The Fundamentals Of Landscape Architecture 2nd Edition Tim Waterman
The Fundamentals Of Landscape Architecture 2nd Edition Tim Waterman
The Fundamentals Of Landscape Architecture 2nd Edition Tim Waterman
The Fundamentals Of Landscape Architecture 2nd Edition Tim Waterman
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8. Contents
History and Ideas 10
Yesterday and Today 12
Before the Ancient World 16
The Ancient World 22
The Middle Ages 26
The Renaissance and Baroque 30
The Nineteenth Century 38
The Twentieth Century 42
The Twenty-First Century 48
Case Study: University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill—Hoerr Schaudt Landscape
Architects 50
Introduction 06
Inhabiting the Landscape 90
Site Planning and Development 92
The View of the Landscape 98
Landscape Planting 102
Flow: Circulation and Access 106
Structures and Habitation 111
Community Planning 114
Case Study: Januburu Six Seasons,
Broome, Australia—UDLA 118
Site and Context 52
Landscape: Site and Context 54
Climate 60
Land 66
Water 70
Plants 74
Topography 79
Landscape Character 82
Case Study: Shanghai Houtan Park—
Turenscape 88
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9. The Anatomy of a Project 148
The Arizona State University
Polytechnic Campus 150
Timeline 152
Brief 154
Analysis 158
Synthesis and Design 160
Detail Development 162
Construction 165
Maturation 166
Representation 120
The Sketch 122
Orthographic Projection 126
Perspective 130
3D Images 132
Models 134
Computer-Aided Design (CAD) 138
Storyboards 140
The Moving Image 142
Presentation 145
The Portfolio 146
Conclusion 180
Glossary 182
Bibliography 186
Contacts and Useful Resources 188
Index 190
Acknowledgments and Picture Credits 192
Professional Profiles 168
Careers 170
Interview: Phil Askew, CMLI, London
Legacy Development Corporation 172
Interview: Thomas Balsley, FASLA,
Thomas Balsley Associates 174
Interview: Raymond Jungles, FASLA,
Raymond Jungles, Inc. 176
Interview: Thierry Kandjee,
Paysagiste, Taktyk 178
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10. Introduction
—
6
If there’s sky, it’s mine.”
Kathryn Gustafson, landscape architect
“
When asked where landscape architects work,
many people might point out their back door to the
garden. It would be more accurate, however, to look
out the front door. The landscape is anywhere and
everywhere outdoors, and landscape architects are
shaping the face of the Earth across cities, towns,
and countryside alike. Landscape architecture
involves shaping and managing the physical world
and the natural systems that we inhabit. Landscape
architects do design gardens, but what is critical is
that the garden, or any other outdoor space, is seen in
context. All living things are interdependent, and the
landscape is where they all come together. Context
is social, cultural, environmental, and historical,
among other considerations. Landscape architects
are constantly zooming in and out from the details to
the big picture to ensure that balance is maintained.
Landscape architecture combines art and science to
make places. The art provides a vision for a landscape,
using drawings, models, computer imaging, and text.
The elements of design, such as line, shape, texture
and color, are used to create these images, and the
process allows the designer to both communicate
with an audience and to visualize the site in order to
act upon it. The science includes an understanding
of natural systems, including geology, soils, plants,
What Is Landscape Architecture?
—
topography, hydrology, climate, and ecology. It also
includes knowledge of structures and how they are
built, such as roads and bridges, walls, paving, and
even the occasional building. Landscape architects
are broad thinkers who thrive on the big picture.
Landscape architects are playing an increasingly
important role in solving the great issues of
our day such as dealing with climate change
and providing sustainable communities. They
are working on urban regeneration and master-
planning projects, tackling environmental hazards,
designing Olympic sites, and creating the public
squares, parks, and streets we all use.
Landscape architecture is increasingly a field that
requires natural leaders who can use their wide-ranging
knowledge to lead large projects. It still, however,
provides plenty of opportunities to make a substantial
difference on a smaller scale as well. It is simply
not possible to give a satisfactory short definition
of landscape architecture, because of the incredible
breadth of the field—but far from being a shortcoming,
this is landscape architecture’s great strength. For
those who crave both variety and a challenge, and
are curious about everything that makes the world
go round, a career in landscape architecture is ideal.
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11. 7
h Introduction
b History and Ideas
0.1
Fresh Kills Lifescape, Staten Island, New
York, Field Operations, 2001–2005
Fresh Kills is an artificial topography created by half
a century’s worth of New York garbage. It shows
the great range of landscape architecture in one
project, from the need to mitigate pollution, clean
groundwater, and trap escaping methane while
creating a public park for people and wildlife.
0.1
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12. The Role of Landscape Architects
—
8
Introduction
Where do landscape architects work?
—
Landscape architects work within an incredibly
diverse number of places. Anywhere humans
have a hand in shaping the landscape, you
may find a landscape architect at work. Some
may specialize in a specific area, but many
will have the opportunity to work with a wide
variety of fields over the course of a career.
Everyday places: schoolyards, parks, streets
Monumental places: Olympic campuses, grand
public squares, waterfront developments
Play places: resorts, golf courses,
playgrounds, theme or amusement parks
Natural places: national parks, wetlands,
forests, environmental reserves
Private places: gardens, courtyards, corporate
campuses, science, or industrial parks
Historic places: historic monuments,
heritage landscapes, historic urban areas
Scholarly places: universities, botanic gardens,
arboreta, and contemplative places such as
healing gardens, sensory gardens, cemeteries
Productive places: community gardens,
storm water management, agricultural land
Industrial places: factories and industrial
development, mining and mine reclamation,
reservoirs and hydroelectric installations, and
travel places such as highways, transportation
corridors and structures, bridges
The entire place: new towns, urban
regeneration, and housing projects
As a practice, designing with landscapes and
places is as old, perhaps, as the history of human
settlement. As a formally defined profession, however,
landscape architecture is relatively new, dating back
only about a century and a half. However, the term
“landscape architecture” emerged slightly earlier.
It sits within a group of interdependent professions
that can be conveniently called “the architectures,”
which include architecture, landscape architecture,
interior architecture, urban design, and urban
planning. There are also significant overlaps with
civil engineering, especially in the United States.
Most projects require teams that are composed of
representatives from some, or all, of the architectures.
The overlapping nature of the architectures adds to
the difficulty in understanding these career paths,
as many practitioners are quite comfortable moving
across boundaries. Urban design, for example, is not
a profession unto itself but a collaborative activity in
which landscape architects, architects, and urban
planners may specialize. It is perhaps simplest to say
that landscape architects create places for people
to live, work, and enjoy, and places for plants and
animals to thrive. Landscape architects also speak
up for the care and preservation of our landscapes.
Landscape architecture combines social, economic,
environmental, ecological, and cultural perspectives.
Landscape architects study, plan, design, and
manage spaces, which are both sustainable and
visually pleasing. They shape the face of the Earth
and also help to shape the face of the future.
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13. 9
0.2
0.2
Cao Perrot Studios, Jardin des
Hespérides, Quebec, Canada
Xavier Perrot and Andy Cao have
offices in Paris and Los Angeles
and have become known
internationally for creating
gardens of ethereal beauty with
exacting precision and skill.
Indeed, the exceptional rigor
with which they approach their
work is essential to allowing
the visitor to forget the fact of
design and be transported by
a garden. They designed the
Jardin des Hespérides for the
Metis International Garden
Festival of 2006. The design
voice of Andy Cao can clearly
be heard, as the garden uses
materials, scents, and textures
from his native Vietnam.
h Introduction
b History and Ideas
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15. The history of humankind is written in the landscape. Every
civilization, every empire, has left its mark in some significant
way. People have, for millennia, felt the need to build and
create, not just to provide for the basic needs of food,
shelter, and companionship but to make glorious monuments
that symbolize their collective ambitions. Some stunning
landscapes evolve over generations not as monuments
but as eloquent records of human toil and subsistence
such as the Banaue Rice Terraces of the Philippines.
