THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID STORIES OP INYENTORS AID DISCOVERERS IN SCIENCE AND THE USEFUL ARTS. A BOOK FOR OLD AND YOUNG. BY JOHN TIMES, F.S.A. tJOitl) Illustrations. The First Practical Steam-boat. 'Justice exacts that those by whom we are most benefited should be most honored." DB. JOHNSON'S Rambler. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FBANKLIN SQUARE. I860. ^ / TO THE READER. SIR HUMPHREY DAVY, in his last work of charming philosophy, remarks : " The beginning of civilization is the discovery of some useful arts, by which men acquire property, comforts, or luxuries. The necessity or desire of preserving them leads to laws and social institutions,, The discovery of peculiar arts gives superiority to par- ticular nations ; and the love of power induces them to employ this superiority to subjugate other nations, who learn their arts, and ultimately adopt their manners ; so that, in reality, the origin as well as the progress and im- provement of civil society is founded in mechanical and chemical inventions"* This remark was made thirty years ago ; and the foresight of the author is proved by his words having since become still stronger evidence of his position than at the time they were written. You will not, therefore, be surprised to find the majority of these " Stories of Inventors and Discoverers" selected from the recorded triumphs of Mechanics and Chemistry. Although the Sixty Narratives which are the staple of the present volume range through ages from Ar- chimedes to Isambard Kingdom Brunei they, for the most part, consist of modern instances. The earlier rec- ords have, however, proved rich in what may be termed the Curiosities of Invention, among which it is not diffi- cult to find many a germ of later success. In many cases, too, the moderns have repaid what they owed to * Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Dags of a Philosopher. By Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart. M3588Q8 VU1 TO THE READER. their predecessors by throwing new light upon some of the boasted wonders of ancient ingenuity ; and this mode of illustration has been specially attended to in the present work. In each instance also it has been sought, as far as practicable, to bring the narrative down to the science of our own time. The antiquities of such subjects are curious, and in- teresting to a large class of readers : as in the cases of Printing and Gunpowder; the Art of Navigating the Air and Living under Water ; the marvels of Automata.; and a host of " Secret Inventions" besides those of John, Napier. Occasionally it has been but justice to set in their proper light the merits of old workers as in " The True History of Friar Bacon," who was a reformer gf science centuries before his more illustrious namesake, Francis Lord Bacon. In the " Story of Paracelsus," too, a proper estimate is attempted of his discoveries, which have been, in some instances, obscured by his quackery. To the next group of Inventors of the times of the Civil War and the Restoration a sort of romantic in- terest attaches ; whether in the philosophical pursuits of Prince Rupert beside his forge in the keep of Windsor Castle, or in importing " Rupert's Drops ;" in the recre- ations of Sir Samuel Morland, " Master of Mechanics" to Charles II., or in the Century of Inventions by the Mar- quis of Worcester, who by this rational means beguiled the captivity in the Tower of London to which his loy- alty had consigned him. His " Water-commanding En- gine" is believed to have been one of the results of that period. In " the separate, simultaneous, and yet mutually de- pendent progress of industry" in the latter half of last century, several instances have been gathered, at the TO THE READER. IX head of which is that of " Watt, who, poor in worldly wealth, but possessed of mental riches vouchsafed to few, was then wishing to realize an idea destined to ef- fect more surprising results in the history of Britain than the wars, alliances, and legislation of centuries."* Then, what a series of sufferings and conflicts with jealousy and ignorance can be traced in the progress of the Cotton Manufacture, consummated by Watt's great invention ! To a somewhat earlier period belong the perils of John Lombe in his furtive journey to Piedmont, to bring over Silk-throwing machinery ; and the story of Lee's invention of the Stocking-frame, traceable to the tender- est feeling of man his sympathy for "the sole part of all his joys." In another group of narratives we see how brilliant was the success of Davy's Safety-Lamp, and how miser- able the fate of poor Carcel ; and how hard was the bat- tle which the projectors of Gas-lighting had to fight with Parliament-men and men of science ere the new light broke forth upon the world. Next we have the Era of Engineering, in which our country was improved by Canals, Light-houses, and Har- bors, Bridges, Breakwaters, and Docks by Brindley, Smeaton, Telford, and Rennie, whose fortunes, as here narrated, are so many cheering lessons to striving genius. The Steam-boat yields a long and interesting chapter from the records of nearly four centuries since to the fate of Symington, whose invention led to the earlier ac- complishment of Steam Navigation in another country. The Railway proved, however, a more secure success through the genius of George Stephenson, " once a lo- comotive stoker in the north of England, and afterward one of the most distinguished engineers of modern times," * James Sime, M.A. X TO THE READER. succeeded by his not less distinguished son, Robert Ste- phenson, whose genius matured the system which his fa- ther had originated. To this group also belong the Brunels, father and son, the latter famed for his Railway Works and Iron Ship-building. The arch-chemic art of Photography, aided by the science of the Stereoscope, forms the next chapter ; and the work concludes with an account of the Electric Tel- egraph, its anticipation and consummation, which is crowded with incident. Throughout the following pages acknowledgment is made of the respective authorities for the facts and state- ments in the several narratives, the choice of which has been dictated by impartiality and anxiety to be just. In tracing the fortunes of Inventors and Discoverers, it is painful to note how many have become " Martyrs of Science ;" a phrase sometimes misapplied, and which, there is reason to hope, will at no very distant time be inapplicable. A brighter era is at hand. " Thirty years ago there was not a single literary or scientific man who enjoyed a pension from the crown, or (with one excep- tion) was distinguished by any mark of honor from the sovereign. This is happily no longer the case ; for since 1830 there have been conferred for intellectual services thirty titles of honor, and we now find on the Civil List the names of nearly fifty distinguished persons. These liberal reforms naturally led to others ; institutions as well as individuals now share in the generosity of the state :"* and that scientific men may long continue to receive such honors from a country which so largely owes its pre-eminence to the applied sciences, is the fervent hope of THE AUTHOR. * Address of Sir David Brewster, Principal of Edinburgh Univer- sity, 1859. CONTENTS. PAGE THE INVENTIONS or ARCHIMEDES 15 THE MAGNET AND THE MARINER'S COMPASS 21 WHO INVENTED PRINTING, AND WHERE? 29 WHO INVENTED GUNPOWDER ? 43 THE BAROMETER: TORRICELLI AND PASCAL 50 THE AIR-PUMP AND THE AIR-GUN 55 LIVING UNDERWATER: THE DIVING-BELL, 59 AUTOMATA AND SPEAKING MACHINES 72 THE AUTOMATON CHESS-PLAYER 86 NAVIGATION OF THE AIR: ADVENTURES WITH THE BALLOON... 95 THE TRUE HISTORY OF FRIAR BACON i 121 THE DISCOVERIES OF LEONARDO DA VINCI 127 THE STORY OF PARACELSUS 132 NAPIER'S SECRET INVENTIONS 136 LORD BACON'S "NEW PHILOSOPHY" 141 INVENTIONS OF PRINCE RUPERT 146 "PRINCE RUPERT'S DROPS" 152 SIR SAMUEL MORLAND AND HIS INVENTIONS 156 THE MARQUIS OF WORCESTER'S "CENTURY OF INVENTIONS"... 161 GEORGE GRAHAM AND HIS IMPROVEMENT OF THE WATCH 170 JOHN HARRISON AND THE LONGITUDE WATCH 175 DR. WILLIAM HARVEY AND THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.. 180 DR. JENNER AND HIS DISCOVERY OF VACCINATION 188 EULER'S POWERS OF CALCULATION 195 MR. GEORGE BIDDER AND MENTAL CALCULATION 198 CALCULATING MACHINES 204 "THE STARRY GALILEO:" INVENTION OF THE TELESCOPE 212 ISAAC NEWTON MAKES THE FIRST REFLECTING TELESCOPE 219 GUINAND'S GLASS FOR ACHROMATIC TELESCOPES 225 SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL AND HIS TELESCOPES 230 THE EARL OF ROSSE'S REFLECTING TELESCOPES 239 THE INVENTION OF THE MICROSCOPE .. 246 Xll CONTENTS. PAGE SIR DAVID BREWSTER'S KALEIDOSCOPE 250 MAGIC MIRRORS AND BURNING LENSES 253 DISCOVERY OF THE PLANET NEPTUNE 256 PALISSY THE POTTER 260 JOSIAH WEDGWOOD AND HIS WARES 268 JAMES WATT AND THE STEAM-ENGINE 273 THE COTTON MANUFACTURE : HARGREAVES AND THE SPINNING JENNY ; ARKWRIGHT AND THE SPINNING FRAME 296 SAMUEL CROMPTON AND THE SPINNING MULE 302 DR. CARTWRIGHT AND THE POWER-LOOM 311 CALICO-PRINTING AND THE KISE OF THE PEELS 313 COTTON-SPINNING MACHINERY 316 JOHN LOMBE AND THE FIRST SILK-THROWING MILL IN ENGLAND 319 Silk Culture in England 324 WILLIAM LEE AND THE STOCKING-FRAME 328 JACQUARD AND HIS LOOM 332 DR. FRANKLIN PROVES THE IDENTITY OF LIGHTNING AND ELEC- TRICITY 336 CHEMISTRY OF THE GASES : DISCOVERY OF CHOKE-DAMP AND FIRE-DAMP 340 SIR HUMPHREY DAVY AND THE SAFETY-LAMP 343 CARCEL AND HIS LAMP 352 GAS-LIGHTING 354 JAMES BRINDLEY AND CANAL NAVIGATION 361 JOHN SMEATON: LIGHT-HOUSES AND HARBORS 365 INVENTIONS OF JOSEPH BRAMAH 370 THOMAS TELFORD AND THE MENAI SUSPENSION BRIDGE ; . 373 JOHN RENNIE: DOCKS AND BRIDGES 378 "THE FIRST PRACTICAL STEAM-BOAT" 382 SIR ISAMBARD M. BRUNEL : BLOCK MACHINERY AND THE THAMES TUNNEL 396 GEORGE STEPHENSON, THE KAILWAY ENGINEER 402 EGBERT STEPHENSON AND RAILWAY WORKS 414 ISAMBARD K. BRUNEL : RAILWAY WORKS AND IRON SHIP- BUILDING...- 426 PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE STEREOSCOPE 432 CAOUTCHOUC AND ITS MANUFACTURES 447 GUTTA PERCHA AND ITS MANUFACTURES 452 THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH .. 456 LIST OF ENGRAVINGS, PAGE The Portion of Mr. Babbage's Difference Engine in the Museum of King's College, London Frontispiece. The first practical Steam-boat Vignette. Franklin at his Case 29 Type of a Letter Types setup 31 Casting the Type 34 An Adams Power-press 37 The Hand Press 40 The Roller 41 The Composing-stick 42 Jacob Degen's Flying Machine 94 M. Laurent's Bird Machine 97 The first Montgolfier 101 De Rozier's Balloon 102 The first Ascension on Horseback 105 Testu-Brissy's Balloon 108 The French Academy's Balloon 109 Blanchard's Flying Machine 114 Cooking's Parachute Misfortune 114 Petin's projected Grand Flying Machine . 118 Besnier's Flying Machine 120 Portrait of Roger Bacon 121 "Bacon's Folly," Oxford 126 Portrait of John Napier, of Merchiston 136 Prince Rupert, in his Laboratory in Windsor Castle, visited by Charles II. Drawn by John Gilbert 149 Portrait of Edward, Marquis of Worcester ". 161 Statue of Dr. Jenner in Trafalgar Square 194 Newton's first Reflecting Telescope 221 Statue of Newton at Grantham 223 Lord Rosse's great Reflecting Telescope at Parsonstown 245 Portrait of Palissy the Potter 263 XIV LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. PAGE Wedgwood's first Pottery 263 Arkwright's Mills, from Cromford Heights 301 Portrait of Samuel Crompton, Inventor of the Spinning Mule .... 304 The Hall-in-the-Wood, near Bolton 304 Lombe's Silk-throwing Mill at Derby 325 Chest in which Lombe brought his Silk machinery from Pied- mont 325 SirH. Davy's Model Safety-lamp 347 F . A . Winsor, Projector of Street Gas-lighting 358 The Thames Tunnel Shield 401 Cottage at Wylam in which George Stephenson was born 403 The Rocket Prize Locomotive 411 Portraits of George Stephenson and Robert Stephenson, M.P.... 415 Portraits of Sir I. M.Brunei and I. K. Brunei 415 Ficus Elastica Sipponia Elastica 446 Animals and Plants from the Atlantic Telegraph Plateau 465 ME. BABBAGE'S DIFFERENCE ENGINE. THE Frontispiece represents the face of that small portion of Mr. Babbage's Difference Engine which is now standing in the Museum of King's College. In correction of the closing sentence of the last paragraph in page 207, it should be stated that the portion of the engine in King's Col- lege is in order, and is capable of calculating to five figures, and two orders of differences, at the rate of 12 or 14 arguments and corre- sponding tabular numbers per minute; and neither the number of orders of differences, nor the number of digits, would make any dif- ference in its rate of work. Without numerous carefully lettered and figured mechanical draw- ings, it would be impossible properly to describe the elaborate mech- anism of this engine ; it has, indeed, been found impossible for ono competent mechanic, who has fully mastered eveiy portion, to explain the machine itself to another equally competent mechanic without the devotion of considerable time. There is a very commonly entertained, and certainly a very natural notion that Mr.' Babbage's "Analytical Engine" (see page 207) is an improvement (-we were going to say a mere improvement) on his "Difference Engine." This is altogether a mistake, there being scarcely less connection between a clock and a steam-engine : the two entirely different en- gines of Mr. Babbage merely follow one another in order of time, though, of course, the mechanical experience he acquired during the progress of the one must have been of the greatest assistance while contriving the separate portions of the other. STORIES OP INVENTORS AND DISCOVERERS. THE INVENTIONS OF AKCHIMEDES. IT is scarcely possible to view the vast steam-ships of our day without reflecting that to a great master of Me- chanics, upward of 2000 years since, we in part owe the invention of the machine by which these mighty vessels are propelled upon the wide world of waters. This pow- er is an application of " the Screw of Archimedes," the most celebrated of the Greek geometricians. He was born in Sicily, in the Corinthian colony of Syracuse, in the year 287 B.C., and, when a very young man, was for- tunate enough to enjoy the patronage of his relative, Hi- ero, the reigning Prince of Syracuse. The ancients attribute to Archimedes more than forty mechanical inventions, among which are" the endless screw ; the combination of pulleys ; an hydraulic organ, according to Tertullian ; a machine called the helix, or screw, for launching ships ; and a machine called loculus, which appears to have consisted of forty pieces, by the putting together of which various objects could be framed, and which was used by boys as a sort of arti- ficial memory. Archimedes is said to have obtained the friendship and confidence of Hiero by the following incident. The king had delivered a certain weight of gold to a work- man to be made into a crown. When the crown was made and sent to the king, a suspicion arose in the royal mind that the gold had been adulterated by the alloy of a baser metal, and he applied to Archimedes for his as- sistance in detecting the imposture : the difficulty was 16 to measure the bulk of the crown without melting it into a regular figure ; for silver being, weight for weight, of greater bulk than gold, any alloy of the former in place of an equal weight of the latter would necessarily in- crease the bulk of the crown ; and at that time there was no known means of testing the purity of metal. Archi- medes, after many unsuccessful attempts, was about to abandon the object altogether, when the following cir- cumstance suggested to his discerning and prepared mind a train of thought which led to the solution of the dif- ficulty. Stepping into his bath one day, as was his cus- tom, his mind doubtless fixed on the object of his re- search, he chanced to observe that, the bath being full, a quantity of water of the same bulk as his body must flow over before he could immerse himself. He proba- bly perceived that any other body of the same bulk would have raised the water equally ; but that another body of the same weight, but less bulky, would not have produced so great an effect. In the words of Vitruvius, " as soon as he had hit upon this method of detection, he did not wait a moment, but jumped joyfully out of the bath, and running forthwith toward his own house, call- ed out with a loud voice that he had found what he sought. For as he ran, he called out, in Greek, Eureka ! Eureka ! ' 1 have found it out ! I have found it out !' " When his emotion had sobered down, he proceeded to investigate the subject calmly. He procured two mass- es of metal, each of equal weight with the crown one of gold, and the other of silver ; and having filled a ves- sel very accurately with water, he plunged into it the silver, and marked the exact quantity of water that over- flowed. He then treated the gold in the same manner, and observed that a less quantity of water overflowed than before. He next plunged the crown into the same vessel full of water, and observed that it displaced more of the fluid than the gold had done, and less than the silver ; by which he inferred that the crown was neither pure gold nor pure silver, but a mixture of both. Hiero was so gratified with this result as to declare that from that moment he could never refuse to believe any thing Archimedes told him.* * Galileo, while studying the hydrostatical treatise of Archimedes, THE SCREW OF ARCHIMEDES. 17 Traveling into Egypt, and observing the necessity of raising the water of the Nile to points which the river did not reach, as well as the difficulty of clearing the land from the periodical overflowings of the Nile, Archi- medes invented for this purpose the Screw which bears his name. It was likewise used as a pump to clear water from the holds of vessels ; and the name of Archimedes was held in great veneration by seamen on this account. The screw may be briefly described as a long spiral with its lower extremity immersed in the water, which, rising along the channels by the revolution of the machine on its axis, is discharged at the upper extremity. When ap- plied to the propulsion of steam vessels, the screw is hor- izontal ; and, being put in motion by a steam-engine, drives the water backward, when its reaction, or return, propels the vessel. The mechanical ingenuity of Archimedes was next displayed in the various machines which he constructed for the defense of Syracuse during a three years' siege by the Romans. Among these inventions were cata- pults for throwing arrows, and balista? for throwing masses of stone ; and iron hands or hooks attached to chains, thrown to catch the prows of the enemy's ves- sels, and then overturn them. He is likewise stated to have^ set their vessels on fire by burning-glasses : this, however, rests upon modern authority, and Archimedes is rather believed to have set the ships on fire by machines for throwing lighted materials. After the storming of Syracuse, Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier, who did not know who he was. The soldier inquired ; but the philosopher, being intent upon a problem, begged that his diagram might not be dis- turbed; upon which the soldier put him to death. At his own request, expressed during his life, a sphere in- wrote his Essay on the Hydrostatic Balance, in which he describes the construction of the instrument, and the method by which Archi- medes detected the fraud committed by the jeweler in the composition of Hiero's crown. This work gained for its author the esteem of Guido Ubaldi, who had distinguished himself by his mechanical and mathematical acquirements, and who engaged his young friend to in- vestigate the subject of the centre of gravity in solid bodies. The treatise on this subject, which Galileo presented to his patron, proved the source of his future success in life. 18 THE TOMB OF ARCHIMEDES. scribed in a cylinder was sculptured on his tomb, in memory of his discovery that the solid contents of a sphere is exactly two thirds of that of the circumscribing cylinder ; and by this means the memorial was afterward* identified. One hundred and fifty years after the death of Archimedes, when Cicero was residing in Sicily, he paid homage to his forgotten tomb. " During my quaes- torship," says this illustrious Roman, " I diligently sought to discover the sepulchre of Archimedes, which the Syr- acusans had totally neglected, and suffered to be grown over with thorns and briers. Recollecting some verses, said to be inscribed on the tomb, which mentioned that on the top was placed a sphere with a cylinder, I looked round me upon every object at the Agragentine Gate, the common receptacle of the dead. At last I observed a little column which just rose above the thorns, upon which was placed the figure of a sphere and cylinder. This, said I to the Syracusan nobles who were with me, this must, I think, be what I am seeking. Several per- sons were immediately employed to clear away the weeds, and lay open the spot. As soon as a passage was open- ed, we drew near, and found on the opposite base the inscription, with nearly half the latter part of the verses worn away. Thus would this most famous, and formerly most learned city of Greece have remained a stranger to the tomb of one of its most ingenious citizens, had it not been discovered by a man of Arpinum." To Archimedes is attributed the apophthegm, "Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, and with my own weight I will move the world." This arose from his knowledge of the possible effects of machinery ; but, however it might astonish a Greek of his day, it would now be admitted to be as theoretically possible as it is practically impossible. Archimedes would have re- quired to move with the velocity of a cannon ball for millions of ages to alter the position of the earth by the smallest part of an inch. In mathematical truth, how- ever, the feat is performed by every man who leaps from the ground ; for he kicks the world away when he rises, and attracts it again when he falls back.