DUST OF THE PAST

Taranaki Daily News, 23 February 1935, Page 13 (Supplement)

DUST OF THE PAST

EPICS OF ENDEAVOUR

(By

“Historicus.”)

Sir Henry Bessemer died on March 15, 1898. The name of Bessemer will for ever be linked with the steel industry. He very nearly became a Government servant, and probably, at the time when this possibility fell through, thought that fate was dealing him a very bad hand. It was, however,'a good thing all round because Bessemer turned his attention to other things for a livelihood, and produced his process for the manufacture of steel. He was an inventive youth, and found favour with the Government —very nearly getting a Government job —by inventing a machine for perforating and dating the stamps embossed on legal documents. This machine saved the Government £lOO,OOO a year. He made a gold paint, sugar machinery. and a ship that was to prevent sea-sickness, but did not. At least it was not found very effective in practice. The romance of Bessemer’s life, however, lay in the steel industry. Drawn to the problem of steel manufacture by the attempt to improve the construction of guns he concluded that that improvement was impossible without better metal than was being used. Establishing a small ironworks in St. Pancras, London, he commenced a series of experiments. His first formula failed to produce good results, and he almost found complete failure. Undiscouraged he went on, but the result of further years of experiment only met with rebuffs from the trade. Bessemer decided to exploit the process himself. With the help of friends he erected steel works in Sheffield. The output at first was not encouraging but gradually the business grew, and steel traders suddenly realised that Henry Bessemer was underselling them by £2O a ton. There was a general cry for licenses. Bessemer for the use of his process captured in royalties a sum exceeding a million pounds.

George Mortimer Pullman. Pullman saloon cars were introducedon the Midland Railway on June 1, 1874. The history of the railways is a story of endeavour, incredulity and progress. The introduction of the Pullman car, quite a natural step in the perfection of travel, curiously enough, met with almost the same restricted vision as the reception of the iron horse in its earliest, days. In its way the introduction of the Pullman car was a romance in itself. Pullman—George Mortimer Pullman, to give him his full title—was a poor American, born in New York State. He had been labourer, carpenter and cabinet maker before he conceived his ideas for the greater comfort of travel. With his first savings he converted two old sleeping cars into the comfortable vehicles we recognise as Pullman’s to-day. It, however, was rather too much of an improvement for the railway companies to accept all at once. They could not see that they would pay the costs of production. So Pullman built them himself, and letting the railways run them received a mileage commission. Soon the cars that were to immortalise his name were running all over the world. A town grew around his works. At one time it was known as Pullman, Cook County, Illinois, U.S.A. Now it is part of Chicago. Pullman, himself,-of course, made a huge fortune. That the success of such cars should have ever been doubted seem extraordinary to-day—almost in keeping with the doubts that beset Stephenson’s age, which we are inclined to regard so humorously to-day. Poor Stephenson was compelled to pledge himself to restrict speed to ten miles per hour for, as his directors announced, “if, when they went to Parliament, I talked of going at a greater rate than ten miles per hour, I would put a cross on the concern.” Truly the history of progress makes delightful reading! Built Bell Rock Lighthouse.

Robert Stevenson died in Edinburgh on July 12, 1850, a few months before the birth of his more famous grandson, Robert Louis Stevenson. The old engineer cannot have suspected that his family name would be famous above all for polished and romantic literature. His almost eternal monument was the Bell Rock lighthouse. Robert Stevenson himself took to engineering almost by accident—his widowed mother married the engineer of the newly constituted Board appointed to provide lights for the Scottish coast. He had been designed for the Kirk of Scotland, and the grim concentration on Calvinistic doctrine which he inculcated in his sons eventually added misery to the youth of “R.L.S.” Before he built the Bell Rock lighthouse on the Inchcape Rock at the mouth of the Tay, 77 vessels had struck that reef in one winter. Since his light first shone, not one has been lost. He helped too in establishing the railway era, for he suggested the modem type of rail without a flange. George Stephenson acknowledged this service but there must have been some jealousy among the Scottish Stevensons at the greater celebrity as engineers of the Tyneside Stevensons. It is recorded that when Robert Louis Stevenson received a letter in which his name was spelt Stephenson he picked it up with the tongs and burnt it in the fire, declaiming “Step hence, Stephenson.”

Sewing Machine Inventor. With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags Plying her needle and thread. The invention of Elias Howe, the sewing machine, may not have entirely eradicated the evil expressed in _ Tom Hood’s famous poem, but at least it did much to make the sewing of garments a less arduous business. Curiously enough the life story of Elias Howe has much in common with the poem of Hood. Howe, finding no American would buy his invention, came to England, where he sold the English rights for £250 and engaged himself to work at a weekly wage to the purchaser, a Mr. William Thomas of Cheapside. But Howe’s career in England was chequered and unsuccessful, and eventually pawning his American patent rights, he returned in poverty to America. There he found his young wife dead of consumption and starvation. To make matters worse his patents were being infringed by all manner of persons, who were making fortunes out of the invention. Originally a factory hand Howe had worked at nights on his idea, and now the determination which had carried him through his preliminary work supported him in the great legal battle which had to be fought to legalise his rights. Howe won, and ultimately all makers became tributary to him. It is calculated that he received in royalties at least two million dollars, but to the end his success was clouded by the vision of the young wife who had died in want, too late to be succoured by the wealth that was to come. He died on October 3, 1867.