Chapter 4 of 23

VON KEMPELEN AND HIS DISCOVERY

After the very minute and elaborate paper by Arago, to say

nothing of the summary in ‘Silliman’s Journal,’ with the detailed

statement just published by Lieutenant Maury, it will not be

supposed, of course, that in offering a few hurried remarks in

reference to Von Kempelen’s discovery, I have any design to look

at the subject in a scientific point of view. My object is

simply, in the first place, to say a few words of Von Kempelen

himself (with whom, some years ago, I had the honor of a slight

personal acquaintance), since every thing which concerns him must

necessarily, at this moment, be of interest; and, in the second

place, to look in a general way, and speculatively, at the

results of the discovery.

It may be as well, however, to premise the cursory observations

which I have to offer, by denying, very decidedly, what seems to

be a general impression (gleaned, as usual in a case of this

kind, from the newspapers), viz.: that this discovery, astounding

as it unquestionably is, 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

this illustrious chemist had not only conceived the idea now in

question, but had actually made no inconsiderable progress,

experimentally, in the very identical analysis now so

triumphantly brought to an issue by Von Kempelen, 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 own undertaking.

The paragraph from the ‘Courier and Enquirer,’ which is now going

the rounds of the press, and which purports to claim the

invention for a Mr. Kissam, of Brunswick, Maine, appears to me, I

confess, a little apocryphal, for several reasons; although there

is nothing either impossible or very improbable in the statement

made. I need not go into details. My opinion of the paragraph is

founded principally upon its manner. It does not look true.

Persons who are narrating facts, are seldom so particular as Mr.

Kissam seems to be, about day and date and precise location.

Besides, if Mr. Kissam actually did come upon the discovery he

says he did, at the period designated—nearly eight years ago—how

happens it that he took no steps, on the instant, to reap the

immense benefits which the merest bumpkin must have known would

have resulted to him individually, if not to the world at large,

from the discovery? It seems to me quite incredible that any man

of common understanding could have discovered what Mr. Kissam

says he did, and yet have subsequently acted so like a baby—so

like an owl—as Mr. Kissam admits that he did. By-the-way, who is

Mr. Kissam? and is not the whole paragraph in the ‘Courier and

Enquirer’ a fabrication got up to ‘make a 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 of

science are mystified, on points out of their usual range of

inquiry, I should be profoundly astonished at finding so eminent

a chemist as Professor 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 not designed for the public eye, even upon the decease of the

writer, as any person at all conversant with authorship may

satisfy himself at once by the slightest inspection of the style.

At page 13, for example, near the middle, we read, in reference

to his researches about the protoxide of azote: ‘In less than

half a minute the respiration being continued, diminished

gradually and were succeeded by analogous to gentle pressure on

all the muscles.’ That the respiration was not ‘diminished,’ is

not only clear by the subsequent context, but by the use of the

plural, ‘were.’ The sentence, no doubt, was thus intended: ‘In

less than half a minute, the respiration [being continued, these

feelings] diminished gradually, and were succeeded by [a

sensation] analogous to gentle pressure on all the muscles.’ A

hundred similar instances go to show that the MS. so

inconsiderately published, was merely a rough note-book, meant

only for the writer’s own eye, but an inspection of the pamphlet

will convince almost any thinking person of the truth of my

suggestion. The fact is, Sir Humphrey Davy was about the last man

in the world to commit himself on scientific topics. Not only had

he a more than ordinary dislike to quackery, but he was morbidly

afraid of appearing empirical; so that, however fully he might

have been convinced that he was on the right track in the matter

now in question, he would never have spoken out, until he had

every thing ready for the most practical demonstration. I verily

believe that his last moments would have been rendered wretched,

could he have suspected that his wishes in regard to burning this

‘Diary’ (full of crude speculations) would have been unattended

to; as, it seems, they were. I say ‘his wishes,’ for that he

meant to include this note-book among the miscellaneous papers

directed ‘to be burnt,’ I think there can be no manner of doubt.

Whether it escaped 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 discovery itself

(momentous under any circumstances) will be of service or

disservice to mankind at large. That Von Kempelen and his

immediate friends will reap a rich harvest, it would be folly to

doubt for a moment. They will scarcely be so weak as not to

‘realize,’ in time, by large purchases of houses and land, with

other property of intrinsic value.

In the brief account of Von Kempelen which appeared in the ‘Home

Journal,’ and has since been extensively copied, several

misapprehensions of the German original seem to have been made by

the translator, who professes to have taken the passage from a

late number of the Presburg ‘Schnellpost.’ ‘Viele’ has evidently

been misconceived (as it often is), and what the translator

renders by ‘sorrows,’ is probably ‘lieden,’ which, in its true

version, ‘sufferings,’ would give a 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, at least, whatever he may be in fact. My acquaintance

with him was casual altogether; and I am scarcely warranted in

saying that I know him at all; but to have seen and conversed

with a man of so prodigious a notoriety as he has attained, or

will attain in a few days, is not a small 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 pleased in 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 his parents, I believe, are of

Presburg descent. The family is connected, in some way, with

Mäelzel, of Automaton-chess-player memory. In person, he is 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.

There is some defect in one of his feet. His address is frank,

and his whole manner noticeable for bonhomie. Altogether, he

looks, speaks, and acts as little like ‘a misanthrope’ as any man

I ever saw. We were fellow-sojourners for a week about six years

ago, at Earl’s Hotel, in Providence, Rhode Island; and I presume

that I conversed with him, at various times, for some three or

four hours altogether. His principal topics were those of the

day; and nothing that fell from him led me to suspect his

scientific attainments. He left the hotel before me, intending to

go to New York, and thence to Bremen; it was in the latter city

that his great discovery was first made public; or, rather, it

was there that he was first suspected of having made it. This is

about all that I personally know of the now immortal Von

Kempelen; but I have thought that even these few details would

have interest for the public.

