re the name of Roch's
Fulgurator. This apparatus possessed, if he was to be believed, such
superiority over all others, that the State which acquired it would
become absolute master of earth and ocean.

The deplorable difficulties inventors encounter in connection with
their inventions are only too well known, especially when they
endeavor to get them adopted by governmental commissions. Several of
the most celebrated examples are still fresh in everybody's memory.
It is useless to insist upon this point, because there are sometimes
circumstances underlying affairs of this kind upon which it is
difficult to obtain any light. In regard to Thomas Roch, however,
it is only fair to say that, as in the case of the majority of his
predecessors, his pretensions were excessive. He placed such an
exorbitant price upon his new engine that it was practicably
impossible to treat with him.

This was due to the fact--and it should not be lost sight of--that in
respect of previous inventions which had been most fruitful in result,
he had been imposed upon with the greatest audacity. Being unable
to obtain therefrom the profits which he had a right to expect, his
temper had become soured. He became suspicious, would give up nothing
without knowing just what he was doing, impose conditions that
were perhaps unacceptable, wanted his mere assertions accepted as
sufficient guarantee, and in any case asked for such a large sum of
money on account before condescending to furnish the test of practical
experiment that his overtures could not be entertained.

In the first place he had offered the fulgurator to France, and made
known the nature of it to the commission appointed to pass upon his
proposition. The fulgurator was a sort of auto-propulsive engine,
of peculiar construction, charged with an explosive composed of new
substances and which only produced its effect under the action of a
deflagrator that was also new.

When this engine, no matter in what way it was launched, exploded, not
on striking the object aimed at, but several hundred yards from it,
its action upon the atmospheric strata was so terrific that any
construction, warship or floating battery, within a zone of twelve
thousand square yards, would be blown to atoms. This was the principle
of the shell launched by the Zalinski pneumatic gun with which
experiments had already been made at that epoch, but its results were
multiplied at least a hundred-fold.

If, therefore