MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 79 



which were ready to hand when wanted. Those who decry the highest stone 

 because it supports nothing are fortunate in one point, they will always 

 have something to decry : those who are busy in raising the next stone will 

 find them another job at the very instant the old one is finished. Machinery 

 will do anything which symbolic calculation will do, whether simply numeri- 

 cal or algebraical ; and. the highest recent developments of algebra seem to 

 point to a time when the details of mere calculation must be the work of 

 machinery, if final results are to be actually exhibited. 



George Scheutz, the father, took up the subject in 1834, after reading the 

 Edinburgh Review above mentioned. He desisted, after proving the prac- 

 ticability of the idea by some models. In 1837, Edward, the son, took up 

 the plan, and, after a refusal from the government to lend any aid, the 

 two completed a machine of small compass in 1 840. This was enlarged, the 

 model of the printing part was added, and the machine was exhibited to the 

 Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1843. On the certificate of this body, the 

 projectors sought for orders (we mean commissions to construct machines) 

 in various countries, but without success. In 1851, after another inspection 

 in the previous year by the Swedish Academy, a new and unsuccessful ap- 

 plication was made to the government. A motion for a national recompense 

 in the Diet was more successful ; the motion was earned, subject to the con- 

 dition that the king, after examination, should find the machine complete and 

 successful. But the projectors wanted the recompense to complete the 

 machine ; and they obtained it on giving security for its return in case of 

 failure. Fifteen gentlemen ran the risk for the honor of their country. The 

 machine was completed, and performed, its work perfectly at the very first 

 trials. But the expenditure had far exceeded the recompense awarded ; on 

 which, at the suggestion of the king, the Diet added another sum of the 

 same amount. This was in August, 1854. The inventors immediately 

 brought their machine to England, where it soon excited interest. Mr. 

 Gravatt, the civil engineer, took it up, explained it at the Royal Society, and 

 at the Paris Exhibition. The machine was again brought to England in 

 1856, and the publication of the present tables was resolved on. 



While this was going on, Mr. Rathbone of Albany, at the suggestion of 

 Professor B. A. Gould, purchased the machine for 1,000, and presented it 

 to the Dudley Observatory of that city. 



Great Britain, in consideration of nearly 20,000 expended on 'an attempt, 

 which it would not complete, has the honor of being the ground on which an 

 American merchant bought the machine which the Swedish Government had 

 enabled two of its subjects to make. The idea of finding a purchaser in 

 England seems never to have entered the mind of any one. 



In the construction of the machine, many parts of Mr. Babbage's details 

 have been adopted, and many have been altered. The calculating portion 

 of the machine, which appears in the front of the drawing, consists of a series 

 of fifteen upright steel axes, passing down the middle of five horizontal rows 

 of silver-coated numbering rings, fifteen in each row, each ring being sup- 

 ported by, and turning concentrically on its own small brass shelf, having 

 within it a hole rather less than the largest diameter of the ring. Round the 



