Produced by The James J. Kelly Library of St. Gregory's
University, Alev Akman, and Dianne Bean
THE AGE OF INVENTION,
A CHRONICLE OF MECHANICAL CONQUEST
By Holland Thompson
PREFATORY NOTE
This volume is not intended to be a complete record of inventive genius
and mechanical progress in the United States. A bare catalogue of
notable American inventions in the nineteenth century alone could not be
compressed into these pages. Nor is it any part of the purpose of
this book to trespass on the ground of the many mechanical works and
encyclopedias which give technical descriptions and explain in detail
the principle of every invention. All this book seeks to do is to
outline the personalities of some of the outstanding American inventors
and indicate the significance of their achievements.
Acknowledgments are due the Editor of the Series and to members of the
staff of the Yale University Press particularly, Miss Constance Lindsay
Skinner, Mr. Arthur Edwin Krows, and Miss Frances Hart--without whose
intelligent assistance the book could not have been completed in time to
take its place in the Series.
H. T.
COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK,
May 10, 1921.
CONTENTS
I. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND HIS TIMES
II. ELI WHITNEY AND THE COTTON GIN
III. STEAM IN CAPTIVITY
IV. SPINDLE, LOOM, AND NEEDLE IN NEW ENGLAND
V. THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION
VI. AGENTS OF COMMUNICATION
VII. THE STORY OF RUBBER
VIII. PIONEERS OF THE MACHINE SHOP
IX. THE FATHERS OF ELECTRICITY
X. THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
THE AGE OF INVENTION
CHAPTER I. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND HIS TIMES
On Milk Street, in Boston, opposite the Old South Church, lived Josiah
Franklin, a maker of soap and candles. He had come to Boston with his
wife about the year 1682 from the parish of Ecton, Northamptonshire,
England, where his family had lived on a small freehold for about three
hundred years. His English wife had died, leaving him seven children,
and he had married a colonial girl, Abiah Folger, whose father, Peter
Folger, was a man of some note in early Massachusetts.
Josiah Franklin was fifty-one and his wife Abiah thirty-nine, when the
first illustrious American inventor was born in their house on Milk
Street, January 17, 1706. He was their eighth child and Josiah's
tenth son and was baptized Benjamin. What little we know of Benjamin's
childhood is contained in his "Autobiography", which the world has
accepted as one of its best books and which was the first American book
to be so accepted. In the crowded household, where thirteen children
grew to manhood and womanhood, there were no luxuries. Benjamin's period
of formal schooling was less than two years, though he could never
remember the time when he could not read, and at the age of ten he was
put to work in his father's shop.
Benjamin was restless and unhappy in the shop. He appeared to have no
aptitude at all for the business of soap making. His parents debated
whether they might not educate him for the ministry, and his father took
him into various shops in Boston, where he might see artisans at work,
in the hope that he would be attracted to some trade. But Benjamin saw
nothing there that he wished to engage in. He was inclined to follow the
sea, as one of his older brothers had done.
His fondness for books finally determined his career. His older brother
James was a printer, and in those days a printer was a literary man as
well as a mechanic. The editor of a newspaper was always a printer and
often composed his articles as he set them in type; so "composing" came
to mean typesetting, and one who sets type is a compositor. Now James
needed an apprentice. It happened then that young Benjamin, at the age
of thirteen, was bound over by law to serve his brother.
James Franklin printed the "New England Courant", the fourth newspaper
to be established in the colonies. Benjamin soon began to write articles
for this newspaper. Then when his brother was put in jail, because he
had printed matter considered libelous, and forbidden to continue as the
publisher, the newspaper appeared in Benjamin's name.
The young apprentice felt that his brother was unduly severe and, after
serving for about two years, made up his mind to run away. Secretly he
took passage on a sloop and in three days reached New York, there to
find that the one printer in the town, William Bradford, could give him
no work. Benjamin then set out for Philadelphia. By boat to Perth Amboy,
on foot to Burlington, and then by boat to Philadelphia was the course
of his journey, which consumed five days. On a Sunday morning in
October, 1723, the tired, hungry boy landed upon the Market Street
wharf, and at once set out to find food and explore America's
metropolis.
