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HOW TO USE THE POPULAR SCIENCE LIBRARY. BY GARRETT P. SERVISS 9

HISTORY OF SCIENCE 39-198

CHAPTER

GENERAL INDEX 199-384

FACING PAGE

EOHIPPUS--FROM WHICH THE MODERN HORSE DEVELOPED 16

ORNITHOLESTES--A PREHISTORIC ANIMAL OF AMERICA 17

HUNTSMAN, HORSE, AND HUNTING DOG OF LONG AGO--FROM AN ANCIENT CRETAN FRESCO 17

PREHISTORIC PAINTINGS--AN EXHIBITION OF COPIES FROM THE CAVERN AT ALTAMIRA, SPAIN 24

SABER-TOOTHED TIGER THAT ONCE ROAMED OVER NORTH AMERICA 25

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S PRINTING PRESS 33

MODEL OF THE "SANTA MARIA," THE FLAGSHIP OF COLUMBUS 48

CURTISS NAVY RACER, THE AIRPLANE THAT WON THE PULITZER RACE OF 1921 49

ELECTRIC MOTOR OF 1834 64

TURNING LATHE OF 1843 64

EDISON PHONOGRAPH OF 1878 65

WHITNEY'S COTTON GIN 65

DE WITT CLINTON TRAIN OF 1831 BESIDE A MODERN LOCOMOTIVE 80

LOCOMOTIVE OF THE 1870 PERIOD 81

"JOHN BULL," A LOCOMOTIVE BROUGHT FROM ENGLAND IN 1831 81

WEATHER AND ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS ON THE ROOF OF GREENWICH OBSERVATORY, ENGLAND 112

MOORING TOWER FOR AIRSHIPS, WITH THE "R-24" FASTENED HEAD ON 113

HOSPITAL ROOM IN WHICH INFECTED ARTICLES ARE STERILIZED 160

MODERN OPERATING ROOM IN PARIS, FITTED WITH A GLASS DOME AND RADIO MICROPHONES FOR OBSERVING STUDENTS AND DOCTORS 161

EDOUARD BELIN AND THE TELAUTOGRAPH, WHICH TRANSMITS PICTURES BY WIRE 176

LEE DE FOREST, INVENTOR OF THE OSCILLATING AUDION 177

AUTOMOBILE WITH RADIO EQUIPMENT FOR LISTENING IN EN TOUR 177

GIFTS FOR TUTANKHAMEN BROUGHT BY ONE OF HIS VICEROYS 192

TUTANKHAMEN'S TOMB--BRINGING UP THE HATHOR COUCH 193

QUEEN NEFERTITI, MOTHER-IN-LAW OF TUTANKHAMEN AND WIFE OF AHKNATON 193

HOW TO USE THE POPULAR SCIENCE LIBRARY

This series of books is written for all the people and not for specialists only, though it is the work of specialists who know how to explain their subjects clearly and interestingly, without unnecessary technicalities and with keen appreciation of the popular and constantly increasing desire for scientific knowledge.

The supreme importance of science in the wonderful age in which our lot has been cast was demonstrated with overwhelming force of conviction by the events of the World War. If, as certain persons assert, science may be accused of having rendered war more destructive and terrible, yet, on the other hand, no one can deny that it was science that saved the world from sliding backward into an age of despotism.

The true importance of science for everybody arises from its rapidly increasing service in the development of human industry in all its forms, for industry is the mother of democracy.

Said Gabriel Lippman, the French physicist, inventor of color photography, who died in the summer of 1921: "For thousands of years science progressed by groping and feeling its way, and coincidentally industry got slowly on by guesswork; but within the last century science has developed more than during all preceding time, while industry has sprung upon its feet and begun to march with the strides of a giant."

Each branch of science has its own particular methods, but it is not necessary for the average reader to study these special methods in order to become able to grasp the facts and principles that have been developed by them. The results are all thrown into a common store--or should be if science is to attain its utmost usefulness to humanity--and from the common store the great public, the people at large, should be enabled freely to draw. The object of this series of books is to form such a store of science for the people.

