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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Inventors, by Philip Gengembre Hubert
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Inventors
+
+Author: Philip Gengembre Hubert
+
+Release Date: February 6, 2012 [EBook #38782]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INVENTORS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Albert László, Rory OConor and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+
+  INVENTORS
+
+
+  MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT SERIES
+
+
+  TRAVELLERS AND EXPLORERS. By
+  General A.W. GREELY, U.S.A.
+
+  STATESMEN. By NOAH BROOKS.
+
+  MEN OF BUSINESS. By W.O. STODDARD.
+
+  INVENTORS. By P.G. HUBERT, Jr.
+
+[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.]
+
+
+
+
+  MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
+
+
+
+
+  INVENTORS
+
+
+  BY
+  PHILIP G. HUBERT, JR.
+
+  NEW YORK
+  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+  1896
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY
+  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+
+  Press of J.J. Little & Co.
+  Astor Place, New York
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This book, dealing with our great inventors, their origins, hopes, aims,
+principles, disappointments, trials, and triumphs, their daily life and
+personal character, presents just enough concerning their inventions to
+make the story intelligible. The history is often a painful one. When
+poor Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber, was one day asked what
+he wanted to make of his boys, he is said to have replied: "Make them
+anything but inventors; mankind has nothing but cuffs and kicks for
+those who try to do it a service."
+
+Meanwhile, the value of the work done by great inventors is widely
+acknowledged. In a remarkable sketch of the history of civilization,
+Professor Huxley remarked, in 1887, that the wonderful increase of
+industrial production by the application of machinery, the improvement
+of old technical processes and the invention of new ones, constitutes
+the most salient feature of the world's progress during the last fifty
+years. If this was true a few years ago, its truth is still more
+apparent to-day. It is safe to say that within fifty years power, light,
+and heat will cost half, perhaps one-tenth, of what they do now; and
+this virtually means that in 1943 mankind will be able to buy decent
+food, shelter, and clothing for half or one-tenth of the labor now
+required. Steam is said to have reduced the working hours of man in the
+civilized world from fourteen to ten a day. Electricity will mark the
+next giant step in advance.
+
+With the many and superb tools now at our service, of which our fathers
+knew comparatively nothing--steam, electricity, the telegraph,
+telephone, phonograph, and the camera--we and our descendants ought to
+accomplish even greater wonders than these. As invention thus rises in
+the scale of importance to humanity, the history of the pioneers and, to
+the shame of mankind be it said, the martyrs of the art, becomes of
+intense interest. In the annals of hero-worship the inventor of the
+perfecting press ought to stand before the great general, and Elias Howe
+should rank before Napoleon. Whitney, Howe, Morse, and Goodyear, to
+mention but a few of our Americans, contributed thousands of millions of
+dollars to the nation's wealth and received comparatively nothing in
+return. Their history suggests as pertinent the inquiry whether our
+patent laws do not need a radical change. The burden and cost of proving
+that an invention deserves no protection ought to fall upon whoever
+infringes a patent granted by the Government. At present it is all the
+other way.
+
+  P.G.H., JR.
+
+  NEW YORK, September, 1893.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                              PAGE
+
+     I. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,                                       9
+
+    II. ROBERT FULTON,                                          45
+
+   III. ELI WHITNEY,                                            69
+
+    IV. ELIAS HOWE,                                             99
+
+     V. SAMUEL F.B. MORSE,                                     111
+
+    VI. CHARLES GOODYEAR,                                      155
+
+   VII. JOHN ERICSSON,                                         178
+
+  VIII. CYRUS HALL MCCORMICK,                                  207
+
+    IX. THOMAS A. EDISON,                                      223
+
+     X. ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL,                                 264
+
+    XI. AMERICAN INVENTORS, PAST AND PRESENT,                  270
+
+
+James M. Townsend, E.L. Drake, Alvan Clark, John Fitch, Oliver Evans,
+Amos Whittemore, Thomas Blanchard, Richard M. Hoe, Thomas W. Harvey,
+C.L. Sholes, B.B. Hotchkiss, Charles F. Brush, Rudolph Eickemeyer,
+George Westinghouse, Jr.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+FULL-PAGE
+
+                                                             FACING
+  BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,                  (_Frontispiece._)        PAGE
+
+  DEPARTURE OF THE CLERMONT ON HER FIRST VOYAGE,                 60
+
+  CHARLES GOODYEAR,                                             155
+
+  JOHN ERICSSON,                                                178
+
+  CYRUS HALL MCCORMICK,                                         207
+
+  THOMAS A. EDISON,                                             223
+
+  EDISON IN HIS LABORATORY,                                     247
+
+  PROFESSOR BELL SENDING THE FIRST TELEPHONE MESSAGE FROM NEW   264
+  YORK TO CHICAGO,
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
+
+                                                               PAGE
+
+  THE FRANKLIN STOVE,                                            10
+
+  FRANKLIN'S BIRTHPLACE, BOSTON,                                 14
+
+  FRANKLIN ENTERING PHILADELPHIA,                                17
+
+  THE FRANKLIN PENNY,                                            27
+
+  FRANKLIN'S GRAVE,                                              43
+
+  ROBERT FULTON,                                                 46
+
+  BIRTHPLACE OF ROBERT FULTON,                                   48
+
+  FULTON BLOWING UP A DANISH BRIG,                               53
+
+  JOHN FITCH'S STEAMBOAT AT PHILADELPHIA,                        56
+
+  FULTON'S FIRST EXPERIMENT WITH PADDLE-WHEELS,                  57
+
+  THE "DEMOLOGOS," OR "FULTON THE FIRST,"                        65
+
+  THE CLERMONT,                                                  68
+
+  ELI WHITNEY,                                                   70
+
+  WHITNEY WATCHING THE COTTON-GIN,                               75
+
+  THE COTTON-GIN,                                                78
+
+  ELIAS HOWE,                                                   100
+
+  BIRTHPLACE OF S.F.B. MORSE, BUILT 1775,                       111
+
+  S.F.B. MORSE,                                                 113
+
+  UNDER SIDE OF A MODERN SWITCHBOARD, SHOWING 2,000 WIRES,      121
+
+  THE FIRST TELEGRAPH INSTRUMENT, AS EXHIBITED IN 1837 BY       125
+  MORSE,
+
+  THE MODERN MORSE TELEGRAPH,                                   127
+
+  MORSE MAKING HIS OWN INSTRUMENT,                              129
+
+  TRAIN TELEGRAPH--THE MESSAGE TRANSMITTED BY INDUCTION FROM    131
+  THE MOVING TRAIN TO THE SINGLE WIRE,
+
+  INTERIOR OF A CAR ON THE LEHIGH VALLEY RAILROAD, SHOWING      132
+  THE METHOD OF OPERATING THE TRAIN TELEGRAPH,
+
+  DIAGRAM SHOWING THE METHOD OF TELEGRAPHING FROM A MOVING      134
+  TRAIN BY INDUCTION,
+
+  MORSE IN HIS STUDY,                                           139
+
+  THE SIPHON RECORDER FOR RECEIVING CABLE MESSAGES--OFFICE OF   146
+  THE COMMERCIAL CABLE COMPANY, 1 BROAD STREET, NEW YORK,
+
+  NO. 5 WEST TWENTY-SECOND STREET, NEW YORK, WHERE MORSE        151
+  LIVED FOR MANY YEARS AND DIED,
+
+  CALENDERS HEATED INTERNALLY BY STEAM, FOR SPREADING INDIA     164
+  RUBBER INTO SHEETS OR UPON CLOTH, CALLED THE "CHAFFEE
+  MACHINE,"
+
+  CHARLES GOODYEAR'S EXHIBITION OF HARD INDIA-RUBBER GOODS AT   169
+  THE CRYSTAL PALACE, SYDENHAM, ENGLAND,
+
+  COUNCIL MEDAL OF THE EXHIBITION, 1851,                        173
+
+  GRANDE MEDAILLE D'HONNEUR, EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE DE 1855,    176
+
+  JOHN ERICSSON'S BIRTHPLACE AND MONUMENT,                      180
+
+  THE NOVELTY LOCOMOTIVE, BUILT BY ERICSSON TO COMPETE WITH     184
+  STEPHENSON'S ROCKET, 1829,
+
+  ERICSSON ON HIS ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND, AGED TWENTY-THREE,        186
+
+  MRS. JOHN ERICSSON, NÉE AMELIA BYAM,                          187
+
+  EXTERIOR VIEW OF ERICSSON'S HOUSE, NO. 36 BEACH STREET, NEW   189
+  YORK, 1890,
+
+  SOLAR-ENGINE ADAPTED TO THE USE OF HOT AIR,                   191
+
+  SECTIONAL VIEW OF MONITOR THROUGH TURRET AND PILOT-HOUSE,     198
+
+  THE ORIGINAL MONITOR,                                         199
+
+  FAC-SIMILE OF A PENCIL SKETCH BY ERICSSON GIVING A            201
+  TRANSVERSE SECTION OF HIS ORIGINAL MONITOR PLAN, WITH A
+  LONGITUDINAL SECTION DRAWN OVER IT,
+
+  INTERIOR OF THE DESTROYER, LOOKING TOWARD THE BOW,            202
+
+  DEVELOPMENT OF THE MONITOR IDEA,                              204
+
+  THE ROOM IN WHICH ERICSSON WORKED FOR MORE THAN TWENTY        206
+  YEARS,
+
+  FARM WHERE CYRUS H. MCCORMICK WAS BORN AND RAISED,            209
+
+  EXTERIOR OF THE BLACKSMITH SHOP WHERE THE FIRST REAPER WAS    212
+  BUILT,
+
+  INTERIOR OF THE BLACKSMITH SHOP WHERE THE FIRST REAPER WAS    215
+  BUILT,
+
+  THE FIRST REAPER,                                             217
+
+  EDISON'S PAPER CARBON LAMP,                                   224
+
+  EDISON LISTENING TO HIS PHONOGRAPH,                           227
+
+  FROM EDISON'S NEWSPAPER, THE "GRAND TRUNK HERALD,"            230
+
+  EDISON'S TINFOIL PHONOGRAPH--THE FIRST PRACTICAL MACHINE,     237
+
+  VOTE RECORDER--EDISON'S FIRST PATENTED INVENTION,             243
+
+  EDISON'S MENLO PARK ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE (1880),               250
+
+  THE HOME OF THOMAS A. EDISON,                                 257
+
+  EDISON'S LABORATORY,                                          258
+
+  LIBRARY AT EDISON'S LABORATORY,                               262
+
+  ALVAN CLARK,                                                  276
+
+  C.L. SHOLES,                                                  286
+
+  B.B. HOTCHKISS,                                               288
+
+  CHARLES F. BRUSH,                                             290
+
+  RUDOLPH EICKEMEYER,                                           294
+
+  GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE, JR.,                                     296
+
+
+
+
+INVENTORS
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
+
+
+Benjamin Franklin's activity and resource in the field of invention
+really partook of the intellectual breadth of the man of whom Turgot
+wrote:
+
+    "Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis."
+
+    "He snatched the thunderbolt from heaven,
+    And the sceptre from the hands of tyrants."
+
+And of which bit of verse Franklin once dryly remarked, that as to the
+thunder, he left it where he found it, and that more than a million of
+his countrymen co-operated with him in snatching the sceptre. Those
+persons who knew Franklin, the inventor, only as the genius to whom we
+owe the lightning-rod, will be amazed at the range of his activity. For
+half a century his mind seems to have been on the alert concerning the
+why and wherefore of every phenomenon for which the explanation was not
+apparent. Nothing in nature failed to interest him. Had he lived in an
+era of patents he might have rivalled Edison in the number of his
+patentable devices, and had he chosen to make money from such devices,
+his gains would certainly have been fabulous. As a matter of fact,
+Franklin never applied for a patent, though frequently urged to do so,
+and he made no money by his inventions. One of the most popular of
+these, the Franklin stove, which device, after a half-century of disuse,
+is now again popular, he made a present to his early friend, Robert
+Grace, an iron founder, who made a business of it. The Governor of
+Pennsylvania offered to give Franklin a monopoly of the sale of these
+stoves for a number of years. "But I declined it," writes the inventor,
+"from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions,
+viz.: That as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others,
+we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of
+ours; and this we should do freely and generously. An ironmonger in
+London, however, assuming a good deal of my pamphlet (describing the
+principle and working of the stove), and working it up into his own, and
+making some small change in the machine, which rather hurt its
+operation, got a patent for it there, and made, as I was told, a little
+fortune by it."
+
+[Illustration: The Franklin Stove.]
+
+The complete list of inventions, devices, and improvements of which
+Franklin was the originator, or a leading spirit and contributor, is so
+long a one that a dozen pages would not suffice for it. I give here a
+brief summary, as compiled by Parton in his excellent "Life of
+Franklin." "It is incredible," Franklin once wrote, "the quantity of
+good that may be done in a country by a single man who will _make a
+business_ of it and not suffer himself to be diverted from that purpose
+by different avocations, studies, or amusements." As a commentary upon
+this sentiment, here is a catalogue of the achievements of Benjamin
+Franklin that may fairly come under the title of inventions:
+
+He established and inspired the Junto, the most useful and pleasant
+American club of which we have knowledge.
+
+He founded the Philadelphia Library, parent of a thousand libraries, and
+which marked the beginning of an intellectual movement of endless good
+to the whole country.
+
+He first turned to great account the engine of advertising, an
+indispensable element in modern business.
+
+He published "Poor Richard," a record of homely wisdom in such shape
+that hundreds of thousands of readers were made better and stronger by
+it.
+
+He created the post-office system of America, and was the first champion
+of a reformed spelling.
+
+He invented the Franklin stove, which economized fuel, and suggested
+valuable improvements in ventilation and the building of chimneys.
+
+He robbed thunder of its terrors and lightning of some of its power to
+destroy.
+
+He founded the American Philosophical Society, the first organization in
+America of the friends of science.
+
+He suggested the use of mineral manures, introduced the basket willow,
+promoted the early culture of silk, and pointed out the advisability of
+white clothing in hot weather.
+
+He measured the temperature of the Gulf Stream, and discovered that
+northeast storms may begin in the southwest.
+
+He pointed out the advantage of building ships in water-tight
+compartments, taking the hint from the Chinese, and first urged the use
+of oil as a means of quieting dangerous seas.
+
+Besides these great achievements, accomplished largely as recreation
+from his life work as economist and statesman, Benjamin Franklin helped
+the whole race of inventors by a remark that has been of incalculable
+value and comfort to theorists and dreamers the world over. When someone
+spoke rather contemptuously in Franklin's presence of Montgolfier's
+balloon experiments, and asked of what use they were, the great American
+replied in words now historic: "Of what use is a new-born babe?"
+
+"This self-taught American," said Lord Jeffrey, in the _Edinburgh
+Review_ of July, 1806, "is the most rational, perhaps, of all
+philosophers. He never loses sight of common sense in any of his
+speculations. No individual, perhaps, ever possessed a greater
+understanding, or was so seldom obstructed in the use of it by
+indolence, enthusiasm, or authority. Dr. Franklin received no regular
+education; and he spent the greater part of his life in a society where
+there was no relish and no encouragement for literature. On an ordinary
+mind, these circumstances would have produced their usual effects, of
+repressing all sorts of intellectual ambition or activity, and
+perpetuating a generation of incurious mechanics; but to an
+understanding like Franklin's, we cannot help considering them as
+peculiarly propitious, and imagine that we can trace back to them
+distinctly almost all the peculiarities of his intellectual character."
+
+The main outlines of Franklin's life and career are so familiar to
+everyone, that I may as well pass at once to the story of his work as an
+inventor. We all know, or ought to know, that Benjamin, the fifteenth
+child of Josiah Franklin, the Boston soap-boiler, was born in that town
+on the 17th of January, 1706, and established himself as a printer in
+Philadelphia in 1728. That he prospered and founded the _Gazette_ a few
+years later, and became Postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737; that after
+valuable services to the Colonies as their agent in England, he was
+appointed United States Minister at the Court of France upon the
+Declaration of Independence; and that in 1782 he had the supreme
+satisfaction of signing at Paris the treaty of peace with England by
+which the independence of the Colonies was assured. That he died full of
+honors at Philadelphia in April, 1790, and that Congress, as a testimony
+of the gratitude of the Thirteen States and of their sorrow for his
+loss, appointed a general mourning throughout the States for a period
+of two months.
+
+[Illustration: Franklin's Birthplace, Boston.]
+
+The great invention or discovery which entitles Benjamin Franklin to
+rank at the head of American inventors was, of course, the
+identification of lightning with electricity, and his suggestion of
+metallic conductors so arranged as to render the discharge from the
+clouds a harmless one. In order to appreciate the originality and value
+of this discovery, it is necessary to review briefly what the world knew
+of the subject at that day.
+
+For a hundred years before Franklin's time, electricity had been studied
+in Europe without much distinct progress resulting. A thousand
+experiments had been performed and described. Gunpowder had been
+exploded by the spark from a lady's finger, and children had been
+insulated by hanging them from the ceiling by silk cords. A tolerable
+machine had been devised for exciting electricity, though most
+experimenters still used a glass tube. Several volumes of electrical
+observations and experiments had appeared, and yet what had been done
+was little more than a repetition on a larger scale, and with better
+means, of the original experiment of rubbing a piece of amber on the
+sleeve of the philosopher's coat. Experimenters in 1745 could produce a
+more powerful spark and play a greater variety of tricks with it than
+Dr. Gilbert, the English experimenter of 1600, but that was about all
+the advantage they had over him.
+
+So-called experts had attempted, with more or less satisfaction to
+themselves, to answer the question addressed by the mad Lear to poor
+Tom: "Let me talk with this philosopher. What is the cause of thunder?"
+Pliny thought he had explained it when he called it an earthquake in the
+air. Dr. Lister announced that lightning was caused by the sudden
+ignition of immense quantities of fine floating sulphur. Jonathan
+Edwards, in his diary of 1722, records the popular impression of the day
+upon this subject: "Lightning," he says, "seem to be an almost
+infinitely fine combustible matter, that floats in the air, that takes
+fire by sudden and mighty fermentation, that is some way promoted by the
+cool and moisture, and perhaps attraction of the clouds. By this sudden
+agitation, this fine floating matter is driven forth with a mighty
+force one way or other, whichever way it is directed, by the
+circumstances and temperature of the circumjacent air; for cold and
+heat, density and rarity, moisture and dryness, have almost an
+infinitely strong influence upon the fine particles of matter. This
+fluid matter thus projected, still fermenting to the same degree,
+divides the air as it goes, and every moment receives a new impulse by
+the continued fermentation; and as its motion received its direction, at
+first, from the different temperature of the air on different sides, so
+its direction is changed, according to the temperature of the air it
+meets with, which renders the path of the lightning so crooked."
+
+Even this explanation was a daring bit of speculation in Jonathan
+Edwards, for thunder and lightning were then commonly regarded as the
+physical expression of God's wrath against the insects He had created.
+
+[Illustration: Franklin Entering Philadelphia.]
+
+Mr. Peter Collinson, the London agent of the library that Franklin had
+founded in Philadelphia in 1732, was accustomed to send over with the
+annual parcel of books any work or curious object that chanced to be in
+vogue in London at the time. In 1746 he sent one of the new electrical
+tubes with a paper of directions for using it. The tubes then commonly
+used were two feet and a half long, and as thick as a man could
+conveniently grasp. They were rubbed with a piece of cloth or buckskin,
+and held in contact with the object to be charged. Franklin had already
+seen one of these tubes in Boston, and had been astonished by its
+properties. No sooner, therefore, was it unpacked at the Library, than
+he repeated the experiments he had seen in Boston, as well as those
+described by Collinson. The subject completely fascinated him. He gave
+himself up to it. Procuring other tubes, he distributed them among his
+friends and set them all rubbing. "I never," he writes in 1747, "was
+before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and
+my time as this has done; for what with making experiments when I can be
+alone, and repeating to my friends and acquaintances, who, from the
+novelty of the thing, come continually in crowds to see them; I have
+during some months past had little leisure for anything else."
+
+Franklin claimed no credit for what he achieved in electricity. During
+the winter of 1746-7 he and his friends experimented frequently, and
+observed electrical attraction and repulsion with care. That electricity
+was not created, but only collected by friction, was one of their first
+conjectures, the correctness of which they soon demonstrated by a number
+of experiments. Before having heard of the Leyden jar coated with
+tin-foil, these Philadelphia experimenters substituted granulated lead
+for the water employed by Professor Maschenbroeck. They fired spirits
+and lighted candles with the electric spark. They performed rare tricks
+with a spider made of burnt cork. Philip Syng mounted one of the tubes
+upon a crank and employed a cannon-ball as a prime conductor, thus
+obtaining the same result without much tedious rubbing of the tube.
+
+The summer of 1747 was devoted to preparing the province for defence.
+But during the following winter the Philadelphians resumed their
+experiments. The wondrous Leyden jar was the object of Franklin's
+constant observation. His method of work is well shown in his own
+account of an experiment during this winter. The jar used was
+Maschenbroeck's original device of a bottle of water with a wire running
+through the cork.
+
+"Purposing," writes Franklin, "to analyse the electrified bottle, in
+order to find wherein its strength lay, we placed it on glass, and drew
+out the cork and wire, which for that purpose had been loosely put in.
+Then, taking the bottle in one hand, and bringing a finger of the other
+near its mouth, a strong spark came from the water, and the shock was as
+violent as if the wire had remained in it, which showed that the force
+did not lie in the wire. Then, to find if it resided in the water, being
+crowded into and condensed in it, as confined by the glass, which had
+been our former opinion, we electrified the bottle again, and placing it
+on glass, drew out the wire and cork as before; then, taking up the
+bottle, we decanted all its water into an empty bottle, which likewise
+stood on glass; and taking up that other bottle, we expected, if the
+force resided in the water, to find a shock from it. But there was
+none. We judged then that it must either be lost in decanting or remain
+in the first bottle. The latter we found to be true; for that bottle on
+trial gave the shock, though filled up as it stood with fresh
+unelectrified water from a tea-pot. To find, then, whether glass had
+this property merely as glass, or whether the form contributed anything
+to it, we took a pane of sash glass, and laying it on the hand, placed a
+plate of lead on its upper surface; then electrified that plate, and
+bringing a finger to it, there was a spark and shock. We then took two
+plates of lead of equal dimensions, but less than the glass by two
+inches every way, and electrified the glass between them, by
+electrifying the uppermost lead; then separated the glass from the lead,
+in doing which, what little fire might be in the lead was taken out, and
+the glass being touched in the electrified parts with a finger, afforded
+only very small pricking sparks, but a great number of them might be
+taken from different places. Then dexterously placing it again between
+the leaden plates, and completing a circle between the two surfaces, a
+violent shock ensued; which demonstrated the power to reside in glass as
+glass, and that the non-electrics in contact served only, like the
+armature of a loadstone, to unite the force of the several parts, and
+bring them at once to any point desired; it being the property of a
+non-electric, that the whole body instantly receives or gives what
+electrical fire is given to, or taken from, any one of its parts.
+
+"Upon this we made what we called an electrical battery, consisting of
+eleven panes of large sash glass, armed with thin leaden plates, pasted
+on each side, placed vertically, and supported at two inches' distance
+on silk cords, with thick hooks of leaden wire, one from each side,
+standing upright, distant from each other, and convenient communications
+of wire and chain, from the giving side of one pane to the receiving
+side of the other; that so the whole might be charged together with the
+same labor as one single pane."
+
+In 1748 Franklin, being then forty-two years old, and in the enjoyment
+of an ample income from his business as printer and publisher, sold out
+to his foreman, David Hall, and was free to devote himself wholly to his
+beloved experiments. He had built himself a home in a retired spot on
+the outskirts of Philadelphia, and with an income which in our days
+would be equivalent to $15,000 or $20,000 a year, he was considered a
+fairly rich man. Having thus settled his business affairs in a manner
+which proved that he knew perfectly well what money was worth, he took
+up his electrical studies again and extended them from the machine to
+the part played in nature by electricity. The patience with which he
+observed the electrical phenomena of the heavens, the acuteness
+displayed by him in drawing plausible inferences from his observations,
+and the rapidity with which he arrived at all that we now know of
+thunder and lightning, still excite the astonishment of all who read
+the narratives he has left us of his proceedings. During the whole
+winter of 1748-49 and the summer following, he was feeling his way to
+his final conclusions on the subject. Early in 1749 he drew up a series
+of fifty-six observations, entitled "Observations and Suppositions
+towards forming a new Hypothesis for explaining the several Phenomena of
+Thundergusts." Nearly all that he afterward demonstrated on this subject
+is anticipated in this truly remarkable paper, which was soon followed
+by the most famous of all his electrical writings, that entitled
+"Opinions and Conjectures concerning the Properties and Effects of the
+Electrical Matter, and the Means of preserving Buildings, Ships, etc.,
+from Lightning; arising from Experiments and Observations made at
+Philadelphia, 1749."
+
+Franklin sets forth in this masterly paper the similarity of electricity
+and lightning, and the property of points to draw off electricity. It is
+this treatise which contains the two suggestions that gave to the name
+of Franklin its first celebrity. Both suggestions are contained in one
+brief passage, which follows the description of a splendid experiment,
+in which a miniature lightning-rod had conducted harmlessly away the
+electricity of an artificial thunder-storm.
+
+"If these things are so," continues the philosopher, after stating the
+results of his experiment, "may not the knowledge of this power of
+points be of use to mankind in preserving houses, churches, ships, etc.,
+from the stroke of lightning, by directing us to fix on the highest
+part of those edifices upright rods of iron, made sharp as a needle and
+gilt to prevent rusting, and from the foot of those rods, a wire down
+the outside of the building into the ground, or down round one of the
+shrouds of a ship, and down her side till it reaches the water? Would
+not these pointed rods probably draw the electrical fire silently out of
+a cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from
+that most sudden and terrible mischief?"
+
+The second of these immortal suggestions was one that immediately
+arrested the attention of European electricians when the paper was
+published. It was in these words:
+
+"To determine the question, whether the clouds that contain lightning
+are electrified or not, I would propose an experiment to be tried where
+it may be done conveniently. On the top of some high tower or steeple,
+place a kind of sentry-box, big enough to contain a man and an electric
+stand. From the middle of the stand let an iron rod rise and pass,
+bending out of the door, and then upright twenty or thirty feet, pointed
+very sharp at the end. If the electrical stand be kept clean and dry, a
+man standing on it, when such clouds are passing low, might be
+electrified and afford sparks, the rod drawing fire to him from a cloud.
+If any danger to the man should be apprehended (though I think there
+would be none), let him stand on the floor of his box, and now and then
+bring near to the rod the loop of a wire that has one end fastened to
+the leads, he holding it by a wax handle; so the sparks, if the rod is
+electrified, will strike from the rod to the wire and not affect him."
+
+A friend once asked Franklin how he came to hit upon such an idea. His
+reply was to quote an extract from the minutes he kept of the
+experiments he made. This extract, dated November 7, 1749, was as
+follows: "Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars:
+1. Giving light. 2. Color of the light. 3. Crooked direction. 4. Swift
+motion. 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7.
+Subsisting in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies it passes through. 9.
+Destroying animals. 10. Melting metals. 11. Firing inflammable
+substances. 12. Sulphurous smell. The electric fluid is attracted by
+points. We do not know whether this property is in lightning. But since
+they agree in all the particulars wherein we can already compare them,
+is it not probable they agree likewise in this? Let the experiment be
+made."
+
+In this discovery, therefore, there was nothing of chance; it was a
+legitimate deduction from patiently accumulated facts.
+
+It was not until the spring of 1752 that Franklin thought of making his
+suggested experiment with a kite. The country around Philadelphia
+presents no high hills, and he was not aware till later that the roof of
+any dwelling-house would have answered as well as the peak of Teneriffe.
+There were no steeples in Philadelphia at that day. The vestry of Christ
+Church talked about erecting a steeple, but it was not begun until
+1753. On the 15th of June, 1752, Franklin decided to fly that immortal
+kite. Wishing to avoid the ridicule of a failure, he took no one with
+him except his son, who, by the way, was not the small boy shown in
+countless pictures of the incident, but a stalwart young man of
+twenty-two. The kite had been made of a large silk handkerchief, and
+fitted out with a piece of sharpened iron wire. Part of the string was
+of hemp, and the part to be held in the hand was of silk. At the end of
+the hempen string was tied a key, and in a convenient shed was a Leyden
+jar in which to collect some of the electricity from the clouds. When
+the first thunder-laden clouds reached the kite, there were no signs of
+electricity from Franklin's key, but just as he had begun to doubt the
+success of the experiment, he saw the fibres of the hempen string begin
+to rise. Approaching his hand to the key, he got an electric spark, and
+was then able to charge the Leyden jar and get a stronger shock. Then
+the happy philosopher drew in his wet kite and went home to write his
+modest account of one of the most notable experiments made by man.
+
+Franklin's fame as the first to suggest the identity of lightning and
+electricity would have been safe, however, even without the famous
+kite-flying achievement. A month before that June thunderstorm his
+suggestions had been put into practice in Europe with complete success.
+Mr. Peter Collinson, to whom Franklin addressed from time to time long
+letters about his experiments and conjectures, had caused them to be
+read at the meetings of the Royal Society, of which he (Collinson) was a
+member. That learned body, however, did not deem them worthy of
+publication among its transactions, and a letter of Franklin's
+containing the substance of his conjectures respecting lightning was
+laughed at. The only news that reached Philadelphia concerning these
+letters was that Watson and other English experimenters did not agree
+with Franklin. It was only in May, 1751, that a pamphlet was finally
+published in London, entitled "New Experiments and Observations in
+Electricity, made at Philadelphia, in America." A copy having been
+presented to the Royal Society, Watson was requested to make an abstract
+of its contents, which he did, giving generous praise to the author.
+
+Before the year came to a close Franklin was famous. There was something
+in the drawing down, for mere experiment, of the dread electricity of
+heaven that appealed not less powerfully to the imagination of the
+ignorant than to the understanding of the learned. And the marvel was
+the greater that the bold idea should have come from so remote a place
+as Philadelphia. By a unanimous vote the Royal Society elected Franklin
+a member, and the next year bestowed upon him the Copley medal. Yale
+College and then Harvard bestowed upon him the honorary degree of Master
+of Arts.
+
+[Illustration: The Franklin Penny.]
+
+As might have been expected, there was no lack of opposition to the new
+doctrine of lightning-rods. Every new movement of radical character is
+denounced more or less fiercely. The last years of Newton's life were
+perplexed by the charge that his theory of gravitation tended to
+"materialize" religion. Insuring houses against fire was opposed as an
+interference with the prerogatives of deity. The establishment of the
+Royal Society was opposed upon the ground that the study of natural
+philosophy, grounded, as it was, upon experimental evidence, tended to
+weaken the force of evidence not so founded; and this objection was
+deemed of sufficient weight to call for serious answer. Franklin's
+daring proposal to neutralize the "artillery of heaven," of course could
+not escape, and the impiety of lightning-rods was widely discussed,
+often with acrimony. Mr. Kinnersley, one of Franklin's friends, who
+lectured for several years upon electricity, when advertising the
+outline of his subject always announced his intention to show that the
+erection of lightning-rods was "not chargeable with presumption nor
+inconsistent with any of the principles either of natural or revealed
+religion." Quincy relates in his "History of Harvard College," that in
+November, 1755, a shock of earthquake having been felt in New England, a
+Boston clergyman preached a sermon on the subject, in which he contended
+that the lightning-rods, by accumulating the electricity in the earth,
+had caused the earthquake. Professor Winthrop, of Harvard, thought it
+worth while to defend Franklin. "In 1770," Mr. Quincy adds, "another
+Boston clergyman opposed the use of the rods on the ground that, as the
+lightning was one of the means of punishing the sins of mankind, and of
+warning them from the commission of sin, it was impious to prevent its
+full execution." And to this attack also Professor Winthrop replied.
+Apparently Franklin himself thought it wise to conciliate the opposition
+of some so-called religious people of the day, for an account of the
+lightning-rod which appears in _Poor Richard's Almanac_ for 1753,
+written probably by Franklin, begins as follows: "It has pleased God in
+his Goodness to Mankind, at length to discover to them the means of
+securing their Habitations and other Buildings from Mischief by Thunder
+and Lightning."
+
+Franklin bore his honors with the most remarkable modesty. It was in
+June that he flew his first kite, but not until October that he sent to
+Mr. Collinson an account of the experiment, and even then he described
+the manner of making and flying the kite and omitted all reference to
+his own success with it. The identity of lightning with electricity
+having been established by M. Dalibard, he deemed it unnecessary to
+forward the account of an experiment which, however brilliant, he
+thought superfluous. Accordingly, we have no narrative by Franklin of
+the flying of the kite. We owe our knowledge of what occurred on that
+memorable afternoon to persons who heard Franklin tell the story.
+Franklin prefaces his description of his kite with these words: "As
+frequent mention is made in public papers from Europe of the success of
+the Philadelphia experiment for drawing the electric fire from clouds by
+means of pointed rods of iron erected on high buildings, it may be
+agreeable to the curious to be informed that the same experiment has
+succeeded in Philadelphia, though made in a different and more easy
+manner, which is as follows." And then we have the description of the
+kite, the letter ending without reference to what he himself had done
+with it.
+
+Yet he was far from hiding the pleasure his fame brought him. "The
+_Tatler_," he wrote, in 1753, to a friend, "tells us of a girl who was
+observed to grow suddenly proud, and none could guess the reason, till
+it came to be known that she had got on a pair of new silk garters. Lest
+you should be puzzled to guess the cause, when you observe anything of
+the kind in me, I think I will not hide my new garters under my
+petticoats, but take the freedom to show them to you in a paragraph of
+our friend Collinson's last letter, viz.--But I ought to mortify, and
+not indulge, this vanity; I will not transcribe the paragraph--yet I
+cannot forbear." Then he quotes the paragraph, which mentions the honors
+done him by the King of France and the Royal Society.
+
+For twenty years Franklin continued to work at electricity, devoting
+most of his leisure to his beloved study. The great practical value of
+the lightning-rod, at one time in the early part of this century
+somewhat exaggerated, as a perfect protection against harm by lightning,
+just as electricity was at one time heralded as a panacea for all bodily
+ailments, has of late years been questioned, but the consensus of
+scientific opinion still attributes much merit to the device, and the
+extent of Franklin's services to science in the matter cannot be called
+into doubt. Others have claimed his discoveries. The Abbé Nolet, of
+France, has been credited as being the first to note the similarity
+between electricity and lightning; and M. Romas, of Nerac, France, is
+said to have used a kite with a copper wire wound around the string, to
+attract electricity from clouds, some time before Franklin made his
+experiment. But posterity has ignored these claimants, and Franklin had
+the happiness of escaping bitter contentions with rivals. In fact, there
+could hardly have been a quarrel with a man who claimed nothing, who
+mentioned with honor everybody's achievements but his own, and who
+recorded his most brilliant observations in the plural, as though he
+were but one of a band of investigating Philadelphians.
+
+Passing now, to Franklin's connection with the use of oil to still
+dangerous waves, I had occasion recently to note that Lieutenant W.H.
+Beehler, of the United States Navy, in writing upon the matter, quotes
+Franklin's explanation of why oil works so beneficently as the accepted
+theory. Franklin was greatly interested, when at sea, in studying the
+matter. Any phenomenon that puzzled him was fit subject for
+investigation. Let us see how he went about the inquiry. "In 1757," he
+wrote, "being at sea in a fleet of ninety-six sail bound against
+Louisburg, I observed the wakes of two of the ships to be remarkably
+smooth, while all the others were ruffled by the wind which blew fresh.
+Being puzzled with the differing appearance, I at last pointed it out to
+our captain and asked him the meaning of it. 'The cooks,' says he,
+'have, I suppose, been just emptying their greasy water through the
+scuppers, which has greased the sides of those ships a little;' and this
+answer he gave me with an air of some little contempt, as to a person
+ignorant of what everybody else knew. In my own mind I at first slighted
+his solution, though I was not able to think of another; but
+recollecting what I had formerly read in Pliny, I resolved to make some
+experiment of the effect of oil on water, when I should have
+opportunity. Afterwards, being again at sea in 1762, I first observed
+the wonderful quietness of oil on agitated water, in the swinging glass
+lamp I made to hang up in the cabin, as described in my printed papers.
+This I was continually looking at and considering, as an appearance to
+me inexplicable. An old sea captain, then a passenger with me, thought
+little of it, supposing it an effect of the same kind with that of oil
+put on water to smooth it, which he said was a practice of the
+Bermudians when they would strike fish, which they could not see if the
+surface of the water was ruffled by the wind. The same gentleman told me
+he had heard it was a practice with the fishermen of Lisbon, when about
+to return into the river (if they saw before them too great a surf upon
+the bar, which they apprehended might fill their boats in passing) to
+empty a bottle or two of oil into the sea, which would suppress the
+breakers, and allow them to pass safely. A confirmation of this I have
+not since had an opportunity of obtaining; but discoursing of it with
+another person, who had often been in the Mediterranean, I was informed
+that the divers there, who, when under water in their business, need
+light, which the curling of the surface interrupts by the refractions of
+so many little waves, let a small quantity of oil now and then out of
+their mouths, which rising to the surface smooths it, and permits the
+light to come down to them. All these informations I at times resolved
+in my mind, and wondered to find no mention of them in our books of
+experimental philosophy.
+
+"At length being at Clapham where there is, on the common, a large pond,
+which I observed one day to be very rough with the wind, I fetched out a
+cruet of oil and dropped a little of it on the water. I saw it spread
+itself with surprising swiftness upon the surface; but the effect of
+smoothing the waves was not produced; for I had applied it first on the
+leeward side of the pond, where the waves were largest, and the wind
+drove my oil back upon the shore. I then went to the windward side,
+where they began to form; and there the oil, though not more than a
+teaspoonful, produced an instant calm over a space several yards square,
+which spread amazingly, and extended itself gradually, till it reached
+the lee side, making all that quarter of the pond, perhaps half an acre,
+as smooth as a looking glass.
+
+"A gentleman from Rhode Island told me it had been remarked that the
+harbor of Newport was ever smooth while any whaling vessels were in it;
+which, probably arose from hence, that the blubber, which they sometimes
+bring loose in the hold, or the leakage of their barrels, might, afford
+some oil to mix with that water, which, from time to time, they pump out
+to keep their vessel free, and that some oil might spread over the
+surface of the water in the harbor and prevent the forming of any
+waves."
+
+Thus Franklin collected his facts, taking them far and near, and from
+anybody and everybody. By dint of observation and reflection he finally
+solved the problem, arriving at the conclusion that "the wind blowing
+over water thus covered with a film of oil, cannot easily catch upon it,
+so as to raise the first wrinkles, but slides over it, and leaves it
+smooth as it finds it."
+
+Another remarkable instance of Franklin's passion for investigation is
+afforded in the following interesting letter to Sir John Pringle: "When
+we were travelling together in Holland, you remarked that the canal boat
+in one of the stages went slower than usual, and inquired of the boatman
+what might be the reason; who answered that it had been a dry season,
+and the water in the canal was low. On being asked if it was so low that
+the boat touched the muddy bottom, he said no, not so low as that, but
+so low as to make it harder for the horse to draw the boat. We neither
+of us at first could conceive that, if there was water enough for the
+boat to swim clear of the bottom, its being deeper would make any
+difference. But as the man affirmed it seriously as a thing well known
+among them, and as the punctuality required in their stages was likely
+to make such difference, if any there were, more readily observed by
+them than by other watermen who did not pass so regularly and constantly
+backwards and forwards in the same track, I began to apprehend there
+might be something in it, and attempted to account for it from this
+consideration, that the boat in proceeding along the canal must, in
+every boat's length of her course, move out of her way a body of water
+equal in bulk to the room her bottom took up in the water; that the
+water so moved must pass on each side of her, and under her bottom, to
+get behind her; that if the passage under her bottom was straitened by
+the shallows, more of the water must pass by her sides, and with a
+swifter motion, which would retard her, as moving the contrary way; or
+that, the water becoming lower behind the boat than before, she was
+pressed back by the weight of its difference in height, and her motion
+retarded by having that weight constantly to overcome. But, as it is
+often lost time to attempt accounting for uncertain facts, I determined
+to make an experiment of this, when I should have convenient time and
+opportunity.
+
+"After our return to England, as often as I happened to be on the
+Thames, I enquired of our watermen whether they were sensible of any
+difference in rowing over shallow or deep water. I found them all
+agreeing in the fact that there was a very great difference, but they
+differed widely in expressing the quantity of the difference; some
+supposing it was equal to a mile in six, others to a mile in three. As I
+did not recollect to have met with any mention of this matter in our
+philosophical books, and conceiving that, if the difference should be
+really great, it might be an object of consideration in the many
+projects now on foot for digging new navigable canals in this island, I
+lately put my design of making the experiment in execution, in the
+following manner.
+
+"I provided a trough of planed boards fourteen feet long, six inches
+wide, and six inches deep in the clear, filled with water within half an
+inch of the edge, to represent a canal, I had a loose board of nearly
+the same length and breadth, that being put into the water, might be
+sunk to any depth, and fixed by little wedges where I would choose to
+have it stay, in order to make different depths of water, leaving the
+surface at the same height with regard to the sides of the trough. I had
+a little boat in form of a lighter or boat of burden, six inches long,
+two inches and a quarter wide, and one inch and a quarter deep. When
+swimming it drew one inch of water. To give motion to the boat, I fixed
+one end of a long silk thread to its bow, just even with the water's
+edge, the other end passed over a well-made brass pulley, of about an
+inch in diameter, turning freely upon a small axis; and a shilling was
+the weight. Then placing the boat at one end of the trough, the weight
+would draw it through the water to the other. Not having a watch that
+shows seconds, in order to measure the time taken up by the boat in
+passing from end to end of the trough, I counted as fast as I could
+count to ten repeatedly, keeping an account of the number of tens on my
+fingers. And, as much as possible to correct any little inequalities in
+my counting, I repeated the experiment a number of times at each depth
+of water, that I might take the medium."
+
+The experiment proved the truth of the boatmen's assertions. Franklin
+found that five horses would be required to draw a boat in a canal
+affording little more than enough water to float it, which four horses
+could draw in a canal of the proper depth.
+
+No circumstance, remarks Mr. Parton, was too trifling to engage him upon
+a series of experiments. At dinner, one day, a bottle of Madeira was
+opened which had been bottled in Virginia many months before. Into the
+first glass poured from it fell three drowned flies. "Having heard it
+remarked that drowned flies were capable of being revived by the rays of
+the sun, I proposed making the experiment upon these; they were
+therefore exposed to the sun upon a sieve which had been employed to
+strain them out of the wine. In less than three hours two of them began
+by degrees to recover life. They commenced by some convulsive motions of
+the thighs, and at length they raised themselves upon their legs, wiped
+their eyes with their forefeet, beat and brushed their wings with their
+hind feet, and soon after began to fly, finding themselves in Old
+England without knowing how they came thither. The third continued
+lifeless till sunset, when, losing all hopes of him, he was thrown
+away." And upon this he remarks: "I wish it were possible, from this
+instance, to invent a method of embalming drowned persons in such a
+manner that they may be recalled to life at any period, however distant;
+for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America
+a hundred years hence, I should prefer to any ordinary death being
+immersed in a cask of Madeira wine, with a few friends, till that time,
+to be then recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country."
+
+Among the studies in natural philosophy of which but little is known to
+the general public may be mentioned Franklin's experiments with heat at
+a time when a thermometer was a scientific curiosity. The manner in
+which he proved that black cloth was not so good a covering for the body
+in hot weather as white, shows the simplicity of his methods and his
+faculty for making small means subserve great ends: "I took a number of
+little square pieces of broadcloth from a tailor's pattern-card, of
+various colors. There were black, deep blue, lighter blue, green,
+purple, red, yellow, white, and other colors or shades of colors. I laid
+them all out upon the snow in a bright sunshiny morning. In a few hours
+the black, being warmed most by the sun, was so low as to be below the
+stroke of the sun's rays; the dark blue almost as low, the lighter blue
+not quite so much as the dark, the other colors less as they were
+lighter, and the quite white remained on the surface of the snow, not
+having entered it at all. What signifies philosophy that does not apply
+to some use? May we not learn from hence that black clothes are not so
+fit to wear in a hot, sunny climate or season as white ones?" That all
+summer hats, particularly for soldiers, should be white, and that garden
+walls intended for fruit should be black, were suggestions put forth as
+a result of this experiment.
+
+Dr. Small assigns to Franklin the credit of having discovered that
+repeated respiration imparts to air a poisonous quality similar to that
+which extinguishes candles and destroys life in mines and wells. "The
+doctor," he records, "breathed gently through a tube into a deep glass
+mug, so as to impregnate all the air in the mug with this quality. He
+then put a lighted _bougie_ (candle) into the mug, and upon touching the
+air therein the flame was instantly extinguished; by frequently
+repeating this operation, the _bougie_ gradually preserved its light
+longer in the mug, so as in a short time to retain it to the bottom of
+it, the air having totally lost the bad quality it had contracted from
+the breath blown into it." Upon being consulted with regard to the
+better ventilation of the House of Commons, he advised that openings
+should be made near the ceiling, communicating with flues running
+parallel with the chimneys and close enough to them to be kept warm by
+their heat. These flues, he recommended, should begin in the cellar,
+where the air was cool, and the flues being warmed by the hot air of the
+chimneys, would cause an upward current of air strong enough to expel
+the vitiated air in the upper part of the house. Franklin's letters at
+this time are full of the importance of ventilation. Unquestionably, he
+was among the first who called attention to the folly of excluding fresh
+air from hospitals and sick-rooms, particularly those of fever patients.
+As Mr. Parton expresses it, he cleared the pure air of heaven from
+calumnious imputation and threw open the windows of mankind.
+
+Some inventions of Franklin's have not met with the approval of
+posterity. For instance, he seems to have had no more success with a
+reformed spelling of his own devising than laborers in the same field
+who came after him. He used to say that they alone spelt well who spelt
+ill, since the so-called bad speller used the letters according to their
+real value. The illiterate girl who wrote of her _bo_ was more correct,
+he thought, than the young lady who would blush to omit a superfluous
+vowel. What was the use of the final letter in muff, and why take the
+trouble to write _tough_ when _tuf_ would do as well? Had he lived to
+see Dr. Webster's Dictionary, the lexicographer would have found in him
+an ardent champion. His reformed alphabet and spelling is an interesting
+curiosity, but hardly more. Some letters of our alphabet he omitted,
+only to add new ones. He also changed their order, making _o_ the first
+letter and _m_ the last. In this connection it may be well to say that
+Franklin was perhaps the first and foremost American champion of the
+movement, now so powerful, looking to the displacement of Latin and
+Greek as the foundations of education. At the very close of his life, in
+1789, he issued his famous protest against the study of dead languages.
+He is reported to have said one evening, when talking about this matter:
+"When the custom of wearing broad cuffs with buttons first began, there
+was a reason for it; the cuffs might be brought down over the hands and
+thus guard them from wet and cold. But gloves came into use, and the
+broad cuffs were unnecessary; yet the custom was still retained. So
+likewise with cocked hats. The wide brim, when let down, afforded a
+protection from the rain and the sun. Umbrellas were introduced, yet
+fashion prevailed to keep cocked hats in vogue, although they were
+rather cumbersome than useful. Thus with the Latin language. When nearly
+all the books of Europe were written in that language, the study of it
+was essential in every system of education; but it is now scarcely
+needed, except as an accomplishment, since it has everywhere given
+place, as a vehicle of thought and knowledge, to some one of the modern
+tongues."
+
+With all his love of the practical, Franklin was not deficient in a
+rather delicate wit. I have already had occasion to quote at the
+beginning of this paper his disclaimer of the honors conferred upon him
+by Turgot's famous Latin line. Instances of this dry humor may be found
+all through Sparks's exhaustive biography. I remember one in particular.
+The merchants of Philadelphia, being at one time desirous to establish
+an assembly for dancing, they drew up some rules, among which was one
+"that no mechanic or mechanic's wife or daughter should be admitted on
+any terms." This rule being submitted to Franklin, he remarked that "it
+excluded God Almighty, for he was the greatest mechanic in the
+universe."
+
+Benjamin Franklin's services to the cause of invention by no means ended
+with his own inventions. One of his greatest services was the part he
+took in the foundation of the American Philosophical Society, whose
+object was to bring into correspondence with a central association in
+Philadelphia all scientists, philosophers, and inventors on this
+continent and in Europe. Franklin's share in the foundation of this
+society, which has proved of such vast use, seems to have been largely
+overlooked by his biographers. Mr. Parton, having mentioned that
+Franklin founded the society in accordance with his proposal of 1743,
+adds: "The society was formed and continued in existence for some years.
+Nevertheless, its success was neither great nor permanent, for at that
+day the circle of men capable of taking much interest in science was too
+limited for the proper support of such an organization." The recent
+historian of the society, Dr. Robert M. Patterson, agrees, however, with
+Sparks in tracing the origin of the Philosophical Society, which grew
+into prominence about 1767, back to Franklin's proposal of 1743. After
+describing the Junto, or Leather Apron Society, formed among Franklin's
+acquaintance, a sort of debating club of eleven young men, Sparks says:
+"Forty years after its establishment it became the basis of the American
+Philosophical Society, of which Franklin was the first president, and
+the published transactions of which have contributed to the advancement
+of science and the diffusion of valuable knowledge in the United
+States." In his first proposal Franklin gave a list of the subjects that
+were to engage the attention of these New World philosophers. It
+included investigations in botany; in medicine; in mineralogy and
+mining; in chemistry; in mechanics; in arts, trades, and manufactures;
+in geography and topography; in agriculture; and, lest something should
+have been forgotten, he adds that the association should "give its
+attention to all philosophical experiments that let light into the
+nature of things, tend to increase the power of man over matter and
+multiply the conveniences or pleasures of life." The duties of the
+secretary of the society were laid down and were arduous, including much
+foreign correspondence, in addition to the correcting, abstracting, and
+methodizing of such papers as required it. This office Franklin took
+upon himself.
+
+[Illustration: Franklin's Grave.]
+
+While he lived the proceedings of the society scarcely ever failed of a
+useful end. Unlike so many original and inventive geniuses, his eminent
+common sense was as marked as his originality. In the language of his
+most recent biographer, John Bach McMaster, "whatever he has said on
+domestic economy or thrift is sound and striking. No other writer has
+left so many just and original observations on success in life. No other
+writer has pointed out so clearly the way to obtain the greatest amount
+of comfort out of life. What Solomon did for the spiritual man, that did
+Franklin for the earthly man. The book of Proverbs is a collection of
+receipts for laying up treasure in heaven. 'Poor Richard' is a
+collection of receipts for laying up treasure on earth."
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+ROBERT FULTON.
+
+
+[Illustration: Robert Fulton.]
+
+Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, or at least the first man
+to apply the power of the steam-engine to the propulsion of boats in a
+practical and effective manner, was born in Little Britain, Lancaster
+County, Pa., 1765, of respectable but poor parents. His father was a
+native of Kilkenny, Ireland, and his mother came of a fairly well-to-do
+Irish family, settled in Pennsylvania. He was the third of five
+children. As a child he received the rudiments of a common education.
+His vocation showed itself in his earliest years. All his hours of
+recreation were passed in shops and in drawing. At the time he was
+seventeen he had become so much of an artist as to make money by
+portrait and landscape painting in Philadelphia, where he remained until
+he was twenty-one. After this he went to Washington County and there
+purchased a little farm on which he settled his mother, his father
+having died when he was three years old. He returned to Philadelphia,
+but on his way visited the Warm Springs of Pennsylvania, where he met
+with some gentlemen who were so much pleased with his painting that they
+advised him to go to England, where they told him he would meet with
+West who had then attained great celebrity. Fulton took this advice, and
+his reception by West, always kindly toward Americans, was such as he
+had been led to expect. The distinguished painter was so well pleased
+with him that he took him into his house, where he continued to live for
+several years. For some time Fulton made painting his chief employment,
+spending two years in Devonshire, near Exeter, where he made many
+influential acquaintances, among others the Duke of Bridgewater, famous
+for his canals, and Lord Stanhope, a nobleman noted for his love of
+science and his attachment to the mechanic arts. With Lord Stanhope,
+Fulton held a correspondence for a long time upon subjects in which they
+were interested.
+
+In 1793, Fulton was engaged in a project to improve inland navigation.
+Even at that early day it appeared that he had conceived the idea of
+propelling vessels by steam, and he speaks in his letters of its
+practicability. In 1794 he obtained from the British Government a patent
+for improvements in canal locks, and his pursuits at this time appear to
+have been in this direction. In his preface to a description of his
+Nautilus, or "plunging" boat, a species of submarine boat, he says that
+he had resided eighteen months in Birmingham where he acquired much of
+his knowledge of mechanics. In later years, when in Paris, Fulton sent a
+large collection of his manuscripts to this country. Unfortunately, the
+vessel in which they were sent was wrecked, and, while the case was
+recovered, only a few fragments of the manuscripts could be used. It is
+owing to this misfortune that we have so few records of Fulton's work at
+this time.
+
+[Illustration: Birthplace of Robert Fulton.[1]]
+
+[Footnote 1: This illustration and the four following are from Knox's
+"Life of Fulton," reproduced by permission of the publishers, G.P.
+Putnam's Sons.]
+
+We know, however, that in 1794 he submitted to the British Society for
+the Promotion of Arts and Commerce an improvement of his invention for
+sawing marble, for which he received the thanks of the society and an
+honorary medal. He invented also, it is thought, about this time, a
+machine for spinning flax and another for making ropes, for both of
+which he obtained patents from the British Government. A mechanical
+contrivance for scooping out earth to form channels for canals or
+aqueducts, which is said to have been much used in England, was also
+his invention. The subject of canals appears to have chiefly engaged his
+attention during these years of the end of the century. He called
+himself a civil engineer, and under this title published his work on
+canals, and, in 1795, many essays on the same subject in one of the
+London journals. He recommended small canals and boats of little burden
+in a treatise on "Improvement of Canal Navigation," and inclined planes
+instead of locks, as a means of transporting canal boats from one level
+to another. His plans were strongly recommended by the British Board of
+Agriculture. Throughout his course as civil engineer his talent for
+drawing was of great advantage to him, and the plates annexed to his
+works are admirable examples of such work. He seems to have neglected
+his painting till a short time before his death, when he took up the
+brush again to paint some portraits of his family. During his residence
+in England he sent copies of his works to distinguished men in this
+country, setting forth the advantages to be derived from communication
+by canals.
+
+Having obtained a patent for mill improvements from the British
+Government, he went to France with the intention of introducing his
+invention there; but, not meeting with much encouragement, he devoted
+his time to other matters. Political economy had also some attraction
+for him, and he wrote a book to show that internal improvements would
+have a good effect on the happiness of a nation. He not only wished to
+see a free and speedy communication between the different parts of a
+large country, but universal free trade between all countries. He
+thought that it would take ages to establish the freedom of the seas by
+the common consent of nations, and believed in destroying ships of war,
+so as to put it out of the power of any nation to control ocean trade.
+In 1797 he became acquainted with Joel Barlow, the well-known American,
+then residing in Paris, in whose family he lived for seven years, during
+which time he learned French and something of German, and studied
+mathematics and chemistry. In the same year he made an experiment with
+Mr. Barlow on the Seine with a machine he had constructed to give
+packages of gunpowder a progressive motion under water and then to
+explode at a given point. These experiments appear to have been the
+first in the line of his submarine boats, and are unquestionably the
+germ of all subsequent inventions in the direction of torpedo warfare.
+
+Want of money to carry out his designs induced him to apply to the
+French Directory, who at first gave him reason to expect their aid, but
+finally rejected his plan. Fulton, however, was not to be discouraged,
+but went on with his inventions, and having made a handsome model of his
+machine for destroying ships, a commission was appointed to examine his
+plans, but they also rejected them. He offered his idea to the British
+Government, still again without success, although a committee was
+appointed to examine his models. The French Government being changed,
+and Bonaparte having come to the head of it, Fulton presented an address
+to him. A commission was appointed, and some assistance given which
+enabled him to put some of his plans into practice. In the spring of
+1801 he went to Brest to make experiments with the plunging boat that he
+had constructed in the winter. This, as he says, had many imperfections,
+to be expected in a first machine, and had been injured by rust, as
+parts which should have been of copper or brass were made of iron.
+
+Notwithstanding these disadvantages, he engaged in a course of
+experiments which required no less courage than perseverance. From a
+report of his proceedings to the committee appointed by the French
+Government we learn that in July, 1801, he embarked with three
+companions on board of this boat, in the harbor of Brest, and descended
+to the depth of twenty-five feet, remaining below the surface an hour,
+in utter darkness, as the candles were found to consume too much of the
+vital air. He placed two men at the engine, which was intended to give
+her motion, and one at the helm, while he, with a barometer before him,
+kept her balanced between the upper and lower waters. He could turn her
+round while under the water, and found that in seven minutes he had gone
+about a third of a mile. During that summer Fulton descended under water
+with a store of air compressed into a copper globe, whereby he was
+enabled to remain under water four hours and twenty minutes. The success
+of these experiments determined him to try the effect of his invention
+on the English war-ships, then daily near the harbor of Brest--France
+and England being then at war. He made his own bombs. For experimental
+purposes a small vessel was anchored in the harbor, and with a bomb
+containing about twenty pounds of powder, he approached within about two
+hundred yards, struck the vessel, and blew her into atoms. A column of
+water and fragments were sent nearly one hundred feet into the air. This
+experiment was made in the presence of the prefect of the department and
+a multitude of spectators. During the summer of 1801 Fulton tried to use
+his bombs against some of the English vessels, but was not successful in
+getting within range. The French Government refused to give him further
+encouragement.
+
+The English had some information concerning the attempts that their
+enemies were making, and the anxiety expressed induced the British
+Minister to communicate with Fulton and try to secure to England his
+services. In this he was successful, and Fulton went to London, where he
+arrived in 1804, and met Pitt and Lord Melville. When Mr. Pitt first saw
+a drawing of a torpedo with a sketch of the mode of applying it, and
+understood what would be the effect of the explosion, he said that if it
+were introduced into practice it could not fail to annihilate all
+navies.
+
+[Illustration: Fulton Blowing Up a Danish Brig.]
+
+But from the subsequent conduct of the British ministry it is supposed
+that they never really intended to give Fulton a fair opportunity to
+try the effect of his submarine engines. Their object may have been to
+prevent these devices getting into the hands of an enemy. Several
+experiments were made, and some of them were failures, but on October
+15, 1805, he blew up a strong-built Danish brig of two hundred tons
+burden, which had been provided for the experiment and which was
+anchored near the residence of Pitt. The torpedo used on this occasion
+contained one hundred and seventy pounds of powder. In fifteen minutes
+from the time of starting the machinery the explosion took place. It
+lifted the brig almost entire and broke her completely in two; in one
+minute nothing was to be seen of her but floating fragments.
+Notwithstanding the complete success of this experiment, the British
+ministry seems to have had nothing to do with Fulton. The inventor was
+rather discouraged at this lack of appreciation and, after some further
+experiments, he sailed for New York in December, 1806.
+
+In this country Fulton devoted himself at once to his project of
+submarine warfare and steam navigation. So far from being discouraged by
+his failure to impress Europe with the importance of his torpedoes, his
+confidence was unshaken, because he saw that his failures were to be
+attributed to trivial errors that could easily be corrected. He induced
+our Government to give him the means of making further experiments, and
+invited the magistracy of New York and a number of citizens to
+Governor's Island where were the torpedoes and the machinery with which
+his experiments were to be made. In July, 1807, he blew up, in the
+harbor of New York, a large brig prepared for that purpose. He also
+devised at this time a number of stationary torpedoes, really casks of
+powder, with triggers that might be caught by the keel of any passing
+vessel. In March, 1810, $5,000 were granted by Congress for further
+experiments in submarine explosions. The sloop of war, Argus, was
+prepared for defence against the torpedoes after Fulton had explained
+his mode of attack. This defence was so complete that Fulton found it
+impracticable to do anything with his torpedoes. Some experiments were
+made, however, with a gun-harpoon and cable cutter, and after several
+attempts a fourteen-inch cable was cut off several feet below the
+surface of the water.
+
+Fulton was, during all these experiments, much pressed for money, and
+apparently was making no headway toward the use of his submarine engines
+in a profitable way. It was in despair of getting our Government to make
+an investment in this direction that he finally turned to the problem of
+navigation by steam. He had the valuable co-operation in his new work of
+Chancellor Livingston, of New Jersey, who, while devoting much of his
+own time and means to the advancement of science, was fond of fostering
+the discoveries of others. He had very clear conceptions of what would
+be the great advantages of steamboats on the navigable rivers of the
+United States. He had already, when in Paris, applied himself at great
+expense to constructing vessels and machinery for that kind of
+navigation. As early as 1798 he believed that he had accomplished his
+object, and represented to the Legislature of New York that he was
+possessed of a mode of applying the steam-engine to a boat on new and
+advantageous principles; but that he was deterred from carrying it into
+effect by the uncertainty of expensive experiments, unless he could be
+assured of an exclusive advantage should it be successful. The
+Legislature in March, 1798, passed an act vesting him with the exclusive
+right and privilege of navigating all kinds of boats which might be
+propelled by the force of fire or steam on all the waters within the
+territory of New York for the term of twenty years, upon condition that
+he should within a twelve-month build such a boat, whose progress
+should not be less than four miles an hour.
+
+[Illustration: John Fitch's Steamboat at Philadelphia.]
+
+Livingston, as soon as the act had passed, built a boat of about thirty
+tons burden, to be propelled by steam. Soon after he entered into a
+contract with Fulton, by which it was agreed that a patent should be
+taken out in the United States in Fulton's name. Thus began the
+preparations for the first practical steamboat. All the experiments were
+paid for by Chancellor Livingston, but the work was Fulton's. In 1802,
+in Paris, he began a course of calculations upon the resistance of
+water, upon the most advantageous form of the body to be moved, and upon
+the different means of propelling vessels which had been previously
+attempted. After a variety of calculations he rejected the proposed plan
+of using paddles or oars, such as those already used by Fitch; likewise
+that of ducks' feet, which open as they are pushed out and shut as they
+are drawn in; also that of forcing water out of the stern of the vessel.
+He retained two methods as worthy of experiment, namely, endless chains
+with paddle-boards upon them, and the paddle-wheel. The latter was found
+to be the most promising, and was finally adopted after a number of
+trials with models on a little river which runs through the village of
+Plombières, to which he had retired in the spring of 1802, to pursue his
+experiments without interruption.
+
+[Illustration: Fulton's First Experiment with Paddle-wheels.]
+
+It was now determined to build an experimental boat, which was completed
+in the spring of 1803; but when Fulton was on the point of making an
+experiment with her, an accident happened to the boat, the woodwork not
+having been framed strongly enough to bear the weight of the machinery
+and the agitation of the river. The accident did the machinery very
+little injury; but they were obliged to build the boat almost entirely
+anew. She was completed in July; her length was sixty-six feet and she
+was eight feet wide. Early in August, Fulton addressed a letter to the
+French National Institute, inviting the members to witness a trial of
+his boat, which was made before the members, and in the presence of a
+great multitude of Parisians. The experiment was entirely satisfactory
+to Fulton, though the boat did not move altogether with as much speed as
+he expected. But he imputed her moving so slowly to the extremely
+defective machinery, and to imperfections which were to be expected in
+the first experiment with so complicated a machine; the defects were
+such as might be easily remedied.
+
+Such entire confidence did he acquire from this experiment that
+immediately afterward he wrote to Messrs. Boulton & Watt, of Birmingham,
+England, ordering certain parts of a steam-engine to be made for him,
+and sent to America. He did not disclose to them for what purpose the
+engine was intended, but his directions were such as would produce the
+parts of an engine that might be put together within a compass suited
+for a boat. Mr. Livingston had written to his friends in this country,
+and through their assistance an act was passed by the Legislature of the
+State of New York, on April 5, 1803, by which the rights and exclusive
+privileges of navigating all the waters of that State, by vessels
+propelled by fire or steam, granted to Livingston by the Act of 1798, as
+already mentioned, were extended to Livingston and Fulton, for the term
+of twenty years from the date of the new act. By this law the time of
+producing proof of the practicability of propelling by steam a boat of
+twenty tons capacity, at the rate of four miles an hour, with and
+against the ordinary current of the Hudson, was extended two years, and
+by a subsequent law, the time was extended to 1807.
+
+Very soon after Fulton's arrival in New York he began building his first
+American boat. While she was constructing, he found that her cost would
+greatly exceed his calculations. He endeavored to lessen the pressure on
+his own finances by offering one-third of the rights for a proportionate
+contribution to the expense. It was generally known that he made this
+offer, but no one was then willing to afford aid to his enterprise.
+
+In the spring of 1807, Fulton's first American boat was launched from
+the shipyard of Charles Brown, on the East River. The engine from
+England was put on board, and in August she was completed, and was moved
+by her machinery from her birthplace to the Jersey shore. Livingston and
+Fulton had invited many of their friends to witness the first trial,
+among them Dr. Mitchell and Dr. M'Neven, to whom we are indebted for
+some account of what passed on this occasion. Nothing could exceed the
+surprise and admiration of all who witnessed the experiment. The minds
+of the most incredulous were changed in a few minutes. Before the boat
+had gone a quarter of a mile, the greatest unbeliever must have been
+converted. The man who, while he looked on the expensive machine,
+thanked his stars that he had more wisdom than to waste his money on
+such idle schemes, changed his mind as the boat moved from the wharf and
+gained speed, and his complacent expression gradually stiffened into one
+of wonder.
+
+This boat, which was called the Clermont, soon after made a trip to
+Albany. Fulton gives the following account of this voyage in a letter to
+his friend, Mr. Barlow:
+
+[Illustration: Departure of the Clermont on her First Voyage.]
+
+"My steamboat voyage to Albany and back, has turned out rather more
+favorable than I had calculated. The distance from New York to Albany is
+one hundred and fifty miles; I ran it up in thirty-two hours, and down
+in thirty. I had a light breeze against me the whole way, both going and
+coming, and the voyage has been performed wholly by the power of the
+steam-engine. I overtook many sloops and schooners beating to windward,
+and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of
+propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. The morning I left New
+York there were not, perhaps, thirty persons in the city who believed
+that the boat would even move one mile an hour, or be of the least
+utility; and while we were putting off from the wharf, which was
+crowded with spectators, I heard a number of sarcastic remarks. This is
+the way in which ignorant men compliment what they call philosophers and
+projectors. Having employed much time, money, and zeal, in accomplishing
+this work, it gives me, as it will you, great pleasure to see it fully
+answer my expectations. It will give a cheap and quick conveyance to the
+merchandise on the Mississippi, Missouri, and other great rivers, which
+are now laying open their treasures to the enterprise of our countrymen;
+and although the prospect of personal emolument has been some inducement
+to me, yet I feel infinitely more pleasure in reflecting on the immense
+advantage that my country will derive from the invention."
+
+Soon after this successful voyage, the Hudson boat was advertised and
+established as a regular passage-boat between New York and Albany. She,
+however, in the course of the season, met with several accidents, from
+the hostility of those engaged in the ordinary navigation of the river,
+and from defects in her machinery, the greatest of which was having her
+water-wheel shafts of cast-iron, which was insufficient to sustain the
+great power applied to them. The wheels also were hung without any
+support for the outward end of the shaft, which is now supplied by what
+are called the wheel-guards.
+
+At the session of 1808 a law was passed to prolong the time of the
+exclusive right to thirty years; it also declared combinations to
+destroy the boat, or wilful attempts to injure her, public offences,
+punishable by fine and imprisonment. Notwithstanding her misfortunes,
+the boat continued to run as a packet, always loaded with passengers,
+for the remainder of the summer. In the course of the ensuing winter she
+was enlarged, and in the spring of 1808 she again began running as a
+packet-boat, and continued it through the season. Several other boats
+were soon built for the Hudson River, and also for steamboat companies
+formed in different parts of the United States. On February 11, 1809,
+Fulton took out a patent for his inventions in navigation by steam, and
+on February 9, 1811, he obtained a second patent for some improvements
+in his boats and machinery.
+
+About the year 1812 two steam ferry-boats were built under the direction
+of Fulton for crossing the Hudson River, and one of the same description
+for the East River. These boats were what are called twin-boats, each of
+them being two complete hulls united by a deck or bridge. They were
+sharp at both ends, and moved equally well with either end foremost, so
+that they crossed and recrossed without losing any time by turning
+about. He contrived, with great ingenuity, floating docks for the
+reception of these boats, and a means by which they were brought to them
+without a shock. These boats, were the first of a fleet which has since
+carried hundreds of millions of passengers to and from New York.
+
+From the time the first boat was put in motion till the death of Fulton,
+the art of navigating by steam advanced rapidly to that perfection of
+which he believed it capable; the boats performed each successive trip
+with increased speed, and every year improvements were made. The last
+boat built by Fulton was invariably the best, the most convenient, and
+the swiftest.
+
+At the beginning of 1814 a number of the citizens of New York, alarmed
+at the exposed situation of their harbor, had assembled with a view to
+consider whether some measures might not be taken to aid the Government
+in its protection. This assembly had some knowledge of Fulton's plans
+for submarine attack, and knew that he contemplated other means of
+defence. It deputed a number of gentlemen to act for it, and these were
+called the Coast and Harbor Committee. Fulton exhibited to this
+committee the model and plans for a vessel of war, to be propelled by
+steam, capable of carrying a strong battery, with furnaces for red-hot
+shot, and which, he represented, would move at the rate of four miles an
+hour. The confidence of the committee in this design was confirmed by
+the opinions of many of our most distinguished naval commanders, which
+he had obtained in writing, and exhibited to the committee. They pointed
+out many advantages which a steam vessel of war would possess over those
+with sails only.
+
+The National Legislature passed a law in March, 1814, authorizing the
+President of the United States to cause to be built, equipped, and
+employed one or more floating batteries for the defence of the waters
+of the United States. A sub-committee of five gentlemen was appointed to
+superintend the building of the proposed vessel, and Fulton, whose
+spirit animated the whole enterprise, was appointed the engineer. In
+June, 1814, the keel of this novel and mighty engine was laid, and in
+October she was launched from the New York yard of Adam and Noah Brown.
+The scene exhibited on this occasion was magnificent. It happened on one
+of our bright autumnal days. Multitudes of spectators crowded the
+surrounding shores. The river and bay were filled with vessels of war,
+dressed in all their colors in compliment to the occasion. By May, 1815,
+her engine was put on board, and she was so far completed as to afford
+an opportunity of trying her machinery. On the 4th of July, in the same
+year, the steam-frigate made a passage to the ocean and back, a distance
+of fifty-three miles, in eight hours and twenty minutes, by the mere
+force of steam. In September she made another passage to the sea, and
+having at this time the weight of her whole armament on board, she went
+at the rate of five and a half miles an hour, upon an average, with and
+against the tide. The superintending committee gave in their report a
+full description of the Fulton the First, the honored name this vessel
+bore.
+
+The last work in which the active and ingenious mind of Fulton was
+engaged was a project for the modification of his submarine boat. He
+presented a model of this vessel to the Government, by which it was
+approved; and under Federal authority he began building one; but before
+the hull was entirely finished his country had to lament his death, and
+the mechanics he employed were incapable of proceeding without him.
+
+[Illustration: The "Demologos," or "Fulton the First."
+
+The first steam vessel-of-war in the world.]
+
+During the whole time that Fulton had thus been devoting his talents to
+the service of his country, he had been harassed by lawsuits and
+controversies with those who were violating his patent rights, or
+intruding upon his exclusive grants. The State of New Jersey had passed
+a law which operated against Fulton, without being of much advantage to
+those interested in its passage, inasmuch as the laws of New York
+prevented any but Fulton's boats to approach the city of New York. Its
+only operation was to stop a boat owned in New York, which had been for
+several years running to New Brunswick, under a license from Messrs.
+Livingston and Fulton. A bold attempt was therefore made to induce the
+Legislature of the State of New York to repeal the laws which they had
+passed for the protection of their exclusive grant to Livingston and
+Fulton. The committee reported that such repeal might be passed
+consistently with good faith, honor, and justice! This report being made
+to the House, it was prevailed upon to be less precipitate than the
+committee had been. It gave time, which the committee would not do, for
+Fulton to be sent for from New York. The Assembly and Senate in joint
+session examined witnesses, and heard him and the petitioner by counsel.
+The result was that the Legislature refused to repeal the prior law, or
+to pass any act on the subject. The Legislature of the State of New
+Jersey also repealed their law, which left Fulton in the full enjoyment
+of his rights. This enjoyment was of very short duration; for on
+returning from Trenton, after this last trial, he was exposed on the
+Hudson, which was very full of ice, for several hours. He had not a
+constitution to encounter such exposure, and upon his return found
+himself much indisposed. He had at that time great anxiety about the
+steam-frigate, and, after confining himself to the house for a few days,
+went to give his superintendence to the workmen employed about her.
+Forgetting his ill-health in the interest he took in what was doing on
+the frigate, he remained too long exposed on a bad day to the weather.
+He soon felt the effects of this imprudence. His indisposition returned
+upon him with such violence as to confine him to his bed. His illness
+increased, and on February 24, 1815, it ended his life.
+
+It was not known that Fulton's illness was dangerous till a very short
+time before his death. Means were immediately taken to testify,
+publicly, the universal regret at his loss, and respect for his memory.
+The corporation of the city of New York, the different literary
+institutions and other societies, assembled and passed resolutions
+expressing their estimation of his worth, and regret at his loss. They
+also resolved to attend his funeral, and that the members should wear
+badges of mourning for a certain time. As soon as the Legislature, which
+was then in session at Albany, heard of the death of Fulton, they
+expressed their participation in the general sentiment by resolving that
+the members of both Houses should wear mourning for some weeks.
+
+In 1806 Fulton married Harriet Livingston, a daughter of Walter
+Livingston, a relative of his associate, Chancellor Livingston. He left
+four children; one son, Robert Barlow Fulton, and three daughters.
+Fulton was in person considerably above medium height; his face showed
+great intelligence. Natural refinement and long intercourse with the
+most polished society of Europe and America had given him grace and
+elegance of manner.
+
+[Illustration: The Clermont.]
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+ELI WHITNEY.
+
+
+In 1784 an American vessel arrived at Liverpool having on board, as part
+of her cargo, eight bags of cotton, which were seized by the
+Custom-House under the conviction that they could not be the growth of
+America. The whole amount of cotton arriving at Liverpool from America
+during the two following years was less than one hundred and twenty
+bags. When Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin, applied for his
+first patent in 1793, the total export of cotton from the United States
+was less than ten thousand bales. Fifty years later, the growth of this
+industry, owing almost wholly to Whitney's gin, had increased to
+millions of bales, and by 1860, the export amounted to four million
+bales.
+
+[Illustration: Eli Whitney.]
+
+According to the estimate of Judge Johnson, given in the most famous
+decision affecting the cotton-gin, the debts of the South were paid off
+by its aid, its capital was increased, and its lands trebled in value.
+This famous device, the gift of a young Northerner to the South, was
+rewarded by thirty years of ingratitude, relieved only by a few gleams
+of sunshine in the way of justice, serving to make the injustice all the
+more conspicuous. Whitney added hundreds of millions to the wealth of
+the United States. His personal reward was countless lawsuits and
+endless vexation of body and spirit. No more conspicuous example can be
+cited of steady patience and sweet-tempered perseverance.
+
+
+Eli Whitney was born in Westborough, Worcester County, Mass., December
+8, 1765. His parents belonged to that respectable class of society who,
+by honest farming and kindred industries, managed to provide well for
+the rising family--the class from whom have arisen most of those who in
+New England have attained to eminence and usefulness. The indications of
+his mechanical genius were noted at an early age. Of his passion for
+mechanics, his sister gives the following account:
+
+"Our father had a workshop and sometimes made wheels of different kinds,
+and chairs. He had a variety of tools and a lathe for turning
+chair-posts. This gave my brother an opportunity of learning the use of
+tools when very young. He lost no time, but as soon as he could handle
+tools he was always making something in the shop, and seemed to prefer
+that to work on the farm. After the death of our mother, when our father
+had been absent from home two or three days, on his return he inquired
+of the housekeeper what the boys had been doing. She told him what the
+elders had done. 'But what has Eli been doing?' said he. She replied he
+has been making a fiddle. 'Ah!' added he, despondently, 'I fear Eli will
+have to take his portion in fiddles.'"
+
+He was at this time about twelve years old. The sister adds that his
+fiddle was finished throughout like a common violin and made pretty good
+music. It was examined by many persons, and all pronounced it to be a
+model piece of work for such a boy. From this time he was always
+employed to repair violins, and did many nice jobs that were executed to
+the entire satisfaction and even to the astonishment of his customers.
+His father's watch being the greatest piece of mechanism that had yet
+presented itself to his observation, he was extremely desirous of
+examining its interior construction, but was not permitted to do so. One
+Sunday morning, observing that his father was going to church and would
+leave at home the wonderful little machine, he feigned illness as an
+apology for not going. As soon as the family were out of sight, he flew
+to the room where the watch hung and took it down. He was so delighted
+with its motion that he took it to pieces before he thought of the
+consequences of his rash deed; for his father was a stern parent, and
+punishment would have been the reward of his idle curiosity, had the
+mischief been detected. He, however, put the works so neatly together
+that his father never discovered his audacity until he himself told him
+many years afterward.
+
+When Eli was thirteen years old his father married a second time. His
+stepmother, among her articles of furniture, had a handsome set of
+table-knives that she valued very highly.
+
+One day Eli said: "I could make as good ones if I had tools, and I
+could make the tools if I had common tools to begin with;" his mother
+laughed at him. But it so happened soon afterward that one of the knives
+was broken, and he made one exactly like it in every respect, except the
+stamp of the blade. When he was fifteen or sixteen years of age, he
+suggested to his father an enterprise which clearly showed his capacity
+for important work. The time being the Revolutionary War, nails were in
+great demand and at high prices. They were made chiefly by hand. Whitney
+proposed to his father to get him a few tools and allow him to set up
+the manufacture of nails. His father consented, and the work was begun.
+By extraordinary diligence he found time to make tools for his own use
+and to put in knife-blades, repair farm machinery, and perform other
+little jobs beyond the skill of the country workman. At this occupation
+the enterprising boy worked, alone with great success and with large
+profit to his father for two winters, going on with the ordinary work of
+the farm during the summer. He devised a plan for enlarging the
+business, and managed to obtain help from a fellow-laborer whom he
+picked up when on a short journey of forty miles, in the course of which
+he tells us that he called at every workshop on the way and gleaned all
+the information as to tools and methods that he could.
+
+At the close of the war the business of making nails was no longer
+profitable; but the fashion prevailing among the ladies of fastening on
+their bonnets with long pins having appeared, he contrived to make
+these pins with such skill that he nearly monopolized the business,
+though he devoted to it only such leisure as he could redeem from the
+occupations of the farm. He also made excellent walking-canes. At the
+age of nineteen Whitney conceived the idea of getting a liberal
+education; and partly by the results of his mechanical industries, and
+partly by teaching the village school, he was enabled so far to surmount
+the difficulties in his way as to prepare himself for the Freshman Class
+in Yale College, which he entered in 1789. At college his mechanical
+propensity frequently showed itself. He successfully undertook, on one
+occasion, the repairing of some of the philosophical apparatus. Soon
+after taking his degree, in the autumn of 1792, he engaged with a
+Georgia family as private teacher, and through his engagement he made
+the acquaintance of a certain General Greene, of Savannah, who took a
+deep interest in him, and with whom he began the study of law. While
+living with the Greenes he noticed an embroidery-frame used by Mrs.
+Greene, and about which she complained, observing that it tore the
+delicate threads of her work. Young Whitney, eager to oblige his
+hostess, went to work and speedily produced a frame on an entirely new
+plan. The family were much delighted with it, and considered it a
+wonderful piece of ingenuity.
+
+[Illustration: Whitney Watching the Cotton-Gin.]
+
+Not long afterward the Greenes were visited by a party of gentlemen,
+chiefly officers who had served under the general in the Revolutionary
+War. The conversation turned on the state of agriculture. It was
+remarked that unfortunately there was no means of cleaning the staple of
+the green cotton-seed, which might otherwise be profitably raised on
+land unsuitable for rice. But until someone devised a machine which
+would clean the cotton, it was vain to think of raising it for market.
+Separating one pound of the clean staple from the seed was a day's work
+for a woman. The time usually devoted to the picking of cotton was the
+evening, after the labor of the field was over. Then the slaves--men,
+women, and children--were collected in circles, with one in the middle
+whose duty it was to rouse the dosing and quicken the indolent. While
+the company were engaged in this conversation, Mrs. Greene said:
+"Gentlemen, apply to my young friend here, Mr. Whitney; he can make
+anything." And she showed them the frame and several other articles he
+had made. He modestly disclaimed all pretensions to mechanical genius,
+and replied that he had never seen cotton-seed.
+
+Nevertheless, he immediately began upon the task of inventing and
+constructing the machine on which his fame depends. A Mr. Phineas
+Miller, a neighbor, to whom he communicated his design, warmly
+encouraged him, and gave him a room in his house wherein to carry on his
+operations. Here he began work with the disadvantage of being obliged to
+manufacture his own tools and draw his own wire--an article not to be
+found in Savannah. Mr. Miller and Mrs. Greene were the only persons who
+knew anything of his occupation. Near the close of the winter, 1793, the
+machine was so far completed as to leave no doubt of its success. The
+person who contributed most to the success of the undertaking, after the
+inventor, was his friend, Miller, a native of Connecticut and, a
+graduate of Yale. Like Whitney, he had come to Georgia as a private
+teacher, and after the death of General Greene he married the widow. He
+was a lawyer by profession, with a turn for mechanics. He had some money
+and proposed to Whitney to become his partner, he to be at the whole
+expense of manufacturing the invention until it should be patented. If
+the machine should succeed, they agreed that the profits and advantages
+should be divided between them. A legal paper covering this agreement
+and establishing the firm of Miller & Whitney, bears the date of May 27,
+1793.
+
+An invention so important to the agricultural interests of the country
+could not long remain a secret. The knowledge of it swept through the
+State, and so great was the excitement on the subject that crowds of
+persons came from all parts to see the machine; it was not deemed safe
+to gratify curiosity until the patent-right should be secured. But so
+determined were some of these people that neither law nor justice could
+restrain them; they broke into the building by night and carried off the
+machine. In this way the public became possessed of the invention, and
+before Whitney could complete his model and secure his patent, a number
+of machines, patterned after his, were in successful operation.
+
+The principle of the Whitney cotton-gin and all other gins following its
+features is so well known as to make it scarcely worth while to describe
+it here. The different parts are two cylinders of different diameters,
+mounted in a strong wooden frame, one cylinder bearing a number of
+circular saws fitted into grooves cut into the cylinder. The other
+hollow cylinder is mounted with brushes, the tips of whose bristles
+touch the saw-teeth. The cotton is put into a hopper, where it is met by
+the sharp teeth of the saws, torn from the seed, and carried to a point
+where the brushes sweep it off into a convenient receptacle. The seeds
+are too large to pass between the bars through which the saws protrude.
+This is the principle of the first machine, but many improvements have
+been made since Whitney's day. Nevertheless, by means of the cotton-gin,
+even in its earliest shape, one man, with the aid of two-horse power,
+could clean five thousand pounds of cotton in a day.
+
+[Illustration: The Cotton-Gin.
+
+(From the original model.)]
+
+As soon as the partnership of Miller & Whitney was formed, the latter
+went to Connecticut to perfect the machine, obtain the patent, and
+manufacture for Georgia as many machines as he thought would supply the
+demand. At once there began between Whitney in Connecticut and Miller in
+Georgia a correspondence relative to the cotton-gin, which gives a
+complete history of the extraordinary efforts made by the two partners
+and the disappointments that fell to their lot. The very first letter,
+written three days after Whitney left, announces that encroachments upon
+their rights had already begun. "It will be necessary," says Miller, "to
+have a considerable number of gins in readiness to send out as soon as
+the patent is obtained in order to satisfy the absolute demands and make
+people's heads easy on the subject; for I am informed of two other
+claimants for the honor of the invention of the cotton-gin in addition
+to those we knew before." At the close of the year 1793 Whitney was to
+return to Georgia with his gins, where his partner had made arrangements
+for beginning business. The importunity of Miller's letters, written
+during this period, urging him to come on, show how eager the Georgia
+planters were to enter the new field of enterprise that the genius of
+Whitney had opened to them. Nor did they at first contemplate stealing
+the invention. But the minds of even the more honorable among the
+planters were afterward deluded by various artifices set on foot by
+designing rivals of Whitney with a view to robbing him of his rights.
+One of the greatest difficulties experienced by the partners was the
+extreme scarcity of money, which embarrassed them so much as to make it
+impossible to construct machines fast enough.
+
+In April Whitney returned to Georgia. Large crops of cotton had been
+planted, the profits of which were to depend almost wholly on the
+success of the gin. A formidable competitor, the roller-gin, had also
+appeared, which destroyed the seed by means of rollers, crushing them
+between revolving cylinders instead of disengaging them by means of
+teeth. The fragments of seeds which remained in the cotton made it much
+inferior to Whitney's gin, and it was slower in operation. A still more
+dangerous rival appeared in 1795, under the name of the saw-gin. It was
+really Whitney's invention, except that the teeth were cut in circular
+rings of iron instead of being made of wire, as in the earlier forms of
+the Whitney gin. The use of such teeth had occurred to Whitney, as he
+established by legal proof. They would have been of no use except in
+connection with other parts of his machine, and it was a palpable
+attempt to invade his patent right. It was chiefly in reference to this
+device that the endless lawsuits that wore the life out of the partners
+were afterward held.
+
+In March, 1795, after two years of struggle, during which no progress
+seems to have been made, although the value of the gin was proved,
+Whitney went to New York, where he was detained three weeks by fever.
+Upon reaching New Haven he discovered that his shop, with all his
+machines and papers, had been consumed by fire. Thus he was suddenly
+reduced to bankruptcy and was in debt $4,000 without any means of
+payment. He was not, however, one to sink under such trials; Miller
+showed the same buoyant spirit, and the following extract of a letter
+of his to Whitney may be a useful lesson to young men in trouble:
+
+    "I think we ought to meet such events with equanimity. We have been
+    pursuing a valuable object by honorable means, and I trust that all
+    our measures have been such as reason and virtue must justify. It
+    has pleased Providence to postpone the attainment of this object. In
+    the midst of the reflections which your story has suggested, and
+    with feelings keenly awake to the heavy, the extensive injury we
+    have sustained, I feel a secret joy and satisfaction that you
+    possess a mind in this respect similar to my own--that you are not
+    disheartened, that you do not relinquish the pursuit, and that you
+    will persevere, and endeavor, at all events, to attain the main
+    object. This is exactly consonant to my own determinations. I will
+    devote all my time, all my thoughts, all my exertions, and all the
+    money I can earn or borrow to encompass and complete the business we
+    have undertaken; and if fortune should, by any future disaster, deny
+    us the boon we ask, we will at least deserve it. It shall never be
+    said that we have lost an object which a little perseverance could
+    have attained. I think, indeed, it will be very extraordinary if two
+    young men in the prime of life, with some share of ingenuity, and
+    with a little knowledge of the world, a great deal of industry, and
+    a considerable command of property, should not be able to sustain
+    such a stroke of misfortune as this, heavy as it is."
+
+Miller winds up by suggesting to Whitney that perhaps he can get help in
+New Haven by offering twelve per cent. a year for money with which to
+build a new shop, and the inventor seems to have had some success in
+reorganizing his affairs, even under such desperate conditions. Word
+came at the same time from England that manufacturers had condemned the
+cotton cleaned by their machines on the ground that the staple was
+greatly injured. This threatened a deathblow to their hopes. At the
+time, 1796, they already had thirty gins at different places in Georgia,
+some worked by horses and oxen and some by water. Some of these were
+still standing a few years ago. The following extract of a letter by
+Whitney will show the state of his mind and affairs:
+
+    "The extreme embarrassments which have been for a long time
+    accumulating upon me are now become so great that it will be
+    impossible for me to struggle against them many days longer. It has
+    required my utmost exertions to exist without making the least
+    progress in our business. I have labored hard against the strong
+    current of disappointment which has been threatening to carry us
+    down the cataract, but I have labored with a shattered oar and
+    struggled in vain, unless some speedy relief is obtained.... Life is
+    but short at best, and six or seven years out of the midst of it is
+    to him who makes it an immense sacrifice. My most unremitted
+    attention has been devoted to our business. I have sacrificed to it
+    other objects from which, before this time, I might certainly have
+    gained $20,000 or $30,000. My whole prospects have been embarked in
+    it, with the expectation that I should before this time have
+    realized something from it."
+
+The cotton of Whitney's gin was, however, sought by merchants in
+preference to other kinds, and respectable manufacturers testified in
+his favor. Had it not been for the extensive and shameful violations of
+their patent-right, the partners might yet have succeeded; but these
+encroachments had become so extensive as almost to destroy its value.
+The issue of the first important trial that they were able to obtain on
+the merits of the gin is announced in the following letter from Miller
+to Whitney, dated May 11, 1797:
+
+    "The event of the first patent suit, after all our exertions made in
+    such a variety of ways, has gone against us. The preposterous custom
+    of trying civil causes of this intricacy and magnitude by a common
+    jury, together with the imperfection of the patent law, frustrated
+    all our views, and disappointed expectations which had become very
+    sanguine. The tide of popular opinion was running in our favor, the
+    judge was well disposed toward us, and many decided friends were
+    with us, who adhered firmly to our cause and interests. The judge
+    gave a charge to the jury pointedly in our favor; after which the
+    defendant himself told an acquaintance of his that he would give
+    two thousand dollars to be free from the verdict, and yet the jury
+    gave it against us, after a consultation of about an hour. And
+    having made the verdict general, no appeal would lie.
+
+    "On Monday morning, when the verdict was rendered, we applied for a
+    new trial, but the judge refused it to us on the ground that the
+    jury might have made up their opinion on the defect of the law,
+    which makes an aggression consist of making, devising, and using or
+    selling; whereas we could only charge the defendant with using.
+
+    "Thus, after four years of assiduous labor, fatigue, and difficulty,
+    are we again set afloat by a new and most unexpected obstacle. Our
+    hopes of success are now removed to a period still more distant than
+    before, while our expenses are realized beyond all controversy."
+
+Great efforts were made to obtain trial in a second suit in Savannah the
+following May, and a number of witnesses were collected from various
+parts of the country, all to no purpose, for the judge failed to appear,
+and in the meantime, owing to the failure of the first suit,
+encroachments on the patent-right had multiplied prodigiously.
+
+In April, 1799, nearly a year later, and two years after their first
+legal rebuff, Miller writes as follows:
+
+    "The prospect of making anything by ginning in this State is at an
+    end. Surreptitious gins are erected in every part of the country,
+    and the jurymen at Augusta have come to an understanding among
+    themselves that they will never give a cause in our favor, let the
+    merits of the case be as they may."
+
+The company would now have gladly relinquished the plan of making their
+own machines, and confined their operations to the sale of
+patent-rights; but few would buy the right to a machine which could be
+used with impunity without purchase, and those few usually gave notes
+instead of cash, which they afterward, to a great extent, avoided
+paying, either by obtaining a verdict from the juries declaring them
+void, or by contriving to postpone the collection till they were barred
+by the Statute of Limitations, a period of only four years. The agent of
+Miller & Whitney, who was despatched on a collecting tour through the
+State of Georgia, informed his employers that such obstacles were thrown
+in his way by one or the other of these causes that he was unable to
+collect money enough to pay his expenses. It was suggested that an
+application to the Legislature of South Carolina to purchase the
+patent-right for that State would be successful. Whitney accordingly
+repaired to Columbia, and the business was brought before the
+Legislature in December, 1801. An extract from a letter by Whitney at
+this time shows the nature of the contract thus made:
+
+    "I have been at this place a little more than two weeks attending
+    the Legislature. A few hours previous to their adjournment they
+    voted to purchase for the State of South Carolina my patent-right
+    to the machine for cleaning cotton at $50,000, of which sum $20,000
+    is to be paid in hand, and the remainder in three annual payments of
+    $10,000 each." He adds: "We get but a song for it in comparison with
+    the worth of the thing, but it is securing something. It will enable
+    Miller & Whitney to pay their debts and divide something between
+    them."
+
+In December, 1802, Whitney negotiated the sale of his patent-right with
+the State of North Carolina. The Legislature laid a tax of 2_s._ 6_d._
+upon every saw (some of the gins had forty saws) employed in ginning
+cotton, to be continued for five years; and after deducting the expenses
+of collection the returns were faithfully passed over to the patentee.
+This compensation was regarded by Whitney as more liberal than that
+received from any other source. About the same time Mr. Goodrich, the
+agent of the company, entered into a similar negotiation with Tennessee,
+which State had by this time begun to realize the importance of the
+invention. The Legislature passed a law laying a tax of 37-1/2 cents per
+annum on every saw used, for the period of four years. Thus far the
+prospects were growing favorable to the patentees, when the Legislature
+of South Carolina unexpectedly annulled the contract which they had
+made, suspended further payment of the balance, and sued for the
+refunding of what had been already paid. When Whitney first heard of the
+transactions of the South Carolina Legislature, he was at Raleigh,
+where he had just completed a negotiation with the Legislature of North
+Carolina. In a letter written to Miller at this time, he remarks:
+
+    "I am, for my own part, more vexed than alarmed by their
+    extraordinary proceedings. I think it behooves us to be very
+    cautious and very circumspect in our measures, and even in our
+    remarks with regard to it. Be cautious what you say or publish till
+    we meet our enemies in a court of justice, where, if they have any
+    sensibility left, we will make them very much ashamed of their
+    childish conduct."
+
+But that Whitney felt keenly the severities afterward practised against
+him is evident from the tenor of the remonstrance which he presented to
+the Legislature:
+
+    "The subscriber avers that he has manifested no other than a
+    disposition to fulfil all the stipulations entered into with the
+    State of South Carolina with punctuality and good faith; and he begs
+    leave to observe further, that to have industriously, laboriously,
+    and exclusively devoted many years of the prime of his life to the
+    invention and the improvement of a machine from which the citizens
+    of South Carolina have already realized immense profits, which is
+    worth to them millions, and from which their prosperity must
+    continue to derive the most important profits, and in return to be
+    treated as a felon, a swindler, and a villain, has stung him to the
+    very soul. And when he considers that this cruel persecution is
+    inflicted by the very persons who are enjoying these great benefits,
+    and expressly for the purpose of preventing his ever deriving the
+    least advantage from his own labors, the acuteness of his feelings
+    is altogether inexpressible."
+
+Doubts, it seems, had arisen in the public mind as to the validity of
+the patent. Great exertions had been made in Georgia, where, it will be
+remembered, hostilities were first declared against him, to show that
+his title to the invention was unsound, and that "somebody" in
+Switzerland had conceived it before him; and that the improved form of
+the machine with saws, instead of wire teeth, did not come within the
+patent, having been introduced by one Hodgin Holmes. The popular voice,
+stimulated by the most sordid methods, was now raised against Whitney
+throughout all the cotton States. Tennessee followed the example of
+South Carolina, annulling the contract made with him. And the attempt
+was made in North Carolina. But a committee of the Legislature, to whom
+it was referred, reported in Whitney's favor, declaring "that the
+contract ought to be fulfilled with punctuality and good faith," which
+resolution was adopted by both Houses. There were also high-minded men
+in South Carolina who were indignant at the dishonorable measures
+adopted by their Legislature of 1803; their sentiments impressed the
+community so favorably with regard to Whitney that, at the session of
+1804, the Legislature not only rescinded what the previous one had done,
+but signified their respect for Whitney by marked commendations.
+
+Miller died on December 7, 1803. In the earlier stages of the enterprise
+he had indulged high hopes of a great fortune; perpetual disappointments
+appear to have attended him through life. Whitney was now left alone to
+contend single-handed against the difficulties which had, for a series
+of years, almost broken down the spirits of the partners. The light,
+moreover, which seemed to be breaking, proved but the twilight of
+prosperity. The favorable issue of Whitney's affairs in South Carolina,
+and the generous receipts he obtained from his contract with North
+Carolina, relieved him, however, from the embarrassments under which he
+had so long groaned, and made him, in some degree, independent. Still,
+no small portion of the funds thus collected in North and South Carolina
+was expended in carrying on trials and endless lawsuits in Georgia.
+
+Finally, in the United States Court, held in Georgia, December, 1807,
+Whitney's patent obtained a most important decision in its favor against
+a trespasser named Fort. It was on this trial that Judge Johnson gave a
+most celebrated decision in the following words:
+
+    "To support the originality of the invention, the complainants have
+    produced a variety of depositions of witnesses, examined under
+    commission, whose examinations expressly prove the origin,
+    progress, and completion of the machine of Whitney, one of the
+    copartners. Persons who were made privy to his first discovery
+    testify to the several experiments which he made in their presence
+    before he ventured to expose his invention to the scrutiny of the
+    public eye. But it is not necessary to resort to such testimony to
+    maintain this point. The jealousy of the artist to maintain that
+    reputation which his ingenuity has justly acquired, has urged him to
+    unnecessary pains on this subject. There are circumstances in the
+    knowledge of all mankind which prove the originality of this
+    invention more satisfactorily to the mind than the direct testimony
+    of a host of witnesses. The cotton-plant furnished clothing to
+    mankind before the age of Herodotus. The green seed is a species
+    much more productive than the black, and by nature adapted to a much
+    greater variety of climate, but by reason of the strong adherence of
+    the fibre to the seed, without the aid of some more powerful machine
+    for separating it than any formerly known among us, the cultivation
+    of it would never have been made an object. The machine of which Mr.
+    Whitney claims the invention so facilitates the preparation of this
+    species for use that the cultivation of it has suddenly become an
+    object of infinitely greater national importance than that of the
+    other species ever can be. Is it, then, to be imagined that if this
+    machine had been before discovered, the use of it would ever have
+    been lost, or could have been confined to any tract or country left
+    unexplored by commercial enterprise? But it is unnecessary to remark
+    further upon this subject. A number of years have elapsed since Mr.
+    Whitney took out his patent, and no one has produced or pretended to
+    prove the existence of a machine of similar construction or use.
+
+    "With regard to the utility of this discovery the court would deem
+    it a waste of time to dwell long upon this topic. Is there a man who
+    hears us who has not experienced its utility? The whole interior of
+    the Southern States was languishing and its inhabitants emigrating
+    for want of some object to engage their attention and employ their
+    industry, when the invention of this machine at once opened views to
+    them which set the whole country in active motion. From childhood to
+    age it has presented to us a lucrative employment. Our debts have
+    been paid off, our capitals have increased, and our lands trebled
+    themselves in value. We cannot express the weight of the obligation
+    which the country owes to this invention. The extent of it cannot
+    now be seen. Some faint presentiment may be formed from the
+    reflection that cotton is rapidly supplanting wool, flax, silk, and
+    even furs in manufactures, and may one day profitably supply the use
+    of specie in our East India trade. Our sister States also
+    participate in the benefits of this invention, for besides affording
+    the raw material for their manufacturers, the bulkiness and quantity
+    of the article affords a valuable employment for their shipping."
+
+The influence of this decision, however, availed Whitney very little,
+for the term of his patent had nearly expired. During Miller's life more
+than sixty suits had been instituted in Georgia, and but a single
+decision on the merits of the claim was obtained. In prosecution of his
+troublesome business, Whitney had made six different journeys to
+Georgia, several of which were accomplished by land at a time when the
+difficulties of such journeys were exceedingly great. A gentleman who
+was well acquainted with Whitney's affairs in the South, and sometimes
+acted as his legal adviser, says that in all his experience in the
+thorny profession of the law he never saw a case of such perseverance
+under prosecution. He adds: "Nor do I believe that I ever knew any other
+man who would have met them with equal coolness and firmness, or who
+would finally have obtained even the partial success which he did. He
+always called on me in New York on his way South when going to attend
+his endless trials and to meet the mischievous contrivances of men, who
+seemed inexhaustible in their resources of evil. Even now, after thirty
+years, my head aches to recollect his narratives of new trials, fresh
+disappointments, and accumulated wrongs."
+
+In 1798 Whitney had become deeply impressed with the uncertainty of all
+his hopes founded upon the cotton-gin, and began to think seriously of
+devoting himself to some business in which his superior ingenuity,
+seconded by uncommon industry, would conduct him by a slow but sure
+road to a competent fortune. It may be considered indicative of solid
+judgment and a well-balanced mind that he did not, as is so frequently
+the case with men of inventive genius, become so poisoned with the hopes
+of vast wealth as to be disqualified for making a reasonable provision
+for life by the sober earnings of private industry. The enterprise which
+he selected in accordance with these views was the manufacture of arms
+for the United States. Through Oliver Wolcott, then Secretary of the
+Treasury, he obtained a contract for the manufacture of 10,000 stand of
+arms, 4,000 of which were to be delivered before the last of September
+of the ensuing year, 1799. Whitney purchased for his works a site called
+East Rock, near New Haven, now known as Whitneyville, and justly admired
+for the romantic beauty of its scenery. A water-fall offered the
+necessary power for the machinery.
+
+Here he began operations with great zeal. His machinery was yet to be
+built, his material collected, and even his workmen to be taught, and
+that in a business with which he was imperfectly acquainted.
+
+A severe winter retarded his operations and rendered him incompetent to
+fulfil the contract. Only 500 instead of 4,000 stands were delivered the
+first year, and eight years instead of two were found necessary for
+completing the whole. During the eight years Whitney was occupied in
+performing this work, he applied himself to business with the most
+exemplary diligence, rising every morning as soon as it was day, and at
+night setting everything in order in all parts of the establishment. His
+genius impressed itself on every part of the factory, extending even to
+the most common tools, most of which received some peculiar modification
+which improved them in accuracy or efficiency. His machines for making
+the several parts of the musket were made to operate with the greatest
+possible degree of uniformity and precision. The object at which he
+aimed, and which he fully accomplished, was to make the same parts of
+different guns, as the locks, for instance, as much like each other as
+the successive impressions of a copper-plate engraving, and it has
+generally been considered that Whitney greatly improved the way of
+manufacturing arms and laid his country under permanent obligations by
+augmenting our facilities for national defence. In 1812 he made a
+contract to manufacture for the United States 15,000 stand of arms, and
+in the meantime a similar contract with the State of New York. Several
+other persons made contracts with the Government at about the same time
+and attempted the manufacture of muskets. The result of their efforts
+was a complete failure, and in some instances they expended a
+considerable fortune in addition to the amount received for their work.
+In 1822 Calhoun, then Secretary of War, admitted in a conversation with
+Whitney that the Government was saving $25,000 a year at the public
+armories alone by his improvements, and it should be remembered that
+the utility of Whitney's labors during this part of his life was not
+limited to this particular business.
+
+In 1812 Whitney made application to Congress for the renewal of his
+patent for the cotton-gin. In his memorial he presented the history of
+the struggles he had been forced to make in defence of his rights,
+observing that he had been unable to obtain any decision on the merits
+of his claim until thirteen years of his patent had expired. He states
+also that his invention had been a source of opulence to thousands of
+the citizens of the United States; that as a labor-saving machine it
+would enable one man to perform the work of a thousand men, and that it
+furnished to the whole family of mankind, at a very cheap rate, the most
+essential material for their clothing. Although so great advantages had
+already been experienced, and the prospect of future benefits was so
+promising, still, many of those whose interest had been most promoted
+and the value of whose property had been most enhanced by this
+invention, had obstinately persisted in refusing to make any
+compensation to the inventor. From the State in which he had first made,
+and where, he had first introduced his machine, and which had derived
+the most signal benefits--Georgia--he had received nothing; and from no
+State had he received the amount of half a cent per pound on the cotton
+cleaned with his machines in one year. Estimating the value of the labor
+of one man at twenty cents a day, the whole amount which had been
+received by him for his invention was not equal to the value of the
+labor saved in one hour by his machines then in use in the United
+States. He continues:
+
+    "It is objected that if the patentee succeeds in procuring the
+    renewal of his patent he will be too rich. There is no probability
+    that the patentee, if the term of his patent were extended for
+    twenty years, would ever obtain for his invention one-half as much
+    as many an individual will gain by the use of it. Up to the present
+    time the whole amount of what he had acquired from this source,
+    after deducting his expenses, does not exceed one-half the sum which
+    a single individual has gained by the use of the machine in one
+    year. It is true that considerable sums have been obtained from some
+    of the States where the machine is used, but no small portion of
+    these sums has been expended in prosecuting his claim in a State
+    where nothing has been obtained, and where his machine has been used
+    to the greatest advantage."
+
+Notwithstanding these cogent arguments, the application was rejected by
+the courts. Some liberal-minded and enlightened men from the cotton
+districts favored the petition, but a majority of the members from that
+part of the Union were warmly opposed to granting it. In a letter to
+Robert Fulton, Whitney says:
+
+    "The difficulties with which I have to contend have originated,
+    principally, in the want of a disposition in mankind to do justice.
+    My invention was new and distinct from every other; it stood alone.
+    It was not interwoven with anything before known; and it can seldom
+    happen that an invention or improvement is so strongly marked and
+    can be so clearly and specifically identified; and I have always
+    believed that I should have no difficulty in causing my right to be
+    respected, if it had been less valuable, and been used only by a
+    small portion of the community. But the use of this machine being
+    immensely profitable to almost every planter in the cotton
+    districts, all were interested in trespassing upon the patent-right,
+    and each kept the other in countenance. Demagogues made themselves
+    popular by misrepresentations and unfounded clamors, both against
+    the right and against the law made for its protection. Hence there
+    arose associations and combinations to oppose both. At one time, but
+    few men in Georgia dared to come into court and testify to the most
+    simple facts within their knowledge, relative to the use of the
+    machine. In one instance I had great difficulty in proving that the
+    machine had been used in Georgia, although at the same moment there
+    were three separate sets of this machinery in motion within fifty
+    yards of the building in which the court sat, and all so near that
+    the rattling of the wheels was distinctly heard on the steps of the
+    court-house."
+
+Such perseverance, patience, and uncommon skill were not, however, to go
+wholly unrewarded. Whitney's factory of arms in New Haven made money for
+him, and the Southern States were not all guilty of ingratitude.
+Moreover, in his private life he was extremely fortunate. In January,
+1817, he married Henrietta Edwards, the youngest daughter of Judge
+Pierpont Edwards, of Connecticut. A son and three daughters contributed
+to the sunshine of the close of a somewhat stormy and eventful life. His
+last years were his happiest. He found prosperity and honor in New
+Haven, where he died on January 8, 1825, after a tedious illness.
+
+In person Whitney was of more than usual height, with much dignity of
+manner and an open, pleasant face. Among his particular friends no man
+was more esteemed. Some of the earliest of his intimate associates were
+among the latest. His sense of honor was high, and his feeling of
+resentment and indignation under injustice correspondingly strong. He
+could, however, be cool when his opponents were hot, and his strong
+sense of the injuries he had suffered did not impair the natural
+serenity of his temper. The value of his famous invention has so
+steadily grown that its money importance to this country can scarcely be
+estimated in figures. His tomb in New Haven is after a model of that of
+Scipio, at Rome, and bears the following inscription:
+
+  ELI WHITNEY,
+
+  THE INVENTOR OF THE COTTON-GIN.
+
+  OF USEFUL SCIENCE AND ARTS, THE EFFICIENT PATRON
+  AND IMPROVER.
+
+  IN THE SOCIAL RELATIONS OF LIFE, A MODEL OF EXCELLENCE.
+
+  WHILE PRIVATE AFFECTION WEEPS AT HIS TOMB, HIS
+  COUNTRY HONORS HIS MEMORY.
+
+  BORN DEC. 8, 1765. DIED JAN. 8, 1825.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+ELIAS HOWE.
+
+
+[Illustration: Elias Howe.]
+
+In looking over the history of great inventions it is remarkable how
+uniformly those discoveries that helped mankind most have been derided,
+abused, and opposed by the very classes which in the end they were
+destined to bless. Nearly every great invention has had literally to be
+forced into popular acceptance. The bowmen of the Middle Ages resisted
+the introduction of the musket; the sedan-chair carriers would not allow
+hackney carriages to be used; the stagecoach lines attempted by all
+possible devices to block the advance of the railway. When, in 1707, Dr.
+Papin showed his first rude conception of a steamboat, it was seized by
+the boatmen, who feared that it would deprive them of a living. Kay was
+mobbed in Lancashire when he tried to introduce his fly-shuttle;
+Hargreaves had his spinning-frame destroyed by a Blackburn mob; Crampton
+had to hide his spinning-mule in a lumber-room for fear of a similar
+fate; Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning-frame, was denounced as
+the enemy of the working-classes and his mill destroyed; Jacquard
+narrowly escaped being thrown into the river Rhone by a crowd of furious
+weavers when his new loom was first put into operation; Cartwright had
+to abandon his power-loom for years because of the bitter animosity of
+the weavers toward it. Riots were organized in Nottingham against the
+use of the stocking-loom.
+
+It is not therefore surprising that the greatest labor-saving machine of
+domestic life, the sewing-machine, should have been received with
+anything but thanks. Howe was abused, ridiculed, and denounced as the
+enemy of man, and especially of poor sewing-women, the very class whose
+toil he has done so much to lighten. Curses instead of blessings were
+showered upon him during the first years that followed the successful
+working of his wonderful machine. Fortunately for the inventor, the age
+of persecution had almost passed, and Howe lived to receive the rewards
+he so fully deserved.
+
+Elias Howe, Jr., was born in Spencer, Mass., in 1819. His father was a
+farmer and miller, and the eight children of the family, as was common
+with all poor people of the time, were early taught to do light work of
+one kind or another. When Elias was six years old he was set with his
+brothers and sisters at sticking wire teeth through the leather straps
+used for cotton-cards. When older he helped his father in the mill, and
+in summer picked up a little book knowledge at the district school. As a
+boy he was frail in constitution, and he was slightly lame. When eleven
+years old he attempted farm labor for a neighbor, but, was not strong
+enough for it and returned to his father's mill, where he remained
+until he was sixteen. It was here that he first began to like machinery.
+A friend who had visited Lowell gave him such an account of that
+bustling city and its big mills that young Howe, becoming dissatisfied,
+obtained his father's consent to leave, and found employment in one of
+the Lowell cotton-mills. The financial crash of 1837 stopped the looms,
+and Howe obtained a place in a Cambridge machine-shop in which his
+cousin, Nathaniel P. Banks, afterward Governor of Massachusetts, also
+worked. Howe's first job happened to be upon a new hemp-carding machine
+of Treadwell.
+
+At the age of twenty-one Howe married and moved to Boston, finding
+employment in the machine-shop of Ari Davis. He is described as being a
+capital workman, more full of resources than of plodding industry,
+however, and rather apt to spend more time in suggesting a better way of
+doing a job than in following instructions. With such a disposition, and
+inasmuch as his suggestions were not considered of value, he had rather
+a hard time of it. Three children were born to the young couple. As
+Howe's earnings were slight and his health none of the best, his wife
+tried to add to the family income, and at evening, when Howe lay
+exhausted upon the bed after his day's work, the young mother patiently
+sewed. Her toil was to some purpose. With his natural bent for
+mechanics, Howe could not be a silent witness of this incessant and
+poorly paid labor without becoming interested in affording aid.
+Moreover, he was constantly employed upon new spinning and weaving
+machines for doing work that for thousands of years had been done
+painfully and slowly by hand. The possibility of sewing by machinery had
+often been spoken of before that day, but the problem seemed to present
+insuperable difficulties.
+
+Elias Howe had, as we know, peculiar fitness for such work. He had seen
+much of inventors and inventions, and knew something of the dangers and
+disappointments in store for him. In the intervals between important
+jobs at the shop he nursed the idea of a sewing-machine, keeping his own
+counsel. In his first rude attempt it appeared to him, that
+machine-sewing could only be accomplished with very coarse thread or
+string; fine thread would not stand the strain. For his first machine he
+made a needle pointed at both ends, with an eye in the middle; it was
+arranged to work up and down, carrying the thread through at each
+thrust. It was only after more than a year's work upon this device that
+he decided it would not do. This first attempt was a sort of imitation
+of sewing by hand, the machine following more or less the movements of
+the hand. Finally, after repeated failures, it became plain to him that
+something radically different was needed, and that there must be another
+stitch, and perhaps another needle or half a dozen needles, in such a
+machine. He then conceived the idea of using two threads, and making the
+stitch by means of a shuttle and a curved needle with the eye near the
+point. This was the real solution of the problem. In October, 1844, he
+made a rough model of his first sewing-machine, all of wood and wire,
+and found that it would actually sew.
+
+In one of the earliest accounts of the invention it is thus described:
+"He used a needle and a shuttle of novel construction, and combined them
+with holding surfaces, feed mechanism, and other devices as they had
+never before been brought together in one machine.... One of the
+principal features of Mr. Howe's invention is the combination of a
+grooved needle having an eye near its point, and vibrating in the
+direction of its length, with a side-pointed shuttle for effecting a
+locked stitch, and forming, with the threads, one on each side of the
+cloth, a firm and lasting seam not easily ripped."
+
+Meanwhile Howe had given up work as a machinist and had moved to his
+father's house in Cambridge, where the elder Howe had a shop for the
+cutting of palm-leaf used in the manufacture of hats. Here Elias and his
+little family lived, and in the garret the inventor put up a lathe upon
+which he made the parts of his sewing-machine. To provide for his family
+he did such odd jobs as he could find; but it was hard work to get
+bread, to say nothing of butter, and to make matters worse his father
+lost his shop by fire. Elias knew that his sewing-machine would work,
+but he had no money wherewith to buy the materials for a machine of
+steel and iron, and without such a machine he could not hope to interest
+capital in it. He needed at least $500 with which to prove the value of
+his great invention.
+
+Fortune threw in his way a coal and wood dealer of Cambridge, named
+Fisher, who had some money. Fisher liked the invention and agreed to
+board Howe and his family, to give Howe a workshop in his house, and to
+advance the $500 necessary for the construction of a first machine. In
+return he was to become a half owner in the patent should Howe succeed
+in obtaining one. In December, 1844, Howe accordingly moved into
+Fisher's house, and here the new marvel was brought into the world. All
+that winter Howe worked over his device in Fisher's garret, making many
+changes as unforeseen difficulties arose. He worked all day, and
+sometimes nearly all night, succeeding by April, 1845, in sewing a seam
+four yards long with his machine. By the middle of May the machine was
+completed, and in July Howe sewed with it the seams of two woollen
+suits, one for himself and the other for Fisher; the sewing was so well
+done that it promised to outlast the cloth. For many years this machine
+was exhibited in a shop in New York. It showed how completely, at really
+the first attempt, Howe had mastered the enormous difficulties in his
+way. Its chief features are those upon which were founded all the
+sewing-machines that followed.
+
+Late in 1845 Howe obtained his first patent and began to take means to
+introduce his sewing-machine to the public. He first offered it to the
+tailors of Boston, who admitted its usefulness, but assured him that it
+would never be adopted, as it would ruin their trade. Other efforts
+were equally unsuccessful; the more perfectly the machine did its work,
+the more obstinate and determined seemed to be the resistance to it.
+Everyone admitted and praised the ingenuity of the invention, but no one
+would invest a dollar in it. Fisher became disheartened and withdrew
+from the partnership, and Howe and his family moved back into his
+father's house.
+
+For a time the poor inventor abandoned his machine and obtained a place
+as engineer on a railway, driving a locomotive, until his health
+entirely broke down. Forced to turn again to his beloved sewing-machine
+for want of anything better to do, Howe decided to send his brother
+Amasa to England with a machine. Amasa reached London in October, 1846,
+and met a certain William Thomas, to whom he explained the invention.
+Thomas was much impressed with its possibilities and offered $1,250 for
+the machine and also to engage Elias Howe at $15 a week if he would
+enter his business of umbrella and corset maker. This was at least a
+livelihood to the latter, and he sailed for England, where for the next
+eight months he worked for Thomas, whom he found an uncommonly hard
+master. He was indeed so harshly treated that, although his wife and
+three children had arrived in London, he threw up his situation. For a
+time his condition was a piteous one. He was in a strange country,
+without friends or money. For days at a time the little family were
+without more than crusts to live upon.
+
+Believing that he could struggle along better alone, Howe sent his
+family home with the first few dollars that he could obtain from the
+other side and remained in London. There were certain things which
+caused him to hope for better times ahead. But such hopes were delusive,
+it seems, and after some months of hardship he followed his family to
+this country, pawning his model and his patent papers in order to obtain
+the necessary money for the passage. As he landed in New York with less
+than a dollar in his pocket, he received news that his wife was dying of
+consumption in Cambridge. He had no money for travelling by rail, and he
+was too feeble to attempt the journey on foot. It took him some days to
+obtain the money for his fare to Boston, but he arrived in time to be
+present at the death-bed of his wife. Before he could recover from this
+blow he had news that the ship by which he had sent home the few
+household goods still remaining to him had gone to the bottom.
+
+This was poor Howe's darkest hour. Others had seen the value of the
+sewing-machine, and during his absence in England several imitations of
+it had been made and sold to great advantage by unscrupulous mechanics,
+who had paid no attention to the rights of the inventor. Such machines
+were already spoken of as wonders by the newspapers, and were beginning
+to be used in several industries. Howe's patent was so strong that it
+was not difficult to find money to defend it, once the practical value
+of the invention had been well established, and in August, 1850, he
+began several suits to make his rights clear. At the same time he moved
+to New York, where he began in a small way to manufacture machines in
+partnership with a business man named Bliss, who undertook to sell them.
+
+It was not until Howe's rights to the invention had been fully
+established, which was done by the decision of Judge Sprague, in 1854,
+that the real value of the sewing-machine as a money-making venture
+began to be apparent and even then its great importance was so little
+realized, even by Bliss, who was in the business and died in 1855, that
+Howe was enabled to buy the interest of his heirs for a small sum. It
+was during these efforts to introduce the sewing-machine that occurred
+what were known as the sewing-machine riots--disturbances of no special
+importance, however--fomented by labor leaders in the New York shops in
+which cheap clothing was manufactured. Howe's sewing-machine was
+denounced as a menace to the thousands of men and women who worked in
+these shops, and in several establishments the first Howe machines
+introduced were so injured by mischievous persons as to retard the
+success of the experiment for nearly a year. Failing to stop their
+introduction by such means a public demonstration against them was
+organized and for a time threatened such serious trouble that some of
+the large shops gave up the use of the machine; but in small
+establishments employing but a few workmen they continued to be used and
+were soon found to be so indispensable that all opposition faded away.
+
+The patent suits forced upon Howe by a number of infringers were costly
+drains upon the inventor, but in the end all other manufacturers were
+compelled to pay tribute to him, and in six years his royalties grew
+from $300 to more than $200,000 a year. In 1863 his royalties were
+estimated at $4,000 a day. At the Paris Exposition of 1867 he was
+awarded a gold medal and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor.
+
+Howe's health, never strong, was so thoroughly broken by the years of
+struggle and hardship he met with while trying to introduce his machine
+that he never completely recovered. If honors and money were any comfort
+to him, his last years must have been happy ones, for his invention made
+him famous, and he had been enough of a workingman to recognize the
+blessing he had conferred upon millions of women released from the
+slavery of the needle; he had answered Hood's "Song of the Shirt." He
+died on October 3, 1867, at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y.
+
+Those who knew Howe personally speak of him as rather a handsome man,
+with a head somewhat like Franklin's and a reserved, quiet manner. His
+bitter struggle against poverty and disease left its impress upon him
+even to the last. One trait frequently mentioned was his readiness to
+find good points in the thousand and one variations and sometimes
+improvements upon his invention. During the years 1858-67, when he died,
+there were recorded nearly three hundred patents affecting the
+sewing-machine, taken out by other inventors. Howe was always ready to
+help along such improvements by advice and often by money. He fought
+sturdily for his rights, but once those conceded he was a generous
+rival.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.
+
+
+[Illustration: Birthplace of S.F.B. Morse, Built 1775.]
+
+Samuel Finley Breese Morse was the eldest son of the Rev. Jedediah
+Morse, an eminent New England divine. The Rev. Samuel Finley, D.D.,
+second president of the College of New Jersey, Princeton, was his
+maternal great-grandfather, after whom he was named. Breese was the
+maiden name of his mother. The famous inventor of the telegraph was born
+at the foot of Breed's Hill, Charlestown, Mass., April 27, 1791. Dr.
+Belknap, of Boston, writing to Postmaster-General Hazard, New York,
+says:
+
+"Congratulate the Monmouth judge (Mr. Breese, the grandfather) on the
+birth of a grandson. Next Sunday he is to be loaded with names, not
+quite so many as the Spanish ambassador who signed the treaty of peace
+of 1783, but only four. As to the child, I saw him asleep, so can say
+nothing of his eye, or his genius peeping through it. He may have the
+sagacity of a Jewish rabbi, or the profundity of a Calvin, or the
+sublimity of a Homer for aught I know, but time will bring forth all
+things."
+
+Jedediah Morse studied theology under the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Edwards.
+Before he began preaching, and while teaching school in New Haven, he
+began his "American Geography," which was afterward indentified with his
+name. He began his ministry at Norwich, whence he was called back to be
+tutor in Yale. His health was inadequate to the work and he went to
+Georgia, returning to Charlestown, Mass., as pastor of the First
+Congregational Church, on the day that Washington was inaugurated as
+President in New York, April 30, 1789. Dr. Eliot, speaking of Jedediah
+Morse, said: "What an astonishing impetus that man has!" President
+Dwight said: "He is as full of resources as an egg is of meat." Daniel
+Webster spoke of him as "always thinking, always writing, always
+talking, always acting."
+
+[Illustration: S.F.B. Morse.]
+
+Morse's mother, Elizabeth Anne Breese, came of good Scotch-Irish stock.
+She was married to Jedediah Morse in 1789, and was noted as a calm,
+judicious, and thinking woman, with a will of her own. When the child,
+Samuel F.B. Morse, was four years old he was sent to school to an old
+lady within a few hundred yards of the parsonage. She was an invalid,
+unable to leave her chair, and governed her unruly flock with a long
+rattan which reached across the small room in which it was gathered. One
+of her punishments was pinning the culprit to her own dress, and Morse
+remarks that his first attempts at drawing were discouraged in this
+fashion. Perhaps the fact that he selected the old lady's face as a
+model had something to do with it. At the age of seven he was sent to
+school at Andover, where he was fitted for entering Phillips Academy,
+and prepared here for Yale, joining the class of 1807. When he was
+thirteen years old, at Andover, he wrote a sketch of Demosthenes and
+sent it to his father, by whom it was preserved as a mark of the
+learning and taste of the child. Dr. Timothy Dwight was then president
+of Yale and a warm friend of the elder Morse. Finley Morse, as he was
+then known, received therefore the deep personal interest of Dr. Dwight.
+Jeremiah Day was professor of natural philosophy in Yale College, and
+under his instruction Morse began the study of electricity, receiving
+perhaps those impressions that were destined to produce so great an
+influence upon him and, through him, upon this century. Professor Day
+was then young and ardent in the pursuit of science, kindling readily
+the enthusiasm of his students. He afterward became president of the
+college. There was at the same time in the faculty Benjamin Silliman,
+who was professor of chemistry, and near whom Morse resided for several
+years. Years afterward the testimony of Professors Day and Silliman was
+given in court, when it was important, in the defence of his claim to
+priority in the invention of the telegraph. Through them Morse was able
+to show that he was early interested in the study of chemistry and
+electricity. During this litigation Morse did not know that there were
+scores of letters, written by him as a young student to his father,
+among the papers of Dr Jedediah Morse, that would have shown
+conclusively his interest and aptitude in these studies. The papers
+were brought to light when the life of Morse by Prime came to be
+written.
