Part 3

"After our return to England, as often as I happened to be on the Thames, I enquired of our watermen whether they were sensible of any difference in rowing over shallow or deep water. I found them all agreeing in the fact that there was a very great difference, but they differed widely in expressing the quantity of the difference; some supposing it was equal to a mile in six, others to a mile in three. As I did not recollect to have met with any mention of this matter in our philosophical books, and conceiving that, if the difference should be really great, it might be an object of consideration in the many projects now on foot for digging new navigable canals in this island, I lately put my design of making the experiment in execution, in the following manner.

"I provided a trough of planed boards fourteen feet long, six inches wide, and six inches deep in the clear, filled with water within half an inch of the edge, to represent a canal, I had a loose board of nearly the same length and breadth, that being put into the water, might be sunk to any depth, and fixed by little wedges where I would choose to have it stay, in order to make different depths of water, leaving the surface at the same height with regard to the sides of the trough. I had a little boat in form of a lighter or boat of burden, six inches long, two inches and a quarter wide, and one inch and a quarter deep. When swimming it drew one inch of water. To give motion to the boat, I fixed one end of a long silk thread to its bow, just even with the water's edge, the other end passed over a well-made brass pulley, of about an inch in diameter, turning freely upon a small axis; and a shilling was the weight. Then placing the boat at one end of the trough, the weight would draw it through the water to the other. Not having a watch that shows seconds, in order to measure the time taken up by the boat in passing from end to end of the trough, I counted as fast as I could count to ten repeatedly, keeping an account of the number of tens on my fingers. And, as much as possible to correct any little inequalities in my counting, I repeated the experiment a number of times at each depth of water, that I might take the medium."

The experiment proved the truth of the boatmen's assertions. Franklin found that five horses would be required to draw a boat in a canal affording little more than enough water to float it, which four horses could draw in a canal of the proper depth.

No circumstance, remarks Mr. Parton, was too trifling to engage him upon a series of experiments. At dinner, one day, a bottle of Madeira was opened which had been bottled in Virginia many months before. Into the first glass poured from it fell three drowned flies. "Having heard it remarked that drowned flies were capable of being revived by the rays of the sun, I proposed making the experiment upon these; they were therefore exposed to the sun upon a sieve which had been employed to strain them out of the wine. In less than three hours two of them began by degrees to recover life. They commenced by some convulsive motions of the thighs, and at length they raised themselves upon their legs, wiped their eyes with their forefeet, beat and brushed their wings with their hind feet, and soon after began to fly, finding themselves in Old England without knowing how they came thither. The third continued lifeless till sunset, when, losing all hopes of him, he was thrown away." And upon this he remarks: "I wish it were possible, from this instance, to invent a method of embalming drowned persons in such a manner that they may be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to any ordinary death being immersed in a cask of Madeira wine, with a few friends, till that time, to be then recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country."

Among the studies in natural philosophy of which but little is known to the general public may be mentioned Franklin's experiments with heat at a time when a thermometer was a scientific curiosity. The manner in which he proved that black cloth was not so good a covering for the body in hot weather as white, shows the simplicity of his methods and his faculty for making small means subserve great ends: "I took a number of little square pieces of broadcloth from a tailor's pattern-card, of various colors. There were black, deep blue, lighter blue, green, purple, red, yellow, white, and other colors or shades of colors. I laid them all out upon the snow in a bright sunshiny morning. In a few hours the black, being warmed most by the sun, was so low as to be below the stroke of the sun's rays; the dark blue almost as low, the lighter blue not quite so much as the dark, the other colors less as they were lighter, and the quite white remained on the surface of the snow, not having entered it at all. What signifies philosophy that does not apply to some use? May we not learn from hence that black clothes are not so fit to wear in a hot, sunny climate or season as white ones?" That all summer hats, particularly for soldiers, should be white, and that garden walls intended for fruit should be black, were suggestions put forth as a result of this experiment.

