[Transcriber's Note: Underscores are used as delimiter for _italics_.
Small capitals have been transcribed as all capitals.]
BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS
[Illustration: G. Marconi]
BOYS' SECOND BOOK
OF INVENTIONS
BY RAY STANNARD BAKER
_Author of
Boys' Book of Inventions, Seen in
Germany_
[Illustration]
FULLY ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
MCMIX
_Copyright, 1903, by_
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
Published, November, 1903, N
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE MIRACLE OF RADIUM 3
Story of the Marvels and Dangers of the New Element
Discovered by Professor and Madame Curie.
CHAPTER II
FLYING MACHINES 27
Santos-Dumont's Steerable Balloons.
CHAPTER III
THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER 79
Professor John Milne's Seismograph.
CHAPTER IV
ELECTRICAL FURNACES 113
How the Hottest Heat is Produced--Making Diamonds.
CHAPTER V
HARNESSING THE SUN 153
The Solar Motor.
CHAPTER VI
THE INVENTOR AND THE FOOD PROBLEM 173
Fixing of Nitrogen--Experiments of Professor Nobbe.
CHAPTER VII
MARCONI AND HIS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS 207
New Experiments in Wireless Telegraphy.
CHAPTER VIII
SEA-BUILDERS 255
The Story of Lighthouse Building--Stone-Tower
Lighthouses, Iron Pile Lighthouses, and Steel
Cylinder Lighthouses.
CHAPTER IX
THE NEWEST ELECTRIC LIGHT 293
Peter Cooper Hewitt and his Three Great Inventions
--The Mercury Arc Light--The New Electrical
Converter--The Hewitt Interrupter.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Guglielmo Marconi _Frontispiece_
M. Curie Explaining the Wonders of Radium at
the Sorbonne 5
Dr. Danlos Treating a Lupus Patient with Radium
at the St. Louis Hospital, Paris 13
Radium as a Test for Real Diamonds 19
_At the approach of Radium pure gems are thrown
into great brilliancy, while imitations remain
dull._
M. and Mme. Curie Finishing the Preparation of
some Radium 25
M. Alberto Santos-Dumont 29
Severo's Balloon, the "Pax," which on its First
Ascent at a Height of about 2,000 feet,
Burst and Exploded, Sending to a Terrible
Death both M. Severo and his Assistant 33
The Trial of Count Zeppelin's Air-Ship, July 2,
1900 37
M. Santos-Dumont at Nineteen 41
M. Santos-Dumont's First Balloon (Spherical) 43
M. Santos-Dumont's Workshop 45
"Santos-Dumont No. 1" 49
Basket of "Santos-Dumont No. 1" 52
_Showing propeller and motor._
"Santos-Dumont No. 1" 54
_Showing how it began to fold up in the middle._
"Santos-Dumont No. 5" Rounding Eiffel Tower,
July 13, 1901 57
The Interior of the Aërodrome 61
_Showing its construction, the inflated balloon,
and the pennant with its mystic letters._
The Fall into the Courtyard of the Trocadero Hotel 65
"_Santos-Dumont No. 5._"
"Santos-Dumont No. 6"--The Prize Winner 69
Air-Ship Pointing almost Vertically Upward 73
Falling to the Sea 73
Just Before the Air-Ship Lost all its Gas 74
Losing its Gas and Sinking 74
The Balloon Falling to the Waves 75
Boats Around the Ruined Air-Ship 75
Manoeuvring Above the Bay at Monte Carlo 77
Professor John Milne 80
_From a photograph by S. Suzuki, Kudanzaka, Tokio._
Professor Milne's Sensitive Pendulum, or Seismograph,
as it Appears Enclosed in its Protecting Box 81
The Sensitive Pendulum, or Seismograph, as it
Appears with the Protecting Box Removed 81
Gifu, Japan, after the Earthquake of 1891 85
_This and the pictures following on pages 89, 101,
111, are from Japanese photographs reproduced in
"The Great Earthquake in Japan, 1891," by John
Milne and W. K. Burton._
The Work of the Great Earthquake of 1891 in
Neo Valley, Japan 89
Diagram Showing Vertical and Horizontal Sections
of the More Sensitive of Professor
Milne's Two Pendulums, or Seismographs 93
Seismogram of a Borneo Earthquake that Occurred
September 20, 1897 94
