Читать книгу A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins - Johann Beckmann - Страница 6
ОглавлениеTRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
That the arts had their rise in the East, and that they were conveyed thence to the Greeks, and from them to the Romans, is universally admitted. Respecting the inventions and discoveries however of the earliest ages, nothing certain is known. Many of those most useful in common life must have been the production of periods when men were little acquainted with letters, or any sure mode of transmitting an account of their improvements to succeeding generations. The taste which then prevailed of giving to every thing a divine origin, rendered traditional accounts fabulous; and the exaggeration of poets tended more and more to make such authorities less worthy of credit. A variety of works also, which might have supplied us with information on this subject, have been lost; and the relations of some of those preserved are so corrupted and obscure, that the best commentators have not been able to illustrate them. This in particular is the case with many passages in Pliny, an author who appears to have collected with the utmost diligence whatever he thought useful or curious, and whose desire of communicating knowledge seems to have been equal to his thirst for acquiring it.
Of all those nations whose history has been preserved, the most distinguished are certainly the Greeks and the Romans; but, as far as can be judged at this remote period, the former were superior to the latter in point of invention. The Romans indeed seem to have known little, except what they borrowed from the Grecians; and it is evident, by their sending their young men of rank to finish their education in Greece, that they considered that country as the seat of the arts and the sciences, and as a school where genius would be excited by the finest models, while the taste was corrected and formed. From some hints given however by Pliny and other writers, we have reason to conclude that the Romans possessed more knowledge of the arts than the moderns perhaps are willing to allow, and that some inventions, considered as new, may be only old ones revived and again rendered useful.
When Rome, abandoned to luxury and vice, became an easy prey to those hordes of barbarians who overran the empire, her arts shared in the general wreck, and were either entirely lost, or for a time forgotten. The deplorable state of ignorance in which Europe was afterwards plunged during several centuries, retarded their revival; and it was not till a late period, when favoured and protected by a few men of superior genius, that they began to be again cultivated. It cannot however be denied, that several important discoveries, altogether unknown to the ancients, which must have had considerable influence on the general state of society, were made in ages that can hardly be exempted from the appellation of barbarous. As a proof of this may be mentioned the invention of paper1, painting in oil2, the mariner’s compass3, gunpowder4, printing5, and engraving on copper6. After the invention of the compass and printing, two grand sources were opened for the improvement of science. In proportion as navigation was extended, new objects were discovered to awaken the curiosity and excite the attention of the learned; and the ready means of diffusing knowledge, afforded by the press, enabled the ingenious to make them publicly known. Ignorance and superstition, the formidable enemies of philosophy in every age, began soon to lose some of that power which they had usurped; and states, forgetting their former blind policy, adopted improvements which their prejudice had before condemned.
Though it might be expected that the great share which new inventions and discoveries have at all times had in effecting such happy changes among mankind would have secured them a distinguished place in the annals of nations, we find with regret, that the pen of history has been more employed in recording the crimes of ambition and the ravage of conquerors, than in preserving the remembrance of those who, by improving science and the arts, contributed to increase the conveniences of life, and to heighten its enjoyments. So little indeed has hitherto been done towards a history of inventions and discoveries, that the rise and progress of part of those even of modern times is involved in considerable darkness and obscurity: of some the names of the inventors are not so much as known, and the honour of others is disputed by different nations; while the evidences on both sides are so imperfect, that it is almost impossible to determine to which the palm is due. To Professor Beckmann, therefore, those fond of such researches are much indebted for the pains he has been at to collect information on this subject; and though he has perhaps not been able to clear up every doubt respecting the objects on which he treats, he has certainly thrown much light on many curious circumstances hitherto buried in oblivion.
The author, with much modesty, gives to this work in the original the title of only Collections towards a History of Inventions: but as he has carefully traced out the rise and progress of all those objects which form the subject of his inquiry, from the earliest periods of their being known, as far as books supplied information, and arranged his matter in chronological order, the original title may admit, without being liable to much criticism, of the small variation adopted in the translation. The author, indeed, has not in these volumes comprehended every invention and discovery, but he has given an account of a great many, most of them very important.
Should any one be disposed to find fault with the author for introducing into his work some articles which on the first view may appear trifling, his own words, taken from the short preface prefixed to the first volume of the original, will perhaps be considered as a better exculpation than anything the translator might advance in his favour. “I am sensible,” says he, “that many here will find circumstances which they may think unworthy of the labour I have bestowed upon them; but those who know how different our judgements are respecting utility, will not make theirs a rule for mine. Those whose self-conceit would never allow them to be sensible of this truth, and who reject as useless all ore in which they do not observe pure gold, as they display very little acuteness, must be often duped by the tinsel glare of false metal; and they give me as little uneasiness as those who have no desire to know the origin of inventions, or how they were brought to their present utility. If my extending the term Invention farther than is perhaps usual, by comprehending under it several police-establishments, be a fault, it is at any rate harmless, and on that account may be pardoned without much apology.”
