An abacus is a counting frame with balls sliding on wires. It was first used before the adoption of the ten digit numeric system and is still widely used in China. Research Abacus
A bell is a hollow, somewhat cup-shaped, sounding instrument of metal. The metal from which bells are usually made (by founding) is an alloy, called bell-metal, commonly composed of eighty parts of copper and twenty of tin. The proportion of tin varies, however, from one-third to one-fifth of the weight of the copper, according to the sound required, the size of the bell, and the impulse to be given. The clearness and richness of the tone depend upon the metal used, the perfection of its casting, and also upon its shape; it having been shown by a number of experiments that the well-known shape with a thick lip is the best adapted to give a perfect sound. The depth of the tone of a bell increases in proportion to its size.
A bell is divided into the body or barrel, the ear or cannon, and the clapper or tongue. The lip or sound-bow is that part where the bell is struck by the clapper. It is uncertain whether the jangling instruments used by the Egyptians and Israelites can be correctly described as bells; but it is certain that bells of a considerable size were in early use in China and Japan, and that the Greeks and Romans used them for various purposes. They are said to have been first introduced into Christian churches about 400 AD by Paulinus, bishop of Nola, in Campania (whence campana and nola as old names of bells); although their adoption on a wide scale does not become apparent until after the year 550, when they were introduced into France.
Benedict Biscop, abbot of Wearmouth, seems to have imported bells from Italy to England in 680, but their use in Ireland and Scotland is probably of earlier date. The oldest of those existing in Great Britain and Ireland, such as the 'bell of St. Patrick's will' and St Ninian's bell, are quadrangular and made of thin iron plates hammered and riveted together.
Until the thirteenth century bells were of comparatively small size, but after the casting of the Jacqueline of Paris (6.5 tons) in 1400 their weight rapidly increased. Among the more famous bells are the bell of Cologne, 11. tons, 1448; of Dantzic, 6 tons, 1453; of Halberstadt, 7.5, 1457; of Rouen, 16, 1501; of Breslau, 11, 1507; of Lucerne, 71, 1636; of Oxford,7.5 1680; of Paris, 12.8, 1680; of Bruges, 10.5, 1680; of Vienna, 17.75, 1711; of Moscow (the monarch of all bells), 193, 1736; three other bells at Moscow ranging from 16 to 31 tons, and a fourth of 80 tons cast in 1819; the bell of Lincoln (Great Tom), 5.5, 1834; of YorkMinster (Great Peter), 10.75, 1845; of Montreal, 134, 1847; of Westminster (Big Ben), 15.5, 1856, (St Stephen), 13.5, 1858; the Great Bell of St. Paul's, 17.5, 1882. Others are the bells of Ghent (5 tons), Gorlitz (10.75 tons), St Peter's, Rome (8 tons), Antwerp (7.25 tons), Olmutz (18 tons), Sacred Heart, Paris (27 tons), Novgorod (31 tons), Pekin (53.5 tons).
Besides their use in churches bells are employed for various purposes, formerly the most common use being to summon attendants or domestics in private houses, hotels, etc. Bells for this purpose were of small size and may be held in the hand and rung, but most commonly were rung by means of wires stretched from the various apartments to the place where the bells were hung. Bells rung by electricity became common in hotels and other establishments around 1905.
The blind are those who want, or are deficient in, the sense of sight. Blindness may vary in degree from the slightest impairment of vision to total loss of sight; it may also be temporary or permanent. It is caused by defect, disease, or injury to the eye, to the optic nerve, or to that part of the brain connected with it. Old age is sometimes accompanied with blindness, occasioned by the drying up of the humours of the eye, or by the opacity of the cornea, the crystalline lens, etc. The blind are often distinguished for a remarkable mental activity, and a wonderful development of the intellectual powers. Their touch and hearing, particularly, become very acute.
As early as 1260 an asylum for the blind (L'hospice des Quinze-Vingts) was founded in Paris by St Louis for the relief of the Crusaders who lost their sight in Egypt and Syria; but the first institution for the instruction of the blind was the idea of Valentin Hauy, brother of the celebrated mineralogist. In 1784 he opened an institution in which the blind were instructed not only in appropriate mechanical employments, as spinning, knitting, making ropes or fringes, and working in paste-board, but also in music, in reading, writing, ciphering, geography, and the sciences. For instruction in reading he procured raised letters of metal; for writing he used particular writing-cases, in which a frame, with wires to separate the lines, could be fastened upon the paper; for ciphering there were movable figures of metal, and ciphering-boards in which the figures could be fixed; for teaching geographymaps were prepared upon which mountains, rivers, cities, and the boundaries of countries were indicated to the sense of touch in various ways, etc.
