Let American inventors be assured that any new invention, useful and practical, and above all, requiring but little capital to establish it as an industry, will find a ready sale in Spain.
I could enlarge to a much greater extent upon the indifference of American inventors, merchants, manufacturers, and business men, as to the market they have in Spain in their respective lines, and upon the importance of building up a trade with this country, but to do so would require more space than I think you would feel justified in occupying in your columns.
PETER COOPER AS AN INVENTOR
The successes of Peter Cooper's long and useful life are well known. Not so many are aware of his varied experience in the direction of failure, particularly in the field of invention. More than once he has found his best devices profitless because ahead of his time, or because of conditions, political or otherwise, which no one could foresee. He possessed the rare qualities, however, of pluck and perseverance, and when one thing failed he lost no time in trying something else. Before he was of age he had learned three tradesand he did not make his fortune at either.
In a familiar conversation with a Herald writer recently, Mr. Cooper related some of his early experiences, particularly with reference to enterprises which did not succeed. His father was a hatter, and as a boy young Cooper learned how to make a hat in all its parts. The father was not successful in business, and the hatter's trade seems to have offered little encouragement to the son. Accordingly he learned the art of making ale. Why he did not stick to that calling and become a millionaire brewer, Mr. Cooper does not say. Most probably the national taste for stronger tipple could not at that time be overcome, and ale could not compete with New England rum and apple-jack. The young mechanic next essayed the art of coachmaking, at which he served a full apprenticeship. At the end of his time his employer offered to set him up in business, but the offer was not accepted, through fear of losing another's money. He felt that if he took the money and lost it he would have to be a slave for life. So he quit coachmaking and went to work for a man at Hempstead, L. I., making machines for shearing cloth. In three years, on $1.50 a day, Cooper had saved enough money to buy his employer's patent. Immediately he introduced improvements in the manufacture and in the machine, which the war with England made a great demand for by excluding foreign cloths. At this time Cooper married. In due time the family numbered three, and the young father's inventive faculty was again called upon.
"In those days," said Mr. Cooper to the reporter, smiling as the remembrance came to his mind, "we kept no servants as they do nowadays, and my wife and myself had to do all that was to be done. After our first child was born I used to come into the house and find my wife rocking the cradle, and I relieved her from that while I was there. After doing that for a few days I thought to myself that I could make that thing go of itself. So I went into my shop, and made a pendulous cradle that would rock the child. Then I attached a musical instrument which would sing for it, and at the same time the machine would keep the flies off. The latter was very simple; by hanging something to the cross bar, as the cradle swung under it, backward and forward, it would create wind enough to drive away the flies. The machine was wound up by a weight, and would run for nearly half an hour without stopping. I took out a patent for it, and one day a peddler came along with a horse and wagon, as they do in the country, and saw the cradle. He struck a bargain with me and bought the patent right for the State of Connecticut, giving for it his horse and wagon and all the goods he had with him. They afterward made some there, but nothing like as good as mine. It was a beautiful piece of furniture," said Mr. Cooper regretfully, as he thought of it as a thing of the past. "They afterward substituted springs for the weight movement, but that kind was not so good."
About this time the war with England ended and the market was spoiled for the shearing machines. Then, we believe, Mr. Cooper tried his hand at cabinetmaking, but that failed, and he set up a grocery store where the Bible House now stands. While selling groceries Mr. Cooper made an invention which ought to have made his fortune, but it did not. The story is best told in Mr. Cooper's own words:
"It was just before the Erie Canal was completed, and I conceived a plan by which to tow boats by the use of all the elevated waters on the line of the canal. To demonstrate that that was practicable I made with my own hands a chain two miles long, and placed posts 200 feet apart in the East River from Bellevue dock down town about a mile. These posts supported grooved wheels to lay the chain in, forming an endless chain. The whole was moved by an overshot waterwheel placed at the Bellevue dock. A reservoir twelve feet square and three deep held the water to turn the wheel."
At the suggestion of Governor Clinton Mr. Cooper tightened his chain and pulled up the end post just before the grand trial of his device was to come off. He succeeded in getting stone enough to anchor the post, however, and the experiment went off swimmingly. The boat was hooked on to the chain, and the passage back and forwardtwo mileswas made in eleven minutes.
"I ran that boat some ten days," says Mr. Cooper, "to let people see what could be done, and carried nearly a thousand people. Part of the time I ran two boats. Once I counted 52 people in one boat. I made the whole chain myself and planted the posts. As I could find no wheels to suit me I made the moulds and cast the wheels myself out of block tin and zinc. It was no small job, I can tell you."
This was unquestionably a grand invention. In itself it was a perfect success; but it was not used. Mr. Cooper tells why:
"It demonstrated completely that the elevated water power along the line of the canal and every lock in the canal could be made use of to drive the boats. Governor Clinton gave me $800 for the privilege of buying the right to the plan in case he should want to use it on the Erie Canal. In making the canal he had promised the people along the route that as soon as it was finished they could sell their horses to tow the boats, their grain and fodder to feed the horses, and their provisions for the passengers. On reflection he thought that if he took all that away from them he would have to run the gantlet again, and he could not afford to do that. There never was anything done with the plan until a few years ago, when Mr. Welch, president of the Camden and Amboy Railroad and Canal, invented exactly the same thing and put it in practice on his locks on the canal. He found it saved half the time and great expense. He went to Washington to take out a patent for it, and when he got there he found that I had patented the same thing fifty-three years before. My patent had run out, so he could use the plan on his canal. It has also been used on one lock on the Erie Canal. If they could have used that chain on the whole length of the Erie Canal it would have saved many millions of dollars."
This would not be a bad place, were there room for it, to speak of "undeveloped" and therefore worthless inventions; and the assumption that if an inventor does not make his invention immediately profitable it must be good for nothing, and should be dispatented. But the moral goes without telling.
Mr. Cooper's next attempt at invention was made about the same time, but in quite a different direction. It was during the struggle of the Greeks for independence, and wishing to do something for their assistance, Mr. Cooper undertook to make a torpedo boat for them. Mr. Cooper says: