STORIES OF INVENTION
_TOLD BY INVENTORS AND THEIR FRIENDS._
BY EDWARD E. HALE.
[Illustration]
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1889.
_Copyright, 1885_,
BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
PREFACE.
This little book closes a series of five volumes which I undertook some
years since, in the wish to teach boys and girls how to use for
themselves the treasures which they have close at hand in the Public
Libraries now so generally opened in the Northern States of America. The
librarians of these institutions are, without an exception, so far as I
know, eager to introduce to the young the books at their command. From
these gentlemen and ladies I have received many suggestions as the
series went forward, and I could name many of them who could have edited
or prepared such a series far more completely than I have done. But it
is not fair to expect them, in the rush of daily duty, to stop and tell
boys or girls what will be "nice books" for them to read. If they issue
frequent bulletins of information in this direction, as is done so
admirably by the librarians at Providence and at Hartford, they do more
than any one has a right to ask them for. Such bulletins must be
confined principally to helping young people read about the current
events of the day. In that case it will only be indirectly that they
send the young readers back into older literature, and make them
acquainted with the best work of earlier times.
I remember well a legend of the old Public Library at Dorchester, which
describes the messages sent to the hard-pressed librarian from the
outlying parts of the town on the afternoon of Saturday, which was the
only time when the Library was open.
"Mother wants a sermon book and another book." This was the call almost
regularly made by the messengers.
I think that many of the most accomplished librarians of to-day have
demands not very dissimilar, and that they will be glad of any
assistance that will give to either mother or messenger any hint as to
what this "other book" shall be.
It is indeed, of course, almost the first thing to be asked that boys
and girls shall learn to find out for themselves what they want, and to
rummage in catalogues, indexes, and encyclopædias for the books which
will best answer their necessities. Mr. Emerson's rule is, "Read in the
line of your genius." And the young man or maiden who can find out, in
early life, what the line of his or her genius is, has every reason to
be grateful to the teacher, or the event, or the book that has
discovered it. I have certainly hoped, in reading and writing for this
series, that there might be others of my young friends as sensible and
as bright as Fergus and Fanchon, who will be found to work out their own
salvation in these matters, and order their own books without troubling
too much that nice Miss Panizzi or that omniscient Mrs. Bodley who
manages the Library so well, and knows so well what every one in the
town has read, and what he has not read.
I had at first proposed to publish with each book a little bibliography
on the subjects referred to, telling particularly where were the
available editions and the prices at which they could be bought by young
collectors. But a little experiment showed that no such supplement could
be made, which should be of real use for most readers for whom these
books are made. The same list might be too full for those who have only
small libraries at command, and too brief for those who are fortunate
enough to use large ones. Indeed, I should like to say to such young
readers of mine as have the pluck and the sense to read a preface, that
the sooner they find out how to use the received guides in such
matters,--the very indexes and bibliographies which I should use in
making such a list for them,--why, the better will it be for them.
Such books as Poole's Index, Watt's and Brunet's Bibliographies, and the
New American Indexes, prepared with such care by the Librarians'
Association, are at hand in almost all the Public Libraries; and the
librarians will always be glad to encourage intelligent readers in the
use of them.
I should be sorry, in closing the series, not to bear my testimony to
the value of the Public Library system, still so new to us, in raising
the standard of thought and education. For thirty years I have had more
or less to do with classes of intelligent young people who have met for
study. I can say, therefore, that the habit of thought and the habit of
work of such young people now is different from what it was thirty years
ago. Of course it ought to be. You can say to a young learner now, "This
book says thus and so, but you must learn for yourself whether this
author is prejudiced or ill-informed, or not."
You can send him to the proper authorities. On almost any detail in
general history, if he live near one of the metropolitan libraries, you
can say to him, "If you choose to study a fortnight on this thing, you
will very likely know more about it than does any person in the world."
It is encouraging to young people to know that they can thus take
literature and history at first hand. It pleases them to know that "the
book" is not absolute. With such resources that has resulted which such
far-seeing men as Edward Everett and George Ticknor and Charles Coffin
Jewett hoped for,--the growth, namely, of a race of students who do not
take anything on trust. As Professor Agassiz was forever driving up his
pupils to habits of original observation in natural history, the Public
Library provokes and allures young students to like courage in original
research in matters of history and literature.
EDWARD E. HALE.
ROXBURY, April 1, 1885.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 9
II. ARCHIMEDES 20
III. FRIAR BACON 36
Of the Parents and Birth of Fryer Bacon, and
how he addicted himself to Learning, 39. How
Fryer Bacon made a Brazen Head to speak, by
the which he would have walled England about
with Brass, 41. How Fryer Bacon by his Art
took a Town, when the King had lain before it
three Months, without doing it any Hurt, 45.
How Fryer Bacon burnt his Books of Magic
and gave himself to the Study of Divinity
only; and how he turned Anchorite, 49. How
Virgilius was set to School, 53. Howe the
Emperor asked Counsel of Virgilius, how the
Night Runners and Ill Doers might be rid-out
of the Streets, 55. How Virgilius made a
Lamp that at all Times burned, 56.
