British officer. About 1808 he invented a mode of saving life by shooting from a mortar a rope to mariners shipwrecked near the coast.

 Mournful wave! I deemed thy song
 Was telling of a mournful prison,
 Which, when tempests swept along,
 And the mighty winds were risen,
 Foundered in the ocean’s grasp,
 While the brave and fair were dying.
 Wave! didst mark a white hand clasp
 In thy folds as thou wert flying?

 —A Dying Wave: Anonymous

 Throw out the Life-line across the dark wave,
 There is a brother whom some one should save;
 Somebody’s brother! oh, who then will dare
 To throw out the Life-line, his peril to share?

 Throw out the Life-line with hand quick and strong;
 Why do you tarry, my brother, so long?
 See! he is sinking; oh, hasten to-day-
 And out with the Life-boat! away, then, away.

 —E. S. Ufford

 1802—Life-boats first invented.

 1819, June 20—First American steamer at Liverpool was launched.

 1821—First seagoing steam vessel, made of iron, was constructed in England.

 1880—First iron steamship was built in the United States.

American inventor. From 1842-1873 he was Professor at Harvard. With Dr. John Torrey, he classified species on the natural basis of affinity. In 1874 he was Regent of the Smithsonian Institute. From 1863-’73 he was President of the Amer. Acad. of Arts and Sciences, and in 1872 of the Amer. Assn. for the Adv. of Science.

 Lo! on each seed, within its slender rind,
 Life’s golden threads in endless circles wind;
 Maze within maze the lucid webs are rolled,
 And as they burst, the living flame unfold.
 The pulply acorn, ere it swells, contains
 The oak’s vast branches in its milky veins,
 Each raveled bud, fine film, and fiber-line,
 Traced with nine pencil on the small design,
 The young Narcissus, in its bulb compressed,
 Cradles a second nestling on its breast,
 In whose fine arms a younger embryo lies,
 Folds its thin leaves, and shuts its floret-eyes;
 Grain within grain, successive harvests dwell,
 And boundless forests slumber in a shell.

 See’st thou yon fern and tree, the herb, the flower,
 Have they not life as thine, and health and power?
 Do they not breathe, and eat, and drink, to be?
 Something they have in common, man, with thee.
 Watch their emotion when the cold north wind
 Blows on the flowers; do they not try to find
 Some shelter ‘neath their leaves? Then bow their heads
 Away from hurting winds. But if instead
 Of cold the beneficent sun should shine,
 How glad all nature grows!

 —John P. Morris

English inventor, metallurgist and electrician. With his brother, Werner, he made improvements in electric plating and in the solutions used for gilding and silvering. A chronometric governor for steam engines was devised by Werner and worked out by William and the process of “anastatic printing” wad developed by them. The regenerative steam engine and condenser was mainly the invention of William. In 1851 William produced a water meter, and, with Frederick Siemens, he invented the regenerative furnace which was applied to the manufacture of steel. William was one of the fist to suggest the transmission of power by electricity. In 1879 he also invented an electric furnace, a bathometer, and with his brother, Werner, he built the Indo-European telegraph in 1868-’69.

 Iron vessels cross the ocean, iron engines give them motion;
 Iron needles northward veering, iron tillers vessels steering;
 Iron pipe our gas delivers, iron bridges span our rivers;
 Iron pens are used for writing, iron ink our thoughts inditing;
 Iron stoves for cooking victuals, iron ovens, pots and kettles;
 Iron horses draw our loads, iron rails compose our roads;
 Iron anchors hold in sands, iron bolts, and rods, and bands,
 Iron houses, iron walls, iron cannon, iron balls;
 Iron axes, knives and chains, iron augers, saws and planes;
 Iron globules in our blood, iron particles in food;
 Iron lightning-rods on spires, iron telegraphic wires;
 Iron hammers, nails, and screws-iron everything we use.

