NOTHING NEW.
‘There is no new thing under the sun,’ says a proverb which is itself perhaps only the rehabilitation of some antediluvian precept to the same effect; and nothing so powerfully argues in favour of the truth of the statement as a little pamphlet written by the eccentric though clever Marquis of Worcester, and printed in London by J. Grismond in 1663. It is entitled, ‘A Century of the Names and Scantlings of such Inventions as at present I can call to mind to have tried and perfected, which, my former Notes being lost, I have, at the instance of a powerful friend, endeavoured now, in the year 1655, to set these down in such a way as may sufficiently instruct me to put any of them in Practice.’ Who the ‘powerful friend’ may have been it is impossible to say. The published catalogue was, however, dedicated to Charles II. by His Majesty’s ‘passionately devoted, or otherwise disinterested, subject and servant,’ the Marquis.
This dedication is followed by a quaintly worded address to the two Houses of Parliament, craving patronage for the author’s investigations, thanking the Lords and Commons for past favours, ruefully stating that the inventor had already spent ten thousand pounds on his experiments, and promising to prosecute his researches by the aid of one Casper Kaltoff, who for five-and-thirty years had been employed under him. The Marquis, in stating his merits, is not too modest, for he belauds his inventions and his disinterestedness to the skies, and in well-chosen words suggests that if the government refuse him its patronage, the government, and not he, will suffer. Then, after the custom of the age, he subscribes himself, ‘Your most passionately bent fellow-subject in His Majesty’s service, compatriot for the publick good and advantage, and a most humble servant to all and every of you,
Worcester.’
So far the Marquis is, comparatively speaking, plain-spoken and straightforward; but when he begins to catalogue his discoveries, the reader feels bound to confess that though the noble peer may have set down his notes in such a way as might sufficiently instruct him to put any of them in practice, he scarcely amplified them sufficiently to instruct other people. Doubtless he was intentionally vague in the specifications or explanations of his inventions; for when he wrote, he still cherished a hope that he would reap some substantial fruits from his ingenuity; but in spite of his vagueness, he wrote at least enough to shew that many things even now regarded as new, had been roughly thought out by his fertile brain.
The specification first on the list is decidedly mysterious. It is entitled ‘Seals abundantly significant,’ and professes to describe an invention whereby accounts may be kept mechanically, and a letter, ‘though written but in English, may be read and understood in eight several languages, and in English itself to a clean contrary and different sense, unknown to any but the correspondent, and not to be read or understood by him neither, if opened before it arrive unto him.’ Presumably this ambiguous statement alludes to an instrument for writing accounts and letters in cipher, for the four specifications that follow, treat of that hackneyed subject, and one of them of a system of short-hand which seems to be not without a modern representative. Next comes a plan for telegraphing by means of coloured flags and lights; and then ‘A way how to level and shoot cannon by night as well as by day and as directly.’ The ninth specification is terribly pertinent to the tragic event that happened at Bremerhafen in December 1875. It speaks of ‘An engine, portable in one’s pocket, which may be carried and fastened on the inside of the greatest ship, and at any appointed minute, though a week after, either of day or night, it shall irrecoverably sink that ship.’ The note immediately following suggests torpedoes, and relates to a plan for diving and fastening a similar engine to a vessel.
Nor were Admiral Hobart Pacha’s attempts to ward off the attacks of these submarine monsters without a prototype; for the inventive Marquis at once goes on to hint at a method whereby a ship may be guarded from such a catastrophe either by day or by night. Specification number twelve is scarcely less suggestive of water-tight compartments, for it alludes to ‘A way to make a ship not possible to be sunk, though shot an hundred times betwixt wind and water by cannon.’ The next note does not seem to have prompted the exertions of modern inventors; but who shall say whether number fourteen is not responsible for the employment of steam, or even of hydraulic power, for the working of a vessel? At all events, it hints at the economisation of labour, and at the multiplication of force without the intervention of a capstan or of similar machinery. Number fifteen palpably suggests the application of some motive-power very like steam to boats. The Marquis speaks of ‘A way how to make a boat work itself against wind and tide, yea, both without the help of man or beast; yet so that the wind or tide, though directly opposite, shall force the ship or boat against itself.’
It is not surprising that, in the middle of the seventeenth century, this, among many other alleged inventions, was regarded as somewhat chimerical; and indeed, at the present moment, if we except steam, it is hard to believe that the noble lord was not solemnly joking with Charles II. and the two Houses of Parliament. But a subsequent specification, which we shall notice in its due order, proves that the Marquis knew of the power of steam, and had practically experimented with it; and there are therefore some grounds for thinking that, had he been properly subsidised and assisted, the name of Worcester might have been as intimately associated with the great modern means of locomotion as are those of Watt and Fulton. Unfortunately the Marquis was too much in advance of his age, and thus his genius was lost upon it.
A very common table ornament of the present day is hinted at in number eighteen, which speaks of ‘An artificial fountain to be turned like an hour-glass by a child in the twinkling of an eye.’ And number nineteen plainly suggests the carriage-brake as now applied by every coachbuilder. The two succeeding notices relate to the use of water as a motive-power. And number twenty-three tells of a water-clock intended not only to shew the time, but also the motions of the heavenly bodies. Number twenty-four is a plan for discharging bullets by means of a silent spring, ‘admirable for fire-works and astonishing of besieged cities.’ And number twenty-six is a method for the more effectual employment of the lever as a mechanical force. Then follows a dark hint at the employment of pontoons for the formation of military bridges over broad rivers; and another specification, number thirty, speaks of a system for enabling four pieces of cannon ‘to discharge two hundred bullets each hour’—a thing which, under the old system of loading by manual power at the muzzle, would have been quite impossible. This is followed by a number of different plans for writing in cipher, and for communicating by means of various objects, such as knotted strings, fringes, bracelets, gloves, &c., and by the smell, taste, and touch. Number forty-four is a way ‘To make a key of a chamber-door which to your sight hath its wards and rose-pipe but paper-thick, and yet at pleasure in a minute of an hour shall become a perfect pistol, capable to shoot through a breast-plate commonly of carbine-proof, with prime, powder, and firelock, undiscoverably in a stranger’s hand.’ Such a diabolical machine in the possession of one of the many unscrupulous gentlemen of the period, would indeed have been a murderous weapon if used freely in the dimly lighted streets of London. Scarcely less unpleasant must have been the Venetian instrument for noiselessly discharging a poisoned needle at an unsuspecting enemy.