Knoxville journal. [volume] (Knoxville, Iowa) 1874-1986, 1874-06-18

left off turning my thoughts that way;
and never resumed the idea. See how
! near / may have been to another sort OF
! life!'' See how near we all may have
been, but for that cold, to never knowing
Pickwick, Old Weller, and the irrepressi-
BILE Sam, Captain Cutie, Dick Swiveller,
Micawber and the host of friends whose
| names are familiar in our mouths as
| household wordsl To such trivial ac-
cident do they owe their being; just as
| the red-skinned heroes OF Fennimore
Cooper would never have been heard OF
| but for their creators being wearied out
of all patience by dull novel until,
! throwing it down in disgust, he ex-
| claimed: a could do better than this
| myselfl' and, setting to work, did it.
Thorwaldsen would have gone back to
Denmark disappointed man-perhaps
| forsworn the sculptor's art-if flaw in
| his passport had not obliged him, much
against his will, to stay twenty-four hours
| longer in Rome. Before the twenty-four
| hours had passed away Mr.. Hope had
| walked into the studio, admired the
Jason, and commissioned the despairing
Dane to execute it in marble. Thor
| waldsen's boxes were unpacked again,
and from that time he never knew what
| it was to be idle for want of work to be
done.
The cracking of picture placed in the
sunshine set Van Eyck experimenting to
produce a varnish that would dry in the
shade; he found what he sought, and
found beside that by mixing it with his
colors they acquired greater force and
brilliancy, and required no subsequent
vanishing; and so came about the dis
covery, or rediscovery, of the art OF paint
ing in oil.
Mezzotinto owed its invention by
Prince Rupert to the simple accident OF
sentry's gun-barrel being rusted by the
| dew.
Henry Schanward, Nuremberg glass
cutter, happened to let some aqua forts
fall upon his spectacles, and noticed the
glass was corroded and softened where
the aqua forts had touched it. Taking
the hint, he made a liquid accordingly,
drew some figures upon piece of glass,
| covered them with varnish, and applied
his corroding fluid, cut away the glass
| around his drawing, 30 that when he re-
moved the varnish the figures appeared
raised upon a dark ground, and etching
upon glass was added to the ornamental
| arts.
Alois Senefelder, playwright and actor,
thinking it possible to etch upon stone in
| lieu of copper, polished slab for the
purpose He was disturbed by his moth
er coming into his small laboratory with
| a request that he would jot down her list
| of things for the wash, as the woman was
waiting to take the basket away. There
| being neither paper nor ink handy, Sene-
fielder scrubbed the items on his stone
with his etching preparation, that he
might copy them at his leisure. Some
| time afterward when about 10 clean the
stone, he thought he might as well see
what would be the effect of biting the
stone with aqua FORTS, and in few min
utes saw the writing standing out in re-
| lief Taking up peltball charged with
printing-ink, he linked the stone, took off
few impressions upon paper, and he
had invented photography. The pelt-ball
used by Senefeider was long indispensa-
BILE In a printing Office. A Salopian
printer, in a hurry to get off job, could
not find his bali, and linked his form with
a piece Of soft glue that had fallen out of
the glue-pot, with such excellent results
that he thenceforth discarded the peltball
altogether, and by adding treacle to the
glue to keep it from hardening hit upon
the composition Of which printers rollers
have ever since been made.
Three very different discoveries are
recorded to have resulted from the unin-
territorial application of intense heat.
Piiny attributes the discovery of glass to
some merchants travelling with inter, who,
stopping on the banks of river to take a
meal, were at loss for stones TO rest their
kettles upon. Putting them upon pieces
of inter, they kindled their fires the inter
dissolved by the heat, mixed with the sand,
and the merchants were astonished to see
transparent matter flowing over the
ground which was nothing else but glass.
Charles Goodyear had for years expert
mented in vain, hoping to deprive india
rubber of its susceptibility to the action
| of heat and cold. Conversing with
friend on the subject, he emphasized an
assertion by flinging piece of sulphured
rubber across the room. 1t lighted upon
the stove; and when he picked it up,
few days afterward, he found the intense
heat to which it had been subjected had
conferred upon the indiarubber the
quality he had SO long striven to impart
| to 1t. According to some, he stumbled
upon the discovery in different manner;
| but at any rate, vulcanized india-rubber
was the creation of an accident.
A Limerick tobacconist looking dole
fully at his poor neighbors cropping
among the smoldering ruins of his
burned.out shop noticed that some of
them, after trying the contents OF certain
canisters, carefully loaded their waist.
coat pockets from them. He followed
suit, and found the snuff had come out of
the fiery ordeal very much improved in
pungency and aroma. Like wise man
he said nothing, but took another place,
set up a lot of ovens, and before long
Black Yard Snuff-otherwise Irish
Blackguard"-was all the rage with lovers
of nasal Utilization; and in few years
Lundyfoot was rich man, owing to the
accident he thought had ruined him.
A would-be alchemist, seeking to dis
cover what mixture of earths would make
the strongest crucibles, one day found he
had made porcelain. Instead Of trans
muting metals as he had fondly hoped to
do, Bottger transmitted himself: "as If
he had been touched with conjurer's
wand, he was on sudden transformed
from an alchemist into potter"
Cornelius Drebbel placed in his win
| dow some extract of cochineal with which