The Mentor, No. 29, Great American Inventors

The Mentor

“A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend”

GREAT AMERICAN INVENTORS

By H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

Anyone who reads the history of the United States must be
impressed with the supremely important part played by the
inventor in the evolution of the nation. The explorer and
pioneer, the statesman, diplomat, and soldier,—all these have contributed,
and contributed notably, to the upbuilding of the mighty republic
of today. But it is beyond dispute that in the long run their efforts
would have counted for comparatively little had it not been for the genius
of those who have bent their energies to the devising of means for the
development of the country’s marvelously rich resources, and have
still further added to the national wealth by the creation of unsuspected
channels for the profitable employment of human enterprise and labor.

WHITNEY’S ARMORY

In 1798 the inventor of the cotton gin began the manufacture
of firearms near New Haven, Connecticut.

It was in the humble workshops of men like Whitney, Fitch, and
Fulton that, almost as soon as the independence of the United States had
been won by the sword, the foundations were laid for its rise to the
standing of a world power. Every invention these men made meant
a gain in the nation’s strength, and
a wider opening of the door of opportunity
to all native-born Americans,
and to the constantly increasing host
of newcomers from abroad. The
American inventors have not simply
astonished mankind; they have enhanced
the prestige, power, and prosperity
of their country.

THE COTTON GIN

BIRTHPLACE OF WHITNEY

In this house in Westborough, Massachusetts,
Eli Whitney was born on December 8, 1765.

Take, for example, the results
that have flowed from a single invention,
that of the Whitney cotton gin. When the young Yankee schoolmaster
and law student, Eli Whitney, was graduated from Yale and
settled in Georgia in 1792, the production of cotton in the Southern
States was insignificant. At that time, indeed, cotton was grown by the
Southerners chiefly for decorative effect in gardens, because of its handsome
flowers. Its cultivation for commercial purposes was virtually out of
the question, owing to the fact that no means were available for economically
separating the lint from the seed. This had to be done by hand,
and since it took ten hours for a quick worker to separate one pound of
lint from its three pounds of seed no adequate returns could be had.

What was needed, as his southern friends pointed out to Whitney,
was the invention of some apparatus for performing the work of separation
cleanly and quickly. The problem was one that appealed to him
with peculiar force. Even as a boy in
Massachusetts he had been fond of tinkering
with mechanical appliances. At
the early age of twelve he had made a
violin of fairly good tone; a year later
he was making excellent knives; and
before he was fifteen he was recognized
as the best mechanic in his native town
of Westborough. It was therefore with
real enthusiasm that he set up a workshop
in the basement of his Georgia
home, and varied his law studies by experimenting
in the manufacture of a
cotton gin. Within a few months he
had successfully completed his self-imposed task by the creation of a
machine equipped with hundreds of tiny metal fingers, each of which
did more work in quicker time than the human hand could possibly do.

That same year (1793) fully five million pounds of cotton were
harvested in the United
States, the product of
a planting stimulated
solely by faith in the
Whitney gin. By the
year of Whitney’s death
(1825) cotton was indisputably
king in the
commercial life of the
nation, the value of the
cotton exports for that
year being more than
$36,000,000, as against
a valuation of barely
$30,000,000 for all other American
exports. The eventual
abolition of slavery served
only to accentuate the stupendous
importance of the cotton
gin. Under free labor the
production of cotton has
steadily risen, until nowadays
it annually runs into the billions
of pounds, with a valuation
of many hundreds of millions
of dollars, and affords
employment not only to an
enormous army of cultivators, but to a still greater army of workers in
factory, office, and store.

THE FULTON HOMESTEAD

The inventor purchased this farm in Washington
County, Pennsylvania, when he was but
twenty-one years of age. Here he left his mother
when he went to England to study art.

Even of much greater importance have been the results of the labors of
another illustrious American inventor, Robert Fulton. Born in Lancaster
County, Pennsylvania,
in November, 1765,
Fulton, by reason of the
astonishing number
and variety of his inventions,
may well be called
the Edison of his time.

ROBERT FULTON

ROBERT FULTON

Fulton was tall, and his face showed great intelligence. He was
refined, and possessed grace and elegance of manner.

