I have a terrible confession: I am not particularly a cat-person. That, against a background of knowing that a huge majority of my followers on Twitter are moggy-lovers! I don’t dislike cats: I just don’t understand them. Or rather, I didn’t until I read the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1754. It explains:
“The phaenomenae of electricity, which has so many surprising properties, seems to be of two sorts, natural and artificial. The last is to be obtain’d from all bodies naturally susceptible of it, as glass etc in which the property lies dormant till excited to act by friction, or some other violent motion.
Natural electricity is common almost to all animals, especially those destin’d to catch their prey by night; cats have this property in the greatest degree of any animal we are acquainted with; their furr or hair is surprisingly electrical. If it be gently raised up it avoids the touch till it be forc’d to , and by stroking the backs in the dark, the emanations of electrical fire are extremely quick and vibrative from it, follow’d by a crackling noise as from glass tubes when their electrical atmosphere is struck. 
It appears to me of singular use to animals destin’d to catch their prey in the dark: they give a sudden and quick erection of their furr, raises the electrical fire, and this, by its quickness running along the long pointed hairs over their eyes, and illuminating the pupilla enables them to perceive and seize their prey. It would be worth while to enquire whether all the wild sort that catch their prey with the paw are not endow’d with the same vibrations of electrical fire; the cat is the only domestic animal of that species but such a discovery in the ferocious kind would still be an additional demonstration of that infinite wisdom so easily discoverable in the minutest executions of all his works, and so perfectly adapted to a proper end.”
The article is interesting in illustrating the 18th Century preoccupation and fascination with electricity, from its cause to its effects. I rather like the idea of cats seeing in the dark because of their ‘natural electricity’.
Mind you, while looking for illustrations to go with this post I came across a highly inappropriate, un-funny (and downright cruel!) picture of a cat piano, apparently designed in 1650 by one Athanasius Kircher a 17th century German Jesuit scholar.
According to the Neatorama site “The piano was designed to raise the spirits of an Italian prince who was too stressed out. The musician would select cats whose voices were at different pitches then arrange them in the pens accordingly. The piano delivered sharp pokes into the tails of the cats”. (No, not funny, definitely in bad taste, definitely worth including….). I mention it as an example of how cruelty to animals was endemic: more so because cats had always been associated with witchcraft.
Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to stay at the lovely Arizona Inn at Tucson. The dining area, somewhat dark and cavernous, was transformed into a warm, glowing, welcoming room by one thing: the tables were all set with water glasses made of cobalt blue. Here in Britain it is generally known as ‘Bristol Blue’. It gave some idea of the effect that introducing blue glassware must have had when it came into vogue in the last couple of decades of the Eighteenth Century. From decanters to wine glasses, from display dishes to glass coolers and finger rinsing bowls, they must have glittered and amazed in the flickering candle-light.
So I have written a book. Not a very long one, but packed with full-colour photographs to give an idea of the beautiful rich translucent blue.
Anyway, a harmless hobby, and I brought the book out on Amazon where you can find it 
Goldsworthy (later 
Eventually he decided to do a there-and-back journey to Bath, a feat accomplished at an average speed of 14 miles per hour (including stops for re-fuelling, taking on water etc.). This was twice as fast as a horse-drawn carriage. It was not entirely without incident, as his daughter remarked in a letter to The Times some years later “I never heard of any accident or injury to anyone with it, except in the fray at Melksham on the noted journey to Bath, when the fair people set upon it, burnt their fingers, threw stones, and wounded poor Martyn the stoker”. Well that says all you need to know about the good burghers of Melksham… but they were apparently mostly unemployed mill-workers so perhaps their luddism can be excused. The vehicle had to be escorted under guard to Bath to prevent further vandalism.
Unfortunately the general public were not convinced that it was a terribly good idea to sit atop a carriage next to a pressurised steam engine, particularly one which belched burning cinders out of every aperture. Our intrepid hero therefore developed what you might call ‘a Gurney gurney’ – an articulated trolley towed by the steam engine, on which the paying public might sit. But no-one really wanted to be towed along in this fashion, and GG quickly started to run out of money.
A self-propelling wheel chair or ‘Gouty Chair’, propelled and steered by turning winches on the arms. These enabled the disabled user to control the mahogany wheels. This one appeared in Ackermann’s Repository in 1811.
Pictured is a photograph of one of the scales which came up for auction a few years back when it was expected to make £1000 ($1500). 
A perpetual motion clock – a joint collaboration with James Cox. It wound itself up automatically. The change of pressure in the Earth’s atmosphere acted as an external energy source and caused the winding mechanism to move. This kept the mainspring coiled inside the barrel – with the winding of the mainspring via movement of the liquid in a mercury barometer. So as to provide the required amount of energy, a Fortin mercury barometer was used. It contained an astonishing 68 kilograms (150 pounds) of mercury! Somehow it failed to catch on…