* * Ozanam has taken the trouble to calculate the time which would be required to move the earth one inch ; he makes it 3, 653, 745, 176, 803 centuries. HIEBO'S GALLEY. 19 Under the superintendence of Archimedes was also built the renowned Galley for Hiero. It was construct- ed to half its height by 300 master workmen and their servants in six months. Hiero then directed that the vessel should be perfected afloat; but how to get the vast pile into the water the builders knew not, till Ar- chimedes invented his engine called the Helix, by which, with the assistance of very few hands, he drew the ship into the sea, where it was completed in six months. The ship consumed wood enough to build sixty large galleys ; it had twenty tiers of bars, and three decks ; the middle deck had on each side fifteen dining apart- ments, besides other chambers, luxuriously furnished, and floors paved with mosaics of the story of the Iliad. On the upper deck were gardens, with arbors of ivy and vines; and here was a temple of Venus, paved with agates, and roofed with Cyprus wood: it was richly adorned with pictures and statues, and furnished with couches and drinking vessels. Adjoining was an apart- ment of box-wood, with a clock in the ceiling, in imita- tion of the great dial of Syracuse ; and here was a huge bath set with gems called Tauromenites. There were also, on each side of this deck, cabins for the marine sol- diers, and twenty stables for horses; in the forecastle was a fresh-water cistern, which held 253 hogsheads; and near it was a large tank of sea-water, in which fish were kept. From the ship's sides projected ovens, kitchens, mills, and other offices, built upon beams, each supported by a carved image nine feet high. Around the deck were eight wooden towers, from each of which was raised a breastwork full of loop-holes, whence an enemy might be annoyed with stones ; each tower being guarded by four armed soldiers and two archers. On this upper deck was also placed the machine invented by Archimedes to fling stones of 300 pounds weight, and darts eighteen feet long, to the distance of 120 paces; while each of the three masts had two engines for throw- ing stones. The ship was furnished with four anchors of wood and eight of iron ; and " the Water-Screw" of Archimedes, already mentioned, was used instead of a pump for the vast ship, "by the help of which one man might easily and speedily drain out the water, though it 20 ARCHIMEDES, THE HOMER OF GEOMETRY. were very deep." The whole ship's company consisted of an immense multitude, there being in the forecastle alone 600 seamen. There were placed on board her 60,000 bushels of corn, 10,000 barrels of salt fish, and 20,000 barrels of flesh, besides the provisions for her company. She was first called the Syracuse, but after- ward the Alexandria. The builder was Archias, the Corinthian shipwright. The vessel appears to have been armed for war, and sumptuously fitted for a pleasure yacht, yet was ultimately used to carry corn. The tim- ber for the mainmast, after being in vain sought for in Italy, was brought from England. The dimensions are not recorded, but they must have exceeded those of any ship of the present day : indeed, Hiero, finding that none of the surrounding harbors sufficed to receive his vast ship, loaded it with corn, and presented the vessel, with its cargo, to Ptolemy, King of Egypt ; and on arriving at Alexandria it was hauled ashore, and nothing more is recorded respecting it. A most elaborate description of this vast ship has been preserved to us by Athena3us, and translated into English by Burchett, in his Naval Trans- actions. Archimedes has been styled the Homer of Geometry ; yet it must not be concealed that he fell into the prevail- ing error of the ancient philosophers, that geometry was degraded by being employed to produce any thing use- ful. " It was with difficulty," says Lord Macaulay, " that he was induced to stoop from speculation to practice. He was half ashamed of those inventions which were the wonder of hostile nations, and always spoke of them slightingly, as mere amusements, as trifles in which a mathematician might be suffered to relax his mind after intense application to the higher parts of his science." THE MAGNET AND THE MARINER'S COMPASS. THE vast service of which Magnetism is to man may be said to have commenced by supplying him with that invaluable instrument, the Mariner's Compass. Mr. Hal- lam characterizes it as " a property of a natural sub- stance, which, long overlooked, even though it attracted observation by a different peculiarity, has influenced by its accidental discovery the fortunes of mankind more than all the deductions of philosophy." Before we describe the discovery of the Compass, we shall briefly explain the source from which its power and usefulness are derived. The Magnet is a metallic body, possessing the remarkable property of attracting iron and some other metals. It is said to have been found abundantly at Magnesia, in Lydia, from which circum- stance its name may have been derived. The term na- tive magnet is applied to the loadstone, which appears to be derived from an Icelandic term, leider-stein, signifying the leading-stone, so designated from the stony particles found connected with it. India and Ethiopia formerly furnished great quantities of this native magnet. Tiger Island, at the mouth of the Canton River, in China, is in great measure made up of this ore, as mariners infer from the circumstance of the needles of their compasses being much affected by their proximity to the island. In the earliest times there were reputed to be five distinct kinds of loadstone the Ethiopian, the Magnesian, the Bo3otic, the Alexandrian, and the Natolian. It is also found abundantly in the iron mines of Sweden, in America, and sometimes, though rarely, among the iron ores of En- gland. The ancients also believed the loadstone to be of two species, male and female. " We read," says Tom- linson, " of its being used in the Middle Ages medicinally to cure sore eyes and to procure purgation. Even in modern times plasters have been made from this ore, 22 TRADITIONS OF THE MAGNET. and much other quackery has been perpetrated by its means."* The attracting power of the Magnet was known at a very early period, as references are made to it by Aris- totle, and more particularly by Pliny, who states that ig- norant persons call itferrum vivum, or quick iron, a name somewhat analogous to our loadstone. The same author appears to have been acquainted with the power of the magnet to communicate properties similar to its own to other bodies. The polarity of the Magnetic Needle, that is, the power of taking a particular direction when freely suspended, escaped the notice of the Greeks and Romans of antiquity, but the Chinese appear to have been ac- quainted with it from a very early date. We are not surprised to find so mysterious an agency as the Magnet exercises to have been referred to acci- dental origin. The ancient Greeks represent one Mag- nes, T a shepherd, leading his flocks to Mount Ida: he stretched himself upon the green-sward to take repose, and left his crook, the upper part of which was made of iron, leaning against a large stone. When he awoke and arose to depart, he found, on attempting to take up his crook, that the iron adhered to the stone. He communi- cated this fact to some philosophers of the time, and they called the stone, after the name of the shepherd, Magnes, the Magnet, which it retains to the present day. It is, however, denominated among many nations the love- jtone, from its apparent affection for iron. A tradition of very ancient date still exists among the Chinese respecting a mountain of magnetic oref rising in the midst of the sea, whose intensity of attraction is so great as to draw the nails and iron bands, with which the planks of the ship are fastened together, from their places with great force, and cause the ship to fall to pieces. * It has been observed that the smallest natural magnets generally possess the greatest proportion of attractive power. The magnet worn by Sir Isaac Newton, in his ring, weighed only three grains, yet it was able to take up 746 grains, or nearly 250 times its own weight ; where- as magnets weighing above two pounds seldom lift more than five or six times their own weight. f European writers in general attribute the history of magnetic mountains to the Moors; and reference to the supposition may be found even in writers of the seventeenth century. MAGNETIC CARS. 23 This tradition is very general throughout Asia ; and the Chinese historians place the mountain in Tchang-hai, the southern sea, between Tunkin and Cochin China. Ptol- emy also, in a remarkable passage in his Geography, places tnis mountain in the Chinese seas. In a work at- tributed to St. Ambrose, there is an account of one of the islands of the Persian Gulf, called Mammoles, in which the magnet is found ; and the precaution necessary to be taken (of building ships without iron) to navigate in that vicinity is distinctly specified. It should also be added that the Chinese writers place this magnetic mountain in precisely the same geographical region that the au- thor of the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor does, which is to be regarded as a confirmation of the Oriental origin of a great number of tales, half fiction, half fact, which are so universally diffused among the legendary literature of every language as to seem indigenous in each of them. It is extremely probable (says Humboldt) that Europe owes the knowledge of the northern and southern di- recting powers of the Magnetic Needle the use of the Mariner's Compass to the Arabs, and that these people were, in turn, indebted for it to the Chinese. In the Chinese historical Szuki of Szumathsian, who lived in the earlier half of the second century before our era, we meet with an allusion to the " magnetic cars," which the em- peror had given more than 900 years earlier to the em- bassadors from Tunkin and Cochin China, that they might not miss their way on their return home.* In the fourth century of our era, Chinese ships employed the magnet to guide their course safely across the open sea ; and it was by means of these vessels that the knowledge of the compass was carried to India, and from thence to the eastern coasts of Africa. The Arabic designations Zoron and Aphron (south and north), which Vincenzius of Beau- vais gives, in his Mirror of Nature, to the two ends of the Magnetic Needle, indicate, like many Arabic names of stars which we still employ, the channel and the peo- ple from whom Western countries received the elements of their knowledge. In Christian Europe, the first men- * Maurice, in his Indian Antiquities, describes this instrument as a sort of magnetic index, which the Chinese called Chimans ; a name by which they at this day denominate the Mariner's Compass. 24 USE OF THE MARINER'S COMPASS. tion of the use of the Magnetic Needle occurs in the po- litico-satirical poem called La Bible, by Guyot of Pro- vence, in 1190 ; and in the description of Palestine, by Ja- cobus of Vitry, Bishop of Ptolemais, between 120! and 1215. Dante (in his Par.) xii., 29) refers, in a simile, to the needle (ago) " which points to the star." Navarrete quotes a remarkable passage in the Spanish Leyes de las Partidas of the middle of the thirteenth century : " The needle which guides the seaman in the dark night, and shows him, both in good and in bad weather, how to di- rect his course, is the intermediate agent (medianerd) be- tween the loadstone (la piedra) and the north star." Humboldt considers it striking that the use of the south direction of the Needle should have been first ap- plied in eastern Asia, not to navigation, but to land trav- eling. In the anterior part of the Magnetic Wagon, a freely-floating needle moved the arm and hand of a small figure, which pointed toward the south. Klaproth, whose researches upon this curious subject have been confirm- ed by Biot and Stanislas Julien, adduces an old tradition, according to which the Magnetic Wagon was already in use in the reign of the Emperor Honngti, presumed to have lived 2600 years before our era; but no allusion to this tradition can be found in any writers prior to the early Christian ages. The Magnetic Wagon was used as late as the fifteenth century. Several of these carriages were carefully pre- served in the Chinese imperial palace, and were employ- ed in the building of Buddhist monasteries in fixing the points toward which the main sides of the edifice should be directed. As the excessive mobility of the Chinese Needles float- ing upon water rendered it difficult to note down the in- dications which they afforded, another arrangement was adopted in their place as early as the twelfth century of our era, in which the Needle, which was freely suspend- ed in the air, was attached to a fine cotton or silken thread, and by means of this more perfect apparatus, the Chinese, as early as the beginning of the twelfth century, determined the amount of the western variation of the needle. From its use on land, the Compass was finally adapted to maritime purposes. When it had become 25 general throughout the Indian Ocean, along the shores of Persia and Arabia, it was introduced into the West, in the twelfth century, either directly through the influ- ence of the Arabs, or through the agency of the Cru- saders, who, since 1096, had been brought into contact with Egypt and the true Oriental regions. The most essential share in its use seems to have belonged to the Moorish pilots, the Genoese, Venetians, Majorcans, and Catalans. The old story, that Marco Polo first brought the Compass into Europe, has long been disproved : as he traveled from 1271 to 1295, it is evident, from the testimony we have quoted, that the Compass was, at all events, used in European seas from sixty to seventy years before Marco Polo set forth on his journeyings. Dr. Gilbert, who was physician in ordinary to Queen Elizabeth, states that P. Venutus brought a Compass from China in 1260. Gilbert bestowed much attention upon magnetism, and to some extent inculcated the doc- trine of gravitation, by comparing the earth to a great magnet. The term " poles of a magnet" arose from his theory, which is remarkably consonant with the notions of the present day. The discovery of the Compass was long ascribed to Flavio Gioja, of Positano, in 1302, not far from the love- ly town of Amalfi, on the coast of Calabria, and which town was rendered so celebrated by its widely-extended maritime laws. The Compass was then a rude and sim- ple instrument, being only an iron needle magnetized, and stuck in a bit of wood, floating in a vessel of water ; in which artificial and inconvenient form it seems to have remained till about the beginning of the fourteenth cen- tury, when Flavio Gioja made the great improvement of suspending the needle on a centre, and inclosing it in a box. The advantages of this were so great that it was universally adopted, and the instrument in its old and simple form laid aside and forgotten; hence Gioja in after times came to be considered as the inventor of the Mariner's Compass, of which he was only the improver. He lived in the reign of Charles of Anjou, who died King of Naples in 1509. It was in compliment to this sover- eign (for Amalfi is in the dominion of Naples) that Gioja distinguished the north point by a fleur-de-lis ; and this B 26 VARIATION OF THE NEEDLE. was one of the circumstances by which, in France, in later days, it was endeavored to prove that the Mariner's Compass was a French discovery. Guyot of Provence, the French poet, who lived a centu- ry earlier than Flavio Gioja, or, at the latest, under St. Louis, describes the polarity of the Magnet in the most unequivocal language. Evidence of the earlier use of the Compass in European seas than at the beginning of the fourteenth century is also furnished by a nautical treatise of Raymond Lully, of Majorca, who was at once a phil- osophical systematizer and an analytic chemist, a skillful mariner and a successful propagator of Christianity ; in 1286 he remarked that the seamen of his time employed "instruments of measurement, sea-charts, and the mag- netic needle." The application of the Compass to the purposes of navigation, doubtless, speedily led to the discovery of the Variation of the Needle. It must have been known to the Chinese as far back as the beginning of the twelfth century, as it is mentioned in a work published by a Chinese philosopher, named Keon-tsoung-chy, who wrote about the year 1111 (Sir Snow Harris's Rudimentary Magnetism). In the Life of Columbus, written by his son, it is distinctly assigned to that celebrated man ; and though its amount at this period must have been small in France, Spain, etc., yet it was doubtless a very ob- servable quantity in many of the regions visited by Co- lumbus. It is remarkable that Columbus noticed the Variation of the Needle for the first time when sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in his attempt to find a new world. It was on the 14th of September, 1492 ; he was perhaps 200 leagues from land, and the variation was a little to the west at London. It appears that Columbus perceived, about nightfall, that the needle, instead of pointing to the north star, varied about half a point, or between five and six degrees, to the northwest, and still more on the fol- lowing morning. Struck with this circumstance he ob- served it attentively for three days, and found that the variation increased as he advanced. He at first made no mention of this phenomenon, knowing how ready his people were to take alarm ; but it soon filled with con- OBSEEVATION OF COLUMBUS. 