IV. BENVENUTO CELLINI 58
Life of Benvenuto Cellini, 59. Benvenuto's
Autobiography, 60.
V. BERNARD PALISSY 82
Bernard Palissy the Potter, 83.
VI. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 97
Franklin's Method of Growing Better, 100.
Musical Glasses, 112.
VII. THEORISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 119
Richard Lovell Edgeworth, 119. Edgeworth's
Telegraph, 124. Mr. Edgeworth's Telegraph
in Ireland, 127. Mr. Edgeworth's Machine,
136. More of Mr. Edgeworth's Fancies, 140.
Jack the Darter, 142. A One-wheeled Chaise,
144.
VIII. JAMES WATT 146
The Newcomen Engine, 150. James Watt and
the Steam-engine, 153. The Separate Condenser,
161. Completing the Invention, 164.
Watt makes his Model, 167.
IX. ROBERT FULTON 172
X. GEORGE STEPHENSON AND THE LOCOMOTIVE 193
George Stephenson, 194.
XI. ELI WHITNEY 219
Eli Whitney, 222.
XII. JAMES NASMYTH 237
The Steam-hammer, 237. James Nasmyth, 239.
XIII. SIR HENRY BESSEMER 259
The Age of Steel, 259. Bessemer's Family, 261.
Henry Bessemer, 264. Stamped Paper, 265.
Gold Paint, 270. Bessemer Steel, 273.
XIV. THE LAST MEETING 284
Goodyear, 284.
STORIES OF INVENTION
TOLD BY INVENTORS.
I.
INTRODUCTION.
There is, or is supposed to be, somewhere in Norfolk County in
Massachusetts, in the neighborhood of the city of Boston, a rambling old
house which in its day belonged to the Oliver family. I am afraid they
were most of them sad Tories in their time; and I am not sure but these
very windows could tell the story of one or another brick-bat thrown
through them, as one or another committee of the people requested one or
another Oliver, of the old times, to resign one or another royal
commission. But a very peaceful Rowland has taken the place of those
rebellious old Olivers.
This comfortable old house is now known to many young people as the home
of a somewhat garrulous old gentleman whom they call Uncle Fritz. His
real name is Frederick Ingham. He has had a checkered life, but it has
evidently been a happy one. Once he was in the regular United States
Navy. For a long time he was a preacher in the Sandemanian connection,
where they have no ordained ministers. In Garibaldi's time he was a
colonel in the patriot service in Italy. In our civil war he held a
command in the national volunteer navy; and his scientific skill and
passion for adventure called him at one time across "the Great American
Desert," and at another time across Siberia, in the business of
constructing telegraphs. In point of fact, he is not the relation of any
one of the five-and-twenty young people who call him Uncle Fritz. But he
pets them, and they pet him. They like to make him a regular visit once
a week, as the winter goes by. And the habit has grown up, of their
reading with him, quite regularly, on some subject selected at their
first meeting after they return from the country. Either at Lady
Oliver's house, as his winter home is called, or at Little Crastis,
where he spends his summers, those selections for reading have been
made, which have been published in a form similar to that of the book
which the reader holds in his hand.
The reader may or may not have seen these books,--so much the worse for
him if he have not,--but that omission of his may be easily repaired.
There are four of them: STORIES OF WAR told by Soldiers; STORIES OF THE
SEA told by Sailors; STORIES OF ADVENTURE told by Adventurers; STORIES
OF DISCOVERY told by Discoverers.
Since the regular meetings began, of which these books are the history,
the circle of visitors has changed more or less, as most circles will,
in five years. Some of those who met are now in another world. Some of
the boys have grown to be so much like men, that they are "subduing the
world," as Uncle Fritz would say, in their several places, and that they
write home, from other latitudes and longitudes, of the Discoveries and
Adventures in which they have themselves been leaders. But younger
sisters and brothers take the places of older brothers and sisters. The
club--for it really is one--is popular, Lady Oliver's house is large,
and Uncle Fritz is hospitable. He says himself that there is always room
for more; and Ellen Flaherty, or whoever else is the reigning queen in
the kitchen, never complains that the demand is too great for her
"waffles."
Last fall, when the young people made their first appearance, the week
before Thanksgiving day, after the new-comers had been presented to
Uncle Fritz, and a chair or two had been brought in from the dining-room
to make provision for the extra number of guests, it proved that, on the
way out, John Coram, who is Tom Coram's nephew, had been talking with
Helen, who is one of the old Boston Champernoons, about the change of
Boston since his uncle's early days.
"I told her," said he to Uncle Fritz, "that Mr. Allerton was called 'the
last of the merchants,' and he is dead now."
"That was a pet phrase of his," said Uncle Fritz. "He meant that his
house, with its immense resources, simply bought and sold. He was away
for many years once. When he returned, he found that the chief of his
affairs had made an investment, from motives of public spirit, in a
Western railroad. 'I thought we were merchants,' said the fine old man,
disapproving. As he turned over page after page of the account, he found
at last that the whole investment had been lost. 'I am glad of that,'
said he; 'you will remember now that we are merchants.'"
"But surely my father is a merchant," said Julius. "He calls himself a
merchant, he is put down as a merchant in the Directory, and he buys and
sells, if that makes a man a merchant."
