Famous Days in the Century of Invention. M. Grace Fickett
15th 9th mo., 1849.
Mr. Elias Howe, Jr., Cambridge, Mass.
My dear Mr. Howe:—
Perhaps thee remembers the boy who saw thee run a race with thy sewing machine against five seamstresses over Quincy Hall Market four years ago. Thy uncle told me of the hard time thee has had since. I am very sorry. I want to buy a sewing machine and I want to help thee. I am sending thee five dollars. It is all the money I have. I hope thee will use it to win thy suit. Sometime when thee sells sewing machines, I hope thee will sell me one for my mother five dollars less than the usual price. Thee can see thee will not have to pay this back for a long time, for it will be a good many years before I shall have money enough to buy a sewing machine.
Thy friend and well-wisher,
Jonathan Wheeler
There is little more to tell of Jonathan's visit to Spencer. After dinner that day he started with his uncle for Worcester, where they stayed all night. The next morning, after an early breakfast, they set out again, reaching home before the forenoon grew very hot.
PART III
Not many days after Jonathan's return, the first letter he ever received his father brought him from the post office. It hardly needed the post mark, Cambridge, to make Jonathan sure who had sent it. Let us open it with him:—
Cambridge, August 26, 1849.
My dear friend Jonathan,
Your letter with its inclosure of five dollars has been gratefully received. I remember you and your uncle, your father and your mother, with much pleasure. Ever since I ran that race in Boston I have been sure that the machine would work its way to success.
I am more confident now than ever. I have found some one who will buy out Mr. Fisher's interest; Mr. Burlingame will bring my old machine and letters patent from London; and every lawyer I have consulted says my claims are valid and I shall win my suit.
When I have succeeded, and the manufacture of sewing machines is under my control, I shall send for you to pick out a machine for your mother.
Again thanking you for your substantial interest, I am
Very faithfully yours,
Elias Howe, Jr.
This was in 1849. Mr. Howe's darkest days were over; but even then success came slowly and in rather a strange way. Mr. Howe's chief enemy was a Mr. Singer, who built machines and advertised them with remarkable success.
"You are infringing my patent," wrote Howe to Singer, upon hearing of the latter's activity.
"But you are not the inventor," replied Singer. "The Chinese have had a sewing machine for ages; an Englishman made one in 1790; a Frenchman built one in 1830; and what is more to the point, in 1832, a man named Walter Hunt, living in New York, invented a sewing machine with a shuttle stitch like yours. I can find Walter Hunt and prove my statement."
Well, Mr. Singer did find Walter Hunt and the fragments of his old machine. But "not all the king's horses nor all the king's men" could put those fragments together again so that the machine would sew. For four years, however, the trial in the courts continued. But at last, in 1854, when Mr. Howe had waited nine years after completing his first machine, the Wheelers and many others read with great satisfaction in the Worcester Spy:
"Judge Sprague of Massachusetts has decided that the plaintiff's patent is valid and that the defendant's machine is an infringement. Further, there is no evidence in this case that leaves a shadow of a doubt that, for all the benefit conferred upon the public by the introduction of a sewing machine, the public are indebted to Mr. Howe."
In 1855, Jonathan, now grown into a tall, manly youth of twenty, started with Uncle William on another journey, longer and more interesting than either had ever taken before. This time they went to New York, where they found Mr. Howe at the head of a prosperous business; and when they returned, they brought with them a Howe sewing machine of the very latest model, "a present from the inventor to Mrs. Wheeler, in gratitude for the sympathy and encouragement of her family."
LONG-DISTANCE TALKING
PART I
Late one June afternoon Arthur Burton was leaning against a table in the eastern gallery of the main hall at the Philadelphia Exposition. It had been a wonderful day, but it was past dinner time, and he was hot, tired, and hungry. He had seen more wonders that day than he had witnessed in all his life before; but now his uncle and the other judges were in the midst of the Massachusetts educational exhibit, which wasn't half so interesting as the first electric light, or the first grain reaper, or the iceboats. So Arthur had moved away from the new-fashioned school desks and the slate blackboards, and was waiting rather wearily.
Suddenly he straightened up. Entering the door near by was the most distinguished visitor at the Centennial, the tall, handsome Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, with the Empress and a bevy of courtiers. To Arthur's amazement, His Majesty walked directly up to the table against which he himself was standing; and looking beyond the little boy, he said with outstretched hand and a pleasant smile:
"How do you do, Mr. Bell? I am very glad to see you and your work."
Till then Arthur had scarcely noticed a sallow, dark-haired young man who had been sitting behind the little table, nor had he paid the slightest attention to some pieces of wood and iron with wire attached lying on the table. But now, the young man and his material had become decidedly interesting.
Dom Pedro II
"I remember very pleasantly," continued Dom Pedro, "my visit to your class in Boston University when you were teaching deaf mutes to speak by means of visible speech. You were working out a new method, I remember. I suppose this is apparatus that you have devised in that connection."
"I thank Your Majesty," stammered the surprised young man, who for a moment had been at a loss to recall who his royal visitor might be. "I shall be delighted to explain my apparatus. But it has nothing to do with teaching deaf mutes to speak. It is more wonderful than that. It speaks itself; that is, it reproduces sounds. It is the improvement on the telegraph that the world has awaited for years.
"You see, I found in my experiments that I could transmit spoken words by electric current through a telegraph wire so that those words could be reproduced by vibrations at the other end of the wire. I suppose my invention might be called a speaking telegraph."
By this time all the judges had joined the Emperor's party. Arthur fell back to his uncle's side, but he could still hear and see everything.
"Now, Your Majesty," continued Mr. Bell, "if you will press your ear against the lid of this iron box, I think in a moment you will have a surprise."
At these words, Mr. Bell's assistant, who had come up to the group during the conversation, went to another table several rods away and quite out of hearing. The Emperor bent down expectantly. The judges looked rather incredulous, but they were all interested.
"Is the man that went off going to talk over the wire so that the Emperor can hear?" whispered Arthur to his uncle.
"Mr. Bell says so," was the reply, "but we shall see."
Suddenly the Emperor