Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 97, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1917 — WONDERS HAVE SHORT LEASE [ARTICLE]

WONDERS HAVE SHORT LEASE

Magazine Writer Shows How Rapidly Remarkable Inventions Tread on Each Other's Heels. “Not a great many years ago a spectacled and skeptical old scientist wrote a long thesis In which he claimed that the world’s great discoveries all lay In the past, that the future had no new wdnders to disclose, and that all the really fundamental Inventions, discoveries and researches had already beep made,” sayg J.S. Newman, in the February St. Nicholas. “ ‘For,’ said the pessimistic philosopher, ‘there are no more strange lands to explore, no more conceivable inventions for the benefit of mankind. The telegraph, electric light, telephone and electric motor are already here. The camera and microscope, telescope and linotype, printing press and sewing machine, airship and steamboat are already What else is there left that is really new?’ “But Mother Nature seemed "to have kept her most wonderful secrets for just such an occasion. As if deliberately to disprove the fooljsh scientist, the next ten years brought out the most astounding collection of new inventions and discoveries the world has ever known. For in the period Immediately following the bold claim of this doubting Thomas, Hertz discovered electric waves, Marconi invented wireless telegraphy, Roentgen stumbled upon the X-ray, Madame Curie isolated radium, Sir William Ramsay found five new chemical • elements, Edison made his first moving picture the Wright brothers conquered the air and countless greater or lesser discoveries astounded the scientific world. “So the seven great wonders, of today will become the commonplaces of tomorrow I”