The Inventor-Businessman

Edison was an example of scientific inventors who set up labs for their own purposes.  Others included Benjamin Stillman, who analyzed oil sample for the oil companies, Charles Jackson who introduced Samuel Morse to the principle of the electric telegraph.  These men of "research and development" worked behind to scenes to make others a household name.

Actually Jackson (pictured right) opened a chemical lab in Boston in 1836 where he experimented with gun-cotton  and sorghum, proposing the application of ether in surgery. He is credited with developing the basis for the telegraph and anesthesia. His contemporary, James Booth, in Philadelphia, set up a laboratory for researching sugar, molasses and iron while providing instructions to young chemists.

The 19th century is full of struggling inventors who sacrificed and braved the public ridicule.  Eli Whitney (cotton gin), Oliver Evans (steam engine), Elias Howe (sewing machine), Gail Borden (condensing milk), Samuel Morse (telegraph), Alexander Graham Bell (telephone), George Eastman (film rolls), and John Wesley Hyatt (plastics).  These men spent their lives, and their family's lives to produce marketable ideas that would change our lives for the better.

These men were inventor-businessmen.  They fashioned a product with their own hands, demonstrated it to the public, showed how to manufacture it, and finally persuaded someone to do just that.  There were the inventors turned businessmen.  There were also the businessmen turned inventors...Next time.

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Today in Pioneer History: "On May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, a bomb is thrown at a squad of policemen attempting to break up a labor-party rally.  The police responded with gunfire, killing several people in the crowd and injuring dozens more.  The demonstration which drew 1500 Chicago workers, was led by a German born activist and set off a national wave of foreign dissension.