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Show CotocidencM Id Intentions. Coincidence in invention and discovery are the rule rather than the exception. When any notable advance is made in the knowledge "fthe laws of nature, or in applying Hum liylf jiirp, nld ot new, to the service f man, is haidtv ever one person alone whs makes the discovery dis-covery or the application. Almost always al-ways more lhan one claimant appears, and frequently severalinake good their claims to the honor d having; pursued indeptndently and ta valuable results the same line of thought or experiment that has made one of their number famous by associating his name permanently perman-ently with the greal invention or discovery. dis-covery. Le Aerrier and Adams almost simultaneously reaiored out the existence ex-istence ot the planet Neptune, and diiect-ed diiect-ed agronomical obseiveis how to pome their telescopes in order to find it. Professor Pro-fessor Morse's title tod. stinction ns tha inventor of the magnetic telegraph was stubbornly contested by men who had labored with the same idea before it had curied to him. Haifa dozen others have toiled upon the problem ot steam navigation nav-igation befote Fulton solved it. Morton, Jackson, ; nd Wells ere experimenting with anesthetics at the same time, and the meiit of the discovery is still claimed or each of them. Bell and Gray invented in-vented their respective telephones almost al-most at the same time. Edison and Hughes dispute each other's claim to priority in the invention of the microphone. micro-phone. In some ol these cases probably, one claimant has knowingly or unconsciously uncon-sciously borrowed something f om his rival; but those where two or more persons per-sons have pursued independent y substantially sub-stantially the same line of research and experiment, tending to the aame result are very numerous. |