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PREFATORY NOTE
PREFATORY NOTE
This volume is not intended to be a complete record of inventive genius and mechanical progress in the United States. A bare catalogue of notable American inventions in the nineteenth century alone could not be compressed into these pages. Nor is it any part of the purpose of this book to trespass on the ground of the many mechanical works and encyclopedias which give technical descriptions and explain in detail the principle of every invention. All this book seeks to do is to outline the person
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CHAPTER I. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND HIS TIMES
CHAPTER I. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND HIS TIMES
On Milk Street, in Boston, opposite the Old South Church, lived Josiah Franklin, a maker of soap and candles. He had come to Boston with his wife about the year 1682 from the parish of Ecton, Northamptonshire, England, where his family had lived on a small freehold for about three hundred years. His English wife had died, leaving him seven children, and he had married a colonial girl, Abiah Folger, whose father, Peter Folger, was a man of some note in early Massachusetts. Josiah Franklin was fif
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CHAPTER II. ELI WHITNEY AND THE COTTON GIN
CHAPTER II. ELI WHITNEY AND THE COTTON GIN
The cotton industry is one of the most ancient. One or more of the many species of the cotton plant is indigenous to four continents, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and the manufacture of the fiber into yarn and cloth seems to have developed independently in each of them. We find mention of cotton in India fifteen hundred years before Christ. The East Indians, with only the crudest machinery, spun yarn and wove cloth as diaphanous as the best appliances of the present day have been able to prod
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CHAPTER III. STEAM IN CAPTIVITY
CHAPTER III. STEAM IN CAPTIVITY
For the beginnings of the enslavement of steam, that mighty giant whose work has changed the world we live in, we must return to the times of Benjamin Franklin. James Watt, the accredited father of the modern steam engine, was a contemporary of Franklin, and his engine was twenty-one years old when Franklin died. The discovery that steam could be harnessed and made to work is not, of course, credited to James Watt. The precise origin of that discovery is unknown. The ancient Greeks had steam eng
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CHAPTER IV. SPINDLE, LOOM, AND NEEDLE IN NEW ENGLAND
CHAPTER IV. SPINDLE, LOOM, AND NEEDLE IN NEW ENGLAND
The major steps in the manufacture of clothes are four: first to harvest and clean the fiber or wool; second, to card it and spin it into threads; third, to weave the threads into cloth; and, finally to fashion and sew the cloth into clothes. We have already seen the influence of Eli Whitney's cotton gin on the first process, and the series of inventions for spinning and weaving, which so profoundly changed the textile industry in Great Britain, has been mentioned. It will be the business of thi
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CHAPTER V. THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION
CHAPTER V. THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION
The Census of 1920 shows that hardly thirty per cent of the people are today engaged in agriculture, the basic industry of the United States, as compared with perhaps ninety per cent when the nation began. Yet American farmers, though constantly diminishing in proportion to the whole population, have always been, and still are, able to feed themselves and all their fellow Americans and a large part of the outside world as well. They bring forth also not merely foodstuffs, but vast quantities of
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CHAPTER VI. AGENTS OF COMMUNICATION
CHAPTER VI. AGENTS OF COMMUNICATION
Communication is one of man's primal needs. There was indeed a time when no formula of language existed, when men communicated with each other by means of gestures, grimaces, guttural sounds, or rude images of things seen; but it is impossible to conceive of a time when men had no means of communication at all. And at last, after long ages, men evolved in sound the names of the things they knew and the forms of speech; ages later, the alphabet and the art of writing; ages later still, those wond
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CHAPTER VII. THE STORY OF RUBBER
CHAPTER VII. THE STORY OF RUBBER
One day in 1852, at Trenton, New Jersey, there appeared in the Circuit Court of the United States two men, the legal giants of their day, to argue the case of Goodyear vs. Day for infringement of patent. Rufus Choate represented the defendant and Daniel Webster the plaintiff. Webster, in the course of his plea, one of the most brilliant and moving ever uttered by him, paused for a moment, drew from himself the attention of those who were hanging upon his words, and pointed to his client. He woul
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CHAPTER VIII. PIONEERS OF THE MACHINE SHOP
CHAPTER VIII. PIONEERS OF THE MACHINE SHOP
There is a tinge of melancholy about the life of such a pioneer as Oliver Evans, that early American mechanic of great genius, whose story is briefly outlined in a preceding chapter. Here was a man of imagination and sensibility, as well as practical power; conferring great benefits on his countrymen, yet in chronic poverty; derided by his neighbors, robbed by his beneficiaries; his property, the fruit of his brain and toil, in the end malevolently destroyed. The lot of the man who sees far ahea
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CHAPTER IX. THE FATHERS OF ELECTRICITY
CHAPTER IX. THE FATHERS OF ELECTRICITY
It may startle some reader to be told that the foundations of modern electrical science were definitely established in the Elizabethan Age. The England of Elizabeth, of Shakespeare, of Drake and the sea-dogs, is seldom thought of as the cradle of the science of electricity. Nevertheless, it was; just as surely as it was the birthplace of the Shakespearian drama, of the Authorized Version of the Bible, or of that maritime adventure and colonial enterprise which finally grew and blossomed into the
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CHAPTER X. THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR
CHAPTER X. THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR
The most popular man in Europe in the year 1783 was still the United States Minister to France. The figure of plain Benjamin Franklin, his broad head, with the calm, shrewd eyes peering through the bifocals of his own invention, invested with a halo of great learning and fame, entirely captivated the people's imagination. As one of the American Commissioners busy with the extraordinary problems of the Peace, Franklin might have been supposed too occupied for excursions into the paths of science
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
A clear, non-technical discussion of the basis of all industrial progress is "Power", by Charles E. Lucke (1911), which discusses the general principle of the substitution of power for the labor of men. Many of the references given in "Colonial Folkways", by C. M. Andrews ("The Chronicles of America", vol. IX), are valuable for an understanding of early industrial conditions. The general course of industry and commerce in the United States is briefly told by Carroll D. Wright in "The Industrial
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
The primary source of information on Benjamin Franklin is contained in his own writings. These were compiled and edited by Jared Sparks, "The Works of... Franklin... with Notes and a Life of the Author", 10 vols. (1836-40); and later by John Bigelow, "The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin; including His Private as well as His Official and Scientific Correspondence, and Numerous Letters and Documents Now for the First Time Printed, with Many Others not included in Any Former Collection, also, t
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
The first life of Eli Whitney is the "Memoir" by Denison Olmsted (1846), and a collection of Whitney's letters about the cotton gin may be found in "The American Historical Review", vol. III (1897). "Eli Whitney and His Cotton Gin," by M. F. Foster, is included in the "Transactions of the New England Cotton Manufacturers' Association", no. 67 (October, 1899). See also Dwight Goddard, "A Short Story of Eli Whitney" (1904); D. A. Tompkins, "Cotton and Cotton Oil" (1901); James A. B. Scherer, "Cott
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
For an account of James Watt's achievements, see J. Cleland, "Historical Account of the Steam Engine" (1825) and John W. Grant, "Watt and the Steam Age" (1917). On Fulton: R. H. Thurston, "Robert Fulton" (1891) in the "Makers of America" series; A. C. Sutcliffe, "Robert Fulton and the 'Clermont'" (1909); H. W. Dickinson, "Robert Fulton, Engineer and Artist; His Life and Works" (1913). For an account of John Stevens, see George Iles, "Leading American Inventors" (1912), and Dwight Goddard, "A Sho
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
On the general subject of cotton manufacture and machinery, see: J. L. Bishop, "History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860", 3 vols. (1864-67); Samuel Batchelder, "Introduction and Early Progress of the Cotton Manufacture in the United States" (1863); James Montgomery, "A Practical Detail of the Cotton Manufacture of the United States of America" (1840); Melvin T. Copeland, "The Cotton Manufacturing Industry of the United States" (1912); and John L. Hayes, "American Textile Machinery" (1
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
The story of the reaper is told in: Herbert N. Casson, "Cyrus Hall McCormick; His Life and Work" (1909), and "The Romance of the Reaper" (1908), and Merritt F. Miller, "Evolution of Reaping Machines" (1902), U. S. Experiment Stations Office, Bulletin 103. Other farm inventions are covered in: William Macdonald, "Makers of Modern Agriculture" (1913); Emile Guarini, "The Use of Electric Power in Plowing" in The "Electrical Review", vol. XLIII; A. P. Yerkes, "The Gas Tractor in Eastern Farming" (19
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
An account of an early "agent of communication" is given by W. F. Bailey, article on the "Pony Express" in "The Century Magazine", vol. XXXIV (1898). For the story of the telegraph and its inventors, see: S. I. Prime, "Life of Samuel F. B. Morse" (1875); S. F. B. Morse, "The Electro-Magnetic Telegraph" (1858) and "Examination of the Telegraphic Apparatus and the Process in Telegraphy" (1869); Guglielmo Marconi, "The Progress of Wireless Telegraphy" (1912) in the "Transactions of the New York Ele
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
For information on the subject of rubber and the life of Charles Goodyear, see: H. Wickham, "On the Plantation, Cultivation and Curing of Para Indian Rubber", London (1908); Francis Ernest Lloyd, "Guayule, a Rubber Plant of the Chihuahuan Desert", Washington (1911), Carnegie Institute publication no. 139; Charles Goodyear, "Gum Elastic and Its Varieties" (1853); James Parton, "Famous Americans of Recent Times" (1867); and "The Rubber Industry, Being the Official Report of the Proceedings of the
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
J. W. Roe, "English and American Tool Builders" (1916), and J. V. Woodworth, "American Tool Making and Interchangeable Manufacturing" (1911), give general accounts of great American mechanics. For an account of John Stevens and Robert L. and E. A. Stevens, see George Iles, "Leading American Inventors" (1912); Dwight Goddard, "A Short Story of John Stevens and His Sons" in "Eminent Engineers" (1905), and R. H. Thurston, "The Messrs. Stevens, of Hoboken, as Engineers, Naval Architects and Philanth
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
"The Story of Electricity" (1919) is a popular history edited by T. C. Martin and S. L. Coles. A more specialized account of electrical inventions may be found in George Bartlett Prescott's "The Speaking Telephone, Electric Light, and Other Recent Electrical Inventions" (1879). For Joseph Henry's achievements, see his own "Contributions to Electricity and Galvanism" (1835-42) and "On the Application of the Principle of the Galvanic Multiplier to Electromagnetic Apparatus" (1831), and the account
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
Charles C. Turner, "The Romance of Aeronautics" (1912); "The Curtiss Aviation Book", by Glenn H. Curtiss and Augustus Post (1912); Samuel Pierpont Langley and Charles M. Manly, "Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight" (Smithsonian Institution, 1911); "Our Atlantic Attempt", by H. G. Hawker and K. Mackenzie Grieve (1919); "Flying the Atlantic in Sixteen Hours", by Sir Arthur Whitten Brown (1920); "Practical Aeronautics", by Charles B. Hayward, with an Introduction by Orville Wright (1912); "Aircraft
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