Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and ScienceFyfe, J. Hamilton (James Hamilton)
History
Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science
Fyfe, J. Hamilton (James Hamilton)
Inventions -- History; Inventors; Technology -- England -- 19th century
thousands of his countrymen, besides placing within the reach of even
the humblest of them good serviceable earthenware for household use.
The success of his white stoneware was such, that he was able to quit
the little thatched house he had formerly occupied, and open shop in
larger and more imposing premises. He increased the number of his hands,
and drove an extensive and growing trade. He was not content to halt
after the discovery of the white stoneware. On the contrary, the success
he had already attained only impelled him to further efforts to improve
the trade he had taken up, and which now became quite a passion with
him. When he devoted himself to any particular effort in connection with
it, his first thought was always how to turn out the very best article
that could be made--his last thought was whether it would pay him or
not. He stuck up for the honour of old England, and maintained that
whatever enterprise could be achieved, that English skill and enterprise
was competent to do. Although he had never had any education himself
worth speaking of, his natural shrewdness and keen faculty of
observation supplied his deficiencies in that respect; and when he
applied himself, as he now did, to the study of chemistry, with a view
to the improvement of the pottery art, he made rapid and substantial
progress, and passed muster creditably even in the company of men of
science and learning. He contributed many valuable communications to the
Royal Society, and invented a thermometer for measuring the higher
degrees of heat employed in the various arts of pottery.
Again his premises proved too confined for his expanding trade, and he
removed to a larger establishment, and there perfected that
cream-coloured ware with which Queen Charlotte was so delighted, that
she ordered a whole service of it, and commanding that it should be
called after her--the Queen's Ware, and that its inventor should receive
the title of the "Royal Potter."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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