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A HISTORY OF INVENTIONS, DISCOVERIES, AND ORIGINS.
BY JOHN BECKMANN, PROFESSOR OF ŒCONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GÖTTINGEN.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN, BY WILLIAM JOHNSTON.
CAREFULLY REVISED AND ENLARGED BY WILLIAM FRANCIS, Ph.D., F.L.S., EDITOR OF THE CHEMICAL GAZETTE; AND J. W. GRIFFITH, M.D., F.L.S., LICENTIATE OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS.
LONDON: HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1846.
PRINTED BY RICHARD AND JOHN E. TAYLOR, RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET.
Page The Steam-Engine, and Discoveries of James Watt v Lending and Pawnbroking 1 Chemical Names of Metals 23 Zinc 32 Carp 46 Camp-mills 55 Mirrors 56 Glass-cutting. Etching on Glass 84 Soap 92 Madder 108 Jugglers, Rope-dancers, Automata, etc. 115 Artificial Ice. Cooling Liquors 142 Hydrometer 161 Lighting of Streets 172 Night-watch 185 Plant-skeletons 195 Bills of Exchange 203 Tin. Tinning 206 Sowing-machines 230 Manganese 235 Prince Rupert’s Drops. Lacrymæ Vitreæ 241 Fire-engines 245 Indigo 258 Vanes. Weathercocks 281 Gilding 290 Fur Dresses 296 Steel 324 Stamping-works 333 Kitchen Vegetables 336 Knitting Nets and Stockings. Stocking-Loom 355 Hops 376 Black Lead 388 Sal-Ammoniac 396 Forks 407 Lottery. Tontine 414 Bologna Stone 429 Foundling Hospitals 434 Orphan Houses 449 Infirmaries. Hospitals for Invalids. Field Lazarettos 454 Cock-fighting 473 Saltpetre. Gunpowder. Aquafortis 482 Book-censors 512 Exclusive Privilege for Printing Books 518 Catalogues of Books 522 Ribbon-Loom 527 Guns. Gun-Locks 533
Although the plan of this new edition of Beckmann’s ‘History of Inventions and Discoveries’ was to confine it to the subjects treated of in the original work, yet we feel it imperative to make an exception in favour of the _Steam-Engine_, the most important of all modern inventions.
The power of steam was not entirely unknown to the ancients, but before the æra rendered memorable by the discoveries of JAMES WATT, the steam-engine, which has since become the object of such universal interest, was a machine of extremely limited power, inferior in importance and usefulness to most other mechanical agents used as prime movers. Hero of Alexandria, who lived about 120 years before the birth of Christ, has left us the description of a machine, in which a continued rotatory motion was imparted to an axis by a blast of steam issuing from lateral orifices in arms placed at right angles to it. About the beginning of the seventeenth century, a French engineer, De Caus, invented a machine by which a column of water might be raised by the pressure of steam confined in the vessel, above the water to be elevated; and in 1629, Branca, an Italian philosopher, contrived a plan of working several mills by a blast of steam against the vanes; from the descriptions, however, which have been left us of these contrivances, it does not appear that their projectors were acquainted with those physical properties of elasticity and condensation on which the power of steam as a mechanical agent depends.