Effect of the Great Earthquake of 1891 on the
Nagara Gawa Railway Bridge, Japan 101
Pieces of a Submarine Cable Picked Up in the
Gulf of Mexico in 1888 108
_The kinks are caused by seismic disturbances,
and they show how much distortion a cable can
suffer and still remain in good electrical
condition, as this was found to be._
Record made on a Stationary Surface by the
Vibrations of the Japanese Earthquake of
July 19, 1891 111
_Showing the complicated character of the motion
(common to most earthquakes), and also the course
of a point at the centre of disturbance._
Table of Temperatures 115
Mr. E. G. Acheson, One of the Pioneers in the
Investigation of High Temperatures 125
The Furnace-Room, where Carborundum is Made 131
"_A great, dingy brick building, open at the
sides like a shed._"
Taking Off a Crust of the Furnace at Night 135
_The light is so intense that you cannot look at
it without hurting the eyes._
The Interior of a Furnace as it Appears after the
Carborundum has been Taken Out 143
Blowing Off 147
"_Not infrequently gas collects, forming a
miniature mountain, with a crater at its summit,
and blowing a magnificent fountain of flame,
lava, and dense white vapour high into the air,
and roaring all the while in a most terrifying
manner._"
Side View of the Solar Motor 155
Front View of the Los Angeles Solar Motor 159
The Brilliant Steam Boiler Glistens in the Centre 163
The Rear Machinery for Operating the Reflector 167
Trees Growing in Water at Professor Nobbe's
Laboratory 187
Experimenting with Nitrogen in Professor Nobbe's
Laboratory 191
Mr. Charles S. Bradley 198
Mr. D. R. Lovejoy 199
Eight-Inch 10,000-Volt Arcs Burning the Air for
Fixing Nitrogen 200
Machine for Burning the Air with Electric Arcs
so as to Produce Nitrates 201
Marconi. The Sending of an Epoch-Making Message 206
_January 18, 1903, marks the beginning of a new
era in telegraphic communication. On that day
there was sent by Marconi himself from the
wireless station at South Wellfleet, Cape Cod,
Mass., to the station at Poldhu, Cornwall,
England, a distance of 3,000 miles, the
message--destined soon to be historic--from the
President of the United States to the King of
England._
Preparing to Fly the Kite which Supported the
Receiving Wire 213
_Marconi on the extreme left._
Mr. Marconi and his Assistants in Newfoundland:
Mr. Kemp on the Left, Mr. Paget on the Right 217
_They are sitting on a balloon basket, with one
of the Baden-Powell kites in the background._
Marconi Transatlantic Station at Wellfleet, Cape
Cod, Mass. 229
At Poole, England 231
Nearer View, South Foreland Station 235
Alum Bay Station, Isle of Wight 237
Marconi Room, S.S. Philadelphia 241
Transatlantic High Power, Marconi Station at
Glace Bay, Nova Scotia 247
Work on the Smith Point Lighthouse Stopped by
a Violent Storm 254
_Just after the cylinder had been set in place,
and while the workmen were hurrying to stow
sufficient ballast to secure it against a heavy
sea, a storm forced the attending steamer to draw
away. One of the barges was almost overturned,
and a lifeboat was driven against the cylinder
and crushed to pieces._
Robert Stevenson, Builder of the Famous Bell
Rock Lighthouse, and Author of Important
Inventions and Improvements in the System
of Sea Lighting 256
_From a bust by Joseph, now in the library of
Bell Rock Lighthouse._
The Bell Rock Lighthouse, on the Eastern Coast
of Scotland 257
_From the painting by Turner. The Bell Rock
Lighthouse was built by Robert Stevenson,
grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson, on the
Inchcape Reef, in the North Sea, near Dundee,
Scotland, in 1807-1810._
The Present Lighthouse on Minot's Ledge, near
the Entrance of Massachusetts Bay, Fifteen
Miles Southeast of Boston 260
"_Rising sheer out of the sea, like a huge stone
cannon, mouth upward._"--Longfellow.
