CHAPTER X

INVENTORS

It is a curious fact that the men to whom the world owes most generally

get the least reward. The genius in art or letters is seldom recognized

as such until long after he himself has passed away--his life is usually

embittered by derision or neglect. But, in the history of civilization,

the lot of no man has been harder or more thankless than that of the

inventor. Poverty and want have always been his portion, and even after

he had won his triumph, had compelled public recognition of some great

invention, it was usually some one else who won the reward.

America has been especially strong in the field of invention. Indeed,

practically all the great labor-saving devices of the past century and

more have originated here. "Yankee ingenuity" has passed into a proverb,

and a true one, for the country which has produced the steamboat, the

cotton gin, the sewing machine, the electric telegraph, the phonograph,

the telephone, the typewriter, the reaper and binder, to mention only a

few of the achievements of American inventors, may surely claim first

place in this respect among the nations of the world. There are few

stories more inspiring than that of American invention, and as

benefactors to their race, the long line of American inventors may

rightly rank before even the great philanthropists whose careers are

outlined elsewhere in this volume. Indeed, if we judge greatness by the

benefits which a man confers upon mankind, such men as Whitney and Howe

and Morse and Bell and Edison far surpass most of the great characters

of history.

First of the line is Benjamin Franklin, whose many-sided genius gives

him a unique place in American history. His career has been considered

in the chapter dealing with our statesmen, but let us pause for a moment

here to speak of his inventions. One of them, the Franklin stove, is

still in use in hundreds of old houses, and as an economizer of fuel has

never been surpassed; another was the lightning-rod. He introduced the

basket willow, the water-tight compartment for ships, the culture of

silk, the use of white clothing in hot weather, and the use of oil to

quiet a tempest-tossed sea. From none of his inventions did he seek to

get any return. The Governor of Pennsylvania offered to give him a

monopoly of the sale of the Franklin stove for a period of years, but he

declined it, saying, "That, as we enjoy great advantages from the

inventions of others, we should be glad to serve others by any invention

of ours"--a principle characteristic of Franklin's whole philosophy of

life.

After Franklin, came Robert Fulton, the first man successfully to apply

the power of the steam-engine to the propulsion of boats. Everyone has

heard the story of how, years before, the youthful James Watt first got

his idea of the power of steam by noticing how it rattled the lid on his

mother's boiling teakettle. From that came the stationary engine, and

from that the engine as applied to the locomotive. It remained for

Fulton to apply it to water navigation.

Born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, of Irish parents, in poor

circumstances, the boy received only the rudiments of an education, but

developed a surprising talent for painting, so that, when he was

seventeen, he removed to Philadelphia and set up there as an artist,

painting portraits and landscapes. He remained there for some years, and

finally, having made enough money to purchase a small farm for his

mother, sailed for London, where he introduced himself to that amiable

patron of all American painters, Benjamin West. West, who was at that

time at the height of his fame, received Fulton with great kindness, and

made a place in his house for him, where he remained for several years.

Those years were not devoted exclusively to painting, for Fulton had

developed an interest in mechanics, secured a patent for an improvement

in canal locks, invented a "plunging" boat, a kind of submarine, a

machine for spinning flax, one for making ropes, one for sawing marble,

and many others of minor importance. Finally abandoning art altogether,

he went to Paris, where he spent seven years with the family of Joel

Barlow, conducting with him a number of experiments; one series of which

has developed into the modern submarine torpedo. He succeeded in

interesting the French government in his submarine experiments and

constructed a boat equipped with a small engine, with which, in the

harbor of Brest, he seems actually to have made some progress under

water, remaining under on one occasion for more than four hours. But the

French government finally withdrew its support, and finding the British

government also indifferent, Fulton sailed for New York in December,

1806.

Here, he succeeded in interesting the United States government, which

granted him $5,000 to continue his submarine experiments, but interest

in them soon waned, and Fulton turned his whole attention to the subject

of steam navigation. He had been experimenting in this direction for a

number of years, and, in conjunction with Chancellor Livingston, of New

Jersey, had secured from the legislature of New York the exclusive right

and privilege of navigating all kinds of boats which might be propelled

by the force of fire or steam on all the waters within the territory of

New York for a period of twenty years, provided he would, by the end of

1807, produce a boat that would attain a speed of four miles an hour.

Fulton went to work at once, the experiments being paid for by

Livingston, and after various calculations, discarded the use of paddles

or oars, of ducks' feet which open as they are pushed out and close as

they are drawn in, and also the idea of forcing water out of the stern

of the vessel. He finally decided on the paddle-wheel, and, in August,

1807, the first American steamboat appeared on the East River. A great

concourse witnessed the first trial, incredulous at first, but converted

into enthusiastic believers before the boat had gone a quarter of a

mile.

She was christened the "Clermont," and soon afterwards made a trip up

the Hudson to Albany, to the astonishment of the people living along the

banks of that mighty river. The distance of 150 miles, against the

current of the river, was covered in thirty-two hours, and there could

no longer be any question of Fulton's success. A regular schedule

between Albany and New York was established, and the "Clermont" began

that great river traffic now carried on by the most palatial river

steamers in the world.

After that, it was merely a question of development. More boats were

built, improvements were made, and every year witnessed an increase of

speed and efficiency. In 1814, in the midst of the second war with

England, Fulton built the first steam ship-of-war the world had ever

seen, designed for the defense of New York harbor. This ancestor of the

modern "Dreadnought" was named "Fulton the First" in honor of her

designer. She indirectly caused his death, for, exposing himself for

several hours of a bitter winter day, in supervising some changes on

her, he developed pneumonia and died a few days later. Could he re-visit

the world to-day and see the wonderful and mighty ships which have grown

out of his idea, he would no doubt be as astonished as were the people

along the Hudson on that fall day in 1807 when they saw the "Clermont"

making her way up the stream against wind and tide.

The same year that Robert Fulton was born, another inventive genius

first saw the light in the little town of Westborough, Massachusetts.

His name was Eli Whitney, and the work he was to do revolutionized the

industrial development of the South, paid off its debts, and trebled the

value of its lands. It did something else, too, which was to fasten upon

the South the system of negro slavery, resulting in the Civil War. But

though he added hundreds of millions of dollars to the wealth of his

country, his own reward was neglect, indifference, countless lawsuits

and endless vexation of body and spirit.

Whitney's father ran a little wood-working shop where he made wheels and

chairs, and there the boy spent every possible hour. At the age of

twelve, he made himself a violin, and his progress was so steady, that

by the time he was sixteen, he had greatly enlarged the business and had

gained the reputation of being the best mechanic in all the country

round. He soon discovered the value of education, and managed to prepare

himself for Yale College, which he entered in 1789, at the age of

twenty-four--an age at which most men had long since graduated and

settled in life. But Whitney persevered, graduating in 1792, and almost

immediately securing a position as private tutor in a Georgia family,

which was to change the whole course of his life.

Until he reached the South, he had never seen raw cotton, only a little

of which, indeed, had been raised in the United States. It had not been

profitable because of the difficulty of picking out the green

cottonseed. To separate one pound of the staple from the seed was a

day's work, so that cotton was considered rather as a curiosity than as

a profitable crop. Whitney was impressed by the possibilities of cotton

culture, could this obstacle be overcome, and devoted his spare time to

the construction of the machine upon which his fame rests. At last it

was done, and did its work so perfectly that there could be no question

of its success. Experiments showed that with it, one man, with the aid

of two-horse power, could clean five thousand pounds of cotton a day!

A patent was at once applied for and every effort made to keep the

invention a secret until a patent had been secured. But knowledge of it

swept through the state, and great crowds of people came to see the

machine. Whitney refused to show it, and after much excitement, a mob

one night broke into the building where it was, and carried it away.

Others were at once made, using it as a model, and by the time Whitney

had secured his patent, they were in successful operation in many parts

of the state.

That was the beginning of Whitney's trials. He had not enough money to

produce machines rapidly enough to meet the tremendous demand for them,

and various rivals sprang up, some of them even claiming the honor of

the invention. Other gins were put on the market, differing from

Whitney's only in some unimportant detail, and plainly an infringement

of his patent; but he had not the means to prosecute their

manufacturers. The result was, that after two years of disheartening

struggle, Whitney was reduced to bankruptcy.

The attitude of the South toward him caused him especial distress. "I

have invented a machine," he wrote, "from which the citizens of the

South have already realized immense profits, which is worth to them

millions, and from which they must continue to derive the most important

profits, and in return to be treated as a felon, a swindler, and a

villain, has stung me to the very soul. And when I consider that this

cruel persecution is inflicted by the very persons who are enjoying

these great benefits, and expressly for the purpose of preventing my

ever deriving the least advantage from my labors, the acuteness of my

feelings is altogether inexpressible."

Finally, the states of North and South Carolina voted him a royalty upon

all the machines in use, and this enabled him to pay his debts; but

Whitney at last abandoned hope of ever receiving from his invention the

returns he had hoped for, and, turning his attention to other business,

received, in 1798, a contract from the United States government for

10,000 stand of arms. Eight years were consumed in filling this

contract. A contract for 30,000 stand followed, and so many improvements

in design and process of manufacture were made by Whitney that no other

manufacturer could compete with him.

The result of all this was that Whitney was enabled to end his life in

comparative independence. His last days were his happiest, and he found

in the care and affection of a loving family some consolation for the

injustice and ingratitude which he had suffered.