"All that is true," said Uncle Fritz. "But your father also invests
money in railroads; so far he is engaged in transportation. He is a
stockholder and a director in the Hecla Woollen Mills at Bromwich; so
far he is a manufacturer. He told me, the other day, that he had been
encouraging my little friend Griffiths, who is experimenting in the
conservation of electric power; so far he is an inventor, or a patron of
inventions.
"In substance, what Mr. Allerton meant when he said 'I thought we were
merchants,' was this: he meant that that firm simply bought from people
who wished to sell, and sold to people who wished to buy.
"The fact, that almost every man of enterprise in Massachusetts is now
to a certain extent a manufacturer, shows that a great change has come
over people here since the beginning of this century."
"Those were the days of Mr. Cleveland's adventures, and Mr. Forbes's,"
said Hugh.
He alluded to the trade in the Pacific, in which these gentlemen shared,
as may be read in STORIES OF ADVENTURE.
Uncle Fritz said, "Yes." He said that the patient love of Great Britain
for her colonies forbade us here from making so much as a hat or a
hob-nail while we were colonies, as it would gladly do again now. He
said that the New Englanders had a great deal of adventurous old Norse
blood in their veins, that they had plenty of ship-timber and tar. If
they could not make hob-nails they could make ships; and they made very
good ships before they had been in New England ten years.
Luckily for us, soon after the country became a country, near a hundred
years ago, the quarrels of Europe were such, that if an English ship
carried produce of the West Indies or China to Europe, France seized,
if she could, ship and cargo; if a French ship carried them, English
cruisers seized ship and cargo, if they could. So it happened that the
American ships and the American sailors, who were not at war with
England and were not at war with France, were able to carry the stores
which were wanted by all the world. The wars of Napoleon were thus a
steady bounty for the benefit of the commerce of America. When they were
well over, we had become so well trained to commerce here, that we could
build the best ships in the world; and we thought we had the best seamen
in the world,--certainly there were no better. Under such a stimulus,
and what followed it, our commerce, as measured by the tonnage of our
ships, was as large as that of any nation, and, if measured by the miles
sailed, was probably larger.
All this prosperity to merchants was broken up by the War of 1812,
between the United States and Great Britain. For two years and a half,
then, our intercourse with Europe was almost cut off; for the English
cruisers now captured our vessels whenever they could find them. At last
we had to make our own hob-nails, our guns, our cannon, our cotton
cloth, and our woollen cloth, if we meant to have any at all. The
farmers' wives and daughters had always had the traditions of spinning
and weaving.
When Colonel Ingham said this, Blanche nodded to Mary and Mary to
Blanche.
"That means," said the Colonel, "that you have brought dear old mother
Tucker's spinning-wheel downstairs, and have it in the corner behind
your piano, does it not?"
Blanche laughed, and said that was just what she meant.
"It does very well in 'Martha,'" said the Colonel. "And can you spin,
Blanche?"
Blanche rather surprised him by saying that she could, and the Colonel
went on with his lecture. Fergus, who is very proud of Blanche, slipped
out of the room, but was back after a minute, and no one missed him.
Here in Massachusetts some of the most skilful merchants--Appletons,
Perkinses, and Lawrences--joined hand with brave inventors like Slater
and Treadwell, and sent out to England for skilful manufacturers like
Crompton and Boott; thus there sprung up the gigantic system of
manufacture, which seems to you children a thing of course. Oddly
enough, the Southern States, which had always hated New England and New
England commerce, and had done their best to destroy it when they had a
chance, were very eager to secure a home-market for Southern cotton; and
thus, for many years after the war, they kept up such high protective
duties that foreign goods were very dear in America, and the New England
manufacturers had all the better prices.
While Uncle Fritz was saying this in substance, Ransom, the old servant,
appeared with a spinning-wheel from Colonel Ingham's music-room. The
children had had it for some charades. Kate Fogarty, the seamstress of
the Colonel's household, followed, laughing, with a great hank of flax;
and when the Colonel stopped at the interruption, Fergus said,--
"I thought, Uncle Fritz, they would all like to see how well Blanche
spins; so I asked Ransom to bring in the wheel."
And Blanche sat down without any coaxing, and made her wheel fly very
prettily, and spun her linen thread as well as her great-grandmamma
would have done. Colonel Ingham was delighted; and so were all the
children, half of whom had never seen any hand-spinning before. All of
them had seen cotton and wool spun in factories; in fact, half of them
had eaten their daily bread that day, from the profit of the factories
that for ten hours of every day do such spinning.
"Now, you see," said the well-pleased Colonel, "Blanche spins that flax
exactly as her grandmother nine generations back spun it. She spins it
exactly as Mrs. Dudley spun it in the old house where Dr. Paterson's
church stands. It is strange enough, but for one hundred and fifty years
there seems to have been no passion for invention among the New
Englanders. Now they are called a most _inventive_ people, and that bad
word has been coined for them and such as they.
