Calling at his office in response to an invitation by post, I was met on opening the door after the call “come in” by the abrupt question, “What do you want?” I was not wholly unused to this kind of greeting and so told him who I was and what I wanted, when of course his manner changed at once. We became very good friends, and should he be living and this meet his eye, I send him my salutation.
We had quite a discussion on the question of a belt. I urged it, and he would not listen to it. My statement that belts were used exclusively in cotton-mills in America had no influence. I discovered that it makes all the difference in the world who tells a thing. After he had, as we both supposed, made his final decision to follow the universal custom and employ gearing, he happened to meet his friend Mr. Hetherington, the same man already mentioned in connection with the Harrison boiler. Mr. Hetherington had just returned from a trip to “the States,” and had visited the Lowell and Lawrence cotton-mills, and this was part of their conversation:
“Did you see anywhere power taken from a prime mover by a belt?”
“I did not see anything else.”
“Is that so? This is just what Porter told me, but I could not credit it. Did they seem to give satisfaction?”
“That is what every one assured me. They would not use anything else.”
And so I received an order for a belt, 24 inches wide, to be imported from America, with the clamps, rivets, and cement needed to put it on endless, an operation of which no workman in England had any idea, so I had to do it myself. I sent the order to Mr. Allen to be placed, and received quite promptly a carefully selected belt, of hides of uniform thickness, which gave the highest satisfaction.
The following is a copy of the bill for the first American belt ever sent to England. I included an order for a side of lace leather, to enable them to try the American style of lacing belts. This leather is horse hide, their sheep-skin lacing would not be strong enough.
New York, December 15, 1866.
Mr. Chas. Pooley.