Page:Popular Mechanics 1928 01.pdf/62

 stand two motions at the same time. Instead of thrilling people, as the inventor had hoped, it made them seasick.

What will go and what will not, what will succeed and what will be a headstone, cannot be predicted. Before the World's Fair opened in Chicago, in 1893, an inventor came to the board of managers and asked for a concession to put up an amusement device. The management looked his blueprints over: they didn't think much of them, as the blueprints called for some sort of wheel extending up into the air, with seats arranged across it. He was advised against it.

"People aren't going to risk their necks on a thing like that," they told him.

But he posted the advance money and went ahead with the idea. The man's name was Ferris and he called his riding invention the "Ferris Wheel." To the astonishment of the board of managers, people rushed to risk their necks on it and the device became almost instantly world-famous. The day the fair closed, the "fool" who had invented it counted up his money and he had taken in just $726,000. It was new, it caught the public fancy, but it was an exotic flower that, financially, bloomed only once. The wheel was taken to St. Louis with the expectation of making a million, but it took in only $450,000. At each succeeding exhibition its returns grew less. Ferris put out other inventions but none of them pleased the ever-fickle public, and he died on the fringe of want. The wheel, however, still appears in small size in the suburban parks, but the mastodon which amazed Chicago has joined the silent dodo.



In the world of outdoor-amusement inventions, you never know which way the "cat is going to jump." Some years ago there was a young boy working in an architect's office in Nashville, Tenn., at ten dollars a week. A fair was going up at Nashville and a prize was offered for the best architect's design for one of the buildings, and the young man entered his drawings under another name. When the award of $2,500 was announced it was found that a lad, still in his teens, by the 