Kitabı oku: «Invention: The Master-key to Progress», sayfa 18
CHAPTER XII
INVENTION OF THE MODERN MILITARY MACHINE, TELEPHONE, PHONOGRAPH, AND PREVENTIVE MEDICINE
In 1866, one of the most important inventions of history was put to test, in a war between Austria and Prussia. The invention was the Prussian Military Machine, of which the inventor was von Moltke, the Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army. Moltke was not the original inventor of the Military Machine, any more than Watt was the original inventor of the steam engine; but he was the inventor of the modern Military Machine, just as Watt was the inventor of the modern reciprocating steam-engine.
Moltke had been made Chief of Staff in 1858, and had proceeded at once to embody an idea that his mind had conceived some years before. This idea was to utilize all the new inventions of every kind that had been made, especially in weapons, transportation and communication; and to continue to utilize all new inventions as each reached the useful stage, in such a way that the Prussian Army would be an actual weapon, which could be handled with all the quickness and precision that the products of modern civilization could impart to it. Philip of Macedon, Julius Cæsar, and Frederick William of Prussia evidently had had similar ideas; but no one after them, save Moltke, seems to have realized fully that armies and navies must utilize all the new methods and appliances that can be made to assist their operations, if those armies and navies are to attain their maximum effectiveness. It is true that no very great changes in arms or in methods of transportation and communication had recently taken place, at the time when Napoleon went to war; but this only emphasizes the new conditions with which Moltke was confronted, and the courage and resourcefulness with which he met them.
Moltke's Machine was, of course, much more comprehensive and detailed than the paragraph above would indicate; but almost every machine, after it has been perfected, is comprehensive and detailed, even if the original idea was simple. It is true also that the direct means which Moltke employed to perfect his Machine was to train officers to solve independently certain problems in strategy and tactics, just as children at school were taught to solve problems in arithmetic. It is true also that more attention has usually been fixed on Moltke's system of training than on his utilization of inventions, and it may be true that Moltke himself fixed more attention on it. But the idea of training officers as he did, seems also to have been original with Moltke; and it is certain that Moltke was the first to develop such a system, and therefore, that he was the inventor of that system.
We see, therefore, that Moltke made two separate inventions, and combined both in his machine. Both inventions were condemned and ridiculed, but both succeeded. The result was that, when war was declared in 1866 between Prussia and Austria, a reputedly greater nation, the Prussian machine started smoothly but quickly when the button was pressed, advanced into Austria without the slightest delay or jar, collided at once with the Austrian machine, and smashed it in one encounter. This encounter was near Sadowa and Königgrätz, and took place only seventeen days after war began. The most important single invention that Moltke had utilized was the breech-loading "needle gun," a weapon far better than the Austrians had, not only in speed of loading, but in accuracy. The two armies were not very different in point of numbers: so that, even if von Moltke's other measures had not been taken, the superiority of the Prussian musket over the Austrian must of itself have caused the winning of the war, though not so quickly as actually was the case.
But in the war with France, Moltke's machine demonstrated its effectiveness even more completely, because its task was harder. For France was esteemed the greatest military nation in the world; it was the France of Napoleon the Great, then ruled by his nephew Napoleon III. In the usual sense of the word, the French were a more "military" people than the Prussians. The Empire of Napoleon III was much more splendid than the poor little Kingdom of Prussia, the army was more in evidence, there were more military pageants, the people were more ardent. But the military leaders of the French included no such inventor as von Moltke, there was no one who conceived any such ideas as were pictured in Moltke's imaginative brain; and consequently it never occurred to anyone to utilize strenuously all the new inventions, or to train officers like school boys, in the practical problems of war. The result was that Moltke's machine got into France before the French machine had been even put together. The pieces of the French machine had not been got together even when the war ended. When war was declared by France, her military machine was in three parts. Two of them got together fairly quickly, so that the French machine was soon divided into only two parts; one under Marshal Bazaine, and the other under Marshal McMahon. But Moltke's machine was together at the start, and it stayed together throughout the war. This does not mean that all its parts stood in the same spot; but it does mean that the parts were always in supporting distance of each other. The two parts of the French machine were not in supporting distance of each other, and the German machine prevented them from uniting. When McMahon and Bazaine tried to unite, McMahon was defeated at Wörth, and Bazaine at Gravelotte. McMahon was forced to surrender his entire force, including the emperor at Sedan; and Bazaine was shut up in Metz. Paris was then besieged. Bazaine was soon forced to surrender and Paris to capitulate.
