From Thales to Tesla

Franklin, Franklin - Volta, Volta - Faraday, Faraday - Morse, Morse - Tesla. There is a formula not algebraic but convenient, which, imagination aiding, represents the diminishing leaps that electricity has taken in avoiding capture by man. The archaic and monstrous reptile is not wholly fanged as yet. But its elusiveness is clipped. In the processes to which it has been yoked the world is assisting at the domestication of an enigma. Presently it will be quite tame. Meanwhile from the garrulities of its purr the solution of multiple mysteries is obtainable. Wherever thought is, there, too, are sentries of science, a hand to the ear, listening. Among them is Moissan. Recently the monitions which he intercepted were so luminous that he saw diamonds, he saw more, he saw nature in her laboratory, and, following her method, with little else than iron, a crucible, electricity and brains, he produced solid sparks, little gems which are real diamonds. Memory aided, of course. He knew that Sir Humphry Davy had shown that the diamond is formed of but two elements - time and carbon. But though Sir Humphry could dissolve he could not construct. Carbon he could manage, yet not time. For time Moissan substituted electricity; or, more exactly, an electric furnace in which the heat equals that of the sun, the bowels of the earth, the throne of Satan - four thousand degrees Centigrade. Into it the iron went. The result was dissolved carbon in a crystalline form, and behold! the chemist had assisted at the birth of a diamond. Similarly from silica opals come. The receipt for a ruby reads, First get your aluminium. Given now an oven and a little cook-book and we won't have to go to Tiffany for our groceries any more. To such feminine uses will the reptile come.