Early Lexington KY
Inventions
Include
Steamboat, Music of Light, Planetarium
Source: History of Lexington Kentucky: its
early annals and recent progress, George W. Ranck,
Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1872, pp. 183-187.
With the year 1793 commences the history of
invention in Lexington, for at that time, in all reasonable
probability, was invented the first steamboat that ever
successfully plowed the waters of the world. The inventor, Edward
West, was a Virginian, and moved to this city in 1785. He was the
first watchmaker who settled in Lexington. His shop and residence
both were near the corner of Mill and Hill streets, opposite the
present residence of Mrs. Letcher. Mr. West was a hard student
and close investigator. He spent all his leisure time in
experimenting with steam and steam machinery of his own
construction, and the little engine that so successfully
propelled his little boat, was the result of years of untiring
industry. He obtained a patent for his great invention, and also
one for a nail-cutting machine, the first ever invented, and
which cut 5,320 pounds in twelve hours, the patent for which
"he sold at once for ten thousand dollars."* Models of
both inventions were deposited in the patent office, but they
were unfortunately destroyed when Washington was burned by the
British in 1814. It is said that John Fitch, of Pennsylvania,
made the initiatory step in steam navigation in 1787, but it is
also known that he had no success till August, 1807, while West's
boat was notoriously a success as early as 1793, years before
Fulton had built his first boat on the Seine. In that year
(1793), in the presence of a large crowd of deeply interested
citizens, a trial of West's wonderful little steamboat was made
on the town fork of Elkhorn, which was dammed up near the
Lexington and Frankfort freight depot for that purpose. The boat
moved swiftly through the water. The first successful application
of steam to navigation was made, and cheer after cheer arose from
the excited spectators, A number of our most respected and
venerable citizens remember witnessing this experiment when boys.
In confirmation of the early date of this invention, we quote the
following editorial notice from the Old Kentucky Gazette, dated
April 29, 1816:
"STEAMBOATS.--A steamboat owned by a
company of gentlemen of this town (Lexington) was to sail for New
Orleans yesterday, from near the mouth of Hickman creek. We are
informed that she is worked on a plan invented by Mr. West, of
this place, nearly twenty years ago, and in a manner distinct
from any other steamboat now in use. On trial against the current
of the Kentucky, when that river was very high, she more than
answered the sanguine expectations of her owners, and left no
doubt on their minds that she could stem the current of the
Mississippi with rapidity and ease."
The editor settles the question of the
antiquity of the invention, but speaks indefinitely. John B.
West, the inventor's son, states decidedly that it was in the
year 1793. The memory of Edward West should be cherished by all
his countrymen; for to his genius is due one of the grandest
inventions recorded in the geographical history of man."
since Jason sailed in search of the golden fleece, or the
Phoenicians crept timidly along the shores of the Mediterranean,
in their frail, flat-bottomed barges. The time when steam was
first used as a motive power will form an era in the world's
history, for the revolution it had worked has been a mighty one,
and a hundred years from now, the little stream called the
"Town Fork of Elkhorn" will have become classic. The
identical miniature engine that West made and used in 1793 is now
in the museum of the lunatic asylum in this city. Edwin West died
in Lexington, August 23, 1827, aged seventy.
In 1796,+ Nathan Burrowes, an ingenious citizen
of Lexington, introduced the manufacture of hemp into Kentucky,
and also invented a machine for cleaning hemp. Like many other
inventors, he was betrayed , and derived no benefit from either,
He afterward discovered a superior process of manufacturing
mustard, and produced an article which took the premium at the
World's Fair, in London, and which has no equal in quality in
existence. The secret of its compounding has been sacredly
transmitted unrevealed. It is now three-quarters of a century
since "Burrowes' Mustard" was first made, and it is
still manufactured in Lexington, and has a world-wide celebrity.
Mr. Burrowes settled in Lexington in 1792, and died here in 1846.
At the beginning of the present century, John
Jones, who died in Lexington in 1849, at the advanced age of
ninety years, invented a speeder spindle and a machine for sawing
stone, which were afterward "caught up" by eastern
imposters.
Though not an invention, it may not be
inappropriate here to state that vaccination had been introduced
for several years in Lexington by Dr. Samuel Brown, of
Transylvania University, when the first attempts at it were being
made in New York and Philadelphia.** Up to 1802, he had
vaccinated upward of five hundred persons in Kentucky.
In 1805, Dr. Joseph Buchanan, long known as one
of the most remarkable citizens of Lexington, invented, at the
age of twenty, a musical instrument,++ producing its harmony from
glasses of different chemical composition, and originated the
grand conception of the music of light, to be exhausted by means
of harmonific colors luminously displayed; an invention which
will, if ever put in operation, produce one of the most imposing
spectacles ever witnessed by the human eye.
About 1835, Mr. E.S. Noble, of Lexington,
invented an important labor-saving machine, for the purpose of
turning the bead on house-guttering.
One of the great mechanical geniuses, or
inventors, that Lexington has produced, and one who has done
honor to America, was Thomas Harris Barlow. His shop was, for a
long time, located on Spring Street, between Main and Water. He
settled in Lexington in 1825, but first attracted public
attention in 1827, by making a locomotive which would ascend to
an elevation of eighty feet to the mile, with a heavily-laden car
attached.*** He, at the same time, constructed a small circular
railroad, over which the model locomotive and car ran
successfully in the presence of many spectators, some of whom are
still alive. This model is yet in existence in the Lunatic Asylum
of this city. Lexington can claim, therefore, the first railroad
and the first locomotive ever constructed in Western America,
After this, Mr. Barlow invented a self-feeding nail and tack
machine, which was a success. He sold it to some Massachusetts
capitalists. In 1855, he invented and perfected a rifled
percussion cannon, for the testing and experimental manufacture
of which Congress appropriated $3,000.+++ This gun attracted the
attention and admiration of the Russian minister at Washington
during the Crimean war, which was then raging, and is believed to
be the pattern which subsequent inventors of rifled guns have
more or less followed. It weighed seven thousand pounds, the bore
was five and a half inches in diameter, twisting one turn in
forty feet, It was cast at Pittsburg.
His last, and greatest achievement, and one
that will long cause his name to be gratefully remembered by the
learned and scientific throughout the world, was the invention of
the planetarium, now so celebrated, both for the wonderful
ingenuity of its harmonious arrangement and working, and for the
ease and accuracy with which it represents the motions and orbits
of the planets, The planetarium was the result of ten years'
patient study and labor, having been commenced in 1841, and
finished in 1851.**** It was finally perfected and exhibited in a
room in the upper story of the building which formerly occupied
the site of the present banking-house, on the corner of Main and
Upper streets.++++ The first planetarium Mr. Barlow made, was
purchased for Transylvania University, The instrument is now used
at Washington, West Point, and in most of the great educational
institutions of this country. At the late grand Exposition at
Paris, in 1867, Barlow's planetarium was examined with delight
and admiration by the savants of Europe, and received a premium
of the first class. Mr. Barlow was born in Nicholas County,
Kentucky, August 5, 17899, and died in Cincinnati in 1865.
*Michaux
+S.D. McCullough
** Michaux's Travels
++Collins, 559
***Obs. And Rep.
+++Milton Barlow
**** Id.
++++Wm. Swift.
Transcribed by
pb October 2000 |