Great Inventions and Discoveries

Harness me down with your iron bands; Be sure of your curb and rein; For I scorn the power of your puny hands, As the tempest scorns a chain. How I laughed as I lay concealed fr...

The great miracle of the twentieth century is electricity. If the printing press is the brain of civilization and the steam engine is its heart, electric wires are its nervous s...

Man's weapons of warfare, offensive and defensive, have been many and curious. David slew Goliath with a stone from a sling. The Scriptures tell us that Samson, the mighty man o...

The birthplace of mankind is supposed to have been somewhere in Asia, untold thousands of years ago. The race is thought to have spread thence to the northern coast of Africa an...

"Except a living man," says Charles Kingsley, "there is nothing more wonderful than a book--a message to us from the dead--from human souls whom we never saw, who lived perhaps...

Civilization owes the invention of the sewing machine to Elias Howe, an American. Howe was born at Spencer, Massachusetts, July 9, 1819. His father was a miller, and work in the...

Man must have discovered artificial light as soon as he discovered fire, for the two exist together. The first light was probably produced by burning sticks or pieces of wood. I...

"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?" The Hebrew psalmist feels th...

It has been shown already in this volume that the materials from which man has made his tools, and those tools themselves, are the best means of determining his advance in civil...

Another great invention is the cotton-gin. It is great because of the commercial prosperity which it brought to the Southern states; because it cheapened and extended the use of...

The biggest things are not always the most important. A little article, used many times in the course of every day and familiar to every person, is one of the world's great inve...

Tens of thousands of years ago, when the world was even then old, primitive man came into existence. The first men lived in the branches of trees or in their hollow trunks, and...

If those inventions and discoveries out of which have come widespread safety, happiness, or prosperity to mankind are to be considered great, then Dr. Morton's discovery of anæs...

Photography is one of the many triumphs of the human mind over time and space. Thousands of miles are between you and the wonderful Taj Mahal. You may never be able to go to it....

It is difficult to see how man could now dispense with any of the great inventions and discoveries that give him power over time and space. Not one of them could be sacrificed w...

The matters of every-day life, much less the affairs of a complex civilization, could scarcely be carried on without some accurate and uniform system of measuring time. Nature h...

To fly in the air has been the dream of all peoples in all ages. "Oh that I had wings like a dove! Then would I fly away and be at rest!" sang the Psalmist. It would seem from t...