Pocahontas star herald., 1912-01-19

"SO"uso nc shOWeu his lellOW COun-
trymen, how by means of a lightning
rod they could protect their lives
and their property, we have nothing
but pity. Lightning was means
provided by the Almighty to pun
ish the sinful and wicked, these
good people thought, and anybody
who sought to rob it of its capacity
to deal death and injury to those
meritlng it and make it tractable to
control, was in league with the
devil.
Thomas Jefferson tells in his
memories of one of his neighbors
who was "agin" the public schools
because, "when everybody gets so
they can read and write, nobody will
want to work" Bisop Berkely
thanked God there was not a print
ing press in all Virginia, because
"printing presses printed mostly
lies and their business was to de,
ceive the people," Even so broad
guaged a man as RuskIn declared
the introduction of railroads would
ruin England by driving the stages
out of business and killing the
demand for horses. Peter Cooper,
builder Of the first locomotive
operated in the United States was
made the laughing stock of the
whole countryside, because in a ten
mile race with an old grey horse
near Baltimore, his boiler sprang a
leak and the horse won. Robert
Fulton was declared a fraud by the
boatmen of the Hudson river who
doubted his ability to make the
"Cleremont" navigate Its waters
by stream and without the use of
sails. Arkwright who invented the
spinning frame which revolution.
lied the weaving business of the
world was mobbed and jacquard,
whose loom is still the worlds
standard came near being thrown
into the river by an angry crowd of
fabric workers who feared his
machine would destroy their use
fulness.
The invention of Elias Howe's
sewing machine caused riots in New
York and a Pennsylvania woman
said of Samuel f. B. Morse's
telegraph, which the finnanciers of
Wall Street believed impractical and
refused to finance; 81 suppose no
one can spank their brats now,
without the whole world knowing
all about it. Alexander Graham
Bells telephone was said to be toy
until the Emperor Dom Pedro,
finding it in corner of the Centen-
NAL Exposition at Philadelphia,
pronounced it one of the marvels of
the age. Edison was thought to be
possessed fo a mild form of dementia
when he announced that by inject
ing electricity into the carbon fila
ment of a lamp from which the air
had been removed he had discovered
the secret of what to-day the worlds
universal illuminant. Patrick B.
Delany excited the same popular
misgivings among the unsclentltc
with his multiplex, by which SIX
messages were transmitted simultan-
eously over a single wire and taxed
our Imagination to the limit by his
telepost system of automatic
telegraphy by which 1000 words a
minute are sent backward or
forward over one wire. Finally
when Marconl, the beardless youth
from Bologna showed us how
without the use Of any wires at all,
it was possible to communicate over
sea, we admit that there was nothing
left to challenge our credulity.
Thus the world has moved on.
Each step has broadened our
perspective, strengthened our
confidence and added to our length
of days, our polse, peace, power
and Joy. No longer do we denounce
any one or decry his invention.
Rather have we got to that point
In our evolution where we believe
the apparently impossible is