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Title: The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.

Author: Edward W. Byrn

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROGRESS
OF INVENTION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. ***

Please see the Transcriber’s Notes at the end of this
document.

STEAM AND ELECTRICITY.
The 70,000 Horse-Power Station of the Metropolitan Street Railway, New
York.

THE PROGRESS
OF
INVENTION
IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY

BY

EDWARD W. BYRN, A.M.

“Δός που στω, και την γην κινἡσω.”
(Give me where to stand, and I’ll move the earth.)
—Archimedes.

MUNN & CO., Publishers
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN OFFICE
361 BROADWAY, NEW YORK 1900

Copyrighted, 1900, by Munn & Co.
——
Entered at Stationer’s Hall
——
London, England
——
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Printed in the United States of America by
The Manufacturers’ and Publishers’ Printing Company,
New York City.

PREFACE.

For a work of such scope as this, the first word of the author should be an
apology for what is doubtless the too ambitious effort of a single writer. A
quarter of a century in the high tide of the arts and sciences, an ardent interest
in all things that make for scientific progress, and the aid and encouragement
of many friends in and about the Patent Office, furnish the explanation. The
work cannot claim the authority of a text-book, the fullness of a history, nor
the exactness of a technical treatise. It is simply a cursory view of the century
in the field of invention, intended to present the broader bird’s-eye view of
progress achieved. In substantiation of the main facts reliance has been placed
chiefly upon patents, which for historic development are believed to be the
best of all authorities, because they carry the responsibility of the National
Government as to dates, and the attested signature and oath of the inventor as
to subject matter. Many difficulties and embarrassments have been
encountered in the work. The fear of extending it into a too bulky volume has
excluded treatment of many subjects which the author recognizes as
important, and issues in dispute as to the claims of inventors have also
presented themselves in perplexing conflict. A discussion of the latter has
been avoided as far as possible, the paramount object being to do justice to all
the worthy workers in this field, with favor to none, and only expressing such
conclusions as seem to be justified by authenticated facts and the impartial
verdict of reason in the clearing atmosphere of time. For sins of omission a
lack of space affords a reasonable excuse, and for those of commission the
great scope of the work is pleaded in extenuation. It is hoped, however, that
the volume may find an accepted place in the literature of the day, as
presenting in compact form some comprehensive and coherent idea of the
great things in invention which the Nineteenth Century has added to the
world’s wealth of ideas and material resources.
In acknowledging the many obligations to friends who have aided me in the
work, my thanks are due first to the Editors of the Scientific American for aid
rendered in the preparation of the work; also to courteous officials in the

Government Departments, and to many progressive manufacturers throughout
the country.
E. W. B.
Washington, D. C., October, 1900.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
The Perspective View.

CHAPTER II.
Chronology of Leading Inventions of the Nineteenth Century.

CHAPTER III.
The Electric Telegraph.
The Voltaic Pile. Daniell’s Battery. Use of Conducting Wire by Weber.
Steinheil Employs Earth as Return Circuit. Prof. Henry’s Electro-Magnet, and
First Telegraphic Experiment. Prof. Morse’s Telegraphic Code and Register.
First Line Between Washington and Baltimore. Bain’s Chemical Telegraph.
Gintl’s Duplex Telegraph. Edison’s Quadruplex. House’s Printing Telegraph.
Fac Simile Telegraphs. Channing and Farmer Fire Alarm. Telegraphing by
Induction. Wireless Telegraphy by Marconi. Statistics.

CHAPTER IV.
The Atlantic Cable.
Difficulties of Laying. Congratulatory Messages Between Queen Victoria and
President Buchanan. The Siphon Recorder. Statistics.

CHAPTER V.

The Dynamo and Its Applications.
Observations of Faraday and Henry. Magneto-Electric Machines of Pixii, and
of Saxton. Hjorth’s Dynamo of 1855. Wilde’s Machine of 1866. Siemens’ of
1867. Gramme’s of 1870. Tesla’s Polyphase Currents.

CHAPTER VI.
The Electric Motor.
Barlow’s Spur Wheel. Dal Negro’s Electric Pendulum. Prof. Henry’s Electric
Motor. Jacobi’s Electric Boat. Davenport’s Motor. The Neff Motor. Dr. Page’s
Electric Locomotive. Dr. Siemens’ First Electric Railway at Berlin, 1879. First
Electric Railway in United States, between Baltimore and Hampden, 1885.
Third Rail System. Statistics. Electric Railways, and General Electric
Company. Distribution Electric Current in Principal Cities.

CHAPTER VII.
The Electric Light.
Voltaic Arc by Sir Humphrey Davy. The Jablochkoff Candle. Patents of
Brush, Weston, and Others. Search Lights. Grove’s First Incandescent Lamp.
Starr-King Lamp. Moses Farmer Lights First Dwelling with Electric Lamps.
Sawyer-Man Lamp. Edison’s Incandescent Lamp. Edison’s Three-Wire
System of Circuits. Statistics.

CHAPTER VIII.
The Telephone.
Preliminary Suggestions and Experiments of Bourseul, Reis, and Drawbaugh.
First Speaking Telephone by Prof. Bell. Differences between Reis’ and Bell’s
Telephones. The Blake Transmitter. Berliner’s Variation of Resistance and
Electric Undulations, by Variation of Pressure. Edison’s Carbon Microphone.
The Telephone Exchange. Statistics.

CHAPTER IX.
Electricity, Miscellaneous.
Storage Battery. Batteries of Planté, Faure and Brush. Electric Welding. Direct
Generation of Electricity by Combustion. Electric Boats. Electro-Plating.
Edison’s Electric Pen. Electricity in Medicine. Electric Cautery. Electric
Musical Instruments. Electric Blasting.

CHAPTER X.
The Steam Engine.
Hero’s Engine, and Other Early Steam Engines. Watt’s Steam Engine. The
Cut-Off. Giffard Injector. Bourdon’s Steam Gauge. Feed Water Heaters,
Smoke Consumers, etc. Rotary Engines. Steam Hammer. Steam Fire Engine.
Compound Engines. Schlick and Taylor Systems of Balancing Momentum of
Moving Parts. Statistics.

CHAPTER XI.
The Steam Railway.
Trevithick’s Steam Carriage. Blenkinsop’s Locomotive. Hedley’s “Puffing
Billy.” Stephenson’s Locomotive. The Link Motion. Stockton and Darlington
Railway, 1825. Hackworth’s “Royal George.” The “Stourbridge Lion” and
“John Bull.” Baldwin’s Locomotives. Westinghouse Air Brakes. Janney Car
Coupling. The Woodruff Sleeping Car. Railway Statistics.

CHAPTER XII.
Steam Navigation.
Early Experiments. Symington’s Boat. Col. John Stevens’ Screw Propeller.
Robt. Fulton and the “Clermont.” First Trip to Sea by Stevens’ “Phœnix.”
“Savannah,” the First Steam Vessel to Cross the Ocean. Ericsson’s Screw
Propeller. The “Great Eastern.” The Whale Back Steamers. Ocean

Greyhounds. The “Oceanic,” largest Steamship in the World. The “Turbinia.”
Fulton’s “Demologos,” First War Vessel. The Turret Monitor. Modern
Battleships and Torpedo Boats. Holland Submarine Boat.

CHAPTER XIII.
Printing.
Early Printing Press. Nicholson’s Rotary Press. The Columbian and
Washington Presses. König’s Rotary Steam Press. The Hoe Type Revolving
Machine. Color Printing. Stereotyping. Paper Making. Wood Pulp. The
Linotype. Plate Printing. Lithography.

CHAPTER XIV.
The Typewriter.
Old English Typewriter of 1714. The Burt Typewriter of 1829. Progin’s
French Machine of 1833. Thurber’s Printing Machine of 1843. The Beach
Typewriter. The Sholes Typewriter, the First of the Modern Form,
Commercially Developed into the Remington. The Caligraph, Smith-Premier,
and Others.

CHAPTER XV.
The Sewing Machine.
Embroidery Machine the Forerunner of the Sewing Machine. Sewing
Machine of Thomas Saint. The Thimonnier Wooden Machine. Greenough’s
Double-Pointed Needle. Bean’s Stationary Needle. The Howe Sewing
Machine. Bachelder’s Continuous Feed. Improvements of Singer. Wilson’s
Rotary Hook, and Four-Motion Feed. The McKay Shoe Sewing Machine.
Button Hole Machines. Carpet Sewing Machine. Statistics.

CHAPTER XVI.

The Reaper.
Early English Machines. Machine of Patrick Bell. The Hussey Reaper.
McCormick’s Reaper and Its Great Success. Rivalry Between the Two
American Reapers. Self Rakers. Automatic Binders. Combined Steam Reaper
and Threshing Machine. Great Wheat Fields of the West. Statistics.

CHAPTER XVII.
Vulcanized Rubber.
Early Use of Caoutchouc by the Indians. Collection of the Gum. Early
Experiments Failures. Goodyear’s Persistent Experiments. Nathaniel
Hayward’s Application of Sulphur to the Gum. Goodyear’s Process of
Vulcanization. Introduction of his Process into Europe. Trials and
Imprisonment for Debt. Rubber Shoe Industry. Great Extent and Variety of
Applications. Statistics.

CHAPTER XVIII.
Chemistry.
Its Evolution as a Science. The Coal Tar Products. Fermenting and Brewing.
Glucose, Gun Cotton, and Nitro-Glycerine. Electro-Chemistry. Fertilizers and
Commercial Products. New Elements of the Nineteenth Century.

CHAPTER XIX.
Food and Drink.
The Nature of Food. The Roller Mill. The Middlings Purifier. Culinary
Utensils. Bread Machinery. Dairy Appliances. Centrifugal Milk Skimmer. The
Canning Industry. Sterilization. Butchering and Dressing Meats.
Oleomargarine. Manufacture of Sugar. The Vacuum Pan. Centrifugal Filter.
Modern Dietetics and Patented Foods.

CHAPTER XX.
Medicine, Surgery and Sanitation.
Discovery of Circulation of the Blood by Harvey. Vaccination by Jenner. Use
of Anæsthetics the Great Step of Medical Progress of the Century. Materia
Medica. Instruments. Schools of Medicine. Dentistry. Artificial Limbs.
Digestion. Bacteriology, and Disease Germs. Antiseptic Surgery. House
Sanitation.

CHAPTER XXI.
The Bicycle and Automobile.
The Draisine, 1816. Michaux’s Bicycle, 1855. United States Patent to
Lallement and Carrol, 1866. Transition from “Vertical Fork” and “Star” to
Modern “Safety.” Pneumatic Tire. Automobile the Prototype of the
Locomotive. Trevithick’s Steam Road Carriage, 1801. The Locomobile of To-
day. Gas Engine Automobiles of Pinkus, 1839; Selden, 1879; Duryea, Winton,
and Others. Electric Automobiles a Development of Electric Locomotives as
Early as 1836. Grounelle’s Electric Automobile of 1852. The Columbia,
Woods, and Riker Electric Carriages. Statistics.

CHAPTER XXII.
The Phonograph.
Invention of Phonograph by Edison. Scott’s Phonautograph. Improvements of
Bell and Tainter. The Graphophone. Library of Wax Cylinders. Berliner’s
Gramophone.

CHAPTER XXIII.
Optics.
Early Telescopes. The Lick Telescope. The Grande Lunette. The Stereo-
Binocular Field Glass. The Microscope. The Spectroscope. Polarization of

Light. Kaleidoscope. Stereoscope. Range Finder. Kinetoscope, and Moving
Pictures.

CHAPTER XXIV.
Photography.
Experiments of Wedgewood and Davy. Niépce’s Heliography. Daguerre and
the Daguerreotype. Fox Talbot Makes First Proofs from Negatives. Sir John
Herschel Introduces Glass Plates. The Collodion Process. Silver and Carbon
Prints. Ambrotypes. Emulsions. Dry Plates. The Kodak Camera. The
Platinotype. Photography in Colors. Panorama Cameras. Photo-engraving and
Photo-lithography. Half Tone Printing.

CHAPTER XXV.
The Roentgen or X-Rays.
Geissler Tubes. Vacuum Tubes of Crookes, Hittorf, and Lenard. The Cathode
Ray. Roentgen’s Great Discovery in 1895. X-Ray Apparatus. Salvioni’s
Cryptoscope. Edison’s Fluoroscope. The Fluorometer. Sun-burn from X-Rays.
Uses of X-Rays.

CHAPTER XXVI.
Gas Lighting.
Early Use of Natural Gas. Coal Gas Introduced by Murdoch. Winsor
Organizes First Gas Company in 1804. Melville in United States Lights
Beaver-Tail Lighthouse with Gas in 1817. Lowe’s Process of Making Water
Gas. Acetylene Gas. Carburetted Air. Pintsch Gas. Gas Meter. Otto Gas
Engine. The Welsbach Burner.

CHAPTER XXVII.
Civil Engineering.

Great Bridges, Pneumatic Caissons, Tunnels. The Beach Tunnel Shield. Suez
Canal. Dredges. The Lidgerwood Cable Ways. Canal Locks. Artesian Wells.
Compressed-Air Rock Drills. Blasting. Mississippi Jetties. Iron and Steel
Buildings. Eiffel Tower. Washington’s Monument. The United States Capitol.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
Woodworking.
Early Machines of Sir Samuel Bentham. Evolution of the Saw. Circular Saw.
Hammering to Tension. Steam Feed for Saw Mill Carriage. Quarter Sawing.
The Band Saw. Planing Machines. The Woodworth Planer. The Woodbury
Yielding Pressure Bar. The Universal Woodworker. The Blanchard Lathe.
Mortising Machines. Special Woodworking Machines.

CHAPTER XXIX.
Metal Working.
Early Iron Furnace. Operations of Lord Dudley, Abraham Darby, and Henry
Cort. Neilson’s Hot Blast. Great Blast Furnaces of Modern Times. The
Puddling Furnace. Bessemer Steel and the Converter. Open Hearth Steel.
Regenerative Furnace. Siemens-Martin Process. Forging Armor Plate. Making
Horse Shoes. Screws and Special Machines. Electric Welding, Annealing and
Tempering. Coating with Metal. Metal Founding. Barbed Wire Machines.
Making Nails, Pins, etc. Making Shot. Alloys. Making Aluminum, and
Metallurgy of Rarer Metals. The Cyanide Process. Electric Concentrator.

CHAPTER XXX.
Fire Arms and Explosives.
The Cannon, the Most Ancient of Fire Arms. Muzzle and Breech Loaders of
the Sixteenth Century. The Armstrong Gun. The Rodman, Dahlgren, and
Parrott Guns. Breech-Loading Ordnance. Rapid Fire Breech-Loading Rifles.
Disappearing Gun. Gatling Gun. Dynamite Gun. The Colt, and Smith &
Wesson Revolvers. German Automatic Pistol. Breech-Loading Small Arms.

Magazine Guns. The Lee, Krag-Jorgensen, and Mauser Rifles. Hammerless
Guns. Rebounding Locks. Gun Cotton. Nitro Glycerine, and Smokeless
Powder. Mines and Torpedoes.

CHAPTER XXXI.
Textiles.
Spinning and Weaving an Ancient Art. Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny.
Arkwright’s Roll-Drawing Spinning Machine. Crompton’s Mule Spinner. The
Cotton Gin. Ring Spinning. The Rabbeth Spindle. John Kay’s Flying Shuttle
and Robt. Kay’s Drop Box. Cartwright’s Power Loom. The Jacquard Loom.
Crompton’s Fancy Loom. Bigelow’s Carpet Looms. Lyall Positive Motion
Loom. Knitting Machines. Cloth Pressing Machinery. Artificial Silk.
Mercerized Cloth.

CHAPTER XXXII.
Ice Machines.
General Principles. Freezing Mixtures. Perkins’ Ice Machine, 1834. Pictet’s
Apparatus. Carré’s Ammonia Absorption Process. Direct Compression, and
Can System. The Holden Ice Machine. Skating Rinks. Windhausen’s
Apparatus for Cooling and Ventilating Ships.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
Liquid Air.
Liquefaction of Gases by Northmore—1805, Faraday—1823, Bussy—1824,
Thilorier—1834, and others. Liquefaction of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Air, by
Pictet and Cailletet in 1877. Self-Intensification of Cold by Siemens in 1857,
and Windhausen in 1870. Operations of Dewar, Wroblewski, and Olszewski.
Self-Intensifying Processes of Solvay, Tripler, Lindé, Hampson, and Ostergren
and Berger. Liquid Air Experiments and Uses.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
Minor Inventions,
and

Patents of Principal Countries of the World.

CHAPTER XXXV.
Epilogue.

CHAPTER I.

The Perspective View.

tanding on the threshold of the Twentieth Century, and looking back a

S hundred years, the Nineteenth Century presents in the field of invention
a magnificent museum of thoughts crystallized and made immortal, not
as passive gems of nature, but as potent, active, useful agencies of man.
The philosophical mind is ever accustomed to regard all stages of
growth as proceeding by slow and uniform processes of evolution, but in the
field of invention the Nineteenth Century has been unique. It has been
something more than a merely normal growth or natural development. It has
been a gigantic tidal wave of human ingenuity and resource, so stupendous in
its magnitude, so complex in its diversity, so profound in its thought, so
fruitful in its wealth, so beneficent in its results, that the mind is strained and
embarrassed in its effort to expand to a full appreciation of it. Indeed, the
period seems a grand climax of discovery, rather than an increment of growth.
It has been a splendid, brilliant campaign of brains and energy, rising to the
highest achievement amid the most fertile resources, and conducted by the
strongest and best equipment of modern thought and modern strength.
The great works of the ancients are in the main mere monuments of the
patient manual labor of myriads of workers, and can only rank with the
buildings of the diatom and coral insect. Not so with modern achievement.
The last century has been peculiarly an age of ideas and conservation of
energy, materialized in practical embodiment as labor-saving inventions, often
the product of a single mind, and partaking of the sacred quality of creation.
The old word of creation is, that God breathed into the clay the breath of life.
In the new world of invention mind has breathed into matter, and a new and
expanding creation unfolds itself. The speculative philosophy of the past is
but a too empty consolation for short-lived, busy man, and, seeing with the
eye of science the possibilities of matter, he has touched it with the divine
breath of thought and made a new world.

When the Nineteenth Century registered its advent in history, the world of
invention was a babe still in its swaddling clothes, but, with a consciousness
of coming power, was beginning to stretch its strong young arms into the
tremendous energy of its life. James Watt had invented the steam engine. Eli
Whitney had given us the cotton gin. John Gutenberg had made his printing
type. Franklin had set up his press. The telescope had suggested the
possibilities of ethereal space, the compass was already the mariner’s best
friend, and gunpowder had given proof of its deadly agency, but inventive
genius was still groping by the light of a tallow candle. Even up to the
beginning of this century so strong a hold had superstition on the human
mind, that inventions were almost synonymous with the black arts, and the
struggling genius had not only to contend with the natural laws and the
thousand and one expected difficulties that hedge the path of the inventor, but
had also to overcome the far greater obstacles of ignorant fear and bigoted
prejudice. A labor-saving machine was looked upon askance as the enemy of
the working man, and many an earnest inventor, after years of arduous
thought and painstaking labor, saw his cherished model broken up and his
hopes forever blasted by the animosity of his fellow men. But with the
Nineteenth Century a new era has dawned. The legitimate results of
inventions have been realized in larger incomes, shorter hours of labor, and
lives so much richer in health, comfort, happiness, and usefulness, that to-day
the inventor is a benefactor whom the world delights to honor. So crowded is
the busy life of modern civilization with the evidences of his work, that it is
impossible to open one’s eyes without seeing it on every hand, woven into the
very fabric of daily existence. It is easy to lose sight of the wonderful when
once familiar with it, and we usually fail to give the full measure of positive
appreciation to the great things of this great age. They burst upon our vision at
first like flashing meteors; we marvel at them for a little while, and then we
accept them as facts, which soon become so commonplace and so fused into
the common life as to be only noticed by their omission.
To appreciate them let us briefly contrast the conditions of to-day with those
of a hundred years ago. This is no easy task, for the comparison not only
involves the experiences of two generations, but it is like the juxtaposition of
a star with the noonday sun, whose superior brilliancy obliterates the lesser
light. But reverse the wheels of progress, and let us make a quick run of one
hundred years into the past, and what are our experiences? Before we get to
our destination we find the wheels themselves beginning to thump and jolt,
and the passage becomes more difficult, more uncomfortable, and so much

slower. We are no longer gliding along in a luxurious palace car behind a
magnificent locomotive, traveling on steel rails, at sixty miles an hour, but we
find ourselves nearing the beginning of the Nineteenth Century in a rickety,
rumbling, dusty stage-coach. Pause! and consider the change for a moment in
some of its broader aspects. First, let us examine the present more closely, for
the average busy man, never looking behind him for comparisons, does not
fully appreciate or estimate at its real value the age in which he lives. There
are to-day (statistics of 1898), 445,064 miles of railway tracks in the world.
This would build seventeen different railway tracks, of two rails each, around
the entire world, or would girdle mother earth with thirty-four belts of steel. If
extended in straight lines, it would build a track of two rails to the moon, and
more than a hundred thousand miles beyond it. The United States has nearly
half of the entire mileage of the world, and gets along with 36,746
locomotives, nearly as many passenger coaches, and more than a million and
a quarter of freight cars, which latter, if coupled together, would make nearly
three continuous trains reaching across the American continent from the
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The movement of passenger trains is equivalent
to dispatching thirty-seven trains per day around the world, and the freight
train movement is in like manner equal to dispatching fifty-three trains a day
around the world. Add to this the railway business controlled by other
countries, and one gets some idea of how far the stage-coach has been left
behind. To-day we eat supper in one city, and breakfast in another so many
hundreds of miles east or west as to be compelled to set our watches to the
new meridian of longitude in order to keep our engagement. But railroads and
steam-cars constitute only one of the stirring elements of modern civilization.
As we make the backward run of one hundred years we have passed by many
milestones of progress. Let us see if we can count some of them as they
disappear behind us. We quickly lose the telephone, phonograph and
graphophone. We no longer see the cable-cars or electric railways. The
electric lights have gone out. The telegraph disappears. The sewing machine,
reaper, and thresher have passed away, and so also have all india-rubber
goods. We no longer see any photographs, photo-engravings,
photolithographs, or snap-shot cameras. The wonderful octuple web
perfecting printing press; printing, pasting, cutting, folding, and counting
newspapers at the rate of 96,000 per hour, or 1,600 per minute, shrinks at the
beginning of the century into an insignificant prototype. We lose all planing
and wood-working machinery, and with it the endless variety of sashes, doors,
blinds, and furniture in unlimited variety. There are no gas-engines, no

passenger elevators, no asphalt pavement, no steam fire engine, no triple-
expansion steam engine, no Giffard injector, no celluloid articles, no barbed
wire fences, no time-locks for safes, no self-binding harvesters, no oil nor gas
wells, no ice machines nor cold storage. We lose air engines, stem-winding
watches, cash-registers and cash-carriers, the great suspension bridges, and
tunnels, the Suez Canal, iron frame buildings, monitors and heavy ironclads,
revolvers, torpedoes, magazine guns and Gatling guns, linotype machines, all
practical typewriters, all pasteurizing, knowledge of microbes or disease
germs, and sanitary plumbing, water-gas, soda water fountains, air brakes,
coal-tar dyes and medicines, nitro-glycerine, dynamite and guncotton,
dynamo electric machines, aluminum ware, electric locomotives, Bessemer
steel with its wonderful developments, ocean cables, enameled iron ware,
Welsbach gas burners, electric storage batteries, the cigarette machine,
hydraulic dredges, the roller mills, middlings purifiers and patent-process
flour, tin can machines, car couplings, compressed air drills, sleeping cars, the
dynamite gun, the McKay shoe machine, the circular knitting machine, the
Jacquard loom, wood pulp for paper, fire alarms, the use of anæsthetics in
surgery, oleomargarine, street sweepers, Artesian wells, friction matches,
steam hammers, electro-plating, nail machines, false teeth, artificial limbs and
eyes, the spectroscope, the Kinetoscope or moving pictures, acetylene gas, X-
ray apparatus, horseless carriages, and—but, enough! the reader exclaims, and
indeed it is not pleasant to contemplate the loss. The negative conditions of
that period extend into such an appalling void that we stop short, shrinking
from the thought of what it would mean to modern civilization to eliminate
from its life these potent factors of its existence.
Returning to the richness and fullness of the present life, we shall first note
chronologically the milestones and finger boards which mark this great
tramway of progress, and afterward consider separately the more important
factors of progress.

CHAPTER II.

Chronology of Leading Inventions of the
Nineteenth Century.

1800—Volta’s Chemical Battery for producing Electricity. Louis Robert’s
Machine for Making Continuous Webs of Paper.
1801—Trevithick’s Steam Coach (first automobile). Brunel’s Mortising
Machine. Jacquard’s Pattern Loom. First Fire Proof Safe by Richard
Scott. Columbium discovered by Hatchett.
1802—Trevithick and Vivian’s British patent for Running Coaches by Steam.
Charlotte Dundas (Steamboat) towed canal Boats on the Clyde.
Tantalum discovered by Ekeberg. First Photographic Experiments by
Wedgewood and Davy. Bramah’s Planing Machine.
1803—Carpue’s Experiments on Therapeutic Application of Electricity.
Iridium and Osmium discovered by Tenant, and Cerium by Berzelius.
Wm. Horrocks applies Steam to the Loom.
1804—Rhodium and Palladium discovered by Wollaston. First Steam
Railway and Locomotive by Richard Trevithick. Capt. John Stevens
applies twin Screw Propellers in Steam Navigation. Winsor takes
British patent for Illuminating Gas, lights Lyceum Theatre, and
organizes First Gas Company. Lucas’ process making Malleable Iron
Castings.
1805—Life Preserver invented by John Edwards of London. Electro-plating
invented by Brugnatelli.
1806—Jeandeau’s Knitting Machine.
1807—First practical Steamboat between New York and Albany (Fulton’s
Clermont). Discovery of Potassium, Sodium and Boron by Davy.

Forsyth’s Percussion Lock for Guns.
1808—Barium, Strontium, and Calcium discovered by Davy. Polarization of
Light from Reflection by Malus. Voltaic arc discovered by Davy.
1809—Sommering’s Multi-wire Telegraphy.
1810—System of Homœopathy organized by Hahnemann.
1811—Discovery of Metal Iodine by M. Courtois. Blenkinsop’s Locomotive.
Colored Polarization of Light by Arago. Thornton and Hall’s Breech
Loading Musket.
1812—London the First City lighted by Gas. Ritter’s Storage Battery.
Schilling proposes use of Electricity to blow up mines. Zamboni’s Dry
Pile (prototype of dry battery).
1813—Howard’s British patent for Vacuum Pan for refining sugar. Hedley’s
Locomotive “Puffing Billy.” Introduction of Stereotyping in the
United States by David Bruce.
1814—London Times printed by König’s rotary steam press. Stephenson’s
First Locomotive. Demologos built by Fulton (the first steam war
vessel). Heliography by Niépce. Discovery of Cyanogen by Gay
Lussac. The Kaleidoscope invented by Sir David Brewster.
1815—Safety Lamp by Sir Humphrey Davy. Seidlitz Powders invented. Gas
Meter by Clegg.
1816—The “Draisine” Bicycle. Circular Knitting Machine by Brunel.
1817—Discovery of Selenium by Berzelius, Cadmium by Stromeyer, and
Lithium by Arfvedson. Hunt’s Pin Machine.
1818—Brunel’s patent Subterranean and Submarine tunnels. Electro-
Magnetism discovered by Oersted of Copenhagen.
1819—American Steamer Savannah from New York first to cross Atlantic.
Laennec discovers Auscultation and invents Stethoscope. Blanchard’s
Lathe for turning Irregular Forms.
1820—Electro-Magnetic Multiplier by Schweigger. Discoveries in Electro-
magnetism by Ampere and Arago. Bohnenberg’s Electroscope.

Discovery of Quinine by Pelletier and Caventou. Malam’s Gas Meter.
1821—Faraday converts Electric Current into Mechanical Motion.
1822—Babbage Calculation Engine.
1823—Liquefaction and Solidification of Gases by Faraday, and foundation
of ammonia absorption ice machine laid by him. Seebeck discovers
Thermo-electricity. Silicon discovered by Berzelius.
1824—Discovery of metal Zirconium by Berzelius. Wright’s Pin Machine.
1825—First Passenger Railway in the world opened between Stockton and
Darlington. Sturgeon invents prototype of Electro Magnet.
Beaumont’s discoveries in Digestion (Alexis San Martin 1825-32).
1826—Discovery of Bromine by M. Balard. Barlow’s Electrical Spur Wheel.
First Railroad in United States built near Quincy, Mass.
1827—Aluminum reduced by Wohler. Ohm’s Law of Electrical Resistance.
Hackworth’s Improvements in Locomotive. Friction Matches by John
Walker.
1828—Neilson’s Hot Blast for Smelting Iron. Professor Henry invents the
Spool Electro Magnet. Tubular Locomotive Boiler by Seguin. First
Artificial production of organic compounds (urea) by Wohler. Thorium
discovered by Berzelius. Yttrium and Glucinum discovered by Wohler.
Nicol’s prism for Polarized Light. Woodworth’s wood planer. Spinning
Ring invented by John Thorp.
1829—Becquerel’s Double Fluid Galvanic Battery. George Stephenson’s
Locomotive, “Rocket,” takes prizes of Liverpool and Manchester
Railway. Importation of “Stourbridge Lion,” the first locomotive to
run in the United States. Daguerreotype invented. Discovery of
Magnesium by Bussey.
1830—Vanadium discovered by Sefstroem. Abbe Dal Negro’s Electrically
operated pendulum. Ericsson’s Steam Fire Engine.
1831—Faraday discovers Magnetic Induction. Professor Henry telegraphs
signals. Professor Henry invents his Electric Motor. Locomotive “John

Bull” put in service on Camden and Amboy R. R. Chloroform
discovered by Guthrie. McCormick first experiments with Reaper.
1832—Professor Morse conceives the idea of Electric Telegraph. First
Magneto-Electric Machines by Saxton in United States and Pixii in
France. Sturgeon’s Rotary Electric Motor. Baldwin’s first locomotive,
“Old Ironsides,” built. Link Motion for Locomotive Engine invented
by James. Chloral-hydrate discovered by Liebig.
1833—Steam Whistle adopted by Stephenson. Hussey’s Reaper patented.
1834—Jacobi’s Rotary Electric Motor. Henry Bessemer electro-plates lead
castings with copper. Faraday demonstrates relation of chemical and
electrical force. McCormick Reaper patented. Carbolic Acid
discovered by Runge. Perkins’ Ice Machine.
1835—Forbes proves the absence of heat in Moonlight. Burden’s horse shoe
Machine.
1836—The Daniell Constant Battery invented. Acetylene Gas produced by
Edmond Davy. Colt’s Revolver.
1837—Cooke and Wheatstone’s British patent for Electric telegraph. Steinheil
discovered feasibility of using the earth for return section of electric
circuit. Davenport’s Electric Motor. Spencer’s experiments in
electrotyping. Galvanized Iron invented by Craufurd.
1838—Professor Morse’s French patent for Telegraph. Jacobi’s Galvano-
plastic process for making Electrotype Printing Plates. Reflecting
Stereoscope by Wheatstone. Dry Gas Meter by Defries.
1839—Wreck of Royal George blown up by Electro Blasting. Jacobi builds
first Electrically propelled Boat. Fox Talbot makes Photo Prints from
Negatives. Professors Draper and Morse make first Photographic
Portraits. Mungo Ponton applies Bichromate of Potash in Photography.
Goodyear discovers process of Vulcanizing Rubber. Lanthanum and
Didymium discovered by Mosander. Babbit Metal invented.
1840—Professor Morse’s United States patent for Electric Telegraph.
Professor Grove makes first Incandescent Electric Lamp. Celestial
Photography by Professor Draper.

1841—Artesian well bored at Grenelle, Paris. Sickel’s Steam Cut-off.
Talbotype Photos. M. Triger invents Pneumatic Caissons.
1842—First production of Illuminating Gas from water (water gas) by M.
Selligue. Robt. Davidson builds Electric Locomotive. Nasmyth patents
Steam Hammer.
1843—Joule’s demonstration as to the Nature of Force. Erbium and Terbium
discovered by Mosander. The Thames Tunnel Opened.
1844—First Telegraphic Message sent by Morse from Washington to
Baltimore. Application Nitrous Oxide Gas as an Anæsthetic by Dr.
Wells.
1845—Ruthenium discovered by Klaws. The Starr-King Incandescent
Electric Lamp. The Hoe Type Revolving Machine.
1846—House’s Printing Telegraph. Howe’s Sewing Machine. Suez Canal
Started (fourteen years building). Crusell of St. Petersburgh invents
Electric Cautery. Use of Ether as Anæsthetic by Dr. Morton. Artificial
Legs. Discovery of Planet Neptune. Sloan patents Gimlet Pointed
Screw. Gun Cotton discovered by Schönbein.
1847—Chloroform introduced by Dr. Simpson. Nitro-Glycerine discovered
by Sobrero. Time-Locks invented by Savage.
1848—Discovery of Satellites of Saturn by Lassell. Bain’s Chemical
Telegraph. Bakewell’s Fac-Simile Telegraph.
1849—Bourdon’s Pressure Gauge. Lenticular Stereoscope by Brewster.
Hibbert’s Latch Needle for Knitting Machine. Corliss Engine.
1850—First Submarine Cable—Dover to Calais. Collodion Process in
Photography. Mercerizing Cloth. American Machine-made Watches.
1851—Dr. Page’s Electric Locomotive. The Ruhmkorff Coil. Scott Archer’s
Collodion Process in Photography. Seymour’s Self-Raker for
Harvesters. Helmholtz invents Opthalmoscope. Maynard Breech
Loading Rifle.
1852—Channing and Farmer Fire Alarm Telegraph. Fox Talbot first uses
reticulated screen for Half Tone Printing.

1853—Gintl’s Duplex Telegraph invented. Electric Lamps devised by
Foucault and Duboscq. Watt and Burgess Soda Process for Making
Wood Pulp.
1854—Wilson’s Four Motion Feed for Sewing Machines. Melhuish invents
the Photographic Roll Films. Hermann’s Diamond Drill. Smith and
Wesson Magazine Firearm (Foundation of the Winchester).
1855—Bessemer Process of Making Steel. Hjorth invents Dynamo Electric
Machine. Ericsson’s Air Engine. Niagara Suspension Bridge. Dr. J. M.
Taupenot invents Dry Plate Photography. The Michaux Bicycle.
1856—Hughes Printing Telegraph. Alliance Magneto Electric Machine.
Woodruff Sleeping Car. First commercial Aniline Dyes by Perkins.
Siemens Regenerative Furnace.
1857—Rogues’ Gallery established in New York. Introduction of Iron Floor
Beams in building Cooper Institute. Siemens describes principle of
Self Intensification of Cold (now used in ice and liquid air machines).
1858—Phelps Printing Telegraph invented. First Atlantic Cable Laid. Paper
pulp from Wood by Voelter. First use of Electric Light in Light House
at South Foreland. Giffard Steam Injector. Gardner patents first
Underground Cable Car System.
1859—Discovery Coal Oil in United States. Moses G. Farmer subdivides
Electric Current through a number of Electric Lamps, and lights first
dwelling by Electricity. Great Eastern launched. Osborne perfects
modern process of Photolithography. Professors Kirchhoff and Bunsen
map Solar Spectrum, and establish Spectrum Analysis.
1860—Rubidium and Caesium discovered by Bunsen. Gaston Planté’s
Storage Battery. Reis’ Crude Telephone. Thallium discovered by
Crookes, and Indium by Reich and Richter. Spencer and Henry
Magazine Rifles. Carré’s Ammonia Absorption Ice Machine.
1861—McKay Shoe Sewing Machine. Calcium Carbide produced by Wohler.
Col. Green invents Drive Well. Otis Passenger Elevator. First Barbed
Wire Fence.

1862—Ericsson’s Iron Clad Turret Monitor. Emulsions and improvements in
Dry Plate Photography by Russell and Sayce. The Gatling Gun.
Timby’s Revolving Turret.
1863—Schultz white gunpowder.
1864—Nobel’s Explosive Gelatine. Rubber Dental Plates. Cabin John
(Washington Aqueduct) Bridge finished (longest masonry span in the
world).
1865—Louis Pasteur’s work in Bacteriology begun. Martin’s Process of
making Steel.
1866—Wilde’s Dynamo Electric Machine. Burleigh’s Compressed Air Rock
Drill. Whitehead Torpedo.
1867—Siemens’ Dynamo Electric Machine. Dynamite Invented. Tilghman’s
Sulphite Process for making Wood Pulp.
1868—Brickill’s Water Heater for Steam Fire Engines. Moncrieff’s
Disappearing Gun Carriage. Oleomargarine invented by Mege. Sholes
Typewriter.
1869—Suez Canal Opened. Pacific Railway Completed. First Westinghouse
Air-Brakes.
1870—The Gramme Dynamo Electric Machine. Windhausen Refrigerating
Machines. Beleaguered Paris communicates with outer world through
Micro-Photographs. Hailer’s Rebounding Gun Lock. Dittmar’s
Gunpowder.
1871—Hoe’s Web Perfecting Press set up in Office New York Tribune. The
Locke Grain Binder. Bridge Work in Dentistry. Mount Cenis Tunnel
opened for traffic. Phosphorus Bronze. Ingersoll Compressed Air Rock
Drill.
1872—Stearns perfects Duplex Telegraph. Westinghouse Improved automatic
Air Brake. Lyall Positive Motion Loom.
1873—Janney Automatic Car Coupler. Oleomargarine patented in United
States by Mege.

1874—Edison’s Quadruplex Telegraph. Gorham’s Twine Binder for
Harvesters. Barbed Wire Machines. St. Louis Bridge finished.
1875—Lowe’s patent for Water Gas (illuminating gas made from water).
Roller Mills and Middlings Purifier for making flour. Gallium
discovered by Boisbaudran. Pictet Ice Machine. Gamgee’s Skating
Rinks. First Cash Carrier for Stores.
1876—Alexander Graham Bell’s Speaking Telephone. Hydraulic Dredges.
Cigarette Machinery. Photographing by Electric Light by Vander
Weyde. Edison’s Electric Pen. Steam Feed for Saw Mill Carriages.
Introduction of Cable Cars by Hallidie.
1877—Phonograph invented by Edison. Otto Gas Engine. Jablochkoff
Electric Candle. Sawyer-Man Electric Lamp. Berliner’s Telephone
Transmitter of variable resistance (pat. Nov. 17, ’91). Edison’s Carbon
Microphone (pat. May 3, ’92). Discovery of Satellites of Mars by
Professor Asaph Hall, and its so-called Canals by Schiaparelli.
Liquefaction of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Air by Pictet and Cailletet.
1878—Development of Remington Typewriter. Edison invents Carbon
Filament for Incandescent Electric Lamp. Gelatino-Bromide
Emulsions in Photography. Ytterbium discovered by Marignac.
Birkenhead Yielding Spinning Spindle Bearing. Gessner Cloth Press.
1879—Dr. Siemens’ Electric Railway at Berlin. Mississippi Jetties completed
by Capt. Eads. Samarium discovered by Boisbaudran, Scandium by
Nilson, and Thulium by Cleve. The Lee Magazine Rifle.
1880—Faure’s Storage Battery. Eberth and Koch discover Bacillus of
Typhoid Fever, and Sternberg the Bacillus of Pneumonia. Edison’s
Magnetic Ore Concentrator. Greener’s Hammerless Gun. Rabbeth
Spinning Spindle patented.
1881—Telegraphing by Induction by Wm. W. Smith. Blake Telephone
Transmitter. Reece Button Hole Machine. Rack-a-rock (explosive)
patented.
1882—Bacillus of Tuberculosis identified by Koch, and Bacillus of
Hydrophobia by Pasteur. St. Gothard Tunnel opened for traffic.

1883—Brooklyn Suspension Bridge Completed.
1884—Antipyrene. Mergenthaler’s first Linotype Printing Machine invented.
Bacillus of Cholera identified by Koch, Bacillus of Diphtheria by
Loeffler, and Bacillus of Lockjaw by Nicolaier.
1885—Cowles’ Process of Manufacturing Aluminum. First Electric Railway
in America installed between Baltimore and Hampden. Neodymium
and Praseodymium discovered by Welsbach. Welsbach Gas Burner
invented. Blowing up of Flood Rock, New York Harbor. “Bellite”
produced by Lamm, and “Melinite” by Turpin.
1886—Graphophone invented. Electric Welding by Elihu Thomson.
Gadolinum discovered by Marignac, and Germanium by Winkler.
1887—McArthur and Forrest’s Cyanide Process of Obtaining Gold. Tesla’s
System of Polyphase Currents.
1888—Electrocution of Criminals adopted in New York State. Harvey’s
Process of Annealing Armor Plate. De Laval’s Rotary Steam Turbine.
“Kodak” Snap-Shot Camera. Lick Telescope. De Chardonnet’s Process
of Making Artificial Silk.
1889—Nickel Steel. Hall’s Process of Making Aluminum. Dudley Dynamite
Gun. “Cordite” (Smokeless Powder) produced by Abel and Dewar.
1890—Mergenthaler’s Improved Linotype Machine. Photography in Colors.
The Great Forth Bridge finished. Krag-Jorgensen Magazine Rifle.
1891—Parsons’ Rotary Steam Turbine. The Northrup Loom.
1892—The explosive “Indurite” invented by Professor Munroe.
1893—Acheson’s process for making Carborundum. The Yerkes Telescope.
Edison’s Kinetoscope. Production of Calcium Carbide in Electric
Furnace by Willson.
1894—Discovery of element Argon by Lord Rayleigh and Professor Ramsey.
Thorite produced by Bawden.
1895—X-Rays discovered and applied by Roentgen. Acetylene Gas from
Calcium Carbide by Willson. Krupp Armor Plate. Lindé’s Liquid air

apparatus.
1896—Marconi’s System of Wireless Telegraphy. Buffington-Crozier
Disappearing Gun.
1897—Schlick’s System of Balancing Marine Engines. Discovery of Krypton
by Ramsey and Travers.
1898—Horry and Bradley’s process of making Calcium Carbide. Discovery
of Neon and Metargon by Ramsey and Travers; Coronium by Nasini;
Xenon by Ramsey; Monium by Crookes, and Etherion by Brush.
Mercerizing Cloth under tension to render it Silky.
1899—Marconi Telegraphs without wire across the English Channel. Oceanic
launched, the largest steamer ever built.
1900—The Grande Lunette Telescope of Paris Exposition.

CHAPTER III.

The Electric Telegraph.

The Voltaic Pile—Daniell’s Battery—Use of Conducting Wire by Weber—Steinheil
Employs Earth as Return Circuit—Prof. Henry’s Electro Magnet, and First
Telegraphic Experiment—Prof. Morse’s Telegraphic Code and Register—First Line
Between Washington and Baltimore—Bain’s Chemical Telegraph—Gintl’s Duplex
Telegraph—Edison’s Quadruplex—House’s Printing Telegraph—Fac Simile
Telegraphs—Channing and Farmer Fire Alarm—Telegraphing by Induction—Wireless
Telegraphy by Marconi—Statistics.

n the effort to lengthen out the limited span of life into a greater record of

I results, time becomes an object of economy. To save time is to live long,
and this in a pre-eminent degree is accomplished by the telegraph. Of all
the inventions which man has called into existence to aid him in the
fulfillment of his destiny, none so closely resembles man himself in his
dual quality of body and soul as the telegraph. It too has a body and soul. We
see the wire and the electro-magnet, but not the vital principle which animates
it. Without its subtile, pulsating, intangible spirit, it is but dead matter. But
vitalized with its immortal soul it assumes the quality of animated existence,
and through its agency thought is extended beyond the limitations of time and
space, and flashes through air and sea around the world. Its moving principle
flows more silently than a summer’s zephyr, and yet it rises at times to an
angry and deadly crash in the lightning stroke. At once powerful and elusive,
it remained for Professor Morse to capture this wild steed, and, taming it,
place it in the permanent service of man. On May 24, 1844, there went over
the wires between Washington and Baltimore the first message—“What hath
God wrought?” This was both prayer and praise, and no more lofty
recognition of the divine power and beneficence could have been made. It was
indeed the work of God made manifest in the hands of His children.
Popular estimation has always credited Prof. Morse with the invention of the
telegraph, but to ascribe to him all the praise would do great injustice to many

other worthy workers in this field, some of whom are regarded by the best
judges to be entitled to equal praise.
The practical telegraph as originally used is resolvable into four essential
elements, viz., the battery, the conducting wire, the electro-magnet, and the
receiving and transmitting instruments.
The development of the battery began with Galvani in 1790, and Volta in
1800. Galvani discovered that a frog’s legs would exhibit violent muscular
contraction when its exposed nerves were touched with one metal and its
muscles were touched with another metal, the two metals being connected.
The effect was due to an electric current generated and acting with contractile
effect on the muscles of the frog’s legs.

FIG. 1.

From this phenomenon, the chemical action of acids upon metals and the
production of an electric current were observed, and the voltaic pile was
invented. This consisted of alternate discs of copper and zinc, separated by

layers of cloth steeped in an acidulated solution. This was the invention of
Volta. From this grew the Daniell battery, invented in 1836 by Prof. Daniell of
London, quickly followed by those of Grove, Smee, and others. These
batteries were more constant or uniform in the production of electricity, were
free from odors, and did not require frequent cleaning, as did the plates of the
voltaic pile, which were important results for telegraphic purposes. The
Daniell battery in its original form employed an acidulated solution of
sulphate of copper in a copper cell containing a porous cup, and a cylinder of
amalgamated zinc in the porous cup and surrounded by a weak acid solution.
In the illustration, which shows a slightly modified form, a cruciform rod of
zinc within a porous cup is surrounded by a copper cell, the whole being
enclosed within a glass jar.

FIG. 2.—DANIELL’S BATTERY.

The second element of the telegraph—the conducting wire—was scarcely an
invention in itself, and the fact that electricity would act at a distance through

a metal conductor had been observed many years before the Morse telegraph
was invented. In 1823, however, Weber discovered that a copper wire which
he had carried over the houses and church steeples of Göttingen from the
observatory to the cabinet of Natural Philosophy, required no special
insulation. This was an important observation in the practical construction of
telegraph lines. One of even greater importance, however, was that of Prof.
Steinheil, of Munich, who, in 1837, made the discovery of the practicability
of using the earth as one-half, or the return section, of the electric conductor.

FIG. 3.—PROF. HENRY’S INTENSITY MAGNET.

The third element of the telegraph is the electro-magnet. This, and its
arrangement as a relay in a local circuit, was a most important invention, and
contributed quite as much to the success of the telegraph as did the inventions

of Prof. Morse. It may be well to say that an electro-magnet is a magnet which
attracts an iron armature when an electric current is sent through its coil of
wire, and loses its attractive force when the circuit is cut off, thereby
rendering it possible to produce mechanical effects at a distance through the
agency of electrical impulses only. For the electro-magnet the world is chiefly
indebted to Prof. Joseph Henry, formerly of Princeton, N. J., but later of the
Smithsonian Institution. In 1828 he invented the energetic modern form of
electro-magnet with silk covered wire wound in a series of crossed layers to
form a helix of multiple layers around a central soft iron core, and in 1831
succeeded in making practical the production of mechanical effects at a
distance, by the tapping of a bell by a rod deflected by one of his electro-
magnets. This experiment may be considered the pioneer step of the
telegraph.

FIG. 4.

HENRY. STURGEON.

Great as was the work of Prof. Henry, he must share the honors with a number
of prior inventors who made the electro-magnet possible. Electro-magnetism,
the underlying principle of the electro-magnet, was first discovered in 1819 by
Prof. Oersted, of Copenhagen. In 1820 Schweigger added the multiplier.
Arago in the same year discovered that a steel rod was magnetized when
placed across a wire carrying an electric current, and that iron filings adhered
to a wire carrying a voltaic current and dropped off when the current was
broken. M. Ampere substituted a helix for the straight wire, and Sturgeon, of
England, in 1825 made the real prototype of the electro-magnet by winding a

piece of bare copper wire in a single coil around a varnished and insulated
iron core of a horse shoe form, but the powerful and effective electro-magnet
of Prof. Henry is to-day an essential part of the telegraph, is in universal use,
and is the foundation of the entire electrical art. It is unfortunate that Prof.
Henry did not perpetuate the records of his inventions in patents, to which he
was opposed, for there is good reason to believe that he was also the original
inventor of the important arrangement of the electro-magnet as a relay in local
circuit, and other features, which have been claimed by other parties upon
more enduring evidence, but perhaps with less right of priority.

FIG. 5.—MORSE’S FIRST MODEL PENDULUM INSTRUMENT.

The fourth and great final addition to the telegraph which crowned it with
success was the Morse register and alphabetical code, the invention of Prof.
Samuel F. B. Morse, of Massachusetts. Prof. Morse’s invention was made in
1832, while on board ship returning from Europe. He set up an experimental
line in 1835, and got his French patent October 30, 1838, and his first United
States patent June 20, 1840, No. 1647. In 1844 the United States Congress
appropriated $30,000 to build a line from Baltimore to Washington, and on

May 24, 1844, the notable message, “What Hath God wrought?” went over
the wires.

FIG. 6.—THE MORSE CODE.

Morse’s first model, his pendulum instrument of 1837, is illustrated in Fig. 5.
A pendulum carrying a pencil was in constant contact with a strip of paper
drawn beneath the pencil. As long as inactive the pencil made a straight line.
The pendulum carried also an armature, and an electro-magnet was placed
near the armature. A current passed through the magnet would draw the
pendulum to one side. On being released the pendulum would return, and in
this way zigzag markings, as shown at 4 and 5, would be produced on the
strip of paper, which formed the alphabet. A different alphabet, known as the
Morse Code, was subsequently adopted by Morse, and in 1844 the receiving
register shown at Fig. 7 was adopted, which finally assumed the form shown
at Fig. 8.

The alphabet consisted simply of an arrangement of dots and dashes in
varying sequence. The register is an apparatus operated by the combined
effects of a clock mechanism and electro-magnet. Under a roll, see Fig. 8, a
ribbon of paper is drawn by the clockwork. A lever having an armature on one
end arranged over the poles of an electro-magnet, carries on the other end a
point or stylus. When an electric impulse is sent over the line the electro-
magnet attracts the armature, and the stylus on the other end of the lever is
brought into contact with the paper strip, and makes an indented impression.
A short impulse gives a dot, and a long impulse holds the stylus against the
paper long enough to allow the clock mechanism to pull the paper under the
stylus and make a dash. By the manipulation of a key for closing the electric
circuit the short or long impulse may be sent, at the pleasure of the operator.

FIG. 7.—MORSE RECEIVER.

