Triumphs of the Republic in Practical Science: Joseph and Boston
The invention of the first practicable telegraph by Samuel F. B. Morse, aided by Alfred Vail and Professor Gail, dating from 1836, is a familiar story. It did not come into general use until 1844. The first duplex system was invented by Joseph B. Stearns, of Boston, in 1872. Thomas A. Edison improved on this in 1874, enabling two messages to be sent the same way on the same wire. In 1875 Elisha Gray extended this into a multiplex system, when the Stearns and Edison systems were combined to form the quadruplex, by which four messages, two each way, can be sent simultaneously along a single wire. In 1898 Prof. Rowland, of Johns Hopkins University, perfected a method by which twelve messages can be sent at once. By the wonderful ingenuity of a young Italian electrician, Guiglielmo Marconi, a system of wireless telegraphy is being brought into practical use. Messages are being received from ships several miles out at sea. The spread of submarine cables has enabled the day's doings of the whole world to be reported in the evening papers of that day.
Various devicesare being perfected by which the familiar miracle of the telephone can be used for a nominal charge. Paris and London, 297 miles apart, were enabled to converse with each other in April, 1891. New York and Cleveland were connected, though 650 miles apart, in 1883, and the superiority of the long-distance telephone to the telegraph was clearly shown during the great blizzard of 1888, when for several days the only direct means of communication between Boston and New York was a long-distance telephone wire, which withstood the storm that destroyed all other lines. Chicago was brought into communication with New York in October, 1892; and now conversation is carried on as easily over this distance of a thousand miles as if between two residents in the same place. Conversations have been carried on between Texas and Maine, 2,600 miles apart.
America produced the first practicable type-writing machine, and still leads in all new improvements.
In great feats of engineering, America has won a unique record. The Erie Canal, 351 miles long, was opened in 1825. When the Nicaragua Canal is commenced, the world will be amazed at the celerity and ingenuity with which it will be completed, so continuously are our skilled engineers devising new methods and setting up new principles. Office buildings of eighteen and twenty stories have ceased to be uncommon. They have been made necessary by the congestion of the great cities. There was a limit beyond which structures of brick and wood might be built; but the use of iron and steel made it possible to build taller structures, two or three times the height of those possible by the old method. The new method of construction known as the skeleton frame construction does away with the use of brick and masonry except as a thin shell. Steel beams support the walls of each story, and these are framed between columns, permitting thin walls even at the base. The framework of iron and steel being erected, the masons and carpenters can work on all floors at once, and build from top and bottom. Great as have been the improvements in construction, the erection of these buildings calls for the highest engineering skill. The Manhattan Life building in New York, which is twenty-three stories high, weighs 21,000 tons, and there is a pressure of wind estimated at 2,400 tons against its exposed sides, and the total weight is over 30,000 tons.
The utilization of water-power has been an accomplished fact for centuries; but the modern turbine wheel owes its high repute to the improvements effected by an American, A. M. Swain, in 1851. The development of electricity as a propelling force may be recurred to in this connection. The germ of the electric motor is found in the invention of Joseph Henry, an American, who, though little known to the public, was one of the most prolific electrical inventors the world has seen. Many improvements were made by him in the magnet. Exhaustive research was made by him into the subject of the battery as a source of energy and the efficiency of galvanic batteries, and in 1831 he constructed an electric motor, the first of the kind the world had ever known.
A great step was made in the increased utilization of electricity when the problem of the transmission of power over long distances was solved. Now a current cannot only be distributed through a workshop with the utmost convenience and economy, but it can be sent to a workshop from an engine or waterwheel many miles away. The Niagara Falls is yoked to the wheels and lamps of Buffalo. This in itself is typical of all the achievements of the century, and is the crowning glory of electrical development.
The first experiments in this direction were made by Marcel Deprez, at Creil, in 1876 to 1886, and Deprez succeeded in transmitting mechanical power thirty-five miles for industrial purposes in the latter year. Many inventors busied themselves along these lines, and on February 3, 1892, Nikola Tesla, at the Royal Institution, exhibited his alternate-current motor, by which currents are transformed, by continually reversing the direction, into mechanical power. By means of Tesla's apparatus the force of 77 horse-power was transmitted from the rapids of the Neckar to Frankfort-on-the-Main, 110 miles, September, 1891.