The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-06-21
MEN OF GENIUS DARE FORGOTTEN World Is Indebted to Them for
 Many Useful Things MANY TOILED A LIFE TIME Few People Know Who Invented the Useful Pin, Shoe Laolns, the
 Cooking Stove and Many
 Other Comforts.
MANY 10lLED A LIFE TIME
From the Washington Times.

the minds eye; speak of wireless telegra- phy, and one immediately thinks of Mar- conf The names of Santos Dumont Is as closely connected with the flying machine as that of Robert Stephenson with the lo- comotive. Yet there are dozens of things, big and little, which are a part of our daily life, of the origin of which we never think or, if we do, we fail to connect them with the names of their inventors-men as worthy of praise as any of the worlds benefactors.
 The Invention of Pins.
 When our grandmothers were young, pin money was a necessity, not a figure of speech Pins were sold at four penny. It is to the forgotten Samuel Slocum, an Englishman that we owe the cheap pins of today. In 1850 the idea came to him that pins, which were then made by wind. ing fine wire on the head and fastening it to the post of the pin. might be made at a single operation. But strive as he would, he could not perfect the idea. At last he shut himself up in a room at his house in the Isle of Wight and remained there eight days, seeing no one and hav- ing his meals passed in to him. At the end of that time he had every detail per fectly worked out, and in 1881 the manu- fracture of the modern pin commenced.
 A few years ago. comparatively speak ing, everyone laboriously laced his boots from the lowest hole to the top. There was none of that lightning crossing of the laces into the neat little hooks with which the modern lace boot is provided. The in- vento- of the boot-hook, H. A. Ship, who was born in London more than seventy years ago, Is al present ending his days In an almshouse. He sold his patent outright for the sum of e50. and the purchasers are said to have made e250.000 out of the idea.
 The Cooking Range
 It is less than a century ago that almost all the worlds cooking was done over the open fire. Joints were roasted on a spit. Bread was baked in brick oven. tedious ly heated with wood. For buildings and cakes the portable Dutch oven was the only contrivance known. In great houses elaborately built-up ranges of brick, with iron tops, were just beginning to be used. The small compact range or cooking stove seen today in every kitchen was un- known. There is probably not one per- son in ten thousand who could say. If D. His name was Josiah Reed and he died only four or five ;ears ago at the age of 92. His great invention. which revou- tionized domestic life. brough him neither fame nor fortune.
 Thomas Fitzpatrick died about a year ago. He worked a reform in modern city life second to none among the inventions or the past half century. He was the builder of the first modern flats If was l.. came to Fitzpatrick. who was a builder by trade, of erecting an edifiee. each separate floor of which should constitute a separate dwelling. The idea caught on at once. and now there are large areas in most great modern cities where fifty to seventy-f1ve per cent of the inhabitants are flat dwell lers.
 Englishmen who are town dwellers ride in trans every day. and if asked what is the origin of the word they usually at tribute 1t to Benjamin Outram, the Der byshire man, who first invented the fiange for keeping the wheel on the rail, This Is quite a mistaken idea. Tram" Is the old Swedish word for wooden sedge and the world owes the success full modern tram almost entirely to John Warren, Manchester man.
 The Tram
 Be1ore ms tune, GeorBe FranclS Train. had laid tram lines in London. But these were built with high rails like those used on railways. and constituted such a desperate danger to traffic that the vestries had them all torn up. MT. Warren devised the fiush-rail system, built the first tram to run upon it with his own hands, and within fourteen months from the time he commenced operations had 900 people at work making the trams and another 1,5O0 running them. and look ing after his horses of which he owned 4000. He made a fortune out of his en- terprise, and so did another almost un- known inventor, Robert Scrope.
 To Mir Scrope we owe the invention of the brown boot, or. at any rate. its first practical adoption. Within twelve months of commencing the manufacture MT. Scrope had twenty branches at work, employing some thousands of men,
 In all the worlds history there is no ofa of i,,a ,dn