This constituted the completed invention of the telegraph, and on comparing
the work of Profs. Henry and Morse, it is only fair to say that Prof. Henry’s
contribution to the telegraph is still in active use, while the Morse register has
been practically abandoned, as no expert telegrapher requires the visible
evidence of the code, but all rely now entirely upon the sound click of the
electro-magnet placed in the local circuit and known as a sounder, the varying
time lengths of gaps between the clicks serving every purpose of rapid and
intelligent communication. The invention of the telegraph has been claimed

for Steinheil, of Munich, and also for Cooke and Wheatstone, in England, but
few will deny that it is to Prof. Morse’s indefatigable energy and inventive
skill, with the preliminary work of Prof. Henry, that the world to-day owes its
great gift of the electric telegraph, and with this gift the world’s great nervous
forces have been brought into an intimate and sensitive sympathy.

FIG. 8.—PERFECTED MORSE REGISTER.

Whenever an invention receives the advertisement of public approval and
commercial exploitation, the development of that invention along various
lines follows rapidly, and so when practical telegraphic communication was
solved by Henry, Morse, and others, further advances in various directions
were made. Efforts to increase the rapidity in sending messages soon grew
into practical success, and in 1848 Bain’s Chemical Telegraph was brought
out. (U. S. Pats. No. 5,957, Dec. 5, 1848, and No. 6,328, April 17, 1849.) This
employed perforated strips of paper to effect automatic transmission by
contact made through the perforations in place of the key, while a chemically
prepared paper at the opposite end of the line was discolored by the electric
impulses to form the record. This was the pioneer of the automatic system
which by later improvements is able to send over a thousand words a minute.

FIG. 9.—HOUSE PRINTING TELEGRAPH.

FIG. 10.—STOCK BROKER’S “TICKER,” WITH GLASS COVER
REMOVED.

In line with other efforts to increase the capacity of the wires, the duplex
telegraph was invented by Dr. William Gintl, of Austria, in 1853, and was
afterwards improved by Carl Frischen, of Hanover, and by Joseph B. Stearns,
of Boston, Mass, who in 1872 perfected the duplex (U. S. Pats. No. 126,847,
May 14, 1872, and No. 132,933, Nov. 12, 1872). This system doubles the
capacity of the telegraphic wire, and its principle of action permits messages
sent from the home station to the distant station to have no effect on the home
station, but full effect on the distant station, so that the operators at the
opposite ends of the line may both telegraph over the same wire, at the same
time, in opposite directions. This system has been further enlarged by the
quadruplex system of Edison, which was brought out in 1874 (and
subsequently developed in U. S. Pat. No. 209,241, Oct. 22, 1878). This
enabled four messages to be sent over the same wire at the same time, and is
said to have increased the value of the Western Union wires $15,000,000.

In 1846 Royal C. House invented the printing telegraph, which printed the
message automatically on a strip of paper, something after the manner of the
typewriter (U. S. Pat. No. 4,464, April 18, 1846). The ingenious mechanism
involved in this was somewhat complicated, but its results in printing the
message plainly were very satisfactory. This was the prototype of the familiar
“ticker” of the stock broker’s office, seen in Figs. 10 and 11. In 1856 the
Hughes printing telegraph was brought out (U. S. Pat. No. 14,917, May 20,
1856), and in 1858 G. M. Phelps combined the valuable features of the
Hughes and House systems (U. S. Pat. No. 26,003, Nov. 1, 1859).

FIG. 11.—RECEIVING MESSAGE ON STOCK BROKER’S
“TICKER.”

Fac Simile telegraphs constitute another, although less important branch of the
art. These accomplished the striking result of reproducing the message at the
end of the line in the exact handwriting of the sender, and not only writing,
but exact reproductions of all outlines, such as maps, pictures, and so forth,

may be sent. The fac simile telegraph originated with F. C. Bakewell, of
England, in 1848 (Br. Pat. No. 12,352, of 1848).
The Dial Telegraph is still another modification of the telegraph. In this the
letters are arranged in a circular series, and a light needle or pointer,
concentrically pivoted, is carried back and forth over the letters, and is made
to successively point to the desired letters.
Among other useful applications of the telegraph is the fire alarm system. In
1852 Channing and Farmer, of Boston, Mass., devised a system of telegraphic
fire alarms, which was adopted in the city of Boston (U. S. Pat. No. 17,355,
May 19, 1857), and which in varying modifications has spread through all the
cities of the world, introducing that most important element of time economy
in the extinguishment of fires. Hundreds of cities and millions of dollars have
been thus saved from destruction.
Similar applications of local alarms in great numbers have been extended into
various departments of life, such as District Messenger Service, Burglar
Alarms, Railroad-Signal Systems, Hotel-Annunciators, and so on.

FIG. 12.—TELEGRAPHING BY INDUCTION.

For furnishing current for telegraphic purposes the dynamo, and especially the
storage battery, have in late years found useful application. In fact, in the
leading telegraph offices the storage battery has practically superseded the old
voltaic cells.
Telegraphing by induction, i. e., without the mechanical connection of a
conducting wire, is another of the developments of telegraphy in recent years,
and finds application to telegraphing to moving railway trains. When an
electric current flows over a telegraph line, objects along its length are
charged at the beginning and end of the current impulse with a secondary
charge, which flows to the earth if connection is afforded. It is the discharge
of this secondary current from the metal car roof to the ground which, on the
moving train, is made the means of telegraphing without any mechanical
connection with the telegraph lines along the track. As, however, this
secondary circuit occurs only at the making and breaking of the telegraphic
impulse, the length of the impulse affords no means of differentiation into an
alphabet, and so a rapid series of impulses, caused by the vibrator of an
induction coil, is made to produce buzzing tones of various duration
representing the alphabet, and these tones are received upon a telephone
instead of a Morse register. The diagram, Fig. 12,[1] illustrates the operation.
[1] From “Electricity in Daily Life,” by courtesy of Charles Scribner’s Sons.

To receive messages on a car, electric impulses on the telegraph wire W, sent
from the vibrator of an induction coil, cause induced currents as follows: Car
roof R, wire a, key K, telephone b c, car wheel and earth. In sending messages
closure of key K works induction coil I C, and vibrator V, through battery B,
and primary circuit d, c, f, g, and the secondary circuit a, h, i, charges the car
roof and influences by induction the telegraph wire W and the telephone at the
receiving station.
In 1881 William W. Smith proposed the plan of communicating between
moving cars and a stationary wire by induction (U. S. Pat. No. 247,127, Sept.
13, 1881). Thomas A. Edison, L. J. Phelps, and others have further improved
the means for carrying it out. In 1888 the principle was successfully employed
on 200 miles of the Lehigh Valley Railroad.

Wireless Telegraphy, or telegraphing without any wires at all,
from one point to another point through space, is the most
modern and startling development in telegraphy. To the average
mind this is highly suggestive of scientific imposition, so
intangible and unknown are the physical forces by which it is
rendered possible, and yet this is one of the late achievements of
the Nineteenth Century. Many scientists have contributed data
on this subject, but the principles and theories have only begun
to crystallize into an art during the first part of the last decade of
the Nineteenth Century. Heinrich Hertz, the German scientist,
was perhaps the real pioneer in this line in his studies and
observations of the nature
of the electric undulations
which have taken his
name, and are known as
“Hertzian” waves, rays, or
oscillations. Tesla in the
United States, Branly and
Ducretet in France, Righi
in Italy, the Russian
savant, Popoff, and
Professor Lodge, of
England, have all made
contributions to this art. It
FIG. 13.—WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY, INTERNATIONAL
will aid the understanding YACHT RACES, OCTOBER, 1899.
to say, in a preliminary
way, that electric undulations are generated and emitted from a plate or
conductor a hundred feet or more high in the air, are thence transmitted
through space to a remote point, which may be many miles away, and there
influencing a similar plate high in the air give, through a special form of
receiving device known as a “coherer,” a telegraphic record. The “coherer,”
invented by Branly in 1891, is a glass tube containing metal filings between
two circuit terminals. The electric waves cause these filings to cohere, and so
vary the resistance to the passage of the current as to give a basis for
transformation into a record.
In March, 1899, Signor Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian student, then residing
in England, successfully communicated between South Foreland, County of
Kent, and Boulogne-sur-mer, in France, a distance of thirty-two miles across

the English Channel. Signor Marconi used the vertical conductors and the
Hertz-oscillation principle, and his system is described in his United States
patent. No. 586,193, July 13, 1897.
His patent comprehends many claims, a leading feature of which is the means
for automatically shaking the “coherer” to break up the cohesion of the metal
filings as embodied in his first claim, as follows:
“In a receiver for electrical oscillations, the combination of an imperfect electrical contact, a
circuit through the contact, and means actuated by the circuit for shaking the contact.”

The Marconi system of wireless telegraphy was practically employed with
useful effect April 28, 1899, on the “Goodwin Sands” light-ship to telegraph
for assistance when in collision twelve miles from land and in danger of
sinking. It was also used in October, 1899, on board the “Grande Duchesse”
to report the international yacht race between the “Columbia” and the
“Shamrock” at Sandy Hook, as seen in Fig. 13. Lord Roberts also made good
use of it in his South African campaign against the Boers. According to Signor
Marconi its present range is limited to eighty-six miles, but it is expected that
this will be soon extended to 150 miles.

FIG. 13A.—THE COHERER.

Marconi’s receiving apparatus is shown in Fig. 13A, and consists of a small
glass tube called the coherer, about 11⁄2 inches in length, into the ends of
which are inserted two silver pole pieces, which fit the tube, but whose ends
are 1⁄50 inch apart. The space between the ends is filled with a mixture
composed of fine nickel and silver filings and a mere trace of mercury, and
the other ends of the pole pieces are attached to the wires of a local circuit. In
the normal condition the metallic filings have an enormous resistance, and
constitute a practical insulator, preventing the flow of the local current; but if
they are influenced by electric waves, coherence takes place and the resistance

falls, allowing the local current to pass. The coherence will continue until the
filings are mechanically shaken, when they will at once fall apart, as it were,
insulation will be established, and the current will be broken. If, then, a
coherer be brought within the influence of the electric waves thrown out from
a transmitter, coherence will occur whenever the key of the transmitter at the
distant station is depressed. Mr. Marconi has devised an ingenious
arrangement, which is the subject of his patent referred to, in which a small
hammer is made to rap continuously upon the coherer by the action of the
local circuit, which is closed when the Hertzian waves pass through the metal
filings. As soon as the waves cease, the hammer gives its last rap, and the tube
is left in the decohered condition ready for the next transmission of waves. It
is evident that by making the local circuit operate a relay, in the circuit of
which is a standard recording instrument, the messages may be recorded on a
tape in the usual way.

FIG. 13B.—DIAGRAM OF THE TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER.

In Fig. 13B is shown the diagram of circuits. The letters d d indicate the
spheres of the transmitter, which are connected, one to the vertical wire w, the
other to earth, and both by wires c′ c′, to the terminals of the secondary
winding of induction coil, c. In the primary circuit is the key b. The coherer j
has two metal pole pieces, j1 j2, separated by silver and nickel filings. One end
of the tube is connected to earth, the other to the vertical wire w, and the
coherer itself forms part of a circuit containing the local cell g, and a sensitive
telegraph relay actuating another circuit, which circuit works a trembler p, of
which o is the decohering tapper, or hammer. When the electric waves pass
from w to j1 j2 the resistance falls, and the current from g actuates the relay n,

the choking coils k k′, lying between the coherer and the relay, compelling the
electric waves to traverse the coherer instead of flowing through the relay. The
relay n in its turn causes the more powerful battery r to pass a current through
the tapper, and also through the electro-magnet of the recording instrument h.
The alternate cohering by the waves and decohering by the tapper continue
uninterruptedly as long as the transmitting key at the distant station is
depressed. The armature of the recording instrument, however, because of its
inertia, cannot rise and fall in unison with the rapid coherence and
decoherence of the receiver, and hence it remains down and makes a stroke
upon the tape as long as the sending key is depressed.
The principal applications of wireless telegraphy so far have been at sea,
where the absence of intervening obstacles gives a free path to the electrical
oscillations. The system is also applicable on land, however, and no one can
doubt that if the Ministers of the Legations shut up in Pekin had been supplied
with a wireless telegraphy outfit, neither the walls of Pekin nor the strongest
cordon of its Chinese hordes could have prevented the long sought
communication. The full story of mystery and massacre would have been
promptly made known, and the civilized world have been spared its anxiety,
and earlier and effective measures of relief supplied.
As the art of telegraphy grows apace toward the end of the Nineteenth
Century, individuality of invention becomes lost in the great maze of
modifications, ramifications, and combinations. Inventions become merged
into systems, and systems become swallowed up by companies. In the
promises of living inventors the wish is too often father to the thought, and the
conservative man sees the child of promise rise in great expectation, flourish
for a few years, and then subside to quiet rest in the dusty archives of the
Patent Office. They all contribute their quota of value, but it is so difficult to
single out as pre-eminent any one of those which as yet are on probation, that
we must leave to the coming generation the task of making meritorious
selection.
To-day the telegraph is the great nerve system of the nation’s body, and it
ramifies and vitalizes every part with sensitive force. In 1899 the Western
Union Telegraph Company alone had 22,285 offices, 904,633 miles of wire,
sent 61,398,157 messages, received in money $23,954,312, and enjoyed a
profit of $5,868,733. Add to this the business of the Postal Telegraph
Company and other companies, and it becomes well nigh impossible to grasp

the magnitude of this tremendous factor of Nineteenth Century progress.
Figures fail to become impressive after they reach the higher denominations,
and it may not add much to either the reader’s conception or his knowledge to
say that the statistics for the whole world for the year 1898 show: 103,832
telegraph offices, 2,989,803 miles of wire, and 365,453,526 messages sent
during that year. This wire would extend around the earth about 120 times,
and the messages amounted to one million a day for every day in that year.
This is for land telegraphs only, and does not include cable messages.
What saving has accrued to the world in the matter of time, and what
development in values in the various departments of life, and what
contributions to human comfort and happiness the telegraph has brought
about, is beyond human estimate, and is too impressive a thought for
speculation.

CHAPTER IV.

The Atlantic Cable.

Difficulties of Laying—Congratulatory Messages Between Queen Victoria and
President Buchanan—The Siphon Recorder—Statistics.

mong the applications of the telegraph which deserve special mention

A for magnitude and importance is the Atlantic Cable. For boldness of
conception, tireless persistence in execution, and value of results, this
engineering feat, though nearly a half century old, still challenges the
admiration of the world, and marks the beginning of one of the great
epochs of the Nineteenth Century. It was not so brilliant in substantive
invention, as it added but little to the telegraph as already known, beyond the
means for insulating the wires within a gutta percha cable, but it was one of
the greatest of all engineering works. It was chiefly the result of the energy
and public spirit of Mr. Cyrus W. Field, an eminent American citizen. Three
times was its laying attempted before success crowned the work. The first
expedition sailed August 7, 1857, and consisted of a fleet of eight vessels,
four American and four English, starting from Valentia on the Irish coast. On
August 11 the cable parted, and 344 miles of the cable were lost in water two
miles deep. In 1858 a renewal of the effort to lay the cable was made.
Improvements were added in the paying out machinery, and a different
manner of coiling the enormous load of cable on the vessels was resorted to,
and provisions also were made to protect the propeller from contact with the
cable. On June 10 the telegraphic fleet steamed out of Plymouth harbor. It
consisted of the U. S. frigate “Niagara,” with the paddle-wheel steamer
“Valorous” as a tender, and the British frigate “Agamemnon,” with the
paddle-wheel steamer “Gorgon” as a tender. After three days at sea, terrible
gales were encountered and much damage resulted. The vessels were to
proceed to midocean, and the portions of the cable carried by the “Niagara”
and “Agamemnon” were to be spliced, and the two vessels were then to sail in
opposite directions to their respective coasts. The first splice was made on the

26th of June. After paying out two and a half miles each, the cable parted.
Again meeting and splicing, forty miles each were paid out, and the cable
again parted. On the 28th another splicing was effected, and 150 miles each
were paid out, and again the cable parted, and the expedition had to be
abandoned. After much financial embarrassment and adverse criticism, the
courageous and public-spirited directors who had control of the enterprise
dispatched another expedition, which sailed July 17, 1858. The two vessels,
“Niagara” and “Agamemnon,” with their tenders, proceeded to midocean, and
following the same method of connecting the ends of their respective cable
sections, they sailed in opposite directions. On August 5, 1858, Mr. Cyrus
Field announced by telegram from Trinity Bay, on the coast of Newfoundland,
that Trinity Bay in America, and Valentia in Ireland, 2,134 miles apart, had
been connected, and the great Atlantic cable was an established fact.

FIG. 14.—ORIGINAL ATLANTIC CABLE, FULL SIZE.

Consists of seven copper wires (4) to form the conductor, a wrapping (3)
of thread, soaked in tallow and pitch, several layers (2) of gutta percha, all
surrounded by a protecting coat of mail (1) of twisted wires.

On August 16, 1858, the first message came over from Queen Victoria to
President Buchanan of the United States, as follows:
“To the President of the United States, Washington:
“The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful completion of this great
international work, in which the Queen has taken the deepest interest.

“The Queen is convinced that the President will join with her in fervently hoping that the
Electric Cable which now connects Great Britain with the United States will prove an
additional link between the nations whose friendship is founded upon their common interest
and reciprocal esteem.
“The Queen has much pleasure in thus communicating with the President, and renewing to
him her wishes for the prosperity of the United States.”

to which the President replied as follows:
“Washington City, Aug. 16, 1858.
“To Her Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain:
“The President cordially reciprocates the congratulations of Her Majesty, the Queen, on the
success of the great international enterprise accomplished by the science, skill, and
indomitable energy of the two countries. It is a triumph more glorious, because far more
useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle.
“May the Atlantic Telegraph, under the blessing of Heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual
peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by Divine
Providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty and law throughout the world. In this view
will not all nations of Christendom spontaneously unite in the declaration that it shall be
forever neutral, and that its communications shall be held sacred in passing to their places of
destination, even in the midst of hostilities?
(Signed) “James Buchanan.”

Great rejoicing on both sides of the ocean followed, and the public print was
filled with accounts of the enterprise. The following selection from the
Atlantic Monthly of October, 1858, is an apostrophe in lofty sentiments of
verse, which to-day stirs the Twentieth Century heart as a joyous prophecy
fulfilled:

Thou lonely Bay of Trinity,
Ye bosky shores untrod,
Lean, breathless, to the white-lipped sea
And hear the voice of God!

From world to world His couriers fly,
Thought-winged and shod with fire;
The angel of His stormy sky
Rides down the sunken wire.

What saith the herald of the Lord?
“The world’s long strife is done!
Close wedded by that mystic cord,

Her continents are one.

“And one in heart, as one in blood,
Shall all her peoples be;
The hands of human brotherhood
Shall clasp beneath the sea.

“Through Orient seas, o’er Afric’s plain,
And Asian mountains borne,
The vigor of the Northern brain
Shall nerve the world outworn.

“From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
Shall thrill the magic thread;
The new Prometheus steals once more
The fire that wakes the dead.

“Earth, gray with age, shall hear the strain
Which o’er her childhood rolled;
For her the morning stars again
Shall sing their song of old.

“For, lo! the fall of Ocean’s wall,
Space mocked and Time outrun!
And round the world the thought of all
Is as the thought of one!”

O, reverently and thankfully
The mighty wonder own!
The deaf can hear, the blind may see,
The work is God’s alone.

Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat
From answering beach to beach!
Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,
And melt the chains of each!

Wild terror of the sky above,
Glide tamed and dumb below!

Bear gently, Ocean’s carrier dove,
Thy errands to and fro!

Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,
Beneath the deep so far,
The bridal robe of Earth’s accord,
The funeral shroud of war!

The poles unite, the zones agree,
The tongues of striving cease;
As on the Sea of Galilee,
The Christ is whispering, “Peace!”
After a few months of working, the cable became inoperative, but its success
was a demonstrated fact, and in 1866 a new cable was laid by the aid of that
monster steamer “The Great Eastern,” since which time the cable has become
one of the great factors of modern civilization.
Probably the most important of the inventions relating to submarine
telegraphs is the siphon recorder, invented by Sir William Thompson, now
Lord Kelvin (U. S. Pat. No. 156,897, Nov. 17, 1874). It is called a siphon
recorder because the record is made by a little glass siphon down which a
flow of ink is maintained like a fountain pen. This siphon is vibrated by the
electric impulses to produce on the paper strip a zigzag line, whose varying
contour is made to represent letters. In the illustration, Fig. 15, m is an ink
well, o a strip of paper, and n the ink siphon, one end of which is bent and
dips down into the ink well, and the other end of which traces the record on
the moving paper strip o. The siphon is sustained on a vertical axis l, and its
lateral vibration is effected as follows: A light rectangular coil b b, of
exceedingly fine insulated wire, is suspended between the poles N S of a
powerful electro-magnet energized by a local battery. In the coil b b is a
stationary soft iron core a, magnetized by the poles N S. The coil b b is
suspended upon a vertical axis consisting of a fine wire f f, and the delicate
electrical impulses over the submarine cable enter the coil b b through the
axial wire f f as a conductor, and cause a greater or less oscillation of the coil
b b between the poles N S of the electro-magnet. The coil b b is connected by
a thread k to the siphon, and pulls the siphon in one direction, while the
siphon is pulled in the opposite direction by a helical spring attached to an

arm on the siphon axis l. The jagged lines seen in Fig. 16 spell the words
“siphon recorder.”

FIG. 15.—SIPHON RECORDER.

FIG. 16.—SIPHON RECORDER MESSAGE.

To-day there lie in submerged silence, but pulsating with the life of the world,
no less than 1,500 submarine telegraphs. Their aggregate length is 170,000
miles; their total estimated cost is $250,000,000, and the number of messages
annually transmitted over them is 6,000,000. Thirteen cables work daily
across the Atlantic, and an additional one is being laid from Germany.
Messages now go across the Atlantic and are received on the siphon recorder
at the rate of fifty words a minute, and at a cost of twenty-five cents a word.
Our guns may thunder in the Philippines, and the news by cable, traveling
faster than the earth on its axis, may reach the Western Hemisphere under the

paradoxical condition of several hours earlier than it occurred. Cablegrams to
Manila cost $2.38 a word, and the cable tolls for our War Department alone
are costing at the rate of $325,000 a year. The logical outcome is a Pacific
cable, a bill for which, connecting San Francisco and Honolulu, has already
passed the United States Senate.
Messages from the Executive Mansion at Washington to the battlefield at
Santiago were sent and responses received within twelve minutes, while a
message dispatched from the House of Representatives in Washington to the
House of Parliament in London, in the chess match of 1898, was transmitted
and a reply received in thirteen and one-half seconds.
To-day the cable with the still small voice, more divine than human, speaks
with one accent to all the nations of the earth. Differing though they may in
tongue and skin, in thought and religion, in physical development and clime,
the telegraph speaks to them all alike, and by all is understood. Truly it fulfils
the prophecy so gracefully expressed in the verses quoted, and has become the
common bond of union among the nations of the earth.

CHAPTER V.

The Dynamo and Its Applications.

Observations of Faraday and Henry—Magneto-Electric Machines of Pixii and of
Saxton—Hjorth’s Dynamo of 1855—Wilde’s Machine of 1866—Siemens’ of 1867—
Gramme’s of 1870—Tesla’s Polyphase Currents.

n the last thirty-five years of the Nineteenth Century there has grown up

I into the full stature of mechanical majority this stalwart son of electrical
lineage. As the means for furnishing electrical power it stands to-day the
great fountain head of electrical generation, and in its peculiar field ranks
as of equal importance with the steam engine. Until about 1865 the
voltaic battery, which generated electricity by chemical decomposition, was
practically the only means for producing electricity for industrial and
commercial purposes. It was through its agency that the telegraph, the electric
light, and many other discoveries in electricity were made and rendered
possible. Its cost and limited amount of current, however, restricted the limits
of its practical application, and although its current could furnish beautiful
laboratory experiments, its mechanical work was more in the nature of
illustration than utilization. But with the advent of the dynamo electricity has
taken a new and very much larger place in the commercial activities of the
world. It runs and warms our cars, it furnishes our light, it plates our metals, it
runs our elevators, it electrocutes our criminals; and a thousand other things it
performs for us with secrecy and dispatch in its silent and forceful way. But
what is a dynamo? To the average mind the most satisfactory answer would be
—that it is simply a machine which converts mechanical power into
electricity. Attach a dynamo to a steam engine, and the power of the steam
engine will, through the dynamo, become transformed or converted into a
powerful electric current. Any other source of mechanical power, such as a
water wheel, gas engine, wind wheel, or even a horse or man, will serve to
operate the dynamo; its primary and sole function being to take power and
convert it into electricity.

The stepping stone to the dynamo in its development was the magneto-
electrical machine. This is a machine founded upon the general principle
observed by Faraday in 1831 and 1832, and also by Prof. Henry about the
same time, that when a magnet is made to approach a helix of insulated wire it
causes a current of electricity to flow in the helix as long as the magnet
advances. If the magnet is passed through the helix, the current is reversed as
soon as the magnet passes the middle point. The principle is the same if the
magnet be made to approach and recede from the poles of an electro-magnet
having a helix wound around a soft iron core. Likewise the same result occurs
if the electro-magnet with its helix is made to approach and recede from a
permanent magnet, the current in the helix flowing in one direction when it
approaches the permanent magnet, and in the opposite direction when leaving
the said magnet. The movement of the two elements in relation to each other
requires some force to overcome the repellent and attractive actions, and this
force is converted into electrical energy. This is the principle of the magneto-
electric machine.

FIG. 17.—PIXII MAGNETO-ELECTRIC MACHINE, 1832.

Saxton in the United States and Pixii in France were the first to produce
organized devices of this class for generating electricity from magnetism.
Pixii’s machine (1832) consisted of a permanent horse-shoe magnet which
was caused to revolve in proximity to an armature upon which was wound a
coil of insulated wire. On March 30, 1852, Sonnenberg and Rechten obtained
a United States patent, No. 8,843, for an electrical machine for killing whales,
and on August 19, 1856, Shepard obtained U. S. Pat. No. 15,596 for the
machine which came to be known as the “Alliance” machine. Both of these
machines had permanent field magnets, and were early types of magneto-
electric machines. The efficiency of these magneto-electric machines was
necessarily limited to the strength of the inducing field magnets, which, being
permanent magnets, were a positive and fixed factor. It was an easy step to
substitute electro-magnets for permanent magnets, as the field or inducing
magnets, and also to excite the (electro) field magnet by voltaic batteries, but
the important step which resulted in the machine which is called the
“dynamo” (from the Greek “Δυναμις”—power) was yet to come.

FIG. 18.—HJORTH’S DYNAMO ELECTRIC MACHINE.

FIG. 19.—HJORTH’S DYNAMO ELECTRIC MACHINE, PLAN VIEW.

This step consisted in taking the current induced in the revolving helix or
armature (by the field magnets) and sending it back through the coils of the
field magnets which produced it, thereby increasing the energy of the field
magnet coils, and they in turn with an increased efficiency and reciprocal
action induce still stronger currents in the armature coils, and so a building up
process, or principle of mutual and reciprocal excitation, is carried on until the
maximum efficiency is reached. This principle was the discovery of Soren
Hjorth, of Copenhagen, and is fully described in his British patent, No. 806 of
1855, for “An Improved Magneto-Electric Battery.” As the prototype of the
dynamo, it is worthy of illustration. In the illustration, Figs. 18 and 19, a is a
revolving wheel bearing the armature coils, C permanent magnets, d electro-
magnets (field magnets), and g the commutator. Quoting from his
specifications, he says: “The permanent magnets acting on the armatures
brought in succession between their poles, induce a current in the coils of the
armatures, which current, after having been caused by the commutator to flow
in one direction, passes round the electro-magnets (field magnets), charging
the same and acting on the armatures. By the mutual action between the
electro-magnets and the armatures an accelerating force is obtained, which in

result produces electricity greater in quantity and intensity than has heretofore
been obtained by similar means.”
Although the principle of the dynamo was clearly embodied in the Hjorth
patent, its value was not appreciated until some time later. Eleven years later
Wilde (U. S. Pat. No. 59,738, Nov. 13, 1866), employed a small machine with
permanent magnets to excite the coil-wound field magnets of a larger
machine. But Siemens (British Pat. No. 261 of 1867), taking up the principle
employed by Hjorth, dispensed with his superfluous permanent magnets,
having found that the residual magnetism, which always remained in iron
which has once been magnetized, was sufficient as a basis to start the building
up process. Farmer, Wheatstone and Varley also recognized this fact about the
same time. Siemens’ patent also was the first embodiment of what is known as
the bobbin armature. Gramme and D’Ivernois (British Pat. 1,668 of 1870, and
U. S. Pat. No. 120,057, of Oct. 17, 1871), were the first to bring out the
continuously wound ring armature.
Active development now began in various types and by various inventors,
including Weston, Brush, Edison, Thomson and Houston, Westinghouse, and
others, who have brought the dynamo to its present high efficiency.
The revolving coils of the dynamo are called the armature, and the fixed
electro-magnets are called the field magnets, and these latter may be two or
more in number. When two are used they are arranged on opposite sides of the
armature, and form what is known as the bipolar machine. A larger number
constitutes the multipolar machine. The field magnets in the multipolar
machine usually are arranged in radial position around the entire
circumference of the revolving armature, and are held in a fixed circular
frame. To give a clear idea of the principles of the dynamo, the bipolar
machine is best suited for illustration, and is here given in Figs. 20 and 21, in
which Fig. 20 represents the dynamo complete, and Fig. 21 a detail of the end
of the armature and commutator. This armature consists of coils or bobbins of
insulated wire, each section having its terminals connected with separate
insulated plates on the hub, which plates are known as the commutator. When
any section of the armature approaches the pole of a field magnet, the current
induced in that section of the armature coils by the field magnet, is taken off
from a corresponding plate of the commutator by flat springs, seen in Fig. 20,
and known as brushes. The field magnets A and B, Fig. 20, are shown with
only a few turns of wire about them for clearer illustrations of the

connections, which are made as follows: The wire a is extended in coils
around the field magnet B, and thence around field magnet A, and thence to
the upper brush on the commutator, thence through the wire coils or bobbins
of the rotary armature C, and thence by the lower brush to the wire b. The
terminals of the wires a and b extend to the point of utilization of the current,
whether this be electric lights, motors, or other applications. In this
illustration, the circuit, it will be seen, passes through both the coils of the
field magnets and the coils of the armature, involving the principle of mutual
excitation.

FIG. 20.—BIPOLAR DYNAMO.

There are two principal kinds of dynamos—those producing the alternating
currents, and those producing the continuous current. In the first the current
alternates in direction, or is composed of an infinite number of impulses of
opposite polarity: one polarity when a section of the armature coil is
approaching a north field magnet pole or receding from a south pole, and the

other polarity when receding from a north field magnet pole and approaching
a south pole. In the continuous current machine, the commutator and brushes
are so arranged as to take up all the impulses of the same polarity and conduct
them away by one brush, and gathering all the impulses of the opposite
polarity and conducting them away by another brush. Thus the current of each
brush, in the continuous current machine, is always of the same polarity, and
the polarity of one being always positive, and that of the other negative, the
current flows continuously in the same direction. A third species of dynamo is
the pulsatory, in which the current flow is invariable in direction, but proceeds
in waves.

FIG. 21.—ARMATURE OF BIPOLAR DYNAMO.

A change in the character of the current generated by the dynamo is made by
what is known as the “transformer,” in which the principle of the induction
coil is made available. In this way, for instance, the high potential currents
generated by the powerful water wheels at Niagara Falls are taken twenty
miles to Buffalo, and are there transformed into other currents of lower
potential, suited to incandescent lighting and other various uses. A similar
scheme is in process of fulfillment in the establishment of a water power
electric plant near Conowingo, Maryland, on the Susquehanna River, to
furnish electrical power to Baltimore, Wilmington and Philadelphia.

An important development in electrical generation and transmission is to be
found in what is known as the polyphase, multiphase, or rotating current,
pioneer patents for which were granted to Tesla May 1, 1888, Nos. 381,968,
381,969, 382,279, 382,280, 382,281 and 382,282.
Realizing the possibilities of the dynamo, the Legislature of New York in
1888 passed a law, which went into effect in 1889, in that State, substituting
death by electricity for the hangman’s noose. The criminal is strapped in the
chair, seen in Fig. 22, one terminal of the wire from the dynamo is strapped
upon his forehead, and the other to anklets on his legs, and like a flash of
lightning the deadly energy of the dynamo performs its work.
Not the least of the applications of the dynamo is its use in electro-metallurgy
for plating metals, and also for promoting chemical reactions. The electric
furnace, stimulated into higher heat by the dynamo than can be otherwise
obtained, has brought about many valuable discoveries, and made great
advances in various arts. The metal aluminum, and the hard abrasive or
polishing and grinding material known as “carborundum” are the products of
the electric furnace, and so is the product known as “calcium carbide,” which,
when immersed in water, gives off acetylene gas and is a product now
universally used for that purpose, and rapidly increasing in commercial
importance.

FIG. 22.—ELECTROCUTION CHAIR.

In Fig. 23 is seen the Acheson electric furnace for producing carborundum.
The electric current traverses the furnace through a series of horizontal
electrodes at each end, and highly heats a central core of carbon, which is
disposed in a mass of silicious and carbonaceous material, and which latter is
converted by the heat into silicide of carbon, or carborundum. In Fig. 24 is
shown a continuous electric furnace constructed as a revolving wheel, under
the Bradley patents. Rim sections 5 are placed on the wheel on one side and
filled with a mixture of carbon and lime, through which the electric current is
passed from the dynamo g. The heat of the current fuses the mass and
converts it into calcium carbide, and as the wheel slowly revolves the rim
sections 5 are removed from the opposite side, and the mass of calcium
carbide, seen at x, is broken off. The electrolytic production of copper through
the agency of the dynamo amounts to 150,000 tons annually, and the
commercial reduction of aluminum by the electric furnace has grown from
eighty-three pounds in 1883 to 5,200,000 pounds in 1898, and its cost has
been reduced to about 33 cents per pound.

FIG. 23.—PART SECTIONAL VIEW OF CARBORUNDUM FURNACE.

The storage battery, holding in reserve its stored up electric energy, also owes
its practical value entirely to the dynamo which charges it, and thus makes
available a portable source of supply.

FIG. 24.—BRADLEY ELECTRIC FURNACE FOR PRODUCING CALCIUM
CARBIDE.

To contemplate the dynamo with its clumsy, enormous spools, it suggests to
the imagination of the average observer the gigantic toy of some
Brobdingnagian boy—but the dynamo is no toy. It is the most compact,
business-like, and dangerous of all utilitarian devices. To touch its brushes
may be instant death, for the dynamo is the prison house of the lightning, and
resents intrusion. Hidden away from public gaze in some sequestered power
house, and working night and day like some tireless, dumb, and mighty genii,
it sends its magnetic thrills of force silently through the many miles of wire
extending like radii from some great nerve center through the conduits in our

streets, and stretching from pole to pole like giant cobwebs through the air.
Responding to its force, thousands of little incandescent threads leap into
radiant brightness and shed their mellow and genial light in our offices, our
stores, hotels, and homes. Brilliant arc lamps, rivaling the sun in power, make
night into day, and produce along our streets coruscations, silhouettes, and
dancing shadows in spectacular and unceasing pageants. From the towering
lighthouses of our coasts its beams are thrown seaward, and a beacon for the
mariner shines beyond all other lights. The great search light of our ships is in
itself but a hollow mockery until the dynamo whispers in its ear the word
“light!” and then its beam, reaching for miles along the horizon, discovers a
stealthy enemy, or signals the safe return to port. The mighty force of the
dynamo entering the electric motors on the street cars turns the wheels and
transports its load with scarcely a passenger inside realizing how it is all done.
The same energy turns the electric fan, and with kindly service soothes the
weary sufferer, and at another place remorselessly takes the life of the
condemned criminal. The dynamo is one of the great factors of modern
civilization, and its potential name, like that of “dynamite,” rightly defines its
character.

FIG. 25.—MODERN MULTIPOLAR DYNAMO.

CHAPTER VI.

The Electric Motor.

Barlow’s Spur Wheel—Dal Negro’s Electric Pendulum—Prof. Henry’s Electric
Motor—Jacobi’s Electric Boat—Davenport’s Motor—The Neff Motor—Dr. Page’s
Electric Locomotive—Dr. Siemens’ First Electric Railway at Berlin, 1879—First
Electric Railway in United States, Between Baltimore and Hampden, 1885—Third Rail
System—Statistics Electric Railways and General Electric Co.—Distribution Electric
Current in Principal Cities.

lthough the electric motor of to-day depends for practical value

A entirely upon the dynamo which supplies it with electric power,
nevertheless the motor considerably antedated the dynamo. The
genesis of the electric motor began in 1821 with Faraday’s
observation of the phenomenon of the conversion of an electric
current into mechanical motion. In his experiment a copper wire was
supported in a vertical position so as to dip into a cup of mercury, while a
small bar magnet was anchored at one end by a thread to the bottom of the
cup and floated in the mercury in upright position. The mass of mercury being
connected to one pole of a battery, and the vertical wire to the other, it was
found that when the circuit was completed by clipping the wire into the
mercury, the floating bar magnet would revolve around the wire as a center.

FIG. 26.—BARLOW’S WHEEL.

In 1826 Barlow, of Woolwich, made his electrical spur wheel, Fig. 26, and in
1830 the Abbe Dal Negro, in Padua, is said to have constructed a sort of
vibrating electrical pendulum, both of which devices were crude forms of
magnetic engines. Dal Negro’s machine, see Fig. 27, consisted of a magnet A,
movable about an axis situated about one-third of its length, and the upper
extremity of which was capable of oscillating between the two branches of an
electro-magnet E. A current being sent into the electro-magnet, passed through
an eight-cupped mercurial commutator C, which the oscillating magnet
controlled by means of a rod t and a fork F. When the magnet had been
attracted toward one of the poles of the electro-magnet this very motion of
attraction acting upon the commutator changed the direction of the current,
and the magnet was repelled toward the other branch of the electro-magnet,
and so on.

FIG. 27.—DAL NEGRO’S ELECTRIC MOTOR.

In 1828 Prof. Joseph Henry produced his energetic electro-magnets sustaining
weights of some thousands of pounds, and gave prophetic suggestion of the
possibilities of electricity as a motive power. In 1831 he devised the electric
motor shown in Fig. 28, which is described in Prof. Henry’s own words as
follows:
“A B is the horizontal magnet, about seven inches long, and movable on an
axis at the center; its two extremities when placed in a horizontal line are
about one inch from the north poles of the upright magnets C and D. G and F
are two large tumblers containing diluted acid, in each of which is immersed a
plate of zinc surrounded with copper; l m s t are four brass thimbles soldered
to the zinc and copper of the batteries and filled with mercury.

“The galvanic magnet A B is wound with three strands of copper bell wire,
each about twenty-five feet long; the similar ends of these are twisted together
so as to form two stiff wires q r, which project beyond the extremity B, and
dip into the thimbles s t.

FIG. 28.—PROF. HENRY’S ELECTRIC MOTOR.

“To the wires q r two other wires are soldered so as to project in an opposite
direction, and dip into the thimbles l m. The wires of the galvanic magnet
have thus, as it were, four projecting ends; and by inspecting the figure it will
be seen that the extremity p, which dips into the cup m, attached to the copper
of the battery in G, corresponds to the extremity r which dips into the cup t,
connecting, with the zinc in battery F. When the batteries are in action, if the
end B is depressed until q r dips into the cups s t, A B instantly becomes a
powerful magnet, having its north pole at B; this, of course, is repelled by the
north pole D, while at the same time it is attracted by C; the position is
consequently changed, and o p comes in contact with the mercury in l m; as
soon as the communication is formed, the poles are reversed, and the position
again changed. If the tumblers be filled with strong diluted acid, the motion is
at first very rapid and powerful, but it soon almost entirely ceases. By
partially filling the tumblers with weak acid, and occasionally adding a small
quantity of fresh acid, a uniform motion, at the rate of seventy-five vibrations
in a minute, has been kept up for more than an hour; with a large battery and
very weak acid the motion might be continued for an indefinite length of
time.”

Following Prof. Henry came Sturgeon’s rotary motor of 1832, Jacobi’s rotary
motor of 1834, Fig. 29, which had electro-magnets both in the field and
armature; Davenport’s motor of 1834, Zabriskie’s motor of 1837, in which a
vibrating magnet converted reciprocating into rotary motion; Davenport’s
motor of 1837 (U. S. Pat. No. 132, Feb. 25, 1837), Fig. 30; Page’s rotary
motor of 1838, Walkley’s motor of 1838 (U. S. Pat. No. 809, June 27, 1838);
Stimson’s motor of 1838 (U. S. Pat. No. 910, Sept. 12, 1838); Page’s motor of
1839, Cook’s of 1840 (U. S. Pat. No. 1,735, Aug. 25, 1840); Elias’ motor of
1842, invented in Holland; Lillie’s motor of 1850 (U S. Pat. No. 7,287, April
16, 1850); the Neff motor of 1851 (U. S. Pat. No. 7,889, Jan. 7, 1851), of
which illustration is given in Fig. 31, and Page’s motor of 1854 (U. S. Pat. No.
10,480, Jan. 31, 1854). In 1835 Davenport constructed a small circular
railway at Springfield, Mass.

FIG. 29.—JACOBI’S ROTARY ELECTRIC MOTOR.

In 1839 Prof. Jacobi, with the aid of Emperor Nicholas, applied his electric
motor to a boat 28 feet long, carrying fourteen passengers, and propelled the
same at a speed of three miles an hour. About the same time Robert Davidson,
a Scotchman, experimented with an electric railway car sixteen feet long,
weighing six tons, and attaining a speed of four miles an hour. In 1840
Davenport, by means of his electric motor, printed a news sheet called the

Electro Magnet and Mechanics’ Intelligencer. In 1851 an electric locomotive
made by Dr. Page in accordance with his subsequent patent of 1854, drew a
train of cars from Washington to Bladensburg at a rate of nineteen miles an
hour.

FIG. 30.—DAVENPORT MOTOR.

FIG. 31.—NEFF MOTOR.

FIG. 32.—WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC MOTOR.

All these motors were operated by voltaic batteries, and on account of the cost
of the latter but little practical use of the electric motor was made until the
dynamo was invented. In 1873 an accidental discovery led to the rapid
practical development of the electric motor. It is said that at the industrial
exhibition at Vienna in that year, a number of Gramme dynamos were being
placed in position, and a workman in making the electrical connections for
one of these machines, inadvertently connected it to another dynamo in active
operation, and was surprised to find that the dynamo he was connecting began
to revolve in the opposite direction. This was the clue that led to the important
recognition of the structural identity of the dynamo and the modern type of
electric motor. The dynamo and the electric motor then grew into
development together, and the same inventors who brought the dynamo to its
present high efficiency, produced electric motors of corresponding principles
and value. In the illustration, Fig. 32, is shown a modern electric motor. It is a
Westinghouse two-phase machine, of 300 horse power, of the self starting
induction type, designed to operate at a speed of 500 revolutions per minute
when supplied with two-phase currents of 3,000 alternations per minute and
2,000 volts pressure.

FIG. 33.—SIEMENS’ FIRST ELECTRIC RAILWAY.

The most important application of the electric motor is for street car
operation. The first electric railway was that of Dr. Werner Siemens, at Berlin,
in 1879, an illustration of which is given in Fig. 33. The first electric railway
in America was installed at Baltimore in 1885, and ran to Hampden, a
distance of two miles.

FIG. 34.—OVERHEAD TROLLEY CAR.

FIG. 35.—UNDERGROUND ELECTRIC TROLLEY SYSTEM.

The familiar overhead trolley cars, and the far superior conduit trolley system,
represent perhaps the largest use made of electric motors. The motors are
arranged under the cars in varying forms adapted to the structure of the car. In
the overhead trolley, shown in Fig. 34, the current is taken from the overhead
wire by a flexible trolley pole, and in the conduit system a trolley known as a
plow extends from the bottom of the car through a narrow slot in the top of
the conduit and makes a traveling contact with the conductor rails within the
conduit, which carry the electric current. Fig. 35 is an end view of a street car
of the latter type, with the conduit and conductor rails in cross section. The
current goes from one rail to one bearing surface of the plow, thence to the
motor on the car and back to the other bearing surface of the plow and the
other conductor rail in the conduit.

FIG. 36.—THIRD RAIL SYSTEM ON THE N. Y., N. H. & H. RAILROAD—FRONT END
OF MOTOR CAR.

A third system, which has supplanted to some extent the use of steam on short
line railways, is the so-called third rail system, of which an example is seen in
Fig. 36. A third conductor rail is placed between the usual track rails, and
from this conductor the current is taken by a sliding shoe on the car, and
carried to the motor and thence through the car wheels to the track rails. To
reduce danger from the live rail, the third rail in some systems is made in
sections, and, by an automatic switching process as the car moves along, only
the sections of the rail beneath the car are brought into circuit, all other
portions being cut out.
The use of electric motors has greatly extended, cheapened, and expedited the
street car service. All the principal thoroughfares of cities and even towns are
now so equipped, and radiating suburban lines extend for miles from the city,
affording for five cents a pleasant and cheap excursion for the poor to the
green fields and fresh air of the country.

FIG. 37.—ELECTRIC RAILWAY MOTOR, CLOSED.

FIG. 38.—ELECTRIC RAILWAY MOTOR, OPENED.

Figs. 37 and 38 show an electric motor used on street cars, as made by the
General Electric Company. Externally it presents the appearance of some
curious, uncouth, cast iron box, which, to the uninitiated, piques the curiosity,

and when opened adds no explanation of its real character. In it, however, the
electrician finds a most interesting combination of metal and magnetism.

FIG. 39.—ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE OF B. & O. TUNNEL IN BALTIMORE.

In Fig. 39 is shown one of the most powerful electric locomotives ever
constructed. It was built in 1895 by the General Electric Company for the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, to draw trains through the long tunnel from the
Camden Street Station in Baltimore, for the purpose of avoiding smoke and
gas in the tunnel, which is 7,339 feet long. The locomotive weighs ninety-six
tons, or twenty-five tons above the average steam locomotive. It was designed
to draw 100 trains daily each way, moving passenger trains of a maximum
weight of 500 tons at thirty-five miles an hour, and freight trains of 1,200 tons
at fifteen miles an hour. It has two trucks, and eight drive wheels of sixty-two
inches diameter. There are four motors, two to each truck, each rated at 360
horse power.
Other important applications of the electric motor are, the propelling of
automobile carriages, small boats, and fish torpedoes, operating steering gear
for ships, passenger elevators, rock drills in mines, running printing presses,

fans, sewing machines, graphophones, and in all applications where space is
limited and cleanliness a desideratum.
According to Mulhall there were in 1890 in the United States and Canada
about 645 miles of street railway operated by electricity. This about concluded
the first decade of the life of the electric railway. Some idea of the rapid
increase in this field may be had by the statement of the same authority that
there were in 1890, at the end of this first decade, forty-five additional electric
railroads in course of construction, aggregating 512 miles of way, which
nearly doubled the previous existing mileage.
In 1898 it was estimated that there were in the United States 14,000 miles of
electric railroads, with a nominal capital of $1,000,000,000, and employing
170,000 men. In the same year a single electrical contract was entered into
between the Third Avenue Railroad and the Union Railway Company of New
York, acting as one, and the Westinghouse Electrical and Manufacturing
Company, amounting to $5,000,000. This was for the electrical equipment of
their respective railway lines, and is the largest electrical contract ever made.
The change in equipment from other motive power to the electric is rapidly
going on in all directions, and the rapid succession of trains will doubtless
cause it, for passenger traffic on short lines, to eventually supersede steam.
The eighth annual report of the General Electric Company shows for the year
1899 orders received for railway and other electrical equipment amounting to
$26,323,626; goods shipped, $22,379,463.75; profit on same, $3,805,860.18.
The growth of its business from 1893 to 1899 shows the following per cent. of
increase: In 1893, 36 per cent. above 1892; in 1894, 126 per cent. above 1893;
in 1895, 10 per cent. above 1894; in 1896, 60 per cent. above 1895; in 1897,
60 per cent. above 1896; in 1898, 21 per cent. above 1897; in 1899, 51 per
cent. above 1898.
The capitalization in electrical appliances in the United States in 1898 is
estimated at $1,900,000,000, most of which is devoted to industries in which
the electric motor is used. The export of electrical apparatus from this country
amounts to more than three million dollars annually, and it is said that there
are eight times as many electric railways in the United States as in all the rest
of the world combined.
The use of electrical current in twelve principal cities in the United States was
distributed in 1898 as follows:

Lamps, arcs, and motors in sixteen
candle power equivalents.
Boston 616,000
New York 1,718,000
Chicago 1,278,000
Brooklyn 322,000
Baltimore 224,000
Philadelphia 488,000
St. Louis 303,000
San Francisco 231,000
Buffalo 125,000
Rochester 184,000
Cincinnati 201,000
New Orleans 81,000

Boston makes the largest use of electrical current in proportion to its
population of any city in the world. Rochester is next. Both of these cities
employ in electrical units of 16 c. p. equivalents, more than one electric lamp
for every man, woman and child in their respective populations.
The dynamo and the electric motor have together wrought this great
development. The dynamo takes mechanical power and converts it into
electrical energy, and the electric motor takes the electrical energy and
converts it back into mechanical power. Standing behind them both, however,
is the steam engine, and these three afford a beautiful illustration of the law of
correlation of forces. The force starts with the combustion of coal under the
boiler of the steam engine. When carbon unites chemically with oxygen, it is
an exothermic reaction that gives off heat as correlated energy. The influence
of heat on the molecules of water in the boiler causes them, by repellent
action, to assume the qualities of an elastic gas, and this expanding as steam
drives the piston of the steam engine. The steam engine overcomes by force
the resistance existing between the dynamo’s field magnets and armature coil,
and sets up in the latter the correlated force of an electric current, and the
electric current, traveling to its remote destination by suitable conductors,
enters the coils of the electric motor in reverse relation to that of the dynamo,
and in producing the reverse effect between the armature and field magnets,
electrical energy is converted back into mechanical power. It is not possible to

obtain in the electric motor the full equivalent of the dynamo’s current, nor in
the dynamo the full equivalent of the steam engine’s power, nor in the steam
engine the full equivalent of the chemical energy in the combustion of coal.
Loss by radiation, by conduction, by friction, and by electrical resistance
precludes this, but while there is loss in a utilitarian sense there is no real loss,
for force like matter, is indestructible, and the proof of this universal law by
Joule, in 1843, constitutes one of the highest triumphs of philosophy and one
of the most important discoveries of the Nineteenth Century.

CHAPTER VII.

The Electric Light.

