The Bossier banner., 1891-12-24
INVENTIONS OLD AND NEW.
Many Modern Ideas Taken From Ancient
Productions.

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
| terpretation of his declaration let's us
out of the difficulty very smoothly, and
while 1t 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,
our printing presses, our countless ap-
| pliances for useful or fanciful purposes.
Yet thousands of things are not new,
| but are merely adaptations or modifica-
tions of old ideas. We speak of the art
| of printing as modern But the Romans
used movable types to mark their pot
terry and indorse their books. Mr. Lay
ard found in Nineveh a magnificent
lens of rock crystal, which Sir D. Brew
ster considers a true optical lens and
the origin of the microscope. Tho prin-
ciple 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
of Baptista Porta. The Thames tun-
mel at London. and later that at Chica-
go, were anticipated by one under the
Euphrates at Babylon, and the Egyp-
| tians had a Suez canal thousands of
years before the present waterway was
built. Such examples might be indef-
nitely multiplied; but, turning to pho
Biography, NJ Jobarb, in his "Neuvilles
Inventions aux Expositions Univer-
selles," 1856, says a translation from
German was discovered in Russia, three
hundred years old, which contains the
clear explanation of photography. The
old alchemists understood the proper
ties of chloride of silver in relation to
light, and its Photographic action is ex-
planned by Fabricius in ''De Rubus Me-
tallicis," 1866. The daguerreotype pro
cess was anticipated by De La Roche
in his ''Gyphantie, 1860, though it Was
only the statement OF dreamer.
The use of cork for making jackets a.,
an aid in swimming, and now familiar
to ocean travellers in the so-called life
preservers with which steamers are
equipped, is very old. A Roman sent
by Camillus to the capital and who had
to swim the Tiber to evade the besieg-
ing Gauls, wore cork under his attire in
order that he might float. The pyra-
mids 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
put 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
art?" 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
ming 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 a man invents a 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 lie 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
as the reign of Louis XIII. 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
ernment ''paternalism," then in vogue
the prime minister probably had lib
eral share; so the man with a too-in
quiripg mind was put into prison and
there remained all his life. That sort
of thing was not calculated to send mer
on exploring expeditions into the din
unknown" and Edison and his guile
had they lived then would hardly hav'
found a profitable field for their inven
tive talents.
The good old times" were prettJ
tough ones for inventors. Troy Times
Too Old.
MA" said the smart ten-year-old boy
at the dinner-tnhle rs he nicked I'D al