Review of Reviews,  9 (1894), 552–59.

The Progress of the World

Anon

Genre:

Regular Feature, Editorial, News-Commentary

Relevant illustrations:

eng. [2]

Subjects:

Invention, Discovery, Military Technology, War, Engineering, Publishing, Technology, Patronage


    Speculates as to whether it is 'possible that the invention of the German journeyman tailor Dowe of an impenetrable breastplate, made apparently of cloth and asbestos, may [...] tend to postpone the much-dreaded war'. Dowe has 'discovered how to manufacture a material which stops rifle-bullets', and if the 'military authorities decide that their soldiers must be cloth-plated, there will be no war until the men have got their new suits'. Even then 'somebody else may discover something else, and the war may again be put off. M. Turpin, for instance, is announcing the invention of a new engine of destruction which the Germans have snapped up. The invention and science of chemists and journeyman tailors may in the long run be more efficacious in postponing war than the exhortations of the churches or the efforts of the diplomatists'. (555) Records the official opening of the Manchester Ship Canal, and reports that the 'success of the Manchester Canal is now giving birth to other schemes of like nature. The talk now is of a canal to cost £6,000,000, which will enable Transatlantic liners to load and discharge in the heart of the West Riding. That is mere talk, at least as yet' (557–58). Also applauds the award of a knighthood to Isaac Pitman, who is 'best known to the world as the inventor of the system of stenography by the aid of which almost every important speech now finds its way into print' (558).



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