Invention / The Master-key to Progress by Bradley A. Fiske

To show that inventors have accomplished more than most persons realize, not only in bringing forth new mechanisms, but in doing creative work in many walks of life, is, in part, the object of this book. To suggest what they may do, if properly encouraged, is its main intention. For, since it is to inventors mainly that we owe all that civilization is, it is to inventors mainly that we must look for all that civilization can be made to be.
The mind of man cannot even conceive what wonders of beneficence inventors may accomplish: for the resources of invention are infinite.
The author is indebted to Ginn & Company, Boston, for the use of illustrations from "General History for Colleges and High Schools," by Philip Van Ness Myers, and "Ancient Times, A History of the Early World," by James Henry Breasted, and to George H. Doran Company, New York, for the use of a map from "A History of Sea Power," by William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott.
CHAPTER I. INVENTION IN PRIMEVAL TIMES
Our original ancestors dwelt in caves and wildernesses; had no sewed or fabricated clothing of any kind; subsisted on roots and nuts and berries; possessed no arts of any sort; were ignorant to a degree that we cannot imagine, and were little above the brutes in their mode of living. Today, a considerable fraction of the people who dwell upon the earth enjoy a civilization so fine that it seems to have no connection with the brutish conditions of primeval life. Yet, as these pages show, a perfectly plain series of inventions can be seen, starting from the old conditions and building up the new.
The progress of man during the countless ages of prehistoric times is hidden from our knowledge, except in so far as it has been revealed to us by ruins of ancient cities, by prehistoric utensils of many kinds, and by inscriptions carved on monuments and tablets. The sharp dividing line between prehistoric times and historic times, seems to be that made by the art of writing; for this epochal invention rendered possible the recording of events, and the consequent beginning of history.
Of prehistoric times we have, of course, no written record; and we have but the most general means of estimating how many millenniums ago man first had his being. Geological considerations indicate a beginning so indefinitely and exceedingly remote that the imagination may lose itself in speculations as to his mode of living during those forever-hidden centuries that dragged along, before man had advanced so far in his progress toward civilization as to make and use the rude utensils which the researches of antiquarians have revealed.
CONTENTS
Invention in Primeval Times
Invention in the Orient
Invention in Greece
Invention in Rome: Its Rise and Fall
Invention of the Gun and of Printing
Columbus, Copernicus, Galileo and Others
The Rise of Electricity, Steam and Chemistry
The Age of Steam, Napoleon and Nelson
Inventions in Steam, Electricity, and Chemistry Create a Dangerous Era
Certain Important Creations of Invention, and Their Beneficent Influence
Invention and Growth of Liberal Government and American Civil War
Invention of the Modern Military Machine, Telephone, Phonograph and Preventive Medicine
The Conquest of the Ether—Moving Pictures—Rise of Japan and the United States
The Fruition of Invention
The Machine of Civilization, and the Dangerous Ignorance Concerning it, Shown by Statesmen
The Future
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Carvings in Ivory and in Stone of Cavern Walls made by the Hunters of the Middle Stone Age
Early Babylonian Signs, Showing Their Pictorial Origin
Villa of an Egyptian Noble
The Pyramids of Gizeh
Assyrians Flaying Prisoners Alive
Two Cretan Vases
Insurgent Captives Brought Before Darius
The Lighthouse of the Harbor of Alexandria in the Hellenistic Age
Triumphal Procession from the Arch of Titus
The Printing of Books
Portuguese Voyages and Possessions
Hero's Engines
Hero's Altar Engine
Leupold's Engine