One of the most eminent American mechanicians and inventors has
died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of fourscore,— Daniel Treadwell, Rumford Professor in Harvard College. He was one of the earliest improvers of the printing press, and upon a press of his invention the Boston Daily Advertiser was the first sheet struck off on the American Continent by machinery. Pro- bably no living American inventor has produced so large a number of successful machines, although Americans are almost the most fertile of all peoples in mechanical invention. His most important invention is the machinery, completed in 1829, for the spinning of hemp for cordage. All the cordage, we believe, for the United States' Navy is made by his machines, which, to a stranger curious in such matters, form one of the objects beat worth visiting in the Navy Yard near Boston. He was at a later period one of the earliest who gave their attention to improvements in ordnance, and his unwearied and costly experiments in the casting of heavy iron and steel guns resulted in patents obtained in this country anticipating the success of the Armstrong gun. He filled the chair of a professorship founded by Count Rumford, and was for many years Vice-President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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