A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2)

Daniel, the historian, seems to give us to understand that in the ninth century horses were not shod always, but only in the time of frost, and on other particular occasions¹⁴¹³. The practice of shoeing appears to have been introduced into England by William the Conqueror. We are informed that this sovereign gave the city of Northampton as a fief to a certain person, in consideration of his paying a stated sum yearly for the shoeing of horses¹⁴¹⁴; and it is believed that Henry de Ferres or de Ferrers, who came over with William, and whose descendants still bear in their arms six horse-shoes, received that surname because he was entrusted with the inspection of the farriers¹⁴¹⁵. I shall here observe, that horse-shoes have been found, with other riding-furniture, in the graves of some of the old Germans and Vandals in the northern countries; but the antiquity of them cannot be ascertained¹⁴¹⁶.

FLOATING OF WOOD

The conveying of wood in floats is an excellent invention; as countries destitute of that necessary article can be supplied by water carriage, not only with timber for building and other useful purposes, but also with fire-wood. The former is either pushed into the water in single trunks, and suffered to be carried along by the stream, or a number of planks are ranged close to each other in regular order, bound together in that manner, and steered down the current as boats are, by people accustomed to such employment. The first method is that most commonly used for fire-wood. Above floats of the second kind a load of spars, deals, laths, pipe-staves, and other timber, is generally placed; and with these, floaters will trust themselves on broad and rapid rivers, whereas fire-wood is fit to be transported only on rivulets or small streams; and sometimes canals are constructed on purpose¹⁴¹⁷. However simple the invention of floating fire-wood may be, I consider the other method as the oldest; and I confess that I do not remember to have found in ancient authors any information respecting the former. Fire-wood was, indeed, not so scarce formerly in the neighbourhood of large cities as it is at present. Men established themselves where it was abundant; and they used it freely, without thinking on the wants of posterity, till its being exhausted rendered it necessary for them to import it from distant places. It is probable that the most ancient mode of constructing vessels for the purpose of navigation gave rise to the first idea of conveying timber for building in the like manner; as the earliest ships or boats were nothing else than rafts, or a collection of beams and planks bound together, over which were placed deals. By the Greeks they were called schediai, and by the Latins rates; and it is known from the testimony of many writers, that the ancients ventured out to sea with them on piratical expeditions as well as to carry on commerce; and that after the invention of ships they were still retained for the transportation of soldiers and of heavy burthens¹⁴¹⁸.

The above conjecture is confirmed by the oldest information to be found in history respecting the conveyance by water of timber for building. Solomon entered into a contract with Hiram, king of Tyre, by which the latter was to cause cedars for the use of the temple to be cut down on the western side of Mount Lebanon above Tripoli, and to be floated to Jaffa. The words at least employed by the Hebrew historian, which occur nowhere else, are understood as alluding to the conveyance of timber in floats; and this explanation is considered by Michaelis as probable. At present no streams run from Lebanon to Jerusalem; and the Jordan, the only river in Palestine that could bear floats, is at a great distance from the cedar forest. The wood, therefore, must have been brought along the coast by sea to Jaffa¹⁴¹⁹. In this manner is the account understood by Josephus; but although he assures us that he gives the letters of both the kings as they were at that time preserved in the Jewish and Tyrian annals, it is certain that they are spurious, and that he took the whole relation from the sacred books of the Jews which are still extant, as he himself tells us in the beginning of his work¹⁴²⁰.

An old tradition prevailed that the city Camarina, on the southern coast of Sicily, was built of the clay or mud which the river Hipparis carried along with it, and deposited in a lake of the same name. This account seems to be confirmed by a passage in Pindar, which Aristarchus quotes in explaining it¹⁴²¹; and, according to Bochart, some proof is afforded also by the name Camarina, as chamar or chomar signifies sealing-clay¹⁴²². In this tradition there is nothing improbable. In the like manner the Egyptians drew up mud from the lake Mœris¹⁴²³; and thus do the Dutch at present fish up in bag-nets the fine mud or slime which chokes up their rivers, such as the Issel, and which they employ for various uses. This explanation, however, has not been adopted by the old commentators of Pindar. Didymus¹⁴²⁴ and others assert that the poet alludes to wood for building the city being conveyed in floats on the river Hipparis. But whatever opinion may be formed of these elucidations of the scholiasts, we have reason to conclude that the inhabitants of Camarina were much better acquainted with the floating of wood than with drawing up slime by means of bag-nets.

