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

Anemometers, or instruments for measuring the power or force of the wind, have also been contrived of various kinds. The first was invented by Wolf. In this the wind acted upon four sails somewhat resembling those of a windmill, the motion being communicated by cog-wheels to a lever loaded with a weight. When the wind acted upon the sails, the bar rose, this motion continuing until the increased leverage of the weight counterpoised the moving power of the wind. Others on a different principle have been made by Lind, Regnier, Martin, and a very beautiful instrument for this purpose, constructed by Mr. Dent, may be seen at Lloyd’s room in the Royal Exchange.]

GILDING

The astonishing extensibility of gold, a property in which it far surpasses all other metals, induced mankind, at an early period, to attempt beating it into thin plates, as the value of it led them to the art of covering or gilding things of every kind with leaves of it. It is proved by Herodotus, that the Egyptians were accustomed to gild wood and metals688; and gilding is frequently mentioned in the books of the Old Testament689. The gold plates, however, used for this purpose, as may be readily conceived, were not so thin as those made at present; and for this reason, the gilding on statues, which have lain many centuries in the earth, appears to be still entire. Winkelmann says690, that among the ruins of two apartments in the imperial palace, on the palatine hill, in the Villa Farnese, the gold ornaments were found to be as fresh as if they had been newly applied, though these apartments, in consequence of being buried under the earth, were exceedingly damp. The circular bands of sky-blue, with small figures in gold, could not be seen without admiration. The gilding also is still preserved in the ruins of Persepolis.

But, in the time of Pliny, the art of gold-beating was carried so far at Rome, that an ounce of gold could be beat into seven hundred and fifty leaves and more, each four square inches in size691. I shall not compare this result with what the art can do at present, because the account of Pliny is not the most accurate, and because the conversion of the old measures into the modern standard is always attended with uncertainty. Buonarotti, however, who made some researches on this subject692, is of opinion that the gold used at Rome for fire-gilding in his time, that is, at the end of the seventeenth century, was beat six times as thin; and that the gold employed for gilding wood and other things, without the application of fire, was twenty-two times as thin as the gold leaf made at Rome in the time of Pliny. But this Italian author, as appears to me, has, through too great precipitation, translated the words “septingenæ et quinquagenæ bracteæ” fifty and seventy. Gold, however, at that time, was beat so thin at Rome, that Lucretius compares it to a spider’s web, and Martial to a vapour693.

I have, however, not yet met with any information in regard to the method in which the ancient artists beat the gold, or the instruments and apparatus they employed for that purpose. But the German monk Theophilus, whose real name seems to have been Rüger, and who, as Lessing thinks, lived in the ninth, but, according to Morelli, in the twelfth century, describes the process nearly as it is at present694. The gold, at that time, was beat between parchment, in the same manner as is still practised; and the artists knew how to prevent the gold from adhering to the parchment, by covering it over with burnt ochre reduced to a very fine powder, and then rubbing it smooth with a tooth. With the like view, our gold-beaters rub over with a fine bolus the thin paper used for making the books into which they put their gold leaf, in order to preserve it. But the flatting-mills, between the steel rollers of which cast and hammered ingots of gold are at present reduced to thin leaves, seem not to have been then known, at least this monk makes no mention of them. Lessing, to whom we are indebted for this curious fragment of Theophilus, is of opinion that each artist at that time was obliged to beat the gold leaf which he used, because gold-beating was not then a distinct branch of business. This I will not controvert; but it is no proof of it, that the monk taught the art to his brethren; for in convents the clergy endeavoured to make everything they used, in order that they might purchase as little as possible.

During the progress of the art, it being found that parchment was too thick and hard for the above purpose, workmen endeavoured to procure some finer substance, and at length discovered that the skin of an unborn calf was the most convenient. By means of this improvement, gold leaf was made much thinner than it had ever been before possible; but the art was brought to still greater perfection by employing that fine pellicle which is detached from the gut of an ox or a cow. Lancellotti, who wrote in the first half of the seventeenth century695, says that this invention was made by the German gold-beaters, when, in consequence of the war, they were not able to obtain from Flanders the skins of unborn calves.

