Many of our readers are probably aware of, or have seen, a Saxon Almanac, answering the above description, in St. John's College, Cambridge. E.J.H.
SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY
EXEMPLARS ABRIDGED FROM MR. BABBAGE'S "ECONOMY OF MACHINERY AND MANUFACTURES."
Voyage of Manufacture.—The produce of our factories has preceded even our most enterprising travellers. Captain Clapperton saw at the court of the Sultan Bello, pewter dishes with the London stamp, and had at the royal table a piece of meat served up on a white wash-hand basin of English manufacture. The cotton of India is conveyed by British ships round half our planet, to be woven by British skill in the factories of Lancashire; it is again set in motion by British capital, and transported to the very plains whereon it grew, is repurchased by the lords of the soil which gave it birth, at a cheaper price than that at which their coarser machinery enables them to manufacture it themselves. At Calicut, in the East Indies (whence the cotton cloth called calico derives its name) the price of labour is one-seventh of that in England, yet the market is supplied from British looms.
Additions to human power.—The force necessary to move a stone along the roughly-chiselled floor of its quarry is nearly two-thirds of its weight; to move it along a wooden floor, three-fifths; by wood upon wood, five-ninths; if the wooden surfaces are soaped, one-sixth; if rollers are used on the floor of the quarry, it requires one-thirty-second part of the weight; if they roll on wood, one-fortieth; and if they roll between wood, one-fiftieth of its weight. At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged.
Economy of time.—Several pounds of gunpowder may be purchased for a sum acquired by a few days' labour; yet, when this is employed in blasting rocks, effects are produced which could not, even with the best tools, be accomplished by other means in less than many months.
Economy of Materials.—The worn-out saucepans and tin-ware of our kitchens, when beyond the reach of the tinker's art, are not utterly worthless. We sometimes meet carts loaded with old tin kettles and worn-out iron coal-scuttles traversing our streets. These have not yet completed their useful course; the less corroded parts are cut into strips, punched with small holes, and varnished with a coarse black varnish for the use of the trunkmaker, who protects the edges and angles of his box with them; the remainder are conveyed to the manufacturing chemists in the outskirts of the town, who employ them, in conjunction with pyroligneous acid, in making a black dye for the use of calico printers.
Accumulation of Power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall. A man, even with a heavy hammer, might strike repeated blows upon the head of a pile without producing any effect. But if he raises a much heavier hammer to a much greater height, its fall, though far less frequently repeated, will produce the desired effect.