* * * * *

[Illustration: MORSE]

Sixteen years after the battle of Bunker Hill, a boy was born in a great

frame house at the foot of Breed's Hill, upon which that famous and

misnamed battle was really fought. The boy's father was a preacher named

Jedediah Morse, and the boy was named Samuel Finley, after his maternal

great grandfather, the renowned president of Princeton College, and

Breese, after his mother's maiden name, so that he comes down through

history as S. F. B. Morse. He received a thorough schooling, graduating

from Yale in 1807, and at once turned his attention to art. We have

already spoken of his achievements in that respect, which were really of

the first importance. He was an artist, heart and soul, but the whole

course of his life was to be changed in a remarkable fashion.

In the autumn of 1832, Morse, being at that time forty-one years of age,

sailed from Havre for New York in the ship Sully. It happened that there

were on board some scientists who had been interested in electrical

development, and the talk one evening turned on electricity. Morse knew

little about it, except what he had learned in a few lectures heard at

Yale; but when somebody asked how long it took a current of electricity

to pass through a wire, and when the answer was that the passage was

instantaneous, his interest was aroused.

"If that is the case," he said, "and if the passage of the current can

be made visible or audible, there is no reason why intelligence cannot

be transmitted instantaneously by electricity."

The company broke up, after a while, but Morse, filled with his great

idea, went on deck, and at the end of an hour had jotted down in his

notebook the first skeleton of the "Morse alphabet." Before he reached

New York, he had made drawings and specifications of his invention,

which he seems to have grasped clearly and completely from the first,

although its details were worked out only by laborious thought. It was

necessary for him to earn a living, and not until three years later was

the first rude instrument completed. Two years more, and he had a short

line in operation, but it was looked upon as a scientific toy

constructed by an unfortunate dreamer. Finally, in 1838, Morse appeared

before Congress, exhibited his invention and asked aid to construct an

experimental line between Washington and Baltimore. He was laughed at,

and for twelve years an extraordinary struggle ensued, Morse laboring to

convince the world of the value of his invention, and the world scoffing

at him. His own situation was forlorn in the extreme; for his painting

was his only means of livelihood, and, absorbed as he was by his great

invention, he found painting utterly impossible. His home was a single

room in the fifth story of a building at the corner of Nassau and

Beekman streets in New York City--a room which served as studio,

workshop, parlor, kitchen and bedroom. There he labored and slept,

using such money as he could earn for his experiments, and almost

starving himself in consequence.

But at last the tide turned. He was appointed to a position in the

University of the City of New York, which provided him with better means

for experiment, and in 1843, again appeared before Congress. This time,

he found some backers, and by a close vote, at the last hour of the

session, an appropriation of $30,000 was made to enable him to construct

a line between Washington and Baltimore. Wild with delight and

enthusiasm, the inventor went to work, and on the twenty-fourth day of

May, 1844, the first message flashed over the wire, "What hath God

wrought!"

The wonder and amazement of the public can be better imagined than

described. Morse offered to sell his invention to the government for the

sum of $100,000, but the Postmaster General, a thickheaded individual

named Cave Johnson, refused the offer, stating that in his opinion, no

line would ever pay for the cost of operation!

It was inevitable that rival claimants for the honor of the invention

should crop up on every side, but, after years of bitter litigation,

Morse succeeded in defending his title, and honors began to pour in upon

him. It is worth remarking that the Sultan of Turkey, supposedly the

most benighted of all rulers, was the first monarch to acknowledge Morse

as a public benefactor. That was in 1848; but the monarchs of Europe

soon followed, and in 1858, a special congress was called by the

Emperor of the French to devise some suitable testimonial to the great

inventor. But perhaps the most fitting testimonial of all were the

ceremonies at the unveiling of the Morse monument in New York City in

1871. Delegates were present from every state in the Union, and at the

close of the reception, William Orton, president of the Western Union

Telegraph Company, announced that the telegraph instrument before the

audience was in connection with every other one of the ten thousand

instruments in America, and that, beside every instrument an operator

was waiting to receive a message. Then a young operator sent this

message from the key: "Greeting and thanks to the telegraph fraternity

throughout the world. Glory to God in the highest; on earth, peace,

good-will to men." Then the venerable inventor, the personification of

dignity, simplicity and kindliness, bent above the key, and sent out,

"S. F. B. Morse." A storm of enthusiasm swept over the audience, and the

scene will never be forgotten by any who took part in it. The proudest

boast of many an old operator is that he received that message. Death

came to the inventor a year later, and on the day of his funeral, every

telegraph office throughout the land was draped in mourning.

Although to Morse belongs all the credit for the invention of the

telegraph, it should, in justice to one man, be pointed out that it

would have been impossible but for a discovery which preceded it--that

of the electro-magnet. To Joseph Henry, the great physicist, first of

Princeton, then of the Smithsonian Institution, this invention is

chiefly due. We have already spoken of Professor Henry's work in

science, but none of it was more important than his invention, in 1828,

of the modern form of electro-magnet--a coil of silk-covered wire wound

in a series of crossed layers around a soft iron core, and in 1831, he

had used it to produce the ringing of a bell at a distance. It is this

magnet which forms the basis of every telegraph instrument--is essential

to it, and is the foundation of the entire electrical art. Let it be

added to this great scientist's credit that he never sought to patent

any of his inventions, giving them, as Franklin had done, free to all

the world.

The struggle which Morse made to perfect and secure public recognition

of his telegraph and the injustice shown Eli Whitney by the people of

the South, were as nothing when compared with the trials of that most

unfortunate of all inventors, Charles Goodyear, whose story is one of

the most tragic in American annals. No one can read of his struggles

without experiencing the deepest admiration for a man who, at the time,

was regarded as a hopeless lunatic.

Charles Goodyear was born at New Haven, Connecticut, in 1800. While he

was still a child, his father moved to Philadelphia and engaged in the

hardware business, in which his son joined him, as soon as he was old

enough to do so. But the panic of 1836 wiped the business out of

existence, and Goodyear was forced to look around for some other means

of livelihood. He had been interested for some time in the wonderful

success of some newly-established India-rubber companies, and, out of

curiosity, bought an India-rubber life-preserver. Upon examining it, he

found a defect in the valve, and inventing an improvement in it, he went

to New York with the intention of selling his improvement to the

manufacturer. The manufacturer was impressed with the new device, but

told Goodyear frankly that the whole India-rubber business of the

country was on the verge of collapse, and indeed, the collapse came a

few months later.

The trouble was that the goods which the rubber companies had been

turning out were not durable. The use of rubber had begun about fifteen

years before, first in France in the manufacture of garters and

suspenders, and then in England where a manufacturer named Mackintosh

made water-proof coats by spreading a layer of rubber between two layers

of cloth. Then, in 1833, the Roxbury India-Rubber Company was organized

in the United States, and manufactured an India-rubber cloth from which

wagon-covers, caps, coats, and other articles were made. Its success was

so great that other companies were organized and seemed on the highroad

to fortune, when a sudden reverse came. For the heat of summer melted

wagon-covers, caps and coats to sticky masses with an odor so offensive

that they had to be buried. So the business collapsed, the various

companies went into bankruptcy, and the very name of India-rubber came

to be detested by producers and consumers alike.

It was at this time that Charles Goodyear appeared upon the

scene--unfortunately enough for himself, but fortunately for

humanity--and determined to discover some method by which rubber could

be made to withstand the extremes of heat and cold. From that time until

the close of his life, he devoted himself wholly to this work, in the

face of such hardships and discouragements as few other men have ever

experienced. He began his experiments at once, and finally hit upon

magnesia as a substance which, mixed with rubber, seemed to give it

lasting properties; but a month later, the mixture began to ferment and

became as hard and brittle as glass.

His stock of money was soon exhausted, his own valuables, and even the

trinkets of his wife were pawned, but Goodyear never for an instant

thought of giving up the problem which he had set himself to solve.

Again he believed he had discovered the secret by boiling the solution

of rubber and magnesia in quicklime and water, when he found to his

dismay that a drop of the weakest acid, such as the juice of an apple,

would reduce an apparently fine sheet of rubber to a sticky mass. The

first real step in the right direction was made by accident, for, in

removing some bronzing from a piece of rubber with aqua fortis, he found

that the chemical worked a remarkable change in the rubber, which would

now stand a degree of heat that would have melted it before. He called

this "curing" India-rubber, and after careful tests, patented the

process, secured a partner with capital, rented an old India-rubber

works on Staten Island, and set to work, full of hope. But commercial

disaster swept away his partner's fortune, and Goodyear could find no

one else who would risk his money in so doubtful an enterprise.

Indeed, in all America he seemed to be the only man who had the

slightest hope of accomplishing anything with India-rubber. His friends

regarded him as a lunatic, and especially when he made himself a suit of

clothes out of his India-rubber cloth, and wore it on all occasions. One

day a man looking for Goodyear asked one of the latter's friends how he

would recognize him if he met him.

"If you see a man with an India-rubber coat on," was the reply,

"India-rubber shoes, India-rubber hat, and in his pocket an India-rubber

purse with not a cent in it, that's Goodyear."

The description was a good one, for that purse had been without a cent

in it for a long time. It was to stay empty for some weary years longer.

For he had not yet discovered the secret of making India-rubber

permanent, as he found when he tried to fill a contract for a hundred

and fifty mail bags ordered by the government. The bags were apparently

perfect, but in less than a month began to soften and ferment and were

thrown back on his hands. All his property was seized and sold for debt;

his family was reduced to the point of starvation, and friends,

relatives and even his wife joined in demanding that he abandon this

useless quest.