It may encourage those who look with some degree of timidity upon the task of trying to understand the great discoveries and achievements of modern science to know that even the ablest scientists, leaders in their own particular branches, do not pretend, or attempt, to grasp the special methods or the technicalities of any division of science except that one in which their own work is done. They stand, with regard to other branches, practically on the same footing with the unscientific reader, having over him only such possible advantages as their special training in clear thinking and in the intense application of the mental powers may give them.

See if you can find a single detail of your daily life that is not affected by science, or upon which science does not throw new light. It is fascinating to trace out the scientific relations of the simplest things that surround us, or the most ordinary occurrences and incidents.

Start with your first awakening in the morning, and you will perceive that there is not a thing that you see, or that in any way attracts your attention, that is not touched and illuminated by science, and often in the most unexpected and delightful ways. It is by considering these things that one may best perceive how to use the volumes of this little library. As you open your eyes in the morning you see a bright glow through the window curtain, then you know that the sun has risen.

But stop a moment. What does that mean--"the sun has risen"? The sun has not "risen" at all. But, one of the greatest facts of the science of astronomy is illustrated before your eyes--a fact that it took mankind thousands of years to find out. You are standing in the astronomer's shoes now, if you choose to wear them. This is a part of his field of science. It took him a long time to convince the world that the "rising" of the sun in the east next morning after its "setting" in the west really means that the globular earth has turned half way over during the night. If this seems simple to you now, it seemed very hard to comprehend to our remote ancestors, who, though reasoning men like ourselves, had not learned as much about the relativity of motion as we now know, though even we may be puzzled by some of the consequences that Einstein has drawn from it. And a hundred other things that astronomy has discovered about the sun and the other suns, called stars, and the other worlds, called planets, immediately rush to your mind, and you turn to the volume on astronomy to read about them.

But this is only a beginning of the string of everyday incidents that are rendered curiously interesting as soon as their scientific relations and meanings become evident to you. Science is right at your elbow to raise questions and to answer them the moment you step out of bed, and your mind begins to work.

As you throw open the window to see what kind of a day it is going to be, whether fair, or cloudy, or rainy, cool or warm, you draw your conclusions from the appearance of sky and air, but in doing that you are entering another field covered by another branch of science and included in our little library--meteorology, or the realm of the air--and you may be sure that the correctness of the conclusions that you draw from the aspect of the clouds and the feeling of the air will be greatly increased, not only in certainty, but also in interest, if you read what the students of this subject have learned about the laws and the mysteries of the rains, clouds, cyclones, barometric pressures, great winds and genial breezes, great storms and little storms; in short, the whole wonderful science of the atmosphere, that invisible, yet powerful kingdom of the air, which we are just beginning to annex to our world of activities without regard to what its natural occupants, the birds, think of such an invasion.

Now you leave the window to begin making your morning ablutions. You turn on a faucet and take a drink, or plunge hands and face into the refreshing liquid, so cool, lively, and invigorating. But a bird or any four-footed animal may find just as keen physical enjoyment in the touch and taste of the water as you do. You, however, because you are a thinking being, possess a source of enjoyment from the touch and appearance of the water that is not open to those humbler creatures, and that source of enjoyment springs from the principles and facts of another branch of science which the mere sight of the running water may call to mind if you have caught the spirit of these books--the science of chemistry, whose early history is filled with that irresistible kind of romance that pertains to the search for Eldorado, or the strivings of the human spirit after the powers of magic; for the realm of chemistry was once a kind of semi-scientific dreamland, wherein the "alchemists" delved at the same time for the "philosopher's stone" which was to turn base metal into gold, and for the wand of the magician which would give to its possessor the boundless gratifications of a Faust. Water is no mystery to the lower animals, but it is a great mystery even yet to the highest ones--ourselves--because we have been enabled to analyze it. You cannot look at it pouring from the faucet, and sparkling into bubbles, without recalling the fact that it is composed of two invisible, silent gases, and that chemistry tells us not only how to make the water disappear by taking those gases apart, but also how to form new water by making the two gases combine. The mystery is--why should this be so? It is a captivating question, and the business of the book on chemistry is to give you all possible light on the solution of that question, and others of a like nature. You will find, too, that the very latest chemistry has, strangely enough, discovered a sort of justification for the extravagant expectations of the ancient alchemists, by finding a way in which one substance may actually change, or be changed, into another, different substance--one "element" taking the form of another "element"--and also by getting clues to the existence of marvelous locked-up energies in matter, the release of which would give man control over powers that could properly be called "magical."

