Blotting-paper was discovered purely by accident. Some ordinary
paper was being made one day at a mill in Berkshire when a
careless workman forgot to put in the sizing material. It may
be imagined what angry scenes would take place in that mill, as
the whole of the paper made was regarded as being quite useless.
The proprietor of the mill desired to write a note shortly
afterward, and he took a piece of waste paper, thinking it was
good enough for the purpose. To his intense annoyance, the ink
spread all over the paper. All of a sudden there flashed over
his mind the thought that this paper would do instead of sand
for drying ink, and he at once advertised his waste paper as
“blotting.”
There was such a big demand that the mill ceased to make
ordinary paper and was soon occupied making blotting only, the
use of which spread to all countries. The result now is that the
descendant of the discoverer owns the largest mills in the world
for the manufacture of the special kind of paper. The reason the
paper is of use in drying ink is that really it is a mass of
hair-like tubes, which suck up liquid by capillary attraction.
If a very fine glass tube is put into water the liquid will rise
in it owing to capillary attraction. The art of manufacturing
blotting-paper has been carried to such a degree that the
product has wonderful absorbent qualities.--Boston _Herald_.
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* * * * *
Whether this story be true or legendary, it is a fact that many
great discoveries have been the result of happy accident; or, as the
Christian will prefer to say, the result of Providence:
It is said that the two Jansen boys had placed the spectacle
lenses, with which they were playing, at the proper distances
apart and were looking through them at the weather-cock on
the top of a distant church steeple. They were surprized at
discovering two things; first, that the weather-cock appeared
upside down; and, second, it could be seen much more distinctly
through the glasses than with the naked eye. Of course, they
called the attention of their father to this curious discovery.
Jansen, who was an intelligent man, and well acquainted with
the properties of lenses as they were known at that early
time, constructed a telescope based on the discovery of his
sons.--EDWIN J. HOUSTON, “The Wonder-book of Light.”
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