The Story of Mankind [162]
discoveries to the world and Samuel
Morse (who like Fulton began his career as an artist) thought
that he could use this new electric current to transmit messages
from one city to another. He intended to use copper
wire and a little machine which he had invented. People
laughed at him. Morse therefore was obliged to finance his
own experiments and soon he had spent all his money and
then he was very poor and people laughed even louder. He
then asked Congress to help him and a special Committee on
Commerce promised him their support. But the members of
Congress were not at all interested and Morse had to wait
twelve years before he was given a small congressional appropriation.
He then built a ``telegraph'' between Baltimore and
Washington. In the year 1887 he had shown his first successful
``telegraph'' in one of the lecture halls of New York
University. Finally, on the 24th of May of the year 1844 the
first long-distance message was sent from Washington to
Baltimore and to-day the whole world is covered with telegraph
wires and we can send news from Europe to Asia in a few
seconds. Twenty-three years later Alexander Graham Bell used
the electric current for his telephone. And half a century
afterwards Marconi improved upon these ideas by inventing a
system of sending messages which did away entirely with the old-
fashioned wires.
While Morse, the New Englander, was working on his
``telegraph,'' Michael Faraday, the Yorkshire-man, had constructed
the first ``dynamo.'' This tiny little machine was completed
in the year 1881 when Europe was still trembling as a
result of the great July revolutions which had so severely upset
the plans of the Congress of Vienna. The first dynamo grew
and grew and grew and to-day it provides us with heat and
with light (you know the little incandescent bulbs which Edison,
building upon French and English experiments of the forties
and fifties, first made in 1878) and with power for all sorts
of machines. If I am not mistaken the electric-engine will
soon entirely drive out the ``heat engine'' just as in the olden
days the more highly-organised prehistoric animals drove out
their less efficient neighbours.
Personally (but I know nothing about machinery) this will
make me very happy. For the electric engine which can be run
by waterpower is a clean and companionable servant of mankind
but the ``heat-engine,'' the marvel of the eighteenth century,
is a noisy and dirty creature for ever filling the world with
ridiculous smoke-stacks and with dust and soot and asking
that it be fed with coal which has to be dug out of mines at
great inconvenience and risk to thousands of people.
And if I were a novelist and not a historian, who must stick
to facts and may not use his imagination, I would describe the
happy day when the last steam locomotive shall be taken to the
Museum of Natural History to be placed next to the skeleton
of the Dynosaur and the Pteredactyl and the other extinct
creatures of a by-gone age.
THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION
BUT THE NEW ENGINES WERE VERY
EXPENSIVE AND ONLY PEOPLE OF WEALTH
COULD AFFORD THEM. THE OLD CARPENTER
OR SHOEMAKER WHO HAD BEEN HIS
OWN MASTER IN HIS LITTLE WORKSHOP
WAS OBLIGED TO HIRE HIMSELF OUT TO
THE OWNERS OF THE BIG MECHANICAL
TOOLS, AND WHILE HE MADE MORE
MONEY THAN BEFORE, HE LOST HIS
FORMER INDEPENDENCE AND HE DID NOT
LIKE THAT
IN the olden days the work of the world had been done by
independent workmen who sat in their own little workshops in
the front of their houses, who owned their tools, who boxed the
ears of their own apprentices and who, within the limits prescribed
by their guilds, conducted their business as it pleased
them. They lived simple lives, and were obliged to work very
long hours, but they were their own masters. If they got up
and saw that it was a fine day to go fishing, they went fishing
and there
Morse (who like Fulton began his career as an artist) thought
that he could use this new electric current to transmit messages
from one city to another. He intended to use copper
wire and a little machine which he had invented. People
laughed at him. Morse therefore was obliged to finance his
own experiments and soon he had spent all his money and
then he was very poor and people laughed even louder. He
then asked Congress to help him and a special Committee on
Commerce promised him their support. But the members of
Congress were not at all interested and Morse had to wait
twelve years before he was given a small congressional appropriation.
He then built a ``telegraph'' between Baltimore and
Washington. In the year 1887 he had shown his first successful
``telegraph'' in one of the lecture halls of New York
University. Finally, on the 24th of May of the year 1844 the
first long-distance message was sent from Washington to
Baltimore and to-day the whole world is covered with telegraph
wires and we can send news from Europe to Asia in a few
seconds. Twenty-three years later Alexander Graham Bell used
the electric current for his telephone. And half a century
afterwards Marconi improved upon these ideas by inventing a
system of sending messages which did away entirely with the old-
fashioned wires.
While Morse, the New Englander, was working on his
``telegraph,'' Michael Faraday, the Yorkshire-man, had constructed
the first ``dynamo.'' This tiny little machine was completed
in the year 1881 when Europe was still trembling as a
result of the great July revolutions which had so severely upset
the plans of the Congress of Vienna. The first dynamo grew
and grew and grew and to-day it provides us with heat and
with light (you know the little incandescent bulbs which Edison,
building upon French and English experiments of the forties
and fifties, first made in 1878) and with power for all sorts
of machines. If I am not mistaken the electric-engine will
soon entirely drive out the ``heat engine'' just as in the olden
days the more highly-organised prehistoric animals drove out
their less efficient neighbours.
Personally (but I know nothing about machinery) this will
make me very happy. For the electric engine which can be run
by waterpower is a clean and companionable servant of mankind
but the ``heat-engine,'' the marvel of the eighteenth century,
is a noisy and dirty creature for ever filling the world with
ridiculous smoke-stacks and with dust and soot and asking
that it be fed with coal which has to be dug out of mines at
great inconvenience and risk to thousands of people.
And if I were a novelist and not a historian, who must stick
to facts and may not use his imagination, I would describe the
happy day when the last steam locomotive shall be taken to the
Museum of Natural History to be placed next to the skeleton
of the Dynosaur and the Pteredactyl and the other extinct
creatures of a by-gone age.
THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION
BUT THE NEW ENGINES WERE VERY
EXPENSIVE AND ONLY PEOPLE OF WEALTH
COULD AFFORD THEM. THE OLD CARPENTER
OR SHOEMAKER WHO HAD BEEN HIS
OWN MASTER IN HIS LITTLE WORKSHOP
WAS OBLIGED TO HIRE HIMSELF OUT TO
THE OWNERS OF THE BIG MECHANICAL
TOOLS, AND WHILE HE MADE MORE
MONEY THAN BEFORE, HE LOST HIS
FORMER INDEPENDENCE AND HE DID NOT
LIKE THAT
IN the olden days the work of the world had been done by
independent workmen who sat in their own little workshops in
the front of their houses, who owned their tools, who boxed the
ears of their own apprentices and who, within the limits prescribed
by their guilds, conducted their business as it pleased
them. They lived simple lives, and were obliged to work very
long hours, but they were their own masters. If they got up
and saw that it was a fine day to go fishing, they went fishing
and there