Similar institutions were soon afterwards founded in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dresden, Edinburgh, Liverpool, London, Vienna, and in many towns of the United States. By 1900 there were comparatively few large cities that did not possess a school or institution of some kind for the blind.
At the start of the 20th century the attitude towards the blind was rather patronising, and one source may be quoted as saying 'the occupations in which the blind are found capable of engaging are such as the making of baskets and other kinds of wicker-work, brushmaking, rope and twine making, the making of mats and matting, knitting, netting, fancy work of various kinds, cutting fire-wood, the sewing of sacks and bags; the carving of articles in wood, etc'. However, it was also recognised that more skilled tasks could also be performed by blind persons, and the same source notes that 'Piano-tuning is also successfully carried on by some, and the cleaning of clocks and watches has even been occasionally practised by them'.
Around 1900 an impetus was given, in Britain, to the higher education of the blind by the formation of the British and Foreign Blind Association, the establishment of a college for the Blind Sons of Gentlemen at Worcester, and the Royal Normal College and Academy of Music for the Blind, Upper Norwood.
Various systems were devised for the purpose of teaching the blind to read, some of which consisted in the use of the ordinary Roman alphabet, with more or less modification, and some of which employ types quite arbitrary in form. In all systems the characters rise above the surface of the paper so as to be felt by the fingers. The type adopted by Hauy was the script or italic form of the Roman letter. This was introduced into England by Sir C. Lowther, who printed the Gospel of St. Matthew in 1832 with type obtained from Paris. Before this Gall of Edinburgh made use of an embossed alphabet based on the ordinary Roman small letters, in which all curves were replaced by angular lines, and in 1834 he published the Gospel of St John in this character. Subsequently he introduced various improvements, and in particular the letters were produced with serrated surfaces, thus giving greater distinctness. Alston of Glasgow, Howe of Boston, and others also used the Roman form; but the former (who was the first to print the whole Bible, in 1840) adopted the Roman capitals, while the latter adopted the small letters, printing in this type the Bible and many other books. Of alphabets deviating entirely or nearly so from the Roman letter, one consists of a stenographic shorthand invented by Lucas of Bristol; another was a phonetic shorthand devised by Frere of London. In Dr. Moon's alphabet some of the characters are Roman, others are based on or suggested by the Roman characters. The Braille system, widely adopted by the laye 20th century, is one in which the letters are formed by a combination of dots. Dr. Moon's system from its simplicity and the size of its characters is in very general use in books for the blind. There are also systems by which the blind are enabled to write, and the writing may be either in relief so as to be read by the blind, or in characters that may be read by those who see. Research Blind
Carpet, a thick fabric, generally composed wholly or principally of wool, for covering the floors of apartments, staircases, and passages in the interior of a house or other place. Carpets were originally introduced from the East, where they were fabricated in pieces, like the modern rugs, for sitting on - a use obviously suggested by the Eastern habit of sitting cross-legged upon the floor. Eastern carpets are still highly thought of in Europe, into which they are largely imported. The good quality Persian, Turkish, and Indian carpets are all woven by hand, and the design is formed by knotting into the warp tufts of woollen threads of the proper colour one after the other.
Of European carpets the Brussels carpet was a common and highly-esteemed variety at the end of the 19th century. It was composed of linen thread and worsted, the latter forming the pattern. The linen basis did not appear on the surface, being concealed by the worsted, which was drawn through the reticulations and looped over wires that were afterwards withdrawn, giving the surface a ribbed appearance.
Wilton carpets were similar to Brussels in the process of their manufacture, but in them the loops were cut open by using wires with a knife-edge, and the surface thus obtained a pile.
Tapestry carpets have also a pile surface. They were traditionally manufactured according to a process patented by Mr. Whytock of Edinburgh in 1832, the great speciality of which was that the threads were particoloured by printing in the proper manner for each design before being woven up.
The Kidderminster or Scotch carpet consisted of two distinct webs woven at the same time and knitted together by the woof. The pattern was the same on both sides of the cloth, but the colours were reversed. An improvement upon this was the three-ply carpeting, made originally at Kilmarnock.
