The Snap-Shot Camera.—The snap-shot camera, or kodak, is not an invention of magnitude but Eastman who invented it about 1880 has through his business ability made it a money-maker second only to inventions of great utility. So rich is his company that it paid $300,000 for the simple invention of enabling a kodak user to write a record on each film when it was exposed.
The Steam Turbine.—The steam turbine dates back to the time of Hero, that is 120 years B. C., and the place of its birth was Alexandria, Egypt. It consisted of a copper ball pivoted on trunnions. Projecting from opposite sides of its equator were two bent pipes and when the ball was partly filled with water and heated the steam would spout out of the bent pipes and on striking the air it reacted on the ball and this caused it to revolve at a high-speed. For this reason Hero’s engine was called a reaction turbine.
In 1705 Branca, an Italian, invented a steam turbine in which a jet of steam was forced through a nozzle and impinged on the vanes of a paddle-wheel, the impact of the steam causing it to revolve. Hence this kind of a turbine is called an impact turbine.
The first steam turbine to be built and operated as a competitor of the reciprocating engine was made by De Laval in 1883. It was a reaction turbine and it revolved at a tremendously high speed. Parsons of England brought out in 1884 the first multiple expansion turbine which combined the reaction and the impulse types. It made 18,000 revolutions per minute and was directly connected to an electric lighting dynamo. In a little over thirty years the steam turbine reached a degree of perfection and economy not attained in the two hundred odd years of development of the reciprocating engine and it is now used for driving the largest steamships.
The Automobile.—The so-called daddy of the automobile is George B. Selden; he built his first self-moving wagon in 1878 and applied for a patent on it. He did not let this patent issue, however, but kept it alive in the Patent Office until 1895 when in that year automobiles began to be made and used and he then had the patent granted to him.
His next step was to sell licenses to the various gasoline engine automobile manufacturers who paid him a royalty on each machine sold and in this very easy and genteel manner he accumulated much money. But there were some manufacturers who refused to recognize his patent rights and hence refused to pay him royalty. Henry Ford of Detroit was the leader of these rebellious souls and a bitter patent suit resulted in which the courts first decided for Selden and then against him and this ended his monopoly.
Ford organized the Ford Motor Company and at this writing it is the largest manufacturer of automobiles in the world. It employs 16,000 men and turns out 1000 automobiles a day. Mr. Ford has so much money he doesn’t know what to do with it, but his great wealth is based upon his business ability and not upon any patents he may have.
Fig. 124. FIRST INCANDESCENT LIGHT