Part 2 (2/2)
That scientific research is a far greater source of wealth and wellbeing than our stores of coal is easily proved. At present we obtain in our best {62} steam-engines only about one-seventh (or less) of the mechanical power producible by the combustion of the coal, the remainder being lost in various ways. And this occurs simply because we have not yet discovered a method of wholly converting heat into mechanical power. In some other instances we are able to convert one force wholly into another without loss, as for example: the chemical action of a voltaic cell into electricity; and by means of research we shall probably be enabled to effect a similar complete conversion of other powers into each other. The effect of converting heat wholly into mechanical power would be equal to increasing our stock of coals for that purpose to seven times its present amount. This instance is only one of the many thousand possible ways in which research may yet prove of value to mankind.
It is true that a very large amount of original research in physics and chemistry has been done in this country; the contents of our scientific journals and of the publications of our various Learned Societies prove this. It is also true that the English nation has been pre-eminently active in applying scientific knowledge to practical uses by means of inventions, and has been generally the first in carrying out inventions on a large scale. We have been either the first, or nearly so, in developing steam-engines, railways, locomotives, rapid trains, gas works, flour mills, blast-furnaces, cotton machinery, cheap postage, light-houses, electro-plating, lucifer-matches, {63} electric-telegraphs, submarine electric cables, great engineering establishments, iron s.h.i.+p-building, and many other important enterprises. Three out of four of all the great ocean steamers, and three-fourths of all the locomotives of the world were constructed in this country.[10] By means of our enterprise and capital also, the first railways, telegraphs, gas works, cotton mills, modern water works, suspension bridges, water wheels, harbours, lighthouses, &c., &c., in nearly all parts of the world were constructed; and foreign nations have been inducted into the practical methods of working our great manufacturing and technical applications of science.
By means of English enterprise and skill the cities of Aix-la-Chapelle, Altona, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Berlin, Bordeaux, Brussels, Cologne, Frankfort-on-Maine, Ghent, Haarlem, Hanover, Lille, Rotterdam, s...o...b..rg, Toulouse, Vienna, and others were lighted with gas. We formed Water Companies or Waterworks in Amsterdam, Berlin, and other cities, and drained Naples. We utilized the falls of the Rhone at Bellegarde, and thus obtained 10,000 horse-power for the use of the French manufacturers. We also sent the first steam-boat to Coblentz in 1817, and the first to America. We laid the first Atlantic cables. And as a general truth, we have been foremost in invention, application and enterprise.
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Recent International Exhibitions however, and the migration of various branches of our trade to the Continent and America, have shown that the degree of our relative superiority in manufacturing skill is diminis.h.i.+ng.
Other nations, especially the German and American, perceiving the dependence of invention upon research, and the enormous pecuniary and other advantages gained by us, by the application of scientific knowledge to manufacturing and other purposes, have within the last few years aroused themselves, and are now pursuing pure science much more energetically than ourselves. A few years ago the relative number of original researches made per annum in England, France, and Germany were in the proportion 127, 245, and 777. Many of those made in Germany were valuable ones, and were made by Students in order to obtain a degree. Other nations are rapidly gaining upon us in the application of science to industrial purposes, and have even surpa.s.sed us in the extent of some of their manufacturing and technical operations. Many persons who have visited Europe and America at intervals during the last twenty years have testified to this.
