Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/312



HE history and growth of inventions are subjects in which all are interested. The difficulties and rebuffs which inventors have had to undergo in the perfecting of their ideas, their perseverance and ultimate success, form most interesting reading.

Vast sums of money are brought in by apparently simple inventions requiring no great mechanical knowledge. The accounts of these read more like the wildest fiction than simple fact, and are sufficient to make the least covetous among us bright yellow with jealousy. The very simplicity of some of them creates a feeling of annoyance; we feel we could have invented them with the greatest ease. If we had only known better the wants and tastes of the public, we might ourselves have been the recipients of those compact round sums. The stylographic pen brought in £40,000 per annum, the india-rubber tips to pencils £20,000, metal plates for protecting the soles and heels of boots brought in £250,000 in all, the roller skate £200,000. A clergyman realised £400 a week by the invention of a toy; another toy, the return ball (a wooden ball with a piece of elastic attached), brought in an annual income of £10,000, the "Dancing Jim Crow " £15,000 per annum, whilst "Pharaoh's Serpents," a chemical toy, brought in £10,000 in all; the common needle-threader brought in £2,000 a year; the inventor of a copper cap for children's boots was able to leave his heir £400,000; whilst Singer, of sewing-machine fame, left at his death nearly £3,000,000.

But there is another side to the question—the humorous side. It is to this that I propose to confine myself more particularly here, and to describe, with the help or drawings, some of the wonderful things which people have thought it worth their while to patent, strong in the hope or making a big fortune in the near future, only to find in so many cases that their inventions were impracticable and very often perfectly ridiculous.

The prevention of sea-sickness has long been a subject of interest to all travellers. Some of the cures and preventives have been curious. One suggestion I remember