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The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.

by Edward W. Byrn · English · Gutenberg #41538 · 892,524 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.

Author: Edward W. Byrn


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. ***

  Transcriber’s notes:

  Text pinted in italics in the original work has been transcribed as
  _text_, bold text as =text=. Text printed in small capitals in the
  original work has been transcribed in ALL-CAPITALS. Superscript texts
  are transcribed as ^{text}.

  More Transcriber’s notes have been added at the end of the text.




[Illustration: STEAM AND ELECTRICITY.

The 70,000 Horse-Power Station of the Metropolitan Street Railway, New
York.]




  THE PROGRESS
  OF
  INVENTION
  IN THE
  NINETEENTH CENTURY


  BY

  EDWARD W. BYRN, A.M.


  “Δός που στω, και την γην κινἡσω.”
  (Give me where to stand, and I’ll move the earth.)
  --_Archimedes._


  MUNN & CO., PUBLISHERS

  SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN OFFICE
  361 BROADWAY, NEW YORK

  1900




  COPYRIGHTED, 1900, BY MUNN & CO.


  ENTERED AT STATIONER’S HALL
  LONDON, ENGLAND


  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


  Printed in the United States of America by
  The Manufacturers’ and Publishers’ Printing Company,
  New York City.




PREFACE.


For a work of such scope as this, the first word of the author should be
an apology for what is doubtless the too ambitious effort of a single
writer. A quarter of a century in the high tide of the arts and
sciences, an ardent interest in all things that make for scientific
progress, and the aid and encouragement of many friends in and about the
Patent Office, furnish the explanation. The work cannot claim the
authority of a text-book, the fullness of a history, nor the exactness
of a technical treatise. It is simply a cursory view of the century in
the field of invention, intended to present the broader bird’s-eye view
of progress achieved. In substantiation of the main facts reliance has
been placed chiefly upon patents, which for historic development are
believed to be the best of all authorities, because they carry the
responsibility of the National Government as to dates, and the attested
signature and oath of the inventor as to subject matter. Many
difficulties and embarrassments have been encountered in the work. The
fear of extending it into a too bulky volume has excluded treatment of
many subjects which the author recognizes as important, and issues in
dispute as to the claims of inventors have also presented themselves in
perplexing conflict. A discussion of the latter has been avoided as far
as possible, the paramount object being to do justice to all the worthy
workers in this field, with favor to none, and only expressing such
conclusions as seem to be justified by authenticated facts and the
impartial verdict of reason in the clearing atmosphere of time. For sins
of omission a lack of space affords a reasonable excuse, and for those
of commission the great scope of the work is pleaded in extenuation. It
is hoped, however, that the volume may find an accepted place in the
literature of the day, as presenting in compact form some comprehensive
and coherent idea of the great things in invention which the Nineteenth
Century has added to the world’s wealth of ideas and material resources.

In acknowledging the many obligations to friends who have aided me in
the work, my thanks are due first to the Editors of the _Scientific
American_ for aid rendered in the preparation of the work; also to
courteous officials in the Government Departments, and to many
progressive manufacturers throughout the country.

  E. W. B.

_Washington, D. C., October, 1900._




TABLE OF CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER I.

  THE PERSPECTIVE VIEW.


  CHAPTER II.

  CHRONOLOGY OF LEADING INVENTIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.


  CHAPTER III.

  THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.

  The Voltaic Pile. Daniell’s Battery. Use of Conducting Wire by Weber.
  Steinheil Employs Earth as Return Circuit. Prof. Henry’s Electro-
  Magnet, and First Telegraphic Experiment. Prof. Morse’s Telegraphic
  Code and Register. First Line Between Washington and Baltimore. Bain’s
  Chemical Telegraph. Gintl’s Duplex Telegraph. Edison’s Quadruplex.
  House’s Printing Telegraph. Fac Simile Telegraphs. Channing and Farmer
  Fire Alarm. Telegraphing by Induction. Wireless Telegraphy by Marconi.
  Statistics.


  CHAPTER IV.

  THE ATLANTIC CABLE.

  Difficulties of Laying. Congratulatory Messages Between Queen Victoria
  and President Buchanan. The Siphon Recorder. Statistics.


  CHAPTER V.

  THE DYNAMO AND ITS APPLICATIONS.

  Observations of Faraday and Henry. Magneto-Electric Machines of Pixii,
  and of Saxton. Hjorth’s Dynamo of 1855. Wilde’s Machine of 1866.
  Siemens’ of 1867. Gramme’s of 1870. Tesla’s Polyphase Currents.


  CHAPTER VI.

  THE ELECTRIC MOTOR.

  Barlow’s Spur Wheel. Dal Negro’s Electric Pendulum. Prof. Henry’s
  Electric Motor. Jacobi’s Electric Boat. Davenport’s Motor. The Neff
  Motor. Dr. Page’s Electric Locomotive. Dr. Siemens’ First Electric
  Railway at Berlin, 1879. First Electric Railway in United States,
  between Baltimore and Hampden, 1885. Third Rail System. Statistics.
  Electric Railways, and General Electric Company. Distribution
  Electric Current in Principal Cities.


  CHAPTER VII.

  THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

  Voltaic Arc by Sir Humphrey Davy. The Jablochkoff Candle. Patents of
  Brush, Weston, and Others. Search Lights. Grove’s First Incandescent
  Lamp. Starr-King Lamp. Moses Farmer Lights First Dwelling with
  Electric Lamps. Sawyer-Man Lamp. Edison’s Incandescent Lamp. Edison’s
  Three-Wire System of Circuits. Statistics.


  CHAPTER VIII.

  THE TELEPHONE.

  Preliminary Suggestions and Experiments of Bourseul, Reis, and
  Drawbaugh. First Speaking Telephone by Prof. Bell. Differences between
  Reis’ and Bell’s Telephones. The Blake Transmitter. Berliner’s
  Variation of Resistance and Electric Undulations, by Variation of
  Pressure. Edison’s Carbon Microphone. The Telephone Exchange.
  Statistics.


  CHAPTER IX.

  ELECTRICITY, MISCELLANEOUS.

  Storage Battery. Batteries of Planté, Faure and Brush. Electric
  Welding. Direct Generation of Electricity by Combustion. Electric
  Boats. Electro-Plating. Edison’s Electric Pen. Electricity in
  Medicine. Electric Cautery. Electric Musical Instruments. Electric
  Blasting.


  CHAPTER X.

  THE STEAM ENGINE.

  Hero’s Engine, and Other Early Steam Engines. Watt’s Steam Engine. The
  Cut-Off. Giffard Injector. Bourdon’s Steam Gauge. Feed Water Heaters,
  Smoke Consumers, etc. Rotary Engines. Steam Hammer. Steam Fire Engine.
  Compound Engines. Schlick and Taylor Systems of Balancing Momentum of
  Moving Parts. Statistics.


  CHAPTER XI.

  THE STEAM RAILWAY.

  Trevithick’s Steam Carriage. Blenkinsop’s Locomotive. Hedley’s
  “Puffing Billy.” Stephenson’s Locomotive. The Link Motion. Stockton
  and Darlington Railway, 1825. Hackworth’s “Royal George.” The
  “Stourbridge Lion” and “John Bull.” Baldwin’s Locomotives.
  Westinghouse Air Brakes. Janney Car Coupling. The Woodruff Sleeping
  Car. Railway Statistics.


  CHAPTER XII.

  STEAM NAVIGATION.

  Early Experiments. Symington’s Boat. Col. John Stevens’ Screw
  Propeller. Robt. Fulton and the “Clermont.” First Trip to Sea by
  Stevens’ “Phœnix.” “Savannah,” the First Steam Vessel to Cross the
  Ocean. Ericsson’s Screw Propeller. The “Great Eastern.” The Whale Back
  Steamers. Ocean Greyhounds. The “Oceanic,” largest Steamship in the
  World. The “Turbinia.” Fulton’s “Demologos,” First War Vessel. The
  Turret Monitor. Modern Battleships and Torpedo Boats. Holland
  Submarine Boat.


  CHAPTER XIII.

  PRINTING.

  Early Printing Press. Nicholson’s Rotary Press. The Columbian and
  Washington Presses. König’s Rotary Steam Press. The Hoe Type Revolving
  Machine. Color Printing. Stereotyping. Paper Making. Wood Pulp. The
  Linotype. Plate Printing. Lithography.


  CHAPTER XIV.

  THE TYPEWRITER.

  Old English Typewriter of 1714. The Burt Typewriter of 1829. Progin’s
  French Machine of 1833. Thurber’s Printing Machine of 1843. The Beach
  Typewriter. The Sholes Typewriter, the First of the Modern Form,
  Commercially Developed into the Remington. The Caligraph, Smith-
  Premier, and Others.


  CHAPTER XV.

  THE SEWING MACHINE.

  Embroidery Machine the Forerunner of the Sewing Machine. Sewing
  Machine of Thomas Saint. The Thimonnier Wooden Machine. Greenough’s
  Double-Pointed Needle. Bean’s Stationary Needle. The Howe Sewing
  Machine. Bachelder’s Continuous Feed. Improvements of Singer. Wilson’s
  Rotary Hook, and Four-Motion Feed. The McKay Shoe Sewing Machine.
  Button Hole Machines. Carpet Sewing Machine. Statistics.


  CHAPTER XVI.

  THE REAPER.

  Early English Machines. Machine of Patrick Bell. The Hussey Reaper.
  McCormick’s Reaper and Its Great Success. Rivalry Between the Two
  American Reapers. Self Rakers. Automatic Binders. Combined Steam
  Reaper and Threshing Machine. Great Wheat Fields of the West.
  Statistics.


  CHAPTER XVII.

  VULCANIZED RUBBER.

  Early Use of Caoutchouc by the Indians. Collection of the Gum. Early
  Experiments Failures. Goodyear’s Persistent Experiments. Nathaniel
  Hayward’s Application of Sulphur to the Gum. Goodyear’s Process of
  Vulcanization. Introduction of his Process into Europe. Trials and
  Imprisonment for Debt. Rubber Shoe Industry. Great Extent and Variety
  of Applications. Statistics.


  CHAPTER XVIII.

  CHEMISTRY.

  Its Evolution as a Science. The Coal Tar Products. Fermenting and
  Brewing. Glucose, Gun Cotton, and Nitro-Glycerine. Electro-Chemistry.
  Fertilizers and Commercial Products. New Elements of the Nineteenth
  Century.


  CHAPTER XIX.

  FOOD AND DRINK.

  The Nature of Food. The Roller Mill. The Middlings Purifier. Culinary
  Utensils. Bread Machinery. Dairy Appliances. Centrifugal Milk Skimmer.
  The Canning Industry. Sterilization. Butchering and Dressing Meats.
  Oleomargarine. Manufacture of Sugar. The Vacuum Pan. Centrifugal
  Filter. Modern Dietetics and Patented Foods.


  CHAPTER XX.

  MEDICINE, SURGERY AND SANITATION.

  Discovery of Circulation of the Blood by Harvey. Vaccination by
  Jenner. Use of Anæsthetics the Great Step of Medical Progress of the
  Century. Materia Medica. Instruments. Schools of Medicine. Dentistry.
  Artificial Limbs. Digestion. Bacteriology, and Disease Germs.
  Antiseptic Surgery. House Sanitation.


  CHAPTER XXI.

  THE BICYCLE AND AUTOMOBILE.

  The Draisine, 1816. Michaux’s Bicycle, 1855. United States Patent to
  Lallement and Carrol, 1866. Transition from “Vertical Fork” and “Star”
  to Modern “Safety.” Pneumatic Tire. Automobile the Prototype of the
  Locomotive. Trevithick’s Steam Road Carriage, 1801. The Locomobile of
  To-day. Gas Engine Automobiles of Pinkus, 1839; Selden, 1879; Duryea,
  Winton, and Others. Electric Automobiles a Development of Electric
  Locomotives as Early as 1836. Grounelle’s Electric Automobile of 1852.
  The Columbia, Woods, and Riker Electric Carriages. Statistics.


  CHAPTER XXII.

  THE PHONOGRAPH.

  Invention of Phonograph by Edison. Scott’s Phonautograph. Improvements
  of Bell and Tainter. The Graphophone. Library of Wax Cylinders.
  Berliner’s Gramophone.


  CHAPTER XXIII.

  OPTICS.

  Early Telescopes. The Lick Telescope. The Grande Lunette. The Stereo-
  Binocular Field Glass. The Microscope. The Spectroscope. Polarization
  of Light. Kaleidoscope. Stereoscope. Range Finder. Kinetoscope, and
  Moving Pictures.


  CHAPTER XXIV.

  PHOTOGRAPHY.

  Experiments of Wedgewood and Davy. Niépce’s Heliography. Daguerre and
  the Daguerreotype. Fox Talbot Makes First Proofs from Negatives. Sir
  John Herschel Introduces Glass Plates. The Collodion Process. Silver and
  Carbon Prints. Ambrotypes. Emulsions. Dry Plates. The Kodak Camera. The
  Platinotype. Photography in Colors. Panorama Cameras. Photo-engraving
  and Photo-lithography. Half Tone Printing.


  CHAPTER XXV.

  THE ROENTGEN OR X-RAYS.

  Geissler Tubes. Vacuum Tubes of Crookes, Hittorf, and Lenard. The
  Cathode Ray. Roentgen’s Great Discovery in 1895. X-Ray Apparatus.
  Salvioni’s Cryptoscope. Edison’s Fluoroscope. The Fluorometer. Sun-
  burn from X-Rays. Uses of X-Rays.


  CHAPTER XXVI.

  GAS LIGHTING.

  Early Use of Natural Gas. Coal Gas Introduced by Murdoch. Winsor
  Organizes First Gas Company in 1804. Melville in United States Lights
  Beaver-Tail Lighthouse with Gas in 1817. Lowe’s Process of Making
  Water Gas. Acetylene Gas. Carburetted Air. Pintsch Gas. Gas Meter.
  Otto Gas Engine. The Welsbach Burner.


  CHAPTER XXVII.

  CIVIL ENGINEERING.

  Great Bridges, Pneumatic Caissons, Tunnels. The Beach Tunnel Shield.
  Suez Canal. Dredges. The Lidgerwood Cable Ways. Canal Locks. Artesian
  Wells. Compressed-Air Rock Drills. Blasting. Mississippi Jetties. Iron
  and Steel Buildings. Eiffel Tower. Washington’s Monument. The United
  States Capitol.


  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  WOODWORKING.

  Early Machines of Sir Samuel Bentham. Evolution of the Saw. Circular
  Saw. Hammering to Tension. Steam Feed for Saw Mill Carriage. Quarter
  Sawing. The Band Saw. Planing Machines. The Woodworth Planer. The
  Woodbury Yielding Pressure Bar. The Universal Woodworker. The
  Blanchard Lathe. Mortising Machines. Special Woodworking Machines.


  CHAPTER XXIX.

  METAL WORKING.

  Early Iron Furnace. Operations of Lord Dudley, Abraham Darby, and
  Henry Cort. Neilson’s Hot Blast. Great Blast Furnaces of Modern Times.
  The Puddling Furnace. Bessemer Steel and the Converter. Open Hearth
  Steel. Regenerative Furnace. Siemens-Martin Process. Forging Armor
  Plate. Making Horse Shoes. Screws and Special Machines. Electric
  Welding, Annealing and Tempering. Coating with Metal. Metal Founding.
  Barbed Wire Machines. Making Nails, Pins, etc. Making Shot. Alloys.
  Making Aluminum, and Metallurgy of Rarer Metals. The Cyanide Process.
  Electric Concentrator.


  CHAPTER XXX.

  FIRE ARMS AND EXPLOSIVES.

  The Cannon, the Most Ancient of Fire Arms. Muzzle and Breech Loaders
  of the Sixteenth Century. The Armstrong Gun. The Rodman, Dahlgren, and
  Parrott Guns. Breech-Loading Ordnance. Rapid Fire Breech-Loading
  Rifles. Disappearing Gun. Gatling Gun. Dynamite Gun. The Colt, and
  Smith & Wesson Revolvers. German Automatic Pistol. Breech-Loading
  Small Arms. Magazine Guns. The Lee, Krag-Jorgensen, and Mauser Rifles.
  Hammerless Guns. Rebounding Locks. Gun Cotton. Nitro Glycerine, and
  Smokeless Powder. Mines and Torpedoes.


  CHAPTER XXXI.

  TEXTILES.

  Spinning and Weaving an Ancient Art. Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny.
  Arkwright’s Roll-Drawing Spinning Machine. Crompton’s Mule Spinner.
  The Cotton Gin. Ring Spinning. The Rabbeth Spindle. John Kay’s Flying
  Shuttle and Robt. Kay’s Drop Box. Cartwright’s Power Loom. The
  Jacquard Loom. Crompton’s Fancy Loom. Bigelow’s Carpet Looms. Lyall
  Positive Motion Loom. Knitting Machines. Cloth Pressing Machinery.
  Artificial Silk. Mercerized Cloth.


  CHAPTER XXXII.

  ICE MACHINES.

  General Principles. Freezing Mixtures. Perkins’ Ice Machine, 1834.
  Pictet’s Apparatus. Carré’s Ammonia Absorption Process. Direct
  Compression, and Can System. The Holden Ice Machine. Skating Rinks.
  Windhausen’s Apparatus for Cooling and Ventilating Ships.


  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  LIQUID AIR.

  Liquefaction of Gases by Northmore--1805, Faraday--1823, Bussy--1824,
  Thilorier--1834, and others. Liquefaction of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Air,
  by Pictet and Cailletet in 1877. Self-Intensification of Cold by
  Siemens in 1857, and Windhausen in 1870. Operations of Dewar,
  Wroblewski, and Olszewski. Self-Intensifying Processes of Solvay,
  Tripler, Lindé, Hampson, and Ostergren and Berger. Liquid Air
  Experiments and Uses.


  CHAPTER XXXIV.

  MINOR INVENTIONS,

  AND

  Patents of Principal Countries of the World.


  CHAPTER XXXV.

  EPILOGUE.




CHAPTER I.

THE PERSPECTIVE VIEW.


Standing on the threshold of the Twentieth Century, and looking back a
hundred years, the Nineteenth Century presents in the field of invention
a magnificent museum of thoughts crystallized and made immortal, not as
passive gems of nature, but as potent, active, useful agencies of man.
The philosophical mind is ever accustomed to regard all stages of growth
as proceeding by slow and uniform processes of evolution, but in the
field of invention the Nineteenth Century has been unique. It has been
something more than a merely normal growth or natural development. It
has been a gigantic tidal wave of human ingenuity and resource, so
stupendous in its magnitude, so complex in its diversity, so profound in
its thought, so fruitful in its wealth, so beneficent in its results,
that the mind is strained and embarrassed in its effort to expand to a
full appreciation of it. Indeed, the period seems a grand climax of
discovery, rather than an increment of growth. It has been a splendid,
brilliant campaign of brains and energy, rising to the highest
achievement amid the most fertile resources, and conducted by the
strongest and best equipment of modern thought and modern strength.

The great works of the ancients are in the main mere monuments of the
patient manual labor of myriads of workers, and can only rank with the
buildings of the diatom and coral insect. Not so with modern
achievement. The last century has been peculiarly an age of ideas and
conservation of energy, materialized in practical embodiment as
labor-saving inventions, often the product of a single mind, and
partaking of the sacred quality of creation.

The old word of creation is, that God breathed into the clay the breath
of life. In the new world of invention mind has breathed into matter,
and a new and expanding creation unfolds itself. The speculative
philosophy of the past is but a too empty consolation for short-lived,
busy man, and, seeing with the eye of science the possibilities of
matter, he has touched it with the divine breath of thought and made a
new world.

When the Nineteenth Century registered its advent in history, the world
of invention was a babe still in its swaddling clothes, but, with a
consciousness of coming power, was beginning to stretch its strong
young arms into the tremendous energy of its life. James Watt had
invented the steam engine. Eli Whitney had given us the cotton gin. John
Gutenberg had made his printing type. Franklin had set up his press. The
telescope had suggested the possibilities of ethereal space, the compass
was already the mariner’s best friend, and gunpowder had given proof of
its deadly agency, but inventive genius was still groping by the light
of a tallow candle. Even up to the beginning of this century so strong a
hold had superstition on the human mind, that inventions were almost
synonymous with the black arts, and the struggling genius had not only
to contend with the natural laws and the thousand and one expected
difficulties that hedge the path of the inventor, but had also to
overcome the far greater obstacles of ignorant fear and bigoted
prejudice. A labor-saving machine was looked upon askance as the enemy
of the working man, and many an earnest inventor, after years of arduous
thought and painstaking labor, saw his cherished model broken up and his
hopes forever blasted by the animosity of his fellow men. But with the
Nineteenth Century a new era has dawned. The legitimate results of
inventions have been realized in larger incomes, shorter hours of labor,
and lives so much richer in health, comfort, happiness, and usefulness,
that to-day the inventor is a benefactor whom the world delights to
honor. So crowded is the busy life of modern civilization with the
evidences of his work, that it is impossible to open one’s eyes without
seeing it on every hand, woven into the very fabric of daily existence.
It is easy to lose sight of the wonderful when once familiar with it,
and we usually fail to give the full measure of positive appreciation to
the great things of this great age. They burst upon our vision at first
like flashing meteors; we marvel at them for a little while, and then we
accept them as facts, which soon become so commonplace and so fused into
the common life as to be only noticed by their omission.

