The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-01-11
FORTUNATE ACCIDENTS
THAT HAVE LED TO SCIENTIFIC
 DISCOVERIES.
Experiments With Wax-How Edi- son Came to Think of the Talk ing Machine-His For
 tunate Mishaps.

London Answers.
 For the purpose of some experiments CTS wax in a glass, and then forgot it, and left 1t on a shelf.
 Days afterwards he picked up the for gotten test-tube, and, looking through the glass; saw that @ a nail lay at the curious, for he knew that the tube had been empty when the wax was originally poured in, and there was no mark on the surface of the wax, and left it there. In week he found that 1t was at the bottom, yet there was no sign of Tits passage. Then he proceeded to melt the wax, and poured 1t upon cork placed at the bottom of receptacle. In few days the cork had risen to the surface, yet in this case also without leaving any trace of its rising. The accident of the nail falling upon the shoemaker's wax gave the great scientist long-sought
 illustration of the working of ether which carries light and electric rays and which though rigid as steel yet does not retard in the least the passage of the earth or planets through space.
 The stumble of Watts the plumber, and the fall of his ladle full of molten lead from the top of a tower to the bottom. gave the world cheap shot, and in every branch of science similar accidents are pushing on the great inventions of today. thank accident for putting him on the right track when struggling after some new invention.
 T was singing into the mouth of the of the voice sent the fine steel point into my finger. That set me thinking. If could record the actions of the point, and send the point over the same surface. saw no reason why the thing could not talk"
 So Edison's bleeding finger gave the world the photograph.
 The first electric lamp made with a carbon flament also owed its origin to the merest chance. Edison had tried ev. erything he could think of, but could find no f1lament suitable for his purpose, and one blazing hot summer day sat in his labratory almost in despair. A breeze came through the wide open window aSd rustied a broken. palm-ieaf fan which lay on the table. The sound attracted his attention. He made a grasp at 1t, and with eager fingers began tearing up the outer rim. Experiment soon proved that he had found the very substance he had been looking for.
 It was literally a stumble which, through Edison. is now revolutionizinS the world of iron mining. Walking one up some black sand. He filled his pocket with the queer looking stuff, and when he got home turned 1t out on table. One of his workingmeu came by carrying Q load against the table. knocking over both table and sand. When he picked up the magnet a quantity of the black gains was sticking to 1t, so proving that there was iron in the sand. From this acci- dent has grown the present enormous development of low-grade iron ore, which is powdered first and then passed between magnets which extract the metal:
 An Austrian engineer was shooting one day In the salt marshes of Istria. He was thirsty and could find no drinking water. Presently he came to a tree grow | ing on the edge of the marsh, and in a | hollow of the trunk was water-brackish, but drinkabie. It was not rain water. for the hollow was covered in so he conclud- | ed that the water had been sucked up | from below, and the salt extracted by | the trunk. From this idea has been evolved an invention most valuable to
 water can be made fresh without the use | of slow and expensive condensers.
 l One of the earliest lessons we all learn is that man has five senses. It is now
 certain that he has six, and the discov- l cry was made because the patient Of a l London doctor fell down some steps on to a scraper and injured his ear. An op- eration was necessary, and part Of the recovered he could hear pretty well, but, | orn shutting his eyes. he was unable to
 retain his equilibrium. Further expert ments have put it beyond doubt that | there is a sixth sense possessed by man,
 and far more strongly by birds. This
 sense lies between seeing and hearing and is the sense of balance or. as scien- lists call it, thee&tatic sense. A curious proof of the possession of this static sense by lower animals Is that a blind cat can and will run and jump; while a cat whose sense of hearing Is gone seems absolutely afraid to move at anything more than a walk, and will never jump. One of the worst diseases known today is lockjaw. The germ of 1t lives in the earth, and no one who cuts himself bad Iy is safe from this evil little microbe. Not only is the lockjaw microbe widely dispersed, but it is most difficult to kill, for it can stand extremes of heat and cold and dryness which would destroy most other disease germs one day the
 Italian doctor Pernossi, who had been experimenting with a culture of tetanus microbes in bouillon. was called away and left his vial of germs on table by the window The sun had been full upon it for some hours when he came back, and to his surprise the deadly mixture had been deprived of all its poisonous The red light treatment for smallpox which has saved many a poor sufferer
 from hideous and disfguring scars, k another of these boons for which the world must thank mere chance. During the epidemic of smallpox In l694. wheI Queen Mary died of it. it was noticed that the only patient whose face was unmarked was one of the ladies or the court whose room had red blinds. This was nut on record, and now, two centu- ries iato- has led to the experiments oi Dr. Fuislu, who has discovered not tnat red lights are beneficial. but that the hiue rsvs of sunlight are injurious to the diseased skin. Red blinds. by cutting oft .IN ~o,,. tbus save the patient from