Inventions

From the last of the Eighteenth Century to the present time may well be spoken of as an era of invention. Space would forbid us describing in detail these many innovations, but it will serve to give an idea of the changes in society which they imply if we note the times of the discovery of the most important. Most of them are now so common as to make any detailed account tiresome, but it will be of value to note, where possible, the principle the invention embodies.

THE SPINNING JENNY was invented by James Hargreaves in 1767. He had tried in vain to spin several threads at once, when one day his child overturned the spinning-wheel, leaving the spindle revolving vertically. He constructed a machine on this principle. The neighbors broke in and demolished it. His patent was set aside by the courts and he died a poor man in 1778.

THE STEAM ENGINE was first made practical by Watt in 1768. His description of its discovery is given in Volume VI.

STEAM HEATING was thought out by Watts in 1784, but it was not applied until comparatively recently.

THE WEAVING-LOOM, by Edmund Cartwright (1743–1823), in 1785. Cartwright was a country clergyman of poetical tastes, the author of "Armine and Elvira," and "The Prince of Peace." He was the first to apply machinery to weaving. His first power loom, in 1785, was a rude one, but was later much improved on. The first mill on his plan was burned by incendiaries in 1791, but in the next twenty years weaving by machinery became common. In 1809 Parliament voted him a reward of £10,000.

THE LIFE-BOAT was constructed successfully by Lionel Lukin in 1785.

BALLOONS were first used by Montgolfier in 1783. Montgolfier used heated air; a few weeks later Messrs. Charles and Roberts improved on this idea by using hydrogen.

THE COTTON GIN was invented by Eli Whitney in 1793. Whitney was born in Westboro, Mass., Dec. 8, 1765. He graduated at Yale in 1792 and went to Georgia, where he studied law while living at the home of the widow of Gen. Nathanael Greene. The greatest difficulty of the time in the cotton industry was to separate the cotton from the seeds, which had to be done by hand. Stimulated by Mrs. Greene, Whitney began the construction of a separator—the cotton gin—on her estate. Reports of his success caused his workshop to be broken into and his idea stolen before he could get a patent. He formed a partnership in 1793 and went to Connecticut to begin the manufacture of cotton gins. South Carolina voted him $50,000, but all profits were eaten up by legislation. In 1798 he began the manufacture of firearms on a government contract, and made a large fortune in his new business. He was one of the first to apply division of labor in manufacture. He died Jan. 8, 1825. The working of the roller gin for long cotton is described by Basil Hall in Volume IX. The principle of the gin used for the short cotton is to draw in the cotton by means of revolving saws projecting between wires so close together that the seeds can not pass between them.

GAS LIGHTING was made practical by Wm. Murdoch in 1792. He was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, Aug. 25, 1754. While in Cornwall superintending the fitting of engines for Watt and Boulton, he discovered that when coal is heated to a red heat in a close vessel it gives off a gas which, after the water and tar are condensed from it, is suitable for lighting purposes. He lighted his cottage and offices with this gas in 1792, and the Boulton and Watt factory in 1802. Westminster bridge in London was so lighted Dec. 31, 1813, and Guildhall in 1815. The first successful manufacture in the United States was in New York in 1827.

LITHOGRAPHY was first invented by Aloys Senefelder, a Bohemian actor who attempted literature and finally engaged in the printing business. This led to his inventing lithography in 1796, but it was not until 1806, when he received the support of the Bavarian Government, that he was able to perfect his invention. The materials used are a slab of closely grained limestone about three or four inches thick; the crayon is of a greasy composition, composed principally of wax, soap, tallow, shellac, turpentine, and lampblack; the ink used for drawing with a pen on the stone is composed of the same ingredients with a trifle more grease and dissolved with water. After the stone has been carefully polished the drawing is made on it the same as on paper, only reversed. When the drawing is finished it is bathed with a solution of nitric acid and gum arabic, to keep the grease of the crayon or ink from spreading and rendering those parts of the stone having no drawing on them more porous and capable of absorbing moisture. When the acid and gum arabic has dried, the stone is washed with water, then the drawing is washed off with turpentine, leaving only the grease of the drawing on the stone. The stone is now moistened and when the ink-roller goes over it only the part kept dry by the grease, that is the drawing, takes ink and prints. The whole principle of lithography rests on the antagonism of grease to water. In latter years photography has been more or less applied to lithography.

