es feel as
though the train had struck a rock. More than that, should any accident
occur, breaking the train in two, the brakes are instantly set
automatically. All of which is done by the power of compressed air,
working through a series of pipes and air-hose beneath the cars.

George Westinghouse's father was superintendent of the Schenectady
Agricultural Works, and it was there that the boy found his vocation.
Before he was fifteen, he had modelled and built a steam engine, and
followed that with a steel railroad frog, which was so great an
improvement over the frogs then in use that it was soon widely adopted,
and brought the young inventor both money and reputation. He moved to
Pittsburgh, as the centre of the iron and steel business, and began the
manufacture of his frogs there.

One day he came across a newspaper account of the successful use of
compressed air in the digging of the Mont Cenis tunnel, in Switzerland,
and the thought occurred to him that perhaps a railroad train could be
controlled by the same agency. He worked over the problem for a time,
but when he mentioned his idea to his friends, they were inclined to
think it absurd to suppose that a rubber-tube strung along under the
cars could work the brakes effectively. However, Westinghouse was not
discouraged, but continued to experiment, and the air-brake as we have
it to-day was the result.

* * * * *

Which brings us to the most remarkable genius in the field of invention
the world has ever known--the man who has made invention, as it were, a
business, whose life has been devoted to rendering practical and useful
the dreams of other men, who has reduced invention to a science--Thomas
Alva Edison. There are some who are inclined to belittle Edison's
achievements because some of the greatest of them have been founded upon
the ideas of others. He is best known, for instance, as the inventor of
the modern incandescent light; but the discovery that light may be
obtained from wire heated to incandescence in a glass bulb from which
the air has been exhausted, was made when Edison was only two years old.
Experiments with this light were made by a dozen scientists, but it
remained a mere laboratory curiosity until Edison took hold of it, and
with a patience, ingenuity and fertility of resource, in which he stands
alone, made it a practicable, efficient and convenient source of light.
That the incandescent light, as it is kn