Discourtesy—See [Bargain-making].
DISCOVERY, ACCIDENTAL
Blotting-paper was discovered purely by accident. Some ordinary paper was being made one day at a mill in Berkshire when a careless workman forgot to put in the sizing material. It may be imagined what angry scenes would take place in that mill, as the whole of the paper made was regarded as being quite useless. The proprietor of the mill desired to write a note shortly afterward, and he took a piece of waste paper, thinking it was good enough for the purpose. To his intense annoyance, the ink spread all over the paper. All of a sudden there flashed over his mind the thought that this paper would do instead of sand for drying ink, and he at once advertised his waste paper as “blotting.”
There was such a big demand that the mill ceased to make ordinary paper and was soon occupied making blotting only, the use of which spread to all countries. The result now is that the descendant of the discoverer owns the largest mills in the world for the manufacture of the special kind of paper. The reason the paper is of use in drying ink is that really it is a mass of hair-like tubes, which suck up liquid by capillary attraction. If a very fine glass tube is put into water the liquid will rise in it owing to capillary attraction. The art of manufacturing blotting-paper has been carried to such a degree that the product has wonderful absorbent qualities.—Boston Herald.
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Whether this story be true or legendary, it is a fact that many great discoveries have been the result of happy accident; or, as the Christian will prefer to say, the result of Providence:
It is said that the two Jansen boys had placed the spectacle lenses, with which they were playing, at the proper distances apart and were looking through them at the weather-cock on the top of a distant church steeple. They were surprized at discovering two things; first, that the weather-cock appeared upside down; and, second, it could be seen much more distinctly through the glasses than with the naked eye. Of course, they called the attention of their father to this curious discovery. Jansen, who was an intelligent man, and well acquainted with the properties of lenses as they were known at that early time, constructed a telescope based on the discovery of his sons.—Edwin J. Houston, “The Wonder-book of Light.”
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DISCOVERY, BENEFITS FROM