H. Addington Bruce

“ It was as a telegrapher, which he became at eighteen, that his inventive genius first displayed itself. One after another various devices for improving telegraphic service flowed from his fertile mind, until, after his astonishing success in inventing a duplex and quadruplex telegraph, he was able to command the support of a group of New York capitalists in carrying through a long series of experiments that finally resulted in the invention of the now familiar Edison electric light. ”

“ It is a remarkable fact that some of the greatest and most useful inventions have been bitterly opposed by the very persons whom they were designed to help. The bowmen of olden time resented the introduction of guns; the stage coach lines tried in every way to block the building of railways; and Elias Howe, the inventor of one of the greatest labor saving devices in the world, the sewing machine, was ridiculed, discouraged, and denounced as an enemy of poor sewing women, the ones whose toil he was seeking to lighten. ”

“ Never has there been an American inventor who has contributed more abundantly than Thomas Alva Edison to the republic’s industrial expansion, nor one who has achieved greatness under a heavier handicap of early disadvantages. ”

“ Whitney, Fulton, Howe, Morse, Bell, Edison,—clearly it is only simple historic justice to rate these great inventors with the great statesmen, warriors, and pioneers who in days gone by have won undying fame as makers of the American republic. ”

“ For long, however, the world was reluctant to accept this splendid invention. The tailors of Boston, to whom he first offered it, refused to adopt it, on the ground that it would ruin their business; and later, in New York, there were anti-sewing machine demonstrations, fomented by labor leaders, who failed to realize that in the end labor-saving devices of any real merit were always certain to increase, not decrease, the demand and opportunities for the workingman and workingwoman. ”

“ The eventual abolition of slavery served only to accentuate the stupendous importance of the cotton gin. Under free labor the production of cotton has steadily risen, until nowadays it annually runs into the billions of pounds, with a valuation of many hundreds of millions of dollars, and affords employment not only to an enormous army of cultivators, but to a still greater army of workers in factory, office, and store. ”

“ Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on April 27, 1791. He was the son of the Rev. Jedediah Morse, and the great-grandson of Samuel Finley, the second president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton.
Morse entered Yale at the age of fourteen, which was not considered extremely young in those days. It was there that he first began the study of electricity. But his tastes led him more strongly toward art than toward science, and in 1811 the young graduate became the pupil of Washington Allston and went with him to England. ”

“ But, as has happened to other gifted men, circumstances conspired to turn and fix the thoughts of this brilliant son of New England on problems unconnected with the routine of his daily life, yet appealing to him with such force as to change the whole course of his career. ”

“ It has in fact created an entirely new and most important branch of that industry,—the ready-made clothing business,—giving employment to hundreds of thousands of people, and providing well patterned and well finished garments at prices undreamed of in other days. ”

“ Even of much greater importance have been the results of the labors of another illustrious American inventor, Robert Fulton. Born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in November, 1765, Fulton, by reason of the astonishing number and variety of his inventions, may well be called the Edison of his time. ”

“ He worked in a number of cities of the United States and Canada. At the age of twenty-one he had built an automatic repeater, by which a telegraphic message could be transferred from one wire to another without the aid of an operator. By means of this messages could be sent direct to a much greater distance than formerly.
Edison finally went to Boston, as related herein, and thence to New York, in 1869. There he invented an improved printing telegraph for stock quotations, the ticker. For this he received $40,000. ”