The Lighthouse on Stannard Rock, Lake Superior 261
_This is a stone-tower lighthouse, similar in
construction to the one built with such difficulty
on Spectacle Reef, Lake Huron._
The Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, Florida 264
Fourteen-Foot Bank Light Station, Delaware
Bay, Del. 268
The Great Beds Light Station, Raritan Bay,
N. J. 270
_A specimen of iron cylinder construction._
A Storm at the Tillamook Lighthouse, in the
Pacific, one mile out from Tillamook Head,
Oregon 275
Saving the Cylinder of the Lighthouse at Smith
Point, Chesapeake Bay, from being Swamped
in a High Sea 279
_When the builders were towing the unwieldy
cylinder out to set it in position, the water
became suddenly rough and began to fill it.
Workmen, at the risk of their lives, boarded
the cylinder, and by desperate labours succeeded
in spreading sail canvas over it, and so saved a
structure that had cost months of labour and
thousands of dollars._
Great Waves Dashed Entirely Over Them, so that
They had to Cling for Their Lives to the
Air-Pipes 285
_In erecting the Smith Point lighthouse, after
the cylinder was set up, it had to be forced down
fifteen and a half feet into the sand. The lives
of the men who did this, working in the caisson
at the bottom of the sea, were absolutely in the
hands of the men who managed the engine and the
air-compressor at the surface; and twice these
latter were entirely deluged by the sea, but
still maintained steam and kept everything
running as if no sea was playing over them._
Peter Cooper Hewitt 292
_With his interrupter._
Watching a Test of the Hewitt Converter 299
_Lord Kelvin in the centre._
The Hewitt Mercury Vapour Light 305
_The circular piece just above the switch button
is one form of "boosting coil" which operates for
a fraction of a second when the current is first
turned on. The tube shown here is about an inch
in diameter and several feet long. Various shapes
may be used. Unless broken, the tubes never need
renewal._
Testing a Hewitt Converter 311
_The row of incandescent lights is used, together
with a voltmeter and ammeter, to measure strength
of current, resistance, and loss in converting._
BOYS' SECOND BOOK OF INVENTIONS
CHAPTER I
THE MIRACLE OF RADIUM
_Story of the Marvels and Dangers of the New Element Discovered by
Professor and Madame Curie_
No substance ever discovered better deserves the term "Miracle of
Science," given it by a famous English experimenter, than radium. Here
is a little pinch of white powder that looks much like common table
salt. It is one of many similar pinches sealed in little glass tubes
and owned by Professor Curie, of Paris. If you should find one of these
little tubes in the street you would think it hardly worth carrying
away, and yet many a one of them could not be bought for a small
fortune. For all the radium in the world to-day could be heaped on
a single table-spoon; a pound of it would be worth nearly a million
dollars, or more than three thousand times its weight in pure gold.
Professor and Madame Curie, who discovered radium, now possess the
largest amount of any one, but there are small quantities in the hands
of English and German scientists, and perhaps a dozen specimens in
America, one owned by the American Museum of Natural History and
several by Mr. W. J. Hammer, of New York, who was the first American to
experiment with the rare and precious substance.
[Illustration: M. Curie Explaining the Wonders of Radium at the
Sorbonne.]
And perhaps it is just as well, at first, not to have too much radium,
for besides being wonderful it is also dangerous. If a pound or two
could be gathered in a mass it would kill every one who came within its
influence. People might go up and even handle the white powder without
at the moment feeling any ill-effects, but in a week or two the
mysterious and dreadful radium influence would begin to take effect.
Slowly the victim's skin would peel off, his body would become one great
sore, he would fall blind, and finally die of paralysis and congestion
of the spinal cord. Even the small quantities now in hand have severely
burned the experimenters. Professor Curie himself has a number of bad
scars on his hands and arms due to ulcers caused by handling radium. And
Professor Becquerel, in journeying to London, carried in his waistcoat
pocket a small tube of radium to be used in a lecture there. Nothing
happened at the time, but about two weeks later Professor Becquerel
observed that the skin under his pocket was beginning to redden and fall
away, and finally a deep and painful sore formed there and remained for
weeks before healing.
