LITTLE MASTERPIECES OF SCIENCE
George Stephenson.Little Masterpieces
of Science
Edited by George Iles
INVENTION AND DISCOVERY
By
| Benjamin Franklin | Alexander Graham Bell |
| Michael Faraday | Count Rumford |
| Joseph Henry | George Stephenson |
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1902
Copyright, 1877, by George B. Prescott
Copyright, 1896, by S. S. McClure Co.
Copyright, 1900, by Doubleday, McClure & Co.
PREFACE
To a good many of us the inventor is the truehero for he multiplies the working value oflife. He performs an old task with new economy,as when he devises a mowing-machine tooust the scythe; or he creates a service whollynew, as when he bids a landscape depict itself ona photographic plate. He, and his twin brother,the discoverer, have eyes to read a lesson thatNature has held for ages under the undiscerninggaze of other men. Where an ordinary observersees, or thinks he sees, diversity, a Franklin detectsidentity, as in the famous experiment hererecounted which proves lightning to be one andthe same with a charge of the Leyden jar. Of alater day than Franklin, advantaged thereforby new knowledge and better opportunities forexperiment, stood Faraday, the founder ofmodern electric art. His work gave the world thedynamo and motor, the transmission of giantpowers, almost without toll, for two hundredmiles at a bound. It is, however, in the carriageof but trifling quantities of motion, just enoughfor signals, that electricity thus far has done itsmost telling work. Among the men who havecreated the electric telegraph Joseph Henry hasa commanding place. A short account of whathe did, told in his own words, is here presented.Then follows a narrative of the difficult task oflaying the first Atlantic cables, a task longscouted as impossible: it is a story which proveshow much science may be indebted to unfalteringcourage, to faith in ultimate triumph.
To give speech the wings of electricity, toenable friends in Denver and New York to conversewith one another, is a marvel which onlyfamiliarity places beyond the pale of miracle.Shortly after he perfected the telephone ProfessorBell described the steps which led to itsconstruction. That recital is here reprinted.
A recent wonder of electric art is its penetrationby a photographic ray of substances until nowcalled opaque. Professor Röntgen's account ofhow he wrought this feat forms one of themost stirring chapters in the history of science.Next follows an account of the telegraph as itdispenses with metallic conductors altogether,and trusts itself to that weightless ether whichbrings to the eye the lum