Goodyear was in despair, for he had just made another discovery that

seemed to promise success--the discovery that sulphur was the active

"curing" agent for India-rubber, and that it was the sulphuric acid in

aqua fortis which had wrought the changes in rubber which he had noticed

in his experiments. One day, while explaining the properties of a

sulphur-cured piece of rubber to an incredulous crowd in a

country-store, he happened to let it fall on the red-hot stove. To his

amazement it did not melt; it had shrivelled some, but had not softened.

And, at last, he had the key, which was that rubber mixed with sulphur

and subjected to a certain degree of heat, would be rendered impervious

to any extremes of temperature!

But what degree of heat? He experimented in the oven of his wife's

cooking-stove, and in every other kind of oven to which he could gain

access; he induced a brick-layer to make him an oven, paying him in

rubber aprons; he grew yellow and shrivelled, for he and his family were

living upon the charity of neighbors; more than once, there was not a

morsel of food in the house; his friends thought seriously of shutting

him up in an asylum; he tried to get to New York, but was arrested for

debt, and thrown into prison. Even in prison, he tried to interest men

with capital in his discovery, for he needed delicate and expensive

apparatus, and at last two brothers, William and Emory Rider agreed to

advance him a certain sum. The laboratory was built, and in 1844,

Goodyear astonished the world by producing perfect vulcanized

India-rubber with economy and certainty. The long and desperate battle

had been won!

Did he reap a fortune? By no means! In one way or another, he was

defrauded of his patent rights. In England, for instance, another man

who received a copy of the American patent, actually applied for and

obtained the English rights in his own name. In 1858, the United States

Commissioner of Patents said, "No inventor, probably, has ever been so

harassed, so trampled upon, so plundered by that sordid and licentious

class of infringers known in the parlance of the world as 'pirates.'"

Worn out with work and disappointment, Goodyear died two years later, a

bankrupt. But his story should be remembered, and his memory honored, by

every American.

* * * * *

Near a little mountain hamlet of central Sweden stands a great pyramid

of iron cast from ore dug from the neighboring mountains. It is set up

on a base of granite also quarried from those mountains, and bears upon

it two names, Nils Ericsson and John Ericsson. The monument marks the

place where these two men were born. The life of the former was passed

in Sweden and does not concern us, but John Ericsson's name is closely

connected with the history of the United States.

He was the son of a poor miner, and one of his earliest recollections

was of the sheriff coming to take away all their household goods in

payment of a debt. He was put to work in the iron mines as soon as he

was able to earn a few pennies daily, and he soon developed a

remarkable aptitude for mechanics. At the age of eleven, he planned a

pumping engine to keep the mines free from water, and at the age of

twelve, was made a member of the surveying party in charge of the

construction of the Gotha ship canal, and was soon himself in charge of

a section of the work, with six hundred men under him, one of whom was

detailed to follow him with a stool, upon which he stood to use the

surveying instruments. It reminds one of Farragut commanding a war ship,

at the age of eleven.

In 1826, at the age of twenty-three, he went to England to introduce a

flame or gas-engine which he had invented. He remained there for eleven

years, and then a fortunate chance won him for the United States. He had

been experimenting with a screw or propeller for steamboats, instead of

the paddle-wheels as used by Fulton, and finally, equipping a small boat

with two propellers, offered the invention to the British admiralty. But

the admiralty was skeptical. The United States consul in Liverpool

happened to be Francis B. Ogden, a pioneer in steam navigation on the

Ohio river. He was impressed with Ericsson's invention, introduced him

to Robert F. Stockton, of the United States navy, and on their assurance

that the invention would be taken up in the United States, closed up his

affairs in England and sailed for this country.

His first experiment was disastrous--though through no fault of his. A

ship-of-war called the Princeton was ordered by the government and

completed. She embodied, besides screw propellers, many other features

which made her a nine days' wonder. A distinguished company boarded her

for her trial trip, and it was decided also to test her big guns. But at

the first discharge, the gun burst, killing the secretary of state, the

secretary of the navy, the captain of the ship, and a number of other

well known men. As a consequence, the experiment was stopped and

Ericsson was twelve years in securing from the government the $15,000 he

had spent in equipping the Princeton.

However, he was soon to render the country a service which will never be

forgotten. In 1861, he appeared before the navy department with a plan

for an iron-clad consisting of a revolving turret mounted upon an

armored raft. He secured an order for one such vessel, to be paid for

only in the event that it proved successful. The majority of the board

which gave the order doubtless laughed in their sleeves as the inventor

withdrew, for what chance of success had such a vessel? There were some

who even doubted whether she would float--among them her builders, who

took the precaution of placing buoys under her before they launched her

four months later.

Of the voyage of the little craft from New York to Hampton Roads, and of

her epoch-making battle with the Merrimac we have already told. Ericsson

had asked that she be named the "Monitor," as a warning to the nations

of the world that a new era in naval warfare had begun, and that she was

well-named no one could doubt after that momentous ninth of March,

1862. Honors were showered upon the inventor, whose great service to the

nation could not be questioned. The following ten years of his life were

devoted to the construction of his famous torpedo-boat, the "Destroyer,"

which, he believed, would annihilate any vessel afloat--the predecessor

of all the torpedo-boats, past and present, which have played so

important a part in naval warfare. He lived for more than twenty years

in a house in Beach street, New York, where he died, in 1889.

The Monitor's attack upon the Merrimac would have been ineffective but

for the remarkable guns with which the little craft was armed--two

eleven-inch rifled cannon, the invention of John Adolph Dahlgren.

Dahlgren had been connected with the ordnance department of the navy at

Washington for many years, and his inventions had revolutionized United

States gunnery.

Dahlgren was born at Philadelphia, where his father was Swedish consul,

a position which he held until his death in 1824. The boy, from his

earliest years, had been ambitious to enter the navy, and finally, at

the age of seventeen, received his midshipman's warrant. In 1847, he was

assigned to ordnance duty at Washington, and began that career of

extraordinary energy, which lasted for sixteen years. He saw almost at

once the many defects in the cannon which were at that time being

manufactured, and soon offered a design of his own, which proved a vast

advance over old guns. The Dahlgren gun, as it was called, was of iron,

cast solid, with a thick breech adjusted to meet varying pressure

strains. The invention of the rifled cannon followed, and it was this

weapon which caused even the great armored Merrimac to tremble. Admiral

Dahlgren's career was a distinguished one, but no service he rendered

his country was more noteworthy than this.

But there are triumphs of peace, as well as of war, and one of the most

notable of these was won by Cyrus Hall McCormick when he invented the

automatic reaper which bears his name. In 1859, it was estimated that

the reaper was worth $55,000,000 a year to the United States; William H.

Seward remarked that, "owing to Mr. McCormick's invention, the line of

civilization moves westward thirty miles each year"; and the London

Times declared, after it had been tested at the great international

exhibition of 1851, that it was "worth to the farmers of England the

whole cost of that exhibition." To few men is it given to confer such

benefits upon mankind, and the career of this one is well worth dwelling

upon.

Cyrus McCormick was born in 1809, in a little house at the hamlet of

Walnut Grove, Virginia. His father was a farmer, and was also something

of a mechanical genius, and as early as 1816, had tried to build a

mechanical reaper. His son inherited this aptitude, and helped his

father in mechanical experiments, soon quite outstripping him. As a

farmer's boy, his day's work in the fields began at five o'clock in the

morning, and in the harvesting season even earlier. But in the harvest

field, he found himself unable to keep up with grown men in the hard

work of swinging the scythe, and so devised a harvesting-cradle, which

made the work so much easier that he was able to do his share. At the

age of twenty-two he invented a plough, which threw alternate furrows on

either side, and two years later, a self-sharpening plough, which proved

a great success.

Then he turned his attention to a mechanical reaper, though his father

warned him against wasting time and money on so impracticable a project.

But the possibility of making a machine do the hot hand-work of the

harvest field fascinated the young man, and he set to work upon the

problem. It was not an easy one, for the machine, to be successful, must

not only work in fields where the wheat stood straight, but also where

it had become tangled and beaten down by wind and rain. In 1831, he

produced his first practicable machine, making every part of it himself

by hand. Its three essential features have never been changed--a

vibrating cutting-blade, a reel to bring the grain within reach of the

blade, and a platform to receive the falling grain. The problem had been

solved.

Three years, however, were spent in perfecting the minor working parts,

then another was built and tested. It worked well, but McCormick was

still not satisfied with it, and not until 1840, was it perfected

sufficiently to make him willing to put it on the market. This

self-restraint was remarkable, but it had this good effect, that when

the machine was finally offered to the public, it was not an

experiment. So there were no failures, but a steady increase in demand

from the very first, until the great factory, which McCormick early

located at Chicago, now turns out nearly two hundred thousand machines a

year. The whir of these machines is heard around the world--everywhere

the McCormick reaper is doing its share toward lightening man's labor.

Another of the great victories of peace was won by Elias Howe, when, in

1844, he invented a machine which would sew. Strangely enough, he was at

first regarded as an enemy of humanity, rather than as a friend; an

enemy, especially, of the poor sewing-women who earned a pitiful living

with the needle. Few had the foresight to perceive that it was these

very women whose toil he was doing most to lighten!

Elias Howe, born in Spencer, Massachusetts, in 1819, as the son of a

poor miller, and was put to work at the age of six to contribute his

mite to the support of the family. He was a frail child and slightly

lame, so that, after trying in vain to do farm labor, he went to work in

the mill, and afterwards in a machine shop, where he learned to be a

first-class machinist--knowledge which, at a later day, was to stand him

in good stead. He married, at the age of twenty-one, and three children

were born to him. Then came a period of illness, during which the young

mother supported the family by sewing; and as Howe lay upon his bed,

watching his wife at this tedious labor, the thought came to him what a

blessing it would be to mankind if a machine could be devised to do

that work.

