– The Story of –
AMERICA 1442 - 1975 // READER’S DIGEST
GR E AT A ME R I C A N I N VE N TOR S
– The Story of –
AMERICA 1442 - 1975 // READER’S DIGEST // PLEASANTVILLE, NY
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Contents
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04
T HE A M ERI CA N K N ACK OF GET T I N G T H E R E 08
T HE I RON HO RSE COM ES TO STAY
10
A M ACHI N E TO M ATCH OU R WA N D ERLU ST
12
EVOLU T I ON O F T HE AI RPLA N E
14
A REM EM BRA N CE OF PRESI D EN TS PA ST
20
GREAT A M ERI CA N I N VEN TO RS 22
T HE VERSAT I LE M R. F RA N K LI N
25
PHOTO GRA PHY FO R EVERYON E
4
The American Knack of Getting There
T H E A ME R I C A N KN AC K OF GE T T I N G T H E R E
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AMERICANS ARE A RESTLESS PEOPLE, ALWAYS O N T H E M OV E A N D E AG E R TO G E T W H E R E T H E Y A R E G O I N G A S QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. IT WAS NOT UNTIL WE L L A F T E R T H E R E VO LU T I O N , H OW E V E R , W I T H T H E N E E D FO R OPENING UP THE LANDS TO THE WEST, THAT T H E N AT I O N B EG A N TO D E V E LO P A N I N T EG R AT E D SY ST E M FO R TRANSPORING PEOPLE AND GOODS.
Interregional roads were the first components
that mecanical marvel, the automobile, they made
of such a system. The concept of using Federal
it their own by finding ways to improve it, mass–
funds to build them was established in 1806 under
produce it, and sell it. Speed and movement soon
President Jeffereson, and the so–called National
became national obsessions.
Road, which eventually linked Maryland with Illinois, was begun in 1811. This road helped bring
The Wright brothers made their historic flight
more business to Baltimore, toe the detriment
at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, some five years
of New York City. The Empire State retaliated
before Henry Ford built his first Model T in 1908,
by building the Erie Canal, Connecting the Great
but it took World Wars I and II to accelerate the
Lakes with the Atlantic and establishing the Port
evoution of the airplane. When all the technical
of New York as a major trading center. When the
challenges of travel on and around the Earth had
Erie was started in 1817, America had no trained
been met, a new breed of traveler shot for the
engineers, so the men who pushed the canal
Moon, and made it. Next, t were sent to monitor
through by 1825 had to teach themselves on the
the planets. But though time an distance have
job. Ironically, several of them later helped build
been conquered, solutions to the more difficult
the transcontitnental railroad, which in effect put
problems of safe, clean, comfortable travel still
the canals out of business. The railroad, finished
lie ahead.
in 1819, linked the two oceans and unified the continent. Although Americans did not invent
6
T HE P RAIRIE SCHOONE R This “Ship of the Plains” Took the Emigranst West elementary
means
of
communication.
The
earliest newcomers and those who joined them in the next few decades clung to the coastal plain along the Atlantic. For most of the first century of settlement, westward travel was limited to the winding Indian trails, which in a few places were widened to make primitive roads. Only the venturesome hunters and trappers pushed into the heavily forested mountains. On the water it was a different story; the rivers, inlets, and bays provided the easiest and safest means of transportation. Farmers
floated
their
produce–wheat,
corn,
salted pork, logs, cotton, and tobacco–downriver to market on flatboats and rafts. Small loops, ketches, bateaux, and log canoes carried people to church and on visits to neighbors or to market. Many New Englanders gave up cultivating their rocky lands and turned to the sea in sturdy
“MAN HAS ALWAYS GONE WH E R E H E I S A B L E TO G O,” SAID MICAHEL COLLINS OF T H E A P O L LO 1 1 T E A M I N EXPLAINING WHY HE AND H I S F E L LOW A ST R O N AU T S dared to ourney to the Moon. That ride in Apollo 11, which resulted in the first Moon landing in July 1969, took scarcely more courage than it had required some 350 years earlier to set out from England for North America. The voyage aboard crowded sailing ships–in conditions of almost
unimaginable
hardship
and
squalor–
took from 6 to 8 weeks. And when immigrants arrived looking forward to the new opportunities and new freedom, they found danger and more hardship in a land devoid of any but the most
fishing boats to harvest the haddock and cod. Merchants, between
traders,
Boston,
and
New
passengers York,
traveled
Baltimore,
and
Charleston by boat. Although a water voyage usually involved many more miles that the same trip by land, most travelers preferred journeying by ship to risking the hazards of the road. Brigs, barks, schooners, and sloops, mostly built in New England, plied the lanes of commerce linking the New World with the Old. Land travel increased slowly in the early 1700’s. A horseback trip from New York to Boston took at least 7 days, and overnight accomodations ranged from the indifferent to the impossible. Most inns were litte more than hovels–hot and
T HE CON CORD EXPRESS Manufactured in the quiet New England town of Concord, New Hampshire, the world-renowned Concord Coach became a symbol of the Wild West.