Similar to all truly
great inventors, he
was a man of broad
vision and keen imagination.
What he was
most interested in was
not immediate consequences,
but ultimate effects, and in working on the complicated mechanical
problems with which his mind was incessantly occupied he kept
steadily in view their significance to society as a whole. Thus, one of his
most ingenious creations—the famous Fulton torpedo, crude forerunner
of the deadly submarine missiles of today—was inspired by an ardent
desire to produce something that would make war so terrible as to impel
mankind to universal peace. And similarly it was with an eye to increasing
the welfare and happiness of society that he went to work on the
invention with which his name will always be linked,—the steamboat.

He was not the first to whom the idea had occurred of applying the
steam engine to purposes of water transportation. Already the Pennsylvanian,
William Henry, the Connecticut mechanic, John Fitch, the New
Jersey inventor, John Stevens, and the Scotsman, William Symington, had
demonstrated more or less successfully
the possibility of
using steam as a motive power
on the water; but it was left to
Fulton to establish definitely
the value of the steamboat as
a medium for passenger and freight traffic.
This he did with his historic Clermont,
built at New York in 1807, partly with
funds provided by Chancellor Livingston
and partly by loans from reluctant and
skeptical friends.

FULTON’S FIRST EXPERIMENT WITH PADDLE WHEELS

In the summer of 1779 Fulton first tried the method of propelling a boat
by means of paddle wheels on Conestoga Creek in eastern Pennsylvania.

The general impression was that Fulton
had undertaken a hopeless and visionary
task. “As I had occasion,” he
himself has related, “daily to pass to and from the shipyard while my
boat was in progress, I often loitered unknown near idle groups of strangers,
gathering in little circles, and heard various inquiries as to the
object of this new vehicle. The language was uniformly that of scorn,
sneer, or ridicule. The loud laugh often rose at my expense; the dry
jest; the wise calculation of losses and expenditures; the dull but endless
repetition of ‘Fulton’s Folly.’”

As everybody knows, the Clermont
did not sink or otherwise
come to grief when she started up
the Hudson, August 11, 1807, for
her maiden voyage to Albany. On
the contrary, she made the journey,
against the wind, at an average rate
of nearly five miles an hour; and,
with the wind again ahead, returned to New York at about the same
speed. Compared with the steaming powers of the modern ocean
leviathan, this was a sorry enough showing; but, with the continued
success of the Clermont and her sister boats, the Raritan and the Car of
Neptune,—which together constituted the world’s first regular line of
steamboats,—it was sufficient to prove for all time that man had made
another superb advance in the
mastery of the forces of Nature.

MODEL OF ROBERT FULTON’S FIRST STEAMBOAT, THE CLERMONT

Constructed for the Hudson-Fulton celebration at New York in the fall of 1909.

INVENTOR OF THE
SEWING MACHINE

BIRTHPLACE OF ELIAS HOWE

Amid these humble surroundings the inventor of the sewing
machine was born at Spencer, Massachusetts, in 1819.

BEFORE THE WAR

A sewing machine of 1851.

Very different, but also of
great value, was the service
rendered by Elias Howe of
sewing machine fame. There
are two stories as to the genesis
of this wonderful labor-saving
device. One is that it was
suggested to Howe by the
chance remark of a visitor to
the Boston machine shop in
which he was employed. The
other and more romantic story
is that the idea of a machine for sewing garments
originated from a desire on Howe’s
part to lighten the labor of his wife, who,
when he was ill and out of work, was obliged
to take in sewing and toil far into the night.

Whichever version is correct, it is certain
that in 1843 (Howe was then only
twenty-four years old) he set to work in the
garret of his father’s home in Cambridge,
and about a year later gave to the world a
sewing machine that embodied the principal
features of the most up-to-date models of
the present day.
For long, however,
the world
was reluctant to
accept this splendid
invention.
The tailors of
Boston, to whom
he first offered it,
refused to adopt
it, on the ground that it would ruin their business;
and later, in New York, there were anti-sewing
machine demonstrations, fomented by
labor leaders, who failed to realize that in the
end labor-saving devices of any real merit were
always certain to increase, not decrease, the
demand and opportunities for the workingman
and workingwoman.

A SEWING MACHINE OF 1860

“It has stitched many hundred miles of seam, and is
still in good working order.”

