Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1899-12-08
CHANCE INVENTIONS.
HOW SOME LEADING USEFUL
INVENTIONS CAME TO LIGHT.

Gunpowder-Dropped shot-The Telescope
Etching on Glass-The Knitting Machine
Spinnins-Sascharine The Roentsen Ray
We're all Discovered by Accident.
Berthold Schwartz, an old Angus
tinian monk, having put compost.
tion of sulphur and saltpeter in NOR
tar, it took fire, and the stone that
covered it was blown off with great vi
olencc, which accident led the chem
ist to think it might be used to much
advantage in attacking fortified
places. He accordingly added to it a
quantity of charcoal to render it more
apt to take fire and increase combus-
tiOn.
Leaden shot are attributed to a
Bristol plumber, who one night about
the year 1888, chad dream which
was not at all dream" that he was in
q shower of molten lead which fell in
the form of spherical drops. His Gu
riosity being aroused, he went next
day to the top of church and poured
some melted lead into a vessel of
water lying below. To his great de-
light he found that the lead had
gathered into beautifully formed glob-
ular balls, and he at once took out a
patent.
A Nuremberg glass cutter happened
to let some aquafortis fall upon his
spectacles and noticed that the glass
was corroded and softened where the
acid had touched it. Taking the
hint, he made liquid, then drew
some figures upon piece of glass /;
covered them with varnish. applied
his corrOding fluid and cut away the
glass around his drawing. When he
removed the varnish the figures ap-
peared raised upon a, dark ground,
and etching upon glass was added to
the ornamental arts.
One day nearly three hundred years
ago, poor cptician was working in
his shop in the town of Middleburg,
in the Netherlands, his children help
ing him or amusing themselves with
the tools and objects lying about,
when suddenly his little girl ex-
claimed: "Oh papa, see how near the
steeple comesl"
Anxious to learn the cause OF the
child's amazement, he turned towards
her, and saw that she was looking
through two lenses, one held close to
her eye and the other at arms length !;
and calling her to his side he noticed
that the eye lens was plano-concave,
while the other was plano-convex.
Taking the two glasses he repeated his
daughters experiment, and soon dis
covered that she had chance,l to hold
the lenses at the proper focus, thus
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
of lenses. Ere long he had
a tube of pasteboard, in
which he set the glasses at their
proper focus, and so the telescope was
Among the many traditions con-
cerning William Lee and the stock
ing-frame is one that he was expelled
from the university for marrying, and
that, being very poor, his wife was
obliged to contribute towards the
housekeeping by knitting. 1t was
while watching the motion of her
fingers that he conceived how to imi-
tate 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 two rollers.
The ordinary practice of taking a
bath solved for Archimedes the ques-
tion Of how to test the purity OF the
gold 10 Hiero's crown. He observed
that when he stepped into full bath
the quantity of water which over
flowed 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 immersed them separately in a
vessel filled 10 the brim, measuring
exactly the quantity of water that
overfowed in each case. Having
found by this means what measure of
the fluid answered to the quantity of
each metal, less in the case of tho gold
than of the silver-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. Having found the differ
ence between the two masses of pure
gold and silver, in certain known pro-
portions, he was able to compute the
real quantity of each metal in the
crown, and thus discovered the fraud
that had been practiced on the king,
to whom he hurried, exclaiming,
Eureka! Eurekap ("I have found
it! l have found itP) an exclama-
ton that has ever since been used 10
express exultation over discovery.
Coming down now to our own time
the account OF the discovery OF saecha'