But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. <\/i><\/p>\n
\u2014Daniel 12:4<\/i><\/p>\n
4797<\/b> Wright\u2019s Father Knocks Down Flight<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cThe millenium is at hand. Man has invented everything that can be invented. He has done all he can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
These words were spoken by a bishop at a church gathering in 1870. They were challenged by the presiding officer, who suggested that a great invention would be made within the next fifty years. <\/p>\n
The bishop asked him to name such an invention. <\/p>\n
The reply: \u201cI think man will learn to fly.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bishop replied that this was blasphemy. \u201cDon\u2019t you know that flight is reserved for angels?\u201d<\/p>\n
The bishop was Milton Wright, father of Orville and Wilbur. <\/p>\n
4798<\/b> Enter Baby Carriages<\/b><\/p>\n
The first baby carriage was made by Charles Burton in 1884 and used in New York City. People in those days protested violently that the carriage was dangerous to pedestrians! <\/p>\n
4799<\/b> Those Spectacles Did It<\/b><\/p>\n
When \u201cBoss\u201d Kettering, for years Vice-President of General Motors and director of their research laboratories, was just beginning his inventive career in Ashland, Ohio, he worked out a central-battery telephone exchange which did away with the nuisance of cranking the phone in rural communities. It seemed like a huge success but at one point it was in danger of being scrapped because for about two hours every afternoon the whole thing went dead. <\/p>\n
Kettering worked frantically for several weeks to locate the trouble. He finally discovered that out on one of the farms a certain grandfather had the habit of laying his spectacles on top of the telephone box every afternoon while he took a nap, thus short-circuiting system. <\/p>\n
4800<\/b> Hindrances Every Step<\/b><\/p>\n
After the wheel was invented, some cave dwellers undoubtedly complained that ruts would ruin the footpaths. In the 1840s, farmers of New York\u2019s Suffold Country rebelled against another recent invention; they tore up railway tracks, put to torch the depots and caused wrecks by loosening rail ties. The iron horse was evil, they complained; its sparks set fields afire, its bells and noisy clatter shocked cows into withholding milk, and its soot soiled laundry. Decades later, the first autos were denounced for scaring horses and for spewing objectionable fumes \u2026 <\/p>\n
\u2014Time<\/i><\/p>\n
4801<\/b> Toilets On The Go<\/b><\/p>\n
Washington (AFP)\u2014The Smithsonian Institute, the leading US technical museum, has launched a new exhibition covering the period from the open-air latrines of the early pioneers to ultra-modern bathrooms, equipped with telephone. <\/p>\n
The exhibition is composed of a series of photographs fixed to the doors of the lavatories in the museum. <\/p>\n
4802<\/b> That First Bathtub<\/b><\/p>\n
The first bathtub in America brought objections from doctors and politicians. It was built in Cincinnati in 1842 and first exhibited at a Christmas party. <\/p>\n
The next day, the local papers denounced it as a \u201cluxurious and democratic vanity.\u201d Doctors warned that the bathtub would be \u201ca menace to health.\u201d The politicians also took up the fight. Philadelphia issued a public ordinance to prohibit bathing between November 1 and March 15. Boston made bathing unlawful except when prescribed by a physician. One state even levied a $30-a-year tax on every bathtub, and several cities increased water rates for such use. <\/p>\n
The first bathtubs were encased in mahogany and lined with sheet metal, in size seven feet long and four feet wide. It weighed 1750 pounds. And water had to be pumped into it. <\/p>\n
4803<\/b> Olds\u2019 Farewell Car<\/b><\/p>\n
Whenever I think of the future, I think of R. E. Olds who made the Oldsmobile and the Reo cars. About 1902 he announced a new model which he called his Farewell Car. He implied that this automobile was the ultimate, that after it, nobody could ever bring improvement to the motorcar. How wrong he was! There\u2019s always more to be done. You can never catch up. You can never finish. <\/p>\n
\u2014Brooks Steven<\/p>\n
4804<\/b> The Last Explorer? <\/b><\/p>\n
