NOTES BY TUE EDITOR. XV 



shops and factories. The inventor too often has to re-invent, 

 at great expense of thought and money, elements or combina- 

 tions which have long been in use, but which he has never 

 seen. Even then he may not devise as good methods of pro- 

 ducino* the desired eifects as have been previously invented, 

 and are at his disposition if he only knew of them. The 

 work of the inventor, like that of the author, is emphatically 

 brain-work. But inventors have no such aids in their labor as 

 literary men have. The proposed museum, with its catalogues 

 and indexes, would aid inventors somewhat as libraries, diction- 

 aries, and gazetteers help authors. An inventor, meditating upon 

 his design, sees that he has need of some peculiar movement; 

 but he knows no means of producing that movement. He consults 

 such a classified collection of elementary movements, and sees at 

 once among the various screw movements, for example, that a 

 combination of quick and slow screws is capable of producing 

 the particular movement which he has need of. He is thus saved 

 the labor of inventing for his purpose. This is not an imaginary 

 problem, but one which often actually occurs. Many simple and 

 familiar contrivances are constantly re-invented. Examples will 

 occur to all inventors. Wlio can tell how often the Archimedean 

 screw has been discovered ? Even the cam is constantly invented 

 anew. Inventors have hitherto been too much left to their own 

 unaided mental resources. Dictionaries and glossaries do not 

 replace genius, nor make one talent go as far as ten ; but they are 

 important aids to genius, and they enable common men to do 

 much accurate and useful work. So this collection of elementary 

 models, will not diminish the field for inventive genius ; but it will 

 instruct inventors as a class in what has already been done, and 

 it may be expected to prevent in some measure the waste of time 

 and strength involved in reinvention. 



The American community is made possible by American and for- 

 eign invention. The crops of the West could neither be harvested nor 

 brouo-ht to their distant markets without the mechanical reapers, 

 rakes, threshers, huUers, elevators, and cheap railways by which 

 they are handled. The American dwelling-house is full of de- 

 vices, great and small, to promote the comfort or luxury of its 

 inmates. Education and liberty owe much to the inventors of 

 power printing-presses. By the telegraph, the railways, and the 

 swift steamers, this continental republic is made practically smaller 

 than little England was fifty years ago. One man, with the aid 



