The Marietta journal. [volume] (Marietta, Ga.) 1866-1909, 1889-11-07
KNEW MORE THAN WE DO.
MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL Sc
cRETs OF THE ANcIENTs.

Hemarkseie Machinery That the Old
Time Artisans Produced, but Which We
Cannot-Damascus Blades
There are many things that the ancients
knew which is lost to the world despite
the fact that our boasted modern enter
prise has tried hard to recover the miss.
ing link. The chemists OF old CON-
pounded numerous drugs, to which we
are strangers, and in the industrial arts
there are evidences that in a variety of
Occupations they were more skillful than
we are
In the letters of the Catholic priests
who first visited China, which were
published in France 200 years ago, they
relate that they were shown a glass.
transparent and colorless, which was
filled with liquid made by the Chinese,
which to the observers appeared to be
as clear as water. This liquid was
poured into the glass: then. looking
through it, it seemed to be filled with
fishes.
Inns was not owing to any popularity
OF the fluid, but to the glass itself. The
Chinese confessed that they did not
make them, but that they were the
plumber OF some foreign conquest many
centuries before.
MYSTERY OF THE OK.
The art of luminous painting was
known to the Japanese 900 years ago, and
an extract from one of their old writers
has been translated as follows:
One Su Ngoh many years ago had a
picture of an OK. Every day the OK left
the picture frame to Craze and returned
to sleep within it at night. This picture
came into the possession OF the Emperor
Tai Tsung Of the Sung dynasty ruling
from 976 to 99S, who showed it to his
courtiers and asked them for an expla-
nation, which none of them, however,
could give.
AT last certain Buddhist priest said
that the Japanese found some nacreous
substance within the flesh of a certain
kind of oyster they picked up when the
rocks were barred at low tide, and that
they ground this into color material and
then painted pictures.with it which were
invisible by day and luminous by night.
The secret simply was that-during the
day the figure of an OK was not visible
and it was therefore said that it left the
frame to go grazing,
Many instances of remarkable me-
chanical ingenuity are related by vari-
Gus ancient authors. In the year 1878,
the twentieth of Queen Elizabeth's reign,
one Mark Scaliot. blacksmith, made a
lock consisting Of eleven pieces of iron,
steel and brass, with hollow key in it,
that altogether weighed but one grain of
gold. He also made gold chain, COM
posed of forty-three links, which he fast
ened to the lock and key. In the pres
ence of the queen he put the chain about
the neck of fieas which drew it with
ease, after whish he put the lock and
key, flea and chain into pair of scales,
and they altogether weighed but one
grain and half.
Myrmecides, an ancient carver, was
also SO proficient in microscopic mechan-
ism that he made an ivory chariot with
four wheels, and as many harnessed
horses, in so small compass that a fly
wings. The same artisan made a ship
with all her decks, masts, yards, rigging
and sails, which took up scarcely more
room than the chariot.
The silver sphere, "a most noble and
ingenious performance" which was pre-
sented to Sultan Solyman the Magnifi-
cent by his imperial majesty Ferdinand,
is mentioned by Paulus Jovius as showing
and keeping time with the motions of
the celestial bodies in their various con-
fgurations. 1t was carried to CONSTANT
nople by twelve men and there put to-
gether by the artist that made it,
DIMINUTIvE MECHANISM.
An artifcer named Cornelius Van
Drebble once made an instrument like
an organ that, being set in the open air
under a warm sun, would play airs of
itself without the keys being touched,
but would not play in the shade For
this reason it is supposed that it was in
closed air rarified by the sun that caused
the harmony.
George Whitehead, an Englishman,
made ship, with all things pertaining
to it, to move as if it sailed upon table.
"All hands were aloft, woman made
good music on the lutte, and little puppy
cried in the midship. all of which va
riety," quantity says an old author. twas
very pleasant and diverting.'
The Damascus blades as marvels of
perfect steel have long been famous, and
even those used in the cruSades are as
perfect today as they were eight centu-
ries ago. One on exhibition in London
could be put into a scabbard almost as
crooked as corkscrew and bent every
way without breaking. The point of this
sword could be made to touch the hilt.
The poets have celebrated the perfec-
ton of the oriental steel, and many IA
nous writers have sung its praises.
Scott, in his "Talisman," describes a
meeting between Richard Ceur de Lion
and Saladin. Saladin asks Richard to
show him the wonderful strength for
which he is noted, and the Norman mon
arch responds by severing bar of iron