"But all this is of the last century. It was as soon as they were thrown
on their own resources that they began to invent. Eli Whitney, a
Worcester County boy, graduated at Yale College in 1791. He went to
Georgia at once, to be a tutor in a planter's family; but before he
arrived, the planter had another tutor. This was a fortunate chance for
the world; for poor Whitney, disappointed, went to spend the winter at
the house of Mrs. General Greene. One day, at dinner, some guests of
hers said that cotton could never be exported with profit unless a
machine could be made to separate the seeds from the 'wool.' 'If you
want anything invented,' said Mrs. Greene, 'ask my young friend Mr.
Whitney; he will invent anything for you.' Whitney had then never seen
cotton unmanufactured. But he went to work; and before he was one year
out of college, he had invented the cotton-gin, which created an
enormous product of cotton, and, in fact, changed the direction of the
commerce of the world.
"Well, you know about other inventions. Robert Fulton, who built the
first effective steamboat, was born in Pennsylvania the same year
Whitney was born in Massachusetts.
"Hector, you are fond of imaginary conversations: write one in which
Whitney and Fulton meet, when each is twenty-one; let Daniel Boone look
in on them, and prophesy to them the future of the country, and how much
it is to owe to them and to theirs."
"I think Blanche had better write it--in a ballad," said Hector,
laughing. "It shall be an old crone spinning; and as she turns her wheel
she shall describe the Ætna Factory at Watertown."
"There shall be a _refrain_," said Wallace,--
"'Turn my wheel gayly;
Spin, flax, spin.'"
"No," said Hatty; "the refrain shall be
'Four per cent in six months,
Eight per cent in twelve.'
We are to go to Europe if the Vesuvius Mills pay a dividend. But if they
_pass_, I believe I am to scrub floors in my vacation."
"Very well," said Uncle Fritz, recalling them to the subject they had
started on. "All this is enough to show you how it is that you, who are
all New Englanders, are no longer seafaring boys or girls, exclusively
or even principally. Your great-grandmother, Alice, saved the lives of
all the crew of a Bristol trader, by going out in her father's boat and
taking her through the crooked passage between the Brewsters. You would
be glad to do it, but I am afraid you cannot."
"I should rather encourage those who go to do it," said Alice, demurely,
repeating one of their familiar jokes.
"And your great-grandfather, Seth, is the Hunt who discovered Hunt's
Reef in the Philippines. I am afraid you cannot place it on the map."
"I know I cannot," said Seth, bravely.
"No," said the old gentleman. "But all the same the reef is there. I
came to an anchor in the 'Calypso,' waiting for a southwest wind, in
sight of the breakers over it. And I wish we had the pineapples the
black people sold us there.
"All the same the New Englanders are good for something. Ten years
hence, you boys will be doing what your fathers are doing,--subduing the
world, and making it to be more what God wants it to be. And you will
not work at arms' length, as they did, nor with your own muscles."
"We have Aladdin's lamp," said Mary, laughing.
"And his ring," said Susie. "I always liked the ring one better than the
lamp one, though he was not so strong."
"He is prettier in the pictures," said George.
"Yes," said the Colonel; "we have stronger Genii than Aladdin had, and
better machinery than Prince Camaralzaman."
"I heard some one say that Mr. Corliss had added twenty-seven per cent
to the working power of the world by his _cut-off_," said Fergus.
The Colonel said he believed that was true. And this was a good
illustration of what one persevering and intelligent man can do in
bringing in the larger life and nobler purpose of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Such a man makes men cease from _labor_, which is always irksome, and
_work_ with God. This is always ennobling.
"I am ashamed to say that I do not know what a _cut-off_ is," said
Alice, who, like Seth, had been trained to "confess ignorance."
"I was going to say so," said John Rodman.
"And I,--and I,--and I," said quite a little chorus.
"We must make up a party, the first pleasant day, and go and see the
stationary engine which pumps this water for us." So the Colonel met
their confessions.
"But does not all this indicate that we might spend a few days in
looking up inventions?"
"I think we ought to," said Hatty. "Certainly we ought, if the Vesuvius
pays. Imagine me at Manchester. Imagine John Bright taking me through
his own mill, and saying to me, 'This is the rover we like best, on the
whole. Do you use this in America?' Imagine me forced to reply that I do
not know a rover when I see one, and could not tell a 'slubber' from a
'picker.'"
The others laughed, and confessed equal ignorance. "Only, John Bright
has no mills in Manchester, Hatty."
"Well, they are somewhere; and I must not eat the bread of the Vesuvius
slubbers, and not know something of the way in which slubbers came to
be."
"Very well," said Uncle Fritz, as usual recalling the conversation to
sanity. "Whom shall we read about first?"
"Tubal Cain first," said Fergus. "He seems to have been the first of the
crew."
"It was not he who found out witty inventions," said Fanchon, in a mock
_aside_.
"I should begin with Archimedes," said Uncle Fritz.
"Excellent!" said Fergus; "and then may we not burn up old Fogarty's
barn with burning-glasses?"
The children dislike Fogarty, and his barn is an eyesore to them. It
stands just beyond the hedge of the Lady Oliver garden.
"I thank Archimedes every time I take a warm bath. Did he not invent hot
baths?"
"What nonsense! He was killed by Caligula in one."
"You shall not talk such stuff.--Uncle Fritz, what books shall I bring
you?"