Dr. Small assigns to Franklin the credit of having discovered that repeated respiration imparts to air a poisonous quality similar to that which extinguishes candles and destroys life in mines and wells. "The doctor," he records, "breathed gently through a tube into a deep glass mug, so as to impregnate all the air in the mug with this quality. He then put a lighted _bougie_ (candle) into the mug, and upon touching the air therein the flame was instantly extinguished; by frequently repeating this operation, the _bougie_ gradually preserved its light longer in the mug, so as in a short time to retain it to the bottom of it, the air having totally lost the bad quality it had contracted from the breath blown into it." Upon being consulted with regard to the better ventilation of the House of Commons, he advised that openings should be made near the ceiling, communicating with flues running parallel with the chimneys and close enough to them to be kept warm by their heat. These flues, he recommended, should begin in the cellar, where the air was cool, and the flues being warmed by the hot air of the chimneys, would cause an upward current of air strong enough to expel the vitiated air in the upper part of the house. Franklin's letters at this time are full of the importance of ventilation. Unquestionably, he was among the first who called attention to the folly of excluding fresh air from hospitals and sick-rooms, particularly those of fever patients. As Mr. Parton expresses it, he cleared the pure air of heaven from calumnious imputation and threw open the windows of mankind.

Some inventions of Franklin's have not met with the approval of posterity. For instance, he seems to have had no more success with a reformed spelling of his own devising than laborers in the same field who came after him. He used to say that they alone spelt well who spelt ill, since the so-called bad speller used the letters according to their real value. The illiterate girl who wrote of her _bo_ was more correct, he thought, than the young lady who would blush to omit a superfluous vowel. What was the use of the final letter in muff, and why take the trouble to write _tough_ when _tuf_ would do as well? Had he lived to see Dr. Webster's Dictionary, the lexicographer would have found in him an ardent champion. His reformed alphabet and spelling is an interesting curiosity, but hardly more. Some letters of our alphabet he omitted, only to add new ones. He also changed their order, making _o_ the first letter and _m_ the last. In this connection it may be well to say that Franklin was perhaps the first and foremost American champion of the movement, now so powerful, looking to the displacement of Latin and Greek as the foundations of education. At the very close of his life, in 1789, he issued his famous protest against the study of dead languages. He is reported to have said one evening, when talking about this matter: "When the custom of wearing broad cuffs with buttons first began, there was a reason for it; the cuffs might be brought down over the hands and thus guard them from wet and cold. But gloves came into use, and the broad cuffs were unnecessary; yet the custom was still retained. So likewise with cocked hats. The wide brim, when let down, afforded a protection from the rain and the sun. Umbrellas were introduced, yet fashion prevailed to keep cocked hats in vogue, although they were rather cumbersome than useful. Thus with the Latin language. When nearly all the books of Europe were written in that language, the study of it was essential in every system of education; but it is now scarcely needed, except as an accomplishment, since it has everywhere given place, as a vehicle of thought and knowledge, to some one of the modern tongues."

With all his love of the practical, Franklin was not deficient in a rather delicate wit. I have already had occasion to quote at the beginning of this paper his disclaimer of the honors conferred upon him by Turgot's famous Latin line. Instances of this dry humor may be found all through Sparks's exhaustive biography. I remember one in particular. The merchants of Philadelphia, being at one time desirous to establish an assembly for dancing, they drew up some rules, among which was one "that no mechanic or mechanic's wife or daughter should be admitted on any terms." This rule being submitted to Franklin, he remarked that "it excluded God Almighty, for he was the greatest mechanic in the universe."

Benjamin Franklin's services to the cause of invention by no means ended with his own inventions. One of his greatest services was the part he took in the foundation of the American Philosophical Society, whose object was to bring into correspondence with a central association in Philadelphia all scientists, philosophers, and inventors on this continent and in Europe. Franklin's share in the foundation of this society, which has proved of such vast use, seems to have been largely overlooked by his biographers. Mr. Parton, having mentioned that Franklin founded the society in accordance with his proposal of 1743, adds: "The society was formed and continued in existence for some years. Nevertheless, its success was neither great nor permanent, for at that day the circle of men capable of taking much interest in science was too limited for the proper support of such an organization." The recent historian of the society, Dr. Robert M. Patterson, agrees, however, with Sparks in tracing the origin of the Philosophical Society, which grew into prominence about 1767, back to Franklin's proposal of 1743. After describing the Junto, or Leather Apron Society, formed among Franklin's acquaintance, a sort of debating club of eleven young men, Sparks says: "Forty years after its establishment it became the basis of the American Philosophical Society, of which Franklin was the first president, and the published transactions of which have contributed to the advancement of science and the diffusion of valuable knowledge in the United States." In his first proposal Franklin gave a list of the subjects that were to engage the attention of these New World philosophers. It included investigations in botany; in medicine; in mineralogy and mining; in chemistry; in mechanics; in arts, trades, and manufactures; in geography and topography; in agriculture; and, lest something should have been forgotten, he adds that the association should "give its attention to all philosophical experiments that let light into the nature of things, tend to increase the power of man over matter and multiply the conveniences or pleasures of life." The duties of the secretary of the society were laid down and were arduous, including much foreign correspondence, in addition to the correcting, abstracting, and methodizing of such papers as required it. This office Franklin took upon himself.

