Friday, December 31, 1999; Page A01

Excerpts from "the first rough draft of history" as reported in

The Washington Post on this date in the 20th century.

On Dec. 31, 1900, readers of The Washington Post found on Page 3 a remarkable article that spoke of the technological advances of the previous century and speculated on those to come in the next. We end this year-long series with an excerpt from that story, by Post reporter Henry Litchfield West, which was memorable for its poetry, and prescience, and most of all for its charmingly benign view of the march of progress.

The first patent granted by the United States in the century that is just closing was dated Jan. 17, 1801, and was issued to John Cannon for a machine for breaking flax. The last patent of the century was allowed on the 25th of December, was numbered 664,826, and was granted to Henry C. Weeks for improved driving gear for bicycles. Nearly 700,000 inventions, therefore, in a century, nearly all of them, however, within the last twenty-five years. It is a marvelous record of one nation's development in industrial progress.

The man who lived in the year 1800 was in peaceful ignorance of the wonderful discoveries which have made the closing century memorable in the annals of the world. He knew that there was a curious substance known as electricity; he had seen steam whenever he had looked upon boiling water, and he knew that revolving wheels lessened the friction of vehicle and made transportation possible. In each of these things, however, there was the germ of tremendous possibilities beyond his ken. The man fortunate enough to live in 1900 knows that the telegraph and telephone annihilate space; that messages can be transmitted through the air; that railroad trains can be run at the rate of sixty, seventy, and even ninety miles an hour, and that balloon cars are the subject of daily experiment. He does not know to what extent these things may be the germ of future wonders, but, acquainted with the marvels of the past, he does not hesitate to believe that the threshold of miracles has only been crossed.

But what are to be the miracles of the twentieth century? What is there left to discover? How much farther can the mind of man penetrate into the mysteries of nature and make secret forces obey his will?

In the matter of land transportation the development has been tremendous, and yet the probability is that within the next one hundred years the ratio of progress will be enormously increased. Let us see, however, what this means. At the beginning of the century mail coaches traveled at the average rate of six miles an hour. To-day mail trains speed along at sixty miles an hour without jar or jolt. This is ten times as fast. If only the same proportion of increase is maintained, the year 2000 will see a distance of 600 miles covered in an hour -- the journey from Washington to Chicago occupying only seventy or eighty minutes. This seems incredible, but is not more marvelous than it would have seemed in 1800 to suggest that the forty miles between Washington and Baltimore could be traveled in forty minutes. . . .

There is one natural force which must be taken into consideration when the improvement of railroad travel is considered. This is gravitation. Tremendous speed means the overcoming of gravitation. It will be necessary, therefore, when we reach the really rapid schedule of 600 miles an hour to devise some plan of preventing the cars from flying into space. This can be done, of course, and will be done, just as all other problems have been met and conquered in the past.

If there seem to be limitations to the present methods of railroad travel, still more apparent are the restrictions which confront ocean transportation. Ships have been ships since Noah built the ark and Ulysses sailed to the island of the Cyclops. It is, of course, a wonderful advance from the six weeks' cruise of the ancient and slow sailing ships from Liverpool to New York to the brief trip of five or six days, but the time seems to have arrived when the lowering of the record is a matter of minutes.

It would seem therefore, as if the ocean carrier of the next century, keeping pace with the mad race against time, would be something radically different from the steamship with which we are now acquainted. . . . It is not beyond probability . . . that some means will be found of obtaining the electricity from the air and transmitting it directly to the machinery, giving to the propellers a rapidity of revolution not now possible, at a minimum of cost and storage space.

The limitations imposed by the attraction of gravitation upon land and by the frictional resistance of an almost solid mass of water at sea suggest that, after all, the great discoveries of the coming century, in the matter of transportation, will be in the navigation of the air. Up to the present time nothing of real practicability has been accomplished in this direction. . . . The most scientific minds of the world are now devoting themselves to a solution of the problem of aerial navigation, and the successful result of their effort is absolutely certain. Dirigible balloons are even now not unknown, and the time is not far distant when aerial cars will ply between great centers of population, arriving and departing upon fixed schedules and carrying their human cargoes.

