Karl Friedrich Mohr

“ In nearly every place, the most ancient of such great events, the invention of language and of written characters, are wrapped in complete darkness. As history can be handed down to posterity by means of language only, it is obvious that ages without language can have no history. It is language which introduces nations into history. ”

“ Not until the invention of gunpowder was the aspect of society essentially changed. A bit of charcoal, a nitre-crystal, and a few grains of sulphur mixed together, made up a powder that rent mountains and crushed walls. At once all the then prevailing systems of attack and defence were overthrown. The nation most advanced in technical matters became the most powerful. With a few thousand blunderbusses, a handful of adventurers conquered a new continent. The history of the invention of gunpowder is as yet a myth. Very likely, an accident was the main cause. Science claims no reward. ”

“ It can be asserted fearlessly, that the favorable condition of modern society has its rise in the discovery of oxygen.
Let me here allude to those stupendous processes, the manufactures of sulphuric acid and of soda. To sketch the influence of chemistry upon life would carry us too far. Glass and soap are better to-day, and, despite their hundred-fold increased consumption, no dearer than in former times. ”

“ The consequences of any discovery are incalculable. Davy investigated the nature of the flame, and communicated his discoveries in a lecture before a large audience. He demonstrated that it was within our power to produce a flame which, at a state of extreme heat, contained either free oxygen or unburnt carbon; that a large grate with a limited supply of coal would generate the former, the oxidizing flame, while a small grate with a larger amount of coal would yield the other, the flame devoid of oxygen, but in which combustible substances might be melted without the danger of combustion. ”

“ The steam which today gushes from the locomotive is an equivalent of the rays that decomposed the carbonic acid of the huge marine plants of those early periods, and accumulated the carbon as a source of power—a sleeping affinity, a lifted weight. In combining this carbon again with oxygen, we produce precisely as much heat as disappeared during the growth of those plants. The steam generated by this heat we allow to push against a movable obstacle, and to this obstacle we attach the resistances to be overcome—a train of cars, a number of looms or hammers, grindstones or rolls. ”

“ In addition to these, let us record two events of the second half of the last century, which, more promptly and thoroughly than even any of the preceding, changed the entire social conditions of humanity: one an invention, that of the steam-engine; the other a discovery, that of oxygen.
The importance of the steam-engine requires no comment. Man derives power from the rays of the sun which were stored up as carbon in the vegetable kingdom from time immemorial. ”

“ Now, since the change of habitations is an unavoidable, ever-occurring element in the world's history, he who must be considered the greater conqueror is the man who teaches humanity what to do in order not to fall again a prey to Nature's law. ”

“ With the invention of printing, history commenced making more rapid strides. A few centuries later, however, events occurred which were originated and put upon the scene by means of the art of printing, and which greatly diminished the blessings of the invention on account of the almost total destruction of national prosperity during the Thirty Years' War. The art itself meanwhile had not improved. The prints of those times are poor and wretched compared with the excellent works of Gutenberg. The importance of the art by far exceeds its intellectual merit. ”

“ Agricultural chemistry may be considered a part of organic chemistry; its province is to determine the laws of the growth of plants. The year 1840 is of the same importance in the history of the world as the years 1436, 1492, and 1774, which mark the invention of printing, the discovery of America, and that of oxygen. ”

“ The power is neither given us nor is it generated. It disappears with the wood or the coal.
The discovery of oxygen has an altogether different importance. We are confronted by an apparently insignificant fact which Destiny seemed for a time to have permanently assigned to the chemist's laboratory. It was on the 1st of August, in 1774, that Priestley, an English clergyman and a naturalist, for the first time performed the celebrated experiment which up to the present day is repeated in nearly every course of lectures on experimental chemistry. ”

“ IN tracing the history of the civilization and growth of humanity, it becomes noticeable that long periods of time often witness but slow and gradual progress; but that from time to time a few inventions and discoveries of eminent men suddenly kindle a revolution in all the spheres of human affairs. ”

“ The wonder has become a fact of daily occurrence; it rises with us and accompanies us through the day. Do you ever consider that, without this discovery of Oersted, the telegraph would not exist?
We place thirty or forty glasses of water in adjacency, each containing a plate of zinc and one of copper, together with a small quantity of sulphuric acid; we join the vessels by means of metallic wires soldered to the opposite plates, and connect the two extreme plates of the series with the ground, the extreme zinc plate by a short wire, the last copper by, say, a hundred-mile wire. ”

“ The more securely chemistry had established its household, the more willingly were its services offered to its neighbors. In investigating the composition of minerals, an exact science was created out of our collections of specimens. ”

“ The rapid supply of local wants by the importation of grain and cattle acts most powerfully upon the stability of prices. A famine, in the proper sense of the word, can scarcely be thought of at the present time, unless it be a universal famine. ”

“ Up to that time cast-iron was converted into wrought-iron by heating it with charcoal and exposing the melted metal to a blast of air. By this process only small quantities of wrought-iron were obtained at a time, through the necessity of producing but one bloom in a heat, which might easily be hammered out; and also on account of the cost of charcoal. In this process mineral coal could not be placed in contact with the iron, because the never-failing presence of sulphur in that kind of coal would render the iron unfit for use. ”

“ He then first announced the theory that the inorganic constituents, the so-called ashes, played an important part in the growth of vegetables, and that without their presence no vegetable structure could subsist. Thousands of facts and results of experiments had previously existed, but no one had found the law. ”

“ A slight pressure of the finger upon a knob supported by a spring, and a dash or dot is produced a hundred miles away; thought is transmitted to that distance by the electric current; it makes its own record, the recipient needs simply to read off the marks. ”