A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2). Johann Beckmann

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СКАЧАТЬ a whole day, a week, or a month: these coaches were known by the name of carosses de remise. Others kept carriages which at a certain stated time went from one quarter of the city to another, like a kind of stages, and took up such passengers as presented themselves; and in the year 1662 some persons set up carriages with four horses, for the purpose of conveying people to the different palaces at which the court might be; these were called voitures pour la suite de la cour. The proprietors often quarreled respecting the boundaries prescribed to them by their licenses; and on this account they were sometimes united into one company, and sometimes separated. The police established useful regulations, by which the safety and cleanliness of these carriages were promoted; marks were affixed to them, by which they might be known; and young persons and women of the town were forbidden to use them192, &c.

      A particular kind of hackney carriage, peculiar to the Parisians, in the opinion of some does no great honour to their urbanity. I mean the brouettes, called sometimes roulettes, and by way of derision vinaigrettes. The body of these is almost like that of our sedans, but rolls upon two low wheels, and is dragged forwards by men. An attempt was made to introduce such machines under Louis XIII.; but the proprietors of the sedans prevented it, as they apprehended the ruin of their business. In the year 1669 they were however permitted, and came into common use in 1671, but were employed only by the common people. Dupin, the inventor of these brouettes, found means to contrive them so that they did not jolt so much as might have been expected; and he was able to conceal this art so well, that for a long time he was the only person who could make them193. The number of all the coaches at Paris is by some said to be fifteen thousand; the author of Tableau de Paris reckons the number of the hackney coaches to amount to eighteen hundred, and asserts that more than a hundred foot passengers lose their lives by them every year.

      Coaches to be let for hire were first established at London in 1625. At that time there were only twenty, which did not stand in the streets, but at the principal inns. Ten years after, however, they were become so numerous, that king Charles I. found it necessary to issue an order for limiting their number. In the year 1637 there were in London and Westminster fifty hackney coaches, for each of which no more than twelve horses were to be kept. In the year 1652 their number had increased to two hundred; in 1654 there were three hundred, for which six hundred horses were employed; in 1694 they were limited to seven hundred, and in 1715 to eight hundred194.

      Hackney coaches were first established in Edinburgh in 1673. Their number was twenty; but as the situation of the city was unfavourable for carriages, it fell in 1752 to fourteen, and in 1778 to nine, and the number of sedans increased.

      Fiacres were introduced at Warsaw, for the first time, in 1778. In Copenhagen there are a hundred hackney coaches195.

      In Madrid there are from four to five thousand gentlemen’s carriages196; in Vienna three thousand, and two hundred hackney coaches.

      At Amsterdam coaches with wheels were in the year 1663 forbidden, in order to save the expensive pavement of the streets; for coaches there, even in summer, are placed upon sledges, as those at Petersburgh are in winter. The tax upon carriages in Holland has from time to time been raised, yet the number has increased; and some years ago the coach horses in the Seven United Provinces amounted to twenty-five thousand.

      When Prince Repnin made his entrance into Constantinople in 1775, he had with him eighty coaches, and two hundred livery servants.

      [Since the former edition of this work, published in 1814, public conveyances have undergone considerable changes. Stage-coaches, which in this country had arrived at such a degree of perfection, and which, till within a few years, passed through and connected almost every small town in the United Kingdom, have now nearly disappeared in consequence of the introduction of railroads. It is also rare in London to meet with a solitary hackney coach, this class of vehicles being almost entirely superseded by the lighter one-horsed cabriolets which were first introduced as public conveyances in the year 1823. The number of hackney coaches and cabriolets now plying for hire in the streets of London amounts to 2650, of which probably not more than 250 are two-horsed coaches.

      That very useful form of public conveyance, the omnibus, which is at present met with in nearly every large town in Europe, originated in Paris in 1827. In the latter part of 1831 and the beginning of 1832, omnibuses began to ply in the streets of London. Those running from Paddington to the Bank were the earliest. Carriages, however, of a similar form were used in England as Long Stages more than forty years ago, but were discontinued as they were not found profitable. They were in most request at holiday time, by schoolmasters in the neighbourhood of London; and some even of the present generation will remember their joyous pranks on journeying home in these capacious machines.

      There are now about 900 omnibuses running in London and its immediate vicinity. The line from Paddington to the Bank is served by two companies, the London Conveyance Company, and the Paddington Association, which have mutually agreed to run forty omnibuses each. An idea of the utility of these conveyances may be formed from the fact that the receipts of each of the eighty carriages on the above line averages 1000l. per annum, in sixpences.

      Omnibuses began to run in Amsterdam in 1839.]

      WATER-CLOCKS, CLEPSYDRAS

      We are well assured that the ancients had machines by which, through the help of water, they were able to measure time197. The invention of them is by Vitruvius198 ascribed to Ctesibius of Alexandria, who lived under Ptolemy Euergetes, or about the year 245 before the Christian æra199. They were introduced at Rome by P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, in the year 594 after the building of the city, or about 157 years before the birth of Christ. How these water-clocks were constructed, or whether they were different from the clepsydras, I shall not inquire. If under the latter name we understand those measurers of time which were used in courts of justice, the clepsydra is a Grecian invention, first adopted at Rome under the third consulship of Pompey200. The most common kinds of these water-clocks all, however, corresponded in this, that the water issued drop by drop through a hole of the vessel, and fell into another, in which a light body that floated marked the height of the water as it rose, and, by these means, the time that had elapsed. They all had this failing in common, that the water at first flowed out rapidly, and afterwards more slowly, so that they required much care and regulation201.

      That ingenious machine, which we have at present under the name of a water-clock, was invented in the seventeenth century. The precise time seems to be uncertain; but had it been before the year 1643202, Kircher, who mentions all the machines of this kind then known, would in all probability have taken notice of it. It consists of a cylinder divided into several small cells, and suspended by a thread fixed to its axis in a frame on which the hour distances, found by trial, are marked out. As the water flows from the one cell into the other, it changes very slowly the centre of gravity of the cylinder, and puts it in motion203; much like the quicksilver puppets invented by the Chinese204.

      These machines must have been very scarce in France in 1691; for Graverol at that time gave a figure and description of the external parts of one, but promised to give the internal construction as soon as he should become acquainted with it205. This was the only one then in Nismes. He says, also, that they were invented a little before by an Italian Jesuit, who resided at Bologna, СКАЧАТЬ