Not many days after Jonathan's return, the first letter he ever
received his father brought him from the post office. It hardly needed
the post mark, Cambridge, to make Jonathan sure who had sent it. Let us
open it with him:--
CAMBRIDGE, _August 26, 1849._
_My dear friend Jonathan,_
Your letter with its inclosure of five dollars has been gratefully
received. I remember you and your uncle, your father and your mother,
with much pleasure. Ever since I ran that race in Boston I have been
sure that the machine would work its way to success.
I am more confident now than ever. I have found some one who will buy
out Mr. Fisher's interest; Mr. Burlingame will bring my old machine
and letters patent from London; and every lawyer I have consulted says
my claims are valid and I shall win my suit.
When I have succeeded, and the manufacture of sewing machines is under
my control, I shall send for you to pick out a machine for your mother.
Again thanking you for your substantial interest, I am
Very faithfully yours,
ELIAS HOWE, Jr.
This was in 1849. Mr. Howe's darkest days were over; but even then
success came slowly and in rather a strange way. Mr. Howe's chief
enemy was a Mr. Singer, who built machines and advertised them with
remarkable success.
"You are infringing my patent," wrote Howe to Singer, upon hearing of
the latter's activity.
"But you are not the inventor," replied Singer. "The Chinese have
had a sewing machine for ages; an Englishman made one in 1790; a
Frenchman built one in 1830; and what is more to the point, in 1832, a
man named Walter Hunt, living in New York, invented a sewing machine
with a shuttle stitch like yours. I can find Walter Hunt and prove my
statement."
Well, Mr. Singer did find Walter Hunt and the fragments of his old
machine. But "not all the king's horses nor all the king's men" could
put those fragments together again so that the machine would sew. For
four years, however, the trial in the courts continued. But at last, in
1854, when Mr. Howe had waited nine years after completing his first
machine, the Wheelers and many others read with great satisfaction in
the Worcester _Spy_:
"Judge Sprague of Massachusetts has decided that the plaintiff's
patent is valid and that the defendant's machine is an infringement.
Further, there is no evidence in this case that leaves a shadow of
a doubt that, for all the benefit conferred upon the public by the
introduction of a sewing machine, the public are indebted to Mr. Howe."
In 1855, Jonathan, now grown into a tall, manly youth of twenty,
started with Uncle William on another journey, longer and more
interesting than either had ever taken before. This time they went
to New York, where they found Mr. Howe at the head of a prosperous
business; and when they returned, they brought with them a Howe sewing
machine of the very latest model, "a present from the inventor to
Mrs. Wheeler, in gratitude for the sympathy and encouragement of her
family."
LONG-DISTANCE TALKING
PART I
Late one June afternoon Arthur Burton was leaning against a table in
the eastern gallery of the main hall at the Philadelphia Exposition.
It had been a wonderful day, but it was past dinner time, and he was
hot, tired, and hungry. He had seen more wonders that day than he had
witnessed in all his life before; but now his uncle and the other
judges were in the midst of the Massachusetts educational exhibit,
which wasn't half so interesting as the first electric light, or the
first grain reaper, or the iceboats. So Arthur had moved away from the
new-fashioned school desks and the slate blackboards, and was waiting
rather wearily.
Suddenly he straightened up. Entering the door near by was the most
distinguished visitor at the Centennial, the tall, handsome Dom Pedro,
Emperor of Brazil, with the Empress and a bevy of courtiers. To
Arthur's amazement, His Majesty walked directly up to the table against
which he himself was standing; and looking beyond the little boy, he
said with outstretched hand and a pleasant smile:
"How do you do, Mr. Bell? I am very glad to see you and your work."
Till then Arthur had scarcely noticed a sallow, dark-haired young man
who had been sitting behind the little table, nor had he paid the
slightest attention to some pieces of wood and iron with wire attached
lying on the table. But now, the young man and his material had become
decidedly interesting.
[Illustration: DOM PEDRO II]
"I remember very pleasantly," continued Dom Pedro, "my visit to your
class in Boston University when you were teaching deaf mutes to speak
by means of visible speech. You were working out a new method, I
remember. I suppose this is apparatus that you have devised in that
connection."
"I thank Your Majesty," stammered the surprised young man, who for a
moment had been at a loss to recall who his royal visitor might be. "I
shall be delighted to explain my apparatus. But it has nothing to do
with teaching deaf mutes to speak. It is more wonderful than that. It
speaks itself; that is, it reproduces sounds. It is the improvement on
the telegraph that the world has awaited for years.
"You see, I found in my experiments that I could transmit spoken words
by electric current through a telegraph wire so that those words could
be reproduced by vibrations at the other end of the wire. I suppose my
invention might be called a speaking telegraph."
By this time all the judges had joined the Emperor's party. Arthur fell
back to his uncle's side, but he could still hear and see everything.
"Now, Your Majesty," continued Mr. Bell, "if you will press your ear
against the lid of this iron box, I think in a moment you will have a
surprise."
At these words, Mr. Bell's assistant, who had come up to the group
during the conversation, went to another table several rods away and
quite out of hearing. The Emperor bent down expectantly. The judges
looked rather incredulous, but they were all interested.
"Is the man that went off going to talk over the wire so that the
Emperor can hear?" whispered Arthur to his uncle.
"Mr. Bell says so," was the reply, "but we shall see."
Suddenly the Emperor gave a start, and a look of utter amazement came
over his face.
"It talks! It talks!" he exclaimed excitedly.
It was quite true. Mr. Hubbard, Mr. Bell's assistant, had spoken in a
low voice at the other end of the wire and his exact words had been
reproduced. The Emperor's excitement was contagious. Everybody forgot
how hot and hungry he was. One after another of the judges listened at
the magic box to hear Mr. Hubbard or another of their number speak into
the instrument at the other end.
"Oh, Uncle, do you suppose I can listen too after a while?" inquired
Arthur, when he could no longer keep still.
Just then Mr. Bell himself interposed.
"Now it must be the little boy's turn."
The grateful little boy was not slow in stooping over to the receiver.
"What does he say, Arthur?" asked his uncle.
"Why, he says, 'To be or not to be,' whatever that means."
"You don't know your Hamlet very well yet, little boy."
"But I have heard a speaking telegraph, and that is better," replied
Arthur.
By this time Mr. Hubbard was returning with the apparatus he had been
using at the other end. It was time to see how the marvel had been
wrought.
"Now tell us how it works, Mr. Bell," commanded Dom Pedro.
"It is very simple," Mr. Bell explained. "You know, of course, that for
some years it has been possible to transmit articulate speech through
India rubber tubes and stringed instruments for short distances; but
I worked, as you see, to transmit spoken words by electric current
through a telegraph wire.
"Here on the table before you is the instrument I call the transmitter,
into which Mr. Hubbard spoke. This projecting part is only a
mouth-piece. Inside is a piece of thin iron attached to a membrane, and
this piece of iron vibrates whenever one speaks into the transmitter.
For you know, gentlemen, that if you hold a piece of paper in front of
your mouth and then sing or talk, the paper will vibrate as many times
as the air does.
