[It is a condition with the Society of Arts, never to give a reward to any thing for which a patent has been, or is to be, taken out.] Let us now consider the case of platina.

A new process was discovered of rendering it malleable, and the mere circumstance of so large a quantity having been sent into the market, was a positive benefit, of no ordinary magnitude, to many of the arts.

The discoverer of this valuable process selected that course for which no reasonable man could blame him; and from some circumstance, or perhaps from accident, he preserved no written record of the manipulations.

Had Providence appointed for that disorder, which terminated too fatally, a more rapid career, all the knowledge he had acquired from the long attention he had devoted to the subject, would have been lost to mankind.

The hand of a friend recorded the directions of the expiring philosopher, whose anxiety to render useful even his unfinished speculations, proves that the previous omission was most probably accidental.
Under such circumstances it was published to the world in the Transactions of the Royal Society.