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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth
-Century., by Edward W. Byrn
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-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
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-Title: The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.
-
-Author: Edward W. Byrn
-
-Release Date: December 2, 2012 [EBook #41538]
-
-Language: English
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION ***
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41538 ***
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@@ -15733,366 +15700,4 @@ MUNN & CO., Publishers,
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Progress of Invention in the
Nineteenth Century., by Edward W. Byrn
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+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41538 ***
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth
-Century., by Edward W. Byrn
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
-
-
-Title: The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.
-
-Author: Edward W. Byrn
-
-Release Date: December 2, 2012 [EBook #41538]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Chris Curnow, Harry Lamé and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Transcriber's notes:
-
- Text pinted in italics in the original work has been transcribed as
- _text_, bold text as =text=. Text printed in small capitals in the
- original work has been transcribed in ALL-CAPITALS. Superscript texts
- are transcribed as ^{text}.
-
- Greek texts have been transcribed as [Greek: text]. Where the original
- work uses an oe-ligature, this text uses oe (as in Phoenix). In the
- advertisements, [-->] represents a right-pointing hand.
-
- More Transcriber's notes have been added at the end of the text.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: STEAM AND ELECTRICITY.
-
-The 70,000 Horse-Power Station of the Metropolitan Street Railway, New
-York.]
-
-
-
-
- THE PROGRESS
- OF
- INVENTION
- IN THE
- NINETEENTH CENTURY
-
-
- BY
-
- EDWARD W. BYRN, A.M.
-
-
- [Greek: "Dhos pou sthô, kahi têhn ghên kinhêsô."]
- (Give me where to stand, and I'll move the earth.)
- --_Archimedes._
-
-
- MUNN & CO., PUBLISHERS
-
- SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN OFFICE
- 361 BROADWAY, NEW YORK
-
- 1900
-
-
-
-
- COPYRIGHTED, 1900, BY MUNN & CO.
-
-
- ENTERED AT STATIONER'S HALL
- LONDON, ENGLAND
-
-
- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
-
-
- Printed in the United States of America by
- The Manufacturers' and Publishers' Printing Company,
- New York City.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE.
-
-
-For a work of such scope as this, the first word of the author should be
-an apology for what is doubtless the too ambitious effort of a single
-writer. A quarter of a century in the high tide of the arts and
-sciences, an ardent interest in all things that make for scientific
-progress, and the aid and encouragement of many friends in and about the
-Patent Office, furnish the explanation. The work cannot claim the
-authority of a text-book, the fullness of a history, nor the exactness
-of a technical treatise. It is simply a cursory view of the century in
-the field of invention, intended to present the broader bird's-eye view
-of progress achieved. In substantiation of the main facts reliance has
-been placed chiefly upon patents, which for historic development are
-believed to be the best of all authorities, because they carry the
-responsibility of the National Government as to dates, and the attested
-signature and oath of the inventor as to subject matter. Many
-difficulties and embarrassments have been encountered in the work. The
-fear of extending it into a too bulky volume has excluded treatment of
-many subjects which the author recognizes as important, and issues in
-dispute as to the claims of inventors have also presented themselves in
-perplexing conflict. A discussion of the latter has been avoided as far
-as possible, the paramount object being to do justice to all the worthy
-workers in this field, with favor to none, and only expressing such
-conclusions as seem to be justified by authenticated facts and the
-impartial verdict of reason in the clearing atmosphere of time. For sins
-of omission a lack of space affords a reasonable excuse, and for those
-of commission the great scope of the work is pleaded in extenuation. It
-is hoped, however, that the volume may find an accepted place in the
-literature of the day, as presenting in compact form some comprehensive
-and coherent idea of the great things in invention which the Nineteenth
-Century has added to the world's wealth of ideas and material resources.
-
-In acknowledging the many obligations to friends who have aided me in
-the work, my thanks are due first to the Editors of the _Scientific
-American_ for aid rendered in the preparation of the work; also to
-courteous officials in the Government Departments, and to many
-progressive manufacturers throughout the country.
-
- E. W. B.
-
-_Washington, D. C., October, 1900._
-
-
-
-
-TABLE OF CONTENTS.
-
-
- CHAPTER I.
-
- THE PERSPECTIVE VIEW.
-
-
- CHAPTER II.
-
- CHRONOLOGY OF LEADING INVENTIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
-
-
- CHAPTER III.
-
- THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.
-
- The Voltaic Pile. Daniell's Battery. Use of Conducting Wire by Weber.
- Steinheil Employs Earth as Return Circuit. Prof. Henry's Electro-
- Magnet, and First Telegraphic Experiment. Prof. Morse's Telegraphic
- Code and Register. First Line Between Washington and Baltimore. Bain's
- Chemical Telegraph. Gintl's Duplex Telegraph. Edison's Quadruplex.
- House's Printing Telegraph. Fac Simile Telegraphs. Channing and Farmer
- Fire Alarm. Telegraphing by Induction. Wireless Telegraphy by Marconi.
- Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER IV.
-
- THE ATLANTIC CABLE.
-
- Difficulties of Laying. Congratulatory Messages Between Queen Victoria
- and President Buchanan. The Siphon Recorder. Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER V.
-
- THE DYNAMO AND ITS APPLICATIONS.
-
- Observations of Faraday and Henry. Magneto-Electric Machines of Pixii,
- and of Saxton. Hjorth's Dynamo of 1855. Wilde's Machine of 1866.
- Siemens' of 1867. Gramme's of 1870. Tesla's Polyphase Currents.
-
-
- CHAPTER VI.
-
- THE ELECTRIC MOTOR.
-
- Barlow's Spur Wheel. Dal Negro's Electric Pendulum. Prof. Henry's
- Electric Motor. Jacobi's Electric Boat. Davenport's Motor. The Neff
- Motor. Dr. Page's Electric Locomotive. Dr. Siemens' First Electric
- Railway at Berlin, 1879. First Electric Railway in United States,
- between Baltimore and Hampden, 1885. Third Rail System. Statistics.
- Electric Railways, and General Electric Company. Distribution
- Electric Current in Principal Cities.
-
-
- CHAPTER VII.
-
- THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.
-
- Voltaic Arc by Sir Humphrey Davy. The Jablochkoff Candle. Patents of
- Brush, Weston, and Others. Search Lights. Grove's First Incandescent
- Lamp. Starr-King Lamp. Moses Farmer Lights First Dwelling with
- Electric Lamps. Sawyer-Man Lamp. Edison's Incandescent Lamp. Edison's
- Three-Wire System of Circuits. Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER VIII.
-
- THE TELEPHONE.
-
- Preliminary Suggestions and Experiments of Bourseul, Reis, and
- Drawbaugh. First Speaking Telephone by Prof. Bell. Differences between
- Reis' and Bell's Telephones. The Blake Transmitter. Berliner's
- Variation of Resistance and Electric Undulations, by Variation of
- Pressure. Edison's Carbon Microphone. The Telephone Exchange.
- Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER IX.
-
- ELECTRICITY, MISCELLANEOUS.
-
- Storage Battery. Batteries of Planté, Faure and Brush. Electric
- Welding. Direct Generation of Electricity by Combustion. Electric
- Boats. Electro-Plating. Edison's Electric Pen. Electricity in
- Medicine. Electric Cautery. Electric Musical Instruments. Electric
- Blasting.
-
-
- CHAPTER X.
-
- THE STEAM ENGINE.
-
- Hero's Engine, and Other Early Steam Engines. Watt's Steam Engine. The
- Cut-Off. Giffard Injector. Bourdon's Steam Gauge. Feed Water Heaters,
- Smoke Consumers, etc. Rotary Engines. Steam Hammer. Steam Fire Engine.
- Compound Engines. Schlick and Taylor Systems of Balancing Momentum of
- Moving Parts. Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER XI.
-
- THE STEAM RAILWAY.
-
- Trevithick's Steam Carriage. Blenkinsop's Locomotive. Hedley's
- "Puffing Billy." Stephenson's Locomotive. The Link Motion. Stockton
- and Darlington Railway, 1825. Hackworth's "Royal George." The
- "Stourbridge Lion" and "John Bull." Baldwin's Locomotives.
- Westinghouse Air Brakes. Janney Car Coupling. The Woodruff Sleeping
- Car. Railway Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER XII.
-
- STEAM NAVIGATION.
-
- Early Experiments. Symington's Boat. Col. John Stevens' Screw
- Propeller. Robt. Fulton and the "Clermont." First Trip to Sea by
- Stevens' "Phoenix." "Savannah," the First Steam Vessel to Cross the
- Ocean. Ericsson's Screw Propeller. The "Great Eastern." The Whale Back
- Steamers. Ocean Greyhounds. The "Oceanic," largest Steamship in the
- World. The "Turbinia." Fulton's "Demologos," First War Vessel. The
- Turret Monitor. Modern Battleships and Torpedo Boats. Holland
- Submarine Boat.
-
-
- CHAPTER XIII.
-
- PRINTING.
-
- Early Printing Press. Nicholson's Rotary Press. The Columbian and
- Washington Presses. König's Rotary Steam Press. The Hoe Type Revolving
- Machine. Color Printing. Stereotyping. Paper Making. Wood Pulp. The
- Linotype. Plate Printing. Lithography.
-
-
- CHAPTER XIV.
-
- THE TYPEWRITER.
-
- Old English Typewriter of 1714. The Burt Typewriter of 1829. Progin's
- French Machine of 1833. Thurber's Printing Machine of 1843. The Beach
- Typewriter. The Sholes Typewriter, the First of the Modern Form,
- Commercially Developed into the Remington. The Caligraph, Smith-
- Premier, and Others.
-
-
- CHAPTER XV.
-
- THE SEWING MACHINE.
-
- Embroidery Machine the Forerunner of the Sewing Machine. Sewing
- Machine of Thomas Saint. The Thimonnier Wooden Machine. Greenough's
- Double-Pointed Needle. Bean's Stationary Needle. The Howe Sewing
- Machine. Bachelder's Continuous Feed. Improvements of Singer. Wilson's
- Rotary Hook, and Four-Motion Feed. The McKay Shoe Sewing Machine.
- Button Hole Machines. Carpet Sewing Machine. Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER XVI.
-
- THE REAPER.
-
- Early English Machines. Machine of Patrick Bell. The Hussey Reaper.
- McCormick's Reaper and Its Great Success. Rivalry Between the Two
- American Reapers. Self Rakers. Automatic Binders. Combined Steam
- Reaper and Threshing Machine. Great Wheat Fields of the West.
- Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER XVII.
-
- VULCANIZED RUBBER.
-
- Early Use of Caoutchouc by the Indians. Collection of the Gum. Early
- Experiments Failures. Goodyear's Persistent Experiments. Nathaniel
- Hayward's Application of Sulphur to the Gum. Goodyear's Process of
- Vulcanization. Introduction of his Process into Europe. Trials and
- Imprisonment for Debt. Rubber Shoe Industry. Great Extent and Variety
- of Applications. Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER XVIII.
-
- CHEMISTRY.
-
- Its Evolution as a Science. The Coal Tar Products. Fermenting and
- Brewing. Glucose, Gun Cotton, and Nitro-Glycerine. Electro-Chemistry.
- Fertilizers and Commercial Products. New Elements of the Nineteenth
- Century.
-
-
- CHAPTER XIX.
-
- FOOD AND DRINK.
-
- The Nature of Food. The Roller Mill. The Middlings Purifier. Culinary
- Utensils. Bread Machinery. Dairy Appliances. Centrifugal Milk Skimmer.
- The Canning Industry. Sterilization. Butchering and Dressing Meats.
- Oleomargarine. Manufacture of Sugar. The Vacuum Pan. Centrifugal
- Filter. Modern Dietetics and Patented Foods.
-
-
- CHAPTER XX.
-
- MEDICINE, SURGERY AND SANITATION.
-
- Discovery of Circulation of the Blood by Harvey. Vaccination by
- Jenner. Use of Anæsthetics the Great Step of Medical Progress of the
- Century. Materia Medica. Instruments. Schools of Medicine. Dentistry.
- Artificial Limbs. Digestion. Bacteriology, and Disease Germs.
- Antiseptic Surgery. House Sanitation.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXI.
-
- THE BICYCLE AND AUTOMOBILE.
-
- The Draisine, 1816. Michaux's Bicycle, 1855. United States Patent to
- Lallement and Carrol, 1866. Transition from "Vertical Fork" and "Star"
- to Modern "Safety." Pneumatic Tire. Automobile the Prototype of the
- Locomotive. Trevithick's Steam Road Carriage, 1801. The Locomobile of
- To-day. Gas Engine Automobiles of Pinkus, 1839; Selden, 1879; Duryea,
- Winton, and Others. Electric Automobiles a Development of Electric
- Locomotives as Early as 1836. Grounelle's Electric Automobile of 1852.
- The Columbia, Woods, and Riker Electric Carriages. Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXII.
-
- THE PHONOGRAPH.
-
- Invention of Phonograph by Edison. Scott's Phonautograph. Improvements
- of Bell and Tainter. The Graphophone. Library of Wax Cylinders.
- Berliner's Gramophone.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXIII.
-
- OPTICS.
-
- Early Telescopes. The Lick Telescope. The Grande Lunette. The Stereo-
- Binocular Field Glass. The Microscope. The Spectroscope. Polarization
- of Light. Kaleidoscope. Stereoscope. Range Finder. Kinetoscope, and
- Moving Pictures.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXIV.
-
- PHOTOGRAPHY.
-
- Experiments of Wedgewood and Davy. Niépce's Heliography. Daguerre and
- the Daguerreotype. Fox Talbot Makes First Proofs from Negatives. Sir
- John Herschel Introduces Glass Plates. The Collodion Process. Silver and
- Carbon Prints. Ambrotypes. Emulsions. Dry Plates. The Kodak Camera. The
- Platinotype. Photography in Colors. Panorama Cameras. Photo-engraving
- and Photo-lithography. Half Tone Printing.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXV.
-
- THE ROENTGEN OR X-RAYS.
-
- Geissler Tubes. Vacuum Tubes of Crookes, Hittorf, and Lenard. The
- Cathode Ray. Roentgen's Great Discovery in 1895. X-Ray Apparatus.
- Salvioni's Cryptoscope. Edison's Fluoroscope. The Fluorometer. Sun-
- burn from X-Rays. Uses of X-Rays.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXVI.
-
- GAS LIGHTING.
-
- Early Use of Natural Gas. Coal Gas Introduced by Murdoch. Winsor
- Organizes First Gas Company in 1804. Melville in United States Lights
- Beaver-Tail Lighthouse with Gas in 1817. Lowe's Process of Making
- Water Gas. Acetylene Gas. Carburetted Air. Pintsch Gas. Gas Meter.
- Otto Gas Engine. The Welsbach Burner.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXVII.
-
- CIVIL ENGINEERING.
-
- Great Bridges, Pneumatic Caissons, Tunnels. The Beach Tunnel Shield.
- Suez Canal. Dredges. The Lidgerwood Cable Ways. Canal Locks. Artesian
- Wells. Compressed-Air Rock Drills. Blasting. Mississippi Jetties. Iron
- and Steel Buildings. Eiffel Tower. Washington's Monument. The United
- States Capitol.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXVIII.
-
- WOODWORKING.
-
- Early Machines of Sir Samuel Bentham. Evolution of the Saw. Circular
- Saw. Hammering to Tension. Steam Feed for Saw Mill Carriage. Quarter
- Sawing. The Band Saw. Planing Machines. The Woodworth Planer. The
- Woodbury Yielding Pressure Bar. The Universal Woodworker. The
- Blanchard Lathe. Mortising Machines. Special Woodworking Machines.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXIX.
-
- METAL WORKING.
-
- Early Iron Furnace. Operations of Lord Dudley, Abraham Darby, and
- Henry Cort. Neilson's Hot Blast. Great Blast Furnaces of Modern Times.
- The Puddling Furnace. Bessemer Steel and the Converter. Open Hearth
- Steel. Regenerative Furnace. Siemens-Martin Process. Forging Armor
- Plate. Making Horse Shoes. Screws and Special Machines. Electric
- Welding, Annealing and Tempering. Coating with Metal. Metal Founding.
- Barbed Wire Machines. Making Nails, Pins, etc. Making Shot. Alloys.
- Making Aluminum, and Metallurgy of Rarer Metals. The Cyanide Process.
- Electric Concentrator.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXX.
-
- FIRE ARMS AND EXPLOSIVES.
-
- The Cannon, the Most Ancient of Fire Arms. Muzzle and Breech Loaders
- of the Sixteenth Century. The Armstrong Gun. The Rodman, Dahlgren, and
- Parrott Guns. Breech-Loading Ordnance. Rapid Fire Breech-Loading
- Rifles. Disappearing Gun. Gatling Gun. Dynamite Gun. The Colt, and
- Smith & Wesson Revolvers. German Automatic Pistol. Breech-Loading
- Small Arms. Magazine Guns. The Lee, Krag-Jorgensen, and Mauser Rifles.
- Hammerless Guns. Rebounding Locks. Gun Cotton. Nitro Glycerine, and
- Smokeless Powder. Mines and Torpedoes.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXXI.
-
- TEXTILES.
-
- Spinning and Weaving an Ancient Art. Hargreaves' Spinning Jenny.
- Arkwright's Roll-Drawing Spinning Machine. Crompton's Mule Spinner.
- The Cotton Gin. Ring Spinning. The Rabbeth Spindle. John Kay's Flying
- Shuttle and Robt. Kay's Drop Box. Cartwright's Power Loom. The
- Jacquard Loom. Crompton's Fancy Loom. Bigelow's Carpet Looms. Lyall
- Positive Motion Loom. Knitting Machines. Cloth Pressing Machinery.
- Artificial Silk. Mercerized Cloth.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXXII.
-
- ICE MACHINES.
-
- General Principles. Freezing Mixtures. Perkins' Ice Machine, 1834.
- Pictet's Apparatus. Carré's Ammonia Absorption Process. Direct
- Compression, and Can System. The Holden Ice Machine. Skating Rinks.
- Windhausen's Apparatus for Cooling and Ventilating Ships.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXXIII.
-
- LIQUID AIR.
-
- Liquefaction of Gases by Northmore--1805, Faraday--1823, Bussy--1824,
- Thilorier--1834, and others. Liquefaction of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Air,
- by Pictet and Cailletet in 1877. Self-Intensification of Cold by
- Siemens in 1857, and Windhausen in 1870. Operations of Dewar,
- Wroblewski, and Olszewski. Self-Intensifying Processes of Solvay,
- Tripler, Lindé, Hampson, and Ostergren and Berger. Liquid Air
- Experiments and Uses.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXXIV.
-
- MINOR INVENTIONS,
-
- AND
-
- Patents of Principal Countries of the World.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXXV.
-
- EPILOGUE.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-THE PERSPECTIVE VIEW.
-
-
-Standing on the threshold of the Twentieth Century, and looking back a
-hundred years, the Nineteenth Century presents in the field of invention
-a magnificent museum of thoughts crystallized and made immortal, not as
-passive gems of nature, but as potent, active, useful agencies of man.
-The philosophical mind is ever accustomed to regard all stages of growth
-as proceeding by slow and uniform processes of evolution, but in the
-field of invention the Nineteenth Century has been unique. It has been
-something more than a merely normal growth or natural development. It
-has been a gigantic tidal wave of human ingenuity and resource, so
-stupendous in its magnitude, so complex in its diversity, so profound in
-its thought, so fruitful in its wealth, so beneficent in its results,
-that the mind is strained and embarrassed in its effort to expand to a
-full appreciation of it. Indeed, the period seems a grand climax of
-discovery, rather than an increment of growth. It has been a splendid,
-brilliant campaign of brains and energy, rising to the highest
-achievement amid the most fertile resources, and conducted by the
-strongest and best equipment of modern thought and modern strength.
-
-The great works of the ancients are in the main mere monuments of the
-patient manual labor of myriads of workers, and can only rank with the
-buildings of the diatom and coral insect. Not so with modern
-achievement. The last century has been peculiarly an age of ideas and
-conservation of energy, materialized in practical embodiment as
-labor-saving inventions, often the product of a single mind, and
-partaking of the sacred quality of creation.
-
-The old word of creation is, that God breathed into the clay the breath
-of life. In the new world of invention mind has breathed into matter,
-and a new and expanding creation unfolds itself. The speculative
-philosophy of the past is but a too empty consolation for short-lived,
-busy man, and, seeing with the eye of science the possibilities of
-matter, he has touched it with the divine breath of thought and made a
-new world.
-
-When the Nineteenth Century registered its advent in history, the world
-of invention was a babe still in its swaddling clothes, but, with a
-consciousness of coming power, was beginning to stretch its strong
-young arms into the tremendous energy of its life. James Watt had
-invented the steam engine. Eli Whitney had given us the cotton gin. John
-Gutenberg had made his printing type. Franklin had set up his press. The
-telescope had suggested the possibilities of ethereal space, the compass
-was already the mariner's best friend, and gunpowder had given proof of
-its deadly agency, but inventive genius was still groping by the light
-of a tallow candle. Even up to the beginning of this century so strong a
-hold had superstition on the human mind, that inventions were almost
-synonymous with the black arts, and the struggling genius had not only
-to contend with the natural laws and the thousand and one expected
-difficulties that hedge the path of the inventor, but had also to
-overcome the far greater obstacles of ignorant fear and bigoted
-prejudice. A labor-saving machine was looked upon askance as the enemy
-of the working man, and many an earnest inventor, after years of arduous
-thought and painstaking labor, saw his cherished model broken up and his
-hopes forever blasted by the animosity of his fellow men. But with the
-Nineteenth Century a new era has dawned. The legitimate results of
-inventions have been realized in larger incomes, shorter hours of labor,
-and lives so much richer in health, comfort, happiness, and usefulness,
-that to-day the inventor is a benefactor whom the world delights to
-honor. So crowded is the busy life of modern civilization with the
-evidences of his work, that it is impossible to open one's eyes without
-seeing it on every hand, woven into the very fabric of daily existence.
-It is easy to lose sight of the wonderful when once familiar with it,
-and we usually fail to give the full measure of positive appreciation to
-the great things of this great age. They burst upon our vision at first
-like flashing meteors; we marvel at them for a little while, and then we
-accept them as facts, which soon become so commonplace and so fused into
-the common life as to be only noticed by their omission.
-
-To appreciate them let us briefly contrast the conditions of to-day with
-those of a hundred years ago. This is no easy task, for the comparison
-not only involves the experiences of two generations, but it is like the
-juxtaposition of a star with the noonday sun, whose superior brilliancy
-obliterates the lesser light. But reverse the wheels of progress, and
-let us make a quick run of one hundred years into the past, and what are
-our experiences? Before we get to our destination we find the wheels
-themselves beginning to thump and jolt, and the passage becomes more
-difficult, more uncomfortable, and so much slower. We are no longer
-gliding along in a luxurious palace car behind a magnificent locomotive,
-traveling on steel rails, at sixty miles an hour, but we find ourselves
-nearing the beginning of the Nineteenth Century in a rickety, rumbling,
-dusty stage-coach. Pause! and consider the change for a moment in some
-of its broader aspects. First, let us examine the present more closely,
-for the average busy man, never looking behind him for comparisons, does
-not fully appreciate or estimate at its real value the age in which he
-lives. There are to-day (statistics of 1898), 445,064 miles of railway
-tracks in the world. This would build seventeen different railway
-tracks, of two rails each, around the entire world, or would girdle
-mother earth with thirty-four belts of steel. If extended in straight
-lines, it would build a track of two rails to the moon, and more than a
-hundred thousand miles beyond it. The United States has nearly half of
-the entire mileage of the world, and gets along with 36,746 locomotives,
-nearly as many passenger coaches, and more than a million and a quarter
-of freight cars, which latter, if coupled together, would make nearly
-three continuous trains reaching across the American continent from the
-Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The movement of passenger trains is
-equivalent to dispatching thirty-seven trains per day around the world,
-and the freight train movement is in like manner equal to dispatching
-fifty-three trains a day around the world. Add to this the railway
-business controlled by other countries, and one gets some idea of how
-far the stage-coach has been left behind. To-day we eat supper in one
-city, and breakfast in another so many hundreds of miles east or west as
-to be compelled to set our watches to the new meridian of longitude in
-order to keep our engagement. But railroads and steam-cars constitute
-only one of the stirring elements of modern civilization. As we make the
-backward run of one hundred years we have passed by many milestones of
-progress. Let us see if we can count some of them as they disappear
-behind us. We quickly lose the telephone, phonograph and graphophone. We
-no longer see the cable-cars or electric railways. The electric lights
-have gone out. The telegraph disappears. The sewing machine, reaper, and
-thresher have passed away, and so also have all india-rubber goods. We
-no longer see any photographs, photo-engravings, photolithographs, or
-snap-shot cameras. The wonderful octuple web perfecting printing press;
-printing, pasting, cutting, folding, and counting newspapers at the rate
-of 96,000 per hour, or 1,600 per minute, shrinks at the beginning of the
-century into an insignificant prototype. We lose all planing and
-wood-working machinery, and with it the endless variety of sashes,
-doors, blinds, and furniture in unlimited variety. There are no
-gas-engines, no passenger elevators, no asphalt pavement, no steam fire
-engine, no triple-expansion steam engine, no Giffard injector, no
-celluloid articles, no barbed wire fences, no time-locks for safes, no
-self-binding harvesters, no oil nor gas wells, no ice machines nor cold
-storage. We lose air engines, stem-winding watches, cash-registers and
-cash-carriers, the great suspension bridges, and tunnels, the Suez
-Canal, iron frame buildings, monitors and heavy ironclads, revolvers,
-torpedoes, magazine guns and Gatling guns, linotype machines, all
-practical typewriters, all pasteurizing, knowledge of microbes or
-disease germs, and sanitary plumbing, water-gas, soda water fountains,
-air brakes, coal-tar dyes and medicines, nitro-glycerine, dynamite and
-guncotton, dynamo electric machines, aluminum ware, electric
-locomotives, Bessemer steel with its wonderful developments, ocean
-cables, enameled iron ware, Welsbach gas burners, electric storage
-batteries, the cigarette machine, hydraulic dredges, the roller mills,
-middlings purifiers and patent-process flour, tin can machines, car
-couplings, compressed air drills, sleeping cars, the dynamite gun, the
-McKay shoe machine, the circular knitting machine, the Jacquard loom,
-wood pulp for paper, fire alarms, the use of anæsthetics in surgery,
-oleomargarine, street sweepers, Artesian wells, friction matches, steam
-hammers, electro-plating, nail machines, false teeth, artificial limbs
-and eyes, the spectroscope, the Kinetoscope or moving pictures,
-acetylene gas, X-ray apparatus, horseless carriages, and--but, enough!
-the reader exclaims, and indeed it is not pleasant to contemplate the
-loss. The negative conditions of that period extend into such an
-appalling void that we stop short, shrinking from the thought of what it
-would mean to modern civilization to eliminate from its life these
-potent factors of its existence.
-
-Returning to the richness and fullness of the present life, we shall
-first note chronologically the milestones and finger boards which mark
-this great tramway of progress, and afterward consider separately the
-more important factors of progress.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-CHRONOLOGY OF LEADING INVENTIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
-
-
-1800--Volta's Chemical Battery for producing Electricity. Louis Robert's
-Machine for Making Continuous Webs of Paper.
-
-1801--Trevithick's Steam Coach (first automobile). Brunel's Mortising
-Machine. Jacquard's Pattern Loom. First Fire Proof Safe by Richard
-Scott. Columbium discovered by Hatchett.
-
-1802--Trevithick and Vivian's British patent for Running Coaches by
-Steam. Charlotte Dundas (Steamboat) towed canal Boats on the Clyde.
-Tantalum discovered by Ekeberg. First Photographic Experiments by
-Wedgewood and Davy. Bramah's Planing Machine.
-
-1803--Carpue's Experiments on Therapeutic Application of Electricity.
-Iridium and Osmium discovered by Tenant, and Cerium by Berzelius. Wm.
-Horrocks applies Steam to the Loom.
-
-1804--Rhodium and Palladium discovered by Wollaston. First Steam Railway
-and Locomotive by Richard Trevithick. Capt. John Stevens applies twin
-Screw Propellers in Steam Navigation. Winsor takes British patent for
-Illuminating Gas, lights Lyceum Theatre, and organizes First Gas
-Company. Lucas' process making Malleable Iron Castings.
-
-1805--Life Preserver invented by John Edwards of London. Electro-plating
-invented by Brugnatelli.
-
-1806--Jeandeau's Knitting Machine.
-
-1807--First practical Steamboat between New York and Albany (Fulton's
-Clermont). Discovery of Potassium, Sodium and Boron by Davy. Forsyth's
-Percussion Lock for Guns.
-
-1808--Barium, Strontium, and Calcium discovered by Davy. Polarization of
-Light from Reflection by Malus. Voltaic arc discovered by Davy.
-
-1809--Sommering's Multi-wire Telegraphy.
-
-1810--System of Homoeopathy organized by Hahnemann.
-
-1811--Discovery of Metal Iodine by M. Courtois. Blenkinsop's Locomotive.
-Colored Polarization of Light by Arago. Thornton and Hall's Breech
-Loading Musket.
-
-1812--London the First City lighted by Gas. Ritter's Storage Battery.
-Schilling proposes use of Electricity to blow up mines. Zamboni's Dry
-Pile (prototype of dry battery).
-
-1813--Howard's British patent for Vacuum Pan for refining sugar.
-Hedley's Locomotive "Puffing Billy." Introduction of Stereotyping in the
-United States by David Bruce.
-
-1814--London Times printed by König's rotary steam press. Stephenson's
-First Locomotive. Demologos built by Fulton (the first steam war
-vessel). Heliography by Niépce. Discovery of Cyanogen by Gay Lussac. The
-Kaleidoscope invented by Sir David Brewster.
-
-1815--Safety Lamp by Sir Humphrey Davy. Seidlitz Powders invented. Gas
-Meter by Clegg.
-
-1816--The "Draisine" Bicycle. Circular Knitting Machine by Brunel.
-
-1817--Discovery of Selenium by Berzelius, Cadmium by Stromeyer, and
-Lithium by Arfvedson. Hunt's Pin Machine.
-
-1818--Brunel's patent Subterranean and Submarine tunnels.
-Electro-Magnetism discovered by Oersted of Copenhagen.
-
-1819--American Steamer Savannah from New York first to cross Atlantic.
-Laennec discovers Auscultation and invents Stethoscope. Blanchard's
-Lathe for turning Irregular Forms.
-
-1820--Electro-Magnetic Multiplier by Schweigger. Discoveries in
-Electro-magnetism by Ampere and Arago. Bohnenberg's Electroscope.
-Discovery of Quinine by Pelletier and Caventou. Malam's Gas Meter.
-
-1821--Faraday converts Electric Current into Mechanical Motion.
-
-1822--Babbage Calculation Engine.
-
-1823--Liquefaction and Solidification of Gases by Faraday, and
-foundation of ammonia absorption ice machine laid by him. Seebeck
-discovers Thermo-electricity. Silicon discovered by Berzelius.
-
-1824--Discovery of metal Zirconium by Berzelius. Wright's Pin Machine.
-
-1825--First Passenger Railway in the world opened between Stockton and
-Darlington. Sturgeon invents prototype of Electro Magnet. Beaumont's
-discoveries in Digestion (Alexis San Martin 1825-32).
-
-1826--Discovery of Bromine by M. Balard. Barlow's Electrical Spur Wheel.
-First Railroad in United States built near Quincy, Mass.
-
-1827--Aluminum reduced by Wohler. Ohm's Law of Electrical Resistance.
-Hackworth's Improvements in Locomotive. Friction Matches by John
-Walker.
-
-1828--Neilson's Hot Blast for Smelting Iron. Professor Henry invents the
-Spool Electro Magnet. Tubular Locomotive Boiler by Seguin. First
-Artificial production of organic compounds (urea) by Wohler. Thorium
-discovered by Berzelius. Yttrium and Glucinum discovered by Wohler.
-Nicol's prism for Polarized Light. Woodworth's wood planer. Spinning
-Ring invented by John Thorp.
-
-1829--Becquerel's Double Fluid Galvanic Battery. George Stephenson's
-Locomotive, "Rocket," takes prizes of Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
-Importation of "Stourbridge Lion," the first locomotive to run in the
-United States. Daguerreotype invented. Discovery of Magnesium by Bussey.
-
-1830--Vanadium discovered by Sefstroem. Abbe Dal Negro's Electrically
-operated pendulum. Ericsson's Steam Fire Engine.
-
-1831--Faraday discovers Magnetic Induction. Professor Henry telegraphs
-signals. Professor Henry invents his Electric Motor. Locomotive "John
-Bull" put in service on Camden and Amboy R. R. Chloroform discovered by
-Guthrie. McCormick first experiments with Reaper.
-
-1832--Professor Morse conceives the idea of Electric Telegraph. First
-Magneto-Electric Machines by Saxton in United States and Pixii in
-France. Sturgeon's Rotary Electric Motor. Baldwin's first locomotive,
-"Old Ironsides," built. Link Motion for Locomotive Engine invented by
-James. Chloral-hydrate discovered by Liebig.
-
-1833--Steam Whistle adopted by Stephenson. Hussey's Reaper patented.
-
-1834--Jacobi's Rotary Electric Motor. Henry Bessemer electro-plates lead
-castings with copper. Faraday demonstrates relation of chemical and
-electrical force. McCormick Reaper patented. Carbolic Acid discovered by
-Runge. Perkins' Ice Machine.
-
-1835--Forbes proves the absence of heat in Moonlight. Burden's horse
-shoe Machine.
-
-1836--The Daniell Constant Battery invented. Acetylene Gas produced by
-Edmond Davy. Colt's Revolver.
-
-1837--Cooke and Wheatstone's British patent for Electric telegraph.
-Steinheil discovered feasibility of using the earth for return section
-of electric circuit. Davenport's Electric Motor. Spencer's experiments
-in electrotyping. Galvanized Iron invented by Craufurd.
-
-1838--Professor Morse's French patent for Telegraph. Jacobi's
-Galvano-plastic process for making Electrotype Printing Plates.
-Reflecting Stereoscope by Wheatstone. Dry Gas Meter by Defries.
-
-1839--Wreck of Royal George blown up by Electro Blasting. Jacobi builds
-first Electrically propelled Boat. Fox Talbot makes Photo Prints from
-Negatives. Professors Draper and Morse make first Photographic
-Portraits. Mungo Ponton applies Bichromate of Potash in Photography.
-Goodyear discovers process of Vulcanizing Rubber. Lanthanum and Didymium
-discovered by Mosander. Babbit Metal invented.
-
-1840--Professor Morse's United States patent for Electric Telegraph.
-Professor Grove makes first Incandescent Electric Lamp. Celestial
-Photography by Professor Draper.
-
-1841--Artesian well bored at Grenelle, Paris. Sickel's Steam Cut-off.
-Talbotype Photos. M. Triger invents Pneumatic Caissons.
-
-1842--First production of Illuminating Gas from water (water gas) by M.
-Selligue. Robt. Davidson builds Electric Locomotive. Nasmyth patents
-Steam Hammer.
-
-1843--Joule's demonstration as to the Nature of Force. Erbium and
-Terbium discovered by Mosander. The Thames Tunnel Opened.
-
-1844--First Telegraphic Message sent by Morse from Washington to
-Baltimore. Application Nitrous Oxide Gas as an Anæsthetic by Dr. Wells.
-
-1845--Ruthenium discovered by Klaws. The Starr-King Incandescent
-Electric Lamp. The Hoe Type Revolving Machine.
-
-1846--House's Printing Telegraph. Howe's Sewing Machine. Suez Canal
-Started (fourteen years building). Crusell of St. Petersburgh invents
-Electric Cautery. Use of Ether as Anæsthetic by Dr. Morton. Artificial
-Legs. Discovery of Planet Neptune. Sloan patents Gimlet Pointed Screw.
-Gun Cotton discovered by Schönbein.
-
-1847--Chloroform introduced by Dr. Simpson. Nitro-Glycerine discovered
-by Sobrero. Time-Locks invented by Savage.
-
-1848--Discovery of Satellites of Saturn by Lassell. Bain's Chemical
-Telegraph. Bakewell's Fac-Simile Telegraph.
-
-1849--Bourdon's Pressure Gauge. Lenticular Stereoscope by Brewster.
-Hibbert's Latch Needle for Knitting Machine. Corliss Engine.
-
-1850--First Submarine Cable--Dover to Calais. Collodion Process in
-Photography. Mercerizing Cloth. American Machine-made Watches.
-
-1851--Dr. Page's Electric Locomotive. The Ruhmkorff Coil. Scott Archer's
-Collodion Process in Photography. Seymour's Self-Raker for Harvesters.
-Helmholtz invents Opthalmoscope. Maynard Breech Loading Rifle.
-
-1852--Channing and Farmer Fire Alarm Telegraph. Fox Talbot first uses
-reticulated screen for Half Tone Printing.
-
-1853--Gintl's Duplex Telegraph invented. Electric Lamps devised by
-Foucault and Duboscq. Watt and Burgess Soda Process for Making Wood
-Pulp.
-
-1854--Wilson's Four Motion Feed for Sewing Machines. Melhuish invents
-the Photographic Roll Films. Hermann's Diamond Drill. Smith and Wesson
-Magazine Firearm (Foundation of the Winchester).
-
-1855--Bessemer Process of Making Steel. Hjorth invents Dynamo Electric
-Machine. Ericsson's Air Engine. Niagara Suspension Bridge. Dr. J. M.
-Taupenot invents Dry Plate Photography. The Michaux Bicycle.
-
-1856--Hughes Printing Telegraph. Alliance Magneto Electric Machine.
-Woodruff Sleeping Car. First commercial Aniline Dyes by Perkins. Siemens
-Regenerative Furnace.
-
-1857--Rogues' Gallery established in New York. Introduction of Iron
-Floor Beams in building Cooper Institute. Siemens describes principle of
-Self Intensification of Cold (now used in ice and liquid air machines).
-
-1858--Phelps Printing Telegraph invented. First Atlantic Cable Laid.
-Paper pulp from Wood by Voelter. First use of Electric Light in Light
-House at South Foreland. Giffard Steam Injector. Gardner patents first
-Underground Cable Car System.
-
-1859--Discovery Coal Oil in United States. Moses G. Farmer subdivides
-Electric Current through a number of Electric Lamps, and lights first
-dwelling by Electricity. Great Eastern launched. Osborne perfects modern
-process of Photolithography. Professors Kirchhoff and Bunsen map Solar
-Spectrum, and establish Spectrum Analysis.
-
-1860--Rubidium and Caesium discovered by Bunsen. Gaston Planté's Storage
-Battery. Reis' Crude Telephone. Thallium discovered by Crookes, and
-Indium by Reich and Richter. Spencer and Henry Magazine Rifles. Carré's
-Ammonia Absorption Ice Machine.
-
-1861--McKay Shoe Sewing Machine. Calcium Carbide produced by Wohler.
-Col. Green invents Drive Well. Otis Passenger Elevator. First Barbed
-Wire Fence.
-
-1862--Ericsson's Iron Clad Turret Monitor. Emulsions and improvements in
-Dry Plate Photography by Russell and Sayce. The Gatling Gun. Timby's
-Revolving Turret.
-
-1863--Schultz white gunpowder.
-
-1864--Nobel's Explosive Gelatine. Rubber Dental Plates. Cabin John
-(Washington Aqueduct) Bridge finished (longest masonry span in the
-world).
-
-1865--Louis Pasteur's work in Bacteriology begun. Martin's Process of
-making Steel.
-
-1866--Wilde's Dynamo Electric Machine. Burleigh's Compressed Air Rock
-Drill. Whitehead Torpedo.
-
-1867--Siemens' Dynamo Electric Machine. Dynamite Invented. Tilghman's
-Sulphite Process for making Wood Pulp.
-
-1868--Brickill's Water Heater for Steam Fire Engines. Moncrieff's
-Disappearing Gun Carriage. Oleomargarine invented by Mege. Sholes
-Typewriter.
-
-1869--Suez Canal Opened. Pacific Railway Completed. First Westinghouse
-Air-Brakes.
-
-1870--The Gramme Dynamo Electric Machine. Windhausen Refrigerating
-Machines. Beleaguered Paris communicates with outer world through
-Micro-Photographs. Hailer's Rebounding Gun Lock. Dittmar's Gunpowder.
-
-1871--Hoe's Web Perfecting Press set up in Office New York Tribune. The
-Locke Grain Binder. Bridge Work in Dentistry. Mount Cenis Tunnel opened
-for traffic. Phosphorus Bronze. Ingersoll Compressed Air Rock Drill.
-
-1872--Stearns perfects Duplex Telegraph. Westinghouse Improved automatic
-Air Brake. Lyall Positive Motion Loom.
-
-1873--Janney Automatic Car Coupler. Oleomargarine patented in United
-States by Mege.
-
-1874--Edison's Quadruplex Telegraph. Gorham's Twine Binder for
-Harvesters. Barbed Wire Machines. St. Louis Bridge finished.
-
-1875--Lowe's patent for Water Gas (illuminating gas made from water).
-Roller Mills and Middlings Purifier for making flour. Gallium discovered
-by Boisbaudran. Pictet Ice Machine. Gamgee's Skating Rinks. First Cash
-Carrier for Stores.
-
-1876--Alexander Graham Bell's Speaking Telephone. Hydraulic Dredges.
-Cigarette Machinery. Photographing by Electric Light by Vander Weyde.
-Edison's Electric Pen. Steam Feed for Saw Mill Carriages. Introduction
-of Cable Cars by Hallidie.
-
-1877--Phonograph invented by Edison. Otto Gas Engine. Jablochkoff
-Electric Candle. Sawyer-Man Electric Lamp. Berliner's Telephone
-Transmitter of variable resistance (pat. Nov. 17, '91). Edison's Carbon
-Microphone (pat. May 3, '92). Discovery of Satellites of Mars by
-Professor Asaph Hall, and its so-called Canals by Schiaparelli.
-Liquefaction of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Air by Pictet and Cailletet.
-
-1878--Development of Remington Typewriter. Edison invents Carbon
-Filament for Incandescent Electric Lamp. Gelatino-Bromide Emulsions in
-Photography. Ytterbium discovered by Marignac. Birkenhead Yielding
-Spinning Spindle Bearing. Gessner Cloth Press.
-
-1879--Dr. Siemens' Electric Railway at Berlin. Mississippi Jetties
-completed by Capt. Eads. Samarium discovered by Boisbaudran, Scandium by
-Nilson, and Thulium by Cleve. The Lee Magazine Rifle.
-
-1880--Faure's Storage Battery. Eberth and Koch discover Bacillus of
-Typhoid Fever, and Sternberg the Bacillus of Pneumonia. Edison's
-Magnetic Ore Concentrator. Greener's Hammerless Gun. Rabbeth Spinning
-Spindle patented.
-
-1881--Telegraphing by Induction by Wm. W. Smith. Blake Telephone
-Transmitter. Reece Button Hole Machine. Rack-a-rock (explosive)
-patented.
-
-1882--Bacillus of Tuberculosis identified by Koch, and Bacillus of
-Hydrophobia by Pasteur. St. Gothard Tunnel opened for traffic.
-
-1883--Brooklyn Suspension Bridge Completed.
-
-1884--Antipyrene. Mergenthaler's first Linotype Printing Machine
-invented. Bacillus of Cholera identified by Koch, Bacillus of Diphtheria
-by Loeffler, and Bacillus of Lockjaw by Nicolaier.
-
-1885--Cowles' Process of Manufacturing Aluminum. First Electric Railway
-in America installed between Baltimore and Hampden. Neodymium and
-Praseodymium discovered by Welsbach. Welsbach Gas Burner invented.
-Blowing up of Flood Rock, New York Harbor. "Bellite" produced by Lamm,
-and "Melinite" by Turpin.
-
-1886--Graphophone invented. Electric Welding by Elihu Thomson. Gadolinum
-discovered by Marignac, and Germanium by Winkler.
-
-1887--McArthur and Forrest's Cyanide Process of Obtaining Gold. Tesla's
-System of Polyphase Currents.
-
-1888--Electrocution of Criminals adopted in New York State. Harvey's
-Process of Annealing Armor Plate. De Laval's Rotary Steam Turbine.
-"Kodak" Snap-Shot Camera. Lick Telescope. De Chardonnet's Process of
-Making Artificial Silk.
-
-1889--Nickel Steel. Hall's Process of Making Aluminum. Dudley Dynamite
-Gun. "Cordite" (Smokeless Powder) produced by Abel and Dewar.
-
-1890--Mergenthaler's Improved Linotype Machine. Photography in Colors.
-The Great Forth Bridge finished. Krag-Jorgensen Magazine Rifle.
-
-1891--Parsons' Rotary Steam Turbine. The Northrup Loom.
-
-1892--The explosive "Indurite" invented by Professor Munroe.
-
-1893--Acheson's process for making Carborundum. The Yerkes Telescope.
-Edison's Kinetoscope. Production of Calcium Carbide in Electric Furnace
-by Willson.
-
-1894--Discovery of element Argon by Lord Rayleigh and Professor Ramsey.
-Thorite produced by Bawden.
-
-1895--X-Rays discovered and applied by Roentgen. Acetylene Gas from
-Calcium Carbide by Willson. Krupp Armor Plate. Lindé's Liquid air
-apparatus.
-
-1896--Marconi's System of Wireless Telegraphy. Buffington-Crozier
-Disappearing Gun.
-
-1897--Schlick's System of Balancing Marine Engines. Discovery of Krypton
-by Ramsey and Travers.
-
-1898--Horry and Bradley's process of making Calcium Carbide. Discovery
-of Neon and Metargon by Ramsey and Travers; Coronium by Nasini; Xenon by
-Ramsey; Monium by Crookes, and Etherion by Brush. Mercerizing Cloth
-under tension to render it Silky.
-
-1899--Marconi Telegraphs without wire across the English Channel.
-Oceanic launched, the largest steamer ever built.
-
-1900--The Grande Lunette Telescope of Paris Exposition.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.
-
- THE VOLTAIC PILE--DANIELL'S BATTERY--USE OF CONDUCTING WIRE BY
- WEBER--STEINHEIL EMPLOYS EARTH AS RETURN CIRCUIT--PROF. HENRY'S
- ELECTRO MAGNET, AND FIRST TELEGRAPHIC EXPERIMENT--PROF. MORSE'S
- TELEGRAPHIC CODE AND REGISTER--FIRST LINE BETWEEN WASHINGTON
- AND BALTIMORE--BAIN'S CHEMICAL TELEGRAPH--GINTL'S DUPLEX
- TELEGRAPH--EDISON'S QUADRUPLEX--HOUSE'S PRINTING TELEGRAPH--FAC
- SIMILE TELEGRAPHS--CHANNING AND FARMER FIRE ALARM--TELEGRAPHING BY
- INDUCTION--WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY BY MARCONI--STATISTICS.
-
-
-In the effort to lengthen out the limited span of life into a greater
-record of results, time becomes an object of economy. To save time is to
-live long, and this in a pre-eminent degree is accomplished by the
-telegraph. Of all the inventions which man has called into existence to
-aid him in the fulfillment of his destiny, none so closely resembles man
-himself in his dual quality of body and soul as the telegraph. It too
-has a body and soul. We see the wire and the electro-magnet, but not the
-vital principle which animates it. Without its subtile, pulsating,
-intangible spirit, it is but dead matter. But vitalized with its
-immortal soul it assumes the quality of animated existence, and through
-its agency thought is extended beyond the limitations of time and space,
-and flashes through air and sea around the world. Its moving principle
-flows more silently than a summer's zephyr, and yet it rises at times to
-an angry and deadly crash in the lightning stroke. At once powerful and
-elusive, it remained for Professor Morse to capture this wild steed,
-and, taming it, place it in the permanent service of man. On May 24,
-1844, there went over the wires between Washington and Baltimore the
-first message--"What hath God wrought?" This was both prayer and praise,
-and no more lofty recognition of the divine power and beneficence could
-have been made. It was indeed the work of God made manifest in the hands
-of His children.
-
-Popular estimation has always credited Prof. Morse with the invention of
-the telegraph, but to ascribe to him all the praise would do great
-injustice to many other worthy workers in this field, some of whom are
-regarded by the best judges to be entitled to equal praise.
-
-The practical telegraph as originally used is resolvable into four
-essential elements, viz., the battery, the conducting wire, the
-electro-magnet, and the receiving and transmitting instruments.
-
-The development of the battery began with Galvani in 1790, and Volta in
-1800. Galvani discovered that a frog's legs would exhibit violent
-muscular contraction when its exposed nerves were touched with one metal
-and its muscles were touched with another metal, the two metals being
-connected. The effect was due to an electric current generated and
-acting with contractile effect on the muscles of the frog's legs.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
-
-From this phenomenon, the chemical action of acids upon metals and the
-production of an electric current were observed, and the voltaic pile
-was invented. This consisted of alternate discs of copper and zinc,
-separated by layers of cloth steeped in an acidulated solution. This was
-the invention of Volta. From this grew the Daniell battery, invented in
-1836 by Prof. Daniell of London, quickly followed by those of Grove,
-Smee, and others. These batteries were more constant or uniform in the
-production of electricity, were free from odors, and did not require
-frequent cleaning, as did the plates of the voltaic pile, which were
-important results for telegraphic purposes. The Daniell battery in its
-original form employed an acidulated solution of sulphate of copper in a
-copper cell containing a porous cup, and a cylinder of amalgamated zinc
-in the porous cup and surrounded by a weak acid solution. In the
-illustration, which shows a slightly modified form, a cruciform rod of
-zinc within a porous cup is surrounded by a copper cell, the whole being
-enclosed within a glass jar.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 2.--DANIELL'S BATTERY.]
-
-The second element of the telegraph--the conducting wire--was scarcely
-an invention in itself, and the fact that electricity would act at a
-distance through a metal conductor had been observed many years before
-the Morse telegraph was invented. In 1823, however, Weber discovered
-that a copper wire which he had carried over the houses and church
-steeples of Göttingen from the observatory to the cabinet of Natural
-Philosophy, required no special insulation. This was an important
-observation in the practical construction of telegraph lines. One of
-even greater importance, however, was that of Prof. Steinheil, of
-Munich, who, in 1837, made the discovery of the practicability of using
-the earth as one-half, or the return section, of the electric conductor.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 3.--PROF. HENRY'S INTENSITY MAGNET.]
-
-The third element of the telegraph is the electro-magnet. This, and its
-arrangement as a relay in a local circuit, was a most important
-invention, and contributed quite as much to the success of the telegraph
-as did the inventions of Prof. Morse. It may be well to say that an
-electro-magnet is a magnet which attracts an iron armature when an
-electric current is sent through its coil of wire, and loses its
-attractive force when the circuit is cut off, thereby rendering it
-possible to produce mechanical effects at a distance through the agency
-of electrical impulses only. For the electro-magnet the world is chiefly
-indebted to Prof. Joseph Henry, formerly of Princeton, N. J., but later
-of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1828 he invented the energetic modern
-form of electro-magnet with silk covered wire wound in a series of
-crossed layers to form a helix of multiple layers around a central soft
-iron core, and in 1831 succeeded in making practical the production of
-mechanical effects at a distance, by the tapping of a bell by a rod
-deflected by one of his electro-magnets. This experiment may be
-considered the pioneer step of the telegraph.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 4.
-
-HENRY.
-
-STURGEON.
-]
-
-Great as was the work of Prof. Henry, he must share the honors with a
-number of prior inventors who made the electro-magnet possible.
-Electro-magnetism, the underlying principle of the electro-magnet, was
-first discovered in 1819 by Prof. Oersted, of Copenhagen. In 1820
-Schweigger added the multiplier. Arago in the same year discovered that
-a steel rod was magnetized when placed across a wire carrying an
-electric current, and that iron filings adhered to a wire carrying a
-voltaic current and dropped off when the current was broken. M. Ampere
-substituted a helix for the straight wire, and Sturgeon, of England, in
-1825 made the real prototype of the electro-magnet by winding a piece of
-bare copper wire in a single coil around a varnished and insulated iron
-core of a horse shoe form, but the powerful and effective electro-magnet
-of Prof. Henry is to-day an essential part of the telegraph, is in
-universal use, and is the foundation of the entire electrical art. It is
-unfortunate that Prof. Henry did not perpetuate the records of his
-inventions in patents, to which he was opposed, for there is good reason
-to believe that he was also the original inventor of the important
-arrangement of the electro-magnet as a relay in local circuit, and other
-features, which have been claimed by other parties upon more enduring
-evidence, but perhaps with less right of priority.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 5.--MORSE'S FIRST MODEL PENDULUM INSTRUMENT.]
-
-The fourth and great final addition to the telegraph which crowned it
-with success was the Morse register and alphabetical code, the invention
-of Prof. Samuel F. B. Morse, of Massachusetts. Prof. Morse's invention
-was made in 1832, while on board ship returning from Europe. He set up
-an experimental line in 1835, and got his French patent October 30,
-1838, and his first United States patent June 20, 1840, No. 1647. In
-1844 the United States Congress appropriated $30,000 to build a line
-from Baltimore to Washington, and on May 24, 1844, the notable message,
-"What Hath God wrought?" went over the wires.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 6.--THE MORSE CODE.]
-
-Morse's first model, his pendulum instrument of 1837, is illustrated in
-Fig. 5. A pendulum carrying a pencil was in constant contact with a
-strip of paper drawn beneath the pencil. As long as inactive the pencil
-made a straight line. The pendulum carried also an armature, and an
-electro-magnet was placed near the armature. A current passed through
-the magnet would draw the pendulum to one side. On being released the
-pendulum would return, and in this way zigzag markings, as shown at 4
-and 5, would be produced on the strip of paper, which formed the
-alphabet. A different alphabet, known as the Morse Code, was
-subsequently adopted by Morse, and in 1844 the receiving register shown
-at Fig. 7 was adopted, which finally assumed the form shown at Fig. 8.
-
-The alphabet consisted simply of an arrangement of dots and dashes in
-varying sequence. The register is an apparatus operated by the combined
-effects of a clock mechanism and electro-magnet. Under a roll, see Fig.
-8, a ribbon of paper is drawn by the clockwork. A lever having an
-armature on one end arranged over the poles of an electro-magnet,
-carries on the other end a point or stylus. When an electric impulse is
-sent over the line the electro-magnet attracts the armature, and the
-stylus on the other end of the lever is brought into contact with the
-paper strip, and makes an indented impression. A short impulse gives a
-dot, and a long impulse holds the stylus against the paper long enough
-to allow the clock mechanism to pull the paper under the stylus and make
-a dash. By the manipulation of a key for closing the electric circuit
-the short or long impulse may be sent, at the pleasure of the operator.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 7.--MORSE RECEIVER.]
-
-This constituted the completed invention of the telegraph, and on
-comparing the work of Profs. Henry and Morse, it is only fair to say
-that Prof. Henry's contribution to the telegraph is still in active use,
-while the Morse register has been practically abandoned, as no expert
-telegrapher requires the visible evidence of the code, but all rely now
-entirely upon the sound click of the electro-magnet placed in the local
-circuit and known as a sounder, the varying time lengths of gaps between
-the clicks serving every purpose of rapid and intelligent communication.
-The invention of the telegraph has been claimed for Steinheil, of
-Munich, and also for Cooke and Wheatstone, in England, but few will
-deny that it is to Prof. Morse's indefatigable energy and inventive
-skill, with the preliminary work of Prof. Henry, that the world to-day
-owes its great gift of the electric telegraph, and with this gift the
-world's great nervous forces have been brought into an intimate and
-sensitive sympathy.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 8.--PERFECTED MORSE REGISTER.]
-
-Whenever an invention receives the advertisement of public approval and
-commercial exploitation, the development of that invention along various
-lines follows rapidly, and so when practical telegraphic communication
-was solved by Henry, Morse, and others, further advances in various
-directions were made. Efforts to increase the rapidity in sending
-messages soon grew into practical success, and in 1848 _Bain's Chemical
-Telegraph_ was brought out. (U. S. Pats. No. 5,957, Dec. 5, 1848, and
-No. 6,328, April 17, 1849.) This employed perforated strips of paper to
-effect automatic transmission by contact made through the perforations
-in place of the key, while a chemically prepared paper at the opposite
-end of the line was discolored by the electric impulses to form the
-record. This was the pioneer of the automatic system which by later
-improvements is able to send over a thousand words a minute.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 9.--HOUSE PRINTING TELEGRAPH.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 10.--STOCK BROKER'S "TICKER," WITH GLASS COVER
-REMOVED.]
-
-In line with other efforts to increase the capacity of the wires, the
-_duplex telegraph_ was invented by Dr. William Gintl, of Austria, in
-1853, and was afterwards improved by Carl Frischen, of Hanover, and by
-Joseph B. Stearns, of Boston, Mass, who in 1872 perfected the duplex (U.
-S. Pats. No. 126,847, May 14, 1872, and No. 132,933, Nov. 12, 1872).
-This system doubles the capacity of the telegraphic wire, and its
-principle of action permits messages sent from the home station to the
-distant station to have no effect on the home station, but full effect
-on the distant station, so that the operators at the opposite ends of
-the line may both telegraph over the same wire, at the same time, in
-opposite directions. This system has been further enlarged by the
-quadruplex system of Edison, which was brought out in 1874 (and
-subsequently developed in U. S. Pat. No. 209,241, Oct. 22, 1878). This
-enabled four messages to be sent over the same wire at the same time,
-and is said to have increased the value of the Western Union wires
-$15,000,000.
-
-In 1846 Royal C. House invented the _printing telegraph_, which printed
-the message automatically on a strip of paper, something after the
-manner of the typewriter (U. S. Pat. No. 4,464, April 18, 1846). The
-ingenious mechanism involved in this was somewhat complicated, but its
-results in printing the message plainly were very satisfactory. This was
-the prototype of the familiar "_ticker_" of the stock broker's office,
-seen in Figs. 10 and 11. In 1856 the Hughes printing telegraph was
-brought out (U. S. Pat. No. 14,917, May 20, 1856), and in 1858 G. M.
-Phelps combined the valuable features of the Hughes and House systems
-(U. S. Pat. No. 26,003, Nov. 1, 1859).
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 11.--RECEIVING MESSAGE ON STOCK BROKER'S "TICKER."]
-
-_Fac Simile_ telegraphs constitute another, although less important
-branch of the art. These accomplished the striking result of reproducing
-the message at the end of the line in the exact handwriting of the
-sender, and not only writing, but exact reproductions of all outlines,
-such as maps, pictures, and so forth, may be sent. The fac simile
-telegraph originated with F. C. Bakewell, of England, in 1848 (Br. Pat.
-No. 12,352, of 1848).
-
-The Dial Telegraph is still another modification of the telegraph. In
-this the letters are arranged in a circular series, and a light needle
-or pointer, concentrically pivoted, is carried back and forth over the
-letters, and is made to successively point to the desired letters.
-
-Among other useful applications of the telegraph is the _fire alarm
-system_. In 1852 Channing and Farmer, of Boston, Mass., devised a
-system of telegraphic fire alarms, which was adopted in the city of
-Boston (U. S. Pat. No. 17,355, May 19, 1857), and which in varying
-modifications has spread through all the cities of the world,
-introducing that most important element of time economy in the
-extinguishment of fires. Hundreds of cities and millions of dollars have
-been thus saved from destruction.
-
-Similar applications of local alarms in great numbers have been extended
-into various departments of life, such as _District Messenger Service_,
-_Burglar Alarms_, _Railroad-Signal Systems_, _Hotel-Annunciators_, and
-so on.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 12.--TELEGRAPHING BY INDUCTION.]
-
-For furnishing current for telegraphic purposes the dynamo, and
-especially the storage battery, have in late years found useful
-application. In fact, in the leading telegraph offices the storage
-battery has practically superseded the old voltaic cells.
-
-_Telegraphing by induction_, _i. e._, without the mechanical connection
-of a conducting wire, is another of the developments of telegraphy in
-recent years, and finds application to telegraphing to moving railway
-trains. When an electric current flows over a telegraph line, objects
-along its length are charged at the beginning and end of the current
-impulse with a secondary charge, which flows to the earth if connection
-is afforded. It is the discharge of this secondary current from the
-metal car roof to the ground which, on the moving train, is made the
-means of telegraphing without any mechanical connection with the
-telegraph lines along the track. As, however, this secondary circuit
-occurs only at the making and breaking of the telegraphic impulse, the
-length of the impulse affords no means of differentiation into an
-alphabet, and so a rapid series of impulses, caused by the vibrator of
-an induction coil, is made to produce buzzing tones of various duration
-representing the alphabet, and these tones are received upon a telephone
-instead of a Morse register. The diagram, Fig. 12,[1] illustrates the
-operation.
-
- [1] From "Electricity in Daily Life," by courtesy of Charles
- Scribner's Sons.
-
-To receive messages on a car, electric impulses on the telegraph wire W,
-sent from the vibrator of an induction coil, cause induced currents as
-follows: Car roof R, wire _a_, key K, telephone _b c_, car wheel and
-earth. In sending messages closure of key K works induction coil I C,
-and vibrator V, through battery B, and primary circuit _d_, _c_, _f_,
-_g_, and the secondary circuit _a_, _h_, _i_, charges the car roof and
-influences by induction the telegraph wire W and the telephone at the
-receiving station.
-
-In 1881 William W. Smith proposed the plan of communicating between
-moving cars and a stationary wire by induction (U. S. Pat. No. 247,127,
-Sept. 13, 1881). Thomas A. Edison, L. J. Phelps, and others have further
-improved the means for carrying it out. In 1888 the principle was
-successfully employed on 200 miles of the Lehigh Valley Railroad.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 13.--WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY, INTERNATIONAL YACHT RACES,
-OCTOBER, 1899.]
-
-_Wireless Telegraphy_, or telegraphing without any wires at all, from
-one point to another point through space, is the most modern and
-startling development in telegraphy. To the average mind this is highly
-suggestive of scientific imposition, so intangible and unknown are the
-physical forces by which it is rendered possible, and yet this is one of
-the late achievements of the Nineteenth Century. Many scientists have
-contributed data on this subject, but the principles and theories have
-only begun to crystallize into an art during the first part of the last
-decade of the Nineteenth Century. Heinrich Hertz, the German scientist,
-was perhaps the real pioneer in this line in his studies and
-observations of the nature of the electric undulations which have taken
-his name, and are known as "Hertzian" waves, rays, or oscillations.
-Tesla in the United States, Branly and Ducretet in France, Righi in
-Italy, the Russian savant, Popoff, and Professor Lodge, of England, have
-all made contributions to this art. It will aid the understanding to
-say, in a preliminary way, that electric undulations are generated and
-emitted from a plate or conductor a hundred feet or more high in the
-air, are thence transmitted through space to a remote point, which may
-be many miles away, and there influencing a similar plate high in the
-air give, through a special form of receiving device known as a
-"coherer," a telegraphic record. The "coherer," invented by Branly in
-1891, is a glass tube containing metal filings between two circuit
-terminals. The electric waves cause these filings to cohere, and so vary
-the resistance to the passage of the current as to give a basis for
-transformation into a record.
-
-In March, 1899, Signor Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian student, then
-residing in England, successfully communicated between South Foreland,
-County of Kent, and Boulogne-sur-mer, in France, a distance of
-thirty-two miles across the English Channel. Signor Marconi used the
-vertical conductors and the Hertz-oscillation principle, and his system
-is described in his United States patent. No. 586,193, July 13, 1897.
-
-His patent comprehends many claims, a leading feature of which is the
-means for automatically shaking the "coherer" to break up the cohesion
-of the metal filings as embodied in his first claim, as follows:
-
- "In a receiver for electrical oscillations, the combination of an
- imperfect electrical contact, a circuit through the contact, and
- means actuated by the circuit for shaking the contact."
-
-The Marconi system of wireless telegraphy was practically employed with
-useful effect April 28, 1899, on the "Goodwin Sands" light-ship to
-telegraph for assistance when in collision twelve miles from land and in
-danger of sinking. It was also used in October, 1899, on board the
-"Grande Duchesse" to report the international yacht race between the
-"Columbia" and the "Shamrock" at Sandy Hook, as seen in Fig. 13. Lord
-Roberts also made good use of it in his South African campaign against
-the Boers. According to Signor Marconi its present range is limited to
-eighty-six miles, but it is expected that this will be soon extended to
-150 miles.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 13A.--THE COHERER.]
-
-Marconi's receiving apparatus is shown in Fig. 13A, and consists of a
-small glass tube called the coherer, about 1½ inches in length, into the
-ends of which are inserted two silver pole pieces, which fit the tube,
-but whose ends are 1/50 inch apart. The space between the ends is filled
-with a mixture composed of fine nickel and silver filings and a mere
-trace of mercury, and the other ends of the pole pieces are attached to
-the wires of a local circuit. In the normal condition the metallic
-filings have an enormous resistance, and constitute a practical
-insulator, preventing the flow of the local current; but if they are
-influenced by electric waves, coherence takes place and the resistance
-falls, allowing the local current to pass. The coherence will continue
-until the filings are mechanically shaken, when they will at once fall
-apart, as it were, insulation will be established, and the current will
-be broken. If, then, a coherer be brought within the influence of the
-electric waves thrown out from a transmitter, coherence will occur
-whenever the key of the transmitter at the distant station is depressed.
-Mr. Marconi has devised an ingenious arrangement, which is the subject
-of his patent referred to, in which a small hammer is made to rap
-continuously upon the coherer by the action of the local circuit, which
-is closed when the Hertzian waves pass through the metal filings. As
-soon as the waves cease, the hammer gives its last rap, and the tube is
-left in the decohered condition ready for the next transmission of
-waves. It is evident that by making the local circuit operate a relay,
-in the circuit of which is a standard recording instrument, the messages
-may be recorded on a tape in the usual way.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 13B.--DIAGRAM OF THE TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER.]
-
-In Fig. 13B is shown the diagram of circuits. The letters _d d_ indicate
-the spheres of the transmitter, which are connected, one to the vertical
-wire w, the other to earth, and both by wires _c´ c´_, to the terminals
-of the secondary winding of induction coil, c. In the primary circuit is
-the key _b_. The coherer _j_ has two metal pole pieces, _j¹ j²_,
-separated by silver and nickel filings. One end of the tube is connected
-to earth, the other to the vertical wire _w_, and the coherer itself
-forms part of a circuit containing the local cell _g_, and a sensitive
-telegraph relay actuating another circuit, which circuit works a
-trembler _p_, of which _o_ is the decohering tapper, or hammer. When the
-electric waves pass from _w_ to _j¹ j²_ the resistance falls, and the
-current from _g_ actuates the relay _n_, the choking coils _k k´_, lying
-between the coherer and the relay, compelling the electric waves to
-traverse the coherer instead of flowing through the relay. The relay _n_
-in its turn causes the more powerful battery _r_ to pass a current
-through the tapper, and also through the electro-magnet of the
-recording instrument _h_.
-
-The alternate cohering by the waves and decohering by the tapper
-continue uninterruptedly as long as the transmitting key at the distant
-station is depressed. The armature of the recording instrument, however,
-because of its inertia, cannot rise and fall in unison with the rapid
-coherence and decoherence of the receiver, and hence it remains down and
-makes a stroke upon the tape as long as the sending key is depressed.
-
-The principal applications of wireless telegraphy so far have been at
-sea, where the absence of intervening obstacles gives a free path to the
-electrical oscillations. The system is also applicable on land, however,
-and no one can doubt that if the Ministers of the Legations shut up in
-Pekin had been supplied with a wireless telegraphy outfit, neither the
-walls of Pekin nor the strongest cordon of its Chinese hordes could have
-prevented the long sought communication. The full story of mystery and
-massacre would have been promptly made known, and the civilized world
-have been spared its anxiety, and earlier and effective measures of
-relief supplied.
-
-As the art of telegraphy grows apace toward the end of the Nineteenth
-Century, individuality of invention becomes lost in the great maze of
-modifications, ramifications, and combinations. Inventions become merged
-into systems, and systems become swallowed up by companies. In the
-promises of living inventors the wish is too often father to the
-thought, and the conservative man sees the child of promise rise in
-great expectation, flourish for a few years, and then subside to quiet
-rest in the dusty archives of the Patent Office. They all contribute
-their quota of value, but it is so difficult to single out as
-pre-eminent any one of those which as yet are on probation, that we must
-leave to the coming generation the task of making meritorious selection.
-
-To-day the telegraph is the great nerve system of the nation's body, and
-it ramifies and vitalizes every part with sensitive force. In 1899 the
-Western Union Telegraph Company alone had 22,285 offices, 904,633 miles
-of wire, sent 61,398,157 messages, received in money $23,954,312, and
-enjoyed a profit of $5,868,733. Add to this the business of the Postal
-Telegraph Company and other companies, and it becomes well nigh
-impossible to grasp the magnitude of this tremendous factor of
-Nineteenth Century progress. Figures fail to become impressive after
-they reach the higher denominations, and it may not add much to either
-the reader's conception or his knowledge to say that the statistics for
-the _whole world_ for the year 1898 show: 103,832 telegraph offices,
-2,989,803 miles of wire, and 365,453,526 messages sent during that year.
-This wire would extend around the earth about 120 times, and the
-messages amounted to one million a day for every day in that year. This
-is for land telegraphs only, and does not include cable messages.
-
-What saving has accrued to the world in the matter of time, and what
-development in values in the various departments of life, and what
-contributions to human comfort and happiness the telegraph has brought
-about, is beyond human estimate, and is too impressive a thought for
-speculation.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-THE ATLANTIC CABLE.
-
- DIFFICULTIES OF LAYING--CONGRATULATORY MESSAGES BETWEEN QUEEN
- VICTORIA AND PRESIDENT BUCHANAN--THE SIPHON RECORDER--STATISTICS.
-
-
-Among the applications of the telegraph which deserve special mention
-for magnitude and importance is the Atlantic Cable. For boldness of
-conception, tireless persistence in execution, and value of results,
-this engineering feat, though nearly a half century old, still
-challenges the admiration of the world, and marks the beginning of one
-of the great epochs of the Nineteenth Century. It was not so brilliant
-in substantive invention, as it added but little to the telegraph as
-already known, beyond the means for insulating the wires within a gutta
-percha cable, but it was one of the greatest of all engineering works.
-It was chiefly the result of the energy and public spirit of Mr. Cyrus
-W. Field, an eminent American citizen. Three times was its laying
-attempted before success crowned the work. The first expedition sailed
-August 7, 1857, and consisted of a fleet of eight vessels, four American
-and four English, starting from Valentia on the Irish coast. On August
-11 the cable parted, and 344 miles of the cable were lost in water two
-miles deep. In 1858 a renewal of the effort to lay the cable was made.
-Improvements were added in the paying out machinery, and a different
-manner of coiling the enormous load of cable on the vessels was resorted
-to, and provisions also were made to protect the propeller from contact
-with the cable. On June 10 the telegraphic fleet steamed out of Plymouth
-harbor. It consisted of the U. S. frigate "Niagara," with the
-paddle-wheel steamer "Valorous" as a tender, and the British frigate
-"Agamemnon," with the paddle-wheel steamer "Gorgon" as a tender. After
-three days at sea, terrible gales were encountered and much damage
-resulted. The vessels were to proceed to midocean, and the portions of
-the cable carried by the "Niagara" and "Agamemnon" were to be spliced,
-and the two vessels were then to sail in opposite directions to their
-respective coasts. The first splice was made on the 26th of June. After
-paying out two and a half miles each, the cable parted. Again meeting
-and splicing, forty miles each were paid out, and the cable again
-parted. On the 28th another splicing was effected, and 150 miles each
-were paid out, and again the cable parted, and the expedition had to be
-abandoned. After much financial embarrassment and adverse criticism, the
-courageous and public-spirited directors who had control of the
-enterprise dispatched another expedition, which sailed July 17, 1858.
-The two vessels, "Niagara" and "Agamemnon," with their tenders,
-proceeded to midocean, and following the same method of connecting the
-ends of their respective cable sections, they sailed in opposite
-directions. On August 5, 1858, Mr. Cyrus Field announced by telegram
-from Trinity Bay, on the coast of Newfoundland, that Trinity Bay in
-America, and Valentia in Ireland, 2,134 miles apart, had been connected,
-and the great Atlantic cable was an established fact.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 14.--ORIGINAL ATLANTIC CABLE, FULL SIZE.