27 sternation his pilots and mariners, who had leisure on the wide ocean for anxiety and curious wonder. It seemed as if the very laws of nature were changing as they ad- vanced, and that they were entering another world, sub- ject to unknown influences. They apprehended that the compass was about to lose its mysterious virtues : and without this guide, what was to become of them in a vast and trackless ocean ? But Columbus was prepared with a theory to account for this deviation of the laws of nature, as the terrified sailors deemed it to be. The needle was not at fault, he said ; for it did not tend to the polar star, but to some fixed and unseen point. The Variation, therefore, was not caused by any fallacy in the Compass, but by the movement of the polar star itself, which, like the other heavenly bodies, had its changes and revolu- tions, and every day described a circle round the pole. The high opinion that the pilots entertained of Columbus as a profound astronomer gave weight to his theory, and their alarm subsided. As yet the solar system of Coper- nicus was unknown ; the explanation of Columbus was therefore highly plausible and ingenious, and it shows, and we admire, the perspicacity of the man who, with so little means, could trace up so fearful an effect to a cause founded partly in truth, and thus meet the emergency of the moment. The theory may at first have been ad- vanced merely to satisfy the minds of others, but Colum- bus appears subsequently to have been satisfied with it himself. The discovery of a magnetic line without variation is due to Columbus. In a letter written in 1498, he says, " Each time that I sail from Spain to the Indies I find, as soon as I arrive a hundred miles to the west of the Azores, an extraordinary alteration in the movements of the heavenly bodies, in the temperature of the air, and in the character of the ocean ; I have observed these alter- ations with particular care, and have recognized that the needle of the Mariner's Compass, the deviation of which had been northeast, now turned to the northwest" An eloquent writer thus picturesquely illustrates the benefits of this great discovery : " In the development of the commercial spirit of the Crusades, Providence is seen in its most manifest footsteps. Sitting upon the 28 OBSERVATION OF COLUMBUS. floods, it opens to new enterprises. The Compass twinkling on its card was a beam from heaven; that tiny magnet was given as a seniory of earth and sky. Like a new revelation, the mysteries of an unknown world were unveiled ; like a new illapse, the bold and noble were inspired to lead the way. Dias doubles the Cape of Storms ; De Gama finds his course to the East Indies ; Columbus treads the Bahamas ; and twelve years do not separate these discoveries." Franklin at his Case. WHO INVENTED FEINTING, AND WHERE? THE inquirers into the origin and history of this al- most ubiquitous " noble craft and mystery" would seem to have arrived at this conclusion that it is difficult to say at what period of time the art of Printing did not exist. The simplest and most natural mode of convey- ing an idea is by the reproduction of similar appearances from an impression of the same surface ; and whether this be by a hand or foot upon snow, or by the pressure of wood or metal upon paper or vellum, it is alike print- ing. Accordingly, we find evidence that nearly four thousand years since a rude and imperfect method of printing was certainly practiced. First, seals were im- pressed upon a plastic material ; next, symbols or char- acters were stamped upon clay in forming bricks (as practiced in Babylon), cylinders, and the walls of edifices. Of this art, Wilkinson and others have brought examples from Egypt ; and Kawlinson and Layard from the ruins of the buried cities of Asia. Not only have the in- scribed bricks been found, but the wooden stamps with which they were impressed ; of these numerous speci- mens are in the British Museum. Here also may be seen several instruments presenting a singular instance how very nearly we may approach to an important dis- 30 PRINTING FROM MOVABLE TYPES. covery, and yet miss it. These are brass or bronze stamps, having on their faces inscriptions in raised char- acters reversed. To the back has been fastened a handle, a loop, a boss, or a ring. One use of these stamps has evidently been to print the inscription on surfaces, by aid of color, upon papyrus, linen, or parchment ; and, as the inscriptions show these stamps to have been of the period when literature had become one of the pursuits of the great, and the copying of books was a slow and expensive process, it is strange that the Romans, by whom these signets were used, should not have improved upon them by engraving whole sentences and composi- tions upon blocks, and thence transferring them to paper. The Chinese printing from blocks at this day closely re- sembles the old Roman ; and they assert that it was used by them several centuries before it was known in Europe in fact, fifty years before the Christian era. A vast interval elapses between the above attempts and the next advance engraving pictures upon wooden blocks, invented toward the end of the thirteenth century by a twin brother and sister of the illustrious family of Cunio, lords of Italy : these consisted of nine engravings of the " Heroic Actions" of Alexander the Great, and, as stated in the title-page, " first reduced, imagined, and attempted to be executed in relief, with a small knife, on blocks of wood ;" " all this was done and finished by us when only sixteen years of age." This title, if genuine, presents us at once with the origin, execution, and de- sign of the first attempts at block-printing. The next earliest evidence is a decree found among the archives of the Company of Printers at Venice, dated 1441, relat- ing to playing-cards, printed from wood blocks, the im- pressions being taken by means of a burnisher. Then, instead of a single block, a series of blocks was employ- ed, in engravings of the jBiblia Pauperum^ the text being printed from movable types. We have now reached the practice of printing in the present sense of the term. The invention of the movable types is disputed by many cities, but only three have the slightest claim Harlem, Strasburg, and Mentz : Harlem for Lawrence Koster, who, when " walking in a suburban grove, began first to fashion beech-bark into letters, which GUTENBERG AND HTS PARTNERS. 31 being impressed upon pa- per, reversed in the man- ner of a seal, produced one verse, then another, as his fancy pleased, to be for copies for the children of his son-in-law." Next, he, with his son-in-law, devised Type of a letter. ^ Types set up. ^ & ^ Q glutinoils and te . nacious species of writing-ink, which he had commonly used to draw letters ; thence he expressed entire figured pictures, with characters added," only on opposite pages, not printed on both sides. Afterward he changed beech- blocks for lead, and then for tin. The tradition adds that an unfaithful servant, having fled with the secret, set up for himself at Strasburg or Mentz ; but the whole story, which claims the substitution of movable for fixed letters as early as 1430, can not be traced beyond the middle of the sixteenth century, and is generally discred- ited as a romantic fiction. Nevertheless, some have be- lieved that a book called Speculum humance Salvationis, of very rude wooden characters, proceeded from the Har- lem press before any other that is generally recognized. Whether movable wooden characters were ever employ- ed in any entire work is very questionable ; they appear, however, in the capital letters of some early printed books. " But," says Hallam, " no expedient of this kind could have fulfilled the great purposes of this invention, until it was perfected by founding metal types in a ma- trix or mould ; the essential characteristic of printing, as distinguished from other arts that bear some analogy to it." The invention is now unhesitatingly ascribed to John Gutenberg, a native of Mentz, the evidence of which does not rest upon guesses from dateless wood-cuts, but upon a legal document, dated 143 9, by which it is proved that Gutenberg, being engaged " in a wonderful and unknown art," admitted certain persons into partnership, one of whom dying, his brother claimed to be admitted as his successor ; and on Gutenberg's refusal, they brought an action against him as principal partner. From the evi- dence produced on the trial, it was proved that one of 32 THE PRESS. the witnesses had been instructed by Gutenberg to " take the stucke (pages) from the presses, and, by removing two screws, thoroughly separate them from one another, so that no man may know what it is." From this curi- ous document (says the latest investigator of the sub- ject*) may be learned that separate types were used ; for if they were block, arranged so as to print four pages (as stated in the evidence), how could they be so pulled to pieces that no one should know what they were, or how could the abstraction of two screws cause them to fall to pieces ? We are here reminded that within com- paratively few years screws have been substituted for quoins, or wedges, in locking up the type in the chases, or iron frames, which may be a revival of Gutenberg's screw method of 400 years since. It seems that some sort of presses were now used, and the transfers no longer taken by a burnisher or roller ; and, lastly, that the art was still a great secret at the time when Roster was at the point of death. Hence it is man- ifest that the ingenuity of Gutenberg had made a vast advance from the rude methods of the time, and had, in fact, invented a new and hitherto unknown art. All this took place at Strasburg, where Gutenberg re- sided many years ; but it did not lead to any practical re- sult, and \hefirst book was printed at Mentz, near which the inventor was born. Thither Gutenberg returned about the year 1450, with all his materials. His former partnership had expired, and at Mentz he associated him- self with John Fust, a wealthy goldsmith and citizen, who, upon agreement of being taught the secrets of the art, and admitted into the participation of the profits, ad- vanced the necessary funds, 2020 florins. The new part- nership then hired a house called Zum Jungen, and took into their employ Peter Schoefier and others. A lawsuit arose between the partners in 1455 ; and from a docu- ment in existence we learn that, having expended the whole of his considerable private fortune in his experi- ments, Gutenberg had mortgaged his printing materials to Fust, which is proved by the initial letters used by * "Printing," by T. C. Hansard, Esq. (Encyclopedia Britannica, eighth edition, 1859), in which the history and practice of the art are lucidly traced. STATUE OF GUTENBERG. 33 Gutenberg and his partners in printing works between 1450 and 1455, being likewise used by Fust and Schoeffer in the Psalter of 1457 and 1459. Gutenberg did not, however, abandon the unprofitable pursuit, but, starting anew at Mentz, carried on the business for ten years ; but in 1465, on becoming one of the band of gentlemen pensioners of the Elector Adolphus of Nassau, " he final- ly abandoned the pursuit of an art, which, though it caused him infinite trouble and vexation, has been more effectual in preserving his name and the memory of his acts than all the warlike deeds and great achievements of his renowned master and all his house" (Hansard). Gutenberg died on the 24th day of February, 1468. His printing-oifice and materials were eventually sold to Nich- olas Bechtermunze, of Elfield, whose works are greatly- sought after by the curious, as they afford much proof, by collation, of the genuineness of the works attributed to his great predecessor. Gutenberg appears to have had a troubled life. When young, he became implicated in an insurrection at Mentz, and was compelled to fly to Strasburg; there necessity compelled him to employ himself in mechanical pursuits, when he made his great discovery. On his return to Mentz, when in partnership with Fust, and Schoeffer his son-in-law, he experienced the hard fate that all great in- ventors have to endure from the misconceptions and in- gratitude of mankind. The Guild of Writers and the priests persecuted him, and even his partners joined with his enemies against him ; and only his last few years were passed in peace. Posterity has endeavored, in some de- gree, to make amends for the ingratitude of the discov- erer's contemporaries. In 1837, a statue of Gutenberg, by Thorwaldsen, was erected at Mentz, and inaugurated with great ceremony ; and at high mass, in the fine old Cathedral, was displayed the first Bible printed by Gu- tenberg. The statue was erected by a general sub- scription, to which all Europe was invited to contribute. One who witnessed the ceremony writes, with honest indignation, " England literally gave nothing toward the statue of a man who has done as much as any other sin- gle cause to make England what she is."* The Guten- * Charles Knight, in The Old Printer and Modern Press, 1854. B2 34 TYPE-CASTING. berg Society, to which all the writers of the Rhenish provinces belong, hold a yearly meeting also in Mentz, to honor the memory of the first printer, and to celebrate his discovery. It is hard to apportion the share of honor to which each of the partners Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer is entitled in advancing their art. Gutenberg would readily suggest a new and expeditious method of manu- facturing types ; the practical skill of Fust as a worker Casting the Type. in metals, and his large pecuniary resources, would read- ily provide the necessary appliances ; and the entire con- ception and execution of the casting of type is given to Schreffer. The only evidence shows that the partners had for some time taken casts of types in moulds of plas- ter ; for the types of Gutenberg's earlier efforts, both at Strasburg and at Mentz, were cut out of single pieces of wood or metal with infinite labor and imperfection. Schoeffer has therefore (Mr. Hansard allows) an undoubt- CAXTON BEINGS PRINTING INTO ENGLAND. 35 ed claim to be considered as one of the three inventors of printing ; for he it was who first suggested the cut- ting of punches, whereby beautiful form could be stamp- ed upon the matrix, and the highest sharpness and finish given to the face. Lambinet, who thinks " the essence of the art of printing is in the engraved punch," natu- rally gives the chief credit to Schcefier ; this is not the generally-received opinion ; but he is entitled to a place on the right hand of Gutenberg. It should be noted that there is no book known which bears the conjoint names of Gutenberg, Fust, and Schcefier, nor any which has the imprint of Gutenberg alone ; but there are sev- eral books which, from internal evidence, are unanimous- ly attributed by the literati of all parties and opinions to Gutenberg's press. It is curious to observe that War was the means of quickening the growth and extension of Printing. In 1462, the storming of Mentz dispersed the workmen, and gave the secret to the world. In 1465 it appeared in Italy;* in 1469, in France; in 1474, Caxton brought it to England ; and in 1477 it was introduced into Spain. It is generally believed that William Caxton was born in the Weald of Kent; about 141 2, he was put appren- tice to a mercer or merchant of London, became a trav- eling agent or factor in the Low Countries, and there bought manuscripts and books, with other merchandise. He there also learned the new art of Printing ; and, se- curing one of Fust and Schoefier's fugitive workmen from Mentz, he established a printing-office at Cologne, and there printed the French original and his own translation of the Recuyell of the History es of Troy. He afterward transferred his materials to England, and brought over with him Wynkyn de Worde, who probably was the first superintendent of Caxton's printing establishment. * Near Subiaco, forty-four miles from Rome, on a hill above the river, may be traced the ruins of Nero's villa. It was in this villa, as we are told by Tacitus and Philostratus, that the cup of the tyrant was struck by lightning while he was in the act of drinking, and the table overthrown by the shock. In propinquity, which almost sug- gests a parallel, is the monastery of Santa Scolastica, the first place in Italy in which the printing-press was set up by the German printers, Swcynheim and Panartz : a copy of their edition of Lactantius, their first production, dated 14G5, is still preserved in the monastery. 36 FIKST FEINTING IN ENGLAND. Tie set up his first press at Westminster, perhaps in one of the chapels attached to the Abbey, and certainly un- 'der the protection of the abbot ;* and he there produced the first book printed in England, The Game of Chesse. completed on the last day of March, 1474. His " capital work" was a Book of the Noble Historyes of Kyny Arthur in 1485, the most beautiful production of his press. He died in 1491, being about fourscore years of age: his industry and devotedness is recorded in the fact that he finished his translation of the Vitce Patrum, from French into English, on the last day of his life. Caxton was buried in the old church of St. Margaret, built in the reign of Edward I., and of which few traces remain. The parish books contain an entry of the ex- pense " for iiij torches" and " the belle" at the old print- er's " bureying ;" and the same books record the church- wardens' selling for 6s. 8cZ. one of the books bequeathed to the church by Caxton ! In the chancel a tablet to his memory was raised in 1820 by the Roxburghe Club. * But a very curious placard, in Caxton's largest type, and now preserved in the library of Brazen-nose College, Oxford, shows that he printed in the Almonry ; for in this placard he invites customers to "come to Westmonester in to the Almonestrye at the Reed Pale," the name by which was known a house in which Caxton is said to have lived. It stood on the north side of the Almonry, with its back against that of a house on the south side of Tothill Street. Bagford describes this house as of brick, with the sign of the King's Head : it is stated to have fallen down in November, 1845, before the removal of the other dwellings in the Almonry, to form a new line (Victoria Street) from Broad Sanctuary to Pimlico. A beam of wood was saved from the materials of the house, and from it have been made a chessboard and two sets of chessmen, as appropriate memorials of Caxton's first labor in England The Game and Playe of the Chesse. According to a view of Caxton's house, engraved by G. Cooke in 1827, it was three-storied, and had a gallery or balcony to the upper floor, with a window in its bold gable. (Curiosities of London.} The site of Caxton's house is now included in the Westminster Hotel Com- pany's premises. Note. The presses of Seth Adams & Co., of Boston, are the best now made for book-printing. For this purpose they are in general use throughout the United States, and are found, under proper man- agement, to give clear impressions of the finest wood-cuts. Harper's Magazine, the excellence of whose typographical execution is thought remarkable, not only here, but in Europe, is printed from Adams presses, more than forty of which are constantly in operation in the Harper Printing Establishment. THE FIEST PEINTING-PKESS. 39 This tablet (a chaste work by Westmacott) was origin- ally intended to have been placed in Westminster Ab- bey ; but the fees for its erection were so great, that ap- plication was made to the churchwardens of St. Marga- ret's, who, as a mark of respect to their parishioner's memory, allowed it to be placed in the church without any of the customary fees. It was proposed, several years since, to erect at Westminster a memorial statue of Caxton, but the fund raised for that purpose now en- larges the Printers' Pension Society's sphere of benevo- lence. We must say a few words as to the first Presses. Gu- tenberg is thought to have felt the want of a machine of sufficient pOAver to take the impressions of the types or blocks which he employed ; nor is it supposed that, with cutting type, forming screws, making and inventing ink, he could have had time to construct a press, even had he possessed the requisite mechanical skill. His junction with Fust and Schoefier is thought to have supplied the defect. The earliest form of printing-press very closely resem- bled the common screw-press, as the cheese or napkin press, with some contrivance for running the form of type, when inked, under the pressure (obtained from the screw by means of a lever inserted into the spindle), and back again when the pressure is made. The presses used in the office of Fust and Schoeffer are believed to have dif- fered in no essential form from the above, until improved in the details by Blew, a printer of Amsterdam, in 1620. Other improvements were from time to time introduced, but they were all superseded about the commencement of the present century, when the old wooden press gave way to Earl Stanhope's invention of the iron press which bears his name. Its novelty consisted in an improved application of the power to the spindle and screw, where- by it was greatly increased. Lord Stanhope also made some improvements in the process of stereotyping, and in the construction of locks for canals ; he invented an ingenious machine for performing arithmetical opera- tions ; during great part of his life he studied the action of the electric fluid; and in 1779 he made public his theory of what is called " the returning stroke of light- 40 THE PRINTING-MACHINE. mug." Lord Stanhope bequeathed 500 to the Royal Society, of which he had been a fellow fifty-one years. The Hand Press. The principle of the Stanhope press has been followed out by several subsequent inventors, and improvements of mechanical detail introduced, tending to the economy of time and labor, and to precision of workmanship. The printing-press, however, proved inadequate to a rate of production equal to the demand; and as early as 1790, even before the Stanhope press was generally known, Mr. W. Nicholson patented a PRINTING-MACHINE, of which the chief points were the following: "The type, being rubbed or scraped narrower toward the bottom, was to be fixed upon a cylinder, in order, as it were, to radiate from the centre of it. This cylinder, with its type, was THE PRINTING-MACHINE. 