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Author: Baker, Ray Stannard, 1870-1946
Technology — Juvenile literature
Inventions
Boys’ Second Book of Inventions
BOYS’ SECOND BOOK OF
INVENTIONS

BOYS’ SECOND BOOK
OF INVENTIONS

BY RAY STANNARD BAKER
Author of
Boys’ Book of Inventions, Seen in
Germany

FULLY ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
MCMIX
Copyright, 1903, by
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
Published, November, 1903, N

CHAPTER I
PAGE
The Miracle of Radium		3
	Story of the Marvels and Dangers of the New Element Discovered by Professor and Madame Curie.
CHAPTER II
Flying Machines		27
	Santos-Dumont’s Steerable Balloons.
CHAPTER III
The Earthquake Measurer		79
	Professor John Milne’s Seismograph.
CHAPTER IV
Electrical Furnaces		113
	How the Hottest Heat is Produced—Making Diamonds.
CHAPTER V
Harnessing the Sun		153
	The Solar Motor.
CHAPTER VI
The Inventor and the Food Problem		173
	Fixing of Nitrogen—Experiments of Professor Nobbe.
CHAPTER VII
Marconi and his Great Achievements		207
	New Experiments in Wireless Telegraphy.
CHAPTER VIII
Sea-Builders		255
	The Story of Lighthouse Building—Stone-Tower Lighthouses, Iron Pile Lighthouses, and Steel Cylinder Lighthouses.
CHAPTER IX
The Newest Electric Light		293
	Peter Cooper Hewitt and his Three Great Inventions — The Mercury Arc Light—The New Electrical Converter—The Hewitt Interrupter.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Page
Guglielmo Marconi Frontispiece
M. Curie Explaining the Wonders of Radium at the Sorbonne	5
Dr. Danlos Treating a Lupus Patient with Radium at the St. Louis Hospital, Paris	13
Radium as a Test for Real Diamonds	19
At the approach of Radium pure gems are thrown into great brilliancy, while imitations remain dull.
M. and Mme. Curie Finishing the Preparation of some Radium	25
M. Alberto Santos-Dumont	29
Severo’s Balloon, the “Pax,” which on its First Ascent at a Height of about 2,000 feet, Burst and Exploded, Sending to a Terrible Death both M. Severo and his Assistant	33
The Trial of Count Zeppelin’s Air-Ship, July 2, 1900	37
M. Santos-Dumont at Nineteen	41
M. Santos-Dumont’s First Balloon (Spherical)	43
M. Santos-Dumont’s Workshop	45
“Santos-Dumont No. 1”	49
Basket of “Santos-Dumont No. 1”	52
Showing propeller and motor.
“Santos-Dumont No. 1”	54
Showing how it began to fold up in the middle.
“Santos-Dumont No. 5” Rounding Eiffel Tower, July 13, 1901	57
The Interior of the Aërodrome	61
Showing its construction, the inflated balloon, and the pennant with its mystic letters.
The Fall into the Courtyard of the Trocadero Hotel	65
“Santos-Dumont No. 5.“
“Santos-Dumont No. 6″—The Prize Winner	69
Air-Ship Pointing almost Vertically Upward	73
Falling to the Sea	73
Just Before the Air-Ship Lost all its Gas	74
Losing its Gas and Sinking	74
The Balloon Falling to the Waves	75
Boats Around the Ruined Air-Ship	75
Manœuvring Above the Bay at Monte Carlo	77
Professor John Milne	80
From a photograph by S. Suzuki, Kudanzaka, Tokio.
Professor Milne’s Sensitive Pendulum, or Seismograph, as it Appears Enclosed in its Protecting Box	81
The Sensitive Pendulum, or Seismograph, as it Appears with the Protecting Box Removed	81
Gifu, Japan, after the Earthquake of 1891	85
This and the pictures following on pages 89, 101, 111, are from Japanese photographs reproduced in “The Great Earthquake in Japan, 1891,” by John Milne and W. K. Burton.
The Work of the Great Earthquake of 1891 in Neo Valley, Japan	89
Diagram Showing Vertical and Horizontal Sections of the More Sensitive of Professor Milne’s Two Pendulums, or Seismographs	93
Seismogram of a Borneo Earthquake that Occurred September 20, 1897	94
Effect of the Great Earthquake of 1891 on the Nagara Gawa Railway Bridge, Japan	101
Pieces of a Submarine Cable Picked Up in the Gulf of Mexico in 1888	108
The kinks are caused by seismic disturbances, and they show how much distortion a cable can suffer and still remain in good electrical condition, as this was found to be.
Record made on a Stationary Surface by the Vibrations of the Japanese Earthquake of July 19, 1891	111
Showing the complicated character of the motion (common to most earthquakes), and also the course of a point at the centre of disturbance.
Table of Temperatures	115
Mr. E. G. Acheson, One of the Pioneers in the Investigation of High Temperatures	125
The Furnace-Room, where Carborundum is Made	131
“A great, dingy brick building, open at the sides like a shed.“
Taking Off a Crust of the Furnace at Night	135
The light is so intense that you cannot look at it without hurting the eyes.
The Interior of a Furnace as it Appears after the Carborundum has been Taken Out	143
Blowing Off	147
“Not infrequently gas collects, forming a miniature mountain, with a crater at its summit, and blowing a magnificent fountain of flame, lava, and dense white vapour high into the air, and roaring all the while in a most terrifying manner.“