The main immediate result was the establishment of the German Empire. A later result was the establishment of what is sometimes called militarism. Of the two, the latter was probably the more important in future consequences; for the influence of Moltke's conception of military preparedness has been to make all civilized nations keep up enormous and highly organized military and naval establishments, under pain of being caught unprepared for war and beaten to subjection.
The German Empire has vanished, but militarism has not vanished. There seem to be no signs that it will soon vanish, for it is simply part of a general preparedness movement that embraces many fields of life, that is necessitated by the existence of this cumbrous Machine of Civilization, and that is advanced by the realization that everyone must cultivate foresight. The physicians tell us, the financiers tell us, the lawyers tell us, the clergymen tell us, even the business men of every day and the housewives tell us that we must continually look ahead and continually prepare to meet what may be coming. Now this is what Militarism urges as applied to the coming of war. Militarism is the doctrine of preparedness for war; it holds the same relation to national health that preventive medicine does to individual health. It would make us do many unpleasant things, and refrain from doing many pleasant things. But to do many unpleasant things and to refrain from doing many pleasant things is necessary, in order to lead even a moderately virtuous and prudent life. Militarism may be pushed to an undue extreme; but so may any course of conduct.
It may be interesting to note that Moltke was not an "opportunistic inventor," like most men of action typified by Napoleon, but that Bismarck was. Moltke made inventions of a permanent nature, but Bismarck did not. Yet Moltke was a soldier and Bismarck was a statesman. Bismarck's German Empire has already passed away, but Moltke's method of preparedness is with us still, and is gathering more and more prestige as the years go by. Judged by the standard of permanent achievement, Moltke was a greater man than Bismarck; though a belief to the contrary was held during their lifetimes, and is generally held by most men now.
In 1870, Gramme invented the famous Gramme dynamo-electric machine, which was so excellent a machine for producing a smooth and unidirectional electric current, that it gave the start to that wonderful succession of electrical inventions which established the Age of Electricity. The main part of Gramme's machine was a modification of the Pacinnoti ring, invented by Pacinnoti in 1862, which seems never to have been put to practical use, and never to have been heard of by Gramme. The Pacinnoti ring consisted of a ring around which a continuous coil of wire was wound. This ring being rotated in a magnetic field, the various parts of the wire at any instant lay at different angles to the lines of force, instead of at the same angle to them, as was the case with the flat coil of previous dynamo machines. The result was that some coil was always cutting the magnetic lines-of-force at the maximum speed, while others were cutting them at varying speeds, down to zero; so that the aggregate of all was approximately the same at all instants. The result was that the current was nearly uniform in strength. The influence of this invention on subsequent history need hardly be pointed out; for it is impressed on us every day and every night, in every part of the civilized world.
In the same epochal year that ushered in the Franco-Prussian War and the Gramme machine, the Hyatts invented celluloid. The invention was of the simplest character, involving mainly the compression of camphorated gun-cotton by hydraulic or other force. This was not a great invention, but a useful one; making it possible to fabricate many useful articles at low cost.
In the following year of 1871, Goodyear invented his welt shoe-sewing machine and Maddox made his epochal discovery. This was that when nitrate of silver was added to a solution of gelatine in water containing a soluble bromide, silver bromide was formed, which did not subside even after long standing; that the emulsion could be made quickly and in large quantities, and that by thus substituting gelatine for collodion on the surface of glass plates used in photography, greater sensitiveness, and therefore, greater speed could be obtained. This led to an important improvement, and paved the way to others, and thus became the basis of rapid photography.
By 1871 the work of several inventors had produced a press that printed an endless sheet of paper on both sides and folded it automatically. In the same year Ingersoll invented his compressed air rock drill. In 1872, Lyall invented his positive-motion weaving loom, and Clerk Maxwell propounded his electro-magnetic theory of light. According to this theory, luminous and electric disturbances are the same in kind, the same medium transmits both, and light is an electro-magnetic phenomenon. This was a most important invention in the field of physical science, and is now accepted by the majority of scientists. It is not so applicable to the needs of men at the present moment as the weaving loom; but in the future, it may be more so.
In the same year, Westinghouse invented an improvement on his original air-brake that made it automatic under some conditions, and in the following year Janney invented the automatic car-coupler. Both of these were brilliant inventions, though not nearly so brilliant as Clerk Maxwell's. They were immeasurably more important, however, from the standpoint of material contributions to the Machine. One result was that the inventors were immeasurably more rewarded in a material way than was that great mathematical physicist, Clerk Maxwell.
