THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1909. THE AGE OF STEAM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9589, 8 September 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1909. THE AGE OF STEAM.

j A hundred years is not long in the world's history; and in by gone timeo it was common for a century to pass and leave little mark or the life of nations. Whether it is the case, as some people suggest, that the civilised world is on the downward grade, and therefore that events move more rapidly than of old, or not, it is ceitain that changes are more rapid and far reaching now than in the past. The grandfathers of many men who are still active, coul 1, if they were still alive, recall the conditions of the world a hundred j ears ago, and yet they would be almost as unlike those of the world of to-day as if they belonged to another planet. The world moved more slowly then; its work was simpler; its problems fewer; its conditions far le-is complicated in a thuusand ways than they now are. If we had to suggest a cause for the changes that have taken place or to think of any single thing which might be held responsible for the kaleidoscopic attractions that have followed one another with such amazing speed, we should perhaps be driven to attribute them chiefly to the invention of the steam enginy. A hundred and fifty years ago Jarres Watt was, as a boy, puzzling himself as to the meaning of the motion of the boiling kettle's lid. Twenty years later his early curiosity had so far borne fruit that he had actually applied this power to practical use by the invention or the rudimentary steam engine. Like the lever thought of by the old Greek philosopher, with which he could move the world, if

only he could find a spot on which to rest it, the new invention's possibilities were vast, and only required application to make the world's and society's old order yield place to something wholly new. How far the inventor of the first steam engine may have foreseen this it is, of course, impossible to say; but it is safe enough to assert that, however far his expectations may have gone, they have been very far exceeded by the reality. The change, it is true, was not a very sudden one. The ideas of the British people were slow to change in the 18th century., when the new invention arose, and the awakening was very gradual, as compared with the economic and social changes to which we are accustomed now. The new lever had to find a substantial resting place in the minds of the people before il; could really move the industrial and social world; and the eighteenth century had ended and the nineteenth begun before this was really accomplished. The celebration about to be held in New

York to commemorate the beginning of river navigation by means of steamboats on the Hudson suggests the point at which the nevv era ot steam began. The steam engine designed by Watt had been applied to a good many purposes of manufacture before the new century began, though not without doubts and misgivings on the part both of the employers and employed; but the meaning of the new discovery to the world's progress had not really dawned on the public mint*. It was the development uf the idea by Robert Fulton and others about the same time that gave the v»orld the first real impression that a new age, and not merely a new century, had be-

gun. The first steamboat that navr gated the Hudson, indeed, gave but a small indication of what the future had in store; just as it is more than likely the dirigible bal'oona and aeroplanes of to-day give a feeble indication of the airships of the future, and their meaning to the world. A steamer which made the voyage of 150 miles from New York to Albany in 32 hours does not seem to us a very wonderful advance upon the schooners that, ; with a fair wind, could sometimes make the voyage in even less time. The wonder was that the voyage, under the new conditions, was comparatively independent of winds and currents. We can hardly suppose that even then the inventor of the new steamship had any conception of what a single century would bring forth as the result of his invention ; yet it is true that, in a sense, the credit is due to him, as the leader of the thought that has defied the elements, and linked the nations together.