The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1888-01-27
INVENTORS LUCK.


From the earliest times till to-day,
perhaps the most curious thing in the
annals Of inventions is the spontan.
eousness OF that happy idea or brilliant
thought, which crystallizes into useful
ness as it comes from a master mind.
The good, Flooding genius seems to be
nowhere III the game in which the
great IN science, commerce, and arts
nave shone. A heaven-sent idea, in
deed, as often as not, does not come as
the fruit OF long vigils and the mid
night oil. No guest of a scientific
Galahad, however faithful, the cynical
say, ensures that coveted success which
comes unsought and unasked where
not looked for. The alchemists, to
iilustrateour meaning, CROPPED in their
dim laboratories tor more than
century IN hopes of discovering the
philosophers stone; yet what they all
aimed at came to nothing, and that
which few OF them sought, score of
precious finds in physics and
metallurgy, dubbed to light unsum,
moned in their orucibles, or rose with
the fumes of smelling pots and furn-
aces lit for far other searches. The
same preparedness of luck in the
history of origination is to be traced
back to the most ancient records.
There were inventors long before the
alchenists, and perhaps the very earli-
est hits" they made are intrinsicalIy
the most wonderful, though the exact
data regarding them must be forever
unknown. Such, for instance, was
bone needle known to savantS from cave
earth of infinite antiquity, eyed, pol
ished, as effective in its way as any
thing Birmingham can turn out, and
epitomiZing some brilliant conception,
some lucky fruit of sumptuary needs,
when man was only just beginning to
clothe himself. There is again the
wheel, more wonderful in its simplicity
than anything else the very centre
pivot of civilized life, without which
existence to-day is in fact inconoeiv-
able, and yet there are no wheels in ma
ture, and some obliterated hero, vexed
with tie uncertainties of logs or round
pebbles as motive means, must once
have made the first of them, and as
likely as not, looking at the usual for
tune of inventors, got but little good by
it. When men began to originate they
were on the high road to civ
ilization, and the "ages" of the
race-the stone period, when they
furnished their dwellings with flint
or chalcedony rubbed and Clipped into
serviceableness, the bronze, and the
iron periods-are but epochs of inven-
ton. our museum shelves being stocked
with unpatepted happy thoughts in i'm
plements of war or peace There seems
to have been some rude idea OF the &C
acknowledgement due TO genius in the
worship Of Osiris, the first of agricul-
alists, and the p9ans which echoed
through the temples Of Thebes and
Memphis to Isis, who originated wheat
and pulse as food Tor hungry humanity.
The Olympian gods are but inventors
tor the most part from Vulcan, ths
crafty son of Jupiter, to Prometheus,
that admirable and painfully faithful
type of prosecuted bensfactor of his
kind. But what must have struck many
student of human progress is that,
though the improvement of accom-
plished facts may reward application
apS diligence, the great gifts of the
gods come to hand in way that looks
as if their arrival were litrle better than
chance. Infinite as are the engines
and appliances of civilization to-day,
there is scarcely one which
cannot be traced back to q "t1uke" CT
some kind. The steam engine is but
the monument of embodied surprises,
from the tiHe when the hfting lid of a
homely tea-kettle suggested the ire.
sistible power of steam, to the latest
achievement to- day of Bessemer in
compressed steel. or the like. The rod
and piston was happy thought, and
an idle apprentice tying two marbles
to string, and hitching them on to
valve, hit upon the principle OF the
governor, without which we should
be lost in the present state of engi
neering. Then in other directions every
schooiboy knows that Archimedes was
bathing when a great theory dawned
upon him, and that he ran home in a
couple of towels. or something Il s., to
commit it to bis tablets. Isaac Newton
was rustieating, no doubt, when fall
ing apple. if any old story can be ac-
oepted, suggested philosophy to him.
FIiar Bacon was, perhaps. connecting
an antidote for rheumatism, or pros
peeting for the Elixir of Life, when he
CHANGED upon the first rude sample of
gunpowder. In the same way the
world callad aiOud for GLASS duri-,o a