Johnston’s combination phonograph and telephone device (Image courtesy U.S. Patent Office)
Young Samuel Greenhow Johnston tinkered with inventions to the extent that friends and neighbors of his father considered him “a nut.”
“There was no excuse, they reasoned, for the way he carried on,” as the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Pat Jones described in 1938, “inevitably showing up with something that sputtered and made a lot of disagreeable noise.”
Reflecting as an adult on his impulse to innovate, he observed, “I know I’m a freak. As soon as I invent something, I’m through with it.”
His predilection for originating came naturally.
Samuel Greenhow Johnston (Image courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch)
The Greenhow name stemmed from his mother, Lucy Johnson Greenhow, whose ancestry traced back to Colonial Virginia. He was born between older brother Andrew Langstaff Johnston Jr. (a tinkerer, too) and sisters Mary and Lulie. His aunt Mary Tinsley Greenhow founded the Virginia Home for Incurables, now The Virginia Home.
His civil and electrical engineer father, Anderson Langstaff Johnston, was a Virginia Military Institute graduate who designed railway tunnels and improved harbors. He also demonstrated expertise in the technology of powering the electric street railways born in Richmond during 1887-88.
His father became chief engineer for the Richmond Railway and Electric Co., a consolidation of several private companies that enlarged the trolley garages at Vine and West Main streets (today the Home Team Grill) and operated the Barton Heights and Lakeside cars. He participated in the construction of the Seven Pines and Forest Hill lines, and in 1894 he patented a bonding joint that conducted the rail’s electricity back to the powerhouse. His know-how often called him away from the Johnstons’ 505 W. Franklin St. home (supplanted by Monroe Park Towers). He spent months away in Philadelphia and New Orleans.
Greenhow Johnston’s education consisted of tutors and apprenticeships. He observed the machinists at the William Trigg Shipyards (Great Shiplock Park today) while honing his mechanical skills by tinkering with neighbors’ cars. At age 12, he tamed neighbor Marion Langhorne’s cantankerous Oldsmobile by cleaning the carbon from the make-and-break engine, and the embarrassing sudden stops of Langhorne’s pricey motorcar ceased. Johnston’s ability to fix the contraptions expanded to driver’s education. His ambitions, however, aimed higher.
On Dec. 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Johnston witnessed Wilbur and Orville Wright make the first manned flights of an aircraft. He was inspired, but he kept to the ground for a while.
The day after Christmas 1904, the 16-year-old traveled to Springfield, Massachusetts, for a new Indian motorcycle. He helped a factory mechanic build the 2 1/4-horsepower machine to learn about repairs. The automobile troubleshooting and driving lessons apparently allowed him to pay the $375 cost (today more than $11,000, about half the price of a 2023 custom-built Indian).
Johnston’s Indian was the first in Virginia. He intended to open a Richmond franchise but made no sales until 1908: a pair of twin-cylinder cycles to the police department. Johnston competed in cycle races at the state fairgrounds. The first time, he went 10 miles in 10 minutes, and he won competitions for the next decade.
Meanwhile, Johnston, now 20, proceeded to construct and test gliders. He built them in an old stable near Montvale, west of Bedford, where he lifted off from the slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
He returned to the fairgrounds, then on the site of The Diamond, to test an airplane shaped like a bird with running gear of bicycle wheels and powered by a motorcycle engine. A motorcar towed the craft to cause sufficient lift.
The experiment made several astounding laps of the track and attained a height of 100 feet, but a tow-rope mishap caused a crash. Undaunted, he devised improvements for rudder control and air brakes.
Johnston then formed the Virginia Aero Manufacturing Co. to make a prototype “hydro-plane” with pontoons for landing gear.
Johnston tested airplanes he designed in the Richmond area. (Image courtesy U.S. Patent Office)
The two-seater biplane, 30 feet long with a wingspan of 40 feet and a 150-horsepower motor, flew between Richmond and Baltimore in six hours. A scheduled August 1912 test flight on Mayo’s Island, however, went awry. Potential investors watched the craft plunge into the river. He returned to motorcycling — and delved into photography, telegraphy and radio.
By 1914, Johnston led the Virginia National Guard’s motorcycle section and organized its Signal Corps. He improved a hand-cranked generator attached to the back of a mule by placing a set on a cycle’s handlebars that received power from the turning front wheel.
The advent of World War I sent him to install telephone lines for the Army’s Virginia Beach firing range. Then he sought to end the war. Johnston composed a story about how the invention of a doomsday electric cannon necessitated a congress of nations, with representatives elected from each country to maintain security and assure progress.
Peace, unfortunately, didn’t catch on, nor did Johnston’s 1916 patent for a process of transferring telephone conversations to a phonograph record. Aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss nonetheless saw promise in him and placed Johnston in the experimental department of the Curtiss plant in Buffalo, New York.
Following the war, Johnston’s pursuits varied: He trained soldiers on motorcycles and filmed travelogues as Virginia’s honorary state photographer. He also married Anne Elizabeth White at 32 in 1919; they had a son, Samuel, and a daughter, Elizabeth.
Using a tripod he devised, Johnston was filming machine gunners at Fort Story shooting targets pulled by aircraft when a general took notice of how his camera smoothly followed the action. “Young man, you’ve got a fortune there,” the officer told Johnston, to which the inventor replied, “Yes, general, I’ve had a fortune all my life, yet I’ve never been able to spend it.” He soon devised tripods for mounted weapons.
Johnston explained his lack of financial success in 1938 with a wry observation: “Uncle Sam has the patent on money. Why bother with that?”
Flashback acknowledges the research of another tinkerer, Tim Crowder.
