Inventions in the century

When the nineteenth century dawned, men were making brick in the same way for the most part that they were fifty centuries before. It is recorded in the eleventh chapter of Gene...

Franklin in the eighteenth century defined electricity as consisting of particles of matter incomparably more subtle than air, and which pervaded all bodies. At the close of the...

“Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared, That underneath had veins of liquid fire Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude With wondrous art founded the massy ore; Severing...

Although the progress in the invention of fire-arms of all descriptions seems slow during the ages preceding the 19th century, yet it will be found on investigation that no art...

That Prometheus stole fire from heaven to give it to man is perhaps as authentic an account of the invention of fire as has been given. It is also reported that he brought it to...

“Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam! afar Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; Or in wide waving wings expanded bear The flying chariot through the field of air.”

It was Pliny who wrote, at the beginning of the Christian era, that “All the usages of civilised life depend in a remarkable degree upon the employment of paper. At all events t...

Neither the historic nor prehistoric records find man without musical instruments of some sort. They are as old as religion, and have been found wherever evidence of religious r...

“His duties call upon him to devise the means for surmounting obstacles of the most formidable kind. He has to work in the water, over the water, and under the water; to cause s...

_Spinning_:--A bunch of combed fibre fixed in the forked end of a stick called a distaff, held under the left arm, while with the right forefinger and thumb the housewife or mai...

When prehistoric men had only stone implements, with which to do their work, they built aqueducts, reservoirs and deep wells which rival in extent many great similar works that...

“Man is a tool-using animal. Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half square foot, insecurely enough; has to str...

“The march of the human mind is slow,” exclaimed Burke in his great speech on “Conciliation with the Colonies.” It was at the beginning of the last quarter of the 18th century t...

The sun-dial, by which time was measured by the shadow cast from a pin, rod or pillar upon a graduated horizontal plate--the graduations consisting of twelve equal parts, in whi...

Chemistry, having for its field the properties and changes of matter, has excited more or less attention ever since men had the power to observe, to think, and to experiment.

In surveying the wonderful road along which have travelled the toiling inventors, until the splendid fields of the present century have been reached, the mind indulges in contra...

When the harvest is ended and the golden stores of grains and fruits are gathered, then the question arises what shall be next done to prepare them for food and for shipment to...

If the farmer, toward the close of the 18th century, tired with the sickle and the scythe for cutting his grass and grain, had looked about for more expeditious means, he would...

Allusion has been made to the stupendous buildings and works of the ancients and of the middle ages; the immense multitude of workers and great extent of time and labour employe...

We referred in the last chapter to the fact that metal when it came from the melting and puddling furnace was formerly rolled into sheets; but, when the manufacturers and consum...

The high castellated bows and sterns and long prows of _The Great Harry_, of the seventeenth century, and its successors in the eighteenth, with some moderation of cumbersome ma...

The history of inventions is the history of new and useful contrivances made by man for practical purposes. The history of scientific discoveries is the record of new things fou...

It is interesting to speculate how prehistoric man came to use the skin of the beasts of the field for warmth and shelter. Originally no doubt, and for untold centuries, the use...

As with leather, so with stone, the hand tools and hard labour have not changed in principle since the ancient days. The hammer for breaking, the lever for lifting, the saw for...

So, in the humble but extensive art of _broom-making_, men and women worked along through ages binding with their hands the supple twigs of trees or bushes, or of corn, by thong...

The Egyptians were the earliest and greatest agriculturists, and from them the art was learned by the Greeks. Greece in the days of her glory greatly improved the art, and some...

The reflecting observer delights occasionally to shift the scenes of the present stage and bring to the front the processions of the past. That famous triumphal one, for instanc...

“Behold, a sower went forth to sow, and when he sowed some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: some fell on stony places where they had not much...

Prior to the century safes were not constructed to withstand the test of intense heat. Efforts were numerous, however, to render them safe against the entrance of thieves, but t...

“How wonderful that sunbeams absorbed by vegetation in the primordial ages of the earth and buried in its depths as vegetable fossils through immeasurable eras of time, until sy...

So far as machinery is concerned for converting wood into furniture, the same has been anticipated in the previous chapter, but much remains to be said about the articles of fur...

Theories and Definitions.--Franklin’s and a Modern One.-- Varieties of the Force.--Generation.--Dynamic Energy.-- Discoveries before the Nineteenth Century.--Magnetism and Elect...

This Art Slow in Growth, but no Art Progressed Faster.--The Incentives to its Development.--The Greatest Instruments in the New Civilisation.--Peace and its Fruits Established b...

Paper-making Preceded the Art of Printing.--The Wasp Preceded Man.--The Chinese, the Hindoos, Egyptians, and other Orientals had Invented Both Arts.--History of Papyrus.--Parchm...

The Antiquity of the Art.--The “Lost Arts” Rediscovered.-- The Earliest Forms of Smelting Furnaces.--Ancient Iron and Steel.--India and Africa.--Early Spain and the Catalan Furn...

Brickmaking from the Earliest Ages to Nineteenth Century.-- Pottery, its Origin Unknown.--Its Evolution.--Women the First Inventors in Ceramic and Textile Arts.--Progress of Man...

Chemistry among the Ancients.--Egyptians.--Phœnicians.-- Israelites.--Greeks and Romans.--Chinese.--Became a Science in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.--Libavius.--Van...

