buildings, revolvers, magazines and gatling guns, no linotype machines, typewriters. All knowledge of microbes, disease germs, water gas, soda-water fountains, air brakes, coal-tar dyes and medicines, nitro-glycerine, dynamite, aluminum ware, ocean cables, the spectroscope, the kinetoscope, acetylene gas, X-ray apparatus. And but let us stop; surely, this is enough to impress one to some degree at least with the great changes that have occurred since Franklin's death.

He was born in Boston, January 17, 1706, and died in Philadelphia, April 17, 1790. To-day his dust lies entombed, corner Fifth and Arch Streets, unknown to many of the thousands, who pass heedlessly by.

The first steamboat of this century of inventions, the "Charlotte Dundas," made its first trip on the Forth and Clyde Canal in 1801.

Here in America Col. John Stevenson constructed a boat on the Hudson River in 1804. During the same year Mr. Oliver Evans used a steam paddle-wheel boat on the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. This boat could travel on land as a locomotive, if necessary.

In 1807 Robert Fulton built the steamboat "Clermont." It made regular trips between New York and Albany, a distance of 150 miles, in about 32 hours. Given a good road, one might walk there in that time.

The first locomotive was built in 1801 by Richard Trevithicks, of Camborn, Cornwall, England. The same inventor,

in 1804, built the first locomotive to run on rails, called the "Puffing devil."

The first steamboat to cross the Atlantic from England to America was named the "Rising Sun." This was in 1818.

We believe it is possible to write something that will encourage the younger men of our international union to read history, not only the brief and limited record of our own particular trade, but of other industries as well. Not only of industrial, but history in general. There is nothing in all literature more entrancingly interesting than history; nothing that will provide information so easily assimilated by the average man. It broadens our mental concept of things in general, to a wonderful extent; it removes, or at least moderates, the ignorant prejudices which exists among the great majority, for everybody and everything not of our own particular tribe. It encourages us in our struggles of to-day by en-. abling us to see that as in the past so much of our present and future victories won by steady and persistent hard work. It lifts us up out of the little meanness of a narrow provincialism and makes us sympathetic and kind in our estimate of others. The biographies of inventors, for instance, furnish just as interesting and far more profitable reading than the average Sunday awfuls, full of glaring inaccuracies and sensational rubbish.

Well, gentlemen, let us return to our record of inventions.

March 8, 1799. David Hardie. "New invention and improvement in and upon cranes for raising and lowering goods into and out of warehouses, &c., and which considerably lessens the labor that is required to work them."

According to this invention, when goods are to be raised, they are drawn up by means of a rope coiled round a barrel, which is turned by a tread-wheel worked by the feet of men, the men also laying hold with their hands upon rails placed above the wheel. The arrangement is such that the men can either allow their whole weight to act upon the wheel or by partly supporting themselves by the hand rails, only a portion thereof, or they may, if necessary, "superadd their muscular exertions to the whole of their weight," by pulling the rails upwards. For lower

ing goods, the tread-wheel is disconnected from the barrel of the crane, and another piece of apparatus is brought into connection with the axis of the latter. This consists of an axis carrying spokes or vanes, the latter being immersed in water, and the resistance of the water to their rotary motion acts as a check to the descent of the goods, thereby preventing the descent from being too rapid. Instead of spokes or vanes, a piston working in a box or cylinder may be employed, the piston being connected to a crank on the axis on which in the other case the spokes or vanes are mounted, and the cylinder being furnished with suitable aperatures for the admission and emission of water, as may be requisite. "When the lowering apparatus is used för the pur

pose of lowering goods or persons from a building in the case of fire, it will be proper to attach two ropes or chains to the barrel, winding in contrary directions, in order that the descent of one weight by one rope may wind up the other rope to be in readiness to continue the operation."

The next patent was issued on the same day as the previous one-March 8, 1799-by Michael Logan.

"A centrifugal barrel engine of central force, for raising water and great weights from great depths, and applicable to all manufacturies or systems of machinery, either great or small, requiring the action or circular motion, such as an effectual power in mill work, water works and clock works."

