On taking my seat in a car for Albany I found my companion to be Mr. Hiram Sibley, afterwards the founder of Sibley College of the Mechanic Arts in Cornell University. When I lived in Rochester Mr. Sibley was sheriff of Monroe County, of which Rochester is the capital or shire town, and as a lawyer I was occasionally brought into some relations with him. We had not met in eleven years, but we instantly recognized each other. He was then enjoying the triumphant outcome of his amazing foresight and boldness, and he loved to talk about his experience, especially with an old Rochester man who had known his associates there. In fact, he entertained me all the way to Albany.
On the first burst of enthusiasm over the invention of the telegraph, companies had been incorporated in many of the States for the establishment of lines. These companies, it was found directly, could not even pay their running expenses, because their operations were confined to their respective States. Mr. Sibley was the man for the hour. He conceived the plan of buying up the stock of all these companies, which could be got for very little, and after this had been secured incorporating a company to operate throughout the United States. It is difficult now to put ourselves back to that time, when the vastness of such a scheme would take men’s breath away. Mr. Sibley succeeded in interesting the financial men of Rochester in the enterprise, and the Western Union Telegraph Company was formed. The story of his struggles to hold his subscribers, resisting the appeals of some of them for the sake of their families to be released from their obligations, was very amusing. He was obdurate and enriched them all.
A few years later Mr. Sibley conceived a plan for a telegraph line to San Francisco, and at his request a meeting was held of parties holding large interests in the Western Union Telegraph Company to consider the proposition. This was referred to a committee, who in their report pronounced the scheme utterly visionary, and indulged in considerable merriment over its absurdity, and the proposal was unanimously rejected. Mr. Sibley then got up and said, “Gentlemen, if I were not so old a man I would build the line myself.” This declaration was received with peals of laughter. Then he got mad and shouted over the din, “Damn it, gentlemen, I’ll bar the years and do it”; and now he had done it. “And this very day,” said he, “I have been solicited by merchants in New York to let them have shares in California telegraph stock at the rate of five dollars for one, men whom I had almost on my knees begged in vain for help to build the line; but they could not get the stock.” I asked him, “Don’t you have trouble from the Indians?” to which he replied: “The Indians are the best friends we have got. They believe the Great Spirit is in that wire; in fact, they know it, for they have seen him. The linemen had shown them the electric sparks. The only trouble we have had has been from the border ruffians of Missouri. We are now building a line through Iowa, around the State of Missouri.”
On arriving at Buffalo I called first upon the firm of Shepard & Company, who were the largest builders of engines for the lake steamers. I did not succeed in persuading them that it would be for their advantage to add to the cost of the engines they were building, but they were very courteous and advised me to apply to the companies owning the boats. I did not make much progress with them, but the matter was left open for further consideration on my return from Chicago. An official of one of the transportation companies showed me over a new boat. I saw a valve in the steam-pipe at some little distance from the engine, and asked him what it was. He told me that was the cut-off. I asked him, “Why not place it on the boiler?” He did not see the humor of the question, but replied to me quite seriously, “Because it is a part of the engine.”
At the Shepard Works I said to the gentleman who conducted me over the works, “I see you use the Corliss valve.” “Corliss valve, indeed!” said he. “Come with me.” He then showed me their own engine driving the shop, and fitted with the same valve, cutting off, of course, at a fixed point. He said to me: “That engine has been running in that very spot more than twenty years. Mr. Corliss once visited these works, and I showed him around just as I am showing you around. He was very much interested in the valves we were making, and asked me a great many questions about them. It was not very long afterwards that we began to hear from Providence about the Corliss valve.”
I went on to Chicago, arriving on a Saturday afternoon. I went to the house of an uncle, the Rev. Jeremiah Porter, who was a man of some local prominence, having been the first missionary sent by the American Home Missionary Society to Fort Dearborn, which stood where Chicago is before Chicago was. I expected to set out Monday morning to look for customers, but I changed my mind, for that morning the telegraph brought the news of the battle of Bull Run, which had been fought the day before, while I was in church hearing my uncle preach. I did not think any one would have much heart for business for some time to come, so hurried back home as fast as steam could take me, not stopping in Buffalo.
Some years afterwards I had an amusing experience in attempting to introduce my governor into the British navy. I called upon Mr. John Penn, to whom I had sold one of my stationary governors for his own works and who had become very much interested in the Richards indicator, and I thought he would surely adopt my marine governor. He told me, however, that he must set his face against it like a flint, and explained as follows: “I do business entirely with governments, principally the English government, and I come in contact with the official mind, and I have to adapt myself to it. Should I put one of your governors on an engine, my competitors would say: ‘Mr. Penn is afraid to send his engines to sea without a governor, they are made so delicately. Our engines, gentlemen, do not require any governor,’ and they would take all the orders.”
Marine-engine builders generally did not seem to appreciate this governor. While in Manchester I had an inquiry from Caird & Co. of Greenock, the builders of the engines for the “New York,” and indeed of the entire ship. They asked the price of my smallest marine governor. I inquired the size of the vessel for which it was wanted. Their reply was brief. “None of your business. We would like an answer to our question.”
Some months after I received a letter from my foreman in New York: “Mr. Porter, what in the name of common sense did you put such a little governor on the ‘America’ for?” Caird & Co. had performed their contract to supply a Porter governor, and had left a suitable one to be ordered from my shop in New York.
Soon after the first arrival of the steamer “Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse,” about 1900 (I forget the year), I obtained a letter of introduction to the chief engineer of that vessel, and called upon him for the purpose of asking him to favor me with indicator diagrams from its engines. In the course of conversation I said to him: “I have rather a partiality for this line, for I put my first marine governor on its first vessel, the old ‘New York,’ in ’61.” He replied to me: “I remember that very well, Mr. Porter; I was an oiler on that ship.” He had risen from that position to be chief engineer of the line. At that time the Germans were commencing to form a steam marine. They had not only to procure their vessels abroad, but also engineers to run the machinery. They set in earnest about this development, and took out of their polytechnic schools the brightest young men to put them on foreign-built vessels and in foreign shops to learn the business, with the wonderful results we are now witnessing, and the chief engineer was one of those lads. He said to me: “I have an acquaintance in your town, Montclair—Mr. Clemens Herschel,” a prominent civil engineer. “He was an old friend and fellow student of mine in the polytechnic.” About the diagrams, he said he would take a set for me on their next voyage. He kept his promise. I have the diagrams now, and very instructive ones they are.