In the case of the sewing machine the truth
of this has long since been demonstrated. Not
only has it become a familiar household adjunct, freeing millions of
women from the slavery of the needle, and thus most effectively answering
the piteous plea of Hood’s “Song of the Shirt,” but it has also
brought about a marvelous expansion of the clothing industry. It has
in fact created an entirely new and most important branch of that industry,—the
ready-made clothing business,—giving employment to
hundreds of thousands of people, and providing well patterned and
well finished garments at prices undreamed of in other days. Surely
Howe, no less than Fulton and Whitney, deserves to be regarded
as a benefactor of humanity.

So, too, with Samuel F. B.
Morse, and Alexander Graham Bell, the one
the father of the electric telegraph, the other
the inventor of the telephone. If anybody
had told Samuel Morse in 1811, when as a
youth of twenty he sailed from New York to
Liverpool to
study painting
under Benjamin West, that he would
be known to posterity as an inventor rather
than as an artist, he would have laughed
the prophecy to scorn. But, as has happened
to other gifted men, circumstances
conspired to turn and fix the thoughts of
this brilliant son of New England on problems
unconnected with the routine of his daily
life, yet appealing to him with such force
as to change the whole course of his career.

THE FIRST BOBBIN WINDER

TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE

BIRTHPLACE OF S. F. B. MORSE

The inventor of the telegraph was born at the foot of Breed’s
Hill, Charlestown, Massachusetts.

THE NEW YORK HOME OF
S. F. B. MORSE

This house was located on West Twenty-second
Street near Fifth Avenue.

SAMUEL F. B. MORSE

THE FIRST
TELEPHONE

THE FIRST TELEGRAPH
INSTRUMENT

With Morse the turning point was
reached in 1827 when, some years after his
return from England, he attended a course
of lectures in New York on the subject of
electromagnetism. What he then heard
fired his imagination, and led him, during
a second visit abroad, to study more closely
the nature of electricity. He specially
became interested in the possibility
of utilizing this great natural
force as a medium for long-distance
communication, and when homeward
bound, in the autumn of 1832, applied
himself to this one problem to
such good purpose that before landing
in New York he was able to
show to his fellow passengers plans
of the instrument that was to immortalize
his name.

“LONG DISTANCE”

Alexander Graham Bell opening the New York-Chicago
long distance telephone line, October 18, 1892.

It was not until five years afterward,
however, that Morse made
the first working demonstration of
his invention, which by most people
was regarded as a scientific toy rather
than a creation of the highest practical
utility. And a scientific toy it
remained until, after a heartbreaking
struggle to secure the necessary financial
aid, Morse persuaded Congress
in 1843 to appropriate $30,000 for
the construction of a telegraph line
between Washington and Baltimore.
The first message to be flashed over
this line, May 1, 1844, was the news
of the nomination of
Henry Clay for the presidency;
and with the sending
of that message one of
the greatest inventions in
the history of mankind definitely
gained recognition
as an accomplished fact.

Alexander Graham
Bell, experimenting in the
same field of long-distance
communication by the aid
of electricity, was more fortunate
in securing early
acknowledgment of the
merits of his telephone, a
public demonstration of
which was given at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876. Connected with
this invention a most interesting story is told. Bell, it is said, was experimenting
with a device for multiplex telegraphy, when the accidental
snapping of a wire sent a sound vibrating through another wire which
had attached to it at each end a thin sheet-iron disk a few inches in
circumference. At once Bell asked himself if the sound could be repeated.
Experiment showed that it could, and the query then suggested itself
to him, Could vocal sounds be thus transmitted? Forthwith he set himself
to the task that resulted,
after many failures, in the creation
of the telephone.

But even in the case of
this marvelous instrument it
was for a long time impossible
to obtain the necessary
financial support. When,
in 1877, Bell took the telephone
to England, he could
find no purchaser for half
the European rights at $10,000,
and in this country a
personal friend declined to
advance $2,500 for a half interest.
Today, so it is stated,
there are in use in the United States alone approximately seven and a
half million telephones.

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL’S SUBURBAN RESIDENCE AT WASHINGTON, D. C.

EDISON, THE MASTER INVENTOR

THE EDISON HOUSE AT MILAN, OHIO

Here Thomas A. Edison was born on February 11, 1847.

