INVENTORS
MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT SERIES
TRAVELLERS AND EXPLORERS. By
General A.W. Greely, U.S.A.
STATESMEN. By Noah Brooks.
MEN OF BUSINESS. By W.O. Stoddard.
INVENTORS. By P.G. Hubert, Jr.
MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
INVENTORS
BY
PHILIP G. HUBERT, Jr.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1896
Copyright, 1893, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Press of J.J. Little & Co.
Astor Place, New York
PREFACE
This book, dealing with our great inventors,their origins, hopes, aims, principles, disappointments,trials, and triumphs, their daily life andpersonal character, presents just enough concerningtheir inventions to make the storyintelligible. The history is often a painful one.When poor Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanizedrubber, was one day asked what he wantedto make of his boys, he is said to have replied:"Make them anything but inventors; mankindhas nothing but cuffs and kicks for those who tryto do it a service."
Meanwhile, the value of the work done bygreat inventors is widely acknowledged. In aremarkable sketch of the history of civilization,Professor Huxley remarked, in 1887, that thewonderful increase of industrial production bythe application of machinery, the improvementof old technical processes and the invention ofnew ones, constitutes the most salient feature ofthe world's progress during the last fifty years.If this was true a few years ago, its truth is stillmore apparent to-day. It is safe to say thatwithin fifty years power, light, and heat will costhalf, perhaps one-tenth, of what they do now; andthis virtually means that in 1943 mankind will be4able to buy decent food, shelter, and clothing forhalf or one-tenth of the labor now required.Steam is said to have reduced the workinghours of man in the civilized world from fourteento ten a day. Electricity will mark thenext giant step in advance.
With the many and superb tools now at ourservice, of which our fathers knew comparativelynothing—steam, electricity, the telegraph, telephone,phonograph, and the camera—we and ourdescendants ought to accomplish even greaterwonders than these. As invention thus rises inthe scale of importance to humanity, the historyof the pioneers and, to the shame of mankind beit said, the martyrs of the art, becomes of intenseinterest. In the annals of hero-worship theinventor of the perfecting press ought to standbefore the great general, and Elias Howe shouldrank before Napoleon. Whitney, Howe, Morse,and Goodyear, to mention but a few of ourAmericans, contributed thousands of millions ofdollars to the nation's wealth and received comparativelynothing in return. Their history suggestsas pertinent the inquiry whether our patentlaws do not need a radical change. The burdenand cost of proving that an invention deservesno protection ought to fall upon who