It is just as well, therefore, that scientists learn more about radium
and how to handle and control it before too much is manufactured.
But the cost and danger of radium are only two of its least
extraordinary features. Seen in the daylight radium is a commonplace
white powder, but in the dark it glows like live fire, and the purer
it is the more it glows. I held for a moment one of Mr. Hammer's radium
tubes, and, the lights being turned off, it seemed like a live coal
burning there in my hand, and yet I felt no sensation of heat. But
radium really does give off heat as well as light--and gives it off
continually _without losing appreciable weight_. And that is what seems
to scientists a miracle. Imagine a coal which should burn day in and
day out for hundreds of years, always bright, always giving off heat and
light, and yet not growing any smaller, not turning to ashes. That
is the almost unbelievable property of radium. Professor Curie has
specimens which have thus been radiating light and heat for several
years, with practically no loss of weight; and no small amount of light
and heat either. Professor Curie has found that a given quantity of
radium will melt its own weight of ice every hour, and continue doing so
practically for ever. One of his associates has calculated that a fixed
quantity of radium, after throwing out heat for 1,000,000,000 years,
would have lost only one-millionth part of its bulk.
What is the reason for these extraordinary properties? Is it not
"perpetual motion"? All the great scientists of the world have been
trying in vain to answer these questions. Several theories have been
advanced, of which I shall speak later, but none seems a satisfactory
explanation. When we know more of radium perhaps we shall be better
prepared to say what it really is, and we may have to unlearn many
of the great principles of physics and chemistry which were seemingly
settled for all time. Radium would seem, indeed, to defy the very law of
the conservation of energy.
The practical mind at once sees radium in use as a new source of heat
and light for mankind, a furnace that would never have to be fed or
cleaned, a lamp that would glow perpetually--and the time may really
come, the inventor having taken hold of the wonder that the scientist
has produced, when many practical applications of the new element may be
devised. At present, however, the scarcity and cost and danger of radium
will keep it in the hands of the experimenter.
Another astonishing property of radium is its power of communicating
some of its strange qualities to certain substances brought within its
influence. Mr. Hammer kept his radium tubes for a time in a pasteboard
box. This being broken, he removed the tubes and threw the pasteboard
aside. Several days later, having occasion to turn off the lights in
the laboratory, he found that the discarded box was glowing there
in the dark. It had taken up some of the rays from the radium.
Nearly everything that comes in contact with radium thus becomes
"radio-active"--even the experimenter's clothes and hands, so that
delicate instruments are disturbed by the invisible shine of the
experimenter. Photographs can be taken with radium; it also makes
the air around it a better conductor of electricity. And still more
marvellous, besides being an agency for the destruction of life, as I
shall show later, it can actually be used in other ways to prolong life,
and the future may show many wonderful uses for it in the treatment of
disease. Already, in Paris, several cases of lupus have been cured with
it, and there is evidence that it will help to restore sight in certain
cases of blindness. I held a tube of radium to my closed eye and was
conscious of the sensation of light; the same sensation was present
when the tube was held to my temple, thus showing that the radium has
an effect on the optic nerve. A little blind girl in New York, who
had never had the sensation of light, began to see a little after
one treatment with radium, and experiments are still going on, but
cautiously, for fear that injuries may result.
We now come to the fascinating story of the discovery and manufacture
of radium. It has long been known that certain substances are
phosphorescent; that is, under the proper conditions they glow without
apparent heat. Everybody has seen "fox-fire" in the damp and decaying
woods--a cold light which scientists have never been able to explain.
To M. Henri Becquerel of the French Institute is generally given the
credit for having begun the real study of radio-activity, although,
as in every great discovery and invention, many other scientists and
practical electricians had paved the way by their investigations.
In 1896 M. Becquerel was conducting some experiments with various
phosphorescent substances. He exposed some salts of the metal uranium
to the sunlight until they became phosphorescent, and then tried their
effect upon a photographic plate.
It rained, and he put the plate away in a drawer for several days.
When he developed it he was surprised to find on it a better image than
sunlight would have made. And thus, by a sort of accident, he led up to
the discovery of the Becquerel rays, so called.
