The influence of invention on history has been to bring about such victories as that of the _Monitor_ over the _Merrimac_; and the influence of those victories has been to enhance the advantages possessed by the more highly civilized. Furthermore, the victory of the more civilized has given civilization greater assurance in its struggle to go still higher, just as defeat has made it pause and sometimes retreat. The issue of the Civil War, for instance, was more than a victory over slavery and the tendency to dissipation of energy by a division into two parts of the forces of the country; for it removed permanently a highly injurious obstruction and started the rejuvenated republic along that career of progress which it has followed since so valiantly. In 1861 E. G. Otis invented the passenger elevator. Possibly this was not an invention of the first order of brilliancy, but certainly it was an invention of the first order of utility. Can anyone imagine the New York of today without passenger elevators? The Otis elevator has not made it possible to grow two blades of grass where one blade grew before; but it has made it possible to operate hotels and office buildings of more than twice as many stories as could be operated before. Few inventions have had more immediate influence on contemporary history than the passenger elevator. In the same year was invented the barbed-wire fence. The production of carbide of calcium followed in 1862, and also the invention of the Gatling gun. This was the first successful machine gun, and an invention of a high order of brilliancy of conception, excellence of construction and practical usefulness. Few inventions have been more wholly unique than this machine: so beautiful and harmonious and simple in principle--though devoted superficially merely to the killing and wounding of men. Like all inventions in the gun class, it contributed to the self-protectiveness of the Machine. An invention in a similar class, smokeless gunpowder was invented by Schultze in 1863, for use as a sporting powder. Being based on the action of nitric acid on cellulose, it was somewhat like gun-cotton, and therefore a chemical compound; rather than a mechanical mixture like the old gunpowder. It gave out but little smoke when fired. Smokelessness would be such an obvious advantage in military operations, that the study of this powder was prosecuted carefully, with a view to obtaining a smokeless powder suitable for military purposes. This was accomplished in 1886 by Vieille in France. The invention of smokeless powder was not one of a high order of brilliancy for the reason that it was the result of a long series of painstaking investigations and not of any luminous idea. It was nevertheless a contribution of the highest usefulness to the self-protectiveness of the Machine, and therefore to Civilization.