The Vielle Montagne Zinc Company in Belgium employ 6,500 workmen, and produce annually 32,000 tons of zinc. The John c.o.c.kerill Company, engine-builders, Seraing, near Liege, employ nearly 8,000 men. Krupp, the great engineer at Essen, near Dusseldorf, employs about 10,000 workmen; his works at Essen alone cover 450 acres, and 1,000 tons {65} of coal are consumed in them daily. The Anzin Company (Valenciennes) ”is the largest coal company in the world, producing no less than 1,200,000 tons per annum, and employs 8,000 hands.” The Chatillon and Commentry Iron and Coal Company (France), produce annually from 300,000 to 350,000 tons of coal and c.o.ke, nearly 70,000 tons of iron and steel, and employ nearly 9,000 workmen. At the Creuzot Ironworks (France), ”the mineral concessions cover an area of nearly six square miles, the coal-fields nearly twenty-five square miles, the building 296 acres. There are nearly forty-five miles of railway between various parts of the works, upon which are generally running sixteen locomotives. The galleries in the mines are more than twenty miles long.” 10,000 persons are employed in the works and the annual amount of wages paid equals 400,000.[11]
Our practice with regard to original science has been very different from the plan carried out in Germany. Within the last few years great laboratories have been erected in Berlin, Leipzig, Aix la Chapelle, Bonn, Carlsruhe, Stuttgardt, and other places, at the expense of the State, and special provision has been made in them for original scientific research. A glance at the frequently published list of scientific investigations made in different countries will shew us that the Germans have been making a far greater number of discoveries in science than ourselves.
Sir R. B. C. Brodie, Professor of Chemistry at {66} Oxford, speaking of his experience when a student at Geissen, in Germany, states: ”I say that the enthusiasm and earnestness of the young men in the laboratory was quite unparalleled in my experience at Oxford. The dilettante sort of way in which things go on there is very inferior indeed to the way the German students study. At Heidelberg, I have been told, there are about eighty professors, and amongst those professors are some of the most eminent men in Europe, so that they have a staff quite unsurpa.s.sed.”
The industry of the Germans in scientific research is quite remarkable, they are availing themselves of the great fountain of knowledge to a much greater extent than ourselves, and are already beginning to reap the reward. Within the last few years they have succeeded, by means of researches, in making alizarine, the colouring principle of madder.
”England produces immense quant.i.ties of benzene, the greatest part of which goes to Germany, there to be converted into aniline dyes, a considerable quant.i.ty of which goes back to England. No other country is so far advanced in the manufacture of the coal-tar colours as Germany. The quant.i.ty of alizarine manufactured by the German makers far surpa.s.ses the English production.” (See ”Alizarine, Natural and Artificial,” by F. Versmann, New York, 1873). Statements of this kind are frequently published, and made by our manufacturers and others, of the departure of branch after branch of our manufactures to the Continent, and of continually increasing importation of foreign-made articles. {67}
Some persons, having become aware of the cosmopolitan nature of scientific research, have suggested that it is a matter of no importance to us as a nation whether we make researches or not, as foreigners would make them, and we could apply them. But no honourable man would, after reflection, seriously maintain such a proposition, because it implies a willingness to obtain from the labours of other persons, advantages without paying for them. It is partly this absence of a desire to pay for the labour of investigation, which is now damaging the manufacturing and commercial prosperity of this country. It is also certain that however much we may have hitherto succeeded commercially, without making payment for research, we should have succeeded much better had we properly a.s.sisted investigators in pure science. Our success has. .h.i.therto been obtained, not in consequence, but in spite of the disadvantageous circ.u.mstances under which discoverers have laboured.
The commercial argument in favour of encouraging research, although the most effective with the great ma.s.s of persons, and therefore much dwelt upon in this chapter, is however quite a secondary one; the encouragement of truth for the sake of its own intrinsic worth, in preference to the material or extrinsic value of its results, should be the foundation of all aid to discovery. Justice, also, ought to come before all minor considerations, and no upright man would wish for a moment that anyone, and much less the greatest scientific intellects in the country, should work for his benefit without being remunerated. {68}
It has been objected that Continental nations, the Germans in particular, have pirated our patents, infringed our designs, imitated our labels, used our names, and taken our improvements wholesale, and this may be true. But we still have had by far the largest portion of the reward of our greater energy and inventive skill; we have had the great advantage of being first in the markets of the world; and that advantage can only be retained by our being the first in the pursuit of original research, as we have so long been in the application of science to industrial arts, and not by purchasing foreign inventions, nor by accepting gifts of unrecompensed researches.