The Romans transported by water both timber for building and fire-wood. When they became acquainted, during their wars against the Germans, with the benefit of the common larch, they caused large quantities of it to be carried on the Po to Ravenna from the Alps, particularly the Rhætian, and to be conveyed also to Rome for their most important buildings. Vitruvius says¹⁴²⁵ that this timber was so heavy, that, when alone, the water could not support it, and that it was necessary to carry it on ships or on rafts. Could it have been brought to Rome conveniently, says he, it might have been used with great advantage in building. It appears, however, that this was sometimes done; for we are told that Tiberius caused the Naumachiarian bridge, constructed by Augustus, and afterwards burnt, to be rebuilt of larch planks procured from Rhætia. Among these was a trunk one hundred and twenty feet in length, which excited the admiration of all Rome¹⁴²⁶.

That the Romans procured fire-wood from Africa, particularly for the use of the public baths, is proved by the privileges granted on that account to the masters of ships or rafts by the emperor Valentinian¹⁴²⁷. Those who have read the writings of the Latin authors with attention must have remarked other testimonies; but I have found no mention in the ancients of floating timber in single planks, or of canals dug for that purpose; at least as far as I can remember. In the Latin language also there are scarcely two words that allude to what concerns the floating of timber; whereas the German contains more of that kind, perhaps, than are to be found in any other; and I am thence induced to conjecture that the Germans were the first who formed establishments for this mode of conveyance on a large scale.

The earliest information respecting the floating of wood in Saxony appears to be as old as the year 1258¹⁴²⁸, when the margrave Henry the Illustrious remitted by charter to the monastery of Porta, the duty collected at Camburg from the wood transported on the river Saale for the use of the monastery¹⁴²⁹. It is, however, uncertain whether wood really conveyed in floats, or transported in boats and lighters, be here meant. Much clearer information concerning wood floated on the Saale is contained in a letter, expedited in the year 1410 by the two brothers Frederic and William, landgraves of Thuringia, and margraves of Misnia, in which, on account of the scarcity of wood that prevailed in their territories, they so much lessened the toll usually paid on the Saale as far as Weissenfels, that a Rhenish florin only was demanded for floats brought on that river to Jena, and two Rhenish stivers for those carried to Weissenfels; but the proprietors of the floats were bound to be answerable for any injury occasioned to the bridge¹⁴³⁰. In the year 1431, Hans Munzer, an opulent citizen of Freyberg, with the assistance of the then burgomasters, put a float of wood upon the river Mulda, which runs past the city, in order that it might be conveyed thither for the use of the inhabitants and of the mines; which seems to be a proof that the floating of timber was at that period undertaken by private persons, on their own risk and at their own expenses. In 1486 the floating of wood on the Mulda by the people of Zwikaw, was opposed by the neighbouring nobility; but the rights of the city were protected by the electors. When the town of Aschersleben built its church in the year 1495, the timber used for the work was transported on the Elbe from Dresden to Acken, and thence on the Achse to the place of its destination. This is the oldest account known of floating timber on the Elbe. In the year 1521, duke George caused a large canal to be cut at the village of Plauen, which was supplied with water from the Weiseritz, and carried as far as Dresden. It appears that in 1564 there was a float-master, who was obliged to give security to the amount of four hundred florins; so that the business of floating must at that time have been of considerable importance. Floating of wood was undertaken at Annaberg in 1564, by George Oeder, one of the members of the council, and established at the expense of 4000 florins. Of the antiquity of floating in other German states I know nothing more than what is to be gathered from public ordinances respecting this object and forests; by which we learn that in the sixteenth century it was practised in Brandenburg, on the Elbe, Spree, and Havel; in Bavaria, and in the duchy of Brunswick¹⁴³¹.