-
-Consists of seven copper wires (4) to form the conductor, a wrapping (3)
-of thread, soaked in tallow and pitch, several layers (2) of gutta
-percha, all surrounded by a protecting coat of mail (1) of twisted
-wires.]
-
-On August 16, 1858, the first message came over from Queen Victoria to
-President Buchanan of the United States, as follows:
-
- "_To the President of the United States, Washington:_
-
- "The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the
- successful completion of this great international work, in which
- the Queen has taken the deepest interest.
-
- "The Queen is convinced that the President will join with her in
- fervently hoping that the Electric Cable which now connects Great
- Britain with the United States will prove an additional link
- between the nations whose friendship is founded upon their common
- interest and reciprocal esteem.
-
- "The Queen has much pleasure in thus communicating with the
- President, and renewing to him her wishes for the prosperity of the
- United States."
-
-to which the President replied as follows:
-
- "WASHINGTON CITY, Aug. 16, 1858.
-
- "_To Her Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain:_
-
- "The President cordially reciprocates the congratulations of Her
- Majesty, the Queen, on the success of the great international
- enterprise accomplished by the science, skill, and indomitable
- energy of the two countries. It is a triumph more glorious,
- because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror
- on the field of battle.
-
- "May the Atlantic Telegraph, under the blessing of Heaven, prove to
- be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred
- nations, and an instrument destined by Divine Providence to diffuse
- religion, civilization, liberty and law throughout the world. In
- this view will not all nations of Christendom spontaneously unite
- in the declaration that it shall be forever neutral, and that its
- communications shall be held sacred in passing to their places of
- destination, even in the midst of hostilities?
-
-(Signed)
-
-"JAMES BUCHANAN."
-
-Great rejoicing on both sides of the ocean followed, and the public
-print was filled with accounts of the enterprise. The following
-selection from the _Atlantic Monthly_ of October, 1858, is an apostrophe
-in lofty sentiments of verse, which to-day stirs the Twentieth Century
-heart as a joyous prophecy fulfilled:
-
- Thou lonely Bay of Trinity,
- Ye bosky shores untrod,
- Lean, breathless, to the white-lipped sea
- And hear the voice of God!
-
- From world to world His couriers fly,
- Thought-winged and shod with fire;
- The angel of His stormy sky
- Rides down the sunken wire.
-
- What saith the herald of the Lord?
- "The world's long strife is done!
- Close wedded by that mystic cord,
- Her continents are one.
-
- "And one in heart, as one in blood,
- Shall all her peoples be;
- The hands of human brotherhood
- Shall clasp beneath the sea.
-
- "Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain,
- And Asian mountains borne,
- The vigor of the Northern brain
- Shall nerve the world outworn.
-
- "From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
- Shall thrill the magic thread;
- The new Prometheus steals once more
- The fire that wakes the dead.
-
- "Earth, gray with age, shall hear the strain
- Which o'er her childhood rolled;
- For her the morning stars again
- Shall sing their song of old.
-
- "For, lo! the fall of Ocean's wall,
- Space mocked and Time outrun!
- And round the world the thought of all
- Is as the thought of one!"
-
- O, reverently and thankfully
- The mighty wonder own!
- The deaf can hear, the blind may see,
- The work is God's alone.
-
- Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat
- From answering beach to beach!
- Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,
- And melt the chains of each!
-
- Wild terror of the sky above,
- Glide tamed and dumb below!
- Bear gently, Ocean's carrier dove,
- Thy errands to and fro!
-
- Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,
- Beneath the deep so far,
- The bridal robe of Earth's accord,
- The funeral shroud of war!
-
- The poles unite, the zones agree,
- The tongues of striving cease;
- As on the Sea of Galilee,
- The Christ is whispering, "Peace!"
-
-After a few months of working, the cable became inoperative, but its
-success was a demonstrated fact, and in 1866 a new cable was laid by the
-aid of that monster steamer "The Great Eastern," since which time the
-cable has become one of the great factors of modern civilization.
-
-Probably the most important of the inventions relating to submarine
-telegraphs is the siphon recorder, invented by Sir William Thompson, now
-Lord Kelvin (U. S. Pat. No. 156,897, Nov. 17, 1874). It is called a
-siphon recorder because the record is made by a little glass siphon down
-which a flow of ink is maintained like a fountain pen. This siphon is
-vibrated by the electric impulses to produce on the paper strip a zigzag
-line, whose varying contour is made to represent letters. In the
-illustration, Fig. 15, _m_ is an ink well, _o_ a strip of paper, and _n_
-the ink siphon, one end of which is bent and dips down into the ink
-well, and the other end of which traces the record on the moving paper
-strip _o_. The siphon is sustained on a vertical axis _l_, and its
-lateral vibration is effected as follows: A light rectangular coil _b
-b_, of exceedingly fine insulated wire, is suspended between the poles N
-S of a powerful electro-magnet energized by a local battery. In the
-coil _b b_ is a stationary soft iron core _a_, magnetized by the poles N
-S. The coil _b b_ is suspended upon a vertical axis consisting of a fine
-wire _f f_, and the delicate electrical impulses over the submarine
-cable enter the coil _b b_ through the axial wire _f f_ as a conductor,
-and cause a greater or less oscillation of the coil _b b_ between the
-poles N S of the electro-magnet. The coil _b b_ is connected by a thread
-_k_ to the siphon, and pulls the siphon in one direction, while the
-siphon is pulled in the opposite direction by a helical spring attached
-to an arm on the siphon axis _l_. The jagged lines seen in Fig. 16 spell
-the words "siphon recorder."
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 15.--SIPHON RECORDER.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 16.--SIPHON RECORDER MESSAGE.]
-
-To-day there lie in submerged silence, but pulsating with the life of
-the world, no less than 1,500 submarine telegraphs. Their aggregate
-length is 170,000 miles; their total estimated cost is $250,000,000, and
-the number of messages annually transmitted over them is 6,000,000.
-Thirteen cables work daily across the Atlantic, and an additional one is
-being laid from Germany. Messages now go across the Atlantic and are
-received on the siphon recorder at the rate of fifty words a minute,
-and at a cost of twenty-five cents a word. Our guns may thunder in the
-Philippines, and the news by cable, traveling faster than the earth on
-its axis, may reach the Western Hemisphere under the paradoxical
-condition of several hours earlier than it occurred. Cablegrams to
-Manila cost $2.38 a word, and the cable tolls for our War Department
-alone are costing at the rate of $325,000 a year. The logical outcome is
-a Pacific cable, a bill for which, connecting San Francisco and
-Honolulu, has already passed the United States Senate.
-
-Messages from the Executive Mansion at Washington to the battlefield at
-Santiago were sent and responses received within twelve minutes, while a
-message dispatched from the House of Representatives in Washington to
-the House of Parliament in London, in the chess match of 1898, was
-transmitted and a reply received in thirteen and one-half seconds.
-
-To-day the cable with the still small voice, more divine than human,
-speaks with one accent to all the nations of the earth. Differing though
-they may in tongue and skin, in thought and religion, in physical
-development and clime, the telegraph speaks to them all alike, and by
-all is understood. Truly it fulfils the prophecy so gracefully expressed
-in the verses quoted, and has become the common bond of union among the
-nations of the earth.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-THE DYNAMO AND ITS APPLICATIONS.
-
- OBSERVATIONS OF FARADAY AND HENRY--MAGNETO-ELECTRIC MACHINES OF
- PIXII AND OF SAXTON--HJORTH'S DYNAMO OF 1855--WILDE'S MACHINE OF
- 1866--SIEMENS' OF 1867--GRAMME'S OF 1870--TESLA'S POLYPHASE
- CURRENTS.
-
-
-In the last thirty-five years of the Nineteenth Century there has grown
-up into the full stature of mechanical majority this stalwart son of
-electrical lineage. As the means for furnishing electrical power it
-stands to-day the great fountain head of electrical generation, and in
-its peculiar field ranks as of equal importance with the steam engine.
-Until about 1865 the voltaic battery, which generated electricity by
-chemical decomposition, was practically the only means for producing
-electricity for industrial and commercial purposes. It was through its
-agency that the telegraph, the electric light, and many other
-discoveries in electricity were made and rendered possible. Its cost and
-limited amount of current, however, restricted the limits of its
-practical application, and although its current could furnish beautiful
-laboratory experiments, its mechanical work was more in the nature of
-illustration than utilization. But with the advent of the dynamo
-electricity has taken a new and very much larger place in the commercial
-activities of the world. It runs and warms our cars, it furnishes our
-light, it plates our metals, it runs our elevators, it electrocutes our
-criminals; and a thousand other things it performs for us with secrecy
-and dispatch in its silent and forceful way. But what is a dynamo? To
-the average mind the most satisfactory answer would be--that it is
-simply a machine which converts mechanical power into electricity.
-Attach a dynamo to a steam engine, and the power of the steam engine
-will, through the dynamo, become transformed or converted into a
-powerful electric current. Any other source of mechanical power, such as
-a water wheel, gas engine, wind wheel, or even a horse or man, will
-serve to operate the dynamo; its primary and sole function being to take
-power and convert it into electricity.
-
-The stepping stone to the dynamo in its development was the
-_magneto-electrical machine_. This is a machine founded upon the general
-principle observed by Faraday in 1831 and 1832, and also by Prof. Henry
-about the same time, that when a magnet is made to approach a helix of
-insulated wire it causes a current of electricity to flow in the helix
-as long as the magnet advances. If the magnet is passed through the
-helix, the current is reversed as soon as the magnet passes the middle
-point. The principle is the same if the magnet be made to approach and
-recede from the poles of an electro-magnet having a helix wound around a
-soft iron core. Likewise the same result occurs if the electro-magnet
-with its helix is made to approach and recede from a permanent magnet,
-the current in the helix flowing in one direction when it approaches the
-permanent magnet, and in the opposite direction when leaving the said
-magnet. The movement of the two elements in relation to each other
-requires some force to overcome the repellent and attractive actions,
-and this force is converted into electrical energy. This is the
-principle of the magneto-electric machine.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 17.--PIXII MAGNETO-ELECTRIC MACHINE, 1832.]
-
-Saxton in the United States and Pixii in France were the first to
-produce organized devices of this class for generating electricity from
-magnetism. Pixii's machine (1832) consisted of a permanent horse-shoe
-magnet which was caused to revolve in proximity to an armature upon
-which was wound a coil of insulated wire. On March 30, 1852, Sonnenberg
-and Rechten obtained a United States patent, No. 8,843, for an
-electrical machine for killing whales, and on August 19, 1856, Shepard
-obtained U. S. Pat. No. 15,596 for the machine which came to be known as
-the "Alliance" machine. Both of these machines had permanent field
-magnets, and were early types of magneto-electric machines. The
-efficiency of these magneto-electric machines was necessarily limited to
-the strength of the inducing field magnets, which, being permanent
-magnets, were a positive and fixed factor. It was an easy step to
-substitute electro-magnets for permanent magnets, as the field or
-inducing magnets, and also to excite the (electro) field magnet by
-voltaic batteries, but the important step which resulted in the machine
-which is called the "dynamo" (from the Greek "[Greek: Dynamis]"--power)
-was yet to come.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 18.--HJORTH'S DYNAMO ELECTRIC MACHINE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 19.--HJORTH'S DYNAMO ELECTRIC MACHINE, PLAN VIEW.]
-
-This step consisted in taking the current induced in the revolving helix
-or armature (by the field magnets) and sending it back through the coils
-of the field magnets which produced it, thereby increasing the energy of
-the field magnet coils, and they in turn with an increased efficiency
-and reciprocal action induce still stronger currents in the armature
-coils, and so a building up process, or principle of mutual and
-reciprocal excitation, is carried on until the maximum efficiency is
-reached. This principle was the discovery of Soren Hjorth, of
-Copenhagen, and is fully described in his British patent, No. 806 of
-1855, for "An Improved Magneto-Electric Battery." As the prototype of
-the dynamo, it is worthy of illustration. In the illustration, Figs. 18
-and 19, _a_ is a revolving wheel bearing the armature coils, _C_
-permanent magnets, _d_ electro-magnets (field magnets), and _g_ the
-commutator. Quoting from his specifications, he says: "The permanent
-magnets acting on the armatures brought in succession between their
-poles, induce a current in the coils of the armatures, which current,
-after having been caused by the commutator to flow in one direction,
-passes round the electro-magnets (field magnets), charging the same and
-acting on the armatures. By the mutual action between the
-electro-magnets and the armatures an accelerating force is obtained,
-which in result produces electricity greater in quantity and intensity
-than has heretofore been obtained by similar means."
-
-Although the principle of the dynamo was clearly embodied in the Hjorth
-patent, its value was not appreciated until some time later. Eleven
-years later Wilde (U. S. Pat. No. 59,738, Nov. 13, 1866), employed a
-small machine with permanent magnets to excite the coil-wound field
-magnets of a larger machine. But Siemens (British Pat. No. 261 of 1867),
-taking up the principle employed by Hjorth, dispensed with his
-superfluous permanent magnets, having found that the residual magnetism,
-which always remained in iron which has once been magnetized, was
-sufficient as a basis to start the building up process. Farmer,
-Wheatstone and Varley also recognized this fact about the same time.
-Siemens' patent also was the first embodiment of what is known as the
-bobbin armature. Gramme and D'Ivernois (British Pat. 1,668 of 1870, and
-U. S. Pat. No. 120,057, of Oct. 17, 1871), were the first to bring out
-the continuously wound ring armature.
-
-Active development now began in various types and by various inventors,
-including Weston, Brush, Edison, Thomson and Houston, Westinghouse, and
-others, who have brought the dynamo to its present high efficiency.
-
-The revolving coils of the dynamo are called the armature, and the fixed
-electro-magnets are called the field magnets, and these latter may be
-two or more in number. When two are used they are arranged on opposite
-sides of the armature, and form what is known as the bipolar machine. A
-larger number constitutes the multipolar machine. The field magnets in
-the multipolar machine usually are arranged in radial position around
-the entire circumference of the revolving armature, and are held in a
-fixed circular frame. To give a clear idea of the principles of the
-dynamo, the bipolar machine is best suited for illustration, and is here
-given in Figs. 20 and 21, in which Fig. 20 represents the dynamo
-complete, and Fig. 21 a detail of the end of the armature and
-commutator. This armature consists of coils or bobbins of insulated
-wire, each section having its terminals connected with separate
-insulated plates on the hub, which plates are known as the commutator.
-When any section of the armature approaches the pole of a field magnet,
-the current induced in that section of the armature coils by the field
-magnet, is taken off from a corresponding plate of the commutator by
-flat springs, seen in Fig. 20, and known as brushes. The field magnets A
-and B, Fig. 20, are shown with only a few turns of wire about them for
-clearer illustrations of the connections, which are made as follows: The
-wire _a_ is extended in coils around the field magnet B, and thence
-around field magnet A, and thence to the upper brush on the commutator,
-thence through the wire coils or bobbins of the rotary armature C, and
-thence by the lower brush to the wire _b_. The terminals of the wires
-_a_ and _b_ extend to the point of utilization of the current, whether
-this be electric lights, motors, or other applications. In this
-illustration, the circuit, it will be seen, passes through both the
-coils of the field magnets and the coils of the armature, involving the
-principle of mutual excitation.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 20.--BIPOLAR DYNAMO.]
-
-There are two principal kinds of dynamos--those producing the
-alternating currents, and those producing the continuous current. In the
-first the current alternates in direction, or is composed of an infinite
-number of impulses of opposite polarity: one polarity when a section of
-the armature coil is approaching a north field magnet pole or receding
-from a south pole, and the other polarity when receding from a north
-field magnet pole and approaching a south pole. In the continuous
-current machine, the commutator and brushes are so arranged as to take
-up all the impulses of the same polarity and conduct them away by one
-brush, and gathering all the impulses of the opposite polarity and
-conducting them away by another brush. Thus the current of each brush,
-in the continuous current machine, is always of the same polarity, and
-the polarity of one being always positive, and that of the other
-negative, the current flows continuously in the same direction. A third
-species of dynamo is the pulsatory, in which the current flow is
-invariable in direction, but proceeds in waves.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 21.--ARMATURE OF BIPOLAR DYNAMO.]
-
-A change in the character of the current generated by the dynamo is made
-by what is known as the "transformer," in which the principle of the
-induction coil is made available. In this way, for instance, the high
-potential currents generated by the powerful water wheels at Niagara
-Falls are taken twenty miles to Buffalo, and are there transformed into
-other currents of lower potential, suited to incandescent lighting and
-other various uses. A similar scheme is in process of fulfillment in the
-establishment of a water power electric plant near Conowingo, Maryland,
-on the Susquehanna River, to furnish electrical power to Baltimore,
-Wilmington and Philadelphia.
-
-An important development in electrical generation and transmission is to
-be found in what is known as the _polyphase_, _multiphase_, or
-_rotating_ current, pioneer patents for which were granted to Tesla May
-1, 1888, Nos. 381,968, 381,969, 382,279, 382,280, 382,281 and 382,282.
-
-Realizing the possibilities of the dynamo, the Legislature of New York
-in 1888 passed a law, which went into effect in 1889, in that State,
-substituting death by electricity for the hangman's noose. The criminal
-is strapped in the chair, seen in Fig. 22, one terminal of the wire from
-the dynamo is strapped upon his forehead, and the other to anklets on
-his legs, and like a flash of lightning the deadly energy of the dynamo
-performs its work.
-
-Not the least of the applications of the dynamo is its use in
-electro-metallurgy for plating metals, and also for promoting chemical
-reactions. The electric furnace, stimulated into higher heat by the
-dynamo than can be otherwise obtained, has brought about many valuable
-discoveries, and made great advances in various arts. The metal
-aluminum, and the hard abrasive or polishing and grinding material known
-as "carborundum" are the products of the electric furnace, and so is the
-product known as "calcium carbide," which, when immersed in water, gives
-off acetylene gas and is a product now universally used for that
-purpose, and rapidly increasing in commercial importance.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 22.--ELECTROCUTION CHAIR.]
-
-In Fig. 23 is seen the Acheson electric furnace for producing
-carborundum. The electric current traverses the furnace through a series
-of horizontal electrodes at each end, and highly heats a central core of
-carbon, which is disposed in a mass of silicious and carbonaceous
-material, and which latter is converted by the heat into silicide of
-carbon, or carborundum. In Fig. 24 is shown a continuous electric
-furnace constructed as a revolving wheel, under the Bradley patents. Rim
-sections 5 are placed on the wheel on one side and filled with a mixture
-of carbon and lime, through which the electric current is passed from
-the dynamo _g_. The heat of the current fuses the mass and converts it
-into calcium carbide, and as the wheel slowly revolves the rim sections
-5 are removed from the opposite side, and the mass of calcium carbide,
-seen at _x_, is broken off. The electrolytic production of copper
-through the agency of the dynamo amounts to 150,000 tons annually, and
-the commercial reduction of aluminum by the electric furnace has grown
-from eighty-three pounds in 1883 to 5,200,000 pounds in 1898, and its
-cost has been reduced to about 33 cents per pound.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 23.--PART SECTIONAL VIEW OF CARBORUNDUM FURNACE.]
-
-The storage battery, holding in reserve its stored up electric energy,
-also owes its practical value entirely to the dynamo which charges it,
-and thus makes available a portable source of supply.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 24.--BRADLEY ELECTRIC FURNACE FOR PRODUCING CALCIUM
-CARBIDE.]
-
-To contemplate the dynamo with its clumsy, enormous spools, it suggests
-to the imagination of the average observer the gigantic toy of some
-Brobdingnagian boy--but the dynamo is no toy. It is the most compact,
-business-like, and dangerous of all utilitarian devices. To touch its
-brushes may be instant death, for the dynamo is the prison house of the
-lightning, and resents intrusion. Hidden away from public gaze in some
-sequestered power house, and working night and day like some tireless,
-dumb, and mighty genii, it sends its magnetic thrills of force silently
-through the many miles of wire extending like radii from some great
-nerve center through the conduits in our streets, and stretching from
-pole to pole like giant cobwebs through the air. Responding to its
-force, thousands of little incandescent threads leap into radiant
-brightness and shed their mellow and genial light in our offices, our
-stores, hotels, and homes. Brilliant arc lamps, rivaling the sun in
-power, make night into day, and produce along our streets coruscations,
-silhouettes, and dancing shadows in spectacular and unceasing pageants.
-From the towering lighthouses of our coasts its beams are thrown
-seaward, and a beacon for the mariner shines beyond all other lights.
-The great search light of our ships is in itself but a hollow mockery
-until the dynamo whispers in its ear the word "light!" and then its
-beam, reaching for miles along the horizon, discovers a stealthy enemy,
-or signals the safe return to port. The mighty force of the dynamo
-entering the electric motors on the street cars turns the wheels and
-transports its load with scarcely a passenger inside realizing how it is
-all done. The same energy turns the electric fan, and with kindly
-service soothes the weary sufferer, and at another place remorselessly
-takes the life of the condemned criminal. The dynamo is one of the great
-factors of modern civilization, and its potential name, like that of
-"dynamite," rightly defines its character.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 25.--MODERN MULTIPOLAR DYNAMO.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-THE ELECTRIC MOTOR.
-
- BARLOW'S SPUR WHEEL--DAL NEGRO'S ELECTRIC PENDULUM--PROF. HENRY'S
- ELECTRIC MOTOR--JACOBI'S ELECTRIC BOAT--DAVENPORT'S MOTOR--THE NEFF
- MOTOR--DR. PAGE'S ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE--DR. SIEMENS' FIRST ELECTRIC
- RAILWAY AT BERLIN, 1879--FIRST ELECTRIC RAILWAY IN UNITED STATES,
- BETWEEN BALTIMORE AND HAMPDEN, 1885--THIRD RAIL SYSTEM--STATISTICS
- ELECTRIC RAILWAYS AND GENERAL ELECTRIC CO.--DISTRIBUTION ELECTRIC
- CURRENT IN PRINCIPAL CITIES.
-
-
-Although the electric motor of to-day depends for practical value
-entirely upon the dynamo which supplies it with electric power,
-nevertheless the motor considerably antedated the dynamo. The genesis of
-the electric motor began in 1821 with Faraday's observation of the
-phenomenon of the conversion of an electric current into mechanical
-motion. In his experiment a copper wire was supported in a vertical
-position so as to dip into a cup of mercury, while a small bar magnet
-was anchored at one end by a thread to the bottom of the cup and floated
-in the mercury in upright position. The mass of mercury being connected
-to one pole of a battery, and the vertical wire to the other, it was
-found that when the circuit was completed by clipping the wire into the
-mercury, the floating bar magnet would revolve around the wire as a
-center.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 26.--BARLOW'S WHEEL.]
-
-In 1826 Barlow, of Woolwich, made his electrical spur wheel, Fig. 26,
-and in 1830 the Abbe Dal Negro, in Padua, is said to have constructed a
-sort of vibrating electrical pendulum, both of which devices were crude
-forms of magnetic engines. Dal Negro's machine, see Fig. 27, consisted
-of a magnet A, movable about an axis situated about one-third of its
-length, and the upper extremity of which was capable of oscillating
-between the two branches of an electro-magnet E. A current being sent
-into the electro-magnet, passed through an eight-cupped mercurial
-commutator C, which the oscillating magnet controlled by means of a rod
-_t_ and a fork F. When the magnet had been attracted toward one of the
-poles of the electro-magnet this very motion of attraction acting upon
-the commutator changed the direction of the current, and the magnet was
-repelled toward the other branch of the electro-magnet, and so on.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 27.--DAL NEGRO'S ELECTRIC MOTOR.]
-
-In 1828 Prof. Joseph Henry produced his energetic electro-magnets
-sustaining weights of some thousands of pounds, and gave prophetic
-suggestion of the possibilities of electricity as a motive power. In
-1831 he devised the electric motor shown in Fig. 28, which is described
-in Prof. Henry's own words as follows:
-
-"A B is the horizontal magnet, about seven inches long, and movable on
-an axis at the center; its two extremities when placed in a horizontal
-line are about one inch from the north poles of the upright magnets C
-and D. G and F are two large tumblers containing diluted acid, in each
-of which is immersed a plate of zinc surrounded with copper; _l m s t_
-are four brass thimbles soldered to the zinc and copper of the batteries
-and filled with mercury.
-
-"The galvanic magnet A B is wound with three strands of copper bell
-wire, each about twenty-five feet long; the similar ends of these are
-twisted together so as to form two stiff wires _q r_, which project
-beyond the extremity B, and dip into the thimbles _s t_.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 28.--PROF. HENRY'S ELECTRIC MOTOR.]
-
-"To the wires _q r_ two other wires are soldered so as to project in an
-opposite direction, and dip into the thimbles _l m_. The wires of the
-galvanic magnet have thus, as it were, four projecting ends; and by
-inspecting the figure it will be seen that the extremity _p_, which dips
-into the cup _m_, attached to the copper of the battery in G,
-corresponds to the extremity _r_ which dips into the cup _t_,
-connecting, with the zinc in battery F. When the batteries are in
-action, if the end B is depressed until _q r_ dips into the cups _s t_,
-A B instantly becomes a powerful magnet, having its north pole at B;
-this, of course, is repelled by the north pole D, while at the same time
-it is attracted by C; the position is consequently changed, and _o p_
-comes in contact with the mercury in _l m_; as soon as the communication
-is formed, the poles are reversed, and the position again changed. If
-the tumblers be filled with strong diluted acid, the motion is at first
-very rapid and powerful, but it soon almost entirely ceases. By
-partially filling the tumblers with weak acid, and occasionally adding a
-small quantity of fresh acid, a uniform motion, at the rate of
-seventy-five vibrations in a minute, has been kept up for more than an
-hour; with a large battery and very weak acid the motion might be
-continued for an indefinite length of time."
-
-Following Prof. Henry came Sturgeon's rotary motor of 1832, Jacobi's
-rotary motor of 1834, Fig. 29, which had electro-magnets both in the
-field and armature; Davenport's motor of 1834, Zabriskie's motor of
-1837, in which a vibrating magnet converted reciprocating into rotary
-motion; Davenport's motor of 1837 (U. S. Pat. No. 132, Feb. 25, 1837),
-Fig. 30; Page's rotary motor of 1838, Walkley's motor of 1838 (U. S.
-Pat. No. 809, June 27, 1838); Stimson's motor of 1838 (U. S. Pat. No.
-910, Sept. 12, 1838); Page's motor of 1839, Cook's of 1840 (U. S. Pat.
-No. 1,735, Aug. 25, 1840); Elias' motor of 1842, invented in Holland;
-Lillie's motor of 1850 (U S. Pat. No. 7,287, April 16, 1850); the Neff
-motor of 1851 (U. S. Pat. No. 7,889, Jan. 7, 1851), of which
-illustration is given in Fig. 31, and Page's motor of 1854 (U. S. Pat.
-No. 10,480, Jan. 31, 1854). In 1835 Davenport constructed a small
-circular railway at Springfield, Mass.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 29.--JACOBI'S ROTARY ELECTRIC MOTOR.]
-
-In 1839 Prof. Jacobi, with the aid of Emperor Nicholas, applied his
-electric motor to a boat 28 feet long, carrying fourteen passengers, and
-propelled the same at a speed of three miles an hour. About the same
-time Robert Davidson, a Scotchman, experimented with an electric railway
-car sixteen feet long, weighing six tons, and attaining a speed of four
-miles an hour. In 1840 Davenport, by means of his electric motor,
-printed a news sheet called the _Electro Magnet and Mechanics'
-Intelligencer_. In 1851 an electric locomotive made by Dr. Page in
-accordance with his subsequent patent of 1854, drew a train of cars from
-Washington to Bladensburg at a rate of nineteen miles an hour.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 30.--DAVENPORT MOTOR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 31.--NEFF MOTOR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 32.--WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC MOTOR.]
-
-All these motors were operated by voltaic batteries, and on account of
-the cost of the latter but little practical use of the electric motor
-was made until the dynamo was invented. In 1873 an accidental
-discovery led to the rapid practical development of the electric motor.
-It is said that at the industrial exhibition at Vienna in that year, a
-number of Gramme dynamos were being placed in position, and a workman
-in making the electrical connections for one of these machines,
-inadvertently connected it to another dynamo in active operation, and
-was surprised to find that the dynamo he was connecting began to revolve
-in the opposite direction. This was the clue that led to the important
-recognition of the structural identity of the dynamo and the modern
-type of electric motor. The dynamo and the electric motor then grew into
-development together, and the same inventors who brought the dynamo to
-its present high efficiency, produced electric motors of corresponding
-principles and value. In the illustration, Fig. 32, is shown a modern
-electric motor. It is a Westinghouse two-phase machine, of 300 horse
-power, of the self starting induction type, designed to operate at a
-speed of 500 revolutions per minute when supplied with two-phase
-currents of 3,000 alternations per minute and 2,000 volts pressure.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 33.--SIEMENS' FIRST ELECTRIC RAILWAY.]
-
-The most important application of the electric motor is for street car
-operation. The first electric railway was that of Dr. Werner Siemens, at
-Berlin, in 1879, an illustration of which is given in Fig. 33. The first
-electric railway in America was installed at Baltimore in 1885, and ran
-to Hampden, a distance of two miles.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 34.--OVERHEAD TROLLEY CAR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 35.--UNDERGROUND ELECTRIC TROLLEY SYSTEM.]
-
-The familiar overhead trolley cars, and the far superior conduit trolley
-system, represent perhaps the largest use made of electric motors. The
-motors are arranged under the cars in varying forms adapted to the
-structure of the car. In the overhead trolley, shown in Fig. 34, the
-current is taken from the overhead wire by a flexible trolley pole, and
-in the conduit system a trolley known as a plow extends from the bottom
-of the car through a narrow slot in the top of the conduit and makes a
-traveling contact with the conductor rails within the conduit, which
-carry the electric current. Fig. 35 is an end view of a street car of
-the latter type, with the conduit and conductor rails in cross section.
-The current goes from one rail to one bearing surface of the plow,
-thence to the motor on the car and back to the other bearing surface of
-the plow and the other conductor rail in the conduit.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 36.--THIRD RAIL SYSTEM ON THE N. Y., N. H. & H.
-RAILROAD--FRONT END OF MOTOR CAR.]
-
-A third system, which has supplanted to some extent the use of steam on
-short line railways, is the so-called third rail system, of which an
-example is seen in Fig. 36. A third conductor rail is placed between the
-usual track rails, and from this conductor the current is taken by a
-sliding shoe on the car, and carried to the motor and thence through the
-car wheels to the track rails. To reduce danger from the live rail, the
-third rail in some systems is made in sections, and, by an automatic
-switching process as the car moves along, only the sections of the rail
-beneath the car are brought into circuit, all other portions being cut
-out.
-
-The use of electric motors has greatly extended, cheapened, and
-expedited the street car service. All the principal thoroughfares of
-cities and even towns are now so equipped, and radiating suburban lines
-extend for miles from the city, affording for five cents a pleasant and
-cheap excursion for the poor to the green fields and fresh air of the
-country.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 37.--ELECTRIC RAILWAY MOTOR, CLOSED.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 38.--ELECTRIC RAILWAY MOTOR, OPENED.]
-
-Figs. 37 and 38 show an electric motor used on street cars, as made by
-the General Electric Company. Externally it presents the appearance of
-some curious, uncouth, cast iron box, which, to the uninitiated, piques
-the curiosity, and when opened adds no explanation of its real
-character. In it, however, the electrician finds a most interesting
-combination of metal and magnetism.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 39.--ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE OF B. & O. TUNNEL IN
-BALTIMORE.]
-
-In Fig. 39 is shown one of the most powerful electric locomotives ever
-constructed. It was built in 1895 by the General Electric Company for
-the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, to draw trains through the long tunnel
-from the Camden Street Station in Baltimore, for the purpose of avoiding
-smoke and gas in the tunnel, which is 7,339 feet long. The locomotive
-weighs ninety-six tons, or twenty-five tons above the average steam
-locomotive. It was designed to draw 100 trains daily each way, moving
-passenger trains of a maximum weight of 500 tons at thirty-five miles an
-hour, and freight trains of 1,200 tons at fifteen miles an hour. It has
-two trucks, and eight drive wheels of sixty-two inches diameter. There
-are four motors, two to each truck, each rated at 360 horse power.
-
-Other important applications of the electric motor are, the propelling
-of automobile carriages, small boats, and fish torpedoes, operating
-steering gear for ships, passenger elevators, rock drills in mines,
-running printing presses, fans, sewing machines, graphophones, and in
-all applications where space is limited and cleanliness a desideratum.
-
-According to Mulhall there were in 1890 in the United States and Canada
-about 645 miles of street railway operated by electricity. This about
-concluded the first decade of the life of the electric railway. Some
-idea of the rapid increase in this field may be had by the statement of
-the same authority that there were in 1890, at the end of this first
-decade, forty-five additional electric railroads in course of
-construction, aggregating 512 miles of way, which nearly doubled the
-previous existing mileage.
-
-In 1898 it was estimated that there were in the United States 14,000
-miles of electric railroads, with a nominal capital of $1,000,000,000,
-and employing 170,000 men. In the same year a single electrical contract
-was entered into between the Third Avenue Railroad and the Union Railway
-Company of New York, acting as one, and the Westinghouse Electrical and
-Manufacturing Company, amounting to $5,000,000. This was for the
-electrical equipment of their respective railway lines, and is the
-largest electrical contract ever made. The change in equipment from
-other motive power to the electric is rapidly going on in all
-directions, and the rapid succession of trains will doubtless cause it,
-for passenger traffic on short lines, to eventually supersede steam.
-
-The eighth annual report of the General Electric Company shows for the
-year 1899 orders received for railway and other electrical equipment
-amounting to $26,323,626; goods shipped, $22,379,463.75; profit on same,
-$3,805,860.18. The growth of its business from 1893 to 1899 shows the
-following per cent. of increase: In 1893, 36 per cent. above 1892; in
-1894, 126 per cent. above 1893; in 1895, 10 per cent. above 1894; in
-1896, 60 per cent. above 1895; in 1897, 60 per cent. above 1896; in
-1898, 21 per cent. above 1897; in 1899, 51 per cent. above 1898.
-
-The capitalization in electrical appliances in the United States in 1898
-is estimated at $1,900,000,000, most of which is devoted to industries
-in which the electric motor is used. The export of electrical apparatus
-from this country amounts to more than three million dollars annually,
-and it is said that there are eight times as many electric railways in
-the United States as in all the rest of the world combined.
-
-The use of electrical current in twelve principal cities in the United
-States was distributed in 1898 as follows:
-
-Lamps, arcs, and motors in sixteen candle power equivalents.
-
- Boston 616,000
- New York 1,718,000
- Chicago 1,278,000
- Brooklyn 322,000
- Baltimore 224,000
- Philadelphia 488,000
- St. Louis 303,000
- San Francisco 231,000
- Buffalo 125,000
- Rochester 184,000
- Cincinnati 201,000
- New Orleans 81,000
-
-Boston makes the largest use of electrical current in proportion to its
-population of any city in the world. Rochester is next. Both of these
-cities employ in electrical units of 16 c. p. equivalents, more than one
-electric lamp for every man, woman and child in their respective
-populations.
-
-The dynamo and the electric motor have together wrought this great
-development. The dynamo takes mechanical power and converts it into
-electrical energy, and the electric motor takes the electrical energy
-and converts it back into mechanical power. Standing behind them both,
-however, is the steam engine, and these three afford a beautiful
-illustration of the law of correlation of forces. The force starts with
-the combustion of coal under the boiler of the steam engine. When carbon
-unites chemically with oxygen, it is an exothermic reaction that gives
-off heat as correlated energy. The influence of heat on the molecules of
-water in the boiler causes them, by repellent action, to assume the
-qualities of an elastic gas, and this expanding as steam drives the
-piston of the steam engine. The steam engine overcomes by force the
-resistance existing between the dynamo's field magnets and armature
-coil, and sets up in the latter the correlated force of an electric
-current, and the electric current, traveling to its remote destination
-by suitable conductors, enters the coils of the electric motor in
-reverse relation to that of the dynamo, and in producing the reverse
-effect between the armature and field magnets, electrical energy is
-converted back into mechanical power. It is not possible to obtain in
-the electric motor the full equivalent of the dynamo's current, nor in
-the dynamo the full equivalent of the steam engine's power, nor in the
-steam engine the full equivalent of the chemical energy in the
-combustion of coal. Loss by radiation, by conduction, by friction, and
-by electrical resistance precludes this, but while there is loss in a
-utilitarian sense there is no real loss, for force like matter, is
-indestructible, and the proof of this universal law by Joule, in 1843,
-constitutes one of the highest triumphs of philosophy and one of the
-most important discoveries of the Nineteenth Century.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.
-
- VOLTAIC ARC BY SIR HUMPHREY DAVY--THE JABLOCHKOFF CANDLE--PATENTS OF
- BRUSH, WESTON AND OTHERS--SEARCH LIGHTS--GROVE'S FIRST INCANDESCENT
- LAMP--STARR-KING LAMP--MOSES FARMER LIGHTS FIRST DWELLING WITH
- ELECTRIC LAMPS--SAWYER-MAN LAMP--EDISON'S INCANDESCENT LAMP--
- EDISON'S THREE-WIRE SYSTEM OF CIRCUITS--STATISTICS.
-
-
-The popular idea of the electric light is, that it is a very recent
-invention, since even the younger generation remembers when there was no
-such thing in general use. It will surprise many readers, then, to know
-that the electric light had its birth in the first decade of the
-Nineteenth Century. In 1809 Sir Humphrey Davy discovered that when two
-pieces of charcoal, which formed the terminals of a powerful voltaic
-battery, were separated after having been brought into contact with each
-other, at the moment of separation a brilliant arc of flame passed from
-one piece of charcoal to the other, producing a temperature of 4,800°
-F., and that the intensity of the light exceeded all other known forms
-of light. Various improvements in the organization of devices were made
-for holding the two pieces of carbon, which in time assumed the form of
-two pencils in alignment, as in Fig. 40, and devices were provided for
-feeding one carbon toward the other as they burned away. Clock mechanism
-for thus regulating the feed was first employed, which served to
-automatically keep the carbons a definite distance apart, this being a
-necessary condition of the arc. For many years, however, the use of such
-a light was confined to laboratory illustration, for the reason that it
-could only be produced at great expense by a large number of voltaic
-batteries. Nevertheless very efficient electric lamps working by voltaic
-batteries were devised by Foucault, Duboscq, Deleuil and others as early
-as 1853. With the advent of the dynamo, however, the electric light grew
-rapidly and developed into conspicuous use. Even before the true dynamo
-was invented the magneto-electric machine was employed for producing an
-electric current to supply electric light. The so-called "Alliance"
-generator was, in 1858, used in the South Foreland lighthouse in England
-to supply the arc lamps, and the beams of the electric light then, for
-the first time, were turned seaward as a beacon for the mariner.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 40.--SIMPLE ELECTRIC ARC LAMP.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 41.--JABLOCHKOFF CANDLE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 42.--WESTON ARC LAMP.]
-
-Among the early developments of the electric light was the Jablochkoff
-candle, see Fig. 41, brought out in 1877. In this device two parallel
-sticks of carbon G G were separated by a non-conducting layer of kaolin
-I, and were held in an asbestos ferrule A. Metal tubes T T connected the
-conducting wires F F to the carbons. The arc of flame passed from the
-top of one carbon to the other, fusing the separating layer of kaolin,
-and the whole burned down together as a candle. This form of electric
-light was extensively used in Paris in 1877, and also in London, and
-attracted considerable attention.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 43.--ARC LAMP FEED MECHANISM.]
-
-From the Jablochkoff candle the arc light has resumed the form of two
-vertically aligned carbons, and after passing through various forms and
-patterns, of which the Weston lamp, Fig. 42, is a modern type, has come
-into such universal and conspicuous use for lighting the streets of our
-cities, and is so well known to-day, that but little need be said of its
-development, since its real character has undergone no change in
-principle, the improvements relating chiefly to means for regulating the
-feed of the carbons and maintaining them at a uniform distance apart, so
-as to avoid flickering. This result is obtained by automatic mechanism
-operated by the electric current acting upon electro-magnets, as shown
-in Fig. 43, in which the electro-magnets raise the upper carbon when it
-is too close to the lower carbon, and lower the upper carbon when the
-space becomes too great from burning away. Among those who have
-contributed to the development of the arc light the names of Brush,
-Weston, and Thomson and Houston are most conspicuous, and the patents of
-Brush, No. 203,411, May 7, 1878, and No. 212,183, Feb. 11, 1879, and
-Weston, No. 285,451, Sept. 25, 1883, are the most representative
-developments.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 44.--NINE THOUSAND CANDLE POWER ARC LAMP.]
-
-The applications of the arc light have been brilliant beyond the dreams
-of the most sanguine inventor. In the illustrations number 44, 45 and
-46, is shown a gigantic electric light beacon manufactured by Henry
-Lepaute, of Paris, and first exhibited in this country at the Chicago
-World's Fair, in 1893. It consists of two great lenses, each nine feet
-in diameter, between which, in their focus, is placed a 9,000 candle
-power arc light. The great lantern, Fig. 45, is carried by a vertical
-shaft, which terminates at its lower end in a hollow drum, which latter
-floats in a bath of mercury. Although the weight is estimated at several
-tons, so sensitive is its poise on the mercury that the enormous lantern
-may be easily rotated by the pressure of one's finger. Each lens
-consists of concentric segments, see Fig. 46, 190 in number, surrounding
-a central disk, which together cause the rays to issue in parallel
-lines. The nine-foot beam of light thus projected is of 90,000,000
-candle power, and if placed at a sufficient altitude to avoid the
-curvature of the earth's surface, its light would be visible at the
-range of 146.9 nautical miles.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 45.--NINETY MILLION CANDLE POWER BIVALVE LENS.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 46.--FRONT VIEW OF LENS.]
-
-Better known to the patrons of our excursion boats and the visitors to
-our splendid battleships, are the electric search lights. The greatest
-example of all search lights, however, is not to be found on the sea,
-but in the picturesque altitudes of the Sierra Madres in Southern
-California. At the summit of Mount Lowe, in the neighborhood of
-Pasadena, is the largest search light in the world, shown in
-illustration, Fig. 48. It is of 3,000,000 candle power, stands eleven
-feet high, and its total weight is 6,000 pounds. Its light may be seen
-for 150 miles out on the ocean, and as its powerful beam is thrown from
-mountain top to mountain top hundreds of miles apart, it adds the
-illumination of art to the sublimity of nature, and seems a fitting
-jewel to this lofty crown of Mother Earth.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 47.--SEARCH LIGHT WITH MACHINE GUN REPELLING NIGHT
-ATTACK OF TORPEDO BOAT.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 48.--SEARCH LIGHT ON MOUNT LOWE, CALIFORNIA.]
-
-Brilliant as is the arc lamp, far more in evidence is the incandescent
-lamp. The little glass bulb with its tiny thread of light we find
-everywhere. Popular opinion and the decision of the courts accord this
-invention to Thomas A. Edison. The evolution of the incandescent lamp
-is, however, interesting, and may be briefly sketched as follows:
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 49.--FIRST INCANDESCENT LAMP, BY PROFESSOR GROVE,
-1840.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 50.--STARR-KING LAMP.]
-
-In 1845 there appeared in the _Philosophical Magazine_ a description of
-what was probably the first incandescent electric light. It was devised
-in 1840 by William Robert Grove, the inventor of the Grove battery, and
-is illustrated in Fig. 49. It is stated that he experimented and read by
-it for hours. It was described as follows:
-
-"A coil of platinum wire is attached to two copper wires, the lower
-parts of which, or those most distant from the platinum, are well
-varnished; these are fixed erect in a glass of distilled water, and
-another cylindrical glass, closed at the upper end, is inverted over
-them, so that its open mouth rests on the bottom of the former glass;
-the projecting ends of the copper wires are connected with a voltaic
-battery (two or three pairs of the nitric acid combination), and the
-ignited wire now gives a steady light. Instead of making the wires pass
-through the water, they may be fixed to metallic caps well luted to the
-necks of a glass globe."
-
-In 1845 August King patented, in England, an incandescent lamp, having
-an unsealed platinum burner, and also a carbon in a vacuum. Mr. King
-acted as agent for an American inventor, Mr. Starr, and the lamp came
-to be known as the Starr-King lamp, shown in Fig. 50. The burner was a
-thin plate or pencil of carbon B, enclosed in a Torricellian vacuum at
-the end of an inverted barometer tube, and held between the terminals of
-the connecting wires leading to a battery. In 1859 Moses G. Farmer
-lighted his house at Salem, Mass., by a series of subdivided electric
-lights, which was the first private dwelling lighted by electricity, and
-probably the first illustration of the feasibility of subdividing the
-electric current through a number of electric lamps.
-
-In 1877 William E. Sawyer applied for a United States patent for an
-electric engineering and lighting system, and in January, 1878, entered
-into a partnership with Albon Man, and the "Sawyer-Man" lamp, see Fig.
-51, was produced. In this an incandescent rod of carbon was inclosed in
-an atmosphere of nitrogen. This marked the beginning of a period of
-great activity in this field, which finally resulted in the well known
-form of electric lamp shown in Fig. 52, which was patented by Edison,
-No. 223,898, January 27, 1880. The distinctive features of this lamp
-consisted in a bowed filament of carbon of very thin, thread-like
-character, which was made of paper or carbonized cellulose. This, when
-sealed in a vacuum, would not burn away, but would give the proper
-incandescence, and by its small transverse dimension and high
-resistance to the current, permitted a proper distribution of the
-electric current to a number of lamps, without a special regulator for
-each lamp; and which could also be made so cheaply that the lamp could
-be thrown away when the burner was finally broken. Edison's claim on
-this feature of the electric lamp was sharply contested in an
-interference in the Patent Office by Sawyer and Man, with the decisions
-alternating first in favor of one and then of the other, but which
-finally resulted in the grant of a patent to Sawyer and Man, on May 12,
-1885. A struggle then began in the courts, which on October 4, 1892,
-terminated in a decision by the United States Court of Appeals (Edison
-Electric Light Company vs. United States Lighting Company), awarding the
-incandescent lamp to Edison.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 51.--SAWYER-MAN LAMP.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 52.--EDISON'S ELECTRIC LAMP.
-
-_A_--Exhausted globe. _B_--Carbon filament. _CC_--Wires sealed in glass.
-_D_--Line of fusion of two parts of globe. _EF_--Insulating material.
-_G_--Screw-threads. _HI_--Metal socket. _J_--Fixture arm _K_--Circuit
-controlling key.]
-
-In the early demonstration given by Edison great disturbance was caused
-in the stock exchanges among the holders of gas shares, as the
-sensational reportings in the press seemed to indicate that gas was to
-be superseded entirely. This uneasiness on the London Stock Exchange
-amounted on October 11, 1878, to a veritable panic, but while the
-electric light has more than fulfilled the prophecy made for it in many
-directions, gas shares still continue to be good stocks.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 53.--ELECTRIC LIGHT CIRCUIT.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 54.--EDISON'S THREE WIRE SYSTEM OF ELECTRIC LIGHT
-CIRCUITS.]
-
-Closely allied to the practical use of the incandescent lamp is the
-method of supplying and regulating the current from the dynamo. Although
-the alternating current is used for arc light, only the continuous
-current can be used for the incandescent lights, and the relation of
-the dynamo and the incandescent lamps is shown in Fig. 53, in which L
-represents the lamps between the main conducting wires leading from the
-dynamo, which latter has the coils of the field magnets arranged in a
-shunt or branch circuit, in which is interposed a regulator R in the
-form of a resistance coil with movable switch lever, by which more or
-less of the current is allowed to flow through the field magnet coils to
-suit the work being done. In late years automatic regulators have been
-provided for accomplishing this result. In Fig. 54 is shown what is
-known as the Edison "three wire system," patented March 20, 1883, No.
-274,290. In this two dynamos are used as at D¹ D², and the three wires
-emerge from the dynamos, one from the negative pole of one dynamo,
-another from the positive pole of the other dynamo, and the third or
-middle one is connected to both the other poles (positive and negative),
-of the two dynamos. For purposes of illustration, this may be compared
-to a three-storied arrangement of current, the upper wire representing
-the third story, the middle wire the second story, and the bottom one
-the first story. The fall from either story to the next represents the
-working energy, but from the top wire to the bottom would be equal to a
-fall from the third story to the first. The purpose of this arrangement
-is to save expense in copper wire, for while three main wires are used
-instead of two, the aggregate weight of the wires (when the lamps are
-arranged as shown), may be made so much less than two heavy wires as to
-make a very great saving in copper.
-
-The uses of the incandescent light are legion. Besides those which are
-of common observation it is used for lighting the interior of mines,
-caves, and the dark apartments of ships, and does not foul the air. It
-is also used by divers in submarine operations; in the formation of
-advertising signs, and in pyrotechnics, but perhaps one of the most
-extraordinary uses to which it has been put is in exploring the interior
-of the human stomach and other cavities of the body, a patent for which
-was granted to M. C. F. Nitze, No. 218,055, July 29, 1879.
-
-When an electric lamp is arranged with the opposite ends of the carbon
-burner connected, one to the outgoing, the other to the incoming wires
-from a dynamo, so as to be bridged across, this arrangement is said to
-be "in multiple" or "in parallel," and the lamps bear the analogy of
-horses drawing abreast, and when the opposite ends of the carbon burner
-are placed in a gap or break in either the outgoing or the incoming
-wire, the arrangement is said to be "in series," and the lamps bear the
-analogy of horses in tandem.
-
-Explanation of electric nomenclature can best be given by the analogy in
-hydrostatics of a stream of water passing in the hose pipe from a
-fire-engine. The "watt" indicates the sum total unit of electrical power
-for a definite period of time, and in the hose pipe would be
-represented by the effective force of a definite volume of water,
-passing at a definite pressure, during a definite period of time. "Volt"
-is a pressure unit of electro-motive force, and would be represented by
-the power of the engine. "Ampere" would be the quantity, or volume unit,
-or cross section of the hose pipe, and the "ohm" would be the unit of
-frictional resistance. The "watt" then would be the "volt" multiplied by
-the "ampere"; thus 500 watts would be 10 amperes at 50 volts, or 50
-amperes at 10 volts. Low tension circuits, such as are used for
-incandescent lights, range from 100 to 240 volts and are harmless.
-Trolley circuits are usually 500 volts, and will kill an animal, but are
-not necessarily fatal to man. High tension currents from 2,000 to 5,000
-volts, such as are used for arc lights, are fatal.
-
-Of all modern inventions, not one has advertised itself in such a
-spectacular way as the electric light. Those who have seen the
-magnificent electrical displays at the Chicago Fair, the electrical
-celebrations in New York, and the Omaha Exhibition, need no introduction
-to its marvelous splendors and beauties. In the annual report for 1898
-of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, its statement
-shows that for that city alone the gross earnings were $2,898,021. There
-were 9,990 users of the electric light, 443,074 incandescent lamps, and
-7,353 arc lights. It is estimated that the electric light stations and
-plants in the United States alone amount to $600,000,000. In the year
-1899 a single manufacturing concern (The General Electric Company)
-received orders for 10,000,000 incandescent lamps, which is about
-one-half of the present annual production. Sixteen years ago the lamps
-were $1 each; to-day they can be bought for 18 cents.
-
-What the future has in store for the further development of the electric
-light no one may dare predict. Already a different form or manifestation
-of electric light has been demonstrated, in which neither the electric
-arc nor the incandescent filament is used, but a peculiar glow is seen
-disassociated from a direct material habitation, and produced by
-currents of enormous frequency and high potential, in accordance with
-the patent to Tesla, No. 454,622, June 23, 1891. Other worthy inventors
-in this field are at work, and its development will be one of the
-interesting problems of the Twentieth Century.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-THE TELEPHONE.
-
- PRELIMINARY SUGGESTIONS AND EXPERIMENTS OF BOURSEUL, REIS AND
- DRAWBAUGH--FIRST SPEAKING TELEPHONE BY PROF. BELL--DIFFERENCES
- BETWEEN REIS' AND BELL'S TELEPHONES--THE BLAKE TRANSMITTER--
- BERLINER'S VARIATION OF RESISTANCE, AND ELECTRIC UNDULATIONS BY
- VARIATION OF PRESSURE--EDISON'S CARBON MICROPHONE--THE TELEPHONE
- EXCHANGE--STATISTICS.
-
-
-[Greek: Têle] (far), and [Greek: phônê] (sound), are the Greek roots
-from which the word telephone is derived. It has the significance of
-transmitting sound to distant points, and is a word antedating the
-present speaking telephone, although this fact is generally lost sight
-of in the dazzling brilliancy of this latter invention. In the effort to
-hear better, the American Indian was accustomed to place his ear to the
-ground. Children of former generations also made use of a toy known as
-the "lovers' telegraph"--a piece of string held under tension between
-the flexible bottoms of two tin boxes--which latter when spoken into
-transmitted through the string the vibrations from one box to the other,
-and made audible words spoken at a distance. These expedients simply
-made available the superior conductivity of the solid body over the air
-to transmit sound waves. The electro-magnetic telephone operates on an
-entirely different principle. It is a marvelous creation of genius, and
-stands alone as the unique, superb, and unapproachable triumph of the
-Nineteenth Century. For subtilty of principle, impressiveness of action,
-and breadth of results, there is nothing comparable with it among
-mechanical agencies. In its wonderful function of placing one
-intelligent being in direct vocal and sympathetic communication with
-another a thousand miles away, its intangible and mysterious mode of
-action suggests to the imagination that unseen medium of prayer rising
-from the conscious human heart to its omniscient and responsive God. The
-telegraph and railroad had already brought all the peoples of the earth
-into intimate communication and made them close kin, but the telephone
-transformed them into the closer relationship of families, and the tiny
-wire, sentient and responsive with its unlimited burden of human
-thoughts and human feelings, forms one of the great vital cords in the
-solidarity of the human family.
-
-It is a curious fact that many, and perhaps most, great inventions have
-been in the nature of accidental discoveries, the by-products of thought
-directed in another channel, and seeking other results, but the
-telephone does not belong to this class. It is the logical and
-magnificent outcome of persistent thought and experiment in the
-direction of the electrical transmittal of speech. Prof. Bell had his
-objective point, and keeping this steadily in view, worked faithfully
-for the accomplishment of his object in producing a speaking telephone,
-until success crowned his work. He probably did not realize at first the
-full magnitude of the achievement, but looking at it from the end of the
-Nineteenth Century, he might well exclaim in the language of Horace:
-"_Exegi monumentum acre perennius_."
-
-Prof. Bell's conception of the telephone dates back as far as 1874. His
-first United States patent, No. 174,465, was granted March 7, 1876, and
-his second January 30, 1877, No. 186,787. It is generally the fate of
-most inventions, even of a meritorious order, to languish for many
-years, and frequently through the whole term of the patent, before
-receiving full recognition and adoption by the public, but the meteoric
-brilliancy of this invention at its first public announcement astonished
-the masses, and inspired the admiration of the savants of the world.
-When exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, in 1876, it
-was spoken of by Sir William Thomson, and Prof. Henry, as the "greatest
-by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph."
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 55.--PHILIP REIS' TELEPHONE.]
-
-It is always the fate of the author of any great invention to be
-compelled to defend himself against the claims of others. It is one of
-the failings of human nature to lay claim to that which somebody else
-has obtained, and is an old story which finds its first illustration in
-the squabbles of childhood. When a troop of prattling boys hunt
-butterflies among the daisies, and some sharp-eyed youngster has
-captured a prize, there are always others of his mates to cry, "I saw it
-first," and men are but grown-up boys. So in the history of the
-telephone, Prof. Bell has found competitors for this honor, and it is
-astonishing to know how close some of these prior experimenters came to
-success without reaching it. In 1854 Bourseul, of Paris _suggested_ an
-electric telephone, and in 1861 Philip Reis _devised_ an electric
-telephone which would transmit musical tones. Daniel Drawbaugh, of
-Pennsylvania, is alleged to have made an electric telephone in
-1867-1868, and his claims against the Bell interests were fought
-vigorously in the Patent Office, and in the courts, but without success.
-Elisha Gray's claims perhaps came nearer to establishing for him a share
-in the honor of inventing the speaking telephone than any other, for he
-filed a caveat in the United States Patent Office upon the same day
-(February 14, 1876), upon which Prof. Bell's application for a patent
-was made. But in the contest in the Patent Office with Gray, Edison,
-Berliner, Richmond, Holcombe, Farmer, Dolbear, Volker, and others, it
-was decided that Prof. Bell was the first to make a practically
-effective speaking telephone, and this conclusion has been sustained by
-the courts. Reis was a poor German school teacher at Friedrichsdorf, and
-in 1860 he took a coil of wire, a knitting needle, the skin of a German
-sausage, the bung of a beer barrel, and a strip of platinum, and
-constructed the first electric telephone. A typical form of his
-transmitter, see Fig. 55, was a box covered with a vibrating membrane E,
-and provided with a mouth-piece at one side. A platinum strip F was
-attached to the membrane or vibrating diaphragm E, and a platinum
-pointed hammer G rested lightly on the platinum strip F. The hammer G
-and platinum strip F were connected to the opposite ends of a wire,
-which had in its circuit a battery and a receiver. Air vibrations in the
-nature of sound waves in the box caused the diaphragm E to vibrate, and
-a separating make-and-break contact between the platinum strip F and the
-platinum point of hammer G caused a series of separate and distinct
-broken impulses to traverse the battery circuit and be received upon the
-receiver, which latter consisted of an iron rod with a coil of wire
-around it. That Reis' transmitter did alternately make and break the
-circuit, seems clear from his own memoir. A translation from this
-memoir, taken from the annual report (Jahresberichte) of the Physical
-Society of Frankfurt am Main for 1860-1861, reads as follows:
-
-"At the first condensation (of air vibrations) the hammer-shaped little
-wire _d_ (G in our illustration), will be pushed back. At the succeeding
-rarefaction it cannot follow the return vibration of the membrane, and
-the current going through the little strip (of platinum) remains
-interrupted so long as until the membrane driven by a new condensation
-presses the little strip against _d_ (the hammer G) once more. In this
-way each sound wave effects an opening and closing of the current."
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 56.--PROF. BELL'S TELEPHONE, MARCH 7, 1876.]
-
-Reis evidently did not know how to make the vibrations of his diaphragm
-translate themselves into exactly commensurate and correlated electric
-impulses of equal rapidity, range, and quality. If he had done this, he
-would have had a speaking telephone, but a make-and-break contact could
-never do it, and hence he in his later instruments attached to them a
-telegraphic key in order that the sending operator might communicate
-with the receiving operator. If Reis' telephone had been a speaking
-telephone, this would have been unnecessary. Furthermore, it is
-inconceivable how the intelligent, progressive, and scientific Germans
-could have failed to have given to a speaking telephone in 1860 the
-immediate honor and attention that it deserved. In America, the Bell
-speaking telephone, invented in 1876, was known all over the civilized
-world the same year. Reis' broken contact circuit would transmit musical
-tones, because musical tones vary chiefly in rapidity of vibration,
-rather than in range, or quality, and the chattering contacts of Reis'
-telephone would transmit musical tones because said contracts could be
-adjusted to the practically uniform range of vibration. Prof. Bell,
-however, had made a special study of articulate speech, and knew that
-speech was not essentially musical, but was composed of an irregular and
-discordant medley of vowel and consonant sounds, whose vibrations varied
-not only in pitch or rapidity like musical tones, but also in the
-quality or kind of vibrations as to range and loudness. In his
-invention, therefore, he did not make and break the circuit as did Reis,
-through the contact points, but he used the more sensitive plan of a
-constantly closed circuit, and merely caused the current to undulate in
-it by a principle of magnetic induction. This principle was first
-discovered by Oersted, and developed into the well known fact that when
-a piece of iron is moved back and forth from the poles of an
-electro-magnet an induced current is made to oscillate in the helix of
-the electro-magnet. The difference between Reis' separating
-make-and-break circuit, and the Bell continuous but undulating current,
-might be illustrated by the difference between the impulses delivered by
-the beating of the drum sticks on the head of a drum, on the one hand,
-and the alternate pulling and slackening of a kite cord, on the other.
-In the successive impacts on the head of a drum there could not be so
-sensitive a transfer of motion to the lower head of the drum as there
-would be transferred to the kite by the movement of the hand holding the
-kite cord. Reis' plan resembled the broken drum beats, and Bell's the
-kite cord, which always preserved a certain amount of tension. Bell
-accomplished his object by the means shown in Figs. 56 and 57, in which
-Fig. 56 represents his first patent of March 7, 1876, and Fig. 57 his
-second patent of January 30, 1877. In both cases the current was a
-continuously closed one, and was not alternately made and broken as by
-the separating contacts of Reis. Prof. Bell caused the vocal air
-vibrations to undulate or oscillate the continuously closed circuit by
-the principle of magnetic induction as follows (see Fig. 56): He caused
-diaphragm _a_, when spoken against, to vibrate the armature _c_ in front
-of the electro-magnet _b_, but without touching it, and as the armature
-approached and receded from the electro-magnet it induced an undulating
-but never broken current in the helix of this electro-magnet and along
-the line to and through the helix of the electro-magnet _f_ at the
-distant receiver, and this undulating current, influencing the armature
-_h_, which touched the diaphragm _i_ but not the electro-magnet,
-produced in the attractive influence of the magnet on this armature and
-diaphragm, vibrations of the same rapidity, range, and quality as those
-vocal vibrations that acted upon the first diaphragm _a_. In other
-words, the sequence of transference was air vibrations in A, mechanical
-vibrations of diaphragm _a_, electrical undulations traversing the line,
-induced vibrations in armature _h_ and diaphragm _i_, and air vibrations
-again resolved back into sounds of articulate speech, the same as those
-spoken into A. It will be perceived that in the Bell telephone both
-transmitter and receiver were of identical construction. This is better
-shown in Fig. 57 of his later patent, in which the horizontal line below
-the electro-magnet on one side represents a metal transmitting
-diaphragm, and the horizontal line under the electro-magnet at the other
-side was the receiving diaphragm. Not only were the sounds thus
-reproduced, but as the circuit was continuous and never broken by any
-separating contacts, the extreme sensitiveness of the electric
-vibrations set up by magnetic induction was such that the discordant and
-irregular quality of the vibrations of articulate speech were
-transferred and reproduced with exact fidelity, as well as the musical
-tones, and this rendered the speaking telephone a success. In later
-telephones the current is actually transmitted through the contacting
-points, but this only became practicable after the carbon microphone
-transmitter was invented, in which the essential undulations of the
-electric current were produced in another way, _i. e._, by the
-application of the important discovery that the varying of the pressure
-on carbon, by vibration, varied its conductivity, and in this way
-produced the same result of undulating a current without breaking it.
-This in no wise detracts from the value of the principle of the
-continuous undulating current discovered and employed by Prof. Bell,
-between which and the breaks of the hard platinum points of Reis there
-is a difference as wide as the difference between success and failure.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 57.--PROF. BELL'S TELEPHONE, JANUARY 30, 1877.]
-
-The form in which Prof. Bell's telephone was placed before the public
-was not that shown in the patents, but it quickly assumed the well-known
-shape of an elongated cylinder forming a handle, with a flaring
-mouth-piece at one end. This development in form is credited to Dr.
-Channing in 1877, and it is the familiar form to-day, whose internal
-construction is shown in Fig. 58. The handle is made of hard rubber, and
-the cap or mouth-piece, which is screwed thereon, is also of hard
-rubber. The diaphragm A, of thin ferrotype plate, is clamped at its
-edges between the cap, or mouth-piece, and the handle. The compound
-magnet B is composed of four thin flat bar magnets, arranged in pairs on
-opposite sides of the flat end of the soft iron pole piece _c_ at one
-end, and the soft iron spacing piece _d_ at the other end, the magnets
-being clamped to these pieces with like poles all in one direction. The
-end of the pole piece _c_ extends to within 1/100 to 2/100 of an inch of
-the diaphragm, or as near as possible so that the diaphragm does not
-touch it when it vibrates. On the pole piece _c_ is placed a wooden
-spool on which is wound silk-covered wire (No. 34, Am. W. G.). This wire
-fills the spool, and its ends are soldered to two insulated wires which
-pass through a flexible rubber disc _f_ below the spool and extend
-respectively to the two binding posts at the opposite end of the handle.
-The current passes from one binding post and its connecting wire,
-through the wire on the spool, and thence to the other connecting wire
-and binding post. When used as a transmitter, vocal vibrations acting
-mechanically on the diaphragm A produce undulatory vibrations by
-magnetic induction in the spool of wire, which are transmitted to the
-other end of the line; and when used as a receiver, the undulatory
-vibrations from the remote end of the line produce mechanical vibrations
-in the diaphragm, which set up air vibrations that are reproductions of
-articulate sounds.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 58.--LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF BELL TELEPHONE.]
-
-Although the Bell telephone is both a transmitter and receiver, in
-practice a more sensitive and better form of transmitter has taken its
-place. That most generally used and best known is the "Blake
-transmitter," which was brought out about 1880. This employs two
-important elements. The first is the carbon microphone, which is a means
-for producing the undulations in the current by the variations in
-pressure on carbon contacts, and the second is an induction coil
-operated by a local battery, whose primary circuit passes through the
-contacts of the carbon microphone, and whose secondary circuit passes
-over the line. These fundamental elements of the Blake transmitter were
-the inventions of Berliner and Edison, and were made in 1877. The broad
-idea of producing electric undulations by varying the pressure between
-electrodes by vocal vibrations, was a large bone of contention in the
-Patent Office between various inventors. An application for a patent for
-the same was filed in the Patent Office by Emile Berliner, June 4, 1877,
-which was contested in an interference by Gray, Edison, Richmond,
-Dolbear, Holcombe, Prof. Bell, and others. After fourteen years of
-litigation the patent was finally awarded to Berliner. The patent
-granted to him November 17, 1891, No. 463,569, is a valuable one, and
-has become the property of the American Bell Telephone Company. The
-application of a low resistance conductor (carbon) in a microphone was
-invented by Edison as early as 1877, but his patent, No. 474,230, did
-not issue until May 3, 1892, on account of the interference with
-Berliner on the broader principle.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 59.--BLAKE TRANSMITTER.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 60.--DIAGRAM OF CIRCUITS IN BLAKE TRANSMITTER.]
-
-The Blake transmitter takes its name from the inventor of its mechanical
-features, who has assembled in it the fundamental principles of Berliner
-and Edison in a sensitive and practical mechanical construction, covered
-by minor patents, dated November 29, 1881. It is the little box in the
-middle of the familiar telephone outfit into which the talking is done.
-Its internal construction is shown in Fig. 59. To the rear of the door
-is secured the cast iron circular ring A, inside of which lies the
-Russia iron diaphragm B, cushioned at its edges with a rubber band. A
-circular seat a little larger than the diaphragm is formed in the iron
-ring, and on this seat the diaphragm rests. A short, thin metal plate
-attached to the ring A on the right hand side clamps the diaphragm in
-position by resting squarely on the rubber edge of the diaphragm. Its
-function is like that of a hinge, which allows the diaphragm to freely
-swing inward. A steel damping spring is secured to the ring at the
-opposite edge of the diaphragm, and has its free end provided with a
-rubber glove on which is cemented a thin piece of fluffy woolen
-material. The padded end of the damping spring rests against the
-diaphragm and prevents excessive vibration. The iron ring A has at its
-bottom a projection holding an adjusting screw, and to a similar top
-projection is attached by screws a brass spring, from which depends
-another casting C, supporting the microphone apparatus, which is best
-shown in the diagram, Fig. 60. In this diagram A is one terminal of the
-battery connected by wire S to the hinge H of the box. From the other
-leaf of the hinge the wire M passes to K, where it is soldered to the
-upper end of a German silver spring I. At K this spring is clamped and
-insulated from the iron work by two pieces of hard rubber. On the lower
-end of the spring I is soldered a short piece of thick platinum wire,
-whose ends are rounded into heads, one of which bears against the
-diaphragm N, and the other against the carbon button J. This button is
-attached to a small brass weight, and is supported by a spring R,
-clamped at its upper end to the metal support T. This spring is
-surrounded its entire length by rubber tubing to deaden vibration. The
-transmitter is adjusted by screw O, which, acting upon casting T, brings
-the carbon button, the platinum heads, and also the diaphragm N, against
-each other with a regulated pressure. The current passes from the part K
-to the spring I, the platinum head, carbon button J, and its supporting
-spring R, to metal casting T, and ring V, thence by wire L to the lower
-hinge G, by wire P to the primary of the induction coil, and thence by
-wire Y to binding post B, the two binding posts A B being the two
-battery terminals. The secondary wire E of the induction coil has its
-ends connected by wires X and W with the two binding posts C B, which
-are the line terminals, or one the line terminal and the other the
-ground connection. It will thus be seen that the primary current passes
-through the transmitter, and the secondary traverses the line. The most
-familiar forms of the telephone are those seen in Figs. 61 and 62, but
-the ideal form is rigged in a cabinet or little room, which excludes all
-extraneous interfering sounds.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 61.--WALL TELEPHONE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 62.--DESK TELEPHONE.]
-
-With the Bell receiver and the Blake transmitter a good practical
-telephone system may be constructed, but the improvements which have
-been made in the short life of the telephone are beyond adequate
-description, or even mention. They relate to the call bell, the battery,
-the switchboard, meters for registering calls, conductors, conduits,
-connections, lightning arresters, switches, anti-induction devices,
-repeaters, and systems. Among those most prominently identified with its
-development are Bell, Edison, Berliner, Hughes, Gray, Dolbear and
-Phelps. The activity in this field is best illustrated by the fact that
-the art of telephony, begun practically in 1876, has at the end of the
-Nineteenth Century grown into some 3,000 United States patents on the
-subject.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 63.--TELEPHONE EXCHANGE.]
-
-That which has given the telephone its greatest commercial value is the
-"exchange" system, by which at a central office any member of a
-telephonic community may be instantly put into communication with any
-other member of that community. For this purpose, see Fig. 63, a
-continuous switchboard is arranged along the side of a large room and
-occupies most of that side of the wall. It comprises a great array of
-annunciator drops, spring jacks with plug seats, and connecting cords
-with metal plugs at their opposite ends. Each subscriber is connected to
-his own spring jack and annunciator drop, and his call to central
-office (from his magneto-bell) throws down the annunciator drop which
-bears the number of his telephone, and announces to the attendant his
-desire to communicate with another. To insure the attention of the
-attendant, a tiny electric lamp is by the same action lighted directly
-in front of her, which acts as a pilot signal to call her attention to
-the drop. The attendant now puts a plug in that spring jack, which
-automatically restores the drop, and she then asks the number which the
-subscriber wants, and, upon ascertaining this, puts the plug at the
-other end of the connecting cord into the spring jack of the subscriber
-wanted, and by this action disconnects her own telephone. As every
-telephone subscriber has in the central office an apparatus exclusively
-his own, it will be seen that a telephone community of several thousands
-of subscribers involves an imposing array of multiple connections, and a
-great expense in construction. Girls are chosen as exchange attendants
-because their voices are clearer. Every telephone jack, however, does
-not have its Jill, for each girl has charge of a hundred or more jacks,
-and wears constantly on her head a telephone of special shape, embracing
-her head like a child's hoop comb, but terminating with an ear-piece at
-one end that covers one ear. She is too busy to waste time in adjusting
-an ordinary telephone to her ear, and so wears one of special design all
-the time.
-
-In the twentieth annual report of the American Bell Telephone Company,
-for the year 1899, the number of telephones in use January 1, 1900, by
-that company alone, in the United States, was 1,580,101; the miles of
-wire were 1,016,777, and the daily connections for persons using the
-telephone were 5,173,803. The gross earnings of the company were
-$5,760,106.45, and it paid in dividends $3,882,945. The total number of
-exchange stations of the Bell Company in the principal countries of the
-world are: United States, 632,946; Germany, 212,121; Great Britain,
-112,840; Sweden, 63,685; France, 44,865; Switzerland, 35,536; Russia,
-26,865; Austria, 26,664; Norway, 25,376. The United States has nearly
-85,000 more than all the others put together.