Benjamin found employment with Samuel Keimer, an eccentric printer just
beginning business, and lodgings at the house of Read, whose daughter
Deborah was later to become his wife. The intelligent young printer soon
attracted the notice of Sir William Keith, Governor of Pennsylvania, who
promised to set him up in business. First, however, he must go to London
to buy a printing outfit. On the Governor's promise to send a letter
of credit for his needs in London, Franklin set sail; but the Governor
broke his word, and Franklin was obliged to remain in London nearly two
years working at his trade. It was in London that he printed the
first of his many pamphlets, an attack on revealed religion, called "A
Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain." Though he met
some interesting persons, from each of whom he extracted, according to
his custom, every particle of information possible, no future opened for
him in London, and he accepted an offer to return to Philadelphia with
employment as a clerk. But early in 1727 his employer died, and Benjamin
went back to his trade, as printers always do. He found work again in
Keimer's printing office. Here his mechanical ingenuity and general
ability presently began to appear; he invented a method of casting type,
made ink, and became, in fact, the real manager of the business.
The ability to make friends was one of Franklin's traits, and the number
of his acquaintances grew rapidly, both in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
"I grew convinced," he naively says, "that TRUTH, SINCERITY, and
INTEGRITY in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance
to the felicity of life." Not long after his return from England he
founded in Philadelphia the Junto, a society which at its regular
meetings argued various questions and criticized the writings of the
members. Through this society he enlarged his reputation as well as his
education.
The father of an apprentice at Keimer's furnished the money to buy a
printing outfit for his son and Franklin, but the son soon sold his
share, and Benjamin Franklin, Printer, was fairly established in
business at the age of twenty-four. The writing of an anonymous pamphlet
on "The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency" called attention to
the need of a further issue of paper money in Pennsylvania, and the
author of the tract was rewarded with the contract to print the money,
"a very profitable job, and a great help to me." Small favors were
thankfully received. And, "I took care not only to be in REALITY
industrious and frugal, but to avoid all appearances to the contrary. I
drest plainly; I was seen at no places of idle diversion." And, "to show
that I was not above my business, I sometimes brought home the paper I
purchased at the stores thru the streets on a wheelbarrow."
"The Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania
Gazette": this was the high-sounding name of a newspaper which
Franklin's old employer, Keimer, had started in Philadelphia. But
bankruptcy shortly overtook Keimer, and Franklin took the newspaper with
its ninety subscribers. The "Universal Instructor" feature of the paper
consisted of a page or two weekly of "Chambers's Encyclopedia". Franklin
eliminated this feature and dropped the first part of the long name.
"The Pennsylvania Gazette" in Franklin's hands soon became profitable.
And it lives today in the fullness of abounding life, though under
another name. "Founded A.D. 1728 by Benj. Franklin" is the proud legend
of "The Saturday Evening Post", which carries on, in our own times, the
Franklin tradition.
The "Gazette" printed bits of local news, extracts from the London
"Spectator", jokes, verses, humorous attacks on Bradford's "Mercury", a
rival paper, moral essays by the editor, elaborate hoaxes, and pungent
political or social criticism. Often the editor wrote and printed
letters to himself, either to emphasize some truth or to give him the
opportunity to ridicule some folly in a reply to "Alice Addertongue,"
"Anthony Afterwit," or other mythical but none the less typical person.
If the countryman did not read a newspaper, or buy books, he was, at
any rate, sure to own an almanac. So in 1732 Franklin brought out "Poor
Richard's Almanac". Three editions were sold within a few months. Year
after year the sayings of Richard Saunders, the alleged publisher, and
Bridget, his wife, creations of Franklin's fancy, were printed in the
almanac. Years later the most striking of these sayings were collected
and published. This work has been translated into as many as twenty
languages and is still in circulation today.