Voltaic Arc by Sir Humphrey Davy—The Jablochkoff Candle—Patents of Brush,
Weston and Others—Search Lights—Grove’s First Incandescent Lamp—Starr-King
Lamp—Moses Farmer Lights First Dwelling with Electric Lamps—Sawyer-Man Lamp
—Edison’s Incandescent Lamp—Edison’s Three-Wire System of Circuits—Statistics.

he popular idea of the electric light is, that it is a very recent invention,

T since even the younger generation remembers when there was no such
thing in general use. It will surprise many readers, then, to know that
the electric light had its birth in the first decade of the Nineteenth
Century. In 1809 Sir Humphrey Davy discovered that when two pieces
of charcoal, which formed the terminals of a powerful voltaic battery, were
separated after having been brought into contact with each other, at the
moment of separation a brilliant arc of flame passed from one piece of
charcoal to the other, producing a temperature of 4,800° F., and that the
intensity of the light exceeded all other known forms of light. Various
improvements in the organization of devices were made for holding the two
pieces of carbon, which in time assumed the form of two pencils in alignment,
as in Fig. 40, and devices were provided for feeding one carbon toward the
other as they burned away. Clock mechanism for thus regulating the feed was
first employed, which served to automatically keep the carbons a definite
distance apart, this being a necessary condition of the arc. For many years,
however, the use of such a light was confined to laboratory illustration, for the
reason that it could only be produced at great expense by a large number of
voltaic batteries. Nevertheless very efficient electric lamps working by voltaic
batteries were devised by Foucault, Duboscq, Deleuil and others as early as
1853. With the advent of the dynamo, however, the electric light grew rapidly
and developed into conspicuous use. Even before the true dynamo was
invented the magneto-electric machine was employed for producing an
electric current to supply electric light. The so-called “Alliance” generator

was, in 1858, used in the South Foreland lighthouse in England to supply the
arc lamps, and the beams of the electric light then, for the first time, were
turned seaward as a beacon for the mariner.

FIG. 40.—SIMPLE ELECTRIC ARC LAMP.

FIG. 41.— FIG. 42.—
JABLOCH WESTON

KOFF ARC
CANDLE. LAMP.

Among the early developments of the electric light was the Jablochkoff
candle, see Fig. 41, brought out in 1877. In this device two parallel sticks of
carbon G G were separated by a non-conducting layer of kaolin I, and were
held in an asbestos ferrule A. Metal tubes T T connected the conducting wires
F F to the carbons. The arc of flame passed from the top of one carbon to the
other, fusing the separating layer of kaolin, and the whole burned down
together as a candle. This form of electric light was extensively used in Paris
in 1877, and also in London, and attracted considerable attention.

FIG. 43.—ARC LAMP FEED MECHANISM.

From the Jablochkoff candle the arc light has resumed the form of two
vertically aligned carbons, and after passing through various forms and
patterns, of which the Weston lamp, Fig. 42, is a modern type, has come into
such universal and conspicuous use for lighting the streets of our cities, and is
so well known to-day, that but little need be said of its development, since its
real character has undergone no change in principle, the improvements
relating chiefly to means for regulating the feed of the carbons and
maintaining them at a uniform distance apart, so as to avoid flickering. This
result is obtained by automatic mechanism operated by the electric current
acting upon electro-magnets, as shown in Fig. 43, in which the electro-
magnets raise the upper carbon when it is too close to the lower carbon, and
lower the upper carbon when the space becomes too great from burning away.
Among those who have contributed to the development of the arc light the
names of Brush, Weston, and Thomson and Houston are most conspicuous,
and the patents of Brush, No. 203,411, May 7, 1878, and No. 212,183, Feb.
11, 1879, and Weston, No. 285,451, Sept. 25, 1883, are the most
representative developments.

FIG. 44.—NINE THOUSAND CANDLE POWER ARC
LAMP.

The applications of the arc light have been brilliant beyond the dreams of the
most sanguine inventor. In the illustrations number 44, 45 and 46, is shown a
gigantic electric light beacon manufactured by Henry Lepaute, of Paris, and
first exhibited in this country at the Chicago World’s Fair, in 1893. It consists
of two great lenses, each nine feet in diameter, between which, in their focus,
is placed a 9,000 candle power arc light. The great lantern, Fig. 45, is carried
by a vertical shaft, which terminates at its lower end in a hollow drum, which
latter floats in a bath of mercury. Although the weight is estimated at several
tons, so sensitive is its poise on the mercury that the enormous lantern may be

easily rotated by the pressure of one’s finger. Each lens consists of concentric
segments, see Fig. 46, 190 in number, surrounding a central disk, which
together cause the rays to issue in parallel lines. The nine-foot beam of light
thus projected is of 90,000,000 candle power, and if placed at a sufficient
altitude to avoid the curvature of the earth’s surface, its light would be visible
at the range of 146.9 nautical miles.

FIG. 45.—NINETY MILLION CANDLE POWER
BIVALVE LENS.

FIG. 46.—FRONT VIEW OF LENS.

Better known to the patrons of our excursion boats and the visitors to our
splendid battleships, are the electric search lights. The greatest example of all
search lights, however, is not to be found on the sea, but in the picturesque
altitudes of the Sierra Madres in Southern California. At the summit of Mount
Lowe, in the neighborhood of Pasadena, is the largest search light in the
world, shown in illustration, Fig. 48. It is of 3,000,000 candle power, stands
eleven feet high, and its total weight is 6,000 pounds. Its light may be seen for
150 miles out on the ocean, and as its powerful beam is thrown from
mountain top to mountain top hundreds of miles apart, it adds the illumination
of art to the sublimity of nature, and seems a fitting jewel to this lofty crown
of Mother Earth.

FIG. 47.—SEARCH LIGHT WITH MACHINE GUN REPELLING
NIGHT ATTACK OF TORPEDO BOAT.

FIG. 48.—SEARCH LIGHT ON MOUNT LOWE, CALIFORNIA.

Brilliant as is the arc lamp, far more in evidence is the incandescent lamp. The
little glass bulb with its tiny thread of light we find everywhere. Popular
opinion and the decision of the courts accord this invention to Thomas A.
Edison. The evolution of the incandescent lamp is, however, interesting, and
may be briefly sketched as follows:

FIG. 49.—FIRST INCANDESCENT LAMP, BY PROFESSOR GROVE,
1840.

In 1845 there appeared in the Philosophical Magazine a
description of what was probably the first incandescent electric
light. It was devised in 1840 by William Robert Grove, the
inventor of the Grove battery, and is illustrated in Fig. 49. It is
stated that he experimented and read by it for hours. It was
described as follows:
“A coil of platinum wire is attached to two copper wires, the
lower parts of which, or those most distant from the platinum,
are well varnished; these are fixed erect in a glass of distilled
water, and another cylindrical glass, closed at the upper end, is
inverted over them, so that its open mouth rests on the bottom
of the former glass; the projecting ends of the copper wires are
connected with a voltaic battery (two or three pairs of the nitric
acid combination), and the ignited wire now gives a steady
light. Instead of making the wires pass through the water, they
may be fixed to metallic caps well luted to the necks of a glass
globe.”
In 1845 August King patented, in England, an incandescent
lamp, having an unsealed platinum burner, and also a carbon in
FIG. 50.—
STARR- a vacuum. Mr. King acted as agent for an American inventor,
KING Mr. Starr, and the lamp came to be known as the Starr-King
LAMP. lamp, shown in Fig. 50. The burner was a thin plate or pencil
of carbon B, enclosed in a Torricellian vacuum at the end of an
inverted barometer tube, and held between the terminals of the connecting
wires leading to a battery. In 1859 Moses G. Farmer lighted his house at
Salem, Mass., by a series of subdivided electric lights, which was the first
private dwelling lighted by electricity, and probably the first illustration of the
feasibility of subdividing the electric current through a number of electric
lamps.
In 1877 William E. Sawyer applied for a United States patent for an electric
engineering and lighting system, and in January, 1878, entered into a
partnership with Albon Man, and the “Sawyer-Man” lamp, see Fig. 51, was
produced. In this an incandescent rod of carbon was inclosed in an

atmosphere of nitrogen. This marked the beginning of a period of great
activity in this field, which finally resulted in the well known form of electric
lamp shown in Fig. 52, which was patented by Edison, No. 223,898, January
27, 1880. The distinctive features of this lamp consisted in a bowed filament
of carbon of very thin, thread-like character, which was made of paper or
carbonized cellulose. This, when sealed in a vacuum, would not burn away,
but would give the proper incandescence, and by its small transverse
dimension and high resistance to the current, permitted a proper distribution
of the electric current to a number of lamps, without a special regulator for
each lamp; and which could also be made so cheaply that the lamp could be
thrown away when the burner was finally broken. Edison’s claim on this
feature of the electric lamp was sharply contested in an interference in the
Patent Office by Sawyer and Man, with the decisions alternating first in favor
of one and then of the other, but which finally resulted in the grant of a patent
to Sawyer and Man, on May 12, 1885. A struggle then began in the courts,
which on October 4, 1892, terminated in a decision by the United States Court
of Appeals (Edison Electric Light Company vs. United States Lighting
Company), awarding the incandescent lamp to Edison.

FIG. 52.—EDISON’S ELECTRIC LAMP.

FIG. 51.— A—Exhausted globe. B—Carbon filament.
SAWYER-MAN CC—Wires sealed in glass. D—Line of
LAMP. fusion of two parts of globe. EF—
Insulating material. G—Screw-threads. HI
—Metal socket. J—Fixture arm K—
Circuit controlling key.

In the early demonstration given by Edison great disturbance was caused in
the stock exchanges among the holders of gas shares, as the sensational
reportings in the press seemed to indicate that gas was to be superseded
entirely. This uneasiness on the London Stock Exchange amounted on
October 11, 1878, to a veritable panic, but while the electric light has more
than fulfilled the prophecy made for it in many directions, gas shares still
continue to be good stocks.

FIG. 53.—ELECTRIC LIGHT CIRCUIT.

FIG. 54.—EDISON’S THREE WIRE SYSTEM OF ELECTRIC LIGHT CIRCUITS.

Closely allied to the practical use of the incandescent lamp is the method of
supplying and regulating the current from the dynamo. Although the
alternating current is used for arc light, only the continuous current can be
used for the incandescent lights, and the relation of the dynamo and the
incandescent lamps is shown in Fig. 53, in which L represents the lamps
between the main conducting wires leading from the dynamo, which latter has
the coils of the field magnets arranged in a shunt or branch circuit, in which is
interposed a regulator R in the form of a resistance coil with movable switch
lever, by which more or less of the current is allowed to flow through the field
magnet coils to suit the work being done. In late years automatic regulators
have been provided for accomplishing this result. In Fig. 54 is shown what is
known as the Edison “three wire system,” patented March 20, 1883, No.
274,290. In this two dynamos are used as at D1 D2, and the three wires emerge
from the dynamos, one from the negative pole of one dynamo, another from
the positive pole of the other dynamo, and the third or middle one is
connected to both the other poles (positive and negative), of the two dynamos.
For purposes of illustration, this may be compared to a three-storied
arrangement of current, the upper wire representing the third story, the middle
wire the second story, and the bottom one the first story. The fall from either
story to the next represents the working energy, but from the top wire to the
bottom would be equal to a fall from the third story to the first. The purpose
of this arrangement is to save expense in copper wire, for while three main
wires are used instead of two, the aggregate weight of the wires (when the

lamps are arranged as shown), may be made so much less than two heavy
wires as to make a very great saving in copper.
The uses of the incandescent light are legion. Besides those which are of
common observation it is used for lighting the interior of mines, caves, and
the dark apartments of ships, and does not foul the air. It is also used by divers
in submarine operations; in the formation of advertising signs, and in
pyrotechnics, but perhaps one of the most extraordinary uses to which it has
been put is in exploring the interior of the human stomach and other cavities
of the body, a patent for which was granted to M. C. F. Nitze, No. 218,055,
July 29, 1879.
When an electric lamp is arranged with the opposite ends of the carbon burner
connected, one to the outgoing, the other to the incoming wires from a
dynamo, so as to be bridged across, this arrangement is said to be “in
multiple” or “in parallel,” and the lamps bear the analogy of horses drawing
abreast, and when the opposite ends of the carbon burner are placed in a gap
or break in either the outgoing or the incoming wire, the arrangement is said
to be “in series,” and the lamps bear the analogy of horses in tandem.
Explanation of electric nomenclature can best be given by the analogy in
hydrostatics of a stream of water passing in the hose pipe from a fire-engine.
The “watt” indicates the sum total unit of electrical power for a definite period
of time, and in the hose pipe would be represented by the effective force of a
definite volume of water, passing at a definite pressure, during a definite
period of time. “Volt” is a pressure unit of electro-motive force, and would be
represented by the power of the engine. “Ampere” would be the quantity, or
volume unit, or cross section of the hose pipe, and the “ohm” would be the
unit of frictional resistance. The “watt” then would be the “volt” multiplied by
the “ampere”; thus 500 watts would be 10 amperes at 50 volts, or 50 amperes
at 10 volts. Low tension circuits, such as are used for incandescent lights,
range from 100 to 240 volts and are harmless. Trolley circuits are usually 500
volts, and will kill an animal, but are not necessarily fatal to man. High
tension currents from 2,000 to 5,000 volts, such as are used for arc lights, are
fatal.
Of all modern inventions, not one has advertised itself in such a spectacular
way as the electric light. Those who have seen the magnificent electrical
displays at the Chicago Fair, the electrical celebrations in New York, and the
Omaha Exhibition, need no introduction to its marvelous splendors and

beauties. In the annual report for 1898 of the Edison Electric Illuminating
Company of New York, its statement shows that for that city alone the gross
earnings were $2,898,021. There were 9,990 users of the electric light,
443,074 incandescent lamps, and 7,353 arc lights. It is estimated that the
electric light stations and plants in the United States alone amount to
$600,000,000. In the year 1899 a single manufacturing concern (The General
Electric Company) received orders for 10,000,000 incandescent lamps, which
is about one-half of the present annual production. Sixteen years ago the
lamps were $1 each; to-day they can be bought for 18 cents.
What the future has in store for the further development of the electric light no
one may dare predict. Already a different form or manifestation of electric
light has been demonstrated, in which neither the electric arc nor the
incandescent filament is used, but a peculiar glow is seen disassociated from a
direct material habitation, and produced by currents of enormous frequency
and high potential, in accordance with the patent to Tesla, No. 454,622, June
23, 1891. Other worthy inventors in this field are at work, and its
development will be one of the interesting problems of the Twentieth Century.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Telephone.

Preliminary Suggestions and Experiments of Bourseul, Reis and Drawbaugh—First
Speaking Telephone by Prof. Bell—Differences Between Reis’ and Bell’s Telephones—
The Blake Transmitter—Berliner’s Variation of Resistance, and Electric Undulations
by Variation of Pressure—Edison’s Carbon Microphone—The Telephone Exchange—
Statistics.

ηλε (far), and φωνη (sound), are the Greek roots from which the word

Τ telephone is derived. It has the significance of transmitting sound to
distant points, and is a word antedating the present speaking telephone,
although this fact is generally lost sight of in the dazzling brilliancy of
this latter invention. In the effort to hear better, the American Indian
was accustomed to place his ear to the ground. Children of former generations
also made use of a toy known as the “lovers’ telegraph”—a piece of string
held under tension between the flexible bottoms of two tin boxes—which
latter when spoken into transmitted through the string the vibrations from one
box to the other, and made audible words spoken at a distance. These
expedients simply made available the superior conductivity of the solid body
over the air to transmit sound waves. The electro-magnetic telephone operates
on an entirely different principle. It is a marvelous creation of genius, and
stands alone as the unique, superb, and unapproachable triumph of the
Nineteenth Century. For subtilty of principle, impressiveness of action, and
breadth of results, there is nothing comparable with it among mechanical
agencies. In its wonderful function of placing one intelligent being in direct
vocal and sympathetic communication with another a thousand miles away, its
intangible and mysterious mode of action suggests to the imagination that
unseen medium of prayer rising from the conscious human heart to its
omniscient and responsive God. The telegraph and railroad had already
brought all the peoples of the earth into intimate communication and made
them close kin, but the telephone transformed them into the closer
relationship of families, and the tiny wire, sentient and responsive with its

unlimited burden of human thoughts and human feelings, forms one of the
great vital cords in the solidarity of the human family.
It is a curious fact that many, and perhaps most, great inventions have been in
the nature of accidental discoveries, the by-products of thought directed in
another channel, and seeking other results, but the telephone does not belong
to this class. It is the logical and magnificent outcome of persistent thought
and experiment in the direction of the electrical transmittal of speech. Prof.
Bell had his objective point, and keeping this steadily in view, worked
faithfully for the accomplishment of his object in producing a speaking
telephone, until success crowned his work. He probably did not realize at first
the full magnitude of the achievement, but looking at it from the end of the
Nineteenth Century, he might well exclaim in the language of Horace: “Exegi
monumentum acre perennius.”
Prof. Bell’s conception of the telephone dates back as far as 1874. His first
United States patent, No. 174,465, was granted March 7, 1876, and his second
January 30, 1877, No. 186,787. It is generally the fate of most inventions,
even of a meritorious order, to languish for many years, and frequently
through the whole term of the patent, before receiving full recognition and
adoption by the public, but the meteoric brilliancy of this invention at its first
public announcement astonished the masses, and inspired the admiration of
the savants of the world. When exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in
Philadelphia, in 1876, it was spoken of by Sir William Thomson, and Prof.
Henry, as the “greatest by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph.”

FIG. 55.—PHILIP REIS’ TELEPHONE.

It is always the fate of the author of any great invention to be compelled to
defend himself against the claims of others. It is one of the failings of human
nature to lay claim to that which somebody else has obtained, and is an old
story which finds its first illustration in the squabbles of childhood. When a
troop of prattling boys hunt butterflies among the daisies, and some sharp-
eyed youngster has captured a prize, there are always others of his mates to
cry, “I saw it first,” and men are but grown-up boys. So in the history of the
telephone, Prof. Bell has found competitors for this honor, and it is
astonishing to know how close some of these prior experimenters came to
success without reaching it. In 1854 Bourseul, of Paris suggested an electric
telephone, and in 1861 Philip Reis devised an electric telephone which would
transmit musical tones. Daniel Drawbaugh, of Pennsylvania, is alleged to
have made an electric telephone in 1867-1868, and his claims against the Bell
interests were fought vigorously in the Patent Office, and in the courts, but
without success. Elisha Gray’s claims perhaps came nearer to establishing for
him a share in the honor of inventing the speaking telephone than any other,
for he filed a caveat in the United States Patent Office upon the same day
(February 14, 1876), upon which Prof. Bell’s application for a patent was
made. But in the contest in the Patent Office with Gray, Edison, Berliner,
Richmond, Holcombe, Farmer, Dolbear, Volker, and others, it was decided
that Prof. Bell was the first to make a practically effective speaking telephone,
and this conclusion has been sustained by the courts. Reis was a poor German
school teacher at Friedrichsdorf, and in 1860 he took a coil of wire, a knitting
needle, the skin of a German sausage, the bung of a beer barrel, and a strip of
platinum, and constructed the first electric telephone. A typical form of his
transmitter, see Fig. 55, was a box covered with a vibrating membrane E, and
provided with a mouth-piece at one side. A platinum strip F was attached to
the membrane or vibrating diaphragm E, and a platinum pointed hammer G
rested lightly on the platinum strip F. The hammer G and platinum strip F
were connected to the opposite ends of a wire, which had in its circuit a
battery and a receiver. Air vibrations in the nature of sound waves in the box
caused the diaphragm E to vibrate, and a separating make-and-break contact
between the platinum strip F and the platinum point of hammer G caused a
series of separate and distinct broken impulses to traverse the battery circuit
and be received upon the receiver, which latter consisted of an iron rod with a
coil of wire around it. That Reis’ transmitter did alternately make and break
the circuit, seems clear from his own memoir. A translation from this memoir,

taken from the annual report (Jahresberichte) of the Physical Society of
Frankfurt am Main for 1860-1861, reads as follows:
“At the first condensation (of air vibrations) the hammer-shaped little wire d
(G in our illustration), will be pushed back. At the succeeding rarefaction it
cannot follow the return vibration of the membrane, and the current going
through the little strip (of platinum) remains interrupted so long as until the
membrane driven by a new condensation presses the little strip against d (the
hammer G) once more. In this way each sound wave effects an opening and
closing of the current.”

FIG. 56.—PROF. BELL’S TELEPHONE, MARCH 7, 1876.

Reis evidently did not know how to make the vibrations of his diaphragm
translate themselves into exactly commensurate and correlated electric
impulses of equal rapidity, range, and quality. If he had done this, he would
have had a speaking telephone, but a make-and-break contact could never do
it, and hence he in his later instruments attached to them a telegraphic key in
order that the sending operator might communicate with the receiving
operator. If Reis’ telephone had been a speaking telephone, this would have
been unnecessary. Furthermore, it is inconceivable how the intelligent,
progressive, and scientific Germans could have failed to have given to a
speaking telephone in 1860 the immediate honor and attention that it
deserved. In America, the Bell speaking telephone, invented in 1876, was
known all over the civilized world the same year. Reis’ broken contact circuit
would transmit musical tones, because musical tones vary chiefly in rapidity
of vibration, rather than in range, or quality, and the chattering contacts of
Reis’ telephone would transmit musical tones because said contracts could be
adjusted to the practically uniform range of vibration. Prof. Bell, however, had

made a special study of articulate speech, and knew that speech was not
essentially musical, but was composed of an irregular and discordant medley
of vowel and consonant sounds, whose vibrations varied not only in pitch or
rapidity like musical tones, but also in the quality or kind of vibrations as to
range and loudness. In his invention, therefore, he did not make and break the
circuit as did Reis, through the contact points, but he used the more sensitive
plan of a constantly closed circuit, and merely caused the current to undulate
in it by a principle of magnetic induction. This principle was first discovered
by Oersted, and developed into the well known fact that when a piece of iron
is moved back and forth from the poles of an electro-magnet an induced
current is made to oscillate in the helix of the electro-magnet. The difference
between Reis’ separating make-and-break circuit, and the Bell continuous but
undulating current, might be illustrated by the difference between the
impulses delivered by the beating of the drum sticks on the head of a drum, on
the one hand, and the alternate pulling and slackening of a kite cord, on the
other. In the successive impacts on the head of a drum there could not be so
sensitive a transfer of motion to the lower head of the drum as there would be
transferred to the kite by the movement of the hand holding the kite cord.
Reis’ plan resembled the broken drum beats, and Bell’s the kite cord, which
always preserved a certain amount of tension. Bell accomplished his object by
the means shown in Figs. 56 and 57, in which Fig. 56 represents his first
patent of March 7, 1876, and Fig. 57 his second patent of January 30, 1877. In
both cases the current was a continuously closed one, and was not alternately
made and broken as by the separating contacts of Reis. Prof. Bell caused the
vocal air vibrations to undulate or oscillate the continuously closed circuit by
the principle of magnetic induction as follows (see Fig. 56): He caused
diaphragm a, when spoken against, to vibrate the armature c in front of the
electro-magnet b, but without touching it, and as the armature approached and
receded from the electro-magnet it induced an undulating but never broken
current in the helix of this electro-magnet and along the line to and through
the helix of the electro-magnet f at the distant receiver, and this undulating
current, influencing the armature h, which touched the diaphragm i but not the
electro-magnet, produced in the attractive influence of the magnet on this
armature and diaphragm, vibrations of the same rapidity, range, and quality as
those vocal vibrations that acted upon the first diaphragm a. In other words,
the sequence of transference was air vibrations in A, mechanical vibrations of
diaphragm a, electrical undulations traversing the line, induced vibrations in
armature h and diaphragm i, and air vibrations again resolved back into

sounds of articulate speech, the same as those spoken into A. It will be
perceived that in the Bell telephone both transmitter and receiver were of
identical construction. This is better shown in Fig. 57 of his later patent, in
which the horizontal line below the electro-magnet on one side represents a
metal transmitting diaphragm, and the horizontal line under the electro-
magnet at the other side was the receiving diaphragm. Not only were the
sounds thus reproduced, but as the circuit was continuous and never broken
by any separating contacts, the extreme sensitiveness of the electric vibrations
set up by magnetic induction was such that the discordant and irregular
quality of the vibrations of articulate speech were transferred and reproduced
with exact fidelity, as well as the musical tones, and this rendered the
speaking telephone a success. In later telephones the current is actually
transmitted through the contacting points, but this only became practicable
after the carbon microphone transmitter was invented, in which the essential
undulations of the electric current were produced in another way, i. e., by the
application of the important discovery that the varying of the pressure on
carbon, by vibration, varied its conductivity, and in this way produced the
same result of undulating a current without breaking it. This in no wise
detracts from the value of the principle of the continuous undulating current
discovered and employed by Prof. Bell, between which and the breaks of the
hard platinum points of Reis there is a difference as wide as the difference
between success and failure.

FIG. 57.—PROF. BELL’S TELEPHONE, JANUARY 30, 1877.

The form in which Prof. Bell’s telephone was placed before the public was
not that shown in the patents, but it quickly assumed the well-known shape of

an elongated cylinder forming a handle, with a flaring mouth-piece at one end.
This development in form is credited to Dr. Channing in 1877, and it is the
familiar form to-day, whose internal construction is shown in Fig. 58. The
handle is made of hard rubber, and the cap or mouth-piece, which is screwed
thereon, is also of hard rubber. The diaphragm A, of thin ferrotype plate, is
clamped at its edges between the cap, or mouth-piece, and the handle. The
compound magnet B is composed of four thin flat bar magnets, arranged in
pairs on opposite sides of the flat end of the soft iron pole piece c at one end,
and the soft iron spacing piece d at the other end, the magnets being clamped
to these pieces with like poles all in one direction. The end of the pole piece c
extends to within 1⁄100 to 2⁄100 of an inch of the diaphragm, or as near as possible
so that the diaphragm does not touch it when it vibrates. On the pole piece c is
placed a wooden spool on which is wound silk-covered wire (No. 34, Am. W.
G.). This wire fills the spool, and its ends are soldered to two insulated wires
which pass through a flexible rubber disc f below the spool and extend
respectively to the two binding posts at the opposite end of the handle. The
current passes from one binding post and its connecting wire, through the wire
on the spool, and thence to the other connecting wire and binding post. When
used as a transmitter, vocal vibrations acting mechanically on the diaphragm
A produce undulatory vibrations by magnetic induction in the spool of wire,
which are transmitted to the other end of the line; and when used as a receiver,
the undulatory vibrations from the remote end of the line produce mechanical
vibrations in the diaphragm, which set up air vibrations that are reproductions
of articulate sounds.

FIG. 58.—LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF BELL
TELEPHONE.

Although the Bell telephone is both a transmitter and receiver, in practice a
more sensitive and better form of transmitter has taken its place. That most
generally used and best known is the “Blake transmitter,” which was brought
out about 1880. This employs two important elements. The first is the carbon
microphone, which is a means for producing the undulations in the current by
the variations in pressure on carbon contacts, and the second is an induction
coil operated by a local battery, whose primary circuit passes through the
contacts of the carbon microphone, and whose secondary circuit passes over

the line. These fundamental elements of the Blake transmitter were the
inventions of Berliner and Edison, and were made in 1877. The broad idea of
producing electric undulations by varying the pressure between electrodes by
vocal vibrations, was a large bone of contention in the Patent Office between
various inventors. An application for a patent for the same was filed in the
Patent Office by Emile Berliner, June 4, 1877, which was contested in an
interference by Gray, Edison, Richmond, Dolbear, Holcombe, Prof. Bell, and
others. After fourteen years of litigation the patent was finally awarded to
Berliner. The patent granted to him November 17, 1891, No. 463,569, is a
valuable one, and has become the property of the American Bell Telephone
Company. The application of a low resistance conductor (carbon) in a
microphone was invented by Edison as early as 1877, but his patent, No.
474,230, did not issue until May 3, 1892, on account of the interference with
Berliner on the broader principle.

FIG. 59.—BLAKE TRANSMITTER.

FIG. 60.—DIAGRAM OF CIRCUITS IN BLAKE TRANSMITTER.

The Blake transmitter takes its name from the inventor of its mechanical
features, who has assembled in it the fundamental principles of Berliner and
Edison in a sensitive and practical mechanical construction, covered by minor
patents, dated November 29, 1881. It is the little box in the middle of the
familiar telephone outfit into which the talking is done. Its internal
construction is shown in Fig. 59. To the rear of the door is secured the cast
iron circular ring A, inside of which lies the Russia iron diaphragm B,
cushioned at its edges with a rubber band. A circular seat a little larger than
the diaphragm is formed in the iron ring, and on this seat the diaphragm rests.
A short, thin metal plate attached to the ring A on the right hand side clamps
the diaphragm in position by resting squarely on the rubber edge of the
diaphragm. Its function is like that of a hinge, which allows the diaphragm to
freely swing inward. A steel damping spring is secured to the ring at the
opposite edge of the diaphragm, and has its free end provided with a rubber
glove on which is cemented a thin piece of fluffy woolen material. The
padded end of the damping spring rests against the diaphragm and prevents
excessive vibration. The iron ring A has at its bottom a projection holding an
adjusting screw, and to a similar top projection is attached by screws a brass
spring, from which depends another casting C, supporting the microphone
apparatus, which is best shown in the diagram, Fig. 60. In this diagram A is

one terminal of the battery connected by wire S to the hinge H of the box.
From the other leaf of the hinge the wire M passes to K, where it is soldered
to the upper end of a German silver spring I. At K this spring is clamped and
insulated from the iron work by two pieces of hard rubber. On the lower end
of the spring I is soldered a short piece of thick platinum wire, whose ends are
rounded into heads, one of which bears against the diaphragm N, and the
other against the carbon button J. This button is attached to a small brass
weight, and is supported by a spring R, clamped at its upper end to the metal
support T. This spring is surrounded its entire length by rubber tubing to
deaden vibration. The transmitter is adjusted by screw O, which, acting upon
casting T, brings the carbon button, the platinum heads, and also the
diaphragm N, against each other with a regulated pressure. The current passes
from the part K to the spring I, the platinum head, carbon button J, and its
supporting spring R, to metal casting T, and ring V, thence by wire L to the
lower hinge G, by wire P to the primary of the induction coil, and thence by
wire Y to binding post B, the two binding posts A B being the two battery
terminals. The secondary wire E of the induction coil has its ends connected
by wires X and W with the two binding posts C B, which are the line
terminals, or one the line terminal and the other the ground connection. It will
thus be seen that the primary current passes through the transmitter, and the
secondary traverses the line. The most familiar forms of the telephone are
those seen in Figs. 61 and 62, but the ideal form is rigged in a cabinet or little
room, which excludes all extraneous interfering sounds.

FIG. 61.—WALL TELEPHONE. FIG. 62.—DESK TELEPHONE.

With the Bell receiver and the Blake transmitter a good practical telephone
system may be constructed, but the improvements which have been made in
the short life of the telephone are beyond adequate description, or even
mention. They relate to the call bell, the battery, the switchboard, meters for
registering calls, conductors, conduits, connections, lightning arresters,
switches, anti-induction devices, repeaters, and systems. Among those most
prominently identified with its development are Bell, Edison, Berliner,
Hughes, Gray, Dolbear and Phelps. The activity in this field is best illustrated
by the fact that the art of telephony, begun practically in 1876, has at the end
of the Nineteenth Century grown into some 3,000 United States patents on the
subject.

FIG. 63.—TELEPHONE EXCHANGE.

That which has given the telephone its greatest commercial value is the
“exchange” system, by which at a central office any member of a telephonic
community may be instantly put into communication with any other member
of that community. For this purpose, see Fig. 63, a continuous switchboard is
arranged along the side of a large room and occupies most of that side of the
wall. It comprises a great array of annunciator drops, spring jacks with plug
seats, and connecting cords with metal plugs at their opposite ends. Each
subscriber is connected to his own spring jack and annunciator drop, and his
call to central office (from his magneto-bell) throws down the annunciator
drop which bears the number of his telephone, and announces to the attendant
his desire to communicate with another. To insure the attention of the
attendant, a tiny electric lamp is by the same action lighted directly in front of
her, which acts as a pilot signal to call her attention to the drop. The attendant
now puts a plug in that spring jack, which automatically restores the drop, and
she then asks the number which the subscriber wants, and, upon ascertaining
this, puts the plug at the other end of the connecting cord into the spring jack
of the subscriber wanted, and by this action disconnects her own telephone.
As every telephone subscriber has in the central office an apparatus
exclusively his own, it will be seen that a telephone community of several
thousands of subscribers involves an imposing array of multiple connections,
and a great expense in construction. Girls are chosen as exchange attendants

because their voices are clearer. Every telephone jack, however, does not have
its Jill, for each girl has charge of a hundred or more jacks, and wears
constantly on her head a telephone of special shape, embracing her head like a
child’s hoop comb, but terminating with an ear-piece at one end that covers
one ear. She is too busy to waste time in adjusting an ordinary telephone to
her ear, and so wears one of special design all the time.
In the twentieth annual report of the American Bell Telephone Company, for
the year 1899, the number of telephones in use January 1, 1900, by that
company alone, in the United States, was 1,580,101; the miles of wire were
1,016,777, and the daily connections for persons using the telephone were
5,173,803. The gross earnings of the company were $5,760,106.45, and it paid
in dividends $3,882,945. The total number of exchange stations of the Bell
Company in the principal countries of the world are: United States, 632,946;
Germany, 212,121; Great Britain, 112,840; Sweden, 63,685; France, 44,865;
Switzerland, 35,536; Russia, 26,865; Austria, 26,664; Norway, 25,376. The
United States has nearly 85,000 more than all the others put together.
Since the expiration of the Bell patents many smaller companies have sprung
up, and the number of telephones in use has more than doubled in the last five
years. Long distance telephony is now carried on up to nearly 2,000 miles,
and one may to-day lie in bed in New York and listen to a concert in Chicago,
and the vocal exchange of business and social intercourse between cities has
become so large a feature of modern life as to justify the organization of a
great company for this service alone.
In the Old Testament, Book of Job, xxxviii. chapter, 35th verse, it is written:
“Canst thou send lightnings that they may go and say unto thee—‘Here we
are?’” For thousands of years this challenge to Job has been looked upon as a
feat whose execution was only within the power of the Almighty; but to-day
the inventor—that patient modern Job—has accomplished this seemingly
impossible task, for at the end of this Nineteenth Century of the Christian Era,
the telephone makes the lightning man’s vocal messenger, tireless, faithful,
and true, knowing no prevarication, and swifter than the winged messenger of
the gods.

CHAPTER IX.

Electricity—Miscellaneous.

Storage Battery—Batteries of Planté, Faure and Brush—Electric Welding—Direct
Generation of Electricity by Combustion—Electric Boats—Electro-Plating—Edison’s
Electric Pen—Electricity in Medicine—Electric Cautery—Electrical Musical
Instruments—Electric Blasting.

prominent factor in the electrical art is the Storage Battery, Secondary

A Battery, or Accumulator, as it is variously called. A storage battery
acts upon the same general principle as the ordinary galvanic or
voltaic battery in giving forth electrical current as the correlated
equivalent of the chemical force, but differs from it in this respect,
that when the elements of a primary battery are used up, the battery is
exhausted beyond repair. With the storage battery, it may be regenerated at
will by simply subjecting it to an electric current from a dynamo. The dynamo
stores up in this battery its electric force by converting it into chemical force,
which is imprisoned in chemical compounds that are formed while the power
of the dynamo is being applied. These chemical compounds are, however, in a
condition of unstable chemical equilibrium, which is undisturbed so long as
the poles of the storage battery are not connected, but when connected
through a circuit, the instability of the chemical compounds asserts itself, and
in passing back to a condition of normal equilibrium the disruption gives off
the correlative equivalent of electric current stored up in it by the dynamo.
Probably the earliest suggestion of a storage battery is by Ritter in 1812, in his
“secondary pile.” This device consisted of alternate discs of copper and
moistened card, and was capable of receiving a charge from a voltaic pile and
of then producing the physical, chemical, and physiological effects obtained
from the ordinary pile. The first storage battery of importance, however, was
made by Gaston Planté in 1860, which consisted of leaden plates immersed in
a 10 per cent. solution of sulphuric acid in water. In Fig. 64 is shown a
modification of the Planté type of storage battery, composed of a series of

plates shown on the left. Each of these plates is built up, as shown in detail in
Fig. 65, of lead strips corrugated and arranged in layers alternately with flat
strips, within perforated leaden cases. The corrugation of the leaden laminæ
gives greater superficial area, and the alternation of flat and corrugated strips
keeps them properly spaced, so the sulphuric acid solution may penetrate and
act upon the same. Each plate section has a rod to connect it with its proper
terminal. When the charging current is applied, the positive lead plate
becomes covered with lead peroxide (PbO2) and finely divided metallic lead is
deposited on the negative plate. When the battery is being discharged the
peroxide of lead gives up one of its atoms of oxygen to the spongy metallic
lead deposited on the other plate, and both plates remain coated with lead
monoxide (PbO).

FIG. 64.—PLANTÉ STORAGE BATTERY.

FIG. 65.—ENLARGED DETAIL OF
PLANTÉ PLATE.

The most important development of the storage battery was made by Camille
A. Faure, in 1880 (U. S. Pat. No. 252,002, Jan 3, 1882). In the early part of
1881 there was sent from Paris to Glasgow a so-called “box of electric
energy” for inspection and test by Sir William Thomson, the eminent
electrician. It was one of the first storage batteries of M. Faure. The
illustration, Fig. 66, shows a battery of this type in which the lead plates
covered with red lead (Pb3O4) replace the plain lead plates in the Planté cell.
The action of the battery is that when a current of electricity is passed into the
same, the red lead on one plate (the negative) is reduced to metallic lead, and
that on the other is oxidized to a state of peroxide (PbO2). These actions are
reversed when the charged cell is discharging itself. The elements of this
battery consist of alternate layers of sheet lead, and a paste of red oxide of
lead. These are immersed in a 10 per cent. solution of sulphuric acid in water.
Many minor improvements have been made in the storage battery, covered by
716 United States patents, most of which relate to cellular construction for
holding the mass of red lead in place. The most notable are those of Brush, to
whom many patents were granted in 1882 and 1883.

FIG. 66.—STORAGE BATTERY—FAURE TYPE.

The storage battery finds many important applications. For furnishing current
for the propulsion of electric street cars it has proved a disappointment, on
account of the vibrations to which it is subjected, and the great weight of the
lead, which in batteries of suitable capacity runs up into many thousands of
pounds. The storage battery finds a useful place, however, for equalizing the
load in lighting and power stations, and is there brought into action to
supplement the engine and dynamo during those hours of the day when the
tax or load is greatest. It is also used to keep up electrical pressure at the ends
of long transmission lines; for telegraphing purposes; for isolated electric
lighting; for boat propulsion; the propulsion of automobile carriages; and in
all cases where a portable source of electric current would find application.
The great growth of automobile carriages in the past year has greatly
stimulated the output of storage batteries. One large company (The Electric
Storage Battery Company), manufactured and sold storage batteries for the
year ending June 1, 1899, to the amount of $2,387,049.91, and there are many
other manufacturers.

FIG. 67.—ELECTRIC WELDING.

Electric Welding was invented by Prof. Elihu Thomson, of Lynn, Mass., and
patented by him August 10, 1886, No. 347,140-42, and July 18, 1893, No.
501,546. It is useful for the making of chains, tools, carriage axles, joining
shafting, wires, and pipes, mending bands, tires, hoops, and lengthening and
shortening bolts, bars, etc. For electric welding a current of great volume or
quantity, and very low electro-motive force, is required. Thus a current of
from one to two volts, and one to several thousand amperes, is best suited.
Referring to Fig. 67, the current from the dynamo is conducted to one binding
post of the commutator 3, which is arranged to send the current through one-
sixth, one-third or one-half of the primary wire P of a transformer or induction
coil. The other binding post of the commutator 3 extends to one terminal of an
isolated primary coil 4, and the other terminal of this coil connects with the
dynamo. The coil 4 is provided with a switch to regulate the amount of
current. The rods to be welded are placed in clamps C C′, C being connected
with one terminal of the secondary conductor S, and the movable clamp C′
with the other. When the current is turned on C′ is moved so as to project one
of the surfaces to be welded against the other, and as they come in contact
they heat and fuse together, as shown at W. Larger apparatus has been devised
to weld railroad joints on the roadbed, and for other applications.

FIG. 68.—GENERATION OF ELECTRICITY BY COMBUSTION.

The generation of electricity for commercial purposes is almost entirely
dependent upon the dynamo, as this is cheaper than the voltaic battery. The
dynamo, however, must be energized by a steam engine. The direct
production of electric energy by the combustion of coal would be the ideal
method. A process invented by Edison (Pat. No. 490,953, Jan. 31, 1893), is
interesting as an effort in this direction, and is presented in Fig. 68. A carbon
cylinder D is suspended in an air-tight vessel B, and is surrounded by oxide of
iron F, the whole being placed above a furnace. The temperature being raised
to a point where the carbon will be attacked by the oxygen, carbonic oxide
and carbonic acid will be formed, which are exhausted by the suction fan E. A
constant current of electricity is given off from the two electrodes through the
wires, the metallic oxide being reduced and the carbon consumed.

FIG. 69.—RUDDER AND MOTOR OF TROUVÉ’S
ELECTRIC BOAT, 1881.

Electrical Navigation began with Jacobi, who made the first attempt on the
Neva in 1839. He used voltaic apparatus consisting of two Grove batteries,
each containing sixty-four pairs of cells, but little progress was made in this
field until the secondary battery was perfected. In 1881 Mr. G. Trouvé made
an application of the storage battery and electric motor to a small boat on the
Seine. The electric motor, which was located on top of the rudder, as seen in
Fig. 69, was furnished with a Siemens armature connected by an endless belt
with a screw propeller having three paddles arranged in the middle of an iron
rudder. In the middle of the boat were two storage batteries connected with the
motor by two cords that both served to cover the conducting wires and work
the rudder. Electric launches have in later years rapidly gained in popularity.
Visitors to the Chicago fair will remember the fleet of electric launches, which
afforded both pleasure and transportation on the water, at that great
exposition, and to-day every safe harbor has its quota of these silently gliding

and fascinating pleasure crafts. Fig. 70 is a longitudinal section and a general
view of one of these launches.

FIG. 70.—MODERN ELECTRIC LAUNCH.

Electro-plating is one of the great industrial applications of electricity which
had its origin in, and has grown into extensive use in, the Nineteenth Century.
It originated with Volta, Cruikshank, and Wollaston in the very first year of
the century. In 1805 Brugnatelli, a pupil of Volta, gilded two large silver
medals by bringing them into communication by means of a steel wire with
the negative pole of a voltaic pile and keeping them one after the other
immersed in a solution of gold. In 1834 Henry Bessemer electro-plated lead
castings with copper in the production of antique relief heads. In 1838 Prof.
Jacobi announced his galvano-plastic process for the production of electrotype
plates for printing. In the same year he superintended the gilding, by electro-
plate, of the iron dome of the Cathedral of St. Isaac at St. Petersburgh, using
274 pounds of ducat gold. In 1839 Spencer described an electrotype process
and carried the date of his operations back to September, 1837. In 1839 Jordan
also describes an electro-plating process. In 1840 Murray used plumbago to
make non-conducting surfaces conductive for electro-plating. In 1840 De Le
Rive made known his process of electro-gilding, employed by him in 1828,

and in the same year (1840) De Ruolz took out a French patent for electro-
gilding, and in the following year formed electro deposits of brass from
cyanides of zinc and copper. In 1841 Smee employed his battery for electro-
plating with various metals. In 1844 there were published the electro-plating
experiments of Dancer, made in 1838. In 1847 Prof. Silliman imitated mother-
of-pearl by electro-plating process.

FIG. 71.—ELECTRO-PLATING ESTABLISHMENT.

In the last half of the century the production of electrotype plates for printing
in books, and for the production of rollers for printing fabrics, and the
extensive art of electro-plating with gold, silver, nickel and copper, has grown
to enormous proportions, but the fundamental principles have not materially
changed. The dynamo, however, has generally supplanted the voltaic battery
in this art. The deposition of silver and gold on baser metals not only
increases the ornamental effect, but prevents oxidation. Silver plated goods
for the table and articles of vertu are to be found everywhere. Nickel is
employed for cheaper ornamental effect, and copper finds a large application
for electrotypes for printing and for coating iron castings as a protection
against rust. In Fig. 71, which shows the interior of an electro-plating
establishment, the dynamo is shown on the right connected by wires with two
horizontal rods running along the wall and across the various tanks containing

the plating solution. On the tanks are rods supporting the articles to be plated,
which are suspended in the solution. Similar rods support the opposite
electrodes of the tank. Wires connect these rods to the rods on the side of the
wall, and to the opposite poles of the dynamo.

FIG. 72.—EDISON’S ELECTRIC PEN.

The electric pen of Edison, brought out in 1876 (U. S. Pat. No. 196,747, Nov.
6, 1877), is one of the simple applications of electricity, which for a number
of years was in quite general use for making manifold copies of manuscript.
In the illustration, Fig. 72, this is shown. It comprises a stylus b reciprocated
in a tube a by the vibratory action of an armature k over the poles of an
electro-magnet, supplied with a suitable current and vibrating contacts l h.
The stylus was rapidly reciprocated, and as the operator traced the letters on
the paper, the stylus produced a continuous trail of punctures which permitted
the paper to be used as a stencil to make any number of copies. It has,
however, been rotated out of existence by manifolding carbon paper, and the
almost universal use of the typewriter.

Electricity in Medicine.—The superstitious mind is prone to
resort to mysterious agencies for the cure of diseases, and for
many years men of no scientific knowledge whatever have been
employing this seductive instrumentality for all the ills that flesh
is heir to. That it has valuable therapeutic qualities when rightly
applied no intelligent person will doubt, and it is unfortunate that
for the most part it has been in the hands of charlatans who sell
their wares, and rely upon a faith-cure principle for the result.
Still there have been intelligent experimenters in this field, and it
is one of much promise for further research.
In the first century of the Christian Era (A. D. 50) Scribonius
Largus relates that Athero, a freedman of Tiberius, was cured of
the gout by the shocks of the torpedo or electric eel. In 1803 M.
Carpue published experiments on the therapeutic action of
electricity. The discovery of induction currents by Faraday in
1831 brought a new era in the medical application of electricity,
in the use of what is known as the Faradaic current. The first
apparatus for medical use, which operated on this principle, was
made by M. Pixii in France, and the first physician who
employed such currents was Dr. Neef, of Frankfort. The medical FIG. 73.—
ELECTRI
battery is a well-known and useful adjunct to the physician’s C
outfit. Electric baths are also common and effective modes of CAUTERY
.
applying the electric current. An early example of such a device is
shown in the U. S. patent to Young, No. 32,332, May 14, 1861.
The electric cautery and probe are also scientific and useful instruments. The
cautery consists of a loop of platinum wire carried by a suitable non-
conducting handle, with means for constricting the white hot loop of wire
about the tumor or object to be excised. It was invented in 1846 by Crusell, of
St. Petersburgh. A form of the electric cautery is shown in Fig. 73, in which a
is the platinum wire loop whose branches slide through guide tubes, the ends
being attached to a sliding ring B. The current enters through the wire at the
binding posts at the end of non-conducting handle A, and heats the platinum
loop, a, red hot. The loop, a, being around the object to be excised, is
constricted by drawing down the handle ring B.
Of the various applications of electricity in body wear and appliances there is
scarcely any end. There are patents for belts without number, for electric
gloves, rings, bracelets, necklaces, trusses, corsets, shoes, hats, combs,

brushes, chairs, couches, and blankets. Patents have also been granted for
electric smelling bottles, an adhesive plaster, for electric spectacles, scissors, a
foot warmer, hair singer, syringes, a drinking cup, a hair cutter, a torch, a
catheter, a pessary, gas lighters, exercising devices, a door mat, and even for
an electric hair pin and a pair of electric garters.
Electrical Musical Instruments include pianos, banjos, and violins, all of
which are to be played automatically by the aid of electrical appliances. In the
illustration, Fig. 74, is shown a modern electrical piano. A small electrical
motor 1, run by a storage battery or electric light wires, turns a belt 3, and
rotates pulley 4 and a long horizontal cylinder 5 running beneath the
keyboard. Above this cylinder is the mechanism that acts upon the keys. It
consists of a series of brake shoes which, when brought into frictional contact
with the cylinder 5, are made to act on small vertical rods which bring down
the keys just as the fingers do in playing. The selection of the proper keys is
made by a traveling strip of paper perforated with dots and dashes
representing the notes, which strip of paper passes between two metal contact
faces, which are terminals of an electric battery. When the contacts are
separated by the non-conducting paper the current does not flow, but when the
contacts come together through the perforations the current is completed
through an electro-magnet, and this is made to bring the proper brake shoe
into position to be lifted by the cylinder 5, which rotates constantly.

FIG. 74.—ELECTRIC PIANO.

Electro-blasting.—In 1812 Schilling proposed to blow up mines by the
galvanic current. In 1839 Colonel Pasley blew up the wreck of the “Royal
George” by electro-blasting. On Jan. 26, 1843, Mr. Cubitt used electro-
blasting to destroy Round Down Cliff, and in our own time the extensive
excavations in deepening the channel and removing the rocks at Hell Gate,
from the mouth of New York harbor, was a notable operation in electro-
blasting, and doubtless owes its success largely to the electric current
employed.
Only the briefest mention can be made of the induction coil and the electrical
transformer, of electric bells and hotel annunciators, of electric railway
signalling, and electric brakes, of electric clocks and instruments of precision,
of heating by electricity, of electrical horticulture, and of the beautiful electric
fountains. These, however, all belong to the Nineteenth Century, and include
interesting developments.

Electro-chemistry and the electrolytic refining of metals represent also, in the
applications of electricity, a large and important field, more fully treated under
the chapters devoted to chemistry and metal working.

CHAPTER X.

The Steam Engine.

Hero’s Engine, and Other Early Steam Engines—Watt’s Steam Engine—The Cut-Off—
Giffard Injector—Bourdon’s Steam Gauge—Feed-Water Heaters, Smoke Consumers,
Etc.—Rotary Engines—Steam Hammer—Steam Fire Engine—Compound Engines—
Schlick and Taylor Systems of Balancing Momentum of Moving Parts—Statistics.