+
+The first part of Morse's life was devoted to art. At a very early age
+he showed his taste in this direction, and at the age of fifteen painted
+a fairly good picture in water colors of a room in his father's house,
+with his parents, himself, and two brothers around a table. This picture
+used to hang in his home in New York by the side of his last painting.
+From that time his desire to become an artist haunted him through his
+collegiate life. In February, 1811, he painted a picture, now in the
+office of the mayor of Charlestown, Mass., depicting the landing of the
+Pilgrims at Plymouth, which, with a landscape painted at about the same
+time, decided his father, by the advice of Stuart, to permit him to
+visit Europe with Washington Allston. He bore letters to West and to
+Copley, from both of whom he received the kindest attention and
+encouragement.
+
+As a test for his fitness for a place as student in the Royal Academy,
+Morse made a drawing from a small cast of the Farnese Hercules. He took
+this to West, who examined the drawing carefully and handed it back,
+saying: "Very well, sir, very well; go on and finish it." "It is
+finished," said the expectant student. "Oh, no," said the president.
+"Look here, and here, and here," pointing out many unfinished places
+which had escaped the eye of the young artist. Morse quickly observed
+the defects, spent a week in further perfecting his drawing, and then
+took it to West, confident that it was above criticism. The venerable
+president of the Academy bestowed more praise than before and, with a
+pleasant smile, handed it back to Morse, saying: "Very well, indeed,
+sir. Go on and finish it." "Is it not finished?" inquired the almost
+discouraged student. "See," said West, "you have not marked that muscle,
+nor the articulation of the finger-joints." Three days more were spent
+upon the drawing, when it was taken back to the implacable critic. "Very
+clever, indeed," said West; "very clever. Now go on and finish it." "I
+cannot finish it," Morse replied, when the old man, patting him on the
+shoulder, said: "Well, I have tried you long enough. Now, sir, you have
+learned more by this drawing than you would have accomplished in double
+the time by a dozen half-finished beginnings. It is not many drawings,
+but the character of one which makes a thorough draughtsman. Finish one
+picture, sir, and you are a painter."
+
+Morse heeded this advice. He went to work with Allston, and encouraged
+by the veteran, Copley, he began upon a large picture for exhibition in
+the Royal Academy, choosing as his subject "The Dying Hercules." He
+modelled his figure in clay, as the best of the old painters did. It was
+his first attempt in the sculptor's art. The cast was made in plaster
+and taken to West, who was delighted with it. This model contended for
+the prize of a gold medal offered by the Society of Arts for the best
+original cast of a single figure, and won it. In the large room of the
+London Adelphi, in the presence of the British nobility, foreign
+ambassadors, and distinguished strangers, the Duke of Norfolk publicly
+presented the medal to Morse on May 13, 1813. At the same time the
+painting from this model, then on exhibition at the Royal Academy,
+received great praise from the critics, who placed "The Dying Hercules"
+among the first twelve pictures in a collection of almost two thousand.
+
+This was an extraordinary success for so young a man, and Morse
+determined to try for the highest prize offered by the Royal Academy for
+the best historical composition, the decision to be made in 1815. For
+that purpose he produced his "Judgment of Jupiter" in July of that year.
+West assured him that it would take the prize, but Morse was unable to
+comply with the rules of the Academy, which required the victor to
+receive the medal in person. His father had summoned him home. West
+urged the Academy to make an exception in his case, but it could not be
+done, and the young painter had to be contented with his assurances that
+he would certainly have won the prize (a gold medal and $250) had he
+remained.
+
+West was always kind to Americans, and Morse was a favorite with him.
+One day, when the venerable painter was at work upon his great picture,
+"Christ Rejected," after carefully examining Morse's hands and noting
+their beauty, he said: "Let me tie you with this cord and take that
+place while I paint in the hands of the Saviour." This was done, and
+when he released the young artist, he said to him: "You may now say, if
+you please, that you had a hand in this picture." A number of noted
+English artists--Turner, Northcote, Sir James Lawrence, Flaxman--and
+literary men--Coleridge, Wordsworth, Rogers, and Crabbe among them--were
+attracted by young Morse's proficiency and pleasant manners, and when in
+August, 1815, he packed his picture, "The Judgment of Jupiter," and
+sailed for home, he bore with him the good wishes of some of England's
+most distinguished men.
+
+When Morse reached Boston, although but twenty-four years old, he found
+that fame had preceded him. His prestige was such that he set up his
+easel with high hopes and fair prospects for the future, both destined
+soon to be dispelled. The taste of America had not risen to the
+appreciation of historical pictures. His original compositions and his
+excellent copies of the masterpieces of the Old World excited the
+admiration of cultured people, but no orders were given for them. He
+left Boston almost penniless after having waited for months for
+patronage, and determined to try to earn his bread by painting the
+portraits of people in the rural districts of New England, where his
+father's name was a household word. During the autumn of 1816 and the
+winter of 1816-1817 he visited several towns in New Hampshire and
+Vermont, painting portraits in Walpole, Hanover, Windsor, Portsmouth,
+and Concord. He received the modest sum of $15 for each portrait. From
+Concord, N.H., he writes to his parents: "I am still here (August 16th)
+and am passing my time very agreeably. I have painted five portraits at
+$15 each, and have two more engaged and many talked of. I think I shall
+get along well. I believe I could make an independent fortune in a few
+years if I devoted myself exclusively to portraits, so great is the
+desire for good portraits in the different country towns." He doubtless
+was candid when he wrote that he was "passing his time in Concord very
+agreeably," for it was here that he met Lucretia P. Walker, who was
+accounted the most beautiful and accomplished young lady of the town,
+whom Morse subsequently married. She was a young woman of great personal
+loveliness and rare good sense. The young artist was attracted by her
+beauty, her sweetness of temper, and high intellectual qualities. All
+the letters that she wrote to him before and after their marriage he
+carefully preserved, and these are witnesses to her intelligence,
+education, tenderness of feeling, and admirable fitness to be the wife
+of such a man. Gradually Morse's portraits became so much in demand that
+he was enabled to increase his price to $60, and as he painted four a
+week upon the average, and received a good deal of money during a tour
+in the South, he was enabled to return to New England in 1818 with
+$3,000, and to marry Miss Walker on October 6th of that year.
+
+The first years of Morse's married life were passed in Charleston, S.C.,
+after which he returned to New England, and having laid by some little
+capital, he took up again what he deemed to be his real vocation--the
+painting of great historical pictures. His first venture in this
+direction was an exhibition picture of the House of Representatives at
+Washington. As a business venture it was disastrous, and resulted in the
+loss of eighteen months of precious time. It was finally sold to an
+Englishman. Then began Morse's life in New York. Through the influence
+of Isaac Lawrence he obtained a commission from the city authorities of
+New York to paint a full-length portrait of Lafayette, who was then in
+this country. He had just completed his study from life in Washington in
+February, 1825, when he received the news of the death of his wife. A
+little more than a year afterward both his father and mother died.
+Thenceforward his children and art absorbed his affections.
+
+He was an artist, heart and soul, and his professional brethren soon had
+good reason to be grateful to him. The American Academy of Fine Arts,
+then under the presidency of Colonel John Trumbull, was in a languishing
+state and of little use to artists. The most advanced of its members
+felt the need of relief, and a few of them met at Morse's rooms to
+discuss their troubles. At that meeting Morse proposed the formation of
+a new society of artists, and at a meeting held at the New York
+Historical Society's rooms the "New York Drawing Association" was
+organized, with Morse as its president. Trumbull endeavored to compel
+the new society to profess allegiance to the academy, but Morse
+protested, and thanks to his advice, on January 18, 1826, a new art
+association was organized under the name of the "National Academy of
+Design." Morse was its first president, and for sixteen years he was
+annually elected to that office. The friends of the old academy were
+wrathful and assailed the new association. A war of words, in which
+Morse acted as the champion of the new society, was waged until victory
+was conceded to the reformers. Thus Morse inaugurated a new era in the
+history of the fine arts in this country. He wrote, talked, lectured
+incessantly for the advancement of art and the Academy of Design.
+
+[Illustration: Under Side of a Modern Switchboard, showing 2,000 Wires.]
+
+In 1829 Morse made a second visit to Europe, where he was warmly
+welcomed and honored by the Royal Academy. During three years or more
+he lived in continental cities, studying the Louvre in Paris and making
+of the famous gallery an exhibition picture which contained about fifty
+miniatures of the works in that collection. In November, 1832, he was
+back again in New York, with high hopes as to his future. Allston,
+writing to Dunlap in 1834, said: "I rejoice to hear your report of
+Morse's advance in his art. I know what is in him perhaps better than
+anyone else. If he will only bring out all that is there he will show
+parts that many now do not dream of."
+
+For several years the thoughts of the artist Morse had been busy with a
+matter wholly outside of his chosen domain. Some lectures on
+electro-magnetism by his intimate friend, Judge Freeman Dana, given at
+the Athenĉum while Morse was also lecturing there on the fine arts, had
+greatly interested him in the subject, and he learned much in
+conversation with Dana. While on his second visit to Europe Morse made
+himself acquainted with the labors of scientific men in their endeavors
+to communicate intelligence between far-distant places by means of
+electro-magnetism, and he saw an electro-magnet signalling instrument in
+operation. He knew that so early as 1649 a Jesuit priest had prophesied
+an electric telegraph, and that for half a century or more students had
+partially succeeded in attempts of this kind. But no practical telegraph
+had yet been invented. In 1774 Le Sage made an electro-signalling
+instrument with twenty-four wires, one for each letter of the alphabet.
+In 1825 Sturgeon invented an electro-magnet. In 1830 Professor Henry
+increased the magnetic force that Morse afterward used.
+
+On board the ship Sully, in which Morse sailed from Havre to New York,
+in the autumn of 1832, the recent discovery in France of the means of
+obtaining an electric spark from a magnet was a favorite topic of
+conversation among the passengers, and it was during the voyage that
+Morse conceived the idea of an electro-magnetic and chemical recording
+telegraph. Before he reached New York he had made drawings and
+specifications of his conception, which he exhibited to his fellow
+passengers. Few great inventions that have made their authors immortal
+were so completely grasped at inception as this. Morse was accustomed to
+keep small note-books in which to make records of his work, and scores
+of these books are still in existence. As he sat upon the deck of the
+Sully, one night after dinner, he drew from his pocket one of these
+books and began to make marks, to represent letters and figures to be
+produced by electricity at a distance. The mechanism by which the
+results were to be reached was wrought out by slow and laborious
+thought, but the vision as a whole was clear. The current of electricity
+passed instantaneously to any distance along a wire, but the current
+being interrupted, a spark appeared. This spark represented one sign;
+its absence another; the time of its absence still another. Here are
+three signs to be combined into the representation of figures or
+letters. They can be made to form an alphabet. Words may thus be
+indicated. A telegraph, an instrument to record at a distance, will
+result. Continents shall be crossed. This great and wide sea shall be no
+barrier. "If it will go ten miles without stopping," he said, "I can
+make it go around the globe."
+
+He worked incessantly all that next day and could not sleep at night in
+his berth. In a few days he submitted some rough drafts of his invention
+to William C. Rives, of Virginia, who was returning from Paris, where he
+had been minister of the United States. Mr. Rives suggested various
+difficulties, over which Morse spent several sleepless nights,
+announcing in the morning at breakfast-table the new devices by which he
+proposed to accomplish the task before him. He exhibited a drawing of
+the instrument which he said would do the work, and so completely had he
+mastered all the details that five years afterward, when a model of this
+instrument was constructed, it was instantly recognized as the one he
+had devised and drawn in his sketch-book and exhibited to his fellow
+passengers on the ship. In view of subsequent claims made by a fellow
+passenger to the honor of having suggested the telegraph, these details
+are interesting and important.
+
+[Illustration: The First Telegraphic Instrument, as Exhibited in 1837 by
+Morse.]
+
+Circumstances delayed the construction of a recording telegraph by
+Morse, but the subject slumbered in his mind. During his absence abroad
+he had been elected professor of the literature of the arts of design,
+in the University of the City of New York, and this work occupied his
+attention for some time. Three years afterward, in November, 1835, he
+completed a rude telegraph instrument--the first recording apparatus;
+but it embodied the mechanical principle now in use the world over. His
+whole plan was not completed until July, 1837, when by means of two
+instruments he was able to communicate from as well as to a distant
+point. In September hundreds of people saw the new instrument in
+operation at the university, most of whom looked upon it as a scientific
+toy constructed by an unfortunate dreamer. The following year the
+invention was sufficiently perfected to enable Morse to direct the
+attention of Congress to it and ask its aid in the construction of an
+experimental line between Washington and Baltimore.
+
+Late in the long session of 1838 he appeared before that body with his
+instrument. Before leaving New York with it he had invited a few friends
+to see it work. Now began in the life of Morse a period of years during
+which his whole time was devoted to convincing the world, first, that
+his electric telegraph would really communicate messages, and, secondly,
+that if it worked at all, it was of great practical value. Strange to
+say that this required any argument at all. But that in those days it
+did may be inferred from the fact that Morse could then find no help far
+or near. His invention was regarded as interesting, but of no importance
+either scientifically or commercially. In Washington, where he first
+went, he found so little encouragement that he went to Europe with the
+hope of drawing the attention of foreign governments to the advantages,
+and of securing patents for the invention; he had filed a caveat at the
+Patent Office in this country. His mission was a failure. England
+refused him a patent, and France gave him only a useless paper which
+assured for him no special privileges. He returned home disappointed but
+not discouraged, and waited four years longer before he again attempted
+to interest Congress in his invention.
+
+[Illustration: The Modern Morse Telegraph.]
+
+This extraordinary struggle lasted twelve years, during which, with his
+mind absorbed in one idea and yet almost wholly dependent for bread upon
+his profession as an artist, it was impossible to pursue art with the
+enthusiasm and industry essential to success. His situation was forlorn
+in the extreme. The father of three little children, now motherless, his
+pecuniary means exhausted by his residence in Europe, and unable to
+pursue art without sacrificing his invention, he was at his wits' ends.
+He had visions of usefulness by the invention of a telegraph that should
+bring the continents of the earth into intercourse. He was poor and knew
+that wealth as well as fame was within his reach. He had long received
+assistance from his father and brothers when his profession did not
+supply the needed means of support for himself and family; but it seemed
+like robbery to take the money of others for experiments, the success of
+which he could not expect them to believe in until he could give
+practical evidence that the instrument would do the work proposed. It
+was the old story of genius contending with poverty. His brothers
+comforted, encouraged, and cheered him. In the house of his brother
+Richard he found a home and the tender care that he required. Sidney,
+the other brother, also helped him. On the corner of Nassau and Beekman
+Streets, now the site of the handsome Morse Building, his brothers
+erected a building where were the offices of the newspaper of which they
+were the editors and proprietors. In the fifth story of this building a
+room was assigned to him which was for several years his studio,
+bedroom, parlor, kitchen, and workshop. On one side of the room stood a
+little cot on which he slept in the brief hours which he allowed himself
+for repose. On the other side stood his lathe with which the inventor
+turned the brass apparatus necessary in the construction of his
+instruments. He had, with his own hands, first whittled the model; then
+he made the moulds for the castings. Here were brought to him, day by
+day, crackers and the simplest food, by which, with tea prepared by
+himself, he sustained life while he toiled incessantly to give being to
+the idea that possessed him.
+
+[Illustration: Morse Making his own Instrument.
+
+(From Prime's Life of Morse.)]
+
+Before leaving for Europe he had suffered a great disappointment as an
+artist. The government had offered to American artists, to be selected
+by a committee of Congress, commissions to paint pictures for the panels
+in the rotunda of the Capitol. Morse was anxious to be employed upon one
+or more of them. He was the president of the National Academy of Design,
+and there was an eminent fitness in calling him to this national work.
+Allston urged the appointment of Morse. John Quincy Adams, then a
+member of the House and on the committee to whom this subject was
+referred, submitted a resolution in the House that foreign artists be
+allowed to compete for these commissions, and in support alleged that
+there were no American artists competent to execute the paintings. This
+gave great and just offence to the artists and the public. A severe
+reply to Adams appeared in the New York _Evening Post_. It was written
+by James Fenimore Cooper, but it was attributed to Morse, whose pen was
+well known to be skillful, and in consequence his name was rejected by
+the committee. He never recovered fully from the effects of that blow.
+Forty years afterward he could not speak of it without emotion. He had
+consecrated years of his life to the preparation for just such work.
+
+It was well for him and for his country and the world that the artist in
+Morse was disappointed. From painter he became inventor, and from that
+time until the world acknowledged the greatness and importance of his
+invention he turned not back. His appointment as professor in the City
+University entitled him to certain rooms in the University Building
+looking out upon Washington Square, and here the first working models of
+the telegraph were brought into existence.
+
+"There," he says, "I immediately commenced, with very limited means, to
+experiment upon my invention. My first instrument was made up of an old
+picture or canvas frame fastened to a table; the wheels of an old
+wooden clock, moved by a weight to carry the paper forward; three wooden
+drums, upon one of which the paper was wound and passed over the other
+two; a wooden pendulum suspended to the top piece of the picture or
+stretching frame and vibrating across the paper as it passes over the
+centre wooden drum; a pencil at the lower end of the pendulum, in
+contact with the paper; an electro-magnet fastened to a shelf across the
+picture or stretching frame, opposite to an armature made fast to the
+pendulum; a type rule and type for breaking the circuit, resting on an
+endless band, composed of carpet-binding, which passed over two wooden
+rollers moved by a wooden crank.
+
+[Illustration: Train Telegraph--the message transmitted by induction
+from the moving train to the single wire.]
+
+[Illustration: Interior of a Car on the Lehigh Valley Railroad, showing
+the Method of Operating the Train Telegraph.]
+
+"Up to the autumn of 1837 my telegraphic apparatus existed in so rude a
+form that I felt a reluctance to have it seen. My means were very
+limited--so limited as to preclude the possibility of constructing an
+apparatus of such mechanical finish as to warrant my success in
+venturing upon its public exhibition. I had no wish to expose to
+ridicule the representative of so many hours of laborious thought. Prior
+to the summer of 1837, at which time Mr. Alfred Vail's attention became
+attracted to my telegraph, I depended upon my pencil for subsistence.
+Indeed, so straitened were my circumstances that, in order to save time
+to carry out my invention and to economize my scanty means, I had for
+many months lodged and eaten in my studio, procuring my food in small
+quantities from some grocery and preparing it myself. To conceal from my
+friends the stinted manner in which I lived, I was in the habit of
+bringing my food to my room in the evenings, and this was my mode of
+life for many years."
+
+Before the telegraph was actually tried and practised the cumbersome
+piano-key board devised by Morse in his first experiments was done away
+with and the simple device of a single key, with which we are all
+familiar, was adopted. Meantime Morse was practically abandoning art.
+His friends among the profession had subscribed $3,000 in order to
+enable him to paint the picture he had in mind when he applied for the
+government work at Washington, "The Signing of the First Compact on
+Board the Mayflower," and he undertook the commission in 1838, only to
+give it up in 1841 and to return to the subscribers the amount paid with
+interest.
+
+[Illustration: Diagram showing the Method of Telegraphing from a Moving
+Train by Induction.]
+
+While Morse had been in Paris, in 1839, he had heard of Daguerre, who
+had discovered the method of fixing the image of the camera, which feat
+was then creating a great sensation among scientific men. Professor
+Morse was anxious to see the results of this discovery before leaving
+Paris, and the American consul, Robert Walsh, arranged an interview
+between the two inventors. Daguerre promised to send to Morse a copy of
+the descriptive publication which he intended to make so soon as a
+pension he expected from the French Government for the disclosure of his
+discovery should be secured. He kept his promise, and Morse was probably
+the first recipient of the pamphlet in this country. From the drawings
+it contained he constructed the first photographic apparatus made in the
+United States, and from a back window in the University Building he
+obtained a good representation of the tower of the Church of the Messiah
+on Broadway. This possesses an historical interest as being the first
+photograph in America. It was on a plate the size of a playing-card.
+With Professor J.W. Draper, in a studio built on the roof of the
+University, he succeeded in taking likenesses of the living human face.
+His subjects were compelled to sit fifteen minutes in the bright
+sunlight, with their eyes closed, of course. Professor Draper shortened
+the process and was the first to take portraits with the eyes open.
+
+At the session of Congress of 1842-1843 Morse again appeared with his
+telegraph, and on February 21, 1843, John P. Kennedy, of Maryland, moved
+that a bill appropriating $30,000, to be expended, under the direction
+of the Secretary of the Treasury, in a series of experiments for testing
+the merits of the telegraph, should be considered. The proposal met with
+ridicule. Johnson, of Tennessee, moved, as an amendment, that one-half
+should be given to a lecturer on mesmerism, then in Washington, to try
+mesmeric experiments under the direction of the Secretary of the
+Treasury; and Mr. Houston said that Millerism ought to be included in
+the benefits of the appropriation. After the indulgence of much cheap
+wit, Mr. Mason, of Ohio, protested against such frivolity as injurious
+to the character of the House and asked the chair to rule the amendments
+out of order. The chair (John White, of Kentucky) ruled the amendments
+in order because "it would require a scientific analysis to determine
+how far the magnetism of the mesmerism was analogous to that to be
+employed in telegraphy." This wit was applauded by peals of laughter,
+but the amendment was voted down and the bill passed the House on
+February 23d by the close vote of 89 to 83. In the Senate the bill met
+with neither sneers nor opposition, but its progress was discouragingly
+slow. At twilight on the last evening of the session (March 3, 1842)
+there were one hundred and nineteen bills before it. It seemed
+impossible for it to be reached in regular course before the hour of
+adjournment should arrive, and Morse, who had anxiously watched the
+dreary course of business all day from the gallery of the Senate
+chamber, went with a sad heart to his hotel and prepared to leave for
+New York at an early hour the next morning. His cup of disappointment
+seemed to be about full. With the exception of Alfred Vail, a young
+student in the University, through whose influence some money had been
+subscribed in return for a one-fourth interest in the invention, and of
+Professor L.D. Gale, who had shown much interest in the work and was
+also a partner in the enterprise, Morse knew of no one who seemed to
+believe enough in him and his telegraph to advance another dollar.
+
+As he came down to breakfast the next morning a young lady entered and
+came forward with a smile, exclaiming, "I have come to congratulate
+you." "Upon what?" inquired the professor. "Upon the passage of your
+bill," she replied. "Impossible! Its fate was sealed last evening. You
+must be mistaken." "Not at all," answered the young lady, the daughter
+of Morse's friend, the Commissioner of Patents, H.L. Ellsworth; "father
+sent me to tell you that your bill was passed. He remained until the
+session closed, and yours was the last bill but one acted upon, and it
+was passed just five minutes before the adjournment. And I am so glad to
+be able to be the first one to tell you. Mother says you must come home
+with me to breakfast."
+
+Morse, overcome by the intelligence, promised that his young friend, the
+bearer of these good tidings, should send the first message over the
+first line of telegraph that was opened.
+
+He writes to Alfred Vail that day: "The amount of business before the
+Senate rendered it more and more doubtful, as the session drew to a
+close, whether the House bill on the telegraph would be reached, and on
+the last day, March 3, 1843, I was advised by one of my Senatorial
+friends to make up my mind for failure, as he deemed it next to
+impossible that it could be reached before the adjournment. The bill,
+however, was reached a few minutes before midnight and passed. This was
+the turning point in the history of the telegraph. My personal funds
+were reduced to the fraction of a dollar, and, had the passage of the
+bill failed from any cause, there would have been little prospect of
+another attempt on my part to introduce to the world my new invention."
+
+The appropriation by Congress having been made, Morse went to work with
+energy and delight to construct the first line of his electric
+telegraph. It was important that it should be laid where it would
+attract the attention of the government, and this consideration decided
+the question in favor of a line between Washington and Baltimore. He had
+as assistants Professor Gale and Professor J.C. Fisher. Mr. Vail was to
+devote his attention to making the instruments and the purchase of
+materials. Morse himself was general superintendent under the
+appointment of the government and gave attention to the minutest
+details. All disbursements passed through his hands. In point of
+accuracy, the preservation of vouchers, and presentation of accounts,
+General Washington himself was not more precise, lucid, and correct.
+Ezra Cornell, afterward one of the most successful constructors of
+telegraph lines, was employed to take charge of the work under Morse.
+Much time and expense were lost in consequence of following a plan for
+laying the wires in a leaden tube, and it was only when it was decided
+to string them on posts that work began to proceed rapidly.
+
+In expectation of the meeting of the National Whig Convention, May 1,
+1844, to nominate candidates for President and Vice-President, energy
+was redoubled, and by that time the wires were in working order
+twenty-two miles from Washington toward Baltimore. The day before the
+convention met, Professor Morse wrote to Vail that certain signals
+should mean the nomination of a particular candidate. The experiment was
+approaching its crisis. The convention assembled and Henry Clay was
+nominated by acclamation to the Presidency. The news was conveyed on the
+railroad to the point reached by the telegraph and thence instantly
+transmitted over the wires to Washington. An hour afterward passengers
+arriving at the capital, and supposing that they had brought the first
+intelligence, were surprised to find that the announcement had been made
+already and that they were the bearers of old news. The convention
+shortly afterward nominated Frelinghuysen as Vice-President, and the
+intelligence was sent to Washington in the same manner. Public
+astonishment was great and many persons doubted that the feat could have
+been performed. Before May had elapsed the line reached Baltimore.
+
+[Illustration: Morse in his Study.
+
+(From an old print.)]
+
+On the 24th of May, 1844, Morse was prepared to put to final test the
+great experiment on which his mind had been laboring for twelve anxious
+years. Vail, his assistant, was at the Baltimore terminus. Morse had
+invited his friends to assemble in the chamber of the United States
+Supreme Court, where he had his instrument, from which the wires
+extended to Baltimore. He had promised his young friend, Miss Ellsworth,
+that she should send the first message over the wires. Her mother
+suggested the familiar words of scripture (Numbers, xxiii. 23), "What
+hath God wrought!" The words were chosen without consultation with the
+inventor, but were singularly the expression of his own sentiment and
+his own experience in bringing his work to successful accomplishment.
+Perfectly religious in his convictions, and trained from earliest
+childhood to believe in the special superintendence of Providence in the
+minutest affairs of man, he had acted throughout the whole of his
+struggles under the firm persuasion that God was working in him to do
+His own pleasure in this thing.
+
+The first public messages sent were a notice to Silas Wright in
+Washington of his nomination to the office of Vice-President of the
+United States by the Democratic convention, then in session (May, 1844)
+in Baltimore, and his response declining it. Hendrick B. Wright, in a
+letter written to Mr. B.J. Lossing, says: "As the presiding officer of
+the body I read the despatch, but so incredulous were the members as to
+the authority of the evidence before them that the convention adjourned
+over to the following day to await the report of the committee sent over
+to Washington to get _reliable_ information on the subject." Mr. Vail
+kept a diary in those early days of the telegraph, full of interesting
+reminiscences. It was often necessary, in order to convince incredulous
+visitors to the office that the questions and replies sent over the wire
+were not manufactured or agreed upon beforehand, to allow them to send
+their own remarks. When the committee just mentioned by Mr. Wright
+returned from Baltimore and confirmed the correctness of the report
+given by telegraph, the new invention received a splendid advertisement.
+The convention having reassembled in the morning, and the refusal of
+Wright to accept the nomination having been communicated, a conference
+was held between him and his friends through the medium of Morse's
+wires. In Washington Mr. Wright and Mr. Morse were closeted with the
+instrument; at Baltimore the committee of conference surrounded Vail
+with his instrument. Spectators and auditors were excluded. The
+committee communicated to Mr. Wright their reasons for urging his
+acceptance. In a moment he received their communication in writing and
+as quickly returned his answer. Again and again these confidential
+messages passed, and the result was finally announced to the convention
+that Mr. Wright was inflexible. Mr. Dallas then received the nomination
+and accepted it. The ticket thus nominated was successful at the
+election of that year. The original slips of paper on which some of the
+early messages were written are still preserved, among others this
+request: "As a rumor is prevalent here this morning that Mr. Eugene
+Boyle was shot at Baltimore last evening, Professor Morse will confer a
+great favor upon the family by making inquiry by means of his
+electro-magnetic telegraph if such is the fact."
+
+The telegraph was shown at first without charge. During the session of
+1844-1845 Congress made an appropriation of $8,000 to keep it in
+operation during the year, placing it under the supervision of the
+Postmaster-General, who, at the close of the session, ordered a tariff
+of charges of one cent for every four characters made through the
+telegraph. Mr. Vail was appointed operator for the Washington station
+and Mr. H.J. Rogers for Baltimore. This new order of things began April
+1, 1845, the object being to test the profitableness of the enterprise.
+The first day's income was one cent; on the fifth day twelve and a half
+cents were received; on the seventh the receipts ran up to sixty cents;
+on the eighth to one dollar and thirty-two cents; on the ninth to one
+dollar and four cents. It is worthy of remark, as Mr. Vail notes, that
+the business done after the tariff was fixed was greater than when the
+service was gratuitous.
+
+The telegraph was now a reality. Its completion was hailed with
+enthusiasm, and the newspapers lauded the inventor to the skies.
+Resolutions of thanks and applause were adopted by popular assemblies.
+It was a favorite idea with Professor Morse, from the inception of his
+enterprise, that the telegraph should belong to the government, and he
+sent a communication to Congress making a formal offer. The overture was
+not accepted, but the extension of the line from Baltimore to
+Philadelphia and then to New York was only a work of time. The aid of
+Congress was sought in vain. The appropriation of $8,000 was made, but
+further than that the government declined to go. The sum named as the
+price at which the Morse Company would sell the telegraph to the
+government was $100,000. The subject was discussed in the report of Cave
+Johnson, Postmaster-General under President Polk. He was a member of
+Congress when the bill came up before the House appropriating $30,000
+for the experimental line, and was one of those who ridiculed the whole
+subject as unworthy of the notice of sensible men. As Postmaster-General
+he said in his report, after the experiment had succeeded to the
+satisfaction of mankind, that "the operation of a telegraph between
+Washington and Baltimore had not satisfied him that under any rate of
+postage that could be adopted its revenues could be made equal to its
+expenditures." Such an opinion, with the evidence then in the possession
+of the department, appears to be curious official blindness. But it was
+fortunate for the inventor that the telegraph was left to the private
+enterprise. Twenty-five years after the government had declined to take
+the telegraph at the price of $100,000, a project was started to
+establish lines of telegraph to be used by the government as part of the
+mail postal system. And in 1873 the Postmaster-General, Mr. Cresswell,
+said in his report that the entire first cost of all the lines in the
+country, including patents, was less than $10,000,000; but the property
+of the existing telegraph company was already well worth $50,000,000.
+
+Morse's position was far easier than it had been for many years. His old
+friends, the artists of New York, rallied in force and laid before
+Congress a petition that the professor be employed to execute the
+painting to fill the panel at the Capitol assigned to Inman, who had
+been removed by death. But it came to nothing. Morse was never again to
+take the brush in hand. The first money that he received from his
+invention was the sum of $47, being his share of the amount paid for the
+right to use his patent on a short line from the Washington Post-office
+to the National Observatory. The use he made of the money was
+characteristic of the man. He sent it to the Rev. Dr. Sprole, then a
+pastor in Washington, requesting him to apply it for the benefit of his
+church.
+
+Early in June, 1846, the line from Baltimore to Philadelphia was in
+operation, and that from Philadelphia to New York. Abroad the system was
+working its way steadily into favor. In France an appropriation of
+nearly half a million francs was made to introduce the Morse system. But
+meantime violations of Morse's rights were beginning to crop up on every
+side, both at home and abroad. In a letter to Daniel Lord, his lawyer,
+Morse says:
+
+"The plot thickens all around me; I think a dénouement not far off. I
+remember your consoling me under these attacks with bidding me think
+that I had invented something worth contending for. Alas! my dear sir,
+what encouragement is there to an inventor if, after years of toil and
+anxiety, he has only purchased for himself the pleasure of being a
+target for every vile fellow to shoot at, and in proportion as his
+invention is of public utility, so much the greater effort is to be made
+to defame that the robbery may excite the less sympathy? I know,
+however, that beyond all this there is a clear sky; but the clouds may
+not break away till I am no longer personally interested, whether it be
+foul or fair. I wish not to complain, but I have feelings, and cannot
+play the Stoic if I would."
+
+[Illustration: The Siphon Recorder for Receiving Cable Messages--Office
+of the Commercial Cable Company, 1 Broad Street, New York.]
+
+Perhaps the most painful chapter of Morse's life is the history of the
+lawsuits in which he was involved in defence of his rights. His
+reputation as well as his property were assailed. Exceedingly sensitive
+to these attacks, the suits that followed the success of the telegraph
+cost him inexpressible distress. It is some satisfaction to be able to
+record that after years of bitter controversy the final decision was
+favorable to the inventor. Honors began to pour in upon him from even
+the uttermost parts of the earth. The Sultan of Turkey was the first
+monarch to acknowledge Morse as a public benefactor. This was in 1848.
+The kings of Prussia and Wurtemburg and the Emperor of Austria each
+gave him a gold medal, that of the first named being set in a massive
+gold snuff-box. In 1856 the Emperor of the French made him a chevalier
+of the Legion of Honor. Orders from Denmark, Spain, Italy, Portugal soon
+followed. In 1858 a special congress was called by the Emperor of the
+French to devise a suitable testimonial of the nation to Professor
+Morse. Representatives from ten sovereignties convened at Paris and by a
+unanimous vote gave, in the aggregate, $80,000 as an honorary gratuity
+to Professor Morse. The states participating in this testimonial were
+France, Austria, Russia, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Piedmont, the Holy
+See, Tuscany, and Turkey.
+
+Professor Morse was one of the first to suggest and the first to carry
+out the use of a marine cable. During the summer of 1842 he had been
+making elaborate preparations for an experiment destined to give
+wonderful development to his invention. This was no less than a
+submarine wire, to demonstrate the fact that the current of electricity
+could be conducted as well under water as through the air. Of this he
+had entertained no doubt. "If I can make it work ten miles, I can make
+it go around the globe," was a favorite expression of his in the infancy
+of his enterprise. But he wished to prove it. He insulated his wire as
+well as he could with hempen strands well covered with pitch, tar, and
+india-rubber. In the course of the autumn he was prepared to put the
+question to the test of actual experiment. The wire was only the twelfth
+of an inch in diameter. About two miles of this, wound on a reel, was
+placed in a small row-boat, and with one man at the oars and Professor
+Morse at the stern, the work of paying out the cable was begun. It was a
+beautiful moonlight night, and those who had prolonged their evening
+rambles on the Battery must have wondered, as they watched the
+proceedings in the boat, what kind of fishing the two men could be
+engaged in that required so long a line. In somewhat less than two
+hours, on that eventful evening of October 18, 1842, the first cable was
+laid. Professor Morse returned to his lodgings and waited with some
+anxiety the time when he should be able to test the experiment fully and
+fairly. The next morning the New York _Herald_ contained the following
+editorial announcement:
+
+    "MORSE'S ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.
+
+    "This important invention is to be exhibited in operation at Castle
+    Garden between the hours of twelve and one o'clock to-day. One
+    telegraph will be erected on Governor's Island and one at the
+    Castle, and messages will be interchanged and orders transmitted
+    during the day. Many have been incredulous as to the powers of this
+    wonderful triumph of science and art. All such may now have an
+    opportunity of fairly testing it. It is destined to work a complete
+    revolution in the mode of transmitting intelligence throughout the
+    civilized world."
+
+At daybreak the professor was on the Battery, and had just demonstrated
+his success by the transmission of three or four characters between the
+termini of the line, when the communication was suddenly interrupted,
+and it was found impossible to send any messages through the conductor.
+The cause of this was evident when he observed no less than seven
+vessels lying along the line of the submerged cable, one of which, in
+getting under way, had raised it on her anchor. The sailors, unable to
+divine its meaning, hauled in about two hundred feet of it on deck, and
+finding no end, cut off that portion and carried it away with them.
+Thus ended the first attempt at submarine telegraphing. The crowd that
+had assembled on the Battery dispersed with jeers, most of them
+believing they had been made the victims of a hoax.
+
+In a letter to John C. Spencer, then Secretary of the Treasury, in
+August, 1843, concerning electro-magnetism and its powers, he wrote:
+
+"The practical inference from this law is that a telegraphic
+communication on the electro-magnetic plan may with certainty be
+established across the Atlantic Ocean. Startling as this may now seem, I
+am confident the time will come when this project will be realized."
+
+In 1871 a statue of Professor Morse was erected in Central Park, New
+York, at the expense of the telegraph operators of the country. It was
+unveiled on June 10th with imposing ceremonies. There were delegates
+from every State in the Union, and from the British provinces. In the
+evening a public reception was given to the venerable inventor at the
+Academy of Music, at which William Orton, president of the Western Union
+Telegraph Company, presided, assisted by scores of the leading public
+men of the country as vice-presidents. The last scene was an impressive
+one. It was announced that the telegraphic instrument before the
+audience was then in connection with every other one of the ten thousand
+instruments in America. Then Miss Cornell, a young telegraphic operator,
+sent this message from the key: "Greeting and thanks to the telegraph
+fraternity throughout the world. Glory to God in the highest, on earth
+peace, good-will to men." The venerable inventor, the personification of
+simplicity, dignity, and kindliness, was then conducted to the
+instrument, and touching the key, sent out: "S.F.B. MORSE." A storm of
+enthusiasm swept through the house as the audience rose, the ladies
+waving their handkerchiefs and the men cheering.
+
+Professor Morse last appeared in public on February 22, 1872, when he
+unveiled the statue of Franklin, erected in Printing-house Square in New
+York. He died, after a short illness, on April 2, 1872, and was buried
+in Greenwood Cemetery. On the day of the funeral, April 5th, every
+telegraph office in the country was draped in mourning.
+
+Professor Morse was twice married. His first wife died in 1825. In 1848
+he married Sarah Elizabeth Griswold, of Poughkeepsie, who still lives.
+By the first marriage there were three children, one of whom, a son,
+survives. By the second marriage there were four children, three of whom
+are alive--a daughter and two sons. Miss Leila Morse, the daughter, was
+married in 1885 to Herr Franz Rummel, the eminent pianist. The last
+years of his life were eminently peaceful and happy. In the summer he
+lived at a place called Locust Grove, on the banks of the Hudson, near
+Poughkeepsie, and in the winter in a house at No. 5 West Twenty-second
+Street, a few doors west of Fifth Avenue. In recent years a marble
+tablet has been affixed to the front of the house, suitably inscribed.
+
+[Illustration: No. 5 West Twenty-second Street, New York, where Morse
+Lived for Many Years and Died.]
+
+Morse's life in the country was very simple and quiet. His hour of
+rising was half-past six o'clock in the morning, and he was in his
+library alone until breakfast, at eight. He loved to hear the birds in
+their native songs, and he could distinguish the notes of each species,
+and would speak of the quality of their respective music. He spent most
+of the day in reading and writing, rarely taking exercise, except
+walking in his garden to visit his graperies, in which he took special
+pride, or to the stable to see if his horses were well cared for. He did
+not ride out regularly with his family, preferring the repose of his own
+grounds and the labors of his study. But when he walked or rode in the
+country, he was constantly disposed to speak of the beauty and glory
+around him, as revealing to his mind the beneficence, wisdom, and power
+of the infinite Creator, who had made all these things for the use and
+enjoyment of men.
+
+One of his daughters writes of him in these simple and tender words: "He
+loved flowers. He would take one in his hand and talk for hours about
+its beauty, its wonderful construction, and the wisdom and love of God
+in making so many varied forms of life and color to please our eyes. In
+his later years he became deeply interested in the microscope and
+purchased one of great excellence and power. For whole hours, all the
+afternoon or evening, he would sit over it, examining flowers or the
+animalculĉ in different fluids. Then he would gather his children about
+him and give us a sort of extempore lecture on the wonders of creation
+invisible to the naked eye, but so clearly brought to view by the
+magnifying power of the microscope. He was very fond of animals, cats,
+and birds in particular. He tamed a little flying-squirrel, and it
+became so fond of him that it would sit on his shoulder while he was at
+his studies and would eat out of his hand and sleep in his pocket. To
+this little animal he became so much attached that we took it with us to
+Europe, where it came to an untimely end, in Paris, by running into an
+open fire."
+
+His biographer, Prime, says of him:
+
+"In person Professor Morse was tall, slender, graceful, and attractive.
+Six feet in stature, he stood erect and firm, even in old age. His blue
+eyes were expressive of genius and affection. His nature was a rare
+combination of solid intellect and delicate sensibility. Thoughtful,
+sober, and quiet, he readily entered into the enjoyments of domestic and
+social life, indulging in sallies of humor, and readily appreciating and
+greatly enjoying the wit of others. Dignified in his intercourse with
+men, courteous and affable with the gentler sex, he was a good husband,
+a judicious father, a generous and faithful friend. He had the
+misfortune to incur the hostility of men who would deprive him of the
+merit and the reward of his labors. But his was the common fate of great
+inventors. He lived until his rights were vindicated by every tribunal
+to which they could be referred, and acknowledged by all civilized
+nations. And he died leaving to his children a spotless and illustrious
+name, and to his country the honor of having given birth to the only
+electro-magnetic recording telegraph whose line has gone out through all
+the earth and its words to the end of the world."
+
+[Illustration: Charles Goodyear.]
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+CHARLES GOODYEAR.
+
+
+India-rubber had been known for more than a hundred years when Charles
+Goodyear undertook to make of it thousands of articles useful in common
+life. So long ago as 1735 a party of French astronomers discovered in
+Peru a curious tree that yielded the natives a peculiar gum or sap which
+they collected in clay vessels. This sap became hard when exposed to the
+sun, and was used by the natives, who made different articles of
+every-day use from it by dipping a clay mould again and again into the
+liquid. When the article was completed the clay mould was broken to
+pieces and shaken out. In this manner they made a kind of rough shoe and
+an equally rough bottle. In some parts of South America the natives
+presented their guests with these bottles, which served as syringes for
+squirting water. Articles thus made were liable to become stiff and
+unmanageable in cold weather and soft and sticky in warm. Upon getting
+back to France the travellers directed the attention of scientists to
+this remarkable gum, which was afterward found in various parts of South
+America, and the chief supplies of which still come from Brazil. About
+the beginning of the present century this substance, known variously as
+cachuchu, caoutchouc, gum-elastic, and india-rubber, was first
+commercially introduced into Europe. It was regarded merely as a
+curiosity, chiefly useful for erasing pencil-marks. Ships from South
+America took it over as ballast. About the year 1820 it began to be used
+in France in the manufacture of suspenders and garters, india-rubber
+threads being mixed with the material used in weaving those articles.
+Some years later Mackintosh, an English manufacturer, used it in his
+famous water-proof coats, which were made by spreading a layer of the
+gum between two pieces of cloth.
+
+About the same time a pair of india-rubber shoes were exhibited in
+Boston, where they were regarded as a curiosity; they were covered with
+gilt-foil to hide their natural ugliness. In 1823 a Boston merchant,
+engaged in the South American trade, imported five hundred pairs of
+these shoes, made by the natives of Para, and found no difficulty in
+selling them. In fact, this became a large business, although these
+shoes were terribly rough and clumsy and were not to be depended upon;
+in cold weather they became so hard that they could be used only after
+being thawed by the fire, and in summer they could be preserved only by
+keeping them on ice. If during the thawing process they were placed too
+near the fire, they would melt into a shapeless mass; and yet they cost
+from three to five dollars a pair.
+
+In 1830 E.M. Chaffee, of Boston, the foreman of a patent leather
+factory in that city, attempted to replace patent leather by a compound
+of india-rubber. He dissolved a pound of the gum in spirits of
+turpentine, added to the mixture enough lamp-black to produce a bright
+black color, and invented a machine for spreading this compound over
+cloth. When dried in the sun it produced a hard, smooth surface,
+flexible enough to be twisted into any shape without cracking. With the
+aid of a few capitalists, Chaffee organized, in 1833, a company called
+the Roxbury India-rubber Company, and manufactured an india-rubber cloth
+from which wagon-covers, piano-covers, caps, coats, shoes, and other
+articles were made. The product of the factory sold well, and the
+success of the Roxbury Company led to the establishment of a number of
+similar factories elsewhere. Apparently all who were engaged in the
+production of rubber goods were on the highway to wealth.
+
+A day of disaster, however, came. Most of the goods produced in the
+winter of 1833-1834 became worthless during the following summer. The
+shoes melted to a soft mass and the caps, wagon-covers, and coats became
+sticky and useless. To make matters worse they emitted an odor so
+offensive that it was necessary to bury them in the ground. Twenty
+thousand dollars' worth of these goods were thrown back on the hands of
+the Roxbury Company alone, and the directors were appalled by the ruin
+that threatened them. It was useless to go on manufacturing goods that
+might prove worthless at any moment. India-rubber stock fell rapidly,
+and by the end of 1836 there was not a solvent rubber company in the
+Union, the stockholders losing about $2,000,000. People came to detest
+the very name of india-rubber.
+
+One day, in 1834, a Philadelphia hardware merchant, named Charles
+Goodyear, was led by curiosity to buy a rubber life-preserver. And thus
+began for this unfortunate genius nearly twenty-five years of struggle,
+misery, and disappointment. Charles Goodyear was born in New Haven,
+Conn., December 29, 1800. When a boy his father moved to Philadelphia,
+where he engaged in the hardware business, and upon becoming of age,
+Charles Goodyear joined him as a partner. In the panic of 1836-1837 the
+house went down. Goodyear's attention had been attracted for several
+years by the wonderful success of the india-rubber companies. Upon
+examining his life-preserver he discovered a defect in the inflating
+valve and made an improved one. Going to New York with this device, he
+called on the agent of the Roxbury Company and, explaining it to him,
+offered to sell it to the company. The agent was impressed with the
+improvement, but instead of buying it, told the inventor the real state
+of the india-rubber business of the country, then on the verge of a
+collapse. He urged Goodyear to exert his inventive skill in discovering
+some means of imparting durability to india-rubber goods, and assured
+him that if he could find a process to effect that end, he could sell it
+at his own price. He explained the processes then in use and their
+imperfections.
+
+Goodyear forgot all about his disappointment in failing to sell his
+valve, and went home intent upon experiments to make gum-elastic
+durable. From that time until the close of his life he devoted himself
+solely to this work. He was thirty-five years old, feeble in health, a
+bankrupt in business, and had a young family depending upon him. The
+industry in which he now engaged was one in which thousands of persons
+had found ruin. The firm of which he had been a member owed $30,000, and
+upon his return to Philadelphia he was arrested for debt and compelled
+to live within prison limits. He began his experiments at once. The
+price of the gum had fallen to five cents per pound, so that he had no
+difficulty in getting sufficient of it to begin work. By melting and
+working it thoroughly and rolling it out upon a stone table, he
+succeeded in producing sheets of india-rubber that seemed to him to
+possess new properties. A friend loaned him enough money to manufacture
+a number of shoes which at first seemed to be all that could be desired.
+Fearful, however, of coming trouble, Goodyear put his shoes away until
+the following summer, when the warm weather reduced them to a mass of so
+offensive an odor that he was glad to throw them away. His friend was so
+thoroughly disheartened by this failure as to refuse to have anything
+more to do with Goodyear's scheme. The inventor, nevertheless, kept on.
+
+It occurred to him that there must be some substance which, mixed with
+the gum, would render it durable, and he began to experiment with almost
+every substance that he could lay his hands on. All proved total
+failures with the exception of magnesia. By mixing half a pound of
+magnesia with a pound of the gum he produced a substance whiter than the
+pure gum, which was at first as firm and flexible as leather, and out of
+which he made beautiful book-covers and piano-covers. It looked as if he
+had solved the problem; but in a month his pretty product was ruined.
+Heat caused it to soften; fermentation then set in, and finally it
+became as hard and brittle as thin glass. His stock of money was now
+exhausted. He was forced to pawn all his own valuables and even the
+trinkets of his wife. But he felt sure that he was on the road to
+success and would eventually win both fame and fortune. He removed his
+family to the country, and set out for New York, where he hoped to find
+someone willing to aid him in carrying his experiments further. Here he
+met two acquaintances, one of whom offered him the use of a room in Gold
+Street as a workshop, and the other, a druggist, agreed to let him have
+on credit such chemicals as he needed. He now boiled the gum, mixed with
+magnesia, in quicklime and water, and as a result obtained firm, smooth
+sheets that won him a medal at the fair of the American Institute in
+1835. He seemed on the point of success, and easily sold all the sheets
+he could manufacture, when, to his dismay, he discovered that a drop of
+the weakest acid, such as the juice of an apple or diluted vinegar,
+would reduce his new compound to the old sticky substance that had
+baffled him so often.
+
+His first important discovery on the road to real success was the result
+of accident. He liked pretty things, and it was a constant effort with
+him to make his productions as attractive to the eye as possible. Upon
+one occasion, while bronzing a piece of rubber cloth, he applied aqua
+fortis to it for the purpose of removing part of the bronze. It took
+away the bronze, but it also destroyed the cloth to such a degree that
+he supposed it ruined and threw it away. A day or two later, happening
+to pick it up, he was astonished to find that the rubber had undergone a
+remarkable change, and that the effect of the acid had been to harden it
+to such an extent that it would now stand a degree of heat which would
+have melted it before. Aqua fortis contained sulphuric acid. Goodyear
+was thus on the threshold of his great discovery of vulcanizing rubber.
+He called his new process the "curing" of india-rubber.
+
+The "cured" india-rubber was subjected to many tests and passed through
+them successfully, thus demonstrating its adaptability to many important
+uses. Goodyear readily obtained a patent for his process, and a partner
+with a large capital was found ready to aid him. He hired the old
+india-rubber works on Staten Island and opened a salesroom in Broadway.
+He was thrown back for six weeks at this important time by an accident
+which happened to him while experimenting with his fabrics and which
+came near causing his death. Just as he was recovering and preparing to
+begin the manufacture of his goods on a large scale the terrible
+commercial crisis of 1837 swept over the country, and by destroying his
+partner's fortune at one blow, reduced Goodyear to absolute beggary. His
+family had joined him in New York, and he was entirely without the means
+of supporting them. As the only resource at hand he decided to pawn an
+article of value--one of the few which he possessed--in order to raise
+money to procure one day's supply of provisions. At the very door of the
+pawnbroker's shop he met one of his creditors, who kindly asked if he
+could be of any further assistance to him. Weak with hunger and overcome
+by the generosity of his friend the poor man burst into tears and
+replied that, as his family was on the point of starvation, a loan of
+$15 would greatly oblige him. The money was given him on the spot and
+the necessity for visiting the pawnbroker averted for several days
+longer. Still he was a frequent visitor to that person during the year,
+and one by one the relics of his better days disappeared. Another friend
+loaned him $100, which enabled him to remove his family to Staten
+Island, in the neighborhood of the abandoned rubber works, which the
+owners gave him permission to use so far as he could. He contrived in
+this way to manufacture enough of his "cured" cloth, which sold readily,
+to enable him to keep his family from starvation. He made repeated
+efforts to induce capitalists to come to the factory and see his samples
+and the process by which they were made, but no one would venture near
+him. There had been money enough lost in such experiments, these
+acquaintances said, and they were determined to risk no more.
+
+Indeed, in all the broad land there was but one man who had the
+slightest hope of accomplishing anything with india-rubber, and that one
+was Charles Goodyear. His friends regarded him as a monomaniac. He not
+only manufactured his cloth, but even dressed in clothes made of it,
+wearing it for the purpose of testing its durability, as well as of
+advertising it. He was certainly an odd figure, and in his appearance
+justified the remark of one of his friends, who, upon being asked how
+Mr. Goodyear could be recognized, replied: "If you see a man with an
+india-rubber coat on, india-rubber shoes, and india-rubber cap, and in
+his pocket an india-rubber purse with not a cent in it, that is
+Goodyear."
+
+In September, 1837, a new gleam of hope lit up his pathway. A friend
+having loaned him a small sum of money he went to Roxbury, taking with
+him some of his best specimens. Although the Roxbury Company had gone
+down with a fearful crash, Mr. Chaffee, the inventor of the first
+process of making rubber goods in this country, was still firm in his
+faith that india-rubber would at some future time justify the
+expectations of its earliest friends. He welcomed Goodyear cordially and
+allowed him to use the abandoned works of the company for his
+experiments. The result was that Goodyear succeeded in making shoes and
+cloths of india-rubber of a quality so much better than any that had yet
+been seen in America that the hopes of the friends of india-rubber were
+raised to a high point. Offers to purchase rights for certain portions
+of the country came in rapidly, and by the sale of them Goodyear
+realized between four and five thousand dollars. He was now able to
+bring his family to Roxbury, and for the time fortune seemed to smile
+upon him.
+
+[Illustration: Calenders Heated Internally by Steam, for Spreading India
+Rubber into Sheets or upon Cloth, called the "Chaffee Machine."]
+
+His success was but temporary, however. He obtained an order from the
+general Government for one hundred and fifty india-rubber mail-bags,
+which he succeeded in producing, and as they came out smooth, highly
+polished, hard, well shaped, and entirely impervious to moisture, he
+was delighted and summoned his friends to inspect and admire them. All
+who saw them pronounced them a perfect success, but alas! in a single
+month they began to soften and ferment, and finally became useless. Poor
+Goodyear's hopes were dashed to the ground. It was found that the aqua
+fortis merely "cured" the surface of the material, and that only very
+thin cloth made in this way was durable. His other goods began to prove
+worthless and his promising business came to a sudden and disastrous
+end. All his possessions were seized and sold for debt, and once more he
+was reduced to poverty. His position was even worse than before, for his
+family had increased in size and his aged father also had become
+dependent upon him for support.
+
+Friends, relatives, and even his wife, all demanded that he should
+abandon his empty dreams and turn his attention to something that would
+yield a support to his family. Four years of constant failure, added to
+the unfortunate experience of those who had preceded him, ought to
+convince him, they said, that he was hoping against hope. Hitherto his
+conduct, certainly had been absurd, though they admitted that he was to
+some extent excused for it by his partial success; but to persist in it
+would be criminal. The inventor was driven to despair, and being a man
+of tender feelings and ardently devoted to his family, might have
+yielded to them had he not felt that he was nearer than ever to the
+discovery of the secret that had eluded him so long.
+
+Just before the failure of his mail-bags had brought ruin upon him, he
+had taken into his employ a man named Nathaniel Hayward, who had been
+the foreman of the old Roxbury works, and who was still in charge of
+them when Goodyear came to Roxbury, and was making a few rubber articles
+on his own account. He hardened his compound by mixing a little powdered
+sulphur with the gum, or by sprinkling sulphur over the rubber cloth and
+drying it in the sun. He declared that the process had been revealed to
+him in a dream, but could give no further account of it. Goodyear was
+astonished to find that the sulphur cured the india-rubber as thoroughly
+as the aqua fortis, the principal objection being that the sulphurous
+odor of the goods was frightful in hot weather. Hayward's process was
+really the same as that employed by Goodyear, the "curing" of the
+india-rubber being due in each case to the agency of the sulphur, the
+principal difference between them being that Hayward's goods were dried
+by the sun and Goodyear's with nitric acid. Hayward set so small a value
+upon his discovery that he readily sold it to his new employer.
+
+Goodyear felt that he had now all but conquered his difficulties. It was
+plain that sulphur was the great controller of india-rubber, for he had
+proved that when applied to thin cloth it would render it available for
+most purposes. The problem that now remained was how to mix sulphur and
+the gum in a mass, so that every part of the rubber should be subjected
+to the agency of the sulphur. He experimented for weeks and months with
+the most intense eagerness, but the mystery completely baffled him. His
+friends urged him to go to work to do something for his family, but he
+could not turn back. The goal was almost in sight, and he felt that he
+would be false to his mission were he to abandon his labors now. To the
+world he seemed a crack-brained dreamer, and some there were who, seeing
+the distress of his family, did not hesitate to apply still harsher
+names to him. Had it been merely wealth that he was working for,
+doubtless he would have turned back and sought some other means of
+obtaining it; but he sought more. He felt that he had a mission to
+fulfil, and that no one else could perform it.
+
+He was right. A still greater success was about to crown his labors, but
+in a manner far different from his expectations. His experiments had
+developed nothing; chance was to make the revelation. It was in the
+spring of 1839, and in the following manner: Standing before a stove in
+a store at Woburn, Mass., he was explaining to some acquaintances the
+properties of a piece of sulphur-cured india-rubber which he held in his
+hand. They listened to him good-naturedly, but with evident incredulity,
+when suddenly he dropped the rubber on the stove, which was red hot. His
+old clothes would have melted instantly from contact with such heat;
+but, to his surprise, this piece underwent no such change. In amazement
+he examined it, and found that while it had charred or shrivelled like
+leather, it had not softened at all. The bystanders attached no
+importance to this phenomenon, but to him it was a revelation. He
+renewed his experiments with enthusiasm, and in a little while
+established the facts that india-rubber, when mixed with sulphur and
+exposed to a certain degree of heat for a specified time, would not melt
+or soften at any degree of heat; that it would only char at two hundred
+and eighty degrees, and that it would not stiffen from exposure to any
+extent of cold. The difficulty now consisted in finding out the exact
+degree of heat necessary for the perfecting of the rubber and the exact
+length of time required for the heating.
+
+[Illustration: Charles Goodyear's Exhibition of Hard India Rubber Goods
+at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, England. (From a print published at the
+time.)]
+
+He made this discovery in his darkest days, when, in fact, he was in
+constant danger of arrest for debt, having already been a frequent
+inmate of the debtors' prison. He was in the depths of bitter poverty
+and in such feeble health that he was constantly haunted by the fear of
+dying before he had perfected his discovery--before he had fulfilled his
+mission. He needed an apparatus for producing a high and uniform heat
+for his experiments, and he was unable to obtain it. He used to bake his
+compound in his wife's bread-oven and steam it over the spout of her
+tea-kettle, and to press the kitchen fire into his service so far as it
+would go. When this failed, he would go down to the shops in the
+vicinity of Woburn and beg to be allowed to use the ovens and boilers
+after working hours were over. The workmen regarded him as a lunatic,
+but were too good-natured to deny him the request. Finally he induced
+a bricklayer to make him an oven, and paid him in masons' aprons of
+india-rubber. The oven was a failure. Sometimes it would turn out pieces
+of perfectly vulcanized cloth, and again the goods would be charred and
+ruined. Goodyear was in despair.
+
+All this time he lived on the charity of his friends. His neighbors
+pretended to lend him money, but in reality gave him the means of
+keeping his family from starvation. He has declared that all the while
+he felt sure he would, before long, be able to pay them back, but they
+have declared with equal emphasis that, at that time, they never
+expected to witness his success. He was yellow and shrivelled in face,
+with a gaunt, lean figure, and his habit of wearing an india-rubber
+coat, which was charred and blackened from his frequent experiments with
+it, gave him a wild and singular appearance. People shook their heads
+solemnly when they saw him, and said that the mad-house was the proper
+place for him.
+
+The winter of 1839-40 was long and severe. At the opening of the season
+Goodyear received a letter from a house in Paris, making him a handsome
+offer for the use of his process of curing india-rubber with aqua
+fortis. Here was a chance for him to rise out of his misery. A year
+before he would have closed with the offer, but since then he had
+discovered the effects of sulphur and heat on his compound, and had
+passed far beyond the aqua-fortis stage. Disappointment and want had not
+warped his conscience, and he at once declined to enter into any
+arrangements with the French house, informing them that although the
+process they desired to purchase was a valuable one, it was about to be
+entirely replaced by another which he was then on the point of
+perfecting, and which he would gladly sell them as soon as he had
+completed it. His friends declared that he was mad to refuse such an
+offer; but he replied that nothing would induce him to sell a process
+which he knew was about to be rendered worthless by still greater
+discoveries.
+
+A few weeks later a terrible snow-storm passed over the land, one of the
+worst that New England had ever known, and in the midst of it Goodyear
+made the appalling discovery that he had not a particle of fuel or a
+mouthful of food in the house. He was ill enough to be in bed himself,
+and his purse was entirely empty. It was a terrible position, made
+worse, too, by the fact that his friends who had formerly aided him had
+turned from him, vexed with his pertinacity, and abandoned him to his
+fate. In his despair he bethought him of a mere acquaintance named
+Coleridge, who lived several miles from his cottage, and who but a few
+days before had spoken to him with more of kindness than he had received
+of late. This gentleman, he thought, would aid him in his distress, if
+he could but reach his house, but in such a snow the journey seemed
+hopeless to a man in his feeble health. Still the effort must be made.
+Nerved by despair, he set out and pushed his way resolutely through the
+heavy drifts. The way was long, and it seemed to him that he would
+never accomplish it. Often he fell prostrate on the snow, almost
+fainting with fatigue and hunger, and again he would sit down wearily in
+the road, feeling that he would gladly die if his discovery were but
+completed. At length, however, he reached the end of his journey, and
+fortunately found his acquaintance at home. To this gentleman he told
+the story of his discovery, his hopes, his struggles, and his present
+sufferings, and implored him to help him. Mr. Coleridge listened to him
+kindly, and after expressing the warmest sympathy for him, loaned him
+money enough to support his family during the severe weather and to
+enable him to continue his experiments.
+
+Seeing no prospect of success in Massachusetts, he now resolved to make
+a desperate effort to get to New York, feeling confident that the
+specimens he could take with him would convince someone of the
+superiority of his new method. He was beginning to understand the cause
+of his many failures, but he saw clearly that his compound could not be
+worked with certainty without expensive apparatus. It was a very
+delicate operation, requiring exactness and promptitude. The conditions
+upon which success depended were many, and the failure of one spoiled
+all. It cost him thousands of failures to learn that a little acid in
+his sulphur caused the blistering; that his compound must be heated
+almost immediately after being mixed or it would never vulcanize; that a
+portion of white lead in the compound greatly facilitated the operation
+and improved the result; and when he had learned these facts, it still
+required costly and laborious experiments to devise the best methods of
+compounding his ingredients in the best proportions, the best mode of
+heating, the proper duration of the heating, and the various useful
+effects that could be produced by varying the proportions and the degree
+of heat. He tells us that many times when, by exhausting every resource,
+he had prepared a quantity of his compound for heating, it was spoiled
+because he could not, with his inadequate apparatus, apply the heat soon
+enough.
+
+[Illustration: COUNCIL MEDAL OF THE EXHIBITION.
+
+C. GOODYEAR. CLASS XXVIII.
+
+1851.]
+
+To New York, then, he directed his thoughts. Merely to get there cost
+him a severer and a longer effort than men in general are capable of
+making. First he walked to Boston, ten miles distant, where he hoped to
+borrow from an old acquaintance $50, with which to provide for his
+family and pay his fare to New York. He not only failed in this, but he
+was arrested for debt and thrown into prison. Even in prison, while his
+old father was negotiating to procure his release, he labored to
+interest men of capital in his discovery, and made proposals for
+founding a factory in Boston. Having obtained his liberty, he went to a
+hotel and spent a week in vain efforts to effect a small loan. Saturday
+night came, and with it his hotel bill, which he had no means of
+discharging. In an agony of shame and anxiety, he went to a friend and
+entreated the sum of $5 to enable him to return home. He was met with a
+point-blank refusal. In the deepest dejection, he walked the streets
+till late in the night, and strayed at length, almost beside himself, to
+Cambridge, where he ventured to call upon a friend and ask shelter for
+the night. He was hospitably entertained, and the next morning walked
+wearily home, penniless and despairing. At the door of his house a
+member of his family met him with the news that his youngest child, two
+years old, whom he had left in perfect health, was dying. In a few hours
+he had in his house a dead child, but not the means of burying it, and
+five living dependents without a morsel of food to give them. A
+storekeeper near by had promised to supply the family, but, discouraged
+by the unforeseen length of the father's absence, he had that day
+refused to trust them further. In these terrible circumstances he
+applied to a friend, upon whose generosity he knew he could rely, one
+who never failed him. He received in reply a letter of severe and
+cutting reproach, enclosing $7, which his friend explained was given
+only out of pity for his innocent and suffering family. A stranger who
+chanced to be present when this letter arrived sent them a barrel of
+flour, a timely and blessed relief. The next day the family followed on
+foot the remains of the little child to the grave.
+
+This was about the darkest hour of poor Goodyear's life, but it was
+before the dawn. He managed to obtain $50, with which he went to New
+York, and succeeded in interesting two brothers, William and Emory
+Rider, in his discoveries. They agreed to advance to him a certain sum
+to complete his experiments. By means of this aid he was enabled to keep
+his family from want, and his experiments were pursued with greater ease
+and certainty. His brother-in-law, William De Forrest, a rich wool
+manufacturer, also came to his aid, now that success seemed in view.
+Nevertheless, the experiments of that and the following year cost nearly
+$50,000. Thanks to this timely aid, he was able in 1844, ten years after
+beginning his work, to produce perfect vulcanized india-rubber with
+economy and certainty. To the end of his life he was at work, however,
+endeavoring to improve the material and apply it to new uses. He took
+out more than sixty patents covering different processes of making
+rubber goods.
+
+[Illustration: GRANDE MEDAILLE D'HONNEUR.
+
+EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE DE 1855.
+
+Donne pour la Decouverte de la Vulcanisation et Durcissement du
+Caoutchouc.
+
+FACSIMILE GOLD.]
+
+If Goodyear had been a man of business instincts and habits, the years
+following the completion of his great work might have brought him an
+immense fortune; but everywhere he seems to have been unfortunate in
+protecting his rights. In France and England he lost his patent rights
+by technical defects. In the latter country another man, who had
+received a copy of the American patent, actually applied and obtained
+the English rights in his own name. Goodyear, however, obtained the
+great council medal at the London Exhibition of 1851, a grand medal at
+Paris, in 1855, and later the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. In this
+country he was scarcely less unfortunate. His patents were infringed
+right and left, he was cheated by business associates and plundered of
+the profits of his invention. The United States Commissioner of Patents,
+in 1858, thus spoke of his losses:
+
+"No inventor, probably, has ever been so harassed, so trampled upon, so
+plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the
+parlance of the world as 'pirates.' The spoliation of their incessant
+guerrilla warfare upon his defenceless rights has unquestionably
+amounted to millions."
+
+Goodyear died in New York in July, 1860, worn out with work and
+disappointment. Neither Europe nor America seemed disposed to accord him
+any reward or credit for having made one of the greatest discoveries of
+the time. Notwithstanding his invention, which has made millions for
+those engaged in working it, he died insolvent, and left his family
+heavily in debt. A few years after his death an effort was made to
+procure from Congress an extension of his patent for the benefit of his
+family and creditors. The opposition of the men who had grown rich and
+powerful by successfully infringing his rights prevented that august
+body from doing justice in the matter and the effort came to nothing.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+JOHN ERICSSON.
+
+
+Captain John Ericsson, although not by birth an American, rendered such
+signal services to this country and lived here for so many years that we
+may fairly consider him in the light of an American inventor. The
+inventions to which he devoted the best years of his life were made in
+this country. He loved America, he died here, and though his ashes have
+been sent back to Sweden, the world of Europe, in common with ourselves,
+probably thinks of Ericsson as an American.
+
+[Illustration: John Ericsson.]
+
+By the roadside near a mountain hamlet of Central Sweden stands a
+pyramid of iron cast from ore dug from the adjacent mines and set upon a
+base of granite quarried from the hills which overlook the valley. This
+monument bears the information that two brothers, Nils Ericsson and John
+Ericsson, were born in a miner's hut at that place, respectively,
+January 31, 1802, and July 31, 1803. Nils Ericsson was a man of unusual
+distinction, who held high position in Sweden as engineer of the canals
+and railroads of the kingdom. The name of his brother is known the world
+over. These two notable Swedes were sons of Olof Ericsson, a Swedish
+miner. Poverty was one of the bits of good fortune that fell to the lot
+of the two boys, and among John's earliest recollections is that of the
+seizure of their household effects by the sheriff. The mother was a
+woman of intelligence and somewhat acquainted with the literature of her
+time. In boyhood John Ericsson worked in the iron mines of Central
+Sweden. Machinery was his first love and his last. Before he was eleven
+years old, during the winter of 1813, he had produced a miniature
+saw-mill of ingenious construction, and had planned a pumping-engine
+designed to keep the mines free from water. The frame of the saw-mill
+was of wood; the saw-blade was made from a watch-spring and was moved by
+a crank made from a broken tin spoon. A file, borrowed from a
+neighboring blacksmith, a gimlet, and a jack-knife were the only tools
+used in this work. His pumping-engine was a more ambitious affair, to be
+operated by a wind-mill.
+
+[Illustration: John Ericsson's Birthplace and Monument.]
+
+The family then lived in the wilderness, surrounded by a pine forest,
+where Ericsson's father was engaged in selecting timber for the
+lock-gates of a canal. A quill and a pencil were the boy's tools in the
+way of drawing materials. He made compasses of birch wood. A pair of
+steel tweezers were converted into a drawing-pen. Ericsson had never
+seen a wind-mill, but following as well as he could the description of
+those who had, he succeeded in constructing on paper the mechanism
+connecting the crank of a wind-mill with the pump-lever. The plan,
+conceived and executed under such circumstances by a mere boy,
+attracted the attention of Count Platen, president of the Gotha Ship
+Canal, on which Ericsson's father was employed, and when Ericsson was
+twelve years old he was made a member of the surveying party carrying
+out the canal work and put in charge of a section. Six hundred of the
+royal troops looked for directions in their daily work to this boy, one
+of his attendants being a man who followed him with a stool, upon which
+he stood to use the surveying instruments. The amusements of this boy
+engineer, even at the age of fifteen, are indicated by a portfolio of
+drawings made in his leisure moments, giving maps of the most important
+parts of the canal, three hundred miles in length, and showing all the
+machinery used in its construction. His precocity was, however, the
+normal and healthy development of a mind as fond of mechanical
+principles as Raphael was of color.
+
+It was in 1811 that Ericsson made his first scale drawing of the famous
+Sunderland Iron Bridge, and from that time on his career in Sweden was a
+brilliant one. After serving as an engineer upon the Gotha Canal he
+became an officer in the Swedish army, from which circumstance he got
+his title of captain. Most government work was then done by army
+officers, especially in field surveying. The appointments of government
+surveyors being offered soon afterward to competitive examination among
+the officers of the army, Ericsson went to Stockholm and entered the
+lists. Detailed maps of fifty square miles of Swedish territory, still
+upon file at Stockholm, show his skill. Though his work as a surveyor
+exceeded that of any of his companions, he was not satisfied. He sought
+an outlet for his superfluous activity in preparing the drawings and
+engraving sixty-four large plates for a work illustrating the Gotha
+Canal. His faculty for invention was shown here by the construction of a
+machine-engraver, with which eighteen copper-plates were completed by
+his own hand within a year.
+
+From engraving young Ericsson turned his attention to experiments with
+flame as a means of producing mechanical power, and it is interesting to
+note that forty years afterward a large part of his income in this
+country was derived from his gas-or flame-engine, thousands of which are
+now in use in New York City alone for pumping water up to the tops of
+the houses. His early flame-engine, as it was called, turned out so well
+that after building one of ten horse-power, he obtained leave of absence
+to go to England to introduce the invention. He never returned to Sweden
+for any length of time, although he remained a Swede at heart, and many
+Swedish orders and decorations have been conferred upon him. In addition
+to the monument near Ericsson's birthplace, already mentioned, the
+government has erected a granite shaft, eighteen feet high, in front of
+the cottage in which he was born. This shaft, bearing the inscription,
+"John Ericsson was born here in 1803," was dedicated on September 3,
+1867, when work was suspended in the neighboring mines and iron
+furnaces, and a holiday was held in honor of Sweden's famous son. Poems
+were read, the chief engineer of the mining district delivered an
+oration, and Dr. Pallin, a savant from Philipstad, reminded his hearers
+that seven cities in Greece contended for the honor of being Homer's
+birthplace. "Certificates of baptism did not then exist," said Dr.
+Pallin, "and there is no doubt with us as to Ericsson's birthplace; yet
+to guard against all accidents we have here placed a record of baptism
+weighing eighty thousand pounds." The monument stands on an isthmus
+between two lakes surrounded by green hills.
+
+[Illustration: The Novelty Locomotive, built by Ericsson to compete with
+Stephenson's Rocket, 1829.]
+
+Ericsson's life in England began in 1826. Fortune did not smile upon his
+efforts to introduce his flame-engine, for the coal fire which had to be
+used in England was too severe for the working parts of the apparatus.
+But Ericsson possessed a capacity for hard work that recognized no
+obstacles. He undertook a new series of experiments which resulted
+finally in the completion of an engine which was patented and sold to
+John Braithwaite. Young Ericsson's capacity for work and for keeping
+half a dozen experiments in view at the same time seems to have been as
+remarkable in those early days as when he became famous. Records of the
+London Patent Office credit him with invention after invention. Among
+these were a pumping-engine on a new principle; engines with surface
+condensers and no smoke-stack, as applied to the steamship Victory in
+1828; an apparatus for making salt from brine; for propelling boats on
+canals; a hydrostatic weighing machine, to which the Society of Arts
+awarded a prize; an instrument to be used in taking deep-sea soundings;
+a file-cutting machine. The list covers some fourteen patented
+inventions and forty machines.
+
+Perhaps his most important work at this period was a device for creating
+artificial draught in locomotives, to which aid the development of our
+railroad owes much. In 1829 the Liverpool & Manchester Railroad offered
+a prize of $2,500 for the best locomotive capable of doing certain work.
+The prize was taken by Stephenson with his famous Rocket; but his
+sharpest competitor in this contest was John Ericsson. Four locomotives
+entered the contest. The London _Times_ of October 8, 1829, speaks
+highly of the Novelty, the locomotive entered by Messrs. Braithwaite &
+Ericsson, saying: "It was the lightest and most elegant carriage on the
+road yesterday, and the velocity with which it moved surprised and
+amazed every beholder. It shot along the line at the amazing rate of
+thirty miles an hour. It seemed indeed to fly, presenting one of the
+most sublime spectacles of human ingenuity and human daring the world
+ever beheld."
+
+[Illustration: Ericsson on his Arrival in England, aged twenty-three.]
+
+[Illustration: Mrs. John Ericsson, née Amelia Byam.
+
+(From an early daguerreotype.)]
+
+The railroad directors, at whose invitation this test was made, had
+asked for ten miles an hour; Ericsson gave them thirty. The excitement
+of the witnesses found vent in loud cheers. Within an hour the shares
+of the railroad company rose ten per cent., and the young engineer might
+well have considered his fortune made. But although he had beaten his
+rival ten miles an hour, the judges determined to make traction power,
+rather than speed, the critical test, and the prize was awarded to
+Stephenson's Rocket, which drew seventeen tons for seventy miles at the
+rate of thirteen miles an hour. Stephenson's engine weighed twice as
+much as Ericsson's. Nevertheless Ericsson's success with the Novelty was
+such as to keep him busy in this particular field. He followed it up
+with a steam fire-engine that astonished London at the burning of the
+Argyle Rooms, in 1829, when for the first time, as one of the local
+papers remarked, "fire was extinguished by the mechanical power of
+fire." Another engine, of larger power, built for the King of Prussia,
+soon after rendered excellent service in Berlin, and a third was built
+for Liverpool in 1830. Ten years afterward the Mechanics' Institute of
+New York awarded a gold medal to Ericsson as a prize for the best plan
+of a steam-engine.
+
+[Illustration: Exterior View of Ericsson's House, No. 36 Beach Street,
+New York, 1890.]
+
+Disappointed in his ill success with inventions pertaining to
+locomotives, Ericsson now turned his attention to his early
+flame-engine, and the working model of a caloric engine of five-horse
+power soon attracted the attention of London. At first there seemed to
+be a great future for engines upon this principle, but after many years
+of experiments, at great expense, Ericsson found that the principle was
+useful only for purposes requiring small power. In 1851 he built a
+heat-engine for the ship Ericsson, a vessel two hundred and sixty feet
+in length, and tells the result as follows: "The ship after completion
+made a successful trip from New York to Washington and back during the
+winter season; but the average speed at sea proving insufficient for
+commercial purposes, the owners, with regret, acceded to my proposition
+to remove the costly machinery, although it had proved perfect as a
+mechanical combination. The resources of modern engineering having been
+exhausted in producing the motors of the caloric ship, the important
+question, Can heated air, as a mechanical motor, compete on a large
+scale with steam? has forever been set at rest. The commercial world is
+indebted to American enterprise for having settled a question of such
+vital importance. The marine engineer has thus been encouraged to renew
+his efforts to perfect the steam-engine without fear of rivalry from a
+motor depending on the dilation of atmospheric air by heat."
+
+[Illustration: Solar-engine Adapted to the Use of Hot Air.
+
+(Patented as a pumping-engine, 1880.)]
+
+Before leaving this question of heat-engines and passing to the more
+important inventions by which Ericsson will be remembered, it may be as
+well to say a few words concerning the solar-engines to which he devoted
+many years' time, and one of which I saw in operation in the back yard
+of the pleasant old house in Beach Street, opposite the freight depot of
+the Hudson River Railroad. This house, by the way, which Ericsson
+occupied for nearly forty years, faced on St. John's Park, the pleasant
+square which was afterward filled up by the railroad company. Toward the
+last years of Ericsson's life the neighborhood became anything but a
+pleasant one to live in; it was dirty and noisy. Nevertheless Ericsson
+refused to move. Perhaps the unpleasantness of the surroundings made him
+the recluse he was. It is not surprising that he should have been
+attracted by the possibility of obtaining power from the heat of the
+sun. In an early pamphlet on the subject he says: "There is a rainless
+region extending from the northwestern coast of Africa to Mongolia, nine
+thousand miles in length and nearly one thousand miles wide. In the
+Western Hemisphere, Lower California, the table-lands of Guatemala, and
+the west coast of South America, for a distance of more than two
+thousand miles, suffer from a continuous radiant heat." Ericsson
+estimated that the mechanical power that would result from utilizing the
+solar heat on a strip of land a single mile wide and eight thousand
+miles long would suffice to keep twenty-two million solar-engines, of
+one hundred horse-power each, going nine hours a day. He believed that
+with the exhaustion of European coal-fields the day for the solar-engine
+would come, and that those countries which possessed unfailing sunshine,
+such as Egypt, would displace England, France, and Germany as the
+manufacturing powers of the world, for the European would have to move
+his machinery to the borders of the Nile. By concentrating the rays of
+the sun upon a small copper boiler filled with air Ericsson was enabled
+to work a little motor, and for some years he also attempted to produce
+steam by means of heat from the sun. He was not successful, however, in
+making anything of commercial value in this direction, and so far as I
+have been able to learn none of the tropical countries invited by him to
+take up the problem for its own benefit responded to the invitation.
+
+Ericsson's studies and improvements of the screw as a means of
+propelling boats began in England. A model boat, two feet long, fitted
+up with two screws, was launched in a London bath-house, and, supplied
+by steam from a boiler placed at the side of the tank, was sent around
+at a speed estimated at six miles an hour. Ericsson was so delighted
+with it that he built a boat eight feet by forty, armed with two
+propellers, in the hope that the British Admiralty might adopt the
+invention. This boat went through the water at the rate of ten miles an
+hour, or seven miles an hour towing a schooner of one hundred and forty
+tons burden. He invited the Admiralty to see the work of his screw.
+Steaming up to Somerset House with his little vessel, Ericsson took the
+Admiralty barge in tow, to the wonder of the watermen, who could make
+nothing of the novel craft with no apparent means of propulsion. The
+British Admiralty, however, was not easily convinced. These wiseacres
+said nothing, but Ericsson professed to have heard that their verdict
+was against him because one of the authorities of the board decided that
+"even if the propeller had the power of propelling a vessel it would be
+found altogether useless in practice, because the power, being applied
+to the stern, it would be absolutely impossible to make the vessel
+steer."
+
+This official blindness cost England the services of the inventor. The
+United States happened to have as consul in Liverpool at that day (1837)
+Mr. Francis B. Ogden, a pioneer in steam navigation on the Ohio River.
+Ogden saw Ericsson's invention and introduced him to Captain Robert F.
+Stockton, of the United States Navy. With Stockton, seeing was
+believing, and when he returned from a trip on Ericsson's boat, he
+exclaimed: "I do not want the opinion of your scientific men. What I
+have seen to-day satisfies me." Before the vessel had completed her
+trip, Ericsson received from Stockton an order for two boats. Upon
+Stockton's assurance that the United States would try his propeller upon
+a large scale, Ericsson closed up his affairs in England and embarked
+for the United States. Through the good offices of Stockton, but after
+considerable delay, a vessel called the Princeton was ordered and
+completed. She carried a number of radical improvements destined to make
+a revolution in naval warfare. The boilers and engines were below the
+waterline, out of the way of shot and shell. The smoke-stack was a
+telescopic affair, replacing the tall pipe that formed so conspicuous a
+target upon the old boats. Centrifugal blowers in the hold, worked by
+separate engines, secured increased draught for the furnaces. The
+Princeton was a wonder, and everyone was ready to praise the inventive
+genius of Ericsson and the daring of Captain Stockton in adopting so
+many radical novelties. An entry in the diary of John Quincy Adams,
+dated February 28, 1844, tells the sad story of the public exhibition of
+the Princeton at Washington:
+
+"I went into the chamber of the Committee of Manufactures and wrote
+there till six. Dined with Mr. Grinnell and Mr. Winthrop. While we were
+at dinner John Barney burst into the chamber, rushed up to General Scott
+and told him, with groans, that the President wished to see him; that
+the great gun on board the Princeton had burst and killed the Secretary
+of State, Upshur; the Secretary of the Navy, T.W. Gilmer; Captain
+Beverly Kennon, Virgil Maxey, a Colonel Gardiner, of New York, a colored
+servant of the President, and desperately wounded several of the crew."
+
+So tragic an introduction was not needed to direct public attention to
+the Princeton. Ericsson had placed the United States at the head of
+naval powers in the application of steam-power to warfare. He had made
+the experiment of the Princeton at a great cost to himself, and two
+years of concentrated effort had been devoted to the service of the
+Government. For his time, labor, and necessary expenditures he rendered
+a bill of $15,000, leaving the question of what, if anything, should be
+charged for his patent rights entirely to the discretion and generosity
+of the Government. The bill was refused payment by the Navy Department
+because of its limited discretion. Ericsson went to Congress with it,
+but a dozen years passed without the slightest progress toward a
+settlement. A court of claims rendered a unanimous decree in his favor,
+but Congress, to which the bill was again sent, failed to make an
+appropriation, and there the matter has remained, notwithstanding the
+brilliant services since rendered to this country by the inventor.
+
+Various nations claim the invention of the screw as applied to boats. At
+Trieste and at Vienna stand statues erected to Joseph Ressel, for whom
+the Austrians lay claim. Commodore Stevens, of New Jersey, is also said
+by Professor Thurston to have built and worked a screw-propeller on the
+Hudson in 1812. Whatever may be the final decision as to Ericsson's
+claim in this matter, there, can be no doubt as to the value of the
+services he rendered in building the Monitor. The suggestion of the
+Monitor was first made in a communication from Ericsson to Napoleon
+III., dated New York, September, 1854. This paper contained a
+description of an iron-clad vessel surmounted by a cupola substantially
+as in the Monitor as finally built. The emperor, through General Favre,
+acknowledged the communication. Favre wrote: "The emperor has himself
+examined with the greatest care the new system of naval attack which you
+have communicated to him. His Majesty charges me with the honor of
+informing you that he has found your ideas very ingenious and worthy of
+the celebrated name of their author." For eight years Ericsson continued
+working upon his idea of a revolving cupola or turret upon an iron-clad
+raft, but found no opportunity to test the practical value of the
+device. His time finally came when, in 1861, the Navy Department
+appointed a board to examine plans for iron-clads. The board consisted
+of Commodores Joseph Smith, Hiram Paulding, and Charles H. Davis.
+Ericsson, having learned to distrust his own powers as a business agent,
+engaged the assistance of C. S. Bushnell, a Connecticut man of some
+wealth, who went to Washington and presented the designs of the Monitor
+to the board.
+
+Colonel W.C. Church, Ericsson's biographer, who has just been honored by
+Sweden for his publications upon the life of the inventor, tells an
+interesting story of the negotiations concerning the vessel which was to
+render such signal services to the country. Bushnell could make no
+headway with the board and decided that Ericsson's presence in
+Washington was necessary. But the inventor was then, as during his
+whole life, averse to any self-advertisement, and preferred his
+workshop to any place on earth. But as he possessed a sort of rude
+eloquence due to enthusiasm, Bushnell got him to Washington by
+subterfuge. He was told that the board approved his plans for an
+iron-clad and that it would be necessary for him to go to the capital
+and complete the contract. Presenting himself before the board, what was
+his astonishment to find that he was not only an unexpected but
+apparently an unwelcome visitor. He was not long in doubt as to the
+meaning of this reception. To his indignation and astonishment he was
+informed that the plan of a vessel submitted by him had already been
+rejected. His first impulse was to withdraw at once. Mastering his
+anger, however, he inquired the reason for this decision. Commodore
+Smith explained that the vessel had not sufficient stability; in other
+words, it would be liable to upset. Captain Ericsson was too experienced
+a naval designer to have overlooked this point, and in a lucid
+explanation put his views before the board, winding up with the
+declaration: "Gentlemen, after what I have said, I consider it to be
+your duty to the country to give me an order to build the vessel before
+I leave this room."
+
+Withdrawing to a corner the board held a consultation and invited the
+inventor to call again at one o'clock. When Ericsson returned he brought
+with him a diagram illustrating more fully his reasons for considering
+his proposed vessel to be perfectly stable. Commodore, afterward
+Admiral, Paulding was convinced, and admitted that Ericsson had taught
+him much about the stability of vessels. Secretary Welles was informed
+that the board reported favorably upon Ericsson's plan, and told the
+inventor that he might return to New York and begin work, as the
+contract would follow him. When the contract came it was found to be a
+singularly one-sided affair. If the Monitor proved vulnerable--in other
+words; if it was not a success--the money paid for it by the Navy
+Department was to be refunded.
+
+[Illustration: Sectional View of Monitor through Turret and
+Pilot-house.]
+
+[Illustration: The Original Monitor.]
+
+It took one hundred days to build the Monitor. During those three months
+Ericsson scarcely slept, and even in his dreams he went over the details
+of the new-fangled war-engine he was building. He named her Monitor
+because, he said, she would warn the nations of the world that a new era
+in naval warfare had begun. The story of his untiring activity has been
+told almost as often as that of the battle between the Monitor and the
+Merrimac. He was at the ship-yard before any of the workmen, and was the
+last to leave. In the construction of so novel a craft difficulties of a
+puzzling nature came up every day. If Ericsson could not solve them on
+the spot, he studied the matter in the quiet of the night, and was ready
+with his drawings in the morning. The result of the naval battle in
+Hampton Roads, on the 9th of March, 1862, between the little Monitor and
+the big Merrimac made Ericsson the hero of the hour. Had no David
+appeared to stop the ravages of the Confederate Goliath, it is hard to
+say what might not have been the injury inflicted upon the cause of the
+Union by the terrible Merrimac. The United States Navy was virtually
+panic-stricken when the Monitor, this "Yankee cheese-box on a plank," as
+the Southerners called her, came to the rescue.
+
+Notwithstanding the tremendous service rendered the country, Ericsson
+declined to receive more compensation for the Monitor than his contract
+called for. In reply to a resolution of the New York Chamber of Commerce
+calling for "a suitable return for his services as will evince the
+gratitude of the nation," Ericsson said: "All the remuneration I desire
+for the Monitor I get out of the construction of it. It is
+all-sufficient." Our grateful nation took him at his word. But honors of
+another and less costly kind were showered upon him. Chief Engineer
+Stimers, who was on the Monitor during her battle with the Merrimac,
+wrote to Ericsson: "I congratulate you on your great success. Thousands
+have this day blessed you. I have heard whole crews cheer you. Every man
+feels that you have saved this place to the nation by furnishing us with
+the means to whip an iron-clad frigate that was, until our arrival,
+having it all her own way with our most powerful vessels."
+
+[Illustration: Fac-simile of a Pencil Sketch by Ericsson, giving a
+Transverse Section of his Original Monitor Plan, with a Longitudinal
+Section drawn over it.]
+
+[Illustration: Interior of the Destroyer, Looking toward the Bow.]
+
+War vessels upon the plan of the Monitor speedily appeared among the
+navies of several nations. England refused at first to admit the value
+of the invention and was not converted until the double-turreted
+Miantonomoh visited her waters in 1866, when one of the London papers
+described her appearance among the British fleet as that of a wolf among
+a flock of sheep. The day of the big wooden war-vessels was over. It
+was, nevertheless, an Englishman and a naval officer, Captain Cowper
+Coles, who sought to deprive Ericsson of the honor of his invention.
+Coles declared that he had devised a ship during the Crimean War, in
+which a turret or cupola was to protect the guns. Ericsson's letter to
+Napoleon III., written in 1854, is sufficient answer to this, besides
+which Ericsson's scheme includes more than a stationary shield for the
+guns, which is all that Coles claimed. Coles succeeded, however, in
+inducing the British Admiralty to build a vessel according to his plans.
+This ill-fated craft upset off Cape Finisterre on the night of September
+6, 1870, and went to the bottom with Coles and a crew of nearly five
+hundred men.
+
+Having devised an apparatus that made wooden war-vessels useless,
+Ericsson turned his attention to the destruction of iron-clads, and
+devoted ten years of his life to the construction of his famous
+torpedo-boat, the Destroyer, upon which he spent about all the money he
+amassed by other work. According to his belief, no vessel afloat could
+escape annihilation in a battle with his Destroyer. This vessel is
+designed to run at sufficient speed to overtake any of the iron-clads.
+It offers small surface to the shot of an enemy, and besides being
+heavily armored, it can be partly submerged beneath the waves. When
+within fighting distance it fires under water, by compressed air, a
+projectile containing dynamite sufficient to raise a big war-ship out of
+the water. The explosion takes place when the projectile meets with
+resistance, such as the sides of a ship. To Ericsson's great
+disappointment, the United States Government persistently refused to
+purchase the Destroyer or to commission Ericsson to build more vessels
+of her type.
+
+[Illustration: Development of the Monitor Idea.]
+
+Of Ericsson's home life there is not much to be told. He was utterly
+wrapped up in his work. With his devoted secretary, Mr. Arthur Taylor,
+his days knew scarcely any variation. Of social recreation he had none.
+In conversation he was abrupt and somewhat peculiar, apparently
+regarding all other talk than that relating to mechanics and germane
+subjects as a waste of words. His shrewd face, with its blue eyes and
+fringe of white hair, was not an unkindly one, however, and the few
+workmen he employed in the Beach Street house were devoted to him. No
+great man was ever more intensely averse to personal notoriety. Although
+often advised to make his Destroyer better known by means of newspaper
+articles, he persistently refused to see newspaper men; and the
+professional interviewer and lion-hunter were his pet aversions. It was
+perhaps to avoid them that he left his house only after nightfall, and
+then but for a walk in the neighborhood.
+
+[Illustration: The Room in which Ericsson Worked for More than Twenty
+Years.]
+
+His time was divided according to rule. For thirty years he was called
+by his servant at seven o'clock in the morning, and took a bath of very
+cold water, ice being added to it in summer. After some gymnastic
+exercises came breakfast at nine o'clock, always of eggs, tea, and brown
+bread. His second and last meal of the day, dinner, never varied from
+chops or steak, some vegetables, and tea and brown bread again.
+Ice-water was the only luxury that he indulged in. He used tobacco in no
+form. During the daytime he was accustomed to work at his desk or
+drawing-table for about ten hours. After dinner he resumed work until
+ten, when he started out for the stroll of an hour or more, which always
+ended his day. The last desk work accomplished every day was to make a
+record in his diary, always exactly one page long. This diary is in
+Swedish and comprises more than fourteen thousand pages, thus covering a
+period of forty years, during which he omitted but twenty days, in
+1856, when he had a finger crushed by machinery. He scarcely knew what
+sickness was, and just before his death said that he had not missed a
+meal for fifteen years. He was a widower and left no children. He died
+in the Beach Street house, after a short illness, on March 8, 1889, and
+his remains were transferred to Sweden with naval honors.
+
+[Illustration: Cyrus Hall McCormick.]
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+CYRUS HALL McCORMICK.
+
+
+In the course of an argument before the Commissioner of Patents, in
+1859, the late Reverdy Johnson declared that the McCormick reaper was
+worth $55,000,000 a year to this country, an estimate that was not
+disputed. At about the same time the late William H. Seward said that
+"owing to Mr. McCormick's invention the line of civilization moves
+westward thirty miles each year." Already the London _Times_, after
+ridiculing the McCormick reaper exhibited at the London World's Fair of
+1851, as "a cross between an Astley (circus) chariot, a wheel-barrow,
+and a flying-machine," confessed, when the reaper had been tested in the
+fields, that it was "worth to the farmers of England the whole cost of
+this exhibition." Writing of this glorious success, Mr. Seward said: "So
+the reaper of 1831, as improved in 1845, achieved for its inventor a
+triumph which all then felt and acknowledged was not more a personal one
+than it was a national one. It was justly so regarded. No general or
+consul, drawn in a chariot through the streets of Rome by order of the
+Senate, ever conferred upon mankind benefits so great as he who thus
+vindicated the genius of our country at the World's Exhibition of Art
+in the metropolis of the British empire in 1851." In 1861, though
+declining to extend the patent for the reaper, the Commissioner of
+Patents, D.P. Holloway, paid the inventor this remarkable tribute:
+"Cyrus H. McCormick is an inventor whose fame, while he is yet living,
+has spread through the world. His genius has done honor to his own
+country, and has been the admiration of foreign nations, and he will
+live in the grateful recollection of mankind as long as the
+reaping-machine is employed in gathering the harvest." Nevertheless the
+extension of the patent of 1834, which act of justice would have given
+the inventor an opportunity to obtain an adequate reward for his work,
+was refused upon the extraordinary ground that "the reaper was of too
+great value to the public to be controlled by any individual." In other
+words, the benefit conferred by McCormick upon the country was too great
+to be paid for; therefore no effort should be made to pay for it.
+Finally, the French Academy of Sciences, when McCormick was elected to
+the Institute of France--an honor paid but to few Americans--mentioned
+the election as due to "his having done more for the cause of
+agriculture than any other living man."
+
+[Illustration: Farm where Cyrus H. McCormick was Born and Raised.]
+
+It is thus evident that the tremendous service done to the civilized
+world by the invention of the McCormick reaper was appreciated years
+ago. Yet it is improbable that the whole value of the invention was
+fully realized. To-day the McCormick works at Chicago turn out yearly,
+and have turned out for several years, more than one hundred thousand
+reapers and mowers. At a moderate estimate every McCormick reaper, and
+every reaper founded upon it and containing its essential features,
+saves the labor of six men during the ten harvest days of the year. The
+present number of reapers in operation to-day, all of them based upon
+the McCormick patents, is estimated at about two million, so that,
+counting a man's labor at $1 a day, here is a yearly saving of more than
+$100,000,000. The reaper thus stands beside the steam-engine and the
+sewing-machine as one of the most important labor-saving inventions of
+our time, relieving millions of men from the most arduous drudgery and
+increasing the world's wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars every
+year. It is some satisfaction to know that the inventor of the reaper
+lived to enjoy the fruits of his work. A remarkable man in every
+respect, his ingenuity, perseverance, courage under injustice, and
+generosity finally won him not only the material rewards that were his
+by right, but the esteem and honor of the civilized world.
+
+Like Fulton and Morse, Cyrus Hall McCormick came of Scotch-Irish blood,
+a race marked by fixed purpose, untiring industry in carrying out that
+purpose, a strong sense of moral obligation, and an unswerving
+determination to do right by the light of conscience though the heavens
+fall. He was born on the 15th of February, 1809, at Walnut Grove, in
+Rockbridge County, Va., and was the eldest of eight children, six of
+whom lived to grow up. His father, Robert McCormick, in addition to
+farming, had workshops of considerable importance on his farm, as well
+as a saw-mill and grist-mill and smelting furnaces. In these workshops
+young Cyrus McCormick probably got his first love for mechanical
+devices. Robert McCormick was an inventor of no mean attainment. He
+devised and built a thresher, a hemp-breaker, some mill improvements,
+and in 1816 he made and tried a mechanical reaper. In those days so much
+of the farmer's hard labor was expended in swinging the scythe that it
+seems strange we have no record of more attempts to make a machine do
+the work. A schoolmaster named Ogle is said to have built a reaper in
+1822, but, according to his own admission, it would not work. Bell, a
+Scotch minister, also contrived a reaping-machine that was tried in
+1828. In the course of the subsequent patent litigation over the reaper
+the claims of these early inventors were made the most of by McCormick's
+opponents, but the courts of last resort invariably settled the question
+in McCormick's favor.
+
+As a farmer boy, young Cyrus McCormick began his day's work in the
+fields at five o'clock. In winter he went to the Old Field School.
+During his boyhood he would watch his father's experiments and
+disappointments. His first attempt in the same direction was the
+construction, at the age of fifteen, of a harvesting-cradle by which he
+was enabled to keep up with an able-bodied workman. His first patented
+invention (1831) was a plough which threw alternate furrows on either
+side, being thus either a right-hand or left-hand plough. This was
+superseded in 1833 by an improved plough, also by McCormick, called the
+self-sharpening plough, which did excellent work. His father having
+worked long and unsuccessfully at a mechanical reaper, it was natural
+that young McCormick's mind should turn over the same problem from time
+to time, and his father's failures did not deter him, although Robert
+McCormick had suffered so much in mind and pocket through the
+impracticability of his reaper that he warned his son against wasting
+more time and money upon the dream. One martyr to mechanical progress
+was enough for the McCormick family. But the possibility of making a
+machine do the hard, hot work of the harvest-field had a fascination for
+the young man, and the more he studied the discarded reaping-machine
+made by his father in 1816, the more firmly he became convinced that
+while the principle of that device was wrong, the work could be done. In
+those days the development of the country really depended upon some
+better, cheaper way of harvesting. The land was fertile, and there was
+practically no end of it. But labor was scarce.
+
+[Illustration: Exterior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper
+was Built.]
+
+Cyrus McCormick's plough was a success that encouraged him to take hold
+of the more difficult problem of the reaper. He found that some device,
+such as his father's, would cut grain after a fashion, provided it was
+in perfect condition and stood up straight; the moment it became matted
+and tangled and beaten down by wind and rain the machine was useless.
+Other devices had been arranged whereby a fly-wheel armed with sickles
+slashed off the heads of the wheat, leaving the stalks; but here again
+such a machine would work only when the field was in prime condition. He
+determined that no device was of any value which would not cut grain as
+it might happen to stand, stalk and all. After months of labor in his
+father's shop, making every part of the machine himself, in both wood
+and iron, as he said, he turned out, in 1831, the first reaper that
+really cut an average field of wheat satisfactorily. Its three great
+essential features were those of the reaper of to-day--a vibrating
+cutting-blade, a reel to bring the grain within reach of the blade, a
+platform to receive the falling grain, and a divider to separate the
+grain to be cut from that to be left standing. This machine, drawn by
+horses, was tested in a field of six acres of oats, belonging to John
+Steele, within a mile of Walnut Grove. Its work astonished the
+neighboring farmers who gathered to witness the test. The problem of
+cutting standing grain by machinery had been solved.
+
+There were, however, certain defects in the reaper which caused Cyrus
+McCormick not to put the machine on the market. All the cog-wheels were
+of wood. There was no place upon it for either the driver or the raker.
+The former rode on the near horse and the latter followed on foot,
+raking the grain from it as best he could. But it cut grain fast, and
+both father and son were so impressed by its possibilities as
+foreshadowed in even this crude affair, that for the next few years they
+devoted their time, money, and thoughts to it. Robert McCormick was as
+enthusiastic as his son, and he is rightly entitled to a share of the
+honor, for his invention of 1816 turned the attention of his son to the
+problem and pointed out the radical errors to be avoided. A year after
+its first trial, with certain improvements, the reaper cut fifty acres
+of wheat in so perfect and rapid a manner as to insure its practical
+value beyond all doubt. The self-restraint shown by McCormick in
+refusing to sell machines until he was satisfied with them shows the
+man. The patent was granted in 1834, but for six years he kept at work
+experimenting, changing, improving, during the short periods of each
+harvest. In a letter to the Commissioner of Patents, on file in the
+Patent Office, Mr. McCormick said: "From the experiment of 1831 until
+the harvest of 1840 I did not sell a reaper, although during that time I
+had many exhibitions of it, for experience proved to me that it was best
+for the public as well as for myself that no sales were made, as defects
+presented themselves that would render the reaper unprofitable in other
+hands. Many improvements were found necessary, requiring a great deal of
+thought and study. I was sometimes flattered, at other times
+discouraged, and at all times deemed it best not to attempt the sale of
+machines until satisfied that the reaper would succeed."
+
+[Illustration: Interior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper
+was Built.]
+
+About 1835 the McCormicks engaged in a partnership for the smelting of
+iron ore. The reaper, as a business pursuit, was yet in the distance,
+and the new iron industry offered large profits. The panic of 1837 swept
+away these hopes. Cyrus sacrificed all he had, even the farm given him
+by his father, to settle his debts, and his scrupulous integrity in this
+matter turned disaster into blessing, for it compelled him to take up
+the reaper with renewed energy. With the aid of his father and of his
+brothers, William and Leander, he began the manufacture of the machine
+in the primitive workshop at Walnut Grove, turning out less than fifty
+machines a year, all of them made under great disadvantages. The
+sickles were made forty miles away, and as there were no railroads in
+those days, the blades, six feet long, had to be carried on horseback.
+Neither was it easy, when once the machines were made, to get them to
+market. The first consignment sent to the Western prairies, in 1844, was
+taken in wagons from Walnut Grove to Scottsville, then down the canal to
+Richmond, Va.; thence by water to New Orleans, and then up the
+Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to Cincinnati.
+
+The great West, with its vast prairies, was the natural market for the
+reaper. Upon the small farms of the East hand labor might still suffice
+for the harvest; in the West, where the farms were enormous and labor
+scarce, it was out of the question. Realizing that while his reaper was
+a luxury in Virginia, it was a necessity in Ohio and Illinois, Cyrus
+McCormick went to Cincinnati in the autumn of 1844 and began
+manufacturing. At the same time he made some valuable improvements and
+obtained a second patent. The reaper had become known and the inventor
+rode on horseback through Illinois and Wisconsin, obtaining farmers'
+orders for reapers, which he offered to A.C. Brown, of Cincinnati, as
+security for payment, if he would use his workshops for manufacturing
+them. McCormick was enabled also to arrange with a firm in Brockport,
+N.Y., to make his reapers on a royalty, and this business provided the
+great wheat district of Central New York with machines. In 1847 and 1848
+he obtained still other patents for new features of the reaper.
+
+[Illustration: The First Reaper.]
+
+In 1846 he had already fixed upon Chicago as the best centre of
+operations for the reaper business, and at the close of the year he
+moved there. The next year the sale of the reapers rose to seven
+hundred, and more than doubled in 1849. Having associated his two
+brothers, William S. and Leander J., with him, Cyrus McCormick found
+time to devote himself to introducing the reaper in the Old World. The
+American exhibit at the London World's Fair of 1851 was rather a small
+one, redeemed largely by the McCormick reaper, which the London _Times_,
+as I have already said, praised as worth to the farmers of Great Britain
+more than the whole cost of the exhibition. To it was awarded the grand
+prize, known as the council medal.
+
+The reaper's advance in public favor was as steady on the other side of
+the water as here, and medals and honors were awarded McCormick at many
+important exhibitions. During the Paris Exposition of 1867 McCormick
+superintended the work of his reapers at a field trial held by the
+exposition authorities, and so conclusively defeated all competitors
+that Napoleon III., who walked after the reapers, expressed his
+determination to confer upon the inventor, then and there, the Cross of
+the Legion of Honor. At the French Exposition of 1878 the McCormick
+wire-binder won the grand prize. From 1850 the success of the reaper was
+assured. Mr. McCormick might have rested content with what had been
+achieved, but it was not his nature. He not only continued to bear upon
+his shoulders the larger share of responsibility of the rapidly growing
+business, but he labored persistently to add to the effectiveness of his
+invention.
+
+The great fire that swept Chicago in 1871 left nothing of the already
+important works established by Mr. McCormick. But, as might be expected
+from such a man, he was a tower of strength to the city in her time of
+distress, and one of those to rally first from the blow and to inspire
+hope. Within a year, assisted by his brother Leander, he had raised from
+the ashes an immense establishment, which with the growth of the last
+few years now covers forty acres of ground. More than 2,000 men are here
+employed. The statistics for last year show that more than 20,000 tons
+of special bar-iron and steel, 2,800 tons of sheet steel, and 26,000
+tons of castings were used in making the 142,000 machines sold. Ten
+million feet of lumber were used, chiefly in boxing and crating, as very
+little wood is now used in the reaper.
+
+This is a marvellous development from the little Virginia shop of 1840,
+with its output of one machine a week, and the growth means far more for
+the country at large than might be inferred from these figures; the
+farmers of the world owe more to the McCormick reaper than they can
+repay. The whir of the American reaper is heard around the world. In
+Egypt, Russia, India, Australia the machine is helping man with more
+than a giant's strength. Recent American travellers through Persia have
+described the singular effect produced upon them by seeing the McCormick
+reaper doing its steady work in the fields over which Haroun Al Raschid
+may have roamed. And this wonderful machine is followed with awe by the
+more ignorant of the natives, who look upon its achievements as little
+short of magical. They are not far wrong, however, for it is more
+amazing than any wonder described in their "Arabian Nights."
+
+The last years of Cyrus H. McCormick's life were such as have fallen to
+few of the world's benefactors, for as a rule the pioneer who shows the
+road has a hard time of it, even unto the end. Mr. McCormick had the
+satisfaction of knowing not only that by his invention he had conferred
+a blessing upon the workmen of the world, but that the world had
+acknowledged the debt. Material prosperity, however, was not considered
+any reason for luxurious idleness. To the close of his life Mr.
+McCormick continued to supervise the business of his firm and to make
+the reaper more perfect. No great exhibition abroad or in this country
+passed without some of its honors falling to the share of the McCormick
+reaper.
+
+The private life of Cyrus H. McCormick was a happy one, and to this may
+be attributed no small share of the elasticity and courage that
+recognized no defeat as final. Congress failed to do him justice; his
+business was attacked by hordes of rivals; it was interrupted by the
+fire of 1871 and afterward threatened by labor strikes incited by
+self-seeking demagogues. Hard work was the rule of his life and not the
+exception. But that his nature remained sweet and just is shown by his
+untiring work upon behalf of others. His home life, as I have just
+remarked, was unusually blessed. In 1858 he married Miss Nettie Fowler,
+a daughter of Melzar Fowler, of Jefferson County, New York. Of the seven
+children born of this marriage, five lived to grow up, his son, Cyrus H.
+McCormick, now occupying his father's place at the head of the great
+works in Chicago. One of the daughters, Anita, is the widow of Emmons
+Blaine. The inventor of the reaping-machine died on the 13th of May,
+1884. Robert H. Parkinson, of Cincinnati, speaks as follows of one of
+the last interviews he had with Mr. McCormick: "Though struggling with
+the infirmities of age, he took on a kind of majesty which belongs alone
+to that combination of great mental and moral strength, and he surprised
+me by the power with which he grappled the matters under discussion, and
+the strong personality before which obstacles went down as swiftly and
+inevitably as grain before the knife of his machine. I think myself
+fortunate in having had this glimpse of him and in being able to
+remember with so much personal association a life so complete in its
+achievements, so far-reaching in its impress, alike upon the material,
+moral, and religious progress of the country, and so thoroughly
+successful and beneficial in every department of activity and influence
+which it entered." One of his friends, speaking of Mr. McCormick, said:
+"That which gave intensity to his purpose, strength to his will, and
+nerved him with perseverance that never failed was his supreme regard
+for justice, his worshipful reverence for the true and right. The
+thoroughness of his conviction that justice must be done, that right
+must be maintained, made him insensible to reproach and impatient of
+delay. I do not wonder that his character was strong, nor that his
+purpose was invincible, nor that his plans were crowned with an ultimate
+and signal success, for where conviction of right is the motive-power
+and the attainment of justice the end in view, with faith in God there
+is no such word as fail."
+
+Cyrus H. McCormick was not only the inventor of a great labor-saving
+device, but he helped his fellow-man in other ways. Philanthropy,
+religion, education, journalism, and politics received a share of his
+attention. More than thirty years ago he was already an active power for
+good in the councils of his church. In 1859 he proposed to the General
+Assembly of the Presbyterian Church to endow with $100,000 the
+professorships of a theological seminary, to be established in Chicago.
+This was done, and during his lifetime he gave about half a million
+dollars to this institution--the Theological Seminary of the Northwest.
+The McCormick professorship of natural philosophy in the Washington and
+Lee University of Virginia, and gifts to the Union Theological Seminary
+at Hampden-Sidney, and to the college at Hastings, Neb., also attest his
+solicitude for the church in which he had been reared and of which he
+had been a member since 1834. In 1872 he came to the aid of the
+struggling organ of the Presbyterian Church in the Northwest, the
+_Interior_, and used it to foster union between the Old and the New
+Schools in the church, to aid in harmonizing the Presbyterian Church in
+the North and South, to advance the interests of the Theological
+Seminary, and to promote the welfare of the Presbyterian Church in the
+Northwest. Under his care and advice the _Interior_ grew to be a mighty
+voice, expressing the convictions, the aspirations, and hopes of a great
+church.
+
+[Illustration: Thomas A. Edison.]
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THOMAS A. EDISON.
+
+
+[Illustration: Edison's Paper Carbon Lamp.]
+
+Thomas A. Edison is sometimes spoken of rather as a master mechanic than
+as a master inventor or discoverer, and with regard to some of his
+work--I might even say most of it--this characterization holds true.
+Edison's fame is chiefly associated in the popular mind with the
+electric light. Yet it is perfectly well known to every student of the
+matter, that in all that he has done toward making the electric light a
+useful every-day--or perhaps I should say every-night--affair, he has
+simply made practicable what other men had invented or discovered before
+him. The fundamental discovery upon which the incandescent electric lamp
+is founded--that a wire of metal or other substance if heated to
+incandescence in a glass bulb from which the air has been exhausted will
+give light for a longer or shorter time, according to the character of
+the apparatus and the degree to which a perfect vacuum has been effected
+in the bulb--this dates from the first half of the century. As early as
+1849 Despretz, the French scientist, described a series of experiments
+with sticks of carbon sealed in a glass globe from which air had been
+exhausted. When a powerful current was passed through the carbon
+filament it became luminous and remained so for a short time. This was,
+perhaps, the first of a long line of similar experiments in which a
+number of American physicists--Farmer, Draper, Henry, Morse, and Maxim
+among them--took part. But notwithstanding the labors of a score of
+experts in Europe and this country, the incandescent electric light--the
+wire in a glass bulb exhausted of its air--remained a laboratory
+curiosity up to the time, fifteen years ago, when Edison took hold of
+it. It gave light only for a short time and was too expensive a toy for
+practical use. The carbon burned out or disintegrated, and the lamp
+failed. Edison took hold of the mechanical difficulties of the problem.
+With a patience, an ingenuity, a fertility of device in which he stands
+alone, he got to the bottom of each radical defect and remedied it. The
+lamp would not burn long because the platinum wire used gave out, partly
+because platinum was not fitted for the work, fusing at too low a
+temperature. Edison substituted carbonized strips of paper. These in
+turn failed, and he found a species of bamboo that answered. The lamp
+would not burn because air still remained in the little bulbs
+notwithstanding the most careful manipulation with Sprengel pumps to
+exhaust the air. Edison invented new pumps and devices by which the
+air, down to one millionth part, was excluded. The lamp cost too much to
+operate, because large copper wires were needed to carry the current,
+and the generators used up steam power too fast. Edison devised new
+forms of conductors and generators. All such work called more for
+mechanical ingenuity than for actual invention. No new principles were
+involved--merely the better adaptation of known methods. Given a perfect
+carbon, a globe perfectly free from air, cheap electric current, and
+cheap means of carrying it from the generating machine to the lamps, and
+the problem was solved.
+
+Edison, as a master mechanic, furnished all this, or at least so nearly
+solved the problem as to entitle him to claim credit for having given
+the electric light to the world--a better illuminant than gas in every
+way, and destined some day to be infinitely cheaper.
+
+With regard to Edison's work upon the telegraph, telephone, electric
+railway, dynamo, the ore-extracting machines, the electric pen, and a
+score of other inventions which have made him the most profitable
+customer of the United States Patent Office in this or any other
+generation, the labor of this remarkable genius has also been largely
+that of one who made practical and useful the dreams of others. And I am
+by no means sure that the man who does this is not entitled to more
+credit than he who simply suggests that such and such a wonder might be
+accomplished and stops there. It is certain that before Edison we had
+no electric lights; now we have them in every important building in the
+country, and ere long shall have them everywhere.
+
+Edison dislikes intensely the term discoverer as applied to himself.
+"Discovery is not invention," he once remarked in the course of an
+interesting talk with Mr. George Parsons Lathrop, printed in _Harper's
+Magazine_. "A discovery is more or less in the nature of an accident. A
+man walks along the road intending to catch the train. On the way his
+foot kicks against something, and looking down to see what he has hit,
+he sees a gold bracelet embedded in the dust. He has discovered that,
+certainly not invented it. He did not set out to find a bracelet, yet
+the value of it is just as great to him at the moment as if, after long
+years of study, he had invented a machine for making a gold bracelet out
+of common road metal. Goodyear discovered the way to make hard rubber.
+He was at work experimenting with india-rubber, and quite by chance he
+hit upon a process which hardened it--the last result in the world that
+he wished or expected to attain. In a discovery there must be an element
+of the accidental, and an important one, too; while an invention is
+purely deductive. In my own case but few, and those the least important,
+of my inventions owed anything to accident. Most of them have been
+hammered out after long and patient labor, and are the result of
+countless experiments all directed toward attaining some well-defined
+object. All mechanical improvements may safely be said to be inventions
+and not discoveries. The sewing-machine was an invention. So were the
+steam-engine and the typewriter. Speaking of this latter, did I ever
+tell you that I made the first twelve typewriters at my old factory in
+Railroad Avenue, Newark? This was in 1869 or 1870, and I myself had
+worked at a machine of similar character, but never found time to
+develop it fully."
+
+[Illustration: Edison Listening to his Phonograph.]
+
+There is one great invention, however, for which Edison deserves credit,
+both as discoverer and practical inventor--the phonograph. Here was a
+genuine discovery. The phonograph knows no other parent than Edison, and
+he has brought it to its present condition by devotion and tireless
+skill. I have always believed in the phonograph as an instrument
+destined to play some day an important part among the blessings that
+ingenuity has given to man. There are still obstacles in the way of its
+practical success, but that the missing screw or spring--perhaps no more
+than that--will be found in the near future, is not doubted by any
+competent observer.
+
+Thomas Alva Edison was born February 11, 1847, at Milan, Erie County,
+O., an obscure canal village. When a small boy, his family, a most
+humble one (his father being a village jack-of-all-trades, living upon
+odd jobs done for neighboring farmers), moved to Port Huron, Mich.,
+where Edison's boyhood was passed. There his father was in turn tailor,
+well-digger, nursery-man, dealer in grain, lumber, and farm lands. His
+parents were of Dutch-Scotch descent and gave him the iron constitution
+that enables him to-day, at the age of forty-seven, to tire out the most
+robust of his assistants. One of his ancestors lived to the age of one
+hundred and two, and another to the age of one hundred and three, so
+that we may reasonably expect the famous inventor to open the door for
+us to still other wonders of which we do not yet even dream. His mother,
+born in Massachusetts, had a good education and at one time taught
+school in Canada. Of regular schooling, young Edison had but two months
+in his life. Whatever else he knew as a boy he learned from his mother.
+There are no records showing extraordinary promise on his part. He was
+an omnivorous reader, having an intense curiosity about the world and
+its great men. At ten years of age he was reading Hume's "England,"
+Gibbon's "Rome," the Penny Encyclopĉdia, and some books on chemistry.
+
+At the age of twelve he entered upon his life work as newsboy on the
+Grand Trunk Railroad of Canada and the Michigan Central, selling papers,
+books, candies, etc., to the passengers.
+
+"Were you one of the train-boys," he was once asked, "who sold figs in
+boxes with bottoms half an inch thick?"
+
+"If I recollect aright," he replied, with a merry twinkle, "the bottoms
+of my boxes were a good inch."
+
+[Illustration: From Edison's Newspaper, the "Grand Trunk Herald."]
+
+Perhaps the twelve-year-old boy learned something from the books and
+papers he sold. At all events he says that the love of chemistry, even
+at that age, led him to make the corner of the baggage-car where he
+stored his wares a small laboratory, fitted up with such retorts and
+bottles as he could pick up in the railroad workshops. He had a copy of
+Fresenius's "Qualitative Analysis," into which he plunged with the ardor
+a small boy usually shows for nothing literary unless it has a yellow
+cover decorated with an Indian's head. He seems also to have had a habit
+of "hanging around" all interesting places, from a machine-shop to a
+printing-office, keeping his eyes very wide open. In one such expedition
+he received as a gift from W.F. Storey, of the _Detroit Free Press_,
+three hundred pounds of old type thrown out as useless. With an old
+hand-press he began printing a paper of his own, the _Grand Trunk
+Herald_, of which he sold several hundred copies a week, the employees
+of the road being his best customers. "My news," he says, talking of
+this time, "was purely local. But I was proud of my newspaper and looked
+upon myself as a full-fledged newspaper man. My items used to run about
+like this: 'John Robinson, baggage-master at James's Creek Station, fell
+off the platform yesterday and hurt his leg. The boys are sorry for
+John.' Or, 'No. 3 Burlington engine has gone into the shed for
+repairs.'"
+
+This was Edison's only dip into a literary occupation. He has no
+predilection in that way. He realizes the value of newspapers and books,
+but chiefly as tools, and his splendid library at the Orange laboratory,
+kept with scrupulous system, is filled with scientific books and
+periodicals only. Telegraphy was to be the field in which he was to win
+his first laurels. Some years ago he told the story as follows:
+
+"At the beginning of the civil war I was slaving late and early at
+selling papers; but, to tell the truth, I was not making a fortune. I
+worked on so small a margin that I had to be mighty careful not to
+overload myself with papers that I could not sell. On the other hand, I
+could not afford to carry so few that I should find myself sold out long
+before the end of the trip. To enable myself to hit the happy mean, I
+formed a plan which turned out admirably. I made a friend of one of the
+compositors of the _Free Press_ office, and persuaded him to show me
+every day a 'galley-proof' of the most important news article. From a
+study of its head-lines I soon learned to gauge the value of the day's
+news and its selling capacity, so that I could form a tolerably correct
+estimate of the number of papers I should need. As a rule I could
+dispose of about two hundred; but if there was any special news from the
+seat of war, the sale ran up to three hundred or over. Well, one day my
+compositor brought me a proof-slip of which nearly the whole was taken
+up with a gigantic display head. It was the first report of the battle
+of Pittsburgh Landing--afterward called Shiloh, you know--and it gave
+the number of killed and wounded as sixty thousand men.
+
+"I grasped the situation at once. Here was a chance for enormous sales,
+if only the people along the line could know what had happened! If only
+they could see the proof-slip I was then reading! Suddenly an idea
+occurred to me. I rushed off to the telegraph-operator and gravely made
+a proposition to him which he received just as gravely. He on his part
+was to wire to each of the principal stations on our route, asking the
+station-master to chalk up on the bulletin-board--used for announcing
+the time of arrival and departure of trains--the news of the great
+battle, with its accompanying slaughter. This he was to do at once,
+while I, in return, agreed to supply him with current literature 'free,
+gratis, for nothing' during the next six months from that date.
+
+"This bargain struck, I began to bethink me how I was to get enough
+papers to make the grand _coup_ I intended. I had very little cash and,
+I feared, still less credit. I went to the superintendent of the
+delivery department, and preferred a modest request for one thousand
+copies of the _Free Press_ on trust. I was not much surprised when my
+request was curtly and gruffly refused. In those days, though, I was a
+pretty cheeky boy and I felt desperate, for I saw a small fortune in
+prospect if my telegraph operator had kept his word--a point on which I
+was still a trifle doubtful. Nerving myself for a great stroke, I
+marched upstairs into the office of Wilbur F. Storey himself and asked
+to see him. A few minutes later I was shown in to him. I told who I was,
+and that I wanted fifteen hundred copies of the paper on credit. The
+tall, thin, dark-eyed, ascetic-looking man stared at me for a moment and
+then scratched a few words on a slip of paper. 'Take that downstairs,'
+said he, 'and you will get what you want.' And so I did. Then I felt
+happier than I have ever felt since.
+
+"I took my fifteen hundred papers, got three boys to help me fold them,
+and mounted the train all agog to find out whether the telegraph
+operator had kept his word. At the town where our first stop was made I
+usually sold two papers. As the train swung into that station I looked
+ahead and thought there must be a riot going on. A big crowd filled the
+platform and as the train drew up I began to realize that they wanted my
+papers. Before we left I had sold a hundred or two at five cents apiece.
+At the next station the place was fairly black with people. I raised the
+'ante' and sold three hundred papers at ten cents each. So it went on
+until Port Huron was reached. Then I transferred my remaining stock to
+the wagon which always waited for me there, hired a small boy to sit on
+the pile of papers in the back, so as to discount any pilfering, and
+sold out every paper I had at a quarter of a dollar or more per copy. I
+remember I passed a church full of worshippers, and stopped to yell out
+my news. In ten seconds there was not a soul left in meeting. All of
+them, including the parson, were clustered around me, bidding against
+each other for copies of the precious paper.
+
+"You can understand why it struck me then that the telegraph must be
+about the best thing going, for it was the telegraphic notices on the
+bulletin-boards that had done the trick. I determined at once to become
+a telegraph-operator. But if it hadn't been for Wilbur F. Storey I
+should never have fully appreciated the wonders of electrical science."
+
+Telegraphy became a hobby with the boy. From every operator along the
+road he picked up something. He strung the basement of his father's
+house at Port Huron with wires, and constructed a short line, using for
+the batteries stove-pipe wire, old bottles, nails, and zinc which
+urchins of the neighborhood were induced to cut out from under the
+stoves of their unsuspecting mothers and bring to young Edison at three
+cents a pound. In order to save time for his experiments, he had the
+habit of leaping from a train while it was going at the rate of
+twenty-five miles an hour, landing upon a pile of sand arranged by him
+for that purpose. An act of personal courage--the saving of the
+station-master's child at Port Clements from an advancing train--was a
+turning-point in his career, for the grateful father taught him
+telegraphing in the regular way. Telegraphy was then in its infancy,
+comparatively speaking; operators were few, and good wages could be
+earned by means of much less proficiency than is now required. Still,
+Edison had so little leisure at his disposal for learning the new trade,
+that it took him several years to become an expert operator. Most of his
+studies were carried on in the corner of the baggage-car that served him
+as printing-office, laboratory, and business headquarters. With so many
+irons in the fire, mishaps were sure to occur. Once he received a
+drubbing on account of an article reflecting unpleasantly upon some
+employee of the road. One day during his absence a bottle of phosphorus
+upset and set the old railroad caboose on fire, whereupon the conductor
+threw out all the painfully acquired apparatus and thrashed its owner.