After finishing your toilet, with all the suggestions and remembrances of chemical science that it has produced, you start to quicken the circulation of your blood by catching up a pair of dumb-bells, or Indian clubs, or by pulling elastic cords, or banging a leather ball with your fists, as if you meant to go in for the championship of the world. Now, what taught you the value of such exercises? You are still on the ground of science, and you are practically demonstrating the principles of another of its branches--the science of health, or hygiene, which is a part of the subject of medicine, taken in its broadest signification, for, as the volume on that subject will assure you, the greatest service that this science can render to mankind is in teaching us the laws of our physical existence, and indicating, directly or indirectly, how all the functions of the body may be kept in the best working order by proper attention and exercise. You will find such things pointed out in the several sciences that deal with the body, such as physiology and medicine.

While you are making the leather ball strike the ceiling with resounding whacks, your dog, excited by the inspiring noise, bursts into the room, and interrupts your exercise with his enthusiastic morning greetings, expressed as energetically by his wagging tail as by his joyous barks and licks, all anticipatory of a lively morning run. He brings immediately into your mind the thought of still another division of science--zo?logy--to which you will devote many pleasant half-hours of reading, for it is full of most entertaining matter, as well as of matter calculated to awaken profound and useful thought concerning the relations of the many different members of the animal world to one another, and especially to their head and chief, man, to whom the supervision of the whole was, according to the Bible story, originally committed. Familiar as your dog may be to you, there are a hundred particulars of his family relationships, his descent from wild ancestors, etc., which can only become known to you through the studies that have been devoted to the science of zo?logy by curious-minded investigators from the times of Aristotle and Pliny down to our own day, when we have seen an ex-President of the United States wandering adventurously through some of the remotest portions of the inhabited globe, seeking fresh knowledge of, and personal acquaintance with, the rarer kinds of wild animals, and hunting down in their native wilds great beasts which the Caesars used to admire from the security of the imperial seat, high above the bloody sands of the Roman arenas. And this modern ruler, after having laid down the political power intrusted to him by fellow citizens, found no occupation so attractive as that of adding something to the growing stores of science.

Next, your stomach, awakened to its wants and needs by the restored circulation resulting from your lively exercises, reminds you of what will be at the same time a pleasure and a means of sustained strength for body and mind, your breakfast. Breakfast properly comes under the supervision of the science of physiology. It is also suggestive of mechanics and physics, since it has to do with the stoking of the furnace that keeps the bodily engine up to its work. Here you are face to face with a branch of science which you could no more safely neglect than an engineer or a fireman could neglect to learn the elements and principles underlying his critically important occupation. One of the first sciences to be systematically developed was that of man's body, including its structure, or anatomy, and its functioning, or internal action, physiology. You will find that correct ideas on these subjects were slow in being developed, yet even in the most ancient times men were shrewd and wise enough to understand the importance of knowing something about their own bodies, in order to be able to take proper care of them, and to deal with wounds and sickness.

When you went to bed, perhaps your mind was agitated by some important matter of business through whose intricacies you could not clearly see your way. You turned and tossed on your pillow, and stated and restated the facts and arguments and lines of reasoning, but all the while they became more obscure and entangled until at last, in sheer exhaustion, you fell into a troubled sleep. But this morning, to your immense surprise and gratification, without any effort on your part, and while you are occupied with other things--putting on your clothes, hitting the ball, playing with the dog, eating your bacon and eggs, or what not--suddenly the elusive clue or solution, so vainly sought the night before, presents itself plain before you. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, the troublesome problem is solved, as easily and naturally as water runs down hill, and you are provoked at yourself for having been so dull and stupid as not to see it all before. But not so fast! You were stupid, to be sure, but it was not your mind's fault as you are now disposed to think, but the trouble lay in your physical fatigue. You were driving your brain too long without refreshment, and it became like an engine whose oil cups are empty. It could not receive and report the impressions of thought.

