The Portland daily press., 1871-11-22
The Struggles of an inventor

The Struggles of an Inventor.
In the Scientific American we find story
OF the struggles and triumphs of an inventor,
which is worth preservation. The substance
| of it is as follows:
In 1858, Mr.. Thomas Scheehan of Dunkirk,
N. T., foreman in the blacksmith department
OF the Erie railroad shops at the place, patent
ed submarine grapple, which, though an
ingenious invention, proved so be one for
which there was very little demand. This
was his first invention; and the cost of its
completion, together with one years struggle
to manufacture and introduce it. eomnleteIv
exhausted Mr.. Scheehan's means. and reduc-
ed him to the extreuIest poverty. He was.
in fact, in pretty nearly the same condition
as Palissy the Potter, at the moment of his
greatest distress-a wife and eight children.
Sheehan's family were reduced to the verge
Of desttution, and Mrs. Sheehan became un-
consciously bitter
Just at this crisis Mr. S. ID. CoweIl. gener-
al freight agent of the Erie railroad at Dun
Kirk, CHANGED to meet Mr.. Sheehan in the
streets OF that town, and aceosted him with:
wen, Thomas, how are the grapples? |
hear they have used you up.''
Yes" was the answer, ''the grapples have
done my business; wish / had never seen
Them" SS0"
Throw 'em away" advised Mr.. Coweu.
Have you now any finished.
Il have now one most DONE" said Thom-
as.
Finish that, l will pay you $40 for it..
and have it used for picking up coal at the
dock. The money will help you in the present
emergency ~ hoo
place IN the shop and earn good living for
your family"
l. Il WILL" said Thomas.
Back to his humble home went the inyen
TOR, with new hope in his breast, and set
hilnseif TO finish the grapple with all due
speed. But, upon what slender threads do
| the fortunes of men hang! A tan. the only
one our inventor had of the size required.
| suddenly snapped a; under, and, as it was ess
sehtial TO the progress of the work, he must
| nave new one or he could not 90 on
In this strait he applied to his wife to lend
| MN twenty-five cents to buy the necessary
steel to forge the tap. But She, having no
faith in the grapple, refused, for two very
| good reasons first, that she believed the mon
| ey would be thrown away if she gave it to her
husband; and, second, that she had not the
| money to give him, even if so disposed. The
refusal was seasoned with some very hot
word-spice that made it very unpalatable to
Thomas. But he bethought him of a mer-
chant who in brighter days had seen the col
or OF his money, and who, perhaps, would
now give him credit for the small modicum
of steel he required for the tap
To this merchant he hied, and somewhat
reluctant to prefer his request, began beating
about the bush; and finally straying into poll
tics, hot words passed between them, and our
friend, feeling his manliiness would suffer too
keenly by asking credit for the steel, came
without it.
With no definite purpose he went home,
pondering upon how he should surmount
this, now no trifling obstacle of the broken
tap.
He found his wife making I've for soft soap,
| but her acidity in no way neutraliZed by the
| alkaline. Despondent and discouraged, he
sat down in no very enviable mood, when he
| chanced to spy piece of iron lying near the
| tubs at which his spouse was working. Med
| itating how he could make that piece of iron
hard enough for tap, he was led to a rather
| rude experiment, the results of which have in
| the end made him richer man than he ever
| dreamed of being.
1t so happened that from distant relative,
| a Roman Catholic priest in Ireland, our
| friend had inherited quite a library of works
| in chemistry, some OF them rare and valua-
bic. He had read some of these books to very
| good purpose. "There is surely carbon in
| that lye," thought he. 'If l only could get
that into this iron in the proper proportion
| should have steel, and from that my tap, and
| so finish my grapple."
With little faith or hope that he should sue
ceed, he took some of the lye, and adding,
without any particular reason for SO doing,
some saltpetre and Common salt, made a
paste with the solution and a hard d-grudged
| saucefitIl of the little remaining flour there
was in the house. He then forged the tap,
and enveloping it in the paste put the whole
into luted iron box and exposed it to heat
for two hours in blacksmth's fire. To his
joy and surprise, when he took it out, it was
hard enough to cut steel. The grapple was
finished and $40 flowed into the family treas
ury of Thomas Sheehan. He wentback to
his old work, disgusted with patents, and re-
solved never to have anything to do with one
again. But the remembrance of the tap,
hardened in so unique manner, stimulated
| him. Hoving a great deal of case hardening
to do, he thought he would repeat the expert
ment upon large scale, which he did with
perfect success.
For twelve months he went on to expert
ment, purchasing the materials with his OWL
money and working in secret by night and al
odd hours. AT the end of twelve months hi
reconsldered his sentence of condemnation on
patents, and applied for one on his process
which was granted September 4th, 1860, the
claim being for combination of damaged
flour, potash lye, or lye from hard wood ash
es, nitre, common salt, and sulphate of zinc,
for case hardening iron. In 1867 he patent
ed an improvement on the above named pro-
cess. In 1868 he took out another patent for
an entirely new process, which consists in the
use of raw limestone, charcoal, black oxide of
manganese, sal soda, common salt, and pull
verized resin, combined, for converting iron
into steel, which is now widely used, and
from which he reaped quite fortune.
No less than twenty-three of the leading
railways in America now use this process,
under license from the patentee, for harden
ing the links, guides, pins and nuts of loco,
motives, effecting, we are told, no less saw
ing than from five to six hundred dollars an-
nually ON locomotives, in obviating the lost
motion consequent upon the wear of links
guides and pins.
The inventor has already received for lcen
ses under his patent of 1868, S29,650, and has
just sold the remainder of his patent in Amer
| Too Rnp