Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1874-06-18


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.
NeZzOtinto owed its invention bv
| Prince Rupert to the simple accident of
a sentrv's gun-barrel being rusted by the
dew.
Henry Schanward, Nuremberg glass
cutter, happened to let some aqua FORTS
fall unOn mis- 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, so that when he re-
moved the varnish the figures appeared
raised upon a dark ground, and etching
uDon glass was added to the ornamental
arts.
Alois Senefelder, playwright and actor,
thinking it possible to etch upon stone in
lieu of copper, polished a 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 TO clean the
stone he thought he might as we'll 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 pelt-ball charged with
printing-ink, he mixed the stone, took off
a few Impressions upon paper, and he
had invented TYPOGRAPHY. The pelt-ball
used by Senefeider was long indispensa-
BILE in a printing Office. A Salopian
printer, in a hurry to get off a job, could
not find his bali, and linked his form with
piece Of soft glue that had fallen out of
the glue-pOt with such excellent results
that he thenceforth discarded the pelt-ball
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.
Pliny attributes the discovery of glass to
some merchants travelling with inter, who,
stopping on the banks of river to take a
meal, were at a 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 t1inging piece of sulphured
rubber across the room. 1t lighted upon
the stove; and when he picked it up, a
few days afterward, he found the intense
heat to which it had been subjected had
quality he had so long striven to impart
to it. According to some, he stumbled
upon the discovery in a 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 lot OF ovens, and before long
Black Yard Snutf-0therwise "Irish
Undergraduates all the rage with lovers
OF nasal Utilization; and in few years
LundytoOt 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 a cOnjurer's
wand, he was on a sudden transformed
from an alchemist into potter"
Cornelius Drebbel placed in his win
dow some extractor cOchineal with which
he intended to fill a thermometer; into
this some aqua regia dropped from bro
ken phlal standing just above it, and
Drebbeps purple liquid was converted
INTO beautiful scarlet one. How this
came to pass puzzled him not a little, but
he ascertained that the aqua regia had
dissolved some of the tin of the window
frame on its way to the cochineal. Tell
ing this to his sOn-in-law, Kuffelar, dyer
at Leyden, the latter turned the informa-
ton to such good account that Kufelar's
Color" as it was called, proved d little
gold mine to its godfather.
Beckmann says: Through the means
of Colbert, one Qf the Gobelins learned
the process used for preparing the German
scarlet dye from one Gluck, and the Pa.
risian scarlet dye soon rose into so great
repute that the pOpulace imagined that
Gobelin had acquired his art from the
devil = all because Drebbel chose to
make use of a broken bottle.
Mrs. East, the wife of an English paper
maker, is said to have been the first pro-
Queer of blue-tinted writing-paper. Going
among the watts while the wOrkmen were
away tor their dinner-hour, she let blue
bag tall into one OF them, and, Mortified
at the mischief she had done, said not a
word about the matter. The spoiled pa
per was hidden away in the warehouse
by the angry paper-maker for four years;
then he sent it to his London agent to be
sold Tor what it would fetch. The novelty
was admired, and the agent not only sold
the whole stock of b1up DaOer at high