Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

a

moderate pension, the amount of which was fixed by himself. After

perfecting his invention accordingly, he retired at sixty to end

his days at Oullins, his father’s native place. It was there that

he received, in 1820, the decoration of the Legion of Honour; and

it was there that he died and was buried in 1834. A statue was

erected to his memory, but his relatives remained in poverty; and

twenty years after his death, his two nieces were under the

necessity of selling for a few hundred francs the gold medal

bestowed upon their uncle by Louis XVIII. “Such,” says a French

writer, “was the gratitude of the manufacturing interests of Lyons

to the man to whom it owes so large a portion of its splendour.”

 

It would be easy to extend the martyrology of inventors, and to

cite the names of other equally distinguished men who have, without

any corresponding advantage to themselves, contributed to the

industrial progress of the age,—for it has too often happened that

genius has planted the tree, of which patient dulness has gathered

the fruit; but we will confine ourselves for the present to a brief

account of an inventor of comparatively recent date, by way of

illustration of the difficulties and privations which it is so

frequently the lot of mechanical genius to surmount. We allude to

Joshua Heilmann, the inventor of the Combing Machine.

 

Heilmann was born in 1796 at Mulhouse, the principal seat of the

Alsace cotton manufacture. His father was engaged in that

business; and Joshua entered his office at fifteen. He remained

there for two years, employing his spare time in mechanical

drawing. He afterwards spent two years in his uncle’s banking-house in Paris, prosecuting the study of mathematics in the

evenings. Some of his relatives having established a small cotton-spinning factory at Mulhouse, young Heilmann was placed with

Messrs. Tissot and Rey, at Paris, to learn the practice of that

firm. At the same time he became a student at the Conservatoire

des Arts et Metiers, where he attended the lectures, and studied

the machines in the museum. He also took practical lessons in

turning from a toymaker. After some time, thus diligently

occupied, he returned to Alsace, to superintend the construction of

the machinery for the new factory at Vieux-Thann, which was shortly

finished and set to work. The operations of the manufactory were,

however, seriously affected by a commercial crisis which occurred,

and it passed into other hands, on which Heilmann returned to his

family at Mulhouse.

 

He had in the mean time been occupying much of his leisure with

inventions, more particularly in connection with the weaving of

cotton and the preparation of the staple for spinning. One of his

earliest contrivances was an embroidering-machine, in which twenty

needles were employed, working simultaneously; and he succeeded in

accomplishing his object after about six months’ labour. For this

invention, which he exhibited at the Exposition of 1834, he

received a gold medal, and was decorated with the Legion of Honour.

Other inventions quickly followed—an improved loom, a machine for

measuring and folding fabrics, an improvement of the “bobbin and

fly frames” of the English spinners, and a weft winding-machine,

with various improvements in the machinery for preparing, spinning,

and weaving silk and cotton. One of his most ingenious

contrivances was his loom for weaving simultaneously two pieces of

velvet or other piled fabric, united by the pile common to both,

with a knife and traversing apparatus for separating the two

fabrics when woven. But by far the most beautiful and ingenious of

his inventions was the combing-machine, the history of which we now

proceed shortly to describe.

 

Heilmann had for some years been diligently studying the

contrivance of a machine for combing long-stapled cotton, the

ordinary carding-machine being found ineffective in preparing the

raw material for spinning, especially the finer sorts of yarn,

besides causing considerable waste. To avoid these imperfections,

the cotton-spinners of Alsace offered a prize of 5000 francs for an

improved combing-machine, and Heilmann immediately proceeded to

compete for the reward. He was not stimulated by the desire of

gain, for he was comparatively rich, having acquired a considerable

fortune by his wife. It was a saying of his that “one will never

accomplish great things who is constantly asking himself, how much

gain will this bring me?” What mainly impelled him was the

irrepressible instinct of the inventor, who no sooner has a

mechanical problem set before him than he feels impelled to

undertake its solution. The problem in this case was, however,

much more difficult than he had anticipated. The close study of

the subject occupied him for several years, and the expenses in

which he became involved in connection with it were so great, that

his wife’s fortune was shortly swallowed up, and he was reduced to

poverty, without being able to bring his machine to perfection.

From that time he was under the necessity of relying mainly on the

help of his friends to enable him to prosecute the invention.

 

While still struggling with poverty and difficulties, Heilmann’s

wife died, believing her husband ruined; and shortly after he

proceeded to England and settled for a time at Manchester, still

labouring at his machine. He had a model made for him by the

eminent machine-makers, Sharpe, Roberts, and Company; but still he

could not make it work satisfactorily, and he was at length brought

almost to the verge of despair. He returned to France to visit his

family, still pursuing his idea, which had obtained complete

possession of his mind. While sitting by his hearth one evening,

meditating upon the hard fate of inventors and the misfortunes in

which their families so often become involved, he found himself

almost unconsciously watching his daughters coming their long hair

and drawing it out at full length between their fingers. The

thought suddenly struck him that if he could successfully imitate

in a machine the process of combing out the longest hair and

forcing back the short by reversing the action of the comb, it

might serve to extricate him from his difficulty. It may be

remembered that this incident in the life of Heilmann has been made

the subject of a beautiful picture by Mr. Elmore, R.A., which was

exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1862.

