CHAPTER VII
AIR VS. WATER
THE STEAM engine had its origin in a kitchen; the modern clock was first conceived in a cathedral; our laws of motion were discovered under an apple tree, but, strangest of all, pneumatic engineering had its beginning in a barber shop. In each case it was an inquisitive boy who played the leading rôle.
We do not hear much about the youthful father of pneumatic engineering, possibly because he lived so very long ago, but his story is fully as interesting as that of Watt or Galileo or Newton. Young Ctesibius dwelt in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, 250 years before the birth of Christ. His father kept a barber shop, and the young lad used to watch his father practice his tonsorial art on the Greek and Egyptian dandies of the time. No doubt Ctesibius’s father expected to make a first-rate barber of his son, but history does not tell us much about his early life.
The barbers of those days had their mirrors as do the barbers of the present time. But a mirror in those days was a treasured possession. It consisted of a brightly polished plate of metal in which a person could see himself “darkly” or it might have been a plate of glass with a black backing. These mirrors had to be carefully preserved from injury and from moisture, and so, instead of having them mounted on the wall as in a modern barber shop, they were stowed carefully away and brought out only after the tonsorial artist had completed his operation and was ready to exhibit his finished product to the customer.