Franklin kept a shop in connection with his printing office, where he
sold a strange variety of goods: legal blanks, ink, pens, paper, books,
maps, pictures, chocolate, coffee, cheese, codfish, soap, linseed
oil, broadcloth, Godfrey's cordial, tea, spectacles, rattlesnake root,
lottery tickets, and stoves--to mention only a few of the many articles
he advertised. Deborah Read, who became his wife in 1730, looked after
his house, tended shop, folded and stitched pamphlets, bought rags,
and helped him to live economically. "We kept no idle servants,"
says Franklin, "our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the
cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was a long time bread and milk (no
tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer with a pewter
spoon."
With all this frugality, Franklin was not a miser; he abhorred the
waste of money, not the proper use. His wealth increased rapidly. "I
experienced too," he says, "the truth of the observation, 'THAT AFTER
GETTING THE FIRST HUNDRED POUND, IT IS MORE EASY TO GET THE SECOND,
money itself being of a prolific nature." He gave much unpaid public
service and subscribed generously to public purposes; yet he was able,
at the early age of forty-two, to turn over his printing office to one
of his journeymen, and to retire from active business, intending to
devote himself thereafter to such public employment as should come his
way, to philosophical or scientific studies, and to amusements.
From boyhood Franklin had been interested in natural phenomena. His
"Journal of a Voyage from London to Philadelphia", written at sea as he
returned from his first stay in London, shows unusual powers of exact
observation for a youth of twenty. Many of the questions he propounded
to the Junto had a scientific bearing. He made an original and important
invention in 1749, the "Pennsylvania fireplace," which, under the name
of the Franklin stove, is in common use to this day, and which brought
to the ill-made houses of the time increased comfort and a great saving
of fuel. But it brought Franklin no pecuniary reward, for he never
deigned to patent any of his inventions.
His active, inquiring mind played upon hundreds of questions in a dozen
different branches of science. He studied smoky chimneys; he invented
bifocal spectacles; he studied the effect of oil upon ruffled water;
he identified the "dry bellyache" as lead poisoning; he preached
ventilation in the days when windows were closed tight at night, and
upon the sick at all times; he investigated fertilizers in agriculture.
Many of his suggestions have since borne fruit, and his observations
show that he foresaw some of the great developments of the nineteenth
century.
His fame in science rests chiefly upon his discoveries in electricity.
On a visit to Boston in 1746 he saw some electrical experiments and at
once became deeply interested. Peter Collinson of London, a Fellow
of the Royal Society, who had made several gifts to the Philadelphia
Library, sent over some of the crude electrical apparatus of the day,
which Franklin used, as well as some contrivances he had purchased in
Boston. He says in a letter to Collinson: "For my own part, I never was
before engaged in any study that so engrossed my attention and my time
as this has lately done."
Franklin's letters to Collinson tell of his first experiments and
speculations as to the nature of electricity. Experiments made by a
little group of friends showed the effect of pointed bodies in drawing
off electricity. He decided that electricity was not the result of
friction, but that the mysterious force was diffused through most
substances, and that nature is always alert to restore its equilibrium.
He developed the theory of positive and negative electricity, or plus
and minus electrification. The same letter tells of some of the tricks
which the little group of experimenters were accustomed to play upon
their wondering neighbors. They set alcohol on fire, relighted candles
just blown out, produced mimic flashes of lightning, gave shocks
on touching or kissing, and caused an artificial spider to move
mysteriously.
Franklin carried on experiments with the Leyden jar, made an electrical
battery, killed a fowl and roasted it upon a spit turned by electricity,
sent a current through water and found it still able to ignite alcohol,
ignited gunpowder, and charged glasses of wine so that the drinkers
received shocks. More important, perhaps, he began to develop the theory
of the identity of lightning and electricity, and the possibility of
protecting buildings by iron rods. By means of an iron rod he brought
down electricity into his house, where he studied its effect upon bells
and concluded that clouds were generally negatively electrified. In
June, 1752, he performed the famous experiment with the kite, drawing
down electricity from the clouds and charging a Leyden jar from the key
at the end of the string.
