Peter Cooper / The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4

d. A few of them may be mentioned here, in addition to those to which allusion has been made already. It will be seen that even those which failed of c

aid Mr. Cooper eight hundred dollars for the first chance to purchase the right of applying the method on the new canal. But the scheme failed for the reason (as Mr. Cooper explained half a century later) that the right of way for the Erie Canal had been secured from the farmers of the State by representing to them the profit which they would realize from selling forage, etc., for the use of canal boats, which were to be drawn by horses or mules. The introduction of mechanical power would destroy these induc

Cooper to invent a torpedo boat, to be steered from the shore by "two steel wires, like the reins of a horse." But on the trial trip of the boat a ship crossed and broke

ial to the solution of the problem, resolved to employ the explosive force of chloride of nitrogen,-one of the most dangerous compounds known to chemists. The result of his experiments in this d

buildings was foreseen and provided for by him in the erection of the Cooper Union building, and in that building also he introduced fo

many years, and possibly to the very last, as his crowning achievement-was a curious example of misdirected ingenuity. It is worthy of n

ank. To his mind this was a source of great loss of power, and he believed that, if he could transform the rectilinear mot

Attorney-General; examined, approved, and signed by him, and returned to the Department of State for final delivery to the patentee. It grants for fourteen years to the said Peter Cooper, his heirs, administrators, and assignees the exclusive right to make, use, or license others to use, the described improvement in the method of effecting rotary motion directly from the alternate rectilinear motion of a steam piston. Evidently these distinguished statesmen-Adams, Clay, and Wirt-were not experts in mechanics, or at least did not undertake to hinder by technical criticism the experiments of American ambition; and there was no trained corps of patent-examiners to decide upon the novelty, practicability, and usefulness of any proposed improvement in the arts. Probably the government shared at that time the dominant A

ccompanied by no drawings; but it contains a detailed specification which shows that the invention consisted in an arrangement by which, at each forward movement, a prolongation

. Yet the inventor constructed a working-machine, and satisfied himself, by a "duty trial" of some sort, that it "saved two fifths of the steam." H

e idea." His fertile and ingenious mind threw out its suggestions in every direction, into fields untrodden by experience; but when any such plan failed of acceptance, he turned

the steam engine was the source of his fame as the builder of the