CHAPTER I. STATESMANSHIP IN ITS RELATION TO WAR. Under this head are included those considerations from which a statesman concludes whether a war is proper, opportune, or indispensable, and determines the various operations necessary to attain the object of the war. A government goes to war,— To reclaim certain rights or to defend them; To protect and maintain the great interests of the state, as commerce, manufactures, or... more...

In an inventive tour de force that seldom, if ever, has been equalled for its brilliance and far-reaching consequences, James Watt radically altered the steam engine not only by adding a separate condenser but by creating a whole new family of linkages. His approach was largely empirical, as we use the word today. This study suggests that, despite the glamor of today's sophisticated methods of calculation, a highly developed intuitive sense,... more...

INTRODUCTORY Electricity, like every science, presents two phases to the student, one belonging to a theoretical knowledge, and the other which pertains to the practical application of that knowledge. The boy is directly interested in the practical use which he can make of this wonderful phenomenon in nature. It is, in reality, the most successful avenue by which he may obtain the theory, for he learns the abstract more readily from concrete... more...

INTRODUCTION THE Germans interpret their new national colours—black, red, and white—by the saying, "Durch Nacht und Blut zur licht." ("Through night and blood to light"), and no work yet written conveys to the thinker a clearer conception of all that the red streak in their flag stands for than this deep and philosophical analysis of "War" by Clausewitz. It reveals "War," stripped of all accessories, as the exercise of force for the... more...

CHAPTER I ACOUSTICS Telephony is the art of reproducing at a distant point, usually by the agency of electricity, sounds produced at a sending point. In this art the elements of two general divisions of physical science are concerned, sound and electricity. Sound is the effect of vibrations of matter upon the ear. The vibrations may be those of air or other matter. Various forms of matter transmit sound vibrations in varying degrees, at... more...

PREFACE "Let posterity know, and knowing be astonished, that on the fifteenth day of September, 1784, Vincent Lunardi of Lucca, in Tuscany, the first aerial traveller in Britain, mounting from the Artillery Ground in London, and traversing the regions of the air for two hours and fifteen minutes, on this spot revisited the earth. In this rude monument for ages be recorded this wondrous enterprise successfully achieved by the powers of chemistry... more...

FOREWORD We are not tied to a desk or to a bench; we stay there only because we think we are tied. In Montana I had a horse, which was hobbled every night to keep him from wandering; that is, straps joined by a short chain were put around his forefeet, so that he could only hop. The hobbles were taken off in the morning, but he would still hop until he saw his mate trotting off. This book is intended to show how any one can trot off if he... more...

CHAPTER I ESSENTIALS OF SUCCESS Columella, the much traveled Spanish-Roman writer of the first century A. D., said that for successful farming three things are essential: knowledge, capital and love for the calling. This statement is just as true today as it was when written 1900 years ago by this early writer on European agriculture. Every man who loves the calling and has an ambition to become a successful farmer should understand that no... more...

THE MEN BEHIND THE MACHINES I MACHINES. AS SEEN FROM A MEADOW It would be difficult to find anything in the encyclopedia that would justify the claim that we are about to make, or anything in the dictionary. Even a poem—which is supposed to prove anything with a little of nothing—could hardly be found to prove it; but in this beginning hour of the twentieth century there are not a few of us—for the time at least allowed to... more...

ANNOUNCER In the year 1661 Connecticut received from the hand of Charles the Second a very liberal charter granting to the people of the colony almost complete self-government and to the colony an enormous stretch of territory extending westward to the Pacific Ocean. For fifteen years the colony prospered under the generous charter. Then in 1676 trouble arose with the Governor of New York, Sir Edmund Andros, about the boundary line between the... more...