Franklin's letters to Collinson were read before the Royal Society
but were unnoticed. Collinson gathered them together, and they were
published in a pamphlet which attracted wide attention. Translated into
French, they created great excitement, and Franklin's conclusions were
generally accepted by the scientific men of Europe. The Royal Society,
tardily awakened, elected Franklin a member and in 1753 awarded him the
Copley medal with a complimentary address.*
* It may be useful to mention some of the scientific facts and
mechanical principles which were known to Europeans at this time.
More than one learned essay has been written to prove the mechanical
indebtedness of the modern world to the ancient, particularly to the
works of those mechanically minded Greeks: Archimedes, Aristotle,
Ctesibius, and Hero of Alexandria. The Greeks employed the lever, the
tackle, and the crane, the force-pump, and the suction-pump. They had
discovered that steam could be mechanically applied, though they never
made any practical use of steam. In common with other ancients they
knew the principle of the mariner's compass. The Egyptians had the
water-wheel and the rudimentary blast-furnace. The pendulum clock
appears to have been an invention of the Middle Ages. The art of
printing from movable type, beginning with Gutenberg about 1450, helped
to further the Renaissance. The improved mariner's compass enabled
Columbus to find the New world; gunpowder made possible its conquest.
The compound microscope and the first practical telescope came from the
spectacle makers of Middelburg, Holland, the former about 1590 and the
latter about 1608. Harvey, an English physician, had discovered the
circulation of the blood in 1628, and Newton, an English mathematician,
the law of gravitation in 1685.
If Franklin's desire to continue his scientific researches had been
gratified, it is possible that he might have discovered some of the
secrets for which the world waited until Edison and his contemporaries
revealed them more than a century later. Franklin's scientific
reputation has grown with the years, and some of his views seem in
perfect accord with the latest developments in electricity. But he
was not to be permitted to continue his experiments. He had shown his
ability to manage men and was to be called to a wider field.
Franklin's influence among his fellow citizens in Philadelphia was very
great. Always ostensibly keeping himself in the background and working
through others, never contradicting, but carrying his point by shrewd
questions which showed the folly of the contrary position, he continued
to set on foot and carry out movements for the public good. He
established the first circulating library in Philadelphia, and one of
the first in the country, and an academy which grew into the University
of Pennsylvania. He was instrumental in the foundation of a hospital. "I
am often ask'd by those to whom I propose subscribing," said one of the
doctors who had made fruitless attempts to raise money for the hospital,
"Have you consulted Franklin upon this business?" Other public matters
in which the busy printer was engaged were the paving and cleaning of
the streets, better street lighting, the organization of a police force
and of a fire company. A pamphlet which he published, "Plain Truth",
showing the helplessness of the colony against the French and Indians,
led to the organization of a volunteer militia, and funds were raised
for arms by a lottery. Franklin himself was elected colonel of the
Philadelphia regiment, "but considering myself unfit, I declined
the station and recommended Mr. Lawrence, a fine person and man of
influence, who was accordingly appointed." In spite of his militarism,
Franklin retained the position which he held as Clerk of the Assembly,
though the majority of the members were Quakers opposed to war on
principle.
The American Philosophical Society owes its origin to Franklin. It was
formally organized on his motion in 1743, but the society has accepted
the organization of the Junto in 1727 as the actual date of its birth.
From the beginning the society has had among its members many leading
men of scientific attainments or tastes, not only of Philadelphia, but
of the world. In 1769 the original society was consolidated with another
of similar aims, and Franklin, who was the first secretary of the
society, was elected president and served until his death. The first
important undertaking was the successful observation of the transit of
Venus in 1769, and many important scientific discoveries have since been
made by its members and first given to the world at its meetings.
