Merchiston Academy, housed in the old castle of Napier, the inventor of logarithms, is another institution conducted on English public school lines.
He is now remembered and honored as the inventor of the steamboat.
His treatises De mensura astrolabii and De utilitatibus astrolabii (to be found, on the authority of Salzburg MSS., in Pez, Thesaurus anecdotorum novissimus, iii.) being the first contributions of moment furnished by a European to this subject, Hermann was for a time considered the inventor of the astrolabe.
The founder of a sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when we know how or by what the way was prepared for his activity.
As Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Judicium de Thucydide, c. 23) distinctly states that the work current in his time under the name of Cadmus was a forgery, it is most probable that the two first are identical with the Phoenician Cadmus, who, as the reputed inventor of letters, was subsequently transformed into the Milesian and the author of an historical work.