41 to revolve in gear with another cylinder covered with soft leather (the impression cylinder), and the type re- ceived its ink from another cylinder, to which the inking apparatus was applied. The paper was impressed by The Koller. passing between the type and impression cylinders." (Hansard.) Such was the first printing-machine : it was never brought into use, although most of Nicholson's plans were, when modified, adopted by after-constructors. Konig, a German, conceived nearly the same idea ; and meeting with the encouragement in England which he failed to receive on the Continent, constructed a print- ing-machine for Mr. Walter ; and on the 28th of Novem- ber, 1814, the readers of the Times were informed that they were then, for the first time, reading a newspaper printed by machinery driven by steam-power, and work- ing at the rate of 1100 impressions per hour. In this machine the ordinary type was used, and laid upon a flat surface, the impression being given by the form pass- ing under a cylinder of great size. This machine was, however, very complicated, and was soon superseded by that of Messrs. Applegath and Cowper, the novel fea- tures of which were, accuracy in the register (that is, one page falling precisely upon the back of the other), the method of inking the types, and the simplification of very complicated parts ; and this machine, with numerous modifications by different makers, is now in general use, so that the foremost improver of the printing-machine is Augustus Applegath. The simplicity of the operation is admirable: the whole machine is put in motion by means of a strap, which passes over a wheel under the frame, and is mostly worked by steam, it requiring only two boys, one to lay on, and the other to take off the sheets. The next great improvement was the construction of 42 THE PBINTING-MACHINE. the vertical machine by Mr. Applegath, in which he abandoned the reciprocating motion (occasioning a great waste of motive power), and instead of placing the type on a plane table, placed it on a cylinder of large dimen- sions, which revolves on a vertical axis, with a continuous rotatory motion. " No description," says Mr. Hansard, " can give any adequate idea of the scene presented by one of these machines in full work the maze of wheels and rollers, the intricate lines of swift-moving tapes, the flight of sheets, and the din of machinery. The central drum moves at the rate of six feet per second, or one revolution in three seconds; the impression cylinders make five revolutions in the same time. The layer-on delivers two sheets every five seconds, consequently six- teen sheets are printed in that brief space. The diameter of an eight-feeder, including the galleries for the layers- on, is twenty-five feet. The Times employs two of these eight-cylinder machines, each of which averages 12,000 impressions per hour; and one nine-cylinder, which prints 16,000." Messrs. Hoe, of New York, have con- structed machines differing from Applegath's Vertical chiefly in the drum and impression cylinders being hori- zontal : one of these machines has been constructed with ten cylinders for working the Times at 20,000 impres- sions per hour. Another American machine has been constructed to work 22,000 double impressions per hour. " Could Gutenberg, if he were to rise from the dead, imagine that at the present day there would be more than 4000 presses in Europe, each house being designated by its press ; and of these, 600 in the city of London alone and 1000 printing-machines in England, supply- ing the printing requirements, on such a scale as this, for her populations !" Lecture delivered at the Royal Insti- tution, by Mr. Henry Bradbury, 1858. The Composing-stick. WHO INVENTED GUNPOWDER? " FROM the earliest dawnings of policy to this day," says Burke, " the invention of men has been sharpening and improving the mystery of murder, from the first rude essay of clubs and stones to the present perfection of gunnery, cannoneering, bombarding, mining." The imputed universality of the class of invention may ac- count for the difficulty of tracing the special practice of it in the composition of Gunpowder with certainty to any period or nation. The evidence is conflicting, and it ranges from several centuries before the commence- ment of our era to the claim of the German monk of the fourteenth century, of whom a commemorative statue was erected so lately as the year 1853. The earliest account extant on the subject of Gun- powder exists in a code of Gentoo laws, where it is men- tioned as applied to fire-arms ; this document, being of some fifteen centuries before Christ, is thought by many to have been coeval with the time of Moses ! The notice occurs in the Sanscrit preface, translated by Halhed, and is as follows : " The magistrate shall not make war with any deceitful machine, nor with poisoned weapons, nor with cannon and guns, nor any kind of fire-arms." Hal- hed observes : " The reader, no doubt, will wonder to find a prohibition of fire-arms in records of such remote antiquity; and he will probably hence renew the sus- picion which has long been deemed absurd, that Alex- ander the Great did absolutely meet with some weapons of this kind in India, as a passage in Quintus Curtius seems to ascertain. Gunpowder has been known in China as well as in Hindostan far beyond all periods of investigation. The word ' fire-arms' is literally translated by the Sanscrit agnee-aster (agny astro), a weapon of fire. In their earliest form they are described to have been a kind of dart tipped with fire, and discharged by some sort of explosive compound from a bamboo. Among several extraordinary properties of this weapon, 44 GUNPOWDER IN CHINA. one was, that, after it had taken its flight, it divided into several separate streams of flame, each of which took effect, and which, when once kindled, could not be ex- tinguished ; but this kind of agnee-aster is now lost." Dutens has selected many passages from Greek and Latin authors favorable to the opinion that Gunpowder was known to the ancients. He mentions the attempt of Salmoneus to imitate thunder, and of the Brahmins to do the same thing; but his most remarkable quotation is from the life of Apollonius of Tyana, written by Philos- tratus, showing that Alexander was prevented from ex- tending his conquests in India because of the use of Gunpowder by a people called Oxydraca3, who repulsed the enemy " with storms of lightning and thunder-bolts, hurled upon them from above." Philostratus is not re- markable for veracity ; but taking into consideration the records of Oriental history, and the fact of pyrotechny having been cultivated from time immemorial in India and China, his assertion does not seem improbable. In India and many other parts of Asia, nitre occurs in great quantity, spread over the surface of the earth. Dr. Scoffern, the experienced writer on this subject, supposes a fire lighted on such a spot : the most careless observer must have noticed the effect of the saltpetre in augment- ing the flame ; if then, attention having been directed to this phenomenon, charcoal and saltpetre had been mixed together purposely, Gunpowder would have been form- ed. The third ingredient, sulphur, is not absolutely necessary; indeed, very good Gunpowder, chemically speaking, can be made without it. Sulphur tends to in- crease the plasticity of the mass, and better enables it to be made into and to retain the form of grains. It has been said that Gunpowder was used in China as early as the year A.D. 85. Sir George Staunton observes that " the knowledge of Gunpowder in China and India seemed coeval with the most distant historic events. Among the Chinese it has at all times been applied to useful purposes, as blasting rocks, etc., and in the making of fire-works ; although it has not been directed through strong metallic tubes, as the Europeans did soon after they had discovered it." In short, there can be no doubt that a sort of Gunpowder was at an early period used in GUNPOWDER IN EUKOPE. 45 China, and in other parts of Asia ; and Barrow's state- ment that the Chinese soldiery make their Gunpowder, and every soldier prepares his own, is highly character- istic of the people. Against the claim of the Chinese to the invention, it is urged that the silence of Marco Polo respecting Gunpowder may be considered as at least a negative proof that it was unknown to the Chinese in the time of Kublai Khan. There is nothing in the history of these people, nor in their " Dictionary of Arts and Sciences," that bears any allusion to their knowledge of cannon before the invasion of Ghengis Khan, when (in the year 1219) mention is made of ho-pao, or fire-tubes, the name of cannon, which are said to have killed men, and to set fire to inflamma- ble substances ; they are said, too, to have been used by the Tartars, not by the Chinese, and were probably noth- ing more than the enormous rockets known in India 'at the time of the Mohammedan invasion (Quarterly Re- view, No. 41). Numerous documents, however, show that Gunpow- der was known in the East at periods of great antiquity, whence it might have been introduced into Europe, either through the medium of the Byzantine Greeks, or by the Saracens into Spain. In a paper read about fifty- five years since before the French Institute, M. Langles maintained that the use of Gunpowder was conveyed to us by the Crusaders, who are stated to have employed it at the siege of Mecca in 690 : he contended that they had derived it from the Indians. Mr. Hallam considers it nearly certain that Gunpow- der was brought by the Saracens into Europe. Its use in engines of war, though they may seem to have been rather like our fire-works than artillery, is mentioned by an Arabic writer in the Escurial collection about the year 1249. The words which are thought to mean gun- powder are translated pulvis nitratus. The Moors or Arabs, in Spain, appear to have used gunpowder and cannon as early as 1312 ; and in 1331, when the King of Granada laid siege to Alicant, he battered its walls with iron bullets, discharged by fire from machines; which novel mode of warfare (says the chronicle) inspired great terror. And when Alonzo XT., King of Castile, besieged 46 GUNPOWDER IN EUROPE. Algesiras in 1342-3, the Moorish garrison, in defending the place, employed truenos (literally thunders), which a passage in the chronicle proves to have been a species of cannon fired with powder. And Petrarch, in a passage written before 1344, and quoted by Muratori, speaks of the art of making Gunpowder as nuper rara, nunc com- munis (recently rare, now common). Another authority traces Gunpowder to the Arabs, but at an earlier date than hitherto mentioned, and at the same time seeks to identify it with an invention of much earlier antiquity. The celebrated Oriental scholar, M. Reinaud, has discovered an Arabic MS. of the thir- teenth century, which proves that compositions identical with Gunpowder in all but the granulations were, and had been for a long time previously, in the possession of the Arabs ; and that there is every probability they had obtained them from the Chinese in the ninth century. Many of these were called " Greek fire ;" and comparing the account of Joinville, of the wars on the Nile in the time of St. Louis, with the Arabic recipes, there can be little doubt we are now in possession of what was then termed " Greek fire." Mr. Grove, F.R.S., who has inves- tigated the subject experimentally as well as historically, concludes that the main element of Greek fire, as contra- distinguished from other inflammable substances, was nitre, or a salt containing much oxygen ; that Greek fire and Gunpowder were substantially the same thing ; and that the development of the invention had been very slow and gradual, and had taken place long antecedent to the date of Schwartz, the monk of Cologne, A.D. 1320, to whom the invention of Gunpowder is generally attribu- ted ; thus adding to the innumerable, if not unexception- able cases in which discoveries commonly attributed to ac- cident, and to a single mind, are found, upon investiga- tion, to have been progressive, and the result of the con- tinually-improving knowledge of successive generations. It was long the custom to attribute the invention of Gunpowder to our philosopher, Roger Bacon ; but a pas- sage in his Opus Ma jus, written in 1267, proves that in- stead of claiming the merit of the discovery, he mentions Gunpowder as a substance well known in his time, and even employed by the makers of fire-works ; and he mi- GUNPOWDEK IN ENGLAND. 47 nutely describes a common cracker. In his treatise De /Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturae, he says, that from " saltpetre and other ingredients we are able to make a fire that shall burn at any distance." In another passage he indicates two ingredients, saltpetre and sulphur, and " Lura nope cum ubre," which is a transposition of the words "carbonum pulvere" (charcoal in powder). At the period when Bacon lived, Spam was the favorite seat of literature and art. Bacon is known to have traveled through Spain, and to have been conversant with Arabic, so that he might have seen the manuscript in the Escurial collection, which is at least as probable a supposition as that he saw the treatise of Marcus Graecus. Some fifty years later, 1320, is the date claimed by the Germans for the invention due to their monk, Bartholdus Schwartz, in whose honor a stone statue has been erected in the town of Freiburg, where he was born ; and in reply to earlier claims to the invention, it is maintained that to Schwartz is due the merit, because he did not learn the secret from any one else. Nearly two hundred years before this date, Humboldt states that a species of Gunpowder was used to blast the rock in the Rammelsberg, in the Hartz Mountains. Authorized statements negative the assertion by Cam- den, Kennett, and other writers, that no Gunpowder was manufactured in England until the reign of Elizabeth. Its first application to the firing of artillery has been commonly ascribed to the English at the battle of Cres- sy, in August, 1343 ; but hitherto the fact has depended almost solely on the evidence of a single Italian writer, and the word " gunners" having been met with in some public accounts of the reign of Edward III. The Rev. Joseph Hunter has, however, from records of the period, shown the names of the persons employed in the manu- facture of Gunpowder (out of saltpetre and " quick sul- phur," without any mention of charcoal), with the quan- tities supplied to the king just previously to his expedi- tion to France in June or July, 1346. In the records it is termed pulvis pro ingeniis ; and they establish that a considerable weight had been supplied to the English army subsequently to its landing at La Hogue, and pre- viously to the battle of Cressy ; and that before Edward 48 GUNPOWDER FIEST MADE IN ENGLAND. III. engaged in the siege of Calais, he issued an order to the proper officers in England, requiring them to pur- chase as much saltpetre and sulphur as they could pro- cure. Sharon Turner, in his Ilistory of England, has also shown, from an order of Richard III. in the Harleian MSS., that Gunpowder was made in England in 1483 ; and Mr. Eccleston (English Antiquities] states that the English both made and exported it as early as 1411. Nevertheless, Gunpowder long remained a costly article ; and even in the reign of Charles I., on account of its dear- ness, " the trained bands are much discouraged in their exercising." In 1686, it appears from the Clarendon Correspondence that the wholesale price ranged from about 2 105. to 3 a barrel. John Evelyn, of Wotton, Surrey, asserts that his an- cestors were the first who manufactured Gunpowder in England ; but this must be regarded as the reintroduc- tion. His grandfather transferred the patent to Sir John Evelyn's grandfather, of Godstone, in whose family it continued till the Civil Wars. As we stroll along the valley in which lies Wotton Place, we are reminded that upon the rivulet which winds through this peaceful re- gion was once made the " warlike contrivance." Evelyn, in a letter to John Aubrey, dated February 8, 1675, says that on this stream, near his house, formerly stood many powder-mills, erected by his ancestors, who were the very first that brought that invention into England ; before which we had all our powder from Flanders. He also describes the blowing-up of one of these mills, when a beam, fifteen inches in diameter, at Wotton Place, was broken ; and on the blowing-up of another mill lower down, toward Sheire, there was shot through a cottage a piece of timber, " which took off a poor woman's head as she was spinning." The Manufacture of Gunpowder may be described from a visit by Dr. Scoffern to one of her majesty's mills at Waltham, in the Essex Marshes. First, as to the ingredients. The saltpetre (principally im- ported from Bengal) is boiled in large pans, evaporated, and crystal- lized ; and the charcoal is prepared from the alder and willow, which abound in the neighborhood. These processes are conducted in build- ings at some distance from the Gunpowder Mills, Avhithcr the materi- als are carried, by water, in covered boats, to the works. There the saltpetre, brimstone, and charcoal are ground separately in mills, each consisting of a pair of heavy circular stones slowly revolving on a MANUFACTURE OF GUNPOWDER. 49 stone bed. Next the ingredients are conveyed to ' ' the Mixing House, " where visitors wear over-shoes. Here, in bins, are the saltpetre, brim- stone, and charcoal, weighed in the exact proportions : saltpetre 75, brimstone 10, and charcoal 15, in every 100 parts. Of the three in- gredients, 42 Ibs. are placed in a hollow drum, which revolves rapidly, and contains a fly-pan, which rotates in an opposite direction; in about five minutes a complete mixture is effected, and the charge is received in a bag tied over the lower orifice of the drum. The "composition" is next taken to "the Incorporating Mills, " and is now a combustible compound, to obtain its explosive power by the ingredients being thoroughly incorporated. The mill consists of a pair of circular stones (" runners"), weighing about 3 tons each, and slowly rolling over the powder, which is placed on the stone bed of the mill, surrounded by a huge wooden basin. The powder is pre- viously damped, as it could not be safely ground dry ; about 7 pints of water ("liquor") being added to the charge of 42 Ibs. of powder dur- ing 3-^ hours, the time of grinding. To insure this with precision, and to obviate the chance of any irregularity in a clock, the water- wheel which works two of these mills in one house also marks its rev- olutions on a dial, so that the attendant can never be mistaken in the time the charge has been "on" a most important point, where the over-grinding of the too dry powder might cause it to explode. Sometimes a portion of the wood-work of the roof, or mill, becoming detached such as a cog of the wheel and falling into the pan, acts as a skid on one of the runners, and by friction produces heat enough to cause a mass of powder to explode. As a protection, over each house containing a pair of mills is suspended a flat board, which, in case of an explosion, is first blown upward, and, being connected by wires with a cistern of water over the pan of the fellow mill, upsets the same, and drowns the Gunpowder. The attendants are as little as possible in these mills, and only work by daylight. More hazardous processes, however, follow. The powder thus in- corporated is in hard, flat lumps, and has again to be reduced to dust in the "Breaking-down House," by conveying it down an inclined plane, through rollers, which crush nearly 500 Ibs. in the hour. The powder is then taken to "the Press House," and there, between gun- metal plates, is pressed in thin cakes to one third its bulk by a power of 700 tons in a hydraulic press. The cakes are roughly broken up, and sent in baskets to "the Granulating Mill," where the powder is again broken down into grains, the size being regulated by sieves. The floor is covered with hides fastened down with copper nails, and the mill can be started or stopped by a rope passing through the wall, which is bomb-proof. The powder is then dried, by heat, in "the Stoving-room," which is flanked externally by "traversers" (mounds of earth 30 feet thick), to confine explosion, should it happen, as much as possible to one house. Lastly, the powder is sifted in "the Dusting House," where the sieves revolve with great velocity; the dust escapes through the meshes, and the Gunpowder is drawn off through a sort of tap, into barrels, for packing. The finest powder is " glazed" by black-lead being shaken up with it ; but cannon pow- der has not this finish. c THE BAROMETER: TORRICELLI AND PASCAL. THE invention of the Barometer is one of the most curious events in the history of philosophy. No new discovery, not even those substantiated by the telescope, ever knocked so hard at the door of a received system, or in a manner which so imperiously demanded admis- sion. The circumstances attending it are briefly these : The phenomena of the common Pump had been well known for more than a century at least before the Chris- tian era. The mode of explanation was simply the well- known maxim that " Nature abhors a vacuum ;" but no attempt had been made to discover why. Sir John Herschel observes, that " if any such abhorrence existed, and had the force of an acting cause which could urge water a single foot into a pipe, there is no reason why the same principle should not carry it up two, three, or any number of feet ; none why it should suddenly stop at a certain height, and refuse to rise higher, however violent the suction might be nay, even fall back, if pur- posely forced up too high." It is related that the engineers of Cosmo de Medicis, wishing to raise water higher than thirty-two feet by means of a sucking-pump, they found it impossible to take it higher than thirty-one feet. Galileo, the Italian sage, was applied to in vain for a solution of the diffi- culty. It had been the belief of all ages that the water followed the piston from the horror which nature had of a vacuum ; and Galileo improved the dogma* by tell- ing the engineers that this horror was not felt, or at least not shown, beyond heights of thirty-one feet ! At * The above story is told in several different ways (it has been said, for instance, that the answer of Galileo was ironical) ; but, whichever may be true, it is most probable that it led him to abandon the theory of nature's horror, though without substituting any other. It has been thought that, before his death, Galileo suspected the true ex- planation. PASCAL AND THE BAKOHETER. 