The Boy's Book of New Inventions

by Harry E. Maule

PREFACE

IN THE preparation of this book the author has tried to give an interesting account of the invention and workings of a few of the machines and mechanical processes that are making the history of our time more wonderful and more dramatic than that of any other age since the world began. For heroic devotion to science in the face of danger and the scorn of their fellowmen, there is no class who have made a better record than inventors. Most inventions, too, are far more than scientific calculation, and it is the human story of the various factors in this great age of invention that is here set forth for boy readers.

New discoveries, or new applications of forces known to exist, illustrating some broad principle of science, have been the chief concern of the author in choosing the subjects to be taken up in the various chapters, so that it has been necessary to limit the scope of the book, except in one or two instances, to inventions that have come into general use within the last ten years. In "The Boy's Book of Inventions," "The Second Boy's Book of Inventions," and "Stories of Invention," Mr. Baker and Mr. Doubleday have told the stories of many of the greatest inventions up to 1904, including those of the gasoline motor, the wireless telegraph, the dirigible balloon, photography, the phonograph, submarine boats, etc. Consequently for the most part the important developments in some of these machines are treated briefly in the final chapters, while the earlier chapters are devoted to new inventions, which, if made before 1904, did not receive general notice until after that time.

Although the subjects treated in the earlier chapters are here spoken of as new inventions, all of them are not recent in the strictest sense of the word, for men had been working on the central idea of some of them for many years before they actually were developed to a stage where they could be patented and sent out into the world.

H. E. M.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER		PAGE
I.	The Aeroplane How a Scientist Who Liked Boys and a Boy WhoLiked Science Followed the Fascinating Story ofthe Invention of the Aeroplane.	[3]
II.	Aeroplane Development How the Inventors Carried On the Art of AviationUntil It Became the Greatest of All Sportsand Then a Great Industry.	[49]
III.	Aeroplanes To-day Our Boy Friend and the Scientist Look OverModern Aeroplanes and Find Great ImprovementsOver Those of a Few Years Ago. AModel Aeroplane.	[91]
IV.	Artificial Lightning Made and Harnessed To Man's Use Our Friends Investigate Nikola Tesla's Inventionfor the Wireless Transmission of Power, byWhich He Hopes to Encircle the Earth WithLimitless Electrical Power, Make Ocean and AirTravel Absolutely Safe, and Revolutionize LandTraffic.	[129]
V.	The Motion Picture Machine Machines That Make Sixteen Tiny Pictures PerSecond and Show Them at the Same Rate MagnifiedSeveral Thousand Times. Motion Picturesin School. Our Boy Friend Sees theWhole Process of Making a Motion Picture Play.	[164]
VI.	Adventures With Motion Pictures Perilous and Exciting Times in Obtaining MotionPictures. How the Machine Came to Be Inventedand the Newest Developments in Cinematography.	[195]
VII.	Steel Boiled Like Water and Cut LikePaper Our Boy Friend Sees How Science Has Turnedthe Greatest Known Heats to the Everyday Useof Mankind.	[224]
VIII.	The Tesla Turbine Dr. Nikola Tesla Tells of His New Steam TurbineEngine, a Model of Which, the Size of aDerby Hat, Develops More Than 110 HorsePower.	[263]
IX.	The Romance of Concrete The One Piece House of Thomas A. Edison andOther Uses of the Newest and Yet the OldestBuilding Material of Civilized Peoples, Seen Bythe Boy and His Scientific Friend.	[288]
X.	The Latest Automobile Engine Our Boy Friend and the Scientist Look Over theField of Gasoline Engines and See Some BigImprovements Over Those of a Few Years Ago.	[320]
XI.	The Wireless Telegraph Up To The Minute The Scientist Talks of Amateur Wireless Operators.The Great Development of Wireless ThatHas Enabled It to Save Three Thousand Lives.Long Distance Work of the Modern Instruments.	[332]
XII.	More Marvels of Science Color Photography, the Tungsten Electric Lamp,the Pulmotor, and Other New Inventions Investigatedby Our Boy Friend.	[352]