was as big as a sewing-machine. Still, it embodied the essential
principles of the typewriter as it is made to-day, and after spending
five years in perfecting it, Sholes made a contract with E. Remington &
Son to manufacture it. It is one of the ironies of fate that the name
principally connected with the typewriter in the public mind is that of
the manufacturer, the identity of the inventor being completely lost, so
far as applied, at least, to the name of any machine.

* * * * *

We have spoken elsewhere of the career of John D. Rockefeller, of the
immense fortune he made from petroleum and the manner in which he
disposed of a portion of it. It is worth pausing a moment to consider
the career of the two men who discovered petroleum, who sunk the first
well in search of a larger supply, and who put it on the market. There
is scarcely any development of modern life to rank in importance with
the introduction of kerosene. It added at once several hours to every
day, and who can estimate what these evening hours, spent usually in
study or reading, have meant to humanity?

In the early part of the century, whales were so plentiful, especially
along the New England coast, that whale, or sperm, oil was used for
lighting purposes, and many of the old whale-oil lamps are still in
existence. The light they gave was dim and smoky, but it was far better
than no light at all. As the years passed, whales became more and more
scarce, until sperm oil was selling at over two dollars a gallon. Only
the richest people could afford to pay that, and the poor passed their
evenings in darkness.

In 1854, a man named James M. Townsend brought to Professor Silliman, of
Yale, a bottle of oil, asking him to test it. This was done, and the
astonished professor found that here was an oil, whose source he could
only guess, which made a splendid illuminant and which also seemed to
have some medicinal properties. The oil was from Oil Creek,
Pennsylvania, and Townsend, associating with himself a conductor named
E. L. Drake, formed the Seneca Oil Company and began gathering the oil
by digging trenches. At first it was bottled and sold for medicinal
purposes at one dollar a gallon; then Drake suggested that a larger
supply might be secured if a well was bored for it. A man familiar with
salt well boring was employed, and in 1859 the first well was begun at
Titusville.

Most people regarded Drake as a madman, and th