Standardization, due to the machine tool, is one of the chief
glories of American manufacturing. Accurate watches and clocks,
bicycles and motor cars, innumerable devices to save labor in the
home, the office, the shop, or on the farm, are within the reach
of all, because the machine tool, tended by labor comparatively
unskilled, does the greater part of the work of production. In
the crisis of the World War, American manufacturers, turning from
the arts of peace, promptly adapted their plants to the
manufacture of the most complicated engines of destruction, which
were produced in Europe only by skilled machinists of the highest
class.
CHAPTER IX. THE FATHERS OF ELECTRICITY
It may startle some reader to be told that the foundations of
modern electrical science were definitely established in the
Elizabethan Age. The England of Elizabeth, of Shakespeare, of
Drake and the sea-dogs, is seldom thought of as the cradle of the
science of electricity. Nevertheless, it was; just as surely as
it was the birthplace of the Shakespearian drama, of the
Authorized Version of the Bible, or of that maritime adventure
and colonial enterprise which finally grew and blossomed into the
United States of America.
The accredited father of the science of electricity and magnetism
is William Gilbert, who was a physician and man of learning at
the court of Elizabeth.
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