The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1897-11-12

sun. Had patents been invent
ed at the time Solomon wrote,
the descendants of some Of his
contemporaries might now be bring
ing suits for infringement, says the
Louisville Courier-Journal. Something
similar to the telephone was used in
China 200 years ago. Ancient Egypt
boosted the proud possession of a
nickel in the SLOT machine. Babylon
the Great went fishing 1000 years be-
fore the Christian era with hooks like
those in use today, and studied the
stars through a telescope. Thimbles
nave been found in prehistoric mound
with every evidence of having been
made by machinery similar to our own.
Hatpins with glass heads and safety
pins with a little coiled spring at m
end and a catch at the other were in
use in Pompeii 1000 years age. Combs
and hairpins have lived for twenty
centuries and the housewife of the
bronze age, 5000 years ago, put patches
on the apparel of her lord and master
with needles and thread. Locks sim
liar to those in use today, which could
only be opened by the knowledge of a
certain combination of numbers. were
known to the Chinese centuries ago.
And so instances might be indefinitely
multiplied. In view of the recent won
derful advances in electrical science by
DR.. Bose, Sig. Marconi and Tesla,
whereby the possibility of conveying
messages to distant points through
ether by electric waves, without the
aid Of wires, has become a certainty,
the following extract from the writ
ings of Joseph Addison. who lived at
the beginning of the last century. may
be of interest: "Strada, in one of his
.prolusions, gives an account of a cor
respondence between two friends by the
help of a certain loadstone which had
such a virtue in it that if touched by
several needles, when one of these
needle so touched began to move the
other, though at ever so much great
a distance, moved at the same time
and in the same manner. He tells us
that two friends, being each of them
possessed of these needles, made a kind
OF dial plate, inscribing it with twenty
four letters in the same manner as the
hours of the day are marked upon the
ordinary dial plate. They then fixed
n of the needles on each of these
plates in such a manner that it could
move around without impediment, so
as to point to any of the twenty-four
letters. Upon their separating from
one another into distinct countries.
they agreed to withdraw themselves
punctually into their closets at a GER
tain hour of the day and to converse
with one another by this their inven-
ton. Accordingly, when they were
some hundreds of miles asunder. each
of them shut himself up in his closet
at the time appointed and Immediately
cast his eye upon the dial plate. If he
had a mind to write anything to his
friend, he directed his needle to every
letter that formed the words that he
had occasion for, making a little pause
at the end of every word or sentence
to avoid confusion. The friend in the
meanwhile saw his own sympathetic
needle moving of itself to every letter
which that of his correspondent point
ed out. BY this means they talked to-
gether across a whole continent AID
conveyed their thoughts to each other
in an instant over cities or mountains.
seas or deserts. If amy writer Of ro-
NANCE" continues Addison. had in
troduced a necromancer, who is gem
orally in the train of a knight errant.
making a present to two lovers of
those aforementioned needles. the
reader would have been not a little
pleased to have seen them correspond
ing with n another, when they were
guarded by spies and watches, or sep
arated by castles and adventures. In
the meanwhile, if ever this invention
should be revived or put in practice.
I would suggest that on the lovers
dial plate there should be written. not
only the t~wenty-four letters. but <sy-
eral entire words, which have always
a place in passionate epistles-as
flames. darts, die. language, absence.
Cupid, heart, eyes, hang, dro.n and
the like. This would very much
abridge the lovers pains in this way
of writing a letter, as it would enable
him to express the most useful and
significant words with a single turn of
the needle" Addison considered this
invention to be an utterly chimerical
idea, born in the brain of Strada, but
how strikingly it foreshadows the re-
cent work Of Bose and Marconi; and