Elcot Park, - Bacon, Esq.- Aug. 16. This place is celebrated as the scene in which the mode of heating hot-houses by hot water was displayed, in 1823 (III. 186.), to the British public; we will not say for the first time, because we have shown (III., Pref.) that it was exhibited in the hot-houses at Sundridge Park, by the Comte Chabannes, in 1816; but we do say that it was from the apparatus displayed in this garden that this mode of heating first became generally known to the British public. We also believe that the late Mr. Bacon invented it at Aberaman, in 1821 (IV. 439.), as Mr. Atkinson appears to have done in London, in 1822. (III. 423.) There is nothing uncommon in different persons inventing the same thing at nearly the same time, without any knowledge of each other's ideas. Inventions are more commonly results of the general state of science on a particular subject, at a given time, than of the character or degree of knowledge of an individual mind. [(2005) It is now the Ramada Hotel & Resort Elcot Park]
