Notable Events Of The Nineteenth Century Part 9

No other known substances would produce the given lines. The conclusion is overwhelming that the substances in question are present in a gaseous condition in the burning flames of the sun. Down to the present time the examination of the sun's atmosphere has shown the existence therein of thirty-six known elements. These include sodium, pota.s.sium, calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, cobalt, silver, lead, tin, zinc, t.i.tanium, aluminium, chromium, silicon, carbon, hydrogen and several others.

It was thus established that in the const.i.tution of the sun many of the well-known elements of the earth are present. There could be no mistake about it. An ident.i.ty of lines in such a case proved beyond dispute the ident.i.ty of the substance from which such lines are derived. The existence of common materials in the central sphere of our system and in _one_ of his attendant orbs--our own--could not be doubted. The discovery of such a fact led by immediate inference to the expectation and belief that the _other_ planets were of like const.i.tution, or in a word, that the whole solar system was essentially composed of identical materials.

As the inquiry proceeded, it was found, however, that the agreement in the lines of different spectra was not perfect. Lines would be found in the spectrum derived from one source that were not present in a spectrum derived from another source. Materials were therefore suggested as present in one body that were not present in another.

Still further inquiry confirmed the belief that while there is a general uniformity in the materials of our solar system, the ident.i.ty is not complete in all. An element is found in one part that may not be found in another. Hydrogen shows its line in the spectrum derived from every heavenly body that has been investigated; but not so aluminium or cobalt. Sodium, that is, the salt-producing base, is discovered everywhere, but not nickel or a.r.s.enium. The result, in a word, shows a certain variability in the distribution of solar and planetary matter, but a general ident.i.ty of most.

The question next presented itself as to the character of the luminous bodies _beyond_ the solar system. Of what kind of matter are the comets? Of what kind are the fixed stars? Of what kind are the nebulae?

Could the spectroscope be used in determining also the character of the materials in those orbs that we see s.h.i.+ning in the depths of s.p.a.ce? The instrument was turned in answer to these questions to the sidereal heavens. No other branch of science has been prosecuted in the after half of this century with more zeal and success than has the spectroscopic a.n.a.lysis of the fixed stars. These are known by the telescope to have the character of suns. The most general fact of the visible heavens is the plentiful distribution of suns. They sparkle everywhere as the so-called fixed stars. To them the telescope has been virtually turned in vain. We say in vain because no single fixed star has, we believe, ever been made by aid of the telescope to show a disc.

On turning the telescope to a fixed star, its brightness, its brilliancy, increases according to the power of the instrument. Coming into the field of one of these great suns of s.p.a.ce, the telescope shows a miraculous dawn spreading and blazing into a glorious sunrise, and a sun itself flaming like infinite majesty on the sight; but there is no disc--nothing but a blaze of glory. Thus in a sense the telescope has worked in vain on the visible heavens. But not so the spectroscope. The latter has done its glorious work. Turning to a given fixed star, it shows that the tremendous combustion going on therein is virtually the same as that in our own sun. There, too, is flaming hydrogen, and there is carbon and oxygen and iron and sodium and pota.s.sium and many other of the leading elements of what we thus know to be universal nature. The suns are all akin; they are cousins-german. They are of the same family--they and their progeny.

They were born of the same universal fact. They are of the same Father! They are builded on the same plan, and they have a common destiny. Aye, more, the nebulae that float far off, swanlike, in the infinitudes, are of the same family. The nebulae may be regarded as the mothers of universes. It is out of their bosoms that the life and substance of all suns and worlds are drawn! And these, too, are composed of the common matter of universal nature. It is the same matter that we eat and drink. It is the same that we breathe. It is the same that we see aflame in our lamps and grates. It is the same that is borne to us in the fragrance of flowers planted on the graves of our dead. It is the common hydrogen and carbon and oxygen and nitrogen of our earth and its envelope. It is the soda of our bread; the pota.s.sa of our ashes; the phosphorus of our bones and brain!

Indeed, the universe throughout is of one form and one substance, and there is one Father over all. Sooner or later the concepts of science and of religion will come together; and the small agitations and conflicts of human thought and hope will pa.s.s away in a sublime unity of human faith.

Progress in Discovery and Invention.

THE FIRST STEAMBOAT AND ITS MAKER.

On the night of the second of July, 1798, a man at a little old tavern in Bardstown, Kentucky, committed suicide. If ever there was a justifiable case of self-destruction, it was this. No human being is permitted to take his own life, but there are instances in which the burden of existence becomes well-nigh intolerable. In the case just mentioned, the man went to his room and took poison. He was a little more than fifty-five years of age, but was prematurely old from the hards.h.i.+ps to which he had been subjected. He had not a penny. His clothes were worn out. A dirty s.h.i.+rt, made of coa.r.s.e materials, was seen through the rags of his coat. His face was haggard, wrinkled, written all over with despair, the lines of which not even the goodness of death was able to dispel.

