e water of Niagara is to-day turning machinery in Buffalo and
Albany. The same method of producing power, the cheapest that has ever
been discovered, is being installed all over the world, and will, in
time, produce a revolution in manufacturing processes.

The vital mechanism in the production of this power is the dynamo, and
it is to Charles F. Brush, of Cleveland, Ohio, that its development is
principally due. He was interested in electricity from his earliest
years, and when he was only thirteen, distinguished himself by making
magnetic machines and batteries for the Cleveland high-school, where he
was a pupil. During his senior year, the physical apparatus of the
school laboratory was placed under his charge, and he constructed an
electric motor having its field magnets as well as its armature excited
by the electric current. He devised an apparatus for turning on the gas
in the street lamps of Cleveland, lighting it and turning it off again,
thus doing away with the expensive process of lighting them and turning
them out by hand.

After graduating from the University of Michigan with the degree of
mining engineer, he returned to Cleveland, where, in 1875, his attention
was drawn to the great need of a more effective dynamo than the clumsy
and inefficient types then in use. In two months, Brush had made a
dynamo so perfect in every way that it was running until taken to the
Chicago Exposition, in 1893. Six months more of experimenting resulted
in the Brush arc light, and in 1879 the Brush Electric Company was
organized. A year later, the first Brush lights were installed in New
York City, and now there is scarcely a town in the country which does
not pay tribute to the inventor.

* * * * *

Let us turn for a moment from the field of electricity, in which America
has been pre-eminent, to another in which Yankee ingenuity has also led
the world--the railroad. It was in this country that the sleeping-car,
the diner, the parlor-car were first used; no other country affords
such luxury of travel; and no other country has added to railroading any
device comparable in importance to the invention of George Westinghouse,
the air-brake. Before its introduction, to stop a train brakes must be
set painfully by hand, and even then were not always effective. Now, the
engineer, by pulling a single lever, sets the brakes instantly all along
his train, and so effectively that the passengers sometim