Robert Fulton, George Stephenson, and the
Triumphs of Invention.
[=Anglo-Saxon Activity in Invention=]
In no direction has the nineteenth century been more prolific than in
that of invention, and its fame in the future is likely to be largely
based on its immense achievements in this field of human activity. It
has been great in other directions,--in science, in exploration, in
political and moral development, but it is perhaps in invention and the
industrial adaptation of scientific discovery that it stands highest
and has done most for the advancement of mankind. And it is a fact of
great interest that much the most striking and important work in this
direction has been done by the Anglo-Saxon race, in many respects the
most enterprising and progressive race upon the face of the earth. For
the beginning of this work, during the eighteenth century, credit must
be given to Great Britain, and especially for the notable invention of
the steam engine, which forms the foundation stone of the whole immense
edifice. But to the development of the work, during the nineteenth
century, we must seek the United States, whose inventive activity and
the value of its results have surpassed those of any other region of
the earth.
[=James Watt and the Steam Engine=]
We cannot confine ourselves to the nineteenth century in considering
this subject, but must go back to the eighteenth, and glance at the
epoch-making discovery of James Watt, the famous Scottish engineer,
to whom we owe the great moving force of nineteenth century industry
and progress, and whose life extended until 1819, well within the
century. There exists an interesting legend that his attention was
first attracted to the power of steam when a boy, when sitting by the
fireside and observing the lid of his mother's tea-kettle lifted by
the escaping steam. It is not, however, to the discovery, but to the
useful application of steam power that his fame is due. The use of
steam as a motive power had been attempted long before, and steam pumps
used almost a century before Watt's great invention. What he did was
to produce the first effective steam engine, the parent machine upon
which the multitudinous improvements during the succeeding century were
based.
[=Nineteenth Century Invention=]
While the eighteenth century is notable for the discovery of the steam
engine and for the first stages in the production of labor-saving
machinery, the great triumphs in the latter field of invention were
made in the succeeding century, during which era the powers of human
production were developed to an extent not only unprecedented, but
almost incredible, the powers of man, aided by steam and electricity,
being increased a hundred-fold during a century of time. It would
need a volume devoted to this subject alone to tell, even in epitome,
all that has been done in this direction, and here we must confine
ourselves to a rapid review of the leading results of inventive genius.
[=Labor-saving Machinery of the Eighteenth Century=]
Both in Great Britain and in America notable triumphs in the invention
of labor-saving machines were accomplished in the closing period of
the eighteenth century. These include the famous British inventions
of the spinning jenny of James Hargreaves, the spinning frame of Sir
Richard Arkwright, and the power loom of Dr. Cartwright, the first
notable aids in cotton manufacture. These were rendered available
by the cotton-gin of Eli Whitney, the American inventor, by whose
genius the production of cotton fibre was enormously cheapened. Other
celebrated American inventors of this period were John Fitch, to whose
efforts the first practical steamboat was due, and Oliver Evans, who
revolutionized milling machinery, his devices in flour and grist mills
being in use for half a century after his death. He was also the first
to devise a steam carriage, and in 1804 built a steam dredger, which
propelled itself through the streets of Philadelphia and afterwards
was moved as a stern-wheel steamboat on the Schuylkill River. Another
famous invention of this period was the nail machine of Jacob Perkins,
patented in 1795, though not fully developed until 1810. At that time
nails were all hand-wrought, and cost twenty-five cents a pound. By
this machine the ancient hand process was speedily brought to an end
and the price of nails has since been reduced to little more than that
of the iron of which they are made. Another famous American inventor
of early date was Thomas Blanchard, the most notable of whose many
inventions was the Blanchard lathe, developed in 1819, for the turning
of irregular forms, a contrivance of the utmost value in doing away
with slow and costly methods of labor.
[=The Steamboat and Locomotive=]
Of early inventions of the nineteenth century, however, the most
notable were the steamboat and the locomotive, the later development
of which has been of extraordinary value to mankind. Previous to the
century under review, for a period of several thousand years, the horse
had been depended on for rapid land travel, the sail for rapid motion
on the water. The inventions of Fulton and Stephenson brought these
ancient systems to an end, and within a single century produced a
magical change in the ability of man to make his way over the surface
of land and sea.
The application of steam to the movement of boats had been tried by
several inventors in Great Britain and America in the eighteenth
century, the most successful being John Fitch, whose steamboat was used
for months on the Delaware about 1790. But the earliest inventor to
produce a commercially successful steamboat was Robert Fulton, another
American, whose boat, the _Clermont_, was given its trial trip on the
Hudson in 1807.