-
-Since the expiration of the Bell patents many smaller companies have
-sprung up, and the number of telephones in use has more than doubled in
-the last five years. Long distance telephony is now carried on up to
-nearly 2,000 miles, and one may to-day lie in bed in New York and listen
-to a concert in Chicago, and the vocal exchange of business and social
-intercourse between cities has become so large a feature of modern life
-as to justify the organization of a great company for this service
-alone.
-
-In the Old Testament, Book of Job, xxxviii. chapter, 35th verse, it is
-written: "Canst thou send lightnings that they may go and say unto
-thee--'Here we are?'" For thousands of years this challenge to Job has
-been looked upon as a feat whose execution was only within the power of
-the Almighty; but to-day the inventor--that patient modern Job--has
-accomplished this seemingly impossible task, for at the end of this
-Nineteenth Century of the Christian Era, the telephone makes the
-lightning man's vocal messenger, tireless, faithful, and true, knowing
-no prevarication, and swifter than the winged messenger of the gods.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-
-ELECTRICITY--MISCELLANEOUS.
-
- STORAGE BATTERY--BATTERIES OF PLANTÉ, FAURE AND BRUSH--ELECTRIC
- WELDING--DIRECT GENERATION OF ELECTRICITY BY COMBUSTION--ELECTRIC
- BOATS--ELECTRO-PLATING--EDISON'S ELECTRIC PEN--ELECTRICITY IN
- MEDICINE--ELECTRIC CAUTERY--ELECTRICAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS--ELECTRIC
- BLASTING.
-
-
-A prominent factor in the electrical art is the _Storage Battery_,
-Secondary Battery, or Accumulator, as it is variously called. A storage
-battery acts upon the same general principle as the ordinary galvanic or
-voltaic battery in giving forth electrical current as the correlated
-equivalent of the chemical force, but differs from it in this respect,
-that when the elements of a primary battery are used up, the battery is
-exhausted beyond repair. With the storage battery, it may be regenerated
-at will by simply subjecting it to an electric current from a dynamo.
-The dynamo stores up in this battery its electric force by converting it
-into chemical force, which is imprisoned in chemical compounds that are
-formed while the power of the dynamo is being applied. These chemical
-compounds are, however, in a condition of unstable chemical equilibrium,
-which is undisturbed so long as the poles of the storage battery are not
-connected, but when connected through a circuit, the instability of the
-chemical compounds asserts itself, and in passing back to a condition of
-normal equilibrium the disruption gives off the correlative equivalent
-of electric current stored up in it by the dynamo.
-
-Probably the earliest suggestion of a storage battery is by Ritter in
-1812, in his "secondary pile." This device consisted of alternate discs
-of copper and moistened card, and was capable of receiving a charge from
-a voltaic pile and of then producing the physical, chemical, and
-physiological effects obtained from the ordinary pile. The first storage
-battery of importance, however, was made by Gaston Planté in 1860, which
-consisted of leaden plates immersed in a 10 per cent. solution of
-sulphuric acid in water. In Fig. 64 is shown a modification of the
-Planté type of storage battery, composed of a series of plates shown on
-the left. Each of these plates is built up, as shown in detail in Fig.
-65, of lead strips corrugated and arranged in layers alternately with
-flat strips, within perforated leaden cases. The corrugation of the
-leaden laminæ gives greater superficial area, and the alternation of
-flat and corrugated strips keeps them properly spaced, so the sulphuric
-acid solution may penetrate and act upon the same. Each plate section
-has a rod to connect it with its proper terminal. When the charging
-current is applied, the positive lead plate becomes covered with lead
-peroxide (PbO_{2}) and finely divided metallic lead is deposited on the
-negative plate. When the battery is being discharged the peroxide of
-lead gives up one of its atoms of oxygen to the spongy metallic lead
-deposited on the other plate, and both plates remain coated with lead
-monoxide (PbO).
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 64.--PLANTÉ STORAGE BATTERY.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 65.--ENLARGED DETAIL OF PLANTÉ PLATE.]
-
-The most important development of the storage battery was made by
-Camille A. Faure, in 1880 (U. S. Pat. No. 252,002, Jan 3, 1882). In the
-early part of 1881 there was sent from Paris to Glasgow a so-called "box
-of electric energy" for inspection and test by Sir William Thomson, the
-eminent electrician. It was one of the first storage batteries of M.
-Faure. The illustration, Fig. 66, shows a battery of this type in which
-the lead plates covered with red lead (Pb_{3}O_{4}) replace the plain
-lead plates in the Planté cell. The action of the battery is that when a
-current of electricity is passed into the same, the red lead on one
-plate (the negative) is reduced to metallic lead, and that on the other
-is oxidized to a state of peroxide (PbO_{2)}. These actions are reversed
-when the charged cell is discharging itself. The elements of this
-battery consist of alternate layers of sheet lead, and a paste of red
-oxide of lead. These are immersed in a 10 per cent. solution of
-sulphuric acid in water. Many minor improvements have been made in the
-storage battery, covered by 716 United States patents, most of which
-relate to cellular construction for holding the mass of red lead in
-place. The most notable are those of Brush, to whom many patents were
-granted in 1882 and 1883.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 66.--STORAGE BATTERY--FAURE TYPE.]
-
-The storage battery finds many important applications. For furnishing
-current for the propulsion of electric street cars it has proved a
-disappointment, on account of the vibrations to which it is subjected,
-and the great weight of the lead, which in batteries of suitable
-capacity runs up into many thousands of pounds. The storage battery
-finds a useful place, however, for equalizing the load in lighting and
-power stations, and is there brought into action to supplement the
-engine and dynamo during those hours of the day when the tax or load is
-greatest. It is also used to keep up electrical pressure at the ends of
-long transmission lines; for telegraphing purposes; for isolated
-electric lighting; for boat propulsion; the propulsion of automobile
-carriages; and in all cases where a portable source of electric current
-would find application. The great growth of automobile carriages in the
-past year has greatly stimulated the output of storage batteries. One
-large company (The Electric Storage Battery Company), manufactured and
-sold storage batteries for the year ending June 1, 1899, to the amount
-of $2,387,049.91, and there are many other manufacturers.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 67.--ELECTRIC WELDING.]
-
-_Electric Welding_ was invented by Prof. Elihu Thomson, of Lynn, Mass.,
-and patented by him August 10, 1886, No. 347,140-42, and July 18, 1893,
-No. 501,546. It is useful for the making of chains, tools, carriage
-axles, joining shafting, wires, and pipes, mending bands, tires, hoops,
-and lengthening and shortening bolts, bars, etc. For electric welding a
-current of great volume or quantity, and very low electro-motive force,
-is required. Thus a current of from one to two volts, and one to several
-thousand amperes, is best suited. Referring to Fig. 67, the current from
-the dynamo is conducted to one binding post of the commutator 3, which
-is arranged to send the current through one-sixth, one-third or one-half
-of the primary wire P of a transformer or induction coil. The other
-binding post of the commutator 3 extends to one terminal of an isolated
-primary coil 4, and the other terminal of this coil connects with the
-dynamo. The coil 4 is provided with a switch to regulate the amount of
-current. The rods to be welded are placed in clamps C C´, C being
-connected with one terminal of the secondary conductor S, and the
-movable clamp C´ with the other. When the current is turned on C´ is
-moved so as to project one of the surfaces to be welded against the
-other, and as they come in contact they heat and fuse together, as shown
-at W. Larger apparatus has been devised to weld railroad joints on the
-roadbed, and for other applications.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 68.--GENERATION OF ELECTRICITY BY COMBUSTION.]
-
-_The generation of electricity_ for commercial purposes is almost
-entirely dependent upon the dynamo, as this is cheaper than the voltaic
-battery. The dynamo, however, must be energized by a steam engine. The
-direct production of electric energy by the combustion of coal would be
-the ideal method. A process invented by Edison (Pat. No. 490,953, Jan.
-31, 1893), is interesting as an effort in this direction, and is
-presented in Fig. 68. A carbon cylinder D is suspended in an air-tight
-vessel B, and is surrounded by oxide of iron F, the whole being placed
-above a furnace. The temperature being raised to a point where the
-carbon will be attacked by the oxygen, carbonic oxide and carbonic acid
-will be formed, which are exhausted by the suction fan E. A constant
-current of electricity is given off from the two electrodes through the
-wires, the metallic oxide being reduced and the carbon consumed.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 69.--RUDDER AND MOTOR OF TROUVÉ'S ELECTRIC BOAT,
-1881.]
-
-_Electrical Navigation_ began with Jacobi, who made the first attempt on
-the Neva in 1839. He used voltaic apparatus consisting of two Grove
-batteries, each containing sixty-four pairs of cells, but little
-progress was made in this field until the secondary battery was
-perfected. In 1881 Mr. G. Trouvé made an application of the storage
-battery and electric motor to a small boat on the Seine. The electric
-motor, which was located on top of the rudder, as seen in Fig. 69, was
-furnished with a Siemens armature connected by an endless belt with a
-screw propeller having three paddles arranged in the middle of an iron
-rudder. In the middle of the boat were two storage batteries connected
-with the motor by two cords that both served to cover the conducting
-wires and work the rudder. Electric launches have in later years rapidly
-gained in popularity. Visitors to the Chicago fair will remember the
-fleet of electric launches, which afforded both pleasure and
-transportation on the water, at that great exposition, and to-day every
-safe harbor has its quota of these silently gliding and fascinating
-pleasure crafts. Fig. 70 is a longitudinal section and a general view of
-one of these launches.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 70.--MODERN ELECTRIC LAUNCH.]
-
-_Electro-plating_ is one of the great industrial applications of
-electricity which had its origin in, and has grown into extensive use
-in, the Nineteenth Century. It originated with Volta, Cruikshank, and
-Wollaston in the very first year of the century. In 1805 Brugnatelli, a
-pupil of Volta, gilded two large silver medals by bringing them into
-communication by means of a steel wire with the negative pole of a
-voltaic pile and keeping them one after the other immersed in a solution
-of gold. In 1834 Henry Bessemer electro-plated lead castings with copper
-in the production of antique relief heads. In 1838 Prof. Jacobi
-announced his galvano-plastic process for the production of electrotype
-plates for printing. In the same year he superintended the gilding, by
-electro-plate, of the iron dome of the Cathedral of St. Isaac at St.
-Petersburgh, using 274 pounds of ducat gold. In 1839 Spencer described
-an electrotype process and carried the date of his operations back to
-September, 1837. In 1839 Jordan also describes an electro-plating
-process. In 1840 Murray used plumbago to make non-conducting surfaces
-conductive for electro-plating. In 1840 De Le Rive made known his
-process of electro-gilding, employed by him in 1828, and in the same
-year (1840) De Ruolz took out a French patent for electro-gilding, and
-in the following year formed electro deposits of brass from cyanides of
-zinc and copper. In 1841 Smee employed his battery for electro-plating
-with various metals. In 1844 there were published the electro-plating
-experiments of Dancer, made in 1838. In 1847 Prof. Silliman imitated
-mother-of-pearl by electro-plating process.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 71.--ELECTRO-PLATING ESTABLISHMENT.]
-
-In the last half of the century the production of electrotype plates for
-printing in books, and for the production of rollers for printing
-fabrics, and the extensive art of electro-plating with gold, silver,
-nickel and copper, has grown to enormous proportions, but the
-fundamental principles have not materially changed. The dynamo, however,
-has generally supplanted the voltaic battery in this art. The deposition
-of silver and gold on baser metals not only increases the ornamental
-effect, but prevents oxidation. Silver plated goods for the table and
-articles of vertu are to be found everywhere. Nickel is employed for
-cheaper ornamental effect, and copper finds a large application for
-electrotypes for printing and for coating iron castings as a protection
-against rust. In Fig. 71, which shows the interior of an electro-plating
-establishment, the dynamo is shown on the right connected by wires with
-two horizontal rods running along the wall and across the various tanks
-containing the plating solution. On the tanks are rods supporting the
-articles to be plated, which are suspended in the solution. Similar rods
-support the opposite electrodes of the tank. Wires connect these rods to
-the rods on the side of the wall, and to the opposite poles of the
-dynamo.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 72.--EDISON'S ELECTRIC PEN.]
-
-_The electric pen of Edison_, brought out in 1876 (U. S. Pat. No.
-196,747, Nov. 6, 1877), is one of the simple applications of
-electricity, which for a number of years was in quite general use for
-making manifold copies of manuscript. In the illustration, Fig. 72, this
-is shown. It comprises a stylus _b_ reciprocated in a tube _a_ by the
-vibratory action of an armature _k_ over the poles of an electro-magnet,
-supplied with a suitable current and vibrating contacts _l h_. The
-stylus was rapidly reciprocated, and as the operator traced the letters
-on the paper, the stylus produced a continuous trail of punctures which
-permitted the paper to be used as a stencil to make any number of
-copies. It has, however, been rotated out of existence by manifolding
-carbon paper, and the almost universal use of the typewriter.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 73.--ELECTRIC CAUTERY.]
-
-_Electricity in Medicine._--The superstitious mind is prone to resort to
-mysterious agencies for the cure of diseases, and for many years men of
-no scientific knowledge whatever have been employing this seductive
-instrumentality for all the ills that flesh is heir to. That it has
-valuable therapeutic qualities when rightly applied no intelligent
-person will doubt, and it is unfortunate that for the most part it has
-been in the hands of charlatans who sell their wares, and rely upon a
-faith-cure principle for the result. Still there have been intelligent
-experimenters in this field, and it is one of much promise for further
-research.
-
-In the first century of the Christian Era (A. D. 50) Scribonius Largus
-relates that Athero, a freedman of Tiberius, was cured of the gout by
-the shocks of the torpedo or electric eel. In 1803 M. Carpue published
-experiments on the therapeutic action of electricity. The discovery of
-induction currents by Faraday in 1831 brought a new era in the medical
-application of electricity, in the use of what is known as the Faradaic
-current. The first apparatus for medical use, which operated on this
-principle, was made by M. Pixii in France, and the first physician who
-employed such currents was Dr. Neef, of Frankfort. The medical battery
-is a well-known and useful adjunct to the physician's outfit. Electric
-baths are also common and effective modes of applying the electric
-current. An early example of such a device is shown in the U. S. patent
-to Young, No. 32,332, May 14, 1861. The electric cautery and probe are
-also scientific and useful instruments. The cautery consists of a loop
-of platinum wire carried by a suitable non-conducting handle, with means
-for constricting the white hot loop of wire about the tumor or object to
-be excised. It was invented in 1846 by Crusell, of St. Petersburgh. A
-form of the electric cautery is shown in Fig. 73, in which _a_ is the
-platinum wire loop whose branches slide through guide tubes, the ends
-being attached to a sliding ring B. The current enters through the wire
-at the binding posts at the end of non-conducting handle A, and heats
-the platinum loop, _a_, red hot. The loop, _a_, being around the object
-to be excised, is constricted by drawing down the handle ring B.
-
-Of the various applications of electricity in body wear and appliances
-there is scarcely any end. There are patents for belts without number,
-for electric gloves, rings, bracelets, necklaces, trusses, corsets,
-shoes, hats, combs, brushes, chairs, couches, and blankets. Patents have
-also been granted for electric smelling bottles, an adhesive plaster,
-for electric spectacles, scissors, a foot warmer, hair singer, syringes,
-a drinking cup, a hair cutter, a torch, a catheter, a pessary, gas
-lighters, exercising devices, a door mat, and even for an electric hair
-pin and a pair of electric garters.
-
-_Electrical Musical Instruments_ include pianos, banjos, and violins,
-all of which are to be played automatically by the aid of electrical
-appliances. In the illustration, Fig. 74, is shown a modern electrical
-piano. A small electrical motor 1, run by a storage battery or electric
-light wires, turns a belt 3, and rotates pulley 4 and a long horizontal
-cylinder 5 running beneath the keyboard. Above this cylinder is the
-mechanism that acts upon the keys. It consists of a series of brake
-shoes which, when brought into frictional contact with the cylinder 5,
-are made to act on small vertical rods which bring down the keys just as
-the fingers do in playing. The selection of the proper keys is made by a
-traveling strip of paper perforated with dots and dashes representing
-the notes, which strip of paper passes between two metal contact faces,
-which are terminals of an electric battery. When the contacts are
-separated by the non-conducting paper the current does not flow, but
-when the contacts come together through the perforations the current is
-completed through an electro-magnet, and this is made to bring the
-proper brake shoe into position to be lifted by the cylinder 5, which
-rotates constantly.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 74.--ELECTRIC PIANO.]
-
-_Electro-blasting._--In 1812 Schilling proposed to blow up mines by the
-galvanic current. In 1839 Colonel Pasley blew up the wreck of the "Royal
-George" by electro-blasting. On Jan. 26, 1843, Mr. Cubitt used
-electro-blasting to destroy Round Down Cliff, and in our own time the
-extensive excavations in deepening the channel and removing the rocks at
-Hell Gate, from the mouth of New York harbor, was a notable operation in
-electro-blasting, and doubtless owes its success largely to the electric
-current employed.
-
-Only the briefest mention can be made of the induction coil and the
-electrical transformer, of electric bells and hotel annunciators, of
-electric railway signalling, and electric brakes, of electric clocks and
-instruments of precision, of heating by electricity, of electrical
-horticulture, and of the beautiful electric fountains. These, however,
-all belong to the Nineteenth Century, and include interesting
-developments.
-
-_Electro-chemistry_ and the _electrolytic refining of metals_ represent
-also, in the applications of electricity, a large and important field,
-more fully treated under the chapters devoted to chemistry and metal
-working.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X.
-
-THE STEAM ENGINE.
-
- HERO'S ENGINE, AND OTHER EARLY STEAM ENGINES--WATT'S STEAM
- ENGINE--THE CUT-OFF--GIFFARD INJECTOR--BOURDON'S STEAM GAUGE--FEED-
- WATER HEATERS, SMOKE CONSUMERS, ETC.--ROTARY ENGINES--STEAM HAMMER--
- STEAM FIRE ENGINE--COMPOUND ENGINES--SCHLICK AND TAYLOR SYSTEMS OF
- BALANCING MOMENTUM OF MOVING PARTS--STATISTICS.
-
-
-When the primeval man first turned upon himself the critical light of
-introspection, and observed his own deficiencies, there were born within
-him both the desire and the determination to supplement his weakness,
-and become the ruling factor in the world's destiny. The strength of his
-arm unaided could not cope with that of the wild beast, he could not
-travel so fast as the animal, nor soar so high as the bird, nor traverse
-the waters of the sea like the fish. The magnificent power of the
-elements first inspired him with awe, then was worshiped as a god, and
-he trembled in his weakness. Then he began to invent, and seeing in
-physical laws an escape from his fears, and a solution for his
-ambitions, he trained these forces and made them subservient to his
-will, and established his right to rule. Out of the maze of the
-centuries a steam engine is born--not all at once, for that would be
-inconsistent with the law of evolution--but gradually growing first into
-practicability, then into efficiency, and finally into perfection, it
-stands to-day a beautiful monument of man's ingenuity, throbbing with
-life and energy, and moving the world. What has not the steam engine
-done for the Nineteenth Century? It speeds the locomotive across the
-continent faster and farther than the birds can fly; no fish can equal
-the mighty steamship on the sea; it grinds our grain; it weaves our
-cloth; it prints our books; it forges our steel, and in every department
-of life it is the ubiquitous, tireless, potent agency of civilization.
-Does the ambitious young philosopher predict that electricity will
-supersede steam? It is not yet a rational prophecy, for the direct
-production of electricity from the combustion of coal is still an
-unsolved problem, and behind the electric generator can always be found
-the steam engine, modestly and quietly giving its full life's work to
-the dynamo, which it actuates, and caring nothing for the credit,
-unmindful of the beautiful and striking manifestations of electricity
-which astonish the world, but humbly doing its duty with a silent faith
-that the law of correlation of force will always lead the way back to
-the steam engine, and place it where it belongs, at the head of all
-useful agencies of man.
-
-The Nineteenth Century did not include in its discoveries the invention
-of the steam engine. The great gift of James Watt was one of the
-legacies which it received from the past, but the economical, efficient,
-graceful, and mathematically perfect engine of to-day is the product of
-this age.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 75.--HERO'S ENGINE, 150 B. C.]
-
-The genesis of the steam engine belongs to ancient history, for in the
-year 150 B. C. Hero made and exhibited in the Serapeum of Alexandria the
-first steam engine. It was of the rotary type and was known as the
-"aeolipile." During the middle ages the spirit of invention seems to
-have slept, for nearly eighteen centuries passed from the time of Hero's
-engine before any active revival of interest was manifested in this
-field of invention. Giovanni Branca in 1629, the Marquis of Worcester in
-1633, Dr. Papin in 1695, Savary in 1698, and Newcomen in 1705, were the
-pioneers of Watt, and gave to him a good working basis. Strange as it
-may appear, there was in 1894 and probably still is in existence in
-England an old Newcomen steam engine (see Fig. 76), which for at least a
-hundred years has stood exposed to the weather, slowly rusting and
-crumbling away. It is to be found in Fairbottom Valley, half way between
-Ashton-under-Lyne and Oldham, and is the property of the trustees of the
-late Earl of Stamford and Warrington. It is erected on a solid masonry
-pillar 14 by 7 feet at the base, which carries on its top, on trunnions,
-an oak beam 20 feet long and 12 by 14 inches thick. This beam is braced
-with iron, and has segmental ends with a piston at one end, and a
-balance weight at the other. The piston and pump rods are attached by
-chains. The cylinder is of cast iron, 27 inches in diameter, and about
-six foot stroke, the steam entering at the bottom only. It was formerly
-used for pumping a mine.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 76.--OLD NEWCOMEN ENGINE.]
-
-The distinct and valuable legacy, however, which the Nineteenth Century
-received from the past, was the double acting steam engine of James
-Watt, disclosed in his British Pat. No. 1,321, of 1782. Prior to this
-date steam engines had been almost exclusively confined to raising
-water, but with the invention of Watt it extended into all fields of
-industrial use. Watt's double acting engine is shown in Fig. 77. It
-comprised a cylinder A, with double acting piston and valve gear E F G
-H; the parallel motion R for translating the reciprocating motion of the
-piston into the curved oscillatory path of the walking beam; a condenser
-chamber K, with spray I, for condensing the exhaust steam; a pump L J to
-remove the water from the condenser, and also the air, which is drawn
-out of the water by the vacuum; a water supply pump N; the automatic
-ball governor D, and throttle valve B. Two pins on the pump rod L strike
-the lever H and work the valve gear, and a collecting rod P and crank Q
-convert the oscillations of the walking beam into the continuous
-rotation of the fly wheel.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 77.--WATT'S DOUBLE ACTING STEAM ENGINE.]
-
-Watt's automatic ball governor is shown in Fig. 78 and its function is
-as follows: When the working strain on an engine is relieved by the
-throwing out of action of a part of the work being performed, the engine
-would run too fast, or if more than a normal tax were placed on the
-engine, it would "slow up." To secure a regular and uniform motion in
-the performance of his engine Watt invented the automatic or
-self-regulating ball governor and throttle valve. A vertical shaft D is
-rotated constantly by a band on pulley _d_. Any tendency in the engine
-to run too fast throws the balls up by centrifugal action, and this
-through toggle links _f h_, pulls down on a lever F G H, and partially
-closes the throttle valve Z, reducing the flow of steam to the engine.
-When the engine has a tendency to run too slow the balls drop down, and,
-deflecting the lever in the opposite direction, open the throttle valve,
-and increase the flow of steam to the engine. This double acting engine
-of Watt marks the beginning of the great epoch of steam engineering, and
-his patent expired just in time to give to the Nineteenth Century the
-greatest of all natal gifts.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 78.--WATT'S AUTOMATIC GOVERNOR AND THROTTLE VALVE.]
-
-Steam engines are divided into two principal classes, the low pressure
-engine, using steam usually under 40 pounds to the square inch, and the
-high pressure engine, using steam from 50 to 200 pounds. In the low
-pressure engine there is the expansive pressure of the steam on one side
-of the piston, aided by the suction of a vacuum on the opposite side of
-the piston, which vacuum is created by the condensation of the
-discharging, or exhaust steam, by cold water. As there are two factors
-at work impelling the piston, only a relatively low pressure in the
-boiler is required. In the high pressure engines there is no
-condensation of the exhaust steam, but it is discharged directly into
-the air, and this type was originally called "puffers." Familiar
-examples of the low pressure type are to be found in our side wheel
-passenger steamers, and of the high pressure type in the steam
-locomotive.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 79.--PRINCIPLE OF CUT-OFF.]
-
-One of the most important steps in the development of the steam engine
-was the addition of the cut-off. Prior to its adoption steam was
-admitted to the cylinder during the whole time the piston was making
-its stroke from one end of the cylinder to the other. In the cut-off
-(see Fig. 79), when steam is being admitted through the port _p_, and
-the piston is being driven in the direction of the arrow, it was found
-that if the steam were cut off when the piston arrived at the position
-1, the expansive action of the steam behind it in chamber _a_ would
-continue to carry the piston with an effective force to the end of its
-stroke, or to position 2. This of course effected a great saving in
-steam. Various cut-offs have been devised. Perhaps that most easily
-recognized by most persons is the one seen in the engine room of our
-side wheel steamers, of which illustration is given in Fig. 80. This was
-invented in 1841 by F. E. Sickels, and was the first successful drop
-cut-off. It was covered by his patents, May 20, 1842, July 20, 1843,
-October 19, 1844, No. 3,802, and September 19, 1845, No. 4,201. A rock
-shaft _s_ is worked by an eccentric rod _e_ from the paddle wheel shaft.
-The rock shaft has lifting arms _a_ that act upon and alternately raise
-the feet _c_ on rods _b b_. One of these rods _b_ works the valves that
-admit steam, and the other the valves that discharge steam. The valve
-rod that admits steam has a quick drop, or fall, to cut off the live
-steam before the piston reaches the end of its stroke. In Fig. 81 is
-shown the celebrated Corliss cut-off and valve gear, in which a central
-wrist plate and four radiating rods work the valves. This valve gear was
-covered in Corliss patents, No. 6,162, March 10, 1849, and No. 8.253,
-July 29, 1851.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 80.--SICKELS' DROP CUT-OFF VALVE GEAR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 81.--CORLISS CUT-OFF AND VALVE GEAR.]
-
-Among other important improvements in the steam engine are those for
-replenishing the water in the boiler, and the Giffard Injector is the
-simplest and most ingenious of all boiler feeds. It was invented in 1858
-and covered by French patent No. 21,457, May 8, 1858, and U. S. patent
-No. 27,979, April 24, 1860. Prior to the Giffard Injector, steam boilers
-were supplied with water usually by steam pumps, which forced the water
-into the boiler against the pressure of the steam. The Giffard Injector
-takes a jet of steam from the boiler, and causes it to lift the water in
-an external pipe, and blow it directly into the boiler against its own
-pressure. So paradoxical and inoperative did this seem at first that it
-was met with incredulity, and not until repeated demonstrations
-established the fact was it accepted as an operative device. Its
-construction is shown in Fig. 82. A is a steam pipe communicating with
-the boiler, B another pipe receiving steam from A through small holes
-and terminating in a cone. C is a screw rod, cone-shaped at its
-extremity, turned by the crank M, and serving to regulate and even
-intercept the passage of steam. D is a water suction pipe. The water
-that is drawn up introduces itself around the steam pipe and tends to
-make its exit through the annular space at the conical extremity of the
-latter steam pipe. This annular space is increased at will by means of
-the lever L, which acts upon a screw whose office is to cause the pipe B
-and its attached parts to move backward or forward. E is a diverging
-tube which receives the water injected by the jet of steam that
-condenses at I, and imparts to the water a portion of its speed in
-proportion to the pressure of the boiler. F is a box carrying a check
-valve to keep the water from issuing from the boiler when the apparatus
-is not at work. G is a pipe that leads the injected water to the boiler.
-H is a purge or overflow pipe, K a sight hole which permits the
-operation of the apparatus to be watched, the stream of water being
-distinctly seen in the free interval. Fig. 83 shows the application of
-the injector to locomotives, which are now almost universally supplied
-with this device.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 82.--GIFFARD INJECTOR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 83.--INJECTOR ON LOCOMOTIVE.]
-
-To keep the pressure in the boiler within the limit of safety, and
-adjusted to the work being performed, is an important part of the
-engineer's duty, and this he could not do without the steam gauge. One
-of the best known is the Bourdon gauge, shown in Fig. 84, constructed on
-the principle of the barometer invented by Bourdon of Paris in 1849 and
-patented in France June, 1849, and in the United States August 3, 1852,
-No. 9,163. A screw threaded thimble B, with stop cock A, is screwed in
-the shell of the boiler, and a coiled pipe C communicates at one end
-with the thimble and is closed at the other end E and connected by a
-link F, with an arm on an axle, carrying an index hand that moves over a
-graduated scale. The coiled pipe C is in the nature of a flattened
-tube, as shown in the enlarged cross section, and is enclosed in a case.
-When the steam pressure varies in this flat tube its coil expands or
-contracts, and in moving the index hand over the scale indicates the
-degree of pressure.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 84.--BOURDON'S PRESSURE GAUGE.]
-
-In line with the development of the steam engine must be considered the
-efforts to economize fuel. These may be divided into the following
-classes: Increased steam generating surface in boiler construction;
-surface condensers for exhaust steam; devices for promoting the
-combustion of fuel and burning the smoke, and feed water heaters. Even
-before the Nineteenth Century Smeaton devised the cylindrical boiler
-traversed by a flue, but the multitubular steam boiler of to-day
-represents a very important Nineteenth Century adjunct to the steam
-engine. Our locomotives, fire engines, and torpedo boat engines would be
-of no value without it. Sectional steam boilers made in detachable
-portions fastened together by packed or screw joints also represent an
-important development. These permit of the removal and replacement of
-any one section that may become defective, and are also capable of being
-built up section by section to any size needed. For promoting the
-combustion of fuel the draft is energized by blasts of air or steam, or
-both, either through hollow grate bars, jet pipes in the fire box, or by
-discharging the exhaust steam in the smoke pipe. Surface condensers pass
-the exhaust steam over the great surface area of a multitubular
-construction having cold water flowing through it. Feed water heaters
-utilize the waste heat escaping in the smoke flue to heat the water that
-is being fed to the boiler, so that it is warm when it is injected into
-the boiler, and the furnace is relieved of that much work.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 85.--BRANCA'S STEAM TURBINE, 1629.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 86.--SECTION OF PARSONS TURBINE OF 1891.]
-
-In the reciprocating type of steam engine the inertia of the piston must
-be overcome at the beginning of each stroke and its momentum must be
-arrested at the end of each stroke, and this involves a great loss of
-power. If the power of the steam could be applied so as to continuously
-move the piston in the same direction this loss would be avoided. The
-effort to do this has engaged the attention of many inventors, and the
-devices are called rotary engines. The most successful engines of this
-kind are those of the impact type, in which jets of steam impinge upon
-buckets after the manner of water on a water wheel, and which are known
-to-day as steam turbines. The earliest of these is Branca's steam
-turbine of 1629 (see Fig. 85) and the most important of this class in
-use to-day are those of Mr. Parsons, of England, and De Laval, of
-Sweden. The internal construction of the Parsons turbine is seen in Fig.
-86 and is covered by British patent No. 10,940, of 1891, and United
-States patent No. 553,658, January 28th, 1896. A series of turbines are
-set one after the other on the same axis, so that each takes steam from
-the preceding one, and passes it on to the next. Each consists of a ring
-of fixed steam guides on the casing, and a ring of moving blades on the
-shaft. The steam passes through the first set of guides, then through
-the first set of moving blades, then through the second set of guides,
-and then through the second set of moving blades, and so on.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 87.--PARSONS COMPOUND STEAM TURBINE, ON PLURALITY OF
-PROPELLER SHAFTS.]
-
-In the application of his turbine to marine propulsion Mr. Parsons
-employs a plurality of propeller shafts and steam turbines, as seen in
-Fig. 87, and covered under United States patent No. 608,969, August 9,
-1898.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 88.--DE LAVAL'S STEAM TURBINE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 89.--DE LAVAL TURBINE GEARED TO DYNAMO.]
-
-The De Laval turbine, as shown in Fig. 88, is of very simple
-construction, consisting only of a steel wheel with a series of buckets
-at its periphery enclosed by a circular rim, and a series of steam
-nozzles on the side with diverging jet orifices directing steam jets
-against the buckets. A speed of 30,000 revolutions a minute may be
-attained by this construction. In Fig. 89 is shown a 300 horse-power
-steam turbine of the De Laval type applied to a dynamo; to which this
-type of engine is peculiarly adapted. The dynamo is seen on the extreme
-right, the steam turbine on the extreme left, and the drum-shaped
-casing between contains cog-gearing by which the high revolution of the
-turbine wheel is reduced to a proper working speed for the dynamo.
-Within the last few years application of the Parsons steam turbine has
-been made to marine propulsion with very remarkable results as to speed.
-The small steam craft, "The Turbinia," built in 1897, and supplied with
-three of Parsons' compound steam turbines, developed a speed of 32¾
-knots, and more recently the torpedo boat "Viper" has with steam
-turbines attained the remarkable speed of 37.1 knots, or over 40 statute
-miles an hour. About 2,000 United States patents have been granted on
-various forms of rotary engines.
-
-In the transportation building of the World's Fair at Chicago in 1893
-one of the most conspicuous objects of attention was the model of the
-great Bethlehem Iron Co.'s steam hammer, standing with its feet apart
-like some great "Colossus of Rhodes" and towering 91 feet high among the
-models of the great ocean steamers and battleships which are so largely
-dependent upon the work of this Titanic machine. Its hammer head, in the
-working-machine, weighs 125 tons, and many of the seventeen inch thick
-armor plates for our battleships have been forged by its tremendous
-blows.
-
-In 1838, during the construction of the "Great Britain," the largest
-steamship up to that time ever built, it was found that there was not a
-forge hammer in England or Scotland powerful enough to forge a paddle
-shaft for that vessel. The emergency was met by Mr. Nasmyth, of England,
-who invented the steam hammer and covered it in British patent No.
-9,382, of 1842 (U. S. Pat. No. 3,042, April 10, 1843). A modern example
-of it is seen in Fig. 90. It consists of a steam cylinder at the top
-whose piston is attached to a block of iron, forming the hammer head and
-sliding vertically in guides between the two legs of the frame. Valve
-gear is arranged to control the flow of steam to and from the opposite
-sides of the piston, and so nicely adjusted is the valve gear of such a
-modern steam hammer that it is said that an expert workman can
-manipulate the great mass of metal with such accuracy and delicacy as to
-crack an egg in a wineglass without touching the glass. To the steam
-hammer we owe the first heavy armor plate for our battle ships and the
-propeller shafts of our earlier steamships. In fact it was the steam
-hammer which first rendered the large steamship possible. Mr. Nasmyth
-not only invented the steam hammer, but the steam pile driver as well.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 90.--STEAM HAMMER.]
-
-For quick action, nicely adjusted machinery, and showy finish the steam
-fire engine is a familiar and conspicuous application of steam power. A
-dude among engines when on dress parade, and a sprinter when on the run,
-it gets to work with the vim and efficiency of a thoroughbred, and is a
-most business-like and valuable custodian of life and property. The
-first portable steam fire engine was built about 1830 by Mr. Brathwaite
-and Capt. Ericsson in London. In 1841 Mr. Hodges produced a similar
-engine in New York City. Cincinnati was the first city to adopt the
-steamer as a part of its fire department apparatus. To-day all the
-important cities and towns of the civilized world rely upon the steam
-fire engines for their longevity and existence. Time economy in getting
-into action is the great objective point of most improvements of the
-fire-engine, and one of the most important is the keeping of the water
-in the boiler hot when the engine is out of action at the engine house,
-so that when the fire is built and the run is made to the scene of
-action, the water will be hot to start with. This attachment was the
-invention of William A. Brickill, and was patented by him August 18,
-1868, No. 81,132. In the illustration, Fig. 91, the two pipes passing
-from the engine through the trap door in the floor connect with a water
-heater in the basement below, which heater maintains a constant
-circulation of hot water in the steam boiler. Couplings in these pipes
-serve to quickly disconnect the engine when the run to the fire is to be
-made.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 91.--STEAM FIRE ENGINE WITH WATER HEATING
-ATTACHMENT.]
-
-Among other useful applications of the steam engine are the steam plow,
-steam drill, steam dredge, steam press, and steam pump, of which latter
-the Blake, Knowles, and Worthington are representative types.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 92.--THE SIX-CYLINDER QUADRUPLE EXPANSION ENGINES OF
-THE "DEUTSCHLAND," 35,640 HORSE POWER.]
-
-The highest type of modern steam engines is to be found in the compound
-multiple-expansion engine, in which three or more cylinders of different
-diameters with corresponding pistons are so arranged that steam is made
-to act first upon the piston in the smallest cylinder at high pressure,
-and then discharging into the next larger cylinder, called the
-intermediate, acts expansively upon its piston, and thence, passing into
-the still larger low pressure cylinder, imparts its further expansive
-effect upon its piston. The fundamental principle of the compound engine
-dates back to the time of Watt, its first embodiment appearing in the
-Hornblower compound engine, as described in British patent No. 1,298, of
-1781, but modern improvements have differentiated it into almost a new
-invention. A fine example is shown in Fig. 92, which represents the
-quadruple expansion engines of the "Deutschland," the new steamer of the
-Hamburg-American Line. The two high pressure cylinders, however, do not
-appear in the illustration, being too high for the shops. They stand
-vertically, however, upon the two bed plates which appear at the top of
-the two low pressure cylinders. In each set of six cylinders the two low
-pressure cylinders are in the middle, the two high pressure cylinders
-immediately above them or arranged tandem, while at the forward end is
-the first intermediate cylinder, and at the after end is the second
-intermediate. The low pressure cylinders are 106 inches in diameter, the
-intermediate cylinders are 73.6 inches and 103.9 inches respectively,
-and the two high pressure cylinders are 30.6 inches, and the steam
-pressure is 225 pounds. Its improvements comprehend the systems of
-Schlick, patented in the United States November 23, 1897, No. 594,288
-and 594,289, and Taylor, patented November 22, 1898, No. 614,674, which
-embody fine mathematical principles for balancing the momentum of the
-great masses of moving parts, so that the engine may run up to high
-speed without vibrations and damaging strains upon the hull.
-
-Mulhall gives the steam horse power of the world in 1895, not including
-war vessels, as follows:
-
- Stationary. Railway. Steamboat. Total.
- The World 11,340,000 32,235,000 12,005,000 55,580,000
- United States 3,940,000 10,800,000 2,200,000 16,940,000
-
-The increase in steam power in the United States has been from 3,500,000
-horse power in 1860, to 16,940,000 horse power in 1895, or about five
-fold within thirty-five years.
-
-Prof. Thurston says that in 1890 the combined power of all the steam
-engines of the world was not far from 100,000,000[2] horse power, of
-which the United States had 15,000,000, Great Britain the same, and the
-other countries smaller amounts. Taking the horse power as the
-equivalent of the work of five men, the work of steam is equivalent to
-that of a population of 500,000,000 working men. It is also said that
-one man to-day, with the aid of a steam engine, performs the work of 120
-men in the last century.
-
- [2] Prof. Thurston's estimate doubtless includes war vessels, which
- Mulhall's later estimate does not (see Mulhall's "Industries and
- Wealth of Nations," 1896, pages 4 and 379).
-
-The influence of the steam engine upon the history and destiny of the
-world is an impressive subject, far beyond any intelligent computation
-or estimate. It has been the greatest moving force of the Nineteenth
-Century. The labor of 100,000 men for twenty years might build a great
-pyramid in Egypt, and it remains as a monument of patience only, but the
-genius of the modern inventor has organized a machine with muscles of
-steel, far more patient and tireless than those of the Egyptian slave.
-He gave it but a drink of water and making coal its black slave, and
-himself the master of both, he has in the Nineteenth Century hitched his
-chariot to a star and driven to unparalleled achievement.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI.
-
-THE STEAM RAILWAY.
-
- TREVITHICK'S FIRST LOCOMOTIVE--BLENKINSOP'S LOCOMOTIVE--HEDLEY'S
- "PUFFING BILLY"--STEPHENSON'S LOCOMOTIVE--THE LINK MOTION--STOCKTON
- AND DARLINGTON RAILWAY, 1825--HACKWORTH'S "ROYAL GEORGE"--
- "STOURBRIDGE LION"--"JOHN BULL"--BALDWIN'S LOCOMOTIVES--WESTINGHOUSE
- AIR BRAKES--JANNEY CAR COUPLING--THE WOODRUFF SLEEPING CAR--RAILWAY
- STATISTICS.
-
-
-The fact that more patents have been granted in the class of carriages
-and wagons than in any other field, shows that means of transportation
-has engaged the largest share of man's inventive genius, and has been
-most closely allied to his necessities. The moving of passengers and
-freight seems to be directly related to the progress of civilization,
-and the factor whose influence has been most felt in this field is the
-steam locomotive. Sir Isaac Newton in 1680 proposed a steam carriage
-propelled by the reaction of a jet of steam. Dr. Robinson in 1759
-suggested the steam carriage to Watt. Cugnot in 1769 built a steam
-carriage. Symington, in 1770, and Murdock, in 1784, built working
-models, and in 1790 Nathan Read also made experiments in steam
-transportation, but the Nineteenth Century dawned without any other
-results than a few abandoned experiments, and the criticism and
-disappointment of the inventors in this field.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 93.--TREVITHICK'S LOCOMOTIVE, 1804. THE FIRST TO RUN
-ON RAILS.]
-
-The father of the locomotive and the first inventor of the Nineteenth
-Century who directed his energy to its development was Richard
-Trevithick, of Camborne, Cornwall. In 1801 he built his first steam
-carriage, adapted to carry seven or eight passengers, which was said to
-have "gone off like a bird," but broke down, and was taken to the home
-of Capt. Vivian, who afterward became a partner of Trevithick. An old
-lady, upon seeing this novel and, to her, frightful engine, is said to
-have cried out: "Good gracious! Mr. Vivian, what will be done next? I
-can't compare it to anything but a walking, puffing devil." On the 24th
-of March, 1802, Trevithick and Vivian obtained British patent No. 2,599
-for their steam carriage, and a second one was built in 1803 which was
-popularly known as Capt. Trevithick's "Puffing Devil." In 1804, at Pen y
-Darran, South Wales, a third engine was built, which was the first
-steam locomotive ever to run on rails. It is seen in the illustration,
-No. 93. It had a horizontal cylinder inside the boiler, a cross head
-sliding on guides in front of the engine, the cross head being connected
-to a crank on a rear gear wheel, which in turn meshes with an
-intermediate gear wheel above and between two other gear wheels on the
-running wheels. A fly wheel was on the crank shaft. The steam was
-discharged into the chimney, and the whole engine weighed five tons, and
-it ran, when loaded, at five miles an hour. In 1808 Trevithick built a
-circular railway at London within an inclosure, and charged a shilling
-for admission to his steam circus and a ride behind his locomotive. The
-engine here employed was the "Catch Me Who Can," and had a vertical
-cylinder and piston, without the toothed gear wheels shown in the
-illustration.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 94.--BLENKINSOP'S LOCOMOTIVE, 1811.]
-
-In Fig. 94 is shown Blenkinsop's locomotive of 1811. This was employed
-at the Middleton Colliery in hauling coal. It had cog wheels engaging
-teeth on the side of the rail. The fire was built in a large tube
-passing through the boiler and bent up to form a chimney. Two vertical
-cylinders were placed inside the boiler, and the pistons were connected
-by cross heads, and, by connecting rods, to cranks on the axles of small
-cog wheels engaging with the main cog wheels. It drew thirty tons weight
-at three and three-quarter miles an hour.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 95.--HEDLEY'S "PUFFING BILLY," 1813.]
-
-In 1813 "Puffing Billy" was built by Wm. Hedley. There were (see Fig.
-95) four smooth drive wheels running on smooth rails, which wheels were
-coupled together by intermediate gear wheels on the axle, and all
-propelled by a gear wheel in the middle, driven by a connecting rod from
-the walking beam overhead. Hedley's locomotive was used on the Wylam
-railway, and was said to have been at work more or less until 1862.
-
-Most prominent among those who took an active interest in the
-development of the locomotive were George Stephenson and his son,
-Robert. Stephenson's first locomotive was tried on the Killingworth
-Railway on July 27, 1814. In 1815 Dodds and Stephenson patented an
-arrangement for attaching the connecting rods to the driving wheels,
-which took the place of cog wheels heretofore employed, and in the
-following year Stephenson, in connection with Mr. Losh, patented the
-application of steam cushion-springs for supporting the weight of the
-locomotive in an elastic manner.
-
-In 1825 the Stockton and Darlington Railway, in England, was opened for
-traffic, with George Stephenson's engine, "Locomotion," and was put
-permanently into service for the transportation of freight and
-passengers.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 96.--HACKWORTH'S LOCOMOTIVE, "ROYAL GEORGE," 1827.]
-
-In 1827 Hackworth produced the "Royal George" (see Fig. 96), whose
-cylinders were arranged vertically at the rear end of the boiler, and
-whose pistons emerged from the cylinders at the lower ends of the
-latter, and imparted their power through connecting rods to cranks on
-the opposite ends of the axle of the rear driving wheels in a more
-direct manner than heretofore, and doing away with the overhead
-mechanism heretofore employed in most engines. Hackworth also improved
-the steam blast, put on the bell, and greatly simplified and modernized
-the appearance of the locomotive.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 97.--GEORGE STEPHENSON'S "ROCKET," 1829.]
-
-In 1829 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was completed, and the
-directors offered a prize of £500 for the best locomotive. George
-Stephenson's "Rocket," shown in Fig. 97, attained a speed of 24-1/6
-miles an hour, and took the prize. Its success, however, was marred by
-the first railroad fatality, for it ran over and killed a man on this
-occasion. It embodied, as leading features, the steam blast and the
-multitubular boiler, which latter was six feet long and had twenty-five
-three-inch tubes. The fire box was surrounded by an exterior casing that
-formed a water jacket, which, by means of pipes, was in open
-communication with the water space of the boiler.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 98.--"STOURBRIDGE LION," 1829.]
-
-The first practical locomotive to run on a railroad in the United States
-was the "Stourbridge Lion," seen in Fig. 98. This was imported from
-England, and arrived in New York in May, 1829, and was tried in that
-year on a section of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company's railroad. The
-boiler was tubular, and the exhaust steam was carried into the chimney
-by a pipe in front of the smoke stack as shown. It had vertical
-cylinders of thirty-six inch stroke, with overhead grasshopper beams and
-connecting rods.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 99.--LOCOMOTIVE "JOHN BULL," 1831.]
-
-In Fig. 99 is shown the "John Bull," now in the National Museum at
-Washington, D. C. It was built by Stephenson & Co. for the Camden &
-Amboy Railroad, and was brought over from England and put into service
-in 1831. During the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, after a
-long rest in the Washington Museum, it made its way under its own steam
-to Chicago, drawing a train of two cars a distance of 912 miles without
-assistance. It further distinguished itself while there by carrying
-50,000 passengers over the exhibition tracks, and although sixty-two
-years of age at the time, showed itself quite capable of performing
-substantial work.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 100.--BALDWIN'S "OLD IRONSIDES," 1832.]
-
-Most of the early locomotives used in America were imported from
-England, but our inventors soon commenced making them for themselves.
-The Baldwin Locomotive Works, of Philadelphia, has had a notable career
-in the field of locomotive construction. "Old Ironsides," built in
-1832, was the first Baldwin locomotive, and it did duty for over a
-score of years. It is shown in Fig. 100. It had four wheels and weighed
-a little over five tons. The drive wheels were 54 inches in diameter,
-and the cylinder 9½ inches in diameter, 18 inches stroke. The wheels had
-heavy cast iron hubs with wooden spokes and rims and wrought iron tires,
-and the frame was of wood placed outside the wheels. The boiler was 30
-inches in diameter and had 72 copper flues 1½ inches in diameter, 7 feet
-long. The price of the locomotive was $4,000, and it attained a speed of
-30 miles an hour, with its train.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 101.--EIGHT-WHEEL PASSENGER EXPRESS LOCOMOTIVE,
-1863.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 102.--EXPRESS PASSENGER LOCOMOTIVE, 1881.]
-
-In Fig. 101 is shown a standard type of passenger locomotive of the
-period of 1863, and in Fig. 102 is illustrated the period of 1881, which
-latter represents perhaps the greatest epoch of railroad building in the
-history of the world. According to Poor's Manual, $1,000,000 a day was
-the estimated cash outlay on this account for the three years up to the
-close of 1882, during which period 28,019 miles of railroad were opened
-up in the United States, or more than enough to girdle the entire earth.
-Some idea of the wonderful growth of the railroad industry during this
-period is given by the following tables, which represent the yearly
-production of locomotives by the Baldwin Company alone for forty years
-prior to this period:
-
- 1842 14
- 1843 12
- 1844 22
- 1845 27
- 1846 42
- 1847 39
- 1848 20
- 1849 30
- 1850 37
- 1851 50
- 1852 49
- 1853 60
- 1854 62
- 1855 47
- 1856 59
- 1857 66
- 1858 33
- 1859 70
- 1860 83
- 1861 40
- 1862 75
- 1863 96
- 1864 130
- 1865 115
- 1866 118
- 1867 127
- 1868 124
- 1869 235
- 1870 280
- 1871 331
- 1872 442
- 1873 437
- 1874 205
- 1875 130
- 1876 232
- 1877 185
- 1878 292
- 1879 398
- 1880 517
- 1881 555
- 1882 563
- 1883 557
-
-The present capacity of the Baldwin works is one thousand locomotives a
-year, and they have built up to this date about fifteen thousand
-locomotives, or nearly one-half of all the locomotives in use in the
-United States.
-
-The successive steps of the development in detail of the various
-features of the locomotive are distributed over a long period, and are
-somewhat difficult to trace. The turning of the exhaust steam into the
-smoke stack was done by Trevithick as early as 1804, but its effect was
-greatly increased by Hackworth about 1827, who augmented its power by
-directing it into the chimney through a narrow orifice. This and the
-tubular locomotive boiler by Seguin in 1828, the link-motion in 1832,
-the steam whistle by Stephenson in 1833, the Giffard injector in 1858,
-and the Westinghouse air brake of 1869, are the most prominent features
-of the locomotive.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 103.--STEPHENSON'S LINK MOTION.]
-
-The link motion has been claimed both for the younger Stephenson and W.
-T. James, of New York, the latter being probably its real inventor. Its
-purpose is to reverse the engine and also to cut off steam in either
-direction, so that it may act expansively. The form of link motion most
-generally used is shown in Fig. 103, and is known as Stephenson's. A B
-are two eccentrics projecting in opposite directions from the center of
-the common drive shaft, their rods being connected at their outer ends
-by a curved and slotted link C D. In the slot of this link plays a pin
-E, carried by a pendent swinging lever G F, which lever is jointed at
-its lower end to the slide valve rod H. A T-shaped lever I L K M has one
-arm at I connected by a rod with the slotted link at C. The opposite arm
-is provided with a counter weight at K to balance the weight of the link
-C D and eccentric rods, and the upright arm is connected at M to a rod
-operated by a hand lever P within easy access of the engineer. When the
-link C D is lowered the eccentric B imparts its throw to pendent lever G
-F and valve rod H, and the eccentric A will only swing the end C of the
-link without imparting any effect to the valve. When link C D is drawn
-up so that pin E is in the bottom of the slot, the eccentric A is active
-and B inactive, and as A has an opposite throw to B, the action of the
-valve is reversed. If link C D be drawn half way up, the pin E becomes
-the center of the oscillation of the link, and the valve rod is not
-moved at all. By adjusting the link nearer to or further from the
-central position, the throw of the slide valve may be made shorter or
-longer, and the steam cut off at a later or earlier period in the stroke
-of the piston.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 104.--LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE NO. 999.]
-
-Fig. 104 is a type of the best modern express locomotive. This is the
-famous 999 of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad. Its
-cylinders are 19 × 24 inches, driving wheels 86½ inches in diameter,
-weight 62 tons, steam pressure 190 pounds. This engine hauls the Empire
-State Express at a speed of 64.22 miles an hour, excluding stops, or
-more than a mile a minute.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 105.--COMPOUND LOCOMOTIVE.]
-
-In securing a higher efficiency and a greater economy in the use of
-steam, the most recent developments in the locomotive have been in the
-application of the principle of the compound expansion engine, in which
-two or more cylinders of different diameters are used, the steam at high
-pressure acting in the smaller cylinder, and being then exhausted into
-and acting expansively upon the piston of the larger cylinder. A fine
-example of the compound locomotive is shown in Fig. 105. The cylinders
-are arranged in pairs, the small high pressure cylinder above, and the
-larger low pressure cylinder below, both piston rods engaging a common
-cross head. The application of this principle of the compound engine is
-said to involve a saving in coal of over 25 per cent.
-
-Prominent among modern improvements in steam railways is the air brake.
-This invention is chiefly the result of the ingenuity of Mr. George
-Westinghouse, Jr., who, beginning his experiments in 1869, took out his
-first patents on the automatic air brake March 5, 1872, Nos. 124,404 and
-124,405, which have since been followed up by many others in perfecting
-the system. The principle of the air brake is to store up compressed air
-in a reservoir on the locomotive by means of a steam pump. This air
-passing through a train pipe connected by hose couplings between cars
-charges an auxiliary reservoir under each car. This reservoir is
-arranged beside a cylinder having a piston and a triple valve. Pressure
-in the train pipe is maintained constantly, and the power to work the
-piston to apply the brakes comes from the auxiliary reservoir beside it,
-which is set into action by a sudden reduction of pressure in the train
-pipe by the engineer through a special form of valve on the locomotive.
-The air brake is capable of stopping a train at average speed within the
-distance of its own length, and so great a safeguard to life and
-property is it, that its application to a certain number of cars on
-every train is made compulsory by law.
-
-The automatic car coupling is another important life-saving improvement.
-Many thousands of these have been patented, but the "Janney" coupling,
-patented April 29, 1873, No. 138,405, is the most representative type.
-The year 1900 is to witness the compulsory adoption of automatic car
-couplings on all cars. The "block system" of signals, by which no train
-is admitted on to a given section of track until the preceding train has
-left that section, improved switches, which are not dependent upon the
-memory of men, and steel rails, which constitute nine-tenths of all
-tracks and serve to increase the stability of the track, are further
-modern safeguards against danger.
-
-Sleeping cars were invented by Woodruff, and patented Dec. 2, 1856, Nos.
-16,159 and 16,160. These, with the palace cars of Pullman and Wagner,
-the special refrigerator cars for perishable goods, cars for cattle, and
-cars for coal, multiply the equipment, swell the traffic, and supply
-every want of the great railroad systems of modern times.
-
-The first railroad in the United States was built near Quincy, Mass., in
-1826. The Pacific Railway, the first of our half a dozen
-transcontinental railways, was completed in 1869. The great
-Trans-Siberian Railway is nearing completion, and in the Twentieth
-Century a Trans-Sahara Railway will probably relieve the burdens of the
-camel, as it has already done those of the horse.
-
-At the end of the year 1898 there were in use in the United States
-36,746 locomotives, 1,318,700 cars, and the mileage in tracks, including
-second track and sidings, was 245,238.87, which, if extended in a
-straight line, would build a railway to the moon. The money investment
-represented in capital stock and bonds was $11,216,886,452. The gross
-earnings for the year 1898 were $1,249,558,724. The net earnings were
-$389,666,474. Tons of freight moved were 912,973,853. Receipts from
-freight were $868,924,526. Number of passengers carried was 514,982,288.
-Receipts from passengers were $272,589,591, and dividends paid were
-$94,937,526. Add to the above the elevated railroads and street
-railroads, which are not included, and the immensity of the railroad
-business in the United States becomes apparent. In 1898 the United
-States exported 468 locomotives, worth $3,883,719. Mulhall estimates
-that the steam horse power of railroads in the world amounted in 1896 to
-40,420,000, of which the United States had more than one-third. He also
-states that the railways in the United States carry _every day_, in
-merchandise, a weight equal to that of the whole of the seventy millions
-of persons constituting its population; that the total railway traffic
-of the world in 1894 averaged ten million passengers and six million
-tons of merchandise _daily_; and that the total railway capital of the
-world reached in that year, 6,745 million sterling, or about
-thirty-three billion dollars.
-
-It is said that the highest railway speed ever attained by steam prior
-to 1900 was by locomotive No. 564 of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern
-Railroad, made during part of a run from Chicago to Buffalo. In this run
-86 miles were made at an average rate of 72.92 miles an hour. The train
-load was 304,500 pounds, and the 86 mile run included one mile at 92.3
-miles an hour, eight miles at 85.44 miles an hour, and thirty-three
-miles at 80.6 miles an hour. On May 26, 1900, however, an experiment on
-the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, made by Mr. F. U. Adams between Baltimore
-and Washington, demonstrated that by sheathing the train to prevent
-retardation by the air, an average speed of 78.6 miles an hour was
-obtained, and for five miles on a down grade a speed of 102.8 miles an
-hour was reached.
-
-The largest and most powerful locomotives in the world are those being
-built for the Pittsburg, Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad for hauling long
-trains of iron and ore, one of which has just been completed. Its
-cylinders are 24 × 32 inches; drive wheels, 54 inches diameter; weight,
-125 tons; draw bar pull 56,300 pounds, and hauling capacity 7,847 tons.
-One of these mammoth engines is capable of drawing a train of box cars,
-loaded with wheat, and more than a mile long, at a speed of ten miles an
-hour. This load of wheat would represent the yield of 14 square miles of
-land. No doubt it would greatly astonish our forefathers to know that at
-the end of the century we would have iron horses capable of carting
-away, at a single load, the products of 14 square miles of the country
-side, and do it at a gait faster than that of their local mail coach.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII.
-
-STEAM NAVIGATION.
-
- EARLY EXPERIMENTS--SYMINGTON'S BOAT--COL. JOHN STEVENS' SCREW
- PROPELLER--ROBT. FULTON AND THE "CLERMONT"--FIRST TRIP TO SEA BY
- STEVENS' "PHOENIX"--"SAVANNAH," THE FIRST STEAM VESSEL TO CROSS THE
- OCEAN--ERICSSON'S SCREW PROPELLER--THE "GREAT EASTERN"--THE
- WHALEBACK STEAMERS--OCEAN GREYHOUNDS--THE "OCEANIC," LARGEST
- STEAMSHIP IN THE WORLD--THE "TURBINIA"--FULTON'S "DEMOLOGOS," FIRST
- WAR VESSEL--THE TURRET MONITOR--MODERN BATTLESHIPS AND TORPEDO
- BOATS--HOLLAND SUBMARINE BOAT.
-
-
-The application of steam for the propulsion of boats engaged the
-attention of inventors along with the very earliest development of the
-steam engine itself. Blasco de Garay in 1543, the Marquis of Worcester
-in 1655, Savary in 1698, Denys Papin in 1707, Dr. John Allen in 1730,
-Jonathan Hulls in 1737, Bernouilli and Genevois in 1757, William Henry
-(of Pennsylvania) in 1763, Count D'Auxiron and M. Perier in 1774, the
-Marquis de Jouffroy in 1781, James Rumsey (on the Potomac) in 1782,
-Benjamin Franklin and Oliver Evans in 1786 and 1789, John Fitch in 1786,
-and also again in 1796, and William Symington in 1788-89 were the early
-experimenters. Papin's boat was said to have been used on the Fulda at
-Cassel, and was reported to have been destroyed by bargemen, who feared
-that it would deprive them of a livelihood. Allen, Rumsey, Franklin, and
-Evans (1786) proposed to employ a backwardly discharged column of water
-issuing from a pump. Jonathan Hulls and Oliver Evans (1789) had stern
-wheels. Bernouilli, Genevois, and the Marquis de Jouffroy used paddles
-on the duck's foot principle, which closed when dragged forward, and
-expanded when pushed to the rear. Fitch's first boat employed a system
-of paddles suspended by their handles from cranks, which, in revolving,
-gave the paddles a motion simulating that which the Indian imparts to
-his paddle. Symington's boat of 1788 (Patrick Miller's pleasure boat)
-had side paddle wheels. Symington's next boat, built in 1789, and also
-owned by Patrick Miller, was of the catamaran type, _i. e._, it had two
-parallel hulls with paddle wheels between them.
-
-Such was the state of this art when the Nineteenth Century commenced its
-wonderful record. No practical steam vessel had been constructed, as
-the efforts in this direction were handicapped by the crudeness of all
-the arts, and were to be regarded as experiments only, most of which had
-to be abandoned. The seed of this invention, however, had been sown in
-the fertile soil of genius, conception of its great possibilities had
-fired the zeal of the inventors in this field, and the new century was
-shortly to number among its great resources a practical and efficient
-steamboat.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 106.--SYMINGTON'S STEAMBOAT, 1801.]
-
-The first steamboat of the Nineteenth Century was the "Charlotte
-Dundas," built by William Symington in 1801, see Fig. 106, and used on
-the Forth and Clyde Canal in 1802. She had a double acting "Watt
-engine," which transmitted power by a connecting rod to a crank on the
-paddle-wheel shaft. The boat had a single paddle wheel in the middle
-near the stern, and was intended only for canal use, in the place of
-horses. It was abandoned for fear of washing the banks.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 107.--STEVENS' TWIN SCREW PROPELLER AND ENGINE,
-1804.]
-
-In 1804 Col. John Stevens constructed a boat on the Hudson, driven by a
-Watt engine, and having a tubular boiler of his own invention and a twin
-screw propeller. The engine, boiler, and twin screws are shown in Fig.
-107. The same year Oliver Evans used a stern paddle wheel boat on the
-Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It was driven by a double acting high
-pressure engine, and geared so as to rotate wagon wheels by which it was
-transported on land, as well as the paddle wheels when on the water. It
-was in primitive form both a locomotive and a steamboat.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 108.--THE "CLERMONT," 1807.]
-
-In 1807 Robert Fulton built the "Clermont," and permanently established
-steam navigation on the Hudson River between New York and Albany. Fulton
-in 1802-1803, while living in Paris with Mr. Joel Barlow, and with the
-aid and encouragement of Chancellor Livingston, of New Jersey, had built
-an earlier steamboat 86 feet long, and although it broke down owing to
-defects in the strength of the hull, he was so encouraged that he
-ordered Messrs. Boulton & Watt, of England, to send to America a new
-steam engine, and upon his return to America he built the "Clermont."
-This vessel, although not the first steamboat, was nevertheless the
-first to make a voyage of any considerable length, and to run regularly
-and continuously for practical purposes, and Fulton was the first
-inventor in this field whose labors were not to be classed as an
-abandoned experiment. The "Clermont" as originally built was quite a
-different looking boat from that usually given in the histories. A model
-of the original construction is to be found in the National Museum at
-Washington. In the winter of 1807-8 she was remodeled as shown in Fig.
-108. She then appeared as a side wheel steamer, whose wheels were
-provided with outer guards and enclosed in side wheel houses, and whose
-shaft had outer bearings in the guards, which were not in the original
-boat. The hull was 133 feet long, 18 feet beam, and 7 feet depth. The
-"Clermont's" engines were coupled to the crank shaft by a bell crank,
-and the paddle wheel shaft was separated from the crank shaft, but
-connected with it by gearing. The cylinders were 24 inches in diameter,
-and 4 foot stroke. The paddle wheels had buckets 4 feet long with a dip
-of 2 feet. She made the first trip from New York to Albany of 150 miles
-in 32 hours, and returned in 30 hours, which was the first voyage of any
-considerable length ever made by steam power.
-
-The honor of inventing the steamboat has been claimed for many
-inventors, and that many worthy experimenters had been working in this
-field, and that Fulton had the benefit of their experience is true. The
-fact is, however, that the evolution of any great, invention is a slow
-and cumulative process, the product of many minds, and while the
-proposers, suggesters, and experimenters are entitled to their share of
-the credit, it is the man who achieves success and gives to the public
-the benefit of his labors whom the world honors, and in this connection
-the name of Fulton stands pre-eminent, for although the "Clermont" was
-264 years later than the steamboat of Blasco de Garay, the "Clermont"
-marks the beginning of practical steam navigation, and whatever the
-claims of other inventors may be, it is certain that steam navigation,
-established by Fulton in 1807, on the Hudson, preceded the practical use
-of the steamboat in any other country by at least five years, for it was
-not until 1812 that Henry Bell, of Scotland, built the "Comet," that
-plied between Glasgow and Greenock, on the Clyde, and not until 1814 was
-a steam packet used for hire on the Thames in England.
-
-At the same time that Fulton was in Paris making his first experiments
-with the steamboat, Col. John Stevens, the most celebrated boat builder
-and engineer of his day, was actively experimenting in America in the
-same line. Having in 1804 made the first application of steam to the
-screw propeller, he in 1807 built the "Phoenix," which was driven by
-paddle wheels. The "Phoenix" was constructed shortly after Fulton's
-boat, but was barred from use on the Hudson by the exclusive monopoly
-obtained by Fulton and Livingston from the State Legislature, and she
-was accordingly taken from New York to Philadelphia by sea, which was
-the first ocean voyage by a steam vessel.
-
-The first steamboat on the Mississippi was the "Orleans," of 100 tons,
-built at Pittsburg by Fulton and Livingston in 1811. She had a stern
-wheel, and went from Pittsburg to New Orleans in 14 days.
-
-Although the first trip out to sea was made in 1808 by Col. Stevens' son
-in taking the "Phoenix" from New York to Philadelphia, no attempt had
-been made to cross the ocean until 1819. In this year the "Savannah," an
-American steamer of 380 tons, performed this feat, and had the honor of
-being the first steam vessel to cross the Atlantic. In 1824 the
-"Enterprise," an English steamer, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and went
-to India.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 109.--SCREW PROPELLER OF THE "ROBT. F. STOCKTON,"
-ERICSSON'S PATENT, 1836.]
-
-The screw propeller employed by Colonel Stevens in 1804 was not a new
-invention with him, as popularly supposed, but had its origin early in
-the preceding century, being a mere development of the ancient wind
-wheel. In 1836 it was further developed by Francis P. Smith and by Capt.
-John Ericsson, then living in England. Ericsson took out British patent
-No. 7,149, of 1836, and United States patent No. 588, of Feb. 1, 1838,
-and built several screw steamers, and through Capt. Robert F. Stockton,
-of the United States Navy, succeeded in having a screw steamer, the
-"Robert F. Stockton," built in accordance with the plans of his patent
-and sent to the United States. The arrangement of her machinery is seen
-in Fig. 109. She had two propellers on the same axis, but revolving in
-opposite directions, one being on the central shaft and the other on a
-concentric tube. The engines were coupled directly to the propeller
-shafts, which feature was one of Ericsson's improvements, and has
-continued to be the approved form to this day.
-
-In the early history of steam navigation the side wheel steamer was the
-favorite, and was employed for ocean travel as well as for inland
-waters. In 1840 the "Brittania," the first Cunarder, commenced the
-career of that celebrated line. This vessel had side wheels, as did also
-the "United States," shown in Fig. 110, which was the first American
-steamer built expressly for the Atlantic trade. In 1852 the United
-States mail steamer "Arctic," of the Collins line, was regarded as the
-greyhound of the Atlantic, her time being 9 days, 17 hours and 12
-minutes. She also had side wheels.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 110.--STEAMER "UNITED STATES," 1847.]
-
-Side wheel steamers for inland waters, and screw propellers for sea
-service, however, in time established their fitness for their respective
-scenes of action. In side wheel steamers the most notable improvements
-have been in stiffening the hull by braces, and the adoption of
-feathering paddle wheels, whose function is to cause the paddles to
-enter and leave the water in vertical position without dragging dead
-water. Manley in 1862, and Morgan in 1875, patented practical forms of
-the feathering paddle wheel. In screw propellers, Woodcroft in 1832, and
-Griffiths at a later period, made valuable improvements. The surface
-condenser was used by Hall in 1838 on the steamship "Wilberforce," and
-Sickels in 1841 invented the drop cut-off.
-
-[Illustration:
-
- {"GREAT EASTERN," SCREW AND PADDLE WHEELS, 1858. LENGTH,
- FIG. 111.--{692 FEET, SPEED 12 KNOTS.
- {"OCEANIC," TWIN SCREW, 1899. LENGTH, 704 FEET, SPEED, 20
- {KNOTS.]
-
-In 1854 the "Great Eastern" was begun and was finished in 1858. This was
-the largest steam vessel ever built up to this time, and has continued
-to hold the record for size up to the year 1899, when her dimensions
-were exceeded by the "Oceanic," which ships are put in comparison in
-Fig. 111. The length of the "Great Eastern" was 692 feet, beam 83 feet,
-depth 57½ feet, draft 25½ feet, displacement 27,000 tons, and speed 12
-knots. She was designed by the English engineer Brunel, and was intended
-for the Australian trade. She had both a screw propeller and paddle
-wheels at the side, with four engines coupled to each. The paddle wheel
-engines had steam cylinders 74 inches in diameter, with 14 foot stroke,
-and those of the screw engines were 84 inches in diameter and 4 foot
-stroke. Collectively they were of 10,000 horse power. The paddle wheels
-were 56 feet in diameter, and the screw propeller 24 feet. On her first
-voyage to New York, across the Atlantic, in 1860, she carried from 15 to
-24 pounds of steam and consumed 2,877 tons of coal. Her cost was
-$3,831,520. This mammoth vessel was too large and unwieldy for the uses
-for which she was designed, and proved a bad investment. She served,
-however, a most useful purpose, by virtue of her great bulk, steadiness,
-and carrying capacity, for relaying the Atlantic cable in 1866, and
-others in 1873-1874.
-
-In 1874 the "Castalia" was built. This was a steamer with two parallel
-hulls, decked across, and designed for greater steadiness in crossing
-the English Channel. The "Bessemer" steamer, designed for the same
-purpose, and built about the same time, had four paddle wheels, and the
-entire cabin was hung on pivots, so that it could not partake of the sea
-motion.
-
-In later years great improvements have been made in reducing the weight
-of the engines, in forced blast, steam steering gear, anchor hoisting
-devices, water-tight bulkheads, surface condensers, electric lights, and
-signalling devices. By the year 1880 the standard form of marine engine
-for large powers had become the compound double cylinder type, expanding
-steam from an initial pressure as high as 90 pounds. In 1890 triple
-expansion engines had become common, employing three cylinders, and
-using steam with an initial pressure as high as 180 pounds. In 1890
-McDougal's whale-back steamers were introduced. See United States
-patents No. 429,467 and 429,468, June 3, 1890, and No. 500,411, June 27,
-1893.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 112.--STEAMBOAT "PRISCILLA."]
-
-In no country in the world are such fine examples of side wheel steamers
-to be found as in the United States, and in no country are there such
-splendid reaches of inland waters as theatres for their performances.
-The "Priscilla," shown in Fig. 112, of the Fall River Line, plying on
-Long Island Sound, and the "Adirondack," on the Hudson, are fine
-examples of this type. The "Priscilla," which is said to be the largest
-river boat in the world, is 440 feet 6 inches long and 93 feet breadth
-over the guards. She is driven by double compound inclined engines, has
-feathering paddle wheels 35 feet in diameter and 14 feet face, and her
-speed is over 20 miles an hour. The "Adirondack," whose engines and
-feathering paddle wheel are shown in Fig. 113, is 412 feet long and 90
-feet breadth over guards. The engines and paddle wheels of the
-"Adirondack" are distinctly representative of the modern American side
-wheel steamer.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 113.--ENGINES AND PADDLE WHEEL OF STEAMER
-"ADIRONDACK" ON THE HUDSON RIVER.]
-
-The largest and in many respects the highest type of marine architecture
-is to be found in the modern ocean greyhound for transatlantic trade. In
-recent years the rival companies have vied with each other in the effort
-to excel, and steamships of larger size, greater speed, and more perfect
-equipment have followed each other, until it would seem that the limit
-had been reached. In the accompanying table the largest and most recent
-steamers are placed in comparison with the "Great Eastern."
-
-DIMENSIONS OF THE LARGEST OCEAN STEAMERS.
-
- ==============+======+=======+======+======+========+=========+=======
- NAME OF | DATE.|LENGTH | BEAM.|DEPTH.|DRAUGHT.|DISPLACE-|MAXIMUM
- SHIP. | | OVER | | | | MENT. |SPEED.