The idea remained with him, and finally led to experiments. Of the many

disappointments, the long months of patient labor, the intense thought,

the repeated failures, there is not room to tell here; but at last he

hit upon the solution of the problem--the use of two threads, making the

stitch by means of a shuttle and a needle with the eye near the point.

In October, 1844, he produced a rude machine which would actually sew.

Another year was spent in perfecting it, while he kept his family from

starvation by doing such odd jobs as he could find, and in the winter of

1845, he was ready to introduce his machine to the public.

But here an unforeseen difficulty arose. The public refused to have

anything to do with the machine. The tailors declared it would ruin

their trade, and refused to try it; nobody could be found who would

invest a dollar in it; and Howe, in despair, was forced to put his

invention away and to accept a place as railway engineer in order to

support his family. Some disastrous years followed, his wife died, and

he was left in absolute poverty, but at last came a ray of light. A man

named Bliss became interested in Howe's invention, and a few machines

were made and marketed in New York. Riots among the workingmen followed,

so serious that for a time the use of the machines was stopped; but no

human power could stay the wheel of progress, and as the value of the

invention came to be recognized, all opposition to it faded away.

Howe's royalties grew to enormous proportions, but he had been broken in

health by his years of struggle and hardship, and lived only a few years

to enjoy them.

George Henry Corliss was another mechanical genius, who, in one respect,

anticipated Howe, for about 1842 he actually invented a machine for

stitching leather. That was two years before Howe made his discovery.

But Corliss was soon attracted to other work, and the development of the

sewing machine was left for the other inventor. It was in 1846 that

Corliss began to develop those improvements in the steam engine which

were to revolutionize its construction. One trouble with the steam

engine as then built was that it was not uniform in motion. That is, if

the engine was running a lot of machines their speed would vary from

moment to moment, as they were started or stopped. For instance, a

hundred looms, all running at once, would run at a certain speed, but if

some of them were shut off, the speed of the others would increase, so

that it was very difficult to regulate them. Again, there was a

tremendous waste of power, so that the fuel consumption was out of all

proportion to the power actually developed.

It was these defects that Corliss set himself to remedy, and he did it

simply by taking a load off the governor, which had always been used to

move the throttle-valve. In the Corliss engine, the governor simply

indicated to the valves the work to be done, and the saving of fuel was

so great that the inventor often installed his engine under a contract

to take the saving in coal-bills from a certain period as his pay. One

of his great achievements was the construction of a 1400 horse power

engine to move all the machinery at the centennial exposition at

Philadelphia, in 1876. The engine, which worked splendidly, was one of

the sights of the exposition.

What the sewing-machine is to the needle, the typewriter is to the pen.

No other one invention has so revolutionized business, and the credit

for the invention of a practicable typewriting machine is due to C.

Latham Sholes. Others had tried their hands at the problem before he

took it up, but he was the first to hit upon its solution--a number of

type-bars carrying the letters of the alphabet operated by levers and

striking upon a common centre, past which the paper was carried on a

revolving cylinder.

Sholes had a varied and picturesque career. Born in Pennsylvania in

1819, he followed the printer's trade for a number of years, and it was

no doubt from the type that he got his idea of engraved dies mounted on

type-bars. Finally he removed to Wisconsin, where he edited a paper and

soon became prominent in the politics of the state, holding a number of

appointive positions. It was in 1866 that he began to experiment with a

writing-machine, and his first one, which was patented two years later,

was as big as a sewing-machine. Still, it embodied the essential

principles of the typewriter as it is made to-day, and after spending

five years in perfecting it, Sholes made a contract with E. Remington &

Son to manufacture it. It is one of the ironies of fate that the name

principally connected with the typewriter in the public mind is that of

the manufacturer, the identity of the inventor being completely lost, so

far as applied, at least, to the name of any machine.

* * * * *

We have spoken elsewhere of the career of John D. Rockefeller, of the

immense fortune he made from petroleum and the manner in which he

disposed of a portion of it. It is worth pausing a moment to consider

the career of the two men who discovered petroleum, who sunk the first

well in search of a larger supply, and who put it on the market. There

is scarcely any development of modern life to rank in importance with

the introduction of kerosene. It added at once several hours to every

day, and who can estimate what these evening hours, spent usually in

study or reading, have meant to humanity?

In the early part of the century, whales were so plentiful, especially

along the New England coast, that whale, or sperm, oil was used for

lighting purposes, and many of the old whale-oil lamps are still in

existence. The light they gave was dim and smoky, but it was far better

than no light at all. As the years passed, whales became more and more

scarce, until sperm oil was selling at over two dollars a gallon. Only

the richest people could afford to pay that, and the poor passed their

evenings in darkness.

In 1854, a man named James M. Townsend brought to Professor Silliman, of

Yale, a bottle of oil, asking him to test it. This was done, and the

astonished professor found that here was an oil, whose source he could

only guess, which made a splendid illuminant and which also seemed to

have some medicinal properties. The oil was from Oil Creek,

Pennsylvania, and Townsend, associating with himself a conductor named

E. L. Drake, formed the Seneca Oil Company and began gathering the oil

by digging trenches. At first it was bottled and sold for medicinal

purposes at one dollar a gallon; then Drake suggested that a larger

supply might be secured if a well was bored for it. A man familiar with

salt well boring was employed, and in 1859 the first well was begun at

Titusville.

Most people regarded Drake as a madman, and thought that he was simply

throwing money away. The work was costly and slow, and finally, when

$50,000 had been spent without result, the stockholders of the company

refused to go further--all except Townsend. That enthusiast managed to

rake up another $500, which he sent to Drake, with instructions to make

it go as far as possible. It did not go very far--and yet far

enough--for one day the auger, which was down sixty-eight feet, struck a

cavity, and up came a flow of oil to within five feet of the surface.

Pumping began at the rate of five hundred barrels a day, and fortune

seemed in sight. But three months later, the company's works were

destroyed by fire, and before they could be rebuilt, scores of other

wells had been sunk, many of which were "gushers," requiring no pumping,

and the supply was soon so far in excess of the demand that the price

of oil tumbled to one dollar a barrel. Discouraged by all this, the

Seneca Company sold out its leases and disbanded, leaving Townsend and

Drake poorer than they had been before their great discovery.

* * * * *

Years ago, in 1790, to be exact, an Italian scientist named Galvani,

experimenting with the legs of a frog, happened to touch the exposed

nerves with a piece of metal, while the legs were lying across another

piece. He was astonished to see the legs contract violently. Further

experiments followed, and the galvanic battery resulted. Years later,

our own Professor Henry discovered that if an insulated wire carrying a

current of electricity was wrapped around a piece of soft iron, the

latter became a magnet. Out of these simple discoveries, came the

electric telegraph, and, still more wonderful, the telephone, by which

the human voice may be instantly projected hundreds of miles, not only

intelligibly, but with every tone and inflection reproduced. In an age

of wonders, this is surely one of the greatest.

On February 14, 1876, two applications were made at the patent office at

Washington for patents upon the conveyance of sound by electricity. One

was filed by Elisha Gray, the other by Alexander Graham Bell. They were

practically identical, but it was Bell's good fortune to be the first to

make his device practically effective, and so he may fairly be

considered the inventor of the telephone.

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847, the son

of the famous Alexander Melville Bell, the inventor of the system by

which deaf people are enabled to read speech more or less correctly by

observing the motion of the lips. The family moved to Canada in 1872,

and Alexander Bell came to Boston, where he soon became widely known as

an authority in the teaching of the deaf and dumb. The reproduction of

the human voice by mechanical means interested him deeply, and his study

of the construction of the human ear, with its drum vibrating in

response to sound vibrations, gave him the idea of a vibrating piece of

iron in front of an electric magnet. He was, however, very poor and had

no money to expend in experiments--so poor, indeed, that when attacked

by illness, his hospital expenses were paid by his employer, and so

friendless that during his illness no one visited him except two or

three pupils from his school.

He persevered with his experiments, with such rude apparatus as he could

make himself, and the first Bell telephone was brought into existence

with an old cigar-box, two hundred feet of wire, and two magnets from a

toy fish-pond. In an improved form, it was shown at the Centennial

exhibition of 1876, where Sir William Thomson pronounced it "the

greatest marvel hitherto achieved by the electric telegraph." As is

always the case, the public was slow to appreciate the importance of the

invention, and as late as 1877, Bell was unable to secure $10,000 for a

half interest in the European rights. The rapid growth of the business

in this country is almost without a parallel in history, and no

invention has added more to the convenience of modern life.

* * * * *

A distinguished scientist one day asked the late Clerk Maxwell what was

the greatest scientific discovery of the last half century, and Maxwell

answered without an instant's hesitation: "That the Gramme machine is

reversible." Probably the whole scientific world will agree with him,

for that discovery meant that power will not only produce electricity,

but that electricity will produce power. Let us see how that has been

applied. Falling water is one of the most powerful agents in the world,

and at a great waterfall like Niagara, millions of horsepower go to

waste every day. So at the foot of Niagara, great power-houses have been

built where the power of the water is converted into electricity. The

electricity is conducted along wires for hundreds of miles to the great

industrial centres, and there converted back again into power. In other

words, the water of Niagara is to-day turning machinery in Buffalo and

Albany. The same method of producing power, the cheapest that has ever

been discovered, is being installed all over the world, and will, in

time, produce a revolution in manufacturing processes.

