Stories of Invention, Told by Inventors and their Friends Part 9

My largest gla.s.s is G, a little below the reach of a common voice, and my highest G, including three complete octaves. To distinguish the gla.s.ses the more readily to the eye, I have painted the apparent parts of the gla.s.ses withinside, every semitone white, and the other notes of the octave with the seven prismatic colors,--viz., C, red; D, orange; E, yellow; F, green; G, blue; A, indigo; B, purple; and C, red again,--so that gla.s.ses of the same color (the white excepted) are always octaves to each other.

This instrument is played upon by sitting before the middle of the set of gla.s.ses, as before the keys of a harpsichord, turning them with the foot, and wetting them now and then with a sponge and clean water. The fingers should be first a little soaked in water, and quite free from all greasiness; a little fine chalk upon them is sometimes useful, to make them catch the gla.s.s and bring out the tone more readily. Both hands are used, by which means different parts are played together.

Observe that the tones are best brought out when the gla.s.ses turn _from_ the ends of the fingers, not when they turn _to_ them.

The advantages of this instrument are, that its tones are incomparably sweet, beyond those of any other; that they may be swelled and softened at pleasure by stronger or weaker pressure of the finger, and continued to any length; and that the instrument, being once well tuned, never again wants tuning.

In honor of your musical language, I have borrowed from it the name of this instrument, calling it the Armonica.

With great respect and esteem, I am, &c.,

B. FRANKLIN.

VII.

THEORISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH.

At the next meeting there was a slight deviation from the absolutely expected. Bedford and Mabel desired to dispense with the regular order of the day, and moved for permission to bring in a new inventor, "invented by myself," said Mabel,--"entirely by myself, a.s.sisted by Bedford. n.o.body that I know of ever heard of him before. He is a new discovery."

"Who is he?" asked Horace, somewhat piqued that there should be any one interesting of whom he had not heard even the name.

"What did he invent?" asked Emma.

"Did he write memoirs?" asked Fergus.

"Did you ever read 'Frank'?" asked Mabel, in what is known as the Socratic method.

There was a slight stir at the mention of this little cla.s.sic. Few seemed to be able to answer in the affirmative.

"I have read 'Rollo,'" said Horace.

"I have read 'Frank,'" said Will Withers, "and 'Harry and Lucy,' and the 'Parents' a.s.sistant,' and 'Sandford and Merton,' and 'Henry Milner.' In fact, there are few of those books, all kindred volumes, which I have not read. They have had an important effect upon my later life."

"Hinc illae lachrymae," in a low tone from Clem Waters.

For Colonel Ingham, the turn taken by the conversation had a peculiar charm. He was of the generation before the rest, and what were to them but ghostly ideals were to him glad memories of a happy past.

"Good!" said he. "'Frank' was, in a sense, the greatest book ever written. Do you remember that part where Frank lifted up the skirts of his coat when pa.s.sing through the greenhouse?" he asked of Mabel.

"I should think I did," said Mabel and Will. As for Bedford, he had only a vague recollection of it. The others considered the conversation to be trembling upon the verge of insanity.

"Perhaps," said Florence, gently, "I might be allowed to suggest that although you have heard of 'Frank' and those other persons mentioned, we have not. I do not think that I ever heard of an inventor named Frank,--did he have any other name?--and I am usually considered," she went on modestly, "tolerably well informed. Therefore the present conversation, though probably edifying in a high degree to those who have read 'Frank,' or who have some interest in horticulture and greenhouses, can hardly fail to be very stupid to those of us who have not."

"My dear child," said the Colonel, "you are right. Mabel and I, and Will and Bedford here, are of the generation that is pa.s.sing off the stage.

We look back to the things of our youth, hardly considering that there are those to whom that period suggests Noah and his ark."

"But who is the inventor?" asked some one who thought that the conversation was gradually leaving the trodden path.

"Oh, we had almost forgotten him," said Bedford.

"The inventor," said Mabel, producing two volumes from under her arm, "is Mr. Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the father of Maria Edgeworth."