To appreciate them let us briefly contrast the conditions of to-day with
those of a hundred years ago. This is no easy task, for the comparison
not only involves the experiences of two generations, but it is like the
juxtaposition of a star with the noonday sun, whose superior brilliancy
obliterates the lesser light. But reverse the wheels of progress, and
let us make a quick run of one hundred years into the past, and what are
our experiences? Before we get to our destination we find the wheels
themselves beginning to thump and jolt, and the passage becomes more
difficult, more uncomfortable, and so much slower. We are no longer
gliding along in a luxurious palace car behind a magnificent locomotive,
traveling on steel rails, at sixty miles an hour, but we find ourselves
nearing the beginning of the Nineteenth Century in a rickety, rumbling,
dusty stage-coach. Pause! and consider the change for a moment in some
of its broader aspects. First, let us examine the present more closely,
for the average busy man, never looking behind him for comparisons, does
not fully appreciate or estimate at its real value the age in which he
lives. There are to-day (statistics of 1898), 445,064 miles of railway
tracks in the world. This would build seventeen different railway
tracks, of two rails each, around the entire world, or would girdle
mother earth with thirty-four belts of steel. If extended in straight
lines, it would build a track of two rails to the moon, and more than a
hundred thousand miles beyond it. The United States has nearly half of
the entire mileage of the world, and gets along with 36,746 locomotives,
nearly as many passenger coaches, and more than a million and a quarter
of freight cars, which latter, if coupled together, would make nearly
three continuous trains reaching across the American continent from the
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The movement of passenger trains is
equivalent to dispatching thirty-seven trains per day around the world,
and the freight train movement is in like manner equal to dispatching
fifty-three trains a day around the world. Add to this the railway
business controlled by other countries, and one gets some idea of how
far the stage-coach has been left behind. To-day we eat supper in one
city, and breakfast in another so many hundreds of miles east or west as
to be compelled to set our watches to the new meridian of longitude in
order to keep our engagement. But railroads and steam-cars constitute
only one of the stirring elements of modern civilization. As we make the
backward run of one hundred years we have passed by many milestones of
progress. Let us see if we can count some of them as they disappear
behind us. We quickly lose the telephone, phonograph and graphophone. We
no longer see the cable-cars or electric railways. The electric lights
have gone out. The telegraph disappears. The sewing machine, reaper, and
thresher have passed away, and so also have all india-rubber goods. We
no longer see any photographs, photo-engravings, photolithographs, or
snap-shot cameras. The wonderful octuple web perfecting printing press;
printing, pasting, cutting, folding, and counting newspapers at the rate
of 96,000 per hour, or 1,600 per minute, shrinks at the beginning of the
century into an insignificant prototype. We lose all planing and
wood-working machinery, and with it the endless variety of sashes,
doors, blinds, and furniture in unlimited variety. There are no
gas-engines, no passenger elevators, no asphalt pavement, no steam fire
engine, no triple-expansion steam engine, no Giffard injector, no
celluloid articles, no barbed wire fences, no time-locks for safes, no
self-binding harvesters, no oil nor gas wells, no ice machines nor cold
storage. We lose air engines, stem-winding watches, cash-registers and
cash-carriers, the great suspension bridges, and tunnels, the Suez
Canal, iron frame buildings, monitors and heavy ironclads, revolvers,
torpedoes, magazine guns and Gatling guns, linotype machines, all
practical typewriters, all pasteurizing, knowledge of microbes or
disease germs, and sanitary plumbing, water-gas, soda water fountains,
air brakes, coal-tar dyes and medicines, nitro-glycerine, dynamite and
guncotton, dynamo electric machines, aluminum ware, electric
locomotives, Bessemer steel with its wonderful developments, ocean
cables, enameled iron ware, Welsbach gas burners, electric storage
batteries, the cigarette machine, hydraulic dredges, the roller mills,
middlings purifiers and patent-process flour, tin can machines, car
couplings, compressed air drills, sleeping cars, the dynamite gun, the
McKay shoe machine, the circular knitting machine, the Jacquard loom,
wood pulp for paper, fire alarms, the use of anæsthetics in surgery,
oleomargarine, street sweepers, Artesian wells, friction matches, steam
hammers, electro-plating, nail machines, false teeth, artificial limbs
and eyes, the spectroscope, the Kinetoscope or moving pictures,
acetylene gas, X-ray apparatus, horseless carriages, and--but, enough!
the reader exclaims, and indeed it is not pleasant to contemplate the
loss. The negative conditions of that period extend into such an
appalling void that we stop short, shrinking from the thought of what it
would mean to modern civilization to eliminate from its life these
potent factors of its existence.

Returning to the richness and fullness of the present life, we shall
first note chronologically the milestones and finger boards which mark
this great tramway of progress, and afterward consider separately the
more important factors of progress.




CHAPTER II.

CHRONOLOGY OF LEADING INVENTIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.


1800--Volta’s Chemical Battery for producing Electricity. Louis Robert’s
Machine for Making Continuous Webs of Paper.

1801--Trevithick’s Steam Coach (first automobile). Brunel’s Mortising
Machine. Jacquard’s Pattern Loom. First Fire Proof Safe by Richard
Scott. Columbium discovered by Hatchett.

1802--Trevithick and Vivian’s British patent for Running Coaches by
Steam. Charlotte Dundas (Steamboat) towed canal Boats on the Clyde.
Tantalum discovered by Ekeberg. First Photographic Experiments by
Wedgewood and Davy. Bramah’s Planing Machine.

1803--Carpue’s Experiments on Therapeutic Application of Electricity.
Iridium and Osmium discovered by Tenant, and Cerium by Berzelius. Wm.
Horrocks applies Steam to the Loom.

1804--Rhodium and Palladium discovered by Wollaston. First Steam Railway
and Locomotive by Richard Trevithick. Capt. John Stevens applies twin
Screw Propellers in Steam Navigation. Winsor takes British patent for
Illuminating Gas, lights Lyceum Theatre, and organizes First Gas
Company. Lucas’ process making Malleable Iron Castings.

1805--Life Preserver invented by John Edwards of London. Electro-plating
invented by Brugnatelli.

1806--Jeandeau’s Knitting Machine.

1807--First practical Steamboat between New York and Albany (Fulton’s
Clermont). Discovery of Potassium, Sodium and Boron by Davy. Forsyth’s
Percussion Lock for Guns.

1808--Barium, Strontium, and Calcium discovered by Davy. Polarization of
Light from Reflection by Malus. Voltaic arc discovered by Davy.

1809--Sommering’s Multi-wire Telegraphy.

1810--System of Homœopathy organized by Hahnemann.

1811--Discovery of Metal Iodine by M. Courtois. Blenkinsop’s Locomotive.
Colored Polarization of Light by Arago. Thornton and Hall’s Breech
Loading Musket.

1812--London the First City lighted by Gas. Ritter’s Storage Battery.
Schilling proposes use of Electricity to blow up mines. Zamboni’s Dry
Pile (prototype of dry battery).

1813--Howard’s British patent for Vacuum Pan for refining sugar.
Hedley’s Locomotive “Puffing Billy.” Introduction of Stereotyping in the
United States by David Bruce.

1814--London Times printed by König’s rotary steam press. Stephenson’s
First Locomotive. Demologos built by Fulton (the first steam war
vessel). Heliography by Niépce. Discovery of Cyanogen by Gay Lussac. The
Kaleidoscope invented by Sir David Brewster.

1815--Safety Lamp by Sir Humphrey Davy. Seidlitz Powders invented. Gas
Meter by Clegg.

1816--The “Draisine” Bicycle. Circular Knitting Machine by Brunel.

1817--Discovery of Selenium by Berzelius, Cadmium by Stromeyer, and
Lithium by Arfvedson. Hunt’s Pin Machine.

1818--Brunel’s patent Subterranean and Submarine tunnels.
Electro-Magnetism discovered by Oersted of Copenhagen.

1819--American Steamer Savannah from New York first to cross Atlantic.
Laennec discovers Auscultation and invents Stethoscope. Blanchard’s
Lathe for turning Irregular Forms.

1820--Electro-Magnetic Multiplier by Schweigger. Discoveries in
Electro-magnetism by Ampere and Arago. Bohnenberg’s Electroscope.
Discovery of Quinine by Pelletier and Caventou. Malam’s Gas Meter.

1821--Faraday converts Electric Current into Mechanical Motion.

1822--Babbage Calculation Engine.

1823--Liquefaction and Solidification of Gases by Faraday, and
foundation of ammonia absorption ice machine laid by him. Seebeck
discovers Thermo-electricity. Silicon discovered by Berzelius.

1824--Discovery of metal Zirconium by Berzelius. Wright’s Pin Machine.

1825--First Passenger Railway in the world opened between Stockton and
Darlington. Sturgeon invents prototype of Electro Magnet. Beaumont’s
discoveries in Digestion (Alexis San Martin 1825-32).

1826--Discovery of Bromine by M. Balard. Barlow’s Electrical Spur Wheel.
First Railroad in United States built near Quincy, Mass.

1827--Aluminum reduced by Wohler. Ohm’s Law of Electrical Resistance.
Hackworth’s Improvements in Locomotive. Friction Matches by John
Walker.

1828--Neilson’s Hot Blast for Smelting Iron. Professor Henry invents the
Spool Electro Magnet. Tubular Locomotive Boiler by Seguin. First
Artificial production of organic compounds (urea) by Wohler. Thorium
discovered by Berzelius. Yttrium and Glucinum discovered by Wohler.
Nicol’s prism for Polarized Light. Woodworth’s wood planer. Spinning
Ring invented by John Thorp.

1829--Becquerel’s Double Fluid Galvanic Battery. George Stephenson’s
Locomotive, “Rocket,” takes prizes of Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
Importation of “Stourbridge Lion,” the first locomotive to run in the
United States. Daguerreotype invented. Discovery of Magnesium by Bussey.

1830--Vanadium discovered by Sefstroem. Abbe Dal Negro’s Electrically
operated pendulum. Ericsson’s Steam Fire Engine.

1831--Faraday discovers Magnetic Induction. Professor Henry telegraphs
signals. Professor Henry invents his Electric Motor. Locomotive “John
Bull” put in service on Camden and Amboy R. R. Chloroform discovered by
Guthrie. McCormick first experiments with Reaper.

1832--Professor Morse conceives the idea of Electric Telegraph. First
Magneto-Electric Machines by Saxton in United States and Pixii in
France. Sturgeon’s Rotary Electric Motor. Baldwin’s first locomotive,
“Old Ironsides,” built. Link Motion for Locomotive Engine invented by
James. Chloral-hydrate discovered by Liebig.

1833--Steam Whistle adopted by Stephenson. Hussey’s Reaper patented.

1834--Jacobi’s Rotary Electric Motor. Henry Bessemer electro-plates lead
castings with copper. Faraday demonstrates relation of chemical and
electrical force. McCormick Reaper patented. Carbolic Acid discovered by
Runge. Perkins’ Ice Machine.

1835--Forbes proves the absence of heat in Moonlight. Burden’s horse
shoe Machine.

1836--The Daniell Constant Battery invented. Acetylene Gas produced by
Edmond Davy. Colt’s Revolver.

1837--Cooke and Wheatstone’s British patent for Electric telegraph.
Steinheil discovered feasibility of using the earth for return section
of electric circuit. Davenport’s Electric Motor. Spencer’s experiments
in electrotyping. Galvanized Iron invented by Craufurd.

1838--Professor Morse’s French patent for Telegraph. Jacobi’s
Galvano-plastic process for making Electrotype Printing Plates.
Reflecting Stereoscope by Wheatstone. Dry Gas Meter by Defries.

1839--Wreck of Royal George blown up by Electro Blasting. Jacobi builds
first Electrically propelled Boat. Fox Talbot makes Photo Prints from
Negatives. Professors Draper and Morse make first Photographic
Portraits. Mungo Ponton applies Bichromate of Potash in Photography.
Goodyear discovers process of Vulcanizing Rubber. Lanthanum and Didymium
discovered by Mosander. Babbit Metal invented.

1840--Professor Morse’s United States patent for Electric Telegraph.
Professor Grove makes first Incandescent Electric Lamp. Celestial
Photography by Professor Draper.

1841--Artesian well bored at Grenelle, Paris. Sickel’s Steam Cut-off.
Talbotype Photos. M. Triger invents Pneumatic Caissons.

1842--First production of Illuminating Gas from water (water gas) by M.
Selligue. Robt. Davidson builds Electric Locomotive. Nasmyth patents
Steam Hammer.

1843--Joule’s demonstration as to the Nature of Force. Erbium and
Terbium discovered by Mosander. The Thames Tunnel Opened.

1844--First Telegraphic Message sent by Morse from Washington to
Baltimore. Application Nitrous Oxide Gas as an Anæsthetic by Dr. Wells.

1845--Ruthenium discovered by Klaws. The Starr-King Incandescent
Electric Lamp. The Hoe Type Revolving Machine.

1846--House’s Printing Telegraph. Howe’s Sewing Machine. Suez Canal
Started (fourteen years building). Crusell of St. Petersburgh invents
Electric Cautery. Use of Ether as Anæsthetic by Dr. Morton. Artificial
Legs. Discovery of Planet Neptune. Sloan patents Gimlet Pointed Screw.
Gun Cotton discovered by Schönbein.

1847--Chloroform introduced by Dr. Simpson. Nitro-Glycerine discovered
by Sobrero. Time-Locks invented by Savage.

1848--Discovery of Satellites of Saturn by Lassell. Bain’s Chemical
Telegraph. Bakewell’s Fac-Simile Telegraph.

1849--Bourdon’s Pressure Gauge. Lenticular Stereoscope by Brewster.
Hibbert’s Latch Needle for Knitting Machine. Corliss Engine.

1850--First Submarine Cable--Dover to Calais. Collodion Process in
Photography. Mercerizing Cloth. American Machine-made Watches.

1851--Dr. Page’s Electric Locomotive. The Ruhmkorff Coil. Scott Archer’s
Collodion Process in Photography. Seymour’s Self-Raker for Harvesters.
Helmholtz invents Opthalmoscope. Maynard Breech Loading Rifle.

1852--Channing and Farmer Fire Alarm Telegraph. Fox Talbot first uses
reticulated screen for Half Tone Printing.

1853--Gintl’s Duplex Telegraph invented. Electric Lamps devised by
Foucault and Duboscq. Watt and Burgess Soda Process for Making Wood
Pulp.

1854--Wilson’s Four Motion Feed for Sewing Machines. Melhuish invents
the Photographic Roll Films. Hermann’s Diamond Drill. Smith and Wesson
Magazine Firearm (Foundation of the Winchester).

1855--Bessemer Process of Making Steel. Hjorth invents Dynamo Electric
Machine. Ericsson’s Air Engine. Niagara Suspension Bridge. Dr. J. M.
Taupenot invents Dry Plate Photography. The Michaux Bicycle.

1856--Hughes Printing Telegraph. Alliance Magneto Electric Machine.
Woodruff Sleeping Car. First commercial Aniline Dyes by Perkins. Siemens
Regenerative Furnace.

1857--Rogues’ Gallery established in New York. Introduction of Iron
Floor Beams in building Cooper Institute. Siemens describes principle of
Self Intensification of Cold (now used in ice and liquid air machines).

1858--Phelps Printing Telegraph invented. First Atlantic Cable Laid.
Paper pulp from Wood by Voelter. First use of Electric Light in Light
House at South Foreland. Giffard Steam Injector. Gardner patents first
Underground Cable Car System.

1859--Discovery Coal Oil in United States. Moses G. Farmer subdivides
Electric Current through a number of Electric Lamps, and lights first
dwelling by Electricity. Great Eastern launched. Osborne perfects modern
process of Photolithography. Professors Kirchhoff and Bunsen map Solar
Spectrum, and establish Spectrum Analysis.

1860--Rubidium and Caesium discovered by Bunsen. Gaston Planté’s Storage
Battery. Reis’ Crude Telephone. Thallium discovered by Crookes, and
Indium by Reich and Richter. Spencer and Henry Magazine Rifles. Carré’s
Ammonia Absorption Ice Machine.

1861--McKay Shoe Sewing Machine. Calcium Carbide produced by Wohler.
Col. Green invents Drive Well. Otis Passenger Elevator. First Barbed
Wire Fence.

1862--Ericsson’s Iron Clad Turret Monitor. Emulsions and improvements in
Dry Plate Photography by Russell and Sayce. The Gatling Gun. Timby’s
Revolving Turret.

1863--Schultz white gunpowder.

1864--Nobel’s Explosive Gelatine. Rubber Dental Plates. Cabin John
(Washington Aqueduct) Bridge finished (longest masonry span in the
world).

1865--Louis Pasteur’s work in Bacteriology begun. Martin’s Process of
making Steel.

1866--Wilde’s Dynamo Electric Machine. Burleigh’s Compressed Air Rock
Drill. Whitehead Torpedo.

1867--Siemens’ Dynamo Electric Machine. Dynamite Invented. Tilghman’s
Sulphite Process for making Wood Pulp.

1868--Brickill’s Water Heater for Steam Fire Engines. Moncrieff’s
Disappearing Gun Carriage. Oleomargarine invented by Mege. Sholes
Typewriter.

1869--Suez Canal Opened. Pacific Railway Completed. First Westinghouse
Air-Brakes.

1870--The Gramme Dynamo Electric Machine. Windhausen Refrigerating
Machines. Beleaguered Paris communicates with outer world through
Micro-Photographs. Hailer’s Rebounding Gun Lock. Dittmar’s Gunpowder.

1871--Hoe’s Web Perfecting Press set up in Office New York Tribune. The
Locke Grain Binder. Bridge Work in Dentistry. Mount Cenis Tunnel opened
for traffic. Phosphorus Bronze. Ingersoll Compressed Air Rock Drill.

1872--Stearns perfects Duplex Telegraph. Westinghouse Improved automatic
Air Brake. Lyall Positive Motion Loom.

1873--Janney Automatic Car Coupler. Oleomargarine patented in United
States by Mege.

1874--Edison’s Quadruplex Telegraph. Gorham’s Twine Binder for
Harvesters. Barbed Wire Machines. St. Louis Bridge finished.

1875--Lowe’s patent for Water Gas (illuminating gas made from water).
Roller Mills and Middlings Purifier for making flour. Gallium discovered
by Boisbaudran. Pictet Ice Machine. Gamgee’s Skating Rinks. First Cash
Carrier for Stores.

1876--Alexander Graham Bell’s Speaking Telephone. Hydraulic Dredges.
Cigarette Machinery. Photographing by Electric Light by Vander Weyde.
Edison’s Electric Pen. Steam Feed for Saw Mill Carriages. Introduction
of Cable Cars by Hallidie.

1877--Phonograph invented by Edison. Otto Gas Engine. Jablochkoff
Electric Candle. Sawyer-Man Electric Lamp. Berliner’s Telephone
Transmitter of variable resistance (pat. Nov. 17, ’91). Edison’s Carbon
Microphone (pat. May 3, ’92). Discovery of Satellites of Mars by
Professor Asaph Hall, and its so-called Canals by Schiaparelli.
Liquefaction of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Air by Pictet and Cailletet.

1878--Development of Remington Typewriter. Edison invents Carbon
Filament for Incandescent Electric Lamp. Gelatino-Bromide Emulsions in
Photography. Ytterbium discovered by Marignac. Birkenhead Yielding
Spinning Spindle Bearing. Gessner Cloth Press.

1879--Dr. Siemens’ Electric Railway at Berlin. Mississippi Jetties
completed by Capt. Eads. Samarium discovered by Boisbaudran, Scandium by
Nilson, and Thulium by Cleve. The Lee Magazine Rifle.

1880--Faure’s Storage Battery. Eberth and Koch discover Bacillus of
Typhoid Fever, and Sternberg the Bacillus of Pneumonia. Edison’s
Magnetic Ore Concentrator. Greener’s Hammerless Gun. Rabbeth Spinning
Spindle patented.

1881--Telegraphing by Induction by Wm. W. Smith. Blake Telephone
Transmitter. Reece Button Hole Machine. Rack-a-rock (explosive)
patented.

1882--Bacillus of Tuberculosis identified by Koch, and Bacillus of
Hydrophobia by Pasteur. St. Gothard Tunnel opened for traffic.

1883--Brooklyn Suspension Bridge Completed.

1884--Antipyrene. Mergenthaler’s first Linotype Printing Machine
invented. Bacillus of Cholera identified by Koch, Bacillus of Diphtheria
by Loeffler, and Bacillus of Lockjaw by Nicolaier.

1885--Cowles’ Process of Manufacturing Aluminum. First Electric Railway
in America installed between Baltimore and Hampden. Neodymium and
Praseodymium discovered by Welsbach. Welsbach Gas Burner invented.
Blowing up of Flood Rock, New York Harbor. “Bellite” produced by Lamm,
and “Melinite” by Turpin.

1886--Graphophone invented. Electric Welding by Elihu Thomson. Gadolinum
discovered by Marignac, and Germanium by Winkler.

1887--McArthur and Forrest’s Cyanide Process of Obtaining Gold. Tesla’s
System of Polyphase Currents.

1888--Electrocution of Criminals adopted in New York State. Harvey’s
Process of Annealing Armor Plate. De Laval’s Rotary Steam Turbine.
“Kodak” Snap-Shot Camera. Lick Telescope. De Chardonnet’s Process of
Making Artificial Silk.

1889--Nickel Steel. Hall’s Process of Making Aluminum. Dudley Dynamite
Gun. “Cordite” (Smokeless Powder) produced by Abel and Dewar.

1890--Mergenthaler’s Improved Linotype Machine. Photography in Colors.
The Great Forth Bridge finished. Krag-Jorgensen Magazine Rifle.

1891--Parsons’ Rotary Steam Turbine. The Northrup Loom.

1892--The explosive “Indurite” invented by Professor Munroe.

1893--Acheson’s process for making Carborundum. The Yerkes Telescope.
Edison’s Kinetoscope. Production of Calcium Carbide in Electric Furnace
by Willson.

1894--Discovery of element Argon by Lord Rayleigh and Professor Ramsey.
Thorite produced by Bawden.

1895--X-Rays discovered and applied by Roentgen. Acetylene Gas from
Calcium Carbide by Willson. Krupp Armor Plate. Lindé’s Liquid air
apparatus.

1896--Marconi’s System of Wireless Telegraphy. Buffington-Crozier
Disappearing Gun.

1897--Schlick’s System of Balancing Marine Engines. Discovery of Krypton
by Ramsey and Travers.

1898--Horry and Bradley’s process of making Calcium Carbide. Discovery
of Neon and Metargon by Ramsey and Travers; Coronium by Nasini; Xenon by
Ramsey; Monium by Crookes, and Etherion by Brush. Mercerizing Cloth
under tension to render it Silky.

1899--Marconi Telegraphs without wire across the English Channel.
Oceanic launched, the largest steamer ever built.

1900--The Grande Lunette Telescope of Paris Exposition.




CHAPTER III.

THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.

