



Produced by Dave Morgan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




[Illustration: MARCONI READING A MESSAGE]





STORIES OF INVENTORS


The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers.
True Incidents And Personal Experiences

By


RUSSELL DOUBLEDAY



1904




ACKNOWLEDGMENT


The author and publishers take pleasure in acknowledging the courtesy of

  _The Scientific American_
  _The Booklovers Magazine_
  _The Holiday Magazine_, and
  Messrs. Wood & Nathan Company

for the use of a number of illustrations in this book.

From _The Scientific American_, illustrations facing pages 16, 48,
78, 80, 88, 94, 118, 126, 142, and 162.

From _The Booklovers Magazine_, illustrations facing pages 184, 190,
194, and 196.

From _The Holiday Magazine_, illustrations facing pages 100 and 110.




CONTENTS


  How Guglielmo Marconi Telegraphs Without Wires
  Santos-Dumont and His Air-Ship
  How a Fast Train Is Run
  How Automobiles Work
  The Fastest Steamboats
  The Life-Savers and Their Apparatus
  Moving Pictures--Some Strange Subjects and How They Were Taken
  Bridge Builders and Some of Their Achievements
  Submarines in War and Peace
  Long-Distance Telephony--What Happens When You Talk into a
    Telephone Receiver
  A Machine That Thinks--A Type-Setting Machine That Makes
    Mathematical Calculations
  How Heat Produces Cold--Artificial Ice-Making




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  Marconi Reading a Message      _Frontispiece_

  Marconi Station at Wellfleet, Massachusetts
  The Wireless Telegraph Station at Glace Bay
  Santos-Dumont Preparing for a Flight
  Rounding the Eiffel Tower
  The Motor and Basket of "Santos-Dumont No. 9"
  Firing a Fast Locomotive
  Track Tank
  Railroad Semaphore Signals
  Thirty Years' Advance in Locomotive Building
  The "Lighthouse" of the Rail
  A Giant Automobile Mower-Thrasher
  An Automobile Buckboard
  An Automobile Plow
  The _Velox_, of the British Navy
  The Engines of the _Arrow_
  A Life-Saving Crew Drilling
  Life-Savers at Work
  Biograph Pictures of a Military Hazing
  Developing Moving-Picture Films
  Building an American Bridge in Burmah
  Viaduct Across Canyon Diablo
  Beginning an American Bridge in Mid-Africa
  Lake's Submarine Torpedo-Boat _Protector_
  Speeding at the Rate of 102 Miles an Hour
  Singing Into the Telephone
  "Central" Telephone Operators at Work
  Central Making Connections
  The Back of a Telephone Switchboard
  A Few Telephone Trunk Wires
  The Lanston Type-Setter Keyboard
  Where the "Brains" are Located
  The Type Moulds and the Work They Produce




INTRODUCTION


There are many thrilling incidents--all the more attractive because of
their truth--in the study, the trials, the disappointments, the
obstacles overcome, and the final triumph of the successful inventor.

Every great invention, afterward marvelled at, was first derided. Each
great inventor, after solving problems in mechanics or chemistry, had to
face the jeers of the incredulous.

The story of James Watt's sensations when the driving-wheels of his
first rude engine began to revolve will never be told; the visions of
Robert Fulton, when he puffed up the Hudson, of the fleets of vessels
that would follow the faint track of his little vessel, can never be put
in print.

It is the purpose of this book to give, in a measure, the adventurous
side of invention. The trials and dangers of the builders of the
submarine; the triumphant thrill of