_ ._ MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



never supersede or compete with steam.* He believed however 

 that the engine had a useful future in many minor applications 

 where economy was not the most important consideration. 



When sometime afterward, a friend urged him to secure patents 

 on liis inventions, — the "intensity" electro-magnet with its combi- 

 nations, and the magnetic engine with it- automatic pole-changer, 

 earnestly assuring him that either one with proper managemt at 

 would secure an ample fortune to its owner, he firmly resisted every 

 importunity; declaring that la- would feel humilitated by any 

 attempt at monopolizing the fruits of science, which lie thought 

 belonged to the world. And this aversion to self-aggrandizement 

 by researches undertaken tor truth, was carried with him through 

 life. f 



^ hile such disinterestedness cannot fail to excite our admiration, 

 it may perhaj>s lie questioned whether in these eases it did not from 

 a practical point of view, amount to an over-fastidiousness: — 

 whether such legal establishment of ownership, shielding the pos- 

 sessor from the occasional depreciations of the envious, and securing 

 by its more tangible remunerations the leisure and the moans for 

 more extended researches, would not have been to science more 

 than a compensation for the supposed sacrifice of dignity by the 

 philosopher. I 



Nor did this repugnance to patenting arise' (as it sometimes does) 

 from any theoretical disapproval of the system. On the contrary, 



'James P. Joule (himself an inventor of an electro-magnetic engine in :t 

 letter dated May 28, 1S39, said : "lean scarcely doubt that electro-magnetism will 

 eventually be substituted for steam in propelling machinery." Sturgeon's 



Annals of Electricity, vol.iv. p. 135. This was some years before hi mmenced his 



investigations en the mechanical equivalent of heat and other meters. [Ie sul> 

 utlj estimated that the consumption of a grain of zinc though forty times 

 more costly than a grain of coal, produces only about one-eighth of the same 

 im chan ical effect. 



tThis trait rails to mind Faraday's avowal made nearly thirty years later, 

 when in a letter to Messrs. Smith a- Bentley, dated January 3, IS.39, f declining 

 their offer for the publication ..this "Juvenile Lectures," la- said: "In far- i 



have always loved science more than money; and because my ■ upation is 



almost entirely personal, I cannot afford to get rich." Bence .1 - / 



Faraday, vol. ii. p. 123. 



-, veral hundred patents have since been granted in this country for ingen- 

 ious modifications of — or improvements upon the electro-magnetic telegraph; ana 

 ibly a hundred for equally ingenious varieties of the i lectro-magnetic engine; 

 all ef which would have been tributary to IIenky as an original patentee. 



