THE WORLD'S FAIR by R. C. Porter

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Dec 14, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 49.

THE WORLD'S FAIR.

By R. C. Porter

BY R. C. PORTER.

A Century of Progress.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson to be learned at the World's Fair, is that of the world's progress within the past century. “On every hand there are evidences of the marvelous advance in art, science, agriculture, mining, manufacture, and in that agent which brought them all together and made them possible—transportation.”

Commencing with agriculture, we are impressed with the marked advance in machinery in every department of agricultural work. From the tedious primitive cotton-gin, we are brought to the automatic feed and cleaner, Cheesman gin of to-day, with a capacity of over three bales per day. Six of these machines can be operated by one person. Likewise in the plow exhibit. Side by side stand a plow forged in 1837, and the latest improved four gang-plow, and disc gang-plow. The old single shovel in contrast with the two-row corn-cultivator, the hay-loader, the corn-planter, corn-sheller, thrashing-machine, hay-baler, road engine, the scientific feed grinder, corn-binder, and tool sharpener, the grain-thrasher with its weighing, bagging, and loading attachments, the self-feeding clover-hullers and grain-thrashers, the Tennessee improved horse pea picker, hay-stackers, corn-huskers, and cream-separators. All these pass in review to remind the observer that we are living in an age of remarkable progress.

The most striking contrasts seen in this department were the wooden plow used by Daniel Webster on his father's farm, standing by the side of an enormous eight-gang steam plow; and a Western steam harvester and thrasher and auto mower, in contrast with the old fashioned grain-cradle and scythe.

The exhibit in the United States Government building, where the century's progress in harvesting machinery was collected and in actual operation in miniature form, was one of the most interesting.

In the Transportation building the primitive two-wheeled ox cart stands in contrast with the rapid transit, elegant and comfortable automobile carriage. The quaint little Dewitt Clinton train of 1831, the first run in America, consisting of a crude engine and tender and three omnibus-shaped cars, running at the rate of fifteen miles an hour between Albany and Schenectady, was seen in contrast with the Empire State Express running a mile a minute, the fastest long-distance train in the world, its coaches veritable palaces of convenience and comfort. It would have taken the Dewitt train twenty-nine and one-third hours to run from New York to Buffalo. The Empire State Express makes the run in eight and one-quarter hours. All this change since 1831.

Near by stood an old fashioned iron teakettle-shaped engine, a production from Sir Isaac Newton's Description in 1680. This was the first-thought-of propulsion by steam on land. The first locomotive used in America was built in England in 1829. It had two pairs of drive wheels, and ran on a wooden track, with iron rails laid flat and screwed to the wood. From Murdock's working model 1780, tricycle type, nearly a score of various patterns from different countries were exhibited, showing the evolution of invention in that period, when it was supposed to be next to impossible to attempt to run engines and pull loads overland.

“As long ago as 1811 Chancellor Livingston, who was associated with Robert Fulton in the invention of the steamboat, received a letter from some ‘wild, hair-brained individual,’ asking his opinion of the practicability of railroads. After giving the matter due consideration, the worthy Chancellor replied that, besides too dangerous, it would be impossible to build rails that would sustain so heavy a weight as you propose, moving at the rate of four miles an hour on wheels.”

Place this statement in comparison with the St. Louis engine which had no peer in the great Exposition for weight. This engine has six pairs of driving wheels; its weight with tender is two hundred and forty tons. It works on the compound principle, with two high pressure cylinders on the rear section, and two low pressure cylinders on the front section. It is a mammoth machine and in remarkable contrast with the early types of engines standing in a cluster near by.

The present century shows machinery applied to every conceivable purpose. The ingenuity now applied to the invention of new machinery is incalculable.

Pumping machinery occupied a prominent place at the Exposition. The water for the cascades was pumped by electric turbine pumps against a head of one hundred and fifty-nine feet, each pump handling 35,000 gallons per minute.

In an exhibit with an endless variety of the latest improved machinery from the churn to the forty tons lift machinery crane, covering every phase of invention in every form of industry, but a few special items can be mentioned. Engines reaching the enormous test of 45,000 horse-power in operation so compact and unpretentious in appearance as scarcely to attract attention.

Perhaps the most striking exhibit in machinery, is that of a gas producer and engine which it is said is destined to work a revolution in the production of power for manufacturing. By this invention a low form of gas is extracted from coal, greatly minimizing the cost of the gas fuel. It is claimed that this engine will produce 1,750 horse-power with an expenditure of 1,550 pounds of anthracite coal per hour. No former method has produced one horse-power with less than three pounds of anthracite coal, while this one produces from less than one pound, one horse-power. This engine seems to strike many machinists with the impression that the splendid steam inventions will soon have to succumb to this new invention for producing power.

