THE STORY OF STEAM.

            What Steam is.--Steam in Nature.--The Engine in its earlier
 forms.--Gradual explosion.--The Hero engine.--The Temple-door
 machine.--Ideas of the Middle Ages.--Beginnings of the modern
 engine.--Branca's engine.--Savery's engine.--The Papin engine
 using cylinder and piston.--Watt's improvements upon the
 Newcomen idea.--The crank movement.--The first use of steam
 expansively.--The "Governor."--First engine by an American
 Inventor.--Its effect upon progress in the United
 States.--Simplicity and cheapness of the modern engine.--Actual
 construction of the modern engine.--Valves, piston, etc., with
 diagrams.

            THE AGE OF STEEL.

            The various "Ages" in civilization.--Ancient knowledge of the
 metals.--The invention and use of Bronze.--What Steel is.--The
 "Lost Arts."--Metallurgy and chemistry.--Oriental Steel.--Modern
 definition of Steel.--Invention of Cast Steel.--First iron-ore
 discoveries in America.--First American Iron-works.--Early
 methods without steam.--First American casting.--Effect of iron
 industry upon independence.--Water-power.--The trip-hammer.--The
 steam-hammer of Nasmyth.--Machine-tools and their
 effects.--First rolling-mill.--Product of the iron industry in
 1840-50.--The modern nail, and how it came.--Effect of iron upon
 architecture.--The "Sky-Scraper."--Gas as fuel in iron
 manufactures.--The Steel of the present.--The invention of
 Kelley.--The Bessemer process.--The "Converter."--Present
 product of Steel.--The Steel-mill.

            THE STORY OF ELECTRICITY.

            The oldest and the youngest of the sciences.--Origin of the
 name.--Ancient ideas of Electricity.--Later experiments.--Crude
 notions and wrong conclusions.--First Electric
 Machine.--Frictional Electricity.--The Leyden Jar.--Extreme
 ideas and Fakerism.--Franklin, his new ideas and their
 reception.--Franklin's Kite.--The Man Franklin.--Experiments
 after Franklin, leading to our present modern uses.--Galvani and
 his discovery.--Volta, and the first "Battery."--How a battery
 acts.--The laws of Electricity, and how they were
 discovered.--Induction, and its discoverer.--The line at which
 modern Electricity begins.--Magnetism and Electricity.--The
 Electro-Magnet.--The Molecular theory.--Faraday, and his Law of
 Magnetic Force.

            MODERN ELECTRICITY.

            CHAPTER I. The Four great qualities of Electricity which make
 its modern uses possible.--The universal wire.--Conductors and
 non conductors.--Electricity an exception in the ordinary Laws
 of Nature.--A dual nature: "Positive" and "Negative."--All
 modern uses come under the law of Induction.--Some of the laws
 of this induction.--Magnets and Magnetism.--Relationship between
 the two.--Magnetic "poles."--Practical explanation of the action
 of induction.--The Induction Coil.--Dynamic and Static
 Electricity.--The Electric Telegraph.--First attempts.--Morse,
 and his beginnings.--The first Telegraph Line.--Vail, and the
 invention of the dot-and-dash alphabet.--The old instruments and
 the new.--The final simplicity of the telegraph.

            CHAPTER II. The Ocean Cable.--Differences between land lines and
 cables.--The story of the first cable.--Field and his final
 success.--The Telephone.--Early attempts.--Description of Bell's
 invention.--The Telautograph.--Early attempts and the idea upon
 which they were based.--Description of Gray's invention.--How a
 Telautograph may be made mechanically.

            CHAPTER III. The Electric Light.--Causes of heat and light in
 the conductor of a current.--The first Electric Light.--The Arc
 Light, and how constructed.--The Incandescent.--The
 Dynamo.--Date of the invention.--Successive steps.--Faraday the
 discoverer of its principle.--Pixü's
 machine.--Pacinatti.--Wilde.--Siemens' and Wheatstone.--The
 Motor.--How the Dynamo and Motor came to be coupled.--Review of
 first attempts.--Kidder's battery.--Page's machine.--Electric
 Railroads.--Electrolysis.--General facts.--Electrical
 Measurements.--"Death Current."--Instruments of
 Measurement.--Electricity as an Industry.--Medical
 Electricity.--Incomplete possibilities.--What the "Storage
 Battery" is.

            CHAPTER IV. Electrical Invention in the United States.--Review
 of the careers of Franklin, Morse, Field, Edison and
 others.--Some of the surprising applications of
 Electricity.--The Range-Finder.--Cooking and heating by
 Electricity.