Inventions and Vocabulary

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 22, 1910

Inventions and Vocabulary

WERE George Washington to be suddenly restored to life, and dropped down in any busy American community, he might have some difficulty in carrying on an ordinary conversation; and it would certainly require hours of study to bring himself to an understanding of what are now the merest commonplaces.

Until the matter could be explained to him, he would not know what was meant by the word telephone; and automobile would be as Sanskrit to the father of his country. Drawing on only those everyday conveniences that no longer attract passing attention, he would have to be shown before he could understand phonograph, street-car, aeroplane, air-ship, ocean liner, Pullman car, motor, incandescent light, gasoline, sky-scraper, asphalt paving, cotton-gin, sewing-machine, trunk line, searchlight, armored cruiser, fountain pen, repeating arms, radium, X-ray, appendicitis, postage stamp, telegraph, suffragette, express, San Francisco, Klondike, breakfast-food, and thousands of other terms that have been developed with modern inventions. And George Washington did not live so very long ago at that!—Columbus Dispatch.