51 his desire, however, his disciple, Torricelli, investigated the subject. He found that when the fluid raised was mercury, the horror of a vacuum did not extend beyond thirty inches, because the mercury would not rise to a greater height; and hence he concluded that a column of water thirty-one feet high, and one of mercury thirty inches, exerted the same pressure upon the same base, and that the antagonistic force which counterbalanced them must in both cases be the same ; and having learn- ed from Galileo that the air was a heavy fluid, he con- cluded, and published the conclusion in 1645, that the weight of the air was the cause of the rise of water to thirty-one feet, and of mercury to thirty inches. He then filled a tube, more than three feet long, and open at one end only, with mercury ; and then, stopping the open end with the finger, he placed the tube in an open vessel of mercury, with the open end downward. On removing the finger, the mercury in the tube sank until it stood in the tube at about twenty-eight inches higher than the mercury in the vessel. He thus constructed what is at this time considered the best form of the ba- rometer. In 1646, Pascal, the young philosopher of Clermont, repeated these experiments at Rouen, before more than 500 persons, among whom were five or six Jesuits of the college, and he obtained precisely the same results as Torricelli, with whose explanation, however, he did not become acquainted until the following year, when, assum- ing that the mercury in the Torricellian tube was sus- pended by the weight or pressure of the air, he sug- gested that it would necessarily fall in ascending a high mountain, by the diminution of the superincumbent col- umn of air. At his request, his relative, M. Perier, tried the barometer at the summit and the base of the mount- ain of Puy,de Dome, in Auvergne; the result was, that the mercury, which, at the base, stood twenty-six and a quarter inches (French), was only twenty-three and a sixth inches at the summit. Pascal afterward found the same result sensibly shown in the ascent of a church tower and of a private house. After this important experiment was made, Pascal in- timated that different states of the weather would occa- 52 YOUTH OF PASCAL. sion differences in the barometer, according as it was cold, hot, dry, or moist ; and M. Perier tested this opinion by observations made at Clermont from 1649 to 1651. Cor- responding observations were made at the same time at Paris and at Stockholm ; and from these it appeared that the mercury rises in cold, cloudy, and damp weather, and falls when the weather is hot and dry, and during rain and snow ; but still with such irregularities, that no gen- eral rule could be established. At Clermont, the differ- ence between the highest and lowest state of the mer- cury was one inch three and a half lines ; at Paris, the same ; and at Stockholm, two inches two and a quarter lines. The discovery was, however, at first much miscon- ceived, and even disputed, till the question was finally decided by an appeal to a crucial instance ; one of the first, if not the very first, on record in physics. " It was then seen," says Sir John Herschel, " as by a glaring instance, that the maintenance of the mercury in the tube was. the effect of a perfectly definite external cause, while its fluctuations from day to day, with the varying state of the atmosphere, strongly corroborated the notion of its being due to the pressure of the external air on the surface of the mercury in the reservoir." The truth of the thing is just this : air, though com- paratively light, is positively heavy, having a weight of its own. The above experiments showed that a square inch of it, carried up from the surface of the earth to the top of the atmosphere, is no less than fifteen pounds in weight. It is this weight of the atmosphere, fifteen pounds on every square inch, that pushes water into the void left by the up-drawn piston of a pump ; and there is, of course, a limit beyond w T hich it can not push the water, namely, the point of height at which the column of water in the pump-tube is exactly balanced by the weight of the atmosphere. It is just a question of bal- ance : fifteen pounds can only support fifteen pounds a thing which every body now understands, thanks to Ga- lileo, Torricelli, and Blaise Pascal, the seer, the discover- er, and verifier of the fact. Pascal evinced such early sagacity, that, at the age of eleven, he was ambitious of teaching as well as learning ; PASCAL WEIGHS THE ATMOSPHERE. 53 and he then composed a little treatise on the refractions of sounds of vibrating bodies when touched by the finger. One day he was found alone in his chamber tracing with charcoal geometrical figures on the wall ; and on another occasion he was surprised by his father just when he had succeeded in obtaining a demonstration of the 32d prop- osition of the first book of Euclid that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. Astonished and overjoyed, his father rushed to his friend, M. Rail- leur, to announce the extraordinary fact ; and the young geometer was instantly permitted to study, unrestrained, the Elements of Euclid, of which he soon made himself master without any extrinsic aid. From the geometry of planes and solids he passed to the higher branches of the science; and before he was sixteen years of age he composed a treatise on the Conic Sections, which evinced the most extraordinary sagacity. When scarcely nine- teen years of age, too, Pascal contrived a machine to as- sist his father in making the numerical calculations which his official duties in Upper Normandy required. In later life, Pascal found, researches in geometry an occupation well fitted to give serenity to a heart bleed- ing from the wounds of his beloved associates. He had for some time renounced the study of the sciences, when, during a violent attack of toothache, which deprived him of sleep, the subject of the cycloid forced itself upon his thoughts. Fermal, Roberval, and others, had trodden the same ground before him ; but in less than eight days, and under severe suffering, he discovered a gen- eral method of solving this class of problems by the sum- mation of certain series ; and as there was only one step from this discovery to that of Fluxions, Pascal might, with more leisure and better health, have won from New- ton and from Leibnitz the glory of that great invention. Pascal's treatise on the weight of the whole mass of air forms the basis of the modern science of Pneumatics. In order to prove that the mass of air presses by its wejght on all the bodies which it surrounds, and also that it is elastic and compressible, Pascal carried a balloon half filled with air to the top of the Puy de Dome. It gradually inflated itself as it ascended ; and when it reached the summit it was quite full and swollen, as if 54 PASCAL WEIGHS THE ATMOSPHERE. fresh air had been blown into it, or, what is the same thing, it swelled in proportion as the weight of the col- umn of air which pressed upon it was diminished. When again brought down, it became more and more flaccid ; and when it reached the bottom, it resumed its original condition. In the above treatise, Pascal shows that all the phenomena and effects hitherto ascribed to the hor- ror of a vacuum arise from the weight of a mass of air ; and after explaining the variable pressure of the atmos- phere in different localities and in its different states, and the rise of water in pumps he calculates that the whole mass of air round our globe weighs 8,983,889,440,000,- 000,000 French pounds. Seeing that little more than two centuries have elapsed since the exposition of this great principle of Hydrostat- ics was clearly established, we are not surprised to find that the science in the Dark Ages enabled the ancient magicians to impose upon their dupes with unimpeach- able certainty. To name a few of the most celebrated instances : the magic cup of Tantalus, which he could never drink though the beverage rose to his lips; the fountain in the island of Andros, which discharged wine for seven days, and water for the rest of the year ; the fountain of oil, which burnt out to welcome the return of Augustus from the Sicilian war ; the empty urns, which, at the annual feast of Bacchus, filled themselves with wine, to the astonishment of the assembled strangers ; the glass tomb of Belus, which, after being emptied by Xerxes, could never again be filled ; the weeping statues of the ancients, and the weeping virgin of modern times, whose tears were uncourteously stopped by Peter the Great when he discovered the trick ; and the perpetual lamps of the ancient temples, were all the obvious effects of hydrostatical pressure. THE AIE-PUMP AND THE AIR-GUN. IMMEDIATELY after the discovery of the principle of the Barometer by Torricelli, in the pressure of the air on the general surface, followed that of Otto von Guericke, whose aim seems to have been to decide the question whether a vacuum could or could not exist, by endeavor- ing to make one.* The first Air-pump constructed by Guericke was exhibited by him at the Imperial Diet of Ratisbon in 1654. It was an exhausting syringe, attach- ed underneath a spherical glass receiver, and worked somewhat like a common pump. The syringe was en- tirely immersed in water, to render it air-tight. The im- perfection of his mechanism, however, enabled Guericke only to diminish the aerial contents of his receiver, not entirely to empty them ; but the curious effects produced by even a partial exhaustion of air speedily excited at- tention, and induced our illustrious countryman, Robert Boyle, to construct an air-pump, in which the syringe was so far improved that the. water could be dispensed with : he also first applied rack-work to the syringe. In the Journals of the Royal Society, January 2d, 1660, we find Boyle's Air-pump referred to as his Cylinder, and " that Mr. Boyle be desired to show his Experiments of the Air," which are printed in the Society's Transac- * This ingenious and ardent cultivator of science, who was born at Magdeburg, in Saxony, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, in his original attempts to produce a vacuum, used first to fill his vessel with water, which he then sucked out by a common pump, taking care, of course, that no air entered to replace the liquid. It was by first filling it with water that Guericke expelled the air from the cop- per globe, the two closely fitting hemispheres comprising which six horses were then unable to pull asunder, although held together by nothing more than the pressure of the external atmosphere. This curious proof of the force or weight of the air, which was exhibited before the Emperor Ferdinand III. in 1634-, is commonly referred to by the name of the experiment of the Magdeburg Hemispheres. Gue- ricke, however, afterward adopted the method of exhausting a vessel of its contained air by the air-pump. 56 EFFECTS OF THE AIR-PUMP. tions. The Air-pump constructed by Boyle was pre- sented to the Society by him in 1662, and it is now in the museum at Burlington House : the pump consists of two barrels. We have the testimony of a French savant of the nine- teenth century, M. Sibes, that the Air-pump in Boyle's hands became a new machine ; and Professor Baden Powell considers that " he reduced it nearly to its pres- ent construction." It is true that the second syringe and the barometer gauge were afterward added by Hawksbee, and several minor 'improvements were made by Hooke, Mariotte, Gravesande, and Smeaton. All the alterations which have been made since the time of the invention, however important, relate to the mechanism only, and not to the principle on which the pump acts. Dr. Hutton has grouped these effects and phenomena of the Air-pump. In the exhausted receiver, heavy and light bodies fall equally swiftly : so a guinea and a feath- er fall from the top of a tall receiver to the bottom exactly together. Most animals die in a minute or two : however, vipers and frogs, although they swell much, live an hour or two, and, after being seemingly quite dead, revive in the open air. Snails survive about ten hours ; efts, two or three days ; leeches, five or six. Oysters live for twenty-four hours. The heart of an eel, taken out of the body, continues to beat for great part of an hour, and that more briskly than in the air. Warm blood, milk, gall, etc., undergo a considerable internes- cence and ebullition. Eggs of silkworms hatch in vacua. Vegetation stops. Fire is extinguished ; the flame of a candle usually going out in one minute, and charcoal in about five minutes. Red-hot iron seems, however, not to be affected; sulphur and gunpowder are not lighted by it, only fused. A match, after lying seemingly ex- tinct for a long while, revives on readmitting the air. A flint and steel strike sparks of fire as copiously as in air. Magnets and magnetized needles act as in air. Heat may be produced by attrition. Camphor will not take fire ; and gunpowder, though some of the grains of a heap of it be kindled by a burning-glass, will not give fire to the contiguous grains. Glowworms lose their light in proportion as the air is exhausted ; but, on read- THEORY OF THE AIR-GUN. 57 mitting the air, they presently recover. A bell, on being struck, is not heard to ring, or very faintly. Water freezes. A syphon will not run ; and electricity appears like the Aurora Borealis. De la Croix relates the following instance of sagacity in a cat, who, even under the receiver of an Air-pump, discovered the means of escaping a death which appeared to all present inevitable. " I once saw," he relates, " a lecturer upon experimental philosophy place a cat under the glass receiver of an Air-pump for the purpose of de- monstrating that life can not be supported without air and respiration. The lecturer had already made several strokes with the piston in order to exhaust the receiver of its air, when the cat, who began to feel herself very uncomfortable in the rarefied atmosphere, was fortunate enough to discover the source from whence her uneasi- ness proceeded. She placed her paw upon the hole through which the air escaped, and thus prevented any more from passing out of the receiver. All the exertions of the philosopher were now unavailing : in vain he drew the piston ; the cat's, paw effectually prevented its opera- tion. Hoping to effect his purpose, he again let air into the receiver, which as soon as the cat perceived, she withdrew her paw from the aperture ; but whenever he attempted to exhaust the receiver, she applied her paw as before. The spectators clapped their hands in ad- miration of the cat's sagacity ; and the lecturer was com- pelled to remove her, and substitute another cat that possessed less penetration for the cruel experiment." Although the Air-pump is scarcely two centuries old, yet the Air-gun, which is so nearly allied to it in the con- struction of its valve and condensing syringe, existed long antecedent to it ; for it is recorded that an Air-gun was made for Henry IV., by Marim, of Lisseau, in Nor- mandy, as early as 1408 ; and another was preserved in the armory at Schmetau, bearing the date of 1474. The Air-gun of the present day is different. Bishop Wilkins mentions " the Wind Gun" as a late ingenious invention, which discharges with force " almost equal to our pow- der guns." Professor Helmholtz, one of the latest illustrators of this instrument, thus lucidly explains its theory : " Into C 2 58 THEOEY OF THE AIR-GUN. the chamber of an Air-gun we squeeze, by means of a condensing air-pump, a great quantity of air. When we afterward open the cock of the gun, and admit the com- pressed air into the barrel, the ball is driven out of the latter with a force similar to that exerted by ignited powder. Now we may determine the work consumed in the pumping-in of the air, and the living force which, upon firing, is communicated to the ball, but we shall never find the latter greater than the former. The com- pressed air has generated no working force, but simply gives to the bullet that which has been previously com- municated to it. And while we have pumped for per- haps a quarter of an hour to charge the gun, the force is expended in a few seconds when the bullet is discharged ; but, because the action is compressed into so short a time, a much greater velocity is imparted to the ball than would be possible to communicate to it by the un- aided effort of the arm in throwing it." We may here relate a curious wager which Sir Robert Moray, at the request of Charles II., brought forward at a meeting of the Royal Society in 1671. It was, that the king wagered 50 to 5 " for the compression of air by water." It was accordingly resolved that Mr. Hooke should prepare the necessary apparatus for the experi- ment, which Sir Robert Moray said " might be done by a cane, so contrived that it should take in more and more water, according as it should be sunk deeper and deeper into it." The minutes of a subsequent meeting record the successful performance of the experiment, and that it "was acknowledged his majesty had won the wager." LIVING UNDER WATER: THE DIVING- BELL. we consider the vast amount of treasure which has been from time to time lost in the depths of the sea, we shall not be surprised at the variety of the means which have been devised for the recovery of the hidden wealth. The principal of these contrivances is the Div- ing-bell, with the operations of which the public have be- come familiar by the exhibition of an improved bell at our Polytechnic Institution ;* but the history of the in- vention, as well as the primitive means by which it was preceded, present many interesting instances of ingenu- ity directed to humane and praiseworthy purposes. In remote ages (says Professor Beckmann) divers were kept in ships to assist in raising anchors, and goods thrown overboard in times of danger ; and, by the laws of the Rhodians, they were allowed a share of the wreck pro- portioned to the depth in which they had gone in search of it. In war, they were often employed to destroy the works and ships of the enemy ; divers also fished for * For twenty years (1839-1859) there was exhibited at the Poly- technic Institution, No. 300 llegent Street, London, a diving-bell, which was put in operation daily. This bell was manufactured by Cottam and Hallen, and cost about 400. It is of cast iron, and weighs 3 tons ; 5 feet in height, and 4 feet 8 inches in diameter at the mouth. Within is affixed a knocker, under which is painted : " More air, knock once; Less air, knock twice ; Pull up, knock three times." The bell is about one third open at the bottom, has a seat all round for the divers, is lit by twelve openings of thick plate glass. It is sus- pended by a massive chain to a large swing-crane, with a powerful crab, the chain having compensation weights, and working into a well beneath. The air was supplied from two powerful air-pumps, of eight- inch cylinder, conveyed by the leather hose to any depth ; the divers being seated in the bell, it was moved over the water, and directly let down within two feet of the bottom of the tank, and then drawn up, the whole occupying only two minutes and a half. The tank and the adjoining canals held 10,000 gallons of water. Each person descend- ing in the bell paid Is. ; and it has produced 1000 in one year. 60 LIVING UNDER WATER. pearls. The statements of their remaining under water unassisted by apparatus for procuring air are, however, greatly exaggerated ; they speak of six hours, whereas six minutes is the longest time of submersion recorded in modern times. Dr. Halley, in a paper in the Philosophical Transac- tions on " the Art of living under Water," describes the divers for sponges in the Archipelago taking down in their mouths a piece of sponge soaked in oil, by which they were enabled to dive for a longer period than with- out it. As the bulk of the sponge must diminish the quantity of air which the diver could contain in his mouth, it does not appear probable that this practice could assist respiration. In connection with diving by the unassisted powers of the body, Professor Faraday relates this curious fact : The lungs are, in their natural state, charged with a large quantity of impure air ; this being a portion of the carbonic acid gas which is formed during respiration, but which, after such expiration, remains lodged in the in- volved passages of the pulmonary vessels. By breathing hard for a short time, as a person does after violent ex- ercise, this impure air is expelled, and its place is suppli- ed by pure atmospheric air, by which a person will be enabled to hold his breath much longer than without such precaution. Dr. Faraday