[=Fulton's Boat the "Clermont"=]
[=The First Steamboat Trip Up the Hudson=]
This boat, in which was employed the principle of the side
paddle-wheel, and which used a more powerful engine than John Fitch
could command, was completed in August, 1807, and excited a great
degree of public interest, far more than had been given to the pioneer
steamboat. Monday, September 11, 1807, the time set for sailing, came,
and expectation was at its highest pitch. The friends of the inventor
were in a state of feverish anxiety lest the enterprise should come to
grief, and the scoffers on the wharf were ready to give vent to shouts
of derision. Precisely at the hour of one the moorings were thrown off,
and the _Clermont_ moved slowly out into the stream. Volumes of smoke
rushed forth from her chimney, and her wheels, which were uncovered,
scattered the spray far behind her. The spectacle was certainly novel
to the people of those days, and some of the crowd on the wharf broke
into shouts of ridicule. Soon, however, the jeers grew silent, for
it was seen that the steamer was increasing her speed. Soon she was
fairly under way, and making a steady progress up the stream at the
rate of five miles per hour. The incredulity of the spectators had been
succeeded by astonishment, and now this feeling gave way to undisguised
delight, and cheer after cheer went up from the vast throng. In
a little while, however, the boat was observed to stop, and the
enthusiasm at once subsided. The scoffers were again in their glory,
and unhesitatingly pronounced the enterprise a failure. But to their
chagrin, the steamer, after a short delay, once more proceeded on her
way, and this time even more rapidly than before. Fulton had discovered
that the paddles were too long, and took too deep a hold on the water,
and had stopped the boat for the purpose of shortening them.
This defect remedied, the _Clermont_ continued her voyage during the
rest of the day and all night, without stopping, and at one o'clock the
next day ran alongside the landing at Clermont, the seat of Chancellor
Livingston. She lay there until nine the next morning, when she
continued her voyage toward Albany, reaching that city at five in the
afternoon. On her return trip, she reached New York in thirty hours
running time--exactly five miles per hour.
[=The Effect of the Steamboat on River Men=]
The river was at this time navigated entirely with sailing vessels. The
surprise and dismay excited among the crews of these vessels by the
appearance of the steamer was extreme. These simple people beheld what
they supposed to be a huge monster, vomiting fire and smoke from its
throat, lashing the water with its fins, and shaking the river with its
roar, approaching rapidly in the face of both wind and tide. Some threw
themselves flat on the decks of their vessels, where they remained in
an agony of terror until the monster had passed, while others took to
their boats and made for the shore in dismay, leaving their vessels to
drift helplessly down the stream.
The introduction of the steamboat gave a powerful impetus to the
internal commerce of the Union. It opened to navigation many important
rivers whose swift currents had closed them to sailing craft, and made
rapid and easy communication between the most distant parts of the
country practicable. The public soon began to appreciate this, and
orders came in rapidly for steamboats for various parts of the country.
Fulton executed these as fast as possible, several among the number
being for boats on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
[=Development of Ocean Steamers=]
The subsequent history of this important invention need but be glanced
at here. The first steamship to cross the ocean was the _Savannah_,
which set out from the city of that name in 1819, and reached
Liverpool by the combined aid of wind and steam in twenty-eight days.
The first to cross entirely by steam power was the _Royal William_,
a Canadian-built vessel, in 1833. A year or two later the _Great
Britain_, the first iron ocean steamer--322 feet long by 31 feet
beam--crossed the ocean in fifteen days. Since then the development of
steam navigation, alike on inland and ocean waters, has been enormous,
and an extraordinary increase has been made in the size and speed of
steam vessels. Forty years ago the fastest ocean steamer took more
than nine days to cross from New York to Queenstown. This journey
can be made now in a little over five days. As regards size, the
great _Oceanic_, whose first voyage was made in 1899, surpasses any
other boat ever built. This sea-monster is 704 feet long, and has a
displacement of 28,000 tons, while it is capable of steaming around
the earth at twelve knots an hour without recoaling. Its engine power
is enormous, and its carrying capacity unprecedented. This leviathan
considerably outranks in dimensions the _Great Eastern_, the former
ocean marvel, and fitly typifies the progress of the century. As will
be remembered the _Great Eastern_ proved a failure, while the _Oceanic_
is a pronounced success.
[Illustration: GEORGE STEPHENSON.
SAMUEL F. B. MORSE.
THE INVENTORS OF THE LOCOMOTIVE AND THE ELECTRIC
TELEGRAPH
Stephenson's genius enabled men to travel 1000 miles
in a day. Morse's genius enabled men to send a message
around the world in less than one hour.]
