The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century

Edward Wright Byrn

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The 1800s saw a meteoric rise in modern technology in many areas. The century set the stage for modern life with developments such as the electric light, the electric motor, the telephone, the sewing machine, the automobile, and X-rays. The difference between life in 1800 and 1900 is extreme, as the pace of invention in the 19th century rapidly increased.

This book, published in 1900, is an overview of the major areas of technological change that ushered in life as it was in the 20th century. Many more changes were to come, as we know by our experience of life in the 21st. But the basis of developments up to the present day began to be built over 200 years ago.

“Whatever the future centuries may bring in new and useful inventions, certain it is that the Nineteenth Century stands pre-eminent in this field of human achievement, so far excelling all other like periods as to establish on the pages of history an epoch as remarkable as it is unique. Never before has human conception so expressed itself in materialized embodiment, never has thought been so fruitfully wedded to the pregnant possibilities of matter, never has the divine function of creation been so closely approximated, never has such an accretion of helpful instrumentalities and material resources been added to the world’s wealth… ideas wrought into practical, substantive things, tried and proven true, these are inventions—immortal creations—and of these the Nineteenth Century has borne fruit in paramount abundance, and this legacy it now bequeaths to the coming century.” - Summary by Verla Viera and Epilogue (16 hr 38 min)