The patentee proposes to carry out this invention by means of an upright hollow column, so arranged as to rotate with its lower end in a cistern of water, the water being admitted to the interior of the column by means of a valve. At the upper end of the column is mounted a kind of barrel, and at the lower end of this barrel is a cylinder, from which project horizontally two or more hollow arms or pipes, each slightly curved at the end furthest from the cylinder, and having at the same end a valve or plug which keeps the pipe closed when the engine is not in action. Immediately below these pipes is another cistern, in the bottom of which is an opening for the purpose of allowing water to pass thence and be discharged upon a water-wheel, mounted in suitable bearings underneath this cistern,

but above the lower one. Suitable gearing is arranged, so as to connect the axis of the water wheel with the upright hollow column, so that on the wheel being made to rotate, the column will rotate also. The idea of the patentee appears to be that on a supply of water being placed in the barrel and arms, and upright column, and in the two cisterns, and a sufficient quantity of water being placed in the buckets of the water wheel to cause the apparatus to rotate, the water in the arms will be discharged therefrom by the operation of the centrifugal force, and falling into the upper cistern, and thence upon the water wheel, will continue the motion of the apparatus, a vacuum being formed in the upright column by the discharge of water from the arms, and the atmospheric pressure upon the surface of the water in the lower cistern forcing

up a continuous supply to keep the apparatus in motion.

The next invention is certainly a long step in advance, and suggest very strongly our upright hydraulic cylinder.

April 13, 1802. John Harriott and Thomas Strode, patentees.

"An engine for raising and lowering of weights of all kinds, and for working mills, and for other similar purposes." This invention consists of the following parts:

1st. The engine is to be so constructed that a descending column of water inclosed in a pipe is made to act or press upon a piston properly fitted in a cylinder of metal or other fit material, at the same time that another column of water, continued and inclosed from beneath the piston downwards to a lower level than and actually beneath

the surface of water exposed to the atmosphere in a drain or other receptacle, whence the same may be conveyed away, and by preventing the atmosphere from pressing upwards with its usual force against the said piston, increases the tendency of the said piston to descend in the same manner, and with the same effect as if the said last-mentioned inferior column were actually bearing upon the upper surface of the said piston, and in consequence whereof the said piston is acted upon by a force equal to, or expressed by the weight of a column of water of which the base is taken to be that of the interior space or bore of the said cylinder, and of which last-mentioned column the height is taken to be equal to the whole height of the water measured perpendicularly from the surface in a reservoir above, by which the descending column is to be supplied to the surface of the water in the before-mentioned drain or receptacle beneath."

2d. "The said piston should be properly disposed and fixed so as to be movable forward and backwards in the said cylinder without any external communication excepting a communication by the piston rod, which passes through a

stuffing box, and is employed to raise weights, or to perform any other work, and excepting two other communications or waterways, through which the water is admitted into or suffered to pass out of the cavities or interior spaces of the said cylinder on each side of the said piston.".

3d. "Certain pipes, channels, or close waterways should be so constructed as to communicate from the said upper and lower columns of water, that by the turning of certain cocks the upper column shall press by its gravity upon any one of the sides of the said piston, at the same time that the said lower column shall be made to act against the pressure of the atmosphere, which might otherwise have operated against the other side of the said piston; and by these means we can, as before mentioned, cause the said piston to be moved by the force of the column of water answering to the whole height or fall of the water as aforesaid, and we can also reverse the motion of the said piston at pleasure, with an equal power in both cases."

4th. "A communication is to be made between the upper and lower interior spaces of the said cylinder by means of

a pipe, in which there is a cock, in order that whenever the said cock is gradually or partly opened, the said piston shall be at liberty to move by any reaction upon the rod thereof, as in lowering

weights, or otherwise, with any degree of slowness or speed which the attendant who governs the engine may think proper."

K

March 20, 1809, No. 3218.

"A ma

Simeon Thompson, patentee. chine or machinery for raising, lowering, drawing, driving, forcing, impressing or moving bodies, substances, materials, fluids, articles or commodities."

In this invention two parallel ropes are secured either in a vertical or slanting direction, so as to act as guides for a frame or carriage, the latter being furnished with rings so as to slip up and down on the ropes. This carriage is connected to another rope, which passes over a pulley working in bearings placed higher than the upper ends of the guiding ropes, and has suspended from its other end a basket or other vessel. In order to make use of the apparatus, this basket or vessel is brought down to the place from whence the goods or commodities are to be lifted, and when in

this position, the arrangement is such that the carriage already mentioned is near the top of the guiding ropes. The basket is then loaded with the articles to be raised, and a man ascends by means of a ladder to the carriage, and placing himself therein, his weight, aided by the action of his hands on the guiding ropes or some other part of the apparatus, causes the carriage to descend and so raise the loaded basket to a height equal to that from which he has descended. The contents of the basket being there discharged, and the man having left the carriage, the basket, by its weight, again descends and raises up the carriage to its first position, when the basket may be again loaded and raised as before. The apparatus may be variously arranged, two carriages being employed when it is desired