7
As more Indian trails were widened into rough
The food, often scarce, was usually coarse,
dirt or corduroy roads–the latter made of logs
greasy, and badly cooked.
laid side by side–vehicles began to appear. The first conveyances for private travel were the
As more Indian trails were widened into rough
chair, a graceful two-wheeled, two-passenger,
dirt or corduroy roads–the latter made of logs
one-horse cart, and the chaise, a more elegant
laid side by side–vehicles began to appear. The
two-wheeled carriage with a leather top and a
first conveyances for private travel were the
body swung on leather braces to somewhat ease
chair, a graceful two-wheeled, two-passenger,
its bone-jarring ride; footmen were common
one-horse cart, and the chaise, a more elegant
among the prosperous Virginia planters.
two-wheeled carriage with a leather top and a body swung on leather braces to somewhat ease its bone-jarring ride. By the mid-1700’s four - and
The Slow Conversion to Wheels LAND TRAVEL INCREASED SLOWLY IN THE E A R LY 1700’S. A HORSEBACK TRIP FROM NEW YOR K TO BOSTON TOOK AT LEAST 7 DAYS, AND OVER N I G H T accomodations ranged from the indifferent to the impossible. Most inns were litte more than hovels–hot and dirty in the summer, cold and dirty in the winter. The food was usually coarse, greasy, and badly cooked.
RIVERS & CANALS : 1850 / THEY UNITED A GROWING NATION
six - horse carriages
Less than ten years after its completion, the Erie Canal had proven a glorious success. Cities within the canal’s perimeter flourished beyond their founders’ wildest dreams. New York City became the Nation’s chief port, and shipping costs shrank to a fraction of precanal rates: On the Albany-Buffalo run, for instance, goods that had cost $100 per ton to ship via wagon were only $12 per ton to ship on a canal barge. Investors now flocked to put their money into new canals: The Chesapeake and Ohio, paralleling the Potomac River; the Ohio and Eerie, linking Lake Eerie with the Ohio River; and almost 1,000 miles of canal in Pennsylvania alone. In the decade 1830–40 a total of 3,300 miles of new canal were built. The succeeding decade aded another 3,600 miles. Ironically, despite the wealth these canals helped create, many investors were never repaid; States often repudiated their canal debts, particularly in the depression of 1837–43. With the rise of the railroads in the mid–19th century, the great canal building era ended. Roadbuilding never rivaled canal construction during those early years. Aside from the short stretches of privately built turnpike (some 300 such roads hahd been built by 1810), which by 1840 stretched west from Maryland to Illinois; a few more-or-less pasable intercity roads; and a tangled remainder of wagon routes, dusty trails, and obscure pathways. By 1840 roadbuilding had virtually come to a halt–to be resumed only with the coming of the automobile, some 70 years later.
T H E A ME R I C A N KN AC K OF GE T T I N G T H E R E
dirty in the summer, cold and dirty in the winter.
