Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/798

778 the prevailing experimental fervor, and contributed perhaps more than any of his contemporaries to advance the credit and promote the cultivation of science. The tinge of credulity which occasionally colored his inquiries may be excused (in the words of Bacon's apology for corruption) as vitium temporis non hominis, and we suppress a smile at his solemn testamentary disposition of an infallible recipe for "multiplying gold," when we find Newton and Locke the eager recipients of the secret.

Several members of the "Philosophical or Invisible College" of London finding themselves about this time together at Oxford, their discussions were resumed, and Hooke's singular mechanical skill quickly brought him to their notice. Boyle at once attached him to himself, and, if we are to believe what Anthony Wood tells us, was glad to improve his foreign acquirements by receiving from the young servitor instruction in Euclid, and some much-needed light on the Cartesian philosophy. What is more certain is, that Hooke constructed for him an air-pump vastly superior in design to that recently contrived at Magdeburg by Otto Guericke, and differing in no essential particular from that now in use. He further devised thirty different modes of flying, and emulated Archytas in the production of a "Module" (we quote his own words), "which, by the help of springs and wings, raised and sustained itself in the air; but finding," he adds, "by my own trials, and afterward by calculation, that the muscles of a man's body were not sufficient to do anything considerable of that kind, I applied my mind to contrive a way to make artificial muscles, divers designs whereof I shewed also at the same time to Dr. Wilkins, then Warden of Wadham College, but was in many of my trials frustrated of my expectations."

It may be conjectured that the failure of these attempts sufficed to convince the Icarus of Wadham of the impracticability of his projected lunar excursion, as well as to divert their author to less ambitious designs. The improvement of timepieces was then looked upon as the shortest road to the solution of the great practical problem of finding the longitude at sea, and in this direction, accordingly, Hooke next turned his thoughts and his experiments. He was rewarded by the discovery of a contrivance for applying springs to regulate the movement of watches. For this important invention his friends endeavored to procure him a patent, which he, however, refused, being dissatisfied with the terms proposed; and it thus remained undivulged, and by many disbelieved in. But when, in 1675, Huygens published, in the "Journal des Savants," his discovery of spiral watch-springs, Hooke indignantly claimed it as his own, incidentally attacking Oldenburg, then Secretary of the Royal Society, with whom he was never on very civil terms. A sharp paper-conflict ensued, Hooke (quite unjustifiably)