It would seem as if, perhaps, Uncle Fritz had led the conversation in
the direction it had taken. At least it proved that, all together on the
rolling book-rack which Mr. Perkins gave him, were the account of
Archimedes in the Cyclopædia Britannica, the account in the French
Universal Biography, the life in La Rousse's Cyclopædia, Plutarch's
Lives, and a volume of Livy in the Latin. From these together, Uncle
Fritz, and the boys and girls whom he selected, made out this little
history of Archimedes.
II.
ARCHIMEDES.
Archimedes was born in Syracuse in the year 287 B. C., and was killed
there in the year 212 B. C. He is said to have been a relation of Hiero,
King of Syracuse; but he seems to have held no formal office known to
the politicians. Like many other such men, however, from his time down
to Ericsson, he came to the front when he was needed, and served
Syracuse better than her speech-makers. While he was yet a young man, he
went to Alexandria to study; and he was there the pupil of Euclid, the
same Euclid whose Geometry is the basis of all the geometry of to-day.
While Archimedes is distinctly called, on very high authority, "the
first mathematician of antiquity," and while we have nine books which
are attributed to him, we do not have--and this is a great
misfortune--any ancient biography of him. He lived seventy-five years,
for most of that time probably in Syracuse itself; and it would be hard
to say how much Syracuse owed to his science. At the end of his life he
saved Syracuse from the Romans for three years, during a siege in which,
by his ingenuity, he kept back Marcellus and his army. At the end of
this siege he was killed by a Roman soldier when the Romans entered the
city.
The books of his which we have are on the "Sphere and Cylinder," "The
Measure of the Circle," "Conoids and Spheroids," "On Spirals,"
"Equiponderants and Centres of Gravity," "The Quadrature of the
Parabola," "On Bodies floating in Liquids," "The Psammites," and "A
Collection of Lemmas." The books which are lost are "On the Crown of
Hiero;" "Cochleon, or Water-Screw;" "Helicon, or Endless Screw;"
"Trispaston, or Combination of Wheels and Axles;" "Machines employed at
the Siege of Syracuse;" "Burning Mirror;" "Machines moved by Air and
Water;" and "Material Sphere."
As to the story of the bath-tub, Uncle Fritz gave to Hector to read the
account as abridged in the "Cyclopædia Britannica."
"Hiero had set him to discover whether or not the gold which he had
given to an artist to work into a crown for him had been mixed with a
baser metal. Archimedes was puzzled by the problem, till one day, as he
was stepping into a bath, and observed the water running over, it
occurred to him that the excess of bulk occasioned by the introduction
of alloy could be measured by putting the crown and an equal weight of
gold separately into a vessel filled with water, and observing the
difference of overflow. He was so overjoyed when this happy thought
struck him that he ran home without his clothes, shouting, 'I have found
it, I have found it,'--[Greek: Eurêka, Eurêka.]
"This word has been chosen by the State of California for its motto."
To make the story out, it must be supposed that the crown was irregular
in shape, and that the precise object was to find how much metal, in
measurement, was used in its manufacture. Suppose three cubic inches of
gold were used, Archimedes knew how much this would cost. But if three
cubic inches of alloy were used, the king had been cheated. What the
overflow of the water taught was the precise cubic size of the various
ornaments of the crown. A silver crown or a lead crown would displace as
much water as a gold crown of the same shape and ornament. But neither
silver nor lead would weigh so much as if pure gold were used, and at
that time pure gold was by far the heaviest metal known.
Fergus, who is perhaps our best mathematician, pricked up his ears when
he heard there was a treatise on the relation of the Circle to the
Square. Like most of the intelligent boys who will read this book,
Fergus had tried his hand on the fascinating problem which deals with
that proportion. Younger readers will remember that it is treated in
"Swiss Family." Jack--or is it perhaps Ernest?--remembers there, that
for the ribbon which was to go round a hat the hat-maker allowed three
times the diameter of the hat, and a little more. This "little more" is
the delicate fraction over which Archimedes studied; and Fergus, after
him. Fergus knew the proportion as far as thirty-three figures in
decimals. These are 3.141,592,653,589,793,238,462,643,383,279,502. When
Uncle Fritz asked Fergus to repeat these, the boy did it promptly,
somewhat to the astonishment of the others. He had committed it to
memory by one of Mr. Gouraud's "analogies," which are always convenient
for persons who have mathematical formulas to remember.
When those of the young people who were interested in mathematics looked
at Archimedes's solution of the problem, they found it was the same as
that they had themselves tried at school. But he carried it so far as to
inscribe a circle between two polygons, each of ninety-six sides; and
his calculation is based on the relation between the two.
Taking the "Swiss Family Robinson" statement again, Archimedes shows
that the circumference of a circle exceeds three times its diameter by a
small fraction, which is less than 10/70 and greater than 10/71 and that
a circle is to its circumscribing square nearly as 11 to 14. Those who
wish to carry his calculations farther may be pleased to know that he
found the figures 7 to 22 expressed the relation more correctly than 1
to 3 does. Metius, another ancient mathematician, used the proportion
113 to 355. If you reduce that to decimals, you will find it correct to
the sixth decimal. Remember that Archimedes and Metius had not the
convenience of the Arabic or decimal notation. Imagine yourselves doing
Metius's sum in division when you have to divide CCCLV by CXIII.
