Invention: The Master-key to Progress

by Bradley A. Fiske

The first important successful application of the steam engine was embodied in the steamboat Charlotte Dundas that was produced in Scotland in 1801. Other steamboats had appeared before, but they had not been successful. The first was tried on the Soane River in France in 1781. Later, Fitch and Ramsay made some unsuccessful attempts in the United States. Then, in 1788, Patrick Miller, with the assistance of an engineer named William Symington, had constructed a steam vessel that attained a speed of five knots on a lake in Scotland. In the next year, Mr. Miller and Mr. Symington had put another steamboat on the water that developed a speed of nearly seven knots. None of these experiments could be called successful of itself; but the experience gained by them induced Lord Dundas to build the Charlotte Dundas and name it after his daughter. The Charlotte Dundas was a practical success from the start; for, in March, 1802, it towed two vessels of 70 tons each a distance of 19½ miles in six hours, while such a strong wind was blowing from ahead that no other vessel on the canal tried to move to windward.

Whether or not this constituted an actual invention the present author will not attempt to determine, even in his own mind. It is clear, however, that it was the direct issue of several inventions, and that it was the first embodiment in a concrete form of the successful and practical application of steam power to transportation on the water.

The next successful application was made by Robert Fulton, who built the Clermont in 1807. This vessel went into regular service in 1808, plying between New York and Albany, on the Hudson River.

The first steamboat to venture on the ocean was the Phœnix, that made the trip from New York to Delaware Bay by sea in 1808. It was built by Mr. R. L. Stevens, an engineer of Hoboken. If it accomplished nothing else, it supplied a precedent and gave encouragement to inventors everywhere. It made "le premier pas qui coute."

Meanwhile, in June, 1802, Mr. Thomas Wedgwood had published "An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of making Profiles by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver," with observations by Sir Humphry Davy. In the course of his paper, he declared that he had secured profiles of paintings made on glass by throwing the shadows of those paintings on paper covered with a solution of the nitrate; the paper showing the objects delineated in tones that were dark or light inversely as they were in the painting. He also took profiles of natural objects by throwing their shadows on the prepared paper: the parts of the paper covered by the shadows being white, while the parts outside the shadows became dark.

This seems to have been an actual invention, in that it followed a discovery made by Wedgwood that sunlight acted on nitrate of silver, and was the embodiment of an idea, then conceived by him, to utilize his discovery in making profile pictures. His invention was far from perfect, however; the greatest imperfection being the fact that the pictures could not be fixed; because, unless the paper was ever afterward kept away from the light, its whole surface would become dark, and the picture therefore cease to exist. In consequence, it aroused almost no interest whatever at the time. In 1814, M. Niepce invented a process that he called "heliography," by which he made pictures on silvered copper covered with a thin solution of asphaltum. In 1829, Daguerre and Niepce entered into a copartnership for developing heliography, and instituted experiments that led Daguerre to inventing the daguerreotype, made by a process quite new in detail, but based on the earlier inventions of both Wedgwood and Niepce. The daguerreotype was followed in 1850 by the present "photograph."

The invention of electroplating was made by Brugnatelli in Italy in 1803. The fact that electric currents could decompose certain liquids had been known since 1800, and also the further fact that oxygen and hydrogen, acids and alkalies, appeared at the positive and negative poles respectively of the wires in contact with the liquid. But Brugnatelli seems to have been the first to conceive the idea of utilizing these facts in a device whereby he could deposit metals at will at the negative end of a solution. In the embodiment of his conception, pieces (say of silver) were hung on rods in connection with the positive pole of the battery supplying the electric current, while the articles to be plated with silver were hung on rods connected with the negative pole. The value of this invention and its extensive use in the electrodeposition of metals at the present day are well known.

In the following year, Sir Humphry Davy, working along the general line of electrical decomposition of liquids, made a number of super-brilliant investigations. Possibly the most important result was his discovery of a new metal, to which he gave the name Potassium, formed at the negative pole by the electrical decomposition of moistened caustic potash. He followed this by decomposing caustic soda and discovering another new metal, that he named Sodium.

During the course of his experiments, Davy noted that when the two terminal wires from a large Voltaic battery were touched together and then drawn apart, not only did a spark pass, but a continuous discharge of great brilliancy, that did not cease until the wires were separated by a considerable distance. The extent of this distance was found later to be dependent on the number of cells in the battery. He noted also that the discharge did not follow a straight line, but was bent into an arc; and for this reason he gave it the name, "Voltaic arc." This light is still known by the name "arc light." Its importance does not seem to have been realized until after the dynamo-machine had been invented, and means thereby supplied for providing a greater amount of electric current, and at less expense than Voltaic cells were capable of delivering.

Davy's last great invention was his miner's safety lamp, made in 1816. There had been frequent explosions in the collieries, attended with great loss of life, and Davy was requested to try to ascertain how they could be prevented. After visiting the mines, he had samples of the gas that was found in them sent to him for investigation. He went about the work with scientific thoroughness and system, and ascertained that the gas would not explode if it were mixed with less than six times or more than fourteen times its volume of air; that air rendered impure by the combustion of a candle would not explode the gas; that, if a candle were burnt in a closed vessel, with small openings near the flame, no explosion would take place, even if the vessel were introduced into an explosive mixture; and that the gas from the mines would not explode inside a tube less than 1/8 inch in diameter. These data being secured, Davy conceived the idea of making a lamp in which a small oil light should be fixed and surrounded with a cylinder of wire gauze. He then embodied his conception in a concrete form, and the "Miners' Safety Lamp" resulted.