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Popular Science Monthly

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thousand years ago. Modern astronomy is the natural continuation and development of the work of Hipparchus and of Ptolemy; modern physics of that of Democritus and of Archimedes; it was long before biological science outgrew the knowledge bequeathed to us by Aristotle, by Theophrastus and by Galen.[1] [1] T. H. Huxley, "Science and Culture." If, therefore, we ask ourselves what has been the value of science to man, the answer is that its value is practically the value of the whole world in which we find ourselves to-day, or, at any rate, the difference between the value of our world and that of a world inhabited by Neolithic savages. The sweeping nature of this deduction may from its very comprehensiveness fail to carry conviction to the reader. But concrete illustrations of the value which scientific research may add to our environment are not far to seek. They are afforded in abundance by the dramatic achievements of the past century of human progress, in which science has begun painfully and haltingly to creep into its true place and achieve its true function. In the year 1813 many important events occurred. The power of Napoleon was crumbling in that year and countless historians have written countless pages describing innumerable events, great and small, which accompanied that colossal downfall. But one event of that year, of which we do not read in our historical memoirs and school books was the discovery by Sir Humphry Davy, in the humble person of a bookbinder's apprentice, of the man who will probably stand out forever in the history of science as the ideal scientific man--Michael Faraday. The manner of this discovery is revealed by the following conversation between Sir Humphry Davy and his friend Pepys. "Pepys, what am I to do, here is a letter from a young man named Faraday; he has been attending my lectures, and wants me to give him employment at the Royal Institution--what can I do?" "Do?" replied Pepys, "put him to wash bottles; if he refuses he is good for nothing." "No, no," replied Davy; "we must try him with something better than that." The result was, that Davy engaged him to assist in the laboratory at weekly wages.[2] [2] J. Tyndall, "Faraday as a Discoverer." Davy made many important discoveries, but none of his discoveries was more important than his discovery of Faraday, and of all the events which occurred in the year 1813, the entry of Faraday into the Royal Institution was not the least significant for humanity. On the morning of Christmas day, 1821, Faraday called his wife into his laboratory to witness, for the first time in the history of man, the revolution of a magnet around an electric current. The foundations of electromagnetics were laid and the edifice was built by Faraday upon this foundation in the fourteen succeeding years. In those years and from those labors, the electro-motor, the motor generator, the electrical utilization of water power, the electric car, electric lighting, the telephone and telegraph, in short all that is comprised in modern electrical machinery came actually or potentially into being. The little rotating magnet which Faraday showed his wife was, in fact, the first electric motor. What was the cash value to humanity of those fourteen years of labor in a laboratory? According to the thirteenth census of the United States, the value of the electrical machinery, apparatus and supplies produced in this country alone, in 1909 was $221,000,000. In 1907, the value of the electric light and power stations in the United States was $1,097,000,000, of the telephones $820,000,000, and the combined income from these two sources was $360,000,000. Nor does this represent a tithe of the values, as yet barely realized, which these researches placed at our disposal. Thus in its waterfalls, the United States is estimated to possess 150,000,000 available horse-power, which can only be realized through the employment of Faraday's electro-motor. This corresponds, at the conservative figure of $20 per horse-power per annum to a yearly income of $3,000,000,000, corresponding at 4 per cent. interest to a capital value of $75,000,000,0000.[3] [3] M. T. Bogert, "The Function of Chemistry in the Conservation of our National Resources," Journal of the American Chemical Society, February, 1909. Such was the Christmas gift which Michael Faraday presented to the world in 1821. Faraday died a poor man in 1867, neither for lack of opportunity nor for lack of ability to grasp his opportunities, but because as his pupil Tyndall tells us, he found it necessary to choose between the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of science, and he deliberately chose the latter. This is not a bad thing. It is perhaps as it should be, and as it has been in the vast majority of cases. But another fact which can not be viewed with like equanimity is that of all the inexhaustible wealth which Faraday poured into the lap of the world, not one millionth, not a discernible fraction, has ever been returned to science for the furtherance of its aims and its achievements, for the continuance of research. There is no regular machinery for securing the permanent endowment of research, and it is always and everywhere a barely tolerated intruder. In the universities it crouches under the shadow of pedagogy, and snatches its time and its materials from the fragments which are left over when the all-important business of teaching the young what others have accomplished has been done. In commercial institutions it occasionally pursues a stunted career, subject to all the caprices of momentary commercial advantage and the cramped outlook of the "practical man." The investigator in the employ of a commercial undertaking is encouraged to be original, it is true, but not to be too original. He must never transcend the "practical," that is to say, the infinitesimal rearrangement of the preexisting. The institutions existing in the world which are devoted to research and, research alone can almost be counted on the fingers. The Solvay Institute in Brussels, the Nobel Institute in Stockholm, the Pasteur Institute in France, the Institute for Experimental Therapy at Frankfort, The Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes at Berlin, The Imperial Institute for Medical Research at Petrograd, the Biologisches Versuchsanstalt

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