+
+Edison's first regular employment as telegraph-operator was at
+Indianapolis when he was eighteen years old. He received a small salary
+for day-work in the railroad office there, and at night he used to
+receive newspaper reports for practice. The regular operator was a man
+given to copious libations, who was glad enough to sleep off their
+effects while Edison and a young friend of his named Parmley did his
+work. "I would sit down," says Edison, "for ten minutes, and 'take' as
+much as I could from the instrument, carrying the rest in my head. Then
+while I wrote out, Parmley would serve his turn at 'taking,' and so on.
+This worked well until they put a new man on at the Cincinnati end. He
+was one of the quickest despatchers in the business, and we soon found
+it was hopeless for us to try to keep up with him. Then it was that I
+worked out my first invention, and necessity was certainly the mother of
+it.
+
+"I got two old Morse registers and arranged them in such a way that by
+running a strip of paper through them the dots and dashes were recorded
+on it by the first instrument as fast as they were delivered from the
+Cincinnati end, and were transmitted to us through the other instrument
+at any desired rate of speed. They would come in on one instrument at
+the rate of forty words a minute, and would be ground out of our
+instrument at the rate of twenty-five. Then weren't we proud! Our copy
+used to be so clean and beautiful that we hung it up on exhibition; and
+our manager used to come and gaze at it silently with a puzzled
+expression. He could not understand it, neither could any of the other
+operators; for we used to hide my impromptu automatic recorder when our
+toil was over. But the crash came when there was a big night's work--a
+Presidential vote, I think it was--and copy kept pouring in at the top
+rate of speed until we fell an hour and a half or two hours behind. The
+newspapers sent in frantic complaints, an investigation was made, and
+our little scheme was discovered. We couldn't use it any more.
+
+[Illustration: Edison's Tinfoil Phonograph--the First Practical
+Machine.]
+
+"It was that same rude automatic recorder that indirectly led me long
+afterward to invent the phonograph. I'll tell you how this came about.
+After thinking over the matter a great deal, I came to the point where,
+in 1877, I had worked out satisfactorily an instrument that would not
+only record telegrams by indenting a strip of paper with dots and dashes
+of the Morse code, but would also repeat a message any number of times
+at any rate of speed required. I was then experimenting with the
+telephone also, and my mind was filled with theories of sound vibrations
+and their transmission by diaphragms. Naturally enough, the idea
+occurred to me: if the indentations on paper could be made to give forth
+again the click of the instrument, why could not the vibrations of a
+diaphragm be recorded and similarly reproduced? I rigged up an
+instrument hastily and pulled a strip of paper through it, at the same
+time shouting, 'Hallo'! Then the paper was pulled through again, my
+friend Batchelor and I listening breathlessly. We heard a distinct
+sound, which a strong imagination might have translated into the
+original 'Hallo.' That was enough to lead me to a further experiment.
+But Batchelor was sceptical, and bet me a barrel of apples that I
+couldn't make the thing go. I made a drawing of a model and took it to
+Mr. Kruesi, at that time engaged on piece-work for me, but now assistant
+general manager of our machine-shop at Schenectady. I told him it was a
+talking-machine. He grinned, thinking it a joke; but he set to work and
+soon had the model ready. I arranged some tinfoil on it, and spoke into
+the machine. Kruesi looked on, still grinning. But when I arranged the
+machine for transmission and we both heard a distinct sound from it, he
+nearly fell down in his fright. I was a little scared myself, I must
+admit. I won that barrel of apples from Batchelor, though, and was
+mighty glad to get it."
+
+
+To go back to earlier days, the story of Edison's first years as a
+full-fledged operator shows that from the beginning he was more of an
+inventor than an operator. He was full of ideas, some of which were
+gratefully received. One day an ice-jam broke the cable between Port
+Huron, in Michigan, and Sarnia, on the Canada side, and stopped
+communication. The river is a mile and a half wide and was impassable.
+Young Edison jumped upon a locomotive and seized the valve controlling
+the whistle. He had the idea that the scream of the whistle might be
+broken into long and short notes, corresponding to the dots and dashes
+of the telegraphic code. "Hallo there, Sarnia! Do you get me? Do you
+hear what I say?" tooted the locomotive.
+
+No answer.
+
+"Do you hear what I say, Sarnia?"
+
+A third, fourth, and fifth time the message went across without
+response, but finally the idea was caught on the other side; answering
+toots came cheerfully back and the connection was recovered.
+
+Anything connected with the difficulties of telegraphy had a fascination
+for him. He lost many a place because of unpardonable blunders due to
+his passion for improvement. At Stratford, Canada, being required to
+report the word "Six" every half hour to the manager to show that he was
+awake and on duty, he rigged up a wheel to do it for him. At
+Indianapolis he kept press reports waiting while he experimented with
+new devices for receiving them. At Louisville, in procuring some
+sulphuric acid at night for his experiments, he tipped over a carboy of
+it, ruining the handsome outfit of a banking establishment below. At
+Cincinnati he abandoned the office on every pretext to hasten to the
+Mechanics' Library to pass his day in reading.
+
+An indication of his thirst for knowledge, and of a _naïve_ ignoring of
+enormous difficulties, is found in a project formed by him at this time
+to read through the whole public library. There was no one to tell him
+that a summary of human knowledge may be found in a moderate number of
+volumes, nor to point out to him what they are. Each book was to him a
+part of the great domain of knowledge, none of which he meant to lose.
+He began with the solid treatises of a dusty lower shelf and actually
+read, in the accomplishment of his heroic purpose, fifteen feet along
+that shelf. He omitted no book and nothing in the book. The list
+contained Newton's "Principia," Ure's Scientific Dictionary, and
+Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy."
+
+At that time a message sent from New Orleans to New York had to be taken
+at Memphis, re-telegraphed to Louisville, taken down again by the
+operator there, and telegraphed to another centre, and so on till it
+reached New York. Time was lost and the chance of error was increased.
+Edison was the first to connect New Orleans and New York directly. It
+was just after the war. He perfected an automatic repeater which was put
+on at Memphis and did its work perfectly. The manager of the office
+there, one Johnson, had a relative who was also busy on the same
+problem, but Edison solved it ahead of him and received complimentary
+notices from the local papers. He was discharged without cause. He got a
+pass as far as Decatur on his way home, but had to walk from there to
+Nashville, a hundred and fifty miles. From there he got a pass to
+Louisville, where he arrived during a sharp snow-storm, clad in a linen
+duster.
+
+It was soon after this that Edison, already a swift and competent
+operator when he devoted himself to practical work, received promise of
+employment in the Boston office. The weather was quite cold and his
+peculiar dress, topped with a slouchy broad-brimmed hat, made something
+of a sensation. But Edison then cared as little for dress as he does
+to-day. So one raw wet day a tall man with a limp, wet duster clinging
+to his legs, stalked into the superintendent's room, and said:
+
+"Here I am."
+
+The superintendent eyed him from head to foot, and said:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Tom Edison."
+
+"And who on earth might Tom Edison be?"
+
+The young man explained that he had been ordered to report for duty at
+the Boston office, and was finally told to sit down in the
+operating-room, where his advent created much merriment. The operators
+guyed him loudly enough for him to hear. He didn't care. A few moments
+later a New York sender noted for his swiftness called up the Boston
+office. There was no one at liberty.
+
+"Well," said the office chief, "let that new fellow try him." Edison sat
+down, and for four hours and a half wrote out messages in his peculiarly
+clear round hand, stuck a date and number on them and threw them on the
+floor for the office boy to pick up. The time he took in numbering and
+dating the sheets were the only seconds he was not writing out
+transmitted words. Faster and faster ticked the instrument, and faster
+and faster went Edison's fingers, until the rapidity with which the
+messages came tumbling on the floor attracted the attention of the
+other operators, who, when their work was done, gathered around to
+witness the spectacle. At the close of the four and a half hours' work
+there flashed from New York the salutation:
+
+"Hello!"
+
+"Hello yourself," ticked back Edison.
+
+"Who the devil are you?" rattled into the Boston office.
+
+"Tom Edison."
+
+"You are the first man in the country," ticked the instrument, "that
+could ever take me at my fastest, and the only one who could ever sit at
+the other end of my wire for more than two hours and a half. I'm proud
+to know you."
+
+Edison was once asked with what invention he really began his career as
+an inventor.
+
+"Well," said he, in reply, "my first appearance at the Patent Office was
+in 1868, when I was twenty-one, with an ingenious contrivance which I
+called the electrical vote recorder. I had been impressed with the
+enormous waste of time in Congress and in the State Legislatures by the
+taking of votes on any motion. More than half an hour was sometimes
+required to count the 'Ayes' and 'Noes.' So I devised a machine somewhat
+on the plan of the hotel annunciator that was invented long afterward,
+only mine was a great deal more complex. In front of each member's desk
+were to have been two buttons, one for 'Aye,' the other for 'No,' and by
+the side of the Speaker's desk a frame with two dials, one showing the
+total of 'Ayes' and the other the total of 'Noes.' When the vote was
+called for, each member could press the button he wished and the result
+would appear automatically before the Speaker, who could glance at the
+dials and announce the result. This contrivance would save several hours
+of public time every day in the session, and I thought my fortune was
+made. I interested a moneyed man in the thing and we went together to
+Washington, where we soon found the right man to get the machine
+adopted. I set forth its merits. Imagine my feelings when, in a
+horrified tone, he exclaimed:
+
+[Illustration: Vote Recorder--Edison's First Patented Invention.]
+
+"'Young man, that won't do at all. That is just what we do not want.
+Your invention would destroy the only hope the minority have of
+influencing legislation. It would deliver them over, bound hand and
+foot, to the majority. The present system gives them time, a weapon
+which is invaluable, and as the ruling majority always knows that they
+may some day become a minority, they will be as much averse to any
+change as their opponents.' I saw the force of these remarks, and the
+vote recorder got no further than the Patent Office."
+
+But he began to believe in himself. His next work was upon the
+applications of the vibratory principle in telegraphing, upon which so
+many of his subsequent inventions were founded. His first ambitious
+attempt was in the direction of a multiplex system for sending several
+messages over one wire at the same time. It was not much of a success,
+however, and Edison drifted to New York, where, after a vain attempt to
+interest the telegraph companies in his inventions, he established
+himself as an electrical expert ready for odd jobs and making a
+specialty of telegraphy. One day the Western Union Company had trouble
+with its Albany Wire. The wire wasn't broken, but wouldn't work, and
+several days of experimenting on the part of the company's electricians
+only served to puzzle them the more. As a forlorn hope they sent for
+young Edison.
+
+"How long will you give me?" he asked. "Six hours?"
+
+The manager laughed and told him he would need longer than that.
+
+Edison sat down at the instrument, established communication with Albany
+by way of Pittsburgh, told the Albany office to put their best man at
+the instrument, and began a rapid series of tests with currents of all
+intensities. He directed the tests from both ends, and after two hours
+and a half told the company's officers that the trouble existed at a
+certain point he named on the line, and he told them what it was. They
+telegraphed the office nearest this point the necessary directions, and
+an hour later the wire was working properly. This incident first
+established his value in New York as an expert, and the business became
+profitable. Moreover, it led the different telegraph companies to give
+respectful attention to what he had to offer in the way of patented
+devices.
+
+Edison's mechanical skill soon became so noted that he was made
+superintendent of the repair shop of one of the smaller telegraph
+companies then in existence, all of which were using what was known as
+the Page sounder, a device for signalling, the sole right to which was
+claimed by the Western Union Company. Owing to the latter company's
+success in a patent suit over this sounder, there came a time when an
+injunction was obtained, silencing all sounders of that type, and
+practically putting a serious obstacle in the way of rapid work. Edison
+was called into the president's office and the situation explained. For
+a long time, according to one who was present, he stood chewing
+vigorously upon a mouthful of tobacco, looking first at the sounder in
+his hand, and then falling into a brown study. At length he picked up a
+sheet of tin used as a "back" for manifolding on thin sheets of paper,
+and began to twist and cut it into queer shapes; a group of persons
+gathered around and watched. Not a word was spoken. Finally Edison tore
+off the Page sounder on the instrument before him, and substituting his
+bit of tin, began working. It was not so good as the patented
+arrangement discarded, but it worked. In four hours a hundred such
+devices were in use over the line, and what would have been a ruinous
+interruption to business was avoided.
+
+Edison's first large sums of money came from the sale of an improvement
+in the instruments used to record stock quotations in brokers' offices,
+commonly known as "tickers." His success in this direction led him to
+take a contract to manufacture some hundreds of "tickers," and his only
+venture in this direction was carried out with considerable success at a
+shop he rented in Newark about 1875. But as he told me a few years
+later, in talking about this incident in his career, manufacturing was
+not in his line. Like Thoreau, who having succeeded in making a perfect
+lead-pencil, declared he should never make another, he hates routine. "I
+was a poor manufacturer," said he, "because I could not let well enough
+alone. My first impulse upon taking any apparatus into my hand, from an
+egg-beater to an electric-motor, is to seek a way of improving it.
+Therefore, as soon as I have finished a machine I am anxious to take it
+apart again in order to make an experiment. That is a costly mania for a
+manufacturer."
+
+[Illustration: Edison in his Laboratory.]
+
+It was his success with a device for printing stock quotations upon
+paper tape that finally induced several New York capitalists to accept
+Edison's offer to experiment with the incandescent electric light, they
+to pay the expense of the experiments and share in the inventions if
+any were made. For the sake of quiet Edison moved out to Menlo Park,
+a little station on the Pennsylvania road about twenty-five miles beyond
+Newark, and built a shop twenty-eight feet wide, one hundred feet long,
+and two stories high. It was here that I first made his acquaintance, in
+January, 1879, soon after the newspapers had announced that he had
+solved the problem of the electric light. It may be remembered that gas
+stock tumbled in price at that time, and there was a rush to sell before
+the new light should displace gas altogether. One cold day I climbed the
+hill from the station, and once past the reception-room, in which every
+new-comer was carefully scrutinized, for inventors are apt to have odds
+and ends lying about that they do not want seen by everyone, I found
+myself in a long big work-shop. To anyone accustomed to the orderly
+appearance of the ideal machine-shop, it presented a curious appearance,
+for evidently half the machines in it--forges, lathes, furnaces,
+retorts, etc.--were dismantled for the moment and useless. Half a dozen
+workmen were busy in an apparently aimless manner.
+
+Upstairs, in a room devoted to chemical experiments, I found Edison
+himself. He is to-day just what he was then. Prosperity has not changed
+him in the least, except perhaps in one particular. In those days of
+struggle the inventor was far less affable with visitors than he is
+to-day. One felt instinctively that he was a man struggling to
+accomplish some serious task to which he was devoting every waking
+thought and probably dreaming about it at night. As I strode across the
+laboratory in the direction indicated by one of the workmen present, a
+compactly built but not tall man, with rather a boyish, clean-shaven
+face, prematurely old, was holding a vial of some liquid up to the
+light. He had on a blouse such as chemists wear, but it was hardly
+necessary, as his clothes were well stained with acids; his hands were
+covered with some oil with which his hair was liberally streaked, as he
+had a habit of wiping his fingers upon his head. "Good clothes are
+wasted upon me," he once explained to me. "I feel it is wrong to wear
+any, and I never put on a new suit when I can help it." Edison has been
+slightly deaf for a number of years, and like all persons of defective
+hearing, closely watches anyone with whom he talks. His patience with
+visitors is proverbial, and provided any intelligence is shown, he will
+plunge into long explanations. As he goes on from point to point,
+warming up to his subject, he is sometimes quite oblivious to the fact
+that it is all lost upon his visitor until brought back by some question
+or comment which shows that he might as well talk Sanskrit. Then he
+laughs and goes back to simpler matters.
+
+I watched him for a few moments before presenting myself. After a long
+look at his bottle, held up against the light, he put it down again on
+the table before him, and resting his head between his hands, both
+elbows on the table, he peered down at the bottle as if he expected it
+to say something. Then, after a moment's brown study, he would seize it
+again, give it a shake, as if to shake its secret out, and hold it up to
+the light. As pantomime nothing could have been more expressive. That
+liquid contained a secret it would not give up, but if it could be made
+to give it up, Edison was the man to do it, as a terrier might worry the
+life out of a rat.
+
+[Illustration: Edison's Menlo Park Electric Locomotive (1880).]
+
+The secret of his success might well be "Persistency, more persistency,
+still more persistency." One of his foremen relates that once in Newark
+when his printing telegraph suddenly refused to work, he locked himself
+into his laboratory, declaring that he would not come out till the
+trouble was found. It took him sixty hours, during which time his only
+food consisted of crackers and cheese eaten at the bench; then he went
+to bed and slept twenty hours at a stretch. At another time, during the
+height of the first electric-light excitement, all the lamps he had
+burning in Menlo Park, about eighty in all, suddenly went out, one after
+another, without apparent cause. Everything had gone well for nearly a
+month and the great success of the experiment had been published to the
+world. If the lamps, with their carbon filaments of charred paper would
+burn for a month there seemed to be no reason why they should not burn
+for a year, and Edison was stunned by the catastrophe. The trouble was
+evidently in the lamps themselves, for new lamps burned well. Then began
+the most exciting and most exhaustive series of experiments ever
+undertaken by an American physicist. For five days Edison remained day
+and night at the laboratory, sleeping only when his assistants took his
+place at whatever was going on. The difficulties in the way of
+experimenting with the incandescent lamp are enormous because the light
+only burns when in a vacuum. The instant the glass is broken, out it
+goes. Edison's eyes grew weak studying the brilliant glow of the carbon
+filament. At the end of the five days he took to his bed, worn out with
+excitement and sick with disappointment. During the last two days and
+nights he ate nothing. He could not sleep, for the moment he left the
+laboratory and closed his eyes some new test suggested itself. Neither
+was there much sleep for his faithful force. Ordinarily one of the most
+considerate of men, he seemed quite surprised when rest and refreshments
+were sometimes suggested as in order after fifteen hours' incessant
+work. The trouble was finally discovered to be one that time alone could
+have proved. The air was not sufficiently exhausted from the lamps. To
+add to the discomfiture of the inventor, a professor of physics in one
+of the well-known colleges declared in a newspaper article widely
+circulated that the Edison lamp would never last long enough to pay for
+itself.
+
+"I'll make a statue of that man," said Edison to me one day when he was
+still groping in the dark for the secret of his temporary defeat, "and
+I'll illuminate it brilliantly with Edison lamps and inscribe it: 'This
+is the man who said the Edison lamp would not burn.'"
+
+To go back to Edison, shaking his bottle in the sunlight, his brown
+study gave way to a pleasant smile of welcome when I had made my
+business known. "Take a look at these filings," he said, making room for
+me at the bench. "See how curiously they settle when I shake the bottle
+up. In alcohol they behave one way, but in oil in this way. Isn't that
+the most curious thing you ever saw--better than a play at one of your
+city theatres, eh?" and he chuckled to himself as he shook them up
+again.
+
+"What I want to know," he went on, more to himself than to me, "is what
+they mean by it, and I'm going to find out." To me the interesting
+spectacle was Edison tossing up his bottle and watching the filings
+settle, and not the curious behavior of the filings.
+
+When he put the bottle by, with a deep sigh, he took me over the whole
+place, pointing out with particular pride the apparatus for making the
+paper carbons for the lamps, and the new forms of Sprengel mercury pumps
+that did better work in extracting air from the lamps than any yet
+devised.
+
+Looking back to that first visit to Edison, the first of perhaps a score
+that I have had occasion to make him in the last fifteen years, what
+impressed me most was the immensity of the field in which he takes an
+interest. Ask Edison what he thinks will be the next step in the
+development of the sewing-machine, or the telescope, the microscope, the
+steam-engine, the electric-motor, the reaping-machine, or any device by
+which man accomplishes much work in little time, and invariably it will
+be found that he has some novel ideas upon the subject, perhaps fanciful
+in the extreme, but practical enough to show that he has pondered the
+matter. He shares the opinion of the gentleman who insists that whatever
+is is wrong, but only to this extent: that whatever is might be better.
+Authority means nothing to him; he must test for himself. For instance,
+it is well known that he rejects the Newtonian theory in part and holds
+that motion is an inherent property of matter; that it pushes, finding
+its way in the direction of least resistance, and is not pulled or
+attracted. "It seems to me," he said once, "that every atom is possessed
+by a certain amount of primitive intelligence. Look at the thousand
+ways in which atoms of hydrogen combine with those of other elements,
+forming the most diverse substances. Do you mean to say that they do
+this without intelligence? Atoms in harmonious and useful relation
+assume beautiful or interesting shapes and colors, or give forth a
+pleasant perfume, as if expressing their satisfaction. In sickness,
+death, decomposition, or filth the disagreement of the component atoms
+immediately makes itself felt by bad odors." It is partly due to this
+belief in the sensibility of atoms that Edison attributes his faith in
+an intelligent Creator.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It is hard to say into what field of inquiry Edison has not dipped. He
+told me once that whenever he travelled he carried a note-book with him,
+in which he jotted down suggestions for experiments to be made. Railway
+journeys, at a time when Edison was a constant traveller, were
+productive of much material of this kind, for the inventor never sleeps
+when travelling, and his brain works, going over, even in a doze, the
+thousand and one aspects of his work, and evolving theories to be
+dismissed almost as soon as evolved. His mind, when at rest, reviews his
+day's work almost automatically, just as a chess player's brain will,
+after an exciting game, go over every situation in a half dream-like
+condition and evolve new solutions. He has great respect for even what
+appear to be the most inconsequential observations, provided they are
+made by a competent person, and a large force in his splendid
+laboratory at Orange is always employed in studies that appear to the
+outsider to be aimless; for instance, the action of chemicals upon
+various substances or upon each other. Strips of ivory in a certain oil
+become transparent in six weeks. A globule of mercury in water takes
+various shapes for the opposite poles of the electric-battery upon the
+addition of a little potassium. There is no present use for the
+knowledge of such facts, but it is recorded in voluminous note-books,
+and some day the connecting-link in the chain of an invaluable discovery
+may here be found.
+
+My next visit to Menlo Park was a few months later, when I found Edison
+in bed sick with disappointment. The lamps had again taken to antics for
+which no remedy or explanation could be discovered. There was an air of
+desolation over the place. The laboratory was cold and comfortless. Upon
+every side were signs of strict economy. Most of the assistants were
+young men glad to work for little or nothing. For the last month Edison
+had been working in the direction of a general improvement of all parts
+of the lamp instead of devoting himself to one feature. Expert
+glass-blowers were brought to Menlo Park, the air-pumps were made more
+perfect, new substances were tried for carbons. All this had taken time,
+during which outsiders freely predicted failure. The stock in the
+enterprise fell to such a price that it was hard to raise money for the
+maintenance of the laboratory. It was argued, and with some truth, as I
+have had occasion to remark, that Edison had really discovered nothing
+new; he had attempted to do what a dozen famous men had tried before him
+and he had failed. The quotations of New York gas stocks rose again.
+
+The next time I visited the laboratory, a few days later, Edison was up
+again and talking cheerfully. But he had grown five years older in five
+months. "I shall succeed," he said to me, "but it may take me longer
+than I at first supposed. Everything is so new that each step is in the
+dark; I have to make the dynamos, the lamps, the conductors, and attend
+to a thousand details that the world never hears of. At the same time I
+have to think about the expense of my work. That galls me. My one
+ambition is to be able to work without regard to the expense. What I
+mean is, that if I want to give up a whole month of my time and that of
+my whole establishment to finding out why one form of a carbon filament
+is slightly better than another, I can do it without having to think of
+the cost. My greatest luxury would be a laboratory more perfect than any
+we have in this country. I want a splendid collection of material--every
+chemical, every metal, every substance in fact that may be of use to me,
+and I hardly know what may not be of use. I want all this right at hand,
+within a few feet of my own house. Give me these advantages and I shall
+gladly devote fifteen hours a day to solid work. I want none of the rich
+man's usual toys, no matter how rich I may become. I want no horses or
+yachts--have no time for them. I want a perfect workshop."
+
+In the last twelve years Edison has seen his dream fulfilled. His
+electric light has not displaced gas, by any means, but it has been the
+foundation of a business large enough to make the inventor sufficiently
+rich to build the finest laboratory in the world, in the most curious
+room of which are to be found the three hundred models of machinery and
+apparatus of various kinds devised by Edison in the last twenty years
+and made by himself or under his eye. He is still a gaunt fellow, with a
+slight stoop, a clean-shaven face, and a low voice. His hands are still
+soiled with acids, his clothes are shabby, and there is always a cigar
+in his mouth.
+
+[Illustration: The Home of Thomas A. Edison.]
+
+[Illustration: Edison's Laboratory.]
+
+The Edison laboratory deserves a chapter by itself. In 1886 Edison
+bought a fine villa in Llewellyn Park at a cost of $150,000. He took the
+house as it stood, with all its luxurious fittings, rather to please his
+wife than himself; a corner of the laboratory would suit him quite as
+well. Right outside the gates of the park and within view of the house,
+he bought ten acres of land and began his laboratory. Two handsome
+structures of brick, each 60 feet wide, 100 feet long, and four stories
+high, accommodate the machine-shop, library, lecture-room, experimental
+workshops, assistants' rooms and store-rooms. The boiler-house and
+dynamo-rooms are outside the main buildings. Also, in a separate room,
+the floor of which consists of immense blocks of stone, are the delicate
+instruments of precision used in testing electric currents. The
+instruments in this one room, twenty feet square, cost $18,000 to make
+and to import from Europe. Upon first entering the main building, the
+visitor finds what is apparently a busy factory of some sort, with long
+rows of machinery, from steam-hammers to diamond-lathes. Everywhere
+workmen are busy at their tasks, and Edison has good reason to be proud
+of his laboratory force, for it consists of the picked workmen of the
+country. Whenever he finds in one of the Edison factories in Newark,
+New York, Schenectady, or elsewhere a particularly expert and
+intelligent man, he has him transferred to the Orange laboratory, where,
+at increased pay for shorter hours, the man not only finds life
+pleasanter, but has a chance of learning and becoming somebody. The
+whole place hums with the rattle of machinery and glows with electric
+light. There are eighty assistants, who have charge of the various
+departments. The most expert iron-workers, glass-blowers, wood-turners,
+metal-spinners, screw-makers, chemists, and machinists in the country
+are to be found here. A rough drawing of the most complicated model is
+all they require to work from.
+
+The store-rooms contain all the material needed. Four store-keepers are
+employed to keep the supplies, valued at $100,000, in order and ready
+for use at a moment's notice. Each article is put down in a catalogue
+which shows the shelf or bottle where it may be found. Every known
+metal, every chemical known to science, every kind of glass, stone,
+earth, wood, fibre, paper, skin, cloth, is to be found there. In making
+up the chemical collection an assistant was kept at work for weeks going
+through the three most exhaustive works on chemistry in English, French,
+and German, making a note of every substance mentioned, and this list
+constituted the order for chemicals, an order, by the way, which it
+required seven months to fill. In the glass department, for instance,
+there is every known kind of glass, from plates two inches thick to the
+finest, film, and if anything else in the way of glass is needed, the
+glass-workers are there to make it. This stupendous collection of
+material, filling one floor, is intended to guard against annoying
+delays that might occur at critical times for want of some rare
+material. In 1885, when working upon an apparatus for getting a current
+of electricity directly from heat--the thermo-electric
+generator--Edison's work was brought to a standstill for want of a few
+pounds of nickel, an article not then to be found in any quantity in
+this country. The store-room was organized to avert such delays. The
+library is the only part of the main building that shows any attempt at
+decoration. It is a superb room, 60 feet by 40, with a height of 25
+feet. Galleries run around the second story. At one end is a monumental
+fireplace, and in the centre of the hall a fine group of palms and
+ferns. The room is finished in oiled hard wood and lighted by
+electricity. Fine rugs cover the floors. The shelves contain nothing but
+scientific works and the files of the forty-six scientific periodicals
+in English, French, and German to which Edison subscribes. They are
+indexed by a librarian as soon as received, so that Edison can see at a
+glance what they contain concerning the special fields in which he is
+interested.
+
+Nothing in this big establishment, often employing more than one hundred
+persons, is made for sale. It is wholly devoted to experimental work and
+tests. Its expenses, said to be more than $150,000 a year, are paid by
+the commercial companies in which Edison is interested, he, on his
+part, giving them the benefit of any improvements made. Thus in one room
+hundreds of incandescent electric lamps burn night and day the year
+through. Each lamp is specially marked and when it burns out more
+quickly than the average, or lasts longer, a special study is made as to
+the contributing causes. It may seem impossible that the suggestions of
+one man can keep busy a big workshop upon experiments the year round,
+but Edison says that the temptation is always to increase the force.
+When it is remembered that the list of Edison's patents reaches to seven
+hundred and forty, and that on the electric light alone he has worked
+out several hundred theories, the wonder ceases. Ten minutes' work with
+a pencil may sketch an apparatus that a dozen men cannot finish inside
+of a fortnight.
+
+When the new Orange laboratory was finished and Edison found himself
+with time and means at his disposal, his first thought was to take up
+his phonograph. The history of the great hopes built upon the phonograph
+and the bitter disappointment that followed is too familiar to need
+repetition here. As may be imagined, Edison is most keenly bent upon
+tightening the loose screw that has prevented it from doing all that its
+friends predicted for it. He still works at other problems, but chiefly
+as relaxation. He rests from inventing one thing by inventing something
+else.
+
+[Illustration: Library at Edison's Laboratory.]
+
+One day recently, when I found him less confident than usual as to the
+triumph of the phonograph in the near future, he said: "There are some
+difficulties about the problem that seem insurmountable. I go on
+smoothly until at a certain point I run my head against a stone wall; I
+cannot get under, over, or around it. After butting my head against that
+wall until it aches, I go back to the beginning again. It is absurd to
+say that because I can see no possible solution of the problem to-day,
+that I may not see one to-morrow. The very fact that this century has
+accomplished so much in the way of invention, makes it more than
+probable that the next century will do far greater things. We ought to
+be ashamed of ourselves if we are content to fold our hands and say that
+the telegraph, telephone, steam-engine, dynamo, and camera having been
+invented, the field has been exhausted. These inventions are so many
+wonderful tools with which we ought to accomplish far greater wonders.
+Unless the coming generations are particularly lazy, the world ought to
+possess in 1993 a dozen marvels of the usefulness of the steam-engine
+and dynamo. The next step in advance will perhaps be the discovery of a
+method for transforming heat directly into electricity. That will
+revolutionize modern life by making heat, power, and light almost as
+cheap as air. Inventors are already feeling their way toward this
+wonder. I have gone far enough on that road to know that there are
+several stone walls ahead. But the problem is one of the most
+fascinating in view."
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL.
+
+
+[Illustration: Professor Bell Sending the First Message, by
+Long-distance Telephone, from New York to Chicago.]
+
+Sir Charles Wheatstone, the eminent English electrician, while engaged
+in perfecting his system of telegraphy discovered that wires charged
+with electricity often carried noises in a curious manner. He made and
+exhibited at the Royal Society, in 1840, a clock in which the tick of
+another clock miles away was conveyed through a wire. This experiment
+appears to have been one of the germs of the telephone. In 1844 Captain
+John Taylor, also an Englishman, invented an instrument to which he gave
+the name of the telephone, but it had nothing electrical about it. It
+was an apparatus for conveying sounds at sea by means of compressed air
+forced through trumpets. He could make his telephone heard six miles
+away. The first real suggestion of the telephone as we know it comes
+from Reis, the German professor of physics at Friedrichsdorf, who in
+1860 constructed with a coil of wire, a knitting-needle, the skin of a
+German sausage, the bung of a beer-barrel, and a strip of platinum an
+instrument which reproduced the sound of the voice by the vibration of
+the membrane and sent a series of clicks along an electric wire to an
+electro-magnetic receiver at the other end of the wire. The same idea
+was taken up in this country by Elisha Gray, Edison, and by Alexander
+Graham Bell, who first exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition an
+apparatus that transmitted speech by electricity in a fairly
+satisfactory manner. The American claimants to the honor of having
+invented the telephone include Daniel Drawbaugh, a backwoods genius of
+Pennsylvania, who claims to have made and used a practical telephone in
+1867-68. A large fortune has been spent in fighting Drawbaugh's claims
+against the Bell monopoly, but the courts have finally decided in favor
+of the latter. It should be recorded as a matter of justice to Mr. Gray,
+that he appears to have solved the problem of conveying speech by
+electricity at about the same time as Bell. Both these inventors filed
+their caveats upon the telephone upon the same day--February 14, 1876.
+It was Bell's good fortune to be the first to make his device
+practically effective.
+
+Alexander Graham Bell is not an American by birth. He was born in
+Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 1st of March, 1847. His father, Alexander
+Melville Bell, was the inventor of the system by which deaf people are
+enabled to read speech more or less correctly by observing the motion of
+the lips. His mother was the daughter of Samuel Symonds, a surgeon in
+the British navy.
+
+In 1872 the Bells moved to Canada, and young Alexander Bell became
+widely known in Boston as an authority in the teaching of the deaf and
+dumb. He first carried to great perfection in this country the art of
+enabling the deaf and dumb to enunciate intelligible words and sounds
+that they themselves have never heard. Most of his art he acquired from
+his father, one of the most expert of teachers in this field. The elder
+Bell is still active in his work, constantly devising new methods and
+experiments. He lives in Washington with his son and is frequently heard
+in lectures in New York and Boston.
+
+In 1873 Alexander Bell began to study the transmission of musical tones
+by telegraph. It was in the line of his work with deaf and dumb people
+to make sound vibrations visible to the eye. With the phonautograph he
+could obtain tracings of such vibrations upon blackened paper by means
+of a pencil or stylus attached to a vibrating cord or membrane. He also
+succeeded in obtaining tracings upon smoked glass of the vibrations of
+the air produced by vowel sounds. He began experimenting with an
+apparatus resembling the human ear, and upon the suggestion of Dr.
+Clarence J. Blake, the Boston aurist, he tried his work upon a prepared
+specimen of the ear itself. Observation upon the vibrations of the
+various bones within the ear led him to conceive the idea of vibrating a
+piece of iron in front of an electro-magnet.
+
+Mr. Bell was at this time an instructor in phonetics, or the art of
+visible speech, in Monroe's School of Oratory in Boston. One of his old
+pupils describes him then as a swarthy, foreign-looking personage, more
+Italian than English in appearance, with jet-black hair and dark skin.
+His manner was earnest and full of conviction. He was an enthusiast in
+his work, and only emerged from his habitual diffidence when called upon
+to talk upon his studies and views. He was miserably poor and almost
+without friends. When he was attacked with muscular rheumatism, in 1873,
+his hospital expenses were paid by his employer, and his only visitors
+were some of the pupils at the school.
+
+Until the close of 1874, Bell's experiments seemed to promise nothing of
+practical value. But in 1875 he began to transmit vibrations between two
+armatures, one at each end of a wire. He was much interested at the time
+in multiple telegraphy and fancied that something might come of some
+such arrangement of many magnetic armatures responding to the vibrations
+set up in one.
+
+In November, 1875, he discovered that the vibrations created in a reed
+by the voice could be transmitted so as to reproduce words and sounds.
+One day in January, 1876, he called a dozen of the pupils at Monroe's
+school into his room and exhibited an apparatus by which singing was
+more or less satisfactorily transmitted by wire from the cellar of the
+building to a room on the fourth floor. The exhibition created a
+sensation among the pupils, but, although no attempts were made by Bell
+to conceal what he was doing, or how he did it, the noise of his
+discovery does not seem to have reached the outside world. With an old
+cigar-box, two hundred feet of wire, two magnets from a toy fish-pond,
+the first Bell telephone was brought into existence. The apparatus was,
+however, not yet the practical telephone as we know it, but it was
+sufficient of a curiosity to warrant its exhibition in an improved form
+at the Centennial Exhibition, when Sir William Thomson spoke of it as
+"perhaps the greatest marvel hitherto achieved by the electric
+telegraph."
+
+The next year Bell succeeded in bringing the telephone to the condition
+in which it became of immediate practical value. Strange to say, the
+public was at first slow to appreciate the great importance of the
+invention, and when Bell took it to England, in 1877, he could find no
+purchaser for half the European rights at $10,000. In this country,
+thanks to the business energy of Professor Gardiner Hubbard, of Harvard,
+Bell's father-in-law, the telephone was soon made commercially valuable,
+and there are now said to be nearly six hundred thousand telephones in
+use in the United States alone.
+
+Professor Bell, as may be imagined, is not idle. His vast fortune has
+enabled him to continue costly experiments in aiding deaf and dumb
+people, and it will probably be in this field that his next achievement
+will be made. Personally, he is a reserved and thoughtful man, wholly
+given up to his scientific work. His wife, whom he married in 1876, was
+one of his deaf and dumb pupils. It is often said that it was largely
+due to his intense desire to soften her misfortune that his experiments
+were so exhaustive and finally became so productive in another
+direction. His home life in Washington, where he bought, in 1885, the
+superb house on Scott Circle known as "Broadhead's Folly," after the man
+who built it and ruined himself in so doing, is said to be an ideally
+peaceful and happy one, given up to study and efforts to alleviate the
+troubles of the deaf and dumb.
+
+As in the case of most inventions of such immense value as the
+telephone, a fortune has had to be spent in order to protect the patent
+rights; but in Bell's case the inventor's money reward has been ample
+and is now said to amount to more than $1,000,000 a year. Just at
+present Mr. Bell is engaged upon a modification of the phonograph, which
+may enable persons not wholly deaf to hear a phonographic reproduction
+of the human voice, even if they cannot hear the voice itself. Honors
+have poured in upon him within the last fifteen years. In 1880 the
+French Government awarded him the Volta prize of $10,000, which Mr. Bell
+devoted to founding the Volta Laboratory in Washington, an institution
+for the use of students. In 1882 he also received from France the ribbon
+of the Legion of Honor.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+AMERICAN INVENTORS, PAST AND PRESENT.
+
+
+There are now in force in this country nearly three hundred thousand
+patents for inventions and devices of more or less importance and aid to
+everyone. To how great a degree the world is indebted to the inventor,
+very few of us realize. The more we think of the matter, however, the
+more are we likely to believe that the inventor is mankind's great
+benefactor. Watt should stand before Napoleon in the hero-worship of the
+age, and the man who perfected the friction-match before the author of
+an epic. Some day this redistribution of the world's honors will surely
+take place, and it should be a satisfaction to us Americans that our
+country stands so high in the ranks of inventive genius. Within the last
+half century Americans have contributed, to mention only great
+achievements, the telegraph, the telephone, the electric light, the
+sewing-machine, the reaper, and vulcanized rubber, to the world's
+wealth--a far larger contribution than that of any other nation. What
+may not the next generation produce? Some people seem to believe that so
+much has already been invented as to have exhausted the field. In this
+connection I have quoted in another place some remarks Mr. Edison once
+made to me as to what the next fifty years might bring forth. Still more
+astonishing than our past fecundity in invention would be future
+barrenness. This century has done its work and produced its marvels with
+comparatively blunt tools, or no tools at all. The next century will be
+able to work with superb instruments of which our grandfathers knew
+nothing. The school-boy to-day knows more of the forces of nature and
+their useful application than the magician of fifty years ago. It has
+been said that the fifteen blocks in the "Gem" puzzle can be arranged in
+more than a million different ways. The material in the game at which
+man daily plays is so infinitely more complex that the number of
+combinations cannot be written out in figures. The rôle played by
+invention in modern life is infinitely greater than during preceding
+ages. One invention, by affording a new tool, makes others possible. The
+steam-engine made possible the dynamo, the dynamo made possible the
+electric light. In its turn the electric light may lead to wonders still
+more extraordinary.
+
+The degree to which invention has contributed to civilization is far
+from suspected by the careless observer. Almost everything we have or
+use is the fruit of invention. Man might be defined as the animal that
+invents. The air we breathe and the water we drink are provided by
+Nature, but we drink water from a vessel of some kind, an invention of
+man. Even if we drink from a shell or a gourd, we shape it to serve a
+new purpose. If we want our air hotter or colder, we resort to
+invention, and a vast amount of ingenuity has been expended upon putting
+air in motion by means of fans, blowers, ventilators, etc. We take but a
+small part of our food as animals do--in the natural state. The savage
+who first crushed some kernels of wheat between two stones invented
+flour, and we are yet hard at it inventing improvements upon his
+process. The earliest inventions probably had reference to the procuring
+and preparing of food, and the ingenuity of man is still exercised upon
+these problems more eagerly than ever before. During the last fifty
+years the power of man to produce food has increased more than during
+the preceding fifteen centuries. Sixty years ago a large part of the
+wheat and other grain raised in the world was cut, a handful at a time,
+with a scythe, and a man could not reap much more than a quarter of an
+acre a day. With a McCormick reaper a man and two horses will cut from
+fifteen to twenty acres of grain a day. In the threshing of grain,
+invention has achieved almost as much. A man with a machine will thresh
+ten times as much as he formerly could with a flail.
+
+It is less than sixty years since matches have come into common use.
+Many old men remember the time in this country when a fire could be
+kindled only with the embers from another fire, as there were no such
+things as matches. Most of us who have reached the age of forty
+remember the abominable, clumsy sulphur-matches of 1860, as bulky as
+they were unpleasant. And yet the first sulphur-matches, made about
+1830, cost ten cents a hundred. To-day the safety match, certain and
+odorless, is sold at one-tenth of this price. The introduction of
+kerosene was one of the blessings of modern life. It added several hours
+a day to the useful, intelligent life of man, and who can estimate the
+influence of these evening hours upon the advance of civilization? The
+evening, after the day's work is done, has been the only hour when the
+workingman could read. Before cheap and good lights were given him,
+reading was out of the question. Gas marked a step in advance, but only
+for large towns, and now electricity bids fair soon to displace gas; and
+we hear vague suggestions of a luminous ether that will flood houses
+with a soft glow like that of sunlight.
+
+
+TOWNSEND AND DRAKE--THE INTRODUCTION OF COAL OIL.
+
+In 1850 sperm oil, then commonly used in lamps, had become high-priced,
+owing to the failure of the New Bedford whalers, and cost $2.25 a
+gallon. Oil obtained by the distillation of coal was tried, but was also
+too costly--not less than $1 a gallon. It burned well, but its odor was
+frightful. The problem of a cheap and pleasant light was solved by James
+M. Townsend and E.L. Drake, both of New Haven. In 1854 a man brought to
+Professor Silliman, of Yale, some oil from Oil Creek, Pa., to be tested.
+His report was so favorable that a company was formed, which leased all
+the land along Oil Creek upon which were traces of the new rock oil. The
+hard times of 1857 came before any headway had been made, and the
+company tried to find some way of ridding itself of the lease. At this
+time Townsend, who knew something about the property, undertook to get
+possession. Boarding in the same house in New Haven was E.L. Drake, once
+a conductor on the New York & New Haven Railroad, who had been obliged
+to give up work on account of ill-health. Townsend proposed that as
+Drake could get railroad passes as an ex-employee, he should go to
+Pennsylvania and look into the property. He did so, and reported that a
+fortune might be made by gathering the oil and bottling it for medicinal
+purposes. Drake and Townsend organized the Seneca Oil Company. The oil
+was gathered by digging trenches, and was sold at $1 a gallon. Drake
+suggested that it might be well to bore for oil. A man familiar with
+salt-well boring was brought from Syracuse, and in 1850 the first well
+was begun at Titusville under the supervision of Drake. He was commonly
+considered by the neighbors to be insane. The work was costly and slow.
+When many months and about $50,000 had been spent, the stockholders in
+the company refused to go any further--all except Townsend, who sent his
+last $500 to Drake, with instructions to use it in paying debts and his
+expenses in reaching home. On the day before the receipt of this
+money--August 29, 1859--the auger, which was down sixty-eight feet,
+struck a cavity, and up came a flow of oil that filled the well to
+within five feet of the surface. Pumping began at the rate of five
+hundred gallons a day, and a more powerful pump doubled this flow. As
+this oil was worth a dollar a gallon, fortune was within sight. But the
+very quantity of the oil proved to be the company's ruin. Their works
+were destroyed by fire in the winter of 1859-60, and before they could
+be rebuilt, scores of other wells, some of them requiring no pumping
+apparatus, had been sunk in the neighborhood. The supply was soon far in
+excess of the demand, which was limited by the small number of
+refineries, the want of good lamps in which to burn the oil, and the
+attacks by manufacturers of other oils. Such was the effect of these
+causes that the new oil fell to a dollar a barrel, a price so low that
+it did not pay for the handling. The Seneca Oil Company was so much
+discouraged that they sold out their leases and disbanded. Both Townsend
+and Drake would have died richer men had they never heard of the
+Pennsylvania rock oil.
+
+
+THE CLARKS AND THE TELESCOPE.
+
+[Illustration: Alvan Clark.]
+
+The fame of American telescopes is due to the work and inventions of the
+Clark family of Cambridgeport, Mass., the descendants of Thomas Clark,
+the mate of the Mayflower. The founder of the great--in a scientific
+sense--house of Alvan Clark & Sons, telescope-makers, was a remarkable
+man. Until after his fortieth year he devoted himself to
+portrait-painting. In 1843 his attention was accidentally turned toward
+telescope-making. One day the dinner-bell at Phillips Academy, Andover,
+Mass., happened to break. The pieces were gathered up by one of Clark's
+boys, George, who proceeded to melt them in a crucible over the kitchen
+fire, declaring that he was going to make a telescope. His mother
+laughed, but his father was deeply interested and helped the boy make a
+five-inch reflecting telescope which showed the satellites of Jupiter.
+This was the beginning of telescope-making in the Clark family, an
+industry which has given to the scientific world its most remarkable
+lenses. Alvan Clark dropped his paintbrushes, never to take them up
+again until at the age of eighty-three he made an excellent portrait of
+his little grandson. To Alvan G. Clark, the present head of the house,
+are chiefly due the scores of devices by which American ingenuity has
+surpassed the slower European methods. The delicacy required in the
+manipulation and grinding of the immense lenses made by the Clarks is
+almost incredible. The latest triumph of the firm--a forty-inch lens for
+the Spence Observatory at Los Angeles, Cal.--required two years of
+grinding and polishing after a piece of glass perfect enough had been
+obtained. So delicately finished is it that half a dozen sharp rubs with
+the soft part of a man's thumb would be sufficient to ruin it. Alvan G.
+Clark is now a man sixty-one years-old. He has lived all his life at the
+home in Cambridgeport. His greatest sorrow is that there is no son of
+his to carry on the work after his death. His only son died a few years
+ago, just as he was beginning to show wonderful aptitude in the art
+which has made the family famous in all the great observatories of the
+world.
+
+
+JOHN FITCH AND OLIVER EVANS--STEAM TRANSPORTATION.
+
+In looking over the work done by American inventors, the great names are
+those to be found at the heads of the preceding chapters. But the list
+is by no means exhausted. Among the early men of achievement in the
+field of invention I have had to omit at least a dozen whose work
+deserves more than a paragraph. The history of the steamboat is not
+complete without reference to John Fitch.
+
+Fulton was fortunate in making the first really successful attempt at
+propelling boats by steam, but Fitch came very near reaping the honors
+for this invention. The account of Fitch's life and experiments, written
+by himself and now in the possession of the Franklin Library of
+Philadelphia, clearly shows that this unhappy genius really deserves to
+share in Fulton's glory. Fitch was born in Connecticut, in January,
+1743, more than twenty years before Fulton. He was a farmer's boy and
+picked up knowledge as best he could. Before he was twenty he had
+learned clock-making and then button-making. It was in 1788 that he
+obtained his first patent for a steamboat. His experimental boat was an
+extraordinary affair, fully described in the _Columbian_ (Philadelphia)
+_Magazine_ for December, 1786. Its motive power consisted of a clumsy
+engine that moved horizontal bars, upon which were fastened a number of
+oars or paddles. So far as possible the machine imitated the movements
+of a man rowing. This boat made eight miles an hour in calm water.
+Finding nothing but ridicule for his project here, as his steamboat cost
+too much money to run as a commercial undertaking, Fitch went to Europe,
+and was equally unsuccessful there. There is still in existence a letter
+from him in which he predicts that steam would some day carry vessels
+across the Atlantic. He died in 1796, without having contributed more
+than a curiosity to the art of steam navigation.
+
+Another early inventor was Oliver Evans, who has been called the Watt of
+America. In 1804 Evans offered to build for the Lancaster Turnpike
+Company a steam-carriage to carry one hundred barrels of flour fifty
+miles in twenty-four hours. The offer was derided. Here is one of
+Evans's predictions written at about this time: "The time will come when
+people will travel in stages, moved by steam-engines, from one city to
+another, almost as fast as birds fly, fifteen or twenty miles an hour.
+Passing through the air with such velocity, changing the scene with such
+rapid succession, will be the most rapid, exhilarating exercise. A
+carriage (steam) will set out from Washington in the morning, the
+passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia, and sup in
+New York the same day. To accomplish this, two sets of railways will be
+laid so nearly level as not in any way to deviate more than two degrees
+from a horizontal line, made of wood, or iron, or smooth paths of
+broken stone or gravel, with a rail to guide the carriages so that they
+may pass each other in different directions and travel by night as well
+as by day. Engines will drive boats ten or twelve miles per hour, and
+there will be many hundred steamboats running on the Mississippi." In
+1805 Evans built a steam-carriage propelled by a sort of paddle-wheel at
+the stern, the paddles touching the ground. This apparatus he named the
+"Oructor Amphibolis," and it is believed to have been the first
+application of steam in America to the propelling of land carriages. He
+died in 1819 without having seen his steam-carriage come to anything
+practicable. He made a fortune, however, from some patents upon
+flour-mill improvements.
+
+
+AMOS WHITTEMORE AND THOMAS BLANCHARD.
+
+In the domain of textile fabrics Amos Whittemore, the Massachusetts
+inventor of the card-machine, which did away with the old-fashioned
+method of making cards for cotton and woollen factories, must be
+mentioned. Before Whittemore's machine came into use, about 1812, such
+cards were made by hand, the laborer sticking one by one into sheets of
+leather the wire staples, which operation gave work to thousands of
+families in New England early in the century. Whittemore made a fortune
+by his invention, and devoted the last years of his life to astronomy.
+
+Another Massachusetts boy, Thomas Blanchard, invented the lathe for
+turning irregular objects, and well deserves mention. Born in 1788, he
+was noted as a boy for his efficiency in the New England accomplishment
+of whittling, making wonderful windmills and water-wheels with his
+knife. When thirteen years old he made an apple-paring machine, with
+which at the "paring bees" held in the neighborhood he could accomplish
+more than a dozen girls. Soon after this achievement he began helping
+his brother in the manufacture of tacks. The operation consisted in
+stamping them out from a thin plate of iron, after which they were taken
+up, one at a time, with the thumb and finger and caught in a tool worked
+by the foot, while a blow given simultaneously with a hammer held in the
+right hand made a flat head of the large end of the tack projecting
+above the face of the vise. This was the only method then known, and it
+was so slow and irksome that young Blanchard often grew disgusted. As a
+daily task he was given a certain quantity of tacks to make, which
+number was ascertained by counting. Finding this much trouble, he
+constructed a counting-machine, consisting of a ratchet-wheel which
+moved one tooth every time the jaws of the heading tool or vise moved in
+the process of making a tack. From this achievement he passed to a tack
+machine, and after six years of hard work turned out an apparatus that
+made five hundred tacks a minute. He sold his patent for the trifle of
+$5,000.
+
+With part of this money he began his experiments in turning
+musket-barrels, an operation that was simple enough except at the
+breech, where the flat and oval sides had to be ground down or chipped.
+Blanchard made a lathe that turned the whole barrel satisfactorily.
+While exhibiting his new lathe at the United States Armory at
+Springfield, occurred the incident that led to Blanchard's great device
+for turning irregular forms. One of the men employed in cutting
+musket-stocks remarked that Blanchard could never spoil his job, for he
+could not turn a gun-stock. The remark struck Blanchard, who replied, "I
+am not so sure of that, but will think of it a while." The result of six
+months' study was the lathe with which such articles as gun-stocks,
+shoe-lasts, hat-blocks, tackle-blocks, axe-handles, wig-blocks, and a
+thousand other objects of irregular shape may now be turned. While at
+Washington getting his patent, Blanchard exhibited his machine at the
+War Office, where many heads of departments had assembled. Among the
+rest was a navy commissioner, who, after listening to Blanchard,
+remarked to the inventor: "Can you turn a seventy-four?"
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "if you will furnish the block." Blanchard
+afterward made many interesting experiments in steam-carriages, but his
+chief claim to fame rests upon his lathe.
+
+
+RICHARD M. HOE AND THE WEB-PRESS.
+
+From the end of the first half of this century date movements of
+extraordinary importance in the world of American invention. The
+locomotive, the steam-engine and steam-boat, the telegraph,
+reaping-machine, the printing-press, all seemed to reach an era of wide
+usefulness at about the same time. It was in 1814 that Walters first
+printed the London _Times_ by steam, the sullen pressmen standing around
+waiting for a pretext to destroy the machinery, and only prevented by
+strategy from doing so. About thirty years afterward Richard M. Hoe
+first turned his attention to the improvement of printing-presses. The
+founder of the famous house of printing-press makers, Robert Hoe, was
+born in England. His son, Richard March Hoe, was born in New York on the
+12th of September, 1812. He made his first press in 1840, when he turned
+out the machine known as "Hoe's Double-cylinder," which was capable of
+making about six thousand impressions an hour, and was the admiration of
+all the printers in the city. So long as the newspaper circulation knew
+no great increase this wonderful press was all-sufficient; but the
+greater the supply the greater grew the demand, and a printing-press
+capable of striking off papers with greater rapidity was felt to be an
+imperative need. It was often necessary to hold the forms back until
+nearly daylight for the purpose of getting the latest news, and the
+work of printing the paper had to be done in a very few hours. In 1842
+Hoe began to experiment for the purpose of getting greater speed. There
+were many difficulties in the way, however, and at the end of four years
+of experimenting he was about ready to confess that the obstacles were
+insurmountable. One night in 1846, while still in this mood, he resumed
+his experiments; the more he reviewed the problem, the more difficult it
+seemed. In despair he was about to give it up for the night, when there
+flashed across his brain a plan for securing the type on the surface of
+a cylinder. This was the solution of the problem, and within a year our
+leading newspapers had their "Lightning" presses, in which from four to
+ten cylinders were used to feed sheets of paper against the surface of
+the type as it flew around. So recently as 1870 the ten-cylinder Hoe
+press, printing twenty-five thousand sheets an hour, was considered a
+marvel.
+
+Then came the perfecting press, a far smaller machine, but capable of
+five times as much work, thanks to the substitution of rolls of paper
+for separate sheets fed in one by one. The device by which the web of
+paper after being printed on one side is turned over and printed on the
+other side in the same machine was another triumph of American
+ingenuity. Stereotyping made it possible to print from a dozen presses
+at the same time without the trouble of setting up new type, and
+inventions for pasting, folding, and counting the papers still further
+increased the speed at which papers may be issued, while at the same
+time decreasing the number of men employed as pressmen. In 1865 it
+required the services of twenty-six men and boys to print and fold
+twenty-five thousand copies of an eight-page paper in an hour. To-day a
+perfecting press, with the aid of four men, does four times as much
+work. It has been recently estimated that to print, paste, and fold the
+Sunday edition of one of the great newspapers with the machinery of 1865
+would require the services of five hundred persons.
+
+
+THOMAS W. HARVEY AND SCREW-MAKING.
+
+The gimlet-pointed screw patented in 1838 by Thomas W. Harvey, of
+Providence, R.I., is a marked instance of an improvement so useful that
+we can scarcely realize that less than fifty years ago such screws were
+unknown to the carpenter, for it was not until 1846 that Harvey
+succeeded in getting people to abandon the old blunt-ended screw that we
+now occasionally find in buildings put up before 1850. Harvey was a
+Vermont boy, born in 1795. His faculty for the invention of machinery
+for screw-making and other purposes gave him and his associates and
+successors--Angell, Sloan, and Whipple--great fortunes according to the
+estimate of that day. He died in 1856.
+
+
+C.L. SHOLES AND THE TYPEWRITER.
+
+[Illustration: C.L. Sholes.]
+
+A great many men contributed to make the typewriter what it is
+to-day--as much of an improvement upon the pen as the sewing-machine is
+upon the needle. So long ago as 1843 some patents were taken out for
+divers forms of writing-machines, all more or less impracticable. It was
+not until C.L. Sholes, then of Wisconsin, took up the problem, in 1866,
+that the present form of a number of type-bars, arranged so that their
+ends strike upon a common centre, was devised. Sholes died in 1890,
+having also helped by many minor devices the increase in the use of
+writing-machines. From 1865 to 1873 he made thirty different working
+models of writing-machines, devoting himself to the task almost day and
+night for eight years.
+
+
+B.B. HOTCHKISS AND HIS GUNS.
+
+[Illustration: B.B. Hotchkiss.]
+
+American inventors have had, as a rule, but small success in making
+Europe see the value of their inventions before this country has proved
+it. Morse could get neither England nor France to take an interest in
+his telegraph schemes, and, at a later day, Bell's telephone was
+received in England as a curious device, but not worth investing money
+in. An exception to this rule may be found, however, in the case of B.B.
+Hotchkiss, a Connecticut inventor, who during the civil war conceived
+the idea of a breech-loading cannon. In 1869 Hotchkiss mounted one of
+his small guns in the Brooklyn Navy-yard, but found no encouragement to
+experiment further. The Franco-German war found him in Europe with a
+breech-loading gun that would throw shells. His success was such that
+there is not a civilized country where Hotchkiss guns, throwing light
+shells with a rapidity not dreamed of years ago, are not now in use.
+The inventor has made a large fortune and has had the pleasure of
+sending to this country a number of guns for our cruisers, the Atlanta,
+the Boston, the Chicago, and the Dolphin. So great is the rapidity,
+accuracy, and power of these Hotchkiss rapid-fire guns that some experts
+expect to see two-thirds of an action fought with these or similar
+pieces, which they think will silence and put out of action all the
+heavy guns in a few minutes after the enemies come within fifteen
+hundred yards of each other. For instance, the latest piece is a
+six-pounder, which, with smokeless powder, has a range of five thousand
+yards and an effective fighting range of one thousand yards, within
+which distance a target the size of a six-inch gun can be hit nearly
+every time and five inches of wrought iron perforated. A speed in
+firing of twenty-five shots a minute has been attained.
+
+
+CHARLES F. BRUSH AND THE DYNAMO.
+
+A trifling incident revealed to an Italian savant the fact that when two
+metals and the leg of a frog came into contact the muscles of the leg
+contracted. The galvanic battery resulted. Years later another observer
+discovered that if a wire carrying a current of electricity was wound
+around a piece of soft iron the latter became a magnet. Out of these
+simple discoveries have arisen the telegraph, the telephone, and a host
+of inventions depending upon electricity. And to-day, with all the
+wonders accomplished in this field, we are yet upon the threshold of the
+enchanted palace that electricity is about to open to us. Through its
+aid we shall one day enjoy light, heat, and power almost as freely as we
+now enjoy air. The crops will be planted, watered, cultivated, gathered,
+and transported to the uttermost ends of the earth by electricity. The
+steam-engine is said to do the work of two hundred million men, and to
+have been the chief agent in reducing the average working hours of men
+in the civilized world in this century from fourteen hours a day to ten.
+But electricity, according to even conservative judges, will accomplish
+infinitely more. It will make possible the harnessing of vast forces of
+nature, such as the falls of Niagara, because the electric current can
+be transported from place to place at small cost and it is easily
+transformed into light or power or heat. Within a few months we shall
+see the first results of the great work at Niagara. Before many years
+the power of the tides is certain to be used along the seaboard for
+producing electricity. Here is a force equal to that of a million
+Niagaras going to waste.
+
+[Illustration: Charles F. Brush.]
+
+The late Clerk Maxwell, when asked by a distinguished scientist what was
+the greatest scientific discovery of the last half-century, replied:
+"That the Gramme machine is reversible." In other words, that power will
+not only produce electricity, but that electricity will produce power.
+By turning a big wheel at Niagara we can produce an electric current
+that will turn another wheel for us fifty, or perhaps five hundred miles
+away. The dynamo is one of the great achievements of the day to which
+Charles F. Brush, of Cleveland, O., has devoted himself with much signal
+success. Brush was born in March, 1849, in Euclid Township near
+Cleveland, and his early years were spent on his father's farm. When
+fourteen years old he went to the public school at Collamer, and later
+to the Cleveland High-school, and as early as 1862 distinguished himself
+by making magnetic machines and batteries for the high-school. During
+his senior year in the high-school, the chemical and physical apparatus
+of the laboratory of the school was placed under his charge. In this
+year he constructed an electric motor having its field magnets as well
+as its armature excited by the electric current. He also constructed a
+microscope and a telescope, making all the parts himself, down to the
+grinding of the lenses. He devised an apparatus for turning on the gas
+in the street-lamps of Cleveland, lighting it and turning it off again.
+When he was eighteen years of age he entered Michigan University at Ann
+Arbor, and, following his particular bent, was graduated as a mining
+engineer in 1869, one year ahead of his class. Returning to Cleveland he
+began work as an analytical chemist and soon became interested in the
+iron business. In 1875 Brush's attention was first called to electricity
+by George W. Stockly, who suggested that there was an immense field
+ready for a cheaper and more easily managed dynamo than the Gramme or
+Siemens, the best types then known. Stockly, who was interested in the
+Telegraph Supply Company, of Cleveland, agreed to undertake the
+manufacture of such a machine if one was devised. In two months Brush
+made a dynamo so perfect in every way that it was running until it was
+taken to the World's Fair in 1893. Having made a good dynamo, the next
+step was a better lamp than those in use. Six months of experimenting
+resulted in the Brush arc light. Stockly was so well satisfied with the
+commercial value of these inventions that the Telegraph Supply Company,
+a small concern then employing about twenty-five men, was reorganized in
+1879, as the Brush Electric Company. In 1880 the Brush Company put its
+first lights into New York City, and it has since extended the system
+until there is scarcely a town in the country where the light may not be
+found. Besides dynamos and lamps, the immense establishment at Cleveland
+employs its twelve hundred men in making carbons, storage-batteries, and
+electro-plating apparatus. Mr. Brush is a self-taught mechanic, able to
+do any work of his shops in a manner equal to that of an expert. He is
+intensely practical, never over-sanguine, and an excellent business man.
+If a delicate piece of work is to be done for the first time, he will
+probably do it with his own hands. He is not fond of experiment for the
+experiment's sake; he wants to see the practical utility of the aim in
+view before devoting time to its attainment. Of the scores of patents
+he has taken out, two-thirds are said to pay him a revenue. In 1881, at
+the Paris Electrical Exposition, Brush received the ribbon of the Legion
+of Honor. In personal appearance there is nothing of the
+round-shouldered, impecunious, studious inventor about him. He is six
+feet or more in height, and so fine a specimen of manhood that Gambetta,
+the French statesman, once remarked that the man impressed him quite as
+much as the inventor.
+
+
+EICKEMEYER AND HIS MOTOR.
+
+[Illustration: Rudolph Eickemeyer.]
+
+In the same field of electricity, as applied to every-day life, a
+Bavarian by birth, but an American by adoption, Rudolf Eickemeyer, of
+Yonkers, has done some valuable work in devising a useful form of
+dynamo. His machines are now used almost exclusively for elevators and
+hoisting apparatus, one large firm of elevator builders having put in no
+less than six hundred Eickemeyer motors within the last four years. As
+electricity becomes more and more useful for small powers, such as
+lathes, pumps, and elevators, an effective and simple motor becomes of
+the utmost importance. Rudolf Eickemeyer was born in October, 1831, at
+Kaiserslautern, Bavaria, where his father was employed as a forester. He
+was educated at the Darmstadt Polytechnic Institute and at once showed a
+predilection for scientific work. When still a boy he joined the
+Revolutionists under Siegel, and after the upheaval of 1848 came here
+with Siegel, Carl Schurz, and George Osterheld, the latter afterward
+becoming his partner. The young man's first work here was as an engineer
+on the Erie Railroad line, then building. In 1854 he established himself
+in Yonkers in the business of repairing the tools used in the many
+hat-shops of that already flourishing city. The next twenty years of his
+life were devoted to inventions and improvements in every branch of
+hat-making. His shaving-machines, stretchers, blockers, pressers,
+ironers, and sewing-machines substituted mechanism for laborious and
+slow methods of hand work. At the beginning of the war Eickemeyer was
+quick to see the opportunity for turning his factory to other uses, and
+vast quantities of revolvers were made there. When that industry
+declined, he took up the manufacture of mowing-machines, having invented
+a driving mechanism for such machines that met with wide favor. The
+introduction of the Bell telephone in Yonkers first turned Eickemeyer's
+attention to electricity, and for the last ten years he has devoted
+himself almost exclusively to the invention and manufacture of electric
+motors. His first successful invention in this field was a dynamo to
+furnish light for railroad trains. From this he was led to the invention
+of a dynamo capable of doing effective work at much lower speed than
+that usually employed, and this has proved to be his most valuable
+achievement. Some improvements in winding the armatures have also been
+accepted as valuable and adopted by other manufacturers. In connection
+with storage batteries Mr. Eickemeyer has also done a good deal of
+interesting work. But he is chiefly known to the electrical world as the
+inventor of a most useful dynamo for power purposes. For the last forty
+years he has been one of the men who have most aided in the growth of
+Yonkers, taking great interest in all questions pertaining to its
+government and school system. He was married in 1856 to Mary T. Tarbell,
+of Dover, Me., and his eldest son, Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr., is associated
+with him in business.
+
+
+GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE, JR., AND THE AIR-BRAKE.
+
+[Illustration: George Westinghouse, Jr.]
+
+George Westinghouse, Jr., to whom is due the railroad air-brake, and who
+was also largely instrumental in revolutionizing Pittsburgh by the
+introduction of natural gas, was born at Central Bridge, in Schoharie
+County, N.Y., in 1846. His father was a builder and, later,
+superintendent of the Schenectady Agricultural Works, and it was in the
+shops of these works that the boy found his vocation. Before he was
+fifteen he had modelled and built a steam engine. The war took him away
+from work in 1864, but when that was over he returned to Schenectady
+and, although yet in his teens, he began to attempt improvements upon
+every device that presented itself. Sometimes he was successful. Among
+one of his first valuable achievements was a steel railroad frog that
+resulted in a good deal of money and some reputation. This was in 1868.
+While in Pittsburgh making his frogs, which sold well, he one day came
+across a newspaper account of the successful use of compressed air in
+piercing the Mont Cenis tunnel. His success in the field of railroad
+appliances had led him to study the question of better brakes, and the
+suggestion of compressed air came to him as a revelation. To stop a
+train by the old methods was a matter of much time and a tremendous
+expenditure of muscular energy by the brakeman, whose exertions were not
+always effective enough to prevent disaster. Westinghouse consulted one
+or two friends, who were inclined to ridicule the idea that a rubber
+tube strung along under the cars could do better work than the men at
+the brakes. Fortunately, he was able to make the experiment, and the
+air-brake was speedily recognized as one of the important inventions of
+the century.
+
+When petroleum was discovered in the fields near Pittsburgh, some ten
+years ago, Mr. Westinghouse was greatly interested, and at once
+suggested that perhaps oil might be found near his own home in
+Washington County. He decided to test the matter, and planted a derrick
+on his own grounds. The drill was started in December, 1883, and at a
+depth of 1,560 feet a vein was struck, not of oil, as was anticipated,
+but--what had not been counted upon as among the contingencies--of gas.
+Gas was not what Westinghouse was after or wanted, but there it was, and
+not wishing to let it run to waste, he began to consider what use could
+be made of it. Other people who had been boring for oil also struck gas,
+which, taking fire, shot up twenty or thirty feet. If such gas could be
+made to serve foundry purposes, here was a gigantic power going to
+waste. Within three years the business grew to be an immense one. The
+company organized by Mr. Westinghouse owned or controlled fifty-six
+thousand acres, upon which were one hundred wells and a distributing
+plant of four hundred miles of pipes. Notwithstanding the failure of
+some of the wells since then, natural gas is an extraordinary boon for
+which Pittsburgh has to thank Mr. Westinghouse. Of late years this
+inventor's energies have been turned toward electric machinery for
+lighting and power, especially as applied to railroad purposes, and a
+number of useful devices have resulted. Mr. Westinghouse is still in the
+prime of life and is activity personified. He makes his home in
+Pittsburgh, and is naturally looked upon as one of its leading spirits.
+
+
+The field of electric invention is so vast and so actively worked that
+one cannot take up a newspaper without finding reference to some new
+achievement made possible by this wonderful agent, whose real powers
+were unsuspected fifty years ago. Aside from the direct value of these
+inventions in promoting the comfort and increasing the wealth of the
+country there is another factor to be considered having the most vital
+relation to the industries of the country and its powers of production.
+The large number of inventions made in these United States implies a
+high degree of intelligence and mental activity in the great body of the
+people. It indicates trained habits of observation and trained powers of
+applying knowledge which has been acquired. It shows an ability to turn
+to account the forces of Nature and, train them to the service of man,
+such as has been possessed by the laborers of no other country. It
+suggests as pertinent the inquiry whether any other country is so well
+equipped for competition in production as our own; whether in any other
+country the mechanic is so efficient and his labor, therefore, so cheap
+as in our own; whether he does not exhibit the seeming paradox of
+receiving more for his labor than in any other country, and at the same
+time doing more for what he receives.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Inventors, by Philip Gengembre Hubert
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+      Inventors, by Philip G. Hubert -- a Project Gutenberg eBook.
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Inventors, by Philip Gengembre Hubert
+
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+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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+Title: Inventors
+
+Author: Philip Gengembre Hubert
+
+Release Date: February 6, 2012 [EBook #38782]
+
+Language: English
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INVENTORS ***
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+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>INVENTORS</h1>
+
+
+
+<p class="center p6">MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT SERIES</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p class="center">TRAVELLERS AND EXPLORERS. By<br />
+General <span class="smcap">A.W. Greely</span>, U.S.A.</p>
+
+<p class="center">STATESMEN. By <span class="smcap">Noah Brooks</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="center">MEN OF BUSINESS. By <span class="smcap">W.O. Stoddard</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="center">INVENTORS. By <span class="smcap">P.G. Hubert</span>, Jr.
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="BENJAMIN_FRANKLIN" id="BENJAMIN_FRANKLIN"></a>
+<img src="images/004.jpg" width="500" height="639" alt="BENJAMIN FRANKLIN." />
+<span class="caption">BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="center p6 u">MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>INVENTORS</h1>
+
+
+<h3><small>BY</small><br />
+PHILIP G. HUBERT, <span class="smcap">Jr.</span></h3>
+
+<p class="center p6">NEW YORK<br />
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS<br />
+1896
+</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center p6"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1893, by</span><br />
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</p>
+
+<p class="center p6">Press of J.J. Little &amp; Co.<br />
+Astor Place, New York
+</p>
+<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>This book, dealing with our great inventors,
+their origins, hopes, aims, principles, disappointments,
+trials, and triumphs, their daily life and
+personal character, presents just enough concerning
+their inventions to make the story
+intelligible. The history is often a painful one.
+When poor Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized
+rubber, was one day asked what he wanted
+to make of his boys, he is said to have replied:
+"Make them anything but inventors; mankind
+has nothing but cuffs and kicks for those who try
+to do it a service."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the value of the work done by
+great inventors is widely acknowledged. In a
+remarkable sketch of the history of civilization,
+Professor Huxley remarked, in 1887, that the
+wonderful increase of industrial production by
+the application of machinery, the improvement
+of old technical processes and the invention of
+new ones, constitutes the most salient feature of
+the world's progress during the last fifty years.
+If this was true a few years ago, its truth is still
+more apparent to-day. It is safe to say that
+within fifty years power, light, and heat will cost
+half, perhaps one-tenth, of what they do now; and
+this virtually means that in 1943 mankind will be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span>
+able to buy decent food, shelter, and clothing for
+half or one-tenth of the labor now required.
+Steam is said to have reduced the working
+hours of man in the civilized world from fourteen
+to ten a day. Electricity will mark the
+next giant step in advance.</p>
+
+<p>With the many and superb tools now at our
+service, of which our fathers knew comparatively
+nothing&mdash;steam, electricity, the telegraph, telephone,
+phonograph, and the camera&mdash;we and our
+descendants ought to accomplish even greater
+wonders than these. As invention thus rises in
+the scale of importance to humanity, the history
+of the pioneers and, to the shame of mankind be
+it said, the martyrs of the art, becomes of intense
+interest. In the annals of hero-worship the
+inventor of the perfecting press ought to stand
+before the great general, and Elias Howe should
+rank before Napoleon. Whitney, Howe, Morse,
+and Goodyear, to mention but a few of our
+Americans, contributed thousands of millions of
+dollars to the nation's wealth and received comparatively
+nothing in return. Their history suggests
+as pertinent the inquiry whether our patent
+laws do not need a radical change. The burden
+and cost of proving that an invention deserves
+no protection ought to fall upon whoever
+infringes a patent granted by the Government.
+At present it is all the other way.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+P.G.H., <span class="smcap">Jr.</span></p>
+<p>
+<span class="smcap">New York</span>, September, 1893.
+</p>
+<hr class="chap" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of contents">
+<tr><th></th><th></th><th align="right">PAGE</th></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td align="left"><a href="#I"><span class="smcap">Benjamin Franklin</span>,</a></td><td align="right">9</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td align="left"><a href="#II"><span class="smcap">Robert Fulton</span>,</a></td><td align="right">45</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td align="left"><a href="#III"><span class="smcap">Eli Whitney</span>,</a></td><td align="right">69</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td align="left"><a href="#IV"><span class="smcap">Elias Howe</span>,</a></td><td align="right">99</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">V.</td><td align="left"><a href="#V"><span class="smcap">Samuel F.B. Morse</span>,</a></td><td align="right">111</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VI.</td><td align="left"><a href="#VI"><span class="smcap">Charles Goodyear</span>,</a></td><td align="right">155</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VII.</td><td align="left"><a href="#VII"><span class="smcap">John Ericsson</span>,</a></td><td align="right">178</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VIII.</td><td align="left"><a href="#VIII"><span class="smcap">Cyrus Hall McCormick</span>,</a></td><td align="right">207</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IX.</td><td align="left"><a href="#IX"><span class="smcap">Thomas A. Edison</span>,</a></td><td align="right">223</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">X.</td><td align="left"><a href="#X"><span class="smcap">Alexander Graham Bell</span>,</a></td><td align="right">264</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XI.</td><td align="left"><a href="#XI"><span class="smcap">American Inventors, Past and Present</span>,</a></td><td align="right">270</td></tr>
+<tr><td></td><td align="left">
+James M. Townsend, E.L. Drake, Alvan Clark,
+John Fitch, Oliver Evans, Amos Whittemore, Thomas
+Blanchard, Richard M. Hoe, Thomas W. Harvey, C.L.
+Sholes, B.B. Hotchkiss, Charles F. Brush, Rudolph
+Eickemeyer, George Westinghouse, Jr.
+</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<h3>FULL-PAGE</h3>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Full page illustrations">
+<tr><td></td><th align="right">FACING<br />PAGE</th></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#BENJAMIN_FRANKLIN"><span class="smcap">Benjamin Franklin</span>,</a></td><td align="right">(<i>Frontispiece.</i>)</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Departure_of_the_Clermont_on_her_First_Voyage"><span class="smcap">Departure of the Clermont on her First Voyage</span>,</a></td><td align="right">60</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Charles_Goodyear"><span class="smcap">Charles Goodyear</span>,</a></td><td align="right">155</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#John_Ericsson"><span class="smcap">John Ericsson</span>,</a></td><td align="right">178</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Cyrus_Hall_McCormick"><span class="smcap">Cyrus Hall McCormick</span>,</a></td><td align="right">207</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Thomas_A_Edison"><span class="smcap">Thomas A. Edison</span>,</a></td><td align="right">223</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Edison_in_his_Laboratory"><span class="smcap">Edison in his Laboratory</span>,</a></td><td align="right">247</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Professor_Bell_Sending_the_First_Message"><span class="smcap">Professor Bell Sending the First Telephone Message from New York to Chicago</span>,</a></td><td align="right">264</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<h3>ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT</h3>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations in the text">
+<tr><td></td><th align="right">PAGE</th></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_Franklin_Stove"><span class="smcap">The Franklin Stove</span>,</a></td><td align="right">10</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Franklins_Birthplace_Boston"><span class="smcap">Franklin's Birthplace, Boston</span>,</a></td><td align="right">14</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Franklin_Entering_Philadelphia"><span class="smcap">Franklin Entering Philadelphia</span>,</a></td><td align="right">17</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_Franklin_Penny"><span class="smcap">The Franklin Penny</span>,</a></td><td align="right">27</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Franklins_Grave"><span class="smcap">Franklin's Grave</span>,</a></td><td align="right">43</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Robert_Fulton"><span class="smcap">Robert Fulton</span>,</a></td><td align="right">46</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Birthplace_of_Robert_Fulton"><span class="smcap">Birthplace of Robert Fulton</span>,</a></td><td align="right">48</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Fulton_Blowing_Up_a_Danish_Brig"><span class="smcap">Fulton Blowing Up a Danish Brig</span>,</a></td><td align="right">53</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#John_Fitchs_Steamboat_at_Philadelphia"><span class="smcap">John Fitch's Steamboat at Philadelphia</span>,</a></td><td align="right">56</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Fultons_First_Experiment_with_Paddle-wheels"><span class="smcap">Fulton's First Experiment with Paddle-wheels</span>,</a></td><td align="right">57</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_Demologos_or_Fulton_the_First"><span class="smcap">The "Demologos," or "Fulton the First,"</span></a></td><td align="right">65</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_Clermont"><span class="smcap">The Clermont</span>,</a></td><td align="right">68</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Eli_Whitney"><span class="smcap">Eli Whitney</span>,</a></td><td align="right">70</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Whitney_Watching_the_Cotton-Gin"><span class="smcap">Whitney Watching the Cotton-Gin</span>,</a></td><td align="right">75</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_Cotton-Gin"><span class="smcap">The Cotton-Gin</span>,</a></td><td align="right">78</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Elias_Howe"><span class="smcap">Elias Howe</span>,</a></td><td align="right">100<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Birthplace_of_SFB_Morse"><span class="smcap">Birthplace of S.F.B. Morse, Built 1775</span>,</a></td><td align="right">111</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#SFB_Morse"><span class="smcap">S.F.B. Morse</span>,</a></td><td align="right">113</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Under_Side_of_a_Modern_Switchboard"><span class="smcap">Under Side of a Modern Switchboard, showing 2,000 Wires</span>,</a></td><td align="right">121</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_First_Telegraphic_Instrument"><span class="smcap">The First Telegraph Instrument, as Exhibited in 1837 by Morse</span>,</a></td><td align="right">125</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_Modern_Morse_Telegraph"><span class="smcap">The Modern Morse Telegraph</span>,</a></td><td align="right">127</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Morse_Making_his_own_Instrument"><span class="smcap">Morse Making his own Instrument</span>,</a></td><td align="right">129</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Train_Telegraph"><span class="smcap">Train Telegraph&mdash;the Message Transmitted by Induction from the Moving Train to the Single Wire</span>,</a></td><td align="right">131</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Interior_of_a_Car_on_the_Lehigh_Valley_Railroad"><span class="smcap">Interior of a Car on the Lehigh Valley Railroad, showing the Method of Operating the Train Telegraph</span>,</a></td><td align="right">132</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Diagram_showing_the_Method_of_Telegraphing_from_a_Moving_Train_by_Induction"><span class="smcap">Diagram showing the Method of Telegraphing from a Moving Train by Induction</span>,</a></td><td align="right">134</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Morse_in_his_Study"><span class="smcap">Morse in his Study</span>,</a></td><td align="right">139</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_Siphon_Recorder_for_Receiving_Cable_Messages"><span class="smcap">The Siphon Recorder for Receiving Cable Messages&mdash;Office of the Commercial Cable Company, 1 Broad Street, New York</span>,</a></td><td align="right">146</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#No_5_West_Twenty-second_Street"><span class="smcap">No. 5 West Twenty-second Street, New York, where Morse Lived for Many Years and Died</span>,</a></td><td align="right">151</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Calenders_Heated_Internally_by_Steam"><span class="smcap">Calenders Heated Internally by Steam, for Spreading India Rubber into Sheets or upon Cloth, called the "Chaffee Machine,"</span></a></td><td align="right">164</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Charles_Goodyears_Exhibition_of_Hard_India_Rubber_Goods"><span class="smcap">Charles Goodyear's Exhibition of Hard India-rubber Goods at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, England</span>,</a></td><td align="right">169</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#COUNCIL_MEDAL_OF_THE_EXHIBITION"><span class="smcap">Council Medal of the Exhibition, 1851</span>,</a></td><td align="right">173</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#GRANDE_MEDAILLE_DHONNEUR_EXPOSITION_UNIVERSELLE_DE_1855"><span class="smcap">Grande Medaille d'Honneur, Exposition Universelle de 1855</span>,</a></td><td align="right">176</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#John_Ericssons_Birthplace_and_Monument"><span class="smcap">John Ericsson's Birthplace and Monument</span>,</a></td><td align="right">180</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_Novelty_Locomotive_built_by_Ericsson"><span class="smcap">The Novelty Locomotive, built by Ericsson to compete with Stephenson's Rocket, 1829</span>,</a></td><td align="right">184</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Ericsson_on_his_Arrival_in_England"><span class="smcap">Ericsson on his Arrival in England, aged Twenty-three</span>,</a></td><td align="right">186</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Mrs_John_Ericsson_nee_Amelia_Byam"><span class="smcap">Mrs. John Ericsson, née Amelia Byam</span>,</a></td><td align="right">187<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Exterior_View_of_Ericssons_House"><span class="smcap">Exterior View of Ericsson's House, No. 36 Beach Street, New York, 1890</span>,</a></td><td align="right">189</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Solar-engine_Adapted_to_the_Use_of_Hot_Air"><span class="smcap">Solar-engine Adapted to the Use of Hot Air</span>,</a></td><td align="right">191</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Sectional_View_of_Monitor_through_Turret_and_Pilot-house"><span class="smcap">Sectional View of Monitor through Turret and Pilot-house</span>,</a></td><td align="right">198</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_Original_Monitor"><span class="smcap">The Original Monitor</span>,</a></td><td align="right">199</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Fac-simile_of_a_Pencil_Sketch_by_Ericsson"><span class="smcap">Fac-simile of a Pencil Sketch by Ericsson giving a Transverse Section of his Original Monitor Plan, with a Longitudinal Section drawn over it</span>,</a></td><td align="right">201</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Interior_of_the_Destroyer_Looking_toward_the_Bow"><span class="smcap">Interior of the Destroyer, Looking toward the Bow</span>,</a></td><td align="right">202</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Development_of_the_Monitor_Idea"><span class="smcap">Development of the Monitor Idea</span>,</a></td><td align="right">204</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_Room_in_which_Ericsson_Worked"><span class="smcap">The Room in Which Ericsson Worked for More than Twenty Years</span>,</a></td><td align="right">206</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Farm_where_Cyrus_H_McCormick_was_Born_and_Raised"><span class="smcap">Farm where Cyrus H. McCormick was Born and Raised</span>,</a></td><td align="right">209</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Exterior_of_the_Blacksmith_Shop"><span class="smcap">Exterior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper was Built</span>,</a></td><td align="right">212</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Interior_of_the_Blacksmith_Shop"><span class="smcap">Interior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper was Built</span>,</a></td><td align="right">215</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_First_Reaper"><span class="smcap">The First Reaper</span>,</a></td><td align="right">217</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Edisons_Paper_Carbon_Lamp"><span class="smcap">Edison's Paper Carbon Lamp</span>,</a></td><td align="right">224</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Edison_Listening_to_his_Phonograph"><span class="smcap">Edison Listening to his Phonograph</span>,</a></td><td align="right">227</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#From_Edisons_Newspaper"><span class="smcap">From Edison's Newspaper, the "Grand Trunk Herald,"</span></a></td><td align="right">230</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Edisons_Tinfoil_Phonograph"><span class="smcap">Edison's Tinfoil Phonograph&mdash;the First Practical Machine</span>,</a></td><td align="right">237</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Vote_Recorder"><span class="smcap">Vote Recorder&mdash;Edison's First Patented Invention</span>,</a></td><td align="right">243</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Edisons_Menlo_Park_Electric_Locomotive"><span class="smcap">Edison's Menlo Park Electric Locomotive (1880)</span>,</a></td><td align="right">250</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#The_Home_of_Thomas_A_Edison"><span class="smcap">The Home of Thomas A. Edison</span>,</a></td><td align="right">257</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Edisons_Laboratory"><span class="smcap">Edison's Laboratory</span>,</a></td><td align="right">258</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Library_at_Edisons_Laboratory"><span class="smcap">Library at Edison's Laboratory</span>,</a></td><td align="right">262</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Alvan_Clark"><span class="smcap">Alvan Clark</span>,</a></td><td align="right">276</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#CL_Sholes"><span class="smcap">C.L. Sholes</span>,</a></td><td align="right">286</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#BB_Hotchkiss"><span class="smcap">B.B. Hotchkiss</span>,</a></td><td align="right">288</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Charles_F_Brush"><span class="smcap">Charles F. Brush</span>,</a></td><td align="right">290</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Rudolph_Eickemeyer"><span class="smcap">Rudolph Eickemeyer</span>,</a></td><td align="right">294</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left"><a href="#George_Westinghouse_Jr"><span class="smcap">George Westinghouse, Jr.</span>,</a></td><td align="right">296</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span></p>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+<h1><a name="INVENTORS" id="INVENTORS"></a>INVENTORS</h1>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Benjamin Franklin's activity and resource
+in the field of invention really partook of the intellectual
+breadth of the man of whom Turgot
+wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Eripuit c&#339;lo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"He snatched the thunderbolt from heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the sceptre from the hands of tyrants."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And of which bit of verse Franklin once dryly
+remarked, that as to the thunder, he left it where
+he found it, and that more than a million of his
+countrymen co-operated with him in snatching
+the sceptre. Those persons who knew Franklin,
+the inventor, only as the genius to whom we owe
+the lightning-rod, will be amazed at the range of
+his activity. For half a century his mind seems
+to have been on the alert concerning the why
+and wherefore of every phenomenon for which
+the explanation was not apparent. Nothing in
+nature failed to interest him. Had he lived in
+an era of patents he might have rivalled Edison
+in the number of his patentable devices, and had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span>
+he chosen to make money from such devices, his
+gains would certainly have been fabulous. As
+a matter of fact, Franklin never applied for a
+patent, though frequently
+urged to do so, and he made
+no money by his inventions.
+One of the most popular of
+these, the Franklin stove,
+which device, after a half-century
+of disuse, is now
+again popular, he made a
+present to his early friend, Robert Grace, an iron
+founder, who made a business of it. The Governor
+of Pennsylvania offered to give Franklin a
+monopoly of the sale of these stoves for a number
+of years. "But I declined it," writes the
+inventor, "from a principle which has ever
+weighed with me on such occasions, viz.: That
+as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions
+of others, we should be glad of an opportunity
+to serve others by any invention of ours;
+and this we should do freely and generously.
+An ironmonger in London, however, assuming a
+good deal of my pamphlet (describing the principle
+and working of the stove), and working it
+up into his own, and making some small change
+in the machine, which rather hurt its operation,
+got a patent for it there, and made, as I
+was told, a little fortune by it."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="The_Franklin_Stove" id="The_Franklin_Stove"></a>
+<img src="images/014.jpg" width="300" height="215" alt="The Franklin Stove." />
+<span class="caption">The Franklin Stove.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The complete list of inventions, devices, and
+improvements of which Franklin was the originator,
+or a leading spirit and contributor, is so
+long a one that a dozen pages would not suffice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span>
+for it. I give here a brief summary, as compiled
+by Parton in his excellent "Life of Franklin."
+"It is incredible," Franklin once wrote, "the
+quantity of good that may be done in a country
+by a single man who will <i>make a business</i> of it and
+not suffer himself to be diverted from that purpose
+by different avocations, studies, or amusements."
+As a commentary upon this sentiment,
+here is a catalogue of the achievements of Benjamin
+Franklin that may fairly come under the
+title of inventions:</p>
+
+<p>He established and inspired the Junto, the
+most useful and pleasant American club of which
+we have knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>He founded the Philadelphia Library, parent
+of a thousand libraries, and which marked the
+beginning of an intellectual movement of endless
+good to the whole country.</p>
+
+<p>He first turned to great account the engine of
+advertising, an indispensable element in modern
+business.</p>
+
+<p>He published "Poor Richard," a record of
+homely wisdom in such shape that hundreds
+of thousands of readers were made better and
+stronger by it.</p>
+
+<p>He created the post-office system of America,
+and was the first champion of a reformed spelling.</p>
+
+<p>He invented the Franklin stove, which economized
+fuel, and suggested valuable improvements
+in ventilation and the building of chimneys.</p>
+
+<p>He robbed thunder of its terrors and lightning
+of some of its power to destroy.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He founded the American Philosophical Society,
+the first organization in America of the
+friends of science.</p>
+
+<p>He suggested the use of mineral manures, introduced
+the basket willow, promoted the early
+culture of silk, and pointed out the advisability
+of white clothing in hot weather.</p>
+
+<p>He measured the temperature of the Gulf
+Stream, and discovered that northeast storms
+may begin in the southwest.</p>
+
+<p>He pointed out the advantage of building
+ships in water-tight compartments, taking the
+hint from the Chinese, and first urged the use of
+oil as a means of quieting dangerous seas.</p>
+
+<p>Besides these great achievements, accomplished
+largely as recreation from his life work
+as economist and statesman, Benjamin Franklin
+helped the whole race of inventors by a remark
+that has been of incalculable value and comfort
+to theorists and dreamers the world over. When
+someone spoke rather contemptuously in Franklin's
+presence of Montgolfier's balloon experiments,
+and asked of what use they were, the
+great American replied in words now historic:
+"Of what use is a new-born babe?"</p>
+
+<p>"This self-taught American," said Lord Jeffrey,
+in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> of July, 1806, "is
+the most rational, perhaps, of all philosophers.
+He never loses sight of common sense in any of
+his speculations. No individual, perhaps, ever
+possessed a greater understanding, or was so
+seldom obstructed in the use of it by indolence,
+enthusiasm, or authority. Dr. Franklin received<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span>
+no regular education; and he spent the greater
+part of his life in a society where there was no
+relish and no encouragement for literature. On
+an ordinary mind, these circumstances would
+have produced their usual effects, of repressing
+all sorts of intellectual ambition or activity, and
+perpetuating a generation of incurious mechanics;
+but to an understanding like Franklin's, we
+cannot help considering them as peculiarly propitious,
+and imagine that we can trace back to
+them distinctly almost all the peculiarities of his
+intellectual character."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Franklins_Birthplace_Boston" id="Franklins_Birthplace_Boston"></a>
+<img src="images/018.jpg" width="400" height="519" alt="Franklin's Birthplace, Boston." />
+<span class="caption">Franklin&#39;s Birthplace, Boston.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The main outlines of Franklin's life and career
+are so familiar to everyone, that I may as
+well pass at once to the story of his work as an
+inventor. We all know, or ought to know, that
+Benjamin, the fifteenth child of Josiah Franklin,
+the Boston soap-boiler, was born in that town
+on the 17th of January, 1706, and established himself
+as a printer in Philadelphia in 1728. That
+he prospered and founded the <i>Gazette</i> a few
+years later, and became Postmaster of Philadelphia
+in 1737; that after valuable services to
+the Colonies as their agent in England, he
+was appointed United States Minister at the
+Court of France upon the Declaration of Independence;
+and that in 1782 he had the supreme
+satisfaction of signing at Paris the treaty of
+peace with England by which the independence
+of the Colonies was assured. That he died full
+of honors at Philadelphia in April, 1790, and that
+Congress, as a testimony of the gratitude of the
+Thirteen States and of their sorrow for his loss,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span>
+appointed a general mourning throughout the
+States for a period of two months.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Franklin_Entering_Philadelphia" id="Franklin_Entering_Philadelphia"></a>
+<img src="images/021.jpg" width="400" height="564" alt="Franklin Entering Philadelphia." />
+<span class="caption">Franklin Entering Philadelphia.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The great invention or discovery which entitles
+Benjamin Franklin to
+rank at the head of
+American inventors was, of course, the identification
+of lightning with electricity, and his suggestion
+of metallic conductors so arranged as
+to render the discharge from the clouds a harmless
+one. In order to appreciate the originality<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span>
+and value of this discovery, it is necessary to review
+briefly what the world knew of the subject
+at that day.</p>
+
+<p>For a hundred years before Franklin's time,
+electricity had been studied in Europe without
+much distinct progress resulting. A thousand
+experiments had been performed and described.
+Gunpowder had been exploded by the spark
+from a lady's finger, and children had been insulated
+by hanging them from the ceiling by
+silk cords. A tolerable machine had been devised
+for exciting electricity, though most experimenters
+still used a glass tube. Several
+volumes of electrical observations and experiments
+had appeared, and yet what had been
+done was little more than a repetition on a
+larger scale, and with better means, of the original
+experiment of rubbing a piece of amber
+on the sleeve of the philosopher's coat. Experimenters
+in 1745 could produce a more powerful
+spark and play a greater variety of tricks with
+it than Dr. Gilbert, the English experimenter of
+1600, but that was about all the advantage they
+had over him.</p>
+
+<p>So-called experts had attempted, with more or
+less satisfaction to themselves, to answer the
+question addressed by the mad Lear to poor
+Tom: "Let me talk with this philosopher.
+What is the cause of thunder?" Pliny thought
+he had explained it when he called it an
+earthquake in the air. Dr. Lister announced
+that lightning was caused by the sudden ignition
+of immense quantities of fine floating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span>
+sulphur. Jonathan Edwards, in his diary of
+1722, records the popular impression of the
+day upon this subject: "Lightning," he says,
+"seem to be an almost infinitely fine combustible
+matter, that floats in the air, that takes
+fire by sudden and mighty fermentation, that is
+some way promoted by the cool and moisture,
+and perhaps attraction of the clouds. By this
+sudden agitation, this fine floating matter is
+driven forth with a mighty force one way or
+other, whichever way it is directed, by the circumstances
+and temperature of the circumjacent
+air; for cold and heat, density and rarity,
+moisture and dryness, have almost an infinitely
+strong influence upon the fine particles of matter.
+This fluid matter thus projected, still fermenting
+to the same degree, divides the air as
+it goes, and every moment receives a new impulse
+by the continued fermentation; and as its
+motion received its direction, at first, from the
+different temperature of the air on different
+sides, so its direction is changed, according to the
+temperature of the air it meets with, which
+renders the path of the lightning so crooked."</p>
+
+<p>Even this explanation was a daring bit of speculation
+in Jonathan Edwards, for thunder and
+lightning were then commonly regarded as the
+physical expression of God's wrath against the
+insects He had created.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Peter Collinson, the London agent of the
+library that Franklin had founded in Philadelphia
+in 1732, was accustomed to send over with
+the annual parcel of books any work or curious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span>
+object that chanced to be in vogue in London at
+the time. In 1746 he sent one of the new electrical
+tubes with a paper of directions for using it.
+The tubes then commonly used were two feet
+and a half long, and as thick as a man could conveniently
+grasp. They were rubbed with a piece<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span>
+of cloth or buckskin, and held in contact with
+the object to be charged. Franklin had already
+seen one of these tubes in Boston, and had been
+astonished by its properties. No sooner, therefore,
+was it unpacked at the Library, than he repeated
+the experiments he had seen in Boston,
+as well as those described by Collinson. The
+subject completely fascinated him. He gave
+himself up to it. Procuring other tubes, he distributed
+them among his friends and set them
+all rubbing. "I never," he writes in 1747, "was
+before engaged in any study that so totally
+engrossed my attention and my time as this has
+done; for what with making experiments when
+I can be alone, and repeating to my friends and
+acquaintances, who, from the novelty of the
+thing, come continually in crowds to see them; I
+have during some months past had little leisure
+for anything else."</p>
+
+<p>Franklin claimed no credit for what he
+achieved in electricity. During the winter of
+1746-7 he and his friends experimented frequently,
+and observed electrical attraction and repulsion
+with care. That electricity was not created,
+but only collected by friction, was one of their
+first conjectures, the correctness of which they
+soon demonstrated by a number of experiments.
+Before having heard of the Leyden jar coated
+with tin-foil, these Philadelphia experimenters
+substituted granulated lead for the water employed
+by Professor Maschenbroeck. They
+fired spirits and lighted candles with the electric
+spark. They performed rare tricks with a spider<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span>
+made of burnt cork. Philip Syng mounted one
+of the tubes upon a crank and employed a cannon-ball
+as a prime conductor, thus obtaining the same
+result without much tedious rubbing of the tube.</p>
+
+<p>The summer of 1747 was devoted to preparing
+the province for defence. But during the following
+winter the Philadelphians resumed their
+experiments. The wondrous Leyden jar was the
+object of Franklin's constant observation. His
+method of work is well shown in his own account
+of an experiment during this winter. The
+jar used was Maschenbroeck's original device of
+a bottle of water with a wire running through
+the cork.</p>
+
+<p>"Purposing," writes Franklin, "to analyse the
+electrified bottle, in order to find wherein its
+strength lay, we placed it on glass, and drew out
+the cork and wire, which for that purpose had
+been loosely put in. Then, taking the bottle in
+one hand, and bringing a finger of the other near
+its mouth, a strong spark came from the water,
+and the shock was as violent as if the wire had
+remained in it, which showed that the force did
+not lie in the wire. Then, to find if it resided in
+the water, being crowded into and condensed in
+it, as confined by the glass, which had been our
+former opinion, we electrified the bottle again,
+and placing it on glass, drew out the wire and
+cork as before; then, taking up the bottle, we
+decanted all its water into an empty bottle,
+which likewise stood on glass; and taking up
+that other bottle, we expected, if the force resided
+in the water, to find a shock from it. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span>
+there was none. We judged then that it must
+either be lost in decanting or remain in the first
+bottle. The latter we found to be true; for
+that bottle on trial gave the shock, though filled
+up as it stood with fresh unelectrified water
+from a tea-pot. To find, then, whether glass had
+this property merely as glass, or whether the
+form contributed anything to it, we took a pane
+of sash glass, and laying it on the hand, placed
+a plate of lead on its upper surface; then electrified
+that plate, and bringing a finger to it,
+there was a spark and shock. We then took
+two plates of lead of equal dimensions, but less
+than the glass by two inches every way, and
+electrified the glass between them, by electrifying
+the uppermost lead; then separated the
+glass from the lead, in doing which, what little
+fire might be in the lead was taken out, and the
+glass being touched in the electrified parts with
+a finger, afforded only very small pricking
+sparks, but a great number of them might be
+taken from different places. Then dexterously
+placing it again between the leaden plates, and
+completing a circle between the two surfaces, a
+violent shock ensued; which demonstrated the
+power to reside in glass as glass, and that the
+non-electrics in contact served only, like the armature
+of a loadstone, to unite the force of the
+several parts, and bring them at once to any point
+desired; it being the property of a non-electric,
+that the whole body instantly receives or gives
+what electrical fire is given to, or taken from,
+any one of its parts.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Upon this we made what we called an electrical
+battery, consisting of eleven panes of large
+sash glass, armed with thin leaden plates, pasted
+on each side, placed vertically, and supported at
+two inches' distance on silk cords, with thick
+hooks of leaden wire, one from each side, standing
+upright, distant from each other, and convenient
+communications of wire and chain, from
+the giving side of one pane to the receiving side
+of the other; that so the whole might be charged
+together with the same labor as one single
+pane."</p>
+
+<p>In 1748 Franklin, being then forty-two years
+old, and in the enjoyment of an ample income
+from his business as printer and publisher, sold
+out to his foreman, David Hall, and was free
+to devote himself wholly to his beloved experiments.
+He had built himself a home in a retired
+spot on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and with
+an income which in our days would be equivalent
+to $15,000 or $20,000 a year, he was considered
+a fairly rich man. Having thus settled his
+business affairs in a manner which proved that
+he knew perfectly well what money was worth,
+he took up his electrical studies again and extended
+them from the machine to the part
+played in nature by electricity. The patience
+with which he observed the electrical phenomena
+of the heavens, the acuteness displayed by him
+in drawing plausible inferences from his observations,
+and the rapidity with which he arrived
+at all that we now know of thunder and lightning,
+still excite the astonishment of all who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span>
+read the narratives he has left us of his proceedings.
+During the whole winter of 1748-49 and
+the summer following, he was feeling his way
+to his final conclusions on the subject. Early
+in 1749 he drew up a series of fifty-six observations,
+entitled "Observations and Suppositions
+towards forming a new Hypothesis for explaining
+the several Phenomena of Thundergusts."
+Nearly all that he afterward demonstrated on
+this subject is anticipated in this truly remarkable
+paper, which was soon followed by the most
+famous of all his electrical writings, that entitled
+"Opinions and Conjectures concerning
+the Properties and Effects of the Electrical
+Matter, and the Means of preserving Buildings,
+Ships, etc., from Lightning; arising from Experiments
+and Observations made at Philadelphia,
+1749."</p>
+
+<p>Franklin sets forth in this masterly paper the
+similarity of electricity and lightning, and the
+property of points to draw off electricity. It is
+this treatise which contains the two suggestions
+that gave to the name of Franklin its first celebrity.
+Both suggestions are contained in one
+brief passage, which follows the description of a
+splendid experiment, in which a miniature lightning-rod
+had conducted harmlessly away the
+electricity of an artificial thunder-storm.</p>
+
+<p>"If these things are so," continues the philosopher,
+after stating the results of his experiment,
+"may not the knowledge of this power of points
+be of use to mankind in preserving houses,
+churches, ships, etc., from the stroke of lightning,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span>
+by directing us to fix on the highest part
+of those edifices upright rods of iron, made
+sharp as a needle and gilt to prevent rusting, and
+from the foot of those rods, a wire down the outside
+of the building into the ground, or down
+round one of the shrouds of a ship, and down
+her side till it reaches the water? Would not
+these pointed rods probably draw the electrical
+fire silently out of a cloud before it came nigh
+enough to strike, and thereby secure us from
+that most sudden and terrible mischief?"</p>
+
+<p>The second of these immortal suggestions was
+one that immediately arrested the attention of
+European electricians when the paper was published.
+It was in these words:</p>
+
+<p>"To determine the question, whether the
+clouds that contain lightning are electrified or
+not, I would propose an experiment to be tried
+where it may be done conveniently. On the top
+of some high tower or steeple, place a kind of
+sentry-box, big enough to contain a man and an
+electric stand. From the middle of the stand let
+an iron rod rise and pass, bending out of the
+door, and then upright twenty or thirty feet,
+pointed very sharp at the end. If the electrical
+stand be kept clean and dry, a man standing on
+it, when such clouds are passing low, might be
+electrified and afford sparks, the rod drawing
+fire to him from a cloud. If any danger to the
+man should be apprehended (though I think
+there would be none), let him stand on the floor
+of his box, and now and then bring near to the
+rod the loop of a wire that has one end fastened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span>
+to the leads, he holding it by a wax handle; so
+the sparks, if the rod is electrified, will strike
+from the rod to the wire and not affect him."</p>
+
+<p>A friend once asked Franklin how he came to
+hit upon such an idea. His reply was to quote
+an extract from the minutes he kept of the experiments
+he made. This extract, dated November
+7, 1749, was as follows: "Electrical fluid
+agrees with lightning in these particulars: 1.
+Giving light. 2. Color of the light. 3. Crooked
+direction. 4. Swift motion. 5. Being conducted
+by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7.
+Subsisting in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies
+it passes through. 9. Destroying animals. 10.
+Melting metals. 11. Firing inflammable substances.
+12. Sulphurous smell. The electric
+fluid is attracted by points. We do not know
+whether this property is in lightning. But since
+they agree in all the particulars wherein we can
+already compare them, is it not probable they
+agree likewise in this? Let the experiment be
+made."</p>
+
+<p>In this discovery, therefore, there was nothing
+of chance; it was a legitimate deduction from
+patiently accumulated facts.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until the spring of 1752 that Franklin
+thought of making his suggested experiment
+with a kite. The country around Philadelphia
+presents no high hills, and he was not aware till
+later that the roof of any dwelling-house would
+have answered as well as the peak of Teneriffe.
+There were no steeples in Philadelphia at that
+day. The vestry of Christ Church talked about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span>
+erecting a steeple, but it was not begun until
+1753. On the 15th of June, 1752, Franklin decided
+to fly that immortal kite. Wishing to
+avoid the ridicule of a failure, he took no one
+with him except his son, who, by the way, was
+not the small boy shown in countless pictures
+of the incident, but a stalwart young man of
+twenty-two. The kite had been made of a large
+silk handkerchief, and fitted out with a piece of
+sharpened iron wire. Part of the string was of
+hemp, and the part to be held in the hand was of
+silk. At the end of the hempen string was tied
+a key, and in a convenient shed was a Leyden jar
+in which to collect some of the electricity from
+the clouds. When the first thunder-laden clouds
+reached the kite, there were no signs of electricity
+from Franklin's key, but just as he had
+begun to doubt the success of the experiment,
+he saw the fibres of the hempen string begin to
+rise. Approaching his hand to the key, he got
+an electric spark, and was then able to charge the
+Leyden jar and get a stronger shock. Then the
+happy philosopher drew in his wet kite and
+went home to write his modest account of one of
+the most notable experiments made by man.</p>
+
+<p>Franklin's fame as the first to suggest the
+identity of lightning and electricity would have
+been safe, however, even without the famous
+kite-flying achievement. A month before that
+June thunderstorm his suggestions had been put
+into practice in Europe with complete success.
+Mr. Peter Collinson, to whom Franklin addressed
+from time to time long letters about his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span>
+experiments and conjectures, had caused them
+to be read at the meetings of the Royal Society,
+of which he (Collinson) was a member. That
+learned body, however, did not deem them
+worthy of publication among its transactions,
+and a letter of Franklin's containing the substance
+of his conjectures respecting lightning
+was laughed at. The only news that reached
+Philadelphia concerning these letters was that
+Watson and other English experimenters did not
+agree with Franklin. It was only in May, 1751,
+that a pamphlet was finally published in London,
+entitled "New Experiments and Observations in
+Electricity, made at Philadelphia, in America."
+A copy having been presented to the Royal Society,
+Watson was requested to make an abstract
+of its contents, which he did, giving generous
+praise to the author.</p>
+
+<p>Before the year came to a close Franklin was
+famous. There was something in the drawing
+down, for mere experiment, of the dread electricity
+of heaven that appealed not less powerfully
+to the imagination of the ignorant than to the
+understanding of the learned. And the marvel
+was the greater that the bold idea should have
+come from so remote a place as Philadelphia.
+By a unanimous vote the Royal Society elected
+Franklin a member, and the next year bestowed
+upon him the Copley medal. Yale College and
+then Harvard bestowed upon him the honorary
+degree of Master of Arts.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 250px;">
+<a name="The_Franklin_Penny" id="The_Franklin_Penny"></a>
+<img src="images/031.jpg" width="250" height="115" alt="The Franklin Penny." />
+<span class="caption">The Franklin Penny.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>As might have been expected, there was no
+lack of opposition to the new doctrine of lightning-rods.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span>
+Every new movement of radical character
+is denounced more or less fiercely. The last
+years of Newton's life were perplexed by the
+charge that his theory of gravitation tended to
+"materialize" religion. Insuring houses against
+fire was opposed as an interference with the prerogatives
+of deity. The establishment of the
+Royal Society was opposed upon the ground
+that the study of natural philosophy, grounded,
+as it was, upon experimental evidence, tended to
+weaken the force of evidence not so founded;
+and this objection was deemed of sufficient
+weight to call for serious answer. Franklin's
+daring proposal to neutralize the "artillery of
+heaven," of course could not escape, and the impiety
+of lightning-rods was widely discussed,
+often with acrimony. Mr. Kinnersley, one of
+Franklin's friends, who lectured for several years
+upon electricity, when advertising the outline of
+his subject always announced his intention to
+show that the erection of lightning-rods was
+"not chargeable with presumption nor inconsistent
+with any of the principles either of natural<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span>
+or revealed religion." Quincy relates in
+his "History of Harvard College," that in
+November, 1755, a shock of earthquake having
+been felt in New England, a Boston clergyman
+preached a sermon on the subject, in
+which he contended that the lightning-rods, by
+accumulating the electricity in the earth, had
+caused the earthquake. Professor Winthrop,
+of Harvard, thought it worth while to defend
+Franklin. "In 1770," Mr. Quincy adds, "another
+Boston clergyman opposed the use of the rods
+on the ground that, as the lightning was one of
+the means of punishing the sins of mankind, and
+of warning them from the commission of sin, it
+was impious to prevent its full execution." And
+to this attack also Professor Winthrop replied.
+Apparently Franklin himself thought it wise to
+conciliate the opposition of some so-called religious
+people of the day, for an account of the
+lightning-rod which appears in <i>Poor Richard's
+Almanac</i> for 1753, written probably by Franklin,
+begins as follows: "It has pleased God in his
+Goodness to Mankind, at length to discover to
+them the means of securing their Habitations
+and other Buildings from Mischief by Thunder
+and Lightning."</p>
+
+<p>Franklin bore his honors with the most remarkable
+modesty. It was in June that he flew
+his first kite, but not until October that he sent
+to Mr. Collinson an account of the experiment,
+and even then he described the manner of making
+and flying the kite and omitted all reference to
+his own success with it. The identity of lightning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span>
+with electricity having been established by M.
+Dalibard, he deemed it unnecessary to forward
+the account of an experiment which, however
+brilliant, he thought superfluous. Accordingly,
+we have no narrative by Franklin of the flying
+of the kite. We owe our knowledge of what
+occurred on that memorable afternoon to persons
+who heard Franklin tell the story. Franklin
+prefaces his description of his kite with these
+words: "As frequent mention is made in public
+papers from Europe of the success of the Philadelphia
+experiment for drawing the electric fire
+from clouds by means of pointed rods of iron
+erected on high buildings, it may be agreeable
+to the curious to be informed that the same
+experiment has succeeded in Philadelphia,
+though made in a different and more easy manner,
+which is as follows." And then we have
+the description of the kite, the letter ending
+without reference to what he himself had done
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he was far from hiding the pleasure his
+fame brought him. "The <i>Tatler</i>," he wrote, in
+1753, to a friend, "tells us of a girl who was observed
+to grow suddenly proud, and none could
+guess the reason, till it came to be known that
+she had got on a pair of new silk garters. Lest
+you should be puzzled to guess the cause, when
+you observe anything of the kind in me, I think I
+will not hide my new garters under my petticoats,
+but take the freedom to show them to you
+in a paragraph of our friend Collinson's last
+letter, viz.&mdash;But I ought to mortify, and not indulge,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span>
+this vanity; I will not transcribe the paragraph&mdash;yet
+I cannot forbear." Then he quotes
+the paragraph, which mentions the honors done
+him by the King of France and the Royal Society.</p>
+
+<p>For twenty years Franklin continued to work at
+electricity, devoting most of his leisure to his beloved
+study. The great practical value of the
+lightning-rod, at one time in the early part of this
+century somewhat exaggerated, as a perfect protection
+against harm by lightning, just as electricity
+was at one time heralded as a panacea for all
+bodily ailments, has of late years been questioned,
+but the consensus of scientific opinion still attributes
+much merit to the device, and the extent of
+Franklin's services to science in the matter cannot
+be called into doubt. Others have claimed
+his discoveries. The Abbé Nolet, of France, has
+been credited as being the first to note the similarity
+between electricity and lightning; and M.
+Romas, of Nerac, France, is said to have used a
+kite with a copper wire wound around the
+string, to attract electricity from clouds, some
+time before Franklin made his experiment. But
+posterity has ignored these claimants, and Franklin
+had the happiness of escaping bitter contentions
+with rivals. In fact, there could hardly
+have been a quarrel with a man who claimed
+nothing, who mentioned with honor everybody's
+achievements but his own, and who recorded
+his most brilliant observations in the plural, as
+though he were but one of a band of investigating
+Philadelphians.</p>
+
+<p>Passing now, to Franklin's connection with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span>
+use of oil to still dangerous waves, I had occasion
+recently to note that Lieutenant W.H.
+Beehler, of the United States Navy, in writing
+upon the matter, quotes Franklin's explanation
+of why oil works so beneficently as the accepted
+theory. Franklin was greatly interested, when
+at sea, in studying the matter. Any phenomenon
+that puzzled him was fit subject for investigation.
+Let us see how he went about the inquiry.
+"In 1757," he wrote, "being at sea in a
+fleet of ninety-six sail bound against Louisburg,
+I observed the wakes of two of the ships to be
+remarkably smooth, while all the others were
+ruffled by the wind which blew fresh. Being
+puzzled with the differing appearance, I at last
+pointed it out to our captain and asked him the
+meaning of it. 'The cooks,' says he, 'have, I
+suppose, been just emptying their greasy water
+through the scuppers, which has greased the
+sides of those ships a little;' and this answer he
+gave me with an air of some little contempt, as
+to a person ignorant of what everybody else
+knew. In my own mind I at first slighted his
+solution, though I was not able to think of another;
+but recollecting what I had formerly
+read in Pliny, I resolved to make some experiment
+of the effect of oil on water, when I should
+have opportunity. Afterwards, being again
+at sea in 1762, I first observed the wonderful
+quietness of oil on agitated water, in the swinging
+glass lamp I made to hang up in the cabin,
+as described in my printed papers. This I was
+continually looking at and considering, as an appearance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span>
+to me inexplicable. An old sea captain,
+then a passenger with me, thought little of
+it, supposing it an effect of the same kind with
+that of oil put on water to smooth it, which he
+said was a practice of the Bermudians when they
+would strike fish, which they could not see if
+the surface of the water was ruffled by the wind.
+The same gentleman told me he had heard it
+was a practice with the fishermen of Lisbon,
+when about to return into the river (if they saw
+before them too great a surf upon the bar, which
+they apprehended might fill their boats in passing)
+to empty a bottle or two of oil into the sea,
+which would suppress the breakers, and allow
+them to pass safely. A confirmation of this I
+have not since had an opportunity of obtaining;
+but discoursing of it with another person, who
+had often been in the Mediterranean, I was informed
+that the divers there, who, when under
+water in their business, need light, which the
+curling of the surface interrupts by the refractions
+of so many little waves, let a small quantity
+of oil now and then out of their mouths, which
+rising to the surface smooths it, and permits the
+light to come down to them. All these informations
+I at times resolved in my mind, and
+wondered to find no mention of them in our
+books of experimental philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>"At length being at Clapham where there is,
+on the common, a large pond, which I observed
+one day to be very rough with the wind, I
+fetched out a cruet of oil and dropped a little of
+it on the water. I saw it spread itself with surprising<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span>
+swiftness upon the surface; but the effect
+of smoothing the waves was not produced; for
+I had applied it first on the leeward side of the
+pond, where the waves were largest, and the
+wind drove my oil back upon the shore. I then
+went to the windward side, where they began
+to form; and there the oil, though not more
+than a teaspoonful, produced an instant calm
+over a space several yards square, which spread
+amazingly, and extended itself gradually, till it
+reached the lee side, making all that quarter of
+the pond, perhaps half an acre, as smooth as a
+looking glass.</p>
+
+<p>"A gentleman from Rhode Island told me it
+had been remarked that the harbor of Newport
+was ever smooth while any whaling vessels were
+in it; which, probably arose from hence, that
+the blubber, which they sometimes bring loose
+in the hold, or the leakage of their barrels,
+might, afford some oil to mix with that water,
+which, from time to time, they pump out to keep
+their vessel free, and that some oil might spread
+over the surface of the water in the harbor and
+prevent the forming of any waves."</p>
+
+<p>Thus Franklin collected his facts, taking them
+far and near, and from anybody and everybody.
+By dint of observation and reflection he finally
+solved the problem, arriving at the conclusion
+that "the wind blowing over water thus covered
+with a film of oil, cannot easily catch upon it, so
+as to raise the first wrinkles, but slides over it,
+and leaves it smooth as it finds it."</p>
+
+<p>Another remarkable instance of Franklin's passion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span>
+for investigation is afforded in the following
+interesting letter to Sir John Pringle: "When
+we were travelling together in Holland, you remarked
+that the canal boat in one of the stages
+went slower than usual, and inquired of the boatman
+what might be the reason; who answered
+that it had been a dry season, and the water in
+the canal was low. On being asked if it was so
+low that the boat touched the muddy bottom,
+he said no, not so low as that, but so low as to
+make it harder for the horse to draw the boat.
+We neither of us at first could conceive that, if
+there was water enough for the boat to swim
+clear of the bottom, its being deeper would make
+any difference. But as the man affirmed it seriously
+as a thing well known among them, and
+as the punctuality required in their stages was
+likely to make such difference, if any there were,
+more readily observed by them than by other
+watermen who did not pass so regularly and constantly
+backwards and forwards in the same
+track, I began to apprehend there might be
+something in it, and attempted to account for it
+from this consideration, that the boat in proceeding
+along the canal must, in every boat's length
+of her course, move out of her way a body of
+water equal in bulk to the room her bottom took
+up in the water; that the water so moved must
+pass on each side of her, and under her bottom, to
+get behind her; that if the passage under her
+bottom was straitened by the shallows, more of
+the water must pass by her sides, and with a
+swifter motion, which would retard her, as moving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span>
+the contrary way; or that, the water becoming
+lower behind the boat than before, she was
+pressed back by the weight of its difference in
+height, and her motion retarded by having that
+weight constantly to overcome. But, as it is often
+lost time to attempt accounting for uncertain
+facts, I determined to make an experiment of
+this, when I should have convenient time and
+opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>"After our return to England, as often as I
+happened to be on the Thames, I enquired of our
+watermen whether they were sensible of any
+difference in rowing over shallow or deep water.
+I found them all agreeing in the fact that there
+was a very great difference, but they differed
+widely in expressing the quantity of the difference;
+some supposing it was equal to a mile in
+six, others to a mile in three. As I did not recollect
+to have met with any mention of this
+matter in our philosophical books, and conceiving
+that, if the difference should be really great,
+it might be an object of consideration in the
+many projects now on foot for digging new
+navigable canals in this island, I lately put my
+design of making the experiment in execution,
+in the following manner.</p>
+
+<p>"I provided a trough of planed boards fourteen
+feet long, six inches wide, and six inches deep in
+the clear, filled with water within half an inch of
+the edge, to represent a canal, I had a loose
+board of nearly the same length and breadth,
+that being put into the water, might be sunk to
+any depth, and fixed by little wedges where I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span>
+would choose to have it stay, in order to make
+different depths of water, leaving the surface at
+the same height with regard to the sides of the
+trough. I had a little boat in form of a lighter
+or boat of burden, six inches long, two inches
+and a quarter wide, and one inch and a quarter
+deep. When swimming it drew one inch of
+water. To give motion to the boat, I fixed one
+end of a long silk thread to its bow, just even
+with the water's edge, the other end passed over
+a well-made brass pulley, of about an inch in
+diameter, turning freely upon a small axis; and
+a shilling was the weight. Then placing the
+boat at one end of the trough, the weight would
+draw it through the water to the other. Not
+having a watch that shows seconds, in order to
+measure the time taken up by the boat in passing
+from end to end of the trough, I counted as fast
+as I could count to ten repeatedly, keeping an
+account of the number of tens on my fingers.
+And, as much as possible to correct any little inequalities
+in my counting, I repeated the experiment
+a number of times at each depth of water,
+that I might take the medium."</p>
+
+<p>The experiment proved the truth of the
+boatmen's assertions. Franklin found that five
+horses would be required to draw a boat in a
+canal affording little more than enough water to
+float it, which four horses could draw in a canal
+of the proper depth.</p>
+
+<p>No circumstance, remarks Mr. Parton, was
+too trifling to engage him upon a series of experiments.
+At dinner, one day, a bottle of Madeira<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>
+was opened which had been bottled in Virginia
+many months before. Into the first glass poured
+from it fell three drowned flies. "Having heard
+it remarked that drowned flies were capable of
+being revived by the rays of the sun, I proposed
+making the experiment upon these; they were
+therefore exposed to the sun upon a sieve which
+had been employed to strain them out of the
+wine. In less than three hours two of them began
+by degrees to recover life. They commenced
+by some convulsive motions of the
+thighs, and at length they raised themselves
+upon their legs, wiped their eyes with their forefeet,
+beat and brushed their wings with their
+hind feet, and soon after began to fly, finding
+themselves in Old England without knowing
+how they came thither. The third continued
+lifeless till sunset, when, losing all hopes of him,
+he was thrown away." And upon this he remarks:
+"I wish it were possible, from this instance,
+to invent a method of embalming drowned
+persons in such a manner that they may be recalled
+to life at any period, however distant; for
+having a very ardent desire to see and observe
+the state of America a hundred years hence, I
+should prefer to any ordinary death being immersed
+in a cask of Madeira wine, with a few
+friends, till that time, to be then recalled to life
+by the solar warmth of my dear country."</p>
+
+<p>Among the studies in natural philosophy of
+which but little is known to the general public
+may be mentioned Franklin's experiments
+with heat at a time when a thermometer was a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span>
+scientific curiosity. The manner in which he
+proved that black cloth was not so good a covering
+for the body in hot weather as white,
+shows the simplicity of his methods and his
+faculty for making small means subserve great
+ends: "I took a number of little square pieces
+of broadcloth from a tailor's pattern-card, of
+various colors. There were black, deep blue,
+lighter blue, green, purple, red, yellow, white,
+and other colors or shades of colors. I laid
+them all out upon the snow in a bright sunshiny
+morning. In a few hours the black, being
+warmed most by the sun, was so low as to be below
+the stroke of the sun's rays; the dark blue
+almost as low, the lighter blue not quite so much
+as the dark, the other colors less as they were
+lighter, and the quite white remained on the
+surface of the snow, not having entered it at all.
+What signifies philosophy that does not apply to
+some use? May we not learn from hence that
+black clothes are not so fit to wear in a hot,
+sunny climate or season as white ones?" That
+all summer hats, particularly for soldiers, should
+be white, and that garden walls intended for
+fruit should be black, were suggestions put forth
+as a result of this experiment.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Small assigns to Franklin the credit of
+having discovered that repeated respiration imparts
+to air a poisonous quality similar to that
+which extinguishes candles and destroys life
+in mines and wells. "The doctor," he records,
+"breathed gently through a tube into a deep
+glass mug, so as to impregnate all the air in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span>
+the mug with this quality. He then put a
+lighted <i>bougie</i> (candle) into the mug, and upon
+touching the air therein the flame was instantly
+extinguished; by frequently repeating
+this operation, the <i>bougie</i> gradually preserved
+its light longer in the mug, so as in a
+short time to retain it to the bottom of it, the
+air having totally lost the bad quality it had
+contracted from the breath blown into it." Upon
+being consulted with regard to the better ventilation
+of the House of Commons, he advised that
+openings should be made near the ceiling, communicating
+with flues running parallel with the
+chimneys and close enough to them to be kept
+warm by their heat. These flues, he recommended,
+should begin in the cellar, where the
+air was cool, and the flues being warmed by the
+hot air of the chimneys, would cause an upward
+current of air strong enough to expel the
+vitiated air in the upper part of the house.