Musical Instruments Old as Religion.--Abounded before the Lyre of Apollo or the Harp of Orpheus.--Their Evolution.--To Meet Wants and Growing Tastes.--Nineteenth Century and the...

Contrast of Prehistoric Labour and Implements and Modern Tools.--The Ages of Stone, Bronze, Iron, and the Age of Wood.--The Slow Growth of Wood-working Inventions.--Tools of the...

“Man is a Tool-using Animal, of which Truth, Clothes are but one Example.”--Form of Needle not Changed until 1775.-- Weisenthal.--Embroidery Needle.--Saint’s Sewing Machine, 179...

Inventions and Discoveries.--Distinctions and Contrast.--The One, Useful Contrivances of Man; the Other, New Things Found in Nature.--Galileo and the Telescope.--Newton and the...

Metal Working Tools One of the Glories of 19th Century.--Wood Working and Metal Working.--Ancient and Modern Lathe.--Turning Metal Lathe.--A Lost Art in Use in Egypt and in Solo...

Time Measuring Instruments of Antiquity.--Sun-dial.--Clepsydra, Hour-glass, Graduated Candle.--Plato’s Bell.--The Clepsydra of Ctesibius.--Incense Sticks of Chinese.--Sun-dials...

The Slow March of the Human Mind.--Burke.--The Age of Mechanical Inventions not until nearly Watt’s Steam Engine.--Review of “Learning” until that Time.--Motor Engines not Produ...

Old as the Thirst of Man.--Prehistoric Inventions.--China.-- Pliny’s Record.--Egyptian, Carthaginian, Greek and Roman Water Works.--“Pneumatics of Hero.”--Overshot, Undershot, a...

The Distaff and the Spindle, without a Change from Ancient Days to Middle of Fourteenth Century.--Ancient and Modern Cloth Making.--Woman the Natural Goddess of the Art.--The An...

Leather and Prehistoric Man.--Earliest Implements and Processes Forerunners of Modern Inventions.--Modern Leather Unknown to the Earliest Races.--Tanning.--Leathers of Different...

Harvesting in Ancient Times.--The Sickle.--Pliny’s Machine.-- Now the Clover Header.--Palladius’ Description.--Improved in 1786.--Scotchman’s Grain Cradle in 1794.--The Seven An...

Harvest Ended, Comes the Preparation of Grain and Fruits for Food.--Cleaning.--Separating.--Grinding.--Fanning Mills and Sir Walter Scott.--The Rudimentary Mills.--Egyptian.--He...

The Duties of a Civil Engineer.--Great Engineering of the Past.--The Divisions.--Steam.--Mining.--Hydraulic.-- Electrical.--Marine.--Bridge Making, Its Development.--First Arche...

Prometheus and the Modern Match.--1680, Godfrey Hanckwitz Invented First Phosphorous Match.--Other Forms of Matches.-- Promethean Matches in 1820.--John Walker.--Lucifer.--Tons...

Ancient Tools and the Art of Building.--The Parthenon.-- Aqueducts of Rome.--Tombs of India.--Halls of Alhambra.-- Gothic Cathedrals.--Steam First Drew Coal, then Sawed Wood and...

What Artificial Light has done for Man.--Its Condition before the Nineteenth Century.--Experiments of Dr. Clayton, Hon. R. Boyle, Dr. Hales, Bishop Watson, Lord Dundonald, Dr. R...

“Ships are but Boards.”--“The Great Harry.”--Noah’s Ark the Prototype of the Modern “Whale-back.”--Phœnicians.-- Northmen.--Dutch, French, English, and American Types.-- Ninetee...

The Egyptians the Earliest and Greatest Agriculturists.-- Rome and Farming.--Cato, Varro, Virgil.--Columella.--Pliny.-- Palladius.--The Decline of Agriculture.--Northern Barbari...

The Sowing of Grain.--The Sower of the Parables.--His Art and its Defects Lasted until Nineteenth Century.--The Problems to be Solved.--Assyrian and Chinese Seeding Implements.-...

Universal Supply of Convenient and Ornamental Furniture Due to Modern Inventions and Machinery.--The Furniture of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.--Tables.--Modern Improvements...

Review of Conveyances from Time of Ptolemy’s Great Procession, 270 B. C., until Nineteenth Century.--The Old Stage Coaches.-- Coaches of the Rich, the Middle Classes and the Poo...

Drudgery of Ancient Times Relieved by Modern Inventions.-- The Labour of Men and Beasts now Done by Steam Giants.-- Labour-Saving Appliances for Transportation.--Tall Buildings...

Safes, how Constructed before this Century.--Classification.-- Century Starts out to Make Safes Fireproof.--Scott in 1801.-- Marr, 1834.--Result of Great Fire in New York, 1835....

Inventions Engender Others.--Co-operative Growth.--Broom Making.--Crude Condition until the Modern Lathe, Mandrel, Shuttle and Sewing Machine.--Broom Sewing Machines.--Effect on...

Prophecy of Dr. Darwin in Eighteenth Century.--Review of the Art from Hero to James Watt.--Pumping Engines.--Road Carriages.-- Watt.--Cugnot.--Rumsey.--Fitch.--Oliver Evans.--Re...