In the same year of Our Lord, 1873, Willis invented his platinotype photographic process, in which finely divided platinum forms an image virtually permanent, and Edison invented his duplex telegraph. This was the first of those wonderful inventions that made Edison famous; and it embodied possibly as brilliant an idea as he ever conceived. The principle was exceedingly simple, and consisted merely in using currents that increased in strength as the key was pressed to actuate an ordinary electro-magnet for one message, and using currents whose direction was reversed when the key was pressed, to actuate a polarized relay for another message. By combining this scheme with one long before proposed, of putting the receiving instruments across the arms of a Wheatstone Bridge, the entire system could be duplicated, and two messages sent at the same time in each direction. This, of course, constituted quadruplex telegraphy.
In the same year, Gorham invented the twine-binder for harvesters, Bennett improved the gelatine-bromide process of Maddox; and Locke and Wood invented the self-binding reaper. In 1874, Glidden and Vaughan invented a machine for making barbed wire, and Sir William Thomson invented his super-excellent siphon-recorder for receiving messages over the Atlantic cable. This invention combined the three elements that constitute a great invention; brilliancy of conception, excellence of construction and concrete product. It was of immediate usefulness also, which a great invention may not necessarily be. But Sir William Thomson was a "canny Scot," a good mechanic, and a man of the world, as well as a mathematical physicist of the highest order; with the result that even on his loftiest flights, he held tight to a string that connected him to the earth, and that kept his flights within the regions of the practical and immediate. His siphon-recorder was very much more sensitive to electric currents than any recorder ever invented before; a quality which made feebler currents utilizable, decreased induction and therefore increased speed. Coming when it did, and coming because Sir William Thomson saw a need for it, it was a great and important contribution to submarine telegraphy, and therefore to the Machine; for the Machine has now become very large and complicated, and needed the best possible communication among its various parts. Some of these parts were far distant from each other.
In the following year, 1875, Brown invented his cash-carrier. This was not so brilliant or important an invention as Sir William Thomson's; but it can hardly be doubted that a hundred thousand times as many cash-carriers and their children, cash-registers, have been made as siphon-recorders. In the same year, Lowe invented his illuminating water-gas; Wegmann his roller flour mills; Smith his middlings purifier for flour; and Pictet his ice-machine. The last four inventions were of that distinctly practical kind that contribute directly to the operativeness of the Machine, by facilitating the conditions of living in large communities, and make great cities possible. Of the four, the invention of Pictet was the most brilliant and scientific, and the least directly useful.
In 1876, Bell made an invention that is usually conceded to be the most important of modern times, and that was also of the highest order of brilliancy of conception, excellence of construction and concreteness of result. The invention was that of the speaking telephone.
The telephone is not in the class with the actual doers of things, like the weaving machine and the gun, but rather in the class with the telegraph and the typewriter, in being an assistant to the doers of things: that is, it is an instrument rather than a machine. This does not mean that a machine is more important than an instrument, though possibly machines have done more work directly in furthering civilization than instruments have. A machine does something itself; an instrument is a means or agency or implement with which men do something. As a class, machines have probably been more directly useful than instruments; but this does not mean, of course, that any machine that one may name has been more useful than any instrument. A machine (generally speaking) does only one class of work; the sewing-machine, for instance, does no work save sewing; while such an instrument as the telephone is an aid to men in directing the work of thousands of machines.
It may be pointed out here that, in the broad meaning of the word instrument, every machine that does actual work is an instrument in the hands of men for doing that work; but that every instrument is not necessarily a machine. A machine, by definition, is composed of various parts that work together to a common end, and it carries with it the ideas of movement and of power. An instrument, on the other hand, need not be composed of more than one part; it may of itself be incapable of moving or exerting power; and yet, in the hands of men and women, it may be the means of doing the most useful work. A familiar illustration among many is the needle.
Now the telephone can hardly be called a machine: it can of itself do nothing. It is not like an engine that can do work hour after hour, without external interposition, supervision or assistance. Yet, for the reason that the only value of a machine lies in the fact that it is an instrument whereby men can get results, an instrument is not necessarily in a lower class than a machine.
The essential value of the telephone seems to lie in the fact that the Machine has become so complicated, and composed of so many separate parts, that, without the telephone, those parts would not be adequately linked together. The telephone, like the telegraph, acts in the Machine of Civilization as do the nerves in the human organism. The human organism could not be an organism without the nervous system; and the present Machine could not exist in its present form without the telegraph and the telephone. These two instruments have so greatly improved the Machine as to raise it toward the dignity of an organism. They have not made it an organism, because they have not endowed it with life. They have, however, raised it to the dignity of an automatic machine, by supplying such a ready and sure means of conveying information and instructions, that a blow to the Machine anywhere is felt everywhere, and assistance to the part attacked can be summoned from everywhere.
