Self Help - Samuel Smiles (children's ebooks free online TXT) 📗
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moderate pension, the amount of which was fixed by himself. After
perfecting his invention accordingly, he retired at sixty to end
his days at Oullins, his father’s native place. It was there that
he received, in 1820, the decoration of the Legion of Honour; and
it was there that he died and was buried in 1834. A statue was
erected to his memory, but his relatives remained in poverty; and
twenty years after his death, his two nieces were under the
necessity of selling for a few hundred francs the gold medal
bestowed upon their uncle by Louis XVIII. “Such,” says a French
writer, “was the gratitude of the manufacturing interests of Lyons
to the man to whom it owes so large a portion of its splendour.”
It would be easy to extend the martyrology of inventors, and to
cite the names of other equally distinguished men who have, without
any corresponding advantage to themselves, contributed to the
industrial progress of the age,—for it has too often happened that
genius has planted the tree, of which patient dulness has gathered
the fruit; but we will confine ourselves for the present to a brief
account of an inventor of comparatively recent date, by way of
illustration of the difficulties and privations which it is so
frequently the lot of mechanical genius to surmount. We allude to
Joshua Heilmann, the inventor of the Combing Machine.
Heilmann was born in 1796 at Mulhouse, the principal seat of the
Alsace cotton manufacture. His father was engaged in that
business; and Joshua entered his office at fifteen. He remained
there for two years, employing his spare time in mechanical
drawing. He afterwards spent two years in his uncle’s banking-house in Paris, prosecuting the study of mathematics in the
evenings. Some of his relatives having established a small cotton-spinning factory at Mulhouse, young Heilmann was placed with
Messrs. Tissot and Rey, at Paris, to learn the practice of that
firm. At the same time he became a student at the Conservatoire
des Arts et Metiers, where he attended the lectures, and studied
the machines in the museum. He also took practical lessons in
turning from a toymaker. After some time, thus diligently
occupied, he returned to Alsace, to superintend the construction of
the machinery for the new factory at Vieux-Thann, which was shortly
finished and set to work. The operations of the manufactory were,
however, seriously affected by a commercial crisis which occurred,
and it passed into other hands, on which Heilmann returned to his
family at Mulhouse.
He had in the mean time been occupying much of his leisure with
inventions, more particularly in connection with the weaving of
cotton and the preparation of the staple for spinning. One of his
earliest contrivances was an embroidering-machine, in which twenty
needles were employed, working simultaneously; and he succeeded in
accomplishing his object after about six months’ labour. For this
invention, which he exhibited at the Exposition of 1834, he
received a gold medal, and was decorated with the Legion of Honour.
Other inventions quickly followed—an improved loom, a machine for
measuring and folding fabrics, an improvement of the “bobbin and
fly frames” of the English spinners, and a weft winding-machine,
with various improvements in the machinery for preparing, spinning,
and weaving silk and cotton. One of his most ingenious
contrivances was his loom for weaving simultaneously two pieces of
velvet or other piled fabric, united by the pile common to both,
with a knife and traversing apparatus for separating the two
fabrics when woven. But by far the most beautiful and ingenious of
his inventions was the combing-machine, the history of which we now
proceed shortly to describe.
Heilmann had for some years been diligently studying the
contrivance of a machine for combing long-stapled cotton, the
ordinary carding-machine being found ineffective in preparing the
raw material for spinning, especially the finer sorts of yarn,
besides causing considerable waste. To avoid these imperfections,
the cotton-spinners of Alsace offered a prize of 5000 francs for an
improved combing-machine, and Heilmann immediately proceeded to
compete for the reward. He was not stimulated by the desire of
gain, for he was comparatively rich, having acquired a considerable
fortune by his wife. It was a saying of his that “one will never
accomplish great things who is constantly asking himself, how much
gain will this bring me?” What mainly impelled him was the
irrepressible instinct of the inventor, who no sooner has a
mechanical problem set before him than he feels impelled to
undertake its solution. The problem in this case was, however,
much more difficult than he had anticipated. The close study of
the subject occupied him for several years, and the expenses in
which he became involved in connection with it were so great, that
his wife’s fortune was shortly swallowed up, and he was reduced to
poverty, without being able to bring his machine to perfection.
From that time he was under the necessity of relying mainly on the
help of his friends to enable him to prosecute the invention.
While still struggling with poverty and difficulties, Heilmann’s
wife died, believing her husband ruined; and shortly after he
proceeded to England and settled for a time at Manchester, still
labouring at his machine. He had a model made for him by the
eminent machine-makers, Sharpe, Roberts, and Company; but still he
could not make it work satisfactorily, and he was at length brought
almost to the verge of despair. He returned to France to visit his
family, still pursuing his idea, which had obtained complete
possession of his mind. While sitting by his hearth one evening,
meditating upon the hard fate of inventors and the misfortunes in
which their families so often become involved, he found himself
almost unconsciously watching his daughters coming their long hair
and drawing it out at full length between their fingers. The
thought suddenly struck him that if he could successfully imitate
in a machine the process of combing out the longest hair and
forcing back the short by reversing the action of the comb, it
might serve to extricate him from his difficulty. It may be
remembered that this incident in the life of Heilmann has been made
the subject of a beautiful picture by Mr. Elmore, R.A., which was
exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1862.
