Stories of Invention, Told by Inventors and their Friends Part 21

"I think so too," said he.

"I should like," said the girl, "to write to those children of his a letter to thank them for what they have done, and what he did for me, and a million girls like me."

"It would be a good thing to do," said he, "and I think I can put you in the way."

"And I do hope," said Alice, eagerly, "that if we are ever tested in that way we shall bear the test."

"Dear Uncle Fritz, if we cannot invent a flying-machine, and have not learned how to close up rivets this winter, we have learned at least how to bear each other's burdens."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] These are the quinqueremes, fastened together, of the other account.

[2] The estimates of a talent vary somewhat, but ten talents made about seven hundred pounds.

[3] Quoted in Fabricius's Greek fragments.

[4] Encyclopaedia Americana: art. "Roger Bacon."

[5] See "Stories of Adventure."

[6] As St. James says, "The wisdom from above is _first_ pure."

[7] Joseph Droz, born in 1773. His essay was published in 1806, and had come to its fourth edition in 1825.

[8] The first-steam-engines were devised in order to supply some motor for the pumps which were necessary, all over England, to keep the mines free from water. The locomotive engine, as will be seen later, owes its birth to the efforts of colliery engineers to find some means of drawing coal better than the horse-power generally in use.

[9] John Robison, at this time a student at Glasgow College, and afterwards Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh. He was at one time Master of the Marine Cadet Academy at Cronstadt.

[10] The princ.i.p.al men of Glasgow were the importers of tobacco from Virginia.

[11] Earl Stanhope, among other projects, had conceived "the hope of being able to apply the steam-engine to navigation by the aid of a peculiar apparatus modelled after the foot of an aquatic fowl." Fulton, on being consulted by the Earl, doubted the feasibility, and suggested the very means which he afterward made successful upon the Hudson.

[12] Symington was an engineer who had been carrying out some experiments of Miller of Dalswinton in regard to the practicability of steam navigation.

[13] Who subsequently made charge that Fulton, having seen his steamboat and made copious notes thereon, had thus been able to make his boat upon the Hudson.

[14] This was in the course of the War of 1812.

[15] Fulton died Feb. 24, 1815; he was born in 1765.

[16] Killingworth is a town some seven or eight miles north of Newcastle, in Northumberland. George Stephenson was at this time the engine-wright of the colliery. It may be said here that the princ.i.p.al use for which the early locomotive engines and railroads were designed was to convey coal from the pit to a market. It was not till the success of the mining and quarrying railways led to the building of the Liverpool and Manchester Road, between two great cities, that the value of the railroad for the transfer of pa.s.sengers was recognized.

[17] It had been generally the opinion that cog-wheels must be used which should fit into cogs in the rail. Otherwise it was imagined the wheels would revolve without proceeding.

[18] "The private risk is the public benefit."

[19] It had a sort of resemblance to a gra.s.shopper, caused by the angle at which the piston and cylinder were placed.

[20] Mr. Henry Booth, secretary to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, suggested to Mr. Stephenson the idea of a mult.i.tubular boiler.

[21] This letter is dated Nov. 24, 1793.

[22] This was in 1812, twenty years after the invention of the gin. The saving in 1885 is enormously greater.

[23] Napoleon III., under whose protection Bessemer had been experimenting in projectiles when his attention was turned to the manufacture of iron.

[24] In Gruner's text-book on steel, he says: "In its properties, as well as in its manufacture, steel is comprised between the limits of cast and wrought iron. It cannot even be said where steel begins or ends. It is a series which begins with the most impure black pig iron, and ends with the softest and purest wrought iron. [Karsten stated this in these words in 1823.] Cast-iron pa.s.ses into hard steel in becoming malleable (natural steel for wire-mills, the 'Wildstahl' of the Germans); and steel, properly so called, pa.s.ses into iron, giving in succession mild steel, steel of the nature of iron, steely iron, and granular iron."

[25] A small cannon cast by Sir Henry, the description of which we have omitted.

[26] Immediately after his first successful experiment at St. Pancras, described above.