- | | ALL. | | | | |
- --------------+------+-------+------+------+--------|---------+-------
- | | FEET. | FEET.| FEET.| FEET. | TONS. | KNOTS.
- Great Eastern | 1858 | 692 | 83 | 57½ | 25½ | 27,000 | 12
- Paris | 1888 | 560 | 63 | 42 | 26½ | 13,000 | 20
- Teutonic | 1890 | 585 | 57½ | 42 | 26 | 12,000 | 20
- Campania | 1893 | 625 | 65 | 41½ | 28 | 19,000 | 22
- St. Paul | 1895 | 554 | 63 | 42 | 27 | 14,000 | 21
- Kaiser Wilhelm| 1897 | 649 | 66 | 43 | 29 | 20,000 | 22.35
- der Grosse | | | | | | |
- Oceanic | 1899 | 704 | 68 | 49 | 32½ | 28,500 | 20
- Deutschland | 1900 | 686½ | 67- | 44 | 29 | 22,000 | 23½
- | | | 1/3 | | | |
- ==============+======+=======+======+======+========+=========+=======
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 114.--"KAISER WILHELM DER GROSSE."]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 115.--"OCEANIC" COMPARED WITH BROADWAY BUILDINGS.]
-
-The "Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse," owned by the North German Lloyd
-Company, and built in 1897, is shown in Fig. 114, and for three years
-held the record as the fastest steamship afloat. The "Kaiser Wilhelm"
-was followed by the "Oceanic," in 1899, of the White Star Company, which
-is the largest ocean steamer ever built, exceeding the proportions of
-the "Great Eastern." Just what the dimensions of the "Oceanic" mean, as
-given in the preceding tables, can be best illustrated by the
-accompanying Fig. 115, in which she is juxtaposed with several blocks of
-large buildings on Broadway, New York, opposite City Hall Park. If the
-"Oceanic" were placed on end beside Washington's Monument, at the United
-States Capital, she would tower 150 feet above the top of the same. An
-ordinary brick house four rooms deep and three stories high could be
-built with its length crosswise in her hull. There is accommodation for
-410 first-class passengers, 300 second-class passengers, and 1,000 third
-class, and as her crew will number 390, the total number of souls on
-board, when she carries her full complement, will be 2,100.
-
-The latest achievement in marine architecture, however, is the
-"Deutschland," built for the Hamburg-American Company. The "Deutschland"
-is not quite so large as the "Oceanic," but is of higher speed, her
-maximum speed of 23½ knots an hour exceeding that of any other ocean
-steamer. The "Savannah," the first steam vessel to cross the Atlantic,
-made the trip in 1819 in 26 days. The "Deutschland" in her eastward trip
-September 4, 1900, crossed the Atlantic in 5 days 7 hours and 38
-minutes, which is the fastest time on record. The "Deutschland" is of
-35,640 horse power, her two bronze propellers are 23 feet diameter, and
-weigh 30 tons, and her propeller shafts are 25 inches in diameter. The
-cranks of her propeller shafts, like those of the "Kaiser Wilhelm" and
-the "Oceanic," are set according to the Schlick system, to reduce
-vibration. The "Deutschland's" engines are seen in Fig. 92, and in
-general appearance the ship resembles the "Kaiser Wilhelm." Still larger
-and possibly swifter steamships are in process of construction, viz.:
-the "Kaiser Wilhelm II.," by the North German Lloyd Company, and a
-mammoth unnamed ship by the White Star Line, whose length of 750 feet
-will exceed all others.
-
-It may be interesting to note in familiar terms what these enormous
-traveling palaces comprehend in equipment. For the safety and comfort of
-passengers, the great length reduces the pitching, bilge keels prevent
-rolling, and the Schlick system of cranks neutralizes vibration in the
-engine. Strong bulkheads, and double bottoms with air-tight
-compartments, impart buoyancy in case of collision. Boilers are placed
-in separate water-tight compartments, so that damage to one does not
-disable the others. Powerful pumps are arranged to discharge inflowing
-water, and the best of life boats are provided. Spacious dining rooms,
-promenade decks, drawing rooms, pianos, library, smoking room, state
-rooms, cabins for children, toilets, baths, medicine stores, a printing
-office, and electric lights everywhere, furnish every want and satisfy
-every luxurious taste. The cuisine includes a refrigerating plant, the
-finest ranges, and provisions galore. It may be interesting to the
-housewife to see the market list of a modern transatlantic steamer. A
-specimen is partially represented in the following: 25,450 pounds of
-fresh meat, 3,250 pounds of fish, 6,370 pounds of game and poultry,
-12,715 pounds of bread, 43 barrels of flour, 3,938 pounds of butter,
-1,307 pounds of coffee, 2,790 pounds of sugar, 102 pounds of tea, 7,220
-pounds of fresh fruit; 1,230 gallons of milk, 26,106 eggs, 29,180
-oranges and lemons, 7,033 bottles of mineral water, 1,800 bottles of
-beer, 2,688 gallons of beer in casks, 1,240 bottles of wine, 630 bottles
-of champagne, 1,600 heads of lettuce, 800 jars of preserved fruits, and
-other things in proportion.
-
-In the matter of size the "Oceanic" surpasses all previous efforts in
-ship building, but ocean steamers do not reach the highest speed
-attainable. The little "Turbinia," a 40 ton craft equipped with a
-compound rotary steam turbine of the Parsons type, has attained a speed
-of 32¾ knots an hour. An even greater speed has recently been attained
-by the larger boat, "Hai Lung," constructed in England for the Chinese
-Government, which vessel was equipped with reciprocating engines, and is
-credited with having made a run of 18½ knots at an average speed of 35
-knots an hour. The highest speed ever attained, however, is by the
-British torpedo boat "Viper," which is 210 feet long, and, like the
-"Turbinia," is equipped with the Parsons steam turbines. In a recent
-trial the "Viper" covered a measured mile at the rate of 37.1 knots, or
-about 43 miles an hour.
-
-In many respects the most important branch of steam navigation in recent
-years has been its war vessels. The great navies of the world at the end
-of 1898[3] ranked as follows: England, 1,557,522 tons; France, 731,629
-tons; Russia, 453,899 tons; United States, 303,070 tons; Germany,
-299,637 tons; Italy, 286,175 tons, and they all owe their efficiency
-entirely to steam. The first steam war vessel was built in 1814 by
-Fulton for the defence of New York Harbor, during the then existing war
-times. She was known as the "Demologos" (voice of the people), or
-"Fulton the First." As shown in the original designs, Fig. 116, she is a
-double ender, whose sides were to be 5 feet thick. In her middle was a
-channel way or well containing a protected paddle wheel 16 feet in
-diameter, 14 feet wide, and having a dip of 4 feet. A single cylinder
-engine turned the paddle wheel on one side, and was balanced by the
-boiler on the other side. Although intended to have only twenty guns,
-she was equipped, when finished, with thirty long 32-pounder guns and
-two Columbiad 100-pounders. It was proposed also to have submarine guns
-suspended from each bow. An engine was also to be used to discharge hot
-water on the enemy, and a furnace was to be provided for heating the
-cannon balls red hot. She was 156 feet long, 20 feet deep, and 56 feet
-broad, and was regarded as a very formidable vessel. Her cost was
-$278,544. Iron-clad floating batteries were first used in 1855 in the
-Crimean war, and shortly afterward the French built the first sea-going
-iron-clad, "Gloire," followed in 1859 by the British iron-clad,
-"Warrior."
-
- [3] The figures represent a selective list which excludes about 15 per
- cent. of old and inefficient vessels.
-
-[Illustration: "DEMOLOGOS"
-
-Figure I^{st} Transverse section A _her Boiler,_ B _the steam Engine,_ C
-_the water-wheel,_
-
-EE _her wooden walls 5 feet thick, diminishing to below the waterline as
-at_ FF.
-
-_draught of water 9 feet_ DD _her gun deck._
-
-Figure II^{d} _This shews her gun deck. 140 feet long,
-
-24 feet wide; mounting 20 guns_ A _the Water wheel_
-
-Figure III^{d}
-
-_Side View_
-
-FIG. 116.]
-
-The civil war in 1861 brought with it a novel and striking form of war
-vessel known as the "Monitor."[4] It was built from plans of Capt.
-Ericsson, an engineer of the ripest experience, skill, and attainments,
-who had then come to make his home in the United States. He undertook to
-construct for the Navy Department of the United States some form of iron
-clad steam batteries of light draft, suitable to navigate the rivers and
-harbors of the Confederate States. The "Monitor" was the result. The
-salient features, shown in vertical cross section in Fig. 117, are a low
-deck projecting but a few inches above the water line, so as to present
-as little target as possible to the enemy, and a revolving and heavily
-armored turret containing the battery of guns. In 1862 the Confederate
-forces had reconstructed a steam vessel with a chicken-coop-shaped
-covering of armor, that proved a formidable engine of war, which was
-practically invulnerable to the attacks of ordinary war vessels, and was
-doing great damage to the Union vessels. In the spring of 1862 the
-"Monitor" met the "Merrimac" in engagement in Hampton Roads, and
-established the great value of the turret monitor.
-
- [4] The revolving turret was invented and patented by Theodore R.
- Timby, No. 35,846, July 8, 1862, and No. 36,593, September 30,
- 1862.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 117.--CROSS SECTION OF "MONITOR."]
-
-Vessels of the "Monitor" type still form useful parts of the United
-States Navy, in which the "Monterey" and "Monadnock" are its most
-representative types. The "Monadnock," which is a double-turret coast
-defence monitor, is shown in Fig. 118. Although regarded by some as
-unseaworthy on account of the low seaboard and small buoyancy, the
-monitor has cleared itself of such suspicion, for in the recent war with
-Spain both the "Monadnock" and "Monterey" sailed across the Pacific
-Ocean by way of Honolulu to Manila, a distance of 7,000 miles, and
-joined the fleet of Admiral Dewey without mishap or delay.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 118.--MONITOR "MONADNOCK."]
-
-No patriotic American citizen would expect to read an account of modern
-war vessels without finding special mention of those two splendid
-types of their class, the battleship "Oregon" and the armored cruiser
-"Brooklyn," whose performances during the late war with Spain
-contributed so much to the honor and glory of the United States Navy,
-and demonstrated the skill and efficiency of our American shipbuilders.
-Before the war began the "Oregon" was stationed on the Pacific Coast,
-where she had been built, and it was desired that she should join the
-fleet of Admiral Sampson in Cuban waters. Leaving Puget Sound on March
-6, 1898, this floating fortress of steel, weighted with her enormous
-guns and 18-inch thick armor, made the long journey of over 14,500 miles
-around the southern end of the western continent, and up to Jupiter
-Inlet on the Florida coast, arriving there on the 24th day of May, and
-was not delayed an hour on account of her machinery, the only stops
-being made for coal. Immediately after coaling at Key West she took her
-place in the blockading line at Santiago, and in the great battle of
-July 3 quickly developed a power greater than that attained on her trial
-trip and a speed only slightly less, easily distancing all other ships
-immediately engaged except the "Brooklyn," and in connection with the
-"Brooklyn" forced the fleetest of the Spanish cruisers to surrender.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 119.--BATTLESHIP "OREGON."]
-
-The "Oregon" is shown in Fig. 119. She is an armored battleship of the
-first class, built by the Union Iron Works of San Francisco, and
-launched Oct. 26, 1893. Her length is 348 feet, beam 69¼ feet, draft 24
-feet, displacement 10,288 tons, maximum speed 16.79 knots, and coal
-capacity 1,594 tons. Her side armor is of steel plates 18 inches thick,
-and her deck is, 2¾ inches thick. On the turrets the armor is from 6 to
-15 inches thick, and on the barbettes it is from 6 to 17 inches thick.
-Her engines are of the twin screw, vertical triple expansion direct
-acting inverted cylinder type. The stroke is 42 inches, and the
-diameters of the cylinders are 34½, 48, and 75 inches, respectively. The
-battery consists of four 13-inch breech loading rifles, eight 8-inch
-breech loading rifles, four 6-inch, twenty 6-pounder rapid fire guns,
-six 1-pounder rapid fire, two Colts, one 3-inch rapid fire field gun,
-and three torpedo tubes. The 13-inch guns weigh 136,000 pounds each, are
-39 feet 9¼ inches long, are set 18 feet above the water, can be moved
-through an arc of 270 degrees, and throw a projectile of 1,100 pounds a
-distance of 12 miles, and with a power which at 1,000 yards would
-perforate a mass of steel 2½ feet in thickness. The cost of the "Oregon"
-was $3,180,000.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 120.--ARMORED CRUISER "BROOKLYN."]
-
-The "Brooklyn" is shown in Fig. 120, and enjoys the distinction of
-having borne the brunt of the fight of July 3, 1898, having been hit
-over forty times in that engagement without being disabled. She was
-built by the William Cramp & Sons Ship and Engine Building Company, of
-Philadelphia, was launched Oct. 2, 1895, and cost $2,986,000. She is an
-armored cruiser, and is one of the latest and most speedy of that type.
-She is 400 feet 6 inches long, 64 feet 8 inches breadth, 24 feet draft,
-9,215 tons displacement. Her engines are the twin-screw vertical triple
-expansion type, imparting a speed of 21.91 knots an hour. Her maximum
-indicated horse power is 18,769, and her coal capacity is 1,461 tons.
-Her battery consists of eight 8-inch breech loading rifles, twelve
-5-inch rapid fire guns, twelve 6-pounder rapid fire, four 1-pounder
-rapid fire, four Colts, two 3-inch rapid fire field guns, and four
-Whitehead torpedo tubes. Her side armor is 3 inches thick, her turrets
-5½ inches, her barbettes from 4 to 8 inches, and her deck from 3 to 6
-inches. She also has a water line protection of cocoa fibre to
-automatically close up an opening made by a shot.
-
-Although not a steam vessel, it would be regarded as an omission not to
-mention among war vessels the "Holland" submarine boat, brought into
-notice in 1898 by the Spanish American war, and designed to dive below
-the surface and make attack below the water level. Torpedo boats of this
-type have been acquired by, and now form a part of, the United States
-Navy.
-
-Among all the types of steam war vessels which have claimed popular
-attention the most interesting in proportion to its size is the torpedo
-boat, for none represent such concentrated pent-up energy and deadly
-effect as this little demon of the sea. A mere shell in construction,
-with engine and boiler built for highest speed, and crew suffering
-untold discomforts and dangers below, this modern engine of destruction,
-with the speed of an express locomotive, and the helplessness and deadly
-intent of a scorpion, darts up to the monster battleship under cover of
-darkness, and before being discovered discharges a torpedo and delivers
-a mortal wound in the side of the big ship which sends her to the
-bottom, perishing perhaps itself in the destruction which it works. The
-United States has 37 of these torpedo boats. The torpedo boat destroyer
-is a larger and swifter boat, whose special duty it is to overtake and
-destroy this dangerous little fighter.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 121.--SHIPPING OF ALL NATIONS. RATIO OF STEAM TO
-SAILS.]
-
-The growth of steam navigation during the present generation has been
-wonderfully rapid. The accompanying diagram, Fig. 121, from Mulhall's
-"Industries and Wealth of Nations," shows in 1860 30 per cent. of steam
-to 70 per cent. of sailing vessels, while in 1894 the ratio is 80 per
-cent. of steam to 20 of sailing vessels. The same authority estimated
-the total horse power of steam vessels in the merchant marine of the
-world in 1895 to be 12,005,000. Add to this the growth of the past five
-years, and about 4,000,000 horse power for the steam war vessels of the
-world's navies, which were not included, and the total horse power of
-the steam vessels of the world would not be far from twenty million.
-
-This cursory review, in a single chapter, cannot adequately treat this
-great subject, for a whole library is needed to cover the field. Suffice
-it to say, however, that among the great scenes and acts in the theatre
-of human action, no figure has occupied so much attention, and none
-played so important a part in the drama of life, as the steam vessel.
-Its stage setting has been the majestic waters of the earth, and on it
-the play of the great warships has vied in power and grandeur with the
-flash and vehemence of the lightning, and the whirl and turmoil of the
-elements. Tense with a deep meaning which no stage simulation could
-approximate, and with the smoke of conflict for a drop curtain, it has
-laid tragedies upon the pages of history, and changed the maps of the
-world; while behind the scenes the great passenger steamers, with their
-uninterrupted traffic of human freight, are more silently, but none the
-less surely, stirring the peoples of the earth into the homogeneous
-ferment of civilization, and slowly moulding nations into the solidarity
-of a common brotherhood.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII.
-
-PRINTING.
-
- EARLY PRINTING PRESSES--NICHOLSON'S ROTARY PRESS--THE COLUMBIAN AND
- WASHINGTON PRESSES--KÖNIG ROTARY STEAM PRESS--THE HOE TYPE REVOLVING
- MACHINE--COLOR PRINTING--STEREOTYPING--PAPER MAKING--WOOD PULP--THE
- LINOTYPE--PLATE PRINTING--LITHOGRAPHY.
-
-
-The art preservative of all arts it has been rightfully called. Before
-its birth generation after generation of the human family lived and
-died, and each was but little wiser, and but little better than its
-predecessor. Tradition was the misty, vague, and sometimes wholly false
-dependence of the living, and the experiences of mankind were, in the
-words of an eminent writer, but like the stern lights of a vessel, which
-only illumined the pathway over which each had passed. But printing
-gives to the present the cumulative wisdom of the past, and marks a
-great era of growth in civilization. It conserves and preserves man's
-thoughts and makes them immortal, so that each generation comes into
-existence with a richer legacy of ideas, and is guaranteed a higher
-plane of existence, and a more exalted destiny.
-
-Printing from letters engraved on blocks of wood is an ancient art,
-having had its origin in China many centuries before the Christian era.
-The Chinese method, which is still followed, was to write their
-characters with a brush on a sheet of paper, and while still wet, the
-piece of paper was laid face downward on a smooth piece of board to
-transfer the ink lines, and then all except the ink lines on the board
-was cut away. Thus they have one type plate for each book page. Printing
-with movable type, _i. e._, with a separate type for each letter, which
-may be repeatedly set up into forms of varying composition, is
-practically the beginning of the modern art of printing. This invention
-is usually ascribed to Johann Gutenberg, of Mentz, about 1436.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 122.--BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S PRESS, 1725.]
-
-In the earliest printing presses the form was locked up in a tray, and
-placed upon a platform, and the platen was then brought down upon it by
-turning a screw in a cross bar above. The first printing press of this
-type was made by Blaew, of Amsterdam, in 1620, which had a spring to
-cause the screw to fly back after the impression was taken. The press
-upon which Benjamin Franklin worked in London in 1725 is of this
-pattern, and is to be seen in the National Museum at Washington. It is
-almost entirely of wood, and is shown in Fig. 122. About the beginning
-of the Nineteenth Century Lord Stanhope invented a press entirely of
-cast iron, in which the oscillating handle operated a toggle to force
-down the platen in taking the impression. The bed traveled on guide
-ways, and the tympan and frisket were hinged to fold back and lay in
-elevated position.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 123.--THE WASHINGTON PRESS.]
-
-The "Columbian" press was the first important American improvement. It
-was invented by George Clymer, of Philadelphia, and is shown in his
-British Pat. No. 4,174 of 1817. A compound lever was employed for
-applying the power. The "Washington" press was patented in the United
-States by Samuel Rust, April 17, 1829. In this press (see Fig. 123) the
-platen is forced downwardly by a compound lever applied to a toggle
-joint and is raised by springs on each side. The bed is run in and out
-by turning a crank on a shaft which has a pulley and belt passing around
-it.
-
-As so far described the presses were worked by hand power. An important
-step in the advancement of this art was made by the introduction of
-_power presses_ worked by steam. These arranged the type on the surface
-of a cylinder. Probably the earliest form of rotary cylinder press is
-that invented by Nicholson, British Pat. No. 1,748 of 1790. Its main
-features are described as follows: "The types, being rubbed or scraped
-narrower toward the foot, were to be fixed radially upon a cylinder.
-This cylinder with its type was to revolve in gear with another cylinder
-covered with soft leather (the impression cylinder), and the type
-received its ink from another cylinder, to which the inking apparatus
-was applied. The paper was impressed by passing between the type and the
-impression cylinder."
-
-The first practical success, however, in rotary steam presses was
-achieved by König, a German, who in 1814 set up for the _London Times_
-two machines, by which that newspaper was printed at the rate of 1,100
-impressions per hour. He obtained British Pat. No. 3,321 of 1810, No.
-3,496 of 1811, No. 3,725 of 1813, and No. 3,868 of 1814. König's machine
-was in 1827 succeeded by that of Applegath and Cowper, which was simpler
-and more rapid.
-
-Many improvements upon the methods for handling the paper were
-subsequently devised, and double cylinder presses were made which were
-able to print 4,000 sheets an hour. In 1845 the firm of R. Hoe & Co.,
-which had already been for years engaged in the manufacture of printing
-presses, brought out the Hoe Type Revolving Machine. The first one of
-these was placed in the office of the _Philadelphia Ledger_ in 1846, and
-had four impression cylinders, printing 8,000 papers per hour. The
-constantly increasing circulation of newspapers, however, continued to
-make insatiable demands for more rapid work, and to meet this demand the
-Hoe company in 1871 brought out their continuous web press, in which the
-paper was furnished to the machine in the form of a roll, and after
-being printed was separated into sheets. This principle of action gave
-promise of unlimited speed, and required important reorganization in all
-parts of the machine. To meet these conditions of increased speed more
-rapid drying ink had to be produced to prevent blurring, paper of
-uniform quality and strength had to be made, means had to be devised for
-printing the opposite side of the web, and severing devices for cutting
-the web into sheets were needed, but perhaps the most important feature
-was the device called a gathering and delivering cylinder, whereby the
-papers could be gathered and disposed of as fast as they could be
-printed, and much faster than human hands could work. This was the
-invention of Stephen D. Tucker, and it is the mechanism upon which the
-speed of the modern press depends, for it would obviously be useless to
-print papers faster than they could be taken from the machine in proper
-condition. Many patents were taken by Messrs. Hoe & Tucker covering
-various improvements, prominent among which were No. 18,640, Nov. 17,
-1857; No. 25,199, Aug. 23, 1859 (re-issue No. 4,429); No. 84,627, Dec.
-1, 1868 (re-issue No. 4,400); No. 113,769, April 18, 1871; No. 124,460,
-March 12, 1872; No. 131,217, Sept. 10, 1872. The first rapid printing
-press of the Hoe Company was set up in the office of the _New York
-Tribune_ in 1871, and its maximum output was 18,000 an hour. This marked
-the great era of rapid newspaper printing, and following it many further
-improvements, such as devices for folding and counting the papers
-automatically, have been added, until to-day the great Hoe Octuple
-Press, shown in Fig. 124, is the wonder of the Nineteenth Century. It
-prints 96,000 papers of four, six, or eight pages in an hour, or at the
-rate of 1,600 a minute, and these papers are not only printed, but in
-the same operation and by the same machine are cut, pasted, folded, and
-counted automatically. Fifty miles of paper of the width of an ordinary
-newspaper pass through it each hour from its several rolls. The machine
-weighs over 60 tons, and is composed of about 16,000 parts, and yet its
-touch is so deft, and its members so delicately and accurately adjusted
-that it does not tear the tender sheet as it flies through the
-machine--so fast that one-fifth of a second only is required to print a
-page.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 124.--HOE OCTUPLE PRESS. PRINTS, CUTS, PASTES, FOLDS
-AND COUNTS NEWSPAPERS AT RATE OF 1,600 A MINUTE.]
-
-The latest development in the printing press has been in color printing,
-which has recently been introduced in the illustration of some of the
-largest daily newspapers. Such a press contains from 50,000 to 60,000
-parts, and its cost is from $35,000 to $45,000.
-
-Collateral with the development of the printing press are three
-important branches of the art--stereotyping, paper making, and type
-setting.
-
-_Stereotyping_ was the invention of William Ged, of Edinburgh, in 1731,
-and was introduced into the United States by David Bruce, of New York,
-in 1813. The stereotype is simply a moulded duplicate of the type face
-as set up, the duplicate being cast in the form of a single block of
-metal, by first taking an impression in plastic material from the faces
-of the type, after being set up, to form the mould, and then casting, in
-an easily fusible metal, an exact duplicate of this type face in this
-mould. This art prevents the wear on the movable type involved in
-printing, and also avoids the locking up into permanent forms of a large
-body of valuable type, since a form may be set up, stereotyped, and the
-type then distributed and set up into another form. Stereotyping,
-although used in book printing, was not thought practical for newspaper
-work until about 1861, because of the length of time required for the
-formation and drying of the mould and the casting of the plate; but
-about this time great expedition in the formation of the plate was
-attained by the employment of a steam bed to dry the mould, and a novel
-form of papier maché matrix, or mould, which could be conveniently
-disposed around the cylinders of type. The dampened and plastic papier
-maché sheets are beaten into the face of the type form by means of
-brushes, are then removed, dried, and used as moulds to cast the
-stereotype plate from. A stereotype plate can now be made in about seven
-minutes.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 125.--PAPER PULP BEATING ENGINE.]
-
-_Paper Making_ is an important adjunct of the printing art, and its
-formation cheaply into long rolls of uniform strength is an essential
-condition of success in the rapid web-perfecting printing press. A
-Frenchman named Louis Robert about 1799 was the first to make a
-continuous web of paper, and in 1800 he received from the French
-Government a reward of 8,000 francs for his discovery. His invention was
-subsequently taken up and carried to a success by the great English
-paper makers, the Fourdrinier Brothers, whose name has been given to the
-machine. In the Fourdrinier process rags are ground to a pulp by a
-revolving beater (Fig. 125) working in a tank of water. The pulp, duly
-beaten, refined, screened, and diluted with water, is then piped into
-the "flow-box" of the Fourdrinier machine. The "flow-box," shown on
-right of Fig. 126, is a deep rectangular chamber extending across the
-full width of the machine, from which the pulp flows out in a thin
-stream onto an endless belt of 70-mesh wire cloth which runs over end
-rollers. To prevent the stream of pulp from flowing laterally over the
-edges of the belt, two endless rubber guides or bands, two inches square
-in cross section, travel with the belt over the first twenty feet of its
-length, and run over two pulleys above the wire cloth. The upper half of
-the wire cloth belt is supported by and runs over a series of closely
-juxtaposed rollers. As the pulp passes from the "flow-box" the particles
-of fibre float in it just as an innumerable multitude of particles of
-cotton fibre would float in a stream of water. To unite and interlace
-the fibres the wire cloth belt is given a lateral oscillating or shaking
-movement, which serves to interlock the fibres. Meanwhile the water
-strains through the wire cloth, leaving a thin layer of moist interlaced
-fibre spread in a white sheet over the surface of the belt. The
-separation of the water is further assisted by suction boxes which
-extend across close beneath the upper run of the belt and are connected
-to suction pumps.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 126.--FOURDRINIER PAPER MACHINE.]
-
-The wire cloth with its layer of moist pulp now passes below a roll
-which compresses the fibre, and then leaving the machine seen in Fig.
-126 it passes below a second and larger roll covered with felt, which
-presses out more of the water. The fibre next passes to the "first
-press," where it is caught up on an endless belt and passed between two
-rollers where more water is pressed out of the sheet. Then it passes
-through a "second press," and finally the sheet commences a long journey
-up and down over a series of steam-heated drying rolls, by which the
-sheet is dried.
-
-_Wood-Pulp._--When a purchaser of one of the New York dailies reads the
-morning's voluminous edition, he little realizes that he holds in his
-hands the remains of a billet of wood as large as a good-sized club, yet
-such is the case. Originally made from the fibres of the papyrus plant,
-and later from rags beaten into a pulp, paper for the printing of books
-and newspapers is now made almost entirely of wood. In the formation of
-paper pulp from wood two processes are employed, one known as the soda
-process, and the other the sulphite process. In both cases the wood is
-cut into fine chips, and then digested in great drums with chemicals to
-extract the resinous matter and leave the pure fibrous cellulose, which
-resembles raw cotton in texture. This industry was developed by Watt and
-Burgess in 1853 (U. S. Pat. No. 11,343, July 18, 1854), who invented the
-soda process; by Voelter (U. S. Pat. No. 21,161, Aug. 10, 1858), who
-devised means for comminuting or shredding the wood; and by Tilghman (U.
-S. Pat. No. 70,485, Nov. 5, 1867), who invented the sulphite process.
-
-The logs, usually of spruce or poplar, are first split, as seen at the
-bottom of Fig. 127, then placed in the chipper, where a revolving disc
-with knives cuts them into small chips, which are fed to an elevator and
-raised to a screening device, seen at the top, to remove saw-dust, dirt
-and knots. In the sulphite process the chips are then delivered into the
-digesters shown in Fig. 128, which are supplied with sulphurous acid
-generated in a plant shown in Fig. 129. In the digesters the gummy and
-resinous matters are dissolved by the heat and chemicals, and the woolly
-fibre left behind is bleached, washed, and dried, and afterwards made
-into paper upon the Fourdrinier machine.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 127.--CHIPPING LOGS FOR PAPER PULP.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 128.--DIGESTER FOR WOOD PULP.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 129.--SULPHUROUS ACID PLANT FOR MAKING WOOD PULP.]
-
-It was stated by the _Paper Trade Journal_ in 1897 that the increase in
-paper making in the United States during the 15 years preceding amounted
-to 352 per cent., due chiefly to the growth of the wood pulp industry.
-The Androscoggin Pulp Mill, established in Maine in 1870, was one of the
-pioneers in this field. In that State the industry had grown in 1897 to
-over $13,000,000 and gave employment to more than 5,000 men, but the
-State of Maine is excelled by both New York and Wisconsin in this
-industry, for in the same year New York mills had a daily capacity of
-1,800,000 pounds; Wisconsin, 670,000; Maine, 665,000, and other States a
-less capacity. There are over 1,000 paper mills in the United States,
-and their combined daily capacity amounts to over 13,000 tons. In 1898
-the United States exported over five million dollars' worth of paper,
-and over fifty million pounds of wood pulp. Of the total amount of paper
-produced in the world Mulhall estimated it in 1890 to be 2,620,000,000
-tons annually. This amount is greatly increased at the present time, and
-by far the larger part of it is manufactured from wood.
-
-In 1891 the _Philadelphia Record_ in an experimental test as to speed,
-cut trees from the forest, converted them into paper, and then into
-printed newspapers, all within the space of 22 hours. At a later period
-in Germany, where the wood pulp art began, even this expeditious work
-has been excelled. The trees were felled in the morning at 7:35,
-converted into paper, and presented at 10 A. M. in the form of printed
-newspapers, with a record of the news of the forenoon. The great naval
-edition of the _Scientific American_ of April 30, 1898, consumed a
-hundred tons of wood pulp paper, and was therefore built upon a material
-foundation of 125 cords of wood, which cleared off over six acres of
-well-set spruce timber land. It is mainly wood pulp that has enabled
-books and newspapers to be made so cheaply, for they are now furnished
-at a less price than the cost of the paper made in the old way from
-rags.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 130.--LINOTYPE MACHINE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 131.--LINOTYPE MATRIX.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 132.--SPACING OF ASSEMBLED LINE OF MATRICES.]
-
-_The Linotype._--The most revolutionary and perhaps the most important
-development in the printing art of this century has been the linotype
-machine. The laborious, painstaking, and expensive feature of printing
-has always been the setting and redistribution of the types, since each
-little piece had to be separately selected and placed in the composing
-stick, and the line afterwards "justified," which means an apportionment
-of the space between the words so as to make each line of type about the
-same length in the column. The same separate handling of each piece was
-again involved in restoring the type to the case. Machines for thus
-setting and distributing the type had been devised, but the operation
-was so involved, and required so nearly the discretion of the thinking
-mind, that all automatic machinery proved too complicated and
-impracticable. In 1886, however, a machine was placed in the office of
-the _New York Tribune_ whose performances astonished and alarmed the
-old-time compositor. It rendered it unnecessary to handle the type, or
-even to have any separate type at all. It was the Mergenthaler Linotype
-machine, which automatically formed its own type by casting a whole line
-of it at a time. The first machine was invented in 1884, and patented in
-1885, but it was subsequently reorganized and greatly improved in Pats.
-No. 425,140, April 8, 1890; Nos. 436,531 and 436,532, Sept. 16, 1890,
-and No. 438,354, Oct. 14, 1890. It is shown in the accompanying
-illustration (Fig. 130). By manipulating the keyboard, which resembles
-that of a typewriter, each lettered key is made to bring down from an
-inclined elevated magazine a little brass plate of the shape shown in
-Fig. 131, and which plate is called a matrix, because it bears on its
-edge at _x_ a mould of the type letter. There is a matrix plate for
-every letter and character used. These little matrices are spaced by
-wedges, as seen in Fig. 132, and are assembled, as in Fig. 133, along
-the side of a mould wheel having a slot in it which forms a channel
-between the aligned type-moulds or matrices on one side and the
-discharge mouth of a melting pot, in which molten type metal is
-maintained in a fluid state by a subjacent gas-burner. In the melting
-pot there is a cylinder and plunger, and when the plunger descends, it
-forces the molten metal up through the discharge spout into the slot of
-the mould wheel, and against the letter mould _x_ of each one of the
-composed or aligned matrices. The wheel is then turned with the
-matrices, and the metal in its slot is afterwards discharged in the form
-of a linotype slug, seen in Fig. 134, which is a metal plate bearing on
-its edge a completely moulded line of type ready for setting up in the
-form for printing. The jagged notches in the tops of the matrices (Fig.
-131) are for co-operation with a distributer bar (not easily explained)
-for restoring the matrices to their appropriate magazines after being
-used. There are altogether about 1,500 of the little brass matrices. The
-machine is about five feet square, weighs 1,750 pounds, and costs $3,000
-each. Notwithstanding this expense these Linotype machines have to-day
-made their way into nearly all the daily newspaper offices of the
-civilized world, even to Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. In the
-composing rooms of the daily newspapers and the larger book printing
-offices we find great rows of these Linotype machines, each doing the
-work of from four to five men. There are now in use in America something
-over 5,000 Linotype machines; and in other countries about 2,000, making
-7,000 in all. Each machine may be adjusted in five minutes to produce
-any size or style of type, and it gives new, clean faces for each day's
-issue, with none of the ordinary troubles of distributing type. The
-cheapness of composition, due to the machine, has led to an enormous
-increase in the size of papers, in the frequency of the editions, and
-has correspondingly increased the demand for labor in all the attendant
-lines, such as paper-making, press-making, the attendants on presses,
-stereotyping, etc. In the Boston Library, which keeps its catalogues
-printed up to within 24 hours of date, the Linotypes print in 23
-languages.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 133.--CASTING THE LINE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 134.--A LINOTYPE.]
-
-When the Linotype machine was first patented it was not regarded by
-printers generally as a practical machine, but only one of the many
-complicated, theoretical, but impracticable organizations which the
-Patent Office has to deal with. Its history, however, has been unique.
-It is practically the product of the brain of a single man, Ottmar
-Mergenthaler, a most ingenious and indefatigable inventor living in
-Baltimore. It was exploited under the powerful patronage of a syndicate
-of newspaper men, and hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent in
-perfecting it before any practical results were obtained. To-day it
-stands a triumph of human ingenuity, ranking in importance with the
-rotary web-perfecting press, and is probably the most ingenious piece of
-practical mechanism in existence.
-
-Of the three forms of printing attention has been given thus far only to
-the leading branch of the art, which is _type printing_, or "_letter
-press_," as it is called, in which the characters are raised in relief
-and receive ink on their raised surfaces only. A second branch of the
-art is _plate printing_, in which the lines and characters are engraved
-in intaglio in a plate, and which, being covered with ink, and the
-surface of the plate wiped clean, leaves the ink in the undercuts, which
-is taken up by the paper when pressure is applied through a roller.
-Plate printing is a very old art, the plate printing press having been
-ascribed to Tomasso Finiguerra, of Florence, in 1460. The reciprocating
-table bearing the engraved plate, and the superposed pressure roller
-turned by hand through its long radial arms, is an ancient and familiar
-form of press which has been in use for many years. This method of
-printing finds application in fine line engraving in works of art, card
-invitations, and bank note engraving. Very ingenious automatic machines
-have been invented and were in use a few years ago by the United States
-Government for printing its bank notes, but have since been displaced by
-the old hand machines. To the credit of the machine, it should be said,
-that it was from no fault in the machine that this retrograde step was
-taken, but rather the disfavor of the labor organizations.
-
-_Lithography_ is another and quite important branch of the printing art,
-in which the lines and characters are drawn upon stone with a kind of
-oily ink to which printers' ink will adhere, while it is repelled from
-the other moistened surfaces of the stone. Lithography was invented in
-1798 by Alois Senefelder, of Munich. It finds its greatest application
-in artistic and fanciful work in inks of various colors, and its
-development into chromo-lithography in the Nineteenth Century has grown
-into a fine art. Our beautifully colored chromos, prints, labels, maps,
-etc., are made by this process. A more recent and quite important
-development of this art is photo-lithography, which will be more fully
-considered under photography.
-
-Many collateral branches of the printing art are interesting in their
-development, such as calico printing, the printing of wall papers, of
-oil cloth, printing for the blind, book binding, type founding, and
-folding and addressing machines, but lack of space forbids more than a
-casual mention.
-
-Printing is perhaps the greatest of all the arts of civilization, and
-the libraries and newspapers of the Nineteenth Century attest its value.
-If Benjamin Franklin could wake from his long sleep and enter the
-composing rooms of our great dailies, and witness the imposing array of
-linotype machines, more resembling a machine shop than a printing
-office, and then visit the press room and see the avalanche of finished
-papers flying at the rate of 1,600 a minute, neatly folded, and counted
-for delivery, he would doubtless be overwhelmed with emotions of wonder
-and incredulity, for broad-minded man as he was, he could have no
-conception of such progress.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV.
-
-THE TYPEWRITER.
-
- OLD ENGLISH TYPEWRITER OF 1714--THE BURT TYPEWRITER OF 1829--
- PROGIN'S FRENCH MACHINE OF 1833--THURBER'S PRINTING MACHINE OF
- 1843--THE BEACH TYPEWRITER--THE SHOLES TYPEWRITER, THE FIRST OF THE
- MODERN FORM, COMMERCIALLY DEVELOPED INTO THE REMINGTON--THE
- CALIGRAPH--SMITH-PREMIER--THE BOOK TYPEWRITER AND OTHERS.
-
-
-Occupying an intermediate place between the old-fashioned scribe and the
-printer, the typewriter has in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century
-established a distinct and important avocation, and has become a
-necessary factor in modern business life. Chirography, or hand writing,
-reflecting, as it did, the idiosyncrasies of each writer, was not only
-slow, but when employed was, in most cases, in the haste and press of
-active business reduced to an illegible scrawl. For the use of reporters
-and others requiring extra speed, stenography, or short hand, was
-resorted to, but there was a distinct need for some easy, quick,
-legible, and uniform record of the busy man's correspondence and copy
-work, and this the modern typewriter has supplied.
-
-Like most other important inventions, the typewriter did not spring into
-existence all at once, for while the practical embodiment in really
-useful machines has only taken place since about 1868, there had been
-many experiments and some success attained at a much earlier date. The
-British patent to Henry Mills. No. 395 of 1714, is the earliest record
-of efforts in this direction. At this early date no drawings were
-attached to patents, and the specification dwells more on the function
-of the machine than the instrumentalities employed. No record of the
-construction of this machine remains in existence, and it may fairly be
-considered a lost art. In quaint and old-fashioned English, the patent
-specification proceeds as follows:
-
-"_ANNE_, by the grace of God, &c., to all whom these presents shall
-come, greeting: _WHEREAS_, our trusty and well-beloved subject, Henry
-Mills, hath by his humble peticon represented vnto vs, that he has by
-his greate study, paines, and expence, lately invented, and brought to
-perfection "_An Artificial Machine_ or _Method_ for the _Impressing_ or
-_Transcribing Letters Singly_ or _Progressively_ one after another as in
-_Writing_, whereby all _Writing whatever_ may be _Engrossed_ in _Paper_
-or _Parchment_ so _Neat_ and _Exact_ as not to be Distinguished from
-_Print_, that the said _Machine_ or Method, may be of greate vse in
-_Settlements_ and _Publick Recors_, the Impression being deeper and more
-Lasting that any other _Writing_, and not to be erased, or
-_Counterfeited_ without _Manifest Discovery_, and having therefore
-humbly prayed vs to grant him our Royall Letters Patents, for the sole
-vse of his said Invention for the term of fourteen yeares."
-
-"_Know Yee_, that wee," etc.
-
-The first American typewriter of which any record remains is that
-described in the patent granted to W. A. Burt, July 23, 1829. It was
-called a "Typographer." It had a segment bearing the letters of the
-alphabet and corresponding notches acting as an index. A superposed
-lever, which could be worked up and down, and also moved laterally, was
-provided with a series of type, arranged in a segmental curve, so that
-any type could be brought into place on the subjacent paper by swinging
-the lever over to and down into the proper notch in the index segment
-below. A restored model of this is to be found in the U. S. Patent
-Office.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 135.--FRENCH TYPEWRITER, 1833.]
-
-The first organized typewriter in which separate key levers were
-provided for each type is a French invention. It is to be found in the
-French patent to M. Progin (Xavier), of Marseilles, No. 3,748, Sept. 6,
-1833 (Brevets d'Invention, Vol. 37, 1st Series, pl. 36). It was called a
-Typographic Machine, and is shown in the illustration (Fig. 135).
-Upright key levers _s_ are arranged in a circle around a circular plate
-_n_. They have hook-shaped handles at the upper end, and terminate
-below in forks that are pivoted to the shanks of type hammers, to raise
-and lower them. These hammers are inked from a pad, and at a central
-point deliver a printing blow on the paper below. The paper is held
-stationary, and the whole nest of levers was moved over the paper for
-each letter printed. The circular index plate _n_ had marked on it
-opposite the respective levers the letters and characters represented by
-said levers. Besides printing letters, the device was to be used for
-printing music, and for making stereotype plates.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 136.--THURBER TYPEWRITER.]
-
-On Aug. 26, 1843, Charles Thurber, of Worcester, Mass., took out Pat.
-No. 3,228 for a Printing Machine. Under the patent he constructed the
-machine shown in Fig. 136. This differed somewhat from the form shown in
-his patent, in that the machine shows a paper feed roller which does not
-appear in the patent. This machine was found among the effects of Mr.
-Thurber after having lain neglected and unnoticed for many years, and
-its damaged parts were restored by Mr. H. R. Cummings, of Worcester. The
-types are carried on the lower ends of a circular series of depressible
-bars, which are spring seated in a horizontal rotatable wheel. By
-turning the wheel any type can be brought to the front, and a stationary
-guide controls its descent as it makes the impression. An inking roller
-is seen on the right, which inks the faces of the type. In front of the
-type wheel is a horizontal roller to which the sheet of paper is
-attached by clips. Finger pawls, working into ratchets at the ends of
-the roller, serve to rotate it after each line is printed. By means of a
-handle, seen projecting from the right hand side of the frame, the
-roller is shifted longitudinally on its axis rod after each letter has
-been printed. This appears to be the first embodiment of the feed roller
-rotating to bring a new line into range, and having also a longitudinal
-feed, but as these movements were required to be separately executed by
-the operator, the work of the machine was necessarily very slow. Just at
-what time this old Thurber machine was constructed it is impossible to
-state in the light of present information, but as the feed roller did
-not appear in Thurber's patent of 1843, it is possible that the claim to
-authorship of the feed roller having both a rotary and a longitudinal
-movement may be maintained in behalf of J. Jones, whose Pat. No. 8,980
-of June 1, 1852, appears to be the first dated record of such a feed
-roller. Jones was also the first to provide a spring to automatically
-retract the paper carriage to the position for beginning a new line, the
-spring being put under tension by the movement of the paper carriage in
-printing.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 137.--BEACH TYPEWRITER.]
-
-Prominent among those whose genius has served to perfect the typewriter
-occurs the name of A. E. Beach, for many years of the firm of Munn &
-Co., and well known to the readers of the _Scientific American_. Mr.
-Beach's first model of a typewriter was made in 1847. It printed upon a
-sheet of paper supported on a roller, carried in a sliding frame worked
-by a ratchet and pawl. It had a weight for running the frame, letter and
-line spacing keys, paper feeding devices, line signal bell, and carbon
-tissue. It had a series of finger keys connected with printing levers
-which were arranged in a circle, and struck at a common center. This
-machine was said to have worked well, but was laid aside for further
-improvement. In the meantime he constructed a typewriter to print in
-raised letters, without ink. This machine, which was intended primarily
-for the use of the blind, is illustrated in Figs. 137 and 138. It was
-first publicly exhibited in operation at the Crystal Palace Exhibition
-of the American Institute in the fall of 1856, where it attracted great
-attention and took the gold medal. The embossed letters were printed on
-a ribbon of paper which ran centrally through the machine. The printing
-levers were arranged in a circle in pairs, one riding on the top of the
-other. When the operator pressed a key, the two printing levers of each
-pair answering to the letter key were brought together, the paper being
-between them. The printing type were at the extremities of the levers,
-one lever having a raised letter, and its mate a sunken or intaglio
-letter, which, seizing the paper strip between them, like the jaws of a
-pair of pincers, impressed therein an embossed letter. The patent for
-this machine was granted June 24, 1856, No. 15,164, but the machine
-showed a much higher degree of development than appeared in the patent.
-This machine was the earliest representative of the circular basket of
-radially swinging type levers, combined with finger keys assembled in a
-keyboard at one side, which is now an almost universal feature, and the
-suggestion which it handed down to subsequent inventors has doubtless
-done much to make the typewriter the practical machine that it is
-to-day.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 138.--CENTRAL SECTION OF BEACH TYPEWRITER.]
-
-Up to the year 1868, however, typewriting machines were mere
-illustrations of sporadic genius occuring here and there as the pet
-hobby of some humanitarian seeking to help the blind, or supplement the
-deficiencies of the tremulous fingers of the paralytic. It had not yet
-come to be regarded as of any special use, nor had even the demand for
-such a device been forcibly felt, until the last quarter of the
-Nineteenth Century began to accumulate its wonderful momentum of
-progress and prosperity. The man whose genius finally brought forth a
-practical typewriter, and made a permanent place for it in the daily
-business of the world, was C. Latham Sholes. As joint inventor with C.
-Glidden and S. W. Soule, all of Milwaukee, he took out patents No.
-79,265, of June 23, 1868, and No. 79,868, of July 14, 1868. These,
-together with Sholes' Pat. No. 118,491, of Aug. 29, 1871, formed the
-working basis of the first typewriters that went into office use. These
-typewriters were first introduced to the general public under the
-management of the original inventors (Sholes, Soule and Glidden) about
-1873, and at first used only capital letters. On Aug. 27, 1878, a
-further patent. No. 207,559, was granted to Sholes, and about this time,
-after five years of uncertain and precarious business existence, the
-machine was taken for manufacture to E. Remington & Sons, at Ilion, N.
-Y. Since this time the well-known "Remington" has built up for itself a
-reputation and a commercial importance that has given it first place
-among typewriters. In the nine years from 1873 to 1882, it is said that
-less than 8,000 machines had been manufactured. In the year 1882
-Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict obtained control of the machine, and during
-the fourteen years following it is said that nearly 200,000 "Remingtons"
-were made and sold. It is said that 1,000 men are now employed in
-making this machine, and that the present output is about 800 machines a
-week, despite the fact that it has a half dozen worthy competitors for
-public favor. The modern Remington, seen in Fig. 139, is too well known
-to require special description. Besides the Sholes patents, it embodies
-the improvements covered by patents to Clough & Jenne, No. 199,263, Jan.
-15, 1878; Jenne, No. 478,964, July 12, 1892, and No. 548,553, Oct. 22,
-1895, and also a patent to Brooks, No. 202,923, April 30, 1878, a
-characteristic feature of which latter is the location of both a capital
-and small letter on the same striking lever, and the shifting of the
-paper roller by a key to bring either the large or small letter into
-printing range.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 139.--REMINGTON TYPEWRITER.]
-
-The earliest rival of the Remington was the Caligraph, made by the
-American Writing Machine Co. This well-known machine, introduced in the
-decade of the eighties, was made under the patents of G. Y. N. Yost,
-March 18, 1884, No. 295,469; March 17, 1885, No. 313,973; and July 30,
-1889, No. 408,061. The most modern form of the Caligraph is known as the
-"New Century," which is shown in the accompanying illustration, Fig.
-140. The Caligraph uses a separate type lever and key for each letter,
-and by a system of compound key levers the touch is rendered easy, even,
-and elastic, and perfect alignment and freedom from noise are among the
-objects sought in its mechanical construction.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 140.--NEW CENTURY CALIGRAPH.]
-
-Next among the earlier typewriters is to be mentioned the "Hammond,"
-made under the patents to J. B. Hammond, No. 224,088, Feb. 8, 1880, and
-290,419, Dec. 18, 1883. A distinguishing feature of the machine is that
-the printed work is in full view, so that the operator can see what he
-is doing. The impression is made by an oscillating type wheel, to which
-a variable throw is imparted by the key letters to bring any desired
-letter into printing position. When the letter is brought into printing
-position a hammer, arranged in the rear of the sheet of paper, is made
-to force the latter against the type to produce the impression by the
-same movement of the key that brought the type wheel into printing
-position.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 141.--SMITH-PREMIER TYPE BAR RING.]
-
-Of later machines, none has met with more popular favor than the
-Smith-Premier, manufactured under the patent to A. T. Brown, No.
-465,451, Dec. 22, 1891, and others. A leading feature of this is the
-type-bar ring of its printing mechanism. In all typewriters accurate
-location of the impression is essential to proper alignment of the
-letters, and proper alignment is the _sine qua non_ of typewriting. The
-old pivoted type bars were liable to wear at the joint, and the
-slightest looseness at this point would so multiply the lateral play at
-the end carrying the type that the letters would soon become irregularly
-placed and out of alignment. In the Smith-Premier this is reduced to a
-minimum by making a short type bar, and arranging each upon an
-oscillating rock shaft, the bearings at whose ends are so widely
-separated as to permit little or no lateral play in the type bar. A view
-of this type bar ring with tangentially arranged rock shafts disposed in
-circular series is seen in Fig. 141, while the full machine is given in
-Fig. 142. In this latter view there is also shown the cleaning brush for
-quickly cleaning at one operation all of the types of the outer ring. It
-is simply a circular brush mounted upon the end of a tool resembling a
-carpenter's brace, and is a useful and convenient adjunct to the
-machine.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 142.--SMITH-PREMIER AND CLEANING BRUSH.]
-
-In 1891 the "Densmore" typewriter first made its appearance before the
-public. It was named after James and Amos Densmore, who had been
-connected with typewriting interests from the time of Sholes' first
-practical machine. The Densmore is made under patents to A. Densmore,
-No. 507,726 and 507,727, of Oct. 31, 1893. It has ball-bearing type bar
-joints, giving accurate alignment and light key action, the platen rolls
-to show the work, and the carriage locks at the end of the line,
-protecting the writing.
-
-Noted for its clear, sharp print, the "Yost" typewriter comes in for its
-share of praise. It is made under the patent to Felbel and Steiger,
-March 26, 1889, No. 400,200. It does not employ an inked ribbon
-interposed between the type and the paper, as do most typewriters, but
-its type-bearing levers, when at rest, occupy a position in which the
-type are all arranged within and bear against a circular inking ring or
-pad, and when a key is struck, its lever, by a peculiar and ingenious
-movement, leaves the inking pad, moves inward and backward toward the
-center, and then rises and strikes an upwardly directed blow in the
-center, and prints the letter on the paper. As the printing is done
-directly from the type, the letters are formed with sharp and clear
-outlines that give beauty and neatness to the print. Alignment is
-insured by a center guide hole through which the type end of the lever
-passes in striking the paper.
-
-Among machines of simple organization may be mentioned the
-Blickensderfer, which is a wonderfully simple and effective little
-machine, first made under the patent to Blickensderfer, No. 472,692,
-April 12, 1892. Like the Hammond, it belongs to the class of typewriters
-which employ a rotary type wheel, which is given a variable throw, from
-the depression of the keys, to bring the proper letter into printing
-position; but unlike the Hammond, its type wheel advances to contact
-with the paper, a little felt ink-roller being brought into contact with
-the type wheel to ink it as the latter moves. The printed work is in
-full view, the line spacing may be varied to any fractional adjustment,
-and the action is quite free from noise. With its mechanism reduced to
-the fewest and simplest parts, the whole machine weighs only six pounds,
-and it differs in many respects from the ordinary typewriter. Since its
-introduction a few years ago, its growth in popularity has been very
-rapid.
-
-Another recently appearing machine is the "Oliver." This has type bars
-which are normally above the work. Each bar is loop shaped, hinged at
-its lower ends, and bearing the type letter on the bend at the upper
-end. They are arranged in two series, one on each side of the center,
-and in printing each loop swings down like the wing of a bird. As the
-printing is from the top, and the ribbon is moved away from in front of
-the line immediately after the printing blow, the writing is always
-visible to the operator. This machine is manufactured under various
-patents to Thomas Oliver, the first of which was No. 450,107, granted
-April 7, 1891. Further improvements are covered by subsequent patents,
-Nos. 528,484, 542,275, 562,337, and 599,863. The Oliver has made many
-friends for itself by its fine alignment and visible writing, and shares
-with the other standard machines a considerable patronage.
-
-It is not practicable to give a full illustration of the state of the
-art in typewriters, as it has grown to an industry of large proportions.
-Nearly 1,700 patents have been granted for such machines, and more than
-100 useful and meritorious machines have been devised and put upon the
-market. Among these may be mentioned the Hall, Underwood, Manhattan,
-Williams, Jewett, and many others.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 143.--ELLIOTT & HATCH BOOK TYPEWRITER.]
-
-Besides the regular typewriters, various modifications have been made to
-suit special kinds of work. The "Comptometer" used in banks is a species
-of typewriter, as is also the Dudley adding and subtracting machine,
-known as the "Numerograph," and covered by patents Nos. 554,993,
-555,038, 555,039, 579,047 and 579,048. Typewriters for short hand
-characters, and for foreign languages, and for printing on record and
-blank books, are also among the modern developments of this art. In the
-latter the whole carriage and system of type levers move over the book.
-The Elliott & Hatch book typewriter, Fig. 143, is a well-known example.
-In attachments, holders for the copy have received considerable
-attention, and simple and practical billing and tabulating attachments
-have been devised which expedite and facilitate the statements of
-accounts and other work requiring numeration in columns. The Gorin
-Tabulator is one of those in practical use.
-
-In point of speed the typewriter depends entirely upon the aptness of
-the operator. For ordinary copying work, where much time is occupied in
-deciphering the illegible scrawl, probably forty words a minute is the
-average work. When taken from dictation, seventy-five words a minute may
-be written, and in special cases, when copying from memory, a speed of
-150 words a minute has been maintained for a limited time. It was
-estimated that there were in use in the United States in 1896 150,000
-typewriters, and that up to that time 450,000 had been made altogether.
-In the last four years this number has been greatly increased, and a
-fair estimate of the present output in the United States is between
-75,000 and 100,000 yearly. In 1898 there were exported from the United
-States typewriting machines to the value of $1,902,153.
-
-The typewriter has not only revolutionized modern business methods, by
-furnishing a quick and legible copy that may be rapidly taken from
-dictation, and also at the same time a duplicate carbon copy for the use
-of the writer, but it has established a distinct avocation especially
-adapted to the deftness and skill of women, who as bread winners at the
-end of the Nineteenth Century are working out a destiny and place in the
-business activities of life unthought of a hundred years ago. The
-typewriter saves time, labor, postage and paper; it reduces the
-liability to mistakes, brings system into official correspondence, and
-delights the heart of the printer. It furnishes profitable amusement to
-the young, and satisfactory aid to the nervous and paralytic. All over
-the world it has already traveled--from the counting house of the
-merchant to the Imperial Courts of Europe, from the home of the new
-woman in the Western Hemisphere to the harem of the East--everywhere its
-familiar click is to be heard, faithfully translating thought into all
-languages, and for all peoples.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV.
-
-THE SEWING MACHINE.
-
- EMBROIDERING MACHINE, THE FORERUNNER OF THE SEWING MACHINE--SEWING
- MACHINE OF THOMAS SAINT--THE THIMONNIER WOODEN MACHINE--GREENOUGH'S
- DOUBLE POINTED NEEDLE--BEAN'S STATIONARY NEEDLE--THE HOWE SEWING
- MACHINE--BACHELDER'S CONTINUOUS FEED--IMPROVEMENTS OF SINGER--
- WILSON'S ROTARY HOOK AND FOUR-MOTION FEED--THE MCKAY SHOE SEWING
- MACHINE--BUTTONHOLE MACHINES--CARPET SEWING MACHINE--STATISTICS.
-
- "With fingers weary and worn,
- With eyelids heavy and red,
- A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
- Plying her needle and thread--
- Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!
- In poverty, hunger and dirt,
- And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,
- She sang the 'Song of the Shirt.'"
-
-
-In 1844 Thomas Hood wrote and published his famous "Song of the Shirt,"
-in which the drudgery of the needle is portrayed with pathetic fidelity.
-It is not to be supposed that any relation of cause and effect exists
-between the events, but it is nevertheless a singular fact that about
-this time Howe commenced work on his great invention, which was patented
-in 1846, and was the prototype of the modern sewing machine. If the
-sewing machine had appeared a few years earlier, the "Song of the Shirt"
-would doubtless never have been written.
-
-From the time of Mother Eve, who crudely stitched together her fig
-leaves, sewing seems to have been set apart as an occupation peculiarly
-belonging to women, and it may be that this was the reason why in the
-history of mechanical progress the sewing machine was so late appearing,
-for women are not, as a rule, inventors, and none of the sewing machines
-were invented by women.
-
-In all the preceding centuries of civilization hand sewing was
-exclusively employed, and it was reserved for the Nineteenth Century to
-relieve women from the drudgery which for so many centuries had enslaved
-them.
-
-Embroidery machines had been patented in England by Weisenthal in 1755,
-and Alsop in 1770, and on July 17, 1790, an English patent, No. 1,764,
-was granted to Thomas Saint for a crude form of sewing machine, having a
-horizontal arm and vertical needle. In 1826 a patent was granted in the
-United States to one Lye for a sewing machine, but no records of the
-same remain, as all were burned in the fire of 1836. In 1830 B.
-Thimonnier patented a sewing machine in France, 80 of which, made of
-wood, were in use in 1841 for sewing army clothing, but they were
-destroyed by a mob, as many other labor-saving inventions had been
-before. Between 1832 and 1835 Walter Hunt, of New York, made a
-lock-stitch sewing machine, but abandoned it. On Feb. 21, 1842, U. S.
-Pat. No. 2,466 was granted to J. J. Greenough for a sewing machine
-having a double pointed needle with an eye in the middle, which needle
-was drawn through the work by pairs of traveling pincers. It was
-designed for sewing leather, and an awl pierced the hole in advance of
-the needle. On March 4, 1843, U. S. Pat. No. 2,982 was granted to B. W.
-Bean for a sewing machine in which the needle was stationary, and the
-cloth was gathered in crimps or folds and forced over the stationary
-needle. In 1844, British Pat. No. 10,424 was granted to Fisher and
-Gibbons for working ornamental designs by machinery, in which two
-threads were looped together, one passing through the fabric, and the
-other looping with it on the surface without passing through.
-
-The great epoch of the sewing machine, however, begins with Elias Howe
-and the sewing machine patented by him Sept. 10, 1846, No. 4,750. Almost
-everyone is familiar with the modern Howe sewing machine, and it will be
-therefore more interesting to present the form in which it originally
-appeared. This is shown in Fig. 144. A curved eye-pointed needle was
-carried at the end of a pendent vibrating lever, which had a motion
-simulating that of a pick-ax in the hands of a workman. The needle took
-its thread from a spool situated above the lever, and the tension on the
-thread was produced by a spring brake whose semicircular end bore upon
-the spool, the pressure being regulated by a vertical thumb screw. The
-work was held in a vertical plane by means of a horizontal row of pins
-projecting from the edge of a thin metal "baster plate," to which an
-intermittent motion was given by the teeth of a pinion. Above, and to
-one side of the "baster plate" was the shuttle race, through which the
-shuttle carrying the second thread was driven by two strikers, which
-were operated by two arms and cams located on the horizontal main shaft.
-As will be seen, this machine bears but little resemblance to any of the
-modern machines, but it embodied the three essential features which
-characterize most all practical machines, viz.: a grooved needle with
-the eye at the point, a shuttle operating on the opposite side of the
-cloth from the needle to form a lock stitch, and an automatic feed.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 144.--HOWE'S SEWING MACHINE, 1846.]
-
-Howe first commenced his work on the sewing machine in 1844, and
-although he had made a rough model of that date, he was too poor to
-follow it up with more practical results until a former schoolmate,
-George Fisher, provided $500 to build a machine and support his family
-while it was being constructed, in consideration of which Mr. Fisher was
-to receive a half interest in the invention. In April, 1845, the machine
-was completed, and in July he sewed two suits of clothes on it, one for
-Mr. Fisher and the other for himself. Notwithstanding the success of
-his machine, which on public exhibition beat five of the swiftest hand
-sewers, he met only discouragement and disappointment. He, however,
-built a second machine, which was the basis of his patent, and is the
-one shown in the illustration. After obtaining his United States patent
-Howe went to England with the hope of introducing his machine there,
-but, failing, he returned to America, some years later, only to find
-that his invention had been taken up by infringers, and that sewing
-machines embodying his invention were being built and sold. These
-infringers sought to break his patent by endeavoring to prove, but
-without success, that Howe's invention was anticipated by the abandoned
-experiments of Walter Hunt in 1834. Howe won his suit, and the
-infringers were obliged to pay him royalties, which, for a time,
-amounted to $25 on each machine. Howe then bought the outstanding
-interest in his patent, established a factory in New York, and from the
-profits of his manufacture, and the royalties, he soon reaped a princely
-fortune of several million dollars. In six years his royalties had grown
-from $300 to $200,000 a year, and in 1863 his royalties were estimated
-at $4,000 a day.
-
-A patent that occupied an important place in sewing machine feeds was
-that granted to Bachelder May 8, 1849, No. 6,439, in which a spiked and
-endless belt passed horizontally around two pulleys. This patent
-contained the first continuous feed, and it was re-issued and extended,
-and ran with dominating claims on the continuous feed, until 1877.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 145.--WILSON SEWING MACHINE, 1852.]
-
-In connection with the development of the sewing machine the name of A.
-B. Wilson stands next in rank to that of Howe. Wilson invented the
-rotary hook carrying a bobbin, which took the place of the reciprocating
-shuttle. This was patented by him June 15, 1852, No. 9,041, and is shown
-in Fig. 145. He also invented the far more important improvement of the
-four-motion feed, which is a characteristic feature of nearly all
-practical family sewing machines. This four-motion feed was pooled in
-the early sewing machine combination with the Bachelder and other
-patents, and earned for its promotors a far greater pecuniary return
-than the original Howe sewing machine itself. Estimates place this
-profit high in the millions. The four-motion feed was patented December
-19, 1854, No. 12,116, and it is a comparatively simple affair. Divested
-of its operating mechanism, it consists simply of a little metal bar
-serrated with forwardly projecting saw teeth on its upper surface, to
-which bar, by means of an operating cam, a motion in four directions in
-the path of a rectangle is given. The serrated bar first rises through a
-slot in the table, then moves horizontally to advance the cloth, then
-drops below the table, and finally moves back again horizontally below
-the table to its starting point.
-
-Upon these two important features--the rotating hook patented by Wilson
-in 1852, and the four-motion feed, patented in 1854--a large and
-important business was built. In this business Mr. Nathaniel Wheeler was
-associated with Mr. Wilson, and the well-known Wheeler & Wilson machines
-are the result of their enterprise and ingenuity.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 146.--ORIGINAL SINGER SEWING MACHINE.]
-
-Contemporaneous with the Wheeler & Wilson machine were other excellent
-machines, among which may be mentioned the Singer machine, patented Aug.
-12, 1851, No. 8,294, by Isaac M. Singer, the original model of which is
-shown in Fig. 146. The Singer machine met the demands of the tailoring
-and leather industries for a heavier and more powerful machine. A
-characteristic feature was the vertical standard with horizontal arm
-above the work table, which was afterwards adopted in many other
-machines. Singer was the first to apply the treadle to the sewing
-machine for actuating it by foot power in the place of the hand-driven
-crank wheel. In 1851 W. O. Grover and W. E. Baker patented a machine
-which made the double chain stitch, characteristic of the Grover & Baker
-machine. James E. A. Gibbs invented and covered in several patents from
-1856 to 1860 the single-thread rotating hook, which was embodied in the
-Wilcox & Gibbs machine. In addition to these, the "Weed" machine, made
-under Fairfield's patents; the "Domestic" machine, made under Mack's
-patents; and the "Florence" machine, made under Langdon's patents, were
-other representative machines, which, in a few years after Howe's
-patent, helped to revolutionize the art of tailoring, introduced the
-great era of ready-made clothing and ready-made shoes, emancipated women
-from the drudgery of the needle, and increased the efficiency of one
-pair of hands fully ten fold.
-
-In 1856 the owners of the original sewing machine patents formed the
-famous "sewing machine combination," for the establishment of a common
-license fee, and for the protection of their mutual interests. The
-combination included Elias Howe, the Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing
-Company, the Grover & Baker Sewing Machine Company, and I. M. Singer &
-Co. The following summary of machines made by the leading companies from
-1853 to 1876 illustrates the early growth of this industry:
-
- Manufacturer. 1853. 1859. 1867. 1871. 1873. 1876.
-
- Wheeler & Wilson
- Manufacturing Co. 799 21,306 38,055 128,526 119,190 108,997
-
- The Singer
- Manufacturing Company 810 10,953 43,053 181,260 232,444 262,316
-
- Grover & Baker Sewing
- Machine Co. 657 10,280 32,999 50,838 36,179 ....
-
- Howe Sewing Machine
- Company .... .... 11,053 134,010 90,000 109,294
-
- Wilcox & Gibbs
- Sewing Machine Co. .... .... 14,152 30,127 15,881 12,758
-
- Domestic Sewing
- Machine Company .... .... .... 10,397 40,114 23,587
-
-From the foregoing table it will be seen that as far back as a quarter
-of a century ago the output of machines was over a half a million a
-year. By 1877 all of the fundamental patents on the sewing machine had
-expired, but the continued activity of inventors in this field is
-attested by the fact that to-day there are many thousands of patents
-relating to the sewing machine and its parts. Besides those relating to
-the organization of the machine itself there is an endless variety of
-attachments, such as hemmers, tuckers, fellers, quilters, binders,
-gatherers and rufflers, embroiderers, corders and button hole
-attachments. Every part of the machine has also received separate
-attention and separate patents, all tending to the perfection of the
-machine, until to-day, with all fundamental principles public property,
-and endless improvements in details, it is difficult to discriminate as
-to comparative excellence.
-
-There is to-day a great variety of sewing machines on the market,
-standard machines for ordinary work, and special machines for numerous
-special applications. It is said that one concern alone manufactures
-over four hundred different varieties of sewing machines.
-
-One of the most important and revolutionary of the applications of the
-sewing machine is for making shoes. Prior to 1861 shoemaking was
-confined to the slow, laborious hand methods of the shoemaker. Cheap
-shoes could only be made by roughly fastening the soles to the uppers by
-wooden pegs, whose row of projecting points within has made many a man
-and boy do unnecessary penance. Hand sewed shoes cost from $8 to $12 a
-pair, and were too expensive a luxury for any but the rich. With the
-McKay shoe sewing machine in 1861, however, comfortable shoes were made,
-with the soles strongly and substantially sewed to the uppers, at a less
-price even than the coarse and clumsy pegged variety. The McKay machine
-was the result of more than three years patient study and work. It was
-covered by United States patents No. 35,105, April 29, 1862; No. 35,165,
-May 6, 1862; No. 36,163, Aug. 12, 1862; and No. 45,422, Dec. 13, 1864,
-and its development cost $130,000 before practical results were
-obtained. A modern form of it is shown in Fig. 147. In preparing a shoe
-for the machine, an inner sole is placed on the last, the upper is then
-lasted and its edges secured to the inner sole. An outer sole, channeled
-to receive the stitches, is then tacked on so that the edges of the
-upper are caught and retained between the two soles. The shoe is then
-placed on the end of a rotary support called a horn, which holds it up
-to the needle. A spool containing thread coated with shoemakers' wax is
-carried by the horn, and the thread, with its wax kept soft by a lamp,
-runs up the inside of the horn to the whirl. The latter is a small ring
-placed at the upper end of the horn, and through which there is an
-opening for the passage of the needle. The needle has a barb, or hook,
-and as it descends through the sole the whirl lays the thread in this
-hook, and as the needle rises it draws the thread through the soles and
-forms a chain stitch in the external channel of the outer sole. As the
-sewing proceeds, the horn is rotated so as to bring every part of the
-margin of the sole under the needle. With this machine a single operator
-has been able to sew nine hundred pairs of shoes in a day of ten hours,
-and five hundred to six hundred pairs is only an average workman's
-output. It is said that up to 1877 there were 350,000,000 pairs of shoes
-made on this machine in the United States, and probably an equal or
-greater number in Europe. Shoes made on this machine were strongly made
-and comfortable, but they could not be resoled by a shoemaker, except by
-pegging or nailing, and the soles were furthermore somewhat stiff and
-lacking in flexibility. To meet these difficulties, a new machine known
-as the "Goodyear Welt Machine," was patented in 1871 and 1875, and
-brought out a little later. This sewed a welt to an upper, which welt in
-a subsequent operation was sewed by an external row of stitches to the
-sole. This gave much greater flexibility, and the further advantage of
-enabling a shoemaker to half sole the shoe by the old method of hand
-sewing. This advanced the art of shoemaking in the finer varieties of
-shoes, and to-day nearly all men's fine shoes are made in this way. The
-introduction of the sewing machine into the shoe industry made a new era
-in foot wear, and it is said that no nation on earth is so well and
-cheaply shod as the people of the United States.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 147.--MCKAY SHOE SEWING MACHINE.]
-
-A buttonhole does not strike the average person as a thing of any
-importance whatever. The needlewoman, however, who has to patiently
-stitch around and form the buttonholes, knows differently, and when this
-needlewoman, working in the great shirt factories and shoe factories, is
-confronted with the many millions of buttonholes in collars, cuffs,
-shirts and shoes, the great amount of this painstaking and nerve
-destroying labor becomes appalling. For cheapening the cost of
-buttonholes, and reducing the hand labor, various buttonhole machines
-and attachments to sewing machines have been devised. Patents Nos.
-36,616 and 36,617, to Humphrey, Oct. 7, 1862, covered one of the
-earliest forms, but the Reece buttonhole machine, which is specially
-devised for the work, is one of the most modern and successful. It was
-patented April 26, 1881, Sept. 21, 1886, and Aug. 20, 1895. These
-machines mark an important departure, which consists in working the
-buttonhole by moving the stitch forming mechanism about the buttonhole,
-instead of moving the fabric. An illustration of the machine is given in
-Fig. 148. Upon this machine 10,010 button holes have been made in nine
-hours and fifty minutes. The machine first cuts the buttonhole, then
-transfers it to the stitching devices, which stitch and bar the
-buttonhole, finishing it entirely in an automatic manner. The saving
-involved to the manufacturer by this machine over the hand method is
-several hundred per cent., but the relief to the needlewoman is of far
-greater consequence.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 148.--REECE BUTTONHOLE MACHINE.]
-
-Many striking applications of the sewing machine to various kinds of
-work have been made. A recent one is the automatic power carpet sewing
-machine, made and sold by the Singer Manufacturing Company. It was
-patented by E. B. Allen in 1894. This machine in general appearance
-resembles a miniature elevated railroad. It consists of an elevated
-track about thirty-six feet long, sustained every three or four feet
-upon standards, and having clamping jaws, which hold together the upper
-edges of the two lengths of carpet to be sewed together. A compact
-little stitching apparatus, not larger than a tea-pot, is actuated by an
-endless belt from an electric motor at one end. The little machine runs
-along and stitches together the upper edges of the suspended carpet
-lengths, and as it crawls along at its work, it strikingly reminds one
-of the movements of a squirrel along the top of a rail fence. This
-machine will sew five yards of seam every minute, fastening together
-evenly and strongly ten yards of carpet, and entirely dispensing with
-all hand labor in this roughest and most trying of all fabrics.
