The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1891-10-23
INVENTIONS OLD AND NEW.
Many Modern Ideas Taken From Ancient
Productions.

Is there no new thing under the sun?
| The wise man of Scripture says there is
not, and if his statement is proved cor
rect it makes out this inventive and
progressive age as not so very wonder
full after all. But the theologians have
given us new term. 1t is the liner
rancy" of the good book. The wise
man may not have been "inerrant"
when he wrote that sentence. Or, to
go little farther afield, we may as
sumo that up to this time there was
nothing new under the sun. This in
depreciation of his declaration lets us
out of the difficulty very smoothly, and
while it may be granted that things
went on very much in the same old way
in Solomon's day, it is very different
now, with our countless devices for
comfort, convenience and pleasure, our
electric inventions, our steam engines,
pliances for useful or fanciful purposes.
Yet thousands of things are not new,
put are merely adaptations or modifica-
lions of old ideas. We speak of the art
Of printing as modern. But the Romans
used movable types to mark their pot
sery and indorse their books. Mr.. Lay
ard found in Nineyeh a magnificent
ems of rock crystal, which Sir d. Brew
ter considers true optical lens and
the origin of the microscope. The prin-
,iple of the stereoscope, invented by
Prof. Wheating, was known to Euclid,
described by Galen 1900 years ago and
more fully in 1899, A. D., in the works
If Baptista Porta. The Thames tun-
ael at London, and later that at Chica-
go, were anticipated by one under the
Euphrates at Babylon, and the Egyp-
ians had a Suez canal thousands of
years before the present waterway was
built Such examples might be indeti-
litely multiplied; but, turning to pho
geography, NJ Jobarb, in his ''Neuvilles
Inventions aux EXpositions Univer-
'elles," 1856, says a translation from
German was discovered in Russia, three
hundred years old, which contains the
clear explanation of photography. The
Did alchemiSts understood the proper
lies of chloride of silver in relation to
light, and its Photographic action is ex-
planned by Fabricius in ''De Rubus Me-
;allicis," 1866. The daguerreotype pro-
.ess was anticipated by De La Roche
n his "Gyphantie," 1860, though it was
only the statement of dreamer
The use of cork for making jackets as
In aid in swimming, and now familiar
20 ocean travellers in the so-called life
oreservers with which steamers are
equipped, is very old. A Roman sent
oy Camillus to the capital and who had
20 swim the Tiber to evade the besieg-
ng Gauls, wore cork under his attire in
order that he might float. The pyra-
nids of Egypt and the foundation walls
Of the temple at Jerusalem contain
stones of such size and weight that it
IS hardly possible for them to have been
out in place without mechanical power
equal to any now known. Was it steam
that supplied this power, or was it some
device which has now become "a lost
lrt?" Perhaps they had their Edisons,
their Wattses and their Stephensons in
those days, who, like the builders of the
tabernacle in the wilderness were cum
ning workmen, equal to any emergency,
but who when the need of their services
no longer existed dropped back into
modest obscurity.
1t may be, also, that the patent sys-
tenn of the ancients did not encourage
the development of inventive genius.
Now when man invents really use
full article his fame and fortune are
fairly well assured 1t was not so then.
A Roman architect discovered the means
Of altering the nature of glass and
making it malleable. He produced all
the malleable glass which Emperor
Tiberius desired, and then, to prevent
the secret becoming known, the mon
arch cut off the inventors head. So late
rs the reign of Louis Kill a similar
discovery was made. But Cardinal
Richelieu was afraid that it would in
jure the French glass manufacturers, of
whose profits, after the style of gov
eminent ''paternalism," then in vogue,
the prime minister probably had a lib
eral share; so the man with a too-in.
quiring mind was put into prison and
there remained all his life. That sort
of thing was not calculated to send men
on exploring expeditions into the dim
unknown" and Edison and his guild
had they lived then would hardly have
found a profitable field for their inven.
tive talents.
The good old times" were pretty
tough ones for inventors Troy Times.