"Now, of course, if I could reproduce those sound or air waves at a
distance, a person listening would hear the same sounds that caused the
first vibration. I have accomplished that by making and breaking an
electric current between two pieces of sheet iron. My assistant spoke
into the cone-shaped mouth-piece. At the end of it, as you could see
if I took off the cover, is the first thin plate of sheet iron. Near
that iron, but not touching it, is a magnetized piece of iron wound
around with a coil of wire.
[Illustration: BELL'S TELEPHONE IN MARCH, 1876.]
"This magnet is connected by this wire with another magnet that also
has a coil of wire around it. On the other side of the second magnet is
the other thin plate of sheet iron. This last part makes what I call
the receiver. It is the part at which you listened. It looks, you see,
like a metallic pill box with a flat disc for a cover, fastened down at
one side and tilted up on another. When you put your ear to that, you
heard the reproduction of the original sound."
"Marvelous!" "Wonderful!" "Stupendous!" "Incredible!" were some of the
exclamations.
"But, gentlemen," confirmed one of the judges, a man named Elisha Gray,
"it is perfectly true. I myself have an invention of a similar sort, by
which I can send musical sounds along a telegraph wire."
There was a moment of amazement and congratulation for Mr. Gray. Then
came a question addressed to Mr. Bell.
"Could you talk into the iron box and hear at the transmitter?"
"Yes, but not easily. So far I have had to use different instruments at
each end of the circuit. I shall remedy that some day," continued Mr.
Bell, confidently.
"I am sure you will," agreed the questioner. "We want to see this
again, sir," spoke one of the group. "May it not be transferred to the
Judges' Hall?"
"Certainly, as far as I am concerned," was the reply. "Mr. Hubbard will
see to that, I am sure. I myself must return to Boston to-night."
"My young friend," now spoke Sir William Thomson (who later became
Lord Kelvin), perhaps the most noted of all the scientists present,
"is it not possible to arrange for a test with your apparatus over a
considerable distance? If so, I shall be glad to go to Boston also to
witness such an experiment."
"I shall be most delighted, Sir William," answered Bell. "I will make
the necessary arrangements and telegraph you at once."
After more congratulations for the young inventor, the group dispersed,
the judges going away to the dinner they had for a while forgotten.
But during the meal and through the evening they talked of little but
the new invention; and Arthur distinctly remembers to this day the
enthusiastic remark of Sir William Thomson: "What yesterday I should
have declared impossible I have to-day seen realized. The speaking
telegraph is the most wonderful thing I have seen in America."
PART II
When Arthur went back to his home in one of the country towns of
Massachusetts, he had many things to tell his family and his friends.
To him the Exposition had been a veritable fairy land. But the most
wonderful genie there was Electricity, and his most remarkable work was
the speaking telegraph.
"And you could really hear through that wire?" questioned more than one
incredulous person.
"I really could, and as plainly as I hear you," insisted Arthur.
"Sho, now!" remonstrated a farmer neighbor, "you only thought you
could."
"Well, maybe," commented another, cautiously, "but of course there was
a hole in the wire that you didn't see."
Arthur's own family were more thoughtful and intelligent people.
"I knew," said Grandfather, "that the marvels of electricity were not
all understood. When I was a young man, the telegraph was the greatest
wonder the world owned. But using that was somehow like talking at
arm's length; the telephone brings your friend almost beside you."
"To me," said Arthur's mother, "the telephone, in comparison with the
telegraph, seems like a highly finished oil painting. The old invention
is like a page of black and white print."
"Why, I have seen Mr. Bell," remembered Arthur's older sister, who
was studying to be a teacher, after she had heard the story. "He came
to the normal school last year to explain his system of teaching deaf
mutes to speak."
The Burtons heard no more of the telephone for six months or more; but
the next winter, when Herbert, the older brother, came home from Tufts
College to spend a week end, he exclaimed:
"Well, Arthur, I've talked through a telephone, too!"
"You have!"
"Where?"
"Tell us about it!" were the quick replies.
"Professor Dolbear, the physics instructor, has made one in
his laboratory. It's a little different from Professor Bell's.
Your professor, Arthur, had a battery, you know, to make the
electro-magnet. My professor has a permanent magnet instead."
Early in February Herbert came home with more news and an invitation:
"Professor Bell is going to give a public lecture and exhibition of
his telephone at Salem next Monday evening. He expects to carry on a
conversation with people in Boston. Want to go back to college with me
Monday morning, Arthur, and go down to Salem in the evening?"
So it happened that on Monday evening, February 12, 1877, Arthur and
Herbert, with about five hundred others, were at Lyceum Hall in Salem.
It was an eager audience, full of curiosity.
Upon the platform and well toward the front was a small table, on the
top of which rested an unimportant-looking covered box. From this box
wires extended above to the gas fixture and out through the hall. At
the back of the platform was a blackboard on a frame, and at the side a
young woman, an expert telegrapher, who was to help Mr. Bell.
"Rather an unpromising set of apparatus!" Arthur heard a man behind him
whisper to his neighbor.
"I'm not expecting much," returned the neighbor. "They say Professor
Bell's going to talk to Boston. That's nonsense!"
But just then Professor Bell began. He briefly explained the
instrument upon the table, which, Arthur saw, varied but little from
that at Philadelphia.
"Only," thought Arthur, "he uses it now as he said he should, for
transmitting and receiving too."
Then Professor Bell gave a brief account of the studies he had made
since 1872, when he came to Boston to teach speech to deaf mutes.
"I made up my mind," said he, "that if I could make a deaf mute talk,
I could make iron talk. For two years I worked on the problem, but
unsuccessfully. At last, about two years ago, while a friend and I were
experimenting daily with a wire stretched between my own room at Boston
University and the basement of an adjoining building, I spoke into the
transmitter, 'Can you hear me?' To my surprise and delight the answer
came at once, 'I can understand you perfectly.' To be sure," continued
the lecturer, "the sounds were not perfect, but they were intelligible.
I had transmitted articulate speech.
"My problem was a long way toward its solution. With practically those
same instruments, improved with a year's experimenting, I went to
the Exposition, where, as you know, I interested many people. Since
last June Sir William Thomson and I have succeeded in talking over
a distance of about sixty miles. Moreover, I have talked, but not
so successfully, between New York and Boston, a distance of over two
hundred miles. To-night I expect to establish a connection between
this hall and my study in Exeter Place in Boston, eighteen miles away.
My colleague, Professor Watson, is there, in company with six other
gentlemen."
Then, in an ordinary tone, as if speaking to some one a few feet away,
Professor Bell inquired, talking into the transmitter:
"Are you ready, Watson?"
Evidently Watson was ready, for there came from the telephone a noise
much like the sound of a horn.
"That is Watson making and breaking the circuit," explained Professor
Bell.
Soon Arthur heard plainly the organ notes of "Auld Lang Syne," followed
by those of "Yankee Doodle."
"But that's not the human voice," objected Arthur's neighbor to his
companion. "Musical sounds we know can be telegraphed."
Just then Mr. Bell spoke again into the transmitter.
"Watson, will you make us a speech?"
There came a few seconds of silence. Then, to the astonishment of all,
a voice issued from the telephone. All the five hundred people could
hear the sound, and those less than six feet from the instrument had
little difficulty in making out the words:
"Ladies and gentlemen: It gives me great pleasure to address you this
evening, though I am in Boston and you are in Salem."
