INVENTORS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 99, 29 March 1937, Page 8

INVENTORS

AY HO ARE THE GREATEST? AA'ho are the greatest inventors? Can any nation lay claim to this? The Americans believe that they are the most inventive people in the world. Certainly they are responsible for many great and useful inventions, but their claim of being the world’s most inventive people is open to challenge. AVho invented the steamboat? The Americans claim this honour for their countryman, Robert Fulton, in 1807. As a matter of fact 30 steamers, more or less successful, had been built before Fulton’s Clermontt ploughed the Hudson in 1807. In England AVilliam Symington had a paddle-wheel boat churning the waters in 1787. His Charlotte Dundas was a notable success. .Steam navigation, commercially, in the United States began with Fulton, because a monopoly of the Hudson river gave him his start. If the automobile is traced to its origin very little of it turns out to be American. George Seklen secured a patent in 1879, on the strength of which his assignees collected two million dollars in royalties from the motor industry, until an infringement suit was successfully defended. Selden’s claim was no better than that of Rivaz, a Swiss, who patented in France (1807) a gas-driven car. Actually American cars were derived from those of Daimler and Benz, developed independently in Germany between 1883 and 1885. Of the numerous engineering improvements since made very few can be credited to Americans.

Four-wheel brakes are English, invented in 1904. They appeared on Argyll cars in 1910. “Knee action” came from the Frenchman Dubonnet (about 1932). The straight-eight cylinder engine was introduced by IsottaFranchini in Italy, and the A 7 type descends from that developed in France in 1913. America’s chief contributions to the automobile seem to be electric starting, camshaft-driven fuel pumps, steel bodies and floating power. The American car is American because of mass production methods, and not because it is American in mechanical construction. The development of the aeroplane after the success of the AV right's offers a parallel. The early work in streamlining was done in Europe from researches conducted by Eiffel in 1' ranee. The Frenchman, Nieuport, about 1910. began to win races with bodies and wings scientifically shaped. Europeans have for years been working on the stratosphere ’planes while the Americans have not yet begun. The autogiro, the most original aeronautic invention of our time, we owe to the Spaniard Cieroxa. AVho invented the reaper? Americans will say Cyrus McCormick, abaut 1833. But the Stotch reaper (1794). the .Salmon reaper (1807), the Bell scissors reaper (1826) were cutting swaths in European grain before McCormick made his first demonstration. AVho invented the elevator? Not Otis. He devised simply a safety brake. Even in its modern developments the elevator is not American. Armstrong (English) invented the hydraulic type (1846), and Siemens (German) electric (1880). The sewing machine, the bicycle, the photo-electric, cell are not American inventions as many believe.