Evening Star Newspaper, November 24, 1936, Page 5

T2LEADING 1., INVENTORS NAMED Secret Committee Selects Honor Roll Announced at Patent Celebration. BY THOMAS R. HENRY. ‘Whitney, Morse, Goodyear, Mc- Oormick, Howe, Fulton, Westinghouse, Bell, Edison, Hall, Wright, Mergen- thaler— These 12 Americains took the slow, eandlelit, doddering old world of 1800 and by their brain magic made it over into a place grander and stranger than men before them had dared to picture heaven. Thousands of others helped in the century’s miraculous apocalypse, but ' these men were the greatest, it was the consensus of & secret committee of 12, who picked the honor roll for the centennial of the American patent system, which was celebrated here yesterday. The list was announced at the closing banquet at the Mayflower last night. The committee selected the men in the light of the significance of their work in 1936. No member of this committee knew any other member, except the chairman, Thomas Midg- ley, jr.. who also was chairman of the Centennial Committee. Poor and Ridiculed. With hardly an exception these inventors were poor, obscure and ridi- culed.. Some of them died as poor as when they started. Others finally attained to great wealth and honor. Eli Whitney, 1768-1812, invented the cotton gin. He was directly responsible for the great agricultural expansion of the South, Egypt and India. His invention was absolutely essential to the great textile industry Jof the North and of England. Morse Started as Artist. Samuel F. B. Morse, 1791-1872, was an artist upon whom triumph had begun to pall when he happened to drop into a popular lectuge on elec- thicity and turned his thoughts to the transmission of sounds by wire. He invented the electric telegraph, which annihilated distance. A feature of the banquet was the receipt from the original Baltimore & Ohio station in Baltimore of Morse's original message, “What hath » God wrought?” Charles Goodyear, 1800-1860, was s clerk in a Connecticut hardware store with a mania for rubber. His debts mounted, his family went hun- gry. his health broke while he experi- mented. He found the vulcanization | process upon which is based practi- cally every use of rubber today. He was the father of the “rubber age,” of automobile tires and all the rest. Invented Mechanical Reaper. Cyrus Hall McCormick, 1809-1894, labored garnering wheat on a Vir- ginia farm as a boy. His father was an impractical man who had known a lifetime of failure while he tried vainly to devise a mechanical reaper. The boy did the job and revolutionized agriculture. Robert Fulton, 1765-1815, who used to sail paper boats on Rock Creek with Joel Barlow and the rest of the brain trust of Jefferson’s day. He made the first commercially successful steam- boat. Alexander Graham Bell, 1847-1922, +“teacher of the deaf, who invented the telephone. One March day in 1876 Bell spoke into a crude mouthpiece in & Boston workshop: “Mr. Watson, come here. I wantyou.” Those words traveled by wire across the room, and thus was consummated one of the outstanding miracles of history. Dream Inspired Invention. Elias Howe, jr., 1819-1867, sick, hun- gry Boston machinist, who had & feverish dream one night that can- nibals were chasing him and that their spears had holes in the heads. . tomorrow and Thursday. | Steenstrup, Willlam B. Stout and Wil- | liam E. Wine. | When the 1,000 participants in the | centennial celebration sat down at the banquet table the hall was lit dimly by tallow candles, and an old- fashioned melodion was playing the sentimental ballads of the '40s Dr. Charles Kettering, General Motors vice president, who presided, waved his hand. In doing so he in- tercepted the beam of a photo- | electric cell and thus sutomatically | | flashed on what was described as the | | most brilliant lighting effect ever | | known under a roof. It was equiva- |lent to full noonday sunlight. At the same time the triumphant strains of an electric organ replaced the fee- ble voice of the melodion. The dinner was made up entirely | of patented dishes, the tables were decorated with patented flowers, pat- ented gadgets of various sorts were distributed as souvenirs. First were the cocktails—a hair tonic patented in 1909 and guaranteed to “grow hair on bald heads.” It contained 40 per cent corn whisky, 20 per cent port wine and various harmless flavoring ingredients. 1905 Auto Thought the Acme. A humorous note in the dinner menu was a reproduction of Andrew Car- negie's testimonial for his 1905 auto- mobile. “We are very pleased with our G. W. U. PREPARES | FOR HOME-COMING| Festivities Open Tomorrow, With Thanksgiving Game as Climax. | Thousands of visiting alumni and students will celebrate ‘“home-com- ing” festivities at George Washington University, which begin tomorrow and | will be climaxed by the Thanksgiving day foot ball game between G. Ww. and West Virginia at Griffith Stadium. Events tomorrow include two ral- lies on the university yard, one at 11 am. and another at 4:45 pm.; & reception and tea in the new dormi- | tory for women from 4 to 6 pm, & | dedication of the new Social Service Hall at 5 pm, and a third rally at 11 p.m. at the Rialto Theater. i Between the halves at the game If You Suffer With Kidney Trouble ache. backache. unusual thirst are ms that point to kidney trouble. For 3 physicians have endorsed in Mineral Water direct {rom | ous Hot Springs. Arkansas. Phone Et. 1062 for free booklet today. new Winton,” wrote Mr. ;Carnegie. | “From the very start it ha#' done its | work and never falled us. ‘There may | be improvements yet to come, but it | is difficult to see much room for them.” | ‘There were addrésses on the history and significance of the patent system | by Commissioner of Patents Conway P. Coe and Secretary of Commerce Roper. ‘The program was.broadcast from an airplane fiying high over Washington. ' areund the doors opening with thi sad enjoy coi He applied the idea to make the first | practical sewing machine. | Thomas Alva Edison, 1847-1931, | railway telegraph operator, whose | genius gave the world the electric | light and the phonograph and scores | of other mechanisms which are a| part of daily life. A dramatic epi- | sode at the banquet last night was | * when the voice of the dead inventor | was heard in a war-time speech pre- served by his own invention. George Westinghouse, 1846-1914, Civil War steamboat engineer, who invented the air brake and thus made possible the expansion of railroads and the rapid conquest of a conti- nent. Wilbur Wright, 1867-1912, bicycle mechanic, who on December 17, 1903, startled an unbelieving world with the first airplane flight. Ottomar Mergenthaler, 1854-1899, German immigrant and apprentice in 8 Washington instrument shop, who invented the linotype and thus made possible the modern newspaper. Charles Martin Hall, 1863-1914, the son of a village minister who, while & poor college student in 1885, first found a method to manufacture aluminum and thus made one of the worid’s most abundant minerals & servant of man. Honored guests at the banquet last night were 20 representative living inventors, some of whom may have made contributions as outstanding as any of those on the honor roll, the full significance of which is not yet appreciated. They were Harold E. Balsiger, Howard M. Barber, Howard L. Bender, Martin C. Dellinger, Ca- mille Dreyfus, Montague H. Duval, Carleton Ellis, Fred G. Folberth, John R. Gammeter, Norman P. Harsh- berger, Russell A. Hetzler, Joseph Led- winka, Prank C. Mock, Lewis P, Moody, Jacques C. Morrell, Rodney 8. Pullen, Joseph Slepian, Christian WHEN YOU NEED . 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We use only the together by experts in our own ies ave justly named lete without a box of Fannie These famous candies are s ap- wait. 1 Candy Mailed Anywhere, lmu-red 7 Fannie May Candy Sheps 621 F Se. NW." % (Lejt to right) Peggy Wadsworth, Mary Fulgham and Mary Selton, George Washington Uni- versity co-eds, display on placards the spirit of their school’s homecoming, 4 which will be held —Star stag_.Phota. Thursday afternoon entertainment stunts will be held in observance of the “home - coming.” Fraternity houses will be decorated in honor of the festivities. Hugh H. Clegg, as- sistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is “home-coming” chairman. The West Virginia Soclety of Wash- ington is co-operating with university officials in planning the “home-com- ing.” Sections of the stands have been set aside for the West Virginia student body and for natives of that State now in Washington, it was an- nounced. Call for particulars re- garding this remarkable value. 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