Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/470

Rh Supervisors to take into consideration the erection in the Park of suitable buildings for Courts. Laid over.

It is easy to imagine what a modern reporter would have done with as important a matter as a proposition to erect "suitable buildings for courts."

A big news story in the New York Herald of July 22, 1859, about the erection of a "New Monster Hotel in Fifth Avenue" contains a pioneer description of the newly-invented elevator, the work of Otis Tufts, of Boston. The reporter, none too sure that the new contraption, the "vertical railway," is feasible, allows some doubt to creep into his description:

"One novel feature of this hotel is, that it will contain a vertical railway; that is, a carriage will move from the top to the bottom of the building, and from bottom to top. It will be forced upwards by the application of steam power, and the descent will be regulated by the assistance of hydraulic power, so as to guard against accidents. The car will be attached to a shaft, which, being turned by steam, will cause the car to proceed upwards, by means of a screw, or on the principle of an inclined plane. The car stops at each floor, and passengers are landed, and others taken in In the same way, in making the descent, it stops at each floor. It is stated that there be contrivances at each of these landings to prevent accidents. We should think something very effectual would be wanted to make this arrangement safe. The inventor is Mr. Otis Tufts, of Boston, who, suffering from the commercial convulsion, turned his attention to mechanical studies. In his case necessity was the mother of invention. The design is to equalize the stories in the building and make the sixth as desirable as the second or third.

Behind the vertical railway is a baggage elevator, moved by the same power. The object of this is obviously to save the necessity of taking trunks up and down the stairs—a great convenience."

The bigger the event, apparently, the more determined were the news writers of the 50's and 6o's to sneak up on it chronologically and get it moving with the minimum of jar or excitement-like a skillful locomotive engineer starting his train so gently as not to clink the dishes in the dining car. One of the big news stories of the whole '50-'60 decade was John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859. Here is the way the New York Weekly Tribune started this story in its issue of October 22, 1859:

Old John Brown, of Kansas fame, has incited an insurrection at Harper's Ferry. With 21 men he took pos-