ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

320

Proposed Arrangement for the New Post-Office.

MR. EDITOR,

THE report of the state of London Bridge, which appeared in your Number for March, was highly interesting; and if any of your correspondents could add to it that of the committee for examining into the state of the Post-office, it would, I think, be acceptable to many of your readers. The writer knows but little of the management of the present office, that little he obtained from a person who a few years since was employed in the sorting department-that little he takes the liberty to communicate, hoping it may induce others who can communicate much more to do so. My informant told me that there were then fifty persons employed in the sorting department; it was expected that each sorter should be acquainted with the situation of every town, village, and gentleman's seat throughout the kingdom; and as almost all the letters for the country were received at the post-office, and sorted during the last hour or two, prior to the bags being made up, the labour in that department was excessive; it was so much so in his case, as to injure his health and oblige him to leave his situation. The interval between the delivery of the letters in the morning, and the receipt of them in the evening, was totally unoccupied. The number of letters received in town was about 32 or 33,000 a-day, and about the same number returned in the evening to the country, together with about as many newspapers Of the management of other departments of the post-office the writer is ignorant, excepting what may be seen of the receiving offices, which are, in their present situation, as incommodious as can be well conceived. The first is for unpaid letters; it is a line of boxes for the receipt of letters for all England, &c.; and from the narrow confined situation is exceedingly inconvenient, particularly from the crowd usually collected to put in letters previous to the closing of the bags. The next office is for paid and overcharged letters; and as there is only one office for both these purposes, and generally, I believe, only one person to receive the letters, charge the postage, and take the money, and I think no more for examining the letters and returning the money for those that are overcharged, the crowd of persons collected there for a considerable time after the mails come in, and an hour or two before they set off, is excessive; and these are confined in a narrow contracted situation, without covering,

(May 1,

[blocks in formation]

imperfections in the management of a But as it is much easier to point out public office than to rectify them, I will take the liberty to offer a few crude ideas, which I hope some of your more able correspondents will enlarge and improve upon for the better regulation and improvement of the receiving department of the intended new Post-office. I will suppose the new office to be inclosed with a wall, which shall form a square inclosed court in the center, similar to the inside of the Royal Exchange; let there be a receiving office erected in the rotunda, and let there be a number of middle of this square in the form of a apartments built round the whole of the exterior wall of the rotunda, each about 12 or 14 feet in length; let these apartroad on which the mail coaches run to ments be as numerous as the lines of each apartment, or receiving-office, be the various parts of the kingdom; let the rotunda-No. 1 being placed over numbered on the wall of the interior of the office for the northern road- No. 2, for the southern-No. 3, for the western

No. 4, for the midland, &c. &c. each office to be provided with a person to receive the paid letters through an opening in the wall from the interior of the ro tunda (which may be closed by a sliding board,) and also with an opening in the there be also a list arranged alphabetiwall into a box for unpaid letters. Let cally of every town, village, and gentleveyed on that Ime of road to which the man's seat, to which letters will be conoffice belongs. Let this list be written' as to be easily read by every person, or printed on the wall at such a height however short or imperfect their sight. By inspecting such lists every person may know to what places letters will be conveyed on that line of road, and into which box to put their letters. If print ed copies of those lists were delivered to every mercantile house, and hung up in their counting-houses, it would much faci delivering them to the porter to take to litate the sorting of letters previous to

1615.]

Mr. Taylor-an Error of Saunderson and Hobbs.

