The Faber Book of Science (23 page)

In Pasteur’s era the problem was becoming especially severe. Life was increasingly under rational control, so each loss of life seemed more objectionable, wrong. There also seems to have been a decrease in genuine popular belief in religion. The conjunction meant that there was an especially strong interest in altered forms of the body that had any sort of immortality to offer. One of these was patriotism, a continuation of that Kingly identification with the whole mass of living creatures in a political unit. But another, not a consolation but still a terrible fascination, was that mass of small creatures, that whole distorted society in miniature, which yet also happened to be immortal: the bacteria. Organisms known to science before that – cows, humans, daffodils – were not immortal. These were. The first journalists and royalty who peered through the microscopes in Pasteur’s or Koch’s laboratory to see the bacteria consistently reported this fascination.

Along with these factors of individual psychology, there were changes in the whole society to make Pasteur’s concept so readily picked up in this particular era. The increased life expectancy meant that population was growing, a lot. Also there was a great amount of internal migration, from one country to another, and from the land to the city. There were perhaps 100 million more people in Europe in 1900 than in 1870. Strange things happened. In 1830 a swampy settlement by one of the American Great Lakes had a population of under 100. By 1890 it was the city of Chicago, with a population of one million.

There were not enough accepted institutions to handle all these new bodies. Guilds were gone, upper and middle society seemed closed, and so enormous numbers were left in between: working, or joining trade unions, or just being – always in those great numbers, always milling and jumbling and getting in the way of the established citizens and of each other. One would not need to have been M. Pasteur to be attuned to swarming masses with that going on.

In the heavens we discover by their light, and by their light alone, stars so distant from each other that no material thing can ever have passed from one to another; and yet this light, which is to us the sole evidence of the existence of these distant worlds, tells us also that each of them is built up of molecules of the same kinds as those which we find on earth. A molecule of hydrogen, for example, whether in Sirius or in Arcturus, executes its vibrations in precisely the same time.

Each molecule therefore throughout the universe bears impressed upon it the stamp of a metric system as distinctly as does the metre of the Archives at Paris, or the double royal cubit of the temple of Karnac.

No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction.

None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of
the molecules or the identity of their properties to any of the causes which we call natural.

On the other hand, the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel [English astronomer 1792–1871] has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent.

Thus we have been led, along a strictly scientific path, very near to the point at which Science must stop, – not that Science is debarred from studying the internal mechanism of a molecule which she cannot take to pieces, any more than from investigating an organism which she cannot put together. But in tracing back the history of matter, Science is arrested when she assures herself, on the one hand, that the molecule has been made, and, on the other, that it has not been made by any of the processes we call natural …

Natural causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, if they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built – the foundation-stones of the material universe – remain unbroken and unworn. They continue this day as they were created – perfect in number and measure and weight; and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations after accuracy in measurement, and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are essential constituents of the image of Him who in the beginning created, not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials of which heaven and earth consist.

The hunt was a long, tedious one. Many materials which at first seemed promising fell down under later tests and had to be laid aside. Every experiment was recorded methodically in the notebooks. In many there was simply the name of the fiber and after it the initials ‘T. A.,’ meaning ‘Try Again.’

Literally hundreds of experiments were made on different sorts of fiber; for the master seemed determined to exhaust them all. Threads of cotton, flax, jute silks, cords, manila hemp and even hard woods were tried.

Some of the fibers being worked at the moment were piled conveniently on top of the chest; and today you may see them still in the same spot. Others were stored in jars along the shelves. An examination of the labels on the jars as they stand today on the shelves along the east wall of the restored laboratory will give an idea of what an infinite variety were examined.

Chinese and Italian raw silk both boiled out and otherwise treated were among those used. Others included horsehair, fish line, teak, spruce, boxwood, vulcanized rubber, cork, celluloid, grass fibres from everywhere, linen twine, tar paper, wrapping paper, cardboard, tissue paper, parchment, holly wood, absorbent cotton, rattan, California redwood, raw jute fiber, corn silk, and New Zealand flax.

The most interesting material of all that we used in our researches after a successful filament was the hair from the luxurious beards of some of the men about the laboratory. There was the great ‘derby,’ in which we had a contest between filaments made from the beards of [John] Kruesi and J. U. Mackenzie, to see which would last the longer in a lamp. Bets were placed with much gusto by the supporters of the two men, and many arguments held over the rival merits of their beards.

Kruesi, you know, was a cool mountaineer from Switzerland possessed of a bushy black beard. Mackenzie was the station master at Mt. Clemens, Michigan, who had taught telegraphy to the chief in the early days after the young Edison had saved the life of Mackenzie’s small son Jimmy. His beard, or rather, his burnsides, were stiff and bristling.

