Willis Duff Piercy

“ The most powerful and important mass of matter on the earth is the steam engine. It is the throbbing heart of civilization, even as the printing press is its brain. It would be difficult for man to compute his debt to steam. Upon it he relies for food, clothing, and shelter, the three necessities for which the race has always striven; and without it he could have scarcely any of life's comforts and luxuries. Steam is the mistress of commerce, manufacturing, and mining, and the servant of agriculture. Steam gives employment to millions of men. ”

“ Is it not wonderful that a record of all the world has thought and said and felt and done can be deposited in a corner of my room, and that there I may sit and commune with the master spirits of all the centuries? Socrates, Plato, Homer, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Paul, David, Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Goethe, Dante, Shakespeare, Hugo, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Carlyle, and Emerson, all in one room at the same time!
Great as books are, however, the world has not long had them. For many generations after man's advent, he had no language. ”

“ THE TELEGRAPH AND THE TELEPHONE
The great miracle of the twentieth century is electricity. If the printing press is the brain of civilization and the steam engine is its heart, electric wires are its nervous system. Steam is a giant; electricity is a witch. ”

“ Invention is the making of some new thing not previously existing. Discovery is the finding of something already in existence but not known before. There was no electric telegraph until Samuel Morse made or invented it; America has always existed, but was not known until Christopher Columbus found or discovered it.
Among all the builders of civilization, not the least are the inventors and discoverers. ”

“ Man writes volumes about electricity; calls it positive and negative and measures it in ohms and volts; gives courses to explain it in his schools and universities; kills criminals, cures the sick, and scatters darkness with it; makes it whirl him through space; compels it to bear his whisper through hundreds of miles, and can make it fly around the entire earth with his written word—and yet no man knows what electricity is. Electricity exists, and has always existed, from the back of a cat to the infinite arch of the sky. ”

“ But looking far down the vista of future ages, who shall say that the fortieth century may not as far surpass the twentieth as the twentieth does the sleepy dawn of man's existence on the earth? We are packing more of life into a day than our ancestors could put into a month. And the hours of the centuries to come hold a fuller experience than our days.
Thomas Carlyle calls man a "tool-using animal." Throughout all time man has made and used tools. These tools are the best measure of his civilization. ”

“ What is the difference between the life of the cave-dweller and the life of the modern New Yorker? We call it civilization. It is not at one bound or at one thousand that we pass from the primitive cave to New York City. Civilization is the accumulation of centuries of achievement. ”

“ Even up to the beginning of the Revolutionary War, less than one hundred fifty years ago, no man in America had ever seen an envelope, a match, a stove, a piece of coal, a daily newspaper, a sewing machine, a reaper, a drill, a mowing machine, ether, chloroform, galvanized iron, India-rubber, or steam-driven machinery. We who are alive to-day are fortunate more than any other generation thus far in the world's population. ”

“ Certain individuals have seen farther in certain directions than their fellows and have contributed to civilization the results of their vision. Whoever has added to the safety, the happiness, the power, or the convenience of society; whoever discovers a star or a microbe; whoever paints a picture or plants a tree, builds a bridge or fights a righteous battle; whoever makes two ears of corn grow where there grew but one before; whoever lets the light shine in upon a darkened street or a darkened spirit is an agent of civilization. ”

“ When you look up into the heavens at the flickering dots of light which we call the stars, you are looking at worlds, many of them far larger than our earth. They seem small because of vast distances from us. Our own solar system, great as it is, in comparison with the celestial universe is but a clod in an acre. At the center of our system is the sun, a huge ball of fiery matter 93,000,000 miles from the earth, and as large as 330,000 worlds like ours. Circling around the sun like maddened horses around a race course are eight planets. ”

“ High up on the page of those who have made the world great will always stand the names of Gutenberg or Coster, Watt, Stephenson, Morse, Edison, Fulton, Galileo, Newton, Columbus, Morton, Bell, Marconi, and others who have invented new machines and discovered new processes for making life more happy, safe, and powerful. ”

