eaving of cloth, and the
myriad uses of electric and atomic power will make man the master of his
destiny once he frees himself from the myth of a tyrant God.

Ingersoll best expressed man's inventions and their uses when he said
that, "Science took the thunderbolt from the gods, and in the electric
spark, freedom, with thought, with intelligence and with love, sweeps
under all the waves of the sea; science, free thought, took a tear from
the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into steam, and created the
giant that turns, with tireless arms, the countless wheels of toil."

Deprive man of the use of his discoveries and inventions of the past
century and he will think he has been returned to barbarism.

Look what Thomas A. Edison's invention of the electric light did for
man--it lengthened his life, it gave more hours to the day, and
increased his comforts beyond anything previously known or imagined, and
added immeasurably to his joy of living.

Even Joshua's fictitious performance of stopping the sun and the moon
fades into nothingness when compared with this sublime achievement.

Nor must we forget Edison's invention for reproducing the human
voice--and please grant me a moment's indulgence to say that I had the
great honor to know Thomas A. Edison, and Edison honored me by calling
me his friend.

If printing has been hailed as one of the world's great inventions,
what must we say of the phonograph? While printing preserves man's
thoughts on paper, the phonograph preserves not only his thoughts but
also his voice!

The song of the skylark is no longer "wasted upon the desert air."

Thomas A. Edison--the greatest of human benefactors--wrested from nature
her most guarded secret--the mystery of the human voice.

He disproved, as it was once believed, that the human voice, like the
heart, was the "gift of God." He demonstrated that the human voice was
merely the natural mechanism of sound produced by air of the lungs
passing over the "cords" of the throat and larynx in the same manner as
are sounds produced by the strings of a musical instrument.

As a result of Edison's invention, man himself has already produced
artificially every manifestation of the human voice!

If the voice was part of "God's plan," how do we account for its absence
in the giraffe? This animal has no larynx and therefore no vocal cords,
and as a consequence it cannot talk or make sounds with its throat!

The giraffe is proof of the lac