The vital mechanism in the production of this power is the dynamo, and

it is to Charles F. Brush, of Cleveland, Ohio, that its development is

principally due. He was interested in electricity from his earliest

years, and when he was only thirteen, distinguished himself by making

magnetic machines and batteries for the Cleveland high-school, where he

was a pupil. During his senior year, the physical apparatus of the

school laboratory was placed under his charge, and he constructed an

electric motor having its field magnets as well as its armature excited

by the electric current. He devised an apparatus for turning on the gas

in the street lamps of Cleveland, lighting it and turning it off again,

thus doing away with the expensive process of lighting them and turning

them out by hand.

After graduating from the University of Michigan with the degree of

mining engineer, he returned to Cleveland, where, in 1875, his attention

was drawn to the great need of a more effective dynamo than the clumsy

and inefficient types then in use. In two months, Brush had made a

dynamo so perfect in every way that it was running until taken to the

Chicago Exposition, in 1893. Six months more of experimenting resulted

in the Brush arc light, and in 1879 the Brush Electric Company was

organized. A year later, the first Brush lights were installed in New

York City, and now there is scarcely a town in the country which does

not pay tribute to the inventor.

* * * * *

Let us turn for a moment from the field of electricity, in which America

has been pre-eminent, to another in which Yankee ingenuity has also led

the world--the railroad. It was in this country that the sleeping-car,

the diner, the parlor-car were first used; no other country affords

such luxury of travel; and no other country has added to railroading any

device comparable in importance to the invention of George Westinghouse,

the air-brake. Before its introduction, to stop a train brakes must be

set painfully by hand, and even then were not always effective. Now, the

engineer, by pulling a single lever, sets the brakes instantly all along

his train, and so effectively that the passengers sometimes feel as

though the train had struck a rock. More than that, should any accident

occur, breaking the train in two, the brakes are instantly set

automatically. All of which is done by the power of compressed air,

working through a series of pipes and air-hose beneath the cars.

George Westinghouse's father was superintendent of the Schenectady

Agricultural Works, and it was there that the boy found his vocation.

Before he was fifteen, he had modelled and built a steam engine, and

followed that with a steel railroad frog, which was so great an

improvement over the frogs then in use that it was soon widely adopted,

and brought the young inventor both money and reputation. He moved to

Pittsburgh, as the centre of the iron and steel business, and began the

manufacture of his frogs there.

One day he came across a newspaper account of the successful use of

compressed air in the digging of the Mont Cenis tunnel, in Switzerland,

and the thought occurred to him that perhaps a railroad train could be

controlled by the same agency. He worked over the problem for a time,

but when he mentioned his idea to his friends, they were inclined to

think it absurd to suppose that a rubber-tube strung along under the

cars could work the brakes effectively. However, Westinghouse was not

discouraged, but continued to experiment, and the air-brake as we have

it to-day was the result.

* * * * *

Which brings us to the most remarkable genius in the field of invention

the world has ever known--the man who has made invention, as it were, a

business, whose life has been devoted to rendering practical and useful

the dreams of other men, who has reduced invention to a science--Thomas

Alva Edison. There are some who are inclined to belittle Edison's

achievements because some of the greatest of them have been founded upon

the ideas of others. He is best known, for instance, as the inventor of

the modern incandescent light; but the discovery that light may be

obtained from wire heated to incandescence in a glass bulb from which

the air has been exhausted, was made when Edison was only two years old.

Experiments with this light were made by a dozen scientists, but it

remained a mere laboratory curiosity until Edison took hold of it, and

with a patience, ingenuity and fertility of resource, in which he stands

alone, made it a practicable, efficient and convenient source of light.

That the incandescent light, as it is known to-day, is his through and

through cannot be questioned.

It is as a scientific inventor that Edison likes to be known. He abhors

the word discoverer, as applied to himself. "Discovery is not

invention," he once said. "A discovery is more or less in the nature of

an accident, while an invention is purely deductive. In my own case, but

few, and those the least important, of my inventions, owed anything to

accident. Most of them have been hammered out after long and patient

labor, and are the result of countless experiments all directed toward

attaining some well-defined object."

There is, however, one modern marvel for which Edison is wholly

responsible, both for the initial idea and for its practical

working-out--the phonograph--but let us tell something of his early

life, before we relate the achievements of his manhood.

Born in a little village in Erie County, Ohio, in 1847, Edison was early

introduced to the struggle for existence. His father was very poor,

being, indeed, the village jack-of-all-trades, and living upon such odd

jobs as he was able to procure. The boy, of course, was put to work as

soon as he was old enough, and of regular schooling had only two months

in all his life. At the age of twelve, he was a train-boy on the

Michigan Central Railroad, selling books, papers, candy, and fruit to

the passengers. He managed to get some type and an old press and issued

a little paper called the "Grand Trunk Herald," containing the news of

the railroad. One day, he snatched the little child of the

station-master at Port Clements, Michigan, from under the wheels of a

train, and in return the grateful father taught the boy telegraphy.

It was the turning-point in his career, for it turned his attention to

the study of electricity, with which he was soon fascinated. At

eighteen, he was working as an operator at Indianapolis, but he was from

the very first, more of an inventor than an operator, and his inventions

sometimes got him into trouble. For instance, at one place where he had

a night trick, he was required to report the word "six" every half-hour

to the manager to show that he was awake and on duty. After a while, he

rigged up a wheel to do it for him, and all went well until the manager

happened to visit the office one night and found Edison sleeping calmly

while his wheel was sending in the word "six." But he nevertheless

developed into one of the swiftest operators in the country, all the

time devising changes and improvements in the mechanism of telegraphy.

His first great success came with the sale of an improvement in the

instruments used to record stock quotations, which enabled these

"tickers" to print the quotations legibly on paper tape, and this

success enabled him to get some capitalists to finance his experiments

with the electric light. The arrangement was that they were to pay the

expense of the experiments and to share in such inventions as resulted.

For the sake of quiet, he moved out to a little place in New Jersey

called Menlo Park, and built himself a shop. Then began that remarkable

series of experiments--one of the most remarkable in history--which

resulted in the perfection of the incandescent lamp.

The problem was to find a material for the filament which would give a

bright light and which, would, at the same time, be durable, and with

this end in view, hundreds and hundreds of different filaments were

tried. The difficulties in the way of this experimenting were enormous,

since the light only burns when in a vacuum, and the instant the vacuum

is impaired, out it goes. At one time, all the lamps he had burning at

Menlo Park, about eighty in all, went out, one after another, without

apparent cause. The lamps had been equipped with filaments of carbon and

had burned for a month. There seemed to be no reason why they should not

burn for a year, and Edison was stunned by the catastrophe. He began at

once the most exhaustive series of experiments ever undertaken by an

American physicist, remaining in his laboratory for five days and

nights, dining at his work bench on bread and cheese, and snatching a

little sleep occasionally, when one of his assistants was on duty. It

was finally discovered that the air had not been sufficiently exhausted

from the lamps.

Again success seemed in sight, but soon the lamps began acting queerly

again. Worn out with fatigue and disappointment, Edison took to his bed.

Ultimate failure was freely predicted, and the price of gas stock rose

again. In five months, the inventor had aged five years, but he was not

yet ready to give up the fight. And at last it was won, and the

incandescent lamp placed on the market. It has not displaced gas, as

some people thought it would, but it is the basis of a business which

made the inventor sufficiently rich to realize his great ambition of

building himself the finest laboratory in the world; where the most

expert iron-workers, wood-workers, glass-blowers, metal-spinners,

machinists and chemists in the world find employment. Every known metal,

every chemical, every kind of glass, stone, earth, wood, fibre, paper,

skin, cloth, may be found in its store-rooms, ready for instant use. The

library contains one of the finest collections of scientific books and

periodicals to be found anywhere. These are the tools, and with them

Edison is constantly at work upon a great variety of problems.

The first thing he turned his hand to after his installation in his new

laboratory was the phonograph. The patient thought and experiment,

extending over many years, lavished on this wonderful invention are

almost unbelievable. The idea had come to him years before, when he had

worked out an instrument that would not only record telegrams by

indenting a strip of paper with the dots and dashes of the Morse code,

but would also repeat the message any number of times by running the

indented strip of paper through it.

"Naturally enough," said Edison, in telling the story, "the idea

occurred to me that if the indentations on paper could be made to give

off again the click of the instrument, why could not the vibrations of a

diaphragm be recorded and similarly reproduced? I rigged up an

instrument hastily and pulled a strip of paper through it, at the same

time shouting 'Hallo!' Then the paper was pulled through again, and

listening breathlessly, I heard a distinct sound, which a strong

imagination might have translated into the original 'Hallo!' That was

enough to lead me to a further experiment. I made a drawing of a model,

and took it to Mr. Kruesi, at that time engaged on piece-work for me. I

told him it was a talking-machine. He grinned, thinking it a joke; but

he set to work and soon had the model ready. I arranged some tin-foil on

it and spoke into the machine. Kruesi looked on, still grinning. But

when I arranged the machine for transmission and we both heard a

distinct sound from it, he nearly fell down in his fright. I must admit

that I was a little scared myself." The words which he had spoken into

the machine and which were the first ever to be reproduced mechanically,

was the old Mother Goose quatrain, starting, "Mary had a Little Lamb."

From that rude beginning came the phonograph, with which Edison has

never ceased to experiment. He has made improvements in it from year to

year, until it has reached its present high state of efficiency--a

state, however, which Edison hopes to improve still further. In addition

to the two great inventions of the phonograph and incandescent lamp,

which we have dwelt upon here, many more stand to his credit. In fact,

he has been the greatest client the patent office ever had, nearly one

thousand patents having been issued in his name. At the age of

sixty-three, he shows no sign of falling off in either mental or

physical energy, and no doubt more than one invention has yet to come

from Llewellyn Park before he quits his great laboratory forever.