[Illustration: EDISON PERFECTING THE FIRST PHONOGRAPH
The phonograph, one of the most wonderful discoveries
of the nineteenth century, was, in a measure, the
result of chance, that of Edison's accidently
perceiving a vibration due to an electric current. But
it was one of the chances of which only great minds
avail themselves. By its aid the words and voices of
this century may be heard ten or twenty centuries in
the future.]
Important as has been the invention of the steamboat, it is much
surpassed by that of the locomotive and the railroad, which have
increased the ease, cheapness, and rapidity of land travel and freight
transportation far more than steam navigation has increased traffic by
water. While the sailing vessel falls short of the steamship as an aid
to commerce, the difference between the two is very much less than that
between the horse and the locomotive, the iron rail and the ordinary
road, and the railroad has achieved a revolution in transportation
equal to that made by the steam engine in manufacture.
[=George Stephenson and the Locomotive=]
[=The Performance of the "Rocket"=]
The motor engine is, aside from the work of Oliver Evans, already
mentioned, solely a result of nineteenth century enterprise. The
railroad came earlier, first in the form of tramways of wood; the
earliest iron rails being laid in England about 1767. But it was
not until after 1800 that an attempt was made to replace the horse
by the steam carriage on these roads. Of those who sought to solve
this problem, George Stephenson, a poor English workingman, stands
decidedly first. While serving as fireman in a colliery, and later as
engineer, he occupied himself earnestly in the study of machinery, and
as early as 1814 constructed for the colliery a traction engine with
two cylinders. This was seated on a boiler mounted on wheels, which
were turned by means of chains connected with their axles. It drew
eight loaded cars at a speed of four miles an hour. This was a clumsy
affair, weak in power, and inefficient in service, but it was much
superior to any other engine then in use, and was improved on greatly
by his second engine, built the following year, and in which he used
the steam blast-pipe. These early engines were not much esteemed, and
the horse continued to be employed in preference, the first passenger
railroad, the Stockton and Darlington, opened in 1825, being run by
horse-power. Meanwhile Stephenson continued to work on the locomotive,
improving it year after year, until his early ventures were far
surpassed in efficiency by his later. A French engineer, M. Seguin, in
1826, successfully introduced locomotives in which improved appliances
for increasing the draught were employed. At that time, indeed,
inventors seem to have been actively engaged on this problem, and when
the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, begun in 1825, offered premiums
for the best engines to be run at high speed, a number of applicants
appeared. The premium was easily won, in 1830, by Stephenson's
"Rocket," the most effective locomotive yet produced. This antediluvian
affair, as it would appear to-day, weighed only 4¼ tons, but was
able to draw a load of 17 tons at an average speed of fourteen miles an
hour, sometimes reaching seventeen miles. When run alone it attained
thirty miles an hour, to the amazement and admiration of the public.
It is to George Stephenson we owe the locomotive as an effective piece
of mechanism. "He found it inefficient," says Smiles, "and he made it
powerful, efficient and useful."
[=First American Railroads and Locomotives=]
While these events were taking place in England and France, the new
idea had taken root in America, and the inventors and engineers of the
United States set themselves to the development of the problem. Short
lines of railway, for horse traction, were laid at early dates, the
first locomotive, the "Stourbridge Lion," being imported from England
and placed on a short line at Honesdale, Pa., in 1829. The Baltimore
and Ohio, the first passenger railroad in the United States, was begun
in 1830, and on it was tried the earliest American-built locomotive,
the production of Peter Cooper, the celebrated philanthropist of later
years. This was a toy affair, with a three and a half inch cylinder,
an upright tubular boiler made of old gun barrels, and a fan blower
to increase the draught. Its weight was two and a half tons. Yet it
did not lack speed, making the run from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills,
twenty-seven miles, in an hour. But the first serviceable American
locomotive was the "Best Friend," built at West Point, N. Y., and run
on the Charleston and Hamburg Road, in South Carolina, in 1830, shortly
after Stephenson's "Rocket" had been tried. The "Best Friend" could
make more than thirty miles an hour, and could draw a train of four or
five coaches, with forty to fifty passengers, at twenty miles an hour.
It was inferior to the "Rocket," however, in design, and its career
came to a sudden end through the zeal of a negro fireman, who sat on
the safety valve to stop the escape of steam. The fireman shared the
fate of the locomotive.
[=Development of The Railroad=]
Such was the railroad as it began,--a microscopic event. To-day it
is of telescopic magnitude. At the end of 1831 there were less than
a hundred miles of railroad in the United States, and probably still
fewer elsewhere. At the end of the century this country alone had over
180,000 miles of railroad, while there were single railroad systems
with more than 8000 miles of track. In the whole world there were about
450,000 miles of road,--only two and a half times the mileage of the
United States.