As the city of Paris had consumed all the wood in its neighbourhood, and as the price of that article became enormous on account of the distance of forests and the expense of transporting it, John Rouvel, a citizen and merchant, in the year 1549, fell upon the plan of conducting wood bound together along rivers which were not navigable for large vessels. With this view, he made choice of the forests in the woody district of Morvant, which belonged to the government of Nivernois; and as several small streams and rivulets had their sources there, he endeavoured to convey into them as much water as possible¹⁴³². That great undertaking, at first laughed at, was completed by his successor René Arnoul, in 1566. The wood was thrown into the water in single trunks, and suffered to be driven in that manner by the current to Crevant, a small town on the river Yonne; where each timber-merchant drew out his own, which he had previously marked, and, after it was dry, formed it into floats that were transported from the Yonne to the Seine, and thence to the capital. By this method large quantities of timber are conveyed thither at present from Nivernois and Burgundy, and some also from Franche-Comté. The French extol highly a beneficial establishment formed by one Sauterau, in Morvant, at his own expense, by which the transportation of timber was rendered much more speedy, and for which a small sum was allowed him from the proprietors of all the wood floated on the Yonne.

The success of this attempt soon gave rise to others. John Tournouer and Nicholas Gobelin, two timber-merchants, undertook to convey floats in the like manner on the Marne; and canals were afterwards constructed in several places for the purpose of forming a communication between different rivers. The French writers consider the transportation of large floats, trains de bois, like those formed at present, from the before-mentioned districts, and also from Bourbonnois, Champagne, Lorraine, Montergis, and other parts of the kingdom, as a great invention; but I am firmly of opinion that this method was known and employed in Germany at a much earlier period¹⁴³³.

[Victor Hugo gives the following animated account of floating rafts. The traveller who ascends the river sees it, so to speak, coming to him, and then the sight is full of charms. At each instant he meets something which passes him; at one time, a vessel crowded with peasants, especially if it be Sunday; at another, a steam-boat; then a long, two-masted vessel, laden with merchandize, its pilot attentive and serious, its sailors busy, with women seated near the door of the cabin; here, a heavy-looking boat, dragging two or three after it; there, a little horse drawing a huge bark, as an ant drags a dead beetle. Suddenly there is a winding in the river; and formerly, on turning, an immense raft, a floating house, presented itself, the oars splashing on both sides. On the ponderous machine were cattle of all kinds, some bleating, and others bellowing, when they perceived the heifers peaceably grazing on the banks. The master came and went, looked at this, then at that, while the sailors busily performed their respective duties. A whole village seemed to live on this float, – on this prodigious construction of fir.]

The floating of wood seems, like many other useful establishments, to have been invented or first undertaken by private persons at their own risk and expense, with the consent of governments, or at least without any opposition from them; but, as soon as it was brought to be useful and profitable, to have been considered among regalia. Hence, therefore, soon arose the float-regal, which, indeed, on account of the free use granted of rivers, the many regulations requisite, and its connexion with the forest-regal, can be sufficiently justified. But when and where originated the term jus grutiæ, under which this regal is known by jurists?

The few authors who have turned their thoughts to this question have not been able, as far as I know, to answer it with certainty, nor even with probability. They have only repeated, without making any researches themselves, what Stypmann¹⁴³⁴ has said on the subject; and the latter refers to a passage of Hadrian Junius, which I shall here more particularly notice. Junius, speaking of the oldest families in the Netherlands, says that the family of Wassenaer had formerly a certain supremacy over the rivers in Rhineland, so that no one, without their permission, could keep swans on them, and that the brewers paid for the use of the water a certain tax called the gruyt-geld, from which arose the jus grutæ. The origin of this word he did not know; but he conjectured that it was derived either from gruta, which signifies duckweed (Lemna), a plant that grows in the water and covers its surface during the summer, or from grut, an ingredient used in making beer¹⁴³⁵. It is certain that in the tenth, eleventh, and thirteenth centuries gruta, grutt, or gruit, signified a tax which brewers were obliged to pay¹⁴³⁶; but the origin of the word has been sufficiently explained neither by Junius nor any other writer. I nowhere find that it was used in ancient times for a float-duty; and this meaning Junius himself has not so much as once mentioned.