Never has there been an American inventor who has contributed more
abundantly than Thomas Alva Edison to the republic’s industrial expansion,
nor one who has achieved greatness under a heavier handicap of
early disadvantages. Born (1847) of a poor family in an obscure Ohio
canal village, Edison began his career at the age of twelve in the
occupation of a railway newsboy.

THE FIRST PHONOGRAPH

It was with this machine that Edison in 1877 originally demonstrated
the fact that sound could be recorded and reproduced.

It was as a telegrapher, which
he became at eighteen, that his
inventive genius first displayed
itself. One after another various
devices for improving telegraphic
service flowed from his fertile
mind, until, after his astonishing
success in inventing a duplex and
quadruplex telegraph, he was able
to command the support of a group
of New York capitalists in carrying
through a long series of experiments
that finally resulted in the
invention of the now familiar
Edison electric light.

Had it been for only this one
invention Edison’s name would
be gratefully remembered for all
time. But to strengthen his claims
on the gratitude of his countrymen
and of posterity there has since
come from his New Jersey laboratory
a succession of inventions,—to name only a few, the phonograph,
the kinetoscope, the mimeograph, the storage battery, and the “talking
moving pictures,”—which have meant new openings for capital, new
opportunities for labor, and an incalculable enlargement of the resources
of the human race. Whitney, Fulton, Howe, Morse, Bell, Edison,—clearly
it is only simple historic justice to rate these great inventors with
the great statesmen, warriors, and pioneers who in days gone by have won
undying fame as makers of the American republic.

EDISON LISTENING TO THE PHONOGRAPH

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Leading American Inventors	George Iles
Inventors	P. G. Hubert, Jr.
Four American Inventors	F. M. Perry
Edison—His Life and Inventions	F. L. Dyer and T. C. Martin
Bell’s Electric Speaking Telephone	George B. Prescott
Samuel Finley Breese Morse	J. Trowbridge
Life of Robert Fulton	T. W. Knox
Memoir of Eli Whitney	D. Olmstead

QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Subscribers desiring further information concerning this
subject can obtain it by writing to

The Mentor Association

381 Fourth Avenue, New York City

ELI WHITNEY

ONE

A machine said to have paid off the debts of the
South, greatly increased its capital, and trebled the
value of its land, was the invention of Eli Whitney.
This machine was the cotton gin. And, like many
another inventor, Whitney was rewarded with ingratitude.
He added hundreds of millions to the wealth of our country,
and in return had to endure humiliation
and vexation of body and spirit.

Eli Whitney was born at Westborough,
Massachusetts, on December 8, 1765. He
early showed great mechanical ability,
and by the time he was twenty-three years
old had earned enough money to enable
him to enter Yale. After graduating he
went to Savannah, Georgia, with the hope
of becoming a teacher there. He was disappointed
in this; but made the acquaintance
of Mrs. Nathanael Greene, widow of
the Revolutionary general, and paid a
visit to her plantation.

When he was there some men who were
also visiting Mrs. Greene happened one
day to lament the fact that there was no
machine for cleaning the staple cotton of
its seeds. This work had to be done by
hand and was very slow. Separating one
pound of the clean staple from the seed
was a day’s work for a negro woman.

Suddenly Mrs. Greene turned to them.
“Gentlemen,” she said, “apply to my
friend here, Mr. Whitney. He can make
anything.” And she showed them several
contrivances the young Northerner had
made.

Whitney modestly said that he did not
know how successful he would be, but that
he would try. In a few weeks he produced
a model, consisting of a wooden cylinder
encircled by rows of slender spikes set half
an inch apart, which extended between the
bars of a grid set so closely together that
the seeds could not pass, but the lint was
pulled through by the revolving spikes.
A revolving brush cleaned the spikes, and
the seed fell into another compartment.
This machine could clean fifty pounds of
cotton a day, as compared with one pound
a day cleaned by hand.

Whitney formed a partnership with
Phineas Miller, who later married Mrs.
Greene, and they built a factory at New
Haven to make cotton gins. This place
was burned to the ground in March, 1795,
and the partners were plunged into debt.
Several infringements of their patent then
appeared to discourage them still more,
and it was not until 1807 that Whitney’s
rights were established.

In the meanwhile, however, the inventor
became disgusted with the struggle and
began manufacturing firearms for the government.
This proved profitable, and he
greatly improved the methods of making
arms. But from the cotton gin he received
little revenue.