“ The stars seek to hide their secrets behind immeasurable distances; but an Italian gives man a glass that brings the heavens closer before his vision. History tries to conceal itself in the rubbish of ages; but with ink man preserves the past. His asylums, hospitals, churches, schools, libraries, and universities are lights along the shore guiding the human race in its voyage down the ever widening stream of growth and possibility.
The centuries do not yield to man equal advancement. ”

“ Photography is a noble servant of mind and soul. It brings to us likenesses of eminent persons and objects of nature and art which perhaps we should never be able to see otherwise. It has been used in measuring the velocity of bullets and in showing the true positions of animals in motion. Photography has created the "new astronomy." Immediately after its discovery, photography was applied to the science of the stars, and it has been ever since of incalculable service in this field of inquiry. ”

“ While he was quietly sleeping in his grave, the very earth was shaken with the tread of contending armies that he had done more than any other one man to call forth to battle; for there is little doubt that but for the invention of the cotton-gin slavery would not have lived out the century of the Revolution." Macaulay says: "What Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin has more than equaled in its relation to the power and progress of the United States." ”

“ It is the central fact of the physical universe, the cement of the material world, the mighty, mystic shepherdess of space, that keeps the planets from wandering off alone. It is this awful, silent power reaching out from the enormous mass of the sun, that lashes the planets in their furious race, and yet holds them tightly reined in their orbits. ”

“ Pitman's invention of a phonographic alphabet for shorthand was the beginning of verbatim reporting that has spread to every land which Anglo-Saxon civilization has touched. There is scarcely a legislative body, a court of importance, or a great convention of any kind, whose proceedings are not taken down on the spot in shorthand, accurately and at once, to say nothing of the very wide use of stenography in private business. In this bewildering commercial whirl of the twentieth century time is money, and stenography is time. ”

“ Secretary Seward pays this tribute to invention: "The exercise of the inventive faculty is the nearest akin to the Creator of any faculty possessed by the human mind; for while it does not create in the sense that the Creator did, yet it is the nearest approach to it of anything known to man." ”

“ O thou who art able to write a book, which once in two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name conqueror or city-burner! ”

“ The human intellect began to awake, to stretch itself, to go forth and conquer. One of the first signs and causes of this intellectual awakening was an event that happened at Mainz in Germany or at Haarlem in Holland, or possibly in both places at the same time. Of all the events that have made for civilization and have influenced the progress of the human race, this event at Haarlem or Mainz is the most important. It is the invention of printing. ”

“ Man passed from the Stone Age with its few, crude implements into the Bronze Age, and from this into the Iron Age, with each succeeding step increasing the number and efficiency of his tools. The race has lately passed into an age which might well be named the Age of Steel. The discovery or invention of this metal—for there is in it the nature of both invention and discovery—is sufficiently important to mark a distinct era in human progress. ”

“ The history of civilization is largely a history of man's struggle against the forces of nature and of his victory over them. Nature is always saying to man, "Thou shalt not"; and man is always replying, "I will." ”

“ It lessens the power of time and space, and makes neighbors of ocean-divided continents.
It would not be easy for men living in the twentieth century to imagine a society uninfluenced by the use of steam; but nearly all of man's life on the earth has been passed without its help. Fire and water, the two productive factors of steam, have always existed; but it was not until a few score of years ago that man learned to put them together successfully, and to produce the greatest force known to civilization. ”

“ The coast of Australia had not yet been traced, and nothing was known of its interior. At that time South America was better known than any other of the continental land masses, except Europe; now it is the least explored of all. The nineteenth century, wonderful for advancement in many fields of human endeavor, was a marvelous one for the growth of geographical knowledge. As we stand in the doorway of the twentieth century, there is scarcely one eleventh of the land area of the whole earth that remains unexplored. ”

