Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1881 — Industrial Secrets. [ARTICLE]

Industrial Secrets.

A century ago what a man discovered in the arts he concealed. Workmen were put upon an oath never to reveal the process used by their employers. Doors were kept closed, artisans going out were searched, visitors were rigorously excluded from admission, and false operations blinded the workmen themselves. The mysteries of every craft were hedged in by thick-set fences of empirical pretensions and judicial affirmation. The royal manufactories of porcelain, for example, were carried on in Europe with a spirit of jealous exclusiveness. His Majesty of Saxony was especially circumspect. Not content with the oath of secrecy imposed upon his workpeople, he would not abate his Kingly suspicion in favor of a brother

monarch. Neither King nor King’s deleS,te might enter the tabooed walls of eissen. What is erroneously called the Dresden porcelain—that exquisite pottery of which the world has never seen its like—was produced for twa hundred years by a process so secret that neither the bribery of princes nor the garrulity of the operatives revealed it. Other discoveries have been less successfully guarded, fortunately for the world. I’he manufacture of tinware in England originated in a stolen secret.— Scientific American.