big Deutschland. with
its SO 900 horsepower Guadruple ex-
pansion engines driving its mass Of
$1,000 tons. at twenty-three knots an
hour in five days across the Atlantic.
anu the blpcE VIII It's OlIC
engines, making its forty miles an
hour. In the seventy-five years since
Stevenson's locomotive started on the
railroad journey, 100000 miles of
track have formed network round
the earth. and giants have been con-
structed that can drag loads of nearly
5000 tons at a speed of ten miles an
hour. while others maintain c sreed
of sixty miles an hour for hundreds
of miles. and at pinch make eighty
or 100 miles an hour. The idea of dis
lance has been well-nigh obliterated.
as that of time has been by the tele-
graph. It is but forty-two years since
the first Atlantic cable was laid, and
the earth has been girdled by cables
and wires, save for the width of the
Pacific ocean.
Unexampled feats of engineering
have been performed. The ship canal
through the Isthmus of Suez has
shortened the road to India and re-
stored 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 sus
pension bridge over the East River
show what the nineteenth century
bridge builders could do Tunnels
have been dug throug the Alps, at
the Mont Gents and the st. Gothard,
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 buildings twenty and
thirty stories high and towers that
rise a thousand feet in the air
The output of minerals has been
enormous. since the discovery of gold
in California and Australia the world s
stock of the precious metal has been
trebled, and silver has almost ceased
to be regarded as a precious metal;
but this production is exceeded IN
value by the coal, the iron, the copper,
that have been mined in the same
period.
A remarkable result of the flood of
inventions on social life has been the
establishment of practical equality
among men. 1t was inevitable that
their effects should become common
and within the reach of all. The
average of welfare and of comfort
throughout the civilized world is in
comparably higher than in any earlier