I have often heard that the preparation of this pellicle, which the French call baudruche and the Dutch liezen, and which is so thin that two of them must be pasted together, is a secret, and that the best is obtained from England. But in the year 1785, when I paid a visit to a very ingenious gold-beater at Hamburg, he assured me that he prepared this substance himself, and that the case was the same with most of the gold-beaters in Germany. Even in England, in the year 1763, this art was known only to two or three persons, who practised it as a business, but kept it so secret that Lewis was not able to obtain a proper account of it696. In Ireland also this skin is prepared and sent to England697. When the French, in the beginning of the revolutionary war, hoped to out-manœuvre the Germans by the use of aerostatic machines, it became of some importance to them to obtain a supply of these skins. On this account, the Commission des armes et poudres drew up instructions for preparing them, which they caused to be printed and distributed to all the butchers. At Strasburg they were printed in French, and at the same time in German, but in many parts faulty and unintelligible.

About the year 1621, Mersenne excited general astonishment, when he showed that the Parisian gold-beaters could beat an ounce of gold into 1600 leaves, which together covered a surface of 105 square feet. But in 1711, when the pellicles, discovered by the Germans, came to be used in Paris, Reaumur found that an ounce of gold, in the form of a cube, five and a quarter lines at most in length, breadth, and thickness, and which covered only a surface of about twenty-seven square lines, could be so extended by the gold-beaters as to cover a surface of more than one hundred and forty-six and a half square feet. This extension, therefore, is nearly one-half more than was possible about a century before.

When these skins are worn out by the hammer of the gold-beater, they are employed, under the name of English skin, for plasters, or properly to unite small wounds. By the English they are called gold-beaters’ skin698; but, since silk covered with isinglass and Peruvian balsam, which in Germany is named English plaster, for the Germans at present call every thing English, has become the mode, this skin is much less used699. I mention this that I might have an opportunity of remarking, that in the middle of the twelfth century, in the Levant at least, a very thin pellicle was in like manner used for wounds. For when the emperor, John Comnenus, accidentally wounded himself in the hand with a poisoned arrow while hunting, a piece of skin, which, from the name and description may be considered the same as that used at present by the gold-beaters, was applied to the wound. The emperor, however, died in consequence of this wound, after it had become inflamed under the pellicle, which, in large wounds, and when the skin is suffered to remain too long, is commonly the case, though the poison alone would have been a sufficient cause of death. Reaumur and others are astonished that artists should have sought for and found a part of their apparatus in the bowels of an ox; but I am of opinion that this pellicle, which is sometimes separated in washing and cleaning the bowels, was first observed by the butchers, and made known by them as a plaster; and that it came into request among the German gold-beaters, as the finest of all the pellicles then known, in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

The art of gilding, and particularly unmetallic bodies, was much facilitated by the invention of oil-painting; but it must be acknowledged that the process employed by the ancients in cold-gilding was nearly the same as that used at present. Pliny says700 that gold leaves were applied to marble with a varnish, and to wood with a certain kind of cement, which he calls leucophoron. Without entering into any research respecting the minerals employed for this cement, one may readily conceive that it must have been a ferruginous ochre, or kind of bole, which is still used as a ground (poliment, assiette)701. But gilding of this kind must have suffered from dampness, though many specimens of it are still preserved. Some of the ancient artists, perhaps, may have employed resinous substances, on which water can produce very little effect.