[=Great Railroad Bridges=]
As for the development of the locomotive, the railroad carriage,
the track, etc., it has been enormous, and sixty miles an hour for
passenger trains is now a common speed, while the numbers of people
and tons of freight transported annually by the railroads of the
world are incredibly great. We cannot here undertake to describe the
notable feats of engineering which have carried railroads over rivers
and chasms, over mountains impassable otherwise except by sure-footed
mules, across deserts too hot and dry even for mule trains. "No heights
seem too great to-day, no valleys too deep, no cañons too forbidding,
no streams too wide; if commerce demands it the engineer will respond
and the railways will be built." The railroad bridges of the country
would make a continuous structure from New York to San Francisco, and
include many of the boldest and most original, as well as the longest
and highest, bridges in the world. The pioneer railroad suspension
bridge at Niagara Falls was as remarkable in its day for boldness and
originality as for dimensions and success. A single span of 821 feet,
supported by four cables, carried the track 245 feet above the river
that rushed beneath. The cables were supported by masonry towers,
whose slow disintegration gave occasion for an engineering feat even
more notable than the original construction of the bridge. The first
railroad bridge across the Ohio was at Steubenville, completed in 1866;
the first iron bridge over the Upper Mississippi was the Burlington
bridge of 1869. The first great bridge across the Mississippi was Eads'
magnificent structure at St. Louis, whose beautiful steel arches of
over 500 feet span each give no hint of the difficult problems that had
to be solved before a permanent bridge was possible at that point. It
was completed in 1874. Since then the great river has been frequently
bridged for railroads, while its great branch, the Missouri, has been
crossed by bridges in a dozen places.
[=The Electric Steel Railway=]
The steam railroad has been supplemented by the electric street
railway, which at the close of the century was being extended at a
highly promising rate. Passenger travel in cities by aid of the horse
railway was inaugurated about the middle of the century, the horse
beginning to be replaced by the electric motor in 1881, when the first
railway of this character was laid in Berlin. A second was laid in
Ireland in 1883. But the electric steel railway has made its greatest
progress in the United States, where the first line went into operation
at Richmond, Va., in 1888. This adopted the overhead trolly system,
since so widely employed, and the length of line had increased to over
3,000 miles in 1892 and 15,000 miles in 1897. Since that date the
progress of electric railways has been enormous, they being extended
from the cities far into the country, where they come into active
competition with the steam roads. Electric locomotives are also in use,
and the twentieth century is likely to see a development of electric
traction which will have the whole earth for its field, and may perhaps
displace the steam road, the great triumph in transportation of the
nineteenth century.
[=The Bicycle and the Automobile=]
Other recent devices for swift travel are the bicycle, which came
extraordinarily into use during the last quarter of the century, and
the automobile carriage, whose era only fairly began as the century
reached its end. It is in the direction of the latter and of aërial
travel that the twentieth century will perhaps achieve its most notable
triumphs in this field. As for the horse, man's most useful servant at
the beginning of the century, it was rapidly being displaced at the
end, and may during the century to come cease to be employed in the
service of man.
[=Marvels in Iron and Wood-working=]
The story of railroading leads naturally to that of progress in iron
and steel work generally, which has been extraordinary during the
century. Of inventions in this direction perhaps the most notable is
the Bessemer steel-making process, which converts iron into steel by
the direct addition of the necessary quantity of carbon, and has had
the important result of making steel cheaper to-day than iron was
not very many years ago. In iron-working machinery the progress has
been very great, and in no other field has the genius of the American
inventor been more conspicuously displayed. The same may be said of
wood-working machinery, in which the most clever mechanism is employed.
The result is that many articles in metal and wood, of the most varied
and useful kinds, formerly almost unattainable by the rich, are now
within the easy reach of the poor, and the comfort and convenience of
common life to-day are enormously in advance of those enjoyed by our
ancestors of a century ago.
As it is impossible to name all the inventions which conduce to this
increase in convenience, it will perhaps suffice to name one alone,
the friction match, that most useful of small contrivances, which has
relegated into the museum of antiquities the slow and clumsy flint and
steel to which the world was for centuries confined. This invention,
gradually developed in various countries, owes its cheapness largely to
the invention of an American, whose patent, taken out in 1836, first
made possible the production of phosphorus matches on a large scale.
[=Progress in Illumination and Heating=]
Mention of the friction match opens to us one broad vista of nineteenth
century progress, too great to be more than glanced at. This embraces
the replacement of wood by coal for heating purposes, the development
of the stove, the furnace, the coal-burning grate, and various
conveniences of like character. As regards the tallow candle, which
was in common use during the first third of the century, it seems
as antiquated now as the pyramids. Various kinds of oil succeeded it
as illuminants, until the discovery of petroleum set them all aside,
and gave the world one of its most useful natural products. Then came
the illuminating gas, and finally the wonderful electric light, whose
brilliant glow lighted up the threshold of the twentieth century.
