RANDOM READINGS.

Matamata Record, Volume II, Issue 88, 27 June 1918, Page 4

RANDOM READINGS.

ANTIQUE MODERN INVENTIONS A German paper points out that many so-called modern inventions are possessed of considerable antiquity. In the matter of submarines it is of interest to note that about 1710, Emanuel Swedenborg, most generally known, perhaps, on account of his religious writings, but who was one of the most advanced scientists of his age, published a pamphlet in which he described the construction of a vessel which “can with its whole crew dive beneath the surface of the sea wheresoever it pleaseth, and do great harm to the enemy’s fleet.” Then, again a flying-machine which was invented in Vienna in 1809, by a watchmaker, Degan, had a great many details in common with the aeroplane of to-day. Records state that Degan actually flew with this machine, and that “he did not only rise and fall but actually navigated in the air.” Swedenborg, as early as 1716, made up general plans for a flying machine. He was certain that the power problem, which he was unable to solve, would be solved some time in the future. Finally, the fact was recently established by archaeologists that the imperial palace in Rome was provided with elevators some 2000 years ago, although it has not been determined exactly how the power was supplied nor how they were operated. POSTCARD HISTORY. It was about forty years ago that M. Raymond Louis Wolowski, a wellknown French politician who was by birth a Pole, proposed in the National Assembly that the postal card should be recognised as a legitimate form of correspondence in France, and this was the beginning, so far as is known, of the postcard as we know it

But the real discovery of the postcard ns a means of correspondence, it is said, was made long before by two young lovers living in distant villages. It was at the time before stamps existed, and the receiver of a letter paid the charges to the postman. The daughter of a poor farmer received from time to time a letter from her lover, a soldier, but she was too poor to pay the postage, and after having examined it intently she returned it to the postman. On the envelope were scratched numbers and figures, together with the address. One day a neighbour, taking pity on the young girl, offered to pay the postage. The girl refused, but the neighbour insisted. Once in possession of the letter the girl made no attempt to open it, but stood gazing at the envelope. The neighbour was astonished. When questioned, the girl replied, “There is nothing written inside the letter. We are not rich enough, my fiance and I, to pay the postage of our letters, and before he went to the army we arranged a code language between us, the signs you see traetd on the envelope.” Thus was discovered the postcard. INVENTOR OF THE THERMOMETER. It seems strange to think that a little over 260 years ago the only way there was to tell of the weather, or the atmosphere of a room, or to speak about its being hot or cold, was by one’s own personal sensations. All wa need to do, from the beginning of the year to its end, is to look at the thermometer, and no matter how varying the change may be, it informs us correctly of the state of the atmosphere whether out of doors or in. Seventeen hundred years appears to have been a long time to wait for such, a convenient little instrument; and one, too, which is of course, of interest to everybody. Having become accustomed to its use, we, of course, are unable to understand how the people of the seventeenth century ever managed to get along without a thermometer. To be sure many attempts were made by 'scientific men to produce an instrument for measuring heat and cold, hut none of them were successful. And if Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit had not failfed in business as a merchant, there is no telling how we of to-day would be speaking of the weather. After Fahrenheit, the name which every thermometer bears, and who was fa native of Danteic, failed in business, he turned his attention to mechanics and chemistry. Fahrenheit was a poor man, and had lived a very obscure life, and while he had a taste for the higher learning he had never been able to gratify liis love for study in any particular branch. Now, however, he began a series of experiments for the production of the thermometer. And it is owing to .his determination to succeed, and to his loyalty to the conviction that he must give to the world the instrument which has proved so serviceable to mankind, that we are able to have a definite way of speaking of hot, or very hot; cold, or very cold. For his first instrument Fahrenheit used alcohol. But before long he became convinced that a more suitable article to use in the glass tube was the semi-solid mercury. By this time, about the year 1720, Fahrenheit Had removed from Dantzic to Amsterdam. ’And here, jn the capital of Holland, he made the mercury thermometers. And all the thermometers which ©vet since have been produced were made like the original one that Fahrenheit fashioned in Amsterdam over two centuries ago. The basis of Fahrenheit’s plan was this: “To work on the tube the two points respectively at which' water is congealed and boiled, graduate the space between.l