Archimedes, in fact, used the Greek notation,--which was a little better
than the Roman, but had none of the facility of ours. For every _ten_,
from 20 to 90, they had a separate character, and for every _hundred_,
and for every _thousand_. The _thousands_ were the units with a mark
underneath. Thus [Greek: a] meant 1, and [Greek: ,a] meant 1,000. To
express 113, Archimedes would have written [Greek: rig]. To express 355,
he would have written [Greek: tne]; and the place which these signs had
in the order would not have affected their value, as they do with us.
We cannot tell how the greater part of Archimedes's life was spent. But
whether he were nominally in public office or not, it is clear enough
that he must have given great help to Syracuse and her rulers, as an
engineer, long before the war in which the Romans captured that great
city. At that time Syracuse was, according to Cicero, "the largest and
noblest of the Greek cities." It was in Sicily; but, having been built
by colonists from Greece, who still spoke the Greek language, Cicero
speaks of it among Greek cities, as he would have spoken of Thurii, or
Sybaris, or the cities of "Magna Græcia,"--"great Greece," as they
called the Greek settlements in southern Italy. In the Second Punic War
Syracuse took sides against Rome with the Carthaginians, though her old
king, Hiero, had been a firm ally of the Romans. The most interesting
accounts that we have of Archimedes are in Livy's account of this war,
and in Plutarch's Life of Marcellus, who carried it on on the Roman
side. Livy says of Archimedes that he was--
"A man of unrivalled skill in observing the heavens and the stars, but
more deserving of admiration as the inventor and constructor of warlike
engines and works, by means of which, with a very slight effort, he
turned to ridicule what the enemy effected with great difficulty.
"The wall, which ran along unequal eminences, most of which were high
and difficult of access, some low and open to approach along level
vales, was furnished by him with every kind of warlike engine, as seemed
suitable to each particular place. Marcellus attacked from the
quinqueremes [his large ships] the wall of the Achradina, which was
washed by the sea. From the other ships the archers and slingers and
light infantry, whose weapon is difficult to be thrown back by the
unskilful, allowed scarce any person to remain upon the wall unwounded.
These soldiers, as they required some range in aiming their missiles
upward, kept their ships at a distance from the wall. Eight more
quinqueremes joined together in pairs, the oars on their inner sides
being removed, so that side might be placed to side, and which thus
formed ships [of double width], and were worked by the outer oars,
carried turrets built up in stories, and other battering-engines.
"Against this naval armament Archimedes placed, on different parts of
the walls, engines of various dimensions. Against the ships which were
at a distance he discharged stones of immense weight; those which were
nearer he assailed with lighter and more numerous missiles. Lastly, in
order that his own men might heap their weapons upon the enemy without
receiving any wounds themselves, he perforated the wall from the top to
the bottom with a great number of loop-holes, about a cubit in diameter,
through which some with arrows, others with scorpions of moderate size,
assailed the enemies without being seen. He threw upon their sterns some
of the ships which came nearer to the walls, in order to get inside the
range of the engines, raising up their prows by means of an iron grapple
attached to a strong chain, by means of a _tolleno_ [or derrick], which
projected from the wall and overhung them, having a heavy counterpoise
of lead which forced the line to the ground. Then, the grapple being
suddenly disengaged, the ship, falling from the wall, was by these
means, to the utter consternation of the seamen, so dashed against the
water that even if it came back to its true position it took in a great
quantity of water."
"Fancy," cried Bedford, "one of their double quinqueremes, when she had
run bravely in under the shelter of the wall. Just as the men think they
can begin to work, up goes the prow, and they all are tumbled down into
the steerage. Up she goes, and fifty rowers are on each other in a pile;
when the old pile-driver claw lets go again, and down she comes, splash
into the sea. And then Archimedes pokes his head out through one of the
holes, and says in Greek, 'How do you like that, my friends?' I do not
wonder they were discouraged."
The bold cliff of the water front of Syracuse gave Archimedes a
particular advantage for defensive operations of this sort. They are
described in more detail in Plutarch's Life of Marcellus, who was the
Roman general employed against Syracuse, and who was held at bay by
Archimedes for three years.
Here is Plutarch's account:--
Marcellus, with sixty galleys, each with five rows of oars, furnished
with all sorts of arms and missiles, and a huge bridge of planks laid
upon eight ships chained together,[1] upon which was carried the engine
to cast stones and darts, assaulted the walls. He relied on the
abundance and magnificence of his preparations, and on his own previous
glory; all which, however, were, it would seem, but trifles for
Archimedes and his machines.
