The successes of Peter Cooper's long and useful life are well known.
Not so many are aware of his varied experience in the direction of
failure, particularly in the field of invention. More than once he has
found his best devices profitless because ahead of his time, or
because of conditions, political or otherwise, which no one could
foresee. He possessed the rare qualities, however, of pluck and
perseverance, and when one thing failed he lost no time in trying
something else. Before he was of age he had learned three trades--and
he did not make his fortune at either.
In a familiar conversation with a _Herald_ writer recently, Mr. Cooper
related some of his early experiences, particularly with reference to
enterprises which did not succeed. His father was a hatter, and as a
boy young Cooper learned how to make a hat in all its parts. The
father was not successful in business, and the hatter's trade seems to
have offered little encouragement to the son. Accordingly he learned
the art of making ale. Why he did not stick to that calling and become
a millionaire brewer, Mr. Cooper does not say. Most probably the
national taste for stronger tipple could not at that time be overcome,
and ale could not compete with New England rum and apple-jack. The
young mechanic next essayed the art of coachmaking, at which he served
a full apprenticeship. At the end of his time his employer offered to
set him up in business, but the offer was not accepted, through fear
of losing another's money. He felt that if he took the money and lost
it he would have to be a slave for life. So he quit coachmaking and
went to work for a man at Hempstead, L. I., making machines for
shearing cloth. In three years, on $1.50 a day, Cooper had saved
enough money to buy his employer's patent. Immediately he introduced
improvements in the manufacture and in the machine, which the war with
England made a great demand for by excluding foreign cloths. At this
time Cooper married. In due time the family numbered three, and the
young father's inventive faculty was again called upon.
"In those days," said Mr. Cooper to the reporter, smiling as the
remembrance came to his mind, "we kept no servants as they do
nowadays, and my wife and myself had to do all that was to be done.
After our first child was born I used to come into the house and find
my wife rocking the cradle, and I relieved her from that while I was
there. After doing that for a few days I thought to myself that I
could make that thing go of itself. So I went into my shop, and made a
pendulous cradle that would rock the child. Then I attached a musical
instrument which would sing for it, and at the same time the machine
would keep the flies off. The latter was very simple; by hanging
something to the cross bar, as the cradle swung under it, backward and
forward, it would create wind enough to drive away the flies. The
machine was wound up by a weight, and would run for nearly half an
hour without stopping. I took out a patent for it, and one day a
peddler came along with a horse and wagon, as they do in the country,
and saw the cradle. He struck a bargain with me and bought the patent
right for the State of Connecticut, giving for it his horse and wagon
and all the goods he had with him. They afterward made some there, but
nothing like as good as mine. It was a beautiful piece of furniture,"
said Mr. Cooper regretfully, as he thought of it as a thing of the
past. "They afterward substituted springs for the weight movement, but
that kind was not so good."
About this time the war with England ended and the market was spoiled
for the shearing machines. Then, we believe, Mr. Cooper tried his hand
at cabinetmaking, but that failed, and he set up a grocery store where
the Bible House now stands. While selling groceries Mr. Cooper made an
invention which ought to have made his fortune, but it did not. The
story is best told in Mr. Cooper's own words:
"It was just before the Erie Canal was completed, and I conceived a
plan by which to tow boats by the use of all the elevated waters on
the line of the canal. To demonstrate that that was practicable I made
with my own hands a chain two miles long, and placed posts 200 feet
apart in the East River from Bellevue dock down town about a mile.
These posts supported grooved wheels to lay the chain in, forming an
endless chain. The whole was moved by an overshot waterwheel placed at
the Bellevue dock. A reservoir twelve feet square and three deep held
the water to turn the wheel."
At the suggestion of Governor Clinton Mr. Cooper tightened his chain
and pulled up the end post just before the grand trial of his device
was to come off. He succeeded in getting stone enough to anchor the
post, however, and the experiment went off swimmingly. The boat was
hooked on to the chain, and the passage back and forward--two
miles--was made in eleven minutes.
"I ran that boat some ten days," says Mr. Cooper, "to let people see
what could be done, and carried nearly a thousand people. Part of the
time I ran two boats. Once I counted 52 people in one boat. I made the
whole chain myself and planted the posts. As I could find no wheels to
suit me I made the moulds and cast the wheels myself out of block tin
and zinc. It was no small job, I can tell you."
