VON KEMPELEN AND HIS DISCOVERY
AFTER THE very minute and elaborate paper by Arago, to say nothing ofthe summary in 'Silliman's Journal,' with the detailed statement justpublished by Lieutenant Maury, it will not be supposed, of course,that in offering a few hurried remarks in reference to Von Kempelen'sdiscovery, I have any design to look at the subject in a scientificpoint of view. My object is simply, in the first place, to say a fewwords of Von Kempelen himself (with whom, some years ago, I had thehonor of a slight personal acquaintance), since every thing whichconcerns him must necessarily, at this moment, be of interest; and, inthe second place, to look in a general way, and speculatively, at theresults of the discovery.
It may be as well, however, to premise the cursory observations whichI have to offer, by denying, very decidedly, what seems to be ageneral impression (gleaned, as usual in a case of this kind, from thenewspapers), viz.: that this discovery, astounding as it unquestionablyis, is unanticipated.
By reference to the 'Diary of Sir Humphrey Davy' (Cottle and Munroe,London, pp. 150), it will be seen at pp. 53 and 82, that thisillustrious chemist had not only conceived the idea now in question,but had actually made no inconsiderable progress, experimentally, in thevery identical analysis now so triumphantly brought to an issue by VonKempelen, who although he makes not the slightest allusion to it, is,without doubt (I say it unhesitatingly, and can prove it, if required),indebted to the 'Diary' for at least the first hint of his ownundertaking.
The paragraph from the 'Courier and Enquirer,' which is now going therounds of the press, and which purports to claim the invention for aMr. Kissam, of Brunswick, Maine, appears to me, I confess, a littleapocryphal, for several reasons; although there is nothing eitherimpossible or very improbable in the statement made. I need not go intodetails. My opinion of the paragraph is founded principally upon itsmanner. It does not look true. Persons who are narrating facts, areseldom so particular as Mr. Kissam seems to be, about day and date andprecise location. Besides, if Mr. Kissam actually did come upon thediscovery he says he did, at the period designated--nearly eight yearsago--how happens it that he took no steps, on the instant, to reap theimmense benefits which the merest bumpkin must have known would haveresulted to him individually, if not to the world at large, from thediscovery? It seems to me quite incredible that any man of commonunderstanding could have discovered what Mr. Kissam says he did, and yethave subsequently acted so like a baby--so like an owl--as Mr. Kissamadmits that he did. By-the-way, who is Mr. Kissam? and is not the wholeparagraph in the 'Courier and Enquirer' a fabrication got up to 'makea talk'? It must be confessed that it has an amazingly moon-hoaxy-air.Very little dependence is to be placed upon it, in my humble opinion;and if I were not well aware, from experience, how very easily men ofscience are mystified, on points out of their usual range of inquiry,I should be profoundly astonished at finding so eminent a chemist asProfessor Draper, discussing Mr. Kissam's (or is it Mr. Quizzem's?)pretensions to the discovery, in so serious a tone.
But to return to the 'Diary' of Sir Humphrey Davy. This pamphlet was notdesigned for the public eye, even upon the decease of the writer, as anyperson at all conversant with authorship may satisfy himself at once bythe slightest inspection of the style. At page 13, for example, near themiddle, we read, in reference to his researches about the protoxideof azote: 'In less than half a minute the respiration being continued,diminished gradually and were succeeded by analogous to gentle pressureon all the muscles.' That the respiration was not 'diminished,' is notonly clear by the subsequent context, but by the use of the plural,'were.' The sentence, no doubt, was thus intended: 'In less than halfa minute, the respiration [being continued, these feelings] diminishedgradually, and were succeeded by [a sensation] analogous to gentlepressure on all the muscles.' A hundred similar instances go to showthat the MS. so inconsiderately published, was merely a rough note-book,meant only for the writer's own eye, but an inspection of the pamphletwill convince almost any thinking person of the truth of my suggestion.The fact is, Sir Humphrey Davy was about the last man in the worldto commit himself on scientific topics. Not only had he a more thanordinary dislike to quackery, but he was morbidly afraid of appearingempirical; so that, however fully he might have been convinced that hewas on the right track in the matter now in question, he would neverhave spoken out, until he had every thing ready for the most practicaldemonstration. I verily believe that his last moments would have beenrendered wretched, could he have suspected that his wishes in regardto burning this 'Diary' (full of crude speculations) would have beenunattended to; as, it seems, they were. I say 'his wishes,' for that hemeant to include this note-book among the miscellaneous papers directed'to be burnt,' I think there can be no manner of doubt. Whether itescaped the flames by good fortune or by bad, yet remains to be seen.That the passages quoted above, with the other similar ones referred to,gave Von Kempelen the hint, I do not in the slightest degree question;but I repeat, it yet remains to be seen whether this momentous discoveryitself (momentous under any circumstances) will be of service ordisservice to mankind at large. That Von Kempelen and his immediatefriends will reap a rich harvest, it would be folly to doubt for amoment. They will scarcely be so weak as not to 'realize,' in time, bylarge purchases of houses and land, with other property of intrinsicvalue.
