PREFACE.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

AMERICAN INVENTIONS AND INVENTORS.

CHAPTER I.

Now the long journey across the continent is over, and we are standing on the dock in New York City. Here we see the steamboat Puritan, thronged with passengers, ready to steam away from the wharf on its regular night trip to Fall River. For hours, perhaps, we have been watching the longshoremen as they have rushed back and forth, loading the great vessel with freight for New England. A few minutes later, as we see the majestic steamer, hundreds of feet long—larger than most city business buildings—slowly, but gracefully moving away from the dock, we say to ourselves, "Can it be that steam, caused by fire, has power enough to make the steamboat move through the water like this?"

While we watch the steamer glide around Castle Garden into East River, evening begins to come on; we must hasten uptown. As we pass along Broadway, lights flash out in the darkness and our thoughts are again turned to fire and steam. We have heard that the source of the electric light is in the dynamo, and that steam power is used to turn that great machine. The enormous engine, the mammoth boat, the brilliant light—all need the power of steam, and nothing but fire will produce this steam. What, then, is fire? and is its only use that of changing quiet, liquid water into powerful steam? Let us see.

Did you notice that machine shop which we passed when we were in Cleveland a few days ago? Did you see those furnaces with the huge volumes of flame bursting out of the open doors? You know that great heat is necessary to make tools and other implements of iron, and all the instruments of everyday life that are formed out of metals. Our pens and needles, our hoes and rakes, our horseshoes, our stoves and furnaces, our registers and the iron of our desks—all depend upon heat for their production. Fire can do much for us. To change water into steam is but one of its powers. Fire and heat are behind most of the operations of modern life.

As we open the door of the house we are met by a current of warm air rushing out into the chilly evening. It is the last of October, and in the middle of the day windows and doors have been left wide open to let in all the light and warmth of the bright sunshine. But it is evening now, and the sun has long since sunk below the horizon; it no longer gives us any of its heat. All night the air will grow colder and colder, and were we unprotected by clothing we should suffer from the chill atmosphere. Even coverings are not sufficient to keep the heat of our bodies from passing off into the air, just as the warm air rushed out through the open hall door. It has been found necessary to warm the air in our houses so that the bodily heat, which we need to sustain life, may not so easily be lost. The heat which the sun furnishes us is called natural heat; that which is produced by the skill of man is called artificial heat.

This artificial heat is used for a fourth purpose also. As we have seen, it makes steam for the locomotive, the steamboat, and other engines; it is necessary in the manufacture of tools and various utensils out of iron and other metals; and it warms our houses and schools, our offices and stores. It is also used everywhere and by everybody in cooking. Had we no fires or artificial heat of some sort we should have to eat our meat and fish raw; we could only mix our meal and flour with cold water, which would not be palatable to most of us; our vegetables, uncooked, would fail to satisfy us; and many of us would find ourselves limited to fruits and nuts, which would be hardly sufficient to keep us in good health, to say the least.

Have you ever thought that men or human beings are very much like other animals? Have you ever tried to find out the important differences between man and what are called the lower animals? One of these differences comes right in the line of our present thought. Dogs are fond of meat, and so are most people; but dogs do not need to have their meat cooked as we do. Horses whinny for their oats at night and morning; but they would not care for our favorite breakfast dish of cooked oatmeal. Bears are partly protected from the cold by their thick, shaggy coverings of fur; but even in very cold regions they have no warm fire around which to gather. Man is the "only fire-making animal," and to this fact he owes much of his power.

These early peoples regarded the blessing of fire as so great that they believed it must have originally belonged to the gods alone. Many of them had traditions that the gods did not permit men in the earliest ages to have any knowledge or use of fire. Myths or stories have been found among the people of Australia, Asia, Europe, and America, telling how fire had been stolen from the gods and brought down to men. The best of these stories is that of the Greek, Prometheus, whose name means "forethought." This ancient mythical hero was supposed to have been the great friend and benefactor of mankind. But of all his gifts to men the most valuable was the gift of fire. According to the old myth, Prometheus went up into Olympus, the Greek heaven, and was welcomed by the gods. While there he examined the fire of the gods and thought what a blessing it would be to mankind. Acting under the advice of Athene, the goddess of wisdom, he stole some fire from the sun god, concealed it in a hollow reed, and brought it back with him to earth.

In early times there were no matches, and if a fire went out it was not easy to kindle it again. Probably the people wondered how the fire was made for the first time. They knew that it must have been obtained somehow, from somewhere; and out of this grew the story of Prometheus among the Greeks, and of the other fire stealers, the heroes of other peoples in all parts of the globe.

But all these stories of the fire of the gods and the way in which human beings were able to get hold of this priceless blessing we now know to be only myths. Students of early history are agreed that all men, everywhere, and at all times, have had the knowledge and the use of fire. Great differences exist between civilized and uncivilized people; the savages of interior Africa seem almost to belong to a different species of being from the cultured people of Europe and America; but all are able to warm themselves and to cook their food by means of burning fuel.