These machines he had designed and contrived, not as matters of any
importance, but as mere amusements in geometry,--in compliance with King
Hiero's desire and request, some little time before, that he should
reduce to practice some part of his admirable speculations in science,
and by accommodating the theoretic truth to sensation and ordinary use,
bring it more within the appreciation of people in general. Eudoxus and
Archytas had been the first originators of this far-famed and highly
prized art of mechanics, which they employed as an elegant illustration
of geometrical truths, and as a means of sustaining experimentally, to
the satisfaction of the senses, conclusions too intricate for proof by
words and diagrams. As, for example, to solve the problem so often
required in constructing geometrical figures, "Given the two extremes to
find the two mean lines of a proportion," both these mathematicians had
recourse to the aid of instruments, adapting to their purpose certain
curves and sections of lines. But what with Plato's indignation at it,
and his invectives against it as the mere corruption and annihilation of
the one good of geometry, which was thus shamefully turning its back
upon the unembodied objects of pure intelligence, to recur to sensation,
and to ask help (not to be obtained without base subservience and
depravation) from matter; so it was that mechanics came to be separated
from geometry, and when repudiated and neglected by philosophers, took
its place as a military art.
Archimedes, however, in writing to King Hiero, whose friend and near
relative he was, had stated that, given the force, any given weight
might be moved; and even boasted, we are told, relying on the strength
of demonstration, that if there were another earth, by going into it he
could move this.
Hiero being struck with amazement at this, and entreating him to make
good this assertion by actual experiment, and show some great weight
moved by a small engine, he fixed upon a ship of burden out of the
king's arsenal, which could not be drawn out of the dock without great
labor by many men. Loading her with many passengers and a full freight,
sitting himself the while far off, with no great endeavor, but only
holding the head of the pulley in his hand and drawing the cord by
degrees, he drew the ship in a straight line, as smoothly and evenly as
if she had been in the sea.
The king, astonished at this, and convinced of the power of the art,
prevailed upon Archimedes to make him engines accommodated to all the
purposes, offensive and defensive, of a siege. These the king himself
never made use of, because he spent almost all his life in a profound
quiet and the highest affluence. But the apparatus was, in a most
opportune time, ready at hand for the Syracusans, and with it also the
engineer himself.
When, therefore, the Romans assaulted the walls in two places at once,
fear and consternation stupefied the Syracusans, believing that nothing
was able to resist that violence and those forces. But when Archimedes
began to ply his engines, he at once shot against the land forces all
sorts of missile weapons, with immense masses of stone that came down
with incredible noise and violence, against which no man could stand;
for they knocked down those upon whom they fell in heaps, breaking all
their ranks and files. In the mean time huge poles thrust out from the
walls over the ships [these were the derricks, or _tollenos_, of Livy]
sunk some by the great weights which they let down from on high upon
them; others they lifted up into the air by an iron hand or beak like a
crane's beak, and when they had drawn them up by the prow, and set them
on end upon the poop, they plunged them to the bottom of the sea. Or
else the ships, drawn by engines within, and whirled about, were dashed
against the steep rocks that stood jutting out under the walls, with
great destruction of the soldiers that were aboard them. A ship was
frequently lifted up to a great height in the air (a dreadful thing to
behold), and was rolled to and fro and kept swinging, until the mariners
were all thrown out, when at length it was dashed against the rocks, or
let fall.
At the engine that Marcellus brought upon the bridge of ships,--which
was called _Sambuca_ from some resemblance it had to an instrument of
music of that name,--while it was as yet approaching the wall, there was
discharged a piece of a rock of ten talents' weight,[2] then a second
and a third, which, striking upon it with immense force and with a noise
like thunder, broke all its foundation to pieces, shook out all its
fastenings, and completely dislodged it from the bridge. So Marcellus,
doubtful what counsel to pursue, drew off his ships to a safer distance,
and sounded a retreat to his forces on land. They then took a resolution
of coming up under the walls, if it were possible, in the night;
thinking that as Archimedes used ropes stretched at length in playing
his engines, the soldiers would now be under the shot, and the darts
would, for want of sufficient distance to throw them, fly over their
heads without effect. But he, it appeared, had long before framed for
such occasion engines accommodated to any distance, and shorter weapons;
and had made numerous small openings in the walls, through which, with
engines of a shorter range, unexpected blows were inflicted on the
assailants. Thus, when they, who thought to deceive the defenders, came
close up to the walls, instantly a shower of darts and other missile
weapons was again cast upon them. And when stones came tumbling down
perpendicularly upon their heads, and, as it were, the whole wall shot
out arrows against them, they retired.
And now, again, as they were going off, arrows and darts of a longer
range inflicted a great slaughter among them, and their ships were
driven one against another, while they themselves were not able to
retaliate in any way. For Archimedes had provided and fixed most of his
engines immediately under the wall; whence the Romans, seeing that
infinite mischiefs overwhelmed them from no visible means, began to
think they were fighting with the gods.