states that, although he could only hold his breath, after breathing in the ordi- nary way, for about three quarters of a minute, and that with great difficulty, he felt no inconvenience, after mak- ing eight or ten forced respirations to clear the lungs, un- til the mouth and nostrils had been closed more than a minute and a half; and that he continued to hold breath to the end of the second minute. A knowledge of this fact may enable a diver to remain under water at least twice as long as he otherwise could do. Possibly the ex- ertion of swimming may have the effect of clearing the lungs, so that persons accustomed to diving may uncon- sciously avail themselves of this preparatory measure. The advantage of breathing condensed air, and there- by obtaining a larger supply of oxygen in the same bulk than with air of the ordinary pressure, is shown also in the following fact : After one of the disastrous occur- THE EARLIEST DIVING-BELL. 61 rences at the works of the Thames Tunnel, Mr. Brunei, the engineer, descended in a diving-bell to examine the breach made by the irruption of the river into the tun- nel. The bell was lowered to the mouth of the opening, a depth of about thirty feet ; but the breach was too nar- row to allow it to go lower, in order that the shield and other works, which lay eight or ten feet deeper, might be examined from the bell. Mr. Brunei therefore took hold of the rope, and dived below the bell for the pur- pose. After he had remained under water about two minutes, his companion in the bell became alarmed, and gave a signal which caused Brunei to rise. On doing so, he was surprised to find how much time had elapsed ; and, on repeating the experiment, he ascertained that he could with ease remain fully two minutes under water, a circumstance accounted for by the condensation of the air in the bell, from which his lungs were supplied, by the pressure of a column of water nearly thirty feet high, which would condense the air into little more than one half of its usual bulk. Plans for enabling persons to remain for a longer pe- riod under water than is possible by the natural powers of the body are of very old date. Aristotle is supposed to intimate that in his time divers used a kind of kettle to enable them to continue longer under water ; but this interpretation is disputed. Beckmann states that the oldest information we have respecting the use of the Div- ing-bell in Europe is that of John Taisnier, quoted in Schott's Technica Curiosa, Nuremberg, 1664, in which 'Taisnier relates : " Were the ignorant vulgar told that one could descend to the bottom of the Rhine, in the midst of the water, without wetting one's clothes, or any part of one's body, and even carry a lighted candle to the bottom of the water, they would consider it altogeth- er as ridiculous and impossible. This, however, I saw done at Toledo in Spain, in the year 1538, before the Em- peror Charles V. and almost ten thousand spectators. The experiment was made by two Greeks, who, taking a very large kettle suspended by ropes with the mouth downward, fixed beams and planks in the middle of its concavity, upon which they placed themselves, together with a candle. The kettle was equipoised by means of 62 DIVING-BELLS. lead fixed round its mouth, so that, when let down to- ward the water, no part of its circumference should touch the water sooner than another, else the water might eas- ily have overcome the air included in it, and have con- verted it into moist vapor ; but if the vessel were gently drawn up, the men continue dry, and the candle is found burning." Schott calls the machine " an aquatic kettle ;" he also describes " an aquatic armor," which would ena- ble those who were covered with it to walk under wa- ter ; and the former apparatus is represented, showing a man walking into the water with a covering like a small diving-bell over his head, descending nearly to his feet. In England, besides the supposed contrivance of a Div- ing-machine by Roger Bacon, it is evident that the Div- ing-bell was known at a very early period. It is de- scribed more than once in the works of Lord Bacon as a machine used to assist persons laboring under water upon wrecks, by affording a reservoir of air to which they might resort whenever they required to take breath. "A hollow vessel was made of metal, which was let down equally to the surface of the water, and thus carried with it to the bottom of the sea the whole air it contained. It stood upon three feet like a tripod, which were in length somewhat less than the height of a man, so that the div- er, when he was no longer able to contain his breath, could put his head into the vessel, and, having breathed, return again to his work" (Novum Organwn, lib. ii., p. 850). The next use of the bell occurred in America, where, in 1642, it was used by one Edward Bedall, of Boston, to weigh the Mary Rose, which had sunk the previous year. Bedall made use of two tubs, " upon which were hanged so many weights (600 Ibs.) as would sink them to the ground." The experiment succeeded, and the guns, ballast, goods, hull, etc., were all transported into shoal water, and recovered. Some curious information on submarine operations was published in 1688 by Professor Sinclair, of Glasgow, show- ing how " to buoy up a ship of any burden from the ground of the sea ;" and stating that the late Marquis of Argyle, " having obtained a patent of the king on one of the Spanish Armada, which was sunk near the Isle of PHIPPS'S DIVING-BELL. 63 Mull, anno 1588, employed James Colquhoun, of Glas- gow," who, " not knowing the Diving-bell, went down several times, the air from above being communicated to his lungs by a long pipe of leather." The Armada ships sunk near Mull, according to the accounts of the Span- ish prisoners, contained great riches ; and this informa- tion excited from time to time the avarice of speculators, and gave rise to several attempts to procure part of the lost treasure. About 1664, an ingenious gentleman, the Laird of Melgim, " went down with a Diving-bell, and got up three guns." Sinclair also proposed to raise wrecks by the buoyancy of arks or boxes, open at the bottom, which were to be sunk full of water, and then filled with air, either by sending down casks of air, by bellows and a long tube, or otherwise. He alludes to the occasional use of casks for the purpose of raising vessels, and ex- plains why, when at a great depth, they are liable to be crushed by the pressure of the water ; showing that, by allowing the water to enter by a hole in the lower part of the cask, it would so compress the air as to produce an equilibrium of pressure, and thereby preserve it from fracture. About twenty years after this, William Phipps, the son of a blacksmith of Pemaquid, in the United States, and who had been brought up as a ship-carpenter at Boston, formed a project for searching and unloading a rich Span- ish wreck near the Bahamas, when Charles II. gave him a frigate to obtain the treasure. He sailed in 1683 ; but, being unsuccessful, returned in great poverty, though with a firm conviction of the practicability of his scheme. He then endeavored to procure a vessel from James II., failing in which he opened a subscription. At first he was laughed at; but at length the Duke of Albemarle, son of the celebrated General Monk, advanced Phipps a considerable sum toward the second outfit ; and having collected the remainder, he set sail in 1687, in a ship of 200 tons burden, and reaching the wreck, when nearly worn out with fruitless labor he brought up, from six and seven fathoms depth, treasure of 300,000, of which Phipps received for his share 16,000, the Duke of Albe- marle 90,000, and the subscribers received the remain- der. Some envious persons then endeavored to persuade 64 DIVING APPARATUS. the king to seize both the ship and the cargo, under a pretense that Phipps, when he solicited his majesty's per- mission, had not given accurate information respecting the business ; but James nobly replied that he knew Phipps to be an honest man, and that he and his friends should share the treasure among them : the king after- ward knighted Phipps, who had previously been made High Sheriff of New England. In 1691 he was made governor of his native colony. He was uneducated, and knew not how to read or write until he had grown to manhood ; but, by strong native abilities and restless en- terprise, he rose to distinction. He is erroneously said to have been the founder of the Mulgrave family, of which the present head is the Marquis of ISTormanby; which mistake has, doubtless, arisen from one of the ear- ly members of that family, Captain Constantine John Phipps, commander of the unsuccessful Arctic Expedi- tion in 1773, having been raised to the British Peerage as Baron Mulgrave, of Mulgrave, co. York, in 1790. Among the oldest representations of Diving apparatus, Beckmann mentions a print in editions of Vegetius on War, published in 1511 and 1532, representing a diver with a cap, from which rises a long leathern pipe, term- inating in an opening which floats upon the surface of the water. Beckmann also names a figure, in Lorini's work on Fortification, 1607, which nearly resembles the modern Diving-bell, and consists of a square box, bound with iron, which is furnished with windows, and a seat for the diver. Lorini, who was an Italian, does not lay claim to the invention of this apparatus. In 1617, Francis Kessler described his Water-armor, intended for diving, but which Beckmann states to have been useless. In 1 6 7 1 , Witsen taught, better than any of his predecessors, the construction and use of the Diving- bell, which, however, he erroneously says was invented at Amsterdam. About 1679, Borelli, the celebrated phy- sician of Naples, invented an apparatus by which per- sons might go a considerable depth under water, remain there, move from place to place, and sink or rise at pleas- ure ; and also a boat in which two or more persons might row themselves under water ; but the practicability of these machines has been much controverted. THE DIVING-BELL. 65 Dr. Halley, in the paper in the Philosophical Trans- actions already quoted, describes the defects of the Diving-bell as previously -used, and suggests a remedy for them. This paper alone would be sufficient, although it does not enter into the early history of the machine, to contradict the erroneous statement which has been made, that Halley was the inventor of the Diving-bell. In its simplest form, the Diving-bell is a strong, heavy vessel of wood or metal, made perfectly air and water- tight at the top and sides, but open at the bottom. If such a vessel be gradually lowered into the water in a perfectly horizontal position, the air which it contains can not escape, and therefore the vessel can not become full of water. This may be readily illustrated by plung- ing a glass tumbler in an inverted position into a vessel of water, and placing a bit of cork under the glass. If a bit of burning matter be laid upon the cork float, it will continue to burn, although the glass and all that it con- tains be plunged far beneath the water, thereby proving that the upper part of the cavity of the glass is occupied by air, and not by water. In this experiment, however, it will be observed that the water does fill a small part of the cavity of the glass, and that it rises more into it when it is plunged to a considerable depth than when the rim is onjy just immersed beneath the surface. This is occasioned by the condensation of the air contained in the glass, which, being very elastic and compressible, is condensed into a smaller space than it would occupy under the ordinary pressure of the atmosphere. We have now illustrated the principle of the Diving- bell : let us proceed to its application. When the bell is used for descending to a very small depth, as the press- ure of the water is small, it will not rise in the bell to a sufficient height to be inconvenient ; but at the depth of thirty feet the pressure is so great as to compress the air into one half its original volume, so that the bell will be- come half full of water; and at a greater depth the air will be still more compressed, and the water will rise pro- portionally higher in the bell. This condensation of the air does not materially interfere with respiration, pro- vided the descent of the bell be very gradual, as the air then insinuates itself into the cavities of the body, and 66 THE DIVING-BELL. balances the pressure from without. The principal effect of the increased pressure is a pain in the ears, since the Eustachian tube does not allow the condensed air imme- diately to find its way into the cavities of the ear, so that the pressure on the outside of the tympanum is for a time unbalanced by a corresponding pressure from with- in, and occasions a sensation like that of having quills thrust into the ears. This continues until the pressure of the air in the mouth, which at first has a tendency to keep the aperture of the Eustachian tube closed, forces it open ; an action which is accompanied by a noise like a slight explosion. The condensed air then enters the interior cavities of the ear, and by restoring the equilib- rium of pressure on each side the tympanum, removes the pain, which will return, and be remedied in the same manner, if the bell should descend to a greater depth. But, while the mere condensation of the air in the bell does not render it unfit for respiration, it would soon be- come so if no means were provided for renewing it from time to time, as it becomes vitiated by repeated respira- tion. Dr. Halley provided a remedy for the inconven- ience by supplying the bell with fresh air without raising it to the surface. The air was conveyed in two thirty- gallon barrels, weighted with lead to make them sink readily. Each had an open bung-hole in the lower end, to allow water to enter during their descent, so as to condense the air. There was also a hole in the upper end of each barrel, to which was fitted an air-tight leath- ern hose. These air-barrels were attached to tackle, by which they were by two men let down and raised altern- ately, like two buckets in a well ; and by lines attached to the lower edge of the bell, they were so guided in their descent that the mouth of the hose always came directly to the hand of a man who stood upon the stage suspended from the bell. As the apertures of the hose were, during the descent, always below the level of the barrels, no air could escape from them ; and when they were turned up by the attendant, so as to be above the level of the water in the barrels, the air rushed out with great force into the bell, the barrels becoming at the same time full of water. By sending down the air-barrels in rapid succession, HALLEY'S DIVING-BELL. 67 the air was kept in so pure a state that Halley and four other persons remained in the bell, at a depth of nine or ten fathoms, for more than an hour and a half at a time, without injurious consequences ; and Halley states that he could have remained there as long as he pleased for any thing that appeared to the contrary. Halley ob- served that it was necessary to be set down gradually at first, and to pause at about the depth of twelve feet, to drive out, by the admission of a supply of air, the water which had entered the bell. When the Diving-bell was at the required depth, he let out, by a cock in the top of the bell, a quantity of hot impure air equal to the quan- tity of fresh air admitted from the barrels. This foul air rushed up from the valve with such force as to cover the surface of the sea with a white foam. So perfect was the action of this apparatus that Halley says he could, be re- moving the hanging stage, lay the bottom of the sea so far dry, within the circuit of the bell, that the sand or mud did not rise above his shoes. Through the strong glass window in the top, when the sea was clear, and es- pecially when the sun shone, sufficient light was trans- mitted to allow a person in the bell to write or read ; and when the sea was troubled or thick, which occasioned the bell to be as dark as night, a candle was burnt in it. Halley sometimes sent up orders with the empty air-bar- rels, writing them with an iron pen on plates of lead. Halley, having by these ingenious contrivances removed the principal difficulties attending the use of the diving- bell, foresaw its extensive application : as fishing for pearl, diving for coral, sponges, and the like, in far greater depths than had hitherto been thought possible ; also for laying the foundations of moles, bridges, etc., upon rocky bottoms ; and for the cleaning and scrubbing of ships' bottoms, when foul, in calm weather at sea, to which pur- poses the Diving-bell has, since the date of Halley' s paper (1717), been applied. The next improver of the Diving-bell was Martin Trie- wald, " captain of mechanics, and military architect to his Swedish majesty," who had the sole privilege of div- ing upon the coasts of the Baltic belonging to the King of Sweden. His bell was of copper, tinned inside, small- er than that of Dr. Halley, and managed by two men. A 68 IMPROVED DIVING-BELLS. stage for the diver to stand upon was suspended at such a depth below it that the man's head would be but little above the level of the water, where the air is cooler and fitter for respiration than in the upper part of the bell ; and a spiral tube was attached to the inside of the bell, with a wide aperture at the bottom, and a flexible tube and mouth-piece at the top, so that when the diver was up in the bell he might inhale cool air from the lower part, exhaling the foul air by his nostrils. In lieu of win- dows of flat glass, Triewald used convex lenses, such as are employed to this day,* to admit light to the bell. In 1775, Mr. Spalding, a grocer of Edinburgh, made certain improvements upon Halley's bell, in recovering part of the cargo of a vessel lost on the Fern Islands. Spalding's bell was of wood ; and to sink it he used, in addition to the weights attached to the rim, a large bal- ance-weight suspended by a rope from the centre, and which, by pulleys, the divers employed to anchor the bell at any required level ; and by hauling in the rope while the weight was at the bottom, the persons in the bell might lower themselves at pleasure. Another improve- ment was a horizontal partition near the top of the bell, which divided off a chamber, with valves, to be filled either with water or with air from the lower part of the bell, so as to alter the specific gravity of the whole ma- chine, and thereby cause it to ascend or descend at pleas- ure. This bell also had an air apparatus like Halley's ; ropes were used instead of seats in the bell, so that the divers could raise themselves to the surface unassisted from above ; the bell could be removed at will from the point at which it descended, and a long-boat carried the signal-lines and the tackle for working the air barrels. Mr. John Farey, jr., has improved upon Spalding's appa- * These convex glasses have been known to produce extraordinary effects. Thus, in 1828, Mr. Mackintosh, contractor for the govern- ment works at Stonehouse Point, Devon, had to descend in the Diving- bell with workmen to lay the foundation of a sea-wall. The bell was fitted with convex glasses in the upper part; and Mr. Mackintosh states that on several occasions, in clear weather, he witnessed the sun's rays so concentrated as to burn the laborers' clothes when opposed to the focal point, and this when the machine was twenty-five feet under the surface of the water. From the MS. Journal of the Bristol Nursery Library. WALKING UNDER WATER. 69 ratus, by making the upper chamber of the bell without valves, and used it as a reservoir of concTensed air, to be filled by forcing-pumps in the partition, besides other pro- visions. Smeaton first employed the Diving-bell in civil engi- neering operations in repairing the foundations of Hexham Bridge in 1779. His bell was an oblong box of wood, and supplied with a gallon of air a minute by a forcing- pump fixed at the top, which was not covered with water, the river being shallow. In 1788 Smeaton used a cast iron bell in repairing Ramsgate Harbor, the air being supplied through a flexible tube from a forcing- pump in a boat. Rennie improved the apparatus for moving the bell in any direction; and in 1817 the wreck of the Royal G-eorge at Spithead was first surveyed by the aid of the Diving-bell. Many plans have been proposed for enabling a man to walk beneath the surface of the water by means of water- proof coverings for the head and upper part of the body, or of strong vessels in which every part but the arms should be incased ; a supply of air being either transmit- ted from above by a flexible pipe, or contained in the cavities of the protecting armor. This apparatus may be conveniently used at small depths ; but at any con- siderable depth it is both dangerous and inconvenient, because the strength necessary to enable it to bear the pressure of the water is incompatible with the flexibility essential to the free use of the limbs. Dr. Halley in- vented a leaden cap for the diver's head, the front glazed for the eyes ; it contained a supply of air for two min- utes, and had affixed to it a pliable pipe, the other end being fastened to the bell, whence fresh air was convey- ed to the diver. ^At Newton-Bushel, in Devonshire, a gentleman con- trived an apparatus consisting of a large strong leather water-tight case, holding half a hogshead of air, and adapted to the legs and arms, with a glass in front, so that when the case was put on the wearer could walk about easily at the bottom of the sea, examine a wreck- ed vessel, and deliver out the goods ; the inventor of this apparatus used it forty years, and thereby acquired a large fortune. 