-
-Probably no organized piece of machinery has ever been so systematically
-exploited, so thoroughly advertised, so persistently canvassed, and so
-extensively sold as the sewing machine. With their main central offices,
-their branch offices, sub-agencies and traveling canvassers in wagons,
-every city, village, hamlet, and farmhouse has been actively besieged,
-and with the enticing system of payment by instalments there is scarcely
-a home too humble to be without its sewing machine. The retail price of
-sewing machines bears no proper relation to their cost, but this price
-to the consumer results from the liberal commissions to agents, and the
-expensive methods of canvassing. In the early days of the sewing machine
-its sales were chiefly for family use, but this is now no longer the
-case. While almost every family owns a sewing machine, it is only
-brought into requisition for finer and special varieties of work, since
-nearly all the clothing of men, women and children can now be purchased
-ready made, at a price much less than the cost of the material and the
-labor of making it up. A man to-day buys a ready-made shirt for fifty
-cents, which fifty years ago would have cost him $2. This has largely
-transferred the sphere of action of the sewing machine from the family
-to the factory. Great factories now make ready-made clothing for men,
-women and children, shirts, collars and cuffs, shoes, hats, caps,
-awnings, tents, sails, bags, flags, banners, corsets, gloves,
-pocketbooks, harness, saddlery, rubber goods, etc., and all these
-industries are founded upon the sewing machine, which may be seen in
-long rows beside the factory walls, busily supplying the demand of the
-world. With this transition in the sewing machine foot treadles are no
-longer relied on, but the machines are run by power from countershafts.
-This, in turn, has opened up possibilities of much higher speed and
-greater efficiency in the machine. Inventors have found, however, that
-high speed is handicapped with certain limitations. Beyond a certain
-speed the needle gets hot from friction, which burns off the thread and
-draws the temper. Cams and springs, moreover, are not positive enough in
-action, as the resilience of the spring does not act quickly enough, and
-so more positive gearings, such as eccentrics and cranks, must be
-employed. Despite these difficulties, however, the modern factory
-machine has raised the speed of the old-time sewing machine from a few
-hundred stitches a minute to three and four thousand stitches a minute.
-
-The United States is the home of the sewing machine, and New York City
-is the center of the industry, probably 90 per cent. of the sewing
-machine trade being managed and handled there. German manufacturers are
-making great efforts to compete in this field, but American machines are
-generally regarded as the best in the world.
-
-Among those prominently interested in the machine in its early days were
-Orlando B. Potter and the law firm of Jordan & Clarke. The latter were
-attorneys representing some of the prominent inventors in litigation,
-and in this way Mr. Edward Clarke became interested in the business, and
-it was he who in 1856 instituted the system of selling on the instalment
-plan. For some years before his death Mr. Clarke was the president of
-the Singer Company.
-
-Recent statistics in relation to the sewing machine industry are
-difficult to obtain, partly by reason of the great extent and
-ramifications of the business, and partly by reason of the unwillingness
-of the larger companies to give out data for publication. At the Patent
-Centennial in Washington, in 1891, Ex-Commissioner of Patents
-Butterworth made the statement that "Cæsar conquered Gaul with a force
-numerically less than was employed in inventing and perfecting the parts
-of the sewing machine." The great Singer Company, with headquarters at
-New York, operates not only a factory at Elizabethport, N. J., employing
-5,000 men, but also other factories in Europe and Canada, the one at
-Kilbowie, Scotland, employing 6,000 men. Of the total of 13,500,000
-machines made by this company from 1853 to the end of 1896, nearly
-6,000,000 have been made in factories located abroad, but directly
-controlled and managed by the New York office. It is stated that the
-present output of the American factory of the Singer Company amounts to
-over 11,000 weekly, or more than half a million annually. Although so
-many sewing machines are made abroad, the exports from the United States
-for 1899 amounted to $3,264,344.
-
-In the early days of the Howe sewing machine it was denounced as a
-menace to the occupations of the thousands of men and women who worked
-in the clothing shops, and the struggles of the inventor against this
-opposition and discouragement form an interesting page of history. But
-it had come to stay and to grow. Some 7,000 United States patents attest
-the interest and ingenuity in this field, in the neighborhood of 100,000
-persons make a living from the manufacture and sale of the machine,
-millions find profitable employment in its use, and from 700,000 to
-800,000 machines are annually manufactured in the United States. The
-output of all countries is estimated to be from 1,200,000 to 1,300,000
-annually.
-
-The sewing machine has for its objective result only the simple and
-insignificant function of fastening one piece of fabric to another, but
-its influence upon civilization in ministering to the wants of the race
-has been so great as to cause it to be numbered with the epoch-making
-inventions of the age. It has created new industries. It has given
-useful employment to capital, has extended the lists of the wage earner,
-and increased his daily pay. It has clothed the naked, fed the hungry,
-and warded off the ravages of cold and death; but, best of all its
-tuneful accompaniment has lightened the heart and smoothed the pathway
-of life for Hood's weary working woman, to whose tired fingers and
-aching eyes it has brought the balm of much-needed rest.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI.
-
-THE REAPER.
-
- EARLY ENGLISH MACHINES--MACHINE OF PATRICK BELL--THE HUSSEY
- REAPER--MCCORMICK'S REAPER AND ITS GREAT SUCCESS--RIVALRY BETWEEN
- THE TWO AMERICAN REAPERS--SELF RAKERS--AUTOMATIC BINDERS--COMBINED
- STEAM REAPER AND THRESHING MACHINE--GREAT WHEAT FIELDS OF THE
- WEST--STATISTICS.
-
-
-In the harvest scenes upon the tombs of ancient Thebes the thirsty
-reaper is depicted, with curved sickle in hand, alternately bending his
-back to the grain and refreshing himself at the skin bottle. For more
-than thirty centuries did man thus continue to earn his bread by the
-sweat of his brow. Even to the present time the scythe, with its cradle
-of wooden fingers, is occasionally met with, and it is to the older
-generation a familiar suggestion of the sweat, toil, bustle and
-excitement of the old harvest time. But all this has been changed by the
-advent of the reaper, and ere long the grain cradle will hang on the
-walls of the museum as an ethnological specimen only.
-
-The first reaper of which we find historical evidence is that described
-by Pliny in the first century of the Christian Era (A. D. 70). He says:
-"The mode of getting in the harvest varies considerably. In the vast
-domains of the province of Gaul a large hollow frame, armed with
-comb-like teeth, and supported on two wheels, is driven through the
-standing grain, the beasts being yoked behind it (in contrarium juncto),
-the result being that the ears are torn off and fall within the frame."
-
-This crude machine has in late years been many times re-invented, and it
-finds a special application to-day for the gathering of clover seeds,
-and is called a "header."
-
-The first attempt of modern times to devise a reaper was the English
-machine of Pitt, in 1786, which followed the principle of the old Gallic
-implement, in that it stripped the heads from the standing grain. The
-Pitt machine, however, had a revolving cylinder on which were rows of
-comb teeth, which tore off the heads of grain and discharged them into a
-receptacle. In 1799 Boyce, of England, invented the vertical shaft, with
-horizontally rotating cutters. In 1800 Mears devised a machine
-employing shears. In 1806 Gladstone devised a front-draft, side-cut
-machine, in which a curved segment-bar with fingers gathered the grain
-and held it while a horizontally revolving knife cut the same. In 1811
-Cumming introduced the reel, and in 1814 Dobbs described a wheelbarrow
-arrangement of reaper in which he used the divider. In 1822 the
-important improvement of the reciprocating knife bar was made by Ogle,
-which became a characteristic feature of all subsequent successful
-reapers. It was drawn by horses in front. The cutter bar projected at
-the side. It had a reel to gather the grain to the cutter, and the grain
-platform was tilted to drop the gavel. In 1826 Rev. Patrick Bell, of
-Scotland, devised a reaper that had a movable vibrating cutter working
-like a series of shears, a reel, and a traveling apron, which carried
-off the grain to one side. This machine was pushed from behind, and,
-with a swath of five feet, cut an acre in an hour. It was, however, for
-some reason laid aside till 1851, when it was reorganized and put in
-service at the World's Fair in London in competition with the American
-machines. All the earlier experiments in the development of the reaper
-were made in England. Grain raising was in its infancy in the United
-States, and near the end of the Eighteenth Century the Royal
-Agricultural Society of England had stimulated its own inventors by
-offering a prize for the production of a successful reaper, and
-continued thus to offer it for many years. There is no evidence,
-however, that the preceding machines attained any practical results,
-and it remained for the fertility of American genius to invent a
-practical reaper which satisfactorily performed its work, and continued
-to do so. Quite a number of patents for reapers were granted to American
-inventors in the early part of the century, among which may be mentioned
-that to Manning, of Plainfield, N. J., May 3, 1831, which embodied
-finger bars to hold the grain and a reciprocating cutter bar with
-spear-shaped blades.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 149.--PATENT OFFICE DRAWING, HUSSEY'S REAPER,
-DECEMBER 31, 1833.]
-
-Cyrus H. McCormick, of Virginia, and Obed Hussey, of Maryland, were the
-men who brought the reaper to a condition of practical utility.
-The commercial development of their machines was practically
-contemporaneous, and their respective claims for superiority had about
-an equal number of supporters among the farmers of that day. Hussey,
-originally of Cincinnati, but afterwards of Maryland, was the first to
-obtain a patent, which was granted December 31, 1833. An illustration of
-the patent drawing is given in Fig. 149. It embodied a reciprocating saw
-tooth cutter _f_ sliding within double guard fingers _e_. It had a front
-draft, side-cut, and a platform. The cutter was driven by a pitman from
-a crank shaft operated through gear wheels from the main drive wheels.
-His specification provided for the locking or unlocking of the drive
-wheels; also for the hinging of the platform, and states that the
-operator who takes off the grain may ride on the machine.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 150.--PATENT OFFICE DRAWING, McCORMICK'S REAPER,
-JUNE 21, 1834.]
-
-On June 21, 1834, Cyrus H. McCormick, of Virginia, obtained a patent on
-his reaper. In Fig. 150 appears an illustration of his patent drawing.
-This had two features which were not found in the Hussey patent, viz., a
-reel on a horizontal axis above the cutter, and a divider L, at the
-outer end of the cutter, which divider projected in front of the cutter,
-and separated in advance the grain which was to be cut from that which
-was to be left standing. McCormick's machine had two cutters or knives,
-reciprocated by cranks in opposite directions to each other. This
-feature he afterward abandoned, adopting the single knife, described by
-him as an alternative. This machine was to be pushed ahead of the team,
-which was hitched to the bar C of the tongue B in the rear, but
-provision was made for a front draft by a pair of shafts in front, shown
-in dotted lines. The curved dotted line beside the shafts indicated a
-bowed guard to press the standing grain away from the horse. The divider
-L had a cloth screen extending to the rear of the platform.
-
-Neither Hussey nor McCormick appears at that time to have been cognizant
-of the prior state of the art, and as the patent law of 1836 had not yet
-been enacted, there was little or no examination as to novelty, and no
-interference proceedings as to priority of invention, and consequently
-their respective claims were drawn to much that was old, and probably
-much that would have been in conflict with each other under the present
-practice of the Patent Office. In the _Scientific American_, of December
-16 and 23, 1854, in a most interesting series of articles on the reaper,
-the Hussey machine is fully described. The first public trial was on
-July 2, 1833, before the Hamilton County Agricultural Society, near
-Carthage, O., and its success was attested by nine witnesses. Great
-stress was laid by Mr. Hussey on the double finger bar, _i. e._, a
-finger bar having one member above and the other below the knife. The
-_Scientific American_ said the machine was a success from the first;
-that "in 1834 the machine was introduced into Illinois and New York, and
-in 1837 into Pennsylvania, and in 1838 Mr. Hussey moved from Ohio to
-Baltimore, Md., and continued to manufacture his reapers there up to the
-present time."
-
-In 1836 Hussey was invited by the Maryland Agricultural Society for the
-Eastern Shore to exhibit his machine before them. On July 1 he did so,
-and made practical demonstration of its working to the society at
-Oxford, Talbot County, and again on July 12 at Easton. On the following
-Saturday it was shown at Trappe, and it was afterwards used on the farm
-of Mr. Tench Tilghman, where 180 acres of wheat, oats and barley were
-cut with it. The report of the Board of Trustees of the society was an
-unqualified commendation of the practicability, efficiency and value of
-the machine, and a handsome pair of silver cups was awarded to the
-inventor. The report was signed by the following well-known residents of
-the Eastern Shore: Robert H. Goldsborough, Samuel Stevens, Samuel T.
-Kennard, Robert Banning, Samuel Hambleton, Sr., Nichol Goldsborough, Ed.
-N. Hambleton, James L. Chamberlain, Martin Goldsborough, Horatio L.
-Edmonson, and Tench Tilghman.
-
-Hussey made and sold his machine for years. In the _American Farmer_, of
-October, 1847, an agricultural journal printed at Baltimore, the
-advertisement of his machine appears with full price lists of the
-different sizes of machines, and also of an improvement in the manner of
-disposing of the grain, which was the invention of Mr. Tench Tilghman,
-and was adopted by Hussey on his reaper.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 151.--THE McCORMICK REAPER OF 1847.]
-
-While Hussey was at work at his reaper, McCormick also was busily
-engaged with his, and he took his second patent January 31, 1845, No.
-3,895. This related to the cutter bar, the divider, and reel post.
-McCormick's next patent was dated October 23, 1847, No. 5,335, and in
-this the raker's seat was to be mounted on the platform as shown in Fig.
-151. McCormick's last named patent also covered the arrangement of the
-gearing and crank in front of the drive wheel, so as to balance the
-weight of the raker. In the same year Hussey took out his patent of
-August 7, 1847, No. 5,227, for the open top and slotted finger guard,
-which is an important part of all successful cutter bars.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 152.--THE MANN HARVESTER OF 1849.]
-
-The rivalry between the McCormick and Hussey machines continued for many
-years, and they were frequently in competition both in America and
-England. The stimulus of this rivalry doubtless had much to do with the
-development and success of the reaper. Both Hussey and McCormick asked
-for extensions of their patents, but they failed to get them. In 1848,
-pending McCormick's extension proceedings, facts were introduced by him
-to show that his invention of the reaper antedated Hussey's, and that he
-had made his machine as early as 1831, and had used it then on the farm
-of Mr. John Steele, in Virginia. This claim to priority was supported by
-the publication of a description of the machine, and certificate of its
-use, in the _Union_, a newspaper published at Lexington, Va., September
-28, 1833, and although no adjudication was ever made on this issue, this
-fact, together with Mr. McCormick's success in the contest in England in
-1851, and his subsequent persistence and activity in improving,
-developing and introducing the reaper, has so distinguished him in this
-connection, that to-day his name is as commonly associated with the
-reaper as is Fulton's with the steamboat, or that of Morse with the
-telegraph. To Mr. McCormick more than to anybody else the perfection of
-the reaper is due. In the spring of 1851 McCormick placed his reaper on
-exhibition at the World's Fair in London. Hussey also had his machine
-there, and they were the only ones represented. The machines were tested
-in the field, and astonished all who saw them operate. The Grand Council
-medal, which was one of four special medals awarded for marked epochs in
-progress, was given to McCormick, and the judges referred to the
-McCormick machine as being worth to the people of England "the whole
-cost of the exposition." It is only fair to state that Hussey was not
-present to direct the trial of his machine, and that in a subsequent
-trial another jury decided in his favor, and His Royal Highness, Prince
-Albert, ordered two of Hussey's machines in 1851--one for Windsor and
-the other for the Isle of Wight. The Duke of Marlborough also gave his
-personal testimonial to Mr. Hussey as to the excellence of his machine.
-In 1855, at a competitive trial of reapers near Paris, three machines
-were entered. The American machine cut an acre of oats in twenty-two
-minutes, the English machine in sixty-six minutes, and the Algerian in
-seventy-two. In 1863, at the great International Exposition at Hamburg,
-the McCormick reaper again took the grand prize. While in Paris in 1878
-Mr. McCormick was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences as
-"having done more for the cause of agriculture than any living man." Mr.
-McCormick continued to the end of his days, in 1884, to devote his
-entire energies to the development of the reaper, and well deserved the
-princely fortune that resulted from his indefatigable labors, a good
-portion of which fortune he spent during his life in the cause of
-education and acts of philanthropy. The inventory of his estate, filed
-in the Probate Court of Cook County, Ill., showed $10,000,000 as the
-reward of his genius and industry, and is an object lesson of the reward
-of merit for the ambitious youth of the Twentieth Century.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 153.--THE MARSH HARVESTER OF 1858.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 154.--THE CHAMPION REAPER.]
-
-In the development of the reaper one of the first deficiencies to be
-supplied was automatic mechanism for taking the grain from the
-platform. In November, 1848, F. S. Pease took out patent No. 5,925 for
-a rake whose teeth projected up through slots in the platform, and moved
-back and forth to deposit the grain upon the ground. On June 19, 1849,
-J. J. & H. F. Mann took out patent No. 6,540 on a machine employing the
-principle of an endless band for carrying the cut grain to the side of
-the machine, where it passed up an inclined plane and accumulated in a
-receptacle to form a gavel, which was clumped upon the ground. This
-machine is shown in Fig. 152. On July 8, 1851, W. H. Seymour took out
-patent No. 8,212 for a self-raker, and this machine marks the beginning
-of the era of self-raking reapers, which for a quarter of a century in
-various modifications continued to be used, until displaced by
-subsequent improvements in binding devices. In 1853 the Sylla and Adams
-machine was brought out, the patents for which were bought by the
-Aultmans, and the Aultman and Miller, or "Buckeye" harvester, was
-manufactured thereunder. The general form of the modern harvester has
-followed along the lines of the Mann machine of 1849. The development
-began by replacing the gavel receptacle on the right of that machine
-(Fig. 152) with a platform on which stood men who rode on the machine as
-they bound the grain. An early and important example of a harvester of
-this class is given in the Marsh machine, patented August 15, 1858, No.
-21,207, and shown in Fig. 153. To this type of machine the self-binding
-devices were subsequently applied, but before they materialized many
-other improvements in self-rakers were made and applied, among which may
-be mentioned the combined rake and reel of Owen Dorsey, of Maryland
-(1856), sweeping horizontally across the quadrantal platform; the
-McClintock Young revolving reel, carrying a rake; the Henderson rake
-(1860) used on the Wood machine; the Seiberling dropper (1861), which
-consisted of a slotted platform which moved to discharge the gavel; and
-the various improvements covered by Whiteley's patents, which were
-embodied in the Champion reaper, of Springfield, O., and which is shown
-in Fig. 154. This machine had a combined rake and reel of the Dorsey
-type, whose arms moved over a circular inclined and stationary cam, and
-whose rakes had a horizontal sweep over the platform, and a vertical
-return over the wheels.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 155.--THE LOCKE WIRE BINDER OF 1873.]
-
-The next step, and, perhaps the most important one, in the development
-of the reaper, was in providing automatic devices for binding the gavels
-of grain into sheaves. John E. Heath, of Ohio, in patent No. 7,520, of
-July 22, 1850, was the pioneer, and he used cord. Watson, Renwick &
-Watson, in patent No. 8,083, of May 13, 1851, and C. A. McPhitridge, in
-patent No. 16,097, of November 18, 1856, quickly followed in the attempt
-to provide such a device, the former using cord and the latter wire. But
-the problem was not an easy one to solve. On November 16, 1858, W. Grey
-took out patent No. 22,074, for starting the binding mechanism by the
-weight of the bundle. Probably the first to complete a binding
-attachment that was partly automatic, and to attach it to a reaping
-machine, were H. M. & W. W. Burson, of Illinois. On June 26, 1860, and
-October 4, 1864, W. W. Burson patented a cord binder, and in 1863 one
-thousand machines were built. These machines, however, used wire, and
-being assisted in their operations by hand labor, were not truly
-automatic. On February 16, 1864, Jacob Behel, of Illinois, obtained a
-patent, No. 41,661, for a very important invention in binders. He showed
-and claimed for the first time the knotting bill, which loops and forms
-the knot, and the turning cord holder for retaining the end of the cord.
-On May 31, 1870, George H. Spaulding took out patent No. 103,673 for a
-binder which automatically regulated the bundles to a uniform size.
-Sylvanus D. Locke, of Wisconsin, was the next inventor who undertook to
-solve the problem. He took out patents No. 121,290, November 28, 1871,
-and No. 149,233, March 31, 1874, and many others. In 1873 he associated
-himself with Walter A. Wood, and they built and sold probably the first
-automatic self-binding harvester that was ever put upon the market. The
-Locke wire binder of 1873 is shown in Fig. 155. The use of wire,
-however, for binding grain, involved certain objections in that it
-required a special cutting tool for cutting the sheaves at the thresher,
-and it was not easy to remove the wire, and parts of it were likely to
-go through the thresher. Inventors accordingly concentrated their
-attention on the use of twine or cord. Marquis L. Gorham, of Illinois,
-built a successful twine binder, and had it at work in the harvest field
-in 1874. This machine, covered by patent No. 159,506, February 9, 1875,
-not only bound by cord, but produced bundles of the same size. The grain
-in this machine is delivered by the elevator of the harvester upon a
-platform, where it is seized by packers and carried forward into a
-second chamber, where it is compacted by the packers against a yielding
-trip, so that when sufficient grain is accumulated, the trip will yield
-and start the binding mechanism into operation. The ball of cord carried
-on the machine has one end threaded through the needle and fastened in a
-holder. The grain is forced against the cord by the packers, and when
-the binder starts the needle encircles the gavel, carrying the cord to a
-knotting bill, and the end is again seized by the rotating holder, the
-loop formed, the ends of the band severed, and the bound bundle is
-discharged from the machine. A gate, which has in the meantime shut off
-the flow of grain, is now drawn back, and the operation is repeated. On
-February 18, 1879, John F. Appleby took out a patent, No. 212,420, for
-an improvement on the Gorham binder. In Fig. 156 is shown a modern
-automatic self-binding reaper which embodies the fundamental principles
-of McCormick and Hussey, the inclined elevator and platform shown by
-Marsh, and the automatic binding devices of Behel, Gorham and Appleby.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 156.--MODERN AUTOMATIC SELF-BINDING REAPER.]
-
-This machine, under favorable conditions, with one driver, cuts twenty
-acres of wheat in a day, binds it, and carries the bound bundles into
-windrows, and with one shocker, performs the work of twenty men, and
-does it better, the saving in the waste of grain over hand labor being
-sufficient to pay for the twine used in binding. It is said that the
-self-binding reaper has reduced the cost of harvesting grain to less
-than half a cent a bushel.
-
-It is estimated that more than 180,000 machines of the self-binding type
-are now produced yearly, the manufacturers in Chicago alone turning out
-more than three-fourths of this number. It is not possible to do justice
-to all the worthy workers in this great industry. Nearly 10,000 patents
-have been granted on reaping and mowing machines, and the conspicuous
-names of Whiteley, Wood, Atkins, Manny, Yost, and Ketchum, in addition
-to those already mentioned, are only a small part of the great army of
-inventors who have contributed to the development and perfection of the
-reaper.
-
-In 1840 it is said there were but three reapers made. To-day the total
-number of self-binding harvesters, reapers and mowers in use is
-estimated to be two millions. The growth of this industry in the four
-earlier decades is as follows (the relatively small increase between
-1860 and 1870 being accounted for by the Civil War):
-
- 1840. 1850. 1860. 1870. 1880.
-
- Machines made 3 3,000 20,000 30,000 60,000
-
-Immediately succeeding this period the automatic cord binder was put
-into use, and within five years the increase in output of reapers and
-mowers was very great. In 1885 more than 100,000 self-binding harvesters
-and 150,000 reapers and mowers were built and sold. In 1890 two
-manufacturing establishments in Chicago made more than 200,000 machines,
-half of which were self-binders and the other half reapers and mowers,
-and these two institutions alone employed in their various branches of
-manufacturing and selling 10,000 employees. In 1895 the output of the
-largest of these manufacturing establishments was 60,000 self-binding
-harvesters, fitted with bundle carriers and trucks, 61,000 mowers,
-10,000 corn harvesters, and 5,000 reapers, making 136,000 machines in
-all. In 1898 the output of this one factory for the year was 74,000
-self-binding harvesters, 107,000 mowers, 9,000 corn harvesters, and
-10,000 reapers, amounting to 200,000 machines. This output, together
-with 75,000 horse rakes, also made, averaged a complete machine for
-every forty seconds in the year, working ten hours a day. The estimated
-annual production of all factories in this class of agricultural
-implements is 180,000 self-binding harvesters, 250,000 mowing machines,
-18,000 corn harvesters, and 25,000 reapers.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 157.--STEAM HARVESTER AND THRESHER.
-
-The wheat is headed, threshed, cleaned and sacked by this machine in one
-continuous operation.--Cutter, 26 feet wide; Capacity, 75 acres per
-day.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 158.--FIFTY HORSE POWER STEAM PLANTING COMBINATION.
-
-Traction engine pulling sixteen 10-inch plows, four 6-foot harrows, and
-a drill.]
-
-There were exported in the year 1880 about 800 self-binding harvesters,
-2,000 reapers, and 1,000 mowers. In 1890 this was increased to 3,000
-self-binding harvesters, 4,000 reapers, and 2,000 mowers. The total
-value of mowers and reapers exported in 1890 was $2,092,638. The growth
-subsequent to 1890 is well attested by the exports for 1899, which for
-mowers and reapers was $9,053,830, or more than four times what it was
-in 1890. These exported machines harvest the crops of the Argentine
-Republic, Paraguay, and Uruguay, of South America; carry their
-labor-saving values to Australia and New Zealand; traverse the wheat
-fields along the banks of the Red Sea and the Volga, and are used
-throughout all the continent of Europe.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 159.--A WESTERN HARVEST SCENE (LEFT SECTION OF
-VIEW).]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 159.--A WESTERN HARVEST SCENE (RIGHT SECTION OF
-VIEW).]
-
-With the self-binding harvester performing the work of twenty men,
-cutting and binding the grain, and arranging the bundles in windrows, it
-would seem that perfection in this art had been reached, but the
-tendency of the age is to do things on a constantly increasing scale,
-and so the latest developments in harvesters comprise a mammoth machine
-(Fig. 157) propelled across the grain fields by steam, and which by the
-same power cuts a swath from 26 to 28 feet wide, threshes it at once as
-it moves along, blows out the chaff, and puts the grain in bags at the
-rate of three bags per minute, each bag containing one hundred and
-fifteen pounds, and requiring two expert bag sewers to take the grain
-away from the spout, sew the bags, and dump them on the ground.
-Seventy-five acres a day is its task. A companion piece to this machine
-is illustrated in Fig. 158, which shows the same power utilized for
-planting. A powerful steam traction engine of fifty horse power hauls
-across the field a planting combination of sixteen ten-inch plows, four
-six-foot harrows and a seeding drill in the rear. Such great reaping
-machines only find useful application in the enormous wheat fields of
-California and the Pacific Coast States, where the dry climate permits
-the grain to ripen and dry sufficiently while standing in the field.
-Moreover, only the heads of the grain are cut, the straw being left
-standing. Some conception of the enormous scale upon which grain is
-raised in the Western States may be gotten from the dimensions of the
-farms. It is said that Dr. Glenn's wheat farm comprises 45,000 acres;
-the Dalrymples', in North Dakota, 70,000; and Mr. Mitchell, in the San
-Joaquin Valley, in California, has 90,000 acres. The Dalrymple farms in
-1893 had 54,000 acres in wheat, and employed 283 self-binding reapers to
-harvest the crop. There is a single unbroken wheat field on the banks of
-the San Joaquin River, near the town of Clovis, in Madera County,
-California, which comprises 25,000 acres, or nearly forty square miles
-of wheat--a veritable sea of waving grain. The field is nearly square;
-each side is a little over six miles long. If its shape were changed to
-the width of one mile, the field would then be forty miles long. It has
-been said of the grain fields of the West, that the men and teams eat
-breakfast at one end of a furrow, take dinner in the middle of the
-row, and at night camp and sup at the end of the same row. With a field
-of such proportions it is not difficult to see how this may be true. The
-cultivation and garnering of crops from such vast areas can only be
-appreciated by comparisons. If it were one man's work to plow such a
-field, even with a double gang plow, cutting a furrow twenty-four inches
-wide, he would travel 105,600 miles, which would be equivalent to going
-around the world four times. If he plowed twenty miles a day, it would
-take 5,280 days. To harrow would require as long, and to plant would
-take about the same time, or about forty-three years altogether. A full
-lifetime would be required to plant the crop, and a second generation
-would be required to reap it. But great results require great agencies,
-and so great labor-saving machines, operated by armies of men, are
-brought into requisition, and with these the crop is both planted and
-reaped. A long procession of self-binding harvesters, following close
-one behind the other, makes quick work of it, and before the weather
-changes this great field is mowed, its crop garnered, and bread supplied
-for the hungry of all lands.
-
-The exports of wheat to foreign lands in 1898 were 148,231,261 bushels,
-worth $145,684,659, and the exports of wheat flour for the same year
-were 15,349,943 barrels, worth $69,263,718. The total yield of wheat in
-the United States for 1898 was 675,148,705 bushels.
-
-With the fertile earth, and its prolific inventors, the United States
-has become the richest country in the world. What its future is to be no
-man may say, but its destiny is not yet fulfilled, and it is pregnant
-with potential possibilities.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII.
-
-VULCANIZED RUBBER.
-
- EARLY USE OF CAOUTCHOUC BY THE INDIANS--COLLECTION OF THE GUM--EARLY
- EXPERIMENTS FAILURES--GOODYEAR'S PERSISTENT EXPERIMENTS--NATHANIEL
- HAYWARD'S APPLICATION OF SULPHUR TO THE GUM--GOODYEAR'S PROCESS OF
- VULCANIZATION--INTRODUCTION OF HIS PROCESS INTO EUROPE--TRIALS AND
- IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT--RUBBER SHOE INDUSTRY--GREAT EXTENT AND
- VARIETY OF APPLICATIONS--STATISTICS.
-
-
-Most all important inventions have grown into existence by slow stages
-of development, and by successive contributions from many minds, not a
-few having descended by gradual processes of evolution from preceding
-centuries. Vulcanized rubber, however, is not of this class. It belongs
-exclusively to the Nineteenth Century, and owes its existence to the
-tireless energy of one man. The value of the crude gum had been
-previously speculated upon, and for years attempts had been made to
-utilize it, but not until Goodyear invented his process of vulcanizing
-it did it have any real value. This process was an important, distinct
-and unique step, entirely the work of Mr. Goodyear, and it has never
-been superseded nor improved upon to any extent. Charles Goodyear was
-born in New Haven, December 29, 1800, and his life, beginning two days
-in advance of the Nineteenth Century, furnishes an extraordinary
-illustration of the struggles and trials of the inventor against adverse
-fortune, and is a pathetic example of self denial, indefatigable labor,
-and unrequited toil. Of feeble health, small stature, poor, and
-frequently in prison for debt, he made the development of this art the
-paramount object of his life, and with a pious faith and unfaltering
-courage for thirty years he devoted himself to this work. Money he cared
-nothing for, except in so far as it was necessary to carry on his work,
-and he died July 1, 1860, poor in this world's goods, but rich in the
-consciousness of the great benefit conferred by his invention upon the
-human race.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 160.--COLLECTING THE GUM.]
-
-India rubber, or caoutchouc, as it is more properly called, is a
-concentrated gum derived from the evaporation of the milky juice of
-certain trees found in South America, Mexico, Central America and the
-East Indies. The South American variety is called _Jatropha elastica_,
-and the East Indian variety the _Ficus elastica_. The South American
-Indians called it _cahuchu_. The province of Para, south of the equator,
-in Brazil, furnishes the largest part and best quality of gum. The tree
-from which the gum exudes grows to the height of eighty, and sometimes
-to one hundred feet. It runs up straight for forty or fifty feet without
-a branch. Its top is spreading, and is ornamented with a thick and
-glossy foliage. The gum is collected by chopping through the bark with a
-hatchet and placing under each series of cuts a little clay cup formed
-by the hands of the workman. About a gill of the sap accumulates in each
-cup in the course of a day, and it is then transferred to receiving
-vessels and taken to camp. The first use of the gum was made by the
-South American Indians, who made shoes, bottles, playing balls and
-various other articles from it. Their method for making a shoe was to
-take a crude wooden last, which they covered with clay to prevent the
-adhesion of the gum. It was then dipped in the sap, or the latter was
-poured over it, which gave it a thin coating. It was then held over a
-smoky fire, which gave it a dark color and dried the gum. When one
-coating became sufficiently hard another was added, and smoked in turn,
-and so successive coatings were applied until a sufficient thickness was
-obtained. When the work was completed it was exposed for some days in
-the sun, and while still soft the shoes were decorated as the fancy or
-taste of the maker suggested. The clay forms were then broken out, and
-the shoe stuffed with grass to keep it in shape for use or sale. In 1820
-a pair of these clumsy shoes was brought to Boston and exhibited as a
-curiosity. They were covered with gilding, and resembled the shoe of a
-Chinaman. Subsequently considerable numbers of these shoes were brought
-from South America, and being sold at a large price, they served to
-stimulate Yankee ingenuity into devising methods of making them from the
-raw material, which being brought as ballast in the ships from Brazil,
-could be had cheaply. In France some attention had been given to the
-material, and the rubber bottles of the Indians had been cut into narrow
-threads which were woven into strips of cloth to form suspenders and
-garters. In England an application of it in thin solution had been made
-by a Mr. Macintosh, who spread it between two thicknesses of thin cloth
-to form Macintosh water-proof coats. The first practical use of the gum
-on a large scale was instituted by Mr. Chaffee in Roxbury, Mass., about
-1830. He dissolved the gum in spirits of turpentine and invented
-steam-heated rolls for spreading it upon cloth. Companies were formed to
-exploit the products, and in the fall and winter of 1833 and 1834 many
-thousands of dollars' worth of goods were made by the Roxbury Company,
-but the business proved a total failure, for in the summer the goods
-melted, decomposed and became so offensive as to be worse than useless,
-while the cold of winter rendered them stiff and liable to crack. With a
-knowledge of these facts and conditions Charles Goodyear commenced his
-experiments, believing that there was a great future for this material
-if it could only be prevented from melting in summer and stiffening in
-winter. He tried mixing it with many materials, first using magnesia,
-which, however, proved ineffective. On June 17, 1837, he took out patent
-No. 240, in which he proposed to destroy the adhesive properties of
-caoutchouc by superficial application of an acid solution of the metals,
-nitric acid with copper or bismuth being specially recommended. He also
-claimed the incorporation of lime with the gum to bleach it. Under this
-process Mr. Goodyear made various articles in the form of fabrics, toys
-and ornamental articles, using the fabric to make clothing for himself,
-which he wore to demonstrate its value and wearing qualities. A striking
-word picture of Mr. Goodyear at this time is given by the reply of a
-gentleman who, being asked by a man looking for Mr. Goodyear as to how
-he might recognize him, replied, "If you meet a man who has on an India
-rubber cap, stock, coat, vest, and shoes, and an India rubber money
-purse in his pocket, without a cent of money in it, that is he."
-
-Many useful and artistic articles were made under this first patented
-process, including maps, surgical bandages, etc., and were brought by
-Mr. Goodyear to the notice of President Jackson, Henry Clay and John C.
-Calhoun, from whom he received very encouraging letters. His efforts,
-however, to introduce his process commercially were not attended with
-success. Capitalists and manufacturers had been rendered so conservative
-by the large loss of money in the Roxbury Company, that they were
-disinclined to have anything further to do with it. Practically alone he
-was obliged to continue his work. By the kindness of Mr. Chaffee and Mr.
-Haskins he was allowed the use of the valuable machinery standing idle
-in their factory at Roxbury, and he made shoes, piano covers, table
-cloths and carriage covers of superior quality, and from the sale of
-these, and of licenses to manufacture, he for the first time was able to
-support his family in comfort. Mr. Goodyear had not yet discovered,
-however, the process of vulcanization, upon which the rubber industry is
-founded. In 1838 Mr. Nathaniel Hayward, of Woburn, Mass., who had been
-employed in the bankrupt rubber company, discovered that the stickiness
-of the rubber could be prevented by spreading a small quantity of
-sulphur on it. The same result had also been noticed by a German
-chemist. On Feb. 24, 1839, Mr. Hayward procured the patent, No. 1,090,
-on his process, and assigned it to Mr. Goodyear. The patent covered a
-process of dissolving sulphur in oil of turpentine and mixing it with
-the gum, and also included the incorporation of the dry flowers of
-sulphur with the gum, the product afterwards being treated by Mr.
-Goodyear's metallic salt process. This was the starting point of
-vulcanization, for vulcanization consists simply in admixing sulphur
-with the rubber, and then subjecting it for six to eight hours to a
-temperature of about 300°. Its effect is to so change the nature of the
-gum to prevent it from melting or becoming sticky under the influence of
-heat, or of hardening and becoming stiff under the influence of cold,
-the vulcanized gum remaining elastic, impervious, and unchangeable under
-all ordinary conditions. This great discovery of the influence of heat
-on the sulphur treated gum was quite accidental and wholly unexpected.
-Heat above all things was the agency which in all previous observations
-was most to be feared, for it was this more than anything else that
-melted down, decomposed and destroyed all of his manufactured articles.
-While sitting near a hot stove engaged in an animated discussion
-concerning his experiments, a piece of the gum treated with sulphur,
-which he held in his hand, was, by a rapid gesture, thrown upon the
-stove. To his astonishment, he found that this relatively high heat did
-not melt it, as heretofore, and while it charred slightly, it was not
-made at all sticky. He nailed the piece of gum outside the kitchen door
-in the intense cold, and upon examining it the next morning found it as
-perfectly flexible as when he put it out. Goodyear had discovered the
-process which afterwards came to be known as "vulcanization." The
-discovery was made in 1839, but was not accepted by those to whom it was
-submitted as possessing any importance. Prof. Silliman, of Yale College,
-however, in the fall of 1839 testified to the results claimed for it by
-Mr. Goodyear--that it did not melt with heat, nor stiffen with the cold.
-On June 15, 1844, Mr. Goodyear took out his celebrated patent, No.
-3,633, covering this process, in which he not only used sulphur, but
-added a proportion of white lead. The proportions named were 25 parts of
-rubber, 5 parts of sulphur, and 7 parts of white lead, the ingredients
-either to be ground in spirits of turpentine, or to be incorporated dry
-between rolls. The odor imparted by the sulphur was to be destroyed by
-washing with potash or vinegar. This patent was reissued in two
-divisions Dec. 25, 1849, and again on Nov. 20, 1860, and was extended
-for seven years from June 15, 1858, which was the end of the first term.
-Under this patent two kinds of rubber were made and sold--"soft rubber,"
-containing only a small proportion of sulphur, while the other, known as
-the "vulcanite," "ebonite," or "hard rubber," had from 25 to 35 per
-cent. of sulphur and was subjected to a longer heat.
-
-The history of this patent is a remarkable one. Immensely valuable as it
-was, Goodyear reaped but a small share of the profit, for in the midst
-of his poverty and necessities he was obliged to sell licenses and
-establish royalties at a figure far below the real value of the rights
-conveyed. Some idea of the great value of the business which Mr.
-Goodyear had developed may be had from the fact that the companies who
-held rights under the patent for the manufacture of shoes paid at one
-time to Daniel Webster the enormous fee of $25,000 for defending their
-patent interests.
-
-With the idea of extending his invention Mr. Goodyear visited England in
-1851, where he found that Thomas Hancock, of the house of Macintosh &
-Co., had forestalled him, although not the inventor. A peculiar
-provision of the English patent law, which gives the patent to the first
-introducer, permitted this. Nothing daunted, however, he organized a
-magnificent exhibit for the Great International Exhibition held in
-Crystal Palace at Hyde Park, London, in 1851. This exhibit cost him
-$30,000, and he called it the Goodyear Vulcanite Court. It comprehended
-an elegantly constructed suite of open rooms made of hard rubber
-ornamented with handsome carvings, and furnished with rubber furniture,
-musical instruments, and globes made of rubber, and it was also carpeted
-with the same material. For his exhibit he received the "Grand Council
-Medal," which was one of the highest testimonials of the exposition.
-This exhibit was afterwards moved from London to Sydenham, where it was
-exposed and used as an agency for some years for the sale of rubber
-goods.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 161.--MACHINE FOR GRINDING AND WASHING CRUDE
-RUBBER.]
-
-Mr. Goodyear had obtained a French patent for his invention, and at the
-Exposition Universelle in Paris, in 1855, he fitted up at an expense of
-$50,000 two elegant courts with India rubber furniture, caskets and rich
-jewelry, and for this exhibit he had conferred upon him by the Emperor
-Napoleon the "Grand Medal of Honor" and the "Cross of the Legion of
-Honor." It was a singular instance of the irony of fate that the
-decoration of the "Cross of the Legion of Honor" should have been
-conveyed to him while imprisoned for debt in "Clichy," the debtors'
-prison in Paris. The lofty courage of the man was well illustrated at
-this time in his reply to his wife's solicitous inquiries as to how he
-had spent the night while in prison. He said, "I have been through
-nearly every form of trial that human flesh is heir to, and I find that
-_there is nothing in life to fear but sin_." The declining years of his
-life were full of sorrow, pain and affliction, and at his death in 1860
-his estate was $200,000 in debt. He lived long enough, however, to see
-his material applied to nearly five hundred uses, giving employment in
-England, France and Germany to 60,000 persons, and producing in this
-country alone goods worth $8,000,000 a year.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 162.--MAKING RUBBER CLOTH.]
-
-The greatest of all applications of rubber are to be found in the
-manufacture of boots and shoes. The number of attacks of cold,
-rheumatism, and death-dealing diseases from wet feet, that have been
-averted by the use of rubber shoes, can never be estimated, but perhaps
-it is safe to say that the rubber shoe has done more to conserve the
-health of the human family than any other single article of apparel.
-
-In the manufacture of shoes the finest quality of rubber is received in
-wooden boxes 4 × 2 × 1½ feet, containing about 350 pounds in lumps of 1
-to 75 pounds. These lumps are cut to suitable size, and are then ground
-and washed in the machine shown in Fig. 161, water and steam being
-sprayed on the rubber during the operation. It is then worked into
-sheets or mats between rolls. From the grinding room the sheets are
-taken to the mixing room, where lampblack, sulphur and other ingredients
-are added, and worked into it by being passed many times between heated
-rolls, the sheets being finally reduced to a thickness of less than 1/32
-of an inch. The rubber sheets are then applied to a cloth backing by
-cloth calendering rolls, shown in Fig. 162, which are steam heated and
-by great pressure serve to incorporate the sheets of rubber and cloth
-into intimate and inseparable union. Out of this rubber fabric, which is
-made of different thicknesses for the upper, sole and heel, the patterns
-for the shoe are cut, and the parts are deftly fitted around the forms
-by girls, and secured by rubber cement, as shown in Fig. 163. The shoes
-are then covered with a coat of rubber varnish, and are put into cars
-and run into the vulcanizing ovens, where they remain from six to seven
-hours at a temperature of about 275°. The goods are then taken out, and
-after being inspected are boxed for the market. The vulcanizing is a
-very important part of the manufacture of a rubber shoe, for it is
-absolutely necessary in order to give them stability and wearing
-qualities. A shoe that had not been vulcanized would mash down, spread,
-become sticky and go to pieces after a few hours' wear.
-
-The rubber shoe industry of the United States is carried on by about
-fifteen large companies, representing an investment of many millions of
-dollars, most of which companies are located in Massachusetts, Rhode
-Island and Connecticut.
-
-Some idea of the immensity of this industry may be obtained from the
-import statistics. In 1899 the United States alone imported crude rubber
-to the extent of 51,063,066 pounds, as much as 1,000,000 pounds a month
-coming from the single port of Para. The export of manufactured rubber
-goods for the same year amounted to $1,765,385. The statistics for Great
-Britain for 1896 showed the imports of rubber to that country to be
-one-third more than the imports of the United States. Germany also is a
-large consumer. The great Harburg-Vienna factories cover sixty-seven
-acres, are capitalized at 9,000,000 marks, and employ 3,500 hands. Much
-fine technical apparatus, toys, and balls are made here, the daily
-output of balls reaching 8,000. These, with the Noah's arks of India
-rubber animals, are the delight of the little ones all over the world.
-
-Although so much in evidence about us, India rubber is not by any means
-a cheap material. Costing only five cents a pound when Goodyear
-commenced his experiments, it is now worth a dollar a pound, and is
-therefore much more expensive than any of the ordinary metals, woods, or
-building materials. Many substitutes in the form of compositions of
-various ingredients have been devised and patented, but no real
-substitute for nature's product has yet been found. For many years old
-and worn out rubber goods were thrown away as worthless. Now all such
-rubber is reclaimed, and used in many grades of goods which do not
-require a pure gum. Insatiable as the demands of the trade may appear,
-there is no need to fear a rubber famine, for the forests of trees in
-South America and the East Indies are practically inexhaustible, and in
-the rich alluvial soil of their habitat nature's processes of growth
-rapidly restore the decimation.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 163.--MAKING RUBBER SHOES.]
-
-Since the time of Goodyear, the amplification of this art and the
-multiplication of uses for rubber, and its increased commercial
-importance, have gone on at such a rate of increase that to-day we may
-be said to be living in the rubber age. Its uses and applications are
-legion, and they extend literally from the cradle to the grave. When the
-baby comes into the world its introduction to India rubber begins at
-once with the nursing bottle and the gum cloth, and when the aged
-invalid takes leave of the world his last moments are soothed with the
-water bag and the rubber bed, and between these extremes we find it in
-evidence everywhere about us. In wearing apparel it extends from the
-crown of the head to the sole of the foot--rubber cap, coat, gloves, and
-shoes. The man has it in his suspenders and his pipe stem, the woman in
-her garters and dress shields, and the baby in its teething ring and
-rattle. The soldier stands on picket duty in the rain, and the rubber
-blanket protects him from rheumatism. If wounded, the surgeon dresses
-his mangled limb with rubber bandages, and when he gets well he has a
-rubber cushion on the end of his crutch, or on the foot of his
-artificial leg. If wounded in the mouth perhaps the government gives him
-a set of artificial teeth on a rubber plate. The rubber mat greets you
-at the front door, a little pad cushions the door stops and the backs of
-chairs, and a ring seals the mouth of the fruit jar. The whole array of
-toilet articles, including combs, brushes, mirrors, shoe horns, etc.,
-are made from it. In the parlor it is found in picture frames and the
-piano cover; in the bath room the wash rag, water bag, rubber cup, and
-hose pipe of the shower bath are all made of it; in the play room are
-found rubber balls and toys of all kinds; in the kitchen the clothes
-wringer and the table cloth; in the dining room the handles of knives,
-and the tea tray, and what is more useful and more ubiquitous in the
-office than the rubber band, the rubber ruler, the pencil eraser, or the
-fountain pen? But these are only a few of the personal and indoor uses
-and applications. Rubber belting for machinery, fire engine and garden
-hose, steam engine packing, car springs, covers for carriages and the
-big guns of the navy, life preservers, billiard table cushions, and
-chemical and surgical apparatus in endless variety. The electrical world
-is almost entirely dependent upon it for the insulation of our ocean
-cables and electric light wires, for battery cups, and the insulating
-mountings of all electrical apparatus. The pneumatic bicycle tire could
-not exist without rubber, and the modern application of it to this use
-alone amounts to nearly four million pounds annually. Every automobile
-carriage takes twenty-five pounds of rubber for each tire, or 100 pounds
-altogether. This great and growing industry, together with the now
-common use of rubber tires on horse-drawn vehicles, raises the sum total
-of rubber employed in the arts to an enormous figure.
-
-That the sap of an uncultivated tree in a swampy, tropical, and malarial
-forest, thousands of miles from civilization, should cut so great a
-figure in the necessities of modern life, seems strange and
-unaccountable on any basis of probabilities. It is only another
-illustration of the possibilities of the patient and persistent work of
-the inventor. Charles Goodyear took this nearly worthless material, and
-made of it, as Parton said in 1865--"not a new material merely, but a
-new class of materials, applicable to a thousand divers uses. It was
-still India rubber, but its surface would not adhere, nor would it
-harden at any degree of cold, nor soften at any degree of heat. It was a
-cloth impervious to water; it was a paper that would not tear; it was a
-parchment that would not crease; it was leather which neither rain nor
-sun would injure; it was ebony that could be run into a mould; it was
-ivory that could be worked like wax; it was wood that never cracked,
-shrunk nor decayed. It was metal, 'elastic metal,' as Daniel Webster
-termed it, that could be wound round the finger, or tied into a knot,
-and which preserved its elasticity like steel. Trifling variations in
-the ingredients, in the proportion and in the heating, made it either
-pliable as kid, tougher than ox hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as
-rigid as flint."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII.
-
-CHEMISTRY.
-
- ITS EVOLUTION AS A SCIENCE--THE COAL TAR PRODUCTS--FERMENTING AND
- BREWING--GLUCOSE, GUN COTTON AND NITRO-GLYCERINE--ELECTRO-CHEMISTRY
- --FERTILIZERS AND COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS--NEW ELEMENTS OF THE
- NINETEENTH CENTURY.
-
-
-The foundation stones of empirical discovery, upon which this science is
-based, had been crudely shaped by the workmen of preceding centuries,
-but the classification and laying of them into the structure of an exact
-science is the work of the Nineteenth Century. The glass of the
-Phoenicians, and the dyes and metallurgical operations of the Egyptians,
-involved some chemical knowledge; much more did the operations of the
-alchemists, who vainly sought to convert the baser metals into gold, but
-these were only the crude building stones, out of which the great
-complex modern structure has been raised. In the Sixteenth Century the
-study of chemistry, apart from alchemy, began, and some attention was
-given to its application to the uses of medicine. Aristotle's four
-elements--fire, air, earth and water--were no longer accepted as
-representing a correct theory, and new ones were proposed only to be
-found as erroneous, and to be superseded in time by others.
-
-Briefly traversing the more important of the earlier steps, there may be
-mentioned the phlogiston theory of Stahl in the earlier part of the
-Eighteenth Century; the discovery of the composition of water by
-Cavendish in 1766; of oxygen by Priestly and Scheele in 1774; the
-electro-chemical dualistic theory of Lavoisier in the latter part of the
-Eighteenth Century, followed by a rational nomenclature established by
-Guyton de Morveau, Berthollet and Fourcroy; the doctrine of chemical
-equivalents by Wenzel in 1777 and Richter in 1792; Dalton's atomic
-theory; Wollaston's scale of chemical equivalents; Gay Lussac's law of
-combining volumes; Berzelius' system of chemical symbols and theory of
-compound radicals; contributions of Sir Humphrey Davy and Faraday in
-electro-chemistry, and Thenard's grouping of the metals. These
-interesting phases of development of the old chemistry have been
-followed by the new theory of substitution, by Dumas and others. This
-change, beginning about 1860 and running through a period of nearly
-twenty years, has gradually supplanted the old electro-chemical
-dualistic theory and established the present system.
-
-Among the important and interesting achievements of chemistry in the
-Nineteenth Century is the _artificial production of organic compounds_.
-All such compounds had heretofore been either directly or indirectly
-derived from plants or animals. In 1828 Wohler produced urea from
-inorganic substances, which was the first example of the synthetic
-production of organic compounds, and it was for many years the only
-product so formed. Berthelot, of Paris, by heating carbonic oxide with
-hydrate of potash produced formiate of potash, from which formic acid is
-obtained; by agitating olefiant gas with oil of vitriol a compound is
-produced from which, upon the addition of water and distillation,
-alcohol is formed; he also re-combined the fatty acids with glycerine to
-form the original fats.
-
-In the classification of this science, it has been divided into
-inorganic chemistry, relating to metals, minerals and bodies not
-associated with organic life, and organic chemistry, which was formerly
-limited to matter associated with or the result of growth or life
-processes, but which is now extended to the broader field of all carbon
-compounds. In later years the most remarkable advances have been made in
-the field of organic chemistry. The four elements carbon, hydrogen,
-oxygen and nitrogen have been juggled into innumerable associations, and
-in various proportions, and endless permutations, have been combined to
-produce an unlimited series of useful compounds, such as dyes,
-explosives, medicines, perfumes, flavoring extracts, disinfectants, etc.
-
-The most interesting of these compounds are the _coal tar products_.
-Coal tar, for many years, was the waste product of gas making. Forty
-years ago about the only use made of it was by the farmer, who painted
-the ends of his fence posts with it to prevent decay, or by the
-fisherman, who applied it to the bottoms of his boats and his fishing
-nets. To-day the black, offensive and unpromising substance, with
-magical metamorphosis, has been transformed by the chemist into the most
-beautiful dyes, excelling the hues and shades of the rainbow, the most
-delightful perfumes and flavoring extracts, the most useful medicines,
-the most powerful antiseptics, and a product which is the very sweetest
-substance known. The aniline dyes represent one of the great
-developments in this field. In 1826 Unverdorben obtained from indigo a
-substance which he called "Crystalline." In 1834 Runge obtained from
-coal tar "Kyanol." In 1840 Fritzsch obtained from indigo a product which
-he called "Aniline," from "Anil," the Portuguese for indigo. Zinin soon
-after obtained "Benzidam." All these substances were afterward proved to
-be the same as aniline. Perkins' British patent, No. 1,984, of 1856, is
-the first patented disclosure of the aniline dyes, and represents the
-beginning of their commercial production. This combines sulphate of
-aniline and bichromate of potash to produce an exquisite lilac, or
-purple color. The first United States patent was in 1861, and now there
-are about 1,400 patents on carbon dyes and compounds, the most of which
-belong to the coal tar group. In dyes artificial alizarine, by Graebe
-and Lieberman (Pat. No. 95,465, Oct. 5, 1869); aniline black, by
-Lightfoot (Pat. No. 38,589, May 19, 1863); naphthazarin black, by Bohn
-(Pat. No. 379,150, March 6, 1888); artificial indigo, by Baeyer (Pat.
-No. 259,629, June 13, 1882); the azo-colors, by Roussin (Pat. No.
-210,054, Nov. 19, 1878); and the processes for making colors on fibre,
-by Holliday (Pat. No. 241,661, May 17, 1881), are the most important.
-The artificial production of salicylic acid, by Kolbe (Pat. No. 150,867,
-May 12, 1874), marks an important step in antiseptics. Artificial
-vanilla, by Fritz Ach (Pat. No. 487,204, Nov. 29, 1892), represents
-flavoring extracts; and artificial musk, by Baur (Pat. No. 536,324,
-March 26, 1895), is an example of perfumes. In medicines a great array
-of compounds has been produced, such as antipyrin, the fever remedy, by
-Knorr (Pat. No. 307,399, Oct. 28, 1884); phenacetin, by Hinsberg (Pat.
-No. 400,086, March 26, 1889); salol, by Von Nencki (Pat. No. 350,012,
-Sept. 28, 1886), and sulfonal by Bauman (Pat. No. 396,526, Jan. 22,
-1889). To these may be added antikamnia (acetanilide), the headache
-remedy, and saccharin, by Fahlberg (Pat. No. 319,082, June 2, 1885),
-which latter is a substitute for sugar, and thirteen times sweeter than
-sugar. Among the more familiar products of coal tar or petroleum are
-moth balls, carbolic acid, benzine, vaseline, and paraffine.
-
-In the commercial application of chemistry the work of Louis Pasteur in
-_fermenting_ and _brewing_ deserves special notice as making a great
-advance in this art. His United States patent, No. 141,072, July 22,
-1873, deals with the manufacture of yeast for brewing.
-
-The manufacture of _sugar_ and _glucose_ from starch is an industry of
-great magnitude, which has grown up in the last twenty-five years.
-Water, acidulated with 1/100th part of sulphuric acid, is heated to
-boiling, and a hot mixture of starch and water is allowed to flow into
-it gradually. After boiling a half hour chalk is added to neutralize the
-sulphuric acid, and when the sulphate of lime settles the clear syrup is
-drawn off, and either sold as syrup, or is evaporated to produce
-crystallized grape sugar, which latter is only about half as sweet as
-cane sugar. Glucose syrup, however, has largely superseded all other
-table syrups, and is extensively used in brewing, for cheap candies, and
-for bee food. Our exports of glucose and grape sugar for 1899 amounted
-to 229,003,571 pounds, worth $3,624,890.
-
-An important discovery, made in 1846, was that carbohydrates, such as
-starch, sugar, or cellulose, and glycerine, when acted upon by the
-strongest nitric acid, produced compounds remarkable for their explosive
-character. _Gun cotton and nitro-glycerine_ are the most conspicuous
-examples. Gun cotton is made by treating raw cotton with nitric acid, to
-which a proportion of sulphuric acid is added to maintain the strength
-of the nitric acid and effect a more perfect conversion. Besides its use
-as an explosive, gun cotton when dissolved in ether has found an
-important application as collodion in the art of photography.
-Nitro-glycerine only differs in its manufacture from gun cotton in that
-glycerine is acted upon by the acids, instead of cotton. Pyroxiline,
-xyloidine, and celluloid are allied products, which have found endless
-applications in toilet articles and for other uses, as a substitute for
-hard rubber.
-
-The applications of chemistry in the commercial world have been in
-recent years so numerous and varied that it is not possible to do more
-than to refer to its uses in the manufacture of soda and potash, of
-alcohol, ether, chloroform, and ammonia, in soap making, washing
-compounds and tanning, the production of gelatine, the refining of
-cotton seed and other oils, the art of oxidizing oils for the
-manufacture of linoleum and oil cloth, the manufacture of fertilizers,
-white lead and other paints, the preparation of proprietary medicines,
-of soda water and photographic chemicals, the manufacture of salt and
-preserving compounds, in the fermentation of liquors and brewing of
-beer, the preparation of cements and street pavements, the manufacture
-of gas, and the embalming of the dead.
-
-The most interesting and, in many respects, the most important,
-development of the last twenty-five years has been in
-_electro-chemistry_. Electro-chemical methods are now employed for the
-production of a large number of elements, such as the alkali and
-alkaline earth metals, copper, zinc, aluminum, chromium, manganese, the
-halogens, phosphorus, hydrogen, oxygen, and ozone; various chemicals,
-including the mineral acids, hydrates, chlorates, hypochlorites,
-chromates, permanganates, disinfectants, alkaloids, coal tar dyes, and
-various carbon compounds; white lead and other pigments; varnish; in
-bleaching, dyeing, tanning; in extracting grease from wool; in
-purifying water, sewerage, sugar solutions, and alcoholic beverages. The
-present low price of _aluminum_, reduced from $12 per pound in 1878 to
-33 cents now, is due to its production by electrical methods. Among the
-earliest successful processes is that described in patents to Cowles and
-Cowles, No. 319,795, June 9, 1885, and No. 324,658, August 18, 1885, in
-which a mixture of alumina, carbon and copper is heated to incandescence
-by the passage of a current, the reduced aluminum alloying with the
-copper. This has now been superseded by the Hall process (Pat. No.
-400,766, April 2, 1889), in which alumina, dissolved in fused cryolite,
-is electrolytically decomposed. Practically all the copper now produced,
-except that from Lake Superior, is refined electrolytically by
-substantially the method of Farmer's patent (Pat. No. 322,170, July 14,
-1885). All metallic sodium and potassium are now obtained by
-electrolysis of fused hydroxides or chlorides (Pats. No. 452,030, May
-12, 1891, to Castner, and No. 541,465, June 25, 1895, to Vautin). The
-production of caustic soda, sodium carbonate, and chlorine by the
-electrolysis of brine, is carried on upon a large scale, and will
-probably supersede all other methods. Nolf's process (Pat. No. 271,906,
-Feb. 6, 1883), and Caster's (No. 528,322, Oct. 30, 1894), employ a
-receiving body or cathode of mercury, alternately brought in contact
-with the brine undergoing decomposition, and with water to oxidize the
-contained sodium. _Carborundum_, or silicide of carbon, is largely
-superseding emery and diamond dust as an abradant. It is produced by
-Acheson (Pat. No. 492,767, Feb. 28, 1893), by passing a current of
-electricity through a mixture of silica and carbon. _Calcium carbide_, a
-rare compound a few years ago, is now cheaply produced by the action of
-an electric arc on a mixture of lime and carbon, as described by Willson
-(Pats. Nos. 541,137, 541,138, June 18, 1895). Calcium carbide resembles
-coke in general appearance, and it is used for the manufacture of
-acetylene gas, for which purpose it is only necessary to immerse the
-calcium carbide in water, and the gas is at once given off by the mutual
-decomposition of the water and the carbide.
-
-_Agricultural chemistry_ is another one of the practical developments of
-the Nineteenth Century. A hundred years ago the farmer planted his
-crops, prayed for rain, and trusted to Providence for the increase; he
-was not infrequently disappointed, but was wholly unable to account for
-the failure. To-day the intelligent farmer understands the value of
-nitrogen, has ascertained how it may be fed to his crops through the
-agency of nitrifying organisms, or he has his soil analyzed at the
-Agricultural Department, finds out what element it lacks for the crop
-desired, and in chemically prepared fertilizers supplies that
-deficiency. The chemical analysis of drinking water has also
-contributed much to the knowledge of right living and to the avoidance
-of disease and death, which our forefathers were accustomed to regard as
-dispensations of Providence.
-
-America has furnished some eminent chemists in the Nineteenth Century,
-who have made valuable contributions to the science, notably in the
-field of metallurgy. It is a fact, however, which must be admitted with
-regret, that America has not in the field of chemical research occupied
-the leading place she has in mechanical progress. The European
-laboratory is the birthplace of most modern inventions in the chemical
-field, and this is so simply by reason of the fact that these more
-patient investigators have set themselves studiously, systematically and
-persistently to the work of chemical invention. It is said that some of
-the large commercial works in Germany have over 100 Ph. D.'s in a single
-manufacturing establishment, whose work is not directed to the
-management of the manufacture, but solely to original research, and the
-making of inventions. The laboratories in such works differ from those
-in the universities only in being more perfectly equipped, and more
-sumptuously appointed. The result of this is seen in the fact that in
-1899 the United States imported coal tar dyes alone to the extent of
-$3,799,353, and 5,227,098 pounds of alizarine, most of which came from
-Germany, and for which we paid a good price, since the German
-manufacturers control the United States patents. The alizarine dyes are
-for the most part the artificial kind made by German chemists. Prior to
-1869 the red alizarine dye was of plant origin, being obtained from
-madder root, and it cost $2 a pound. The German chemist produced an
-artificially made product, which took the place of the madder dye, and
-was sold at $1.20 a pound. At the end of the patent term (seventeen
-years) the price fell to 15c. a pound, showing that the product was
-produced at a profit of more than $1.05 a pound, and as millions of
-pounds were imported annually, it is estimated that $35,000,000 was the
-price paid the German chemists for their foresight in combining science
-with business. Many United States patents granted to foreign chemists
-are still in force, and the rich reward of their skill is reaped at our
-expense.
-
-_Discovery of elements._--In the early days of chemical knowledge, fire,
-air, earth and water constituted the insignificant category of the
-elements, which was as faulty in classification as it was small in size.
-Gradual splitting up of compounds, and an increase in the number of
-elements, has gone on progressively for some hundreds of years, until
-to-day the list extends well on to one hundred elementary bodies. Those
-which belong to the credit of the Nineteenth Century are given in the
-table following, with the name of the discoverer, and the date of its
-discovery.
-
-ELEMENTS DISCOVERED IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
-
- ELEMENTS. DISCOVERER. YEAR.
-
- Columbium Hatchett 1801
- Tantalum Ekeberg 1802
- Iridium Tenant 1803
- Osmium Tenant 1803
- Cerium Berzelius 1803
- Palladium Wollaston 1804
- Rhodium Wollaston 1804
- Potassium Davy 1807
- Sodium Davy 1807
- Barium Davy 1808
- Strontium Davy 1808
- Calcium Davy 1808
- Boron Davy 1808
- Iodine Courtois 1811
- Cyanogen Gay Lussac 1814
- (Comp. rad.)
- Selenium Berzelius 1817
- Cadmium Stromeyer 1817
- Lithium Arfvedson 1817
- Silicon Berzelius 1823
- Zirconium Berzelius 1824
- Bromine Balard 1826
- Thorium Berzelius 1828
- Yttrium Wohler 1828
- Glucinum Wohler 1828
- Aluminum Wohler 1828
- Magnesium Bussey 1829
- Vanadium Sefstroem 1830
- Lanthanum Mosander 1839
- Didymium Mosander 1839
- Erbium Mosander 1843
- Terbium Mosander 1843
- Ruthenium Claus 1845
- Rubidium Bunsen 1860
- Caesium Bunsen 1860
- Thallium Crookes 1862
- Indium {Reich } 1863
- {Richter}
- Gallium Boisbaudran 1875
- Ytterbium Marignac 1878
- Samarium Boisbaudran 1879
- Scandium Nilson 1879
- Thulium Cleve 1879
- Neodymium Welsbach 1885
- Praseodymium Welsbach 1885
- Gadolinium Marignac 1886
- Germanium Winkler 1886
- Argon {Raleigh} 1894
- {Ramsey }
- Krypton { Ramsey } 1897
- { Travers }
- Neon {Ramsey } 1898
- {Travers}
- Metargon { Ramsey } 1898
- { Travers }
- Coronium Nasini 1898
- Xenon Ramsey 1898
- Monium Crookes 1898
- Etherion (?) Brush 1898
-
-Whether or not these so-called elements are really true elementary forms
-of matter, which are absolutely indivisible, is a problem for the
-chemists of the coming centuries to solve. The classification has the
-approval of the present age. What new elements may be found no one may
-predict. Mendelejeff's _periodic law_, however, suggests great
-possibilities in this field. Allotropism, in which the same element will
-present entirely different physical aspects, is also a significant and
-suggestive phenomenon, for in it we see carbon appearing at one time as
-a crude, black and ungainly mass of coal, and at another it appears as
-the limpid and flashing diamond. In more than one mind there is a
-lurking suspicion that there may, after all, be only one form of
-primordial matter, from which all others are derived by some wondrous
-play of the atoms, and if so the old idea of the alchemist as to the
-transmutation of metals may not be entirely wrong. The Twentieth Century
-may give us more light.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX.
-
-FOOD AND DRINK.
-
- THE NATURE OF FOOD--THE ROLLER MILL--THE MIDDLINGS PURIFIER--
- CULINARY UTENSILS--BREAD MACHINERY--DAIRY APPLIANCES--CENTRIFUGAL
- MILK SKIMMER--THE CANNING INDUSTRY--STERILIZATION--BUTCHERING AND
- DRESSING MEATS--OLEOMARGARINE--MANUFACTURE OF SUGAR--THE VACUUM
- PAN--CENTRIFUGAL FILTER--MODERN DIETETICS AND PATENTED FOODS.
-
-
-If called upon to name the most important of all factors of human
-existence, that which underlies and sustains all others, even to life
-itself, everyone must agree that it is _food_. A remarkable fact in this
-connection is that all animal life lives and thrives by eating some
-other thing that is or has been alive, or is the product of organic
-growth. The vegetarian may pride himself upon his higher ideals of
-living, but after all his fruit, vegetables, and cereals belong to the
-great category of living organisms, and are to a certain extent sentient
-and conscious, for even the plant will turn to the sun. The beasts of
-the field and fowls of the air live by preying upon other weaker animals
-and birds, these upon plants and grasses, and the plants and grasses
-upon the decaying mosses and organic mould of the soil, and the mosses
-upon still lower organisms. The big fish of the sea eat the little fish,
-the little fish the small fry, and these in turn live upon worms and
-animalcula, and so on all the way down to protoplasm. Omniverous man, in
-spite of his boasted civilization and enlightment, not only eats them
-all, flesh, fowl, fish, grain and plants, but lives exclusively upon
-them. But he can _only_ live on that which has been produced by the
-mysterious agency of life, and this furnishes a significant suggestion
-for the philosopher, for it may be that life itself is only an
-accumulated active power or unitary force regenerated in some
-metamorphic way from vital force stored up in the bacteria of organic
-food, and necessarily connected therewith in an endless chain of
-reproductions, and if this be true, the hope of the scientist as to the
-synthesis of food from its elements must ever remain a philosophic
-dream, because the scientist cannot create a bacterium.
-
-It has been said that when a man eats meat he thinks meat, and when he
-eats bread he thinks bread, and when he eats fruit he thinks fruit. It
-is not clear that the quality or character of man's food is so closely
-correlated to his thought, but that it has its influence cannot be
-doubted. It would be safer to say, however, that when a man eats meat he
-acts meat, and when he eats bread he acts bread, for the muscular energy
-and aggressive potentiality appear to be much more closely related to
-the quality of his food than are his thoughts. May it not be that the
-powerful achievement of the British Empire was directly related to its
-roast beef? Is not the listless apathy of the Chinese due to a diet of
-rice? Is not the dominant and masterful power of the lion or the eagle
-related to a carniverous diet, and the mild and placid temper of the ox
-the reflex expression of his vegetable food? It is quite true that our
-potentialities are largely represented by what we eat, and our food
-therefore becomes a most interesting topic, not only by virtue of its
-indispensable quality, but by reason also of the possibilities of
-development in the betterment and elevation of the human race.
-
-From the earliest times even down to the present day man's food has been
-the same--flesh, fish, cereals, fruits and vegetables. The development
-of the present century has not extended this category, but it has been
-directed to an increase in the supply, an improvement in quality, the
-preservation against decay and waste, and its intelligent selection and
-adaptation to the special needs of the body. Progress manifests itself
-in the great field of agriculture, in improved processes and machines
-for milling; in butchering, packing and handling meats; in preserving
-and drying fruits; in the preparation of canned goods, in dairy
-appliances, in cake and cracker machines; in the manufacture of sugar;
-in the great advance in cookery; in the science of dietetics, and in
-thousands of minor industries.
-
-In agriculture the raising of grain has extended in the Nineteenth
-Century to enormous proportions. More than ten thousand patents for
-plows, as many for reapers, and a proportionate number of planters,
-cultivators, threshers, and other implements and tools represent the
-extent to which inventive genius has been directed to the increase of
-the yield in the harvest field.
-
-This yield in the United States for the year 1898 was:
-
- Corn 1,924,184,660 bushels
- Wheat 675,148,705 bushels
- Oats 730,906,643 bushels
- Rye 25,657,522 bushels
- Barley 55,792,257 bushels
- Buckwheat 11,721,927 bushels
- Potatoes 192,306,338 bushels
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 164.--ROLLER PROCESS OF MAKING FLOUR, WEGMANN'S
-PATENT.]
-
-For converting the grain into flour, the inventors of the Nineteenth
-Century have made revolutionary changes. Milling processes within the
-last twenty-five years have been completely transformed by the
-introduction of the roller mill and middlings purifier. Formerly two
-horizontal disk-shaped stones or burrs were employed, the lower one
-stationary and the upper one revolving in a horizontal plane and crudely
-crushing the grain between them. In all modern mills these have been
-entirely displaced by porcelain rolls revolving on horizontal axes and
-crushing the grain between them. The first of these roller mills is
-shown in pat. No. 182,250, to Wegmann, Sept. 12, 1876. (See Fig. 164).
-The outer rolls _d e_ are pressed against the inner ones _a c_ by a
-system of weighted levers, and scrapers below remove the crushed grain
-from the periphery of the rolls. Many subsequent improvements have been
-made, one type of which employs a succession of rolls which act in pairs
-on the grain one after the other and reduce it by successive gradations.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 165.--MIDDLINGS PURIFIER.]
-
-The _middlings purifier_, see Fig. 165, comprehends a flat bolt or
-shaker screen _b_, of bolting cloth, arranged as a horizontal partition
-in an enclosing case through which passes an upward draft of air
-produced by suction fan D at the top. This air passing up through the
-bolting screen lifts the bran specks and fuzz from the shaken material
-as it passes downward through the screen, brushes K being arranged below
-to keep the screen constantly clean. A representative and pioneer type
-of this machine is seen in Pat. No. 164,050 to George T. Smith, June 1,
-1875, from which the view is taken. The useful effect of the roller mill
-and middlings purifier is to save the most nutritious and valuable part
-of the grain, which lies between the outer cuticle and the white starch
-within, and which breaks up in fine grains and is of a golden hue. This
-portion of the grain was formerly unseparated, and was mixed with the
-middlings and bran as an inferior product. Modern analysis has disclosed
-its superior food value, and the roller mill and middlings purifier have
-provided means by which it can be separated from the bran and
-incorporated with the flour, thereby greatly adding to its wholesome
-character and nutritive value, and imparting to the flour the rich
-creamy tint which characterizes all higher grades.
