A School History of the United States

by John Bach McMaster

[Illustration: St. Louis postage stamp]

%409. Mechanical Improvements.%—No American need be told that his fellow-countrymen are the most ingenious people the world has ever known. But we do not always remember that it was during this period (1840-1860) that the marvelous inventive genius of the people of the United States began to show itself. Between the day when the patent office was established, in 1790, and 1840, the number of patents issued was 11,908; but after 1840 the stream poured forth increased in volume nearly every year. In 1855 there were 2012 issued and reissued; in 1856, 2506; in 1857, 2896; in 1858, 3695; and in 1860, 4778, raising the total number to 43,431. An examination of these inventions shows that they related to cotton gins and cotton presses; to reapers and mowers; to steam engines; to railroads; to looms; to cooking stoves; to sewing machines, printing presses, boot and shoe machines, rubber goods, floor cloths, and a hundred other things. Very many of them helped to increase the comfort of man and raise the standard of living. Three of them, however, have revolutionized the industrial and business world and been of inestimable good to mankind. They are the sewing machine, the reaper and the electric telegraph.

[Illustration: The first Howe sewing machine]

%410. The Sewing Machine.%—As far back as the year 1834, Walter Hunt made and sold a few sewing machines in New York. But the man to whose genius, perseverance, and unflinching zeal the world owes the sewing machine, is Elias Howe. His patent was obtained in 1846, and he then spent four years in poverty and distress trying to convince the world of the utility of his machine. By 1850 he succeeded not only in interesting the public, but in so arousing the mechanical world that seven rivals (Wheeler and Wilson, Grover and Baker, Wilcox and Gibbs, and Singer) entered the field. To the combined efforts of them all, we owe one of the most useful inventions of the century. It has lessened the cost of every kind of clothing; of shoes and boots; of harness; of everything, in short, that can be sewed. It has given employment to millions of people, and has greatly added to the comfort of every household in the civilized world.

[Illustration: The Wilson sewing machine of 1850]

%411. The Harvester.%—Much the same can be said of the McCormick reaper. It was invented and patented as early as 1831; but it was hard work to persuade the farmer to use it. Not a machine was sold till 1841. During 1841, 1842, 1843, such as were made in the little blacksmith shop near Steel's Tavern, Virginia, were disposed of with difficulty. Every effort to induce manufacturers to make the machine was a failure. Not till McCormick had gone on horseback among the farmers of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and secured written orders for his reapers, did he persuade a firm in Cincinnati to make them. In 1845, five hundred were manufactured; in 1850, three thousand. In 1851 McCormick placed one on exhibition at the World's Fair in London, and astonished the world with its performance. To-day two hundred thousand are turned out annually, and without them the great grain fields of the middle West and the far West would be impossible. The harvester has cheapened the cost of bread, and benefited the whole human race.

%412. The Telegraph.%—Think, again, what would be our condition if every telegraph line in the world were suddenly pulled down. Yet the telegraph, like the reaper and the sewing machine, was introduced slowly. Samuel F. B. Morse got his patent in 1837; and for seven years, helped by Alfred Vail, he struggled on against poverty. In 1842 he had but thirty-seven cents in the world. But perseverance conquers all things; and with thirty thousand dollars, granted by Congress, the first telegraph line in the world was built in 1844 from Baltimore to Washington. In 1845 New York and Philadelphia were connected; but as wires could not be made to work under water, the messages were received on the New Jersey side of the Hudson and carried to New York by boat. By 1856 the telegraph was in use in the most populous states. Some forty companies, but one of which paid dividends, competed for the business. This was ruinous; and in 1856 a union of Western companies was formed and called the Western Union Telegraph Company. To-day it has 21,000 offices, sends each year some 58,000,000 messages, receives about $23,000,000, and does seven eighths of all the telegraph business in the United States.

%413. India Rubber.%—The same year (1844) which witnessed the introduction of the telegraph saw the perfection of Goodyear's secret for the vulcanization of India rubber. In 1820 the first pair of rubber shoes ever seen in the United States were exhibited in Boston. Two years later a ship from South America brought 500 pairs of rubber shoes. They were thick, heavy, and ill-shaped; but they sold so rapidly that more were imported, and in 1830 a cargo of raw gum was brought from South America for the purpose of making rubber goods. With this C. M. Chaffee went to work and succeeded in producing some pieces of cloth spread with rubber. Supposing the invention to be of great value, a number of factories[1] began to make rubber coats, caps, wagon curtains, of pure rubber without cloth. But to the horror of the companies the goods melted when hot weather came, and were sent back, emitting so dreadful an odor that they had to be buried. It was to overcome this and find some means of hardening the gum that Goodyear began his experiments and labored year after year against every sort of discouragement. Even when the secret of vulcanizing, as it is called, was discovered, five years passed before he was able to conduct the process with absolute certainty. In 1844, after ten years of labor, he succeeded and gave to the world one of the most useful inventions of the nineteenth century.

[Footnote 1: At Roxbury, Boston, Framingham, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, Troy, and Staten Island.]

%414. The Photograph; the Discovery of Anaesthesia.%—But there were other inventions and discoveries of almost as great or even greater value to mankind. In 1840 Dr. John W. Draper so perfected the daguerreotype that it could be used to take pictures of persons and landscapes. Till then it could be used only to make pictures of buildings and statuary.