Uranium is extracted from a metal or ore called uranite by mineralogists,
and popularly known as pitch-blende. Every young college student who
has studied geology or chemistry has heard of pitch-blende.
Two years after Becquerel's discovery of the radio-activity of uranium
Professor Pierre Curie and Madame Curie, of Paris, made the discovery
that some of the samples of pitch-blende which they had were much more
powerful than any uranium that they had used.
Was there, then, something more powerful than uranium within the
pitch-blende? They began to "boil down" the waste rock left at the
uranium mines, and found a strange new element, related to uranium
but different, to which Madame Curie gave the name polonium, after her
native land, Poland.
[Illustration: Dr. Danlos Treating a Lupus Patient with Radium at the
St. Louis Hospital, Paris.]
Then they did some more boiling down, and succeeded in isolating
an entirely new substance, and the most radio-active yet
discovered--radium. Shortly after that Debierne discovered still another
radio-active substance, to which he gave the name actinium.
Thus three new elements were added to the list of the world's
substances, and the most wonderful of these is radium. In a day, almost,
the Curies became famous in the scientific world, and many of the
greatest investigators in the world--Lord Kelvin, Sir William Crookes,
and others--took up the study of radium.
Very rarely have a man and woman worked together so perfectly as
Professor Curie and his wife. Madame Curie was a Polish girl; she
came to Paris to study, very poor, but possessed of rare talents. Her
marriage with M. Curie was such a union as _must_ have produced some
fine result. Without his scientific learning and vivid imagination it
is doubtful if radium would ever have been dreamed of, and without her
determination and patience against detail it is likely the dream would
never have been realised.
One of the chief problems to be met in finding the secrets of radium is
the great difficulty and expense, in the first place, of getting any of
the substance to experiment with. The Curies have had to manufacture
all they themselves have used. In the first place, pitch-blende, which
closely resembles iron in appearance, is not plentiful. The best of it
comes from Bohemia, but it is also found in Saxony, Norway, Egypt, and
in North Carolina, Colorado, and Utah. It appears in small lumps in
veins of gold, silver, and mica, and sometimes in granite.
Comparatively speaking, it is easy to get uranium from pitch-blende.
But to get the radium from the residues is a much more complicated task.
According to Professor Curie, it is necessary to refine about 5,000 tons
of uranium residues to get a kilogramme--or about 2.2 pounds--of radium.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, considering the enormous amount of
raw material which must be handled, that the cost of this rare mineral
should be high. It has been said that there is more gold in sea-water
than radium in the earth. Professor Curie has an extensive plant at
Ivry, near Paris, where the refuse dust brought from the uranium mines
is treated by complicated processes, which finally yield a powder or
crystals containing a small amount of radium. These crystals are sent
to the laboratory of the Curies where the final delicate processes of
extraction are carried on by the professor and his wife.
And, after all, pure metallic radium is not obtained. It could be
obtained, and Professor Curie has actually made a very small quantity of
it, but it is unstable, immediately oxidised by the air and destroyed.
So it is manufactured only in the form of chloride and bromide of
radium. The "strength" of radium is measured in radio-activity, in the
power of emitting rays. So we hear of radium of an intensity of 45 or
7,000 or 300,000. This method of measurement is thus explained. Taking
the radio-activity of uranium as the unit, as one, then a certain
specimen of radium is said to be 45 or 7,000 or 300,000 times as
intense, to have so many times as much radio-activity. The radium of
highest intensity in this country now is 300,000, but the Curies have
succeeded in producing a specimen of 1,500,000 intensity. This is so
powerful and dangerous that it must be kept wrapped in lead, which has
the effect of stopping some of the rays. Rock-salt is another substance
which hinders the passage of the rays.
English scientists have devised a curious little instrument, called the
spinthariscope, which allows one actually to _see_ the emanations
from radium and to realise as never before the extraordinary atomic
disintegration that is going on ceaselessly in this strange metal. The
spinthariscope is a small microscope that allows one to look at a tiny
fragment of radium supported on a little wire over a screen.
[Illustration: Radium as a Test for Real Diamonds.
