JOHANN, the author of the History of Inventions, was born at Hoya in the electorate of Hanover, in 1739. His father, who was receiver of taxes and postmaster in that town, occupied himself in the cultivation of a small piece of land, and appears to have inspired his son with a taste for agriculture. All the honour of his education belongs, however, to his mother, who, having become a widow when young Beckmann was scarcely seven years old, sent him, in his fifteenth year, to the school at Stade, placing him under the care of Gehlen. Being intended for the clerical function, he repaired in 1759 to Göttingen, to finish his studies there; but, whether the advice of Hollmann, who testified much kindness towards him, produced a change in his plans, or that the instructions of the mathematicians Kaestner and Tobias Mayer had greater attractions for him than theology, he abandoned the career on which he had entered, in order to devote himself entirely to the natural sciences, and principally to the application of these sciences to economical purposes. His first studies were not without their use to him; he derived from them a methodical habit of mind, and a considerable knowledge of languages, which, in the sequel, assisted him greatly in the pursuits to which he owed his celebrity. In 1762, having lost his mother, and with her his former means of subsistence, he accepted the offer of Busching, who invited him to come and fill the situation of professor of natural philosophy in the Lutheran Academy at St Petersburgh, of which this celebrated geographer had at that time the direction; but Busching quitting the institution shortly after, and dissensions having arisen among the superintendents, Beckmann gave up his place, and made a journey through Sweden to acquire a detailed knowledge of the mines of that country, and of the manner of working them. Linnaeus having received him hospitably at Upsal, he prolonged his stay there, and availed himself of the friendship as well as the instructions of that great naturalist. In 1766, the governors of the university Beckmann of Göttingen appointed him, on the recommendation of Busching, professor to that celebrated establishment, of which he became one of the principal ornaments. His mind, entirely directed to the practical uses of human knowledge, had early conceived the idea of an academical classification of the arts and different branches of economy, both political and domestic, which had hitherto been left to routine and accident. He composed, to serve him as a guide in this course of instruction, Treatises on Rural Economy, on Policy, on Finance, on Commerce, and other departments of practical knowledge; which, though since carried to a higher degree of perfection, owed to Beckmann their primary elements and their first scientific form. His lectures, which had at the time the recommendation of novelty, were attended by the flower of the studious youth, whom the most civilized nations of Europe sent to the university of Göttingen; and it may be added, that the most distinguished statesmen and public functionaries of Germany were among his auditors. He was in the habit of accompanying them himself into the workshops, to give them a knowledge of the different processes and handicrafts of which he had explained to them the theory. He never relinquished his public lectures; but his private studies took insensibly a direction altogether historical, the motives for which it will not, perhaps, be uninteresting to point out.

At Göttingen it is considered that a professor, in teaching a particular science, cannot be excused from explaining the progress of that science in all the civilized nations of Europe at the same time. Any one who, two years after the appearance of a work of importance in his department, published in any country of Europe, should not have read and analyzed it in order, to refute or else enrich his own observations from it, would not regard himself as a worthy successor to the chair of Haller, of Mosheim, of Gesner, and Michaelis. Beckmann, in particular, having studied at Göttingen at a time when the example of these great men dictated the law and gave the tone there, was determined to advance in a line with his age, and not to be ignorant of any of the steps which were being made in the numerous and extensive sciences which furnished the foundation and the subjects of practical principles. But these steps were the steps of a giant; and whatever might be his ardour or his love of study, it was impossible to read and digest all the important works which appeared from the year 1770, on chemistry theoretical and practical, on physics, natural history, and mathematics. His disappointment ended in chagrin, and excited in him a degree of anger against the new ideas, methods of reasoning, and materials, which changed the face, enlarged the limits, and facilitated the study of these sciences. His course of lectures, turning only on practical matters, suffered little from this circumstance; but feeling that his writings would be open to the objection of being behind the advanced state of the sciences which were the subject of them, he directed the researches with which he wished to occupy the attention of the public to the history of arts and trades. He employed, in illustration of the subject, the materials to which he had access in the Göttingen library, assisted by general information, a mind peculiarly fitted for this kind of study, and indefatigable industry. It is to these labours that we owe the Notices of Beckmann on the History of Discoveries in the most common Arts of Life; for instance, the history of watch-making, of distillation, of almanacs, of insurance, of the lighting of streets, of the original country and migrations of the fruits and flowers in our gardens, of the common materials for dyeing, of bellows, of fire-arms, of mills, of grinding corn, of carriages, of different parts of our dress, of different household utensils, of a multitude of machines and mechanical contrivances employed in common trades; and of most of the products of industry, such as the gathering of saffron, the preparation of alum, the Beckmann printing-press, of fulling-mills, of book-keeping, of the digging of turf, of gazettes and newspapers, of stamped paper, of the pearl fishery, of paving of chimneys, of collections of natural curiosities, of mile-stones, of pharmacy, of quarantine, of painted paper, of ruffles, of milking, of pawn-brokers, of looking-glasses and glass in general, of soap, of musical glasses, of watchmen, of ices to be eaten, of the anatomy of plants, of exchange, of pens for writing, of instruments of husbandry, of fireworks, of the working of pewter, of the procuring of amber, of indigo, of the gilding of weather-cocks, of furs, of steel, of gardening, of crayons, of knives and forks, of corks, of sal-ammoniac, of hops, of weaving, of lotteries, of hospitals for orphans and foundlings, of infirmaries, of lazarettoes, of fighting-cocks, of saltpetre, of gunpowder, of aquafortis, &c. &c. We should form to ourselves a very false idea of these Notices if we expected to find in them only some general account of these arts, and of the different manner of practising them used in different times and places. Beckmann traces their first germ from the most remote periods of antiquity; he follows their development through the obscurity of the middle ages, and exhibits their latest improvements amongst the civilized nations of modern Europe, with a patience and a depth of learning which can only be equalled by the sagacity and the variety of knowledge displayed in his researches. We have thought it would be interesting to the reader to see a list of the most remarkable among these notices, in the order in which they were published. They make five volumes in octavo, published at Leipzig from 1783 to 1805, and furnish the most invaluable materials to the individual, or society of men of letters, who may hereafter venture to undertake the general history of the origin and progress of the mechanical arts, which are so important a branch in that of civilization. It is almost needless to add, that the most exact references to original authorities accompany each article, and give it a new value in the eyes of those who are unwilling to take things upon trust, or may be desirous to push still further the inquiries of the author. It has been translated into English.

