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  BOHN’S STANDARD LIBRARY.

  BECKMANN’S
  HISTORY OF INVENTIONS,
  DISCOVERIES, AND ORIGINS.




“Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every
variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness
to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things
might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for
reading.... Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and
you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you
put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him
in contact with the best society in every period of history,--with
the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest
characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all
nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for
him.”--SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. _Address on the opening of the Eton Library_,
1833.

[Illustration:

  _Lud. Schmidt._      _J. J. Hinchliff._

_John Beckmann._]




  A
  HISTORY
  OF
  INVENTIONS, DISCOVERIES,
  AND ORIGINS.

  BY JOHN BECKMANN,
  PROFESSOR OF ŒCONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GÖTTINGEN.

  TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN,
  BY