How the Ancients Rewarded Inventors
A Roman architect discovered the means of so far altering the nature of glass as to render it malleable; but the Emperor Tiberius caused the architect to be beheaded. A similar discovery was made in France during the reign of Louis XIII. The inventor presented a bust, formed of malleable glass, to Cardinal Richelieu, and was rewarded for his ingenuity by perpetual imprisonment, lest the French glass manufacturers should be injured by the discovery of it.