In the brief account of Von Kempelen which appeared in the'Home Journal,' and has since been extensively copied, severalmisapprehensions of the German original seem to have been made by thetranslator, who professes to have taken the passage from a late numberof the Presburg 'Schnellpost.' 'Viele' has evidently been misconceived(as it often is), and what the translator renders by 'sorrows,' isprobably 'lieden,' which, in its true version, 'sufferings,' would givea totally different complexion to the whole account; but, of course,much of this is merely guess, on my part.
Von Kempelen, however, is by no means 'a misanthrope,' in appearance, atleast, whatever he may be in fact. My acquaintance with him was casualaltogether; and I am scarcely warranted in saying that I know himat all; but to have seen and conversed with a man of so prodigious anotoriety as he has attained, or will attain in a few days, is not asmall matter, as times go.
'The Literary World' speaks of him, confidently, as a native of Presburg(misled, perhaps, by the account in 'The Home Journal') but I am pleasedin being able to state positively, since I have it from his own lips,that he was born in Utica, in the State of New York, although both hisparents, I believe, are of Presburg descent. The family is connected, insome way, with Maelzel, of Automaton-chess-player memory. In person, heis short and stout, with large, fat, blue eyes, sandy hair and whiskers,a wide but pleasing mouth, fine teeth, and I think a Roman nose. Thereis some defect in one of his feet. His address is frank, and his wholemanner noticeable for bonhomie. Altogether, he looks, speaks, andacts as little like 'a misanthrope' as any man I ever saw. We werefellow-sojourners for a week about six years ago, at Earl's Hotel, inProvidence, Rhode Island; and I presume that I conversed with him, atvarious times, for some three or four hours altogether. His principaltopics were those of the day, and nothing that fell from him led meto suspect his scientific attainments. He left the hotel before me,intending to go to New York, and thence to Bremen; it was in the lattercity that his great discovery was first made public; or, rather, it wasthere that he was first suspected of having made it. This is about allthat I personally know of the now immortal Von Kempelen; but I havethought that even these few details would have interest for the public.
There can be little question that most of the marvellous rumors afloatabout this affair are pure inventions, entitled to about as much creditas the story of Aladdin's lamp; and yet, in a case of this kind, as inthe case of the discoveries in California, it is clear that the truthmay be stranger than fiction. The following anecdote, at least, is sowell authenticated, that we may receive it implicitly.
Von Kempelen had never been even tolerably well off during his residenceat Bremen; and often, it was well known, he had been put to extremeshifts in order to raise trifling sums. When the great excitementoccurred about the forgery on the house of Gutsmuth & Co., suspicionwas directed toward Von Kempelen, on account of his having purchaseda considerable property in Gasperitch Lane, and his refusing, whenquestioned, to explain how he became possessed of the purchase money. Hewas at length arrested, but nothing decisive appearing against him, wasin the end set at liberty. The police, however, kept a strict watch uponhis movements, and thus discovered that he left home frequently, takingalways the same road, and invariably giving his watchers the slip in theneighborhood of that labyrinth of narrow and crooked passages knownby the flash name of the 'Dondergat.' Finally, by dint of greatperseverance, they traced him to a garret in an old house of sevenstories, in an alley called Flatzplatz,--and, coming upon him suddenly,found him, as they imagined, in the midst of his counterfeitingoperations. His agitation is represented as so excessive that theofficers had not the slightest doubt of his guilt. After hand-cuffinghim, they searched his room, or rather rooms, for it appears he occupiedall the mansarde.