There can be little question that most of the marvellous rumors

afloat about this affair are pure inventions, entitled to about

as much credit as the story of Aladdin’s lamp; and yet, in a case

of this kind, as in the case of the discoveries in California, it

is clear that the truth may be stranger than fiction. The

following anecdote, at least, is so well authenticated, that we

may receive it implicitly.

Von Kempelen had never been even tolerably well off during his

residence at Bremen; and often, it was well known, he had been

put to extreme shifts in order to raise trifling sums. When the

great excitement occurred about the forgery on the house of

Gutsmuth & Co., suspicion was directed toward Von Kempelen, on

account of his having purchased a considerable property in

Gasperitch Lane, and his refusing, when questioned, to explain

how he became possessed of the purchase money. He was at length

arrested, but nothing decisive appearing against him, was in the

end set at liberty. The police, however, kept a strict watch upon

his movements, and thus discovered that he left home frequently,

taking always the same road, and invariably giving his watchers

the slip in the neighborhood of that labyrinth of narrow and

crooked passages known by the flash name of the ‘Dondergat.’

Finally, by dint of great perseverance, they traced him to a

garret in an old house of seven stories, in an alley called

Flatzplatz,—and, coming upon him suddenly, found him, as they

imagined, in the midst of his counterfeiting operations. His

agitation is represented as so excessive that the officers had

not the slightest doubt of his guilt. After hand-cuffing him,

they searched his room, or rather rooms, for it appears he

occupied all the mansarde.

Opening into the garret where they caught him, was a closet, ten

feet by eight, fitted up with some chemical apparatus, of which

the object has not yet been ascertained. In one corner of the

closet was a very small furnace, with a glowing fire in it, and

on the fire a kind of duplicate crucible—two crucibles connected

by a tube. One of these crucibles was nearly full of lead in a

state of fusion, but not reaching up to the aperture of the tube,

which was close to the brim. The other crucible had some liquid

in it, which, as the officers entered, seemed to be furiously

dissipating in vapor. They relate that, on finding himself taken,

Kempelen seized the crucibles with both hands (which were encased

in gloves that afterwards turned out to be asbestic), and threw

the contents on the tiled floor. It was now that they hand-cuffed

him; and before proceeding to ransack the premises they searched

his person, but nothing unusual was found about him, excepting a

paper parcel, in his coat-pocket, containing what was afterward

ascertained to be a mixture of antimony and some unknown

substance, in nearly, but not quite, equal proportions. All

attempts at analyzing the unknown substance have, so far, failed,

but that it will ultimately be analyzed, is not to be doubted.

Passing out of the closet with their prisoner, the officers went

through a sort of ante-chamber, in which nothing material was

found, to the chemist’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 lying carelessly

across the bottom portion. Upon attempting to draw this trunk out

from under the bed, they found that, with their united strength

(there were three of them, all powerful men), they ‘could not

stir it one 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 of brass!’

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 all theirs, the trunk, with much difficulty, was slid

out from under the bed, and its contents examined. The supposed

brass with which it was filled was all in small, smooth pieces,

varying from the size of a pea to that of a dollar; but the

pieces were irregular in shape, although more or less

flat-looking, upon the whole, “very much as lead looks when

thrown upon the ground in a molten state, and there suffered to

grow cool.” Now, not one of these officers for a moment suspected

this metal to be anything but brass. The idea of its being

gold never entered their brains, of course; how could such a

wild fancy have entered it? And their astonishment may be well

conceived, when the next day it became known, all over Bremen,

that the “lot of brass” which they had carted so contemptuously

to the police office, without putting themselves to the trouble

of pocketing the smallest scrap, was not only gold—real gold—but

gold far finer than any employed in coinage—gold, in fact,

absolutely pure, virgin, without the slightest appreciable alloy.

I need not go over the details of Von Kempelen’s confession (as

far as it went) and release, for these are familiar to the

public. That he has actually realized, in spirit and in effect,

if not to the letter, the old chimaera of the philosopher’s

stone, no sane person is at liberty to doubt. The opinions of

Arago are, of course, entitled to the greatest consideration; but

he is by no means infallible; and what he says of bismuth, 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;

and until Von Kempelen chooses to let us have the key to his own

published enigma, 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 connection with certain other

substances, in kind and in proportions, unknown.’

Speculation, of course, is busy as to the immediate and ultimate

results of this discovery—a discovery which few thinking persons

will hesitate in referring to an increased interest in the matter

of gold generally, by the late developments in California; and

this reflection brings us inevitably to another—the exceeding

inopportuneness of Von Kempelen’s analysis. If many were

prevented from adventuring to California, by the mere

apprehension that gold would so materially diminish in value, on

account of its plentifulness in the mines there, as to render the

speculation of going so far in search of it a doubtful one—what

impression will be wrought now, upon the minds of those about to

emigrate, and especially upon the minds of those actually in the

mineral region, by the announcement of this astounding discovery

of Von Kempelen? a discovery which declares, in so many words,

that beyond its intrinsic worth for manufacturing purposes

(whatever that worth may be), gold now is, or at least soon will

be (for it cannot be supposed that Von Kempelen can long retain

his secret), of no greater value than lead, and of far inferior

value to silver. It is, indeed, exceedingly difficult to

speculate prospectively upon the consequences of the discovery,

but one thing may be positively maintained—that the announcement

of the discovery six months ago would have had material influence

in regard to the settlement of California.

In Europe, as yet, the most noticeable results have been a rise

of two hundred per cent. in the price of lead, and nearly

twenty-five per cent. that of silver.