In early periods, the trunks of trees were split with wedges into as
many and as thin pieces as possible[639]; and if it was necessary to
have them still thinner, they were hewn on both sides to the proper
size. This simple and wasteful manner of making boards has been still
continued to the present time. Peter the Great of Russia endeavoured
to put a stop to it by forbidding hewn deals to be transported on the
river Neva. The saw, however, though so convenient and beneficial, has
not been able to banish entirely the practice of splitting timber used
in building, or in making furniture and utensils, for I do not speak
here of fire-wood; and, indeed, it must be allowed that this method
is attended with peculiar advantages, which that of sawing can never
possess. The wood-splitters perform their work more expeditiously
than sawyers, and split timber is much stronger than that which has
been sawn; for the fissure follows the grain of the wood, and leaves
it whole; whereas the saw, which proceeds in the line chalked out for
it, divides the fibres, and by these means lessens its cohesion and
solidity. Split timber, indeed, turns out often crooked and warped; but
in many purposes to which it is applied this is not prejudicial; and
such faults may sometimes be amended. As the fibres, however, retain
their natural length and direction, thin boards, particularly, can be
bent much better. This is a great advantage in making pipe-staves, or
sieve-frames, which require still more art, and in forming various
implements of the like kind.
Our common saw, which needs only to be guided by the hand of the
workman, however simple it may be, was not known to the inhabitants of
America when they were subdued by the Europeans[640]. The inventor of
this instrument has by the Greeks been inserted in their mythology,
with a place in which, among their gods, they honoured the greatest
benefactors of the earliest ages. By some he is called Talus, and by
others Perdix. Pliny[641] alone ascribes the invention to Dædalus;
but Hardouin, in the passage where he does so, chooses to read Talus
rather than Dædalus. In my opinion, Pliny may have committed an error
as well as any of the moderns; and as one writer at present misleads
another, Seneca[642], who gives the same inventor, may have fallen into
a mistake by copying Pliny. Diodorus Siculus[643], Apollodorus[644],
and others name the inventor Talus. He was the son of Dædalus’s sister;
and was by his mother placed under the tuition of her brother, to be
instructed in his art. Having once found the jaw-bone of a snake, he
employed it to cut through a small piece of wood; and by these means
was induced to form a like instrument of iron, that is, to make a saw.
This invention, which greatly facilitates labour, excited the envy of
his master, and instigated him to put Talus to death privately. We are
told, that being asked by some one, when he was burying the body, what
he was depositing in the earth, he replied, a serpent. This suspicious
answer discovered the murder; and thus, adds the historian, a snake
was the cause of the invention, of the murder, and of its being found
out[645].
Hyginus[646], Servius[647], Fulgentius[648], Lactantius Placidus[649],
Isidorus[650], and others call the inventor Perdix. That he was the son
of a sister of Dædalus they all agree; but they differ respecting the
name of his parents. The mother, by Fulgentius, is called Polycastes,
but without any proof; and Lactantius gives to the father the name of
Calaus. In Apollodorus, however, the mother of Talus is called Perdix;
and the same name is given by Tzetzes to the mother of the inventor,
whose name Talus he changes into Attalus[651]. Perdix, we are told,
did not employ for a saw the jaw-bone of a snake, like Talus, but
the back-bone of a fish; and this is confirmed by Ovid[652], who
nevertheless is silent respecting the name of the inventor.
What may be meant by _spina piscis_ it is perhaps difficult to
conjecture; but I can by no means make _spina dorsi_ of it, as Dion.
Salvagnius has done, in his observations on the passage quoted from
Ovid’s Ibis. The small bony processes which project from the spine of
a fish have some similitude to a saw; but it would be hardly possible
to saw through with them small pieces of wood. These bones are too
long, as well as too far distant from each other; and the joints of
the back-bone are liable to be dislocated by the smallest force. I am
not acquainted with the spine of any fish which would be sufficiently
strong for that purpose. The jaw-bone of a fish furnished with teeth
would be more proper; but the words _spina in medio pisce_ prevent us
from adopting that alteration. I should be inclined rather to explain
this difficulty by the bone which projects from the snout of the
saw-fish, called by the Romans _serra_, and by the Greeks _pristis_.
That bone, indeed, might not be altogether unfit for such a use: the
teeth are strongly united to the broad bone in the middle, and are
capable of resisting a great force; but they are placed at rather too
great a distance. The old inhabitants of Madeira, however, we are told,
really used this bone instead of a saw[653]. That Talus found the
jaw-bone of a snake with teeth like a saw is extremely probable, for
there are many snakes which have teeth of that kind.