His last years were the happiest. In
1817 he married Henrietta Edwards, the
youngest daughter of Judge Pierpont Edwards
of Connecticut. They had four
children, a son and three daughters. Whitney
died in New Haven on January 8,
1825.

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ROBERT FULTON

TWO

Robert Fulton was not the inventor of the steamboat.
He was, however, the first man to apply the
power of the steam engine to the propulsion of boats
in a practical and effective manner. Born of poor
parents at Little Britain, now Fulton, Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, in 1765, he received only the scantiest education;
but early showed promise of becoming an
excellent artist. At the age of seventeen
he took up painting seriously, and supported
himself thus in Philadelphia until
he was twenty-one.

Then he bought a farm in Washington
County; but soon after was strongly
advised to go to England for the purpose
of studying art under the American, Benjamin
West. There he met Earl Stanhope,
Duke of Bridgewater, who interested him
in engineering. In 1794 he took out an
English patent for superseding canal locks
by inclined planes. He also invented
about this time a new method for sawing
marble, a machine for spinning flax, and
another for making ropes.

Soon after this he went to Paris, and
built a submarine, the Nautilus. This
boat was tried in Brest Harbor in 1801,
before a commission appointed by Napoleon
Bonaparte, and Fulton succeeded in
blowing up a small vessel anchored there
for that purpose. Two years later, at Paris,
he was also successful in propelling a boat
by steam power.

Fulton returned to America, and in
partnership with Robert Livingston constructed
the first American steamboat, the
Clermont. This was launched in the spring
of 1807, and its success caused a great sensation.
The principle of propelling boats
by steam was now proved. The Clermont
was soon established as a regular passenger
boat between New York and Albany.

Fulton built the Demologos, or Fulton
the First, for the United States government
during the years 1814 and 1815.
This was the first steam battleship ever
constructed.

In February, 1815, the inventor caught
cold from exposure and rapidly became
worse. On February 24 he died, mourned
by everyone who had known the man and
his achievements.

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ELIAS HOWE

THREE

It is a remarkable fact that some of the greatest and
most useful inventions have been bitterly opposed
by the very persons whom they were designed to
help. The bowmen of olden time resented the introduction
of guns; the stage coach lines tried in every way to
block the building of railways; and Elias Howe, the inventor
of one of the greatest labor saving devices
in the world, the sewing machine, was ridiculed,
discouraged, and denounced as an
enemy of poor sewing women, the ones
whose toil he was seeking to lighten. They
imagined that with the introduction of the
sewing machine their occupation would be
taken away.

Elias Howe was born at Spencer, Massachusetts,
on July 9, 1819, one of a family
of eight children. His father was a farmer
and miller, and Elias’ early years were
spent in the mill. At the same time he
managed to pick up a smattering of education.

He went to Lowell, Massachusetts, in
1835, to work in a cotton mill. Two years
later he obtained a place in a Cambridge
machine shop, in which his cousin, Nathaniel
P. Banks, afterward governor of Massachusetts,
was also employed.

Howe married at the age of twenty-one
and moved to Boston. It was there that
the first germs of his great idea became
implanted in his brain. To increase the
family income his wife did sewing at night.
As Howe watched her slowly and laboriously
stitching a seam, his inventive mind
sought and sought for some way to decrease
her toil. He had a natural bent for
mechanics, and it was not long before he
had constructed the first crude sewing
machine.

This was in October, 1844. But, although
he now had his idea, he lacked
money to prove its value. However, a
man named Fisher in Cambridge liked his
invention, and agreed to board Howe and
his family and to advance $500 in return
for a half interest in the patent. By the
middle of next May, Howe had constructed
a machine which did sewing that promised
to outlast the cloth.

But the invention was opposed everywhere
in America. Finally, in 1846,
Howe’s brother Amasa went to England,
and managed to sell the English rights in
the machine for $1,250 to a William
Thomas. This man also gave Elias Howe
a place in his factory at $15 a week. But
he treated the inventor shamefully, and
Howe threw up the situation. He sent his
family back to America ahead of him, and
then returned himself. He landed in New
York with less than a dollar in his pocket,
and was met with the news that his wife
was dying of consumption at Cambridge.
He managed to borrow some money, and
reached her side just before she passed
away.