Franklin's appointment as one of the two Deputy Postmasters General
of the colonies in 1753 enlarged his experience and his reputation. He
visited nearly all the post offices in the colonies and introduced
many improvements into the service. In none of his positions did his
transcendent business ability show to better advantage. He established
new postal routes and shortened others. There were no good roads in the
colonies, but his post riders made what then seemed wonderful speed.
The bags were opened to newspapers, the carrying of which had previously
been a private and unlawful perquisite of the riders. Previously there
had been one mail a week in summer between New York and Philadelphia
and one a month in winter. The service was increased to three a week in
summer and one in winter.
The main post road ran from northern New England to Savannah, closely
hugging the seacoast for the greater part of the way. Some of the
milestones set by Franklin to enable the postmasters to compute the
postage, which was fixed according to distance, are still standing.
Crossroads connected some of the larger communities away from the
seacoast with the main road, but when Franklin died, after serving also
as Postmaster General of the United States, there were only seventy-five
post offices in the entire country.
Franklin took a hand in the final struggle between France and England
in America. On the eve of the conflict, in 1754, commissioners from the
several colonies were ordered to convene at Albany for a conference with
the Six Nations of the Iroquois, and Franklin was one of the deputies
from Pennsylvania. On his way to Albany he "projected and drew a plan
for the union of all the colonies under one government so far as might
be necessary for defense and other important general purposes." This
statesmanlike "Albany Plan of Union," however, came to nothing. "Its
fate was singular," says Franklin; "the assemblies did not adopt it, as
they all thought there was too much PREROGATIVE in it and in England it
was judg'd to have too much of the DEMOCRATIC."
How to raise funds for defense was always a grave problem in the
colonies, for the assemblies controlled the purse-strings and released
them with a grudging hand. In face of the French menace, this was
Governor Shirley's problem in Massachusetts, Governor Dinwiddie's in
Virginia, and Franklin's in the Quaker and proprietary province of
Pennsylvania. Franklin opposed Shirley's suggestion of a general tax to
be levied on the colonies by Parliament, on the ground of no taxation
without representation, but used all his arts to bring the Quaker
Assembly to vote money for defense, and succeeded. When General Braddock
arrived in Virginia Franklin was sent by the Assembly to confer with him
in the hope of allaying any prejudice against Quakers that the general
might have conceived. If that blustering and dull-witted soldier had any
such prejudice, it melted away when the envoy of the Quakers promised to
procure wagons for the army. The story of Braddock's disaster does not
belong here, but Franklin formed a shrewd estimate of the man which
proved accurate. His account of Braddock's opinion of the colonial
militia is given in a sentence: "He smil'd at my ignorance, and reply'd,
'These savages may, indeed, be a formidable enemy to your raw American
militia, but upon the King's regular and disciplin'd troops, sir, it is
impossible they should make any impression.'" After Braddock's defeat
the Pennsylvania Assembly voted more money for defense, and the
unmilitary Franklin was placed in command of the frontier with full
power. He built forts, as he had planned, and incidentally learned much
of the beliefs of a group of settlers in the back country, the "Unitas
Fratrum," better known as the Moravians.
The death struggle between English and French in America served only to
intensify a lesser conflict that was being waged between the Assembly
and the proprietors of Pennsylvania; and the Assembly determined to
send Franklin to London to seek judgment against the proprietors and to
request the King to take away from them the government of Pennsylvania.
Franklin, accompanied by his son William, reached London in July, 1757,
and from this time on his life was to be closely linked with Europe. He
returned to America six years later and made a trip of sixteen hundred
miles inspecting postal affairs, but in 1764 he was again sent to
England to renew the petition for a royal government for Pennsylvania,
which had not yet been granted. Presently that petition was made
obsolete by the Stamp Act, and Franklin became the representative of the
American colonies against King and Parliament.
Franklin did his best to avert the Revolution. He made many friends in
England, wrote pamphlets and articles, told comical stories and fables
where they might do some good, and constantly strove to enlighten the
ruling class of England upon conditions and sentiment in the colonies.