the post-office; when nothing more would be necessary but to desire him to put certain letters into the letter-box No. 1, others into the box No. 2, &c. &c. The interior of each apartment, or receivingoffice, should be provided with a counter, which may be divided on the top into boxes after the manner of a seedsman's show-board: the number of these boxes should be the same as the number of bags of letters to be made up for that line of road to which the office belongs. These boxes would be found very convenient by the person employed in sorting the letters, who, standing in the centre of the counter with the letters to be sorted before him, would have nothing to do but to throw them into the different boxes, according to the bags to which they may belong; and after so doing, to put them into the different bags. On the exterior of each receiving office, or apartment, let there be a door which may open either into the open court, or a covered piazza, under which the mail-coaches might be brought to take in the bags of letters, sheltered as they would then be in all sorts of weather. I need hardly say that the light both to the receiving-offices and rotunda might be admitted from the roof. The inclosed court should be provided with two entrances, or carriage-ways, similar to those at the Royal Exchange. The mail-coaches should invariably enter at one and leave at the other. The advantages of the above alteration, I think, in the first place, would be, that those who have letters to put into the letterboxes would be always under cover when so doing; in the second, the number of receiving-offices both for paid and unpaid letters being increased, it would prevent the accumulation of a crowd round any of the boxes, and that detention and waste of time, which is so much complained of at present, and by having as many receiving-offices as mail-coaches, the sorting of the letters would be much expedited; and although some letters might be dropped into the wrong letterbox, yet the number would be so small as to be easily selected when the bags were made up at each receiving-office. The keepers of the various receiving offices in the different parts of the town might be directed to sort the letters as they receive them, putting those for the northern road into a bag No. 1, those for the southern into a bag No. 2, &c.; by so doing much time might be saved at the general post-office. Hoping the above imperfect hints may induce some NEW MONTHLY MAG.-No. 16.

321

of your able and better informed correspondents to favour us with a more complete plan of improvement than the above, I remain VECLEE. March 28, 1815.

MR. EDITOR,

IT will doubtless appear no less sur prising to many of your mathematical readers than it did to me, that so great a mathematician as Dr. Saunderson should have been ignorant of the difference between double and duplicate ratio: but that he was so the following quotation from the second volume of his Algebra, p. 468, abundantly evinces:-"The way of representing ratios by fractions," says he," though it may serve well enough for comparing them as to greater and less, yet ought it notby any means to be admitted in general, because these representations are not in the same proportion with the ratios represented by them. Thus the fraction is double of the fraction; but yet it must by no means be concluded from thence that the ratio of 6 to 2 is double of the ratio of 3 to 2; for it will be found hereafter that the ratio of 9 to 4 is double of the ratio of 3 to 2. For my own part I never was a favourer of representing ratios by fractions, or even fraction-wise, as is done by Barrow and others; not only for the reasons above given, but also because this way of representing ratios is very apt to mislead beginners into wrong conceptions of their composition and resolution."

The mathematician who has studied Euclid with that attention which he so eminently deserves, need not be told that the ratio of 9 to 4 is duplicate of the ratio of S to 2; because it is compounded of the ratio of 3 to 2 twice, viz. of the ratio of 9 to 6, and the ratio of 6 to 4; but that the ratio of 6 to 2 is double, and not duplicate, of the ratio of 3 to 2.

It is also a singular fact that Hobbes committed the very same blunder, and received correction for it from the acute Wallis; for, in a treatise published by the latter, at Oxford, in 1656, entitled Due Correction for Mr. Hobbes, or School Discipline for not saying his Les-' sons right, &c." he observes as follows, (p. 73):-" Then you do not like that I should say, the proportion of 6 to 3 is double, and that of 3 to 1 treble. Tell me (say you) egregious professors, how is to 6 to 3 double proportion? The answer is easy, though perhaps you will not like it. The proportion of 6 to 3, VOL. III. QU

1322

On Gunpowder, Fire-arms, &c.

or 2 to 4, is that which is commonly
called double; and that of 3 to 1 is
commonly called treble. And if you will
not believe me, pray believe your own
words: Corp. p. 110, l. 5—6. Ratio 2 to
1 vocatur dupla; et 3 ad 1 tripla. You
tell us then, We may observe that Euclid
never distinguisheth between double and
duplicate; one word (you say) serves
him every where for either.. You might
as well bid us put out our eyes; or else
believe that o διπλασιος διπλασιού, and ο δι
Wasiwv diadalovos, are the same words.
Perhaps you thought so when you wrote
your work in Latin; but since that time
you have been better instructed, and
have learned at length to distinguish
between double and duplicate, as we
shall hear anon.”, THOS. TAYLOR.
Manor-place, Walworth,
April 13, 1815.

For the New Monthly Magazine.
ON GUNPOWDER, IGNEOUS SUBSTANCES
USED IN WAR, AND FIRE-ARMS.