Admiral Byrd, the explorer, one day was passing through the lobby of a hotel when a large company of people commenced cheering him. Two men were joining in the salutation, when one was overheard remarking to the other: \u201cHe is the last of the explorers; there is nothing left for the rest of us to explore.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Sunshine Magazine<\/i><\/p>\n
4805<\/b> \u201cNo More Inventions\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
Henry J. Ellsworth, commissioner of the U.S. Patent office, assured people that his resignation was really of no great concern. \u201cMankind,\u201d he declared, \u201chas already achieved all of which it is capable. There would be no more inventions requiring patents.\u201d<\/p>\n
The year was 1844\u2014before the steamboat, the telegraph cable under the ocean, the electric light, the telephone, and a host of other inventions that came along during the next half-century. <\/p>\n
4806<\/b> Closing Patent Office<\/b><\/p>\n
And then in the early 1870\u2019s, the U.S. Congress became greatly alarmed over the size of the federal budget, and determined to cut it. Finally a senator arose to announce a solution. It seems that he had been investigating the Patent Office. After noting the staggering total of entries in the records, he had concluded that it would be impossible to invent anything else. Therefore, they might as well discontinue the Patent Office, and appropriate no more money for it. The savings here would provide the desired decrease in the federal budget. <\/p>\n
4807<\/b> An Early Telephone Man Arrested<\/b><\/p>\n
This clipping from a Boston newspaper in 1872: \u201cA man about forty-six years of age, giving the name of Joshua Coppersmith, has been arrested in New York for allegedly attempting to extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people. He exhibited a device which he says will convey the human voice any distance over metallic wires, so that it will be heard by the listener at the other end of the wire. He calls the instrument a \u201ctelephone,\u201d which is obviously intended to imitate the word \u201ctelegraph,\u201d thus winning the confidence of those who know the success of the latter instrument without understanding the principles on which it is based. <\/p>\n
\u201cWell-informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires, as may be done with dots and dashes and signals of the Morse code and, that, were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value. Authorities who apprehended this criminal are to be congratulated, and it is hoped that his punishment will be prompt and fitting.\u201d<\/p>\n
4808<\/b> Czar Banned Progress<\/b><\/p>\n
When Nicholas I became Czar of Russia, he attempted to shut off his country from all intercourse with the outside world. A historian summarized the results of the Tsar\u2019s attitude: \u201cRussians were forbidden to travel abroad. Nicholas referred to the Moscow University as a \u201cden of wolves,\u201d and restricted the number of students to three hundred.\u201d<\/p>\n
Censors struck out of papers such phrases as \u201cForces of nature\u201d and \u201cmovements of minds.\u201d Nicholas himself was enraged at finding the word \u201cprogress\u201d used in a report of one of his ministers and demanded its deletion from all future official documents. But progress could not thus be staved off. <\/p>\n
\u2014Donald Grey Barnhouse<\/p>\n
4809<\/b> When Men Are Free<\/b><\/p>\n
Less than a hundred years ago the human voice could be delivered the distance that one champion hog-caller could effectively communicate with another champion hog-caller, which I have estimated at about forty-four yards. Since that time man, acting freely, privately, competitively, voluntarily, has discovered how to deliver the human voice around the earth in 1\/27th of a second\u2014one million times as far, and in one-third the time, that the voice of one hog-caller reached the ear of the other. <\/p>\n
When men were free to try, they found out how to deliver an event like the Rose Bowl game in motion and in color into your living room while it is going on. When men were free to try, they found out how to deliver 115 individuals from Los Angeles to Baltimore in three hours and thirty-nine minutes. When men are free to try, they deliver gas from a hole in the ground in Texas to Irvington, New York, without subsidy and at low prices. <\/p>\n
