396

Eolipiles from Rivius and Cardan.

[Book IV

preferable, on some occasions, to bellows. One perhaps was their occu-pying little room on the hearth; and another, their requiring no attendantto keep up the blast. It has already been observed (page 237-8,) thathuman bellows-blowers formed part of the large domestic establishmentsin ancient Egypt, and Nos. 103 and 104 of our illustrations representsome at work in one of the kitchens of the Pharaohs . The practice wasprobably common among all the celebrated nations of old, and we knowthat it was continued in Europe tili the sixteenth Century if not later.To supersede these workmen mlght therefore have been one reason forthe employment of eolipiles.

In a Latin collection of “ Emblems human and divine,” (Prague , 1601,)there is a device of one of the old Counts of Hapsburg , which consistsof a blowing eolipile with a stream of vapor issuing from it, and themotto Lmsus Juvo. (Vol. ii, 372.) The same device is also given in atreatise on Heroic Symbols, Antwerp , 1634. Hence this ancient domes-tic instrument was adopted on such occasions as well as the bellows,syringe, watering pot, &c.

Rivius in commenting on the eolipiles mentioned by Vitruvius describesthose in use in his own time, (A. D. 1548,) and gives several figures, fromwhich we have selected the first three of the following ones.

Eolipiles, from Rivius and Cardan.

No. 181. No. 182. No. 183. No. 184.

Rivius names them “ wind holders” and “ fire blowers.” He says theywere made in various shapes and of different materials, and were used“to blow the fire like a pair of bellows.” Some, designed for other pur-poses, that will presently be mentioned, were made of gold or silver andrichly ornamented, as represented above. At a subsequent period of thesixteenth Century, Cardan gave a figure of one. (See No. 184.) Fludd,Porta and other old writers also describe them. The latter, in book xix,chap. 3, of his Natural Magic, speaks of them as used in houses to blowfires. Sir Hugh Platte, in 1594, published a figure and description of“ a rounde ball of copper, or latton [brass] that blows the fyre veriestronglie by the attenuation of the water into ayre.”

Bishop Wilkins, in his Mathematical Magic, (published in 1648) speaksof eolipiles as then common. They are made, he observes, “ of somesuch material as may endure the fire, having a small hole, at which theyare filled with water, and out of which (when the vessels are heated) theair doth issue forth with a strong and lasting violence. These are fre-quently used for the exciting and contracting of heat in the melting ofglasses or metals. They may also be contrived to be servic.eable for sun-dry other pleasant use», as for tue moviug of sails in a chimney Corner,the motion of which sails may be applied to the turning of a spit, or theiike.” (Book ii, chap. 1.) Kircher has given a figure of an eolipileturning a joint of meat, (as indicated by the Bishop) in the first volume