★ Find a new page on our Untranscribed Manuscripts list.
I cannot enough admire the humane delicacy of your ingenious friend: and as he
appears to be one of that small and valuable number of men in a community who
are governed in the first place by conscientious motives, and capable upon occasion
of postponing a benefit of their own to a greater benefit of their neighbour, I shall
venture to treat the question you proposed to me as a case of conscience, without
fear of being laughed at for my pains by him I am writing of, should he happen
to come to the knowledge of what I say, any more than I am sure I shall
be by him I am writing to.
Mechanical inventions are calculated for one or the other of 2 purposes:
either 1st do something compass some end that was not compassed before: or 2dly,
to compass one that was, at a less expence. This expence is either 1st of materials
or, 2dly, of workmanship — so that the saving to be made by an
invention of this lastmentioned kind must be a saving either of materials
or of workmanship. Of a saving of materials, (whatever may be the case with it in respect of workmanship) An invention that I saw a few days ago for making
wheels out of single pieces of timber by bending, may serve for an example;
it taking no more than about ⅓ of the wood that is necessary where each quar-
(or felly as it is called) of the wheel is to be cut out of a solid parallellepipedon
A saving of workmanship is made either at the expence of 1. it the
Masters (already in the business) only; or 2. of the Workmen only: or 3d of both
at once.
|
Identifier: | JB/537/263/002"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 537. |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
1773-11-04 |
|||
|
537 |
|||
|
263 |
|||
|
002 |
|||
|
Correspondence |
|||
|
Jeremy Bentham |
|||
