BRAIDWOOD, THOMAS. 



BRAHANTK, DTJRBINO. 



squabble between U>U minister, called Walckendorf, and a dog of 

 TTCAO, who** nun' baa not reached us. The astronomer was grad ally 

 <-d of his different appoiutm. ntt, tod in 16W removed, with all 

 his nualler |i|>rtu, to Copenhagen. A mnimtuiini appointed by 

 thr ii.iui.trr had declared bil methods not worth prosecuting, and his 

 instruments WOTM than ua--leaa. 



Io ilio summer of 1597 ha finally left hi* country, and removed 

 with hu wife, two sons, and four daughter*, to Hontock, whence ha 

 shortly ramoTed to Wandabeck, near Hamburg, at the inriution of 

 Count Kantian, At the end of 1698 be received a pressing invitat ion 

 from the Emperor Rudolph IL, promising him every aetiitance if he 

 would remove with all hit apparatus to the imperial dominion*. 

 Thither Tycho armed in the spring of 1599, having been detained 

 during the winter at Wittenberg by the circumstance of a contagion* 

 disorder raging in Prague. The emperor settled upon him a pension 

 of 3000 ducata, and offered him the choice of three different residences. 

 He chose that of Benateck (Benaehia, or Benatica, Gassendi), fire milea 

 from Prague, and called the Venice of Bohemia, He lent for the 

 remainder of hii inatrumenta from Denmark, and remained at Benateck 

 till February 1601, when he settled in Prague. 



The celebrated Kepler joined him in February 1600. Tycho had 

 repeatedly written to invite him, having first entered into communi- 

 cation with him in 1598, when he sent Tycho a copy of his ' Myste- 

 rium Coemographioum.' It is to following the advice of Tycho, to 

 lay aside speculations, and apply himself to the deduction of causes 

 from phenomena, that Kepler owea all his fame ; to that Tycho not 

 only furnished him with the observations necessary, but was hit 

 adviser (and never waa adviser more wanted) in the way of using 

 them. In the year 1601 they were employed together in the compo- 

 sition of tables from the Uraniberg observations, which tables they 

 agreed should be called Rndolphine. But on the 13th of October 

 1641, the effects of a convivial party, combined with inattention to 

 himself, produced a mortification of the bladder. He continued for 

 many days in pain, and died on the 24th of the month. During his 

 delirium he several times repeated " ne frustra vixisse videar," which 

 must be interpreted as something between a hope and a declaration 

 that be had not lived in vain. Nor will he be thought to have done 

 10 by any one who ever found his longitude at sea, or slept in quiet 

 while a comet was in the heaven*, without fear of the once supposed 

 minister of God'a anger. For if the list of illustrious men be formed, 

 to whom we owe such benefit, it will be found that his observations 

 form the first great step of the moderns in astronomy. There was a 

 report set abroad in Denmark, that he had been poisoned by the 

 emperor, probably the imagination of those who had driven him from 

 hia country. He was buried at Prague, and hia monument still exists 

 there. (Malte-liruu.) He was of moderate stature, and latterly rather 

 corpulent, of florid complexion, and light hair. Oassendi refers to 

 the portrait in his own work in testimony of the skill with which the 

 wound already mentioned was repaired; and certainly, with the 

 exception of a very great fulness and cylindricality of figure about 

 the lower part of the nostrils, there is nothing there to excite remark. 

 In hi* younger days he cultivated astrology, but latterly renounced it 

 altogether. He has left no record of his chemical and medical studies. 

 He waa a copious writer of Latin verges. Some of his earlier observa- 

 tions are preserved at Copenhagen. 



It is our belief that the merits of Tycho have been underrated, both 

 as an inventor of instruments and aa a philosopher. As an observer, 

 his works have spoken for themselves, in language which cannot be 

 mistaken. 



BRAimVOOD, THOMAS, is known as one of the earliest teachers 

 of the deaf and dumb in this island. He began this useful career at 

 Edinburgh in 1760. No authentic record of the methods which he 

 pursued has been made known, unless a work published by the late 

 br. Wataon, formerly the head master of the London Institution for 

 the Deaf and Dumb, may be so considered. Dr. Wataon, aa an 

 assistant to Mr. Braidwood, acquired his mode of tuition, and says, 

 speaking of Braidwood, " His method was founded upon the same 

 principles; and his indefatigable industry and great success would 

 claim from me respectful notice, even if I could forget the ties of 

 blood and of friendship." ( Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb,' 

 Introduction, p. xxiii., London, 1809.) A work entitled 'Vox Ooulis 

 Subjects,' published hi London in 1 783, the production of an American 

 gentleman, whose son was educated by Braidwood, professes to give 

 "a particular account of the academy of Messrs. Braidwood of Edin- 

 burgh," but it throws no light upon the system of instruction pursued 

 by those gentlemen. It is chiefly valuablo for its oopiom extracts 

 from the writings of Bulwer, Hoi ler, Amman, Wallia, and Lord Mon- 

 boddo, who had all considered the subject of |- ech with philosophical 

 attention, and in relation to those persons who are born deaf, or who 

 become so at an early age, and who consequently labour und-r th.- 

 deprivation of speech. There was doubtless much merit in the 

 mechanical motboda used by Braidwood and hia sou to produce in 

 theii pnjiils an artificial articulation, and in the persevering application 

 of principles which had be-n previously ascertained. Braid wood auo- 

 I in attracting the notice of many eminent persona. After having 

 1 rome jean at Edinburgh, he removed hia establishment to 

 ckocy. near London, where he continued to instruct the deaf and 

 dumb, and to relieve impedimenta in speech, till his death in 1806. 