His examination before the House of Commons in February, 1766, marks
perhaps the zenith of his intellectual powers. His wide knowledge,
his wonderful poise, his ready wit, his marvelous gift for clear and
epigrammatic statement, were never exhibited to better advantage and no
doubt hastened the repeal of the Stamp Act. Franklin remained in England
nine years longer, but his efforts to reconcile the conflicting claims
of Parliament and the colonies were of no avail, and early in 1775 he
sailed for home.
Franklin's stay in America lasted only eighteen months, yet during that
time he sat in the Continental Congress and as a member of the most
important committees; submitted a plan for a union of the colonies;
served as Postmaster General and as chairman of the Pennsylvania
Committee of Safety; visited Washington at Cambridge; went to Montreal
to do what he could for the cause of independence in Canada; presided
over the convention which framed a constitution for Pennsylvania; was
a member of the committee appointed to draft the Declaration of
Independence and of the committee sent on the futile mission to New York
to discuss terms of peace with Lord Howe.
In September, 1776, Franklin was appointed envoy to France and sailed
soon afterwards. The envoys appointed to act with him proved a handicap
rather than a help, and the great burden of a difficult and momentous
mission was thus laid upon an old man of seventy. But no other American
could have taken his place. His reputation in France was already made,
through his books and inventions and discoveries. To the corrupt and
licentious court he was the personification of the age of simplicity,
which it was the fashion to admire; to the learned, he was a sage; to
the common man he was the apotheosis of all the virtues; to the rabble
he was little less than a god. Great ladies sought his smiles; nobles
treasured a kindly word; the shopkeeper hung his portrait on the wall;
and the people drew aside in the streets that he might pass without
annoyance. Through all this adulation Franklin passed serenely, if not
unconsciously.
The French ministers were not at first willing to make a treaty
of alliance, but under Franklin's influence they lent money to the
struggling colonies. Congress sought to finance the war by the issue of
paper currency and by borrowing rather than by taxation, and sent bill
after bill to Franklin, who somehow managed to meet them by putting
his pride in his pocket, and applying again and again to the French
Government. He fitted out privateers and negotiated with the British
concerning prisoners. At length he won from France recognition of the
United States and then the Treaty of Alliance.
Not until two years after the Peace of 1783 would Congress permit the
veteran to come home. And when he did return in 1785 his people would
not allow him to rest. At once he was elected President of the Council
of Pennsylvania and twice reelected in spite of his protests. He was
sent to the Convention of 1787 which framed the Constitution of the
United States. There he spoke seldom but always to the point, and the
Constitution is the better for his suggestions. With pride he axed his
signature to that great instrument, as he had previously signed the
Albany Plan of Union, the Declaration of Independence, and the Treaty of
Paris.
Benjamin Franklin's work was done. He was now an old man of eighty-two
summers and his feeble body was racked by a painful malady. Yet he kept
his face towards the morning. About a hundred of his letters,
written after this time, have been preserved. These letters show no
retrospection, no looking backward. They never mention "the good old
times." As long as he lived, Franklin looked forward. His interest
in the mechanical arts and in scientific progress seems never to have
abated. He writes in October, 1787, to a friend in France, describing
his experience with lightning conductors and referring to the work of
David Rittenhouse, the celebrated astronomer of Philadelphia. On the
31st of May in the following year he is writing to the Reverend John
Lathrop of Boston:
"I have long been impressed with the same sentiments you so well
express, of the growing felicity of mankind, from the improvement
in philosophy, morals, politics, and even the conveniences of common
living, and the invention of new and useful utensils and instruments;
so that I have sometimes wished it had been my destiny to be born two or
three centuries hence. For invention and improvement are prolific, and
beget more of their kind. The present progress is rapid. Many of great
importance, now unthought of, will, before that period, be produced."
