On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
We notice in the reports of the doings of the Legislature of this State, as published in the New York Herald, that " Mr Armstrong has introduced a bill in the Assembly to incorporate a company with the title of the ' Ericsson Manufacturing and Navigation Company' The corporators are John Ericsson, J B Kitching, Cornelius H Delameter and James Hogg ; and their objects and purposes are the building, equipment and propelling of vessels on the navigable waters of this State, by means of engines whose power is heated air or caloric, as now patented, or as may from time to time be patented by Ericsson or his associates Their capital stock is to be $500,000, in shares of $100 each They are authorized to use boats with this motive power on the canals, provided they put them on within eighteen months from the passage of the act In that case they have the exclusive privilego, for thirty years, of towing boats carrying freight and passengers on the canals of the State ; provided their boats are so constructed as not to produce any greater wash or wear and tear to the canals than is produced by the boats now in use The boats used are to receive the sanction and approval of the Canal Commissioners, and submit to such restrictions as to speed, right of way, c, as is necessary to the preservation and safe navigation of the canals" It is desirable, unquestionably, to introduce some system of propulsion on our State canals more in harmony with the spirit of the age; but we must condemn all attempts of this character They are at war with all true notions of progress, and will meet with no encouragement from practical legislators If the Ericsson scheme is best adapted to change the present system, we shall cheerfully advocate its introduction, but not as an exclusive monopoly Ericsson is secured in the full enjoyment of his rights as an inventor under the grant of Letters Patent He has but to show by proper experiment that his plan is best, and it will, no doubt, be adopted, and the privilege will belong to him so far as the right to build and operate his inventions is concerned Such an attempt as this to obtain a complete monopoly of the State canals might have been tolerable, if proposed in the days of Prince Rupert and Jonathan Hull; but in this stirring age of improvement, a "thirty years exclusive privilege" smacks of a past generation There are some inventors so impatient of success that they are never satisfied to let their discoveries stand out upon their own merits They must be continually nursing up some magnificent schemesome giant enterprisethrough which to startle a whole world These cometlike effusions dazzle but for a moment, while the light of a steady progress continues to shine on, not a whit the less sure, though those eccentric comets may have momentarily intercepted its rays