+Franklin's letters at this time are full of the
+importance of ventilation. Unquestionably, he
+was among the first who called attention to
+the folly of excluding fresh air from hospitals
+and sick-rooms, particularly those of fever patients.
+As Mr. Parton expresses it, he cleared
+the pure air of heaven from calumnious imputation
+and threw open the windows of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Some inventions of Franklin's have not met
+with the approval of posterity. For instance, he
+seems to have had no more success with a reformed
+spelling of his own devising than laborers
+in the same field who came after him. He used<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span>
+to say that they alone spelt well who spelt ill,
+since the so-called bad speller used the letters
+according to their real value. The illiterate
+girl who wrote of her <i>bo</i> was more correct, he
+thought, than the young lady who would blush
+to omit a superfluous vowel. What was the use
+of the final letter in muff, and why take the
+trouble to write <i>tough</i> when <i>tuf</i> would do as
+well? Had he lived to see Dr. Webster's
+Dictionary, the lexicographer would have found
+in him an ardent champion. His reformed alphabet
+and spelling is an interesting curiosity,
+but hardly more. Some letters of our alphabet
+he omitted, only to add new ones. He also
+changed their order, making <i>o</i> the first letter and
+<i>m</i> the last. In this connection it may be well to
+say that Franklin was perhaps the first and foremost
+American champion of the movement,
+now so powerful, looking to the displacement of
+Latin and Greek as the foundations of education.
+At the very close of his life, in 1789, he issued
+his famous protest against the study of dead languages.
+He is reported to have said one evening,
+when talking about this matter: "When
+the custom of wearing broad cuffs with buttons
+first began, there was a reason for it; the cuffs
+might be brought down over the hands and thus
+guard them from wet and cold. But gloves came
+into use, and the broad cuffs were unnecessary;
+yet the custom was still retained. So likewise
+with cocked hats. The wide brim, when let
+down, afforded a protection from the rain and
+the sun. Umbrellas were introduced, yet fashion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span>
+prevailed to keep cocked hats in vogue,
+although they were rather cumbersome than
+useful. Thus with the Latin language. When
+nearly all the books of Europe were written
+in that language, the study of it was essential in
+every system of education; but it is now scarcely
+needed, except as an accomplishment, since it
+has everywhere given place, as a vehicle of
+thought and knowledge, to some one of the
+modern tongues."</p>
+
+<p>With all his love of the practical, Franklin was
+not deficient in a rather delicate wit. I have already
+had occasion to quote at the beginning of
+this paper his disclaimer of the honors conferred
+upon him by Turgot's famous Latin line. Instances
+of this dry humor may be found all
+through Sparks's exhaustive biography. I remember
+one in particular. The merchants of
+Philadelphia, being at one time desirous to establish
+an assembly for dancing, they drew up
+some rules, among which was one "that no mechanic
+or mechanic's wife or daughter should be
+admitted on any terms." This rule being submitted
+to Franklin, he remarked that "it excluded
+God Almighty, for he was the greatest mechanic
+in the universe."</p>
+
+<p>Benjamin Franklin's services to the cause of
+invention by no means ended with his own inventions.
+One of his greatest services was the
+part he took in the foundation of the American
+Philosophical Society, whose object was to bring
+into correspondence with a central association
+in Philadelphia all scientists, philosophers, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span>
+inventors on this continent and in Europe.
+Franklin's share in the foundation of this society,
+which has proved of such vast use, seems
+to have been largely overlooked by his biographers.
+Mr. Parton, having mentioned that Franklin
+founded the society in accordance with his
+proposal of 1743, adds: "The society was formed
+and continued in existence for some years.
+Nevertheless, its success was neither great nor
+permanent, for at that day the circle of men capable
+of taking much interest in science was too
+limited for the proper support of such an organization."
+The recent historian of the society,
+Dr. Robert M. Patterson, agrees, however, with
+Sparks in tracing the origin of the Philosophical
+Society, which grew into prominence about
+1767, back to Franklin's proposal of 1743. After
+describing the Junto, or Leather Apron Society,
+formed among Franklin's acquaintance, a sort of
+debating club of eleven young men, Sparks says:
+"Forty years after its establishment it became
+the basis of the American Philosophical Society,
+of which Franklin was the first president, and
+the published transactions of which have contributed
+to the advancement of science and the
+diffusion of valuable knowledge in the United
+States." In his first proposal Franklin gave a
+list of the subjects that were to engage the attention
+of these New World philosophers. It included
+investigations in botany; in medicine; in
+mineralogy and mining; in chemistry; in mechanics;
+in arts, trades, and manufactures; in
+geography and topography; in agriculture; and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span>
+lest something should have been forgotten, he
+adds that the association should "give its attention
+to all philosophical experiments that let
+light into the nature of things, tend to increase
+the power of man over matter and multiply the
+conveniences or pleasures of life." The duties
+of the secretary of the society were laid down
+and were arduous, including much foreign correspondence,
+in addition to the correcting, abstracting,
+and methodizing of such papers as required
+it. This office Franklin took upon himself.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Franklins_Grave" id="Franklins_Grave"></a>
+<img src="images/047.jpg" width="400" height="461" alt="Franklin's Grave." />
+<span class="caption">Franklin&#39;s Grave.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>While he lived the proceedings of the society
+scarcely ever failed of a useful end. Unlike so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span>
+many original and inventive geniuses, his eminent
+common sense was as marked as his originality.
+In the language of his most recent biographer,
+John Bach McMaster, "whatever
+he has said on domestic economy or thrift is
+sound and striking. No other writer has left so
+many just and original observations on success
+in life. No other writer has pointed out so
+clearly the way to obtain the greatest amount of
+comfort out of life. What Solomon did for the
+spiritual man, that did Franklin for the earthly
+man. The book of Proverbs is a collection of
+receipts for laying up treasure in heaven. 'Poor
+Richard' is a collection of receipts for laying up
+treasure on earth."</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>ROBERT FULTON.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Robert_Fulton" id="Robert_Fulton"></a>
+<img src="images/050.jpg" width="400" height="460" alt="Robert Fulton." />
+<span class="caption">Robert Fulton.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat,
+or at least the first man to apply the power
+of the steam-engine to the propulsion of boats in a
+practical and effective manner, was born in Little
+Britain, Lancaster County, Pa., 1765, of respectable
+but poor parents. His father was a native of
+Kilkenny, Ireland, and his mother came of a fairly
+well-to-do Irish family, settled in Pennsylvania.
+He was the third of five children. As a child he
+received the rudiments of a common education.
+His vocation showed itself in his earliest years.
+All his hours of recreation were passed in shops
+and in drawing. At the time he was seventeen
+he had become so much of an artist as to make
+money by portrait and landscape painting in
+Philadelphia, where he remained until he was
+twenty-one. After this he went to Washington
+County and there purchased a little farm on
+which he settled his mother, his father having
+died when he was three years old. He returned
+to Philadelphia, but on his way visited the Warm
+Springs of Pennsylvania, where he met with
+some gentlemen who were so much pleased with
+his painting that they advised him to go to England,
+where they told him he would meet with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a><br /><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span>
+West who had then attained great celebrity.
+Fulton took this advice, and his reception by
+West, always kindly toward Americans, was
+such as he had been led to expect. The distinguished
+painter was so well pleased with him
+that he took him into his house, where he continued
+to live for several years. For some time
+Fulton made painting his chief employment,
+spending two years in Devonshire, near Exeter,
+where he made many influential acquaintances,
+among others the Duke of Bridgewater, famous
+for his canals, and Lord Stanhope, a nobleman
+noted for his love of science and his attachment
+to the mechanic arts. With Lord Stanhope, Fulton
+held a correspondence for a long time upon
+subjects in which they were interested.</p>
+
+<p>In 1793, Fulton was engaged in a project to
+improve inland navigation. Even at that early
+day it appeared that he had conceived the idea
+of propelling vessels by steam, and he speaks in
+his letters of its practicability. In 1794 he obtained
+from the British Government a patent for
+improvements in canal locks, and his pursuits at
+this time appear to have been in this direction.
+In his preface to a description of his Nautilus, or
+"plunging" boat, a species of submarine boat,
+he says that he had resided eighteen months in
+Birmingham where he acquired much of his
+knowledge of mechanics. In later years, when
+in Paris, Fulton sent a large collection of his
+manuscripts to this country. Unfortunately, the
+vessel in which they were sent was wrecked,
+and, while the case was recovered, only a few<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span>
+fragments of the manuscripts could be used. It
+is owing to this misfortune that we have so few
+records of Fulton's work at this time.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Birthplace_of_Robert_Fulton" id="Birthplace_of_Robert_Fulton"></a>
+<img src="images/052.jpg" width="400" height="268" alt="Birthplace of Robert Fulton." />
+<p class="center caption">Birthplace of Robert Fulton.
+<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This illustration and the four following are from Knox's "Life
+of Fulton," reproduced by permission of the publishers, G.P. Putnam's
+Sons.</p></div>
+
+<p>We know, however, that in 1794 he submitted
+to the British Society for the Promotion of Arts
+and Commerce an improvement of his invention
+for sawing marble, for which he received the
+thanks of the society and an honorary medal.
+He invented also, it is thought, about this time, a
+machine for spinning flax and another for making
+ropes, for both of which he obtained patents
+from the British Government. A mechanical
+contrivance for scooping out earth to form channels
+for canals or aqueducts, which is said to have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>
+been much used in England, was also his invention.
+The subject of canals appears to have
+chiefly engaged his attention during these years
+of the end of the century. He called himself a
+civil engineer, and under this title published his
+work on canals, and, in 1795, many essays on the
+same subject in one of the London journals. He
+recommended small canals and boats of little
+burden in a treatise on "Improvement of Canal
+Navigation," and inclined planes instead of locks,
+as a means of transporting canal boats from one
+level to another. His plans were strongly recommended
+by the British Board of Agriculture.
+Throughout his course as civil engineer
+his talent for drawing was of great advantage to
+him, and the plates annexed to his works are admirable
+examples of such work. He seems to
+have neglected his painting till a short time before
+his death, when he took up the brush again
+to paint some portraits of his family. During
+his residence in England he sent copies of his
+works to distinguished men in this country,
+setting forth the advantages to be derived from
+communication by canals.</p>
+
+<p>Having obtained a patent for mill improvements
+from the British Government, he went to
+France with the intention of introducing his invention
+there; but, not meeting with much encouragement,
+he devoted his time to other
+matters. Political economy had also some attraction
+for him, and he wrote a book to show
+that internal improvements would have a good
+effect on the happiness of a nation. He not only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span>
+wished to see a free and speedy communication
+between the different parts of a large country,
+but universal free trade between all countries.
+He thought that it would take ages to establish
+the freedom of the seas by the common consent
+of nations, and believed in destroying ships of
+war, so as to put it out of the power of any nation
+to control ocean trade. In 1797 he became
+acquainted with Joel Barlow, the well-known
+American, then residing in Paris, in whose family
+he lived for seven years, during which time he
+learned French and something of German, and
+studied mathematics and chemistry. In the same
+year he made an experiment with Mr. Barlow on
+the Seine with a machine he had constructed to
+give packages of gunpowder a progressive motion
+under water and then to explode at a given
+point. These experiments appear to have been
+the first in the line of his submarine boats, and
+are unquestionably the germ of all subsequent
+inventions in the direction of torpedo warfare.</p>
+
+<p>Want of money to carry out his designs induced
+him to apply to the French Directory,
+who at first gave him reason to expect their aid,
+but finally rejected his plan. Fulton, however,
+was not to be discouraged, but went on with his
+inventions, and having made a handsome model
+of his machine for destroying ships, a commission
+was appointed to examine his plans, but
+they also rejected them. He offered his idea to
+the British Government, still again without success,
+although a committee was appointed to examine
+his models. The French Government<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>
+being changed, and Bonaparte having come to
+the head of it, Fulton presented an address to
+him. A commission was appointed, and some assistance
+given which enabled him to put some of
+his plans into practice. In the spring of 1801
+he went to Brest to make experiments with the
+plunging boat that he had constructed in the winter.
+This, as he says, had many imperfections,
+to be expected in a first machine, and had been
+injured by rust, as parts which should have been
+of copper or brass were made of iron.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding these disadvantages, he engaged
+in a course of experiments which required
+no less courage than perseverance. From a report
+of his proceedings to the committee appointed
+by the French Government we learn that
+in July, 1801, he embarked with three companions
+on board of this boat, in the harbor of
+Brest, and descended to the depth of twenty-five
+feet, remaining below the surface an hour, in
+utter darkness, as the candles were found to consume
+too much of the vital air. He placed two
+men at the engine, which was intended to give
+her motion, and one at the helm, while he, with
+a barometer before him, kept her balanced between
+the upper and lower waters. He could
+turn her round while under the water, and found
+that in seven minutes he had gone about a third
+of a mile. During that summer Fulton descended
+under water with a store of air compressed
+into a copper globe, whereby he was
+enabled to remain under water four hours and
+twenty minutes. The success of these experiments<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span>
+determined him to try the effect of his
+invention on the English war-ships, then daily
+near the harbor of Brest&mdash;France and England
+being then at war. He made his own bombs.
+For experimental purposes a small vessel was
+anchored in the harbor, and with a bomb containing
+about twenty pounds of powder, he approached
+within about two hundred yards,
+struck the vessel, and blew her into atoms. A
+column of water and fragments were sent nearly
+one hundred feet into the air. This experiment
+was made in the presence of the prefect of the
+department and a multitude of spectators. During
+the summer of 1801 Fulton tried to use his
+bombs against some of the English vessels, but
+was not successful in getting within range. The
+French Government refused to give him further
+encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>The English had some information concerning
+the attempts that their enemies were making,
+and the anxiety expressed induced the British
+Minister to communicate with Fulton and try to
+secure to England his services. In this he was
+successful, and Fulton went to London, where he
+arrived in 1804, and met Pitt and Lord Melville.
+When Mr. Pitt first saw a drawing of a torpedo
+with a sketch of the mode of applying it, and
+understood what would be the effect of the explosion,
+he said that if it were introduced into
+practice it could not fail to annihilate all navies.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Fulton_Blowing_Up_a_Danish_Brig" id="Fulton_Blowing_Up_a_Danish_Brig"></a>
+<img src="images/057.jpg" width="400" height="246" alt="Fulton Blowing Up a Danish Brig." />
+<span class="caption">Fulton Blowing Up a Danish Brig.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But from the subsequent conduct of the British
+ministry it is supposed that they never really
+intended to give Fulton a fair opportunity to try<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span>
+the effect of his submarine engines. Their object
+may have been to prevent these devices
+getting into the hands of an enemy. Several
+experiments were made, and some of them were
+failures, but on October 15, 1805, he blew up a
+strong-built Danish brig of two hundred tons
+burden, which had been provided for the experiment
+and which was anchored near the residence
+of Pitt. The torpedo used on this occasion contained
+one hundred and seventy pounds of powder.
+In fifteen minutes from the time of starting
+the machinery the explosion took place. It lifted
+the brig almost entire and broke her completely
+in two; in one minute nothing was to be seen of
+her but floating fragments. Notwithstanding
+the complete success of this experiment, the
+British ministry seems to have had nothing to do
+with Fulton. The inventor was rather discouraged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>
+at this lack of appreciation and, after some
+further experiments, he sailed for New York in
+December, 1806.</p>
+
+<p>In this country Fulton devoted himself at once
+to his project of submarine warfare and steam
+navigation. So far from being discouraged by
+his failure to impress Europe with the importance
+of his torpedoes, his confidence was unshaken,
+because he saw that his failures were to
+be attributed to trivial errors that could easily
+be corrected. He induced our Government to
+give him the means of making further experiments,
+and invited the magistracy of New York
+and a number of citizens to Governor's Island
+where were the torpedoes and the machinery
+with which his experiments were to be made.
+In July, 1807, he blew up, in the harbor of New
+York, a large brig prepared for that purpose.
+He also devised at this time a number of stationary
+torpedoes, really casks of powder, with triggers
+that might be caught by the keel of any
+passing vessel. In March, 1810, $5,000 were
+granted by Congress for further experiments
+in submarine explosions. The sloop of war,
+Argus, was prepared for defence against the
+torpedoes after Fulton had explained his mode
+of attack. This defence was so complete that
+Fulton found it impracticable to do anything
+with his torpedoes. Some experiments were
+made, however, with a gun-harpoon and cable
+cutter, and after several attempts a fourteen-inch
+cable was cut off several feet below the surface
+of the water.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Fulton was, during all these experiments,
+much pressed for money, and apparently was
+making no headway toward the use of his submarine
+engines in a profitable way. It was in despair
+of getting our Government to make an investment
+in this direction that he finally turned
+to the problem of navigation by steam. He
+had the valuable co-operation in his new work
+of Chancellor Livingston, of New Jersey, who,
+while devoting much of his own time and means
+to the advancement of science, was fond of fostering
+the discoveries of others. He had very
+clear conceptions of what would be the great
+advantages of steamboats on the navigable rivers
+of the United States. He had already, when in
+Paris, applied himself at great expense to constructing
+vessels and machinery for that kind of
+navigation. As early as 1798 he believed that
+he had accomplished his object, and represented
+to the Legislature of New York that he was
+possessed of a mode of applying the steam-engine
+to a boat on new and advantageous principles;
+but that he was deterred from carrying
+it into effect by the uncertainty of expensive experiments,
+unless he could be assured of an exclusive
+advantage should it be successful. The
+Legislature in March, 1798, passed an act vesting
+him with the exclusive right and privilege of
+navigating all kinds of boats which might be
+propelled by the force of fire or steam on all
+the waters within the territory of New York for
+the term of twenty years, upon condition that he
+should within a twelve-month build such a boat,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span>
+whose progress should not be less than four
+miles an hour.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="John_Fitchs_Steamboat_at_Philadelphia" id="John_Fitchs_Steamboat_at_Philadelphia"></a>
+<img src="images/060.jpg" width="400" height="269" alt="John Fitch's Steamboat at Philadelphia." />
+<span class="caption">John Fitch&#39;s Steamboat at Philadelphia.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Livingston, as soon as the act had passed, built
+a boat of about thirty tons burden, to be propelled
+by steam. Soon after he entered into a
+contract with Fulton, by which it was agreed
+that a patent should be taken out in the United
+States in Fulton's name. Thus began the preparations
+for the first practical steamboat. All
+the experiments were paid for by Chancellor Livingston,
+but the work was Fulton's. In 1802, in
+Paris, he began a course of calculations upon the
+resistance of water, upon the most advantageous
+form of the body to be moved, and upon the
+different means of propelling vessels which had
+been previously attempted. After a variety of
+calculations he rejected the proposed plan of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>
+using paddles or oars, such as those already
+used by Fitch; likewise that of ducks' feet,
+which open as they are pushed out and shut as
+they are drawn in; also that of forcing water
+out of the stern of the vessel. He retained two
+methods as worthy of experiment, namely, endless
+chains with paddle-boards upon them, and
+the paddle-wheel. The latter was found to be
+the most promising, and was finally adopted
+after a number of trials with models on a little
+river which runs through the village of Plombières,
+to which he had retired in the spring of
+1802, to pursue his experiments without interruption.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Fultons_First_Experiment_with_Paddle-wheels" id="Fultons_First_Experiment_with_Paddle-wheels"></a>
+<img src="images/061.jpg" width="400" height="235" alt="" title="Fulton&#39;s First Experiment with Paddle-wheels." />
+<span class="caption">Fulton&#39;s First Experiment with Paddle-wheels.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was now determined to build an experimental
+boat, which was completed in the spring of
+1803; but when Fulton was on the point of making
+an experiment with her, an accident happened
+to the boat, the woodwork not having<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span>
+been framed strongly enough to bear the weight
+of the machinery and the agitation of the river.
+The accident did the machinery very little injury;
+but they were obliged to build the boat almost
+entirely anew. She was completed in July;
+her length was sixty-six feet and she was eight
+feet wide. Early in August, Fulton addressed a
+letter to the French National Institute, inviting
+the members to witness a trial of his boat, which
+was made before the members, and in the presence
+of a great multitude of Parisians. The
+experiment was entirely satisfactory to Fulton,
+though the boat did not move altogether with
+as much speed as he expected. But he imputed
+her moving so slowly to the extremely defective
+machinery, and to imperfections which were to
+be expected in the first experiment with so complicated
+a machine; the defects were such as
+might be easily remedied.</p>
+
+<p>Such entire confidence did he acquire from
+this experiment that immediately afterward
+he wrote to Messrs. Boulton &amp; Watt, of Birmingham,
+England, ordering certain parts of a
+steam-engine to be made for him, and sent to
+America. He did not disclose to them for
+what purpose the engine was intended, but his
+directions were such as would produce the
+parts of an engine that might be put together
+within a compass suited for a boat. Mr. Livingston had
+written to his friends in this country,
+and through their assistance an act was
+passed by the Legislature of the State of New
+York, on April 5, 1803, by which the rights<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span>
+and exclusive privileges of navigating all the
+waters of that State, by vessels propelled by
+fire or steam, granted to Livingston by the Act
+of 1798, as already mentioned, were extended to
+Livingston and Fulton, for the term of twenty
+years from the date of the new act. By this
+law the time of producing proof of the practicability
+of propelling by steam a boat of
+twenty tons capacity, at the rate of four miles
+an hour, with and against the ordinary current
+of the Hudson, was extended two years, and
+by a subsequent law, the time was extended to
+1807.</p>
+
+<p>Very soon after Fulton's arrival in New York
+he began building his first American boat.
+While she was constructing, he found that her
+cost would greatly exceed his calculations. He
+endeavored to lessen the pressure on his own
+finances by offering one-third of the rights for a
+proportionate contribution to the expense. It
+was generally known that he made this offer,
+but no one was then willing to afford aid to his
+enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring of 1807, Fulton's first American
+boat was launched from the shipyard of Charles
+Brown, on the East River. The engine from
+England was put on board, and in August she
+was completed, and was moved by her machinery
+from her birthplace to the Jersey shore.
+Livingston and Fulton had invited many of
+their friends to witness the first trial, among
+them Dr. Mitchell and Dr. M'Neven, to whom
+we are indebted for some account of what<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>
+passed on this occasion. Nothing could exceed
+the surprise and admiration of all who witnessed
+the experiment. The minds of the most
+incredulous were changed in a few minutes.
+Before the boat had gone a quarter of a mile,
+the greatest unbeliever must have been converted.
+The man who, while he looked on the
+expensive machine, thanked his stars that he
+had more wisdom than to waste his money on
+such idle schemes, changed his mind as the boat
+moved from the wharf and gained speed, and
+his complacent expression gradually stiffened
+into one of wonder.</p>
+
+<p>This boat, which was called the Clermont,
+soon after made a trip to Albany. Fulton gives
+the following account of this voyage in a letter
+to his friend, Mr. Barlow:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="Departure_of_the_Clermont_on_her_First_Voyage" id="Departure_of_the_Clermont_on_her_First_Voyage"></a>
+<img src="images/065.jpg" width="500" height="290" alt="" title="Departure of the Clermont on her First Voyage." />
+<span class="caption">Departure of the Clermont on her First Voyage.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"My steamboat voyage to Albany and back,
+has turned out rather more favorable than I had
+calculated. The distance from New York to
+Albany is one hundred and fifty miles; I ran
+it up in thirty-two hours, and down in thirty.
+I had a light breeze against me the whole way,
+both going and coming, and the voyage has been
+performed wholly by the power of the steam-engine.
+I overtook many sloops and schooners
+beating to windward, and parted with them as if
+they had been at anchor. The power of propelling
+boats by steam is now fully proved. The
+morning I left New York there were not, perhaps,
+thirty persons in the city who believed that the
+boat would even move one mile an hour, or be of
+the least utility; and while we were putting off
+from the wharf, which was crowded with spectators,
+I heard a number of sarcastic remarks.
+This is the way in which ignorant men compliment
+what they call philosophers and projectors.
+Having employed much time, money, and zeal, in
+accomplishing this work, it gives me, as it will
+you, great pleasure to see it fully answer my expectations.
+It will give a cheap and quick conveyance
+to the merchandise on the Mississippi,
+Missouri, and other great rivers, which are now
+laying open their treasures to the enterprise
+of our countrymen; and although the prospect
+of personal emolument has been some inducement
+to me, yet I feel infinitely more pleasure in
+reflecting on the immense advantage that my
+country will derive from the invention."</p>
+
+<p>Soon after this successful voyage, the Hudson
+boat was advertised and established as a regular
+passage-boat between New York and Albany.
+She, however, in the course of the season, met
+with several accidents, from the hostility of
+those engaged in the ordinary navigation of the
+river, and from defects in her machinery, the
+greatest of which was having her water-wheel
+shafts of cast-iron, which was insufficient to sustain
+the great power applied to them. The
+wheels also were hung without any support for
+the outward end of the shaft, which is now
+supplied by what are called the wheel-guards.</p>
+
+<p>At the session of 1808 a law was passed to
+prolong the time of the exclusive right to thirty
+years; it also declared combinations to destroy
+the boat, or wilful attempts to injure her, public<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a><br /><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span>
+offences, punishable by fine and imprisonment.
+Notwithstanding her misfortunes, the boat continued
+to run as a packet, always loaded with
+passengers, for the remainder of the summer.
+In the course of the ensuing winter she was
+enlarged, and in the spring of 1808 she again
+began running as a packet-boat, and continued it
+through the season. Several other boats were
+soon built for the Hudson River, and also for
+steamboat companies formed in different parts
+of the United States. On February 11, 1809, Fulton
+took out a patent for his inventions in navigation
+by steam, and on February 9, 1811, he obtained
+a second patent for some improvements in
+his boats and machinery.</p>
+
+<p>About the year 1812 two steam ferry-boats
+were built under the direction of Fulton for
+crossing the Hudson River, and one of the same
+description for the East River. These boats
+were what are called twin-boats, each of them
+being two complete hulls united by a deck or
+bridge. They were sharp at both ends, and
+moved equally well with either end foremost, so
+that they crossed and recrossed without losing
+any time by turning about. He contrived, with
+great ingenuity, floating docks for the reception
+of these boats, and a means by which they were
+brought to them without a shock. These boats,
+were the first of a fleet which has since carried
+hundreds of millions of passengers to and from
+New York.</p>
+
+<p>From the time the first boat was put in motion
+till the death of Fulton, the art of navigating by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span>
+steam advanced rapidly to that perfection of
+which he believed it capable; the boats performed
+each successive trip with increased
+speed, and every year improvements were made.
+The last boat built by Fulton was invariably the
+best, the most convenient, and the swiftest.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of 1814 a number of the citizens
+of New York, alarmed at the exposed situation
+of their harbor, had assembled with a view
+to consider whether some measures might not be
+taken to aid the Government in its protection.
+This assembly had some knowledge of Fulton's
+plans for submarine attack, and knew that he
+contemplated other means of defence. It deputed
+a number of gentlemen to act for it, and
+these were called the Coast and Harbor Committee.
+Fulton exhibited to this committee the
+model and plans for a vessel of war, to be propelled
+by steam, capable of carrying a strong
+battery, with furnaces for red-hot shot, and
+which, he represented, would move at the rate
+of four miles an hour. The confidence of the
+committee in this design was confirmed by the
+opinions of many of our most distinguished
+naval commanders, which he had obtained in
+writing, and exhibited to the committee. They
+pointed out many advantages which a steam
+vessel of war would possess over those with sails
+only.</p>
+
+<p>The National Legislature passed a law in
+March, 1814, authorizing the President of the
+United States to cause to be built, equipped, and
+employed one or more floating batteries for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span>
+defence of the waters of the United States. A
+sub-committee of five gentlemen was appointed
+to superintend the building of the proposed
+vessel, and Fulton, whose spirit animated the
+whole enterprise, was appointed the engineer.
+In June, 1814, the keel of this novel and mighty
+engine was laid, and in October she was launched
+from the New York yard of Adam and Noah
+Brown. The scene exhibited on this occasion
+was magnificent. It happened on one of our
+bright autumnal days. Multitudes of spectators
+crowded the surrounding shores. The river and
+bay were filled with vessels of war, dressed in
+all their colors in compliment to the occasion.
+By May, 1815, her engine was put on board, and
+she was so far completed as to afford an opportunity
+of trying her machinery. On the 4th of
+July, in the same year, the steam-frigate made
+a passage to the ocean and back, a distance of
+fifty-three miles, in eight hours and twenty
+minutes, by the mere force of steam. In September
+she made another passage to the sea,
+and having at this time the weight of her whole
+armament on board, she went at the rate of five
+and a half miles an hour, upon an average,
+with and against the tide. The superintending
+committee gave in their report a full description
+of the Fulton the First, the honored name this
+vessel bore.</p>
+
+<p>The last work in which the active and ingenious
+mind of Fulton was engaged was a project
+for the modification of his submarine boat.
+He presented a model of this vessel to the Government,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>
+by which it was approved; and under
+Federal authority he began building one; but
+before the hull was entirely finished his country
+had to lament his death, and the mechanics he
+employed were incapable of proceeding without
+him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="The_Demologos_or_Fulton_the_First" id="The_Demologos_or_Fulton_the_First"></a>
+<img src="images/071.jpg" width="400" height="460" alt="The Demologos, or Fulton the First. The first steam vessel-of-war in the world" />
+<span class="caption">The &quot;Demologos,&quot; or &quot;Fulton the First.&quot;<br />The first steam vessel-of-war in the world.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>During the whole time that Fulton had thus
+been devoting his talents to the service of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span>
+country, he had been harassed by lawsuits and
+controversies with those who were violating his
+patent rights, or intruding upon his exclusive
+grants. The State of New Jersey had passed a
+law which operated against Fulton, without being
+of much advantage to those interested in its
+passage, inasmuch as the laws of New York prevented
+any but Fulton's boats to approach the
+city of New York. Its only operation was to stop
+a boat owned in New York, which had been for
+several years running to New Brunswick, under
+a license from Messrs. Livingston and Fulton.
+A bold attempt was therefore made to induce
+the Legislature of the State of New York to repeal
+the laws which they had passed for the protection
+of their exclusive grant to Livingston
+and Fulton. The committee reported that such
+repeal might be passed consistently with good
+faith, honor, and justice! This report being
+made to the House, it was prevailed upon to be
+less precipitate than the committee had been. It
+gave time, which the committee would not do,
+for Fulton to be sent for from New York. The
+Assembly and Senate in joint session examined
+witnesses, and heard him and the petitioner by
+counsel. The result was that the Legislature
+refused to repeal the prior law, or to pass any
+act on the subject. The Legislature of the State
+of New Jersey also repealed their law, which
+left Fulton in the full enjoyment of his rights.
+This enjoyment was of very short duration; for
+on returning from Trenton, after this last trial,
+he was exposed on the Hudson, which was very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span>
+full of ice, for several hours. He had not a constitution
+to encounter such exposure, and upon
+his return found himself much indisposed. He
+had at that time great anxiety about the steam-frigate,
+and, after confining himself to the house
+for a few days, went to give his superintendence
+to the workmen employed about her. Forgetting
+his ill-health in the interest he took in what
+was doing on the frigate, he remained too long
+exposed on a bad day to the weather. He soon
+felt the effects of this imprudence. His indisposition
+returned upon him with such violence
+as to confine him to his bed. His illness increased,
+and on February 24, 1815, it ended his
+life.</p>
+
+<p>It was not known that Fulton's illness was
+dangerous till a very short time before his death.
+Means were immediately taken to testify, publicly,
+the universal regret at his loss, and respect
+for his memory. The corporation of the city of
+New York, the different literary institutions and
+other societies, assembled and passed resolutions
+expressing their estimation of his worth, and regret
+at his loss. They also resolved to attend
+his funeral, and that the members should wear
+badges of mourning for a certain time. As soon
+as the Legislature, which was then in session at
+Albany, heard of the death of Fulton, they expressed
+their participation in the general sentiment
+by resolving that the members of both
+Houses should wear mourning for some weeks.</p>
+
+<p>In 1806 Fulton married Harriet Livingston, a
+daughter of Walter Livingston, a relative of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span>
+associate, Chancellor Livingston. He left four
+children; one son, Robert Barlow Fulton, and
+three daughters. Fulton was in person considerably
+above medium height; his face showed
+great intelligence. Natural refinement and long
+intercourse with the most polished society of
+Europe and America had given him grace and
+elegance of manner.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="The_Clermont" id="The_Clermont"></a>
+<img src="images/074.jpg" width="400" height="219" alt="The Clermont." />
+<span class="caption">The Clermont.</span>
+</div><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>ELI WHITNEY.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Eli_Whitney" id="Eli_Whitney"></a>
+<img src="images/076.jpg" width="400" height="528" alt="Eli Whitney." />
+<span class="caption">Eli Whitney.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In 1784 an American vessel arrived at Liverpool
+having on board, as part of her cargo, eight
+bags of cotton, which were seized by the Custom-House
+under the conviction that they could not
+be the growth of America. The whole amount
+of cotton arriving at Liverpool from America
+during the two following years was less than
+one hundred and twenty bags. When Eli Whitney,
+the inventor of the cotton-gin, applied for
+his first patent in 1793, the total export of cotton
+from the United States was less than ten thousand
+bales. Fifty years later, the growth of this
+industry, owing almost wholly to Whitney's
+gin, had increased to millions of bales, and by
+1860, the export amounted to four million bales.</p>
+
+<p>According to the estimate of Judge Johnson,
+given in the most famous decision affecting the
+cotton-gin, the debts of the South were paid off
+by its aid, its capital was increased, and its lands
+trebled in value. This famous device, the gift
+of a young Northerner to the South, was rewarded
+by thirty years of ingratitude, relieved
+only by a few gleams of sunshine in the way of
+justice, serving to make the injustice all the
+more conspicuous. Whitney added hundreds
+of millions to the wealth of the United States.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a><br /><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span>
+His personal reward was countless lawsuits and
+endless vexation of body and spirit. No more
+conspicuous example can be cited of steady patience
+and sweet-tempered perseverance.</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">Eli Whitney was born in Westborough, Worcester
+County, Mass., December 8, 1765. His
+parents belonged to that respectable class of society
+who, by honest farming and kindred industries,
+managed to provide well for the rising
+family&mdash;the class from whom have arisen most of
+those who in New England have attained to eminence
+and usefulness. The indications of his
+mechanical genius were noted at an early age.
+Of his passion for mechanics, his sister gives
+the following account:</p>
+
+<p>"Our father had a workshop and sometimes
+made wheels of different kinds, and chairs. He
+had a variety of tools and a lathe for turning
+chair-posts. This gave my brother an opportunity
+of learning the use of tools when very
+young. He lost no time, but as soon as he could
+handle tools he was always making something
+in the shop, and seemed to prefer that to work
+on the farm. After the death of our mother,
+when our father had been absent from home two
+or three days, on his return he inquired of the
+housekeeper what the boys had been doing. She
+told him what the elders had done. 'But what
+has Eli been doing?' said he. She replied he
+has been making a fiddle. 'Ah!' added he, despondently,
+'I fear Eli will have to take his portion
+in fiddles.'"</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was at this time about twelve years old.
+The sister adds that his fiddle was finished
+throughout like a common violin and made
+pretty good music. It was examined by many
+persons, and all pronounced it to be a model
+piece of work for such a boy. From this time
+he was always employed to repair violins, and
+did many nice jobs that were executed to the
+entire satisfaction and even to the astonishment
+of his customers. His father's watch being the
+greatest piece of mechanism that had yet presented
+itself to his observation, he was extremely
+desirous of examining its interior construction,
+but was not permitted to do so. One Sunday
+morning, observing that his father was going to
+church and would leave at home the wonderful
+little machine, he feigned illness as an apology for
+not going. As soon as the family were out of
+sight, he flew to the room where the watch hung
+and took it down. He was so delighted with its
+motion that he took it to pieces before he thought
+of the consequences of his rash deed; for his
+father was a stern parent, and punishment would
+have been the reward of his idle curiosity, had the
+mischief been detected. He, however, put the
+works so neatly together that his father never
+discovered his audacity until he himself told him
+many years afterward.</p>
+
+<p>When Eli was thirteen years old his father
+married a second time. His stepmother, among
+her articles of furniture, had a handsome set of
+table-knives that she valued very highly.</p>
+
+<p>One day Eli said: "I could make as good ones<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span>
+if I had tools, and I could make the tools if I
+had common tools to begin with;" his mother
+laughed at him. But it so happened soon afterward
+that one of the knives was broken, and he
+made one exactly like it in every respect, except
+the stamp of the blade. When he was fifteen or
+sixteen years of age, he suggested to his father
+an enterprise which clearly showed his capacity
+for important work. The time being the Revolutionary
+War, nails were in great demand and at
+high prices. They were made chiefly by hand.
+Whitney proposed to his father to get him a few
+tools and allow him to set up the manufacture
+of nails. His father consented, and the work
+was begun. By extraordinary diligence he
+found time to make tools for his own use and to
+put in knife-blades, repair farm machinery, and
+perform other little jobs beyond the skill of the
+country workman. At this occupation the enterprising
+boy worked, alone with great success
+and with large profit to his father for two winters,
+going on with the ordinary work of the
+farm during the summer. He devised a plan for
+enlarging the business, and managed to obtain
+help from a fellow-laborer whom he picked up
+when on a short journey of forty miles, in the
+course of which he tells us that he called at every
+workshop on the way and gleaned all the information
+as to tools and methods that he could.</p>
+
+<p>At the close of the war the business of making
+nails was no longer profitable; but the fashion
+prevailing among the ladies of fastening on their
+bonnets with long pins having appeared, he contrived<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span>
+to make these pins with such skill that he
+nearly monopolized the business, though he devoted
+to it only such leisure as he could redeem
+from the occupations of the farm. He also made
+excellent walking-canes. At the age of nineteen
+Whitney conceived the idea of getting a liberal
+education; and partly by the results of his mechanical
+industries, and partly by teaching the
+village school, he was enabled so far to surmount
+the difficulties in his way as to prepare himself
+for the Freshman Class in Yale College, which he
+entered in 1789. At college his mechanical propensity
+frequently showed itself. He successfully
+undertook, on one occasion, the repairing
+of some of the philosophical apparatus. Soon
+after taking his degree, in the autumn of 1792,
+he engaged with a Georgia family as private
+teacher, and through his engagement he made
+the acquaintance of a certain General Greene, of
+Savannah, who took a deep interest in him, and
+with whom he began the study of law. While
+living with the Greenes he noticed an embroidery-frame
+used by Mrs. Greene, and about
+which she complained, observing that it tore the
+delicate threads of her work. Young Whitney,
+eager to oblige his hostess, went to work and
+speedily produced a frame on an entirely new
+plan. The family were much delighted with it,
+and considered it a wonderful piece of ingenuity.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Whitney_Watching_the_Cotton-Gin" id="Whitney_Watching_the_Cotton-Gin"></a>
+<img src="images/081.jpg" width="400" height="275" alt="Whitney Watching the Cotton-Gin." />
+<span class="caption">Whitney Watching the Cotton-Gin.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Not long afterward the Greenes were visited
+by a party of gentlemen, chiefly officers who had
+served under the general in the Revolutionary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>
+War. The conversation turned on the state of
+agriculture. It was remarked that unfortunately
+there was no means of cleaning the staple of
+the green cotton-seed, which might otherwise be
+profitably raised on land unsuitable for rice. But
+until someone devised a machine which would
+clean the cotton, it was vain to think of raising
+it for market. Separating one pound of the
+clean staple from the seed was a day's work for
+a woman. The time usually devoted to the picking
+of cotton was the evening, after the labor of
+the field was over. Then the slaves&mdash;men, women,
+and children&mdash;were collected in circles, with
+one in the middle whose duty it was to rouse
+the dosing and quicken the indolent. While
+the company were engaged in this conversation,
+Mrs. Greene said: "Gentlemen, apply to my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>
+young friend here, Mr. Whitney; he can make
+anything." And she showed them the frame and
+several other articles he had made. He modestly
+disclaimed all pretensions to mechanical
+genius, and replied that he had never seen cotton-seed.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, he immediately began upon the
+task of inventing and constructing the machine
+on which his fame depends. A Mr. Phineas
+Miller, a neighbor, to whom he communicated
+his design, warmly encouraged him, and gave
+him a room in his house wherein to carry on his
+operations. Here he began work with the disadvantage
+of being obliged to manufacture his
+own tools and draw his own wire&mdash;an article not
+to be found in Savannah. Mr. Miller and Mrs.
+Greene were the only persons who knew anything
+of his occupation. Near the close of the
+winter, 1793, the machine was so far completed
+as to leave no doubt of its success. The person
+who contributed most to the success of the undertaking,
+after the inventor, was his friend,
+Miller, a native of Connecticut and, a graduate of
+Yale. Like Whitney, he had come to Georgia
+as a private teacher, and after the death of General
+Greene he married the widow. He was a
+lawyer by profession, with a turn for mechanics.
+He had some money and proposed to Whitney
+to become his partner, he to be at the whole
+expense of manufacturing the invention until
+it should be patented. If the machine should
+succeed, they agreed that the profits and advantages
+should be divided between them. A<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span>
+legal paper covering this agreement and establishing
+the firm of Miller &amp; Whitney, bears the
+date of May 27, 1793.</p>
+
+<p>An invention so important to the agricultural
+interests of the country could not long remain a
+secret. The knowledge of it swept through the
+State, and so great was the excitement on the
+subject that crowds of persons came from all
+parts to see the machine; it was not deemed safe
+to gratify curiosity until the patent-right should
+be secured. But so determined were some of
+these people that neither law nor justice could
+restrain them; they broke into the building by
+night and carried off the machine. In this way
+the public became possessed of the invention,
+and before Whitney could complete his model
+and secure his patent, a number of machines,
+patterned after his, were in successful operation.</p>
+
+<p>The principle of the Whitney cotton-gin and
+all other gins following its features is so well
+known as to make it scarcely worth while to describe
+it here. The different parts are two cylinders
+of different diameters, mounted in a strong
+wooden frame, one cylinder bearing a number
+of circular saws fitted into grooves cut into the
+cylinder. The other hollow cylinder is mounted
+with brushes, the tips of whose bristles touch
+the saw-teeth. The cotton is put into a hopper,
+where it is met by the sharp teeth of the saws,
+torn from the seed, and carried to a point where
+the brushes sweep it off into a convenient receptacle.
+The seeds are too large to pass between
+the bars through which the saws protrude. This<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span>
+is the principle of the first machine, but many
+improvements have been made since Whitney's
+day. Nevertheless, by means of the cotton-gin,
+even in its earliest shape, one man, with the aid
+of two-horse power, could clean five thousand
+pounds of cotton in a day.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="The_Cotton-Gin" id="The_Cotton-Gin"></a>
+<img src="images/084.jpg" width="400" height="386" alt="The Cotton-Gin. (From the original model.)" />
+<span class="caption">The Cotton-Gin.<br />(From the original model.)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>As soon as the partnership of Miller &amp; Whitney
+was formed, the latter went to Connecticut
+to perfect the machine, obtain the patent, and
+manufacture for Georgia as many machines as
+he thought would supply the demand. At once
+there began between Whitney in Connecticut
+and Miller in Georgia a correspondence relative<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span>
+to the cotton-gin, which gives a complete history
+of the extraordinary efforts made by the two
+partners and the disappointments that fell to
+their lot. The very first letter, written three
+days after Whitney left, announces that encroachments
+upon their rights had already begun.
+"It will be necessary," says Miller, "to
+have a considerable number of gins in readiness
+to send out as soon as the patent is obtained in
+order to satisfy the absolute demands and make
+people's heads easy on the subject; for I am informed
+of two other claimants for the honor of
+the invention of the cotton-gin in addition to
+those we knew before." At the close of the year
+1793 Whitney was to return to Georgia with
+his gins, where his partner had made arrangements
+for beginning business. The importunity
+of Miller's letters, written during this period,
+urging him to come on, show how eager the
+Georgia planters were to enter the new field of
+enterprise that the genius of Whitney had
+opened to them. Nor did they at first contemplate
+stealing the invention. But the minds of
+even the more honorable among the planters
+were afterward deluded by various artifices set
+on foot by designing rivals of Whitney with a
+view to robbing him of his rights. One of the
+greatest difficulties experienced by the partners
+was the extreme scarcity of money, which embarrassed
+them so much as to make it impossible
+to construct machines fast enough.</p>
+
+<p>In April Whitney returned to Georgia.
+Large crops of cotton had been planted, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span>
+profits of which were to depend almost wholly
+on the success of the gin. A formidable competitor,
+the roller-gin, had also appeared, which
+destroyed the seed by means of rollers, crushing
+them between revolving cylinders instead of disengaging
+them by means of teeth. The fragments
+of seeds which remained in the cotton
+made it much inferior to Whitney's gin, and it
+was slower in operation. A still more dangerous
+rival appeared in 1795, under the name of
+the saw-gin. It was really Whitney's invention,
+except that the teeth were cut in circular rings
+of iron instead of being made of wire, as in the
+earlier forms of the Whitney gin. The use of
+such teeth had occurred to Whitney, as he established
+by legal proof. They would have been
+of no use except in connection with other parts
+of his machine, and it was a palpable attempt to
+invade his patent right. It was chiefly in reference
+to this device that the endless lawsuits that
+wore the life out of the partners were afterward
+held.</p>
+
+<p>In March, 1795, after two years of struggle,
+during which no progress seems to have been
+made, although the value of the gin was proved,
+Whitney went to New York, where he was detained
+three weeks by fever. Upon reaching
+New Haven he discovered that his shop, with
+all his machines and papers, had been consumed
+by fire. Thus he was suddenly reduced to bankruptcy
+and was in debt $4,000 without any means
+of payment. He was not, however, one to sink
+under such trials; Miller showed the same buoyant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span>
+spirit, and the following extract of a letter of
+his to Whitney may be a useful lesson to young
+men in trouble:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"I think we ought to meet such events with
+equanimity. We have been pursuing a valuable
+object by honorable means, and I trust that all
+our measures have been such as reason and virtue
+must justify. It has pleased Providence to
+postpone the attainment of this object. In the
+midst of the reflections which your story has suggested,
+and with feelings keenly awake to the
+heavy, the extensive injury we have sustained, I
+feel a secret joy and satisfaction that you possess
+a mind in this respect similar to my own&mdash;that
+you are not disheartened, that you do not
+relinquish the pursuit, and that you will persevere,
+and endeavor, at all events, to attain the
+main object. This is exactly consonant to my
+own determinations. I will devote all my time,
+all my thoughts, all my exertions, and all the
+money I can earn or borrow to encompass and
+complete the business we have undertaken; and if
+fortune should, by any future disaster, deny us the
+boon we ask, we will at least deserve it. It shall
+never be said that we have lost an object which
+a little perseverance could have attained. I think,
+indeed, it will be very extraordinary if two young
+men in the prime of life, with some share of ingenuity,
+and with a little knowledge of the world, a
+great deal of industry, and a considerable command
+of property, should not be able to sustain
+such a stroke of misfortune as this, heavy as it is."</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Miller winds up by suggesting to Whitney
+that perhaps he can get help in New Haven by
+offering twelve per cent. a year for money with
+which to build a new shop, and the inventor
+seems to have had some success in reorganizing
+his affairs, even under such desperate conditions.
+Word came at the same time from England that
+manufacturers had condemned the cotton cleaned
+by their machines on the ground that the staple
+was greatly injured. This threatened a deathblow
+to their hopes. At the time, 1796, they already
+had thirty gins at different places in
+Georgia, some worked by horses and oxen and
+some by water. Some of these were still standing
+a few years ago. The following extract of
+a letter by Whitney will show the state of his
+mind and affairs:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"The extreme embarrassments which have
+been for a long time accumulating upon me are
+now become so great that it will be impossible
+for me to struggle against them many days
+longer. It has required my utmost exertions
+to exist without making the least progress in
+our business. I have labored hard against the
+strong current of disappointment which has been
+threatening to carry us down the cataract, but I
+have labored with a shattered oar and struggled
+in vain, unless some speedy relief is obtained....
+Life is but short at best, and six or
+seven years out of the midst of it is to him who
+makes it an immense sacrifice. My most unremitted
+attention has been devoted to our business.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span>
+I have sacrificed to it other objects from
+which, before this time, I might certainly have
+gained $20,000 or $30,000. My whole prospects
+have been embarked in it, with the expectation
+that I should before this time have realized something
+from it."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The cotton of Whitney's gin was, however,
+sought by merchants in preference to other
+kinds, and respectable manufacturers testified in
+his favor. Had it not been for the extensive and
+shameful violations of their patent-right, the
+partners might yet have succeeded; but these
+encroachments had become so extensive as almost
+to destroy its value. The issue of the first
+important trial that they were able to obtain on
+the merits of the gin is announced in the following
+letter from Miller to Whitney, dated May
+11, 1797:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"The event of the first patent suit, after all
+our exertions made in such a variety of ways,
+has gone against us. The preposterous custom
+of trying civil causes of this intricacy and magnitude
+by a common jury, together with the imperfection
+of the patent law, frustrated all our
+views, and disappointed expectations which had
+become very sanguine. The tide of popular
+opinion was running in our favor, the judge was
+well disposed toward us, and many decided
+friends were with us, who adhered firmly to our
+cause and interests. The judge gave a charge
+to the jury pointedly in our favor; after which
+the defendant himself told an acquaintance of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>
+his that he would give two thousand dollars
+to be free from the verdict, and yet the jury
+gave it against us, after a consultation of about
+an hour. And having made the verdict general,
+no appeal would lie.</p>
+
+<p>"On Monday morning, when the verdict was
+rendered, we applied for a new trial, but the
+judge refused it to us on the ground that the jury
+might have made up their opinion on the defect
+of the law, which makes an aggression consist of
+making, devising, and using or selling; whereas
+we could only charge the defendant with using.</p>
+
+<p>"Thus, after four years of assiduous labor,
+fatigue, and difficulty, are we again set afloat by
+a new and most unexpected obstacle. Our hopes
+of success are now removed to a period still
+more distant than before, while our expenses are
+realized beyond all controversy."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Great efforts were made to obtain trial in a
+second suit in Savannah the following May, and
+a number of witnesses were collected from various
+parts of the country, all to no purpose, for
+the judge failed to appear, and in the meantime,
+owing to the failure of the first suit, encroachments
+on the patent-right had multiplied prodigiously.</p>
+
+<p>In April, 1799, nearly a year later, and two
+years after their first legal rebuff, Miller writes
+as follows:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"The prospect of making anything by ginning
+in this State is at an end. Surreptitious gins
+are erected in every part of the country, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span>
+jurymen at Augusta have come to an understanding
+among themselves that they will never
+give a cause in our favor, let the merits of the
+case be as they may."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The company would now have gladly relinquished
+the plan of making their own machines,
+and confined their operations to the sale of patent-rights;
+but few would buy the right to a machine
+which could be used with impunity without purchase,
+and those few usually gave notes instead
+of cash, which they afterward, to a great extent,
+avoided paying, either by obtaining a verdict
+from the juries declaring them void, or by contriving
+to postpone the collection till they were
+barred by the Statute of Limitations, a period of
+only four years. The agent of Miller &amp; Whitney,
+who was despatched on a collecting tour
+through the State of Georgia, informed his employers
+that such obstacles were thrown in his
+way by one or the other of these causes that he
+was unable to collect money enough to pay his
+expenses. It was suggested that an application
+to the Legislature of South Carolina to purchase
+the patent-right for that State would be successful.
+Whitney accordingly repaired to Columbia,
+and the business was brought before the
+Legislature in December, 1801. An extract from
+a letter by Whitney at this time shows the nature
+of the contract thus made:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"I have been at this place a little more than
+two weeks attending the Legislature. A few
+hours previous to their adjournment they voted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>
+to purchase for the State of South Carolina my
+patent-right to the machine for cleaning cotton
+at $50,000, of which sum $20,000 is to be paid
+in hand, and the remainder in three annual payments
+of $10,000 each." He adds: "We get
+but a song for it in comparison with the worth
+of the thing, but it is securing something. It
+will enable Miller &amp; Whitney to pay their debts
+and divide something between them."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>In December, 1802, Whitney negotiated the
+sale of his patent-right with the State of North
+Carolina. The Legislature laid a tax of 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>
+upon every saw (some of the gins had forty saws)
+employed in ginning cotton, to be continued for
+five years; and after deducting the expenses
+of collection the returns were faithfully passed
+over to the patentee. This compensation was
+regarded by Whitney as more liberal than that
+received from any other source. About the
+same time Mr. Goodrich, the agent of the company,
+entered into a similar negotiation with
+Tennessee, which State had by this time begun
+to realize the importance of the invention.
+The Legislature passed a law laying a tax of 37&frac12;
+cents per annum on every saw used, for the
+period of four years. Thus far the prospects
+were growing favorable to the patentees, when
+the Legislature of South Carolina unexpectedly
+annulled the contract which they had made, suspended
+further payment of the balance, and sued
+for the refunding of what had been already
+paid. When Whitney first heard of the transactions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>
+of the South Carolina Legislature, he
+was at Raleigh, where he had just completed
+a negotiation with the Legislature of North
+Carolina. In a letter written to Miller at this
+time, he remarks:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"I am, for my own part, more vexed than
+alarmed by their extraordinary proceedings. I
+think it behooves us to be very cautious and
+very circumspect in our measures, and even in
+our remarks with regard to it. Be cautious what
+you say or publish till we meet our enemies in
+a court of justice, where, if they have any sensibility
+left, we will make them very much
+ashamed of their childish conduct."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>But that Whitney felt keenly the severities
+afterward practised against him is evident from
+the tenor of the remonstrance which he presented
+to the Legislature:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"The subscriber avers that he has manifested
+no other than a disposition to fulfil all the stipulations
+entered into with the State of South
+Carolina with punctuality and good faith; and
+he begs leave to observe further, that to have industriously,
+laboriously, and exclusively devoted
+many years of the prime of his life to the invention
+and the improvement of a machine from
+which the citizens of South Carolina have already
+realized immense profits, which is worth to them
+millions, and from which their prosperity must
+continue to derive the most important profits, and
+in return to be treated as a felon, a swindler, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span>
+a villain, has stung him to the very soul. And
+when he considers that this cruel persecution is
+inflicted by the very persons who are enjoying
+these great benefits, and expressly for the purpose
+of preventing his ever deriving the least
+advantage from his own labors, the acuteness of
+his feelings is altogether inexpressible."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Doubts, it seems, had arisen in the public mind
+as to the validity of the patent. Great exertions
+had been made in Georgia, where, it will
+be remembered, hostilities were first declared
+against him, to show that his title to the invention
+was unsound, and that "somebody" in
+Switzerland had conceived it before him; and
+that the improved form of the machine with
+saws, instead of wire teeth, did not come within
+the patent, having been introduced by one
+Hodgin Holmes. The popular voice, stimulated
+by the most sordid methods, was now raised
+against Whitney throughout all the cotton States.
+Tennessee followed the example of South Carolina,
+annulling the contract made with him. And
+the attempt was made in North Carolina. But a
+committee of the Legislature, to whom it was referred,
+reported in Whitney's favor, declaring
+"that the contract ought to be fulfilled with
+punctuality and good faith," which resolution
+was adopted by both Houses. There were also
+high-minded men in South Carolina who were
+indignant at the dishonorable measures adopted
+by their Legislature of 1803; their sentiments
+impressed the community so favorably with regard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span>
+to Whitney that, at the session of 1804, the
+Legislature not only rescinded what the previous
+one had done, but signified their respect for
+Whitney by marked commendations.</p>
+
+<p>Miller died on December 7, 1803. In the
+earlier stages of the enterprise he had indulged
+high hopes of a great fortune; perpetual disappointments
+appear to have attended him through
+life. Whitney was now left alone to contend
+single-handed against the difficulties which had,
+for a series of years, almost broken down the
+spirits of the partners. The light, moreover,
+which seemed to be breaking, proved but the
+twilight of prosperity. The favorable issue of
+Whitney's affairs in South Carolina, and the generous
+receipts he obtained from his contract
+with North Carolina, relieved him, however,
+from the embarrassments under which he had
+so long groaned, and made him, in some degree,
+independent. Still, no small portion of the funds
+thus collected in North and South Carolina was
+expended in carrying on trials and endless lawsuits
+in Georgia.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in the United States Court, held in
+Georgia, December, 1807, Whitney's patent obtained
+a most important decision in its favor
+against a trespasser named Fort. It was on this
+trial that Judge Johnson gave a most celebrated
+decision in the following words:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"To support the originality of the invention,
+the complainants have produced a variety of
+depositions of witnesses, examined under commission,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span>
+whose examinations expressly prove the
+origin, progress, and completion of the machine
+of Whitney, one of the copartners. Persons who
+were made privy to his first discovery testify to
+the several experiments which he made in their
+presence before he ventured to expose his invention
+to the scrutiny of the public eye. But it
+is not necessary to resort to such testimony to
+maintain this point. The jealousy of the artist
+to maintain that reputation which his ingenuity
+has justly acquired, has urged him to unnecessary
+pains on this subject. There are circumstances
+in the knowledge of all mankind which
+prove the originality of this invention more satisfactorily
+to the mind than the direct testimony
+of a host of witnesses. The cotton-plant furnished
+clothing to mankind before the age of
+Herodotus. The green seed is a species much
+more productive than the black, and by nature
+adapted to a much greater variety of climate,
+but by reason of the strong adherence of the
+fibre to the seed, without the aid of some more
+powerful machine for separating it than any formerly
+known among us, the cultivation of it
+would never have been made an object. The
+machine of which Mr. Whitney claims the invention
+so facilitates the preparation of this species
+for use that the cultivation of it has suddenly
+become an object of infinitely greater national
+importance than that of the other species ever
+can be. Is it, then, to be imagined that if this
+machine had been before discovered, the use of
+it would ever have been lost, or could have been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>
+confined to any tract or country left unexplored
+by commercial enterprise? But it is unnecessary
+to remark further upon this subject. A number
+of years have elapsed since Mr. Whitney took
+out his patent, and no one has produced or pretended
+to prove the existence of a machine of
+similar construction or use.</p>
+
+<p>"With regard to the utility of this discovery
+the court would deem it a waste of time to dwell
+long upon this topic. Is there a man who hears
+us who has not experienced its utility? The
+whole interior of the Southern States was languishing
+and its inhabitants emigrating for want
+of some object to engage their attention and employ
+their industry, when the invention of this machine
+at once opened views to them which set the
+whole country in active motion. From childhood
+to age it has presented to us a lucrative
+employment. Our debts have been paid off, our
+capitals have increased, and our lands trebled
+themselves in value. We cannot express the
+weight of the obligation which the country owes
+to this invention. The extent of it cannot now
+be seen. Some faint presentiment may be
+formed from the reflection that cotton is rapidly
+supplanting wool, flax, silk, and even furs in
+manufactures, and may one day profitably supply
+the use of specie in our East India trade.
+Our sister States also participate in the benefits
+of this invention, for besides affording the raw
+material for their manufacturers, the bulkiness
+and quantity of the article affords a valuable
+employment for their shipping."</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The influence of this decision, however, availed
+Whitney very little, for the term of his patent
+had nearly expired. During Miller's life more
+than sixty suits had been instituted in Georgia,
+and but a single decision on the merits of the
+claim was obtained. In prosecution of his
+troublesome business, Whitney had made six
+different journeys to Georgia, several of which
+were accomplished by land at a time when the
+difficulties of such journeys were exceedingly
+great. A gentleman who was well acquainted
+with Whitney's affairs in the South, and sometimes
+acted as his legal adviser, says that in all
+his experience in the thorny profession of the
+law he never saw a case of such perseverance
+under prosecution. He adds: "Nor do I believe
+that I ever knew any other man who would
+have met them with equal coolness and firmness,
+or who would finally have obtained even the
+partial success which he did. He always called
+on me in New York on his way South when going
+to attend his endless trials and to meet the
+mischievous contrivances of men, who seemed
+inexhaustible in their resources of evil. Even
+now, after thirty years, my head aches to recollect
+his narratives of new trials, fresh disappointments,
+and accumulated wrongs."</p>
+
+<p>In 1798 Whitney had become deeply impressed
+with the uncertainty of all his hopes founded
+upon the cotton-gin, and began to think seriously
+of devoting himself to some business in which
+his superior ingenuity, seconded by uncommon
+industry, would conduct him by a slow but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span>
+sure road to a competent fortune. It may be
+considered indicative of solid judgment and a
+well-balanced mind that he did not, as is so frequently
+the case with men of inventive genius,
+become so poisoned with the hopes of vast
+wealth as to be disqualified for making a reasonable
+provision for life by the sober earnings
+of private industry. The enterprise which he
+selected in accordance with these views was
+the manufacture of arms for the United States.
+Through Oliver Wolcott, then Secretary of the
+Treasury, he obtained a contract for the manufacture
+of 10,000 stand of arms, 4,000 of which
+were to be delivered before the last of September
+of the ensuing year, 1799. Whitney purchased
+for his works a site called East Rock,
+near New Haven, now known as Whitneyville,
+and justly admired for the romantic beauty of
+its scenery. A water-fall offered the necessary
+power for the machinery.</p>
+
+<p>Here he began operations with great zeal. His
+machinery was yet to be built, his material collected,
+and even his workmen to be taught, and
+that in a business with which he was imperfectly
+acquainted.</p>
+
+<p>A severe winter retarded his operations and
+rendered him incompetent to fulfil the contract.
+Only 500 instead of 4,000 stands were delivered
+the first year, and eight years instead of two
+were found necessary for completing the whole.
+During the eight years Whitney was occupied
+in performing this work, he applied himself to
+business with the most exemplary diligence, rising<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span>
+every morning as soon as it was day, and at
+night setting everything in order in all parts of
+the establishment. His genius impressed itself
+on every part of the factory, extending even
+to the most common tools, most of which received
+some peculiar modification which improved
+them in accuracy or efficiency. His machines
+for making the several parts of the musket
+were made to operate with the greatest possible
+degree of uniformity and precision. The object
+at which he aimed, and which he fully accomplished,
+was to make the same parts of different
+guns, as the locks, for instance, as much like each
+other as the successive impressions of a copper-plate
+engraving, and it has generally been considered
+that Whitney greatly improved the way
+of manufacturing arms and laid his country
+under permanent obligations by augmenting
+our facilities for national defence. In 1812 he
+made a contract to manufacture for the United
+States 15,000 stand of arms, and in the meantime
+a similar contract with the State of New
+York. Several other persons made contracts
+with the Government at about the same time and
+attempted the manufacture of muskets. The
+result of their efforts was a complete failure,
+and in some instances they expended a considerable
+fortune in addition to the amount received
+for their work. In 1822 Calhoun, then Secretary
+of War, admitted in a conversation with Whitney
+that the Government was saving $25,000
+a year at the public armories alone by his improvements,
+and it should be remembered that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span>
+the utility of Whitney's labors during this part of
+his life was not limited to this particular business.</p>
+
+<p>In 1812 Whitney made application to Congress
+for the renewal of his patent for the cotton-gin.
+In his memorial he presented the history of the
+struggles he had been forced to make in defence
+of his rights, observing that he had been unable
+to obtain any decision on the merits of his claim
+until thirteen years of his patent had expired.
+He states also that his invention had been a
+source of opulence to thousands of the citizens
+of the United States; that as a labor-saving
+machine it would enable one man to perform the
+work of a thousand men, and that it furnished to
+the whole family of mankind, at a very cheap
+rate, the most essential material for their clothing.
+Although so great advantages had already
+been experienced, and the prospect of future
+benefits was so promising, still, many of those
+whose interest had been most promoted and the
+value of whose property had been most enhanced
+by this invention, had obstinately persisted in
+refusing to make any compensation to the inventor.
+From the State in which he had first
+made, and where, he had first introduced his
+machine, and which had derived the most signal
+benefits&mdash;Georgia&mdash;he had received nothing;
+and from no State had he received the amount
+of half a cent per pound on the cotton cleaned
+with his machines in one year. Estimating the
+value of the labor of one man at twenty cents a
+day, the whole amount which had been received
+by him for his invention was not equal to the value<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span>
+of the labor saved in one hour by his machines
+then in use in the United States. He continues:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"It is objected that if the patentee succeeds in
+procuring the renewal of his patent he will be
+too rich. There is no probability that the patentee,
+if the term of his patent were extended
+for twenty years, would ever obtain for his invention
+one-half as much as many an individual
+will gain by the use of it. Up to the present
+time the whole amount of what he had acquired
+from this source, after deducting his expenses,
+does not exceed one-half the sum which a single
+individual has gained by the use of the machine
+in one year. It is true that considerable sums
+have been obtained from some of the States
+where the machine is used, but no small portion
+of these sums has been expended in prosecuting
+his claim in a State where nothing has been obtained,
+and where his machine has been used to
+the greatest advantage."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding these cogent arguments, the
+application was rejected by the courts. Some
+liberal-minded and enlightened men from the
+cotton districts favored the petition, but a majority
+of the members from that part of the Union
+were warmly opposed to granting it. In a letter
+to Robert Fulton, Whitney says:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"The difficulties with which I have to contend
+have originated, principally, in the want of a disposition
+in mankind to do justice. My invention
+was new and distinct from every other; it stood
+alone. It was not interwoven with anything<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span>
+before known; and it can seldom happen that an
+invention or improvement is so strongly marked
+and can be so clearly and specifically identified;
+and I have always believed that I should have
+no difficulty in causing my right to be respected,
+if it had been less valuable, and been used only
+by a small portion of the community. But the
+use of this machine being immensely profitable
+to almost every planter in the cotton districts,
+all were interested in trespassing upon the patent-right,
+and each kept the other in countenance.
+Demagogues made themselves popular by misrepresentations
+and unfounded clamors, both
+against the right and against the law made for
+its protection. Hence there arose associations
+and combinations to oppose both. At one time,
+but few men in Georgia dared to come into court
+and testify to the most simple facts within their
+knowledge, relative to the use of the machine. In
+one instance I had great difficulty in proving that
+the machine had been used in Georgia, although
+at the same moment there were three separate
+sets of this machinery in motion within fifty yards
+of the building in which the court sat, and all so
+near that the rattling of the wheels was distinctly
+heard on the steps of the court-house."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Such perseverance, patience, and uncommon
+skill were not, however, to go wholly unrewarded.
+Whitney's factory of arms in New
+Haven made money for him, and the Southern
+States were not all guilty of ingratitude. Moreover,
+in his private life he was extremely fortunate.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>
+In January, 1817, he married Henrietta
+Edwards, the youngest daughter of Judge Pierpont
+Edwards, of Connecticut. A son and three
+daughters contributed to the sunshine of the
+close of a somewhat stormy and eventful life.
+His last years were his happiest. He found
+prosperity and honor in New Haven, where he
+died on January 8, 1825, after a tedious illness.</p>
+
+<p>In person Whitney was of more than usual
+height, with much dignity of manner and an
+open, pleasant face. Among his particular
+friends no man was more esteemed. Some of
+the earliest of his intimate associates were among
+the latest. His sense of honor was high, and his
+feeling of resentment and indignation under injustice
+correspondingly strong. He could, however,
+be cool when his opponents were hot, and
+his strong sense of the injuries he had suffered
+did not impair the natural serenity of his temper.
+The value of his famous invention has so steadily
+grown that its money importance to this country
+can scarcely be estimated in figures. His tomb
+in New Haven is after a model of that of Scipio,
+at Rome, and bears the following inscription:</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<big>ELI WHITNEY,</big><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Inventor of the Cotton-Gin.</span><br />
+<br />
+OF USEFUL SCIENCE AND ARTS, THE EFFICIENT PATRON<br />
+AND IMPROVER.<br />
+<br />
+IN THE SOCIAL RELATIONS OF LIFE, A MODEL OF EXCELLENCE.<br />
+<br />
+WHILE PRIVATE AFFECTION WEEPS AT HIS TOMB, HIS<br />
+COUNTRY HONORS HIS MEMORY.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Born Dec. 8, 1765. Died Jan. 8, 1825.</span><br />
+</p>
+<hr class="chap" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<h3>ELIAS HOWE.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Elias_Howe" id="Elias_Howe"></a>
+<img src="images/106.jpg" width="400" height="534" alt="Elias Howe." />
+<span class="caption">Elias Howe.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In looking over the history of great inventions
+it is remarkable how uniformly those discoveries
+that helped mankind most have been derided,
+abused, and opposed by the very classes which
+in the end they were destined to bless. Nearly
+every great invention has had literally to be
+forced into popular acceptance. The bowmen
+of the Middle Ages resisted the introduction of
+the musket; the sedan-chair carriers would not
+allow hackney carriages to be used; the stagecoach
+lines attempted by all possible devices to
+block the advance of the railway. When, in
+1707, Dr. Papin showed his first rude conception
+of a steamboat, it was seized by the boatmen, who
+feared that it would deprive them of a living.
+Kay was mobbed in Lancashire when he tried to
+introduce his fly-shuttle; Hargreaves had his
+spinning-frame destroyed by a Blackburn mob;
+Crampton had to hide his spinning-mule in a
+lumber-room for fear of a similar fate; Arkwright,
+the inventor of the spinning-frame, was denounced
+as the enemy of the working-classes
+and his mill destroyed; Jacquard narrowly escaped
+being thrown into the river Rhone by a
+crowd of furious weavers when his new loom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a><br /><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span>
+was first put into operation; Cartwright had to
+abandon his power-loom for years because of
+the bitter animosity of the weavers toward it.
+Riots were organized in Nottingham against
+the use of the stocking-loom.</p>
+
+<p>It is not therefore surprising that the greatest
+labor-saving machine of domestic life, the sewing-machine,
+should have been received with anything
+but thanks. Howe was abused, ridiculed,
+and denounced as the enemy of man, and especially
+of poor sewing-women, the very class whose
+toil he has done so much to lighten. Curses instead
+of blessings were showered upon him during
+the first years that followed the successful
+working of his wonderful machine. Fortunately
+for the inventor, the age of persecution had almost
+passed, and Howe lived to receive the rewards
+he so fully deserved.</p>
+
+<p>Elias Howe, Jr., was born in Spencer, Mass., in
+1819. His father was a farmer and miller, and
+the eight children of the family, as was common
+with all poor people of the time, were early
+taught to do light work of one kind or another.
+When Elias was six years old he was set with his
+brothers and sisters at sticking wire teeth through
+the leather straps used for cotton-cards. When
+older he helped his father in the mill, and in summer
+picked up a little book knowledge at the district
+school. As a boy he was frail in constitution,
+and he was slightly lame. When eleven
+years old he attempted farm labor for a neighbor,
+but, was not strong enough for it and returned
+to his father's mill, where he remained<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span>
+until he was sixteen. It was here that he first
+began to like machinery. A friend who had
+visited Lowell gave him such an account of that
+bustling city and its big mills that young Howe,
+becoming dissatisfied, obtained his father's consent
+to leave, and found employment in one of
+the Lowell cotton-mills. The financial crash of
+1837 stopped the looms, and Howe obtained a
+place in a Cambridge machine-shop in which his
+cousin, Nathaniel P. Banks, afterward Governor
+of Massachusetts, also worked. Howe's first job
+happened to be upon a new hemp-carding machine
+of Treadwell.</p>
+
+<p>At the age of twenty-one Howe married and
+moved to Boston, finding employment in the machine-shop
+of Ari Davis. He is described as being a
+capital workman, more full of resources
+than of plodding industry, however, and rather
+apt to spend more time in suggesting a better
+way of doing a job than in following instructions.
+With such a disposition, and inasmuch as his suggestions
+were not considered of value, he had
+rather a hard time of it. Three children were
+born to the young couple. As Howe's earnings
+were slight and his health none of the best, his
+wife tried to add to the family income, and at
+evening, when Howe lay exhausted upon the bed
+after his day's work, the young mother patiently
+sewed. Her toil was to some purpose. With
+his natural bent for mechanics, Howe could not
+be a silent witness of this incessant and poorly
+paid labor without becoming interested in affording
+aid. Moreover, he was constantly employed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span>
+upon new spinning and weaving machines for doing
+work that for thousands of years had been
+done painfully and slowly by hand. The possibility
+of sewing by machinery had often been
+spoken of before that day, but the problem
+seemed to present insuperable difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>Elias Howe had, as we know, peculiar fitness for
+such work. He had seen much of inventors and
+inventions, and knew something of the dangers
+and disappointments in store for him. In the intervals
+between important jobs at the shop he
+nursed the idea of a sewing-machine, keeping
+his own counsel. In his first rude attempt it appeared
+to him, that machine-sewing could only
+be accomplished with very coarse thread or
+string; fine thread would not stand the strain.
+For his first machine he made a needle pointed
+at both ends, with an eye in the middle; it was
+arranged to work up and down, carrying the
+thread through at each thrust. It was only
+after more than a year's work upon this device
+that he decided it would not do. This first
+attempt was a sort of imitation of sewing by
+hand, the machine following more or less the
+movements of the hand. Finally, after repeated
+failures, it became plain to him that something
+radically different was needed, and that there
+must be another stitch, and perhaps another
+needle or half a dozen needles, in such a machine.
+He then conceived the idea of using two threads,
+and making the stitch by means of a shuttle and
+a curved needle with the eye near the point.
+This was the real solution of the problem. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span>
+October, 1844, he made a rough model of his
+first sewing-machine, all of wood and wire, and
+found that it would actually sew.</p>
+
+<p>In one of the earliest accounts of the invention
+it is thus described: "He used a needle
+and a shuttle of novel construction, and combined
+them with holding surfaces, feed mechanism,
+and other devices as they had never before
+been brought together in one machine....
+One of the principal features of Mr. Howe's invention
+is the combination of a grooved needle
+having an eye near its point, and vibrating in the
+direction of its length, with a side-pointed shuttle
+for effecting a locked stitch, and forming, with
+the threads, one on each side of the cloth, a firm
+and lasting seam not easily ripped."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Howe had given up work as a
+machinist and had moved to his father's house
+in Cambridge, where the elder Howe had a
+shop for the cutting of palm-leaf used in the
+manufacture of hats. Here Elias and his little
+family lived, and in the garret the inventor put
+up a lathe upon which he made the parts of his
+sewing-machine. To provide for his family he
+did such odd jobs as he could find; but it was
+hard work to get bread, to say nothing of butter,
+and to make matters worse his father lost his shop
+by fire. Elias knew that his sewing-machine
+would work, but he had no money wherewith to
+buy the materials for a machine of steel and iron,
+and without such a machine he could not hope to
+interest capital in it. He needed at least $500 with
+which to prove the value of his great invention.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Fortune threw in his way a coal and wood
+dealer of Cambridge, named Fisher, who had
+some money. Fisher liked the invention and
+agreed to board Howe and his family, to give
+Howe a workshop in his house, and to advance
+the $500 necessary for the construction of a first
+machine. In return he was to become a half
+owner in the patent should Howe succeed in obtaining
+one. In December, 1844, Howe accordingly
+moved into Fisher's house, and here the
+new marvel was brought into the world. All
+that winter Howe worked over his device in
+Fisher's garret, making many changes as unforeseen
+difficulties arose. He worked all day, and
+sometimes nearly all night, succeeding by April,
+1845, in sewing a seam four yards long with his
+machine. By the middle of May the machine
+was completed, and in July Howe sewed with it
+the seams of two woollen suits, one for himself
+and the other for Fisher; the sewing was so well
+done that it promised to outlast the cloth. For
+many years this machine was exhibited in a shop
+in New York. It showed how completely, at
+really the first attempt, Howe had mastered the
+enormous difficulties in his way. Its chief features
+are those upon which were founded all the
+sewing-machines that followed.</p>
+
+<p>Late in 1845 Howe obtained his first patent
+and began to take means to introduce his sewing-machine
+to the public. He first offered it to
+the tailors of Boston, who admitted its usefulness,
+but assured him that it would never be
+adopted, as it would ruin their trade. Other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span>
+efforts were equally unsuccessful; the more perfectly
+the machine did its work, the more obstinate
+and determined seemed to be the resistance
+to it. Everyone admitted and praised the ingenuity
+of the invention, but no one would invest a
+dollar in it. Fisher became disheartened and
+withdrew from the partnership, and Howe and
+his family moved back into his father's house.</p>
+
+<p>For a time the poor inventor abandoned his
+machine and obtained a place as engineer on a
+railway, driving a locomotive, until his health
+entirely broke down. Forced to turn again to
+his beloved sewing-machine for want of anything
+better to do, Howe decided to send his brother
+Amasa to England with a machine. Amasa
+reached London in October, 1846, and met a certain
+William Thomas, to whom he explained the
+invention. Thomas was much impressed with
+its possibilities and offered $1,250 for the machine
+and also to engage Elias Howe at $15 a
+week if he would enter his business of umbrella
+and corset maker. This was at least a livelihood
+to the latter, and he sailed for England, where
+for the next eight months he worked for Thomas,
+whom he found an uncommonly hard master.
+He was indeed so harshly treated that, although
+his wife and three children had arrived in London,
+he threw up his situation. For a time his
+condition was a piteous one. He was in a strange
+country, without friends or money. For days at
+a time the little family were without more than
+crusts to live upon.</p>
+
+<p>Believing that he could struggle along better<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span>
+alone, Howe sent his family home with the first
+few dollars that he could obtain from the other
+side and remained in London. There were certain
+things which caused him to hope for better
+times ahead. But such hopes were delusive, it
+seems, and after some months of hardship he
+followed his family to this country, pawning his
+model and his patent papers in order to obtain
+the necessary money for the passage. As he
+landed in New York with less than a dollar in his
+pocket, he received news that his wife was dying
+of consumption in Cambridge. He had no
+money for travelling by rail, and he was too
+feeble to attempt the journey on foot. It took
+him some days to obtain the money for his fare
+to Boston, but he arrived in time to be present
+at the death-bed of his wife. Before he could
+recover from this blow he had news that the
+ship by which he had sent home the few household
+goods still remaining to him had gone to
+the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>This was poor Howe's darkest hour. Others
+had seen the value of the sewing-machine, and
+during his absence in England several imitations
+of it had been made and sold to great advantage
+by unscrupulous mechanics, who had paid no attention
+to the rights of the inventor. Such machines
+were already spoken of as wonders by
+the newspapers, and were beginning to be used
+in several industries. Howe's patent was so
+strong that it was not difficult to find money to
+defend it, once the practical value of the invention
+had been well established, and in August,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span>
+1850, he began several suits to make his rights
+clear. At the same time he moved to New
+York, where he began in a small way to manufacture
+machines in partnership with a business
+man named Bliss, who undertook to sell
+them.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until Howe's rights to the invention
+had been fully established, which was done by
+the decision of Judge Sprague, in 1854, that the
+real value of the sewing-machine as a money-making
+venture began to be apparent and even
+then its great importance was so little realized,
+even by Bliss, who was in the business and died
+in 1855, that Howe was enabled to buy the interest
+of his heirs for a small sum. It was during
+these efforts to introduce the sewing-machine
+that occurred what were known as the sewing-machine
+riots&mdash;disturbances of no special importance,
+however&mdash;fomented by labor leaders
+in the New York shops in which cheap clothing
+was manufactured. Howe's sewing-machine
+was denounced as a menace to the thousands of
+men and women who worked in these shops, and
+in several establishments the first Howe machines
+introduced were so injured by mischievous persons
+as to retard the success of the experiment
+for nearly a year. Failing to stop their introduction
+by such means a public demonstration
+against them was organized and for a time
+threatened such serious trouble that some of the
+large shops gave up the use of the machine; but
+in small establishments employing but a few
+workmen they continued to be used and were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span>
+soon found to be so indispensable that all opposition
+faded away.</p>
+
+<p>The patent suits forced upon Howe by a number
+of infringers were costly drains upon the inventor,
+but in the end all other manufacturers
+were compelled to pay tribute to him, and in six
+years his royalties grew from $300 to more than
+$200,000 a year. In 1863 his royalties were estimated
+at $4,000 a day. At the Paris Exposition
+of 1867 he was awarded a gold medal and the
+ribbon of the Legion of Honor.</p>
+
+<p>Howe's health, never strong, was so thoroughly
+broken by the years of struggle and hardship he
+met with while trying to introduce his machine
+that he never completely recovered. If honors
+and money were any comfort to him, his last
+years must have been happy ones, for his invention
+made him famous, and he had been enough
+of a workingman to recognize the blessing he
+had conferred upon millions of women released
+from the slavery of the needle; he had answered
+Hood's "Song of the Shirt." He died on October
+3, 1867, at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y.</p>
+
+<p>Those who knew Howe personally speak of
+him as rather a handsome man, with a head
+somewhat like Franklin's and a reserved, quiet
+manner. His bitter struggle against poverty
+and disease left its impress upon him even to the
+last. One trait frequently mentioned was his
+readiness to find good points in the thousand and
+one variations and sometimes improvements
+upon his invention. During the years 1858-67,
+when he died, there were recorded nearly three<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>
+hundred patents affecting the sewing-machine,
+taken out by other inventors. Howe was always
+ready to help along such improvements by advice
+and often by money. He fought sturdily
+for his rights, but once those conceded he was a
+generous rival.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="SFB_Morse" id="SFB_Morse"></a>
+<img src="images/119.jpg" width="400" height="404" alt="S.F.B. Morse." />
+<span class="caption">S.F.B. Morse.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Samuel Finley Breese Morse was the eldest
+son of the Rev. Jedediah Morse, an eminent
+New England divine. The Rev. Samuel Finley,
+D.D., second president of the College of New
+Jersey, Princeton, was his maternal great-grandfather,
+after whom he was named. Breese was
+the maiden name of his mother. The famous inventor
+of the telegraph was born at the foot of
+Breed's Hill, Charlestown, Mass., April 27, 1791.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>
+Dr. Belknap, of Boston, writing to Postmaster-General
+Hazard, New York, says:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Birthplace_of_SFB_Morse" id="Birthplace_of_SFB_Morse"></a>
+<img src="images/117.jpg" width="400" height="291" alt="Birthplace of S.F.B. Morse, Built 1775." />
+<span class="caption">Birthplace of S.F.B. Morse, Built 1775.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Congratulate the Monmouth judge (Mr.
+Breese, the grandfather) on the birth of a grandson.
+Next Sunday he is to be loaded with
+names, not quite so many as the Spanish ambassador
+who signed the treaty of peace of 1783,
+but only four. As to the child, I saw him asleep,
+so can say nothing of his eye, or his genius peeping
+through it. He may have the sagacity of a
+Jewish rabbi, or the profundity of a Calvin, or
+the sublimity of a Homer for aught I know, but
+time will bring forth all things."</p>
+
+<p>Jedediah Morse studied theology under the
+Rev. Dr. Jonathan Edwards. Before he began
+preaching, and while teaching school in New
+Haven, he began his "American Geography,"
+which was afterward indentified with his name.
+He began his ministry at Norwich, whence he
+was called back to be tutor in Yale. His health
+was inadequate to the work and he went to
+Georgia, returning to Charlestown, Mass., as
+pastor of the First Congregational Church, on
+the day that Washington was inaugurated as
+President in New York, April 30, 1789. Dr.
+Eliot, speaking of Jedediah Morse, said: "What
+an astonishing impetus that man has!" President
+Dwight said: "He is as full of resources
+as an egg is of meat." Daniel Webster spoke of
+him as "always thinking, always writing, always
+talking, always acting."</p>
+
+<p>Morse's mother, Elizabeth Anne Breese, came
+of good Scotch-Irish stock. She was married to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span>
+Jedediah Morse in 1789, and was noted as a calm,
+judicious, and thinking woman, with a will of her
+own. When the child, Samuel F.B. Morse, was
+four years old he was sent to school to an old
+lady within a few hundred yards of the parsonage.
+She was an invalid, unable to leave her chair, and
+governed her unruly flock with a long rattan
+which reached across the small room in which it
+was gathered. One of her punishments was pinning
+the culprit to her own dress, and Morse remarks
+that his first attempts at drawing were discouraged
+in this fashion. Perhaps the fact that
+he selected the old lady's face as a model had
+something to do with it. At the age of seven he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span>
+was sent to school at Andover, where he was fitted
+for entering Phillips Academy, and prepared
+here for Yale, joining the class of 1807. When
+he was thirteen years old, at Andover, he wrote
+a sketch of Demosthenes and sent it to his father,
+by whom it was preserved as a mark of the
+learning and taste of the child. Dr. Timothy
+Dwight was then president of Yale and a warm
+friend of the elder Morse. Finley Morse, as he
+was then known, received therefore the deep personal
+interest of Dr. Dwight. Jeremiah Day was
+professor of natural philosophy in Yale College,
+and under his instruction Morse began the study
+of electricity, receiving perhaps those impressions
+that were destined to produce so great an
+influence upon him and, through him, upon this
+century. Professor Day was then young and
+ardent in the pursuit of science, kindling readily
+the enthusiasm of his students. He afterward became
+president of the college. There was at the
+same time in the faculty Benjamin Silliman, who
+was professor of chemistry, and near whom Morse
+resided for several years. Years afterward the
+testimony of Professors Day and Silliman was
+given in court, when it was important, in the
+defence of his claim to priority in the invention of
+the telegraph. Through them Morse was able to
+show that he was early interested in the study of
+chemistry and electricity. During this litigation
+Morse did not know that there were scores of
+letters, written by him as a young student to his
+father, among the papers of Dr Jedediah Morse,
+that would have shown conclusively his interest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span>
+and aptitude in these studies. The papers were
+brought to light when the life of Morse by
+Prime came to be written.</p>
+
+<p>The first part of Morse's life was devoted to
+art. At a very early age he showed his taste in
+this direction, and at the age of fifteen painted a
+fairly good picture in water colors of a room in
+his father's house, with his parents, himself, and
+two brothers around a table. This picture used
+to hang in his home in New York by the side of
+his last painting. From that time his desire to become
+an artist haunted him through his collegiate
+life. In February, 1811, he painted a picture, now
+in the office of the mayor of Charlestown, Mass.,
+depicting the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth,
+which, with a landscape painted at about
+the same time, decided his father, by the advice of
+Stuart, to permit him to visit Europe with Washington
+Allston. He bore letters to West and to
+Copley, from both of whom he received the
+kindest attention and encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>As a test for his fitness for a place as student
+in the Royal Academy, Morse made a drawing
+from a small cast of the Farnese Hercules. He
+took this to West, who examined the drawing
+carefully and handed it back, saying: "Very
+well, sir, very well; go on and finish it." "It
+is finished," said the expectant student. "Oh,
+no," said the president. "Look here, and here,
+and here," pointing out many unfinished places
+which had escaped the eye of the young artist.
+Morse quickly observed the defects, spent a week
+in further perfecting his drawing, and then took<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span>
+it to West, confident that it was above criticism.
+The venerable president of the Academy bestowed
+more praise than before and, with a pleasant
+smile, handed it back to Morse, saying:
+"Very well, indeed, sir. Go on and finish it." "Is
+it not finished?" inquired the almost discouraged
+student. "See," said West, "you have not
+marked that muscle, nor the articulation of the
+finger-joints." Three days more were spent
+upon the drawing, when it was taken back to the
+implacable critic. "Very clever, indeed," said
+West; "very clever. Now go on and finish it."
+"I cannot finish it," Morse replied, when the old
+man, patting him on the shoulder, said: "Well,
+I have tried you long enough. Now, sir, you
+have learned more by this drawing than you
+would have accomplished in double the time by
+a dozen half-finished beginnings. It is not many
+drawings, but the character of one which makes
+a thorough draughtsman. Finish one picture,
+sir, and you are a painter."</p>
+
+<p>Morse heeded this advice. He went to work
+with Allston, and encouraged by the veteran,
+Copley, he began upon a large picture for exhibition
+in the Royal Academy, choosing as his
+subject "The Dying Hercules." He modelled
+his figure in clay, as the best of the old painters
+did. It was his first attempt in the sculptor's art.
+The cast was made in plaster and taken to West,
+who was delighted with it. This model contended
+for the prize of a gold medal offered by
+the Society of Arts for the best original cast of
+a single figure, and won it. In the large room of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span>
+the London Adelphi, in the presence of the
+British nobility, foreign ambassadors, and distinguished
+strangers, the Duke of Norfolk publicly
+presented the medal to Morse on May 13, 1813.
+At the same time the painting from this model,
+then on exhibition at the Royal Academy, received
+great praise from the critics, who placed
+"The Dying Hercules" among the first twelve
+pictures in a collection of almost two thousand.</p>
+
+<p>This was an extraordinary success for so young
+a man, and Morse determined to try for the highest
+prize offered by the Royal Academy for the
+best historical composition, the decision to be
+made in 1815. For that purpose he produced
+his "Judgment of Jupiter" in July of that year.
+West assured him that it would take the prize,
+but Morse was unable to comply with the rules
+of the Academy, which required the victor to
+receive the medal in person. His father had
+summoned him home. West urged the Academy
+to make an exception in his case, but it
+could not be done, and the young painter had to
+be contented with his assurances that he would
+certainly have won the prize (a gold medal and
+$250) had he remained.</p>
+
+<p>West was always kind to Americans, and
+Morse was a favorite with him. One day, when
+the venerable painter was at work upon his great
+picture, "Christ Rejected," after carefully examining
+Morse's hands and noting their beauty,
+he said: "Let me tie you with this cord and
+take that place while I paint in the hands of the
+Saviour." This was done, and when he released<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span>
+the young artist, he said to him: "You may now
+say, if you please, that you had a hand in this picture."
+A number of noted English artists&mdash;Turner,
+Northcote, Sir James Lawrence, Flaxman&mdash;and
+literary men&mdash;Coleridge, Wordsworth, Rogers,
+and Crabbe among them&mdash;were attracted
+by young Morse's proficiency and pleasant manners,
+and when in August, 1815, he packed his
+picture, "The Judgment of Jupiter," and sailed
+for home, he bore with him the good wishes of
+some of England's most distinguished men.</p>
+
+<p>When Morse reached Boston, although but
+twenty-four years old, he found that fame had
+preceded him. His prestige was such that he
+set up his easel with high hopes and fair prospects
+for the future, both destined soon to be
+dispelled. The taste of America had not risen
+to the appreciation of historical pictures. His
+original compositions and his excellent copies of
+the masterpieces of the Old World excited the
+admiration of cultured people, but no orders
+were given for them. He left Boston almost
+penniless after having waited for months for patronage,
+and determined to try to earn his bread
+by painting the portraits of people in the rural
+districts of New England, where his father's
+name was a household word. During the autumn
+of 1816 and the winter of 1816-1817 he visited
+several towns in New Hampshire and Vermont,
+painting portraits in Walpole, Hanover, Windsor,
+Portsmouth, and Concord. He received the
+modest sum of $15 for each portrait. From
+Concord, N.H., he writes to his parents: "I am<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>
+still here (August 16th) and am passing my time
+very agreeably. I have painted five portraits at
+$15 each, and have two more engaged and many
+talked of. I think I shall get along well. I believe
+I could make an independent fortune in a
+few years if I devoted myself exclusively to portraits,
+so great is the desire for good portraits in
+the different country towns." He doubtless was
+candid when he wrote that he was "passing his
+time in Concord very agreeably," for it was here
+that he met Lucretia P. Walker, who was accounted
+the most beautiful and accomplished
+young lady of the town, whom Morse subsequently
+married. She was a young woman of
+great personal loveliness and rare good sense.
+The young artist was attracted by her beauty,
+her sweetness of temper, and high intellectual
+qualities. All the letters that she wrote to him
+before and after their marriage he carefully preserved,
+and these are witnesses to her intelligence,
+education, tenderness of feeling, and admirable
+fitness to be the wife of such a man.
+Gradually Morse's portraits became so much in
+demand that he was enabled to increase his price
+to $60, and as he painted four a week upon the
+average, and received a good deal of money during
+a tour in the South, he was enabled to return
+to New England in 1818 with $3,000, and to
+marry Miss Walker on October 6th of that year.</p>
+
+<p>The first years of Morse's married life were
+passed in Charleston, S.C., after which he returned
+to New England, and having laid by
+some little capital, he took up again what he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span>
+deemed to be his real vocation&mdash;the painting of
+great historical pictures. His first venture in
+this direction was an exhibition picture of the
+House of Representatives at Washington. As a
+business venture it was disastrous, and resulted
+in the loss of eighteen months of precious time.
+It was finally sold to an Englishman. Then began
+Morse's life in New York. Through the influence
+of Isaac Lawrence he obtained a commission
+from the city authorities of New York to
+paint a full-length portrait of Lafayette, who was
+then in this country. He had just completed
+his study from life in Washington in February,
+1825, when he received the news of the death of
+his wife. A little more than a year afterward
+both his father and mother died. Thenceforward
+his children and art absorbed his affections.</p>
+
+<p>He was an artist, heart and soul, and his
+professional brethren soon had good reason to
+be grateful to him. The American Academy of
+Fine Arts, then under the presidency of Colonel
+John Trumbull, was in a languishing state and of
+little use to artists. The most advanced of its
+members felt the need of relief, and a few of
+them met at Morse's rooms to discuss their
+troubles. At that meeting Morse proposed the
+formation of a new society of artists, and at a
+meeting held at the New York Historical Society's
+rooms the "New York Drawing Association"
+was organized, with Morse as its president.
+Trumbull endeavored to compel the new society
+to profess allegiance to the academy, but Morse
+protested, and thanks to his advice, on January<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>
+18, 1826, a new art association was organized
+under the name of the "National Academy of
+Design." Morse was its first president, and for
+sixteen years he was annually elected to that
+office. The friends of the old academy were
+wrathful and assailed the new association. A
+war of words, in which Morse acted as the champion
+of the new society, was waged until victory
+was conceded to the reformers. Thus Morse
+inaugurated a new era in the history of the fine
+arts in this country. He wrote, talked, lectured
+incessantly for the advancement of art and the
+Academy of Design.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Under_Side_of_a_Modern_Switchboard" id="Under_Side_of_a_Modern_Switchboard"></a>
+<img src="images/127.jpg" width="400" height="391" alt="Under Side of a Modern Switchboard, showing 2,000 Wires." />
+<span class="caption">Under Side of a Modern Switchboard, showing 2,000 Wires.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In 1829 Morse made a second visit to Europe,
+where he was warmly welcomed and honored by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>
+the Royal Academy. During three years or
+more he lived in continental cities, studying the
+Louvre in Paris and making of the famous gallery
+an exhibition picture which contained about
+fifty miniatures of the works in that collection.
+In November, 1832, he was back again in New
+York, with high hopes as to his future. Allston,
+writing to Dunlap in 1834, said: "I rejoice to
+hear your report of Morse's advance in his art.
+I know what is in him perhaps better than anyone
+else. If he will only bring out all that is
+there he will show parts that many now do not
+dream of."</p>
+
+<p>For several years the thoughts of the artist
+Morse had been busy with a matter wholly outside
+of his chosen domain. Some lectures on
+electro-magnetism by his intimate friend, Judge
+Freeman Dana, given at the Athenĉum while
+Morse was also lecturing there on the fine arts,
+had greatly interested him in the subject, and he
+learned much in conversation with Dana. While
+on his second visit to Europe Morse made himself
+acquainted with the labors of scientific men
+in their endeavors to communicate intelligence
+between far-distant places by means of electro-magnetism,
+and he saw an electro-magnet signalling
+instrument in operation. He knew that so
+early as 1649 a Jesuit priest had prophesied an
+electric telegraph, and that for half a century or
+more students had partially succeeded in attempts
+of this kind. But no practical telegraph
+had yet been invented. In 1774 Le Sage made
+an electro-signalling instrument with twenty-four<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span>
+wires, one for each letter of the alphabet. In
+1825 Sturgeon invented an electro-magnet. In
+1830 Professor Henry increased the magnetic
+force that Morse afterward used.</p>
+
+<p>On board the ship Sully, in which Morse
+sailed from Havre to New York, in the autumn
+of 1832, the recent discovery in France of the
+means of obtaining an electric spark from a magnet
+was a favorite topic of conversation among
+the passengers, and it was during the voyage
+that Morse conceived the idea of an electro-magnetic
+and chemical recording telegraph. Before
+he reached New York he had made drawings
+and specifications of his conception, which he exhibited
+to his fellow passengers. Few great inventions
+that have made their authors immortal
+were so completely grasped at inception as this.
+Morse was accustomed to keep small note-books
+in which to make records of his work, and scores
+of these books are still in existence. As he
+sat upon the deck of the Sully, one night
+after dinner, he drew from his pocket one of
+these books and began to make marks, to represent
+letters and figures to be produced by electricity
+at a distance. The mechanism by which
+the results were to be reached was wrought out
+by slow and laborious thought, but the vision as
+a whole was clear. The current of electricity
+passed instantaneously to any distance along a
+wire, but the current being interrupted, a spark
+appeared. This spark represented one sign; its
+absence another; the time of its absence still
+another. Here are three signs to be combined<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span>
+into the representation of figures or letters.
+They can be made to form an alphabet. Words
+may thus be indicated. A telegraph, an instrument
+to record at a distance, will result. Continents
+shall be crossed. This great and wide sea
+shall be no barrier. "If it will go ten miles
+without stopping," he said, "I can make it go
+around the globe."</p>
+
+<p>He worked incessantly all that next day and
+could not sleep at night in his berth. In a few
+days he submitted some rough drafts of his
+invention to William C. Rives, of Virginia, who
+was returning from Paris, where he had been
+minister of the United States. Mr. Rives suggested
+various difficulties, over which Morse
+spent several sleepless nights, announcing in the
+morning at breakfast-table the new devices by
+which he proposed to accomplish the task before
+him. He exhibited a drawing of the instrument
+which he said would do the work, and so completely
+had he mastered all the details that five
+years afterward, when a model of this instrument
+was constructed, it was instantly recognized
+as the one he had devised and drawn in his
+sketch-book and exhibited to his fellow passengers
+on the ship. In view of subsequent claims
+made by a fellow passenger to the honor of having
+suggested the telegraph, these details are interesting
+and important.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="The_First_Telegraphic_Instrument" id="The_First_Telegraphic_Instrument"></a>
+<img src="images/131.jpg" width="400" height="567" alt="The First Telegraphic Instrument, as Exhibited in 1837 by Morse." />
+<span class="caption">The First Telegraphic Instrument, as Exhibited in 1837 by Morse.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Circumstances delayed the construction of a
+recording telegraph by Morse, but the subject
+slumbered in his mind. During his absence
+abroad he had been elected professor of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span>
+literature of the arts of design, in the University
+of the City of New York, and this work occupied
+his attention for some time. Three years
+afterward, in November, 1835, he completed
+a rude telegraph instrument&mdash;the first recording
+apparatus; but it embodied the mechanical principle
+now in use the world over. His whole
+plan was not completed until July, 1837, when by
+means of two instruments he was able to communicate
+from as well as to a distant point. In
+September hundreds of people saw the new
+instrument in operation at the university, most
+of whom looked upon it as a scientific toy constructed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span>
+by an unfortunate dreamer. The following
+year the invention was sufficiently perfected
+to enable Morse to direct the attention of
+Congress to it and ask its aid in the construction
+of an experimental line between Washington and
+Baltimore.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the long session of 1838 he appeared
+before that body with his instrument. Before
+leaving New York with it he had invited a few
+friends to see it work. Now began in the life of
+Morse a period of years during which his whole
+time was devoted to convincing the world, first,
+that his electric telegraph would really communicate
+messages, and, secondly, that if it worked
+at all, it was of great practical value. Strange
+to say that this required any argument at all.
+But that in those days it did may be inferred
+from the fact that Morse could then find no help
+far or near. His invention was regarded as interesting,
+but of no importance either scientifically
+or commercially. In Washington, where he first
+went, he found so little encouragement that he
+went to Europe with the hope of drawing the
+attention of foreign governments to the advantages,
+and of securing patents for the invention;
+he had filed a caveat at the Patent Office in this
+country. His mission was a failure. England
+refused him a patent, and France gave him only
+a useless paper which assured for him no special
+privileges. He returned home disappointed but
+not discouraged, and waited four years longer
+before he again attempted to interest Congress
+in his invention.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="The_Modern_Morse_Telegraph" id="The_Modern_Morse_Telegraph"></a>
+<img src="images/133.jpg" width="400" height="140" alt="The Modern Morse Telegraph." />
+<span class="caption">The Modern Morse Telegraph.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>This extraordinary struggle lasted twelve
+years, during which, with his mind absorbed in
+one idea and yet almost wholly dependent for
+bread upon his profession as an artist, it was impossible
+to pursue art with the enthusiasm and
+industry essential to success. His situation was
+forlorn in the extreme. The father of three little
+children, now motherless, his pecuniary means
+exhausted by his residence in Europe, and unable
+to pursue art without sacrificing his invention,
+he was at his wits' ends. He had visions
+of usefulness by the invention of a telegraph that
+should bring the continents of the earth into
+intercourse. He was poor and knew that wealth
+as well as fame was within his reach. He had
+long received assistance from his father and
+brothers when his profession did not supply the
+needed means of support for himself and family;
+but it seemed like robbery to take the money of
+others for experiments, the success of which he
+could not expect them to believe in until he
+could give practical evidence that the instrument
+would do the work proposed. It was the old
+story of genius contending with poverty. His
+brothers comforted, encouraged, and cheered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span>
+him. In the house of his brother Richard he
+found a home and the tender care that he required.
+Sidney, the other brother, also helped
+him. On the corner of Nassau and Beekman
+Streets, now the site of the handsome Morse
+Building, his brothers erected a building where
+were the offices of the newspaper of which they
+were the editors and proprietors. In the fifth
+story of this building a room was assigned to
+him which was for several years his studio,
+bedroom, parlor, kitchen, and workshop. On
+one side of the room stood a little cot on which
+he slept in the brief hours which he allowed
+himself for repose. On the other side stood his
+lathe with which the inventor turned the brass
+apparatus necessary in the construction of his
+instruments. He had, with his own hands, first
+whittled the model; then he made the moulds for
+the castings. Here were brought to him, day
+by day, crackers and the simplest food, by which,
+with tea prepared by himself, he sustained life
+while he toiled incessantly to give being to the
+idea that possessed him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Morse_Making_his_own_Instrument" id="Morse_Making_his_own_Instrument"></a>
+<img src="images/135.jpg" width="400" height="598" alt="Morse Making his own Instrument. (From Prime's Life of Morse.)" />
+<span class="caption">Morse Making his own Instrument.<br />(From Prime&#39;s Life of Morse.)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Before leaving for Europe he had suffered a
+great disappointment as an artist. The government
+had offered to American artists, to be selected
+by a committee of Congress, commissions
+to paint pictures for the panels in the rotunda of
+the Capitol. Morse was anxious to be employed
+upon one or more of them. He was the president
+of the National Academy of Design, and
+there was an eminent fitness in calling him to
+this national work. Allston urged the appointment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a><br /><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span>
+of Morse. John Quincy Adams, then a
+member of the House and on the committee to
+whom this subject was referred, submitted a
+resolution in the House that foreign artists be
+allowed to compete for these commissions, and
+in support alleged that there were no American
+artists competent to execute the paintings. This
+gave great and just offence to the artists and the
+public. A severe reply to Adams appeared in
+the New York <i>Evening Post</i>. It was written by
+James Fenimore Cooper, but it was attributed
+to Morse, whose pen was well known to be skillful,
+and in consequence his name was rejected
+by the committee. He never recovered fully
+from the effects of that blow. Forty years afterward
+he could not speak of it without emotion.
+He had consecrated years of his life to the
+preparation for just such work.</p>
+
+<p>It was well for him and for his country and
+the world that the artist in Morse was disappointed.
+From painter he became inventor, and
+from that time until the world acknowledged
+the greatness and importance of his invention
+he turned not back. His appointment as professor
+in the City University entitled him to certain
+rooms in the University Building looking
+out upon Washington Square, and here the first
+working models of the telegraph were brought
+into existence.</p>
+
+<p>"There," he says, "I immediately commenced,
+with very limited means, to experiment
+upon my invention. My first instrument was
+made up of an old picture or canvas frame fastened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span>
+to a table; the wheels of an old wooden
+clock, moved by a weight to carry the paper
+forward; three wooden drums, upon one of
+which the paper was wound and passed over
+the other two; a wooden pendulum suspended
+to the top piece of the picture or stretching
+frame and vibrating across the paper as it
+passes over the centre wooden drum; a pencil
+at the lower end of the pendulum, in contact
+with the paper; an electro-magnet fastened to a
+shelf across the picture or stretching frame, opposite
+to an armature made fast to the pendulum;
+a type rule and type for breaking the
+circuit, resting on an endless band, composed of
+carpet-binding, which passed over two wooden
+rollers moved by a wooden crank.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Train_Telegraph" id="Train_Telegraph"></a>
+<img src="images/137.jpg" width="400" height="246" alt="Train Telegraph&mdash;the message transmitted by induction from the moving train to
+the single wire." />
+<span class="caption">Train Telegraph&mdash;the message transmitted by induction from the moving train to
+the single wire.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Interior_of_a_Car_on_the_Lehigh_Valley_Railroad" id="Interior_of_a_Car_on_the_Lehigh_Valley_Railroad"></a>
+<img src="images/138.jpg" width="400" height="437" alt="Interior of a Car on the Lehigh Valley Railroad, showing the Method of Operating
+the Train Telegraph." />
+<span class="caption">Interior of a Car on the Lehigh Valley Railroad, showing the Method of Operating
+the Train Telegraph.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Up to the autumn of 1837 my telegraphic
+apparatus existed in so rude a form that I felt a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span>
+reluctance to have it seen. My means were very
+limited&mdash;so limited as to preclude the possibility
+of constructing an apparatus of such mechanical
+finish as to warrant my success in venturing
+upon its public exhibition. I had no wish to expose
+to ridicule the representative of so many
+hours of laborious thought. Prior to the summer
+of 1837, at which time Mr. Alfred Vail's attention<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span>
+became attracted to my telegraph, I
+depended upon my pencil for subsistence. Indeed,
+so straitened were my circumstances that,
+in order to save time to carry out my invention
+and to economize my scanty means, I had for
+many months lodged and eaten in my studio,
+procuring my food in small quantities from some
+grocery and preparing it myself. To conceal
+from my friends the stinted manner in which I
+lived, I was in the habit of bringing my food to
+my room in the evenings, and this was my mode
+of life for many years."</p>
+
+<p>Before the telegraph was actually tried and
+practised the cumbersome piano-key board devised
+by Morse in his first experiments was done
+away with and the simple device of a single key,
+with which we are all familiar, was adopted.
+Meantime Morse was practically abandoning art.
+His friends among the profession had subscribed
+$3,000 in order to enable him to paint the picture
+he had in mind when he applied for the government
+work at Washington, "The Signing of the
+First Compact on Board the Mayflower," and he
+undertook the commission in 1838, only to give
+it up in 1841 and to return to the subscribers the
+amount paid with interest.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Diagram_showing_the_Method_of_Telegraphing_from_a_Moving_Train_by_Induction" id="Diagram_showing_the_Method_of_Telegraphing_from_a_Moving_Train_by_Induction"></a>
+<img src="images/140.jpg" width="400" height="482" alt="Diagram showing the Method of Telegraphing from a Moving Train by Induction." />
+<span class="caption">Diagram showing the Method of Telegraphing from a Moving Train by Induction.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>While Morse had been in Paris, in 1839, he had
+heard of Daguerre, who had discovered the
+method of fixing the image of the camera, which
+feat was then creating a great sensation among
+scientific men. Professor Morse was anxious to
+see the results of this discovery before leaving
+Paris, and the American consul, Robert Walsh,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span>
+arranged an interview between the two inventors.
+Daguerre promised to send to Morse a
+copy of the descriptive publication which he intended
+to make so soon as a pension he expected
+from the French Government for the disclosure
+of his discovery should be secured. He kept his
+promise, and Morse was probably the first recipient
+of the pamphlet in this country. From the
+drawings it contained he constructed the first
+photographic apparatus made in the United
+States, and from a back window in the University
+Building he obtained a good representation
+of the tower of the Church of the Messiah on
+Broadway. This possesses an historical interest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span>
+as being the first photograph in America. It was
+on a plate the size of a playing-card. With Professor
+J.W. Draper, in a studio built on the roof
+of the University, he succeeded in taking likenesses
+of the living human face. His subjects
+were compelled to sit fifteen minutes in the
+bright sunlight, with their eyes closed, of
+course. Professor Draper shortened the process
+and was the first to take portraits with the eyes
+open.</p>
+
+<p>At the session of Congress of 1842-1843 Morse
+again appeared with his telegraph, and on February
+21, 1843, John P. Kennedy, of Maryland,
+moved that a bill appropriating $30,000, to be expended,
+under the direction of the Secretary of
+the Treasury, in a series of experiments for testing
+the merits of the telegraph, should be considered.
+The proposal met with ridicule. Johnson,
+of Tennessee, moved, as an amendment, that
+one-half should be given to a lecturer on mesmerism,
+then in Washington, to try mesmeric experiments
+under the direction of the Secretary
+of the Treasury; and Mr. Houston said that
+Millerism ought to be included in the benefits of
+the appropriation. After the indulgence of
+much cheap wit, Mr. Mason, of Ohio, protested
+against such frivolity as injurious to the character
+of the House and asked the chair to rule the
+amendments out of order. The chair (John
+White, of Kentucky) ruled the amendments in
+order because "it would require a scientific
+analysis to determine how far the magnetism of
+the mesmerism was analogous to that to be employed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span>
+in telegraphy." This wit was applauded
+by peals of laughter, but the amendment was
+voted down and the bill passed the House on
+February 23d by the close vote of 89 to 83. In
+the Senate the bill met with neither sneers nor
+opposition, but its progress was discouragingly
+slow. At twilight on the last evening of the
+session (March 3, 1842) there were one hundred
+and nineteen bills before it. It seemed impossible
+for it to be reached in regular course before
+the hour of adjournment should arrive, and
+Morse, who had anxiously watched the dreary
+course of business all day from the gallery of the
+Senate chamber, went with a sad heart to his
+hotel and prepared to leave for New York at an
+early hour the next morning. His cup of disappointment
+seemed to be about full. With the
+exception of Alfred Vail, a young student in the
+University, through whose influence some money
+had been subscribed in return for a one-fourth
+interest in the invention, and of Professor L.D.
+Gale, who had shown much interest in the work
+and was also a partner in the enterprise, Morse
+knew of no one who seemed to believe enough
+in him and his telegraph to advance another
+dollar.</p>
+
+<p>As he came down to breakfast the next morning
+a young lady entered and came forward
+with a smile, exclaiming, "I have come to congratulate
+you." "Upon what?" inquired the
+professor. "Upon the passage of your bill,"
+she replied. "Impossible! Its fate was sealed
+last evening. You must be mistaken." "Not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span>
+at all," answered the young lady, the daughter
+of Morse's friend, the Commissioner of Patents,
+H.L. Ellsworth; "father sent me to tell you that
+your bill was passed. He remained until the
+session closed, and yours was the last bill but
+one acted upon, and it was passed just five
+minutes before the adjournment. And I am so
+glad to be able to be the first one to tell you.
+Mother says you must come home with me to
+breakfast."</p>
+
+<p>Morse, overcome by the intelligence, promised
+that his young friend, the bearer of these good
+tidings, should send the first message over the
+first line of telegraph that was opened.</p>
+
+<p>He writes to Alfred Vail that day: "The
+amount of business before the Senate rendered
+it more and more doubtful, as the session drew
+to a close, whether the House bill on the telegraph
+would be reached, and on the last day,
+March 3, 1843, I was advised by one of my
+Senatorial friends to make up my mind for failure,
+as he deemed it next to impossible that it
+could be reached before the adjournment. The
+bill, however, was reached a few minutes before
+midnight and passed. This was the turning
+point in the history of the telegraph. My personal
+funds were reduced to the fraction of a
+dollar, and, had the passage of the bill failed
+from any cause, there would have been little
+prospect of another attempt on my part to introduce
+to the world my new invention."</p>
+
+<p>The appropriation by Congress having been
+made, Morse went to work with energy and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span>
+delight to construct the first line of his electric
+telegraph. It was important that it should be
+laid where it would attract the attention of the
+government, and this consideration decided the
+question in favor of a line between Washington
+and Baltimore. He had as assistants Professor
+Gale and Professor J.C. Fisher. Mr. Vail was
+to devote his attention to making the instruments
+and the purchase of materials. Morse
+himself was general superintendent under the
+appointment of the government and gave attention
+to the minutest details. All disbursements
+passed through his hands. In point of accuracy,
+the preservation of vouchers, and presentation of
+accounts, General Washington himself was not
+more precise, lucid, and correct. Ezra Cornell,
+afterward one of the most successful constructors
+of telegraph lines, was employed to take charge
+of the work under Morse. Much time and
+expense were lost in consequence of following a
+plan for laying the wires in a leaden tube, and it
+was only when it was decided to string them on
+posts that work began to proceed rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>In expectation of the meeting of the National
+Whig Convention, May 1, 1844, to nominate
+candidates for President and Vice-President,
+energy was redoubled, and by that time the
+wires were in working order twenty-two miles
+from Washington toward Baltimore. The day
+before the convention met, Professor Morse
+wrote to Vail that certain signals should mean
+the nomination of a particular candidate. The
+experiment was approaching its crisis. The convention<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span>
+assembled and Henry Clay was nominated
+by acclamation to the Presidency. The
+news was conveyed on the railroad to the
+point reached by the telegraph and thence instantly
+transmitted over the wires to Washington.
+An hour afterward passengers arriving
+at the capital, and supposing that they had
+brought the first intelligence, were surprised to
+find that the announcement had been made already
+and that they were the bearers of old
+news. The convention shortly afterward nominated
+Frelinghuysen as Vice-President, and
+the intelligence was sent to Washington in the
+same manner. Public astonishment was great
+and many persons doubted that the feat could
+have been performed. Before May had elapsed
+the line reached Baltimore.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Morse_in_his_Study" id="Morse_in_his_Study"></a>
+<img src="images/145.jpg" width="400" height="246" alt="Morse in his Study. (From an old print.)" />
+<span class="caption">Morse in his Study.<br />(From an old print.)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the 24th of May, 1844, Morse was prepared<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span>
+to put to final test the great experiment on which
+his mind had been laboring for twelve anxious
+years. Vail, his assistant, was at the Baltimore
+terminus. Morse had invited his friends to assemble
+in the chamber of the United States
+Supreme Court, where he had his instrument,
+from which the wires extended to Baltimore.
+He had promised his young friend, Miss Ellsworth,
+that she should send the first message
+over the wires. Her mother suggested the
+familiar words of scripture (Numbers, xxiii. 23),
+"What hath God wrought!" The words were
+chosen without consultation with the inventor,
+but were singularly the expression of his own
+sentiment and his own experience in bringing his
+work to successful accomplishment. Perfectly
+religious in his convictions, and trained from
+earliest childhood to believe in the special superintendence
+of Providence in the minutest affairs
+of man, he had acted throughout the whole of
+his struggles under the firm persuasion that God
+was working in him to do His own pleasure in
+this thing.</p>
+
+<p>The first public messages sent were a notice to
+Silas Wright in Washington of his nomination
+to the office of Vice-President of the United
+States by the Democratic convention, then in
+session (May, 1844) in Baltimore, and his response
+declining it. Hendrick B. Wright, in a
+letter written to Mr. B.J. Lossing, says: "As
+the presiding officer of the body I read the despatch,
+but so incredulous were the members as
+to the authority of the evidence before them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>
+that the convention adjourned over to the following
+day to await the report of the committee
+sent over to Washington to get <i>reliable</i> information
+on the subject." Mr. Vail kept a diary in
+those early days of the telegraph, full of interesting
+reminiscences. It was often necessary, in
+order to convince incredulous visitors to the
+office that the questions and replies sent over
+the wire were not manufactured or agreed upon
+beforehand, to allow them to send their own remarks.
+When the committee just mentioned by
+Mr. Wright returned from Baltimore and confirmed
+the correctness of the report given by
+telegraph, the new invention received a splendid
+advertisement. The convention having reassembled
+in the morning, and the refusal of Wright
+to accept the nomination having been communicated,
+a conference was held between him and
+his friends through the medium of Morse's wires.
+In Washington Mr. Wright and Mr. Morse were
+closeted with the instrument; at Baltimore the
+committee of conference surrounded Vail with
+his instrument. Spectators and auditors were
+excluded. The committee communicated to Mr.
+Wright their reasons for urging his acceptance.
+In a moment he received their communication
+in writing and as quickly returned his answer.
+Again and again these confidential messages
+passed, and the result was finally announced to
+the convention that Mr. Wright was inflexible.
+Mr. Dallas then received the nomination and accepted
+it. The ticket thus nominated was successful
+at the election of that year. The original<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span>
+slips of paper on which some of the early messages
+were written are still preserved, among
+others this request: "As a rumor is prevalent
+here this morning that Mr. Eugene Boyle was
+shot at Baltimore last evening, Professor Morse
+will confer a great favor upon the family by
+making inquiry by means of his electro-magnetic
+telegraph if such is the fact."</p>
+
+<p>The telegraph was shown at first without
+charge. During the session of 1844-1845 Congress
+made an appropriation of $8,000 to keep it
+in operation during the year, placing it under
+the supervision of the Postmaster-General, who,
+at the close of the session, ordered a tariff of
+charges of one cent for every four characters
+made through the telegraph. Mr. Vail was appointed
+operator for the Washington station and
+Mr. H.J. Rogers for Baltimore. This new order
+of things began April 1, 1845, the object being
+to test the profitableness of the enterprise. The
+first day's income was one cent; on the fifth
+day twelve and a half cents were received; on
+the seventh the receipts ran up to sixty cents;
+on the eighth to one dollar and thirty-two
+cents; on the ninth to one dollar and four
+cents. It is worthy of remark, as Mr. Vail
+notes, that the business done after the tariff
+was fixed was greater than when the service
+was gratuitous.</p>
+
+<p>The telegraph was now a reality. Its completion
+was hailed with enthusiasm, and the
+newspapers lauded the inventor to the skies.
+Resolutions of thanks and applause were adopted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span>
+by popular assemblies. It was a favorite idea
+with Professor Morse, from the inception of his
+enterprise, that the telegraph should belong to
+the government, and he sent a communication
+to Congress making a formal offer. The overture
+was not accepted, but the extension of the line
+from Baltimore to Philadelphia and then to New
+York was only a work of time. The aid of Congress
+was sought in vain. The appropriation of
+$8,000 was made, but further than that the government
+declined to go. The sum named as the
+price at which the Morse Company would sell
+the telegraph to the government was $100,000.
+The subject was discussed in the report of Cave
+Johnson, Postmaster-General under President
+Polk. He was a member of Congress when the
+bill came up before the House appropriating
+$30,000 for the experimental line, and was one of
+those who ridiculed the whole subject as unworthy
+of the notice of sensible men. As Postmaster-General
+he said in his report, after the experiment
+had succeeded to the satisfaction of
+mankind, that "the operation of a telegraph between
+Washington and Baltimore had not satisfied
+him that under any rate of postage that could
+be adopted its revenues could be made equal to
+its expenditures." Such an opinion, with the evidence
+then in the possession of the department,
+appears to be curious official blindness. But it
+was fortunate for the inventor that the telegraph
+was left to the private enterprise. Twenty-five
+years after the government had declined to take
+the telegraph at the price of $100,000, a project<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span>
+was started to establish lines of telegraph to be
+used by the government as part of the mail postal
+system. And in 1873 the Postmaster-General,
+Mr. Cresswell, said in his report that the entire
+first cost of all the lines in the country, including
+patents, was less than $10,000,000; but the property
+of the existing telegraph company was already
+well worth $50,000,000.</p>
+
+<p>Morse's position was far easier than it had
+been for many years. His old friends, the artists
+of New York, rallied in force and laid before
+Congress a petition that the professor be employed
+to execute the painting to fill the panel
+at the Capitol assigned to Inman, who had been
+removed by death. But it came to nothing.
+Morse was never again to take the brush in hand.
+The first money that he received from his invention
+was the sum of $47, being his share of the
+amount paid for the right to use his patent on a
+short line from the Washington Post-office to
+the National Observatory. The use he made of
+the money was characteristic of the man. He
+sent it to the Rev. Dr. Sprole, then a pastor in
+Washington, requesting him to apply it for the
+benefit of his church.</p>
+
+<p>Early in June, 1846, the line from Baltimore
+to Philadelphia was in operation, and that from
+Philadelphia to New York. Abroad the system
+was working its way steadily into favor. In
+France an appropriation of nearly half a million
+francs was made to introduce the Morse system.
+But meantime violations of Morse's rights were
+beginning to crop up on every side, both at home<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span>
+and abroad. In a letter to Daniel Lord, his lawyer,
+Morse says:</p>
+
+<p>"The plot thickens all around me; I think a
+dénouement not far off. I remember your consoling
+me under these attacks with bidding me
+think that I had invented something worth contending
+for. Alas! my dear sir, what encouragement
+is there to an inventor if, after years of
+toil and anxiety, he has only purchased for himself
+the pleasure of being a target for every vile
+fellow to shoot at, and in proportion as his invention
+is of public utility, so much the greater
+effort is to be made to defame that the robbery
+may excite the less sympathy? I know, however,
+that beyond all this there is a clear sky;
+but the clouds may not break away till I am no
+longer personally interested, whether it be foul
+or fair. I wish not to complain, but I have feelings,
+and cannot play the Stoic if I would."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="The_Siphon_Recorder_for_Receiving_Cable_Messages" id="The_Siphon_Recorder_for_Receiving_Cable_Messages"></a>
+<img src="images/152.jpg" width="400" height="288" alt="The Siphon Recorder for Receiving Cable Messages&mdash;Office of the Commercial
+Cable Company, 1 Broad Street, New York." />
+<span class="caption">The Siphon Recorder for Receiving Cable Messages&mdash;Office of the Commercial
+ Cable Company, 1 Broad Street, New York.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Perhaps the most painful chapter of Morse's
+life is the history of the lawsuits in which he
+was involved in defence of his rights. His reputation
+as well as his property were assailed.
+Exceedingly sensitive to these attacks, the suits
+that followed the success of the telegraph cost
+him inexpressible distress. It is some satisfaction
+to be able to record that after years of bitter
+controversy the final decision was favorable
+to the inventor. Honors began to pour in upon
+him from even the uttermost parts of the earth.
+The Sultan of Turkey was the first monarch to
+acknowledge Morse as a public benefactor. This
+was in 1848. The kings of Prussia and Wurtemburg<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>
+and the Emperor of Austria each gave him
+a gold medal, that of the first named being set in
+a massive gold snuff-box. In 1856 the Emperor
+of the French made him a chevalier of the Legion
+of Honor. Orders from Denmark, Spain,
+Italy, Portugal soon followed. In 1858 a special
+congress was called by the Emperor of the
+French to devise a suitable testimonial of the
+nation to Professor Morse. Representatives
+from ten sovereignties convened at Paris and by
+a unanimous vote gave, in the aggregate, $80,000
+as an honorary gratuity to Professor Morse.
