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Stories of invention told by inventors and their friends
Stories of invention told by inventors and their friends Author:Edward Everett Hale Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. FRIAR BACON. " A LL the world seems to have known of Columbus '' discoveries as soon as he came home, but all tl world did not know at once of Archime... more »des's inventiom indeed, I should think the world did not know now whi all of them are." Hester Van Brunt was saying this in the hall, as tl girls laid off their waterproofs, when they next met tr Colonel. " I think that may often be said of what we call Inve: tions and what we call Discoveries," he said, " till qui: recent times. When a man invented a new process, it w supposed that if he could keep the secret, it might be i him a very valuable secret. But when one discovered a island or a continent, it was almost impossible to keep ta secret. They tried it sometimes, as you know. But then must be a whole ship's crew who know something of th new-found land, and from some of them the secret wouJ leak out. " But there has been many a process in the arts Ids! because the man who discovered the new quality in natui or invented the new method in manufacture kept it secret so that he might do better work than his competitor This went so far that boys were apprenticed to maste - learn ' the secrets of their trades.' " ROGER BACO.V. 37 Fergus said that in old times inventors were not always 'eated very kindly. If people thought they were sorcerers, r in league with the Devil, they did not care much for :-ie invention. 'Uncle Fritz said they would find plenty of instances of be persecution of inventors, even to quite a late date. t is impossible, of course, to say how many good things fere lost to the world by the pig-headedness which dis- rouraged new inventions. It is marvellous to think what rogress single men made, who had to begin almost at he beginning, and learn for themselves what every in- telligent boy o...« less