The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1880-11-04
of American Ingenuity.

The remarkable inventiveness of Amer
lean genius hns often been commented
upon with wonder and applause by OBJ
servers from every land, and it deserves
to be admired. Last year, for instance,
in Great Britain, 3,400 patents were
granted out of 5000 applications, while
in the United States of 10000 applicants
12,400 received patents. This is nearly
four to one, both Of applications made
and patents granted. But the flexible
ness of American invention, its peculiar
capacity Of adjusting itself to surround
ing circumstances, its "pliability to the
environment" as the evolutionists would
say, is much more valuable property
than were its fecundity. This quality
makes every resource of the American
mild instantly available for each occa-
sion rs soon as it arises and contrasts
strikingly with the rustiness, the slowness
of motion Of the more solid European
mind. Examples abound of this differ
encc in mental cultivation, but none are
more forcible than those afforded by the
comparative history of railroad construc-
tion in this country and in Europe. The
first locomotive engine was put on the
Liverpool and Manchester Railroad in
1929. 1t was built for straight, stone
ballasted road, with rrstone and iron
bridges, n roadway solid as Roman
road, and costing enormous sums per
mile. Uuder such conditions, with our
inferior amount of available capital, ex-
tensive railroad construction could not
have been entered upon in this country.
The English roads are still built in the
same solid way, and the English engines
are simply improvements upon Stephen
sons original model. But in this coun.
try, from the first, our railroads were con.
trivcd to turn almost impossible curves,
to wind up almost impossible SUBMITS, to
descend perilious grades, and to. cross
great ravines on spider.web tracery of
trestle. work. A British engine could not
have been driven on any such road, and
if it could its weight and massiveness
would have crushed the track. But the
engineers who adapted their roads to the
face of the country and the state of the
public purse might be trusted to adapt
their engines to the roads. Indeed, the
first locomotive ever built in the country,
Mr.. Peter Cooper's, was intended and
contrived to wheel in and out of the fire.
quent and marvelously short and sharp
curves of the original Baltimore and
Ohio railroad to EIlicott's Mills, which it
was thought would look $50 picturesque"
winding along its ambient way and fol.
lowing the bends of Gwynn's Falls and
the Patapsco. This sort of pliancy has
continued throughout. It gave the
"camel- back" engine and the V curve to
the Alleganies, and the light cottonwood
cheap road. bed to the prairies. The
rapidity with which our engineers learn
to adjust means to ends is surprising.
The builders of the Liverpool and Man
chester road, in order to make it straight,
ran it right across Chat.Moss, great
morass, into which millions of cubic
yards of rubbish were dumped for ten
years. American engineers began in the
same way. In building the Erie railroad
ninety miles of it were laid on piles, as if
it were O pier they were building. But
GURluGSIS SOUu Icat ucO w uauh SuSn w
structions, or, if they had to be crossed,
to get over them not by main strength
and awkwardness, but by cheap, ready
made, yet efficient expedients.
Thus again the Erie, when British rails
were not to be had for less than $50 a
ton, in 1886 founded the Lackawanna
Iron Works, hauled iron and coal over
wagon, roads and forged its own rails
the first T rails ever made and laid down
in this country. In tunnelling and
bridging, as we'll as in trestle work and
in climbing steep activities, this same
fexibleness in invention is constantly
seen, and it was often displayed during
the late war, as when the Confederatess
built an armor. clad vessel out of railroad
iron, or Farragut protected his vessels
from shot with anchor chains, or Porter
rescued his feet from the Red River by
constructing boom and wing-dam,
one of tine most ingenious engineering
performances upon record. This capa-
city of Establishment in the American
faculty of invention is the most resource
full possession of our people, and must
continue to enrich US more rapidly than
other nations are enriched as long as we
retain it.