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The Mentor, No. 29, Great American Inventors




THE MENTOR

“A Wise and Faithful Guide and Friend”

    VOL. 1         NO. 29




GREAT AMERICAN INVENTORS

    ELI WHITNEY
    1765-1825

    ROBERT FULTON
    1765-1815

    ELIAS HOWE
    1819-1867

    S. F. B. MORSE
    1791-1872

    ALEX. GRAHAM BELL
    1847-

    THOMAS ALVA EDISON
    1847-

[Illustration]

_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.

[Illustration: 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

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF ELIAS HOWE

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

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: THE FIRST BOBBIN WINDER]


TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF S. F. B. MORSE

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

[Illustration: THE NEW YORK HOME OF S. F. B. MORSE

_This house was located on West Twenty-second Street near Fifth
Avenue._]

[Illustration: SAMUEL F. B. MORSE]

[Illustration: THE FIRST TELEPHONE]

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: “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.

[Illustration: ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL’S SUBURBAN RESIDENCE AT
WASHINGTON, D. C.]


EDISON, THE MASTER INVENTOR

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: 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.

[Illustration: EDISON LISTENING TO THE PHONOGRAPH]


_SUPPLEMENTARY READING_

[Illustration]

    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_

[Illustration]

_QUESTIONS ANSWERED_

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

_The Mentor Association_

_381 Fourth Avenue, New York City_




[Illustration: ELI WHITNEY]




_GREAT AMERICAN INVENTORS_

_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 <DW64> 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.

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




[Illustration: ROBERT FULTON]




_GREAT AMERICAN INVENTORS_

_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.

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




[Illustration: ELIAS HOWE]




_GREAT AMERICAN INVENTORS_

_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.

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




[Illustration: SAMUEL F. B. MORSE]




_GREAT AMERICAN INVENTORS_

_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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    ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, No. 29, SERIAL No. 29




[Illustration: ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL]




_GREAT AMERICAN INVENTORS_

_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




[Illustration: THOMAS A. EDISON]




_GREAT AMERICAN INVENTORS_

_Thomas Alva 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





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mentor: Great American Inventors,
Vol. 1, Num. 29, Serial No. 29, by H. Addington Bruce

*** 