Petroleum, gas and electricity are also beginning to replace coal for
heating and cooking purposes,--as coal replaced wood,--and an outlook
into the future seems to reveal to us the marvelous electric energy
performing these and a thousand other services; this energy yielded,
not as now, by costly fuel dug from the earth, but by power derived
from falling water, from moving air, from swelling tides and flowing
currents, and even from the direct light and heat of the sun.
[=Howe and the Sewing Machine=]
We cannot undertake to describe in detail the inventions of the
century, even all those of great service to mankind. A mere inventory
of these would more than fill this chapter, and we must confine
ourselves to the notable ones of American origin. Among the most
important of these may be named the sewing machine, a device gradually
approached through a century of effort, but not made workable until
a poor mechanic named Elias Howe attacked the problem, and worked it
out through years of penury and disappointment. It was the lock-stitch
and shuttle to which he owed his success, but these devices, patented
by him in 1846, were pirated by wealthy corporations, and years of
litigation were necessary before he gained his rights. He finally
obtained a royalty of five dollars for each machine made up to 1860,
and, after the renewal of his patent in that year, one dollar for each
machine. The numbers produced were sufficient to make him very wealthy,
and by the time the original patents expired, in 1877, over six million
machines had been produced and sold by American manufacturers alone.
Aside from the vast number of sewing machines now used in families,
those used in factories are estimated to give employment, throughout
the world, to over 20,000,000 women.
[=Goodyear and the Vulcanization of Rubber=]
Another American invention of the greatest utility is that of
vulcanized India-rubber, the production of a poor man named Charles
Goodyear, who, like Howe, spent years of his life and endured
semi-starvation while persistently experimenting. Beginning in 1834,
it was 1839 before, after innumerable failures, he discovered the
secret of vulcanizing the rubber by means of sulphur. Before that date
the softening effect of heat rendered rubber practically useless, but
the vulcanized rubber produced by Goodyear was, before his death in
1860, applied to nearly five hundred purposes, and gave employment to
60,000 persons in Europe and the United States. Since then its utility
has very greatly increased, and its recent employment for bicycle and
carriage tires opens up a new field for its use which must enormously
increase the demand.
[=Morse and the Telegraph=]
Another of the famous inventions of the century, the electric
telegraph, usually attributed to Samuel Finley Morse, should really
be credited to the labors of several scientists both in Europe and
America. The merit of Morse lay, not in the discovery of the principle
of electric telegraphy, but in his simplified telegraphic alphabet,
which has nearly driven out all other devices and has made its way
throughout the world. Morse's first line, completed in 1844, was the
pioneer of a development analogous to that of the railroad. To-day
the telegraph runs over all continents and under almost all seas, the
length of the telegraph lines in the world at the end of the century
being over 5,000,000 miles, of which more than half were in America.
The telephone--the marvelous talking telegraph--invented by Alexander
Bell and developed in the final quarter of the century, now has over
half a million miles of wire in the United States.
[=The Inventions of Edison=]
The mention of the telegraph and telephone calls to our attention
one of the ablest and most prolific of American inventors, the
indefatigable Thomas Alva Edison, to whom are due important discoveries
in multiplex telegraphy--the sending of various messages at once over
a single wire--in telephony, in the incandescent electric light, and
other fields of research. Most surprising of his many discoveries is
the marvelous phonograph, by which the sounds of the human voice may be
put on permanent record, to speak again in their original tones years
or centuries hence.
Other inventors have been active in this field, and extraordinary
progress has been made in systems of telegraphy, some of the new
inventions being capable of remarkable feats in the rapid sending of
messages, while it is possible now to transmit pictures as well as
words over the telegraphic wire.
[=Marconi and Wireless Telegraphy=]
So vast, indeed, has been the advance in this field of practical
science, so many the applications and devices employed, and so
wonderful the results, that it seemed as if the powers of telegraphy
must be exhausted, when, at the very end of the century, one of its
most remarkable results was announced, as the discovery of a young
Italian named Marconi. This was the method of "wireless telegraphy,"
the sending of messages through the air without the aid of connecting
wires. This discovery, like most others, cannot be credited to
one man alone. A number of scientists were experimenting with it
simultaneously, but to Marconi is due the honor of a successful and
practical solution of the problem. It has long been known that electric
energy can produce effects through space by the influence known as
induction, in which a moving current causes a reverse current to
appear in a neighboring wire. By aid of the very powerful currents
now produced this effect may be shown at a considerable distance.
