A steam hammer in a Krupp plant forges pieces of iron weighing 400 quintals each, whereas an ordinary blacksmith with several assistants can barely forge a piece weighing a couple of quintals.
Inventions heighten our dexterity and correct our disabilities: today we can divide a human hair into several dozen if not into a hundred parts by thickness; we can measure the thickness of a spider’s thread; we can measure a weight down to 1/800,000th of a pound; we can roll gold leaf so thin that 130,000 leaves make an inch. As to correcting defects and disabilities of the human body, we all know that people can be fitted with artificial teeth and with artificial hands with which to write and paint, and so on.
Inventions and discoveries heighten our senses: an acoustic tube allows us to speak quietly with a person a couple of hundred paces away. Our telescopes allow us to see stars so remote that the light which courses from them at 42,000 miles [186,000 international miles – Translator] per second requires several million years to reach us. Our microscopes so amplify our vision that, with their aid, we can see animalcules, millions of which comfortably live in a single drop of water. Moreover, in these animalcules we can see organs that serve them for swimming, and a stomach bristling with hairs that are in constant motion!...
Inventions and discoveries heighten our mental powers: For example, the invention of higher mathematics allows us to solve, within minutes, problems that, using ordinary calculation, we could not have solved in years, if ever. An example will illustrate the power of today's mathematics.
