MILLBOY MILLIONAIRES.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 126, 13 May 1911, Page 2 (Supplement)

MILLBOY MILLIONAIRES.

Mr. James Hodgkinson, of Manchester, the cx-irillhoy who has liecomt* famous by the sale to America for a million pounds of an invention which is expected to revolutionise the salt industry, is not the only working-man upon whom fortune lias smiled in similar fashion. AA'ithout going so far back ns the days of Stephenson, Watts, or Arkwright, a modern parallel ease is that of Mergenthaler, the inventor of the' linotype machine. He was a weekly wage-earner in a factory when he hit upon the idea, and was a millionaire within less than a. vear afterwards. Argand. who invented the burner named after him. was a working-man, arid so poor that his wife grudged the lew pennies ho spent on hi.s experiments. He. too. died a millionaire. Charles Dcpoele. the inventor iif the under-running trolley for electric tramcars. was another workman whose idea, imtted him over a million sterling. Not one million pounds only, but ’-veral, were the reward of Augusto Klootz, the working briokinaker who invented the artificial stone named after him, and with which the streets of Berlin. Vi» Him. and many other continental cities ..re largely paved. W. L. Ihimlv. a workman himself, invented the werkmen's time reio>-der. and wax lifted from poverty to affluent?’ in tho course of a few months. Thon tlicre was L. C. Crowell, the printer's I:ii <ji:ror who inveiihxl the Crowell folder, the contrivance which first made possible the present ennrmcus editions of manv-pagod periodicals end now’pnpfrs. He. too, reaped a fortune from his inventions.