We should treat with reverence these obscure hints of the triumphs of the ancients in certain departments of art as suggestive of like great achievements in other directions, for without a knowledge of types they could neither teach the many what the few knew, nor preserve what they had acquired for the instruction of future ages. All art is the product of a sequential series of ideas, each idea containing the germ of the next; hence the preservation of each idea is essential to progress. The art of printing alone enables man to preserve such a record. It follows presumptively that the art of printing constitutes the predominant feature of difference between the civilization of the moderns and that of the ancients. And it is important to observe that the art of printing is far more necessary to progress in the useful arts than in the so-called fine arts. The ancient temples with their sculptured splendors—the Parthenon, the Jupiter Olympius, and scores of others—remained long to testify to the genius of Phidias, Praxiteles, and their gifted colleagues of the chisel. These souvenirs of Greek genius still serve as models for the architect and the sculptor. It needs no chronicle to prove that they mark the culmination of the fine arts. If the moderns have failed to excel, or even equal them, it is not because their conception, design, or construction involved occult processes. It is rather because there is a limit to the development of the so-called fine arts, and that limit in architecture and sculpture was reached in Greece more than two thousand years ago.
But with the Damascus blade, which typifies the useful arts, it is entirely different. It, too, is in itself a triumph of genius not less pronounced than the Athena of Phidias. But above and beyond this the arts of smelting and forging are so subtile as almost to elude the grasp of analysis. Not only the method of the fabrication of the Damascus blade but the processes involved in the production of the steel entering into its composition—all these are shrouded in impenetrable mystery. It follows that the useful arts are finer than the so-called fine arts. Their processes are more intricate, and hence more difficult of comprehension. To a solution of the questions presented in the course of their study an extended acquaintance with the sciences is essential. The highest departments of the fine arts, so-called, require only a study of the features, figure, and character of man, and of certain visible forms of nature, while the useful arts make incessant demands upon the resources of natural philosophy. The chemist toils in his laboratory, and the botanist and the geologist explore forest, field, and mine in search of new truths, with the single purpose of enlarging the sphere of the useful arts, and so of ministering more effectively to the ever increasing needs of man. Hence there can be no limit to the development of the useful arts except the limit to be found in the exhaustion of the forces of nature.
We should, then, venerate the artisan rather than the artist. Let us invoke the shade of the dusky Indian smelter. See him in the dark recesses of the forest, bending in rapt attention over his furnace, or holding aloft a little lump of his matchless steel. Alas, he is dumb! His secret perished with him. But the Indian smelter and the Damascus smith are kin to all the inventors and discoverers of all the ages. Across continents and seas, over trackless wastes of history—epochs during which ignorance and superstition prevailed and the intellect of man slumbered—the ancient smelter and the ancient smith extend their shadowy hands to the students in this school of the nineteenth century—extend them in token of the fellowship of a common struggle and a common hope of triumph—the struggle after truth[E2], and the hope of the triumph of industry.
The instructor raps on the black-board, and the school-room is at once transformed into a smithy. Again the forge-fires roar, and again the anvils resound under the stroke of the hammer. For half an hour the lesson goes on, and then comes the wind-up, and the several tests of excellence are applied to the completed task of each student. Form, dimensions, finish—these are the tests. The instructor marks the several pieces of work, makes a record of the result, reads the record, and is on the point of dismissing the class when an idea occurs to his mind and he enjoins silence. Taking in his hand a heavy sledge, and resting it on the anvil before him, he says, “This is a baby-hammer, and all the forging we do here is baby-forging. I hope soon to have an opportunity to take you to the great works of Mr. Crane, in this city, and there show you a steam-hammer which weighs a ton striking fifty to one hundred blows a minute—blows, too, that shame the fabled power of Vulcan, the God of Fire. At Pittsburg, Pa., there is an anvil of 150 tons weight which serves for forging with a 15-ton hammer. But the monster steam-hammer is to be found in Krupp’s cast-steel works at Essen, Germany. The hammer-head is 12 feet long, 51⁄2 feet wide, 4 feet thick, weighs 50 tons, and has a stroke of 9 feet. The depth of the foundation is 100 feet, consisting of three parts, masonry, timber, and iron, bolted together. Four cranes, each capable of bearing 200 tons, serve the hammer with material.”
The steam-hammer was invented in 1837 by James Nasmyth, of England, in response to a demand for a hammer that would forge a steamship paddle-shaft of unprecedented size. The nature of the emergency being presented to his mind, Mr. Nasmyth conceived the idea of the steam-hammer instantaneously, as it were, and at once proceeded to sketch the child of his brain on paper. He was too poor to defray the cost of patenting his invention; nor was he able to procure the necessary funds for that purpose until he had seen in France a hammer made from his own original sketch in operation.
The steam-hammer came rapidly into use, superseding all others of the ponderous sort, increasing the quantity of products and reducing the cost of manufacture by fifty per cent. It was through the steam-hammer only that the fabrication of the immense wrought-iron ordnance and the huge plates for covering ships-of-war of modern times became possible. In the hands of the giant, steam, Mr. Nasmyth’s hammer, even if it weigh fifty tons, is susceptible of more accurate strokes than the tack-hammer in the hands of the upholsterer, or the sledge in the hands of the most skilled blacksmith. It crushes tons of iron into a shapeless mass at one blow, and at the next drives a tack, or cracks an egg-shell in an egg-cup without injuring the cup.
Mr. Nasmyth, in 1845, applied the steam-hammer principle to the pile-driver. With this wonderful machine the “driving-block,” weighing several tons, descends eighty times a minute on the head of the pile, sending it home with almost incredible rapidity. The saving of time as compared with the old method is in the ratio of 1 to 1800; that is, a pile can be driven in four minutes that before required twelve hours.
The course in the Forging Laboratory extends from the making and care of forge-fires to case-hardening iron and hardening and tempering steel; and competent and experienced instructors declare that the student in the educational smithy gains as much skill in a day as the smith’s apprentice gains in a year in the ordinary shop.
[E2] “The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it—is the sovereign good of human nature.”—Essays of Francis Bacon—“Truth,” p. 2. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1852.