Machines have, to a large extent, replaced human laborers. Machines are being employed to an increasing extent in agricultural processes. Tractors are used nowadays for plowing the soil. In many countries the sowing of seeds, the harvesting of crops, threshing, and all other agricultural activities are done by machines. The huge steel works, the cement factories, the sugar mills and a host of other production centers are built with machines, and are operated with machines. Human beings are only needed to work the machines, to lubricate the machines, to repair the machines and to operate the machines. Machines do all the work that is necessary for the production of goods.
Our means of communication and transport are today dependent on machines. The telephone, mobile phones, motor-car, the railway engine, the airplane, the ship, etc. are all machines. Similarly our means of entertainment are mechanical. In our households, we have several machines which are in daily use. We have the cooking range, the washing machines, the refrigerator, the electric iron, electric fans and heaters, and so on.
All our printing is done by machinery. Newspapers, magazines and journals, books-these are all printed in various languages by machines which work at an astonishing speed. Thus the rapid spread of information has been made possible by scientific machines. Type-writers, weighing machines, calculating machines, and the numerous gadgets invented by science are being used all over the world. Computers are now being increasingly used in business, in industry, I offices, in homes and they are doing a wonderful service to man.
Then there are destructive machines. Bombs, missiles, submarines, destroyers, magnetic mines, guns and cannons- these and many more are the engines of destruction invented by science. We thus have machines which do the work, constructive or destructive, and also machines which manufacture machines.
Machines are the slaves of mankind. Machines have made human life not only comfortable, but luxurious, not only interesting but enjoyable and pleasurable. The comforts and enjoyments of pre-machines were nothing as compared with those of machine age. Machines have opened up the unknown regions of the earth; machines have linked together the distant and remote areas and machines have reduced the size of the earth by reducing greatly the time required to cover long distances. Not only that; machines are now exploring the space and have already reached the Moon and the Mars.