1!UAM All, JOSEPH, waa bora on the 18th of April 1749. at Stain- 

 borough in York-hire, where his father followed the occupation of a 

 farmer. He was the eldest of five children, and was intended for hi* 

 father's avocation ; but he very early exhibited proofs of mechanical 

 talent, and bring, at the age of sixteen, incapacitated for agricultural 

 labour by lameness, he was apprenticed to a carpenter and joiner. 

 He subsequently removed to London, where he worked for some time 

 as a journeyman cabinet-maker, and afterwards aet up in the same 

 business for himself. His adoption of the profession of engineer or 

 machinist appears to have arisen from his invention of some important 

 improvements in water-closets, in consequence of which he became a 

 manufacturer of auch articles. Hia next important mechanical 

 invention was the ingenious lock still known by his name, and 

 which, after a lapse of seventy years, during which time many new 

 kinds of locks have been introduced, maintains its character aa one of 

 the most inviolable locks ever contrived. This invention was patented 

 in 1784. Among the numerous other inventions of Bramah were 

 improvements in water-cocks, pumps, and fire-engines, and the 

 hydraulic press, a machine of immense power, acting on the prin- 

 ciple of the philosophical toy called the hydrostatic paradox. This 

 Invaluable machine waa patented in 1796. The boundless power 

 which it enablea one man to exert renders it an important agent in 

 many manufacturing processes. In the following year Bramah 

 patented the convenient beer-machine which is now so universally 

 adopted in taverns for drawing liquors in the bar from barrels 

 deposited in the cellar, by means of a force-pump. He was also the 

 author of improvements in steam-engines, especially in boilers ; in 

 machinery for producing smooth and accurate surfaces ou wood or 

 metal ; in paper-making machinery ; in making pens by a mechanical 

 process, by which several nibs resembling steel pens were cut out of 

 one quill and fixed in a holder for use ; and in the construction of 

 carriages. In 1806 he contrived an exceedingly ingenious mode of 

 printing, which was shortly afterwards applied to the consecutive 

 numbering of bank-notes, and by the introduction of which, during 

 the issue of one-pound notes by the Bank of England, the labour of 

 100 clerks out of 120 was dispensed with. In 1812 he patented a 

 scheme for laying mains or large water-pipes through the principal 

 streets of London, of sufficient strength to withstand great pressure, 

 to be applied by force-pumps ; his object being to provide the means 

 of extinguishing fires by throwing water without the aid of a fire- 

 engine, and also to supply a lifting power applicable to the raising of 

 great weights, by forcing water or air into an apparatus consisting of 

 a scries of tubes, sliding into one another like the tubes of a telescope, 

 and capable of being projected when necessary. He asserted his 

 ability to make a series of 500 such tubes, each five feet long, capable 

 of sliiling within each other, and of being extended in a few seconds, 

 by the pressure of air, to the length of 2500 feet ; and with such an 

 apparatus he proposed to raise wrecks and regulate the descent of 

 weights. The last patent obtained by Bramah was for a mode of 

 preventing dry-rot in timber, by covering it with a thin coat of Parker's 

 Roman cement. 



He died, in consequence of cold contracted while superintending the 

 uprooting of trees in Holt Forest by his hydraulic press, on the tltli of 

 December 1814, in his sixty-sixth year. In the construction of some 

 water-works at Norwich, Bramah acted with success in the depart- 

 ment of the civil engineer. He also appeared as an author iu a 

 'Dissertation on the Construction of Locks,' and a 'Letter to the 

 Right Honourable Sir James Eyre, Lord Chief Justice of the Common 

 Picas, on the subject of the cause Boulton and Watt versus Horn- 

 blower and Maberley,' which was published in 1797, and is referred to 

 under WATT. A memoir, which gives a very pleasing account of his 

 amiable private character, and of his energy and probity in business, 

 waa published in the ' New Monthly Magazine' for April 1814, from 

 the pen of William Cullen Brown, M.D. 



BRAMANTE, D'URIUNO, or HRAMANTE LAZZORI, was one 

 of the moat eminent men in his profession at the time of the so-called 

 revival of the arts in the 15th century, when he distinguished himself 

 by a more accurate investigation of antique buildings than had before 

 been adopted, thereby contributing in no small degree towards estab- 

 lishing that system of architecture which, founded upon the appli- 

 cation of the Roman orders, arrogated to iUelf the title of 'classical,' 

 and within a short time entirely superseded every other rnodo of 

 building that had previously obtained iu Italy. Seconded by the 

 circumstances of the times, almost as much aa by his genius, hia 

 diligence earned for him a reputation which appears quite adequate to 

 his intrinsic merits. His name alto derives some reflected lustra from 

 being associated with the names of Raphael (his relative) aud Michel 

 Angelo, not only aa that of their immediatu predecessor, but for the 

 encouragement he gave to the talents of the one, and the degree of 

 rivalry which existed between hiinrelf and the other. 



According to some, Bramaute waa born at Castel Durante, in the 

 duchy of Urbiuo; according to others, at Fermignano in the same 

 state, in 1444, the same year iu which Filippo Hrunelleachi (the 

 architect of the then unrivalled cupola of the cathedral at Florence) 

 died. Although in very humble circumstances, his family appears to 

 have been respectable ; and as he very early evinced a natural aj> 

 for dr.iwing, his father placed him under the celebrated artist Fra 

 Bartolomeo of Urbino. The proficiency he attained in this part of 



