The Newark star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1909, 1909-08-04

CAPSULE NO. II.

- CAPSULE NO. 81
TT each year in Newarkas history vas marked by its most important event.
the close Of the "a would not be set down to remember 1916. Something
of TAI more importance to Newark than vars umos Of war pr peace hap
pened in that year-seth Boyden cam to town. He as a young a tn in
years, out his brain vas as mature active as though he had lived much
longer tina h really had.
Seth Boydens statue stands in Washington Park today, and is q proef
that the year 1876 saw nothing more important than his coming to town. One
unacquared with the history OF the nan and the record of his work sees In
the statue a laborer with the head and features of the deep thinker. Perhaps
too. there is in the face som suggestion of the absolute unselashness of the
man. If it is not there, it should be.
This statue vas not erected because Seth Boyden left a great deal of money
to public institutions, for lie died a comparatively poor man nor because he
his country Oh the battlefield or in legislative halls but rather because
he was Newarks most useful citizen. There is hardly n year in the history
of the town when the coming Of Seth Boyden would not have the prize perform
anceo of he entire twelvemonth. .A.I
When this great inventor, who discovered new and needed things because
he couldn't help it, oame to Newark there IA certainly need for him. The town.
ws making things in enormous quantities, and Boyden made new and i'm
proved tools that the townspeople might make things hetter aud quicker and
His forge in Orange street wa going day and night He worked for the Joy
of working inc because he couldn't help it, The lions share of the profits and
the portions of most of the res of the menagerie ven to others because the
thought If realizing heavily Oh his " wonderful work never oeeurred to
Boyden. 1t was thu work itself which held him. In 1873, before coming to
Newark, he had invented a machine for cutting files Two years later he
fashioned a machine by which wrought nails could be made Then can others
cutting and heading tacks.
AS has been remarked, Boyden never saw anything which SCENE to be
just perfect and working right principally because man-nade things seldom
perfect and working right nd because he had the raref faculty If seeing
things just S they were. And when he sal them with their tmp@ec.ens he
had a mental itch until he could bette them. This tickling in his thinking
as going on most of tn time. to the eternal welfare of Newark.
He would hardly get it meaphorhaly scratched D. turning out; sems machine
which would do new things under thu SUI or by improving an old n when
a new minus proposition would bob up and set that little annoyance going
again until he cou make it plus. This caused him to invent h piston rod
for the locomotive, to be the first to discover the daguerreotype in this country,
to discover maneable hon and help Morse with the telegraph; anticipate Bw-
bank by making ne strawberry grow IS big as two which hd grown before.
1t was that wanting osee-w what -makes it, tick spirit Of Boydens and the
ability to throw it together again with 100 or so per cent added to its efficiency
which introduced patent leather into this country via Newark. Boydsn got hold
of the enameed peak of a German military al and studied it O such good
purpose that he vas al to produce patent leather The first years sales of
the new product were 45N The value of thu discovery of this nw leather
and the process of making to a town in WHICH the chief industry vas the
manufactur OF leather was enormous,
If Newark manufacturers and merchants could hay had a new citizen
made % order for them lie would have fallen frs short of Seth Boyden, because
they would not have dreamed of asking for so much in N man His exploits
out in the ensuing history of the own until his death like flaming arcs
in dark spaces .@.a