Rapid Advance of Scientific and Inventive Achievement

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21647, 13 November 1933, Page 63 (Supplement)

Rapid Advance of Scientific and Inventive Achievement

IK stupendous strides made in tlio realm of scientific discovery in the years since the N'kw Zkai.am> Hkhai.d was born have made readers of a later generation familiar with much that was undreamed of by the men and women who read the Hkiiam) in tlie early days. The process has been an ever forward one.and still goes on, and it is, perhaps, j'i>t as impossible to appreciate accurately the outlook ol those early colonists who lived a Jjfe of isolation as it is to appreciate what will be tlie outlook ot men and women of a future generation. Scientific discovery, as distinct from actual invention although the latter olten follows the former —lies Jit tlie roots of so much that, lias revolutionised the lite of mankind. Translated to comprehensive utility and expressed through concrete media, it has made of the world a habitat that, surpasses all previous notions of it. Jt has also awakened a realisation of the magnitude of discovery yet to he made, so that the common man of to-day conjectures with wonder what tlie world of to-morrow will lie like. Mativ scientific discoveries are appreciated f u ||v onlv liy the scientific mind, and remain so until their application makes them demonstrable to the man in the street. The keenest speculation is ' lieu aroused and the world awaits expectant l.v for the maturity of development that u ill make a commonplace of stilt another njjirwl. Television, or seeing at a distance, is an example ol something upon which the human imagination has seized in this way in recent years yet its genesis lies farther back. In when the Xi.w Zkai.am) Hkrat.d w;ls |i) \ ears old. the light-sensitive properties of selenium «c>v discovered. Thus the tirst fraetioiial part of the riddle of television, the posuihil'itv of t limine light into electrical impulses, wns ' s „| W ml. I lie discoverer was Willoughby Smith, a pioneer of submarine telegraphy. It was not until. li'O". however, that pictures were transmit te»l by telegraphy. In this year the German scientist Korn, who had worked on the problem for live years, sent a picture of King Vilward VII. from .Munich to Merlin in 20 minutes, bv the aid of selenium cells and teleera pit v.'■ In* IN*S, came the discovery by Hertz of'wireless waxes, which made broadcasting possible, then, in October, 191?."), a young Scottish inventor. John Haird, succeeded in transmitting by wireless the picture of an object from one room to anothet. Headers ot the Hkhai.d in the early "eighties" were not aware that in their own land, at Nelson College, was a lad who later

nineteenth century concluded that the universe lVim Air U CloC ' k w , ,l "' h was rllnni »K down. Jn : . ('.finnan and Rutherford discovered certain radiations near the earth's surface so penetrating that they were capable of passing through thick screens of lead. In 1910 the Swiss scientist Gockel found that these radiations wore stronger as ono ascended from the earth s surface. Then Kolhorster, a German, announeed his belief that the rays emanated from certain groups of stars. Many scientists of repute had 110 belief in those "cosmic" rays, but others persevered with their researches. Dr. It. A. Millikan was ono

was to become one of the foremost scientists of the world and famous for his researches into the atom. Lord Rutherford, as lie now is, working with I)r. Geiger and others, was the first actually to break up the atom and put forward the" theory of the proton, or charged centre. An ""object hitherto deemed to he indivisible was therefore found to be no more fundamental and permanent than anything else, which called for another readjustment of man's conception of matter. Ono of the romances of modern scientific discovery is that associated with the radium researches of M. and Mine. Curie, and the resultant gift to the world of a means of combating the disease of cancer. In 1902 Mine. Curie, after four years of strenuous endeavour, succeeded in isolating a salt of radium. Ihe work was extremely hazardous, for at that time the danger of the rays emitted by radium was not realised, and her husband's hands, when he visited London to lecture shortly afterward, were so affected and blistered that he was unable to dress himself. In J9OG Pierre Curie was killed in a street accident, but his wife continued with the experiments and, in 1910, isolated radium in its pure state. The relativity and quantum theories advanced by Albert Einstein blazed into prominence after the Great War, when, in May, 1919, experiments proved the accuracy of his theory that light rays curved under the inlluence of gravity. Scientists had waited expectantly for the eclipse which made the tests possible, for Einstein had announced his theory in 1915. Its, vindication in 1910, however, brought the whole matter into public ken, though very few people were able to grasp meaning of it. " Space," s'lid Einstein, ' is finite yet unbounded." Scientists, asked to explain what it meant, said: "It is impossible to explain relativity except in terms of algebra. The theory of radio-activity, which has been the subject of such intensive investigation sinco the beginning of the twentieth century, has led to a glimpse of something new in man's conception of the universe. £ii-u>nLiatM nf the

dreams become new age realities

of the latter. Speaking in 1028 before the California. Institute of Technology, he said: " My recent experiments with cosmic rays leavo no doubt in my mind that the process of creation is now going on in the heavens, and that our earth is not, as has long been believed, a disintegrating planet." From a host of discoveries and scientific developments the foregoing examples have been taken. Their influence upon man may not yet be fully realised, but t.hey all point toward a truer conception of the universe that cannot iiiil t<> have ii deep effect upon the generations yet unborn.

