George Sutherland

“ Nevertheless, in endeavouring to forecast the progress of invention during the twentieth century, it is necessary to take count of the risks involved in the inauguration of any public and social economical systems which might tend to stifle freedom of thought and to discourage the efforts of those who have suggestions of industrial improvements to make.
It is plain that those economic forces which prevent the inventor from having his ideas tested must to that extent retard the progress of industrial improvement. ”

“ A traction-engine and automobile which can run across broad, almost trackless plains at the rate of fifteen miles an hour will bring within quick reach of civilisation many localities in which at present, for lack of such communication, rough men are apt to grow into semi-savages, while those who retain the instincts of civilisation look upon their exile as a living death. It will do more to enlighten the dark places of the earth than any other mechanical agency of the twentieth century. ”

“ When man has the solid earth upon which to conduct his traffic, without the necessity of overcoming the force of gravitation by costly power, he would be foolish in the extreme to attempt to abandon the advantage which this gives him, and to commit himself to such an element as the air, in which the power required to lift himself and his goods would be immeasurably greater than that needed to transport them from place to place. ”

“ Military aeronautics, like submarine operations in naval warfare, have been somewhat overrated. Visions of air-ships hovering over a doomed city and devastating it with missiles dropped from above are mere fairy tales. Indeed the whole subject of aeronautics as an element in future human progress has excited far more attention than its intrinsic merits deserve. ”

“ We see certain industrial and inventive forces at work, producing certain initial effects, but plainly, as yet, falling immeasurably short of an entire fulfilment of their possibilities; setting to work a multitude of busy brains, planning and arranging, and gradually preparing the minds of the more apathetic portion of humanity for the reception of new ideas and the adoption of improved methods of life and of work. Whither is it all tending? Will the twentieth century bring about as great a change upon the earth—man's habitat—as the nineteenth did? ”

“ While for purposes of convenience, history labels certain great inventive movements, each with the name of one pre-eminent individual who has contributed largely to its success, nothing like a due appraisement of the services rendered by other men is ever attempted. It is not even as if the commanding general should by public acclamation receive all the applause for a successful campaign to the exclusion of his lieutenants. The pioneers in each great department of invention have generally acted as forerunners of the men whose names have become the most famous. ”

“ But when the naval architect and the engineer have evolved a class of torpedo-using vessel which can both travel far and strike hard, and which, moreover, can stand a few well-directed shots penetrating her without succumbing to their effect, a new era will have been opened up in naval warfare—an era of high explosive weapons requiring to strike home with dash and bravery in spite of risk from shot and shell; but, like the bayonet on land, capable of overthrowing all war-machines which can only strike from a considerable distance. ”

“ The steam-engine or, as Watt and his predecessors called it, the "fire-engine" is par excellence the world's prime motor; and by far the greater proportion of the electrical energy that is generated to-day owes its existence primarily to the steam-engine and to other forms of reciprocating machinery designed to utilise the expansive power of vapours or gases acting in a similar manner to steam.
The industrial revolutions of the coming century will, without doubt, be brought about very largely through the utilisation of Nature's waste energy in the service of mankind. ”

“ But the position of the conductor himself in the front of an orchestra is, from a purely artistic standpoint, highly anomalous. It is as if the prompter at the performance of a drama were to be seen taking the most conspicuous part and mixing among the actors upon the stage. If an orchestral piece be well played without the visible presence of a conductor, the sense of correct time reaches the audience naturally through the music itself ”

“ It is strange that, while so much has been written and spoken about the possibility of turning the energy of the tides to account for power in the service of man, comparatively little attention has been paid to the problem of similarly utilising the wave-power, which goes to waste in such inconceivably huge quantities. Where the tidal force elevates and depresses the sea-water on a shore, through a vertical distance of say eight feet, about once in twelve hours, the waves of the ocean will perform the same work during moderate weather once in every twelve or fifteen seconds. ”

“ In music, as at present written and published for the piano, which is, and must continue to be, the real "King of Instruments," there is a good deal of make-believe. A long note—or two notes tied in a certain method—is intended to be played as a continued sound, like the note of an organ; whereas there is no piano in existence which will produce anything even approximately approaching to that effect. The characteristic of the piano as an instrument is percussion, producing, at the moment of striking the note, a loud sound which almost immediately dies away and leaves but a faint vibration. ”