Thus the old philosopher felt the thrill of dawn and knew that the day
of great mechanical inventions was at hand. He had read the meaning of
the puffing of the young steam engine of James Watt and he had heard of
a marvelous series of British inventions for spinning and weaving. He
saw that his own countrymen were astir, trying to substitute the power
of steam for the strength of muscles and the fitful wind. John Fitch on
the Delaware and James Rumsey on the Potomac were already moving vessels
by steam. John Stevens of New York and Hoboken had set up a machine shop
that was to mean much to mechanical progress in America. Oliver Evans,
a mechanical genius of Delaware, was dreaming of the application
of high-pressure steam to both road and water carriages. Such
manifestations, though still very faint, were to Franklin the signs of a
new era.
And so, with vision undimmed, America's most famous citizen lived
on until near the end of the first year of George Washington's
administration. On April 17, 1790, his unconquerable spirit took its
flight.
In that year, 1790, was taken the First Census of the United States.
The new nation had a population of about four million people. It then
included practically the present territory east of the Mississippi,
except the Floridas, which belonged to Spain. But only a small part
of this territory was occupied. Much of New York and Pennsylvania was
savage wilderness. Only the seacoast of Maine was inhabited, and the
eighty-two thousand inhabitants of Georgia hugged the Savannah River.
Hardy pioneers had climbed the Alleghanies into Kentucky and Tennessee,
but the Northwest Territory--comprising Ohio, Michigan, Indiana,
Illinois, and Wisconsin--was not enumerated at all, so scanty were its
people, perhaps not more than four thousand.
Though the First Census did not classify the population by occupation it
is certain that nine-tenths of the breadwinners worked more or less upon
the soil. The remaining tenth were engaged in trade, transportation,
manufacturing, fishing and included also the professional men, doctors,
lawyers, clergymen, teachers, and the like. In other words, nine out of
ten of the population were engaged primarily in the production of food,
an occupation which today engages less than three out of ten. This
comparison, however, requires some qualification. The farmer and the
farmer's wife and children performed many tasks which are now done in
factories. The successful farmer on the frontier had to be a jack of
many trades. Often he tanned leather and made shoes for his family and
harness for his horses. He was carpenter, blacksmith, cobbler, and often
boat-builder and fisherman as well. His wife made soap and candles, spun
yarn and dyed it, wove cloth and made the clothes the family wore, to
mention only a few of the tasks of the women of the eighteenth century.
The organization of industry, however, was beginning. Here and there
were small paper mills, glass factories-though many houses in the back
country were without glass windows--potteries, and iron foundries and
forges. Capitalists, in some places, had brought together a few
handloom weavers to make cloth for sale, and the famous shoemakers of
Massachusetts commonly worked in groups.
The mineral resources of the United States were practically unknown. The
country seems to have produced iron enough for its simple needs, some
coal, copper, lead, gold, silver, and sulphur. But we may say that
mining was hardly practiced at all.
The fisheries and the shipyards were great sources of wealth, especially
for New England. The cod fishers numbered several hundred vessels and
the whalers about forty. Thousands of citizens living along the seashore
and the rivers fished more or less to add to the local food supply. The
deep-sea fishermen exported a part of their catch, dried and salted.
Yankee vessels sailed to all ports of the world and carried the greater
part of the foreign commerce of the United States. Flour, tobacco, rice,
wheat, corn, dried fish, potash, indigo, and staves were the principal
exports. Great Britain was the best customer, with the French West
Indies next, and then the British West Indies. The principal imports
came from the same countries. Imports and exports practically balanced
each other, at about twenty million dollars annually, or about five
dollars a head. The great merchants owned ships and many of them, such
as John Hancock of Boston, and Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, had grown
very rich.
Inland transportation depended on horses and oxen or boats. There were
few good roads, sometimes none at all save bridle paths and trails.
The settlers along the river valleys used boats almost entirely.
Stage-coaches made the journey from New York to Boston in four days in
summer and in six in winter. Two days were required to go between New
York and Philadelphia. Forty to fifty miles a day was the speed of the
best coaches, provided always that they did not tumble into the ditch.
In many parts of the country one must needs travel on horseback or on
foot.