PERCUSSION ARMS were first contrived by the Rev. Mr. Foryyth of Aberdeenshire in 1807. Caps were not used with them at first, but became common in the twenties and percussion arms were adopted for the army in 1840. In the breech-loading gun which metallic-cased cartridges made practical soon afterwards—though it had been experimented on for centuries—the cap is constructed as part of the cartridge.

THE STEAMBOAT was first made a success by Fulton. Robert Fulton was born at Little Brittan, Pennsylvania, in 1765. His father died when he was three years old. When he was seventeen he went to Philadelphia and practiced the art of miniature-painting there and in New York. In four years’ time he had saved enough to buy a farm for his mother’s support and in 1786 he went to London and became a pupil of West. While there he made the acquaintance of the Duke of Bridgewater, father of the British canal system; Lord Stanhope, an enthusiastic mechanician; and with Watt, the inventor of the steam-engine; and partly through their influence his attention was turned strongly to mechanical invention, his true field of labor. Then follow his machines for marble-sawing, rope-making, flax-spinning, and removing earth from excavations. His Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation (1796) and a series of essays on canals were followed by a British patent for canal improvements, consisting chiefly in the substitution of inclined planes for locks. He resided in Paris 1797–1806, and then brought forward a sub-marine torpedo-boat for marine defense, which was rejected by the French and British Governments in 1805, and the United States Government in 1810. In 1793 he had conceived the design of propelling vessels by steam; but did not find suitable opportunity for putting his views into practice. It was thought that the paddle wheel would lose in lifting water at the end of the stroke all the momentum it would give the boat at the beginning, but Fulton thought otherwise. While still in Paris (1806) he first succeeded in his design. Aided by Chancellor Livingston, then United States Minister in France, he purchased a Boulton and Watt engine and shipped it to New York, where, after careful study of the defects and merits of previous attempts in the same direction he built and launched (in 1807) the Clermont, his first successful steamboat, which attained the speed of only five miles an hour. He took out his first patent in 1809, but his rights were disputed and a compromise was effected. Throughout life Fulton was involved in lawsuits with parties infringing upon his claims. In 1814 he constructed the first United States war steamer, and was engaged upon an improvement of his submarine torpedo when he died, Feb. 24, 1815. There is no need enlarging on the influence of his chief invention, the steamboat. There had been many previous attempts to apply steam to navigation by use of a paddle wheel, goose-foot, screw propeller, and the like, but Fulton was the first to persevere until he succeeded.

THE SAFETY LAMP was first constructed by Sir Humphry Davy in 1815 and about the same time by George Stephenson. The principle discovered was that metallic gauze acts the same as a series of square tubes and does not allow the flame to pass it to be communicated to the inflammable fire-damp of a mine. If a lighted lamp surrounded by a gauze netting is exposed where there is fire-damp a pale flame fills the whole inside of the netting and gives warning of the danger, but does not explode the fire-damp unless the netting should be broken.

THE LOCOMOTIVE STEAM-ENGINE was first satisfactorily constructed by George Stephenson. Stephenson was born at Wylam, a village in Northumberland, England, June 9, 1781, son of Robert Stephenson, fireman of a colliery engine. His first employment was herding cows at 2d. per day; from this he was promoted to hoeing turnips at 4d.; he next drove a gin horse at the colliery, and in his fourteenth year he became assistant to his father in firing the engine at a shilling a day, and at fifteen we find him rejoicing at 12 shillings a week. At seventeen he was appointed engine man or plug man. Stimulated by a desire for fuller information regarding the wonderful inventions of Boulton and Watt, he attended a night school where he learned to read. He occupied his leisure hours taking his machine apart and putting it together again, thus gaining a thorough knowledge of it. In 1810 accident gave him an opportunity of putting in motion a steam-engine that needed repairs, and in 1812 he was made engine-wright at Killingworth Colliery at a salary of £100 a year.

