The Newcomen Engine, 150. James Watt and the Steam-engine, 153. The Separate Condenser, 161. Completing the Invention, 164. Watt makes his Model, 167. IX. ROBERT FULTON 172 X. GEORGE STEPHENSON AND THE LOCOMOTIVE 193 George Stephenson, 194. XI. ELI WHITNEY 219 Eli Whitney, 222. XII. JAMES NASMYTH 237 The Steam-hammer, 237. James Nasmyth, 239. XIII. SIR HENRY BESSEMER 259 The Age of Steel, 259. Bessemer's Family, 261. Henry Bessemer, 264. Stamped Paper, 265. Gold Paint, 270. Bessemer Steel, 273. XIV. THE LAST MEETING 284 Goodyear, 284. STORIES OF INVENTION TOLD BY INVENTORS. I. INTRODUCTION. There is, or is supposed to be, somewhere in Norfolk County in Massachusetts, in the neighborhood of the city of Boston, a rambling old house which in its day belonged to the Oliver family. I am afraid they were most of them sad Tories in their time; and I am not sure but these very windows could tell the story of one or another brick-bat thrown through them, as one or another committee of the people requested one or another Oliver, of the old times, to resign one or another royal commission. But a very peaceful Rowland has taken the place of those rebellious old Olivers. This comfortable old house is now known to many young people as the home of a somewhat garrulous old gentleman whom they call Uncle Fritz. His real name is Frederick Ingham. He has had a checkered life, but it has evidently been a happy one. Once he was in the regular United States Navy. For a long time he was a preacher in the Sandemanian connection, where they have no ordained ministers. In Garibaldi's time he was a colonel in the patriot service in Italy. In our civil war he held a command in the national volunteer navy; and his scientific skill and passion for adventure called him at one time across "the Great American Desert," and at another time across Siberia, in the business of constructing telegraphs. In point of fact, he is not the relation of any one of the five-and-twenty young people who call him Uncle Fritz. But he pets them, and they pet him. They like to make him a regular visit once a week, as the winter goes by. And the habit has grown up, of their reading with him, quite regularly, on some subject selected at their first meeting after they return from the country. Either at Lady Oliver's house, as his winter home is called, or at Little Crastis, where he spends his summers, those selections for reading have been made, which have been published in a form similar to that of the book which the reader holds in his hand.