ABOUT MIRRORS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1985, 23 April 1906, Page 2

ABOUT MIRRORS.

The necessity for something which wfluld enable a man to see hlfcyjwn face q)ast have been early apparent, anW s itL.*iKprobabiiity the first mirror was thsyplacid surface of a body of water. The next most accessible object was a piece of polished metal, and it was of this material that the first artificial mirrors were made. The Israelites, under Moses, had mirrors of brass, and doubtless other metals were used long before that period. Black glass was used for mirrors, as well as transparent glass with some black substance on the back. It is related that the Spaniards found mirrors ef polished black stone, both convex and concave, among th« natives of South America. The mirrors of the ancient Greeks and Romans were thin discs of bronze, highly polished, and usually fashioned with handles, though sometimes they were set upright on stands. Later on, silver was used, and the fir?t mirror of solid silver is said to have been marie by Praxiteles, in the time of Julius (Jcesar. Subsequently silver mirrors took the place of brass or bronze ones-airmv<t altogether, though steel, copper, and even goldwerealso employed. " Looking-glasses" of metal were employed everywhere up to the fifteenth century. From the twelfth to the fifteenth century small mirrors, carried in the pocket or attached to the girdle, were regarded as indispensable adjuncts to ladies' toilets. The pocket-mirror was a circular plaque of polished metal fixed in a shallow box and covered with a lid. Ivory was usually the material of such cases, and, as a rule, they were carved in relief of representations of love, domestic scenes, hunting sports, and the like. Gold, silver, enamels, and ebony were likewise used as materials. The sort of mirror worn at the girdle had no cover, but was provided with a short handle. In the Middle Ages, when steel and silver mirrors were almost exclusively used, a method of backing glass for the same purpose with thin sheets of metal was known. Small convex mirrors of glass were mad« in Germany before the sixteenth century, and were in demand until comparatively modem times. They were produced by blowing small glass globes, into which, while they wore hot, was passed through a pipe a mixture of tin, antimony and resin. When the globe was coated inside, it was allowed to cool, and was afterwards cut j into convex lenses, which formed small but j well-defined images. j Hand-mirrors of metal are still in common . use in Oriental countries. In China and j Japan they are usually made of bronze, slightly convex, and about twelve inches in diameter. The Japanese woman who is so fortunate as to own a mirror regards it as the most precious of her possessions. Some Japanese mirrors ar« supposed te possess a magic quality, which has rendered them objects of superstitious reverence for centuries, and, in fact, it has even puzzled modern science not a little. When a strong beam of light is so reflected j from one of them as to be thiown upon a screen, there appears upon th« screen an I image in delicate tracery, perfectly reproj ducing the pattern engraved in relief on th« back of the mirror, which, of course, is altogether hidden from the light. Inasmuch as the face of the mirror presents a surface that is perfectly smooth, apparently the reason for this phenomenon is difficult to find. Its cause, however, is j simple enough. The preliminary operation j of polishing the face consists in scoring the i cast disc with a sharp tool in every direction. j The thicker portions, where the ornamentaj tion in relief is on the back, offer mora j resistance, and the result is aconesponding inequality of the polished surface. This inequality is not sufficiently marked to be visible to the naked eye, but it is enough to turn the rays of light, and thus the pattern of the engraving on the back la • reproduced on the screen in the manner | described. | These so-called magic mirrors are so highly valued that they sell from ten te twenty times the price paid for ordinary ones. !- i