"I wonder what those men think now," reflected Arthur.
But the answer was forthcoming.
"We can no longer doubt. We can only admire the sagacity and patience
with which Mr. Bell has brought his problem to a successful issue."
At the conclusion of the lecture many of the audience went to the
platform to examine the wonderful box more closely. Arthur and Herbert
were of the number, you may be sure.
"Is it all right for me to speak to Mr. Bell, Herbert?" whispered
Arthur.
"Certainly, if you don't interrupt."
Arthur watched his chance.
"Mr. Bell," he said finally, "you did make the receiver into a
transmitter, didn't you? I saw you at Philadelphia, you know."
Mr. Bell's puzzled look wore away.
"Why," he exclaimed, "you're the boy I saw at the Exposition that
Sunday afternoon last June, aren't you?" Then he added, before turning
away to answer a question that a man was asking, "Better buy a Boston
_Globe_ in the morning. You'll find a new triumph for the telephone
there."
Arthur bought his _Globe_ the next morning before breakfast. Mr. Bell
was right. The paper recorded even more successes than the boys had
witnessed the night before. Its account of the evening ended with these
words:
"This special by telephone to the _Globe_ has been transmitted in the
presence of about twenty, who have thus been witnesses to a feat never
before attempted: that is, the sending of a newspaper despatch over
the space of eighteen miles by the human voice, all this wonder being
accomplished in a time not much longer than would be consumed in an
ordinary conversation between two people in the same room."
Probably no child who reads this story can remember when the telephone
was not so common an object as a lawn mower or an elevator; but
those of us who lived through the years when its wonders were slowly
developing can never forget our strange, almost uncanny feeling when
the voice of a friend who, we knew, was miles away actually came out of
a little iron box.
From that day of the _Globe_ report Arthur watched the telephone grow
rapidly into public notice. Salem people invited Mr. Bell to repeat his
lecture; leading citizens of Boston, Lowell, Providence, Manchester,
and New York within a few weeks clamored for demonstrations in their
cities.
[Illustration: PART OF A TELEPHONE EXCHANGE.]
By September, 1878, a telephone exchange was set up among the business
houses of Boston, with about three hundred subscribers. Two years later
the telephone found its way to the little town where Arthur lived, and
two instruments were installed--one at the railroad station and another
at the lawyer's office.
The next day came the presidential election; and in the evening the
lawyer's office was filled with curious men and boys, eager to see
whether the telephone would really work or not. Arthur and his father
were there, of course. But before any message came, the lawyer had to
see a client for a few minutes.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL IN 1900.]
"Here, Arthur, you've used a telephone before. Take my place at the
receiver, will you?"
There was no need to ask. Arthur was at the receiver when the lawyer's
question was finished. No message came for some time; but at last the
bell rang, and Arthur announced proudly:
"He says Florida has gone Republican."
"I knew the thing couldn't be trusted," sputtered an old voter then.
"As if the solid South were broken! I'll get my news some other way."
And off he went.
"You didn't hear right, I fancy," said the lawyer, returning. "The
operator couldn't have said that."
"But he did," insisted Arthur. "I'm sure he did."
"And why not?" quietly asked the school teacher from one corner of the
room. "He means the town of Florida, not the state."
"Of course," said everybody.
By 1883, Arthur heard that conversation had been carried on between New
York and Chicago, cities one thousand miles apart. "That is all we can
hope for," was the general verdict. For a long time it seemed true. But
when the country had been covered by a network of wires, there came
another long-distance triumph. Communication was open to Omaha, five
hundred miles farther west.
And not long ago, Arthur, now a prosperous business man of fifty, a
member of the City Club of Boston, sat with several associates around
a table at the new club house, each with a telephone in front of him;
and over the wires, across three thousand miles of mountain, lake,
and prairie, came clearly the voices of the governor of Massachusetts
and the mayor of Boston, speaking from the Panama Exposition at San
Francisco.
What will be the next triumph of the telephone? To transmit speech
around the globe, perhaps. Anyway, here is a newspaper paragraph that
asks an interesting question:
"The _Mayflower_ has been called the last frail link binding the
Pilgrims to man and habitable earth. With its departure from Plymouth
in America that frail link was severed. The Atlantic cable has surely
bound the countries together again. Will the telephone and the
aeroplane make the desert of the Pilgrims a popular London suburb?"
A NEW ERA IN LIGHTING
PART I
"Uncle John, I've decided to go to Wellesley College."
"I'm glad to hear it, Dora. Have you money enough?"
"That's just the trouble, Uncle John. I have exactly twenty-four
dollars that I've earned picking berries the last three summers. But
I'm only eleven, you know, and I shan't try to go before I'm eighteen.
That will give me seven more summers to work. Only I can never pay my
college expenses if I can't earn more than eight dollars a summer."
"That's true, Dora. I wish I were rich enough to send you myself. But
school teachers are not wealthy, you know."
"Oh, I don't want anybody to give me the money, Uncle John. I want
to earn it. Don't you know of something that's more profitable than
berry-picking?"
"I'll think about it, Dora."
This conversation took place in 1878, when Dora's Uncle John, who
was a high school principal in New Jersey, was spending his Christmas
vacation at Dora's home in a little village on the Maine coast. Nothing
more was said about the college money then; but when Uncle John came
again in February, he showed that he had interested himself in the
ambitious plans of his little niece.
[Illustration: WELLESLEY COLLEGE IN 1886.]
"Dora," he inquired, "do you want to go to college as much as ever?"
"Yes, more, Uncle John. Have you thought of anything for me to do this
summer?"
"I know something you can do, Dora, if you want to."
"Oh, Uncle John, what is it?"
"How should you like to work for me?"
"I should like to ever so much. But I don't know enough yet to correct
high school papers. All I can do is housework."
"And that's just what I want of you, Dora. You didn't know I had leased
the Atlantic House, did you?"
"No, indeed, Uncle John. Do you mean you're coming here summers to
manage that hotel?"
"Yes, for the next ten years, anyway, I expect. Do you like to fill
lamps and clean chimneys, Dora?"
"Why, that's the part of the housework I can do best."
"That's good. Will you work for me twelve weeks this summer for three
dollars and a half a week?"
"Oh, Uncle John, of course I will. But isn't there gas in that hotel?"
"No, just kerosene lamps. I know some people like gas better, but I
don't. It's too dangerous and it's bad for one's eyes. So even if I
could spare the money this summer, I shouldn't pipe the house for gas.
It can't be many years before there will be a cleaner and better light.
The Wizard will soon attend to that."
"What do you mean, Uncle? Who is the Wizard?"
"The most wonderful man in America, Dora. His name is Thomas Alva
Edison, and he lives in Menlo Park, New Jersey, not far from where
I teach. I know him a little. He is the man who, I think, best
represents the scientific spirit of the nineteenth century. He's an
inventor, but a systematic one. He doesn't trust to chance."
"What has he invented, Uncle? I don't think I ever heard of him."
"I fancy not, Dora. So far his work has been largely improvements on
inventions already made. Just now, as I said, he is experimenting to
find a way of lighting buildings by electricity. He will succeed, I
know; and I shall wait for his electric light. I expect, though, to
wait a number of years yet, for even though he should discover the
secret within a few months, no one can supply the necessary apparatus.
