"IMPOSSIBLE."

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 122, 23 May 1908, Page 9

"IMPOSSIBLE."

INVENTIONS UNFAVOURABLY

RECEIVED.

THEIR SUBSEQUENT SUCCESS.

The Simpson gun, with all the possibilities claimed for it, has naturally directed attention to the famous secret war plan which tho tenth Earl of Dundonald devised (remarks St. James's Budget). By the means which ho suggested, he was able, he asserted, to destroy any fleet or fortress in the world. The mystery attaching to this plan is enhanced by Professor Laughton, who, in the "Dictionary of National Biography," states that the plan, as often as it was submitted to the Government, was put on one side as too terrible and inhuman, "though always with the clear admission that it was capable of producing the results which Dundonald claimed for it.' r That is the general belief as to tho scheme, and common report has it that tho plan lies to this day buried away in the archives of the War Office. The true history of the plan had a different termination. Lord Dundonald has all the papers relating to tho secret plan, has had them for tho last two-and-twenty years, and can, if he pleases, tell the whole story from A to Z.

ARMS AND THE MEN

It is quite tiue that the infiutntial committee of experts who first* examfned the plan declared it "infallible, irresistible, but inhuman," and for That reason put it aside. But the science of war marched rapidly in the early decades of the nineteenth century, and when during the Crimean War, Lord Dundonald again submitted his plan, men of a different type of mind, and with far greater scientific knowledge, were appointed by Lord Palmerston to examine it. The examiners now were Lyon Playfair, one of tne sanest scientists of tho century, and his old master in chemistry, Professor . Graham, at this time Master of the Mint. It was an interesting moment when the plan was finally considered. Admiral Sir Charles Napier was preparing to take over tho command of the Baltic Fleet, in full possession of his friend Dundonald's secret ; while Dundonald was hoping to obtain command of the Black Sea Fleet. The two old heroes used frequently to visit Playfair to discuss the whole thing with him, and Dundonald sketched out a project for the reduction, by his own methods, of Sebastopol.

THE VERDICT.

Lord Playfair and his confrere decided against the secret plan. "I reported unfavourably as to the chief part of his invention," he recorded, "while I thought that the minor part, to which he did not attach much importance, was suspectible of extensive application." Lord Dundonald did not in tho least mind his adverse judgment. Strangers when the investigation . brought them together, he and Playfair became firm friends, in spite of the fact that the scientist was destroying his hope of immortality as an inventor of an invincible war plan. That the invention did not comprise anything in the nature of the Simpson gun may be inferred from this commentary of Playfair's : "Whether he would have succeeded with his secret methods, had ■he received the command of the Black Sea Fleet, it is impossible to say, on account of his wonderful personal influence with sailors." The two experts did not feel justified on any grounds in recommending it} and Lord Palmerston coincided with their views. It was Lord Playfair who handed the whole of Lord Dundonald's paper over to his present successor.

ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE,

The new gun invented by Mr. Simpson may be impossible as somo of the critics assert. The man in the street cannot hope to decide where experts disagree, 1 but he remembers that every invention of a startling kind has been received with precisely the same incredulity by the critics. The new implement has no more powerful critics than those who assailed the Armstrong gun. For three years its creator experimented with it before he submitted it to the inspection of tho War Office. "Pooh, a pop-gun," they said when they first exa'mincd it. Two years later General Peel declared of the "pop-gun" that its accuracy at three thousand yards was as seven to one compared with that of the ordinary gun at one thousand yards ; whilst at a thousand yards it would hit an object every time which was struck by the common gun only once in fifty-seven times. Thus the piece which the critics condemned was fiftyseven times as accurate as that to which they pinned thoir faith. It- would hit a target thirty inches in diameter, while the old sorvico gun could not bo roliod upon to hit a haystack.

' MORE WONDERS. Dr. Russell Wallace, who nas had a good deal of experience of hostility to new discoveries, avers that wherever you have the opinion of one man who has made a long study of a given subject controverted by -many men who have not made a close study of it, you are to believe the one against the multitude. That is what the frionds of early attempts nt industrial invention had to do in this country. Sir Joseph Banks ridiculed the possibility of trie steamship. "A very pretty plan, but you forget one little thing," he said, "that the (.team engine must have a solid base upon which to work." George Stephenson had tho like experience with his railway. He would never have got his Bill through Parliament had the experts known that he . meant to employ locomotives on the Manchester and Liverpool line. They thought he was going to use horses ! Tho lessons which ho tr.ught might have sufficed for a later generation, but Sir John Towler had just as serious opposition to combat in Parliamentary committees. It was ridiculous for him to talk of an underground railway, he was told. Why, the lines would be so greasy that his engines would never be able to draw tho trains !