It seems strange, of course, to talk about aerial trains, and the thought of them is inseparably connected with the danger of falling headlong to the earth. As a matter of fact, the first experiments will be accomplished with serious mishaps, and conservative people will prefer the slower and safer travel, just as many of our forefathers chose the stage coach and wagon rather than the railroad train. Aerial navigation, however, seems to be the only method now apparent by which time and space can be more completely annihilated than it is at present; and as the tendency of the world is constantly toward this annihilation, the inventive minds will devote themselves to perfecting overhead transportation until practical results are accomplished.

In the field of electricity the possibilities of the future are beyond human comprehension. The telegraph and the telephone, the two marvels of the closing century, are in their infancy. The time is not far distant when the instruments which are now regarded with wonder will be discarded as obsolete and crude. It is something nowadays to talk over a wire from Washington to Chicago, but in the future it will be easier to converse with your friend in London or Calcutta than it is now to speak to your next-door neighbor.

The fact is that we have not yet fathomed the mystery of electricity. Scientists believe that it is akin to light and heat, emanating from the sun, and while they grope darkly for its origin, practical men are utilizing its force. Marconi is struggling to conquer the mysterious something which is in the atmosphere, and is astounding the world with the possibilities of wireless telegraphy. Some of these days a now unborn Marconi will capture the elusive agency, and then all mankind will wonder why it was never discovered before. Much has been done since Franklin brought down the lightning from the sky with his silk thread and iron key, but the door to the future is hardly ajar, much less fully opened. When all that is to be learned about electricity is brought within human ken the mind will be staggered at the possibilities which will be revealed. Electricity is light and heat and power, combining within itself the three great agencies upon which the earth depends. It is also death. Its development in warfare might easily bring the world to a point where mankind would stand aghast at the wholesale destruction of human lives, and thus compel universal peace. And as it is death, so may it also be life. Of all the wonders which are in store in the twentieth century nothing would be more remarkable than the unveiling of the mystery of life -- a mystery which is still a mystery, though thousands of years have passed since the first man breathed the breath of life.

Ever since this world was evolved out of chaos dreamers have dreamed strange things. It is a curious but established fact that to these dreamers we owe the great discoveries which we laud to-day, and which reconcile our minds to the wildest flights of fancy for the future. Ptolemy was a dreamer. Galileo was a dreamer. Columbus had visions of lands beyond the sea. In more modern times the dreamers who wrote and the dreamers who executed have gone hand in hand. Jules Verne dreamed of a submarine vessel, and it is now a realization. He also imagined a voyage to the moon, and if that still remains a bit of fiction there is no good reason why it should not some day be transformed into result. . . .

The progress of the world in the century which is just closing has been almost wholly in the direction of material development. It would not be surprising if, in the century that is to come, there should be a marked tendency toward more thorough investigation of mental and psychic phenomena, and if this should prove to be the case, no man can forecast the marvelous discoveries which will make the century memorable. If, on the other hand, material things are still to largely engross human attention, we can discard wild imagination and confidently anticipate the all-important revelation of the new century. This will be the art of obtaining and utilizing energy from its original source. We know, and have known for centuries, something about this energy. It is crystallized in fuel. Upon this the world is absolutely dependent. It underlies everything. It makes light and heat. It produces power. . . . With the tremendous demands which are being made by material progress upon the fuel supply, the day will come when the great storehouses of energy in the mines will be exhausted, and we must look to the fountain head. There will be a universal cry for power, more power. We know already that this power is latent in the sun's rays and is dispensed with wanton extravagance. There is, of course, above and beyond this, and yet possibly akin to it, a mysterious force which controls the planets in their pathways and holds the sidereal universe in its strong embrace. Much nearer, however, and more attainable, is the energy which emanates from the sun. It is more than light, more than heat, more than electricity. It exists, but, like the escaping steam of Watt's kettle, is unharnessed. It is in the atmosphere, waiting for the genius which will triumphantly seize and improve it. And when this initial energy, now untrammeled, shall be captured and made to do man's bidding, all the marvels which the nineteenth century has witnessed will be as the days that are past.

HENRY LITCHFIELD WEST.

Wonder what the next 100 years might hold? See the Outlook section on Sunday.