It will take years, I'm sure, before electric lighting is cheap enough
to be common."
"How did you get acquainted with such a wonderful man, Uncle?"
"I knew him first when I was getting ready for college. Like you, I had
my own way to pay; and I learned to be a telegraph operator. The summer
before I entered Harvard I had a place in the Boston office of the
Western Union Telegraph Company. Mr. Edison was a young man too, and he
came to work in the office while I was there.
"The night he came we tried to play a joke on him, but the joke was
decidedly on ourselves. Edison wore an old linen duster, and looked so
much like a country boy that we thought he couldn't know much about
taking messages. So we arranged with a skillful New York operator to
send a long message faster and faster, and we saw to it that the new
boy had to take it. To our surprise, he proved the fastest operator we
had ever known and very carelessly and easily handled the quick dots
and dashes. The joke was on the New York operator, too, for after a
while Edison signaled, 'Say, young man, why don't you change off and
send with your other foot?'
"An operator like that didn't stay long in the office. He went to New
York, and almost at once got a position at three hundred dollars a
month because he was bright enough to repair a stock-indicator in a
broker's office. Soon afterward he improved the indicator so much that
the president of the company gave him forty thousand dollars for his
new idea.
"Next he proved his value to the telegraph company again by locating
a break in the wire between New York and Albany. The president of the
Western Union had promised to consider any invention Edison might
make if the young man would find the trouble on the line in two days.
Edison was not two hours in locating the break; and ever after that the
Western Union people were glad enough to be told of all his new ideas."
"Is he working for the Western Union now?"
[Illustration: STOCK INDICATOR OR "TICKER"]
"No, not now. Just as soon as he had enough money in the bank so that
he could afford time to experiment, he opened a factory and laboratory
of his own. He made stock tickers for a while; but he cared more about
improving them than selling them. 'No matter,' I have heard him say,
'whether I take an egg beater or an electric motor into my hand, I want
to improve it. I'm a poor manufacturer, because I can't let well enough
alone.' So, instead of making stock indicators, he went to work to
improve the telegraph. He saved the Western Union Company millions of
dollars by making a device for sending four messages at the same time
over one wire. So you see he made their one hundred thousand miles of
wire into four hundred thousand without using any more wire. That's a
wizard's work, I think."
"I should think so, too," agreed Dora. "That seems to me as hard as
singing two notes at once."
"But it can be done, nevertheless; and Edison was so pleased with
that invention that he put his factory at Newark into the hands of
a capable superintendent and established a laboratory at Menlo Park,
where he is now, about twenty-five miles from Newark. Then he began to
think about the telephone. Do you know what that is, Dora?"
"I've heard about it, of course, but I never saw one. There are some
telephones in Portland, though."
"Yes, and there's going to be one here. I'm going to connect the hotel
with the telegraph office at the station this summer, and sometime
I'll give you a chance to talk over the wire. It's easier to use the
telephone now than it was at first, for in the beginning there was a
continual buzzing that was very annoying; but Edison has stopped all
that by improving what we call the transmitter."
Dora's idea of a telephone was indistinct; but she was satisfied with
the explanation to come, and she wanted to hear more of Mr. Edison.
"Has he made anything else?" she asked.
"Oh, yes," replied Uncle John. "What I think is the most wonderful
thing Edison has done is the phonograph. Next to the telephone, that
to me is the biggest marvel in the world of science. Think, Dora,
of speaking into a machine that makes a picture of the sound waves
produced by your voice, and then, a day or a year or a century later,
letting the instrument work backward and hearing your own voice
exactly as it sounded at first. Such a mechanism almost frightens me.
It makes me sure that if a man like Edison can keep the idle words men
speak through centuries, the Master Mind of this universe can keep them
for us forever."
[Illustration: EDISON'S FIRST PHONOGRAPH.]
Dora must have caught a little of her uncle's thought, for she said,
slowly, "Do you mean that everything I say I shall hear again sometime?"
"I don't know exactly, Dora. But I am sure that God, who gave you power
to speak, knows how to keep your words forever; and I am sure you will
never cease to be glad for all the kind words you may speak for human
ears to hear.
"But I'd almost forgotten about the electric light, Dora. Let me
tell you what Edison said about that the last time I saw him. He told
me of seeing in Philadelphia what is called an arc lamp--two pieces
of carbon that electricity has heated white hot and that give off a
powerful light, much more powerful than any gas lamp you ever saw could
give. But a lamp like that, though it makes a fine street lamp, is not
suitable for lighting a house. It's too bright and too big. Edison says
it needs to be subdivided so that it can be distributed to houses just
as gas is now.
"That's Edison's present problem, Dora. He is such an untiring worker
that I don't believe it will take many months; and when the process
is perfected and the implements for generating the electricity can be
secured, I mean to make my hotel the prettiest place at night on the
Maine coast. But meantime, Dora, suppose you learn to wipe lamps so dry
and polish chimneys so bright and trim wicks so even that every summer
visitor at the 'Atlantic' will be glad to get away for a while from the
flaring, ill-smelling, poisonous gas light."
"I will, Uncle John, I will! I'll be the best lamp-trimmer on the whole
Maine coast!"
"That's the spirit that will take you to college, Dora," answered her
uncle. "Don't lose a bit of it."
PART II
For all the long hot weeks of the next summer Dora worked faithfully
every day on the hotel lamps. She had to be at her work at eight
o'clock every morning, and she seldom finished before two in the
afternoon. But every week her uncle paid her three dollars and a half,
and by the end of the season she had forty-two dollars carefully put
away. When the hotel closed, her uncle made her a present of eight
dollars, so that when she started for school in the fall she rejoiced
in the thought of fifty dollars put away in the savings bank as a
college fund.
She was happy, too, in the prospect of making as much money the next
summer. For the Wizard, Uncle John told her, had not the secret yet.
He had succeeded in making a platinum wire, encased in a glass globe,
give a light equal to that of twenty-five candles without melting. But
he needed to exhaust all the air from the glass globe, and still one
one-hundred-thousandth of the original volume remained.
"But that's not sufficient," commented Uncle John. "I know enough
about the matter to be sure that so much air as that would prevent the
platinum from giving out the light it ought to give. Still, within a
short time, Dora, I expect even the Portland papers will describe Mr.
Edison's success with the electric light."
Uncle John's prediction was fulfilled. By the first of October the
vacuum was so nearly perfect that only one-millionth part of the
original air was left in the glass bulb. By the last of that same
month, moreover, the whole secret was practically in Edison's grasp. He
had stopped experimenting with platinum for a burner and had gone back
to carbon, on which he had pinned his faith at first.
But this time he used the carbon only as a coating for a piece of
cotton thread that he had bent into a loop and sealed up in the almost
perfect vacuum of glass. When this lamp was connected with the battery,
it flashed forth with the brightness that the inventor had so long
waited to see. But how long would it burn? There was no sleep for
Edison till that question was answered; and it was not answered for
forty hours--nearly two days of growing delight and diminishing anxiety.