Civilized man has better arrangements for kindling his fire, better means of obtaining more good from it, and better ways for avoiding the smoke and other unpleasant features than has uncivilized man. A savage would not understand the modern chimney nor a kitchen range. He would be utterly at a loss to comprehend our modes of heating by the hot-air furnace or the coils of steam pipes. The forest provides him with all the wood that he needs for his fire, and he has little or no knowledge of coal or oil or gas.

Thus you and I are far in advance of the poor, half clad, half warmed savage; we are also in far more comfortable circumstances than were our ancestors who came from Europe to America two or three hundred years ago. In all the ages of the past until within a few hundred years little advance had been made in the methods of obtaining artificial heat. But since Columbus set sail from Spain, since John Cabot first saw the shores of this continent, since John Smith made friends with the Indians in Virginia, and William Bradford guided the lives of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, discoveries and inventions have changed most of our habits and customs as well as our surroundings. The methods of heating our houses and cooking our food have altered greatly, and we cannot fail to be interested in comparing the simple wood fires of long ago with the complex ways in which heat is now evenly distributed wherever it is wanted. For a little while, then, let us turn our thoughts to the primitive forms of heating and cooking which were common three centuries ago, and see in what ways the modern systems of providing artificial heat have been developed.

CHAPTER II.

"Our homes and their surroundings are so familiar to us that it is hard for us to realize that our country was not always as it is now. Let us think about it. Have you seen any changes near where you live since you can remember? Have any new houses been built? Do you know of any old buildings that have been torn down in order that larger or better ones might take their places? Have you watched men making a new street or road, or, perhaps, working upon an old road to make it better? If you have, then you can think back to a time when some house that you can see to-day was not there; a time when there were not so many roads nor such good streets as now. Can you think back still further to a time when the house in which you live had not been built? when the street in front of your house had not been made? Can you imagine a time, still further back, when none of the houses in your city or village were standing? when there were no streets at all within sight of the place where you live? Then it will not be so very hard to think of the time, four hundred years ago, when there were no houses of wood, brick, or stone, such as we now see, anywhere in this country; when there was not a carriage road nor a street of any kind in the whole United States. We will try to imagine how this country looked before any white people lived in it, and before the cities and towns and villages and farms and ranches, that are so familiar to us, had been begun.

Four hundred years ago John Cabot sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and saw this country for the first time. As his little vessel moved along the coast, he looked upon bays and mouths of rivers which were very much as they are to-day. The peninsulas, the capes, and the islands were in the same places that they now are. They were, however, almost entirely covered with woods. Here and there were fields of grass, through which blue streams were flowing; but the larger part of what is now New England and the other Atlantic States was covered with thick forests. The trees were large and close together; their branches had never been cut off, and grew close to the ground. Shrubs and bushes filled all the space that was left between the larger trees, and made it almost impossible for any one to pass through. Wild animals had made paths for themselves, but if people had attempted to use these paths they would have been obliged to get down on their hands and knees and crawl through them. The rivers and the smaller streams of water were the best roads in those days; for unless they were shallow or flowed too swiftly down the rapids, boats could quite easily be pushed up stream as well as be carried down by the current.

In this country, covered with forests, were there only wild animals? Were there no human beings: no men, nor women, nor children? No white men lived in New England; the city of New York had not even been thought of; Baltimore and Savannah were impassable forests; and the great West was only a hunting ground. But the red men or American Indians did live in this country and were its only owners.

The Indians did not live in many roomed houses of wood or brick or stone; they never built roads or streets; nor did they ride in carriages. If they wished to go from one place to another they used canoes on the rivers as far as they could; if they wished to cross the land from one stream to another they made a foot path, called a trail. Sometimes a trail was broad enough to permit a canoe to be carried. Thus the Indians could travel long distances without growing tired from much walking.

The Indians must have had dwelling places to protect them from the cold and the storms which were as common then as now. Many tribes of Indians were in the habit of moving frequently from place to place, and for this reason their homes were not built for permanent use, but were made of materials that could be quickly put together. The Indians that lived in Canada and New England were more roving than those of New York; therefore their houses were very simple. They were long and narrow, with rounded roofs, and covered on the tops and sides with matting that could be readily removed.

The Iroquois, dwelling south of Lake Ontario, were a little more civilized than their neighbors, and built more permanent houses. Their dwellings were very long, from one to two hundred feet in length, and usually about thirty feet wide. The frames were made of long sticks or poles, set firmly in the ground; other poles formed the roof, with two sloping sides, over which were laid large strips of elm bark. These houses had a door at each end, with no windows, and light entered only through the doors and the large openings in the roof. The openings were made at frequent intervals to allow the escape of the smoke from the fires directly beneath.

Although the Indian dwellings varied greatly among the different tribes, in none of them did a family live by itself Usually twenty or more families dwelt together in each of the Iroquois "long houses." A building planned for twenty families had ten stalls or open closets as they might be called, arranged along each side. An open passageway ran the entire length of the house from door to door, in which were built five fires at equal distances. Each fire belonged to the four families whose stalls—two on each side—opened directly toward it.