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TH E TRA N SCO N T I N EN TA L RA I LR OA D was completed on May 10, 1869. The United Pacific’s west-running tracks met the rails built eastward by the Central Pacific; and amidst acclamation, the two lines were joined by a golden spike.
The Iron Horse Comes to Stay C A N A L A N D STAG COAC H O P E R ATO RS S P R E A D D I R E TA L E S A B O U T T H OS E N E W FA N G L E D R A I L R OA DS T H AT W E R E B EG I N N I N G TO C A R RY PA S S E N G E R S A N D freight in Englang early in the 19th century. They spoke darkly of boiler explosiions, derailments, and devastating fires set by sparks. But that hardly mattered to the Baltimore merchants who needed a way across the mountains to compete with the Erie Canal. They got a charter for one of the first railroads, the Baltimore & Ohio, in 1827, and used horsedrawn cars on the tracks. In 1830 inventor Peter Cooper demonstrated the steam locomotive Tom Thumb, dubbed a “tea-kettle on a truck,” on the B & O tracks. A few months earlier another steam engine, The Best Friend of Charleston, had made a pioneer run for the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Co. Extending its line south and west, the B & O reached Washington, D.C., in 1835; Cumberland, Maryland, in 1842; and the Ohio River in 1852. Other railroad companies quickly entered
the
field–the
Pennsylvania
Railroad
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1 8 39 Development of the Locomotive T H E P OW E R F U L I R O N H O R S E T H AT T H U N D E R E D OV E R T H E G R E AT P LA I N S CO U L D B E T R AC E D BAC K TO T I N Y E N G I N E S L I K E T H E D E W I T T C L I N TO N , B U I LT I N 1 8 3 1 for the 17-mile Mohawk & Hudson Railroad. The linked Pittsburgh with the Atlantic coast, and the
passengers on this pioneer line sat in open cars
New York–formed by merging several small lines–
resembling stage coaches just behind the engine–
operated between New York City and Buffalo.
bathed in black smoke and menaced by sparks
By 1857 passengers could travel by rail from
from the smokestack. Although such engines
the Atlantic coast to St. Louis, making only five
performed yeoman service on short hauls, they
changes on the way. In 1860 there were 30,000
were too heavy for the slender rails and too small
miles of track and Chicago had become the
to haul sizable loads. Later engines distributed
leading rail center.
the weight via several sets of wheels, with the
1 8 67 1889
front wheel-pairs mounted on swivels to ease the While
the
railroads
were
pushing
to
the
bulky machines around bends in the road. With
Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, wagon trails were
the incorporation of the boiler into the body of
probing the wilderness area hundreds of miles
the engine, the engine became more efficient
to the west. Mountain men and Government
and less dangerous in case of an explosion, and
explorers had marked the way for the Oregon
the steam locomotive began to assume a more
Trail from Independence, Missouri, to Portland
modern shape.
1 923
and Fort Vancouver, Oregon. In the 1840’s this trail was deeply rutted by the prairie schooners– descendents of the heavy old Conestoga wagons.
196 6
1949
1969
T H E A ME R I C A N KN AC K OF GE T T I N G T H E R E
1831
10
A Machine To Match BY 1906 THE AUTOMOBILE WA S C U T T I N G LO OS E F R O M ITS HORSE-BUGGY PARENTAG E A N D D E V E LO P I N G A STYLE OF ITS OWN: FENDE R S , RU N N I N G B OA R DS ,
As the 19th century drew to a close, self-taught
steering wheel, and paired lights front and back
busily experimenting with new ways to drive
were added. If the automobile as we know it
wheels by power. Trains and steamships took
has a birthay, October 1908 will serve. That is
care of long journeys and cross-country freight,
when Henry Ford introduced his firts Model
but
T, a five-passenger, open ttouring car with a
improvement of individual, everyday travel.