This was unquestionably a grand invention. In itself it was a perfect
success; but it was not used. Mr. Cooper tells why:
"It demonstrated completely that the elevated water power along the
line of the canal and every lock in the canal could be made use of to
drive the boats. Governor Clinton gave me $800 for the privilege of
buying the right to the plan in case he should want to use it on the
Erie Canal. In making the canal he had promised the people along the
route that as soon as it was finished they could sell their horses to
tow the boats, their grain and fodder to feed the horses, and their
provisions for the passengers. On reflection he thought that if he
took all that away from them he would have to run the gantlet again,
and he could not afford to do that. There never was anything done with
the plan until a few years ago, when Mr. Welch, president of the
Camden and Amboy Railroad and Canal, invented exactly the same thing
and put it in practice on his locks on the canal. He found it saved
half the time and great expense. He went to Washington to take out a
patent for it, and when he got there he found that I had patented the
same thing fifty-three years before. My patent had run out, so he
could use the plan on his canal. It has also been used on one lock on
the Erie Canal. If they could have used that chain on the whole length
of the Erie Canal it would have saved many millions of dollars."
This would not be a bad place, were there room for it, to speak of
"undeveloped" and therefore worthless inventions; and the assumption
that if an inventor does not make his invention immediately profitable
it must be good for nothing, and should be dispatented. But the moral
goes without telling.
Mr. Cooper's next attempt at invention was made about the same time,
but in quite a different direction. It was during the struggle of the
Greeks for independence, and wishing to do something for their
assistance, Mr. Cooper undertook to make a torpedo boat for them. Mr.
Cooper says:
"It was a small one that could be taken on board ship and used to
destroy any vessel that came to destroy them. It was fixed with a
rotary steam engine and a screw wheel to propel it. It was intended to
be guided from the ship or the shore. There were two steel wires fixed
to the tiller of the rudder, and the operator could pull on one side
or the other and guide the vessel just as a horse is guided with
reins. It was so arranged that at night it would carry a light with
its dark side toward the object to be destroyed, and by simply keeping
the light in range with the vessel it would be sure to hit it. The
torpedo was carried on a little iron rod, projecting in front of the
torpedo vessel a few inches under water. Contact would discharge the
torpedo and bend this iron rod. This would reverse the action of the
engine and cause the torpedo vessel to return right back from whence
it came, ready to carry another torpedo."
Unfortunately the torpedo boat was not ready in time to go with the
ship carrying the contributions for Greece. It was stored in Mr.
Cooper's factory (he had then turned his attention to glue) and was
destroyed by the burning of the factory. It seems to have been quite a
promising affair for the time. Mr. Cooper says:
"I experimented with it at once to see how far it could be guided. I
made a steel wire ten miles long and went down to the Narrows to test
the matter. I had steel yards fastened to one end of the wire, and to
the other end the torpedo vessel as attached. It got about six miles
away when a vessel coming into the harbor crossed the wire and broke
it. Although the experiment was not complete it showed that for at
least six miles I could guide the vessel as easily as I could guide a
horse."
Mr. Cooper's work as the pioneer locomotive builder in this country;
his later inventions and improvements in the manufacture of railway
iron and wrought iron beams for fireproof buildings; his application
of anthracite coal to iron puddling, and his other successes are
almost as widely known as his philanthropic efforts for the education
and advancement of the industrial classes of this city.
After all, we are not sure but the story of his long and varied and
always honorable career, told by himself, would not be worth, to young
people who have to make their way in life through many difficulties,
more even than the advantages of the noble institution which bears his
name.
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TASTE FOR READING.--Sir John Herschel has declared that "if he were to
pray for a taste which should stand under every variety of
circumstance and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to him
through life, it would be a taste for reading." Give a man, he
affirms, that taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you cannot
fail of making him good and happy; for you bring him in contact with
the best society in all ages, with the tenderest, the bravest, and the
purest men who have adorned humanity, making him a denizen of all
nations, a contemporary of all times, and giving him a practical proof
that the world has been created for him, for his solace, and for his
enjoyment.
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