SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 1886. 



COMMENT AND CRITICISM. 

 A ^RECENT NUMBER of the Philadelphia Ameri- 

 can has an article on ' Unrecognized proprietor- 

 ships,' pointing out the difficulties encountered in 

 ' rewarding men of the most beneficent inventive- 

 ness,' and recounting w^ith many illustrations how 

 seldom the originator of a new device reaps a 

 fortune, while those who come after and make 

 new adaptations of the original artifice become 

 prosperous. Wyatt invented roller-spinning, and 

 Hargreaves invented the spinning- jenny ; but 

 Ai'kwright appropriated both, and was the only 

 ' successful ' man of the three. On reading further, 

 it is with surprise that we find ' Myer,' vp^hose 

 ' weather-charts have saved thousands of dollars,' 

 classed, not with the successful Arkvvrights, but 

 with the neglected Wyatts and Hargreaves, where 

 he is notoriously out of place. It is difficult to 

 say in whose mind the idea of daily weather- 

 charts first took practical shape ; but the idea was 

 fully carried out in Europe several years before 

 its introduction here, if we except the charts with 

 which Professor Henry used to entertain visitors 

 to the Smithsonian in 1859 or 1860, and which 

 might have early grown into a systematic service 

 had it not been for the interruptions of 1861. 

 Besides this, Professor Cleveland Abbe had, with 

 the assistance of local enterprise, established an 

 actual, continuous, and successful weather-service 

 in Cincinnati a year before weather-prediction was 

 undertaken by the government. It was essentially 

 this Cincinnati service that General Myer, with 

 his imperious executive ability and the support of 

 the government treasury, appropriated and ex- 

 panded into a national service ; taking not only 

 its methods, but its director, who has ever since 

 been, even though anonymously, the leading 

 scientific member of the weather-bureau. The 

 American's article is an example of the very 

 neglect that it laments. 



A SON OP Charles Goodyear, the well-known 

 inventor, has lately felt it to be his duty to make 

 public some particulars in respect to the origin of 

 the india-rubber patents, which, if not hitherto 



No. 183. — 1886. 



unknown, have been generally forgotten by those 

 who participate in the great advantages which 

 have followed the wonderful expansion of india- 

 rubber manufactures. He wishes particularly to 

 controvert the idea that his father's discovery was 

 accidental ; and for this purpose he publishes his 

 father's account of the various steps which were 

 taken by him as far back as 1838 to ascertain 

 what modifications could be made in ' the mate- 

 rial,' as he was accustomed to call the gum-elastic, 

 in order to adapt its peculiar properties to the 

 greater service of mankind. The inventor's own 

 narrative was printed in 1849, in a very few 

 impressions, upon thin sheets of a tissue made of 

 cotton, and shows conclusively by what prolonged, 

 intelligent, painstaking endeavors he reached the 

 processes which are known as ' vulcanization.' 

 Few persons are aware of the great changes which 

 were introduced by these discoveries, or of the 

 constant increase in india-rubber manufactures. 

 In 1870 the imports of the crude material were 

 five million pounds ; in 1885 they were twenty- 

 five millions. 



The narrative from which we draw these par- 

 ticulars also calls attention to the fact that Good- 

 year at an early day foresaw most of the innumer- 

 able applications which were destined to follow 

 the promulgation of his process. There is a cir- 

 cular of his, which was issixed in 1844, announ- 

 cing the invention or discovery of ' a metallic gum- 

 elastic composition,' enumerating its properties 

 and its possible uses, and inviting ' the most search- 

 ing investigation and the most severe trial.' In 

 the light of all that has followed, the prophetic 

 sagacity of the inventor is as noteworthy as his 

 inventive power. It is a pity that a life arduously 

 devoted to the advancement of an idea which was 

 fertile in utilities should have been so much de- 

 pressed at one stage by penury, at another by 

 extreme ill health, and again by vexatious and 

 almost interminable litigations. The final decision 

 of the U. S. supreme court, confirming Goodyear's 

 claims, was given four years after the patent had 

 expired, and eight years after his death. 



Dr. M. a. Veeder of Lyons, N.Y., has sent a 

 letter to the Rochester Democrat and chronicle 