The flying machine was also in evidence, tho this invention is yet in its infancy, as was steam transportation in 1829. Santos Dumont and other inventors have recently come forward with air-ships that do sail in the air to a limited extent.

No less marked is the invention displayed in firearms for army and navy. From the old bow and arrow, spear, and sword, and battering-ram, we now see the breech-loading rifle, the rapid-fire gun shooting its eight hundred shots per minute. The sixteen-inch cannon discharging its 2,400 pounds of solid cast iron, shot by an explosion of six hundred and sixty pounds of smokeless powder, at a velocity of two thousand three hundred feet per second. The weight of this gun is 291,000 pounds. Its length is 49.25 feet. Its extreme range is twenty-one miles, penetrating forty-six inches of solid steel at the muzzle. It performs on a disappearing carriage, which rises about four feet to make the discharge, then drops back out of sight within the fort. The contrast of weapons of earlier times with these of to-day, overawes. This scene does not impress the beholder that he is on the eve of a millennium, when all will be peace; but rather on the eve of a mighty waking up of nations for war, and these inventions are to be used by man to slaughter his fellow-man. Space forbids entering upon a discussion of many other inventions worthy of consideration.

The remarkable educational exhibit, with its manual training appliances, its methods of instruction for blind, deaf, and dumb, its Indian school system and its general advanced methods of practical instruction, were not behind the progress in other branches of industry.

Then come the electric discoveries and inventions. Since Benjamin Franklin drew from the clouds the electric current on the string of his kite, and Professor Morse taught it to speak through telegraphy, there have come such marked inventions that we now have wireless telegraphy; also an invention, which was one of the most remarkable on exhibit, which sends by telegraph one thousand words a minute over lines one thousand miles in length; while by the ordinary method only about fifty words per minute are transmitted. This instrument can send twenty-five thousand words a minute over shorter lines. There was shown also the electric transmission of writing by the telautograph, by which one writes and a facsimile of the writing appears at the other end of the line. Inventions in telephony bring us now the automatic switchboard and automatic exchanges. We have also Professor Graham Bell's radiophone, a discovery by which is made possible the sending of a verbal message along a beam of light.

The climax of recent discoveries seems to have been reached in the discovery of radium. As an explosive it is said that an ounce of radium would lift both the French and English navies from the water. It is a white crystalline powder composed of several metals, with an illuminating power that far eclipses Roentgen, or X rays. Its rays travel almost as fast as sunlight, and can pierce three feet of iron, burn through metallic cases, and take photographs in closed trunks.

Polonium may surpass radium in some ways, but its possibilities are not yet fully known.

After reviewing so many of these stupendous advances in all lines of discovery and invention we naturally inquire what is the great lesson these inventions are designed to teach? Turning to the Bible, the storehouse of all the higher knowledge which this world needs, we read in Daniel 12:4, “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Without arguing the question as to the beginning of the period called “the time of the end” (which in chapter eleven, verse thirty-five, is declared to follow the close of the persecutions under the Papacy), I would suggest that we are living now in a time of great running “to and fro.” “And knowledge shall be increased.” The great inventions of which we have spoken tell their own story as to the fulfilment of this prediction in our day. What, then, is the lesson to be learned from this study? We are living in the time of the end. This is a brief period just prior to the end of time. When we see the preparations for war, the death-dealing gatling-gun, the mighty destructive cannon, the destructive submarine boat, the waking up of the heathen and their desperate and bloody part in the conflict now going on, it says to us in the language of the third chapter of Joel, that we have reached the time when the harvest is ripe, and the sickle is soon to gather its fruitage from the earth. But Christ says “The harvest is at the end of the world.” The fulfilment of Joel's prophecy to turn agricultural implements into war weapons, and to wake up the mighty men for war, is before our eyes. Its lesson is, The harvest is ripe; the end of all things is at hand.

A century covers nearly all the inventions and discoveries of modern times. Why were they not made before? The prophet declared that they were reserved as a sign of the second coming of Christ and the end of the world. It is also stated by Christ, in Matt. 24:14, that the people of the last generation upon the earth are to carry the last message of the Gospel to all the world, “and then shall the end come.” Before the chapter closes he tells us this work will be done by one generation, then the Lord will come. What facilities He, who, from the heavens, conducts the work which He committed to men to perform, has provided in our day for the accomplishment of that work! The possibilities of its announcement in all the world surpass all previous historical record. God's great purpose is soon to be accomplished. “My Word shall not return unto Me void.” The Mystery of God is soon to be finished, and the last note of the Gospel sounded. The great day of God is near and hasteth greatly. Are we ready?