FOOTNOTES
1 Montfaucon, notwithstanding all his researches in France and Italy, was not able to discover any charter or diploma written on common paper, older than the year 1270. Paper, however, made of cotton, is said to be much older, and to have been introduced into Europe by the Arabs. If we can believe an Arabian author, who wrote in the thirteenth century, quoted by Casiri, in Biblioth. Arabico-Hispana, vol. ii. p. 9, paper (doubtless of cotton) was invented at Mecca by one Joseph Amru, about the year of the Hegira 88, or of the Christian æra 706. According to other Arabian authors, quoted by Casiri and Abulfeda, the Arabs found a manufactory of paper at Samarcand in Bucharia, when they conquered that country in the year of the Hegira 85, or of our æra 704. The art of making paper from silk was, as some pretend, known to the Chinese 180 years before Jesus Christ. See a letter from Father de Mailla to Father Etienne Souciet, in Mémoires des Inscript. et des Belles Lettres, vol. xv. 520.
2 The oldest picture, known at present, painted in oil-colours on wood is preserved in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. It was painted in the year 1297, by a painter named Thomas de Mutina, or de Muttersdorf, in Bohemia. Two other paintings in the same gallery are of the year 1357; one of them is by Nicholas Wurmser of Strasburg, and the other by Thierry of Prague. It appears therefore that painting in oil was known long before the epoch at which that invention is generally fixed; and that it is erroneously ascribed to Hubert van Eyck and his brother and pupil, John van Eyck, otherwise called John of Bruges, who lived about the end of the fourteenth century, and not the beginning of the fifteenth, as is commonly supposed. [There is evidence in the books of the Painters’ Company, under the date of the 11th of Edward I. (1283), that oil painting was in use at that time. See a communication from Sir Francis Palgrave given in the new edition of Carter’s Ancient Sculpture and Paintings in England, page 80.]
3 The person who first speaks of the magnetic needle and its use in navigation, is a Provençal poet, who lived in the beginning of the thirteenth century, and who wrote a poem entitled Bible Guyot. This work is a satire, in which the author lashes with great freedom the vices of that age. Comparing the Pope to the polar star, he introduces a description of the compass, such as it appears to have been in its infancy. This invention however is claimed by the Italians, who maintain that we are indebted for it to a citizen of Amalphi, named Flavius Gioja, and in support of this assertion quote commonly the following line of Panormitanus:
Prima dedit nautis usum magnetis Amalfis.
4 Of the use of gunpowder in Europe no certain traces occur till towards the middle of the fourteenth century. It seems pretty well proved, that artillery was known in France after the year 1345. In 1356, the city of Nuremberg purchased the first gunpowder and cannon. The same year the city of Louvain employed thirty cannon at the battle of Santfliet against the Flemings. In 1361, a fire broke out at Lubec, occasioned by the negligence of those employed in making gunpowder. In 1363, the Hans-towns used cannon for the first time, in a naval combat which they fought against the Danes. After 1367, the use of fire-arms became general throughout Italy, into which they had been introduced from Germany.
5 The invention of printing has given rise to many researches. Meermann in his Origines Typographicæ, published in 1768, endeavours to prove that Laurence Coster of Haarlem was the inventor, about the year 1430. Most authors however agree that John Gutenberg was the inventor of moveable types, but they differ respecting the place of the invention. Some make it to be Strasburg, others Mentz, and some fix the epoch of the invention at 1440, and others at 1450.
6 Vasari, in Vite de’ Pittori, vol. iv. p. 264, ascribes the invention of engraving on copper to a goldsmith of Florence, named Maso Finiguerra, about 1460. The oldest engravers whose names and marks are known, were Israel de Mecheln, of Bokholt, in the bishopric of Munster; Martin Schœn, who worked at Colmar in Alsace, where he died in 1486; and Michael Wolgemuth of Nuremberg, who was preceptor to the famous Albert Durer, and engraved the plates in the well-known Nuremberg Chronicle. It may be proper here to observe, that the art of engraving on wood seems to be older than the invention of printing, to which perhaps it gave rise. The names of the first engravers on wood are however not known. [In the Athenæum Journal for 1845, page 965, is given a fac-simile of a large wood-engraving, bearing the date of 1418, which was discovered at Malines in 1844, and is now preserved in the public library at Brussels.]