    THE VOLTAIC PILE--DANIELL’S BATTERY--USE OF CONDUCTING WIRE BY
    WEBER--STEINHEIL EMPLOYS EARTH AS RETURN CIRCUIT--PROF. HENRY’S
    ELECTRO MAGNET, AND FIRST TELEGRAPHIC EXPERIMENT--PROF. MORSE’S
    TELEGRAPHIC CODE AND REGISTER--FIRST LINE BETWEEN WASHINGTON
    AND BALTIMORE--BAIN’S CHEMICAL TELEGRAPH--GINTL’S DUPLEX
    TELEGRAPH--EDISON’S QUADRUPLEX--HOUSE’S PRINTING TELEGRAPH--FAC
    SIMILE TELEGRAPHS--CHANNING AND FARMER FIRE ALARM--TELEGRAPHING BY
    INDUCTION--WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY BY MARCONI--STATISTICS.


In the effort to lengthen out the limited span of life into a greater
record of results, time becomes an object of economy. To save time is to
live long, and this in a pre-eminent degree is accomplished by the
telegraph. Of all the inventions which man has called into existence to
aid him in the fulfillment of his destiny, none so closely resembles man
himself in his dual quality of body and soul as the telegraph. It too
has a body and soul. We see the wire and the electro-magnet, but not the
vital principle which animates it. Without its subtile, pulsating,
intangible spirit, it is but dead matter. But vitalized with its
immortal soul it assumes the quality of animated existence, and through
its agency thought is extended beyond the limitations of time and space,
and flashes through air and sea around the world. Its moving principle
flows more silently than a summer’s zephyr, and yet it rises at times to
an angry and deadly crash in the lightning stroke. At once powerful and
elusive, it remained for Professor Morse to capture this wild steed,
and, taming it, place it in the permanent service of man. On May 24,
1844, there went over the wires between Washington and Baltimore the
first message--“What hath God wrought?” This was both prayer and praise,
and no more lofty recognition of the divine power and beneficence could
have been made. It was indeed the work of God made manifest in the hands
of His children.

Popular estimation has always credited Prof. Morse with the invention of
the telegraph, but to ascribe to him all the praise would do great
injustice to many other worthy workers in this field, some of whom are
regarded by the best judges to be entitled to equal praise.

The practical telegraph as originally used is resolvable into four
essential elements, viz., the battery, the conducting wire, the
electro-magnet, and the receiving and transmitting instruments.

The development of the battery began with Galvani in 1790, and Volta in
1800. Galvani discovered that a frog’s legs would exhibit violent
muscular contraction when its exposed nerves were touched with one metal
and its muscles were touched with another metal, the two metals being
connected. The effect was due to an electric current generated and
acting with contractile effect on the muscles of the frog’s legs.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

From this phenomenon, the chemical action of acids upon metals and the
production of an electric current were observed, and the voltaic pile
was invented. This consisted of alternate discs of copper and zinc,
separated by layers of cloth steeped in an acidulated solution. This was
the invention of Volta. From this grew the Daniell battery, invented in
1836 by Prof. Daniell of London, quickly followed by those of Grove,
Smee, and others. These batteries were more constant or uniform in the
production of electricity, were free from odors, and did not require
frequent cleaning, as did the plates of the voltaic pile, which were
important results for telegraphic purposes. The Daniell battery in its
original form employed an acidulated solution of sulphate of copper in a
copper cell containing a porous cup, and a cylinder of amalgamated zinc
in the porous cup and surrounded by a weak acid solution. In the
illustration, which shows a slightly modified form, a cruciform rod of
zinc within a porous cup is surrounded by a copper cell, the whole being
enclosed within a glass jar.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--DANIELL’S BATTERY.]

The second element of the telegraph--the conducting wire--was scarcely
an invention in itself, and the fact that electricity would act at a
distance through a metal conductor had been observed many years before
the Morse telegraph was invented. In 1823, however, Weber discovered
that a copper wire which he had carried over the houses and church
steeples of Göttingen from the observatory to the cabinet of Natural
Philosophy, required no special insulation. This was an important
observation in the practical construction of telegraph lines. One of
even greater importance, however, was that of Prof. Steinheil, of
Munich, who, in 1837, made the discovery of the practicability of using
the earth as one-half, or the return section, of the electric conductor.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--PROF. HENRY’S INTENSITY MAGNET.]

The third element of the telegraph is the electro-magnet. This, and its
arrangement as a relay in a local circuit, was a most important
invention, and contributed quite as much to the success of the telegraph
as did the inventions of Prof. Morse. It may be well to say that an
electro-magnet is a magnet which attracts an iron armature when an
electric current is sent through its coil of wire, and loses its
attractive force when the circuit is cut off, thereby rendering it
possible to produce mechanical effects at a distance through the agency
of electrical impulses only. For the electro-magnet the world is chiefly
indebted to Prof. Joseph Henry, formerly of Princeton, N. J., but later
of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1828 he invented the energetic modern
form of electro-magnet with silk covered wire wound in a series of
crossed layers to form a helix of multiple layers around a central soft
iron core, and in 1831 succeeded in making practical the production of
mechanical effects at a distance, by the tapping of a bell by a rod
deflected by one of his electro-magnets. This experiment may be
considered the pioneer step of the telegraph.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.

HENRY.

STURGEON.
]

Great as was the work of Prof. Henry, he must share the honors with a
number of prior inventors who made the electro-magnet possible.
Electro-magnetism, the underlying principle of the electro-magnet, was
first discovered in 1819 by Prof. Oersted, of Copenhagen. In 1820
Schweigger added the multiplier. Arago in the same year discovered that
a steel rod was magnetized when placed across a wire carrying an
electric current, and that iron filings adhered to a wire carrying a
voltaic current and dropped off when the current was broken. M. Ampere
substituted a helix for the straight wire, and Sturgeon, of England, in
1825 made the real prototype of the electro-magnet by winding a piece of
bare copper wire in a single coil around a varnished and insulated iron
core of a horse shoe form, but the powerful and effective electro-magnet
of Prof. Henry is to-day an essential part of the telegraph, is in
universal use, and is the foundation of the entire electrical art. It is
unfortunate that Prof. Henry did not perpetuate the records of his
inventions in patents, to which he was opposed, for there is good reason
to believe that he was also the original inventor of the important
arrangement of the electro-magnet as a relay in local circuit, and other
features, which have been claimed by other parties upon more enduring
evidence, but perhaps with less right of priority.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.--MORSE’S FIRST MODEL PENDULUM INSTRUMENT.]

The fourth and great final addition to the telegraph which crowned it
with success was the Morse register and alphabetical code, the invention
of Prof. Samuel F. B. Morse, of Massachusetts. Prof. Morse’s invention
was made in 1832, while on board ship returning from Europe. He set up
an experimental line in 1835, and got his French patent October 30,
1838, and his first United States patent June 20, 1840, No. 1647. In
1844 the United States Congress appropriated $30,000 to build a line
from Baltimore to Washington, and on May 24, 1844, the notable message,
“What Hath God wrought?” went over the wires.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.--THE MORSE CODE.]

Morse’s first model, his pendulum instrument of 1837, is illustrated in
Fig. 5. A pendulum carrying a pencil was in constant contact with a
strip of paper drawn beneath the pencil. As long as inactive the pencil
made a straight line. The pendulum carried also an armature, and an
electro-magnet was placed near the armature. A current passed through
the magnet would draw the pendulum to one side. On being released the
pendulum would return, and in this way zigzag markings, as shown at 4
and 5, would be produced on the strip of paper, which formed the
alphabet. A different alphabet, known as the Morse Code, was
subsequently adopted by Morse, and in 1844 the receiving register shown
at Fig. 7 was adopted, which finally assumed the form shown at Fig. 8.

The alphabet consisted simply of an arrangement of dots and dashes in
varying sequence. The register is an apparatus operated by the combined
effects of a clock mechanism and electro-magnet. Under a roll, see Fig.
8, a ribbon of paper is drawn by the clockwork. A lever having an
armature on one end arranged over the poles of an electro-magnet,
carries on the other end a point or stylus. When an electric impulse is
sent over the line the electro-magnet attracts the armature, and the
stylus on the other end of the lever is brought into contact with the
paper strip, and makes an indented impression. A short impulse gives a
dot, and a long impulse holds the stylus against the paper long enough
to allow the clock mechanism to pull the paper under the stylus and make
a dash. By the manipulation of a key for closing the electric circuit
the short or long impulse may be sent, at the pleasure of the operator.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.--MORSE RECEIVER.]

This constituted the completed invention of the telegraph, and on
comparing the work of Profs. Henry and Morse, it is only fair to say
that Prof. Henry’s contribution to the telegraph is still in active use,
while the Morse register has been practically abandoned, as no expert
telegrapher requires the visible evidence of the code, but all rely now
entirely upon the sound click of the electro-magnet placed in the local
circuit and known as a sounder, the varying time lengths of gaps between
the clicks serving every purpose of rapid and intelligent communication.
The invention of the telegraph has been claimed for Steinheil, of
Munich, and also for Cooke and Wheatstone, in England, but few will
deny that it is to Prof. Morse’s indefatigable energy and inventive
skill, with the preliminary work of Prof. Henry, that the world to-day
owes its great gift of the electric telegraph, and with this gift the
world’s great nervous forces have been brought into an intimate and
sensitive sympathy.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.--PERFECTED MORSE REGISTER.]

Whenever an invention receives the advertisement of public approval and
commercial exploitation, the development of that invention along various
lines follows rapidly, and so when practical telegraphic communication
was solved by Henry, Morse, and others, further advances in various
directions were made. Efforts to increase the rapidity in sending
messages soon grew into practical success, and in 1848 _Bain’s Chemical
Telegraph_ was brought out. (U. S. Pats. No. 5,957, Dec. 5, 1848, and
No. 6,328, April 17, 1849.) This employed perforated strips of paper to
effect automatic transmission by contact made through the perforations
in place of the key, while a chemically prepared paper at the opposite
end of the line was discolored by the electric impulses to form the
record. This was the pioneer of the automatic system which by later
improvements is able to send over a thousand words a minute.

[Illustration: FIG. 9.--HOUSE PRINTING TELEGRAPH.]

[Illustration: FIG. 10.--STOCK BROKER’S “TICKER,” WITH GLASS COVER
REMOVED.]

In line with other efforts to increase the capacity of the wires, the
_duplex telegraph_ was invented by Dr. William Gintl, of Austria, in
1853, and was afterwards improved by Carl Frischen, of Hanover, and by
Joseph B. Stearns, of Boston, Mass, who in 1872 perfected the duplex (U.
S. Pats. No. 126,847, May 14, 1872, and No. 132,933, Nov. 12, 1872).
This system doubles the capacity of the telegraphic wire, and its
principle of action permits messages sent from the home station to the
distant station to have no effect on the home station, but full effect
on the distant station, so that the operators at the opposite ends of
the line may both telegraph over the same wire, at the same time, in
opposite directions. This system has been further enlarged by the
quadruplex system of Edison, which was brought out in 1874 (and
subsequently developed in U. S. Pat. No. 209,241, Oct. 22, 1878). This
enabled four messages to be sent over the same wire at the same time,
and is said to have increased the value of the Western Union wires
$15,000,000.

In 1846 Royal C. House invented the _printing telegraph_, which printed
the message automatically on a strip of paper, something after the
manner of the typewriter (U. S. Pat. No. 4,464, April 18, 1846). The
ingenious mechanism involved in this was somewhat complicated, but its
results in printing the message plainly were very satisfactory. This was
the prototype of the familiar “_ticker_” of the stock broker’s office,
seen in Figs. 10 and 11. In 1856 the Hughes printing telegraph was
brought out (U. S. Pat. No. 14,917, May 20, 1856), and in 1858 G. M.
Phelps combined the valuable features of the Hughes and House systems
(U. S. Pat. No. 26,003, Nov. 1, 1859).

[Illustration: FIG. 11.--RECEIVING MESSAGE ON STOCK BROKER’S “TICKER.”]

_Fac Simile_ telegraphs constitute another, although less important
branch of the art. These accomplished the striking result of reproducing
the message at the end of the line in the exact handwriting of the
sender, and not only writing, but exact reproductions of all outlines,
such as maps, pictures, and so forth, may be sent. The fac simile
telegraph originated with F. C. Bakewell, of England, in 1848 (Br. Pat.
No. 12,352, of 1848).

The Dial Telegraph is still another modification of the telegraph. In
this the letters are arranged in a circular series, and a light needle
or pointer, concentrically pivoted, is carried back and forth over the
letters, and is made to successively point to the desired letters.

Among other useful applications of the telegraph is the _fire alarm
system_. In 1852 Channing and Farmer, of Boston, Mass., devised a
system of telegraphic fire alarms, which was adopted in the city of
Boston (U. S. Pat. No. 17,355, May 19, 1857), and which in varying
modifications has spread through all the cities of the world,
introducing that most important element of time economy in the
extinguishment of fires. Hundreds of cities and millions of dollars have
been thus saved from destruction.

Similar applications of local alarms in great numbers have been extended
into various departments of life, such as _District Messenger Service_,
_Burglar Alarms_, _Railroad-Signal Systems_, _Hotel-Annunciators_, and
so on.

[Illustration: FIG. 12.--TELEGRAPHING BY INDUCTION.]

For furnishing current for telegraphic purposes the dynamo, and
especially the storage battery, have in late years found useful
application. In fact, in the leading telegraph offices the storage
battery has practically superseded the old voltaic cells.

_Telegraphing by induction_, _i. e._, without the mechanical connection
of a conducting wire, is another of the developments of telegraphy in
recent years, and finds application to telegraphing to moving railway
trains. When an electric current flows over a telegraph line, objects
along its length are charged at the beginning and end of the current
impulse with a secondary charge, which flows to the earth if connection
is afforded. It is the discharge of this secondary current from the
metal car roof to the ground which, on the moving train, is made the
means of telegraphing without any mechanical connection with the
telegraph lines along the track. As, however, this secondary circuit
occurs only at the making and breaking of the telegraphic impulse, the
length of the impulse affords no means of differentiation into an
alphabet, and so a rapid series of impulses, caused by the vibrator of
an induction coil, is made to produce buzzing tones of various duration
representing the alphabet, and these tones are received upon a telephone
instead of a Morse register. The diagram, Fig. 12,[1] illustrates the
operation.

  [1] From “Electricity in Daily Life,” by courtesy of Charles
      Scribner’s Sons.

To receive messages on a car, electric impulses on the telegraph wire W,
sent from the vibrator of an induction coil, cause induced currents as
follows: Car roof R, wire _a_, key K, telephone _b c_, car wheel and
earth. In sending messages closure of key K works induction coil I C,
and vibrator V, through battery B, and primary circuit _d_, _c_, _f_,
_g_, and the secondary circuit _a_, _h_, _i_, charges the car roof and
influences by induction the telegraph wire W and the telephone at the
receiving station.

In 1881 William W. Smith proposed the plan of communicating between
moving cars and a stationary wire by induction (U. S. Pat. No. 247,127,
Sept. 13, 1881). Thomas A. Edison, L. J. Phelps, and others have further
improved the means for carrying it out. In 1888 the principle was
successfully employed on 200 miles of the Lehigh Valley Railroad.

[Illustration: FIG. 13.--WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY, INTERNATIONAL YACHT RACES,
OCTOBER, 1899.]

_Wireless Telegraphy_, or telegraphing without any wires at all, from
one point to another point through space, is the most modern and
startling development in telegraphy. To the average mind this is highly
suggestive of scientific imposition, so intangible and unknown are the
physical forces by which it is rendered possible, and yet this is one of
the late achievements of the Nineteenth Century. Many scientists have
contributed data on this subject, but the principles and theories have
only begun to crystallize into an art during the first part of the last
decade of the Nineteenth Century. Heinrich Hertz, the German scientist,
was perhaps the real pioneer in this line in his studies and
observations of the nature of the electric undulations which have taken
his name, and are known as “Hertzian” waves, rays, or oscillations.
Tesla in the United States, Branly and Ducretet in France, Righi in
Italy, the Russian savant, Popoff, and Professor Lodge, of England, have
all made contributions to this art. It will aid the understanding to
say, in a preliminary way, that electric undulations are generated and
emitted from a plate or conductor a hundred feet or more high in the
air, are thence transmitted through space to a remote point, which may
be many miles away, and there influencing a similar plate high in the
air give, through a special form of receiving device known as a
“coherer,” a telegraphic record. The “coherer,” invented by Branly in
1891, is a glass tube containing metal filings between two circuit
terminals. The electric waves cause these filings to cohere, and so vary
the resistance to the passage of the current as to give a basis for
transformation into a record.

In March, 1899, Signor Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian student, then
residing in England, successfully communicated between South Foreland,
County of Kent, and Boulogne-sur-mer, in France, a distance of
thirty-two miles across the English Channel. Signor Marconi used the
vertical conductors and the Hertz-oscillation principle, and his system
is described in his United States patent. No. 586,193, July 13, 1897.

His patent comprehends many claims, a leading feature of which is the
means for automatically shaking the “coherer” to break up the cohesion
of the metal filings as embodied in his first claim, as follows:

    “In a receiver for electrical oscillations, the combination of an
    imperfect electrical contact, a circuit through the contact, and
    means actuated by the circuit for shaking the contact.”

The Marconi system of wireless telegraphy was practically employed with
useful effect April 28, 1899, on the “Goodwin Sands” light-ship to
telegraph for assistance when in collision twelve miles from land and in
danger of sinking. It was also used in October, 1899, on board the
“Grande Duchesse” to report the international yacht race between the
“Columbia” and the “Shamrock” at Sandy Hook, as seen in Fig. 13. Lord
Roberts also made good use of it in his South African campaign against
the Boers. According to Signor Marconi its present range is limited to
eighty-six miles, but it is expected that this will be soon extended to
150 miles.

[Illustration: FIG. 13A.--THE COHERER.]

Marconi’s receiving apparatus is shown in Fig. 13A, and consists of a
small glass tube called the coherer, about 1½ inches in length, into the
ends of which are inserted two silver pole pieces, which fit the tube,
but whose ends are 1/50 inch apart. The space between the ends is filled
with a mixture composed of fine nickel and silver filings and a mere
trace of mercury, and the other ends of the pole pieces are attached to
the wires of a local circuit. In the normal condition the metallic
filings have an enormous resistance, and constitute a practical
insulator, preventing the flow of the local current; but if they are
influenced by electric waves, coherence takes place and the resistance
falls, allowing the local current to pass. The coherence will continue
until the filings are mechanically shaken, when they will at once fall
apart, as it were, insulation will be established, and the current will
be broken. If, then, a coherer be brought within the influence of the
electric waves thrown out from a transmitter, coherence will occur
whenever the key of the transmitter at the distant station is depressed.
Mr. Marconi has devised an ingenious arrangement, which is the subject
of his patent referred to, in which a small hammer is made to rap
continuously upon the coherer by the action of the local circuit, which
is closed when the Hertzian waves pass through the metal filings. As
soon as the waves cease, the hammer gives its last rap, and the tube is
left in the decohered condition ready for the next transmission of
waves. It is evident that by making the local circuit operate a relay,
in the circuit of which is a standard recording instrument, the messages
may be recorded on a tape in the usual way.

[Illustration: FIG. 13B.--DIAGRAM OF THE TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER.]

In Fig. 13B is shown the diagram of circuits. The letters _d d_ indicate
the spheres of the transmitter, which are connected, one to the vertical
wire w, the other to earth, and both by wires _c′ c′_, to the terminals
of the secondary winding of induction coil, c. In the primary circuit is
the key _b_. The coherer _j_ has two metal pole pieces, _j¹ j²_,
separated by silver and nickel filings. One end of the tube is connected
to earth, the other to the vertical wire _w_, and the coherer itself
forms part of a circuit containing the local cell _g_, and a sensitive
telegraph relay actuating another circuit, which circuit works a
trembler _p_, of which _o_ is the decohering tapper, or hammer. When the
electric waves pass from _w_ to _j¹ j²_ the resistance falls, and the
current from _g_ actuates the relay _n_, the choking coils _k k′_, lying
between the coherer and the relay, compelling the electric waves to
traverse the coherer instead of flowing through the relay. The relay _n_
in its turn causes the more powerful battery _r_ to pass a current
through the tapper, and also through the electro-magnet of the
recording instrument _h_.

The alternate cohering by the waves and decohering by the tapper
continue uninterruptedly as long as the transmitting key at the distant
station is depressed. The armature of the recording instrument, however,
because of its inertia, cannot rise and fall in unison with the rapid
coherence and decoherence of the receiver, and hence it remains down and
makes a stroke upon the tape as long as the sending key is depressed.

The principal applications of wireless telegraphy so far have been at
sea, where the absence of intervening obstacles gives a free path to the
electrical oscillations. The system is also applicable on land, however,
and no one can doubt that if the Ministers of the Legations shut up in
Pekin had been supplied with a wireless telegraphy outfit, neither the
walls of Pekin nor the strongest cordon of its Chinese hordes could have
prevented the long sought communication. The full story of mystery and
massacre would have been promptly made known, and the civilized world
have been spared its anxiety, and earlier and effective measures of
relief supplied.

As the art of telegraphy grows apace toward the end of the Nineteenth
Century, individuality of invention becomes lost in the great maze of
modifications, ramifications, and combinations. Inventions become merged
into systems, and systems become swallowed up by companies. In the
promises of living inventors the wish is too often father to the
thought, and the conservative man sees the child of promise rise in
great expectation, flourish for a few years, and then subside to quiet
rest in the dusty archives of the Patent Office. They all contribute
their quota of value, but it is so difficult to single out as
pre-eminent any one of those which as yet are on probation, that we must
leave to the coming generation the task of making meritorious selection.

To-day the telegraph is the great nerve system of the nation’s body, and
it ramifies and vitalizes every part with sensitive force. In 1899 the
Western Union Telegraph Company alone had 22,285 offices, 904,633 miles
of wire, sent 61,398,157 messages, received in money $23,954,312, and
enjoyed a profit of $5,868,733. Add to this the business of the Postal
Telegraph Company and other companies, and it becomes well nigh
impossible to grasp the magnitude of this tremendous factor of
Nineteenth Century progress. Figures fail to become impressive after
they reach the higher denominations, and it may not add much to either
the reader’s conception or his knowledge to say that the statistics for
the _whole world_ for the year 1898 show: 103,832 telegraph offices,
2,989,803 miles of wire, and 365,453,526 messages sent during that year.
This wire would extend around the earth about 120 times, and the
messages amounted to one million a day for every day in that year. This
is for land telegraphs only, and does not include cable messages.

What saving has accrued to the world in the matter of time, and what
development in values in the various departments of life, and what
contributions to human comfort and happiness the telegraph has brought
about, is beyond human estimate, and is too impressive a thought for
speculation.