The word gruit occurs under a quite different sense in a letter of investiture of the year 1593, by which the elector of Cologne gave as a fief to the countess of Moers, the gruit within the town of Berg, with all its rents, revenues, and appurtenances. “No other person was allowed to put grudt or any plant in beer, or to draw beer brought from other countries. On the other hand, the countess was to make good grutt, and to cause it to be sold at the price usual in the neighbouring parts; she was bound also to supply the elector gratis with what beer was necessary for family consumption; and if more was required than usual, on extraordinary occasions, she was to ask and receive money. If any one in the town did not deliver good gruidt, and should prove that he could not deliver better, as the fault was occasioned by the gruitte, the loss that might arise should fall upon the countess.” The word grut or gruitt seems to occur here under a double meaning; as an ingredient in the beer, and as the beer itself which was made from it. Of this difficulty I have in vain endeavoured to find an explanation. Grut, perhaps, may signify malt. In Dutch and other kindred languages grut means the small refuse which is separated from anything; and to which grusch bran, and grütze groats, have an affinity. May not ground malt be understood by it? I have thought likewise of a kind of herb-beer, which was much esteemed in the sixteenth century; and that grut might signify a mixture of herbs used for making that beer. It is probable that this word was confined within the boundaries of the Netherlands; and thence only, perhaps, is an explanation of it to be expected.

I am, however, still unable to comprehend how the float-duty obtained the name of jus grutiæ; and in our kindred languages I can find no derivation of it. The German word flosz, from fliessen, to flow or glide; flusz, a river, occurs in them all. The Dutch say vlot, vlothout; the Swedes, en flott, flotta, to float; flot-wed, float-wood; and the English, a float, to float, &c.

LACE

Fifty years ago, when a knowledge of many useful and ingenious arts formed a part of the education given to young women destined for genteel life, one who should have supposed that any reader could be ignorant of the manner in which lace is made, would only have been laughed at; but as most of our young ladies at present employ the greater part of their time in reading romances or the trifles of the day, it is probable that many who have even had an opportunity of frequenting the company of the fair sex, may never have seen the method of working lace. For this reason, I hope I shall be permitted to say a few words in explanation of an art towards the history of which I mean to offer such information as I have been able to collect.

Proper lace or point was not wove. It had neither warp nor woof, but was rather knit after the manner of nets (filets) or of stockings. In the latter, however, one thread only is employed, from which the whole piece or article of dress is made; whereas lace is formed of as many threads as the pattern and breadth require, and in such a manner that it exhibits figures of all kinds. To weave, or, as it is called, knit lace, the pattern, stuck upon a slip of parchment, is fastened to the cushion of the knitting-box; the thread is wound upon the requisite number of spindles, which are called bobbins; and these are thrown over and under each other in various ways, so that the threads twine round pins stuck in the holes of the pattern, and by these means produce that multiplicity of eyes or openings which give to the lace the desired figures. For this operation much art is not necessary; and the invention of it is not so ingenious as that of weaving stockings. Knitting, however, is very tedious; and when the thread is fine and the pattern complex, it requires more patience than the modern refinement of manners has left to young ladies for works of this kind. Such labour, therefore, is consigned to the hands of indigent girls, who by their skill and dexterity raise the price of materials, originally of little value, higher when manufactured than has ever yet been possible by any art whatever. The price, however, becomes enormous when knit lace has been worked with the needle or embroidered: in French it is then called points.