mechanics in bicycle repair shops, buggy works, and machinery barns around the country were
people
were
beginning
to
think
about
20-horsepower four-cycle engine. The Model T cost $850 and its progeny came rolling out of
In 1893 two brothers, Charles E. and J. Frank
Ford’s factory so fast that by June 1909 some 100
Duryea of Springfield Massachusetts, fitted a
cars a day were being made. More than 150,000
single-cycle, four-horsepower gasoline motor to
were manufactured in 1913, and three times that
a secondhand buggy they had bought for $70.
number were made in 1915. By 1924 the price was
“It ran no faster than and old man could walk,”
down to $260. When the Model T was finally
Charles Duryea said laters, “but it did run.” They
discontinued 3 years later, more than 15 million
were the first of many Americans to make a
A ME RIC A’S H I GH WAYS
had come off the assembly lines. America was
successful car. In 1896 the Duryeas sold a dozen of
Largest System in the World
on wheels.
their roofless motor buggies, with their wooden wheels, tufted seats fot two, and brass kerosene headlamps. Although the brothers soon went their separate ways, they were both involved in the automobile business well into the 1900’s. In 1897 a gearless, steam-driven car ws built by the twin brothers Francis E. and Freelan O.
THIS NEW YORK CITY PARKING LOT REPRESENTS LOOK-ALIKE cars in staggering numbers, and a major contemporary problem. In 1973 registered motor vehicles of all kinds totaled 125 million–more than one for every two Americans. The roads to carry them, the lots to park them in, the air to absorb their fumes, even the gasoline to power them are all in short supply. Prescription: more efficient modes of transport.
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Stanley in Newton, Massachusetts. Five years later they began to manufacture the car, which could achieve a speed of more that 25 miles per hour with no more sound that a sibilant hiss. In 1906 a racing model of a Stanley Steamer set a world speed record of more that 120 miles per hour. In 1903, 23 firms were making steamers, and the Stanleys continued turning models until 1927. The Oldsmobile of 1901 was a popular early combustion engine auto. It had a snappy curved dashboard and a steering device that looked like a tiller. During those first years of the 20th century fume-free electirc runabouts were gliding noiselessly through city streets. Thomis Edison was convinced that the future of the automobile lay in the develeopment of such electric cars, not in those using the smelly internal combustion engine. The 21st century may prove him right.
“AMERICA WAS ON WHEELS.�
T H E A ME R I C A N KN AC K OF GE T T I N G T H E R E
Our Wanderlust
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Evolution of the Airplane
1903
F RO M W I RE & WOOD TO GLEA M I N G M ETA L FA ST E R TH A N SO UN D
1909
1918
F L I M SY A S T H E Y W E R E , T H E W R I G H T B R OT H E R S’ P LA N E S E M B O D I E S P R I N C I P L E S O F AC R O N AU T I C A L D E S I G N T H AT WO U L D R E M A I N BA S I C A L LY unchanged for mor than four decades. It was not until after the invention of the jet engine during World War II that a new spiecies of plane was created,
propellerless,
capable
of
incredible
speed and altitude, and able to carry hundreds of passengers and thousands of pounds of cargo. In the 1970’s two supersonic jet airliners, the AngloFrench Concorde and the Russion Tupolev Tu-144
1926 1936
had begun flights, but the United States ended its development of the Boeing SST when questions were raised about sonic bom and damage to the upper atmoshphere. Future air flight may rely on helicopters and more short take-off and landing (STOL) aircraft.
196 1946
13 T H E A ME R I C A N KN AC K OF GE T T I N G T H E R E
LINDBE RGH Stands beside the monoplane which was built for him especially for his flight across the Atlantic
FIRST HEROES OF THE AIR
69
For an enthralled public, the men and women who flew their fragile craft incredible distances at unbelievable speeds were a breed set apart. Daring and sometimes reckless, always in danger of their lives and often losing them, they were the pioneers of the air who charted new pathways in the sky, often helped to improve planes they flew, and changed flying from a daredevil stunt to a safe new mode of travel.
