“What were your first practical inventions?”
“In 1862-63 I was at work at Fitchburg, Massachusetts, making gas
machines. I made various improvements at that time, which afterward
came into general use. From Fitchburg I went to Boston, where I
entered the service of Oliver P. Drake, who was not only a gas-machine
maker, but also a philosophical-instrument maker. I first worked as a
draughtsman, and then became his foreman. I learned from Mr. Drake many
things that were useful to me in after life. From Boston I came to New
York, where I obtained a situation as draughtsman at the Novelty Iron
Works, East Twelfth street. At that time they were building the Pacific
Mail steamers. Shortly after this, I thought of a new system of making
gas from gasoline. All the machines that had existed would maintain
only one hundred lights or less, and the density and illuminating power
of the gas varied so much as to make the lights very unsatisfactory.
I decided to make a machine that would make the gas, from first to
last, of an equal density. I made this machine and patented it. It
was intended for large consumers, and several were purchased by A. T.
Stewart & Company. One of them was in the Park Avenue Hotel, and, for
a time, another was used in the Post Office in New York City. I also
made a very large machine, the biggest ever made, for the Grand Union
and several other hotels at Saratoga which belonged to A. T. Stewart.
From gas machines I turned my attention to small steam motors, and had
a place in Centre street, which is still in existence, my successors
being Messrs. Welch and Lawson, 205 Centre street. I soon began to
experiment with electricity, and was the first man to file at the
Patent Office an invention for building up and preserving the carbons
of incandescent lamps, by the action of hydro-carbon vapors. I lost
this patent, however, by a system of fraud, which I will not describe
to-day. I was the first man to make an electrical regulator, and
exhibited it at the Paris Exposition in 1881, and was made a Chevalier
of the French Legion of Honor. I secured many patents on electrical
inventions from 1880 to 1885. I next experimented with automatic
firearms.”