Omaha daily bee., 1912-03-12

date notions. knowledge and prejudlces
and thus make room for the inflow Of
something new and better. Reading an
an article in Good Housekeeping maya
zine on the wonders OF vacuum cleaners
leads me to reflect that really active
human brain is very like one OF those
surprising machines. They typify the
action Of every great. scientific mind.
When Napoleon was organizing his vast
code Of laws. every man who approached
him felt the suction OF that tremendous
mental vacuum pump which drew out the
deepest things hidden in other minds and
then sorted, organized and vitalized them.
Napoleon vas superior to other men
because he had plenty OF room In his
head. He did not allow 1t 10 become q
plenum. He constantly rejected the old,
the WORKOUT and the useless blowing II
away like dust and keeping only the per-
manently useful. Of which there can never
be enough to fill any mind,
Newton. after all his years Of dlseov-
cry, declared that he had gathered only
a grain of sand from the shore OF the
ocean OF knowledge. He. too, was great
Intellectual vacuum machine. always
gathering and constantly rejecting.
II is amazing that man should have
been so long In discovering some of the
simplest uses Of vacuum. For unnum
bered centuries housewives had been la
boriously sweeping their rooms with IN
effective brooms, raising the dust into the
air. 10 be burned in their lungs, and TO
scatter noxlous germs broadcast. Philos-
ophers had been. sucking the air out of
glass bells and exhibiting the wonders OF
the vacuum to schoolboys. Everybody
had all their lives been watching files
walking on the ceiling and up the window
panes. sustained by the pressure OF the
air. No student was ignorant Of the fact
that II two large, hollow hemispheres were
pressed together and exhausted OF air
team Of horses could not draw them
apart. Yet until new inventive genius
came along few years age nobody
thought OF making the pressure OF the
atmosphere do the housewives disagree
able work with infinitely increased thor
ouRhness and incomparably less danger.
IfIam not mistaken Edison had made
his vacuum lamps and certainly erookes
had produced his marvellous vacuum
tubes before the vacuum cleaner was ~
vented. And yet the latter is by far the
simpler continuance. But in operation II
is a wonderful thing to watch. The rpD-
Der tube with It's serpent head goes into
a dusty corner or creeps along the top
OF a noldIng. and the dirt and, the ae-
cumulated germ-fiiled dust disappear
into the hidden vacuum as'if by magic.
With a powerful machine the dust under
a thick carpet comes up. invisibly,
through the web and wool. PUSHES I'M
seen into the receptacle. and when the
apparatus has passed the floor is clean.
stu the vacuum which does such sur
prising work is far from being perfect.
Man cannot make a perfect vacuum, but
a partial. enc serves his purpose. When
the afr in . Crookes' tube Is exhausted
TO a millionth Of the. ordinary pressure
Of the atmosphere something yet re-
mains which is 50 mysterious in its pro-
perties that some have supposed II to be
matter reduced to a fourth state.
We know matter is only three states
solid, liquid ard gaseous. We can pro-
duce. these states ourselves in g labor
afory. We can turn bit Of solid iron
into a liquid and then into q gas. But
the something which remains In a
crooke's tube does not behave Ike either
a solid. a liquid or gas. About all that