CHARLES A. LINDBERGH,
doubtless the most famous of all air heroes, thrilled the world with his 1927 nonstop flight from New York to Paris. The French cheered him as though he were another Napolean, and on his return to New York the “Lone Eagle” was given the greatest reception in America’s history. Hundreds of thousands of people lined Broadway to welcome him. Lindbergh became the revered spokesman for the air industry and made flying seem respectable and safe. Thus in 1929 alone aviation manufacturers sold more than $70 million worth of planes and parts.
JACQUELINE COCHRAN
1959
learned how to fly to promote her cosmetics business. In the process she set a new world’s speed record for women in 1937 and won the Bendix transcontinental race in 1938. She flew a bomber to England in 1941. In 1953 she bacame the first woman to excede the speed of sound, in a Sabre jet F–86, and 11 years later she flew at more than twice the speed of sound. She was also the first woman to pilot a jet across the Atlantic.
– A Remembrance of –
PRESIDENTS PAST
GEORGE WAS H IN GTON
17 32 - 179 9 // FED E R A L IST Washington got the Nation of to a good start. Courageous, honest, decisive, and judicious, the hero of the Revolution addressed himself to the tasks of minimizing factionalism and setting worthy precedents in his every official act. Most modern historians agree he was neither a military nor a political genius. Yet he gave to the presidency the area of his own prestige.
ABRAHAM L IN CO L N
18 09 - 18 6 5 // RE P UB L ICA N Possibly the Nation’s greates President, Lincoln set standars of integrity and wisdom by which his successors are judged. A super orator, he was essentially a loner; a believer in persuasion, he would fight for for prinsiple. Decisive in war, maganimous in victory, putting the Union above even the Constitution, he wanswered America’s need. His assassination caused a worldwide grief.
WILLIAM HOWA R D TA F T
18 57 - 1930 // REP UB L ICA N Taft was a genial giant weighin over 300 pounds. His area of greates expertise was the law. As President, he carried on the policies of his friend Roosevelt, prosecuting even more anti-trust suits, but he did so in a spirit of legalistic conservatism that alienated his party’s progressive wing. In 1921 he became Chief Justice of the United States, fulfilling a lifelong ambition.
J OHN FITZGERALD K E N N E DY
19 17 - 19 6 3 // DEMOCR ACY At 43 Kennedy was the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic elected President. His wit, grace, inteeligence, and good looks; his dedication to national service; and his handpicked band of “New Frontiersmen� inspired enthusiam and a sense of renewal. When he was assassinated, he was globally mourned and something of his elan long outlived him.
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Great American Inventors
21 GR E AT A ME R I C A N I N VE N TOR S
TODAY WE T RAV EL IN EASY-CHA IR CONFORT AC R OS S T H E S KY O R O N R I B B O N S O F ST E E L O R CO N C R E T E , WITH THE FLICK OF A FINGER WE CAN HAVE L I G H T W E H E R E V E R W E WA N T I T A N D I N STA N T H E AT TO CO O K OUR MEALS. WE SET A THERMOSTAT TO ADJUST T H E I N D O O R C L I M AT E TO O U R L I K I N G ; T U R N A TA P FO R H OT WATER; DIAL A NIMBER TO TALK WITH A FRIE N D 3 , 0 0 0 M I L E S AWAY. O N A SC R E E N , I N CO LO R , I N our homes, we see events taking place in all parts
many or such far-reaching changes. Present-day
of the world and in outer space the moment
Americans tend to take this veritable revolution
they ocure. Tools, clothing, food–all our material
for granted, along with the dislike of standing
needs–are available on demand if we have the
still and the predilection for problem solving that
price. Two hundred years ago a 40–mile trip
have brought it about. these qualities are amply
meant 10 bonejarring hours through dust or
documented in the files of the U.S Patent Office,
mud behind a team of horses. It took 4 to 6 days
which has issued more than 4.5 million patents
for a query of any kind to reach New York from
since it was established in 1790. Consider the
Boston and as
long again for the answer to
impact on our lives of just a few: The cotton gin,
come back; it took weeks for news to arrive from
the steel plow, the reaper, the telephone, the
Paris of London, months from Asia. Clothing was
telegraph, the typewriter, the sewing machine,
handmade, mostly at home. Illumination was
an–fromthe laboratory of one man–the electric
from an open
flame. Tools were primitive and
light bulb, the phonograph, and motion pictures.
