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[Illustration:

  _Sir W. Beechy._       _I. J. Hinchliff._

_James Watt._]




  A
  HISTORY
  OF
  INVENTIONS, DISCOVERIES,
  AND ORIGINS.

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

  TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN,
  BY WILLIAM JOHNSTON.


  Fourth Edition,

  CAREFULLY REVISED AND ENLARGED BY
  WILLIAM FRANCIS, Ph.D., F.L.S.,
  EDITOR OF THE CHEMICAL GAZETTE;
  AND
  J. W. GRIFFITH, M.D., F.L.S.,
  LICENTIATE OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS.


  VOL. II.


  LONDON:
  HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
  1846.




  PRINTED BY RICHARD AND JOHN E. TAYLOR,
  RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET.




CONTENTS.


                                                            Page
  The Steam-Engine, and Discoveries of James Watt              v
  Lending and Pawnbroking                                      1
  Chemical Names of Metals                                    23
  Zinc                                                        32
  Carp                                                        46
  Camp-mills                                                  55
  Mirrors                                                     56
  Glass-cutting. Etching on Glass                             84
  Soap                                                        92
  Madder                                                     108
  Jugglers, Rope-dancers, Automata, etc.                     115
  Artificial Ice. Cooling Liquors                            142
  Hydrometer                                                 161
  Lighting of Streets                                        172
  Night-watch                                                185
  Plant-skeletons                                            195
  Bills of Exchange                                          203
  Tin. Tinning                                               206
  Sowing-machines                                            230
  Manganese                                                  235
  Prince Rupert’s Drops. Lacrymæ Vitreæ                      241
  Fire-engines                                               245
  Indigo                                                     258
  Vanes. Weathercocks                                        281
  Gilding                                                    290
  Fur Dresses                                                296
  Steel                                                      324
  Stamping-works                                             333
  Kitchen Vegetables                                         336
  Knitting Nets and Stockings. Stocking-Loom                 355
  Hops                                                       376
  Black Lead                                                 388
  Sal-Ammoniac                                               396
  Forks                                                      407
  Lottery. Tontine                                           414
  Bologna Stone                                              429
  Foundling Hospitals                                        434
  Orphan Houses                                              449
  Infirmaries. Hospitals for Invalids. Field Lazarettos      454
  Cock-fighting                                              473
  Saltpetre. Gunpowder. Aquafortis                           482
  Book-censors                                               512
  Exclusive Privilege for Printing Books                     518
  Catalogues of Books                                        522
  Ribbon-Loom                                                527
  Guns. Gun-Locks                                            533




THE STEAM-ENGINE,

AND THE DISCOVERIES OF JAMES WATT.


Although the plan of this new edition of Beckmann’s ‘History of
Inventions and Discoveries’ was to confine it to the subjects treated
of in the original work, yet we feel it imperative to make an exception
in favour of the _Steam-Engine_, the most important of all modern
inventions.

The power of steam was not entirely unknown to the ancients, but
before the æra rendered memorable by the discoveries of JAMES WATT,
the steam-engine, which has since become the object of such universal
interest, was a machine of extremely limited power, inferior in
importance and usefulness to most other mechanical agents used as
prime movers. Hero of Alexandria, who lived about 120 years before the
birth of Christ, has left us the description of a machine, in which a
continued rotatory motion was imparted to an axis by a blast of steam
issuing from lateral orifices in arms placed at right angles to it.
About the beginning of the seventeenth century, a French engineer, De
Caus, invented a machine by which a column of water might be raised
by the pressure of steam confined in the vessel, above the water to
be elevated; and in 1629, Branca, an Italian philosopher, contrived a
plan of working several mills by a blast of steam against the vanes;
from the descriptions, however