Chapter Sixty-One: The Great Minds of The Later Years
As the 1860s arrived in America so did the desire to continue the advancements of the country. The FBST pushed harder and faster, competition growing between different investors to bring out the next greatest invention. It was this push that would lead to some of the biggest breakthroughs of the later half the 19th century. These mind’s also included writers who would spread new ideas and made literature a big industry within America . These people included:
Josephine Cochrane: By the 1860s, more and more women were starting to protest for their rights to vote and serve in jobs. However, men insisted that their job was in the home, a role that was still not simple despite innovations. Josephine Garis Cochran was the inventor of the first commercially successful automatic dishwasher, which she designed in the shed behind her home, she then constructed it engaging the assistance of mechanic George Butters, who became one of her first employees. Despite inventing it to make entertaining easier, the gold rush of the 1850s had led to more income for many and thus the dishwasher’s popularity began to climb allowing housewife’s more free time.
Samuel Morse: By the 1860s, the telegraph had been around and tested but had never fully taken root in America . By the 1860s however America had expanded further and needed to communicate more easily. Congress appropriated $67,000 to Morse to get him to help establish the telegraph in the capital. By 1867, Morse and his son had established telegraphs in the capital and state buildings. This use of the telegraph and Morse code would lead to the rapid expansion of the telegraph in government institutions then civilian buildings.
Alexander Graham Bell: Bell would change America and the world. Bell was Scottish by birth and lived in the United Kingdom of Great Britain. When Scotland fell into anarchy shortly after the Spanish invaded, bell and his family would flee to America . It would be here in the 1870s that bell would invent the telephone and change the world. By the 1890s, the telephone began to replace morse code with almost all major governments beginning to use them. Bell and the FBST would also sell them across the world netting in a profit for both. This was not all Bell would do in his many years at the FBST. Bell is also credited with developing one of the early versions of a metal detector and helped found the Deaf and hard of hearing institution in America that would bring about a universal code of Sign language to the country in the late 1890s.
Henry Ford/ Carl Benz: Carl Friedrich was a German engine designer and automotive engineer. His Benz Patent Motorcar from 1881 is considered the first practical automobile. In 1885, Ford was a growing business man selling products from the FBST overseas. It was here Ford would meet with Benz and together they agreed to work on the automobile. Benz appreciated the ideas and spirt of ford. Together they would go on to form the Benz-Ford motorcar company. The Company converted the automobile from an expensive curiosity into an accessible conveyance that profoundly impacted the landscape of the early 1900s. Ford would die in 1911 leaving the company in the sole ownership of German-American Carl Benz.
Thomas Edison/Nicola Tesla: Thomas Edison was born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio, but grew up in Port Huron, Michigan after the family moved there in 1854. Edison would join the FBST in 1867 at the age of 20 and in under four years would quickly rise to the top of the bureau. Nikola Tesla was born an ethnic Serb in the village of Smiljan, within the Military Frontier, in Austria Empire on 10 July 1856. Three years after his birth, an Austrian military detachment came by and took his father away. His mother fearing the same for tesla fled to America . By 1876, tesla had joined the FBST and began a competitive working relationship with Edison. Together they would change America . With the alternating current (AC) electricity supply system, the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb. By the late 1880s, the pair alongside the FBST had begun to light up major cities with electricity for the first time.
Joseph Lister: Lister was born to a prosperous Quaker family in the village of Upton, West Ham, Essex, near London, England. Throughout his youth, Lister found himself rejected because of his religion including the two highest universities in England. In October 1848, Lister attempted to join medical school but was rejected, annoyed he would run away to America and become a doctor in 1849 free from prosecution. It is here were he would eventually work his way up to be noticed by the health department. Lister successfully introduced antiseptic to sterilise surgical instruments and to clean wounds. When it was discovered to work it was quirkily rolled out as a new idea by the health department becoming the first widely used antiseptic in America . Lister's work led to a reduction in post-operative infections and made surgery safer for patients, distinguishing him as the "father of modern surgery".
Edgar Allan Poe: Poe was a poet and literary critic who also pioneered the form of the short story. His dark writing style was marked with a penchant for the macabre and mystery. He contributed to the development of such genres as horror tales and detective fiction. Within Poe's troubled life reside the clues to how he could conceive of the disturbing stories and poetry for which he is widely remembered today. The rise of the printing industry and literature in the 1840s saw Poe’s fortunes rise and after a near brush with death he would continue writing until his death in 1889.
Arthur Conan Doyle: Born in 1859, Doyle was wanted by the British army, as every teen had to serve at least two years. When he was 17, he had written humorous stories about the army and its infectiveness which brought the eyes of the army down upon him. Despite living in Scotland, Doyle did not feel safe so he left for America when he was 18. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction and would be a big boom for the book industry. Sherlock Holmes was based around Doyle himself. An exiled detective living in new York who must solve crimes with New York born Doctor Watson.
Bram Stoker/ H. G. Wells/Lewis Carroll: Herbert George Wells was born at Atlas House, 162 High Street in Bromley, Kent, on 21 September 1866. Lewis Carroll was born in 1832 in All Saints' Vicarage at Daresbury, Cheshire, near Warrington. Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, on the northside of Dublin, Ireland. All three would begin to meet frequently at a writer’s club in 1879. Not knowing they were being watched the three would speek their minds and soon be charged with treason. With help from Charles dickens in America , all 3 would flee together. Once in New York they would form the backbone of Boston writers’ group.
Wells would go on to write dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. However, he would be best known for his science fiction novels and is often called the "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne and the publisher Hugo Gernsback. His most popular book *war of the worlds* is a commentary on Americanism, the American empire, democracy, evolutionary theory, and generally superstitions of the time, fears, and prejudices. Lewis Carroll would go on to become one of the key figures in children’s books, normalising them as more then silly books to entertain children. Most notably Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. He was noted for his ability at word play, logic, and fantasy. The poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark are classified in the genre of literary nonsense. He was also a mathematician, photographer and inventor.
Bram Stoker would write one influential book titled Dracula which was a big hit about an age-old vampire fleeing to Boston. Afterword stoker would take up the job of a teacher as education in America slowly grew. Stoker was a deeply private man, but his almost sexless marriage, intense adoration of Walt Whitman, Henry Irving and Hall Caine, and shared interests with Oscar Wilde, as well as the homoerotic aspects of Dracula have led to scholarly speculation that he was a repressed homosexual who used his fiction as an outlet for his sexual frustrations. Oscar Wilde would join stoker in America in 1896 and would go on to become a big writer on his own.