We have, as an ever more urban species, become disconnected
in many ways from the landscape that supports us. For
example, we are rarely able to make a link between the
food on our plates and the landscape that produced it. This
disconnection is also often clear when we look at the great
built landscapes of our past. Most people, for instance,
see the Pyramids at Giza as merely buildings, but in reality
they were important elements of a complex functioning
landscape: a necropolis. An understanding of the history
of landscapes can help us to see the whole picture.
Landscapes are the result of a conversation between
people and place. We shape our environments, but our
environments in turn shape us. Understanding landscape
history and its impact upon the way we design today is
dependent upon this realization; for landscape architects, it is
important to know that we don’t start with a clean slate but
that our work is part of this ongoing conversation in which
humans are part of nature, not merely actors upon it.
1.1
The Banaue Rice Terraces, the Philippines
The terraces of the mountains of Ifugao in the
Philippines were built by hand by many generations
of farmers. Today, it is not so much their crops
but their scenic and topographic appeal to tourists
that provides sustenance for the locals.
1.1
History and Ideas
11
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16. Landscape architecture, as it is practiced today,
is quite distinct from its historical roots in
landscape gardening, and it is on a course that
is still evolving. At its most basic level, it is still
about building landscapes for inhabitation and
sustaining the human species. However, the
great advances of knowledge and technology
through the past two centuries have completely
changed our relationship with the land.
One of the greatest paradoxes of our day, perhaps, is
that while we have never known more about natural
systems, we have never in history done more damage
to them. There is now almost no place on Earth that
we have not changed or affected in some way. Even
places we tend to see as virgin wilderness, such as
the Amazon basin or even the ocean floors, have
been progressively and radically modified by human
actions; new methods of landscape analysis show
records of extensive prehistoric civilizations in the
Amazon, not to mention the contemporary presence
of indigenous people. The ocean floors show a record
of massive recent silt deposits from human agricultural
processes along with displaying debris from shipwrecks
to garbage. Landscape architecture is increasingly
responding to the realization that we are living in a
world that is very much of our own making, and if
we are to save it for the future, it will require a great
deal more making and significantly less destroying.
Yesterday and Today
—
12
History and Ideas
What we owe the future is not a new
start, for we can only begin with what
has happened. We owe the future
the past, the long knowledge that
is the potency of time to come.”
Wendell Berry, poet and novelist
“
People have long left their mark on the landscape,
from the earliest cave paintings at the caves of Lascaux
or Chauvet in France to Stonehenge in the UK or
the enigmatic Serpent Mound in Ohio, USA. While
we shape landscapes, we are at the same time the
product of these places. In an urbanized world, we
are more and more the product of city landscapes. As
with rural landscapes, no two cities are alike, and so
it is with people. A forest dweller is as different from
a desert nomad as a Parisian is from an Athenian.
It is in the landscape that all the interconnected
forces of our existence come together. The ability
to arrive at an enlightened design and strategy that
recognizes the uniqueness of individual places
while understanding their place in larger systems
is thus a crucial skill. Landscape architecture is
growing to meet this challenge—it is building
upon its past to create a better future for all.
A975-14.indb 12 10/17/14 8:47 AM
17. 13
1.2
Vintage aerial view of Central Park,
New York City, USA
This is an aerial view of the Central Park entrance
at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in New York City,
in 1886. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s
design for Central Park serves as a marker for the
emergence of the defined profession of landscape
architecture. This chapter, though, shows that landscape
design is a practice that is much more ancient.
1.2
h Yesterday and Today
b Before the Ancient World
A975-14.indb 13 10/17/14 8:48 AM
18. Timeline
—
14
History and Ideas
1.3
c10,000 BCE
The beginnings of agriculture
and of the Neolithic age
c7000 BCE
The first urban center at
Çatalhöyük, Turkey
c3000 BCE
Settlement at Skara Brae,
Orkney, Scotland
c2600–2500 BCE
The Pyramids at Giza, Egypt
The Pyramids are part of a
complex funerary landscape
or necropolis (“city of the
dead”). The site required
stable ground that would take
the weight of the buildings.
The site also needed to be
near a quarry. The grounds
surrounding the Pyramids
were designed for ceremony
and majesty.
c2250 BCE
The Ziggurat at Ur,
Sumer, Mesopotamia
The Ziggurat at Ur stood
at the heart of a temple
complex, in the heart of
one of the earliest cities.
It symbolized not only
religious power, but it also
marked the center of one of
the earliest empires: that of
the ancient Sumerians.
c3100–1900 BCE
Stonehenge,
Wiltshire, England
For over a millennium
the ceremonial site and
astronomical observatory
at Stonehenge was in active
use and was continually
modified. It is one of the
most enduring symbols ever
inscribed on the landscape.
1333–1324 BCE
Reign of Tutankhamun
c540 BCE
The founding of
Persepolis, Persia
Emperors of Persia Cyrus
the Great and his son
Darius the Great built
Persepolis as their capital in
what is now southwestern
Iran. It was a center of
ceremony, marked with lavish
and impressive buildings.
c500 BCE
Birth of Gautama Buddha
356 BCE
Birth of Alexander the Great
0 CE
Birth of Jesus Christ
570 CE
Birth of the Prophet
Muhammad
1096
The First Crusade
14th Century
The rise of the Aztec Empire
The beginning of the
Black Plague
1406–1420
The Forbidden City,
Beijing, China
The Forbidden City was built
as the capital of the empire of
the Ming Dynasty of China.
It sits at the center of a city
grid that forms the street
pattern of Beijing to this day.
The Forbidden City was the
Emperor’s palace, and he
controlled all entry to the city.
1455–1487
The Wars of the Roses
1508–1512
Michelangelo paints the
Sistine Chapel
1550
The gardens at the Villa
d’Este, Tivoli, Italy
The Villa d’Este is a
masterpiece of Renaissance
Italian garden design. It is a
highly romanticized image
of the natural world and is
notable for its very elaborate
gravity-fed fountains.
1564
Birth of William Shakespeare
1620
Shalimar Bagh, Kashmir, India
Elaborate fountains and
cascades over three levels
were constructed in the
beautiful Shalimar Gardens
of the Shah Jahan. The
gardens were arranged in
a grid pattern, much like
Shah Jahan’s most famous
creation: the Taj Mahal.
1633
Inquisition trial of
Galileo Galilei
A975-14.indb 14 10/17/14 8:48 AM
19. 15
1.3
Timeline
This timeline shows some of the major events
in the history of landscape architecture.
1661
Vaux-le-Vicomte, near
Melun, France
André le Nôtre designed
the impeccable landscape
at Vaux-le-Vicomte, a
masterpiece of baroque
design, which incited such
jealousy in Louis XIV that he
hired the same designer to
create the ultimate garden for
him at Versailles.
1666
The Great Fire of London
1740–1760
The Gardens at Stourhead,
Wiltshire, England
Built in the English landscape
tradition, the Stourhead
gardens were hugely
influential, both in their day
and today. They continue
to serve as a model for
park design.
1769
Birth of Napoleon Bonaparte
1776
The American Revolution
1789–1799
The French Revolution
Late 1700s
The Industrial Revolution
1804
Père Lachaise Cemetery,
Paris, France
The cemetery of Père
Lachaise contains the
tombs of some of the most
famous French figures of two
centuries. Its picturesque
style set the tone for later
cemeteries, such as Mount
Auburn in Massachusetts.
