The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1901-12-01
WORTH VAST WEALTH.
Valuable Ideas Now Lost to the
World.

Utica Globe)
Great inventions which, in some
cases. might have changed the tenor
of the business world OF the present
day. have been wantOnly destroyed OF
lost though the eccentricities or dis
tCrted imagination of the inventor.
The story of some Of these lost in
ventions is interesting. It is hardly
! twenty years since John Weymouth,
the WolverhamptOn engineer and de-
Signer, discovered the motive power
OF heat, exhibited il in one Of the
simplest, cheapest and most useful en-
gines imaginable, and then deprived
the world of its benefits. He had pro-
duced beforehand a round dozen Of ex-
cellent inventions, which still bear his
name, including the modern revolving
chimney coWl; and, having made a
large fortune, he devoted himself to
Harvesting the ordinary heat Of fire
and making a new power of it. The
idea was laughed at by all his friends,
but after four years of study and ex-
perimenting, he produced a stationary
engine that gave double the power of
any steam-dTiven mechanism at about
I a third the cost, and also small
model heat locomotive, large enough
to draw a truck with a man in it, He
engineers. including Professors Hux-
ley and Forbes Brown. and showed
them that his two machines worked to
| perfection. The affair made a great
stir, and it proved that a great power
of unlimited scope had been discOv--
cred. Weymouth was flooded with Of
| fers of huge sums for his invention,
but. fors no apparent reason, except,
perhaps, the alleged madness of genius.
| he absolutely refused to either bring
it out himself or sell the secret. He
announced himself satisfied with the
triumph of the invention and before his
death, a year later. he destroyed all
the papers and plans explaining the
system, and removed the essential
| parts of the two engines. These en-
gines arc still possessed by his heirs.
| but nobody has been able to make
anything of than. Still stranger was
the famous loss of the recipe for the
manufacture of diamonds. some fifteen
years ago. Herbert Warner, who
alone discovered and held the secret
Of diamond making, did not live to
wreck the diamond industry, as peO-
pie thought he would, and the eircum-
stances of the loss were mysterious
and tragic. Inferior diamonds can
/ still be produced artificially, but only
Z dL d EUSL ul dBpuL zen t-AAACo SAAClL
/ value Warner, after years of expert
menting, was able to turn out geRU-
inc diamond of large size and of the
| first water, at the cost Of a small frac-
/ ton of the complete stones worth
Q @ q
! He, like Weymouth, of heat power
| fame, manufactured his diamonds be-
fore an audience of scientists, and pro-
cured three fine stones, which were
tested and pronounced faultless. Two
Of them are still in existence and are
| the greatest curiosity the jewel world
| has ever seen. But within a fortnight
| of this triumph, before any of the new
/ stones We're put on the market, War
ner utterly disappeared from his house
| in Harley street, London, leaving no
/ trace whatever. So complete was his
| disappearance that from that day to
/ this not the smallest explanation has
/ been hit upon. Then there is the lost
/ secret of the wonderful new metal
called "talium," which would certainly
/ have been worth many millions ster-
| ling to the nation and the inventor.
Grantley Adams discovered il . just
| eight years ago, and during it's short
/ life it was one of the greatest Won
] ders of the science and commerce"
world.
1t was sheer vanity that kept Grant
/ Finlay from giving to the world the
| benefit of his invention for the total
| abolition of smoke. He evolved a SIM
/ PIE system by which any fire or light
| could be made to consume its own car
bon. and though he demonstrated the
| usefulness Of the invention many
/ times. he obstinately refused to put 1t
on the market or sell the secret of it.
/ His own house, just outside Glasgow
was fitted with the system, which did
not cost him 80 shillings for the
entire building, and no jot of smoke
was ever emitted there. All his fires
| consumed their own smoke and he
was fond Of showing the efficiency of
/ his invention TO guests but never
| would he explain the working of It,
and he died two years ago carrying
his secret with him to the grave. A
week before his death he had all the
''anti-smoke" apparatus stripped from
his house and destroyed.