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  INVENTORS


  MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT SERIES


  TRAVELLERS AND EXPLORERS. By
  General A.W. GREELY, U.S.A.

  STATESMEN. By NOAH BROOKS.

  MEN OF BUSINESS. By W.O. STODDARD.

  INVENTORS. By P.G. HUBERT, Jr.

[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.]




  MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT




  INVENTORS


  BY
  PHILIP G. HUBERT, JR.

  NEW YORK
  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
  1896


  COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY
  CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS


  Press of J.J. Little & Co.
  Astor Place, New York




PREFACE


This book, dealing with our great inventors, their origins, hopes, aims,
principles, disappointments, trials, and triumphs, their daily life and
personal character, presents just enough concerning their inventions to
make the story intelligible. The history is often a painful one. When
poor Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber, was one day asked what
he wanted to make of his boys, he is said to have replied: "Make them
anything but inventors; mankind has nothing but cuffs and kicks for
those who try to do it a service."

Meanwhile, the value of the work done by great inventors is widely
acknowledged. In a remarkable sketch of the history of civilization,
Professor Huxley remarked, in 1887, that the wonderful increase of
industrial production by the application of machinery, the improvement
of old technical processes and the invention of new ones, constitutes
the most salient feature of the world's progress during the last fifty
years. If this was true a few years ago, its truth is still more
apparent to-day. It is safe to say that within fifty years power, light,
and heat will cost half, perhaps one-tenth, of what they do now; and
this virtually means that in 1943 mankind will be able to buy decent
food, shelter, and clothing for half or one-tenth of the labor now
required. Steam is said to have reduced the working hours of man in the
civilized world from fourteen to ten a day. Electricity will mark the
next giant step in advance.

With the many and superb tools now at our service, of which our fathers
knew comparatively nothing--steam, electricity, the telegraph,
telephone, phonograph, and the camera--we and our descendants ought to
accomplish even greater wonders than these. As invention thus rises in
the scale of importance to humanity, the history of the pioneers and, to
the shame of mankind be it said, the martyrs of the art, becomes of
intense interest. In the annals of hero-worship the inventor of the
perfecting press ought to stand before the great general, and Elias Howe
should rank before Napoleon. Whitney, Howe, Morse, and Goodyear, to
mention but a few of our Americans, contributed thousands of millions of
dollars to the nation's wealth and received comparatively nothing in
return. Their history suggests as pertinent the inquiry whether our
patent laws do not need a radical change. The burden and cost of proving
that an invention deserves no protection ought to fall upon whoever
infringes a patent granted by the Government. At present it is all the
other way.

  P.G.H., JR.

  NEW YORK, September, 1893.




CONTENTS


                                                              PAGE

     I. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN,                                       9

    II. ROBERT FULTON,                                          45

   III. ELI WHITNEY,                                            69

    IV. ELIAS HOWE,                                             99

     V. SAMUEL F.B. MORSE,                                     111

    VI. CHARLES GOODYEAR,                                      155

   VII. JOHN ERICSSON,                                         178

  VIII. CYRUS HALL MCCORMICK,                                  207

    IX. THOMAS A. EDISON,                                      223

     X. ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL,                                 264

    XI. AMERICAN INVENTORS, PAST AND PRESENT,                  270