Discoveries and Inventions of the 20th century

Description

These are followed by chapters on electric lighting and heating, new processes in the manufacture and treatment of steel, some typical modern devices in the engineering workshop and the factory, and the extraordinary number of manufacturing processes which have their birth in the electric furnaces. From the highest temperatures which man has, so far, been able to produce the book passes to a consideration of the artificial production of cold and its applications in the manufacture of ice, cold storage on land and sea, and the liquefaction of gases. This chapter is succeeded by one dealing with the interesting facts which have recently been discovered relating to the fertility of the soil and the yield and quality of wheat. One of the most characteristic features of the twentieth century is the improvement in transport and communication, and Chapters XII to XVII contain some account of railways, electric traction, motor-cars, modern ships, aeroplanes and airships, and wireless telegraphy. The constitution and some of the weapons of a twentieth-century navy are described in Chapter XVIII; Chapter XIX deals with the photography of colour and of bodies in motion; and the book closes with a brief account of the recent marvellous discoveries relating to radium, electricity, and matter.