Whether the action in wireless telegraphy is the result of induction,
or of a direct passage of electricity through space, must be left for
scientists to decide, but the results are astonishing, messages having
been sent and received over distances of many miles. It is not well to
state how many miles, since the system is still in its infancy, and
before these words are read, for all that can now be affirmed to the
contrary, a message may be sent in this manner from America to Europe.
Wireless telegraphy is a combination of science and invention.
Scientifically the electric waves appear to flow out through the air
in all directions from the powerful currents employed. Mechanically a
lofty pole seems necessary, and by the aid of a directive contrivance
the waves can be sent in a fixed course. In the Marconi contrivance,
the electric waves, when received, are made to pass through a vial
containing metal filings, which are caused to cohere so as to furnish
a direct line of passage for the current. Marconi's special invention
is a small tapper which strikes the vial of filings and causes them to
fall asunder, thus breaking the current. The public at large, however,
is likely to be more interested in results than methods, and in the
system of wireless telegraphy there is promise of a development that
may supplant all existing telegraphic systems during the century upon
whose threshold we stand.
[=Labor-saving Agricultural Implements=]
In no field of effort have inventors been more active or their
results more useful than in the production of labor-saving devices in
agriculture. In these we have to do with the yield of food, the very
corner-stone of life itself, and whatever seems to increase the product
of the fields, or to cheapen the necessaries of life, is of the most
direct and immediate utility to mankind. This subject, therefore, one
of vital interest to all the farmers of our country, calls for special
notice here.
[=Early Farming Tools=]
Great inventions are not necessarily large or costly. The scythe is
a simple and inexpensive tool; yet the practical perfecting of it by
Joseph Jenks, almost at the outset of farm-life in New England, formed
an epoch-mark in agriculture. It was the beginning of a new order
of things. Putting curved fingers to the improved scythe-blade and
snath did for the harvester what had been done for the grass-cutter,
gave him an implement which doubled or trebled his efficiency at a
critical season, and furnished in the American grain cradle a farm-tool
perfect of its kind, and likely to hold its place as long as grain is
grown on uneven ground. For the great bulk of grain and grain-cutting,
the scythe and the cradle have been displaced by later American
inventions,--mowers and harvesters, operated by animal or steam
power,--still they are likely to remain forever a part of every farm's
equipment. Their utility is beyond computation.
[=The Development of the American plow=]
The plow supplied to the Colonial farmers, was as venerable as the
reaping-hook. It had been substantially unimproved for four thousand
years. The moment our people were free to manufacture for themselves,
they set about its improvement in form and material, the very first
patent granted by the National Patent Office being for an improved
plow of cast-iron. The best plow then in use was a rude affair,
clumsily made, hard to guide, and harder to draw. It had a share of
wrought iron, roughly shaped by the roadside black-smith, a landside
and standard of wood, and an ill-shaped mould-board plated with tin,
sheet iron, or worn-out saw-plates. Only a stout man could hold it,
and a yoke of oxen was needed for work that a colt can do with a
modern plow. Its improvement engaged the attention of many inventors,
notably President Jefferson, who experimented with various forms and
made a mathematical investigation of the shape of the mould-board,
to determine the form best suited for the work. He was the first to
discover the importance of straight lines from the sole to the top of
the share and mould-board. Pinckney discovered the value of a straight
line from front to rear. Jethro Wood discovered that all lines, from
front to rear, should be straight. The method of drafting the lines,
on a plane surface, in designing plows, is due to Knox. The discovery
of the importance of the centre-draught, and the practical means of
attaining it by the inclination of the landside inward, is credited
to Mears. Governor Holbrook, of New Hampshire, devised the method of
making plows of any size symmetrical, so as to ensure the complete
pulverization of the soil. Col. Randolph, Jefferson's son-in-law, "the
best farmer in Virginia," invented a side-hill plow. Smith was the
first to hitch two plows together; and Allen, by combining a number
of small plow-points in one implement, led the way to the production
of the infinite variety of horse-hoes, cultivators, and the like, for
special use. But Jethro Wood, of New York, in 1819 and after, probably
did more than any other man to perfect the cast-iron plow, and to
secure its general use in place of the cumbrous plows of the earlier
days. His skill as an inventor, and his pluck as a fighter against
stolid ignorance and prejudice, for the advancement of sensible
plowing, cost him--what they ought to have gained for him--a fortune.
The use of cast-iron plows had become general by 1825.
[=Increase of Working Power of the Farmer=]
The construction of plows has since been taken up by a multitude of
inventors, the most valuable of improvements, probably, coming through
the use of chilled iron, and the most promising from the application
of steam-power to plowing. The increase in the working power of the
farmer, from American improvements in plows, may be estimated from
the fact that two million plowmen, with as many teams, would need to
work every day in the year with the primitive plow to prepare the soil
annually under cultivation in this country. It would be impossible,
under the ancient system, to do this work within the brief plowing
season.
