ee. ee ee 
ar - “ay 
REASON OF MOVING FORCES. STD . 
Now one day, according to tradition, the lid of the 
saucepan, in which his dinner was being cooked, suddenly 
rose. Worcester then considered the strangeness of the 
phenomenon that he had just witnessed. The thought 
now occurred to him that the same power which had 
raised the lid might become, under certain circumstances, 
a useful and convenient motive power. After recovering 
his liberty, he described, in 1663, in a book entitled Cen- 
tury of Inventions,* the means by which he intended to 
realize his idea. The essential part of these means, as 
far at least as they can be understood, is the bomb half 
filled with a fluid, and the vertically ascending tube, as 
we just now described. 
This bomb, this same tube, are drawn in the Reason 
of Moving Forces, a work by Solomon de Caus. There, 
the idea is presented clearly, simply, and without any 
pretension. Its origin has nothing romantic in it; it is 
not connected with the events of civil war, nor with a 
celebrated state prison, nor even with the rising of the 
lid of a prisoner’s saucepan; but, what is of infinitely 
more importance in a question of priority, it is, by its 
publication, forty-eight years older than the Century of 
Inventions, and forty-one years anterior to Worcester’s 
imprisonment. 
Thus reduced to a comparison of dates, the debate 
seemed to be brought to a close. Indeed, how maintain 
that 1615 had not preceded 1663? But those persons 
whose principal aim was to expel any French name from 
this important chapter of the history of the sciences, im- 
mediately changed their ground, as soon as they had 
* It is expressly stated on the title-page of this pamphlet, that it 
was written in the year 1655, though not published till 1663.— Zyans- 
lator. 