CHAPTER IV.

THE ATLANTIC CABLE.

    DIFFICULTIES OF LAYING--CONGRATULATORY MESSAGES BETWEEN QUEEN
    VICTORIA AND PRESIDENT BUCHANAN--THE SIPHON RECORDER--STATISTICS.


Among the applications of the telegraph which deserve special mention
for magnitude and importance is the Atlantic Cable. For boldness of
conception, tireless persistence in execution, and value of results,
this engineering feat, though nearly a half century old, still
challenges the admiration of the world, and marks the beginning of one
of the great epochs of the Nineteenth Century. It was not so brilliant
in substantive invention, as it added but little to the telegraph as
already known, beyond the means for insulating the wires within a gutta
percha cable, but it was one of the greatest of all engineering works.
It was chiefly the result of the energy and public spirit of Mr. Cyrus
W. Field, an eminent American citizen. Three times was its laying
attempted before success crowned the work. The first expedition sailed
August 7, 1857, and consisted of a fleet of eight vessels, four American
and four English, starting from Valentia on the Irish coast. On August
11 the cable parted, and 344 miles of the cable were lost in water two
miles deep. In 1858 a renewal of the effort to lay the cable was made.
Improvements were added in the paying out machinery, and a different
manner of coiling the enormous load of cable on the vessels was resorted
to, and provisions also were made to protect the propeller from contact
with the cable. On June 10 the telegraphic fleet steamed out of Plymouth
harbor. It consisted of the U. S. frigate “Niagara,” with the
paddle-wheel steamer “Valorous” as a tender, and the British frigate
“Agamemnon,” with the paddle-wheel steamer “Gorgon” as a tender. After
three days at sea, terrible gales were encountered and much damage
resulted. The vessels were to proceed to midocean, and the portions of
the cable carried by the “Niagara” and “Agamemnon” were to be spliced,
and the two vessels were then to sail in opposite directions to their
respective coasts. The first splice was made on the 26th of June. After
paying out two and a half miles each, the cable parted. Again meeting
and splicing, forty miles each were paid out, and the cable again
parted. On the 28th another splicing was effected, and 150 miles each
were paid out, and again the cable parted, and the expedition had to be
abandoned. After much financial embarrassment and adverse criticism, the
courageous and public-spirited directors who had control of the
enterprise dispatched another expedition, which sailed July 17, 1858.
The two vessels, “Niagara” and “Agamemnon,” with their tenders,
proceeded to midocean, and following the same method of connecting the
ends of their respective cable sections, they sailed in opposite
directions. On August 5, 1858, Mr. Cyrus Field announced by telegram
from Trinity Bay, on the coast of Newfoundland, that Trinity Bay in
America, and Valentia in Ireland, 2,134 miles apart, had been connected,
and the great Atlantic cable was an established fact.

[Illustration: FIG. 14.--ORIGINAL ATLANTIC CABLE, FULL SIZE.

Consists of seven copper wires (4) to form the conductor, a wrapping (3)
of thread, soaked in tallow and pitch, several layers (2) of gutta
percha, all surrounded by a protecting coat of mail (1) of twisted
wires.]

On August 16, 1858, the first message came over from Queen Victoria to
President Buchanan of the United States, as follows:

    “_To the President of the United States, Washington:_

     “The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the
     successful completion of this great international work, in which
     the Queen has taken the deepest interest.

     “The Queen is convinced that the President will join with her in
     fervently hoping that the Electric Cable which now connects Great
     Britain with the United States will prove an additional link
     between the nations whose friendship is founded upon their common
     interest and reciprocal esteem.

     “The Queen has much pleasure in thus communicating with the
     President, and renewing to him her wishes for the prosperity of the
     United States.”

to which the President replied as follows:

    “WASHINGTON CITY, Aug. 16, 1858.

     “_To Her Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain:_

     “The President cordially reciprocates the congratulations of Her
     Majesty, the Queen, on the success of the great international
     enterprise accomplished by the science, skill, and indomitable
     energy of the two countries. It is a triumph more glorious,
     because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror
     on the field of battle.

     “May the Atlantic Telegraph, under the blessing of Heaven, prove to
     be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred
     nations, and an instrument destined by Divine Providence to diffuse
     religion, civilization, liberty and law throughout the world. In
     this view will not all nations of Christendom spontaneously unite
     in the declaration that it shall be forever neutral, and that its
     communications shall be held sacred in passing to their places of
     destination, even in the midst of hostilities?

(Signed)

“JAMES BUCHANAN.”

Great rejoicing on both sides of the ocean followed, and the public
print was filled with accounts of the enterprise. The following
selection from the _Atlantic Monthly_ of October, 1858, is an apostrophe
in lofty sentiments of verse, which to-day stirs the Twentieth Century
heart as a joyous prophecy fulfilled:

    Thou lonely Bay of Trinity,
      Ye bosky shores untrod,
    Lean, breathless, to the white-lipped sea
      And hear the voice of God!

    From world to world His couriers fly,
      Thought-winged and shod with fire;
    The angel of His stormy sky
      Rides down the sunken wire.

    What saith the herald of the Lord?
      “The world’s long strife is done!
    Close wedded by that mystic cord,
      Her continents are one.

    “And one in heart, as one in blood,
      Shall all her peoples be;
    The hands of human brotherhood
      Shall clasp beneath the sea.

    “Through Orient seas, o’er Afric’s plain,
      And Asian mountains borne,
    The vigor of the Northern brain
      Shall nerve the world outworn.

    “From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
      Shall thrill the magic thread;
    The new Prometheus steals once more
      The fire that wakes the dead.

    “Earth, gray with age, shall hear the strain
      Which o’er her childhood rolled;
    For her the morning stars again
      Shall sing their song of old.

    “For, lo! the fall of Ocean’s wall,
      Space mocked and Time outrun!
    And round the world the thought of all
      Is as the thought of one!”

    O, reverently and thankfully
      The mighty wonder own!
    The deaf can hear, the blind may see,
      The work is God’s alone.

    Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat
      From answering beach to beach!
    Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,
      And melt the chains of each!

    Wild terror of the sky above,
      Glide tamed and dumb below!
    Bear gently, Ocean’s carrier dove,
      Thy errands to and fro!

    Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,
      Beneath the deep so far,
    The bridal robe of Earth’s accord,
      The funeral shroud of war!

    The poles unite, the zones agree,
      The tongues of striving cease;
    As on the Sea of Galilee,
      The Christ is whispering, “Peace!”

After a few months of working, the cable became inoperative, but its
success was a demonstrated fact, and in 1866 a new cable was laid by the
aid of that monster steamer “The Great Eastern,” since which time the
cable has become one of the great factors of modern civilization.

Probably the most important of the inventions relating to submarine
telegraphs is the siphon recorder, invented by Sir William Thompson, now
Lord Kelvin (U. S. Pat. No. 156,897, Nov. 17, 1874). It is called a
siphon recorder because the record is made by a little glass siphon down
which a flow of ink is maintained like a fountain pen. This siphon is
vibrated by the electric impulses to produce on the paper strip a zigzag
line, whose varying contour is made to represent letters. In the
illustration, Fig. 15, _m_ is an ink well, _o_ a strip of paper, and _n_
the ink siphon, one end of which is bent and dips down into the ink
well, and the other end of which traces the record on the moving paper
strip _o_. The siphon is sustained on a vertical axis _l_, and its
lateral vibration is effected as follows: A light rectangular coil _b
b_, of exceedingly fine insulated wire, is suspended between the poles N
S of a powerful electro-magnet energized by a local battery. In the
coil _b b_ is a stationary soft iron core _a_, magnetized by the poles N
S. The coil _b b_ is suspended upon a vertical axis consisting of a fine
wire _f f_, and the delicate electrical impulses over the submarine
cable enter the coil _b b_ through the axial wire _f f_ as a conductor,
and cause a greater or less oscillation of the coil _b b_ between the
poles N S of the electro-magnet. The coil _b b_ is connected by a thread
_k_ to the siphon, and pulls the siphon in one direction, while the
siphon is pulled in the opposite direction by a helical spring attached
to an arm on the siphon axis _l_. The jagged lines seen in Fig. 16 spell
the words “siphon recorder.”

[Illustration: FIG. 15.--SIPHON RECORDER.]

[Illustration: FIG. 16.--SIPHON RECORDER MESSAGE.]

To-day there lie in submerged silence, but pulsating with the life of
the world, no less than 1,500 submarine telegraphs. Their aggregate
length is 170,000 miles; their total estimated cost is $250,000,000, and
the number of messages annually transmitted over them is 6,000,000.
Thirteen cables work daily across the Atlantic, and an additional one is
being laid from Germany. Messages now go across the Atlantic and are
received on the siphon recorder at the rate of fifty words a minute,
and at a cost of twenty-five cents a word. Our guns may thunder in the
Philippines, and the news by cable, traveling faster than the earth on
its axis, may reach the Western Hemisphere under the paradoxical
condition of several hours earlier than it occurred. Cablegrams to
Manila cost $2.38 a word, and the cable tolls for our War Department
alone are costing at the rate of $325,000 a year. The logical outcome is
a Pacific cable, a bill for which, connecting San Francisco and
Honolulu, has already passed the United States Senate.

Messages from the Executive Mansion at Washington to the battlefield at
Santiago were sent and responses received within twelve minutes, while a
message dispatched from the House of Representatives in Washington to
the House of Parliament in London, in the chess match of 1898, was
transmitted and a reply received in thirteen and one-half seconds.

To-day the cable with the still small voice, more divine than human,
speaks with one accent to all the nations of the earth. Differing though
they may in tongue and skin, in thought and religion, in physical
development and clime, the telegraph speaks to them all alike, and by
all is understood. Truly it fulfils the prophecy so gracefully expressed
in the verses quoted, and has become the common bond of union among the
nations of the earth.




CHAPTER V.

THE DYNAMO AND ITS APPLICATIONS.

    OBSERVATIONS OF FARADAY AND HENRY--MAGNETO-ELECTRIC MACHINES OF
    PIXII AND OF SAXTON--HJORTH’S DYNAMO OF 1855--WILDE’S MACHINE OF
    1866--SIEMENS’ OF 1867--GRAMME’S OF 1870--TESLA’S POLYPHASE
    CURRENTS.


In the last thirty-five years of the Nineteenth Century there has grown
up into the full stature of mechanical majority this stalwart son of
electrical lineage. As the means for furnishing electrical power it
stands to-day the great fountain head of electrical generation, and in
its peculiar field ranks as of equal importance with the steam engine.
Until about 1865 the voltaic battery, which generated electricity by
chemical decomposition, was practically the only means for producing
electricity for industrial and commercial purposes. It was through its
agency that the telegraph, the electric light, and many other
discoveries in electricity were made and rendered possible. Its cost and
limited amount of current, however, restricted the limits of its
practical application, and although its current could furnish beautiful
laboratory experiments, its mechanical work was more in the nature of
illustration than utilization. But with the advent of the dynamo
electricity has taken a new and very much larger place in the commercial
activities of the world. It runs and warms our cars, it furnishes our
light, it plates our metals, it runs our elevators, it electrocutes our
criminals; and a thousand other things it performs for us with secrecy
and dispatch in its silent and forceful way. But what is a dynamo? To
the average mind the most satisfactory answer would be--that it is
simply a machine which converts mechanical power into electricity.
Attach a dynamo to a steam engine, and the power of the steam engine
will, through the dynamo, become transformed or converted into a
powerful electric current. Any other source of mechanical power, such as
a water wheel, gas engine, wind wheel, or even a horse or man, will
serve to operate the dynamo; its primary and sole function being to take
power and convert it into electricity.

The stepping stone to the dynamo in its development was the
_magneto-electrical machine_. This is a machine founded upon the general
principle observed by Faraday in 1831 and 1832, and also by Prof. Henry
about the same time, that when a magnet is made to approach a helix of
insulated wire it causes a current of electricity to flow in the helix
as long as the magnet advances. If the magnet is passed through the
helix, the current is reversed as soon as the magnet passes the middle
point. The principle is the same if the magnet be made to approach and
recede from the poles of an electro-magnet having a helix wound around a
soft iron core. Likewise the same result occurs if the electro-magnet
with its helix is made to approach and recede from a permanent magnet,
the current in the helix flowing in one direction when it approaches the
permanent magnet, and in the opposite direction when leaving the said
magnet. The movement of the two elements in relation to each other
requires some force to overcome the repellent and attractive actions,
and this force is converted into electrical energy. This is the
principle of the magneto-electric machine.

[Illustration: FIG. 17.--PIXII MAGNETO-ELECTRIC MACHINE, 1832.]

Saxton in the United States and Pixii in France were the first to
produce organized devices of this class for generating electricity from
magnetism. Pixii’s machine (1832) consisted of a permanent horse-shoe
magnet which was caused to revolve in proximity to an armature upon
which was wound a coil of insulated wire. On March 30, 1852, Sonnenberg
and Rechten obtained a United States patent, No. 8,843, for an
electrical machine for killing whales, and on August 19, 1856, Shepard
obtained U. S. Pat. No. 15,596 for the machine which came to be known as
the “Alliance” machine. Both of these machines had permanent field
magnets, and were early types of magneto-electric machines. The
efficiency of these magneto-electric machines was necessarily limited to
the strength of the inducing field magnets, which, being permanent
magnets, were a positive and fixed factor. It was an easy step to
substitute electro-magnets for permanent magnets, as the field or
inducing magnets, and also to excite the (electro) field magnet by
voltaic batteries, but the important step which resulted in the machine
which is called the “dynamo” (from the Greek “Δυναμις”--power) was yet
to come.

[Illustration: FIG. 18.--HJORTH’S DYNAMO ELECTRIC MACHINE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 19.--HJORTH’S DYNAMO ELECTRIC MACHINE, PLAN VIEW.]

This step consisted in taking the current induced in the revolving helix
or armature (by the field magnets) and sending it back through the coils
of the field magnets which produced it, thereby increasing the energy of
the field magnet coils, and they in turn with an increased efficiency
and reciprocal action induce still stronger currents in the armature
coils, and so a building up process, or principle of mutual and
reciprocal excitation, is carried on until the maximum efficiency is
reached. This principle was the discovery of Soren Hjorth, of
Copenhagen, and is fully described in his British patent, No. 806 of
1855, for “An Improved Magneto-Electric Battery.” As the prototype of
the dynamo, it is worthy of illustration. In the illustration, Figs. 18
and 19, _a_ is a revolving wheel bearing the armature coils, _C_
permanent magnets, _d_ electro-magnets (field magnets), and _g_ the
commutator. Quoting from his specifications, he says: “The permanent
magnets acting on the armatures brought in succession between their
poles, induce a current in the coils of the armatures, which current,
after having been caused by the commutator to flow in one direction,
passes round the electro-magnets (field magnets), charging the same and
acting on the armatures. By the mutual action between the
electro-magnets and the armatures an accelerating force is obtained,
which in result produces electricity greater in quantity and intensity
than has heretofore been obtained by similar means.”

Although the principle of the dynamo was clearly embodied in the Hjorth
patent, its value was not appreciated until some time later. Eleven
years later Wilde (U. S. Pat. No. 59,738, Nov. 13, 1866), employed a
small machine with permanent magnets to excite the coil-wound field
magnets of a larger machine. But Siemens (British Pat. No. 261 of 1867),
taking up the principle employed by Hjorth, dispensed with his
superfluous permanent magnets, having found that the residual magnetism,
which always remained in iron which has once been magnetized, was
sufficient as a basis to start the building up process. Farmer,
Wheatstone and Varley also recognized this fact about the same time.
Siemens’ patent also was the first embodiment of what is known as the
bobbin armature. Gramme and D’Ivernois (British Pat. 1,668 of 1870, and
U. S. Pat. No. 120,057, of Oct. 17, 1871), were the first to bring out
the continuously wound ring armature.

Active development now began in various types and by various inventors,
including Weston, Brush, Edison, Thomson and Houston, Westinghouse, and
others, who have brought the dynamo to its present high efficiency.

The revolving coils of the dynamo are called the armature, and the fixed
electro-magnets are called the field magnets, and these latter may be
two or more in number. When two are used they are arranged on opposite
sides of the armature, and form what is known as the bipolar machine. A
larger number constitutes the multipolar machine. The field magnets in
the multipolar machine usually are arranged in radial position around
the entire circumference of the revolving armature, and are held in a
fixed circular frame. To give a clear idea of the principles of the
dynamo, the bipolar machine is best suited for illustration, and is here
given in Figs. 20 and 21, in which Fig. 20 represents the dynamo
complete, and Fig. 21 a detail of the end of the armature and
commutator. This armature consists of coils or bobbins of insulated
wire, each section having its terminals connected with separate
insulated plates on the hub, which plates are known as the commutator.
When any section of the armature approaches the pole of a field magnet,
the current induced in that section of the armature coils by the field
magnet, is taken off from a corresponding plate of the commutator by
flat springs, seen in Fig. 20, and known as brushes. The field magnets A
and B, Fig. 20, are shown with only a few turns of wire about them for
clearer illustrations of the connections, which are made as follows: The
wire _a_ is extended in coils around the field magnet B, and thence
around field magnet A, and thence to the upper brush on the commutator,
thence through the wire coils or bobbins of the rotary armature C, and
thence by the lower brush to the wire _b_. The terminals of the wires
_a_ and _b_ extend to the point of utilization of the current, whether
this be electric lights, motors, or other applications. In this
illustration, the circuit, it will be seen, passes through both the
coils of the field magnets and the coils of the armature, involving the
principle of mutual excitation.

[Illustration: FIG. 20.--BIPOLAR DYNAMO.]

There are two principal kinds of dynamos--those producing the
alternating currents, and those producing the continuous current. In the
first the current alternates in direction, or is composed of an infinite
number of impulses of opposite polarity: one polarity when a section of
the armature coil is approaching a north field magnet pole or receding
from a south pole, and the other polarity when receding from a north
field magnet pole and approaching a south pole. In the continuous
current machine, the commutator and brushes are so arranged as to take
up all the impulses of the same polarity and conduct them away by one
brush, and gathering all the impulses of the opposite polarity and
conducting them away by another brush. Thus the current of each brush,
in the continuous current machine, is always of the same polarity, and
the polarity of one being always positive, and that of the other
negative, the current flows continuously in the same direction. A third
species of dynamo is the pulsatory, in which the current flow is
invariable in direction, but proceeds in waves.

[Illustration: FIG. 21.--ARMATURE OF BIPOLAR DYNAMO.]

A change in the character of the current generated by the dynamo is made
by what is known as the “transformer,” in which the principle of the
induction coil is made available. In this way, for instance, the high
potential currents generated by the powerful water wheels at Niagara
Falls are taken twenty miles to Buffalo, and are there transformed into
other currents of lower potential, suited to incandescent lighting and
other various uses. A similar scheme is in process of fulfillment in the
establishment of a water power electric plant near Conowingo, Maryland,
on the Susquehanna River, to furnish electrical power to Baltimore,
Wilmington and Philadelphia.

An important development in electrical generation and transmission is to
be found in what is known as the _polyphase_, _multiphase_, or
_rotating_ current, pioneer patents for which were granted to Tesla May
1, 1888, Nos. 381,968, 381,969, 382,279, 382,280, 382,281 and 382,282.

Realizing the possibilities of the dynamo, the Legislature of New York
in 1888 passed a law, which went into effect in 1889, in that State,
substituting death by electricity for the hangman’s noose. The criminal
is strapped in the chair, seen in Fig. 22, one terminal of the wire from
the dynamo is strapped upon his forehead, and the other to anklets on
his legs, and like a flash of lightning the deadly energy of the dynamo
performs its work.

Not the least of the applications of the dynamo is its use in
electro-metallurgy for plating metals, and also for promoting chemical
reactions. The electric furnace, stimulated into higher heat by the
dynamo than can be otherwise obtained, has brought about many valuable
discoveries, and made great advances in various arts. The metal
aluminum, and the hard abrasive or polishing and grinding material known
as “carborundum” are the products of the electric furnace, and so is the
product known as “calcium carbide,” which, when immersed in water, gives
off acetylene gas and is a product now universally used for that
purpose, and rapidly increasing in commercial importance.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.--ELECTROCUTION CHAIR.]

In Fig. 23 is seen the Acheson electric furnace for producing
carborundum. The electric current traverses the furnace through a series
of horizontal electrodes at each end, and highly heats a central core of
carbon, which is disposed in a mass of silicious and carbonaceous
material, and which latter is converted by the heat into silicide of
carbon, or carborundum. In Fig. 24 is shown a continuous electric
furnace constructed as a revolving wheel, under the Bradley patents. Rim
sections 5 are placed on the wheel on one side and filled with a mixture
of carbon and lime, through which the electric current is passed from
the dynamo _g_. The heat of the current fuses the mass and converts it
into calcium carbide, and as the wheel slowly revolves the rim sections
5 are removed from the opposite side, and the mass of calcium carbide,
seen at _x_, is broken off. The electrolytic production of copper
through the agency of the dynamo amounts to 150,000 tons annually, and
the commercial reduction of aluminum by the electric furnace has grown
from eighty-three pounds in 1883 to 5,200,000 pounds in 1898, and its
cost has been reduced to about 33 cents per pound.

[Illustration: FIG. 23.--PART SECTIONAL VIEW OF CARBORUNDUM FURNACE.]

The storage battery, holding in reserve its stored up electric energy,
also owes its practical value entirely to the dynamo which charges it,
and thus makes available a portable source of supply.

[Illustration: FIG. 24.--BRADLEY ELECTRIC FURNACE FOR PRODUCING CALCIUM
CARBIDE.]