THE discovery of gunpowder, which was commonly ascribed to one Barthold Schwartz, a monk, about the year 1320, seems to have justly become the object of considerable doubt of late years; though no researches have hitherto afforded us any satisfactory elucidation either as to its author, or the precise era of its origin or application. Some mo, dern writers of our own country have ascribed a knowledge, and others the absolute invention, of this destructive weapon to the famous Roger Bacon, who flourished in the middle of the thirteenth century and it is by no means improbable that he had ascertained the effect of saltpetre combined with sulphur though it may reasonably be doubted whether he was altogether acquainted with the composition of gunpowder, as his advocates have asserted, Bacon's knowledge, whatever it was, remained, however, without any further conse quences; and a discovery of the same art was undoubtedly made in a remote country, nearly a century after him; we must, therefore, be put into possession of much more decisive evidence than, has hitherto been adduced, before we consent to strip the brow of Schwartz, in order to adorn that of our learned, countryman. The Saracens are asserted by others to have employed gunpowder, as early as the year 1242, in their wars in Spain; having acquired the, art either

Particularly Bishop Watson, in his Chemical Essays. Vide vol. i. essay 10. Vide Biographia Brit. vol. i.

[May,

from some eastern nation, or borrowed the idea of it from the use of the Gre cian fire: whilst some have again attributed both the discovery, and the subsequent diffusion of its principles, to the Moguls or the Chinese. The first may be possible, though the historians of the Holy Wars speak of the Grecian fire only, and not of any substance in the least resembling gunpowder; in point of tine, however, we by no means, pretend to deny that they may have invented or discovered it at an earlier period than we Europeans. Indeed, it must have been of very great antiquity among Asiatics, if it be true either that the. Veidain or Vede forbids the use of it in war, or that it was employed in a battle. near Mecca in the year 690.

the

Awriter of late date has even gone so far as to claim the merit of this in-. vention in behalf of the ancients.* These circumstances cannot, however, in any way controvert the established fact, that the discovery and application of gunpowder in Germany, and other com tries of the Continent, was altogether independent of any previous knowledge of a similar preparation.

Still there seems to be little doubt but the Grecian fire contributed, if indeed. it did not directly lead, to this casual or scientific invention, when we consider the affinities existing in so many points between the nature and effect of both substances. But as it is not the object of the following pages to travel over so wide and intricate a ground, nor to attempt a discussion of the several claims which have been set up, we shall proceed to lay before the reader some ac count of various igneous compositions used in war at different period's, and particularly some memorable passages respecting those employed in the Low Countries, a short time before the dis covery of gunpowder; for which we are indebted to John of Leyden's Chronicon Hollandia. With these will be com bined a brief memoir of some kinds of fire-arms, arranged according to the order of time.

Fire, as a weapon of war, was em ployed both by the Greeks and Romans. They used it as, well in the attack as the defence of fortified places in the destruction of the assailants and the, assailed as well as their engines. Livy, the historian, relating the minner

*Dutens Orig. des Découvertes, ch. 210.

+ Preserved in Franc. Sweerti Rer. Beg Annal. Francof. 1620, fol.

1815.]

On Gunpowder, Fire-arms, &c.

in which the Saguntii repelled the Africans, who had penetrated into the town, describes a fire-arm which be calls faluPica. It was a square-formed dart, with an iron head three feet long, whose shaft was bound round with tow covered with itch. The middle or shaft being set on fire, it was launched among the enemy, and though it might fail of penetrating into the body of one of the adversaries, it was still of use in obliging him to throw away his shield, to which it adhered, and thus exposing him without defence against succeeding blows. These firedarts, which were probably of Iberian invention, were also hurled against the machines brought to beat down the ramparts, and against the wooden towers which were placed close alongside of them, in order to attack and drive posts. away the besieged from their When used for these purposes, the falarica, was prepared with more art.-Vegetius tells us how to bedaub the tow with which the shaft is bound, with brimstone, pitch, rosin, and turpentine, and a particular kind of oil, which he callsoleum incendiarium. It was launched by means of the balistæ..

