Produced by Albert László, Rory OConor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) INVENTORS MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT SERIES TRAVELLERS AND EXPLORERS. By General A.W. GREELY, U.S.A. STATESMEN. By NOAH BROOKS. MEN OF BUSINESS. By W.O. STODDARD. INVENTORS. By P.G. HUBERT, Jr. [Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.] MEN OF ACHIEVEMENT INVENTORS BY PHILIP G. HUBERT, JR. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1896 COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Press of J.J. Little & Co. Astor Place, New York PREFACE This book, dealing with our great inventors, their origins, hopes, aims, principles, disappointments, trials, and triumphs, their daily life and personal character, presents just enough concerning their inventions to make the story intelligible. The history is often a painful one. When poor Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber, was one day asked what he wanted to make of his boys, he is said to have replied: "Make them anything but inventors; mankind has nothing but cuffs and kicks for those who try to do it a service." Meanwhile, the value of the work done by great inventors is widely acknowledged. In a remarkable sketch of the history of civilization, Professor Huxley remarked, in 1887, that the wonderful increase of industrial production by the application of machinery, the improvement of old technical processes and the invention of new ones, constitutes the most salient feature of the world's progress during the last fifty years. If this was true a few years ago, its truth is still more apparent to-day. It is safe to say that within fifty years power, light, and heat will cost half, perhaps one-tenth, of what they do now; and this virtually means that in 1943 mankind will be able to buy decent food, shelter, and clothing for half or one-tenth of the labor now required. Steam is said to have reduced the working hours of man in the civilized world from fourteen to ten a day. Electricity will mark the next giant step in advance.