1827
Invention of the lawnmower
1839–1860
Baron Georges-Eugène
Haussmann’s renovation
of Paris
1857
Central Park, New York, USA
The vision of Frederick Law
Olmsted, Central Park was
conceived as an egalitarian
public space for all the people
of New York.
1914–1918
The First World War
1939–1945
The Second World War
1950
Indian Independence
1967
Paley Park, New York, USA
A tiny oasis in Manhattan
where the sound of a wall
of water washes away the
noise of the city. Designed
by landscape architects Zion
and Breen.
1968
Assassination of Martin
Luther King
1969
First man on the moon
1970
Copacabana Beach, Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil
Bold modernist patterns,
including the emblematic
wave motif that unifies the
waterfront along Copacabana
Beach, are typical of the
work of Roberto Burle Marx.
His exuberant landscapes
captured the optimistic spirit
of the age.
1975
End of the Vietnam War
1989
Berlin Wall dismantled
2003
War in Iraq
2012
Olympic Games in London,
UK
2016
Olympic Games in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil
h Yesterday and Today
b Before the Ancient World
A975-14.indb 15 10/17/14 8:48 AM
20. 16
History and Ideas
Before the Ancient World
—
When we dream alone it is only a
dream, but when many dream together
it is the beginning of a new reality.”
Friedensreich Hundertwasser, painter and architect
“
As agriculture emerged around 10,000–12,000
years ago, fixed settlements of people became
more common. It is easier to imagine that people
might have given names to the hills and rivers that
gave shape to their existence, which provided
them with more stable sustenance. Skara Brae
on the windswept Orkney Islands to the north of
Scotland is the most complete Stone Age settlement
in Europe, built roughly 5,000 years ago.
What is startling about Skara Brae is just how
recognizable it is that people were making
a home, a community, a place, in more or
less the same way as we do now.
Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, and the great
field of standing stones at Carnac in Brittany,
France, are monumental examples of how Stone
Age people left their mark on the land.
The Dawn of Civilization
—
1.4
Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands, Scotland
Skara Brae was continually occupied for approximately
600 years. The buildings were nestled into
heaps of old kitchen rubbish called “middens,”
which provided shelter and insulation for the
buildings from the harsh North Sea climate.
1.4
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21. 17
a Yesterday and Today
h
Before the
Ancient World
b The Ancient World
A975-14.indb 17 10/17/14 8:48 AM
22. 18
History and Ideas
Western Civilizations
—
Mesopotamia has long been considered the
“cradle of civilization,” at least of western urban
and agrarian civilization. Mesopotamia, the rich
but vast and featureless valleys of the Tigris and
Euphrates (now present-day Iraq), was farmed by the
Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians.
The Sumerians built great brick ziggurats—stepped
pyramids rising high out of the level plain. Some
archaeologists believe that the terraces of these
huge structures were planted with trees and gardens.
These massive pyramids would have helped to
organize the flat landscape as landmarks—markers
of place and identity as well as aids to navigation.
The floodwaters of the Nile River in Africa nourished
the land with silts and sediments in much the same
way as the Tigris and Euphrates, and the civilization
of ancient Egypt took root in these fertile plains.
The great ambitions and power of the pharaohs
made it possible for the necropolis of pyramids
at Giza to be built, as well as the remarkable
temple at Karnak and the tombs at Luxor.
The seat of Mediterranean civilization was soon to
shift north from Egypt to ancient Greece, and then
to Rome, where the philosophies underpinning
the western world view were first articulated.
1.5a
A975-14.indb 18 10/17/14 8:48 AM
23. 19
1.5a–1.5b
The temple complex at Karnak near Luxor, Egypt
A sphinx-lined avenue connects two of the temples at Karnak.
The great complexity of the site takes it out of the realm of building
architecture into landscape architecture and urbanism. The entire
complex is a walled enclosure with interior spaces that include
buildings and garden courtyards. The processional routes between
the temples foreshadow the great avenues that were to come.
a Yesterday and Today
h
Before the
Ancient World
b The Ancient World
1.5b
A975-14.indb 19 10/17/14 8:48 AM
25. S
CHAPTER I.
The Perspective View.
tanding on the threshold of the Twentieth Century, and looking
back a hundred years, the Nineteenth Century presents in the field
of invention a magnificent museum of thoughts crystallized and
made immortal, not as passive gems of nature, but as potent,
active, useful agencies of man. The philosophical mind is ever
accustomed to regard all stages of growth as proceeding by slow and
uniform processes of evolution, but in the field of invention the
Nineteenth Century has been unique. It has been something more than a
merely normal growth or natural development. It has been a gigantic
tidal wave of human ingenuity and resource, so stupendous in its
magnitude, so complex in its diversity, so profound in its thought, so
fruitful in its wealth, so beneficent in its results, that the mind is strained
and embarrassed in its effort to expand to a full appreciation of it.
Indeed, the period seems a grand climax of discovery, rather than an
increment of growth. It has been a splendid, brilliant campaign of brains
and energy, rising to the highest achievement amid the most fertile
resources, and conducted by the strongest and best equipment of
modern thought and modern strength.
The great works of the ancients are in the main mere monuments of the
patient manual labor of myriads of workers, and can only rank with the
buildings of the diatom and coral insect. Not so with modern
achievement. The last century has been peculiarly an age of ideas and
conservation of energy, materialized in practical embodiment as labor-
saving inventions, often the product of a single mind, and partaking of
the sacred quality of creation.
The old word of creation is, that God breathed into the clay the breath of
life. In the new world of invention mind has breathed into matter, and a
26. new and expanding creation unfolds itself. The speculative philosophy of
the past is but a too empty consolation for short-lived, busy man, and,
seeing with the eye of science the possibilities of matter, he has touched
it with the divine breath of thought and made a new world.
When the Nineteenth Century registered its advent in history, the world
of invention was a babe still in its swaddling clothes, but, with a
consciousness of coming power, was beginning to stretch its strong
young arms into the tremendous energy of its life. James Watt had
invented the steam engine. Eli Whitney had given us the cotton gin. John
Gutenberg had made his printing type. Franklin had set up his press. The
telescope had suggested the possibilities of ethereal space, the compass
was already the mariner’s best friend, and gunpowder had given proof of
its deadly agency, but inventive genius was still groping by the light of a
tallow candle. Even up to the beginning of this century so strong a hold
had superstition on the human mind, that inventions were almost
synonymous with the black arts, and the struggling genius had not only
to contend with the natural laws and the thousand and one expected
difficulties that hedge the path of the inventor, but had also to overcome
the far greater obstacles of ignorant fear and bigoted prejudice. A labor-
saving machine was looked upon askance as the enemy of the working
man, and many an earnest inventor, after years of arduous thought and
painstaking labor, saw his cherished model broken up and his hopes
forever blasted by the animosity of his fellow men. But with the
Nineteenth Century a new era has dawned. The legitimate results of
inventions have been realized in larger incomes, shorter hours of labor,
and lives so much richer in health, comfort, happiness, and usefulness,
that to-day the inventor is a benefactor whom the world delights to
honor. So crowded is the busy life of modern civilization with the
evidences of his work, that it is impossible to open one’s eyes without
seeing it on every hand, woven into the very fabric of daily existence. It
is easy to lose sight of the wonderful when once familiar with it, and we
usually fail to give the full measure of positive appreciation to the great
things of this great age. They burst upon our vision at first like flashing
meteors; we marvel at them for a little while, and then we accept them
as facts, which soon become so commonplace and so fused into the
common life as to be only noticed by their omission.
