Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/Patent ghosts
PATENT GHOSTS.
Perceptive faculties, and the want of them, constitute a very large part of the difference between the progress and non-progress of humanity. Those who possess perception are the great purveyors for those without it. The great mass have eyes, but they see not with them till they fall into the hands of guides who direct their vision. Why should not the guides be paid for this, as much as the Swiss guides who take people up Swiss mountains? There was a time when the world was ignorant of the optical effect of two strips of glass, placed edgewise together, to form a hollow prism, till Sir David Brewster patented the matter, and gave the kaleidoscope to the world.
The principle of Mr. Pepper’s popular Ghost is the same that produces giant shadows projected on mountain mist; and thousands of shadows of this kind may be seen between sunrise and sunset throughout London streets every day; but as they happen to be common objects, nobody heeds them. But a ghost, or gaseous vapour supposed to resemble a human being after death, excites most people’s imaginations more or less morbidly, and when Mr. Pepper used a common principle to produce a ghost, all the world ran mad, and the process of producing this ghost became a valuable source of profit for public exhibition. If amusement be a good and useful thing, Mr. Pepper has done good service to the community. At all events he thought so; and therefore, in concert with Mr. Dircks, he applied for a patent on the 5th of February, 1863. The application was opposed, for the exhibition was a very profitable one, and every proprietor of a theatre or exhibition was interested in not paying a royalty for what was so very simple, after it was once pointed out. Any number might assert their previous knowledge of an invention which existed everywhere spontaneously, and so up to this day no patent has been granted: whether on the ground that it is an abstract principle and not a subject of manufacture, or whether on account of disputes between claimants, does not appear.
In October, 1858, Mr. Dircks contributed to the “Mechanics’ Magazine” an article, in which the optical principle was described, and herein is evidence of the importance to the public of giving individual proprietorship, in order to get a thing into public use. Of the hundreds of people who must have read the paper, not one sought to apply it and turn it to purposes of use or profit. But the Polytechnic was in want of novelty—something to draw—and so Mr. Dircks and Mr. Pepper laid their heads together to produce a ghost in broad daylight. Like the egg of Columbus, everybody knew how to do it after showing. Had the patent been quietly applied for before making a stir, probably it would have been granted, and we think that Mr. Dircks’ previous article, five years before, which the public failed to recognise or adopt, should not have been any bar to the grant. Had the public used it, Mr. Dircks would not in equity have been entitled to revoke his gift.
But there was an older giver than Mr. Dircks. In the library of the Patent Office, gathered together by the diligent, loving labours of Mr. Bennet Woodcroft, there is an old black-letter folio volume, entitled “Porta’s Natural Magick,” with an engraved portrait of the author, a Neapolitan, and apparently a friar of the Bacon stamp, surrounded by emblems of the four elements—Fire, Air, Earth, and Water, with a curious “Chaos,” from which they spring, and a figure of a very bounteous “Nature,” with three pairs of breasts. This volume was printed in London, for Thomas Young and Samuel Speed, at the “Three Pigeons,” and at the “Angel,” in St. Paul’s Churchyard, in 1658, being a translation from the original Latin edition, first published at Naples some seventy years previously. The following is an extract:—
How we may see in a chamber
Things that are not.
I thought this an artifice not to be dispised; for we may in a chamber, if a man look in, see those things which were never there; and there is no man so witty that will think he is mistaken. Wherefore, to describe the matter, let there be a chamber whereinto no other light comes, unless by the door or window where the spectator looks in; let the whole window, or part of it, be of glass, as we used to do to keep out the cold, but let one part be polished, that there may be a looking-glass on both sides, whence the spectator must look in; for the rest do nothing. Let pictures be set over against this window, marble statues and such like; for what is without will seem to be within, and what is behind the spectator’s back, he will think to be in the middle of the house, as far from the glass inward, as they stand from it outwardly, and so clearly and certainly that he will think he sees nothing but truth. But, lest the skill should be known, let the part be made so where the ornament is, that the spectator may not see it, as above his head, that a pavement may come between above his head; and if an ingenious man do this, it is impossible that he should suppose that he is deceived.—Chapter XII., p. 370.
No doubt, the Egyptian priests understood this earlier than Italian friars, and the Hebrews raised up “lying spirits” in the same fashion.
This very day I have seen some hundred ghosts, and scores of people saw them with me, though not consciously. It was in an omnibus, passing from Charing Cross to the city. The plate-glass in the shops had dark backgrounds, and became thus the dark chambers of Porta, and everything that passed by was projected by the vision into the shops. It was a perfect phantasmagoria, and it was the plate-glass that produced the effect, “polished like a looking-glass on both sides.” I had occasion afterwards to enter a butcher’s shop, the front open, and a counting-house in the interior, glazed with plate-glass. Projected into this glass were dozens of ghosts of the sheep and beeves hanging up in front. They were as clean as photographs, and with a similar effect.
Now, this thing has been before the world in a printed book 274 years, but no one has turned it to the account of a public exhibition till Mr. Pepper took it in hand. No one practically noticed it, and it was virtually buried; and therefore Mr. Pepper, supposing he did not himself make it known before applying for a patent, must be regarded in the light of a discoverer, and it is for the interest of the public that he should obtain his patent, as much so as the discoverer of any practical improvement in photography, in order to induce other discoverers to do likewise. The fact that the shadow is projected through glass, and is evanescent, instead of being permanently deposited on it, and that the Ghost is a gratification for a large assembly instead of a property for individuals, cannot diminish its utility. Nothing, as we all know, is new under the sun; but no doubt Mr. Pepper at the Polytechnic has given something to the public that they had never had before, and he is fairly entitled to his reward.