The same merits belong to his History of the earliest Voyages made in modern times; a highly interesting collection, which occupied the last years of his life, and which he left at the eighth number. Another result of the literary application and industry of Beckmann was a return to the studies of humanity, to which we are indebted for editions of the work De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus, attributed to Aristotle (1786); of the Wonderful Histories of Antigonus Carystius (1791); and of Marbodius's Treatise on Stones (1799)—editions which required the rare union of physical knowledge and natural sagacity with philological learning. The Royal Society of Göttingen had, in the year 1772, admitted Beckmann among its members; and, from that period to 1783, he supplied their proceedings with interesting memoirs, among which are the following: On the Reduction of Fossils to their Original Substances; On the History of Alum; On the Sap of Madder; On the Froth of the Sea, from which the Heads are formed for the Nictotin Fistula; On the History of Sugar. But from this period he withdrew from all further share in the labours of this learned body, probably from the same motives that we have assigned above for the change in the objects of his own particular studies. He was, besides, modest to an extreme degree; and his natural timidity did not find anything to counteract it in the traditional jealousy of reputation, which the example of his predecessors, who had founded the glory of Göttingen, had transmitted to a generation more confident of its powers, and more vain of its merit, but still restrained by habits difficult to lay aside, when the respect for great authorities had originally sanctioned them. His candour, his sincerity, his fidelity in friendship, his affability to his scholars, have been celebrated with one accord by his coadjutors and his auditors. Schletzler, whom he had known from his youth in Russia, was the one among his colleagues with whom he maintained the most uninterrupted intimacy. He was better qualified than almost any one else to appreciate the researches of Beckmann, as he had himself insisted with so much force on the necessity of introducing into history a view of the influence exercised on social institutions by the efforts of industry, and by the birth or maturity of the most common arts. Beckmann died on the 3d of February 1811, after having been admitted into almost all the learned societies of Germany and the north, and after having impressed a tendency to pursuits of practical utility on the minds of a multitude of distinguished young men who had attended his lectures, and whom his celebrity drew to Göttingen during the forty-five years of his professorship. A portrait of him will be found at the head of the twelfth volume of the Economical Encyclopedia of Kunitz, and it has been engraved separately by Raid, Schwenterley, and Grape. Beckmann married the daughter of Hollmann, his tutor and friend; she survived him only a few weeks, and they left a son and daughter grown up. His eulogium was pronounced by his colleague, the illustrious Heyne, and was published at Göttingen with this title, Memoriae Joan. Beckmanni, Soc. R. Sci. Götting. sodalis in concussu Soc. Publico D. 16 Febr. 1811, commendata.

(BECTASSE, or Bektachis, an order or set of religionists among the Turks, so called from their founder Bektach, preacher to Sultan Amurath. The habit of the Bectasse is white; and on their heads they wear white caps of several pieces, with turbans of wool twisted ropewise. They observe constantly the hour of prayer, which they perform in their own assemblies, and make frequent declarations of the unity of God.