INTENTION* AND DISCOVERY. 



INVENTION AND DISCOVERY. 



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td practically. Ai to invention!, we call Davy's 

 arfety lamp a theoretical invention : for the question given wmi how to 

 overcome a wUin danger, generally; and it waa not even assumed that 

 lamp was to be constructed. But the common story of the boy who 

 saved hi* labour by tying a string from the valve he wu employed to 

 open and ahut to a part of the machinery which moved in such a 

 manner a> to do it for him, is, if true, a record of a practical invention. 

 Still there ia truth in this, that practical men, properly so called 

 [THEORY AHD PRACTICE], hare invented oftener than they have dis- 

 I ; and that theoretical men have discovered more often than 

 they have invented. 



It u no wonder that the early hUtory of diacovery should be con- 

 futed and uncertain : the loan of documents, which operates on all our 

 fint knowledge of antiquity, in a sufficient explanation. Nor is it 

 surprising that fint writer* should be persons of unsettled claims ; that 

 in the case of Kuclid, for example, we should not be so well able to say 

 where his discoveries began as where they ended. But it does soem 

 strange that in matters of our own day, or of that immediately preceding, 

 it should be a question to whom a right of discovery should belong, 

 when the only tangible matter is a book, to the date of the publication 

 of which there is every possible attestation. 



There U une most important preliminary consideration, which will, 

 in the minds of those who for the first time give it due attention. 

 change the face of the whole question. When the period arrives at 

 which a discovery becomes possible, there are many courses which lead 

 t-i it. and many ships sailing on each of these courses. The analogy 

 may be carried further. When a new island is discovered in or near a 

 frequented track, so soon as a ship of some one country casts anchor 

 in a port and takes possession, it may be afterwards found in some logs 

 that something like land had been suspected before, in others that 

 land birds had been seen, in others that the colour of the water was 

 noted, in others that an alteration of the current was observed, and so 

 on, all near the same point, and any one of which might have led to the 

 diacovery, if the hint had been followed. It is the mine in matters of 

 science, to an extent which will not be easily credited by those who 

 are unacquainted with its history. And this greatly enhances the 

 merit of most original researches. It is much to the credit of Newton 

 that Huyghena had gone so far as to determine the conditions of 

 circular motion, that Grimaldi had noted the effect of the prism 

 on light, that Fcrmat and Cavalieri had all but discovered the 

 method of fluxions. The character of accidental good fortune 

 disappears when we see that the progress of knowledge seems to 

 bring new results within the possible reach of many, but within the 

 actual grasp only of one. Is there then nothing accidental in discovery 

 and invention ? We answer that there is something, but that the 

 accidents which miyht produce discovery are happening to all, and 

 frequently ; while the accidents which do produce it happen to those 

 only who are ready to take advantage of them. But this, it may be 

 said, is reasoning in a circle ; for if we are asked how we distinguish 

 the person who is ready to take advantage from the one who is not, we 

 have only the discovery to point to. We reply, that it generally 

 happens that the persons who can thus fix a casualty, are also those 

 who give evidence of successful research in cases where fortune shows 

 no special favour. It was by a mere accident that Mr. Baily [FLAM- 

 STEED; BAILT ; in Bioo. Div.J bought a house opposite to the possessor 

 of a large bundle of Flamsteed's letters, and nothing more that the 

 fact of their existence came to his ears. Many perhaps had seen them, 

 and either taken it for granted that the contents were all in print, or 

 been unable to judge of their value. But the life of Flamsteed is not 

 the only evidence of Mr. Baily's success in a point of astronomical 

 history : there was no accident about the editorship of the old cata- 

 logues. It is said to have been by a casual effect of sun-light at a 

 window that Mains discovered the polarisation of reflected light; but 

 then Malus was a profound optical investigator. It is our conviction 

 that no accidents are valid except those which happen to the proper 

 men at the right times ; and that there are usually other means of 

 bowing this besides the success of the accidents themselves. 



Before we can examine the title to a discovery, it must first be 

 settled what the discovery is : and this is frequently the greatest 

 difficulty. The case of the steam-engine is constantly under discussion ; 

 and the principal point at issue is, what is the steam-engine. II. \ 

 of Alexandria certainly produced rotatory motion by steam, and with 

 miflirifnt funds, could have ground all the corn in Egypt by his 

 method. If we assign the merit to the person who contrived such an 

 economy of fuel as to place the use of steam on something like its 

 present footing of convenience, it then becomes a doubt whether any 

 except Watt has a claim. M. Arago remarks on this subject, that a 

 watchmaker would be struck dumb by the question, who invented a 

 watch ! The thing as it now exists is not the invention of any one 

 person. So long as there is any national feeling in the discussion, one 

 or another definition will be proposed, constructed to suit the advocacy 

 of one or another claim. We have not here to settle the cases which 

 we cite; it is enough that they illustrate our pout. 



It may happen that in a complicated instrument or method, the 

 perfecting of which extends over a long period, there is some one dis- 

 tinguishing characteristic the introduction of which marks the main 

 epoch of the invention. In the case of the watch, for instance, if we 

 ask for the distinctive definition of the term, we find that it is not 



merely an instrument for measuring time, which would include 

 the clepsydra, nor an application of wheel-work for that purpose, which 

 would include the clock ; but it is the use of a spring for the regulator 

 in which consists the distinction between a watch and other horologes. 

