A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins (Vol. 1&2). Johann Beckmann

when he accompanied Charles, prince of Juliers and Cleves, on his travels669. It may here be asked whether the Dutch had such mills first, as is commonly believed670. The first saw-mill was erected in Holland at Saardam, in the year 1596; and the invention of it is ascribed to Cornelis Cornelissen671; but he is as little the inventor as the mathematician of Joachimsthal. Perhaps he was the first person who built a saw-mill at that place, which is a village of great trade, and has still a great many saw-mills, though the number of them is becoming daily less; for within the last thirty years a hundred have been given up672. The first mill of this kind in Sweden was erected in the year 1653673. At present, that kingdom possesses the largest perhaps ever constructed in Europe, where a water-wheel, twelve feet broad, drives at the same time seventy-two saws.

In England saw-mills had at first the same fate that printing had in Turkey, the ribbon-loom in the dominions of the Church, and the crane at Strasburgh. When attempts were made to introduce them they were violently opposed, because it was apprehended that the sawyers would be deprived by them of their means of getting a subsistence. For this reason it was found necessary to abandon a saw-mill erected by a Dutchman near London674, in 1663; and in the year 1700, when one Houghton laid before the nation the advantages of such a mill, he expressed his apprehension that it might excite the rage of the populace675. What he dreaded was actually the case in 1767 or 1768, when an opulent timber-merchant, by the desire and approbation of the Society of Arts, caused a saw-mill, driven by wind, to be erected at Limehouse under the direction of James Stansfield, who had learned, in Holland and Norway, the art of constructing and managing machines of that kind. A mob assembled and pulled the mill to pieces; but the damage was made good by the nation, and some of the rioters were punished. A new mill was afterwards erected, which was suffered to work without molestation, and which gave occasion to the erection of others676. It appears, however, that this was not the only mill of the kind then in Britain; for one driven also by wind had been built at Leith, in Scotland, some years before677.

      [The application of the steam-engine has in modern times almost entirely displaced the use of either water or wind as sources of power in machinery, and most of the saw-mills now in action, especially those on a large scale, are worked by steam. Some idea of the precision with which their operations are now accomplished may be obtained from the following fact. At the City of London saw-mills, the largest log of wood which had been placed on the carriage in one piece—a log of Honduras mahogany 18 feet long and three feet one inch square—was cut into unbroken sheets at the rate of ten to an inch, and so beautifully smooth as to require scarcely any dressing.]

      FOOTNOTES

639 Virgil. Georg. lib. i. v. 144. Pontoppidan says, “Before the middle of the sixteenth century all trunks were hewn and split with the axe into two planks; whereas at present they would give seven or eight boards. This is still done in some places where there are no saw-mills in the neighbourhood; especially at Sudenoer and Amte Nordland, where a great many boats and sloops are built of such hewn boards, which are twice as strong as those sawn; but they consume too many trunks.” See Natürliche Historie von Norwegen. Copenhagen, 1753, 2 vols. 8vo, i. p. 244.

640 De Garcilasso de la Vega, Histoire des Incas.

641 Lib. vii. 1. cap. 56.

642 Epist. 90.

643 Diodor. Sicul. iv. cap. 78.

644 Apollodori Bibl. lib. iii. cap. 16.

645 Those who are desirous of seeing the whole account may consult Diodorus, or Banier’s Mythology, [or Keightley’s Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy, p. 398, Lond. 1838.]

646 Hygin. Fab. 39, 244, 274.

647 Ad Georg. i. 143.

648 Mythographi, ed. Van Staveren, lib. iii. 2, p. 708.

649 In Mythogr. et in Ovid. Burm. lib. viii. fab. 3.

650 Orig. lib. xix. cap. 19.

651 Chiliad. i. 493.

652 Metamorph. lib. viii. 244. The following line from the Ibis, ver. 500, alludes to the same circumstance:

      “Ut cui causa necis serra reperta fuit.”

653 See Cadomosto’s Voyage to Africa, in Novi Orbis Navigat. cap. 6. This account is not so ridiculous as that of Olaus Magnus, who says that the saw-fish can with his snout bore through a ship. [There are however many well-authenticated instances of the planks of ships being perforated by the upper jaw of this powerful animal, which it has been supposed occasionally attacks the hulls of vessels in mistake for the whale.]

654 Le Pitture antiche d’Ercolano, vol. i. tav. 34.

655 That cramps or hold-fasts are still formed in the same manner as those seen in the ancient painting found at Herculaneum, particularly when fine inlaid works are made, is proved by the figure in Roubo, l’Art du Menuisier, tab. xi. fig. 4, and xii. fig. 15.

656 L’Antiquité Expliquée, vol. iii. pl. 189.

657 Pallad. De Re Rust. lib. i. tit. 43.—Cicero, in his oration for Cluentius, chap. lxiv., speaks of an ingenious saw, with which a thief sawed out the bottom of a chest.

658 Ausonii Mosella, v. 361.

659 Plin. lib. xxxvi. cap. 6.

660 Vitruv. lib. ii. cap. 8.

661 Plin. lib. xxxvi. cap. 22.

662