Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-10-02
HISTORY HAS PLAYED
MANY QUEER FREAKS

0R. COOK and Commander Peary pre-.
senting to the world within five
days OF each other news of a dis
covery that had been the goal of explorers
for three and half centuries are not
the first pioneers who have been thrown
at each others threats by the curious
trick history has of producing coinci-
dences.
There have been other cases hardly less
remarkable.
1t was noteworthy that after so many
years of endeavor, during which explorer
after explorer has gone into the frozen
north, some never to return, two men
should have found the coveted goal vir-
tually at the same time, for the time in
tervening between the dates named by the
rival claimants can hardly be adjudged
lengthy In the estimation of history.
Yet this simultaneous attainment of an
end long sought is not without many pre-
cedents. 1t has cropped up again and
again in connection with great achieve
ments In science, mechanics and other
fields of endeavor.
In fact, If historic coincidence could be
done away with a whole lot of the work
of the courts could be lessened and an
endless flood of controversy avoided.
The simultaneous discovery of the tele-
phone was natural enough thing, when
analysed. Many men had been working
to the same end. All profited by the
worlds increasing knowledge of the SUBJ
ject. They kept hustlng on, each work
ing and scheming. and it happened that
three of them arrived closely enough to-
gether at the goal to make it a debate as
to which was the real discoverer.
So with the north pole exploration,
Every man who went into the sea of ice
came back to write his story, be inter-
viewed, to lecture and to communicate in
a thousand ways all the information he
had gained.
better fortified with facts, and 1t hap
pened that when the march to the pole
had been brought very close, Peary and
Cook were in the north. Working with
largely the same knowledge they made
their dashes, and hence the terrific con-
troversy that is now engaging the seem
tific world.
The telegraph is another similar case.
Samuel F. B. Morse gets the credit. yet
his case Is by no means clear.
To begin with, Morse owed a whole lot
to principles laid down by Joseph Henry.
and never made any concealment of the
fact. Henry. however, made no practical
application of what he knew. while Morse
did.
But this was not the whole of Morse s
obligation to others. He owed some of
the most important and ingenious fea-
lures of the invention to Alfred Vail, his
partner.
Morse managed to get through his first
line between Baltimore and Washington
in 1874. Yet in England there was line
in operation for commercial purposes sew
en- years before that time.
Germany even claims mat this was not
the first, and names as the inventor Of the
present system OF telegraphy Somme rim 8
of Munich. Ii is said for him that as
early as 1909 he lao put into operation a
system OF transmission Of messages that
involves all the vital features of the teie-
graph as we have 1t today.
Another case of peculiar interest just
now is that of the saxtant, for this is the
most necessary Of eli devices TO the polar
explorer, since by its use alone can they
tell when they have reached the north
pole.
1t started with the cross-staff. a primi-
tive instrument for taking observations,
much improved by John Davies, who de-
scribed his perfected instrument III 1911
Further improvements were made in 1129
by Pierre Bougeur.
In 1870 Thomas Godfrey designed SEX
tant soon after put to use by naVlgatorS.
and close on his heels in 1881 came John
Hadley with another.
II 10 claimed that whereas the latter's
sextant traces its descent from the inven-
ton of Bougeur. that OF Godfrey was en-
tirely independent both of the latter and
of the Hadley sextant.
sir Isaac Newton. too, evolved some
thing like a sextant but apparently no de-
velopments of the instrument were ever
ba sed on 1t.
A remarkable instance of simultaneous
discovery by men each of whom could
have had no possible knowledge of the
work being done by the other had to do
with the planet Neptune.
Astronomers found that the planet IRA