These were Howe’s darkest days. Imitations
of his machine were infringing on
his patent, and he had to begin several
suits to establish his rights. He and another
man now began to manufacture
sewing machines in a small way. It was
during this time that the “sewing machine
riots” took place; but soon the real value
of the invention was seen, and all opposition
ceased.

Brighter times began for the inventor.
He won his patent suits, and by 1863 his
royalties were estimated at $4,000 a day!
At the Paris Exposition of 1867 he was
awarded a gold medal and the ribbon of
the Legion of Honor. His last years were
happy ones. He died on October 3, 1867.

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SAMUEL F. B. MORSE

FOUR

The story has been told that the first words that ever
came over a telegraph instrument were “What hath
God Wrought!” and that they were spelled out by
Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraphic
code. This was supposed to have taken place in 1844 in Baltimore,
and to have proclaimed the fact that Morse’s dream of
telegraphy had become a reality. We are
now told on good authority that this was
not the first message to be sent by telegraph,
nor was Morse the sender of the
words. Instead, it was sent by one of the
committee who were debating upon the
proposal of Morse, the inventor, to string a
telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington.
Morse, who wanted to end the
discussion and at the same time demonstrate
his invention, strung a wire from
the committee room to the top of the Capitol.
One of the committee, who was opposed
to President Tyler, wrote, “Tyler
deserves to be hanged.” This was received
by the man at the other end exactly as it
was composed.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born
at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on April
27, 1791. He was the son of the Rev.
Jedediah Morse, and the great-grandson of
Samuel Finley, the second president of the
College of New Jersey at Princeton.

Morse entered Yale at the age of fourteen,
which was not considered extremely
young in those days. It was there that he
first began the study of electricity. But
his tastes led him more strongly toward
art than toward science, and in 1811 the
young graduate became the pupil of Washington
Allston and went with him to England.
Here he remained four years, distinguishing
himself with his brush and
making many friends.

During the next few years the young
artist traveled about New England, painting
portraits for the sum of $15 apiece.
Later he increased his price to $60 a portrait,
doing an average of four a week.
By the money thus earned he was enabled
to marry Miss Lucretia P. Walker on October
6, 1818.

In 1825 Morse was one of the founders
of the National Academy of Design, and
was its first president, from 1826 until
1845. He made a second visit to Europe
in 1829, and traveled about the Continent
for three years before returning to New
York.

During all this time, however, while he
was working at his art, Morse’s mind had
also been occupied with another interest.
That was electromagnetism, and the possibility
of communication between far distant
places by means of it.

It was on board the ship Sully, in which
he was returning to America, that he said,
“If the presence of electricity can be made
visible in any part of the circuit, I see no
reason why intelligence may not be transmitted
by electricity.” And in a few days
he had finished some rough plans of an
apparatus to do this.

But it was a twelve years’ struggle
against poverty and discouragement before
he could get any apparatus that
would work. Finally, however, he was
successful in this, and after taking out a
patent applied to Congress for money to
experiment with the telegraph over a circuit
of sufficient length to test its possibility
and value. After long delay he was
at last granted this in 1843. A line was
built from Baltimore to Washington, and
on May 24, 1844, Miss Ellsworth, daughter
of the Commissioner of Patents, sent the
first message from the chamber of the
Supreme Court in Washington to Baltimore.

Three years later Morse was compelled
to defend his invention in the courts, and
successfully proved his claim to be called
the inventor of the electromagnetic recording
telegraph. He married for the
second time in 1848.

In 1871 a bronze statue of Morse was
erected in Central Park, New York City,
and the following year, on April 2, the
great inventor died, simple, dignified, and
kindly to the end.

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ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL

FIVE

One hot afternoon in June, about forty years ago, a
young man was standing in a grimy workshop by
the side of a crude little machine composed of a
clock spring reed, a magnet, and a wire. He was
bending over this queer machine listening intently. Suddenly
he bent nearer, a startled look of excitement upon his face.
From the clock spring had come a faint,
almost inaudible sound. The young man
straightened up and ran into an adjoining
room, where another man stood near
a second instrument similar to the first.

“Snap that reed again!” he cried excitedly.

The assistant obeyed him, and again
came that faint twang from the spring in
the front room. The telephone was born!