“ Much heavy bodily labour, no doubt, remains to be done by some classes of workers in mines; but the significance of the march of improvement is shown by the fact that a larger and larger proportion of those who work under the surface of the ground, or in ore-reduction works, consists of men who are gradually being enrolled among the ranks of the more highly skilled and intelligent workers, whose duty it is to understand and to superintend pieces of mechanism driven by mechanical power.
In farming and horticulture the field of labour is not so narrowly localised as it is in mining. ”

“ Fifty miles an hour is a rate which is already in sight as the speed of the future torpedo-boat, the first turbine steamer of the British Navy having achieved forty-three miles an hour before the end of the nineteenth century. ”

“ The attacked warship is like an animal exposed to the onslaught of one of those fabled reptiles possessing a separate life and a separate sting in each of its myriad sections; so that what would be a mortal injury to a creature having its vital organs concentrated in one spot produces only the most limited effect in diminishing its strength and powers of offence. ”

“ But then, again, it is becoming plain to many experts in mining that, in working downwards from the surface itself, the future of their industry offers a wide field for the extension of the open-cut system. In proportion as power becomes cheaper, the expense attendant upon the removal of clay, sand, and rock for the purpose of laying bare the cap of a lode at a moderate depth becomes less formidable when balanced against the economy introduced by methods which admit of the miner working in the open air, although at the bottom of a kind of deep quarry. ”

“ Thus the fact that a man has made money out of one class of patents may not be any safe guide at all to arriving at a due estimate of his ideas on industrial improvements of greater "pith and moment," but, on the contrary, it is generally exactly the reverse. The law offers an immense premium for such inventions as are readily introduced, and the inventor who has made it his business to take advantage of this fact is usually one of the last men from whom to get a trustworthy opinion on patents of a different class. ”

“ If, therefore, we look at the whole subject from the entirely impersonal point of view, and face the task of forecasting the progress of industry during the twentieth century, in this aspect we shall find that we have entered upon a chapter in the evolution of the human race—dealing, in fact, with a branch of anthropology. ”

“ No one will think of carrying ore to the power when it is far more economical and profitable to carry power to the ore. In this connection the principle of the division of labour becomes very important. In its bearing upon the mining industry generally, whether in its application to the precious metals or to those which are termed the baser, and even in the work of raising coal and other non-metalliferous minerals, the fact that nearly all mines [Pg 183] occur in groups will greatly aid in determining the separation of the work of supplying power, as a distinct industry from that of mining. ”

“ As a solution of a mechanical and physical puzzle, the arrangement of a large reflector, with a small steam-boiler at the focus of the heat rays thrown by it, is full of interest. Yet, when a man like the late John Ericsson, who did so much to improve the caloric engine, and the steam-ship as applied to war-like purposes, meets with failure in the attempt to carry such an idea to a commercially successful issue, there is at least prima facie evidence of some obstacle which places the proposed machine at a disadvantage in competition with its rivals. ”

“ One interesting fact, which gives to wave-power a peculiarly enhanced value as a source of stored wind-power, is that the surface of the ocean—wild as it may at times appear—is not moved by such extremes of agitation as the atmosphere. In a calm it is never so inertly still, and in a storm it is never so far beyond the normal condition in its agitation as is the wind. The ocean surface to some extent operates as the governor of a steam-engine, checking an excess in either direction. ”

“ When once it is clearly seen that by delicate electrical instruments, such as the telephone, the microphone and the coherer as used in wireless telegraphy, the line of least resistance on any given area of the earth's surface or any given piece of its crust may be determined, the bearing of that fact in showing the best lines of moisture and therefore the likeliest lines for mineral lodes will soon be recognised in a very practical manner.
No class of men is keener or more enterprising in its applications of the latest practical science to the getting of money than mining speculators. ”

“ Many of these are the heroes and statesmen of that great nation which is gradually coming to be recognised as a true entity under the name of Civilisation. Their life's work is to elevate humanity, and if mankind paid more attention to them, and to what they are thinking and doing, instead of setting so much store by the veriest tittle-tattle of what is called political life, it would make much faster progress. ”

“ For the encouragement of those to whom the ambition for fame acts as a great stimulus to self-devotion in the interests of human progress, it is unavoidable that some men should be singled out and made heroes, while the much more numerous class of those who have also done great work, but who have not been quite so successful, must pass out of the ken of all, excepting the few who possess an expert knowledge of the various subjects which they have taken in hand. ”

“ Herbert Spencer's strong protest against the part assigned by some writers in the mental and industrial evolution of the human race to the influence of great men is certainly fully justified, if the attribute of greatness is to be ascribed only to those whose names figure in current histories. The parts performed by others, whose fate it may have been to have fallen into comparatively unfavourable environments, may have entitled them even more eminently to the acclamation of greatness. ”