The antiquity of this art I do not pretend to determine with much certainty; and I shall not be surprised if others by their observations trace it higher than I can. I remember no passage in the Greek or Latin authors that seems to allude to it; for those who ascribe works of this kind to the Romans found their opinion on the expression opus Phrygianum: but the art of the Phrygians¹⁴³⁷, as far as I have hitherto been able to learn, consisted only in needle-work: and those ingenious borders sewed upon clothes and tapestry, mention of which occurs in the ancients, cannot be called lace, as they have been by Braun¹⁴³⁸ and other writers. I am however firmly of opinion that lace worked by the needle is much older than that made by knitting. Lace of the former kind may be found among old church furniture, and in such abundance that it could have been the work only of nuns or ladies of fortune, who had little else to employ their time, and who imagined it would form an agreeable present to their Maker; for had it been manufactured as an article of commerce, we must certainly have found more information respecting it.

We read in different authors that the art of making lace was brought from Italy, particularly from Genoa and Venice, to Germany and France; but this seems to allude only to the oldest kind, or that worked with the needle, and which was by far the dearest. At any rate, I have nowhere found an expression that can be applied to lace wove or knit. In the account given of the establishment of the lace manufacture under Colbert in 1666, no mention is made but of points¹⁴³⁹.

I will venture to assert that the knitting of lace is a German invention, first known about the middle of the sixteenth century; and I shall consider as true, until it be fully contradicted, the account given us that this art was found out, before the year 1561, at St. Annaberg, by Barbara wife of Christopher Uttmann. This woman died in 1575, in the sixty-first year of her age, after she had seen sixty-four children and grandchildren; and that she was the inventress of this art is unanimously affirmed by all the annalists of that part of Saxony¹⁴⁴⁰. About that period the mines were less productive, and the making of veils, an employment followed by the families of the miners, had declined, as there was little demand for them. This new invention, therefore, was so much used that it was known in a short time among all the wives and daughters of the miners; and the lace which they manufactured, on account of the low price of labour, soon became fashionable, in opposition to the Italian lace worked with the needle, and even supplanted it in commerce.

A doubt, however, has often occurred to me, which may probably occur also to some of my readers, that this Barbara Uttmann may be entitled only to the merit of having made known and introduced this employment; and that, as has often happened to those who first brought a new art to their own country, she may have been considered as the inventress, though she only learned it in a foreign land, where it had been long practised. But I conjecture that this could not have been the case, as I find no mention of the art of knitting lace, nor any of the terms that belong to it, before the middle of the sixteenth century.

[The application of machinery to the manufacture of lace dates from the early part of the present century. The original fabric, called pillow or bone-lace, which formerly gave employment to so many thousands¹⁴⁴¹ of the poorer classes, is now, especially in this country, almost entirely abandoned, in consequence of the invention of the bobbin-net machinery.

The bobbin-net trade is a branch of the cotton manufacture, the net being almost invariably formed of that material. It originated in successive improvements and alterations on the stocking-frame, by which it was adapted to the weaving of lace; though it is deserving of notice that it could have had no existence but for Samuel Crompton’s invention, the mule, which spins yarn suitable for that delicate fabric. The application of the stocking-frame to lace-making was first attempted by a frame-work knitter of Nottingham, named Hammond, about 1768; but it was not rendered completely successful till after improvements by John Heathcoat, also of Nottingham, for which a patent was secured in 1809. His improvements were of so important a character as to entitle him to be justly considered the inventor of the lace-frame, and the father of the bobbin-net manufacture. Means were besides discovered for making the net into various widths, instead of only one broad piece as at first, and likewise to work various ornaments into it by the aid of machinery, which, in point of complex ingenuity, far surpasses that used in any other branch of human industry¹⁴⁴². One of Fisher’s spotting-frames, according to Dr. Ure, is as much beyond the most curious chronometer in multiplicity of mechanical device, as that is beyond a common roasting-jack. The combined effects of these improvements is, that fabrics, for which £5 were paid during the existence of Mr. Heathcoat’s patent, may now be purchased for 2s. 6d. The different systems of bobbin-net machines are described in Ure’s Dictionary, or his Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain. It has been found that no machines, except those upon the circular-bolt principle invented by Mr. Morley of Derby, have been found capable of working successfully by mechanical power.]