27. To appreciate them let us briefly contrast the conditions of to-day with
those of a hundred years ago. This is no easy task, for the comparison
not only involves the experiences of two generations, but it is like the
juxtaposition of a star with the noonday sun, whose superior brilliancy
obliterates the lesser light. But reverse the wheels of progress, and let us
make a quick run of one hundred years into the past, and what are our
experiences? Before we get to our destination we find the wheels
themselves beginning to thump and jolt, and the passage becomes more
difficult, more uncomfortable, and so much slower. We are no longer
gliding along in a luxurious palace car behind a magnificent locomotive,
traveling on steel rails, at sixty miles an hour, but we find ourselves
nearing the beginning of the Nineteenth Century in a rickety, rumbling,
dusty stage-coach. Pause! and consider the change for a moment in
some of its broader aspects. First, let us examine the present more
closely, for the average busy man, never looking behind him for
comparisons, does not fully appreciate or estimate at its real value the
age in which he lives. There are to-day (statistics of 1898), 445,064 miles
of railway tracks in the world. This would build seventeen different
railway tracks, of two rails each, around the entire world, or would girdle
mother earth with thirty-four belts of steel. If extended in straight lines, it
would build a track of two rails to the moon, and more than a hundred
thousand miles beyond it. The United States has nearly half of the entire
mileage of the world, and gets along with 36,746 locomotives, nearly as
many passenger coaches, and more than a million and a quarter of
freight cars, which latter, if coupled together, would make nearly three
continuous trains reaching across the American continent from the
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The movement of passenger trains is
equivalent to dispatching thirty-seven trains per day around the world,
and the freight train movement is in like manner equal to dispatching
fifty-three trains a day around the world. Add to this the railway business
controlled by other countries, and one gets some idea of how far the
stage-coach has been left behind. To-day we eat supper in one city, and
breakfast in another so many hundreds of miles east or west as to be
compelled to set our watches to the new meridian of longitude in order to
keep our engagement. But railroads and steam-cars constitute only one
of the stirring elements of modern civilization. As we make the backward
run of one hundred years we have passed by many milestones of
progress. Let us see if we can count some of them as they disappear
28. behind us. We quickly lose the telephone, phonograph and graphophone.
We no longer see the cable-cars or electric railways. The electric lights
have gone out. The telegraph disappears. The sewing machine, reaper,
and thresher have passed away, and so also have all india-rubber goods.
We no longer see any photographs, photo-engravings, photolithographs,
or snap-shot cameras. The wonderful octuple web perfecting printing
press; printing, pasting, cutting, folding, and counting newspapers at the
rate of 96,000 per hour, or 1,600 per minute, shrinks at the beginning of
the century into an insignificant prototype. We lose all planing and wood-
working machinery, and with it the endless variety of sashes, doors,
blinds, and furniture in unlimited variety. There are no gas-engines, no
passenger elevators, no asphalt pavement, no steam fire engine, no
triple-expansion steam engine, no Giffard injector, no celluloid articles, no
barbed wire fences, no time-locks for safes, no self-binding harvesters, no
oil nor gas wells, no ice machines nor cold storage. We lose air engines,
stem-winding watches, cash-registers and cash-carriers, the great
suspension bridges, and tunnels, the Suez Canal, iron frame buildings,
monitors and heavy ironclads, revolvers, torpedoes, magazine guns and
Gatling guns, linotype machines, all practical typewriters, all pasteurizing,
knowledge of microbes or disease germs, and sanitary plumbing, water-
gas, soda water fountains, air brakes, coal-tar dyes and medicines, nitro-
glycerine, dynamite and guncotton, dynamo electric machines, aluminum
ware, electric locomotives, Bessemer steel with its wonderful
developments, ocean cables, enameled iron ware, Welsbach gas burners,
electric storage batteries, the cigarette machine, hydraulic dredges, the
roller mills, middlings purifiers and patent-process flour, tin can machines,
car couplings, compressed air drills, sleeping cars, the dynamite gun, the
McKay shoe machine, the circular knitting machine, the Jacquard loom,
wood pulp for paper, fire alarms, the use of anæsthetics in surgery,
oleomargarine, street sweepers, Artesian wells, friction matches, steam
hammers, electro-plating, nail machines, false teeth, artificial limbs and
eyes, the spectroscope, the Kinetoscope or moving pictures, acetylene
gas, X-ray apparatus, horseless carriages, and—but, enough! the reader
exclaims, and indeed it is not pleasant to contemplate the loss. The
negative conditions of that period extend into such an appalling void that
we stop short, shrinking from the thought of what it would mean to
modern civilization to eliminate from its life these potent factors of its
existence.
29. Returning to the richness and fullness of the present life, we shall first
note chronologically the milestones and finger boards which mark this
great tramway of progress, and afterward consider separately the more
important factors of progress.
31. CHAPTER II.
Chronology of Leading Inventions of the Nineteenth
Century.
1800—Volta’s Chemical Battery for producing Electricity. Louis Robert’s
Machine for Making Continuous Webs of Paper.
1801—Trevithick’s Steam Coach (first automobile). Brunel’s Mortising
Machine. Jacquard’s Pattern Loom. First Fire Proof Safe by Richard
Scott. Columbium discovered by Hatchett.
1802—Trevithick and Vivian’s British patent for Running Coaches by
Steam. Charlotte Dundas (Steamboat) towed canal Boats on the
Clyde. Tantalum discovered by Ekeberg. First Photographic
Experiments by Wedgewood and Davy. Bramah’s Planing Machine.
1803—Carpue’s Experiments on Therapeutic Application of Electricity.
Iridium and Osmium discovered by Tenant, and Cerium by
Berzelius. Wm. Horrocks applies Steam to the Loom.
1804—Rhodium and Palladium discovered by Wollaston. First Steam
Railway and Locomotive by Richard Trevithick. Capt. John Stevens
applies twin Screw Propellers in Steam Navigation. Winsor takes
British patent for Illuminating Gas, lights Lyceum Theatre, and
organizes First Gas Company. Lucas’ process making Malleable
Iron Castings.
1805—Life Preserver invented by John Edwards of London. Electro-plating
invented by Brugnatelli.
1806—Jeandeau’s Knitting Machine.
1807—First practical Steamboat between New York and Albany (Fulton’s
Clermont). Discovery of Potassium, Sodium and Boron by Davy.
32. Forsyth’s Percussion Lock for Guns.
1808—Barium, Strontium, and Calcium discovered by Davy. Polarization
of Light from Reflection by Malus. Voltaic arc discovered by Davy.
1809—Sommering’s Multi-wire Telegraphy.
1810—System of Homœopathy organized by Hahnemann.
1811—Discovery of Metal Iodine by M. Courtois. Blenkinsop’s Locomotive.
Colored Polarization of Light by Arago. Thornton and Hall’s Breech
Loading Musket.
1812—London the First City lighted by Gas. Ritter’s Storage Battery.
Schilling proposes use of Electricity to blow up mines. Zamboni’s
Dry Pile (prototype of dry battery).
1813—Howard’s British patent for Vacuum Pan for refining sugar. Hedley’s
Locomotive “Puffing Billy.” Introduction of Stereotyping in the
United States by David Bruce.
1814—London Times printed by König’s rotary steam press. Stephenson’s
First Locomotive. Demologos built by Fulton (the first steam war
vessel). Heliography by Niépce. Discovery of Cyanogen by Gay
Lussac. The Kaleidoscope invented by Sir David Brewster.
1815—Safety Lamp by Sir Humphrey Davy. Seidlitz Powders invented.
Gas Meter by Clegg.
1816—The “Draisine” Bicycle. Circular Knitting Machine by Brunel.
1817—Discovery of Selenium by Berzelius, Cadmium by Stromeyer, and
Lithium by Arfvedson. Hunt’s Pin Machine.
1818—Brunel’s patent Subterranean and Submarine tunnels. Electro-
Magnetism discovered by Oersted of Copenhagen.
