Part 7 (1/2)

DAVID RAMSEY

a.s.sociated with Thomas Wildgosse in his experimenting and patenting, in 1618, was David Ramsey, who at that time was Page of the Bed Chamber to James I. of England, and afterwards was Groom of the Privy Chamber to the same monarch. In 1644, Ramsey was again a partner in the grant of a patent for ”a farre more easie and better waye for soweing of corne and grayne, and alsoe for the carrying of coaches, carts, drayes, and other things goeing on wheels, than ever yet was used and discovered.” This may have been a manually or a steam propelled vehicle. It is most reasonable to suppose that it was the former.

JOHANN HAUTSCH

Born in 1595. Died in 1670.

Hautsch was a noted mathematician, and, experimenting in the construction of road vehicles, he built a mechanical carriage for use on common roads.

This carriage was successfully run in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1649, and thereafter attracted a great deal of attention. It was propelled by a train of gears that turned the axle, being operated by two men who, secreted in the interior of the body, worked cranks. The finish of the body of this coach was very elaborate, being heavily carved and having fas.h.i.+oned in front the figure of a dragon, arranged to roll its eyes and spout steam and water, in order to terrify the populace and clear the way.

On each side of the body were carved angels holding trumpets, which were constantly blown, the precursors, perhaps, of the automobile horns of to-day. The Hautsch coach was said to have gone as rapidly as one thousand paces an hour. One of the carriages which he built was sold to the Crown Prince of Sweden, and another to the King of Denmark. Not much more is known of the Hautsch vehicles, but it is a matter of record that the inventor was preceded by one whose name is unknown, but who ran a coach, mechanically propelled somewhat like this car, in January, 1447, near Nuremberg.

CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS

Born at The Hague, Holland, April 14, 1629. Died at The Hague, June 8, 1695.

Huygens received a good education, and at early age showed a singular apt.i.tude for mathematics. Soon after he was sixteen years of age he prepared papers on mathematical subjects that gave him pre-eminent distinction. He became noted as a physicist, astronomer and mathematician.

He devoted some time to the consideration of improvements in road vehicular travel.

STEPHEN FARFLUER

Born in 1663.

Farfluer was a contemporary of Johann Hautsch, and was a skillful mechanician of Altderfanar, Nuremberg, Germany. About 1650 he made a dirigible vehicle propelled by man power, but as distinguished from that of his rival, Hautsch, this was a small carriage, being calculated only for one person. Being crippled, Farfluer used the wagon as his only means of getting about alone. It had hand cranks that drove the single front wheel by gears.

FERNANDO VERBIEST

Born near Courtrai, Belgium, 1623. Died in China in 1688.

Verbiest became a Jesuit missionary, and was a man of marked ability.

After going to China he acquired a thorough knowledge of the language of that country, where he spent the greater part of his life. Under his Chinese name he wrote scientific and theological works in Chinese. He was appointed astronomer at the Pekin observatory, undertook the reformation of the Chinese calendar, superintended the cannon foundries, and was a great favorite of the Emperor.

About 1655 he made a small model of a steam carriage. This is described in the English edition of Huc's Christianity in China, in Muirhead's Life of James Watt, and in the Astronomia Europia, a work that is attributed to Verbiest, but was probably compiled from his works by another Jesuit priest and was published in Europe in 1689. The Verbiest model was for a four-wheeled carriage, on which an aeolipile was mounted with a pan of burning coals beneath it. A jet of steam from the aeolipile impinged upon the vanes of a wheel on a vertical axle, the lower end of the spindle being geared to the front axle. An additional wheel, larger than the supporting wheels, was mounted on an adjustable arm in a manner to adapt the vehicle to moving in a circular path. Another orifice in the aeolipile was fitted with a reed, so that the steam going through it imitated the song of a bird.

ISAAC NEWTON

Born at Woolsthorpe, Lincolns.h.i.+re, England, December 25, 1642. Died at Kensington, March 20, 1727.

Isaac Newton, who became one of the greatest mathematicians that the world ever knew, was the son of a farmer. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in his early youth he mastered the principles of mathematics, as then known, and began original investigations to discover new methods. His great achievement was the discovery of the law of universal gravitation, but his genius was active in other directions, as the investigation of the nature of light, the construction of improved telescopes, and so on. He was a Member of Parliament in 1689 and 1701, and master of the mint, a lucrative position, from 1696 until the time of his death. In 1671 he was elected a member of the Royal Society, and was annually chosen to be its president, from 1703 until his death.

Newton was one of the first Englishmen to conceive the idea of the propulsion of vehicles by the power of steam. Taking up for consideration Hero's hollow ball filled with water from which steam was generated by the outward application of heat, he added these conclusions: ”We have a more sensible effect of the elasticity of vapors if the hole be made bigger and stopped, and then the ball be laid upon the fire till the water boils violently; after this, if the ball be set upon little wheels, so as to move easily upon a horizontal plane, and the hole be opened, the vapors will rush out violently one way, and the wheels and the ball at the same time will be carried the contrary way.” Beyond this philosophical suggestion, however, Newton never went. The steam carriage attributed to him by some writers is merely an imaginative creation, by writer or artist, based upon the above proposition.

VEGELIUS