The Century of Inventions of the Marquis of Worcester / from the Original MS., with Historical and Explanatory Notes and a Biographical Memoir

by Marquis of Edward Somerset Worcester

No. XLIX.

A portable engine, in way of a tobacco-tongs, whereby a man may get over a wall, or get up again, being come down, finding the coast proveth insecure for him.

NOTE.

It is not very easy to discover to what the noble author here alludes: if by tobacco-tongs, he means a combination of levers such as is used by gardeners, to gather choice fruit or lop the upper boughs of trees, the mode of applying them is extremely easy. A number of short pieces of brass, jointed together, and made to resemble a row of trellis work, may, by distending the joints in an horizontal direction, be made to go in the smallest compass; and again, by closing the arms, the machine will be elevated. An ingenious mechanic has constructed a fire-escape upon this principle, of which a model is preserved in the Museum of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c.