To contemplate the dynamo with its clumsy, enormous spools, it suggests
to the imagination of the average observer the gigantic toy of some
Brobdingnagian boy--but the dynamo is no toy. It is the most compact,
business-like, and dangerous of all utilitarian devices. To touch its
brushes may be instant death, for the dynamo is the prison house of the
lightning, and resents intrusion. Hidden away from public gaze in some
sequestered power house, and working night and day like some tireless,
dumb, and mighty genii, it sends its magnetic thrills of force silently
through the many miles of wire extending like radii from some great
nerve center through the conduits in our streets, and stretching from
pole to pole like giant cobwebs through the air. Responding to its
force, thousands of little incandescent threads leap into radiant
brightness and shed their mellow and genial light in our offices, our
stores, hotels, and homes. Brilliant arc lamps, rivaling the sun in
power, make night into day, and produce along our streets coruscations,
silhouettes, and dancing shadows in spectacular and unceasing pageants.
From the towering lighthouses of our coasts its beams are thrown
seaward, and a beacon for the mariner shines beyond all other lights.
The great search light of our ships is in itself but a hollow mockery
until the dynamo whispers in its ear the word “light!” and then its
beam, reaching for miles along the horizon, discovers a stealthy enemy,
or signals the safe return to port. The mighty force of the dynamo
entering the electric motors on the street cars turns the wheels and
transports its load with scarcely a passenger inside realizing how it is
all done. The same energy turns the electric fan, and with kindly
service soothes the weary sufferer, and at another place remorselessly
takes the life of the condemned criminal. The dynamo is one of the great
factors of modern civilization, and its potential name, like that of
“dynamite,” rightly defines its character.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.--MODERN MULTIPOLAR DYNAMO.]




CHAPTER VI.

THE ELECTRIC MOTOR.

    BARLOW’S SPUR WHEEL--DAL NEGRO’S ELECTRIC PENDULUM--PROF. HENRY’S
    ELECTRIC MOTOR--JACOBI’S ELECTRIC BOAT--DAVENPORT’S MOTOR--THE NEFF
    MOTOR--DR. PAGE’S ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE--DR. SIEMENS’ FIRST ELECTRIC
    RAILWAY AT BERLIN, 1879--FIRST ELECTRIC RAILWAY IN UNITED STATES,
    BETWEEN BALTIMORE AND HAMPDEN, 1885--THIRD RAIL SYSTEM--STATISTICS
    ELECTRIC RAILWAYS AND GENERAL ELECTRIC CO.--DISTRIBUTION ELECTRIC
    CURRENT IN PRINCIPAL CITIES.


Although the electric motor of to-day depends for practical value
entirely upon the dynamo which supplies it with electric power,
nevertheless the motor considerably antedated the dynamo. The genesis of
the electric motor began in 1821 with Faraday’s observation of the
phenomenon of the conversion of an electric current into mechanical
motion. In his experiment a copper wire was supported in a vertical
position so as to dip into a cup of mercury, while a small bar magnet
was anchored at one end by a thread to the bottom of the cup and floated
in the mercury in upright position. The mass of mercury being connected
to one pole of a battery, and the vertical wire to the other, it was
found that when the circuit was completed by clipping the wire into the
mercury, the floating bar magnet would revolve around the wire as a
center.

[Illustration: FIG. 26.--BARLOW’S WHEEL.]

In 1826 Barlow, of Woolwich, made his electrical spur wheel, Fig. 26,
and in 1830 the Abbe Dal Negro, in Padua, is said to have constructed a
sort of vibrating electrical pendulum, both of which devices were crude
forms of magnetic engines. Dal Negro’s machine, see Fig. 27, consisted
of a magnet A, movable about an axis situated about one-third of its
length, and the upper extremity of which was capable of oscillating
between the two branches of an electro-magnet E. A current being sent
into the electro-magnet, passed through an eight-cupped mercurial
commutator C, which the oscillating magnet controlled by means of a rod
_t_ and a fork F. When the magnet had been attracted toward one of the
poles of the electro-magnet this very motion of attraction acting upon
the commutator changed the direction of the current, and the magnet was
repelled toward the other branch of the electro-magnet, and so on.

[Illustration: FIG. 27.--DAL NEGRO’S ELECTRIC MOTOR.]

In 1828 Prof. Joseph Henry produced his energetic electro-magnets
sustaining weights of some thousands of pounds, and gave prophetic
suggestion of the possibilities of electricity as a motive power. In
1831 he devised the electric motor shown in Fig. 28, which is described
in Prof. Henry’s own words as follows:

“A B is the horizontal magnet, about seven inches long, and movable on
an axis at the center; its two extremities when placed in a horizontal
line are about one inch from the north poles of the upright magnets C
and D. G and F are two large tumblers containing diluted acid, in each
of which is immersed a plate of zinc surrounded with copper; _l m s t_
are four brass thimbles soldered to the zinc and copper of the batteries
and filled with mercury.

“The galvanic magnet A B is wound with three strands of copper bell
wire, each about twenty-five feet long; the similar ends of these are
twisted together so as to form two stiff wires _q r_, which project
beyond the extremity B, and dip into the thimbles _s t_.

[Illustration: FIG. 28.--PROF. HENRY’S ELECTRIC MOTOR.]

“To the wires _q r_ two other wires are soldered so as to project in an
opposite direction, and dip into the thimbles _l m_. The wires of the
galvanic magnet have thus, as it were, four projecting ends; and by
inspecting the figure it will be seen that the extremity _p_, which dips
into the cup _m_, attached to the copper of the battery in G,
corresponds to the extremity _r_ which dips into the cup _t_,
connecting, with the zinc in battery F. When the batteries are in
action, if the end B is depressed until _q r_ dips into the cups _s t_,
A B instantly becomes a powerful magnet, having its north pole at B;
this, of course, is repelled by the north pole D, while at the same time
it is attracted by C; the position is consequently changed, and _o p_
comes in contact with the mercury in _l m_; as soon as the communication
is formed, the poles are reversed, and the position again changed. If
the tumblers be filled with strong diluted acid, the motion is at first
very rapid and powerful, but it soon almost entirely ceases. By
partially filling the tumblers with weak acid, and occasionally adding a
small quantity of fresh acid, a uniform motion, at the rate of
seventy-five vibrations in a minute, has been kept up for more than an
hour; with a large battery and very weak acid the motion might be
continued for an indefinite length of time.”

Following Prof. Henry came Sturgeon’s rotary motor of 1832, Jacobi’s
rotary motor of 1834, Fig. 29, which had electro-magnets both in the
field and armature; Davenport’s motor of 1834, Zabriskie’s motor of
1837, in which a vibrating magnet converted reciprocating into rotary
motion; Davenport’s motor of 1837 (U. S. Pat. No. 132, Feb. 25, 1837),
Fig. 30; Page’s rotary motor of 1838, Walkley’s motor of 1838 (U. S.
Pat. No. 809, June 27, 1838); Stimson’s motor of 1838 (U. S. Pat. No.
910, Sept. 12, 1838); Page’s motor of 1839, Cook’s of 1840 (U. S. Pat.
No. 1,735, Aug. 25, 1840); Elias’ motor of 1842, invented in Holland;
Lillie’s motor of 1850 (U S. Pat. No. 7,287, April 16, 1850); the Neff
motor of 1851 (U. S. Pat. No. 7,889, Jan. 7, 1851), of which
illustration is given in Fig. 31, and Page’s motor of 1854 (U. S. Pat.
No. 10,480, Jan. 31, 1854). In 1835 Davenport constructed a small
circular railway at Springfield, Mass.

[Illustration: FIG. 29.--JACOBI’S ROTARY ELECTRIC MOTOR.]

In 1839 Prof. Jacobi, with the aid of Emperor Nicholas, applied his
electric motor to a boat 28 feet long, carrying fourteen passengers, and
propelled the same at a speed of three miles an hour. About the same
time Robert Davidson, a Scotchman, experimented with an electric railway
car sixteen feet long, weighing six tons, and attaining a speed of four
miles an hour. In 1840 Davenport, by means of his electric motor,
printed a news sheet called the _Electro Magnet and Mechanics’
Intelligencer_. In 1851 an electric locomotive made by Dr. Page in
accordance with his subsequent patent of 1854, drew a train of cars from
Washington to Bladensburg at a rate of nineteen miles an hour.

[Illustration: FIG. 30.--DAVENPORT MOTOR.]

[Illustration: FIG. 31.--NEFF MOTOR.]

[Illustration: FIG. 32.--WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC MOTOR.]

All these motors were operated by voltaic batteries, and on account of
the cost of the latter but little practical use of the electric motor
was made until the dynamo was invented. In 1873 an accidental
discovery led to the rapid practical development of the electric motor.
It is said that at the industrial exhibition at Vienna in that year, a
number of Gramme dynamos were being placed in position, and a workman
in making the electrical connections for one of these machines,
inadvertently connected it to another dynamo in active operation, and
was surprised to find that the dynamo he was connecting began to revolve
in the opposite direction. This was the clue that led to the important
recognition of the structural identity of the dynamo and the modern
type of electric motor. The dynamo and the electric motor then grew into
development together, and the same inventors who brought the dynamo to
its present high efficiency, produced electric motors of corresponding
principles and value. In the illustration, Fig. 32, is shown a modern
electric motor. It is a Westinghouse two-phase machine, of 300 horse
power, of the self starting induction type, designed to operate at a
speed of 500 revolutions per minute when supplied with two-phase
currents of 3,000 alternations per minute and 2,000 volts pressure.

[Illustration: FIG. 33.--SIEMENS’ FIRST ELECTRIC RAILWAY.]

The most important application of the electric motor is for street car
operation. The first electric railway was that of Dr. Werner Siemens, at
Berlin, in 1879, an illustration of which is given in Fig. 33. The first
electric railway in America was installed at Baltimore in 1885, and ran
to Hampden, a distance of two miles.

[Illustration: FIG. 34.--OVERHEAD TROLLEY CAR.]

[Illustration: FIG. 35.--UNDERGROUND ELECTRIC TROLLEY SYSTEM.]

The familiar overhead trolley cars, and the far superior conduit trolley
system, represent perhaps the largest use made of electric motors. The
motors are arranged under the cars in varying forms adapted to the
structure of the car. In the overhead trolley, shown in Fig. 34, the
current is taken from the overhead wire by a flexible trolley pole, and
in the conduit system a trolley known as a plow extends from the bottom
of the car through a narrow slot in the top of the conduit and makes a
traveling contact with the conductor rails within the conduit, which
carry the electric current. Fig. 35 is an end view of a street car of
the latter type, with the conduit and conductor rails in cross section.
The current goes from one rail to one bearing surface of the plow,
thence to the motor on the car and back to the other bearing surface of
the plow and the other conductor rail in the conduit.

[Illustration: FIG. 36.--THIRD RAIL SYSTEM ON THE N. Y., N. H. & H.
RAILROAD--FRONT END OF MOTOR CAR.]

A third system, which has supplanted to some extent the use of steam on
short line railways, is the so-called third rail system, of which an
example is seen in Fig. 36. A third conductor rail is placed between the
usual track rails, and from this conductor the current is taken by a
sliding shoe on the car, and carried to the motor and thence through the
car wheels to the track rails. To reduce danger from the live rail, the
third rail in some systems is made in sections, and, by an automatic
switching process as the car moves along, only the sections of the rail
beneath the car are brought into circuit, all other portions being cut
out.

The use of electric motors has greatly extended, cheapened, and
expedited the street car service. All the principal thoroughfares of
cities and even towns are now so equipped, and radiating suburban lines
extend for miles from the city, affording for five cents a pleasant and
cheap excursion for the poor to the green fields and fresh air of the
country.

[Illustration: FIG. 37.--ELECTRIC RAILWAY MOTOR, CLOSED.]

[Illustration: FIG. 38.--ELECTRIC RAILWAY MOTOR, OPENED.]

Figs. 37 and 38 show an electric motor used on street cars, as made by
the General Electric Company. Externally it presents the appearance of
some curious, uncouth, cast iron box, which, to the uninitiated, piques
the curiosity, and when opened adds no explanation of its real
character. In it, however, the electrician finds a most interesting
combination of metal and magnetism.

[Illustration: FIG. 39.--ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE OF B. & O. TUNNEL IN
BALTIMORE.]

In Fig. 39 is shown one of the most powerful electric locomotives ever
constructed. It was built in 1895 by the General Electric Company for
the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, to draw trains through the long tunnel
from the Camden Street Station in Baltimore, for the purpose of avoiding
smoke and gas in the tunnel, which is 7,339 feet long. The locomotive
weighs ninety-six tons, or twenty-five tons above the average steam
locomotive. It was designed to draw 100 trains daily each way, moving
passenger trains of a maximum weight of 500 tons at thirty-five miles an
hour, and freight trains of 1,200 tons at fifteen miles an hour. It has
two trucks, and eight drive wheels of sixty-two inches diameter. There
are four motors, two to each truck, each rated at 360 horse power.

Other important applications of the electric motor are, the propelling
of automobile carriages, small boats, and fish torpedoes, operating
steering gear for ships, passenger elevators, rock drills in mines,
running printing presses, fans, sewing machines, graphophones, and in
all applications where space is limited and cleanliness a desideratum.

According to Mulhall there were in 1890 in the United States and Canada
about 645 miles of street railway operated by electricity. This about
concluded the first decade of the life of the electric railway. Some
idea of the rapid increase in this field may be had by the statement of
the same authority that there were in 1890, at the end of this first
decade, forty-five additional electric railroads in course of
construction, aggregating 512 miles of way, which nearly doubled the
previous existing mileage.

In 1898 it was estimated that there were in the United States 14,000
miles of electric railroads, with a nominal capital of $1,000,000,000,
and employing 170,000 men. In the same year a single electrical contract
was entered into between the Third Avenue Railroad and the Union Railway
Company of New York, acting as one, and the Westinghouse Electrical and
Manufacturing Company, amounting to $5,000,000. This was for the
electrical equipment of their respective railway lines, and is the
largest electrical contract ever made. The change in equipment from
other motive power to the electric is rapidly going on in all
directions, and the rapid succession of trains will doubtless cause it,
for passenger traffic on short lines, to eventually supersede steam.

The eighth annual report of the General Electric Company shows for the
year 1899 orders received for railway and other electrical equipment
amounting to $26,323,626; goods shipped, $22,379,463.75; profit on same,
$3,805,860.18. The growth of its business from 1893 to 1899 shows the
following per cent. of increase: In 1893, 36 per cent. above 1892; in
1894, 126 per cent. above 1893; in 1895, 10 per cent. above 1894; in
1896, 60 per cent. above 1895; in 1897, 60 per cent. above 1896; in
1898, 21 per cent. above 1897; in 1899, 51 per cent. above 1898.

The capitalization in electrical appliances in the United States in 1898
is estimated at $1,900,000,000, most of which is devoted to industries
in which the electric motor is used. The export of electrical apparatus
from this country amounts to more than three million dollars annually,
and it is said that there are eight times as many electric railways in
the United States as in all the rest of the world combined.

The use of electrical current in twelve principal cities in the United
States was distributed in 1898 as follows:

Lamps, arcs, and motors in sixteen candle power equivalents.

  Boston                  616,000
  New York              1,718,000
  Chicago               1,278,000
  Brooklyn                322,000
  Baltimore               224,000
  Philadelphia            488,000
  St. Louis               303,000
  San Francisco           231,000
  Buffalo                 125,000
  Rochester               184,000
  Cincinnati              201,000
  New Orleans              81,000

Boston makes the largest use of electrical current in proportion to its
population of any city in the world. Rochester is next. Both of these
cities employ in electrical units of 16 c. p. equivalents, more than one
electric lamp for every man, woman and child in their respective
populations.

The dynamo and the electric motor have together wrought this great
development. The dynamo takes mechanical power and converts it into
electrical energy, and the electric motor takes the electrical energy
and converts it back into mechanical power. Standing behind them both,
however, is the steam engine, and these three afford a beautiful
illustration of the law of correlation of forces. The force starts with
the combustion of coal under the boiler of the steam engine. When carbon
unites chemically with oxygen, it is an exothermic reaction that gives
off heat as correlated energy. The influence of heat on the molecules of
water in the boiler causes them, by repellent action, to assume the
qualities of an elastic gas, and this expanding as steam drives the
piston of the steam engine. The steam engine overcomes by force the
resistance existing between the dynamo’s field magnets and armature
coil, and sets up in the latter the correlated force of an electric
current, and the electric current, traveling to its remote destination
by suitable conductors, enters the coils of the electric motor in
reverse relation to that of the dynamo, and in producing the reverse
effect between the armature and field magnets, electrical energy is
converted back into mechanical power. It is not possible to obtain in
the electric motor the full equivalent of the dynamo’s current, nor in
the dynamo the full equivalent of the steam engine’s power, nor in the
steam engine the full equivalent of the chemical energy in the
combustion of coal. Loss by radiation, by conduction, by friction, and
by electrical resistance precludes this, but while there is loss in a
utilitarian sense there is no real loss, for force like matter, is
indestructible, and the proof of this universal law by Joule, in 1843,
constitutes one of the highest triumphs of philosophy and one of the
most important discoveries of the Nineteenth Century.




CHAPTER VII.

THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.

    VOLTAIC ARC BY SIR HUMPHREY DAVY--THE JABLOCHKOFF CANDLE--PATENTS OF
    BRUSH, WESTON AND OTHERS--SEARCH LIGHTS--GROVE’S FIRST INCANDESCENT
    LAMP--STARR-KING LAMP--MOSES FARMER LIGHTS FIRST DWELLING WITH
    ELECTRIC LAMPS--SAWYER-MAN LAMP--EDISON’S INCANDESCENT LAMP--
    EDISON’S THREE-WIRE SYSTEM OF CIRCUITS--STATISTICS.


The popular idea of the electric light is, that it is a very recent
invention, since even the younger generation remembers when there was no
such thing in general use. It will surprise many readers, then, to know
that the electric light had its birth in the first decade of the
Nineteenth Century. In 1809 Sir Humphrey Davy discovered that when two
pieces of charcoal, which formed the terminals of a powerful voltaic
battery, were separated after having been brought into contact with each
other, at the moment of separation a brilliant arc of flame passed from
one piece of charcoal to the other, producing a temperature of 4,800°
F., and that the intensity of the light exceeded all other known forms
of light. Various improvements in the organization of devices were made
for holding the two pieces of carbon, which in time assumed the form of
two pencils in alignment, as in Fig. 40, and devices were provided for
feeding one carbon toward the other as they burned away. Clock mechanism
for thus regulating the feed was first employed, which served to
automatically keep the carbons a definite distance apart, this being a
necessary condition of the arc. For many years, however, the use of such
a light was confined to laboratory illustration, for the reason that it
could only be produced at great expense by a large number of voltaic
batteries. Nevertheless very efficient electric lamps working by voltaic
batteries were devised by Foucault, Duboscq, Deleuil and others as early
as 1853. With the advent of the dynamo, however, the electric light grew
rapidly and developed into conspicuous use. Even before the true dynamo
was invented the magneto-electric machine was employed for producing an
electric current to supply electric light. The so-called “Alliance”
generator was, in 1858, used in the South Foreland lighthouse in England
to supply the arc lamps, and the beams of the electric light then, for
the first time, were turned seaward as a beacon for the mariner.

[Illustration: FIG. 40.--SIMPLE ELECTRIC ARC LAMP.]

[Illustration: FIG. 41.--JABLOCHKOFF CANDLE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 42.--WESTON ARC LAMP.]

Among the early developments of the electric light was the Jablochkoff
candle, see Fig. 41, brought out in 1877. In this device two parallel
sticks of carbon G G were separated by a non-conducting layer of kaolin
I, and were held in an asbestos ferrule A. Metal tubes T T connected the
conducting wires F F to the carbons. The arc of flame passed from the
top of one carbon to the other, fusing the separating layer of kaolin,
and the whole burned down together as a candle. This form of electric
light was extensively used in Paris in 1877, and also in London, and
attracted considerable attention.

[Illustration: FIG. 43.--ARC LAMP FEED MECHANISM.]

From the Jablochkoff candle the arc light has resumed the form of two
vertically aligned carbons, and after passing through various forms and
patterns, of which the Weston lamp, Fig. 42, is a modern type, has come
into such universal and conspicuous use for lighting the streets of our
cities, and is so well known to-day, that but little need be said of its
development, since its real character has undergone no change in
principle, the improvements relating chiefly to means for regulating the
feed of the carbons and maintaining them at a uniform distance apart, so
as to avoid flickering. This result is obtained by automatic mechanism
operated by the electric current acting upon electro-magnets, as shown
in Fig. 43, in which the electro-magnets raise the upper carbon when it
is too close to the lower carbon, and lower the upper carbon when the
space becomes too great from burning away. Among those who have
contributed to the development of the arc light the names of Brush,
Weston, and Thomson and Houston are most conspicuous, and the patents of
Brush, No. 203,411, May 7, 1878, and No. 212,183, Feb. 11, 1879, and
Weston, No. 285,451, Sept. 25, 1883, are the most representative
developments.

[Illustration: FIG. 44.--NINE THOUSAND CANDLE POWER ARC LAMP.]

The applications of the arc light have been brilliant beyond the dreams
of the most sanguine inventor. In the illustrations number 44, 45 and
46, is shown a gigantic electric light beacon manufactured by Henry
Lepaute, of Paris, and first exhibited in this country at the Chicago
World’s Fair, in 1893. It consists of two great lenses, each nine feet
in diameter, between which, in their focus, is placed a 9,000 candle
power arc light. The great lantern, Fig. 45, is carried by a vertical
shaft, which terminates at its lower end in a hollow drum, which latter
floats in a bath of mercury. Although the weight is estimated at several
tons, so sensitive is its poise on the mercury that the enormous lantern
may be easily rotated by the pressure of one’s finger. Each lens
consists of concentric segments, see Fig. 46, 190 in number, surrounding
a central disk, which together cause the rays to issue in parallel
lines. The nine-foot beam of light thus projected is of 90,000,000
candle power, and if placed at a sufficient altitude to avoid the
curvature of the earth’s surface, its light would be visible at the
range of 146.9 nautical miles.

[Illustration: FIG. 45.--NINETY MILLION CANDLE POWER BIVALVE LENS.]

[Illustration: FIG. 46.--FRONT VIEW OF LENS.]

Better known to the patrons of our excursion boats and the visitors to
our splendid battleships, are the electric search lights. The greatest
example of all search lights, however, is not to be found on the sea,
but in the picturesque altitudes of the Sierra Madres in Southern
California. At the summit of Mount Lowe, in the neighborhood of
Pasadena, is the largest search light in the world, shown in
illustration, Fig. 48. It is of 3,000,000 candle power, stands eleven
feet high, and its total weight is 6,000 pounds. Its light may be seen
for 150 miles out on the ocean, and as its powerful beam is thrown from
mountain top to mountain top hundreds of miles apart, it adds the
illumination of art to the sublimity of nature, and seems a fitting
jewel to this lofty crown of Mother Earth.

[Illustration: FIG. 47.--SEARCH LIGHT WITH MACHINE GUN REPELLING NIGHT
ATTACK OF TORPEDO BOAT.]