Such a discovery meant the end of all fruitless experimenting. The
secret of the incandescent light was revealed; and the newspapers
all over the country--the _Daily Eastern Argus_ of Portland among
them--spread the knowledge of the great event in science and prophesied
the speedy conquest of kerosene and gas. Late in November Uncle
John sent Dora a copy of the _Scientific American_ which gave the
authoritative account of what had been accomplished.
[Illustration: EDISON IN HIS LIBRARY.]
"But," wrote Uncle John in the letter accompanying the paper, "now
the real work has only begun. The Wizard knows that some carbonized
material is what he needs, but he is sure that carbonized cotton
thread is not the best thing. Now he is carbonizing everything he
can lay his hands on--straw, tissue paper, soft paper, all kinds of
cardboard, all kinds of threads, fish line, threads rubbed with tarred
lampblack, fine threads plaited together in strands, cotton soaked in
boiling tar, lamp wick, twine, tar and lampblack mixed, and many other
materials that I can't remember. Why," finished Uncle John, "so far he
has examined no fewer than six thousand different species of vegetable
growth alone. Somebody said something to him the other day about his
wonderful genius. 'Well,' modestly answered the great man, mopping
his forehead with his handkerchief, 'genius, I think, is one per cent
_in_spiration and ninety-nine per cent _per_spiration.'"
In December there came into Dora's life the most happy and exciting
experience of her childhood. The letter from Uncle John in November had
ended with this paragraph:
"I am looking forward to my visit to Maine next month, but I'm sorry
to say it must be earlier and shorter than usual. I have an important
engagement here for the twenty-fourth, and I'm planning to reach Maine
on Saturday, the twentieth, spend Sunday with you, and leave there the
twenty-second. But I have thought of a way of making my visit last
longer and of giving you a new kind of Christmas present. That way is
to take you back with me to Jersey and let you see what Christmas and
New Year's in the neighborhood of New York are like. If you approve my
new idea for Christmas, I want you to let me know at once."
If any twelve-year-old child who lives fifty miles from a city and
has never been farther from home than that city in her life is reading
this, she will know how Dora felt at the prospect of such a Christmas
journey, and she will understand, too, how Dora had her answer ready
for the post office in less than an hour after she had read her letter.
The only event of Dora's wonderful vacation that this story has a right
to tell is her visit to Mr. Edison. It happened that in the _Herald_
Uncle John bought as the train was nearing New York, there was a long
article describing the lighting system that Mr. Edison had put into
successful operation at Menlo Park. "Interest is getting so great in
the incandescent light," remarked Uncle John, "that I shouldn't wonder
if Mr. Edison let the public see it in operation. If he does, you and I
are going to Menlo Park."
The prophecy was a true one. On New Year's Mr. Edison opened his
grounds to the public, the railroad ran special trains, and over three
thousand people visited Menlo Park. Here is the enthusiastic letter
that Dora wrote next day to Maine:
NEWARK, N. J.
_Jan. 1, 1880_
_Dear Father and Mother,_
I have been to Fairyland. The enclosed clippings will tell you all
about it. I saw the king of the fairies too--I mean Mr. Edison--and
he said, "Good evening, little girl," to me. He talked with Uncle
John quite a while, and I heard all they said. Some one asked Mr.
Edison when New York would be lighted by electricity and he answered,
"I'm working night and day, but you see I have to produce not only
a practicable lamp, but a whole system. I haven't found the best
material for filaments yet, and there's not a place in the world where
I can buy the dynamos (those are machines for making the electricity,
Uncle John told me) and the smaller appliances."
Then Uncle John said, "Well, Edison, I'm waiting patiently till you
make electric lights cheap enough for me to wire my hotel on the Maine
coast. Can you make a prediction?"
"None that's safe," Edison answered. "You know the opposition of the
gas companies, and you know the present high cost of the experiments.
I've spent already over forty thousand dollars without returns, and
my lamps are costing almost two dollars apiece. The public won't take
them till they can be sold for forty cents or less. Moreover, I'm not
satisfied with my paper carbon lamps. No, there is much work left; but
I shall work day and night till New York has a central station and
every appliance we need is manufactured at small cost."
"I suppose eating and sleeping don't bother you much just now," some
one said.
"Not very much," answered Edison. "I eat when I'm hungry, and I sleep
when I have to. Four hours a night are enough, for I can go to sleep
instantly, and I always wake up rested."
Uncle John says that Mr. Edison is the greatest inventor the world has
known. Just think of that! And I have seen him!
Yours affectionately,
DORA
Here are two newspaper clippings that Dora enclosed in her letter:
I
A NIGHT WITH EDISON
_Menlo Park, N. J._
_Dec. 30, 1879_
All day long and until late this evening, Menlo Park has been thronged
with visitors coming from all directions to see the wonderful
"electric light." Nearly every train that stopped brought delegations
of sightseers till the depot was overrun and the narrow plank walk
leading to the laboratory became alive with people. In the laboratory
the throngs practically took possession of everything in their eager
curiosity to learn all about the great invention. Four new street
lamps were added last night, making six in all, which now give out
the horse shoe light in the open air. Their superiority to gas is so
apparent, both in steadiness and beauty of illumination, that every
one is struck with admiration.
II
The afternoon trains brought some visitors, but in the evening every
train set down a couple of score, at least. The visitors never seemed
to tire of lighting the lamps upon the two main tables by simply
laying one between the two long wires. Most were content to ejaculate
"Wonderful!" But no amount of explanation would persuade one old
gentleman that it was not an iron wire that was inside the glass tube.
"It could not be the carbon filament of a piece of paper, for," said
he, "I have seen some red hot, white hot iron wire, only it was not
quite so bright, but it looked just like that. That's no filament!"
"This is a bad time for sceptics," I said to Edison.
"There are some left," he answered. "They die harder than a cat or a
snake."
Dora's New York visit colored all the next five years that she
worked and waited for college. Her interest in the electric light
never wavered for an instant. Like many another, she marveled at the
thoroughness of Mr. Edison's search for the right sort of filament and
followed expectantly reports of those men whom he sent around the world
in search of it.
She read with a bit of almost personal pride the item in the Portland
paper that told how, on September 4, 1882, at three o'clock in the
afternoon, electric light was supplied for the first time to a number
of New York customers; and when, in 1884, that same paper stated
that at Brockton, Massachusetts, the first theater ever lighted by
electricity from a central plant had been thrown open, she wrote her
uncle:
"I'm sure you'll have to discharge your lamp trimmer pretty soon. But I
don't care now, for with father's help, I think I can enter Wellesley
in the fall. Of course I hope to work one more summer for you."
Uncle John answered that letter in person, for he needed to go to Maine
to make arrangements for the summer.
"I congratulate you, Dora," said he. "You deserve a college course. But
I shan't discharge you yet. I expect now to wire the hotel by 1889; but
even if I shouldn't need a lamp trimmer all the time till then, I shall
always be glad of a capable waitress.--Will you work for me the next
three summers?"
"Of course I will, Uncle John," replied Dora as eagerly and gratefully
as she had made the same reply six years before. "With the money I can
earn the next three summers, I can lessen college expenses a good deal."
So it happened that the ambition of Dora's girlhood; largely through
her own pluck and persistence, was realized in due season. Still,
she always felt that Mr. Edison unknowingly had a large share in the
making of her career; for when in after years she became an instructor
in physics at an influential school, she could easily trace back her
love for her subject to her interest in the early experiments upon the
electric light.
THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR
PART I
In March, 1852, Lucy Hobart began a six months' visit with her
grandparents who lived just outside Trenton, New Jersey. One morning at
the breakfast table, Grandfather Hobart, whom most people called Lawyer
Hobart, said to Lucy, "Little girl, a most important case is being
tried at the court house this week. It may not be very interesting to
a child, but I think that you, as well as Grandmother, ought to attend
this morning. I want you to be able to say that you have heard the
great Daniel Webster make a plea."
"Do you mean Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, Grandfather?" inquired
Lucy. "I thought," she resumed rather timidly, for she feared
Grandfather might think she was contradicting him, "I thought people
didn't like him any more."
"You come from a strong anti-slavery family, Lucy, the worst kind,"
answered Grandfather, good-humoredly. "Webster did seem to many people
to sacrifice his ideal in that seventh of March speech two years ago,
but he's a keen lawyer yet. His health is broken, though, from the
criticism he has suffered. I don't believe he will live much longer.
That's why I think you had better go to-day."
"I should like to ever so much," replied Lucy.
"Is it the Goodyear case?" inquired Grandmother.
"Yes," replied Grandfather. "It's his case against Horace Day, who, I
think, has been outrageously infringing his patents."
"It's raining a little," remarked Grandmother. "Shall you take us if it
keeps on?"
"If you feel like going. If it hadn't been for Mr. Goodyear, you know,
you couldn't have gone anyway on such a day," Grandfather added.
"Why couldn't we?" inquired Lucy, after trying to think it out a few
seconds.
"My stars! Don't you, a Boston girl, know about Goodyear and his rubber
goods?"
"I don't believe so," answered Lucy. "Unless," she added after a pause,
"you mean the man that advertises in the _Transcript_ every night. Ever
since I could read, I've seen advertisements in the paper about rubber
that's been heated to two hundred and eighty degrees."
"Yes, Lucy, that's an advertisement of the Charles Goodyear I mean.
I've known him a good many years (he's only a little younger than I,
and we were both born in New Haven), and he's had a hard, sad life so
far. To be sure, he's reckoned now as one of New Haven's prosperous
business men; but unless he wins this suit, his poverty will come back
again. Shall I tell you a little about him so that you'll understand
some of the references you'll be sure to hear at the trial?"
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF CHARLES GOODYEAR]
"Oh, I wish you would, Grandfather."
Breakfast was over then; and as Grandmother went to the kitchen to give
her orders for the day, Grandfather said:
"You and I, Lucy, will sit in front of the fire a little while and talk
about Mr. Goodyear. But first you'd better go with Grandmother and let
her give you my galoshes and my rubber cap, and her rubber shoes and
your own."
A little girl of to-day, on hearing that request, might not know
exactly what she had been sent for. Rubber goods were too expensive
then to be common, and "rubber shoes" had not been shortened to our
"rubbers." The awkward _galoshes_ was just a name for high rubber
shoes, or overshoes.
Lucy came back soon, her arms full. The cap she placed on a table, and
the three pairs of rubber shoes she put carefully down to warm in front
of the fire.
"It wouldn't have been safe to put my galoshes that I had twenty years
ago so near the fire," commented Grandfather, as Lucy drew up her chair
beside his. "Can you guess what would have happened to them?"
"Would the fire have burned them, Grandfather?"
"Not exactly, but it would have melted them,--at least have made them
as soft as suet. What Goodyear has done is to invent a way of preparing
rubber or gum elastic so that it can be used in various thicknesses
without being stiff as iron in cold weather or softening like wax with
the heat." Then Grandfather interrupted his statements with a question:
"Do you know where we get gum elastic, Lucy?"
"Let's pretend I don't know anything about rubber," answered Lucy
judiciously, after a pause. "You begin at the beginning, Grandfather."
Grandfather smiled at the little girl's strategy and began at the
beginning.
"Gum elastic is really the dried sap of the South American rubber tree.
To get it, the trees are tapped, just as maple trees are tapped here.
But the rubber sap is yellowish white and thick as cream. The natives
of Brazil long ago discovered that this sap, when hardened, would keep
out water. So they made bottles from it and sent the bottles to Europe
and the United States. Finally the Portuguese settlers in South America
made the hardened sap into shoes; and in 1820 I saw in Boston the first
pair of rubber shoes ever brought into the United States. They were as
clumsy looking as Chinese shoes. They were gilded, too, not so much to
make them beautiful as to keep the rubber from melting."
[Illustration: TAPPING A RUBBER TREE]
"Oh, but they must have been handsome," commented Lucy. "They must have
looked just like gold slippers. How much did they cost, Grandfather?"
"I don't know, Lucy. I'm not sure that they were intended to be sold.
Two years afterward, though, when there were five hundred pairs for
sale in Boston, the price was pretty high. I paid five dollars for
mine, I remember. These were not gilded, but they were just as thick
and unshapely as the first ones were. They were better than nothing,
though, when the weather was not too hot nor too cold.
"During the next few years I suppose there were at least a million
pairs of rubber shoes brought into this country and sold for four or
five dollars a pair. Then, of course, enterprising New Englanders began
to think that if people wanted rubber shoes so much, there would be
a good deal of profit in manufacturing them. Then rubber companies
prospered for a while; but customers soon found that the rubber shoes
they bought were spoiled by heat or cold, and every rubber company went
rapidly out of existence.
"It was just about this time that Mr. Goodyear sent for me to come to
Philadelphia. He was in the jail there, I'm sorry to say, but for no
fault of his, and he needed a lawyer's advice. The hardware firm he
belonged to had failed, owing thirty thousand dollars; and though he
could in no way be blamed for the disaster, on account of our poor
debtors' laws he had been sent to prison. In spite of his misfortune,
he was not downcast. 'It's unfair, Hobart,' he said; 'but there's a way
out. Look into this kettle. That's gum elastic I've been melting. The
secret of rubber will pay that thirty thousand dollars and give the
world the most important commercial product of the century.'
"I was glad he was so cheerful, for I couldn't give him much
encouragement about keeping out of prison. Our laws were unfair, just
as he said, and I knew that his creditors were likely to send the
poor fellow to prison again and again. And so they did for ten long
years. But his faith in rubber never wavered. Just after he had been
released the first time, I called on him again. 'Here's the means of
good fortune, Hobart,' he cried cheerfully; and he showed me a mass of
rubber he was pressing into shape with his wife's rolling-pin."
"I'm afraid there was always more rubber than bread under that rolling
pin!" commented Grandmother, just then passing through the room on an
errand.
"I'm afraid so," agreed Grandfather. "But, Lucy, your grandmother never
had much patience with Mr. Goodyear's experiments. I remonstrated a
good many times, myself. 'Goodyear,' said I, when I found him once
in a little attic room in New York, boiling his gum with all sorts of
chemicals, 'why not give it up? You can't do it without money, and
nobody believes in rubber now.'
"'Don't try to discourage me,' he answered. 'I know I shall succeed.
What is hidden and unknown and cannot be discovered by scientific
research will most likely be discovered by accident; and it will be
discovered by the one who applies himself most perseveringly to his
task.'