Yet Marcellus escaped unhurt, and, deriding his own artificers and
engineers, "What," said he, "must we give up fighting with this
geometrical Briareus, who plays pitch and toss with our ships, and with
the multitude of darts which he showers at a single moment upon us,
really outdoes the hundred-handed giants of mythology?" And doubtless
the rest of the Syracusans were but the body of Archimedes's designs,
one soul moving and governing all; for, laying aside all other arms,
with his alone they infested the Romans and protected themselves. In
fine, when such terror had seized upon the Romans that if they did but
see a little rope or a piece of wood from the wall, instantly crying out
that there it was again, that Archimedes was about to let fly some
engine at them, they turned their backs and fled, Marcellus desisted
from conflicts and assaults, putting all his hope in a long siege. Yet
Archimedes possessed so high a spirit, so profound a soul, and such
treasures of scientific knowledge, that though these inventions had now
obtained him the renown of more than human sagacity, he yet would not
deign to leave behind him any commentary or writing on such subjects;
but, repudiating as sordid and ignoble the whole trade of engineering,
and every sort of art that lends itself to mere use and profit, he
placed his whole affection and ambition in those purer speculations
where there can be no reference to the vulgar needs of life,--studies
the superiority of which to all others is unquestioned, and in which the
only doubt can be whether the beauty and grandeur of the subjects
examined or the precision and cogency of the methods and means of proof
most deserve our admiration.
It is not possible to find in all geometry more difficult and intricate
questions, or more simple and lucid explanations. Some ascribe this to
his natural genius; while others think that incredible toil produced
these, to all appearance, easy and unlabored results. No amount of
investigation of yours would succeed in attaining the proof; and yet,
once seen, you immediately believe you would have discovered it,--by so
smooth and so rapid a path he leads you to the conclusion required. And
thus it ceases to be incredible that (as is commonly told of him) the
charm of his familiar and domestic science made him forget his food and
neglect his person to that degree that when he was occasionally carried
by absolute violence to bathe, or have his body anointed, he used to
trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, and diagrams in the
oil on his body, being in a state of entire preoccupation, and, in the
truest sense, divine possession, with his love and delight in science.
His discoveries were numerous and admirable; but he is said to have
requested his friends and relations that when he was dead they would
place over his tomb a sphere containing a cylinder, inscribing it with
the ratio which the containing solid bears to the contained.
The boys were highly edified by this statement of the difficulty which
Archimedes's friends found in making him take a bath, and chaffed Jack,
who had asked if he were not the inventor of bath-tubs.
When the reading from Plutarch was over, Fergus asked if that were all,
and was disappointed that there was nothing about the setting of ships
on fire by mirrors. It is one of the old stories of the siege of
Syracuse, that he set fire to the Roman ships by concentrating on them
the heat of the sun from a number of mirrors. But this story is not in
Livy, nor is it in Plutarch, though, as has been seen, they were well
disposed to tell what they knew which was marvellous in his
achievements. It is told at length and in detail by Zonaras and
Tzetzes, two Greek writers of the twelfth century, who must have found
it in some ancient writers whose works we do not now have.
"Archimedes," says Zonaras,[3] "having received the rays of the sun on a
mirror, by the thickness and polish of which they were reflected and
united, kindled a flame in the air, and darted it with full violence
upon the ships, which were anchored within a certain distance, in such a
manner that they were burned to ashes."
The same writer says that Proclus, a celebrated "mathematician" of
Constantinople, in the sixth century, at the siege of Constantinople set
fire to the Thracian fleet by means of brass mirrors. Tzetzes is yet
more particular. He says that when the Roman galleys were within a
bow-shot of the city walls, Archimedes brought together hexagonal
specula (mirrors) with other smaller ones of twenty-four facets, and
caused them to be placed each at a proper distance; that he moved these
by means of hinges and plates of metal; that the hexagon was bisected by
the meridian of summer and winter; that it was placed opposite the sun;
and that a great fire was thus kindled, which consumed the ships.
Now, it is to be remembered that these are the accounts of writers who
were not so good mechanics as Archimedes. It should be remembered, also,
that in the conditions of war then, the distance at which ships would be
anchored in a little harbor like that of Syracuse was not great. By
"bow-shot" would be meant the distance at which a bow would do serious
damage. Doubtful as the story of Zonaras and Tzetzes seems, it received
unexpected confirmation in the year 1747 from a celebrated experiment
tried by the naturalist Buffon.
After encountering many difficulties, which he had foreseen with great
acuteness, and obviated with equal ingenuity, Buffon at length succeeded
in repeating Archimedes's performance. In the spring of 1747 he laid
before the French Academy a memoir which, in his collected works,
extends over upwards of eighty pages. In this paper he described himself
as in possession of an apparatus by means of which he could set fire to
planks at the distance of 200 and even 210 feet, and melt metals and
metallic minerals at distances varying from 25 to 40 feet. This
apparatus he describes as composed of 168 plain glasses, silvered on the
back, each six inches broad by eight inches long. These, he says, were
ranged in a large wooden frame, at intervals not exceeding the third of
an inch, so that, by means of an adjustment behind, each should be
movable in all directions independent of the rest; the spaces between
the glasses being further of use in allowing the operator to see from
behind the point on which it behooved the various disks to be converged.
In this last statement there is a parallel with that of Tzetzes, who
speaks of the division of Archimedes's mirrors.
At the present moment naturalists are paying great attention to plans
for the using of the heat of the sun. It is said that on any county in
the United States, twenty by thirty miles square, there is wasted as
much heat of the sun as would drive, if we knew how to use it, all the
steam-engines in the world.
Fergus asked Uncle Fritz if he believed that Archimedes threw seven
hundred pounds of stone from one of his machines. The largest modern
guns throw shot of one thousand pounds, and it is only quite recently
that any such shot have been used.