We are not aware of the use of any other fire-arm than this previously to the seventh century, in the time of the Eperor Constans; in the latter part of whose reign (A. D. 665) one Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis, deserted from the Saracenic to the Grecian service, and imparted to the Byzantian monarch the important secret of the Grecian fire, which became the palladium of the totWith this tering empire of the East. composition, which Paul the Deacon calls" ignis marinus," Callinicus taught his new countrymen to destroy the fleets of the Saracens. Some writers have quarrelled with the name given to this destructive weapon; but, as the secret was unknown to the Saracens themselves, though the chemist was born in a place in their possession, and as the Byzantian government confined it for above 400 years within their own breast, we know not what more suitable appella tion it could have received: an equal want of justice has also apparently induced them to strip him of any honour beyond that of inventing a machine for discharging it. From this time the Greeks always kept particular ships for the express purpose of employing it against their adversaries' vessels. At first, it was poured from the walls, either out

Lib. xxi. cap. 9.

+ De Re Milit. lib. iv. 18.
De Gestis longobard, xix. 15.

323

of pots, or sent forth in red hot shells. of stone and iron, or hurled by means of javelins or arrows, over the enemy and his engines; and was held to be inextinguishable by any other matters than vinegar, urine, and sand.

So late as the year 1106, it was made use of in a fluid state by the people of Dyrrachium, when besieged by Boemond, Prince of Antioch. About the same time also, the Mahomedans having discovered the secret, took revenge for an invention originally contrived against themselves, and made a destructive use of it against the Christians in the Holy Wars. They generally, if not always, combined with it other ardent or combustible matters brittistone, wax, grease, pitch, and towwhen it was called inextinguishable oil.†

James de Vitry speaks more distinctly than any other writer we are acquainted with of the principal ingredient of the Grecian fire, which he assures us to have says, "Est fons quibeen naptha. He dam in Oriente, ex cujus aquis ignis Græcus efficitur, quibusdam atriś admixtis; qui postquam vehementer fuerit uccensus, xix aut nunquam potest extingui, nisi aceto, et hominum urina, et sabulo." To be concluded in our next.)

MR. EDITOR,

I observed your attention in gising a place in your esteemed publication to invention, the descriptive sketch of my after being laid before' a meeting of the Edinburgh Institute, and for which I return you my sincere thanks. I am sensible of the advantage derived in giving it publicity through such respectable channels, and am happy to transmit you a particular account of it, which was published in the Scots Magazine for February last, accompanied with engravings. As this may be too extensive for your work, you may make what use of it you think proper; and if a perspective wood-engraving be annexed to what you insert, it would tend very much to illustrate it.

As there are now several of the large presses in different offices here, and all of them giving complete satisfaction, I can with the greater confidence submit this invention to the public, from having been thus practically proved, The portable presses are made wholly of iron, or brass; the smallest size, as you will ob serve in the accompanying description, are not longer than a cubic foot; they *Alb. Aqu. in Gest. Rei per Franc, t. j.

X. 40.

1

† Ibid, xii, 6. Also Willerni, Pyr. viii, 12,

324

Mr. Ruthven on his Printing Press.

are delivered, completely fitted up and ready for working, at 12 guineas; one pair of cases, with a fount of types, 4 guineas; the other requisites are sup plied for 2 guineas; these consist of iron frames, for making fast the types or pages; ink case; pair of balls; iron composing-stick, &c. &c. Portable presses for printing a royal quarto, or copying large quarto letters; 18 inches square by 12 inches high, 16 guineas; the types and other necessary articles, are the same for both sizes; when they are made of brass an additional charge is made.

Though I have not yet been able to send up any of the portable presses, I

[May 1,

am fully aware of the importance of having a few for inspection in London; and I expect to have one or two sent off in the course of a few days. As I also intend being in your city in about three weeks, I shall take the liberty of leaving my address with your publisher, and be happy to give you, or any of your friends an opportunity of inspecting them.

I am, &c. JOHN RUTHVEN. Edinburgh, March 17, 1815.

Since this article was sent to the printer, we have received an information from Mr. RUTHVEN that his press may be eza

mined at work at Messrs. HAINES and TURNER'S, 75, Margaret-street, Oxford-street. EDITOR.

Description of a Patent Printing Press, invented by JOHN RUTHVEN,

Printer, Edinburgh.

[graphic]

Before entering into a description of this invention, it may not be improper to give a sketch of the construction of the common printing press, with a brief account of the improvements that have been attempted to be made on it, in or

[ocr errors]

der to shew that there is occasion for one For many may probably conceive, that on new principles and an improved plan. the presses at present in use, are suf ciently adapted for the purpose, else they would not have continued for such

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »