The daily Alaskan., 1908-02-27
T IS NOT TRUE THAT INVENTION IS PASSING. THE FUTURE HAS STORES
 THE PAST NEVER DREAMED OF

So thoughtful and observing a man as Frederick Upham Adams iu a recent published article, which is being widely quoted. makes the remarkable and dIs~ nal declaration that invention has seen i.s highest achievement, and that no single generation will see the like of the period inclusive between 1876 and 1896.
 Suppose" says Mr. Adams, "that those years were strIckeO out of mechanical and scientific advance meut-wha, would the world be denied? The telephone, electric lights, both arc and iucandesceut; gas lights of high intensity and economy, electric rail roads, wireless telegrsphy, duplex and multiple telegraph, the typewriter, electric heating, all the innumerable forms of electric bells and signaling, automobiles, bicycles. motor cycles, motor boats, type-setting machines, the rhonograph, high speed elevators, scientific cold storage aud refrigera- tion, steel buildings which havs rev olutiouized our cities.
 "It will be urged, " says Mir. Adams "thac the principles Oi such inventions as the telephone, electric light, type writer and other epoch making devices were known before 1876. Admitted, but what of it? We now know the principle of extracting heat and power directly from coal without combustion and the consequent waste, tthis fact vii. not detract from the credit of the man who solved the problem-if It ever is solved. None of the things I have enumerated was in practical operation in 1876"
 This pessimistic review would seem to answer itself iu it's final paragraph. Alter each discovery of fundamental principle, Invention takes 1t up and many and amazing are the developments and ramiicadous that follow All that he has named in bis list Of wonders does DO. match what followed within few years after Robert Watts revealed the secret O steam. That little trick has enabled men to go further aud do more than anything in Mir. Adams recital. All the inventions named by Mir. Adams grew out of the discovery of the appli- cation of electricity. The phono2raph followed the telephone. And are we to suppose that the application of the wirelessis at 90 end? Who shall say that the generation that saw the machine ses up in the Eifel tower may not wit ness the starting oI machinery in India by it's agency?
 Mir. Adams says the principle of ex- tracing heat from coal without com bus.ion is known but yet remains to be done. No one doubts that 1t will be done and, when dowo, another reYOlu- tionsry period is due. But already and since the period named by Mir. Adams we have the secret Of developing large power from small and light engines, such ss will enable us to conquer the air. Mir. Edison has invented con- crete building that will do greater thiGgs for mankind than the steel sky scrapers, while the application of the gyroscope iu the transportation prob lem, now demonstrated beyond S doubt, may be expected to equal in It's epoch making tendency, it's revolutionary si- feet upon modern life and affairs, any invention of hundred years. And this last is altogether new. There is noth- ing in all this, surely, to cause one to look sad when he looks forward.
 Major John P. Cum, postmaster at
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