From the Dispatch, 26 April 1920.
A few months ago D. F. Henry, who will be 84 years
old next May 24, sent to Dr. John A. Brashear, then on the verge of 80
years, a copy of his reminiscences, a little volume of great interest to
all Pittsburghers, which was reviewed and presented, with illustrations,
in the Sunday Dispatch. Some time after the receipt of the reminiscences,
Dr. Brashear acknowledged the remembrance in a letter, given herewith,
which bears in every sentence marks of the sympathetic, fervent, striking
personality of the dead scientist:
My Dear Mr. Henry;
The unfortunate dose of influenza that pretty nearly laid me low
in the early part of the year, and later on an attack of ptomaine
poisoning, came near to sending me over among the stars, made it
imperative that I should slip away during the summer months
for a rest at my little island home in the Muskoka Lakes, Ontario, and I
have only been home for a short time. quite myself in most ways, but still
bothered with a weakness in my 79-year-old legs, and yet I trust still
able to send out a little sunlight
into the pathways of my fellow travelers over this old world of ours.
I did a lot of writing while away, but found on my arrival home
scores of letters piled up that my secretary and home folks did not send
me, as they wanted me to rest and get well. But like your own good self,
I have found that the most difficult thing
for me to do is to do nothing, and even now I sometimes wish for working
hours in the 24. It is fortunate, too, that in my later life, and
particularly since the passing away of my dear companion nine years ago, I
have had such congenial work as the administration
of the half-million dollar fund placed in my hands by Mr. Frick,
for the benefit of the teachers in the public schools of our city--a work
that has quietly been doing a great good in many ways, particularly in the
domain of Americanization and social service among our foreign population.
It's an Autograph Letter
But I am getting away from the purpose of this letter. My secretary
is, of course, not with me on Sunday; and then it is a pleasure to write
to you with my own hand and pen, to tell you how I enjoy reading of your
reminiscences.
I was all the more absorbed in your reminiscences because, while
my life work has been largely in the domain of science and it correlated
studies, there are places in your career that I came pretty closely in
touch with. For instance, you mention the old
hostelry at the corner of Water and Ferry streets, I learned the trade
of engine building at the works of John Snowden & Sons in
Brownsville--1857-1860. I think it was 1858 or '59, that three of us
mechanicians came from Brownsville to Pittsburg to put
the engines in two cotton boats--side-wheelers. The reason we had to come
to Pittsburg to put the engines in place was because the boats were too
big to go through the locks at that date and a rise came just as we were
ready to put them in--at Brownsville--and the boats were floated
over the dams in the big rise that came at the time.
Well, our little party of mechanicians stayed at the little hotel
you mention until we finished the job. The boats lay at the foot of Ferry
street. I recently visited the old works of Ramsey & Renton, across the
street from the old hotel, and old Mr. Renton remembered the hotel and
the two boats.
Reveals Vivid Memory
How well I remember when you started the Henry Auction Company, and it
is as fresh in my memory as it occurred yesterday; when you re-laid the
rails of the Perrysville section of the electric railway, and had that
little cupola to pour hot metal on the
joints to weld them together. This is, I think, the first time I ever
had the pleasure to "shake hands" with you, though I am not sure of this,
for your friend and my friend, Oliver Scaife, invited me to take a ride in
the first car that went out as far
as Marshall's lane (it was then), and I think I can remember how many
times we got off the track and how many times the trolley tumbled off the
double wire that was first used, from which the power was taken, generated
at the old power house at the foot
of Perrysville avenue, a place that has become historic, not only as one
of the first power houses ever built in which to generate electricity to
drive electrically-propelled cars, but where Acheson perfected his
method--after you had put up your new power house--for making
carborundum, which brought him a fortune. Indeed, he
told me before he developed his method of making graphite, his profits
from the manufacture of carborundum was $100,000 a year. He often came up
on our workshop to get little things
done for him in the mechanical line. Sometimes when I am sitting near a
conductor on the Perrysville line and he calls out: "Power House Steps," I
tell him the story of how the station, or stopping place, got the name,
for I doubt if there is one conductor on the line that knows
a thing about the old power house.
His Tribute to Acheson
I had the honor some years ago of proposing the name of Acheson to the
trustees of the Western University for the degree of doctor of
science and of placing the "hood" of that degree on his shoulders.
Just after you had finished the Perrysville system with the old
"Bently-Knight" motors I had a visit from Professor Blake--then one of the
most eminent physicists in America, and professor of physical science at
Brown University, Providence, R. I. I can
not forget his overflowing encomium on the men who would make such a
pioneer venture to climb such a hill by electricity.
Then your association with the development of the
telephone--another pioneer venture worthy of your name. I listened to some
of the first messages over the telephone in Pittsburg, and when the first
messages were to be sent across the continent, I was the one invited
guest at the Dey street office in New York, beside my dear
friend of many years, Alexander Graham Bell, and his grandson. This was, I
think, Sunday afternoon, January 24, 1915. I listened to a conversation
across the continent, first with Mr. Watson, whom we could not hear very
well (he was the man who made Bell's
first telephone.) Then we talked with "Charlie" Moore, director general of
the Panama Pacific exposition, whom we could hear splendidly; then with
President Wilson at Washington, then with Ginninson at Boston,
and then with President Theodore Vail, who
was at the time at Jekyl Island, off the coast of Florida.
Well, you and I have lived through a wonderful age of
progress--for in the line of astronomical and physical photography, of
spectrum analysis, of wireless telegraphy and of aviation marvelous
discoveries have been made since I began my scientific studies
in the old rolling mills of the Southside as a "greasy millwriting." I
have a picture of the first dear lady who sat in a daguerreotype and heard
the story from her own lips of that long sitting. Now we make an apparatus
in the little shop on the hill to photograph the swift-moving
projectile as it moves out of the gun and
through the air and can tell to a thousandth of a second how long it
required to move over a space inside or outside of the gun for a foot, 100
feet or a mile.
When I commenced my studies of Star Land our telescopes could not
reach to the borders of our own universe--now with the great telescope of
72-inch diameter in which we made all optical parts--"Island Universes"
have been discovered entirely removed from our own environments.
And I have a picture--a photograph of one taken
last June--but the light from that "Island Universe" that made the picture
left it 800,000 years ago and has been traveling at the rate of 186,000
miles every second of that time!
Believed in Human Touch
Can the human mind grasp such quantities--such distances? But I must
not draw this out any longer. It is a joy to me to have known you and so
many of your colleagues in the great and good things you have done for our
city and for humanity--indeed I am
glad that you put that in your reminiscences--for after all:
" 'Tis the human touch in this world that counts, The touch of your hand and mine-- That means far more to the sinking heart Than shelter or bread or wine. For shelter is gone when the night is o'er, And bread lasts only a day, But the touch of the hand and the sound of the voice Live on in the soul always."I have about five chapters of my autobiography written--but it is slow work and I must get at it soon or memory will or may prove false to me--but here you are four years ahead of me and have given us a lovely talk of your life work. "God bless us every one." Ever yours,
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