So far the Marquis is, comparatively speaking, plain-spoken and
straightforward; but when he begins to catalogue his discoveries, the
reader feels bound to confess that though the noble peer may have set
down his notes in such a way as might sufficiently instruct him to
put any of them in practice, he scarcely amplified them sufficiently
to instruct other people. Doubtless he was intentionally vague in the
specifications or explanations of his inventions; for when he wrote, he
still cherished a hope that he would reap some substantial fruits from
his ingenuity; but in spite of his vagueness, he wrote at least enough
to shew that many things even now regarded as new, had been roughly
thought out by his fertile brain.
The specification first on the list is decidedly mysterious. It is
entitled ‘Seals abundantly significant,’ and professes to describe
an invention whereby accounts may be kept mechanically, and a letter,
‘though written but in English, may be read and understood in eight
several languages, and in English itself to a clean contrary and
different sense, unknown to any but the correspondent, and not to be
read or understood by him neither, if opened before it arrive unto
him.’ Presumably this ambiguous statement alludes to an instrument for
writing accounts and letters in cipher, for the four specifications
that follow, treat of that hackneyed subject, and one of them of
a system of short-hand which seems to be not without a modern
representative. Next comes a plan for telegraphing by means of coloured
flags and lights; and then ‘A way how to level and shoot cannon by
night as well as by day and as directly.’ The ninth specification is
terribly pertinent to the tragic event that happened at Bremerhafen in
December 1875. It speaks of ‘An engine, portable in one’s pocket, which
may be carried and fastened on the inside of the greatest ship, and at
any appointed minute, though a week after, either of day or night, it
shall irrecoverably sink that ship.’ The note immediately following
suggests torpedoes, and relates to a plan for diving and fastening a
similar engine to a vessel.
Nor were Admiral Hobart Pacha’s attempts to ward off the attacks of
these submarine monsters without a prototype; for the inventive Marquis
at once goes on to hint at a method whereby a ship may be guarded from
such a catastrophe either by day or by night. Specification number
twelve is scarcely less suggestive of water-tight compartments, for
it alludes to ‘A way to make a ship not possible to be sunk, though
shot an hundred times betwixt wind and water by cannon.’ The next note
does not seem to have prompted the exertions of modern inventors;
but who shall say whether number fourteen is not responsible for the
employment of steam, or even of hydraulic power, for the working of a
vessel? At all events, it hints at the economisation of labour, and at
the multiplication of force without the intervention of a capstan or
of similar machinery. Number fifteen palpably suggests the application
of some motive-power very like steam to boats. The Marquis speaks of
‘A way how to make a boat work itself against wind and tide, yea, both
without the help of man or beast; yet so that the wind or tide, though
directly opposite, shall force the ship or boat against itself.’
It is not surprising that, in the middle of the seventeenth century,
this, among many other alleged inventions, was regarded as somewhat
chimerical; and indeed, at the present moment, if we except steam,
it is hard to believe that the noble lord was not solemnly joking
with Charles II. and the two Houses of Parliament. But a subsequent
specification, which we shall notice in its due order, proves that the
Marquis knew of the power of steam, and had practically experimented
with it; and there are therefore some grounds for thinking that, had he
been properly subsidised and assisted, the name of Worcester might have
been as intimately associated with the great modern means of locomotion
as are those of Watt and Fulton. Unfortunately the Marquis was too much
in advance of his age, and thus his genius was lost upon it.
A very common table ornament of the present day is hinted at in
number eighteen, which speaks of ‘An artificial fountain to be turned
like an hour-glass by a child in the twinkling of an eye.’ And number
nineteen plainly suggests the carriage-brake as now applied by every
coachbuilder. The two succeeding notices relate to the use of water as
a motive-power. And number twenty-three tells of a water-clock intended
not only to shew the time, but also the motions of the heavenly bodies.