_At the approach of Radium pure gems are thrown into great brilliancy,
while imitations remain dull._]
The experiment must be made in a darkened room after the eye has
gradually acquired its greatest sensitiveness to light. Looking intently
through the lenses the screen appears like a heaven of flashing meteors
among which stars shine forth suddenly and die away. Near the central
radium speck the fire-shower is most brilliant, while toward the rim of
the circle it grows fainter. And this goes on continuously as the metal
throws off its rays like myriads of bursting, blazing stars. M. Curie
has spoken of this vision, really contained within the area of a
two-cent piece, as one of the most beautiful and impressive he ever
witnessed; it was as if he had been allowed to assist at the birth of a
universe. Radium emits radiations, that is, it shoots off particles of
itself into space at such terrific speed that 92,500 miles a second is
considered a small estimate. Yet, in spite of the fact that this
waste goes on eternally and at such enormous velocity, the actual loss
sustained by the radium is, as I have said, infinitesimal.
We now come to one of the most interesting phases of the whole subject
of radium--that is, the influence which its strange rays have upon
animal life. Mr. Cleveland Moffett, to whom I am indebted for the facts
of the following experiments, recently visited M. Danysz, of the Pasteur
Institute in Paris, who has made some wonderful investigations in this
branch of science. M. Danysz has tried the effect of radium on mice,
rabbits, guinea-pigs, and other animals, and on plants, and he found
that if exposed long enough they all died, often first losing their fur
and becoming blind.
But the most startling experiment performed thus far at the Pasteur
Institute is one undertaken by M. Danysz, February 3, 1903, when he
placed three or four dozen little larvæ that live in flour in a glass
flask, where they were exposed for a few hours to the rays of radium.
He placed a like number of larvæ in a control-flask, where there was
no radium, and he left enough flour in each flask for the larvæ to live
upon. After several weeks it was found that most of the larvæ in the
radium flask had been killed, but that a few of them had escaped the
destructive action of the rays by crawling away to distant corners of
the flask, where they were still living. But _they were living as larvæ,
not as moths_, whereas in the natural course they should have become
moths long before, as was seen by the control-flask, where the larvæ
had all changed into moths, and these had hatched their eggs into other
larvæ, and these had produced other moths. All of which made it clear
that the radium rays had arrested the development of these little worms.
More weeks passed, and still three or four of the larvæ lived, and four
full months after the original exposure one larva was still alive and
wriggling, while its contemporary larvæ in the other jar had long since
passed away as aged moths, leaving generations of moths' eggs and larvæ
to witness this miracle, for here was a larva, venerable among his kind,
that had actually lived through _three times the span of life accorded
to his fellows_ and that still showed no sign of changing into a
moth. It was very much as if a young man of twenty-one should keep the
appearance of twenty-one for two hundred and fifty years!
Not less remarkable than these are some recent experiments made by M.
Bohn at the biological laboratories of the Sorbonne, his conclusions
being that radium may so far modify various lower forms of life as to
actually produce new species of "monsters," abnormal deviations from
the original type of the species. Furthermore, he has been able to
accomplish with radium what Professor Loeb did with salt solutions--that
is, to cause the growth of unfecundated eggs of the sea-urchin, and
to advance these through several stages of their development. In other
words, he has used radium _to create life_ where there would have been
no life but for this strange stimulation.
So much for the wonders of radium. We seem, indeed, to be on the
border-land of still more wonderful discoveries. Perhaps these radium
investigations will lead to some explanation of that great question in
science, "What is electricity?"--and that, who can say, may solve that
profounder problem, "What is life?"
At present there are two theories as to the source of energy in radium,
thus stated by Professor Curie:
"Where is the source of this energy? Both Madame Curie and myself are
unable to go beyond hypotheses; one of these consists in supposing the
atoms of radium evolving and transforming into another simple body, and,
despite the extreme slowness of that transformation, which cannot
be located during a year, the amount of energy involved in that
transformation is tremendous.
[Illustration: M. and Mme. Curie Finishing the Preparation of some
Radium.]
"The second hypothesis consists in the supposition that radium is
capable of capturing and utilising some radiations of unknown nature
which cross space without our knowledge."