That gold-leaf was affixed to metals by means of quicksilver, with the assistance of heat, in the time of Pliny, we are told by himself in more places than one. The metal to be gilded was prepared by salts of every kind, and rubbed with pumice-stone in order to clean it thoroughly, and to render the surface a little rough702. This process is similar to that used at present for gilding with amalgam, by means of heat, especially as amalgamation was known to the ancients. But, to speak the truth, Pliny says nothing of heating the metal after the gold is applied, or of evaporating the quicksilver, but of drying the cleaned metal before the gold is laid on. Had he not mentioned quicksilver, his gilding might have been considered as that with gold-leaf by means of heat, dorure en feuille à feu, in which the gold is laid upon the metal after it has been cleaned and heated, and strongly rubbed with blood-stone, or polished steel. Felibien was undoubtedly right when he regretted703 that the process of the ancients, the excellence of which is proved by remains of antiquity, has been lost.

False gilding, that is, where thin leaves of a white metal, such as tin or silver, are applied to the article to be gilded, and then rubbed over with a yellow transparent colour, through which the metallic splendour appears, is much older than I believed it to be in the year 1780. The process for this purpose is given by the monk Theophilus, whose fragments were first printed in 1781704. According to his directions, tin beat into thin leaves was to be rendered of a golden yellow colour by a vinous tincture of saffron, so that other pigments could be applied over it. The varnish or solution of resin in spirit of wine or oil, used for this purpose at present, appears not then to have been known. But in the sixteenth century this art was very common; and instructions respecting it were given by Garzoni705, Cardan706, Caneparius707 and others in their writings. About the same period a pewterer at Nuremberg, named Melchior Koch, was acquainted with the art of communicating a golden colour, in the like manner, to tin goblets and dishes. He died in 1567; and with him, as Doppelmayer says, the art was lost. A method of applying a white metal to paper, and then drawing over it a gold varnish, has been known in China since the earliest periods708. At present this method of gilding is practised more in Sicily than in any other country. It appears also to have been used, at an early period, for gilding leather and leather tapestry; and this perhaps was first attempted at Messina, as we are told by John Matthæus709, who, however, in another place ascribes the invention to a saint of Lucca, named Cita. But gilt leather was made as early as the time of Lucian, who conjectures that Alexander the impostor had a piece of it bound round his thigh710. The dress of the priests, on the festival of Bacchus, was perhaps of the same kind711.

FUR DRESSES

As long as mankind lived under palm-trees in their original country, between the tropics, they had no occasion to provide either food or clothing: the former was spontaneously supplied by the earth, that is, without care or labour; and the latter in that warm climate was superfluous. The art of cultivating plants, and that of preparing clothes, were not innate, but first taught by necessity; and this did not exist till men, in consequence of their increase, were obliged to spread towards both the poles. In proportion as they removed from their former abode, provisions became scarcer, and the climate colder. Hence arose the breeding of cattle, as well as agriculture; and men then first ventured on the cruelty of killing animals, in order that they might devour them as food, and use their skins to shelter them against the severity of the weather.

At first these skins were used raw, without any preparation; and many nations did not till a late period fall upon the art of rendering them softer, and making them more pliable, durable, and convenient. As long as mankind traded only for necessaries, and paid no attention to ornaments, they turned the hairy side towards the body; but as the art of dressing skins was not then understood, the flesh side must have given to this kind of clothing, when the manners of people began to be more refined, an appearance which could not fail of exciting disgust. To prevent this the Ozolæ inverted the skins, and wore the hair outwards; and in this manner some account for the bad smell which exhaled from their bodies712. This custom, however, was so general, that Juvenal, where he describes a miserly person, says, “to guard himself against the cold he does not wear the costly woollen clothing of the luxurious Romans, but the skins of animals, and these even inverted, that is to say, with the hairy side turned inwards, without caring whether the appearance be agreeable or not713.” In what manner the art of tanning was afterwards found out, Goguet has endeavoured to conjecture from the accounts given by travellers, in regard to the savages in the northern parts of America and Asia, but particularly in regard to the Greenlanders. The far more ingenious method of manufacturing wool, first into felt and then into cloth, seems to have been discovered by the inhabitants of temperate districts, where the mildness of the winter rendered fur dresses unnecessary.

