archives of the Hartford Museum or Athenæum." The successful inventor probably received during the remainder of his life more marks of distinction than any other American. "Violations of his patents and the assumption of his rights by rival companies involved him in a long series of lawsuits, but eventually these were decided in his favor, and he reaped the benefits to which his invention entitled him. In 1846 Yale College conferred upon him the title of LL.D., and in 1848 he received the decoration of the Nishan Iftikar in diamonds from the Sultan of Turkey. Gold medals of scientific merit were awarded him by the king of Prussia, the king of Würtemberg and the emperor of Austria. In 1856 he received from the emperor of the French the cross of chevalier of the legion of honor; in 1857 from the king of Denmark the cross of knight commander of the first class of the Danebrog; in 1858 from the queen of Spain the cross of knight commander of the order of Isabella the Catholic; from the king of Italy the cross of the order of SS. Maurice and Lazarus, and from the king of Portugal the cross of the order of the Tower and Sword. In the same year, at the instance of Napoleon III., representatives of France, Russia, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Sardinia, Tuscany, the Holy See and Turkey met in Paris to decide upon a collective testimonial to him, and the result was a vote of 400,000 francs [$80,000] as a personal reward for his labors." Banquets were given him in London, Paris and New York, and in June, 1871, a bronze statue of him, erected by the voluntary contributions of telegraphic operators, was formally unveiled in Central Park, New York, by William Cullen Bryant, and in the evening a reception was held in the Academy of Music, at which Professor Morse telegraphed (using one of the instruments employed on the original line between Baltimore and Washington) a message of greeting to the cities of America. The Sewing-Machine.-There is one thing for which a claim. cannot be maintained by any other nation with any degree of plausibility. The honor of having given birth to the inventor of the sewing-machine certainly belongs to the United States. When infringements upon Mr. Howe's patent were begun, "the patent records of England, France and the United States were searched, encyclopædias were examined, and an attempt was even made to show that the Chinese had possessed a sewingmachine for ages;" yet after all this trouble and after years of litigation, Judge Sprague observed, when pronouncing his decision, "There is no evidence in this case which leaves the slightest doubt that for all the benefit conferred upon the public by the introduction of a sewing-machine the public are indebted to Mr. Howe." It was in the year 1839, according to Parton, that Elias Howe heard the remark that the invention of a sewing-machine would ensure an independent fortune to the man who was able to accomplish the difficult task. Howe was then twenty years old. The remark was never forgotten, but it required the pressure of poverty to bring him fairly to work upon the problem, which, when solved, gave him eventually an independent fortune ($200,000) as his yearly income. It was not before the winter of 1844–45 that the idea of using two threads and forming a stitch by the aid of a shuttle and a curved needle with an eye near the point occurred to him, but then his success was assured. In April, 1845, he sewed a seam with his machine. "In July he sewed by his machine all the seams of two suits of woollen clothes, one suit for Mr. Fisher [who was at that time his partner and his only convert] and the other for himself, the sewing of both of which outlasted the cloth. . . . It is agreed by all disinterested persons (Professor Renwick among others) who have examined this machine, that Elias Howe, in making it, carried his invention farther on toward its complete and final utility than any other inventor has ever brought a first-rate invention at the first trial.” The inventor was not afraid to subject his handy-work to a thorough test. Upon one occasion he challenged five of the swiftest seamstresses in a clothing manufactory to sew a race with him. "Ten seams of equal length were prepared for sewing, of which five were laid by the machine. and the other five were given to the girls. The gentleman who held the watch, and who was to decide the wager, testified upon oath that the five girls were the fastest sewers that could be found, and that they sewed as fast as they could-much faster than they were in the habit of sewingfaster than they could have kept on for one hour. Nevertheless, Mr. Howe finished his five seams a little sooner than the girls finished their five, and the umpire, who was himself a tailor, has sworn that 'the work done on the machine was the neatest and the strongest.'" Even this successful contest was not the means of introducing the sewing-machine into general use. It was only after the lapse of several years that the new invention began to be appreciated, and then rival inventors came into the field who were finally vanquished or conciliated by Mr. Howe. A combination was formed by the leading manufacturers, which before the renewal of the patent in 1860 paid Mr. Howe five dollars for every machine sold in the United States, and after that date one dollar for each machine. So great, however, had been the expense of the lawsuits that when Mr. Howe died, in 1867, his estate was worth less than $500,000, though his receipts up to that time had been $1,700,000. Patents. A glance at the accompanying table will show the number of American inventions patented from 1840 to 1874, inclusive. The following note from The American Patent System, by H. and C. Howson, may be of service to the reader. "A caveat is simply a