Upon this idea he proceeded, introduced the apparently simple but
really most intricate process of machine-combing, and after great
labour he succeeded in perfecting the invention. The singular
beauty of the process can only be appreciated by those who have
witnessed the machine at work, when the similarity of its movements
to that of combing the hair, which suggested the invention, is at
once apparent. The machine has been described as “acting with
almost the delicacy of touch of the human fingers.” It combs the
lock of cotton AT BOTH ENDS, places the fibres exactly parallel
with each other, separates the long from the short, and unites the
long fibres in one sliver and the short ones in another. In fine,
the machine not only acts with the delicate accuracy of the human
fingers, but apparently with the delicate intelligence of the human
mind.
The chief commercial value of the invention consisted in its
rendering the commoner sorts of cotton available for fine spinning.
The manufacturers were thereby enabled to select the most suitable
fibres for high-priced fabrics, and to produce the finer sorts of
yarn in much larger quantities. It became possible by its means to
make thread so fine that a length of 334 miles might be spun from a
single pound weight of the prepared cotton, and, worked up into the
finer sorts of lace, the original shilling’s worth of cotton-wool,
before it passed into the hands of the consumer, might thus be
increased to the value of between 300l. and 400l. sterling.
The beauty and utility of Heilmann’s invention were at once
appreciated by the English cotton-spinners. Six Lancashire firms
united and purchased the patent for cotton-spinning for England for
the sum of 30,000l; the wool-spinners paid the same sum for the
privilege of applying the process to wool; and the Messrs.
Marshall, of Leeds, 20,000l. for the privilege of applying it to
flax. Thus wealth suddenly flowed in upon poor Heilmann at last.
But he did not live to enjoy it. Scarcely had his long labours
been crowned by success than he died, and his son, who had shared
in his privations, shortly followed him.
It is at the price of lives such as these that the wonders of
civilisation are achieved.
CHAPTER III—THE GREAT POTTERS—PALISSY, BOTTGHER, WEDGWOOD
“Patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the
rarest too … Patience lies at the root of all pleasures, as
well as of all powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness when
Impatience companions her.”—John Ruskin.
“Il y a vingt et cinq ans passez qu’il ne me fut monstre une coupe
de terre, tournee et esmaillee d’une telle beaute que …
deslors, sans avoir esgard que je n’avois nulle connoissance des
terres argileuses, je me mis a chercher les emaux, comme un homme
qui taste en tenebres.”—Bernard Palissy.
It so happens that the history of Pottery furnishes some of the
most remarkable instances of patient perseverance to be found in
the whole range of biography. Of these we select three of the most
striking, as exhibited in the lives of Bernard Palissy, the
Frenchman; Johann Friedrich Bottgher, the German; and Josiah
Wedgwood, the Englishman.
Though the art of making common vessels of clay was known to most
of the ancient nations, that of manufacturing enamelled earthenware
was much less common. It was, however, practised by the ancient
Etruscans, specimens of whose ware are still to be found in
antiquarian collections. But it became a lost art, and was only
recovered at a comparatively recent date. The Etruscan ware was
very valuable in ancient times, a vase being worth its weight in
gold in the time of Augustus. The Moors seem to have preserved
amongst them a knowledge of the art, which they were found
practising in the island of Majorca when it was taken by the Pisans
in 1115. Among the spoil carried away were many plates of Moorish
earthenware, which, in token of triumph, were embedded in the walls
of several of the ancient churches of Pisa, where they are to be
seen to this day. About two centuries later the Italians began to
make an imitation enamelled ware, which they named Majolica, after
the Moorish place of manufacture.
The reviver or rediscoverer of the art of enamelling in Italy was
Luca della Robbia, a Florentine sculptor. Vasari describes him as
a man of indefatigable perseverance, working with his chisel all
day and practising drawing during the greater part of the night.
He pursued the latter art with so much assiduity, that when working
late, to prevent his feet from freezing with the cold, he was
accustomed to provide himself with a basket of shavings, in which
he placed them to keep himself warm and enable him to proceed with
his drawings. “Nor,” says Vasari, “am I in the least astonished at
this, since no man ever becomes distinguished in any art whatsoever
who does not early begin to acquire the power of supporting heat,
cold, hunger, thirst, and other discomforts; whereas those persons
deceive themselves altogether who suppose that when taking their
ease and surrounded by all the enjoyments of the world they may
still attain to honourable distinction,—for it is not by sleeping,
but by waking, watching, and labouring continually, that
proficiency is attained and reputation acquired.”
But Luca, notwithstanding all his application and industry, did not
succeed in earning enough money by sculpture to enable him to live
by the art, and the idea occurred to him that he might nevertheless
be able to pursue his modelling
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