clearly the why and the wherefore of everything that existed, and I am indebted to the Hon. Edward Everett for many valuable observations in some of his earliest productions in regard to the necessity of studying principles by which means I have generally arrived at just conclusions. I have always had a great desire for books, especially those that treated of mechanics and natural philosophy, and perhaps I have studied as much in my lifetime as people generally do. I have made, I think, some useful inventions; one in particular, which has been in use in every city and village in the country wherever there was a stone building to be erected. I mean the portable derrick which I invented in eighteen hundred and twenty-three, and used in building the United States Bank at Boston. This, with every other of my inventions, I have abandoned to the public. Every railroad in the country is now using my eight-wheeled car, and I have never received one cent for the invention. My turn-table has also been adopted by all railroads, as well as my switches and turnouts, nor have I been paid for services and expenses incurred in the lawsuits which were commenced against several railroad companies by Winans for his pretended invention of my eight-wheeled car, and which the Railroad Companies have since appropriated to themselves. References Scholes, Robert E. (1968), The Granite Railway and its Associated Enterprises. Retrieved March 31, 2005. 1789 births 1867 deaths American construction businesspeople 19th-century American inventors People from Scituate, Massachusetts American railroad pioneers 19th-century American businesspeople