When the primeval man first turned upon himself the critical light of
introspection, and observed his own deficiencies, there were born within him
both the desire and the determination to supplement his weakness, and
become the ruling factor in the world’s destiny. The strength of his arm
unaided could not cope with that of the wild beast, he could not travel so fast
as the animal, nor soar so high as the bird, nor traverse the waters of the sea
like the fish. The magnificent power of the elements first inspired him with
awe, then was worshiped as a god, and he trembled in his weakness. Then he
began to invent, and seeing in physical laws an escape from his fears, and a
solution for his ambitions, he trained these forces and made them subservient
to his will, and established his right to rule. Out of the maze of the centuries a
steam engine is born—not all at once, for that would be inconsistent with the
law of evolution—but gradually growing first into practicability, then into
efficiency, and finally into perfection, it stands to-day a beautiful monument
of man’s ingenuity, throbbing with life and energy, and moving the world.
What has not the steam engine done for the Nineteenth Century? It speeds the
locomotive across the continent faster and farther than the birds can fly; no
fish can equal the mighty steamship on the sea; it grinds our grain; it weaves
our cloth; it prints our books; it forges our steel, and in every department of
life it is the ubiquitous, tireless, potent agency of civilization. Does the
ambitious young philosopher predict that electricity will supersede steam? It
is not yet a rational prophecy, for the direct production of electricity from the
combustion of coal is still an unsolved problem, and behind the electric
generator can always be found the steam engine, modestly and quietly giving

its full life’s work to the dynamo, which it actuates, and caring nothing for the
credit, unmindful of the beautiful and striking manifestations of electricity
which astonish the world, but humbly doing its duty with a silent faith that the
law of correlation of force will always lead the way back to the steam engine,
and place it where it belongs, at the head of all useful agencies of man.
The Nineteenth Century did not include in its discoveries the invention of the
steam engine. The great gift of James Watt was one of the legacies which it
received from the past, but the economical, efficient, graceful, and
mathematically perfect engine of to-day is the product of this age.

FIG. 75.—HERO’S ENGINE, 150 B. C.

The genesis of the steam engine belongs to ancient history, for in the year 150
B. C. Hero made and exhibited in the Serapeum of Alexandria the first steam
engine. It was of the rotary type and was known as the “aeolipile.” During the
middle ages the spirit of invention seems to have slept, for nearly eighteen

centuries passed from the time of Hero’s engine before any active revival of
interest was manifested in this field of invention. Giovanni Branca in 1629,
the Marquis of Worcester in 1633, Dr. Papin in 1695, Savary in 1698, and
Newcomen in 1705, were the pioneers of Watt, and gave to him a good
working basis. Strange as it may appear, there was in 1894 and probably still
is in existence in England an old Newcomen steam engine (see Fig. 76),
which for at least a hundred years has stood exposed to the weather, slowly
rusting and crumbling away. It is to be found in Fairbottom Valley, half way
between Ashton-under-Lyne and Oldham, and is the property of the trustees of
the late Earl of Stamford and Warrington. It is erected on a solid masonry
pillar 14 by 7 feet at the base, which carries on its top, on trunnions, an oak
beam 20 feet long and 12 by 14 inches thick. This beam is braced with iron,
and has segmental ends with a piston at one end, and a balance weight at the
other. The piston and pump rods are attached by chains. The cylinder is of cast
iron, 27 inches in diameter, and about six foot stroke, the steam entering at the
bottom only. It was formerly used for pumping a mine.

FIG. 76.—OLD NEWCOMEN ENGINE.

The distinct and valuable legacy, however, which the Nineteenth Century
received from the past, was the double acting steam engine of James Watt,
disclosed in his British Pat. No. 1,321, of 1782. Prior to this date steam
engines had been almost exclusively confined to raising water, but with the
invention of Watt it extended into all fields of industrial use. Watt’s double
acting engine is shown in Fig. 77. It comprised a cylinder A, with double
acting piston and valve gear E F G H; the parallel motion R for translating the
reciprocating motion of the piston into the curved oscillatory path of the
walking beam; a condenser chamber K, with spray I, for condensing the
exhaust steam; a pump L J to remove the water from the condenser, and also
the air, which is drawn out of the water by the vacuum; a water supply pump
N; the automatic ball governor D, and throttle valve B. Two pins on the pump
rod L strike the lever H and work the valve gear, and a collecting rod P and
crank Q convert the oscillations of the walking beam into the continuous
rotation of the fly wheel.

FIG. 77.—WATT’S DOUBLE ACTING STEAM ENGINE.

Watt’s automatic ball governor is shown in Fig. 78 and its function is as
follows: When the working strain on an engine is relieved by the throwing out
of action of a part of the work being performed, the engine would run too fast,
or if more than a normal tax were placed on the engine, it would “slow up.”
To secure a regular and uniform motion in the performance of his engine Watt
invented the automatic or self-regulating ball governor and throttle valve. A
vertical shaft D is rotated constantly by a band on pulley d. Any tendency in
the engine to run too fast throws the balls up by centrifugal action, and this
through toggle links f h, pulls down on a lever F G H, and partially closes the
throttle valve Z, reducing the flow of steam to the engine. When the engine
has a tendency to run too slow the balls drop down, and, deflecting the lever
in the opposite direction, open the throttle valve, and increase the flow of
steam to the engine. This double acting engine of Watt marks the beginning of
the great epoch of steam engineering, and his patent expired just in time to
give to the Nineteenth Century the greatest of all natal gifts.

FIG. 78.—WATT’S AUTOMATIC GOVERNOR AND THROTTLE VALVE.

Steam engines are divided into two principal classes, the low pressure engine,
using steam usually under 40 pounds to the square inch, and the high pressure
engine, using steam from 50 to 200 pounds. In the low pressure engine there
is the expansive pressure of the steam on one side of the piston, aided by the
suction of a vacuum on the opposite side of the piston, which vacuum is
created by the condensation of the discharging, or exhaust steam, by cold
water. As there are two factors at work impelling the piston, only a relatively
low pressure in the boiler is required. In the high pressure engines there is no
condensation of the exhaust steam, but it is discharged directly into the air,
and this type was originally called “puffers.” Familiar examples of the low
pressure type are to be found in our side wheel passenger steamers, and of the
high pressure type in the steam locomotive.

FIG. 79.—PRINCIPLE OF CUT-OFF.

One of the most important steps in the development of the steam engine was
the addition of the cut-off. Prior to its adoption steam was admitted to the
cylinder during the whole time the piston was making its stroke from one end
of the cylinder to the other. In the cut-off (see Fig. 79), when steam is being
admitted through the port p, and the piston is being driven in the direction of
the arrow, it was found that if the steam were cut off when the piston arrived
at the position 1, the expansive action of the steam behind it in chamber a
would continue to carry the piston with an effective force to the end of its
stroke, or to position 2. This of course effected a great saving in steam.
Various cut-offs have been devised. Perhaps that most easily recognized by
most persons is the one seen in the engine room of our side wheel steamers, of
which illustration is given in Fig. 80. This was invented in 1841 by F. E.
Sickels, and was the first successful drop cut-off. It was covered by his
patents, May 20, 1842, July 20, 1843, October 19, 1844, No. 3,802, and
September 19, 1845, No. 4,201. A rock shaft s is worked by an eccentric rod e
from the paddle wheel shaft. The rock shaft has lifting arms a that act upon

and alternately raise the feet c on rods b b. One of these rods b works the
valves that admit steam, and the other the valves that discharge steam. The
valve rod that admits steam has a quick drop, or fall, to cut off the live steam
before the piston reaches the end of its stroke. In Fig. 81 is shown the
celebrated Corliss cut-off and valve gear, in which a central wrist plate and
four radiating rods work the valves. This valve gear was covered in Corliss
patents, No. 6,162, March 10, 1849, and No. 8.253, July 29, 1851.

FIG. 80.—SICKELS’ DROP CUT-OFF
VALVE GEAR.

FIG. 81.—CORLISS CUT-OFF AND VALVE GEAR.

Among other important improvements in the steam engine are those for
replenishing the water in the boiler, and the Giffard Injector is the simplest
and most ingenious of all boiler feeds. It was invented in 1858 and covered by
French patent No. 21,457, May 8, 1858, and U. S. patent No. 27,979, April
24, 1860. Prior to the Giffard Injector, steam boilers were supplied with water
usually by steam pumps, which forced the water into the boiler against the
pressure of the steam. The Giffard Injector takes a jet of steam from the boiler,
and causes it to lift the water in an external pipe, and blow it directly into the
boiler against its own pressure. So paradoxical and inoperative did this seem
at first that it was met with incredulity, and not until repeated demonstrations
established the fact was it accepted as an operative device. Its construction is
shown in Fig. 82. A is a steam pipe communicating with the boiler, B another
pipe receiving steam from A through small holes and terminating in a cone. C
is a screw rod, cone-shaped at its extremity, turned by the crank M, and
serving to regulate and even intercept the passage of steam. D is a water
suction pipe. The water that is drawn up introduces itself around the steam
pipe and tends to make its exit through the annular space at the conical
extremity of the latter steam pipe. This annular space is increased at will by
means of the lever L, which acts upon a screw whose office is to cause the

pipe B and its attached parts to move backward or forward. E is a diverging
tube which receives the water injected by the jet of steam that condenses at I,
and imparts to the water a portion of its speed in proportion to the pressure of
the boiler. F is a box carrying a check valve to keep the water from issuing
from the boiler when the apparatus is not at work. G is a pipe that leads the
injected water to the boiler. H is a purge or overflow pipe, K a sight hole
which permits the operation of the apparatus to be watched, the stream of
water being distinctly seen in the free interval. Fig. 83 shows the application
of the injector to locomotives, which are now almost universally supplied
with this device.

FIG. 82.—GIFFARD INJECTOR.

FIG. 83.—INJECTOR ON LOCOMOTIVE.

To keep the pressure in the boiler within the limit of safety,
and adjusted to the work being performed, is an important
part of the engineer’s duty, and this he could not do without
the steam gauge. One of the best known is the Bourdon
gauge, shown in Fig. 84, constructed on the principle of the
barometer invented by Bourdon of Paris in 1849 and
patented in France June, 1849, and in the United States
August 3, 1852, No. 9,163. A screw threaded thimble B,
with stop cock A, is screwed in the shell of the boiler, and a
coiled pipe C communicates at one end with the thimble
and is closed at the other end E and connected by a link F,
with an arm on an axle, carrying an index hand that moves FIG. 84.—
over a graduated scale. The coiled pipe C is in the nature of BOURDON’S
a flattened tube, as shown in the enlarged cross section, and PRESSURE
GAUGE.
is enclosed in a case. When the steam pressure varies in
this flat tube its coil expands or contracts, and in moving
the index hand over the scale indicates the degree of pressure.
In line with the development of the steam engine must be considered the
efforts to economize fuel. These may be divided into the following classes:
Increased steam generating surface in boiler construction; surface condensers
for exhaust steam; devices for promoting the combustion of fuel and burning

the smoke, and feed water heaters. Even before the Nineteenth Century
Smeaton devised the cylindrical boiler traversed by a flue, but the
multitubular steam boiler of to-day represents a very important Nineteenth
Century adjunct to the steam engine. Our locomotives, fire engines, and
torpedo boat engines would be of no value without it. Sectional steam boilers
made in detachable portions fastened together by packed or screw joints also
represent an important development. These permit of the removal and
replacement of any one section that may become defective, and are also
capable of being built up section by section to any size needed. For promoting
the combustion of fuel the draft is energized by blasts of air or steam, or both,
either through hollow grate bars, jet pipes in the fire box, or by discharging
the exhaust steam in the smoke pipe. Surface condensers pass the exhaust
steam over the great surface area of a multitubular construction having cold
water flowing through it. Feed water heaters utilize the waste heat escaping in
the smoke flue to heat the water that is being fed to the boiler, so that it is
warm when it is injected into the boiler, and the furnace is relieved of that
much work.

FIG. 85.—BRANCA’S STEAM TURBINE, 1629.

FIG. 86.—SECTION OF PARSONS TURBINE OF 1891.

In the reciprocating type of steam engine the inertia of the piston must be
overcome at the beginning of each stroke and its momentum must be arrested
at the end of each stroke, and this involves a great loss of power. If the power
of the steam could be applied so as to continuously move the piston in the
same direction this loss would be avoided. The effort to do this has engaged
the attention of many inventors, and the devices are called rotary engines. The
most successful engines of this kind are those of the impact type, in which jets
of steam impinge upon buckets after the manner of water on a water wheel,
and which are known to-day as steam turbines. The earliest of these is
Branca’s steam turbine of 1629 (see Fig. 85) and the most important of this
class in use to-day are those of Mr. Parsons, of England, and De Laval, of
Sweden. The internal construction of the Parsons turbine is seen in Fig. 86
and is covered by British patent No. 10,940, of 1891, and United States patent
No. 553,658, January 28th, 1896. A series of turbines are set one after the
other on the same axis, so that each takes steam from the preceding one, and
passes it on to the next. Each consists of a ring of fixed steam guides on the
casing, and a ring of moving blades on the shaft. The steam passes through the
first set of guides, then through the first set of moving blades, then through
the second set of guides, and then through the second set of moving blades,
and so on.

FIG. 87.—PARSONS COMPOUND STEAM TURBINE, ON
PLURALITY OF PROPELLER SHAFTS.

In the application of his turbine to marine propulsion Mr. Parsons employs a
plurality of propeller shafts and steam turbines, as seen in Fig. 87, and
covered under United States patent No. 608,969, August 9, 1898.

FIG. 88.—DE LAVAL’S STEAM TURBINE.

FIG. 89.—DE LAVAL TURBINE GEARED TO DYNAMO.

The De Laval turbine, as shown in Fig. 88, is of very simple construction,
consisting only of a steel wheel with a series of buckets at its periphery
enclosed by a circular rim, and a series of steam nozzles on the side with

diverging jet orifices directing steam jets against the buckets. A speed of
30,000 revolutions a minute may be attained by this construction. In Fig. 89 is
shown a 300 horse-power steam turbine of the De Laval type applied to a
dynamo; to which this type of engine is peculiarly adapted. The dynamo is
seen on the extreme right, the steam turbine on the extreme left, and the drum-
shaped casing between contains cog-gearing by which the high revolution of
the turbine wheel is reduced to a proper working speed for the dynamo.
Within the last few years application of the Parsons steam turbine has been
made to marine propulsion with very remarkable results as to speed. The
small steam craft, “The Turbinia,” built in 1897, and supplied with three of
Parsons’ compound steam turbines, developed a speed of 323⁄4 knots, and
more recently the torpedo boat “Viper” has with steam turbines attained the
remarkable speed of 37.1 knots, or over 40 statute miles an hour. About 2,000
United States patents have been granted on various forms of rotary engines.
In the transportation building of the World’s Fair at Chicago in 1893 one of
the most conspicuous objects of attention was the model of the great
Bethlehem Iron Co.’s steam hammer, standing with its feet apart like some
great “Colossus of Rhodes” and towering 91 feet high among the models of
the great ocean steamers and battleships which are so largely dependent upon
the work of this Titanic machine. Its hammer head, in the working-machine,
weighs 125 tons, and many of the seventeen inch thick armor plates for our
battleships have been forged by its tremendous blows.
In 1838, during the construction of the “Great Britain,” the largest steamship
up to that time ever built, it was found that there was not a forge hammer in
England or Scotland powerful enough to forge a paddle shaft for that vessel.
The emergency was met by Mr. Nasmyth, of England, who invented the steam
hammer and covered it in British patent No. 9,382, of 1842 (U. S. Pat. No.
3,042, April 10, 1843). A modern example of it is seen in Fig. 90. It consists
of a steam cylinder at the top whose piston is attached to a block of iron,
forming the hammer head and sliding vertically in guides between the two
legs of the frame. Valve gear is arranged to control the flow of steam to and
from the opposite sides of the piston, and so nicely adjusted is the valve gear
of such a modern steam hammer that it is said that an expert workman can
manipulate the great mass of metal with such accuracy and delicacy as to
crack an egg in a wineglass without touching the glass. To the steam hammer
we owe the first heavy armor plate for our battle ships and the propeller shafts
of our earlier steamships. In fact it was the steam hammer which first rendered

the large steamship possible. Mr. Nasmyth not only invented the steam
hammer, but the steam pile driver as well.

FIG. 90.—STEAM HAMMER.

For quick action, nicely adjusted machinery, and showy finish the steam fire
engine is a familiar and conspicuous application of steam power. A dude
among engines when on dress parade, and a sprinter when on the run, it gets
to work with the vim and efficiency of a thoroughbred, and is a most
business-like and valuable custodian of life and property. The first portable
steam fire engine was built about 1830 by Mr. Brathwaite and Capt. Ericsson
in London. In 1841 Mr. Hodges produced a similar engine in New York City.
Cincinnati was the first city to adopt the steamer as a part of its fire
department apparatus. To-day all the important cities and towns of the
civilized world rely upon the steam fire engines for their longevity and
existence. Time economy in getting into action is the great objective point of
most improvements of the fire-engine, and one of the most important is the
keeping of the water in the boiler hot when the engine is out of action at the

engine house, so that when the fire is built and the run is made to the scene of
action, the water will be hot to start with. This attachment was the invention
of William A. Brickill, and was patented by him August 18, 1868, No. 81,132.
In the illustration, Fig. 91, the two pipes passing from the engine through the
trap door in the floor connect with a water heater in the basement below,
which heater maintains a constant circulation of hot water in the steam boiler.
Couplings in these pipes serve to quickly disconnect the engine when the run
to the fire is to be made.

FIG. 91.—STEAM FIRE ENGINE WITH WATER HEATING
ATTACHMENT.

Among other useful applications of the steam engine are the steam plow,
steam drill, steam dredge, steam press, and steam pump, of which latter the
Blake, Knowles, and Worthington are representative types.

FIG. 92.—THE SIX-CYLINDER QUADRUPLE EXPANSION ENGINES OF THE
“DEUTSCHLAND,” 35,640 HORSE POWER.

The highest type of modern steam engines is to be found in the compound
multiple-expansion engine, in which three or more cylinders of different
diameters with corresponding pistons are so arranged that steam is made to act
first upon the piston in the smallest cylinder at high pressure, and then
discharging into the next larger cylinder, called the intermediate, acts
expansively upon its piston, and thence, passing into the still larger low
pressure cylinder, imparts its further expansive effect upon its piston. The
fundamental principle of the compound engine dates back to the time of Watt,
its first embodiment appearing in the Hornblower compound engine, as
described in British patent No. 1,298, of 1781, but modern improvements
have differentiated it into almost a new invention. A fine example is shown in
Fig. 92, which represents the quadruple expansion engines of the
“Deutschland,” the new steamer of the Hamburg-American Line. The two
high pressure cylinders, however, do not appear in the illustration, being too
high for the shops. They stand vertically, however, upon the two bed plates
which appear at the top of the two low pressure cylinders. In each set of six
cylinders the two low pressure cylinders are in the middle, the two high

pressure cylinders immediately above them or arranged tandem, while at the
forward end is the first intermediate cylinder, and at the after end is the second
intermediate. The low pressure cylinders are 106 inches in diameter, the
intermediate cylinders are 73.6 inches and 103.9 inches respectively, and the
two high pressure cylinders are 30.6 inches, and the steam pressure is 225
pounds. Its improvements comprehend the systems of Schlick, patented in the
United States November 23, 1897, No. 594,288 and 594,289, and Taylor,
patented November 22, 1898, No. 614,674, which embody fine mathematical
principles for balancing the momentum of the great masses of moving parts,
so that the engine may run up to high speed without vibrations and damaging
strains upon the hull.
Mulhall gives the steam horse power of the world in 1895, not including war
vessels, as follows:
Stationary. Railway. Steamboat. Total.
The World 11,340,000 32,235,000 12,005,000 55,580,000
United States 3,940,000 10,800,000 2,200,000 16,940,000

The increase in steam power in the United States has been from 3,500,000
horse power in 1860, to 16,940,000 horse power in 1895, or about five fold
within thirty-five years.
Prof. Thurston says that in 1890 the combined power of all the steam engines
of the world was not far from 100,000,000[2] horse power, of which the
United States had 15,000,000, Great Britain the same, and the other countries
smaller amounts. Taking the horse power as the equivalent of the work of five
men, the work of steam is equivalent to that of a population of 500,000,000
working men. It is also said that one man to-day, with the aid of a steam
engine, performs the work of 120 men in the last century.
[2] Prof. Thurston’s estimate doubtless includes war vessels, which Mulhall’s later estimate
does not (see Mulhall’s “Industries and Wealth of Nations,” 1896, pages 4 and 379).

The influence of the steam engine upon the history and destiny of the world is
an impressive subject, far beyond any intelligent computation or estimate. It
has been the greatest moving force of the Nineteenth Century. The labor of
100,000 men for twenty years might build a great pyramid in Egypt, and it
remains as a monument of patience only, but the genius of the modern
inventor has organized a machine with muscles of steel, far more patient and

tireless than those of the Egyptian slave. He gave it but a drink of water and
making coal its black slave, and himself the master of both, he has in the
Nineteenth Century hitched his chariot to a star and driven to unparalleled
achievement.

CHAPTER XI.

The Steam Railway.

Trevithick’s First Locomotive—Blenkinsop’s Locomotive—Hedley’s “Puffing Billy”—
Stephenson’s Locomotive—The Link Motion—Stockton and Darlington Railway, 1825
—Hackworth’s “Royal George”—“Stourbridge Lion”—“John Bull”—Baldwin’s
Locomotives—Westinghouse Air Brakes—Janney Car Coupling—The Woodruff
Sleeping Car—Railway Statistics.

he fact that more patents have been granted in the class of carriages

T and wagons than in any other field, shows that means of transportation
has engaged the largest share of man’s inventive genius, and has been
most closely allied to his necessities. The moving of passengers and
freight seems to be directly related to the progress of civilization, and
the factor whose influence has been most felt in this field is the steam
locomotive. Sir Isaac Newton in 1680 proposed a steam carriage propelled by
the reaction of a jet of steam. Dr. Robinson in 1759 suggested the steam
carriage to Watt. Cugnot in 1769 built a steam carriage. Symington, in 1770,
and Murdock, in 1784, built working models, and in 1790 Nathan Read also
made experiments in steam transportation, but the Nineteenth Century
dawned without any other results than a few abandoned experiments, and the
criticism and disappointment of the inventors in this field.

FIG. 93.—TREVITHICK’S LOCOMOTIVE, 1804. THE FIRST TO RUN ON
RAILS.

The father of the locomotive and the first inventor of the Nineteenth Century
who directed his energy to its development was Richard Trevithick, of
Camborne, Cornwall. In 1801 he built his first steam carriage, adapted to
carry seven or eight passengers, which was said to have “gone off like a bird,”
but broke down, and was taken to the home of Capt. Vivian, who afterward
became a partner of Trevithick. An old lady, upon seeing this novel and, to
her, frightful engine, is said to have cried out: “Good gracious! Mr. Vivian,
what will be done next? I can’t compare it to anything but a walking, puffing
devil.” On the 24th of March, 1802, Trevithick and Vivian obtained British
patent No. 2,599 for their steam carriage, and a second one was built in 1803
which was popularly known as Capt. Trevithick’s “Puffing Devil.” In 1804, at
Pen y Darran, South Wales, a third engine was built, which was the first steam
locomotive ever to run on rails. It is seen in the illustration, No. 93. It had a
horizontal cylinder inside the boiler, a cross head sliding on guides in front of
the engine, the cross head being connected to a crank on a rear gear wheel,
which in turn meshes with an intermediate gear wheel above and between two
other gear wheels on the running wheels. A fly wheel was on the crank shaft.
The steam was discharged into the chimney, and the whole engine weighed
five tons, and it ran, when loaded, at five miles an hour. In 1808 Trevithick
built a circular railway at London within an inclosure, and charged a shilling

for admission to his steam circus and a ride behind his locomotive. The engine
here employed was the “Catch Me Who Can,” and had a vertical cylinder and
piston, without the toothed gear wheels shown in the illustration.

FIG. 94.—BLENKINSOP’S LOCOMOTIVE, 1811.

In Fig. 94 is shown Blenkinsop’s locomotive of 1811. This was employed at
the Middleton Colliery in hauling coal. It had cog wheels engaging teeth on
the side of the rail. The fire was built in a large tube passing through the boiler
and bent up to form a chimney. Two vertical cylinders were placed inside the
boiler, and the pistons were connected by cross heads, and, by connecting
rods, to cranks on the axles of small cog wheels engaging with the main cog
wheels. It drew thirty tons weight at three and three-quarter miles an hour.

FIG. 95.—HEDLEY’S “PUFFING BILLY,” 1813.

In 1813 “Puffing Billy” was built by Wm. Hedley. There were (see Fig. 95)
four smooth drive wheels running on smooth rails, which wheels were
coupled together by intermediate gear wheels on the axle, and all propelled by
a gear wheel in the middle, driven by a connecting rod from the walking beam
overhead. Hedley’s locomotive was used on the Wylam railway, and was said
to have been at work more or less until 1862.
Most prominent among those who took an active interest in the development
of the locomotive were George Stephenson and his son, Robert. Stephenson’s
first locomotive was tried on the Killingworth Railway on July 27, 1814. In
1815 Dodds and Stephenson patented an arrangement for attaching the
connecting rods to the driving wheels, which took the place of cog wheels
heretofore employed, and in the following year Stephenson, in connection
with Mr. Losh, patented the application of steam cushion-springs for
supporting the weight of the locomotive in an elastic manner.
In 1825 the Stockton and Darlington Railway, in England, was opened for
traffic, with George Stephenson’s engine, “Locomotion,” and was put

permanently into service for the transportation of freight and passengers.

FIG. 96.—HACKWORTH’S LOCOMOTIVE, “ROYAL GEORGE,” 1827.

In 1827 Hackworth produced the “Royal George” (see Fig. 96), whose
cylinders were arranged vertically at the rear end of the boiler, and whose
pistons emerged from the cylinders at the lower ends of the latter, and
imparted their power through connecting rods to cranks on the opposite ends
of the axle of the rear driving wheels in a more direct manner than heretofore,
and doing away with the overhead mechanism heretofore employed in most
engines. Hackworth also improved the steam blast, put on the bell, and greatly
simplified and modernized the appearance of the locomotive.

FIG. 97.—GEORGE STEPHENSON’S “ROCKET,” 1829.

In 1829 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was completed, and the
directors offered a prize of £500 for the best locomotive. George Stephenson’s
“Rocket,” shown in Fig. 97, attained a speed of 241⁄6 miles an hour, and took
the prize. Its success, however, was marred by the first railroad fatality, for it
ran over and killed a man on this occasion. It embodied, as leading features,
the steam blast and the multitubular boiler, which latter was six feet long and
had twenty-five three-inch tubes. The fire box was surrounded by an exterior
casing that formed a water jacket, which, by means of pipes, was in open
communication with the water space of the boiler.

FIG. 98.—“STOURBRIDGE LION,” 1829.

The first practical locomotive to run on a railroad in the United States was the
“Stourbridge Lion,” seen in Fig. 98. This was imported from England, and
arrived in New York in May, 1829, and was tried in that year on a section of
the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company’s railroad. The boiler was tubular,
and the exhaust steam was carried into the chimney by a pipe in front of the
smoke stack as shown. It had vertical cylinders of thirty-six inch stroke, with
overhead grasshopper beams and connecting rods.

FIG. 99.—LOCOMOTIVE “JOHN BULL,” 1831.

In Fig. 99 is shown the “John Bull,” now in the National Museum at
Washington, D. C. It was built by Stephenson & Co. for the Camden &
Amboy Railroad, and was brought over from England and put into service in
1831. During the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, after a long rest
in the Washington Museum, it made its way under its own steam to Chicago,
drawing a train of two cars a distance of 912 miles without assistance. It
further distinguished itself while there by carrying 50,000 passengers over the
exhibition tracks, and although sixty-two years of age at the time, showed
itself quite capable of performing substantial work.

FIG. 100.—BALDWIN’S “OLD IRONSIDES,” 1832.

Most of the early locomotives used in America were imported from England,
but our inventors soon commenced making them for themselves. The Baldwin
Locomotive Works, of Philadelphia, has had a notable career in the field of
locomotive construction. “Old Ironsides,” built in 1832, was the first Baldwin
locomotive, and it did duty for over a score of years. It is shown in Fig. 100. It
had four wheels and weighed a little over five tons. The drive wheels were 54
inches in diameter, and the cylinder 91⁄2 inches in diameter, 18 inches stroke.
The wheels had heavy cast iron hubs with wooden spokes and rims and
wrought iron tires, and the frame was of wood placed outside the wheels. The
boiler was 30 inches in diameter and had 72 copper flues 11⁄2 inches in
diameter, 7 feet long. The price of the locomotive was $4,000, and it attained
a speed of 30 miles an hour, with its train.

FIG. 101.—EIGHT-WHEEL PASSENGER EXPRESS LOCOMOTIVE, 1863.

FIG. 102.—EXPRESS PASSENGER LOCOMOTIVE, 1881.

In Fig. 101 is shown a standard type of passenger locomotive of the period of
1863, and in Fig. 102 is illustrated the period of 1881, which latter represents
perhaps the greatest epoch of railroad building in the history of the world.
According to Poor’s Manual, $1,000,000 a day was the estimated cash outlay
on this account for the three years up to the close of 1882, during which
period 28,019 miles of railroad were opened up in the United States, or more
than enough to girdle the entire earth. Some idea of the wonderful growth of
the railroad industry during this period is given by the following tables, which
represent the yearly production of locomotives by the Baldwin Company
alone for forty years prior to this period:

1842 14 1856 59 1870 280
1843 12 1857 66 1871 331
1844 22 1858 33 1872 442
1845 27 1859 70 1873 437
1846 42 1860 83 1874 205
1847 39 1861 40 1875 130
1848 20 1862 75 1876 232
1849 30 1863 96 1877 185
1850 37 1864 130 1878 292
1851 50 1865 115 1879 398
1852 49 1866 118 1880 517
1853 60 1867 127 1881 555
1854 62 1868 124 1882 563
1855 47 1869 235 1883 557

The present capacity of the Baldwin works is one thousand locomotives a
year, and they have built up to this date about fifteen thousand locomotives, or
nearly one-half of all the locomotives in use in the United States.
The successive steps of the development in detail of the various features of
the locomotive are distributed over a long period, and are somewhat difficult
to trace. The turning of the exhaust steam into the smoke stack was done by
Trevithick as early as 1804, but its effect was greatly increased by Hackworth
about 1827, who augmented its power by directing it into the chimney
through a narrow orifice. This and the tubular locomotive boiler by Seguin in
1828, the link-motion in 1832, the steam whistle by Stephenson in 1833, the
Giffard injector in 1858, and the Westinghouse air brake of 1869, are the most
prominent features of the locomotive.

FIG. 103.—STEPHENSON’S LINK MOTION.

The link motion has been claimed both for the younger Stephenson and W. T.
James, of New York, the latter being probably its real inventor. Its purpose is
to reverse the engine and also to cut off steam in either direction, so that it
may act expansively. The form of link motion most generally used is shown in
Fig. 103, and is known as Stephenson’s. A B are two eccentrics projecting in
opposite directions from the center of the common drive shaft, their rods
being connected at their outer ends by a curved and slotted link C D. In the
slot of this link plays a pin E, carried by a pendent swinging lever G F, which
lever is jointed at its lower end to the slide valve rod H. A T-shaped lever I L
K M has one arm at I connected by a rod with the slotted link at C. The
opposite arm is provided with a counter weight at K to balance the weight of
the link C D and eccentric rods, and the upright arm is connected at M to a rod
operated by a hand lever P within easy access of the engineer. When the link
C D is lowered the eccentric B imparts its throw to pendent lever G F and
valve rod H, and the eccentric A will only swing the end C of the link without
imparting any effect to the valve. When link C D is drawn up so that pin E is
in the bottom of the slot, the eccentric A is active and B inactive, and as A has
an opposite throw to B, the action of the valve is reversed. If link C D be

drawn half way up, the pin E becomes the center of the oscillation of the link,
and the valve rod is not moved at all. By adjusting the link nearer to or further
from the central position, the throw of the slide valve may be made shorter or
longer, and the steam cut off at a later or earlier period in the stroke of the
piston.

FIG. 104.—LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE NO. 999.

Fig. 104 is a type of the best modern express locomotive. This is the famous
999 of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad. Its cylinders are 19 ×
24 inches, driving wheels 861⁄2 inches in diameter, weight 62 tons, steam
pressure 190 pounds. This engine hauls the Empire State Express at a speed of
64.22 miles an hour, excluding stops, or more than a mile a minute.

FIG. 105.—COMPOUND LOCOMOTIVE.

In securing a higher efficiency and a greater economy in the use of steam, the
most recent developments in the locomotive have been in the application of
the principle of the compound expansion engine, in which two or more
cylinders of different diameters are used, the steam at high pressure acting in
the smaller cylinder, and being then exhausted into and acting expansively
upon the piston of the larger cylinder. A fine example of the compound
locomotive is shown in Fig. 105. The cylinders are arranged in pairs, the small
high pressure cylinder above, and the larger low pressure cylinder below, both
piston rods engaging a common cross head. The application of this principle
of the compound engine is said to involve a saving in coal of over 25 per cent.
Prominent among modern improvements in steam railways is the air brake.
This invention is chiefly the result of the ingenuity of Mr. George
Westinghouse, Jr., who, beginning his experiments in 1869, took out his first
patents on the automatic air brake March 5, 1872, Nos. 124,404 and 124,405,
which have since been followed up by many others in perfecting the system.
The principle of the air brake is to store up compressed air in a reservoir on
the locomotive by means of a steam pump. This air passing through a train
pipe connected by hose couplings between cars charges an auxiliary reservoir
under each car. This reservoir is arranged beside a cylinder having a piston
and a triple valve. Pressure in the train pipe is maintained constantly, and the
power to work the piston to apply the brakes comes from the auxiliary

reservoir beside it, which is set into action by a sudden reduction of pressure
in the train pipe by the engineer through a special form of valve on the
locomotive. The air brake is capable of stopping a train at average speed
within the distance of its own length, and so great a safeguard to life and
property is it, that its application to a certain number of cars on every train is
made compulsory by law.
The automatic car coupling is another important life-saving improvement.
Many thousands of these have been patented, but the “Janney” coupling,
patented April 29, 1873, No. 138,405, is the most representative type. The
year 1900 is to witness the compulsory adoption of automatic car couplings
on all cars. The “block system” of signals, by which no train is admitted on to
a given section of track until the preceding train has left that section,
improved switches, which are not dependent upon the memory of men, and
steel rails, which constitute nine-tenths of all tracks and serve to increase the
stability of the track, are further modern safeguards against danger.
Sleeping cars were invented by Woodruff, and patented Dec. 2, 1856, Nos.
16,159 and 16,160. These, with the palace cars of Pullman and Wagner, the
special refrigerator cars for perishable goods, cars for cattle, and cars for coal,
multiply the equipment, swell the traffic, and supply every want of the great
railroad systems of modern times.
The first railroad in the United States was built near Quincy, Mass., in 1826.
The Pacific Railway, the first of our half a dozen transcontinental railways,
was completed in 1869. The great Trans-Siberian Railway is nearing
completion, and in the Twentieth Century a Trans-Sahara Railway will
probably relieve the burdens of the camel, as it has already done those of the
horse.
At the end of the year 1898 there were in use in the United States 36,746
locomotives, 1,318,700 cars, and the mileage in tracks, including second track
and sidings, was 245,238.87, which, if extended in a straight line, would build
a railway to the moon. The money investment represented in capital stock and
bonds was $11,216,886,452. The gross earnings for the year 1898 were
$1,249,558,724. The net earnings were $389,666,474. Tons of freight moved
were 912,973,853. Receipts from freight were $868,924,526. Number of
passengers carried was 514,982,288. Receipts from passengers were
$272,589,591, and dividends paid were $94,937,526. Add to the above the
elevated railroads and street railroads, which are not included, and the

immensity of the railroad business in the United States becomes apparent. In
1898 the United States exported 468 locomotives, worth $3,883,719. Mulhall
estimates that the steam horse power of railroads in the world amounted in
1896 to 40,420,000, of which the United States had more than one-third. He
also states that the railways in the United States carry every day, in
merchandise, a weight equal to that of the whole of the seventy millions of
persons constituting its population; that the total railway traffic of the world in
1894 averaged ten million passengers and six million tons of merchandise
daily; and that the total railway capital of the world reached in that year, 6,745
million sterling, or about thirty-three billion dollars.
It is said that the highest railway speed ever attained by steam prior to 1900
was by locomotive No. 564 of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad,
made during part of a run from Chicago to Buffalo. In this run 86 miles were
made at an average rate of 72.92 miles an hour. The train load was 304,500
pounds, and the 86 mile run included one mile at 92.3 miles an hour, eight
miles at 85.44 miles an hour, and thirty-three miles at 80.6 miles an hour. On
May 26, 1900, however, an experiment on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad,
made by Mr. F. U. Adams between Baltimore and Washington, demonstrated
that by sheathing the train to prevent retardation by the air, an average speed
of 78.6 miles an hour was obtained, and for five miles on a down grade a
speed of 102.8 miles an hour was reached.
The largest and most powerful locomotives in the world are those being built
for the Pittsburg, Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad for hauling long trains of
iron and ore, one of which has just been completed. Its cylinders are 24 × 32
inches; drive wheels, 54 inches diameter; weight, 125 tons; draw bar pull
56,300 pounds, and hauling capacity 7,847 tons. One of these mammoth
engines is capable of drawing a train of box cars, loaded with wheat, and more
than a mile long, at a speed of ten miles an hour. This load of wheat would
represent the yield of 14 square miles of land. No doubt it would greatly
astonish our forefathers to know that at the end of the century we would have
iron horses capable of carting away, at a single load, the products of 14 square
miles of the country side, and do it at a gait faster than that of their local mail
coach.

CHAPTER XII.

Steam Navigation.

Early Experiments—Symington’s Boat—Col. John Stevens’ Screw Propeller—Robt.
Fulton and the “Clermont”—First Trip to Sea by Stevens’ “Phœnix”—“Savannah,” the
First Steam Vessel to Cross the Ocean—Ericsson’s Screw Propeller—The “Great
Eastern”—The Whaleback Steamers—Ocean Greyhounds—The “Oceanic,” Largest
Steamship in the World—The “Turbinia”—Fulton’s “Demologos,” First War Vessel—
The Turret Monitor—Modern Battleships and Torpedo Boats—Holland Submarine
Boat.

he application of steam for the propulsion of boats engaged the

T attention of inventors along with the very earliest development of the
steam engine itself. Blasco de Garay in 1543, the Marquis of Worcester
in 1655, Savary in 1698, Denys Papin in 1707, Dr. John Allen in 1730,
Jonathan Hulls in 1737, Bernouilli and Genevois in 1757, William
Henry (of Pennsylvania) in 1763, Count D’Auxiron and M. Perier in 1774, the
Marquis de Jouffroy in 1781, James Rumsey (on the Potomac) in 1782,
Benjamin Franklin and Oliver Evans in 1786 and 1789, John Fitch in 1786,
and also again in 1796, and William Symington in 1788-89 were the early
experimenters. Papin’s boat was said to have been used on the Fulda at Cassel,
and was reported to have been destroyed by bargemen, who feared that it
would deprive them of a livelihood. Allen, Rumsey, Franklin, and Evans
(1786) proposed to employ a backwardly discharged column of water issuing
from a pump. Jonathan Hulls and Oliver Evans (1789) had stern wheels.
Bernouilli, Genevois, and the Marquis de Jouffroy used paddles on the duck’s
foot principle, which closed when dragged forward, and expanded when
pushed to the rear. Fitch’s first boat employed a system of paddles suspended
by their handles from cranks, which, in revolving, gave the paddles a motion
simulating that which the Indian imparts to his paddle. Symington’s boat of
1788 (Patrick Miller’s pleasure boat) had side paddle wheels. Symington’s
next boat, built in 1789, and also owned by Patrick Miller, was of the

catamaran type, i. e., it had two parallel hulls with paddle wheels between
them.
Such was the state of this art when the Nineteenth Century commenced its
wonderful record. No practical steam vessel had been constructed, as the
efforts in this direction were handicapped by the crudeness of all the arts, and
were to be regarded as experiments only, most of which had to be abandoned.
The seed of this invention, however, had been sown in the fertile soil of
genius, conception of its great possibilities had fired the zeal of the inventors
in this field, and the new century was shortly to number among its great
resources a practical and efficient steamboat.

FIG. 106.—SYMINGTON’S STEAMBOAT, 1801.

The first steamboat of the Nineteenth Century was the “Charlotte Dundas,”
built by William Symington in 1801, see Fig. 106, and used on the Forth and
Clyde Canal in 1802. She had a double acting “Watt engine,” which
transmitted power by a connecting rod to a crank on the paddle-wheel shaft.
The boat had a single paddle wheel in the middle near the stern, and was
intended only for canal use, in the place of horses. It was abandoned for fear of
washing the banks.

FIG. 107.—STEVENS’ TWIN SCREW PROPELLER AND ENGINE, 1804.

In 1804 Col. John Stevens constructed a boat on the Hudson, driven by a Watt
engine, and having a tubular boiler of his own invention and a twin screw
propeller. The engine, boiler, and twin screws are shown in Fig. 107. The same
year Oliver Evans used a stern paddle wheel boat on the Delaware and
Schuylkill rivers. It was driven by a double acting high pressure engine, and
geared so as to rotate wagon wheels by which it was transported on land, as
well as the paddle wheels when on the water. It was in primitive form both a
locomotive and a steamboat.

FIG. 108.—THE “CLERMONT,” 1807.

In 1807 Robert Fulton built the “Clermont,” and permanently established
steam navigation on the Hudson River between New York and Albany. Fulton
in 1802-1803, while living in Paris with Mr. Joel Barlow, and with the aid and

encouragement of Chancellor Livingston, of New Jersey, had built an earlier
steamboat 86 feet long, and although it broke down owing to defects in the
strength of the hull, he was so encouraged that he ordered Messrs. Boulton &
Watt, of England, to send to America a new steam engine, and upon his return
to America he built the “Clermont.” This vessel, although not the first
steamboat, was nevertheless the first to make a voyage of any considerable
length, and to run regularly and continuously for practical purposes, and
Fulton was the first inventor in this field whose labors were not to be classed
as an abandoned experiment. The “Clermont” as originally built was quite a
different looking boat from that usually given in the histories. A model of the
original construction is to be found in the National Museum at Washington. In
the winter of 1807-8 she was remodeled as shown in Fig. 108. She then
appeared as a side wheel steamer, whose wheels were provided with outer
guards and enclosed in side wheel houses, and whose shaft had outer bearings
in the guards, which were not in the original boat. The hull was 133 feet long,
18 feet beam, and 7 feet depth. The “Clermont’s” engines were coupled to the
crank shaft by a bell crank, and the paddle wheel shaft was separated from the
crank shaft, but connected with it by gearing. The cylinders were 24 inches in
diameter, and 4 foot stroke. The paddle wheels had buckets 4 feet long with a
dip of 2 feet. She made the first trip from New York to Albany of 150 miles in
32 hours, and returned in 30 hours, which was the first voyage of any
considerable length ever made by steam power.
The honor of inventing the steamboat has been claimed for many inventors,
and that many worthy experimenters had been working in this field, and that
Fulton had the benefit of their experience is true. The fact is, however, that the
evolution of any great, invention is a slow and cumulative process, the product
of many minds, and while the proposers, suggesters, and experimenters are
entitled to their share of the credit, it is the man who achieves success and
gives to the public the benefit of his labors whom the world honors, and in this
connection the name of Fulton stands pre-eminent, for although the
“Clermont” was 264 years later than the steamboat of Blasco de Garay, the
“Clermont” marks the beginning of practical steam navigation, and whatever
the claims of other inventors may be, it is certain that steam navigation,
established by Fulton in 1807, on the Hudson, preceded the practical use of the
steamboat in any other country by at least five years, for it was not until 1812
that Henry Bell, of Scotland, built the “Comet,” that plied between Glasgow
and Greenock, on the Clyde, and not until 1814 was a steam packet used for
hire on the Thames in England.

At the same time that Fulton was in Paris making his first experiments with the
steamboat, Col. John Stevens, the most celebrated boat builder and engineer of
his day, was actively experimenting in America in the same line. Having in
1804 made the first application of steam to the screw propeller, he in 1807
built the “Phœnix,” which was driven by paddle wheels. The “Phœnix” was
constructed shortly after Fulton’s boat, but was barred from use on the Hudson
by the exclusive monopoly obtained by Fulton and Livingston from the State
Legislature, and she was accordingly taken from New York to Philadelphia by
sea, which was the first ocean voyage by a steam vessel.
The first steamboat on the Mississippi was the “Orleans,” of 100 tons, built at
Pittsburg by Fulton and Livingston in 1811. She had a stern wheel, and went
from Pittsburg to New Orleans in 14 days.
Although the first trip out to sea was made in 1808 by Col. Stevens’ son in
taking the “Phœnix” from New York to Philadelphia, no attempt had been
made to cross the ocean until 1819. In this year the “Savannah,” an American
steamer of 380 tons, performed this feat, and had the honor of being the first
steam vessel to cross the Atlantic. In 1824 the “Enterprise,” an English
steamer, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and went to India.

FIG. 109.—SCREW PROPELLER OF THE “ROBT. F. STOCKTON,” ERICSSON’S
PATENT, 1836.

The screw propeller employed by Colonel Stevens in 1804 was not a new
invention with him, as popularly supposed, but had its origin early in the
preceding century, being a mere development of the ancient wind wheel. In
1836 it was further developed by Francis P. Smith and by Capt. John Ericsson,

then living in England. Ericsson took out British patent No. 7,149, of 1836,
and United States patent No. 588, of Feb. 1, 1838, and built several screw
steamers, and through Capt. Robert F. Stockton, of the United States Navy,
succeeded in having a screw steamer, the “Robert F. Stockton,” built in
accordance with the plans of his patent and sent to the United States. The
arrangement of her machinery is seen in Fig. 109. She had two propellers on
the same axis, but revolving in opposite directions, one being on the central
shaft and the other on a concentric tube. The engines were coupled directly to
the propeller shafts, which feature was one of Ericsson’s improvements, and
has continued to be the approved form to this day.
In the early history of steam navigation the side wheel steamer was the
favorite, and was employed for ocean travel as well as for inland waters. In
1840 the “Brittania,” the first Cunarder, commenced the career of that
celebrated line. This vessel had side wheels, as did also the “United States,”
shown in Fig. 110, which was the first American steamer built expressly for
the Atlantic trade. In 1852 the United States mail steamer “Arctic,” of the
Collins line, was regarded as the greyhound of the Atlantic, her time being 9
days, 17 hours and 12 minutes. She also had side wheels.

FIG. 110.—STEAMER “UNITED STATES,” 1847.

Side wheel steamers for inland waters, and screw propellers for sea service,
however, in time established their fitness for their respective scenes of action.
In side wheel steamers the most notable improvements have been in stiffening

the hull by braces, and the adoption of feathering paddle wheels, whose
function is to cause the paddles to enter and leave the water in vertical position
without dragging dead water. Manley in 1862, and Morgan in 1875, patented
practical forms of the feathering paddle wheel. In screw propellers, Woodcroft
in 1832, and Griffiths at a later period, made valuable improvements. The
surface condenser was used by Hall in 1838 on the steamship “Wilberforce,”
and Sickels in 1841 invented the drop cut-off.

“GREAT EASTERN,” SCREW AND PADDLE WHEELS, 1858. LENGTH, 692
FIG. 111.— FEET, SPEED 12 KNOTS.
“OCEANIC,” TWIN SCREW, 1899. LENGTH, 704 FEET, SPEED, 20 KNOTS.

In 1854 the “Great Eastern” was begun and was finished in 1858. This was the
largest steam vessel ever built up to this time, and has continued to hold the
record for size up to the year 1899, when her dimensions were exceeded by the
“Oceanic,” which ships are put in comparison in Fig. 111. The length of the
“Great Eastern” was 692 feet, beam 83 feet, depth 571⁄2 feet, draft 251⁄2 feet,
displacement 27,000 tons, and speed 12 knots. She was designed by the
English engineer Brunel, and was intended for the Australian trade. She had
both a screw propeller and paddle wheels at the side, with four engines

coupled to each. The paddle wheel engines had steam cylinders 74 inches in
diameter, with 14 foot stroke, and those of the screw engines were 84 inches in
diameter and 4 foot stroke. Collectively they were of 10,000 horse power. The
paddle wheels were 56 feet in diameter, and the screw propeller 24 feet. On
her first voyage to New York, across the Atlantic, in 1860, she carried from 15
to 24 pounds of steam and consumed 2,877 tons of coal. Her cost was
$3,831,520. This mammoth vessel was too large and unwieldy for the uses for
which she was designed, and proved a bad investment. She served, however, a
most useful purpose, by virtue of her great bulk, steadiness, and carrying
capacity, for relaying the Atlantic cable in 1866, and others in 1873-1874.
In 1874 the “Castalia” was built. This was a steamer with two parallel hulls,
decked across, and designed for greater steadiness in crossing the English
Channel. The “Bessemer” steamer, designed for the same purpose, and built
about the same time, had four paddle wheels, and the entire cabin was hung on
pivots, so that it could not partake of the sea motion.
In later years great improvements have been made in reducing the weight of
the engines, in forced blast, steam steering gear, anchor hoisting devices,
water-tight bulkheads, surface condensers, electric lights, and signalling
devices. By the year 1880 the standard form of marine engine for large powers
had become the compound double cylinder type, expanding steam from an
initial pressure as high as 90 pounds. In 1890 triple expansion engines had
become common, employing three cylinders, and using steam with an initial
pressure as high as 180 pounds. In 1890 McDougal’s whale-back steamers
were introduced. See United States patents No. 429,467 and 429,468, June 3,
1890, and No. 500,411, June 27, 1893.

FIG. 112.—STEAMBOAT “PRISCILLA.”

In no country in the world are such fine examples of side wheel steamers to be
found as in the United States, and in no country are there such splendid
reaches of inland waters as theatres for their performances. The “Priscilla,”
shown in Fig. 112, of the Fall River Line, plying on Long Island Sound, and
the “Adirondack,” on the Hudson, are fine examples of this type. The
“Priscilla,” which is said to be the largest river boat in the world, is 440 feet 6
inches long and 93 feet breadth over the guards. She is driven by double
compound inclined engines, has feathering paddle wheels 35 feet in diameter
and 14 feet face, and her speed is over 20 miles an hour. The “Adirondack,”
whose engines and feathering paddle wheel are shown in Fig. 113, is 412 feet
long and 90 feet breadth over guards. The engines and paddle wheels of the
“Adirondack” are distinctly representative of the modern American side wheel
steamer.

FIG. 113.—ENGINES AND PADDLE WHEEL OF STEAMER
“ADIRONDACK” ON THE HUDSON RIVER.

The largest and in many respects the highest type of marine architecture is to
be found in the modern ocean greyhound for transatlantic trade. In recent years
the rival companies have vied with each other in the effort to excel, and
steamships of larger size, greater speed, and more perfect equipment have
followed each other, until it would seem that the limit had been reached. In the
accompanying table the largest and most recent steamers are placed in
comparison with the “Great Eastern.”
DIMENSIONS OF THE LARGEST OCEAN STEAMERS.

LENGTH DIS-
MAXIMUM
NAME OF SHIP. DATE. OVER BEAM. DEPTH. DRAUGHT. PLACE-
SPEED.
ALL. MENT.
FEET. FEET. FEET. FEET. TONS. KNOTS.
Great Eastern 1858 692 83 571⁄2 251⁄2 27,000 12

Paris 1888 560 63 42 261⁄2 13,000 20
Teutonic 1890 585 571⁄2 42 26 12,000 20
Campania 1893 625 65 411⁄2 28 19,000 22
St. Paul 1895 554 63 42 27 14,000 21
Kaiser Wilhelm
der Grosse 1897 649 66 43 29 20,000 22.35
Oceanic 1899 704 68 49 321⁄2 28,500 20
Deutschland 1900 6861⁄2 671⁄3 44 29 22,000 231⁄2

FIG. 114.—“KAISER WILHELM DER GROSSE.”

