The record-union., 1898-09-18
ACCIDENTAL INVENTIONS.
How Many Important Discoveries
Were Made.

An Augustinian monk Berthold
schwartz, having put a composition of
sulphur and Saltpeter in a mortar it
took fire, and the stone that covered
1T was blown off with great violence.
Whlch accident led the chemist to think
1t might be used to much advantage in
attacking fortified places. He accord
lngly added to it a quantity of char
coal to render it more apt to take fire
and increase combustion.
Leaden shot are attributed to a
Bristol plumber, who, one night about
the year 1888, had a dream which
was not all dream" that he was out
in shower of molten lead, which fell
in the form of spherical drops His
curiosity being aroused, he went the
next day to the top of a church and
poured some melted lead into a vessel
lying below. To his great delight he
found that the lead had gathered into
beautifully formed globular balls, and
he at once took out patent.
A Nuremberg glass-cutt happened
to let some aquafortis fall upon his
spectacles, and he noticed the glass
was corroded and softened where the
acid had touched it. Taking the hint,
he made a liquid, then drew some fig
ures upon piece of glass, covered
them with varnish, applied his corrod-
ing fluid, and cut away the glass
around his drawing. When he re-
moved the varnish the figures appeared
raised upon dark ground; and etch-
ing upon glass was added to the or
namental arts.
One day nearly 800 years ago a
poor optician was working in his shop
in the town of Mddelburg, in the
Netherlands, his children helping him
or amusing themselves with the tools
and objects lying about, when sudden
ly his little girl exclaimed: "Oh, papa,
see how near the steeple comes!" Anx-
ious to learn the cause of the child s
amazement, he turned toward her, and
saw that she was looking through two
lenses, one held close to her eye, the
other at arms length; and calling her
to his side, he noticed that the eye lens
was plano while the other was
plano-conyex. Taking the two glasses,
he repeated his daughters experiment
and soon discovered that she had
chanced to hold the lenses at the proper
focus, thus producing the wonderful
effect that she observed. His quick wit
saw in this a wonderful discovery, and
he at once set about making use of
his new knowledge of lenses. Ere long
he had fashioned a tube of pasteboard
in which he set the glasses at their
proper focus, and SO the telescope was
invented.
Among the many traditions concern
ing William Lee and the stocking
frame is one that he was expelled from
the university for marrying, and that,
being very poor, his wife was obliged
to contribute toward the housekeeping
knitting. 1t was while watching the
motion Of her fingers that he conceived
how to initiate those movements by a
machine.
Arkwright accidentally derived the
idea of spinning by rollers from seeing
a red-hot bar elongated by being
passed between the two rollers
The ordinary practice of taking a
bath solved for Archimedes the ques-
ton of how to test the purity of the
gold in Hiero's crown He observed
that when he stepped into a full bath
the quantity of water which overfowed
was equal to the bulk of his body. and
it occurred to him that the worth of
the crown might be tested by such
means. He thereupon made two masses
of the same weight as the crown, one
of gold, the other of silver, and i'm
mersed them separately in a vessel
filled to the brim, measuring exactly
the quantity of water that overfiowed
in each case. Having found by this
means what measure Of the fluid an
swered to the quantity of each metal,
less in the case of gold than of the sill
ver-the bulk of the former being less,
weight for weight-he next immersed
the crown itself and found that it
caused more water to overflow than
the gold, but less than the silver. Hav-
ing found the difference between the
two masses of pure gold and silver, in
certain known proportions. he was able
to compute the real quantity of each
metal in the crown, and thus discov-
cred the fraud that had been prac-
ticed on the king. to whom. he hur-
ried, exclaiming, Eureka. Eureka"
CT have found it! I have found it!'O
an exclamation that has ever since been