FAMOUS BANGOR INVENTOR DEAD” declared a headline in the Bangor Daily News on Feb. 11, 1907. “Hiram L. Leonard, Originator of the Split Bamboo Fishing Rod, Passes Away.”

Leonard was the “father of the split bamboo fishing rod industry in this country,” said the newspaper. He had established his first factory in Bangor before moving to New York. On the same day, the Bangor Daily Commercial explained that while Leonard hadn’t actually invented bamboo rods, he was “the first man in America” to make them “in the way they should be made” – that was from six strips of bamboo in the form of a hexagon.

Leonard had also invented “the double-shot rifle back in those days when the muzzle-loader had not been supplanted by the breech-loading repeater.” He was a hero – a genius or even a wizard – in the way only an inventor could be a century ago. Men such as Edison, Marconi and Maine’s own Sir Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the modern machine gun, were major international celebrities. The H.L. Leonard Rod Co. continues Leonard’s legacy today in Houston.

Bangor was blessed with its own pantheon of inventors a century ago. Some months after Leonard’s death, another Bangor inventor, Gilman P. Smith, was announced to the world. “Bangor Man Has Invented Fastener for Top of Fruit Cases That Will Be Convenient for Blueberry Packers,” said the Commercial on Dec. 31. Smith was president of the Schoodic Pond Packing Co. and the Dirigo Packing Co. Machias. Of even greater importance to many readers was the fact that his boxes were going to be manufactured by a Bangor company, Holt & Kendall.

Perhaps every small city had lots of inventors back then, especially cities such as Bangor perched on the edge of the frontier where men and women had to figure things out for themselves. Some of these inventors are anonymous today, long forgotten after their tinkering entered the marketplace, while others are little more than names in a few scattered newspaper clippings. A small number like Hiram Leonard are still widely known among select groups of enthusiasts.

The anonymous inventors of Bangor included a truckman named Dave, who dreamed up a once-popular type of wagon called a jigger. In 1849, Dave, a man of “small stature,” asked Cowan’s team wagon shop “to hang the body of his cart underneath the axles and not more than six or eight inches from the ground.” This made it easier for Dave to load and unload his vehicle with hogsheads of molasses, pipes of West Indian rum and other heavy goods on the wharves along the Bangor waterfront.

At first people derided Dave’s contraption, calling it a jigger, but eventually, after it was perfected (using a “drop axle” first designed by Joseph Wharff on Franklin Street) the style was used widely in Bangor and other small towns all over Maine and presumably beyond. That was according to S.J.W. Penney, Wharff’s former assistant, as reported in the Bangor Daily News on Dec. 8, 1906.

Bangoreans were at their most inventive when handling logs. Their innovations helped the Queen City briefly become the “logging capital of the world.” Robert E. Pike, in his book “Tall Trees, Tough Men,” summed up these innovations several decades ago: “Bangor men invented the Peavey, which revolutionized the logging industry; the Bangor snubber, which slowed down sled-loads of logs on steep hills; the Peavey hoist, for pulling stumps and raising the gates of dams; the haypress, by which loose hay could be packed into small, tight bales, for transportation to the logging camps; the sorting boom; the log-branding hammer. All these things were universally used and still are today, from coast to coast.”

Joseph Peavey’s blacksmith shop where he fashioned his revolutionary cant dog to make it easier for river drivers to handle logs was actually just up the river in Stillwater, but many of these tools were made in Bangor, according to an accounting of local inventions in the Bangor Daily Commercial on Jan. 5, 1942. Another innovation deserving mention was the Maynard bateau. Built by Hosea B. Maynard, the craft “was the best, doing heavier work and standing up better under rough usage than any others.” They were shipped to Michigan, Wisconsin and other states where logging was a major industry.

The Commercial story listed some of Bangor’s other claims. E.H. Gerrish designed and manufactured the first canvas canoes here. Maj. James M. Davis invented the extension ladder, while Zebrina L. Bragdon devised “a new and improved sewer grate.” The accuracy of such claims, whether they are folklore or innovations of purely local interest, is difficult to evaluate as time goes by.

One could scan the pages of the Industrial Journal, a Bangor business paper, for even more inventions, most of which probably never again would receive public mention. For example, it was announced on Jan. 16, 1891 that C.E. Williams of 5 Middle St. had invented a device called a dish manipulator. On April 10 the same year, it was revealed that John L. Clark had invented a new kind of tea kettle, while Frank Robinson and P.W.J. Lander had devised a “trolley support” for electric cars.

A century ago, Bangoreans were proud of such “firsts.” While the names of Edison, Marconi and Maxim were household words throughout the world, those of Hiram Leonard and Joseph Peavey were well-known in Maine and anyplace fishing and logging were important pastimes. How many contemporary inventors can the average person name today?

Wayne E. Reilly may be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.