It was rendered possible only because Columbus secured two patrons who, resembling in this respect far-seeing investors of to-day, dared to be original, and provided him with the necessary ships and control over the necessary labour.

Or let us take the case of the iron industry of the modern world.

This industry, in its vast modern developments, depends entirely on the discovery made in England of a method by which iron might be smelted with coal in place of wood.

The completed discovery was due to a succession of solitary men, beginning with Dud Dudley in the reign of James I., and ending a century later with Darby of Coalbrookdale.

Practically these heroic men had all their contemporaries against them.