The era of agricultural machinery began about 1825, its earliest phase
appearing in the application of horse-power to the threshing and
cleaning of grain. Already the American tendency to seek practical
results by the simplest means, and to make high-priced labor profitable
by increasing its efficiency, had been shown in the improvement of
a wide range of farmer's tools, almost everything they had to use
being made lighter, neater, and more serviceable. The same improving,
practical sense was displayed in devising more complicated labor-saving
machines, which made it possible to do easily and directly what had
been previously difficult or quite impossible to do. Too often,
however, the early inventor was defeated by the lack of skilled labor
and proper machine tools for making his improvements commercially
successful. As soon as the mechanic arts had been sufficiently
perfected and extended--largely by American genius--the development and
production of agricultural machinery became rapid and profitable.
[=Threshing Machines and Their Performance=]
Washington had tried a sort of threshing machine as early as 1798;
and one of the first patents issued by the Patent Office was for an
improved thresher; yet the flail held the field until after 1825. In
the following twenty-five years over two hundred patents were granted
for improvements in threshers, and since then the patents have numbered
thousands. By 1840, most of the grain was threshed by horse-driven
machinery. In 1853, when a famous trial of rival threshers was held
in England, the American machine did three times as much as the best
English machine, and did it better. In a subsequent trial in France,
the average work of experts with the flail being reckoned as one,
that of the best French machine was twenty-five; of the best English
machine, forty-one; while Pitt's American machine did the work of
seventy-four. The application of steam-power greatly increased the
efficiency of threshing machines, raising the output from perhaps 2,000
bushels a day to six or seven thousand for a single machine.
[=The American Reapers and Mowers=]
Still more significant and important have been the victories of
American inventors in connection with mowers and reapers. The
circumstance that reaping by machinery is as old as the Christian
era, and that a multitude of comparatively modern attempts have been
made, particularly in England, to apply horse-power to the cutting of
grass and grain, only added to the merit of inventors like Hussey and
McCormick, who practically solved the problems involved by means so
simple and efficient that they have not been and are likely never to be
entirely displaced. Hussey's mowing machine of 1833 had reciprocating
knives working through slotted fingers, a feature not only new but
essential to all practical grass and grain cutters, except the special
type known as lawn-mowers. McCormick patented a combination reaper
and mower in 1834, which he subsequently so improved as to make it
the necessary basis of all reapers. In competitive trials at home
and abroad, the American mowers and reapers have never failed to
demonstrate their superiority over all others.
[=Harvesters and Self-binders=]
The first great victory, which gave these machines the world-wide
fame they have so successfully maintained, was won in London in 1851.
In the competitive trial near Paris, in 1855, the American machine
cut an acre of oats in twenty-two minutes; the English in sixty-six
minutes; the French in seventy-two. In the later competition, local and
international, their superior efficiency has been not less signally
manifested. By increasing the efficiency of the harvester twenty-fold
(and twice that by the self-binders), these products of American
invention have played a part second only to railroads in opening up the
West to profitable cultivation, rapidly converting a wilderness into
the granary of the world. Devices for binding grain as it was cut began
to be developed about 1855. The first machine used wire binders; the
later twine. The combination of reapers and threshers in one machine
has been most largely developed in California. The largest in use there
weighs eight tons; and, pushed by thirty mules, cuts a swath twenty-two
feet wide and eighteen miles long in a day--over forty-eight acres,
yielding about as many tons of wheat, which is cut, threshed, cleaned
and deposited in 700 sacks. The machine employs a driver, a shearer, a
knife-tender, and a sack-lowerer--four men, costing eight dollars a day
for wages.
[=The Great Variety of Agricultural Implements=]
Less important individually, yet in the aggregate of incalculable
assistance to agriculture, have been a multitude of American inventions
intended to expedite and lighten the farmer's work--stump and stone
extractors for clearing the ground, ditching machines for drainage
systems, fencing devices, particularly the barbed wire fence, special
plows for breaking up new ground, harrows of many types, seeders,
planters, cultivators, horse rakes, hay tedders and hay loaders, potato
and rock diggers, corn huskers and shellers, cotton pickers, and
countless other labor-saving tools and devices. In most cases these
improved appliances enable one man to do easily the work of several
working with primitive tools. With the help of machine planters and
seeders the farmer's work is made at least five times more efficient;
with cultivators, ten times; with potato diggers, twenty; with
harrowers, thirty; with mowers and harvesters, from twenty to fifty;
with corn huskers and shellers, a hundred. The latest cotton harvester,
employing a team, a driver, and a helper, does the work of forty
hand-pickers.
