What may be said of the developments in the line of scientific inventions since 1798?
Answer
These have been remarkable, phenomenal, and without parallel in the history of the world. The people of a
century and a half ago knew nothing of steamships, steam and electric railways, telegraphs, telephones,
photographs, phonographs, sewing-machines, anaesthetics, submarine cables, linotypes, monotypes,
motion pictures, X-rays, aeroplanes, wireless telegraphy, or radio. Were they to be raised from the dead,
they would be as much astonished at all these things as would the people of four thousand years ago.
NOTES - 'Of a verity, this is the age of invention."- Scientific American.
"The great facts of the nineteenth century stand out so conspicuously above the achievements of
any preceding century that it would be affectation of humility not to recognize and speak of them."-Union
Handbook, 1870.
"The most striking characteristic of our times is the rapid strides which the world is making in
science, general intelligence, and inventions."- Chicago Republican, March 14, 1872. "Never was there
such activity of invention within the history of mankind as at the present day."-Phrenological Journal,
April, 1871. "More has been done, richer and more prolific discoveries have been made, grander
achievements have been realized, in the course of the fifty years of our lifetime than in all the previous
lifetime of the race."- London Spectator.
Some of the principal inventions and discoveries of modern times are the following:
Balloon in 1798.
Gas for lighting purposes in 1798.
Cast-iron plough in 1800.
Steel pen in 1803.
Steamboat in 1807.
Steam printing-press in 1811.
Railway-cars in 1825.
Mower and reaper in 1833.
Electric telegraph in 1837.
Electrotyping in 1837.
Photography in 1839.
Sewing-machine in 1846.
Anaesthesia in 1846.
Submarine cable in 1851.
Machine-gun in 1861.
Monitor war vessel in 1862.
Automatic air-brake in 872.
Typewriter in 1873.
Telephone in 1876.
Internal-combustion engine in 1876.
Phonograph in 1877.
Electric railway in 1879.
Incandescent electric lamp in 1879.
Modern seismograph in i88o.
Linotype in 1885.
Steam-turbine in 1888.
X-ray in 1895.
Motion pictures in 1895.
Wireless telegraphy in 1895.
Wireless telephony in 1900.
Radium in 1902.
Successful aeroplane in 1903.
Successful radio -photography in 1907.
Broadcasting by radio in 1915.
Flight from England to Melbourne in three days in 1934.
Atomic bomb in 1945.
Jet Fighters in 1950.
Space Satellites in 1957.
Man orbits the Earth in 1961.
Man lands on the Moon in 1969.
Personal computers in 1989.
The internet in 1995.
A glance at this list will show that it is by no means exhaustive. And since the dates given, there
has been continuous elaboration and improvement in every line of invention and research.
It will be noticed that none of these inventions antedate 1798. Go back less than a century and a
half, and we find the world about where it was in the days of the patriarchs. For thousands of years there
seemed to be scarcely any advancement or improvement in knowledge. But suddenly with the opening of
the nineteenth century, the world awoke from its long sleep, and a new era dawned-the time of the end,
when knowledge was to be increased.
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Questions & Answers are from the book Bible Readings for the Home Circle