1819—American Steamer Savannah from New York first to cross Atlantic.
Laennec discovers Auscultation and invents Stethoscope.
Blanchard’s Lathe for turning Irregular Forms.
1820—Electro-Magnetic Multiplier by Schweigger. Discoveries in Electro-
magnetism by Ampere and Arago. Bohnenberg’s Electroscope.
33. Discovery of Quinine by Pelletier and Caventou. Malam’s Gas
Meter.
1821—Faraday converts Electric Current into Mechanical Motion.
1822—Babbage Calculation Engine.
1823—Liquefaction and Solidification of Gases by Faraday, and foundation
of ammonia absorption ice machine laid by him. Seebeck discovers
Thermo-electricity. Silicon discovered by Berzelius.
1824—Discovery of metal Zirconium by Berzelius. Wright’s Pin Machine.
1825—First Passenger Railway in the world opened between Stockton
and Darlington. Sturgeon invents prototype of Electro Magnet.
Beaumont’s discoveries in Digestion (Alexis San Martin 1825-32).
1826—Discovery of Bromine by M. Balard. Barlow’s Electrical Spur Wheel.
First Railroad in United States built near Quincy, Mass.
1827—Aluminum reduced by Wohler. Ohm’s Law of Electrical Resistance.
Hackworth’s Improvements in Locomotive. Friction Matches by
John Walker.
1828—Neilson’s Hot Blast for Smelting Iron. Professor Henry invents the
Spool Electro Magnet. Tubular Locomotive Boiler by Seguin. First
Artificial production of organic compounds (urea) by Wohler.
Thorium discovered by Berzelius. Yttrium and Glucinum discovered
by Wohler. Nicol’s prism for Polarized Light. Woodworth’s wood
planer. Spinning Ring invented by John Thorp.
1829—Becquerel’s Double Fluid Galvanic Battery. George Stephenson’s
Locomotive, “Rocket,” takes prizes of Liverpool and Manchester
Railway. Importation of “Stourbridge Lion,” the first locomotive to
run in the United States. Daguerreotype invented. Discovery of
Magnesium by Bussey.
1830—Vanadium discovered by Sefstroem. Abbe Dal Negro’s Electrically
operated pendulum. Ericsson’s Steam Fire Engine.
1831—Faraday discovers Magnetic Induction. Professor Henry telegraphs
signals. Professor Henry invents his Electric Motor. Locomotive
34. “John Bull” put in service on Camden and Amboy R. R. Chloroform
discovered by Guthrie. McCormick first experiments with Reaper.
1832—Professor Morse conceives the idea of Electric Telegraph. First
Magneto-Electric Machines by Saxton in United States and Pixii in
France. Sturgeon’s Rotary Electric Motor. Baldwin’s first locomotive,
“Old Ironsides,” built. Link Motion for Locomotive Engine invented
by James. Chloral-hydrate discovered by Liebig.
1833—Steam Whistle adopted by Stephenson. Hussey’s Reaper patented.
1834—Jacobi’s Rotary Electric Motor. Henry Bessemer electro-plates lead
castings with copper. Faraday demonstrates relation of chemical
and electrical force. McCormick Reaper patented. Carbolic Acid
discovered by Runge. Perkins’ Ice Machine.
1835—Forbes proves the absence of heat in Moonlight. Burden’s horse
shoe Machine.
1836—The Daniell Constant Battery invented. Acetylene Gas produced by
Edmond Davy. Colt’s Revolver.
1837—Cooke and Wheatstone’s British patent for Electric telegraph.
Steinheil discovered feasibility of using the earth for return section
of electric circuit. Davenport’s Electric Motor. Spencer’s
experiments in electrotyping. Galvanized Iron invented by
Craufurd.
1838—Professor Morse’s French patent for Telegraph. Jacobi’s Galvano-
plastic process for making Electrotype Printing Plates. Reflecting
Stereoscope by Wheatstone. Dry Gas Meter by Defries.
1839—Wreck of Royal George blown up by Electro Blasting. Jacobi builds
first Electrically propelled Boat. Fox Talbot makes Photo Prints from
Negatives. Professors Draper and Morse make first Photographic
Portraits. Mungo Ponton applies Bichromate of Potash in
Photography. Goodyear discovers process of Vulcanizing Rubber.
Lanthanum and Didymium discovered by Mosander. Babbit Metal
invented.
35. 1840—Professor Morse’s United States patent for Electric Telegraph.
Professor Grove makes first Incandescent Electric Lamp. Celestial
Photography by Professor Draper.
1841—Artesian well bored at Grenelle, Paris. Sickel’s Steam Cut-off.
Talbotype Photos. M. Triger invents Pneumatic Caissons.
1842—First production of Illuminating Gas from water (water gas) by M.
Selligue. Robt. Davidson builds Electric Locomotive. Nasmyth
patents Steam Hammer.
1843—Joule’s demonstration as to the Nature of Force. Erbium and
Terbium discovered by Mosander. The Thames Tunnel Opened.
1844—First Telegraphic Message sent by Morse from Washington to
Baltimore. Application Nitrous Oxide Gas as an Anæsthetic by Dr.
Wells.
1845—Ruthenium discovered by Klaws. The Starr-King Incandescent
Electric Lamp. The Hoe Type Revolving Machine.
1846—House’s Printing Telegraph. Howe’s Sewing Machine. Suez Canal
Started (fourteen years building). Crusell of St. Petersburgh
invents Electric Cautery. Use of Ether as Anæsthetic by Dr. Morton.
Artificial Legs. Discovery of Planet Neptune. Sloan patents Gimlet
Pointed Screw. Gun Cotton discovered by Schönbein.
1847—Chloroform introduced by Dr. Simpson. Nitro-Glycerine discovered
by Sobrero. Time-Locks invented by Savage.
1848—Discovery of Satellites of Saturn by Lassell. Bain’s Chemical
Telegraph. Bakewell’s Fac-Simile Telegraph.
1849—Bourdon’s Pressure Gauge. Lenticular Stereoscope by Brewster.
Hibbert’s Latch Needle for Knitting Machine. Corliss Engine.
1850—First Submarine Cable—Dover to Calais. Collodion Process in
Photography. Mercerizing Cloth. American Machine-made Watches.
1851—Dr. Page’s Electric Locomotive. The Ruhmkorff Coil. Scott Archer’s
Collodion Process in Photography. Seymour’s Self-Raker for
36. Harvesters. Helmholtz invents Opthalmoscope. Maynard Breech
Loading Rifle.
1852—Channing and Farmer Fire Alarm Telegraph. Fox Talbot first uses
reticulated screen for Half Tone Printing.
1853—Gintl’s Duplex Telegraph invented. Electric Lamps devised by
Foucault and Duboscq. Watt and Burgess Soda Process for Making
Wood Pulp.
1854—Wilson’s Four Motion Feed for Sewing Machines. Melhuish invents
the Photographic Roll Films. Hermann’s Diamond Drill. Smith and
Wesson Magazine Firearm (Foundation of the Winchester).
1855—Bessemer Process of Making Steel. Hjorth invents Dynamo Electric
Machine. Ericsson’s Air Engine. Niagara Suspension Bridge. Dr. J.
M. Taupenot invents Dry Plate Photography. The Michaux Bicycle.
1856—Hughes Printing Telegraph. Alliance Magneto Electric Machine.
Woodruff Sleeping Car. First commercial Aniline Dyes by Perkins.
Siemens Regenerative Furnace.
1857—Rogues’ Gallery established in New York. Introduction of Iron Floor
Beams in building Cooper Institute. Siemens describes principle of
Self Intensification of Cold (now used in ice and liquid air
machines).