And the man who accomplished this
wonder was a poor young professor of elocution
in Boston, Alexander Graham Bell.
He was not an American by birth. He was
born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 1,
1847. His father was Alexander Melville
Bell, the inventor of a system by which
the deaf can read speech by observing
the motion of the lips.

The Bell family moved to Canada in
1870, and Alexander, the younger, took up
teaching the deaf and dumb in Boston.
He became instructor of phonetics, or the
science of articulate sound, in Monroe’s
School of Oratory. He was a hard worker,
but poor. One time when he had rheumatism
his employer had to pay his hospital
expenses.

It was about this time that Bell began
experimenting with the transmission of
sound by electricity. For a number of
years other people had been trying to do
this. Sir Charles Wheatstone in England
had discovered that wires charged with
electricity often carried noises in a curious
way. In 1869 Reis, a German professor,
constructed an instrument that sent a
series of clicks along an electric wire to an
electromagnetic receiver at the other end.
And others were turning their attention
to this interesting phase of telegraphy.

But it was Alexander Graham Bell who
first succeeded in grasping the correct idea.
A few months after the incident described
above, on a day in January, 1876, he called
some of his pupils into a room and showed
them an instrument that transmitted singing
from the cellar of the building to where
they were on the fourth floor.

People were at first slow to appreciate
the importance of this great invention:
but gradually they came to see its value,
and today there are over seven million
telephones in use in the United States alone.

Money and honors have poured in upon
the inventor, who still lives to enjoy his
triumph. His income is said to be more
than $1,000,000 a year. In 1880 the
French government awarded him the
Volta prize of $10,000, and two years later
he received from the same country the
ribbon of the Legion of Honor.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 29, SERIAL No. 29

THOMAS A. EDISON

SIX

The scene—the Boston office of a great telegraph company.
The time—a half century ago. Enter a tall
young man wearing a slouchy, broad-brimmed hat
and a wet duster clinging to his legs, who marches
into the superintendent’s office, and says: “Here I am.” The
superintendent gazes at him. “Who are you?” he finally asks.

“Tom Edison.”

“And who on earth might Tom Edison
be?”

The young man explains that he has
been ordered to report for duty at the
Boston office. He is told to sit down and
wait. A little while later a New York
sender, who is one of the most rapid in the
telegraph business at the time, calls up.

All the operators are busy.

“Let that new fellow try him,” says the
chief.

Edison sits down and for four and one-half
hours takes the speedy messages.
The faster the instrument clicks, the
faster he writes the words. At the end
New York calls:

“Hello!”

“Hello yourself!” Edison flashes back.

“Who the dickens are you?” asks the
New York operator.

“Tom Edison.”

“You are the first man in the country,
that could ever take me at my fastest,”
clicks out New York, “and the only one
who could ever sit at the other end of my
wire for more than two hours and a half.
I’m proud to know you.”

This little story of Thomas Alva Edison
shows that even as a young man he exhibited
unusual ability. He was born on
February 11, 1847, at Milan, Erie County,
Ohio. His family moved to Port Huron,
Michigan, when the boy was seven, and
when he was only twelve years old Edison
became a train newsboy on the railway to
Detroit. It was during this time that he
rigged up apparatus in the baggage car
and experimented with chemistry and
telegraphy.

He was but fifteen when he became a
telegraph operator. But his studies and
experiments interfered so much with his
duties that he was discharged many times.
He worked in a number of cities of the
United States and Canada. At the age of
twenty-one he had built an automatic
repeater, by which a telegraphic message
could be transferred from one wire to
another without the aid of an operator.
By means of this messages could be sent
direct to a much greater distance than
formerly.

Edison finally went to Boston, as related
herein, and thence to New York, in
1869. There he invented an improved
printing telegraph for stock quotations,
the ticker. For this he received $40,000.

Then he built a laboratory at Newark,
New Jersey; but four years later moved
to Menlo Park, and later to West Orange,
New Jersey. All the time he continued
his experiments and inventions. He lives
now at Orange, and is as hard a worker as
he was when a young man.

Among Edison’s more important inventions
are his system of multiplex telegraphy;
the carbon telephone transmitter;
the phonograph; the incandescent lamp
and light system; the kinetoscope; and
the talking-moving-picture. In all he has
had seven hundred patents granted to
him.

In 1878 Edison was made Chevalier and
afterward Commander of the Legion of
Honor by the French government.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 29, SERIAL No. 29