These agricultural machines, by greatly cheapening all food products,
have had a wider influence, probably, than any other group of
American inventions. In connection with improvements in means of
transportation--largely of American origin--they have changed the food
conditions of half the world, making food more abundant, more varied,
more wholesome, more secure, and vastly cheaper than ever before. At
the same time they have lightened the farmer's labor, shortened his
hours of toil, increased his gains, and quite transformed his social
and industrial position.
[=Productive Activity of the Nineteenth Century=]
The marvelous evolution in the nineteenth century, of which we have
mentioned only some of the more notable particulars, the whole story
being far too voluminous to deal with here, has had the result of
immensely increasing the wealth of the world and the cheapness and
rapid distribution of products, and of placing within the ready control
of mankind hundreds of articles of art and utility scarcely dreamed
of a century ago. In textile production, in metal working, in the
making of furniture, clothing and other articles of ordinary use, in
heating and illumination, in travel and transportation of goods, farm
operations, engineering, mining and excavation, and the production
of the tools of peace and the weapons of war, in ways, indeed, too
numerous to mention, the inventive activity and the industrial energy
of the nineteenth century have added enormously to the variety and
abundance of useful objects at man's disposal, increased his wealth to
an extraordinary extent, and enabled him to move over land and sea with
marvelous ease and speed, and to send information around the world with
a rapidity that almost annihilates time and space.
[=Commerce of the United States=]
Not the least among the results of modern mechanical progress is
the vast development in commerce, and particularly in that of the
Anglo-Saxon people--the inhabitants of Great Britain and the United
States--the commercial enterprise of which countries is nowhere else
equalled. The ocean commerce of the United States, for instance,
has nearly doubled within thirty years, and now amounts to nearly
$2,000,000,000 worth of goods annually, two-thirds of which are
articles of export. But this great sum is far from indicating the
actual commerce of this country, since it is greatly surpassed by its
interior commerce, the movement of goods by aid of river, canal, and
railroad from part to part of the vast area of the United States, the
extent of which commerce it is impossible even to estimate.
[=Wealth and its Sources=]
The statement of a single fact will suffice to put in striking
prominence the result of this in increasing the value of property
and the wealth of the people of this country. In the year 1801, the
opening year of the century, the ideas entertained of riches differed
remarkably from what they do now. At that time it is doubtful if there
was a person in this country worth more than a quarter million of
dollars. Thirty years afterwards, Stephen Girard, with an estate of
about nine million dollars, was looked upon as a prodigy of wealth, and
his reputation as a man of immense riches spread round the world. In
1900, the closing year of the century, there were single estates worth
more than two hundred million dollars, and the number of millionairs
in the United States could be counted by the hundreds. As regards the
largest estates possessed in 1801, there are thousands among us with
greater wealth to-day, while the general average of property possessed
by our citizens has very greatly advanced.
If it be asked in what this wealth consists, it may be said that
the railroad property of the country alone suffices to account for
a considerable proportion of it. The assets of the railroads of the
United States are valued at over $12,000,000,000, and the annual
profits of their business amounts to a very great sum. Another immense
source of wealth is the landed property of the United States, the
annual product of which alone is worth over $3,000,000,000. A third
great element of wealth consists in the dwellings and other buildings
of cities and towns; and a fourth in the buildings and machinery of
manufacturing enterprises, whose annual products alone are valued at
more than $10,000,000,000. It will suffice here to name a fifth great
source of wealth, our mines and their productions, particularly those
of coal, iron and precious metals. The annual yield of coal alone is
worth more than $200,000,000; that of iron more than $90,000,000; those
of gold and silver more than $100,000,000. To these may be added an
annual production of nearly $60,000,000 worth of copper, and as much
of petroleum and its products--each of which nearly equals gold in
value,--$12,000,000 worth of lead, and large values of other minerals;
the grand total being over $750,000,000.
[=Expansion of Values During the Century=]
If these figures should be extended to cover the world, the total
sum of values would be something astounding. What we are principally
concerned with here is the fact that this vast total of wealth is
very largely the result of nineteenth century enterprise, and mainly
as applied in Europe and the northern section of North America. What
the percentage of increase in value has been it is quite impossible
to state, but the wealth of the world as a whole is probably more
than double what it was a century ago, while that of such expanding
countries as the United States has increased in a vastly greater
proportion. That this growth in wealth will go on during the twentieth
century cannot be doubted, but that the proportionate rate of increase
will equal that of the century now at its end may well be questioned,
the inventive activity and application of nature's forces within this
century having reached a development which seems to preclude as great a
future rate of progress. The nineteenth may, therefore, perhaps remain
the banner century in material progress.