The man had seen the Old World and the New, but had never seen happiness. He had followed his forlorn destiny from his native town of South Windsor, Connecticut, where he was born on the twenty-first of January, 1743. His body was buried in the graveyard of Bardstown, then a frontier village. No one contributed a stone to mark the grave. Nor has that duty ever been performed. The spot became undistinguishable as time went by, and we believe that there is not a man in the world who can point out the place where the body of John Fitch was buried. The grave of the inventor of the steamboat, hidden away, more obscurely than that of Jean Valjean in the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, will keep the heroic bones to the last day, when all sepulchres of earth shall set free their occupants and the great sea's wash cast up its dead!

The life of John Fitch is, we are confident, the saddest chapter in human biography. The soul of the man seems from the first to have gone forth darkly voyaging, like Poe's raven,

--"Whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast and followed faster, till his song one burden bore, Till the dirges of his hope the melancholy burden bore,-- Of 'Nevermore--nevermore!'"

Certainly it was nevermore with him. His early years were made miserable by ill-treatment and abuse. His father, a close-fisted farmer and an elder brother of the same character, converted the boyhood life of John Fitch into a long day of grief and humiliation and a long night of gloomy dreams. Then at length came an ill-advised and ill-starred marriage, which broke under him and left him to wander forth in desolation.

He went first from Connecticut to Trenton, N.J., and there in his twenty-sixth year began to ply the humble trade of watch-maker. Then he became a gunsmith, making arms for the patriots of Seventy-six, until what time the British destroyed his shop. Then he was a soldier.

He suffered the horrors of Valley Forge; and before the conclusion of the peace he went abroad in the country as a tinker of clocks and watches. His peculiarity of manner and his mendicant character made him the b.u.t.t of neighborhoods. In 1780 he was sent as a deputy-surveyor from Virginia into Kentucky, and after nearly two years spent in the country between the Kentucky and Green rivers, he went back to Philadelphia. On a second journey to the West his party was a.s.sailed by the Indians at the mouth of the Muskingum, and most were killed. But he was taken captive, and remained with the red men for nearly a year. But he escaped at last, and got back to a Pennsylvania settlement.

Fitch next lived for a year or two in and did approve of the invention, he withheld any public endors.e.m.e.nt of it.

Month after month went by, and no helping hand was extended. Fitch got the reputation of being a crazy man. To save himself from starvation, he made a map of the territory Northwest of the river Ohio, doing the work of the engraving with his own hand, and printing the impressions on a cider-press! Early in 1787 he succeeded in the formation of a small company; and this company supplied, or agreed to supply, the means requisite for the building of a steamboat sixty tons' burden.

The inventor also secured patents from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia, granting to him the exclusive right to use the waters of those States for fourteen years for purposes of steam navigation.

Hereupon a boat was built and launched in the Delaware. It was forty-five feet in length and twelve feet beam. There were six oars, or paddles on each side. The engine had a twelve-inch cylinder, and the route of service contemplated was between Philadelphia and Burlington. The inventor agreed that his boat should make a rate of eight miles an hour, and the charge for pa.s.sage should be a s.h.i.+lling.

He who might have been in Philadelphia on the twenty-second of August, 1787, and did approve of the invention, he withheld any public endors.e.m.e.nt of it.

Month after month went by, and no helping hand was extended. Fitch got the reputation of being a crazy man. To save himself from starvation, he made a map of the territory Northwest of the river Ohio, doing the work of the engraving with his own hand, and printing the impressions on a cider-press! Early in 1787 he succeeded in the formation of a small company; and this company supplied, or agreed to supply, the means requisite for the building of a steamboat sixty tons' burden.

The inventor also secured patents from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia, granting to him the exclusive right to use the waters of those States for fourteen years for purposes of steam navigation.

Hereupon a boat was built and launched in the Delaware. It was forty-five feet in length and twelve feet beam. There were six oars, or paddles on each side. The engine had a twelve-inch cylinder, and the route of service contemplated was between Philadelphia and Burlington. The inventor agreed that his boat should make a rate of eight miles an hour, and the charge for pa.s.sage should be a s.h.i.+lling.

He who might have been in Philadelphia on the twenty-second of August, 1787, would have witnessed a memorable thing. The Convention for the framing of a Const.i.tution for the United States of America was in session. For some time the body had been wearing itself into exhaustion over this question and that question which seemed impossible of solution. On the day referred to, the convention, on invitation, adjourned, and the members, including the Father of his country, who was President, went down to the water's edge to see a sight. There Fitch's steamboat was to make its trial trip, and there the trial trip was made, with entire success.