powered by hand. Providing food for a family
Television was perfected in the United States,
required patience.
as were the computer and a most remarkable machine that could fly. It is no exaggeration to
The differences between daily life in 1776 and
say that Americans have been the most inventive
today are almost unimaginable. In no other
people in history.
equivilant span of history have there been so
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The Versatile Mr. Franklin BENJANMIN FRANKLIN WA S A P R I N T E R , P U B L I S H E R , W R I T E R , STATESMEN, AND SCIENTIST. H E WA S A L SO A G I F T E D I N V E N TO R . SO M E OF HIS BEST KNOWN INVENT I O N S A R E S H OW N O N T H I S PAG E . L E S S well known but perhaps of greater importance were Franklin’s basic principles of investigation. A good example is his approach to the question of electricity. Before Franklin began his experiments, electricity seemed to be more in the realm of magic than science. It was known that when certain substances–such as amber, sulfur, or glass–were rubbed, they developed a force that could attract or repel paper, feathers, cork, and other lightweight materials. This force could also produce a spark, a crackling noise, and a physical shock. It was further known that an experiment in Pomerania, E. G. von Kleist, and a physicist at the University of
Leyded
(now
Leiden)
in
the Netherlands, Pieter van Musschenbroek, had accidentally discovered that this force could by accumilated in a glass jar filled with water and stoppered with a cork pierced by a nail or wire. What no one until Franklin had thought to ascertain was whether the charge in a Leyden jar was in the nail, the glass, or the water. By posing the right questions and answering them logically–the basis of the scientific method–Franklin determined that the static electricity was stored in the glass itself. This knowledge was basic to the later discovery of electromagnetism and the development of the electron theory. Franklin also originated much of the vocabulary of electricity, including such terms as “battery,” “condenser,” “charge” and “discharge,” and “positive” and “negative.”
T HE FRAN K L I N STOVE Americans had previously relied on the open fireplace, which sent most of the heat up in the chimney, or the German stove, which made breathing uncomfortable by constantly reheating the air. Franklin pulled the stove away from the wall to increase its heating efficiency and gave it a flue that lost less heat and also served as a simple radiator.
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Franklin invented this generator for use in his experiments. A charge of electricity was built up in the globe. His interests, brillirant in his scientific methods, Franklin increased man’s power over matter and made life more comfortable.
Scientist, Inventor, + Salesman Too FRANKLIN WAS EASILY THE FOREMOST AME R I C A N SCIENTIST OF HIS DAY, AND HIS INGENUITY WA S IMMENSLY WIDE RANGING. HAVING ESTABLISH E D BY OBSERVATION AND LOGIC, AND THEN BY A PRAC T I C A L kite test, that lightning is atmospheric electricity, he went on to invent the lightning rod, to this day a building’s best protection against thunderstorms. As a boy who loved to swim, he had devised primitive flippers shaped like artists’ palettes for his hands and kick sandals for his feet. Many years later he invented waterweight compartments for ships. He also devised improved designs fo ships hulls, helped define the Gulf Stream, and drafted plans for boats powered by jets of water. His restless mind fixed on problems large and small. It is to Franklin that we are indebted for the grocer’s claw, the mechanical hand attached to a pole used forreaching items stored on shelves. European audiences were delighted when he played for them on his “musical glass” machine, an assembly of glass bowls of graduated thicknesses that were revolved by means of a spindle and foot treadle and occasionally moistened.
GR E AT A ME R I C A N I N VE N TOR S
TH E E L EC TRI C GE NE RATO R
24 EDISON IS SHOWN here at work in his West Orange laboratory about 1919. He originated the team approach to industrial research.