Number twenty-four is a plan for discharging bullets by means of a
silent spring, ‘admirable for fire-works and astonishing of besieged
cities.’ And number twenty-six is a method for the more effectual
employment of the lever as a mechanical force. Then follows a dark hint
at the employment of pontoons for the formation of military bridges
over broad rivers; and another specification, number thirty, speaks of
a system for enabling four pieces of cannon ‘to discharge two hundred
bullets each hour’—a thing which, under the old system of loading by
manual power at the muzzle, would have been quite impossible. This is
followed by a number of different plans for writing in cipher, and for
communicating by means of various objects, such as knotted strings,
fringes, bracelets, gloves, &c., and by the smell, taste, and touch.
Number forty-four is a way ‘To make a key of a chamber-door which to
your sight hath its wards and rose-pipe but paper-thick, and yet at
pleasure in a minute of an hour shall become a perfect pistol, capable
to shoot through a breast-plate commonly of carbine-proof, with prime,
powder, and firelock, undiscoverably in a stranger’s hand.’ Such a
diabolical machine in the possession of one of the many unscrupulous
gentlemen of the period, would indeed have been a murderous weapon
if used freely in the dimly lighted streets of London. Scarcely less
unpleasant must have been the Venetian instrument for noiselessly
discharging a poisoned needle at an unsuspecting enemy.
Next come specifications headed respectively ‘A most conceited
tinder-box,’ ‘An artificial bird,’ and ‘An hour water-ball;’ the last
of which speaks of a ball of any metal, ‘which, thrown into a pool or
pail of water, shall presently rise from the bottom, and constantly
shew, by the superficies of the water, the hour of the day or night,
never rising more out of the water than just to the minute it sheweth
of each quarter of the hour; and, if by force kept under water, yet the
time is not yet lost, but recovered as soon as it is permitted to rise
to the superficies of the water.’ Number forty-eight is the description
of an improved staircase, and number forty-nine of ‘A portable engine,
in way of a tobacco tongs, whereby a man may get over a wall, or get
up again being come down, finding the coast proving unsecure unto
him.’ Then there is ‘A pocket ladder,’ ‘A rule of gradation’ useful
for cipher-writing, ‘A mystical jangling of bells’ for the conveyance
of private intelligence, and three notices relating to ‘water-scrues.’
Number fifty-six is entitled ‘An advantageous change of centers;’ and
respecting it the Marquis says: ‘A most incredible thing if not seen,
but tried before the late king of blessed memory, in the Tower by my
directions, two extraordinary ambassadors accompanying His Majesty, and
the Dukes of Richmond and Hamilton, with most of the court, attending
him. The wheel was fourteen feet over, and forty weights of fifty
pounds apiece. Sir William Balfore, then lieutenant of the Tower, can
justify it with several others. They all saw that no sooner these
great weights passed the diameter line of the lower side but they hung
a foot further from the center, nor no sooner passed the diameter
line of the upper side but they hung a foot nearer. Be pleased to
judge the consequence.’ In this modest request the Marquis appears to
shroud a hint that he has discovered the secret of perpetual motion,
which, however, has like all other perpetual-motion schemes, failed in
practice.
Specification number fifty-eight is certainly in some measure
responsible for the modern revolver, telling as it does of a method
‘whereby a pistol may be made to discharge a dozen times with one
loading, and without so much as once new priming requisite, or to
change it out of one hand into the other, or stop one’s horse.’ And the
next notices are for the application of similar systems to carabines,
muskets, arquebusses, and crocks or ship-muskets, and of a different
method for sakers. In these ideas we may recognise indeed the first
principles not only of the revolver, but also of the Winchester rifle
and of the mitrailleuse in its various forms. Warfare has recently been
revolutionised by inventions of this kind; and the conditions of naval
warfare especially are now likely to be altered by the arrangement
which practically places the whole broadside of a vessel under the
control of one man. For this latter improvement we may find the idea in
the Marquis’s plan by which ‘one man in the cabbin may govern the whole
side of ship-muskets, to the number, if need require, of two or three
thousand shots.’ After devoting several notices to the various aspects
of this subject, the noble inventor complacently remarks: ‘When first
I gave my thoughts to make guns shoot often, I thought there had been
but one only exquisite way inventible, yet by several trials and much
charge I have perfectly tried all these.’ The necessary experiments
appear to have left him with an old cannon or two upon his hands, as
the next and most important specification shews that the scientific
nobleman nearly succeeded in blowing himself up, and so concluding his
investigations. He calls it ‘A fire water-work;’ and probably that
remarkable name expresses, as well as any other might, the Marquis’s
‘admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire, not by
drawing or sucking it upwards, for that must be as the philosopher
calleth it, _intra sphæram activitatis_, which is but at such a
distance. But,’ he emphatically continues, ‘this way hath no bounder,
if the vessels be strong enough.’
