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13 J. Pat. Off. Soc'y 547 (1931)
The Ten Greatest Inventions of Our Time

handle is hein.journals/jpatos13 and id is 567 raw text is: November, 1931, Vol. XIII, No. 11 The Ten Greatest Inventions of Our Time From the Scientific American, November 1, 1913 By WM. I. WYMAN. Editorial Note: The accompanying essay, reprint- ed by permission, and in connection with the article which follows, received the first prize in the contest for an essay on the subject What Are the Ten Greatest Inventions of Our Time, and Why? The contest was open to the whole world and con- testants from Belgium, England and Malta received honorable mention. The inventions to be listed were limited to those of commercial importance and introduced or patented in the 25 years preceding the contest date. Five-and-twenty years ago is a hundred years off-so much has our social life changed in those five lusters.-Thackeray In The Newcomes. N O single invention of the last twenty-five years initiated an industrial epoch in the sense that the locomotive or Bes- semer converter did, yet no former period has been so rich in developments of striking importance or so productive of im- provements whose aggregate so vitally affected our economic and social life. In this short space of time the dreams of ages have come true-man has been able to fly, opaque bodies rendered transparent, and intelligence transmitted between distant points without material communicating means. This short quarter century has seen the world-wide acceptance of electrical transportation, the introduction of high-power gen- eration and transmission of electricity, the radical changes in construction due to the use of steel and re-enforced concrete, and innumerable valuable improvements in chemical and allied arts. Perfected during this period were such epoch-making in- ventions as smokeless powder, high-speed steel, contact method of making sulphuric acid, electrolytic refining of copper, the quick-acting brake, automatic telephone exchange, centrifugal cream-separator, tungsten lamp, Diesel oil-motor, and Harvey- ized armor-plate, which changed existing practices so radically or induced economics of such vast degree as to make it difficult to exclude them from any list except by the adoption of a stand- ard so high as to be unthought of at any other time. In making a selection from the bewilderingly opulent array of creative activities of the period, only such inventions were in-

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