The early life of Stephenson presents a record, whose interest cannot be surpassed, of a contest between determined purpose, industry, and sagacity on the one hand, against poverty on the other. Inch by inch we find the inward forces gaining ground upon the outward. The problem of constructing a locomotive steam-engine was then occupying many minds, and he was in 1814 the first to construct one which proved satisfactory. He originated the steam-blast, which was introduced into his second locomotive, built in 1815. In the same year he invented a miner’s safety lamp that is still in use in some English collieries. Stephenson now turned his attention to improving railways as well as engines. His first railway, opened in 1822, was eight miles long, and so successful that the next year he was appointed engineer of the railway authorized to be constructed between Stockton and Darlington, and in 1825, at a salary of £1,000 a year, of the Liverpool and Manchester line, which was begun in 1826. During this time he had set up an establishment at Newcastle-upon-Tyne for the manufacture of locomotives, and on Oct. 6, 1829, his engine, named Rocket, attained an average speed of 14 miles an hour and was driven for a short distance at the rate of 29 miles. For the next fifteen years he was actively engaged as a railway engineer and contractor in England and on the Continent, still carrying on his great locomotive factory at Newcastle, and also engaging in coal-mining and lime-works. During the three years ending 1837, he was principal engineer on the North Midland, York and North Midland, Manchester and Leeds, Birmingham and Derby, and Sheffield and Rotherham railways. In 1836 alone, 214 miles of railway were put under his direction, involving a capital of five millions. In 1845 he visited Belgium and Spain for professional purposes. On his way home he was seized with pleurisy from which attack he does not seem to have ever thoroughly recovered. He retained during all his life, in speech and manners, much of the rustic simplicity belonging to his early life, and declined the honor of knighthood. By common consent he has received the title of the father of railways. He occupied his declining years as a country gentleman and died at Tapton House, his country-seat, Aug. 12, 1848.

FRICTION MATCHES were first made practical by John Walker in 1827. Before this time flint and steel were most depended upon, though a sulphur match which was ignited by being dipped in a bottle containing phosphorus was some used. Walker made a match, the wooden splint of which was tipped with sulphur covered with a mixture of sulphide of antimony, chlorate of potash and gum. He sold a box of eighty-four matches and a piece of sandpaper for a shilling.

Red Phosphorus was discovered by von Schroeter of Vienna in 1845 and safety matches made from it by Lundström of Sweden in 1855.

PHOTOGRAPHY was first taken up by Wedgewood and Davy. In 1802 Wedgewood, using the fact that sunlight turns nitrate of silver black, impregnated paper with this compound and managed to take a picture of a drawing on the paper in black and white, but Wedgewood and Davy working together could find no way of preventing the whole paper from turning black when exposed to the light.

Niepce in 1814 found that asphalt is made insoluble by sunlight. He exposed a film under a drawing, then dissolved the shadows with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum. Niepce died in 1833, but Daguerre continued the work.

In 1839 Daguerre plated copper with polished silver, then covered it with a film of silver iodide by exposing it to the fumes of iodine. After being left in the light for about thirty minutes this plate was put over a dish of heated mercury, the vapor of which condensed in white on the parts illuminated, thus giving a picture in white and silver.

Many of the photographic processes since discovered depend on this action of sunlight (the lavender end) on the salts of silver, which causes the halogen to be lost. If the salts be alone the loss is slow, but if they be mixed with something that easily absorbs the halogen the action is rapid. Such substances are silver nitrate, gelatin, tannin, etc.

In the carbon process, the gelatin is mixed with colored bichro-mate of potassium or ammonium, instead of silver salts. This the light makes insoluble in water. The other parts are washed off.

In the platinotype the paper is coated with ferric and platinum salts. Light reduces the ferric to a ferrous salt and when this is dissolved by the developer (oxalate of potassium) it reduces the platinum salt, giving an image in black.

GUNCOTTON was approached by Braconnet in 1832. He found that by dissolving starch in nitric acid and adding water a white explosive of great strength was obtained. It was, however, too liable to explode and its use was not practical until Baron von Lenk of Austria in 1853 and Mr. Abel of England in 1863 greatly improved it by using cotton as an absorbent. Abel’s guncotton is prepared from cotton waste treated with a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acids.

Nitroglycerin, consisting of nitric and sulphuric acid introduced into glycerin, was made by Alfred Nobel of Sweden in 1864. He also invented dynamite by mixing this with an absorbent earth (1866).

THE TELEGRAPH was thought of at about the same time by many persons, notably Baron Schilling, W. F. Cooke, Wheatstone and Morse, but the most practical system has proved to be that of Morse. All of these but Morse constructed a system depending on the principle that an electric current will deflect a magnetic needle. Morse used the induction principle discovered by Joseph Henry.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born in Charlestown, Mass., Apr. 27, 1791. He graduated from Yale in 1810 and went to England to study art under Allston and West. In 1811 his "Dying Hercules" was accepted at the Academy and his sculpture of the same subject received a prize the same year. In 1814 he returned to America and was forced to paint portraits at fifteen dollars apiece for a living. He thought out his great invention while returning from a second trip to Europe in 1832.

