THE PROGRESS
OF
Innovation
IN THE
19th Century

BY
EDWARD W. BYRN, A.M.

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

[i]

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[ii] 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.

[iii]

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.[iv]

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.[v]

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.[vi]

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.[vii]

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.[viii]

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.

[3]

Standing on the threshold of the Twentieth Century, and looking back a 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[4] 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[5] 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[6] 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.

[7]

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.

[8]

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.

[9]

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.

[10]

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[11] 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.

[12]

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.

[13]

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.

[14]

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.

[15]

In the effort to lengthen out the limited span of life into a greater record of 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[16] 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.

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.

The second element of the telegraph—the conducting wire—was scarcely an invention in itself, and the fact that electricity would[17] 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[18] 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.

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.

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[19] 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.

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[20] Baltimore to Washington, and on May 24, 1844, the notable message, “What Hath God wrought?” went over the wires.

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.

[21]

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.

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[22] 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.

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.

[23]

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[24] 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).

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[25] 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.

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[26] 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.

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 will[27] aid the understanding 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[28] 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:

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.

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,[29] 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.

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[30] 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[31] 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.

[32]

Among the applications of the telegraph which deserve special mention 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[33] 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.

On August 16, 1858, the first message came over from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan of the United States, as follows:

to which the President replied as follows:

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:

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[36] 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.”

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[37] 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.

[38]

In the last thirty-five years of the Nineteenth Century there has grown up 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[39] 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.

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[40] 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.

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[41] 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[42] 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.

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[43] 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.

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[44] 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.

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.[45] 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.

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.

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,[46] 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[47] 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.

[48]

Although the electric motor of to-day depends for practical value 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.

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[49] 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.

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[50] 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.

“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.”

[51]

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.

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.

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[52]
[53] 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[54] 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[55] 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,[56] 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.

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.

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[57] 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.

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[58]
[59] 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[60] 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.

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.

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[61] 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:

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[62] 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.

[63]

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

[64]

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.

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,[65] 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.

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.

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[66] 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.

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:

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 a vacuum. Mr. King acted as agent for an American inventor, Mr. Starr, and the lamp[67] came to be known as the Starr-King 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[68] cellulose. This, when sealed in a vacuum, would not burn away, but would give the proper incandescence, and by its small transverse dimension and[69] 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[70]
[71] 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.

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.

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[72] 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[73] 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[74] 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[75] 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.

[76]

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

[77]

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.”

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),[78] 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[79] little strip against d (the hammer G) once more. In this way each sound wave effects an opening and closing of the current.”

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[80] 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[81] 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.

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[82] 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.

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[83] patent, No. 474,230, did not issue until May 3, 1892, on account of the interference with Berliner on the broader principle.

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[84] 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 pri[85]mary 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.

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.

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[86] 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[87] 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.

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A prominent factor in the electrical art is the Storage Battery, Secondary 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[89] 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).

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[90] 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.

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[91] 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.

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[92] 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.

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.

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[93] 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.

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.[94]
[95] 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.

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,[96] 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.

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,[97] 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 battery is a well-known and useful adjunct to the physician’s outfit. Electric baths are also common and effective modes of 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,[98] 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.[99] 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.

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.

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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[101] 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.

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[102] 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.

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.[103] 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.

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[104] 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.

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.

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[105] 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.

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[106] 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[107] 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.

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 over a graduated scale.[108] The coiled pipe C is in the nature of a flattened tube, as shown in the enlarged cross section, and 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[109] injected into the boiler, and the furnace is relieved of that much work.

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[110] 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.

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.

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[111] 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[112] 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[113] 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.

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,[114] 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.

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.

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,[115] 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[116] 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:

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.

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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.

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

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[119] 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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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[122] employed in most engines. Hackworth also improved the steam blast, put on the bell, and greatly simplified and modernized the appearance of the locomotive.

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[123] 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.

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.

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.

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,[124] 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.

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[125] 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:

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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.

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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[128] 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 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.

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.

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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[130] 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[131] 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[132] 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.

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The application of steam for the propulsion of boats engaged the 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[134] 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.

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.

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.

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[135] 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[136] 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.

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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.

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.[138] 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.

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.

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 57[139]
[140]¹⁄₂ 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.

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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.

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.[143]
[144] The engines and paddle wheels of the “Adirondack” are distinctly representative of the modern American side wheel steamer.

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.”

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[145] 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[146] 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[147] 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.”

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,[148] 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.

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.

No patriotic American citizen would expect to read an account of modern war vessels without finding special mention of those two splendid[149]
[150] 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.

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[151] 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.

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[152] 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.

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[153] 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.

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

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[155]
[156] 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.

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.”

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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[158]
[159] 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.

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.

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,[160] 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.

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[161] 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[162] 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[163]
[164] 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.

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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.

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[166] 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[167] 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[168] 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[169] 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.

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.

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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.

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Occupying an intermediate place between the old-fashioned scribe and 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[172], 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.

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[173] 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.

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[174] 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.

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 let[175]ter. 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.

Up to the year 1868, however, typewriting machines were mere illustrations of sporadic genius occuring here and there as the pet hobby of some[176] 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.[177] 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.

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.

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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.

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[179] 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[180] 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.

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[181] 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.

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[182] 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.

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

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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[185] operating on the opposite side of the cloth from the needle to form a lock stitch, and an automatic feed.

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[186] 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.

[187]

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.

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 ma[188]chine. 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:

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[189] 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[190] 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.

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[191] 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.

Many striking applications of the sewing machine to various kinds of work have been made. A recent one is the automatic power carpet sewing[192] 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[193] 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[194] 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.

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In the harvest scenes upon the tombs of ancient Thebes the thirsty reaper is 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[196] 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[197] 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.

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.

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.[198] 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[199] 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.

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[200] 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[201] 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.

In the development of the reaper one of the first deficiencies to be supplied was automatic mechanism for taking the grain from the platform.[202] 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[203] 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.

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[204] 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[205] 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.

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):

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[206] 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.

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[207] 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.