Men who are free to try have discovered how to deliver sixty-four ounces of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern seaboard, more than half the way around the world\u2014a million times further than delivering a letter across the street\u2014at a cost below that of a first-class letter! And the people who accomplish these miracles have lost faith in their capacity to deliver a letter, which is a Boy Scout job. You may get the idea that I have faith in free men and not in government. <\/p>\n
\u2014Sunshine Magazine<\/i><\/p>\n
4810<\/b> A Congressional Tradition<\/b><\/p>\n
At the start of each Congress, every Congressman is entitled to be issued one comb, one hairbrush, and a trunk or footlocker. Back in stagecoach days a man had to have a good strongbox to send his possessions home in at the end of the session. They\u2019re still giving them out, and those who have been there a long time could build a pretty good-sized wall with them all. <\/p>\n
\u2014News-Review<\/i>, New York<\/p>\n
4811<\/b> Bequests To Stagnancy<\/b><\/p>\n
There is an endowment for woolcarders. But there have been no woolcarders for 150 years, and the fund is still accumulating in the banks. Another endowment provides for the ransom of American seamen held by Barbary pirates on the North African coast. One will provide for an endowed lectureship at an American University on the Use of Coal gas as a cure for malarial fever! An endowment dated 1683 provided for \u201cthe relief of seven aged Protestants in the county of Cork, Ireland.\u201d For the past 50 years the trustees have been unable to find seven Protestants of any kind in all the county of Cork! <\/p>\n
\u2014Christian Victory<\/i><\/p>\n
4812<\/b> Time Capsule<\/b><\/p>\n
Writer Lincoln Barnett once described the excitement of a group of students emerging from a physics lecture at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. \u201cHow did it go?\u201d one of them was asked. \u201cWonderful!\u201d he replied. \u201cEverything we knew last week isn\u2019t true.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is barely 60 years since the first flying machine wobbled into the air, less than eight years since the first artificial satellite burst the shackles of earth\u2019s atmosphere. Yet in just five years\u2014the time that I\u2019ve been observing satellites as a serious hobby\u2014more than 500 of the manmade devices have rocketed into space. <\/p>\n
\u2014Larry Dean Howard<\/p>\n
4813<\/b> Wanted: Men Without Experience<\/b><\/p>\n
Reader\u2019s Digest<\/i> reprinted an advertisement which was originally published, deadpan, in the Mines Magazine<\/i>. The ad read: \u201cWanted: man to work on nuclear fissionable isotope molecular reactive counters and three-phase cyclotronic uranium photosynthesizers. No experience necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n
And there is as much truth as humor in that, too. For how do you find experienced men in a field that never existed before? Yet, these new fields are opening up every day, with new products and new processes that will again be obsolete tomorrow. <\/p>\n
\u2014Roger M. Blough<\/p>\n
4814<\/b> Progress And The Light Bulb<\/b><\/p>\n
Thomas Alva Edison invented the electric light bulb in 1879. Twenty-two years later, in 1901, one of the newfangled gadgets was hung and turned on in the Livermore, Calif., Fire Department. It\u2019s still there, and still on. The old bulb has almost never been turned off in 71 years. <\/p>\n
By today\u2019s standards it should have burned out 852 times by now. The bulb, hand-blown, with a thick carbon filament, was made, it is said, by the Shelby Electric Company, which did not become one of the giants of the nation, for an obvious reason. The Shelby Company made light bulbs to last, and nobody ever reordered. <\/p>\n
The bulb is accorded an awesome respect by Fire Captain Kirby Slate and his men. In a time of planted and planned obsolescence, when gadgets are forever falling apart or burning out or breaking up, it\u2019s reassuring to watch a dusty 71-year-old light bulb shine on and on and on. <\/p>\n
\u2014Charles Kuralt<\/p>\n
4815<\/b> First-Grade Talk<\/b><\/p>\n