In 1835 he constructed an experimental line. In 1837 he gave an exhibition in New York and applied for a patent. He asked Congress for help, but the session passed without his receiving it. He met as little encouragement in England and France and was reduced to actual hunger. He renewed his appeal to Congress year after year and finally on the last night of the session in March, 1843, after Morse had left disheartened, the bill voting him $30,000 for experimental purposes was granted. The wires were at first enclosed in lead pipe and buried, but this proved both costly and unsuccessful. Then insulated wires on poles were tried and found to work. The first message was sent May 24, 1844. The principle of Morse’s telegraph was the fact, discovered by Henry and Faraday, that a current sent through a wire (the helix) wound about an iron armature makes the armature a magnet. This attracts one end of an iron lever suspended above it. The lever remains down only as long as the current passes. The pressing of the key at the other end makes the connection and sends a current along the wire. All this was Morse’s contrivance, but his special addition was the "relay." By this arrangement the current from a distance does not act directly upon the local armature, but by practically the same method sets in action a local battery which in turn acts on the armature and lever. This adds strength to the current at every station and makes long distance telegraphing merely a question of relays. Morse died April 2, 1872.

THE REAPER is the product principally of Bell, Hussey, and McCormick. Bell of Scotland invented a reaper on the scissors principle in 1826 which was a great improvement on the scythe. In 1833 Obed Hussey invented a reaper that used the reciprocating indented-edge knife now a part of all machines. McCormick’s reaper was patented the next year, but had been successfully tried in 1831. The influence of the reaper and of its further developed forms—the binder, etc.,—has been enormous.

THE SEWING MACHINE is another invention that has had a wonderful influence on ordinary life. It was first made by Elias Howe in 1841. Howe was a poor mechanic and did his work on his machine at night. His first patent was in 1841, but he could not get people to see the use of his crude mechanism. He went to England and patented it, but was compelled to sell it out for £250 and a royalty of £3 on each machine. On his return to the United States he successfully fought an infringement on his patent. The principle of his invention was the lock stitch made by the shuttle underneath passing between the needle above and its thread at every stitch. Howe’s original machine was not well enough made to be practical, but his patents made Wilson and others using this stitch pay him royalty.

ANAESTHETICS for surgical purposes came into use the middle of the nineteenth century. The agonies undergone during operations before that time can now scarcely be imagined. Balzac describes something of them in "Joseph Balsamo." In 1846 Dr. W. T. G. Morton of Boston first used ether in an operation. Even before this he had used it successfully in dentistry. In November, 1847, Sir J. Y. Simpson first administered chloroform to a patient. Its use had already been tried upon lower animals by Flourens. Ether is supposed to act by causing temporary carbonic-dioxide poisoning, and chloroform by driving the blood from the brain.

THE DYNAMO and ELECTRIC MOTOR have been developed from the facts discovered by Henry and Faraday, that a magnet passed in or out of a hollow ball of wire (a helix) generates a current in the wire, that a magnet revolved across a wire causes a current in the wire, that vice versa a current running along a wire will turn an electric needle or magnet, and that a current run round a bar of iron makes a magnet of it.

The first machines to generate electricity by induction were made by Saxon in the United States and Pixii in France (1832). A permanent horseshoe steel magnet was revolved with its ends facing two helixes (an armature) consisting of many coils of insulated wire. Their strength was of course limited by the power of the horseshoe magnet and they were not very useful for mechanical purposes for this reason, besides which the current was of course an alternating one, changing directions with each half-turn of the magnet. To remedy this last defect, the commutator was invented. This consisted at first of two connections with the armature, one of which carried away all the positive current as it was generated and passing round the armature, the other all the negative current. Merely being connected at opposite sides of the armature would do this.

The next step was made by Soren Hjorth of Copenhagen in 1855, when he wound coils of wire round the magnet and led the current back through these, thus vastly increasing the strength of the magnet. Siemens and Gramme both did much to perfect such machines about 1870.

During all this time the development of the electric motor was slowly advancing, retarded by the fact that the electricity, which it was desired to turn into mechanical energy, was generated by the voltaic battery. Such a battery was satisfactory for the telegraph and would do for experimental purposes, but could not furnish power enough for commercial uses. Henry invented an electro-motor run by a battery in 1828. The great advance was made by accident at the Vienna exhibition in 1873, when a workman on the Gramme dynamos discovered that if two were joined either would act as a dynamo or as a motor; that is, that they were in principle interchangeable, merely the reverse of each other. Since then the development has been rapid. In 1879 Dr. Werner Siemens constructed a crude but successful electric railway in Berlin. The first in America was built at Baltimore in 1885.

