The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1893-04-02
AHEAD OF WATTS.
In 1924 a Frenohman Is Said to Have
Discovered Steam Power.

Invention
There lived in Normandy, where he was
born in 1876, a man named Solomon Caus.
He was an engineer and architect and had
held several important positions. He wrote
great many scientific works and papers,
of which, however, no one took much
notice during his life, and finally was seized
with an idea which made his friends and
relatives fear that he was mad. After pes
tering the King and the Cardinal at Paris
he was ordered to be taken to Bicetre-the
madhouse-and there shut up. This was
done. They had just one way with mad peo-
pie in those days. They shut them In iron
cages and fed them through the bars like
wild beasts. They did this to Solomon
Caus. For a long time he stood behind
those bars all day and called to those who
would listen, and to them repeated the story
he had told the Cardinal. He became the
Jest of the place. Some of them even gave
him writing materials, and then, amid the
misery of his surroundings, he wrote down
his ideas and amused his jailers so much the
more. However, it could not be long before
such life, such surroundings, would shat
ter any brain. In time Solomon Caus was
as mad as every one believed him.
1t was in 1924 that an English nobeman,
Lord Worcester, went to Paris and visited
Bicetre. AS he was passing through the
great court, accompanied by the keeper,
ilIutUuo lace, Will lDdlltu UthIu anu HdlE.
appeared at the grating aud a voice shrieked
wildly: stop! stop! / am not mad. l AIN
shut up here most unjCStly. L have made
an invention that would enrich country
that adopted 1t. What does he speak
of?" the Marquis added his guide. "Oh,
that is his madness" said the man, laughing.
That is man called Solomon CauS. He
| Is from Normandy. He believes that by
the use of the steam of boiling water he
can make ships 20 over the ocean and
% fraU val NV in Do
all sorts of wonderful things. He has even
written a book about it which | can show
you" Lord Worcester asked for the book,
glanced over il anu desired TO be conducted
to the cell of the writer When he returned
he had been weeping. The poor man is
certainly mad now" he said, but when you
imprisoned him here he was the greatest
genius of the age. He has certainly made
very great discovery" After this Lord
Worcester made many efforts 10 procure the
liberation of the man, who doubtless would
have been restored to reason by freedom
and ordinary surroundings, but in vain !;
the Cardinal was against him and his Eng
| lish friends began to fancy that lie himself
had lost his senses, for one wrote to an
other:
"My lord is remarkable for never being
satisfied with any explanations which are
given him. but always wanting 10 know for
himself, although he seems to pierce to the
very center of a speakers thoughts with
his big blue eyes that never leave theirs.
At a visit to Bcetre he thought he had dis
covered genius in madman, who declares
| he would travel the world over with kettle
| of boiling water. He desired to carry him
away to London that he might listen to his
| eXtravagancps from morning until night,
and would, [ think, if the maniac had not
been actually raving and chained to the
wall"
Thus in Bicetre died the man to whom,
| after his works were published, many peH-
| pie gave the credit of being the discoverer
Of steam power, and 1t is said that from the
manuscript written in prison Lord Worces-
| ter gathered the idea of machine spoken
| of as "water-commanding engine" which
| he afterward invented. Historians have
denied that Caus died in PRISON, but there
| exists letter written by Marion de Lorme,
who was with Lord Worcester at the time
Of his interview with Caus, which estab-
! lished the fact beyond a doubt.