“ At the close of the day, special correspondents and representatives of press associations in every nook and corner of the earth send the world's news for the day by telegraph and ocean cable direct into the newspaper office. A king has died; a battle has been fought; storm, earthquake, or fire has destroyed a city; or there has been some achievement in science or art. ”

“ Regarding the influence of inventions upon civilization, Lord Salisbury says: "The inventors and even the first users of the great discoveries in applied science had never realized what influence their work was to have upon industry, politics, society, and even religion. The discovery of gunpowder simply annihilated feudalism, thus effecting an entire change in the structure of government in Europe. As to the discovery of printing, it not only made religious revolutions possible, but was the basis on which modern democratic forms of government rested. ”

“ One of the most interesting questions arising in a study of the heavenly bodies is whether or not any of them besides the earth are inhabited. Is there any good reason for supposing that our pigmy planet, so insignificant compared with many celestial bodies, is the only one containing life? On the other hand, life such as we know it could not exist on some of the other planets. Mercury would be too hot; Neptune too cold. Climatic conditions on Mars are most nearly like those of the earth. Within recent years the telescope has revealed on the surface of Mars a number of peculiar, regular lines. ”

“ The Hebrew psalmist feels the insignificance of man compared with the infinitude of the heavens. Victor Hugo expresses the opposite thought: "There is one spectacle grander than the sea—that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky—that is the interior of the soul." ”

“ Fire is one of man's absolute necessities. Without it civilization would have been impossible, and life could scarcely continue. The story of man's power to produce and use fire is practically the story of civilization itself. So far as history can reveal there has never been in any time a people who were without the knowledge and use of fire ”

“ Vulcan among the Romans; Osiris in Egypt; and Loki among the Scandinavians. In ancient religious belief fire and the human soul were supposed to be one and the same in substance. In some instances fire was held to be the very soul of nature, the essence of everything that had shape. "From Jupiter to the fly, from the wandering star to the tiniest blade of grass, all beings owed existence to the fiery element." ”

“ The steam engine not only changed all forms of industry and the conditions under which industries were prosecuted, but it made practically contiguous the most distant parts of the world, reducing its vastness to a relatively contracted area. And now the introduction of electricity as a form of force seems destined, as its development proceeds, to bring about results quite as important in their way, though but yet dimly seen by the most far-sighted. ”

“ In Germany every community has its aero club. In the United States there are about 300,000 club members scattered throughout the land who individually or collectively own over 200 balloons. All of the great nations own one or more aerial warships of the dirigible type, as well as numerous spherical balloons.
An aeroplane, as commonly known, is a machine which is sustained in the air by one, two, or three sets of rigid surfaces or planes. Unlike the balloon, it is heavier than air, and it must therefore maintain its position in the air by some form of mechanical propulsion. ”

“ If those inventions and discoveries out of which have come widespread safety, happiness, or prosperity to mankind are to be considered great, then Dr. Morton's discovery of anæsthetics and its application to surgery is entitled to a high place among the world's discoveries and inventions. The pain that has been destroyed, the lives that have been saved, the sorrow that has been averted, give their testimony to the value of this discovery to humanity. ”

“ Steel is not found native, but is a compound of iron and carbon and is produced artificially. The great value of steel lies in the fact that it can be made so hard that it can cut and shape almost every other substance known to man, and yet this very quality of hardness can be so modified as to make the metal capable of cutting and otherwise shaping itself. Steel can be made nearly as hard as the diamond, or so soft that it can be cut, bent, or hammered into this shape or that, rolled into sheets, or drawn out into the finest wire. ”

“ It is a singular fact that another application for a patent on the telephone was received at the Patent Office a few hours later on the same day from Elisha Gray, an electrical inventor of Chicago. The patent was issued to Bell, not because his invention was superior in merit to Gray's, but on the ground that his application was received first. This is a case where "the early bird catches the worm," for the profits arising from the patent have made Mr. Bell very wealthy, and high honors have come to him as the inventor of one of the world's greatest and most marvelous inventions. ”