Then dealt with by the scientific methods of mathematical discussion and experiment, and practical application made of the result, it has permitted men to communicate instantaneously with each other across continents and under oceans.

It has centralized the world.

By enabling the sovereign authority to transmit its mandates without regard to distance or to time, it has revolutionized statesmanship and condensed political power.
In the Museum of Alexandria there was a machine invented by Hero, the mathematician, a little more than one hundred years before Christ.

It revolved by the agency of steam, and was of the form that we should now call a reaction-engine.

This, the germ of one of the most important inventions ever made, was remembered as a mere curiosity for seventeen hundred years.
Chance had nothing to do with the invention of the modern steam-engine.
It was the product of meditation and experiment.