The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1876-12-14
Discoveries Made by Accident.

Not few discoveries in the arts and
sciences have been made or suggested
by accident. The use of pendulum,
suggested by the vibrating of chan
deller in cathedral; the power Of
steam, intimated by the oscillating of
a lid of a tea-kettle ; the utility of coal.
gas for light, experimental on by an
ordinary tobacco.pipe of white-clay
the magnificent property of the lens,
stumbled upon by an opticians appren-
tice while holding spectacle glasses be-
tween his thumb and finger-are WELL
known instances in proof of the fact.
Galvanism was discovered by acci-
dent. Prof. Galvani Of Bologna, in
Italy, gave his name to the operation,
but his wife is considered as actually
entitled to the credit of the discovery.
She being in bad health, some frogs
were ordered for her. AS they lay
upon the table, skinned, she noticed
that their limbs became strongly con-
vulsed when near an electrical con.
ductor. She called her husband 8 at.
tention to the fact he instituted Sc
ries of experiments, and 1902 the gal.
vanic battery was invented.
Eleven years later, with that dis
coverey for his basis, Prof. Alessandro
Volta, also an Italian, announced his
discovery of the "voltaic pile-''
The discovery Of glass-making was
effected by seeing the sand vitrified
upon which fire had been kindled.
Blancourt says that the making of
plate-glass was suggested by the fact
of a workman happening to break a
crucible filed with melted glass. The
fluid ran under one of the large flag
stones with which the floor was paved.
On raising the stone to recover the
glass, it was found in the form of a
plate, such as could not be produced
by the ordinary process Of blowing.
Glass pearls, though among the most
beautiful, inexpensive and common or.
naments worn by the ladies, are pro-
duced by a very singular process. In
1855 a Venetian named Joaquin discov-
that the scales of a fish called bleak.fi
possessed the property of communi-
eating pearly hue to the water. lle
found by experimenting that beads
dipped into this water assumed, when
dried, the appearance of pearls. It
proved, however, that the pearly coat.
when placed outside, was easily rub
bed off and the next improvement
was to make the beads hollow. Max.
ing these beads is carried on to this day
in Venice. The beads are all blown
separately. BY means of a small tube,
the insides are delicately coated with
the pearly liquid, and waxed coating
is placed over that. 1t requires tho
scales of four thousand fish to produce
half pint of the liquid, to which =
small quantity of sal-amOniac and isin.
glass are afterward added.
Lundy Foot, the celebrated snuff
manufacturer, originally kept small
tobacconist shop at Limerick. Ono
night his house, which was uninsured,
was burned to the ground. AS he con.
templated the smoking ruins on tho
following morning in state bordering
on despair, some of the poorer neigh.
bors, cropping among the embers for
what they could find, stumbled upon
! several canisters of unconsumed but
half baked snuff, which they tried, and
found 50 pleasant to their nose that
they soon loaded their waistcoat
pockets with it. Lundy Foot, aroused
from his stupor, initiated their ex'
ample and took a pinch of his own
property, when he was struck by the
superior pungency and flavor it bad
acquired from the great heat to which
it had been exposed. Acting upon the
hint, he took another house in a place
called Black Yard, erected ovens and
set about the manufacture Of high
dried commodity which soon became
widely known as BACKYARD snuff.
Eventually he took large house in
Dublin, and making his customers pay
literally through the nose, amassed a
great fortune by having been ruined.