They who were building the s.h.i.+p of state could but applaud the performance of the little steamer that sped away toward Burlington.

But the applause was of that kind which the wise and conservative folk always give to the astonis.h.i.+ng thing done by genius. The wise and conservative folk look on and smile and praise, but do not commit themselves. Most dangerous it is for a politician to commit himself to a beneficial enterprise; for the people might oppose it!

The facts here referred to are fully attested in indisputable records.

There are files of Philadelphia newspapers which contain accounts of Fitch's boat. A line of travel and traffic was established between Philadelphia and Burlington. There was also a steam ferryboat on the Delaware. A second boat, called the "Perseverance," was designed for the waters of the Mississippi; but this craft was wrecked by a storm, and then the patent under which the Ohio river and its confluent waters were granted, expired, and the enterprise had to be abandoned.

On the fourth of September, 1790, the following advertis.e.m.e.nt of the "Pennsylvania Packet" appeared in a Philadelphia paper:

"The Steamboat will set out this morning, at eleven o'clock, for Messrs. Gray's Garden, at a quarter of a dollar for each pa.s.senger thither. It will afterwards ply between Gray's and middle ferry, at 11d each pa.s.senger. To-morrow morning, Sunday, it will set off for Burlington at eight o'clock, to return in the afternoon."

This Pennsylvania Packet continued to ply the Delaware for about three years. The mechanical construction of the boat was not perfect; and shortly after the date to which the above advertis.e.m.e.nt refers the little steamer was ruined by an accident. The story is told by Thomas P. Cope, in the seventh volume of Hazard's _Register_. He says: "I often witnessed the performance of the boat in 1788-89-90. It was propelled by paddles in the stern, and was constantly getting out of order. I saw it when it was returning from a trip to Burlington, from whence it was said to have arrived in little more than two hours.

When coming to off Kensington, some part of the machinery broke, and I never saw it in motion afterward. I believe it was his [Fitch's] last effort. He had, up to that period, been patronized by a few stout-hearted individuals, who had subscribed a small capital, in shares, I think, of six pounds Pennsylvania currency; but this last disaster so staggered their faith and unstrung their nerves, that they never again had the hardihood to make other contributions. Indeed, they already rendered themselves the subjects of ridicule and derision for their temerity and presumption in giving countenance to this wild projector and visionary madman. The company thereupon gave up the ghost, the boat went to pieces, and Fitch became bankrupt and brokenhearted. Often have I seen him stalking about like a troubled spectre, with downcast eye and lowering countenance, his coa.r.s.e, soiled linen peeping through the elbows of a tattered garment."

With the breakdown of his enterprise, John Fitch went forth penniless into the world. The patent which he received from the United States in 1791, was of small use. How little can a pauper avail himself of a privilege! Presently his patent was burned up, and a year afterward, namely in 1793, he went to France. There he would--according to his dream--find patronage and fame; but on his arrival in the French capital he found the Reign of Terror just beginning its work. It was not likely that the Revolutionary Tribunal would give heed to an American dreamer and his proposition to propel by steam a boat on the Seine. However, Fitch went to L'Orient and deposited the plans and specifications of his invention with the American consul. Then he departed for London.

In the following year a man by the name of Robert Fulton took up his residence with the family of Joel Barlow, in Paris. There he devoted himself to his art, which was that of a painter. Whoever had pa.s.sed by the corner of Second and Walnut streets, in Philadelphia while Fitch was constructing his first steamboat, might have seen a little sign carrying these words: "Robert Fulton, Miniature Painter." But now, after nearly ten years, he was painting a panorama in France. While thus engaged, the American consul at L'Orient showed to Fulton Fitch's drawings and specifications for a steamboat. More than this, _he loaned them to him, and he kept them for several months_.

A thrifty man was Robert Fulton; discerning, prudent and capable!

Meanwhile, poor Fitch, in 1794, returned to America. On the s.h.i.+p he worked his way as one of the hands. Getting again to New York he determined to make his way into that region of country where he had been a surveyor in 1780. He accordingly set out from New York for Kentucky, but not till he had invented, or rather constructed, a steamboat, which was driven by _a screw propeller_! This, in 1796, he launched on the Collect Pond, in what is now Lower New York. The boat was successful as an experiment; but the people who saw it looked upon its operation and upon the thing itself as the product of a crazy man's brain.

He who now pa.s.ses along the streets of the metropolis will come upon a vendor of toys, who will drop upon the pavement an artificial miniature tortoise, rabbit, rat, or what not, well wound up; and the creature will begin to crawl, or dance, or jump, or run, according to its nature. The busy, conservative man smiles a superior smile, and pa.s.ses on. It was in such mood that the old New Yorker of 1796 witnessed the going of Fitch's little screw propeller on the Pond. It was a toy of the water.