Even the wealthiest Americans of those days had few or none of the
articles which we regard today as necessities of life. The houses were
provided with open--which, however cheerful, did not keep them warm--or
else with Franklin's stoves. To strike a fire one must have the flint
and tinderbox, for matches were unknown until about 1830. Candles made
the darkness visible. There was neither plumbing nor running water. Food
was cooked in the ashes or over an open fire.
The farmer's tools were no less crude than his wife's. His plough had
been little improved since the days of Rameses. He sowed his wheat
by hand, cut it with a sickle, flailed it out upon the floor, and
laboriously winnowed away the chaff.
In that same year, 1790, came a great boon and encouragement to
inventors, the first Federal Patent Act, passed by Congress on the 10th
of April. Every State had its own separate patent laws or regulations,
as an inheritance from colonial days, but the Fathers of the
Constitution had wisely provided that this function of government should
be exercised by the nation.* The Patent Act, however, was for a
time unpopular, and some States granted monopolies, particularly of
transportation, until they were forbidden to do so by judicial decision.
* The Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8) empowers
Congress: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful
Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors
the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries."
The first Patent Act provided that an examining board, consisting of the
Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, and the Attorney-General, or
any two of them, might grant a patent for fourteen years, if they
deemed the invention useful and important. The patent itself was to be
engrossed and signed by the President, the Secretary of State, and
the Attorney-General. And the cost was to be three dollars and seventy
cents, plus the cost of copying the specifications at ten cents a sheet.
The first inventor to avail himself of the advantages of the new Patent
Act was Samuel Hopkins of Vermont, who received a patent on the 31st of
July for an improved method of "Making Pot and Pearl Ashes." The world
knows nothing of this Samuel Hopkins, but the potash industry, which was
evidently on his mind, was quite important in his day. Potash, that is,
crude potassium carbonate, useful in making soap and in the manufacture
of glass, was made by leaching wood ashes and boiling down the lye. To
produce a ton of potash, the trees on an acre of ground would be cut
down and burned, the ashes leached, and the lye evaporated in great iron
kettles. A ton of potash was worth about twenty-five dollars. Nothing
could show more plainly the relative value of money and human labor in
those early times.
Two more patents were issued during the year 1790. The second went to
Joseph S. Sampson of Boston for a method of making candles, and the
third to Oliver Evans, of whom we shall learn more presently, for an
improvement in manufacturing flour and meal. The fourth patent was
granted in 1791 to Francis Baily of Philadelphia for making punches
for types. Next Aaron Putnam of Medford, Massachusetts, thought that
he could improve methods of distilling, and John Stone of Concord,
Massachusetts, offered a new method of driving piles for bridges. And
a versatile inventor, Samuel Mulliken of Philadelphia, received four
patents in one day for threshing grain, cutting and polishing marble,
raising a nap on cloth, and breaking hemp.
Then came improvements in making nails, in making bedsteads, in the
manufacture of boats, and for propelling boats by cattle. On August 26,
1791, James Rumsey, John Stevens, and John Fitch (all three will appear
again in this narrative) took out patents on means of propelling boats.
On the same day Nathan Read received one on a process for distilling
alcohol.
More than fifty patents were granted under the Patent Act of 1790, and
mechanical devices were coming in so thick and fast that the department
heads apparently found it inconvenient to hear applications. So the
Act of 1790 was repealed. The second Patent Act (1793) provided that a
patent should be granted as a matter of routine to any one who swore to
the originality of his device and paid the sum of thirty dollars as a
fee. No one except a citizen, however, could receive a patent. This act,
with some amendments, remained in force until 1836, when the present
Patent Office was organized with a rigorous and intricate system for
examination of all claims in order to prevent interference. Protection
of the property rights of inventors has been from the beginning of the
nation a definite American policy, and to this policy may be ascribed
innumerable inventions which have contributed to the greatness of
American industry and multiplied the world's comforts and conveniences.
Under the second Patent Act came the most important invention yet
offered, an invention which was to affect generations then unborn. This
was a machine for cleaning cotton and it was offered by a young Yankee
schoolmaster, temporarily sojourning in the South.