Earthbound magic
Jan 22, 2020
3 minutes
Huon Mallalieu
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JOHN JOSEPH MERLIN (1735–1803) was not only a goldsmith, jeweller, watchmaker, harpsichord and musical instrument maker and general mechanic, but an adept self-publicist and the inventor of ‘a Machine which enables a blind Person to play at Cards’ and an early form of in-line roller skates. His father was a blacksmith and he was born at Huy in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège, where he demonstrated the skates (while playing a violin) shortly before arriving in London in 1760 in the suite of the Spanish ambassador. They failed in their principal mission—to buy
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