FIG. 115.—“OCEANIC” COMPARED WITH BROADWAY BUILDINGS.

The “Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse,” owned by the North German Lloyd
Company, and built in 1897, is shown in Fig. 114, and for three years held the
record as the fastest steamship afloat. The “Kaiser Wilhelm” was followed by
the “Oceanic,” in 1899, of the White Star Company, which is the largest ocean
steamer ever built, exceeding the proportions of the “Great Eastern.” Just what
the dimensions of the “Oceanic” mean, as given in the preceding tables, can be
best illustrated by the accompanying Fig. 115, in which she is juxtaposed with
several blocks of large buildings on Broadway, New York, opposite City Hall
Park. If the “Oceanic” were placed on end beside Washington’s Monument, at
the United States Capital, she would tower 150 feet above the top of the same.
An ordinary brick house four rooms deep and three stories high could be built
with its length crosswise in her hull. There is accommodation for 410 first-
class passengers, 300 second-class passengers, and 1,000 third class, and as
her crew will number 390, the total number of souls on board, when she
carries her full complement, will be 2,100.
The latest achievement in marine architecture, however, is the “Deutschland,”
built for the Hamburg-American Company. The “Deutschland” is not quite so
large as the “Oceanic,” but is of higher speed, her maximum speed of 231⁄2
knots an hour exceeding that of any other ocean steamer. The “Savannah,” the

first steam vessel to cross the Atlantic, made the trip in 1819 in 26 days. The
“Deutschland” in her eastward trip September 4, 1900, crossed the Atlantic in
5 days 7 hours and 38 minutes, which is the fastest time on record. The
“Deutschland” is of 35,640 horse power, her two bronze propellers are 23 feet
diameter, and weigh 30 tons, and her propeller shafts are 25 inches in diameter.
The cranks of her propeller shafts, like those of the “Kaiser Wilhelm” and the
“Oceanic,” are set according to the Schlick system, to reduce vibration. The
“Deutschland’s” engines are seen in Fig. 92, and in general appearance the
ship resembles the “Kaiser Wilhelm.” Still larger and possibly swifter
steamships are in process of construction, viz.: the “Kaiser Wilhelm II.,” by
the North German Lloyd Company, and a mammoth unnamed ship by the
White Star Line, whose length of 750 feet will exceed all others.
It may be interesting to note in familiar terms what these enormous traveling
palaces comprehend in equipment. For the safety and comfort of passengers,
the great length reduces the pitching, bilge keels prevent rolling, and the
Schlick system of cranks neutralizes vibration in the engine. Strong bulkheads,
and double bottoms with air-tight compartments, impart buoyancy in case of
collision. Boilers are placed in separate water-tight compartments, so that
damage to one does not disable the others. Powerful pumps are arranged to
discharge inflowing water, and the best of life boats are provided. Spacious
dining rooms, promenade decks, drawing rooms, pianos, library, smoking
room, state rooms, cabins for children, toilets, baths, medicine stores, a
printing office, and electric lights everywhere, furnish every want and satisfy
every luxurious taste. The cuisine includes a refrigerating plant, the finest
ranges, and provisions galore. It may be interesting to the housewife to see the
market list of a modern transatlantic steamer. A specimen is partially
represented in the following: 25,450 pounds of fresh meat, 3,250 pounds of
fish, 6,370 pounds of game and poultry, 12,715 pounds of bread, 43 barrels of
flour, 3,938 pounds of butter, 1,307 pounds of coffee, 2,790 pounds of sugar,
102 pounds of tea, 7,220 pounds of fresh fruit; 1,230 gallons of milk, 26,106
eggs, 29,180 oranges and lemons, 7,033 bottles of mineral water, 1,800 bottles
of beer, 2,688 gallons of beer in casks, 1,240 bottles of wine, 630 bottles of
champagne, 1,600 heads of lettuce, 800 jars of preserved fruits, and other
things in proportion.
In the matter of size the “Oceanic” surpasses all previous efforts in ship
building, but ocean steamers do not reach the highest speed attainable. The
little “Turbinia,” a 40 ton craft equipped with a compound rotary steam turbine

of the Parsons type, has attained a speed of 323⁄4 knots an hour. An even greater
speed has recently been attained by the larger boat, “Hai Lung,” constructed in
England for the Chinese Government, which vessel was equipped with
reciprocating engines, and is credited with having made a run of 181⁄2 knots at
an average speed of 35 knots an hour. The highest speed ever attained,
however, is by the British torpedo boat “Viper,” which is 210 feet long, and,
like the “Turbinia,” is equipped with the Parsons steam turbines. In a recent
trial the “Viper” covered a measured mile at the rate of 37.1 knots, or about 43
miles an hour.
In many respects the most important branch of steam navigation in recent
years has been its war vessels. The great navies of the world at the end of
1898[3] ranked as follows: England, 1,557,522 tons; France, 731,629 tons;
Russia, 453,899 tons; United States, 303,070 tons; Germany, 299,637 tons;
Italy, 286,175 tons, and they all owe their efficiency entirely to steam. The first
steam war vessel was built in 1814 by Fulton for the defence of New York
Harbor, during the then existing war times. She was known as the
“Demologos” (voice of the people), or “Fulton the First.” As shown in the
original designs, Fig. 116, she is a double ender, whose sides were to be 5 feet
thick. In her middle was a channel way or well containing a protected paddle
wheel 16 feet in diameter, 14 feet wide, and having a dip of 4 feet. A single
cylinder engine turned the paddle wheel on one side, and was balanced by the
boiler on the other side. Although intended to have only twenty guns, she was
equipped, when finished, with thirty long 32-pounder guns and two Columbiad
100-pounders. It was proposed also to have submarine guns suspended from
each bow. An engine was also to be used to discharge hot water on the enemy,
and a furnace was to be provided for heating the cannon balls red hot. She was
156 feet long, 20 feet deep, and 56 feet broad, and was regarded as a very
formidable vessel. Her cost was $278,544. Iron-clad floating batteries were
first used in 1855 in the Crimean war, and shortly afterward the French built
the first sea-going iron-clad, “Gloire,” followed in 1859 by the British iron-
clad, “Warrior.”
[3] The figures represent a selective list which excludes about 15 per cent. of old and
inefficient vessels.

FIG. 116. Large image
(1150 x 1501, 472 kB).

The civil war in 1861 brought with it a novel and striking form of war vessel
known as the “Monitor.”[4] It was built from plans of Capt. Ericsson, an
engineer of the ripest experience, skill, and attainments, who had then come to
make his home in the United States. He undertook to construct for the Navy
Department of the United States some form of iron clad steam batteries of
light draft, suitable to navigate the rivers and harbors of the Confederate
States. The “Monitor” was the result. The salient features, shown in vertical
cross section in Fig. 117, are a low deck projecting but a few inches above the
water line, so as to present as little target as possible to the enemy, and a
revolving and heavily armored turret containing the battery of guns. In 1862
the Confederate forces had reconstructed a steam vessel with a chicken-coop-
shaped covering of armor, that proved a formidable engine of war, which was

practically invulnerable to the attacks of ordinary war vessels, and was doing
great damage to the Union vessels. In the spring of 1862 the “Monitor” met
the “Merrimac” in engagement in Hampton Roads, and established the great
value of the turret monitor.
[4] The revolving turret was invented and patented by Theodore R. Timby, No. 35,846, July 8,
1862, and No. 36,593, September 30, 1862.

FIG. 117.—CROSS SECTION OF “MONITOR.”

Vessels of the “Monitor” type still form useful parts of the United States Navy,
in which the “Monterey” and “Monadnock” are its most representative types.
The “Monadnock,” which is a double-turret coast defence monitor, is shown in
Fig. 118. Although regarded by some as unseaworthy on account of the low
seaboard and small buoyancy, the monitor has cleared itself of such suspicion,
for in the recent war with Spain both the “Monadnock” and “Monterey” sailed
across the Pacific Ocean by way of Honolulu to Manila, a distance of 7,000
miles, and joined the fleet of Admiral Dewey without mishap or delay.

FIG. 118.—MONITOR “MONADNOCK.”

No patriotic American citizen would expect to read an account of modern war
vessels without finding special mention of those two splendid types of their
class, the battleship “Oregon” and the armored cruiser “Brooklyn,” whose
performances during the late war with Spain contributed so much to the honor
and glory of the United States Navy, and demonstrated the skill and efficiency
of our American shipbuilders. Before the war began the “Oregon” was
stationed on the Pacific Coast, where she had been built, and it was desired
that she should join the fleet of Admiral Sampson in Cuban waters. Leaving
Puget Sound on March 6, 1898, this floating fortress of steel, weighted with
her enormous guns and 18-inch thick armor, made the long journey of over
14,500 miles around the southern end of the western continent, and up to
Jupiter Inlet on the Florida coast, arriving there on the 24th day of May, and
was not delayed an hour on account of her machinery, the only stops being
made for coal. Immediately after coaling at Key West she took her place in the
blockading line at Santiago, and in the great battle of July 3 quickly developed
a power greater than that attained on her trial trip and a speed only slightly
less, easily distancing all other ships immediately engaged except the
“Brooklyn,” and in connection with the “Brooklyn” forced the fleetest of the
Spanish cruisers to surrender.

FIG. 119.—BATTLESHIP “OREGON.”

The “Oregon” is shown in Fig. 119. She is an armored battleship of the first
class, built by the Union Iron Works of San Francisco, and launched Oct. 26,
1893. Her length is 348 feet, beam 691⁄4 feet, draft 24 feet, displacement
10,288 tons, maximum speed 16.79 knots, and coal capacity 1,594 tons. Her
side armor is of steel plates 18 inches thick, and her deck is, 23⁄4 inches thick.
On the turrets the armor is from 6 to 15 inches thick, and on the barbettes it is
from 6 to 17 inches thick. Her engines are of the twin screw, vertical triple
expansion direct acting inverted cylinder type. The stroke is 42 inches, and the
diameters of the cylinders are 341⁄2, 48, and 75 inches, respectively. The battery
consists of four 13-inch breech loading rifles, eight 8-inch breech loading
rifles, four 6-inch, twenty 6-pounder rapid fire guns, six 1-pounder rapid fire,
two Colts, one 3-inch rapid fire field gun, and three torpedo tubes. The 13-inch
guns weigh 136,000 pounds each, are 39 feet 91⁄4 inches long, are set 18 feet
above the water, can be moved through an arc of 270 degrees, and throw a
projectile of 1,100 pounds a distance of 12 miles, and with a power which at
1,000 yards would perforate a mass of steel 21⁄2 feet in thickness. The cost of
the “Oregon” was $3,180,000.

FIG. 120.—ARMORED CRUISER “BROOKLYN.”

The “Brooklyn” is shown in Fig. 120, and enjoys the distinction of having
borne the brunt of the fight of July 3, 1898, having been hit over forty times in
that engagement without being disabled. She was built by the William Cramp
& Sons Ship and Engine Building Company, of Philadelphia, was launched
Oct. 2, 1895, and cost $2,986,000. She is an armored cruiser, and is one of the
latest and most speedy of that type. She is 400 feet 6 inches long, 64 feet 8
inches breadth, 24 feet draft, 9,215 tons displacement. Her engines are the
twin-screw vertical triple expansion type, imparting a speed of 21.91 knots an
hour. Her maximum indicated horse power is 18,769, and her coal capacity is
1,461 tons. Her battery consists of eight 8-inch breech loading rifles, twelve 5-
inch rapid fire guns, twelve 6-pounder rapid fire, four 1-pounder rapid fire,
four Colts, two 3-inch rapid fire field guns, and four Whitehead torpedo tubes.
Her side armor is 3 inches thick, her turrets 51⁄2 inches, her barbettes from 4 to
8 inches, and her deck from 3 to 6 inches. She also has a water line protection
of cocoa fibre to automatically close up an opening made by a shot.
Although not a steam vessel, it would be regarded as an omission not to
mention among war vessels the “Holland” submarine boat, brought into notice
in 1898 by the Spanish American war, and designed to dive below the surface
and make attack below the water level. Torpedo boats of this type have been
acquired by, and now form a part of, the United States Navy.
Among all the types of steam war vessels which have claimed popular
attention the most interesting in proportion to its size is the torpedo boat, for
none represent such concentrated pent-up energy and deadly effect as this little
demon of the sea. A mere shell in construction, with engine and boiler built for
highest speed, and crew suffering untold discomforts and dangers below, this

modern engine of destruction, with the speed of an express locomotive, and
the helplessness and deadly intent of a scorpion, darts up to the monster
battleship under cover of darkness, and before being discovered discharges a
torpedo and delivers a mortal wound in the side of the big ship which sends
her to the bottom, perishing perhaps itself in the destruction which it works.
The United States has 37 of these torpedo boats. The torpedo boat destroyer is
a larger and swifter boat, whose special duty it is to overtake and destroy this
dangerous little fighter.

FIG. 121.—SHIPPING OF ALL NATIONS. RATIO OF STEAM TO SAILS.

The growth of steam navigation during the present generation has been
wonderfully rapid. The accompanying diagram, Fig. 121, from Mulhall’s
“Industries and Wealth of Nations,” shows in 1860 30 per cent. of steam to 70
per cent. of sailing vessels, while in 1894 the ratio is 80 per cent. of steam to
20 of sailing vessels. The same authority estimated the total horse power of
steam vessels in the merchant marine of the world in 1895 to be 12,005,000.
Add to this the growth of the past five years, and about 4,000,000 horse power
for the steam war vessels of the world’s navies, which were not included, and
the total horse power of the steam vessels of the world would not be far from
twenty million.
This cursory review, in a single chapter, cannot adequately treat this great
subject, for a whole library is needed to cover the field. Suffice it to say,
however, that among the great scenes and acts in the theatre of human action,
no figure has occupied so much attention, and none played so important a part
in the drama of life, as the steam vessel. Its stage setting has been the majestic

waters of the earth, and on it the play of the great warships has vied in power
and grandeur with the flash and vehemence of the lightning, and the whirl and
turmoil of the elements. Tense with a deep meaning which no stage simulation
could approximate, and with the smoke of conflict for a drop curtain, it has
laid tragedies upon the pages of history, and changed the maps of the world;
while behind the scenes the great passenger steamers, with their uninterrupted
traffic of human freight, are more silently, but none the less surely, stirring the
peoples of the earth into the homogeneous ferment of civilization, and slowly
moulding nations into the solidarity of a common brotherhood.

CHAPTER XIII.

Printing.

Early Printing Presses—Nicholson’s Rotary Press—The Columbian and Washington
Presses—König Rotary Steam Press—The Hoe Type Revolving Machine—Color
Printing—Stereotyping—Paper Making—Wood Pulp—The Linotype—Plate Printing—
Lithography.

he art preservative of all arts it has been rightfully called. Before its

T birth generation after generation of the human family lived and died,
and each was but little wiser, and but little better than its predecessor.
Tradition was the misty, vague, and sometimes wholly false
dependence of the living, and the experiences of mankind were, in the
words of an eminent writer, but like the stern lights of a vessel, which only
illumined the pathway over which each had passed. But printing gives to the
present the cumulative wisdom of the past, and marks a great era of growth in
civilization. It conserves and preserves man’s thoughts and makes them
immortal, so that each generation comes into existence with a richer legacy of
ideas, and is guaranteed a higher plane of existence, and a more exalted
destiny.
Printing from letters engraved on blocks of wood is an ancient art, having had
its origin in China many centuries before the Christian era. The Chinese
method, which is still followed, was to write their characters with a brush on a
sheet of paper, and while still wet, the piece of paper was laid face downward
on a smooth piece of board to transfer the ink lines, and then all except the ink
lines on the board was cut away. Thus they have one type plate for each book
page. Printing with movable type, i. e., with a separate type for each letter,
which may be repeatedly set up into forms of varying composition, is
practically the beginning of the modern art of printing. This invention is
usually ascribed to Johann Gutenberg, of Mentz, about 1436.

FIG. 122.—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S PRESS, 1725.

In the earliest printing presses the form was locked up in a tray, and placed
upon a platform, and the platen was then brought down upon it by turning a
screw in a cross bar above. The first printing press of this type was made by
Blaew, of Amsterdam, in 1620, which had a spring to cause the screw to fly
back after the impression was taken. The press upon which Benjamin Franklin
worked in London in 1725 is of this pattern, and is to be seen in the National
Museum at Washington. It is almost entirely of wood, and is shown in Fig.
122. About the beginning of the Nineteenth Century Lord Stanhope invented a
press entirely of cast iron, in which the oscillating handle operated a toggle to
force down the platen in taking the impression. The bed traveled on guide
ways, and the tympan and frisket were hinged to fold back and lay in elevated
position.

FIG. 123.—THE WASHINGTON PRESS.

The “Columbian” press was the first important American improvement. It was
invented by George Clymer, of Philadelphia, and is shown in his British Pat.
No. 4,174 of 1817. A compound lever was employed for applying the power.
The “Washington” press was patented in the United States by Samuel Rust,
April 17, 1829. In this press (see Fig. 123) the platen is forced downwardly by
a compound lever applied to a toggle joint and is raised by springs on each
side. The bed is run in and out by turning a crank on a shaft which has a pulley
and belt passing around it.
As so far described the presses were worked by hand power. An important step
in the advancement of this art was made by the introduction of power presses
worked by steam. These arranged the type on the surface of a cylinder.
Probably the earliest form of rotary cylinder press is that invented by
Nicholson, British Pat. No. 1,748 of 1790. Its main features are described as
follows: “The types, being rubbed or scraped narrower toward the foot, were
to be fixed radially upon a cylinder. This cylinder with its type was to revolve
in gear with another cylinder covered with soft leather (the impression
cylinder), and the type received its ink from another cylinder, to which the

inking apparatus was applied. The paper was impressed by passing between
the type and the impression cylinder.”
The first practical success, however, in rotary steam presses was achieved by
König, a German, who in 1814 set up for the London Times two machines, by
which that newspaper was printed at the rate of 1,100 impressions per hour. He
obtained British Pat. No. 3,321 of 1810, No. 3,496 of 1811, No. 3,725 of 1813,
and No. 3,868 of 1814. König’s machine was in 1827 succeeded by that of
Applegath and Cowper, which was simpler and more rapid.
Many improvements upon the methods for handling the paper were
subsequently devised, and double cylinder presses were made which were able
to print 4,000 sheets an hour. In 1845 the firm of R. Hoe & Co., which had
already been for years engaged in the manufacture of printing presses, brought
out the Hoe Type Revolving Machine. The first one of these was placed in the
office of the Philadelphia Ledger in 1846, and had four impression cylinders,
printing 8,000 papers per hour. The constantly increasing circulation of
newspapers, however, continued to make insatiable demands for more rapid
work, and to meet this demand the Hoe company in 1871 brought out their
continuous web press, in which the paper was furnished to the machine in the
form of a roll, and after being printed was separated into sheets. This principle
of action gave promise of unlimited speed, and required important
reorganization in all parts of the machine. To meet these conditions of
increased speed more rapid drying ink had to be produced to prevent blurring,
paper of uniform quality and strength had to be made, means had to be devised
for printing the opposite side of the web, and severing devices for cutting the
web into sheets were needed, but perhaps the most important feature was the
device called a gathering and delivering cylinder, whereby the papers could be
gathered and disposed of as fast as they could be printed, and much faster than
human hands could work. This was the invention of Stephen D. Tucker, and it
is the mechanism upon which the speed of the modern press depends, for it
would obviously be useless to print papers faster than they could be taken
from the machine in proper condition. Many patents were taken by Messrs.
Hoe & Tucker covering various improvements, prominent among which were
No. 18,640, Nov. 17, 1857; No. 25,199, Aug. 23, 1859 (re-issue No. 4,429);
No. 84,627, Dec. 1, 1868 (re-issue No. 4,400); No. 113,769, April 18, 1871;
No. 124,460, March 12, 1872; No. 131,217, Sept. 10, 1872. The first rapid
printing press of the Hoe Company was set up in the office of the New York
Tribune in 1871, and its maximum output was 18,000 an hour. This marked the

great era of rapid newspaper printing, and following it many further
improvements, such as devices for folding and counting the papers
automatically, have been added, until to-day the great Hoe Octuple Press,
shown in Fig. 124, is the wonder of the Nineteenth Century. It prints 96,000
papers of four, six, or eight pages in an hour, or at the rate of 1,600 a minute,
and these papers are not only printed, but in the same operation and by the
same machine are cut, pasted, folded, and counted automatically. Fifty miles of
paper of the width of an ordinary newspaper pass through it each hour from its
several rolls. The machine weighs over 60 tons, and is composed of about
16,000 parts, and yet its touch is so deft, and its members so delicately and
accurately adjusted that it does not tear the tender sheet as it flies through the
machine—so fast that one-fifth of a second only is required to print a page.

FIG. 124.—HOE OCTUPLE PRESS. PRINTS, CUTS, PASTES, FOLDS AND COUNTS
NEWSPAPERS AT RATE OF 1,600 A MINUTE.

The latest development in the printing press has been in color printing, which
has recently been introduced in the illustration of some of the largest daily
newspapers. Such a press contains from 50,000 to 60,000 parts, and its cost is
from $35,000 to $45,000.

Collateral with the development of the printing press are three important
branches of the art—stereotyping, paper making, and type setting.
Stereotyping was the invention of William Ged, of Edinburgh, in 1731, and
was introduced into the United States by David Bruce, of New York, in 1813.
The stereotype is simply a moulded duplicate of the type face as set up, the
duplicate being cast in the form of a single block of metal, by first taking an
impression in plastic material from the faces of the type, after being set up, to
form the mould, and then casting, in an easily fusible metal, an exact duplicate
of this type face in this mould. This art prevents the wear on the movable type
involved in printing, and also avoids the locking up into permanent forms of a
large body of valuable type, since a form may be set up, stereotyped, and the
type then distributed and set up into another form. Stereotyping, although used
in book printing, was not thought practical for newspaper work until about
1861, because of the length of time required for the formation and drying of
the mould and the casting of the plate; but about this time great expedition in
the formation of the plate was attained by the employment of a steam bed to
dry the mould, and a novel form of papier maché matrix, or mould, which
could be conveniently disposed around the cylinders of type. The dampened
and plastic papier maché sheets are beaten into the face of the type form by
means of brushes, are then removed, dried, and used as moulds to cast the
stereotype plate from. A stereotype plate can now be made in about seven
minutes.

FIG. 125.—PAPER PULP BEATING ENGINE.

Paper Making is an important adjunct of the printing art, and its formation
cheaply into long rolls of uniform strength is an essential condition of success
in the rapid web-perfecting printing press. A Frenchman named Louis Robert
about 1799 was the first to make a continuous web of paper, and in 1800 he
received from the French Government a reward of 8,000 francs for his
discovery. His invention was subsequently taken up and carried to a success by
the great English paper makers, the Fourdrinier Brothers, whose name has
been given to the machine. In the Fourdrinier process rags are ground to a pulp
by a revolving beater (Fig. 125) working in a tank of water. The pulp, duly
beaten, refined, screened, and diluted with water, is then piped into the “flow-
box” of the Fourdrinier machine. The “flow-box,” shown on right of Fig. 126,
is a deep rectangular chamber extending across the full width of the machine,
from which the pulp flows out in a thin stream onto an endless belt of 70-mesh
wire cloth which runs over end rollers. To prevent the stream of pulp from
flowing laterally over the edges of the belt, two endless rubber guides or
bands, two inches square in cross section, travel with the belt over the first
twenty feet of its length, and run over two pulleys above the wire cloth. The
upper half of the wire cloth belt is supported by and runs over a series of
closely juxtaposed rollers. As the pulp passes from the “flow-box” the particles
of fibre float in it just as an innumerable multitude of particles of cotton fibre
would float in a stream of water. To unite and interlace the fibres the wire cloth
belt is given a lateral oscillating or shaking movement, which serves to
interlock the fibres. Meanwhile the water strains through the wire cloth,
leaving a thin layer of moist interlaced fibre spread in a white sheet over the
surface of the belt. The separation of the water is further assisted by suction
boxes which extend across close beneath the upper run of the belt and are
connected to suction pumps.

FIG. 126.—FOURDRINIER PAPER MACHINE.

The wire cloth with its layer of moist pulp now passes below a roll which
compresses the fibre, and then leaving the machine seen in Fig. 126 it passes
below a second and larger roll covered with felt, which presses out more of the
water. The fibre next passes to the “first press,” where it is caught up on an
endless belt and passed between two rollers where more water is pressed out of
the sheet. Then it passes through a “second press,” and finally the sheet
commences a long journey up and down over a series of steam-heated drying
rolls, by which the sheet is dried.
Wood-Pulp.—When a purchaser of one of the New York dailies reads the
morning’s voluminous edition, he little realizes that he holds in his hands the
remains of a billet of wood as large as a good-sized club, yet such is the case.
Originally made from the fibres of the papyrus plant, and later from rags
beaten into a pulp, paper for the printing of books and newspapers is now
made almost entirely of wood. In the formation of paper pulp from wood two
processes are employed, one known as the soda process, and the other the
sulphite process. In both cases the wood is cut into fine chips, and then
digested in great drums with chemicals to extract the resinous matter and leave
the pure fibrous cellulose, which resembles raw cotton in texture. This industry
was developed by Watt and Burgess in 1853 (U. S. Pat. No. 11,343, July 18,
1854), who invented the soda process; by Voelter (U. S. Pat. No. 21,161, Aug.
10, 1858), who devised means for comminuting or shredding the wood; and by
Tilghman (U. S. Pat. No. 70,485, Nov. 5, 1867), who invented the sulphite
process.
The logs, usually of spruce or poplar, are first split, as seen at the bottom of
Fig. 127, then placed in the chipper, where a revolving disc with knives cuts
them into small chips, which are fed to an elevator and raised to a screening
device, seen at the top, to remove saw-dust, dirt and knots. In the sulphite
process the chips are then delivered into the digesters shown in Fig. 128,
which are supplied with sulphurous acid generated in a plant shown in Fig.
129. In the digesters the gummy and resinous matters are dissolved by the heat
and chemicals, and the woolly fibre left behind is bleached, washed, and dried,
and afterwards made into paper upon the Fourdrinier machine.

FIG. 127.—CHIPPING LOGS FOR PAPER PULP.

FIG. 128.—DIGESTER FOR WOOD PULP.

FIG. 129.—SULPHUROUS ACID PLANT FOR MAKING WOOD PULP.

It was stated by the Paper Trade Journal in 1897 that the increase in paper
making in the United States during the 15 years preceding amounted to 352
per cent., due chiefly to the growth of the wood pulp industry. The
Androscoggin Pulp Mill, established in Maine in 1870, was one of the
pioneers in this field. In that State the industry had grown in 1897 to over
$13,000,000 and gave employment to more than 5,000 men, but the State of
Maine is excelled by both New York and Wisconsin in this industry, for in the
same year New York mills had a daily capacity of 1,800,000 pounds;
Wisconsin, 670,000; Maine, 665,000, and other States a less capacity. There
are over 1,000 paper mills in the United States, and their combined daily
capacity amounts to over 13,000 tons. In 1898 the United States exported over
five million dollars’ worth of paper, and over fifty million pounds of wood
pulp. Of the total amount of paper produced in the world Mulhall estimated it
in 1890 to be 2,620,000,000 tons annually. This amount is greatly increased at
the present time, and by far the larger part of it is manufactured from wood.
In 1891 the Philadelphia Record in an experimental test as to speed, cut trees
from the forest, converted them into paper, and then into printed newspapers,
all within the space of 22 hours. At a later period in Germany, where the wood
pulp art began, even this expeditious work has been excelled. The trees were
felled in the morning at 7:35, converted into paper, and presented at 10 A. M.

in the form of printed newspapers, with a record of the news of the forenoon.
The great naval edition of the Scientific American of April 30, 1898, consumed
a hundred tons of wood pulp paper, and was therefore built upon a material
foundation of 125 cords of wood, which cleared off over six acres of well-set
spruce timber land. It is mainly wood pulp that has enabled books and
newspapers to be made so cheaply, for they are now furnished at a less price
than the cost of the paper made in the old way from rags.

FIG. 130.—LINOTYPE MACHINE.

FIG. 131.—LINOTYPE
MATRIX.

FIG. 132.—SPACING OF ASSEMBLED LINE OF
MATRICES.

The Linotype.—The most revolutionary and perhaps the most important
development in the printing art of this century has been the linotype machine.
The laborious, painstaking, and expensive feature of printing has always been
the setting and redistribution of the types, since each little piece had to be
separately selected and placed in the composing stick, and the line afterwards

“justified,” which means an apportionment of the space between the words so
as to make each line of type about the same length in the column. The same
separate handling of each piece was again involved in restoring the type to the
case. Machines for thus setting and distributing the type had been devised, but
the operation was so involved, and required so nearly the discretion of the
thinking mind, that all automatic machinery proved too complicated and
impracticable. In 1886, however, a machine was placed in the office of the
New York Tribune whose performances astonished and alarmed the old-time
compositor. It rendered it unnecessary to handle the type, or even to have any
separate type at all. It was the Mergenthaler Linotype machine, which
automatically formed its own type by casting a whole line of it at a time. The
first machine was invented in 1884, and patented in 1885, but it was
subsequently reorganized and greatly improved in Pats. No. 425,140, April 8,
1890; Nos. 436,531 and 436,532, Sept. 16, 1890, and No. 438,354, Oct. 14,
1890. It is shown in the accompanying illustration (Fig. 130). By manipulating
the keyboard, which resembles that of a typewriter, each lettered key is made
to bring down from an inclined elevated magazine a little brass plate of the
shape shown in Fig. 131, and which plate is called a matrix, because it bears
on its edge at x a mould of the type letter. There is a matrix plate for every
letter and character used. These little matrices are spaced by wedges, as seen in
Fig. 132, and are assembled, as in Fig. 133, along the side of a mould wheel
having a slot in it which forms a channel between the aligned type-moulds or
matrices on one side and the discharge mouth of a melting pot, in which
molten type metal is maintained in a fluid state by a subjacent gas-burner. In
the melting pot there is a cylinder and plunger, and when the plunger descends,
it forces the molten metal up through the discharge spout into the slot of the
mould wheel, and against the letter mould x of each one of the composed or
aligned matrices. The wheel is then turned with the matrices, and the metal in
its slot is afterwards discharged in the form of a linotype slug, seen in Fig. 134,
which is a metal plate bearing on its edge a completely moulded line of type
ready for setting up in the form for printing. The jagged notches in the tops of
the matrices (Fig. 131) are for co-operation with a distributer bar (not easily
explained) for restoring the matrices to their appropriate magazines after being
used. There are altogether about 1,500 of the little brass matrices. The machine
is about five feet square, weighs 1,750 pounds, and costs $3,000 each.
Notwithstanding this expense these Linotype machines have to-day made their
way into nearly all the daily newspaper offices of the civilized world, even to
Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. In the composing rooms of the daily

newspapers and the larger book printing offices we find great rows of these
Linotype machines, each doing the work of from four to five men. There are
now in use in America something over 5,000 Linotype machines; and in other
countries about 2,000, making 7,000 in all. Each machine may be adjusted in
five minutes to produce any size or style of type, and it gives new, clean faces
for each day’s issue, with none of the ordinary troubles of distributing type.
The cheapness of composition, due to the machine, has led to an enormous
increase in the size of papers, in the frequency of the editions, and has
correspondingly increased the demand for labor in all the attendant lines, such
as paper-making, press-making, the attendants on presses, stereotyping, etc. In
the Boston Library, which keeps its catalogues printed up to within 24 hours of
date, the Linotypes print in 23 languages.

FIG. 133.—CASTING THE LINE.

FIG. 134.—A LINOTYPE.

When the Linotype machine was first patented it was not regarded by printers
generally as a practical machine, but only one of the many complicated,
theoretical, but impracticable organizations which the Patent Office has to deal
with. Its history, however, has been unique. It is practically the product of the
brain of a single man, Ottmar Mergenthaler, a most ingenious and
indefatigable inventor living in Baltimore. It was exploited under the powerful
patronage of a syndicate of newspaper men, and hundreds of thousands of
dollars were spent in perfecting it before any practical results were obtained.
To-day it stands a triumph of human ingenuity, ranking in importance with the
rotary web-perfecting press, and is probably the most ingenious piece of
practical mechanism in existence.
Of the three forms of printing attention has been given thus far only to the
leading branch of the art, which is type printing, or “letter press,” as it is
called, in which the characters are raised in relief and receive ink on their
raised surfaces only. A second branch of the art is plate printing, in which the
lines and characters are engraved in intaglio in a plate, and which, being
covered with ink, and the surface of the plate wiped clean, leaves the ink in the
undercuts, which is taken up by the paper when pressure is applied through a
roller. Plate printing is a very old art, the plate printing press having been
ascribed to Tomasso Finiguerra, of Florence, in 1460. The reciprocating table
bearing the engraved plate, and the superposed pressure roller turned by hand
through its long radial arms, is an ancient and familiar form of press which has
been in use for many years. This method of printing finds application in fine
line engraving in works of art, card invitations, and bank note engraving. Very
ingenious automatic machines have been invented and were in use a few years
ago by the United States Government for printing its bank notes, but have
since been displaced by the old hand machines. To the credit of the machine, it
should be said, that it was from no fault in the machine that this retrograde step
was taken, but rather the disfavor of the labor organizations.
Lithography is another and quite important branch of the printing art, in which
the lines and characters are drawn upon stone with a kind of oily ink to which
printers’ ink will adhere, while it is repelled from the other moistened surfaces
of the stone. Lithography was invented in 1798 by Alois Senefelder, of
Munich. It finds its greatest application in artistic and fanciful work in inks of
various colors, and its development into chromo-lithography in the Nineteenth
Century has grown into a fine art. Our beautifully colored chromos, prints,
labels, maps, etc., are made by this process. A more recent and quite important

development of this art is photo-lithography, which will be more fully
considered under photography.
Many collateral branches of the printing art are interesting in their
development, such as calico printing, the printing of wall papers, of oil cloth,
printing for the blind, book binding, type founding, and folding and addressing
machines, but lack of space forbids more than a casual mention.
Printing is perhaps the greatest of all the arts of civilization, and the libraries
and newspapers of the Nineteenth Century attest its value. If Benjamin
Franklin could wake from his long sleep and enter the composing rooms of our
great dailies, and witness the imposing array of linotype machines, more
resembling a machine shop than a printing office, and then visit the press room
and see the avalanche of finished papers flying at the rate of 1,600 a minute,
neatly folded, and counted for delivery, he would doubtless be overwhelmed
with emotions of wonder and incredulity, for broad-minded man as he was, he
could have no conception of such progress.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Typewriter.

Old English Typewriter of 1714—The Burt Typewriter of 1829—Progin’s French
Machine of 1833—Thurber’s Printing Machine of 1843—The Beach Typewriter—The
Sholes Typewriter, the First of the Modern Form, Commercially Developed Into the
Remington—The Caligraph—Smith-Premier—The Book Typewriter and Others.

ccupying an intermediate place between the old-fashioned scribe and

O the printer, the typewriter has in the latter part of the Nineteenth
Century established a distinct and important avocation, and has
become a necessary factor in modern business life. Chirography, or
hand writing, reflecting, as it did, the idiosyncrasies of each writer,
was not only slow, but when employed was, in most cases, in the haste and
press of active business reduced to an illegible scrawl. For the use of reporters
and others requiring extra speed, stenography, or short hand, was resorted to,
but there was a distinct need for some easy, quick, legible, and uniform record
of the busy man’s correspondence and copy work, and this the modern
typewriter has supplied.
Like most other important inventions, the typewriter did not spring into
existence all at once, for while the practical embodiment in really useful
machines has only taken place since about 1868, there had been many
experiments and some success attained at a much earlier date. The British
patent to Henry Mills. No. 395 of 1714, is the earliest record of efforts in this
direction. At this early date no drawings were attached to patents, and the
specification dwells more on the function of the machine than the
instrumentalities employed. No record of the construction of this machine
remains in existence, and it may fairly be considered a lost art. In quaint and
old-fashioned English, the patent specification proceeds as follows:
“ANNE, by the grace of God, &c., to all whom these presents shall come,
greeting: WHEREAS, our trusty and well-beloved subject, Henry Mills, hath

by his humble peticon represented vnto vs, that he has by his greate study,
paines, and expence, lately invented, and brought to perfection “An Artificial
Machine or Method for the Impressing or Transcribing Letters Singly or
Progressively one after another as in Writing, whereby all Writing whatever
may be Engrossed in Paper or Parchment so Neat and Exact as not to be
Distinguished from Print, that the said Machine or Method, may be of greate
vse in Settlements and Publick Recors, the Impression being deeper and more
Lasting that any other Writing, and not to be erased, or Counterfeited without
Manifest Discovery, and having therefore humbly prayed vs to grant him our
Royall Letters Patents, for the sole vse of his said Invention for the term of
fourteen yeares.”
“Know Yee, that wee,” etc.
The first American typewriter of which any record remains is that described in
the patent granted to W. A. Burt, July 23, 1829. It was called a “Typographer.”
It had a segment bearing the letters of the alphabet and corresponding notches
acting as an index. A superposed lever, which could be worked up and down,
and also moved laterally, was provided with a series of type, arranged in a
segmental curve, so that any type could be brought into place on the subjacent
paper by swinging the lever over to and down into the proper notch in the
index segment below. A restored model of this is to be found in the U. S.
Patent Office.

FIG. 135.—FRENCH TYPEWRITER, 1833.

The first organized typewriter in which separate key levers were provided for
each type is a French invention. It is to be found in the French patent to M.
Progin (Xavier), of Marseilles, No. 3,748, Sept. 6, 1833 (Brevets d’Invention,
Vol. 37, 1st Series, pl. 36). It was called a Typographic Machine, and is shown
in the illustration (Fig. 135). Upright key levers s are arranged in a circle
around a circular plate n. They have hook-shaped handles at the upper end, and
terminate below in forks that are pivoted to the shanks of type hammers, to
raise and lower them. These hammers are inked from a pad, and at a central
point deliver a printing blow on the paper below. The paper is held stationary,
and the whole nest of levers was moved over the paper for each letter printed.
The circular index plate n had marked on it opposite the respective levers the
letters and characters represented by said levers. Besides printing letters, the
device was to be used for printing music, and for making stereotype plates.

FIG. 136.—THURBER TYPEWRITER.

On Aug. 26, 1843, Charles Thurber, of Worcester, Mass., took out Pat. No.
3,228 for a Printing Machine. Under the patent he constructed the machine
shown in Fig. 136. This differed somewhat from the form shown in his patent,
in that the machine shows a paper feed roller which does not appear in the
patent. This machine was found among the effects of Mr. Thurber after having
lain neglected and unnoticed for many years, and its damaged parts were

restored by Mr. H. R. Cummings, of Worcester. The types are carried on the
lower ends of a circular series of depressible bars, which are spring seated in a
horizontal rotatable wheel. By turning the wheel any type can be brought to
the front, and a stationary guide controls its descent as it makes the
impression. An inking roller is seen on the right, which inks the faces of the
type. In front of the type wheel is a horizontal roller to which the sheet of
paper is attached by clips. Finger pawls, working into ratchets at the ends of
the roller, serve to rotate it after each line is printed. By means of a handle,
seen projecting from the right hand side of the frame, the roller is shifted
longitudinally on its axis rod after each letter has been printed. This appears to
be the first embodiment of the feed roller rotating to bring a new line into
range, and having also a longitudinal feed, but as these movements were
required to be separately executed by the operator, the work of the machine
was necessarily very slow. Just at what time this old Thurber machine was
constructed it is impossible to state in the light of present information, but as
the feed roller did not appear in Thurber’s patent of 1843, it is possible that the
claim to authorship of the feed roller having both a rotary and a longitudinal
movement may be maintained in behalf of J. Jones, whose Pat. No. 8,980 of
June 1, 1852, appears to be the first dated record of such a feed roller. Jones
was also the first to provide a spring to automatically retract the paper carriage
to the position for beginning a new line, the spring being put under tension by
the movement of the paper carriage in printing.

FIG. 137.—BEACH TYPEWRITER.

Prominent among those whose genius has served to perfect the typewriter
occurs the name of A. E. Beach, for many years of the firm of Munn & Co.,
and well known to the readers of the Scientific American. Mr. Beach’s first
model of a typewriter was made in 1847. It printed upon a sheet of paper
supported on a roller, carried in a sliding frame worked by a ratchet and pawl.
It had a weight for running the frame, letter and line spacing keys, paper
feeding devices, line signal bell, and carbon tissue. It had a series of finger
keys connected with printing levers which were arranged in a circle, and struck
at a common center. This machine was said to have worked well, but was laid
aside for further improvement. In the meantime he constructed a typewriter to
print in raised letters, without ink. This machine, which was intended primarily
for the use of the blind, is illustrated in Figs. 137 and 138. It was first publicly
exhibited in operation at the Crystal Palace Exhibition of the American
Institute in the fall of 1856, where it attracted great attention and took the gold
medal. The embossed letters were printed on a ribbon of paper which ran
centrally through the machine. The printing levers were arranged in a circle in
pairs, one riding on the top of the other. When the operator pressed a key, the
two printing levers of each pair answering to the letter key were brought
together, the paper being between them. The printing type were at the

extremities of the levers, one lever having a raised letter, and its mate a sunken
or intaglio letter, which, seizing the paper strip between them, like the jaws of
a pair of pincers, impressed therein an embossed letter. The patent for this
machine was granted June 24, 1856, No. 15,164, but the machine showed a
much higher degree of development than appeared in the patent. This machine
was the earliest representative of the circular basket of radially swinging type
levers, combined with finger keys assembled in a keyboard at one side, which
is now an almost universal feature, and the suggestion which it handed down
to subsequent inventors has doubtless done much to make the typewriter the
practical machine that it is to-day.

FIG. 138.—CENTRAL SECTION OF BEACH TYPEWRITER.

Up to the year 1868, however, typewriting machines were mere illustrations of
sporadic genius occuring here and there as the pet hobby of some humanitarian
seeking to help the blind, or supplement the deficiencies of the tremulous
fingers of the paralytic. It had not yet come to be regarded as of any special
use, nor had even the demand for such a device been forcibly felt, until the last
quarter of the Nineteenth Century began to accumulate its wonderful
momentum of progress and prosperity. The man whose genius finally brought
forth a practical typewriter, and made a permanent place for it in the daily
business of the world, was C. Latham Sholes. As joint inventor with C.
Glidden and S. W. Soule, all of Milwaukee, he took out patents No. 79,265, of
June 23, 1868, and No. 79,868, of July 14, 1868. These, together with Sholes’

Pat. No. 118,491, of Aug. 29, 1871, formed the working basis of the first
typewriters that went into office use. These typewriters were first introduced to
the general public under the management of the original inventors (Sholes,
Soule and Glidden) about 1873, and at first used only capital letters. On Aug.
27, 1878, a further patent. No. 207,559, was granted to Sholes, and about this
time, after five years of uncertain and precarious business existence, the
machine was taken for manufacture to E. Remington & Sons, at Ilion, N. Y.
Since this time the well-known “Remington” has built up for itself a reputation
and a commercial importance that has given it first place among typewriters.
In the nine years from 1873 to 1882, it is said that less than 8,000 machines
had been manufactured. In the year 1882 Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict
obtained control of the machine, and during the fourteen years following it is
said that nearly 200,000 “Remingtons” were made and sold. It is said that
1,000 men are now employed in making this machine, and that the present
output is about 800 machines a week, despite the fact that it has a half dozen
worthy competitors for public favor. The modern Remington, seen in Fig. 139,
is too well known to require special description. Besides the Sholes patents, it
embodies the improvements covered by patents to Clough & Jenne, No.
199,263, Jan. 15, 1878; Jenne, No. 478,964, July 12, 1892, and No. 548,553,
Oct. 22, 1895, and also a patent to Brooks, No. 202,923, April 30, 1878, a
characteristic feature of which latter is the location of both a capital and small
letter on the same striking lever, and the shifting of the paper roller by a key to
bring either the large or small letter into printing range.

FIG. 139.—REMINGTON TYPEWRITER.

The earliest rival of the Remington was the Caligraph, made by the American
Writing Machine Co. This well-known machine, introduced in the decade of
the eighties, was made under the patents of G. Y. N. Yost, March 18, 1884, No.
295,469; March 17, 1885, No. 313,973; and July 30, 1889, No. 408,061. The
most modern form of the Caligraph is known as the “New Century,” which is
shown in the accompanying illustration, Fig. 140. The Caligraph uses a
separate type lever and key for each letter, and by a system of compound key
levers the touch is rendered easy, even, and elastic, and perfect alignment and
freedom from noise are among the objects sought in its mechanical
construction.

FIG. 140.—NEW CENTURY CALIGRAPH.

Next among the earlier typewriters is to be mentioned the “Hammond,” made
under the patents to J. B. Hammond, No. 224,088, Feb. 8, 1880, and 290,419,
Dec. 18, 1883. A distinguishing feature of the machine is that the printed work
is in full view, so that the operator can see what he is doing. The impression is
made by an oscillating type wheel, to which a variable throw is imparted by
the key letters to bring any desired letter into printing position. When the letter

is brought into printing position a hammer, arranged in the rear of the sheet of
paper, is made to force the latter against the type to produce the impression by
the same movement of the key that brought the type wheel into printing
position.

FIG. 141.—SMITH-PREMIER TYPE BAR RING.

Of later machines, none has met with more popular favor than the Smith-
Premier, manufactured under the patent to A. T. Brown, No. 465,451, Dec. 22,
1891, and others. A leading feature of this is the type-bar ring of its printing
mechanism. In all typewriters accurate location of the impression is essential
to proper alignment of the letters, and proper alignment is the sine qua non of
typewriting. The old pivoted type bars were liable to wear at the joint, and the
slightest looseness at this point would so multiply the lateral play at the end
carrying the type that the letters would soon become irregularly placed and out
of alignment. In the Smith-Premier this is reduced to a minimum by making a
short type bar, and arranging each upon an oscillating rock shaft, the bearings
at whose ends are so widely separated as to permit little or no lateral play in

the type bar. A view of this type bar ring with tangentially arranged rock shafts
disposed in circular series is seen in Fig. 141, while the full machine is given
in Fig. 142. In this latter view there is also shown the cleaning brush for
quickly cleaning at one operation all of the types of the outer ring. It is simply
a circular brush mounted upon the end of a tool resembling a carpenter’s
brace, and is a useful and convenient adjunct to the machine.

FIG. 142.—SMITH-PREMIER AND CLEANING BRUSH.

In 1891 the “Densmore” typewriter first made its appearance before the public.
It was named after James and Amos Densmore, who had been connected with
typewriting interests from the time of Sholes’ first practical machine. The
Densmore is made under patents to A. Densmore, No. 507,726 and 507,727, of
Oct. 31, 1893. It has ball-bearing type bar joints, giving accurate alignment

and light key action, the platen rolls to show the work, and the carriage locks
at the end of the line, protecting the writing.
Noted for its clear, sharp print, the “Yost” typewriter comes in for its share of
praise. It is made under the patent to Felbel and Steiger, March 26, 1889, No.
400,200. It does not employ an inked ribbon interposed between the type and
the paper, as do most typewriters, but its type-bearing levers, when at rest,
occupy a position in which the type are all arranged within and bear against a
circular inking ring or pad, and when a key is struck, its lever, by a peculiar
and ingenious movement, leaves the inking pad, moves inward and backward
toward the center, and then rises and strikes an upwardly directed blow in the
center, and prints the letter on the paper. As the printing is done directly from
the type, the letters are formed with sharp and clear outlines that give beauty
and neatness to the print. Alignment is insured by a center guide hole through
which the type end of the lever passes in striking the paper.
Among machines of simple organization may be mentioned the
Blickensderfer, which is a wonderfully simple and effective little machine,
first made under the patent to Blickensderfer, No. 472,692, April 12, 1892.
Like the Hammond, it belongs to the class of typewriters which employ a
rotary type wheel, which is given a variable throw, from the depression of the
keys, to bring the proper letter into printing position; but unlike the Hammond,
its type wheel advances to contact with the paper, a little felt ink-roller being
brought into contact with the type wheel to ink it as the latter moves. The
printed work is in full view, the line spacing may be varied to any fractional
adjustment, and the action is quite free from noise. With its mechanism
reduced to the fewest and simplest parts, the whole machine weighs only six
pounds, and it differs in many respects from the ordinary typewriter. Since its
introduction a few years ago, its growth in popularity has been very rapid.
Another recently appearing machine is the “Oliver.” This has type bars which
are normally above the work. Each bar is loop shaped, hinged at its lower
ends, and bearing the type letter on the bend at the upper end. They are
arranged in two series, one on each side of the center, and in printing each loop
swings down like the wing of a bird. As the printing is from the top, and the
ribbon is moved away from in front of the line immediately after the printing
blow, the writing is always visible to the operator. This machine is
manufactured under various patents to Thomas Oliver, the first of which was
No. 450,107, granted April 7, 1891. Further improvements are covered by

subsequent patents, Nos. 528,484, 542,275, 562,337, and 599,863. The Oliver
has made many friends for itself by its fine alignment and visible writing, and
shares with the other standard machines a considerable patronage.
It is not practicable to give a full illustration of the state of the art in
typewriters, as it has grown to an industry of large proportions. Nearly 1,700
patents have been granted for such machines, and more than 100 useful and
meritorious machines have been devised and put upon the market. Among
these may be mentioned the Hall, Underwood, Manhattan, Williams, Jewett,
and many others.

FIG. 143.—ELLIOTT & HATCH BOOK TYPEWRITER.

Besides the regular typewriters, various modifications have been made to suit
special kinds of work. The “Comptometer” used in banks is a species of
typewriter, as is also the Dudley adding and subtracting machine, known as the
“Numerograph,” and covered by patents Nos. 554,993, 555,038, 555,039,
579,047 and 579,048. Typewriters for short hand characters, and for foreign
languages, and for printing on record and blank books, are also among the
modern developments of this art. In the latter the whole carriage and system of
type levers move over the book. The Elliott & Hatch book typewriter, Fig.
143, is a well-known example. In attachments, holders for the copy have
received considerable attention, and simple and practical billing and tabulating
attachments have been devised which expedite and facilitate the statements of
accounts and other work requiring numeration in columns. The Gorin
Tabulator is one of those in practical use.

