A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins (Vol. 1&2). Johann Beckmann

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 Palladius657:—“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 Ruer658; 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. Pliny659 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 Vitruvius660, 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 period661: 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 amethysts662. 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 century663. 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 Stetten664 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 Portugal665. 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 1545666. Soon after the celebrated Henry Ranzau caused the first mill of this kind to be built in Holstein667. 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 description668. 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 travels669. It may here be asked whether the Dutch had such mills first, as is commonly believed670. The first saw-mill was erected in Holland at Saardam, in the year 1596; and the invention of it is ascribed to Cornelis Cornelissen671; 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 up672. The first mill of this kind in Sweden was erected in the year 1653673. 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 London674, 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 populace675. СКАЧАТЬ