After this the poor spectre left for the West. The spring of 1798 found him at Bardstown, with the model of a little three-foot steamboat, which he launched on a neighboring stream. There he still told his neighbors that the time would come when all rivers and seas would be thus navigated. But they heeded not. The spectre became more spectral. At last, about the beginning of July, in the year just named, he gave up the battle, crept into his room at the little old tavern, took his poison, and fell into the final sleep.

We shall conclude this sketch of him and his work with one of his own sorrowful prophecies: "The day will come," said he in a letter, "when some more powerful man will get fame and riches from _my_ invention; but n.o.body will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of attention." Than this there is, we think, hardly a more pathetic pa.s.sage in the history of the sons of men!

TELEGRAPHING BEFORE MORSE.

There is a great fallacy in the judgment of mankind about the method of the coming of new things. People imagine that new things come all at once, but they do not. Nothing comes all at once; that is, no thing. In the facts of the natural world, that is, among visible phenomena of the landscape, the judgment of people is soon corrected.

There it is seen that everything grows. The growth is sometimes slow and sometimes rapid; but everything comes gradually out of its antecedents. No tree or shrub or flower ever came immediately. No living creature on the face of the earth begins by instantaneous apparition. The chick gets out of its sh.e.l.l presently, but even that takes time. Every living thing comes on by degrees from a germ, and the germ is generally microscopic! Nature is, indeed, a marvel!

The facts of human life, whether tangible or intangible, have this same method. For example, there has not been an invention known to mankind that has not come on in the manner of growth. The antecedents of it work on and on in a tentative way, producing first this trial result and then that, always approaching the true thing; and even the true thing when it comes is not perfect. It is made perfect afterward.

There was never an instantaneous invention, and there was never a complete one! It is doubtful whether there is at the present time a single complete, that is perfect or perfected, invention in the world.

They are all of partial development. They show in their history their origin, their growth, their gradual approximation to the perfect form.

All of the marvelous contrivances which, fill the arena of our civilization, making it first vital and then vocal, have come by the evolutionary process. Every one of them has a history which is more and more obscure as we follow it backward to its source. In every case, however, there comes a time when a given discovery, manifesting itself in a given invention, takes a sort of spectacular character, and it is then rather suddenly revealed to the consciousness of mankind.

Of this general law the telegraph affords a conspicuous example. The whole world knows the story of the telegraph of Morse. It was in 1844 that the work of this great inventor was publicly demonstrated to the world. Then it was that the electro-magnetic telegraph in its first rude estate began to be used in the transmission of messages and other written information.

It has come to pa.s.s that "telegraph" means virtually _electric_ telegraph. The people of to-day seem to have forgotten that the telegraph is not necessarily dependent on the electrical current. They have forgotten that back of the Morse invention other means had been employed of transmitting information at a distance. They have forgotten that it was by the most gradual and tedious process that the old telegraphic methods were evolved into the new. Note with wonder how this great invention began, and through what stages it pa.s.sed to completion.

There is a natural telegraphy. Whoever stands in an open place and calls aloud to his fellow mortal at a distance _telegraphs_ to him. At least he telephones to him; that is, _sounds_ to him at a distance.

The air is the medium, the vocal cords in vibration the source of the utterance, and the ear of the one at a distance the audiphonic receiver. This sort of telegraphy is original and natural with human beings, and it is common to them and the lower animals. All the creatures that have vocality use this method. It were hard to say how humble is the creeping thing that does not rasp out some kind of a message to its fellow insect. Some, like the fireflies, do their telegraphing with a lantern which they carry. The very crickets are expert in telegraphy, or telephony, which is ultimately the same thing.

After transmitted sound the next thing is the visible signal, and this has been employed by human beings from the earliest ages in transmitting information to a distance. It is a method which will perhaps never be wholly abandoned. Observe the surveyors running a trial line. Far off is the chain bearer and here is the theodolite.

The man with the standard watches for the signal of the man with the instrument. The language is _seen_ and the message understood, though no word is spoken. Here the sunlight is the wire, and the visible motion of the hands and arms the letters and words of the message.

The ancients were great users of this method. They employed it in both peace and war. They occupied heights and showed signals at great distances. The better vision of those days made it possible to catch a signal, though far off, and to transmit it to some other station, likewise far away. In this manner bright objects were waved by day and torches by night. In times of invasion such a method of spreading information has been used down to the present age. Nor may we fail to note the improved apparatus for this kind of signaling now employed in military operations. The soldiers on our frontiers in Arizona, New Mexico, and through the mountainous regions further north, are able to signal with a true telegraphic language to stations nearly a hundred miles away.