Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1922-05-02
THE LIGHT OF THE FREELY
MAY BE LIGHT OF THE FUTURE
Invention viii Find Way to
CornmercfaIlxe Il


will appear in the histories. There are Per.
shins and Wilson and Harding and
Hughes and Lloyd George and Northcliffe
and Clemenceau and Foch and Joffre and
Beatty and Orlando and Viviani and pon-
care, to mention only few of them.
But 1t is within the bounds of possibility
that the name Of the living man who will
be remembered in the future as the greatest
benefactor of his kind is now known only
to limited circle and that he Is regarded
as a sort of visionary chap with no sense
for the practical.
He may be such a man as DR.. L. New.
ton Harvey. professor of physiology at
Princeton University, who has recently an
nounced that he has discovered a cold
light.
Pasteur was an unknown professor of
chemistry when he established the germ
theory Of disease. He was merely seeking to
discover what was the cause Of the ferment
in beer and what it was that killed the vines
in the French vineyards. lie found out and
he also found out great deal more. The
world owes more to what he discovered and
TO the development of those discoveries by
others than to any other single event that
happened in the nineteenth century. He
affected both industry and health. He
reduced the mortality in maternity hospitals;
he robbed typhoid fever and diphtheria and
yellow fever of their terrors. He built the
Panama Canal. and made it possible for
Northerners to live in the tropics. All this
is true because If it had not been for his
hova
happened.
Before Pastcur there was Joseph
Pricstley, who isolated oxygen gas and laid
down the foundation for all the discoveries
that have grown out of it. Modern chemis-
try really dates from Priestley. and the
searching into the mysteries of nature from
which he lifted one corner of the veil is
continuing in scores of laboratories to this
day.
After Pasteur there has come Madame
Curie with her discovery Of radium, which
has revolutionized the theories about the
constitution Of matter. The Nobel prizes in
chemistry and physics are given every year
to men who have added to the store of
knowledge, and the Franklin Institute of
this city, awards medals annually to men
of science for their achieyements in finding
out something which was not known before.
The steel mills have their chemists now.
adays, who analyze the ore and add to Il the
substances needed to produce steel Of the
desired quality. The du Pont Company in
Wilmington has large research laboratory
in charge of an expert chemist continually
engaged In experiment with the raw ma
terlals used in the manufacturing plant and
seeking out new uses for waste materials.
The United Gas Improvement Company has
a staff of scientific experts studying light
ing problems. And the colleges and uni
versities with research departments support
professors who are engaged in seeking out
hidden knowledge, the discovery of which
may some day be of great practical value,
Just as DR.. Harvey, of Princeton, has been
busying himself with an attempt to find out
how the lightning bugs make their light and
to reproduce it. lie has found out and he
has reproduced it. Now it remains TO find
a way to reproduce in synthetically, as
synthetic Camphor and synthetic vanilla
havorings are made, and to do it on COM
mercal scale.
Fortunately. these men are free to make
their investigations without such hindrances
as Galileo encountered when he announced
that the world revolved around the sun.
Little theological odium attaches to the pro.
pounder Of a new theory nowadays, al
though when Darwin announced his theory
of evolution he was denounced by all the
orthodox He is still denounced by men who
have not intellectually progressed beyond
medevalism.
For the most part. the right of men to
seek out the processes of nature is admit
ted. 1t Is no more sacrilegious to inquire
into the origin of man than to seek out the
origin of the glow of the lightning bug. We
measure the stars without fear that the
heavens will fall in punishment of our au-
dacity, and we analyze the light of the sun
with as little fear as we study the candle
power Of a gas lamp.
Our whole educational system is devoted
to arousing the curiosity of youth in the
hope that it's qualification will result in the
discovery Of things now unknown about the
processes Of nature that can be utilized for
the benefit of humanity. No matter how
useless new fact may seem when it is dis.
covered, it may have great value when put
along with certain other facts newly discov.
cred
The physicists could make toy electric
motors long before electricity was put to
commercial uses. The college graduates Of
thirty five years ago saw such toys in the
physical laboratories and they had not been
out of college five years before they were
riding in electric cars.
Some boy fooling with a wireless telegraph
plant may even now be on the eve of dis
covery which will make the wireless tele.
phone so simple and 80 cheap that the most
remote farmer In the country may be able
to talk with his neyLbors and the village
store as easily as the people in the towns
now talk over the telephone with wires.
Research is the most profitable work on
which men are now engaged Its results are