-
-Minneapolis, Minn., is the great center of the milling interests of the
-United States. The Pillsbury Mills are located there, and the "Pillsbury
-A." which is said to be the largest in the world, has a capacity of
-7,000 barrels per day.
-
-In 1877-78 disastrous flour dust explosions at Minneapolis brought
-about the development of the dust collector, for withdrawing from the
-air of the mills the suspended particles of flour dust, which not only
-invited explosion, but rendered the air unfit to breathe. Washburn's
-Pat. No. 213,151, March 11, 1879, is an early example.
-
-The use of crushing rolls has also developed a great variety of new
-foods, such as cracked wheat, oatmeal grits, etc. These crushing rolls
-have sometimes been made hollow, and are steam heated, and as they crush
-the grain they simultaneously effect the cooking or partial conversion
-of the starch, and the product is known as hominy flake, ceraline,
-coralline, etc., which furnish popular breakfast foods when served with
-cream.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 166.--DOUGH MIXER.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 167.--BRAKE, OR KNEADING MACHINE.]
-
-In the field of cookery such activity has been displayed that the
-average kitchen to-day is a veritable museum of modern inventions. Egg
-beaters, waffle irons, toasters, broilers, baking pans, apple parers,
-cherry stoners, cheese cutters, butter workers, coffee mills, corn
-poppers, cream freezers, dish washers, egg boilers, flour sifters, flat
-irons, knife sharpeners, can openers, lemon squeezers, potato mashers,
-meat boilers, nutmeg graters, sausage grinders, and frying pans in
-endless array; all patented and clustered around the modern cooking
-range as a central figure, and all presenting points of excellence in
-the matter of economy and convenience, or the betterment of result. The
-most extensive application of inventive genius is to be found in the
-large manufacturing bakeries, which make and sell the millions of pounds
-of crackers and cakes that fill the bins and shelves of the grocery
-store. In these manufactories the dough is prepared by a mixer, see Fig.
-166, which consists of a spiral working blade revolving in a trough, and
-capable of handling half a dozen barrels of flour at a time. It is then
-put through a kneading machine, called a "brake," shown in Fig. 167, and
-is then ready to be converted into crackers or cakes on a great machine
-25 feet long, which finishes the crackers and puts them in the pan ready
-for the oven. This machine, see Fig. 168, receives the dough at A, where
-it is coated with flour and flattened into a sheet between rolls. It is
-then received on a traveling apron B, has the flour brushed off by a
-rotary brush C, and is then cut into crackers or cakes by vertically
-reciprocating dies D. At E a series of fingers press the cakes down
-through the sheet of dough, while the surrounding scraps are raised on a
-belt F and delivered into a suitable receptacle. The separated cakes at
-B´ are then delivered into pans at G, the pans being fed on the
-subjacent belt at G´. Such machines, costing nearly a thousand dollars,
-produce from forty to sixty barrels of crackers a day, enabling them to
-be sold at about 5 cents a pound at retail.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 168.--CRACKER AND CAKE MACHINE.]
-
-_Dairy Appliances_ have come in for a large share of attention at the
-hands of the Nineteenth Century inventor. There are about sixteen
-million milch cows in the United States, and their contribution to the
-food stuffs of the day in milk, butter, and cheese is no insignificant
-factor. There have been over 2,700 patents granted for churns alone, and
-besides these there are milk coolers, cheese presses, milk skimmers, and
-even cow milkers. The centrifugal milk skimmer is an interesting type of
-this class of machine. In the old way the milk was set for the cream to
-rise, which it did slowly from its lighter specific gravity. In the
-centrifugal skimmer the milk is continuously poured in through a funnel,
-and the cream runs out continuously through one spout, and the skimmed
-milk at the other. An illustrative type of this machine is shown in
-Fig. 169. A steam turbine wheel near the base turns a vertical shaft
-bearing at its upper end a pan which rotates within the outer case. The
-milk enters through the faucet at the top, and as the pan within
-rotates, the heavier milk, by its greater specific gravity, is thrown to
-the outer part of the pan and passes out through the larger of the two
-spouts, while the lighter cream is crowded to the center and passes out
-of the upper spout, which opens into the center of the pan. Patents to
-Lefeldt & Lentsch, No. 195,515, Sept. 25, 1877, and Houston and Thomson,
-No. 239,659, April 5, 1881, represent pioneer milk skimmers of this
-type.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 169.--CENTRIFUGAL MILK SKIMMER.]
-
-Closely allied to the dairy appliances are the incubator and the bee
-hive, both of which have claimed a large share of attention, and for
-which many patents have been granted.
-
-One important and characteristic feature of the present age is the
-conservation of waste in perishable foodstuffs. Fruits, vegetables, fish
-and oysters were suitable food to our forefathers only when freshly
-taken, and any superabundance in supply was either wasted by natural
-processes of decay, or was fed to the hogs. To-day thousands of patented
-fruit dryers, cider mills, and preserving processes save this waste and
-carry over for valuable use through the unproductive winter months these
-wholesome and valuable articles of diet. Even more important is the
-_canning industry_, by which not only fruits are maintained in a
-practically fresh condition for an indefinite time, but oysters, meats,
-fish, soups, and vegetables are also put up in enormous quantities.
-To-day the grocer's shelves present an endless array of canned tomatoes,
-peaches, corn, peas, beans, fish, oysters, condensed milk, and potted
-meats, which constitute probably three-fourths of his staple goods. The
-tin can is in itself a very insignificant thing, not entitled to rank
-with any of the great inventions, but in the every-day campaign of life
-it is playing its part, and working its influence to an extent that is
-little dreamed of by the casual observer. It renders possible our
-military and exploring expeditions; it holds famine and starvation in
-abeyance; it gives wholesome variety to the diet of both rich and poor;
-and it transfers the glut of the full season to the want of future days.
-Perhaps no single factor of modern life has so great an economic value.
-Simple as is the tin can, quite complex machines are required to make
-it. Originally such machines were operated by hand or foot power, but
-within the last 25 years power machines have been devised which
-automatically convert a simple blank or plate of sheet metal into a
-finished can. Of the many patents granted for such machines the most
-representative ones are 243,287, 250,096, 267,014, 384,825, 450,624,
-465,018, 480,256, 495,426, 489,484.
-
-In the process of putting up canned goods the products are filled into
-the cans, and the caps, or heads, are soldered on. These caps have a
-minute hole in the center for the escape of air and steam in the process
-of cooking and sterilizing, which is conducted as follows: A large
-number of cans are placed on a tray swung from a crane and the cans
-lowered into one of a series of great cooking boilers. The cover of the
-boiler is then closed and fastened by lugs, and steam turned on until
-the goods in the can are thoroughly heated through. During this process
-the air and steam escape through the little vent hole from the interior
-of each can. The cans are then removed, the vent hole closed by a drop
-of solder, and the goods thus hermetically sealed in a cooked or
-sterilized condition will keep for a long period of time.
-
-_Sterilizing._--During the last quarter of the century, which has
-witnessed the growth of the wonderful science of bacteriology, a class
-of devices known as sterilizers has come into existence, whose primary
-function is to kill the germs of decay by heat. This has had in the
-canning industry an important commercial application. An example is
-found in the patent to Shriver, No. 149,256, March 31, 1874. In some of
-these devices the receptacles containing the food stuffs are in large
-numbers placed within the heating chamber, and by devices operated from
-the outside the cans or bottles are opened and shut while within the
-steam filled chamber. A late illustration is found in patent to Popp _et
-al._, 524,649, August 14, 1894.
-
-_Butchering and Dressing Meats._--Chicago is the leading city of the
-world in this industry, and Armour & Co. the largest packers. In the
-year ending April 1, 1891, they killed and dressed 1,714,000 hogs,
-712,000 cattle, and 413,000 sheep. They had 7,900 employees, and 2,250
-refrigerating cars were employed for the transportation of their
-products. The ground area covered by their buildings was fifty acres,
-giving a floor area of 140 acres, a chill room and cold storage area of
-forty acres, and a storage capacity of 130,000 tons. In addition to its
-meat packing business the firm has separate glue works, with buildings
-covering fifteen acres, where 600 hands are employed, their production
-in 1890 being 7,000,000 pounds of glue, and 9,500 tons of fertilizer.
-Since 1891 this great business has increased until to-day it is said
-that the army of workmen employed is greater than that of Xenophon, that
-the firm pays out in wages alone, half a million dollars every month,
-that four thousand cars are required to carry the products of their
-factory, and whose business amounts to the enormous sum of one hundred
-million dollars annually.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 170.--KILLING AND DRESSING PORK.]
-
-There are from forty to fifty million cattle raised in the United
-States, and an equal amount of sheep. The number of hogs raised has
-diminished somewhat in the past few years, but from 1889 to 1892 more
-than fifty million were maintained. The process of slaughtering and
-dressing pork, as practiced to-day, is a continuous one, and is well
-illustrated in Fig. 170, in 13 operations. The animals are driven into a
-catching pen at 1, where they are strung up by one leg, and secured to a
-traveling pulley on an overhead rail. At 2 the animal is instantly
-killed by a knife thrust that reaches the heart; at 3 he is dumped into
-a vat of scalding water, kept hot by steam pipes, where the hair is
-loosened (see detail view Fig. 171). A series of oscillating curved
-arms, shaped like a horse hay-rake, dips the carcass out of the scalding
-vat and deposits it upon the table 4 (Fig. 170), where it is attached to
-an endless cable that drags it through a scraping machine at 5. This
-takes off the hair, as shown in detail view Fig. 172. At 6 (Fig. 170)
-the remnants of hair are removed by hand, and at 7 the skin is washed
-clean. At 8 the carcass is inspected, and the throat cut across; at 9
-the entrails are removed; at 10 the leaf lard is taken out; at 11 the
-heads are severed and tongues removed; at 12 the carcass is split into
-halves, and at 13 the sections are ready to be run into the cooling
-room.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 171.--SCALDING TO LOOSEN THE HAIR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 172.--SCRAPING OFF THE HAIR BY MACHINERY.]
-
-From 10 to 15 minutes only are required to convert the living animal
-into dressed pork. Every part of the animal is utilized. The lungs,
-heart, liver and trimmings go to the sausage department. The feet are
-pickled or converted into glue. The intestines are stripped and
-cleaned for sausage casings. The soft parts of the head are made into
-so-called cheese, and the fat is rendered into lard. The finer quality
-of bristles goes to the brushmakers, and the balance is used by
-upholsterers for mixing with horse hair. The blood is largely used for
-making albumen for photographic uses, as well as in sugar refining, for
-meat extracts, and for fertilizers. The bones are ground for fertilizer,
-and even the tank waters are concentrated and used for the same purpose.
-
-_Oleomargarine._--About 1868 M. Mege, a French chemist, commissioned by
-his government to investigate certain questions of domestic economy, was
-led into the study of beef fat, and to make comparisons of the same with
-butter. He found that when cows were deprived of food containing fat
-they still continued to give milk yielding cream or fatty products. He
-therefore concluded that the stored-up fat in the animal was then
-converted into cream, and that it was practicable, therefore, to convert
-beef fat into butter fat. Physiology taught that in the living animal
-the change was wrought through the withdrawal of the larger part of the
-stearine by respiratory combustion, while the oleomargarine was secreted
-by the milk glands, and its conversion into butyric oleomargarine
-effected in the udder under the influence of the mammary pepsin. In the
-process of making butter by the ordinary method of churning the cream,
-the finely divided butter fat globules are united into masses,
-containing by mechanical admixture from 12 to 14 per cent. of water or
-buttermilk carrying a fractional per cent. of cheese. This buttermilk
-contributes somewhat to the flavor, but at the same time furnishes a
-ferment which ultimately spoils the butter by making it rancid. It is a
-purely accidental ingredient, and one not at all desirable. To some
-extent the same may be said of the soluble fats which give to the butter
-its variable though characteristic flavor. They are unstable compounds,
-decomposing readily, and furnish the acrid products which make "strong"
-butter. M. Mege sought to imitate the natural process of butter-making,
-which was first to separate from the oily fat of suet the cellular
-tissue and excess of stearine or hard fat; second, to add to the oil a
-sufficient proportion of butyric compounds to give the necessary flavor,
-and third, to consolidate the butter fat without grain, and to add at
-the same time the requisite proportion of water, salt, and coloring
-matter, to make a compound substantially the same in composition,
-flavor, and appearance, as butter churned from the cream, and all this
-without adding to the original fat anything dietetically objectionable,
-and without submitting it to any process capable of impairing its
-wholesome quality. These objects were fairly obtained in the product
-known as oleomargarine, the United States patent for which was granted
-to Mege Dec. 30, 1873, No. 146,012.
-
-The process in brief is to take fresh beef fat, which is first chopped
-up and thoroughly washed. It is then placed in melting tanks at a
-temperature of 122° to 124° F, and the clear yellow oil is drawn off and
-allowed to stand until it granulates. The fat is then packed in cloths
-set in moulds and a slowly increasing pressure squeezes out the pure
-amber colored oil, leaving the stearine behind. This sweet and pure
-yellow oil is then churned with milk for 20 minutes until the oil is
-completely broken up, and a small quantity of annato, a vegetable
-coloring matter, is added to give a yellow color. The product is then
-cooled in ice, and after a second churning with milk it is salted and
-finished like butter. Chemical analysis shows oleomargarine to have
-substantially the same constituents and in almost the identical
-proportions of pure butter. It is equally wholesome, and while it does
-not have the same rich flavor, it has the advantage that it keeps
-better, and is not so liable to become rancid or strong. The
-oleomargarine industry is closely related to the beef packing industries
-of the United States, and its growth has been enormous. Notwithstanding
-the stringent laws on the subject, much of the oleomargarine made is
-sold for, and by the average purchaser is not distinguishable from, pure
-butter. In 1899 there were 80,495,628 pounds of oleomargarine made in
-the United States, or more than a pound for every man, woman, and child
-in the country. The internal revenue tax paid on it was $1,609,912.56.
-The exports for the year 1899 were 5,549,322 pounds of the artificial
-butter, and 142,390,492 pounds of the oleo oil prepared for conversion
-into the complete product by simply churning with milk.
-
-_Sugar._--Sugar-cane, beets, and the sap of the maple constitute the
-sources from which sugar is extracted, but the cane furnishes by far the
-largest supply. When crushed between rolls it yields 65 per cent. of its
-weight as juice, and 18 per cent. of this juice is sugar. It is
-concentrated by evaporation at a low temperature, the crystallized
-portion being known as "raw" or brown sugar, which is subsequently
-refined, while the uncrystallized portion forms molasses.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 173.--VACUUM PAN FOR EVAPORATING THE SYRUP TO
-PRODUCE SUGAR.]
-
-In the process of refining, 2 or 3 parts of raw sugar, with one of water
-containing a little lime, ground bone black, and the serum of bullocks'
-blood, is heated by the passage of steam through it. The albumen of the
-serum coagulates and rises to the surface in a scum which entangles the
-impurities and bone black, leaving the syrup light in color. The latter
-is then filtered through bone black until it is colorless and is then
-evaporated in the vacuum pan, which is the important invention of the
-century in sugar making. Heat has the effect of converting the
-crystallized sugar into the uncrystallized variety, and hence the
-evaporation must, to prevent this, be conducted at a low temperature.
-Contact with the air is also objectionable. These conditions are
-provided for by conducting the evaporation in a vacuum, which lowers the
-evaporating temperature and avoids contact with the air. The vacuum pan
-was the invention of Howard, an Englishman. (British Pat. No. 3,754, of
-1813). As constructed to-day it is an enormous vessel (see Fig. 173),
-capable of holding 7,000 or more gallons, and yielding 250 barrels of
-sugar at a strike. In this a vacuum is maintained by a condenser, the
-vapors passing from the pan to the condenser through the great curved
-pipe rising from the top, which pipe is five feet in diameter. A gentle
-heat is applied through internal steam-heated coils which connect with
-an external series of steam inlet pipes on one side, and a corresponding
-series of steam outlet pipes on the other. A large discharge valve for
-the concentrated syrup closes the bottom of the pan. After concentration
-the crystallized sugar is separated from the syrup by a centrifugal
-filter, in which the liquid is thrown from the crystallized sugar by
-centrifugal action. The first centrifugal filter is shown in British
-patent to Joshua Bates, No. 6,068, of 1831. This, however, revolved
-about a horizontal axis. The present form of centrifugal filter is a
-cylinder revolving about a vertical axis, the sides of the cylinder
-being formed of filtering medium, through which the liquid is thrown by
-centrifugal action, while the sugar is retained within. This was the
-invention of Joseph Hurd, of Mass., U. S. Pat. No. 3,772, Oct. 3, 1844;
-re-issue No. 607, Sept. 29, 1858, which patent was extended for seven
-years, from Oct. 3, 1858. The diffusion process, which extracts the
-juice by cutting the cane in slices and soaking in water; the bagasse
-furnace, which dries and burns the expressed cane stalks as fuel, and
-the manufacture of glucose and grape sugar by the reaction of sulphuric
-acid on starch, are interesting allied features of this industry which
-can only be briefly mentioned. Most of the sugar consumed in the United
-States is imported, much raw sugar being imported and refined here. The
-imports for the year 1899 were 3,980,250,569 pounds, and the per capita
-consumption in 1898 was 61.1 pounds a year.
-
-_Aids to Digestion._--It is only during the last part of the Nineteenth
-Century that the world has learned how to live. "What is one man's food
-is another man's poison" has been a trite old saying for many years, but
-the reason why has only in late years been fully understood. The
-physiology of digestion, the relative digestibility of different
-articles of food, and their nutritive values, have received of late
-years the earnest attention of physicians and students of dietetics and
-have contributed much to the quality and kind of food, and a knowledge
-of when and how to eat it. We know that the starchy foods are digested
-by the saliva, which is an alkaline digestion; that meat, fish, eggs,
-cheese and the albumenoids are digested in the stomach by the gastric
-juices (pepsin and hydrochloric acid) which is an acid digestion, and
-that the remaining portions of starch, the sugars, and fats are digested
-in the intestines, and that this is also an alkaline digestion, and this
-has helped to solve the problem for us. We also know that starch is an
-excellent food, provided the vital powers are sufficiently stimulated by
-fresh air, sunlight, and exercise to digest it, as do the horse and the
-ox when they eat corn, but we know furthermore that the sedentary
-occupations of modern life leave many stomachs in a condition unable to
-assimilate starch, and so bread, oatmeal, potatoes and such simple
-staples, instead of nourishing the body, ferment in the enfeebled
-stomach, produce acids and gas, and lay the foundation for serious
-chronic diseases. The student of chemistry and dietetics knows to-day
-that one part of diastase will effect the conversion of 2,000 parts of
-starch into grape sugar, as a preliminary step to its digestion, and so
-by treating starchy matter with substances containing diastase (derived
-from malt) a partial transformation is effected which will materially
-shorten and assist its digestion. This fact has been largely made use of
-in the preparation of easily soluble or pre-digested foods, examples of
-which are found in patent to Horlick (malted milk), No. 278,967, June 5,
-1883; to Carnrick (milk-wheat food), Dec. 27, 1887, No. 375,601; and
-Boynton and Van Patten (cereals and diastase), 344,717, June 29, 1886.
-
-_Beverages._--Pure water, nature's own gift, has ever supplied every
-legitimate need of the human race, but civilized life has greatly
-extended its list of drinks, much to its own detriment. Soda water,
-whiskey, beer, ginger ale, tea, coffee, and chocolate represent enormous
-industries, and probably all do more harm than they do good. Much
-inventive genius in the Nineteenth Century has been bestowed upon the
-soda water fountain, on stills, and processes for aging liquors and
-processes for brewing beer, on cider and wine presses, on bottling
-machines and bottle stoppers, on devices for carbonating waters, and in
-coffee and teapots. The trend of the times is shown in the following
-figures, which represent the per capita consumption of beverages in the
-United States for 1898: tea, .91 of a pound; coffee, 11.45 pounds;
-wines, .28 of a gallon; distilled spirits, 1.10 gallons; and malt
-liquors 15.64 gallons. The largest per capita increase since 1870 has
-been in malt liquors, and the next in coffee. In tea and distilled
-spirits there has been a decrease, while the consumption of wines is the
-smallest of all and has varied but little.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX.
-
-MEDICINE, SURGERY, SANITATION.
-
- DISCOVERY OF CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD BY HARVEY--VACCINATION BY
- JENNER--USE OF ANÆSTHETICS THE GREAT STEP OF MEDICAL PROGRESS OF THE
- CENTURY--MATERIA MEDICA--INSTRUMENTS--SCHOOLS OF MEDICINE--DENTISTRY
- --ARTIFICIAL LIMBS--DIGESTION--BACTERIOLOGY, AND DISEASE GERMS--
- ANTISEPTIC SURGERY--HOUSE SANITATION.
-
-
-In the early gropings through the uncertain light of first progress, man
-was accustomed to ascribe the ills of his flesh to the anger of the
-gods, and in his craven and abject superstition made peace offerings.
-Later he learned to locate the cause within himself, and constructed the
-theory that the fluids of the body had become disordered. The
-characteristic feature of progress in the Nineteenth Century, in this
-field, has been in the accurate tracing of the relation of cause and
-effect, and with the discovery of true causes has grown efficient means
-of treatment. The old expedients of charms, incantations, conjuration
-and exorcism gave place first to intelligent medication, and this in
-turn is rapidly giving way to the prevention of disease by improved
-conditions of sanitation and right living. The ounce of prevention has
-been found to be worth more than the pound of cure. With the improved
-knowledge of physiology, anatomy, chemistry and biology, which the
-century has brought, the intelligent physician was able to make a
-logical and for the most part a correct diagnosis, but supplemented with
-the microscope, that great revealer of the unseen world of small things,
-corporeal existence itself becomes an open book, and from the principles
-of organic evolution to the germ theory of disease the mystery of life
-and death is being slowly revealed.
-
-When the Eighteenth Century gave birth to the Nineteenth, its great
-natal gift in medicine was vaccination. Jenner in 1798 for the first
-time announced his discovery of this great boon to the human race. In
-1799 Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, in Boston, obtained virus from Jenner and
-vaccinated four of his children, and in 1801 Dr. Valentine Seaman
-obtained virus from Dr. Waterhouse and performed the first vaccination
-in New York. During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries the annual
-death rate from smallpox in London ranged from 2 to 4 per 1,000 of
-population. In 1892 it was only 0.073 per 1,000.
-
-It is also stated on good authority that the mortality from smallpox in
-England alone, was 20,000 a year less after the introduction of
-vaccination than it was in the preceding century, and that its benefits
-to the world at large have been so great that the lancet of Jenner has
-saved more lives than were sacrificed by the sword of Napoleon.
-
-Each century in modern history has been marked by some important
-discovery in the field of medicine. The Seventeenth Century was notable
-for the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey; the
-Eighteenth Century brought with it vaccination by Jenner. The Nineteenth
-Century's greatest gift in this field has been anæsthesia, or
-insensibility to pain. Nature has wisely endowed man with nerves of
-sensation as danger signals for the conservation of life. Accident and
-disease, however, are the inseparable concomitants of human existence,
-and suffering and pain the ineffaceable legacies of mortality. Sometimes
-these nerves of sensation are no longer useful as monitors, and in the
-unavoidable emergency of accident, surgical operations, child birth, and
-certain diseases, suffering can do no good, and then pain--that Prince
-of Terrors--thrusting his presence upon the hapless victim, racks body
-and limb, calling forth groans, and shrieks and writhings, till the poor
-sufferer, possessed with a dominating agony which displaces all thought
-of life, memory of friends, and love of God, breaks down in unutterable
-distress, and prays for death and oblivion. To this poor sufferer
-insensibility is next to heaven. For the past half century all the
-formidable operations of the surgeon have been performed with the aid of
-anæsthetics and without suffering to the patient, producing happy
-recoveries, and greatly contributing to the success of the result by
-relieving the surgeon of the distraction of the patient's pain, and the
-interference of his involuntary movements. Quite a number of anæsthetics
-are known and used to-day. Those more generally employed are--naming
-them in the order of their first application--nitrous oxide gas, ether,
-and chloroform. Nitrous oxide gas is chiefly used for the extraction of
-teeth. Sir Humphrey Davy, in 1800, was the first to observe the peculiar
-quality of nitrous oxide gas, which gave it the name of "laughing gas,"
-from the fact that it caused those inhaling it to act in a manner
-exhibiting an abnormal exhilaration. Dr. Horace Wells, a dentist of
-Hartford, Conn., in 1844, had the gas administered, experimentally, to
-himself during the operation of extracting a tooth, and was the
-discoverer of its useful application as an anæsthetic.
-
-The greatest discovery, however, in anæsthetics is the application of
-ether for this purpose. Ether as a chemical product has been known for
-several centuries, and as early as 1818 Faraday pointed out the
-similarity between the effects of ether and nitrous oxide gas. Dr.
-Morton, a dentist, of Boston, first applied it as an anæsthetic Oct. 16,
-1846, being guided largely in its selection and use by Dr. Jackson, an
-eminent chemist of the same city. On Nov. 12, 1846, U. S. Pat. No. 4,848
-was issued to them for this invention. In the latter part of December of
-the same year Dr. Liston, an eminent English surgeon, performed the
-operation of amputating the thigh while the patient was under the
-influence of ether.
-
-Chloroform, discovered by Guthrie in 1831, was first applied as an
-anæsthetic by Sir James Y. Simpson, of Edinburgh, in 1847. Of the two
-leading anæsthetics, ether is more generally used in the United Sates
-and chloroform in Europe. Ether is less dangerous, but its
-administration is more difficult and disagreeable. It is said on the
-highest authority that in the Crimean War chloroform was administered
-25,000 times without a single death, and ether is even safer than
-chloroform. In the hands of a skillful physician practically no danger
-is to be apprehended from the use of either of the two agents. A little
-over fifty years ago any severe or prolonged surgical operation involved
-such irresistible pain that the patient's writhings were required to be
-restrained by powerful muscular assistants, and by straps which bound
-the patient to the table, and when it is remembered that a false cut of
-a hundredth part of an inch might be fatal, the haste, the disquieting
-influence upon the surgeon, and the interference with the accuracy of
-his hand, added greatly to the percentage of unsuccessful operations, as
-well as to the prolonged agony of the patient. Contrast this with the
-present methods of using anæsthetics, and we find the patient dropping
-into a quiet and peaceful sleep before the operation, and awakening
-thereafter to find, to his astonishment, that it is all over, and that
-recovery is only a question of careful nursing.
-
-_Materia Medica._--Many important contributions have been made to the
-pharmacopoeia in the century. In 1807 the remedy known as ergot was
-brought to the notice of the profession by Dr. Stearns, and named by him
-pulvis parturiens. Iodine was first used as a medicine in 1819 by Dr.
-Coindet, Sr., of Geneva. Quinine was discovered by Pelletier and
-Caventou in 1820, although Peruvian bark had long been used for the same
-purpose. Chloral hydrate, discovered by Liebig in 1832, was applied in
-medicine in 1869 by Dr. Liebreich, of Berlin. Carbolic acid was
-discovered in 1834 by Runge. Artificial seidlitz powders were first put
-up under Savory's British Pat. No. 3,954, of 1815. Veratrum viride,
-lobelia, worm seed, and chloroform were all introduced in the first part
-of the century. The sulphates of morphia, strychnia, atropia and other
-alkaloids are of comparatively recent addition to the pharmacopoeia, and
-the iodide of potash, tincture of iron, digitalis, bichloride of
-mercury, sub-nitrate of bismuth, boracic acid and gallic acid, chlorate
-of potash and Dover's powders have become standard remedies within a
-hundred years. In the latter part of the century the new remedies
-derived from coal tar have occupied an important place. Of these may be
-mentioned antipyrine, by Knorr (pat. Oct. 28, 1884), phenacetin, by
-Hinsberg (pat. March 26, 1889), salol, by Von Nencki (pat. Sept. 28,
-1886), sulfonal, by Bauman (patented Jan. 22, 1889), antikamnia
-(acetanilide), and many others, besides new and valuable antiseptic
-compounds, such as salicylic acid and formalin. A characteristic feature
-of the modern practice of medicine is in improved forms of its
-administration. Sugar-coated pills, gelatine capsules and cod liver oil
-emulsions make the remedy much less disagreeable to take, and very
-ingenious and effective machines have been devised for putting up
-remedies in such forms.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 174.--THE OPHTHALMOMETER.]
-
-_Instruments._--Laennec's discovery in 1819 of auscultation, and the
-stethoscope, for determining internal conditions by sound, was a great
-step in diagnosing diseases. The binaural stethoscope was invented by
-Cammann in 1854, and a later improvement is the phonendoscope, by
-Bianchi. The opthalmoscope is an instrument for inspecting the interior
-of the eye, which was invented by Prof. Helmholtz, and described by him
-in 1851. The laryngoscope, for obtaining a view of the larynx, was said
-to have been constructed by Mr. John Avery, of London, as early as 1846.
-The opthalmometer, Fig. 174, is a comparatively recent invention. It is
-designed to ascertain variations in corneal curvature for the correction
-of corneal astigmatism. Electric lights with reflectors are arranged on
-each side of the patient's head, while the operator looks into the eye
-with a telescope. The sphygmograph, a little instrument to be strapped
-on to the wrist to record the action of the pulse, was first reduced to
-a practically useful form by Marey in 1860. A later development of these
-devices, by Verdin, known as the sphygmometrograph, is shown in Fig.
-175. The endoscope, for looking into the urethra, and the cystoscope,
-for looking into the bladder, are other useful instruments of the modern
-practitioner. Greater than them all, however, is the modern X-ray
-apparatus, for locating foreign substances in the body and making
-visible the bones through the flesh, for which see special chapter. The
-use of the thermometer in recording the progress of fevers is also a
-valuable modern application, and the list of instruments and small tools
-is beyond enumeration. There are series of obstetrical appliances,
-instruments relating to bone surgery, to the taking up of arteries,
-cupping instruments, trepanning instruments, speculums, hypodermic
-syringes, electric cauteries, fracture appliances, instruments for
-lithotrity, bandages for varicose veins, atomizers, breast pumps,
-inhalers, nasal douches, trusses, pessaries, catheters, abdominal
-supporters, and an endless variety of proprietary articles, such as
-electric baths and belts, plasters, chest protectors, liver pads, and so
-forth, all of which are practically the products of the Nineteenth
-Century. The surgeon of to-day can straighten the eyes of a cross-eyed
-man, or take the bow out of his bandy legs, can make him a new nose of
-his own flesh, patch his skull with a silver plate, remove the stone
-from his bladder, supply him with a wind-pipe, wash out his stomach, and
-perform many other operations even more difficult. Among such more
-important operations may be mentioned ovariotomy, which was first
-performed by Dr. Ephraim McDowell, of Danville, Kentucky, in 1809, and
-the tying of the great arteries. The operation of lithotrity, for
-removing stone from the bladder by crushing the stone, was introduced by
-Civiale, 1817-1824, who devised successful instruments and modes of
-using them. In 1836 to 1840 Richard Bright, an English physician, made
-important researches and discoveries in relation to the functions and
-diseases of the kidneys, and established the nature of the so-called
-"Bright's disease."
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 175.--VERDIN'S SPHYGMOMETROGRAPH, FOR RECORDING THE
-ACTION OF THE PULSE.]
-
-_Schools of Medicine._--While the regular school of medicine (called by
-some "Allopathy") has held the leading place in medicine, various other
-schools have sprung up in the Nineteenth Century, all of which represent
-advances in a knowledge of the laws of health, and the modes of
-preventing and curing diseases. Hahnemann, in his "_Organon der
-Rationellen Heilkunde_," in 1810, gave homoeopathy its name, and reduced
-it to a system. The doctrine of _similia similibus curantur_ (like cures
-like), has gained great popularity in the latter part of the century.
-Hydropathy, as a school, also made its appearance in the early part of
-the Nineteenth Century. Priessnitz was its first disciple, and the
-_Grafenberg cure_, established in 1826, was a noted institution for many
-years. The useful application of water in the form of baths and cold
-packs, has been known for centuries, and will always be used as a
-valuable agency in sickness and in health. The "Thompsonian" system of
-treating diseases was covered by patents in 1813, 1823 and 1836, and
-attained considerable notoriety in the early half of the century.
-Sweating by hot bricks and hot tea made of "Composition Powders,"
-vomiting with lobelia to produce relaxation, and a fiery liquid for
-cramps, called "No. 6," were the chief remedies, and very few boys who
-had once taken the treatment were ever willing afterwards to admit that
-they were sick. In the latter part of the Nineteenth Century
-_electro-therapeutics_ has received a large share of attention, many
-forms of medical batteries have been devised, and probably no more
-promising field of study and research exists in the whole domain of
-medicine.
-
-_Dentistry._--George Washington had false teeth, and it is said that the
-teeth of some of the mummies of Egypt had gold fillings, but it
-remained for the Nineteenth Century to establish dentistry as an art,
-and its influence in securing better mastication and digestion of food,
-more sanitary mouths and shapely faces, cannot be estimated. Few people
-can be found to-day who have not either filled teeth, bridge work, gold
-caps, or artificial sets of teeth. The most important advance in the art
-was in the invention of the rubber plate for holding the porcelain
-teeth. This was the invention of J. A. Cummings, and was covered by him
-in his patent No. 43,009, June 7, 1864. In more recent years
-"bridge-work" represents the most important advance. In this practice
-one or more artificial teeth are firmly held in the place of missing
-teeth by a strong bridge-piece of metal, which at its ends is anchored
-to the adjacent natural teeth. This was first done by Bing (British Pat.
-No. 167, of 1871), and was afterwards patented in somewhat different
-form in the United States by J. E. Lowe, No. 238,940, March 15, 1881,
-No. 313,434, March 3, 1885, and Richmond, May 22, 1883, No. 277,933.
-Porcelain and gold crowns and dental pluggers run by electricity
-represent other important advances in this art. It is said that there
-are 20,425 dentists in the United States, and that in 1899 they employed
-in their practice 20,499,000 false teeth.
-
-_Artificial Limbs._--With the successful work of the surgeon came the
-effort to repair, as far as possible, the loss of the limb. Until about
-the middle of the Nineteenth Century the survivor of an operation was an
-unsymmetrical, unique, and pitiful object. The peg-leg of Peter
-Stuyvesant lives in history, and the arm-hook of Capt. Cuttle is
-familiar to every reader. The first United States patent for an
-artificial leg was granted to B. F. Palmer, Nov. 4, 1846, No. 4,834.
-Wooden legs with a restricted back and forward ankle motion and a
-spring, were constructed by A. A. Marks from 1853 to 1863. On Dec. 1,
-1863, a patent, No. 40,763, was granted to Mr. Marks for the use of
-sponge rubber for constructing artificial feet and hands that dispensed
-with the articulated joints, and made a great improvement. In patent No.
-366,494, July 12, 1887, to G. E. Marks, the foot and leg portion of a
-wooden leg are made from wood which grows with a crook, as at the root
-of a tree, where the strength and lightness of a continuous natural
-grain is obtained at the instep. About 300 patents have been granted for
-artificial legs and arms. Modern improvements have extended to every
-detail of construction, and so perfect to-day is the average wooden leg
-that it is hardly to be detected. Men with wooden legs ride horseback,
-are expert users of the bicycle, and have even performed feats on the
-tight rope. The inventor's genius has not stopped at repairing limbs,
-however, for artificial eyes, artificial ear drums, the audiphone, foot
-extensions for short legs, crutches, braces, abdominal supporters, and
-various other applications to supplement the defects of the body have
-been devised.
-
-_Digestion._--The physiology of digestion had, perhaps, the first real
-light shed upon it by Beaumont's observations from 1825 to 1832. A
-Canadian boatman, Alexis San Martin, was wounded in the abdomen from a
-charge of buckshot, and the wound healed, leaving a permanent opening in
-the stomach, through which the operation of digestion could be observed.
-This furnished visible evidence of the relative digestibility of
-different kinds of foods, and the general functions of the stomach. The
-peculiar and different conditions governing the digestion of the starch
-foods, the albumenoids (such as meat and fish), and the sugars and fats,
-have been clearly ascertained, and "what is one man's food is another
-man's poison" is now susceptible of intelligent diagnosis and effective
-adjustment. Of late years the stomach has been greatly aided in its
-functions by prepared or predigested foods. The action of diastase, in
-converting starch into grape sugar, has been taken advantage of, and
-cereals treated with diatase, malted milk, lactated and peptonized
-foods, have proven a boon to the enfeebled digestion, while the
-intelligent study of dietetics has done much to relieve the physician
-and promote the health of the individual by right living.
-
-_Bacteriology._--Although Leeuwenhoeck discovered the bacterium in
-1668-1675, up to 100 years ago disease and death were largely regarded
-as dispensations of Providence, and with fatuous resignation were
-accepted as inevitable. The microscope and the study of bacteriology,
-however, have revealed to us the presence of minute living organisms or
-germs, which are everywhere around us, infesting the air, the earth, the
-water, our food, our bodies, and all organic matter in countless
-millions. These infinitely small beings multiply with a rapidity and
-fecundity that bewilders the imagination. Their method of multiplication
-is by fissiparism--that is to say, each splits into two independent
-beings that separate and afterwards lead independent lives. It is said
-that there is one species in which not more than six or seven minutes
-are required for the division to take place. A single individual might
-consequently produce more than a thousand offspring in an hour, more
-than a million in two hours, and in three hours more than the number of
-inhabitants on the globe. They are known as micro-organisms, of which
-the bacteria are the most important. The bacteria are further divided
-into species, and names are given them to distinguish the different
-forms. The little rod-shaped ones are called _bacilli_: the spheroidal
-ones _micrococci_ or _cocci_. If they cling together in chains they are
-called _streptococci_; if of a spiral or corkscrew form they are called
-_spirallae_. The curved bacilli are called "_comma_" _bacilli_, from
-their resemblance to the punctuation mark of that name. The presence of
-peculiar forms of these bacteria in diseases has so suggested the
-relation of cause and effect as to have given rise to the so-called
-"germ theory" of disease. Now we know with reasonable certainty that
-cholera, diphtheria, typhoid fever, whooping cough, mumps,
-cerebro-spinal meningitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis, hydrophobia, and
-many other diseases have each its specific cause in the form of a
-microbe.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 176.
-
-BACILLUS OF TUBERCULOSIS IN SPUTUM. BACILLUS OF DIPHTHERIA
-(KLEBS-LOEFFLER).
-
-BACILLUS OF TYPHOID FEVER.
-
-(Photo-Micrographs, 1,000 diam., by William M. Gray, M. D.)]
-
-[Illustration: TERTIAN FORM. AESTIVO-AUTUMNAL FORM.
-
-FIG. 177.--BLOOD OF MAN. SHOWING PARASITE OF MALARIA (LAVERAN).
-
-(Photo-Micrographs, 1,000 diam., by William M. Gray, M. D.)]
-
-Henle, a German physiologist, as early as 1840, maintained the doctrine
-of _contagium vivum_, or contagion by the transmission of living germs.
-Certain classes of diseases have also long been known as zymotic, or
-ferment diseases. Louis Pasteur's work, however, marks the first
-definite and important results in the study of bacteriology, and he is
-the father of the "germ theory" of disease. He exploded the previously
-held theories of scientists concerning the spontaneous generation of
-living things, and clearly established and promulgated the knowledge of
-disease germs. Commencing his great work about 1865 with the
-investigation of the silk worm plague in France, he discovered it to be
-due to parasites, and checked it. He also gave great attention to the
-subject of fermentation, proving it to be caused by micro-organisms.
-Taking up the diseases of men and animals, he gave practical value to
-the truths of his theory in the treatment of hydrophobia, diphtheria,
-and other diseases, using the principle of vaccination to destroy or
-render innocuous the toxins or disease-producing poisons derived from
-living germs. Working along the same lines must be mentioned Dr. Koch,
-whose success in detecting the microbes which cause consumption and
-cholera has made him famous the world over. Of the great variety of
-these little microbes which have been separately identified, many are
-innocuous, and, in fact, subserve many important and useful purposes in
-nature, while others are to be as much dreaded as the deadly cobra or
-the rattlesnake. A few typical examples of the latter are given in Figs.
-176 and 177, multiplied 1,000 diameters. The illustrations represented
-in Fig. 177 show the parasites that cause malaria, or fever and ague.
-The dark bean-shaped cells are the normal blood corpuscles, and the few
-speckled cells are those infested with the malarial parasites. It is now
-believed that the mosquito is the active factor in the dissemination of
-malaria, and it is, therefore, to be remembered that this pestiferous
-little insect not only inflicts a painful and disagreeable sensation
-with his puncture, but innoculates the system with poisonous malarial
-germs at the same time.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 178.
-
-TUBE CONTAINING CULTURE OF BACILLI OF TUBERCULOSIS.
-
-TUBE CONTAINING CULTURE OF COMMA BACILLI OF CHOLERA.]
-
-For the study of bacteria they are propagated artificially in a test
-tube--_i. e._, a substance called a "culture" is prepared from some
-organic material which, like the substances of the human body, is
-favorable to their propagation. Such culture media are found in beef
-blood, gelatine, beef extracts, meat broth, milk, etc. An ordinary
-test-tube is supplied with some of the culture medium, and is then
-sterilized over the fire to destroy all interfering germs. Material
-infected with the microbe is then placed in the test-tube by a
-sterilized platinum wire and the tube closed by raw cotton. It is then
-placed in an incubator oven and is subjected to a gentle heat. In a
-little while the microbes begin to develop and increase, forming
-colonies, in which they swarm by the million, and present the clotted
-appearance seen in Fig. 178. The separation of different bacteria
-existing in the same material, so as to isolate each species and get
-what is called a "pure culture," has been greatly promoted by Prof.
-Koch's method of _plate culture_. In this the propagation of bacteria is
-effected upon a sterilized glass plate under a bell jar in such a thin
-layer as to facilitate the segregation of species, enabling them to be
-counted under the microscope and picked out and sown in another culture
-to get an unmixed crop of a definite species. Such a culture so
-multiplies the same microbe, to the exclusion of others, as to permit it
-to be easily identified and studied.
-
-According to the practice in modern municipal health regulations, the
-test as to when a child recovering from diphtheria is incapable of
-disseminating the disease is by test culture. A swab of cotton is rubbed
-against the interior walls of the child's throat to secure the germs (if
-present), and the swab is then placed in a "culture" in a test-tube and
-the tube put in an incubator. If, after the period of incubation, no
-colonies of the germs develop, it is accepted as evidence that the
-diphtheria germs are no longer present in the throat, and the child is
-released from quarantine.
-
-It is the presence of these specific microbes in the fluids or solids of
-the system which constitutes the disease, and for the cure of the same
-the intelligent physician of to-day looks less to medication, and more
-for some agent that will destroy the germ, neutralize its effect, or
-render the body tolerant thereto. Out of the knowledge of disease germs
-has grown the great era of antiseptic surgery, inaugurated by Sir Joseph
-Lister, about 1865. Carbolic acid, the bichloride of mercury, and
-formalin are the most efficient weapons against the dreaded microbe.
-To-day every surgeon in the civilized world sterilizes his knife, and
-conducts the treatment of wounds and all operations by antiseptic
-methods, in accordance with a knowledge of the deadly influence of the
-ubiquitous microbe, and the result has been to so reduce the risk to
-life that even capital operations are no longer coupled with the
-apprehensions of death. Every hospital, board of health, and organized
-medical and sanitary body predicates its laws and modes of treatment
-upon the principles of bacteriology.
-
-_House Sanitation._--The permanent home of the microbe is the sewer, and
-sanitary plumbing, designed to exclude from the house the germ-laden and
-disease-breeding gases from the sewer, constitutes one of the great
-advances of the century. About 3,500 patents have been granted for water
-closets and bath appliances, and about 900 patents on sewerage alone,
-the most of which are directed to improved conditions of sanitation.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 179A.--STREET CONNECTIONS, MODERN SANITARY HOUSE
-PLUMBING.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 179.--MODERN SANITARY HOUSE PLUMBING.]
-
-An illustration of the plumbing and sewer connections of a modern house
-is given in Figs. 179 and 179A. The sewer pipes are shown in solid
-black, the unshaded pipes (in outline only) are air ventilation pipes,
-the single black lines are cold water pipes, and the dotted lines hot
-water pipes. The important sanitary feature in modern plumbing is to
-keep all sewer gas and disease germs out of the house. For this purpose
-traps have long been used under the wash basins, closet hoppers, and
-sinks; but the back pressure of sewer gas would sometimes bubble through
-the trap into the house, and besides the water in passing out from a
-basin would sometimes, by a siphon effect, pass entirely out of the
-trap, leaving it unsealed. Both these results are prevented by the air
-ventilation pipes which connect with the discharge side of every trap in
-the house and lead to a stack extending out through the roof. This
-prevents pressure of sewer gas on the water seal of the trap, destroys
-the siphon action of the trap and allows a circulation of air to be
-taken in from the sidewalk on the house side of the running trap and
-through the sewer pipe of the house, and thence through the air vent
-pipes to the roof.
-
-The great science of bacteriology, dealing with these smallest of living
-things, only came into existence with the microscope, and it was a field
-which was not only wholly unknown and unexplored a few years ago, but
-there was no suggestion visible to the eye to direct attention to it,
-until the lens began to reveal the secrets of microcosm. What
-development the future may bring no one can predict, but to the
-biologist and the physician no more promising field exists. Certain it
-is that the knowledge already gained is of incalculable benefit, and
-constitutes one of the greatest eras of progress the world has known,
-for with the noble army of patient, devoted, and self-sacrificing
-physicians, the discoveries of the scientist, our boards of health, our
-hospitals and asylums for the insane, our quarantine laws, our modern
-plumbing and improved sanitation in the home and public departments,
-there is no reason why the life of man should not be extended far beyond
-the three-score and ten years, and the 50 per cent. of population dying
-in childhood saved for useful lives and citizenship.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI.
-
-THE BICYCLE AND AUTOMOBILE.
-
- THE DRAISINE, 1816--MICHAUX'S BICYCLE, 1855--UNITED STATES PATENT TO
- LALLEMENT AND CARROL, 1866--TRANSITION FROM "VERTICAL FORK" AND
- "STAR" TO MODERN "SAFETY"--PNEUMATIC TIRE--AUTOMOBILE, THE PROTOTYPE
- OF THE LOCOMOTIVE--TREVITHICK'S STEAM ROAD CARRIAGE, 1801--THE
- LOCOMOBILE OF TO-DAY--GAS ENGINE AUTOMOBILES OF PINKUS, 1839;
- SELDEN, 1879; DURYEA, WINTON AND OTHERS--ELECTRIC AUTOMOBILES A
- DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVES AS EARLY AS 1836--GROUNELLE'S
- ELECTRIC AUTOMOBILE OF 1852--THE COLUMBIA, AND OTHER ELECTRIC
- CARRIAGES--STATISTICS.
-
-
-However superior to other animals man may be in point of intellect, it
-must be admitted that he is vastly inferior in his natural equipment for
-locomotion. Quadrupeds have twice as many legs, run faster, and stand
-more firmly. Birds have their two legs supplemented with wings that give
-a wonderfully increased speed in flight, and fish, with no legs at all,
-run races with the fastest steamers; but man has awkwardly toddled on
-two stilted supports since prehistoric time, and for the first year of
-his life is unable to walk at all. That he has felt his inferiority is
-clear, for his imagination has given wings to the angels, and has
-depicted Mercury, the messenger of the gods, with a similar equipment on
-his heels. We see the ambition for speed exemplified even in the baby,
-who crows in exhilaration at rapid movement, and in the boy when the
-ride on the flying horses, the glide on the ice, or the swift descent on
-the toboggan slide, brings a flash to his eye and a glow to his cheeks.
-
-A characteristic trend of the present age is toward increased speed in
-everything, and the most conspicuous example of accelerated speed in
-late years is the bicycle. It has, with its fascination of silent motion
-and the exhilaration of flight, driven the younger generation wild with
-enthusiasm, has limbered up the muscles of old age, has revolutionized
-the attire of men and women, and well-nigh supplanted the old-fashioned
-use of legs. It is the most unique and ubiquitous piece of organized
-machinery ever made. The thoroughfares and highways of civilization
-fairly swarm with thousands of glistening and silently gliding wheels.
-It is to be found everywhere, even to the steppes of Asia, the plains
-of Australia, and the ice fields of the Arctic.
-
-The true definition of the bicycle is a two-wheeled vehicle, with one
-wheel in front and the other in the rear, and both in the same vertical
-plane. Its life principle is the physical law that a rotating body tends
-to preserve its plane of rotation, and so it stands up, when it moves,
-on the same principle that a top does when it spins or a child's hoop
-remains erect when it rolls.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 180.--THE DRAISINE, 1816.]
-
-A form of carriage adapted to be propelled by the muscular effort of the
-rider was constructed and exhibited in Paris by Blanchard and Magurier,
-and was described in the _Journal de Paris_ as early as July 27, 1779,
-but the true bicycle was the product of the Nineteenth Century. It was
-invented by Baron von Drais, of Manheim-on-the Rhine. See Fig. 180. It
-consisted of two wheels, one before the other, in the same plane, and
-connected together by a bar bearing a saddle, the front wheel being
-arranged to turn about a vertical axis and provided with a handle for
-guiding. The rider supported his elbows on an arm rest and propelled the
-device by striking his toes upon the ground, and in this way thrusted
-himself along, while guiding his course by the handle bar and swivelling
-front wheel. This machine was called the "Draisine." It was patented in
-France for the Baron by Louis Joseph Dineur, and was exhibited in Paris
-in 1816. In 1818 Denis Johnson secured an English patent for an improved
-form of this device, but the principle of propulsion remained the same.
-This device, variously known as the "Draisine," "vélocipède,"
-"célérifère," "pedestrian curricle," "dandy horse," and "hobby-horse,"
-was introduced in New York in 1819, and was greeted for a time with
-great enthusiasm in that and other cities.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 181.--VELOCIPEDE OF 1868.]
-
-On June 26, 1819, William K. Clarkson was granted a United States patent
-for a vélocipède, but the records were destroyed in the fire of 1836. In
-1821 Louis Gompertz devised an improved form of "hobby-horse," in which
-a vibrating handle, with segmental rack engaging with a pinion on the
-front wheel axle, enabled the hands to be employed as well as the feet
-in propelling the machine. Such devices all relied, however, upon the
-striking of the ground with the toes. Their fame was evanescent,
-however, and for forty years thereafter little or no attention was paid
-to this means of locomotion, except in the construction of children's
-carriages and velocipedes having three or more wheels.
-
-In 1855 Ernst Michaux, a French locksmith, applied, for the first time,
-the foot cranks and pedals to the axle of the drive wheel. A United
-States patent, No. 59,915, taken Nov. 20, 1866, in the joint names of
-Lallement and Carrol, represented, however, the revival of development
-in this field. Lallement was a Frenchman, and built a machine having the
-pedals on the axle of the drive wheel, and it was at one time believed
-that it was he who deserved the credit for this feature, but it is
-claimed for Michaux, and the monument erected by the French in 1894 to
-Ernest and Pierre Michaux at Bar le Duc gives strength to the claim. The
-bicycle, as represented at this stage of development, is shown in Fig.
-181. In 1868-'69 machines of this type went extensively into use.
-Bicycle schools and riding academies appeared all through the East, and
-notwithstanding the excessive muscular effort required to propel the
-heavy and clumsy wooden wheels, the old "bone-shaker" was received with
-a furor of enthusiasm.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 182.--VERTICAL FORK OF 1879.]
-
-In 1869 Magee, in Paris, made the entire bicycle of iron and steel,
-solid rubber tires and brakes followed, and the front wheel began to
-grow to larger size, until in 1879 the bicycle presented the form shown
-in Fig. 182. This placed the weight of the rider more directly over the
-drive wheel, and was known as the "vertical fork." It gave good results
-but for the accidents from "headers," to which it was especially
-liable. Means to overcome the danger were resorted to, and the "Star"
-bicycle represented such a construction. In this the high wheel was
-behind and the small one in front, and straps and ratchet wheels
-connected the pedals to the axle. In 1877 Rousseau, of Marseilles,
-removed the pedals from the wheel axle and applied the power to the axle
-by a chain extending from a sprocket wheel on the pedal shaft to a
-sprocket wheel on the wheel axle. By gradual steps, initiated in
-Starley's "Rover" in 1880, (see Fig. 183), the high front wheel was
-reduced in size, until the proportions of the modern "Safety" (Fig. 184)
-have been obtained. Strange to say, these proportions have, through
-nearly a century of evolution, gone back to those employed in the old
-"Draisine," where the two wheels were of the same size. The modern
-"Safety," however, is quite a different machine. Its diamond frame of
-light but strong tubular steel, its ball bearings, its suspension wheels
-and pneumatic tires impart to the modern bicycle strength with
-lightness, and beauty with efficiency, to a degree scarcely attained by
-any other piece of organized machinery designed for such trying work.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 183.--"ROVER," 1880.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 184.--MODERN "SAFETY."]
-
-The most important of all modern improvements on the bicycle was perhaps
-the pneumatic tire. This was not originally designed for the bicycle,
-but was patented in England by R. W. Thompson in 1845 and in the United
-States May 8, 1847, No. 5,104. Its application to the bicycle was made
-in 1889 by Dunlop, United States patent No. 435,995, Sept. 9, 1890, and
-453,550, June 2, 1891. It furnishes not only an elastic bearing which
-cushions the jar, but also makes a broader tread that renders cycling on
-the soft roads of the country at once practical and delightful. The
-chainless wheel, which connects the axle of the pedal crank with the
-axle of the rear wheel by a shaft with bevel gears, is the most recent
-form exploited by the manufacturers, but it is doubtful whether it
-presents any points of superiority over the chain type. All of the parts
-of the bicycle have come in for a share of attention at the hands of
-inventors, differential speed gears and brakes having received especial
-attention. The Morrow hub brake, which applies friction to the rear
-wheel hub by back pressure on the pedal, is a popular modern form. The
-first back-pedal brake is shown in United States Pat. No. 418,142, to
-Stover & Hance, Dec. 24, 1889.
-
-Among the many modifications of the bicycle as used to-day may be
-mentioned the drop frame, which has made cycling possible for ladies,
-the tandem, for two riders, the sextet or octet, carrying six or eight
-riders and resembling a centipede in movement and an express train in
-speed: the ice velocipede, in which two runners are combined with a
-spiked driving wheel, and the hydrocycle, or water velocipede, in which
-the drive wheel, formed with paddles, is used to propel a buoyant hull
-through the water.
-
-In point of speed there seems to be no limit to the bicycle. In a test
-made on the Long Island Railroad in the summer of 1899 between a wheel
-and an express train, the bicyclist, riding on a plank road between the
-rails and protected behind the train by a wind break, covered a mile in
-57-4/5 seconds, and while going at top speed of more than a mile a
-minute, overtook the train, was caught by his friends on a rear platform
-and pulled on board, bicycle and all. This is the first instance on
-record of overtaking and boarding an express train going at the rate of
-sixty-four miles an hour, and yet it is said that the rider (Murphy) was
-not doing his best.
-
-Nearly 5,000 patents have been granted on velocipedes and bicycles. Most
-of them were for bicycles which, as improved to-day, are not only as
-fleet as the birds, but almost as countless in numbers. It is estimated
-that in 1889 the total product of bicycles in this country reached
-200,000 machines annually. In 1892, after the general adoption of the
-pneumatic tire, a great increase followed, which has grown from year to
-year until in the year 1899 a conservative estimate for the output in
-the United States is 1,000,000 wheels annually, worth from thirty to
-fifty million dollars. Each bicycle tire takes about two pounds of pure
-rubber, or four pounds to the wheel. The annual output in wheels
-consequently consumes about 4,000,000 pounds, or 2,000 tons of rubber.
-Ten years ago there were not more than twenty-five legitimate
-manufacturers of bicycles in the United States. In 1897 there were over
-200 concerns in the business. It is estimated that there are to-day
-between 150 and 155 regular manufacturers, exclusive of the mere
-assemblers of parts. The Pope Manufacturing Company, which occupies the
-leading place, employed in 1888 about 500 hands. To-day their shops give
-employment to 3,800 workmen, which furnishes a significant object lesson
-as to the importance and growth of the industry.
-
-_The Automobile._--Gliding silently along our city streets without the
-customary accompaniment of the clatter of the horse's hoofs, the
-automobile suggests to the average observer a very recent invention.
-This is, however, not the case. The automobile is older even than the
-locomotive, and is, in fact, the early model from which the rail
-locomotive was evolved. As early as 1680 Sir Isaac Newton proposed a
-steam carriage in which the propelling power was the reactionary
-discharge of a rearwardly directed jet of steam. Cugnot, in 1769, built
-a steam carriage, which is still preserved in the museum of the
-Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris. Hornblower also in the same
-year devised a steam carriage. Watt's patents of 1769 and 1784
-contemplated the application of his steam engines to carriages running
-on land. Symington in 1770, and Murdoch in 1784, built experimental
-models. In 1787 Oliver Evans obtained a patent in Maryland for the
-exclusive right to make steam road wagons. Nathan Read in 1790 also
-patented and built a steam carriage.
-
-Of these, Cugnot represents the pioneer in the heavier forms of
-self-propelled vehicles, but the steam carriage which best deserves to
-be regarded as the prototype of the modern passenger automobile is that
-of Trevithick, in England, who may also be considered as the father of
-the locomotive. On Christmas eve, 1801, this steam carriage made its
-experimental trip along the high road carrying seven or eight
-passengers. The next day the party, with Trevithick in charge of the
-engine, visited Tehidy House, the home of Lord Dunstanville. They met
-with an accident, however, and the carriage turned over. It was placed
-under shelter, and while the party were at the hotel regaling themselves
-with roast goose and popular drinks, the water in the engine boiled
-away, the iron became red hot, and nothing combustible was left either
-of the carriage or the building in which it was sheltered. On March 24,
-1802, Trevithick and Vivian obtained a British patent, No. 2,599, on
-this device, and another carriage was built, and in the spring of 1803
-started a run from Camborne to Redruth, but it stuck in the mud. It was
-popularly known as Capt. Trevithick's "Puffing Devil." It was
-subsequently reconstructed in London and run upon the streets of that
-city. Fig. 185 presents an illustration of the first steam automobile.
-The cylinders and pistons were enclosed within the fire box in the rear.
-Clutches (called striking boxes) on the axle of the front gear wheel
-allowed either running wheel to move independently of the other in
-turning. A pair of small front steering wheels was arranged to turn
-about a vertical axis and was manipulated by a handle bar. A brake was
-provided for in the specification, as were also variable gears for
-changing speed, and an automatic blower for the fire. The carriage had
-an elevated coach body mounted on springs, and the running wheels were
-of large size, adapted to the higher speed and lighter uses of passenger
-traffic.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 185.--TREVITHICK'S STEAM CARRIAGE, 1801.]
-
-It is not possible to trace the succeeding steps in steam carriage
-development by James and Anderson, by Gurney, in 1822, by Marcerone and
-Squire in 1833, by Russel in 1846, and many others; it is sufficient to
-know that bad roads and the success attending the steam locomotive on
-rails diverted attention from the steam road carriage, and not until the
-latter part of the Nineteenth Century was there any marked revival of
-interest in this field. Then came first the ponderous road engine, known
-as a traction engine, and used for heavy hauling; and this in the last
-decade has been followed by the modern steam motor carriage, an example
-of which is seen in Figs. 186 and 186A, which represent the "Locomobile"
-and its actuating mechanism. The fuel used is gasoline, stored in a
-three-gallon tank under the footboard. The boiler, which is arranged
-under the seat, is a vertical cylinder wrapped with piano wire for
-greater tensile strength, and contains 298 copper tubes. The engine,
-which is seen in Fig. 186A, is arranged in upright position under the
-seat, in front of the boiler, has two cylinders, 2½-inch diameter and
-4-inch stroke, a Stephenson link-motion and an ordinary D-valve.
-Sprocket wheels and a chain connect the engine shaft to the rear axle.
-The engine runs from 300 to 400 revolutions per minute and develops
-from four to five horse power. It has a muffle for the steam exhaust
-and the whole weight is 550 pounds. It is one of the lightest and
-cheapest of automobiles, runs easily at ten to twelve miles an hour, and
-is an efficient hill-climber. Although naming the steam automobile first
-because of its earlier genesis, it is not to be understood as
-representing at present the most popular type of motor carriage,
-although it bids fair to become so.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 186.--"LOCOMOBILE" STEAM CARRIAGE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 186A.--THE FOUR HORSE POWER ENGINES OF
-"LOCOMOBILE."]
-
-In France and the continent of Europe the type employing an explosive
-mixture of gasoline and air is most frequently found, and in England and
-the United States the electric motor with the storage battery is chiefly
-used.
-
-In automobiles of the explosive gas type probably the earliest example
-is found in the British patent to Pinkus, No. 8,207, of 1839. In France
-Lenoir, in 1860, is credited with being the pioneer. Among modern
-applications the patent to George B. Selden, No. 549,160, occupies a
-prominent place. This was only granted Nov. 5, 1895, but the application
-for the patent was filed in the Patent Office May 8, 1879 so that the
-invention described has quite an early date, and some broad claims have
-been allowed to the inventor. In the last decade many applications of
-the explosive gas engine to road carriages and tricycles have been made,
-especially in France. Representative motor carriages of this type are to
-be found in the United States in the Duryea and the Winton. An
-illustration of the latter is given in Fig. 187. The form shown
-represents a phaeton weighing 1,400 pounds; the motor is of the single
-hydrocarbon type, and is simple, powerful and compact. It is also free
-from noise and vibration, and is under control at all times. The maximum
-speed is eighteen miles an hour.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 187.--WINTON AUTOMOBILE. HYDROCARBON TYPE.]
-
-Probably the most popular type of the automobile in the United States is
-the "electric." The application of the electric motor to the propulsion
-of vehicles dates back to quite an early period. It is said that as far
-back as 1835 Stratingh and Becker, of Groeningen, and in 1836 Botto, of
-Turin, constructed crude electric carriages. Davenport, in 1835,
-Davidson, in 1838, and Dr. Page, in 1851, built electric locomotives
-which ran on rails. The prototype of the electric automobile, however,
-is best represented in the French patent to M. Grounelle, No. 7,728,
-Feb. 7, 1852 (2 Ser., Vol. 25, p. 220, pl. 46.) This shows a perfectly
-equipped electric automobile. It did not have a practical electric
-generator, however, for the storage battery was not then known. A large
-sulphate of copper battery was employed, which could through the agency
-of a train of gears give only a very slow speed. This road carriage,
-however, only needed a storage battery to make it a well organized and
-efficient electric automobile. It is believed by many that electricity
-fulfills more of the necessary conditions of a successful motive power
-for motor carriages than any other power. It is clean, compact,
-noiseless, free from vibration, heat, dirt and gases, and is under
-perfect control. Its chief objection is that it is only possible to
-recharge it where electric power is available, and in this respect it is
-inferior to the gasoline motor, whose supply may be conveniently
-obtained at every city, village, and country store. The Columbia
-two-seated Dos-a-Dos (Fig. 188), Woods' Victoria Hansom Cab, and the
-Riker Electric Delivery Wagon are representative types of the modern
-electric automobile.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 188.--THE COLUMBIA "DOS-A-DOS."]
-
-All of the motor carriages illustrated are of American make, and for
-lightness, grace, and efficiency they have no superiors. A peculiar and
-recent type which attracted much attention and took the gold medal at
-the Motor Carriage Exposition at Berlin, held in September, 1899, is the
-Pieper double motor carriage. It has both a benzine motor and an
-electric motor, which can be worked separately or together, and yet is
-said to be lighter than most electric carriages. On a long journey,
-remote from electrical supply, the benzine motor is used not only to
-propel the carriage, but by running the electric motor as a dynamo or
-generator, recharges the storage battery. On level, easy roads, where
-the power required falls below the maximum power exerted by the benzine
-motor, the electric motor changes automatically to a dynamo and the
-surplus force of the benzine motor is converted into current and stored.
-In running down hill or stopping the carriage, the momentum of the
-vehicle is also received by the electric motor acting as a dynamo and
-brake, and is stored as electricity in the battery, which is thus in an
-ordinary journey kept constantly charged.
-
-It is not probable that man will ever be able to get along without the
-horse, but the release of the noble animal from the bondage of city
-traffic, which was begun only a few years ago with mechanical street car
-propulsion, promises now to be extensively advanced by the substitution
-of the motor carriage and the auto-truck for team-drawn vehicles. The
-rapidity with which this industry has grown, and its promise for the
-future may be realized when it is remembered that so far as practical
-results are concerned it has all grown up in the last decade of the
-Nineteenth Century, and yet to-day it is said that there are already in
-the United States about 200 incorporated concerns with an aggregate
-capitalization of some $500,000,000, organized to build automobiles, to
-say nothing of the vast number of individuals who are experimenting in
-this field. The greatest activity, however, is to be found in France,
-which claims over 600 manufacturers and has in use 6,000 automobiles out
-of a total of 11,000 in all of Europe.
-
-The most significant suggestion for the future of the automobile is that
-the cost of maintenance and all things considered, it is in some
-applications cheaper than the horse-drawn vehicles of the same
-efficiency. In a consular report of Oct. 16, 1899, forwarded to the
-State Department by Mr. Marshal Halsted, consul at Birmingham, Mr. E. H.
-Bayley, an English authority, is quoted as saying that in operating
-heavy motor vehicles for hauling, the cost is three half-pence (three
-cents) per net ton per mile, as compared with 18 to 24 cents per net ton
-per mile by horse-drawn vehicles. In England much attention is being
-given to this subject.
-
-As before stated, the modern automobile cannot be considered as a new
-invention so far as fundamental principles are concerned. Its success,
-in late years, is to be credited to the perfection of the arts in
-general, and as essential factors contributing to this may be named the
-refinement of steel, giving increased strength with lightness, the
-increased efficiency of motive power, the vulcanization of rubber, the
-mathematical nicety of mechanical adjustment, the reduction of friction
-by ball bearings, the wonderful developments in electricity and
-improvement in roads.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII.
-
-THE PHONOGRAPH.
-
- INVENTION OF PHONOGRAPH BY EDISON--SCOTT'S PHONAUTOGRAPH--
- IMPROVEMENTS OF BELL AND TAINTER--THE GRAPHOPHONE--LIBRARY OF WAX
- CYLINDERS--THE GRAMOPHONE.
-
-
-Following closely upon the discovery of the telephone the phonograph
-came, literally speaking for itself, and adding another surprise to the
-wonderful inventions of that prolific period. It was in the latter part
-of 1877 that Thomas A. Edison showed to a few privileged friends a
-modest looking little machine. He turned the crank, and to the
-astonishment of those present it said. "Good morning! How do you do? How
-do you like the phonograph?" Its voice was a little metallic, it is
-true, but here was presented an insignificant looking piece of mechanism
-which was undeniably a talking machine and one with an unlimited
-vocabulary. So-called talking machines had been made before, of which
-the Faber machine was a type. These, by an arrangement of bellows to
-furnish air, and flexible pipes in imitation of the larynx and vocal
-organs, made laborious and wheezy efforts to imitate the mechanical
-functions of the throat and tongue in articulate speech, but the method
-was fundamentally faulty and no success was attained. Edison followed no
-such leading. His phonograph made no attempt at imitating in
-construction the complex organization of the human throat, but was as
-wonderful in its divergence therefrom and in its simplicity as it was in
-the success of its results. The machine was patented by him Feb. 19,
-1878, No. 200,521, and its life principle is simply and clearly defined
-in the first claim of the patent, as follows:
-
- "The method herein specified of reproducing the human voice, or
- other sounds, by causing the sound vibrations to be recorded
- substantially as specified, and obtaining motion from that record as
- set forth for the reproduction of sound vibrations."
-
-The invention was a striking and interesting novelty and at once
-attracted the attention of scientific men as well as the general public.
-Its first public exhibition was about the latter part of January, 1878,
-before the Polytechnic Association of the American Institute, at New
-York. It spoke English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Hebrew with
-equal facility. It imitated the barking of a dog and crowing of a cock,
-and then catching cold, coughed and sneezed and wheezed until it is said
-a physician in the audience proposed sending a prescription for it. It
-was also suggested by an irreverent man that it might take the place of
-preachers in the rendition of sermons, while another thought that as it
-reproduced music with equal facility it might take the place of preacher
-and choir both. In the spring of 1878 it was exhibited at Washington by
-Edison and his assistant, Mr. Batchelor. Mr. Edison was the guest of Mr.
-U. H. Painter, and in his parlors it was shown to a party of gentlemen.
-
-From Mr. Painter's house the machine was taken to the office of the
-Assistant Secretary of the Interior, thence to the Academy of Sciences,
-in session at the Smithsonian Institution, and at night it was taken to
-the White House and exhibited to President and Mrs. Hayes.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 189.--FIRST PHONOGRAPH.]
-
-The form of the first phonograph is shown in Fig. 189. It consisted of
-three principal parts--the mouthpiece A, into which speech was uttered,
-the spirally grooved cylinder B, carrying on its periphery a sheet of
-tin foil, and a second mouthpiece D. The cylinder B and its axial shaft
-were both provided with spiral grooves or screw threads of exactly the
-same pitch, and when the shaft was turned by its crank its screw
-threaded bearings caused the cylinder to slowly advance as it rotated.
-The mouthpiece A had adjacent to the cylinder a flexible diaphragm
-carrying a little point or stylus which bore against the tin foil on the
-cylinder. When the mouthpiece A was spoken into and the cylinder B was
-turned, the little stylus, vibrating from the voice impulses, traced by
-indentations a little jagged path in the tin foil that formed the
-record. To reproduce the record in speech again, the mouthpiece A was
-adjusted away from the cylinder, the cylinder run back to the starting
-point, and mouthpiece D was then brought up to the cylinder. This
-mouthpiece had a diaphragm and stylus similar to the other one, only
-more delicately constructed. This stylus was adjusted to bear lightly in
-the little spiral path in the tin foil traced by the other stylus, and
-as the tin foil revolved with the cylinder its jagged irregularities set
-up the same vibrations in the diaphragm of mouthpiece D as those caused
-by the voice on the other diaphragm, and thus translated the record into
-sounds of articulate speech, exactly corresponding to the words first
-spoken into the instrument. In Fig. 190 is shown a further development
-of the phonograph, in which a single mouthpiece with diaphragm and
-stylus serves the purpose both of recorder for making the record and a
-speaker for reproducing it, a trumpet or horn being used, as indicated
-in dotted lines, to concentrate the vibrations in recording and to
-augment the sound in reproducing.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 190.--SECOND FORM OF PHONOGRAPH.]
-
-The phonograph is in reality a development of the phonautograph, which
-was an instrument invented by Leon Scott in 1857 to automatically record
-sounds by diagrams. There is a model of Scott's phonautograph in the
-National Museum at Washington, D. C, and it consists of a chamber to
-catch the sound waves and an elastic diaphragm with stylus working on a
-revolving cylinder bearing a sheet of paper coated with lampblack. The
-phonograph's record-making mouthpiece, with its diaphragm and stylus, is
-substantially a phonautograph, but instead of simply causing the stylus
-to trace a record on carbon-coated paper and stopping with this result,
-Edison traced a record in a substance--tinfoil--which was capable of
-mechanically translating that record into sound again by a mere reversal
-of the function of the stylus and diaphragm. This was the very essence
-of simplicity and logical reasoning. All records had been heretofore
-traced for visual inspection only. Edison's record was not for visual
-inspection, but was endowed with the mechanical function of reproducing
-sound.
-
-From the first Edison believed that his phonograph was to fill an
-important place in the business activities of the world, since here
-seemed a silent but faithful stenographer which reproduced the words of
-the speaker with absolute fidelity, even to the quality of emphasis and
-inflection, and which made no mistakes, was always even with the speaker
-in its work, and asked no questions. For a number of years, however, the
-invention lay dormant and served no other purpose than that of a
-scientific curiosity or an amusing toy. The difficulty of its practical
-application largely existed in the perishable form of the record, which,
-being in tinfoil, was liable to be mutilated and distorted, and was not
-well adapted for storage or transportation.