The sheep came from Africa; but in that country it has hair and not wool; and it is only in colder climates that the former acquires a woolly nature. If it be true that a Hercules first brought this species of animal from Africa to Greece714, that improvement may have first been effected in the latter country; in which case it is probable that the first attempts to manufacture wool were made by the Athenians, that is to say, among the Greeks; for this art was before known to the Egyptians, who ascribe the invention of it to their Isis.

It may be readily comprehended that many centuries must have elapsed before the tender sheep could be conveyed to and reared in the northern countries, where thick and immense forests produced in abundance a great variety of those animals which were capable of supplying the best furs; where mankind increased but slowly; applied to hunting till a later period; and were not so soon compelled to employ artificial methods of obtaining the most necessary productions; and where they also lived too widely scattered to be soon conducted to the arts by a communication of experience and inventions. The northern nations, therefore, clothed themselves in the raw skins of animals, a long time after the southern tribes were acquainted with the spinning and weaving of wool, flax, and cotton; and on this account the former were astonished at the appearance of the latter.

When the Greeks give us a picture of these barbarians, they scarcely ever fail to state how disgusting they were on account of their dress; which however, by the acknowledgement of their historians, was long worn by their own forefathers715. The heroes even of the Grecian fabulous history clothed themselves in the skins of the most terrible animals716, such as lions and tigers, and on these they also slept. When the Romans wished to describe the manners of their ancestors, and to exhibit the difference between them and their own, they commonly mentioned the use of skins. Thus Propertius calls the senators of the earliest periods the pelliti717, and Valerius Maximus says718, speaking of the luxury of his time, that no one in imitation of Cato would use goat skins as a covering to his bed. But it appears that the Greeks and the Romans, at the time of their prosperity, when the arts and sciences were cultivated among them, made little use of fur clothing. It was worn at that period only on certain festivals, and merely by the poorer classes and rustics719, or employed in the time of war720. At any rate, it is not mentioned among the dresses of the rich, or articles of magnificence and ornament.

The ancient physicians, where they treat on the influence which clothing has on the health, and the choice of it for winter and summer, make no mention of furs. Suetonius, describing the manner in which the emperor Augustus dressed in winter, names various articles of clothing, but no furs; which the emperor, who was so sensible of cold, would certainly have worn, had they been usual. They no doubt would have been much more convenient and answered the purpose better, than the four tunicæ drawn over each other, and the thick toga, the woollen shirt and breast-cloth, and all the other articles mentioned. Martial ridicules a petit-maître, who wished for the arrival of winter and for severe weather in that season, in order that he might exhibit his costly winter dresses. Had furs, at that period, been the fashionable and principal winter clothing, the poet certainly would not have omitted to mention them. At present the baccaræ for the like reason make their appearance as soon as the first frost takes place, along with large muffs, which leave scarcely any part of the body to be seen but the head and the feet. Had furs been employed by way of ornament in the time of Pliny, he no doubt would have noticed this use of them, especially as he mentions and ridicules so many superstitious ways of applying the skins of animals; but I do not remember to have read in the works of this naturalist any account of fur clothing. He relates that an attempt had been made to manufacture the fur of the hare; but it had not succeeded, because the fur, on account of its shortness, as he supposes, would not adhere, or, as we say at present, could not be felted721. He, however, says nothing of hare’s fur being employed to line clothes. It appears also that furs do not often occur as clothing in the sacred scriptures722. In the third, or perhaps even the second century of the Christian æra, fur dresses seem to have been known to the Romans, and to have been much esteemed by them. The numerous northern tribes, who at that time advanced towards the south, were clothed in furs; but they were not all raw, dirty, and disgusting, like those which had before been in use. It may with certainty be supposed that the chief men among them had the most beautiful furs; and that in general they were so well acquainted with the art of preparing them, and wearing them in the most graceful manner, that they by these means recommended them to the notice of the young Romans. For that all those warlike tribes who attacked the Roman empire, and in part subdued it, are not to be considered as uncultivated, savage barbarians, unacquainted with the arts or the sciences, addicted to plundering and murder, who overturned governments and destroyed public happiness and trade, has been lately remarked, when the French applied the term Vandalism to the horrid cruelties committed during the late revolution723. It can be proved that the Romans adopted from their uninvited guests those kinds of dress; that furs soon became fashionable among them, and were an object of luxury and of commerce; and it appears that skins were the first article which occasioned a trade from Italy to the most distant parts of the North, as in the fifteenth century they were the cause of the discovery and conquest of Siberia.