Illustrations of this can be seen the most clearly in our large cities, in which information concerning a fire, or a riot, or an accident is transmitted instantly to all parts of the city; and fire engines, police or ambulances are sent in response thereto. Illustrations covering wider fields come to mind at once; but they are of the same character, whether the fields comprise single states or continents or seas, or the whole surface of the earth. Possibly the best single illustration is that supplied by the events of the recent World War, in which the nerves of civilization in every land were kept on the tingle by the news continually received from the fighting fronts, and measures were continually taken to meet each situation as it occurred. Australia and New Zealand and America and Canada and South Africa assisted France to repel the invader from her soil.
The influence of the telephone on history has been so great that history would not be at all as it has been, if the telephone had not been born. Has this influence been beneficent? Probably, because it has tied the parts of the Machine together, and made it more coherent. But it may be well to realize that this very fact has had the effect of permitting other additions to the Machine; with the result that the Machine is perhaps no more coherent now than it was when the telephone was added to it. Furthermore, we must not forget that, although the influence of each new invention is usually to assist civilization rather than to assist its enemies, yet we cannot assume that 100 % is exerted on that side, for a considerable percentage is always exerted on the other side. For instance, the printing press is used to disseminate harmful teachings, as well as beneficent teachings, the telephone is used for bad purposes as well as good ones, etc.
We must not restrict our appreciation of the influence of the telephone by ignoring the stimulation which it has given to study and experiment, especially in the physical sciences. People of the present day do not realize the amazement and excitement caused throughout the world by the sudden realization of the fact that human speech could be transmitted. Coming as it did so soon after the invention of the Gramme dynamo, it waked the minds of men with a sudden start, and opened a dazzling avenue of anticipation of discoveries and inventions yet to come. Young men, and especially young men of fine ambition, saw ahead a clear line of useful and brilliant work; and the colleges and technical schools were soon thronged with eager youth. A new epoch – the electric epoch – was at hand.
The most generally noticed herald of the new epoch was not the telephone, however, but the "electric candle" invented by Jablochkoff in 1876, which soon afterward came into use in Paris. This candle consisted of two parallel sticks of carbon separated by an insulating substance, made of some refractory material, that fuzed as the carbons gradually burned away. The two carbons were connected to an electric circuit that passed from the tip of one carbon to the tip of the other, causing a brilliant electric arc. To prevent one carbon wasting away more rapidly than the other, an alternating current was employed. This great invention is now almost forgotten, because it was soon supplanted by the present arc-light that is better in many ways. Nevertheless, to Jablochkoff must be accorded the distinction of being the first to make electric lighting on a large scale practicable, and to demonstrate the fact.
In the same year, an invention of more than doubtful beneficence was made, a machine for continuously making cigarettes; but this was balanced in the same year by the inventions of the steam saw-mill and of Portland cement.
In the following year came an invention fully as brilliant as the telephone, though not so useful, the phonograph. It is usually considered as more brilliant; certainly it was more unexpected. The idea of transmitting speech was very old, many men had worked on it, and many were working on it at the time when Bell accomplished it; but the idea of recording speech was almost undreamed of. Up to the present moment, it can hardly be said that the phonograph has had great influence on history; for its main work has been in giving pleasure by the music it has rendered. We can easily imagine the present Machine, without the phonograph, but not without the telephone.
And we cannot imagine the present Machine to exist without the gas engine, invented the same year by Dr. Otto, that made possible the use of large units of mechanical power, without the need of boilers or condensers or other external appliances; for the combustion of the fuel was carried on inside the engine itself. This invention has been followed by many others during the forty-five years that have since gone by, in which oil has taken the place of gas. Petrol or gasolene has been the oil (or spirit) most used; but engines of the Deisel type, employing heavy oils, have now come into being in large numbers.
It is easy to underestimate the influence of the gas-engine, or oil-engine (usually called the internal combustion engine), as is proved by the fact that most people do so; despite the evidence of its importance on all sides, in the shape of submarine vessels, automobiles and similar vehicles. Its most important single effect has been to make possible the aeroplane, and all the science and art of aviation, and the consequent conquest of the air.
In the same year of 1877, Edison made his great invention, the carbon telephone transmitter, which increased enormously the effect of the voice in varying the resistance of a telephone circuit, and thereby increased the loudness of telephone speech. In the same year, Berliner invented the induction transmitter, which consisted of a primary coil of small resistance in circuit with the transmitter and the secondary coil connected to the outside circuit. These two inventions, added to Bell's original invention, made the telephone of today – in its essential features.