warning notifying the patent office that the caveator has made an invention which he intends to mature, and to apply for a patent therefor within one year. A caveat refers to an avowedly uncompleted invention, while letters-patent are granted only for one which is complete. It is common to allude to caveats as affording a temporary security, thus leading many inventors to a mistaken impression that a caveat is a sort of temporary patent." This it is not, being merely a notice obliging the patent office to grant no patent for the invention to any other claimant (without giving the caveator an opportunity to establish his priority of right) during one year after the filing or the renewal of a caveat. Statement of the Applications filed, Caveats filed and Patents issued for 35 Years, ending December 31, 1874. The totals for the period covered by the table were as follows: Applications filed, 268,861; caveats filed, 49,588; patents issued, 170,791. The Commissioner of Patents says in the Official Gazette: "The business of the office for 1874 presents several interesting features. From the above statement it will be seen that, notwithstanding the general prostration of business, a larger number of applications was received during the year 1874 than in any preceding year, and a larger number of patents was granted than in any year before, with the exception of 1869. It also appears that 2561 applications were allowed, but patents were not issued because the final fee was not paid within six months, as the law requires. If this number be added to the number of patents issued, it will be seen that of the 21,602 applications filed during the year, 16,160 were allowed," leaving only a little more than one-fourth of the entire number of applications finally rejected. The fact that nearly three-fourths of the applications were decided favorably to the petitioners is a sufficient answer to the inconsiderate charge sometimes made of illiberality on the part of the officials of the patent office." UNITED STATES CENTENNIAL INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, FAIRMOUNT PARK, PHILADELPHIA, 1876. OFFICERS OF THE UNITED STATES CENTENNIAL COMMISSION. President.-JOSEPH R. HAWLEY. Vice-Presidents.-ORESTES CLEVELAND, JOHN D. CREIGH, ROBERT Counsellor and Solicitor.-JOHN L. SHOEMAKER, ESQ. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.-Daniel J. Morrell, Chairman, Philadelphia ; Alfred T. Goshorn, Ohio; N. M. Beckwith, New York; Alexander R. Boteler, West Virginia; Richard C. McCormick, Arizona; John Lynch, Louisiana; Charles P. Kimball, Maine; Samuel F.-Phillips, North Carolina; George B. Loring, Massachusetts; Frederick L. Matthews, Illinois; Wm. Phipps Blake, Connecticut; James E. Dexter, District of Columbia; J. T. Bernard, Florida; Myer Asch, Secretary, Philadelphia. BUREAUS OF ADMINISTRATION. CHIEFS OF BUREAUS.-Foreign.-A. T. Goshorn, Myer Asch. Installation.-Henry Pettit. Transportation.-Dolphus Torrey. Machinery.— John S. Albert. Agriculture.-Burnet Landreth. Horticulture.—Charles H. Miller. Fine Arts.-John Sartain. UNITED STATES CENTENNIAL COMMISSIONERS. Alabama.-James L. Cooper. Arizona.-Richard C. McCormick, John Wasson. Arkansas.-Geo. W. Lawrence, Geo. E. Dodge. California.John Dunbar Creigh, Benj. P. Kooser. Colorado.-J. Marshall Paul, N. C. Meeker. Connecticut.-Joseph R. Hawley, Wm. Phipps Blake. Dakota.-J. A. Burbank, Solomon L. Spink. Delaware.-Henry F. Askew, John H. Rodney. District of Columbia.-James E. Dexter, Lawrence A. Gobright. Florida.-John S. Adams, J. T. Bernard. Georgia.-George Hillyer, Richard Peters, Jr. Idaho.-Thomas Donaldson, C. W. Moore. Illinois.-Frederick L. Matthews, Lawrence Weldon. Indiana.—John L. Campbell, Franklin C. Johnson. Iowa.-Robert Lowry, Coker F. Clarkson. Kansas.-John A. Martin, George A. Crawford. Kentucky.Robert Mallory, Smith M. Hobbs. Louisiana.-John Lynch, Edward Penington. Maine.-Joshua Nye. Maryland.-James T. Earle, S. M. Shoemaker. Massachusetts.-George B. Loring, William B. Spooner. Michigan.-James Birney, Claudius B. Grant. Minnesota.-J. Fletcher Williams, William W. Folwell. Mississippi.-O. C. French, E. D. Frost. Missouri.-John McNeil, Samuel Hays. Montana.-J. P. Woolman, Patrick A. Largey. Nebraska.-Henry S. Moody, R. W. Furnas. Nevada.Wm. Wirt McCoy, James W. Haines. New Hampshire.-Ezekiel A. Straw, Asa P. Cate. New Jersey.-Orestes Cleveland, John G. Stevens. New Mexico.-Eldridge W. Little, Stephen B. Elkins. New York.-N. M. Beckwith, Charles P. Kimball. North Carolina.-Samuel F. Phillips, Jonathan W. Albertson. Ohio.-Alfred T. Goshorn, Wilson W. Griffith. Oregon.-James W. Virtue, Andrew J. Dufur. Pennsylvania.-Daniel J. Morrell, Asa Packer. Rhode Island.-George H. Corliss, R. C. Taft. South Carolina.-William Gurney, Archibald Cameron. Tennessee.Thomas H. Coldwell, William F. Prosser. Texas.-William Henry Parsons, John C. Chew. Utah.-John H. Wickizer, Wm. Haydon. Vermont. -Middleton Goldsmith, Henry Chase. Virginia.-F. W. M. Holliday, Edmund R. Bagwell. Washington Territory.-Elwood Evans, Alexander S. Abernethy. West Virginia.-Alex. R. Boteler, Andrew J. Sweeney. Wisconsin.-David Atwood, Edward D. Holton. Wyoming.-Jos. M. Carey, Robert H. Lamborn. CENTENNIAL BOARD OF FINANCE. President.-John Welsh. Vice-Presidents.-William Sellers, John S. Barbour. Directors.-Samuel M. Felton, Daniel M. Fox, Thomas Cochran, Clement M. Biddle, N. Parker Shortridge, James M. Robb, Edward T. Steel, John Wanamaker, John Price Wetherill, Henry Winsor, Henry Lewis, Amos R. Little, John Baird, Thos. H. Dudley, A. S. Hewitt, John Cummings, John Gorham, Charles W. Cooper, William Bigler, Robert M. Patton, J. B. Drake, George Bain. Secretary and Treasurer.-Frederick Fraley. Financial Agent.-Hon. Wm. Bigler. Engineers and Architects. - Henry Pettit, Jos. M. Wilson, H. J. Schwarzmann. |