The later the art of manufacturing wool, and of converting the noble metals into lace and other ornaments, was known, in the northern countries, and the later the inhabitants became acquainted with cotton, silk, and precious stones, the earlier and the more they exerted themselves to find out and prepare the most beautiful furs, and to trim and to border with them their dresses; and it needs excite no surprise that the southern nations, though their climate did not require it, adopted this magnificence; especially as the distance and scarcity of furs made them dear enough to be considered by the rich and people of rank as a luxurious mark of distinction. This, in my opinion, will be proved by what follows.

When historians speak of those northern nations with whom the Romans carried on long and for the most part unfortunate wars, they scarcely ever forget to mention their fur clothing; and this is the case in particular with those writers who lived at the time. We are told by Herodotus, that the people near the Caspian sea clothed themselves in seal-skins. The same thing is related by Strabo of the Massagetæ; and Cæsar and Sallust both assert, that the skin of the rein-deer formed in part the clothing of the ancient Germans. I allude here to those dresses which they call renones. That this word is derived from the animal named at present by the Swedes Ren; that the rein-deer was common in ancient Germany, when, in consequence of its being covered with forests and marshes, it had a much colder climate and produced more rein-deer moss than at present; and that Cæsar, where he describes the most remarkable things of Germany, mentions the rein-deer under the name of bos cervi figura, I think I have proved in my juvenile production on the ancient animals of that country. Reno is also Lappmud, or the rein-deer skin, which is still worn in Sweden, which I have worn there myself, and which is handsome and costly. The objection of Wachter724 to this opinion is of very little weight. How is it possible to believe, says he, that these animals were formerly so numerous, that all the Germans and Gauls could clothe themselves in their skins? But on this occasion he does not recollect what he has often proved by examples, that the name of a species is often given to the whole genus. Because a great many wore renones, of which the Romans perhaps were fondest, they gave the name of renones to all these fur dresses of the Germans. The proofs, in ancient authors, in regard to the fur clothing of the Scythians, the Goths, the Getæ, and Huns, are too numerous to be collected. I shall therefore refer only to those passages which I have occasionally remarked, and which I shall soon employ for another purpose725.

It can easily be proved that the Germans and other northern nations, in consequence of their intercourse with the Romans, gradually left off the use of furs, and became more and more accustomed to woollen clothing; and, on the other hand, that the Romans adopted the state dress of their conquerors. Even in the time of Tacitus, those Germans who lived on the Rhine and the Danube, and consequently who were nearest to the Romans, set much less value on furs than those who, residing further within the country, were at a greater distance from intercourse with foreigners and from trade726. The latter had the most costly furs, which they knew how to ornament and variegate with trimmings of every kind, in the same manner perhaps as our furriers at present ornament white fur with the tail of the ermine727. These people possessed no other articles of luxury, and had no other means of distinguishing themselves among their countrymen, but by the rarity and costliness of their furs. Such was the case with the Spartans when Lycurgus deprived them of all their superfluities. They then ornamented, and thereby enhanced the value of the necessary articles they had left, beds, tables and wooden bowls, from which they drank water, and to such a degree, that at length these things were as capable of gratifying the taste of luxury as the foreign wares they had before purchased at so dear a rate728.