Side View of the Solar Motor	155
Front View of the Los Angeles Solar Motor	159
The Brilliant Steam Boiler Glistens in the Centre	163
The Rear Machinery for Operating the Reflector	167
Trees Growing in Water at Professor Nobbe’s Laboratory	187
Experimenting with Nitrogen in Professor Nobbe’s Laboratory	191
Mr. Charles S. Bradley	198
Mr. D. R. Lovejoy	199
Eight-Inch 10,000-Volt Arcs Burning the Air for Fixing Nitrogen	200
Machine for Burning the Air with Electric Arcs so as to Produce Nitrates	201
Marconi. The Sending of an Epoch-Making Message	206
January 18, 1903, marks the beginning of a new era in telegraphic communication. On that day there was sent by Marconi himself from the wireless station at South Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass., to the station at Poldhu, Cornwall, England, a distance of 3,000 miles, the message—destined soon to be historic—from the President of the United States to the King of England.
Preparing to Fly the Kite which Supported the Receiving Wire	213
Marconi on the extreme left.
Mr. Marconi and his Assistants in Newfoundland: Mr. Kemp on the Left, Mr. Paget on the Right	217
They are sitting on a balloon basket, with one of the Baden-Powell kites in the background.
Marconi Transatlantic Station at Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass.	229
At Poole, England	231
Nearer View, South Foreland Station	235
Alum Bay Station, Isle of Wight	237
Marconi Room, S.S. Philadelphia	241
Transatlantic High Power, Marconi Station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia	247
Work on the Smith Point Lighthouse Stopped by a Violent Storm	254
Just after the cylinder had been set in place, and while the workmen were hurrying to stow sufficient ballast to secure it against a heavy sea, a storm forced the attending steamer to draw away. One of the barges was almost overturned, and a lifeboat was driven against the cylinder and crushed to pieces.
Robert Stevenson, Builder of the Famous Bell Rock Lighthouse, and Author of Important Inventions and Improvements in the System of Sea Lighting	256
From a bust by Joseph, now in the library of Bell Rock Lighthouse.
The Bell Rock Lighthouse, on the Eastern Coast of Scotland	257
From the painting by Turner. The Bell Rock Lighthouse was built by Robert Stevenson, grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson, on the Inchcape Reef, in the North Sea, near Dundee, Scotland, in 1807-1810.
The Present Lighthouse on Minot’s Ledge, near the Entrance of Massachusetts Bay, Fifteen Miles Southeast of Boston	260
“Rising sheer out of the sea, like a huge stone cannon, mouth upward.“—Longfellow.
The Lighthouse on Stannard Rock, Lake Superior	261
This is a stone-tower lighthouse, similar in construction to the one built with such difficulty on Spectacle Reef, Lake Huron.
The Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, Florida	264
Fourteen-Foot Bank Light Station, Delaware Bay, Del.	268
The Great Beds Light Station, Raritan Bay, N. J.	270
A specimen of iron cylinder construction.
A Storm at the Tillamook Lighthouse, in the Pacific, one mile out from Tillamook Head, Oregon	275
Saving the Cylinder of the Lighthouse at Smith Point, Chesapeake Bay, from being Swamped in a High Sea	279
When the builders were towing the unwieldy cylinder out to set it in position, the water became suddenly rough and began to fill it. Workmen, at the risk of their lives, boarded the cylinder, and by desperate labours succeeded in spreading sail canvas over it, and so saved a structure that had cost months of labour and thousands of dollars.
Great Waves Dashed Entirely Over Them, so that They had to Cling for Their Lives to the Air-Pipes	285
In erecting the Smith Point lighthouse, after the cylinder was set up, it had to be forced down fifteen and a half feet into the sand. The lives of the men who did this, working in the caisson at the bottom of the sea, were absolutely in the hands of the men who managed the engine and the air-compressor at the surface; and twice these latter were entirely deluged by the sea, but still maintained steam and kept everything running as if no sea was playing over them.
Peter Cooper Hewitt	292
With his interrupter.
Watching a Test of the Hewitt Converter	299
Lord Kelvin in the centre.
The Hewitt Mercury Vapour Light	305
The circular piece just above the switch button is one form of “boosting coil” which operates for a fraction of a second when the current is first turned on. The tube shown here is about an inch in diameter and several feet long. Various shapes may be used. Unless broken, the tubes never need renewal.
Testing a Hewitt Converter	311
The row of incandescent lights is used, together with a voltmeter and ammeter, to measure strength of current, resistance, and loss in converting.