70 THE SUBMARINE NAUTILUS. Mr. Klingert, in 1798, constructed at Breslau tin-plate armor for the head and body, leather jacket, and water- tight drawers brass hooped; and a helmet with two pipes, one for inhaling, and the other for the escape of foul air. The body was kept down by weights. Con- trivances of this kind, in which water-proof India-rubber cloth has been applied, are very numerous. In 1839 Mr. Thornthwaite made a hollow belt of India-rubber cloth, with a small strong copper vessel attached, and into which air is forced by a condensing syringe ; the belt is put on collapsed, and the diver descends ; but when he desires to rise, by a valve he lets out the condensed air from the copper vessel into the belt, which, as it ex- pands, buoys up the diver to the surface. Extraordinary substitutes have been sometimes made for the regularly-constructed Diving-bell. Thus, in the memorable recovery of treasure and stores from the wreck of the Thetis, which sank in a cove southeast of Cape Frio in 1830, and was not attempted to be raised until fifteen months after, by the officers and crew of H.M.S. Lightning, the Diving-bell consisted of a one-ton ship's water-tank, with eight inches of iron riveted to the bot- tom in order to give it more depth, and having attached to it eighteen pigs of ballast (1 7 cwt.) to sink it. Yet, with such a means of survey, often rendered unmanage- able by the swell of the South Atlantic rolling into the cove of nearly perpendicular granite rocks, from 100 to 200 feet high, fifteen sixteenths of the property were re- covered. A model of this enterprise may be seen in the United Service Institution Museum, Scotland Yard. For the achievement Captain Dickson received the gold med- al of the Society of Arts. < One of the latest improvements upon the old Diving- bell the Nautilus Submarine Machine, an American in- vention has been successfully employed by engineers. It is nearly cylindrical, with a spherical top ; and the working apparatus, on board a barge floating near, con- sists of a steam-boiler, a cylinder or reservoir, and a con- densing or air pump. The workmen being stationed in the machine, water is admitted into two chambers, to serve as ballast and cause the Nautilus to descend to the bot- tom, meanwhile air being drawn through hose from the THE SUBMARINE NAUTILUS. 71 reservoir in the barge. As soon as the air thus drawn is sufficiently condensed, a cover to the bottom is raised, and communication obtained. Not only do persons thus remain under water for a considerable time, but should the hose communicating with the reservoir become dis- connected, no danger can ensue to those in the machine, as they can, by means of the compressed air within the bell itself, expel a portion of the water, and thus rise to the surface. AUTOMATA AND SPEAKING MACHINES. THE amusing species of ingenuity which is requisite for the construction of these machines has been exercised to great extent. The name Atitomaton is derived from two Greek words meaning self-moved^ and is generally applied to all machines which are so constructed as to imitate any actions of men or the lower animals, and are moved by wheels, weights, and springs. The most ancient Automata are the Tripods which Homer mentions as having been constructed by Vulcan for the banqueting-hall of the gods, and which advanced of their own accord to the table, and again returned to their place. Self-moving Tripods are mentioned by Aris- totle ; and Philostratus informs us, in his Life of Apollo- nius, that this philosopher saw and admired similar pieces of mechanism among the sages of India. Beckmann hints that these Tripods were only small tables, or dumb- waiters, which had wheels so contrived that they could be put in motion, and driven to a distance, on the small- est impulse, like the fire-pans in the country beer-houses of Germany, at which the boors light their pipes. That Daedalus made Statues which could not only walk, but required to be tied up that they might not move, is related by Plato and Aristotle. The latter speaks also of a wooden Venus, which moved about in consequence of quicksilver being poured into its interior ; and before this method was known in Europe, Kircher proposed to put a small wagon in motion by adding to it a pipe filled with quicksilver, and heating it with a candle placed below it. Calistratus, the tutor of Daeda- lus,* however, states that his statues received their mo- * Daedalus, having been banished From Athens for killing his nephew, of whose rising genius he was envious, took refuge in Crete, and here constructed the celebrated Labyrinth, in the windings of which he was subsequently confined as close prisoner by Minos, whom he had displeased. His unrivaled resource, however, did not forsake him ; he manufactured for himself and his son Icarus waxen wings, FRIAK BACONS BRAZEN HEAD. 3 tion from the mechanical powers, which is more probable than the opinion of Beckmann, that their being in a po- sition " as if ready to walk gave rise to the exaggeration that they possessed the power of locomotion." " This opinion," Sir David Brewster observes, " however, can not be maintained with any show of reason ; for if we apply such a principle in one case, we must apply it in all, and the mind would be left in a state of utter skep- ticism respecting the inventions of ancient times" (JVat- ural Magic, p. 265). It is related by Aulus Gellius, on the authority of Favorinus, that Archytas of Tarentum (about 400 B.C.) constructed a Wooden Pigeon which was capable of fly- ing. Favorinus states that when it had once alighted, it could not resume its flight ; and Aulus Gellius adds, that it was suspended by balancing, and animated by a con- cealed aura, or spirit. Of Albertus Magnus it is related that, among other prodigies, he constructed a Head of Brass, which is not only said to have moved, but to have answered ques- tions ! It is said to have occupied Albertus thirty years in its construction ; and that his disciple, Thomas Aqui- nas, was so frightened when he saw the head, that he broke it to pieces ; when Albertus exclaimed, " Periit opus triginta annorum." Of contemporary date is the legendary story of " Friar Bacon's Brazen Head." It is pretended he discovered that if he could make a head of brass which should speak, and hear it when it spoke, he might be able to surround all England with a wall of brass. Bacon, with some assistance, accomplished his object, but with this drawback the head was warrant- ed to speak in the course of one month, but it was quite uncertain when ; and if they heard it not before it had with which they flew over the sea. The father arrived safely in Sici- ly ; but the son, in spite of his father's example and admonition, flew so high that his wings were melted by the sun, and he fell into the sea, which from him was called the Icarian Sea. It was the ancient custom to deify the authors of any useful inventions. Now Daedalus was especially famous for the sails of ships; and "though they did not place him in the heavens, yet they have promoted him as near as they could, feigning him to fly aloft in the air, whereas he did but fly in a swift ship, as Diodorus (and Eusebius) relates the historical truth on which that fiction is grounded." Bishop Wilkins. D 74 EARLY AUTOMATA. done speaking, all their labor would be lost. Bacon, wearied with three weeks' watching, set his man Miles to watch, with strictest injunction to awake him if the head should speak. The fellow heard the head at the end of one half hour say, " Time is ;" at the end of an- other, " Time was ;" and at the end of another half hour, "Time's past;" when down it fell with a tremendous crash ; but the blockhead of a servant thought his mas- ter would be angry if he disturbed him for such trifles ! Now Robert Records states that on the above account Bacon was considered to be a necromancer, "which never used that arte," but was an expert geometer and mathematician, as will be shown in a future page. Among the earliest pieces of modern mechanism was the curious Water-clock presented to Charlemagne by the Calif Haroun-al-Raschid. In the dial-plate were twelve small windows corresponding with the divisions of the hours, indicated by the opening of the windows, which let out little metallic balls, which struck the hour by falling upon a brazen bell. The doors continued open till twelve o'clock, when twelve little knights, mounted on horseback, came out at the same instant, and, after parading round the dial, shut all the windows, and re- turned to their apartments. The next automaton was the Artificial Eagle, which John Muller, or Regiomontanus, constructed, and which flew to meet the Emperor Maximilian when he arrived at Nuremberg, June 7th, 1470. This eagle is said to have soared aloft, and met the emperor at some distance from the city; then to have returned and perched upon the town-gate, and to have stretched out its wings and saluted the emperor when he approached ! Another of Miiller's prodigies was an Iron Fly, put in motion by wheel-work, and which flew about and leaped upon a table ! But as none of Miiller's contemporary writers speak of these pieces of mechanism, the tale of them is suspected to have been invented by Peter Ramus, who was never at Nuremberg till the year 1571. The Emperor Charles V. is known to have amused himself in his later years with Automata, made for him by an artist of Cremona. Among the prodigies which he wrought for the emperor were figures of armed men and EARLY AUTOMATA. 75 horses attacking with spears, while others beat drums and played flutes ; besides, also, wooden sparrows which flew to and from their nests, and minute corn-mills which could be concealed in a glove. It will hardly excite surprise to find that the artists who produced Automaton figures were in some instances suspected of practicing the black art, and thus fell vic- tims to their own ingenuity. A melancholy incident, arising from the prevalence of this opinion, even so late as 1674, is related by Bonnet, in his History of Music. Alex, an ingenious Proven9al mathematician and mecha- nician, had discovered the sympathy of sound in two in- struments tuned in unison. To illustrate his discovery, he constructed an Automaton Skeleton, placed a guitar in its hand, while by a mechanical contrivance the fingers moved, as though playing it : he then set it at a window, and at a proper distance played another guitar, which produced sound in the instrument held by the figure. The inhabitants of Aix (the town in which this was ex- hibited), believing that the skeleton really performed on the guitar, denounced Alex as a sorcerer, and he was condemned by the Parliament to be burnt alive, together with his figure. In the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, 1729, is de- scribed a set of Automaton Actors representing a panto- mime. But previously to this, M. Camus had constructed, for the amusement of Louis XIV., a small coach drawn by two horses, etc. The coachman smacked his whip, and the horses set off, drawing the coach about a table ; and when opposite the king, it stopped, the page got down and opened the door, on which a lady alighted, with a courtesy presented a petition to the king, and then re-entered the carriage. The page then shut the door, the carriage proceeded, and the servant, running after it, jumped up behind it (Hutton's Mathematical Recreations). This is by no means inconceivable, but is somewhat hard to believe. Among the results of the development of the natural sciences in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the attempt to build Automaton figures which should perform the functions of animals by means of wheels and pinions. Thus, General Degennes, who invented machines 76 VAUCANSON'S AUTOMATON DUCK. in navigation and gunnery, and constructed clocks with- out springs or weights, made a peacock, which could walk about as if alive, pick up grains of corn from the ground, eat and digest them. This automaton is thought to have suggested to M. Vaucanson the idea of constructing his celebrated Duck, perhaps the most w r onderful piece of mechanism ever made. It resembled a living duck in size and appear- ance, ate and drank with avidity, performed the quick motions of the head and throat peculiar to the living an- imal, and, like it, dabbled in the water, which it drank with its bill. It produced also the sound of quacking. In its anatomical structure every bone of the real duck had its representative, and exhibited its proper move- ment, as its wings were anatomically correct; and the automaton picked up corn, swallowed it, and, being di- gested by a chemical solution, the food was conveyed away by tubes. This famous automaton was repaired by Robert Houdin, the Parisian conjuror, who, on ex- amining the mechanism of the Duck, found the trick to be as simple as it was interesting. "A vase," he tells us, " containing seed steeped in water, was placed before the bird. The motion of the bill in dabbling crushed the food, and facilitated its introduction into a pipe placed beneath the lower bill. The water and seed thus swal- lowed fell into a box placed under the bird's stomach, which was emptied every three or four days. The other part of the operation was thus effected : bread-crumb, colored green, was expelled by a forcing pump, and care- fully caught on a silver salver as the result of artificial digestion" (Houdin's Memoirs, 1859). Vaucanson' s Automata were imitated by one Du Mou- lin, a silversmith, who traveled through Germany in 1752. Beckmann saw several of these automata, and among them an Artificial Duck, which was able to drink and move : its ribs were made of wire, and covered with duck's feathers, and the motion was communicated through the feet of the duck by means* of a cylinder and fine chains, as iiv a watch. Vaucanson also constructed a Flute-player, which really played on the flute by projecting air with its lips against the embouchure, producing the different octaves by ex- THE AUTOMATON FLUTE-PLAYER. 77 panding and contracting their opening ; forcing more or less air in the manner of living performers, and regulat- ing the tones by its fingers. Of these automata, or rather androides, the Flute-player of Vau- canson is the only one of which a correct description has been pre- served, a particular account of its mechanism having been published in the Memoirs of the French Academy. The figure was about five feet six inches high, and was placed upon an elevated square pedes- tal. The air entered the body by three separate pipes, into which it was conveyed by nine pairs of bellows, which expanded and contract- ed in regular succession by means of an axis of steel turned by the machine. The three tubes, which conveyed the air from the bellows, after passing through the lower extremities of the figure, united at the chest, and, ascending from thence to the mouth, passed through two artificial lips. Within the cavity of the mouth was a small movable tongue, which, by its motion at proper intervals, admitted or intercept- ed the air in its passage to the flute. The fingers, lips, and tongue derived their specific movements from a steel cylinder turned by clock- work. The cylinder was divided into fifteen equal parts, which, by means of pegs pressing upon a like number of levers, caused the other extremities to ascend. Seven of these levers directed the fingers, having rods and chains fixed to their ascending extremities ; which, being attached to the fingers, made them ascend in proportion as the other extremity was pressed down by the motion of the cylinders, and vice versa. Three of the levers served to regulate the ingress of the air, being so contrived as to open and shut, by mean^s of valves, the communication between the lips and reservoir, so that more or less strength might be given, and a higher or lower note produced, as oc- casion required. The lips were directed by four similar levers, one of which opened to give the air a freer passage, another contracted them, a third drew them backward, and the fourth pushed them forward. The remaining lever was employed in the direction of the tongue, which, by its motion, shut or opened the mouth of the flute. The varied and successive motions performed by this ingenious androides were regulated by a contrivance no less simple than efficacious. The axis of the steel cylinder or barrel was terminated by an endless screw composed of twelve threads, above which was placed a small arm cf copper, with a steel stud made to fit the threads of the worm, which, by its vertical motion, was continually pushed forward. Hence, if a lever were moved by a peg placed on the cylinder in any one revolu- tion, it could not be moved by the same peg in the succeeding revolu- tion, in consequence of the lateral motion communicated by the worm. By this means the size of the barrel was considerably reduced ; and the statue not only poured forth a varied selection of instrumental harmony, but exhibited all the evolutions of the most graceful per- former. It is curious to find that Vaucanson's uncle reproach- ed him by telling him that to construct the Flute-player would be a great waste of time, and he did not set about 78 AUTOMATON BOYS. the work until he lacked employment to while away the time after a long illness. He also made a Flageolet-play- er, who beat a tambourine with one hand. The flageolet had only three holes, by half stopping which some notes were made : the force of wind required to produce the lowest note was one ounce ; the highest, 56 Ibs. French. Jacques Vaucanson, the maker of these Automata, was a native of Grenoble, born in 1 709. His mother took him one day to a fete, when, peeping through a crack in the partition of a room, he saw part of the works of a clock which hung against the wall; he was much struck, and, on his next visit, he drew with a pencil as much as he could see of the clock-springs and the escapement ; and by aid of some poor tools, he soon made a clock. Then he made a sort of baby-house chapel, with figures, which he caused to move. At length he devoted all his time to studying anatomy, music, and mechanics. He grew to be so celebrated, that the King of Prussia tried to at- tach Vaucanson to his court : he, however, remained in France, where Cardinal Fleury made him inspector of silk manufactures, for which he greatly improved the ma- chinery. This rendered Vaucanson unpopular, and he was nearly killed by an incensed mob. He died in 1782, having bequeathed his curious collection of machines to Louis XVI. Next deserve to be mentioned the Writing Boy of the older, and the Piano-forte-player of the younger Droz ; which latter, when performing, followed its hands with its eyes, and at the conclusion of the piece bowed court- eously to the audience. Droz's Writing Boy was pub- licly exhibited in Germany some years ago. Its wheel- work is so complicated that no ordinary head would be sufficient to decipher its manner of action ; when, how- ever, we learn that the Boy and its constructor, being suspected of the black art, lay for a time in the Spanish Inquisition, and with difficulty obtained their freedom, we may infer that in those days even the mystery of such a toy was great enough to excite doubts as to its natural origin. M. Maillardet next constructed an Automaton Boy, which both wrote and drew with a pencil, kneeling on one knee. When the figure began to work, an attendant MUSICAL AUTOMATA. 