SCIENCE, INVENTION, DISCOVERY. 



345 





fluxing material ; for use they are generally 

 made liquid with oil of spike, and they are 

 laid on with hair pencils in the same way as 

 oil colors. The whole process is exactly the 

 same as in painting or staining glass, the glaze 

 on the biscuit porcelain being true glass, and 

 the enamel colors being exactly the same as 

 those used by the glass decorator. Peculiar 

 and beautiful metallic lusters are produced 

 upon pottery by precipitated platinum and 

 other metals. The manufacture of pottery is 

 carried on with great activity at Trenton, 

 N. J., Philadelphia, Liverpool ^in Ohio), and 

 other places in the United States. 



Printing in America. Printing was 

 introduced into America at Mexico by the 

 Viceroy Mendoza in 1536. The first book 

 printed was the Escala espiritual de San Juan 

 Climaco, of which no copy is known to exist ; 

 but the oldest American book now extant is 

 the Manual de Adultos, dated 1540, of which 

 only the last four leaves are to be found in the 

 library of the Cathedral of Toledo. The name 

 of the earliest printer is a matter of question. 



Cambridge, Massachusetts, is entitled to the 

 distinction of having the first printing press in 

 North America, which was under the charge 

 of Stephen Daye. For this press the colony 

 was mainly indebted to the Rev. Jesse Glover, 

 a nonconformist minister possessed of a con- 

 siderable estate, who had left England to set- 

 tle among his friends in Massachusetts. Some 

 gentlemen of Amsterdam also ' ' gave towards 

 furnishing of a printing press with letters, 

 forty-nine pounds and something more. ' ' This 

 was about 1638. The first book issued was the 

 Bay Psalm Book, in 1640. 



The first book issued in the Middle Colonies 

 was an almanac, printed by William Brad- 

 ford in 1685, near Philadelphia. Bradford 

 was brought out from England in 1684 by 

 William Penn. As the government of Penn- 

 sylvania became very restrictive in regard to 

 the press, Bradford in 1693 removed to New 

 York, and was appointed printer to that colony, 

 where he established, in 1725, the -New York 

 Gazette, the first newspaper published there. 

 He died May 23, 1752, after an active and 

 useful life of eighty-nine years. 



The first newspaper in America was" the 

 Boston News Letter, which was first issued by 

 John Campbell on Monday, April 24, 1704; 

 it was regularly published for nearly seventy- 

 two years. The second was the Boston Gazette, 

 begun December 21, 1719. The third was the 

 American Weekly Mercury, issued in Philadel- 

 phia, by Andrew Bradford, on December 22, 

 1719. James Franklin, an elder brother of 

 Benjamin, established the New England Cou- 

 rant, August 17, 1721. 



The oldest living paper of the United States 

 is the New Hampshire Gazette, published at 

 Portsmouth, now (Oct. 7, 1899) one hundred 

 and forty-three years old. 



The North American and United States Ga- 

 zette leads the existing daily press of this coun- 

 try in point of antiquity. It is the successor 

 of the Pennsylvania Packet (begun in 1771 and 

 becoming a daily paper in 1784), and is still 

 the chief commercial journal of Philadelphia. 



The first paper mill in America was estab- 

 lished near Germantown, Pa., in 1690, by 

 William Rittenhouse. 



Ptolemaic System, The Ptolemy of 

 Alexandria (A. D. 130-150) was the founder 

 of a theory called the Ptolemaic system, based 

 largely upon the materials gathered by previ- 

 ous astronomers, such as Hipparchus, already 

 mentioned, and Eratosthenes, who computed 

 the size of the earth by means even now con- 

 sidered the best the measurement of ah arc 

 of the meridian. The advocates of the Ptole- 

 maic theory assumed that every planet revolves 

 in a circle, and that the earth is the fixed cen- 

 ter around which the sun and the heavenly 

 bodies move. They conceived that a bar, or 

 something equivalent, is connected at one end 

 with the earth ; that at some part of this bar 

 the sun is attached ; while between that and 

 the earth, Venus is fastened, not to the bar di- 

 rectly, but to a sort of crank ; and farther on, 

 Mercury is hitched on in the same way. They 

 did not fully understand the nature of these 

 bars whether they were real or only imag- 

 inary but they did comprehend their action, 

 as they thought ; and so they supposed the bar 

 revolved, carrying the sun and planets along in 

 a large circle about the earth ; while all the 

 short cranks kept flying around, thus sweep- 

 ing each planet through a smaller circle. 



The movements of the planets were to the 

 ancients extremely complex. Venus, for in- 

 stance, was sometimes seen as ' evening star ' ' 

 in the west ; and then again as ' ' morning 

 star " in the east. Sometimes she seemed to 

 be moving in the same direction as the sun, 

 then, going apparently behind the sun, she 

 appeared to pass on again in a course directly 

 opposite. At one time she would recede from 

 the sun more and more slowly and coyly, un- 

 til she would appear to be entirely stationary; 

 then she would retrace her steps, and seem to 

 meet the sun. All these facts were attempted 

 to be accounted for by an incongruous system 

 of "cycles and epicycles." 



The system of Ptolemy passed current for 

 1400 years, and during this time astrology was 

 ranked as one of the most important branches 

 of knowledge. Star diviners were held in the 

 greatest estimation, and the issue of any im- 