Opening into the garret where they caught him, was a closet, ten feet byeight, fitted up with some chemical apparatus, of which the object hasnot yet been ascertained. In one corner of the closet was a very smallfurnace, with a glowing fire in it, and on the fire a kind of duplicatecrucible--two crucibles connected by a tube. One of these crucibles wasnearly full of lead in a state of fusion, but not reaching up to theaperture of the tube, which was close to the brim. The other cruciblehad some liquid in it, which, as the officers entered, seemed to befuriously dissipating in vapor. They relate that, on finding himselftaken, Kempelen seized the crucibles with both hands (which were encasedin gloves that afterwards turned out to be asbestic), and threw thecontents on the tiled floor. It was now that they hand-cuffed him; andbefore proceeding to ransack the premises they searched his person, butnothing unusual was found about him, excepting a paper parcel, in hiscoat-pocket, containing what was afterward ascertained to be a mixtureof antimony and some unknown substance, in nearly, but not quite, equalproportions. All attempts at analyzing the unknown substance have,so far, failed, but that it will ultimately be analyzed, is not to bedoubted.
Passing out of the closet with their prisoner, the officers went througha sort of ante-chamber, in which nothing material was found, to thechemist's sleeping-room. They here rummaged some drawers and boxes,but discovered only a few papers, of no importance, and some good coin,silver and gold. At length, looking under the bed, they saw a large,common hair trunk, without hinges, hasp, or lock, and with the top lyingcarelessly across the bottom portion. Upon attempting to draw this trunkout from under the bed, they found that, with their united strength(there were three of them, all powerful men), they 'could not stir itone inch.' Much astonished at this, one of them crawled under the bed,and looking into the trunk, said:
'No wonder we couldn't move it--why it's full to the brim of old bits ofbrass!'
Putting his feet, now, against the wall so as to get a good purchase,and pushing with all his force, while his companions pulled with alltheirs, the trunk, with much difficulty, was slid out from under thebed, and its contents examined. The supposed brass with which it wasfilled was all in small, smooth pieces, varying from the size of a peato that of a dollar; but the pieces were irregular in shape, althoughmore or less flat-looking, upon the whole, 'very much as lead looks whenthrown upon the ground in a molten state, and there suffered to growcool.' Now, not one of these officers for a moment suspected this metalto be any thing but brass. The idea of its being gold never enteredtheir brains, of course; how could such a wild fancy have entered it?And their astonishment may be well conceived, when the next day itbecame known, all over Bremen, that the 'lot of brass' which theyhad carted so contemptuously to the police office, without puttingthemselves to the trouble of pocketing the smallest scrap, was not onlygold--real gold--but gold far finer than any employed in coinage-gold,in fact, absolutely pure, virgin, without the slightest appreciablealloy.
I need not go over the details of Von Kempelen's confession (as far asit went) and release, for these are familiar to the public. That he hasactually realized, in spirit and in effect, if not to the letter, theold chimaera of the philosopher's stone, no sane person is at libertyto doubt. The opinions of Arago are, of course, entitled to the greatestconsideration; but he is by no means infallible; and what he says ofbismuth, in his report to the Academy, must be taken cum grano salis.The simple truth is, that up to this period all analysis has failed; anduntil Von Kempelen chooses to let us have the key to his own publishedenigma, it is more than probable that the matter will remain, for years,in statu quo. All that as yet can fairly be said to be known is, that'Pure gold can be made at will, and very readily from lead in connectionwith certain other substances, in kind and in proportions, unknown.'
Speculation, of course, is busy as to the immediate and ultimate resultsof this discovery--a discovery which few thinking persons will hesitatein referring to an increased interest in the matter of gold generally,by the late developments in California; and this reflection brings usinevitably to another--the exceeding inopportuneness of Von Kempelen'sanalysis. If many were prevented from adventuring to California, by themere apprehension that gold would so materially diminish in value,on account of its plentifulness in the mines there, as to renderthe speculation of going so far in search of it a doubtful one--whatimpression will be wrought now, upon the minds of those about toemigrate, and especially upon the minds of those actually in themineral region, by the announcement of this astounding discovery of VonKempelen? a discovery which declares, in so many words, that beyond itsintrinsic worth for manufacturing purposes (whatever that worth may be),gold now is, or at least soon will be (for it cannot be supposed thatVon Kempelen can long retain his secret), of no greater value thanlead, and of far inferior value to silver. It is, indeed, exceedinglydifficult to speculate prospectively upon the consequences of thediscovery, but one thing may be positively maintained--that theannouncement of the discovery six months ago would have had materialinfluence in regard to the settlement of California.
In Europe, as yet, the most noticeable results have been a rise of twohundred per cent. in the price of lead, and nearly twenty-five per cent.that of silver.