+The states participating in this testimonial were
+France, Austria, Russia, Belgium, Holland, Sweden,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span>
+Piedmont, the Holy See, Tuscany, and Turkey.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Morse was one of the first to suggest
+and the first to carry out the use of a marine
+cable. During the summer of 1842 he had
+been making elaborate preparations for an experiment
+destined to give wonderful development
+to his invention. This was no less than
+a submarine wire, to demonstrate the fact that
+the current of electricity could be conducted
+as well under water as through the air. Of
+this he had entertained no doubt. "If I can
+make it work ten miles, I can make it go around
+the globe," was a favorite expression of his in the
+infancy of his enterprise. But he wished to prove
+it. He insulated his wire as well as he could
+with hempen strands well covered with pitch,
+tar, and india-rubber. In the course of the
+autumn he was prepared to put the question
+to the test of actual experiment. The wire was
+only the twelfth of an inch in diameter. About
+two miles of this, wound on a reel, was placed in
+a small row-boat, and with one man at the oars
+and Professor Morse at the stern, the work of
+paying out the cable was begun. It was a beautiful
+moonlight night, and those who had prolonged
+their evening rambles on the Battery must
+have wondered, as they watched the proceedings
+in the boat, what kind of fishing the two men
+could be engaged in that required so long a line.
+In somewhat less than two hours, on that eventful
+evening of October 18, 1842, the first cable was
+laid. Professor Morse returned to his lodgings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span>
+and waited with some anxiety the time when he
+should be able to test the experiment fully and
+fairly. The next morning the New York <i>Herald</i>
+contained the following editorial announcement:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Morse's Electro-Magnetic Telegraph.</span></p>
+
+<p>"This important invention is to be exhibited in
+operation at Castle Garden between the hours of
+twelve and one o'clock to-day. One telegraph
+will be erected on Governor's Island and one at
+the Castle, and messages will be interchanged
+and orders transmitted during the day. Many
+have been incredulous as to the powers of this
+wonderful triumph of science and art. All such
+may now have an opportunity of fairly testing it.
+It is destined to work a complete revolution
+in the mode of transmitting intelligence throughout
+the civilized world."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>At daybreak the professor was on the Battery,
+and had just demonstrated his success by the
+transmission of three or four characters between
+the termini of the line, when the communication
+was suddenly interrupted, and it was found impossible
+to send any messages through the conductor.
+The cause of this was evident when he
+observed no less than seven vessels lying along
+the line of the submerged cable, one of which, in
+getting under way, had raised it on her anchor.
+The sailors, unable to divine its meaning, hauled
+in about two hundred feet of it on deck, and finding
+no end, cut off that portion and carried it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span>
+away with them. Thus ended the first attempt
+at submarine telegraphing. The crowd that had
+assembled on the Battery dispersed with jeers,
+most of them believing they had been made the
+victims of a hoax.</p>
+
+<p>In a letter to John C. Spencer, then Secretary
+of the Treasury, in August, 1843, concerning electro-magnetism
+and its powers, he wrote:</p>
+
+<p>"The practical inference from this law is that
+a telegraphic communication on the electro-magnetic
+plan may with certainty be established
+across the Atlantic Ocean. Startling as this
+may now seem, I am confident the time will
+come when this project will be realized."</p>
+
+<p>In 1871 a statue of Professor Morse was erected
+in Central Park, New York, at the expense of the
+telegraph operators of the country. It was unveiled
+on June 10th with imposing ceremonies.
+There were delegates from every State in the
+Union, and from the British provinces. In the
+evening a public reception was given to the venerable
+inventor at the Academy of Music, at
+which William Orton, president of the Western
+Union Telegraph Company, presided, assisted
+by scores of the leading public men of the country
+as vice-presidents. The last scene was an impressive
+one. It was announced that the telegraphic
+instrument before the audience was then
+in connection with every other one of the ten
+thousand instruments in America. Then Miss
+Cornell, a young telegraphic operator, sent this
+message from the key: "Greeting and thanks to
+the telegraph fraternity throughout the world.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span>
+Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace,
+good-will to men." The venerable inventor, the
+personification of simplicity, dignity, and kindliness,
+was then conducted to the instrument, and
+touching the key, sent out: "<span class="smcap">S.F.B. Morse</span>."
+A storm of enthusiasm swept through the house
+as the audience rose, the ladies waving their
+handkerchiefs and the men cheering.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Morse last appeared in public on
+February 22, 1872, when he unveiled the statue
+of Franklin, erected in Printing-house Square in
+New York. He died, after a short illness, on
+April 2, 1872, and was buried in Greenwood
+Cemetery. On the day of the funeral, April 5th,
+every telegraph office in the country was draped
+in mourning.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Morse was twice married. His first
+wife died in 1825. In 1848 he married Sarah
+Elizabeth Griswold, of Poughkeepsie, who still
+lives. By the first marriage there were three
+children, one of whom, a son, survives. By the
+second marriage there were four children, three
+of whom are alive&mdash;a daughter and two sons.
+Miss Leila Morse, the daughter, was married in
+1885 to Herr Franz Rummel, the eminent pianist.
+The last years of his life were eminently peaceful
+and happy. In the summer he lived at a place
+called Locust Grove, on the banks of the Hudson,
+near Poughkeepsie, and in the winter in a house
+at No. 5 West Twenty-second Street, a few doors
+west of Fifth Avenue. In recent years a marble
+tablet has been affixed to the front of the house,
+suitably inscribed.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="No_5_West_Twenty-second_Street" id="No_5_West_Twenty-second_Street"></a>
+<img src="images/157.jpg" width="400" height="607" alt="No. 5 West Twenty-second Street, New York, where Morse Lived for Many Years
+ and Died." />
+<span class="caption">No. 5 West Twenty-second Street, New York, where Morse Lived for Many Years
+ and Died.</span>
+</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Morse's life in the country was very simple and
+quiet. His hour of rising was half-past six
+o'clock in the morning, and he was in his library
+alone until breakfast, at eight. He loved to hear
+the birds in their native songs, and he could distinguish
+the notes of each species, and would
+speak of the quality of their respective music.
+He spent most of the day in reading and writing,
+rarely taking exercise, except walking in
+his garden to visit his graperies, in which he
+took special pride, or to the stable to see if his
+horses were well cared for. He did not ride out
+regularly with his family, preferring the repose
+of his own grounds and the labors of his study.
+But when he walked or rode in the country, he
+was constantly disposed to speak of the beauty
+and glory around him, as revealing to his mind
+the beneficence, wisdom, and power of the infinite
+Creator, who had made all these things for the
+use and enjoyment of men.</p>
+
+<p>One of his daughters writes of him in these
+simple and tender words: "He loved flowers.
+He would take one in his hand and talk for hours
+about its beauty, its wonderful construction, and
+the wisdom and love of God in making so many
+varied forms of life and color to please our eyes.
+In his later years he became deeply interested in
+the microscope and purchased one of great excellence
+and power. For whole hours, all the
+afternoon or evening, he would sit over it, examining
+flowers or the animalculĉ in different fluids.
+Then he would gather his children about him and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span>
+give us a sort of extempore lecture on the wonders
+of creation invisible to the naked eye, but
+so clearly brought to view by the magnifying
+power of the microscope. He was very fond of
+animals, cats, and birds in particular. He tamed
+a little flying-squirrel, and it became so fond of
+him that it would sit on his shoulder while he
+was at his studies and would eat out of his hand
+and sleep in his pocket. To this little animal he
+became so much attached that we took it with
+us to Europe, where it came to an untimely end,
+in Paris, by running into an open fire."</p>
+
+<p>His biographer, Prime, says of him:</p>
+
+<p>"In person Professor Morse was tall, slender,
+graceful, and attractive. Six feet in stature, he
+stood erect and firm, even in old age. His blue
+eyes were expressive of genius and affection.
+His nature was a rare combination of solid intellect
+and delicate sensibility. Thoughtful, sober,
+and quiet, he readily entered into the enjoyments
+of domestic and social life, indulging in sallies of
+humor, and readily appreciating and greatly enjoying
+the wit of others. Dignified in his intercourse
+with men, courteous and affable with the
+gentler sex, he was a good husband, a judicious
+father, a generous and faithful friend. He had
+the misfortune to incur the hostility of men who
+would deprive him of the merit and the reward
+of his labors. But his was the common fate of
+great inventors. He lived until his rights were
+vindicated by every tribunal to which they could
+be referred, and acknowledged by all civilized<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span>
+nations. And he died leaving to his children a
+spotless and illustrious name, and to his country
+the honor of having given birth to the only
+electro-magnetic recording telegraph whose line
+has gone out through all the earth and its words
+to the end of the world."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>CHARLES GOODYEAR.</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="Charles_Goodyear" id="Charles_Goodyear"></a>
+<img src="images/162.jpg" width="500" height="515" alt="Charles Goodyear." />
+<span class="caption">Charles Goodyear.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>India-rubber had been known for more than
+a hundred years when Charles Goodyear undertook
+to make of it thousands of articles useful in
+common life. So long ago as 1735 a party of
+French astronomers discovered in Peru a curious
+tree that yielded the natives a peculiar gum
+or sap which they collected in clay vessels.
+This sap became hard when exposed to the sun,
+and was used by the natives, who made different
+articles of every-day use from it by dipping a
+clay mould again and again into the liquid.
+When the article was completed the clay mould
+was broken to pieces and shaken out. In this
+manner they made a kind of rough shoe and an
+equally rough bottle. In some parts of South
+America the natives presented their guests with
+these bottles, which served as syringes for
+squirting water. Articles thus made were liable
+to become stiff and unmanageable in cold weather
+and soft and sticky in warm. Upon getting back
+to France the travellers directed the attention
+of scientists to this remarkable gum, which was
+afterward found in various parts of South America,
+and the chief supplies of which still come
+from Brazil. About the beginning of the present<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span>
+century this substance, known variously as
+cachuchu, caoutchouc, gum-elastic, and india-rubber,
+was first commercially introduced into
+Europe. It was regarded merely as a curiosity,
+chiefly useful for erasing pencil-marks. Ships
+from South America took it over as ballast.
+About the year 1820 it began to be used in
+France in the manufacture of suspenders and
+garters, india-rubber threads being mixed with
+the material used in weaving those articles.
+Some years later Mackintosh, an English manufacturer,
+used it in his famous water-proof coats,
+which were made by spreading a layer of the
+gum between two pieces of cloth.</p>
+
+<p>About the same time a pair of india-rubber
+shoes were exhibited in Boston, where they were
+regarded as a curiosity; they were covered with
+gilt-foil to hide their natural ugliness. In 1823 a
+Boston merchant, engaged in the South American
+trade, imported five hundred pairs of these shoes,
+made by the natives of Para, and found no difficulty
+in selling them. In fact, this became a
+large business, although these shoes were terribly
+rough and clumsy and were not to be depended
+upon; in cold weather they became so
+hard that they could be used only after being
+thawed by the fire, and in summer they could
+be preserved only by keeping them on ice. If
+during the thawing process they were placed
+too near the fire, they would melt into a shapeless
+mass; and yet they cost from three to five
+dollars a pair.</p>
+
+<p>In 1830 E.M. Chaffee, of Boston, the foreman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span>
+of a patent leather factory in that city, attempted
+to replace patent leather by a compound of
+india-rubber. He dissolved a pound of the gum
+in spirits of turpentine, added to the mixture
+enough lamp-black to produce a bright black
+color, and invented a machine for spreading this
+compound over cloth. When dried in the sun
+it produced a hard, smooth surface, flexible
+enough to be twisted into any shape without
+cracking. With the aid of a few capitalists,
+Chaffee organized, in 1833, a company called the
+Roxbury India-rubber Company, and manufactured
+an india-rubber cloth from which wagon-covers,
+piano-covers, caps, coats, shoes, and other
+articles were made. The product of the factory
+sold well, and the success of the Roxbury Company
+led to the establishment of a number of similar
+factories elsewhere. Apparently all who
+were engaged in the production of rubber goods
+were on the highway to wealth.</p>
+
+<p>A day of disaster, however, came. Most of
+the goods produced in the winter of 1833-1834
+became worthless during the following summer.
+The shoes melted to a soft mass and the caps,
+wagon-covers, and coats became sticky and useless.
+To make matters worse they emitted an
+odor so offensive that it was necessary to bury
+them in the ground. Twenty thousand dollars'
+worth of these goods were thrown back on the
+hands of the Roxbury Company alone, and the
+directors were appalled by the ruin that threatened
+them. It was useless to go on manufacturing
+goods that might prove worthless at any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span>
+moment. India-rubber stock fell rapidly, and by
+the end of 1836 there was not a solvent rubber
+company in the Union, the stockholders losing
+about $2,000,000. People came to detest the very
+name of india-rubber.</p>
+
+<p>One day, in 1834, a Philadelphia hardware
+merchant, named Charles Goodyear, was led by
+curiosity to buy a rubber life-preserver. And
+thus began for this unfortunate genius nearly
+twenty-five years of struggle, misery, and disappointment.
+Charles Goodyear was born in
+New Haven, Conn., December 29, 1800. When
+a boy his father moved to Philadelphia, where
+he engaged in the hardware business, and
+upon becoming of age, Charles Goodyear joined
+him as a partner. In the panic of 1836-1837 the
+house went down. Goodyear's attention had
+been attracted for several years by the wonderful
+success of the india-rubber companies. Upon
+examining his life-preserver he discovered a defect
+in the inflating valve and made an improved
+one. Going to New York with this device, he
+called on the agent of the Roxbury Company
+and, explaining it to him, offered to sell it to
+the company. The agent was impressed with
+the improvement, but instead of buying it, told
+the inventor the real state of the india-rubber
+business of the country, then on the verge of a
+collapse. He urged Goodyear to exert his inventive
+skill in discovering some means of imparting
+durability to india-rubber goods, and
+assured him that if he could find a process to
+effect that end, he could sell it at his own price.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span>
+He explained the processes then in use and their
+imperfections.</p>
+
+<p>Goodyear forgot all about his disappointment
+in failing to sell his valve, and went home intent
+upon experiments to make gum-elastic durable.
+From that time until the close of his life he devoted
+himself solely to this work. He was thirty-five
+years old, feeble in health, a bankrupt
+in business, and had a young family depending
+upon him. The industry in which he now engaged
+was one in which thousands of persons
+had found ruin. The firm of which he had been
+a member owed $30,000, and upon his return to
+Philadelphia he was arrested for debt and compelled
+to live within prison limits. He began his
+experiments at once. The price of the gum had
+fallen to five cents per pound, so that he had no
+difficulty in getting sufficient of it to begin work.
+By melting and working it thoroughly and rolling
+it out upon a stone table, he succeeded in producing
+sheets of india-rubber that seemed to him
+to possess new properties. A friend loaned him
+enough money to manufacture a number of shoes
+which at first seemed to be all that could be
+desired. Fearful, however, of coming trouble,
+Goodyear put his shoes away until the following
+summer, when the warm weather reduced them
+to a mass of so offensive an odor that he was
+glad to throw them away. His friend was so
+thoroughly disheartened by this failure as to
+refuse to have anything more to do with
+Goodyear's scheme. The inventor, nevertheless,
+kept on.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It occurred to him that there must be some
+substance which, mixed with the gum, would render
+it durable, and he began to experiment with
+almost every substance that he could lay his
+hands on. All proved total failures with the
+exception of magnesia. By mixing half a pound
+of magnesia with a pound of the gum he produced
+a substance whiter than the pure gum,
+which was at first as firm and flexible as leather,
+and out of which he made beautiful book-covers
+and piano-covers. It looked as if he had solved
+the problem; but in a month his pretty product
+was ruined. Heat caused it to soften; fermentation
+then set in, and finally it became as hard
+and brittle as thin glass. His stock of money
+was now exhausted. He was forced to pawn all
+his own valuables and even the trinkets of his
+wife. But he felt sure that he was on the road
+to success and would eventually win both fame
+and fortune. He removed his family to the country,
+and set out for New York, where he hoped
+to find someone willing to aid him in carrying
+his experiments further. Here he met two
+acquaintances, one of whom offered him the use
+of a room in Gold Street as a workshop, and the
+other, a druggist, agreed to let him have on
+credit such chemicals as he needed. He now
+boiled the gum, mixed with magnesia, in quicklime
+and water, and as a result obtained firm,
+smooth sheets that won him a medal at the fair
+of the American Institute in 1835. He seemed
+on the point of success, and easily sold all the
+sheets he could manufacture, when, to his dismay,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span>
+he discovered that a drop of the weakest acid,
+such as the juice of an apple or diluted vinegar,
+would reduce his new compound to the old
+sticky substance that had baffled him so often.</p>
+
+<p>His first important discovery on the road to
+real success was the result of accident. He
+liked pretty things, and it was a constant effort
+with him to make his productions as attractive
+to the eye as possible. Upon one occasion, while
+bronzing a piece of rubber cloth, he applied
+aqua fortis to it for the purpose of removing part
+of the bronze. It took away the bronze, but it
+also destroyed the cloth to such a degree that he
+supposed it ruined and threw it away. A day or
+two later, happening to pick it up, he was astonished
+to find that the rubber had undergone a remarkable
+change, and that the effect of the acid
+had been to harden it to such an extent that it
+would now stand a degree of heat which would
+have melted it before. Aqua fortis contained
+sulphuric acid. Goodyear was thus on the
+threshold of his great discovery of vulcanizing
+rubber. He called his new process the "curing"
+of india-rubber.</p>
+
+<p>The "cured" india-rubber was subjected to
+many tests and passed through them successfully,
+thus demonstrating its adaptability to many important
+uses. Goodyear readily obtained a patent
+for his process, and a partner with a large
+capital was found ready to aid him. He hired
+the old india-rubber works on Staten Island and
+opened a salesroom in Broadway. He was
+thrown back for six weeks at this important<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span>
+time by an accident which happened to him
+while experimenting with his fabrics and which
+came near causing his death. Just as he was recovering
+and preparing to begin the manufacture
+of his goods on a large scale the terrible commercial
+crisis of 1837 swept over the country,
+and by destroying his partner's fortune at one
+blow, reduced Goodyear to absolute beggary.
+His family had joined him in New York, and he
+was entirely without the means of supporting
+them. As the only resource at hand he decided
+to pawn an article of value&mdash;one of the few
+which he possessed&mdash;in order to raise money to
+procure one day's supply of provisions. At the
+very door of the pawnbroker's shop he met one
+of his creditors, who kindly asked if he could
+be of any further assistance to him. Weak
+with hunger and overcome by the generosity
+of his friend the poor man burst into tears and
+replied that, as his family was on the point of
+starvation, a loan of $15 would greatly oblige
+him. The money was given him on the spot and
+the necessity for visiting the pawnbroker averted
+for several days longer. Still he was a frequent
+visitor to that person during the year, and one
+by one the relics of his better days disappeared.
+Another friend loaned him $100, which enabled
+him to remove his family to Staten Island, in the
+neighborhood of the abandoned rubber works,
+which the owners gave him permission to use
+so far as he could. He contrived in this way to
+manufacture enough of his "cured" cloth, which
+sold readily, to enable him to keep his family<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span>
+from starvation. He made repeated efforts to
+induce capitalists to come to the factory and see
+his samples and the process by which they were
+made, but no one would venture near him.
+There had been money enough lost in such experiments,
+these acquaintances said, and they
+were determined to risk no more.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, in all the broad land there was but one
+man who had the slightest hope of accomplishing
+anything with india-rubber, and that one
+was Charles Goodyear. His friends regarded
+him as a monomaniac. He not only manufactured
+his cloth, but even dressed in clothes made of it,
+wearing it for the purpose of testing its durability,
+as well as of advertising it. He was certainly
+an odd figure, and in his appearance justified
+the remark of one of his friends, who, upon
+being asked how Mr. Goodyear could be recognized,
+replied: "If you see a man with an india-rubber
+coat on, india-rubber shoes, and india-rubber
+cap, and in his pocket an india-rubber
+purse with not a cent in it, that is Goodyear."</p>
+
+<p>In September, 1837, a new gleam of hope lit
+up his pathway. A friend having loaned him a
+small sum of money he went to Roxbury, taking
+with him some of his best specimens. Although
+the Roxbury Company had gone down with a
+fearful crash, Mr. Chaffee, the inventor of the
+first process of making rubber goods in this
+country, was still firm in his faith that india-rubber
+would at some future time justify the expectations
+of its earliest friends. He welcomed
+Goodyear cordially and allowed him to use the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>
+abandoned works of the company for his experiments.
+The result was that Goodyear succeeded
+in making shoes and cloths of india-rubber of a
+quality so much better than any that had yet
+been seen in America that the hopes of the
+friends of india-rubber were raised to a high
+point. Offers to purchase rights for certain portions
+of the country came in rapidly, and by the
+sale of them Goodyear realized between four
+and five thousand dollars. He was now able to
+bring his family to Roxbury, and for the time
+fortune seemed to smile upon him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Calenders_Heated_Internally_by_Steam" id="Calenders_Heated_Internally_by_Steam"></a>
+<img src="images/172.jpg" width="400" height="241" alt="Calenders Heated Internally by Steam, for Spreading India Rubber into Sheets or upon Cloth, called the Chaffee Machine." />
+<span class="caption">Calenders Heated Internally by Steam, for Spreading India Rubber into Sheets or
+ upon Cloth, called the &quot;Chaffee Machine.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>His success was but temporary, however. He
+obtained an order from the general Government
+for one hundred and fifty india-rubber mail-bags,
+which he succeeded in producing, and as they
+came out smooth, highly polished, hard, well
+shaped, and entirely impervious to moisture, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span>
+was delighted and summoned his friends to inspect
+and admire them. All who saw them pronounced
+them a perfect success, but alas! in a
+single month they began to soften and ferment,
+and finally became useless. Poor Goodyear's
+hopes were dashed to the ground. It was found
+that the aqua fortis merely "cured" the surface
+of the material, and that only very thin cloth
+made in this way was durable. His other goods
+began to prove worthless and his promising
+business came to a sudden and disastrous end.
+All his possessions were seized and sold for debt,
+and once more he was reduced to poverty. His
+position was even worse than before, for his
+family had increased in size and his aged father
+also had become dependent upon him for support.</p>
+
+<p>Friends, relatives, and even his wife, all demanded
+that he should abandon his empty
+dreams and turn his attention to something that
+would yield a support to his family. Four years
+of constant failure, added to the unfortunate experience
+of those who had preceded him, ought
+to convince him, they said, that he was hoping
+against hope. Hitherto his conduct, certainly
+had been absurd, though they admitted that he
+was to some extent excused for it by his partial
+success; but to persist in it would be criminal.
+The inventor was driven to despair, and being a
+man of tender feelings and ardently devoted to
+his family, might have yielded to them had he
+not felt that he was nearer than ever to the discovery
+of the secret that had eluded him so long.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Just before the failure of his mail-bags had
+brought ruin upon him, he had taken into his
+employ a man named Nathaniel Hayward, who
+had been the foreman of the old Roxbury works,
+and who was still in charge of them when Goodyear
+came to Roxbury, and was making a few
+rubber articles on his own account. He hardened
+his compound by mixing a little powdered
+sulphur with the gum, or by sprinkling sulphur
+over the rubber cloth and drying it in the sun.
+He declared that the process had been revealed
+to him in a dream, but could give no further account
+of it. Goodyear was astonished to find
+that the sulphur cured the india-rubber as thoroughly
+as the aqua fortis, the principal objection
+being that the sulphurous odor of the goods was
+frightful in hot weather. Hayward's process
+was really the same as that employed by Goodyear,
+the "curing" of the india-rubber being
+due in each case to the agency of the sulphur,
+the principal difference between them being that
+Hayward's goods were dried by the sun and
+Goodyear's with nitric acid. Hayward set so
+small a value upon his discovery that he readily
+sold it to his new employer.</p>
+
+<p>Goodyear felt that he had now all but conquered
+his difficulties. It was plain that sulphur
+was the great controller of india-rubber, for he
+had proved that when applied to thin cloth it
+would render it available for most purposes. The
+problem that now remained was how to mix sulphur
+and the gum in a mass, so that every part
+of the rubber should be subjected to the agency<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span>
+of the sulphur. He experimented for weeks and
+months with the most intense eagerness, but the
+mystery completely baffled him. His friends
+urged him to go to work to do something for
+his family, but he could not turn back. The
+goal was almost in sight, and he felt that he
+would be false to his mission were he to abandon
+his labors now. To the world he seemed a crack-brained
+dreamer, and some there were who, seeing
+the distress of his family, did not hesitate to
+apply still harsher names to him. Had it been
+merely wealth that he was working for, doubtless
+he would have turned back and sought some
+other means of obtaining it; but he sought more.
+He felt that he had a mission to fulfil, and that
+no one else could perform it.</p>
+
+<p>He was right. A still greater success was
+about to crown his labors, but in a manner far
+different from his expectations. His experiments
+had developed nothing; chance was to make the
+revelation. It was in the spring of 1839, and in
+the following manner: Standing before a stove
+in a store at Woburn, Mass., he was explaining
+to some acquaintances the properties of a piece
+of sulphur-cured india-rubber which he held in
+his hand. They listened to him good-naturedly,
+but with evident incredulity, when suddenly he
+dropped the rubber on the stove, which was red
+hot. His old clothes would have melted instantly
+from contact with such heat; but, to his surprise,
+this piece underwent no such change. In amazement
+he examined it, and found that while it had
+charred or shrivelled like leather, it had not softened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span>
+at all. The bystanders attached no importance
+to this phenomenon, but to him it was a
+revelation. He renewed his experiments with
+enthusiasm, and in a little while established the
+facts that india-rubber, when mixed with sulphur
+and exposed to a certain degree of heat for a
+specified time, would not melt or soften at any
+degree of heat; that it would only char at two
+hundred and eighty degrees, and that it would
+not stiffen from exposure to any extent of cold.
+The difficulty now consisted in finding out the
+exact degree of heat necessary for the perfecting
+of the rubber and the exact length of time required
+for the heating.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Charles_Goodyears_Exhibition_of_Hard_India_Rubber_Goods" id="Charles_Goodyears_Exhibition_of_Hard_India_Rubber_Goods"></a>
+<img src="images/177.jpg" width="400" height="249" alt="Charles Goodyear's Exhibition of Hard India Rubber Goods at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, England.
+(From a print published at the time.)" />
+<span class="caption">Charles Goodyear&#39;s Exhibition of Hard India Rubber Goods at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, England.
+(From a print published at the time.)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>He made this discovery in his darkest days,
+when, in fact, he was in constant danger of arrest
+for debt, having already been a frequent inmate
+of the debtors' prison. He was in the depths of
+bitter poverty and in such feeble health that he
+was constantly haunted by the fear of dying before
+he had perfected his discovery&mdash;before he
+had fulfilled his mission. He needed an apparatus
+for producing a high and uniform heat for his
+experiments, and he was unable to obtain it. He
+used to bake his compound in his wife's bread-oven
+and steam it over the spout of her tea-kettle,
+and to press the kitchen fire into his service
+so far as it would go. When this failed, he
+would go down to the shops in the vicinity of
+Woburn and beg to be allowed to use the ovens
+and boilers after working hours were over. The
+workmen regarded him as a lunatic, but were too
+good-natured to deny him the request. Finally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a><br /><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span>
+he induced a bricklayer to make him an oven,
+and paid him in masons' aprons of india-rubber.
+The oven was a failure. Sometimes it would
+turn out pieces of perfectly vulcanized cloth,
+and again the goods would be charred and
+ruined. Goodyear was in despair.</p>
+
+<p>All this time he lived on the charity of his
+friends. His neighbors pretended to lend him
+money, but in reality gave him the means of
+keeping his family from starvation. He has declared
+that all the while he felt sure he would,
+before long, be able to pay them back, but they
+have declared with equal emphasis that, at that
+time, they never expected to witness his success.
+He was yellow and shrivelled in face, with a
+gaunt, lean figure, and his habit of wearing an
+india-rubber coat, which was charred and blackened
+from his frequent experiments with it, gave
+him a wild and singular appearance. People
+shook their heads solemnly when they saw him,
+and said that the mad-house was the proper place
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>The winter of 1839-40 was long and severe.
+At the opening of the season Goodyear received
+a letter from a house in Paris, making him a handsome
+offer for the use of his process of curing
+india-rubber with aqua fortis. Here was a
+chance for him to rise out of his misery. A
+year before he would have closed with the offer,
+but since then he had discovered the effects of
+sulphur and heat on his compound, and had
+passed far beyond the aqua-fortis stage. Disappointment
+and want had not warped his conscience,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span>
+and he at once declined to enter into any
+arrangements with the French house, informing
+them that although the process they desired to
+purchase was a valuable one, it was about to be
+entirely replaced by another which he was then
+on the point of perfecting, and which he would
+gladly sell them as soon as he had completed it.
+His friends declared that he was mad to refuse
+such an offer; but he replied that nothing would
+induce him to sell a process which he knew was
+about to be rendered worthless by still greater
+discoveries.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks later a terrible snow-storm passed
+over the land, one of the worst that New England
+had ever known, and in the midst of it
+Goodyear made the appalling discovery that he
+had not a particle of fuel or a mouthful of food
+in the house. He was ill enough to be in bed
+himself, and his purse was entirely empty. It
+was a terrible position, made worse, too, by the
+fact that his friends who had formerly aided him
+had turned from him, vexed with his pertinacity,
+and abandoned him to his fate. In his despair
+he bethought him of a mere acquaintance named
+Coleridge, who lived several miles from his cottage,
+and who but a few days before had spoken to
+him with more of kindness than he had received of
+late. This gentleman, he thought, would aid him
+in his distress, if he could but reach his house, but
+in such a snow the journey seemed hopeless to a
+man in his feeble health. Still the effort must be
+made. Nerved by despair, he set out and pushed
+his way resolutely through the heavy drifts.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span>
+The way was long, and it seemed to him that
+he would never accomplish it. Often he fell
+prostrate on the snow, almost fainting with fatigue
+and hunger, and again he would sit down
+wearily in the road, feeling that he would gladly
+die if his discovery were but completed. At
+length, however, he reached the end of his journey,
+and fortunately found his acquaintance at
+home. To this gentleman he told the story
+of his discovery, his hopes, his struggles, and
+his present sufferings, and implored him to help
+him. Mr. Coleridge listened to him kindly, and
+after expressing the warmest sympathy for him,
+loaned him money enough to support his family
+during the severe weather and to enable him to
+continue his experiments.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing no prospect of success in Massachusetts,
+he now resolved to make a desperate effort
+to get to New York, feeling confident that the
+specimens he could take with him would convince
+someone of the superiority of his new
+method. He was beginning to understand the
+cause of his many failures, but he saw clearly
+that his compound could not be worked with
+certainty without expensive apparatus. It was
+a very delicate operation, requiring exactness
+and promptitude. The conditions upon which
+success depended were many, and the failure of
+one spoiled all. It cost him thousands of failures
+to learn that a little acid in his sulphur
+caused the blistering; that his compound must
+be heated almost immediately after being mixed
+or it would never vulcanize; that a portion of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span>
+white lead in the compound greatly facilitated
+the operation and improved the result; and when
+he had learned these facts, it still required costly
+and laborious experiments to devise the best
+methods of compounding his ingredients in the
+best proportions, the best mode of heating, the
+proper duration of the heating, and the various
+useful effects that could be produced by varying
+the proportions and the degree of heat. He
+tells us that many times when, by exhausting
+every resource, he had prepared a quantity of
+his compound for heating, it was spoiled because
+he could not, with his inadequate apparatus,
+apply the heat soon enough.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="COUNCIL_MEDAL_OF_THE_EXHIBITION" id="COUNCIL_MEDAL_OF_THE_EXHIBITION"></a>
+<img src="images/181.jpg" width="300" height="152" alt="COUNCIL MEDAL OF THE EXHIBITION. C. GOODYEAR. CLASS XXVIII. 1851." />
+<span class="caption">COUNCIL MEDAL OF THE EXHIBITION.<br />
+C. GOODYEAR. CLASS XXVIII. <br />
+1851.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>To New York, then, he directed his thoughts.
+Merely to get there cost him a severer and a
+longer effort than men in general are capable of
+making. First he walked to Boston, ten miles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span>
+distant, where he hoped to borrow from an old
+acquaintance $50, with which to provide for
+his family and pay his fare to New York. He
+not only failed in this, but he was arrested for
+debt and thrown into prison. Even in prison,
+while his old father was negotiating to procure
+his release, he labored to interest men of capital
+in his discovery, and made proposals for founding
+a factory in Boston. Having obtained his
+liberty, he went to a hotel and spent a week in
+vain efforts to effect a small loan. Saturday
+night came, and with it his hotel bill, which he
+had no means of discharging. In an agony of
+shame and anxiety, he went to a friend and entreated
+the sum of $5 to enable him to return
+home. He was met with a point-blank refusal.
+In the deepest dejection, he walked the streets
+till late in the night, and strayed at length,
+almost beside himself, to Cambridge, where he
+ventured to call upon a friend and ask shelter
+for the night. He was hospitably entertained,
+and the next morning walked wearily home,
+penniless and despairing. At the door of his
+house a member of his family met him with the
+news that his youngest child, two years old,
+whom he had left in perfect health, was dying.
+In a few hours he had in his house a dead
+child, but not the means of burying it, and five
+living dependents without a morsel of food to
+give them. A storekeeper near by had promised
+to supply the family, but, discouraged by
+the unforeseen length of the father's absence, he
+had that day refused to trust them further. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span>
+these terrible circumstances he applied to a
+friend, upon whose generosity he knew he could
+rely, one who never failed him. He received in
+reply a letter of severe and cutting reproach,
+enclosing $7, which his friend explained was
+given only out of pity for his innocent and suffering
+family. A stranger who chanced to be
+present when this letter arrived sent them a barrel
+of flour, a timely and blessed relief. The
+next day the family followed on foot the remains
+of the little child to the grave.</p>
+
+<p>This was about the darkest hour of poor Goodyear's
+life, but it was before the dawn. He managed
+to obtain $50, with which he went to
+New York, and succeeded in interesting two
+brothers, William and Emory Rider, in his discoveries.
+They agreed to advance to him a
+certain sum to complete his experiments. By
+means of this aid he was enabled to keep his
+family from want, and his experiments were pursued
+with greater ease and certainty. His
+brother-in-law, William De Forrest, a rich wool
+manufacturer, also came to his aid, now that
+success seemed in view. Nevertheless, the experiments
+of that and the following year cost
+nearly $50,000. Thanks to this timely aid, he
+was able in 1844, ten years after beginning his
+work, to produce perfect vulcanized india-rubber
+with economy and certainty. To the end of
+his life he was at work, however, endeavoring
+to improve the material and apply it to new uses.
+He took out more than sixty patents covering
+different processes of making rubber goods.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="GRANDE_MEDAILLE_DHONNEUR_EXPOSITION_UNIVERSELLE_DE_1855" id="GRANDE_MEDAILLE_DHONNEUR_EXPOSITION_UNIVERSELLE_DE_1855"></a>
+<img src="images/184.jpg" width="300" height="152" alt="GRANDE MEDAILLE D'HONNEUR. EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE DE 1855. Donne pour la Decouverte de la Vulcanisation et Durcissement du Caoutchouc. FACSIMILE GOLD." />
+<span class="caption">GRANDE MEDAILLE D&#39;HONNEUR.<br />
+EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE DE 1855.<br />
+Donne pour la Decouverte de la Vulcanisation et Durcissement du Caoutchouc.<br />
+FACSIMILE GOLD.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If Goodyear had been a man of business instincts
+and habits, the years following the completion
+of his great work might have brought him
+an immense fortune; but everywhere he seems
+to have been unfortunate in protecting his rights.
+In France and England he lost his patent rights
+by technical defects. In the latter country another
+man, who had received a copy of the
+American patent, actually applied and obtained
+the English rights in his own name. Goodyear,
+however, obtained the great council medal at
+the London Exhibition of 1851, a grand medal at
+Paris, in 1855, and later the ribbon of the Legion
+of Honor. In this country he was scarcely less
+unfortunate. His patents were infringed right
+and left, he was cheated by business associates
+and plundered of the profits of his invention.
+The United States Commissioner of Patents, in
+1858, thus spoke of his losses:</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No inventor, probably, has ever been so
+harassed, so trampled upon, so plundered by
+that sordid and licentious class of infringers
+known in the parlance of the world as 'pirates.'
+The spoliation of their incessant guerrilla warfare
+upon his defenceless rights has unquestionably
+amounted to millions."</p>
+
+<p>Goodyear died in New York in July, 1860,
+worn out with work and disappointment. Neither
+Europe nor America seemed disposed to
+accord him any reward or credit for having
+made one of the greatest discoveries of the time.
+Notwithstanding his invention, which has made
+millions for those engaged in working it, he died
+insolvent, and left his family heavily in debt. A
+few years after his death an effort was made to
+procure from Congress an extension of his patent
+for the benefit of his family and creditors.
+The opposition of the men who had grown rich
+and powerful by successfully infringing his
+rights prevented that august body from doing
+justice in the matter and the effort came to
+nothing.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>JOHN ERICSSON.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="John_Ericsson" id="John_Ericsson"></a>
+<img src="images/187.jpg" width="500" height="642" alt="John Ericsson." />
+<span class="caption">John Ericsson.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Captain John Ericsson, although not by
+birth an American, rendered such signal services
+to this country and lived here for so many years
+that we may fairly consider him in the light of
+an American inventor. The inventions to which
+he devoted the best years of his life were made
+in this country. He loved America, he died
+here, and though his ashes have been sent back
+to Sweden, the world of Europe, in common
+with ourselves, probably thinks of Ericsson as
+an American.</p>
+
+<p>By the roadside near a mountain hamlet of
+Central Sweden stands a pyramid of iron cast
+from ore dug from the adjacent mines and set
+upon a base of granite quarried from the hills
+which overlook the valley. This monument bears
+the information that two brothers, Nils Ericsson
+and John Ericsson, were born in a miner's
+hut at that place, respectively, January 31, 1802,
+and July 31, 1803. Nils Ericsson was a man of
+unusual distinction, who held high position in
+Sweden as engineer of the canals and railroads
+of the kingdom. The name of his brother is
+known the world over. These two notable
+Swedes were sons of Olof Ericsson, a Swedish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span>
+miner. Poverty was one of the bits of good
+fortune that fell to the lot of the two boys, and
+among John's earliest recollections is that of the
+seizure of their household effects by the sheriff.
+The mother was a woman of intelligence and
+somewhat acquainted with the literature of her
+time. In boyhood John Ericsson worked in the
+iron mines of Central Sweden. Machinery was
+his first love and his last. Before he was eleven
+years old, during the winter of 1813, he had produced
+a miniature saw-mill of ingenious construction,
+and had planned a pumping-engine
+designed to keep the mines free from water.
+The frame of the saw-mill was of wood; the
+saw-blade was made from a watch-spring and
+was moved by a crank made from a broken tin
+spoon. A file, borrowed from a neighboring
+blacksmith, a gimlet, and a jack-knife were the
+only tools used in this work. His pumping-engine
+was a more ambitious affair, to be operated
+by a wind-mill.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="John_Ericssons_Birthplace_and_Monument" id="John_Ericssons_Birthplace_and_Monument"></a>
+<img src="images/190.jpg" width="400" height="271" alt="John Ericsson's Birthplace and Monument." />
+<span class="caption">John Ericsson&#39;s Birthplace and Monument.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The family then lived in the wilderness, surrounded
+by a pine forest, where Ericsson's father
+was engaged in selecting timber for the lock-gates
+of a canal. A quill and a pencil were the
+boy's tools in the way of drawing materials. He
+made compasses of birch wood. A pair of steel
+tweezers were converted into a drawing-pen.
+Ericsson had never seen a wind-mill, but following
+as well as he could the description of those
+who had, he succeeded in constructing on paper
+the mechanism connecting the crank of a wind-mill
+with the pump-lever. The plan, conceived<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a><br /><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span>
+and executed under such circumstances by a
+mere boy, attracted the attention of Count
+Platen, president of the Gotha Ship Canal, on
+which Ericsson's father was employed, and when
+Ericsson was twelve years old he was made
+a member of the surveying party carrying out
+the canal work and put in charge of a section.
+Six hundred of the royal troops looked for directions
+in their daily work to this boy, one of his
+attendants being a man who followed him with
+a stool, upon which he stood to use the surveying
+instruments. The amusements of this boy
+engineer, even at the age of fifteen, are indicated
+by a portfolio of drawings made in his leisure
+moments, giving maps of the most important
+parts of the canal, three hundred miles in length,
+and showing all the machinery used in its construction.
+His precocity was, however, the normal
+and healthy development of a mind as fond
+of mechanical principles as Raphael was of color.</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1811 that Ericsson made his first
+scale drawing of the famous Sunderland Iron
+Bridge, and from that time on his career in
+Sweden was a brilliant one. After serving as an
+engineer upon the Gotha Canal he became an
+officer in the Swedish army, from which circumstance
+he got his title of captain. Most government
+work was then done by army officers, especially
+in field surveying. The appointments of
+government surveyors being offered soon afterward
+to competitive examination among the officers
+of the army, Ericsson went to Stockholm
+and entered the lists. Detailed maps of fifty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span>
+square miles of Swedish territory, still upon file at
+Stockholm, show his skill. Though his work as
+a surveyor exceeded that of any of his companions,
+he was not satisfied. He sought an outlet
+for his superfluous activity in preparing the drawings
+and engraving sixty-four large plates for a
+work illustrating the Gotha Canal. His faculty
+for invention was shown here by the construction
+of a machine-engraver, with which eighteen
+copper-plates were completed by his own hand
+within a year.</p>
+
+<p>From engraving young Ericsson turned his
+attention to experiments with flame as a means
+of producing mechanical power, and it is interesting
+to note that forty years afterward a large
+part of his income in this country was derived
+from his gas-or flame-engine, thousands of which
+are now in use in New York City alone for
+pumping water up to the tops of the houses.
+His early flame-engine, as it was called, turned
+out so well that after building one of ten horse-power,
+he obtained leave of absence to go to
+England to introduce the invention. He never
+returned to Sweden for any length of time,
+although he remained a Swede at heart, and
+many Swedish orders and decorations have been
+conferred upon him. In addition to the monument
+near Ericsson's birthplace, already mentioned,
+the government has erected a granite
+shaft, eighteen feet high, in front of the cottage
+in which he was born. This shaft, bearing
+the inscription, "John Ericsson was born here
+in 1803," was dedicated on September 3, 1867,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span>
+when work was suspended in the neighboring
+mines and iron furnaces, and a holiday was held
+in honor of Sweden's famous son. Poems were
+read, the chief engineer of the mining district
+delivered an oration, and Dr. Pallin, a savant
+from Philipstad, reminded his hearers that seven
+cities in Greece contended for the honor of being
+Homer's birthplace. "Certificates of baptism
+did not then exist," said Dr. Pallin, "and
+there is no doubt with us as to Ericsson's birthplace;
+yet to guard against all accidents we
+have here placed a record of baptism weighing
+eighty thousand pounds." The monument
+stands on an isthmus between two lakes surrounded
+by green hills.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="The_Novelty_Locomotive_built_by_Ericsson" id="The_Novelty_Locomotive_built_by_Ericsson"></a>
+<img src="images/194.jpg" width="400" height="269" alt="The Novelty Locomotive, built by Ericsson to compete with Stephenson's Rocket, 1829." />
+<span class="caption">The Novelty Locomotive, built by Ericsson to compete with Stephenson&#39;s Rocket, 1829.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Ericsson's life in England began in 1826. Fortune
+did not smile upon his efforts to introduce
+his flame-engine, for the coal fire which had
+to be used in England was too severe for the
+working parts of the apparatus. But Ericsson
+possessed a capacity for hard work that recognized
+no obstacles. He undertook a new series
+of experiments which resulted finally in the completion
+of an engine which was patented and
+sold to John Braithwaite. Young Ericsson's capacity
+for work and for keeping half a dozen experiments
+in view at the same time seems to have
+been as remarkable in those early days as when
+he became famous. Records of the London
+Patent Office credit him with invention after
+invention. Among these were a pumping-engine
+on a new principle; engines with surface condensers
+and no smoke-stack, as applied to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a><br /><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span>
+steamship Victory in 1828; an apparatus for
+making salt from brine; for propelling boats
+on canals; a hydrostatic weighing machine, to
+which the Society of Arts awarded a prize; an
+instrument to be used in taking deep-sea soundings;
+a file-cutting machine. The list covers
+some fourteen patented inventions and forty machines.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Ericsson_on_his_Arrival_in_England" id="Ericsson_on_his_Arrival_in_England"></a>
+<img src="images/196.jpg" width="400" height="522" alt="Ericsson on his Arrival in England, aged twenty-three." />
+<span class="caption">Ericsson on his Arrival in England, aged twenty-three.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Perhaps his most important work at this period
+was a device for creating artificial draught
+in locomotives, to which aid the development of
+our railroad owes much. In 1829 the Liverpool
+&amp; Manchester Railroad offered a prize of $2,500
+for the best locomotive capable of doing certain
+work. The prize was taken by Stephenson
+with his famous Rocket; but his sharpest competitor
+in this contest was John Ericsson. Four
+locomotives entered the contest. The London
+<i>Times</i> of October 8, 1829, speaks highly of the
+Novelty, the locomotive entered by Messrs.
+Braithwaite &amp; Ericsson, saying: "It was the
+lightest and most elegant carriage on the road
+yesterday, and the velocity with which it moved
+surprised and amazed every beholder. It shot
+along the line at the amazing rate of thirty miles
+an hour. It seemed indeed to fly, presenting
+one of the most sublime spectacles of human
+ingenuity and human daring the world ever
+beheld."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Mrs_John_Ericsson_nee_Amelia_Byam" id="Mrs_John_Ericsson_nee_Amelia_Byam"></a>
+<img src="images/197.jpg" width="400" height="499" alt="Mrs. John Ericsson, née Amelia Byam. (From an early daguerreotype.)" />
+<span class="caption">Mrs. John Ericsson, née Amelia Byam.<br />
+(From an early daguerreotype.)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The railroad directors, at whose invitation this
+test was made, had asked for ten miles an hour;
+Ericsson gave them thirty. The excitement of
+the witnesses found vent in loud cheers. Within<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span>
+an hour the shares of the railroad company rose
+ten per cent., and the young engineer might well
+have considered his fortune made. But although
+he had beaten his rival ten miles an hour, the
+judges determined to make traction power,
+rather than speed, the critical test, and the prize
+was awarded to Stephenson's Rocket, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span>
+drew seventeen tons for seventy miles at the rate
+of thirteen miles an hour. Stephenson's engine
+weighed twice as much as Ericsson's. Nevertheless
+Ericsson's success with the Novelty was
+such as to keep him busy in this particular field.
+He followed it up with a steam fire-engine that
+astonished London at the burning of the Argyle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span>
+Rooms, in 1829, when for the first time, as one
+of the local papers remarked, "fire was extinguished
+by the mechanical power of fire."
+Another engine, of larger power, built for the
+King of Prussia, soon after rendered excellent
+service in Berlin, and a third was built for Liverpool
+in 1830. Ten years afterward the Mechanics'
+Institute of New York awarded a gold
+medal to Ericsson as a prize for the best plan of
+a steam-engine.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Exterior_View_of_Ericssons_House" id="Exterior_View_of_Ericssons_House"></a>
+<img src="images/199.jpg" width="400" height="336" alt="Exterior View of Ericsson's House, No. 36 Beach Street, New York, 1890." />
+<span class="caption">Exterior View of Ericsson&#39;s House, No. 36 Beach Street, New York, 1890.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Disappointed in his ill success with inventions
+pertaining to locomotives, Ericsson now
+turned his attention to his early flame-engine,
+and the working model of a caloric engine of
+five-horse power soon attracted the attention of
+London. At first there seemed to be a great
+future for engines upon this principle, but after
+many years of experiments, at great expense,
+Ericsson found that the principle was useful only
+for purposes requiring small power. In 1851 he
+built a heat-engine for the ship Ericsson, a vessel
+two hundred and sixty feet in length, and tells
+the result as follows: "The ship after completion
+made a successful trip from New York to
+Washington and back during the winter season;
+but the average speed at sea proving insufficient
+for commercial purposes, the owners, with regret,
+acceded to my proposition to remove the
+costly machinery, although it had proved perfect
+as a mechanical combination. The resources of
+modern engineering having been exhausted in
+producing the motors of the caloric ship, the important
+question, Can heated air, as a mechanical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a><br /><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span>
+motor, compete on a large scale with steam?
+has forever been set at rest. The commercial
+world is indebted to American enterprise for
+having settled a question of such vital importance.
+The marine engineer has thus been encouraged
+to renew his efforts to perfect the
+steam-engine without fear of rivalry from a motor
+depending on the dilation of atmospheric air
+by heat."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Solar-engine_Adapted_to_the_Use_of_Hot_Air" id="Solar-engine_Adapted_to_the_Use_of_Hot_Air"></a>
+<img src="images/201.jpg" width="400" height="489" alt="Solar-engine Adapted to the Use of Hot Air. (Patented as a pumping-engine, 1880.)" />
+<span class="caption">Solar-engine Adapted to the Use of Hot Air.<br />
+(Patented as a pumping-engine, 1880.)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Before leaving this question of heat-engines
+and passing to the more important inventions by
+which Ericsson will be remembered, it may be
+as well to say a few words concerning the solar-engines
+to which he devoted many years' time,
+and one of which I saw in operation in the back
+yard of the pleasant old house in Beach Street,
+opposite the freight depot of the Hudson River
+Railroad. This house, by the way, which Ericsson
+occupied for nearly forty years, faced on St.
+John's Park, the pleasant square which was afterward
+filled up by the railroad company. Toward
+the last years of Ericsson's life the neighborhood
+became anything but a pleasant one to
+live in; it was dirty and noisy. Nevertheless
+Ericsson refused to move. Perhaps the unpleasantness
+of the surroundings made him the recluse
+he was. It is not surprising that he should have
+been attracted by the possibility of obtaining
+power from the heat of the sun. In an early
+pamphlet on the subject he says: "There is a
+rainless region extending from the northwestern
+coast of Africa to Mongolia, nine thousand miles
+in length and nearly one thousand miles wide.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span>
+In the Western Hemisphere, Lower California,
+the table-lands of Guatemala, and the west coast
+of South America, for a distance of more than two
+thousand miles, suffer from a continuous radiant
+heat." Ericsson estimated that the mechanical
+power that would result from utilizing the solar
+heat on a strip of land a single mile wide and
+eight thousand miles long would suffice to keep
+twenty-two million solar-engines, of one hundred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>
+horse-power each, going nine hours a day. He
+believed that with the exhaustion of European
+coal-fields the day for the solar-engine would
+come, and that those countries which possessed
+unfailing sunshine, such as Egypt, would displace
+England, France, and Germany as the manufacturing
+powers of the world, for the European
+would have to move his machinery to the borders
+of the Nile. By concentrating the rays of
+the sun upon a small copper boiler filled with
+air Ericsson was enabled to work a little motor,
+and for some years he also attempted to produce
+steam by means of heat from the sun. He was
+not successful, however, in making anything of
+commercial value in this direction, and so far as
+I have been able to learn none of the tropical
+countries invited by him to take up the problem
+for its own benefit responded to the invitation.</p>
+
+<p>Ericsson's studies and improvements of the
+screw as a means of propelling boats began in
+England. A model boat, two feet long, fitted
+up with two screws, was launched in a London
+bath-house, and, supplied by steam from a boiler
+placed at the side of the tank, was sent around
+at a speed estimated at six miles an hour. Ericsson
+was so delighted with it that he built a boat
+eight feet by forty, armed with two propellers,
+in the hope that the British Admiralty might
+adopt the invention. This boat went through
+the water at the rate of ten miles an hour, or
+seven miles an hour towing a schooner of one
+hundred and forty tons burden. He invited the
+Admiralty to see the work of his screw. Steaming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span>
+up to Somerset House with his little vessel,
+Ericsson took the Admiralty barge in tow, to
+the wonder of the watermen, who could make
+nothing of the novel craft with no apparent
+means of propulsion. The British Admiralty,
+however, was not easily convinced. These wiseacres
+said nothing, but Ericsson professed to
+have heard that their verdict was against him
+because one of the authorities of the board decided
+that "even if the propeller had the power
+of propelling a vessel it would be found altogether
+useless in practice, because the power,
+being applied to the stern, it would be absolutely
+impossible to make the vessel steer."</p>
+
+<p>This official blindness cost England the services
+of the inventor. The United States happened
+to have as consul in Liverpool at that day
+(1837) Mr. Francis B. Ogden, a pioneer in steam
+navigation on the Ohio River. Ogden saw
+Ericsson's invention and introduced him to Captain
+Robert F. Stockton, of the United States
+Navy. With Stockton, seeing was believing, and
+when he returned from a trip on Ericsson's boat,
+he exclaimed: "I do not want the opinion of
+your scientific men. What I have seen to-day
+satisfies me." Before the vessel had completed
+her trip, Ericsson received from Stockton an
+order for two boats. Upon Stockton's assurance
+that the United States would try his propeller
+upon a large scale, Ericsson closed up his
+affairs in England and embarked for the United
+States. Through the good offices of Stockton,
+but after considerable delay, a vessel called the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span>
+Princeton was ordered and completed. She
+carried a number of radical improvements destined
+to make a revolution in naval warfare.
+The boilers and engines were below the waterline,
+out of the way of shot and shell. The
+smoke-stack was a telescopic affair, replacing
+the tall pipe that formed so conspicuous a target
+upon the old boats. Centrifugal blowers in the
+hold, worked by separate engines, secured increased
+draught for the furnaces. The Princeton
+was a wonder, and everyone was ready to
+praise the inventive genius of Ericsson and the
+daring of Captain Stockton in adopting so many
+radical novelties. An entry in the diary of John
+Quincy Adams, dated February 28, 1844, tells
+the sad story of the public exhibition of the
+Princeton at Washington:</p>
+
+<p>"I went into the chamber of the Committee of
+Manufactures and wrote there till six. Dined
+with Mr. Grinnell and Mr. Winthrop. While
+we were at dinner John Barney burst into the
+chamber, rushed up to General Scott and told
+him, with groans, that the President wished to
+see him; that the great gun on board the Princeton
+had burst and killed the Secretary of State,
+Upshur; the Secretary of the Navy, T.W. Gilmer;
+Captain Beverly Kennon, Virgil Maxey, a
+Colonel Gardiner, of New York, a colored servant
+of the President, and desperately wounded
+several of the crew."</p>
+
+<p>So tragic an introduction was not needed to
+direct public attention to the Princeton. Ericsson
+had placed the United States at the head of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>
+naval powers in the application of steam-power
+to warfare. He had made the experiment of the
+Princeton at a great cost to himself, and two
+years of concentrated effort had been devoted
+to the service of the Government. For his
+time, labor, and necessary expenditures he rendered
+a bill of $15,000, leaving the question of
+what, if anything, should be charged for his
+patent rights entirely to the discretion and generosity
+of the Government. The bill was refused
+payment by the Navy Department because of
+its limited discretion. Ericsson went to Congress
+with it, but a dozen years passed without
+the slightest progress toward a settlement. A
+court of claims rendered a unanimous decree in
+his favor, but Congress, to which the bill was
+again sent, failed to make an appropriation, and
+there the matter has remained, notwithstanding
+the brilliant services since rendered to this country
+by the inventor.</p>
+
+<p>Various nations claim the invention of the
+screw as applied to boats. At Trieste and at
+Vienna stand statues erected to Joseph Ressel,
+for whom the Austrians lay claim. Commodore
+Stevens, of New Jersey, is also said by Professor
+Thurston to have built and worked a screw-propeller
+on the Hudson in 1812. Whatever may
+be the final decision as to Ericsson's claim in
+this matter, there can be no doubt as to the
+value of the services he rendered in building the
+Monitor. The suggestion of the Monitor was
+first made in a communication from Ericsson to
+Napoleon III., dated New York, September,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span>
+1854. This paper contained a description of an
+iron-clad vessel surmounted by a cupola substantially
+as in the Monitor as finally built. The
+emperor, through General Favre, acknowledged
+the communication. Favre wrote: "The emperor
+has himself examined with the greatest
+care the new system of naval attack which you
+have communicated to him. His Majesty charges
+me with the honor of informing you that he has
+found your ideas very ingenious and worthy of
+the celebrated name of their author." For eight
+years Ericsson continued working upon his idea
+of a revolving cupola or turret upon an iron-clad
+raft, but found no opportunity to test the practical
+value of the device. His time finally came
+when, in 1861, the Navy Department appointed
+a board to examine plans for iron-clads. The
+board consisted of Commodores Joseph Smith,
+Hiram Paulding, and Charles H. Davis. Ericsson,
+having learned to distrust his own powers
+as a business agent, engaged the assistance of C.
+S. Bushnell, a Connecticut man of some wealth,
+who went to Washington and presented the designs
+of the Monitor to the board.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel W.C. Church, Ericsson's biographer,
+who has just been honored by Sweden for his
+publications upon the life of the inventor, tells
+an interesting story of the negotiations concerning
+the vessel which was to render such signal
+services to the country. Bushnell could make
+no headway with the board and decided that
+Ericsson's presence in Washington was necessary.
+But the inventor was then, as during his whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span>
+life, averse to any self-advertisement, and preferred
+his workshop to any place on earth. But
+as he possessed a sort of rude eloquence due to
+enthusiasm, Bushnell got him to Washington by
+subterfuge. He was told that the board approved
+his plans for an iron-clad and that it
+would be necessary for him to go to the capital
+and complete the contract. Presenting himself
+before the board, what was his astonishment to
+find that he was not only an unexpected but apparently
+an unwelcome visitor. He was not
+long in doubt as to the meaning of this reception.
+To his indignation and astonishment he
+was informed that the plan of a vessel submitted
+by him had already been rejected. His first impulse
+was to withdraw at once. Mastering his
+anger, however, he inquired the reason for this
+decision. Commodore Smith explained that the
+vessel had not sufficient stability; in other words,
+it would be liable to upset. Captain Ericsson
+was too experienced a naval designer to have
+overlooked this point, and in a lucid explanation
+put his views before the board, winding up with
+the declaration: "Gentlemen, after what I have
+said, I consider it to be your duty to the country
+to give me an order to build the vessel before I
+leave this room."</p>
+
+<p>Withdrawing to a corner the board held a consultation
+and invited the inventor to call again
+at one o'clock. When Ericsson returned he
+brought with him a diagram illustrating more
+fully his reasons for considering his proposed
+vessel to be perfectly stable. Commodore, afterward<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span>
+Admiral, Paulding was convinced, and admitted
+that Ericsson had taught him much about
+the stability of vessels. Secretary Welles was
+informed that the board reported favorably upon
+Ericsson's plan, and told the inventor that he
+might return to New York and begin work, as
+the contract would follow him. When the contract
+came it was found to be a singularly one-sided
+affair. If the Monitor proved vulnerable&mdash;in
+other words; if it was not a success&mdash;the
+money paid for it by the Navy Department was
+to be refunded.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="The_Original_Monitor" id="The_Original_Monitor"></a>
+<img src="images/209.jpg" width="400" height="102" alt="The Original Monitor." />
+<span class="caption">The Original Monitor.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It took one hundred days to build the Monitor.
+During those three months Ericsson scarcely
+slept, and even in his dreams he went over the
+details of the new-fangled war-engine he was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>
+building. He named her Monitor because, he
+said, she would warn the
+nations of the world that
+a new era in naval warfare
+had begun. The story of
+his untiring activity has
+been told almost as often
+as that of the battle between
+the Monitor and
+the Merrimac. He was at
+the ship-yard before any
+of the workmen, and was
+the last to leave. In the
+construction of so novel a
+craft difficulties of a puzzling
+nature came up every
+day. If Ericsson could not
+solve them on the spot, he
+studied the matter in the
+quiet of the night, and was
+ready with his drawings
+in the morning. The result
+of the naval battle in
+Hampton Roads, on the
+9th of March, 1862, between
+the little Monitor
+and the big Merrimac
+made Ericsson the hero of
+the hour. Had no David
+appeared to stop the ravages
+of the Confederate
+Goliath, it is hard to say what might not have
+been the injury inflicted upon the cause of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span>
+Union by the terrible Merrimac. The United
+States Navy was virtually panic-stricken when
+the Monitor, this "Yankee cheese-box on a
+plank," as the Southerners called her, came to
+the rescue.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Sectional_View_of_Monitor_through_Turret_and_Pilot-house" id="Sectional_View_of_Monitor_through_Turret_and_Pilot-house"></a>
+<img src="images/208.jpg" width="400" height="246" alt="Sectional View of Monitor through Turret and Pilot-house." />
+<span class="caption">Sectional View of Monitor through Turret and Pilot-house.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the tremendous service rendered
+the country, Ericsson declined to receive
+more compensation for the Monitor than his contract
+called for. In reply to a resolution of the
+New York Chamber of Commerce calling for
+"a suitable return for his services as will evince
+the gratitude of the nation," Ericsson said: "All
+the remuneration I desire for the Monitor I
+get out of the construction of it. It is all-sufficient."
+Our grateful nation took him at his
+word. But honors of another and less costly
+kind were showered upon him. Chief Engineer
+Stimers, who was on the Monitor during her
+battle with the Merrimac, wrote to Ericsson:
+"I congratulate you on your great success.
+Thousands have this day blessed you. I have
+heard whole crews cheer you. Every man feels
+that you have saved this place to the nation by
+furnishing us with the means to whip an iron-clad
+frigate that was, until our arrival, having
+it all her own way with our most powerful
+vessels."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Fac-simile_of_a_Pencil_Sketch_by_Ericsson" id="Fac-simile_of_a_Pencil_Sketch_by_Ericsson"></a>
+<img src="images/211.jpg" width="400" height="281" alt="Fac-simile of a Pencil Sketch by Ericsson, giving a Transverse Section of his Original Monitor Plan, with a Longitudinal Section drawn over it." />
+<span class="caption">Fac-simile of a Pencil Sketch by Ericsson, giving a Transverse Section of his Original Monitor Plan, with a Longitudinal
+Section drawn over it.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>War vessels upon the plan of the Monitor
+speedily appeared among the navies of several
+nations. England refused at first to admit the
+value of the invention and was not converted until
+the double-turreted Miantonomoh visited her
+waters in 1866, when one of the London papers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a><br /><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span>
+described her appearance among the British fleet
+as that of a wolf among a flock of sheep. The
+day of the big wooden war-vessels was over. It
+was, nevertheless, an Englishman and a naval officer,
+Captain Cowper Coles, who sought to deprive
+Ericsson of the honor of his invention.
+Coles declared that he had devised a ship during
+the Crimean War, in which a turret or cupola
+was to protect the guns. Ericsson's letter to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>
+Napoleon III., written in 1854, is sufficient answer
+to this, besides which Ericsson's scheme includes
+more than a stationary shield for the guns, which
+is all that Coles claimed. Coles succeeded, however,
+in inducing the British Admiralty to build
+a vessel according to his plans. This ill-fated
+craft upset off Cape Finisterre on the night of
+September 6, 1870, and went to the bottom with
+Coles and a crew of nearly five hundred men.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Interior_of_the_Destroyer_Looking_toward_the_Bow" id="Interior_of_the_Destroyer_Looking_toward_the_Bow"></a>
+<img src="images/212.jpg" width="400" height="335" alt="Interior of the Destroyer, Looking toward the Bow." />
+<span class="caption">Interior of the Destroyer, Looking toward the Bow.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Having devised an apparatus that made
+wooden war-vessels useless, Ericsson turned his
+attention to the destruction of iron-clads, and devoted
+ten years of his life to the construction of
+his famous torpedo-boat, the Destroyer, upon
+which he spent about all the money he amassed
+by other work. According to his belief, no vessel
+afloat could escape annihilation in a battle
+with his Destroyer. This vessel is designed to
+run at sufficient speed to overtake any of the
+iron-clads. It offers small surface to the shot of
+an enemy, and besides being heavily armored, it
+can be partly submerged beneath the waves.
+When within fighting distance it fires under
+water, by compressed air, a projectile containing
+dynamite sufficient to raise a big war-ship out of
+the water. The explosion takes place when the
+projectile meets with resistance, such as the sides
+of a ship. To Ericsson's great disappointment,
+the United States Government persistently refused
+to purchase the Destroyer or to commission
+Ericsson to build more vessels of her type.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Development_of_the_Monitor_Idea" id="Development_of_the_Monitor_Idea"></a>
+<img src="images/214.jpg" width="400" height="669" alt="Development of the Monitor Idea." />
+<span class="caption">Development of the Monitor Idea.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Of Ericsson's home life there is not much to
+be told. He was utterly wrapped up in his work.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span>
+With his devoted secretary, Mr. Arthur Taylor,
+his days knew scarcely any variation. Of social
+recreation he had none. In conversation he was
+abrupt and somewhat peculiar, apparently regarding
+all other talk than that relating to mechanics
+and germane subjects as a waste of
+words. His shrewd face, with its blue eyes and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span>
+fringe of white hair, was not an unkindly one,
+however, and the few workmen he employed in
+the Beach Street house were devoted to him.
+No great man was ever more intensely averse to
+personal notoriety. Although often advised to
+make his Destroyer better known by means of
+newspaper articles, he persistently refused to see
+newspaper men; and the professional interviewer
+and lion-hunter were his pet aversions. It was
+perhaps to avoid them that he left his house only
+after nightfall, and then but for a walk in the
+neighborhood.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="The_Room_in_which_Ericsson_Worked" id="The_Room_in_which_Ericsson_Worked"></a>
+<img src="images/216.jpg" width="400" height="269" alt="The Room in which Ericsson Worked for More than Twenty Years." />
+<span class="caption">The Room in which Ericsson Worked for More than Twenty Years.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>His time was divided according to rule. For
+thirty years he was called by his servant at seven
+o'clock in the morning, and took a bath of very
+cold water, ice being added to it in summer.
+After some gymnastic exercises came breakfast
+at nine o'clock, always of eggs, tea, and brown
+bread. His second and last meal of the day,
+dinner, never varied from chops or steak, some
+vegetables, and tea and brown bread again. Ice-water
+was the only luxury that he indulged in.
+He used tobacco in no form. During the daytime
+he was accustomed to work at his desk or
+drawing-table for about ten hours. After dinner
+he resumed work until ten, when he started out
+for the stroll of an hour or more, which always
+ended his day. The last desk work accomplished
+every day was to make a record in his diary, always
+exactly one page long. This diary is in
+Swedish and comprises more than fourteen thousand
+pages, thus covering a period of forty years,
+during which he omitted but twenty days, in 1856,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span>
+when he had a finger crushed by machinery. He
+scarcely knew what sickness was, and just before
+his death said that he had not missed a meal
+for fifteen years. He was a widower and left no
+children. He died in the Beach Street house,
+after a short illness, on March 8, 1889, and his
+remains were transferred to Sweden with naval
+honors.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>CYRUS HALL McCORMICK.</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="Cyrus_Hall_McCormick" id="Cyrus_Hall_McCormick"></a>
+<img src="images/218.jpg" width="500" height="677" alt="Cyrus Hall McCormick." />
+<span class="caption">Cyrus Hall McCormick.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the course of an argument before the Commissioner
+of Patents, in 1859, the late Reverdy
+Johnson declared that the McCormick reaper
+was worth $55,000,000 a year to this country,
+an estimate that was not disputed. At about
+the same time the late William H. Seward
+said that "owing to Mr. McCormick's invention
+the line of civilization moves westward thirty
+miles each year." Already the London <i>Times</i>,
+after ridiculing the McCormick reaper exhibited
+at the London World's Fair of 1851, as "a cross
+between an Astley (circus) chariot, a wheel-barrow,
+and a flying-machine," confessed, when
+the reaper had been tested in the fields, that it
+was "worth to the farmers of England the whole
+cost of this exhibition." Writing of this glorious
+success, Mr. Seward said: "So the reaper of
+1831, as improved in 1845, achieved for its inventor
+a triumph which all then felt and acknowledged
+was not more a personal one than
+it was a national one. It was justly so regarded.
+No general or consul, drawn in a chariot through
+the streets of Rome by order of the Senate, ever
+conferred upon mankind benefits so great as he
+who thus vindicated the genius of our country<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span>
+at the World's Exhibition of Art in the metropolis
+of the British empire in 1851." In 1861,
+though declining to extend the patent for the
+reaper, the Commissioner of Patents, D.P. Holloway,
+paid the inventor this remarkable tribute:
+"Cyrus H. McCormick is an inventor whose
+fame, while he is yet living, has spread through
+the world. His genius has done honor to his
+own country, and has been the admiration of
+foreign nations, and he will live in the grateful
+recollection of mankind as long as the reaping-machine
+is employed in gathering the harvest."
+Nevertheless the extension of the patent of 1834,
+which act of justice would have given the inventor
+an opportunity to obtain an adequate reward
+for his work, was refused upon the extraordinary
+ground that "the reaper was of too great value
+to the public to be controlled by any individual."
+In other words, the benefit conferred by McCormick
+upon the country was too great to be paid
+for; therefore no effort should be made to pay
+for it. Finally, the French Academy of Sciences,
+when McCormick was elected to the Institute
+of France&mdash;an honor paid but to few Americans&mdash;mentioned
+the election as due to "his having
+done more for the cause of agriculture than any
+other living man."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Farm_where_Cyrus_H_McCormick_was_Born_and_Raised" id="Farm_where_Cyrus_H_McCormick_was_Born_and_Raised"></a>
+<img src="images/221.jpg" width="400" height="326" alt="Farm where Cyrus H. McCormick was Born and Raised." />
+<span class="caption">Farm where Cyrus H. McCormick was Born and Raised.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is thus evident that the tremendous service
+done to the civilized world by the invention of the
+McCormick reaper was appreciated years ago.
+Yet it is improbable that the whole value of the
+invention was fully realized. To-day the McCormick
+works at Chicago turn out yearly, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span>
+have turned out for several years, more than one
+hundred thousand reapers and mowers. At a
+moderate estimate every McCormick reaper, and
+every reaper founded upon it and containing
+its essential features, saves the labor of six men
+during the ten harvest days of the year. The
+present number of reapers in operation to-day,
+all of them based upon the McCormick patents,
+is estimated at about two million, so that,
+counting a man's labor at $1 a day, here is a
+yearly saving of more than $100,000,000. The
+reaper thus stands beside the steam-engine and
+the sewing-machine as one of the most important
+labor-saving inventions of our time, relieving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span>
+millions of men from the most arduous drudgery
+and increasing the world's wealth by hundreds
+of millions of dollars every year. It is
+some satisfaction to know that the inventor of
+the reaper lived to enjoy the fruits of his work.
+A remarkable man in every respect, his ingenuity,
+perseverance, courage under injustice,
+and generosity finally won him not only the
+material rewards that were his by right, but the
+esteem and honor of the civilized world.</p>
+
+<p>Like Fulton and Morse, Cyrus Hall McCormick
+came of Scotch-Irish blood, a race marked
+by fixed purpose, untiring industry in carrying
+out that purpose, a strong sense of moral obligation,
+and an unswerving determination to do
+right by the light of conscience though the heavens
+fall. He was born on the 15th of February,
+1809, at Walnut Grove, in Rockbridge County,
+Va., and was the eldest of eight children, six of
+whom lived to grow up. His father, Robert
+McCormick, in addition to farming, had workshops
+of considerable importance on his farm,
+as well as a saw-mill and grist-mill and smelting
+furnaces. In these workshops young Cyrus
+McCormick probably got his first love for mechanical
+devices. Robert McCormick was an
+inventor of no mean attainment. He devised
+and built a thresher, a hemp-breaker, some mill
+improvements, and in 1816 he made and tried
+a mechanical reaper. In those days so much of
+the farmer's hard labor was expended in swinging
+the scythe that it seems strange we have
+no record of more attempts to make a machine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span>
+do the work. A schoolmaster named Ogle is
+said to have built a reaper in 1822, but, according
+to his own admission, it would not work.
+Bell, a Scotch minister, also contrived a reaping-machine
+that was tried in 1828. In the course
+of the subsequent patent litigation over the
+reaper the claims of these early inventors were
+made the most of by McCormick's opponents,
+but the courts of last resort invariably settled
+the question in McCormick's favor.</p>
+
+<p>As a farmer boy, young Cyrus McCormick
+began his day's work in the fields at five o'clock.
+In winter he went to the Old Field School.
+During his boyhood he would watch his father's
+experiments and disappointments. His
+first attempt in the same direction was the construction,
+at the age of fifteen, of a harvesting-cradle
+by which he was enabled to keep up with
+an able-bodied workman. His first patented invention
+(1831) was a plough which threw alternate
+furrows on either side, being thus either a right-hand
+or left-hand plough. This was superseded
+in 1833 by an improved plough, also by McCormick,
+called the self-sharpening plough, which
+did excellent work. His father having worked
+long and unsuccessfully at a mechanical reaper,
+it was natural that young McCormick's mind
+should turn over the same problem from time to
+time, and his father's failures did not deter him,
+although Robert McCormick had suffered so
+much in mind and pocket through the impracticability
+of his reaper that he warned his son against
+wasting more time and money upon the dream.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span>
+One martyr to mechanical progress was enough
+for the McCormick family. But the possibility
+of making a machine do the hard, hot work of
+the harvest-field had a fascination for the young
+man, and the more he studied the discarded
+reaping-machine made by his father in 1816, the
+more firmly he became convinced that while the
+principle of that device was wrong, the work
+could be done. In those days the development
+of the country really depended upon some better,
+cheaper way of harvesting. The land was
+fertile, and there was practically no end of it.
+But labor was scarce.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Exterior_of_the_Blacksmith_Shop" id="Exterior_of_the_Blacksmith_Shop"></a>
+<img src="images/224.jpg" width="400" height="301" alt="Exterior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper was Built." />
+<span class="caption">Exterior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper was Built.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Cyrus McCormick's plough was a success that
+encouraged him to take hold of the more difficult
+problem of the reaper. He found that some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span>
+device, such as his father's, would cut grain after
+a fashion, provided it was in perfect condition
+and stood up straight; the moment it became
+matted and tangled and beaten down by wind
+and rain the machine was useless. Other devices
+had been arranged whereby a fly-wheel
+armed with sickles slashed off the heads of the
+wheat, leaving the stalks; but here again such a
+machine would work only when the field was in
+prime condition. He determined that no device
+was of any value which would not cut grain as
+it might happen to stand, stalk and all. After
+months of labor in his father's shop, making
+every part of the machine himself, in both wood
+and iron, as he said, he turned out, in 1831, the
+first reaper that really cut an average field of
+wheat satisfactorily. Its three great essential
+features were those of the reaper of to-day&mdash;a
+vibrating cutting-blade, a reel to bring the grain
+within reach of the blade, a platform to receive
+the falling grain, and a divider to separate the
+grain to be cut from that to be left standing.
+This machine, drawn by horses, was tested in a
+field of six acres of oats, belonging to John Steele,
+within a mile of Walnut Grove. Its work astonished
+the neighboring farmers who gathered to
+witness the test. The problem of cutting standing
+grain by machinery had been solved.</p>
+
+<p>There were, however, certain defects in the
+reaper which caused Cyrus McCormick not to
+put the machine on the market. All the cog-wheels
+were of wood. There was no place upon
+it for either the driver or the raker. The former<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span>
+rode on the near horse and the latter followed
+on foot, raking the grain from it as best
+he could. But it cut grain fast, and both father
+and son were so impressed by its possibilities as
+foreshadowed in even this crude affair, that for
+the next few years they devoted their time,
+money, and thoughts to it. Robert McCormick
+was as enthusiastic as his son, and he is rightly
+entitled to a share of the honor, for his invention
+of 1816 turned the attention of his son to the
+problem and pointed out the radical errors to be
+avoided. A year after its first trial, with certain
+improvements, the reaper cut fifty acres of wheat
+in so perfect and rapid a manner as to insure its
+practical value beyond all doubt. The self-restraint
+shown by McCormick in refusing to sell
+machines until he was satisfied with them shows
+the man. The patent was granted in 1834, but
+for six years he kept at work experimenting,
+changing, improving, during the short periods
+of each harvest. In a letter to the Commissioner
+of Patents, on file in the Patent Office,
+Mr. McCormick said: "From the experiment of
+1831 until the harvest of 1840 I did not sell a
+reaper, although during that time I had many
+exhibitions of it, for experience proved to me
+that it was best for the public as well as for myself
+that no sales were made, as defects presented
+themselves that would render the reaper unprofitable
+in other hands. Many improvements were
+found necessary, requiring a great deal of thought
+and study. I was sometimes flattered, at other
+times discouraged, and at all times deemed it best<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span>
+not to attempt the sale of machines until satisfied
+that the reaper would succeed."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Interior_of_the_Blacksmith_Shop" id="Interior_of_the_Blacksmith_Shop"></a>
+<img src="images/227.jpg" width="400" height="309" alt="Interior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper was Built." />
+<span class="caption">Interior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper was Built.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>About 1835 the McCormicks engaged in a partnership
+for the smelting of iron ore. The reaper,
+as a business pursuit, was yet in the distance, and
+the new iron industry offered large profits. The
+panic of 1837 swept away these hopes. Cyrus
+sacrificed all he had, even the farm given him by
+his father, to settle his debts, and his scrupulous
+integrity in this matter turned disaster into blessing,
+for it compelled him to take up the reaper with
+renewed energy. With the aid of his father and
+of his brothers, William and Leander, he began
+the manufacture of the machine in the primitive
+workshop at Walnut Grove, turning out less than
+fifty machines a year, all of them made under<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span>
+great disadvantages. The sickles were made
+forty miles away, and as there were no railroads
+in those days, the blades, six feet long, had to be
+carried on horseback. Neither was it easy, when
+once the machines were made, to get them to
+market. The first consignment sent to the Western
+prairies, in 1844, was taken in wagons from
+Walnut Grove to Scottsville, then down the
+canal to Richmond, Va.; thence by water to
+New Orleans, and then up the Mississippi and
+Ohio Rivers to Cincinnati.</p>
+
+<p>The great West, with its vast prairies, was the
+natural market for the reaper. Upon the small
+farms of the East hand labor might still suffice
+for the harvest; in the West, where the farms
+were enormous and labor scarce, it was out of
+the question. Realizing that while his reaper
+was a luxury in Virginia, it was a necessity in
+Ohio and Illinois, Cyrus McCormick went to
+Cincinnati in the autumn of 1844 and began
+manufacturing. At the same time he made
+some valuable improvements and obtained a
+second patent. The reaper had become known
+and the inventor rode on horseback through
+Illinois and Wisconsin, obtaining farmers' orders
+for reapers, which he offered to A.C. Brown,
+of Cincinnati, as security for payment, if he
+would use his workshops for manufacturing
+them. McCormick was enabled also to arrange
+with a firm in Brockport, N.Y., to make his
+reapers on a royalty, and this business provided
+the great wheat district of Central New
+York with machines. In 1847 and 1848 he obtained<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span>
+still other patents for new features of the
+reaper.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="The_First_Reaper" id="The_First_Reaper"></a>
+<img src="images/229.jpg" width="400" height="300" alt="The First Reaper." />
+<span class="caption">The First Reaper.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In 1846 he had already fixed upon Chicago as
+the best centre of operations for the reaper business,
+and at the close of the year he moved there.
+The next year the sale of the reapers rose to
+seven hundred, and more than doubled in 1849.
+Having associated his two brothers, William S.
+and Leander J., with him, Cyrus McCormick
+found time to devote himself to introducing the
+reaper in the Old World. The American exhibit
+at the London World's Fair of 1851 was rather a
+small one, redeemed largely by the McCormick
+reaper, which the London <i>Times</i>, as I have already
+said, praised as worth to the farmers of Great
+Britain more than the whole cost of the exhibition.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span>
+To it was awarded the grand prize, known
+as the council medal.</p>
+
+<p>The reaper's advance in public favor was as
+steady on the other side of the water as here, and
+medals and honors were awarded McCormick at
+many important exhibitions. During the Paris
+Exposition of 1867 McCormick superintended
+the work of his reapers at a field trial held by the
+exposition authorities, and so conclusively defeated
+all competitors that Napoleon III., who
+walked after the reapers, expressed his determination
+to confer upon the inventor, then and
+there, the Cross of the Legion of Honor. At
+the French Exposition of 1878 the McCormick
+wire-binder won the grand prize. From 1850
+the success of the reaper was assured. Mr. McCormick
+might have rested content with what
+had been achieved, but it was not his nature.
+He not only continued to bear upon his shoulders
+the larger share of responsibility of the rapidly
+growing business, but he labored persistently
+to add to the effectiveness of his invention.</p>
+
+<p>The great fire that swept Chicago in 1871 left
+nothing of the already important works established
+by Mr. McCormick. But, as might be
+expected from such a man, he was a tower of
+strength to the city in her time of distress, and
+one of those to rally first from the blow and to
+inspire hope. Within a year, assisted by his
+brother Leander, he had raised from the ashes an
+immense establishment, which with the growth
+of the last few years now covers forty acres of
+ground. More than 2,000 men are here employed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>
+The statistics for last year show that
+more than 20,000 tons of special bar-iron and steel,
+2,800 tons of sheet steel, and 26,000 tons of castings
+were used in making the 142,000 machines
+sold. Ten million feet of lumber were used,
+chiefly in boxing and crating, as very little wood
+is now used in the reaper.</p>
+
+<p>This is a marvellous development from the
+little Virginia shop of 1840, with its output of
+one machine a week, and the growth means far
+more for the country at large than might be
+inferred from these figures; the farmers of the
+world owe more to the McCormick reaper than
+they can repay. The whir of the American
+reaper is heard around the world. In Egypt,
+Russia, India, Australia the machine is helping
+man with more than a giant's strength. Recent
+American travellers through Persia have
+described the singular effect produced upon
+them by seeing the McCormick reaper doing
+its steady work in the fields over which Haroun
+Al Raschid may have roamed. And this
+wonderful machine is followed with awe by the
+more ignorant of the natives, who look upon its
+achievements as little short of magical. They
+are not far wrong, however, for it is more amazing
+than any wonder described in their "Arabian
+Nights."</p>
+
+<p>The last years of Cyrus H. McCormick's life
+were such as have fallen to few of the world's
+benefactors, for as a rule the pioneer who shows
+the road has a hard time of it, even unto the
+end. Mr. McCormick had the satisfaction of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span>
+knowing not only that by his invention he had
+conferred a blessing upon the workmen of the
+world, but that the world had acknowledged the
+debt. Material prosperity, however, was not
+considered any reason for luxurious idleness.
+To the close of his life Mr. McCormick continued
+to supervise the business of his firm and
+to make the reaper more perfect. No great exhibition
+abroad or in this country passed without
+some of its honors falling to the share of the
+McCormick reaper.</p>
+
+<p>The private life of Cyrus H. McCormick was
+a happy one, and to this may be attributed no
+small share of the elasticity and courage that
+recognized no defeat as final. Congress failed
+to do him justice; his business was attacked by
+hordes of rivals; it was interrupted by the fire of
+1871 and afterward threatened by labor strikes
+incited by self-seeking demagogues. Hard work
+was the rule of his life and not the exception.
+But that his nature remained sweet and just is
+shown by his untiring work upon behalf of others.
+His home life, as I have just remarked,
+was unusually blessed. In 1858 he married Miss
+Nettie Fowler, a daughter of Melzar Fowler, of
+Jefferson County, New York. Of the seven children
+born of this marriage, five lived to grow up,
+his son, Cyrus H. McCormick, now occupying
+his father's place at the head of the great works
+in Chicago. One of the daughters, Anita, is the
+widow of Emmons Blaine. The inventor of the
+reaping-machine died on the 13th of May, 1884.
+Robert H. Parkinson, of Cincinnati, speaks as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span>
+follows of one of the last interviews he had with
+Mr. McCormick: "Though struggling with the
+infirmities of age, he took on a kind of majesty
+which belongs alone to that combination of great
+mental and moral strength, and he surprised me
+by the power with which he grappled the matters
+under discussion, and the strong personality before
+which obstacles went down as swiftly and inevitably
+as grain before the knife of his machine.
+I think myself fortunate in having had this
+glimpse of him and in being able to remember
+with so much personal association a life so complete
+in its achievements, so far-reaching in its
+impress, alike upon the material, moral, and religious
+progress of the country, and so thoroughly
+successful and beneficial in every department
+of activity and influence which it entered."
+One of his friends, speaking of Mr. McCormick,
+said: "That which gave intensity to his purpose,
+strength to his will, and nerved him with perseverance
+that never failed was his supreme regard
+for justice, his worshipful reverence for the true
+and right. The thoroughness of his conviction
+that justice must be done, that right must be
+maintained, made him insensible to reproach
+and impatient of delay. I do not wonder that
+his character was strong, nor that his purpose
+was invincible, nor that his plans were crowned
+with an ultimate and signal success, for where
+conviction of right is the motive-power and the
+attainment of justice the end in view, with faith
+in God there is no such word as fail."</p>
+
+<p>Cyrus H. McCormick was not only the inventor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span>
+of a great labor-saving device, but he
+helped his fellow-man in other ways. Philanthropy,
+religion, education, journalism, and politics
+received a share of his attention. More
+than thirty years ago he was already an active
+power for good in the councils of his church. In
+1859 he proposed to the General Assembly of
+the Presbyterian Church to endow with $100,000
+the professorships of a theological seminary, to
+be established in Chicago. This was done, and
+during his lifetime he gave about half a million
+dollars to this institution&mdash;the Theological
+Seminary of the Northwest. The McCormick
+professorship of natural philosophy in the
+Washington and Lee University of Virginia, and
+gifts to the Union Theological Seminary at
+Hampden-Sidney, and to the college at Hastings,
+Neb., also attest his solicitude for the
+church in which he had been reared and of
+which he had been a member since 1834. In
+1872 he came to the aid of the struggling organ
+of the Presbyterian Church in the Northwest, the
+<i>Interior</i>, and used it to foster union between the
+Old and the New Schools in the church, to aid
+in harmonizing the Presbyterian Church in the
+North and South, to advance the interests of the
+Theological Seminary, and to promote the welfare
+of the Presbyterian Church in the Northwest.
+Under his care and advice the <i>Interior</i>
+grew to be a mighty voice, expressing the convictions,
+the aspirations, and hopes of a great
+church.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>THOMAS A. EDISON.</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="Thomas_A_Edison" id="Thomas_A_Edison"></a>
+<img src="images/236.jpg" width="500" height="637" alt="Thomas A. Edison." />
+<span class="caption">Thomas A. Edison.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Thomas A. Edison is sometimes spoken of
+rather as a master mechanic than as a master inventor
+or discoverer, and with regard to some of
+his work&mdash;I might even say most of it&mdash;this
+characterization holds true. Edison's fame is
+chiefly associated in the popular mind with the
+electric light. Yet it is perfectly well known to
+every student of the matter, that in all that he
+has done toward making the electric light a useful
+every-day&mdash;or perhaps I should say every-night&mdash;affair,
+he has simply made practicable
+what other men had invented or discovered before
+him. The fundamental discovery upon
+which the incandescent electric lamp is founded&mdash;that
+a wire of metal or other substance if
+heated to incandescence in a glass bulb from
+which the air has been exhausted will give light
+for a longer or shorter time, according to the
+character of the apparatus and the degree to
+which a perfect vacuum has been effected in
+the bulb&mdash;this dates from the first half of the
+century. As early as 1849 Despretz, the French
+scientist, described a series of experiments with
+sticks of carbon sealed in a glass globe from
+which air had been exhausted. When a powerful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span>
+current was passed through the carbon
+filament it became luminous and remained so for
+a short time. This was, perhaps, the first of a
+long line of similar experiments
+in which a number of American
+physicists&mdash;Farmer, Draper,
+Henry, Morse, and Maxim
+among them&mdash;took part. But
+notwithstanding the labors of a
+score of experts in Europe and
+this country, the incandescent
+electric light&mdash;the wire in a glass
+bulb exhausted of its air&mdash;remained
+a laboratory curiosity
+up to the time, fifteen years ago,
+when Edison took hold of it. It
+gave light only for a short time
+and was too expensive a toy for practical use.
+The carbon burned out or disintegrated, and
+the lamp failed. Edison took hold of the mechanical
+difficulties of the problem. With a patience,
+an ingenuity, a fertility of device in which he
+stands alone, he got to the bottom of each radical
+defect and remedied it. The lamp would not
+burn long because the platinum wire used gave
+out, partly because platinum was not fitted for the
+work, fusing at too low a temperature. Edison
+substituted carbonized strips of paper. These
+in turn failed, and he found a species of bamboo
+that answered. The lamp would not burn because
+air still remained in the little bulbs notwithstanding
+the most careful manipulation with
+Sprengel pumps to exhaust the air. Edison invented<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span>
+new pumps and devices by which the
+air, down to one millionth part, was excluded.
+The lamp cost too much to operate, because large
+copper wires were needed to carry the current,
+and the generators used up steam power too
+fast. Edison devised new forms of conductors
+and generators. All such work called more for
+mechanical ingenuity than for actual invention.
+No new principles were involved&mdash;merely the
+better adaptation of known methods. Given a
+perfect carbon, a globe perfectly free from air,
+cheap electric current, and cheap means of carrying
+it from the generating machine to the lamps,
+and the problem was solved.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;">
+<a name="Edisons_Paper_Carbon_Lamp" id="Edisons_Paper_Carbon_Lamp"></a>
+<img src="images/238.jpg" width="150" height="285" alt="Edison's Paper Carbon Lamp." />
+<span class="caption">Edison&#39;s Paper Carbon Lamp.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Edison, as a master mechanic, furnished all
+this, or at least so nearly solved the problem as
+to entitle him to claim credit for having given
+the electric light to the world&mdash;a better illuminant
+than gas in every way, and destined some
+day to be infinitely cheaper.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to Edison's work upon the telegraph,
+telephone, electric railway, dynamo, the
+ore-extracting machines, the electric pen, and a
+score of other inventions which have made him
+the most profitable customer of the United States
+Patent Office in this or any other generation, the
+labor of this remarkable genius has also been
+largely that of one who made practical and useful
+the dreams of others. And I am by no
+means sure that the man who does this is not entitled
+to more credit than he who simply suggests
+that such and such a wonder might be accomplished
+and stops there. It is certain that before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span>
+Edison we had no electric lights; now we have
+them in every important building in the country,
+and ere long shall have them everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>Edison dislikes intensely the term discoverer
+as applied to himself. "Discovery is not invention,"
+he once remarked in the course of an interesting
+talk with Mr. George Parsons Lathrop,
+printed in <i>Harper's Magazine</i>. "A discovery is
+more or less in the nature of an accident. A man
+walks along the road intending to catch the
+train. On the way his foot kicks against something,
+and looking down to see what he has hit,
+he sees a gold bracelet embedded in the dust.
+He has discovered that, certainly not invented
+it. He did not set out to find a bracelet, yet the
+value of it is just as great to him at the moment
+as if, after long years of study, he had invented
+a machine for making a gold bracelet out of
+common road metal. Goodyear discovered the
+way to make hard rubber. He was at work experimenting
+with india-rubber, and quite by
+chance he hit upon a process which hardened it&mdash;the
+last result in the world that he wished or
+expected to attain. In a discovery there must
+be an element of the accidental, and an important
+one, too; while an invention is purely deductive.
+In my own case but few, and those the
+least important, of my inventions owed anything
+to accident. Most of them have been hammered
+out after long and patient labor, and are the result
+of countless experiments all directed toward
+attaining some well-defined object. All mechanical
+improvements may safely be said to be inventions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span>
+and not discoveries. The sewing-machine
+was an invention. So were the steam-engine
+and the typewriter. Speaking of this
+latter, did I ever tell you that I made the first
+twelve typewriters at my old factory in Railroad
+Avenue, Newark? This was in 1869 or 1870, and
+I myself had worked at a machine of similar
+character, but never found time to develop it
+fully."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Edison_Listening_to_his_Phonograph" id="Edison_Listening_to_his_Phonograph"></a>
+<img src="images/241.jpg" width="400" height="255" alt="Edison Listening to his Phonograph." />
+<span class="caption">Edison Listening to his Phonograph.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>There is one great invention, however, for
+which Edison deserves credit, both as discoverer
+and practical inventor&mdash;the phonograph. Here
+was a genuine discovery. The phonograph
+knows no other parent than Edison, and he has
+brought it to its present condition by devotion
+and tireless skill. I have always believed in the
+phonograph as an instrument destined to play<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span>
+some day an important part among the blessings
+that ingenuity has given to man. There are still
+obstacles in the way of its practical success, but
+that the missing screw or spring&mdash;perhaps no
+more than that&mdash;will be found in the near future,
+is not doubted by any competent observer.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Alva Edison was born February 11,
+1847, at Milan, Erie County, O., an obscure canal
+village. When a small boy, his family, a most
+humble one (his father being a village jack-of-all-trades,
+living upon odd jobs done for neighboring
+farmers), moved to Port Huron, Mich.,
+where Edison's boyhood was passed. There his
+father was in turn tailor, well-digger, nursery-man,
+dealer in grain, lumber, and farm lands.
+His parents were of Dutch-Scotch descent and
+gave him the iron constitution that enables him
+to-day, at the age of forty-seven, to tire out the
+most robust of his assistants. One of his ancestors
+lived to the age of one hundred and two,
+and another to the age of one hundred and three,
+so that we may reasonably expect the famous inventor
+to open the door for us to still other wonders
+of which we do not yet even dream. His
+mother, born in Massachusetts, had a good education
+and at one time taught school in Canada.
+Of regular schooling, young Edison had but two
+months in his life. Whatever else he knew as
+a boy he learned from his mother. There are
+no records showing extraordinary promise on
+his part. He was an omnivorous reader, having
+an intense curiosity about the world and its
+great men. At ten years of age he was reading<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span>
+Hume's "England," Gibbon's "Rome," the Penny
+Encyclopĉdia, and some books on chemistry.</p>
+
+<p>At the age of twelve he entered upon his life
+work as newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad
+of Canada and the Michigan Central, selling papers,
+books, candies, etc., to the passengers.</p>
+
+<p>"Were you one of the train-boys," he was once
+asked, "who sold figs in boxes with bottoms half
+an inch thick?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I recollect aright," he replied, with a merry
+twinkle, "the bottoms of my boxes were a good
+inch."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="From_Edisons_Newspaper" id="From_Edisons_Newspaper"></a>
+<img src="images/244.jpg" width="400" height="489" alt="From Edison's Newspaper, the Grand Trunk Herald." />
+<span class="caption">From Edison&#39;s Newspaper, the &quot;Grand Trunk Herald.&quot;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Perhaps the twelve-year-old boy learned something
+from the books and papers he sold. At
+all events he says that the love of chemistry,
+even at that age, led him to make the corner of
+the baggage-car where he stored his wares a
+small laboratory, fitted up with such retorts and
+bottles as he could pick up in the railroad workshops.
+He had a copy of Fresenius's "Qualitative
+Analysis," into which he plunged with the
+ardor a small boy usually shows for nothing literary
+unless it has a yellow cover decorated with
+an Indian's head. He seems also to have had a
+habit of "hanging around" all interesting places,
+from a machine-shop to a printing-office, keeping
+his eyes very wide open. In one such expedition
+he received as a gift from W.F. Storey,
+of the <i>Detroit Free Press</i>, three hundred pounds
+of old type thrown out as useless. With an old
+hand-press he began printing a paper of his own,
+the <i>Grand Trunk Herald</i>, of which he sold several
+hundred copies a week, the employees of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span>
+road being his best customers. "My news," he
+says, talking of this time, "was purely local. But
+I was proud of my newspaper and looked upon
+myself as a full-fledged newspaper man. My
+items used to run about like this: 'John Robinson,
+baggage-master at James's Creek Station,
+fell off the platform yesterday and hurt his leg.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span>
+The boys are sorry for John.' Or, 'No. 3 Burlington
+engine has gone into the shed for repairs.'"</p>
+
+<p>This was Edison's only dip into a literary occupation.
+He has no predilection in that way. He
+realizes the value of newspapers and books, but
+chiefly as tools, and his splendid library at the
+Orange laboratory, kept with scrupulous system,
+is filled with scientific books and periodicals
+only. Telegraphy was to be the field in which
+he was to win his first laurels. Some years ago
+he told the story as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"At the beginning of the civil war I was slaving
+late and early at selling papers; but, to tell
+the truth, I was not making a fortune. I worked
+on so small a margin that I had to be mighty
+careful not to overload myself with papers that
+I could not sell. On the other hand, I could not
+afford to carry so few that I should find myself
+sold out long before the end of the trip. To enable
+myself to hit the happy mean, I formed a
+plan which turned out admirably. I made a
+friend of one of the compositors of the <i>Free
+Press</i> office, and persuaded him to show me every
+day a 'galley-proof' of the most important news
+article. From a study of its head-lines I soon
+learned to gauge the value of the day's news and
+its selling capacity, so that I could form a tolerably
+correct estimate of the number of papers I
+should need. As a rule I could dispose of about
+two hundred; but if there was any special news
+from the seat of war, the sale ran up to three
+hundred or over. Well, one day my compositor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span>
+brought me a proof-slip of which nearly the
+whole was taken up with a gigantic display head.
+It was the first report of the battle of Pittsburgh
+Landing&mdash;afterward called Shiloh, you know&mdash;and
+it gave the number of killed and wounded
+as sixty thousand men.</p>
+
+<p>"I grasped the situation at once. Here was a
+chance for enormous sales, if only the people
+along the line could know what had happened!
+If only they could see the proof-slip I was then
+reading! Suddenly an idea occurred to me. I
+rushed off to the telegraph-operator and gravely
+made a proposition to him which he received just
+as gravely. He on his part was to wire to each
+of the principal stations on our route, asking the
+station-master to chalk up on the bulletin-board&mdash;used
+for announcing the time of arrival and departure
+of trains&mdash;the news of the great battle,
+with its accompanying slaughter. This he was
+to do at once, while I, in return, agreed to supply
+him with current literature 'free, gratis, for
+nothing' during the next six months from that
+date.</p>
+
+<p>"This bargain struck, I began to bethink me
+how I was to get enough papers to make the
+grand <i>coup</i> I intended. I had very little cash
+and, I feared, still less credit. I went to the superintendent
+of the delivery department, and
+preferred a modest request for one thousand
+copies of the <i>Free Press</i> on trust. I was not
+much surprised when my request was curtly and
+gruffly refused. In those days, though, I was a
+pretty cheeky boy and I felt desperate, for I saw<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span>
+a small fortune in prospect if my telegraph operator
+had kept his word&mdash;a point on which I was
+still a trifle doubtful. Nerving myself for a great
+stroke, I marched upstairs into the office of Wilbur
+F. Storey himself and asked to see him. A
+few minutes later I was shown in to him. I told
+who I was, and that I wanted fifteen hundred
+copies of the paper on credit. The tall, thin,
+dark-eyed, ascetic-looking man stared at me for
+a moment and then scratched a few words on a
+slip of paper. 'Take that downstairs,' said he,
+'and you will get what you want.' And so I
+did. Then I felt happier than I have ever felt
+since.</p>
+
+<p>"I took my fifteen hundred papers, got three
+boys to help me fold them, and mounted the
+train all agog to find out whether the telegraph
+operator had kept his word. At the town where
+our first stop was made I usually sold two papers.
+As the train swung into that station I
+looked ahead and thought there must be a riot
+going on. A big crowd filled the platform and
+as the train drew up I began to realize that they
+wanted my papers. Before we left I had sold a
+hundred or two at five cents apiece. At the
+next station the place was fairly black with
+people. I raised the 'ante' and sold three hundred
+papers at ten cents each. So it went on
+until Port Huron was reached. Then I transferred
+my remaining stock to the wagon which
+always waited for me there, hired a small boy to
+sit on the pile of papers in the back, so as to discount
+any pilfering, and sold out every paper I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span>
+had at a quarter of a dollar or more per copy.
+I remember I passed a church full of worshippers,
+and stopped to yell out my news. In ten
+seconds there was not a soul left in meeting.
+All of them, including the parson, were clustered
+around me, bidding against each other for
+copies of the precious paper.</p>
+
+<p>"You can understand why it struck me then
+that the telegraph must be about the best thing
+going, for it was the telegraphic notices on the
+bulletin-boards that had done the trick. I determined
+at once to become a telegraph-operator.
+But if it hadn't been for Wilbur F. Storey I
+should never have fully appreciated the wonders
+of electrical science."</p>
+
+<p>Telegraphy became a hobby with the boy.
+From every operator along the road he picked
+up something. He strung the basement of his
+father's house at Port Huron with wires, and
+constructed a short line, using for the batteries
+stove-pipe wire, old bottles, nails, and zinc which
+urchins of the neighborhood were induced to
+cut out from under the stoves of their unsuspecting
+mothers and bring to young Edison at three
+cents a pound. In order to save time for his
+experiments, he had the habit of leaping from a
+train while it was going at the rate of twenty-five
+miles an hour, landing upon a pile of sand
+arranged by him for that purpose. An act of
+personal courage&mdash;the saving of the station-master's
+child at Port Clements from an advancing
+train&mdash;was a turning-point in his career, for
+the grateful father taught him telegraphing in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span>
+the regular way. Telegraphy was then in its infancy,
+comparatively speaking; operators were
+few, and good wages could be earned by means
+of much less proficiency than is now required.
+Still, Edison had so little leisure at his disposal
+for learning the new trade, that it took him several
+years to become an expert operator. Most
+of his studies were carried on in the corner of
+the baggage-car that served him as printing-office,
+laboratory, and business headquarters.
+With so many irons in the fire, mishaps were
+sure to occur. Once he received a drubbing on
+account of an article reflecting unpleasantly
+upon some employee of the road. One day
+during his absence a bottle of phosphorus upset
+and set the old railroad caboose on fire, whereupon
+the conductor threw out all the painfully
+acquired apparatus and thrashed its owner.</p>
+
+<p>Edison's first regular employment as telegraph-operator
+was at Indianapolis when he was
+eighteen years old. He received a small salary
+for day-work in the railroad office there, and
+at night he used to receive newspaper reports
+for practice. The regular operator was a man
+given to copious libations, who was glad enough
+to sleep off their effects while Edison and a young
+friend of his named Parmley did his work. "I
+would sit down," says Edison, "for ten minutes,
+and 'take' as much as I could from the instrument,
+carrying the rest in my head. Then while
+I wrote out, Parmley would serve his turn at
+'taking,' and so on. This worked well until they
+put a new man on at the Cincinnati end. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span>
+was one of the quickest despatchers in the business,
+and we soon found it was hopeless for us to
+try to keep up with him. Then it was that I
+worked out my first invention, and necessity was
+certainly the mother of it.</p>
+
+<p>"I got two old Morse registers and arranged
+them in such a way that by running a strip of
+paper through them the dots and dashes were
+recorded on it by the first instrument as fast as
+they were delivered from the Cincinnati end,
+and were transmitted to us through the other instrument
+at any desired rate of speed. They
+would come in on one instrument at the rate of
+forty words a minute, and would be ground out
+of our instrument at the rate of twenty-five.
+Then weren't we proud! Our copy used to be
+so clean and beautiful that we hung it up on exhibition;
+and our manager used to come and
+gaze at it silently with a puzzled expression.
+He could not understand it, neither could any of
+the other operators; for we used to hide my impromptu
+automatic recorder when our toil was
+over. But the crash came when there was a big
+night's work&mdash;a Presidential vote, I think it was&mdash;and
+copy kept pouring in at the top rate of
+speed until we fell an hour and a half or two
+hours behind. The newspapers sent in frantic
+complaints, an investigation was made, and our
+little scheme was discovered. We couldn't use
+it any more.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Edisons_Tinfoil_Phonograph" id="Edisons_Tinfoil_Phonograph"></a>
+<img src="images/251.jpg" width="400" height="190" alt="Edison's Tinfoil Phonograph&mdash;the First Practical Machine." />
+<span class="caption">Edison&#39;s Tinfoil Phonograph&mdash;the First Practical Machine.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"It was that same rude automatic recorder that
+indirectly led me long afterward to invent the
+phonograph. I'll tell you how this came about.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span>
+After thinking over the matter a great deal, I
+came to the point where, in 1877, I had worked
+out satisfactorily an instrument that would not
+only record telegrams by indenting a strip of
+paper with dots and dashes of the Morse code,
+but would also repeat a message any number of
+times at any rate of speed required. I was then
+experimenting with the telephone also, and my
+mind was filled with theories of sound vibrations
+and their transmission by diaphragms.
+Naturally enough, the idea occurred to me: if
+the indentations on paper could be made to
+give forth again the click of the instrument, why
+could not the vibrations of a diaphragm be
+recorded and similarly reproduced? I rigged
+up an instrument hastily and pulled a strip of
+paper through it, at the same time shouting,
+'Hallo'! Then the paper was pulled through
+again, my friend Batchelor and I listening breathlessly.
+We heard a distinct sound, which a
+strong imagination might have translated into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span>
+the original 'Hallo.' That was enough to lead
+me to a further experiment. But Batchelor was
+sceptical, and bet me a barrel of apples that I
+couldn't make the thing go. I made a drawing
+of a model and took it to Mr. Kruesi, at that
+time engaged on piece-work for me, but now assistant
+general manager of our machine-shop at
+Schenectady. I told him it was a talking-machine.
+He grinned, thinking it a joke; but he
+set to work and soon had the model ready. I
+arranged some tinfoil on it, and spoke into the
+machine. Kruesi looked on, still grinning. But
+when I arranged the machine for transmission
+and we both heard a distinct sound from it, he
+nearly fell down in his fright. I was a little
+scared myself, I must admit. I won that barrel
+of apples from Batchelor, though, and was
+mighty glad to get it."</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">To go back to earlier days, the story of Edison's
+first years as a full-fledged operator shows
+that from the beginning he was more of an inventor
+than an operator. He was full of ideas,
+some of which were gratefully received. One
+day an ice-jam broke the cable between Port
+Huron, in Michigan, and Sarnia, on the Canada
+side, and stopped communication. The river is
+a mile and a half wide and was impassable.
+Young Edison jumped upon a locomotive and
+seized the valve controlling the whistle. He had
+the idea that the scream of the whistle might be
+broken into long and short notes, corresponding
+to the dots and dashes of the telegraphic code.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span>
+"Hallo there, Sarnia! Do you get me? Do
+you hear what I say?" tooted the locomotive.</p>
+
+<p>No answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear what I say, Sarnia?"</p>
+
+<p>A third, fourth, and fifth time the message
+went across without response, but finally the
+idea was caught on the other side; answering
+toots came cheerfully back and the connection
+was recovered.</p>
+
+<p>Anything connected with the difficulties of
+telegraphy had a fascination for him. He lost
+many a place because of unpardonable blunders
+due to his passion for improvement. At Stratford,
+Canada, being required to report the word
+"Six" every half hour to the manager to show
+that he was awake and on duty, he rigged up a
+wheel to do it for him. At Indianapolis he kept
+press reports waiting while he experimented with
+new devices for receiving them. At Louisville,
+in procuring some sulphuric acid at night for his
+experiments, he tipped over a carboy of it, ruining
+the handsome outfit of a banking establishment below.
+At Cincinnati he abandoned the office on
+every pretext to hasten to the Mechanics' Library
+to pass his day in reading.</p>
+
+<p>An indication of his thirst for knowledge, and
+of a <i>naïve</i> ignoring of enormous difficulties, is
+found in a project formed by him at this time to
+read through the whole public library. There
+was no one to tell him that a summary of human
+knowledge may be found in a moderate number
+of volumes, nor to point out to him what they
+are. Each book was to him a part of the great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span>
+domain of knowledge, none of which he meant
+to lose. He began with the solid treatises of a
+dusty lower shelf and actually read, in the accomplishment
+of his heroic purpose, fifteen feet
+along that shelf. He omitted no book and nothing
+in the book. The list contained Newton's
+"Principia," Ure's Scientific Dictionary, and
+Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy."</p>
+
+<p>At that time a message sent from New Orleans
+to New York had to be taken at Memphis, re-telegraphed
+to Louisville, taken down again by
+the operator there, and telegraphed to another
+centre, and so on till it reached New York.
+Time was lost and the chance of error was increased.
+Edison was the first to connect New
+Orleans and New York directly. It was just
+after the war. He perfected an automatic repeater
+which was put on at Memphis and did
+its work perfectly. The manager of the office
+there, one Johnson, had a relative who was also
+busy on the same problem, but Edison solved it
+ahead of him and received complimentary notices
+from the local papers. He was discharged
+without cause. He got a pass as far as Decatur
+on his way home, but had to walk from there to
+Nashville, a hundred and fifty miles. From
+there he got a pass to Louisville, where he arrived
+during a sharp snow-storm, clad in a linen
+duster.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon after this that Edison, already
+a swift and competent operator when he devoted
+himself to practical work, received promise
+of employment in the Boston office. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>
+weather was quite cold and his peculiar dress,
+topped with a slouchy broad-brimmed hat, made
+something of a sensation. But Edison then cared
+as little for dress as he does to-day. So one raw
+wet day a tall man with a limp, wet duster clinging
+to his legs, stalked into the superintendent's
+room, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Here I am."</p>
+
+<p>The superintendent eyed him from head to
+foot, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tom Edison."</p>
+
+<p>"And who on earth might Tom Edison be?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man explained that he had been
+ordered to report for duty at the Boston office,
+and was finally told to sit down in the operating-room,
+where his advent created much merriment.
+The operators guyed him loudly enough for him
+to hear. He didn't care. A few moments later
+a New York sender noted for his swiftness called
+up the Boston office. There was no one at liberty.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the office chief, "let that new fellow
+try him." Edison sat down, and for four
+hours and a half wrote out messages in his peculiarly
+clear round hand, stuck a date and number
+on them and threw them on the floor for the
+office boy to pick up. The time he took in
+numbering and dating the sheets were the only
+seconds he was not writing out transmitted
+words. Faster and faster ticked the instrument,
+and faster and faster went Edison's fingers, until
+the rapidity with which the messages came tumbling<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span>
+on the floor attracted the attention of the
+other operators, who, when their work was done,
+gathered around to witness the spectacle. At
+the close of the four and a half hours' work
+there flashed from New York the salutation:</p>
+
+<p>"Hello!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hello yourself," ticked back Edison.</p>
+
+<p>"Who the devil are you?" rattled into the
+Boston office.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom Edison."</p>
+
+<p>"You are the first man in the country," ticked
+the instrument, "that could ever take me at
+my fastest, and the only one who could ever
+sit at the other end of my wire for more than
+two hours and a half. I'm proud to know
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Edison was once asked with what invention he
+really began his career as an inventor.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he, in reply, "my first appearance
+at the Patent Office was in 1868, when I was
+twenty-one, with an ingenious contrivance which
+I called the electrical vote recorder. I had been
+impressed with the enormous waste of time in
+Congress and in the State Legislatures by the
+taking of votes on any motion. More than half
+an hour was sometimes required to count the
+'Ayes' and 'Noes.' So I devised a machine
+somewhat on the plan of the hotel annunciator
+that was invented long afterward, only mine
+was a great deal more complex. In front of
+each member's desk were to have been two buttons,
+one for 'Aye,' the other for 'No,' and by
+the side of the Speaker's desk a frame with two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span>
+dials, one showing the total of 'Ayes' and the
+other the total of 'Noes.' When the vote was
+called for, each member could press the button
+he wished and the result
+would appear automatically
+before the
+Speaker, who could
+glance at the dials and
+announce the result.
+This contrivance would
+save several hours of
+public time every day
+in the session, and I
+thought my fortune
+was made. I interested
+a moneyed man in the
+thing and we went together
+to Washington,
+where we soon found
+the right man to get
+the machine adopted.
+I set forth its merits. Imagine my feelings
+when, in a horrified tone, he exclaimed:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="Vote_Recorder" id="Vote_Recorder"></a>
+<img src="images/257.jpg" width="300" height="486" alt="Vote Recorder&mdash;Edison's First Patented Invention." />
+<span class="caption">Vote Recorder&mdash;Edison&#39;s First Patented Invention.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"'Young man, that won't do at all. That is
+just what we do not want. Your invention
+would destroy the only hope the minority have
+of influencing legislation. It would deliver
+them over, bound hand and foot, to the majority.
+The present system gives them time, a weapon
+which is invaluable, and as the ruling majority
+always knows that they may some day become a
+minority, they will be as much averse to any
+change as their opponents.' I saw the force of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span>
+these remarks, and the vote recorder got no
+further than the Patent Office."</p>
+
+<p>But he began to believe in himself. His next
+work was upon the applications of the vibratory
+principle in telegraphing, upon which so many of
+his subsequent inventions were founded. His
+first ambitious attempt was in the direction of a
+multiplex system for sending several messages
+over one wire at the same time. It was not
+much of a success, however, and Edison drifted
+to New York, where, after a vain attempt to interest
+the telegraph companies in his inventions,
+he established himself as an electrical expert
+ready for odd jobs and making a specialty of
+telegraphy. One day the Western Union Company
+had trouble with its Albany Wire. The wire
+wasn't broken, but wouldn't work, and several
+days of experimenting on the part of the company's
+electricians only served to puzzle them
+the more. As a forlorn hope they sent for
+young Edison.</p>
+
+<p>"How long will you give me?" he asked.
+"Six hours?"</p>
+
+<p>The manager laughed and told him he would
+need longer than that.</p>
+
+<p>Edison sat down at the instrument, established
+communication with Albany by way of Pittsburgh,
+told the Albany office to put their best
+man at the instrument, and began a rapid series
+of tests with currents of all intensities. He
+directed the tests from both ends, and after two
+hours and a half told the company's officers that
+the trouble existed at a certain point he named<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span>
+on the line, and he told them what it was. They
+telegraphed the office nearest this point the
+necessary directions, and an hour later the wire
+was working properly. This incident first established
+his value in New York as an expert,
+and the business became profitable. Moreover,
+it led the different telegraph companies to give
+respectful attention to what he had to offer in
+the way of patented devices.</p>
+
+<p>Edison's mechanical skill soon became so noted
+that he was made superintendent of the repair
+shop of one of the smaller telegraph companies
+then in existence, all of which were using what
+was known as the Page sounder, a device for
+signalling, the sole right to which was claimed
+by the Western Union Company. Owing to the
+latter company's success in a patent suit over
+this sounder, there came a time when an injunction
+was obtained, silencing all sounders of that
+type, and practically putting a serious obstacle in
+the way of rapid work. Edison was called into
+the president's office and the situation explained.
+For a long time, according to one who was present,
+he stood chewing vigorously upon a mouthful
+of tobacco, looking first at the sounder in his
+hand, and then falling into a brown study. At
+length he picked up a sheet of tin used as a
+"back" for manifolding on thin sheets of paper,
+and began to twist and cut it into queer shapes;
+a group of persons gathered around and watched.
+Not a word was spoken. Finally Edison tore off
+the Page sounder on the instrument before him,
+and substituting his bit of tin, began working.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span>
+It was not so good as the patented arrangement
+discarded, but it worked. In four hours a hundred
+such devices were in use over the line, and
+what would have been a ruinous interruption to
+business was avoided.</p>
+
+<p>Edison's first large sums of money came from
+the sale of an improvement in the instruments
+used to record stock quotations in brokers' offices,
+commonly known as "tickers." His success
+in this direction led him to take a contract
+to manufacture some hundreds of "tickers," and
+his only venture in this direction was carried out
+with considerable success at a shop he rented in
+Newark about 1875. But as he told me a few
+years later, in talking about this incident in his
+career, manufacturing was not in his line. Like
+Thoreau, who having succeeded in making a
+perfect lead-pencil, declared he should never
+make another, he hates routine. "I was a poor
+manufacturer," said he, "because I could not let
+well enough alone. My first impulse upon taking
+any apparatus into my hand, from an egg-beater
+to an electric-motor, is to seek a way of
+improving it. Therefore, as soon as I have finished
+a machine I am anxious to take it apart
+again in order to make an experiment. That is
+a costly mania for a manufacturer."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="Edison_in_his_Laboratory" id="Edison_in_his_Laboratory"></a>
+<img src="images/262.jpg" width="500" height="630" alt="Edison in his Laboratory." />
+<span class="caption">Edison in his Laboratory.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was his success with a device for printing
+stock quotations upon paper tape that finally induced
+several New York capitalists to accept
+Edison's offer to experiment with the incandescent
+electric light, they to pay the expense of the
+experiments and share in the inventions if any
+were made. For the sake of quiet Edison moved
+out to Menlo Park, a little station on the Pennsylvania
+road about twenty-five miles beyond
+Newark, and built a shop twenty-eight feet wide,
+one hundred feet long, and two stories high. It
+was here that I first made his acquaintance, in
+January, 1879, soon after the newspapers had
+announced that he had solved the problem
+of the electric light. It may be remembered
+that gas stock tumbled in price at that time, and
+there was a rush to sell before the new light
+should displace gas altogether. One cold day I
+climbed the hill from the station, and once past
+the reception-room, in which every new-comer
+was carefully scrutinized, for inventors are apt to
+have odds and ends lying about that they do not
+want seen by everyone, I found myself in a long
+big work-shop. To anyone accustomed to the
+orderly appearance of the ideal machine-shop,
+it presented a curious appearance, for evidently
+half the machines in it&mdash;forges, lathes, furnaces,
+retorts, etc.&mdash;were dismantled for the moment
+and useless. Half a dozen workmen were busy
+in an apparently aimless manner.</p>
+
+<p>Upstairs, in a room devoted to chemical experiments,
+I found Edison himself. He is to-day
+just what he was then. Prosperity has not
+changed him in the least, except perhaps in one
+particular. In those days of struggle the inventor
+was far less affable with visitors than he is to-day.
+One felt instinctively that he was a man
+struggling to accomplish some serious task to
+which he was devoting every waking thought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a><br /><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span>
+and probably dreaming about it at night. As I
+strode across the laboratory in the direction indicated
+by one of the workmen present, a compactly
+built but not tall man, with rather a boyish,
+clean-shaven face, prematurely old, was
+holding a vial of some liquid up to the light.
+He had on a blouse such as chemists wear, but
+it was hardly necessary, as his clothes were well
+stained with acids; his hands were covered with
+some oil with which his hair was liberally streaked,
+as he had a habit of wiping his fingers upon his
+head. "Good clothes are wasted upon me," he
+once explained to me. "I feel it is wrong to
+wear any, and I never put on a new suit when
+I can help it." Edison has been slightly deaf
+for a number of years, and like all persons of defective
+hearing, closely watches anyone with
+whom he talks. His patience with visitors is
+proverbial, and provided any intelligence is
+shown, he will plunge into long explanations.
+As he goes on from point to point, warming up
+to his subject, he is sometimes quite oblivious to
+the fact that it is all lost upon his visitor until
+brought back by some question or comment
+which shows that he might as well talk Sanskrit.
+Then he laughs and goes back to simpler matters.</p>
+
+<p>I watched him for a few moments before presenting
+myself. After a long look at his bottle,
+held up against the light, he put it down again
+on the table before him, and resting his head between
+his hands, both elbows on the table, he
+peered down at the bottle as if he expected it to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span>
+say something. Then, after a moment's brown
+study, he would seize it again, give it a shake, as
+if to shake its secret out, and hold it up to the
+light. As pantomime nothing could have been
+more expressive. That liquid contained a secret
+it would not give up, but if it could be made to
+give it up, Edison was the man to do it, as a terrier
+might worry the life out of a rat.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Edisons_Menlo_Park_Electric_Locomotive" id="Edisons_Menlo_Park_Electric_Locomotive"></a>
+<img src="images/266.jpg" width="400" height="295" alt="Edison's Menlo Park Electric Locomotive (1880)." />
+<span class="caption">Edison&#39;s Menlo Park Electric Locomotive (1880).</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The secret of his success might well be "Persistency,
+more persistency, still more persistency."
+One of his foremen relates that once in
+Newark when his printing telegraph suddenly
+refused to work, he locked himself into his laboratory,
+declaring that he would not come out till
+the trouble was found. It took him sixty hours,
+during which time his only food consisted of
+crackers and cheese eaten at the bench; then he
+went to bed and slept twenty hours at a stretch.
+At another time, during the height of the first
+electric-light excitement, all the lamps he had
+burning in Menlo Park, about eighty in all, suddenly
+went out, one after another, without apparent
+cause. Everything had gone well for nearly
+a month and the great success of the experiment
+had been published to the world. If the lamps,
+with their carbon filaments of charred paper
+would burn for a month there seemed to be no
+reason why they should not burn for a year, and
+Edison was stunned by the catastrophe. The
+trouble was evidently in the lamps themselves,
+for new lamps burned well. Then began the
+most exciting and most exhaustive series of experiments
+ever undertaken by an American physicist.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>
+For five days Edison remained day and
+night at the laboratory, sleeping only when his
+assistants took his place at whatever was going
+on. The difficulties in the way of experimenting
+with the incandescent lamp are enormous because
+the light only burns when in a vacuum. The
+instant the glass is broken, out it goes. Edison's
+eyes grew weak studying the brilliant glow of
+the carbon filament. At the end of the five days
+he took to his bed, worn out with excitement and
+sick with disappointment. During the last two
+days and nights he ate nothing. He could not
+sleep, for the moment he left the laboratory and
+closed his eyes some new test suggested itself.
+Neither was there much sleep for his faithful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span>
+force. Ordinarily one of the most considerate
+of men, he seemed quite surprised when rest and
+refreshments were sometimes suggested as in
+order after fifteen hours' incessant work. The
+trouble was finally discovered to be one that time
+alone could have proved. The air was not sufficiently
+exhausted from the lamps. To add to
+the discomfiture of the inventor, a professor of
+physics in one of the well-known colleges declared
+in a newspaper article widely circulated
+that the Edison lamp would never last long
+enough to pay for itself.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make a statue of that man," said Edison
+to me one day when he was still groping in the
+dark for the secret of his temporary defeat, "and
+I'll illuminate it brilliantly with Edison lamps
+and inscribe it: 'This is the man who said the
+Edison lamp would not burn.'"</p>
+
+<p>To go back to Edison, shaking his bottle in
+the sunlight, his brown study gave way to a
+pleasant smile of welcome when I had made my
+business known. "Take a look at these filings,"
+he said, making room for me at the bench. "See
+how curiously they settle when I shake the bottle
+up. In alcohol they behave one way, but in oil
+in this way. Isn't that the most curious thing
+you ever saw&mdash;better than a play at one of your
+city theatres, eh?" and he chuckled to himself
+as he shook them up again.</p>
+
+<p>"What I want to know," he went on, more to
+himself than to me, "is what they mean by it,
+and I'm going to find out." To me the interesting
+spectacle was Edison tossing up his bottle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span>
+and watching the filings settle, and not the curious
+behavior of the filings.</p>
+
+<p>When he put the bottle by, with a deep sigh,
+he took me over the whole place, pointing out
+with particular pride the apparatus for making
+the paper carbons for the lamps, and the new
+forms of Sprengel mercury pumps that did better
+work in extracting air from the lamps than
+any yet devised.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back to that first visit to Edison, the
+first of perhaps a score that I have had occasion
+to make him in the last fifteen years, what impressed
+me most was the immensity of the field
+in which he takes an interest. Ask Edison what
+he thinks will be the next step in the development
+of the sewing-machine, or the telescope, the
+microscope, the steam-engine, the electric-motor,
+the reaping-machine, or any device by which
+man accomplishes much work in little time, and
+invariably it will be found that he has some novel
+ideas upon the subject, perhaps fanciful in the
+extreme, but practical enough to show that he
+has pondered the matter. He shares the opinion
+of the gentleman who insists that whatever is is
+wrong, but only to this extent: that whatever is
+might be better. Authority means nothing to
+him; he must test for himself. For instance, it
+is well known that he rejects the Newtonian
+theory in part and holds that motion is an inherent
+property of matter; that it pushes, finding
+its way in the direction of least resistance, and is
+not pulled or attracted. "It seems to me," he
+said once, "that every atom is possessed by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span>
+certain amount of primitive intelligence. Look
+at the thousand ways in which atoms of hydrogen
+combine with those of other elements, forming
+the most diverse substances. Do you mean
+to say that they do this without intelligence?