-
-A few years after the announcement of Mr. Edison's invention. Dr.
-Alexander Graham Bell, the distinguished inventor of the telephone, with
-his associates, Messrs. Chichester A. Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter,
-directed their attention to the improvement of the phonograph. Dr. Bell
-had received from the French government, upon the recommendation of the
-French Academy of Sciences, the Volta prize of 50,000 francs as a
-recognition of his successful work in acoustics and the invention of the
-telephone, and with this sum he built the Volta Institute in Washington
-and carried on the work of developing the phonograph.
-
-On May 4, 1886, Chichester A. Bell and Sumner Tainter obtained patents
-Nos. 341,214 and 341,288, which covered a great improvement in the
-record of the phonograph. This invention substituted for the tinfoil
-sheet a surface of wax, which was finally fashioned into a cylinder, and
-instead of merely indenting the record on tinfoil the stylus cut a
-distinct groove or kerf in the wax cylinder as it revolved, dislodging
-therefrom a minute filament or shaving and forming a record which was
-not only far more positive in its translating effect and more easily
-transported and stored, but was also less perishable, and besides it
-could be easily effaced without loss of the cylinder by simply smoothing
-off the surface of the cylinder again when it was desired to make a new
-record. This invention quickly grew into practical use, and is known as
-the "Graphophone."
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 191.--THE GRAPHOPHONE, RECORDING AND REPRODUCING
-DEVICES.]
-
-In Fig. 191 is shown on the left a cross section of the diaphragm,
-recording stylus, and wax cylinder, of the graphophone, the stylus
-plowing a tiny groove in the wax cylinder in the act of recording the
-speech, and on the right is shown the reproducing stylus traversing the
-record groove in the wax cylinder, and the diaphragm chamber with which
-the ear tubes are connected. The grooves in the wax, although giving
-forth mechanical movement that is translated into sound, are very
-minute, being only 6/10,000 of an inch deep.
-
-When the possibilities of the graphophone became known, capital was
-quickly supplied for its commercial exploitation, and the Columbia
-Phonograph Company was organized. At the present time, owing to the
-great increase in the business, the control of the graphophone business
-is vested in two branches, the Columbia Phonograph Company, which has
-charge of the selling, and which has offices throughout all the
-principal cities of this country and some of the larger ones of Europe,
-and the American Graphophone Company, which attends to the manufacturing
-branch, and whose factory is located at Bridgeport, Conn., where, it is
-said, that in 1898 the production of the factory reached the point of
-one graphophone for every minute of the day, making a total daily output
-of 600 machines. Although the Bell and Tainter patents of 1886 represent
-the basic principles of the graphophone, its development and perfection
-have been contributed to in many subsequent improvements by Messrs.
-Bell, Tainter, McDonald, and others. The more important of these are
-covered by patents No. 375,579, Dec. 27, 1887; No. 380,535, April 3,
-1888; No. 527,755, Oct. 16, 1894, and No. 579,595, March 30, 1897.
-
-At the beginning of this industry it was thought that the principal use
-of the instrument would be found in business applications, to take the
-place of the stenographer, but it proved difficult to revolutionize
-office methods, especially as the earlier machines were somewhat
-intricate, and the business man had no time to divide in engineering a
-machine. These difficulties, however, have been so far overcome by
-modern improvements and simplification of the machine that its use in
-business houses as an amanuensis has become quite common. The greatest
-use of the graphophone is, however, for amusement purposes. Its songs,
-orchestral and solo renditions, and its humorous monologue reproductions
-constitute to-day a great library of wax cylinders, regularly catalogued
-and sold by the thousands. It will readily be understood that the
-formation of the cylinders must constitute a great business of itself
-when it is remembered that many record cylinders accompany each
-graphophone, and that the latter are turned out at the rate of one a
-minute by a single company. Many thousands of these cylinders are made
-daily. Some are sent out simply as plain wax cylinders, onto which the
-records are made by the voice of the purchaser, while others have
-records made for them of popular music, monologues in dialect, humorous
-speeches, etc. The waxy composition, which is in reality a species of
-soap, is melted in huge pots, and then passes from one floor to
-another, undergoing a refining process in its progress, and finally
-reaches the molds. These molds are arranged in rows around a horizontal
-wheel about eight feet in diameter. The wheel is kept revolving, and a
-man on one side is kept constantly busy in filling the molds with the
-molten material as they reach him. A half revolution of the wheel brings
-the filled molds to the other side of the room, and by that time the
-material has hardened sufficiently to enable another attendant,
-stationed there, to remove the cylinders from the molds. Thus the wheel
-is kept going, receiving at one side a charge of the melted wax and
-discharging at the other molded cylinders, which are afterwards turned
-true on the surface. The record-making department is both unique and
-interesting. Here the records of music are produced, and they are made
-by bands and performers engaged for the purpose, many of which,
-operating at the same time, produce such a medley as to be scarcely
-distinguishable to the visitor. The records are tested by about half a
-hundred women, each of whom has a little compartment or booth framed in
-by glass partitions. The duty of the tester is to decide upon the merits
-of the record by actually listening to it on the graphophone.
-
-A very important feature in record-making, from a commercial standpoint,
-is in means for cheaply duplicating records. If every record cylinder
-had to be made by the separate act of a performer such records would be
-very expensive. An original record is first made by some celebrated
-musician or speaker, and this record is afterwards multiplied and
-reproduced in large numbers. For this purpose an original record by
-suitable mechanism is made to take the place of the speaker or singer,
-and so multiplies and reproduces the original record. The duplicating of
-records was contemplated by Edison from the first, as seen in his
-British patent, 1,644 of 1878, and later appliances for accomplishing
-such results are covered under Tainter's patent, No. 341,287, Bettini's,
-No. 488,381, and McDonald's, No. 559,806. The diaphragms used in the
-recorders and reproducers are made of French rolled plate glass, thinner
-than a sheet of ordinary writing paper. The recording stylus is shaped
-like a little gouge to cut the little grooves in the wax, while the
-corresponding stylus of the reproducer has a ball-shaped end to travel
-in the groove. Both the recording stylus and reproducing ball are made
-of sapphire, chosen on account of its hardness, to resist the great
-frictional wear to which they are subjected. When a record is to be
-effaced from a cylinder, it is turned off smooth on a sort of lathe, and
-the cutting tool or knife for this purpose is also made of sapphire.
-
-The latest, loudest, and most impressive form of the talking machine is
-the "Graphophone Grand." This has a horn attachment exceeding the big
-horn of a brass band in size, and the wax cylinder is about four inches
-in diameter. Its reproductions in music and speech are so full and
-strong as to be clearly heard at the most remote part of a large hall,
-and its versatile voice lends effective rendition to all sorts and kinds
-of sounds, from the inspiring chords of "A Choir Invisible" to the
-grandiloquent and facetious rattle of a noisy and hustling auctioneer.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 192.--MODERN PHONOGRAPH.]
-
-It is not to be understood, however, that the graphophone is the only
-speaking machine on the market, for about 250 patents have been granted
-on phonographs and graphophones. The National Phonograph Company, under
-many later patents granted to Mr. Edison, manufactures and sells the
-phonograph shown in Fig. 192, which is a very ingenious and effective
-instrument. This modern form of phonograph is actuated either by
-electricity or spring power, is regulated by a speed governor, and
-bifurcated ear tubes connect with the diaphragm case, which tubes are
-placed in the ears when the instrument is operated.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 193.--THE GRAMOPHONE RECORDER.]
-
-The gramophone is also another speaking machine. This is the invention
-of Mr. E. Berliner and covered by him in patent No. 372,786, Nov. 8,
-1887. An illustration of the gramophone recorder is given in Fig. 193.
-Instead of a wax cylinder this machine employs a flat disc on which the
-record is formed as a volute spiral groove, gradually drawing toward the
-center. It is produced as follows: A zinc disc is covered by a thin film
-of acid resisting material, such as wax or grease, and is placed in a
-horizontal pan, mounted to revolve as a turn table about a vertical
-axis. A stylus and diaphragm, with speaking tube attached, are arranged
-above the disc, and when spoken into the vibrations of the diaphragm
-cause, through the stylus, a record to be traced through the wax, down
-to the zinc. As the waxed disc and pan are revolved, the stylus and
-diaphragm are gradually moved by gears toward the center of the disc.
-While the record is being traced the waxed disc is kept flooded with
-alcohol from a glass jar, seen in the cut, to soften the film and
-prevent the clogging of the stylus. The disc, when completed, is then
-rinsed off and etched with acid, chromic acid being used, to prevent
-liberation of hydrogen bubbles. The etched disc is then electrotyped to
-form a matrix, and from this electrotype hard rubber duplicates of the
-original record are molded, which are capable of giving 1,000
-reproductions. These rubber discs are placed on the reproducing
-instrument, which is arranged to cause the stylus to freely trail along
-in the spiral groove, and when the disc is rotated under the said stylus
-its record is converted into articulate speech. Such flat disc records
-give quite loud reproductions, are not easily destroyed, and may be
-compactly stored and transported. In the gramophone the diaphragm stands
-at right angles to the record disc and the stylus does not vibrate
-endwise to make a path of varying depth, as in the phonograph and
-graphophone, but the stylus vibrates laterally and traces a little
-zigzag line.
-
-The cost of a talking machine is from $5 to $150. The wax cylinders cost
-from 25 cents to $3.00, and the cylinders will hold a record of from 800
-to 1,200 words, equivalent to about three or four pages of print in an
-octavo volume. An important part of such machines is the motor, which
-must maintain a uniform rate of speed, and much ingenuity has been
-displayed on this part of the machine. Probably the largest use of the
-phonograph or graphophone is for home amusement and exhibition purpose.
-The coin operated, or "nickel-in-the-slot" machine, finds a popular
-demand, while its utilitarian use as an amanuensis, or stenographer, is
-as yet a subordinate one.
-
-Although twenty-one years of age, and of full growth, the phonograph is
-ever a wonderfully new and impressive device. When listening to it for
-the first time the conflict of emotions which it excites is difficult to
-analyze. A voice full of human quality, of clear and familiar
-enunciation, and speaking in the most matter of fact way about the most
-matter of fact things, proceeds from an insignificant and insensible bit
-of metal, presenting the apparently anomalous condition of speech
-without a speaker. When convinced that there is no trick, astonishment
-struggles with admiration and a desire for a personal introduction. We
-speak into it, and have the unique experience of listening to our own
-voice emanating from a different part of the room, instead of our own
-mouths. It is really difficult to believe one's own senses, and no
-wonder that it inspires the superstitious with a feeling of awe. If Mr.
-Edison had lived a few centuries earlier, and had produced such an
-instrument, his life might have paid the penalty of his ingenuity, for
-without doubt he would have been classed as a wizard, and of close kin
-to the evil one.
-
-The phonograph is the truth-telling and incontrovertible witness whose
-memory is never at fault, and whose nerves are never discomposed by any
-cross-examination. As evidence in court its word cannot be doubted, and
-the witness confronted by his own utterances from the phonograph must
-yield to its infallible dictum. The dying father, unable to write, may
-dictate to it his last will and testament, and leave a message for his
-loved ones, and long after the sod is green on his grave, that message
-would still be audible, and fresh and true to all the tender inflections
-of the heart's emotions. By its aid the Holy Father, at Rome, may give
-his personal and audible blessing to his children throughout the world,
-though separated by thousands of miles. Who can tell what stories of
-interesting and instructive knowledge would be in our possession if the
-phonograph had appeared in the ages of the past, and its records had
-been preserved? The voices of our dead ancestors, whose portraits hang
-on the wall, and the eloquent words of Demosthenes and Cicero would be
-preserved to us. In fact, we should be brought into vocal contact with
-the world's heroes, martyrs, saints, and sages, and all the great actors
-and teachers whose personalities have made history, and whose teachings
-have given us our best ideals. But perhaps the most practical and best
-characterization of the phonograph is given in Mr. Edison's own terse
-words. He says: "In one sense it knows more than we know ourselves, for
-it retains the memory of many things which we forget, even though we
-have said them. It teaches us to be careful of what we say, and I am
-sure makes men more brief, more businesslike, and more
-straightforward."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIII.
-
-OPTICS.
-
- EARLY TELESCOPES--THE LICK TELESCOPE--THE GRANDE LUNETTE--THE
- STEREO-BINOCULAR FIELD GLASS--THE MICROSCOPE--THE SPECTROSCOPE--
- POLARIZATION OF LIGHT--KALEIDOSCOPE--STEREOSCOPE--RANGE FINDER--
- KINETOSCOPE AND MOVING PICTURES.
-
-
-"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the
-light that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness."
-Thus early in the account of the creation is evidenced man's
-appreciation of the value of vision. Of all the senses which place man
-in intelligent relation to his environment none is so important as
-sight. More than all the others does it establish our relation to the
-material world. When the babe is born, and its little emancipated soul
-is brought in contact with the world, its wondering gaze sees the
-panorama of visible things touching its eyes, and it stretches forth its
-tiny arms in the vain effort to pluck the stars, apparently within its
-reach. Distance and time add their values to light and vision, and as
-his life expands to greater fullness, the perspective of his existence
-creeps into his consciousness, and he finds himself farther away, but
-still peering beyond into the infinity of distance, searching for the
-visible evidence of knowledge. From the earliest times man learned to
-spurn the groveling things of earth, and to delight his soul with the
-marvelous infinity of the sky and its heavenly bodies. _Nunc ad astra_
-was his ambitious cry, and in no field has his quest for knowledge been
-more skillfully directed, faithfully maintained, or richly rewarded than
-in the study of astronomy. Many important discoveries in this field have
-been made in the Nineteenth Century, among which may be named the
-discovery of the planet Neptune by Adams, Leverrier and Galle in 1846;
-the satellites of Neptune in 1846, and those of Saturn in 1848 by Mr.
-Lassell; the two satellites of Mars by Prof. Asaph Hall in 1877; and the
-discovery of the so-called canals of Mars by Schiaparelli in 1877. But
-the purpose of this work is to deal with material inventions rather than
-scientific discoveries, and the leading invention in optics is the
-telescope.
-
-Who invented the telescope is a question that cannot now be answered.
-For many years Galileo was credited in popular estimation with having
-made this invention in 1609. But it is now known that, while he built
-telescopes, and discovered the mountains of the moon, the spots on the
-sun's disk, the crescent phases of Venus, the four satellites of
-Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and made the first important astronomical
-observations, the invention of the telescope, as an instrument, could
-not be rightly claimed for him. Borelli credits it to Jansen &
-Lippersheim, spectacle makers, of Middelburg, Holland, about 1590;
-Descartes credits it to James Metius; Humboldt says Hans Lippershey (or
-Laprey), a native of Wesel and a spectacle maker of Middelburg in 1608,
-naming also Jacob Adriansz, sometimes called Metius and also Zacharias
-Jansen.
-
-The great impetus given to the study of astronomy by Galileo, in 1609,
-was followed up by Huygens in 1655 with his improvement, by Gregory's
-reflecting telescope of 1663, and Newton's in 1668. In 1733 Chester More
-Hall invented the achromatic object glass of crown and flint glass. In
-1758 John Dolland reinvented and introduced the same in the manufacture
-of telescopes. In 1779 Herschel built his reflecting telescope, and in
-March, 1781, he discovered the planet Uranus. In 1789 he built his great
-reflector. It was while the latter telescope was exploring the heavens
-that the Nineteenth Century began, and in the early part of this century
-Herschel laid before the Royal Society a catalogue of many thousand
-nebulæ and clusters of stars. Among the great telescopes of the
-Nineteenth Century may be mentioned that made in London in 1802 for the
-observatory of Madrid, which cost £11,000; the great reflecting
-telescope of the Earl of Rosse, erected at Parsonstown, in Ireland, in
-1842-45. This was 6 feet diameter, 54 feet focal length, and cost over
-£20,000; the magnificent equatorial telescopes set up at the National
-Observatories at Greenwich and Paris in 1860; Foucault's reflecting
-telescope at Paris, 1862, whose mirror was 31½ inches diameter, and
-focal length 17¾ feet; Mr. R. S. Newall's telescope, set up at Gateshead
-by Cookes, of York, in 1870; object glass, 25 inches, tube, 30 feet; Mr.
-A. Ainslie Common's reflecting telescope, Ealing, Middlesex, 1879,
-mirror, 37½ inches diameter, tube, 20 feet; the telescope at the United
-States Observatory, at Washington, 1873, object glass, 26 inches, tube,
-33 feet long; and the large refracting telescope by Howard Grubb, at
-Dublin, for Vienna, 1881.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 194.--TELESCOPE AT LICK OBSERVATORY.]
-
-In more recent times the great refracting telescope by Alvan Clark &
-Sons, for the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, California, in 1888,
-attracted attention as superior to anything in existence up to that
-time. This is shown in Fig. 194. The supporting column and base are of
-iron, weighing twenty-five tons. This rests on a masonry foundation,
-which forms the tomb of James Lick, its founder. The tube is 52 feet
-long, 4 feet diameter in the middle, tapering to a little over 3 feet at
-the ends. The object glass is 36 inches in diameter, and weighs, with
-its cell, 530 lbs. The steel dome is 75 feet 4 inches in diameter, and
-the weight of its moving parts is 100 tons. This instrument was
-perfectly equipped with all gauges, scales, photographic and
-spectroscope accessories, and fulfilled the condition imposed in the
-trust deed of James Lick, of being "superior to and more powerful than
-any telescope made." It is a giant among instruments of precision, and
-its ponderous aspect still asserts the dignity of its purpose, and
-impresses even the frivolous visitor with a silent and thoughtful
-respect.
-
-It is not to be understood, however, that the great Lick telescope still
-maintains its supremacy. The Yerkes telescope, which was exhibited at
-the World's Fair Exposition in 1893, at Chicago, had an object glass of
-3.28 feet in diameter and a focal distance of 65 feet, and it moved
-around a central axis in a vast cupola or dome 78 feet in diameter. The
-Grand Equatorial of Gruenewald, at the recent Berlin Exposition, was
-even still larger, since its object glass was 3 feet 7 inches, or nearly
-2 inches larger than the Yerkes.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 195.--GREAT TELESCOPE, PARIS EXPOSITION. 1900.]
-
-Even these great instruments have now been excelled in the Grande
-Lunette, of the Paris Exposition, in 1900. When it is remembered that an
-increase in the diameter of any circular body causes, for every
-additional inch, a vastly disproportionate increase in the
-cross-sectional area and weight, it will readily be seen how handicapped
-the instrument maker is in any increase in the power of such a
-telescope. An increased diameter of a few inches in the glass lens means
-an enormous increase in the cross section, its weight and the
-difficulties attending its successful casting free from imperfections,
-and the perfect grinding and polishing of the lens. An increased length
-of the tubular case of the telescope is liable to involve, from the
-great weight, a slight bending or springing out of axial alignment when
-supported near the middle for equatorial adjustment, and a few feet
-increase in the diameter of the massive and movable steel dome add
-greatly to the weight and incidental difficulties of constructing and
-delicately adjusting it. The great Lunette, see Fig. 195, changes
-entirely the method of manipulating the telescope, and also, in a
-measure, its principle of action, so as to avoid some of these
-difficulties. Its tube, instead of being pointed upwardly through the
-slot of a movable dome, and made adjustable with the dome, is laid down
-horizontally on a stationary base of supporting pillars, and an
-adjustable reflecting mirror and regulating mechanism, called a
-"siderostat," is arranged at one end, to catch the view of the star, or
-moon, and reflect it into the great tube, and through its lenses on to
-the screen at the other end. The tube is 197 feet long, and the object
-glass or lens is a fraction over 4 feet in diameter. There are two of
-these, which together cost $120,000. The siderostat is supported on a
-large cast iron frame, and is provided with clockwork and devices for
-causing the mirror to follow the movement of the celestial object which
-is being viewed. The entire weight of the siderostat and base is 99,000
-pounds, the movable part weighs 33,000 pounds, and the mirror and its
-cell weigh 14,740. The mirror itself is of glass, weighs 7,920 pounds,
-is 6.56 feet in diameter, and 10.63 inches thick. To facilitate the
-free and sensitive adjustment of this great mirror its base floats in a
-reservoir of mercury. The entire cost of the instrument is said to be
-over 2,000,000 francs. With the wonderful strides of improvement in all
-fields of invention, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the
-revelations in astronomy may keep pace with those of mundane interest,
-and that great discoveries may be made in the near future. The average
-individual does not bother himself much about the calculation of
-eclipses, or the laws which govern the movements of an erratic comet. He
-is, however, intensely personal and neighborly, and what he wants to
-know is, Is Mars inhabited? and if so, are its denizens men, and may we
-communicate with them? The wonderful regularity of the so-called canals,
-of apparently intelligent design, already discovered on the surface of
-Mars, has stimulated this neighborly curiosity into an expectant
-interest, and who knows what marvelous introductions the modern
-telescope may bring about?
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 196.--PROF. ABBE'S STEREO-BINOCULAR.]
-
-Many minor improvements have been made in recent years in the form of
-the telescope known as field and opera glasses. Probably the most
-important of these is the Stereo-Binocular, invented by Prof. Abbe, of
-Germany, and patented by him in that country in 1893, and also in the
-United States, June 22, 1897, No. 584,976. This gives a much increased
-field, and also an increased stereoscopic effect, or conception of
-relative distance, by having the object glasses wider apart than the
-eyes of the observer. The field is also flatter, the instrument rendered
-very much smaller and more compact, and no change of focus is required
-for changing from near-by to remote objects. The rays of light, see Fig.
-196, enter the object glasses, strike a double reflecting prism, and are
-first thrown away from the observer, and then striking another double
-reflecting prism, arranged after Porro's method, are returned to the
-observer in line with the eye-piece.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 197.--MODERN MICROSCOPE.]
-
-_The Microscope._--Just as the telescope reveals the infinity of the
-great world above and around us, so does the microscope reveal the
-infinity of the little world around, about, and within us. Its origin,
-like the telescope, is hidden in the dim distance of the past, but it is
-believed to antedate the telescope. Probably the dewdrop on a leaf
-constituted the first microscope. The magnifying power of glass balls
-was known to the Chinese, Japanese, Assyrians and Egyptians, and a lens
-made of rock crystal was found among the ruins of Ninevah. The
-microscope is either single or compound. In the single the object is
-viewed directly. In the compound two or more lenses are so arranged that
-the image formed by one is magnified by the others, and viewed as if it
-were the object itself. The single microscope cannot be claimed by any
-inventor. The double or compound microscope was invented by Farncelli in
-1624, and it was in that century that the first important applications
-were made for scientific investigation. Most of the investigations were
-made, however, by the single microscope, and the names of Borelli,
-Malpighi, Lieberkuhn, Hooke, Leeuwenhoek, Swammerden, Lyonnet, Hewson
-and Ellis were conspicuous as the fathers of microscopy. For more than
-two hundred and fifty years the microscope has lent its magnifying aid
-to the eye, and step by step it has been gradually improved. Joseph J.
-Lister's aplanatic foci and compound objective, in 1829, was a notable
-improvement in the first part of the century, and this has been followed
-up by contributions from various inventors, until the modern compound
-microscope, Fig. 197, is a triumph of the optician's art, and an
-instrument of wonderful accuracy and power. Its greatest work belongs to
-the Nineteenth Century.
-
-Multiplying the dimensions of the smallest cells to more than a thousand
-times their size, it has brought into range of vision an unseen world,
-developed new sciences, and added immensely to the stores of human
-knowledge. To the biologist and botanist it has yielded its revelations
-in cell structure and growth; to the physician its diagnosis in urinary
-and blood examinations; in histology and morbid secretions it is
-invaluable; in geology its contribution to the knowledge of the physical
-history of the world is of equal importance; while in the study of
-bacteriology and disease germs it has so revolutionized our conception
-of the laws of health and sanitation, and the conditions of life and
-death, and is so intimately related to our well being, as to mark
-probably the greatest era of progress and useful extension of knowledge
-the world has ever known. In the useful arts, also, it figures in almost
-every department; the jeweler, the engraver, the miner, the
-agriculturalist, the chemical manufacturer, and the food inspector, all
-make use of its magnifying powers.
-
-To the microscope the art of photography has lent its valuable aid, so
-that all the revelations of the microscope are susceptible of
-preservation in permanent records, as photomicrographs. A curious, but
-very practical, use of the microscope was made in the establishment of
-the pigeon-post during the siege of Paris in 1870-71. Shut in from the
-outside world, the resourceful Frenchmen photographed the news of the
-day to such microscopic dimensions that a single pigeon could carry
-50,000 messages, which weighed less than a gramme. These messages were
-placed on delicate films, rolled up, and packed in quills. The pigeons
-were sent out in balloons, and flying back to Paris from the outer
-world, carried these messages back and forth, and the messages, when
-reaching their destination, were enlarged to legible dimensions and
-interpreted by the microscope. It is said that two and a half million
-messages were in this way transmitted.
-
-_The Spectroscope._--To the popular comprehension, the best definition
-of any scientific instrument is to tell what it does. Few things,
-however, so tax the credulity of the uninformed as a description of the
-functions and possibilities of the spectroscope. To state that it tells
-what kind of materials there are in the sun and stars, millions of miles
-away, seems like an unwarranted attack upon one's imagination, and yet
-this is one of the things that the spectroscope does. A few commonplace
-observations will help to explain its action. Every schoolboy has seen
-the play of colors through a triangular prism of glass, as seen in Fig.
-198, and the older generation remembers the old-fashioned candelabras,
-which, with their brilliant pendants of cut glass cast beautiful colored
-patches on the wall, and whose dancing beauties delighted the souls of
-many a boy and girl of fifty years ago. This spread of color is called
-the _spectrum_, and it is with the spectrum that the spectroscope has to
-deal. The white light of the sun is composed of the seven colors: red,
-orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. When a sunbeam falls
-upon a triangular prism of glass the beam is bent from its course at an
-angle, and the different colors of its light are deflected at different
-angles or degrees, and consequently, instead of appearing as white
-light, the beam is spread out into a divergent wedge shape, that
-separates the colors and produces what is called the spectrum. This
-discovery was made by Sir Isaac Newton, in 1675.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 198.--PRISM AND SPECTRUM.]
-
-In 1802 Dr. Wollaston, in repeating Newton's experiments, admitted the
-beam of light through a very narrow slit, instead of a round hole, and
-noticed that the spectrum, as spread out in its colors, was not a
-continuous shading from one color into another, but he found black lines
-crossing the spectrum. These black lines were, in 1814, carefully mapped
-by a German optician, named Fraunhofer, and were found by him to be 576
-in number. The next step toward the spectroscope was made by Simms, an
-optician, in 1830, who placed a lens in front of the prism so that the
-slit was in the focus of the lens, and the light passing through the
-slit first passed through the lens, and then through the prism. This
-lens was called the "Collimating" lens. With these preliminary steps of
-development, Prof. Kirchhoff began in 1859 his great work of mapping the
-solar spectrum, and he, in connection with Prof. Bunsen, found several
-thousand of the dark lines in the spectrum, and laid the foundation of
-_spectrum-analysis_, or the determination of the nature of substances
-from the spectra cast by them when in an incandescent state.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 199.--KIRCHHOFF'S FOUR-PRISM SPECTROSCOPE.]
-
-The form of Kirchhoff's spectroscope is given in Fig. 199. The slit
-forming slide is seen on the far end of the tube A, and is shown in
-enlarged detached view on the right. The collimating lens is contained
-in the tube A. The beam of light entering the slit at the far end of the
-tube A, passes through the lens in that tube, and then passes
-successively through the four triangular prisms on the table, and is
-successively bent by these and thrown in the form of a spectrum into the
-telescopic tube B, and is seen by the eye at the remote end of said
-tube B. The greater the number of prisms the wider is the dispersion of
-the rays and the longer is the spectrum, and the more easily studied are
-the peculiar lines which Wollaston and Fraunhofer found crossing it. It
-was the presence of these black lines on the spectrum which led to the
-development of the spectroscope and established its significance and
-value. The work which the spectroscope does is simply to form an
-extended spectrum, but this spectrum varies with the different kinds of
-light admitted through the slit, the different kinds of light showing
-different arrangement of colored bands and dark lines, and such a
-definite relation between the light of various incandescing elementary
-bodies and their spectra has been found to exist, that the casting of a
-definite spectrum from the sun or stars indicates with certainty the
-presence in the sun or stars of the incandescing element which produces
-that spectrum. This application of the spectroscope is called
-_spectrum-analysis_, and by rendering any substance incandescent in the
-flame of a Bunsen burner, and directing the light of its incandescence
-through the spectroscope, its spectrum gives the basis of intelligent
-chemical identification. So delicate is its test that it has been
-calculated by Profs. Kirchhoff and Bunsen that the eighteen-millionth
-part of a grain of sodium may be detected.
-
-The useful applications of the spectroscope are found principally in
-astronomy and the chemical laboratory, but some industrial applications
-have also been made of it in metallurgical operations, as, for instance,
-in determining the progress of the Bessemer process of making steel, and
-also for testing alloys. Many hitherto unknown metals have also been
-discovered through the agency of the spectroscope, among which may be
-named caesium, rubidium, thallium, and indium.
-
-The field of optics is so large that many interesting branches can
-receive only a casual mention. The polarization of light, first noticed
-by Bartholinus in 1669, and by Huygens in 1678, in experiments in double
-refraction with crystals of Iceland spar, were followed in the
-Nineteenth Century by the discoveries of Malus, Arago, Fresnel,
-Brewster, and Biot. Malus, in 1808, discovered polarization by
-reflection from polished surfaces; Arago, in 1811, discovered colored
-polarization; Nicol, in 1828, invented the prism named after him. The
-Kaleidoscope was invented by Sir David Brewster in 1814, and British
-patent No. 4,136 granted him July 10, 1817, for the same. The reflecting
-stereoscope was invented by Wheatstone in 1838, and the lenticular form,
-as now generally used, was invented by Sir David Brewster in the year
-1849.
-
-Among the more recent inventions of importance in optics may be
-mentioned the Fiske range finder (Patent No. 418,510, December 31,
-1889), for enabling a gunner to direct his cannon upon the target when
-its distance is unknown, or even when obscured by fog or smoke. The
-Beehler solarometer (Patent No. 533,340, January 29, 1895), is also an
-important scientific invention, which has for its object to determine
-the position, or the compass error, of a ship at sea when the horizon is
-obscured. There is also in late years a great variety of entertaining
-and instructive apparatus in photography, and improvements in the
-stereopticon and magic lantern.
-
-The most interesting of the latter is the Kinetoscope, for producing the
-so-called moving pictures, in which the magic lantern and modern results
-in the photographic art, have wrought wonders on the screen. The
-old-fashioned magic lantern projections were interesting and instructive
-object lessons, but modern invention has endowed the pictures with all
-the atmosphere and naturalness of real living scenes, in which the
-figures move and act, and the scenes change just as they do in real
-life.
-
-The foundation principle upon which these moving pictures exist is that
-of persistence of vision. If a succession of views of the same object in
-motion is made, with the moving object in each consecutive figure
-changed just a little, and progressively so in a constantly advancing
-attitude in a definite movement, and those different positions are
-rapidly presented in sequence to the eye in detached views, the figures
-appear to constantly move through the changing position. The theory of
-the duration of visible impressions was taught by Leonardo da Vinci in
-the fifteenth century, and practical advantage has been taken of the
-same in a variety of old-fashioned toys, known as the phenakistoscope,
-thaumatrope, zoetrope, stroboscope, rotascope, etc.
-
-The phenakistoscope was invented by Dr. Roget, and improved by Plateau
-in 1829, and also by Faraday. A circular disk, bearing a circular series
-of figures is mounted on a handle to revolve. The figures following each
-other show consecutively a gradual progression, or change in position.
-The disk has radial slits around its periphery, and is held with its
-figured face before a looking glass. When the reflection is viewed in
-the looking glass through the slits, the figures rapidly passing in
-succession before the slits appear to have the movements of life. The
-thaumatrope, which originated with Sir John Herschel, consists of a thin
-disc, bearing on opposite sides two associated objects, such as a bird
-and a cage, or a horse and a man. This, when rotated about its diameter,
-to bring alternately the bird and cage into view, appears to bring the
-bird into the cage, or to put the rider on the horse's back, as the case
-may be. The zoetrope, described in the _Philosophical Magazine_,
-January, 1834, employs the general principle of the phenakistoscope,
-except that, instead of a disc before a looking glass, an upright
-rotating drum or cylinder is employed, and has its figures on the
-inside, and is viewed, when rotating, through a succession of vertical
-slits in the drum.
-
-The earliest patents found in this art are the British patent to Shaw,
-No. 1,260, May 22, 1860; United States patents, Sellers, No. 31,357,
-February 5, 1861, and Lincoln, No. 64,117, April 23, 1867. In Brown's
-patent, No. 93,594, August 10, 1869, the magic lantern was applied to
-the moving pictures, and Muybridge's photos of trotting horses in 1872,
-followed by instantaneous photography, which enabled a great number of
-views to be taken of moving objects in rapid succession, laid the
-foundation for the modern art.
-
-[Illustration: SHOOTING GLASS BALLS.
-
-FIRING DISAPPEARING GUN.
-
-FIG. 200.]
-
-In Fig. 200 is shown a succession of instantaneous photographs of a
-sportsman shooting a glass ball, and the firing of a disappearing gun. A
-multiplicity of views extending through all the phases of these
-movements, when successively presented in order, before a magic lantern
-projecting apparatus, gives to the eye the striking semblance of real
-movements. In practice these views are taken by special cameras, and are
-printed on long transparent ribbons that contain many hundreds, and even
-thousands of the views. Edison's Kinetoscope is covered by patent No.
-493,426, March 14, 1893, and his instrument known as the Vitascope, is
-one of those used for projecting the views upon a screen. In Fig. 201 a
-similar instrument, called the Biograph, is shown, in which the seeming
-approach of the locomotive makes those who witness it shudder with the
-apparent danger.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 201.--BIOGRAPH IN THE THEATRE.]
-
-To secure the best results, the ribbon with its views should remain with
-a figure the longest possible time between the light and the lens, and
-the shifting to the next view should be as nearly instantaneous as
-possible. This problem has been admirably solved by C. F. Jenkins, who,
-in 1894, devised means for accomplishing it, and was one of the first,
-if not the first, to successfully project the views on a large screen
-adapted to public exhibitions. His apparatus is shown in Fig. 202. An
-electric motor, seen on the left, drives, through a belt and pulley, a
-countershaft, and also through a worm gear turns another shaft parallel
-to the countershaft, and bearing a sprocket pulley, whose teeth
-penetrate little marginal holes in the ribbon of views, and, drawing it
-down from the reel above, deliver it to the receiving reel on the right.
-On the end of the countershaft, just in front of the sprocket wheel, is
-a revolving crank pin or spool, which intermittently beats down the
-ribbon of views, causing the latter to advance through the vertical
-guides in front of the lens by a succession of jerks. This holds each
-view for a maximum period before the lens, and then suddenly jerks the
-ribbon to bring the next view into position. In the Kinetoscope the
-animated pictures not only present the movements of life, but, by a
-combination with the phonograph, the audible speech, or music fitting
-the occasion, is also presented at the same time, making a marvelous
-simulation of real life to both the eye and the ear.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 202.--JENKINS' PHANTASCOPE.]
-
-Among the latest promises of the inventor is the "Distance Seer," or
-telectroscope, which, it is said, enables one to see at any distance
-over electric wires, just as one may telegraph or telephone over them.
-The surprises of the Nineteenth Century have been so many and so
-astounding, and the principles of this invention are so far correct,
-that it would be dogmatic to say that this hope may not be realized.
-
-To the sum total of human knowledge no department of science has
-contributed more than that of optics. With the telescope man has climbed
-into the limitless space of the heavens, and ascertained the infinite
-vastness of the universe. The flaming sun which warms and vitalizes the
-world, is found more than ninety millions of miles away. The nearest
-fixed stars visible to the naked eye are more than 200,000 times the
-distance of the sun, and their light, traveling at the rate of 190,000
-miles a second, requires more than three years to reach us. Although so
-far away, their size, distance, and constitution have been ascertained,
-and their movements are scheduled with such accuracy that the going and
-coming thereof are brought to the exactness of a railroad time table.
-The astronomer predicts an eclipse, and on the minute the spheres swing
-into line, verifying, beyond all doubt, the correctness of the laws
-predicated for their movements. The wonders of the telescope, the
-microscope, and the spectroscope are, however, but suggestions of what
-we may still expect, for science abundantly teaches that the eye may yet
-see what to the eye is now invisible, and that light exists in what may
-now seem darkness.
-
-No man may say with certainty what thought was uppermost in Goethe's
-mind when, grappling in the final struggle with the King of Terrors, he
-exclaimed "Mehr licht!" It may be that it was but the wish to dispel the
-gathering gloom of his dimming senses, or perchance the unfolding of an
-illuminated vision of a brighter threshold, but certain it is that no
-words so voice the aspirations of an enlightened humanity as that one
-cry of "More light!"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIV.
-
-PHOTOGRAPHY.
-
- EXPERIMENTS OF WEDGEWOOD AND DAVY--NIÉPCE'S HELIOGRAPHY--DAGUERRE
- AND THE DAGUERREOTYPE--FOX TALBOT MAKES FIRST PROOFS FROM
- NEGATIVES--SIR JOHN HERSCHEL INTRODUCES GLASS PLATES--THE COLLODION
- PROCESS--SILVER AND CARBON PRINTS--AMBROTYPES--EMULSIONS--DRY
- PLATES--THE KODAK CAMERA--THE PLATINOTYPE--PHOTOGRAPHY IN COLORS--
- PANORAMA CAMERAS--PHOTO-ENGRAVING AND PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHY--HALF TONE
- ENGRAVING.
-
-"Art's proudest triumph is to imitate nature."
-
-
-When nature paints she does so with the brush of beauty, dipped in the
-pigment of truth. The tender affection of a ray of light touches the
-heart of a rose, brings a blush to its cheek, and life, becoming the
-bride of chemical affinity, blooms into surpassing beauty and
-loveliness. Photography is closely allied to nature's painting, for just
-as light brings into existence nature's living beauties, so does light
-fix, preserve, and perpetuate these beauties by the same subtile and
-mysterious agency of a quickened chemical affinity. Photography is both
-an art and a science, and as such is both beautiful and true. It is an
-art intimately associated with the tenderest affections of the human
-heart in keeping alive its precious memories. By it the youthful
-sweetheart of long ago, the loving face of the departed mother, and the
-cherished form of the dead child are brought back to us in familiar
-presence, while our great men have become the every-day friends and
-ideals of the common people. What an enrichment and satisfaction it
-would have added to our lives if the art had been coeval with history,
-and all the world's exalted scenes and faces had come to us through the
-camera with the knowledge of absolute truth and fidelity. But not only
-in portraiture is photography a great art, for it catches the stately
-pose of the mountain, the grandeur of the sea, the beauty of the forest,
-or the majesty of Niagara Falls, and brings them all home to us, even to
-the vision of the bed-ridden invalid. The camera alike records the
-secrets of the starry heavens and the bacteria of the microscopic world.
-Hanging on the tail of a kite it photographs the face of mother earth,
-and, acting quicker than the lightning, it catches and defines the path
-of that erratic flash. It plays the part of a private detective, and its
-testimony in court is never doubted. The architect, engineer, and
-illustrator find it in constant requisition. By the aid of the Roentgen
-Rays, it locates a bullet in a wounded soldier, and takes a picture of
-one's spinal column. In fact, it sees and records things both visible
-and invisible, acts with the rapidity of thought, and is never mistaken.
-
-The art of photography, named from the two Greek words [Greek: phôtos
-graphê] (the writing of light), is a comparatively new one, and belongs
-entirely to the Nineteenth Century. It was known to the ancient
-alchemists that "horn silver" (fused chloride of silver) would blacken
-on exposure to light, but there was neither any clear understanding of
-the nature of this action, nor any application made of it prior to the
-year 1800. We now know that the art of photography is dependent upon the
-actinic effect of certain of the rays of the spectrum upon certain
-chemical salts, notably those of silver and chromic acid, in connection
-with organic matter. The rays which have this effect are the blue and
-violet rays at one end of the spectrum, and even invisible rays beyond
-the violet, the red and yellow rays having little or no such actinic
-effect.
-
-That which made photography possible for the Nineteenth Century was the
-philosophical observation of Scheele, in 1777, upon the decomposing
-influence of light on the salts of silver, and the superior activity of
-the violet rays of the spectrum over the others in producing this
-effect. In 1801 Ritter proved the existence of such invisible rays
-beyond the violet end of the visible spectrum by the power they
-possessed of blackening chloride of silver.
-
-_Earliest Application of Principles._--The first attempt to render the
-blackening of silver salts by light available for artistic purposes, was
-made by Wedgewood and Davy in 1802. A sheet of white paper was saturated
-with a solution of nitrate of silver, and the shadow of the figure
-intended to be copied was projected upon it. Where the shadow fell the
-paper remained white, while the surrounding exposed parts darkened under
-the sun's rays. There was, however, no means of fixing such a picture,
-and in time the white parts would also turn black.
-
-_Introduction of Camera._--The camera obscura, a very old invention
-designed for the use of artists in copying from nature, was at a very
-early period brought into this art, but it was found that the chemicals
-employed by Wedgewood and Davy were not sufficiently sensitive to be
-affected by its subdued light. In 1814, however, Joseph Nicéphore
-Niépce, of Chalôns, invented a process that utilized the camera, and
-which was called "Heliography," or sun drawing. In 1827 he discarded
-the use of silver salts, and employed a resin known as "Bitumen of
-Judea" (asphaltum). A plate was coated with a solution of this resin and
-exposed. The light acting upon the plate rendered the resin insoluble
-where exposed, and left it soluble under the shadows. Hence, when
-treated with an oleaginous solvent the shadows dissolved out, and the
-lights, represented by the undissolved resin, formed a picture, which
-was in reality a permanent negative. The process, however, was slow,
-requiring some hours.
-
-_The Daguerreotype._--In 1829 Niépce and Daguerre became partners, and
-in 1839, after the death of the elder Niépce, the process named after
-Daguerre was perfected (British patent No. 8,194, of 1839). He abandoned
-the resin as a sensitive material, and went back to the salts of silver.
-He employed a polished silver surfaced plate, and exposed it to the
-action of the vapors of iodine, so as to form a layer of iodide of
-silver upon the surface, which rendered it very sensitive. By a short
-exposure in the camera an effect was produced, not visible to the eye,
-but appearing when the plate was subjected to the vapor of mercury. This
-process reduced the time required from hours to minutes, and as it
-involved the production of a latent image, which was subsequently
-developed by a chemical agent, it represented practically the beginning
-of the photographic art as practiced to-day. Daguerre sought also to
-permanently fix his pictures, but this was accomplished only imperfectly
-until 1839, when Sir John Herschel made known the properties of the
-hyposulphites for dissolving the salts of silver. In 1844 Hunt
-introduced the protosulphate of iron as a developer.
-
-_Production of Positive Proofs from Negatives._--This was first done by
-Mr. Fox Talbot, of England, between 1834 and 1839. In his first
-communication to the Royal Society, in January, 1839, it was directed
-that the paper should be dipped first in a solution of chloride of
-sodium, and then in nitrate of silver, which, by reaction, produced, on
-the face of the paper, chloride of silver, which was more sensitive to
-the light than nitrate of silver. The object to be reproduced was laid
-in contact with the prepared paper, and exposed to the light until a
-copy was produced which was a negative, having the lights and shadows
-reversed. A second sheet was then prepared, and the first or negative
-impression was laid upon it, and used as a stencil to produce a second
-print which, by a reversal of the lights and shadows, formed an exact
-reproduction of the original. In 1841, British patent No. 8,842 was
-obtained by Mr. Talbot, for what he called the "Calotype," and which was
-afterward known as the "Talbotype." A sheet of paper was first coated
-with iodide of silver, by soaking it alternately in iodide of potassium
-and nitrate of silver, and was then washed with a solution of gallic
-acid containing nitrate of silver, by which the sensitiveness to light
-was increased. An exposure of some seconds or minutes, according to the
-brightness of the light, produced an impression upon the plate, which,
-when treated with a fresh portion of gallic acid and nitrate of silver,
-developed into the image. After being fixed it formed a negative from
-which any number of prints might be obtained. The Talbot process
-represented a great advance in this art. Glass plates to retain the
-sensitive film were introduced by Sir John Herschel in 1839, and were a
-great improvement over the paper negatives, which latter, from lack of
-transparency and uniformity in texture, had prevented fine definition
-and sharpness of outline. Blue printing was also invented by Sir John
-Herschel in 1842, and he was the first to apply the term "negative" in
-photography. In 1848 M. Niépce de St. Victor, a nephew of Daguerre's
-former partner, applied to the glass a film of albumen to receive the
-sensitive silver coating.
-
-_Collodion Process._--The most important step in the preparation of the
-negative was the application of collodion. This is a solution of
-pyroxilin in ether and alcohol, which rapidly evaporates and leaves a
-thin film adhering to the glass. M. Le Gray, of Paris, was the first to
-suggest collodion for this purpose, but Mr. Scott Archer, of London, in
-1851, was the first to carry it out practically. A clean plate of glass
-is coated with collodion sensitized with iodides of potassium, etc., and
-is then immersed in a solution of nitrate of silver. Metallic silver
-takes the place of potassium, forming insoluble iodide of silver on the
-film. The plate is then exposed and the latent image developed by an
-aqueous solution of pyrogallic acid, or protosulphate of iron. When
-sufficiently developed, the plate is washed, and the image fixed by
-dissolving the unacted-upon iodide of silver with a solution of cyanide
-of potassium or hyposulphite of soda. This completed the negative or
-stencil from which the positives are printed by passing rays of light
-through it upon sensitive paper.
-
-_The Ambrotype_ succeeded the Daguerreotype, and was produced by making
-a very thin negative by under exposure on glass, using the collodion
-process, and, after drying, backing the glass with black asphaltum
-varnish or black velvet, causing the dense portions of the negative to
-appear white by reflected light, and the transparent portions black.
-Such pictures were quickly made, and were much in vogue forty years ago,
-but are now obsolete. A modification of the ambrotype, however, still
-survives in what is known as the "tin-type" or "ferro-type." In the
-tin-type the collodion picture is made directly upon a very thin iron
-plate, covered with black enamel, which both protects the plate from
-the action of the chemicals in the bath, and forms the equivalent of the
-black background of the ambrotype.
-
-_Silver Printing._--A sheet of paper, previously treated with a solution
-of chloride of sodium and dried, is sensitized in an alkaline bath of
-nitrate of silver. When the paper is exposed under a negative, the light
-through the transparent parts of the negative reduces the silver,
-converting the chloride, it is supposed, into a metallic sub-chloride of
-silver which becomes dark or black, and constitutes the main portion of
-the picture. The image is then fixed by dissolving out the chloride of
-silver unaltered by light in a bath of hyposulphite of soda. After
-fixation, the image is well washed in several changes of water to
-eliminate all traces of the hyposulphite of soda and prevent the
-subsequent fading of the darkened portions of the picture and the
-yellowing of the whites. If the printed image is immediately fixed, it
-will have a red color. To avoid this it is washed first in water and
-then immersed in a chloride of gold toning bath and fixed.
-
-_The Platinotype Process_ is one in which potassium chloroplatinite and
-ferric oxalate are converted by light into the ferrous state, and
-metallic platinum is reduced when in contact with the ferrous oxalate of
-potash solution. The unacted upon portions are dissolved out by dilute
-hydrochloric acid, leaving a black permanent image. This process is
-characterized by simplicity, sensitiveness in action, permanence of
-print, and a peculiarly soft and artistic quality in the picture.
-British Patent No. 2,011, of 1873, to Willis, is the first disclosure of
-the platinotype.
-
-_Carbon Printing_ is a process in which lampblack or other
-indestructible pigment is mixed with the chemicals to render the
-photograph more stable against fading from the gradual decomposition of
-its elements. Mungo Ponton, in 1838, discovered the sensitive quality of
-potassium bichromate, which led up to carbon printing. Becquerel and
-Poitevin, in Paris, in 1855, were the first to experiment in this
-direction, and Fargier, Swan, and Johnson were successors who made
-valuable contributions.
-
-_Emulsions._--A photographic emulsion is a viscous liquid, such as
-collodion or a solution of gelatine, containing a sensitive silver salt
-with which the glass plate is at once coated, instead of coating the
-plate with collodion or gelatine, and then immersing it in a sensitizing
-bath. The desirability of emulsions was recognized as early as 1850 by
-Gustave Le Gray, and in 1853 by Gaudin. Collodion emulsion with bromide
-of silver was invented by Sayce and made known in 1864. In 1871 Maddox
-published his first notice of gelatine emulsion, and in 1873 the
-gelatine emulsions of Burgess were advertised for sale. In 1878 Mr.
-Charles Bennett brought out gelatino-bromide emulsion of extreme
-sensitiveness, by the application of heat, and from this time gelatine
-began to supersede all other organic media.
-
-_Dry Plates_ were a great improvement over the old wet process, with its
-tray for baths, its bottles of chemicals, and other accessories.
-Especially was this the case with out of door work, which heretofore had
-involved the carrying along of much unwieldy and inconvenient
-paraphernalia. With the dry plate process only the camera and the plates
-were needed, and this step marks the beginning of the spread of the art
-among amateurs, and the great snap-shot era of photography, growing into
-a distinct movement about the year 1888, has since spread over the
-entire world. The first practical dry plate process (collodion-albumen)
-was published in 1855 by Dr. J. M. Taupenot, a French scientist.
-Russell, in 1862; Sayce, in 1864; Captain Abney, for photographing the
-transit of Venus in 1874; Rev. Canon Beechey, of England, in 1875; Prof.
-John W. Draper, of the University of New York, and the Eastman Walker
-Company, of Rochester, were the chief promoters of dry plate
-photography. The practical introduction began about 1862 with the
-application of the alkaline developer.
-
-The progress of the photographic art may be approximately noted as
-follows:
-
- _Process._ _Time Required._ _Introduced._
- Heliography 6 hours' exposure 1814
- Daguerreotype 30 minutes' exposure 1839
- Calotype or Talbotype 3 minutes' exposure 1841
- Collodion process 10 seconds' exposure 1851
- Collodion emulsion (dry plate) 15 seconds' exposure 1864
- Gelatine emulsion (dry plate) 1 second exposure 1878
-
-_Mechanical Development._--The photographic camera is but an adaptation
-of the optical principles of the old camera obscura, which has been
-credited to various persons, including Roger Bacon in 1297, Baptista
-Porta about 1569, and others. The essential elements of the camera
-obscura are a dark chamber, having in one end a perforation containing a
-lens, and opposite it on the back of the chamber a screen upon which an
-image of the object is projected by the lens for the purpose of enabling
-it to be directly traced by a pencil. The photographic camera,
-introduced by Daguerre in 1839, adds to the camera obscura some means
-for adjusting the distance between the lens and the screen on which the
-image falls. This was accomplished by making the dark chamber adjustable
-in length by forming it in two telescopic sections sliding over each
-other, and in later years by the well-known bellows arrangement. A
-luminous image of any object placed in front of the lens is thrown in an
-inverted position upon the screen, which is of ground glass, to permit
-the image to be seen in focusing. When the proper focus on this ground
-glass is obtained a sensitive plate is put in the plane of this screen
-to receive the image.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 203.--KODAK.]
-
-It is not possible to trace all the steps of development of the camera
-which have brought it to its present perfection. Most of the
-improvements have had relation to the lens in correcting chromatic and
-spherical aberration, and in shutters for regulating exposure, in stops
-for shutting out the oblique rays and holders for the sensitive plate.
-
-The "Iris" shutter, so-called from its resemblance in function to the
-iris of the eye, consists of a series of tangentially arranged plates
-which open or close a central opening symmetrically from all sides.
-
-The ordinary camera of the photographic artist is too familiar an object
-to require special illustration. It has been looked into by the rich and
-the poor, and the high and the low, all over the whole world. Between
-the traveling outfit, and the "look pleasant, please!" of the
-peripatetic artist, and the handsome studios of the cities, it is hard
-to find an individual in the civilized world who has not posed before
-its lens. Through its agency the great man of the day has found himself
-in evidence everywhere; the country maiden has many times experienced
-the delicious thrill of satisfied vanity as she posed before it, and the
-superstitious savage is paralyzed with fear lest the mysterious thing
-should steal his soul.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 204.--FOLDING KODAK.]
-
-In 1851 the first instantaneous views were made by Mr. Cady and Mr.
-Beckers, of New York, and also by Mr. Talbot, who employed as a flash
-light a spark from a Leyden jar. In 1864 magnesium light was employed by
-Mr. Brothers, of Manchester, for photographic purposes, and about 1876-8
-Van der Weyde made use of the electric light for the same purpose.
-
-The _roller slide_, or roll film, was invented by A. J. Melhuish, in
-England, in 1854 (British patent No. 1,139, of 1854). The films were,
-however, of paper. In 1856 Norris produced sensitized dry films of
-collodion or gelatine (British patent No. 2,029, of 1856). In later
-years apparatus for utilizing the roll film has been greatly improved
-and extensively applied by Eastman, Walker & Co., of Rochester, N. Y.
-
-About 1888 a new thing in the photographic world made its appearance. It
-was a little black leather-covered rectangular box, about six inches
-long, with a sort of blind eye at one end closed by a cylindrical
-shutter, substantially as seen in Fig. 203. This shutter was wound up by
-a spring operated by a pull cord. In the back of the box was a film or
-ribbon of sensitized paper wound upon one spool, and unwinding therefrom
-and winding onto another spool, and being distended as it passed so as
-to form a flat surface which was directly in rear of the lens. A thumb
-piece or key on the top, and a push button on the side, were the only
-suggestions of the operative mechanism within. When the button was
-pressed the shutter for an instant passed from in front of the lens, and
-as quickly covered it again, but in this brief interval an image had
-been flashed upon the sensitive ribbon or film, and a snap-shot picture
-was taken. By a simple movement of the thumb piece or key, the receiving
-roll was made to take up the exposed section of the sensitive film and
-bring another section into the range of the lens, for a repetition of
-the operation. This little instrument was slung in a case looking like a
-cartridge box, and its sensitive roll was able to receive 100 successive
-pictures. When the roll was exhausted, it was removed and developed in a
-dark room. The device was placed upon the market by the Eastman Company,
-and it was called the "Kodak." The advertisement of the company, that
-"You press the button and we do the rest," was soon realized to be
-founded in fact, and in a short while the great era of snap-shot
-photography had set in. To-day this form of camera is a part of the
-luggage of every tourist, traveler, scientist, and dilletante. In fact,
-it has become the familiar scientific toy of man, woman, and child,
-interesting, instructive, and useful to all. In Fig. 204 is shown a
-modern form of Kodak, which is made in various sizes and is foldable for
-compact and convenient portability.
-
-A very convenient and useful development in films is to be found in the
-cartridge system, by which the film may be placed in and removed from
-the camera in broad daylight. The film has throughout its length a
-backing of black paper which extends far enough beyond the ends of the
-film to allow it to be unwound, so far, in making connection with the
-roll holder, without exposing the film to light, and also to allow it to
-be removed without exposure to light, after all the exposures have been
-made.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 205.--HAND PREMO.]
-
-Among the many other ingenious and useful hand cameras may be mentioned
-the "Premo," made by the Rochester Optical Company, and shown in Fig.
-205. The "Premo" is arranged for either snap-shot or time exposure, is
-adapted to be either held in the hand or mounted upon a tripod, and is
-furnished for use either with glass plates or roll films. In Fig. 206 is
-shown the "Premo" for stereoscopic work, in which two pictures are taken
-at once, a sufficient distance from each other to produce the effect of
-binocular vision and give the appearance of relief when viewed through
-the stereoscope. Brett's British patent No. 1,629, of 1853, appears to
-be the earliest description of a stereoscopic camera.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 206.--STEREOSCOPIC CAMERA.]
-
-There have been 2,000 United States patents granted in photography, most
-of which have been taken in the past thirty years, and great efficiency
-and detail in both the chemical and mechanical branches of the art have
-been obtained.
-
-The useful applications of the art have been numerous and varied.
-_Portrait making_ is probably the largest field. This was first
-successfully accomplished in 1839 by Professor Morse, of telegraph fame,
-working with Prof. John W. Draper, of the University of New York.
-
-_Celestial Photography_ began with Prof. Draper's photograph of the moon
-in March, 1840, and Prof. Bond, of Cambridge, Mass., in 1851. In 1872
-Prof. Draper photographed the spectra of the stars, and in 1880-81 the
-nebulæ of Orion, and in 1887 the Photographic Congress of Astronomers of
-the World, organized in Paris, began the work of photographing the
-entire heavens. In late years notable work has been done at the Lick
-Observatory by Prof. Holden. In 1861 Mr. Thompson, of Weymouth,
-photographed the bottom of the sea, and Prof. O. N. Rood, of Troy, N.
-Y., the same year described his application of it to the microscope. In
-1871 criminals were ordered to be photographed in England, and in
-America the Rogues' Gallery became an institution in New York as early
-as 1857, ambrotypes being first used. In 1876 the Adams Cabinet for
-holding and displaying the photos was invented. To-day the New York
-collection amounts to nearly 30,000, while that of the National Bureau
-of Identification at Chicago approximates 100,000. It is a striking
-illustration of the law of compensation that the counterfeiter who
-invokes the aid of photography to copy a bank note is, by the same
-agency of his photo in the Rogues' Gallery, identified and convicted.
-
-_Photography in Colors_ has been the goal of artists and scientists in
-this field for many years. Robt. Hunt, in England, in 1843, and Edmond
-Becquerel, in France, in 1848, made evanescent photographs in colors,
-but little progress was made until about the last decade of the
-Nineteenth Century. Franz Veress in 1890, F. E. Ives (United States
-patent No. 432,530, July 22, 1890), W. Kurtz (United States patent No.
-498,396, May 30, 1893), Gabriel Lippmann in 1892 and 1896, Ives in 1892,
-M. Lumière in 1893, Dr. Joly in 1895, M. Villedien Chassagne, and Dr.
-Adrien, M. Dansac and M. Bennetto, all in 1897, represent active workers
-in this field.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 207.--PANORAM-KODAK.]
-
-Among recent developments of the camera may be mentioned the wide angle
-lens, which permits larger images to be made on the plate from small
-near-by objects, and the telephotographic camera, which gives a large
-image of remote objects, such as an enemy's fort, and the panorama
-camera, which is designed to cover a broad field. For this purpose the
-lens is movably mounted for a semi-circular swing, and the image is
-flashed across a curved film in the case. The Eastman Panoram-Kodak,
-seen in Fig. 207, is an external illustration of this type, and in Fig.
-207A is shown a sectional view of another make of panorama camera which
-clearly shows the internal construction.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 207A.--SECTIONAL PLAN OF PANORAMIC CAMERA.]
-
-As allied branches of the photographic art, photo-engraving,
-photo-lithographing, and half-tone engraving are important developments
-of the Nineteenth Century.
-
-Photo-engraving is a process by means of which photographs may be used
-in forming plates from which prints in ink can be taken. The process
-depends upon the property possessed by bichromate of potassium, and
-other chemicals, of rendering insoluble under the action of light,
-gelatine or some similar substance. A picture is thus produced on a
-metal plate, and the blank spaces are etched out by acid, leaving the
-lines in relief as printing surfaces. When the operation is reversed,
-and only the _darks_ are etched in _intaglio_, to be filled with ink, as
-in copper-plate engraving, it is called photo-gravure. Mungo Ponton, in
-1839, discovered the sensitive quality of a sheet of paper treated with
-bichromate of potash. In 1840 Becquerel discovered that the sizing had
-an important function, and Fox Talbot, in 1853, discovered and utilized
-the insolubility of gelatine exposed to light in presence of bichromate
-of potash. In 1854 Paul Pretsch observed that the exposed parts of the
-gelatine did not swell in water. One of the first suggestions of
-photo-engraving appears in the British patent No. 13,736, of 1851, of
-James Palmer. In recent times great perfection in details has been
-obtained by Mr. Moss, of the Photo-Engraving Company, and others. The
-Albert-type and Woodbury-type are early modifications of this art.
-
-In _photo-lithography_ the photograph is transferred to the stone, and
-the latter then used to print from, as in lithography. The operation
-consists: 1, in making the photographic negative; 2, printing with it
-upon transfer paper coated with gelatine and bichromate of potash: 3,
-the transfer paper is then given a coat of insoluble fatty transfer ink
-from an inking stone; 4, all ink on surfaces not reached by the light
-being on a soluble surface is washed off, leaving the insoluble lines
-acted upon by light forming the picture; 5, the washed transfer sheet is
-then applied to the stone, and the remaining inked lines of the design
-are transferred to the stone; 6, the stone with transferred lines will
-now receive ink from the ink rolls on these lines, and repels ink from
-all other surfaces, which latter are made repellent by being kept
-constantly wet, as in ordinary lithography. The first attempts in this
-art were by Dixon, of Jersey City, and Lewis, of Dublin, in 1841, who
-used resins. Joseph Dixon, in 1854, was the first to use organic matter
-and bichromate of potash upon stone to produce a photo-lithograph. In
-1859 J. W. Osborne patented in Australia, and in 1861 in the United
-States, a transfer process which gave such great impetus to the art that
-he may be considered its founder and chief promotor. His United States
-patents are No. 32,668, June 25, 1861, and No. 33,172, August 27, 1861.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 208.--PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY.]
-
-For photo-lithography only line drawing, type print, or script, without
-any smooth shading, can be employed. The most extensive application of
-photo-lithography is in the reproduction of the Patent Office drawings,
-which amount to about 60,000 sheets weekly. The contracting firm, which
-is probably the largest in the world, also prints each week by
-photo-lithography 7,000 copies of the _Patent Office Gazette_, of about
-165 pages each, including both drawings and claims, and also reproduces
-specifications without errors or proof reading, thus saving about 200
-per cent. in cost over type setting. This art is also largely employed
-for printing maps, and the reproduction of the pages of books by this
-process has flooded the stores and news stands with cheap literature.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 209.--DIAGRAM SHOWING PRODUCTION OF DOT.]
-
-_Half-tone engraving_ enables a photograph to be reproduced on a
-printing press, and for faithfulness in reproduction and low cost has
-revolutionized the art of illustrating, as nearly all books, magazines,
-and newspapers are now illustrated by this process. Before its
-introduction it was not possible to reproduce cheaply in printers' ink
-shaded pictures like photographs, brush drawings, paintings, etc.
-Half-tone engraving renders it possible to thus print on a press, with
-printers' ink, reproductions of photographs or any shaded picture, in
-which the soft shadows fade away in depth to white by an imperceptible
-tenuity. It does so by breaking up the soft shadows into minute stipples
-which form inkable printing faces in relief, by the interposition of a
-fine reticulated screen between the camera lens and the sensitive plate.
-This forms a sort of stencil negative through which the copper plate is
-etched, which latter is thus converted into a relief plate whose raised
-surfaces left by the etching may receive ink and print like an ordinary
-relief plate. By making the screen lines very fine (80 to 250 meshes to
-the inch), the visible effect of the shading is so far preserved that
-the photograph may be reproduced in printers' ink with but little
-depreciation. At first, bolting cloth was used for the screen, but at
-present two glass plates, with closely ruled lines, laid crosswise upon
-each other, form the screen. A characteristic distinction of half-tone
-work is the regularly stippled surface, formed by the stenciling out of
-a portion of the picture by the screen, which may be easily seen with
-any magnifying glass. It is called half-tone process because half of the
-tones or shadows are preserved, the other half being stenciled out. The
-use of gauze screens was first described by Fox Talbot in British patent
-No. 565, October 29, 1852.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 210.--TRIMMING FILM.]
-
-In the making of a half-tone negative, the photograph, painting, or wash
-drawing which is to be reproduced, is set up in front of the camera,
-which is arranged on an inclined runway, as seen in Fig. 208, and an
-exposure is made on a plate prepared by the wet collodion process (see
-page 304). The shadows of the picture are broken up into stipples or
-dots by the interposition of a cross-lined screen arranged in the plate
-holder between the lens and the sensitive plate, so that the picture
-taken is "half-toned" or stippled. Fig. 209 illustrates the relation of
-the parts, in which the picture to be copied is seen on the right, the
-camera lens in the middle, and the cross-lined screen on the left in
-front of the sensitive plate.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 211.--STRIPPING FILM.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 212.--PRINTING BY ELECTRIC LIGHT.]
-
-The image on the plate is then developed and fixed, and in order to
-secure a printed image exactly like the copy as to right and left
-position it is necessary to reverse the negative. This is done by
-cutting the film square, as seen in Fig. 210, and then peeling it off
-the glass, as seen at Fig. 211, and transferring it to another glass
-plate in reversed relation. The copper printing plate is produced as
-follows: The plate is first polished, as seen at the top of Fig. 213,
-and is then sensitized with a solution of organic matter and an alkaline
-bichromate. The face of the reversed negative is laid flat against and
-in direct contact with the face of the sensitized copper plate, and
-tightly held thereto by the screw clamps of the half tone printing
-frame. The printing on the sensitized copper face through the stippled
-or half-tone negative is then effected either by daylight or by the
-electric light. The application of the electric light for this purpose
-is shown in Fig. 212. The copper plate is then taken out and subjected
-to the three lower operations seen in Fig. 213. It is first developed
-under a stream of water from a faucet, seen on the left, and is then
-taken in a pair of pliers and held over a gas stove, as seen at the
-bottom, to "burn-in" the image, and then placed in a tray containing an
-etching bath of chloride of iron seen on the right, by which the copper
-is eaten away around the little stipples, and the latter, representing
-the half tones of the original picture, are left raised, or in relief,
-to form the inkable surfaces of the printing plate. So fine are these
-stipples, however, that the picture is to the eye perfectly reproduced.
-The several views illustrating this process are made in this way, the
-lines of the reticulated screen being 175 to the inch. The plate is next
-subjected to the mechanical operation of "routing out" or cutting away
-the undesirable portions by a routing machine, seen in Fig. 214. It then
-receives further mechanical treatment to correct imperfections and
-finish its edges, and is finally mounted upon a block ready for the
-printer.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 213.--TREATMENT OF COPPER PLATE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 214.--ROUTER AT WORK ON HALF-TONE PLATE.]
-
-The most striking application made of photography in recent years is in
-the production of so-called moving pictures, in which a series of
-photographic figures thrown upon the screen have all the motion of
-animated scenes which have been caught and imprisoned by the swiftly
-acting and never failing memory of the camera, to be again turned loose
-in active play through the Kinetoscope or Biograph. Perhaps the most
-valuable contribution to science at the end of the century made by this
-art is in surgery, for photographing through opaque bodies by the aid of
-the Roentgen rays, but for the latter subjects treatment in separate
-chapters must be reserved.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXV.
-
-THE ROENTGEN OR X-RAYS.
-
- GEISSLER TUBES--VACUUM TUBES OF CROOKES, HITTORF AND LENARD--THE
- CATHODE RAY--ROENTGEN'S GREAT DISCOVERY IN 1895--X-RAY APPARATUS--
- SALVIONI'S CRYPTOSCOPE--EDISON'S FLUOROSCOPE--THE FLUOROMETER--SUN
- BURN FROM X-RAYS--USES OF X-RAYS.
-
-
-The majority of people have been accustomed to regard light as something
-to be excluded and controlled by opaque screens just as effectively as
-rain is excluded by a tin roof, or cold is kept out by a brick wall. The
-shady retreat furnished relief from the garish day to the primitive man,
-and the opaque shades and Venetian blinds of modern civilization exclude
-the excess of light at our windows. Sunshine and shadow have, in fact,
-been correlated conditions to the ordinary observation of man since time
-began. The last few years of the Nineteenth Century, however, were to
-witness the discovery of a new kind of light ray which, in its behavior,
-subverted all previous conception of the nature and action of light. It
-was a species of electric light, which we are accustomed to regard as
-brilliant, but this light ray was invisible to the eye. It could not be
-refracted or bent from its course by a prism or lens, and it was so
-subtle, penetrating and insidious, that it could not be barred out like
-sunlight, but passed readily through many opaque substances, such as
-wood, flesh tissue, paper (even a book of 1,000 pages), as well as some
-of the metals. The lighter the weight of the substance, or less its
-density, the easier these rays passed through it, or the more
-transparent such bodies were to the rays. The heavier metals, like
-platinum, gold and lead, were practically opaque, or allowed none of the
-rays to pass through them, while the very light metal aluminum was about
-as transparent to these rays as was glass to ordinary light, and for
-that reason this metal could form window panes for such rays, while
-excluding other light. Most organic substances are transparent or
-semi-transparent to these rays, and hence such rays readily pass through
-the body of an individual, being only intercepted in part by the denser
-parts of the anatomy, such as the bones, so that a man in such light no
-longer casts a well-defined shadow of his outline, but the shadow
-disclosed is that of a skeleton, by virtue of the greater density of the
-bones. Any object of higher density, such as a ring upon the finger,
-clearly establishes its shadow by virtue of its greater density.
-Likewise, any foreign object in the body, such as a bullet from a
-gun-shot wound, or a foreign body accidentally swallowed, is perfectly
-disclosed and located by the shadow which it casts. As these light rays
-have been characterized as invisible, it may be difficult to understand
-how invisible rays can cast a visible shadow, and it should be here
-stated that when these unseen rays fall upon certain chemical substances
-the latter are made to glow with a peculiar fluorescence, and a screen
-made of such fluorescing materials will light up where the rays fall
-upon it, and remain dark at the points where the rays are intercepted by
-a substance opaque to such rays, thus outlining a shadow.
-
-Not only do these light rays in passing through the body tissues
-(transparent to them) cast a shadow of the bones or any foreign objects,
-but by the application of photography to these shadow pictures a species
-of photograph, called a radiograph, or skiagraph, may be taken, and thus
-any foreign body, such as a bullet, may be definitely located in the
-human body and quickly extracted, without the element of doubt which
-beset the old method of diagnosis, which, at best, was only intelligent
-guessing. Not only are foreign bodies so located, but the fractures of
-the bones may also be accurately observed, studied and adjusted. Stone
-in the bladder may be discovered, and the condition and movements of the
-heart and lungs ascertained.
-
-This new kind of light ray was discovered November 8, 1895, by Prof. W.
-C. Roentgen, of the Royal University of Wurzburg, and was named by him
-the "X-Ray," probably because the letter x in algebraic formula
-represents the unknown quantity, and the hitherto unknown and elusive
-quality of this light suggested to Prof. Roentgen this appropriate name.
-
-As before stated, a peculiar quality of the X-Rays is that they are not
-visible to the eye. A beam of X-Rays, thrown into a dark chamber through
-an aluminum window, would produce no illumination whatever in the room,
-but such rays would still penetrate the room, and if a fluorescing
-screen were placed in their path it would instantly light up. It is not
-surprising, therefore, that these subtle rays should have so long eluded
-the observation of the scientist.
-
-A brief sketch of the conditions leading up to the discovery of the rays
-is necessary to a proper understanding of the same.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 215.--THE CATHODE RAY.]
