As he surrendered to authorities, Guiteau uttered these words: "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts! I did it and I want to be arrested! Arthur is President now!"
The president did not die immediately and suffered for eleven weeks. During this time, two major inventions came out of the efforts to help him recover.
First, in an effort to relieve him of the heat of Washington's summer, Navy engineers built an early version of today's modern air conditioner. Fans blew air over a large box of ice into the President's room and were able to lower the temperature by twenty degrees.
Then, Alexander Graham Bell invented a metal detector specifically for the purpose of finding the bullet lodged inside Garfield. During those early times, doctors did not believe in sterilizing their hands before working on patients, and they were probing the president's wound with their dirty fingers trying to find the location of the bullet.
Unfortunately,the metal bed frame on which Garfield lay made the instrument malfunction.
President James A Garfield died on Monday, 19 September 1881.
