Greenbrier independent. [volume] (Lewisburg, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1980, 1897-01-07
MISCELLANEOUS.
The Slow Adoption of New Mechanical
Devices.


Within fortnight an act of Par
lament has gone into operation max
ing it lawful to use motor carriages
in the streets of English cities. And
only few days ago a cable dispatch
informed us that a committee of In
quiry, sent out to the United States
from England to investigate and re-
port upon the merits of cable and
trolley traction as applied to street
cars in this country, had returned
and reported that there were no OBJ
Jections Of a serious kind to the sub
stitution of electricity by the trolley
system for horse power in English
city streets--a conclusion which
would hardly be ratified by popular
opinion in some American cities.
like Brooklyn, for example.
The significant lesson of these re-
cent news items is that discoveries
and inventions continue, even i'm this
age OF progress, to find their way to
general acceptance quite slowly. 1t
is somewhere about forty years ago
that the hOrseless or motor carriage,
in crude form, put in it's first ap-
pearance on English highways, and
the prejudice against it developed
so strongly that further experiment
tation with it was forbidden by a
statute which has only just been re-
pealed. We have been using saloon
railroad cars, with central aisles run
ming leDgthwise between the seats
for half a century, but the British
railroad managers are only Just be-
ginning to introduce them on their
lines, having all this time stubbornly
adhered to their old. fashioned little
compartments, with two seats only,
running widthwise of the car, each
seat holding five or six persons only.
1t was many years after street rail
roads were in general use in this
country before any English city
would permit tracks to be laid in its
streets, and they are not yet in gen.
eral use over there. The omnibus
still holds its own in the streets of
London, Liverpool and other large
cities. The opposition to the street
railroads, or "the tramways," as
they call them, was so violent as to
cause riotiDg in some places when
they were first opened.
History is simply repeating itself
in all these cases. Partly owing to
popular prejudice and still more
largely because of the selfish opposi-
tion of vested interests, whose pro-
fits are threatened by new discover
les and inventions, there has always
been much difficulty in bringing
them into general use. Tradition
says that John Faust, one of the
three inventors Of printing, was
charged with multiplying books by
the aid of the devil, and was both
prosecuted by the authorities and
prosecuted by the people. The rib
bon-loom is an invention of the six
teenth century, and, on the plea that
it deprived many workmen of bread,
it was prohibited in Holland, in Ger
many, in the dominions ofthe church
and in other countries of Europe
At Hamburg the authorities ordered
a ribbon-l loom TO be publicly burned.
The stocking-looms shared the same
fate of the ribbon-loom. In England
the patronage of Queen Elizabeth
was requested for the invention, but
the inventor was impeded rather
than assisted in his undertaking.
In France, opposition to the stock
ing-ioom was of the most base and
cruel kind. A Frenchman who
adopted the invention. manufactured
by the loom pair of silk stockings
for Louis XIV. They were pre-
sented to the monarch, but the par
ties who supplied hosiery to the
court caused several of the loops of
the stockings to be cut, and thus
brought the stOcking-loom into dis
repute at headquarters.
Table forks appear so necessary a
part of the furniture Of dinner ta-
bic that one can scarcely believe that
the tables of the sixteenth century
were destitute of them. They were
not, however, introduced into Eng
land until the commencement of the
seventeenth century, and then were
ridiculed as effeminate and superfu-
Gus. The saw mill was brought into
England from Holland in 1868, but
the attempt to build one 80 displeased
the English that the enterprise
was abandoned. A second attempt
was made a few years later, and a
mill was actually erected, but soon
after 1t was pulled down by mob.
Pottery is glazed by throwing COM
mon salt into the oven at a certain
stage of baking. This mode of bak-
ing was introduced into England In
1890 by two brothers, who came to
Staffordshire from Nuremburg.-
Their success and their secrecy sc
enraged their neighbors that perse
cution arose against them and they
were compelled to give up theil
works. The pendulum was invented
by GalIileo, but so late as the end o
the seventeenth century, wheI
Hooke brought 1t forward as a stan
dard of measure, 1t was ridiculet
and passed by the nickname O
"awing-swang."
Papin in France, and Fulton ii
this country both encountered tn