Scottish mechanician and astronomer. Without assistance he discovered the fundamental principles of the lever and the wheel and axle. While serving as a shepherd he made himself master of astronomy and constructed models of mills, spinning wheels and at length framed a pair of globes an a watch. He supported himself for several years by being a miniature painter. Among his works are “Astronomy Explained,” “Lectures on Mechanics, Hydrostatics, etc.,” “The Art of Drawing in Perspective” and “An Introduction to Elctricity.”

 The untried forces of the air, the earth, the sea,
 Wait at thy bidding: oh, compel their powers
 To uses holy! Let them ever be
 Servants to tend and bless these new-found bowers,
 And make them household-workers, free and swift,
 On daily use-on daily service bent;
 Her face again old Eden may uplift,
 And God look down the open firmament.

 —The Mechanic: Cornelius Mathews

 610 B. C.-547 B. C., Anaximander lived. He was the founder of the Ionic sect. He is said to have discovered the obliquity of the ecliptic, fixed the epoch of the equinoxes and solstices and in 562 B. C. invented the sphere and the gnomon. He taught that the earth revolved and that the sun was a globe of fire as large as the earth and that there was an infinite number of worlds. He was a reputed inventor of maps and estimated the circumference of the globe at 400,000 stadia.

 The gnomon was invented to measure altitudes in 312 B. C.

American inventor. Manufacture of nails and cut files with improved machines of his own construction. He improved the machine originally devised by his father for leather-splitting, which he adapted for the splitting of sheep-skins and thin leather for bookbinder’s use. In 1819 he produced a superior article of patent leather. From 1831-’35 he manufactured malleable iron castings. He introduced the cast-iron prome or bed used in stationary steam-engines and substituted the straight axle in place of the crank in locomotives. His most important invention was the cut-off in place of the throttle valve and he connected the same with the governor. He also invented a “hat-body doming machine.”

 Keep upon the anvil ringing
 Stroke of hammer; on the gloom
 Set ‘twixt cradle and ‘twixt tomb
 Shower of fiery sparkles flinging;
 Keep the mighty furnace glowing;
 Keep the red ore hissing, flowing
 Swift within the ready mould;
 See that each one than the old
 Still be fitter still be fairer
 For the servant’s use, and rarer
 For the master to behold. —Work Away 1093 B. C.—Files were used in Judea.

 1093 B. C.—Files were used in Judea.

Greek astronomer. Pliny informed us that he determined the length of the year at 365 1/4 days. He is also said to have originated the doctrine of the concentric solid crystalline spheres, by which the apparent motions of the sun, the moon and the planets were explained. His works are not extant.

 What a solemn and striking admonition to youth
 is that inscribed on the dial at All Souls, Oxford-
 periunt et imputantur-the hours perish and are
 laid to our charge: for time, like life, can never be
 recalled. Melancthon noted down the time lost by
 him that he might reanimate his industry, and not
 lose an hour.

 —Samuel Smiles

 Every moment you now lose is so much character
 and advantage lost; as, on the other hand, every
 moment you now employ usefully, is so much time
 wisely laid out, at prodigious interest.

 —Lord Chesterfield

 The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his
 ideas, as those of a fool are by his passions. The
 time of the one is long, because he does not know
 what to do with it; so is that of the other, because
 he distinguishes every moment of it with useful or
 amusing thoughts; or, in other words, because the
 one is always wishing it away, and the other always
 enjoying it.

 —Addison

French geometer and philosopher. In 1743 he published a “Treatise on Dynamics,” containing an important principle which is known by his name and which initiated a revolution in physico-mathematical sciences. He wrote “Researches on Various Important Points of the System of the Universe” (1754-’56) and “Elements of Philosophy” (1759).

 The world’s a bubble, and the life of man
 Less than a span;
 In his conception wretched, from the womb,
 So to the tomb;
 Curst from the cradle, and brought up to years,
 With cares and fears;
 Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
 But limes the water, or but writes in dust.