[Illustration: FIG. 48.--SEARCH LIGHT ON MOUNT LOWE, CALIFORNIA.]

Brilliant as is the arc lamp, far more in evidence is the incandescent
lamp. The little glass bulb with its tiny thread of light we find
everywhere. Popular opinion and the decision of the courts accord this
invention to Thomas A. Edison. The evolution of the incandescent lamp
is, however, interesting, and may be briefly sketched as follows:

[Illustration: FIG. 49.--FIRST INCANDESCENT LAMP, BY PROFESSOR GROVE,
1840.]

[Illustration: FIG. 50.--STARR-KING LAMP.]

In 1845 there appeared in the _Philosophical Magazine_ a description of
what was probably the first incandescent electric light. It was devised
in 1840 by William Robert Grove, the inventor of the Grove battery, and
is illustrated in Fig. 49. It is stated that he experimented and read by
it for hours. It was described as follows:

“A coil of platinum wire is attached to two copper wires, the lower
parts of which, or those most distant from the platinum, are well
varnished; these are fixed erect in a glass of distilled water, and
another cylindrical glass, closed at the upper end, is inverted over
them, so that its open mouth rests on the bottom of the former glass;
the projecting ends of the copper wires are connected with a voltaic
battery (two or three pairs of the nitric acid combination), and the
ignited wire now gives a steady light. Instead of making the wires pass
through the water, they may be fixed to metallic caps well luted to the
necks of a glass globe.”

In 1845 August King patented, in England, an incandescent lamp, having
an unsealed platinum burner, and also a carbon in a vacuum. Mr. King
acted as agent for an American inventor, Mr. Starr, and the lamp came
to be known as the Starr-King lamp, shown in Fig. 50. The burner was a
thin plate or pencil of carbon B, enclosed in a Torricellian vacuum at
the end of an inverted barometer tube, and held between the terminals of
the connecting wires leading to a battery. In 1859 Moses G. Farmer
lighted his house at Salem, Mass., by a series of subdivided electric
lights, which was the first private dwelling lighted by electricity, and
probably the first illustration of the feasibility of subdividing the
electric current through a number of electric lamps.

In 1877 William E. Sawyer applied for a United States patent for an
electric engineering and lighting system, and in January, 1878, entered
into a partnership with Albon Man, and the “Sawyer-Man” lamp, see Fig.
51, was produced. In this an incandescent rod of carbon was inclosed in
an atmosphere of nitrogen. This marked the beginning of a period of
great activity in this field, which finally resulted in the well known
form of electric lamp shown in Fig. 52, which was patented by Edison,
No. 223,898, January 27, 1880. The distinctive features of this lamp
consisted in a bowed filament of carbon of very thin, thread-like
character, which was made of paper or carbonized cellulose. This, when
sealed in a vacuum, would not burn away, but would give the proper
incandescence, and by its small transverse dimension and high
resistance to the current, permitted a proper distribution of the
electric current to a number of lamps, without a special regulator for
each lamp; and which could also be made so cheaply that the lamp could
be thrown away when the burner was finally broken. Edison’s claim on
this feature of the electric lamp was sharply contested in an
interference in the Patent Office by Sawyer and Man, with the decisions
alternating first in favor of one and then of the other, but which
finally resulted in the grant of a patent to Sawyer and Man, on May 12,
1885. A struggle then began in the courts, which on October 4, 1892,
terminated in a decision by the United States Court of Appeals (Edison
Electric Light Company vs. United States Lighting Company), awarding the
incandescent lamp to Edison.

[Illustration: FIG. 51.--SAWYER-MAN LAMP.]

[Illustration: FIG. 52.--EDISON’S ELECTRIC LAMP.

_A_--Exhausted globe. _B_--Carbon filament. _CC_--Wires sealed in glass.
_D_--Line of fusion of two parts of globe. _EF_--Insulating material.
_G_--Screw-threads. _HI_--Metal socket. _J_--Fixture arm _K_--Circuit
controlling key.]

In the early demonstration given by Edison great disturbance was caused
in the stock exchanges among the holders of gas shares, as the
sensational reportings in the press seemed to indicate that gas was to
be superseded entirely. This uneasiness on the London Stock Exchange
amounted on October 11, 1878, to a veritable panic, but while the
electric light has more than fulfilled the prophecy made for it in many
directions, gas shares still continue to be good stocks.

[Illustration: FIG. 53.--ELECTRIC LIGHT CIRCUIT.]

[Illustration: FIG. 54.--EDISON’S THREE WIRE SYSTEM OF ELECTRIC LIGHT
CIRCUITS.]

Closely allied to the practical use of the incandescent lamp is the
method of supplying and regulating the current from the dynamo. Although
the alternating current is used for arc light, only the continuous
current can be used for the incandescent lights, and the relation of
the dynamo and the incandescent lamps is shown in Fig. 53, in which L
represents the lamps between the main conducting wires leading from the
dynamo, which latter has the coils of the field magnets arranged in a
shunt or branch circuit, in which is interposed a regulator R in the
form of a resistance coil with movable switch lever, by which more or
less of the current is allowed to flow through the field magnet coils to
suit the work being done. In late years automatic regulators have been
provided for accomplishing this result. In Fig. 54 is shown what is
known as the Edison “three wire system,” patented March 20, 1883, No.
274,290. In this two dynamos are used as at D¹ D², and the three wires
emerge from the dynamos, one from the negative pole of one dynamo,
another from the positive pole of the other dynamo, and the third or
middle one is connected to both the other poles (positive and negative),
of the two dynamos. For purposes of illustration, this may be compared
to a three-storied arrangement of current, the upper wire representing
the third story, the middle wire the second story, and the bottom one
the first story. The fall from either story to the next represents the
working energy, but from the top wire to the bottom would be equal to a
fall from the third story to the first. The purpose of this arrangement
is to save expense in copper wire, for while three main wires are used
instead of two, the aggregate weight of the wires (when the lamps are
arranged as shown), may be made so much less than two heavy wires as to
make a very great saving in copper.

The uses of the incandescent light are legion. Besides those which are
of common observation it is used for lighting the interior of mines,
caves, and the dark apartments of ships, and does not foul the air. It
is also used by divers in submarine operations; in the formation of
advertising signs, and in pyrotechnics, but perhaps one of the most
extraordinary uses to which it has been put is in exploring the interior
of the human stomach and other cavities of the body, a patent for which
was granted to M. C. F. Nitze, No. 218,055, July 29, 1879.

When an electric lamp is arranged with the opposite ends of the carbon
burner connected, one to the outgoing, the other to the incoming wires
from a dynamo, so as to be bridged across, this arrangement is said to
be “in multiple” or “in parallel,” and the lamps bear the analogy of
horses drawing abreast, and when the opposite ends of the carbon burner
are placed in a gap or break in either the outgoing or the incoming
wire, the arrangement is said to be “in series,” and the lamps bear the
analogy of horses in tandem.

Explanation of electric nomenclature can best be given by the analogy in
hydrostatics of a stream of water passing in the hose pipe from a
fire-engine. The “watt” indicates the sum total unit of electrical power
for a definite period of time, and in the hose pipe would be
represented by the effective force of a definite volume of water,
passing at a definite pressure, during a definite period of time. “Volt”
is a pressure unit of electro-motive force, and would be represented by
the power of the engine. “Ampere” would be the quantity, or volume unit,
or cross section of the hose pipe, and the “ohm” would be the unit of
frictional resistance. The “watt” then would be the “volt” multiplied by
the “ampere”; thus 500 watts would be 10 amperes at 50 volts, or 50
amperes at 10 volts. Low tension circuits, such as are used for
incandescent lights, range from 100 to 240 volts and are harmless.
Trolley circuits are usually 500 volts, and will kill an animal, but are
not necessarily fatal to man. High tension currents from 2,000 to 5,000
volts, such as are used for arc lights, are fatal.

Of all modern inventions, not one has advertised itself in such a
spectacular way as the electric light. Those who have seen the
magnificent electrical displays at the Chicago Fair, the electrical
celebrations in New York, and the Omaha Exhibition, need no introduction
to its marvelous splendors and beauties. In the annual report for 1898
of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, its statement
shows that for that city alone the gross earnings were $2,898,021. There
were 9,990 users of the electric light, 443,074 incandescent lamps, and
7,353 arc lights. It is estimated that the electric light stations and
plants in the United States alone amount to $600,000,000. In the year
1899 a single manufacturing concern (The General Electric Company)
received orders for 10,000,000 incandescent lamps, which is about
one-half of the present annual production. Sixteen years ago the lamps
were $1 each; to-day they can be bought for 18 cents.

What the future has in store for the further development of the electric
light no one may dare predict. Already a different form or manifestation
of electric light has been demonstrated, in which neither the electric
arc nor the incandescent filament is used, but a peculiar glow is seen
disassociated from a direct material habitation, and produced by
currents of enormous frequency and high potential, in accordance with
the patent to Tesla, No. 454,622, June 23, 1891. Other worthy inventors
in this field are at work, and its development will be one of the
interesting problems of the Twentieth Century.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE TELEPHONE.

    PRELIMINARY SUGGESTIONS AND EXPERIMENTS OF BOURSEUL, REIS AND
    DRAWBAUGH--FIRST SPEAKING TELEPHONE BY PROF. BELL--DIFFERENCES
    BETWEEN REIS’ AND BELL’S TELEPHONES--THE BLAKE TRANSMITTER--
    BERLINER’S VARIATION OF RESISTANCE, AND ELECTRIC UNDULATIONS BY
    VARIATION OF PRESSURE--EDISON’S CARBON MICROPHONE--THE TELEPHONE
    EXCHANGE--STATISTICS.


Τηλε (far), and φωνη (sound), are the Greek roots from which the word
telephone is derived. It has the significance of transmitting sound to
distant points, and is a word antedating the present speaking telephone,
although this fact is generally lost sight of in the dazzling brilliancy
of this latter invention. In the effort to hear better, the American
Indian was accustomed to place his ear to the ground. Children of former
generations also made use of a toy known as the “lovers’ telegraph”--a
piece of string held under tension between the flexible bottoms of two
tin boxes--which latter when spoken into transmitted through the string
the vibrations from one box to the other, and made audible words spoken
at a distance. These expedients simply made available the superior
conductivity of the solid body over the air to transmit sound waves. The
electro-magnetic telephone operates on an entirely different principle.
It is a marvelous creation of genius, and stands alone as the unique,
superb, and unapproachable triumph of the Nineteenth Century. For
subtilty of principle, impressiveness of action, and breadth of results,
there is nothing comparable with it among mechanical agencies. In its
wonderful function of placing one intelligent being in direct vocal and
sympathetic communication with another a thousand miles away, its
intangible and mysterious mode of action suggests to the imagination
that unseen medium of prayer rising from the conscious human heart to
its omniscient and responsive God. The telegraph and railroad had
already brought all the peoples of the earth into intimate communication
and made them close kin, but the telephone transformed them into the
closer relationship of families, and the tiny wire, sentient and
responsive with its unlimited burden of human thoughts and human
feelings, forms one of the great vital cords in the solidarity of the
human family.

It is a curious fact that many, and perhaps most, great inventions have
been in the nature of accidental discoveries, the by-products of thought
directed in another channel, and seeking other results, but the
telephone does not belong to this class. It is the logical and
magnificent outcome of persistent thought and experiment in the
direction of the electrical transmittal of speech. Prof. Bell had his
objective point, and keeping this steadily in view, worked faithfully
for the accomplishment of his object in producing a speaking telephone,
until success crowned his work. He probably did not realize at first the
full magnitude of the achievement, but looking at it from the end of the
Nineteenth Century, he might well exclaim in the language of Horace:
“_Exegi monumentum acre perennius_.”

Prof. Bell’s conception of the telephone dates back as far as 1874. His
first United States patent, No. 174,465, was granted March 7, 1876, and
his second January 30, 1877, No. 186,787. It is generally the fate of
most inventions, even of a meritorious order, to languish for many
years, and frequently through the whole term of the patent, before
receiving full recognition and adoption by the public, but the meteoric
brilliancy of this invention at its first public announcement astonished
the masses, and inspired the admiration of the savants of the world.
When exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, in 1876, it
was spoken of by Sir William Thomson, and Prof. Henry, as the “greatest
by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph.”

[Illustration: FIG. 55.--PHILIP REIS’ TELEPHONE.]

It is always the fate of the author of any great invention to be
compelled to defend himself against the claims of others. It is one of
the failings of human nature to lay claim to that which somebody else
has obtained, and is an old story which finds its first illustration in
the squabbles of childhood. When a troop of prattling boys hunt
butterflies among the daisies, and some sharp-eyed youngster has
captured a prize, there are always others of his mates to cry, “I saw it
first,” and men are but grown-up boys. So in the history of the
telephone, Prof. Bell has found competitors for this honor, and it is
astonishing to know how close some of these prior experimenters came to
success without reaching it. In 1854 Bourseul, of Paris _suggested_ an
electric telephone, and in 1861 Philip Reis _devised_ an electric
telephone which would transmit musical tones. Daniel Drawbaugh, of
Pennsylvania, is alleged to have made an electric telephone in
1867-1868, and his claims against the Bell interests were fought
vigorously in the Patent Office, and in the courts, but without success.
Elisha Gray’s claims perhaps came nearer to establishing for him a share
in the honor of inventing the speaking telephone than any other, for he
filed a caveat in the United States Patent Office upon the same day
(February 14, 1876), upon which Prof. Bell’s application for a patent
was made. But in the contest in the Patent Office with Gray, Edison,
Berliner, Richmond, Holcombe, Farmer, Dolbear, Volker, and others, it
was decided that Prof. Bell was the first to make a practically
effective speaking telephone, and this conclusion has been sustained by
the courts. Reis was a poor German school teacher at Friedrichsdorf, and
in 1860 he took a coil of wire, a knitting needle, the skin of a German
sausage, the bung of a beer barrel, and a strip of platinum, and
constructed the first electric telephone. A typical form of his
transmitter, see Fig. 55, was a box covered with a vibrating membrane E,
and provided with a mouth-piece at one side. A platinum strip F was
attached to the membrane or vibrating diaphragm E, and a platinum
pointed hammer G rested lightly on the platinum strip F. The hammer G
and platinum strip F were connected to the opposite ends of a wire,
which had in its circuit a battery and a receiver. Air vibrations in the
nature of sound waves in the box caused the diaphragm E to vibrate, and
a separating make-and-break contact between the platinum strip F and the
platinum point of hammer G caused a series of separate and distinct
broken impulses to traverse the battery circuit and be received upon the
receiver, which latter consisted of an iron rod with a coil of wire
around it. That Reis’ transmitter did alternately make and break the
circuit, seems clear from his own memoir. A translation from this
memoir, taken from the annual report (Jahresberichte) of the Physical
Society of Frankfurt am Main for 1860-1861, reads as follows:

“At the first condensation (of air vibrations) the hammer-shaped little
wire _d_ (G in our illustration), will be pushed back. At the succeeding
rarefaction it cannot follow the return vibration of the membrane, and
the current going through the little strip (of platinum) remains
interrupted so long as until the membrane driven by a new condensation
presses the little strip against _d_ (the hammer G) once more. In this
way each sound wave effects an opening and closing of the current.”

[Illustration: FIG. 56.--PROF. BELL’S TELEPHONE, MARCH 7, 1876.]

Reis evidently did not know how to make the vibrations of his diaphragm
translate themselves into exactly commensurate and correlated electric
impulses of equal rapidity, range, and quality. If he had done this, he
would have had a speaking telephone, but a make-and-break contact could
never do it, and hence he in his later instruments attached to them a
telegraphic key in order that the sending operator might communicate
with the receiving operator. If Reis’ telephone had been a speaking
telephone, this would have been unnecessary. Furthermore, it is
inconceivable how the intelligent, progressive, and scientific Germans
could have failed to have given to a speaking telephone in 1860 the
immediate honor and attention that it deserved. In America, the Bell
speaking telephone, invented in 1876, was known all over the civilized
world the same year. Reis’ broken contact circuit would transmit musical
tones, because musical tones vary chiefly in rapidity of vibration,
rather than in range, or quality, and the chattering contacts of Reis’
telephone would transmit musical tones because said contracts could be
adjusted to the practically uniform range of vibration. Prof. Bell,
however, had made a special study of articulate speech, and knew that
speech was not essentially musical, but was composed of an irregular and
discordant medley of vowel and consonant sounds, whose vibrations varied
not only in pitch or rapidity like musical tones, but also in the
quality or kind of vibrations as to range and loudness. In his
invention, therefore, he did not make and break the circuit as did Reis,
through the contact points, but he used the more sensitive plan of a
constantly closed circuit, and merely caused the current to undulate in
it by a principle of magnetic induction. This principle was first
discovered by Oersted, and developed into the well known fact that when
a piece of iron is moved back and forth from the poles of an
electro-magnet an induced current is made to oscillate in the helix of
the electro-magnet. The difference between Reis’ separating
make-and-break circuit, and the Bell continuous but undulating current,
might be illustrated by the difference between the impulses delivered by
the beating of the drum sticks on the head of a drum, on the one hand,
and the alternate pulling and slackening of a kite cord, on the other.
In the successive impacts on the head of a drum there could not be so
sensitive a transfer of motion to the lower head of the drum as there
would be transferred to the kite by the movement of the hand holding the
kite cord. Reis’ plan resembled the broken drum beats, and Bell’s the
kite cord, which always preserved a certain amount of tension. Bell
accomplished his object by the means shown in Figs. 56 and 57, in which
Fig. 56 represents his first patent of March 7, 1876, and Fig. 57 his
second patent of January 30, 1877. In both cases the current was a
continuously closed one, and was not alternately made and broken as by
the separating contacts of Reis. Prof. Bell caused the vocal air
vibrations to undulate or oscillate the continuously closed circuit by
the principle of magnetic induction as follows (see Fig. 56): He caused
diaphragm _a_, when spoken against, to vibrate the armature _c_ in front
of the electro-magnet _b_, but without touching it, and as the armature
approached and receded from the electro-magnet it induced an undulating
but never broken current in the helix of this electro-magnet and along
the line to and through the helix of the electro-magnet _f_ at the
distant receiver, and this undulating current, influencing the armature
_h_, which touched the diaphragm _i_ but not the electro-magnet,
produced in the attractive influence of the magnet on this armature and
diaphragm, vibrations of the same rapidity, range, and quality as those
vocal vibrations that acted upon the first diaphragm _a_. In other
words, the sequence of transference was air vibrations in A, mechanical
vibrations of diaphragm _a_, electrical undulations traversing the line,
induced vibrations in armature _h_ and diaphragm _i_, and air vibrations
again resolved back into sounds of articulate speech, the same as those
spoken into A. It will be perceived that in the Bell telephone both
transmitter and receiver were of identical construction. This is better
shown in Fig. 57 of his later patent, in which the horizontal line below
the electro-magnet on one side represents a metal transmitting
diaphragm, and the horizontal line under the electro-magnet at the other
side was the receiving diaphragm. Not only were the sounds thus
reproduced, but as the circuit was continuous and never broken by any
separating contacts, the extreme sensitiveness of the electric
vibrations set up by magnetic induction was such that the discordant and
irregular quality of the vibrations of articulate speech were
transferred and reproduced with exact fidelity, as well as the musical
tones, and this rendered the speaking telephone a success. In later
telephones the current is actually transmitted through the contacting
points, but this only became practicable after the carbon microphone
transmitter was invented, in which the essential undulations of the
electric current were produced in another way, _i. e._, by the
application of the important discovery that the varying of the pressure
on carbon, by vibration, varied its conductivity, and in this way
produced the same result of undulating a current without breaking it.
This in no wise detracts from the value of the principle of the
continuous undulating current discovered and employed by Prof. Bell,
between which and the breaks of the hard platinum points of Reis there
is a difference as wide as the difference between success and failure.

[Illustration: FIG. 57.--PROF. BELL’S TELEPHONE, JANUARY 30, 1877.]

The form in which Prof. Bell’s telephone was placed before the public
was not that shown in the patents, but it quickly assumed the well-known
shape of an elongated cylinder forming a handle, with a flaring
mouth-piece at one end. This development in form is credited to Dr.
Channing in 1877, and it is the familiar form to-day, whose internal
construction is shown in Fig. 58. The handle is made of hard rubber, and
the cap or mouth-piece, which is screwed thereon, is also of hard
rubber. The diaphragm A, of thin ferrotype plate, is clamped at its
edges between the cap, or mouth-piece, and the handle. The compound
magnet B is composed of four thin flat bar magnets, arranged in pairs on
opposite sides of the flat end of the soft iron pole piece _c_ at one
end, and the soft iron spacing piece _d_ at the other end, the magnets
being clamped to these pieces with like poles all in one direction. The
end of the pole piece _c_ extends to within 1/100 to 2/100 of an inch of
the diaphragm, or as near as possible so that the diaphragm does not
touch it when it vibrates. On the pole piece _c_ is placed a wooden
spool on which is wound silk-covered wire (No. 34, Am. W. G.). This wire
fills the spool, and its ends are soldered to two insulated wires which
pass through a flexible rubber disc _f_ below the spool and extend
respectively to the two binding posts at the opposite end of the handle.
The current passes from one binding post and its connecting wire,
through the wire on the spool, and thence to the other connecting wire
and binding post. When used as a transmitter, vocal vibrations acting
mechanically on the diaphragm A produce undulatory vibrations by
magnetic induction in the spool of wire, which are transmitted to the
other end of the line; and when used as a receiver, the undulatory
vibrations from the remote end of the line produce mechanical vibrations
in the diaphragm, which set up air vibrations that are reproductions of
articulate sounds.

[Illustration: FIG. 58.--LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF BELL TELEPHONE.]

