Stories of Inventors the Adventures of Inventors and Engineers
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Stories of Inventors The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers Russell Doubleday The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stories of Inventors, by Russell Doubleday This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Stories of Inventors The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers Author: Russell Doubleday Release Date: February 29, 2004 [EBook #11368] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES OF INVENTORS *** Produced by Dave Morgan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team [Illustration: MARCONI READING A MESSAGE] STORIES OF INVENTORS The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers. True Incidents And Personal Experiences By RUSSELL DOUBLEDAY 1904 ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author and publishers take pleasure in acknowledging the courtesy of _The Scientific American_ _The Booklovers Magazine_ _The Holiday Magazine_, and Messrs. Wood & Nathan Company for the use of a number of illustrations in this book. From _The Scientific American_, illustrations facing pages 16, 48, 78, 80, 88, 94, 118, 126, 142, and 162. From _The Booklovers Magazine_, illustrations facing pages 184, 190, 194, and 196. From _The Holiday Magazine_, illustrations facing pages 100 and 110. CONTENTS How Guglielmo Marconi Telegraphs Without Wires Santos-Dumont and His Air-Ship How a Fast Train Is Run How Automobiles Work The Fastest Steamboats The Life-Savers and Their Apparatus Moving Pictures--Some Strange Subjects and How They Were Taken Bridge Builders and Some of Their Achievements Submarines in War and Peace Long-Distance Telephony--What Happens When You Talk into a Telephone Receiver A Machine That Thinks--A Type-Setting Machine That Makes Mathematical Calculations How Heat Produces Cold--Artificial Ice-Making LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Marconi Reading a Message _Frontispiece_ Marconi Station at Wellfleet, Massachusetts The Wireless Telegraph Station at Glace Bay Santos-Dumont Preparing for a Flight Rounding the Eiffel Tower The Motor and Basket of "Santos-Dumont No. 9" Firing a Fast Locomotive Track Tank Railroad Semaphore Signals Thirty Years' Advance in Locomotive Building The "Lighthouse" of the Rail A Giant Automobile Mower-Thrasher An Automobile Buckboard An Automobile Plow The _Velox_, of the British Navy The Engines of the _Arrow_ A Life-Saving Crew Drilling Life-Savers at Work Biograph Pictures of a Military Hazing Developing Moving-Picture Films Building an American Bridge in Burmah Viaduct Across Canyon Diablo Beginning an American Bridge in Mid-Africa Lake's Submarine Torpedo-Boat _Protector_ Speeding at the Rate of 102 Miles an Hour Singing Into the Telephone "Central" Telephone Operators at Work Central Making Connections The Back of a Telephone Switchboard A Few Telephone Trunk Wires The Lanston Type-Setter Keyboard Where the "Brains" are Located The Type Moulds and the Work They Produce INTRODUCTION There are many thrilling incidents--all the more attractive because of their truth--in the study, the trials, the disappointments, the obstacles overcome, and the final triumph of the successful inventor. Every great invention, afterward marvelled at, was first derided. Each great inventor, after solving problems in mechanics or chemistry, had to face the jeers of the incredulous. The story of James Watt's sensations when the driving-wheels of his first rude engine began to revolve will never be told; the visions of Robert Fulton, when he puffed up the Hudson, of the fleets of vessels that would follow the faint track of his little vessel, can never be put in print. It is the purpose of this book to give, in a measure, the adventurous side of invention. The trials and dangers of the builders of the submarine; the triumphant thrill of the inventor who hears for the first time the vibration of the long-distance message through the air; the daring and tension of the engineer who drives a locomotive at one hundred miles an hour. The wonder of the mechanic is lost in the marvel of the machine; the doer is overshadowed by the greatness of his achievement. These are true stories of adventure in invention. STORIES OF INVENTORS HOW GUGLIELMO MARCONI TELEGRAPHS WITHOUT WIRES A nineteen-year-old boy, just a quiet, unobtrusive young fellow, who talked little but thought much, saw in the discovery of an older scientist the means of producing a revolutionising invention by which nations could talk to nations without the use of wires or tangible connection, no matter how far apart they might be or by what they might be separated. The possibilities of Guglielmo (William) Marconi's invention are just beginning to be