In 1866, Muir returned to the US after two years in Canada and got a job in a carriage plant in Indianapolis, Indiana. A year later an accident pierced his right eye, as recounted in this April 6, 1867 letter to Jeanne Carr. Though he recovered his eyesight fully in a month, he later wrote in his autobiography, "I bade adieu to all my mechanical inventions, determined to devote the rest of my life to the study of the inventions of God." (John Muir Papers, Muir to Carr April 6, 1867)

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Read John Muir, Inventor, 1985 by George Emanuels.