+Atoms in harmonious and useful relation assume
+beautiful or interesting shapes and colors, or
+give forth a pleasant perfume, as if expressing
+their satisfaction. In sickness, death, decomposition,
+or filth the disagreement of the component
+atoms immediately makes itself felt by bad
+odors." It is partly due to this belief in the sensibility
+of atoms that Edison attributes his faith
+in an intelligent Creator.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<a name="Handwritten_letter" id="Handwritten_letter"></a>
+<img src="images/270.jpg" width="300" height="394" alt="Handwritten letter." />
+<span class="caption">Handwritten letter.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is hard to say into what field of inquiry Edison
+has not dipped. He told me once that whenever
+he travelled he carried a note-book with
+him, in which he jotted down suggestions for
+experiments to be made. Railway journeys, at a
+time when Edison was a constant traveller, were
+productive of much material of this kind, for the
+inventor never sleeps when travelling, and his
+brain works, going over, even in a doze, the thousand
+and one aspects of his work, and evolving
+theories to be dismissed almost as soon as
+evolved. His mind, when at rest, reviews his
+day's work almost automatically, just as a chess player's
+brain will, after an exciting game, go
+over every situation in a half dream-like condition
+and evolve new solutions. He has great
+respect for even what appear to be the most inconsequential
+observations, provided they are
+made by a competent person, and a large force<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span>
+in his splendid laboratory at Orange is always
+employed in studies that appear to the outsider
+to be aimless; for instance, the action of chemicals
+upon various substances or upon each other.
+Strips of ivory in a certain oil become transparent
+in six weeks. A globule of mercury in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span>
+water takes various shapes for the opposite poles
+of the electric-battery upon the addition of a little
+potassium. There is no present use for the
+knowledge of such facts, but it is recorded in
+voluminous note-books, and some day the connecting-link
+in the chain of an invaluable discovery
+may here be found.</p>
+
+<p>My next visit to Menlo Park was a few months
+later, when I found Edison in bed sick with disappointment.
+The lamps had again taken to antics
+for which no remedy or explanation could
+be discovered. There was an air of desolation
+over the place. The laboratory was cold and
+comfortless. Upon every side were signs of
+strict economy. Most of the assistants were
+young men glad to work for little or nothing.
+For the last month Edison had been working in
+the direction of a general improvement of all
+parts of the lamp instead of devoting himself to
+one feature. Expert glass-blowers were brought
+to Menlo Park, the air-pumps were made more
+perfect, new substances were tried for carbons.
+All this had taken time, during which outsiders
+freely predicted failure. The stock in the enterprise
+fell to such a price that it was hard to raise
+money for the maintenance of the laboratory. It
+was argued, and with some truth, as I have had
+occasion to remark, that Edison had really discovered
+nothing new; he had attempted to do
+what a dozen famous men had tried before him
+and he had failed. The quotations of New York
+gas stocks rose again.</p>
+
+<p>The next time I visited the laboratory, a few<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span>
+days later, Edison was up again and talking
+cheerfully. But he had grown five years older
+in five months. "I shall succeed," he said to me,
+"but it may take me longer than I at first supposed.
+Everything is so new that each step is
+in the dark; I have to make the dynamos, the
+lamps, the conductors, and attend to a thousand
+details that the world never hears of. At the
+same time I have to think about the expense of
+my work. That galls me. My one ambition is
+to be able to work without regard to the expense.
+What I mean is, that if I want to give up
+a whole month of my time and that of my whole
+establishment to finding out why one form of a
+carbon filament is slightly better than another, I
+can do it without having to think of the cost.
+My greatest luxury would be a laboratory more
+perfect than any we have in this country. I
+want a splendid collection of material&mdash;every
+chemical, every metal, every substance in fact
+that may be of use to me, and I hardly know
+what may not be of use. I want all this right at
+hand, within a few feet of my own house. Give
+me these advantages and I shall gladly devote
+fifteen hours a day to solid work. I want none
+of the rich man's usual toys, no matter how rich
+I may become. I want no horses or yachts&mdash;have
+no time for them. I want a perfect workshop."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="The_Home_of_Thomas_A_Edison" id="The_Home_of_Thomas_A_Edison"></a>
+<img src="images/273.jpg" width="400" height="274" alt="The Home of Thomas A. Edison." />
+<span class="caption">The Home of Thomas A. Edison.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the last twelve years Edison has seen his
+dream fulfilled. His electric light has not displaced
+gas, by any means, but it has been the
+foundation of a business large enough to make<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span>
+the inventor sufficiently rich to build the finest
+laboratory in the world, in the most curious
+room of which are to be found the three hundred
+models of machinery and apparatus of various
+kinds devised by Edison in the last twenty
+years and made by himself or under his eye. He
+is still a gaunt fellow, with a slight stoop, a clean-shaven
+face, and a low voice. His hands are still
+soiled with acids, his clothes are shabby, and
+there is always a cigar in his mouth.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Edisons_Laboratory" id="Edisons_Laboratory"></a>
+<img src="images/274.jpg" width="400" height="186" alt="Edison's Laboratory." />
+<span class="caption">Edison&#39;s Laboratory.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Edison laboratory deserves a chapter by
+itself. In 1886 Edison bought a fine villa in Llewellyn
+Park at a cost of $150,000. He took the
+house as it stood, with all its luxurious fittings,
+rather to please his wife than himself; a corner
+of the laboratory would suit him quite as well.
+Right outside the gates of the park and within<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span>
+view of the house, he bought ten acres of land
+and began his laboratory. Two handsome structures
+of brick, each 60 feet wide, 100 feet long,
+and four stories high, accommodate the machine-shop,
+library, lecture-room, experimental workshops,
+assistants' rooms and store-rooms. The
+boiler-house and dynamo-rooms are outside the
+main buildings. Also, in a separate room, the
+floor of which consists of immense blocks of
+stone, are the delicate instruments of precision
+used in testing electric currents. The instruments
+in this one room, twenty feet square, cost
+$18,000 to make and to import from Europe.
+Upon first entering the main building, the visitor
+finds what is apparently a busy factory of
+some sort, with long rows of machinery, from
+steam-hammers to diamond-lathes. Everywhere
+workmen are busy at their tasks, and Edison has
+good reason to be proud of his laboratory force,
+for it consists of the picked workmen of the
+country. Whenever he finds in one of the Edison<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span>
+factories in Newark, New York, Schenectady, or
+elsewhere a particularly expert and intelligent
+man, he has him transferred to the Orange laboratory,
+where, at increased pay for shorter hours,
+the man not only finds life pleasanter, but has
+a chance of learning and becoming somebody.
+The whole place hums with the rattle of machinery
+and glows with electric light. There
+are eighty assistants, who have charge of the various
+departments. The most expert iron-workers,
+glass-blowers, wood-turners, metal-spinners,
+screw-makers, chemists, and machinists in the
+country are to be found here. A rough drawing
+of the most complicated model is all they require
+to work from.</p>
+
+<p>The store-rooms contain all the material
+needed. Four store-keepers are employed to
+keep the supplies, valued at $100,000, in order
+and ready for use at a moment's notice. Each
+article is put down in a catalogue which shows
+the shelf or bottle where it may be found. Every
+known metal, every chemical known to science,
+every kind of glass, stone, earth, wood, fibre,
+paper, skin, cloth, is to be found there. In making
+up the chemical collection an assistant was
+kept at work for weeks going through the three
+most exhaustive works on chemistry in English,
+French, and German, making a note of every
+substance mentioned, and this list constituted
+the order for chemicals, an order, by the way,
+which it required seven months to fill. In the
+glass department, for instance, there is every
+known kind of glass, from plates two inches<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span>
+thick to the finest, film, and if anything else in
+the way of glass is needed, the glass-workers
+are there to make it. This stupendous collection
+of material, filling one floor, is intended to
+guard against annoying delays that might occur
+at critical times for want of some rare material.
+In 1885, when working upon an apparatus for
+getting a current of electricity directly from heat&mdash;the
+thermo-electric generator&mdash;Edison's work
+was brought to a standstill for want of a few
+pounds of nickel, an article not then to be found
+in any quantity in this country. The store-room
+was organized to avert such delays. The library
+is the only part of the main building that shows
+any attempt at decoration. It is a superb room,
+60 feet by 40, with a height of 25 feet. Galleries
+run around the second story. At one
+end is a monumental fireplace, and in the centre
+of the hall a fine group of palms and ferns. The
+room is finished in oiled hard wood and lighted
+by electricity. Fine rugs cover the floors. The
+shelves contain nothing but scientific works and
+the files of the forty-six scientific periodicals in
+English, French, and German to which Edison
+subscribes. They are indexed by a librarian as
+soon as received, so that Edison can see at a
+glance what they contain concerning the special
+fields in which he is interested.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing in this big establishment, often employing
+more than one hundred persons, is made
+for sale. It is wholly devoted to experimental
+work and tests. Its expenses, said to be more
+than $150,000 a year, are paid by the commercial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span>
+companies in which Edison is interested, he,
+on his part, giving them the benefit of any improvements
+made. Thus in one room hundreds
+of incandescent electric lamps burn night and
+day the year through. Each lamp is specially
+marked and when it burns out more quickly than
+the average, or lasts longer, a special study is
+made as to the contributing causes. It may
+seem impossible that the suggestions of one man
+can keep busy a big workshop upon experiments
+the year round, but Edison says that the temptation
+is always to increase the force. When it is
+remembered that the list of Edison's patents
+reaches to seven hundred and forty, and that on
+the electric light alone he has worked out several
+hundred theories, the wonder ceases. Ten
+minutes' work with a pencil may sketch an apparatus
+that a dozen men cannot finish inside of
+a fortnight.</p>
+
+<p>When the new Orange laboratory was finished
+and Edison found himself with time and means
+at his disposal, his first thought was to take up his
+phonograph. The history of the great hopes
+built upon the phonograph and the bitter disappointment
+that followed is too familiar to need
+repetition here. As may be imagined, Edison
+is most keenly bent upon tightening the loose
+screw that has prevented it from doing all that
+its friends predicted for it. He still works at
+other problems, but chiefly as relaxation. He
+rests from inventing one thing by inventing
+something else.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Library_at_Edisons_Laboratory" id="Library_at_Edisons_Laboratory"></a>
+<img src="images/278.jpg" width="400" height="298" alt="Library at Edison's Laboratory." />
+<span class="caption">Library at Edison&#39;s Laboratory.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>One day recently, when I found him less confident<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a><br /><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>
+than usual as to the triumph of the phonograph
+in the near future, he said: "There are
+some difficulties about the problem that seem
+insurmountable. I go on smoothly until at a
+certain point I run my head against a stone
+wall; I cannot get under, over, or around it.
+After butting my head against that wall until it
+aches, I go back to the beginning again. It is
+absurd to say that because I can see no possible
+solution of the problem to-day, that I may not
+see one to-morrow. The very fact that this century
+has accomplished so much in the way of
+invention, makes it more than probable that the
+next century will do far greater things. We
+ought to be ashamed of ourselves if we are content
+to fold our hands and say that the telegraph,
+telephone, steam-engine, dynamo, and
+camera having been invented, the field has been
+exhausted. These inventions are so many wonderful
+tools with which we ought to accomplish
+far greater wonders. Unless the coming generations
+are particularly lazy, the world ought to
+possess in 1993 a dozen marvels of the usefulness
+of the steam-engine and dynamo. The next step
+in advance will perhaps be the discovery of a
+method for transforming heat directly into electricity.
+That will revolutionize modern life by
+making heat, power, and light almost as cheap
+as air. Inventors are already feeling their way
+toward this wonder. I have gone far enough on
+that road to know that there are several stone
+walls ahead. But the problem is one of the most
+fascinating in view."</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a name="Professor_Bell_Sending_the_First_Message" id="Professor_Bell_Sending_the_First_Message"></a>
+<img src="images/281.jpg" width="500" height="615" alt="Professor Bell Sending the First Message, by Long-distance Telephone, from New York to Chicago." />
+<span class="caption">Professor Bell Sending the First Message, by Long-distance Telephone, from New York to Chicago.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Wheatstone, the eminent English
+electrician, while engaged in perfecting
+his system of telegraphy discovered that wires
+charged with electricity often carried noises in
+a curious manner. He made and exhibited at
+the Royal Society, in 1840, a clock in which the
+tick of another clock miles away was conveyed
+through a wire. This experiment appears to
+have been one of the germs of the telephone. In
+1844 Captain John Taylor, also an Englishman,
+invented an instrument to which he gave the
+name of the telephone, but it had nothing electrical
+about it. It was an apparatus for conveying
+sounds at sea by means of compressed
+air forced through trumpets. He could make
+his telephone heard six miles away. The first
+real suggestion of the telephone as we know it
+comes from Reis, the German professor of physics
+at Friedrichsdorf, who in 1860 constructed
+with a coil of wire, a knitting-needle, the skin of
+a German sausage, the bung of a beer-barrel, and
+a strip of platinum an instrument which reproduced
+the sound of the voice by the vibration of
+the membrane and sent a series of clicks along
+an electric wire to an electro-magnetic receiver<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span>
+at the other end of the wire. The same idea
+was taken up in this country by Elisha Gray,
+Edison, and by Alexander Graham Bell, who
+first exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition an
+apparatus that transmitted speech by electricity
+in a fairly satisfactory manner. The American
+claimants to the honor of having invented the
+telephone include Daniel Drawbaugh, a backwoods
+genius of Pennsylvania, who claims to
+have made and used a practical telephone in
+1867-68. A large fortune has been spent in
+fighting Drawbaugh's claims against the Bell
+monopoly, but the courts have finally decided in
+favor of the latter. It should be recorded as a
+matter of justice to Mr. Gray, that he appears to
+have solved the problem of conveying speech by
+electricity at about the same time as Bell. Both
+these inventors filed their caveats upon the telephone
+upon the same day&mdash;February 14, 1876.
+It was Bell's good fortune to be the first to make
+his device practically effective.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander Graham Bell is not an American
+by birth. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland,
+on the 1st of March, 1847. His father, Alexander
+Melville Bell, was the inventor of the system
+by which deaf people are enabled to read
+speech more or less correctly by observing
+the motion of the lips. His mother was the
+daughter of Samuel Symonds, a surgeon in the
+British navy.</p>
+
+<p>In 1872 the Bells moved to Canada, and young
+Alexander Bell became widely known in Boston
+as an authority in the teaching of the deaf and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span>
+dumb. He first carried to great perfection in
+this country the art of enabling the deaf and
+dumb to enunciate intelligible words and sounds
+that they themselves have never heard. Most
+of his art he acquired from his father, one of the
+most expert of teachers in this field. The elder
+Bell is still active in his work, constantly devising
+new methods and experiments. He lives
+in Washington with his son and is frequently
+heard in lectures in New York and Boston.</p>
+
+<p>In 1873 Alexander Bell began to study the
+transmission of musical tones by telegraph. It
+was in the line of his work with deaf and dumb
+people to make sound vibrations visible to the
+eye. With the phonautograph he could obtain
+tracings of such vibrations upon blackened paper
+by means of a pencil or stylus attached to
+a vibrating cord or membrane. He also succeeded
+in obtaining tracings upon smoked glass
+of the vibrations of the air produced by vowel
+sounds. He began experimenting with an apparatus
+resembling the human ear, and upon the
+suggestion of Dr. Clarence J. Blake, the Boston
+aurist, he tried his work upon a prepared specimen
+of the ear itself. Observation upon the
+vibrations of the various bones within the ear
+led him to conceive the idea of vibrating a piece
+of iron in front of an electro-magnet.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bell was at this time an instructor in
+phonetics, or the art of visible speech, in Monroe's
+School of Oratory in Boston. One of his
+old pupils describes him then as a swarthy,
+foreign-looking personage, more Italian than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span>
+English in appearance, with jet-black hair and
+dark skin. His manner was earnest and full of
+conviction. He was an enthusiast in his work,
+and only emerged from his habitual diffidence
+when called upon to talk upon his studies and
+views. He was miserably poor and almost without
+friends. When he was attacked with muscular
+rheumatism, in 1873, his hospital expenses
+were paid by his employer, and his only visitors
+were some of the pupils at the school.</p>
+
+<p>Until the close of 1874, Bell's experiments
+seemed to promise nothing of practical value.
+But in 1875 he began to transmit vibrations between
+two armatures, one at each end of a wire.
+He was much interested at the time in multiple
+telegraphy and fancied that something might
+come of some such arrangement of many magnetic
+armatures responding to the vibrations set
+up in one.</p>
+
+<p>In November, 1875, he discovered that the
+vibrations created in a reed by the voice could
+be transmitted so as to reproduce words and
+sounds. One day in January, 1876, he called a
+dozen of the pupils at Monroe's school into his
+room and exhibited an apparatus by which
+singing was more or less satisfactorily transmitted
+by wire from the cellar of the building to a
+room on the fourth floor. The exhibition created
+a sensation among the pupils, but, although
+no attempts were made by Bell to conceal what
+he was doing, or how he did it, the noise of his
+discovery does not seem to have reached the
+outside world. With an old cigar-box, two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span>
+hundred feet of wire, two magnets from a toy
+fish-pond, the first Bell telephone was brought
+into existence. The apparatus was, however,
+not yet the practical telephone as we know it,
+but it was sufficient of a curiosity to warrant
+its exhibition in an improved form at the Centennial
+Exhibition, when Sir William Thomson
+spoke of it as "perhaps the greatest marvel
+hitherto achieved by the electric telegraph."</p>
+
+<p>The next year Bell succeeded in bringing the
+telephone to the condition in which it became
+of immediate practical value. Strange to say,
+the public was at first slow to appreciate the
+great importance of the invention, and when
+Bell took it to England, in 1877, he could find
+no purchaser for half the European rights at
+$10,000. In this country, thanks to the business
+energy of Professor Gardiner Hubbard, of Harvard,
+Bell's father-in-law, the telephone was soon
+made commercially valuable, and there are now
+said to be nearly six hundred thousand telephones
+in use in the United States alone.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Bell, as may be imagined, is not idle.
+His vast fortune has enabled him to continue
+costly experiments in aiding deaf and dumb
+people, and it will probably be in this field that
+his next achievement will be made. Personally,
+he is a reserved and thoughtful man, wholly
+given up to his scientific work. His wife, whom
+he married in 1876, was one of his deaf and dumb
+pupils. It is often said that it was largely due
+to his intense desire to soften her misfortune
+that his experiments were so exhaustive and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span>
+finally became so productive in another direction.
+His home life in Washington, where he bought,
+in 1885, the superb house on Scott Circle known
+as "Broadhead's Folly," after the man who built
+it and ruined himself in so doing, is said to be
+an ideally peaceful and happy one, given up to
+study and efforts to alleviate the troubles of the
+deaf and dumb.</p>
+
+<p>As in the case of most inventions of such immense
+value as the telephone, a fortune has had
+to be spent in order to protect the patent rights;
+but in Bell's case the inventor's money reward
+has been ample and is now said to amount to more
+than $1,000,000 a year. Just at present Mr. Bell
+is engaged upon a modification of the phonograph,
+which may enable persons not wholly
+deaf to hear a phonographic reproduction of the
+human voice, even if they cannot hear the voice
+itself. Honors have poured in upon him within
+the last fifteen years. In 1880 the French Government
+awarded him the Volta prize of $10,000,
+which Mr. Bell devoted to founding the Volta
+Laboratory in Washington, an institution for the
+use of students. In 1882 he also received from
+France the ribbon of the Legion of Honor.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>AMERICAN INVENTORS, PAST AND
+PRESENT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>There are now in force in this country nearly
+three hundred thousand patents for inventions
+and devices of more or less importance and aid
+to everyone. To how great a degree the world
+is indebted to the inventor, very few of us realize.
+The more we think of the matter, however,
+the more are we likely to believe that the inventor
+is mankind's great benefactor. Watt
+should stand before Napoleon in the hero-worship
+of the age, and the man who perfected
+the friction-match before the author of an epic.
+Some day this redistribution of the world's
+honors will surely take place, and it should be a
+satisfaction to us Americans that our country
+stands so high in the ranks of inventive genius.
+Within the last half century Americans have
+contributed, to mention only great achievements,
+the telegraph, the telephone, the electric light,
+the sewing-machine, the reaper, and vulcanized
+rubber, to the world's wealth&mdash;a far larger contribution
+than that of any other nation. What
+may not the next generation produce? Some
+people seem to believe that so much has already
+been invented as to have exhausted the field. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span>
+this connection I have quoted in another place
+some remarks Mr. Edison once made to me as
+to what the next fifty years might bring forth.
+Still more astonishing than our past fecundity
+in invention would be future barrenness. This
+century has done its work and produced its
+marvels with comparatively blunt tools, or no
+tools at all. The next century will be able to
+work with superb instruments of which our
+grandfathers knew nothing. The school-boy to-day
+knows more of the forces of nature and their
+useful application than the magician of fifty years
+ago. It has been said that the fifteen blocks in
+the "Gem" puzzle can be arranged in more than
+a million different ways. The material in the
+game at which man daily plays is so infinitely
+more complex that the number of combinations
+cannot be written out in figures. The
+rôle played by invention in modern life is
+infinitely greater than during preceding ages.
+One invention, by affording a new tool, makes
+others possible. The steam-engine made possible
+the dynamo, the dynamo made possible the
+electric light. In its turn the electric light may
+lead to wonders still more extraordinary.</p>
+
+<p>The degree to which invention has contributed
+to civilization is far from suspected by the careless
+observer. Almost everything we have or
+use is the fruit of invention. Man might be defined
+as the animal that invents. The air we
+breathe and the water we drink are provided by
+Nature, but we drink water from a vessel of
+some kind, an invention of man. Even if we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span>
+drink from a shell or a gourd, we shape it to
+serve a new purpose. If we want our air hotter
+or colder, we resort to invention, and a vast
+amount of ingenuity has been expended upon putting
+air in motion by means of fans, blowers,
+ventilators, etc. We take but a small part of our
+food as animals do&mdash;in the natural state. The
+savage who first crushed some kernels of wheat
+between two stones invented flour, and we are
+yet hard at it inventing improvements upon his
+process. The earliest inventions probably had
+reference to the procuring and preparing of
+food, and the ingenuity of man is still exercised
+upon these problems more eagerly than ever before.
+During the last fifty years the power of
+man to produce food has increased more than
+during the preceding fifteen centuries. Sixty
+years ago a large part of the wheat and other
+grain raised in the world was cut, a handful at a
+time, with a scythe, and a man could not reap
+much more than a quarter of an acre a day.
+With a McCormick reaper a man and two horses
+will cut from fifteen to twenty acres of grain a
+day. In the threshing of grain, invention has
+achieved almost as much. A man with a machine
+will thresh ten times as much as he formerly
+could with a flail.</p>
+
+<p>It is less than sixty years since matches have
+come into common use. Many old men remember
+the time in this country when a fire could be
+kindled only with the embers from another fire,
+as there were no such things as matches. Most
+of us who have reached the age of forty remember<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span>
+the abominable, clumsy sulphur-matches of
+1860, as bulky as they were unpleasant. And yet
+the first sulphur-matches, made about 1830, cost
+ten cents a hundred. To-day the safety match,
+certain and odorless, is sold at one-tenth of this
+price. The introduction of kerosene was one
+of the blessings of modern life. It added several
+hours a day to the useful, intelligent life
+of man, and who can estimate the influence of
+these evening hours upon the advance of civilization?
+The evening, after the day's work is done,
+has been the only hour when the workingman
+could read. Before cheap and good lights were
+given him, reading was out of the question. Gas
+marked a step in advance, but only for large
+towns, and now electricity bids fair soon to displace
+gas; and we hear vague suggestions of a
+luminous ether that will flood houses with a soft
+glow like that of sunlight.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Townsend and Drake&mdash;The Introduction
+of Coal Oil</span>.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In 1850 sperm oil, then commonly used in
+lamps, had become high-priced, owing to the
+failure of the New Bedford whalers, and cost
+$2.25 a gallon. Oil obtained by the distillation
+of coal was tried, but was also too costly&mdash;not
+less than $1 a gallon. It burned well,
+but its odor was frightful. The problem of a
+cheap and pleasant light was solved by James M.
+Townsend and E.L. Drake, both of New Haven.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span>
+In 1854 a man brought to Professor Silliman, of
+Yale, some oil from Oil Creek, Pa., to be tested.
+His report was so favorable that a company
+was formed, which leased all the land along Oil
+Creek upon which were traces of the new rock
+oil. The hard times of 1857 came before any
+headway had been made, and the company tried
+to find some way of ridding itself of the lease.
+At this time Townsend, who knew something
+about the property, undertook to get possession.
+Boarding in the same house in New Haven was
+E.L. Drake, once a conductor on the New York
+&amp; New Haven Railroad, who had been obliged
+to give up work on account of ill-health. Townsend
+proposed that as Drake could get railroad
+passes as an ex-employee, he should go to Pennsylvania
+and look into the property. He did so,
+and reported that a fortune might be made by
+gathering the oil and bottling it for medicinal
+purposes. Drake and Townsend organized the
+Seneca Oil Company. The oil was gathered
+by digging trenches, and was sold at $1 a
+gallon. Drake suggested that it might be well
+to bore for oil. A man familiar with salt-well
+boring was brought from Syracuse, and in 1850
+the first well was begun at Titusville under the
+supervision of Drake. He was commonly considered
+by the neighbors to be insane. The
+work was costly and slow. When many months
+and about $50,000 had been spent, the stockholders
+in the company refused to go any further&mdash;all
+except Townsend, who sent his last $500 to
+Drake, with instructions to use it in paying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span>
+debts and his expenses in reaching home. On
+the day before the receipt of this money&mdash;August
+29, 1859&mdash;the auger, which was down
+sixty-eight feet, struck a cavity, and up came a
+flow of oil that filled the well to within five feet
+of the surface. Pumping began at the rate of
+five hundred gallons a day, and a more powerful
+pump doubled this flow. As this oil was
+worth a dollar a gallon, fortune was within sight.
+But the very quantity of the oil proved to be the
+company's ruin. Their works were destroyed
+by fire in the winter of 1859-60, and before they
+could be rebuilt, scores of other wells, some of
+them requiring no pumping apparatus, had been
+sunk in the neighborhood. The supply was soon
+far in excess of the demand, which was limited
+by the small number of refineries, the want of
+good lamps in which to burn the oil, and the attacks
+by manufacturers of other oils. Such was
+the effect of these causes that the new oil fell to
+a dollar a barrel, a price so low that it did not
+pay for the handling. The Seneca Oil Company
+was so much discouraged that they sold out
+their leases and disbanded. Both Townsend and
+Drake would have died richer men had they
+never heard of the Pennsylvania rock oil.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Clarks and the Telescope.</span></h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Alvan_Clark" id="Alvan_Clark"></a>
+<img src="images/294.jpg" width="400" height="540" alt="Alvan Clark." />
+<span class="caption">Alvan Clark.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The fame of American telescopes is due to the
+work and inventions of the Clark family of Cambridgeport,
+Mass., the descendants of Thomas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span>
+Clark, the mate of the Mayflower. The founder
+of the great&mdash;in a scientific sense&mdash;house of
+Alvan Clark &amp; Sons, telescope-makers, was a remarkable
+man. Until after his fortieth year he
+devoted himself to portrait-painting. In 1843
+his attention was accidentally turned toward
+telescope-making. One day the dinner-bell at
+Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., happened to
+break. The pieces were gathered up by one of
+Clark's boys, George, who proceeded to melt
+them in a crucible over the kitchen fire, declaring
+that he was going to make a telescope. His
+mother laughed, but his father was deeply interested
+and helped the boy make a five-inch
+reflecting telescope which showed the satellites
+of Jupiter. This was the beginning of telescope-making<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span>
+in the Clark family, an industry which
+has given to the scientific world its most remarkable
+lenses. Alvan Clark dropped his paintbrushes,
+never to take them up again until at the
+age of eighty-three he made an excellent portrait
+of his little grandson. To Alvan G. Clark, the
+present head of the house, are chiefly due the
+scores of devices by which American ingenuity
+has surpassed the slower European methods.
+The delicacy required in the manipulation and
+grinding of the immense lenses made by the
+Clarks is almost incredible. The latest triumph
+of the firm&mdash;a forty-inch lens for the Spence
+Observatory at Los Angeles, Cal.&mdash;required two
+years of grinding and polishing after a piece of
+glass perfect enough had been obtained. So
+delicately finished is it that half a dozen sharp
+rubs with the soft part of a man's thumb would
+be sufficient to ruin it. Alvan G. Clark is now a
+man sixty-one years-old. He has lived all his
+life at the home in Cambridgeport. His greatest
+sorrow is that there is no son of his to carry
+on the work after his death. His only son died
+a few years ago, just as he was beginning to show
+wonderful aptitude in the art which has made
+the family famous in all the great observatories
+of the world.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">John Fitch and Oliver Evans&mdash;Steam
+Transportation.</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>In looking over the work done by American
+inventors, the great names are those to be found
+at the heads of the preceding chapters. But
+the list is by no means exhausted. Among the
+early men of achievement in the field of invention
+I have had to omit at least a dozen whose
+work deserves more than a paragraph. The
+history of the steamboat is not complete without
+reference to John Fitch.</p>
+
+<p>Fulton was fortunate in making the first really
+successful attempt at propelling boats by steam,
+but Fitch came very near reaping the honors
+for this invention. The account of Fitch's life
+and experiments, written by himself and now in
+the possession of the Franklin Library of Philadelphia,
+clearly shows that this unhappy genius
+really deserves to share in Fulton's glory. Fitch
+was born in Connecticut, in January, 1743, more
+than twenty years before Fulton. He was a
+farmer's boy and picked up knowledge as best
+he could. Before he was twenty he had learned
+clock-making and then button-making. It was
+in 1788 that he obtained his first patent for a
+steamboat. His experimental boat was an extraordinary
+affair, fully described in the <i>Columbian</i>
+(Philadelphia) <i>Magazine</i> for December, 1786.
+Its motive power consisted of a clumsy engine
+that moved horizontal bars, upon which were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span>
+fastened a number of oars or paddles. So far as
+possible the machine imitated the movements of
+a man rowing. This boat made eight miles an
+hour in calm water. Finding nothing but ridicule
+for his project here, as his steamboat cost
+too much money to run as a commercial undertaking,
+Fitch went to Europe, and was equally
+unsuccessful there. There is still in existence
+a letter from him in which he predicts that
+steam would some day carry vessels across
+the Atlantic. He died in 1796, without having
+contributed more than a curiosity to the
+art of steam navigation.</p>
+
+<p>Another early inventor was Oliver Evans, who
+has been called the Watt of America. In 1804
+Evans offered to build for the Lancaster Turnpike
+Company a steam-carriage to carry one
+hundred barrels of flour fifty miles in twenty-four
+hours. The offer was derided. Here is one
+of Evans's predictions written at about this time:
+"The time will come when people will travel in
+stages, moved by steam-engines, from one city
+to another, almost as fast as birds fly, fifteen or
+twenty miles an hour. Passing through the air
+with such velocity, changing the scene with
+such rapid succession, will be the most rapid,
+exhilarating exercise. A carriage (steam) will
+set out from Washington in the morning,
+the passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine
+at Philadelphia, and sup in New York the same
+day. To accomplish this, two sets of railways
+will be laid so nearly level as not in any way to
+deviate more than two degrees from a horizontal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span>
+line, made of wood, or iron, or smooth paths
+of broken stone or gravel, with a rail to guide the
+carriages so that they may pass each other in
+different directions and travel by night as well
+as by day. Engines will drive boats ten or
+twelve miles per hour, and there will be many
+hundred steamboats running on the Mississippi."
+In 1805 Evans built a steam-carriage propelled
+by a sort of paddle-wheel at the stern, the paddles
+touching the ground. This apparatus he
+named the "Oructor Amphibolis," and it is believed
+to have been the first application of steam
+in America to the propelling of land carriages.
+He died in 1819 without having seen his steam-carriage
+come to anything practicable. He
+made a fortune, however, from some patents upon
+flour-mill improvements.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Amos Whittemore and Thomas Blanchard.</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>In the domain of textile fabrics Amos Whittemore,
+the Massachusetts inventor of the card-machine,
+which did away with the old-fashioned
+method of making cards for cotton and woollen
+factories, must be mentioned. Before Whittemore's
+machine came into use, about 1812, such
+cards were made by hand, the laborer sticking
+one by one into sheets of leather the wire staples,
+which operation gave work to thousands of
+families in New England early in the century.
+Whittemore made a fortune by his invention, and
+devoted the last years of his life to astronomy.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another Massachusetts boy, Thomas Blanchard,
+invented the lathe for turning irregular
+objects, and well deserves mention. Born in
+1788, he was noted as a boy for his efficiency in
+the New England accomplishment of whittling,
+making wonderful windmills and water-wheels
+with his knife. When thirteen years old he made
+an apple-paring machine, with which at the "paring
+bees" held in the neighborhood he could
+accomplish more than a dozen girls. Soon after
+this achievement he began helping his brother in
+the manufacture of tacks. The operation consisted
+in stamping them out from a thin plate of
+iron, after which they were taken up, one at a
+time, with the thumb and finger and caught in
+a tool worked by the foot, while a blow given
+simultaneously with a hammer held in the right
+hand made a flat head of the large end of the
+tack projecting above the face of the vise. This
+was the only method then known, and it was so
+slow and irksome that young Blanchard often
+grew disgusted. As a daily task he was given a
+certain quantity of tacks to make, which number
+was ascertained by counting. Finding this much
+trouble, he constructed a counting-machine, consisting
+of a ratchet-wheel which moved one tooth
+every time the jaws of the heading tool or
+vise moved in the process of making a tack.
+From this achievement he passed to a tack machine,
+and after six years of hard work turned
+out an apparatus that made five hundred tacks
+a minute. He sold his patent for the trifle of
+$5,000.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span></p>
+
+<p>With part of this money he began his experiments
+in turning musket-barrels, an operation
+that was simple enough except at the breech,
+where the flat and oval sides had to be ground
+down or chipped. Blanchard made a lathe that
+turned the whole barrel satisfactorily. While
+exhibiting his new lathe at the United States
+Armory at Springfield, occurred the incident
+that led to Blanchard's great device for turning
+irregular forms. One of the men employed in
+cutting musket-stocks remarked that Blanchard
+could never spoil his job, for he could not turn a
+gun-stock. The remark struck Blanchard, who
+replied, "I am not so sure of that, but will think
+of it a while." The result of six months' study
+was the lathe with which such articles as gun-stocks,
+shoe-lasts, hat-blocks, tackle-blocks, axe-handles,
+wig-blocks, and a thousand other objects
+of irregular shape may now be turned. While
+at Washington getting his patent, Blanchard
+exhibited his machine at the War Office, where
+many heads of departments had assembled.
+Among the rest was a navy commissioner, who,
+after listening to Blanchard, remarked to the inventor:
+"Can you turn a seventy-four?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," was the reply, "if you will furnish the
+block." Blanchard afterward made many interesting
+experiments in steam-carriages, but his
+chief claim to fame rests upon his lathe.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Richard M. Hoe and the Web-Press.</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>From the end of the first half of this century
+date movements of extraordinary importance in
+the world of American invention. The locomotive,
+the steam-engine and steam-boat, the telegraph,
+reaping-machine, the printing-press, all
+seemed to reach an era of wide usefulness at
+about the same time. It was in 1814 that Walters
+first printed the London <i>Times</i> by steam, the
+sullen pressmen standing around waiting for a
+pretext to destroy the machinery, and only prevented
+by strategy from doing so. About thirty
+years afterward Richard M. Hoe first turned
+his attention to the improvement of printing-presses.
+The founder of the famous house of
+printing-press makers, Robert Hoe, was born in
+England. His son, Richard March Hoe, was
+born in New York on the 12th of September,
+1812. He made his first press in 1840, when he
+turned out the machine known as "Hoe's Double-cylinder,"
+which was capable of making about six
+thousand impressions an hour, and was the admiration
+of all the printers in the city. So long
+as the newspaper circulation knew no great increase
+this wonderful press was all-sufficient; but
+the greater the supply the greater grew the
+demand, and a printing-press capable of striking
+off papers with greater rapidity was felt to be
+an imperative need. It was often necessary to
+hold the forms back until nearly daylight for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span>
+the purpose of getting the latest news, and the
+work of printing the paper had to be done in a
+very few hours. In 1842 Hoe began to experiment
+for the purpose of getting greater speed.
+There were many difficulties in the way, however,
+and at the end of four years of experimenting
+he was about ready to confess that the obstacles
+were insurmountable. One night in 1846,
+while still in this mood, he resumed his experiments;
+the more he reviewed the problem, the
+more difficult it seemed. In despair he was about
+to give it up for the night, when there flashed
+across his brain a plan for securing the type on
+the surface of a cylinder. This was the solution
+of the problem, and within a year our leading
+newspapers had their "Lightning" presses, in
+which from four to ten cylinders were used to
+feed sheets of paper against the surface of the
+type as it flew around. So recently as 1870 the
+ten-cylinder Hoe press, printing twenty-five
+thousand sheets an hour, was considered a marvel.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the perfecting press, a far smaller
+machine, but capable of five times as much work,
+thanks to the substitution of rolls of paper for
+separate sheets fed in one by one. The device
+by which the web of paper after being printed
+on one side is turned over and printed on the
+other side in the same machine was another
+triumph of American ingenuity. Stereotyping
+made it possible to print from a dozen presses
+at the same time without the trouble of setting
+up new type, and inventions for pasting, folding,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span>
+and counting the papers still further increased
+the speed at which papers may be issued, while
+at the same time decreasing the number of men
+employed as pressmen. In 1865 it required the
+services of twenty-six men and boys to print
+and fold twenty-five thousand copies of an eight-page
+paper in an hour. To-day a perfecting
+press, with the aid of four men, does four times
+as much work. It has been recently estimated
+that to print, paste, and fold the Sunday edition
+of one of the great newspapers with the machinery
+of 1865 would require the services of
+five hundred persons.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Thomas W. Harvey and Screw-making.</span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The gimlet-pointed screw patented in 1838 by
+Thomas W. Harvey, of Providence, R.I., is a
+marked instance of an improvement so useful that
+we can scarcely realize that less than fifty years
+ago such screws were unknown to the carpenter,
+for it was not until 1846 that Harvey succeeded
+in getting people to abandon the old blunt-ended
+screw that we now occasionally find in buildings
+put up before 1850. Harvey was a Vermont
+boy, born in 1795. His faculty for the invention
+of machinery for screw-making and other purposes
+gave him and his associates and successors&mdash;Angell,
+Sloan, and Whipple&mdash;great fortunes
+according to the estimate of that day. He died
+in 1856.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">C.L. Sholes and the Typewriter.</span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="CL_Sholes" id="CL_Sholes"></a>
+<img src="images/304.jpg" width="400" height="509" alt="C.L. Sholes." />
+<span class="caption">C.L. Sholes.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A great many men contributed to make the
+typewriter what it is to-day&mdash;as much of an improvement
+upon the pen as the sewing-machine
+is upon the needle. So long ago as 1843 some
+patents were taken out for divers forms of writing-machines,
+all more or less impracticable. It
+was not until C.L. Sholes, then of Wisconsin,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span>
+took up the problem, in 1866, that the present
+form of a number of type-bars, arranged so that
+their ends strike upon a common centre, was devised.
+Sholes died in 1890, having also helped
+by many minor devices the increase in the use of
+writing-machines. From 1865 to 1873 he made
+thirty different working models of writing-machines,
+devoting himself to the task almost day
+and night for eight years.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">B.B. Hotchkiss and his Guns.</span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="BB_Hotchkiss" id="BB_Hotchkiss"></a>
+<img src="images/306.jpg" width="400" height="503" alt="B.B. Hotchkiss." />
+<span class="caption">B.B. Hotchkiss.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>American inventors have had, as a rule, but
+small success in making Europe see the value of
+their inventions before this country has proved
+it. Morse could get neither England nor France
+to take an interest in his telegraph schemes, and,
+at a later day, Bell's telephone was received
+in England as a curious device, but not worth
+investing money in. An exception to this rule
+may be found, however, in the case of B.B.
+Hotchkiss, a Connecticut inventor, who during
+the civil war conceived the idea of a breech-loading
+cannon. In 1869 Hotchkiss mounted
+one of his small guns in the Brooklyn Navy-yard,
+but found no encouragement to experiment
+further. The Franco-German war found
+him in Europe with a breech-loading gun that
+would throw shells. His success was such that
+there is not a civilized country where Hotchkiss
+guns, throwing light shells with a rapidity not
+dreamed of years ago, are not now in use. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span>
+inventor has made a large fortune and has had
+the pleasure of sending to this country a number
+of guns for our cruisers, the Atlanta, the Boston,
+the Chicago, and the Dolphin. So great is the
+rapidity, accuracy, and power of these Hotchkiss
+rapid-fire guns that some experts expect to
+see two-thirds of an action fought with these or
+similar pieces, which they think will silence and
+put out of action all the heavy guns in a few
+minutes after the enemies come within fifteen
+hundred yards of each other. For instance, the
+latest piece is a six-pounder, which, with smokeless
+powder, has a range of five thousand yards
+and an effective fighting range of one thousand
+yards, within which distance a target the size of
+a six-inch gun can be hit nearly every time and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span>
+five inches of wrought iron perforated. A speed
+in firing of twenty-five shots a minute has been
+attained.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Charles F. Brush and the Dynamo.</span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Charles_F_Brush" id="Charles_F_Brush"></a>
+<img src="images/308.jpg" width="400" height="490" alt="Charles F. Brush." />
+<span class="caption">Charles F. Brush.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A trifling incident revealed to an Italian savant
+the fact that when two metals and the
+leg of a frog came into contact the muscles
+of the leg contracted. The galvanic battery
+resulted. Years later another observer discovered
+that if a wire carrying a current of electricity
+was wound around a piece of soft iron the
+latter became a magnet. Out of these simple
+discoveries have arisen the telegraph, the telephone,
+and a host of inventions depending upon
+electricity. And to-day, with all the wonders
+accomplished in this field, we are yet upon the
+threshold of the enchanted palace that electricity
+is about to open to us. Through its aid we shall
+one day enjoy light, heat, and power almost as
+freely as we now enjoy air. The crops will be
+planted, watered, cultivated, gathered, and transported
+to the uttermost ends of the earth by
+electricity. The steam-engine is said to do the
+work of two hundred million men, and to have
+been the chief agent in reducing the average
+working hours of men in the civilized world in
+this century from fourteen hours a day to ten.
+But electricity, according to even conservative
+judges, will accomplish infinitely more. It will
+make possible the harnessing of vast forces of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span>
+nature, such as the falls of Niagara, because the
+electric current can be transported from place to
+place at small cost and it is easily transformed
+into light or power or heat. Within a few
+months we shall see the first results of the great
+work at Niagara. Before many years the power
+of the tides is certain to be used along the seaboard
+for producing electricity. Here is a force
+equal to that of a million Niagaras going to
+waste.</p>
+
+<p>The late Clerk Maxwell, when asked by a distinguished
+scientist what was the greatest scientific
+discovery of the last half-century, replied:
+"That the Gramme machine is reversible." In
+other words, that power will not only produce
+electricity, but that electricity will produce<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span>
+power. By turning a big wheel at Niagara we
+can produce an electric current that will turn
+another wheel for us fifty, or perhaps five
+hundred miles away. The dynamo is one of the
+great achievements of the day to which Charles
+F. Brush, of Cleveland, O., has devoted himself
+with much signal success. Brush was born
+in March, 1849, in Euclid Township near Cleveland,
+and his early years were spent on his
+father's farm. When fourteen years old he went
+to the public school at Collamer, and later to the
+Cleveland High-school, and as early as 1862 distinguished
+himself by making magnetic machines
+and batteries for the high-school. During his
+senior year in the high-school, the chemical and
+physical apparatus of the laboratory of the school
+was placed under his charge. In this year he
+constructed an electric motor having its field
+magnets as well as its armature excited by the
+electric current. He also constructed a microscope
+and a telescope, making all the parts himself,
+down to the grinding of the lenses. He devised
+an apparatus for turning on the gas in the
+street-lamps of Cleveland, lighting it and turning
+it off again. When he was eighteen years of age
+he entered Michigan University at Ann Arbor,
+and, following his particular bent, was graduated
+as a mining engineer in 1869, one year ahead
+of his class. Returning to Cleveland he began
+work as an analytical chemist and soon became
+interested in the iron business. In 1875 Brush's
+attention was first called to electricity by George
+W. Stockly, who suggested that there was an immense<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span>
+field ready for a cheaper and more easily
+managed dynamo than the Gramme or Siemens,
+the best types then known. Stockly, who was interested
+in the Telegraph Supply Company, of
+Cleveland, agreed to undertake the manufacture
+of such a machine if one was devised. In two
+months Brush made a dynamo so perfect in every
+way that it was running until it was taken to the
+World's Fair in 1893. Having made a good dynamo,
+the next step was a better lamp than those
+in use. Six months of experimenting resulted in
+the Brush arc light. Stockly was so well satisfied
+with the commercial value of these inventions
+that the Telegraph Supply Company, a small
+concern then employing about twenty-five men,
+was reorganized in 1879, as the Brush Electric
+Company. In 1880 the Brush Company put its
+first lights into New York City, and it has since
+extended the system until there is scarcely a
+town in the country where the light may not be
+found. Besides dynamos and lamps, the immense
+establishment at Cleveland employs its
+twelve hundred men in making carbons, storage-batteries,
+and electro-plating apparatus. Mr.
+Brush is a self-taught mechanic, able to do any
+work of his shops in a manner equal to that of
+an expert. He is intensely practical, never over-sanguine,
+and an excellent business man. If a
+delicate piece of work is to be done for the first
+time, he will probably do it with his own hands.
+He is not fond of experiment for the experiment's
+sake; he wants to see the practical utility
+of the aim in view before devoting time to its attainment.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span>
+Of the scores of patents he has taken
+out, two-thirds are said to pay him a revenue.
+In 1881, at the Paris Electrical Exposition, Brush
+received the ribbon of the Legion of Honor.
+In personal appearance there is nothing of the
+round-shouldered, impecunious, studious inventor
+about him. He is six feet or more in height,
+and so fine a specimen of manhood that Gambetta,
+the French statesman, once remarked that
+the man impressed him quite as much as the
+inventor.</p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Eickemeyer and His Motor.</span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="Rudolph_Eickemeyer" id="Rudolph_Eickemeyer"></a>
+<img src="images/312.jpg" width="400" height="488" alt="Rudolph Eickemeyer." />
+<span class="caption">Rudolph Eickemeyer.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the same field of electricity, as applied to
+every-day life, a Bavarian by birth, but an American
+by adoption, Rudolf Eickemeyer, of Yonkers,
+has done some valuable work in devising
+a useful form of dynamo. His machines are
+now used almost exclusively for elevators and
+hoisting apparatus, one large firm of elevator
+builders having put in no less than six hundred
+Eickemeyer motors within the last four years.
+As electricity becomes more and more useful
+for small powers, such as lathes, pumps, and elevators,
+an effective and simple motor becomes
+of the utmost importance. Rudolf Eickemeyer
+was born in October, 1831, at Kaiserslautern,
+Bavaria, where his father was employed as a
+forester. He was educated at the Darmstadt
+Polytechnic Institute and at once showed a predilection
+for scientific work. When still a boy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span>
+he joined the Revolutionists under Siegel, and
+after the upheaval of 1848 came here with Siegel,
+Carl Schurz, and George Osterheld, the latter
+afterward becoming his partner. The young
+man's first work here was as an engineer on the
+Erie Railroad line, then building. In 1854 he established
+himself in Yonkers in the business of
+repairing the tools used in the many hat-shops of
+that already flourishing city. The next twenty
+years of his life were devoted to inventions and
+improvements in every branch of hat-making.
+His shaving-machines, stretchers, blockers, pressers,
+ironers, and sewing-machines substituted
+mechanism for laborious and slow methods of
+hand work. At the beginning of the war Eickemeyer
+was quick to see the opportunity for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span>
+turning his factory to other uses, and vast quantities
+of revolvers were made there. When that
+industry declined, he took up the manufacture
+of mowing-machines, having invented a driving
+mechanism for such machines that met with
+wide favor. The introduction of the Bell telephone
+in Yonkers first turned Eickemeyer's attention
+to electricity, and for the last ten years
+he has devoted himself almost exclusively to the
+invention and manufacture of electric motors.
+His first successful invention in this field was a
+dynamo to furnish light for railroad trains.
+From this he was led to the invention of a dynamo
+capable of doing effective work at much
+lower speed than that usually employed, and
+this has proved to be his most valuable achievement.
+Some improvements in winding the armatures
+have also been accepted as valuable and
+adopted by other manufacturers. In connection
+with storage batteries Mr. Eickemeyer has also
+done a good deal of interesting work. But he
+is chiefly known to the electrical world as the
+inventor of a most useful dynamo for power
+purposes. For the last forty years he has been
+one of the men who have most aided in the
+growth of Yonkers, taking great interest in all
+questions pertaining to its government and
+school system. He was married in 1856 to
+Mary T. Tarbell, of Dover, Me., and his eldest
+son, Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr., is associated with
+him in business.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">George Westinghouse, Jr., and the Air-brake.</span></h3>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a name="George_Westinghouse_Jr" id="George_Westinghouse_Jr"></a>
+<img src="images/314.jpg" width="400" height="518" alt="George Westinghouse, Jr." />
+<span class="caption">George Westinghouse, Jr.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>George Westinghouse, Jr., to whom is due the
+railroad air-brake, and who was also largely instrumental
+in revolutionizing Pittsburgh by the
+introduction of natural gas, was born at Central
+Bridge, in Schoharie County, N.Y., in 1846.
+His father was a builder and, later, superintendent
+of the Schenectady Agricultural Works,
+and it was in the shops of these works that the
+boy found his vocation. Before he was fifteen
+he had modelled and built a steam engine. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span>
+war took him away from work in 1864, but when
+that was over he returned to Schenectady and,
+although yet in his teens, he began to attempt
+improvements upon every device that presented
+itself. Sometimes he was successful. Among
+one of his first valuable achievements was a
+steel railroad frog that resulted in a good deal
+of money and some reputation. This was in
+1868. While in Pittsburgh making his frogs,
+which sold well, he one day came across a newspaper
+account of the successful use of compressed
+air in piercing the Mont Cenis tunnel.
+His success in the field of railroad appliances
+had led him to study the question of better
+brakes, and the suggestion of compressed air
+came to him as a revelation. To stop a train by
+the old methods was a matter of much time and
+a tremendous expenditure of muscular energy
+by the brakeman, whose exertions were not always
+effective enough to prevent disaster. Westinghouse
+consulted one or two friends, who were
+inclined to ridicule the idea that a rubber tube
+strung along under the cars could do better
+work than the men at the brakes. Fortunately,
+he was able to make the experiment, and the air-brake
+was speedily recognized as one of the important
+inventions of the century.</p>
+
+<p>When petroleum was discovered in the fields
+near Pittsburgh, some ten years ago, Mr. Westinghouse
+was greatly interested, and at once
+suggested that perhaps oil might be found near
+his own home in Washington County. He decided
+to test the matter, and planted a derrick<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span>
+on his own grounds. The drill was started in
+December, 1883, and at a depth of 1,560 feet a
+vein was struck, not of oil, as was anticipated,
+but&mdash;what had not been counted upon as among
+the contingencies&mdash;of gas. Gas was not what
+Westinghouse was after or wanted, but there it
+was, and not wishing to let it run to waste, he
+began to consider what use could be made of it.
+Other people who had been boring for oil also
+struck gas, which, taking fire, shot up twenty or
+thirty feet. If such gas could be made to serve
+foundry purposes, here was a gigantic power
+going to waste. Within three years the business
+grew to be an immense one. The company organized
+by Mr. Westinghouse owned or controlled
+fifty-six thousand acres, upon which were
+one hundred wells and a distributing plant of four
+hundred miles of pipes. Notwithstanding the
+failure of some of the wells since then, natural
+gas is an extraordinary boon for which Pittsburgh
+has to thank Mr. Westinghouse. Of late years
+this inventor's energies have been turned toward
+electric machinery for lighting and power, especially
+as applied to railroad purposes, and a number
+of useful devices have resulted. Mr. Westinghouse
+is still in the prime of life and is activity
+personified. He makes his home in Pittsburgh,
+and is naturally looked upon as one of its leading
+spirits.</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">The field of electric invention is so vast and so
+actively worked that one cannot take up a newspaper
+without finding reference to some new<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span>
+achievement made possible by this wonderful
+agent, whose real powers were unsuspected fifty
+years ago. Aside from the direct value of these
+inventions in promoting the comfort and increasing
+the wealth of the country there is another
+factor to be considered having the most vital relation
+to the industries of the country and its
+powers of production. The large number of inventions
+made in these United States implies a
+high degree of intelligence and mental activity
+in the great body of the people. It indicates
+trained habits of observation and trained powers
+of applying knowledge which has been acquired.
+It shows an ability to turn to account the forces
+of Nature and, train them to the service of man,
+such as has been possessed by the laborers of
+no other country. It suggests as pertinent the
+inquiry whether any other country is so well
+equipped for competition in production as our
+own; whether in any other country the mechanic
+is so efficient and his labor, therefore, so cheap
+as in our own; whether he does not exhibit the
+seeming paradox of receiving more for his labor
+than in any other country, and at the same time
+doing more for what he receives.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">THE END.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Inventors, by Philip Gengembre Hubert
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,6792 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Inventors, by Philip Gengembre Hubert
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Inventors
+
+Author: Philip Gengembre Hubert
+
+Release Date: February 6, 2012 [EBook #38782]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INVENTORS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Albert Laszlo, Rory OConor and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  INVENTORS
+
+
+  MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT SERIES
+
+
+  TRAVELLERS AND EXPLORERS. By
+  General A.W. GREELY, U.S.A.
+
+  STATESMEN. By NOAH BROOKS.
+
+  MEN OF BUSINESS. By W.O. STODDARD.
+
+  INVENTORS. By P.G. HUBERT, Jr.
+
+[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.]
+
+
+
+
+  MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
+
+
+
+
+  INVENTORS
+
+
+  BY
+  PHILIP G. HUBERT, JR.
+
+  NEW YORK
+  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+  1896
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY
+  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+
+  Press of J.J. Little & Co.
+  Astor Place, New York
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This book, dealing with our great inventors, their origins, hopes, aims,
+principles, disappointments, trials, and triumphs, their daily life and
+personal character, presents just enough concerning their inventions to
+make the story intelligible. The history is often a painful one. When
+poor Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber, was one day asked what
+he wanted to make of his boys, he is said to have replied: "Make them
+anything but inventors; mankind has nothing but cuffs and kicks for
+those who try to do it a service."
+
+Meanwhile, the value of the work done by great inventors is widely
+acknowledged. In a remarkable sketch of the history of civilization,
+Professor Huxley remarked, in 1887, that the wonderful increase of
+industrial production by the application of machinery, the improvement
+of old technical processes and the invention of new ones, constitutes
+the most salient feature of the world's progress during the last fifty
+years. If this was true a few years ago, its truth is still more
+apparent to-day. It is safe to say that within fifty years power, light,
+and heat will cost half, perhaps one-tenth, of what they do now; and
+this virtually means that in 1943 mankind will be able to buy decent
+food, shelter, and clothing for half or one-tenth of the labor now
+required. Steam is said to have reduced the working hours of man in the
+civilized world from fourteen to ten a day. Electricity will mark the
+next giant step in advance.
+
+With the many and superb tools now at our service, of which our fathers
+knew comparatively nothing--steam, electricity, the telegraph,
+telephone, phonograph, and the camera--we and our descendants ought to
+accomplish even greater wonders than these. As invention thus rises in
+the scale of importance to humanity, the history of the pioneers and, to
+the shame of mankind be it said, the martyrs of the art, becomes of
+intense interest. In the annals of hero-worship the inventor of the
+perfecting press ought to stand before the great general, and Elias Howe
+should rank before Napoleon. Whitney, Howe, Morse, and Goodyear, to
+mention but a few of our Americans, contributed thousands of millions of
+dollars to the nation's wealth and received comparatively nothing in
+return. Their history suggests as pertinent the inquiry whether our
+patent laws do not need a radical change. The burden and cost of proving
+that an invention deserves no protection ought to fall upon whoever
+infringes a patent granted by the Government. At present it is all the
+other way.
+
+  P.G.H., JR.
+
+  NEW YORK, September, 1893.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                              PAGE
+
+     I. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,                                       9
+
+    II. ROBERT FULTON,                                          45
+
+   III. ELI WHITNEY,                                            69
+
+    IV. ELIAS HOWE,                                             99
+
+     V. SAMUEL F.B. MORSE,                                     111
+
+    VI. CHARLES GOODYEAR,                                      155
+
+   VII. JOHN ERICSSON,                                         178
+
+  VIII. CYRUS HALL MCCORMICK,                                  207
+
+    IX. THOMAS A. EDISON,                                      223
+
+     X. ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL,                                 264
+
+    XI. AMERICAN INVENTORS, PAST AND PRESENT,                  270
+
+
+James M. Townsend, E.L. Drake, Alvan Clark, John Fitch, Oliver Evans,
+Amos Whittemore, Thomas Blanchard, Richard M. Hoe, Thomas W. Harvey,
+C.L. Sholes, B.B. Hotchkiss, Charles F. Brush, Rudolph Eickemeyer,
+George Westinghouse, Jr.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+FULL-PAGE
+
+                                                             FACING
+  BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,                  (_Frontispiece._)        PAGE
+
+  DEPARTURE OF THE CLERMONT ON HER FIRST VOYAGE,                 60
+
+  CHARLES GOODYEAR,                                             155
+
+  JOHN ERICSSON,                                                178
+
+  CYRUS HALL MCCORMICK,                                         207
+
+  THOMAS A. EDISON,                                             223
+
+  EDISON IN HIS LABORATORY,                                     247
+
+  PROFESSOR BELL SENDING THE FIRST TELEPHONE MESSAGE FROM NEW   264
+  YORK TO CHICAGO,
+
+
+
+
+  ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
+
+                                                               PAGE
+
+  THE FRANKLIN STOVE,                                            10
+
+  FRANKLIN'S BIRTHPLACE, BOSTON,                                 14
+
+  FRANKLIN ENTERING PHILADELPHIA,                                17
+
+  THE FRANKLIN PENNY,                                            27
+
+  FRANKLIN'S GRAVE,                                              43
+
+  ROBERT FULTON,                                                 46
+
+  BIRTHPLACE OF ROBERT FULTON,                                   48
+
+  FULTON BLOWING UP A DANISH BRIG,                               53
+
+  JOHN FITCH'S STEAMBOAT AT PHILADELPHIA,                        56
+
+  FULTON'S FIRST EXPERIMENT WITH PADDLE-WHEELS,                  57
+
+  THE "DEMOLOGOS," OR "FULTON THE FIRST,"                        65
+
+  THE CLERMONT,                                                  68
+
+  ELI WHITNEY,                                                   70
+
+  WHITNEY WATCHING THE COTTON-GIN,                               75
+
+  THE COTTON-GIN,                                                78
+
+  ELIAS HOWE,                                                   100
+
+  BIRTHPLACE OF S.F.B. MORSE, BUILT 1775,                       111
+
+  S.F.B. MORSE,                                                 113
+
+  UNDER SIDE OF A MODERN SWITCHBOARD, SHOWING 2,000 WIRES,      121
+
+  THE FIRST TELEGRAPH INSTRUMENT, AS EXHIBITED IN 1837 BY       125
+  MORSE,
+
+  THE MODERN MORSE TELEGRAPH,                                   127
+
+  MORSE MAKING HIS OWN INSTRUMENT,                              129
+
+  TRAIN TELEGRAPH--THE MESSAGE TRANSMITTED BY INDUCTION FROM    131
+  THE MOVING TRAIN TO THE SINGLE WIRE,
+
+  INTERIOR OF A CAR ON THE LEHIGH VALLEY RAILROAD, SHOWING      132
+  THE METHOD OF OPERATING THE TRAIN TELEGRAPH,
+
+  DIAGRAM SHOWING THE METHOD OF TELEGRAPHING FROM A MOVING      134
+  TRAIN BY INDUCTION,
+
+  MORSE IN HIS STUDY,                                           139
+
+  THE SIPHON RECORDER FOR RECEIVING CABLE MESSAGES--OFFICE OF   146
+  THE COMMERCIAL CABLE COMPANY, 1 BROAD STREET, NEW YORK,
+
+  NO. 5 WEST TWENTY-SECOND STREET, NEW YORK, WHERE MORSE        151
+  LIVED FOR MANY YEARS AND DIED,
+
+  CALENDERS HEATED INTERNALLY BY STEAM, FOR SPREADING INDIA     164
+  RUBBER INTO SHEETS OR UPON CLOTH, CALLED THE "CHAFFEE
+  MACHINE,"
+
+  CHARLES GOODYEAR'S EXHIBITION OF HARD INDIA-RUBBER GOODS AT   169
+  THE CRYSTAL PALACE, SYDENHAM, ENGLAND,
+
+  COUNCIL MEDAL OF THE EXHIBITION, 1851,                        173
+
+  GRANDE MEDAILLE D'HONNEUR, EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE DE 1855,    176
+
+  JOHN ERICSSON'S BIRTHPLACE AND MONUMENT,                      180
+
+  THE NOVELTY LOCOMOTIVE, BUILT BY ERICSSON TO COMPETE WITH     184
+  STEPHENSON'S ROCKET, 1829,
+
+  ERICSSON ON HIS ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND, AGED TWENTY-THREE,        186
+
+  MRS. JOHN ERICSSON, NEE AMELIA BYAM,                          187
+
+  EXTERIOR VIEW OF ERICSSON'S HOUSE, NO. 36 BEACH STREET, NEW   189
+  YORK, 1890,
+
+  SOLAR-ENGINE ADAPTED TO THE USE OF HOT AIR,                   191
+
+  SECTIONAL VIEW OF MONITOR THROUGH TURRET AND PILOT-HOUSE,     198
+
+  THE ORIGINAL MONITOR,                                         199
+
+  FAC-SIMILE OF A PENCIL SKETCH BY ERICSSON GIVING A            201
+  TRANSVERSE SECTION OF HIS ORIGINAL MONITOR PLAN, WITH A
+  LONGITUDINAL SECTION DRAWN OVER IT,
+
+  INTERIOR OF THE DESTROYER, LOOKING TOWARD THE BOW,            202
+
+  DEVELOPMENT OF THE MONITOR IDEA,                              204
+
+  THE ROOM IN WHICH ERICSSON WORKED FOR MORE THAN TWENTY        206
+  YEARS,
+
+  FARM WHERE CYRUS H. MCCORMICK WAS BORN AND RAISED,            209
+
+  EXTERIOR OF THE BLACKSMITH SHOP WHERE THE FIRST REAPER WAS    212
+  BUILT,
+
+  INTERIOR OF THE BLACKSMITH SHOP WHERE THE FIRST REAPER WAS    215
+  BUILT,
+
+  THE FIRST REAPER,                                             217
+
+  EDISON'S PAPER CARBON LAMP,                                   224
+
+  EDISON LISTENING TO HIS PHONOGRAPH,                           227
+
+  FROM EDISON'S NEWSPAPER, THE "GRAND TRUNK HERALD,"            230
+
+  EDISON'S TINFOIL PHONOGRAPH--THE FIRST PRACTICAL MACHINE,     237
+
+  VOTE RECORDER--EDISON'S FIRST PATENTED INVENTION,             243
+
+  EDISON'S MENLO PARK ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE (1880),               250
+
+  THE HOME OF THOMAS A. EDISON,                                 257
+
+  EDISON'S LABORATORY,                                          258
+
+  LIBRARY AT EDISON'S LABORATORY,                               262
+
+  ALVAN CLARK,                                                  276
+
+  C.L. SHOLES,                                                  286
+
+  B.B. HOTCHKISS,                                               288
+
+  CHARLES F. BRUSH,                                             290
+
+  RUDOLPH EICKEMEYER,                                           294
+
+  GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE, JR.,                                     296
+
+
+
+
+INVENTORS
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
+
+
+Benjamin Franklin's activity and resource in the field of invention
+really partook of the intellectual breadth of the man of whom Turgot
+wrote:
+
+    "Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis."
+
+    "He snatched the thunderbolt from heaven,
+    And the sceptre from the hands of tyrants."
+
+And of which bit of verse Franklin once dryly remarked, that as to the
+thunder, he left it where he found it, and that more than a million of
+his countrymen co-operated with him in snatching the sceptre. Those
+persons who knew Franklin, the inventor, only as the genius to whom we
+owe the lightning-rod, will be amazed at the range of his activity. For
+half a century his mind seems to have been on the alert concerning the
+why and wherefore of every phenomenon for which the explanation was not
+apparent. Nothing in nature failed to interest him. Had he lived in an
+era of patents he might have rivalled Edison in the number of his
+patentable devices, and had he chosen to make money from such devices,
+his gains would certainly have been fabulous. As a matter of fact,
+Franklin never applied for a patent, though frequently urged to do so,
+and he made no money by his inventions. One of the most popular of
+these, the Franklin stove, which device, after a half-century of disuse,
+is now again popular, he made a present to his early friend, Robert
+Grace, an iron founder, who made a business of it. The Governor of
+Pennsylvania offered to give Franklin a monopoly of the sale of these
+stoves for a number of years. "But I declined it," writes the inventor,
+"from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions,
+viz.: That as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others,
+we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of
+ours; and this we should do freely and generously. An ironmonger in
+London, however, assuming a good deal of my pamphlet (describing the
+principle and working of the stove), and working it up into his own, and
+making some small change in the machine, which rather hurt its
+operation, got a patent for it there, and made, as I was told, a little
+fortune by it."
+
+[Illustration: The Franklin Stove.]
+
+The complete list of inventions, devices, and improvements of which
+Franklin was the originator, or a leading spirit and contributor, is so
+long a one that a dozen pages would not suffice for it. I give here a
+brief summary, as compiled by Parton in his excellent "Life of
+Franklin." "It is incredible," Franklin once wrote, "the quantity of
+good that may be done in a country by a single man who will _make a
+business_ of it and not suffer himself to be diverted from that purpose
+by different avocations, studies, or amusements." As a commentary upon
+this sentiment, here is a catalogue of the achievements of Benjamin
+Franklin that may fairly come under the title of inventions:
+
+He established and inspired the Junto, the most useful and pleasant
+American club of which we have knowledge.
+
+He founded the Philadelphia Library, parent of a thousand libraries, and
+which marked the beginning of an intellectual movement of endless good
+to the whole country.
+
+He first turned to great account the engine of advertising, an
+indispensable element in modern business.
+
+He published "Poor Richard," a record of homely wisdom in such shape
+that hundreds of thousands of readers were made better and stronger by
+it.
+
+He created the post-office system of America, and was the first champion
+of a reformed spelling.
+
+He invented the Franklin stove, which economized fuel, and suggested
+valuable improvements in ventilation and the building of chimneys.
+
+He robbed thunder of its terrors and lightning of some of its power to
+destroy.
+
+He founded the American Philosophical Society, the first organization in
+America of the friends of science.
+
+He suggested the use of mineral manures, introduced the basket willow,
+promoted the early culture of silk, and pointed out the advisability of
+white clothing in hot weather.
+
+He measured the temperature of the Gulf Stream, and discovered that
+northeast storms may begin in the southwest.
+
+He pointed out the advantage of building ships in water-tight
+compartments, taking the hint from the Chinese, and first urged the use
+of oil as a means of quieting dangerous seas.
+
+Besides these great achievements, accomplished largely as recreation
+from his life work as economist and statesman, Benjamin Franklin helped
+the whole race of inventors by a remark that has been of incalculable
+value and comfort to theorists and dreamers the world over. When someone
+spoke rather contemptuously in Franklin's presence of Montgolfier's
+balloon experiments, and asked of what use they were, the great American
+replied in words now historic: "Of what use is a new-born babe?"
+
+"This self-taught American," said Lord Jeffrey, in the _Edinburgh
+Review_ of July, 1806, "is the most rational, perhaps, of all
+philosophers. He never loses sight of common sense in any of his
+speculations. No individual, perhaps, ever possessed a greater
+understanding, or was so seldom obstructed in the use of it by
+indolence, enthusiasm, or authority. Dr. Franklin received no regular
+education; and he spent the greater part of his life in a society where
+there was no relish and no encouragement for literature. On an ordinary
+mind, these circumstances would have produced their usual effects, of
+repressing all sorts of intellectual ambition or activity, and
+perpetuating a generation of incurious mechanics; but to an
+understanding like Franklin's, we cannot help considering them as
+peculiarly propitious, and imagine that we can trace back to them
+distinctly almost all the peculiarities of his intellectual character."
+
+The main outlines of Franklin's life and career are so familiar to
+everyone, that I may as well pass at once to the story of his work as an
+inventor. We all know, or ought to know, that Benjamin, the fifteenth
+child of Josiah Franklin, the Boston soap-boiler, was born in that town
+on the 17th of January, 1706, and established himself as a printer in
+Philadelphia in 1728. That he prospered and founded the _Gazette_ a few
+years later, and became Postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737; that after
+valuable services to the Colonies as their agent in England, he was
+appointed United States Minister at the Court of France upon the
+Declaration of Independence; and that in 1782 he had the supreme
+satisfaction of signing at Paris the treaty of peace with England by
+which the independence of the Colonies was assured. That he died full of
+honors at Philadelphia in April, 1790, and that Congress, as a testimony
+of the gratitude of the Thirteen States and of their sorrow for his
+loss, appointed a general mourning throughout the States for a period
+of two months.
+
+[Illustration: Franklin's Birthplace, Boston.]
+
+The great invention or discovery which entitles Benjamin Franklin to
+rank at the head of American inventors was, of course, the
+identification of lightning with electricity, and his suggestion of
+metallic conductors so arranged as to render the discharge from the
+clouds a harmless one. In order to appreciate the originality and value
+of this discovery, it is necessary to review briefly what the world knew
+of the subject at that day.
+
+For a hundred years before Franklin's time, electricity had been studied
+in Europe without much distinct progress resulting. A thousand
+experiments had been performed and described. Gunpowder had been
+exploded by the spark from a lady's finger, and children had been
+insulated by hanging them from the ceiling by silk cords. A tolerable
+machine had been devised for exciting electricity, though most
+experimenters still used a glass tube. Several volumes of electrical
+observations and experiments had appeared, and yet what had been done
+was little more than a repetition on a larger scale, and with better
+means, of the original experiment of rubbing a piece of amber on the
+sleeve of the philosopher's coat. Experimenters in 1745 could produce a
+more powerful spark and play a greater variety of tricks with it than
+Dr. Gilbert, the English experimenter of 1600, but that was about all
+the advantage they had over him.
+
+So-called experts had attempted, with more or less satisfaction to
+themselves, to answer the question addressed by the mad Lear to poor
+Tom: "Let me talk with this philosopher. What is the cause of thunder?"
+Pliny thought he had explained it when he called it an earthquake in the
+air. Dr. Lister announced that lightning was caused by the sudden
+ignition of immense quantities of fine floating sulphur. Jonathan
+Edwards, in his diary of 1722, records the popular impression of the day
+upon this subject: "Lightning," he says, "seem to be an almost
+infinitely fine combustible matter, that floats in the air, that takes
+fire by sudden and mighty fermentation, that is some way promoted by the
+cool and moisture, and perhaps attraction of the clouds. By this sudden
+agitation, this fine floating matter is driven forth with a mighty
+force one way or other, whichever way it is directed, by the
+circumstances and temperature of the circumjacent air; for cold and
+heat, density and rarity, moisture and dryness, have almost an
+infinitely strong influence upon the fine particles of matter. This
+fluid matter thus projected, still fermenting to the same degree,
+divides the air as it goes, and every moment receives a new impulse by
+the continued fermentation; and as its motion received its direction, at
+first, from the different temperature of the air on different sides, so
+its direction is changed, according to the temperature of the air it
+meets with, which renders the path of the lightning so crooked."
+
+Even this explanation was a daring bit of speculation in Jonathan
+Edwards, for thunder and lightning were then commonly regarded as the
+physical expression of God's wrath against the insects He had created.
+
+[Illustration: Franklin Entering Philadelphia.]
+
+Mr. Peter Collinson, the London agent of the library that Franklin had
+founded in Philadelphia in 1732, was accustomed to send over with the
+annual parcel of books any work or curious object that chanced to be in
+vogue in London at the time. In 1746 he sent one of the new electrical
+tubes with a paper of directions for using it. The tubes then commonly
+used were two feet and a half long, and as thick as a man could
+conveniently grasp. They were rubbed with a piece of cloth or buckskin,
+and held in contact with the object to be charged. Franklin had already
+seen one of these tubes in Boston, and had been astonished by its
+properties. No sooner, therefore, was it unpacked at the Library, than
+he repeated the experiments he had seen in Boston, as well as those
+described by Collinson. The subject completely fascinated him. He gave
+himself up to it. Procuring other tubes, he distributed them among his
+friends and set them all rubbing. "I never," he writes in 1747, "was
+before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and
+my time as this has done; for what with making experiments when I can be
+alone, and repeating to my friends and acquaintances, who, from the
+novelty of the thing, come continually in crowds to see them; I have
+during some months past had little leisure for anything else."
+
+Franklin claimed no credit for what he achieved in electricity. During
+the winter of 1746-7 he and his friends experimented frequently, and
+observed electrical attraction and repulsion with care. That electricity
+was not created, but only collected by friction, was one of their first
+conjectures, the correctness of which they soon demonstrated by a number
+of experiments. Before having heard of the Leyden jar coated with
+tin-foil, these Philadelphia experimenters substituted granulated lead
+for the water employed by Professor Maschenbroeck. They fired spirits
+and lighted candles with the electric spark. They performed rare tricks
+with a spider made of burnt cork. Philip Syng mounted one of the tubes
+upon a crank and employed a cannon-ball as a prime conductor, thus
+obtaining the same result without much tedious rubbing of the tube.
+
+The summer of 1747 was devoted to preparing the province for defence.
+But during the following winter the Philadelphians resumed their
+experiments. The wondrous Leyden jar was the object of Franklin's
+constant observation. His method of work is well shown in his own
+account of an experiment during this winter. The jar used was
+Maschenbroeck's original device of a bottle of water with a wire running
+through the cork.
+
+"Purposing," writes Franklin, "to analyse the electrified bottle, in
+order to find wherein its strength lay, we placed it on glass, and drew
+out the cork and wire, which for that purpose had been loosely put in.
+Then, taking the bottle in one hand, and bringing a finger of the other
+near its mouth, a strong spark came from the water, and the shock was as
+violent as if the wire had remained in it, which showed that the force
+did not lie in the wire. Then, to find if it resided in the water, being
+crowded into and condensed in it, as confined by the glass, which had
+been our former opinion, we electrified the bottle again, and placing it
+on glass, drew out the wire and cork as before; then, taking up the
+bottle, we decanted all its water into an empty bottle, which likewise
+stood on glass; and taking up that other bottle, we expected, if the
+force resided in the water, to find a shock from it. But there was
+none. We judged then that it must either be lost in decanting or remain
+in the first bottle. The latter we found to be true; for that bottle on
+trial gave the shock, though filled up as it stood with fresh
+unelectrified water from a tea-pot. To find, then, whether glass had
+this property merely as glass, or whether the form contributed anything
+to it, we took a pane of sash glass, and laying it on the hand, placed a
+plate of lead on its upper surface; then electrified that plate, and
+bringing a finger to it, there was a spark and shock. We then took two
+plates of lead of equal dimensions, but less than the glass by two
+inches every way, and electrified the glass between them, by
+electrifying the uppermost lead; then separated the glass from the lead,
+in doing which, what little fire might be in the lead was taken out, and
+the glass being touched in the electrified parts with a finger, afforded
+only very small pricking sparks, but a great number of them might be
+taken from different places. Then dexterously placing it again between
+the leaden plates, and completing a circle between the two surfaces, a
+violent shock ensued; which demonstrated the power to reside in glass as
+glass, and that the non-electrics in contact served only, like the
+armature of a loadstone, to unite the force of the several parts, and
+bring them at once to any point desired; it being the property of a
+non-electric, that the whole body instantly receives or gives what
+electrical fire is given to, or taken from, any one of its parts.
+
+"Upon this we made what we called an electrical battery, consisting of
+eleven panes of large sash glass, armed with thin leaden plates, pasted
+on each side, placed vertically, and supported at two inches' distance
+on silk cords, with thick hooks of leaden wire, one from each side,
+standing upright, distant from each other, and convenient communications
+of wire and chain, from the giving side of one pane to the receiving
+side of the other; that so the whole might be charged together with the
+same labor as one single pane."
+
+In 1748 Franklin, being then forty-two years old, and in the enjoyment
+of an ample income from his business as printer and publisher, sold out
+to his foreman, David Hall, and was free to devote himself wholly to his
+beloved experiments. He had built himself a home in a retired spot on
+the outskirts of Philadelphia, and with an income which in our days
+would be equivalent to $15,000 or $20,000 a year, he was considered a
+fairly rich man. Having thus settled his business affairs in a manner
+which proved that he knew perfectly well what money was worth, he took
+up his electrical studies again and extended them from the machine to
+the part played in nature by electricity. The patience with which he
+observed the electrical phenomena of the heavens, the acuteness
+displayed by him in drawing plausible inferences from his observations,
+and the rapidity with which he arrived at all that we now know of
+thunder and lightning, still excite the astonishment of all who read
+the narratives he has left us of his proceedings. During the whole
+winter of 1748-49 and the summer following, he was feeling his way to
+his final conclusions on the subject. Early in 1749 he drew up a series
+of fifty-six observations, entitled "Observations and Suppositions
+towards forming a new Hypothesis for explaining the several Phenomena of
+Thundergusts." Nearly all that he afterward demonstrated on this subject
+is anticipated in this truly remarkable paper, which was soon followed
+by the most famous of all his electrical writings, that entitled
+"Opinions and Conjectures concerning the Properties and Effects of the
+Electrical Matter, and the Means of preserving Buildings, Ships, etc.,
+from Lightning; arising from Experiments and Observations made at
+Philadelphia, 1749."
+
+Franklin sets forth in this masterly paper the similarity of electricity
+and lightning, and the property of points to draw off electricity. It is
+this treatise which contains the two suggestions that gave to the name
+of Franklin its first celebrity. Both suggestions are contained in one
+brief passage, which follows the description of a splendid experiment,
+in which a miniature lightning-rod had conducted harmlessly away the
+electricity of an artificial thunder-storm.
+
+"If these things are so," continues the philosopher, after stating the
+results of his experiment, "may not the knowledge of this power of
+points be of use to mankind in preserving houses, churches, ships, etc.,
+from the stroke of lightning, by directing us to fix on the highest
+part of those edifices upright rods of iron, made sharp as a needle and
+gilt to prevent rusting, and from the foot of those rods, a wire down
+the outside of the building into the ground, or down round one of the
+shrouds of a ship, and down her side till it reaches the water? Would
+not these pointed rods probably draw the electrical fire silently out of
+a cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from
+that most sudden and terrible mischief?"
+
+The second of these immortal suggestions was one that immediately
+arrested the attention of European electricians when the paper was
+published. It was in these words:
+
+"To determine the question, whether the clouds that contain lightning
+are electrified or not, I would propose an experiment to be tried where
+it may be done conveniently. On the top of some high tower or steeple,
+place a kind of sentry-box, big enough to contain a man and an electric
+stand. From the middle of the stand let an iron rod rise and pass,
+bending out of the door, and then upright twenty or thirty feet, pointed
+very sharp at the end. If the electrical stand be kept clean and dry, a
+man standing on it, when such clouds are passing low, might be
+electrified and afford sparks, the rod drawing fire to him from a cloud.
+If any danger to the man should be apprehended (though I think there
+would be none), let him stand on the floor of his box, and now and then
+bring near to the rod the loop of a wire that has one end fastened to
+the leads, he holding it by a wax handle; so the sparks, if the rod is
+electrified, will strike from the rod to the wire and not affect him."
+
+A friend once asked Franklin how he came to hit upon such an idea. His
+reply was to quote an extract from the minutes he kept of the
+experiments he made. This extract, dated November 7, 1749, was as
+follows: "Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars:
+1. Giving light. 2. Color of the light. 3. Crooked direction. 4. Swift
+motion. 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7.
+Subsisting in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies it passes through. 9.
+Destroying animals. 10. Melting metals. 11. Firing inflammable
+substances. 12. Sulphurous smell. The electric fluid is attracted by
+points. We do not know whether this property is in lightning. But since
+they agree in all the particulars wherein we can already compare them,
+is it not probable they agree likewise in this? Let the experiment be
+made."
+
+In this discovery, therefore, there was nothing of chance; it was a
+legitimate deduction from patiently accumulated facts.
+
+It was not until the spring of 1752 that Franklin thought of making his
+suggested experiment with a kite. The country around Philadelphia
+presents no high hills, and he was not aware till later that the roof of
+any dwelling-house would have answered as well as the peak of Teneriffe.
+There were no steeples in Philadelphia at that day. The vestry of Christ
+Church talked about erecting a steeple, but it was not begun until
+1753. On the 15th of June, 1752, Franklin decided to fly that immortal
+kite. Wishing to avoid the ridicule of a failure, he took no one with
+him except his son, who, by the way, was not the small boy shown in
+countless pictures of the incident, but a stalwart young man of
+twenty-two. The kite had been made of a large silk handkerchief, and
+fitted out with a piece of sharpened iron wire. Part of the string was
+of hemp, and the part to be held in the hand was of silk. At the end of
+the hempen string was tied a key, and in a convenient shed was a Leyden
+jar in which to collect some of the electricity from the clouds. When
+the first thunder-laden clouds reached the kite, there were no signs of
+electricity from Franklin's key, but just as he had begun to doubt the
+success of the experiment, he saw the fibres of the hempen string begin
+to rise. Approaching his hand to the key, he got an electric spark, and
+was then able to charge the Leyden jar and get a stronger shock. Then
+the happy philosopher drew in his wet kite and went home to write his
+modest account of one of the most notable experiments made by man.
+
+Franklin's fame as the first to suggest the identity of lightning and
+electricity would have been safe, however, even without the famous
+kite-flying achievement. A month before that June thunderstorm his
+suggestions had been put into practice in Europe with complete success.
+Mr. Peter Collinson, to whom Franklin addressed from time to time long
+letters about his experiments and conjectures, had caused them to be
+read at the meetings of the Royal Society, of which he (Collinson) was a
+member. That learned body, however, did not deem them worthy of
+publication among its transactions, and a letter of Franklin's
+containing the substance of his conjectures respecting lightning was
+laughed at. The only news that reached Philadelphia concerning these
+letters was that Watson and other English experimenters did not agree
+with Franklin. It was only in May, 1751, that a pamphlet was finally
+published in London, entitled "New Experiments and Observations in
+Electricity, made at Philadelphia, in America." A copy having been
+presented to the Royal Society, Watson was requested to make an abstract
+of its contents, which he did, giving generous praise to the author.
+
+Before the year came to a close Franklin was famous. There was something
+in the drawing down, for mere experiment, of the dread electricity of
+heaven that appealed not less powerfully to the imagination of the
+ignorant than to the understanding of the learned. And the marvel was
+the greater that the bold idea should have come from so remote a place
+as Philadelphia. By a unanimous vote the Royal Society elected Franklin
+a member, and the next year bestowed upon him the Copley medal. Yale
+College and then Harvard bestowed upon him the honorary degree of Master
+of Arts.
+
+[Illustration: The Franklin Penny.]
+
+As might have been expected, there was no lack of opposition to the new
+doctrine of lightning-rods. Every new movement of radical character is
+denounced more or less fiercely. The last years of Newton's life were
+perplexed by the charge that his theory of gravitation tended to
+"materialize" religion. Insuring houses against fire was opposed as an
+interference with the prerogatives of deity. The establishment of the
+Royal Society was opposed upon the ground that the study of natural
+philosophy, grounded, as it was, upon experimental evidence, tended to
+weaken the force of evidence not so founded; and this objection was
+deemed of sufficient weight to call for serious answer. Franklin's
+daring proposal to neutralize the "artillery of heaven," of course could
+not escape, and the impiety of lightning-rods was widely discussed,
+often with acrimony. Mr. Kinnersley, one of Franklin's friends, who
+lectured for several years upon electricity, when advertising the
+outline of his subject always announced his intention to show that the
+erection of lightning-rods was "not chargeable with presumption nor
+inconsistent with any of the principles either of natural or revealed
+religion." Quincy relates in his "History of Harvard College," that in
+November, 1755, a shock of earthquake having been felt in New England, a
+Boston clergyman preached a sermon on the subject, in which he contended
+that the lightning-rods, by accumulating the electricity in the earth,
+had caused the earthquake. Professor Winthrop, of Harvard, thought it
+worth while to defend Franklin. "In 1770," Mr. Quincy adds, "another
+Boston clergyman opposed the use of the rods on the ground that, as the
+lightning was one of the means of punishing the sins of mankind, and of
+warning them from the commission of sin, it was impious to prevent its
+full execution." And to this attack also Professor Winthrop replied.
+Apparently Franklin himself thought it wise to conciliate the opposition
+of some so-called religious people of the day, for an account of the
+lightning-rod which appears in _Poor Richard's Almanac_ for 1753,
+written probably by Franklin, begins as follows: "It has pleased God in
+his Goodness to Mankind, at length to discover to them the means of
+securing their Habitations and other Buildings from Mischief by Thunder
+and Lightning."
+
+Franklin bore his honors with the most remarkable modesty. It was in
+June that he flew his first kite, but not until October that he sent to
+Mr. Collinson an account of the experiment, and even then he described
+the manner of making and flying the kite and omitted all reference to
+his own success with it. The identity of lightning with electricity
+having been established by M. Dalibard, he deemed it unnecessary to
+forward the account of an experiment which, however brilliant, he
+thought superfluous. Accordingly, we have no narrative by Franklin of
+the flying of the kite. We owe our knowledge of what occurred on that
+memorable afternoon to persons who heard Franklin tell the story.
+Franklin prefaces his description of his kite with these words: "As
+frequent mention is made in public papers from Europe of the success of
+the Philadelphia experiment for drawing the electric fire from clouds by
+means of pointed rods of iron erected on high buildings, it may be
+agreeable to the curious to be informed that the same experiment has
+succeeded in Philadelphia, though made in a different and more easy
+manner, which is as follows." And then we have the description of the
+kite, the letter ending without reference to what he himself had done
+with it.
+
+Yet he was far from hiding the pleasure his fame brought him. "The
+_Tatler_," he wrote, in 1753, to a friend, "tells us of a girl who was
+observed to grow suddenly proud, and none could guess the reason, till
+it came to be known that she had got on a pair of new silk garters. Lest
+you should be puzzled to guess the cause, when you observe anything of
+the kind in me, I think I will not hide my new garters under my
+petticoats, but take the freedom to show them to you in a paragraph of
+our friend Collinson's last letter, viz.--But I ought to mortify, and
+not indulge, this vanity; I will not transcribe the paragraph--yet I
+cannot forbear." Then he quotes the paragraph, which mentions the honors
+done him by the King of France and the Royal Society.
+
+For twenty years Franklin continued to work at electricity, devoting
+most of his leisure to his beloved study. The great practical value of
+the lightning-rod, at one time in the early part of this century
+somewhat exaggerated, as a perfect protection against harm by lightning,
+just as electricity was at one time heralded as a panacea for all bodily
+ailments, has of late years been questioned, but the consensus of
+scientific opinion still attributes much merit to the device, and the
+extent of Franklin's services to science in the matter cannot be called
+into doubt. Others have claimed his discoveries. The Abbe Nolet, of
+France, has been credited as being the first to note the similarity
+between electricity and lightning; and M. Romas, of Nerac, France, is
+said to have used a kite with a copper wire wound around the string, to
+attract electricity from clouds, some time before Franklin made his
+experiment. But posterity has ignored these claimants, and Franklin had
+the happiness of escaping bitter contentions with rivals. In fact, there
+could hardly have been a quarrel with a man who claimed nothing, who
+mentioned with honor everybody's achievements but his own, and who
+recorded his most brilliant observations in the plural, as though he
+were but one of a band of investigating Philadelphians.
+
+Passing now, to Franklin's connection with the use of oil to still
+dangerous waves, I had occasion recently to note that Lieutenant W.H.
+Beehler, of the United States Navy, in writing upon the matter, quotes
+Franklin's explanation of why oil works so beneficently as the accepted
+theory. Franklin was greatly interested, when at sea, in studying the
+matter. Any phenomenon that puzzled him was fit subject for
+investigation. Let us see how he went about the inquiry. "In 1757," he
+wrote, "being at sea in a fleet of ninety-six sail bound against
+Louisburg, I observed the wakes of two of the ships to be remarkably
+smooth, while all the others were ruffled by the wind which blew fresh.
+Being puzzled with the differing appearance, I at last pointed it out to
+our captain and asked him the meaning of it. 'The cooks,' says he,
+'have, I suppose, been just emptying their greasy water through the
+scuppers, which has greased the sides of those ships a little;' and this
+answer he gave me with an air of some little contempt, as to a person
+ignorant of what everybody else knew. In my own mind I at first slighted
+his solution, though I was not able to think of another; but
+recollecting what I had formerly read in Pliny, I resolved to make some
+experiment of the effect of oil on water, when I should have
+opportunity. Afterwards, being again at sea in 1762, I first observed
+the wonderful quietness of oil on agitated water, in the swinging glass
+lamp I made to hang up in the cabin, as described in my printed papers.
+This I was continually looking at and considering, as an appearance to
+me inexplicable. An old sea captain, then a passenger with me, thought
+little of it, supposing it an effect of the same kind with that of oil
+put on water to smooth it, which he said was a practice of the
+Bermudians when they would strike fish, which they could not see if the
+surface of the water was ruffled by the wind. The same gentleman told me
+he had heard it was a practice with the fishermen of Lisbon, when about
+to return into the river (if they saw before them too great a surf upon
+the bar, which they apprehended might fill their boats in passing) to
+empty a bottle or two of oil into the sea, which would suppress the
+breakers, and allow them to pass safely. A confirmation of this I have
+not since had an opportunity of obtaining; but discoursing of it with
+another person, who had often been in the Mediterranean, I was informed
+that the divers there, who, when under water in their business, need
+light, which the curling of the surface interrupts by the refractions of
+so many little waves, let a small quantity of oil now and then out of
+their mouths, which rising to the surface smooths it, and permits the
+light to come down to them. All these informations I at times resolved
+in my mind, and wondered to find no mention of them in our books of
+experimental philosophy.
+
+"At length being at Clapham where there is, on the common, a large pond,
+which I observed one day to be very rough with the wind, I fetched out a
+cruet of oil and dropped a little of it on the water. I saw it spread
+itself with surprising swiftness upon the surface; but the effect of
+smoothing the waves was not produced; for I had applied it first on the
+leeward side of the pond, where the waves were largest, and the wind
+drove my oil back upon the shore. I then went to the windward side,
+where they began to form; and there the oil, though not more than a
+teaspoonful, produced an instant calm over a space several yards square,
+which spread amazingly, and extended itself gradually, till it reached
+the lee side, making all that quarter of the pond, perhaps half an acre,
+as smooth as a looking glass.
+
+"A gentleman from Rhode Island told me it had been remarked that the
+harbor of Newport was ever smooth while any whaling vessels were in it;
+which, probably arose from hence, that the blubber, which they sometimes
+bring loose in the hold, or the leakage of their barrels, might, afford
+some oil to mix with that water, which, from time to time, they pump out
+to keep their vessel free, and that some oil might spread over the
+surface of the water in the harbor and prevent the forming of any
+waves."
+
+Thus Franklin collected his facts, taking them far and near, and from
+anybody and everybody. By dint of observation and reflection he finally
+solved the problem, arriving at the conclusion that "the wind blowing
+over water thus covered with a film of oil, cannot easily catch upon it,
+so as to raise the first wrinkles, but slides over it, and leaves it
+smooth as it finds it."
+
+Another remarkable instance of Franklin's passion for investigation is
+afforded in the following interesting letter to Sir John Pringle: "When
+we were travelling together in Holland, you remarked that the canal boat
+in one of the stages went slower than usual, and inquired of the boatman
+what might be the reason; who answered that it had been a dry season,
+and the water in the canal was low. On being asked if it was so low that
+the boat touched the muddy bottom, he said no, not so low as that, but
+so low as to make it harder for the horse to draw the boat. We neither
+of us at first could conceive that, if there was water enough for the
+boat to swim clear of the bottom, its being deeper would make any
+difference. But as the man affirmed it seriously as a thing well known
+among them, and as the punctuality required in their stages was likely
+to make such difference, if any there were, more readily observed by
+them than by other watermen who did not pass so regularly and constantly
+backwards and forwards in the same track, I began to apprehend there
+might be something in it, and attempted to account for it from this
+consideration, that the boat in proceeding along the canal must, in
+every boat's length of her course, move out of her way a body of water
+equal in bulk to the room her bottom took up in the water; that the
+water so moved must pass on each side of her, and under her bottom, to
+get behind her; that if the passage under her bottom was straitened by
+the shallows, more of the water must pass by her sides, and with a
+swifter motion, which would retard her, as moving the contrary way; or
+that, the water becoming lower behind the boat than before, she was
+pressed back by the weight of its difference in height, and her motion
+retarded by having that weight constantly to overcome. But, as it is
+often lost time to attempt accounting for uncertain facts, I determined
+to make an experiment of this, when I should have convenient time and
+opportunity.
+
+"After our return to England, as often as I happened to be on the
+Thames, I enquired of our watermen whether they were sensible of any
+difference in rowing over shallow or deep water. I found them all
+agreeing in the fact that there was a very great difference, but they
+differed widely in expressing the quantity of the difference; some
+supposing it was equal to a mile in six, others to a mile in three. As I
+did not recollect to have met with any mention of this matter in our
+philosophical books, and conceiving that, if the difference should be
+really great, it might be an object of consideration in the many
+projects now on foot for digging new navigable canals in this island, I
+lately put my design of making the experiment in execution, in the
+following manner.
+
+"I provided a trough of planed boards fourteen feet long, six inches
+wide, and six inches deep in the clear, filled with water within half an
+inch of the edge, to represent a canal, I had a loose board of nearly
+the same length and breadth, that being put into the water, might be
+sunk to any depth, and fixed by little wedges where I would choose to
+have it stay, in order to make different depths of water, leaving the
+surface at the same height with regard to the sides of the trough. I had
+a little boat in form of a lighter or boat of burden, six inches long,
+two inches and a quarter wide, and one inch and a quarter deep. When
+swimming it drew one inch of water. To give motion to the boat, I fixed
+one end of a long silk thread to its bow, just even with the water's
+edge, the other end passed over a well-made brass pulley, of about an
+inch in diameter, turning freely upon a small axis; and a shilling was
+the weight. Then placing the boat at one end of the trough, the weight
+would draw it through the water to the other. Not having a watch that
+shows seconds, in order to measure the time taken up by the boat in
+passing from end to end of the trough, I counted as fast as I could
+count to ten repeatedly, keeping an account of the number of tens on my
+fingers. And, as much as possible to correct any little inequalities in
+my counting, I repeated the experiment a number of times at each depth
+of water, that I might take the medium."
+
+The experiment proved the truth of the boatmen's assertions. Franklin
+found that five horses would be required to draw a boat in a canal
+affording little more than enough water to float it, which four horses
+could draw in a canal of the proper depth.
+
+No circumstance, remarks Mr. Parton, was too trifling to engage him upon
+a series of experiments. At dinner, one day, a bottle of Madeira was
+opened which had been bottled in Virginia many months before. Into the
+first glass poured from it fell three drowned flies. "Having heard it
+remarked that drowned flies were capable of being revived by the rays of
+the sun, I proposed making the experiment upon these; they were
+therefore exposed to the sun upon a sieve which had been employed to
+strain them out of the wine. In less than three hours two of them began
+by degrees to recover life. They commenced by some convulsive motions of
+the thighs, and at length they raised themselves upon their legs, wiped
+their eyes with their forefeet, beat and brushed their wings with their
+hind feet, and soon after began to fly, finding themselves in Old
+England without knowing how they came thither. The third continued
+lifeless till sunset, when, losing all hopes of him, he was thrown
+away." And upon this he remarks: "I wish it were possible, from this
+instance, to invent a method of embalming drowned persons in such a
+manner that they may be recalled to life at any period, however distant;
+for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America
+a hundred years hence, I should prefer to any ordinary death being
+immersed in a cask of Madeira wine, with a few friends, till that time,
+to be then recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country."
+
+Among the studies in natural philosophy of which but little is known to
+the general public may be mentioned Franklin's experiments with heat at
+a time when a thermometer was a scientific curiosity. The manner in
+which he proved that black cloth was not so good a covering for the body
+in hot weather as white, shows the simplicity of his methods and his
+faculty for making small means subserve great ends: "I took a number of
+little square pieces of broadcloth from a tailor's pattern-card, of
+various colors. There were black, deep blue, lighter blue, green,
+purple, red, yellow, white, and other colors or shades of colors. I laid
+them all out upon the snow in a bright sunshiny morning. In a few hours
+the black, being warmed most by the sun, was so low as to be below the
+stroke of the sun's rays; the dark blue almost as low, the lighter blue
+not quite so much as the dark, the other colors less as they were
+lighter, and the quite white remained on the surface of the snow, not
+having entered it at all. What signifies philosophy that does not apply
+to some use? May we not learn from hence that black clothes are not so
+fit to wear in a hot, sunny climate or season as white ones?" That all
+summer hats, particularly for soldiers, should be white, and that garden
+walls intended for fruit should be black, were suggestions put forth as
+a result of this experiment.
+
+Dr. Small assigns to Franklin the credit of having discovered that
+repeated respiration imparts to air a poisonous quality similar to that
+which extinguishes candles and destroys life in mines and wells. "The
+doctor," he records, "breathed gently through a tube into a deep glass
+mug, so as to impregnate all the air in the mug with this quality. He
+then put a lighted _bougie_ (candle) into the mug, and upon touching the
+air therein the flame was instantly extinguished; by frequently
+repeating this operation, the _bougie_ gradually preserved its light
+longer in the mug, so as in a short time to retain it to the bottom of
+it, the air having totally lost the bad quality it had contracted from
+the breath blown into it." Upon being consulted with regard to the
+better ventilation of the House of Commons, he advised that openings
+should be made near the ceiling, communicating with flues running
+parallel with the chimneys and close enough to them to be kept warm by
+their heat. These flues, he recommended, should begin in the cellar,
+where the air was cool, and the flues being warmed by the hot air of the
+chimneys, would cause an upward current of air strong enough to expel
+the vitiated air in the upper part of the house. Franklin's letters at
+this time are full of the importance of ventilation. Unquestionably, he
+was among the first who called attention to the folly of excluding fresh
+air from hospitals and sick-rooms, particularly those of fever patients.
+As Mr. Parton expresses it, he cleared the pure air of heaven from
+calumnious imputation and threw open the windows of mankind.
+
+Some inventions of Franklin's have not met with the approval of
+posterity. For instance, he seems to have had no more success with a
+reformed spelling of his own devising than laborers in the same field
+who came after him. He used to say that they alone spelt well who spelt
+ill, since the so-called bad speller used the letters according to their
+real value. The illiterate girl who wrote of her _bo_ was more correct,
+he thought, than the young lady who would blush to omit a superfluous
+vowel. What was the use of the final letter in muff, and why take the
+trouble to write _tough_ when _tuf_ would do as well? Had he lived to
+see Dr. Webster's Dictionary, the lexicographer would have found in him
+an ardent champion. His reformed alphabet and spelling is an interesting
+curiosity, but hardly more. Some letters of our alphabet he omitted,
+only to add new ones. He also changed their order, making _o_ the first
+letter and _m_ the last. In this connection it may be well to say that
+Franklin was perhaps the first and foremost American champion of the
+movement, now so powerful, looking to the displacement of Latin and
+Greek as the foundations of education. At the very close of his life, in
+1789, he issued his famous protest against the study of dead languages.
+He is reported to have said one evening, when talking about this matter:
+"When the custom of wearing broad cuffs with buttons first began, there
+was a reason for it; the cuffs might be brought down over the hands and
+thus guard them from wet and cold. But gloves came into use, and the
+broad cuffs were unnecessary; yet the custom was still retained. So
+likewise with cocked hats. The wide brim, when let down, afforded a
+protection from the rain and the sun. Umbrellas were introduced, yet
+fashion prevailed to keep cocked hats in vogue, although they were
+rather cumbersome than useful. Thus with the Latin language. When nearly
+all the books of Europe were written in that language, the study of it
+was essential in every system of education; but it is now scarcely
+needed, except as an accomplishment, since it has everywhere given
+place, as a vehicle of thought and knowledge, to some one of the modern
+tongues."
+
+With all his love of the practical, Franklin was not deficient in a
+rather delicate wit. I have already had occasion to quote at the
+beginning of this paper his disclaimer of the honors conferred upon him
+by Turgot's famous Latin line. Instances of this dry humor may be found
+all through Sparks's exhaustive biography. I remember one in particular.
+The merchants of Philadelphia, being at one time desirous to establish
+an assembly for dancing, they drew up some rules, among which was one
+"that no mechanic or mechanic's wife or daughter should be admitted on
+any terms." This rule being submitted to Franklin, he remarked that "it
+excluded God Almighty, for he was the greatest mechanic in the
+universe."
+
+Benjamin Franklin's services to the cause of invention by no means ended
+with his own inventions. One of his greatest services was the part he
+took in the foundation of the American Philosophical Society, whose
+object was to bring into correspondence with a central association in
+Philadelphia all scientists, philosophers, and inventors on this
+continent and in Europe. Franklin's share in the foundation of this
+society, which has proved of such vast use, seems to have been largely
+overlooked by his biographers. Mr. Parton, having mentioned that
+Franklin founded the society in accordance with his proposal of 1743,
+adds: "The society was formed and continued in existence for some years.
+Nevertheless, its success was neither great nor permanent, for at that
+day the circle of men capable of taking much interest in science was too
+limited for the proper support of such an organization." The recent
+historian of the society, Dr. Robert M. Patterson, agrees, however, with
+Sparks in tracing the origin of the Philosophical Society, which grew
+into prominence about 1767, back to Franklin's proposal of 1743. After
+describing the Junto, or Leather Apron Society, formed among Franklin's
+acquaintance, a sort of debating club of eleven young men, Sparks says:
+"Forty years after its establishment it became the basis of the American
+Philosophical Society, of which Franklin was the first president, and
+the published transactions of which have contributed to the advancement
+of science and the diffusion of valuable knowledge in the United
+States." In his first proposal Franklin gave a list of the subjects that
+were to engage the attention of these New World philosophers. It
+included investigations in botany; in medicine; in mineralogy and
+mining; in chemistry; in mechanics; in arts, trades, and manufactures;
+in geography and topography; in agriculture; and, lest something should
+have been forgotten, he adds that the association should "give its
+attention to all philosophical experiments that let light into the
+nature of things, tend to increase the power of man over matter and
+multiply the conveniences or pleasures of life." The duties of the
+secretary of the society were laid down and were arduous, including much
+foreign correspondence, in addition to the correcting, abstracting, and
+methodizing of such papers as required it. This office Franklin took
+upon himself.
+
+[Illustration: Franklin's Grave.]
+
+While he lived the proceedings of the society scarcely ever failed of a
+useful end. Unlike so many original and inventive geniuses, his eminent
+common sense was as marked as his originality. In the language of his
+most recent biographer, John Bach McMaster, "whatever he has said on
+domestic economy or thrift is sound and striking. No other writer has
+left so many just and original observations on success in life. No other
+writer has pointed out so clearly the way to obtain the greatest amount
+of comfort out of life. What Solomon did for the spiritual man, that did
+Franklin for the earthly man. The book of Proverbs is a collection of
+receipts for laying up treasure in heaven. 'Poor Richard' is a
+collection of receipts for laying up treasure on earth."
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+ROBERT FULTON.
+
+
+[Illustration: Robert Fulton.]
+
+Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, or at least the first man
+to apply the power of the steam-engine to the propulsion of boats in a
+practical and effective manner, was born in Little Britain, Lancaster
+County, Pa., 1765, of respectable but poor parents. His father was a
+native of Kilkenny, Ireland, and his mother came of a fairly well-to-do
+Irish family, settled in Pennsylvania. He was the third of five
+children. As a child he received the rudiments of a common education.
+His vocation showed itself in his earliest years. All his hours of
+recreation were passed in shops and in drawing. At the time he was
+seventeen he had become so much of an artist as to make money by
+portrait and landscape painting in Philadelphia, where he remained until
+he was twenty-one. After this he went to Washington County and there
+purchased a little farm on which he settled his mother, his father
+having died when he was three years old. He returned to Philadelphia,
+but on his way visited the Warm Springs of Pennsylvania, where he met
+with some gentlemen who were so much pleased with his painting that they
+advised him to go to England, where they told him he would meet with
+West who had then attained great celebrity. Fulton took this advice, and
+his reception by West, always kindly toward Americans, was such as he
+had been led to expect. The distinguished painter was so well pleased
+with him that he took him into his house, where he continued to live for
+several years. For some time Fulton made painting his chief employment,
+spending two years in Devonshire, near Exeter, where he made many
+influential acquaintances, among others the Duke of Bridgewater, famous
+for his canals, and Lord Stanhope, a nobleman noted for his love of
+science and his attachment to the mechanic arts. With Lord Stanhope,
+Fulton held a correspondence for a long time upon subjects in which they
+were interested.
+
+In 1793, Fulton was engaged in a project to improve inland navigation.
+Even at that early day it appeared that he had conceived the idea of
+propelling vessels by steam, and he speaks in his letters of its
+practicability. In 1794 he obtained from the British Government a patent
+for improvements in canal locks, and his pursuits at this time appear to
+have been in this direction. In his preface to a description of his
+Nautilus, or "plunging" boat, a species of submarine boat, he says that
+he had resided eighteen months in Birmingham where he acquired much of
+his knowledge of mechanics. In later years, when in Paris, Fulton sent a
+large collection of his manuscripts to this country. Unfortunately, the
+vessel in which they were sent was wrecked, and, while the case was
+recovered, only a few fragments of the manuscripts could be used. It is
+owing to this misfortune that we have so few records of Fulton's work at
+this time.
+
+[Illustration: Birthplace of Robert Fulton.[1]]
+
+[Footnote 1: This illustration and the four following are from Knox's
+"Life of Fulton," reproduced by permission of the publishers, G.P.
+Putnam's Sons.]
+
+We know, however, that in 1794 he submitted to the British Society for
+the Promotion of Arts and Commerce an improvement of his invention for
+sawing marble, for which he received the thanks of the society and an
+honorary medal. He invented also, it is thought, about this time, a
+machine for spinning flax and another for making ropes, for both of
+which he obtained patents from the British Government. A mechanical
+contrivance for scooping out earth to form channels for canals or
+aqueducts, which is said to have been much used in England, was also
+his invention. The subject of canals appears to have chiefly engaged his
+attention during these years of the end of the century. He called
+himself a civil engineer, and under this title published his work on
+canals, and, in 1795, many essays on the same subject in one of the
+London journals. He recommended small canals and boats of little burden
+in a treatise on "Improvement of Canal Navigation," and inclined planes
+instead of locks, as a means of transporting canal boats from one level
+to another. His plans were strongly recommended by the British Board of
+Agriculture. Throughout his course as civil engineer his talent for
+drawing was of great advantage to him, and the plates annexed to his
+works are admirable examples of such work. He seems to have neglected
+his painting till a short time before his death, when he took up the
+brush again to paint some portraits of his family. During his residence
+in England he sent copies of his works to distinguished men in this
+country, setting forth the advantages to be derived from communication
+by canals.
+
+Having obtained a patent for mill improvements from the British
+Government, he went to France with the intention of introducing his
+invention there; but, not meeting with much encouragement, he devoted
+his time to other matters. Political economy had also some attraction
+for him, and he wrote a book to show that internal improvements would
+have a good effect on the happiness of a nation. He not only wished to
+see a free and speedy communication between the different parts of a
+large country, but universal free trade between all countries. He
+thought that it would take ages to establish the freedom of the seas by
+the common consent of nations, and believed in destroying ships of war,
+so as to put it out of the power of any nation to control ocean trade.
+In 1797 he became acquainted with Joel Barlow, the well-known American,
+then residing in Paris, in whose family he lived for seven years, during
+which time he learned French and something of German, and studied
+mathematics and chemistry. In the same year he made an experiment with
+Mr. Barlow on the Seine with a machine he had constructed to give
+packages of gunpowder a progressive motion under water and then to
+explode at a given point. These experiments appear to have been the
+first in the line of his submarine boats, and are unquestionably the
+germ of all subsequent inventions in the direction of torpedo warfare.
+
+Want of money to carry out his designs induced him to apply to the
+French Directory, who at first gave him reason to expect their aid, but
+finally rejected his plan. Fulton, however, was not to be discouraged,
+but went on with his inventions, and having made a handsome model of his
+machine for destroying ships, a commission was appointed to examine his
+plans, but they also rejected them. He offered his idea to the British
+Government, still again without success, although a committee was
+appointed to examine his models. The French Government being changed,
+and Bonaparte having come to the head of it, Fulton presented an address
+to him. A commission was appointed, and some assistance given which
+enabled him to put some of his plans into practice. In the spring of
+1801 he went to Brest to make experiments with the plunging boat that he
+had constructed in the winter. This, as he says, had many imperfections,
+to be expected in a first machine, and had been injured by rust, as
+parts which should have been of copper or brass were made of iron.
+
+Notwithstanding these disadvantages, he engaged in a course of
+experiments which required no less courage than perseverance. From a
+report of his proceedings to the committee appointed by the French
+Government we learn that in July, 1801, he embarked with three
+companions on board of this boat, in the harbor of Brest, and descended
+to the depth of twenty-five feet, remaining below the surface an hour,
+in utter darkness, as the candles were found to consume too much of the
+vital air. He placed two men at the engine, which was intended to give
+her motion, and one at the helm, while he, with a barometer before him,
+kept her balanced between the upper and lower waters. He could turn her
+round while under the water, and found that in seven minutes he had gone
+about a third of a mile. During that summer Fulton descended under water
+with a store of air compressed into a copper globe, whereby he was
+enabled to remain under water four hours and twenty minutes. The success
+of these experiments determined him to try the effect of his invention
+on the English war-ships, then daily near the harbor of Brest--France
+and England being then at war. He made his own bombs. For experimental
+purposes a small vessel was anchored in the harbor, and with a bomb
+containing about twenty pounds of powder, he approached within about two
+hundred yards, struck the vessel, and blew her into atoms. A column of
+water and fragments were sent nearly one hundred feet into the air. This
+experiment was made in the presence of the prefect of the department and
+a multitude of spectators. During the summer of 1801 Fulton tried to use
+his bombs against some of the English vessels, but was not successful in
+getting within range. The French Government refused to give him further
+encouragement.
+
+The English had some information concerning the attempts that their
+enemies were making, and the anxiety expressed induced the British
+Minister to communicate with Fulton and try to secure to England his
+services. In this he was successful, and Fulton went to London, where he
+arrived in 1804, and met Pitt and Lord Melville. When Mr. Pitt first saw
+a drawing of a torpedo with a sketch of the mode of applying it, and
+understood what would be the effect of the explosion, he said that if it
+were introduced into practice it could not fail to annihilate all
+navies.
+
+[Illustration: Fulton Blowing Up a Danish Brig.]
+
+But from the subsequent conduct of the British ministry it is supposed
+that they never really intended to give Fulton a fair opportunity to
+try the effect of his submarine engines. Their object may have been to
+prevent these devices getting into the hands of an enemy. Several
+experiments were made, and some of them were failures, but on October
+15, 1805, he blew up a strong-built Danish brig of two hundred tons
+burden, which had been provided for the experiment and which was
+anchored near the residence of Pitt. The torpedo used on this occasion
+contained one hundred and seventy pounds of powder. In fifteen minutes
+from the time of starting the machinery the explosion took place. It
+lifted the brig almost entire and broke her completely in two; in one
+minute nothing was to be seen of her but floating fragments.
+Notwithstanding the complete success of this experiment, the British
+ministry seems to have had nothing to do with Fulton. The inventor was
+rather discouraged at this lack of appreciation and, after some further
+experiments, he sailed for New York in December, 1806.
+
+In this country Fulton devoted himself at once to his project of
+submarine warfare and steam navigation. So far from being discouraged by
+his failure to impress Europe with the importance of his torpedoes, his
+confidence was unshaken, because he saw that his failures were to be
+attributed to trivial errors that could easily be corrected. He induced
+our Government to give him the means of making further experiments, and
+invited the magistracy of New York and a number of citizens to
+Governor's Island where were the torpedoes and the machinery with which
+his experiments were to be made. In July, 1807, he blew up, in the
+harbor of New York, a large brig prepared for that purpose. He also
+devised at this time a number of stationary torpedoes, really casks of
+powder, with triggers that might be caught by the keel of any passing
+vessel. In March, 1810, $5,000 were granted by Congress for further
+experiments in submarine explosions. The sloop of war, Argus, was
+prepared for defence against the torpedoes after Fulton had explained
+his mode of attack. This defence was so complete that Fulton found it
+impracticable to do anything with his torpedoes. Some experiments were
+made, however, with a gun-harpoon and cable cutter, and after several
+attempts a fourteen-inch cable was cut off several feet below the
+surface of the water.
+
+Fulton was, during all these experiments, much pressed for money, and
+apparently was making no headway toward the use of his submarine engines
+in a profitable way. It was in despair of getting our Government to make
+an investment in this direction that he finally turned to the problem of
+navigation by steam. He had the valuable co-operation in his new work of
+Chancellor Livingston, of New Jersey, who, while devoting much of his
+own time and means to the advancement of science, was fond of fostering
+the discoveries of others. He had very clear conceptions of what would
+be the great advantages of steamboats on the navigable rivers of the
+United States. He had already, when in Paris, applied himself at great
+expense to constructing vessels and machinery for that kind of
+navigation. As early as 1798 he believed that he had accomplished his
+object, and represented to the Legislature of New York that he was
+possessed of a mode of applying the steam-engine to a boat on new and
+advantageous principles; but that he was deterred from carrying it into
+effect by the uncertainty of expensive experiments, unless he could be
+assured of an exclusive advantage should it be successful. The
+Legislature in March, 1798, passed an act vesting him with the exclusive
+right and privilege of navigating all kinds of boats which might be
+propelled by the force of fire or steam on all the waters within the
+territory of New York for the term of twenty years, upon condition that
+he should within a twelve-month build such a boat, whose progress
+should not be less than four miles an hour.
+
+[Illustration: John Fitch's Steamboat at Philadelphia.]
+
+Livingston, as soon as the act had passed, built a boat of about thirty
+tons burden, to be propelled by steam. Soon after he entered into a
+contract with Fulton, by which it was agreed that a patent should be
+taken out in the United States in Fulton's name. Thus began the
+preparations for the first practical steamboat. All the experiments were
+paid for by Chancellor Livingston, but the work was Fulton's. In 1802,
+in Paris, he began a course of calculations upon the resistance of
+water, upon the most advantageous form of the body to be moved, and upon
+the different means of propelling vessels which had been previously
+attempted. After a variety of calculations he rejected the proposed plan
+of using paddles or oars, such as those already used by Fitch; likewise
+that of ducks' feet, which open as they are pushed out and shut as they
+are drawn in; also that of forcing water out of the stern of the vessel.
+He retained two methods as worthy of experiment, namely, endless chains
+with paddle-boards upon them, and the paddle-wheel. The latter was found
+to be the most promising, and was finally adopted after a number of
+trials with models on a little river which runs through the village of
+Plombieres, to which he had retired in the spring of 1802, to pursue his
+experiments without interruption.
+
+[Illustration: Fulton's First Experiment with Paddle-wheels.]
+
+It was now determined to build an experimental boat, which was completed
+in the spring of 1803; but when Fulton was on the point of making an
+experiment with her, an accident happened to the boat, the woodwork not
+having been framed strongly enough to bear the weight of the machinery
+and the agitation of the river. The accident did the machinery very
+little injury; but they were obliged to build the boat almost entirely
+anew. She was completed in July; her length was sixty-six feet and she
+was eight feet wide. Early in August, Fulton addressed a letter to the
+French National Institute, inviting the members to witness a trial of
+his boat, which was made before the members, and in the presence of a
+great multitude of Parisians. The experiment was entirely satisfactory
+to Fulton, though the boat did not move altogether with as much speed as
+he expected. But he imputed her moving so slowly to the extremely
+defective machinery, and to imperfections which were to be expected in
+the first experiment with so complicated a machine; the defects were
+such as might be easily remedied.
+
+Such entire confidence did he acquire from this experiment that
+immediately afterward he wrote to Messrs. Boulton & Watt, of Birmingham,
+England, ordering certain parts of a steam-engine to be made for him,
+and sent to America. He did not disclose to them for what purpose the
+engine was intended, but his directions were such as would produce the
+parts of an engine that might be put together within a compass suited
+for a boat. Mr. Livingston had written to his friends in this country,
+and through their assistance an act was passed by the Legislature of the
+State of New York, on April 5, 1803, by which the rights and exclusive
+privileges of navigating all the waters of that State, by vessels
+propelled by fire or steam, granted to Livingston by the Act of 1798, as
+already mentioned, were extended to Livingston and Fulton, for the term
+of twenty years from the date of the new act. By this law the time of
+producing proof of the practicability of propelling by steam a boat of
+twenty tons capacity, at the rate of four miles an hour, with and
+against the ordinary current of the Hudson, was extended two years, and
+by a subsequent law, the time was extended to 1807.
+
+Very soon after Fulton's arrival in New York he began building his first
+American boat. While she was constructing, he found that her cost would
+greatly exceed his calculations. He endeavored to lessen the pressure on
+his own finances by offering one-third of the rights for a proportionate
+contribution to the expense. It was generally known that he made this
+offer, but no one was then willing to afford aid to his enterprise.
+
+In the spring of 1807, Fulton's first American boat was launched from
+the shipyard of Charles Brown, on the East River. The engine from
+England was put on board, and in August she was completed, and was moved
+by her machinery from her birthplace to the Jersey shore. Livingston and
+Fulton had invited many of their friends to witness the first trial,
+among them Dr. Mitchell and Dr. M'Neven, to whom we are indebted for
+some account of what passed on this occasion. Nothing could exceed the
+surprise and admiration of all who witnessed the experiment. The minds
+of the most incredulous were changed in a few minutes. Before the boat
+had gone a quarter of a mile, the greatest unbeliever must have been
+converted. The man who, while he looked on the expensive machine,
+thanked his stars that he had more wisdom than to waste his money on
+such idle schemes, changed his mind as the boat moved from the wharf and
+gained speed, and his complacent expression gradually stiffened into one
+of wonder.
+
+This boat, which was called the Clermont, soon after made a trip to
+Albany. Fulton gives the following account of this voyage in a letter to
+his friend, Mr. Barlow:
+
+[Illustration: Departure of the Clermont on her First Voyage.]
+
+"My steamboat voyage to Albany and back, has turned out rather more
+favorable than I had calculated. The distance from New York to Albany is
+one hundred and fifty miles; I ran it up in thirty-two hours, and down
+in thirty. I had a light breeze against me the whole way, both going and
+coming, and the voyage has been performed wholly by the power of the
+steam-engine. I overtook many sloops and schooners beating to windward,
+and parted with them as if they had been at anchor. The power of
+propelling boats by steam is now fully proved. The morning I left New
+York there were not, perhaps, thirty persons in the city who believed
+that the boat would even move one mile an hour, or be of the least
+utility; and while we were putting off from the wharf, which was
+crowded with spectators, I heard a number of sarcastic remarks. This is
+the way in which ignorant men compliment what they call philosophers and
+projectors. Having employed much time, money, and zeal, in accomplishing
+this work, it gives me, as it will you, great pleasure to see it fully
+answer my expectations. It will give a cheap and quick conveyance to the
+merchandise on the Mississippi, Missouri, and other great rivers, which
+are now laying open their treasures to the enterprise of our countrymen;
+and although the prospect of personal emolument has been some inducement
+to me, yet I feel infinitely more pleasure in reflecting on the immense
+advantage that my country will derive from the invention."
+
+Soon after this successful voyage, the Hudson boat was advertised and
+established as a regular passage-boat between New York and Albany. She,
+however, in the course of the season, met with several accidents, from
+the hostility of those engaged in the ordinary navigation of the river,
+and from defects in her machinery, the greatest of which was having her
+water-wheel shafts of cast-iron, which was insufficient to sustain the
+great power applied to them. The wheels also were hung without any
+support for the outward end of the shaft, which is now supplied by what
+are called the wheel-guards.
+
+At the session of 1808 a law was passed to prolong the time of the
+exclusive right to thirty years; it also declared combinations to
+destroy the boat, or wilful attempts to injure her, public offences,
+punishable by fine and imprisonment. Notwithstanding her misfortunes,
+the boat continued to run as a packet, always loaded with passengers,
+for the remainder of the summer. In the course of the ensuing winter she
+was enlarged, and in the spring of 1808 she again began running as a
+packet-boat, and continued it through the season. Several other boats
+were soon built for the Hudson River, and also for steamboat companies
+formed in different parts of the United States. On February 11, 1809,
+Fulton took out a patent for his inventions in navigation by steam, and
+on February 9, 1811, he obtained a second patent for some improvements
+in his boats and machinery.
+
+About the year 1812 two steam ferry-boats were built under the direction
+of Fulton for crossing the Hudson River, and one of the same description
+for the East River. These boats were what are called twin-boats, each of
+them being two complete hulls united by a deck or bridge. They were
+sharp at both ends, and moved equally well with either end foremost, so
+that they crossed and recrossed without losing any time by turning
+about. He contrived, with great ingenuity, floating docks for the
+reception of these boats, and a means by which they were brought to them
+without a shock. These boats, were the first of a fleet which has since
+carried hundreds of millions of passengers to and from New York.
+
+From the time the first boat was put in motion till the death of Fulton,
+the art of navigating by steam advanced rapidly to that perfection of
+which he believed it capable; the boats performed each successive trip
+with increased speed, and every year improvements were made. The last
+boat built by Fulton was invariably the best, the most convenient, and
+the swiftest.
+
+At the beginning of 1814 a number of the citizens of New York, alarmed
+at the exposed situation of their harbor, had assembled with a view to
+consider whether some measures might not be taken to aid the Government
+in its protection. This assembly had some knowledge of Fulton's plans
+for submarine attack, and knew that he contemplated other means of
+defence. It deputed a number of gentlemen to act for it, and these were
+called the Coast and Harbor Committee. Fulton exhibited to this
+committee the model and plans for a vessel of war, to be propelled by
+steam, capable of carrying a strong battery, with furnaces for red-hot
+shot, and which, he represented, would move at the rate of four miles an
+hour. The confidence of the committee in this design was confirmed by
+the opinions of many of our most distinguished naval commanders, which
+he had obtained in writing, and exhibited to the committee. They pointed
+out many advantages which a steam vessel of war would possess over those
+with sails only.