Nations as well as individuals are apt to push to an extreme the means by which they have succeeded in gaining either riches or power. We have devoted ourselves relatively too much to the pursuit of money and too little to the pursuit of knowledge. The desire for wealth is in this country so great, that probably nothing but a loss of that wealth will ever make us properly encourage the pursuit of new knowledge.
Whilst research is being neglected, manufacturers and others in all directions are asking for improvements in their machines and processes; employers of steam engines want to obtain more power from the coals; makers of was.h.i.+ng soda wish to recover their lost sulphur; copper smelters, want to utilize the copper smoke; gla.s.s makers wish to prevent bad colour in their gla.s.s; iron puddlers want to economise heat; gas companies are desirous of diminis.h.i.+ng the {69} leakage of gas; iron smelters wish to avoid the evil effects of impurities in the iron; manufacturers in general want to utilise their waste products and prevent their polluting our streams and atmosphere; and so on without end. And inventors are continually trying to supply these demands, by exercising their skill in every possible way, with the aid of scientific information contained in books; but after putting manufacturers and themselves to great expense, they very frequently fail, not always through want of inventive skill, but often through want of _new_ knowledge attainable only by means of pure research. Judging from the vast amount of inventive skill already expended upon the steam engine, and the small proportion of available mechanical power yet obtained from the coals consumed in it, it is highly probable that a machine for completely converting heat into mechanical force cannot be invented until more scientific knowledge is discovered.
It must not be supposed from these remarks, that discoveries which will enable a man to make any particular invention, can be produced to order; that is only true to a very limited extent. Men are beggars of nature, and must not expect to be permitted to choose her gifts, or dictate what secrets shall be disclosed. We may however be certain that if we acquire a very much greater supply of new scientific knowledge, we shall then be able to perfect many good inventions, though not always of the kind we wish, or in the way we expect. The great sewage question {70} may perhaps be solved in quite an unexpected way, possibly by the discovery of some substance capable of precipitating ammonia and organic matter from their solutions.
Nearly all our manufacturing processes are full of imperfections; thus the loss of gas by a single large provincial gas company, after that substance has left the works, amounts to nearly one hundred and fifty millions of cubic feet per annum, and to a value of about 18,000; and the soil of all our large cities and towns is permeated and rendered foetid by coal gas.
And it has been stated by an eminent authority in such matters that we might save 500,000 tons of coal a year by economizing the waste heat of furnaces, by purifying the coal, c.o.king it, etc. In a single chemical manufactory, out of about two thousand tons of hydrochloric acid used per annum, about eight hundred tons have been allowed to flow away as a polluting substance, because it was not possible to utilise it. The loss of material from a single large gla.s.s works equals fourteen hundred tons per annum, and a value of 8,000. Similar grave defects might be pointed out in nearly all our large manufactures, by those acquainted with the subject.
Inventions are wanted for quickening the process of vinegar making, and diminis.h.i.+ng the percentage of loss of the acid. For bleaching discoloured fats. For quickening the process of converting cast iron into malleable iron. To easily separate nitrogen from the oxygen of the atmosphere. To economically convert {71} the nitrogen of the air into valuable products, such as nitric acid and ammonia. To find uses for the immense quant.i.ties of minerals which abound all over the earth; to utilise wolfram and find applications for tungstic acid; to apply t.i.tanic acid to great industrial purposes; to produce aluminium on the large scale, as we now produce iron.
To tan leather more quickly, and without detriment to its quality. To prevent the rusting of iron. To more perfectly prevent smoke. To collect and use the sulphuric acid of the salt cake consumed in the gla.s.s manufacture. To make window gla.s.s by means of common salt. To deodorise offensive substances. To find larger uses for phosphorus, sodium, magnesium, and common salt. To remove phosphorus and sulphur from iron ores, and sulphur from coal and c.o.ke. To obtain a good white alloy as a cheaper subst.i.tute for German silver. To convert white phosphorus into the red variety by a less dangerous process than the present one. To prevent the putrefaction of ”peltries” in glue making. To obtain better and cheaper materials for colouring gla.s.s. To more perfectly prevent animal food from change. To obviate or prevent explosions in mines. To perfectly purify ordinary red lead for making flint gla.s.s. A cheaper process for converting common salt into was.h.i.+ng soda; and so on without end.