In point of speed the typewriter depends entirely upon the aptness of the
operator. For ordinary copying work, where much time is occupied in
deciphering the illegible scrawl, probably forty words a minute is the average
work. When taken from dictation, seventy-five words a minute may be written,
and in special cases, when copying from memory, a speed of 150 words a
minute has been maintained for a limited time. It was estimated that there were
in use in the United States in 1896 150,000 typewriters, and that up to that
time 450,000 had been made altogether. In the last four years this number has
been greatly increased, and a fair estimate of the present output in the United
States is between 75,000 and 100,000 yearly. In 1898 there were exported
from the United States typewriting machines to the value of $1,902,153.
The typewriter has not only revolutionized modern business methods, by
furnishing a quick and legible copy that may be rapidly taken from dictation,
and also at the same time a duplicate carbon copy for the use of the writer, but
it has established a distinct avocation especially adapted to the deftness and
skill of women, who as bread winners at the end of the Nineteenth Century are
working out a destiny and place in the business activities of life unthought of a
hundred years ago. The typewriter saves time, labor, postage and paper; it
reduces the liability to mistakes, brings system into official correspondence,
and delights the heart of the printer. It furnishes profitable amusement to the
young, and satisfactory aid to the nervous and paralytic. All over the world it
has already traveled—from the counting house of the merchant to the Imperial
Courts of Europe, from the home of the new woman in the Western
Hemisphere to the harem of the East—everywhere its familiar click is to be
heard, faithfully translating thought into all languages, and for all peoples.

CHAPTER XV.

The Sewing Machine.

Embroidering Machine, the Forerunner of the Sewing Machine—Sewing Machine of
Thomas Saint—The Thimonnier Wooden Machine—Greenough’s Double Pointed Needle
—Bean’s Stationary Needle—The Howe Sewing Machine—Bachelder’s Continuous
Feed—Improvements of Singer—Wilson’s Rotary Hook and Four-Motion Feed—The
McKay Shoe Sewing Machine—Buttonhole Machines—Carpet Sewing Machine—
Statistics.

“With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread—
Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,
She sang the ‘Song of the Shirt.’”

n 1844 Thomas Hood wrote and published his famous “Song of the

I Shirt,” in which the drudgery of the needle is portrayed with pathetic
fidelity. It is not to be supposed that any relation of cause and effect exists
between the events, but it is nevertheless a singular fact that about this
time Howe commenced work on his great invention, which was patented
in 1846, and was the prototype of the modern sewing machine. If the sewing
machine had appeared a few years earlier, the “Song of the Shirt” would
doubtless never have been written.
From the time of Mother Eve, who crudely stitched together her fig leaves,
sewing seems to have been set apart as an occupation peculiarly belonging to
women, and it may be that this was the reason why in the history of
mechanical progress the sewing machine was so late appearing, for women are
not, as a rule, inventors, and none of the sewing machines were invented by
women.

In all the preceding centuries of civilization hand sewing was exclusively
employed, and it was reserved for the Nineteenth Century to relieve women
from the drudgery which for so many centuries had enslaved them.
Embroidery machines had been patented in England by Weisenthal in 1755,
and Alsop in 1770, and on July 17, 1790, an English patent, No. 1,764, was
granted to Thomas Saint for a crude form of sewing machine, having a
horizontal arm and vertical needle. In 1826 a patent was granted in the United
States to one Lye for a sewing machine, but no records of the same remain, as
all were burned in the fire of 1836. In 1830 B. Thimonnier patented a sewing
machine in France, 80 of which, made of wood, were in use in 1841 for
sewing army clothing, but they were destroyed by a mob, as many other labor-
saving inventions had been before. Between 1832 and 1835 Walter Hunt, of
New York, made a lock-stitch sewing machine, but abandoned it. On Feb. 21,
1842, U. S. Pat. No. 2,466 was granted to J. J. Greenough for a sewing
machine having a double pointed needle with an eye in the middle, which
needle was drawn through the work by pairs of traveling pincers. It was
designed for sewing leather, and an awl pierced the hole in advance of the
needle. On March 4, 1843, U. S. Pat. No. 2,982 was granted to B. W. Bean for
a sewing machine in which the needle was stationary, and the cloth was
gathered in crimps or folds and forced over the stationary needle. In 1844,
British Pat. No. 10,424 was granted to Fisher and Gibbons for working
ornamental designs by machinery, in which two threads were looped together,
one passing through the fabric, and the other looping with it on the surface
without passing through.
The great epoch of the sewing machine, however, begins with Elias Howe and
the sewing machine patented by him Sept. 10, 1846, No. 4,750. Almost
everyone is familiar with the modern Howe sewing machine, and it will be
therefore more interesting to present the form in which it originally appeared.
This is shown in Fig. 144. A curved eye-pointed needle was carried at the end
of a pendent vibrating lever, which had a motion simulating that of a pick-ax
in the hands of a workman. The needle took its thread from a spool situated
above the lever, and the tension on the thread was produced by a spring brake
whose semicircular end bore upon the spool, the pressure being regulated by a
vertical thumb screw. The work was held in a vertical plane by means of a
horizontal row of pins projecting from the edge of a thin metal “baster plate,”
to which an intermittent motion was given by the teeth of a pinion. Above, and
to one side of the “baster plate” was the shuttle race, through which the shuttle

carrying the second thread was driven by two strikers, which were operated by
two arms and cams located on the horizontal main shaft. As will be seen, this
machine bears but little resemblance to any of the modern machines, but it
embodied the three essential features which characterize most all practical
machines, viz.: a grooved needle with the eye at the point, a shuttle operating
on the opposite side of the cloth from the needle to form a lock stitch, and an
automatic feed.

FIG. 144.—HOWE’S SEWING MACHINE, 1846.

Howe first commenced his work on the sewing machine in 1844, and although
he had made a rough model of that date, he was too poor to follow it up with
more practical results until a former schoolmate, George Fisher, provided $500
to build a machine and support his family while it was being constructed, in
consideration of which Mr. Fisher was to receive a half interest in the
invention. In April, 1845, the machine was completed, and in July he sewed
two suits of clothes on it, one for Mr. Fisher and the other for himself.

Notwithstanding the success of his machine, which on public exhibition beat
five of the swiftest hand sewers, he met only discouragement and
disappointment. He, however, built a second machine, which was the basis of
his patent, and is the one shown in the illustration. After obtaining his United
States patent Howe went to England with the hope of introducing his machine
there, but, failing, he returned to America, some years later, only to find that
his invention had been taken up by infringers, and that sewing machines
embodying his invention were being built and sold. These infringers sought to
break his patent by endeavoring to prove, but without success, that Howe’s
invention was anticipated by the abandoned experiments of Walter Hunt in
1834. Howe won his suit, and the infringers were obliged to pay him royalties,
which, for a time, amounted to $25 on each machine. Howe then bought the
outstanding interest in his patent, established a factory in New York, and from
the profits of his manufacture, and the royalties, he soon reaped a princely
fortune of several million dollars. In six years his royalties had grown from
$300 to $200,000 a year, and in 1863 his royalties were estimated at $4,000 a
day.
A patent that occupied an important place in sewing machine feeds was that
granted to Bachelder May 8, 1849, No. 6,439, in which a spiked and endless
belt passed horizontally around two pulleys. This patent contained the first
continuous feed, and it was re-issued and extended, and ran with dominating
claims on the continuous feed, until 1877.

FIG. 145.—WILSON SEWING MACHINE, 1852.

In connection with the development of the sewing machine the name of A. B.
Wilson stands next in rank to that of Howe. Wilson invented the rotary hook
carrying a bobbin, which took the place of the reciprocating shuttle. This was
patented by him June 15, 1852, No. 9,041, and is shown in Fig. 145. He also
invented the far more important improvement of the four-motion feed, which
is a characteristic feature of nearly all practical family sewing machines. This
four-motion feed was pooled in the early sewing machine combination with
the Bachelder and other patents, and earned for its promotors a far greater
pecuniary return than the original Howe sewing machine itself. Estimates
place this profit high in the millions. The four-motion feed was patented
December 19, 1854, No. 12,116, and it is a comparatively simple affair.
Divested of its operating mechanism, it consists simply of a little metal bar
serrated with forwardly projecting saw teeth on its upper surface, to which bar,
by means of an operating cam, a motion in four directions in the path of a
rectangle is given. The serrated bar first rises through a slot in the table, then
moves horizontally to advance the cloth, then drops below the table, and
finally moves back again horizontally below the table to its starting point.
Upon these two important features—the rotating hook patented by Wilson in
1852, and the four-motion feed, patented in 1854—a large and important
business was built. In this business Mr. Nathaniel Wheeler was associated with
Mr. Wilson, and the well-known Wheeler & Wilson machines are the result of
their enterprise and ingenuity.

FIG. 146.—ORIGINAL SINGER SEWING MACHINE.

Contemporaneous with the Wheeler & Wilson machine were other excellent
machines, among which may be mentioned the Singer machine, patented Aug.
12, 1851, No. 8,294, by Isaac M. Singer, the original model of which is shown
in Fig. 146. The Singer machine met the demands of the tailoring and leather
industries for a heavier and more powerful machine. A characteristic feature
was the vertical standard with horizontal arm above the work table, which was
afterwards adopted in many other machines. Singer was the first to apply the
treadle to the sewing machine for actuating it by foot power in the place of the
hand-driven crank wheel. In 1851 W. O. Grover and W. E. Baker patented a
machine which made the double chain stitch, characteristic of the Grover &
Baker machine. James E. A. Gibbs invented and covered in several patents
from 1856 to 1860 the single-thread rotating hook, which was embodied in the
Wilcox & Gibbs machine. In addition to these, the “Weed” machine, made
under Fairfield’s patents; the “Domestic” machine, made under Mack’s
patents; and the “Florence” machine, made under Langdon’s patents, were
other representative machines, which, in a few years after Howe’s patent,
helped to revolutionize the art of tailoring, introduced the great era of ready-

made clothing and ready-made shoes, emancipated women from the drudgery
of the needle, and increased the efficiency of one pair of hands fully ten fold.
In 1856 the owners of the original sewing machine patents formed the famous
“sewing machine combination,” for the establishment of a common license
fee, and for the protection of their mutual interests. The combination included
Elias Howe, the Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing Company, the Grover &
Baker Sewing Machine Company, and I. M. Singer & Co. The following
summary of machines made by the leading companies from 1853 to 1876
illustrates the early growth of this industry:
Manufacturer. 1853. 1859. 1867. 1871. 1873. 1876.
Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing Co. 799 21,306 38,055 128,526 119,190 108,997
The Singer Manufacturing Company 810 10,953 43,053 181,260 232,444 262,316
Grover & Baker Sewing Machine Co. 657 10,280 32,999 50,838 36,179 ....
Howe Sewing Machine Company .... .... 11,053 134,010 90,000 109,294
Wilcox & Gibbs Sewing Machine Co. .... .... 14,152 30,127 15,881 12,758
Domestic Sewing Machine Company .... .... .... 10,397 40,114 23,587

From the foregoing table it will be seen that as far back as a quarter of a
century ago the output of machines was over a half a million a year. By 1877
all of the fundamental patents on the sewing machine had expired, but the
continued activity of inventors in this field is attested by the fact that to-day
there are many thousands of patents relating to the sewing machine and its
parts. Besides those relating to the organization of the machine itself there is
an endless variety of attachments, such as hemmers, tuckers, fellers, quilters,
binders, gatherers and rufflers, embroiderers, corders and button hole
attachments. Every part of the machine has also received separate attention
and separate patents, all tending to the perfection of the machine, until to-day,
with all fundamental principles public property, and endless improvements in
details, it is difficult to discriminate as to comparative excellence.
There is to-day a great variety of sewing machines on the market, standard
machines for ordinary work, and special machines for numerous special
applications. It is said that one concern alone manufactures over four hundred
different varieties of sewing machines.
One of the most important and revolutionary of the applications of the sewing
machine is for making shoes. Prior to 1861 shoemaking was confined to the
slow, laborious hand methods of the shoemaker. Cheap shoes could only be
made by roughly fastening the soles to the uppers by wooden pegs, whose row

of projecting points within has made many a man and boy do unnecessary
penance. Hand sewed shoes cost from $8 to $12 a pair, and were too expensive
a luxury for any but the rich. With the McKay shoe sewing machine in 1861,
however, comfortable shoes were made, with the soles strongly and
substantially sewed to the uppers, at a less price even than the coarse and
clumsy pegged variety. The McKay machine was the result of more than three
years patient study and work. It was covered by United States patents No.
35,105, April 29, 1862; No. 35,165, May 6, 1862; No. 36,163, Aug. 12, 1862;
and No. 45,422, Dec. 13, 1864, and its development cost $130,000 before
practical results were obtained. A modern form of it is shown in Fig. 147. In
preparing a shoe for the machine, an inner sole is placed on the last, the upper
is then lasted and its edges secured to the inner sole. An outer sole, channeled
to receive the stitches, is then tacked on so that the edges of the upper are
caught and retained between the two soles. The shoe is then placed on the end
of a rotary support called a horn, which holds it up to the needle. A spool
containing thread coated with shoemakers’ wax is carried by the horn, and the
thread, with its wax kept soft by a lamp, runs up the inside of the horn to the
whirl. The latter is a small ring placed at the upper end of the horn, and
through which there is an opening for the passage of the needle. The needle
has a barb, or hook, and as it descends through the sole the whirl lays the
thread in this hook, and as the needle rises it draws the thread through the soles
and forms a chain stitch in the external channel of the outer sole. As the
sewing proceeds, the horn is rotated so as to bring every part of the margin of
the sole under the needle. With this machine a single operator has been able to
sew nine hundred pairs of shoes in a day of ten hours, and five hundred to six
hundred pairs is only an average workman’s output. It is said that up to 1877
there were 350,000,000 pairs of shoes made on this machine in the United
States, and probably an equal or greater number in Europe. Shoes made on this
machine were strongly made and comfortable, but they could not be resoled by
a shoemaker, except by pegging or nailing, and the soles were furthermore
somewhat stiff and lacking in flexibility. To meet these difficulties, a new
machine known as the “Goodyear Welt Machine,” was patented in 1871 and
1875, and brought out a little later. This sewed a welt to an upper, which welt
in a subsequent operation was sewed by an external row of stitches to the sole.
This gave much greater flexibility, and the further advantage of enabling a
shoemaker to half sole the shoe by the old method of hand sewing. This
advanced the art of shoemaking in the finer varieties of shoes, and to-day
nearly all men’s fine shoes are made in this way. The introduction of the

sewing machine into the shoe industry made a new era in foot wear, and it is
said that no nation on earth is so well and cheaply shod as the people of the
United States.

FIG. 147.—MCKAY SHOE SEWING MACHINE.

A buttonhole does not strike the average person as a thing of any importance
whatever. The needlewoman, however, who has to patiently stitch around and
form the buttonholes, knows differently, and when this needlewoman, working
in the great shirt factories and shoe factories, is confronted with the many
millions of buttonholes in collars, cuffs, shirts and shoes, the great amount of
this painstaking and nerve destroying labor becomes appalling. For cheapening
the cost of buttonholes, and reducing the hand labor, various buttonhole
machines and attachments to sewing machines have been devised. Patents
Nos. 36,616 and 36,617, to Humphrey, Oct. 7, 1862, covered one of the
earliest forms, but the Reece buttonhole machine, which is specially devised

for the work, is one of the most modern and successful. It was patented April
26, 1881, Sept. 21, 1886, and Aug. 20, 1895. These machines mark an
important departure, which consists in working the buttonhole by moving the
stitch forming mechanism about the buttonhole, instead of moving the fabric.
An illustration of the machine is given in Fig. 148. Upon this machine 10,010
button holes have been made in nine hours and fifty minutes. The machine
first cuts the buttonhole, then transfers it to the stitching devices, which stitch
and bar the buttonhole, finishing it entirely in an automatic manner. The saving
involved to the manufacturer by this machine over the hand method is several
hundred per cent., but the relief to the needlewoman is of far greater
consequence.

FIG. 148.—REECE BUTTONHOLE MACHINE.

Many striking applications of the sewing machine to various kinds of work
have been made. A recent one is the automatic power carpet sewing machine,
made and sold by the Singer Manufacturing Company. It was patented by E.
B. Allen in 1894. This machine in general appearance resembles a miniature
elevated railroad. It consists of an elevated track about thirty-six feet long,
sustained every three or four feet upon standards, and having clamping jaws,

which hold together the upper edges of the two lengths of carpet to be sewed
together. A compact little stitching apparatus, not larger than a tea-pot, is
actuated by an endless belt from an electric motor at one end. The little
machine runs along and stitches together the upper edges of the suspended
carpet lengths, and as it crawls along at its work, it strikingly reminds one of
the movements of a squirrel along the top of a rail fence. This machine will
sew five yards of seam every minute, fastening together evenly and strongly
ten yards of carpet, and entirely dispensing with all hand labor in this roughest
and most trying of all fabrics.
Probably no organized piece of machinery has ever been so systematically
exploited, so thoroughly advertised, so persistently canvassed, and so
extensively sold as the sewing machine. With their main central offices, their
branch offices, sub-agencies and traveling canvassers in wagons, every city,
village, hamlet, and farmhouse has been actively besieged, and with the
enticing system of payment by instalments there is scarcely a home too
humble to be without its sewing machine. The retail price of sewing machines
bears no proper relation to their cost, but this price to the consumer results
from the liberal commissions to agents, and the expensive methods of
canvassing. In the early days of the sewing machine its sales were chiefly for
family use, but this is now no longer the case. While almost every family owns
a sewing machine, it is only brought into requisition for finer and special
varieties of work, since nearly all the clothing of men, women and children can
now be purchased ready made, at a price much less than the cost of the
material and the labor of making it up. A man to-day buys a ready-made shirt
for fifty cents, which fifty years ago would have cost him $2. This has largely
transferred the sphere of action of the sewing machine from the family to the
factory. Great factories now make ready-made clothing for men, women and
children, shirts, collars and cuffs, shoes, hats, caps, awnings, tents, sails, bags,
flags, banners, corsets, gloves, pocketbooks, harness, saddlery, rubber goods,
etc., and all these industries are founded upon the sewing machine, which may
be seen in long rows beside the factory walls, busily supplying the demand of
the world. With this transition in the sewing machine foot treadles are no
longer relied on, but the machines are run by power from countershafts. This,
in turn, has opened up possibilities of much higher speed and greater
efficiency in the machine. Inventors have found, however, that high speed is
handicapped with certain limitations. Beyond a certain speed the needle gets
hot from friction, which burns off the thread and draws the temper. Cams and
springs, moreover, are not positive enough in action, as the resilience of the

spring does not act quickly enough, and so more positive gearings, such as
eccentrics and cranks, must be employed. Despite these difficulties, however,
the modern factory machine has raised the speed of the old-time sewing
machine from a few hundred stitches a minute to three and four thousand
stitches a minute.
The United States is the home of the sewing machine, and New York City is
the center of the industry, probably 90 per cent. of the sewing machine trade
being managed and handled there. German manufacturers are making great
efforts to compete in this field, but American machines are generally regarded
as the best in the world.
Among those prominently interested in the machine in its early days were
Orlando B. Potter and the law firm of Jordan & Clarke. The latter were
attorneys representing some of the prominent inventors in litigation, and in this
way Mr. Edward Clarke became interested in the business, and it was he who
in 1856 instituted the system of selling on the instalment plan. For some years
before his death Mr. Clarke was the president of the Singer Company.
Recent statistics in relation to the sewing machine industry are difficult to
obtain, partly by reason of the great extent and ramifications of the business,
and partly by reason of the unwillingness of the larger companies to give out
data for publication. At the Patent Centennial in Washington, in 1891, Ex-
Commissioner of Patents Butterworth made the statement that “Cæsar
conquered Gaul with a force numerically less than was employed in inventing
and perfecting the parts of the sewing machine.” The great Singer Company,
with headquarters at New York, operates not only a factory at Elizabethport, N.
J., employing 5,000 men, but also other factories in Europe and Canada, the
one at Kilbowie, Scotland, employing 6,000 men. Of the total of 13,500,000
machines made by this company from 1853 to the end of 1896, nearly
6,000,000 have been made in factories located abroad, but directly controlled
and managed by the New York office. It is stated that the present output of the
American factory of the Singer Company amounts to over 11,000 weekly, or
more than half a million annually. Although so many sewing machines are
made abroad, the exports from the United States for 1899 amounted to
$3,264,344.
In the early days of the Howe sewing machine it was denounced as a menace
to the occupations of the thousands of men and women who worked in the
clothing shops, and the struggles of the inventor against this opposition and

discouragement form an interesting page of history. But it had come to stay
and to grow. Some 7,000 United States patents attest the interest and ingenuity
in this field, in the neighborhood of 100,000 persons make a living from the
manufacture and sale of the machine, millions find profitable employment in
its use, and from 700,000 to 800,000 machines are annually manufactured in
the United States. The output of all countries is estimated to be from 1,200,000
to 1,300,000 annually.
The sewing machine has for its objective result only the simple and
insignificant function of fastening one piece of fabric to another, but its
influence upon civilization in ministering to the wants of the race has been so
great as to cause it to be numbered with the epoch-making inventions of the
age. It has created new industries. It has given useful employment to capital,
has extended the lists of the wage earner, and increased his daily pay. It has
clothed the naked, fed the hungry, and warded off the ravages of cold and
death; but, best of all its tuneful accompaniment has lightened the heart and
smoothed the pathway of life for Hood’s weary working woman, to whose
tired fingers and aching eyes it has brought the balm of much-needed rest.

CHAPTER XVI.

The Reaper.

Early English Machines—Machine of Patrick Bell—The Hussey Reaper—McCormick’s
Reaper and Its Great Success—Rivalry Between the Two American Reapers—Self
Rakers—Automatic Binders—Combined Steam Reaper and Threshing Machine—Great
Wheat Fields of the West—Statistics.

n the harvest scenes upon the tombs of ancient Thebes the thirsty reaper is

I depicted, with curved sickle in hand, alternately bending his back to the
grain and refreshing himself at the skin bottle. For more than thirty
centuries did man thus continue to earn his bread by the sweat of his
brow. Even to the present time the scythe, with its cradle of wooden
fingers, is occasionally met with, and it is to the older generation a familiar
suggestion of the sweat, toil, bustle and excitement of the old harvest time. But
all this has been changed by the advent of the reaper, and ere long the grain
cradle will hang on the walls of the museum as an ethnological specimen only.
The first reaper of which we find historical evidence is that described by Pliny
in the first century of the Christian Era (A. D. 70). He says: “The mode of
getting in the harvest varies considerably. In the vast domains of the province
of Gaul a large hollow frame, armed with comb-like teeth, and supported on
two wheels, is driven through the standing grain, the beasts being yoked
behind it (in contrarium juncto), the result being that the ears are torn off and
fall within the frame.”
This crude machine has in late years been many times re-invented, and it finds
a special application to-day for the gathering of clover seeds, and is called a
“header.”
The first attempt of modern times to devise a reaper was the English machine
of Pitt, in 1786, which followed the principle of the old Gallic implement, in
that it stripped the heads from the standing grain. The Pitt machine, however,
had a revolving cylinder on which were rows of comb teeth, which tore off the

heads of grain and discharged them into a receptacle. In 1799 Boyce, of
England, invented the vertical shaft, with horizontally rotating cutters. In 1800
Mears devised a machine employing shears. In 1806 Gladstone devised a
front-draft, side-cut machine, in which a curved segment-bar with fingers
gathered the grain and held it while a horizontally revolving knife cut the
same. In 1811 Cumming introduced the reel, and in 1814 Dobbs described a
wheelbarrow arrangement of reaper in which he used the divider. In 1822 the
important improvement of the reciprocating knife bar was made by Ogle,
which became a characteristic feature of all subsequent successful reapers. It
was drawn by horses in front. The cutter bar projected at the side. It had a reel
to gather the grain to the cutter, and the grain platform was tilted to drop the
gavel. In 1826 Rev. Patrick Bell, of Scotland, devised a reaper that had a
movable vibrating cutter working like a series of shears, a reel, and a traveling
apron, which carried off the grain to one side. This machine was pushed from
behind, and, with a swath of five feet, cut an acre in an hour. It was, however,
for some reason laid aside till 1851, when it was reorganized and put in service
at the World’s Fair in London in competition with the American machines. All
the earlier experiments in the development of the reaper were made in
England. Grain raising was in its infancy in the United States, and near the end
of the Eighteenth Century the Royal Agricultural Society of England had
stimulated its own inventors by offering a prize for the production of a
successful reaper, and continued thus to offer it for many years. There is no
evidence, however, that the preceding machines attained any practical results,
and it remained for the fertility of American genius to invent a practical reaper
which satisfactorily performed its work, and continued to do so. Quite a
number of patents for reapers were granted to American inventors in the early
part of the century, among which may be mentioned that to Manning, of
Plainfield, N. J., May 3, 1831, which embodied finger bars to hold the grain
and a reciprocating cutter bar with spear-shaped blades.

FIG. 149.—PATENT OFFICE DRAWING, HUSSEY’S REAPER,
DECEMBER 31, 1833.

Cyrus H. McCormick, of Virginia, and Obed Hussey, of Maryland, were the
men who brought the reaper to a condition of practical utility. The commercial
development of their machines was practically contemporaneous, and their
respective claims for superiority had about an equal number of supporters
among the farmers of that day. Hussey, originally of Cincinnati, but afterwards
of Maryland, was the first to obtain a patent, which was granted December 31,
1833. An illustration of the patent drawing is given in Fig. 149. It embodied a
reciprocating saw tooth cutter f sliding within double guard fingers e. It had a
front draft, side-cut, and a platform. The cutter was driven by a pitman from a
crank shaft operated through gear wheels from the main drive wheels. His
specification provided for the locking or unlocking of the drive wheels; also

for the hinging of the platform, and states that the operator who takes off the
grain may ride on the machine.

FIG. 150.—PATENT OFFICE DRAWING, McCORMICK’S REAPER, JUNE 21, 1834.

On June 21, 1834, Cyrus H. McCormick, of Virginia, obtained a patent on his
reaper. In Fig. 150 appears an illustration of his patent drawing. This had two
features which were not found in the Hussey patent, viz., a reel on a horizontal
axis above the cutter, and a divider L, at the outer end of the cutter, which
divider projected in front of the cutter, and separated in advance the grain
which was to be cut from that which was to be left standing. McCormick’s
machine had two cutters or knives, reciprocated by cranks in opposite
directions to each other. This feature he afterward abandoned, adopting the
single knife, described by him as an alternative. This machine was to be
pushed ahead of the team, which was hitched to the bar C of the tongue B in
the rear, but provision was made for a front draft by a pair of shafts in front,
shown in dotted lines. The curved dotted line beside the shafts indicated a
bowed guard to press the standing grain away from the horse. The divider L
had a cloth screen extending to the rear of the platform.
Neither Hussey nor McCormick appears at that time to have been cognizant of
the prior state of the art, and as the patent law of 1836 had not yet been
enacted, there was little or no examination as to novelty, and no interference
proceedings as to priority of invention, and consequently their respective
claims were drawn to much that was old, and probably much that would have
been in conflict with each other under the present practice of the Patent Office.

In the Scientific American, of December 16 and 23, 1854, in a most interesting
series of articles on the reaper, the Hussey machine is fully described. The first
public trial was on July 2, 1833, before the Hamilton County Agricultural
Society, near Carthage, O., and its success was attested by nine witnesses.
Great stress was laid by Mr. Hussey on the double finger bar, i. e., a finger bar
having one member above and the other below the knife. The Scientific
American said the machine was a success from the first; that “in 1834 the
machine was introduced into Illinois and New York, and in 1837 into
Pennsylvania, and in 1838 Mr. Hussey moved from Ohio to Baltimore, Md.,
and continued to manufacture his reapers there up to the present time.”
In 1836 Hussey was invited by the Maryland Agricultural Society for the
Eastern Shore to exhibit his machine before them. On July 1 he did so, and
made practical demonstration of its working to the society at Oxford, Talbot
County, and again on July 12 at Easton. On the following Saturday it was
shown at Trappe, and it was afterwards used on the farm of Mr. Tench
Tilghman, where 180 acres of wheat, oats and barley were cut with it. The
report of the Board of Trustees of the society was an unqualified
commendation of the practicability, efficiency and value of the machine, and a
handsome pair of silver cups was awarded to the inventor. The report was
signed by the following well-known residents of the Eastern Shore: Robert H.
Goldsborough, Samuel Stevens, Samuel T. Kennard, Robert Banning, Samuel
Hambleton, Sr., Nichol Goldsborough, Ed. N. Hambleton, James L.
Chamberlain, Martin Goldsborough, Horatio L. Edmonson, and Tench
Tilghman.
Hussey made and sold his machine for years. In the American Farmer, of
October, 1847, an agricultural journal printed at Baltimore, the advertisement
of his machine appears with full price lists of the different sizes of machines,
and also of an improvement in the manner of disposing of the grain, which
was the invention of Mr. Tench Tilghman, and was adopted by Hussey on his
reaper.

FIG. 151.—THE McCORMICK REAPER OF 1847.

While Hussey was at work at his reaper, McCormick also was busily engaged
with his, and he took his second patent January 31, 1845, No. 3,895. This
related to the cutter bar, the divider, and reel post. McCormick’s next patent
was dated October 23, 1847, No. 5,335, and in this the raker’s seat was to be
mounted on the platform as shown in Fig. 151. McCormick’s last named
patent also covered the arrangement of the gearing and crank in front of the
drive wheel, so as to balance the weight of the raker. In the same year Hussey
took out his patent of August 7, 1847, No. 5,227, for the open top and slotted
finger guard, which is an important part of all successful cutter bars.
The rivalry between the McCormick and Hussey machines continued for many
years, and they were frequently in competition both in America and England.
The stimulus of this rivalry doubtless had much to do with the development
and success of the reaper. Both Hussey and McCormick asked for extensions
of their patents, but they failed to get them. In 1848, pending McCormick’s
extension proceedings, facts were introduced by him to show that his invention
of the reaper antedated Hussey’s, and that he had made his machine as early as
1831, and had used it then on the farm of Mr. John Steele, in Virginia. This
claim to priority was supported by the publication of a description of the
machine, and certificate of its use, in the Union, a newspaper published at
Lexington, Va., September 28, 1833, and although no adjudication was ever
made on this issue, this fact, together with Mr. McCormick’s success in the
contest in England in 1851, and his subsequent persistence and activity in

improving, developing and introducing the reaper, has so distinguished him in
this connection, that to-day his name is as commonly associated with the
reaper as is Fulton’s with the steamboat, or that of Morse with the telegraph.
To Mr. McCormick more than to anybody else the perfection of the reaper is
due. In the spring of 1851 McCormick placed his reaper on exhibition at the
World’s Fair in London. Hussey also had his machine there, and they were the
only ones represented. The machines were tested in the field, and astonished
all who saw them operate. The Grand Council medal, which was one of four
special medals awarded for marked epochs in progress, was given to
McCormick, and the judges referred to the McCormick machine as being
worth to the people of England “the whole cost of the exposition.” It is only
fair to state that Hussey was not present to direct the trial of his machine, and
that in a subsequent trial another jury decided in his favor, and His Royal
Highness, Prince Albert, ordered two of Hussey’s machines in 1851—one for
Windsor and the other for the Isle of Wight. The Duke of Marlborough also
gave his personal testimonial to Mr. Hussey as to the excellence of his
machine. In 1855, at a competitive trial of reapers near Paris, three machines
were entered. The American machine cut an acre of oats in twenty-two
minutes, the English machine in sixty-six minutes, and the Algerian in
seventy-two. In 1863, at the great International Exposition at Hamburg, the
McCormick reaper again took the grand prize. While in Paris in 1878 Mr.
McCormick was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences as
“having done more for the cause of agriculture than any living man.” Mr.
McCormick continued to the end of his days, in 1884, to devote his entire
energies to the development of the reaper, and well deserved the princely
fortune that resulted from his indefatigable labors, a good portion of which
fortune he spent during his life in the cause of education and acts of
philanthropy. The inventory of his estate, filed in the Probate Court of Cook
County, Ill., showed $10,000,000 as the reward of his genius and industry, and
is an object lesson of the reward of merit for the ambitious youth of the
Twentieth Century.

FIG. 152.—THE MANN HARVESTER OF 1849.

FIG. 153.—THE MARSH HARVESTER OF 1858.

FIG. 154.—THE CHAMPION REAPER.

In the development of the reaper one of the first deficiencies to be supplied
was automatic mechanism for taking the grain from the platform. In
November, 1848, F. S. Pease took out patent No. 5,925 for a rake whose teeth
projected up through slots in the platform, and moved back and forth to
deposit the grain upon the ground. On June 19, 1849, J. J. & H. F. Mann took
out patent No. 6,540 on a machine employing the principle of an endless band
for carrying the cut grain to the side of the machine, where it passed up an
inclined plane and accumulated in a receptacle to form a gavel, which was
clumped upon the ground. This machine is shown in Fig. 152. On July 8, 1851,
W. H. Seymour took out patent No. 8,212 for a self-raker, and this machine
marks the beginning of the era of self-raking reapers, which for a quarter of a
century in various modifications continued to be used, until displaced by
subsequent improvements in binding devices. In 1853 the Sylla and Adams
machine was brought out, the patents for which were bought by the Aultmans,
and the Aultman and Miller, or “Buckeye” harvester, was manufactured
thereunder. The general form of the modern harvester has followed along the
lines of the Mann machine of 1849. The development began by replacing the
gavel receptacle on the right of that machine (Fig. 152) with a platform on
which stood men who rode on the machine as they bound the grain. An early
and important example of a harvester of this class is given in the Marsh
machine, patented August 15, 1858, No. 21,207, and shown in Fig. 153. To
this type of machine the self-binding devices were subsequently applied, but
before they materialized many other improvements in self-rakers were made
and applied, among which may be mentioned the combined rake and reel of

Owen Dorsey, of Maryland (1856), sweeping horizontally across the
quadrantal platform; the McClintock Young revolving reel, carrying a rake; the
Henderson rake (1860) used on the Wood machine; the Seiberling dropper
(1861), which consisted of a slotted platform which moved to discharge the
gavel; and the various improvements covered by Whiteley’s patents, which
were embodied in the Champion reaper, of Springfield, O., and which is
shown in Fig. 154. This machine had a combined rake and reel of the Dorsey
type, whose arms moved over a circular inclined and stationary cam, and
whose rakes had a horizontal sweep over the platform, and a vertical return
over the wheels.

FIG. 155.—THE LOCKE WIRE BINDER OF 1873.

The next step, and, perhaps the most important one, in the development of the
reaper, was in providing automatic devices for binding the gavels of grain into
sheaves. John E. Heath, of Ohio, in patent No. 7,520, of July 22, 1850, was the
pioneer, and he used cord. Watson, Renwick & Watson, in patent No. 8,083, of
May 13, 1851, and C. A. McPhitridge, in patent No. 16,097, of November 18,
1856, quickly followed in the attempt to provide such a device, the former
using cord and the latter wire. But the problem was not an easy one to solve.
On November 16, 1858, W. Grey took out patent No. 22,074, for starting the
binding mechanism by the weight of the bundle. Probably the first to complete
a binding attachment that was partly automatic, and to attach it to a reaping
machine, were H. M. & W. W. Burson, of Illinois. On June 26, 1860, and
October 4, 1864, W. W. Burson patented a cord binder, and in 1863 one

thousand machines were built. These machines, however, used wire, and being
assisted in their operations by hand labor, were not truly automatic. On
February 16, 1864, Jacob Behel, of Illinois, obtained a patent, No. 41,661, for
a very important invention in binders. He showed and claimed for the first
time the knotting bill, which loops and forms the knot, and the turning cord
holder for retaining the end of the cord. On May 31, 1870, George H.
Spaulding took out patent No. 103,673 for a binder which automatically
regulated the bundles to a uniform size. Sylvanus D. Locke, of Wisconsin, was
the next inventor who undertook to solve the problem. He took out patents No.
121,290, November 28, 1871, and No. 149,233, March 31, 1874, and many
others. In 1873 he associated himself with Walter A. Wood, and they built and
sold probably the first automatic self-binding harvester that was ever put upon
the market. The Locke wire binder of 1873 is shown in Fig. 155. The use of
wire, however, for binding grain, involved certain objections in that it required
a special cutting tool for cutting the sheaves at the thresher, and it was not easy
to remove the wire, and parts of it were likely to go through the thresher.
Inventors accordingly concentrated their attention on the use of twine or cord.
Marquis L. Gorham, of Illinois, built a successful twine binder, and had it at
work in the harvest field in 1874. This machine, covered by patent No.
159,506, February 9, 1875, not only bound by cord, but produced bundles of
the same size. The grain in this machine is delivered by the elevator of the
harvester upon a platform, where it is seized by packers and carried forward
into a second chamber, where it is compacted by the packers against a yielding
trip, so that when sufficient grain is accumulated, the trip will yield and start
the binding mechanism into operation. The ball of cord carried on the machine
has one end threaded through the needle and fastened in a holder. The grain is
forced against the cord by the packers, and when the binder starts the needle
encircles the gavel, carrying the cord to a knotting bill, and the end is again
seized by the rotating holder, the loop formed, the ends of the band severed,
and the bound bundle is discharged from the machine. A gate, which has in the
meantime shut off the flow of grain, is now drawn back, and the operation is
repeated. On February 18, 1879, John F. Appleby took out a patent, No.
212,420, for an improvement on the Gorham binder. In Fig. 156 is shown a
modern automatic self-binding reaper which embodies the fundamental
principles of McCormick and Hussey, the inclined elevator and platform
shown by Marsh, and the automatic binding devices of Behel, Gorham and
Appleby.

FIG. 156.—MODERN AUTOMATIC SELF-BINDING REAPER.

This machine, under favorable conditions, with one driver, cuts twenty acres of
wheat in a day, binds it, and carries the bound bundles into windrows, and with
one shocker, performs the work of twenty men, and does it better, the saving in
the waste of grain over hand labor being sufficient to pay for the twine used in
binding. It is said that the self-binding reaper has reduced the cost of
harvesting grain to less than half a cent a bushel.
It is estimated that more than 180,000 machines of the self-binding type are
now produced yearly, the manufacturers in Chicago alone turning out more
than three-fourths of this number. It is not possible to do justice to all the
worthy workers in this great industry. Nearly 10,000 patents have been granted
on reaping and mowing machines, and the conspicuous names of Whiteley,
Wood, Atkins, Manny, Yost, and Ketchum, in addition to those already
mentioned, are only a small part of the great army of inventors who have
contributed to the development and perfection of the reaper.
In 1840 it is said there were but three reapers made. To-day the total number of
self-binding harvesters, reapers and mowers in use is estimated to be two
millions. The growth of this industry in the four earlier decades is as follows
(the relatively small increase between 1860 and 1870 being accounted for by
the Civil War):
1840. 1850. 1860. 1870. 1880.
Machines made 3 3,000 20,000 30,000 60,000

Immediately succeeding this period the automatic cord binder was put into
use, and within five years the increase in output of reapers and mowers was
very great. In 1885 more than 100,000 self-binding harvesters and 150,000
reapers and mowers were built and sold. In 1890 two manufacturing
establishments in Chicago made more than 200,000 machines, half of which
were self-binders and the other half reapers and mowers, and these two
institutions alone employed in their various branches of manufacturing and
selling 10,000 employees. In 1895 the output of the largest of these
manufacturing establishments was 60,000 self-binding harvesters, fitted with
bundle carriers and trucks, 61,000 mowers, 10,000 corn harvesters, and 5,000
reapers, making 136,000 machines in all. In 1898 the output of this one factory
for the year was 74,000 self-binding harvesters, 107,000 mowers, 9,000 corn
harvesters, and 10,000 reapers, amounting to 200,000 machines. This output,
together with 75,000 horse rakes, also made, averaged a complete machine for
every forty seconds in the year, working ten hours a day. The estimated annual
production of all factories in this class of agricultural implements is 180,000
self-binding harvesters, 250,000 mowing machines, 18,000 corn harvesters,
and 25,000 reapers.

FIG. 157.—STEAM HARVESTER AND THRESHER.

The wheat is headed, threshed, cleaned and sacked by this machine in one continuous operation.—
Cutter, 26 feet wide; Capacity, 75 acres per day.

FIG. 158.—FIFTY HORSE POWER STEAM PLANTING COMBINATION.

Traction engine pulling sixteen 10-inch plows, four 6-foot harrows, and a drill.

There were exported in the year 1880 about 800 self-binding harvesters, 2,000
reapers, and 1,000 mowers. In 1890 this was increased to 3,000 self-binding
harvesters, 4,000 reapers, and 2,000 mowers. The total value of mowers and
reapers exported in 1890 was $2,092,638. The growth subsequent to 1890 is
well attested by the exports for 1899, which for mowers and reapers was
$9,053,830, or more than four times what it was in 1890. These exported
machines harvest the crops of the Argentine Republic, Paraguay, and Uruguay,
of South America; carry their labor-saving values to Australia and New
Zealand; traverse the wheat fields along the banks of the Red Sea and the
Volga, and are used throughout all the continent of Europe.

FIG. 159.—A WESTERN HARVEST SCENE (LEFT SECTION OF VIEW).

FIG. 159.—A WESTERN HARVEST SCENE (RIGHT SECTION OF VIEW).

With the self-binding harvester performing the work of twenty men, cutting
and binding the grain, and arranging the bundles in windrows, it would seem
that perfection in this art had been reached, but the tendency of the age is to do
things on a constantly increasing scale, and so the latest developments in
harvesters comprise a mammoth machine (Fig. 157) propelled across the grain
fields by steam, and which by the same power cuts a swath from 26 to 28 feet
wide, threshes it at once as it moves along, blows out the chaff, and puts the
grain in bags at the rate of three bags per minute, each bag containing one
hundred and fifteen pounds, and requiring two expert bag sewers to take the
grain away from the spout, sew the bags, and dump them on the ground.
Seventy-five acres a day is its task. A companion piece to this machine is
illustrated in Fig. 158, which shows the same power utilized for planting. A
powerful steam traction engine of fifty horse power hauls across the field a
planting combination of sixteen ten-inch plows, four six-foot harrows and a
seeding drill in the rear. Such great reaping machines only find useful
application in the enormous wheat fields of California and the Pacific Coast
States, where the dry climate permits the grain to ripen and dry sufficiently
while standing in the field. Moreover, only the heads of the grain are cut, the
straw being left standing. Some conception of the enormous scale upon which
grain is raised in the Western States may be gotten from the dimensions of the
farms. It is said that Dr. Glenn’s wheat farm comprises 45,000 acres; the
Dalrymples’, in North Dakota, 70,000; and Mr. Mitchell, in the San Joaquin
Valley, in California, has 90,000 acres. The Dalrymple farms in 1893 had
54,000 acres in wheat, and employed 283 self-binding reapers to harvest the
crop. There is a single unbroken wheat field on the banks of the San Joaquin
River, near the town of Clovis, in Madera County, California, which comprises
25,000 acres, or nearly forty square miles of wheat—a veritable sea of waving

grain. The field is nearly square; each side is a little over six miles long. If its
shape were changed to the width of one mile, the field would then be forty
miles long. It has been said of the grain fields of the West, that the men and
teams eat breakfast at one end of a furrow, take dinner in the middle of the
row, and at night camp and sup at the end of the same row. With a field of such
proportions it is not difficult to see how this may be true. The cultivation and
garnering of crops from such vast areas can only be appreciated by
comparisons. If it were one man’s work to plow such a field, even with a
double gang plow, cutting a furrow twenty-four inches wide, he would travel
105,600 miles, which would be equivalent to going around the world four
times. If he plowed twenty miles a day, it would take 5,280 days. To harrow
would require as long, and to plant would take about the same time, or about
forty-three years altogether. A full lifetime would be required to plant the crop,
and a second generation would be required to reap it. But great results require
great agencies, and so great labor-saving machines, operated by armies of
men, are brought into requisition, and with these the crop is both planted and
reaped. A long procession of self-binding harvesters, following close one
behind the other, makes quick work of it, and before the weather changes this
great field is mowed, its crop garnered, and bread supplied for the hungry of
all lands.
The exports of wheat to foreign lands in 1898 were 148,231,261 bushels,
worth $145,684,659, and the exports of wheat flour for the same year were
15,349,943 barrels, worth $69,263,718. The total yield of wheat in the United
States for 1898 was 675,148,705 bushels.
With the fertile earth, and its prolific inventors, the United States has become
the richest country in the world. What its future is to be no man may say, but
its destiny is not yet fulfilled, and it is pregnant with potential possibilities.

CHAPTER XVII.

Vulcanized Rubber.

Early Use of Caoutchouc by the Indians—Collection of the Gum—Early Experiments
Failures—Goodyear’s Persistent Experiments—Nathaniel Hayward’s Application of
Sulphur to the Gum—Goodyear’s Process of Vulcanization—Introduction of His
Process Into Europe—Trials and Imprisonment for Debt—Rubber Shoe Industry—
Great Extent and Variety of Applications—Statistics.

ost all important inventions have grown into existence by slow

M stages of development, and by successive contributions from many
minds, not a few having descended by gradual processes of
evolution from preceding centuries. Vulcanized rubber, however, is
not of this class. It belongs exclusively to the Nineteenth Century,
and owes its existence to the tireless energy of one man. The value of the
crude gum had been previously speculated upon, and for years attempts had
been made to utilize it, but not until Goodyear invented his process of
vulcanizing it did it have any real value. This process was an important,
distinct and unique step, entirely the work of Mr. Goodyear, and it has never
been superseded nor improved upon to any extent. Charles Goodyear was
born in New Haven, December 29, 1800, and his life, beginning two days in
advance of the Nineteenth Century, furnishes an extraordinary illustration of
the struggles and trials of the inventor against adverse fortune, and is a
pathetic example of self denial, indefatigable labor, and unrequited toil. Of
feeble health, small stature, poor, and frequently in prison for debt, he made
the development of this art the paramount object of his life, and with a pious
faith and unfaltering courage for thirty years he devoted himself to this work.
Money he cared nothing for, except in so far as it was necessary to carry on
his work, and he died July 1, 1860, poor in this world’s goods, but rich in the
consciousness of the great benefit conferred by his invention upon the human
race.

FIG. 160.—COLLECTING THE GUM.

India rubber, or caoutchouc, as it is more properly called, is a concentrated
gum derived from the evaporation of the milky juice of certain trees found in
South America, Mexico, Central America and the East Indies. The South
American variety is called Jatropha elastica, and the East Indian variety the
Ficus elastica. The South American Indians called it cahuchu. The province
of Para, south of the equator, in Brazil, furnishes the largest part and best
quality of gum. The tree from which the gum exudes grows to the height of
eighty, and sometimes to one hundred feet. It runs up straight for forty or fifty
feet without a branch. Its top is spreading, and is ornamented with a thick and
glossy foliage. The gum is collected by chopping through the bark with a
hatchet and placing under each series of cuts a little clay cup formed by the
hands of the workman. About a gill of the sap accumulates in each cup in the
course of a day, and it is then transferred to receiving vessels and taken to
camp. The first use of the gum was made by the South American Indians, who

made shoes, bottles, playing balls and various other articles from it. Their
method for making a shoe was to take a crude wooden last, which they
covered with clay to prevent the adhesion of the gum. It was then dipped in
the sap, or the latter was poured over it, which gave it a thin coating. It was
then held over a smoky fire, which gave it a dark color and dried the gum.
When one coating became sufficiently hard another was added, and smoked in
turn, and so successive coatings were applied until a sufficient thickness was
obtained. When the work was completed it was exposed for some days in the
sun, and while still soft the shoes were decorated as the fancy or taste of the
maker suggested. The clay forms were then broken out, and the shoe stuffed
with grass to keep it in shape for use or sale. In 1820 a pair of these clumsy
shoes was brought to Boston and exhibited as a curiosity. They were covered
with gilding, and resembled the shoe of a Chinaman. Subsequently
considerable numbers of these shoes were brought from South America, and
being sold at a large price, they served to stimulate Yankee ingenuity into
devising methods of making them from the raw material, which being brought
as ballast in the ships from Brazil, could be had cheaply. In France some
attention had been given to the material, and the rubber bottles of the Indians
had been cut into narrow threads which were woven into strips of cloth to
form suspenders and garters. In England an application of it in thin solution
had been made by a Mr. Macintosh, who spread it between two thicknesses of
thin cloth to form Macintosh water-proof coats. The first practical use of the
gum on a large scale was instituted by Mr. Chaffee in Roxbury, Mass., about
1830. He dissolved the gum in spirits of turpentine and invented steam-heated
rolls for spreading it upon cloth. Companies were formed to exploit the
products, and in the fall and winter of 1833 and 1834 many thousands of
dollars’ worth of goods were made by the Roxbury Company, but the business
proved a total failure, for in the summer the goods melted, decomposed and
became so offensive as to be worse than useless, while the cold of winter
rendered them stiff and liable to crack. With a knowledge of these facts and
conditions Charles Goodyear commenced his experiments, believing that
there was a great future for this material if it could only be prevented from
melting in summer and stiffening in winter. He tried mixing it with many
materials, first using magnesia, which, however, proved ineffective. On June
17, 1837, he took out patent No. 240, in which he proposed to destroy the
adhesive properties of caoutchouc by superficial application of an acid
solution of the metals, nitric acid with copper or bismuth being specially
recommended. He also claimed the incorporation of lime with the gum to

bleach it. Under this process Mr. Goodyear made various articles in the form
of fabrics, toys and ornamental articles, using the fabric to make clothing for
himself, which he wore to demonstrate its value and wearing qualities. A
striking word picture of Mr. Goodyear at this time is given by the reply of a
gentleman who, being asked by a man looking for Mr. Goodyear as to how he
might recognize him, replied, “If you meet a man who has on an India rubber
cap, stock, coat, vest, and shoes, and an India rubber money purse in his
pocket, without a cent of money in it, that is he.”
Many useful and artistic articles were made under this first patented process,
including maps, surgical bandages, etc., and were brought by Mr. Goodyear to
the notice of President Jackson, Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, from whom
he received very encouraging letters. His efforts, however, to introduce his
process commercially were not attended with success. Capitalists and
manufacturers had been rendered so conservative by the large loss of money
in the Roxbury Company, that they were disinclined to have anything further
to do with it. Practically alone he was obliged to continue his work. By the
kindness of Mr. Chaffee and Mr. Haskins he was allowed the use of the
valuable machinery standing idle in their factory at Roxbury, and he made
shoes, piano covers, table cloths and carriage covers of superior quality, and
from the sale of these, and of licenses to manufacture, he for the first time was
able to support his family in comfort. Mr. Goodyear had not yet discovered,
however, the process of vulcanization, upon which the rubber industry is
founded. In 1838 Mr. Nathaniel Hayward, of Woburn, Mass., who had been
employed in the bankrupt rubber company, discovered that the stickiness of
the rubber could be prevented by spreading a small quantity of sulphur on it.
The same result had also been noticed by a German chemist. On Feb. 24,
1839, Mr. Hayward procured the patent, No. 1,090, on his process, and
assigned it to Mr. Goodyear. The patent covered a process of dissolving
sulphur in oil of turpentine and mixing it with the gum, and also included the
incorporation of the dry flowers of sulphur with the gum, the product
afterwards being treated by Mr. Goodyear’s metallic salt process. This was the
starting point of vulcanization, for vulcanization consists simply in admixing
sulphur with the rubber, and then subjecting it for six to eight hours to a
temperature of about 300°. Its effect is to so change the nature of the gum to
prevent it from melting or becoming sticky under the influence of heat, or of
hardening and becoming stiff under the influence of cold, the vulcanized gum
remaining elastic, impervious, and unchangeable under all ordinary
conditions. This great discovery of the influence of heat on the sulphur treated

gum was quite accidental and wholly unexpected. Heat above all things was
the agency which in all previous observations was most to be feared, for it
was this more than anything else that melted down, decomposed and
destroyed all of his manufactured articles. While sitting near a hot stove
engaged in an animated discussion concerning his experiments, a piece of the
gum treated with sulphur, which he held in his hand, was, by a rapid gesture,
thrown upon the stove. To his astonishment, he found that this relatively high
heat did not melt it, as heretofore, and while it charred slightly, it was not
made at all sticky. He nailed the piece of gum outside the kitchen door in the
intense cold, and upon examining it the next morning found it as perfectly
flexible as when he put it out. Goodyear had discovered the process which
afterwards came to be known as “vulcanization.” The discovery was made in
1839, but was not accepted by those to whom it was submitted as possessing
any importance. Prof. Silliman, of Yale College, however, in the fall of 1839
testified to the results claimed for it by Mr. Goodyear—that it did not melt
with heat, nor stiffen with the cold. On June 15, 1844, Mr. Goodyear took out
his celebrated patent, No. 3,633, covering this process, in which he not only
used sulphur, but added a proportion of white lead. The proportions named
were 25 parts of rubber, 5 parts of sulphur, and 7 parts of white lead, the
ingredients either to be ground in spirits of turpentine, or to be incorporated
dry between rolls. The odor imparted by the sulphur was to be destroyed by
washing with potash or vinegar. This patent was reissued in two divisions
Dec. 25, 1849, and again on Nov. 20, 1860, and was extended for seven years
from June 15, 1858, which was the end of the first term. Under this patent two
kinds of rubber were made and sold—“soft rubber,” containing only a small
proportion of sulphur, while the other, known as the “vulcanite,” “ebonite,” or
“hard rubber,” had from 25 to 35 per cent. of sulphur and was subjected to a
longer heat.
The history of this patent is a remarkable one. Immensely valuable as it was,
Goodyear reaped but a small share of the profit, for in the midst of his poverty
and necessities he was obliged to sell licenses and establish royalties at a
figure far below the real value of the rights conveyed. Some idea of the great
value of the business which Mr. Goodyear had developed may be had from
the fact that the companies who held rights under the patent for the
manufacture of shoes paid at one time to Daniel Webster the enormous fee of
$25,000 for defending their patent interests.