As I now recall, he won the contest, though some claimed that an unfair advantage was given him; that less current was used on the filament made from his beard than on that from Kruesi’s. Be that as it may, both burned out with considerable rapidity.

Edison’s electric light, incredible as it may appear, is produced from a little piece of paper – a tiny strip of paper that a breath would blow away. Through this little strip of paper is passed an electric current, and the result is a bright, beautiful light, like the mellow sunset of an Italian autumn.

‘But paper instantly burns, even under the trifling heat of a tallow candle!’ exclaims the sceptic, ‘and how, then, can it withstand the fierce heat of an electric current.’ Very true, but Edison makes the little piece of paper more infusible than platinum, more durable than granite. And this involves no complicated process. The paper is merely baked in an oven until all its elements have passed away except its carbon framework. The latter is then placed in a glass globe connected with the wires leading to the electricity producing machine, and the air exhausted from the globe. Then the apparatus is ready to give out a
light that produces no deleterious gases, no smoke, no offensive odors – a light without flame, without danger, requiring no matches to ignite, giving out but little heat, vitiating no air, and free from all flickering; a light that is a little globe of sunshine, a veritable Aladdin’s lamp. And this light, the inventor claims, can be produced cheaper than that from the cheapest oil.

Edison’s laboratory was tonight thrown open to the general public for the inspection of his electric light. Extra trains were run from east and west, and notwithstanding the stormy weather, hundreds of persons availed themselves of the privilege. The laboratory was brilliantly illuminated with twenty-five electric lamps, the office and counting room with eight, and twenty others were distributed in the street leading to the depot and in some of the adjoining houses. The entire system was explained in detail by Edison and his assistants, and the light was subjected to a variety of tests. Among others the inventor placed one of the electric lamps in a large glass jar filled with water and turned on the current, the little horseshoe filament when this submerged burned with the same bright steady illumination as it did in the air, the water not having the slightest effect upon it. The lamp was kept thus under water for four hours. Another test was turning the electric current on and off on one of the lamps with great rapidity and as many times as it was calculated the light would be turned on and off in actual household illuminations in a period of thirty years, and no perceptible variation either in the brilliancy, steadiness or durability of the lamp occurred.

It is widely believed that Bird's custard is one of the earliest examples of ‘convenience foods' or of regrettable substitutes designed purely to reduce the cost and the time of preparation of a dish. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, the invention of Bird's custard is a shining example of alleviating a deprivation caused by cruel nature.

Alfred Bird, whose father taught astronomy at Eton, was born in 1811 in Birmingham and in 1837 established himself as an analytical and retail pharmaceutical chemist there. When he married Elizabeth Lavinia Ragg he faced a challenge which was to influence his career. His young wife suffered from a digestive disorder which prevented her from eating anything prepared with eggs or with yeast. But Elizabeth Lavinia was apparently yearning for custard to go with her favourite fruit pies so Alfred Bird started experimenting in his shop. The result was the custard powder bearing his name and based on cornflour, which when mixed with milk produced, after heating, a sauce reminiscent in appearance, taste and consistency of a genuine
egg-and
-milk custard sauce.

The young wife was overjoyed and this substitute custard became the normal accompaniment to puddings at the Birds' dinner table, though, when they entertained, genuine custard sauce was offered to their guests. Then came an occasion when, whether by accident or by design, ‘Bird's custard' was served and Alfred must have been gratified to hear his guests declare that it was the best custard they had ever tasted!

This then was the beginning of the firm Alfred Bird and Sons Ltd of Birmingham which for 120 years remained a family business, first under the chairmanship of the founder, then of his son, Sir Alfred Bird Bt and then of his grandson Sir Robert Bird Bt. While the firm's main
product remained custard powder Alfred Bird's other invention to circumvent his wife's digestive troubles, namely baking powder, was also manufactured and was used during the Crimean war so that British troops could be given fresh, palatable bread.

Alfred Bird was a Fellow of the Chemical Society and, a few months after his death on 2 December 1878, a brief obituary was published in the
Journal
of
the
Chemical
Society,
Vol. 35, p. 206, 1879. It described at some length Bird's interest in physics and meteorology, thus: ‘He constructed a beautiful set of harmonized glass bowls extending over 5 octaves which he used to play with much skill'; and ‘in 1859 he constructed a water barometer with which he was fond of observing and showing to others the minute oscillations of the atmospheric pressure'. But of Bird's Custard Powder – not a word!