of any history compiled in the early half of
the century, the eye will trace hardly the barest allusions to forces,
the discoveries in which were, in the year 1801, still in the
incipient stage. Canon Hughes, for instance, in his continuation of
the histories of Hume and Smollett, devoted some forty pages to the
record of that year. The space which he could spare from the demands
made upon his attention by the wars in Spain and Egypt, and the naval
conflict with France, was mainly occupied with such matters as the
election of the Rev. Horne Tooke for Old Sarum, and the burning
question as to whether that gentleman had not rendered himself
permanently ineligible for Parliamentary honours through taking Holy
Orders, and with a miscellaneous mass of topics relating to the merely
evanescent politics of the day.

The whole of the effects of invention and discovery in making history
during the first year of the century were dismissed by this writer
with a casual reference to the augmentation of the productive power of
the labouring population through the use of machinery, and a footnote
stating that "this was more particularly the case in the cotton
manufacture".

Time corrects the historical perspective of the past, but it does not
very materially alter the power of the historical vision to adjust
itself to an examination of the present day forces which are likely to
grow to importance in the making of future history. When we ask what
are the inventions and discoveries which are really destined to grow
from seeds of the nineteenth into trees of the twentieth century, we
are at once confronted with the same kind of difficulty which would
present itself to one who, standing in the midst of an ancient forest,
should be requested to indicate in what spots the wide-spreading
giants of the next generation of trees might be expected to grow. The
company promoter labels those inventions in which he is commercially
interested as the affairs which will grow to huge dimensions in the
future; while the man of scientific or mechanical bent is very apt to
predict a mighty future only for achievements which strike him as
being peculiarly brilliant.

Patent experts, on the other hand, when asked by their clients to
state candidly what class of inventions may be relied upon to bring
the most certain returns, generally reply that "big money usually
comes from small patents". In other words, an invention embodying some
comparatively trivia