Visual Education (Jan-Nov 1920)

Foreword 3 gyroscopic governors of modem Archimedes , his water elevator, and numerous other ingenuities that he did not think worthy of record in his writings, these were the things thai gave the greal geometrician his w • m the ancient world. The mass of his contemporarii • zled by his minor achievements. These device fascinated ratlin than served; their appeal reached first the emotions which are quick to respond, rather than the reason which is slow. Men were children in the presence of a oovelty in those days. have they changed much since in this respect. When the omnipotent little Printing Press assisted at the birth of the modern world and made effective the power of the human intellect — the most suhtle and resistless force in the —-many a learned mind and pious heart grieved at this invention of the deviJ ; for it poured forth so many frivolities which would lead the world inevitably to perdition. The first dingy efforts of Daguerre amused, hut hardly sugg the dazzling future of Photography. Yet think of the toiling cameras today, snapping ceaselessly around the world; at midnight, at noon; in thousand of workshops and laboratories, engraving plants and glaring studios; on the earth, in the air, under the sea; endlessly turning out their mighty values for the world of business. Photography has passed the amusement stage. The click of the summerresort snapshot is drowned in the chorus of commercial shutters. The dominant emotions experienced in the first steps of modern transportation sprang from the fascination of being moved from one place to another by a lifeless mechanism; not from the consciousness that a revolution in human living was at hand. The first trains were for the curious — gaily-dressed, beparasolled ladies with their escorts, adventurers out for a thrilling holiday. Freight — the world's sustenance today — was an afterthought. The first steamships carried chattering passengers, not merchandise. Now the whole face of the sea is wrinkled with wakes of a myriad ships, but most of them are "tramps/' not "greyhounds." Eecall the merry velocipede and the bicycle that followed it to its more and more utilitarian destiny. The horseless "carriage" preceded the "truck." The aeroplane carried no mail nor ammunition till it had carried sportsmen and professional entertainers. The first occupation of the Roentgen rays was to show to titillating witnesses coins in leather purses and nails in shoe-heels. Yet modern medical science owes its astounding progress largely to these same X-rays. The Wireless Telegraph was long a prize attraction on the lecture platform. It put many little lecturers on the road to success before it set struggling ships on their course through the storm. It was amusing thousands in Chautauqua tents before it began keeping millions safe on the high seas. The Phonograph was merely "funny" at the start. Prom its early success in the penny arcades, it has become a genuine cultural force among America's millions. The art of Literature benefited hardly more by Printing than the art of Music henefits by the Phonograph. The Stereopticon and the Stereoscope have had a similar career. The former went through a novelty period, but few educators today would deny that the lantern slide is a cultural and educational means of high value. The Stereoscope's first mission was to supply summer-vacation wages to student canvassers and breathless entertainment to