“ There can be no doubt but that in America, invention has been more versatile and, to borrow a now familiar phrase, more "differentiated" than among ourselves, while here it has achieved in certain lines greater results, perhaps due only to the concentrativeness of the English mind. ”

“ There, in a still new country, handiness and ready adaptability is everything, and every possible encouragement is fully given to that versatility which has so little, comparatively speaking, in this country with its well defined and strictly preserved paths of infinitely subdivided industries. ”

“ One of our English contemporaries, Invention, in referring to the life and genius of the late Rufus Porter, pays a compliment to the energy, ingenuity, and versatility of the American in contrast with the Englishman, whose idea, the editor thinks, is generally confined to fitting himself for a single pursuit in life. ”

“ He was as a youth, too, an ardent patriot, and in truth half a dozen other things, each of which if followed up fully might have sufficed to secure to most men a reasonable amount of distinction and prosperity. ”

“ From the first he was the true type of the smart American boy, who, so far from being impressed by the Carlylean idea of the great dignity of personal work in its manual forms, was nothing unless a labor saving machine in its most comprehensive shape. Thus Rufus Porter began his long career of usefulness as an inventor of turbine water wheels, windmills, flying ships, rotary engines, and sundry contrivances for abolishing as far as possible agricultural labor. ”