79 dipped the pencil in ink, and adjusted the drawing-paper upon a brass tablet. Upon touching a spring, the figure proceeded to write or to execute landscape drawings. Maillardet also constructed a Magician, w T ho answered questions inscribed in oval medallions upon a wall ; one of which the spectator having selected, it was shut up in a spring drawer. The magician then rose, consulted his book, and striking a wall with his wand, two folding doors flew open, and displayed the answer to the ques- tion. The door again closed, and the drawer opened to return the medallion. The machinery being wound up, the movements in about an hour answered fifty ques- tions ; and the means by which the medallions acted upon the machinery, so as to produce the proper answers to the questions which they contained, is stated to have been very simple. Maillardet likewise constructed other automata, including a Spider, made of steel ; and a Cat- erpillar, Lizard, Mouse, and Serpent, all with their nat- ural movements. In London he exhibited in Spring Gar- dens. Musical automata have obtained great celebrity. Mael- zel, the inventor of the Metronome, exhibited in 1809 an automaton trumpeter of his construction. From a tent he led out a figure in the uniform of a trumpeter of the Austrian dragoon regiment Albert, his trumpet being at his mouth. Having pressed the figure on the left shoul- der, it played the Austrian cavalry march, the signals, and a march and allegro by Weigl, accompanied by the whole orchestra. The dress of the figure was then changed into that of a French trumpeter of the Guard, when it played the French cavalry march, all the signals, a march of Dussek's, and an allegro of Pleyel, all accom- panied by the orchestra. The sound of the trumpet was pure, and more agreeable than that which the ablest mu- sician could produce from that instrument, because the breath of man gives the inside of the trumpet a moisture which is prejudicial to the purity of the tone. Maelzel publicly wound up his instrument only twice, and this was on the left hip. His most famous work was his Panharmonica, a band of forty-two wind-instrument players, for which Cherubini deigned to compose, and Beethoven wrote his Battle symphony. Maelzel died in 80 SPEAKING MACHINES. 1855. Marreppe, in 1837, produced his automaton violin- player at Paris, which played airs a la Paganini; the in- terior was filled with small cranks, by which the motions were given to the several parts of the automaton at the conductor's will. In the speaking machines of antiquity, the head of Or- pheus in the island of Lesbos, and the tripod at Delphi, the answers were probably conveyed by the priests ; and Charles II. and his court were similarly deceived by a Popish priest in an adjoining chamber answering through a pipe the question proposed to the w r ooden head by whispering in its ear. The principle of a speaking-machine has, however, been developed. Bishop Wilkins, in his Mathematical Magic, illustrating the mode by which articulate sounds may be produced from automata, says : " Walchius thinks it pos- sible entirely to preserve the voice, or any words spoken in a hollow trunk or pipe ; and that, this pipe being right- ly opened, the words will come out of it in the same or- der wherein they were spoken, somewhat like that cold country where the people's discourse doth freeze in the air all winter, and may be heard in the next summer or at a great thaw ; but this conjecture will need no refuta- tion." Van Helmont, one of the first persons who wrote upon the adaptation of the organs of the voice to the articula- tion of the letters, considered that the letters of the al- phabet constituted the order in which articulate sounds were naturally produced by the structure of the tongue and larynx ; that, when one letter was uttered, the tongue was in its proper position for the pronunciation of the sub- sequent one. Thus, as several different sounds are form- ed merely by raising or depressing the tongue slightly, as in the sounds Au\ Ah, Ae, A, E, it was easy to pro- duce them by means of a tube with a reed, and termina- ting with a bell. Mr. Willis has effected this by using a long tube with a reed, capable of being lengthened or shortened at pleasure. In the pronunciation of the vow- els, i, e, a, o, u, it required to be shortest with the first, and in uttering the subsequent letters to be gradually lengthened. In this way it was easy to measure the length necessary for each note. When Ae was pro- SPEAKING MACHINES. 81 nounced, the tube was 1 inch long; Aw, 3*8 inches ; Ah, 2-2 inches ; A, 0'6 inch ; .Z?, 0'3 inch. A speaking ma- chine invented in Germany pronounced distinctly mam- ma, papa, mother, father, summer. The instrument con- sists of a pair of bellows, to which is adapted a tube term- inating in a bell, the aperture of which is regulated by the hand, so as to produce the articulate sounds. This ma- chine was exhibited at the Royal Institution in 1835 by Professor Wheatstone. De Kempelen, the inventor of the automaton chess- player, also constructed a speaking automaton, in which he ultimately succeeded so far as to make it pronounce several sentences, among the best of which were, " Ro- manorum imperator semper Augustus ;" " Leopoldus se- cundus ;" " Vous etes mon ami ;" " Je vous aime de tout mon coeur." It was some years, however, before he could accomplish more than the simple utterance of the sounds o, ou, and e. Year after year, we are told, was devoted to this machine ; but i or u, or any of the consonants, re- fused to obey his summons. At length he added at the open extremity of the vocal tube an apparatus similar in action and construction to the human mouth with its teeth, when he quickly succeeded in making it not only pronounce the consonants, but words, and even the sen- tences quoted above. He had previously imitated the tongue and its actions. The fact is interesting, not only as a rare instance of human ingenuity, but also as exhib- iting in a most striking light the beautiful adaptation of parts to their respective functions ; and that so perfect are the contrivances in Nature for particular ends, that, in order to arrive at any thing like an imitation of those functions, we must follow closely the method she em- ploys. In 1843 there was exhibited before the American Phil- osophical Society a speaking machine, susceptible of va- rious movements by means of keys, and thus made to enunciate various letters and words ; in enunciating the simple sounds could be seen the movements of the mouth, the parts of which were made of caoutchouc. The in- ventor, Mr. Reale, in a phrensy, destroyed this instru- ment, which it had taken him sixteen years to construct. Three years later, in 1846, there was shown at the D 2 82 SPEAKING MACHINES. Egyptian tlall, Piccadilly, the Euphonia of Professor Faber, of Vienna, the result of twenty-five years' labor. It consisted of a draped bust and waxen-faced figure, in which the sounds were produced by striking on sixteen keys, and thus were enunciated words. A small pair of bellows was worked with the nozzle into the back part of the head, and the mouth formations were of caoutchouc. ISTow, the several attempts of Cagniard la Tour, Biot, Miiller, and Steinle to produce articulate sounds, or even to imitate the human voice, have not been very success- ful; but M. Faber's machine with its bellows worked by a pedal, and its caoutchouc imitation of the larynx, tongue, nostrils, and a set of keys by which the springs are brought into action is considered the nearest ap- proach to perfect success. Reviewing the results of the Automata of the last century, Professor Helniholtz observes : " This inventive genius was boldly chosen, and was followed up with an expenditure of sagacity which has contributed not a lit- tle to enrich the mechanical experience which a later age knew how to take advantage of. We no longer seek to build machines which shall fulfill the thousand services required of one man, but strive, on the contrary, that a machine shall perform one service, but shall occupy, in doing it, the place of a thousand men." Nevertheless, the above passion for automatic exhi- bitions introduced among the higher order of artists hab- its of nice and accurate execution in the formation of the most delicate pieces of machinery ; and the same com- bination of the mechanical powers which in one century enriched only the conjuror who used them, is in another employed in extending the power and promoting the civilization of our species. Robert Houdin is one of the latest adepts in automatic art. He was born at Blois, the son of a watchmaker, and had such early mechanical tastes that he professes to have come into the world metaphorically, " with a file or ham- mer in his hand." His aptitude showed itself in early efforts to train mice and canary-birds, to construct ingen- ious toys and model apparatus ; and he perfected him- self at Paris as a mechanist. In 1844 he made himself widely known by exhibiting an Automaton Writer, which AUTOMATON NIGHTINGALE. 83 attracted the notice of Louis Philippe and his family. The figure drew, as well as wrote answers to questions, and by a curious coincidence its performance on this oc- casion was particularly ominous. When the Comte de Paris requested it to draw a crown, the Automaton began drawing the outline demanded, but its pencil broke, and the crown could not be finished. Houdin was going to recommence the experiment, when the kingj declined, with thanks. "As you have learned to draw," he said to the Comte de Paris, " you can finish this for your- self." This incident is characteristic as regards the tact of the king. Houdin, in his Memoirs,* relates the following remark- able proof of his assiduity in this mechanical phase of his life. He had received an order from a merchant of St. Petersburg to construct an Automaton Nightingale, and he agreed for a large sum to make a perfect imitation of the above bird. This undertaking oifered some serious difficulties ; for, he tells us, though he had already made several birds, their singing was quite arbitrary, and he had only consulted his own taste in arranging it. The imitation of the nightingale's pipe was much more deli- cate, for he had to copy notes and sounds which were almost inimitable. Fortunately, it was the season for this skillful songster, and Houdin resolved to employ him as his teacher. He went constantly to the wood of Romain- ville, the skirt of which almost joined the street in which he lived ; and, laying himself on a soft bed of moss in the densest foliage, he challenged his master to give him lessons. (The nightingale sings both by night and day, and the slightest whistle, in tune or not, makes him strike up directly.) Houdin wanted to imprint on his memory the musical phrases with which the bird com- poses its melodies. The following are the most striking among them : Tioii-tiou-tiou, ut-ut-ut-ut-ut, tchitchou, tchit- chou, tchit-tchit, rrrrrrrrrrrrrouit, etc. Houdin had to analyze these strange sounds these numberless chirps, these impossible " rrrrrouits," and recompose them by a musical process. To imitate this flexibility of throat, and reproduce the harmonious modulations, Houdin made * Memoirs of Robert Houdin, Embassador, Author, and Conjuror. Written by him self. 1 859. 84 EXPANDING MODEL. a small copper tube, about the size and length of a quill, in which a steel piston, moving very freely, produced the different sounds required ; this tube represented in some respects the nightingale's throat. This instrument had to work mechanically : clockwork set in motion the bel- lows, opened or closed a valve which produced the twit- tering, the modulation, and the sliding notes, while it guided the piston according to the different degrees of speed and depth wanted. Houdin had also to impart motion to the bird : it must move its beak in accordance with the sounds it produced, flap its wings, and leap from branch to branch, which, however, was purely a mechanical labor. After repeated experiments, Houdin succeeded in cre- ating a system half musical, half mechanical, which only required to be improved by fresh studies from nature. Provided with this instrument, Houdin hurried off to the wood of Romainville, where, seating himself under an oak, near which he had often heard a nightingale sing, he wound up the clockwork, and it began playing in the midst of profound silence ; but the last notes had scarce- ly died away ere a concert commenced from various parts of the wood. This collective lesson did not suit his purpose, for he wished to compare and study, and could positively distinguish nothing. Fortunately for Houdin, all the musicians ceased, and one of them began a solo of dulcet sounds and accents, which Houdin most attentively followed, thus passing a portion of the night, when the conjuror returned home. His lesson had done him so much good, that the next morning he began making important corrections in his mechanism ; and after five or six more visits to the wood, Houdin attain- ed the required result the nightingale's song was per- fectly imitated. In the Great Exhibition of 1851 was shown a mechan- ical curiosity an expanding Model of a Man, the con- struction of which has a romantic interest. It was, the invention of the Polish Count Dunin, who in early life became involved in the insurrection of his countrymen, and was banished. In his dreary exile he betook him- self to mechanical pursuits, that he might expiate his of- fense, real or imaginary, against the Emperor of Russia, EXPANDING MODEL. 85 by showing that he might be useful if he were restored to his country. The model represents a man 5 feet high in the proportions of the Apollo Belvidere ; from that size it can be proportionally increased to 6 feet 8 inches ; and as it is intended to measure the clothing of an army, it is capable of expansion and contraction in all its parts. The internal mechanism is completely concealed, the figure externally being composed of thin slips of steel and copper, by the overlapping of which expansion or contraction is exercised, the motion being com- municated by thin metal slides within the figure, these slides having pins worked in curved grooves in circular steel plates, which are put in revolution by a train of wheels or screws. A winding-key, turned right or left, effects the expansion or contraction noiselessly, and in the direction of the fibres of the muscles in the Jiving subject. The mechanical combinations are composed of 857 framing-pieces, 48 grooved steel plates, 163 wheels, 203 slides, 476 metal washers, 488 spiral springs, 704 sliding plates, 497 nuts, 3500 fixing and adjusting screws, with numerous steadying pins, so that the number of pieces is upward of 7000. For this beautiful piece of mechanism a Great- Exhibition Council Medal was awarded to Count Dunin. THE AUTOMATON CHESS-PLAYER. WE have reserved for a separate chapter the origin and history of this marvelous contrivance, which, at va- rious periods during the lapse of ninety years, has aston- ished and delighted the scientific world in several cities of Europe and North America. Its machinery has been variously explained. It was constructed in 1769 by M. de Kempelen, a gentleman of Presburg, in Hungary, long distinguished for his skill in mechanics. The Chess- player is a life-sized figure, clothed in a Turkish dress, sitting behind a large chest, three and a half feet long, two feet deep, and two and a half feet high. The player sits on a chair fixed to the chest, his right arm rests on the table or upper surface of the chest, and in the left he holds a pipe, which is removed during the game, as it is with this hand that he makes the moves. A chess-board, with the pieces, is placed before the figure. The exhib- itor first opens the doors of the chest, and shows the interior, with its cylinders, levers, wheels, pinions, and other pieces of machinery, which have the appearance of occupying the whole space. This machinery being wound up, the Automaton is ready to play ; and when an opponent has been found, the figure takes the first move, moves its head, and seems to look over every part of the chess-board. When it gives check to its opponent it shakes its head thrice, and only twice when it checks the queen. It likewise shakes its head when a false move is made, replaces the adversary's piece on the square from which it was taken, and takes the next move itself. In general, though not always, the Automaton wins the game. During its progress, the exhibitor often stood near the machine, and wound it up like a clock after it had made ten or twelve moves. At other times he went to a corner of the room, as if it were to consult a small square box, which stood open for this purpose. The earliest English account of the Automaton Chess- THE ATOMATON CHESS-PLAYEK. 87 player that we can find is in a letter from the Rev. Mr. Dutens to the Gentleman's Magazine, dated Presburg, January 24, 1771. The writer formed an acquaintance with the inventor, whom he terms M. de Kempett (not Kempelen), an Aulic counselor, and director general of the salt mines in Hungary. Mr. Dutens played a game at chess with the Automaton at Presburg ; the English embassador, Prince Giustiniani, and several English lords, standing round the table. "They all," according, to Mr. Dutens, "had their eyes on M. de Kempett, who stood by the table, or sometimes removed five or six feet from it, yet not one of them could discover the least motion in him that could influence the Automaton He also withdraws to any distance you please, and lets the figure play four or five moves successively without approaching it. The marvelous in this Automa- ton consists chiefly in this, that it has not (as'in others, the most cel- ebrated machines of this sort) one determined series of movements, but that it always moves in consequence of the manner in which its opponent moves, which produces an amazing multitude of different combinations in its movements. M. de Kempett winds up from time to time the springs of the arms of this automaton, in order to renew its motive force ; but this, you will observe, has no relation to its guid- ing force or power of direction, which makes the great merit of this machine. In general, I am of opinion that the contriver influences the direction of almost every stroke played by the Automaton, al- though, as I have said, I have sometimes seen him leave it to itself for many moves together, which, in my opinion, is the most difficult circumstance of all to comprehend in what regards this machine." Mr. Staunton, the celebrated chess-player, states that De Kempelen constructed the Automaton " merely to af- ford a passing amusement to the Empress Maria Teresa and her court." Upon its completion, it was exhibited at Presburg and Vienna; in 1783, in Paris; and in that and the following year in London and different parts of England, without the secret of its movements having been discovered. " It was subsequently," says Mr. Staun- ton, " taken, by special invitation of the emperor, to the court of Frederick the Great at Berlin. This prince was devotedly attached to chess ; and in a moment of liberal- ity, he proffered an enormous sum for the purchase of the Automaton and its secret. The offer was accepted, and in a private interview with De Kempelen, he was fur- nished with a key to the mystery. In a short time, how- ever, Frederick threw aside the novelty so dearly bought, 88 THE AUTOMATON CHESS-PLAYER. and for many years it lay forgotten and neglected among the lumber of his palace. "M. Kempelen died in 1804; but in two years after, when Napoleon I. occupied Berlin, we find the Chess Au- tomaton in the field again under a new master. On one occasion of its exhibition at this period, Napoleon him- self is said to have entered the lists. After some half dozen moves, he purposely made a false move ; the figure inclined its head, replaced the piece, and made a sign for Napoleon to play again. Presently he again played false- ly : this time the Automaton removed the offending piece from the board, and played its own move. Napoleon was delighted ; and, to put the patience of his taciturn opponent to a severer test, he once more played incor- rectly, upon which^the Automaton raised its arm, and, sweeping the pieces from the board, declined to continue the game." After a second tour of the leading cities of Europe, where it was received with unabated enthusiasm, in 1819 the Automaton was again established in London, under M. Maelzel. For some years it was exhibited in Canada and the United States, and was finally understood to have returned to New York, where it was shown in the au- tumn of 1845. Meanwhile there were various attempts made to dis- cover the secret. The ingenious inventor never pretend- ed that the Automaton itself really played the game : on the contrary, he distinctly stated that " the machine was a bagatelle, which was not without merit in point of mech- anism, but that the effects of it appeared so marvelous only from the boldness of the conception, and the fortu- nate choice of the methods adopted for promoting the illusion." It was surmised that the game was played ei- ther by a person inclosed in the chest, or by the exhib- itor himself; yet the chest, being nearly filled with ma- chinery, did not appear capable of accommodating even a dwarf; nor could any mechanical communication be- tween the exhibitor and the figure be detected. It was then thought to be influenced by a magnet, which the exhibitor disproved by placing a strong and well-armed loadstone upon the machine during the game, which did not affect the moving power. The original conjecture, THE AUTOMATON CHESS-PLAYER. 89 that the player was concealed in the interior, was then .revived; and in 1789, Mr. J. F. Freyhere, of Dresden, published a pamphlet, in. which he endeavored to explain by colored plates how the effect was produced ; and he concluded " that a well-taught boy, very thin and tall of his age (sufficiently so that he could be concealed in a drawer almost immediately under the chess-board), agi- tated the whole." In an earlier pamphlet, published in Paris in 1785, the writer supposed the machine was put in moti