NOTES.
It is related that when George Westinghouse called on Commodore Vanderbilt to endeavor to interest him in his air-brake, Vanderbilt said to him: "Do you mean to tell me that you can stop a train of cars by wind?" and when informed that in effect that was what was contemplated, remarked that he had no time for fools. Sometime afterward when, through the support of Andrew Carnegie and several others, a successful test of the brake had been made, Westinghouse had the satisfaction, according to the story, of replying to Vanderbilt's request for a conference, "I have no time to waste on fools."
Ottmar Mergenthaler worked twenty years on the development of his linotype machine, and ten years thereafter in perfecting it. The Mergenthaler Linotype Company has paid out twenty millions of dollars in dividends in fourteen years. The romance of the invention of the linotype brings out in glaring letters PERSISTENCE, as Edward Mott Woolley states in "System," of September, 1908, in an article describing the development of the linotype machine.
It is related of Oscar Hammerstein, the well-known theatrical proprietor, that when he was fifteen years old he landed from a steamer at the Battery in New York, after running away from his German home. He was without money or friends, or any place to go. He got a job in a cigar factory at $2.00 per week. Making cigars by hand seemed to him a poor way of doing it, so he began experimenting on his own account, and four years later he had a machine to do the work. He sold this machine for $6,000 cash, and immediately started on a new one, which in place of selling outright he had manufactured on a royalty basis. It is said that he has received over $250,000 in cash from his royalties. Yet today Hammerstein is not known by his inventions, but by the big theatrical enterprises which have earned or lost other fortunes for him at various times.
In the struggle of Charles Goodyear to manufacture a rubber compound that should fulfil mercantile needs is presented a striking, if rather familiar example of what eternal persistence will finally accomplish, and of how it may be assisted by what we call "luck." When he was twenty-one Goodyear entered a rubber house in Philadelphia and began experimenting in India rubber. By chance one day a little rubber mixed with sulphur fell on a stove, and he at once realized what might be accomplished by what is now known as vulcanization. To carry on his experiments he was required to pawn the school-books of his children to raise money. However, he kept everlastingly at it, and was rewarded with a number of international prizes and decorated by several foreign rulers. His name has gone down to fame as one of the successful inventors of the world. The Goodyear Rubber Company bears his name.
The public today is familiar with the record of Thomas A. Edison, who is considered the greatest inventor the world has ever known. The new book which has recently come out, "The Life of Thomas A. Edison," is well worth purchasing and reading. The public press reported he had won his infringement suits and that the "Moving Picture" trust or combination agreed to pay him royalties running into a sum of seven figures.