Invention and Discovery: Curious Facts and Characteristic SketchesAnonymous
History
Invention and Discovery: Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches
Anonymous
Inventions
Bulwer, in his romance of _Zanoni_, introduces a mirror of this kind;
and every tale of superstition has its magic glass. It is worth while to
compare Dee's speculum with the celebrated ink mirror described in
Lane's work on the _Modern Egyptians_; it may, at least, illustrate the
curious inquiry upon coincident superstitions.
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VOYAGE OF MANUFACTURE.
The produce of our factories has preceded even our most enterprising
travellers. Captain Clapperton saw at the court of the Sultan Bello, in
the interior of Africa, pewter dishes with the London stamp, and had at
the royal table a piece of meat served up on a white wash-hand basin of
English manufacture. The cotton of India is conveyed by British ships
round half our planet, to be woven by British skill in the factories of
Lancashire. It is again set in motion by British capital, and
transported to the very plains whereon it grew; and is repurchased by
the lords of the soil which gave it birth, at a cheaper price than that
at which their coarser machinery enables them to manufacture it
themselves. At Calicut, (in the East Indies,) whence the cotton cloth
called calico derives its name, the price of labour is a fraction of
that in England, yet the market is supplied from British looms.
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SIR DAVID BREWSTER'S KALEIDOSCOPE.
The idea of this instrument, constructed for the purpose of creating and
exhibiting a variety of beautiful and perfectly symmetrical forms, first
occurred to Sir David Brewster in 1814, when he was engaged in
experiments on the polarization of light, by successive reflections
between plates of glass. The reflectors were, in some instances,
inclined to each other; and he had occasion to remark the circular
arrangement of the images of a candle round a centre, or the
multiplication of the sectors formed by the extremities of the glass
plates. In repeating, at a subsequent period, the experiments of M. Biot
on the action of fluids upon light, Sir David Brewster placed the fluids
in a trough, formed by two plates of glass, cemented together at an
angle; and the eye being necessarily placed at one end, some of the
cement, which had been pressed through between the plates, appeared to
be arranged into a regular figure. The remarkable symmetry which it
presented led to Dr. Brewster's investigation of the cause of this
phenomenon; and in so doing, he discovered the leading principles of the
kaleidoscope.
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