History of Inventions and Discoveries, Vol. 1 of 4 (Classic Reprint)

Download or read book History of Inventions and Discoveries, Vol. 1 of 4 (Classic Reprint) written by John Beckman and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-07 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from History of Inventions and Discoveries, Vol. 1 of 4 That the arts had their rise in the East, and-that they were conveyed thence to' the Greeks, and from them't'o the Romans, ls universally admitted. Respecting the in ventions and discoveries however of the early ages, no thing certain is known; Many Of those most useful in common life must have been the production Of periods when men were-little acquainted with letters, or any sure mode of transmitting an account Of their improvements to succeeding generations. The taste which then pre vailed of giving to every thing a divine origin, rendered tra ditional accounts fabulous; and the exaggeration of poets tended 'more and more to make such authorities less wor thy Of credit. A variety Of works also, which might have supplied us with information onithis subject, have been lost; and the relations Of some of those preserved are so *corrupted and.obscure, that the best commentators have not been able to illustrate them. This in particular is the case with many passages in Pliny, an author who appears to have collected with the utmost diligence whatever he thought useful or curious, and whose desire of communi eating knowledge seems to have been equal to-llls' thirst for acquiring it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.