Miscellaneous

Lake County Press, Issue 2790, 19 June 1919, Page 7

Miscellaneous

ENCINEERINC FEATS OF THE ANCIENTS. In an address at the annual meeting of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the President of the Society, Mr. George H. Pegram, made some statements in regard to the antiquity of the engineering profession, and to the achievements of days long past, which, while not new in detail, are of interest, and most impressive, as presented by the speaker. He said: Engineering is sometimes claimed to : be a modern profession because the prej sent appellation is of comparatively rej cent adoption. The practice, however, j is of such ancient origin that, in con- ! sideling its relations to the communi ity, we are obliged to view its history. ' ' Most of our tools —the dowel, drill, chisel, wedge, screw, pulley, file, and saw—were used by the ancients. ! No works of modern times compare in j magnitude with those of the ancients. | Consider a reservoir, to impound the J waters of the Nile, covering an area of j 150 square miles, with a dam 30 feet i high and 13 miles long. The pyramids of Gizeh, constructed more than 5,00(j| years ago, had granite blocks which were five feet square and 30 feet long, and were transported 500 miles. One , of the temples of Memphis was built of stones which were 13 feet square and 65 feet long, and laid with close joints.

The Appian Way from Rome to Capua was so-well built that after a thousand years its roadway was in perfect condition, and, even now, after two thousand years, with slight repairs, is in use. The modern engineer would question tlie possibility of such work without these great examples. Tf one could imagine cessation of life on this continent, and our works subjected to the destructive forces of time and Nature for a thousand years, what evidences of civilisation would remain?

Probably the most surprising and interesting of the older examples of engineering are the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci, as shown in his sketches. He seems to have lacked nothing but the application of mechanical power to produce most of the typical machines of the present day. The bellows-blast, jigsaw, lathe, roiling mill, printing press, file-cutting machine , trip-hammer, sprocket-chain, water-wheel, boring machine, rapid-fire gun, spinning machine, side-wheel boat, flying machine, etc., and I commend to your notice the work of Franz M. Feldhaus on "Leonardi da Vinci as Engineer and Inventor," published in 1913. In this work is shown an apparatus of cylinder, piston, and valve by which Leonardo determined the relative volumes of steam and water; also an atmospheric engine, consisting of cylinder, piston, and valve, bv which reciprocal motion was produced. The pity is that, in all his machinery requiring mechanical power, and in spite of his experiments hinting at its application, he still was limited to muscular effort, and it was not unit! the invention of Watt that the mystic want of mechanical power initiated a transformation of the world and made a radical change in the organisation ot man.

We look in vain for the application of mechanical power by the ancients, whose works seem almost impossible without its assumption, but the stone reliefs showing the movement of large weights by manual power indicate that probably the other did not exist.

MADE FAMOUS BY FICHTINC, War brings into prominence many places, small and insignificant in themselves. The names of tiny villages like Givenchy and Messines, for instance, will live for all time in the historybooks of the future. Similarly, Blenheim, the sqene of Marlborough's most famous victory, is but a hamlet of some half-dozen houses straggling along the Bavarian bank of the Danube. Waterloo is a smaTl place with fewer than 4,000 inhabitants. Austerlitz. where Napoleon defeated the combined armies of Austria and Russia, falls into the same category. Agincourt—or Azincour, to give it the modern French spelling—is a mere hamlet of a few hundred souls. So are Fontenoy and Malplaquet. Abu Klea, where, in 1885, 1,500 of our troops defeated 15,000 of the Mahdi's picked warriors, is a ramshackle collection of Arab huts clustered round a group of wells. Mafeking, Colenso, Siormberg, Magersfontein, and Paardeberg, places famous in the South I African War, are quite unimportant I villages apart from the historical 1 events associated with them.

QUILL PENS. • Although fche steel pen, the fountain pen, and the typewriter have long been in universal use, the old-fashioned quill pen may still he found in the offices of old-fashioned solicitors. Quills are known to have been used for writing as early as the fifth century, and through "penna," a feather, have given their name to a whole class of writing implements. The first steel pen is not much more than a hundred years old, and at first it cost half a crown. At that time only the well-to-do participated in the advantage of the novely. The "boons" and he "blessings" came later, and now the quill penmaker. liktt the steel and flint, and other handy accessories of everyday life which our forbears carried about with them, is to be found only occasionally. A TRAGEDY OF MONT BLANC. Mont Blanc is noted for its deathroll, one of tho first disasters being the Hamel catastrophe. In August, 1820,

y Messrs. Durnford and Henderson, with d Dr. Haniel and guides, began the ascent i, at 6.20, at 10.30 they had reached a v point above the Dome du Gouter, 14,000 ' feet high. Suddenly the snow gave way . beneath their feet, while that from . above descended upon them, and swept them towards the crevasse. The three ,i front guides were engulfed; the fourth, Matthew Balmat, dug his staff through t the snow into the ice and saved himself. Two other guides narrowl.y escaped their 3 comrades' fate, one being senseless when dragged out of the snow. The , Englishmen and Dr. Hamel, with the ' three guides, were hopelessly lost. Now comes the most noteworthy pre- " diction by Professor Forbes to the effect that the bodies buried in the crevasse | would be recovered in 40 years. In 1861 the remains began to appear at Glacier des Bossons, more than four i miles from the scene of acicdent, having travelled an average of 500 feet per annum. •'£•! A Geneva professor at Chamouni, when the remains were recovered, stated that the most pathetic scene he ever witnessed was when a spinster pi 70 hobbled up to identify the remains of him who had been her lover. The corpse preserved from decay by the glacier was that of a youth who might have died the day before, snatched away in all the glory of early manhood, and it was impossible to realise that this worn-old creature who had bent. over him could ever have been his mate. (RAZILIANS AND THE UNION JACK. Th', Brazilian navy once fired on the Union Jack— fortunately not in any hostile spirit (says the Manchester Guardian). Forty years ago a couple of adventurous bluejackets from a British warship anchored off Rio de Janeiro climbed to the top of Pao d'Azucar, or Sugarloaf, the conical peak at the entrance to the harbour, and marked theit feat by decorating the summit with a Union Jack. The sight of an alien flag planted there aroused fierce indignation among the natives. The British Minister apologised profusely, and expressed his willingness to see the flag removed. As, however, the ship containing the culprits had sailed, nobody could be found to undertake tue removal. Pao d'Azucar being classed by Brazilians as und'mhcible. Eventually some Brazilian warships tried to shoot the flag off the top of the mountain, but their effcits were in vain, and the flag remained till it rotted away.

THE SWISS NAVY. The debate on the Naval Estimates serves to recall the fact that centuries before Germany was to be reckoned with as a sea Power Switzerland possessed a fleet equipped for warfare. Eight hundred years ago, on all the larger Swiss lakes, armed galleys were maintained by the rival cantons. Skilled shipwrights had to be imported from Genoa for the construction of these vessels, some of which carried crews of five hundred men or more. The largest of these flotilla was maintained on the Lake of Geneva, when the inhabitants of Geneva were at war with Savoy. Since the neutrality of Switzerland has been guaranteed by the Powers there has been no need for war vessels on the lakes. The Swiss, however, possess a mercantile navy, which carries a considerable amount of trade over the 342 miles of navigable waterways in the Republic. FIRST ACTOR V.C. Temporary Lieutenant William Dartnell, who sacrificed his life near Maktau (East Africa), and to whom the V.C. has been posthumously awarded, is believed to be the first actor who ever gained this distinction. Lieutenant Dartnell was by birth an Australian, and was f or some time well known as an actor. He served during the South African Campaign.