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The Possibilities Of The Future

The Possibilities Of The Future image
Parent Issue
Day
14
Month
January
Year
1876
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Sir. J. Hawkshaw, in a lecture before the Britiah Association, gives the following hint to those seeking new inventions and discoveries : The marvolous progresa of the last two generations should make every one cautious of predicting the future. Of engineering worka it may be aaid that their practibility or impractibility ia often deteriniued by other elemente than the inherent diffioulty in the worka themselves. Greater works than any yet achieved romain to be acoompliahed, not, perhapa, yet awhile. Society may not require thetn ; the world could not at presont afford to pay for thetn. The progresa of engineering works, if we contsider it, and the expenditure upon them, has been prodigious. One hundred and sixty thousand miles of railway alone, put into figures at L20,000 per mile, amounta to L3,200,000,000 sterling ; 400,000 miles of telegraph, at L100 per mile, and L100,000,000 more for sea canala, docks, harbors, water and aanitary works oonstructed in the same period and weget the enormous sum of L3,340,000,000, sterling expended in one generation and a half on what may undoubtedly be called useful work. The wealth of nations may be impaired by expenditure on luxuries and war ; it oannot be diminished by expenditures on works like these. As to the future, we know we caanot créate a forcé ; we can, and no doubt ahall, greatly iinprove the applioation of those with which we are acquainted. What are called inventions eau do no more than these new machines and inatruments! The telescope extended our visión of distant worlds. The spectroscope has far out stripped that instrument by extending our power of analysia to regions aa remóte. Postal deliveries were and are able organization, but what are they to the telegraph ? Need we try to extend present knowledge, compared to what is unknowneven in physics, is infinitesimal. We may never discover e. new force - yet who can teil ?

Article

Subjects
Old News
Michigan Argus