Although the Bell telephone is both a transmitter and receiver, in
practice a more sensitive and better form of transmitter has taken its
place. That most generally used and best known is the “Blake
transmitter,” which was brought out about 1880. This employs two
important elements. The first is the carbon microphone, which is a means
for producing the undulations in the current by the variations in
pressure on carbon contacts, and the second is an induction coil
operated by a local battery, whose primary circuit passes through the
contacts of the carbon microphone, and whose secondary circuit passes
over the line. These fundamental elements of the Blake transmitter were
the inventions of Berliner and Edison, and were made in 1877. The broad
idea of producing electric undulations by varying the pressure between
electrodes by vocal vibrations, was a large bone of contention in the
Patent Office between various inventors. An application for a patent for
the same was filed in the Patent Office by Emile Berliner, June 4, 1877,
which was contested in an interference by Gray, Edison, Richmond,
Dolbear, Holcombe, Prof. Bell, and others. After fourteen years of
litigation the patent was finally awarded to Berliner. The patent
granted to him November 17, 1891, No. 463,569, is a valuable one, and
has become the property of the American Bell Telephone Company. The
application of a low resistance conductor (carbon) in a microphone was
invented by Edison as early as 1877, but his patent, No. 474,230, did
not issue until May 3, 1892, on account of the interference with
Berliner on the broader principle.

[Illustration: FIG. 59.--BLAKE TRANSMITTER.]

[Illustration: FIG. 60.--DIAGRAM OF CIRCUITS IN BLAKE TRANSMITTER.]

The Blake transmitter takes its name from the inventor of its mechanical
features, who has assembled in it the fundamental principles of Berliner
and Edison in a sensitive and practical mechanical construction, covered
by minor patents, dated November 29, 1881. It is the little box in the
middle of the familiar telephone outfit into which the talking is done.
Its internal construction is shown in Fig. 59. To the rear of the door
is secured the cast iron circular ring A, inside of which lies the
Russia iron diaphragm B, cushioned at its edges with a rubber band. A
circular seat a little larger than the diaphragm is formed in the iron
ring, and on this seat the diaphragm rests. A short, thin metal plate
attached to the ring A on the right hand side clamps the diaphragm in
position by resting squarely on the rubber edge of the diaphragm. Its
function is like that of a hinge, which allows the diaphragm to freely
swing inward. A steel damping spring is secured to the ring at the
opposite edge of the diaphragm, and has its free end provided with a
rubber glove on which is cemented a thin piece of fluffy woolen
material. The padded end of the damping spring rests against the
diaphragm and prevents excessive vibration. The iron ring A has at its
bottom a projection holding an adjusting screw, and to a similar top
projection is attached by screws a brass spring, from which depends
another casting C, supporting the microphone apparatus, which is best
shown in the diagram, Fig. 60. In this diagram A is one terminal of the
battery connected by wire S to the hinge H of the box. From the other
leaf of the hinge the wire M passes to K, where it is soldered to the
upper end of a German silver spring I. At K this spring is clamped and
insulated from the iron work by two pieces of hard rubber. On the lower
end of the spring I is soldered a short piece of thick platinum wire,
whose ends are rounded into heads, one of which bears against the
diaphragm N, and the other against the carbon button J. This button is
attached to a small brass weight, and is supported by a spring R,
clamped at its upper end to the metal support T. This spring is
surrounded its entire length by rubber tubing to deaden vibration. The
transmitter is adjusted by screw O, which, acting upon casting T, brings
the carbon button, the platinum heads, and also the diaphragm N, against
each other with a regulated pressure. The current passes from the part K
to the spring I, the platinum head, carbon button J, and its supporting
spring R, to metal casting T, and ring V, thence by wire L to the lower
hinge G, by wire P to the primary of the induction coil, and thence by
wire Y to binding post B, the two binding posts A B being the two
battery terminals. The secondary wire E of the induction coil has its
ends connected by wires X and W with the two binding posts C B, which
are the line terminals, or one the line terminal and the other the
ground connection. It will thus be seen that the primary current passes
through the transmitter, and the secondary traverses the line. The most
familiar forms of the telephone are those seen in Figs. 61 and 62, but
the ideal form is rigged in a cabinet or little room, which excludes all
extraneous interfering sounds.

[Illustration: FIG. 61.--WALL TELEPHONE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 62.--DESK TELEPHONE.]

With the Bell receiver and the Blake transmitter a good practical
telephone system may be constructed, but the improvements which have
been made in the short life of the telephone are beyond adequate
description, or even mention. They relate to the call bell, the battery,
the switchboard, meters for registering calls, conductors, conduits,
connections, lightning arresters, switches, anti-induction devices,
repeaters, and systems. Among those most prominently identified with its
development are Bell, Edison, Berliner, Hughes, Gray, Dolbear and
Phelps. The activity in this field is best illustrated by the fact that
the art of telephony, begun practically in 1876, has at the end of the
Nineteenth Century grown into some 3,000 United States patents on the
subject.

[Illustration: FIG. 63.--TELEPHONE EXCHANGE.]

That which has given the telephone its greatest commercial value is the
“exchange” system, by which at a central office any member of a
telephonic community may be instantly put into communication with any
other member of that community. For this purpose, see Fig. 63, a
continuous switchboard is arranged along the side of a large room and
occupies most of that side of the wall. It comprises a great array of
annunciator drops, spring jacks with plug seats, and connecting cords
with metal plugs at their opposite ends. Each subscriber is connected to
his own spring jack and annunciator drop, and his call to central
office (from his magneto-bell) throws down the annunciator drop which
bears the number of his telephone, and announces to the attendant his
desire to communicate with another. To insure the attention of the
attendant, a tiny electric lamp is by the same action lighted directly
in front of her, which acts as a pilot signal to call her attention to
the drop. The attendant now puts a plug in that spring jack, which
automatically restores the drop, and she then asks the number which the
subscriber wants, and, upon ascertaining this, puts the plug at the
other end of the connecting cord into the spring jack of the subscriber
wanted, and by this action disconnects her own telephone. As every
telephone subscriber has in the central office an apparatus exclusively
his own, it will be seen that a telephone community of several thousands
of subscribers involves an imposing array of multiple connections, and a
great expense in construction. Girls are chosen as exchange attendants
because their voices are clearer. Every telephone jack, however, does
not have its Jill, for each girl has charge of a hundred or more jacks,
and wears constantly on her head a telephone of special shape, embracing
her head like a child’s hoop comb, but terminating with an ear-piece at
one end that covers one ear. She is too busy to waste time in adjusting
an ordinary telephone to her ear, and so wears one of special design all
the time.

In the twentieth annual report of the American Bell Telephone Company,
for the year 1899, the number of telephones in use January 1, 1900, by
that company alone, in the United States, was 1,580,101; the miles of
wire were 1,016,777, and the daily connections for persons using the
telephone were 5,173,803. The gross earnings of the company were
$5,760,106.45, and it paid in dividends $3,882,945. The total number of
exchange stations of the Bell Company in the principal countries of the
world are: United States, 632,946; Germany, 212,121; Great Britain,
112,840; Sweden, 63,685; France, 44,865; Switzerland, 35,536; Russia,
26,865; Austria, 26,664; Norway, 25,376. The United States has nearly
85,000 more than all the others put together.

Since the expiration of the Bell patents many smaller companies have
sprung up, and the number of telephones in use has more than doubled in
the last five years. Long distance telephony is now carried on up to
nearly 2,000 miles, and one may to-day lie in bed in New York and listen
to a concert in Chicago, and the vocal exchange of business and social
intercourse between cities has become so large a feature of modern life
as to justify the organization of a great company for this service
alone.

In the Old Testament, Book of Job, xxxviii. chapter, 35th verse, it is
written: “Canst thou send lightnings that they may go and say unto
thee--‘Here we are?’” For thousands of years this challenge to Job has
been looked upon as a feat whose execution was only within the power of
the Almighty; but to-day the inventor--that patient modern Job--has
accomplished this seemingly impossible task, for at the end of this
Nineteenth Century of the Christian Era, the telephone makes the
lightning man’s vocal messenger, tireless, faithful, and true, knowing
no prevarication, and swifter than the winged messenger of the gods.




CHAPTER IX.

ELECTRICITY--MISCELLANEOUS.

    STORAGE BATTERY--BATTERIES OF PLANTÉ, FAURE AND BRUSH--ELECTRIC
    WELDING--DIRECT GENERATION OF ELECTRICITY BY COMBUSTION--ELECTRIC
    BOATS--ELECTRO-PLATING--EDISON’S ELECTRIC PEN--ELECTRICITY IN
    MEDICINE--ELECTRIC CAUTERY--ELECTRICAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS--ELECTRIC
    BLASTING.


A prominent factor in the electrical art is the _Storage Battery_,
Secondary Battery, or Accumulator, as it is variously called. A storage
battery acts upon the same general principle as the ordinary galvanic or
voltaic battery in giving forth electrical current as the correlated
equivalent of the chemical force, but differs from it in this respect,
that when the elements of a primary battery are used up, the battery is
exhausted beyond repair. With the storage battery, it may be regenerated
at will by simply subjecting it to an electric current from a dynamo.
The dynamo stores up in this battery its electric force by converting it
into chemical force, which is imprisoned in chemical compounds that are
formed while the power of the dynamo is being applied. These chemical
compounds are, however, in a condition of unstable chemical equilibrium,
which is undisturbed so long as the poles of the storage battery are not
connected, but when connected through a circuit, the instability of the
chemical compounds asserts itself, and in passing back to a condition of
normal equilibrium the disruption gives off the correlative equivalent
of electric current stored up in it by the dynamo.

Probably the earliest suggestion of a storage battery is by Ritter in
1812, in his “secondary pile.” This device consisted of alternate discs
of copper and moistened card, and was capable of receiving a charge from
a voltaic pile and of then producing the physical, chemical, and
physiological effects obtained from the ordinary pile. The first storage
battery of importance, however, was made by Gaston Planté in 1860, which
consisted of leaden plates immersed in a 10 per cent. solution of
sulphuric acid in water. In Fig. 64 is shown a modification of the
Planté type of storage battery, composed of a series of plates shown on
the left. Each of these plates is built up, as shown in detail in Fig.
65, of lead strips corrugated and arranged in layers alternately with
flat strips, within perforated leaden cases. The corrugation of the
leaden laminæ gives greater superficial area, and the alternation of
flat and corrugated strips keeps them properly spaced, so the sulphuric
acid solution may penetrate and act upon the same. Each plate section
has a rod to connect it with its proper terminal. When the charging
current is applied, the positive lead plate becomes covered with lead
peroxide (PbO₂) and finely divided metallic lead is deposited on the
negative plate. When the battery is being discharged the peroxide of
lead gives up one of its atoms of oxygen to the spongy metallic lead
deposited on the other plate, and both plates remain coated with lead
monoxide (PbO).

[Illustration: FIG. 64.--PLANTÉ STORAGE BATTERY.]

[Illustration: FIG. 65.--ENLARGED DETAIL OF PLANTÉ PLATE.]

The most important development of the storage battery was made by
Camille A. Faure, in 1880 (U. S. Pat. No. 252,002, Jan 3, 1882). In the
early part of 1881 there was sent from Paris to Glasgow a so-called “box
of electric energy” for inspection and test by Sir William Thomson, the
eminent electrician. It was one of the first storage batteries of M.
Faure. The illustration, Fig. 66, shows a battery of this type in which
the lead plates covered with red lead (Pb₃O₄) replace the plain lead
plates in the Planté cell. The action of the battery is that when a
current of electricity is passed into the same, the red lead on one
plate (the negative) is reduced to metallic lead, and that on the other
is oxidized to a state of peroxide (PbO₂). These actions are reversed
when the charged cell is discharging itself. The elements of this
battery consist of alternate layers of sheet lead, and a paste of red
oxide of lead. These are immersed in a 10 per cent. solution of
sulphuric acid in water. Many minor improvements have been made in the
storage battery, covered by 716 United States patents, most of which
relate to cellular construction for holding the mass of red lead in
place. The most notable are those of Brush, to whom many patents were
granted in 1882 and 1883.

[Illustration: FIG. 66.--STORAGE BATTERY--FAURE TYPE.]

The storage battery finds many important applications. For furnishing
current for the propulsion of electric street cars it has proved a
disappointment, on account of the vibrations to which it is subjected,
and the great weight of the lead, which in batteries of suitable
capacity runs up into many thousands of pounds. The storage battery
finds a useful place, however, for equalizing the load in lighting and
power stations, and is there brought into action to supplement the
engine and dynamo during those hours of the day when the tax or load is
greatest. It is also used to keep up electrical pressure at the ends of
long transmission lines; for telegraphing purposes; for isolated
electric lighting; for boat propulsion; the propulsion of automobile
carriages; and in all cases where a portable source of electric current
would find application. The great growth of automobile carriages in the
past year has greatly stimulated the output of storage batteries. One
large company (The Electric Storage Battery Company), manufactured and
sold storage batteries for the year ending June 1, 1899, to the amount
of $2,387,049.91, and there are many other manufacturers.

[Illustration: FIG. 67.--ELECTRIC WELDING.]

_Electric Welding_ was invented by Prof. Elihu Thomson, of Lynn, Mass.,
and patented by him August 10, 1886, No. 347,140-42, and July 18, 1893,
No. 501,546. It is useful for the making of chains, tools, carriage
axles, joining shafting, wires, and pipes, mending bands, tires, hoops,
and lengthening and shortening bolts, bars, etc. For electric welding a
current of great volume or quantity, and very low electro-motive force,
is required. Thus a current of from one to two volts, and one to several
thousand amperes, is best suited. Referring to Fig. 67, the current from
the dynamo is conducted to one binding post of the commutator 3, which
is arranged to send the current through one-sixth, one-third or one-half
of the primary wire P of a transformer or induction coil. The other
binding post of the commutator 3 extends to one terminal of an isolated
primary coil 4, and the other terminal of this coil connects with the
dynamo. The coil 4 is provided with a switch to regulate the amount of
current. The rods to be welded are placed in clamps C C′, C being
connected with one terminal of the secondary conductor S, and the
movable clamp C′ with the other. When the current is turned on C′ is
moved so as to project one of the surfaces to be welded against the
other, and as they come in contact they heat and fuse together, as shown
at W. Larger apparatus has been devised to weld railroad joints on the
roadbed, and for other applications.

[Illustration: FIG. 68.--GENERATION OF ELECTRICITY BY COMBUSTION.]

_The generation of electricity_ for commercial purposes is almost
entirely dependent upon the dynamo, as this is cheaper than the voltaic
battery. The dynamo, however, must be energized by a steam engine. The
direct production of electric energy by the combustion of coal would be
the ideal method. A process invented by Edison (Pat. No. 490,953, Jan.
31, 1893), is interesting as an effort in this direction, and is
presented in Fig. 68. A carbon cylinder D is suspended in an air-tight
vessel B, and is surrounded by oxide of iron F, the whole being placed
above a furnace. The temperature being raised to a point where the
carbon will be attacked by the oxygen, carbonic oxide and carbonic acid
will be formed, which are exhausted by the suction fan E. A constant
current of electricity is given off from the two electrodes through the
wires, the metallic oxide being reduced and the carbon consumed.

[Illustration: FIG. 69.--RUDDER AND MOTOR OF TROUVÉ’S ELECTRIC BOAT,
1881.]

_Electrical Navigation_ began with Jacobi, who made the first attempt on
the Neva in 1839. He used voltaic apparatus consisting of two Grove
batteries, each containing sixty-four pairs of cells, but little
progress was made in this field until the secondary battery was
perfected. In 1881 Mr. G. Trouvé made an application of the storage
battery and electric motor to a small boat on the Seine. The electric
motor, which was located on top of the rudder, as seen in Fig. 69, was
furnished with a Siemens armature connected by an endless belt with a
screw propeller having three paddles arranged in the middle of an iron
rudder. In the middle of the boat were two storage batteries connected
with the motor by two cords that both served to cover the conducting
wires and work the rudder. Electric launches have in later years rapidly
gained in popularity. Visitors to the Chicago fair will remember the
fleet of electric launches, which afforded both pleasure and
transportation on the water, at that great exposition, and to-day every
safe harbor has its quota of these silently gliding and fascinating
pleasure crafts. Fig. 70 is a longitudinal section and a general view of
one of these launches.

[Illustration: FIG. 70.--MODERN ELECTRIC LAUNCH.]

_Electro-plating_ is one of the great industrial applications of
electricity which had its origin in, and has grown into extensive use
in, the Nineteenth Century. It originated with Volta, Cruikshank, and
Wollaston in the very first year of the century. In 1805 Brugnatelli, a
pupil of Volta, gilded two large silver medals by bringing them into
communication by means of a steel wire with the negative pole of a
voltaic pile and keeping them one after the other immersed in a solution
of gold. In 1834 Henry Bessemer electro-plated lead castings with copper
in the production of antique relief heads. In 1838 Prof. Jacobi
announced his galvano-plastic process for the production of electrotype
plates for printing. In the same year he superintended the gilding, by
electro-plate, of the iron dome of the Cathedral of St. Isaac at St.
Petersburgh, using 274 pounds of ducat gold. In 1839 Spencer described
an electrotype process and carried the date of his operations back to
September, 1837. In 1839 Jordan also describes an electro-plating
process. In 1840 Murray used plumbago to make non-conducting surfaces
conductive for electro-plating. In 1840 De Le Rive made known his
process of electro-gilding, employed by him in 1828, and in the same
year (1840) De Ruolz took out a French patent for electro-gilding, and
in the following year formed electro deposits of brass from cyanides of
zinc and copper. In 1841 Smee employed his battery for electro-plating
with various metals. In 1844 there were published the electro-plating
experiments of Dancer, made in 1838. In 1847 Prof. Silliman imitated
mother-of-pearl by electro-plating process.

[Illustration: FIG. 71.--ELECTRO-PLATING ESTABLISHMENT.]

In the last half of the century the production of electrotype plates for
printing in books, and for the production of rollers for printing
fabrics, and the extensive art of electro-plating with gold, silver,
nickel and copper, has grown to enormous proportions, but the
fundamental principles have not materially changed. The dynamo, however,
has generally supplanted the voltaic battery in this art. The deposition
of silver and gold on baser metals not only increases the ornamental
effect, but prevents oxidation. Silver plated goods for the table and
articles of vertu are to be found everywhere. Nickel is employed for
cheaper ornamental effect, and copper finds a large application for
electrotypes for printing and for coating iron castings as a protection
against rust. In Fig. 71, which shows the interior of an electro-plating
establishment, the dynamo is shown on the right connected by wires with
two horizontal rods running along the wall and across the various tanks
containing the plating solution. On the tanks are rods supporting the
articles to be plated, which are suspended in the solution. Similar rods
support the opposite electrodes of the tank. Wires connect these rods to
the rods on the side of the wall, and to the opposite poles of the
dynamo.

[Illustration: FIG. 72.--EDISON’S ELECTRIC PEN.]

_The electric pen of Edison_, brought out in 1876 (U. S. Pat. No.
196,747, Nov. 6, 1877), is one of the simple applications of
electricity, which for a number of years was in quite general use for
making manifold copies of manuscript. In the illustration, Fig. 72, this
is shown. It comprises a stylus _b_ reciprocated in a tube _a_ by the
vibratory action of an armature _k_ over the poles of an electro-magnet,
supplied with a suitable current and vibrating contacts _l h_. The
stylus was rapidly reciprocated, and as the operator traced the letters
on the paper, the stylus produced a continuous trail of punctures which
permitted the paper to be used as a stencil to make any number of
copies. It has, however, been rotated out of existence by manifolding
carbon paper, and the almost universal use of the typewriter.

[Illustration: FIG. 73.--ELECTRIC CAUTERY.]

_Electricity in Medicine._--The superstitious mind is prone to resort to
mysterious agencies for the cure of diseases, and for many years men of
no scientific knowledge whatever have been employing this seductive
instrumentality for all the ills that flesh is heir to. That it has
valuable therapeutic qualities when rightly applied no intelligent
person will doubt, and it is unfortunate that for the most part it has
been in the hands of charlatans who sell their wares, and rely upon a
faith-cure principle for the result. Still there have been intelligent
experimenters in this field, and it is one of much promise for further
research.

In the first century of the Christian Era (A. D. 50) Scribonius Largus
relates that Athero, a freedman of Tiberius, was cured of the gout by
the shocks of the torpedo or electric eel. In 1803 M. Carpue published
experiments on the therapeutic action of electricity. The discovery of
induction currents by Faraday in 1831 brought a new era in the medical
application of electricity, in the use of what is known as the Faradaic
current. The first apparatus for medical use, which operated on this
principle, was made by M. Pixii in France, and the first physician who
employed such currents was Dr. Neef, of Frankfort. The medical battery
is a well-known and useful adjunct to the physician’s outfit. Electric
baths are also common and effective modes of applying the electric
current. An early example of such a device is shown in the U. S. patent
to Young, No. 32,332, May 14, 1861. The electric cautery and probe are
also scientific and useful instruments. The cautery consists of a loop
of platinum wire carried by a suitable non-conducting handle, with means
for constricting the white hot loop of wire about the tumor or object to
be excised. It was invented in 1846 by Crusell, of St. Petersburgh. A
form of the electric cautery is shown in Fig. 73, in which _a_ is the
platinum wire loop whose branches slide through guide tubes, the ends
being attached to a sliding ring B. The current enters through the wire
at the binding posts at the end of non-conducting handle A, and heats
the platinum loop, _a_, red hot. The loop, _a_, being around the object
to be excised, is constricted by drawing down the handle ring B.

Of the various applications of electricity in body wear and appliances
there is scarcely any end. There are patents for belts without number,
for electric gloves, rings, bracelets, necklaces, trusses, corsets,
shoes, hats, combs, brushes, chairs, couches, and blankets. Patents have
also been granted for electric smelling bottles, an adhesive plaster,
for electric spectacles, scissors, a foot warmer, hair singer, syringes,
a drinking cup, a hair cutter, a torch, a catheter, a pessary, gas
lighters, exercising devices, a door mat, and even for an electric hair
pin and a pair of electric garters.

_Electrical Musical Instruments_ include pianos, banjos, and violins,
all of which are to be played automatically by the aid of electrical
appliances. In the illustration, Fig. 74, is shown a modern electrical
piano. A small electrical motor 1, run by a storage battery or electric
light wires, turns a belt 3, and rotates pulley 4 and a long horizontal
cylinder 5 running beneath the keyboard. Above this cylinder is the
mechanism that acts upon the keys. It consists of a series of brake
shoes which, when brought into frictional contact with the cylinder 5,
are made to act on small vertical rods which bring down the keys just as
the fingers do in playing. The selection of the proper keys is made by a
traveling strip of paper perforated with dots and dashes representing
the notes, which strip of paper passes between two metal contact faces,
which are terminals of an electric battery. When the contacts are
separated by the non-conducting paper the current does not flow, but
when the contacts come together through the perforations the current is
completed through an electro-magnet, and this is made to bring the
proper brake shoe into position to be lifted by the cylinder 5, which
rotates constantly.

