A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins. Johann Beckmann
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Название: A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins
Автор: Johann Beckmann
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Документальная литература
isbn: 4064066382865
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185 In his Account of the German War, p. 612.
186 Examples may be seen in Frisch’s German Dictionary, where it appears that the beds which are used for raising tobacco plants are at present called Tabacks kutschen, tobacco beds. This expression is old, for I find it in Pet. Laurembergii Horticultura, Franc. 1631, p. 43.
187 Roubo, p. 457. The historian, however, gives it no name.
188 “Berlin. A kind of carriage which takes its name from the city of Berlin, in Germany; though some persons ascribe the invention of it to the Italians, and pretend to find the etymology of it in berlina, a name which the latter give to a kind of stage on which criminals are exposed to public ignominy.”—Encyclopédie, ii. p. 209.
189 Nicolai Beschreibung von Berlin, Anhang, p. 67.
190 At Rome, however, at a very early period, there appears to have been carriages to be let out for hire: Suetonius calls them (i. chap. 57) rheda meritoria, and (iv. c. 39) meritoria vehicula.
191 Charles Villerme paid in 1650, into the king’s treasury, for the exclusive privilege of keeping coaches for hire within the city of Paris, 15,000 livres.
192 A full history of the Parisian fiacres, and the orders issued respecting them, may be seen in Continuation du Traité de la Police. Paris, 1738, fol. p. 435. See also Histoire de la Ville de Paris, par Sauval, i. p. 192.
193 An account of the manner in which these brouettes were suspended may be seen in Roubo, p. 588. He places the invention of post-chaises in the year 1664.
194 Anderson’s Hist. of Commerce.
195 Haubers Beschr. von Copenhagen, p. 173.
196 Twiss’s Travels through Spain and Portugal.
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, but were brought to perfection by Taliaisson, professor of law at Toulouse, and a young clergyman named De l’Isle.
Alexander says more than once that this machine was invented at Sens in Burgundy, in 1690, by Dom Charles Vailly, a Benedictine of the brotherhood of St. Maur, and that he brought it to perfection by the assistance of a pewterer there, named Regnard. This account is in some measure confirmed by Ozanam; for he says expressly, that the first water-clocks were brought from Burgundy to Paris in 1693, and he describes one which was made of tin at Sens. Dom Charles Vailly was born at Paris in 1646, and died in 1726; he was celebrated on account of his mathematical knowledge, though he is known by no works, as he burned all his manuscripts206.
Alexander, however, who was of the same order, seems to have ascribed to his brother Benedictine an honour to which he was not entitled; for Dominic Martinelli, an Italian of Spoletto, published at Venice, in 1663, a treatise written expressly on these water-clocks, which Ozanam got translated into French by one of his friends, and caused to be printed with his additions207. This translator says that water-clocks were known in France twenty years earlier than Ozanam had imagined. It appears therefore that they were invented in Italy about the middle of the seventeenth century, and that Vailly, perhaps, may have first made them known in France208.
It may perhaps afford some pleasure to those who are fond of the history of the arts, to know that Salmon, an ingenious pewterer at Chartres in France, has given very full and ample directions how to construct and use this machineСКАЧАТЬ