[Illustration: NATIVES DRYING RUBBER]
"No one could dissuade him. He borrowed money and made several hundred
pairs of handsome rubber shoes that, when summer came, melted and
smelled so bad they had to be buried; he won a prize for his beautiful
rubber tablecloths and piano covers, but a drop of acid stained and
spoiled them. The story of these years was disappointment and poverty.
Once, to pay the house-rent, Mrs. Goodyear had to sell the household
linen that she herself had spun; and many times, if kind friends had
not sent food and money, the little Goodyear children would have had
nothing to eat.
"Still, even in those dark days, there were moments of rejoicing.
Three times Goodyear thought he had succeeded: once, when he mixed
magnesia with the rubber; once, when he boiled the rubber in quicklime
and water; and once, when he cured the surface of his rubber with what
chemists call nitric acid. Moreover, another experimenter gave him
a valuable clue. Some one in Massachusetts, a man named Hayward, I
believe, claimed that in a dream, he had been told to use sulphur in
rubber-curing. He obeyed the dream, patented the process, and sold the
patent to Goodyear. After that, Goodyear could make thin rubber fabric
that could withstand both heat and cold. But he wanted to cure rubber
in masses, not in films."
"Couldn't he sell the things he made of the thin rubber, Grandfather?"
"Yes, he sold a number of aprons and tablecloths and such articles,
but they didn't bring him much money. They attracted attention to him,
though, and pretty soon the national post office department gave him
an order for one hundred and fifty mail bags. Here was his opportunity.
He was almost sure of success this time, for it was summer, and the
heat did not seem to affect the rubber at all. Still, when the bags
were finished, he hung them up for hotter weather to test, and took
a vacation. When he returned, the mail bags were dropping from their
hooks in shapeless, ill-smelling lumps. The world said, 'We told you
so.' But Goodyear said to me after that failure, 'It wasn't the curing,
Hobart, that ruined those bags. It was the coloring matter. That made
them decompose.'
"This failure only made Goodyear redouble his efforts. He moved his
family to Woburn, in Massachusetts, where he had been experimenting,
and began to work night and day. People who had heard of his
persistence would come to see him, and he would tell them of his
discoveries and his certain hopes. Finally, one night, when he was
talking to such a group, quite by accident he dropped upon a hot stove
a piece of rubber that had been mixed with sulphur. To his surprise
and delight, the rubber did not melt, but charred like leather. He had
found the secret. And what a simple secret it was! Rubber could be
cured by mixing it with sulphur and heating it very hot.
"This happened in 1839, when Goodyear was thirty-nine years old. He
had practically solved his problem; but for nearly two years more no
one would help him or even believe him.
"There, Lucy, I've told you the story from the beginning. I haven't
finished it yet; but I want you to have a chance to say a word. Do you
know what this process of curing rubber is called? We tan leather, you
know. What do we do to rubber?"
"I don't believe I know, Grandfather."
"I saw you reading about the Latin gods and goddesses yesterday. Who
was the god that hammered and made tools?"
"Vulcan, wasn't it?"
"Yes; and we use that word to help name the process of curing rubber.
Just add the suffix-_ize_ and what do you have?"
"Vul-can-ize," spoke Lucy, slowly.
"That's it. And now can you tell when rubber has been vulcanized?"
"When it has been treated with sulphur and heated very hot."
"And what were the unsuccessful ways of vulcanizing that Goodyear
tried?"
"He used magnesia, quicklime and water, and nitric acid."
"Good. That shows you listened and understood. Now I'll tell you the
rest. It's a sad story. But Goodyear is prosperous now, you know; and
I think Mr. Webster will bring justice back."
PART II
"When Goodyear dropped that piece of rubber on the hot stove, he lost
no time in putting the new process to the test. He nailed the rubber
outside the kitchen door in the intense cold. In the morning he brought
it in, holding it up exultantly. It was as flexible as when he had put
it out the night before. Then he cut a square yard of thick rubber,
treated this new piece with sulphur, and with the help of his wife and
children cured it in front of his bedroom fire.
"The experiment was a thorough success; and from this piece of rubber
he made a cap for himself that has never been injured by any heat
or cold or rain or acid. But the process was far from perfect; and
Goodyear saw that the changeful heat of an open fire must be replaced
by something hotter and steadier and something that he could control.
But how hot must the fire be and how long must the heat be applied?
Hopefully he set about answering these questions.
"He would toast a lump of rubber over the kitchen fire sometimes an
hour, sometimes a whole day; he would hold rubber against the steaming
nose of the tea-kettle; he would put a batch of it into the oven of
the cook stove and bake it, sometimes two hours, sometimes six. Indeed
he would often sit up till long past midnight to watch his baking pans.
[Illustration: KITCHEN IN WHICH GOODYEAR MADE HIS EXPERIMENTS]
"Often he begged his friends in a Woburn factory to lend their oven for
his rubber; and they, considering his experiments useless but harmless,
would grant his request. Day after day, however, the truth eluded him;
and day after day food for his family grew scarcer and scarcer. He
pawned everything he could spare, even his children's school books.
"At last one morning after a heavy snow storm, with the secret almost
within his grasp, he awoke to find that there was not one particle of
food in his house nor one penny in his purse. Besides, he was sicker
than most people are when they decide to stay in bed till they feel
better. But he had a wife and four children that must be fed. He got
up and stumbled through the drifts for nearly five miles, so tired and
hungry that many times he almost fainted.
"Luckily, the friend he went to see proved a real friend, and lent him
money enough to support his family and keep on with his experiments
during those winter days. But though with this assistance he found
out just the details he needed to know for vulcanizing the rubber,
ill-health and poverty, instead of growing less, increased with the
certainty of his discovery. He was constantly troubled with dyspepsia.
He was so deeply in debt that people had no faith in him. They
remembered the rubber shoes and the mail bags; but they forgot the
splendid courage that had never accepted defeat. As so often happens,
Goodyear was a genius without the power of persuasion. He had to wait
for his discoveries to be his mouth-piece.
"But his waiting time was his testing time and proved his honesty
and his single-heartedness. A French concern offered to pay for the
privilege of using his first important discovery--that rubber could
be cured by nitric acid--his acid-gas treatment, he called it. What
a temptation that offer was, Lucy, it is impossible to realize; but
Goodyear was too honest to sell a half truth for a truth, and he wrote
to France that he was almost in the possession of a greater secret
which he would gladly sell when he had learned it all.
"Just a little money now stood between Goodyear and assured success;
and the quest for a paltry fifty dollars, which would pay his fare
to New York and provide for his family during his absence, took him
through the darkest days of his life.
"He thought of a friend in Boston who might be willing to lend the
money. So, having prevailed upon a Woburn shop keeper to give his
family credit for a while, he set out to walk the ten miles to Boston
on his pitiful errand. But the friend (perhaps I ought to call him
by another name) refused the loan; and, worse luck, while Goodyear
was still in Boston, he was sent once more to prison for those debts
so long ago forced upon him. His father somehow brought influence to
bear for a release; and then Goodyear spent a week tramping about
Boston streets, inviting this man and that to lend him a little money,
sleeping and eating the while at a small hotel. But every one turned
him only a deaf ear; and when the hotel bill came, he had to leave in
disgrace.