BESSEMER STEEL is the invention of Henry Bessemer of England. He was born in Hertfordshire, Jan. 13, 1813, the youngest son of a French refugee. He began to work at the age of eighteen as a modeler and designer in London, and soon devised an improved method of stamping deeds which the English Stamp Office adopted without compensation. He later invented a method of making bronze powder, which is still used commercially. An invention concerning projectiles brought him into touch with the steel manufacture. The old method of making steel was to melt wrought iron together with carbon, then heat it red hot, forge to the form desired, and harden by quenching in water. The introduction by J. Beaumont Neilson in 1828 of the hot air blast in furnaces for making pig iron tripled the product and vastly reduced the fuel required. Such pig iron must be refined before it can be wrought, welded or rolled. What was now needed was a method of partially purifying this pig iron. If all the impurities are taken out, the product is wrought iron; if part of the carbon is left in, the result is steel. Most pig and cast iron contains silicon besides the carbon. Bessemer in 1855 decided that if air is blown through a mass of molten iron it will unite with the silicon and carbon, keeping up the heat and burning them out. Experiments proved his idea correct. Later ferro manganese or "spiegeleisen," a compound of manganese, carbon and iron, is added to unite with and remove the sulphur and oxide of iron. This was the contribution of R. F. Mushet to the process. The Bessemer process met with a number of failures at first, but after he established works of his own became a great success. It increased the production of steel from 50,000 to 1,600,000 tons in a few years and reduced the cost from $250 to $50 a ton. He died in 1898.

In 1856–66 the Siemens-Martin open hearth process was developed. This is a method of melting the iron by a combination of gas and air burned above it. The product is more expensive but finer than that of the Bessemer process.

The vast increase in the use of iron and steel shows how important these inventions have been. Iron was first used in the construction of buildings in 1857 at the building of the Cooper Institute, and the framework of the modern office building is now entirely of iron. Instead of building an outside of stone thick enough to support the inside, the outside is a mere veneer. The first notable ironclads were the Virginia (Merrimac) and the Monitor in 1862. The development of cannon has kept pace with that of the ironclad.

THE FIRST PRACTICAL TYPEWRITER was made by C. L. Sholes of Milwaukee in 1868–1871. The first Remington was manufactured in 1878. There are now more than a hundred good machines on the market.

THE TELEPHONE was invented in 1876 at the same time by Alexander Graham Bell of Boston and Elisha Gray of Evanston. The principle in brief was this: The waves of the voice undulated a diaphragm; attached to this diaphragm was one end of a small vibrating iron armature; as this was thus vibrating it swung back and forth in front of an electro-magnet; this induced a pulsation in the current flowing continuously through the helix of the electro-magnet; this pulsation was carried to the receiver at the other end, passed through the helix of the electro-magnet there, swung the iron armature, which vibrated the diaphragm and sent sound waves to the ear. Since 1876 there have been many improvements. In 1877 Berliner and Edison modified the plan by producing the undulation in the current through differences of pressure caused by the vibration of the diaphragm between carbon contacts or electrodes. Blake about 1880 added an induction coil whose primary circuit passed through the electrodes, and whose secondary circuit passed over the line.

THE PHONOGRAPH was invented by Thomas Edison in 1878. Here the vibrations of the sound against a diaphragm caused a needle to trace a path in tinfoil. In reproducing the sounds, the needle followed the path traced in the first place and thus vibrated the diaphragm. In 1886 wax was substituted in place of tinfoil.

THE ARC LIGHT was invented, as we have already seen, by Sir Humphry Davy in 1809. His description of it and the use of the heat evolved for electrolysis is given in Volume VIII. The fact that electricity could be supplied only by voltaic batteries made its production too expensive, but the principle was thoroughly understood and as soon as the dynamo made electricity cheap, the arc light was at once put to commercial use.

THE INCANDESCENT LIGHT was first made practical by Edison in 1879. Grove in 1840 described the general principle. In 1859 Moses G. Flanner devised a means of subdividing the current so that one light could be lighted without the others, which could not be done with arc lights. In 1877 Wm. E. Sawyer applied for a patent for an electric lighting system. All of these plans, however, were not worked out in sufficient detail to be reliable. Edison used a filament that would not burn out—a great advance; made it fine enough to resist the entrance of a large current, thus leaving the rest of the current to light the other lamps; and made it of material that was practical in cost. The incandescent light requires a continuous current, while an alternating current is used for an arc light system.

More recent developments in electricity, as also in other fields, are taken up in the last volume.