The Savannah morning news., 1901-02-04
AN ENcouRAGING CAREER.

viduars rights I'm his or her false teeth.
--s-e-~-
AN ENCOURAGING CAREER.
Very few college professors are rich.
Still fewer of them have won great wealth
by developing commercially the theories
which they teach in the class rooms. All
of them know how things are to be
done having learned from text books and
lectures, but the number of them who
do" new things is limited. An exception
to the rule of treading only beaten paths,
and living and dying poor, is to be OBJ
served in the case of Prof. Michael J.
career, as far as it has gone, should prove
an inspiration to young men with the
brain to create and the pluck to work
Prof. Pupin is now in his forty-thrd
year, but he is practically a multi-mlllion-
ARE as the result of his own efforts. He
is the man who invented ocean telephony,
as it may be called in simple term, and
for which a great telephone corporation
recently paid him a cash honorarium OF
10000 and guaranteed a large annual
royalty for the use of the invention in
the United States. The invention being
patented by Prof. Pupin in foreign coun-
tries. he will receive large sums in cash
and royalties for the use of the invention
abroad. He has millions already in sight
therefore; and, being a young and bril-
liant man, there is every reason TO expect
that his career as an inventor has hardly
more than begun.
Nevertheless, twenty-eight years ago
this genius at the age Of fifteen, arrived
in this country from his home in Servia
with a head full of brains and a body fun
of energy as his total capital. He was
practically, if not actually, penniless. So
small was his store of money that he
often went hungry while looking for emr
ployment. He had received fairly good
education for one of his age in the old
country, and had learned to love to in
vestigate intricate problems. When nearly
his last penny had been expended for food
| he found a place as a shampooer in a
! Turkish bath establishment in Brooklyn.
The pay was small but it bought some
| thing to eat and a place to sleep. The
situation brought the young man into con-
tact with some influential gentlemen, one
of whom, the Rev. Or. Homer, became
interested in him because of his bright
ness and originality. The reverend gentle
man procured for the young shampooer
a scholarship in the Adelphi Academy,
now Adelphi College. Pupin thereupon
gave up his regular connection with the
baths but continued for a time to work
| Saturdays and Sundays to get money to
| pay his expenses.
From that time his rise was rapid. He
won honor after honor in the school, and
captured several cash prizes and scholar
ships, until finally he was able to enter
Columbia College, and later take post
graduate courses at Cambridge University,
England, and the University of Berlin,
Germany. At the latter institution he
studied under Prof Bunsen and Prof
Kirchoff, and received the degree of Phi.
D., his course having been marked by
high honors In 1889 Prof. Pupin returned
to Columbia and was appointed instructor
in mathematical physics in the depart
ment of electrical engineering
1t was in this position that Prof. Pupin
solved the problem of g-distance tele-
phony by submarine cable. A technical
description of the invention would be out
of place here. In brief, sit overcomes the
natural dissipation of the electrical cur
rent by the insertion at regular intervals
of induction coils by which the current
is renewed and strengthened and the VOL
ume of energy transmitted is unimpaired
over distances which, without such coils,
it would be impossible to travel by wire
or cable" This one fruit of industry and
brains has transformed poor young man
| into very rich one.