Forks | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 23, 1872

Forks.

FORKS were first known in Italy toward the end of the fifteenth century. It was a hundred years before they came into use in France, and nearly a hundred more before they traveled as far north as Scotland. Their introduction into England was at first ridiculed as a piece of affectation and effeminacy. In one of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, “your fork-carving traveler,” is spoken of with great contempt; and Ben Jonson, too, joined in the laugh against them. In repeated instances the progress of inventions has been resisted by the popular clamor, and even opposed by popular violence. The first man who appeared with an umbrella in the streets of London drew upon himself a pelting shower of mud and stones, which was worse than the rain against which he spread the new-fangled protection. The old way of making boards was by splitting them with wedges, and, clumsy as the method was, it was no easy matter to persuade the world that there was a better. Saw-mills were first used in Europe in the fifteenth century. In 1636, a Dutchman built one in England, but the public cry against it was so vehement that he was soon obliged to decamp, and for the next hundred years no one ventured to repeat the experiment. In 1768, a rash adventurer began to erect another mill, but a conservative mob gathered at once and tore it down.