Thomas A. Edison: Wizard of the Age of Electricity EDISON O N C E R E M A R K E D T H AT G E N I U S I S “ 1 % I N S P I R AT I O N A N D 9 9 % P E R S P I R AT I O N .” CERTAINLY N E I T H E R I N S P I R AT I O N S N O R I N D U ST RY W E R E LAC K I N G I N T H I S P R O L I F I C INVENTOR , W H O WA S G R A N T E D A TOTA L O F 1 , 0 97 PAT E N T S –A N A L L-T I M E R ECO R D. Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, in 1847. He had but a few years of formal schooling, but his mother taught him at home, and he early developed an interest in science. He took his first job as a railroad newsboy and “candy butcher,” and then became an itinerant telegrapher, an occupation that started him on the road to developing his
THREE INVENTIONS THAT CHANGED OUR LIVES
It would be hard to imagine life today without the phonograph, the light bulb, or motion pictures. Edison’s invention, in 1877 of a “talking machine that could record, store, and reproduce human speech or music was revolutionary. Nothing had anticipated it. The insiration came to Edison during experiments witht the automatic telegraph. Noticing that an incoming signal made the need of a telegraph machine vibrate and hum, he had the idea that the vibrations of the human voice might be recorded, too, on the proper surface. His first models used a cylinder covered with a sheet of tinfoil and were tured into a hand crank. Men had worked for years to make a practival incandescent lamp, but it was Edison who found the answer in a flament of carbonized thread sealed in a vacuum. The lamp gave light for 40 hours. He patented this invention in 1880, then devised an electric generating system–which by 1882 was in use in his New York City power plant–to make it practical, this beginning the great utility systems of today.
amazing potentialities for electrical innovation. His first commercially successful invention was an improved stock ticker, used by speculators in gold and securities. He used the $40,000 he got for this–a small fortune for a 23-yearold–to open a factory in Newark, New Jersey. There he made telegraph instruments and stock tickers,
and
methodically
set
about
turning
out further inventions. These included paraffin paper; the the”electric pen,” a precursor tof the mimeograph; and the multiplex telegraph, which could handle seceral incoming and outgoing messages simutaneously on one wire. Edison’s character was not a simple one. As a young man he was handicapped by a progressice deafness, but the affiliation may have served to isolate him from the usual social relationships and spurred his interest in science and invention. Although he assigned various aspects of a project to members of a team, he gave scant consideration to his workers, expecting them to match his own inexhaustible energy.
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FROM WI RE & WOOD TO GLEA M I N G M ETA L FA ST ER T HA N SOU N D
WHEN GEORGE EASTMAN, A BANK CLERK IN R O C H E ST E R , N E W YO R K , BOUGHT HIS FIRST PHOTOGRAPHIC EQUIPMEN T, I T I N C LU D E D A H E AVY camera and tripod, a dark tent for processing, and the necessary chemicals to sensitize, develop, and fix the glass plates before they dried. Such was wet-plate photography in 1877. Young Eastman was impatient with the inconvenience of the system. When he learned of a dry-plate process discovered in Englad, he began to experiment at night in his mother’s kitchen, and he invented a machine for the manufacture of uniform gelatinbased dry plates in quantity. In 1897 he went to England and patented his machine. He got an
This breakthrough made picture taking a family
American patent the following year and started
institution. Improvements soon folloed: roll film
the Eastman Dry Plate Company. Professional
on a flexible trasnparent base; foldinh pocket
photographers were not as quick to switch to dry
cameras; and in 1900 the $1 box Brownie and
plates as
Eastman had anticipated, and so he
a 6-exposure roll of film for 15 cents. With the
invented a camera to create a market for his film.
invention of commercially successful color film in 1935 by two musicians, Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, Kodacolor made inexpensive color prints possible. The next significant advance in photography was a seeming miracle created by Edwin H. Land in 1947. Land’s invention was a camera and film that would produce a finished print on the spot in a minute after exposure. Land started his career making polarizing filters for cameras and lenses for sunglasses. His Polaroid Corporation produced a self-developing color film in 1963 and, in 1973, the amazing automatic camera was
GR E AT A ME R I C A N I N VE N TOR S
Photography for Everyone
The Story of
AME RICA