realised, and what it has already accomplished would seem too wonderful to be true if the people of these marvellous times were not almost surfeited with wonders. It is of the boy and man Marconi that this chapter will tell, and through him the story of his invention, for the personality, the talents, and the character of the inventor made wireless telegraphy possible. It was an article in an electrical journal describing the properties of the "Hertzian waves" that suggested to young Marconi the possibility of sending messages from one place to another without wires. Many men doubtless read the same article, but all except the young Italian lacked the training, the power of thought, and the imagination, first to foresee the great things that could be accomplished through this discovery, and then to study out the mechanical problem, and finally to steadfastly push the work through to practical usefulness. It would seem that Marconi was not the kind of boy to produce a revolutionising invention, for he was not in the least spectacular, but, on the contrary, almost shy, and lacking in the aggressive enthusiasm that is supposed to mark the successful inventor; quiet determination was a strong characteristic of the young Italian, and a studious habit which had much to do with the great results accomplished by him at so early an age. He was well equipped to grapple with the mighty problem which he had been the first to conceive, since from early boyhood he had made electricity his chief study, and a comfortable income saved him from the grinding struggle for bare existence that many inventors have had to endure. Although born in Bologna (in 1874) and bearing an Italian name, Marconi is half Irish, his mother being a native of Britain. Having been educated in Bologna, Florence, and Leghorn, Italy's schools may rightly claim to have had great influence in the shaping of his career. Certain it is, in any case, that he was well educated, especially in his chosen branch. Marconi, like many other inventors, did not discover the means by which the end was accomplished; he used the discovery of other men, and turned their impractical theories and inventions to practical uses, and, in addition, invented many theories of his own. The man who does old things in a new way, or makes new uses of old inventions, is the one who achieves great things. And so it was the reading of the discovery of Hertz that started the boy on the train of thought and the series of experiments that ended with practical, everyday telegraphy without the use of wires. To begin with, it is necessary to give some idea of the medium that carries the wireless messages. It is known that all matter, even the most compact and solid of substances, is permeated by what is called ether, and that the vibrations that make light, heat, and colour are carried by this mysterious substance as water carries the wave motions on its surface. This strange substance, ether, which pervades everything, surrounds everything, and penetrates all things, is mysterious, since it cannot be seen nor felt, nor made known to the human senses in any way; colourless, odourless, and intangible in every way, its properties are only known through the things that it accomplishes that are beyond the powers of the known elements. Ether has been compared by one writer to jelly which, filling all space, serves as a setting for the planets, moons, and stars, and, in fact, all solid substances; and as a bowl of jelly carries a plum, so all solid things float in it. Heinrich Hertz discovered that in addition to the light, heat, and colour waves carried by ether, this substance also served to carry electric waves or vibrations, so that electric impulses could be sent from one place to another without the aid of wires. These electric waves have been named "Hertzian waves," in honour of their discoverer; but it remained for Marconi, who first conceived their value, to put them to practical use. But for a year he did not attempt to work out his plan, thinking that all the world of scientists were studying the problem. The expected did not happen, however. No news of wireless telegraphy reached the young Italian, and so he set to work at his father's farm in Bologna to develop his idea. [Illustration: THE MARCONI STATION AT GLACE BAY, CAPE BRETON From the wires hung to these towers are sent the messages that carry clear across to England.] And so the boy began to work out his great idea with a dogged determination to succeed, and with the thought constantly in mind spurring him on that it was more than likely that some other scientist was striving with might and main to gain the same end. His father's farm was his first field of operations, the small beginnings of experiments that were later to stretch across many hundreds of miles of ocean.