Then he goes on to give us what seems to be the earliest record of
the employment of steam-power in England. ‘I have taken,’ he says,
‘a piece of a whole cannon, whereof the end was burst, and filled it
three-quarters full of water, stopping and scruing up the broken end,
as also the touch-hole; and making a constant fire under it, within
twenty-four hours it burst and made a great crack. So that having a way
to make my vessels, so that they are strengthened by the force within
them, and the one to fill after the other, I have seen the water run
like a constant fountain-stream forty feet high; one vessel of water,
rarefied by fire, driveth up forty of cold water. And a man that tends
the work is but to turn two cocks; that, one vessel of water being
consumed, another begins to force and re-fill with cold water, and
so successively, the fire being tended and kept constant, which the
self-same person may likewise abundantly perform in the interim between
the necessity of turning the said cocks.’ Following this are four
notices relating to improvements for locks to chests and safes, one
relating to a drawbridge, and one treating of what the Marquis calls ‘A
conceited door’—namely one which will open either inwards or outwards.
Two paragraphs further on comes the short specification, ‘How to make
a man to fly; which I have tried with a little boy of ten years old
in a barn, from one end to the other, on a hay-mow.’ The last clause
is certainly acceptable; for it justifies a hope that the poor little
fellow did not break his neck in the pursuit of science. The three
succeeding notices are entitled respectively ‘A continually going
watch,’ ‘A total locking of cabinet-boxes,’ and ‘Light pistol barrels;’
and the headings serve to demonstrate at least the versatility of
the author. Next come two methods for carrying secret correspondence
without observation, an idea for the economisation of labour in rasping
hartshorn, and the specification of a calculating machine. These are
followed by notices of two barbarous engines, respectively called ‘An
untoothsome pear’ and ‘An imprisoning chair,’ of a candle-moulding
machine, and of a talkative artificial head, the _modus operandi_ of
which we take the liberty of smiling at. The Marquis states that his
invention would answer in French, Latin, Welsh, Irish, or English, any
question put to it, and then shut its mouth until the next question
was asked. It cannot be doubted that if the artificial head were
so life-like as to be able to answer questions, it would also do a
little talking on its own account. The noble Lord seems at this period
to have been suffering from an attack of moral depravity; for the
incredible notice of the brazen head is followed by two specifications
of methods for cheating at cards and dice respectively; and a little
lower down, we come upon ‘a little engine portable in one’s pocket,
which placed to any door, without any noise but one crack, openeth
any door or gate.’ Number ninety-three is the specification of an
engine for raising sunken ships; and at the end of the long catalogue
are some mysterious notices of a machine which the Marquis modestly
calls ‘a semi-omnipotent engine,’ and of two other machines which
conjointly seem to hint at some knowledge of hydraulic power of which
the discoverer was particularly proud. ‘I deem this invention,’ he
says, ‘to crown my labours, to reward my expenses, and make my thoughts
acquiesce in way of further inventions;’ and he concludes by hinting
at leaving to posterity a book wherein his inventions, ‘with the shape
and form of all things belonging to them, should be printed by brass
plates.’
And so we will take leave of the inventive nobleman, who, though
apparently not always too veracious, was decidedly a genius. It is
probably owing to the fact of his having lived in an inappreciative
age that he is to this day usually placed on a level with the fabulous
Academicians of Laputa, rather than among such men as Franklin,
Arkwright, and Watt; but on the other hand, it is not unlikely that had
his Century of Inventions been judiciously reduced to a score, or even
a dozen, the Marquis of Worcester’s reputation among his contemporaries
might have stood proportionately higher.