While he lived the proceedings of the society scarcely ever failed of a useful end. Unlike so many original and inventive geniuses, his eminent common sense was as marked as his originality. In the language of his most recent biographer, John Bach McMaster, "whatever he has said on domestic economy or thrift is sound and striking. No other writer has left so many just and original observations on success in life. No other writer has pointed out so clearly the way to obtain the greatest amount of comfort out of life. What Solomon did for the spiritual man, that did Franklin for the earthly man. The book of Proverbs is a collection of receipts for laying up treasure in heaven. 'Poor Richard' is a collection of receipts for laying up treasure on earth."

II.

ROBERT FULTON.

Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, or at least the first man to apply the power of the steam-engine to the propulsion of boats in a practical and effective manner, was born in Little Britain, Lancaster County, Pa., 1765, of respectable but poor parents. His father was a native of Kilkenny, Ireland, and his mother came of a fairly well-to-do Irish family, settled in Pennsylvania. He was the third of five children. As a child he received the rudiments of a common education. His vocation showed itself in his earliest years. All his hours of recreation were passed in shops and in drawing. At the time he was seventeen he had become so much of an artist as to make money by portrait and landscape painting in Philadelphia, where he remained until he was twenty-one. After this he went to Washington County and there purchased a little farm on which he settled his mother, his father having died when he was three years old. He returned to Philadelphia, but on his way visited the Warm Springs of Pennsylvania, where he met with some gentlemen who were so much pleased with his painting that they advised him to go to England, where they told him he would meet with West who had then attained great celebrity. Fulton took this advice, and his reception by West, always kindly toward Americans, was such as he had been led to expect. The distinguished painter was so well pleased with him that he took him into his house, where he continued to live for several years. For some time Fulton made painting his chief employment, spending two years in Devonshire, near Exeter, where he made many influential acquaintances, among others the Duke of Bridgewater, famous for his canals, and Lord Stanhope, a nobleman noted for his love of science and his attachment to the mechanic arts. With Lord Stanhope, Fulton held a correspondence for a long time upon subjects in which they were interested.

In 1793, Fulton was engaged in a project to improve inland navigation. Even at that early day it appeared that he had conceived the idea of propelling vessels by steam, and he speaks in his letters of its practicability. In 1794 he obtained from the British Government a patent for improvements in canal locks, and his pursuits at this time appear to have been in this direction. In his preface to a description of his Nautilus, or "plunging" boat, a species of submarine boat, he says that he had resided eighteen months in Birmingham where he acquired much of his knowledge of mechanics. In later years, when in Paris, Fulton sent a large collection of his manuscripts to this country. Unfortunately, the vessel in which they were sent was wrecked, and, while the case was recovered, only a few fragments of the manuscripts could be used. It is owing to this misfortune that we have so few records of Fulton's work at this time.

[Footnote 1: This illustration and the four following are from Knox's "Life of Fulton," reproduced by permission of the publishers, G.P. Putnam's Sons.]

We know, however, that in 1794 he submitted to the British Society for the Promotion of Arts and Commerce an improvement of his invention for sawing marble, for which he received the thanks of the society and an honorary medal. He invented also, it is thought, about this time, a machine for spinning flax and another for making ropes, for both of which he obtained patents from the British Government. A mechanical contrivance for scooping out earth to form channels for canals or aqueducts, which is said to have been much used in England, was also his invention. The subject of canals appears to have chiefly engaged his attention during these years of the end of the century. He called himself a civil engineer, and under this title published his work on canals, and, in 1795, many essays on the same subject in one of the London journals. He recommended small canals and boats of little burden in a treatise on "Improvement of Canal Navigation," and inclined planes instead of locks, as a means of transporting canal boats from one level to another. His plans were strongly recommended by the British Board of Agriculture. Throughout his course as civil engineer his talent for drawing was of great advantage to him, and the plates annexed to his works are admirable examples of such work. He seems to have neglected his painting till a short time before his death, when he took up the brush again to paint some portraits of his family. During his residence in England he sent copies of his works to distinguished men in this country, setting forth the advantages to be derived from communication by canals.

