Excerpt from Inventions in the Century IN treating of the subject of Inventions it is prop er to distinguish them from their scientific kindred Discoveries. The history of inventions is the history of new and useful contrivances made by man for practical purposes. The history of scientific discoveries is the record of new things found in Nature, its laws, forces, or materials, and brought to light, as they exist, either singly, or in relation, or in combination. Thus Galileo invented the telescope, and Newton discovered the law of gravitation. The practical use of the invention when turned to the heavenly bodies served to confirm the truth of the discovery. Discovery and invention may be, and often are, united as the soul is to the body. The union of the two produces one or more inventions. Thus the in vented electro-telegraph consists of the combina tion of discoveries of certain laws of electricity with an apparatus, by which signs are communicated to distances by electrical influence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.