With the idea of extending his invention Mr. Goodyear visited England in
1851, where he found that Thomas Hancock, of the house of Macintosh &
Co., had forestalled him, although not the inventor. A peculiar provision of the
English patent law, which gives the patent to the first introducer, permitted
this. Nothing daunted, however, he organized a magnificent exhibit for the
Great International Exhibition held in Crystal Palace at Hyde Park, London, in
1851. This exhibit cost him $30,000, and he called it the Goodyear Vulcanite
Court. It comprehended an elegantly constructed suite of open rooms made of
hard rubber ornamented with handsome carvings, and furnished with rubber
furniture, musical instruments, and globes made of rubber, and it was also
carpeted with the same material. For his exhibit he received the “Grand
Council Medal,” which was one of the highest testimonials of the exposition.
This exhibit was afterwards moved from London to Sydenham, where it was
exposed and used as an agency for some years for the sale of rubber goods.

FIG. 161.—MACHINE FOR GRINDING AND WASHING CRUDE
RUBBER.

Mr. Goodyear had obtained a French patent for his invention, and at the
Exposition Universelle in Paris, in 1855, he fitted up at an expense of $50,000
two elegant courts with India rubber furniture, caskets and rich jewelry, and
for this exhibit he had conferred upon him by the Emperor Napoleon the
“Grand Medal of Honor” and the “Cross of the Legion of Honor.” It was a
singular instance of the irony of fate that the decoration of the “Cross of the
Legion of Honor” should have been conveyed to him while imprisoned for
debt in “Clichy,” the debtors’ prison in Paris. The lofty courage of the man
was well illustrated at this time in his reply to his wife’s solicitous inquiries as
to how he had spent the night while in prison. He said, “I have been through
nearly every form of trial that human flesh is heir to, and I find that there is
nothing in life to fear but sin.” The declining years of his life were full of
sorrow, pain and affliction, and at his death in 1860 his estate was $200,000 in
debt. He lived long enough, however, to see his material applied to nearly five
hundred uses, giving employment in England, France and Germany to 60,000
persons, and producing in this country alone goods worth $8,000,000 a year.

FIG. 162.—MAKING RUBBER CLOTH.

The greatest of all applications of rubber are to be found in the manufacture of
boots and shoes. The number of attacks of cold, rheumatism, and death-

dealing diseases from wet feet, that have been averted by the use of rubber
shoes, can never be estimated, but perhaps it is safe to say that the rubber shoe
has done more to conserve the health of the human family than any other
single article of apparel.
In the manufacture of shoes the finest quality of rubber is received in wooden
boxes 4 × 2 × 11⁄2 feet, containing about 350 pounds in lumps of 1 to 75
pounds. These lumps are cut to suitable size, and are then ground and washed
in the machine shown in Fig. 161, water and steam being sprayed on the
rubber during the operation. It is then worked into sheets or mats between
rolls. From the grinding room the sheets are taken to the mixing room, where
lampblack, sulphur and other ingredients are added, and worked into it by
being passed many times between heated rolls, the sheets being finally
reduced to a thickness of less than 1⁄32 of an inch. The rubber sheets are then
applied to a cloth backing by cloth calendering rolls, shown in Fig. 162,
which are steam heated and by great pressure serve to incorporate the sheets
of rubber and cloth into intimate and inseparable union. Out of this rubber
fabric, which is made of different thicknesses for the upper, sole and heel, the
patterns for the shoe are cut, and the parts are deftly fitted around the forms by
girls, and secured by rubber cement, as shown in Fig. 163. The shoes are then
covered with a coat of rubber varnish, and are put into cars and run into the
vulcanizing ovens, where they remain from six to seven hours at a
temperature of about 275°. The goods are then taken out, and after being
inspected are boxed for the market. The vulcanizing is a very important part
of the manufacture of a rubber shoe, for it is absolutely necessary in order to
give them stability and wearing qualities. A shoe that had not been vulcanized
would mash down, spread, become sticky and go to pieces after a few hours’
wear.
The rubber shoe industry of the United States is carried on by about fifteen
large companies, representing an investment of many millions of dollars, most
of which companies are located in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and
Connecticut.
Some idea of the immensity of this industry may be obtained from the import
statistics. In 1899 the United States alone imported crude rubber to the extent
of 51,063,066 pounds, as much as 1,000,000 pounds a month coming from the
single port of Para. The export of manufactured rubber goods for the same
year amounted to $1,765,385. The statistics for Great Britain for 1896 showed

the imports of rubber to that country to be one-third more than the imports of
the United States. Germany also is a large consumer. The great Harburg-
Vienna factories cover sixty-seven acres, are capitalized at 9,000,000 marks,
and employ 3,500 hands. Much fine technical apparatus, toys, and balls are
made here, the daily output of balls reaching 8,000. These, with the Noah’s
arks of India rubber animals, are the delight of the little ones all over the
world.
Although so much in evidence about us, India rubber is not by any means a
cheap material. Costing only five cents a pound when Goodyear commenced
his experiments, it is now worth a dollar a pound, and is therefore much more
expensive than any of the ordinary metals, woods, or building materials.
Many substitutes in the form of compositions of various ingredients have been
devised and patented, but no real substitute for nature’s product has yet been
found. For many years old and worn out rubber goods were thrown away as
worthless. Now all such rubber is reclaimed, and used in many grades of
goods which do not require a pure gum. Insatiable as the demands of the trade
may appear, there is no need to fear a rubber famine, for the forests of trees in
South America and the East Indies are practically inexhaustible, and in the
rich alluvial soil of their habitat nature’s processes of growth rapidly restore
the decimation.

FIG. 163.—MAKING RUBBER SHOES.

Since the time of Goodyear, the amplification of this art and the multiplication
of uses for rubber, and its increased commercial importance, have gone on at
such a rate of increase that to-day we may be said to be living in the rubber
age. Its uses and applications are legion, and they extend literally from the
cradle to the grave. When the baby comes into the world its introduction to
India rubber begins at once with the nursing bottle and the gum cloth, and
when the aged invalid takes leave of the world his last moments are soothed
with the water bag and the rubber bed, and between these extremes we find it
in evidence everywhere about us. In wearing apparel it extends from the
crown of the head to the sole of the foot—rubber cap, coat, gloves, and shoes.
The man has it in his suspenders and his pipe stem, the woman in her garters
and dress shields, and the baby in its teething ring and rattle. The soldier
stands on picket duty in the rain, and the rubber blanket protects him from
rheumatism. If wounded, the surgeon dresses his mangled limb with rubber
bandages, and when he gets well he has a rubber cushion on the end of his
crutch, or on the foot of his artificial leg. If wounded in the mouth perhaps the
government gives him a set of artificial teeth on a rubber plate. The rubber
mat greets you at the front door, a little pad cushions the door stops and the
backs of chairs, and a ring seals the mouth of the fruit jar. The whole array of
toilet articles, including combs, brushes, mirrors, shoe horns, etc., are made
from it. In the parlor it is found in picture frames and the piano cover; in the
bath room the wash rag, water bag, rubber cup, and hose pipe of the shower
bath are all made of it; in the play room are found rubber balls and toys of all
kinds; in the kitchen the clothes wringer and the table cloth; in the dining
room the handles of knives, and the tea tray, and what is more useful and
more ubiquitous in the office than the rubber band, the rubber ruler, the pencil
eraser, or the fountain pen? But these are only a few of the personal and
indoor uses and applications. Rubber belting for machinery, fire engine and
garden hose, steam engine packing, car springs, covers for carriages and the
big guns of the navy, life preservers, billiard table cushions, and chemical and
surgical apparatus in endless variety. The electrical world is almost entirely
dependent upon it for the insulation of our ocean cables and electric light
wires, for battery cups, and the insulating mountings of all electrical
apparatus. The pneumatic bicycle tire could not exist without rubber, and the
modern application of it to this use alone amounts to nearly four million
pounds annually. Every automobile carriage takes twenty-five pounds of
rubber for each tire, or 100 pounds altogether. This great and growing
industry, together with the now common use of rubber tires on horse-drawn

vehicles, raises the sum total of rubber employed in the arts to an enormous
figure.
That the sap of an uncultivated tree in a swampy, tropical, and malarial forest,
thousands of miles from civilization, should cut so great a figure in the
necessities of modern life, seems strange and unaccountable on any basis of
probabilities. It is only another illustration of the possibilities of the patient
and persistent work of the inventor. Charles Goodyear took this nearly
worthless material, and made of it, as Parton said in 1865—“not a new
material merely, but a new class of materials, applicable to a thousand divers
uses. It was still India rubber, but its surface would not adhere, nor would it
harden at any degree of cold, nor soften at any degree of heat. It was a cloth
impervious to water; it was a paper that would not tear; it was a parchment
that would not crease; it was leather which neither rain nor sun would injure;
it was ebony that could be run into a mould; it was ivory that could be worked
like wax; it was wood that never cracked, shrunk nor decayed. It was metal,
‘elastic metal,’ as Daniel Webster termed it, that could be wound round the
finger, or tied into a knot, and which preserved its elasticity like steel. Trifling
variations in the ingredients, in the proportion and in the heating, made it
either pliable as kid, tougher than ox hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as rigid
as flint.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

Chemistry.

Its Evolution as a Science—The Coal Tar Products—Fermenting and Brewing—
Glucose, Gun Cotton and Nitro-Glycerine—Electro-Chemistry—Fertilizers and
Commercial Products—New Elements of the Nineteenth Century.

he foundation stones of empirical discovery, upon which this science is

T based, had been crudely shaped by the workmen of preceding
centuries, but the classification and laying of them into the structure of
an exact science is the work of the Nineteenth Century. The glass of
the Phœnicians, and the dyes and metallurgical operations of the
Egyptians, involved some chemical knowledge; much more did the operations
of the alchemists, who vainly sought to convert the baser metals into gold, but
these were only the crude building stones, out of which the great complex
modern structure has been raised. In the Sixteenth Century the study of
chemistry, apart from alchemy, began, and some attention was given to its
application to the uses of medicine. Aristotle’s four elements—fire, air, earth
and water—were no longer accepted as representing a correct theory, and new
ones were proposed only to be found as erroneous, and to be superseded in
time by others.
Briefly traversing the more important of the earlier steps, there may be
mentioned the phlogiston theory of Stahl in the earlier part of the Eighteenth
Century; the discovery of the composition of water by Cavendish in 1766; of
oxygen by Priestly and Scheele in 1774; the electro-chemical dualistic theory
of Lavoisier in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century, followed by a rational
nomenclature established by Guyton de Morveau, Berthollet and Fourcroy;
the doctrine of chemical equivalents by Wenzel in 1777 and Richter in 1792;
Dalton’s atomic theory; Wollaston’s scale of chemical equivalents; Gay
Lussac’s law of combining volumes; Berzelius’ system of chemical symbols
and theory of compound radicals; contributions of Sir Humphrey Davy and
Faraday in electro-chemistry, and Thenard’s grouping of the metals. These

interesting phases of development of the old chemistry have been followed by
the new theory of substitution, by Dumas and others. This change, beginning
about 1860 and running through a period of nearly twenty years, has gradually
supplanted the old electro-chemical dualistic theory and established the
present system.
Among the important and interesting achievements of chemistry in the
Nineteenth Century is the artificial production of organic compounds. All
such compounds had heretofore been either directly or indirectly derived from
plants or animals. In 1828 Wohler produced urea from inorganic substances,
which was the first example of the synthetic production of organic
compounds, and it was for many years the only product so formed. Berthelot,
of Paris, by heating carbonic oxide with hydrate of potash produced formiate
of potash, from which formic acid is obtained; by agitating olefiant gas with
oil of vitriol a compound is produced from which, upon the addition of water
and distillation, alcohol is formed; he also re-combined the fatty acids with
glycerine to form the original fats.
In the classification of this science, it has been divided into inorganic
chemistry, relating to metals, minerals and bodies not associated with organic
life, and organic chemistry, which was formerly limited to matter associated
with or the result of growth or life processes, but which is now extended to
the broader field of all carbon compounds. In later years the most remarkable
advances have been made in the field of organic chemistry. The four elements
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen have been juggled into innumerable
associations, and in various proportions, and endless permutations, have been
combined to produce an unlimited series of useful compounds, such as dyes,
explosives, medicines, perfumes, flavoring extracts, disinfectants, etc.
The most interesting of these compounds are the coal tar products. Coal tar,
for many years, was the waste product of gas making. Forty years ago about
the only use made of it was by the farmer, who painted the ends of his fence
posts with it to prevent decay, or by the fisherman, who applied it to the
bottoms of his boats and his fishing nets. To-day the black, offensive and
unpromising substance, with magical metamorphosis, has been transformed
by the chemist into the most beautiful dyes, excelling the hues and shades of
the rainbow, the most delightful perfumes and flavoring extracts, the most
useful medicines, the most powerful antiseptics, and a product which is the
very sweetest substance known. The aniline dyes represent one of the great

developments in this field. In 1826 Unverdorben obtained from indigo a
substance which he called “Crystalline.” In 1834 Runge obtained from coal
tar “Kyanol.” In 1840 Fritzsch obtained from indigo a product which he called
“Aniline,” from “Anil,” the Portuguese for indigo. Zinin soon after obtained
“Benzidam.” All these substances were afterward proved to be the same as
aniline. Perkins’ British patent, No. 1,984, of 1856, is the first patented
disclosure of the aniline dyes, and represents the beginning of their
commercial production. This combines sulphate of aniline and bichromate of
potash to produce an exquisite lilac, or purple color. The first United States
patent was in 1861, and now there are about 1,400 patents on carbon dyes and
compounds, the most of which belong to the coal tar group. In dyes artificial
alizarine, by Graebe and Lieberman (Pat. No. 95,465, Oct. 5, 1869); aniline
black, by Lightfoot (Pat. No. 38,589, May 19, 1863); naphthazarin black, by
Bohn (Pat. No. 379,150, March 6, 1888); artificial indigo, by Baeyer (Pat. No.
259,629, June 13, 1882); the azo-colors, by Roussin (Pat. No. 210,054, Nov.
19, 1878); and the processes for making colors on fibre, by Holliday (Pat. No.
241,661, May 17, 1881), are the most important. The artificial production of
salicylic acid, by Kolbe (Pat. No. 150,867, May 12, 1874), marks an
important step in antiseptics. Artificial vanilla, by Fritz Ach (Pat. No. 487,204,
Nov. 29, 1892), represents flavoring extracts; and artificial musk, by Baur
(Pat. No. 536,324, March 26, 1895), is an example of perfumes. In medicines
a great array of compounds has been produced, such as antipyrin, the fever
remedy, by Knorr (Pat. No. 307,399, Oct. 28, 1884); phenacetin, by Hinsberg
(Pat. No. 400,086, March 26, 1889); salol, by Von Nencki (Pat. No. 350,012,
Sept. 28, 1886), and sulfonal by Bauman (Pat. No. 396,526, Jan. 22, 1889). To
these may be added antikamnia (acetanilide), the headache remedy, and
saccharin, by Fahlberg (Pat. No. 319,082, June 2, 1885), which latter is a
substitute for sugar, and thirteen times sweeter than sugar. Among the more
familiar products of coal tar or petroleum are moth balls, carbolic acid,
benzine, vaseline, and paraffine.
In the commercial application of chemistry the work of Louis Pasteur in
fermenting and brewing deserves special notice as making a great advance in
this art. His United States patent, No. 141,072, July 22, 1873, deals with the
manufacture of yeast for brewing.
The manufacture of sugar and glucose from starch is an industry of great
magnitude, which has grown up in the last twenty-five years. Water,
acidulated with 1⁄100th part of sulphuric acid, is heated to boiling, and a hot

mixture of starch and water is allowed to flow into it gradually. After boiling a
half hour chalk is added to neutralize the sulphuric acid, and when the
sulphate of lime settles the clear syrup is drawn off, and either sold as syrup,
or is evaporated to produce crystallized grape sugar, which latter is only about
half as sweet as cane sugar. Glucose syrup, however, has largely superseded
all other table syrups, and is extensively used in brewing, for cheap candies,
and for bee food. Our exports of glucose and grape sugar for 1899 amounted
to 229,003,571 pounds, worth $3,624,890.
An important discovery, made in 1846, was that carbohydrates, such as starch,
sugar, or cellulose, and glycerine, when acted upon by the strongest nitric
acid, produced compounds remarkable for their explosive character. Gun
cotton and nitro-glycerine are the most conspicuous examples. Gun cotton is
made by treating raw cotton with nitric acid, to which a proportion of
sulphuric acid is added to maintain the strength of the nitric acid and effect a
more perfect conversion. Besides its use as an explosive, gun cotton when
dissolved in ether has found an important application as collodion in the art of
photography. Nitro-glycerine only differs in its manufacture from gun cotton
in that glycerine is acted upon by the acids, instead of cotton. Pyroxiline,
xyloidine, and celluloid are allied products, which have found endless
applications in toilet articles and for other uses, as a substitute for hard rubber.
The applications of chemistry in the commercial world have been in recent
years so numerous and varied that it is not possible to do more than to refer to
its uses in the manufacture of soda and potash, of alcohol, ether, chloroform,
and ammonia, in soap making, washing compounds and tanning, the
production of gelatine, the refining of cotton seed and other oils, the art of
oxidizing oils for the manufacture of linoleum and oil cloth, the manufacture
of fertilizers, white lead and other paints, the preparation of proprietary
medicines, of soda water and photographic chemicals, the manufacture of salt
and preserving compounds, in the fermentation of liquors and brewing of
beer, the preparation of cements and street pavements, the manufacture of gas,
and the embalming of the dead.
The most interesting and, in many respects, the most important, development
of the last twenty-five years has been in electro-chemistry. Electro-chemical
methods are now employed for the production of a large number of elements,
such as the alkali and alkaline earth metals, copper, zinc, aluminum,
chromium, manganese, the halogens, phosphorus, hydrogen, oxygen, and

ozone; various chemicals, including the mineral acids, hydrates, chlorates,
hypochlorites, chromates, permanganates, disinfectants, alkaloids, coal tar
dyes, and various carbon compounds; white lead and other pigments; varnish;
in bleaching, dyeing, tanning; in extracting grease from wool; in purifying
water, sewerage, sugar solutions, and alcoholic beverages. The present low
price of aluminum, reduced from $12 per pound in 1878 to 33 cents now, is
due to its production by electrical methods. Among the earliest successful
processes is that described in patents to Cowles and Cowles, No. 319,795,
June 9, 1885, and No. 324,658, August 18, 1885, in which a mixture of
alumina, carbon and copper is heated to incandescence by the passage of a
current, the reduced aluminum alloying with the copper. This has now been
superseded by the Hall process (Pat. No. 400,766, April 2, 1889), in which
alumina, dissolved in fused cryolite, is electrolytically decomposed.
Practically all the copper now produced, except that from Lake Superior, is
refined electrolytically by substantially the method of Farmer’s patent (Pat.
No. 322,170, July 14, 1885). All metallic sodium and potassium are now
obtained by electrolysis of fused hydroxides or chlorides (Pats. No. 452,030,
May 12, 1891, to Castner, and No. 541,465, June 25, 1895, to Vautin). The
production of caustic soda, sodium carbonate, and chlorine by the electrolysis
of brine, is carried on upon a large scale, and will probably supersede all other
methods. Nolf’s process (Pat. No. 271,906, Feb. 6, 1883), and Caster’s (No.
528,322, Oct. 30, 1894), employ a receiving body or cathode of mercury,
alternately brought in contact with the brine undergoing decomposition, and
with water to oxidize the contained sodium. Carborundum, or silicide of
carbon, is largely superseding emery and diamond dust as an abradant. It is
produced by Acheson (Pat. No. 492,767, Feb. 28, 1893), by passing a current
of electricity through a mixture of silica and carbon. Calcium carbide, a rare
compound a few years ago, is now cheaply produced by the action of an
electric arc on a mixture of lime and carbon, as described by Willson (Pats.
Nos. 541,137, 541,138, June 18, 1895). Calcium carbide resembles coke in
general appearance, and it is used for the manufacture of acetylene gas, for
which purpose it is only necessary to immerse the calcium carbide in water,
and the gas is at once given off by the mutual decomposition of the water and
the carbide.
Agricultural chemistry is another one of the practical developments of the
Nineteenth Century. A hundred years ago the farmer planted his crops, prayed
for rain, and trusted to Providence for the increase; he was not infrequently
disappointed, but was wholly unable to account for the failure. To-day the

intelligent farmer understands the value of nitrogen, has ascertained how it
may be fed to his crops through the agency of nitrifying organisms, or he has
his soil analyzed at the Agricultural Department, finds out what element it
lacks for the crop desired, and in chemically prepared fertilizers supplies that
deficiency. The chemical analysis of drinking water has also contributed much
to the knowledge of right living and to the avoidance of disease and death,
which our forefathers were accustomed to regard as dispensations of
Providence.
America has furnished some eminent chemists in the Nineteenth Century, who
have made valuable contributions to the science, notably in the field of
metallurgy. It is a fact, however, which must be admitted with regret, that
America has not in the field of chemical research occupied the leading place
she has in mechanical progress. The European laboratory is the birthplace of
most modern inventions in the chemical field, and this is so simply by reason
of the fact that these more patient investigators have set themselves
studiously, systematically and persistently to the work of chemical invention.
It is said that some of the large commercial works in Germany have over 100
Ph. D.’s in a single manufacturing establishment, whose work is not directed
to the management of the manufacture, but solely to original research, and the
making of inventions. The laboratories in such works differ from those in the
universities only in being more perfectly equipped, and more sumptuously
appointed. The result of this is seen in the fact that in 1899 the United States
imported coal tar dyes alone to the extent of $3,799,353, and 5,227,098
pounds of alizarine, most of which came from Germany, and for which we
paid a good price, since the German manufacturers control the United States
patents. The alizarine dyes are for the most part the artificial kind made by
German chemists. Prior to 1869 the red alizarine dye was of plant origin,
being obtained from madder root, and it cost $2 a pound. The German chemist
produced an artificially made product, which took the place of the madder
dye, and was sold at $1.20 a pound. At the end of the patent term (seventeen
years) the price fell to 15c. a pound, showing that the product was produced at
a profit of more than $1.05 a pound, and as millions of pounds were imported
annually, it is estimated that $35,000,000 was the price paid the German
chemists for their foresight in combining science with business. Many United
States patents granted to foreign chemists are still in force, and the rich reward
of their skill is reaped at our expense.

Discovery of elements.—In the early days of chemical knowledge, fire, air,
earth and water constituted the insignificant category of the elements, which
was as faulty in classification as it was small in size. Gradual splitting up of
compounds, and an increase in the number of elements, has gone on
progressively for some hundreds of years, until to-day the list extends well on
to one hundred elementary bodies. Those which belong to the credit of the
Nineteenth Century are given in the table following, with the name of the
discoverer, and the date of its discovery.
ELEMENTS DISCOVERED
IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

ELEMENTS. DISCOVERER. YEAR.
Columbium Hatchett 1801
Tantalum Ekeberg 1802
Iridium Tenant 1803
Osmium Tenant 1803
Cerium Berzelius 1803
Palladium Wollaston 1804
Rhodium Wollaston 1804
Potassium Davy 1807
Sodium Davy 1807
Barium Davy 1808
Strontium Davy 1808
Calcium Davy 1808
Boron Davy 1808
Iodine Courtois 1811
Cyanogen Gay Lussac 1814
(Comp. rad.)
Selenium Berzelius 1817
Cadmium Stromeyer 1817
Lithium Arfvedson 1817
Silicon Berzelius 1823
Zirconium Berzelius 1824
Bromine Balard 1826

Thorium Berzelius 1828
Yttrium Wohler 1828
Glucinum Wohler 1828
Aluminum Wohler 1828
Magnesium Bussey 1829
Vanadium Sefstroem 1830
Lanthanum Mosander 1839
Didymium Mosander 1839
Erbium Mosander 1843
Terbium Mosander 1843
Ruthenium Claus 1845
Rubidium Bunsen 1860
Caesium Bunsen 1860
Thallium Crookes 1862
Reich
Indium 1863
Richter
Gallium Boisbaudran 1875
Ytterbium Marignac 1878
Samarium Boisbaudran 1879
Scandium Nilson 1879
Thulium Cleve 1879
Neodymium Welsbach 1885
Praseodymium Welsbach 1885
Gadolinium Marignac 1886
Germanium Winkler 1886
Raleigh
Argon 1894
Ramsey
Ramsey
Krypton 1897
Travers
Ramsey
Neon 1898
Travers
Ramsey
Metargon 1898
Travers

Coronium Nasini 1898
Xenon Ramsey 1898
Monium Crookes 1898
Etherion (?) Brush 1898

Whether or not these so-called elements are really true elementary forms of
matter, which are absolutely indivisible, is a problem for the chemists of the
coming centuries to solve. The classification has the approval of the present
age. What new elements may be found no one may predict. Mendelejeff’s
periodic law, however, suggests great possibilities in this field. Allotropism,
in which the same element will present entirely different physical aspects, is
also a significant and suggestive phenomenon, for in it we see carbon
appearing at one time as a crude, black and ungainly mass of coal, and at
another it appears as the limpid and flashing diamond. In more than one mind
there is a lurking suspicion that there may, after all, be only one form of
primordial matter, from which all others are derived by some wondrous play
of the atoms, and if so the old idea of the alchemist as to the transmutation of
metals may not be entirely wrong. The Twentieth Century may give us more
light.

CHAPTER XIX.

Food and Drink.

The Nature of Food—The Roller Mill—The Middlings Purifier—Culinary Utensils—
Bread Machinery—Dairy Appliances—Centrifugal Milk Skimmer—The Canning
Industry—Sterilization—Butchering and Dressing Meats—Oleomargarine—
Manufacture of Sugar—The Vacuum Pan—Centrifugal Filter—Modern Dietetics and
Patented Foods.

f called upon to name the most important of all factors of human

I existence, that which underlies and sustains all others, even to life itself,
everyone must agree that it is food. A remarkable fact in this connection
is that all animal life lives and thrives by eating some other thing that is
or has been alive, or is the product of organic growth. The vegetarian
may pride himself upon his higher ideals of living, but after all his fruit,
vegetables, and cereals belong to the great category of living organisms, and
are to a certain extent sentient and conscious, for even the plant will turn to
the sun. The beasts of the field and fowls of the air live by preying upon other
weaker animals and birds, these upon plants and grasses, and the plants and
grasses upon the decaying mosses and organic mould of the soil, and the
mosses upon still lower organisms. The big fish of the sea eat the little fish,
the little fish the small fry, and these in turn live upon worms and animalcula,
and so on all the way down to protoplasm. Omniverous man, in spite of his
boasted civilization and enlightment, not only eats them all, flesh, fowl, fish,
grain and plants, but lives exclusively upon them. But he can only live on that
which has been produced by the mysterious agency of life, and this furnishes
a significant suggestion for the philosopher, for it may be that life itself is only
an accumulated active power or unitary force regenerated in some
metamorphic way from vital force stored up in the bacteria of organic food,
and necessarily connected therewith in an endless chain of reproductions, and
if this be true, the hope of the scientist as to the synthesis of food from its
elements must ever remain a philosophic dream, because the scientist cannot
create a bacterium.

It has been said that when a man eats meat he thinks meat, and when he eats
bread he thinks bread, and when he eats fruit he thinks fruit. It is not clear that
the quality or character of man’s food is so closely correlated to his thought,
but that it has its influence cannot be doubted. It would be safer to say,
however, that when a man eats meat he acts meat, and when he eats bread he
acts bread, for the muscular energy and aggressive potentiality appear to be
much more closely related to the quality of his food than are his thoughts.
May it not be that the powerful achievement of the British Empire was
directly related to its roast beef? Is not the listless apathy of the Chinese due
to a diet of rice? Is not the dominant and masterful power of the lion or the
eagle related to a carniverous diet, and the mild and placid temper of the ox
the reflex expression of his vegetable food? It is quite true that our
potentialities are largely represented by what we eat, and our food therefore
becomes a most interesting topic, not only by virtue of its indispensable
quality, but by reason also of the possibilities of development in the
betterment and elevation of the human race.
From the earliest times even down to the present day man’s food has been the
same—flesh, fish, cereals, fruits and vegetables. The development of the
present century has not extended this category, but it has been directed to an
increase in the supply, an improvement in quality, the preservation against
decay and waste, and its intelligent selection and adaptation to the special
needs of the body. Progress manifests itself in the great field of agriculture, in
improved processes and machines for milling; in butchering, packing and
handling meats; in preserving and drying fruits; in the preparation of canned
goods, in dairy appliances, in cake and cracker machines; in the manufacture
of sugar; in the great advance in cookery; in the science of dietetics, and in
thousands of minor industries.
In agriculture the raising of grain has extended in the Nineteenth Century to
enormous proportions. More than ten thousand patents for plows, as many for
reapers, and a proportionate number of planters, cultivators, threshers, and
other implements and tools represent the extent to which inventive genius has
been directed to the increase of the yield in the harvest field.
This yield in the United States for the year 1898 was:
Corn 1,924,184,660 bushels
Wheat 675,148,705 bushels

Oats 730,906,643 bushels
Rye 25,657,522 bushels
Barley 55,792,257 bushels
Buckwheat 11,721,927 bushels
Potatoes 192,306,338 bushels

FIG. 164.—ROLLER PROCESS OF MAKING FLOUR, WEGMANN’S PATENT.

For converting the grain into flour, the inventors of the Nineteenth Century
have made revolutionary changes. Milling processes within the last twenty-
five years have been completely transformed by the introduction of the roller
mill and middlings purifier. Formerly two horizontal disk-shaped stones or
burrs were employed, the lower one stationary and the upper one revolving in
a horizontal plane and crudely crushing the grain between them. In all modern
mills these have been entirely displaced by porcelain rolls revolving on
horizontal axes and crushing the grain between them. The first of these roller

mills is shown in pat. No. 182,250, to Wegmann, Sept. 12, 1876. (See Fig.
164). The outer rolls d e are pressed against the inner ones a c by a system of
weighted levers, and scrapers below remove the crushed grain from the
periphery of the rolls. Many subsequent improvements have been made, one
type of which employs a succession of rolls which act in pairs on the grain
one after the other and reduce it by successive gradations.

FIG. 165.—MIDDLINGS PURIFIER.

The middlings purifier, see Fig. 165, comprehends a flat bolt or shaker screen
b, of bolting cloth, arranged as a horizontal partition in an enclosing case
through which passes an upward draft of air produced by suction fan D at the
top. This air passing up through the bolting screen lifts the bran specks and
fuzz from the shaken material as it passes downward through the screen,
brushes K being arranged below to keep the screen constantly clean. A
representative and pioneer type of this machine is seen in Pat. No. 164,050 to
George T. Smith, June 1, 1875, from which the view is taken. The useful
effect of the roller mill and middlings purifier is to save the most nutritious
and valuable part of the grain, which lies between the outer cuticle and the
white starch within, and which breaks up in fine grains and is of a golden hue.
This portion of the grain was formerly unseparated, and was mixed with the
middlings and bran as an inferior product. Modern analysis has disclosed its

superior food value, and the roller mill and middlings purifier have provided
means by which it can be separated from the bran and incorporated with the
flour, thereby greatly adding to its wholesome character and nutritive value,
and imparting to the flour the rich creamy tint which characterizes all higher
grades.
Minneapolis, Minn., is the great center of the milling interests of the United
States. The Pillsbury Mills are located there, and the “Pillsbury A.” which is
said to be the largest in the world, has a capacity of 7,000 barrels per day.
In 1877-78 disastrous flour dust explosions at Minneapolis brought about the
development of the dust collector, for withdrawing from the air of the mills
the suspended particles of flour dust, which not only invited explosion, but
rendered the air unfit to breathe. Washburn’s Pat. No. 213,151, March 11,
1879, is an early example.
The use of crushing rolls has also developed a great variety of new foods,
such as cracked wheat, oatmeal grits, etc. These crushing rolls have
sometimes been made hollow, and are steam heated, and as they crush the
grain they simultaneously effect the cooking or partial conversion of the
starch, and the product is known as hominy flake, ceraline, coralline, etc.,
which furnish popular breakfast foods when served with cream.

FIG. 166.—DOUGH MIXER.

FIG. 167.—BRAKE, OR KNEADING MACHINE.

In the field of cookery such activity has been displayed that the average
kitchen to-day is a veritable museum of modern inventions. Egg beaters,
waffle irons, toasters, broilers, baking pans, apple parers, cherry stoners,
cheese cutters, butter workers, coffee mills, corn poppers, cream freezers, dish
washers, egg boilers, flour sifters, flat irons, knife sharpeners, can openers,
lemon squeezers, potato mashers, meat boilers, nutmeg graters, sausage
grinders, and frying pans in endless array; all patented and clustered around
the modern cooking range as a central figure, and all presenting points of
excellence in the matter of economy and convenience, or the betterment of
result. The most extensive application of inventive genius is to be found in the
large manufacturing bakeries, which make and sell the millions of pounds of
crackers and cakes that fill the bins and shelves of the grocery store. In these
manufactories the dough is prepared by a mixer, see Fig. 166, which consists
of a spiral working blade revolving in a trough, and capable of handling half a
dozen barrels of flour at a time. It is then put through a kneading machine,
called a “brake,” shown in Fig. 167, and is then ready to be converted into
crackers or cakes on a great machine 25 feet long, which finishes the crackers
and puts them in the pan ready for the oven. This machine, see Fig. 168,
receives the dough at A, where it is coated with flour and flattened into a sheet
between rolls. It is then received on a traveling apron B, has the flour brushed
off by a rotary brush C, and is then cut into crackers or cakes by vertically
reciprocating dies D. At E a series of fingers press the cakes down through the
sheet of dough, while the surrounding scraps are raised on a belt F and
delivered into a suitable receptacle. The separated cakes at B′ are then
delivered into pans at G, the pans being fed on the subjacent belt at G′. Such
machines, costing nearly a thousand dollars, produce from forty to sixty
barrels of crackers a day, enabling them to be sold at about 5 cents a pound at
retail.

FIG. 168.—CRACKER AND CAKE MACHINE.

Dairy Appliances have come in for a large share of attention at the hands of
the Nineteenth Century inventor. There are about sixteen million milch cows
in the United States, and their contribution to the food stuffs of the day in
milk, butter, and cheese is no insignificant factor. There have been over 2,700
patents granted for churns alone, and besides these there are milk coolers,
cheese presses, milk skimmers, and even cow milkers. The centrifugal milk
skimmer is an interesting type of this class of machine. In the old way the
milk was set for the cream to rise, which it did slowly from its lighter specific
gravity. In the centrifugal skimmer the milk is continuously poured in through
a funnel, and the cream runs out continuously through one spout, and the
skimmed milk at the other. An illustrative type of this machine is shown in
Fig. 169. A steam turbine wheel near the base turns a vertical shaft bearing at
its upper end a pan which rotates within the outer case. The milk enters
through the faucet at the top, and as the pan within rotates, the heavier milk,
by its greater specific gravity, is thrown to the outer part of the pan and passes
out through the larger of the two spouts, while the lighter cream is crowded to
the center and passes out of the upper spout, which opens into the center of
the pan. Patents to Lefeldt & Lentsch, No. 195,515, Sept. 25, 1877, and
Houston and Thomson, No. 239,659, April 5, 1881, represent pioneer milk
skimmers of this type.

FIG. 169.—CENTRIFUGAL MILK SKIMMER.

Closely allied to the dairy appliances are the incubator and the bee hive, both
of which have claimed a large share of attention, and for which many patents
have been granted.
One important and characteristic feature of the present age is the conservation
of waste in perishable foodstuffs. Fruits, vegetables, fish and oysters were
suitable food to our forefathers only when freshly taken, and any
superabundance in supply was either wasted by natural processes of decay, or
was fed to the hogs. To-day thousands of patented fruit dryers, cider mills, and
preserving processes save this waste and carry over for valuable use through
the unproductive winter months these wholesome and valuable articles of diet.
Even more important is the canning industry, by which not only fruits are
maintained in a practically fresh condition for an indefinite time, but oysters,
meats, fish, soups, and vegetables are also put up in enormous quantities. To-
day the grocer’s shelves present an endless array of canned tomatoes, peaches,

corn, peas, beans, fish, oysters, condensed milk, and potted meats, which
constitute probably three-fourths of his staple goods. The tin can is in itself a
very insignificant thing, not entitled to rank with any of the great inventions,
but in the every-day campaign of life it is playing its part, and working its
influence to an extent that is little dreamed of by the casual observer. It
renders possible our military and exploring expeditions; it holds famine and
starvation in abeyance; it gives wholesome variety to the diet of both rich and
poor; and it transfers the glut of the full season to the want of future days.
Perhaps no single factor of modern life has so great an economic value.
Simple as is the tin can, quite complex machines are required to make it.
Originally such machines were operated by hand or foot power, but within the
last 25 years power machines have been devised which automatically convert
a simple blank or plate of sheet metal into a finished can. Of the many patents
granted for such machines the most representative ones are 243,287, 250,096,
267,014, 384,825, 450,624, 465,018, 480,256, 495,426, 489,484.
In the process of putting up canned goods the products are filled into the cans,
and the caps, or heads, are soldered on. These caps have a minute hole in the
center for the escape of air and steam in the process of cooking and sterilizing,
which is conducted as follows: A large number of cans are placed on a tray
swung from a crane and the cans lowered into one of a series of great cooking
boilers. The cover of the boiler is then closed and fastened by lugs, and steam
turned on until the goods in the can are thoroughly heated through. During
this process the air and steam escape through the little vent hole from the
interior of each can. The cans are then removed, the vent hole closed by a
drop of solder, and the goods thus hermetically sealed in a cooked or sterilized
condition will keep for a long period of time.
Sterilizing.—During the last quarter of the century, which has witnessed the
growth of the wonderful science of bacteriology, a class of devices known as
sterilizers has come into existence, whose primary function is to kill the germs
of decay by heat. This has had in the canning industry an important
commercial application. An example is found in the patent to Shriver, No.
149,256, March 31, 1874. In some of these devices the receptacles containing
the food stuffs are in large numbers placed within the heating chamber, and by
devices operated from the outside the cans or bottles are opened and shut
while within the steam filled chamber. A late illustration is found in patent to
Popp et al., 524,649, August 14, 1894.

Butchering and Dressing Meats.—Chicago is the leading city of the world in
this industry, and Armour & Co. the largest packers. In the year ending April
1, 1891, they killed and dressed 1,714,000 hogs, 712,000 cattle, and 413,000
sheep. They had 7,900 employees, and 2,250 refrigerating cars were
employed for the transportation of their products. The ground area covered by
their buildings was fifty acres, giving a floor area of 140 acres, a chill room
and cold storage area of forty acres, and a storage capacity of 130,000 tons. In
addition to its meat packing business the firm has separate glue works, with
buildings covering fifteen acres, where 600 hands are employed, their
production in 1890 being 7,000,000 pounds of glue, and 9,500 tons of
fertilizer. Since 1891 this great business has increased until to-day it is said
that the army of workmen employed is greater than that of Xenophon, that the
firm pays out in wages alone, half a million dollars every month, that four
thousand cars are required to carry the products of their factory, and whose
business amounts to the enormous sum of one hundred million dollars
annually.

FIG. 170.—KILLING AND DRESSING PORK. Large image
(1000 x 598, 291 kB).

There are from forty to fifty million cattle raised in the United States, and an
equal amount of sheep. The number of hogs raised has diminished somewhat
in the past few years, but from 1889 to 1892 more than fifty million were

maintained. The process of slaughtering and dressing pork, as practiced to-
day, is a continuous one, and is well illustrated in Fig. 170, in 13 operations.
The animals are driven into a catching pen at 1, where they are strung up by
one leg, and secured to a traveling pulley on an overhead rail. At 2 the animal
is instantly killed by a knife thrust that reaches the heart; at 3 he is dumped
into a vat of scalding water, kept hot by steam pipes, where the hair is
loosened (see detail view Fig. 171). A series of oscillating curved arms,
shaped like a horse hay-rake, dips the carcass out of the scalding vat and
deposits it upon the table 4 (Fig. 170), where it is attached to an endless cable
that drags it through a scraping machine at 5. This takes off the hair, as shown
in detail view Fig. 172. At 6 (Fig. 170) the remnants of hair are removed by
hand, and at 7 the skin is washed clean. At 8 the carcass is inspected, and the
throat cut across; at 9 the entrails are removed; at 10 the leaf lard is taken out;
at 11 the heads are severed and tongues removed; at 12 the carcass is split into
halves, and at 13 the sections are ready to be run into the cooling room.

FIG. 171.—SCALDING TO LOOSEN THE HAIR.

FIG. 172.—SCRAPING OFF THE HAIR BY MACHINERY.

From 10 to 15 minutes only are required to convert the living animal into
dressed pork. Every part of the animal is utilized. The lungs, heart, liver and
trimmings go to the sausage department. The feet are pickled or converted
into glue. The intestines are stripped and cleaned for sausage casings. The soft
parts of the head are made into so-called cheese, and the fat is rendered into
lard. The finer quality of bristles goes to the brushmakers, and the balance is
used by upholsterers for mixing with horse hair. The blood is largely used for
making albumen for photographic uses, as well as in sugar refining, for meat
extracts, and for fertilizers. The bones are ground for fertilizer, and even the
tank waters are concentrated and used for the same purpose.
Oleomargarine.—About 1868 M. Mege, a French chemist, commissioned by
his government to investigate certain questions of domestic economy, was led
into the study of beef fat, and to make comparisons of the same with butter.
He found that when cows were deprived of food containing fat they still
continued to give milk yielding cream or fatty products. He therefore
concluded that the stored-up fat in the animal was then converted into cream,
and that it was practicable, therefore, to convert beef fat into butter fat.
Physiology taught that in the living animal the change was wrought through
the withdrawal of the larger part of the stearine by respiratory combustion,
while the oleomargarine was secreted by the milk glands, and its conversion
into butyric oleomargarine effected in the udder under the influence of the
mammary pepsin. In the process of making butter by the ordinary method of
churning the cream, the finely divided butter fat globules are united into

masses, containing by mechanical admixture from 12 to 14 per cent. of water
or buttermilk carrying a fractional per cent. of cheese. This buttermilk
contributes somewhat to the flavor, but at the same time furnishes a ferment
which ultimately spoils the butter by making it rancid. It is a purely accidental
ingredient, and one not at all desirable. To some extent the same may be said
of the soluble fats which give to the butter its variable though characteristic
flavor. They are unstable compounds, decomposing readily, and furnish the
acrid products which make “strong” butter. M. Mege sought to imitate the
natural process of butter-making, which was first to separate from the oily fat
of suet the cellular tissue and excess of stearine or hard fat; second, to add to
the oil a sufficient proportion of butyric compounds to give the necessary
flavor, and third, to consolidate the butter fat without grain, and to add at the
same time the requisite proportion of water, salt, and coloring matter, to make
a compound substantially the same in composition, flavor, and appearance, as
butter churned from the cream, and all this without adding to the original fat
anything dietetically objectionable, and without submitting it to any process
capable of impairing its wholesome quality. These objects were fairly
obtained in the product known as oleomargarine, the United States patent for
which was granted to Mege Dec. 30, 1873, No. 146,012.
The process in brief is to take fresh beef fat, which is first chopped up and
thoroughly washed. It is then placed in melting tanks at a temperature of 122°
to 124° F, and the clear yellow oil is drawn off and allowed to stand until it
granulates. The fat is then packed in cloths set in moulds and a slowly
increasing pressure squeezes out the pure amber colored oil, leaving the
stearine behind. This sweet and pure yellow oil is then churned with milk for
20 minutes until the oil is completely broken up, and a small quantity of
annato, a vegetable coloring matter, is added to give a yellow color. The
product is then cooled in ice, and after a second churning with milk it is salted
and finished like butter. Chemical analysis shows oleomargarine to have
substantially the same constituents and in almost the identical proportions of
pure butter. It is equally wholesome, and while it does not have the same rich
flavor, it has the advantage that it keeps better, and is not so liable to become
rancid or strong. The oleomargarine industry is closely related to the beef
packing industries of the United States, and its growth has been enormous.
Notwithstanding the stringent laws on the subject, much of the oleomargarine
made is sold for, and by the average purchaser is not distinguishable from,
pure butter. In 1899 there were 80,495,628 pounds of oleomargarine made in
the United States, or more than a pound for every man, woman, and child in

the country. The internal revenue tax paid on it was $1,609,912.56. The
exports for the year 1899 were 5,549,322 pounds of the artificial butter, and
142,390,492 pounds of the oleo oil prepared for conversion into the complete
product by simply churning with milk.
Sugar.—Sugar-cane, beets, and the sap of the maple constitute the sources
from which sugar is extracted, but the cane furnishes by far the largest supply.
When crushed between rolls it yields 65 per cent. of its weight as juice, and
18 per cent. of this juice is sugar. It is concentrated by evaporation at a low
temperature, the crystallized portion being known as “raw” or brown sugar,
which is subsequently refined, while the uncrystallized portion forms
molasses.

FIG. 173.—VACUUM PAN FOR EVAPORATING THE SYRUP TO
PRODUCE SUGAR.

In the process of refining, 2 or 3 parts of raw sugar, with one of water
containing a little lime, ground bone black, and the serum of bullocks’ blood,

is heated by the passage of steam through it. The albumen of the serum
coagulates and rises to the surface in a scum which entangles the impurities
and bone black, leaving the syrup light in color. The latter is then filtered
through bone black until it is colorless and is then evaporated in the vacuum
pan, which is the important invention of the century in sugar making. Heat has
the effect of converting the crystallized sugar into the uncrystallized variety,
and hence the evaporation must, to prevent this, be conducted at a low
temperature. Contact with the air is also objectionable. These conditions are
provided for by conducting the evaporation in a vacuum, which lowers the
evaporating temperature and avoids contact with the air. The vacuum pan was
the invention of Howard, an Englishman. (British Pat. No. 3,754, of 1813). As
constructed to-day it is an enormous vessel (see Fig. 173), capable of holding
7,000 or more gallons, and yielding 250 barrels of sugar at a strike. In this a
vacuum is maintained by a condenser, the vapors passing from the pan to the
condenser through the great curved pipe rising from the top, which pipe is
five feet in diameter. A gentle heat is applied through internal steam-heated
coils which connect with an external series of steam inlet pipes on one side,
and a corresponding series of steam outlet pipes on the other. A large
discharge valve for the concentrated syrup closes the bottom of the pan. After
concentration the crystallized sugar is separated from the syrup by a
centrifugal filter, in which the liquid is thrown from the crystallized sugar by
centrifugal action. The first centrifugal filter is shown in British patent to
Joshua Bates, No. 6,068, of 1831. This, however, revolved about a horizontal
axis. The present form of centrifugal filter is a cylinder revolving about a
vertical axis, the sides of the cylinder being formed of filtering medium,
through which the liquid is thrown by centrifugal action, while the sugar is
retained within. This was the invention of Joseph Hurd, of Mass., U. S. Pat.
No. 3,772, Oct. 3, 1844; re-issue No. 607, Sept. 29, 1858, which patent was
extended for seven years, from Oct. 3, 1858. The diffusion process, which
extracts the juice by cutting the cane in slices and soaking in water; the
bagasse furnace, which dries and burns the expressed cane stalks as fuel, and
the manufacture of glucose and grape sugar by the reaction of sulphuric acid
on starch, are interesting allied features of this industry which can only be
briefly mentioned. Most of the sugar consumed in the United States is
imported, much raw sugar being imported and refined here. The imports for
the year 1899 were 3,980,250,569 pounds, and the per capita consumption in
1898 was 61.1 pounds a year.

