Inventors by Philip Gengembre Hubert

This book, dealing with our great inventors, their origins, hopes, aims, principles, disappointments, trials, and triumphs, their daily life and personal character, presents just enough concerning their inventions to make the story intelligible. The history is often a painful one. When poor Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber, was one day asked what he wanted to make of his boys, he is said to have replied: “Make them anything but inventors; mankind has nothing but cuffs and kicks for those who try to do it a service.”