THREE ELECTRICAL ACHIEVEMENTS 187 



flagging industry and perseverance, and has come to his new 

 fortune also Hke the American, suddenly and brilliantly. As 

 a people we like to see a man deserve his success ! The same 

 qualities which made Peter Cooper one of the first of American 

 millionaires, and Abraham S. Hewitt one of the foremost of 

 the world's steel merchants, mayor of New York, and one of 

 its most trusted citizens, have placed Mr. Peter Cooper Hewitt 

 among the greatest of American inventors and scientists. In- 

 deed, Peter Cooper and Abraham S. Hewitt were both in- 

 ventors; that is, they had the imaginative inventive mind. 

 Peter Cooper once said: 



''I was always planning and contriving, and was never 

 satisfied unless I was doing something difficult — something 

 that had never been done before, if possible." 



The grandfather built the first American locomotive; he 

 was one of the most ardent supporters of Cyrus Field in the 

 great project of an Atlantic cable, and he was for a score of 

 years the president of a cable company. His was the curious, 

 constructive mind. As a boy he built a washing machine to 

 assist his overworked mother; later on he built the first lawn 

 mower and invented a process for roUing iron, the first used 

 in this country; he constructed a torpedo boat to aid the Greeks 

 in their revolt against Turkish tyranny in 1824. He dreamed 

 of utiHzing the current of the East river for manufacturing 

 power; he even experimented with flying machines, becoming 

 so enthusiastic in this labor that he nearly lost the sight of an 

 eye through an explosion which blew the apparatus to pieces. 



It will be seen, therefore, that the grandson comes nat- 

 urally by his inchnations. It was his grandfather who gave 

 him his first chest of tools and taught him to work with his 

 hands, and he has always had a fondness for contriving new 

 machines or working out difficult scientific problems. Until 

 the last few years, however, he has never devoted his whole 

 time to the work which best pleased him. For years he was 

 connected wdth his father's extensive business enterprise, an 

 active member, in fact, of the firm of Cooper, Hewitt & Co., 

 and he has always been prominent in the social life of New 

 York, a member of no fewer than eight prominent clubs. But 

 never for a moment in his career — he is now forty two years 