1858—Phelps Printing Telegraph invented. First Atlantic Cable Laid. Paper
pulp from Wood by Voelter. First use of Electric Light in Light
House at South Foreland. Giffard Steam Injector. Gardner patents
first Underground Cable Car System.
1859—Discovery Coal Oil in United States. Moses G. Farmer subdivides
Electric Current through a number of Electric Lamps, and lights
first dwelling by Electricity. Great Eastern launched. Osborne
perfects modern process of Photolithography. Professors Kirchhoff
and Bunsen map Solar Spectrum, and establish Spectrum Analysis.
1860—Rubidium and Caesium discovered by Bunsen. Gaston Planté’s
Storage Battery. Reis’ Crude Telephone. Thallium discovered by
37. Crookes, and Indium by Reich and Richter. Spencer and Henry
Magazine Rifles. Carré’s Ammonia Absorption Ice Machine.
1861—McKay Shoe Sewing Machine. Calcium Carbide produced by
Wohler. Col. Green invents Drive Well. Otis Passenger Elevator.
First Barbed Wire Fence.
1862—Ericsson’s Iron Clad Turret Monitor. Emulsions and improvements
in Dry Plate Photography by Russell and Sayce. The Gatling Gun.
Timby’s Revolving Turret.
1863—Schultz white gunpowder.
1864—Nobel’s Explosive Gelatine. Rubber Dental Plates. Cabin John
(Washington Aqueduct) Bridge finished (longest masonry span in
the world).
1865—Louis Pasteur’s work in Bacteriology begun. Martin’s Process of
making Steel.
1866—Wilde’s Dynamo Electric Machine. Burleigh’s Compressed Air Rock
Drill. Whitehead Torpedo.
1867—Siemens’ Dynamo Electric Machine. Dynamite Invented. Tilghman’s
Sulphite Process for making Wood Pulp.
1868—Brickill’s Water Heater for Steam Fire Engines. Moncrieff’s
Disappearing Gun Carriage. Oleomargarine invented by Mege.
Sholes Typewriter.
1869—Suez Canal Opened. Pacific Railway Completed. First Westinghouse
Air-Brakes.
1870—The Gramme Dynamo Electric Machine. Windhausen Refrigerating
Machines. Beleaguered Paris communicates with outer world
through Micro-Photographs. Hailer’s Rebounding Gun Lock.
Dittmar’s Gunpowder.
1871—Hoe’s Web Perfecting Press set up in Office New York Tribune. The
Locke Grain Binder. Bridge Work in Dentistry. Mount Cenis Tunnel
opened for traffic. Phosphorus Bronze. Ingersoll Compressed Air
Rock Drill.
38. 1872—Stearns perfects Duplex Telegraph. Westinghouse Improved
automatic Air Brake. Lyall Positive Motion Loom.
1873—Janney Automatic Car Coupler. Oleomargarine patented in United
States by Mege.
1874—Edison’s Quadruplex Telegraph. Gorham’s Twine Binder for
Harvesters. Barbed Wire Machines. St. Louis Bridge finished.
1875—Lowe’s patent for Water Gas (illuminating gas made from water).
Roller Mills and Middlings Purifier for making flour. Gallium
discovered by Boisbaudran. Pictet Ice Machine. Gamgee’s Skating
Rinks. First Cash Carrier for Stores.
1876—Alexander Graham Bell’s Speaking Telephone. Hydraulic Dredges.
Cigarette Machinery. Photographing by Electric Light by Vander
Weyde. Edison’s Electric Pen. Steam Feed for Saw Mill Carriages.
Introduction of Cable Cars by Hallidie.
1877—Phonograph invented by Edison. Otto Gas Engine. Jablochkoff
Electric Candle. Sawyer-Man Electric Lamp. Berliner’s Telephone
Transmitter of variable resistance (pat. Nov. 17, ’91). Edison’s
Carbon Microphone (pat. May 3, ’92). Discovery of Satellites of
Mars by Professor Asaph Hall, and its so-called Canals by
Schiaparelli. Liquefaction of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Air by Pictet and
Cailletet.
1878—Development of Remington Typewriter. Edison invents Carbon
Filament for Incandescent Electric Lamp. Gelatino-Bromide
Emulsions in Photography. Ytterbium discovered by Marignac.
Birkenhead Yielding Spinning Spindle Bearing. Gessner Cloth Press.
1879—Dr. Siemens’ Electric Railway at Berlin. Mississippi Jetties
completed by Capt. Eads. Samarium discovered by Boisbaudran,
Scandium by Nilson, and Thulium by Cleve. The Lee Magazine
Rifle.
1880—Faure’s Storage Battery. Eberth and Koch discover Bacillus of
Typhoid Fever, and Sternberg the Bacillus of Pneumonia. Edison’s
Magnetic Ore Concentrator. Greener’s Hammerless Gun. Rabbeth
Spinning Spindle patented.
39. 1881—Telegraphing by Induction by Wm. W. Smith. Blake Telephone
Transmitter. Reece Button Hole Machine. Rack-a-rock (explosive)
patented.
1882—Bacillus of Tuberculosis identified by Koch, and Bacillus of
Hydrophobia by Pasteur. St. Gothard Tunnel opened for traffic.
1883—Brooklyn Suspension Bridge Completed.
1884—Antipyrene. Mergenthaler’s first Linotype Printing Machine
invented. Bacillus of Cholera identified by Koch, Bacillus of
Diphtheria by Loeffler, and Bacillus of Lockjaw by Nicolaier.
1885—Cowles’ Process of Manufacturing Aluminum. First Electric Railway
in America installed between Baltimore and Hampden. Neodymium
and Praseodymium discovered by Welsbach. Welsbach Gas Burner
invented. Blowing up of Flood Rock, New York Harbor. “Bellite”
produced by Lamm, and “Melinite” by Turpin.
1886—Graphophone invented. Electric Welding by Elihu Thomson.
Gadolinum discovered by Marignac, and Germanium by Winkler.
1887—McArthur and Forrest’s Cyanide Process of Obtaining Gold. Tesla’s
System of Polyphase Currents.
1888—Electrocution of Criminals adopted in New York State. Harvey’s
Process of Annealing Armor Plate. De Laval’s Rotary Steam
Turbine. “Kodak” Snap-Shot Camera. Lick Telescope. De
Chardonnet’s Process of Making Artificial Silk.
1889—Nickel Steel. Hall’s Process of Making Aluminum. Dudley Dynamite
Gun. “Cordite” (Smokeless Powder) produced by Abel and Dewar.
1890—Mergenthaler’s Improved Linotype Machine. Photography in Colors.
The Great Forth Bridge finished. Krag-Jorgensen Magazine Rifle.
1891—Parsons’ Rotary Steam Turbine. The Northrup Loom.
1892—The explosive “Indurite” invented by Professor Munroe.
1893—Acheson’s process for making Carborundum. The Yerkes
Telescope. Edison’s Kinetoscope. Production of Calcium Carbide in
Electric Furnace by Willson.
40. 1894—Discovery of element Argon by Lord Rayleigh and Professor
Ramsey. Thorite produced by Bawden.
1895—X-Rays discovered and applied by Roentgen. Acetylene Gas from
Calcium Carbide by Willson. Krupp Armor Plate. Lindé’s Liquid air
apparatus.
1896—Marconi’s System of Wireless Telegraphy. Buffington-Crozier
Disappearing Gun.
1897—Schlick’s System of Balancing Marine Engines. Discovery of
Krypton by Ramsey and Travers.
1898—Horry and Bradley’s process of making Calcium Carbide. Discovery
of Neon and Metargon by Ramsey and Travers; Coronium by
Nasini; Xenon by Ramsey; Monium by Crookes, and Etherion by
Brush. Mercerizing Cloth under tension to render it Silky.
1899—Marconi Telegraphs without wire across the English Channel.
Oceanic launched, the largest steamer ever built.
1900—The Grande Lunette Telescope of Paris Exposition.
42. I
CHAPTER III.
The Electric Telegraph.
The Voltaic Pile—Daniell’s Battery—Use of Conducting Wire by Weber—Steinheil
Employs Earth as Return Circuit—Prof. Henry’s Electro Magnet, and First
Telegraphic Experiment—Prof. Morse’s Telegraphic Code and Register—First Line
Between Washington and Baltimore—Bain’s Chemical Telegraph—Gintl’s Duplex
Telegraph—Edison’s Quadruplex—House’s Printing Telegraph—Fac Simile Telegraphs
—Channing and Farmer Fire Alarm—Telegraphing by Induction—Wireless Telegraphy
by Marconi—Statistics.
n the effort to lengthen out the limited span of life into a greater
record of results, time becomes an object of economy. To save time
is to live long, and this in a pre-eminent degree is accomplished by
the telegraph. Of all the inventions which man has called into
existence to aid him in the fulfillment of his destiny, none so closely
resembles man himself in his dual quality of body and soul as the
telegraph. It too has a body and soul. We see the wire and the electro-
magnet, but not the vital principle which animates it. Without its subtile,
pulsating, intangible spirit, it is but dead matter. But vitalized with its
immortal soul it assumes the quality of animated existence, and through
its agency thought is extended beyond the limitations of time and space,
and flashes through air and sea around the world. Its moving principle
flows more silently than a summer’s zephyr, and yet it rises at times to an
angry and deadly crash in the lightning stroke. At once powerful and
elusive, it remained for Professor Morse to capture this wild steed, and,
taming it, place it in the permanent service of man. On May 24, 1844,
there went over the wires between Washington and Baltimore the first
message—“What hath God wrought?” This was both prayer and praise,
and no more lofty recognition of the divine power and beneficence could
have been made. It was indeed the work of God made manifest in the
hands of His children.
43. Popular estimation has always credited Prof. Morse with the invention of
the telegraph, but to ascribe to him all the praise would do great injustice
to many other worthy workers in this field, some of whom are regarded
by the best judges to be entitled to equal praise.
The practical telegraph as originally used is resolvable into four essential
elements, viz., the battery, the conducting wire, the electro-magnet, and
the receiving and transmitting instruments.
The development of the battery began with Galvani in 1790, and Volta in
1800. Galvani discovered that a frog’s legs would exhibit violent muscular
contraction when its exposed nerves were touched with one metal and its
muscles were touched with another metal, the two metals being
connected. The effect was due to an electric current generated and
acting with contractile effect on the muscles of the frog’s legs.
FIG. 1.
44. From this phenomenon, the chemical action of acids upon metals and the
production of an electric current were observed, and the voltaic pile was
invented. This consisted of alternate discs of copper and zinc, separated
by layers of cloth steeped in an acidulated solution. This was the
invention of Volta. From this grew the Daniell battery, invented in 1836 by
Prof. Daniell of London, quickly followed by those of Grove, Smee, and
others. These batteries were more constant or uniform in the production
of electricity, were free from odors, and did not require frequent cleaning,
as did the plates of the voltaic pile, which were important results for
telegraphic purposes. The Daniell battery in its original form employed an
acidulated solution of sulphate of copper in a copper cell containing a
porous cup, and a cylinder of amalgamated zinc in the porous cup and
surrounded by a weak acid solution. In the illustration, which shows a
slightly modified form, a cruciform rod of zinc within a porous cup is
surrounded by a copper cell, the whole being enclosed within a glass jar.
FIG. 2.—DANIELL’S BATTERY.
45. The second element of the telegraph—the conducting wire—was scarcely
an invention in itself, and the fact that electricity would act at a distance
through a metal conductor had been observed many years before the
Morse telegraph was invented. In 1823, however, Weber discovered that
a copper wire which he had carried over the houses and church steeples
of Göttingen from the observatory to the cabinet of Natural Philosophy,
required no special insulation. This was an important observation in the
practical construction of telegraph lines. One of even greater importance,
however, was that of Prof. Steinheil, of Munich, who, in 1837, made the
discovery of the practicability of using the earth as one-half, or the return
section, of the electric conductor.
FIG. 3.—PROF. HENRY’S INTENSITY MAGNET.
46. The third element of the telegraph is the electro-magnet. This, and its
arrangement as a relay in a local circuit, was a most important invention,
and contributed quite as much to the success of the telegraph as did the
inventions of Prof. Morse. It may be well to say that an electro-magnet is
a magnet which attracts an iron armature when an electric current is sent
through its coil of wire, and loses its attractive force when the circuit is
cut off, thereby rendering it possible to produce mechanical effects at a
distance through the agency of electrical impulses only. For the electro-
magnet the world is chiefly indebted to Prof. Joseph Henry, formerly of
Princeton, N. J., but later of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1828 he
invented the energetic modern form of electro-magnet with silk covered
wire wound in a series of crossed layers to form a helix of multiple layers
around a central soft iron core, and in 1831 succeeded in making
practical the production of mechanical effects at a distance, by the
tapping of a bell by a rod deflected by one of his electro-magnets. This
experiment may be considered the pioneer step of the telegraph.
FIG. 4.
HENRY. STURGEON.
Great as was the work of Prof. Henry, he must share the honors with a
number of prior inventors who made the electro-magnet possible.
Electro-magnetism, the underlying principle of the electro-magnet, was
first discovered in 1819 by Prof. Oersted, of Copenhagen. In 1820
Schweigger added the multiplier. Arago in the same year discovered that
a steel rod was magnetized when placed across a wire carrying an
electric current, and that iron filings adhered to a wire carrying a voltaic
47. current and dropped off when the current was broken. M. Ampere
substituted a helix for the straight wire, and Sturgeon, of England, in
1825 made the real prototype of the electro-magnet by winding a piece
of bare copper wire in a single coil around a varnished and insulated iron
core of a horse shoe form, but the powerful and effective electro-magnet
of Prof. Henry is to-day an essential part of the telegraph, is in universal
use, and is the foundation of the entire electrical art. It is unfortunate
that Prof. Henry did not perpetuate the records of his inventions in
patents, to which he was opposed, for there is good reason to believe
that he was also the original inventor of the important arrangement of
the electro-magnet as a relay in local circuit, and other features, which
have been claimed by other parties upon more enduring evidence, but
perhaps with less right of priority.
FIG. 5.—MORSE’S FIRST MODEL PENDULUM INSTRUMENT.
The fourth and great final addition to the telegraph which crowned it with
success was the Morse register and alphabetical code, the invention of
Prof. Samuel F. B. Morse, of Massachusetts. Prof. Morse’s invention was
made in 1832, while on board ship returning from Europe. He set up an
experimental line in 1835, and got his French patent October 30, 1838,
48. and his first United States patent June 20, 1840, No. 1647. In 1844 the
United States Congress appropriated $30,000 to build a line from
Baltimore to Washington, and on May 24, 1844, the notable message,
“What Hath God wrought?” went over the wires.
FIG. 6.—THE MORSE CODE.
Morse’s first model, his pendulum instrument of 1837, is illustrated in Fig.
5. A pendulum carrying a pencil was in constant contact with a strip of
paper drawn beneath the pencil. As long as inactive the pencil made a
straight line. The pendulum carried also an armature, and an electro-
magnet was placed near the armature. A current passed through the
magnet would draw the pendulum to one side. On being released the
pendulum would return, and in this way zigzag markings, as shown at 4
and 5, would be produced on the strip of paper, which formed the
alphabet. A different alphabet, known as the Morse Code, was
49. subsequently adopted by Morse, and in 1844 the receiving register shown
at Fig. 7 was adopted, which finally assumed the form shown at Fig. 8.
The alphabet consisted simply of an arrangement of dots and dashes in
varying sequence. The register is an apparatus operated by the combined
effects of a clock mechanism and electro-magnet. Under a roll, see Fig. 8,
a ribbon of paper is drawn by the clockwork. A lever having an armature
on one end arranged over the poles of an electro-magnet, carries on the
other end a point or stylus. When an electric impulse is sent over the line
the electro-magnet attracts the armature, and the stylus on the other end
of the lever is brought into contact with the paper strip, and makes an
indented impression. A short impulse gives a dot, and a long impulse
holds the stylus against the paper long enough to allow the clock
mechanism to pull the paper under the stylus and make a dash. By the
manipulation of a key for closing the electric circuit the short or long
impulse may be sent, at the pleasure of the operator.
FIG. 7.—MORSE RECEIVER.
This constituted the completed invention of the telegraph, and on
comparing the work of Profs. Henry and Morse, it is only fair to say that
Prof. Henry’s contribution to the telegraph is still in active use, while the
Morse register has been practically abandoned, as no expert telegrapher
requires the visible evidence of the code, but all rely now entirely upon
50. the sound click of the electro-magnet placed in the local circuit and
known as a sounder, the varying time lengths of gaps between the clicks
serving every purpose of rapid and intelligent communication. The
invention of the telegraph has been claimed for Steinheil, of Munich, and
also for Cooke and Wheatstone, in England, but few will deny that it is to
Prof. Morse’s indefatigable energy and inventive skill, with the preliminary
work of Prof. Henry, that the world to-day owes its great gift of the
electric telegraph, and with this gift the world’s great nervous forces have
been brought into an intimate and sensitive sympathy.
FIG. 8.—PERFECTED MORSE REGISTER.
Whenever an invention receives the advertisement of public approval and
commercial exploitation, the development of that invention along various
lines follows rapidly, and so when practical telegraphic communication
was solved by Henry, Morse, and others, further advances in various
directions were made. Efforts to increase the rapidity in sending
messages soon grew into practical success, and in 1848 Bain’s Chemical
Telegraph was brought out. (U. S. Pats. No. 5,957, Dec. 5, 1848, and No.
6,328, April 17, 1849.) This employed perforated strips of paper to effect
automatic transmission by contact made through the perforations in place
of the key, while a chemically prepared paper at the opposite end of the
51. line was discolored by the electric impulses to form the record. This was
the pioneer of the automatic system which by later improvements is able
to send over a thousand words a minute.
FIG. 9.—HOUSE PRINTING TELEGRAPH.
52. FIG. 10.—STOCK BROKER’S “TICKER,” WITH GLASS COVER
REMOVED.
In line with other efforts to increase the capacity of the wires, the duplex
telegraph was invented by Dr. William Gintl, of Austria, in 1853, and was
afterwards improved by Carl Frischen, of Hanover, and by Joseph B.
Stearns, of Boston, Mass, who in 1872 perfected the duplex (U. S. Pats.
No. 126,847, May 14, 1872, and No. 132,933, Nov. 12, 1872). This
system doubles the capacity of the telegraphic wire, and its principle of
action permits messages sent from the home station to the distant
station to have no effect on the home station, but full effect on the
distant station, so that the operators at the opposite ends of the line may
both telegraph over the same wire, at the same time, in opposite
directions. This system has been further enlarged by the quadruplex
system of Edison, which was brought out in 1874 (and subsequently
developed in U. S. Pat. No. 209,241, Oct. 22, 1878). This enabled four
messages to be sent over the same wire at the same time, and is said to
have increased the value of the Western Union wires $15,000,000.
53. In 1846 Royal C. House invented the printing telegraph, which printed the
message automatically on a strip of paper, something after the manner of
the typewriter (U. S. Pat. No. 4,464, April 18, 1846). The ingenious
mechanism involved in this was somewhat complicated, but its results in
printing the message plainly were very satisfactory. This was the
prototype of the familiar “ticker” of the stock broker’s office, seen in Figs.
10 and 11. In 1856 the Hughes printing telegraph was brought out (U. S.
Pat. No. 14,917, May 20, 1856), and in 1858 G. M. Phelps combined the
valuable features of the Hughes and House systems (U. S. Pat. No.
26,003, Nov. 1, 1859).
FIG. 11.—RECEIVING MESSAGE ON STOCK BROKER’S
“TICKER.”
Fac Simile telegraphs constitute another, although less important branch
of the art. These accomplished the striking result of reproducing the
message at the end of the line in the exact handwriting of the sender,
and not only writing, but exact reproductions of all outlines, such as
54. maps, pictures, and so forth, may be sent. The fac simile telegraph
originated with F. C. Bakewell, of England, in 1848 (Br. Pat. No. 12,352, of
1848).
The Dial Telegraph is still another modification of the telegraph. In this
the letters are arranged in a circular series, and a light needle or pointer,
concentrically pivoted, is carried back and forth over the letters, and is
made to successively point to the desired letters.
Among other useful applications of the telegraph is the fire alarm system.
In 1852 Channing and Farmer, of Boston, Mass., devised a system of
telegraphic fire alarms, which was adopted in the city of Boston (U. S.
Pat. No. 17,355, May 19, 1857), and which in varying modifications has
spread through all the cities of the world, introducing that most important
element of time economy in the extinguishment of fires. Hundreds of
cities and millions of dollars have been thus saved from destruction.
Similar applications of local alarms in great numbers have been extended
into various departments of life, such as District Messenger Service,
Burglar Alarms, Railroad-Signal Systems, Hotel-Annunciators, and so on.
55. FIG. 12.—TELEGRAPHING BY INDUCTION.
For furnishing current for telegraphic purposes the dynamo, and
especially the storage battery, have in late years found useful application.
In fact, in the leading telegraph offices the storage battery has practically
superseded the old voltaic cells.
Telegraphing by induction, i. e., without the mechanical connection of a
conducting wire, is another of the developments of telegraphy in recent
years, and finds application to telegraphing to moving railway trains.
When an electric current flows over a telegraph line, objects along its
length are charged at the beginning and end of the current impulse with
a secondary charge, which flows to the earth if connection is afforded. It
is the discharge of this secondary current from the metal car roof to the
ground which, on the moving train, is made the means of telegraphing
without any mechanical connection with the telegraph lines along the
track. As, however, this secondary circuit occurs only at the making and
breaking of the telegraphic impulse, the length of the impulse affords no
means of differentiation into an alphabet, and so a rapid series of
impulses, caused by the vibrator of an induction coil, is made to produce
buzzing tones of various duration representing the alphabet, and these
tones are received upon a telephone instead of a Morse register. The
diagram, Fig. 12,[1] illustrates the operation.
[1] From “Electricity in Daily Life,” by courtesy of Charles Scribner’s Sons.
To receive messages on a car, electric impulses on the telegraph wire W,
sent from the vibrator of an induction coil, cause induced currents as
follows: Car roof R, wire a, key K, telephone b c, car wheel and earth. In
sending messages closure of key K works induction coil I C, and vibrator
V, through battery B, and primary circuit d, c, f, g, and the secondary
circuit a, h, i, charges the car roof and influences by induction the
telegraph wire W and the telephone at the receiving station.
In 1881 William W. Smith proposed the plan of communicating between
moving cars and a stationary wire by induction (U. S. Pat. No. 247,127,
Sept. 13, 1881). Thomas A. Edison, L. J. Phelps, and others have further
improved the means for carrying it out. In 1888 the principle was
successfully employed on 200 miles of the Lehigh Valley Railroad.
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