He had studied Karl Marx and his doctrines of
history with profound attention, yet he could not apply them at
Paris. Langley, with the ease of a great master of experiment,
threw out of the field every exhibit that did not reveal a new
application of force, and naturally threw out, to begin with,
almost the whole art exhibit. Equally, he ignored almost the
whole industrial exhibit. He led his pupil directly to the
forces. His chief interest was in new motors to make his airship
feasible, and he taught Adams the astonishing complexities of the
new Daimler motor, and of the automobile, which, since 1893, had
become a nightmare at a hundred kilometres an hour, almost as
destructive as the electric tram which was only ten years older;
and threatening to become as terrible as the locomotive
steam-engine itself, which was almost exactly Adams's own age.
Then he showed his scholar the great hall of dynamos, and
explained how little he knew about electricity or force of any
kind, even of his own special sun, which spouted heat in
inconceivable volume, but which, as far as he knew, might spout
less or more, at any time, for all the certainty he felt in it.
To him, the dynamo itself was but an ingenious channel for
conveying somewhere the heat latent in a few tons of poor coal
hidden in a dirty engine-house carefully kept out of sight; but
to Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity.
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