[Illustration: FIG. 74.--ELECTRIC PIANO.]

_Electro-blasting._--In 1812 Schilling proposed to blow up mines by the
galvanic current. In 1839 Colonel Pasley blew up the wreck of the “Royal
George” by electro-blasting. On Jan. 26, 1843, Mr. Cubitt used
electro-blasting to destroy Round Down Cliff, and in our own time the
extensive excavations in deepening the channel and removing the rocks at
Hell Gate, from the mouth of New York harbor, was a notable operation in
electro-blasting, and doubtless owes its success largely to the electric
current employed.

Only the briefest mention can be made of the induction coil and the
electrical transformer, of electric bells and hotel annunciators, of
electric railway signalling, and electric brakes, of electric clocks and
instruments of precision, of heating by electricity, of electrical
horticulture, and of the beautiful electric fountains. These, however,
all belong to the Nineteenth Century, and include interesting
developments.

_Electro-chemistry_ and the _electrolytic refining of metals_ represent
also, in the applications of electricity, a large and important field,
more fully treated under the chapters devoted to chemistry and metal
working.




CHAPTER X.

THE STEAM ENGINE.

    HERO’S ENGINE, AND OTHER EARLY STEAM ENGINES--WATT’S STEAM
    ENGINE--THE CUT-OFF--GIFFARD INJECTOR--BOURDON’S STEAM GAUGE--FEED-
    WATER HEATERS, SMOKE CONSUMERS, ETC.--ROTARY ENGINES--STEAM HAMMER--
    STEAM FIRE ENGINE--COMPOUND ENGINES--SCHLICK AND TAYLOR SYSTEMS OF
    BALANCING MOMENTUM OF MOVING PARTS--STATISTICS.


When the primeval man first turned upon himself the critical light of
introspection, and observed his own deficiencies, there were born within
him both the desire and the determination to supplement his weakness,
and become the ruling factor in the world’s destiny. The strength of his
arm unaided could not cope with that of the wild beast, he could not
travel so fast as the animal, nor soar so high as the bird, nor traverse
the waters of the sea like the fish. The magnificent power of the
elements first inspired him with awe, then was worshiped as a god, and
he trembled in his weakness. Then he began to invent, and seeing in
physical laws an escape from his fears, and a solution for his
ambitions, he trained these forces and made them subservient to his
will, and established his right to rule. Out of the maze of the
centuries a steam engine is born--not all at once, for that would be
inconsistent with the law of evolution--but gradually growing first into
practicability, then into efficiency, and finally into perfection, it
stands to-day a beautiful monument of man’s ingenuity, throbbing with
life and energy, and moving the world. What has not the steam engine
done for the Nineteenth Century? It speeds the locomotive across the
continent faster and farther than the birds can fly; no fish can equal
the mighty steamship on the sea; it grinds our grain; it weaves our
cloth; it prints our books; it forges our steel, and in every department
of life it is the ubiquitous, tireless, potent agency of civilization.
Does the ambitious young philosopher predict that electricity will
supersede steam? It is not yet a rational prophecy, for the direct
production of electricity from the combustion of coal is still an
unsolved problem, and behind the electric generator can always be found
the steam engine, modestly and quietly giving its full life’s work to
the dynamo, which it actuates, and caring nothing for the credit,
unmindful of the beautiful and striking manifestations of electricity
which astonish the world, but humbly doing its duty with a silent faith
that the law of correlation of force will always lead the way back to
the steam engine, and place it where it belongs, at the head of all
useful agencies of man.

The Nineteenth Century did not include in its discoveries the invention
of the steam engine. The great gift of James Watt was one of the
legacies which it received from the past, but the economical, efficient,
graceful, and mathematically perfect engine of to-day is the product of
this age.

[Illustration: FIG. 75.--HERO’S ENGINE, 150 B. C.]

The genesis of the steam engine belongs to ancient history, for in the
year 150 B. C. Hero made and exhibited in the Serapeum of Alexandria the
first steam engine. It was of the rotary type and was known as the
“aeolipile.” During the middle ages the spirit of invention seems to
have slept, for nearly eighteen centuries passed from the time of Hero’s
engine before any active revival of interest was manifested in this
field of invention. Giovanni Branca in 1629, the Marquis of Worcester in
1633, Dr. Papin in 1695, Savary in 1698, and Newcomen in 1705, were the
pioneers of Watt, and gave to him a good working basis. Strange as it
may appear, there was in 1894 and probably still is in existence in
England an old Newcomen steam engine (see Fig. 76), which for at least a
hundred years has stood exposed to the weather, slowly rusting and
crumbling away. It is to be found in Fairbottom Valley, half way between
Ashton-under-Lyne and Oldham, and is the property of the trustees of the
late Earl of Stamford and Warrington. It is erected on a solid masonry
pillar 14 by 7 feet at the base, which carries on its top, on trunnions,
an oak beam 20 feet long and 12 by 14 inches thick. This beam is braced
with iron, and has segmental ends with a piston at one end, and a
balance weight at the other. The piston and pump rods are attached by
chains. The cylinder is of cast iron, 27 inches in diameter, and about
six foot stroke, the steam entering at the bottom only. It was formerly
used for pumping a mine.

[Illustration: FIG. 76.--OLD NEWCOMEN ENGINE.]

The distinct and valuable legacy, however, which the Nineteenth Century
received from the past, was the double acting steam engine of James
Watt, disclosed in his British Pat. No. 1,321, of 1782. Prior to this
date steam engines had been almost exclusively confined to raising
water, but with the invention of Watt it extended into all fields of
industrial use. Watt’s double acting engine is shown in Fig. 77. It
comprised a cylinder A, with double acting piston and valve gear E F G
H; the parallel motion R for translating the reciprocating motion of the
piston into the curved oscillatory path of the walking beam; a condenser
chamber K, with spray I, for condensing the exhaust steam; a pump L J to
remove the water from the condenser, and also the air, which is drawn
out of the water by the vacuum; a water supply pump N; the automatic
ball governor D, and throttle valve B. Two pins on the pump rod L strike
the lever H and work the valve gear, and a collecting rod P and crank Q
convert the oscillations of the walking beam into the continuous
rotation of the fly wheel.

[Illustration: FIG. 77.--WATT’S DOUBLE ACTING STEAM ENGINE.]

Watt’s automatic ball governor is shown in Fig. 78 and its function is
as follows: When the working strain on an engine is relieved by the
throwing out of action of a part of the work being performed, the engine
would run too fast, or if more than a normal tax were placed on the
engine, it would “slow up.” To secure a regular and uniform motion in
the performance of his engine Watt invented the automatic or
self-regulating ball governor and throttle valve. A vertical shaft D is
rotated constantly by a band on pulley _d_. Any tendency in the engine
to run too fast throws the balls up by centrifugal action, and this
through toggle links _f h_, pulls down on a lever F G H, and partially
closes the throttle valve Z, reducing the flow of steam to the engine.
When the engine has a tendency to run too slow the balls drop down, and,
deflecting the lever in the opposite direction, open the throttle valve,
and increase the flow of steam to the engine. This double acting engine
of Watt marks the beginning of the great epoch of steam engineering, and
his patent expired just in time to give to the Nineteenth Century the
greatest of all natal gifts.

[Illustration: FIG. 78.--WATT’S AUTOMATIC GOVERNOR AND THROTTLE VALVE.]

Steam engines are divided into two principal classes, the low pressure
engine, using steam usually under 40 pounds to the square inch, and the
high pressure engine, using steam from 50 to 200 pounds. In the low
pressure engine there is the expansive pressure of the steam on one side
of the piston, aided by the suction of a vacuum on the opposite side of
the piston, which vacuum is created by the condensation of the
discharging, or exhaust steam, by cold water. As there are two factors
at work impelling the piston, only a relatively low pressure in the
boiler is required. In the high pressure engines there is no
condensation of the exhaust steam, but it is discharged directly into
the air, and this type was originally called “puffers.” Familiar
examples of the low pressure type are to be found in our side wheel
passenger steamers, and of the high pressure type in the steam
locomotive.

[Illustration: FIG. 79.--PRINCIPLE OF CUT-OFF.]

One of the most important steps in the development of the steam engine
was the addition of the cut-off. Prior to its adoption steam was
admitted to the cylinder during the whole time the piston was making
its stroke from one end of the cylinder to the other. In the cut-off
(see Fig. 79), when steam is being admitted through the port _p_, and
the piston is being driven in the direction of the arrow, it was found
that if the steam were cut off when the piston arrived at the position
1, the expansive action of the steam behind it in chamber _a_ would
continue to carry the piston with an effective force to the end of its
stroke, or to position 2. This of course effected a great saving in
steam. Various cut-offs have been devised. Perhaps that most easily
recognized by most persons is the one seen in the engine room of our
side wheel steamers, of which illustration is given in Fig. 80. This was
invented in 1841 by F. E. Sickels, and was the first successful drop
cut-off. It was covered by his patents, May 20, 1842, July 20, 1843,
October 19, 1844, No. 3,802, and September 19, 1845, No. 4,201. A rock
shaft _s_ is worked by an eccentric rod _e_ from the paddle wheel shaft.
The rock shaft has lifting arms _a_ that act upon and alternately raise
the feet _c_ on rods _b b_. One of these rods _b_ works the valves that
admit steam, and the other the valves that discharge steam. The valve
rod that admits steam has a quick drop, or fall, to cut off the live
steam before the piston reaches the end of its stroke. In Fig. 81 is
shown the celebrated Corliss cut-off and valve gear, in which a central
wrist plate and four radiating rods work the valves. This valve gear was
covered in Corliss patents, No. 6,162, March 10, 1849, and No. 8.253,
July 29, 1851.

[Illustration: FIG. 80.--SICKELS’ DROP CUT-OFF VALVE GEAR.]

[Illustration: FIG. 81.--CORLISS CUT-OFF AND VALVE GEAR.]

Among other important improvements in the steam engine are those for
replenishing the water in the boiler, and the Giffard Injector is the
simplest and most ingenious of all boiler feeds. It was invented in 1858
and covered by French patent No. 21,457, May 8, 1858, and U. S. patent
No. 27,979, April 24, 1860. Prior to the Giffard Injector, steam boilers
were supplied with water usually by steam pumps, which forced the water
into the boiler against the pressure of the steam. The Giffard Injector
takes a jet of steam from the boiler, and causes it to lift the water in
an external pipe, and blow it directly into the boiler against its own
pressure. So paradoxical and inoperative did this seem at first that it
was met with incredulity, and not until repeated demonstrations
established the fact was it accepted as an operative device. Its
construction is shown in Fig. 82. A is a steam pipe communicating with
the boiler, B another pipe receiving steam from A through small holes
and terminating in a cone. C is a screw rod, cone-shaped at its
extremity, turned by the crank M, and serving to regulate and even
intercept the passage of steam. D is a water suction pipe. The water
that is drawn up introduces itself around the steam pipe and tends to
make its exit through the annular space at the conical extremity of the
latter steam pipe. This annular space is increased at will by means of
the lever L, which acts upon a screw whose office is to cause the pipe B
and its attached parts to move backward or forward. E is a diverging
tube which receives the water injected by the jet of steam that
condenses at I, and imparts to the water a portion of its speed in
proportion to the pressure of the boiler. F is a box carrying a check
valve to keep the water from issuing from the boiler when the apparatus
is not at work. G is a pipe that leads the injected water to the boiler.
H is a purge or overflow pipe, K a sight hole which permits the
operation of the apparatus to be watched, the stream of water being
distinctly seen in the free interval. Fig. 83 shows the application of
the injector to locomotives, which are now almost universally supplied
with this device.

[Illustration: FIG. 82.--GIFFARD INJECTOR.]

[Illustration: FIG. 83.--INJECTOR ON LOCOMOTIVE.]

To keep the pressure in the boiler within the limit of safety, and
adjusted to the work being performed, is an important part of the
engineer’s duty, and this he could not do without the steam gauge. One
of the best known is the Bourdon gauge, shown in Fig. 84, constructed on
the principle of the barometer invented by Bourdon of Paris in 1849 and
patented in France June, 1849, and in the United States August 3, 1852,
No. 9,163. A screw threaded thimble B, with stop cock A, is screwed in
the shell of the boiler, and a coiled pipe C communicates at one end
with the thimble and is closed at the other end E and connected by a
link F, with an arm on an axle, carrying an index hand that moves over a
graduated scale. The coiled pipe C is in the nature of a flattened
tube, as shown in the enlarged cross section, and is enclosed in a case.
When the steam pressure varies in this flat tube its coil expands or
contracts, and in moving the index hand over the scale indicates the
degree of pressure.

[Illustration: FIG. 84.--BOURDON’S PRESSURE GAUGE.]

In line with the development of the steam engine must be considered the
efforts to economize fuel. These may be divided into the following
classes: Increased steam generating surface in boiler construction;
surface condensers for exhaust steam; devices for promoting the
combustion of fuel and burning the smoke, and feed water heaters. Even
before the Nineteenth Century Smeaton devised the cylindrical boiler
traversed by a flue, but the multitubular steam boiler of to-day
represents a very important Nineteenth Century adjunct to the steam
engine. Our locomotives, fire engines, and torpedo boat engines would be
of no value without it. Sectional steam boilers made in detachable
portions fastened together by packed or screw joints also represent an
important development. These permit of the removal and replacement of
any one section that may become defective, and are also capable of being
built up section by section to any size needed. For promoting the
combustion of fuel the draft is energized by blasts of air or steam, or
both, either through hollow grate bars, jet pipes in the fire box, or by
discharging the exhaust steam in the smoke pipe. Surface condensers pass
the exhaust steam over the great surface area of a multitubular
construction having cold water flowing through it. Feed water heaters
utilize the waste heat escaping in the smoke flue to heat the water that
is being fed to the boiler, so that it is warm when it is injected into
the boiler, and the furnace is relieved of that much work.

[Illustration: FIG. 85.--BRANCA’S STEAM TURBINE, 1629.]

[Illustration: FIG. 86.--SECTION OF PARSONS TURBINE OF 1891.]

In the reciprocating type of steam engine the inertia of the piston must
be overcome at the beginning of each stroke and its momentum must be
arrested at the end of each stroke, and this involves a great loss of
power. If the power of the steam could be applied so as to continuously
move the piston in the same direction this loss would be avoided. The
effort to do this has engaged the attention of many inventors, and the
devices are called rotary engines. The most successful engines of this
kind are those of the impact type, in which jets of steam impinge upon
buckets after the manner of water on a water wheel, and which are known
to-day as steam turbines. The earliest of these is Branca’s steam
turbine of 1629 (see Fig. 85) and the most important of this class in
use to-day are those of Mr. Parsons, of England, and De Laval, of
Sweden. The internal construction of the Parsons turbine is seen in Fig.
86 and is covered by British patent No. 10,940, of 1891, and United
States patent No. 553,658, January 28th, 1896. A series of turbines are
set one after the other on the same axis, so that each takes steam from
the preceding one, and passes it on to the next. Each consists of a ring
of fixed steam guides on the casing, and a ring of moving blades on the
shaft. The steam passes through the first set of guides, then through
the first set of moving blades, then through the second set of guides,
and then through the second set of moving blades, and so on.

[Illustration: FIG. 87.--PARSONS COMPOUND STEAM TURBINE, ON PLURALITY OF
PROPELLER SHAFTS.]

In the application of his turbine to marine propulsion Mr. Parsons
employs a plurality of propeller shafts and steam turbines, as seen in
Fig. 87, and covered under United States patent No. 608,969, August 9,
1898.

[Illustration: FIG. 88.--DE LAVAL’S STEAM TURBINE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 89.--DE LAVAL TURBINE GEARED TO DYNAMO.]

The De Laval turbine, as shown in Fig. 88, is of very simple
construction, consisting only of a steel wheel with a series of buckets
at its periphery enclosed by a circular rim, and a series of steam
nozzles on the side with diverging jet orifices directing steam jets
against the buckets. A speed of 30,000 revolutions a minute may be
attained by this construction. In Fig. 89 is shown a 300 horse-power
steam turbine of the De Laval type applied to a dynamo; to which this
type of engine is peculiarly adapted. The dynamo is seen on the extreme
right, the steam turbine on the extreme left, and the drum-shaped
casing between contains cog-gearing by which the high revolution of the
turbine wheel is reduced to a proper working speed for the dynamo.
Within the last few years application of the Parsons steam turbine has
been made to marine propulsion with very remarkable results as to speed.
The small steam craft, “The Turbinia,” built in 1897, and supplied with
three of Parsons’ compound steam turbines, developed a speed of 32¾
knots, and more recently the torpedo boat “Viper” has with steam
turbines attained the remarkable speed of 37.1 knots, or over 40 statute
miles an hour. About 2,000 United States patents have been granted on
various forms of rotary engines.

In the transportation building of the World’s Fair at Chicago in 1893
one of the most conspicuous objects of attention was the model of the
great Bethlehem Iron Co.’s steam hammer, standing with its feet apart
like some great “Colossus of Rhodes” and towering 91 feet high among the
models of the great ocean steamers and battleships which are so largely
dependent upon the work of this Titanic machine. Its hammer head, in the
working-machine, weighs 125 tons, and many of the seventeen inch thick
armor plates for our battleships have been forged by its tremendous
blows.

In 1838, during the construction of the “Great Britain,” the largest
steamship up to that time ever built, it was found that there was not a
forge hammer in England or Scotland powerful enough to forge a paddle
shaft for that vessel. The emergency was met by Mr. Nasmyth, of England,
who invented the steam hammer and covered it in British patent No.
9,382, of 1842 (U. S. Pat. No. 3,042, April 10, 1843). A modern example
of it is seen in Fig. 90. It consists of a steam cylinder at the top
whose piston is attached to a block of iron, forming the hammer head and
sliding vertically in guides between the two legs of the frame. Valve
gear is arranged to control the flow of steam to and from the opposite
sides of the piston, and so nicely adjusted is the valve gear of such a
modern steam hammer that it is said that an expert workman can
manipulate the great mass of metal with such accuracy and delicacy as to
crack an egg in a wineglass without touching the glass. To the steam
hammer we owe the first heavy armor plate for our battle ships and the
propeller shafts of our earlier steamships. In fact it was the steam
hammer which first rendered the large steamship possible. Mr. Nasmyth
not only invented the steam hammer, but the steam pile driver as well.

[Illustration: FIG. 90.--STEAM HAMMER.]

For quick action, nicely adjusted machinery, and showy finish the steam
fire engine is a familiar and conspicuous application of steam power. A
dude among engines when on dress parade, and a sprinter when on the run,
it gets to work with the vim and efficiency of a thoroughbred, and is a
most business-like and valuable custodian of life and property. The
first portable steam fire engine was built about 1830 by Mr. Brathwaite
and Capt. Ericsson in London. In 1841 Mr. Hodges produced a similar
engine in New York City. Cincinnati was the first city to adopt the
steamer as a part of its fire department apparatus. To-day all the
important cities and towns of the civilized world rely upon the steam
fire engines for their longevity and existence. Time economy in getting
into action is the great objective point of most improvements of the
fire-engine, and one of the most important is the keeping of the water
in the boiler hot when the engine is out of action at the engine house,
so that when the fire is built and the run is made to the scene of
action, the water will be hot to start with. This attachment was the
invention of William A. Brickill, and was patented by him August 18,
1868, No. 81,132. In the illustration, Fig. 91, the two pipes passing
from the engine through the trap door in the floor connect with a water
heater in the basement below, which heater maintains a constant
circulation of hot water in the steam boiler. Couplings in these pipes
serve to quickly disconnect the engine when the run to the fire is to be
made.

[Illustration: FIG. 91.--STEAM FIRE ENGINE WITH WATER HEATING
ATTACHMENT.]

Among other useful applications of the steam engine are the steam plow,
steam drill, steam dredge, steam press, and steam pump, of which latter
the Blake, Knowles, and Worthington are representative types.

[Illustration: FIG. 92.--THE SIX-CYLINDER QUADRUPLE EXPANSION ENGINES OF
THE “DEUTSCHLAND,” 35,640 HORSE POWER.]

The highest type of modern steam engines is to be found in the compound
multiple-expansion engine, in which three or more cylinders of different
diameters with corresponding pistons are so arranged that steam is made
to act first upon the piston in the smallest cylinder at high pressure,
and then discharging into the next larger cylinder, called the
intermediate, acts expansively upon its piston, and thence, passing into
the still larger low pressure cylinder, imparts its further expansive
effect upon its piston. The fundamental principle of the compound engine
dates back to the time of Watt, its first embodiment appearing in the
Hornblower compound engine, as described in British patent No. 1,298, of
1781, but modern improvements have differentiated it into almost a new
invention. A fine example is shown in Fig. 92, which represents the
quadruple expansion engines of the “Deutschland,” the new steamer of the
Hamburg-American Line. The two high pressure cylinders, however, do not
appear in the illustration, being too high for the shops. They stand
vertically, however, upon the two bed plates which appear at the top of
the two low pressure cylinders. In each set of six cylinders the two low
pressure cylinders are in the middle, the two high pressure cylinders
immediately above them or arranged tandem, while at the forward end is
the first intermediate cylinder, and at the after end is the second
intermediate. The low pressure cylinders are 106 inches in diameter, the
intermediate cylinders are 73.6 inches and 103.9 inches respectively,
and the two high pressure cylinders are 30.6 inches, and the steam
pressure is 225 pounds. Its improvements comprehend the systems of
Schlick, patented in the United States November 23, 1897, No. 594,288
and 594,289, and Taylor, patented November 22, 1898, No. 614,674, which
embody fine mathematical principles for balancing the momentum of the
great masses of moving parts, so that the engine may run up to high
speed without vibrations and damaging strains upon the hull.

Mulhall gives the steam horse power of the world in 1895, not including
war vessels, as follows:

                  Stationary.  Railway.   Steamboat.    Total.
  The World       11,340,000  32,235,000  12,005,000  55,580,000
  United States    3,940,000  10,800,000   2,200,000  16,940,000

The increase in steam power in the United States has been from 3,500,000
horse power in 1860, to 16,940,000 horse power in 1895, or about five
fold within thirty-five years.

Prof. Thurston says that in 1890 the combined power of all the steam
engines of the world was not far from 100,000,000[2] horse power, of
which the United States had 15,000,000, Great Britain the same, and the
other co

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