We also very badly require a method of recording our thoughts in readable forms upon paper, without the slow and laborious process of writing. An incalculable amount of brains and of intellect, especially of {72} the greatest thinkers, would be saved by such a discovery. The curative arts also are permeated with empiricism, and thousands of lives of persons of all cla.s.ses of society, are annually lost in this country through want of a more perfect scientific basis of medicine, attainable only by means of experiment and observation.
In this country, such great practical results have been obtained by means of invention, that many persons suppose a sufficiency of inventive skill will enable us to effect every possible scientific object, and are surprised that no one can invent a plan of utilising the entire heat of coals, or a mode of overcoming the sewage difficulty, or prevent the great leakage of coal gas, or arrest epidemics, or produce a steam engine which shall work without waste of power. The progress of invention however depends upon that of discovery, and these various inventions, etc., wanted by manufacturers and others probably cannot be perfected until suitable _new_ knowledge is found. Every new invention has its own appropriate discoveries, by means of which alone it can be perfected; it was not possible to perfect the idea of an electric telegraph before the discoveries of Volta and Oersted were made. According to scientific laws, out of everything proceeds everything, and out of nothing, nothing can come, even ideas are not created. An unlimited number of inventions cannot be made by means of a limited amount of scientific knowledge; and our present stock of such information applicable to {73} invention, is very insufficient. One great reason why only a small portion of patents are of practical value; and so many useless ones are taken out is, that in consequence of our so-called ”practical” spirit, we overestimate the power of invention and under-value the discovery of new abstract truths; because also invention has done so much, we think it will continue to do so, but the latter depends upon a continued supply of discoveries.
Nearly every manufacturer is aware by painful experience of the great and almost incessant variation that occurs in the quality and properties of the materials used in his trade, and the frequent risk of failure of his process. In the manufacture of iron, for example, the presence of much phosphorus, sulphur, or silicon in the ore is liable to be very detrimental to the quality of the iron produced from it; in the manufacture of gla.s.s, the least quant.i.ty of iron in the materials will seriously injure the colour of the product; in the selection of copper for telegraph wire, if it contains the least trace of a.r.s.enic, the wire will not conduct the electricity properly. The difficulties experienced in procuring suitable materials for a manufacturing process are in some cases very great; and when they are procured, additional difficulties arise from the inability of the manufacturer or his manager to a.n.a.lyse them.
Every manufacturer is also aware that the difficulties encountered in manufactures are not limited to the substances employed, but extend to all the different {74} processes and stages of processes through which these substances have to pa.s.s, and to all the forces, tools, machinery, and appliances employed in those processes; in the manufacture of gla.s.s, for example, the greatest care has to be exercised in the making and gradual heating of the pots in which the gla.s.s is melted, the proportions of the materials, the construction of the furnaces, the management of the heat, and a whole host of minor conditions too numerous to mention, all of which must be attended to with the greatest care. In the manufacture of iron and steel, the smelting of copper, the refining of nickel, the preparation and baking of porcelain, and in many other trades, innumerable difficulties, all having their origin in the properties of matter and forces, continually beset the manufacturers. In some cases difficulties occur which perplex both the workman and the scientific man called in to his aid, and so far from an unscientific workman being able to overcome them, even with the aid of the scientific man, he is unable to do so.
The hidden difficulties which beset a manufacturer are not unfrequently so inscrutable that the present state of knowledge in science fails to explain them. Who can tell why it is that wire-work of bra.s.s or German silver becomes gradually brittle by lapse of time? Or why varnish made in the open country has different properties from that made in a town? Or why silk dyed in Lyons should possess a finer colour than the same silk dyed by the same process in Coventry? {75} With our present extremely imperfect knowledge of Physical and Chemical science, we can perhaps hardly form an idea of the amount of knowledge yet to be discovered respecting the phenomena which manufactures present.
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