The Boyhood of an Inventor - Early Television Foundation

foot. City fathers don't want automobiles to shy
at the thing and run amuck.
More than a hundred years ago an English inventor
of a horseless vehicle was ruled off the highways be
cause he ran into a neighbor's fence at the frightful
speed of five miles per hour, and knocked off several
palings. Whereupon laws were passed limiting motor
vehicles to four miles per hour. This law was re
sponsible for British backwardness in automobile
development, for it was not repealed until 1906.
The Great Eastern steamship was not a paying
investment, not because she wasn't successful, but
because she was too far in advance of progress. We
have much larger vessels now, but it was nearly
fifty years before another of her size was built, al
though she has the distinction of laying
Atlantic cable.
Again,
one is
the first
often astonished to note on what a
tiny thing, apparently, an inconsequential thing, a
gigantic business may hinge. For example:
The present great telephone industry literally
turned on the half rotation of a screw. Two inventors
contending for priority before the U. S. Supreme
Court used identical exhibits as proof, i.e., small
boxes in which a certain screw was employed, and
the decision was given to the party who proved that
he had turned the screw a half revolution more than
the other, for his turn of the screw made one box a
successful telephone
a failure.
transmitter while the other was
The prototype of the motion picture projecting
machine, the one type which is today used the world
over, differed from others principally in the size of
the shutter opening. One was a success while the
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