 

Upon this idea he proceeded, introduced the apparently simple but

really most intricate process of machine-combing, and after great

labour he succeeded in perfecting the invention. The singular

beauty of the process can only be appreciated by those who have

witnessed the machine at work, when the similarity of its movements

to that of combing the hair, which suggested the invention, is at

once apparent. The machine has been described as “acting with

almost the delicacy of touch of the human fingers.” It combs the

lock of cotton AT BOTH ENDS, places the fibres exactly parallel

with each other, separates the long from the short, and unites the

long fibres in one sliver and the short ones in another. In fine,

the machine not only acts with the delicate accuracy of the human

fingers, but apparently with the delicate intelligence of the human

mind.

 

The chief commercial value of the invention consisted in its

rendering the commoner sorts of cotton available for fine spinning.

The manufacturers were thereby enabled to select the most suitable

fibres for high-priced fabrics, and to produce the finer sorts of

yarn in much larger quantities. It became possible by its means to

make thread so fine that a length of 334 miles might be spun from a

single pound weight of the prepared cotton, and, worked up into the

finer sorts of lace, the original shilling’s worth of cotton-wool,

before it passed into the hands of the consumer, might thus be

increased to the value of between 300l. and 400l. sterling.

 

The beauty and utility of Heilmann’s invention were at once

appreciated by the English cotton-spinners. Six Lancashire firms

united and purchased the patent for cotton-spinning for England for

the sum of 30,000l; the wool-spinners paid the same sum for the

privilege of applying the process to wool; and the Messrs.

Marshall, of Leeds, 20,000l. for the privilege of applying it to

flax. Thus wealth suddenly flowed in upon poor Heilmann at last.

But he did not live to enjoy it. Scarcely had his long labours

been crowned by success than he died, and his son, who had shared

in his privations, shortly followed him.

 

It is at the price of lives such as these that the wonders of

civilisation are achieved.

 

CHAPTER III—THE GREAT POTTERS—PALISSY, BOTTGHER, WEDGWOOD

 

“Patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude, and the

rarest too … Patience lies at the root of all pleasures, as

well as of all powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness when

Impatience companions her.”—John Ruskin.

 

“Il y a vingt et cinq ans passez qu’il ne me fut monstre une coupe

de terre, tournee et esmaillee d’une telle beaute que …

deslors, sans avoir esgard que je n’avois nulle connoissance des

terres argileuses, je me mis a chercher les emaux, comme un homme

qui taste en tenebres.”—Bernard Palissy.

 

It so happens that the history of Pottery furnishes some of the

most remarkable instances of patient perseverance to be found in

the whole range of biography. Of these we select three of the most

striking, as exhibited in the lives of Bernard Palissy, the

Frenchman; Johann Friedrich Bottgher, the German; and Josiah

Wedgwood, the Englishman.

 

Though the art of making common vessels of clay was known to most

of the ancient nations, that of manufacturing enamelled earthenware

was much less common. It was, however, practised by the ancient

Etruscans, specimens of whose ware are still to be found in

antiquarian collections. But it became a lost art, and was only

recovered at a comparatively recent date. The Etruscan ware was

very valuable in ancient times, a vase being worth its weight in

gold in the time of Augustus. The Moors seem to have preserved

amongst them a knowledge of the art, which they were found

practising in the island of Majorca when it was taken by the Pisans

in 1115. Among the spoil carried away were many plates of Moorish

earthenware, which, in token of triumph, were embedded in the walls

of several of the ancient churches of Pisa, where they are to be

seen to this day. About two centuries later the Italians began to

make an imitation enamelled ware, which they named Majolica, after

the Moorish place of manufacture.

 

The reviver or rediscoverer of the art of enamelling in Italy was

Luca della Robbia, a Florentine sculptor. Vasari describes him as

a man of indefatigable perseverance, working with his chisel all

day and practising drawing during the greater part of the night.

He pursued the latter art with so much assiduity, that when working

late, to prevent his feet from freezing with the cold, he was

accustomed to provide himself with a basket of shavings, in which

he placed them to keep himself warm and enable him to proceed with

his drawings. “Nor,” says Vasari, “am I in the least astonished at

this, since no man ever becomes distinguished in any art whatsoever

who does not early begin to acquire the power of supporting heat,

cold, hunger, thirst, and other discomforts; whereas those persons

deceive themselves altogether who suppose that when taking their

ease and surrounded by all the enjoyments of the world they may

still attain to honourable distinction,—for it is not by sleeping,

but by waking, watching, and labouring continually, that

proficiency is attained and reputation acquired.”

 

But Luca, notwithstanding all his application and industry, did not

succeed in earning enough money by sculpture to enable him to live

by the art, and the idea occurred to him that he might nevertheless

be able to pursue his modelling