No one can ever guess at the future of electrical invention. The recent

marvelous development of the wireless telegraph, by which the impalpable

ether is harnessed to man's service, is an indication of the wonders

which may be expected in the future. It was our own Joseph Henry who, in

1842, discovered the electric wave--the "induction" upon which wireless

telegraphy depends. He discovered that when he produced an electric

spark an inch long in a room at the top of his house, electrical action

was instantly set up in another wire circuit in the cellar. After some

study, he saw and announced that the electric spark started some sort of

action in the ether, which passed through floors and ceilings and all

other intervening objects, and caused induction in the wires in the

cellar. But wireless telegraphy was made a commercial possibility not by

any great scientist, but by a young Italian named Marconi. Already

experiments with wireless telephony are going forward, and another half

century may see all the labor of the world performed by this wonderful

and mysterious force which we call electricity.

* * * * *

From earliest times, man has longed to navigate the air. He has watched

with envy the free flight of birds, and has tried to imitate it, usually

with disastrous results. The balloon, of course, enabled him to rise in

the air, but once there, he was at the mercy of every wind. More

recently, balloons fitted with motors and steering gear have been

devised, which are to some extent dirigible; but the real problem has

been to fly as birds do without any such artificial aid as balloons

provide.

Experiments to solve this problem were begun several years ago by

Professor S. P. Langley, of the Smithsonian Institution, under

government supervision, and pointed the way to other investigators. He

proved, theoretically, that air-flight was possible, provided sufficient

velocity could be obtained. He showed that a heavier-than-air machine

would sustain itself in the air if it could only be driven fast enough.

You have all skipped flat stones across the water. Well, that is exactly

the principle of the flying machine. As long as the stone went fast

enough, it skipped along the top of the water, which sustained it and

even threw it up into the air again. When its speed slackened, it sank.

So the boy on skates can skim safely across thin ice which would not

bear his weight for an instant if he tried to stand upon it.

So, theoretically, it was possible to fly, but to reduce theory to

practice was a very different thing. Professor Langley tried for years

and failed. He built a great machine, which plunged beneath the waters

of the Potomac a minute after it was launched. All over the world,

inventors were struggling with the problem, but nowhere with any great

degree of success. It remained for two brothers, in a little workshop at

Dayton, Ohio, to produce the first machine which would really fly.

Orville and Wilbur Wright were poor boys, the sons of a clergyman, and

apparently in no way distinguished from ordinary boys, except by a taste

for mechanics. They had a little workshop, and one day in 1905, they

brought out a strange looking machine from it, and announced that it was

a flying-machine. The people of Dayton smiled skeptically, and assembled

to witness the demonstration with the thought that there would probably

soon be need for an ambulance. The gasoline motor with which the machine

was equipped, was started, one of the brothers climbed aboard and

grasped the levers, the other dropped a weight which started the machine

down a long incline. For a moment, it slid along, then its great forward

planes caught the air current and it soared gracefully up into the air.

That was a great moment in human history, so great that the crowd

looking on scarcely realized its import. They watched the machine with

bated breath, and saw it steered around in a circle, showing that it

could go against the wind as well as with it. For thirty-eight minutes

it remained in the air, making a circular flight of over twenty-four

miles. Then it was gently landed and the exhibition was over. Great

crowds flocked to Dayton, after that, expecting to see further

exhibitions, but they were disappointed. The machine had been taken back

to the shop, and the young inventors announced that they were making

some changes in it. No one was admitted to the shop, nor were any other

flights made.

One day the inventors also disappeared, and months later it was

discovered that they had built themselves a little shop on a deserted

stretch of the sandy North Carolina coast, and that they were carrying

on their experiments there, secure from observation. Enterprising

reporters tried to interview them and failed; but, ambushed afar off,

they one day saw the great machine soaring proudly in a wide circle

above the sands. A photographer even got a distant photograph of it.

There could be no doubt that the Wright brothers had solved the problem

of flight.

But not for two years more were they ready for public exhibitions. Then,

in 1908, they appeared at Fort Myer, Virginia, ready to take part in the

contest set by the United States government. No one who was present on

that first day will ever forget his sensations as the great winged

creature rose gracefully from the ground and circled about in the air

overhead. Again and again flights were made, sometimes with an extra

passenger; great speed was attained and the machine was under perfect

control. But an unfortunate accident put a stop to the trials, for one

day a propellor-blade broke while the machine was in mid-air, and it

struck the ground before it could be righted. The passenger, a member of

the United States Signal Corps, was instantly killed and Orville Wright

was seriously injured.

Meanwhile, the other brother, Wilbur, had gone to Europe, where, first

in France, and afterwards in Italy and England, he created a tremendous

sensation by his spectacular flights. They were uniformly successful.

Not an accident marred them. The governments of Europe were quick to

secure the right to manufacture the aeroplane; kings and princes vied

with each other in honoring the young inventor, and when he returned to

the United States, city, state, and nation combined in a great reception

to him and to his brother.

As these lines are being written, in August, 1909, another series of

flights has been concluded at Fort Myer. They were successful in every

way in fulfilling the government tests, and the Wrights' machine was

purchased by the government for $30,000. Everywhere air-ship flights are

being made successfully, and it is only a question of time until the

aeroplane becomes a common means of conveyance. Wilbur Wright declares

that it is already safer than the automobile, and it would seem that

there is in store for man a new and exquisite sensation, that of flight.

Surely, America has cause to be proud of her inventors!

SUMMARY

FULTON, ROBERT. Born at Little Britain, Pennsylvania, 1765; went to

London, 1786, to study painting under Benjamin West; abandoned painting,

1793; returned to America, 1806; first successful trip in steamboat, the

Clermont, August 11, 1807; died at New York City, February 24, 1815.

WHITNEY, ELI. Born at Westborough, Massachusetts, December 8, 1765;

graduated at Yale, 1792; went to Georgia as teacher and invented

cotton-gin, 1792-93; died at New Haven, Connecticut, January 8, 1825.

MORSE, SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE. Born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, April

27, 1791; graduated at Yale, 1810; studied art under Benjamin West in

London, and opened studio in New York City, 1823; first president

National Academy of Design, 1826-42; designed electric telegraph, 1832;

applied for patent, 1837; first line completed between Baltimore and

Washington, 1844; died at New York City, April 2, 1872.

GOODYEAR, CHARLES. Born at New Haven, Connecticut, December 29, 1800;

began experiments with rubber, 1834; secured patent, 1844; died at New

York City, July 1, 1860.

ERICSSON, JOHN. Born in parish of Fernebo, Wermland, Sweden, July 31,

1803; went to England, 1826; came to America, 1839; constructed caloric

engine, 1833; applied screw to steam navigation, 1836-41; invented

turreted ironclad Monitor, 1862; died at New York City, March 8, 1889.

DAHLGREN, JOHN ADOLPH. Born at Philadelphia, November 13, 1809;

lieutenant in navy, 1837; assigned to ordnance duty at Washington, 1847;

commander, 1855; rear-admiral, 1863; took important part in naval

operations during Civil War; died at Washington, July 12, 1870.

MCCORMICK, CYRUS HALL. Born at Walnut Grove, West Virginia, February 15,

1809; invented mechanical reaper, 1831; died at Chicago, May 13, 1884.

HOWE, ELIAS. Born at Spencer, Massachusetts, July 9, 1819; invented

sewing-machine, 1844; died at Brooklyn, New York, October 3, 1867.

CORLISS, GEORGE HENRY. Born at Easton, New York, July 2, 1817; invented

Corliss engine, 1849; died at Providence, Rhode Island, February 21,

1888.

SHOLES, CHRISTOPHER LATHAM. Born at Mooresburg, Pennsylvania, February

14, 1819; state senator, Wisconsin, 1848, 1856-58; held many positions

of trust in Milwaukee, 1869-78; patented typewriter, 1868.

BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM. Born at Edinburgh, Scotland, March 3, 1847; came

to Canada, 1870, and to Boston, 1871; invented telephone, 1876;

graphophone, 1883.

BRUSH, CHARLES FRANCIS. Born at Euclid, Ohio, March 17, 1849; graduated

University of Michigan, 1869; invented modern arc electric lighting;

founder Brush Electric Company.

WESTINGHOUSE, GEORGE. Born at Central Bridge, Schoharie County, New

York, October 6, 1846; invented rotary engine at age of fifteen; in

Union army, 1863-64; invented air brake, 1868; also inventions in

railway signals, steam and gas engines, turbines, and electric

machinery.

EDISON, THOMAS ALVA. Born at Milan, Ohio, February 11, 1847; established

workshop at Menlo Park, New Jersey, 1876; invented megaphone,

phonograph, aerophone, incandescent electric lamp, kinetoscope, and many

other things.

WRIGHT, ORVILLE. Born at Dayton, Ohio, 1871.

WRIGHT, WILBUR. Born at Dayton, Ohio, 1869.

INDEX

Abbey, Edwin A., 117, 124.

Adams, Edwin, 179.

Adams, Herbert, 153.

Addams, Jane, 223-224, 230.

Agassiz, Alexander, 192, 225.

Agassiz, Louis, 186-192, 193, 201-202, 209-210, 211, 213, 224.

Alcott, Amos Bronson, 41-43, 52.

Alcott, Louisa May, 42-43, 52.