 —Bacon

 Let not him that putteth his hand to the plough look backwards;
 Though the ploughshare cut through the flowers of life to its
 fountains.

 —The Courtship of Miles Standish: Longfellow

 Man has plumbed these veiled realms,
 The boundaries of the possible have been extended,
 A mortal, armed with the eye of a giant,
 Has been enabled to see the gleams of light oscillating on the
 Confines of empty space!

 —J. J. Ampere

 1743—D’Alembert published his principle of the equilibrium of forces, called D’Alembert’s principle.

 1829—Gauss enunciated his law of least constraint which may be deduced from D’Alembert’s principle.

German inventor. Discoverer of the Mannesmann process for rolling seamless steel tubes. By this process a hot steel billet is passed between two conical rolls set with their axes at a small angle to each other. The billet comes out as a tube with uniform walls, without the use of a mandril or anything else to make the central opening. The bicycle trade creates a great demand for Mannesmann tubes. The inventor and his brothers were leading makers of files in Germany. The former made special research into the nature of crucible steel. He was one of the first to suggest the electro-magnetic separation of ores.

 He gathered all the tools of Ages; instruments shaped by his
 elders-
 Mediums of ancient sages, alchemists and iron-welders;
 Gathered them and reared a tower-blocks of Science, pile
 stupendous,
 Apex dizzily tremendous-dazzling spire of Truth and
 Power!
 The giant’s dying, but it shall be said by progeny of Time, He
 is not dead!

 —Will S. Reynolds

 1790—Wilkinson patented a process of drawing a leaden pipe through dies.

 1797, March 12—Jean Denis Gandillot was born. He brought into use in France a method of welding square or round tubes of sheet-iron.

German astronomer in England. In 1781 he discovered a new world which he names Georgian Star, but generally called Herscal or Uranus, March 13, 1781. Afterwards he discovered six moons, belonging to his new planet. His largest telescope was forty feet long, erected at Slough and ready for use August 28, 1789. He was the virtual founder of sidereal science. He discovered more than eight hundered double stars, measuring their “angles of position” by means of his “revolving wire micrometer,” and their angular distances apart with his “lamp micrometer.” In 1774 he first saw Saturn through a five-foot reflecting telescope made by his own hands. As an astronomer he was surpassed by no one of the age; and the depth of his scientific researches and the extent of his observations rendered him, perhaps, second only to the immortal Newton. He was also a musician and in 1766 he was an organist at Halifax.

 “So, late descry’d by Herschel’s piercing sight,
 Hang the bright squadrons of the twinkling Night;
 Ten thousand marshal’d stars, a silver zone,
 Effuse their blended lustres round her throne;
 Suns call to suns, in lucid clouds conspire,
 And light exterior skies with golden fire;
 Resistless rolls the illimitable sphere,
 And one great circle forms the unmeasured year.

 —Botanic Garden: Dr. Darwin

Exeter College, Oxford, B. A., 1819; M. A., 1821

English geologist. He divided the tertiary period into eocene, miocene and pliocene, which has met with world-wide acceptance. In 1838 he published “Elements of Geology” and in 1871 a virtually new work, “The Student’s Elements of Geology.” For years this was the only good text book on geology.

 On heavenly ground they stood; and, from the shore
 They viewed the vast, immeasurable abyss,
 Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
 Up from the bottom turned by furious winds
 And surging waves, as mountains, to assault
 Heaven’s height, and with the centre mix the pole.

 —Raphael’s Account of Creation: Milton

 All the means of action-
 The shapeless masses-the materials-
 Lies everywhere about us. What we need
 Is the celestial fire to change the flint
 Into transparent crystal, bright and clear.

 —The Spanish Student: Longfellow

 2349 B. C., Decemebr 7—The Noachian deluge began in Armenia. It continued 377 days (Blair).

 2348 B. C., May 6—Noah’s ark rested on one of the mountains of Ararat. December 18 Noah and family left the ark (Blair).