Introductory material

Brickmaking from the Earliest Ages to Nineteenth Century.—Pottery, its Origin Unknown.—Its Evolution.—Women the First Inventors in Ceramic and Textile Arts.—Progress of Man Traced in Pottery.—Review of Pottery from Time of Homer to the Wedgwood Ware of Eighteenth Century.—Labour-Saving Devices of Nineteenth.—Operations in Brickmaking and Machinery.—The Celebrated Pug Mill, the Pioneer.—Moulding and Pressing.—Drying and Burning.—The Slow Growth of Methods.—Useful Contrivances never wholly Supplanted.—Modern Heat Distributors.—Hoffman’s Kilns.—Wedgwood’s Pottery in Eighteenth.—Siemens’ Regenerators in Nineteenth, and other Kilns.—Susan Frackelton’s.—The Filter Press.—Chinese and French Porcelains—Battam’s Imitations of Marbles and Plaster Moulds.—Faience.—Porcelain Moulding and Colours.—Atomisers and Backgrounds.—Rookwood Pottery and Miss Fry.—Enamelled Ware.—Artificial Stone.—Modern Cements.—Glass the Sister of Pottery.—The Inventors of Blowing, Cutting, Trimming by Shears and Diamond Cutting, Ancient and Unknown.—Glass Windows and Mirrors Unknown to the Poor Prior to Eighteenth Century.—The Nineteenth Century the Scientific Age of Glass.—Its Commercial Development.—Crystal Palace of 1851.—Description of Modern Discoveries.—Materials.—Colours and Faraday’s Discovery in 1824.—Gaffield’s Extensive Experiments in Producing Colours.—The German Glass Works at Jena of Abbe and Schott.—Methods Followed for Different Varieties.—Machines for Different Purposes.—Cut Glass and other Beautiful Ware.—Cameo Cutting.—Porcelain Electroplating.—Rubber, History of, in Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.—Sketch of Goodyear.—His Inventions and Present State of the Art.—Glass Wool of Volcano of Kilauea and Krupp’s Blast Furnaces. 457

INVENTIONS IN THE CENTURY.