Aids to Digestion.—It is only during the last part of the Nineteenth Century
that the world has learned how to live. “What is one man’s food is another
man’s poison” has been a trite old saying for many years, but the reason why
has only in late years been fully understood. The physiology of digestion, the
relative digestibility of different articles of food, and their nutritive values,
have received of late years the earnest attention of physicians and students of
dietetics and have contributed much to the quality and kind of food, and a
knowledge of when and how to eat it. We know that the starchy foods are
digested by the saliva, which is an alkaline digestion; that meat, fish, eggs,
cheese and the albumenoids are digested in the stomach by the gastric juices
(pepsin and hydrochloric acid) which is an acid digestion, and that the
remaining portions of starch, the sugars, and fats are digested in the intestines,
and that this is also an alkaline digestion, and this has helped to solve the
problem for us. We also know that starch is an excellent food, provided the
vital powers are sufficiently stimulated by fresh air, sunlight, and exercise to
digest it, as do the horse and the ox when they eat corn, but we know
furthermore that the sedentary occupations of modern life leave many
stomachs in a condition unable to assimilate starch, and so bread, oatmeal,
potatoes and such simple staples, instead of nourishing the body, ferment in
the enfeebled stomach, produce acids and gas, and lay the foundation for
serious chronic diseases. The student of chemistry and dietetics knows to-day
that one part of diastase will effect the conversion of 2,000 parts of starch into
grape sugar, as a preliminary step to its digestion, and so by treating starchy
matter with substances containing diastase (derived from malt) a partial
transformation is effected which will materially shorten and assist its
digestion. This fact has been largely made use of in the preparation of easily
soluble or pre-digested foods, examples of which are found in patent to
Horlick (malted milk), No. 278,967, June 5, 1883; to Carnrick (milk-wheat
food), Dec. 27, 1887, No. 375,601; and Boynton and Van Patten (cereals and
diastase), 344,717, June 29, 1886.
Beverages.—Pure water, nature’s own gift, has ever supplied every legitimate
need of the human race, but civilized life has greatly extended its list of
drinks, much to its own detriment. Soda water, whiskey, beer, ginger ale, tea,
coffee, and chocolate represent enormous industries, and probably all do more
harm than they do good. Much inventive genius in the Nineteenth Century has
been bestowed upon the soda water fountain, on stills, and processes for aging
liquors and processes for brewing beer, on cider and wine presses, on bottling
machines and bottle stoppers, on devices for carbonating waters, and in coffee

and teapots. The trend of the times is shown in the following figures, which
represent the per capita consumption of beverages in the United States for
1898: tea, .91 of a pound; coffee, 11.45 pounds; wines, .28 of a gallon;
distilled spirits, 1.10 gallons; and malt liquors 15.64 gallons. The largest per
capita increase since 1870 has been in malt liquors, and the next in coffee. In
tea and distilled spirits there has been a decrease, while the consumption of
wines is the smallest of all and has varied but little.

CHAPTER XX.

Medicine, Surgery, Sanitation.

Discovery of Circulation of the Blood by Harvey—Vaccination by Jenner—Use of
Anæsthetics the Great Step of Medical Progress of the Century—Materia Medica—
Instruments—Schools of Medicine—Dentistry—Artificial Limbs—Digestion—
Bacteriology, and Disease Germs—Antiseptic Surgery—House Sanitation.

n the early gropings through the uncertain light of first progress, man was

I accustomed to ascribe the ills of his flesh to the anger of the gods, and in
his craven and abject superstition made peace offerings. Later he learned
to locate the cause within himself, and constructed the theory that the
fluids of the body had become disordered. The characteristic feature of
progress in the Nineteenth Century, in this field, has been in the accurate
tracing of the relation of cause and effect, and with the discovery of true
causes has grown efficient means of treatment. The old expedients of charms,
incantations, conjuration and exorcism gave place first to intelligent
medication, and this in turn is rapidly giving way to the prevention of disease
by improved conditions of sanitation and right living. The ounce of prevention
has been found to be worth more than the pound of cure. With the improved
knowledge of physiology, anatomy, chemistry and biology, which the century
has brought, the intelligent physician was able to make a logical and for the
most part a correct diagnosis, but supplemented with the microscope, that
great revealer of the unseen world of small things, corporeal existence itself
becomes an open book, and from the principles of organic evolution to the
germ theory of disease the mystery of life and death is being slowly revealed.
When the Eighteenth Century gave birth to the Nineteenth, its great natal gift
in medicine was vaccination. Jenner in 1798 for the first time announced his
discovery of this great boon to the human race. In 1799 Dr. Benjamin
Waterhouse, in Boston, obtained virus from Jenner and vaccinated four of his
children, and in 1801 Dr. Valentine Seaman obtained virus from Dr.
Waterhouse and performed the first vaccination in New York. During the

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries the annual death rate from smallpox in
London ranged from 2 to 4 per 1,000 of population. In 1892 it was only 0.073
per 1,000.
It is also stated on good authority that the mortality from smallpox in England
alone, was 20,000 a year less after the introduction of vaccination than it was
in the preceding century, and that its benefits to the world at large have been
so great that the lancet of Jenner has saved more lives than were sacrificed by
the sword of Napoleon.
Each century in modern history has been marked by some important
discovery in the field of medicine. The Seventeenth Century was notable for
the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey; the Eighteenth
Century brought with it vaccination by Jenner. The Nineteenth Century’s
greatest gift in this field has been anæsthesia, or insensibility to pain. Nature
has wisely endowed man with nerves of sensation as danger signals for the
conservation of life. Accident and disease, however, are the inseparable
concomitants of human existence, and suffering and pain the ineffaceable
legacies of mortality. Sometimes these nerves of sensation are no longer
useful as monitors, and in the unavoidable emergency of accident, surgical
operations, child birth, and certain diseases, suffering can do no good, and
then pain—that Prince of Terrors—thrusting his presence upon the hapless
victim, racks body and limb, calling forth groans, and shrieks and writhings,
till the poor sufferer, possessed with a dominating agony which displaces all
thought of life, memory of friends, and love of God, breaks down in
unutterable distress, and prays for death and oblivion. To this poor sufferer
insensibility is next to heaven. For the past half century all the formidable
operations of the surgeon have been performed with the aid of anæsthetics and
without suffering to the patient, producing happy recoveries, and greatly
contributing to the success of the result by relieving the surgeon of the
distraction of the patient’s pain, and the interference of his involuntary
movements. Quite a number of anæsthetics are known and used to-day. Those
more generally employed are—naming them in the order of their first
application—nitrous oxide gas, ether, and chloroform. Nitrous oxide gas is
chiefly used for the extraction of teeth. Sir Humphrey Davy, in 1800, was the
first to observe the peculiar quality of nitrous oxide gas, which gave it the
name of “laughing gas,” from the fact that it caused those inhaling it to act in
a manner exhibiting an abnormal exhilaration. Dr. Horace Wells, a dentist of
Hartford, Conn., in 1844, had the gas administered, experimentally, to himself

during the operation of extracting a tooth, and was the discoverer of its useful
application as an anæsthetic.
The greatest discovery, however, in anæsthetics is the application of ether for
this purpose. Ether as a chemical product has been known for several
centuries, and as early as 1818 Faraday pointed out the similarity between the
effects of ether and nitrous oxide gas. Dr. Morton, a dentist, of Boston, first
applied it as an anæsthetic Oct. 16, 1846, being guided largely in its selection
and use by Dr. Jackson, an eminent chemist of the same city. On Nov. 12,
1846, U. S. Pat. No. 4,848 was issued to them for this invention. In the latter
part of December of the same year Dr. Liston, an eminent English surgeon,
performed the operation of amputating the thigh while the patient was under
the influence of ether.
Chloroform, discovered by Guthrie in 1831, was first applied as an anæsthetic
by Sir James Y. Simpson, of Edinburgh, in 1847. Of the two leading
anæsthetics, ether is more generally used in the United Sates and chloroform
in Europe. Ether is less dangerous, but its administration is more difficult and
disagreeable. It is said on the highest authority that in the Crimean War
chloroform was administered 25,000 times without a single death, and ether is
even safer than chloroform. In the hands of a skillful physician practically no
danger is to be apprehended from the use of either of the two agents. A little
over fifty years ago any severe or prolonged surgical operation involved such
irresistible pain that the patient’s writhings were required to be restrained by
powerful muscular assistants, and by straps which bound the patient to the
table, and when it is remembered that a false cut of a hundredth part of an
inch might be fatal, the haste, the disquieting influence upon the surgeon, and
the interference with the accuracy of his hand, added greatly to the percentage
of unsuccessful operations, as well as to the prolonged agony of the patient.
Contrast this with the present methods of using anæsthetics, and we find the
patient dropping into a quiet and peaceful sleep before the operation, and
awakening thereafter to find, to his astonishment, that it is all over, and that
recovery is only a question of careful nursing.
Materia Medica.—Many important contributions have been made to the
pharmacopœia in the century. In 1807 the remedy known as ergot was brought
to the notice of the profession by Dr. Stearns, and named by him pulvis
parturiens. Iodine was first used as a medicine in 1819 by Dr. Coindet, Sr., of
Geneva. Quinine was discovered by Pelletier and Caventou in 1820, although

Peruvian bark had long been used for the same purpose. Chloral hydrate,
discovered by Liebig in 1832, was applied in medicine in 1869 by Dr.
Liebreich, of Berlin. Carbolic acid was discovered in 1834 by Runge.
Artificial seidlitz powders were first put up under Savory’s British Pat. No.
3,954, of 1815. Veratrum viride, lobelia, worm seed, and chloroform were all
introduced in the first part of the century. The sulphates of morphia, strychnia,
atropia and other alkaloids are of comparatively recent addition to the
pharmacopœia, and the iodide of potash, tincture of iron, digitalis, bichloride
of mercury, sub-nitrate of bismuth, boracic acid and gallic acid, chlorate of
potash and Dover’s powders have become standard remedies within a hundred
years. In the latter part of the century the new remedies derived from coal tar
have occupied an important place. Of these may be mentioned antipyrine, by
Knorr (pat. Oct. 28, 1884), phenacetin, by Hinsberg (pat. March 26, 1889),
salol, by Von Nencki (pat. Sept. 28, 1886), sulfonal, by Bauman (patented Jan.
22, 1889), antikamnia (acetanilide), and many others, besides new and
valuable antiseptic compounds, such as salicylic acid and formalin. A
characteristic feature of the modern practice of medicine is in improved forms
of its administration. Sugar-coated pills, gelatine capsules and cod liver oil
emulsions make the remedy much less disagreeable to take, and very
ingenious and effective machines have been devised for putting up remedies
in such forms.

FIG. 174.—THE OPHTHALMOMETER.

Instruments.—Laennec’s discovery in 1819 of auscultation, and the
stethoscope, for determining internal conditions by sound, was a great step in
diagnosing diseases. The binaural stethoscope was invented by Cammann in
1854, and a later improvement is the phonendoscope, by Bianchi. The
opthalmoscope is an instrument for inspecting the interior of the eye, which
was invented by Prof. Helmholtz, and described by him in 1851. The
laryngoscope, for obtaining a view of the larynx, was said to have been
constructed by Mr. John Avery, of London, as early as 1846. The
opthalmometer, Fig. 174, is a comparatively recent invention. It is designed to
ascertain variations in corneal curvature for the correction of corneal
astigmatism. Electric lights with reflectors are arranged on each side of the
patient’s head, while the operator looks into the eye with a telescope. The
sphygmograph, a little instrument to be strapped on to the wrist to record the
action of the pulse, was first reduced to a practically useful form by Marey in
1860. A later development of these devices, by Verdin, known as the
sphygmometrograph, is shown in Fig. 175. The endoscope, for looking into
the urethra, and the cystoscope, for looking into the bladder, are other useful
instruments of the modern practitioner. Greater than them all, however, is the

modern X-ray apparatus, for locating foreign substances in the body and
making visible the bones through the flesh, for which see special chapter. The
use of the thermometer in recording the progress of fevers is also a valuable
modern application, and the list of instruments and small tools is beyond
enumeration. There are series of obstetrical appliances, instruments relating to
bone surgery, to the taking up of arteries, cupping instruments, trepanning
instruments, speculums, hypodermic syringes, electric cauteries, fracture
appliances, instruments for lithotrity, bandages for varicose veins, atomizers,
breast pumps, inhalers, nasal douches, trusses, pessaries, catheters, abdominal
supporters, and an endless variety of proprietary articles, such as electric baths
and belts, plasters, chest protectors, liver pads, and so forth, all of which are
practically the products of the Nineteenth Century. The surgeon of to-day can
straighten the eyes of a cross-eyed man, or take the bow out of his bandy legs,
can make him a new nose of his own flesh, patch his skull with a silver plate,
remove the stone from his bladder, supply him with a wind-pipe, wash out his
stomach, and perform many other operations even more difficult. Among such
more important operations may be mentioned ovariotomy, which was first
performed by Dr. Ephraim McDowell, of Danville, Kentucky, in 1809, and the
tying of the great arteries. The operation of lithotrity, for removing stone from
the bladder by crushing the stone, was introduced by Civiale, 1817-1824, who
devised successful instruments and modes of using them. In 1836 to 1840
Richard Bright, an English physician, made important researches and
discoveries in relation to the functions and diseases of the kidneys, and
established the nature of the so-called “Bright’s disease.”

FIG. 175.—VERDIN’S SPHYGMOMETROGRAPH, FOR RECORDING THE
ACTION OF THE PULSE.

Schools of Medicine.—While the regular school of medicine (called by some
“Allopathy”) has held the leading place in medicine, various other schools
have sprung up in the Nineteenth Century, all of which represent advances in
a knowledge of the laws of health, and the modes of preventing and curing
diseases. Hahnemann, in his “Organon der Rationellen Heilkunde,” in 1810,
gave homœopathy its name, and reduced it to a system. The doctrine of
similia similibus curantur (like cures like), has gained great popularity in the
latter part of the century. Hydropathy, as a school, also made its appearance in
the early part of the Nineteenth Century. Priessnitz was its first disciple, and
the Grafenberg cure, established in 1826, was a noted institution for many
years. The useful application of water in the form of baths and cold packs, has
been known for centuries, and will always be used as a valuable agency in
sickness and in health. The “Thompsonian” system of treating diseases was
covered by patents in 1813, 1823 and 1836, and attained considerable
notoriety in the early half of the century. Sweating by hot bricks and hot tea
made of “Composition Powders,” vomiting with lobelia to produce relaxation,
and a fiery liquid for cramps, called “No. 6,” were the chief remedies, and
very few boys who had once taken the treatment were ever willing afterwards
to admit that they were sick. In the latter part of the Nineteenth Century
electro-therapeutics has received a large share of attention, many forms of
medical batteries have been devised, and probably no more promising field of
study and research exists in the whole domain of medicine.
Dentistry.—George Washington had false teeth, and it is said that the teeth of
some of the mummies of Egypt had gold fillings, but it remained for the
Nineteenth Century to establish dentistry as an art, and its influence in
securing better mastication and digestion of food, more sanitary mouths and
shapely faces, cannot be estimated. Few people can be found to-day who have
not either filled teeth, bridge work, gold caps, or artificial sets of teeth. The
most important advance in the art was in the invention of the rubber plate for
holding the porcelain teeth. This was the invention of J. A. Cummings, and
was covered by him in his patent No. 43,009, June 7, 1864. In more recent
years “bridge-work” represents the most important advance. In this practice
one or more artificial teeth are firmly held in the place of missing teeth by a
strong bridge-piece of metal, which at its ends is anchored to the adjacent
natural teeth. This was first done by Bing (British Pat. No. 167, of 1871), and

was afterwards patented in somewhat different form in the United States by J.
E. Lowe, No. 238,940, March 15, 1881, No. 313,434, March 3, 1885, and
Richmond, May 22, 1883, No. 277,933. Porcelain and gold crowns and dental
pluggers run by electricity represent other important advances in this art. It is
said that there are 20,425 dentists in the United States, and that in 1899 they
employed in their practice 20,499,000 false teeth.
Artificial Limbs.—With the successful work of the surgeon came the effort to
repair, as far as possible, the loss of the limb. Until about the middle of the
Nineteenth Century the survivor of an operation was an unsymmetrical,
unique, and pitiful object. The peg-leg of Peter Stuyvesant lives in history,
and the arm-hook of Capt. Cuttle is familiar to every reader. The first United
States patent for an artificial leg was granted to B. F. Palmer, Nov. 4, 1846,
No. 4,834. Wooden legs with a restricted back and forward ankle motion and
a spring, were constructed by A. A. Marks from 1853 to 1863. On Dec. 1,
1863, a patent, No. 40,763, was granted to Mr. Marks for the use of sponge
rubber for constructing artificial feet and hands that dispensed with the
articulated joints, and made a great improvement. In patent No. 366,494, July
12, 1887, to G. E. Marks, the foot and leg portion of a wooden leg are made
from wood which grows with a crook, as at the root of a tree, where the
strength and lightness of a continuous natural grain is obtained at the instep.
About 300 patents have been granted for artificial legs and arms. Modern
improvements have extended to every detail of construction, and so perfect to-
day is the average wooden leg that it is hardly to be detected. Men with
wooden legs ride horseback, are expert users of the bicycle, and have even
performed feats on the tight rope. The inventor’s genius has not stopped at
repairing limbs, however, for artificial eyes, artificial ear drums, the
audiphone, foot extensions for short legs, crutches, braces, abdominal
supporters, and various other applications to supplement the defects of the
body have been devised.
Digestion.—The physiology of digestion had, perhaps, the first real light shed
upon it by Beaumont’s observations from 1825 to 1832. A Canadian boatman,
Alexis San Martin, was wounded in the abdomen from a charge of buckshot,
and the wound healed, leaving a permanent opening in the stomach, through
which the operation of digestion could be observed. This furnished visible
evidence of the relative digestibility of different kinds of foods, and the
general functions of the stomach. The peculiar and different conditions
governing the digestion of the starch foods, the albumenoids (such as meat

and fish), and the sugars and fats, have been clearly ascertained, and “what is
one man’s food is another man’s poison” is now susceptible of intelligent
diagnosis and effective adjustment. Of late years the stomach has been greatly
aided in its functions by prepared or predigested foods. The action of diastase,
in converting starch into grape sugar, has been taken advantage of, and cereals
treated with diatase, malted milk, lactated and peptonized foods, have proven
a boon to the enfeebled digestion, while the intelligent study of dietetics has
done much to relieve the physician and promote the health of the individual
by right living.
Bacteriology.—Although Leeuwenhoeck discovered the bacterium in 1668-
1675, up to 100 years ago disease and death were largely regarded as
dispensations of Providence, and with fatuous resignation were accepted as
inevitable. The microscope and the study of bacteriology, however, have
revealed to us the presence of minute living organisms or germs, which are
everywhere around us, infesting the air, the earth, the water, our food, our
bodies, and all organic matter in countless millions. These infinitely small
beings multiply with a rapidity and fecundity that bewilders the imagination.
Their method of multiplication is by fissiparism—that is to say, each splits
into two independent beings that separate and afterwards lead independent
lives. It is said that there is one species in which not more than six or seven
minutes are required for the division to take place. A single individual might
consequently produce more than a thousand offspring in an hour, more than a
million in two hours, and in three hours more than the number of inhabitants
on the globe. They are known as micro-organisms, of which the bacteria are
the most important. The bacteria are further divided into species, and names
are given them to distinguish the different forms. The little rod-shaped ones
are called bacilli: the spheroidal ones micrococci or cocci. If they cling
together in chains they are called streptococci; if of a spiral or corkscrew form
they are called spirallae. The curved bacilli are called “comma” bacilli, from
their resemblance to the punctuation mark of that name. The presence of
peculiar forms of these bacteria in diseases has so suggested the relation of
cause and effect as to have given rise to the so-called “germ theory” of
disease. Now we know with reasonable certainty that cholera, diphtheria,
typhoid fever, whooping cough, mumps, cerebro-spinal meningitis,
pneumonia, tuberculosis, hydrophobia, and many other diseases have each its
specific cause in the form of a microbe.

FIG.
176.

BACILLUS OF TUBERCULOSIS IN SPUTUM. BACILLUS OF DIPHTHERIA (KLEBS-
LOEFFLER).

BACILLUS OF TYPHOID FEVER.

(Photo-Micrographs, 1,000 diam., by William M. Gray, M. D.)

Henle, a German physiologist, as early as 1840, maintained the doctrine of
contagium vivum, or contagion by the transmission of living germs. Certain
classes of diseases have also long been known as zymotic, or ferment
diseases. Louis Pasteur’s work, however, marks the first definite and
important results in the study of bacteriology, and he is the father of the “germ
theory” of disease. He exploded the previously held theories of scientists
concerning the spontaneous generation of living things, and clearly
established and promulgated the knowledge of disease germs. Commencing
his great work about 1865 with the investigation of the silk worm plague in
France, he discovered it to be due to parasites, and checked it. He also gave
great attention to the subject of fermentation, proving it to be caused by

micro-organisms. Taking up the diseases of men and animals, he gave
practical value to the truths of his theory in the treatment of hydrophobia,
diphtheria, and other diseases, using the principle of vaccination to destroy or
render innocuous the toxins or disease-producing poisons derived from living
germs. Working along the same lines must be mentioned Dr. Koch, whose
success in detecting the microbes which cause consumption and cholera has
made him famous the world over. Of the great variety of these little microbes
which have been separately identified, many are innocuous, and, in fact,
subserve many important and useful purposes in nature, while others are to be
as much dreaded as the deadly cobra or the rattlesnake. A few typical
examples of the latter are given in Figs. 176 and 177, multiplied 1,000
diameters. The illustrations represented in Fig. 177 show the parasites that
cause malaria, or fever and ague. The dark bean-shaped cells are the normal
blood corpuscles, and the few speckled cells are those infested with the
malarial parasites. It is now believed that the mosquito is the active factor in
the dissemination of malaria, and it is, therefore, to be remembered that this
pestiferous little insect not only inflicts a painful and disagreeable sensation
with his puncture, but innoculates the system with poisonous malarial germs
at the same time.

TERTIAN FORM. AESTIVO-AUTUMNAL FORM.

FIG. 177.—BLOOD OF MAN. SHOWING PARASITE OF MALARIA (LAVERAN).
(Photo-Micrographs, 1,000 diam., by William M. Gray, M. D.)

FIG. 178.
TUBE CONTAINING TUBE CONTAINING
CULTURE OF BACILLI CULTURE OF COMMA
OF TUBERCULOSIS. BACILLI OF
CHOLERA.

For the study of bacteria they are propagated artificially in a test tube—i. e., a
substance called a “culture” is prepared from some organic material which,
like the substances of the human body, is favorable to their propagation. Such
culture media are found in beef blood, gelatine, beef extracts, meat broth,
milk, etc. An ordinary test-tube is supplied with some of the culture medium,
and is then sterilized over the fire to destroy all interfering germs. Material
infected with the microbe is then placed in the test-tube by a sterilized
platinum wire and the tube closed by raw cotton. It is then placed in an
incubator oven and is subjected to a gentle heat. In a little while the microbes
begin to develop and increase, forming colonies, in which they swarm by the
million, and present the clotted appearance seen in Fig. 178. The separation of
different bacteria existing in the same material, so as to isolate each species
and get what is called a “pure culture,” has been greatly promoted by Prof.
Koch’s method of plate culture. In this the propagation of bacteria is effected
upon a sterilized glass plate under a bell jar in such a thin layer as to facilitate
the segregation of species, enabling them to be counted under the microscope
and picked out and sown in another culture to get an unmixed crop of a

definite species. Such a culture so multiplies the same microbe, to the
exclusion of others, as to permit it to be easily identified and studied.
According to the practice in modern municipal health regulations, the test as
to when a child recovering from diphtheria is incapable of disseminating the
disease is by test culture. A swab of cotton is rubbed against the interior walls
of the child’s throat to secure the germs (if present), and the swab is then
placed in a “culture” in a test-tube and the tube put in an incubator. If, after
the period of incubation, no colonies of the germs develop, it is accepted as
evidence that the diphtheria germs are no longer present in the throat, and the
child is released from quarantine.
It is the presence of these specific microbes in the fluids or solids of the
system which constitutes the disease, and for the cure of the same the
intelligent physician of to-day looks less to medication, and more for some
agent that will destroy the germ, neutralize its effect, or render the body
tolerant thereto. Out of the knowledge of disease germs has grown the great
era of antiseptic surgery, inaugurated by Sir Joseph Lister, about 1865.
Carbolic acid, the bichloride of mercury, and formalin are the most efficient
weapons against the dreaded microbe. To-day every surgeon in the civilized
world sterilizes his knife, and conducts the treatment of wounds and all
operations by antiseptic methods, in accordance with a knowledge of the
deadly influence of the ubiquitous microbe, and the result has been to so
reduce the risk to life that even capital operations are no longer coupled with
the apprehensions of death. Every hospital, board of health, and organized
medical and sanitary body predicates its laws and modes of treatment upon
the principles of bacteriology.
House Sanitation.—The permanent home of the microbe is the sewer, and
sanitary plumbing, designed to exclude from the house the germ-laden and
disease-breeding gases from the sewer, constitutes one of the great advances
of the century. About 3,500 patents have been granted for water closets and
bath appliances, and about 900 patents on sewerage alone, the most of which
are directed to improved conditions of sanitation.

FIG. 179A.—STREET CONNECTIONS, MODERN SANITARY HOUSE
PLUMBING.

FIG. 179.—MODERN SANITARY HOUSE PLUMBING.
Large image (750 x 985, 145 kB).

An illustration of the plumbing and sewer connections of a modern house is
given in Figs. 179 and 179A. The sewer pipes are shown in solid black, the
unshaded pipes (in outline only) are air ventilation pipes, the single black
lines are cold water pipes, and the dotted lines hot water pipes. The important
sanitary feature in modern plumbing is to keep all sewer gas and disease
germs out of the house. For this purpose traps have long been used under the
wash basins, closet hoppers, and sinks; but the back pressure of sewer gas
would sometimes bubble through the trap into the house, and besides the
water in passing out from a basin would sometimes, by a siphon effect, pass
entirely out of the trap, leaving it unsealed. Both these results are prevented
by the air ventilation pipes which connect with the discharge side of every
trap in the house and lead to a stack extending out through the roof. This

prevents pressure of sewer gas on the water seal of the trap, destroys the
siphon action of the trap and allows a circulation of air to be taken in from the
sidewalk on the house side of the running trap and through the sewer pipe of
the house, and thence through the air vent pipes to the roof.
The great science of bacteriology, dealing with these smallest of living things,
only came into existence with the microscope, and it was a field which was
not only wholly unknown and unexplored a few years ago, but there was no
suggestion visible to the eye to direct attention to it, until the lens began to
reveal the secrets of microcosm. What development the future may bring no
one can predict, but to the biologist and the physician no more promising field
exists. Certain it is that the knowledge already gained is of incalculable
benefit, and constitutes one of the greatest eras of progress the world has
known, for with the noble army of patient, devoted, and self-sacrificing
physicians, the discoveries of the scientist, our boards of health, our hospitals
and asylums for the insane, our quarantine laws, our modern plumbing and
improved sanitation in the home and public departments, there is no reason
why the life of man should not be extended far beyond the three-score and ten
years, and the 50 per cent. of population dying in childhood saved for useful
lives and citizenship.

CHAPTER XXI.

The Bicycle and Automobile.

The Draisine, 1816—Michaux’s Bicycle, 1855—United States Patent to Lallement and
Carrol, 1866—Transition from “Vertical Fork” and “Star” to Modern “Safety”—
Pneumatic Tire—Automobile, the Prototype of the Locomotive—Trevithick’s Steam
Road Carriage, 1801—The Locomobile of To-day—Gas Engine Automobiles of Pinkus,
1839; Selden, 1879; Duryea, Winton and Others—Electric Automobiles a Development
of Electric Locomotives as Early as 1836—Grounelle’s Electric Automobile of 1852
—The Columbia, and Other Electric Carriages—Statistics.

owever superior to other animals man may be in point of intellect, it

H must be admitted that he is vastly inferior in his natural equipment for
locomotion. Quadrupeds have twice as many legs, run faster, and
stand more firmly. Birds have their two legs supplemented with wings
that give a wonderfully increased speed in flight, and fish, with no
legs at all, run races with the fastest steamers; but man has awkwardly toddled
on two stilted supports since prehistoric time, and for the first year of his life
is unable to walk at all. That he has felt his inferiority is clear, for his
imagination has given wings to the angels, and has depicted Mercury, the
messenger of the gods, with a similar equipment on his heels. We see the
ambition for speed exemplified even in the baby, who crows in exhilaration at
rapid movement, and in the boy when the ride on the flying horses, the glide
on the ice, or the swift descent on the toboggan slide, brings a flash to his eye
and a glow to his cheeks.
A characteristic trend of the present age is toward increased speed in
everything, and the most conspicuous example of accelerated speed in late
years is the bicycle. It has, with its fascination of silent motion and the
exhilaration of flight, driven the younger generation wild with enthusiasm,
has limbered up the muscles of old age, has revolutionized the attire of men
and women, and well-nigh supplanted the old-fashioned use of legs. It is the
most unique and ubiquitous piece of organized machinery ever made. The
thoroughfares and highways of civilization fairly swarm with thousands of

glistening and silently gliding wheels. It is to be found everywhere, even to
the steppes of Asia, the plains of Australia, and the ice fields of the Arctic.
The true definition of the bicycle is a two-wheeled vehicle, with one wheel in
front and the other in the rear, and both in the same vertical plane. Its life
principle is the physical law that a rotating body tends to preserve its plane of
rotation, and so it stands up, when it moves, on the same principle that a top
does when it spins or a child’s hoop remains erect when it rolls.

FIG. 180.—THE DRAISINE, 1816.

A form of carriage adapted to be propelled by the muscular effort of the rider
was constructed and exhibited in Paris by Blanchard and Magurier, and was
described in the Journal de Paris as early as July 27, 1779, but the true
bicycle was the product of the Nineteenth Century. It was invented by Baron
von Drais, of Manheim-on-the Rhine. See Fig. 180. It consisted of two
wheels, one before the other, in the same plane, and connected together by a
bar bearing a saddle, the front wheel being arranged to turn about a vertical
axis and provided with a handle for guiding. The rider supported his elbows
on an arm rest and propelled the device by striking his toes upon the ground,
and in this way thrusted himself along, while guiding his course by the handle

bar and swivelling front wheel. This machine was called the “Draisine.” It
was patented in France for the Baron by Louis Joseph Dineur, and was
exhibited in Paris in 1816. In 1818 Denis Johnson secured an English patent
for an improved form of this device, but the principle of propulsion remained
the same. This device, variously known as the “Draisine,” “vélocipède,”
“célérifère,” “pedestrian curricle,” “dandy horse,” and “hobby-horse,” was
introduced in New York in 1819, and was greeted for a time with great
enthusiasm in that and other cities.

FIG. 181.—VELOCIPEDE OF 1868.

On June 26, 1819, William K. Clarkson was granted a United States patent for
a vélocipède, but the records were destroyed in the fire of 1836. In 1821 Louis
Gompertz devised an improved form of “hobby-horse,” in which a vibrating
handle, with segmental rack engaging with a pinion on the front wheel axle,
enabled the hands to be employed as well as the feet in propelling the
machine. Such devices all relied, however, upon the striking of the ground
with the toes. Their fame was evanescent, however, and for forty years
thereafter little or no attention was paid to this means of locomotion, except in
the construction of children’s carriages and velocipedes having three or more
wheels.

In 1855 Ernst Michaux, a French locksmith, applied, for the first time, the
foot cranks and pedals to the axle of the drive wheel. A United States patent,
No. 59,915, taken Nov. 20, 1866, in the joint names of Lallement and Carrol,
represented, however, the revival of development in this field. Lallement was
a Frenchman, and built a machine having the pedals on the axle of the drive
wheel, and it was at one time believed that it was he who deserved the credit
for this feature, but it is claimed for Michaux, and the monument erected by
the French in 1894 to Ernest and Pierre Michaux at Bar le Duc gives strength
to the claim. The bicycle, as represented at this stage of development, is
shown in Fig. 181. In 1868-’69 machines of this type went extensively into
use. Bicycle schools and riding academies appeared all through the East, and
notwithstanding the excessive muscular effort required to propel the heavy
and clumsy wooden wheels, the old “bone-shaker” was received with a furor
of enthusiasm.

FIG. 182.—VERTICAL FORK OF 1879.

In 1869 Magee, in Paris, made the entire bicycle of iron and steel, solid rubber
tires and brakes followed, and the front wheel began to grow to larger size,
until in 1879 the bicycle presented the form shown in Fig. 182. This placed
the weight of the rider more directly over the drive wheel, and was known as
the “vertical fork.” It gave good results but for the accidents from “headers,”
to which it was especially liable. Means to overcome the danger were resorted

to, and the “Star” bicycle represented such a construction. In this the high
wheel was behind and the small one in front, and straps and ratchet wheels
connected the pedals to the axle. In 1877 Rousseau, of Marseilles, removed
the pedals from the wheel axle and applied the power to the axle by a chain
extending from a sprocket wheel on the pedal shaft to a sprocket wheel on the
wheel axle. By gradual steps, initiated in Starley’s “Rover” in 1880, (see Fig.
183), the high front wheel was reduced in size, until the proportions of the
modern “Safety” (Fig. 184) have been obtained. Strange to say, these
proportions have, through nearly a century of evolution, gone back to those
employed in the old “Draisine,” where the two wheels were of the same size.
The modern “Safety,” however, is quite a different machine. Its diamond
frame of light but strong tubular steel, its ball bearings, its suspension wheels
and pneumatic tires impart to the modern bicycle strength with lightness, and
beauty with efficiency, to a degree scarcely attained by any other piece of
organized machinery designed for such trying work.

FIG. 183.—“ROVER,” 1880.

FIG. 184.—MODERN “SAFETY.”

The most important of all modern improvements on the bicycle was perhaps
the pneumatic tire. This was not originally designed for the bicycle, but was
patented in England by R. W. Thompson in 1845 and in the United States May
8, 1847, No. 5,104. Its application to the bicycle was made in 1889 by
Dunlop, United States patent No. 435,995, Sept. 9, 1890, and 453,550, June 2,
1891. It furnishes not only an elastic bearing which cushions the jar, but also
makes a broader tread that renders cycling on the soft roads of the country at
once practical and delightful. The chainless wheel, which connects the axle of
the pedal crank with the axle of the rear wheel by a shaft with bevel gears, is
the most recent form exploited by the manufacturers, but it is doubtful
whether it presents any points of superiority over the chain type. All of the
parts of the bicycle have come in for a share of attention at the hands of
inventors, differential speed gears and brakes having received especial
attention. The Morrow hub brake, which applies friction to the rear wheel hub
by back pressure on the pedal, is a popular modern form. The first back-pedal
brake is shown in United States Pat. No. 418,142, to Stover & Hance, Dec.
24, 1889.
Among the many modifications of the bicycle as used to-day may be
mentioned the drop frame, which has made cycling possible for ladies, the
tandem, for two riders, the sextet or octet, carrying six or eight riders and
resembling a centipede in movement and an express train in speed: the ice
velocipede, in which two runners are combined with a spiked driving wheel,

and the hydrocycle, or water velocipede, in which the drive wheel, formed
with paddles, is used to propel a buoyant hull through the water.
In point of speed there seems to be no limit to the bicycle. In a test made on
the Long Island Railroad in the summer of 1899 between a wheel and an
express train, the bicyclist, riding on a plank road between the rails and
protected behind the train by a wind break, covered a mile in 574⁄5 seconds,
and while going at top speed of more than a mile a minute, overtook the train,
was caught by his friends on a rear platform and pulled on board, bicycle and
all. This is the first instance on record of overtaking and boarding an express
train going at the rate of sixty-four miles an hour, and yet it is said that the
rider (Murphy) was not doing his best.
Nearly 5,000 patents have been granted on velocipedes and bicycles. Most of
them were for bicycles which, as improved to-day, are not only as fleet as the
birds, but almost as countless in numbers. It is estimated that in 1889 the total
product of bicycles in this country reached 200,000 machines annually. In
1892, after the general adoption of the pneumatic tire, a great increase
followed, which has grown from year to year until in the year 1899 a
conservative estimate for the output in the United States is 1,000,000 wheels
annually, worth from thirty to fifty million dollars. Each bicycle tire takes
about two pounds of pure rubber, or four pounds to the wheel. The annual
output in wheels consequently consumes about 4,000,000 pounds, or 2,000
tons of rubber. Ten years ago there were not more than twenty-five legitimate
manufacturers of bicycles in the United States. In 1897 there were over 200
concerns in the business. It is estimated that there are to-day between 150 and
155 regular manufacturers, exclusive of the mere assemblers of parts. The
Pope Manufacturing Company, which occupies the leading place, employed
in 1888 about 500 hands. To-day their shops give employment to 3,800
workmen, which furnishes a significant object lesson as to the importance and
growth of the industry.
The Automobile.—Gliding silently along our city streets without the
customary accompaniment of the clatter of the horse’s hoofs, the automobile
suggests to the average observer a very recent invention. This is, however, not
the case. The automobile is older even than the locomotive, and is, in fact, the
early model from which the rail locomotive was evolved. As early as 1680 Sir
Isaac Newton proposed a steam carriage in which the propelling power was
the reactionary discharge of a rearwardly directed jet of steam. Cugnot, in

1769, built a steam carriage, which is still preserved in the museum of the
Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris. Hornblower also in the same year
devised a steam carriage. Watt’s patents of 1769 and 1784 contemplated the
application of his steam engines to carriages running on land. Symington in
1770, and Murdoch in 1784, built experimental models. In 1787 Oliver Evans
obtained a patent in Maryland for the exclusive right to make steam road
wagons. Nathan Read in 1790 also patented and built a steam carriage.
Of these, Cugnot represents the pioneer in the heavier forms of self-propelled
vehicles, but the steam carriage which best deserves to be regarded as the
prototype of the modern passenger automobile is that of Trevithick, in
England, who may also be considered as the father of the locomotive. On
Christmas eve, 1801, this steam carriage made its experimental trip along the
high road carrying seven or eight passengers. The next day the party, with
Trevithick in charge of the engine, visited Tehidy House, the home of Lord
Dunstanville. They met with an accident, however, and the carriage turned
over. It was placed under shelter, and while the party were at the hotel
regaling themselves with roast goose and popular drinks, the water in the
engine boiled away, the iron became red hot, and nothing combustible was left
either of the carriage or the building in which it was sheltered. On March 24,
1802, Trevithick and Vivian obtained a British patent, No. 2,599, on this
device, and another carriage was built, and in the spring of 1803 started a run
from Camborne to Redruth, but it stuck in the mud. It was popularly known as
Capt. Trevithick’s “Puffing Devil.” It was subsequently reconstructed in
London and run upon the streets of that city. Fig. 185 presents an illustration
of the first steam automobile. The cylinders and pistons were enclosed within
the fire box in the rear. Clutches (called striking boxes) on the axle of the front
gear wheel allowed either running wheel to move independently of the other
in turning. A pair of small front steering wheels was arranged to turn about a
vertical axis and was manipulated by a handle bar. A brake was provided for
in the specification, as were also variable gears for changing speed, and an
automatic blower for the fire. The carriage had an elevated coach body
mounted on springs, and the running wheels were of large size, adapted to the
higher speed and lighter uses of passenger traffic.

FIG. 185.—TREVITHICK’S STEAM CARRIAGE, 1801.

It is not possible to trace the succeeding steps in steam carriage development
by James and Anderson, by Gurney, in 1822, by Marcerone and Squire in
1833, by Russel in 1846, and many others; it is sufficient to know that bad
roads and the success attending the steam locomotive on rails diverted
attention from the steam road carriage, and not until the latter part of the
Nineteenth Century was there any marked revival of interest in this field.
Then came first the ponderous road engine, known as a traction engine, and
used for heavy hauling; and this in the last decade has been followed by the
modern steam motor carriage, an example of which is seen in Figs. 186 and
186A, which represent the “Locomobile” and its actuating mechanism. The
fuel used is gasoline, stored in a three-gallon tank under the footboard. The
boiler, which is arranged under the seat, is a vertical cylinder wrapped with
piano wire for greater tensile strength, and contains 298 copper tubes. The
engine, which is seen in Fig. 186A, is arranged in upright position under the
seat, in front of the boiler, has two cylinders, 21⁄2-inch diameter and 4-inch
stroke, a Stephenson link-motion and an ordinary D-valve. Sprocket wheels
and a chain connect the engine shaft to the rear axle. The engine runs from
300 to 400 revolutions per minute and develops from four to five horse power.
It has a muffle for the steam exhaust and the whole weight is 550 pounds. It is
one of the lightest and cheapest of automobiles, runs easily at ten to twelve
miles an hour, and is an efficient hill-climber. Although naming the steam
automobile first because of its earlier genesis, it is not to be understood as

representing at present the most popular type of motor carriage, although it
bids fair to become so.

FIG. 186.—“LOCOMOBILE” STEAM CARRIAGE.

FIG. 186A.—THE FOUR HORSE POWER ENGINES OF
“LOCOMOBILE.”

In France and the continent of Europe the type employing an explosive
mixture of gasoline and air is most frequently found, and in England and the
United States the electric motor with the storage battery is chiefly used.
In automobiles of the explosive gas type probably the earliest example is
found in the British patent to Pinkus, No. 8,207, of 1839. In France Lenoir, in
1860, is credited with being the pioneer. Among modern applications the
patent to George B. Selden, No. 549,160, occupies a prominent place. This
was only granted Nov. 5, 1895, but the application for the patent was filed in
the Patent Office May 8, 1879 so that the invention described has quite an

early date, and some broad claims have been allowed to the inventor. In the
last decade many applications of the explosive gas engine to road carriages
and tricycles have been made, especially in France. Representative motor
carriages of this type are to be found in the United States in the Duryea and
the Winton. An illustration of the latter is given in Fig. 187. The form shown
represents a phaeton weighing 1,400 pounds; the motor is of the single
hydrocarbon type, and is simple, powerful and compact. It is also free from
noise and vibration, and is under control at all times. The maximum speed is
eighteen miles an hour.

FIG. 187.—WINTON AUTOMOBILE. HYDROCARBON TYPE.

Probably the most popular type of the automobile in the United States is the
“electric.” The application of the electric motor to the propulsion of vehicles
dates back to quite an early period. It is said that as far back as 1835 Stratingh
and Becker, of Groeningen, and in 1836 Botto, of Turin, constructed crude
electric carriages. Davenport, in 1835, Davidson, in 1838, and Dr. Page, in
1851, built electric locomotives which ran on rails. The prototype of the
electric automobile, however, is best represented in the French patent to M.

Grounelle, No. 7,728, Feb. 7, 1852 (2 Ser., Vol. 25, p. 220, pl. 46.) This shows
a perfectly equipped electric automobile. It did not have a practical electric
generator, however, for the storage battery was not then known. A large
sulphate of copper battery was employed, which could through the agency of
a train of gears give only a very slow speed. This road carriage, however, only
needed a storage battery to make it a well organized and efficient electric
automobile. It is believed by many that electricity fulfills more of the
necessary conditions of a successful motive power for motor carriages than
any other power. It is clean, compact, noiseless, free from vibration, heat, dirt
and gases, and is under perfect control. Its chief objection is that it is only
possible to recharge it where electric power is available, and in this respect it
is inferior to the gasoline motor, whose supply may be conveniently obtained
at every city, village, and country store. The Columbia two-seated Dos-a-Dos
(Fig. 188), Woods’ Victoria Hansom Cab, and the Riker Electric Delivery
Wagon are representative types of the modern electric automobile.

FIG. 188.—THE COLUMBIA “DOS-A-DOS.”

All of the motor carriages illustrated are of American make, and for lightness,
grace, and efficiency they have no superiors. A peculiar and recent type which
attracted much attention and took the gold medal at the Motor Carriage
Exposition at Berlin, held in September, 1899, is the Pieper double motor
carriage. It has both a benzine motor and an electric motor, which can be

worked separately or together, and yet is said to be lighter than most electric
carriages. On a long journey, remote from electrical supply, the benzine motor
is used not only to propel the carriage, but by running the electric motor as a
dynamo or generator, recharges the storage battery. On level, easy roads,
where the power required falls below the maximum power exerted by the
benzine motor, the electric motor changes automatically to a dynamo and the
surplus force of the benzine motor is converted into current and stored. In
running down hill or stopping the carriage, the momentum of the vehicle is
also received by the electric motor acting as a dynamo and brake, and is
stored as electricity in the battery, which is thus in an ordinary journey kept
constantly charged.
It is not probable that man will ever be able to get along without the horse, but
the release of the noble animal from the bondage of city traffic, which was
begun only a few years ago with mechanical street car propulsion, promises
now to be extensively advanced by the substitution of the motor carriage and
the auto-truck for team-drawn vehicles. The rapidity with which this industry
has grown, and its promise for the future may be realized when it is
remembered that so far as practical results are concerned it has all grown up in
the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, and yet to-day it is said that there
are already in the United States about 200 incorporated concerns with an
aggregate capitalization of some $500,000,000, organized to build
automobiles, to say nothing of the vast number of individuals who are
experimenting in this field. The greatest activity, however, is to be found in
France, which claims over 600 manufacturers and has in use 6,000
automobiles out of a total of 11,000 in all of Europe.
The most significant suggestion for the future of the automobile is that the
cost of maintenance and all things considered, it is in some applications
cheaper than the horse-drawn vehicles of the same efficiency. In a consular
report of Oct. 16, 1899, forwarded to the State Department by Mr. Marshal
Halsted, consul at Birmingham, Mr. E. H. Bayley, an English authority, is
quoted as saying that in operating heavy motor vehicles for hauling, the cost
is three half-pence (three cents) per net ton per mile, as compared with 18 to
24 cents per net ton per mile by horse-drawn vehicles. In England much
attention is being given to this subject.
As before stated, the modern automobile cannot be considered as a new
invention so far as fundamental principles are concerned. Its success, in late

years, is to be credited to the perfection of the arts in general, and as essential
factors contributing to this may be named the refinement of steel, giving
increased strength with lightness, the increased efficiency of motive power,
the vulcanization of rubber, the mathematical nicety of mechanical
adjustment, the reduction of friction by ball bearings, the wonderful
developments in electricity and improvement in roads.

CHAPTER XXII.

The Phonograph.

Invention of Phonograph by Edison—Scott’s Phonautograph—Improvements of Bell
and Tainter—The Graphophone—Library of Wax Cylinders—The Gramophone.

ollowing closely upon the discovery of the telephone the phonograph

F came, literally speaking for itself, and adding another surprise to the
wonderful inventions of that prolific period. It was in the latter part of
1877 that Thomas A. Edison showed to a few privileged friends a
modest looking little machine. He turned the crank, and to the
astonishment of those present it said. “Good morning! How do you do? How
do you like the phonograph?” Its voice was a little metallic, it is true, but here
was presented an insignificant looking piece of mechanism which was
undeniably a talking machine and one with an unlimited vocabulary. So-called
talking machines had been made before, of which the Faber machine was a
type. These, by an arrangement of bellows to furnish air, and flexible pipes in
imitation of the larynx and vocal organs, made laborious and wheezy efforts
to imitate the mechanical functions of the throat and tongue in articulate
speech, but the method was fundamentally faulty and no success was attained.
Edison followed no such leading. His phonograph made no attempt at
imitating in construction the complex organization of the human throat, but
was as wonderful in its divergence therefrom and in its simplicity as it was in
the success of its results. The machine was patented by him Feb. 19, 1878,
No. 200,521, and its life principle is simply and clearly defined in the first
claim of the patent, as follows:
“The method herein specified of reproducing the human voice, or other sounds, by causing
the sound vibrations to be recorded substantially as specified, and obtaining motion from that
record as set forth for the reproduction of sound vibrations.”

The invention was a striking and interesting novelty and at once attracted the
attention of scientific men as well as the general public. Its first public

exhibition was about the latter part of January, 1878, before the Polytechnic
Association of the American Institute, at New York. It spoke English, French,
German, Dutch, Spanish and Hebrew with equal facility. It imitated the
barking of a dog and crowing of a cock, and then catching cold, coughed and
sneezed and wheezed until it is said a physician in the audience proposed
sending a prescription for it. It was also suggested by an irreverent man that it
might take the place of preachers in the rendition of sermons, while another
thought that as it reproduced music with equal facility it might take the place
of preacher and choir both. In the spring of 1878 it was exhibited at
Washington by Edison and his assistant, Mr. Batchelor. Mr. Edison was the
guest of Mr. U. H. Painter, and in his parlors it was shown to a party of
gentlemen.
From Mr. Painter’s house the machine was taken to the office of the Assistant
Secretary of the Interior, thence to the Academy of Sciences, in session at the
Smithsonian Institution, and at night it was taken to the White House and
exhibited to President and Mrs. Hayes.

FIG. 189.—FIRST PHONOGRAPH.

The form of the first phonograph is shown in Fig. 189. It consisted of three
principal parts—the mouthpiece A, into which speech was uttered, the spirally
grooved cylinder B, carrying on its periphery a sheet of tin foil, and a second
mouthpiece D. The cylinder B and its axial shaft were both provided with
spiral grooves or screw threads of exactly the same pitch, and when the shaft
was turned by its crank its screw threaded bearings caused the cylinder to
slowly advance as it rotated. The mouthpiece A had adjacent to the cylinder a
flexible diaphragm carrying a little point or stylus which bore against the tin
foil on the cylinder. When the mouthpiece A was spoken into and the cylinder
B was turned, the little stylus, vibrating from the voice impulses, traced by
indentations a little jagged path in the tin foil that formed the record. To
reproduce the record in speech again, the mouthpiece A was adjusted away
from the cylinder, the cylinder run back to the starting point, and mouthpiece
D was then brought up to the cylinder. This mouthpiece had a diaphragm and
stylus similar to the other one, only more delicately constructed. This stylus
was adjusted to bear lightly in the little spiral path in the tin foil traced by the
other stylus, and as the tin foil revolved with the cylinder its jagged
irregularities set up the same vibrations in the diaphragm of mouthpiece D as
those caused by the voice on the other diaphragm, and thus translated the
record into sounds of articulate speech, exactly corresponding to the words
first spoken into the instrument. In Fig. 190 is shown a further development of
the phonograph, in which a single mouthpiece with diaphragm and stylus
serves the purpose both of recorder for making the record and a speaker for
reproducing it, a trumpet or horn being used, as indicated in dotted lines, to
concentrate the vibrations in recording and to augment the sound in
reproducing.

FIG. 190.—SECOND FORM OF PHONOGRAPH.

The phonograph is in reality a development of the phonautograph, which was
an instrument invented by Leon Scott in 1857 to automatically record sounds
by diagrams. There is a model of Scott’s phonautograph in the National
Museum at Washington, D. C, and it consists of a chamber to catch the sound
waves and an elastic diaphragm with stylus working on a revolving cylinder
bearing a sheet of paper coated with lampblack. The phonograph’s record-
making mouthpiece, with its diaphragm and stylus, is substantially a
phonautograph, but instead of simply causing the stylus to trace a record on
carbon-coated paper and stopping with this result, Edison traced a record in a
substance—tinfoil—which was capable of mechanically translating that
record into sound again by a mere reversal of the function of the stylus and
diaphragm. This was the very essence of simplicity and logical reasoning. All
records had been heretofore traced for visual inspection only. Edison’s record
was not for visual inspection, but was endowed with the mechanical function
of reproducing sound.
From the first Edison believed that his phonograph was to fill an important
place in the business activities of the world, since here seemed a silent but
faithful stenographer which reproduced the words of the speaker with absolute