Having obtained a patent for mill improvements from the British Government, he went to France with the intention of introducing his invention there; but, not meeting with much encouragement, he devoted his time to other matters. Political economy had also some attraction for him, and he wrote a book to show that internal improvements would have a good effect on the happiness of a nation. He not only wished to see a free and speedy communication between the different parts of a large country, but universal free trade between all countries. He thought that it would take ages to establish the freedom of the seas by the common consent of nations, and believed in destroying ships of war, so as to put it out of the power of any nation to control ocean trade. In 1797 he became acquainted with Joel Barlow, the well-known American, then residing in Paris, in whose family he lived for seven years, during which time he learned French and something of German, and studied mathematics and chemistry. In the same year he made an experiment with Mr. Barlow on the Seine with a machine he had constructed to give packages of gunpowder a progressive motion under water and then to explode at a given point. These experiments appear to have been the first in the line of his submarine boats, and are unquestionably the germ of all subsequent inventions in the direction of torpedo warfare.

Want of money to carry out his designs induced him to apply to the French Directory, who at first gave him reason to expect their aid, but finally rejected his plan. Fulton, however, was not to be discouraged, but went on with his inventions, and having made a handsome model of his machine for destroying ships, a commission was appointed to examine his plans, but they also rejected them. He offered his idea to the British Government, still again without success, although a committee was appointed to examine his models. The French Government being changed, and Bonaparte having come to the head of it, Fulton presented an address to him. A commission was appointed, and some assistance given which enabled him to put some of his plans into practice. In the spring of 1801 he went to Brest to make experiments with the plunging boat that he had constructed in the winter. This, as he says, had many imperfections, to be expected in a first machine, and had been injured by rust, as parts which should have been of copper or brass were made of iron.

Notwithstanding these disadvantages, he engaged in a course of experiments which required no less courage than perseverance. From a report of his proceedings to the committee appointed by the French Government we learn that in July, 1801, he embarked with three companions on board of this boat, in the harbor of Brest, and descended to the depth of twenty-five feet, remaining below the surface an hour, in utter darkness, as the candles were found to consume too much of the vital air. He placed two men at the engine, which was intended to give her motion, and one at the helm, while he, with a barometer before him, kept her balanced between the upper and lower waters. He could turn her round while under the water, and found that in seven minutes he had gone about a third of a mile. During that summer Fulton descended under water with a store of air compressed into a copper globe, whereby he was enabled to remain under water four hours and twenty minutes. The success of these experiments determined him to try the effect of his invention on the English war-ships, then daily near the harbor of Brest--France and England being then at war. He made his own bombs. For experimental purposes a small vessel was anchored in the harbor, and with a bomb containing about twenty pounds of powder, he approached within about two hundred yards, struck the vessel, and blew her into atoms. A column of water and fragments were sent nearly one hundred feet into the air. This experiment was made in the presence of the prefect of the department and a multitude of spectators. During the summer of 1801 Fulton tried to use his bombs against some of the English vessels, but was not successful in getting within range. The French Government refused to give him further encouragement.

The English had some information concerning the attempts that their enemies were making, and the anxiety expressed induced the British Minister to communicate with Fulton and try to secure to England his services. In this he was successful, and Fulton went to London, where he arrived in 1804, and met Pitt and Lord Melville. When Mr. Pitt first saw a drawing of a torpedo with a sketch of the mode of applying it, and understood what would be the effect of the explosion, he said that if it were introduced into practice it could not fail to annihilate all navies.

But from the subsequent conduct of the British ministry it is supposed that they never really intended to give Fulton a fair opportunity to try the effect of his submarine engines. Their object may have been to prevent these devices getting into the hands of an enemy. Several experiments were made, and some of them were failures, but on October 15, 1805, he blew up a strong-built Danish brig of two hundred tons burden, which had been provided for the experiment and which was anchored near the residence of Pitt. The torpedo used on this occasion contained one hundred and seventy pounds of powder. In fifteen minutes from the time of starting the machinery the explosion took place. It lifted the brig almost entire and broke her completely in two; in one minute nothing was to be seen of her but floating fragments. Notwithstanding the complete success of this experiment, the British ministry seems to have had nothing to do with Fulton. The inventor was rather discouraged at this lack of appreciation and, after some further experiments, he sailed for New York in December, 1806.