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 75-76, 82-83, 163.

Alexander, Francis, 102-103, 121.

Alexander, John W., 119.

Allen, James Lane, 33.

Allston, Washington, 97, 99, 121, 126.

Anderson, Charles Joseph, 174.

Anderson, Mary, 174-175, 183.

Andrew, John A., 266.

Anthony, Susan B., 271-272, 289.

Arnold, Benedict, 95.

Astor, John Jacob, 294-297, 324.

Astor, William B., 296-297.

Atwood, Elizabeth, 303.

Audubon, John James, 186-190, 224.

Austin, James T., 270.

Bailey, Liberty Hyde, 212.

Ball, Thomas, 136, 137-139, 155.

Bancroft, George, 34-36, 51.

Barker, George Frederick, 212.

Barlow, Joel, 329.

Barnard, George Gray, 153, 156.

Barnum, Phineas Taylor, 302-305, 314, 325.

Barrett, Lawrence, 171-172, 176, 183.

Bartlett, Paul Wayland, 153.

Barton, Clara, 277-278, 289.

Beecher, Henry Ward, 252, 254, 281, 287.

Beecher, Lyman, 31, 252-254, 269, 287.

Bell, Alexander Graham, 328, 356-358, 373.

Bell, Alexander Melville, 357.

Belmont, August, 323.

Benjamin, Park, 74.

Bennett, James Gordon, 47, 309.

Bergh, Henry, 278-280, 290.

Bessey, Charles Edward, 212.

Bickmore, Albert Smith, 193.

Bierstadt, Albert, 108, 122.

Boone, Daniel, 100.

Booth, Edwin, 118, 157, 158, 160-164, 166, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 176,

182, 183.

Booth, John Wilkes, 161.

Booth, Junius Brutus, 158-162, 177, 182.

Boyle, John J., 153.

Brooks, Phillips, 281-282, 290.

Brown, Henry Kirke, 113, 132-133, 145, 146, 154, 155.

Brown, John, 262, 272-276, 289.

Brown, Nathan, 313.

Brush, Charles F., 358-359, 373.

Brush, George de Forest, 119.

Bryant, William Cullen, 55-58, 80.

Bundy, Benjamin, 264.

Burke, Charles, 179.

Burr, Aaron, 97, 98.

Burr, Theodosia, 97.

Burroughs, John, 211-212.

Cable, George Washington, 33.

Caffin, Charles C., 17.

Calhoun, John C., 130, 134, 135.

Campbell, Archibald, 257.

Carnegie, Andrew, 246-251, 287.

Cary, Alice, 76.

Cary, Phoebe, 76.

Chamberlain, Thomas C., 204.

Channing, William Ellery, 254-256, 259, 260, 262, 270, 288.

Child, Lydia Maria, 261-262, 288.

Church, Frederick Edwin, 107-108, 122.

Clapp, Henry Austin, 18.

Clark, Alonzo Howard, 193.

Clay, Henry, 265.

Clemens, Samuel Langhorne, 32-33, 50-51.

Clemm, Virginia, 68, 81.

Coffin, Thomas, 257.

Cole, Thomas, 105-107, 108, 122.

Cooper, James Fenimore, 24-27, 31, 50, 85, 127.

Cooper, Astley, 205.

Cooper, Peter, 235-237, 242, 286, 307.

Cope, Edward Drinker, 200-201, 226.

Copley, John Singleton, 86-87, 94, 120.

Corliss, George Henry, 352-353, 373.

Cornell, Ezra, 239-241, 242, 286.

Crawford, Thomas, 131-132, 154.

Curtis, George William, 46, 53.

Cushman, Charlotte, 144, 157, 166-168, 172, 182.

Cushman, Susan, 168.

Dahlgren, John Adolph, 347-348, 372.

Daly, Augustin, 172, 176, 177, 183, 184.

Dana, Charles Anderson, 47.

Dana, James Dwight, 202-203, 226-227.

Davenport, E. L., 176-177, 184.

Davenport, Fanny, 177, 184.

Day, Jeremiah, 218.

Dix, Dorothea Lynde, 259-261, 288.

Douglass, Frederick, 273, 275.

Drake, E. L., 355-356.

Drake, Joseph Rodman, 56.

Draper, Henry, 195, 199.

Draper, John William, 194-195, 225.

Drew, John, 176, 184.

Drew, Mrs. John, 184.

Durand, Asher Brown, 104-105, 107, 108, 122.

Dwight, Timothy, 218, 219, 229.

Edison, Thomas A., 328, 361-367, 373.

Edwards, Jonathan, 219-221, 223, 229.

Eliot, Charles William, 215-218, 229.

Elwell, Frank, 153.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 44-45, 52, 58-59.

Ericsson, John, 344-347, 372.

Ericsson, Nils, 344.

Everett, Edward, 215.

Farragut, David Glasgow, 149, 345.

Field, Cyrus West, 307-309, 325.

Field, Eugene, 76, 83.

Field, Marshall, 323.

Fiske, John, 40.

Florence, William J., 169-170, 183.

Forrest, Edwin, 157, 158, 164-166, 167, 169, 170, 179, 182.

Fox, John, 33.

Franklin, Benjamin, 89, 94, 197, 208, 328, 339.

Freeman, Mary Wilkins, 34.

French, Daniel Chester, 150-151, 156.

Freneau, Philip, 56.

Fulton, Robert, 328-332, 345, 371.

Garrison, William Lloyd, 61, 261, 262-267, 268, 269, 271, 288.

Gilder, Richard Watson, 76.

Girard, Stephen, 97, 164, 231-233, 286.

Glasgow, Ellen, 34.

Goelet, Robert, 323.

Goodyear, Charles, 339-344, 372.

Gould, Edwin, 317.

Gould, Frank, 317.

Gould, George, 317-318.

Gould, Helen Miller, 312.

Gould, Howard, 317.

Gould, Jay, 310-312, 317, 325.

Grant, Ulysses S., 49, 300-311.

Gray, Asa, 193, 194, 212, 213, 225.

Gray, Elisha, 356.

Greeley, Horace, 46-49, 53.

Greeley, Zaccheus, 47.

Greenough, Horatio, 90, 125-129, 130, 131, 134, 154.

Guyot, Arnold, 209, 213, 228.

Hale, Nathan, 152.

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 56.

Hamilton, Alexander, 293.

Harding, Chester, 99-102, 103, 121, 133.

Harriman, E. H., 321-324, 326.

Harriott, Frederick C., 183.

Harrison, William Henry, 48.

Harte, Bret, 33.

Hartt, Charles Frederick, 193.

Haseltine, Anne, 256.

Havemeyer, Frederick Christian, 301.

Havemeyer, William Frederick, 301-302.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 27-30, 31, 50, 59, 69, 85, 130, 139, 144.

Hawthorne, William, 28.

Hayne, Paul Hamilton, 30, 77, 78, 84.

Henry, Joseph, 197, 208-209, 228, 234, 338-339, 356, 367.

Henry, Patrick, 132.

Heth, Joice, 302-303.

Hildreth, Richard, 36.

Hill, James J., 318-321, 323, 326.

Hitchcock, Edward, 203-204, 227.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 58, 62-64, 81, 87, 216.

Homer, Winslow, 115-116, 123.

Hopkins, Johns, 237, 239, 242, 286.

Hopkinson, Francis, 89.

Hosmer, Harriet, 143-144, 155.

Howe, Elias, 328, 350-352, 372.

Howe, Julia Ward, 76.

Howe, Samuel G., 260.

Howells, William Dean, 33.

Hubbard, Elbert, 79.

Hunt, William Morris, 112, 113-114, 123.

Hyatt, Alpheus, 193.

Inman, Henry, 103-104, 121.

Inness, George, 108-110, 116, 122.

Irving, Washington, 20-24, 36, 49-50, 97, 296-297.

Irving, William, 20.

Isham, Samuel, 17.

Jackson, Andrew, 107, 130, 135-136.

James, Henry, 33.

Jarvis, John Wesley, 103, 121.

Jefferson, Joseph, 18, 157, 170, 178-180, 182, 184.

Jefferson, Thomas, 98, 132.

Johnson, Cave, 135, 337.

Johnston, Mary, 34.

Jordan, David Starr, 223.

Jouett, Matthew, 103.

Judson, Adoniram, 256-257, 288.

Kean, Edmund, 159.

Keene, Laura, 179.

Kellogg, Vernon L., 212.

Kensett, Frederick, 108, 110, 122.

Key, Francis Scott, 56.

Kimball, Edward, 283.

Kingsley, James, 218.

LaFarge, John, 17, 112-113, 123.

Langley, Samuel Pierpont, 196, 226, 368.

Lanier, Sidney, 77-78, 83.

Le Conte, John, 210, 228.

Le Conte, John Eathan, 210-211.

Le Conte, John Lawrence, 211, 228.

Le Conte, Joseph, 210, 228.

Le Conte, Lewis, 209-210.

Lee, Robert E., 276.

Leidy, Joseph, 201.

Leiter, Levi, 323.

Leslie, C. R., 117.

Lincoln, Abraham, 12, 49, 72, 138, 146, 149, 160.

Lind, Jenny, 138, 302, 305.

Lindsay, R. W., 302.

Livingston, Robert R., 330.

Long, Crawford W., 206, 227.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 15, 28, 54, 58, 59-61, 80, 85.

Longworth, Nicholas, 146.

Lorillard, Pierre, 323.

Lovejoy, Elijah, 266, 270.

Lowell, James Russell, 58, 64-66, 81.

Lyman, Theodore, 193.

