This book is included in the Family Affairs - Children, Parents & Home Economics section.
PREFACE
THE purpose of this book is to tell the story of some few of the great epoch-making inventions, to trace their influence upon world progress and to describe, so far as possible, simple experiments, embodying the principles involved, for home laboratory work. Many very important inventions and discoveries have had to be omitted. The field to be covered is so broad and the limits of a single book so narrow that the selection of subject-matter has been of necessity largely a process of judicious elimination. But in a book of this sort it is not so important what particular subjects are discussed as it is to teach certain fundamental truths and to emphasize the tremendous influence upon human affairs of the so-called dreamer, the man of vision, who in spite of every obstacle of fate and man has blazed the path of progress for the race. We cannot point out too often that genius is very frequently but another name for imagination. The inventor and the poet are in spirit one. The poet creates a mental image and clothes it in words suggestive of the thought picture. The inventor conceives the idea of an instrument, fraught with great material possibilities, and embodies it in a suitable mechanism. Both the poem and the machine, as everything else in the universe, are mental creations. The most intricate piece of machinery existed in the mind of the inventor before it could be translated into visible and tangible form. But in every instance the thinking of the inventor must be true to the eternal laws of the universe if his creation is to have meaning and purpose in it. The inventor's mind is a mirror of universal truths and if his thinking does not reflect them as they are, the product is distortion, error and failure. Some few great minds have caught the vision of a small portion of the truths of Nature and have materialized them for the benefit of mankind. But there is still an ocean of almost infinite possibility for the inventor. The age of discovery and achievement has only just begun and we may be perfectly sure that, so long as the race is here, there will yet be progress to make. Surely the miracles of Science have not all been wrought.
The writer is under obligation to a large number of business organizations for their kindness in supplying photographs and material used in the preparation of the book. He wishes especially to acknowledge his indebtedness to his wife for making more than two-thirds of the drawings for the line cuts and for typing the manuscript. Credit is also due to Miss Beatrice Booraem for a part of the drawings used in the cuts.
FLOYD L. DARROW.
Brooklyn, N. Y.,
August 15, 1918.
Table of Contents PREFACE CHAPTER I. THE GYRO PARADOX CHAPTER II. THE TELEGRAPH CHAPTER III. THE TELEPHONE ROMANCE CHAPTER IV. PRINCIPLES OF THE TELEPHONE CHAPTER V. THE TRIUMPH OF WIRELESS CHAPTER VI. THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF WIRELESS CHAPTER VII. TALKING THROUGH THE ETHER CHAPTER VIII. THE STORY OF AVIATION CHAPTER IX. PRINCIPLES OF THE AEROPLANE CHAPTER X. "THE ASSASSIN OF THE SEA" CHAPTER XI. THE STORY OF THE STEAM AGE CHAPTER XII. SOLVING THE SMALL POWER PROBLEM CHAPTER XIII. A CENTURY OF AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS CHAPTER XIV. TWO CENTURIES OF ELECTRICITY CHAPTER XV. THE EVOLUTION OF ARTIFICIAL ILLUMINATION CHAPTER XVI. FIRE AND HIGH TEMPERATURES CHAPTER XVII. SOME NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS IN CHEMISTRY CHAPTER XVIII. THE STORY OF IRON AND STEEL CHAPTER XIX. GALILEO AND THE TELESCOPE
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