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.