16 September 1871 • Elmira, N.Y. (MS: CU-MARK, UCCL 00652)
I believe I would not bother with that knife.
Bear in mind that your wheel, to supplant others, must break ice 3 or 4 inches thick & plow through it without damage to itself.
The biggest thing isⒶemendation the world is to invent a steam railroadⒶemendation break that the engineer can apply throughout his train without needing breakmen. The N. J. RR run 105 trains a day, & employ say 7 seven breakmen on a train at about $2 a day apiece. Figure that up & you will see that that one railroad could afford to pay you $250,000 a year for the use of such an invention. Can you contrive it?
As to the button. One form of it might be a simple hinge without spring.
Personal | O. Clemens Esq | 149 Asylum st | Hartford | Conn return address: return to j. langdon & co., elmira, n. y., if not delivered within 10 days . postmarked: elmira n.y. sep 16
Orion responded on 18 September. His letter contains the fullest known description of his paddle wheel invention, which he never succeeded in patenting, and answers each of Clemens’s questions in turn. The hinge he described was for Clemens’s garment strap invention (6 Oct 71 to Leggett, n. 7click to open link):
My Dear Brother:—
I was a little dubious about the knife.
My wheel will be below the ice—that is, the buckets while making the stroke will be, or may as well be wholly beneath the surface of the water. While returning, it is intended they shall be above water, and the wheel, both above and below the water, defended by gratings—which I see were once used on an English canal to defend the propeller, without, it seems, objection. The boat itself must be pushed through the water, and the additional resistance offered by my frame work and grating will only be a disadvantage only in case the added benefits fail to overbalance the added resistance.
You are right about the immense advantage of such a railroad brake—but has it not already been invented? Did you see some time ago an account of a new brake being tried on the Missouri Pacific road? It was stopped the train a great deal quicker and in shorter space than by brakemen, and I think it was the way you suggest—by steam under the control of the engineer. If you saw that account and it was something different from my impressions I would try to invent such a brake as you suggest.
The benefit of a hinge I think can be attained by making the part where the bend is, thin like a watch spring. My model maker says it can be filed or ground down on an emery wheel so as to be easily flexible without breaking, and he suggests that the shape be . . .
. . . making the upper edge sharp, which will make easier mark for the screw. He is to make me a german silver one and a brass and a steel one. He says the difference in cost of material is about nothing, and shee spring sheet brass has considerable spring, and German silver still more spring, though nothing has so much spring as steel. He has a clock hospital full of patients, and that being his regular business it is hard to get anything else out of him. He has promised to do something at to it to-day. I told him to do it before my other work, though as he was not doing any thing at my other work that injunction has only helped a shade.
(CU-MARK)
Orion was correct about the train brake. George Westinghouse received his first patent for a compressed-air (not steam) brake on 13 April 1869. The brake had been previously tested in December 1868 on the Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad.
MS, Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CU-MARK).
L4 , 457–58.
see Mark Twain Papers in Description of Provenance.
More information on provenance may be found in Description of Provenanceclick to open link.