MIUACFiKS of invention tlisit have transformed the world have poured forth in never-ending spate since the first issuo of the I:lkkaij) left the printing press. Fantastic dreams of an earlier day have become stone-cold realities that fail to give the slightest thrill to those of a newer generation. .Readers of the Hkkai.d in the late "sixties" who ventured forth with earnestness upon their velocipedes must have presented a spectacle that, the present generation would consider (piaint. As they rattled along, with the wooden, iron-tyred wheels of their " boneshakers" humping over the uneven roads, they douhtlesg responded to the thrill of this then up-to-the-minute invention. They, anil others less venturesome, must have wondered what the world was coming to. None, however, could have had a clear vision of the world as it is to-day, with aeroplane* droning viciously across the sky, electric trains burrowing with a roar beneath the foundations of great cities, monster turbines humming in tunc to the crashing symphony of waterfalls. The talking-picture was not known in those far-oil" days, nor yet the gramophone. .Motorbicycles did not weave th'ir way like roaring shuttles through streets of crowded traffic. Neither did they keep people awake at night. Motor-cars did not compete with trains r.nd Aucklanders did not stand in swaying tramears on their nightly homeward journey. There were no speed-boat races on the Waiteinata — or anywhere else -and huge steamers did 10b tie up at wharves while elect ric cranes plucked their holds hare of freight. People the world oxer had to walk up stairs, unless a hydraulic lift was there to save them the elfort. The 11 Kit a i*i> was born into a world so different, from the present that it is hard to visualise. Il is older than the cinematograph, the telephone, the dynamo, the turbine, the motor-car. the aeroplane and the vacuum cleaner. There were no ocean cables to bring the news flashing from the four corners of Iho earth for publication in the first issues of the Hkhai.ii. The llkuai.o was three years old before the first cable was successfully laid across the Atlantic. The marvels of wireless broadcasting and television were then a dream, doubtless too fantastic even to be dreamed by anv but an occasional scientist.

While the business men of the cities wero hurrying ;ibout (lieir ;ill'jiirs of: font or in hansom en lis. a Dutchman named Christian Jlnypt'us was inventing an internal combustion ci - y;ine that would a modern motorist tl >

ii<_r 111 mure. The fuel ho used was gunpowder, l'lien came the application of gas to the internal •ombustion engines, but the Hkkai.i) was nearly »U years old before volatile liquids were almost •xeiiisivel.v used, paving the way to the inven.ion of tin; motor-ear. A world without motorcars would seem an unhelievahly impossible place to most of the present generation, but there must bo just as many people alive who remember the srofling and scepticism which greeted the first cars seen oil the roads.

Jii transforming the face of communities where men gather together the genius of invention has played one of its most dazzling roles. With a sweep of its magic wand the science or fcrro-eoncrete construction freed the art. of industrial building from its age-old bondage, and overnight, as time is counted, towering skyscrapers sprang into the blue. thrusting their spires and domes into the sunlight while their meaner forebears grovelled in the shadow below. Thus, within the lifetime of the Hr.it.w.n, industrial cities have been changed beyond belief, invention and adaptation transforming mere assemblages of buildings into well-planned and imposing unities which bear the mark of grandeur. Huge arches span the waterways of the world, thrown from shore to shore by tlio miracle of modern invention where formerly they stepped the distance span by span. Whole vistas have been altered, yet such has been the striving to blend beauty with utility that the modern metropolis can greet the eye like a scene from a fairy tale. Only in dreams did these things exist, yet so rapid has been the march of inventive genius that nation can now speak to nation across the vaults of.space. Since the leisurely day of the groundlings man has achieved what to many must seem the supreme achievement. He lias conquered an element. He has built himself wings that enable him to pierce the skyways, that lift him triumphantly and literally to tlio clouds, transporting him from city to city and from shore to shore. He has become a master where before he was a slave, and it is his own inventive genius that has made him conqueror.