Macie, James. See Smithson, James.

McCormick, Cyrus Hall, 348-350, 372.

McCosh, James, 219, 222, 230.

McCullough, John, 170-171, 173, 176, 183.

Mackay, John W., 309-310, 325.

McMaster, John Bach, 40.

MacMonnies, Frederick, 151-152, 156.

Macready, William C., 165, 167.

Macy, John, 17.

Mann, Horace, 213-214, 228-229, 260.

Mansfield, Richard, 180-181.

"Mark Twain." See Clemens, S. L.

Marlowe, Julia, 181.

Marsh, Othniel Charles, 199-200, 226.

Marshall, John, 130.

Martin, Homer Dodge, 108, 110-111, 123.

Maverick, Peter, 122.

Meade, Larkin G., 145-147, 155.

Merrill, Addison Emory, 193.

Miller, Cincinnatus Heine (Joaquin), 76.

Millet, Francis B., 116-117, 124.

Mills, Clarke, 107, 133-136, 154.

Milmore, Martin, 151.

Modjeska, Helena, 172-174, 183.

Moody, Dwight L., 282-285, 290.

Moran, Thomas, 108, 122.

Morgan, J. Pierpont, 315-316, 326.

Morgan, Junius Spencer, 315.

Morris, Clara, 18, 172, 183.

Morris, Robert, 292-293, 324.

Morse, Edward Sylvester, 193.

Morse, Jedediah, 335.

Morse, Samuel Finley Breese, 99, 240, 328, 335-339, 372.

Morton, W. T. G., 206-207, 227-228.

Motley, John Lothrop, 34, 37-38, 40, 51, 216.

Mott, James, 257.

Mott, Lucretia, 257-259, 261, 262, 272, 288.

Mott, Valentine, 204-206, 227.

Murdock, James E., 179.

Murfree, Mary Noailles, 33.

Muspratt, James Sheridan, 168.

Navarro, Antonio de, 183.

Neagle, John, 103, 121.

Neilson, Adelaide, 176.

Newberry, John Strong, 203, 227.

Newcomb, Simon, 197-198, 226.

Nilhaus, Charles, 153.

Ogden, Francis B., 345.

Orton, William, 338.

Osborne, H. F., 201.

Ossoli, Margaret Fuller, 43-44, 52.

Packard, Alpheus Spring, 193.

Page, Thomas Nelson, 34.

Palfrey, John Gorham, 36.

Palmer, Erasmus D., 136-137, 139, 154.

Parker, John, 267.

Parker, Theodore, 267-268, 269, 288.

Parkman, Francis, 34, 39-40, 51.

Peabody, George, 237-239, 242, 286, 315.

Peale, Charles Willson, 90-92, 98, 120, 304.

Peale, Rembrandt, 98, 121, 304.

Pelham, Peter, 86.

Penn, William, 140.

Phillips, John, 269.

Phillips, Wendell, 262, 268-271, 289.

Pickering, Edward Charles, 198-199, 226.

Pierce, Franklin, 29.

Plant, Henry, 147.

Poe, Edgar Allan, 17, 27, 28, 55, 58, 66-70, 76, 81-82, 85.

Porter, Noah, 218-219, 229.

Powers, Hiram, 129-131, 154.

Pratt, Zadock, 310.

Pray, Malvina, 169.

Prescott, William Hickling, 34, 36-38, 40, 51.

Putnam, Frederick Ward, 193.

Quincy, Josiah, 215, 217, 229.

Rehan, Ada, 172, 175-176, 183.

Remsen, Ira, 222.

Rhodes, James Ford, 40.

Rider, Emory, 343.

Rider, Williams, 343.

Riley, James Whitcomb, 76, 83.

Rinehart, William H., 141-142, 155.

Roberts, Marshall, 307.

Robinson, Marius, 266.

Rockefeller, John Davison, 243-246, 287, 354.

Rogers, John, 142-143, 155.

Rogers, Randolph, 140-141, 155.

Ruckstuhl, Frederick, 153.

Rutherford, Lewis Morris, 195-196, 225.

Sage, Russell, 305-306, 325.

Sage, Mrs. Russell, 252, 306.

Saint Gaudens, Augustus, 148-150, 152, 156.

Salisbury, Rollin D., 204.

Sanders, Sarah, 20.

Sankey, Ira D., 284, 285.

Sargent, John Singer, 117-119, 124, 163.

Schurman, Jacob Gould, 223.

Scott, Thomas A., 249.

Scudder, Samuel Hubbard, 193.

Seward, William H., 348.

Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate, 193, 211, 228.

Shaw, Robert Gould, 150.

Sholes, C. Latham, 353-354, 373.

Silliman, Benjamin, 202-204, 213, 218, 226, 227, 354.

Simms, William Gilmore, 30-31, 78-79, 84.

Skinner, Otis, 181.

Slater, John Fox, 241-242, 287.

Sloane, William Milligan, 40.

Slocum, Margaret Olivia. See Sage, Mrs. Russell.

Smithson, James, 233-234, 286.

Sothern, Edward A., 179, 181, 185.

Sothern, E. H., 181, 185.

Sparks, Jared, 36, 255.

Stanford, Jane Lathrop, 243.

Stanford, Leland, 242-243, 287.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 258, 272, 289.

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 75-76, 82.

Stewart, A. T., 299-301, 307, 312, 324.

Stimpson, William, 193.

Stockton, Frank R., 34.

Stockton, Robert F., 345.

Stoddart, J. H., 18.

Story, Joseph, 139, 140.

Story, William Wetmore, 139-140, 155.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 31-32, 50, 254, 262.

Stratton, Charles S. See "Thumb, Tom."

Stuart, Gilbert, 90, 92-94, 102, 103, 120.

Stuart, J. E. B., 276.

Sully, Thomas, 90, 96-97, 121.

Sumner, Charles, 132, 260.

Taft, Lorado, 17.

Tappan, Arthur, 265.

Taylor, Bayard, 73-75, 82.

Taylor, Moses, 307.

Tenney, Sanborn, 193.

Thomson, William, 357.

Thoreau, Henry David, 45-46, 52-53.

Thumb, Tom, 302, 304-305.

Timrod, Henry, 30, 77, 78, 83.

Torrey, John, 193-194, 225.

Townsend, James M., 354-356.

Trent, W. P., 16.

Trumbull, Jonathan, 94.

Trumbull, John, 90, 94-96, 104, 120.

Tryon, Dwight William, 116, 124.

Tucker, George, 36.

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 297-299, 311, 317, 324.

Vanderbilt, William Henry, 298-299, 317.

Vanderlyn, John, 97-98, 121.

Van Dyke, John C., 17.

Vedder, Elihu, 111-112, 123.

Vining, Fanny Elizabeth, 177, 184.

Wanamaker, John, 312-315, 323, 325.

Ward, Henry Augustus, 193.

Ward, J. Q. A., 144-145, 150, 155.

Warner, Olin Levi, 147-148, 156.

Warren, J. C., 207.

Warren, Lavinia, 304-305.

Warren, William, 177-179, 184.

Washington, Augustine, 303.

Washington, George, 12, 23, 90, 91, 93, 94, 127, 128, 130, 132, 133, 134,

138, 293, 302, 303.

Webster, Daniel, 130, 135.

West, Benjamin, 87-90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 120, 121, 151, 329.

Westinghouse, George, 359-361, 373.

Wharton, Edith, 34.

Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, 114-115, 123.

White, Chandler, 307.

White, Stewart Edward, 34.

White, William, 89.

Whitman, Marcus, 295.

Whitman, Walt, 70-73, 82, 85.

Whitney, Eli, 328, 332-335, 339, 371.

Whitney, Josiah Dwight, 203, 227.

Whitney, William C., 323.

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 54, 58, 61-62, 80-81, 263, 265.

Wilder, Burt Green, 193.

Wilkes, Charles, 202.

Willing, Charles, 292.

Wilson, Woodrow, 40, 223.

Winsor, Justin, 40.

Winter, William, 17, 18, 162.

Winthrop, John, 28.

Witherspoon, John, 219, 221-222, 230.

Wright, Orville, 368-371, 373.

Wright, Wilbur, 368-371, 373.

Wyant, Alexander, 108, 110, 123.

Young, Charles Augustus, 196, 225.

* * * * *

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS

GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

* * * * *

+----------------------------------------------------------------+

| Transcriber's Note: |

| |

| Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has been |

| preserved. |

| |

| A reference to the index has been added to the ToC for |

| convenience. |

| |

| Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. These are:-- |

| |

| Page 99 ran away to Pittsburg |

| changed to |

| ran away to Pittsburgh |

| Page 105 landscapists in Thomas Cole. |

| changed to |

| landscapists is Thomas Cole. |

| Page 218 history of adminstration |

| changed to |

| history of administration |

| Page 341 rubber and magnesia is quicklime |

| changed to |

| rubber and magnesia in quicklime |

| Page 347 played so imporant |

| changed to |

| played so important |

| Page 360 power of compresed air, |

| changed to |

| power of compressed air, |

| Page 363 The arrrangement |

| changed to |

| The arrangement |

| Page 376 Cary, Ph[oe]be, 76. |

| changed (for consistency with main text) to |

| Cary, Phoebe, 76. |

| Page 381 Silliman, Benjamin, 202-203-204 |

| changed to |

| Silliman, Benjamin, 202-204 |

| Page 382 Warren, William, 177-178-179-184. |

| changed to |

| Warren, William, 177-179, 184. |

+----------------------------------------------------------------+

End of Project Gutenberg's American Men of Mind, by Burton E. Stevenson