THE TIDE OF INVENTION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2237, 10 February 1921, Page 1

THE TIDE OF INVENTION.

For a mixture of reasons, toil has become comparatively unpopular throughout the world, say* the English technical journal Steel Structures. The public demand, so general as to be practically universal, is for more wealth, less work, and that is altogether impossible save by a great extension of ingenious mechanical means, substituting in effect horse power for man power. Bearing the heaviest burden in the w:ir, and the heaviest responsibilities all the world over in the afterwar, Britain is continuing to display extraordinary energy and enterprise. Nowhere is to be observed greater intellectual activity in research and invention, or in the reorganisation of business. There is an aggressive spirit in face of technical and commercial problems which promises greater benefits for the nation and the empire, and for mutually profitable international trading than the somewhat overcomplacent prosperity of the earlier years of this century. Mental energy has been applied more intensively since 1918 to the mastery of belter mechanical means for restoring general prosperity. There is no department of industrial activity in which distinct gains have not boon recorded, but the most remarkable evidences of ingenuity are to be found in the treatment of iron and steel, and other metal, and in the designing of the machinery and structures of which metal is the material. The whole industry lias made marvellous strides, and yet there is a stronger pressure forward and upward than ever. This pressure represents the combined effort of a multitude of specialists, all working their own miracles, but nece.-sarily rat her unconscious of cadi other's campaigns and conquests. It is not toward the meeting rooms of politics that wo nm~! look for draughts of notional optimism, but toward the research laboratories, the drawing offices, and the homes of Ihe men of mechanical genius delermined to assert their power.