The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 16, 1902, Page 5

THE SUNDAY CALL Mrs. Rda Van Pelk of Szn Framcisce, Whe Has Fashicnzd Many StranGe Devices From Patent Letter Roxes to an Nitempet at Perpetual Metion By SARAH COMSTOCK. P to now a woman has been at the tom of everything except me- wventions. You might ught that there was onz she could keep her finger out of. She is inventing at last. Furthermore, she is pate urthermore, she is she patents. Now, if further good reason him speak up in a A Sen Francisc sawing, screwir wom is hammering, monkey-wrenching in her own p day in and day out. She is burning the midnight oil over her labo She is turning out me- chanical devices that men have to treat respectfully, no matter what they want is making money. ittle worksh to do. She A great many of you know Mrs. Ada Van Pelt, b how many of you know she is a succ nventor? She is about it all that half of her never dream that an Pelt jon lock” and “the Vanguard ofl have anything to do with her. the time they dre owing her started on her ail those twenty , irl spite of fail- f invalidism, she has stuck be a successful has taken he ation to time she k from -the start. She as one lesson in me- She had to work ou: of every tool and chine. When she be- t know even the names of She m r invention in the way that it is s good inventions are made—becs e saw a need for a de- vice, not because she set out to Invent. Patent people say that the amateur is the one who invents what is worth while. When M Van Pelt lived in Lincoln, Nebr., a score of years ago, her husband was Postmaster. In his position he came to notice the fact that the most of the world loses its letter box key. People were forever coming to the window of the postoffice with a grievance. “I can’t get my letter because I've left my key in my other pocket-book.” “Dropped my key in the mud and I car’t 1" “Somebody must have stolen my key. I never mislay it.” And in the end somebody behind _the window had to go to the lock box and get out'the mail and there had to be a pew key made. “People ought to be chained to their letter-box keys,” said the postmaster at home. Then his wife inquired into the matter and was told of the chronic trouble. here should be a lock without a she said. She said it as she says hing, in a quiet little way that you ever think doesn’'t mean anything until you know her. Her husband laughed casually. “The thing is to get it,” he said. She was through ussing the subject for the time. She believes in doing things instead of talking about them. The one thing in her mind at that mo- ment was the idea that she would invent that lock. She didn't know the first thing about machinery iu a technical way. But she had observed. She knew something about locks because she had a good wholesome curiosity about the fearfy and wonderful making of useful things. She set herself to invent a combination that could be used for so simple and small a thing as a letter-box. Bhe didn’t want to tell the family about her scheme until it was mature, for she was pretty sure that they would laugh at her. Bo she stole out secretly to a baréware shop ard laid in a store of tools. I HER WORK JHOF Bhe hadn’t the slightest idea what any of them were called but she knew what she wanted to do with ‘them. So she looked around the shop and picked them out, and what she didn't see she asked “I want that thing that you screw with,” she said, pointing to one imple- ment, “and I want something that will take hold, 50.” She illustrated with two fingers on the edge of the.counter. The hardware man understood and he depart- ed to return with nippers. “That's it,” she said In delight “Now, what is that little square thing with a round hole in the middle called? The thing that stops a screw?” The hardware man returned with a nut. So the purchasing went on. Mrs, Van Pelt returned home with a shopping bag full of hardware. She took it off to her own private corner of the house and went to work. The work was very slow and the fall- ures were many, and in the end, or rather, long before the end, the family found out what she was doing. She had to fate a torrent of questioning then and no end of ‘“jollying,” but she smiled in the congented little way that she has, for she always believed that it is effort wasted to be angry. She kept on with her hammering and screwing and fitting. Days and days and days went by be- fore she could see light ahead. The tools perplexed her. The parts of a mechanism ‘were Greek to her. She simply kept on. She learned what securing pins are and the use of them. She learned spindles and tumblers and latchbolts. Gradually the lock began to shape itself. ) Then came that tantalizing period when the inventor suffers all the fine tortures of the will-o’-the-wisp’s victim. Every 5 Has TaUght Experienced Mechanics Several Tricks of the Trade That Were New &0 Them. mornthg she awoke with a new hope, founded on a new ides. By night she had found a flaw in the scheme and had to throw it away and begin all over next day. Just because she kept on where the other nine hundred and ninety-nine would have given up, she succeeded. In the end she showed her family a lock that worked. It was a combinatioh lock of thirty thousand changes. And it had only seven parts. That is one of her boasts—that her ma- chinery is so simple, it always consists of so few parts. The wonder of it is not its complexity, but its simplicity. On the proud day that the lock was found to work it was put on a letter box and it turned fascinatingly at the mystic combination. By the next day the novelty had worn off and she was ready for the next step—the patenting of her device. It was a triumphant moment when sho knew that her lock was patented and that the manufacture of it might commence. Since that time eight thousand of the Httle locks have been put in Government postoffices within one year. It must be & very nice sensation to see one’s own in- vention attached to letter boxes in every State in the Union. Mrs. Van Pelt would have been less than human if she had not wanted to In- vent everything that the world needed after