Let us keep on further along the wonderful road of science on which your feet begin almost unknowingly to tread from the moment of your awakening, and which they follow, often just as unconsciously, until you fall asleep at the close of another day; while, as we have just seen, even when we are asleep our minds are not altogether inactive, and may even secretly disentangle the puzzles of the day while our tired brains are restoring themselves with slumber. Perhaps you live in the suburbs of a city, or far from the business center, and have to take a considerable journey from your house to your place of work or business. Maybe you go by automobile, or by street car, or by a trolley route, or take a commuters' train. In any event, whether you drive your own car, or ride in one drawn by a motor or a locomotive engine, you are brought face to face with the science of physics, including, of course, not only mechanics, but also, in our own day, electricity and magnetism. If you glance at a steam locomotive, puffing and blowing, and then at a smooth, silent electric motor drawing a long train, and then at a swift automobile winding and turning with serpentine agility through crowds of slow horse-drawn vehicles--in all cases your memory must recall the long, hard road by which these things were brought about, and you must be lacking in intelligent curiosity if you do not resolve to know for yourself, not only the history of these triumphs of human invention, but the principles of action upon which they depend. If you have a car, it would be a good thing to drive it yourself and learn to take care of its machinery yourself, for thus you would go far toward mastering the elementary principles of the science of mechanics, which has done more than all other things combined to transform the face of the world we live in. You cannot, of course, acquire all this knowledge by practical experience, but by putting together what you observe with what you read in the volumes devoted to mechanics, physics, chemistry, electricity, etc., you will find that every day is a school day for you in which you have learned something new, useful, and interesting, and something, moreover, which every wide-awake person in this wide-awake age ought necessarily to know, and can know by pursuing such a course as that just suggested. Your morning's ride to work will be transformed into a delightful intellectual experience if you prepare yourself by a little daily reading to understand the construction and manner of working of all the machines, engines, and mechanisms presented on every side to your inspection.

But machinery is not everything in life. Suppose that as you ride along your eye is caught by the great beauty of the flower gardens by the roadside, their blossoms bright in the morning sunshine and sparkling with the yet undried dew, as if sprinkled with diamonds. Perhaps your attention may never before have happened to be called so strongly to these objects, and possibly you have hitherto remained almost unacquainted with the names and peculiarities of some of the most common plants and flowers. But this morning, for some accidental reason, which may have a psychological origin, you are particularly charmed with the brilliant sight, and you resolve that you will be no longer ignorant of what could, manifestly, give you so much pleasure, besides being of unquestionable usefulness. When you return home you will take up the volume on botany, and it may lead you into a realm of mental delight previously unknown to you.

If it is the springtime, you may be interested by the sight of a tall, graceful tree, as lofty as a pine, and as straight in trunk, with many exquisite blossoms hanging from the pendulous stems on its great limbs, fifty or more feet above the ground, as if it were a flower garden in the air for the special delectation of the birds. Having never heard of a flowering tree outside the tropics, you feel a keen desire to know what this one is, and thus a way of introduction, founded on keen, personal interest, is opened for you to the science of botany. And few persons can take a ride, or a walk, anywhere in city or country or park, without having attention attracted by some unknown flower or plant, or tree, and without becoming aware how much pleasure is lost, and how much useful knowledge missed, by lack of the easily acquired knowledge of these things, which anybody can have by giving to it only that amount of time which would otherwise be wasted almost as completely as if the eyes were kept closed and the mind dismissed from its home in the brain. More mysterious, and not less fascinating than flowers and trees, are the birds and insects that flit by on their own errands. To explain them you have the volume on zo?logy, the science of animal life. Botany and zo?logy together go far to revolutionize the ordinary man's ideas about the attractiveness of outdoor life.

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