Perfects His Wool-Comber.
At last, in 1865, he perfected the wool-comber, a machine that takes the raw material, thoroughly cleanses it, and straightens the fiber, leaving it ready for the carder to take in hand. Its enormous utility was instantly recognized, and the wool-working towns and cities of England and the United States were supplied with the new machines. During the subsequent years the inventor received every year, from this machine alone, an income that seldom fell below two hundred thousand pounds.
The first form of the wool-comber was far more perfect than the first form of most machines. Nevertheless, Cunliffe-Lister spent enormous sums of money in making improvements on it, and on one occasion, when several hundred of the machines were ready for shipment, he held them up in order that there might be incorporated in them certain improvements he had just made. His partners protested that the machines embodied all the features the purchasers had paid for. The inventor was obdurate, and every one of the machines had added to it the improvements, and all the alterations were made solely at his expense.
Head Not Turned by Fortune.
The immense fortune he had made from this and other inventions never for an instant turned him from his work and experiments. Like Edison, he had the ability to concentrate his mind for long periods, to work for long stretches with little rest, and to apportion to his assistants the experiments that he could not personally perform. He could have retired thirty-five years ago and been assured of a large income for the remainder of his life, but he preferred to stick to his work to the last.
"You've got your fortune now," said one of his friends; "why don't you stop working?"
"I didn't work simply to acquire wealth," he replied. "I value the money chiefly for what it will enable me to do."
His second great invention was the air-brake, introduced by him at about the same time Westinghouse introduced his air-brake in America. The English inventor, however, experienced little difficulty in having his device adopted, for he had already made a name for himself, and the English railroad officials were willing to give the benefit of thorough, practical tests to what he brought them. The tests proved the efficiency of the brake, and its general adoption added greatly to the inventor's already large income.
He worked incessantly, experimenting in all branches of science, and his improvements in mill machinery, in railroad devices and steel working are of immense value. For weeks at a time, the expense of his experiments averaged a thousand pounds a day. In spite of this, the enormous income he received from his patents more than kept pace with his expenses, and when he died, early last February, he was one of the richest men in the United Kingdom.