The Half-Million Dollar Idea
A Tacoma inventor discovers a clever water-powered pump that draws the attention of a major syndicate.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
R. R. Mullen has been added to the already long list of Tacoma inventors. He has a new tangled pump out in the North End that is attracting a great deal of attention, and for which he has applied for a patent. Yesterday a representative of a syndicate offered him $250,000 for a half-interest in the patent when he has secured it. Mr. Mullen is the manager of the North End water works and has been paying a day to run a twenty-horse power steam pump to force his supply of water up over 400 feet. He was advised to put in a new water wheel of a modern type, but one night while he was thinking on the matter the half-million dollar idea, which he has now put into practical working order, struck him. Mr. Mullen has applied the power of an imaginary wheel about 200 feet in circumference to two levers, with cranks at the ends, working pistons, which in turn force the water up to the desired level. Out at the ends of these thirty-foot levers, opposite the cranks, are small boxes, or buckets, into which a little thread of water empties. When one of the boxes is full the lever goes down, at the same time driving in the piston at the end of the crank at the other end and raising up the other lever. The weight of the filled box pressing down the one lever also shifts the nozzle through which the thread of water is flowing over to one side, so that the water will flow into the other box when the lever comes up.
“One night while he was thinking on the matter the half-million dollar idea, which he has now put into practical working order, struck him.”
Tacoma’s history is defined by the ingenuity of its industrial pioneers, many of whom sought to solve the topographical challenges of the city's steep hills. Mullen's 'gravity-fed' ambition mirrors the perpetual drive for efficiency that still powers the Pacific Northwest's technological and engineering sectors.
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