The saws of the Grecian carpenters had the same form, and were
made in the like ingenious manner as ours are at present. This is
fully shown by a painting still preserved among the antiquities of
Herculaneum[654]. Two genii are represented at the end of a bench,
which consists of a long table that rests upon two four-footed stools.
The piece of wood which is to be sawn through is secured by cramps. The
saw with which the genii are at work has a perfect resemblance to our
frame-saw. It consists of a square frame, having in the middle a blade,
the teeth of which stand perpendicular to the plane of the frame. The
piece of wood which is to be sawn extends beyond the end of the bench,
and one of the workmen appears standing and the other sitting on the
ground. The arms, in which the blade is fastened, have the same form as
that given to them at present. In the bench are seen holes, in which
the cramps that hold the timber are stuck. They are shaped like the
figure seven; and the ends of them reach below the boards that form the
top of it. The French call a cramp of this kind _un valet_[655].
Montfaucon[656] also has given the representation of two ancient saws
taken from Gruter. One of them seems to be only the blade of a saw
without any frame; but the other figure I consider as a cross-cut saw;
and I think I can distinguish all the parts, though it is imperfectly
delineated. One may however perceive both the handles between which the
blade is fastened; the wooden bar that binds them together, though the
blade is delineated too near it; and about the middle of this bar, the
piece of wood that tightens the cord which keeps the handles as well as
the whole instrument firm. Saws which were not placed in a frame, but
fastened to a handle, are thus described by Palladius[657]:--“Serrulæ
manubriatæ minores majoresque ad mensuram cubiti, quibus facile est,
quod per serram fieri non potest, resecando trunco arboris, aut vitis
interseri.”
The most beneficial and ingenious improvement of this instrument was,
without doubt, the invention of saw-mills, which are driven either
by water, wind, [or by steam]. Mills of the first kind were erected
so early as the fourth century, in Germany, on the small river Roer
or Ruer[658]; for though Ausonius speaks properly of water-mills for
cutting stone, and not timber, it cannot be doubted that these were
invented later than mills for manufacturing deals, or that both kinds
were erected at the same time. The art however of cutting marble with a
saw is very old. Pliny[659] conjectures that it was invented in Caria;
at least he knew no building incrusted with marble of greater antiquity
than the palace of king Mausolus, at Halicarnassus. This edifice is
celebrated by Vitruvius[660], for the beauty of its marble; and Pliny
gives an account of the different kinds of sand used for cutting it;
for it is the sand properly, says he, and not the saw, which produces
that effect. The latter presses down the former, and rubs it against
the marble; and the coarser the sand is, the longer will be the time
required to polish the marble which has been cut by it. Stones of
the soap-rock kind, which are indeed softer than marble, and which
would require less force than wood, were sawn at that period[661]:
but it appears that the far harder glassy kinds of stone were sawn
then also; for we are told of the discovery of a building which was
encrusted with cut agate, cornelian, lapis lazuli, and amethysts[662].
I have, however, found no account in any of the Greek or Roman writers
of a mill for sawing wood; and as the writers of modern times speak
of saw-mills as new and uncommon, it would seem that the oldest
construction of them has been forgotten, or that some important
improvement has made them appear entirely new.
Becher says, with his usual confidence, that saw-mills were invented
in the seventeenth century[663]. Though this is certainly false, I did
not expect to find that there were saw-mills in the neighbourhood of
Augsburg so early as the year 1337, as Stetten[664] has discovered by
the town-books of that place. I shall here insert his own words, in
answer to a request I made that he would be so kind as to communicate
to me all the information he knew on that subject:--“You are desirous
of reading that passage in our town-books, where saw-mills are first
mentioned; but it is of very little importance. There is to be found
only under the year 1338 the name of a burgher called Giss Saegemuller;
and though it may be objected that one cannot from the name infer the
existence of the employment, I am of a different opinion; especially
as I have lately been able to obtain a proof much more to be depended
on. In the surveyors’ book, which I have often before quoted, and
which, perhaps, for many centuries has not been seen or consulted by
any one, I find under the year 1322, and several times afterwards,
sums disbursed under the following title: Molitori dicto Hanrey pro
asseribus et swaertlingis. Schwartlings, among us, are the outside
deals of the trunk, which in other places are called _Schwarten_. This
word, therefore, makes the existence of a saw-mill pretty certain. As
a confirmation of this idea, we have still a mill of that kind which
is at present called the Hanrey-mill; and the stream which supplies it
with water is called the Hanrey-brook. Since the earliest ages, the
ground on which this mill, and the colour, stamping, and oil-mills in
the neighbourhood are built, was the property of the hospital of the
Holy Ghost. By that hospital it was given as a life-rent to a rich
burgher named Erlinger, but returned again in 1417 by his daughter
Anna Bittingerin, who had, above and under the Hanrey-mill, two other
saw-mills, which still exist, and for which, in virtue of an order of
council of that year, she entered into a contract with the hospital in
regard to the water and mill-dams.” There were saw-mills, therefore, at
Augsburg so early as 1322. This appears to be highly probable also from
the circumstance, that such mills occur very often in the following
century in many other countries.