 In a similar manner we look upon the additions made by Vieta to the 

 mechanism of algebra as constituting the main groundwork of wh at 

 now bears the name. But it would be exceedingly wrong to say that 

 Hooke invented a watch, or that Vieta invented algebra : things done 

 before and after both essentially belong to the ideas we mean to 

 convey by the words. But it is not an uncommon practice of writers 

 to strip a word of all its accessories, and to attribute (justly enough 

 perhaps) the invention so cut down to some one person, and then to 

 clothe the word with all its most modern associations, and the 

 favoured inventor with all the glory which ought to be divided among 

 many. When the steam engine is reduced to a tea-kettle, or at most 

 to a pump, it is Avery, or De Caus, or Worcester, or Newcomen, or 

 Papin, Ac., Ac., who invented it, according to the country or the 

 fancy of the writer ; but when once the claim is established, the tea- 

 kettle throws out a condenser, and the pump runs along the railroad 

 at sixty miles an hour. 



The common sense of the law requires that the applicant for a patent 

 should make a distinct specification, not merely of what he intends to 

 construct, but of that particular part of the contrivance which he 

 claims as his own ; and here a claim upon anything old, or an omission 

 of anything new, vitiates the patent. [PATENT.] The cases which 

 have occurred under this law would be good study for those who 

 write on discovery. 



It may indeed happen that the amount of claim may be materially 

 augmented by the view which the discoverer takes of his own title. 

 Columbus inferred, on true principles, the possibility of crossing the 

 Atlantic, spent the energies of a life in procuring the means of making 

 a trial, and is therefore properly and truly the discoverer of all the new 

 world : the Northmen who had visited it long before did not promul- 

 gate their discovery, and it might as well be given to the aboriginal 

 inhabitants of the continent itself as to them. It does not depreciate 

 the merit of Columbus that he could not but suppose he should reach 

 India or China : these were the certainties at which he aimed, and 

 which he would have reached had he not been stopped by the inter- 

 mediate continent which ought to bear his name. Had Heron, v, Inn 

 he first announced and executed his revolving boiler, been able to point 

 out that it was a method of producing force from fuel, which might 

 supply the place of human labour that all which remained was 

 adaptation and that skill in the use of this new kind of force would 

 make it a substitute for the strength of men and beasts it would 

 have been difficult to have denied him the title of the discoverer 

 steam-engine, and the inventor of the first step. 



Among the consequences of attempting to describe discoveries under 

 too general terms, is this, that both things and persons are allowed to 

 clash unnecessarily. It is not always, to be sure, that this goes such a 

 length as procuring for Dalton's atomic theory the character of beinj,' 

 a republication of the notions adopted by Epicurus from his prede- 

 cessors; if it did there would be less harm : there are many th< 

 between which mischievous confusion is more easily brought about 

 than between those of the philosophers of Athens and of Manchester. 

 The nomenclature of science is perplexed by phrases of no precision 

 as that Newton discovered gravitation, instead of a true explanation of 

 the heavenly motions by means of tinirerial gravitation that he first 

 advanced the true theory of astronomy, which he did in one sense, and 

 Copernicus in another ; whence the provinces of the two are frequently 

 confounded. It must also be noticed that a mere opinion, the result 

 of choice between several, one or other of which must have been taken, 

 is confounded with the same opinion advanced and supported by 

 reasons. Thus Philolaus and Aristarchus asserted the motion of the 

 earth, and Copernicus is said to have only revived their opinion. The 

 difference between the two cases lies in this, that the ancient philoso- 

 phers merely asserted their belief, the modern one mode his hypothesis 

 the means of accounting for all the known motions of the heavens, 

 diurnal, annual, and processional. 



The specification, to borrow a term, having been agreed upon, the 

 next question is, what constitutes a claim to discovery 1 The answer is 

 priority of publication. If, as has often happened, two persons should dis- 

 cover the same thing about the same time, the one who first publishes 

 is universally recognised as the discoverer; for 'discoverer' rider 

 implies priority, or is on abbreviation of the words ' first discoverer.' Of 

 course if a fraud con be proved, if it can be satisfactorily shown that the 

 first publisher stole his matter from another, he would not be allowed the 

 advantage of his wrong : but the onus of proving the fraud lies entirely 

 upon the assertor of it, and, until the evidence and verdict arrive, the 

 first publisher is in possession. The reasons for this rule are not alto- 

 gether those which exist for the rule in law. The objects of the latter 

 are the protection of private rights and public peace ; or rather the 

 assignment of private rights in such a manner, as best, in tin- li.ng run, 

 to promote the welfare of the community, and particularly its peace, 

 without any great shock to the natural feelings of equity. It is not 

 difficult to conceive a class of cases in which men would gladly give up 

 a small per centage of decisions consonant to natural justice, or what 

 is so called, for the sake of a rule which would present decided ad- 

 vantages u a rule, in the imperfect state of private morality. But the 