"That night he walked to Cambridge, where, to his great relief, he
found shelter with a friend; and the next morning, more discouraged
than ever before, he walked wearily back to Woburn. But a greater
trouble awaited him at his threshold. His little boy, two years old,
who had been perfectly well when he went away, was dying. His wife was
sick in bed; the faithless store keeper had refused further credit,
and the family were literally starving. Was there ever a more pitiable
case? There was just one friend left, and to him Goodyear turned. That
friend sent seven dollars and a reprimand. Moreover, a sympathetic man,
happening to hear the story in the friend's office, sent the Goodyears
a barrel of flour.
"The money and the flour helped, of course, but they could not save the
little son's life. Still, those precious dollars must be spent on the
living, not the dead; so they carried the little body on a wagon to the
grave, and the sorrowing father walked behind.
"I'm glad to say that this is the darkest part of the story. Somebody
finally lent Goodyear the fifty dollars he wanted; and the inventor
went to New York, interested the right people, proved to a rich
brother-in-law that success was in sight, and perfected his rubber.
"When people found that Goodyear had really succeeded with his
problem, rubber became even more popular than it had been fifteen years
before. Rubber goods began to be manufactured in large quantities; and
Goodyear, having patented his process, made the profits he deserved. Do
I need to tell you, Lucy, what the honest man did first with his money?"
"I don't believe so, Grandfather. Of course he paid his debts."
"Indeed he did. And besides, he's been able to maintain his family
comfortably ever since. But Goodyear will never be an enormously rich
man. He's been wickedly cheated and his patents have been infringed
again and again. Of course he's been fighting for his rights, but the
case has been dragging on these seven years. His opponent is a man
named Day, who is trying to prove that, although he once promised
Goodyear not to manufacture any such articles of rubber as must be
completed by the use of artificial heat and sulphur, that agreement is
invalid because Goodyear is not the inventor of the process."
"He couldn't say so, Grandfather, if he knew all you have just told me,
could he?"
"It seems perfectly plain to you, Lucy, as it seems to me, that only
Goodyear is entitled to credit for the invention. But I think I have
shown you that Goodyear hasn't been much of a business man. He's
always been so unfortunate in protecting his own rights that perhaps
there will be found some legal flaw in his patents. I sincerely hope
not, but the distinguished Rufus Choate has been taking charge of Day's
claims; and if those claims have any force, Choate will find it. We
shall hear this morning only Webster. Mr. Choate and his partner Mr.
Cutting, have already presented their arguments for Day."
[Illustration: CHARLES GOODYEAR]
PART III
It was only a short drive to the court house, and Lucy, with her
grandparents, was in her seat promptly at ten o'clock. It was the
little girl's first visit to a court room; and the sight of the judges
in their gowns and the other solemn-looking officials was strange to
her. But she had eyes mostly for two people--Mr. Goodyear and the great
Webster. She expected to know Webster, for she had seen many pictures
of him; but on the drive over she had asked her grandfather how she
should recognize Mr. Goodyear.
"I'll tell you," he replied, "what one of Goodyear's acquaintances once
said in answer to a similar question: 'If you meet a man who has on an
India rubber cap, stock, coat, vest, and shoes, and carries an India
rubber purse without a cent in it, that is he.'"
Though Lucy had been amused at the description without expecting to
profit by it, she now pressed her grandfather's arm and asked excitedly:
"Is that Mr. Goodyear--that man with the rubber cap and the rubber
vest?" indicating a tall, rather thin, kindly, but keen-eyed man who
was talking earnestly at the front of the room.
"Yes, it is. And see, there come Mr. Webster and the judges!"
Silence now settled over the court, and Lucy watched and listened
eagerly. The formalities of opening were quickly over. It was announced
that the counsel for Mr. Day having spoken previously, the court would
listen to that for Mr. Goodyear.
Then slowly and with dignity the great Webster stood up to make what
proved to be his last speech in any court room. To Lucy and to many
another who looked for the first time upon the most eloquent orator
of the century, he was a handsome, scholarly man, with conviction
behind every word. Others, however, like Lawyer Hobart, who had known
Webster in the earlier days, before he had experienced the humiliation
of wide-spread public distrust and the bitterness of repudiated
friendships, felt that the once sturdy frame had weakened and that
in the depths of those dark eyes the fire of righteous resentment
burned less fiercely. But, though crushed in spirit, the great man
was still keen and invincible in intellect; and the calm vigor of his
mind that morning immortalized in human annals the rugged honesty, the
sublime patience of the inventor who, despite discouragement, despite
temptation, never stepped aside from his high purpose of bestowing a
great good upon mankind.
Mr. Webster made a long speech, during the technical parts of which,
even though Lucy knew that she was listening to the greatest orator in
the country, her attention wandered in spite of herself. But, young as
she was, she appreciated the straightforward and convincing argument
and could follow easily its main points.
"Whatever may be Mr. Goodyear's claims," declared Mr. Webster early
in his speech, "to the great invention now spread out to the ends of
the earth and known to all the world, this record shows, other records
show, everybody knows that he is a man of inquisitive, ingenious,
laborious mind."
Then Webster summarized the history of Goodyear's long struggle,
referring first to the days when India rubber was useless in weather
that was either very hot or very cold.
"I well remember," he asserted, "that I had some experience in this
matter myself. A friend in New York sent me a very fine cloak of India
rubber and a hat of the same material. I did not succeed very well with
them. I took the cloak one day and set it out in the cold. It stood
very well by itself. I surmounted it with the hat, and many persons
passing by thought that they saw on the porch the farmer of Marshfield."
Next the speaker reminded his hearers of the present improvements in
such articles, all due to the perseverance of his client, and made a
prophecy which our day is rapidly fulfilling:
"I look to the time when ships that traverse the ocean will have India
rubber sails, when the sheathing of ships will be composed of this
metallic vegetable production. I see, or think I see, thousands of
other uses to which this extraordinary product is to be applied."
Then with delicate irony the great lawyer attacked the argument of Mr.
Choate. "Those observations are all very eloquent and very pathetic,
but they have one drawback. Nothing is beautiful that is not true. The
invention exists. Everybody knows and understands it, and everybody
connected in former times with the manufacture of India rubber has
been astonished and surprised at it.
[Illustration: DANIEL WEBSTER]
"If Charles Goodyear did not make this discovery, who did make it? They
do not meet Goodyear's claim by setting up a distinct claim of anybody
else. They attempt to prove that he was not the inventor by little
shreds and patches of testimony. We want to know the name and the
habitation and the location of this man upon the face of the globe who
invented vulcanized rubber, if it be not he who now sits before us."
* * * * *
"Well," queried Grandmother on the drive home, "will Goodyear win, I
wonder?"
"It's a peculiar case," returned her husband. "Day's in the wrong, I
know. But I wish Goodyear had had the vision of the sulphur himself
instead of paying Hayward for it."
"But he paid for Hayward's patent," objected Grandmother.
"Yes, luckily. And Webster never pleaded better. It will come out
right, I think."
"Of course Goodyear will win," decided Lucy to herself without knowing
she was prejudiced. But aloud she asked, "When will the judge decide,
Grandfather?"