Progress of Discovery during the last Half Century.
LET us look back to the beginning of this century, and see what mighty works have been done by inventors since that time. In 1800 there was not a single steamboat in the world. In 1807 Fulton launched the Clermont which made a passage to Albany in 32 hours. At that time the mode of travel was by schooners and sloops which were frequently six days on the passage. The improvement was certainly great, but what would Fulton now say to see steamboats running the same distance in eight hours, and some of them large enough to stow the Clermont on their forward decks? At present, it is calculated that there are no less than 3,000 steamboats of all sizes in America, and the time saved to travellers, by the invention of the steamboat, is at seventy per cent; that is, a person can travel a greater distance in 30 days now by steamboat than he could in 100 days in 1800. Look at the Iron Horse moving out of his stable, screaming and panting to start on his journey. That is the steam engine in its most perfect state—it is a near approach to the spiritual and physical combination. Behold how easily he drags the ponderous train at the rate of thirty miles per hour, thus conveying hundreds of passengers in comfort and safety, to a distance in an hour which, but a few years ago, would take them nearly a whole day to accomplish by stages. Within three months the Queen of England was transported from the interior of Scotland to London, a distance of 400 miles, in ten hours. In 1800 the same journey could not be accomplished in less than eight days. In the United States there are at least 5,700 miles of railroad constructed, and there cannot be less than 20,750 miles of railroad now in operation in Europe and America, for neither Africa nor Asia can yet boast of a single line completed. Who, if he were told twenty years ago that the sun would be used for a limner's pencil, would have believed it? Not one: and yet this has been done. When M. Daguerre, a distinguished chemist of Paris, first published in 1839, that he had discovered a method of taking pictures on metal plates by the sun, the public regarded his metal tablets with feelings of wonder. The animal chemistry of Liebig has been but recently given to the world: cotton and saw-dust are now made to propel cannon balls, and rend rocks by a spark from a battery, and chloroform has come to the aid of surgery, arms and limbs are amputated from men and women every day, they are as ignorant of the operation performing on them as the dead in their graves. There is not a single department in science and art but has been greatly enriched with splendid discoveries during the last fifty years. Fifteen years ago pins were all made by hand. Each was made of more than one piece, and a number of persons were required to finish every one. A single machine now completes the operation from beginning to end: and, in Waterbury, Conn., 4,030,000 are finished every day, and the machinery for counting them and sticking them in papers is equally ingenious. Look at the simple article of Lucifer Matches. Twenty years ago we knew nothing about their benefits. None but those who were comparatively rich could buy them, and fifteen years ago a box, which now sells for one cent, could not be purchased for less than twelve cents. Among the grand discoveries of the last half century, the Electric Telegraph stands out in bold relief. It has given to man the power of transmitting his thoughts to his fellow man thousands of miles distant in a few seconds. “Electricity leaves her thunderbolt in the sky, and like Mercury dismissed from Olympus acts as letter-carrier and message-boy.” In 1837, when Morse first proclaimed that he could write messages by electricity at any distance, wise people shrugged their shoulders and looked with blank unbelief upon such a daring proposition. In 1843 the first line of telegraph was completed in our country between Washington and Baltimore, and since that time the progress of telegraph lines has been most surprising and astounding, if anything can now surprise us in the shape of discovery. All the important cities in our Union are linked by the lightning tracks, and wherever we travel, there we behold suspended, on slender poles, those attenuated threads, along which the lightning fleets with messages of love, hope, gain or fear. The speeches delivered in the halls of Congress to-day, are delivered to the readers of the newspapers in all our important cities next morning. The whole science of Voltaism, Electro-magnetism, Electrotyping, are trophies of the discoveries made during the last fifty years.