From Applebee’s Journal, London Spectator, 1898.

"The world cannot keep pace with the scientific surprises of this age. Before sufficient time has elapsed to make one startling invention familiar, another equally astonishing is already the subject of lectures and newspaper articles. Before the telephone, the microphone, and the phonograph have found their way into common use, a still more extraordinary instrument is announced – one of which the results are as unexpected by the scientific, as they are incredible to the ordinary mind.

We hear of the blood being cleaned by means of miniature automata or the atomata, and incredulity reaches its climax when it is whispered that these automata may one day enable us to see the internal machinations of the human body.

The atomata is the latest development of Alfred Upton Alcott’s ingenuity. There are many difficulties in the practical working of this tiny instrument, but, though entirely satisfactory results have not yet been obtained, the principle is beyond dispute.

Science is every day showing us that we are only beginning to discern the subtler potencies of matter and energy, and we find that the goal of to-day becomes the starting-point of to-morrow, and that a barrier is no sooner reached than it becomes a gateway to new and wider views of truth.