When the Infant Henry sent settlers to the island of Madeira, which
was discovered in 1420, and caused European fruits of every kind to
be carried thither, he ordered saw-mills to be erected also, for
the purpose of sawing into deals the various species of excellent
timber with which the island abounded, and which were afterwards
transported to Portugal[665]. About the year 1427 the city of Breslau
had a saw-mill which produced a yearly rent of three marks; and in
1490 the magistrates of Erfurt purchased a forest, in which they
caused a saw-mill to be erected, and they rented another mill in the
neighbourhood besides. Norway, which is covered with forests, had
the first saw-mill about the year 1530. This mode of manufacturing
timber was called the new art; and because the exportation of deals
was by these means increased, that circumstance gave occasion to
the deal-tythe, introduced by Christian III. in the year 1545[666].
Soon after the celebrated Henry Ranzau caused the first mill of this
kind to be built in Holstein[667]. In 1552 there was a saw-mill
at Joachimsthal, which, as we are told, belonged to Jacob Geusen,
mathematician. In the year 1555 the bishop of Ely, ambassador from Mary
queen of England to the court of Rome, having seen a saw-mill in the
neighbourhood of Lyons, the writer of his travels thought it worthy of
a particular description[668]. In the sixteenth century, however, there
were mills with different saw-blades, by which a plank could be cut
into several deals at the same time. Pighius saw one of these, in 1575,
on the Danube, near Ratisbon, when he accompanied Charles, prince of
Juliers and Cleves, on his travels[669]. It may here be asked whether
the Dutch had such mills first, as is commonly believed[670]. The first
saw-mill was erected in Holland at Saardam, in the year 1596; and the
invention of it is ascribed to Cornelis Cornelissen[671]; but he is as
little the inventor as the mathematician of Joachimsthal. Perhaps he
was the first person who built a saw-mill at that place, which is a
village of great trade, and has still a great many saw-mills, though
the number of them is becoming daily less; for within the last thirty
years a hundred have been given up[672]. The first mill of this kind
in Sweden was erected in the year 1653[673]. At present, that kingdom
possesses the largest perhaps ever constructed in Europe, where a
water-wheel, twelve feet broad, drives at the same time seventy-two
saws.
In England saw-mills had at first the same fate that printing had
in Turkey, the ribbon-loom in the dominions of the Church, and the
crane at Strasburgh. When attempts were made to introduce them they
were violently opposed, because it was apprehended that the sawyers
would be deprived by them of their means of getting a subsistence.
For this reason it was found necessary to abandon a saw-mill erected
by a Dutchman near London[674], in 1663; and in the year 1700, when
one Houghton laid before the nation the advantages of such a mill,
he expressed his apprehension that it might excite the rage of the
populace[675]. What he dreaded was actually the case in 1767 or 1768,
when an opulent timber-merchant, by the desire and approbation of the
Society of Arts, caused a saw-mill, driven by wind, to be erected at
Limehouse under the direction of James Stansfield, who had learned,
in Holland and Norway, the art of constructing and managing machines
of that kind. A mob assembled and pulled the mill to pieces; but the
damage was made good by the nation, and some of the rioters were
punished. A new mill was afterwards erected, which was suffered to
work without molestation, and which gave occasion to the erection of
others[676]. It appears, however, that this was not the only mill of
the kind then in Britain; for one driven also by wind had been built
at Leith, in Scotland, some years before[677].
[The application of the steam-engine has in modern times almost
entirely displaced the use of either water or wind as sources of power
in machinery, and most of the saw-mills now in action, especially those
on a large scale, are worked by steam. Some idea of the precision
with which their operations are now accomplished may be obtained from
the following fact. At the City of London saw-mills, the largest log
of wood which had been placed on the carriage in one piece--a log of
Honduras mahogany 18 feet long and three feet one inch square,--was cut
into unbroken sheets at the rate of ten to an inch, and so beautifully
smooth as to require scarcely any dressing.]