+
+The National Legislature passed a law in March, 1814, authorizing the
+President of the United States to cause to be built, equipped, and
+employed one or more floating batteries for the defence of the waters
+of the United States. A sub-committee of five gentlemen was appointed to
+superintend the building of the proposed vessel, and Fulton, whose
+spirit animated the whole enterprise, was appointed the engineer. In
+June, 1814, the keel of this novel and mighty engine was laid, and in
+October she was launched from the New York yard of Adam and Noah Brown.
+The scene exhibited on this occasion was magnificent. It happened on one
+of our bright autumnal days. Multitudes of spectators crowded the
+surrounding shores. The river and bay were filled with vessels of war,
+dressed in all their colors in compliment to the occasion. By May, 1815,
+her engine was put on board, and she was so far completed as to afford
+an opportunity of trying her machinery. On the 4th of July, in the same
+year, the steam-frigate made a passage to the ocean and back, a distance
+of fifty-three miles, in eight hours and twenty minutes, by the mere
+force of steam. In September she made another passage to the sea, and
+having at this time the weight of her whole armament on board, she went
+at the rate of five and a half miles an hour, upon an average, with and
+against the tide. The superintending committee gave in their report a
+full description of the Fulton the First, the honored name this vessel
+bore.
+
+The last work in which the active and ingenious mind of Fulton was
+engaged was a project for the modification of his submarine boat. He
+presented a model of this vessel to the Government, by which it was
+approved; and under Federal authority he began building one; but before
+the hull was entirely finished his country had to lament his death, and
+the mechanics he employed were incapable of proceeding without him.
+
+[Illustration: The "Demologos," or "Fulton the First."
+
+The first steam vessel-of-war in the world.]
+
+During the whole time that Fulton had thus been devoting his talents to
+the service of his country, he had been harassed by lawsuits and
+controversies with those who were violating his patent rights, or
+intruding upon his exclusive grants. The State of New Jersey had passed
+a law which operated against Fulton, without being of much advantage to
+those interested in its passage, inasmuch as the laws of New York
+prevented any but Fulton's boats to approach the city of New York. Its
+only operation was to stop a boat owned in New York, which had been for
+several years running to New Brunswick, under a license from Messrs.
+Livingston and Fulton. A bold attempt was therefore made to induce the
+Legislature of the State of New York to repeal the laws which they had
+passed for the protection of their exclusive grant to Livingston and
+Fulton. The committee reported that such repeal might be passed
+consistently with good faith, honor, and justice! This report being made
+to the House, it was prevailed upon to be less precipitate than the
+committee had been. It gave time, which the committee would not do, for
+Fulton to be sent for from New York. The Assembly and Senate in joint
+session examined witnesses, and heard him and the petitioner by counsel.
+The result was that the Legislature refused to repeal the prior law, or
+to pass any act on the subject. The Legislature of the State of New
+Jersey also repealed their law, which left Fulton in the full enjoyment
+of his rights. This enjoyment was of very short duration; for on
+returning from Trenton, after this last trial, he was exposed on the
+Hudson, which was very full of ice, for several hours. He had not a
+constitution to encounter such exposure, and upon his return found
+himself much indisposed. He had at that time great anxiety about the
+steam-frigate, and, after confining himself to the house for a few days,
+went to give his superintendence to the workmen employed about her.
+Forgetting his ill-health in the interest he took in what was doing on
+the frigate, he remained too long exposed on a bad day to the weather.
+He soon felt the effects of this imprudence. His indisposition returned
+upon him with such violence as to confine him to his bed. His illness
+increased, and on February 24, 1815, it ended his life.
+
+It was not known that Fulton's illness was dangerous till a very short
+time before his death. Means were immediately taken to testify,
+publicly, the universal regret at his loss, and respect for his memory.
+The corporation of the city of New York, the different literary
+institutions and other societies, assembled and passed resolutions
+expressing their estimation of his worth, and regret at his loss. They
+also resolved to attend his funeral, and that the members should wear
+badges of mourning for a certain time. As soon as the Legislature, which
+was then in session at Albany, heard of the death of Fulton, they
+expressed their participation in the general sentiment by resolving that
+the members of both Houses should wear mourning for some weeks.
+
+In 1806 Fulton married Harriet Livingston, a daughter of Walter
+Livingston, a relative of his associate, Chancellor Livingston. He left
+four children; one son, Robert Barlow Fulton, and three daughters.
+Fulton was in person considerably above medium height; his face showed
+great intelligence. Natural refinement and long intercourse with the
+most polished society of Europe and America had given him grace and
+elegance of manner.
+
+[Illustration: The Clermont.]
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+ELI WHITNEY.
+
+
+In 1784 an American vessel arrived at Liverpool having on board, as part
+of her cargo, eight bags of cotton, which were seized by the
+Custom-House under the conviction that they could not be the growth of
+America. The whole amount of cotton arriving at Liverpool from America
+during the two following years was less than one hundred and twenty
+bags. When Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin, applied for his
+first patent in 1793, the total export of cotton from the United States
+was less than ten thousand bales. Fifty years later, the growth of this
+industry, owing almost wholly to Whitney's gin, had increased to
+millions of bales, and by 1860, the export amounted to four million
+bales.
+
+[Illustration: Eli Whitney.]
+
+According to the estimate of Judge Johnson, given in the most famous
+decision affecting the cotton-gin, the debts of the South were paid off
+by its aid, its capital was increased, and its lands trebled in value.
+This famous device, the gift of a young Northerner to the South, was
+rewarded by thirty years of ingratitude, relieved only by a few gleams
+of sunshine in the way of justice, serving to make the injustice all the
+more conspicuous. Whitney added hundreds of millions to the wealth of
+the United States. His personal reward was countless lawsuits and
+endless vexation of body and spirit. No more conspicuous example can be
+cited of steady patience and sweet-tempered perseverance.
+
+
+Eli Whitney was born in Westborough, Worcester County, Mass., December
+8, 1765. His parents belonged to that respectable class of society who,
+by honest farming and kindred industries, managed to provide well for
+the rising family--the class from whom have arisen most of those who in
+New England have attained to eminence and usefulness. The indications of
+his mechanical genius were noted at an early age. Of his passion for
+mechanics, his sister gives the following account:
+
+"Our father had a workshop and sometimes made wheels of different kinds,
+and chairs. He had a variety of tools and a lathe for turning
+chair-posts. This gave my brother an opportunity of learning the use of
+tools when very young. He lost no time, but as soon as he could handle
+tools he was always making something in the shop, and seemed to prefer
+that to work on the farm. After the death of our mother, when our father
+had been absent from home two or three days, on his return he inquired
+of the housekeeper what the boys had been doing. She told him what the
+elders had done. 'But what has Eli been doing?' said he. She replied he
+has been making a fiddle. 'Ah!' added he, despondently, 'I fear Eli will
+have to take his portion in fiddles.'"
+
+He was at this time about twelve years old. The sister adds that his
+fiddle was finished throughout like a common violin and made pretty good
+music. It was examined by many persons, and all pronounced it to be a
+model piece of work for such a boy. From this time he was always
+employed to repair violins, and did many nice jobs that were executed to
+the entire satisfaction and even to the astonishment of his customers.
+His father's watch being the greatest piece of mechanism that had yet
+presented itself to his observation, he was extremely desirous of
+examining its interior construction, but was not permitted to do so. One
+Sunday morning, observing that his father was going to church and would
+leave at home the wonderful little machine, he feigned illness as an
+apology for not going. As soon as the family were out of sight, he flew
+to the room where the watch hung and took it down. He was so delighted
+with its motion that he took it to pieces before he thought of the
+consequences of his rash deed; for his father was a stern parent, and
+punishment would have been the reward of his idle curiosity, had the
+mischief been detected. He, however, put the works so neatly together
+that his father never discovered his audacity until he himself told him
+many years afterward.
+
+When Eli was thirteen years old his father married a second time. His
+stepmother, among her articles of furniture, had a handsome set of
+table-knives that she valued very highly.
+
+One day Eli said: "I could make as good ones if I had tools, and I
+could make the tools if I had common tools to begin with;" his mother
+laughed at him. But it so happened soon afterward that one of the knives
+was broken, and he made one exactly like it in every respect, except the
+stamp of the blade. When he was fifteen or sixteen years of age, he
+suggested to his father an enterprise which clearly showed his capacity
+for important work. The time being the Revolutionary War, nails were in
+great demand and at high prices. They were made chiefly by hand. Whitney
+proposed to his father to get him a few tools and allow him to set up
+the manufacture of nails. His father consented, and the work was begun.
+By extraordinary diligence he found time to make tools for his own use
+and to put in knife-blades, repair farm machinery, and perform other
+little jobs beyond the skill of the country workman. At this occupation
+the enterprising boy worked, alone with great success and with large
+profit to his father for two winters, going on with the ordinary work of
+the farm during the summer. He devised a plan for enlarging the
+business, and managed to obtain help from a fellow-laborer whom he
+picked up when on a short journey of forty miles, in the course of which
+he tells us that he called at every workshop on the way and gleaned all
+the information as to tools and methods that he could.
+
+At the close of the war the business of making nails was no longer
+profitable; but the fashion prevailing among the ladies of fastening on
+their bonnets with long pins having appeared, he contrived to make
+these pins with such skill that he nearly monopolized the business,
+though he devoted to it only such leisure as he could redeem from the
+occupations of the farm. He also made excellent walking-canes. At the
+age of nineteen Whitney conceived the idea of getting a liberal
+education; and partly by the results of his mechanical industries, and
+partly by teaching the village school, he was enabled so far to surmount
+the difficulties in his way as to prepare himself for the Freshman Class
+in Yale College, which he entered in 1789. At college his mechanical
+propensity frequently showed itself. He successfully undertook, on one
+occasion, the repairing of some of the philosophical apparatus. Soon
+after taking his degree, in the autumn of 1792, he engaged with a
+Georgia family as private teacher, and through his engagement he made
+the acquaintance of a certain General Greene, of Savannah, who took a
+deep interest in him, and with whom he began the study of law. While
+living with the Greenes he noticed an embroidery-frame used by Mrs.
+Greene, and about which she complained, observing that it tore the
+delicate threads of her work. Young Whitney, eager to oblige his
+hostess, went to work and speedily produced a frame on an entirely new
+plan. The family were much delighted with it, and considered it a
+wonderful piece of ingenuity.
+
+[Illustration: Whitney Watching the Cotton-Gin.]
+
+Not long afterward the Greenes were visited by a party of gentlemen,
+chiefly officers who had served under the general in the Revolutionary
+War. The conversation turned on the state of agriculture. It was
+remarked that unfortunately there was no means of cleaning the staple of
+the green cotton-seed, which might otherwise be profitably raised on
+land unsuitable for rice. But until someone devised a machine which
+would clean the cotton, it was vain to think of raising it for market.
+Separating one pound of the clean staple from the seed was a day's work
+for a woman. The time usually devoted to the picking of cotton was the
+evening, after the labor of the field was over. Then the slaves--men,
+women, and children--were collected in circles, with one in the middle
+whose duty it was to rouse the dosing and quicken the indolent. While
+the company were engaged in this conversation, Mrs. Greene said:
+"Gentlemen, apply to my young friend here, Mr. Whitney; he can make
+anything." And she showed them the frame and several other articles he
+had made. He modestly disclaimed all pretensions to mechanical genius,
+and replied that he had never seen cotton-seed.
+
+Nevertheless, he immediately began upon the task of inventing and
+constructing the machine on which his fame depends. A Mr. Phineas
+Miller, a neighbor, to whom he communicated his design, warmly
+encouraged him, and gave him a room in his house wherein to carry on his
+operations. Here he began work with the disadvantage of being obliged to
+manufacture his own tools and draw his own wire--an article not to be
+found in Savannah. Mr. Miller and Mrs. Greene were the only persons who
+knew anything of his occupation. Near the close of the winter, 1793, the
+machine was so far completed as to leave no doubt of its success. The
+person who contributed most to the success of the undertaking, after the
+inventor, was his friend, Miller, a native of Connecticut and, a
+graduate of Yale. Like Whitney, he had come to Georgia as a private
+teacher, and after the death of General Greene he married the widow. He
+was a lawyer by profession, with a turn for mechanics. He had some money
+and proposed to Whitney to become his partner, he to be at the whole
+expense of manufacturing the invention until it should be patented. If
+the machine should succeed, they agreed that the profits and advantages
+should be divided between them. A legal paper covering this agreement
+and establishing the firm of Miller & Whitney, bears the date of May 27,
+1793.
+
+An invention so important to the agricultural interests of the country
+could not long remain a secret. The knowledge of it swept through the
+State, and so great was the excitement on the subject that crowds of
+persons came from all parts to see the machine; it was not deemed safe
+to gratify curiosity until the patent-right should be secured. But so
+determined were some of these people that neither law nor justice could
+restrain them; they broke into the building by night and carried off the
+machine. In this way the public became possessed of the invention, and
+before Whitney could complete his model and secure his patent, a number
+of machines, patterned after his, were in successful operation.
+
+The principle of the Whitney cotton-gin and all other gins following its
+features is so well known as to make it scarcely worth while to describe
+it here. The different parts are two cylinders of different diameters,
+mounted in a strong wooden frame, one cylinder bearing a number of
+circular saws fitted into grooves cut into the cylinder. The other
+hollow cylinder is mounted with brushes, the tips of whose bristles
+touch the saw-teeth. The cotton is put into a hopper, where it is met by
+the sharp teeth of the saws, torn from the seed, and carried to a point
+where the brushes sweep it off into a convenient receptacle. The seeds
+are too large to pass between the bars through which the saws protrude.
+This is the principle of the first machine, but many improvements have
+been made since Whitney's day. Nevertheless, by means of the cotton-gin,
+even in its earliest shape, one man, with the aid of two-horse power,
+could clean five thousand pounds of cotton in a day.
+
+[Illustration: The Cotton-Gin.
+
+(From the original model.)]
+
+As soon as the partnership of Miller & Whitney was formed, the latter
+went to Connecticut to perfect the machine, obtain the patent, and
+manufacture for Georgia as many machines as he thought would supply the
+demand. At once there began between Whitney in Connecticut and Miller in
+Georgia a correspondence relative to the cotton-gin, which gives a
+complete history of the extraordinary efforts made by the two partners
+and the disappointments that fell to their lot. The very first letter,
+written three days after Whitney left, announces that encroachments upon
+their rights had already begun. "It will be necessary," says Miller, "to
+have a considerable number of gins in readiness to send out as soon as
+the patent is obtained in order to satisfy the absolute demands and make
+people's heads easy on the subject; for I am informed of two other
+claimants for the honor of the invention of the cotton-gin in addition
+to those we knew before." At the close of the year 1793 Whitney was to
+return to Georgia with his gins, where his partner had made arrangements
+for beginning business. The importunity of Miller's letters, written
+during this period, urging him to come on, show how eager the Georgia
+planters were to enter the new field of enterprise that the genius of
+Whitney had opened to them. Nor did they at first contemplate stealing
+the invention. But the minds of even the more honorable among the
+planters were afterward deluded by various artifices set on foot by
+designing rivals of Whitney with a view to robbing him of his rights.
+One of the greatest difficulties experienced by the partners was the
+extreme scarcity of money, which embarrassed them so much as to make it
+impossible to construct machines fast enough.
+
+In April Whitney returned to Georgia. Large crops of cotton had been
+planted, the profits of which were to depend almost wholly on the
+success of the gin. A formidable competitor, the roller-gin, had also
+appeared, which destroyed the seed by means of rollers, crushing them
+between revolving cylinders instead of disengaging them by means of
+teeth. The fragments of seeds which remained in the cotton made it much
+inferior to Whitney's gin, and it was slower in operation. A still more
+dangerous rival appeared in 1795, under the name of the saw-gin. It was
+really Whitney's invention, except that the teeth were cut in circular
+rings of iron instead of being made of wire, as in the earlier forms of
+the Whitney gin. The use of such teeth had occurred to Whitney, as he
+established by legal proof. They would have been of no use except in
+connection with other parts of his machine, and it was a palpable
+attempt to invade his patent right. It was chiefly in reference to this
+device that the endless lawsuits that wore the life out of the partners
+were afterward held.
+
+In March, 1795, after two years of struggle, during which no progress
+seems to have been made, although the value of the gin was proved,
+Whitney went to New York, where he was detained three weeks by fever.
+Upon reaching New Haven he discovered that his shop, with all his
+machines and papers, had been consumed by fire. Thus he was suddenly
+reduced to bankruptcy and was in debt $4,000 without any means of
+payment. He was not, however, one to sink under such trials; Miller
+showed the same buoyant spirit, and the following extract of a letter
+of his to Whitney may be a useful lesson to young men in trouble:
+
+    "I think we ought to meet such events with equanimity. We have been
+    pursuing a valuable object by honorable means, and I trust that all
+    our measures have been such as reason and virtue must justify. It
+    has pleased Providence to postpone the attainment of this object. In
+    the midst of the reflections which your story has suggested, and
+    with feelings keenly awake to the heavy, the extensive injury we
+    have sustained, I feel a secret joy and satisfaction that you
+    possess a mind in this respect similar to my own--that you are not
+    disheartened, that you do not relinquish the pursuit, and that you
+    will persevere, and endeavor, at all events, to attain the main
+    object. This is exactly consonant to my own determinations. I will
+    devote all my time, all my thoughts, all my exertions, and all the
+    money I can earn or borrow to encompass and complete the business we
+    have undertaken; and if fortune should, by any future disaster, deny
+    us the boon we ask, we will at least deserve it. It shall never be
+    said that we have lost an object which a little perseverance could
+    have attained. I think, indeed, it will be very extraordinary if two
+    young men in the prime of life, with some share of ingenuity, and
+    with a little knowledge of the world, a great deal of industry, and
+    a considerable command of property, should not be able to sustain
+    such a stroke of misfortune as this, heavy as it is."
+
+Miller winds up by suggesting to Whitney that perhaps he can get help in
+New Haven by offering twelve per cent. a year for money with which to
+build a new shop, and the inventor seems to have had some success in
+reorganizing his affairs, even under such desperate conditions. Word
+came at the same time from England that manufacturers had condemned the
+cotton cleaned by their machines on the ground that the staple was
+greatly injured. This threatened a deathblow to their hopes. At the
+time, 1796, they already had thirty gins at different places in Georgia,
+some worked by horses and oxen and some by water. Some of these were
+still standing a few years ago. The following extract of a letter by
+Whitney will show the state of his mind and affairs:
+
+    "The extreme embarrassments which have been for a long time
+    accumulating upon me are now become so great that it will be
+    impossible for me to struggle against them many days longer. It has
+    required my utmost exertions to exist without making the least
+    progress in our business. I have labored hard against the strong
+    current of disappointment which has been threatening to carry us
+    down the cataract, but I have labored with a shattered oar and
+    struggled in vain, unless some speedy relief is obtained.... Life is
+    but short at best, and six or seven years out of the midst of it is
+    to him who makes it an immense sacrifice. My most unremitted
+    attention has been devoted to our business. I have sacrificed to it
+    other objects from which, before this time, I might certainly have
+    gained $20,000 or $30,000. My whole prospects have been embarked in
+    it, with the expectation that I should before this time have
+    realized something from it."
+
+The cotton of Whitney's gin was, however, sought by merchants in
+preference to other kinds, and respectable manufacturers testified in
+his favor. Had it not been for the extensive and shameful violations of
+their patent-right, the partners might yet have succeeded; but these
+encroachments had become so extensive as almost to destroy its value.
+The issue of the first important trial that they were able to obtain on
+the merits of the gin is announced in the following letter from Miller
+to Whitney, dated May 11, 1797:
+
+    "The event of the first patent suit, after all our exertions made in
+    such a variety of ways, has gone against us. The preposterous custom
+    of trying civil causes of this intricacy and magnitude by a common
+    jury, together with the imperfection of the patent law, frustrated
+    all our views, and disappointed expectations which had become very
+    sanguine. The tide of popular opinion was running in our favor, the
+    judge was well disposed toward us, and many decided friends were
+    with us, who adhered firmly to our cause and interests. The judge
+    gave a charge to the jury pointedly in our favor; after which the
+    defendant himself told an acquaintance of his that he would give
+    two thousand dollars to be free from the verdict, and yet the jury
+    gave it against us, after a consultation of about an hour. And
+    having made the verdict general, no appeal would lie.
+
+    "On Monday morning, when the verdict was rendered, we applied for a
+    new trial, but the judge refused it to us on the ground that the
+    jury might have made up their opinion on the defect of the law,
+    which makes an aggression consist of making, devising, and using or
+    selling; whereas we could only charge the defendant with using.
+
+    "Thus, after four years of assiduous labor, fatigue, and difficulty,
+    are we again set afloat by a new and most unexpected obstacle. Our
+    hopes of success are now removed to a period still more distant than
+    before, while our expenses are realized beyond all controversy."
+
+Great efforts were made to obtain trial in a second suit in Savannah the
+following May, and a number of witnesses were collected from various
+parts of the country, all to no purpose, for the judge failed to appear,
+and in the meantime, owing to the failure of the first suit,
+encroachments on the patent-right had multiplied prodigiously.
+
+In April, 1799, nearly a year later, and two years after their first
+legal rebuff, Miller writes as follows:
+
+    "The prospect of making anything by ginning in this State is at an
+    end. Surreptitious gins are erected in every part of the country,
+    and the jurymen at Augusta have come to an understanding among
+    themselves that they will never give a cause in our favor, let the
+    merits of the case be as they may."
+
+The company would now have gladly relinquished the plan of making their
+own machines, and confined their operations to the sale of
+patent-rights; but few would buy the right to a machine which could be
+used with impunity without purchase, and those few usually gave notes
+instead of cash, which they afterward, to a great extent, avoided
+paying, either by obtaining a verdict from the juries declaring them
+void, or by contriving to postpone the collection till they were barred
+by the Statute of Limitations, a period of only four years. The agent of
+Miller & Whitney, who was despatched on a collecting tour through the
+State of Georgia, informed his employers that such obstacles were thrown
+in his way by one or the other of these causes that he was unable to
+collect money enough to pay his expenses. It was suggested that an
+application to the Legislature of South Carolina to purchase the
+patent-right for that State would be successful. Whitney accordingly
+repaired to Columbia, and the business was brought before the
+Legislature in December, 1801. An extract from a letter by Whitney at
+this time shows the nature of the contract thus made:
+
+    "I have been at this place a little more than two weeks attending
+    the Legislature. A few hours previous to their adjournment they
+    voted to purchase for the State of South Carolina my patent-right
+    to the machine for cleaning cotton at $50,000, of which sum $20,000
+    is to be paid in hand, and the remainder in three annual payments of
+    $10,000 each." He adds: "We get but a song for it in comparison with
+    the worth of the thing, but it is securing something. It will enable
+    Miller & Whitney to pay their debts and divide something between
+    them."
+
+In December, 1802, Whitney negotiated the sale of his patent-right with
+the State of North Carolina. The Legislature laid a tax of 2_s._ 6_d._
+upon every saw (some of the gins had forty saws) employed in ginning
+cotton, to be continued for five years; and after deducting the expenses
+of collection the returns were faithfully passed over to the patentee.
+This compensation was regarded by Whitney as more liberal than that
+received from any other source. About the same time Mr. Goodrich, the
+agent of the company, entered into a similar negotiation with Tennessee,
+which State had by this time begun to realize the importance of the
+invention. The Legislature passed a law laying a tax of 37-1/2 cents per
+annum on every saw used, for the period of four years. Thus far the
+prospects were growing favorable to the patentees, when the Legislature
+of South Carolina unexpectedly annulled the contract which they had
+made, suspended further payment of the balance, and sued for the
+refunding of what had been already paid. When Whitney first heard of the
+transactions of the South Carolina Legislature, he was at Raleigh,
+where he had just completed a negotiation with the Legislature of North
+Carolina. In a letter written to Miller at this time, he remarks:
+
+    "I am, for my own part, more vexed than alarmed by their
+    extraordinary proceedings. I think it behooves us to be very
+    cautious and very circumspect in our measures, and even in our
+    remarks with regard to it. Be cautious what you say or publish till
+    we meet our enemies in a court of justice, where, if they have any
+    sensibility left, we will make them very much ashamed of their
+    childish conduct."
+
+But that Whitney felt keenly the severities afterward practised against
+him is evident from the tenor of the remonstrance which he presented to
+the Legislature:
+
+    "The subscriber avers that he has manifested no other than a
+    disposition to fulfil all the stipulations entered into with the
+    State of South Carolina with punctuality and good faith; and he begs
+    leave to observe further, that to have industriously, laboriously,
+    and exclusively devoted many years of the prime of his life to the
+    invention and the improvement of a machine from which the citizens
+    of South Carolina have already realized immense profits, which is
+    worth to them millions, and from which their prosperity must
+    continue to derive the most important profits, and in return to be
+    treated as a felon, a swindler, and a villain, has stung him to the
+    very soul. And when he considers that this cruel persecution is
+    inflicted by the very persons who are enjoying these great benefits,
+    and expressly for the purpose of preventing his ever deriving the
+    least advantage from his own labors, the acuteness of his feelings
+    is altogether inexpressible."
+
+Doubts, it seems, had arisen in the public mind as to the validity of
+the patent. Great exertions had been made in Georgia, where, it will be
+remembered, hostilities were first declared against him, to show that
+his title to the invention was unsound, and that "somebody" in
+Switzerland had conceived it before him; and that the improved form of
+the machine with saws, instead of wire teeth, did not come within the
+patent, having been introduced by one Hodgin Holmes. The popular voice,
+stimulated by the most sordid methods, was now raised against Whitney
+throughout all the cotton States. Tennessee followed the example of
+South Carolina, annulling the contract made with him. And the attempt
+was made in North Carolina. But a committee of the Legislature, to whom
+it was referred, reported in Whitney's favor, declaring "that the
+contract ought to be fulfilled with punctuality and good faith," which
+resolution was adopted by both Houses. There were also high-minded men
+in South Carolina who were indignant at the dishonorable measures
+adopted by their Legislature of 1803; their sentiments impressed the
+community so favorably with regard to Whitney that, at the session of
+1804, the Legislature not only rescinded what the previous one had done,
+but signified their respect for Whitney by marked commendations.
+
+Miller died on December 7, 1803. In the earlier stages of the enterprise
+he had indulged high hopes of a great fortune; perpetual disappointments
+appear to have attended him through life. Whitney was now left alone to
+contend single-handed against the difficulties which had, for a series
+of years, almost broken down the spirits of the partners. The light,
+moreover, which seemed to be breaking, proved but the twilight of
+prosperity. The favorable issue of Whitney's affairs in South Carolina,
+and the generous receipts he obtained from his contract with North
+Carolina, relieved him, however, from the embarrassments under which he
+had so long groaned, and made him, in some degree, independent. Still,
+no small portion of the funds thus collected in North and South Carolina
+was expended in carrying on trials and endless lawsuits in Georgia.
+
+Finally, in the United States Court, held in Georgia, December, 1807,
+Whitney's patent obtained a most important decision in its favor against
+a trespasser named Fort. It was on this trial that Judge Johnson gave a
+most celebrated decision in the following words:
+
+    "To support the originality of the invention, the complainants have
+    produced a variety of depositions of witnesses, examined under
+    commission, whose examinations expressly prove the origin,
+    progress, and completion of the machine of Whitney, one of the
+    copartners. Persons who were made privy to his first discovery
+    testify to the several experiments which he made in their presence
+    before he ventured to expose his invention to the scrutiny of the
+    public eye. But it is not necessary to resort to such testimony to
+    maintain this point. The jealousy of the artist to maintain that
+    reputation which his ingenuity has justly acquired, has urged him to
+    unnecessary pains on this subject. There are circumstances in the
+    knowledge of all mankind which prove the originality of this
+    invention more satisfactorily to the mind than the direct testimony
+    of a host of witnesses. The cotton-plant furnished clothing to
+    mankind before the age of Herodotus. The green seed is a species
+    much more productive than the black, and by nature adapted to a much
+    greater variety of climate, but by reason of the strong adherence of
+    the fibre to the seed, without the aid of some more powerful machine
+    for separating it than any formerly known among us, the cultivation
+    of it would never have been made an object. The machine of which Mr.
+    Whitney claims the invention so facilitates the preparation of this
+    species for use that the cultivation of it has suddenly become an
+    object of infinitely greater national importance than that of the
+    other species ever can be. Is it, then, to be imagined that if this
+    machine had been before discovered, the use of it would ever have
+    been lost, or could have been confined to any tract or country left
+    unexplored by commercial enterprise? But it is unnecessary to remark
+    further upon this subject. A number of years have elapsed since Mr.
+    Whitney took out his patent, and no one has produced or pretended to
+    prove the existence of a machine of similar construction or use.
+
+    "With regard to the utility of this discovery the court would deem
+    it a waste of time to dwell long upon this topic. Is there a man who
+    hears us who has not experienced its utility? The whole interior of
+    the Southern States was languishing and its inhabitants emigrating
+    for want of some object to engage their attention and employ their
+    industry, when the invention of this machine at once opened views to
+    them which set the whole country in active motion. From childhood to
+    age it has presented to us a lucrative employment. Our debts have
+    been paid off, our capitals have increased, and our lands trebled
+    themselves in value. We cannot express the weight of the obligation
+    which the country owes to this invention. The extent of it cannot
+    now be seen. Some faint presentiment may be formed from the
+    reflection that cotton is rapidly supplanting wool, flax, silk, and
+    even furs in manufactures, and may one day profitably supply the use
+    of specie in our East India trade. Our sister States also
+    participate in the benefits of this invention, for besides affording
+    the raw material for their manufacturers, the bulkiness and quantity
+    of the article affords a valuable employment for their shipping."
+
+The influence of this decision, however, availed Whitney very little,
+for the term of his patent had nearly expired. During Miller's life more
+than sixty suits had been instituted in Georgia, and but a single
+decision on the merits of the claim was obtained. In prosecution of his
+troublesome business, Whitney had made six different journeys to
+Georgia, several of which were accomplished by land at a time when the
+difficulties of such journeys were exceedingly great. A gentleman who
+was well acquainted with Whitney's affairs in the South, and sometimes
+acted as his legal adviser, says that in all his experience in the
+thorny profession of the law he never saw a case of such perseverance
+under prosecution. He adds: "Nor do I believe that I ever knew any other
+man who would have met them with equal coolness and firmness, or who
+would finally have obtained even the partial success which he did. He
+always called on me in New York on his way South when going to attend
+his endless trials and to meet the mischievous contrivances of men, who
+seemed inexhaustible in their resources of evil. Even now, after thirty
+years, my head aches to recollect his narratives of new trials, fresh
+disappointments, and accumulated wrongs."
+
+In 1798 Whitney had become deeply impressed with the uncertainty of all
+his hopes founded upon the cotton-gin, and began to think seriously of
+devoting himself to some business in which his superior ingenuity,
+seconded by uncommon industry, would conduct him by a slow but sure
+road to a competent fortune. It may be considered indicative of solid
+judgment and a well-balanced mind that he did not, as is so frequently
+the case with men of inventive genius, become so poisoned with the hopes
+of vast wealth as to be disqualified for making a reasonable provision
+for life by the sober earnings of private industry. The enterprise which
+he selected in accordance with these views was the manufacture of arms
+for the United States. Through Oliver Wolcott, then Secretary of the
+Treasury, he obtained a contract for the manufacture of 10,000 stand of
+arms, 4,000 of which were to be delivered before the last of September
+of the ensuing year, 1799. Whitney purchased for his works a site called
+East Rock, near New Haven, now known as Whitneyville, and justly admired
+for the romantic beauty of its scenery. A water-fall offered the
+necessary power for the machinery.
+
+Here he began operations with great zeal. His machinery was yet to be
+built, his material collected, and even his workmen to be taught, and
+that in a business with which he was imperfectly acquainted.
+
+A severe winter retarded his operations and rendered him incompetent to
+fulfil the contract. Only 500 instead of 4,000 stands were delivered the
+first year, and eight years instead of two were found necessary for
+completing the whole. During the eight years Whitney was occupied in
+performing this work, he applied himself to business with the most
+exemplary diligence, rising every morning as soon as it was day, and at
+night setting everything in order in all parts of the establishment. His
+genius impressed itself on every part of the factory, extending even to
+the most common tools, most of which received some peculiar modification
+which improved them in accuracy or efficiency. His machines for making
+the several parts of the musket were made to operate with the greatest
+possible degree of uniformity and precision. The object at which he
+aimed, and which he fully accomplished, was to make the same parts of
+different guns, as the locks, for instance, as much like each other as
+the successive impressions of a copper-plate engraving, and it has
+generally been considered that Whitney greatly improved the way of
+manufacturing arms and laid his country under permanent obligations by
+augmenting our facilities for national defence. In 1812 he made a
+contract to manufacture for the United States 15,000 stand of arms, and
+in the meantime a similar contract with the State of New York. Several
+other persons made contracts with the Government at about the same time
+and attempted the manufacture of muskets. The result of their efforts
+was a complete failure, and in some instances they expended a
+considerable fortune in addition to the amount received for their work.
+In 1822 Calhoun, then Secretary of War, admitted in a conversation with
+Whitney that the Government was saving $25,000 a year at the public
+armories alone by his improvements, and it should be remembered that
+the utility of Whitney's labors during this part of his life was not
+limited to this particular business.
+
+In 1812 Whitney made application to Congress for the renewal of his
+patent for the cotton-gin. In his memorial he presented the history of
+the struggles he had been forced to make in defence of his rights,
+observing that he had been unable to obtain any decision on the merits
+of his claim until thirteen years of his patent had expired. He states
+also that his invention had been a source of opulence to thousands of
+the citizens of the United States; that as a labor-saving machine it
+would enable one man to perform the work of a thousand men, and that it
+furnished to the whole family of mankind, at a very cheap rate, the most
+essential material for their clothing. Although so great advantages had
+already been experienced, and the prospect of future benefits was so
+promising, still, many of those whose interest had been most promoted
+and the value of whose property had been most enhanced by this
+invention, had obstinately persisted in refusing to make any
+compensation to the inventor. From the State in which he had first made,
+and where, he had first introduced his machine, and which had derived
+the most signal benefits--Georgia--he had received nothing; and from no
+State had he received the amount of half a cent per pound on the cotton
+cleaned with his machines in one year. Estimating the value of the labor
+of one man at twenty cents a day, the whole amount which had been
+received by him for his invention was not equal to the value of the
+labor saved in one hour by his machines then in use in the United
+States. He continues:
+
+    "It is objected that if the patentee succeeds in procuring the
+    renewal of his patent he will be too rich. There is no probability
+    that the patentee, if the term of his patent were extended for
+    twenty years, would ever obtain for his invention one-half as much
+    as many an individual will gain by the use of it. Up to the present
+    time the whole amount of what he had acquired from this source,
+    after deducting his expenses, does not exceed one-half the sum which
+    a single individual has gained by the use of the machine in one
+    year. It is true that considerable sums have been obtained from some
+    of the States where the machine is used, but no small portion of
+    these sums has been expended in prosecuting his claim in a State
+    where nothing has been obtained, and where his machine has been used
+    to the greatest advantage."
+
+Notwithstanding these cogent arguments, the application was rejected by
+the courts. Some liberal-minded and enlightened men from the cotton
+districts favored the petition, but a majority of the members from that
+part of the Union were warmly opposed to granting it. In a letter to
+Robert Fulton, Whitney says:
+
+    "The difficulties with which I have to contend have originated,
+    principally, in the want of a disposition in mankind to do justice.
+    My invention was new and distinct from every other; it stood alone.
+    It was not interwoven with anything before known; and it can seldom
+    happen that an invention or improvement is so strongly marked and
+    can be so clearly and specifically identified; and I have always
+    believed that I should have no difficulty in causing my right to be
+    respected, if it had been less valuable, and been used only by a
+    small portion of the community. But the use of this machine being
+    immensely profitable to almost every planter in the cotton
+    districts, all were interested in trespassing upon the patent-right,
+    and each kept the other in countenance. Demagogues made themselves
+    popular by misrepresentations and unfounded clamors, both against
+    the right and against the law made for its protection. Hence there
+    arose associations and combinations to oppose both. At one time, but
+    few men in Georgia dared to come into court and testify to the most
+    simple facts within their knowledge, relative to the use of the
+    machine. In one instance I had great difficulty in proving that the
+    machine had been used in Georgia, although at the same moment there
+    were three separate sets of this machinery in motion within fifty
+    yards of the building in which the court sat, and all so near that
+    the rattling of the wheels was distinctly heard on the steps of the
+    court-house."
+
+Such perseverance, patience, and uncommon skill were not, however, to go
+wholly unrewarded. Whitney's factory of arms in New Haven made money for
+him, and the Southern States were not all guilty of ingratitude.
+Moreover, in his private life he was extremely fortunate. In January,
+1817, he married Henrietta Edwards, the youngest daughter of Judge
+Pierpont Edwards, of Connecticut. A son and three daughters contributed
+to the sunshine of the close of a somewhat stormy and eventful life. His
+last years were his happiest. He found prosperity and honor in New
+Haven, where he died on January 8, 1825, after a tedious illness.
+
+In person Whitney was of more than usual height, with much dignity of
+manner and an open, pleasant face. Among his particular friends no man
+was more esteemed. Some of the earliest of his intimate associates were
+among the latest. His sense of honor was high, and his feeling of
+resentment and indignation under injustice correspondingly strong. He
+could, however, be cool when his opponents were hot, and his strong
+sense of the injuries he had suffered did not impair the natural
+serenity of his temper. The value of his famous invention has so
+steadily grown that its money importance to this country can scarcely be
+estimated in figures. His tomb in New Haven is after a model of that of
+Scipio, at Rome, and bears the following inscription:
+
+  ELI WHITNEY,
+
+  THE INVENTOR OF THE COTTON-GIN.
+
+  OF USEFUL SCIENCE AND ARTS, THE EFFICIENT PATRON
+  AND IMPROVER.
+
+  IN THE SOCIAL RELATIONS OF LIFE, A MODEL OF EXCELLENCE.
+
+  WHILE PRIVATE AFFECTION WEEPS AT HIS TOMB, HIS
+  COUNTRY HONORS HIS MEMORY.
+
+  BORN DEC. 8, 1765. DIED JAN. 8, 1825.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+ELIAS HOWE.
+
+
+[Illustration: Elias Howe.]
+
+In looking over the history of great inventions it is remarkable how
+uniformly those discoveries that helped mankind most have been derided,
+abused, and opposed by the very classes which in the end they were
+destined to bless. Nearly every great invention has had literally to be
+forced into popular acceptance. The bowmen of the Middle Ages resisted
+the introduction of the musket; the sedan-chair carriers would not allow
+hackney carriages to be used; the stagecoach lines attempted by all
+possible devices to block the advance of the railway. When, in 1707, Dr.
+Papin showed his first rude conception of a steamboat, it was seized by
+the boatmen, who feared that it would deprive them of a living. Kay was
+mobbed in Lancashire when he tried to introduce his fly-shuttle;
+Hargreaves had his spinning-frame destroyed by a Blackburn mob; Crampton
+had to hide his spinning-mule in a lumber-room for fear of a similar
+fate; Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning-frame, was denounced as
+the enemy of the working-classes and his mill destroyed; Jacquard
+narrowly escaped being thrown into the river Rhone by a crowd of furious
+weavers when his new loom was first put into operation; Cartwright had
+to abandon his power-loom for years because of the bitter animosity of
+the weavers toward it. Riots were organized in Nottingham against the
+use of the stocking-loom.
+
+It is not therefore surprising that the greatest labor-saving machine of
+domestic life, the sewing-machine, should have been received with
+anything but thanks. Howe was abused, ridiculed, and denounced as the
+enemy of man, and especially of poor sewing-women, the very class whose
+toil he has done so much to lighten. Curses instead of blessings were
+showered upon him during the first years that followed the successful
+working of his wonderful machine. Fortunately for the inventor, the age
+of persecution had almost passed, and Howe lived to receive the rewards
+he so fully deserved.
+
+Elias Howe, Jr., was born in Spencer, Mass., in 1819. His father was a
+farmer and miller, and the eight children of the family, as was common
+with all poor people of the time, were early taught to do light work of
+one kind or another. When Elias was six years old he was set with his
+brothers and sisters at sticking wire teeth through the leather straps
+used for cotton-cards. When older he helped his father in the mill, and
+in summer picked up a little book knowledge at the district school. As a
+boy he was frail in constitution, and he was slightly lame. When eleven
+years old he attempted farm labor for a neighbor, but, was not strong
+enough for it and returned to his father's mill, where he remained
+until he was sixteen. It was here that he first began to like machinery.
+A friend who had visited Lowell gave him such an account of that
+bustling city and its big mills that young Howe, becoming dissatisfied,
+obtained his father's consent to leave, and found employment in one of
+the Lowell cotton-mills. The financial crash of 1837 stopped the looms,
+and Howe obtained a place in a Cambridge machine-shop in which his
+cousin, Nathaniel P. Banks, afterward Governor of Massachusetts, also
+worked. Howe's first job happened to be upon a new hemp-carding machine
+of Treadwell.
+
+At the age of twenty-one Howe married and moved to Boston, finding
+employment in the machine-shop of Ari Davis. He is described as being a
+capital workman, more full of resources than of plodding industry,
+however, and rather apt to spend more time in suggesting a better way of
+doing a job than in following instructions. With such a disposition, and
+inasmuch as his suggestions were not considered of value, he had rather
+a hard time of it. Three children were born to the young couple. As
+Howe's earnings were slight and his health none of the best, his wife
+tried to add to the family income, and at evening, when Howe lay
+exhausted upon the bed after his day's work, the young mother patiently
+sewed. Her toil was to some purpose. With his natural bent for
+mechanics, Howe could not be a silent witness of this incessant and
+poorly paid labor without becoming interested in affording aid.
+Moreover, he was constantly employed upon new spinning and weaving
+machines for doing work that for thousands of years had been done
+painfully and slowly by hand. The possibility of sewing by machinery had
+often been spoken of before that day, but the problem seemed to present
+insuperable difficulties.
+
+Elias Howe had, as we know, peculiar fitness for such work. He had seen
+much of inventors and inventions, and knew something of the dangers and
+disappointments in store for him. In the intervals between important
+jobs at the shop he nursed the idea of a sewing-machine, keeping his own
+counsel. In his first rude attempt it appeared to him, that
+machine-sewing could only be accomplished with very coarse thread or
+string; fine thread would not stand the strain. For his first machine he
+made a needle pointed at both ends, with an eye in the middle; it was
+arranged to work up and down, carrying the thread through at each
+thrust. It was only after more than a year's work upon this device that
+he decided it would not do. This first attempt was a sort of imitation
+of sewing by hand, the machine following more or less the movements of
+the hand. Finally, after repeated failures, it became plain to him that
+something radically different was needed, and that there must be another
+stitch, and perhaps another needle or half a dozen needles, in such a
+machine. He then conceived the idea of using two threads, and making the
+stitch by means of a shuttle and a curved needle with the eye near the
+point. This was the real solution of the problem. In October, 1844, he
+made a rough model of his first sewing-machine, all of wood and wire,
+and found that it would actually sew.
+
+In one of the earliest accounts of the invention it is thus described:
+"He used a needle and a shuttle of novel construction, and combined them
+with holding surfaces, feed mechanism, and other devices as they had
+never before been brought together in one machine.... One of the
+principal features of Mr. Howe's invention is the combination of a
+grooved needle having an eye near its point, and vibrating in the
+direction of its length, with a side-pointed shuttle for effecting a
+locked stitch, and forming, with the threads, one on each side of the
+cloth, a firm and lasting seam not easily ripped."
+
+Meanwhile Howe had given up work as a machinist and had moved to his
+father's house in Cambridge, where the elder Howe had a shop for the
+cutting of palm-leaf used in the manufacture of hats. Here Elias and his
+little family lived, and in the garret the inventor put up a lathe upon
+which he made the parts of his sewing-machine. To provide for his family
+he did such odd jobs as he could find; but it was hard work to get
+bread, to say nothing of butter, and to make matters worse his father
+lost his shop by fire. Elias knew that his sewing-machine would work,
+but he had no money wherewith to buy the materials for a machine of
+steel and iron, and without such a machine he could not hope to interest
+capital in it. He needed at least $500 with which to prove the value of
+his great invention.
+
+Fortune threw in his way a coal and wood dealer of Cambridge, named
+Fisher, who had some money. Fisher liked the invention and agreed to
+board Howe and his family, to give Howe a workshop in his house, and to
+advance the $500 necessary for the construction of a first machine. In
+return he was to become a half owner in the patent should Howe succeed
+in obtaining one. In December, 1844, Howe accordingly moved into
+Fisher's house, and here the new marvel was brought into the world. All
+that winter Howe worked over his device in Fisher's garret, making many
+changes as unforeseen difficulties arose. He worked all day, and
+sometimes nearly all night, succeeding by April, 1845, in sewing a seam
+four yards long with his machine. By the middle of May the machine was
+completed, and in July Howe sewed with it the seams of two woollen
+suits, one for himself and the other for Fisher; the sewing was so well
+done that it promised to outlast the cloth. For many years this machine
+was exhibited in a shop in New York. It showed how completely, at really
+the first attempt, Howe had mastered the enormous difficulties in his
+way. Its chief features are those upon which were founded all the
+sewing-machines that followed.
+
+Late in 1845 Howe obtained his first patent and began to take means to
+introduce his sewing-machine to the public. He first offered it to the
+tailors of Boston, who admitted its usefulness, but assured him that it
+would never be adopted, as it would ruin their trade. Other efforts
+were equally unsuccessful; the more perfectly the machine did its work,
+the more obstinate and determined seemed to be the resistance to it.
+Everyone admitted and praised the ingenuity of the invention, but no one
+would invest a dollar in it. Fisher became disheartened and withdrew
+from the partnership, and Howe and his family moved back into his
+father's house.
+
+For a time the poor inventor abandoned his machine and obtained a place
+as engineer on a railway, driving a locomotive, until his health
+entirely broke down. Forced to turn again to his beloved sewing-machine
+for want of anything better to do, Howe decided to send his brother
+Amasa to England with a machine. Amasa reached London in October, 1846,
+and met a certain William Thomas, to whom he explained the invention.
+Thomas was much impressed with its possibilities and offered $1,250 for
+the machine and also to engage Elias Howe at $15 a week if he would
+enter his business of umbrella and corset maker. This was at least a
+livelihood to the latter, and he sailed for England, where for the next
+eight months he worked for Thomas, whom he found an uncommonly hard
+master. He was indeed so harshly treated that, although his wife and
+three children had arrived in London, he threw up his situation. For a
+time his condition was a piteous one. He was in a strange country,
+without friends or money. For days at a time the little family were
+without more than crusts to live upon.
+
+Believing that he could struggle along better alone, Howe sent his
+family home with the first few dollars that he could obtain from the
+other side and remained in London. There were certain things which
+caused him to hope for better times ahead. But such hopes were delusive,
+it seems, and after some months of hardship he followed his family to
+this country, pawning his model and his patent papers in order to obtain
+the necessary money for the passage. As he landed in New York with less
+than a dollar in his pocket, he received news that his wife was dying of
+consumption in Cambridge. He had no money for travelling by rail, and he
+was too feeble to attempt the journey on foot. It took him some days to
+obtain the money for his fare to Boston, but he arrived in time to be
+present at the death-bed of his wife. Before he could recover from this
+blow he had news that the ship by which he had sent home the few
+household goods still remaining to him had gone to the bottom.
+
+This was poor Howe's darkest hour. Others had seen the value of the
+sewing-machine, and during his absence in England several imitations of
+it had been made and sold to great advantage by unscrupulous mechanics,
+who had paid no attention to the rights of the inventor. Such machines
+were already spoken of as wonders by the newspapers, and were beginning
+to be used in several industries. Howe's patent was so strong that it
+was not difficult to find money to defend it, once the practical value
+of the invention had been well established, and in August, 1850, he
+began several suits to make his rights clear. At the same time he moved
+to New York, where he began in a small way to manufacture machines in
+partnership with a business man named Bliss, who undertook to sell them.
+
+It was not until Howe's rights to the invention had been fully
+established, which was done by the decision of Judge Sprague, in 1854,
+that the real value of the sewing-machine as a money-making venture
+began to be apparent and even then its great importance was so little
+realized, even by Bliss, who was in the business and died in 1855, that
+Howe was enabled to buy the interest of his heirs for a small sum. It
+was during these efforts to introduce the sewing-machine that occurred
+what were known as the sewing-machine riots--disturbances of no special
+importance, however--fomented by labor leaders in the New York shops in
+which cheap clothing was manufactured. Howe's sewing-machine was
+denounced as a menace to the thousands of men and women who worked in
+these shops, and in several establishments the first Howe machines
+introduced were so injured by mischievous persons as to retard the
+success of the experiment for nearly a year. Failing to stop their
+introduction by such means a public demonstration against them was
+organized and for a time threatened such serious trouble that some of
+the large shops gave up the use of the machine; but in small
+establishments employing but a few workmen they continued to be used and
+were soon found to be so indispensable that all opposition faded away.
+
+The patent suits forced upon Howe by a number of infringers were costly
+drains upon the inventor, but in the end all other manufacturers were
+compelled to pay tribute to him, and in six years his royalties grew
+from $300 to more than $200,000 a year. In 1863 his royalties were
+estimated at $4,000 a day. At the Paris Exposition of 1867 he was
+awarded a gold medal and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor.
+
+Howe's health, never strong, was so thoroughly broken by the years of
+struggle and hardship he met with while trying to introduce his machine
+that he never completely recovered. If honors and money were any comfort
+to him, his last years must have been happy ones, for his invention made
+him famous, and he had been enough of a workingman to recognize the
+blessing he had conferred upon millions of women released from the
+slavery of the needle; he had answered Hood's "Song of the Shirt." He
+died on October 3, 1867, at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y.
+
+Those who knew Howe personally speak of him as rather a handsome man,
+with a head somewhat like Franklin's and a reserved, quiet manner. His
+bitter struggle against poverty and disease left its impress upon him
+even to the last. One trait frequently mentioned was his readiness to
+find good points in the thousand and one variations and sometimes
+improvements upon his invention. During the years 1858-67, when he died,
+there were recorded nearly three hundred patents affecting the
+sewing-machine, taken out by other inventors. Howe was always ready to
+help along such improvements by advice and often by money. He fought
+sturdily for his rights, but once those conceded he was a generous
+rival.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.
+
+
+[Illustration: Birthplace of S.F.B. Morse, Built 1775.]
+
+Samuel Finley Breese Morse was the eldest son of the Rev. Jedediah
+Morse, an eminent New England divine. The Rev. Samuel Finley, D.D.,
+second president of the College of New Jersey, Princeton, was his
+maternal great-grandfather, after whom he was named. Breese was the
+maiden name of his mother. The famous inventor of the telegraph was born
+at the foot of Breed's Hill, Charlestown, Mass., April 27, 1791. Dr.
+Belknap, of Boston, writing to Postmaster-General Hazard, New York,
+says:
+
+"Congratulate the Monmouth judge (Mr. Breese, the grandfather) on the
+birth of a grandson. Next Sunday he is to be loaded with names, not
+quite so many as the Spanish ambassador who signed the treaty of peace
+of 1783, but only four. As to the child, I saw him asleep, so can say
+nothing of his eye, or his genius peeping through it. He may have the
+sagacity of a Jewish rabbi, or the profundity of a Calvin, or the
+sublimity of a Homer for aught I know, but time will bring forth all
+things."
+
+Jedediah Morse studied theology under the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Edwards.
+Before he began preaching, and while teaching school in New Haven, he
+began his "American Geography," which was afterward indentified with his
+name. He began his ministry at Norwich, whence he was called back to be
+tutor in Yale. His health was inadequate to the work and he went to
+Georgia, returning to Charlestown, Mass., as pastor of the First
+Congregational Church, on the day that Washington was inaugurated as
+President in New York, April 30, 1789. Dr. Eliot, speaking of Jedediah
+Morse, said: "What an astonishing impetus that man has!" President
+Dwight said: "He is as full of resources as an egg is of meat." Daniel
+Webster spoke of him as "always thinking, always writing, always
+talking, always acting."
+
+[Illustration: S.F.B. Morse.]
+
+Morse's mother, Elizabeth Anne Breese, came of good Scotch-Irish stock.
+She was married to Jedediah Morse in 1789, and was noted as a calm,
+judicious, and thinking woman, with a will of her own. When the child,
+Samuel F.B. Morse, was four years old he was sent to school to an old
+lady within a few hundred yards of the parsonage. She was an invalid,
+unable to leave her chair, and governed her unruly flock with a long
+rattan which reached across the small room in which it was gathered. One
+of her punishments was pinning the culprit to her own dress, and Morse
+remarks that his first attempts at drawing were discouraged in this
+fashion. Perhaps the fact that he selected the old lady's face as a
+model had something to do with it. At the age of seven he was sent to
+school at Andover, where he was fitted for entering Phillips Academy,
+and prepared here for Yale, joining the class of 1807. When he was
+thirteen years old, at Andover, he wrote a sketch of Demosthenes and
+sent it to his father, by whom it was preserved as a mark of the
+learning and taste of the child. Dr. Timothy Dwight was then president
+of Yale and a warm friend of the elder Morse. Finley Morse, as he was
+then known, received therefore the deep personal interest of Dr. Dwight.
+Jeremiah Day was professor of natural philosophy in Yale College, and
+under his instruction Morse began the study of electricity, receiving
+perhaps those impressions that were destined to produce so great an
+influence upon him and, through him, upon this century. Professor Day
+was then young and ardent in the pursuit of science, kindling readily
+the enthusiasm of his students. He afterward became president of the
+college. There was at the same time in the faculty Benjamin Silliman,
+who was professor of chemistry, and near whom Morse resided for several
+years. Years afterward the testimony of Professors Day and Silliman was
+given in court, when it was important, in the defence of his claim to
+priority in the invention of the telegraph. Through them Morse was able
+to show that he was early interested in the study of chemistry and
+electricity. During this litigation Morse did not know that there were
+scores of letters, written by him as a young student to his father,
+among the papers of Dr Jedediah Morse, that would have shown
+conclusively his interest and aptitude in these studies. The papers
+were brought to light when the life of Morse by Prime came to be
+written.
+
+The first part of Morse's life was devoted to art. At a very early age
+he showed his taste in this direction, and at the age of fifteen painted
+a fairly good picture in water colors of a room in his father's house,
+with his parents, himself, and two brothers around a table. This picture
+used to hang in his home in New York by the side of his last painting.
+From that time his desire to become an artist haunted him through his
+collegiate life. In February, 1811, he painted a picture, now in the
+office of the mayor of Charlestown, Mass., depicting the landing of the
+Pilgrims at Plymouth, which, with a landscape painted at about the same
+time, decided his father, by the advice of Stuart, to permit him to
+visit Europe with Washington Allston. He bore letters to West and to
+Copley, from both of whom he received the kindest attention and
+encouragement.
+
+As a test for his fitness for a place as student in the Royal Academy,
+Morse made a drawing from a small cast of the Farnese Hercules. He took
+this to West, who examined the drawing carefully and handed it back,
+saying: "Very well, sir, very well; go on and finish it." "It is
+finished," said the expectant student. "Oh, no," said the president.
+"Look here, and here, and here," pointing out many unfinished places
+which had escaped the eye of the young artist. Morse quickly observed
+the defects, spent a week in further perfecting his drawing, and then
+took it to West, confident that it was above criticism. The venerable
+president of the Academy bestowed more praise than before and, with a
+pleasant smile, handed it back to Morse, saying: "Very well, indeed,
+sir. Go on and finish it." "Is it not finished?" inquired the almost
+discouraged student. "See," said West, "you have not marked that muscle,
+nor the articulation of the finger-joints." Three days more were spent
+upon the drawing, when it was taken back to the implacable critic. "Very
+clever, indeed," said West; "very clever. Now go on and finish it." "I
+cannot finish it," Morse replied, when the old man, patting him on the
+shoulder, said: "Well, I have tried you long enough. Now, sir, you have
+learned more by this drawing than you would have accomplished in double
+the time by a dozen half-finished beginnings. It is not many drawings,
+but the character of one which makes a thorough draughtsman. Finish one
+picture, sir, and you are a painter."
+
+Morse heeded this advice. He went to work with Allston, and encouraged
+by the veteran, Copley, he began upon a large picture for exhibition in
+the Royal Academy, choosing as his subject "The Dying Hercules." He
+modelled his figure in clay, as the best of the old painters did. It was
+his first attempt in the sculptor's art. The cast was made in plaster
+and taken to West, who was delighted with it. This model contended for
+the prize of a gold medal offered by the Society of Arts for the best
+original cast of a single figure, and won it. In the large room of the
+London Adelphi, in the presence of the British nobility, foreign
+ambassadors, and distinguished strangers, the Duke of Norfolk publicly
+presented the medal to Morse on May 13, 1813. At the same time the
+painting from this model, then on exhibition at the Royal Academy,
+received great praise from the critics, who placed "The Dying Hercules"
+among the first twelve pictures in a collection of almost two thousand.
+
+This was an extraordinary success for so young a man, and Morse
+determined to try for the highest prize offered by the Royal Academy for
+the best historical composition, the decision to be made in 1815. For
+that purpose he produced his "Judgment of Jupiter" in July of that year.
+West assured him that it would take the prize, but Morse was unable to
+comply with the rules of the Academy, which required the victor to
+receive the medal in person. His father had summoned him home. West
+urged the Academy to make an exception in his case, but it could not be
+done, and the young painter had to be contented with his assurances that
+he would certainly have won the prize (a gold medal and $250) had he
+remained.
+
+West was always kind to Americans, and Morse was a favorite with him.
+One day, when the venerable painter was at work upon his great picture,
+"Christ Rejected," after carefully examining Morse's hands and noting
+their beauty, he said: "Let me tie you with this cord and take that
+place while I paint in the hands of the Saviour." This was done, and
+when he released the young artist, he said to him: "You may now say, if
+you please, that you had a hand in this picture." A number of noted
+English artists--Turner, Northcote, Sir James Lawrence, Flaxman--and
+literary men--Coleridge, Wordsworth, Rogers, and Crabbe among them--were
+attracted by young Morse's proficiency and pleasant manners, and when in
+August, 1815, he packed his picture, "The Judgment of Jupiter," and
+sailed for home, he bore with him the good wishes of some of England's
+most distinguished men.
+
+When Morse reached Boston, although but twenty-four years old, he found
+that fame had preceded him. His prestige was such that he set up his
+easel with high hopes and fair prospects for the future, both destined
+soon to be dispelled. The taste of America had not risen to the
+appreciation of historical pictures. His original compositions and his
+excellent copies of the masterpieces of the Old World excited the
+admiration of cultured people, but no orders were given for them. He
+left Boston almost penniless after having waited for months for
+patronage, and determined to try to earn his bread by painting the
+portraits of people in the rural districts of New England, where his
+father's name was a household word. During the autumn of 1816 and the
+winter of 1816-1817 he visited several towns in New Hampshire and
+Vermont, painting portraits in Walpole, Hanover, Windsor, Portsmouth,
+and Concord. He received the modest sum of $15 for each portrait. From
+Concord, N.H., he writes to his parents: "I am still here (August 16th)
+and am passing my time very agreeably. I have painted five portraits at
+$15 each, and have two more engaged and many talked of. I think I shall
+get along well. I believe I could make an independent fortune in a few
+years if I devoted myself exclusively to portraits, so great is the
+desire for good portraits in the different country towns." He doubtless
+was candid when he wrote that he was "passing his time in Concord very
+agreeably," for it was here that he met Lucretia P. Walker, who was
+accounted the most beautiful and accomplished young lady of the town,
+whom Morse subsequently married. She was a young woman of great personal
+loveliness and rare good sense. The young artist was attracted by her
+beauty, her sweetness of temper, and high intellectual qualities. All
+the letters that she wrote to him before and after their marriage he
+carefully preserved, and these are witnesses to her intelligence,
+education, tenderness of feeling, and admirable fitness to be the wife
+of such a man. Gradually Morse's portraits became so much in demand that
+he was enabled to increase his price to $60, and as he painted four a
+week upon the average, and received a good deal of money during a tour
+in the South, he was enabled to return to New England in 1818 with
+$3,000, and to marry Miss Walker on October 6th of that year.
+
+The first years of Morse's married life were passed in Charleston, S.C.,
+after which he returned to New England, and having laid by some little
+capital, he took up again what he deemed to be his real vocation--the
+painting of great historical pictures. His first venture in this
+direction was an exhibition picture of the House of Representatives at
+Washington. As a business venture it was disastrous, and resulted in the
+loss of eighteen months of precious time. It was finally sold to an
+Englishman. Then began Morse's life in New York. Through the influence
+of Isaac Lawrence he obtained a commission from the city authorities of
+New York to paint a full-length portrait of Lafayette, who was then in
+this country. He had just completed his study from life in Washington in
+February, 1825, when he received the news of the death of his wife. A
+little more than a year afterward both his father and mother died.
+Thenceforward his children and art absorbed his affections.
+
+He was an artist, heart and soul, and his professional brethren soon had
+good reason to be grateful to him. The American Academy of Fine Arts,
+then under the presidency of Colonel John Trumbull, was in a languishing
+state and of little use to artists. The most advanced of its members
+felt the need of relief, and a few of them met at Morse's rooms to
+discuss their troubles. At that meeting Morse proposed the formation of
+a new society of artists, and at a meeting held at the New York
+Historical Society's rooms the "New York Drawing Association" was
+organized, with Morse as its president. Trumbull endeavored to compel
+the new society to profess allegiance to the academy, but Morse
+protested, and thanks to his advice, on January 18, 1826, a new art
+association was organized under the name of the "National Academy of
+Design." Morse was its first president, and for sixteen years he was
+annually elected to that office. The friends of the old academy were
+wrathful and assailed the new association. A war of words, in which
+Morse acted as the champion of the new society, was waged until victory
+was conceded to the reformers. Thus Morse inaugurated a new era in the
+history of the fine arts in this country. He wrote, talked, lectured
+incessantly for the advancement of art and the Academy of Design.
+
+[Illustration: Under Side of a Modern Switchboard, showing 2,000 Wires.]
+
+In 1829 Morse made a second visit to Europe, where he was warmly
+welcomed and honored by the Royal Academy. During three years or more
+he lived in continental cities, studying the Louvre in Paris and making
+of the famous gallery an exhibition picture which contained about fifty
+miniatures of the works in that collection. In November, 1832, he was
+back again in New York, with high hopes as to his future. Allston,
+writing to Dunlap in 1834, said: "I rejoice to hear your report of
+Morse's advance in his art. I know what is in him perhaps better than
+anyone else. If he will only bring out all that is there he will show
+parts that many now do not dream of."
+
+For several years the thoughts of the artist Morse had been busy with a
+matter wholly outside of his chosen domain. Some lectures on
+electro-magnetism by his intimate friend, Judge Freeman Dana, given at
+the Athenaeum while Morse was also lecturing there on the fine arts, had
+greatly interested him in the subject, and he learned much in
+conversation with Dana. While on his second visit to Europe Morse made
+himself acquainted with the labors of scientific men in their endeavors
+to communicate intelligence between far-distant places by means of
+electro-magnetism, and he saw an electro-magnet signalling instrument in
+operation. He knew that so early as 1649 a Jesuit priest had prophesied
+an electric telegraph, and that for half a century or more students had
+partially succeeded in attempts of this kind. But no practical telegraph
+had yet been invented. In 1774 Le Sage made an electro-signalling
+instrument with twenty-four wires, one for each letter of the alphabet.
+In 1825 Sturgeon invented an electro-magnet. In 1830 Professor Henry
+increased the magnetic force that Morse afterward used.
+
+On board the ship Sully, in which Morse sailed from Havre to New York,
+in the autumn of 1832, the recent discovery in France of the means of
+obtaining an electric spark from a magnet was a favorite topic of
+conversation among the passengers, and it was during the voyage that
+Morse conceived the idea of an electro-magnetic and chemical recording
+telegraph. Before he reached New York he had made drawings and
+specifications of his conception, which he exhibited to his fellow
+passengers. Few great inventions that have made their authors immortal
+were so completely grasped at inception as this. Morse was accustomed to
+keep small note-books in which to make records of his work, and scores
+of these books are still in existence. As he sat upon the deck of the
+Sully, one night after dinner, he drew from his pocket one of these
+books and began to make marks, to represent letters and figures to be
+produced by electricity at a distance. The mechanism by which the
+results were to be reached was wrought out by slow and laborious
+thought, but the vision as a whole was clear. The current of electricity
+passed instantaneously to any distance along a wire, but the current
+being interrupted, a spark appeared. This spark represented one sign;
+its absence another; the time of its absence still another. Here are
+three signs to be combined into the representation of figures or
+letters. They can be made to form an alphabet. Words may thus be
+indicated. A telegraph, an instrument to record at a distance, will
+result. Continents shall be crossed. This great and wide sea shall be no
+barrier. "If it will go ten miles without stopping," he said, "I can
+make it go around the globe."
+
+He worked incessantly all that next day and could not sleep at night in
+his berth. In a few days he submitted some rough drafts of his invention
+to William C. Rives, of Virginia, who was returning from Paris, where he
+had been minister of the United States. Mr. Rives suggested various
+difficulties, over which Morse spent several sleepless nights,
+announcing in the morning at breakfast-table the new devices by which he
+proposed to accomplish the task before him. He exhibited a drawing of
+the instrument which he said would do the work, and so completely had he
+mastered all the details that five years afterward, when a model of this
+instrument was constructed, it was instantly recognized as the one he
+had devised and drawn in his sketch-book and exhibited to his fellow
+passengers on the ship. In view of subsequent claims made by a fellow
+passenger to the honor of having suggested the telegraph, these details
+are interesting and important.
+
+[Illustration: The First Telegraphic Instrument, as Exhibited in 1837 by
+Morse.]
+
+Circumstances delayed the construction of a recording telegraph by
+Morse, but the subject slumbered in his mind. During his absence abroad
+he had been elected professor of the literature of the arts of design,
+in the University of the City of New York, and this work occupied his
+attention for some time. Three years afterward, in November, 1835, he
+completed a rude telegraph instrument--the first recording apparatus;
+but it embodied the mechanical principle now in use the world over. His
+whole plan was not completed until July, 1837, when by means of two
+instruments he was able to communicate from as well as to a distant
+point. In September hundreds of people saw the new instrument in
+operation at the university, most of whom looked upon it as a scientific
+toy constructed by an unfortunate dreamer. The following year the
+invention was sufficiently perfected to enable Morse to direct the
+attention of Congress to it and ask its aid in the construction of an
+experimental line between Washington and Baltimore.
+
+Late in the long session of 1838 he appeared before that body with his
+instrument. Before leaving New York with it he had invited a few friends
+to see it work. Now began in the life of Morse a period of years during
+which his whole time was devoted to convincing the world, first, that
+his electric telegraph would really communicate messages, and, secondly,
+that if it worked at all, it was of great practical value. Strange to
+say that this required any argument at all. But that in those days it
+did may be inferred from the fact that Morse could then find no help far
+or near. His invention was regarded as interesting, but of no importance
+either scientifically or commercially. In Washington, where he first
+went, he found so little encouragement that he went to Europe with the
+hope of drawing the attention of foreign governments to the advantages,
+and of securing patents for the invention; he had filed a caveat at the
+Patent Office in this country. His mission was a failure. England
+refused him a patent, and France gave him only a useless paper which
+assured for him no special privileges. He returned home disappointed but
+not discouraged, and waited four years longer before he again attempted
+to interest Congress in his invention.
+
+[Illustration: The Modern Morse Telegraph.]
+
+This extraordinary struggle lasted twelve years, during which, with his
+mind absorbed in one idea and yet almost wholly dependent for bread upon
+his profession as an artist, it was impossible to pursue art with the
+enthusiasm and industry essential to success. His situation was forlorn
+in the extreme. The father of three little children, now motherless, his
+pecuniary means exhausted by his residence in Europe, and unable to
+pursue art without sacrificing his invention, he was at his wits' ends.
+He had visions of usefulness by the invention of a telegraph that should
+bring the continents of the earth into intercourse. He was poor and knew
+that wealth as well as fame was within his reach. He had long received
+assistance from his father and brothers when his profession did not
+supply the needed means of support for himself and family; but it seemed
+like robbery to take the money of others for experiments, the success of
+which he could not expect them to believe in until he could give
+practical evidence that the instrument would do the work proposed. It
+was the old story of genius contending with poverty. His brothers
+comforted, encouraged, and cheered him. In the house of his brother
+Richard he found a home and the tender care that he required. Sidney,
+the other brother, also helped him. On the corner of Nassau and Beekman
+Streets, now the site of the handsome Morse Building, his brothers
+erected a building where were the offices of the newspaper of which they
+were the editors and proprietors. In the fifth story of this building a
+room was assigned to him which was for several years his studio,
+bedroom, parlor, kitchen, and workshop. On one side of the room stood a
+little cot on which he slept in the brief hours which he allowed himself
+for repose. On the other side stood his lathe with which the inventor
+turned the brass apparatus necessary in the construction of his
+instruments. He had, with his own hands, first whittled the model; then
+he made the moulds for the castings. Here were brought to him, day by
+day, crackers and the simplest food, by which, with tea prepared by
+himself, he sustained life while he toiled incessantly to give being to
+the idea that possessed him.
+
+[Illustration: Morse Making his own Instrument.
+
+(From Prime's Life of Morse.)]
+
+Before leaving for Europe he had suffered a great disappointment as an
+artist. The government had offered to American artists, to be selected
+by a committee of Congress, commissions to paint pictures for the panels
+in the rotunda of the Capitol. Morse was anxious to be employed upon one
+or more of them. He was the president of the National Academy of Design,
+and there was an eminent fitness in calling him to this national work.
+Allston urged the appointment of Morse. John Quincy Adams, then a
+member of the House and on the committee to whom this subject was
+referred, submitted a resolution in the House that foreign artists be
+allowed to compete for these commissions, and in support alleged that
+there were no American artists competent to execute the paintings. This
+gave great and just offence to the artists and the public. A severe
+reply to Adams appeared in the New York _Evening Post_. It was written
+by James Fenimore Cooper, but it was attributed to Morse, whose pen was
+well known to be skillful, and in consequence his name was rejected by
+the committee. He never recovered fully from the effects of that blow.
+Forty years afterward he could not speak of it without emotion. He had
+consecrated years of his life to the preparation for just such work.
+
+It was well for him and for his country and the world that the artist in
+Morse was disappointed. From painter he became inventor, and from that
+time until the world acknowledged the greatness and importance of his
+invention he turned not back. His appointment as professor in the City
+University entitled him to certain rooms in the University Building
+looking out upon Washington Square, and here the first working models of
+the telegraph were brought into existence.
+
+"There," he says, "I immediately commenced, with very limited means, to
+experiment upon my invention. My first instrument was made up of an old
+picture or canvas frame fastened to a table; the wheels of an old
+wooden clock, moved by a weight to carry the paper forward; three wooden
+drums, upon one of which the paper was wound and passed over the other
+two; a wooden pendulum suspended to the top piece of the picture or
+stretching frame and vibrating across the paper as it passes over the
+centre wooden drum; a pencil at the lower end of the pendulum, in
+contact with the paper; an electro-magnet fastened to a shelf across the
+picture or stretching frame, opposite to an armature made fast to the
+pendulum; a type rule and type for breaking the circuit, resting on an
+endless band, composed of carpet-binding, which passed over two wooden
+rollers moved by a wooden crank.
+
+[Illustration: Train Telegraph--the message transmitted by induction
+from the moving train to the single wire.]
+
+[Illustration: Interior of a Car on the Lehigh Valley Railroad, showing
+the Method of Operating the Train Telegraph.]
+
+"Up to the autumn of 1837 my telegraphic apparatus existed in so rude a
+form that I felt a reluctance to have it seen. My means were very
+limited--so limited as to preclude the possibility of constructing an
+apparatus of such mechanical finish as to warrant my success in
+venturing upon its public exhibition. I had no wish to expose to
+ridicule the representative of so many hours of laborious thought. Prior
+to the summer of 1837, at which time Mr. Alfred Vail's attention became
+attracted to my telegraph, I depended upon my pencil for subsistence.
+Indeed, so straitened were my circumstances that, in order to save time
+to carry out my invention and to economize my scanty means, I had for
+many months lodged and eaten in my studio, procuring my food in small
+quantities from some grocery and preparing it myself. To conceal from my
+friends the stinted manner in which I lived, I was in the habit of
+bringing my food to my room in the evenings, and this was my mode of
+life for many years."
+
+Before the telegraph was actually tried and practised the cumbersome
+piano-key board devised by Morse in his first experiments was done away
+with and the simple device of a single key, with which we are all
+familiar, was adopted. Meantime Morse was practically abandoning art.
+His friends among the profession had subscribed $3,000 in order to
+enable him to paint the picture he had in mind when he applied for the
+government work at Washington, "The Signing of the First Compact on
+Board the Mayflower," and he undertook the commission in 1838, only to
+give it up in 1841 and to return to the subscribers the amount paid with
+interest.
+
+[Illustration: Diagram showing the Method of Telegraphing from a Moving
+Train by Induction.]
+
+While Morse had been in Paris, in 1839, he had heard of Daguerre, who
+had discovered the method of fixing the image of the camera, which feat
+was then creating a great sensation among scientific men. Professor
+Morse was anxious to see the results of this discovery before leaving
+Paris, and the American consul, Robert Walsh, arranged an interview
+between the two inventors. Daguerre promised to send to Morse a copy of
+the descriptive publication which he intended to make so soon as a
+pension he expected from the French Government for the disclosure of his
+discovery should be secured. He kept his promise, and Morse was probably
+the first recipient of the pamphlet in this country. From the drawings
+it contained he constructed the first photographic apparatus made in the
+United States, and from a back window in the University Building he
+obtained a good representation of the tower of the Church of the Messiah
+on Broadway. This possesses an historical interest as being the first
+photograph in America. It was on a plate the size of a playing-card.
+With Professor J.W. Draper, in a studio built on the roof of the
+University, he succeeded in taking likenesses of the living human face.
+His subjects were compelled to sit fifteen minutes in the bright
+sunlight, with their eyes closed, of course. Professor Draper shortened
+the process and was the first to take portraits with the eyes open.
+
+At the session of Congress of 1842-1843 Morse again appeared with his
+telegraph, and on February 21, 1843, John P. Kennedy, of Maryland, moved
+that a bill appropriating $30,000, to be expended, under the direction
+of the Secretary of the Treasury, in a series of experiments for testing
+the merits of the telegraph, should be considered. The proposal met with
+ridicule. Johnson, of Tennessee, moved, as an amendment, that one-half
+should be given to a lecturer on mesmerism, then in Washington, to try
+mesmeric experiments under the direction of the Secretary of the
+Treasury; and Mr. Houston said that Millerism ought to be included in
+the benefits of the appropriation. After the indulgence of much cheap
+wit, Mr. Mason, of Ohio, protested against such frivolity as injurious
+to the character of the House and asked the chair to rule the amendments
+out of order. The chair (John White, of Kentucky) ruled the amendments
+in order because "it would require a scientific analysis to determine
+how far the magnetism of the mesmerism was analogous to that to be
+employed in telegraphy." This wit was applauded by peals of laughter,
+but the amendment was voted down and the bill passed the House on
+February 23d by the close vote of 89 to 83. In the Senate the bill met
+with neither sneers nor opposition, but its progress was discouragingly
+slow. At twilight on the last evening of the session (March 3, 1842)
+there were one hundred and nineteen bills before it. It seemed
+impossible for it to be reached in regular course before the hour of
+adjournment should arrive, and Morse, who had anxiously watched the
+dreary course of business all day from the gallery of the Senate
+chamber, went with a sad heart to his hotel and prepared to leave for
+New York at an early hour the next morning. His cup of disappointment
+seemed to be about full. With the exception of Alfred Vail, a young
+student in the University, through whose influence some money had been
+subscribed in return for a one-fourth interest in the invention, and of
+Professor L.D. Gale, who had shown much interest in the work and was
+also a partner in the enterprise, Morse knew of no one who seemed to
+believe enough in him and his telegraph to advance another dollar.
+
+As he came down to breakfast the next morning a young lady entered and
+came forward with a smile, exclaiming, "I have come to congratulate
+you." "Upon what?" inquired the professor. "Upon the passage of your
+bill," she replied. "Impossible! Its fate was sealed last evening. You
+must be mistaken." "Not at all," answered the young lady, the daughter
+of Morse's friend, the Commissioner of Patents, H.L. Ellsworth; "father
+sent me to tell you that your bill was passed. He remained until the
+session closed, and yours was the last bill but one acted upon, and it
+was passed just five minutes before the adjournment. And I am so glad to
+be able to be the first one to tell you. Mother says you must come home
+with me to breakfast."
+
+Morse, overcome by the intelligence, promised that his young friend, the
+bearer of these good tidings, should send the first message over the
+first line of telegraph that was opened.
+
+He writes to Alfred Vail that day: "The amount of business before the
+Senate rendered it more and more doubtful, as the session drew to a
+close, whether the House bill on the telegraph would be reached, and on
+the last day, March 3, 1843, I was advised by one of my Senatorial
+friends to make up my mind for failure, as he deemed it next to
+impossible that it could be reached before the adjournment. The bill,
+however, was reached a few minutes before midnight and passed. This was
+the turning point in the history of the telegraph. My personal funds
+were reduced to the fraction of a dollar, and, had the passage of the
+bill failed from any cause, there would have been little prospect of
+another attempt on my part to introduce to the world my new invention."
+
+The appropriation by Congress having been made, Morse went to work with
+energy and delight to construct the first line of his electric
+telegraph. It was important that it should be laid where it would
+attract the attention of the government, and this consideration decided
+the question in favor of a line between Washington and Baltimore. He had
+as assistants Professor Gale and Professor J.C. Fisher. Mr. Vail was to
+devote his attention to making the instruments and the purchase of
+materials. Morse himself was general superintendent under the
+appointment of the government and gave attention to the minutest
+details. All disbursements passed through his hands. In point of
+accuracy, the preservation of vouchers, and presentation of accounts,
+General Washington himself was not more precise, lucid, and correct.
+Ezra Cornell, afterward one of the most successful constructors of
+telegraph lines, was employed to take charge of the work under Morse.
+Much time and expense were lost in consequence of following a plan for
+laying the wires in a leaden tube, and it was only when it was decided
+to string them on posts that work began to proceed rapidly.
+
+In expectation of the meeting of the National Whig Convention, May 1,
+1844, to nominate candidates for President and Vice-President, energy
+was redoubled, and by that time the wires were in working order
+twenty-two miles from Washington toward Baltimore. The day before the
+convention met, Professor Morse wrote to Vail that certain signals
+should mean the nomination of a particular candidate. The experiment was
+approaching its crisis. The convention assembled and Henry Clay was
+nominated by acclamation to the Presidency. The news was conveyed on the
+railroad to the point reached by the telegraph and thence instantly
+transmitted over the wires to Washington. An hour afterward passengers
+arriving at the capital, and supposing that they had brought the first
+intelligence, were surprised to find that the announcement had been made
+already and that they were the bearers of old news. The convention
+shortly afterward nominated Frelinghuysen as Vice-President, and the
+intelligence was sent to Washington in the same manner. Public
+astonishment was great and many persons doubted that the feat could have
+been performed. Before May had elapsed the line reached Baltimore.
+
+[Illustration: Morse in his Study.
+
+(From an old print.)]
+
+On the 24th of May, 1844, Morse was prepared to put to final test the
+great experiment on which his mind had been laboring for twelve anxious
+years. Vail, his assistant, was at the Baltimore terminus. Morse had
+invited his friends to assemble in the chamber of the United States
+Supreme Court, where he had his instrument, from which the wires
+extended to Baltimore. He had promised his young friend, Miss Ellsworth,
+that she should send the first message over the wires. Her mother
+suggested the familiar words of scripture (Numbers, xxiii. 23), "What
+hath God wrought!" The words were chosen without consultation with the
+inventor, but were singularly the expression of his own sentiment and
+his own experience in bringing his work to successful accomplishment.
+Perfectly religious in his convictions, and trained from earliest
+childhood to believe in the special superintendence of Providence in the
+minutest affairs of man, he had acted throughout the whole of his
+struggles under the firm persuasion that God was working in him to do
+His own pleasure in this thing.
+
+The first public messages sent were a notice to Silas Wright in
+Washington of his nomination to the office of Vice-President of the
+United States by the Democratic convention, then in session (May, 1844)
+in Baltimore, and his response declining it. Hendrick B. Wright, in a
+letter written to Mr. B.J. Lossing, says: "As the presiding officer of
+the body I read the despatch, but so incredulous were the members as to
+the authority of the evidence before them that the convention adjourned
+over to the following day to await the report of the committee sent over
+to Washington to get _reliable_ information on the subject." Mr. Vail
+kept a diary in those early days of the telegraph, full of interesting
+reminiscences. It was often necessary, in order to convince incredulous
+visitors to the office that the questions and replies sent over the wire
+were not manufactured or agreed upon beforehand, to allow them to send
+their own remarks. When the committee just mentioned by Mr. Wright
+returned from Baltimore and confirmed the correctness of the report
+given by telegraph, the new invention received a splendid advertisement.
+The convention having reassembled in the morning, and the refusal of
+Wright to accept the nomination having been communicated, a conference
+was held between him and his friends through the medium of Morse's
+wires. In Washington Mr. Wright and Mr. Morse were closeted with the
+instrument; at Baltimore the committee of conference surrounded Vail
+with his instrument. Spectators and auditors were excluded. The
+committee communicated to Mr. Wright their reasons for urging his
+acceptance. In a moment he received their communication in writing and
+as quickly returned his answer. Again and again these confidential
+messages passed, and the result was finally announced to the convention
+that Mr. Wright was inflexible. Mr. Dallas then received the nomination
+and accepted it. The ticket thus nominated was successful at the
+election of that year. The original slips of paper on which some of the
+early messages were written are still preserved, among others this
+request: "As a rumor is prevalent here this morning that Mr. Eugene
+Boyle was shot at Baltimore last evening, Professor Morse will confer a
+great favor upon the family by making inquiry by means of his
+electro-magnetic telegraph if such is the fact."
+
+The telegraph was shown at first without charge. During the session of
+1844-1845 Congress made an appropriation of $8,000 to keep it in
+operation during the year, placing it under the supervision of the
+Postmaster-General, who, at the close of the session, ordered a tariff
+of charges of one cent for every four characters made through the
+telegraph. Mr. Vail was appointed operator for the Washington station
+and Mr. H.J. Rogers for Baltimore. This new order of things began April
+1, 1845, the object being to test the profitableness of the enterprise.
+The first day's income was one cent; on the fifth day twelve and a half
+cents were received; on the seventh the receipts ran up to sixty cents;
+on the eighth to one dollar and thirty-two cents; on the ninth to one
+dollar and four cents. It is worthy of remark, as Mr. Vail notes, that
+the business done after the tariff was fixed was greater than when the
+service was gratuitous.
+
+The telegraph was now a reality. Its completion was hailed with
+enthusiasm, and the newspapers lauded the inventor to the skies.
+Resolutions of thanks and applause were adopted by popular assemblies.
+It was a favorite idea with Professor Morse, from the inception of his
+enterprise, that the telegraph should belong to the government, and he
+sent a communication to Congress making a formal offer. The overture was
+not accepted, but the extension of the line from Baltimore to
+Philadelphia and then to New York was only a work of time. The aid of
+Congress was sought in vain. The appropriation of $8,000 was made, but
+further than that the government declined to go. The sum named as the
+price at which the Morse Company would sell the telegraph to the
+government was $100,000. The subject was discussed in the report of Cave
+Johnson, Postmaster-General under President Polk. He was a member of
+Congress when the bill came up before the House appropriating $30,000
+for the experimental line, and was one of those who ridiculed the whole
+subject as unworthy of the notice of sensible men. As Postmaster-General
+he said in his report, after the experiment had succeeded to the
+satisfaction of mankind, that "the operation of a telegraph between
+Washington and Baltimore had not satisfied him that under any rate of
+postage that could be adopted its revenues could be made equal to its
+expenditures." Such an opinion, with the evidence then in the possession
+of the department, appears to be curious official blindness. But it was
+fortunate for the inventor that the telegraph was left to the private
+enterprise. Twenty-five years after the government had declined to take
+the telegraph at the price of $100,000, a project was started to
+establish lines of telegraph to be used by the government as part of the
+mail postal system. And in 1873 the Postmaster-General, Mr. Cresswell,
+said in his report that the entire first cost of all the lines in the
+country, including patents, was less than $10,000,000; but the property
+of the existing telegraph company was already well worth $50,000,000.
+
+Morse's position was far easier than it had been for many years. His old
+friends, the artists of New York, rallied in force and laid before
+Congress a petition that the professor be employed to execute the
+painting to fill the panel at the Capitol assigned to Inman, who had
+been removed by death. But it came to nothing. Morse was never again to
+take the brush in hand. The first money that he received from his
+invention was the sum of $47, being his share of the amount paid for the
+right to use his patent on a short line from the Washington Post-office
+to the National Observatory. The use he made of the money was
+characteristic of the man. He sent it to the Rev. Dr. Sprole, then a
+pastor in Washington, requesting him to apply it for the benefit of his
+church.
+
+Early in June, 1846, the line from Baltimore to Philadelphia was in
+operation, and that from Philadelphia to New York. Abroad the system was
+working its way steadily into favor. In France an appropriation of
+nearly half a million francs was made to introduce the Morse system. But
+meantime violations of Morse's rights were beginning to crop up on every
+side, both at home and abroad. In a letter to Daniel Lord, his lawyer,
+Morse says:
+
+"The plot thickens all around me; I think a denouement not far off. I
+remember your consoling me under these attacks with bidding me think
+that I had invented something worth contending for. Alas! my dear sir,
+what encouragement is there to an inventor if, after years of toil and
+anxiety, he has only purchased for himself the pleasure of being a
+target for every vile fellow to shoot at, and in proportion as his
+invention is of public utility, so much the greater effort is to be made
+to defame that the robbery may excite the less sympathy? I know,
+however, that beyond all this there is a clear sky; but the clouds may
+not break away till I am no longer personally interested, whether it be
+foul or fair. I wish not to complain, but I have feelings, and cannot
+play the Stoic if I would."
+
+[Illustration: The Siphon Recorder for Receiving Cable Messages--Office
+of the Commercial Cable Company, 1 Broad Street, New York.]
+
+Perhaps the most painful chapter of Morse's life is the history of the
+lawsuits in which he was involved in defence of his rights. His
+reputation as well as his property were assailed. Exceedingly sensitive
+to these attacks, the suits that followed the success of the telegraph
+cost him inexpressible distress. It is some satisfaction to be able to
+record that after years of bitter controversy the final decision was
+favorable to the inventor. Honors began to pour in upon him from even
+the uttermost parts of the earth. The Sultan of Turkey was the first
+monarch to acknowledge Morse as a public benefactor. This was in 1848.
+The kings of Prussia and Wurtemburg and the Emperor of Austria each
+gave him a gold medal, that of the first named being set in a massive
+gold snuff-box. In 1856 the Emperor of the French made him a chevalier
+of the Legion of Honor. Orders from Denmark, Spain, Italy, Portugal soon
+followed. In 1858 a special congress was called by the Emperor of the
+French to devise a suitable testimonial of the nation to Professor
+Morse. Representatives from ten sovereignties convened at Paris and by a
+unanimous vote gave, in the aggregate, $80,000 as an honorary gratuity
+to Professor Morse. The states participating in this testimonial were
+France, Austria, Russia, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Piedmont, the Holy
+See, Tuscany, and Turkey.
+
+Professor Morse was one of the first to suggest and the first to carry
+out the use of a marine cable. During the summer of 1842 he had been
+making elaborate preparations for an experiment destined to give
+wonderful development to his invention. This was no less than a
+submarine wire, to demonstrate the fact that the current of electricity
+could be conducted as well under water as through the air. Of this he
+had entertained no doubt. "If I can make it work ten miles, I can make
+it go around the globe," was a favorite expression of his in the infancy
+of his enterprise. But he wished to prove it. He insulated his wire as
+well as he could with hempen strands well covered with pitch, tar, and
+india-rubber. In the course of the autumn he was prepared to put the
+question to the test of actual experiment. The wire was only the twelfth
+of an inch in diameter. About two miles of this, wound on a reel, was
+placed in a small row-boat, and with one man at the oars and Professor
+Morse at the stern, the work of paying out the cable was begun. It was a
+beautiful moonlight night, and those who had prolonged their evening
+rambles on the Battery must have wondered, as they watched the
+proceedings in the boat, what kind of fishing the two men could be
+engaged in that required so long a line. In somewhat less than two
+hours, on that eventful evening of October 18, 1842, the first cable was
+laid. Professor Morse returned to his lodgings and waited with some
+anxiety the time when he should be able to test the experiment fully and
+fairly. The next morning the New York _Herald_ contained the following
+editorial announcement:
+
+    "MORSE'S ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.
+
+    "This important invention is to be exhibited in operation at Castle
+    Garden between the hours of twelve and one o'clock to-day. One
+    telegraph will be erected on Governor's Island and one at the
+    Castle, and messages will be interchanged and orders transmitted
+    during the day. Many have been incredulous as to the powers of this
+    wonderful triumph of science and art. All such may now have an
+    opportunity of fairly testing it. It is destined to work a complete
+    revolution in the mode of transmitting intelligence throughout the
+    civilized world."
+
+At daybreak the professor was on the Battery, and had just demonstrated
+his success by the transmission of three or four characters between the
+termini of the line, when the communication was suddenly interrupted,
+and it was found impossible to send any messages through the conductor.
+The cause of this was evident when he observed no less than seven
+vessels lying along the line of the submerged cable, one of which, in
+getting under way, had raised it on her anchor. The sailors, unable to
+divine its meaning, hauled in about two hundred feet of it on deck, and
+finding no end, cut off that portion and carried it away with them.
+Thus ended the first attempt at submarine telegraphing. The crowd that
+had assembled on the Battery dispersed with jeers, most of them
+believing they had been made the victims of a hoax.
+
+In a letter to John C. Spencer, then Secretary of the Treasury, in
+August, 1843, concerning electro-magnetism and its powers, he wrote:
+
+"The practical inference from this law is that a telegraphic
+communication on the electro-magnetic plan may with certainty be
+established across the Atlantic Ocean. Startling as this may now seem, I
+am confident the time will come when this project will be realized."
+
+In 1871 a statue of Professor Morse was erected in Central Park, New
+York, at the expense of the telegraph operators of the country. It was
+unveiled on June 10th with imposing ceremonies. There were delegates
+from every State in the Union, and from the British provinces. In the
+evening a public reception was given to the venerable inventor at the
+Academy of Music, at which William Orton, president of the Western Union
+Telegraph Company, presided, assisted by scores of the leading public
+men of the country as vice-presidents. The last scene was an impressive
+one. It was announced that the telegraphic instrument before the
+audience was then in connection with every other one of the ten thousand
+instruments in America. Then Miss Cornell, a young telegraphic operator,
+sent this message from the key: "Greeting and thanks to the telegraph
+fraternity throughout the world. Glory to God in the highest, on earth
+peace, good-will to men." The venerable inventor, the personification of
+simplicity, dignity, and kindliness, was then conducted to the
+instrument, and touching the key, sent out: "S.F.B. MORSE." A storm of
+enthusiasm swept through the house as the audience rose, the ladies
+waving their handkerchiefs and the men cheering.
+
+Professor Morse last appeared in public on February 22, 1872, when he
+unveiled the statue of Franklin, erected in Printing-house Square in New
+York. He died, after a short illness, on April 2, 1872, and was buried
+in Greenwood Cemetery. On the day of the funeral, April 5th, every
+telegraph office in the country was draped in mourning.
+
+Professor Morse was twice married. His first wife died in 1825. In 1848
+he married Sarah Elizabeth Griswold, of Poughkeepsie, who still lives.
+By the first marriage there were three children, one of whom, a son,
+survives. By the second marriage there were four children, three of whom
+are alive--a daughter and two sons. Miss Leila Morse, the daughter, was
+married in 1885 to Herr Franz Rummel, the eminent pianist. The last
+years of his life were eminently peaceful and happy. In the summer he
+lived at a place called Locust Grove, on the banks of the Hudson, near
+Poughkeepsie, and in the winter in a house at No. 5 West Twenty-second
+Street, a few doors west of Fifth Avenue. In recent years a marble
+tablet has been affixed to the front of the house, suitably inscribed.
+
+[Illustration: No. 5 West Twenty-second Street, New York, where Morse
+Lived for Many Years and Died.]
+
+Morse's life in the country was very simple and quiet. His hour of
+rising was half-past six o'clock in the morning, and he was in his
+library alone until breakfast, at eight. He loved to hear the birds in
+their native songs, and he could distinguish the notes of each species,
+and would speak of the quality of their respective music. He spent most
+of the day in reading and writing, rarely taking exercise, except
+walking in his garden to visit his graperies, in which he took special
+pride, or to the stable to see if his horses were well cared for. He did
+not ride out regularly with his family, preferring the repose of his own
+grounds and the labors of his study. But when he walked or rode in the
+country, he was constantly disposed to speak of the beauty and glory
+around him, as revealing to his mind the beneficence, wisdom, and power
+of the infinite Creator, who had made all these things for the use and
+enjoyment of men.
+
+One of his daughters writes of him in these simple and tender words: "He
+loved flowers. He would take one in his hand and talk for hours about
+its beauty, its wonderful construction, and the wisdom and love of God
+in making so many varied forms of life and color to please our eyes. In
+his later years he became deeply interested in the microscope and
+purchased one of great excellence and power. For whole hours, all the
+afternoon or evening, he would sit over it, examining flowers or the
+animalculae in different fluids. Then he would gather his children about
+him and give us a sort of extempore lecture on the wonders of creation
+invisible to the naked eye, but so clearly brought to view by the
+magnifying power of the microscope. He was very fond of animals, cats,
+and birds in particular. He tamed a little flying-squirrel, and it
+became so fond of him that it would sit on his shoulder while he was at
+his studies and would eat out of his hand and sleep in his pocket. To
+this little animal he became so much attached that we took it with us to
+Europe, where it came to an untimely end, in Paris, by running into an
+open fire."
+
+His biographer, Prime, says of him:
+
+"In person Professor Morse was tall, slender, graceful, and attractive.
+Six feet in stature, he stood erect and firm, even in old age. His blue
+eyes were expressive of genius and affection. His nature was a rare
+combination of solid intellect and delicate sensibility. Thoughtful,
+sober, and quiet, he readily entered into the enjoyments of domestic and
+social life, indulging in sallies of humor, and readily appreciating and
+greatly enjoying the wit of others. Dignified in his intercourse with
+men, courteous and affable with the gentler sex, he was a good husband,
+a judicious father, a generous and faithful friend. He had the
+misfortune to incur the hostility of men who would deprive him of the
+merit and the reward of his labors. But his was the common fate of great
+inventors. He lived until his rights were vindicated by every tribunal
+to which they could be referred, and acknowledged by all civilized
+nations. And he died leaving to his children a spotless and illustrious
+name, and to his country the honor of having given birth to the only
+electro-magnetic recording telegraph whose line has gone out through all
+the earth and its words to the end of the world."
+
+[Illustration: Charles Goodyear.]
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+CHARLES GOODYEAR.
+
+
+India-rubber had been known for more than a hundred years when Charles
+Goodyear undertook to make of it thousands of articles useful in common
+life. So long ago as 1735 a party of French astronomers discovered in
+Peru a curious tree that yielded the natives a peculiar gum or sap which
+they collected in clay vessels. This sap became hard when exposed to the
+sun, and was used by the natives, who made different articles of
+every-day use from it by dipping a clay mould again and again into the
+liquid. When the article was completed the clay mould was broken to
+pieces and shaken out. In this manner they made a kind of rough shoe and
+an equally rough bottle. In some parts of South America the natives
+presented their guests with these bottles, which served as syringes for
+squirting water. Articles thus made were liable to become stiff and
+unmanageable in cold weather and soft and sticky in warm. Upon getting
+back to France the travellers directed the attention of scientists to
+this remarkable gum, which was afterward found in various parts of South
+America, and the chief supplies of which still come from Brazil. About
+the beginning of the present century this substance, known variously as
+cachuchu, caoutchouc, gum-elastic, and india-rubber, was first
+commercially introduced into Europe. It was regarded merely as a
+curiosity, chiefly useful for erasing pencil-marks. Ships from South
+America took it over as ballast. About the year 1820 it began to be used
+in France in the manufacture of suspenders and garters, india-rubber
+threads being mixed with the material used in weaving those articles.
+Some years later Mackintosh, an English manufacturer, used it in his
+famous water-proof coats, which were made by spreading a layer of the
+gum between two pieces of cloth.
+
+About the same time a pair of india-rubber shoes were exhibited in
+Boston, where they were regarded as a curiosity; they were covered with
+gilt-foil to hide their natural ugliness. In 1823 a Boston merchant,
+engaged in the South American trade, imported five hundred pairs of
+these shoes, made by the natives of Para, and found no difficulty in
+selling them. In fact, this became a large business, although these
+shoes were terribly rough and clumsy and were not to be depended upon;
+in cold weather they became so hard that they could be used only after
+being thawed by the fire, and in summer they could be preserved only by
+keeping them on ice. If during the thawing process they were placed too
+near the fire, they would melt into a shapeless mass; and yet they cost
+from three to five dollars a pair.
+
+In 1830 E.M. Chaffee, of Boston, the foreman of a patent leather
+factory in that city, attempted to replace patent leather by a compound
+of india-rubber. He dissolved a pound of the gum in spirits of
+turpentine, added to the mixture enough lamp-black to produce a bright
+black color, and invented a machine for spreading this compound over
+cloth. When dried in the sun it produced a hard, smooth surface,
+flexible enough to be twisted into any shape without cracking. With the
+aid of a few capitalists, Chaffee organized, in 1833, a company called
+the Roxbury India-rubber Company, and manufactured an india-rubber cloth
+from which wagon-covers, piano-covers, caps, coats, shoes, and other
+articles were made. The product of the factory sold well, and the
+success of the Roxbury Company led to the establishment of a number of
+similar factories elsewhere. Apparently all who were engaged in the
+production of rubber goods were on the highway to wealth.
+
+A day of disaster, however, came. Most of the goods produced in the
+winter of 1833-1834 became worthless during the following summer. The
+shoes melted to a soft mass and the caps, wagon-covers, and coats became
+sticky and useless. To make matters worse they emitted an odor so
+offensive that it was necessary to bury them in the ground. Twenty
+thousand dollars' worth of these goods were thrown back on the hands of
+the Roxbury Company alone, and the directors were appalled by the ruin
+that threatened them. It was useless to go on manufacturing goods that
+might prove worthless at any moment. India-rubber stock fell rapidly,
+and by the end of 1836 there was not a solvent rubber company in the
+Union, the stockholders losing about $2,000,000. People came to detest
+the very name of india-rubber.
+
+One day, in 1834, a Philadelphia hardware merchant, named Charles
+Goodyear, was led by curiosity to buy a rubber life-preserver. And thus
+began for this unfortunate genius nearly twenty-five years of struggle,
+misery, and disappointment. Charles Goodyear was born in New Haven,
+Conn., December 29, 1800. When a boy his father moved to Philadelphia,
+where he engaged in the hardware business, and upon becoming of age,
+Charles Goodyear joined him as a partner. In the panic of 1836-1837 the
+house went down. Goodyear's attention had been attracted for several
+years by the wonderful success of the india-rubber companies. Upon
+examining his life-preserver he discovered a defect in the inflating
+valve and made an improved one. Going to New York with this device, he
+called on the agent of the Roxbury Company and, explaining it to him,
+offered to sell it to the company. The agent was impressed with the
+improvement, but instead of buying it, told the inventor the real state
+of the india-rubber business of the country, then on the verge of a
+collapse. He urged Goodyear to exert his inventive skill in discovering
+some means of imparting durability to india-rubber goods, and assured
+him that if he could find a process to effect that end, he could sell it
+at his own price. He explained the processes then in use and their
+imperfections.
+
+Goodyear forgot all about his disappointment in failing to sell his
+valve, and went home intent upon experiments to make gum-elastic
+durable. From that time until the close of his life he devoted himself
+solely to this work. He was thirty-five years old, feeble in health, a
+bankrupt in business, and had a young family depending upon him. The
+industry in which he now engaged was one in which thousands of persons
+had found ruin. The firm of which he had been a member owed $30,000, and
+upon his return to Philadelphia he was arrested for debt and compelled
+to live within prison limits. He began his experiments at once. The
+price of the gum had fallen to five cents per pound, so that he had no
+difficulty in getting sufficient of it to begin work. By melting and
+working it thoroughly and rolling it out upon a stone table, he
+succeeded in producing sheets of india-rubber that seemed to him to
+possess new properties. A friend loaned him enough money to manufacture
+a number of shoes which at first seemed to be all that could be desired.
+Fearful, however, of coming trouble, Goodyear put his shoes away until
+the following summer, when the warm weather reduced them to a mass of so
+offensive an odor that he was glad to throw them away. His friend was so
+thoroughly disheartened by this failure as to refuse to have anything
+more to do with Goodyear's scheme. The inventor, nevertheless, kept on.
+
+It occurred to him that there must be some substance which, mixed with
+the gum, would render it durable, and he began to experiment with almost
+every substance that he could lay his hands on. All proved total
+failures with the exception of magnesia. By mixing half a pound of
+magnesia with a pound of the gum he produced a substance whiter than the
+pure gum, which was at first as firm and flexible as leather, and out of
+which he made beautiful book-covers and piano-covers. It looked as if he
+had solved the problem; but in a month his pretty product was ruined.
+Heat caused it to soften; fermentation then set in, and finally it
+became as hard and brittle as thin glass. His stock of money was now
+exhausted. He was forced to pawn all his own valuables and even the
+trinkets of his wife. But he felt sure that he was on the road to
+success and would eventually win both fame and fortune. He removed his
+family to the country, and set out for New York, where he hoped to find
+someone willing to aid him in carrying his experiments further. Here he
+met two acquaintances, one of whom offered him the use of a room in Gold
+Street as a workshop, and the other, a druggist, agreed to let him have
+on credit such chemicals as he needed. He now boiled the gum, mixed with
+magnesia, in quicklime and water, and as a result obtained firm, smooth
+sheets that won him a medal at the fair of the American Institute in
+1835. He seemed on the point of success, and easily sold all the sheets
+he could manufacture, when, to his dismay, he discovered that a drop of
+the weakest acid, such as the juice of an apple or diluted vinegar,
+would reduce his new compound to the old sticky substance that had
+baffled him so often.
+
+His first important discovery on the road to real success was the result
+of accident. He liked pretty things, and it was a constant effort with
+him to make his productions as attractive to the eye as possible. Upon
+one occasion, while bronzing a piece of rubber cloth, he applied aqua
+fortis to it for the purpose of removing part of the bronze. It took
+away the bronze, but it also destroyed the cloth to such a degree that
+he supposed it ruined and threw it away. A day or two later, happening
+to pick it up, he was astonished to find that the rubber had undergone a
+remarkable change, and that the effect of the acid had been to harden it
+to such an extent that it would now stand a degree of heat which would
+have melted it before. Aqua fortis contained sulphuric acid. Goodyear
+was thus on the threshold of his great discovery of vulcanizing rubber.
+He called his new process the "curing" of india-rubber.
+
+The "cured" india-rubber was subjected to many tests and passed through
+them successfully, thus demonstrating its adaptability to many important
+uses. Goodyear readily obtained a patent for his process, and a partner
+with a large capital was found ready to aid him. He hired the old
+india-rubber works on Staten Island and opened a salesroom in Broadway.
+He was thrown back for six weeks at this important time by an accident
+which happened to him while experimenting with his fabrics and which
+came near causing his death. Just as he was recovering and preparing to
+begin the manufacture of his goods on a large scale the terrible
+commercial crisis of 1837 swept over the country, and by destroying his
+partner's fortune at one blow, reduced Goodyear to absolute beggary. His
+family had joined him in New York, and he was entirely without the means
+of supporting them. As the only resource at hand he decided to pawn an
+article of value--one of the few which he possessed--in order to raise
+money to procure one day's supply of provisions. At the very door of the
+pawnbroker's shop he met one of his creditors, who kindly asked if he
+could be of any further assistance to him. Weak with hunger and overcome
+by the generosity of his friend the poor man burst into tears and
+replied that, as his family was on the point of starvation, a loan of
+$15 would greatly oblige him. The money was given him on the spot and
+the necessity for visiting the pawnbroker averted for several days
+longer. Still he was a frequent visitor to that person during the year,
+and one by one the relics of his better days disappeared. Another friend
+loaned him $100, which enabled him to remove his family to Staten
+Island, in the neighborhood of the abandoned rubber works, which the
+owners gave him permission to use so far as he could. He contrived in
+this way to manufacture enough of his "cured" cloth, which sold readily,
+to enable him to keep his family from starvation. He made repeated
+efforts to induce capitalists to come to the factory and see his samples
+and the process by which they were made, but no one would venture near
+him. There had been money enough lost in such experiments, these
+acquaintances said, and they were determined to risk no more.
+
+Indeed, in all the broad land there was but one man who had the
+slightest hope of accomplishing anything with india-rubber, and that one
+was Charles Goodyear. His friends regarded him as a monomaniac. He not
+only manufactured his cloth, but even dressed in clothes made of it,
+wearing it for the purpose of testing its durability, as well as of
+advertising it. He was certainly an odd figure, and in his appearance
+justified the remark of one of his friends, who, upon being asked how
+Mr. Goodyear could be recognized, replied: "If you see a man with an
+india-rubber coat on, india-rubber shoes, and india-rubber cap, and in
+his pocket an india-rubber purse with not a cent in it, that is
+Goodyear."
+
+In September, 1837, a new gleam of hope lit up his pathway. A friend
+having loaned him a small sum of money he went to Roxbury, taking with
+him some of his best specimens. Although the Roxbury Company had gone
+down with a fearful crash, Mr. Chaffee, the inventor of the first
+process of making rubber goods in this country, was still firm in his
+faith that india-rubber would at some future time justify the
+expectations of its earliest friends. He welcomed Goodyear cordially and
+allowed him to use the abandoned works of the company for his
+experiments. The result was that Goodyear succeeded in making shoes and
+cloths of india-rubber of a quality so much better than any that had yet
+been seen in America that the hopes of the friends of india-rubber were
+raised to a high point. Offers to purchase rights for certain portions
+of the country came in rapidly, and by the sale of them Goodyear
+realized between four and five thousand dollars. He was now able to
+bring his family to Roxbury, and for the time fortune seemed to smile
+upon him.
+
+[Illustration: Calenders Heated Internally by Steam, for Spreading India
+Rubber into Sheets or upon Cloth, called the "Chaffee Machine."]
+
+His success was but temporary, however. He obtained an order from the
+general Government for one hundred and fifty india-rubber mail-bags,
+which he succeeded in producing, and as they came out smooth, highly
+polished, hard, well shaped, and entirely impervious to moisture, he
+was delighted and summoned his friends to inspect and admire them. All
+who saw them pronounced them a perfect success, but alas! in a single
+month they began to soften and ferment, and finally became useless. Poor
+Goodyear's hopes were dashed to the ground. It was found that the aqua
+fortis merely "cured" the surface of the material, and that only very
+thin cloth made in this way was durable. His other goods began to prove
+worthless and his promising business came to a sudden and disastrous
+end. All his possessions were seized and sold for debt, and once more he
+was reduced to poverty. His position was even worse than before, for his
+family had increased in size and his aged father also had become
+dependent upon him for support.
+
+Friends, relatives, and even his wife, all demanded that he should
+abandon his empty dreams and turn his attention to something that would
+yield a support to his family. Four years of constant failure, added to
+the unfortunate experience of those who had preceded him, ought to
+convince him, they said, that he was hoping against hope. Hitherto his
+conduct, certainly had been absurd, though they admitted that he was to
+some extent excused for it by his partial success; but to persist in it
+would be criminal. The inventor was driven to despair, and being a man
+of tender feelings and ardently devoted to his family, might have
+yielded to them had he not felt that he was nearer than ever to the
+discovery of the secret that had eluded him so long.
+
+Just before the failure of his mail-bags had brought ruin upon him, he
+had taken into his employ a man named Nathaniel Hayward, who had been
+the foreman of the old Roxbury works, and who was still in charge of
+them when Goodyear came to Roxbury, and was making a few rubber articles
+on his own account. He hardened his compound by mixing a little powdered
+sulphur with the gum, or by sprinkling sulphur over the rubber cloth and
+drying it in the sun. He declared that the process had been revealed to
+him in a dream, but could give no further account of it. Goodyear was
+astonished to find that the sulphur cured the india-rubber as thoroughly
+as the aqua fortis, the principal objection being that the sulphurous
+odor of the goods was frightful in hot weather. Hayward's process was
+really the same as that employed by Goodyear, the "curing" of the
+india-rubber being due in each case to the agency of the sulphur, the
+principal difference between them being that Hayward's goods were dried
+by the sun and Goodyear's with nitric acid. Hayward set so small a value
+upon his discovery that he readily sold it to his new employer.
+
+Goodyear felt that he had now all but conquered his difficulties. It was
+plain that sulphur was the great controller of india-rubber, for he had
+proved that when applied to thin cloth it would render it available for
+most purposes. The problem that now remained was how to mix sulphur and
+the gum in a mass, so that every part of the rubber should be subjected
+to the agency of the sulphur. He experimented for weeks and months with
+the most intense eagerness, but the mystery completely baffled him. His
+friends urged him to go to work to do something for his family, but he
+could not turn back. The goal was almost in sight, and he felt that he
+would be false to his mission were he to abandon his labors now. To the
+world he seemed a crack-brained dreamer, and some there were who, seeing
+the distress of his family, did not hesitate to apply still harsher
+names to him. Had it been merely wealth that he was working for,
+doubtless he would have turned back and sought some other means of
+obtaining it; but he sought more. He felt that he had a mission to
+fulfil, and that no one else could perform it.
+
+He was right. A still greater success was about to crown his labors, but
+in a manner far different from his expectations. His experiments had
+developed nothing; chance was to make the revelation. It was in the
+spring of 1839, and in the following manner: Standing before a stove in
+a store at Woburn, Mass., he was explaining to some acquaintances the
+properties of a piece of sulphur-cured india-rubber which he held in his
+hand. They listened to him good-naturedly, but with evident incredulity,
+when suddenly he dropped the rubber on the stove, which was red hot. His
+old clothes would have melted instantly from contact with such heat;
+but, to his surprise, this piece underwent no such change. In amazement
+he examined it, and found that while it had charred or shrivelled like
+leather, it had not softened at all. The bystanders attached no
+importance to this phenomenon, but to him it was a revelation. He
+renewed his experiments with enthusiasm, and in a little while
+established the facts that india-rubber, when mixed with sulphur and
+exposed to a certain degree of heat for a specified time, would not melt
+or soften at any degree of heat; that it would only char at two hundred
+and eighty degrees, and that it would not stiffen from exposure to any
+extent of cold. The difficulty now consisted in finding out the exact
+degree of heat necessary for the perfecting of the rubber and the exact
+length of time required for the heating.
+
+[Illustration: Charles Goodyear's Exhibition of Hard India Rubber Goods
+at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, England. (From a print published at the
+time.)]
+
+He made this discovery in his darkest days, when, in fact, he was in
+constant danger of arrest for debt, having already been a frequent
+inmate of the debtors' prison. He was in the depths of bitter poverty
+and in such feeble health that he was constantly haunted by the fear of
+dying before he had perfected his discovery--before he had fulfilled his
+mission. He needed an apparatus for producing a high and uniform heat
+for his experiments, and he was unable to obtain it. He used to bake his
+compound in his wife's bread-oven and steam it over the spout of her
+tea-kettle, and to press the kitchen fire into his service so far as it
+would go. When this failed, he would go down to the shops in the
+vicinity of Woburn and beg to be allowed to use the ovens and boilers
+after working hours were over. The workmen regarded him as a lunatic,
+but were too good-natured to deny him the request. Finally he induced
+a bricklayer to make him an oven, and paid him in masons' aprons of
+india-rubber. The oven was a failure. Sometimes it would turn out pieces
+of perfectly vulcanized cloth, and again the goods would be charred and
+ruined. Goodyear was in despair.
+
+All this time he lived on the charity of his friends. His neighbors
+pretended to lend him money, but in reality gave him the means of
+keeping his family from starvation. He has declared that all the while
+he felt sure he would, before long, be able to pay them back, but they
+have declared with equal emphasis that, at that time, they never
+expected to witness his success. He was yellow and shrivelled in face,
+with a gaunt, lean figure, and his habit of wearing an india-rubber
+coat, which was charred and blackened from his frequent experiments with
+it, gave him a wild and singular appearance. People shook their heads
+solemnly when they saw him, and said that the mad-house was the proper
+place for him.
+
+The winter of 1839-40 was long and severe. At the opening of the season
+Goodyear received a letter from a house in Paris, making him a handsome
+offer for the use of his process of curing india-rubber with aqua
+fortis. Here was a chance for him to rise out of his misery. A year
+before he would have closed with the offer, but since then he had
+discovered the effects of sulphur and heat on his compound, and had
+passed far beyond the aqua-fortis stage. Disappointment and want had not
+warped his conscience, and he at once declined to enter into any
+arrangements with the French house, informing them that although the
+process they desired to purchase was a valuable one, it was about to be
+entirely replaced by another which he was then on the point of
+perfecting, and which he would gladly sell them as soon as he had
+completed it. His friends declared that he was mad to refuse such an
+offer; but he replied that nothing would induce him to sell a process
+which he knew was about to be rendered worthless by still greater
+discoveries.
+
+A few weeks later a terrible snow-storm passed over the land, one of the
+worst that New England had ever known, and in the midst of it Goodyear
+made the appalling discovery that he had not a particle of fuel or a
+mouthful of food in the house. He was ill enough to be in bed himself,
+and his purse was entirely empty. It was a terrible position, made
+worse, too, by the fact that his friends who had formerly aided him had
+turned from him, vexed with his pertinacity, and abandoned him to his
+fate. In his despair he bethought him of a mere acquaintance named
+Coleridge, who lived several miles from his cottage, and who but a few
+days before had spoken to him with more of kindness than he had received
+of late. This gentleman, he thought, would aid him in his distress, if
+he could but reach his house, but in such a snow the journey seemed
+hopeless to a man in his feeble health. Still the effort must be made.
+Nerved by despair, he set out and pushed his way resolutely through the
+heavy drifts. The way was long, and it seemed to him that he would
+never accomplish it. Often he fell prostrate on the snow, almost
+fainting with fatigue and hunger, and again he would sit down wearily in
+the road, feeling that he would gladly die if his discovery were but
+completed. At length, however, he reached the end of his journey, and
+fortunately found his acquaintance at home. To this gentleman he told
+the story of his discovery, his hopes, his struggles, and his present
+sufferings, and implored him to help him. Mr. Coleridge listened to him
+kindly, and after expressing the warmest sympathy for him, loaned him
+money enough to support his family during the severe weather and to
+enable him to continue his experiments.
+
+Seeing no prospect of success in Massachusetts, he now resolved to make
+a desperate effort to get to New York, feeling confident that the
+specimens he could take with him would convince someone of the
+superiority of his new method. He was beginning to understand the cause
+of his many failures, but he saw clearly that his compound could not be
+worked with certainty without expensive apparatus. It was a very
+delicate operation, requiring exactness and promptitude. The conditions
+upon which success depended were many, and the failure of one spoiled
+all. It cost him thousands of failures to learn that a little acid in
+his sulphur caused the blistering; that his compound must be heated
+almost immediately after being mixed or it would never vulcanize; that a
+portion of white lead in the compound greatly facilitated the operation
+and improved the result; and when he had learned these facts, it still
+required costly and laborious experiments to devise the best methods of
+compounding his ingredients in the best proportions, the best mode of
+heating, the proper duration of the heating, and the various useful
+effects that could be produced by varying the proportions and the degree
+of heat. He tells us that many times when, by exhausting every resource,
+he had prepared a quantity of his compound for heating, it was spoiled
+because he could not, with his inadequate apparatus, apply the heat soon
+enough.
+
+[Illustration: COUNCIL MEDAL OF THE EXHIBITION.
+
+C. GOODYEAR. CLASS XXVIII.
+
+1851.]
+
+To New York, then, he directed his thoughts. Merely to get there cost
+him a severer and a longer effort than men in general are capable of
+making. First he walked to Boston, ten miles distant, where he hoped to
+borrow from an old acquaintance $50, with which to provide for his
+family and pay his fare to New York. He not only failed in this, but he
+was arrested for debt and thrown into prison. Even in prison, while his
+old father was negotiating to procure his release, he labored to
+interest men of capital in his discovery, and made proposals for
+founding a factory in Boston. Having obtained his liberty, he went to a
+hotel and spent a week in vain efforts to effect a small loan. Saturday
+night came, and with it his hotel bill, which he had no means of
+discharging. In an agony of shame and anxiety, he went to a friend and
+entreated the sum of $5 to enable him to return home. He was met with a
+point-blank refusal. In the deepest dejection, he walked the streets
+till late in the night, and strayed at length, almost beside himself, to
+Cambridge, where he ventured to call upon a friend and ask shelter for
+the night. He was hospitably entertained, and the next morning walked
+wearily home, penniless and despairing. At the door of his house a
+member of his family met him with the news that his youngest child, two
+years old, whom he had left in perfect health, was dying. In a few hours
+he had in his house a dead child, but not the means of burying it, and
+five living dependents without a morsel of food to give them. A
+storekeeper near by had promised to supply the family, but, discouraged
+by the unforeseen length of the father's absence, he had that day
+refused to trust them further. In these terrible circumstances he
+applied to a friend, upon whose generosity he knew he could rely, one
+who never failed him. He received in reply a letter of severe and
+cutting reproach, enclosing $7, which his friend explained was given
+only out of pity for his innocent and suffering family. A stranger who
+chanced to be present when this letter arrived sent them a barrel of
+flour, a timely and blessed relief. The next day the family followed on
+foot the remains of the little child to the grave.
+
+This was about the darkest hour of poor Goodyear's life, but it was
+before the dawn. He managed to obtain $50, with which he went to New
+York, and succeeded in interesting two brothers, William and Emory
+Rider, in his discoveries. They agreed to advance to him a certain sum
+to complete his experiments. By means of this aid he was enabled to keep
+his family from want, and his experiments were pursued with greater ease
+and certainty. His brother-in-law, William De Forrest, a rich wool
+manufacturer, also came to his aid, now that success seemed in view.
+Nevertheless, the experiments of that and the following year cost nearly
+$50,000. Thanks to this timely aid, he was able in 1844, ten years after
+beginning his work, to produce perfect vulcanized india-rubber with
+economy and certainty. To the end of his life he was at work, however,
+endeavoring to improve the material and apply it to new uses. He took
+out more than sixty patents covering different processes of making
+rubber goods.
+
+[Illustration: GRANDE MEDAILLE D'HONNEUR.
+
+EXPOSITION UNIVERSELLE DE 1855.
+
+Donne pour la Decouverte de la Vulcanisation et Durcissement du
+Caoutchouc.
+
+FACSIMILE GOLD.]
+
+If Goodyear had been a man of business instincts and habits, the years
+following the completion of his great work might have brought him an
+immense fortune; but everywhere he seems to have been unfortunate in
+protecting his rights. In France and England he lost his patent rights
+by technical defects. In the latter country another man, who had
+received a copy of the American patent, actually applied and obtained
+the English rights in his own name. Goodyear, however, obtained the
+great council medal at the London Exhibition of 1851, a grand medal at
+Paris, in 1855, and later the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. In this
+country he was scarcely less unfortunate. His patents were infringed
+right and left, he was cheated by business associates and plundered of
+the profits of his invention. The United States Commissioner of Patents,
+in 1858, thus spoke of his losses:
+
+"No inventor, probably, has ever been so harassed, so trampled upon, so
+plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the
+parlance of the world as 'pirates.' The spoliation of their incessant
+guerrilla warfare upon his defenceless rights has unquestionably
+amounted to millions."
+
+Goodyear died in New York in July, 1860, worn out with work and
+disappointment. Neither Europe nor America seemed disposed to accord him
+any reward or credit for having made one of the greatest discoveries of
+the time. Notwithstanding his invention, which has made millions for
+those engaged in working it, he died insolvent, and left his family
+heavily in debt. A few years after his death an effort was made to
+procure from Congress an extension of his patent for the benefit of his
+family and creditors. The opposition of the men who had grown rich and
+powerful by successfully infringing his rights prevented that august
+body from doing justice in the matter and the effort came to nothing.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+JOHN ERICSSON.
+
+
+Captain John Ericsson, although not by birth an American, rendered such
+signal services to this country and lived here for so many years that we
+may fairly consider him in the light of an American inventor. The
+inventions to which he devoted the best years of his life were made in
+this country. He loved America, he died here, and though his ashes have
+been sent back to Sweden, the world of Europe, in common with ourselves,
+probably thinks of Ericsson as an American.
+
+[Illustration: John Ericsson.]
+
+By the roadside near a mountain hamlet of Central Sweden stands a
+pyramid of iron cast from ore dug from the adjacent mines and set upon a
+base of granite quarried from the hills which overlook the valley. This
+monument bears the information that two brothers, Nils Ericsson and John
+Ericsson, were born in a miner's hut at that place, respectively,
+January 31, 1802, and July 31, 1803. Nils Ericsson was a man of unusual
+distinction, who held high position in Sweden as engineer of the canals
+and railroads of the kingdom. The name of his brother is known the world
+over. These two notable Swedes were sons of Olof Ericsson, a Swedish
+miner. Poverty was one of the bits of good fortune that fell to the lot
+of the two boys, and among John's earliest recollections is that of the
+seizure of their household effects by the sheriff. The mother was a
+woman of intelligence and somewhat acquainted with the literature of her
+time. In boyhood John Ericsson worked in the iron mines of Central
+Sweden. Machinery was his first love and his last. Before he was eleven
+years old, during the winter of 1813, he had produced a miniature
+saw-mill of ingenious construction, and had planned a pumping-engine
+designed to keep the mines free from water. The frame of the saw-mill
+was of wood; the saw-blade was made from a watch-spring and was moved by
+a crank made from a broken tin spoon. A file, borrowed from a
+neighboring blacksmith, a gimlet, and a jack-knife were the only tools
+used in this work. His pumping-engine was a more ambitious affair, to be
+operated by a wind-mill.
+
+[Illustration: John Ericsson's Birthplace and Monument.]
+
+The family then lived in the wilderness, surrounded by a pine forest,
+where Ericsson's father was engaged in selecting timber for the
+lock-gates of a canal. A quill and a pencil were the boy's tools in the
+way of drawing materials. He made compasses of birch wood. A pair of
+steel tweezers were converted into a drawing-pen. Ericsson had never
+seen a wind-mill, but following as well as he could the description of
+those who had, he succeeded in constructing on paper the mechanism
+connecting the crank of a wind-mill with the pump-lever. The plan,
+conceived and executed under such circumstances by a mere boy,
+attracted the attention of Count Platen, president of the Gotha Ship
+Canal, on which Ericsson's father was employed, and when Ericsson was
+twelve years old he was made a member of the surveying party carrying
+out the canal work and put in charge of a section. Six hundred of the
+royal troops looked for directions in their daily work to this boy, one
+of his attendants being a man who followed him with a stool, upon which
+he stood to use the surveying instruments. The amusements of this boy
+engineer, even at the age of fifteen, are indicated by a portfolio of
+drawings made in his leisure moments, giving maps of the most important
+parts of the canal, three hundred miles in length, and showing all the
+machinery used in its construction. His precocity was, however, the
+normal and healthy development of a mind as fond of mechanical
+principles as Raphael was of color.
