The Sewing Machine.—After many experiments by others the sewing machine was invented by Elias Howe and patented by him in 1846. Like every other inventor who has a really great thing his patents were attacked in the court and for eight years he lived in poverty. When the courts finally found in his favor he made millions out of the royalties on his labor saving invention.
The Ice Machine.—The first machine for making ice was invented by A. C. Twining in which ethyl ether was used for the compressed gas and for which a patent was granted in 1850. In 1867 an ice machine was made by Ferdinand Carré which used liquid ammonia for the compressed gas and from that date on the artificial production of ice on a commercial scale really began. Whether these two inventors made fortunes out of their brain children I cannot say, but this I know, that tens of millions have flowed into the coffers of those who commercialized their work.
The Steel Process.—The process of converting iron into steel cheaply and in quantities was invented by Henry Bessemer who patented it in 1855. It was the Bessemer process which made it possible to use steel for rails and structural purposes generally. The inventor grew rich beyond the dreams of the romancer and the steel industry has made multimillionaires of all its captains.
The Gas Engine.—Many inventions for using gas as the motive power for engines were made before 1861 but it was not until that year that N. A. Otto built a working model of a gas engine in which the explosive gases were mixed, compressed, and ignited in one cylinder when the waste gases were exhausted from it. The Otto gas engine became a commercial success in 1878 and netted the inventor many millions.
The Dynamo and Motor.—The principle on which the dynamo electric machine works was discovered by Faraday in 1831. In 1866 both Wilde and Siemens built dynamos, but it was Gramme who made the dynamo a commercial machine by inventing the ring armature, which he did in 1870. Then some genius, or bonehead, no one seems to know which, found that when a current was passed through a dynamo it became a motor. From 1880 inventions for electric light, heat and power advanced by leaps and bounds and everybody that invented anything at all worth while in the electrical line got rich quick.
The Air Brake.—The air brake to stop and control the speed of trains was invented by Westinghouse in 1869. He had hard work getting any railroad to give it a trial but once that this was done it very quickly came into general use. Next to the safety valve it was the first important safety device applied to railroads. It has in the past and is still piling up millions for its inventor.
Fig. 121. THE FIRST TELEPHONE
The Telephone.—The first use of the word telephone was made by Charles Wheatstone in 1834, who applied it to a musical instrument otherwise known as the magic lyre. In 1854 Charles Bourseul suggested a way to make a speaking telephone, and in 1860 Johanne Phillip Reis constructed a telephone apparatus along the line of Bourseul’s idea; while this instrument reproduced musical tones it would not reproduce the human voice.