Inventions in the Century

by William Henry Doolittle

Some one then recalled the fact that McMillan, a Scotchman, about 1838-1841, had used two low wheels like the “Draisine” with a driving gear, and that Dalzell, also of Scotland, had in 1845 made a similar machine. Parts of these old machines were found and the wheel reconstructed. Then in the seventies the entire field was thrown open to women by the invention in England of the “drop frame,” which removed completely the difficulty as to arrangement of the skirts and thus doubled the interest in and desire for a comfortable riding machine. But they were still, to a great degree, “bone-breakers.”

Then J. B. Dunlop, a veterinary surgeon of Belfast, Ireland, in order to meet the complaints of his son that the wheel was too hard, thought of the pneumatic rubber tire, and applied it with great success. This was a very notable and original re-invention. A re-invention, because a man “born before his time” had invented and patented the pneumatic tire more than forty years before. It was not wanted then and everybody had forgotten it. This man was Robert William Thomson, a civil engineer of Adelphi, Middlesex county, England. In 1845 he obtained a patent in England, and shortly after in the United States. In both patents he describes how he proposed to make a tire for all kinds of vehicles consisting of a hollow rubber tube, with an inner mixed canvas and rubber lining, a tube and a screw cup by which to inflate it, and several ways for preventing punctures. To obviate the bad results of punctures he proposed also to make his tire in sectional compartments, so that if one compartment was punctured the others would still hold good. He also proposed to use vulcanised rubber, thus utilising the then very recent discovery of Goodyear of mixing sulphur with soft rubber, and to apply the same to the canvas lining.

And, now, when the last decade of the century had been reached, and after a century’s hard work by the inventors, the present wonderful vehicle, known as the “safety bicycle,” had obtained a successful and permanent foothold among the vehicles of mankind. Proper proportions, low wheels, chain-gearing, treadles, pedals and cranks, cushion and pneumatic tires, drop frames, steel spokes like a spider’s web, ball-bearings for the crank and axle parts, a spring-supported cushioned seat which could be raised or lowered, adjustable handles, and the clearest-brained scientific mechanics to construct all parts from the best materials and with mathematical exactness—all this has been done. To these accomplishments have been added a great variety of tires to prevent wear and puncturing, among which are self-healing tires, having a lining of viscous or plastic rubber to close up automatically the air holes. Many ways of clamping the tire to the rim have been contrived. So have brakes of various descriptions, some consisting of disks on the driving shaft, brought into frictional contact by a touch of the toe on the pedal, as a substitute for those applied to the surface of the tire, known as “spoon brakes”; saddles, speed-gearings, men’s machines in which by the removal of the upper bar the machine is converted into one for the use of women; the substitution of the direct action, consisting of beveled gearing for the sprocket chain, etc., etc.

The ideas of William Thomson as to pneumatic and cushioned tires are now, after a lapse of fifty years, generally adopted. Even sportsmen were glad to seize upon them, and wheels of sulkies, provided with the pneumatic tires, have enabled them to lower the record of trotting horses. Their use on many other vehicles has accomplished his objects, “of lessening the power required to draw carriages, rendering the motion easier, and diminishing the noise.”

It is impossible to overlook the fact in connection with this subject that the processes and machinery especially invented to make the various parts of a bicycle are as wonderful as the wheel itself. Counting the spokes there are, it is estimated, more than 300 different parts in such a wheel. The best and latest inventions and discoveries in the making of metals, wood, rubber and leather have been drawn upon in supplying these useful carriers. And what a revolution they have produced in the making of good roads, the saving of time, the dispatch of business, and more than all else, in the increase of the pleasure, the health and the amusement of mankind!

It was quite natural that when the rubber cushion and pneumatic tires rounded the pleasure of easy and noiseless riding in vehicles that Motor vehicles should be revived and improved. So we have the Automobiles in great variety. Invention has been and is still being greatly exercised as to the best motive power, in the adaption of electric motors, oil and gasoline or vapour engines, springs and air pumps, in attempts to reduce the number of complicated parts, and to render less strenuous the mental and muscular strain of the operator.

Traction Engines.—The old road engines that antedated the locomotives are being revived, and new ideas springing from other arts are being incorporated in these useful machines to render them more available than in former generations. Many of the principles and features of motor vehicles, but on a heavier scale, are being introduced to adapt them to the drawing of far heavier loads. Late devices comprise a spring link between the power and the traction wheel to prevent too sudden a start, and permit a yielding motion; steering devices by which the power of the engine is used to steer the machine; and application of convenient and easily-worked brakes.

An example of a modern traction engine may be found attached to one or more heavy cars adapted for street work, and on which may be found apparatus for making the mixed materials of which the roadbed is to be constructed, and all of which is moved along as the road or street surface is completed. When these fine roads become the possession of a country light traction engines for passenger traffic will be found largely supplanting the horse and the steam railroad engines.

Brakes, railway and electric, have already been referred to in the proper chapters. In the latest system of railroading greater attention has been paid to the lives and limbs of those employed as workmen on the trains, especially to those of brakemen. And if corporations have been slow to adopt such merciful devices, legislatures have stepped in to help the matter. One great source of accidents in this respect has been due to the necessity of the brakemen entering between the cars while they are in motion to couple them by hand. This is now being abolished by automatic couplers, by which, when the locking means have been withdrawn from connection or thrown up, they will be so held until the cars meet again, when the locking parts on the respective cars will be automatically thrown and locked, as easily and on the same principle as the hand of one man may clasp the hand of another.

The comfort of passengers and the safety of freight have also been greatly increased by the invention of Buffers on railroad cars and trains to prevent sudden and violent concussion. Fluid pressure car buffers, in which a constant supply of fluid under pressure is provided by a pump or train pipe connected to the engine is one of a great variety.