"What did he invent?" asked many of the company.

"He invented the telegraph."

"Well, I never knew that before."

"I thought Morse invented the telegraph."

"Didn't Dr. Franklin invent the telegraph?"

"I thought Edison--"

Other remarks were also made, showing a certain amount of incredulity.

"You mistake," said Bedford, placidly; "you are all of you under a misapprehension. I think that you all of you allude to the electric telegraph,--an invention of a later date than that of Mr. Edgeworth, and one of more value, as far as practical affairs are concerned. No; Mr.

Edgeworth invented, or thinks he invented, the telegraph as it was used in the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, sometimes named the Semaph.o.r.e. It wasn't a difficult invention, and I don't believe it ever came to any very practical use as constructed by Edgeworth, though French telegraphs were very useful."

"What kind of a telegraph was it?"

"Well, it was just the kind of a telegraph that the conductor of a railroad train is when he waves his arms to the engineer to go ahead.

There's an account of it by Edgeworth in one of these books, with pictures to it."

"But my chief interest about Edgeworth," said Mabel, "is in his memoirs, which are written partly by himself and partly by his daughter. They are really very amusing. He was married five times,--once with a door-key when he was only fourteen."

This startling intelligence roused even Colonel Ingham to demand particulars. Was he married to all five at once? to all of them when he was only fourteen?

"No," admitted Mabel, with some regret; "he was married to them, all at different times, and he was divorced from the one he married at fourteen with the door-key."

"They were only married for fun," said Bedford. "It was all a joke. They were at a wedding, and they thought it would be funny after the real marriage to have a mock one. So they did, and married Edgeworth to a girl who was there. It was a real marriage, for they were afterwards divorced."

"Well," said Sam Edmeston, "I shall be glad to hear about this gentleman, I'm sure, though I never did hear of him before. But may I ask why it was necessary to introduce him by means of an allusion to 'Frank' and other works which we have few of us ever read, though it is very possible that we may some of us have heard of them?"

"I see why Mabel spoke first of 'Frank,'" said Colonel Ingham. "And I think that she did very well to bring Edgeworth in as she has done. And Edgeworth, though I had not thought of him before, is very fit to be one of our inventors, not so much for his individual accomplishments, which were little more than curious,--telegraph and all,--as for being a good representative of his age. Those of you who know a little of the century between 1750 and 1850 know that it was an age to which many of the secrets of physical science were being opened for the first time.

Everybody was going back to Nature to see what he could learn from her.

This movement swept all over France and England. Every gentleman dabbled in the sciences, and made his experiments and inventions.

Voltaire in France had a great laboratory made for him in which he pa.s.sed some years in chemical experiments. It was the age, too, of great inventions,--of the application of physical forces to the life of man.

The invention of the steam-engine by Watt, and the applications of it to the locomotive and the steamboat, came along toward the end of this period, and marked the work of the greatest men. But every one could not invent a steam-engine. So, by the hundreds of country gentlemen who studied science, chemistry, and astronomy, and the rest, there were constructed hundreds of orreries, globes, carriages, model-telegraphs, and such things; and it is of these men that Edgeworth is the best, or at least the most available, representative, on account of his very interesting memoirs.

"Such books as 'Harry and Lucy' and 'Frank' are the mirror of this movement. But to this is joined something more, which John Morley speaks of in saying, 'An age touched by the spirit of hope turns naturally to the education of the young.' Then people knew that their own times were about as worthless as times could well be; but as they learned more, they began to hope that things were improving, and that the children might see better times than those in which the fathers lived. And as physical science was to them an all-important factor in this approaching millennium, they took pains to teach these things to the young. Any of you who have read 'Frank' or 'Sandford and Merton' will see what I mean.

It was the hope that the children might be able to take the work where the fathers left it, and carry it on. And the children did. But I do not believe that any one of these eighteenth-century theorists had the first or vaguest idea of the point to which his children and grandchildren would carry his work.