In 1878, Edison produced his incandescent lamp, in which a carbon filament, enclosed in a bulb exhausted of air, was heated to incandescence by an electric current. The importance of this invention need hardly be even mentioned. As to the originality of the conception, there are many opinions; for several experimenters had been working in this field, and many brilliant results had been achieved. Important as this invention was, we can imagine the Machine to exist without it, though not in quite so perfect and complete a form. Its main use is its obvious use; though there can be no doubt that the improvement it wrought in the conditions of comfortable living, and the attractions it offered to ambitious youths enlisted a large army in the study of the physical sciences, gave impetus to all the mechanic arts, and assisted in many important ways the upbuilding of the Machine.
In 1879, Appleby invented the automatic grain-binder, and Sir William Crookes made his epochal discovery of cathode rays. This discovery, like many others of a highly scientific character, was not of immediate practical value; consisting as it did in the fact that if the poles of the secondary circuit of a Rhumkorff coil were connected to the two ends of a glass tube from which nearly all the air (or other gas) had been exhausted, a stream of electrified particles was projected from the cathode, or negative pole. These particles were evidently projected with great violence; for if they struck the side of the tube, they produced a brilliant illumination there; while if they struck a piece of metal they developed heat. If the metal were sufficiently thin, it was melted. Later study of these cathode rays developed the fact that the stream of charged particles could be deflected by magnetic and electric fields, thus showing that they had actual physical mass; and still later studies resulted in that mass being determined, and also the amount of the electric charges on them. To an individual particle the name electron was given; and the interesting fact developed that the mass of an electron is only about one-thousandth that of an atom of hydrogen.
This is not very exciting news to men whose time is consumed in the engrossing occupation of earning a living; but scientific facts have a curious habit of lurking in the background, sometimes a long while, and then suddenly stepping up to the footlights in the form of facts or inventions of a kind that are exceedingly important, – even from the standpoint of making a living, or at least of enduring the conditions of living. The study of electrons, for instance led the way to the discovery of the beneficent X-rays, made in 1895 by Röntgen.
The first electric railways, like the first railways of any kind, were laid in mines; for the superiority of electricity over steam for use in the unventilated spaces of mines was obviously greater than in the open spaces on the surface. The first one was in the mines at Zankerode in Germany and was constructed by the famous Siemens Brothers. The first electric surface railway was built at Berlin in 1879. It was about three hundred and fifty yards in length, and laid upon wooden sleepers; an auxiliary rail being fixed midway between the two main rails. The auxiliary rail carried the electric current, which was taken off by a brush connected to the electric motor on the car, from which it went to the rails that acted as the "return." The similarity between this system and that now used in all our cities is striking, and shows how practically and scientifically good the first electric railway was.
To estimate correctly the influence of the invention of the electric railway would be, of course, impossible, especially on partially developed countries; for the electric railway assisted greatly in developing them. It seems possible, however, that the electric railway may be of not very long life, for the reason that the internal-combustion-engine possesses the same great advantage of smokelessness that the electric motor does and makes possible the use of a much simpler system than electric railways necessitate. The fact that any invention is displaced by a later one does not, of course, detract from the merit of the invention displaced, in having supplied the needed stepping-stone for the other one to rise from.
In the same year, Foy invented the steam plow, and Lee invented his magazine rifle. In the following year (1880) Blake invented his telephone transmitter, an improvement of a practical character over preceding ones, Greener invented his hammerless gun, and Faure invented his electric storage battery.
The Faure storage battery was a very important invention, but not nearly so important a one as was at first supposed. It was an improvement on Planté's battery, and consisted mainly in applying red lead and litharge directly to the positive and negative lead plates, before sending any charging current through the liquid; thus expediting the making of the battery very greatly. The invention was hailed with extravagant rejoicings, even Sir William Thomson being carried away from his habitual equanimity; but serious practical difficulties soon developed that are familiar to most of us, and that have never yet been overcome.
In 1880, Koch and Eberth isolated the typhoid bacillus, and Sternberg the pneumonia bacillus. The importance of these two discoveries is not usually appreciated by any but physicians and those who have suffered from these diseases and been cured. Even those who have been saved from having them, especially those in armies who have been saved from having typhoid fever, fail to realize their debt. But the almost perfect immunity from typhoid fever enjoyed by all the enormous armies of the vast World War, compared with the frightful distress and mortality caused by typhoid fever in previous wars, bears eloquent witness to the influence of the great discoveries of those tireless investigators.
