The present machines are to the
future as the early Saurians to man. The largest of them will probably
greatly diminish in size. Some of the lowest vertebrate attained a much
greater bulk than has descended to their more highly organised living
representatives, and in like manner a diminution in the size of machines
has often attended their development and progress.
"Take the watch, for example; examine its beautiful structure; observe
the intelligent play of the minute members which compose it: yet this
little creature is but a development of the cumbrous clocks that preceded
it; it is no deterioration from them. A day may come when clocks, which
certainly at the present time are not diminishing in bulk, will be
superseded owing to the universal use of watches, in which case they will
become as extinct as ichthyosauri, while the watch, whose tendency has
for some years been to decrease in size rather than the contrary, will
remain the only existing type of an extinct race.
"But returning to the argument, I would repeat that I fear none of the
existing machines; what I fear is the extraordinary rapidity with which
they are becoming something very different to what they are at present.
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