b. March 24, 1490 and d. November 1, 1555

German mineralogist. He became well versed in metallurgy and the art of mining. He discovered bismuth in 1530. Cuvier said, “He was to mineralogy what Gesner was to zoölogy.” His prncipal works are: “Concerning Ores” (1546) and “On the Origin and Causes of Subterranean Things.”

How nitrous Gas, from iron ingots driven,
Drinks with red lips the purest breath of heaven;
How, white Conferva, from its tender hair,
Gives in bright bubbles empyrean air,
The crystal floods phlogistic ores calcine,
And the pure ether marries with the Mine.

—Botanic Garden: Dr. Darwin

1612—Simon Sturtevant obtained a patent for smelting iron with bituminous coal.

1751 or 1754—Axil Frederick Cronstadt discovered nickel.

1783—Henry Cort patented the process of puddling.

1787, September 5-1852, December 10—Francois Sulpice Beudant lived. In 1818 he studied the minerals of Hungary. He published “Researches on the Causes which Determine Variations of Crystalline Forms of the same Mineral Substance” (1818) and an “Elementary Treatise on Mineralogy” (2d ed., 1831).

1829—Neilson introduced hot-blast in blast furnace.

1830—Nils Gabriel Sefstrom discovered the metal Vanadium.

1891, February 8—Tin ore was found in Mexico.

b. November 1, 1802 and d. July ? 1867

French engineer. Celebrated for his improvements in the “turbine,” or whirlpool water-wheel. Turbines of a rude construction have been used since a very remote period and their first inventor is unknown.

Not distant far below, a mill
Was built upon a neighb’ring rill:
Whose pent-up stream, whene’er let loose,
Impell’d a wheel, close at its sluice,
So strongly, that by friction’s power,
‘T would grind the firmest grain to flour.
Or, by a correspondence new,
With hammers, and their clatt’ring crew,
Would so bestir her active stumps,
On iron blocks, with arrant lumps,
That in a trice she’d manage matters,
To make ‘em all as smooth as platters.
Or slit a bar to rods quite taper,
With as much ease as you’d cut paper.
For, though the lever gave the blow,
Yet it was lifted from below.

—Labor and Genius: Richard Jago

There is room enough in human life to crowd
almost every art and science in it. . . . The
more we do, the more we can do; the more busy
we are, the more leisure we have; and it is an old
maxim-”He hath no leisure who useth it not.”

—Leisure Hours: Hazlitt

70 B. C.—Mithridates, King of Cappadocia, invented and set up the first corn mill driven by water.