striking twelve the first time. How- ever, the wanting to would have been enough for some people. It wasn't for her. She went about the doing. Postoffice needs naturally attracted her most, and the invention of two letter boxes was the result. One was for pri- vate houses and one for large business houses. The one shown in the picture is the bigger; as with other mothers and offspring, her pride is its teeth. She will explain to you in the most technical of terms, which she:has acquired since her first day in the workshop, how these teeth prevent any one from taking out thas letters after once they have slipped down to their proper position. In the making of the other box she turned loose her feminine love of beauty. She made it so pretty a little affair that nobody could object to it on a frent door. She had it painted with dapper little bor- ders. Tt worked like a charm. ° Not until she had gone through many tribulations, though. The inspiration of the letter-box was an offer made by Wan- amaker when he was Postmaster General. He saw the need of a perfect house let- ter-box and he made an offer for de- signs. Mrs, Van Pelt set to work. She realized that springs are the most troublesome part of a mechanism, the part that is most often out of order. She determined, therefore, that her box should have nothing to do with springs. She was going to make gravity take their place. When she explained her developed scheme to a famous model maker he laughed at her. He sald the thing could not be done. A second one showed se of hu- mor, but he firmly refused to undertake an imgossibility. Then she went to work to make the model herself. She proved that it could be done. Her box was a succes: She sent it off express haste to Wash- ington and, after all ays that the model makers had caus t arrived just one day after the competition closed. That is not the end of the story, though. She put away the box and kept it st years. Then it came of the proverb knows w aboit. Seven years after the t completed, when she had ten it, a letter came to her. was from a Philadelphia explained that they ! srov to me that it was almost fir 1 a ter box patent and f 1 that it infringed upon one taken out by Mrs. Ada Van Peit of Oakland. Would Mrs. an Pelt join forces with them or sell them her rights? The box had found its use at last. She sold it to tb m for a rousing good price and t advantages with the ave combi The crew of the Oakla ats know her. Where the rdmit- tance” frowns from the door of the e gine-room she is privileged to pas spends hot In that room, studying wonderft inery to which are trusted all the ands of lives the boats carry daily. The engineers and all the assistants know her, and they are always deli ing and they swer all her qu every part of th ited when they see her com- explai nery. t ask fool ques- t'ss/because she tions like most women,” one of ti sald. “Not but that she’s w she’s a lady, she is—but she k things some way and she ask: that show that, like a man would. In time it came about that sh & device to take thesplace of steam | engine. It has been tested on small boats with success. Her ofl burner is 1ue the newest toy that she has built and consequently it is her greatest interest at present: Its comple- tlon—the day on flaming to the fan “It burns, it burr which she carrfed it ily and crled joyfu was just ten mont from the time when had begun work on it. During that time she had worked days and nights—far into the night some- times. Her workshop often showed a light from her midnight ofl until 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. She had experimented over and over again with the ventilator In her efforts to ascertain the correet number of holés for it—one too many or one too few ruined it. The spreader was slow in being perfected. Her wagon was hitched to a star and it was hard getting near the star. She had set out to produce an oll heater that had nefther odor, smoke nor noise; one that should consume less ofl than any other, because of complete com- bustion and one that should be clogged by no formation of carbon. It was not a par- ticularly modest ambition. According to the story of her heater it does not pay to be honest. She was bump-~ tlously ambitious and she has finished her work with the result that a Standard ou expert tells her that she has succeeded. Mrs. Van Pelt has not spent twenty years of her life at invention without hav- ing the perpetual motion bee in her bon- net. Once she almost accomplished her end, like all the rest of them, but when she found that she could get no nearer than almost she gave up with much grace and more wisdom and set to work at less ambitious devices. ‘When she becomes thoroughly absorbed in the working out of an invention she is merelless to herself. She works without eating or sleeping for long stretches; In fact, she says she forgets all about these lttle matters when she is thoroughly absorbed at her work benah. “And then when I go to my meals I keep thinking about my scheme all the time, and when I go to sleep I keep dreaming about it. Sometimes I dream out the very thing that has been puzzling me through the day. Onmce the secret that I was after came to me In a dream and ‘I awoke and followed out the clew and completed the device that I was working on.” And yet she is the last woman in the world that you would call a dreamer. She is a gentle woman, with silky white bair and a queenly carriage. She is full of reserve force; her manner is extremely quiet, her energy is all held In the back- ground. She is entirely what the man in the engine room calls her—‘‘womanly."” “Some people think it is not exactly ladylike to work with a hammer and wrench,” she said In the sweetest of voices. “So I wish that if you are going to publish a picture of me in my work- shop you would put along with it another one—a pleture of me in another costume. I want it to be a ladylike costume.” So Mrs. Van Pelt of the canvas apron transformed herself into Mrs. Van Pelt of the splendid silk robe and the two of her are on this page, side by side. But I defy any observer to discover which one 8 not “ladylike.”