Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 133, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1910 — NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. [ARTICLE]

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN.

Many “Inventions” Improvements on Things Existing,Long Ago. There is no new thing under the sun. Many of our boasted new “inventions” are simply second editions of things which were Invented a thousand years ago, Pearson's Weekly says. The taxicab is by no means a new idea. A German professor has written a letter to the Frankfort Gazette, in which hfe says he has discovered that Vitruvius, the Roman historian, describes a taximeter cab in use in Rome the year 79 A. D.

The mechanism of the taximeter caused a stone to drop into a box under the carriage every thousand paces. At the end of the journey the driver counted the stones which hatd fallen into the box, and in this way was able to calculate the fare.

Within the last fifty years an Englishman produced a particular kind of pin, which he called a “safety” pin. For this admirable service to mankind he was highly honored and fetes and favors have showered upon him. However, when some one was poking about among the ruins of Pompeii they came upon a large number of bronze safety pins They were quite up-to-date pins, too. There was a coiled spring at one end and a catch at the other—just like those in constant use at the present day. Thimbles have been found in prehistoric mounds and combs and hairpins were in existence before the Christian era. It is guessed with some certainty that the first needle must have been threaded by a thrifty housewife about 5,000 years ago. The combination locks we use today, which can only be opened by a combination of certain numbers and letters, were well known and used extensively by the Chinese many centuries ago. In China, too, they illuminated their houses a couple of thousand years ago with natural gas, which was conveyed to the consumer’s house by means of bamboo tubes. It is calculated that some shorthand systems go back to somewhere about 600 B. C. At any rate, there seems no doubt that the orations of Cicero were written with as much skill and rapidity as the modern stenographer could boast. The ancients knew about electricity and, though we usually credit Watts with the discovery of steam as a motive power, Nero of Alexandria described machines driven by steam 2,000 years before Watts was born. This same gentleman invented a double-force pump, such as is used nowadays as a fire engine, and he anticipated the modern turbine wheel.