BOYS’ SECOND BOOK OF
INVENTIONS

CHAPTER I
THE MIRACLE OF RADIUM
Story of the Marvels and Dangers of the New Element Discovered by Professor and Madame Curie

No substance ever discovered better deserves the term “Miracle of Science,” given it by a famous English experimenter, than radium. Here is a little pinch of white powder that looks much like common table salt. It is one of many similar pinches sealed in little glass tubes and owned by Professor Curie, of Paris. If you should find one of these little tubes in the street you would think it hardly worth carrying away, and yet many a one of them could not be bought for a small fortune. For all the radium in the world to-day could be heaped on a single table-spoon; a pound of it would be worth nearly a million dollars, or more than three thousand times its weight in pure gold.
Professor and Madame Curie, who discovered radium, now possess the largest amount of any one, but there are small quantities in the hands of English and German scientists, and perhaps a dozen specimens in America, one owned by the American Museum of Natural History and several by Mr. W. J. Hammer, of New York, who was the first American to experiment with the rare and precious substance.

M. Curie Explaining the Wonders of Radium at the Sorbonne.

And perhaps it is just as well, at first, not to have too much radium, for besides being wonderful it is also dangerous. If a pound or two could be gathered in a mass it would kill every one who came within its influence. People might go up and even handle the white powder without at the moment feeling any ill-effects, but in a week or two the mysterious and dreadful radium influence would begin to take effect. Slowly the victim’s skin would peel off, his body would become one great sore, he would fall blind, and finally die of paralysis and congestion of the spinal cord. Even the small quantities now in hand have severely burned the experimenters. Professor Curie himself has a number of bad scars on his hands and arms due to ulcers caused by handling radium. And Professor Becquerel, in journeying to London, carried in his waistcoat pocket a small tube of radium to be used in a lecture there. Nothing happened at the time, but about two weeks later Professor Becquerel observed that the skin under his pocket was beginning to redden and fall away, and finally a deep and painful sore formed there and remained for weeks before healing.
It is just as well, therefore, that scientists learn more about radium and how to handle and control it before too much is manufactured.
But the cost and danger of radium are only two of its least extraordinary feature