I want to talk about invention versus discovery. Sometimes I look at a thing that has been around for centuries, and I wonder how it got started.My conclusion is that the discovery usually comes first. It may precede the actually invention by a long time. Take television. The basic principles were understood by 1850, or perhaps a long time before that. The Russian inventor Nipkow invented a scanning disc about 1850, but the main bit that was missing was an amplifier. Lee de Forest invented the amplifying triode valve in the early 1900s, but it was not until the 1920s that John Logie Baird brought all the bits together to demonstrate a primitive TV system.
Photography was the same. The Camera Obscura or pinhole camera has been known for centuries. What was missing was light sensitive plate, and way of developing and fixing an image. This was achieved by many different inventors working independently over the best part of a century.
The thing that started me thinking about all this was the violin.{OMG not another fiddle tale neptune}. The first stringed musical instruments were without doubt developed from the hunting bow. Someone twanged a bow, and found that the pitch could be varied by leaning on the bow stave to slacken and tighten the string. It is a myth that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, as the fiddle was not developed untill the fourteenth century. If Nero had an instrument, it was probably a harp, played by plucking.
A hunting bow will produce a sound, but not very loud. In Africa, plucked strings were combined with a drum, giving rise to the banjo. But where did the idea of bowing strings come from? A fiddle bow is horse hair stretched along a stick. Horse hair has been around as long as horses. But if you bow a fiddle, using a brand new bow, it will not produce any sound. You need to add rosin, or resin, which at its most basic is dried tree sap.
Did some ancient hunter lean his hunting bow, strung with plaited horse hair, against a "wounded" tree and contaminate the string with sap? Did he then, by accident or design, rub it against the string of another bow? We will never know of course. It is interesting to speculate though. I can imagine his wife looking on in amazement, and saying " I know I am crazy, but didn`t that sound like Beethoven`s Fifth?
Photography was the same. The Camera Obscura or pinhole camera has been known for centuries. What was missing was light sensitive plate, and way of developing and fixing an image. This was achieved by many different inventors working independently over the best part of a century.
The thing that started me thinking about all this was the violin.{OMG not another fiddle tale neptune}. The first stringed musical instruments were without doubt developed from the hunting bow. Someone twanged a bow, and found that the pitch could be varied by leaning on the bow stave to slacken and tighten the string. It is a myth that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, as the fiddle was not developed untill the fourteenth century. If Nero had an instrument, it was probably a harp, played by plucking.
A hunting bow will produce a sound, but not very loud. In Africa, plucked strings were combined with a drum, giving rise to the banjo. But where did the idea of bowing strings come from? A fiddle bow is horse hair stretched along a stick. Horse hair has been around as long as horses. But if you bow a fiddle, using a brand new bow, it will not produce any sound. You need to add rosin, or resin, which at its most basic is dried tree sap.
Did some ancient hunter lean his hunting bow, strung with plaited horse hair, against a "wounded" tree and contaminate the string with sap? Did he then, by accident or design, rub it against the string of another bow? We will never know of course. It is interesting to speculate though. I can imagine his wife looking on in amazement, and saying " I know I am crazy, but didn`t that sound like Beethoven`s Fifth?
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