These Ten Men Led World's Progress

Eight Americans on List of Greatest Inventors.

The ten greatest inventors of history all have lived within the last 150 years, asserts John S. Seymour, former United States Commissioner of patents, writing in Popular Science Monthly. A century and a half ago the era of modern progress began, he asserts, and from that era he selects the 10 men whose inventions he considers greatest in utility, originality and permanent value to mankind, as follows:

Eli Whitney inventor of the cotton gin; Charles Goodyear, inventor of the vulcanizing process for rubber; Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph; Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; Cyrus Hall McCormick, inventor of the reaper; Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine; Sir Henry Bessemere, first to convert pig iron into steel; Thomas A. Edison, Inventor of the incandescent light; Nikola Tesla, developer of the alternating current transmission and Wilbur Wright, father of the modern airplane. All but two of these — Bessemere and Tesla — were born in the United States, and the latter has made this country his home for year and has pursued the scientific investigation that brought him fame.

"It would be unjust," writes Mг. Seymour, "to be silent concerning James Watt and his steam engine, or Marconi and wireless telegraphy, even though I do not include them in the list of the ten greatest. Neither of these inventors, though, can be called in truth an originator. Likewise, Gutenberg, accredited father of printing, was foreshadowed in China centuries before. Fulton, Franklin, Westinghouse. Merganthaler, DeForest, Stevens and the screw propeller Hyatt, the discoverer of celluloid; Otto, the developer of gas engine; Lake and Holland, creators of the modern submarine — none will deny the right of these to a place among the immortals. Yet, although they cannot be called imitators, they are not strictly originators. The inventions for which they are famous do not possess the epoch-making, widespread utility that marked the work of the ten whom I have called the greatest.

"And with all these achievements we have only scratched the surface. Far greater inventions than the imagination can picture are on the horizon."