Until 1846, aside from Earth, astronomers knew only 6 other planets; but that year two mathematicians, the Frenchman [Urbain – Translator] Le Verrier and the Englishman [John Couch – Translator] Adams, [independently – Translator] calculated that there must be another planet, over 600 million [geographical – Translator] miles [equal to some 2,800 million international miles, or 4.5 billion kilometers – Translator] distant from the sun, 100 times greater than Earth, and which circles the sun in a period of 164 years: a planet that would be visible, by the aid of very powerful instruments, on a certain specified day, at a certain specified spot in the heavens.
And so it came to pass, with the aid of mathematics, that there was discovered a planet [Neptune – Translator] that no one had ever seen!
Inventions save us time and money: Before the invention of printing, books cost as many złotych or even rubles as they now cost groszy [a grosz being a hundredth of a złoty –Translator]. One can now sail from Europe to America in ten days by steamship, where previously the trip took several months. In our time, a trip to Paris costs less and ends sooner than, formerly, a trip from Warsaw to Częstochowa. Formerly a Venetian mirror cost a whole landed estate, today the same kind of mirror can be had for a few dozen rubles.
I would never finish, if I had to enumerate just the more outstanding and more useful inventions and discoveries that have been made by chemistry, physics, technology, medicine, in a word, by every branch of human knowledge. Here I will add only that, together with the increase in discoveries and inventions, with the improvement in living conditions, people are also becoming morally better. Let us not believe the poets who sing the praises of the good old days. Those were bad days when no shame attached to burning and torturing people, to murdering in wartime defenseless enemies, women, and children.
