Detail scrutiny of any one of the greater mechanical inventions, or series of inventions, will bring out something of the same character as is seen in the sequence of successive gains that make up the history of the steam engine. It is to be noted in this connection that time appears to be of the essence of the process of mechanical invention in any field; so much so, indeed, that it will commonly be found that any single inventor contributes but one radical innovation in any one particular connection; which may then presently be taken up again as a securely objective element by a later inventor and pushed forward by a new move as radical as that to which this original invention owed its origin. This time interval which plays such a part in mechanical inventions appears necessary only as an interval of habituation, for the due externalisation of the element, to relieve it, by neglect, of the personal equation with which it is contaminated as it first comes into use, and so to leave it such an objective concept as may be turned to account as mere technological raw material. It appears, then, that the accumulation of technological experience is not of itself sufficient to bring out a consecutive improvement of the industrial arts, particularly not such an advance in the industrial arts as is embodied in the machine technology of late-modern times. In this modern machine technology the ruling norm is the highly impersonal, not to say brutal, concept of mechanical process, blind and irresponsible. The logic of this technology, accordingly, is the logic of the machine process,--a logic of masses, velocities, strains and thrusts, not of personal dexterity, tact, training, and routine. In the degree in which the information that comes to hand comes encumbered with a teleological bias, a connotation of personal bent, it is unavailable or refractory under this logic. But all new information is infused with such an anthropomorphic colouring of personality; which may presently decay and give place to a more objective habitual apprehension of the facts in case use and wont play up the mechanical character and bearing of these facts in subsequent experience of them; or which may on the other hand end by giving its definitive character and value to the acquired information in case it should happen that the facts of experience are by use and wont bent to an habitual anthropomorphic rating and employment. To serve the needs of this machine technology, therefore, the information which accumulates must in some measure be divested of its naïve personal colouring by use and wont; and the degree in which this effect is had is a measure of the degree of availability of the resulting facts for the uses of the machine technology. The larger the available body of information of this character, and the more comprehensive and unremitting the share taken by the discipline of the machine process in the routine of daily