The telephone, wireless telegraphy, the steam engine, refrigeration, the washing and sewing machines, the mechanical weaving of cloth, and the myriad uses of electric and atomic power will make man the master of his destiny once he frees himself from the myth of a tyrant God. Ingersoll best expressed man's inventions and their uses when he said that, "Science took the thunderbolt from the gods, and in the electric spark, freedom, with thought, with intelligence and with love, sweeps under all the waves of the sea; science, free thought, took a tear from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into steam, and created the giant that turns, with tireless arms, the countless wheels of toil." Deprive man of the use of his discoveries and inventions of the past century and he will think he has been returned to barbarism. Look what Thomas A. Edison's invention of the electric light did for man--it lengthened his life, it gave more hours to the day, and increased his comforts beyond anything previously known or imagined, and added immeasurably to his joy of living. Even Joshua's fictitious performance of stopping the sun and the moon fades into nothingness when compared with this sublime achievement. Nor must we forget Edison's invention for reproducing the human voice--and please grant me a moment's indulgence to say that I had the great honor to know Thomas A. Edison, and Edison honored me by calling me his friend. If printing has been hailed as one of the world's great inventions, what must we say of the phonograph? While printing preserves man's thoughts on paper, the phonograph preserves not only his thoughts but also his voice! The song of the skylark is no longer "wasted upon the desert air." Thomas A. Edison--the greatest of human benefactors--wrested from nature her most guarded secret--the mystery of the human voice. He disproved, as it was once believed, that the human voice, like the heart, was the "gift of God." He demonstrated that the human voice was merely the natural mechanism of sound produced by air of the lungs passing over the "cords" of the throat and larynx in the same manner as are sounds produced by the strings of a musical instrument. As a result of Edison's invention, man himself has already produced artificially every manifestation of the human voice! If the voice was part of "God's plan," how do we account for its absence in the giraffe? This animal has no larynx and therefore no vocal cords, and as a consequence it cannot talk or make sounds with its throat! The giraffe is proof of the lack of design in nature and the blindness of the forces of evolutionary life. To list all the great discoveries in the field of science and medicine during the past century, such as aspirin, insulin, penicillin, and the streptomycin drugs would require the undivided attention of a medical historian and a veritable encyclopedia to record them.