Armstrong are conspicuous instances that the race retains the power of magnificent conceptions, and the great multiplication of factories and workshops in Great Britain ought to have stimulated the thought, as it has trained the eyes and hands of a large industrial population. Indeed, it may be said that England still contributes the larger half of the world's inventive fertility; but England no longer gets or deserves the credit for it. If we look back to actual history, we shall find that many of the best patents, such as the steam -plough, the sewing-machine, and the electric telegraph had to cross back to England from America before they could obtain recognition.[1] Even Nasmyth's steam-hammer was employed in Creuzot before the foundries of his own country adopted it.[2] The English inventor is still more than the equal of his rivals; more fertile in expedients than the German, and more patient than the American. Where he fails is when he carries his work to market. The instinctive feeling in England is, that if an invention were really valuable it would have been hit upon before; the feeling in America, that
- ↑ It may be added that the electric telephone was first invented by Mr. Graham Bell of Edinburgh, who had studied the subject under his father in Scotland, though he took out the first patent in America. — Moncel's Le Téléphone, pp. 6, 33. A reaping-machine, resembling the Australian stripper, has been traced back to the Belgae as known by Pliny; and Mr. Smiles shows that one was in use in France in the sixteenth century (Industrial Biography, p. 173); while the present form was invented by Commin of Denwick (1812), and Patrick Bell of Dumfries (1827), before M'Cormick patented it in America. The sewing-machine was first invented by Saint in England, c. 1790. Howe in America improved it, and sold the patent for a trifle (£250) to Thomas in England. Thomas neglected to bring it out, and Howe bought it again and made it a success in America.
- ↑ Smiles's Industrial Biography, p. 287. Compare Goethe's remark: "Der Englander ist Meister das Eutdeckte gleich zu nützen, bis es wieder zur neuen Entdeckung, und frischer That führt. Man frage nur, warum sie uns überall voraus sind."—Ueber Naturwissenschaft, Band iii. S. 268.
