Twentieth Century Inventions

"[...]just been installed as a professor, and began that long series of investigations into the chemistry of common things which, taken up by his successor Faraday, gave to the United Kingdom the first start in some of those industries depending upon a knowledge of organic chemistry and the use of certain essential oils. Public attention at the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, was directed anywhere but towards these small commencements of mighty forces which were to revolutionise the industrial world, and through it also[...]".