“ When we come to consider the evolution of the warship as compared with that of the merchant steamer, we are at once confronted with the fact that the infliction of injury upon the boilers, the engine, or the propellers of a hostile vessel is the great object aimed at by the gunners. The evolution of the warship in the direction of ensuring safety, therefore, will not stop at the duplication of the engines, boilers and propellers. ”

“ For underground railway traffic exactly the same recommendations have, at one period during the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century, given an adventitious stimulus to the use of compressed air.
Yet it is now undoubted that, even in deep mining, the engineer's best policy is to adopt different methods for the conveyance and storage of power on the one hand, and for the ventilation of the workings on the other. Few temptations are more illusory in the course of industrial progress than those presented by that class of inventions which aim at "killing two birds with one stone". ”

“ Fruits, which are nature's most elaborately worked-up edible products, must come more and more into favour as the complement to the seed food represented by bread. As the demand increases it will be more clearly seen that an enormous waste of labour is involved in the culture of an orchard unless its trees are kept in perfect health. At the same time the law of specialization must operate to set aside the tree-doctor to his separate duties, just as the physician and the veterinary surgeon already find their own distinctive spheres of work. ”

“ In the former class of work the waste of power involved in employing a motor of strength sufficient to climb hills—although the bulk of the distance to be travelled is along level roads—may not be at all so serious as to overbalance the many and manifest advantages of the automobile principle. At the same time, as has already been indicated, there is no doubt whatever that when proper automatic shut-off contrivances have been applied for economising mechanical energy in the passenger road-motor, an immense impetus will be given to its advancement. ”

“ Such ideas, when planted in the soil of the collective mind through the medium of official or other records, generally require for their germination a longer time than that for which the patent laws grant protection for industrial property. Many of them, indeed, have formed the subjects of patents which, from one reason or another, lapsed long before the expiration of the maximum terms. Nature is ever prodigal of seeds and of "seed-thoughts" but comparatively niggardly of places in which the young plant will find exactly the kind of soil, air, rain, and sunshine which the young plant needs. ”

“ Something, no doubt, has been done in the direction of economy by the invention of new and improved forms of stoves, but a great preponderance of the heat generated in the fire of even the best stove goes up the chimney. The electric oven, as already invented, is perhaps the nearest approach to a really economical "cooker" that has yet been proposed; but even before the general adoption of such an apparatus there will be ample room for improvement in the cooking stove, first as regards insulation, and secondly in the distribution of the fuel around the objects to be heated. ”

“ In the first attempts to introduce the principle the false analogy of the water-turbine gave rise to much waste of inventive energy and of money; but the more recent and more distinctly successful types of machine have been constructed with a clear understanding that the windmill is the true precursor of the steam-turbine. It is clearly perceived that, although it may be convenient and even essential to reduce the arms to pigmy dimensions and to enclose them in a tube, still the general principle of the machine must resemble that of a number of wind motors all running on the same shaft. ”

“ Steam, which for oversea trade made its entrance cautiously in the shape of a mere auxiliary to sail power, had taken up a much more self-assertive position long before the close of the nineteenth century, and has driven its former ally almost out of the field in large departments of the shipping industry. Yet a curious and interesting counter movement is now taking place on the Pacific Coast of America, as well as among the South Sea Islands and in several other places where coal is exceptionally dear. ”

“ With the ordinary reciprocating type of marine steam machinery it would be impossible to place, in a steamer of moderate tonnage, engines of a size suitable to enable it to attain a very high rate of speed, because the strain and vibration of the gigantic steel arms, pulling and pushing the huge cranks to turn the shafting, would knock the hull to pieces in a very short time. For this very reason, in fact, the marine architect and engineer have hitherto urged, with considerable force of argument, that high speed and large tonnage must go concomitantly. ”

“ The chance of the steam-engine being largely adopted for automobile work and for road traffic generally depends principally on the prospects of inventing a form of cylinder—or its equivalent—which will enable the driver to couple up fresh effective working parts of his machinery at will, just as may be done with storage batteries. A new form of steam cylinder designed to provide for this need will outwardly resemble a long pipe—one being fixed on each lower side of the vehicle—but inwardly it will be divided into compartments each of which will have its own separate piston. ”

“ A perfect sostenuto piano has been the dream of many a musician whose ardent desire it was to perform his music exactly as it was written. A sustained piano note is, indeed, the great mechanical desideratum for the music of the future. ”