3 books to know Time Travel. H. G. Wells
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IS BY NO MEANS UNFAITHFUL to its obligations.Then look above you. Had the distribution been insufficient, we should still see the glass roof over our heads covered with this morning’s snow.”
I looked up, and saw that the street was vaulted over with glass plates of considerable length and width, joined together by thin bars, with here and there an aperture as the means of ventilation.
“I apprehend, then, that we are in a so-called arcade?”
“Well, yes; if you mean to apply that name to the greater part of our city. That which in the nineteenth century was only to be found occasionally in the great towns of Europe, has become a regular institution in the twenty-first, owing to the manufacture of our inexpensive
Verre sans Fin
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OR ‘ENDLESS GLASS,’ as our people generally call it.”
“I have no doubt that this must be a considerable improvement on your town-life throughout winter; but in summer-time I should say this must be intolerably hot.”
“Not at all; the same society which undertakes the supply of warm air in winter also provides for us during the summer months a cooling draught. Nothing can be easier than that. You are doubtless aware of ice having been manufactured in the middle of summer for at least a couple of centuries. During the warm season the air is made to pass over the glass vault above us before it reaches the pavement through the sieve-like plate, and if the warm-air inspectors properly attend to their duties, there is scarcely any difference in our temperature throughout the year.”
“Then probably you warm your houses by a similar process, and you never use any stoves or fireplaces now?”
Neither of my companions could help smiling at these words, betraying again, as they did, my very old-fashioned notions. Bacon, however, gave me a kindly nod of assent as he proceeded to explain: “Just as a cold-water bath may be heated at pleasure by opening the hot-water tap, we can warm the air in our apartments by means of a valve, which when opened, not only affords a supply of warm air, but has the additional advantage of producing a most delightful refreshing of the atmosphere without any idea of draught.”
“I really cannot understand,” Miss Phantasia here remarked, “how the people in those barbarous times managed to live amid the smoke and ashes and dust of their horrible fireplaces.”
“And then their chimneys on fire,” added Bacon; “thank Fate, we have done with that too. Poor insurance offices, they don’t pay half the premium now of what they used to do.”
“One more question,” said I, “before we leave this subject. What do you call the metal used for those elegant little bars which connect and support the roof of glass above us? Surely they are not of iron, as they would have been in my time?”
“No,” answered my guide; “iron, on account of its greater specific weight, would have been less suitable here than aluminium; the latter not only corresponds in weight with the glass which it supports, but it also withstands the effects of the atmosphere far better than iron. You will very soon perceive in how many instances the new metal has superseded the old one, in additional proof of which I would just mention the fact that the modern antiquarians do not exclusively now speak of the ages of stone, bronze, and iron, but that they have formally recognised the
Age of Aluminium
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THE LATTER COMMENCED or dates from the second half of the twentieth century, when it was first discovered how to produce aluminium in large quantities from common clay, old tiles, potsherds, china, and earthenware.”
“Ah!” said I, “here, then, we have another striking example to teach us that discoveries simply arrived at by purely scientific processes searched after from the pure motive of increase of knowledge, may often be ultimately productive of the greatest practical use. The same metal which for years after Wöhler’s discovery continued to be a curiosity—so much so that a few grains of it were preserved among the collections of chemical preparations—has now become universally beneficial, nay, a perfect godsend to those districts where clay, i.e. aluminium ore, is the only underground wealth.”
Following up this idea, at the risk of being ridiculed or, perhaps, reprimanded for my impertinent garrulousness, I continued in the following strain:
“Think of the phosphorus discovered by Brandt and Künckel as early as 1669, yet never getting into common use until the lucifers, fusees, and ‘flamers’ made their appearance some two hundred years afterwards; and of chloroform, now the greatest alleviation of suffering humanity, although Dumas, when he first compounded it, did but little dream of its application. Then, again, when Sir Humphry Davy’s remarkable experiments taught him the refrigerating power of metal gas, did this not ultimately lead to the invention of the safety lamp? and not only has the latter already preserved thousands of human lives, but, more than that, the principle of Davy’s invention has actually become the basis upon which all steam-engines are constructed, as well as those by which ice can be made at any time. With regard to the invention of the art of photography, how could it have become a reality, a possibility, without the number of purely scientific discoveries that preceded it; aye, purely scientific discoveries, such as Porta’s so-called camera obscura (sixteenth century); Scheele’s discovery of the discoloration of chloride of silver by light, at which he did not arrive until two hundred years afterwards; Courtois’s finding of the iodine, 1811; or the invention of gun cotton, from which Schönbein learned to make collodion; nor would it be difficult to name several other materials, all found by regular chemical processes, to fix the photographic images, and to make them permanent.”
Encouraged by my companion’s “line of non-intervention,” I ventured to continue to speak my thoughts aloud.
“If any art more than another,” said I, “is calculated to illustrate the fact that the most important discoveries—such as have been most universally brought to bear upon the joint social condition of mankind—have simply resulted from the inventions of scientific men who never dreamt of the practical application of their discoveries; if any such thing exists, surely it is the telegraph. Could these magic wires have lurked in the mind of Thales when he found out, now twenty-five centuries ago, that a piece of amber, when rubbed, attracts light bodies, even although it led him to discover the very first of those phenomena, the cause of which must be sought in that mysterious power which now we call electricity? Did Galvani think of the telegraphic art when he noticed how the muscles of his frogs contracted under the influence of electricity? or Volta, when, following up Galvani’s experiments, he produced the pile that bears his name? And yet that was, so to speak, the embryo of those modern batteries of ours whence proceeds the marvellous action along the wire. Nor is it in any way presumable that Oerstedt ever thought of the application of his discovery to telegraphy, when he first noticed that the magnetic needle is deflected under the influence of electricity; no more than Arago, who found that iron becomes magnetic when an electric current runs along it through a metal wire.
“No, no!” cried I; “none of those men could ever have foreseen the ultimate beneficial results of these discoveries of natural truths.”
“You are perfectly right in your remarks,” said Bacon, as I paused. “From my own personal knowledge of what has come to pass in the field of industry during the last two centuries, I could adduce a good many more examples to show that many of your nineteenth-century discoveries, which for a long time afterwards merely bore a purely scientific significance or character, have now become prolific sources of material benefit to society at large. Nor does any one now-a-days doubt the importance of pure