[A Discourse woven in Tape or Ribbon.] This article should have followed article No. 43, of which it seems to be one of the “variations” therein contemplated.
76.
How to write in the dark as streight as by day or candle-light.
[To write in the dark.] This would appear only to require a box of any form, the top or lid of which being of ground glass, it could be illuminated by means of a small night-light placed below, within the box; when it would be possible to write on paper laid on the glass, in a totally dark room. Such a device might be useful to an inexpert artist for making a tracing of any drawing.
77.
How to make a man to fly; which I have tried with a little Boy of ten years old in a Barn, from one end to the other, on a Hay-mow.
[A flying man.] One feels disposed to believe, on reading this article, that the Marquis, in multiplying his experiments with fire and water, might have tried in different ways the effects of heating air, and actually gone far to anticipate Montgolfier in producing a balloon.
However, it was confidently believed in the 17th century that flying was possible, provided proper machinery could be invented. There is a curious little work on this subject, “De arte Volandi,” by Frid. Hermannus Flayder, small 12mo. 1627.
Milton, in his “History of Britain,” 1670, speaking of the prognostications of Elmer, a monk of Malmsbury, during the reign of Harold, mentions that—“He in his youth strangely aspiring, had made and fitted wings to his hands and feet; with these on the top of a tower, spread out to gather air, he flew more than a furlong; but the wind being too high, came fluttering down, to the maiming of all his limbs; yet so conceited of his art, that he attributed the cause of his fall to the want of a tail, as birds have, which he forgot to make to his hinder parts.” See also Kennet’s History of England, 1st vol. 1706, fol.
In “Friar Bacon’s discovery of the miracles of Art, Nature, &c.” published in 12mo. 1659, treating “Of admirable artificial instruments,” the following occurs among other inventions: “It is possible to make engines for flying, a man sitting in the midst whereof, by turning only about an instrument, which moves artificial wings made to beat the air, much after the fashion of a bird’s flight.” Chap. iv. page 17. He states that he has seen all his other named inventions, “excepting only that instrument of flying, which I never saw, or know any who hath seen it, though I am exceedingly acquainted with a very prudent man, who hath invented the whole artifice.”