It not only got many of the old articles of wealth, but it found many new ones also. Never was there a country with so many inventors or men that have made things new and useful to everybody, and never were there more wonderful inventions. I have told you about some of our inventors; I shall have to speak of some more of them. There were hundreds of men busily at work at inventing new machines and tools, new things to help everybody—the farmer, the merchant, the workman in the factory, and the cook in the kitchen. It went on so that there was not much done by hand, as in old times, but nearly everything was done by machine.
CHAPTER XXV
THE MARVELS OF INVENTION
IT is not a pleasant thing to go hungry for twenty-four hours and to go many days without half enough to eat. I think all my readers will agree with me in this. I fancy none of you would like to find an empty table before you when the dinner bell rings. But this is a thing that has happened to many inventors; and one of these was Samuel F. B. Morse, to whose genius we owe the electric telegraph.
The Wright Brothers and Their Famous Aeroplane.
You know about the invention of the steamboat, the locomotive, the cotton-gin and various other early inventions; but there have been many later inventions, and one of the most important of these is the telegraph, which tells us every day what is taking place over the whole world.
Professor Morse was a New York artist who studied painting in Europe, and in the year 1832 took passage home in the ship "Sully." One day a talk went on in the cabin of the ship. Dr. Jackson, one of the passengers, told how some persons in Paris had sent an electric current through several miles of wire in less than a second of time.