Part 45 (1/2)
It has ever been the man with an idea, which he puts into practical effect, who has changed the face of Christendoine can be seen in the writings of the Greek philosophers, but it was not developed until lish blacksmith, Newcomen, with no opportunities, who in the seventeenth century conceived the idea of ine consu one horse power The perfection of the ely due to James Watt, a poor, uneducated Scotch boy, who at fifteen walked the streets of London in a vain search for work A professor in the Glasgow University gave hi for jobs he experimented with old vials for steam reservoirs and hollow canes for pipes, for he could not bear to waste aoff the steam after the piston had co the steam already in the cha distance This saved nearly three-fourths of the stea poverty and hardshi+ps which would have disheartened ordinary aret begged hied ”If the engine will not work,” she wrote hi else will Never despair”
”I had gone to take a walk,” said Watt, ”on a fine Sabbath afternoon, and had passed the old washi+ng-house, thinking upon the engine at the time, when the idea came into my head that, as steam is an elastic body, it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel, it would rush into it, andthe cylinder” The idea was siine of much practical value Sir Jaan with only an idea ”at the head of all inventors in all ages and all nations”
See George Stephenson, working in the coal pits for sixpence a day, patching the clothes and ht, to earn a littlethe first money he ever earned, 150, to his blind father to pay his debts
People say he is crazy; his ”roaring steaine will set the house on fire with its sparks”; ”se makers and coachmen will starve for want of work” For three days the committee of the House of Comet on the track of the engine traveling ten miles an hour, will it not be an aard situation?” ”Yes, very aard, indeed, for the coo,” replied Stephenson A government inspector said that if a locomotive ever went ten ine for breakfast
”What can be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held out of loco twice as fast as horses?” asked a writer in the English ”Quarterly Review” for March, 1825 ”We should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer thereve's rockets as to trust the at such a rate We trust that Parliarant, _liht or nine ree with Mr Sylvester is as great as can be ventured upon” This article referred to Stephenson's proposition to use his newly invented locomotive instead of horses on the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, then in process of construction
The coineers, who reported that steaines one and a halfthe cars by means of ropes and pulleys But Stephenson persuaded the a prize of about twenty-five hundred dollars for the best locomotive produced at a trial to take place October 6, 1829
On the eventful day, thousands of spectators asseines, the ”Novelty,” the ”Rocket,” the ”Perseverance,” and the ”Sanspareil” The ”Perseverance” could make but six miles an hour, and so was ruled out, as the conditions called for at least ten The ”Sanspareil” e of fourteen miles an hour, but as it burst a water-pipe it lost its chance The ”Novelty” did splendidly, but also burst a pipe, and was crowded out, leaving the ”Rocket” to carry off the honors with an average speed of fifteentwenty-nine
This was Stephenson's locomotive, and so fully vindicated his theory that the idea of stationary engines on a railroad was coines which the genius of Watt had devised, and set theainst the ineers of his day
In all the records of invention there is nostory than that of John Fitch Poor he was in many senses, poor in appearance, poor in spirit He was born poor, lived poor, and died poor If there ever was a true inventor, this er souls that would coin their own flesh to carry their point He only uttered the obvious truth when he said one day, in a crisis of his invention, that if he could get one hundred pounds by cutting off one of his legs he would gladly give it to the knife
He tried in vain both in this country and in France to get money to build his steamboat He would say: ”You and I will not live to see the day, but the time will come when the steamboat will be preferred to all other modes of conveyance, when steamboats will ascend the Western rivers fro, and when steaotten, but other reat upon theed, forlorn, jeered at, pitied as a reat, refused by the rich, he kept on till, in 1790, he had the first vessel on the Delaware that ever answered the purpose of a steaht ust 4, 1807, a crowd of curious peoplethe wharves of the Hudson River They had gathered to witness what they considered a ridiculous failure of a ”crank” who proposed to take a party of people up the Hudson River to Albany in what he called a steam vessel named the _Clermont_ Did anybody ever hear of such a ridiculous idea as navigating against the current up the Hudson in a vessel without sails? ”The thing will 'bust,'” says one; ”it will burn up,” says another, and ”they will all be drowned,” exclaims a third, as he sees vast columns of black smoke shoot up with showers of brilliant sparks nobody present, in all probability, ever heard of a boat going by steam It was the opinion of everybody that the man who had tooled away his money and his tiht to be in an insane asyluo on board, the plank is pulled in, and the stea beam moves slowly up and down, and the _Clero up streao up strea iiven to the world the first stea that Fulton had rendered such great service to humanity, a service which has revolutionized the commerce of the world, he was looked upon by many as a public enemy Critics and cynics turned up their noses when Fulton was mentioned The severity of the world's censure, ridicule, and detraction has usually been in proportion to the benefit the victim has conferred upon mankind
As the _Clermont_ burned pine wood, dense columns of fire and slided triu the banks were utterly unable to account for the spectacle They rushed to the shore aainst the streareat paddle-wheels increased the wonder
Sailors forsook their vessels, and fisheret out of the way of the fire htened as their predecessors hen the first shi+p approached their hunting-ground on Manhattan Island The owners of sailing vessels were jealous of the _Clermont_, and tried to run her down Others whose interests were affected denied Fulton's claiainst him But the success of the _Clermont_ soon led to the construction of other steaovernate, which was called _Fulton the First_ He also built a diving boat for the governe of torpedoes
By this time his fame had spread all over the civilized world, and when he died, in 1815, newspapers were es offuneral procession passed to old Trinity churchyard
Very few private persons were ever honored with such a burial
True, Dr Lardner had ”proved” to scientific men that a steamshi+p could not cross the Atlantic, but in 1810 the _Savannah_ from New York appeared off the coast of Ireland under sail and steae Those on shore thought that a fire had broken out below the decks, and a king's cutter was sent to her relief
Although the voyage was made without accident, it was nearly twenty years before it was adation could be made a commercial success in ocean traffic
As Junius S froe in 1832, he said to hiularly in steamshi+ps?” In New York and in London a deaf ear was turned to any such nonsense
Se Grote, the historian and banker, who said the idea was practicable; but it was the sath Isaac Selby, a proreed to build a steamshi+p of two thousand tons, the _British Queen_ An unexpected delay in fitting the engines led the projectors to charter the _Sirius_, a river stea of this, other parties started from Bristol four days later in the _Great Western_, and both vessels arrived at New York the same day Soon after Smith made the round trip between London and New York in thirty-two days
What a sublime picture of determination and patience was that of Charles Goodyear, of New Haven, buried in poverty and struggling with hardshi+ps for eleven long years, to make India rubber of practical use!
See hi his clothes and his wife's jewelry to get a little ather sticks in the field for fire) froe and devotion to his idea, when he had no money to bury a dead child and when his other five were near starvation; when his neighbors were harshly criticizing hi him insane But, behold his vulcanized rubber; the result of that heroic struggle, applied to over five hundred uses by 100,000 employees
What a pathetic picture was that of Palissy, plodding on through want and woe to rediscover the lost art of ena his furnaces with bricks carried on his back, seeing his six children die of neglect, probably of starvation, his wife in rags and despair over her husband's ”folly”; despised by his neighbors for neglecting his fa his clothes to his hiredalways, failing steadily, until at last his great as accomplished, and he reaped his reward