The first-graders were visiting the airport. As the roaring planes landed and took off the teacher remarked to the class. \u201cIsn\u2019t it wonderful that we have so many airplanes and, just think, a few years ago we didn\u2019t even have automobiles.\u201d One curious youngster piped up, \u201cHow did people get to the airports?\u201d<\/p>\n
4816<\/b> The 21st Century<\/b><\/p>\n
New York (UPI)\u2014The 21st century will produce a cancer-preventing drug, accident-free automobiles and plastics that are good to eat, McGraw-Hill forecasters said. <\/p>\n
Other marvels of the 21st-century forecast included:<\/p>\n
\u2014The virtual elimination of aircraft noise. <\/p>\n
\u2014A non-petroleum aircraft fuel. <\/p>\n
\u2014Solar energy for most heating. <\/p>\n
McGraw-Hill also predicted drugs that will cure mental illnesses, chemical substitutes for blood, and drugs that will partly control heredity. <\/p>\n
Turning to mechanical things, the study said automobiles will be made largely of plastics, except for the power train, and will be much safer and almost service-free. <\/p>\n
4817<\/b> National Nostalgia Convention<\/b><\/p>\n
Loaded with old comic books and radio tapes from the 1930s, some five hundred people flowed into Tempe, Arizona, for a three-day national nostalgia convention. The conclave featured comicbook collectors who swapped \u201cCaptain Marvel\u201d for \u201cSuperman No. 1\u201d or simply paid up to $200 for a rare copy of the first \u201cBatman\u201d series. They also watched movies from the silent screen era and listened to radio broadcasts from the thirties and forties. <\/p>\n
\u2014C. R. Hembree<\/p>\n
4818<\/b> Tagged Salmon In Can<\/b><\/p>\n
The Department of Fisheries in the State of Washington tags salmon in order to learn more about their migratory habits. It pays three dollars for the return of each tag with information as to where it was found. Alan Janofsky of New York City dutifully returned a tag with this explanatory note:<\/p>\n
\u201cEnclosed is a tag that came off a salmon. I found it when I bit into my sandwich. It came to me in a can of salmon. Please send the $3.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Sports Illustrated<\/i><\/p>\n
4819<\/b> Penicillin And Modern Labs<\/b><\/p>\n
Sir Alexander Fleming made his discovery of penicillin while working in a dusty old laboratory. A mold spore, blown in through a window, landed on a culture plate he was about to examine. <\/p>\n
Some years later, he was taken on a tour of an up-to-date research lab, a gleaming, air-conditioned, dust-free, super-sterile setting. \u201cWhat a pity you did not have a place like this to work in,\u201d his guide said. \u201cWhat you could have discovered in such surroundings!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot penicillin,\u201d Fleming observed dryly. <\/p>\n
\u2014E. E. Edgar. <\/p>\n
4820<\/b> Epigram On Progress<\/b><\/p>\n
\u2022 Restlessness and discontent are the first neccessities of progress. <\/p>\n
\u2014Thomas A. Edison<\/p>\n
\u2022 The world\u2019s moving so fast, the man who says it can\u2019t be done is interrupted by someone doing it. <\/p>\n
\u2014Elbert Hubbard<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u201clf it works it is obsolete,\u201d is a common saying at the Pentagon. This is but a facetious recognition of the rapidity of change in an era of unprecented discovery and development. <\/p>\n
\u2014L. Nelson Bell<\/p>\n
\u2022 We will make electric light so cheap that only the rich will be able to burn candles. <\/p>\n
\u2014Edison<\/p>\n
\u2022 If the old-fashioned family doctor has disappeared, perhaps it\u2019s because he\u2019s out looking for the old-fashioned family. <\/p>\n
\u2014Burton Hillis<\/p>\n
\u2022 In this day of almost total dependence on mechanical gadgets, a Min neapolis supermarket has found it necessary to put this warning on its entrance: \u201cCaution. No Automatic Door.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014Minneapolis Tribune<\/i><\/p>\n
See also:<\/b> Technology. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. \u2014Daniel 12:4 4797 Wright\u2019s Father Knocks Down Flight \u201cThe millenium is at hand. Man has invented everything that can be invented. He has done all … Continue reading “PROGRESS”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}