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Rubber air-brake hose on railroad trains makes safe the travel of a nation, air-drill hose rivets our ships, fire hose protects the properly in city and town and garden hose brings nourishment to our growing plants. Rubber clothing protects against storm and rubber footwear guards us against cold and wet. Tennis balls and golf balls and rubber-cored baseballs give healthful sport to the millions.
The anxious query hinged itself upon the approach of a big, eight-wheeled passenger flyer which was thundering down the yard on the track occupied by the Nadia. Within half a car-length of collision, the air-brake hissed, the siderods clanked and chattered, and the shuddering monster rolled gently backward to a touch coupling with the president's car. Eleanor's hand was on her cousin's arm.
The half-hour lengthened into an hour. Then a trainman entered the car with the unpleasant news that they would be delayed yet longer. The air-brake had failed them, and they must wait until the wreck-train came down from Westport with another car, so it might be an hour before they would be able to proceed. The girls, Landis and Min, left their places to walk up and down the aisle.
The accidents which had been almost the prevailing rule in the fifties and sixties were greatly reduced by the Westinghouse air-brake, invented in 1868, and the block signaling system, introduced somewhat later.
The speed of the train slackened steadily but without jar, until the power of the compressed air clamped the brake-shoes on the wheels so tightly that they were practically locked and the train was stopped. By means of the air-brake the engineer had almost entire control of the train.
Up to the time of the Edison award, three others had been made. The first was to Lord Kelvin, the Nestor of physics in Europe, for his work in submarine-cable telegraphy and other scientific achievement. The second was to George Westinghouse for the air-brake. The third was to Alexander Graham Bell for the invention and introduction of the telephone.
From a hundred hiding-places in the car-strewn yard, men came running, some to swarm thickly upon the moving engines and cabooses, others swinging by the drawheads to cut the air-brake hose. Benson was swept aside and overpowered before he could strike a blow. Bogard, speeding across to take his post beside the Nadia, was struck down before he could get clear of the pouring hornet swarm.
Then, judging the time to be fully ripe, he ducked under the Rosemary to "bleed" the air-brake. Winton heard the hiss of the escaping air above all the industry clamor; heard, and saw the car start backward. Then he had a flitting glimpse of a man in grimy overclothes scrambling terror-frenzied from beneath the Rosemary. The thing done had been overdone.
The air-brake is probably one of the most valuable inventions ever applied to the railroad industry, and yet George Westinghouse, its inventor, found it impossible even to give it away to railroad presidents until he had learned how to sell it.
Government land, be it County, State or United States, never requires booming in these days of the anxious home-seeker, and never will again. At present when a new section becomes attractive there is a rush into it, and then the rush slacks up with an air-brake suddenness.
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