are
inventions which, so far as concerns the germ idea on which their
success has been based, are of very much older origin than the world
generally supposes. The author, therefore, submits that he is
justified in referring inventions to the century in which they produce
successful results, not to that in which they may have been first
vaguely thought of. And in this view it is obvious that many of those
patents and suggestions which have been published in current
literature during the nineteenth century, but which, although pregnant
with mighty industrial influences, have not yet reached fruition, are
essentially inventions of the twentieth century. More than this, it is
extremely probable that the great majority of those ideas which will
move the industrial world during the next ensuing hundred years have
already been indicated, more or less clearly, by the inventive thought
of the nineteenth century.

GEORGE SUTHERLAND.

_December_, 1900.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
CHAPTER I.
INVENTIVE PROGRESS 1

CHAPTER II.
NATURAL POWER 22

CHAPTER III.
STORAGE OF POWER 53

CHAPTER IV.
ARTIFICIAL POWER 72

CHAPTER V.
ROAD AND RAIL 91

CHAPTER VI.
SHIPS 122

CHAPTER VII.
AGRICULTURE 144

CHAPTER VIII.
MINING 167

CHAPTER IX.
DOMESTIC 195

CHAPTER X.
ELECTRIC MESSAGES, ETC. 216

CHAPTER XI.
WARFARE 233

CHAPTER XII.
MUSIC 249

CHAPTER XIII.
ART AND NEWS 264

CHAPTER XIV.
INVENTION AND COLLECTIVISM 276

CHAPTER I.

INVENTIVE PROGRESS.

The year 1801, the first of the nineteenth century, was _an