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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."