292 JOHN FOSTER FRASER 



But Mr. George Westinghouse, head of the Westinghouse 

 Electrical works at east Pittsburg, has seen beyond. Through 

 much vapor he has discerned germs of genius. As placed 

 before him by Nikola Tesla many ideas were unworkable. 

 But there were the ideas, the suggestion of possibilities, and 

 Mr. Westinghouse himself is a practical man and he has 

 practical engineers in his service. Much has been discarded; 

 yet some of the most valuable inventions belonging to the 

 Westinghouse company were, I am informed, the outcome 

 originally of Nikola Tesla's brain. 



Many inventions in active use in America to-day are the 

 creations of Englishmen which no manufacturer in England 

 thought well to take up. In the first state they were prob- 

 ably not worth taking up. But it was the American who 

 grasped the thing, who altered, adapted, and improved the 

 invention, and made it valuable. It is to be noted how many 

 are the inventions respecting railway engineering, brought out 

 by Englishmen, not used in Great Britain, but in general 

 adoption in America. 



The most striking recent instance of an English inven- 

 tion not being appreciated in England, but being adapted 

 in America, is the Northrop loom. Here is an ingenious loom 

 invented by a Yorkshireman, which automatically, when a 

 warp breaks, stops the machine instantly, and does not go 

 on weaving defective cloth. It requires an English girl of 

 experience to look after three or four ordinary looms, being 

 ready to run to a machine the moment her quick eye discerns 

 a break, to stop it and repair the warp ; and she is not always 

 successful in avoiding a stretch with a missing thread be- 

 cause, while she is repairing one machine, another may go 

 wrong. With the Northrop loom, however, a little girl, fresh 

 from school, with not more than a fortnight's experience, can 

 look after twenty looms. 



When I went through the cotton mills at Fall River last 

 autumn I saw thousands of the Northrop looms at work. 

 Until quite recently there was not, I believe, a single Northrop 

 loom in all Lancashire — the center of the cotton industry of 

 the world — and even now, I understand, only one firm has 

 adopted them to any extent. The criticism of Lancashire 