+
+It was in 1811 that Ericsson made his first scale drawing of the famous
+Sunderland Iron Bridge, and from that time on his career in Sweden was a
+brilliant one. After serving as an engineer upon the Gotha Canal he
+became an officer in the Swedish army, from which circumstance he got
+his title of captain. Most government work was then done by army
+officers, especially in field surveying. The appointments of government
+surveyors being offered soon afterward to competitive examination among
+the officers of the army, Ericsson went to Stockholm and entered the
+lists. Detailed maps of fifty square miles of Swedish territory, still
+upon file at Stockholm, show his skill. Though his work as a surveyor
+exceeded that of any of his companions, he was not satisfied. He sought
+an outlet for his superfluous activity in preparing the drawings and
+engraving sixty-four large plates for a work illustrating the Gotha
+Canal. His faculty for invention was shown here by the construction of a
+machine-engraver, with which eighteen copper-plates were completed by
+his own hand within a year.
+
+From engraving young Ericsson turned his attention to experiments with
+flame as a means of producing mechanical power, and it is interesting to
+note that forty years afterward a large part of his income in this
+country was derived from his gas-or flame-engine, thousands of which are
+now in use in New York City alone for pumping water up to the tops of
+the houses. His early flame-engine, as it was called, turned out so well
+that after building one of ten horse-power, he obtained leave of absence
+to go to England to introduce the invention. He never returned to Sweden
+for any length of time, although he remained a Swede at heart, and many
+Swedish orders and decorations have been conferred upon him. In addition
+to the monument near Ericsson's birthplace, already mentioned, the
+government has erected a granite shaft, eighteen feet high, in front of
+the cottage in which he was born. This shaft, bearing the inscription,
+"John Ericsson was born here in 1803," was dedicated on September 3,
+1867, when work was suspended in the neighboring mines and iron
+furnaces, and a holiday was held in honor of Sweden's famous son. Poems
+were read, the chief engineer of the mining district delivered an
+oration, and Dr. Pallin, a savant from Philipstad, reminded his hearers
+that seven cities in Greece contended for the honor of being Homer's
+birthplace. "Certificates of baptism did not then exist," said Dr.
+Pallin, "and there is no doubt with us as to Ericsson's birthplace; yet
+to guard against all accidents we have here placed a record of baptism
+weighing eighty thousand pounds." The monument stands on an isthmus
+between two lakes surrounded by green hills.
+
+[Illustration: The Novelty Locomotive, built by Ericsson to compete with
+Stephenson's Rocket, 1829.]
+
+Ericsson's life in England began in 1826. Fortune did not smile upon his
+efforts to introduce his flame-engine, for the coal fire which had to be
+used in England was too severe for the working parts of the apparatus.
+But Ericsson possessed a capacity for hard work that recognized no
+obstacles. He undertook a new series of experiments which resulted
+finally in the completion of an engine which was patented and sold to
+John Braithwaite. Young Ericsson's capacity for work and for keeping
+half a dozen experiments in view at the same time seems to have been as
+remarkable in those early days as when he became famous. Records of the
+London Patent Office credit him with invention after invention. Among
+these were a pumping-engine on a new principle; engines with surface
+condensers and no smoke-stack, as applied to the steamship Victory in
+1828; an apparatus for making salt from brine; for propelling boats on
+canals; a hydrostatic weighing machine, to which the Society of Arts
+awarded a prize; an instrument to be used in taking deep-sea soundings;
+a file-cutting machine. The list covers some fourteen patented
+inventions and forty machines.
+
+Perhaps his most important work at this period was a device for creating
+artificial draught in locomotives, to which aid the development of our
+railroad owes much. In 1829 the Liverpool & Manchester Railroad offered
+a prize of $2,500 for the best locomotive capable of doing certain work.
+The prize was taken by Stephenson with his famous Rocket; but his
+sharpest competitor in this contest was John Ericsson. Four locomotives
+entered the contest. The London _Times_ of October 8, 1829, speaks
+highly of the Novelty, the locomotive entered by Messrs. Braithwaite &
+Ericsson, saying: "It was the lightest and most elegant carriage on the
+road yesterday, and the velocity with which it moved surprised and
+amazed every beholder. It shot along the line at the amazing rate of
+thirty miles an hour. It seemed indeed to fly, presenting one of the
+most sublime spectacles of human ingenuity and human daring the world
+ever beheld."
+
+[Illustration: Ericsson on his Arrival in England, aged twenty-three.]
+
+[Illustration: Mrs. John Ericsson, nee Amelia Byam.
+
+(From an early daguerreotype.)]
+
+The railroad directors, at whose invitation this test was made, had
+asked for ten miles an hour; Ericsson gave them thirty. The excitement
+of the witnesses found vent in loud cheers. Within an hour the shares
+of the railroad company rose ten per cent., and the young engineer might
+well have considered his fortune made. But although he had beaten his
+rival ten miles an hour, the judges determined to make traction power,
+rather than speed, the critical test, and the prize was awarded to
+Stephenson's Rocket, which drew seventeen tons for seventy miles at the
+rate of thirteen miles an hour. Stephenson's engine weighed twice as
+much as Ericsson's. Nevertheless Ericsson's success with the Novelty was
+such as to keep him busy in this particular field. He followed it up
+with a steam fire-engine that astonished London at the burning of the
+Argyle Rooms, in 1829, when for the first time, as one of the local
+papers remarked, "fire was extinguished by the mechanical power of
+fire." Another engine, of larger power, built for the King of Prussia,
+soon after rendered excellent service in Berlin, and a third was built
+for Liverpool in 1830. Ten years afterward the Mechanics' Institute of
+New York awarded a gold medal to Ericsson as a prize for the best plan
+of a steam-engine.
+
+[Illustration: Exterior View of Ericsson's House, No. 36 Beach Street,
+New York, 1890.]
+
+Disappointed in his ill success with inventions pertaining to
+locomotives, Ericsson now turned his attention to his early
+flame-engine, and the working model of a caloric engine of five-horse
+power soon attracted the attention of London. At first there seemed to
+be a great future for engines upon this principle, but after many years
+of experiments, at great expense, Ericsson found that the principle was
+useful only for purposes requiring small power. In 1851 he built a
+heat-engine for the ship Ericsson, a vessel two hundred and sixty feet
+in length, and tells the result as follows: "The ship after completion
+made a successful trip from New York to Washington and back during the
+winter season; but the average speed at sea proving insufficient for
+commercial purposes, the owners, with regret, acceded to my proposition
+to remove the costly machinery, although it had proved perfect as a
+mechanical combination. The resources of modern engineering having been
+exhausted in producing the motors of the caloric ship, the important
+question, Can heated air, as a mechanical motor, compete on a large
+scale with steam? has forever been set at rest. The commercial world is
+indebted to American enterprise for having settled a question of such
+vital importance. The marine engineer has thus been encouraged to renew
+his efforts to perfect the steam-engine without fear of rivalry from a
+motor depending on the dilation of atmospheric air by heat."
+
+[Illustration: Solar-engine Adapted to the Use of Hot Air.
+
+(Patented as a pumping-engine, 1880.)]
+
+Before leaving this question of heat-engines and passing to the more
+important inventions by which Ericsson will be remembered, it may be as
+well to say a few words concerning the solar-engines to which he devoted
+many years' time, and one of which I saw in operation in the back yard
+of the pleasant old house in Beach Street, opposite the freight depot of
+the Hudson River Railroad. This house, by the way, which Ericsson
+occupied for nearly forty years, faced on St. John's Park, the pleasant
+square which was afterward filled up by the railroad company. Toward the
+last years of Ericsson's life the neighborhood became anything but a
+pleasant one to live in; it was dirty and noisy. Nevertheless Ericsson
+refused to move. Perhaps the unpleasantness of the surroundings made him
+the recluse he was. It is not surprising that he should have been
+attracted by the possibility of obtaining power from the heat of the
+sun. In an early pamphlet on the subject he says: "There is a rainless
+region extending from the northwestern coast of Africa to Mongolia, nine
+thousand miles in length and nearly one thousand miles wide. In the
+Western Hemisphere, Lower California, the table-lands of Guatemala, and
+the west coast of South America, for a distance of more than two
+thousand miles, suffer from a continuous radiant heat." Ericsson
+estimated that the mechanical power that would result from utilizing the
+solar heat on a strip of land a single mile wide and eight thousand
+miles long would suffice to keep twenty-two million solar-engines, of
+one hundred horse-power each, going nine hours a day. He believed that
+with the exhaustion of European coal-fields the day for the solar-engine
+would come, and that those countries which possessed unfailing sunshine,
+such as Egypt, would displace England, France, and Germany as the
+manufacturing powers of the world, for the European would have to move
+his machinery to the borders of the Nile. By concentrating the rays of
+the sun upon a small copper boiler filled with air Ericsson was enabled
+to work a little motor, and for some years he also attempted to produce
+steam by means of heat from the sun. He was not successful, however, in
+making anything of commercial value in this direction, and so far as I
+have been able to learn none of the tropical countries invited by him to
+take up the problem for its own benefit responded to the invitation.
+
+Ericsson's studies and improvements of the screw as a means of
+propelling boats began in England. A model boat, two feet long, fitted
+up with two screws, was launched in a London bath-house, and, supplied
+by steam from a boiler placed at the side of the tank, was sent around
+at a speed estimated at six miles an hour. Ericsson was so delighted
+with it that he built a boat eight feet by forty, armed with two
+propellers, in the hope that the British Admiralty might adopt the
+invention. This boat went through the water at the rate of ten miles an
+hour, or seven miles an hour towing a schooner of one hundred and forty
+tons burden. He invited the Admiralty to see the work of his screw.
+Steaming up to Somerset House with his little vessel, Ericsson took the
+Admiralty barge in tow, to the wonder of the watermen, who could make
+nothing of the novel craft with no apparent means of propulsion. The
+British Admiralty, however, was not easily convinced. These wiseacres
+said nothing, but Ericsson professed to have heard that their verdict
+was against him because one of the authorities of the board decided that
+"even if the propeller had the power of propelling a vessel it would be
+found altogether useless in practice, because the power, being applied
+to the stern, it would be absolutely impossible to make the vessel
+steer."
+
+This official blindness cost England the services of the inventor. The
+United States happened to have as consul in Liverpool at that day (1837)
+Mr. Francis B. Ogden, a pioneer in steam navigation on the Ohio River.
+Ogden saw Ericsson's invention and introduced him to Captain Robert F.
+Stockton, of the United States Navy. With Stockton, seeing was
+believing, and when he returned from a trip on Ericsson's boat, he
+exclaimed: "I do not want the opinion of your scientific men. What I
+have seen to-day satisfies me." Before the vessel had completed her
+trip, Ericsson received from Stockton an order for two boats. Upon
+Stockton's assurance that the United States would try his propeller upon
+a large scale, Ericsson closed up his affairs in England and embarked
+for the United States. Through the good offices of Stockton, but after
+considerable delay, a vessel called the Princeton was ordered and
+completed. She carried a number of radical improvements destined to make
+a revolution in naval warfare. The boilers and engines were below the
+waterline, out of the way of shot and shell. The smoke-stack was a
+telescopic affair, replacing the tall pipe that formed so conspicuous a
+target upon the old boats. Centrifugal blowers in the hold, worked by
+separate engines, secured increased draught for the furnaces. The
+Princeton was a wonder, and everyone was ready to praise the inventive
+genius of Ericsson and the daring of Captain Stockton in adopting so
+many radical novelties. An entry in the diary of John Quincy Adams,
+dated February 28, 1844, tells the sad story of the public exhibition of
+the Princeton at Washington:
+
+"I went into the chamber of the Committee of Manufactures and wrote
+there till six. Dined with Mr. Grinnell and Mr. Winthrop. While we were
+at dinner John Barney burst into the chamber, rushed up to General Scott
+and told him, with groans, that the President wished to see him; that
+the great gun on board the Princeton had burst and killed the Secretary
+of State, Upshur; the Secretary of the Navy, T.W. Gilmer; Captain
+Beverly Kennon, Virgil Maxey, a Colonel Gardiner, of New York, a colored
+servant of the President, and desperately wounded several of the crew."
+
+So tragic an introduction was not needed to direct public attention to
+the Princeton. Ericsson had placed the United States at the head of
+naval powers in the application of steam-power to warfare. He had made
+the experiment of the Princeton at a great cost to himself, and two
+years of concentrated effort had been devoted to the service of the
+Government. For his time, labor, and necessary expenditures he rendered
+a bill of $15,000, leaving the question of what, if anything, should be
+charged for his patent rights entirely to the discretion and generosity
+of the Government. The bill was refused payment by the Navy Department
+because of its limited discretion. Ericsson went to Congress with it,
+but a dozen years passed without the slightest progress toward a
+settlement. A court of claims rendered a unanimous decree in his favor,
+but Congress, to which the bill was again sent, failed to make an
+appropriation, and there the matter has remained, notwithstanding the
+brilliant services since rendered to this country by the inventor.
+
+Various nations claim the invention of the screw as applied to boats. At
+Trieste and at Vienna stand statues erected to Joseph Ressel, for whom
+the Austrians lay claim. Commodore Stevens, of New Jersey, is also said
+by Professor Thurston to have built and worked a screw-propeller on the
+Hudson in 1812. Whatever may be the final decision as to Ericsson's
+claim in this matter, there, can be no doubt as to the value of the
+services he rendered in building the Monitor. The suggestion of the
+Monitor was first made in a communication from Ericsson to Napoleon
+III., dated New York, September, 1854. This paper contained a
+description of an iron-clad vessel surmounted by a cupola substantially
+as in the Monitor as finally built. The emperor, through General Favre,
+acknowledged the communication. Favre wrote: "The emperor has himself
+examined with the greatest care the new system of naval attack which you
+have communicated to him. His Majesty charges me with the honor of
+informing you that he has found your ideas very ingenious and worthy of
+the celebrated name of their author." For eight years Ericsson continued
+working upon his idea of a revolving cupola or turret upon an iron-clad
+raft, but found no opportunity to test the practical value of the
+device. His time finally came when, in 1861, the Navy Department
+appointed a board to examine plans for iron-clads. The board consisted
+of Commodores Joseph Smith, Hiram Paulding, and Charles H. Davis.
+Ericsson, having learned to distrust his own powers as a business agent,
+engaged the assistance of C. S. Bushnell, a Connecticut man of some
+wealth, who went to Washington and presented the designs of the Monitor
+to the board.
+
+Colonel W.C. Church, Ericsson's biographer, who has just been honored by
+Sweden for his publications upon the life of the inventor, tells an
+interesting story of the negotiations concerning the vessel which was to
+render such signal services to the country. Bushnell could make no
+headway with the board and decided that Ericsson's presence in
+Washington was necessary. But the inventor was then, as during his
+whole life, averse to any self-advertisement, and preferred his
+workshop to any place on earth. But as he possessed a sort of rude
+eloquence due to enthusiasm, Bushnell got him to Washington by
+subterfuge. He was told that the board approved his plans for an
+iron-clad and that it would be necessary for him to go to the capital
+and complete the contract. Presenting himself before the board, what was
+his astonishment to find that he was not only an unexpected but
+apparently an unwelcome visitor. He was not long in doubt as to the
+meaning of this reception. To his indignation and astonishment he was
+informed that the plan of a vessel submitted by him had already been
+rejected. His first impulse was to withdraw at once. Mastering his
+anger, however, he inquired the reason for this decision. Commodore
+Smith explained that the vessel had not sufficient stability; in other
+words, it would be liable to upset. Captain Ericsson was too experienced
+a naval designer to have overlooked this point, and in a lucid
+explanation put his views before the board, winding up with the
+declaration: "Gentlemen, after what I have said, I consider it to be
+your duty to the country to give me an order to build the vessel before
+I leave this room."
+
+Withdrawing to a corner the board held a consultation and invited the
+inventor to call again at one o'clock. When Ericsson returned he brought
+with him a diagram illustrating more fully his reasons for considering
+his proposed vessel to be perfectly stable. Commodore, afterward
+Admiral, Paulding was convinced, and admitted that Ericsson had taught
+him much about the stability of vessels. Secretary Welles was informed
+that the board reported favorably upon Ericsson's plan, and told the
+inventor that he might return to New York and begin work, as the
+contract would follow him. When the contract came it was found to be a
+singularly one-sided affair. If the Monitor proved vulnerable--in other
+words; if it was not a success--the money paid for it by the Navy
+Department was to be refunded.
+
+[Illustration: Sectional View of Monitor through Turret and
+Pilot-house.]
+
+[Illustration: The Original Monitor.]
+
+It took one hundred days to build the Monitor. During those three months
+Ericsson scarcely slept, and even in his dreams he went over the details
+of the new-fangled war-engine he was building. He named her Monitor
+because, he said, she would warn the nations of the world that a new era
+in naval warfare had begun. The story of his untiring activity has been
+told almost as often as that of the battle between the Monitor and the
+Merrimac. He was at the ship-yard before any of the workmen, and was the
+last to leave. In the construction of so novel a craft difficulties of a
+puzzling nature came up every day. If Ericsson could not solve them on
+the spot, he studied the matter in the quiet of the night, and was ready
+with his drawings in the morning. The result of the naval battle in
+Hampton Roads, on the 9th of March, 1862, between the little Monitor and
+the big Merrimac made Ericsson the hero of the hour. Had no David
+appeared to stop the ravages of the Confederate Goliath, it is hard to
+say what might not have been the injury inflicted upon the cause of the
+Union by the terrible Merrimac. The United States Navy was virtually
+panic-stricken when the Monitor, this "Yankee cheese-box on a plank," as
+the Southerners called her, came to the rescue.
+
+Notwithstanding the tremendous service rendered the country, Ericsson
+declined to receive more compensation for the Monitor than his contract
+called for. In reply to a resolution of the New York Chamber of Commerce
+calling for "a suitable return for his services as will evince the
+gratitude of the nation," Ericsson said: "All the remuneration I desire
+for the Monitor I get out of the construction of it. It is
+all-sufficient." Our grateful nation took him at his word. But honors of
+another and less costly kind were showered upon him. Chief Engineer
+Stimers, who was on the Monitor during her battle with the Merrimac,
+wrote to Ericsson: "I congratulate you on your great success. Thousands
+have this day blessed you. I have heard whole crews cheer you. Every man
+feels that you have saved this place to the nation by furnishing us with
+the means to whip an iron-clad frigate that was, until our arrival,
+having it all her own way with our most powerful vessels."
+
+[Illustration: Fac-simile of a Pencil Sketch by Ericsson, giving a
+Transverse Section of his Original Monitor Plan, with a Longitudinal
+Section drawn over it.]
+
+[Illustration: Interior of the Destroyer, Looking toward the Bow.]
+
+War vessels upon the plan of the Monitor speedily appeared among the
+navies of several nations. England refused at first to admit the value
+of the invention and was not converted until the double-turreted
+Miantonomoh visited her waters in 1866, when one of the London papers
+described her appearance among the British fleet as that of a wolf among
+a flock of sheep. The day of the big wooden war-vessels was over. It
+was, nevertheless, an Englishman and a naval officer, Captain Cowper
+Coles, who sought to deprive Ericsson of the honor of his invention.
+Coles declared that he had devised a ship during the Crimean War, in
+which a turret or cupola was to protect the guns. Ericsson's letter to
+Napoleon III., written in 1854, is sufficient answer to this, besides
+which Ericsson's scheme includes more than a stationary shield for the
+guns, which is all that Coles claimed. Coles succeeded, however, in
+inducing the British Admiralty to build a vessel according to his plans.
+This ill-fated craft upset off Cape Finisterre on the night of September
+6, 1870, and went to the bottom with Coles and a crew of nearly five
+hundred men.
+
+Having devised an apparatus that made wooden war-vessels useless,
+Ericsson turned his attention to the destruction of iron-clads, and
+devoted ten years of his life to the construction of his famous
+torpedo-boat, the Destroyer, upon which he spent about all the money he
+amassed by other work. According to his belief, no vessel afloat could
+escape annihilation in a battle with his Destroyer. This vessel is
+designed to run at sufficient speed to overtake any of the iron-clads.
+It offers small surface to the shot of an enemy, and besides being
+heavily armored, it can be partly submerged beneath the waves. When
+within fighting distance it fires under water, by compressed air, a
+projectile containing dynamite sufficient to raise a big war-ship out of
+the water. The explosion takes place when the projectile meets with
+resistance, such as the sides of a ship. To Ericsson's great
+disappointment, the United States Government persistently refused to
+purchase the Destroyer or to commission Ericsson to build more vessels
+of her type.
+
+[Illustration: Development of the Monitor Idea.]
+
+Of Ericsson's home life there is not much to be told. He was utterly
+wrapped up in his work. With his devoted secretary, Mr. Arthur Taylor,
+his days knew scarcely any variation. Of social recreation he had none.
+In conversation he was abrupt and somewhat peculiar, apparently
+regarding all other talk than that relating to mechanics and germane
+subjects as a waste of words. His shrewd face, with its blue eyes and
+fringe of white hair, was not an unkindly one, however, and the few
+workmen he employed in the Beach Street house were devoted to him. No
+great man was ever more intensely averse to personal notoriety. Although
+often advised to make his Destroyer better known by means of newspaper
+articles, he persistently refused to see newspaper men; and the
+professional interviewer and lion-hunter were his pet aversions. It was
+perhaps to avoid them that he left his house only after nightfall, and
+then but for a walk in the neighborhood.
+
+[Illustration: The Room in which Ericsson Worked for More than Twenty
+Years.]
+
+His time was divided according to rule. For thirty years he was called
+by his servant at seven o'clock in the morning, and took a bath of very
+cold water, ice being added to it in summer. After some gymnastic
+exercises came breakfast at nine o'clock, always of eggs, tea, and brown
+bread. His second and last meal of the day, dinner, never varied from
+chops or steak, some vegetables, and tea and brown bread again.
+Ice-water was the only luxury that he indulged in. He used tobacco in no
+form. During the daytime he was accustomed to work at his desk or
+drawing-table for about ten hours. After dinner he resumed work until
+ten, when he started out for the stroll of an hour or more, which always
+ended his day. The last desk work accomplished every day was to make a
+record in his diary, always exactly one page long. This diary is in
+Swedish and comprises more than fourteen thousand pages, thus covering a
+period of forty years, during which he omitted but twenty days, in
+1856, when he had a finger crushed by machinery. He scarcely knew what
+sickness was, and just before his death said that he had not missed a
+meal for fifteen years. He was a widower and left no children. He died
+in the Beach Street house, after a short illness, on March 8, 1889, and
+his remains were transferred to Sweden with naval honors.
+
+[Illustration: Cyrus Hall McCormick.]
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+CYRUS HALL McCORMICK.
+
+
+In the course of an argument before the Commissioner of Patents, in
+1859, the late Reverdy Johnson declared that the McCormick reaper was
+worth $55,000,000 a year to this country, an estimate that was not
+disputed. At about the same time the late William H. Seward said that
+"owing to Mr. McCormick's invention the line of civilization moves
+westward thirty miles each year." Already the London _Times_, after
+ridiculing the McCormick reaper exhibited at the London World's Fair of
+1851, as "a cross between an Astley (circus) chariot, a wheel-barrow,
+and a flying-machine," confessed, when the reaper had been tested in the
+fields, that it was "worth to the farmers of England the whole cost of
+this exhibition." Writing of this glorious success, Mr. Seward said: "So
+the reaper of 1831, as improved in 1845, achieved for its inventor a
+triumph which all then felt and acknowledged was not more a personal one
+than it was a national one. It was justly so regarded. No general or
+consul, drawn in a chariot through the streets of Rome by order of the
+Senate, ever conferred upon mankind benefits so great as he who thus
+vindicated the genius of our country at the World's Exhibition of Art
+in the metropolis of the British empire in 1851." In 1861, though
+declining to extend the patent for the reaper, the Commissioner of
+Patents, D.P. Holloway, paid the inventor this remarkable tribute:
+"Cyrus H. McCormick is an inventor whose fame, while he is yet living,
+has spread through the world. His genius has done honor to his own
+country, and has been the admiration of foreign nations, and he will
+live in the grateful recollection of mankind as long as the
+reaping-machine is employed in gathering the harvest." Nevertheless the
+extension of the patent of 1834, which act of justice would have given
+the inventor an opportunity to obtain an adequate reward for his work,
+was refused upon the extraordinary ground that "the reaper was of too
+great value to the public to be controlled by any individual." In other
+words, the benefit conferred by McCormick upon the country was too great
+to be paid for; therefore no effort should be made to pay for it.
+Finally, the French Academy of Sciences, when McCormick was elected to
+the Institute of France--an honor paid but to few Americans--mentioned
+the election as due to "his having done more for the cause of
+agriculture than any other living man."
+
+[Illustration: Farm where Cyrus H. McCormick was Born and Raised.]
+
+It is thus evident that the tremendous service done to the civilized
+world by the invention of the McCormick reaper was appreciated years
+ago. Yet it is improbable that the whole value of the invention was
+fully realized. To-day the McCormick works at Chicago turn out yearly,
+and have turned out for several years, more than one hundred thousand
+reapers and mowers. At a moderate estimate every McCormick reaper, and
+every reaper founded upon it and containing its essential features,
+saves the labor of six men during the ten harvest days of the year. The
+present number of reapers in operation to-day, all of them based upon
+the McCormick patents, is estimated at about two million, so that,
+counting a man's labor at $1 a day, here is a yearly saving of more than
+$100,000,000. The reaper thus stands beside the steam-engine and the
+sewing-machine as one of the most important labor-saving inventions of
+our time, relieving millions of men from the most arduous drudgery and
+increasing the world's wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars every
+year. It is some satisfaction to know that the inventor of the reaper
+lived to enjoy the fruits of his work. A remarkable man in every
+respect, his ingenuity, perseverance, courage under injustice, and
+generosity finally won him not only the material rewards that were his
+by right, but the esteem and honor of the civilized world.
+
+Like Fulton and Morse, Cyrus Hall McCormick came of Scotch-Irish blood,
+a race marked by fixed purpose, untiring industry in carrying out that
+purpose, a strong sense of moral obligation, and an unswerving
+determination to do right by the light of conscience though the heavens
+fall. He was born on the 15th of February, 1809, at Walnut Grove, in
+Rockbridge County, Va., and was the eldest of eight children, six of
+whom lived to grow up. His father, Robert McCormick, in addition to
+farming, had workshops of considerable importance on his farm, as well
+as a saw-mill and grist-mill and smelting furnaces. In these workshops
+young Cyrus McCormick probably got his first love for mechanical
+devices. Robert McCormick was an inventor of no mean attainment. He
+devised and built a thresher, a hemp-breaker, some mill improvements,
+and in 1816 he made and tried a mechanical reaper. In those days so much
+of the farmer's hard labor was expended in swinging the scythe that it
+seems strange we have no record of more attempts to make a machine do
+the work. A schoolmaster named Ogle is said to have built a reaper in
+1822, but, according to his own admission, it would not work. Bell, a
+Scotch minister, also contrived a reaping-machine that was tried in
+1828. In the course of the subsequent patent litigation over the reaper
+the claims of these early inventors were made the most of by McCormick's
+opponents, but the courts of last resort invariably settled the question
+in McCormick's favor.
+
+As a farmer boy, young Cyrus McCormick began his day's work in the
+fields at five o'clock. In winter he went to the Old Field School.
+During his boyhood he would watch his father's experiments and
+disappointments. His first attempt in the same direction was the
+construction, at the age of fifteen, of a harvesting-cradle by which he
+was enabled to keep up with an able-bodied workman. His first patented
+invention (1831) was a plough which threw alternate furrows on either
+side, being thus either a right-hand or left-hand plough. This was
+superseded in 1833 by an improved plough, also by McCormick, called the
+self-sharpening plough, which did excellent work. His father having
+worked long and unsuccessfully at a mechanical reaper, it was natural
+that young McCormick's mind should turn over the same problem from time
+to time, and his father's failures did not deter him, although Robert
+McCormick had suffered so much in mind and pocket through the
+impracticability of his reaper that he warned his son against wasting
+more time and money upon the dream. One martyr to mechanical progress
+was enough for the McCormick family. But the possibility of making a
+machine do the hard, hot work of the harvest-field had a fascination for
+the young man, and the more he studied the discarded reaping-machine
+made by his father in 1816, the more firmly he became convinced that
+while the principle of that device was wrong, the work could be done. In
+those days the development of the country really depended upon some
+better, cheaper way of harvesting. The land was fertile, and there was
+practically no end of it. But labor was scarce.
+
+[Illustration: Exterior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper
+was Built.]
+
+Cyrus McCormick's plough was a success that encouraged him to take hold
+of the more difficult problem of the reaper. He found that some device,
+such as his father's, would cut grain after a fashion, provided it was
+in perfect condition and stood up straight; the moment it became matted
+and tangled and beaten down by wind and rain the machine was useless.
+Other devices had been arranged whereby a fly-wheel armed with sickles
+slashed off the heads of the wheat, leaving the stalks; but here again
+such a machine would work only when the field was in prime condition. He
+determined that no device was of any value which would not cut grain as
+it might happen to stand, stalk and all. After months of labor in his
+father's shop, making every part of the machine himself, in both wood
+and iron, as he said, he turned out, in 1831, the first reaper that
+really cut an average field of wheat satisfactorily. Its three great
+essential features were those of the reaper of to-day--a vibrating
+cutting-blade, a reel to bring the grain within reach of the blade, a
+platform to receive the falling grain, and a divider to separate the
+grain to be cut from that to be left standing. This machine, drawn by
+horses, was tested in a field of six acres of oats, belonging to John
+Steele, within a mile of Walnut Grove. Its work astonished the
+neighboring farmers who gathered to witness the test. The problem of
+cutting standing grain by machinery had been solved.
+
+There were, however, certain defects in the reaper which caused Cyrus
+McCormick not to put the machine on the market. All the cog-wheels were
+of wood. There was no place upon it for either the driver or the raker.
+The former rode on the near horse and the latter followed on foot,
+raking the grain from it as best he could. But it cut grain fast, and
+both father and son were so impressed by its possibilities as
+foreshadowed in even this crude affair, that for the next few years they
+devoted their time, money, and thoughts to it. Robert McCormick was as
+enthusiastic as his son, and he is rightly entitled to a share of the
+honor, for his invention of 1816 turned the attention of his son to the
+problem and pointed out the radical errors to be avoided. A year after
+its first trial, with certain improvements, the reaper cut fifty acres
+of wheat in so perfect and rapid a manner as to insure its practical
+value beyond all doubt. The self-restraint shown by McCormick in
+refusing to sell machines until he was satisfied with them shows the
+man. The patent was granted in 1834, but for six years he kept at work
+experimenting, changing, improving, during the short periods of each
+harvest. In a letter to the Commissioner of Patents, on file in the
+Patent Office, Mr. McCormick said: "From the experiment of 1831 until
+the harvest of 1840 I did not sell a reaper, although during that time I
+had many exhibitions of it, for experience proved to me that it was best
+for the public as well as for myself that no sales were made, as defects
+presented themselves that would render the reaper unprofitable in other
+hands. Many improvements were found necessary, requiring a great deal of
+thought and study. I was sometimes flattered, at other times
+discouraged, and at all times deemed it best not to attempt the sale of
+machines until satisfied that the reaper would succeed."
+
+[Illustration: Interior of the Blacksmith Shop where the First Reaper
+was Built.]
+
+About 1835 the McCormicks engaged in a partnership for the smelting of
+iron ore. The reaper, as a business pursuit, was yet in the distance,
+and the new iron industry offered large profits. The panic of 1837 swept
+away these hopes. Cyrus sacrificed all he had, even the farm given him
+by his father, to settle his debts, and his scrupulous integrity in this
+matter turned disaster into blessing, for it compelled him to take up
+the reaper with renewed energy. With the aid of his father and of his
+brothers, William and Leander, he began the manufacture of the machine
+in the primitive workshop at Walnut Grove, turning out less than fifty
+machines a year, all of them made under great disadvantages. The
+sickles were made forty miles away, and as there were no railroads in
+those days, the blades, six feet long, had to be carried on horseback.
+Neither was it easy, when once the machines were made, to get them to
+market. The first consignment sent to the Western prairies, in 1844, was
+taken in wagons from Walnut Grove to Scottsville, then down the canal to
+Richmond, Va.; thence by water to New Orleans, and then up the
+Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to Cincinnati.
+
+The great West, with its vast prairies, was the natural market for the
+reaper. Upon the small farms of the East hand labor might still suffice
+for the harvest; in the West, where the farms were enormous and labor
+scarce, it was out of the question. Realizing that while his reaper was
+a luxury in Virginia, it was a necessity in Ohio and Illinois, Cyrus
+McCormick went to Cincinnati in the autumn of 1844 and began
+manufacturing. At the same time he made some valuable improvements and
+obtained a second patent. The reaper had become known and the inventor
+rode on horseback through Illinois and Wisconsin, obtaining farmers'
+orders for reapers, which he offered to A.C. Brown, of Cincinnati, as
+security for payment, if he would use his workshops for manufacturing
+them. McCormick was enabled also to arrange with a firm in Brockport,
+N.Y., to make his reapers on a royalty, and this business provided the
+great wheat district of Central New York with machines. In 1847 and 1848
+he obtained still other patents for new features of the reaper.
+
+[Illustration: The First Reaper.]
+
+In 1846 he had already fixed upon Chicago as the best centre of
+operations for the reaper business, and at the close of the year he
+moved there. The next year the sale of the reapers rose to seven
+hundred, and more than doubled in 1849. Having associated his two
+brothers, William S. and Leander J., with him, Cyrus McCormick found
+time to devote himself to introducing the reaper in the Old World. The
+American exhibit at the London World's Fair of 1851 was rather a small
+one, redeemed largely by the McCormick reaper, which the London _Times_,
+as I have already said, praised as worth to the farmers of Great Britain
+more than the whole cost of the exhibition. To it was awarded the grand
+prize, known as the council medal.
+
+The reaper's advance in public favor was as steady on the other side of
+the water as here, and medals and honors were awarded McCormick at many
+important exhibitions. During the Paris Exposition of 1867 McCormick
+superintended the work of his reapers at a field trial held by the
+exposition authorities, and so conclusively defeated all competitors
+that Napoleon III., who walked after the reapers, expressed his
+determination to confer upon the inventor, then and there, the Cross of
+the Legion of Honor. At the French Exposition of 1878 the McCormick
+wire-binder won the grand prize. From 1850 the success of the reaper was
+assured. Mr. McCormick might have rested content with what had been
+achieved, but it was not his nature. He not only continued to bear upon
+his shoulders the larger share of responsibility of the rapidly growing
+business, but he labored persistently to add to the effectiveness of his
+invention.
+
+The great fire that swept Chicago in 1871 left nothing of the already
+important works established by Mr. McCormick. But, as might be expected
+from such a man, he was a tower of strength to the city in her time of
+distress, and one of those to rally first from the blow and to inspire
+hope. Within a year, assisted by his brother Leander, he had raised from
+the ashes an immense establishment, which with the growth of the last
+few years now covers forty acres of ground. More than 2,000 men are here
+employed. The statistics for last year show that more than 20,000 tons
+of special bar-iron and steel, 2,800 tons of sheet steel, and 26,000
+tons of castings were used in making the 142,000 machines sold. Ten
+million feet of lumber were used, chiefly in boxing and crating, as very
+little wood is now used in the reaper.
+
+This is a marvellous development from the little Virginia shop of 1840,
+with its output of one machine a week, and the growth means far more for
+the country at large than might be inferred from these figures; the
+farmers of the world owe more to the McCormick reaper than they can
+repay. The whir of the American reaper is heard around the world. In
+Egypt, Russia, India, Australia the machine is helping man with more
+than a giant's strength. Recent American travellers through Persia have
+described the singular effect produced upon them by seeing the McCormick
+reaper doing its steady work in the fields over which Haroun Al Raschid
+may have roamed. And this wonderful machine is followed with awe by the
+more ignorant of the natives, who look upon its achievements as little
+short of magical. They are not far wrong, however, for it is more
+amazing than any wonder described in their "Arabian Nights."
+
+The last years of Cyrus H. McCormick's life were such as have fallen to
+few of the world's benefactors, for as a rule the pioneer who shows the
+road has a hard time of it, even unto the end. Mr. McCormick had the
+satisfaction of knowing not only that by his invention he had conferred
+a blessing upon the workmen of the world, but that the world had
+acknowledged the debt. Material prosperity, however, was not considered
+any reason for luxurious idleness. To the close of his life Mr.
+McCormick continued to supervise the business of his firm and to make
+the reaper more perfect. No great exhibition abroad or in this country
+passed without some of its honors falling to the share of the McCormick
+reaper.
+
+The private life of Cyrus H. McCormick was a happy one, and to this may
+be attributed no small share of the elasticity and courage that
+recognized no defeat as final. Congress failed to do him justice; his
+business was attacked by hordes of rivals; it was interrupted by the
+fire of 1871 and afterward threatened by labor strikes incited by
+self-seeking demagogues. Hard work was the rule of his life and not the
+exception. But that his nature remained sweet and just is shown by his
+untiring work upon behalf of others. His home life, as I have just
+remarked, was unusually blessed. In 1858 he married Miss Nettie Fowler,
+a daughter of Melzar Fowler, of Jefferson County, New York. Of the seven
+children born of this marriage, five lived to grow up, his son, Cyrus H.
+McCormick, now occupying his father's place at the head of the great
+works in Chicago. One of the daughters, Anita, is the widow of Emmons
+Blaine. The inventor of the reaping-machine died on the 13th of May,
+1884. Robert H. Parkinson, of Cincinnati, speaks as follows of one of
+the last interviews he had with Mr. McCormick: "Though struggling with
+the infirmities of age, he took on a kind of majesty which belongs alone
+to that combination of great mental and moral strength, and he surprised
+me by the power with which he grappled the matters under discussion, and
+the strong personality before which obstacles went down as swiftly and
+inevitably as grain before the knife of his machine. I think myself
+fortunate in having had this glimpse of him and in being able to
+remember with so much personal association a life so complete in its
+achievements, so far-reaching in its impress, alike upon the material,
+moral, and religious progress of the country, and so thoroughly
+successful and beneficial in every department of activity and influence
+which it entered." One of his friends, speaking of Mr. McCormick, said:
+"That which gave intensity to his purpose, strength to his will, and
+nerved him with perseverance that never failed was his supreme regard
+for justice, his worshipful reverence for the true and right. The
+thoroughness of his conviction that justice must be done, that right
+must be maintained, made him insensible to reproach and impatient of
+delay. I do not wonder that his character was strong, nor that his
+purpose was invincible, nor that his plans were crowned with an ultimate
+and signal success, for where conviction of right is the motive-power
+and the attainment of justice the end in view, with faith in God there
+is no such word as fail."
+
+Cyrus H. McCormick was not only the inventor of a great labor-saving
+device, but he helped his fellow-man in other ways. Philanthropy,
+religion, education, journalism, and politics received a share of his
+attention. More than thirty years ago he was already an active power for
+good in the councils of his church. In 1859 he proposed to the General
+Assembly of the Presbyterian Church to endow with $100,000 the
+professorships of a theological seminary, to be established in Chicago.
+This was done, and during his lifetime he gave about half a million
+dollars to this institution--the Theological Seminary of the Northwest.
+The McCormick professorship of natural philosophy in the Washington and
+Lee University of Virginia, and gifts to the Union Theological Seminary
+at Hampden-Sidney, and to the college at Hastings, Neb., also attest his
+solicitude for the church in which he had been reared and of which he
+had been a member since 1834. In 1872 he came to the aid of the
+struggling organ of the Presbyterian Church in the Northwest, the
+_Interior_, and used it to foster union between the Old and the New
+Schools in the church, to aid in harmonizing the Presbyterian Church in
+the North and South, to advance the interests of the Theological
+Seminary, and to promote the welfare of the Presbyterian Church in the
+Northwest. Under his care and advice the _Interior_ grew to be a mighty
+voice, expressing the convictions, the aspirations, and hopes of a great
+church.
+
+[Illustration: Thomas A. Edison.]
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THOMAS A. EDISON.
+
+
+[Illustration: Edison's Paper Carbon Lamp.]
+
+Thomas A. Edison is sometimes spoken of rather as a master mechanic than
+as a master inventor or discoverer, and with regard to some of his
+work--I might even say most of it--this characterization holds true.
+Edison's fame is chiefly associated in the popular mind with the
+electric light. Yet it is perfectly well known to every student of the
+matter, that in all that he has done toward making the electric light a
+useful every-day--or perhaps I should say every-night--affair, he has
+simply made practicable what other men had invented or discovered before
+him. The fundamental discovery upon which the incandescent electric lamp
+is founded--that a wire of metal or other substance if heated to
+incandescence in a glass bulb from which the air has been exhausted will
+give light for a longer or shorter time, according to the character of
+the apparatus and the degree to which a perfect vacuum has been effected
+in the bulb--this dates from the first half of the century. As early as
+1849 Despretz, the French scientist, described a series of experiments
+with sticks of carbon sealed in a glass globe from which air had been
+exhausted. When a powerful current was passed through the carbon
+filament it became luminous and remained so for a short time. This was,
+perhaps, the first of a long line of similar experiments in which a
+number of American physicists--Farmer, Draper, Henry, Morse, and Maxim
+among them--took part. But notwithstanding the labors of a score of
+experts in Europe and this country, the incandescent electric light--the
+wire in a glass bulb exhausted of its air--remained a laboratory
+curiosity up to the time, fifteen years ago, when Edison took hold of
+it. It gave light only for a short time and was too expensive a toy for
+practical use. The carbon burned out or disintegrated, and the lamp
+failed. Edison took hold of the mechanical difficulties of the problem.
+With a patience, an ingenuity, a fertility of device in which he stands
+alone, he got to the bottom of each radical defect and remedied it. The
+lamp would not burn long because the platinum wire used gave out, partly
+because platinum was not fitted for the work, fusing at too low a
+temperature. Edison substituted carbonized strips of paper. These in
+turn failed, and he found a species of bamboo that answered. The lamp
+would not burn because air still remained in the little bulbs
+notwithstanding the most careful manipulation with Sprengel pumps to
+exhaust the air. Edison invented new pumps and devices by which the
+air, down to one millionth part, was excluded. The lamp cost too much to
+operate, because large copper wires were needed to carry the current,
+and the generators used up steam power too fast. Edison devised new
+forms of conductors and generators. All such work called more for
+mechanical ingenuity than for actual invention. No new principles were
+involved--merely the better adaptation of known methods. Given a perfect
+carbon, a globe perfectly free from air, cheap electric current, and
+cheap means of carrying it from the generating machine to the lamps, and
+the problem was solved.
+
+Edison, as a master mechanic, furnished all this, or at least so nearly
+solved the problem as to entitle him to claim credit for having given
+the electric light to the world--a better illuminant than gas in every
+way, and destined some day to be infinitely cheaper.
+
+With regard to Edison's work upon the telegraph, telephone, electric
+railway, dynamo, the ore-extracting machines, the electric pen, and a
+score of other inventions which have made him the most profitable
+customer of the United States Patent Office in this or any other
+generation, the labor of this remarkable genius has also been largely
+that of one who made practical and useful the dreams of others. And I am
+by no means sure that the man who does this is not entitled to more
+credit than he who simply suggests that such and such a wonder might be
+accomplished and stops there. It is certain that before Edison we had
+no electric lights; now we have them in every important building in the
+country, and ere long shall have them everywhere.
+
+Edison dislikes intensely the term discoverer as applied to himself.
+"Discovery is not invention," he once remarked in the course of an
+interesting talk with Mr. George Parsons Lathrop, printed in _Harper's
+Magazine_. "A discovery is more or less in the nature of an accident. A
+man walks along the road intending to catch the train. On the way his
+foot kicks against something, and looking down to see what he has hit,
+he sees a gold bracelet embedded in the dust. He has discovered that,
+certainly not invented it. He did not set out to find a bracelet, yet
+the value of it is just as great to him at the moment as if, after long
+years of study, he had invented a machine for making a gold bracelet out
+of common road metal. Goodyear discovered the way to make hard rubber.
+He was at work experimenting with india-rubber, and quite by chance he
+hit upon a process which hardened it--the last result in the world that
+he wished or expected to attain. In a discovery there must be an element
+of the accidental, and an important one, too; while an invention is
+purely deductive. In my own case but few, and those the least important,
+of my inventions owed anything to accident. Most of them have been
+hammered out after long and patient labor, and are the result of
+countless experiments all directed toward attaining some well-defined
+object. All mechanical improvements may safely be said to be inventions
+and not discoveries. The sewing-machine was an invention. So were the
+steam-engine and the typewriter. Speaking of this latter, did I ever
+tell you that I made the first twelve typewriters at my old factory in
+Railroad Avenue, Newark? This was in 1869 or 1870, and I myself had
+worked at a machine of similar character, but never found time to
+develop it fully."
+
+[Illustration: Edison Listening to his Phonograph.]
+
+There is one great invention, however, for which Edison deserves credit,
+both as discoverer and practical inventor--the phonograph. Here was a
+genuine discovery. The phonograph knows no other parent than Edison, and
+he has brought it to its present condition by devotion and tireless
+skill. I have always believed in the phonograph as an instrument
+destined to play some day an important part among the blessings that
+ingenuity has given to man. There are still obstacles in the way of its
+practical success, but that the missing screw or spring--perhaps no more
+than that--will be found in the near future, is not doubted by any
+competent observer.
+
+Thomas Alva Edison was born February 11, 1847, at Milan, Erie County,
+O., an obscure canal village. When a small boy, his family, a most
+humble one (his father being a village jack-of-all-trades, living upon
+odd jobs done for neighboring farmers), moved to Port Huron, Mich.,
+where Edison's boyhood was passed. There his father was in turn tailor,
+well-digger, nursery-man, dealer in grain, lumber, and farm lands. His
+parents were of Dutch-Scotch descent and gave him the iron constitution
+that enables him to-day, at the age of forty-seven, to tire out the most
+robust of his assistants. One of his ancestors lived to the age of one
+hundred and two, and another to the age of one hundred and three, so
+that we may reasonably expect the famous inventor to open the door for
+us to still other wonders of which we do not yet even dream. His mother,
+born in Massachusetts, had a good education and at one time taught
+school in Canada. Of regular schooling, young Edison had but two months
+in his life. Whatever else he knew as a boy he learned from his mother.
+There are no records showing extraordinary promise on his part. He was
+an omnivorous reader, having an intense curiosity about the world and
+its great men. At ten years of age he was reading Hume's "England,"
+Gibbon's "Rome," the Penny Encyclopaedia, and some books on chemistry.
+
+At the age of twelve he entered upon his life work as newsboy on the
+Grand Trunk Railroad of Canada and the Michigan Central, selling papers,
+books, candies, etc., to the passengers.
+
+"Were you one of the train-boys," he was once asked, "who sold figs in
+boxes with bottoms half an inch thick?"
+
+"If I recollect aright," he replied, with a merry twinkle, "the bottoms
+of my boxes were a good inch."
+
+[Illustration: From Edison's Newspaper, the "Grand Trunk Herald."]
+
+Perhaps the twelve-year-old boy learned something from the books and
+papers he sold. At all events he says that the love of chemistry, even
+at that age, led him to make the corner of the baggage-car where he
+stored his wares a small laboratory, fitted up with such retorts and
+bottles as he could pick up in the railroad workshops. He had a copy of
+Fresenius's "Qualitative Analysis," into which he plunged with the ardor
+a small boy usually shows for nothing literary unless it has a yellow
+cover decorated with an Indian's head. He seems also to have had a habit
+of "hanging around" all interesting places, from a machine-shop to a
+printing-office, keeping his eyes very wide open. In one such expedition
+he received as a gift from W.F. Storey, of the _Detroit Free Press_,
+three hundred pounds of old type thrown out as useless. With an old
+hand-press he began printing a paper of his own, the _Grand Trunk
+Herald_, of which he sold several hundred copies a week, the employees
+of the road being his best customers. "My news," he says, talking of
+this time, "was purely local. But I was proud of my newspaper and looked
+upon myself as a full-fledged newspaper man. My items used to run about
+like this: 'John Robinson, baggage-master at James's Creek Station, fell
+off the platform yesterday and hurt his leg. The boys are sorry for
+John.' Or, 'No. 3 Burlington engine has gone into the shed for
+repairs.'"
+
+This was Edison's only dip into a literary occupation. He has no
+predilection in that way. He realizes the value of newspapers and books,
+but chiefly as tools, and his splendid library at the Orange laboratory,
+kept with scrupulous system, is filled with scientific books and
+periodicals only. Telegraphy was to be the field in which he was to win
+his first laurels. Some years ago he told the story as follows:
+
+"At the beginning of the civil war I was slaving late and early at
+selling papers; but, to tell the truth, I was not making a fortune. I
+worked on so small a margin that I had to be mighty careful not to
+overload myself with papers that I could not sell. On the other hand, I
+could not afford to carry so few that I should find myself sold out long
+before the end of the trip. To enable myself to hit the happy mean, I
+formed a plan which turned out admirably. I made a friend of one of the
+compositors of the _Free Press_ office, and persuaded him to show me
+every day a 'galley-proof' of the most important news article. From a
+study of its head-lines I soon learned to gauge the value of the day's
+news and its selling capacity, so that I could form a tolerably correct
+estimate of the number of papers I should need. As a rule I could
+dispose of about two hundred; but if there was any special news from the
+seat of war, the sale ran up to three hundred or over. Well, one day my
+compositor brought me a proof-slip of which nearly the whole was taken
+up with a gigantic display head. It was the first report of the battle
+of Pittsburgh Landing--afterward called Shiloh, you know--and it gave
+the number of killed and wounded as sixty thousand men.
+
+"I grasped the situation at once. Here was a chance for enormous sales,
+if only the people along the line could know what had happened! If only
+they could see the proof-slip I was then reading! Suddenly an idea
+occurred to me. I rushed off to the telegraph-operator and gravely made
+a proposition to him which he received just as gravely. He on his part
+was to wire to each of the principal stations on our route, asking the
+station-master to chalk up on the bulletin-board--used for announcing
+the time of arrival and departure of trains--the news of the great
+battle, with its accompanying slaughter. This he was to do at once,
+while I, in return, agreed to supply him with current literature 'free,
+gratis, for nothing' during the next six months from that date.
+
+"This bargain struck, I began to bethink me how I was to get enough
+papers to make the grand _coup_ I intended. I had very little cash and,
+I feared, still less credit. I went to the superintendent of the
+delivery department, and preferred a modest request for one thousand
+copies of the _Free Press_ on trust. I was not much surprised when my
+request was curtly and gruffly refused. In those days, though, I was a
+pretty cheeky boy and I felt desperate, for I saw a small fortune in
+prospect if my telegraph operator had kept his word--a point on which I
+was still a trifle doubtful. Nerving myself for a great stroke, I
+marched upstairs into the office of Wilbur F. Storey himself and asked
+to see him. A few minutes later I was shown in to him. I told who I was,
+and that I wanted fifteen hundred copies of the paper on credit. The
+tall, thin, dark-eyed, ascetic-looking man stared at me for a moment and
+then scratched a few words on a slip of paper. 'Take that downstairs,'
+said he, 'and you will get what you want.' And so I did. Then I felt
+happier than I have ever felt since.
+
+"I took my fifteen hundred papers, got three boys to help me fold them,
+and mounted the train all agog to find out whether the telegraph
+operator had kept his word. At the town where our first stop was made I
+usually sold two papers. As the train swung into that station I looked
+ahead and thought there must be a riot going on. A big crowd filled the
+platform and as the train drew up I began to realize that they wanted my
+papers. Before we left I had sold a hundred or two at five cents apiece.
+At the next station the place was fairly black with people. I raised the
+'ante' and sold three hundred papers at ten cents each. So it went on
+until Port Huron was reached. Then I transferred my remaining stock to
+the wagon which always waited for me there, hired a small boy to sit on
+the pile of papers in the back, so as to discount any pilfering, and
+sold out every paper I had at a quarter of a dollar or more per copy. I
+remember I passed a church full of worshippers, and stopped to yell out
+my news. In ten seconds there was not a soul left in meeting. All of
+them, including the parson, were clustered around me, bidding against
+each other for copies of the precious paper.
+
+"You can understand why it struck me then that the telegraph must be
+about the best thing going, for it was the telegraphic notices on the
+bulletin-boards that had done the trick. I determined at once to become
+a telegraph-operator. But if it hadn't been for Wilbur F. Storey I
+should never have fully appreciated the wonders of electrical science."
+
+Telegraphy became a hobby with the boy. From every operator along the
+road he picked up something. He strung the basement of his father's
+house at Port Huron with wires, and constructed a short line, using for
+the batteries stove-pipe wire, old bottles, nails, and zinc which
+urchins of the neighborhood were induced to cut out from under the
+stoves of their unsuspecting mothers and bring to young Edison at three
+cents a pound. In order to save time for his experiments, he had the
+habit of leaping from a train while it was going at the rate of
+twenty-five miles an hour, landing upon a pile of sand arranged by him
+for that purpose. An act of personal courage--the saving of the
+station-master's child at Port Clements from an advancing train--was a
+turning-point in his career, for the grateful father taught him
+telegraphing in the regular way. Telegraphy was then in its infancy,
+comparatively speaking; operators were few, and good wages could be
+earned by means of much less proficiency than is now required. Still,
+Edison had so little leisure at his disposal for learning the new trade,
+that it took him several years to become an expert operator. Most of his
+studies were carried on in the corner of the baggage-car that served him
+as printing-office, laboratory, and business headquarters. With so many
+irons in the fire, mishaps were sure to occur. Once he received a
+drubbing on account of an article reflecting unpleasantly upon some
+employee of the road. One day during his absence a bottle of phosphorus
+upset and set the old railroad caboose on fire, whereupon the conductor
+threw out all the painfully acquired apparatus and thrashed its owner.
+
+Edison's first regular employment as telegraph-operator was at
+Indianapolis when he was eighteen years old. He received a small salary
+for day-work in the railroad office there, and at night he used to
+receive newspaper reports for practice. The regular operator was a man
+given to copious libations, who was glad enough to sleep off their
+effects while Edison and a young friend of his named Parmley did his
+work. "I would sit down," says Edison, "for ten minutes, and 'take' as
+much as I could from the instrument, carrying the rest in my head. Then
+while I wrote out, Parmley would serve his turn at 'taking,' and so on.
+This worked well until they put a new man on at the Cincinnati end. He
+was one of the quickest despatchers in the business, and we soon found
+it was hopeless for us to try to keep up with him. Then it was that I
+worked out my first invention, and necessity was certainly the mother of
+it.
+
+"I got two old Morse registers and arranged them in such a way that by
+running a strip of paper through them the dots and dashes were recorded
+on it by the first instrument as fast as they were delivered from the
+Cincinnati end, and were transmitted to us through the other instrument
+at any desired rate of speed. They would come in on one instrument at
+the rate of forty words a minute, and would be ground out of our
+instrument at the rate of twenty-five. Then weren't we proud! Our copy
+used to be so clean and beautiful that we hung it up on exhibition; and
+our manager used to come and gaze at it silently with a puzzled
+expression. He could not understand it, neither could any of the other
+operators; for we used to hide my impromptu automatic recorder when our
+toil was over. But the crash came when there was a big night's work--a
+Presidential vote, I think it was--and copy kept pouring in at the top
+rate of speed until we fell an hour and a half or two hours behind. The
+newspapers sent in frantic complaints, an investigation was made, and
+our little scheme was discovered. We couldn't use it any more.
+
+[Illustration: Edison's Tinfoil Phonograph--the First Practical
+Machine.]
+
+"It was that same rude automatic recorder that indirectly led me long
+afterward to invent the phonograph. I'll tell you how this came about.
+After thinking over the matter a great deal, I came to the point where,
+in 1877, I had worked out satisfactorily an instrument that would not
+only record telegrams by indenting a strip of paper with dots and dashes
+of the Morse code, but would also repeat a message any number of times
+at any rate of speed required. I was then experimenting with the
+telephone also, and my mind was filled with theories of sound vibrations
+and their transmission by diaphragms. Naturally enough, the idea
+occurred to me: if the indentations on paper could be made to give forth
+again the click of the instrument, why could not the vibrations of a
+diaphragm be recorded and similarly reproduced? I rigged up an
+instrument hastily and pulled a strip of paper through it, at the same
+time shouting, 'Hallo'! Then the paper was pulled through again, my
+friend Batchelor and I listening breathlessly. We heard a distinct
+sound, which a strong imagination might have translated into the
+original 'Hallo.' That was enough to lead me to a further experiment.
+But Batchelor was sceptical, and bet me a barrel of apples that I
+couldn't make the thing go. I made a drawing of a model and took it to
+Mr. Kruesi, at that time engaged on piece-work for me, but now assistant
+general manager of our machine-shop at Schenectady. I told him it was a
+talking-machine. He grinned, thinking it a joke; but he set to work and
+soon had the model ready. I arranged some tinfoil on it, and spoke into
+the machine. Kruesi looked on, still grinning. But when I arranged the
+machine for transmission and we both heard a distinct sound from it, he
+nearly fell down in his fright. I was a little scared myself, I must
+admit. I won that barrel of apples from Batchelor, though, and was
+mighty glad to get it."
+
+
+To go back to earlier days, the story of Edison's first years as a
+full-fledged operator shows that from the beginning he was more of an
+inventor than an operator. He was full of ideas, some of which were
+gratefully received. One day an ice-jam broke the cable between Port
+Huron, in Michigan, and Sarnia, on the Canada side, and stopped
+communication. The river is a mile and a half wide and was impassable.
+Young Edison jumped upon a locomotive and seized the valve controlling
+the whistle. He had the idea that the scream of the whistle might be
+broken into long and short notes, corresponding to the dots and dashes
+of the telegraphic code. "Hallo there, Sarnia! Do you get me? Do you
+hear what I say?" tooted the locomotive.
+
+No answer.
+
+"Do you hear what I say, Sarnia?"
+
+A third, fourth, and fifth time the message went across without
+response, but finally the idea was caught on the other side; answering
+toots came cheerfully back and the connection was recovered.
+
+Anything connected with the difficulties of telegraphy had a fascination
+for him. He lost many a place because of unpardonable blunders due to
+his passion for improvement. At Stratford, Canada, being required to
+report the word "Six" every half hour to the manager to show that he was
+awake and on duty, he rigged up a wheel to do it for him. At
+Indianapolis he kept press reports waiting while he experimented with
+new devices for receiving them. At Louisville, in procuring some
+sulphuric acid at night for his experiments, he tipped over a carboy of
+it, ruining the handsome outfit of a banking establishment below. At
+Cincinnati he abandoned the office on every pretext to hasten to the
+Mechanics' Library to pass his day in reading.
+
+An indication of his thirst for knowledge, and of a _naive_ ignoring of
+enormous difficulties, is found in a project formed by him at this time
+to read through the whole public library. There was no one to tell him
+that a summary of human knowledge may be found in a moderate number of
+volumes, nor to point out to him what they are. Each book was to him a
+part of the great domain of knowledge, none of which he meant to lose.
+He began with the solid treatises of a dusty lower shelf and actually
+read, in the accomplishment of his heroic purpose, fifteen feet along
+that shelf. He omitted no book and nothing in the book. The list
+contained Newton's "Principia," Ure's Scientific Dictionary, and
+Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy."
+
+At that time a message sent from New Orleans to New York had to be taken
+at Memphis, re-telegraphed to Louisville, taken down again by the
+operator there, and telegraphed to another centre, and so on till it
+reached New York. Time was lost and the chance of error was increased.
+Edison was the first to connect New Orleans and New York directly. It
+was just after the war. He perfected an automatic repeater which was put
+on at Memphis and did its work perfectly. The manager of the office
+there, one Johnson, had a relative who was also busy on the same
+problem, but Edison solved it ahead of him and received complimentary
+notices from the local papers. He was discharged without cause. He got a
+pass as far as Decatur on his way home, but had to walk from there to
+Nashville, a hundred and fifty miles. From there he got a pass to
+Louisville, where he arrived during a sharp snow-storm, clad in a linen
+duster.
+
+It was soon after this that Edison, already a swift and competent
+operator when he devoted himself to practical work, received promise of
+employment in the Boston office. The weather was quite cold and his
+peculiar dress, topped with a slouchy broad-brimmed hat, made something
+of a sensation. But Edison then cared as little for dress as he does
+to-day. So one raw wet day a tall man with a limp, wet duster clinging
+to his legs, stalked into the superintendent's room, and said:
+
+"Here I am."
+
+The superintendent eyed him from head to foot, and said:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Tom Edison."
+
+"And who on earth might Tom Edison be?"
+
+The young man explained that he had been ordered to report for duty at
+the Boston office, and was finally told to sit down in the
+operating-room, where his advent created much merriment. The operators
+guyed him loudly enough for him to hear. He didn't care. A few moments
+later a New York sender noted for his swiftness called up the Boston
+office. There was no one at liberty.
+
+"Well," said the office chief, "let that new fellow try him." Edison sat
+down, and for four hours and a half wrote out messages in his peculiarly
+clear round hand, stuck a date and number on them and threw them on the
+floor for the office boy to pick up. The time he took in numbering and
+dating the sheets were the only seconds he was not writing out
+transmitted words. Faster and faster ticked the instrument, and faster
+and faster went Edison's fingers, until the rapidity with which the
+messages came tumbling on the floor attracted the attention of the
+other operators, who, when their work was done, gathered around to
+witness the spectacle. At the close of the four and a half hours' work
+there flashed from New York the salutation:
+
+"Hello!"
+
+"Hello yourself," ticked back Edison.
+
+"Who the devil are you?" rattled into the Boston office.
+
+"Tom Edison."
+
+"You are the first man in the country," ticked the instrument, "that
+could ever take me at my fastest, and the only one who could ever sit at
+the other end of my wire for more than two hours and a half. I'm proud
+to know you."
+
+Edison was once asked with what invention he really began his career as
+an inventor.
+
+"Well," said he, in reply, "my first appearance at the Patent Office was
+in 1868, when I was twenty-one, with an ingenious contrivance which I
+called the electrical vote recorder. I had been impressed with the
+enormous waste of time in Congress and in the State Legislatures by the
+taking of votes on any motion. More than half an hour was sometimes
+required to count the 'Ayes' and 'Noes.' So I devised a machine somewhat
+on the plan of the hotel annunciator that was invented long afterward,
+only mine was a great deal more complex. In front of each member's desk
+were to have been two buttons, one for 'Aye,' the other for 'No,' and by
+the side of the Speaker's desk a frame with two dials, one showing the
+total of 'Ayes' and the other the total of 'Noes.' When the vote was
+called for, each member could press the button he wished and the result
+would appear automatically before the Speaker, who could glance at the
+dials and announce the result. This contrivance would save several hours
+of public time every day in the session, and I thought my fortune was
+made. I interested a moneyed man in the thing and we went together to
+Washington, where we soon found the right man to get the machine
+adopted. I set forth its merits. Imagine my feelings when, in a
+horrified tone, he exclaimed:
+
+[Illustration: Vote Recorder--Edison's First Patented Invention.]
+
+"'Young man, that won't do at all. That is just what we do not want.
+Your invention would destroy the only hope the minority have of
+influencing legislation. It would deliver them over, bound hand and
+foot, to the majority. The present system gives them time, a weapon
+which is invaluable, and as the ruling majority always knows that they
+may some day become a minority, they will be as much averse to any
+change as their opponents.' I saw the force of these remarks, and the
+vote recorder got no further than the Patent Office."
+
+But he began to believe in himself. His next work was upon the
+applications of the vibratory principle in telegraphing, upon which so
+many of his subsequent inventions were founded. His first ambitious
+attempt was in the direction of a multiplex system for sending several
+messages over one wire at the same time. It was not much of a success,
+however, and Edison drifted to New York, where, after a vain attempt to
+interest the telegraph companies in his inventions, he established
+himself as an electrical expert ready for odd jobs and making a
+specialty of telegraphy. One day the Western Union Company had trouble
+with its Albany Wire. The wire wasn't broken, but wouldn't work, and
+several days of experimenting on the part of the company's electricians
+only served to puzzle them the more. As a forlorn hope they sent for
+young Edison.
+
+"How long will you give me?" he asked. "Six hours?"
+
+The manager laughed and told him he would need longer than that.
+
+Edison sat down at the instrument, established communication with Albany
+by way of Pittsburgh, told the Albany office to put their best man at
+the instrument, and began a rapid series of tests with currents of all
+intensities. He directed the tests from both ends, and after two hours
+and a half told the company's officers that the trouble existed at a
+certain point he named on the line, and he told them what it was. They
+telegraphed the office nearest this point the necessary directions, and
+an hour later the wire was working properly. This incident first
+established his value in New York as an expert, and the business became
+profitable. Moreover, it led the different telegraph companies to give
+respectful attention to what he had to offer in the way of patented
+devices.
+
+Edison's mechanical skill soon became so noted that he was made
+superintendent of the repair shop of one of the smaller telegraph
+companies then in existence, all of which were using what was known as
+the Page sounder, a device for signalling, the sole right to which was
+claimed by the Western Union Company. Owing to the latter company's
+success in a patent suit over this sounder, there came a time when an
+injunction was obtained, silencing all sounders of that type, and
+practically putting a serious obstacle in the way of rapid work. Edison
+was called into the president's office and the situation explained. For
+a long time, according to one who was present, he stood chewing
+vigorously upon a mouthful of tobacco, looking first at the sounder in
+his hand, and then falling into a brown study. At length he picked up a
+sheet of tin used as a "back" for manifolding on thin sheets of paper,
+and began to twist and cut it into queer shapes; a group of persons
+gathered around and watched. Not a word was spoken. Finally Edison tore
+off the Page sounder on the instrument before him, and substituting his
+bit of tin, began working. It was not so good as the patented
+arrangement discarded, but it worked. In four hours a hundred such
+devices were in use over the line, and what would have been a ruinous
+interruption to business was avoided.
+
+Edison's first large sums of money came from the sale of an improvement
+in the instruments used to record stock quotations in brokers' offices,
+commonly known as "tickers." His success in this direction led him to
+take a contract to manufacture some hundreds of "tickers," and his only
+venture in this direction was carried out with considerable success at a
+shop he rented in Newark about 1875. But as he told me a few years
+later, in talking about this incident in his career, manufacturing was
+not in his line. Like Thoreau, who having succeeded in making a perfect
+lead-pencil, declared he should never make another, he hates routine. "I
+was a poor manufacturer," said he, "because I could not let well enough
+alone. My first impulse upon taking any apparatus into my hand, from an
+egg-beater to an electric-motor, is to seek a way of improving it.
+Therefore, as soon as I have finished a machine I am anxious to take it
+apart again in order to make an experiment. That is a costly mania for a
+manufacturer."
+
+[Illustration: Edison in his Laboratory.]
+
+It was his success with a device for printing stock quotations upon
+paper tape that finally induced several New York capitalists to accept
+Edison's offer to experiment with the incandescent electric light, they
+to pay the expense of the experiments and share in the inventions if
+any were made. For the sake of quiet Edison moved out to Menlo Park,
+a little station on the Pennsylvania road about twenty-five miles beyond
+Newark, and built a shop twenty-eight feet wide, one hundred feet long,
+and two stories high. It was here that I first made his acquaintance, in
+January, 1879, soon after the newspapers had announced that he had
+solved the problem of the electric light. It may be remembered that gas
+stock tumbled in price at that time, and there was a rush to sell before
+the new light should displace gas altogether. One cold day I climbed the
+hill from the station, and once past the reception-room, in which every
+new-comer was carefully scrutinized, for inventors are apt to have odds
+and ends lying about that they do not want seen by everyone, I found
+myself in a long big work-shop. To anyone accustomed to the orderly
+appearance of the ideal machine-shop, it presented a curious appearance,
+for evidently half the machines in it--forges, lathes, furnaces,
+retorts, etc.--were dismantled for the moment and useless. Half a dozen
+workmen were busy in an apparently aimless manner.
+
+Upstairs, in a room devoted to chemical experiments, I found Edison
+himself. He is to-day just what he was then. Prosperity has not changed
+him in the least, except perhaps in one particular. In those days of
+struggle the inventor was far less affable with visitors than he is
+to-day. One felt instinctively that he was a man struggling to
+accomplish some serious task to which he was devoting every waking
+thought and probably dreaming about it at night. As I strode across the
+laboratory in the direction indicated by one of the workmen present, a
+compactly built but not tall man, with rather a boyish, clean-shaven
+face, prematurely old, was holding a vial of some liquid up to the
+light. He had on a blouse such as chemists wear, but it was hardly
+necessary, as his clothes were well stained with acids; his hands were
+covered with some oil with which his hair was liberally streaked, as he
+had a habit of wiping his fingers upon his head. "Good clothes are
+wasted upon me," he once explained to me. "I feel it is wrong to wear
+any, and I never put on a new suit when I can help it." Edison has been
+slightly deaf for a number of years, and like all persons of defective
+hearing, closely watches anyone with whom he talks. His patience with
+visitors is proverbial, and provided any intelligence is shown, he will
+plunge into long explanations. As he goes on from point to point,
+warming up to his subject, he is sometimes quite oblivious to the fact
+that it is all lost upon his visitor until brought back by some question
+or comment which shows that he might as well talk Sanskrit. Then he
+laughs and goes back to simpler matters.
+
+I watched him for a few moments before presenting myself. After a long
+look at his bottle, held up against the light, he put it down again on
+the table before him, and resting his head between his hands, both
+elbows on the table, he peered down at the bottle as if he expected it
+to say something. Then, after a moment's brown study, he would seize it
+again, give it a shake, as if to shake its secret out, and hold it up to
+the light. As pantomime nothing could have been more expressive. That
+liquid contained a secret it would not give up, but if it could be made
+to give it up, Edison was the man to do it, as a terrier might worry the
+life out of a rat.
+
+[Illustration: Edison's Menlo Park Electric Locomotive (1880).]
+
+The secret of his success might well be "Persistency, more persistency,
+still more persistency." One of his foremen relates that once in Newark
+when his printing telegraph suddenly refused to work, he locked himself
+into his laboratory, declaring that he would not come out till the
+trouble was found. It took him sixty hours, during which time his only
+food consisted of crackers and cheese eaten at the bench; then he went
+to bed and slept twenty hours at a stretch. At another time, during the
+height of the first electric-light excitement, all the lamps he had
+burning in Menlo Park, about eighty in all, suddenly went out, one after
+another, without apparent cause. Everything had gone well for nearly a
+month and the great success of the experiment had been published to the
+world. If the lamps, with their carbon filaments of charred paper would
+burn for a month there seemed to be no reason why they should not burn
+for a year, and Edison was stunned by the catastrophe. The trouble was
+evidently in the lamps themselves, for new lamps burned well. Then began
+the most exciting and most exhaustive series of experiments ever
+undertaken by an American physicist. For five days Edison remained day
+and night at the laboratory, sleeping only when his assistants took his
+place at whatever was going on. The difficulties in the way of
+experimenting with the incandescent lamp are enormous because the light
+only burns when in a vacuum. The instant the glass is broken, out it
+goes. Edison's eyes grew weak studying the brilliant glow of the carbon
+filament. At the end of the five days he took to his bed, worn out with
+excitement and sick with disappointment. During the last two days and
+nights he ate nothing. He could not sleep, for the moment he left the
+laboratory and closed his eyes some new test suggested itself. Neither
+was there much sleep for his faithful force. Ordinarily one of the most
+considerate of men, he seemed quite surprised when rest and refreshments
+were sometimes suggested as in order after fifteen hours' incessant
+work. The trouble was finally discovered to be one that time alone could
+have proved. The air was not sufficiently exhausted from the lamps. To
+add to the discomfiture of the inventor, a professor of physics in one
+of the well-known colleges declared in a newspaper article widely
+circulated that the Edison lamp would never last long enough to pay for
+itself.
+
+"I'll make a statue of that man," said Edison to me one day when he was
+still groping in the dark for the secret of his temporary defeat, "and
+I'll illuminate it brilliantly with Edison lamps and inscribe it: 'This
+is the man who said the Edison lamp would not burn.'"
+
+To go back to Edison, shaking his bottle in the sunlight, his brown
+study gave way to a pleasant smile of welcome when I had made my
+business known. "Take a look at these filings," he said, making room for
+me at the bench. "See how curiously they settle when I shake the bottle
+up. In alcohol they behave one way, but in oil in this way. Isn't that
+the most curious thing you ever saw--better than a play at one of your
+city theatres, eh?" and he chuckled to himself as he shook them up
+again.
+
+"What I want to know," he went on, more to himself than to me, "is what
+they mean by it, and I'm going to find out." To me the interesting
+spectacle was Edison tossing up his bottle and watching the filings
+settle, and not the curious behavior of the filings.
+
+When he put the bottle by, with a deep sigh, he took me over the whole
+place, pointing out with particular pride the apparatus for making the
+paper carbons for the lamps, and the new forms of Sprengel mercury pumps
+that did better work in extracting air from the lamps than any yet
+devised.
+
+Looking back to that first visit to Edison, the first of perhaps a score
+that I have had occasion to make him in the last fifteen years, what
+impressed me most was the immensity of the field in which he takes an
+interest. Ask Edison what he thinks will be the next step in the
+development of the sewing-machine, or the telescope, the microscope, the
+steam-engine, the electric-motor, the reaping-machine, or any device by
+which man accomplishes much work in little time, and invariably it will
+be found that he has some novel ideas upon the subject, perhaps fanciful
+in the extreme, but practical enough to show that he has pondered the
+matter. He shares the opinion of the gentleman who insists that whatever
+is is wrong, but only to this extent: that whatever is might be better.
+Authority means nothing to him; he must test for himself. For instance,
+it is well known that he rejects the Newtonian theory in part and holds
+that motion is an inherent property of matter; that it pushes, finding
+its way in the direction of least resistance, and is not pulled or
+attracted. "It seems to me," he said once, "that every atom is possessed
+by a certain amount of primitive intelligence. Look at the thousand
+ways in which atoms of hydrogen combine with those of other elements,
+forming the most diverse substances. Do you mean to say that they do
+this without intelligence? Atoms in harmonious and useful relation
+assume beautiful or interesting shapes and colors, or give forth a
+pleasant perfume, as if expressing their satisfaction. In sickness,
+death, decomposition, or filth the disagreement of the component atoms
+immediately makes itself felt by bad odors." It is partly due to this
+belief in the sensibility of atoms that Edison attributes his faith in
+an intelligent Creator.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+It is hard to say into what field of inquiry Edison has not dipped. He
+told me once that whenever he travelled he carried a note-book with him,
+in which he jotted down suggestions for experiments to be made. Railway
+journeys, at a time when Edison was a constant traveller, were
+productive of much material of this kind, for the inventor never sleeps
+when travelling, and his brain works, going over, even in a doze, the
+thousand and one aspects of his work, and evolving theories to be
+dismissed almost as soon as evolved. His mind, when at rest, reviews his
+day's work almost automatically, just as a chess player's brain will,
+after an exciting game, go over every situation in a half dream-like
+condition and evolve new solutions. He has great respect for even what
+appear to be the most inconsequential observations, provided they are
+made by a competent person, and a large force in his splendid
+laboratory at Orange is always employed in studies that appear to the
+outsider to be aimless; for instance, the action of chemicals upon
+various substances or upon each other. Strips of ivory in a certain oil
+become transparent in six weeks. A globule of mercury in water takes
+various shapes for the opposite poles of the electric-battery upon the
+addition of a little potassium. There is no present use for the
+knowledge of such facts, but it is recorded in voluminous note-books,
+and some day the connecting-link in the chain of an invaluable discovery
+may here be found.
+
+My next visit to Menlo Park was a few months later, when I found Edison
+in bed sick with disappointment. The lamps had again taken to antics for
+which no remedy or explanation could be discovered. There was an air of
+desolation over the place. The laboratory was cold and comfortless. Upon
+every side were signs of strict economy. Most of the assistants were
+young men glad to work for little or nothing. For the last month Edison
+had been working in the direction of a general improvement of all parts
+of the lamp instead of devoting himself to one feature. Expert
+glass-blowers were brought to Menlo Park, the air-pumps were made more
+perfect, new substances were tried for carbons. All this had taken time,
+during which outsiders freely predicted failure. The stock in the
+enterprise fell to such a price that it was hard to raise money for the
+maintenance of the laboratory. It was argued, and with some truth, as I
+have had occasion to remark, that Edison had really discovered nothing
+new; he had attempted to do what a dozen famous men had tried before him
+and he had failed. The quotations of New York gas stocks rose again.
+
+The next time I visited the laboratory, a few days later, Edison was up
+again and talking cheerfully. But he had grown five years older in five
+months. "I shall succeed," he said to me, "but it may take me longer
+than I at first supposed. Everything is so new that each step is in the
+dark; I have to make the dynamos, the lamps, the conductors, and attend
+to a thousand details that the world never hears of. At the same time I
+have to think about the expense of my work. That galls me. My one
+ambition is to be able to work without regard to the expense. What I
+mean is, that if I want to give up a whole month of my time and that of
+my whole establishment to finding out why one form of a carbon filament
+is slightly better than another, I can do it without having to think of
+the cost. My greatest luxury would be a laboratory more perfect than any
+we have in this country. I want a splendid collection of material--every
+chemical, every metal, every substance in fact that may be of use to me,
+and I hardly know what may not be of use. I want all this right at hand,
+within a few feet of my own house. Give me these advantages and I shall
+gladly devote fifteen hours a day to solid work. I want none of the rich
+man's usual toys, no matter how rich I may become. I want no horses or
+yachts--have no time for them. I want a perfect workshop."
+
+In the last twelve years Edison has seen his dream fulfilled. His
+electric light has not displaced gas, by any means, but it has been the
+foundation of a business large enough to make the inventor sufficiently
+rich to build the finest laboratory in the world, in the most curious
+room of which are to be found the three hundred models of machinery and
+apparatus of various kinds devised by Edison in the last twenty years
+and made by himself or under his eye. He is still a gaunt fellow, with a
+slight stoop, a clean-shaven face, and a low voice. His hands are still
+soiled with acids, his clothes are shabby, and there is always a cigar
+in his mouth.
+
+[Illustration: The Home of Thomas A. Edison.]
+
+[Illustration: Edison's Laboratory.]
+
+The Edison laboratory deserves a chapter by itself. In 1886 Edison
+bought a fine villa in Llewellyn Park at a cost of $150,000. He took the
+house as it stood, with all its luxurious fittings, rather to please his
+wife than himself; a corner of the laboratory would suit him quite as
+well. Right outside the gates of the park and within view of the house,
+he bought ten acres of land and began his laboratory. Two handsome
+structures of brick, each 60 feet wide, 100 feet long, and four stories
+high, accommodate the machine-shop, library, lecture-room, experimental
+workshops, assistants' rooms and store-rooms. The boiler-house and
+dynamo-rooms are outside the main buildings. Also, in a separate room,
+the floor of which consists of immense blocks of stone, are the delicate
+instruments of precision used in testing electric currents. The
+instruments in this one room, twenty feet square, cost $18,000 to make
+and to import from Europe. Upon first entering the main building, the
+visitor finds what is apparently a busy factory of some sort, with long
+rows of machinery, from steam-hammers to diamond-lathes. Everywhere
+workmen are busy at their tasks, and Edison has good reason to be proud
+of his laboratory force, for it consists of the picked workmen of the
+country. Whenever he finds in one of the Edison factories in Newark,
+New York, Schenectady, or elsewhere a particularly expert and
+intelligent man, he has him transferred to the Orange laboratory, where,
+at increased pay for shorter hours, the man not only finds life
+pleasanter, but has a chance of learning and becoming somebody. The
+whole place hums with the rattle of machinery and glows with electric
+light. There are eighty assistants, who have charge of the various
+departments. The most expert iron-workers, glass-blowers, wood-turners,
+metal-spinners, screw-makers, chemists, and machinists in the country
+are to be found here. A rough drawing of the most complicated model is
+all they require to work from.
+
+The store-rooms contain all the material needed. Four store-keepers are
+employed to keep the supplies, valued at $100,000, in order and ready
+for use at a moment's notice. Each article is put down in a catalogue
+which shows the shelf or bottle where it may be found. Every known
+metal, every chemical known to science, every kind of glass, stone,
+earth, wood, fibre, paper, skin, cloth, is to be found there. In making
+up the chemical collection an assistant was kept at work for weeks going
+through the three most exhaustive works on chemistry in English, French,
+and German, making a note of every substance mentioned, and this list
+constituted the order for chemicals, an order, by the way, which it
+required seven months to fill. In the glass department, for instance,
+there is every known kind of glass, from plates two inches thick to the
+finest, film, and if anything else in the way of glass is needed, the
+glass-workers are there to make it. This stupendous collection of
+material, filling one floor, is intended to guard against annoying
+delays that might occur at critical times for want of some rare
+material. In 1885, when working upon an apparatus for getting a current
+of electricity directly from heat--the thermo-electric
+generator--Edison's work was brought to a standstill for want of a few
+pounds of nickel, an article not then to be found in any quantity in
+this country. The store-room was organized to avert such delays. The
+library is the only part of the main building that shows any attempt at
+decoration. It is a superb room, 60 feet by 40, with a height of 25
+feet. Galleries run around the second story. At one end is a monumental
+fireplace, and in the centre of the hall a fine group of palms and
+ferns. The room is finished in oiled hard wood and lighted by
+electricity. Fine rugs cover the floors. The shelves contain nothing but
+scientific works and the files of the forty-six scientific periodicals
+in English, French, and German to which Edison subscribes. They are
+indexed by a librarian as soon as received, so that Edison can see at a
+glance what they contain concerning the special fields in which he is
+interested.
+
+Nothing in this big establishment, often employing more than one hundred
+persons, is made for sale. It is wholly devoted to experimental work and
+tests. Its expenses, said to be more than $150,000 a year, are paid by
+the commercial companies in which Edison is interested, he, on his
+part, giving them the benefit of any improvements made. Thus in one room
+hundreds of incandescent electric lamps burn night and day the year
+through. Each lamp is specially marked and when it burns out more
+quickly than the average, or lasts longer, a special study is made as to
+the contributing causes. It may seem impossible that the suggestions of
+one man can keep busy a big workshop upon experiments the year round,
+but Edison says that the temptation is always to increase the force.
+When it is remembered that the list of Edison's patents reaches to seven
+hundred and forty, and that on the electric light alone he has worked
+out several hundred theories, the wonder ceases. Ten minutes' work with
+a pencil may sketch an apparatus that a dozen men cannot finish inside
+of a fortnight.
+
+When the new Orange laboratory was finished and Edison found himself
+with time and means at his disposal, his first thought was to take up
+his phonograph. The history of the great hopes built upon the phonograph
+and the bitter disappointment that followed is too familiar to need
+repetition here. As may be imagined, Edison is most keenly bent upon
+tightening the loose screw that has prevented it from doing all that its
+friends predicted for it. He still works at other problems, but chiefly
+as relaxation. He rests from inventing one thing by inventing something
+else.
+
+[Illustration: Library at Edison's Laboratory.]
+
+One day recently, when I found him less confident than usual as to the
+triumph of the phonograph in the near future, he said: "There are some
+difficulties about the problem that seem insurmountable. I go on
+smoothly until at a certain point I run my head against a stone wall; I
+cannot get under, over, or around it. After butting my head against that
+wall until it aches, I go back to the beginning again. It is absurd to
+say that because I can see no possible solution of the problem to-day,
+that I may not see one to-morrow. The very fact that this century has
+accomplished so much in the way of invention, makes it more than
+probable that the next century will do far greater things. We ought to
+be ashamed of ourselves if we are content to fold our hands and say that
+the telegraph, telephone, steam-engine, dynamo, and camera having been
+invented, the field has been exhausted. These inventions are so many
+wonderful tools with which we ought to accomplish far greater wonders.
+Unless the coming generations are particularly lazy, the world ought to
+possess in 1993 a dozen marvels of the usefulness of the steam-engine
+and dynamo. The next step in advance will perhaps be the discovery of a
+method for transforming heat directly into electricity. That will
+revolutionize modern life by making heat, power, and light almost as
+cheap as air. Inventors are already feeling their way toward this
+wonder. I have gone far enough on that road to know that there are
+several stone walls ahead. But the problem is one of the most
+fascinating in view."
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL.
+
+
+[Illustration: Professor Bell Sending the First Message, by
+Long-distance Telephone, from New York to Chicago.]
+
+Sir Charles Wheatstone, the eminent English electrician, while engaged
+in perfecting his system of telegraphy discovered that wires charged
+with electricity often carried noises in a curious manner. He made and
+exhibited at the Royal Society, in 1840, a clock in which the tick of
+another clock miles away was conveyed through a wire. This experiment
+appears to have been one of the germs of the telephone. In 1844 Captain
+John Taylor, also an Englishman, invented an instrument to which he gave
+the name of the telephone, but it had nothing electrical about it. It
+was an apparatus for conveying sounds at sea by means of compressed air
+forced through trumpets. He could make his telephone heard six miles
+away. The first real suggestion of the telephone as we know it comes
+from Reis, the German professor of physics at Friedrichsdorf, who in
+1860 constructed with a coil of wire, a knitting-needle, the skin of a
+German sausage, the bung of a beer-barrel, and a strip of platinum an
+instrument which reproduced the sound of the voice by the vibration of
+the membrane and sent a series of clicks along an electric wire to an
+electro-magnetic receiver at the other end of the wire. The same idea
+was taken up in this country by Elisha Gray, Edison, and by Alexander
+Graham Bell, who first exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition an
+apparatus that transmitted speech by electricity in a fairly
+satisfactory manner. The American claimants to the honor of having
+invented the telephone include Daniel Drawbaugh, a backwoods genius of
+Pennsylvania, who claims to have made and used a practical telephone in
+1867-68. A large fortune has been spent in fighting Drawbaugh's claims
+against the Bell monopoly, but the courts have finally decided in favor
+of the latter. It should be recorded as a matter of justice to Mr. Gray,
+that he appears to have solved the problem of conveying speech by
+electricity at about the same time as Bell. Both these inventors filed
+their caveats upon the telephone upon the same day--February 14, 1876.
+It was Bell's good fortune to be the first to make his device
+practically effective.
+
+Alexander Graham Bell is not an American by birth. He was born in
+Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 1st of March, 1847. His father, Alexander
+Melville Bell, was the inventor of the system by which deaf people are
+enabled to read speech more or less correctly by observing the motion of
+the lips. His mother was the daughter of Samuel Symonds, a surgeon in
+the British navy.
+
+In 1872 the Bells moved to Canada, and young Alexander Bell became
+widely known in Boston as an authority in the teaching of the deaf and
+dumb. He first carried to great perfection in this country the art of
+enabling the deaf and dumb to enunciate intelligible words and sounds
+that they themselves have never heard. Most of his art he acquired from
+his father, one of the most expert of teachers in this field. The elder
+Bell is still active in his work, constantly devising new methods and
+experiments. He lives in Washington with his son and is frequently heard
+in lectures in New York and Boston.
+
+In 1873 Alexander Bell began to study the transmission of musical tones
+by telegraph. It was in the line of his work with deaf and dumb people
+to make sound vibrations visible to the eye. With the phonautograph he
+could obtain tracings of such vibrations upon blackened paper by means
+of a pencil or stylus attached to a vibrating cord or membrane. He also
+succeeded in obtaining tracings upon smoked glass of the vibrations of
+the air produced by vowel sounds. He began experimenting with an
+apparatus resembling the human ear, and upon the suggestion of Dr.
+Clarence J. Blake, the Boston aurist, he tried his work upon a prepared
+specimen of the ear itself. Observation upon the vibrations of the
+various bones within the ear led him to conceive the idea of vibrating a
+piece of iron in front of an electro-magnet.
+
+Mr. Bell was at this time an instructor in phonetics, or the art of
+visible speech, in Monroe's School of Oratory in Boston. One of his old
+pupils describes him then as a swarthy, foreign-looking personage, more
+Italian than English in appearance, with jet-black hair and dark skin.
+His manner was earnest and full of conviction. He was an enthusiast in
+his work, and only emerged from his habitual diffidence when called upon
+to talk upon his studies and views. He was miserably poor and almost
+without friends. When he was attacked with muscular rheumatism, in 1873,
+his hospital expenses were paid by his employer, and his only visitors
+were some of the pupils at the school.
+
+Until the close of 1874, Bell's experiments seemed to promise nothing of
+practical value. But in 1875 he began to transmit vibrations between two
+armatures, one at each end of a wire. He was much interested at the time
+in multiple telegraphy and fancied that something might come of some
+such arrangement of many magnetic armatures responding to the vibrations
+set up in one.
+
+In November, 1875, he discovered that the vibrations created in a reed
+by the voice could be transmitted so as to reproduce words and sounds.
+One day in January, 1876, he called a dozen of the pupils at Monroe's
+school into his room and exhibited an apparatus by which singing was
+more or less satisfactorily transmitted by wire from the cellar of the
+building to a room on the fourth floor. The exhibition created a
+sensation among the pupils, but, although no attempts were made by Bell
+to conceal what he was doing, or how he did it, the noise of his
+discovery does not seem to have reached the outside world. With an old
+cigar-box, two hundred feet of wire, two magnets from a toy fish-pond,
+the first Bell telephone was brought into existence. The apparatus was,
+however, not yet the practical telephone as we know it, but it was
+sufficient of a curiosity to warrant its exhibition in an improved form
+at the Centennial Exhibition, when Sir William Thomson spoke of it as
+"perhaps the greatest marvel hitherto achieved by the electric
+telegraph."
+
+The next year Bell succeeded in bringing the telephone to the condition
+in which it became of immediate practical value. Strange to say, the
+public was at first slow to appreciate the great importance of the
+invention, and when Bell took it to England, in 1877, he could find no
+purchaser for half the European rights at $10,000. In this country,
+thanks to the business energy of Professor Gardiner Hubbard, of Harvard,
+Bell's father-in-law, the telephone was soon made commercially valuable,
+and there are now said to be nearly six hundred thousand telephones in
+use in the United States alone.
+
+Professor Bell, as may be imagined, is not idle. His vast fortune has
+enabled him to continue costly experiments in aiding deaf and dumb
+people, and it will probably be in this field that his next achievement
+will be made. Personally, he is a reserved and thoughtful man, wholly
+given up to his scientific work. His wife, whom he married in 1876, was
+one of his deaf and dumb pupils. It is often said that it was largely
+due to his intense desire to soften her misfortune that his experiments
+were so exhaustive and finally became so productive in another
+direction. His home life in Washington, where he bought, in 1885, the
+superb house on Scott Circle known as "Broadhead's Folly," after the man
+who built it and ruined himself in so doing, is said to be an ideally
+peaceful and happy one, given up to study and efforts to alleviate the
+troubles of the deaf and dumb.
+
+As in the case of most inventions of such immense value as the
+telephone, a fortune has had to be spent in order to protect the patent
+rights; but in Bell's case the inventor's money reward has been ample
+and is now said to amount to more than $1,000,000 a year. Just at
+present Mr. Bell is engaged upon a modification of the phonograph, which
+may enable persons not wholly deaf to hear a phonographic reproduction
+of the human voice, even if they cannot hear the voice itself. Honors
+have poured in upon him within the last fifteen years. In 1880 the
+French Government awarded him the Volta prize of $10,000, which Mr. Bell
+devoted to founding the Volta Laboratory in Washington, an institution
+for the use of students. In 1882 he also received from France the ribbon
+of the Legion of Honor.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+AMERICAN INVENTORS, PAST AND PRESENT.
+
+
+There are now in force in this country nearly three hundred thousand
+patents for inventions and devices of more or less importance and aid to
+everyone. To how great a degree the world is indebted to the inventor,
+very few of us realize. The more we think of the matter, however, the
+more are we likely to believe that the inventor is mankind's great
+benefactor. Watt should stand before Napoleon in the hero-worship of the
+age, and the man who perfected the friction-match before the author of
+an epic. Some day this redistribution of the world's honors will surely
+take place, and it should be a satisfaction to us Americans that our
+country stands so high in the ranks of inventive genius. Within the last
+half century Americans have contributed, to mention only great
+achievements, the telegraph, the telephone, the electric light, the
+sewing-machine, the reaper, and vulcanized rubber, to the world's
+wealth--a far larger contribution than that of any other nation. What
+may not the next generation produce? Some people seem to believe that so
+much has already been invented as to have exhausted the field. In this
+connection I have quoted in another place some remarks Mr. Edison once
+made to me as to what the next fifty years might bring forth. Still more
+astonishing than our past fecundity in invention would be future
+barrenness. This century has done its work and produced its marvels with
+comparatively blunt tools, or no tools at all. The next century will be
+able to work with superb instruments of which our grandfathers knew
+nothing. The school-boy to-day knows more of the forces of nature and
+their useful application than the magician of fifty years ago. It has
+been said that the fifteen blocks in the "Gem" puzzle can be arranged in
+more than a million different ways. The material in the game at which
+man daily plays is so infinitely more complex that the number of
+combinations cannot be written out in figures. The role played by
+invention in modern life is infinitely greater than during preceding
+ages. One invention, by affording a new tool, makes others possible. The
+steam-engine made possible the dynamo, the dynamo made possible the
+electric light. In its turn the electric light may lead to wonders still
+more extraordinary.
+
+The degree to which invention has contributed to civilization is far
+from suspected by the careless observer. Almost everything we have or
+use is the fruit of invention. Man might be defined as the animal that
+invents. The air we breathe and the water we drink are provided by
+Nature, but we drink water from a vessel of some kind, an invention of
+man. Even if we drink from a shell or a gourd, we shape it to serve a
+new purpose. If we want our air hotter or colder, we resort to
+invention, and a vast amount of ingenuity has been expended upon putting
+air in motion by means of fans, blowers, ventilators, etc. We take but a
+small part of our food as animals do--in the natural state. The savage
+who first crushed some kernels of wheat between two stones invented
+flour, and we are yet hard at it inventing improvements upon his
+process. The earliest inventions probably had reference to the procuring
+and preparing of food, and the ingenuity of man is still exercised upon
+these problems more eagerly than ever before. During the last fifty
+years the power of man to produce food has increased more than during
+the preceding fifteen centuries. Sixty years ago a large part of the
+wheat and other grain raised in the world was cut, a handful at a time,
+with a scythe, and a man could not reap much more than a quarter of an
+acre a day. With a McCormick reaper a man and two horses will cut from
+fifteen to twenty acres of grain a day. In the threshing of grain,
+invention has achieved almost as much. A man with a machine will thresh
+ten times as much as he formerly could with a flail.
+
+It is less than sixty years since matches have come into common use.
+Many old men remember the time in this country when a fire could be
+kindled only with the embers from another fire, as there were no such
+things as matches. Most of us who have reached the age of forty
+remember the abominable, clumsy sulphur-matches of 1860, as bulky as
+they were unpleasant. And yet the first sulphur-matches, made about
+1830, cost ten cents a hundred. To-day the safety match, certain and
+odorless, is sold at one-tenth of this price. The introduction of
+kerosene was one of the blessings of modern life. It added several hours
+a day to the useful, intelligent life of man, and who can estimate the
+influence of these evening hours upon the advance of civilization? The
+evening, after the day's work is done, has been the only hour when the
+workingman could read. Before cheap and good lights were given him,
+reading was out of the question. Gas marked a step in advance, but only
+for large towns, and now electricity bids fair soon to displace gas; and
+we hear vague suggestions of a luminous ether that will flood houses
+with a soft glow like that of sunlight.
+
+
+TOWNSEND AND DRAKE--THE INTRODUCTION OF COAL OIL.
+
+In 1850 sperm oil, then commonly used in lamps, had become high-priced,
+owing to the failure of the New Bedford whalers, and cost $2.25 a
+gallon. Oil obtained by the distillation of coal was tried, but was also
+too costly--not less than $1 a gallon. It burned well, but its odor was
+frightful. The problem of a cheap and pleasant light was solved by James
+M. Townsend and E.L. Drake, both of New Haven. In 1854 a man brought to
+Professor Silliman, of Yale, some oil from Oil Creek, Pa., to be tested.
+His report was so favorable that a company was formed, which leased all
+the land along Oil Creek upon which were traces of the new rock oil. The
+hard times of 1857 came before any headway had been made, and the
+company tried to find some way of ridding itself of the lease. At this
+time Townsend, who knew something about the property, undertook to get
+possession. Boarding in the same house in New Haven was E.L. Drake, once
+a conductor on the New York & New Haven Railroad, who had been obliged
+to give up work on account of ill-health. Townsend proposed that as
+Drake could get railroad passes as an ex-employee, he should go to
+Pennsylvania and look into the property. He did so, and reported that a
+fortune might be made by gathering the oil and bottling it for medicinal
+purposes. Drake and Townsend organized the Seneca Oil Company. The oil
+was gathered by digging trenches, and was sold at $1 a gallon. Drake
+suggested that it might be well to bore for oil. A man familiar with
+salt-well boring was brought from Syracuse, and in 1850 the first well
+was begun at Titusville under the supervision of Drake. He was commonly
+considered by the neighbors to be insane. The work was costly and slow.
+When many months and about $50,000 had been spent, the stockholders in
+the company refused to go any further--all except Townsend, who sent his
+last $500 to Drake, with instructions to use it in paying debts and his
+expenses in reaching home. On the day before the receipt of this
+money--August 29, 1859--the auger, which was down sixty-eight feet,
+struck a cavity, and up came a flow of oil that filled the well to
+within five feet of the surface. Pumping began at the rate of five
+hundred gallons a day, and a more powerful pump doubled this flow. As
+this oil was worth a dollar a gallon, fortune was within sight. But the
+very quantity of the oil proved to be the company's ruin. Their works
+were destroyed by fire in the winter of 1859-60, and before they could
+be rebuilt, scores of other wells, some of them requiring no pumping
+apparatus, had been sunk in the neighborhood. The supply was soon far in
+excess of the demand, which was limited by the small number of
+refineries, the want of good lamps in which to burn the oil, and the
+attacks by manufacturers of other oils. Such was the effect of these
+causes that the new oil fell to a dollar a barrel, a price so low that
+it did not pay for the handling. The Seneca Oil Company was so much
+discouraged that they sold out their leases and disbanded. Both Townsend
+and Drake would have died richer men had they never heard of the
+Pennsylvania rock oil.
+
+
+THE CLARKS AND THE TELESCOPE.
+
+[Illustration: Alvan Clark.]
+
+The fame of American telescopes is due to the work and inventions of the
+Clark family of Cambridgeport, Mass., the descendants of Thomas Clark,
+the mate of the Mayflower. The founder of the great--in a scientific
+sense--house of Alvan Clark & Sons, telescope-makers, was a remarkable
+man. Until after his fortieth year he devoted himself to
+portrait-painting. In 1843 his attention was accidentally turned toward
+telescope-making. One day the dinner-bell at Phillips Academy, Andover,
+Mass., happened to break. The pieces were gathered up by one of Clark's
+boys, George, who proceeded to melt them in a crucible over the kitchen
+fire, declaring that he was going to make a telescope. His mother
+laughed, but his father was deeply interested and helped the boy make a
+five-inch reflecting telescope which showed the satellites of Jupiter.
+This was the beginning of telescope-making in the Clark family, an
+industry which has given to the scientific world its most remarkable
+lenses. Alvan Clark dropped his paintbrushes, never to take them up
+again until at the age of eighty-three he made an excellent portrait of
+his little grandson. To Alvan G. Clark, the present head of the house,
+are chiefly due the scores of devices by which American ingenuity has
+surpassed the slower European methods. The delicacy required in the
+manipulation and grinding of the immense lenses made by the Clarks is
+almost incredible. The latest triumph of the firm--a forty-inch lens for
+the Spence Observatory at Los Angeles, Cal.--required two years of
+grinding and polishing after a piece of glass perfect enough had been
+obtained. So delicately finished is it that half a dozen sharp rubs with
+the soft part of a man's thumb would be sufficient to ruin it. Alvan G.
+Clark is now a man sixty-one years-old. He has lived all his life at the
+home in Cambridgeport. His greatest sorrow is that there is no son of
+his to carry on the work after his death. His only son died a few years
+ago, just as he was beginning to show wonderful aptitude in the art
+which has made the family famous in all the great observatories of the
+world.
+
+
+JOHN FITCH AND OLIVER EVANS--STEAM TRANSPORTATION.
+
+In looking over the work done by American inventors, the great names are
+those to be found at the heads of the preceding chapters. But the list
+is by no means exhausted. Among the early men of achievement in the
+field of invention I have had to omit at least a dozen whose work
+deserves more than a paragraph. The history of the steamboat is not
+complete without reference to John Fitch.
+
+Fulton was fortunate in making the first really successful attempt at
+propelling boats by steam, but Fitch came very near reaping the honors
+for this invention. The account of Fitch's life and experiments, written
+by himself and now in the possession of the Franklin Library of
+Philadelphia, clearly shows that this unhappy genius really deserves to
+share in Fulton's glory. Fitch was born in Connecticut, in January,
+1743, more than twenty years before Fulton. He was a farmer's boy and
+picked up knowledge as best he could. Before he was twenty he had
+learned clock-making and then button-making. It was in 1788 that he
+obtained his first patent for a steamboat. His experimental boat was an
+extraordinary affair, fully described in the _Columbian_ (Philadelphia)
+_Magazine_ for December, 1786. Its motive power consisted of a clumsy
+engine that moved horizontal bars, upon which were fastened a number of
+oars or paddles. So far as possible the machine imitated the movements
+of a man rowing. This boat made eight miles an hour in calm water.
+Finding nothing but ridicule for his project here, as his steamboat cost
+too much money to run as a commercial undertaking, Fitch went to Europe,
+and was equally unsuccessful there. There is still in existence a letter
+from him in which he predicts that steam would some day carry vessels
+across the Atlantic. He died in 1796, without having contributed more
+than a curiosity to the art of steam navigation.
+
+Another early inventor was Oliver Evans, who has been called the Watt of
+America. In 1804 Evans offered to build for the Lancaster Turnpike
+Company a steam-carriage to carry one hundred barrels of flour fifty
+miles in twenty-four hours. The offer was derided. Here is one of
+Evans's predictions written at about this time: "The time will come when
+people will travel in stages, moved by steam-engines, from one city to
+another, almost as fast as birds fly, fifteen or twenty miles an hour.
+Passing through the air with such velocity, changing the scene with such
+rapid succession, will be the most rapid, exhilarating exercise. A
+carriage (steam) will set out from Washington in the morning, the
+passengers will breakfast at Baltimore, dine at Philadelphia, and sup in
+New York the same day. To accomplish this, two sets of railways will be
+laid so nearly level as not in any way to deviate more than two degrees
+from a horizontal line, made of wood, or iron, or smooth paths of
+broken stone or gravel, with a rail to guide the carriages so that they
+may pass each other in different directions and travel by night as well
+as by day. Engines will drive boats ten or twelve miles per hour, and
+there will be many hundred steamboats running on the Mississippi." In
+1805 Evans built a steam-carriage propelled by a sort of paddle-wheel at
+the stern, the paddles touching the ground. This apparatus he named the
+"Oructor Amphibolis," and it is believed to have been the first
+application of steam in America to the propelling of land carriages. He
+died in 1819 without having seen his steam-carriage come to anything
+practicable. He made a fortune, however, from some patents upon
+flour-mill improvements.
+
+
+AMOS WHITTEMORE AND THOMAS BLANCHARD.
+
+In the domain of textile fabrics Amos Whittemore, the Massachusetts
+inventor of the card-machine, which did away with the old-fashioned
+method of making cards for cotton and woollen factories, must be
+mentioned. Before Whittemore's machine came into use, about 1812, such
+cards were made by hand, the laborer sticking one by one into sheets of
+leather the wire staples, which operation gave work to thousands of
+families in New England early in the century. Whittemore made a fortune
+by his invention, and devoted the last years of his life to astronomy.
+
+Another Massachusetts boy, Thomas Blanchard, invented the lathe for
+turning irregular objects, and well deserves mention. Born in 1788, he
+was noted as a boy for his efficiency in the New England accomplishment
+of whittling, making wonderful windmills and water-wheels with his
+knife. When thirteen years old he made an apple-paring machine, with
+which at the "paring bees" held in the neighborhood he could accomplish
+more than a dozen girls. Soon after this achievement he began helping
+his brother in the manufacture of tacks. The operation consisted in
+stamping them out from a thin plate of iron, after which they were taken
+up, one at a time, with the thumb and finger and caught in a tool worked
+by the foot, while a blow given simultaneously with a hammer held in the
+right hand made a flat head of the large end of the tack projecting
+above the face of the vise. This was the only method then known, and it
+was so slow and irksome that young Blanchard often grew disgusted. As a
+daily task he was given a certain quantity of tacks to make, which
+number was ascertained by counting. Finding this much trouble, he
+constructed a counting-machine, consisting of a ratchet-wheel which
+moved one tooth every time the jaws of the heading tool or vise moved in
+the process of making a tack. From this achievement he passed to a tack
+machine, and after six years of hard work turned out an apparatus that
+made five hundred tacks a minute. He sold his patent for the trifle of
+$5,000.
+
+With part of this money he began his experiments in turning
+musket-barrels, an operation that was simple enough except at the
+breech, where the flat and oval sides had to be ground down or chipped.
+Blanchard made a lathe that turned the whole barrel satisfactorily.
+While exhibiting his new lathe at the United States Armory at
+Springfield, occurred the incident that led to Blanchard's great device
+for turning irregular forms. One of the men employed in cutting
+musket-stocks remarked that Blanchard could never spoil his job, for he
+could not turn a gun-stock. The remark struck Blanchard, who replied, "I
+am not so sure of that, but will think of it a while." The result of six
+months' study was the lathe with which such articles as gun-stocks,
+shoe-lasts, hat-blocks, tackle-blocks, axe-handles, wig-blocks, and a
+thousand other objects of irregular shape may now be turned. While at
+Washington getting his patent, Blanchard exhibited his machine at the
+War Office, where many heads of departments had assembled. Among the
+rest was a navy commissioner, who, after listening to Blanchard,
+remarked to the inventor: "Can you turn a seventy-four?"
+
+"Yes," was the reply, "if you will furnish the block." Blanchard
+afterward made many interesting experiments in steam-carriages, but his
+chief claim to fame rests upon his lathe.
+
+
+RICHARD M. HOE AND THE WEB-PRESS.
+
+From the end of the first half of this century date movements of
+extraordinary importance in the world of American invention. The
+locomotive, the steam-engine and steam-boat, the telegraph,
+reaping-machine, the printing-press, all seemed to reach an era of wide
+usefulness at about the same time. It was in 1814 that Walters first
+printed the London _Times_ by steam, the sullen pressmen standing around
+waiting for a pretext to destroy the machinery, and only prevented by
+strategy from doing so. About thirty years afterward Richard M. Hoe
+first turned his attention to the improvement of printing-presses. The
+founder of the famous house of printing-press makers, Robert Hoe, was
+born in England. His son, Richard March Hoe, was born in New York on the
+12th of September, 1812. He made his first press in 1840, when he turned
+out the machine known as "Hoe's Double-cylinder," which was capable of
+making about six thousand impressions an hour, and was the admiration of
+all the printers in the city. So long as the newspaper circulation knew
+no great increase this wonderful press was all-sufficient; but the
+greater the supply the greater grew the demand, and a printing-press
+capable of striking off papers with greater rapidity was felt to be an
+imperative need. It was often necessary to hold the forms back until
+nearly daylight for the purpose of getting the latest news, and the
+work of printing the paper had to be done in a very few hours. In 1842
+Hoe began to experiment for the purpose of getting greater speed. There
+were many difficulties in the way, however, and at the end of four years
+of experimenting he was about ready to confess that the obstacles were
+insurmountable. One night in 1846, while still in this mood, he resumed
+his experiments; the more he reviewed the problem, the more difficult it
+seemed. In despair he was about to give it up for the night, when there
+flashed across his brain a plan for securing the type on the surface of
+a cylinder. This was the solution of the problem, and within a year our
+leading newspapers had their "Lightning" presses, in which from four to
+ten cylinders were used to feed sheets of paper against the surface of
+the type as it flew around. So recently as 1870 the ten-cylinder Hoe
+press, printing twenty-five thousand sheets an hour, was considered a
+marvel.
+
+Then came the perfecting press, a far smaller machine, but capable of
+five times as much work, thanks to the substitution of rolls of paper
+for separate sheets fed in one by one. The device by which the web of
+paper after being printed on one side is turned over and printed on the
+other side in the same machine was another triumph of American
+ingenuity. Stereotyping made it possible to print from a dozen presses
+at the same time without the trouble of setting up new type, and
+inventions for pasting, folding, and counting the papers still further
+increased the speed at which papers may be issued, while at the same
+time decreasing the number of men employed as pressmen. In 1865 it
+required the services of twenty-six men and boys to print and fold
+twenty-five thousand copies of an eight-page paper in an hour. To-day a
+perfecting press, with the aid of four men, does four times as much
+work. It has been recently estimated that to print, paste, and fold the
+Sunday edition of one of the great newspapers with the machinery of 1865
+would require the services of five hundred persons.
+
+
+THOMAS W. HARVEY AND SCREW-MAKING.
+
+The gimlet-pointed screw patented in 1838 by Thomas W. Harvey, of
+Providence, R.I., is a marked instance of an improvement so useful that
+we can scarcely realize that less than fifty years ago such screws were
+unknown to the carpenter, for it was not until 1846 that Harvey
+succeeded in getting people to abandon the old blunt-ended screw that we
+now occasionally find in buildings put up before 1850. Harvey was a
+Vermont boy, born in 1795. His faculty for the invention of machinery
+for screw-making and other purposes gave him and his associates and
+successors--Angell, Sloan, and Whipple--great fortunes according to the
+estimate of that day. He died in 1856.
+
+
+C.L. SHOLES AND THE TYPEWRITER.
+
+[Illustration: C.L. Sholes.]
+
+A great many men contributed to make the typewriter what it is
+to-day--as much of an improvement upon the pen as the sewing-machine is
+upon the needle. So long ago as 1843 some patents were taken out for
+divers forms of writing-machines, all more or less impracticable. It was
+not until C.L. Sholes, then of Wisconsin, took up the problem, in 1866,
+that the present form of a number of type-bars, arranged so that their
+ends strike upon a common centre, was devised. Sholes died in 1890,
+having also helped by many minor devices the increase in the use of
+writing-machines. From 1865 to 1873 he made thirty different working
+models of writing-machines, devoting himself to the task almost day and
+night for eight years.
+
+
+B.B. HOTCHKISS AND HIS GUNS.
+
+[Illustration: B.B. Hotchkiss.]
+
+American inventors have had, as a rule, but small success in making
+Europe see the value of their inventions before this country has proved
+it. Morse could get neither England nor France to take an interest in
+his telegraph schemes, and, at a later day, Bell's telephone was
+received in England as a curious device, but not worth investing money
+in. An exception to this rule may be found, however, in the case of B.B.
+Hotchkiss, a Connecticut inventor, who during the civil war conceived
+the idea of a breech-loading cannon. In 1869 Hotchkiss mounted one of
+his small guns in the Brooklyn Navy-yard, but found no encouragement to
+experiment further. The Franco-German war found him in Europe with a
+breech-loading gun that would throw shells. His success was such that
+there is not a civilized country where Hotchkiss guns, throwing light
+shells with a rapidity not dreamed of years ago, are not now in use.
+The inventor has made a large fortune and has had the pleasure of
+sending to this country a number of guns for our cruisers, the Atlanta,
+the Boston, the Chicago, and the Dolphin. So great is the rapidity,
+accuracy, and power of these Hotchkiss rapid-fire guns that some experts
+expect to see two-thirds of an action fought with these or similar
+pieces, which they think will silence and put out of action all the
+heavy guns in a few minutes after the enemies come within fifteen
+hundred yards of each other. For instance, the latest piece is a
+six-pounder, which, with smokeless powder, has a range of five thousand
+yards and an effective fighting range of one thousand yards, within
+which distance a target the size of a six-inch gun can be hit nearly
+every time and five inches of wrought iron perforated. A speed in
+firing of twenty-five shots a minute has been attained.
+
+
+CHARLES F. BRUSH AND THE DYNAMO.
+
+A trifling incident revealed to an Italian savant the fact that when two
+metals and the leg of a frog came into contact the muscles of the leg
+contracted. The galvanic battery resulted. Years later another observer
+discovered that if a wire carrying a current of electricity was wound
+around a piece of soft iron the latter became a magnet. Out of these
+simple discoveries have arisen the telegraph, the telephone, and a host
+of inventions depending upon electricity. And to-day, with all the
+wonders accomplished in this field, we are yet upon the threshold of the
+enchanted palace that electricity is about to open to us. Through its
+aid we shall one day enjoy light, heat, and power almost as freely as we
+now enjoy air. The crops will be planted, watered, cultivated, gathered,
+and transported to the uttermost ends of the earth by electricity. The
+steam-engine is said to do the work of two hundred million men, and to
+have been the chief agent in reducing the average working hours of men
+in the civilized world in this century from fourteen hours a day to ten.
+But electricity, according to even conservative judges, will accomplish
+infinitely more. It will make possible the harnessing of vast forces of
+nature, such as the falls of Niagara, because the electric current can
+be transported from place to place at small cost and it is easily
+transformed into light or power or heat. Within a few months we shall
+see the first results of the great work at Niagara. Before many years
+the power of the tides is certain to be used along the seaboard for
+producing electricity. Here is a force equal to that of a million
+Niagaras going to waste.
+
+[Illustration: Charles F. Brush.]
+
+The late Clerk Maxwell, when asked by a distinguished scientist what was
+the greatest scientific discovery of the last half-century, replied:
+"That the Gramme machine is reversible." In other words, that power will
+not only produce electricity, but that electricity will produce power.
+By turning a big wheel at Niagara we can produce an electric current
+that will turn another wheel for us fifty, or perhaps five hundred miles
+away. The dynamo is one of the great achievements of the day to which
+Charles F. Brush, of Cleveland, O., has devoted himself with much signal
+success. Brush was born in March, 1849, in Euclid Township near
+Cleveland, and his early years were spent on his father's farm. When
+fourteen years old he went to the public school at Collamer, and later
+to the Cleveland High-school, and as early as 1862 distinguished himself
+by making magnetic machines and batteries for the high-school. During
+his senior year in the high-school, the chemical and physical apparatus
+of the laboratory of the school was placed under his charge. In this
+year he constructed an electric motor having its field magnets as well
+as its armature excited by the electric current. He also constructed a
+microscope and a telescope, making all the parts himself, down to the
+grinding of the lenses. He devised an apparatus for turning on the gas
+in the street-lamps of Cleveland, lighting it and turning it off again.
+When he was eighteen years of age he entered Michigan University at Ann
+Arbor, and, following his particular bent, was graduated as a mining
+engineer in 1869, one year ahead of his class. Returning to Cleveland he
+began work as an analytical chemist and soon became interested in the
+iron business. In 1875 Brush's attention was first called to electricity
+by George W. Stockly, who suggested that there was an immense field
+ready for a cheaper and more easily managed dynamo than the Gramme or
+Siemens, the best types then known. Stockly, who was interested in the
+Telegraph Supply Company, of Cleveland, agreed to undertake the
+manufacture of such a machine if one was devised. In two months Brush
+made a dynamo so perfect in every way that it was running until it was
+taken to the World's Fair in 1893. Having made a good dynamo, the next
+step was a better lamp than those in use. Six months of experimenting
+resulted in the Brush arc light. Stockly was so well satisfied with the
+commercial value of these inventions that the Telegraph Supply Company,
+a small concern then employing about twenty-five men, was reorganized in
+1879, as the Brush Electric Company. In 1880 the Brush Company put its
+first lights into New York City, and it has since extended the system
+until there is scarcely a town in the country where the light may not be
+found. Besides dynamos and lamps, the immense establishment at Cleveland
+employs its twelve hundred men in making carbons, storage-batteries, and
+electro-plating apparatus. Mr. Brush is a self-taught mechanic, able to
+do any work of his shops in a manner equal to that of an expert. He is
+intensely practical, never over-sanguine, and an excellent business man.
+If a delicate piece of work is to be done for the first time, he will
+probably do it with his own hands. He is not fond of experiment for the
+experiment's sake; he wants to see the practical utility of the aim in
+view before devoting time to its attainment. Of the scores of patents
+he has taken out, two-thirds are said to pay him a revenue. In 1881, at
+the Paris Electrical Exposition, Brush received the ribbon of the Legion
+of Honor. In personal appearance there is nothing of the
+round-shouldered, impecunious, studious inventor about him. He is six
+feet or more in height, and so fine a specimen of manhood that Gambetta,
+the French statesman, once remarked that the man impressed him quite as
+much as the inventor.
+
+
+EICKEMEYER AND HIS MOTOR.
+
+[Illustration: Rudolph Eickemeyer.]
+
+In the same field of electricity, as applied to every-day life, a
+Bavarian by birth, but an American by adoption, Rudolf Eickemeyer, of
+Yonkers, has done some valuable work in devising a useful form of
+dynamo. His machines are now used almost exclusively for elevators and
+hoisting apparatus, one large firm of elevator builders having put in no
+less than six hundred Eickemeyer motors within the last four years. As
+electricity becomes more and more useful for small powers, such as
+lathes, pumps, and elevators, an effective and simple motor becomes of
+the utmost importance. Rudolf Eickemeyer was born in October, 1831, at
+Kaiserslautern, Bavaria, where his father was employed as a forester. He
+was educated at the Darmstadt Polytechnic Institute and at once showed a
+predilection for scientific work. When still a boy he joined the
+Revolutionists under Siegel, and after the upheaval of 1848 came here
+with Siegel, Carl Schurz, and George Osterheld, the latter afterward
+becoming his partner. The young man's first work here was as an engineer
+on the Erie Railroad line, then building. In 1854 he established himself
+in Yonkers in the business of repairing the tools used in the many
+hat-shops of that already flourishing city. The next twenty years of his
+life were devoted to inventions and improvements in every branch of
+hat-making. His shaving-machines, stretchers, blockers, pressers,
+ironers, and sewing-machines substituted mechanism for laborious and
+slow methods of hand work. At the beginning of the war Eickemeyer was
+quick to see the opportunity for turning his factory to other uses, and
+vast quantities of revolvers were made there. When that industry
+declined, he took up the manufacture of mowing-machines, having invented
+a driving mechanism for such machines that met with wide favor. The
+introduction of the Bell telephone in Yonkers first turned Eickemeyer's
+attention to electricity, and for the last ten years he has devoted
+himself almost exclusively to the invention and manufacture of electric
+motors. His first successful invention in this field was a dynamo to
+furnish light for railroad trains. From this he was led to the invention
+of a dynamo capable of doing effective work at much lower speed than
+that usually employed, and this has proved to be his most valuable
+achievement. Some improvements in winding the armatures have also been
+accepted as valuable and adopted by other manufacturers. In connection
+with storage batteries Mr. Eickemeyer has also done a good deal of
+interesting work. But he is chiefly known to the electrical world as the
+inventor of a most useful dynamo for power purposes. For the last forty
+years he has been one of the men who have most aided in the growth of
+Yonkers, taking great interest in all questions pertaining to its
+government and school system. He was married in 1856 to Mary T. Tarbell,
+of Dover, Me., and his eldest son, Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr., is associated
+with him in business.
+
+
+GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE, JR., AND THE AIR-BRAKE.
+
+[Illustration: George Westinghouse, Jr.]
+
+George Westinghouse, Jr., to whom is due the railroad air-brake, and who
+was also largely instrumental in revolutionizing Pittsburgh by the
+introduction of natural gas, was born at Central Bridge, in Schoharie
+County, N.Y., in 1846. His father was a builder and, later,
+superintendent of the Schenectady Agricultural Works, and it was in the
+shops of these works that the boy found his vocation. Before he was
+fifteen he had modelled and built a steam engine. The war took him away
+from work in 1864, but when that was over he returned to Schenectady
+and, although yet in his teens, he began to attempt improvements upon
+every device that presented itself. Sometimes he was successful. Among
+one of his first valuable achievements was a steel railroad frog that
+resulted in a good deal of money and some reputation. This was in 1868.
+While in Pittsburgh making his frogs, which sold well, he one day came
+across a newspaper account of the successful use of compressed air in
+piercing the Mont Cenis tunnel. His success in the field of railroad
+appliances had led him to study the question of better brakes, and the
+suggestion of compressed air came to him as a revelation. To stop a
+train by the old methods was a matter of much time and a tremendous
+expenditure of muscular energy by the brakeman, whose exertions were not
+always effective enough to prevent disaster. Westinghouse consulted one
+or two friends, who were inclined to ridicule the idea that a rubber
+tube strung along under the cars could do better work than the men at
+the brakes. Fortunately, he was able to make the experiment, and the
+air-brake was speedily recognized as one of the important inventions of
+the century.
+
+When petroleum was discovered in the fields near Pittsburgh, some ten
+years ago, Mr. Westinghouse was greatly interested, and at once
+suggested that perhaps oil might be found near his own home in
+Washington County. He decided to test the matter, and planted a derrick
+on his own grounds. The drill was started in December, 1883, and at a
+depth of 1,560 feet a vein was struck, not of oil, as was anticipated,
+but--what had not been counted upon as among the contingencies--of gas.
+Gas was not what Westinghouse was after or wanted, but there it was, and
+not wishing to let it run to waste, he began to consider what use could
+be made of it. Other people who had been boring for oil also struck gas,
+which, taking fire, shot up twenty or thirty feet. If such gas could be
+made to serve foundry purposes, here was a gigantic power going to
+waste. Within three years the business grew to be an immense one. The
+company organized by Mr. Westinghouse owned or controlled fifty-six
+thousand acres, upon which were one hundred wells and a distributing
+plant of four hundred miles of pipes. Notwithstanding the failure of
+some of the wells since then, natural gas is an extraordinary boon for
+which Pittsburgh has to thank Mr. Westinghouse. Of late years this
+inventor's energies have been turned toward electric machinery for
+lighting and power, especially as applied to railroad purposes, and a
+number of useful devices have resulted. Mr. Westinghouse is still in the
+prime of life and is activity personified. He makes his home in
+Pittsburgh, and is naturally looked upon as one of its leading spirits.
+
+
+The field of electric invention is so vast and so actively worked that
+one cannot take up a newspaper without finding reference to some new
+achievement made possible by this wonderful agent, whose real powers
+were unsuspected fifty years ago. Aside from the direct value of these
+inventions in promoting the comfort and increasing the wealth of the
+country there is another factor to be considered having the most vital
+relation to the industries of the country and its powers of production.
+The large number of inventions made in these United States implies a
+high degree of intelligence and mental activity in the great body of the
+people. It indicates trained habits of observation and trained powers of
+applying knowledge which has been acquired. It shows an ability to turn
+to account the forces of Nature and, train them to the service of man,
+such as has been possessed by the laborers of no other country. It
+suggests as pertinent the inquiry whether any other country is so well
+equipped for competition in production as our own; whether in any other
+country the mechanic is so efficient and his labor, therefore, so cheap
+as in our own; whether he does not exhibit the seeming paradox of
+receiving more for his labor than in any other country, and at the same
+time doing more for what he receives.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Inventors, by Philip Gengembre Hubert
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