FANTASTIC INVENTIONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 August 1940, Page 6

FANTASTIC INVENTIONS

INGENIOUS MR. DREBBEL. Mr Drebbel was one of the strangest inventors who ever lived. His inventions usually leaned towards the fantastic, but there is no doubting the brain behind them. To mention all the inventions we owe Ito Mr Drebbel would be tedious indeed. His genius knew no bounds and in his half century or so of life he can have wasted very few moments. Born at Alkmaar in Holland in 1572, Cornelius Drebbel was equal to all occasions. He began by making etchings, and went on to study science and mathematics. He invented a submarine which sailed from Westminster to Greenwich, and machines for making rain, lightning, thunder, or frosty weather to order, a most wonderful gadget, truly. It is said that he showed this apparatus to the King of England, and a host of notable people who all met in Westminster Hall, doing it on a summer day, and succeeding so well that everyone scampered out for fear of being frostbitten. Heat and cold, wet or dry were all alike to Mr Drebbel. He made an incubator for bringing on chicks. He amazed and mystified wondering audiences bj r an invention which must have been something like a magic lantern, for with the aid of it he could show people who were not there — perhaps throwing their portraits on a screen. He is said to have discovered scarlet dye; and he is known to have introduced the thermometer, microscope, and telescope into general use in England. But he is most famous for his perpetual motion machine. Ben Jonson mentions it in one of his plays, and crowds went to see it. including James the First of England and Rudolph the Second of Germany. Everyone thought it a marvellous invention, but we know very well that it would not go for ever, as he claimed. Still, ingenious Mr Drebbel deserves a little praise.