The original Axminster carpets were made on the principle of the Persian or Turkey carpets. Patent Axminster carpets (invented by Templeton of Glasgow, 1839) have a fine pile, which is produced by using chenille as the weft, the projecting threads of which form the pile, which is dyed before being used. Carpets of felted wool, with designs printed on them, are also used, and are very cheap. Cheap jute carpets are also made. Research Carpet
In July, 1859, John Brown settled near Harper's Ferry, Virginia and began, with the aid of some Kansas associates, the forcible liberation of slaves. On October the 17th he seized, with seventeen whites and five negroes, the United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry, and spent the next eighteen hours in freeing slaves, cutting telegraph wires, preparing defences and making prisoners of fifty white men. On October the 18th, 1500 militia and marines arrived. They surrounded the armoury engine house, burst open the door and captured John Brown, three other whites and half a dozen negroes. Eight of the insurgents were killed. John Brown was taken to Charlestown, Virginia., and there hanged, on December the 2nd, 1859. Research Harper's Ferry Insurgency
Anomalure (Anomalurus) is a genus of rodent animals inhabiting the west coast of Africa, resembling the flying-squirrels, but having the under surface of the tail furnished for some distance from the roots with a series of large horny scales, which, when pressed against the trunk of a tree, may subserve the same purpose as those instruments with which a man climbs up a telegraph pole to set the wires. They are called also scale-tails, or scale-tailed squirrels, but some authorities class them with the porcupines rather than the squirrels. There are several species of them, but little is known of their habits. Research Anom'alure
The Ladybird Spider is the rarest of Britain's 450 species of spider. It is so named on account of the adult male having a scarlet back with four black spots, resembling a ladybird. The head is black, the legs are black with white stripes. The Ladybird Spider lives in heather heathland where it builds a web across a vertical shaft in which it lives. Approaching beetles triggertripwires or walk over the web and the spider pounces, biting them with quick acting toxin and then eats its prey. The Ladybird Spider was thought to be extinct in the 1920's, but was rediscovered in the 1980's in the south of England. Research Ladybird Spider
Charles Ellet was an American civil engineer who designed the first wire- cable suspension bridge in the USA, in 1842. He was born in 1810 at Pennsylvania and died in 1862. He also designed the world's first long-span wire-cable suspension bridge, crossing the Ohio River at Wheeling, West Virginia. He began his career as a surveyor and assistant engineer on the Chesapeake and OhioCanal in 1828. In 1831 and 1832 he was in Europe, enrolled at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and studied the various engineering works taking place in France, Germany, and Britain. For his first wire-cable suspension bridge, over the Schuylkill River at Fairmount, Pennsylvania, Ellet introduced a technique he had learned in France of binding small wires together to make the cables. The central span of the suspension bridge over the Ohio River was at 308 meters the longest ever built when it was completed in 1849. The bridge failed under wind forces in 1854; however, Ellet's towers remained standing and the bridge was rebuilt.
Following the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, Ellet produced a steam-powered ship for the Union forces to ram the Confederates on the Mississippi River and in June 1862, led a fleet of nine of these rams in the Battle of Memphis. The Union side was victorious, but in the course of the fighting Ellet was fatally wounded. Research Charles Ellet
The first Battle of Weldon Road, Virginia occurred on June the 22nd and 23rd 1864 during the American Civil War. General Grant, during his memorable operations about Richmond and Petersburg, attempted to capture this road from the Confederates under Lee. Hancock's and Wright's corps were detailed to effect this capture. A gap occurred between the two corps during the necessary movements, and into this the Confederate Hill threw a strong column. Both corps were struck upon the flank and thrown into confusion. The attack was finally repelled. On the twenty-third, Wright again made the attempt to seize the road and cut the telegraph wires. Hill drove him off, inflicting severe loss upon his troops. Grant lost 4000 men in these ineffectual attempts.
Again, on August the 18th, 1864, during the campaign about Petersburg, Grant seized the opportunity, while the main body of Lee's army was massed toward Richmond, of attacking the Weldon Railroad. Warren moved with the eighteenth and fifth corps and struck the road four miles from Petersburg. A gap occurring between the two corps, Lee thrust Mahone's division into the opening and captured 2000 prisoners, but was eventually driven back to his lines. Warren spent the next day in fortifying himself, and Lee, having attempted to dislodge him, was severely defeated. On the twenty-fifth, Gregg's cavalry were defeated while destroying the road. Research Battle of Weldon Road
On the day of the battle of Spottsylvania Court House, May the 8th, 1864, Grant ordered Philip Sheridan to ride with his cavalry entirely around the Confederate army, destroying bridges and depots, tearing up railways and capturing trains. Philip Sheridan followed his commands to the letter. He destroyed ten miles of railway, captured several trains, cut all the telegraph wires and recaptured 400 prisoners, who had been taken by the Confederates in the Wilderness. The Confederate cavalry under JEB Stuart was immediately dispatched to intercept him. They met at Yellow Tavern, and a hot engagement took place. The Confederates were finally defeated, and JEB Stuart himself, the most famous cavalryman of the Southern army, was mortally wounded. Philip Sheridan then rode on toward Richmond. The outer defences were at that time quite weak, and the Union leader found little difficulty in dashing through the Confederate lines and capturing a large number of prisoners. The inner works were too strong for him, so he retreated and rejoined Grant on May the 25th. The entire epsiode being known as Sheridan's Raid in Virginia. Research Sheridan's Raid
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Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Abacus