-
-Every student of physics remembers the old-time lecture room
-experiments in which the Geissler tubes, with their beautiful play of
-colored lights, illustrated the action of the electrical discharge from
-the glass plate machine or the Ruhmkorff coil, on rarified gaseous
-media. Electrical experiments in high vacua by Sir William Crookes, and
-by Hittorf and Lenard, have greatly added to the present knowledge in
-this field, and paved the way to the discovery of Prof. Roentgen. It was
-known that a vacuum tube, variously called after the names of these
-scientists, as a Crookes, Hittorf, or Lenard tube, having platinum
-electrodes sealed in its ends, would, under the static discharge of
-electricity through it, give peculiar manifestations of light. One of
-the conducting terminals of such tubes was called, in electrical
-parlance, the "anode," from the Greek [Greek: ana] (up) [Greek: hodos]
-(way), meaning the way up or into the tube, and referring to the
-entering path of an electric current, or its positive pole; while the
-other was called the "cathode," from [Greek: kata] (down), [Greek:
-hodos] (way), meaning the way down or out, and referring to the outgoing
-path of an electric current, or its negative pole. When such glass tube,
-partially exhausted of air, received through its anode and cathode
-terminals a discharge of static electricity, a peculiar manifestation of
-light is seen between the anode and cathode terminals. At the anode it
-appears as a peach blossom glow, and at the cathode it appears as a
-bluish green light. If the exhaustion of the air in the tube is carried
-very high, approaching a perfect vacuum, or to about one millionth of
-the atmospheric pressure, the glow light at the anode disappears, and
-that at the cathode increases until it fills the entire tube with its
-characteristic light. This is called the "cathode ray," or "cathodic
-ray," an illustration of which is given in Fig. 215, where the cathode
-ray is seen in a Crookes tube emanating from the negative pole N or
-cathode _a_, and casting a shadow of the Maltese cross _b_ into the end
-of the tube, as seen at _d_. Many of the characteristics of the cathode
-ray had been observed prior to Prof. Roentgen's discovery, which,
-briefly stated, grew out of the following observation: He noticed that
-when a vacuum tube illumined by the cathode ray was completely masked or
-covered up by an external shield of black paper, so that no illumination
-of the tube was visible to the eye, there still passed through it
-certain subtle rays of light, invisible to the eye, but which would
-instantly illuminate a sheet of paper coated on one side with barium
-platino-cyanide, even at a distance of two yards or more, and that these
-invisible light rays were capable of passing through many substances
-opaque to ordinary light. He also discovered that these rays could be
-made to take a shadow photograph on a sensitive plate without even
-exposing the plate in the usual way, the X-Rays passing freely through
-the opaque ebonite or pasteboard screen of the plate holder. It did not
-take the scientific world long to realize the immense importance of this
-discovery, and to-day X-Ray apparatus constitutes the greatest addition
-to the surgeon's resources that has ever been made in the form of
-mechanical appliances, since by its aid any foreign body in the human
-frame of greater density than the flesh may be at once definitely
-located and extracted, or any fracture of the bone disclosed, as the
-case may be. In the illustration, Fig. 216, is shown an X-Ray photograph
-of the hand of a gentleman whose thumb bone has been destroyed by
-disease.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 216.--X-RAY PHOTO OF HAND, SHOWING DISEASED THUMB
-BONE.]
-
-Soon after the announcement of Prof. Roentgen's discovery, apparatus was
-devised for seeing with the naked eye the image formed by the shadow of
-the X-Rays. Prof. Salvioni constructed such a device and described it
-before the Rome Medical Society as early as February 8, 1896. He called
-it the "cryptoscope." It was quite a simple affair, and consisted of an
-observation tube with a lens, having in front of it a screen of
-fluorescing material, such as platino-cyanide of barium. When the object
-to be examined, the hand, for instance, was held in front of the
-fluorescing screen, and the X-Rays from the vacuum tube fell upon the
-hand, located between the vacuum tube and the fluorescing screen, a
-shadow of the bones was cast on the fluorescing screen by virtue of the
-greater density of the bones, which shadow was clearly discernible to
-the eye at the end of the observation tube. By this device one was able
-to see his own bones through the flesh. A device, invented by Edison and
-called the "fluoroscope," was constructed on substantially the same
-principle. This used a tapered observation tube like the old-fashioned
-stereoscope box, which had at its outer wide end the fluorescing screen,
-and its small end fashioned to fit the forehead and strapped thereto so
-as to enclose both eyes. This device is shown in Fig. 217, in which an
-X-Ray vacuum tube is housed in a wooden box, on which the hand of the
-patient, or other part to be viewed, is laid, the X-Rays passing readily
-through the top of the box and casting a shadow of the bones of the
-hand, or foreign body, on the fluorescing screen of the observation
-tube. Edison's experiments also led him in constructing his fluorescing
-screen, after testing a great number of substances, to select the
-chemical known as calcium tungstate, instead of the barium
-platino-cyanide, since the calcium tungstate appeared to give better
-results in fluorescing. Many other chemicals can be used, however, for
-making the fluorescing screen, such as the sulphides of calcium, barium
-and strontium. A recently discovered and powerful fluorescing substance
-is the double fluoride of ammonium and uranium, discovered by Dr.
-Mecklebeke. Such fluorescing materials are spread in a thin layer on the
-side of the screen next to the observer in the viewing apparatus.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 217.--EDISON'S SURGEON'S X-RAY APPARATUS.]
-
-It is not to be understood that such viewing apparatus is necessary in
-taking a surgical photograph. In such case only the X-Ray tube, means
-for exciting it, the patient's body, and the sensitive photographic
-plate, are essential factors, the patient's limb or body being
-interposed between the light tube and photographic plate, so as to cause
-the X-Rays emanating from the tube to cast the shadow of the patient's
-bones, the bullet in his body, or other foreign object, directly upon
-the photographic plate, the sensitive and conscious plate obeying the
-will of these subtle rays, and receiving the impress of their actinic
-effect under conditions which it denies to ordinary light.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 218.--COMPLETE X-RAY APPARATUS IN USE.]
-
-For exciting the vacuum tube any electrical machine capable of throwing
-a series of sparks across a gap of about five inches is sufficient.
-Various electrical machines may be used for this purpose, the Holtz, or
-the Wimshurst glass plate machine, the Ruhmkorff, or induction coil, or
-even the high frequency transformer. A good example of a complete X-Ray
-apparatus is that in use at the Army Medical Museum at Washington, made
-by Otis Clapp & Son, and shown in Fig. 218. The electrical generator is
-of the Wimshurst type, and is shown in a large glass-enclosed cabinet on
-the right. The glass disks within are rotated either by a small electric
-motor shown on the floor, or by a hand crank above. The X-Ray tube, of
-globular or bulb shape, is shown just above the patient's hip, and its
-opposite poles are connected by wires to the opposite electrodes of the
-generator. When the current is switched on by the operator, the bulb is
-illuminated with the cathode rays, and the X-Rays, proceeding therefrom
-through the clothing and flesh of the patient, cast a shadow of the
-patient's hip joint upon the photographic plate placed on the cot
-beneath the patient.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 219.--X-RAY FOCUS TUBE.]
-
-In the effort to secure greater sharpness in the image cast by the
-X-Rays, various forms of vacuum tubes have been devised. That shown in
-Fig. 219 represents one of the most important improvements. K is the
-cathode plate, formed of a concave disk of aluminum, which focuses the
-rays at a point near the center of the bulb. At this point a plate of
-platinum A, which metal allows practically none of the X-Rays to pass
-through it, is mounted on the anode in such an angular position that it
-gathers the focused rays and reflects them through the side of the tube.
-They thus make a sharper shadow than when radiating from the more
-extended surface of the glass.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 220.--LOCATING A FOREIGN BODY IN THE BRAIN.]
-
-In Fig. 220 is shown an X-Ray tube, as applied for locating a foreign
-body in the brain cavity, in which view the patient's head is interposed
-between the X-Ray tube and the fluorescing screen, or photographic
-plate, as the case may be; while Fig. 221 shows the application of the
-same devices to the body. In both these views the particular form of
-X-Ray apparatus is known as the "Fluorometer," made under the Dennis
-Patent, No. 581,540, April 27, 1897, and it is devised with reference to
-more accurately locating the foreign object by its shadow, for which
-purpose adjustable bracket-sights, seen in Fig. 221 on opposite sides of
-the body, are provided for bringing the X-Rays into proper alignment for
-projecting the shadow of the foreign body in true indicative position on
-the fluorescing screen, while a cross hatched grating behind the body,
-graduated in aliquot spaces of an inch, furnishes a measured field, and
-forms an easy and quick means of platting the position of said object.
-In the position of parts in the two figures the horizontal line, on
-which the foreign object lies, would be determined, but it would not
-indicate how deep in the object was, _i. e._, whether it was in the
-middle, or on one side. To determine this the fluorescing screen and
-grating are placed under the patient, and the X-Ray tube above, and the
-vertical line of the object is thus obtained. Both the vertical line and
-horizontal line having been obtained, it will be obvious that the
-foreign object will lie at the intersection of these two lines, which
-establishes for the surgeon its definite location.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 221.--X-RAY APPARATUS APPLIED TO THE BODY.]
-
-It has been observed by Prof. Elihu Thomson, and also by Dr. Kolle, that
-the X-Rays are not absorbed and destroyed by the sensitive chemicals of
-a single photographic plate, but so potent and penetrating is their
-influence that the rays pass through and produce an image on a number of
-plates, placed one behind the other, thus affording means for
-multiplying the image at one exposure.
-
-Among other uses of the X-Ray may be mentioned its capacity to detect
-spurious from genuine gems, the diamond giving a distinct color from its
-imitations, as do also most other precious stones.
-
-A peculiar physiological effect of the X-Rays is their capacity to
-produce a severe effect on the skin, somewhat resembling sunburn. Such
-result, produced by long and continued exposure, has sometimes so
-deranged the skin tissues as to make sores that resulted in the entire
-loss of and renewal of the skin.
-
-The discovery of the X-Ray by Prof. Roentgen may be fairly considered
-one of the most wonderful scientific achievements of the century, and
-his first memoir in 1895 is so full, clear and exact, as to have left
-very little more to be said about it. It is to-day, as it was found by
-him in 1895, the same mysterious, unseen, but positive force, a species
-of electrical energy without a domicile, and needing no conductor, a
-form of light passing through closed doors, invisible itself, and yet
-lighting up certain substances with a halo of glory, and radically
-changing and decomposing others. Rivaling the sun in actinic power, and
-writing its autograph with an unseen hand, it is truly called the X-, or
-unknown, ray.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVI.
-
-GAS LIGHTING.
-
- EARLY USE OF NATURAL GAS--COAL GAS INTRODUCED BY MURDOCH--WINSOR
- ORGANIZES FIRST GAS COMPANY IN 1804--MELVILLE IN UNITED STATES
- LIGHTS BEAVER-TAIL LIGHTHOUSE WITH GAS IN 1817--LOWE'S PROCESS OF
- MAKING WATER GAS--ACETYLENE GAS--CARBURETTED AIR--PINTSCH GAS--GAS
- METER--OTTO GAS ENGINE--THE WELSBACH BURNER.
-
-
-For many centuries the going down of the sun marked a cessation of man's
-labors, and among his first efforts toward increasing his efficiency was
-the prolongation of his hours of vision by artificial illumination.
-Beginning with a shell for a lamp, a rush for a wick, and the fat of his
-game for oil, the first crude lamp was made, and while it shed but a
-feeble and flickering light, man ceased to go to sleep with the fowls
-and the beasts, and continued his labors and amusements into the night.
-For many centuries the lamp held its exclusive sway, and probably will
-ever find a useful place; but with the discovery of coal gas and its
-practical manufacture the nights of the Nineteenth Century have been
-made to represent illuminated illustrations of the world's progress.
-Coal gas can hardly be claimed as an invention, however, for natural gas
-from the bowels of the earth had been observed and used in China from
-time immemorial. The holy fires of Baku on the shores of the Caspian and
-elsewhere were also thus supplied. The first steps toward its artificial
-production began in the latter part of the Seventeenth Century with Dr.
-Clayton. Bishop Watson, in 1750, and Lord Dundonald, in 1786, also
-experimented with combustible gas made from coal, but the man who more
-than any other contributed to its practical manufacture and introduction
-was Mr. Murdoch, of Redruth, Cornwall, England. In 1792 Murdoch erected
-a gas distilling apparatus, and lighted his house and offices by gas
-distributed through service pipes. In 1798 he so lighted the steam
-engine works of Boulton & Watt, at Soho, near Birmingham; and in 1802
-made public illumination of the works by this means on the occasion of a
-public celebration. In 1801 Le Bon, of Paris, used a gas made from wood
-for lighting his house. In 1803-4 Frederick Albert Winsor lighted the
-Lyceum Theatre, took out a British patent No. 2,764, of 1804, for
-lighting streets by gas, and established the National Light and Heat
-Company, which was the first gas company. In 1804-5 Murdoch lighted the
-cotton factory of Phillips & Lee at Manchester, the light being
-estimated as equal to 3,000 candles, and this was the largest
-undertaking up to that date. In 1807 Winsor lighted one side of Pall
-Mall, London, and this was the first street lighting. A disastrous
-explosion occurred shortly afterwards, and such eminent men as Sir
-Humphrey Davy, Wollaston, and Watt expressed the opinion that it could
-not be safely used; but the so-called "coal smoke" had come to stay, and
-in 1813 Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament were lighted
-with gas. In 1815 there was general adoption of gas in the streets of
-London, and shortly afterwards in Paris. In 1805-6 David Melville, of
-Newport, R. I., invented a gas apparatus and lighted his house with it.
-He took out United States patent March 18, 1813, and in 1817 contracted
-with the United States to supply for a year the Beaver Tail Lighthouse.
-In 1815 James McMurtrie proposed the lighting of the streets of
-Philadelphia; Baltimore commenced the use of gas in 1816, Boston in
-1822, and New York in 1825.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 222.--A COAL GAS PLANT.]
-
-In Fig. 222 is shown a diagrammatic illustration of the principal
-features of a gas works, as employed throughout the greater part of the
-Nineteenth Century. On the left is seen the furnace, in which is
-arranged above the fire a series of retorts, which are in the nature of
-horizontal closed cast iron boxes. Only one of the series is visible in
-the view. Their ends project out beyond the furnace walls, and have
-doors for giving access to the interior, and each retort outside the
-furnace is connected by an upright pipe to an elevated cylinder called a
-_hydraulic main_. When the retort is charged with coal through its end
-door, and is heated red hot by the subjacent fire of the furnace, a
-heavy gas is driven off from the coal, which passes up the pipe to the
-_hydraulic main_, where it partially condenses and leaves its heavier
-portions in the form of coal tar and ammoniacal liquor. The gas then
-passes through the series of bent pipes, which form a _condenser_, where
-other remaining portions of the tar and other impurities are condensed,
-and drawn off from time to time in the little well shown on the left of
-the coil. From the condenser coils the gas passes into the _purifier_,
-shown on the right of the coils as an enclosed case having a series of
-shelves on which is spread slaked lime, which takes up from the gas
-impurities in the form of sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic acid. From
-this _purifier_ the gas passes downwardly through a pipe into a large
-gas holder whose lower end is sealed in a water tank, and which gas
-holder is balanced by weights and chains passing over pulleys. With the
-gas holder, the distributing mains of the city are made to connect to
-receive their supply. When the gas holder is full it is buoyed up by the
-lighter gas, and occupies an elevated position, and as its supply is
-used up, the gas holder settles down into the water.
-
-In the operation of gas making many valuable secondary products are
-formed. The coal in the retorts is not entirely consumed, but is reduced
-to the condition of coke, and in this form is sold for fuel. The
-ammoniacal condensations are purified to form ammonia, while the coal
-tar, which but a few years ago was little more than a waste material, is
-now a valuable commercial product, being extensively used in the
-manufacture of the aniline, phenol, and naphthalene dyes, also in
-medicines and perfumes, and being used in crude form also as an
-important element in street paving compositions.
-
-_Water Gas._--In 1875 an important era in gas making was inaugurated by
-the introduction of what is known as "_water gas_," so called for the
-reason that water in the form of steam is decomposed and its hydrogen,
-mixed with carbonic oxide gas, is mingled with a heavier carbon gas from
-oil, and is converted at a high temperature into a permanent, stable
-illuminating gas, at a much lower cost than coal gas.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 223.--LOWE'S WATER GAS APPARATUS, PATENTED SEPTEMBER
-21, 1875.]
-
-Fontana was the first to notice the decomposition of steam by
-incandescent carbon to form hydrogen and carbonic oxide. Ibbetson's
-British patent, No. 4,954, of 1824, represents the first application of
-this principle. This was followed by Alexander Selligue, who, in 1834,
-obtained a French patent, No. 9,800, and in 1842 produced water gas at
-Batignolles, a suburb of Paris. Sanders' United States patent, 21,027,
-July 27, 1858, was the basis of an experiment tried at the Girard House
-in Philadelphia. These, with Siemens' British patents, Nos. 2,861, of
-1856, and 972, of 1863, for methods of constructing furnaces, constitute
-the earlier steps in the development of water gas, although many other
-patents were granted prior to the latter date for various methods and
-forms of apparatus. The practical production and successful commercial
-use of water gas, however, began with T. S. C. Lowe, who obtained United
-States patent No. 167,847, September 21, 1875, and revolutionized the
-gas making industry. In less than a dozen years from the date of his
-patent 150 cities and towns in the United States were using water gas,
-and in 1886 the Franklin Institute gave to Mr. Lowe a grand medal of
-honor for his invention, which of those exhibited that year was believed
-to contribute most to the welfare of mankind by cheapening the cost of
-light. Fig. 223 represents an illustration of the Lowe apparatus as
-shown in his patent, and whose operation is as follows: Valves 9 and 10
-being open, an anthracite coal fire in generator chamber 1 gives off
-carbonic oxide gas, which passes down pipe 2 and enters the base of
-superheater 3, where mixing with air coming down pipe 4, it burns to
-form an intense heat. The chamber, 3, is filled with loose pieces of
-fire brick, which are soon heated white hot. Valves 9 and 10 are then
-closed and steam is taken from an upright boiler, 6, and carried by a
-small pipe, 7, to the incandescent mass in chamber 3, and passing down
-through it is superheated. This superheated steam passes from the bottom
-of chamber 3 to the bottom of chamber 1, and then up through the mass of
-red hot coal. The intensely hot steam is thus decomposed into hydrogen
-and oxygen, and the oxygen unites with the carbon of the coal to form
-carbonic oxide gas. As hydrogen and carbonic oxide burn with only a
-feeble blue flame, these gases are now made richer in light giving
-carbon at this point by the addition of oil contained in an elevated
-tank, 8. This, dripping on the incandescent coal in chamber 1, is
-volatilized, and at the same time enriches and combines with the
-hydrogen and carbonic oxide to form a permanent illuminating gas (water
-gas) that passes up pipe 5 and through the flues in boiler 6, to outlet
-13, and thence on in the usual way to the condenser, scrubber and gas
-holder, which are not shown, and merely act to purify the gas. As the
-excessively hot water gas passes through the boiler flues it furnishes
-the necessary heat to generate the steam. The air used in the process is
-forced at 12 into a drum in the smokestack, 11, and is heated by the
-escaping products of combustion. In practical operation there are two
-(or more) of the steam superheating chambers 3, working alternately, and
-one of them is being heated up while the other is superheating the
-steam.
-
-Water gas has neither the illuminating nor the heating qualities of coal
-gas, and it is also much more poisonous. According to O. Wyss, one-tenth
-of 1 per cent. of uncarburetted water gas renders the air of a room
-injurious to health, and 1 per cent. is fatal to all warm-blooded
-animals. Notwithstanding these facts, however, its extreme cheapness and
-fairly satisfactory light have carried it into such general use that
-to-day it is said that two-thirds of all gas made in the United States
-is carburetted water gas.
-
-_Acetylene Gas_ is a combination of two parts carbon and two parts
-hydrogen. It was discovered in 1836 by Edmond Davy, who produced
-carburet of potassium, and evolved acetylene gas therefrom by
-decomposing it with water. It was long known as _klumene_, and when
-burned it produced an intense white light. For a long time it was only
-produced in a small way in the laboratory. It is now made commercially
-by the mutual decomposition of water and calcium carbide, the latter
-giving off, when brought in contact with the water, acetylene gas, which
-rises in bubbles. In the reaction the carbon of the carbide unites with
-a portion of the hydrogen of the water, producing acetylene gas
-(C_{2}H_{2}), while the calcium of the carbide unites with the oxygen of
-the water and the remaining portion of the hydrogen and forms calcium
-hydrate, or slaked lime, which precipitates as a slush.
-
-The union of carbon with an alkali metal, first accomplished by Davy in
-1836, was followed in 1861 by the combination of carbon with calcium by
-Wohler. It was not, however, until the electrical furnace became an
-agency in chemical reaction that calcium carbide was made on a
-commercial scale. The production of acetylene gas for illuminating
-purposes began with the operations of Thomas L. Willson in 1893, and his
-patents, Nos. 541,137 and 541,138, of June 18, 1895, and 563,527 and
-563,528 of July 7, 1896, cover the chemical process, the product, and
-the mode of operating. The reaction is a very simple one. A mixture of
-lime and carbon is subjected to the heat of an electric arc, and the
-carbon combines with the calcium of the lime to form calcium carbide,
-which appears on the market as dirty black stone-like lumps. The
-simplicity of the method of generating acetylene gas from this substance
-by merely bringing it in contact with water has greatly stimulated
-invention in this field. The art began practically in 1895, and since
-that time more than 500 patents have been granted for acetylene gas
-apparatus.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 224.--ACETYLENE GAS APPARATUS.]
-
-A very simple apparatus for the purpose is shown in Fig. 224, in which a
-vessel containing water has an inverted bell or cylinder within it, open
-at its lower end. A basket or cage is suspended within the inner
-cylinder, and contains a few lumps of calcium carbide, which are first
-immersed in the water by being forced down by the rod supporting the
-same, which passes through a stuffing box. Acetylene gas is immediately
-generated and its pressure forces the level of the water down in the
-inner cylinder, causing it to rise in the annular space between said
-cylinder and the case. As the water level descends in the inner chamber
-it passes out of contact with the calcium carbide, and the generation of
-gas is discontinued until some of the gas is drawn off or consumed at
-the burners, whose pipe is shown connecting with the gas space of the
-inner cylinder. When so drawn off, the pressure in the inner cylinder is
-relieved, and the water therein rises to contact again with the calcium
-carbide and renews the generation of gas. This principle of automatic
-action is a very old one, and will be recognized by the student as that
-of the Dobereiner lamp of the chemical laboratory, invented by Prof.
-Dobereiner, of Jena, in 1824.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 225.--MULTI-CHARGE ACETYLENE GAS GENERATOR.]
-
-In acetylene gas apparatus a great variety of methods are employed for
-bringing the water and carbide into contact. Instead of the automatic
-pressure level principle described, many devices discharge a regulated
-quantity of powdered calcium carbide into the water, while in another
-form the water is discharged upon the calcium carbide. An example of the
-latter is given in Fig. 225, which represents the Criterion generator. A
-number of receptacles containing charges of calcium carbide are made to
-successively receive a regulated quantity of water, the gas being
-collected in a rising and falling holder.
-
-Acetylene gas finds its principal uses for isolated plants, and in
-country houses. One form of using it is to compress it under high
-tension in cylinders, but this method has been attended with some
-disastrous explosions, and is discriminated against by the insurance
-companies.
-
-Calcium carbide is now made in a large way by the Willson Aluminum
-Company, at Spray, N. C., and also at Niagara Falls and at Sault St.
-Marie, Mich., and its cost is between 3 and 4 cents per pound.
-
-Acetylene gas has an acrid, garlicy odor, and burns with an intensely
-white flame, and so superior is it to coal gas in illuminating power
-that it only requires a pipe of one-third the diameter of that used for
-coal gas to produce the same illuminating effect.
-
-_Carburetted Air_ is another form of illuminating gas which has found
-some useful applications. This consists simply of air forced through
-some light hydrocarbon, such as naphtha, benzine or gasoline, and so
-saturated with the vapors of these volatile substances as to become an
-inflammable mixture. Many patents have been granted for apparatus
-operating on this principle, and it has been put to some practical use
-in country houses, and seaside resorts.
-
-_Pintsch Gas_ is another special application. It is a gas made from oil
-and compressed in storage cylinders by means of pumps for portable use.
-It is stored under a pressure sometimes as high as 150 pounds to the
-inch, its pressure being reduced at the burners through the agency of
-pressure regulators. It is used for lighting railway cars, buoys, and
-lightships.
-
-Gas making has probably been the most extensive and important of all the
-commercial chemical operations of the Nineteenth Century, and with it
-has come a great array of minor inventions as accessories. Among these
-first came the gas meter and pressure regulator. With the introduction
-of gas into houses some means of determining the amount consumed as a
-basis of payment was required, and for this purpose the gas meter was
-devised. The first gas meters were known as wet meters, and effected a
-measurement by passing the gas through a liquid and rotating a wheel
-therein. The wet meter was invented by Clegg (British patent No. 3,968,
-of 1815), and the dry meter, by Malam (British patent No. 4,458, of
-1820), and improved by Defries (British patent. No. 7,705, of 1838). The
-gas regulator is simply a little automatic apparatus whereby the
-variation of pressure in the gas main is reduced and the flow rendered
-perfectly uniform at the burner. It effects a saving of gas by
-preventing it from blowing when the pressure is too great, and also
-gives a more steady and uniform light.
-
-Among the great number of mechanical devices which have grown out of the
-use of gas may be mentioned the gas range for heat, the gas engine for
-power, and the Welsbach burner for light. The gas range has contributed
-much to the domestic economy of the city house. It gives an immediate
-heat in the kitchen for all culinary and domestic purposes, without the
-incidental objections of having to transport fuel and remove ashes. It
-is put into or out of action in an instant, saves labor and time, and
-avoids the heat and discomfort of a coal stove during the hot months of
-summer. It is organized in principle after the Bunsen burner, whereby a
-perfect combustion of the carbon is obtained with maximum heating effect
-and without smoke or deposits of lampblack.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 226.--OTTO GAS ENGINE.]
-
-The Otto gas engine, seen in Fig. 226, is a pioneer and representative
-type of a great number of explosive gas engines, which in recent years
-have become active competitors of the steam engine where only small
-power is required. The Otto engine is covered by patent No. 194,047,
-August 14, 1877. Patents No. 222,467, 297,329, 336,505, 358,796,
-320,285, 386,211 and 549,160 represent important developments in this
-art.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 227.--WELSBACH GAS BURNER.]
-
-_The Welsbach burner_ for improving the quality of gaslight, and
-economizing its consumption, is also well and favorably known. It
-utilizes the Bunsen burner principle to make a very perfect combustion
-of the gas, with the greatest possible heat and the least smoke, and
-then directs its great heat on to a refractory body which will not burn,
-but glows with a brilliant white incandescence. The Welsbach burner was
-brought out in 1885. The United States patent therefor was granted
-October 7, 1890, to Carl Auer Von Welsbach, No. 438,125. The Welsbach
-light is a development of the Drummond, or limelight, invented by Lieut.
-Drummond, of England, in 1826. This latter exposed a piece of quick lime
-to the intensely hot flame of the oxy-hydrogen blow pipe, which was
-invented by Dr. Robt. Hare in 1802. The piece of lime glows with an
-intense brilliancy approximating that of the electric light. The
-Welsbach burner, see Fig. 227, operates on the same general principle,
-except that the refractory body, which is heated to incandescence, is a
-tubular sleeve of netted fabric first steeped in a solution of the salts
-of refractory earths, and then incinerated by heat to burn out the
-textile fibre and leave the refractory earthy oxides as a skeleton of
-the fabric, and which is called a "mantle." This mantle is suspended
-above the flame arising from a proper admixture of air and gas, and is
-heated thereby to a brilliant incandescence which furnishes the light.
-In the Welsbach burner the light seen does not proceed directly from the
-combustion of the gas, but from the white hot mantle. The light is a
-very pure white one, does not distort or falsify colors, and effects a
-great saving of gas. An important improvement upon the mantle is covered
-by Rawson's patent, July 30, 1889, No. 407,963, for coating the mantles
-with paraffine or analogous material to toughen them and prevent them
-from breaking in packing and transportation.
-
-_Natural Gas._--No review of gas lighting would be complete without some
-reference to the development incident to the use of the natural gas
-flowing from the internal reservoirs of the earth. Such gas has been
-known and utilized for centuries in China, and was conveyed by the
-Chinese in bamboo pipes to points of utilization. The discovery of coal
-oil in the United States in 1859, and the great advances made in the
-methods and apparatus for sinking oil wells, have resulted in the
-discovery of numerous wells of natural gas, whose values were quickly
-perceived and utilized by their owners. The village of Fredonia, N. Y.,
-was probably the first to be lighted by natural gas, and a flow from a
-well at West Bloomfield, N. Y., opened in 1865, was carried in a wooden
-main more than twenty miles to the city of Rochester. Many wells of
-natural gas have since been found at various points, and so extensive
-has been its use for cooking, heating, lighting and metallurgical
-processes, that thousands of patents have been taken for various forms
-of burners, pressure regulators and other appliances for utilizing the
-same. The annual production of natural gas in the United States for 1888
-was valued at $22,629,875. There has, however, been a steady decrease in
-the past ten years. The amount produced in 1897 was $13,826,422. The
-insatiable demands of modern civilization must some day exhaust the
-supply, and what will take place when the subterranean chambers are
-relieved of their burden is a question for the geologists to answer.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVII.
-
-CIVIL ENGINEERING.
-
- GREAT BRIDGES--PNEUMATIC CAISSONS--TUNNELS--THE BEACH TUNNEL SHIELD
- --SUEZ CANAL--DREDGES--THE LIDGERWOOD CABLEWAY--CANAL LOCKS--
- ARTESIAN WELLS--COMPRESSED AIR ROCK DRILLS--BLASTING--MISSISSIPPI
- JETTIES--IRON AND STEEL BUILDINGS--EIFFEL TOWER--WASHINGTON'S
- MONUMENT--THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL.
-
-
-Almost entirely of an outdoor character, and necessarily on public
-exhibition, the engineering achievements of the Nineteenth Century have
-always been conspicuously in evidence, challenging the admiration of the
-public eye. They represent man's attack upon the obstacles presented by
-nature to his irrepressible spirit of progress. Difficulties apparently
-insuperable have confronted him, only to melt away under his persistent
-genius until nothing seems impossible. He has connected continents with
-the telegraph, has crosshatched the land with railroads, penetrated the
-bowels of the earth with artesian wells, opened communication between
-oceans with the Suez Canal, reclaimed territory from the sea in Holland,
-pierced mountain ranges with tunnels, drained marshes, irrigated
-deserts, reared lofty structures of masonry and steel, spanned waters
-with magnificent bridges, opened channel-ways to the sea, built beacons
-for the mariner, and breakwaters for the storm beaten ship.
-
-Probably the most important branch of engineering work is railroad
-construction, already considered under steam railways. Closely related
-to the railroad, however, is bridge building, and many of these noble
-structures hang between heaven and earth, conspicuous monuments of the
-engineer's skill.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 228.--THE FORTH BRIDGE. LARGEST VIADUCT IN THE
-WORLD. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH WHEN IN PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTION. LENGTH, 8,290
-FEET; HEIGHT ABOVE WATER, 361 FEET; MAIN SPANS, 1,710 FEET LONG, 150
-FEET HIGH.]
-
-_The Forth Bridge._--This massive structure, of the cantilever type, is
-shown in Fig. 228. It was begun in 1882 and finished in 1890, and is the
-largest and most costly viaduct in the world. It is built across the
-Firth of Forth, and is the most important link in the direct railway
-communication of the North British Railway, and associated roads,
-between Edinburgh on the one side, and Perth and Dundee on the other.
-The total length of the viaduct is 8,296 feet, or nearly 1-5/8 miles.
-The extreme height of the structure is 361 feet above the water level,
-and the foundations extend 91 feet below the water level. The two main
-spans are 1,710 feet, and these both give a clear headway for navigation
-of 150 feet height. There are over 50,000 tons of steel in the
-superstructure, and about 140,000 cubic yards of masonry and concrete in
-the foundation piers. The three main piers consist each of a group of
-four masonry columns faced with granite, 49 feet in diameter at the top,
-and 36 feet high, which rest on solid rock, or on concrete carried down
-in most cases by means of caissons of a maximum diameter of 70 feet to
-rock or boulder clay.
-
-No intelligent conception of the enormous size of this great structure
-can be obtained except by comparison. Estimating from the bottom of the
-masonry piers to the towering heights of the cantilevers, it reaches
-above the dome of St. Peter's at Rome, and is only a little short of the
-height of the greatest of the pyramids of Egypt. The cost of the bridge
-is given as £3,250,000 or nearly $16,000,000.
-
-_The Brooklyn Bridge._--Having for its successful construction and
-maintenance the same foundation principle upon which the spider builds
-its web, this magnificent bridge of steel wires spans the East River
-between New York and Brooklyn, with a total length of 5,989 feet, and in
-length of span and cost is second only to the great Forth Bridge. It is
-shown in Fig. 229, and among suspension bridges it ranks first. It has a
-central span of 1,595½ feet between the two towers, over which the
-suspension cables are hung, and has a clear headway beneath of 135 feet.
-It has two side spans of 930 feet each between the towers and the shore.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 229.--THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. LONGEST SUSPENSION BRIDGE
-IN THE WORLD. TOTAL LENGTH, 5,989 FEET; SPAN BETWEEN TOWERS, 1,595 FEET
-6 INCHES.]
-
-The suspension towers stand on two piers founded in the river on solid
-rock at depths of 78 and 45 feet below high water, and they rise 277
-feet above the same level. There are four suspension cables 15½ inches
-in diameter, each composed of 5,282 galvanized steel wires, placed side
-by side, without any twist, and arranged in groups of 19 strands bound
-up with wire. These cables have a dip in the center of the large span of
-128 feet, rest on movable saddles on the top of the towers to allow for
-slight movement of the cables due to expansion and contraction, and are
-held down at the shore ends by massive anchorages of masonry. The bridge
-has a width of 85 feet, and has two roadways, two lines of railway, and
-a foot way. It was begun in 1876 and opened for traffic in 1883, and its
-cost was about $15,000,000. It fulfills a great function for the busy
-metropolis, and it hangs in the air a monument in steel wire to the
-genius of the Roeblings.
-
-_Masonry Bridges._--The largest and finest single span of masonry in
-America, and believed to be the largest in the world, is to be found
-about 9 miles northwest of the city of Washington. It is known as the
-Washington Aqueduct or Cabin John Bridge, and is seen in Fig. 230. It
-extends across the small stream known as Cabin John Creek, and carries
-an aqueduct 9 feet in diameter, that supplies the National Capital with
-water, its upper surface above the water conduit being formed into a
-fine roadway. It is 450 feet long. Its span is 220 feet, the height of
-the roadway above the bed of the stream is 100 feet, and the width of
-the structure is 20 feet 4 inches. Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs was the
-engineer in charge of its construction. It was begun in 1857 and
-finished in 1864, with the exception of the parapet walls of the
-roadway, which were added in 1872-3. Its cost was $254,000. Only one
-other masonry arch has ever been built which equalled this in size. The
-Trezzo Bridge, built in the fourteenth century, over the Adda in North
-Italy, and subsequently destroyed, is said to have had a span of 251
-feet, but the Washington Aqueduct Bridge at Cabin John is a noble work
-in masonry, and when standing beneath its majestic sweep, and viewing
-the regular courses of masonry hanging nearly a hundred feet high in the
-air, and springing more than a hundred feet from the embankment upon
-either side, one loses sight of the principles of the arch, and the
-fear that the mass may fall upon him gives way to the impression that
-nature has bowed to the genius of man, and suspended the law of gravity.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 230.--CABIN JOHN BRIDGE, NEAR WASHINGTON, D. C.
-LARGEST MASONRY ARCH IN THE WORLD. LENGTH, 450 FEET; SPAN OF ARCH, 220
-FEET; HEIGHT, 100 FEET.]
-
-Among the patents granted for bridges the most important are those
-relating to the cantilever type, among which may be mentioned those to
-Bender, Latrobe, and Smith, No. 141,310, July 29, 1873; Eads, No.
-142,378 to 142,382, September 2, 1873, and Clarke, No. 504,559,
-September 5, 1893.
-
-_Caissons._--For submarine explorations the ancient diving bell, which
-was said to have been used more than 2,000 years ago, has given place to
-diving armor, while for more extensive local work the pneumatic caisson
-is employed. The latter was invented by M. Triger, a French engineer, in
-1841. An early example of it is also given in Cochrane's British patent
-No. 3,226, of 1861. It consists of a vertical cylinder divided into
-compartments, its lower open end resting on the river bottom. Compressed
-air forced into the lower compartment forces the water back, while the
-men are at work, the intermediate chamber forming an air lock, by which
-entrance to, or egress from, the lower working chamber is obtained. The
-pneumatic caissons of Eads (patents Nos. 123,002, January 23, 1872, and
-123,685, February 13, 1872) and Flad (patent No. 303,830, August 19,
-1884) are modern applications of the same principle. The sinking of
-shafts through quicksand, by artificially freezing the same and then
-treating it as solid material, is an ingenious modern method shown in
-patents to Poetsch, No. 300,891, June 24, 1884; and Smith, No. 371,389,
-October 11, 1887.
-
-_Tunnels._--Less conspicuous than bridges, by virtue of their
-underground character, but none the less important, are these mole-like
-means of communication. Especially difficult of construction for the
-reason that the nature of the soil or rock is largely unknown, and for
-the reason also that the work may have to encounter faults in rocks, and
-springs or quicksands in the earth; nevertheless the demands of the
-railroads for shortening the distance of travel and economizing time
-have stimulated the engineer to expend millions of dollars in piercing
-the earth with these great underground passageways.
-
-_The Mont Cenis Tunnel_ was constructed to establish railway
-communication between France and Italy through the Alps. It was begun in
-1857, and after having been in progress of construction for thirteen
-years, was opened for traffic in 1871. This tunnel was commenced by hand
-borings, being for the most part through solid rock, and its progress up
-to 1862 was so slow that it was estimated that thirty years would be
-required for its construction. Its earlier completion was due to the
-introduction of rock drills operated by compressed air, which trebled
-the rate of advance, and which device made a new epoch in all
-rock-boring and mining operations. This tunnel was cut from both ends at
-the same time, and so accurate were the surveys in establishing the
-alignment of the two headings through the mountain mass, that, although
-the tunnel was more than 7½ miles long, when the two headings came
-together in the middle, only a difference of one foot in level existed
-between them. When it is remembered that most of the 7½ miles of tunnel
-was cut through solid rock, by boring and blasting, the immensity of the
-undertaking can be appreciated. As completed the tunnel is 8 miles long,
-and wide enough for a double track railway.
-
-_The St. Gothard Tunnel_ is another tunnel through the Alps, which
-involved even a longer and deeper cut through the mountains than the
-Mont Cenis Tunnel. This is 9¼ miles long, and it was begun in 1872, the
-headings joined in 1880, and the tunnel opened for traffic in 1882.
-Although by far the largest undertaking yet made, the improvement in
-rock-boring machinery enabled it to be constructed much more rapidly and
-at less expense.
-
-The Arlberg is still another Alpine tunnel. It is 6½ miles long, was
-commenced in 1880, and opened for traffic in 1884.
-
-Tunneling under rivers presents many more difficulties than driving
-through the hardest rock. This is so by reason of the inflow of water.
-Among successful tunnels of this kind may be named the Mersey and Severn
-tunnels in England, opened in 1886, and the St. Clair tunnel between the
-United States and Canada. The histories of the abandoned Detroit and
-Hudson river tunnels are object lessons of the difficulties encountered
-in this class of work.
-
-An important engineering invention for tunneling through silt or soft
-soil is the so-called "shield." This was first employed by the engineer
-Brunel in the construction of the Thames tunnel, which was begun in 1825
-and opened as a thoroughfare in 1843. The shield, as now used, is a sort
-of a cylinder or sleeve as large as the tunnel, which sleeve, as the
-excavation proceeds in front of it, is forced ahead to act both as a
-ring-shaped cutter and a protection to the workmen, its advance being
-effected by powerful hydraulic jacks or screws which find a back bearing
-against the completed wall of the tunnel. As the digging proceeds the
-shield is advanced, and a section of tunnel is built behind it which, in
-turn, furnishes a bearing for the jacks in the further advance of the
-shield.
-
-This latter improvement was the invention of the late Alfred E. Beach,
-of the _Scientific American_, and was covered by him in patent No.
-91,071, June 8, 1869, and was used in driving the experimental pneumatic
-subway constructed by him under Broadway, New York, in 1868-9, and also
-in the St. Clair River tunnel and the unfinished Hudson River tunnel and
-other works.
-
-Subsequent improvements made upon the shield by J. H. Greathead of
-England and covered by him in United States patents Nos. 360,959, April
-12, 1887; and 432,871, July 22, 1890, have greatly added to the value
-and efficiency of this device, and made it one of the leading
-instrumentalities in tunnel construction.
-
-_Suez Canal._--It is said that the undertaking of connecting the
-Mediterranean and Red Seas was considered as long ago as the time of
-Herodotus, and a small channel appears to have been opened twenty-five
-centuries ago, but was subsequently abandoned. In 1847 the subject was
-again taken up for serious consideration, the work begun in 1860, and
-finished in 1869, at a cost of £20,500,000, or more than a hundred
-million dollars. The canal starts at Port Said, on the Mediterranean, a
-view of which with its ships of all nations and the canal reaching far
-away in the distance is seen in Fig. 231. The canal extends nearly due
-south to Suez on the Red Sea, a distance of about 100 miles, through
-barren wastes of sand and an occasional lake. It was originally formed
-with a bottom width of 72 feet, spreading out to 196 to 328 feet at the
-top, and of a depth of 26 feet, but has since been increased in
-transverse dimension to accommodate the great increase in travel.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 231.--PORT SAID ENTRANCE TO SUEZ CANAL, SHOWING
-HARBOR WITH SHIPS OF ALL NATIONS, AND THE CANAL REACHING AWAY IN THE
-DISTANCE.]
-
-Sixty great dredges were employed on the work, and the dredged material
-was discharged in chutes on to the bank. The canal was the work of M. De
-Lesseps, the eminent French engineer, and has proved a great success
-from both an engineering and financial standpoint. The stock is mainly
-held in England, having been bought from the Khedive of Egypt. In 1898
-the ships passing through the canal during the year reached the
-remarkable number of 3,503. The rate of tolls is 10 francs (about $2)
-per net ton. The gross tonnage of ships passing through in 1898 was
-12,962,632, the net tonnage 9,238,603. The total receipts for the year
-were 87,906,255 francs (about $17,500,000), and the net profit
-63,441,987 francs (about $12,500,000). An average size ocean liner pays
-about $5,000 for the privilege of sailing through this great ditch.
-Admiral Dewey's ship, the "Olympia," returning from the Philippines,
-paid for her toll $3,516.04, and the "Chicago," $3,165.95. Going the
-other way, our supply ship "Alexander" paid $4,107.99, while the
-"Glacier" paid $5,052.38. Ships making the passage through the canal
-move slowly on account of the washing of the banks, about 22 hours
-being required, but the shortening of the travel of ships going east and
-west, and the saving of life, property, and time, involved in avoiding
-the circuitous and stormy passage around the Cape of Good Hope, has been
-of incalculable benefit to the world.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 232.--HERCULES DREDGER.]
-
-With the construction of canals and harbors, great improvements have
-been made in dredges. Some of these are of the clam-shell type, some
-employ the scoop and lever, others an endless series of buckets. An
-example of the latter, used on the Panama Canal, is seen in Fig. 232.
-Still another form, and the most recent if not the most important is the
-hydraulic dredger, which, by rotating cutters, stirs and cuts the mud
-and silt, and by powerful suction pumps and immense tubes draws up the
-semi-fluid mass and sends it to suitable points of discharge. The best
-known of the latter type is the Bowers hydraulic dredge, covered by many
-patents, of which Nos. 318,859 and 318,860, May 26, 1885; 388,253,
-August 21, 1888; and 484,763, October 18, 1892, are the most important.
-
-For surface excavations in solid earth the Lidgerwood Cableway is an
-important and labor saving device. A track cable is stretched from two
-distant towers, and a bucket holding well on to a ton of earth is made
-to travel on a trolley running on said cable track, rising at one end
-out of the excavation, and dumping at the other end to fill in the
-excavation as the cutting progresses, all in a continuous and
-economical manner. This device is made under the patent to M. W. Locke,
-No. 295,776, March 25, 1884, and comprehends many subsequent
-improvements patented by Miller, Delaney, North and others. The Chicago
-Drainage Canal is a work just completed, which largely employed these
-devices. This canal was designed to connect the Chicago River with the
-Mississippi River, so as to send the sewage of Chicago down the
-Mississippi instead of into Lake Michigan. Although it cost $33,000,000
-and required seven years for completion, the labor-saving cableways
-greatly cheapened its cost and shortened the time of its construction.
-
-Among the leading inventions relating to canal construction may be
-mentioned the bear-trap canal-lock gate (patents Nos. 229,682, 236,488
-and 552,063), and the Dutton pneumatic lift locks. The latter provide
-ease and rapidity of action by a principle of balancing locks in pairs,
-and are covered by his patent No. 457,528, August 11, 1891, and others
-of subsequent date.
-
-_Artesian Wells_ represent an important branch of engineering work, and
-they are so called from the province of Artois, in France, where they
-have for a long time been in use. Extending several thousand feet into
-the subterranean chambers of the earth, they have brought abundant water
-supply to the surface all over the world, from the desert sands of
-Sahara to the hotels of the modern city; they have contributed oil and
-gas in incredible quantities to supply light and heat, and have made
-valuable additions to the salt supply of the world.
-
-They are driven by reciprocating a ponderous chisel-shaped drill within
-an iron tube, six inches more or less in diameter, which is built up in
-sections, and moved down as the cutting descends. The drill is
-reciprocated by a suspending rope from machinery in a derrick, and in
-order to give a hammer-like blow to the chisel a pair of ponderous iron
-links coupled together like those of a chain, and called a "_drill jar_"
-connect the drill to the rope. As the sections of the link slide over
-each other they come together with a hammer blow at the moment of
-lifting that dislodges the drill from the rock, and on the descending
-movement they come together with a hammering blow immediately after the
-drill touches the rock to drive it into the same. The first United
-States patent for a drill jar is that to Morris, No. 2,243, September 4,
-1841. When an oil well ceases to flow, it is rejuvenated by being
-"shot," which is quite contrary to the ordinary conception of prolonging
-life. For this purpose a dynamite cartridge is exploded at the lower end
-of the well, which shatters the rock, and, in opening up new channels
-of flow for the oil, renews the yield. Many patented inventions have
-been made in the field of well boring, and the discovery of coal oil in
-the United States in 1859 has developed a great industry and built up
-enormous fortunes. The amount of petroleum produced in the United States
-in 1896 was 60,960,361 barrels, the largest yield on record. In 1897 the
-amount was 60,568,081 barrels.
-
-Of less consequence than the artesian well, but finding many useful
-applications, is the drive well. A metal tube with a perforated lower
-end is driven down by hammers into the ground, and furnishes a quick and
-cheap source of water supply. This was invented by Col. Green in 1861,
-in meeting the necessities of his military camp during the civil war,
-and was patented by him January 14, 1868, No. 73,425.
-
-_Rock Drills._--In mining and tunneling through rock, the rock drill has
-been the implement of paramount importance and utility. For boring by
-rotary action the diamond drill is most effective. This uses bits set
-with diamonds which, by their extreme hardness, cut through the most
-refractory rock with great rapidity. It was invented by Hermann and
-patented by him in France, June 3, 1854.
-
-More important, however, is the compressed air rock drill, in which a
-piston has the drill bit directly on its piston rod and cuts by a
-reciprocating action. The piston is actuated by compressed air admitted
-alternately to its opposite sides in an automatic manner by valves. The
-compressed air conveyed to the drill in the tunnel or mine not only
-operates the drill, but helps to ventilate the tunnel. As early as 1849
-Clarke and Motley, in England, invented a machine drill, and in 1851
-Fowle devised a similar machine, having the drill attached directly to
-the piston cross head. The Hoosac and Mont Cenis tunnels greatly
-stimulated invention in this field, and among the notable drills of this
-class may be named the Burleigh, Ingersoll, and Sergeant. The Burleigh
-drill was brought out in 1866, and was covered by patents Nos. 52,960,
-52,961 and 59,960 of that year, and 113,850 of 1871, and the Ingersoll
-drill, by patents No. 112,254, and No. 120,279, of 1871.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 233.--BLOWING UP FLOOD ROCK.]
-
-_Blasting._--The discovery of nitro-glycerine in 1846, followed by its
-convenient commercial preparation in the form of dynamite, gave a great
-impetus to blasting. Notable as the largest operation of the kind in the
-century is the blowing up of Flood Rock, in the path of commerce between
-New York City and Long Island Sound. The dangerous character of this and
-other rocks in this vicinity gave long ago to this channel the
-significant name of Hell Gate. The undermining of the rocks by shafts
-and galleries is seen in Fig. 233, and the final blowing up of the same
-in a single blast was the culmination of a series of similar operations
-at this point tending to safer navigation. On October 10, 1885, 40,000
-cartridges, containing 75,000 pounds of dynamite and 240,000 pounds of
-_rack-a-rock_, were, by the touching of a button and the closing of an
-electric circuit, simultaneously exploded. In the twinkling of an eye
-nine acres of solid rock were shattered into fragments by the prodigious
-force, and a vast upheaval of water 1,400 feet long, 800 feet wide, and
-200 feet high, sprang into the air in tangled and gigantic fountains. As
-the termination of the most stupendous piece of engineering of the kind
-the world has ever seen, and with spectacular features fitting the
-enormous expense of $1,000,000, which the work cost, this final scene
-put an end to the menaces of Flood Rock, and wiped out of existence the
-worst dangers of Hell Gate.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 234.--CROSS SECTION MISSISSIPPI JETTIES.]
-
-_Mississippi Jetties._--The broad bar and shallow waters at the mouth of
-the Mississippi involved such an obstruction to commerce that in 1872 it
-received the attention of Congress, resulting in the building, by Capt.
-Eads, of the celebrated jetties. They were begun in 1875 and finished in
-1879, and cost $5,250,000. The channel obtained was 30 feet deep and 200
-feet wide. Its construction involved the building across the bar and out
-into the Gulf of Mexico two long reaches of parallel embankments, called
-jetties. This was effected by sinking mattresses of willow branches
-bound together and weighted with stone. These were laid in four layers,
-and when submerged, and resting upon the bottom, were covered with a
-layer of loose stone, and this in turn was surmounted with a capping of
-concrete blocks, as seen in cross section in Fig. 234. These jetties so
-concentrated the flow of waters into a narrow channel as to cause its
-increased velocity to wash out the mud and silt and deepen the channel.
-The immensity of the work may be measured by the quantity of material
-used in its construction, which included 6,000,000 cubic yards of willow
-mattresses, 1,000,000 cubic yards of stone, 13,000,000 feet (board
-measure) of lumber, and 8,000,000 cubic yards of concrete. The
-mattresses were laid 35 to 50 feet wide at the bottom, which width was
-considerably increased by the superimposed layer of stone, and the
-jetties extended 2¼ miles into the sea. Their influence upon commerce is
-indicated by the fact that before their construction the annual grain
-export from New Orleans was less than half a million bushels, and in
-1880, the year following their completion, it was increased to
-14,000,000 bushels.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 235.--INTERIOR CONSTRUCTION MODERN STEEL BUILDING.]
-
-_High Buildings._--A distinct feature of modern architecture is the
-enormously tall steel frame building known as the "sky scraper." The
-increasing value of city lots first brought about the vertical extension
-of buildings to a greater number of stories, and the necessity for
-making them fireproof, coupled with the desire to avoid loss of interior
-space, due to thick walls at the base, made a demand for a different
-style of architecture. To meet this a skeleton frame of steel is bolted
-together in unitary structure, the floors being all carried on the steel
-frame, and the outer masonry walls being relatively thin, and carrying
-only their own weight. In Fig. 235 is shown an example of the interior
-structure of such a building. The vertical columns are erected upon a
-very firm foundation, and to them are bolted, on the floor levels,
-horizontal I-beams and girders, stayed by tie rods, which I-beams
-receive between them hollow fireproof tile to form the floor. The outer
-masonry walls are built around the skeleton frame, as seen in Fig. 236,
-and the details of connections for the floor members appear in Fig. 237.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 236.--ENCLOSURE OF STEEL FRAME BY MASONRY.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 237.--DETAILS OF INTERNAL CONSTRUCTION.]
-
-The construction of iron buildings began about the middle of the
-century. In 1845 Peter Cooper erected the largest rolling mill at that
-time in the United States for making railroad iron, and at this mill
-wrought iron beams for fireproof buildings were first rolled. In the
-building of the Cooper Institute in New York City in 1857 he was the
-first to employ such beams with brick arches to support the floors. The
-unifying of the iron work into an integral skeleton frame, for relieving
-the side walls of the weight of the floors is, however, a comparatively
-recent development, and this has so raised the height of the modern
-office building as to cause it to impress the observer as an obelisk
-rather than a place of habitation. An earthquake-proof steel palace for
-the Crown Prince of Japan is one of the modern applications of steel in
-architecture. It is being built by American engineers, and is to cost
-$3,000,000.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 238.--THE EIFFEL TOWER. HEIGHT, 984 FEET. TALLEST
-STRUCTURE IN THE WORLD.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 239.--WASHINGTON'S MONUMENT. HEIGHT 555 FEET, 5½
-INCHES. HIGHEST MASONRY STRUCTURE IN THE WORLD.]
-
-_Eiffel Tower._--Loftiest among the high structures of the world, and
-significant as indicating the possibilities of iron construction, the
-Eiffel Tower of the Paris Exposition of 1889 was a distinct achievement
-in the engineering world. It is seen in Fig. 238. It is 984 feet high,
-and 410 feet across its foundation, and has a supporting base of four
-independent lattice work piers. In the top was constructed a scientific
-laboratory surmounted by a lantern containing a powerful electric light.
-The total weight of iron in the structure is about 7,000 tons, the
-weight of the rivets alone being 450 tons, and the total number of them
-2,500,000. The level of the first story is marked by a bold frieze, on
-the panels of which, around all four faces, were inscribed in gigantic
-letters of gold the names of the famous Frenchmen of the century. The
-summit of the tower was reached by staircases containing 1,793 steps,
-and by hydraulic elevators running in four stages. The cost of this
-structure was nearly $1,000,000.
-
-_Washington's Monument._--Next in height to the Eiffel Tower, and being,
-in fact, the tallest masonry structure in the world, this noble obelisk,
-by its simplicity, boldness and solidity, challenges the admiration of
-every visitor, and gratifies the pride of every patriot. It is seen in
-Fig. 239, and is 555 feet 5½ inches high, 55 feet square at the base,
-and 34 feet square at the top. The walls are 15 feet thick at the base,
-and 18 inches at the top, and its summit is reached by an internal
-winding staircase and a central elevator. At the height of 504 feet the
-walls are pierced with port holes, from which a magnificent view is had
-of the capital city and surrounding country. The summit is crowned with
-a cap of aluminum, inscribed _Laus Deo_. The foundation of rock and
-cement is 36 feet deep and 126 feet square, and the total cost of the
-monument was $1,300,000. The corner stone was laid in 1848. In 1855 the
-work was discontinued at the height of 152 feet, from lack of funds. In
-1878 it was resumed by appropriation from Congress, and completed and
-dedicated in 1885, under the direction of Col. Thomas L. Casey, of the
-United States Corps of Engineers.
-
-_The Capitol Building._--Representing the heart of the great American
-Republic, and overlooking its Capital City, this grand building, shown
-in Fig. 240, is a poem in architecture. Massive, symmetrical and
-harmonious, its highest point reaches 307½ feet above the plaza on the
-east. It is 751 feet 4 inches long, 350 feet wide, and the walls of the
-building proper cover 3½ acres. Crowning the center of the building is
-the imposing dome of iron, surmounted by a lantern, and above this is
-the bronze statue of Freedom, 19 feet 6 inches high, and weighing
-14,985 pounds, the latter being set in place December 2, 1863. The dome
-is 135 feet 5 inches in diameter at the base, and the open space of the
-rotunda within is 96 feet in diameter and 180 feet high.
-
-The corner stone of the original building was laid in 1793 by
-Washington. The first session of Congress held there was in 1800, while
-the building was still incomplete. The original building was finished
-in 1811. In 1814 it was partly burned by the British. In 1815
-reconstruction was begun, and completed in 1827. In 1850 Congress passed
-an act authorizing the extension of the Capitol, which resulted in the
-building of the north and south wings, containing the present Senate
-Chamber and Hall of the House of Representatives. The corner stones of
-the extension were laid by President Fillmore in 1851, Daniel Webster
-being the orator of the occasion, and the wings were finished in 1867.
-Since this time handsome additions in the shape of marble terraces on
-the west front have added greatly to the beauty and apparent size of the
-building.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 240.--THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL. LENGTH, 751-1/3
-FEET; WIDTH, 350 FEET; HEIGHT, 307½ FEET; BUILDING COVERS 3½ ACRES.]
-
-It is not possible to give anything like an adequate review of the
-engineering inventions and achievements of the Nineteenth Century in a
-single chapter, and only the most noteworthy have been mentioned. The
-modern life of the world, however, has been replete with the resourceful
-expedients of the engineer, and the ingenious instrumentalities invented
-by him to carry out his plans. There have been about 1,000 patents
-granted for bridges, about 2,500 for excavating apparatus, and about
-1,500 for hydraulic engineering. In mining the safety-lamp of Sir
-Humphrey Davy, in 1815, has been followed by stamp mills, rock-drills,
-derricks, and hoisting and lowering apparatus, and lately by hydraulic
-mining apparatus, by which a stream of water under high pressure is made
-to wash away a mountain side. Apparatus for loading and unloading,
-pneumatic conveyors, great systems of irrigation, lighthouses,
-breakwaters, pile drivers, dry-docks, ship railways, road-making
-apparatus, fire escapes, fireproof buildings, water towers, and
-filtration plants have been devised, constructed and utilized. Many
-gigantic schemes, already begun, still await successful completion,
-among which may be named the draining of the Zuyder Zee, the Siberian
-railway, the Panama and Nicaraguan Canals, the Simplon tunnel, the new
-East River Bridge, and the Rapid Transit Tunnel under New York City;
-while a bridge or tunnel across the English Channel, a ship canal for
-France, connecting the Bay of Biscay with the Mediterranean, a tunnel
-under the Straits of Gibraltar, and a ship canal connecting the great
-lakes with the Gulf of Mexico, are among the possible achievements which
-challenge the engineer of the Twentieth Century.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVIII.
-
-WOODWORKING.
-
- EARLY MACHINES OF SIR SAMUEL BENTHAM--EVOLUTION OF THE SAW--CIRCULAR
- SAW--HAMMERING TO TENSION--STEAM FEED FOR SAW MILL CARRIAGE--QUARTER
- SAWING--THE BAND SAW--PLANING MACHINES--THE WOODWORTH PLANER--THE
- WOODBURY YIELDING PRESSURE BAR--THE UNIVERSAL WOODWORKER--THE
- BLANCHARD LATHE--MORTISING MACHINES--SPECIAL WOODWORKING MACHINES.
-
-
-Surrounded as we are in the modern home with beautiful and artistic
-furniture, and installed in comfortable and inexpensive houses, one does
-not appreciate the contrast which the life of the average citizen of
-to-day presents to that of his great-grandfather in the matter of his
-dwelling house appointments. A hundred years ago most of the dwellings
-of the middle and poorer classes were crudely made, with clap-boards and
-joists laboriously hewn with the broad ax, and the roof was covered with
-split shingles. Uncouth and clumsy doors, windows and blinds, were
-framed on the simplest utilitarian basis, and a scanty supply of rude
-hand-made furniture imperfectly filled the simple wants of the home.
-To-day nearly every cottage has beautifully moulded trimmings, paneled
-doors, handsomely carved mantels and turned balusters, all furnished at
-an insignificant price, and art has so added its æsthetic values to the
-furniture and other useful things in wood, that beautiful, artistic and
-tasteful homes are no longer confined to the rich, but may be enjoyed by
-all. This great change has been brought about by the sawmill, the
-planing machine, mortising and boring machines, and the turning lathe.
-
-Pre-eminent in the field of woodworking machinery, and worthy to be
-called the father of the art, is to be mentioned the name of Gen. Sir
-Samuel Bentham, of England, whose inventions in the last decade of the
-Eighteenth Century formed the nucleus of the modern art of woodworking.
-
-_The Saw_ was the great pioneer in woodworking machinery, and the
-circular saw has, in the Nineteenth Century, been the representative
-type. Pushing its way along the outskirts of civilization, its
-glistening and apparently motionless disk, filled with a hidden, but
-terrific energy, and singing a merry tune in the clearings, has
-transformed trees into tenements, forests into firesides, and altered
-the face of the earth, the record of its work being only measured by the
-immensity of the forests which it has depleted. It is not possible to
-fix the date of the first circular saw, for rotary cutting action dates
-from the ancient turning lathes. The earliest description of a circular
-saw is to be found in the British patent to Miller, No. 1,152, of 1777.
-It was not until the Nineteenth Century, however, that it was generally
-applied, and its great work belongs to this period. The preceding saws
-were of the straight, reciprocating kind. The old pit-saw is the
-earliest form, and in course of time the men were replaced by machinery
-to form the "muley" saw, the man in the pit being replaced by a
-mechanical "pitman," which accounts for the etymology of the word. With
-the "muley" saw the log was held at each end, and each end shifted
-alternately to set for a new cut. The first development was along the
-lines of this form of saw, and to increase its efficiency the saws were
-arranged in gangs, so as to make a number of cuts at one pass of the
-log. This type was especially used in Europe, but on the up stroke there
-was no work being done, and hence half of the time was lost. This and
-other difficulties led finally to the adoption of the circular type,
-whose continuous cut and high speed saved much time and presented many
-other advantages. A representative example of the circular saw is given
-in Fig. 241.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 241.--PORTABLE CIRCULAR SAW.]
-
-With the increased diameter and peripheral speed of the circular saw,
-however, a grave difficulty presented itself. The saw would heat at its
-periphery, and its rim portion expanding without commensurate expansion
-of the central portion, would cause the saw to crack and fly to pieces
-under the tremendous centrifugal force. This difficulty is provided for
-by what is known as "_hammering to tension_," _i. e._, the saw is
-hammered to a gradually increasing state of compression from the rim to
-the center, thus causing an initial expansion or spread of the molecules
-of metal of the central parts of the saw, which is stored up as an
-elastic expansive force that accommodates itself to the tension caused
-by the expansion of the rim, and prevents the unequal and destructive
-strain, due to the expansion of the rim from the great heat of friction
-in passing through the log.
-
-Mounted upon a portable frame, this machine was put to its great work
-upon the logs in the forests of America, and for many years this type of
-sawmill held its sway, and an enormous amount of work was done through
-its agency. Among its useful accessories were the set-works for
-adjusting the log holding knees to the position for a new cut, log
-turners for rotating the log to change the plane of the cut, and the
-rack and pinion feed, by which the saw carriage was run back and forth.
-Following the rack and pinion feed came the rope feed, in which a rope
-wrapped around a drum was carried at its opposite ends over pulleys and
-back to the opposite ends of the carriage, which was thereby carried
-back and forth by the forward or backward movement of the drum.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 242.--DIRECT-ACTING STEAM FEED SAWMILL CARRIAGE.]
-
-The greatest advance in sawmills in recent years, however, has been the
-steam feed, in which a very long steam cylinder was provided with a
-piston, whose long rod was directly attached to the saw carriage, and
-the latter moved back and forth by the admission of steam alternately
-to opposite sides of the piston. This type of feed, also known as the
-_shot gun_ feed, from the resemblance of the long cylinder to a gun
-barrel, was invented about twenty-five years ago, by De Witt C.
-Prescott, and is covered by his patent, No. 174,004, February 22, 1876,
-later improvements being shown in his patent, No. 360,972, April 12,
-1887. The value of the steam feed was to increase the speed and
-efficiency of the saw, by expediting the movement of its carriage, as
-many as six boards per minute being cut by its aid from a log of average
-length. An example of a modern steam feed for sawmill carriages is seen
-in Fig. 242. With the modern development of the art the ease and
-rapidity of steam action have recommended it for use in most all of the
-work of the sawmill, and the direct application of steam pistons
-working in cylinders has been utilized for canting, kicking, flipping
-and rolling the logs, lifting the stock, taking away the boards, etc.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 243.--METHOD OF SHAPING AND HOLDING LOG FOR QUARTER
-SAWING.]
-
-Beautifully finished furniture in quartered oak has always excited the
-pleasure, and piqued the curiosity of the uninformed as to how this
-result is obtained. Fig. 243 illustrates the method of sawing to produce
-this effect. The log is simply divided longitudinally into four
-quarters, and the quarter sections are then cut by the vertical plane of
-the saw at an oblique angle to the sawed sides, which brings to the
-surface of the boards the peculiar flecks or patches of the wood's grain
-so much admired when finished and polished.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 244.--AUTOMATIC BAND RIP SAW.]
-
-The _Band Saw_ is an endless belt of steel having teeth formed along one
-edge and traveling continuously around an upper and lower pulley, with
-its toothed edge presented to the timber to be cut, as seen in Fig. 244,
-which represents a form of band saw made by the J. A. Fay & Egan
-Company, of Cincinnati. A form of band saw is found as early as 1808, in
-British patent No. 3,105, to Newberry. On March 25, 1834, a French
-patent was granted for a band saw to Etiennot, No. 3,397. The first
-United States patent for a band saw was granted to B. Barker, January 6,
-1836, but it remained for the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century to
-give the band saw its prominence in woodworking machines. That it did
-not find general application at an earlier period was due to the
-difficulty experienced in securely and evenly joining the ends of the
-band. For many years the only moderately successful band saws were made
-in France, but expert mechanical skill has so mastered the problem that
-in recent years the band saw has gone to the very front in wood-sawing
-machinery. To-day it is in service in sizes from a delicate filament,
-used for scroll sawing and not larger than a baby's ribbon, to an
-enormous steel belt 50 feet in peripheral measurement, and 12 inches
-wide, traveling over pulleys 8 feet in diameter, making 500 revolutions
-per minute, and tearing its way through logs much too large for any
-circular saw, at the rate of nearly two miles a minute. A modern form of
-such a saw is seen in Fig. 245. Prescott's patents, Nos. 368,731 and
-369,881, of 1887; 416,012, of 1889, and 472,586 and 478,817, of 1892,
-represent some of the important developments in the band saw.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 245.--MODERN BAND SAW FOR LARGE TIMBER.]
-
-When the band saw is applied to cutting logs the backward movement of
-the carriage would, if there were any slivers on the cut face of the
-log, be liable to force those slivers against the smooth edge of the
-band saw, and distort and possibly break it. To obviate this the saw
-carriage is provided with a lateral adjustment on the back movement
-called an "off-set," so that the log returns for a new cut out of
-contact with the saw. Examples of such off-setting are found in patents
-to Gowen, No. 383,460, May 29, 1888, and No. 401,945, April 23, 1889,
-and Hinkley, No. 368,669, August 23, 1887. A modern form of the band
-saw, however, has teeth on both its edges, which requires no off-setting
-mechanism, but cuts in both directions. An example of this, known as
-the telescopic band mill, is made by the Edward P. Allis Company, of
-Milwaukee.
-
-A saw which planes, as well as severs, is shown in patents to Douglass,
-Nos. 431,510, July 1, 1890, and 542,630, July 16, 1895. Steam power
-mechanism for operating the knees is shown in patent to Wilkin, No.
-317,256, May 5, 1885. Means for quarter sawing in both directions of log
-travel are shown in patent to Gray, No. 550,825, December 3, 1895. Means
-for operating log turners and log loaders appear in patents to Hill, No.
-496,938, May 9, 1893; No. 466,682, January 5, 1892; No. 526,624,
-September 25, 1894, and Kelly, No. 497,098, May 9, 1893. A self cooling
-circular saw is found in patent to Jenks, No. 193,004, July 10, 1877;
-shingle sawing machines in patents to O'Connor, No. 358,474, March 1,
-1887, and No. 292,347, January 22, 1884, and Perkins, No. 380,346, April
-3, 1888; and means for severing veneer spirally and dividing it into
-completed staves, are shown in patent to Hayne, No. 509,534, November
-28, 1893.
-
-_Planing Machines._--While the saw plays the initial part of shaping the
-rough logs into lumber, it is to the planing machine that the
-refinements of woodworking are due. Its rapidly revolving cutter head
-reduces the uneven thickness of the lumber to an exact gauge, and
-simultaneously imparts the fine smooth surface. The planing machine is
-organized in various shapes for different uses. When the cutters are
-straight and arranged horizontally, it is a simple _planer_. When the
-cutters are short and arranged to work on the edge of the board they are
-known as _edgers_; when the edges are cut into tongues and grooves it is
-called a _matching machine_; and when the cutters have a curved
-ornamental contour it is known as a _molding machine_, and is used for
-cutting the ornamental contour for house trimmings and various
-ornamental uses.
-
-The planing machine was one of the many woodworking devices invented by
-General Bentham. His first machine, British patent No. 1,838, of 1791,
-was a reciprocating machine, but in his British patent No. 1,951, of
-1793, he described the rotary form along with a great variety of other
-woodworking machinery.
-
-Bramah's planer, British patent No. 2,652, of 1802, was about the first
-planing machine of the Nineteenth Century. It is known as a transverse
-planer, the cutters being on the lower surface of a horizontal disc,
-which is fixed to a vertical revolving shaft, and overhangs the board
-passing beneath it, the cutters revolving in a plane parallel with the
-upper surface of the board. The planing machine of Muir, of Glasgow,
-British patent No. 5,502, of 1827, was designed for making boards for
-flooring, and represented a considerable advance in the art.
-
-With the greater wooded areas of America, the rapid growth of the young
-republic, and the resourceful spirit of its new civilization, the
-leading activities in woodworking machinery were in the second quarter
-of the Nineteenth Century transferred to the United States, and a
-phenomenal growth in this art ensued. Conspicuous among the early
-planing machine patents in the United States was that granted to William
-Woodworth, December 27, 1828. This covered broadly the combination of
-the cutting cylinders, and rolls for holding the boards against the
-cutting cylinders, and also means for tongueing and grooving at one
-operation. The revolving cutting cylinder had been used by Bentham
-thirty-five years before, and rollers for feeding lumber to circular
-saws were described in Hammond's British patent No. 3,459, of 1811, but
-Woodworth did not employ his rolls for feeding, as a rack and pinion
-were provided for that, but his rolls had a co-active relation with a
-planer cylinder, or cutter head, in holding the board against the
-tendency of the cutter head to pull the board toward it. A patent was
-granted to Woodworth for these two features in combination, which patent
-was reissued July 8, 1845, twice extended, and for a period of
-twenty-eight years from its first grant, exerted an oppressive monopoly
-in this art, since it covered the combination of the two necessary
-elements of every practical planer.
-
-Following the Woodworth patent came a host of minor improvements, among
-which were the Woodbury patents, extending through the period of the
-third quarter of the Nineteenth Century, and prominent among which is
-the patent to J. P. Woodbury, No. 138,462, April 20, 1873, covering
-broadly a rotary cutter head combined with a yielding pressure bar to
-hold the board against the lifting action of the cutter head.
-
-In modern planing machinery the climax of utility is reached in the
-so-called _universal woodworker_. This is the versatile Jack-of-all-work
-in the planing mill. It planes flat, moulded, rabbeted, or beaded
-surfaces; it saws with both the rip and crosscut action; it cuts tongues
-and grooves; makes miters, chamfers, wedges, mortises and tenons, and is
-the general utility machine of the shop.
-
-In Fig. 246 is shown a well known form of planing machine. Its work is
-to plane the surfaces of boards, and to cut the edges into tongues and
-groves, such as are required for flooring. This machine planes boards up
-to 24 inches wide and 6 inches thick, and will tongue and grove 14
-inches wide.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 246.--24-INCH SINGLE SURFACER AND MATCHER.]
-
-_Wood Turning._--To this ancient art Blanchard added, in 1819, his very
-ingenious and important improvement for turning irregular forms. A few
-efforts at irregular turning had been made before, but in the arts
-generally only circular forms had been turned. With Blanchard's
-improvement, patented January 20, 1820, any irregular form, such as a
-shoe-last, gun-stock, ax-handle, wheel-spokes, etc., could be smoothly
-and expeditiously turned and finished in any required shape. In the
-ordinary lathe the work is revolved rapidly, and the cutting tool is
-held stationary, or only slowly shifted in the hand. In the Blanchard
-lathe the work is hung in a swinging frame, and turned very slowly to
-bring its different sides to the cutting action, and the cutting tool is
-constructed as a rapidly revolving disk, against which the work is
-projected bodily by the oscillation of the swinging frame, to
-accommodate the irregularities of the form. In order to do this
-automatically, a pattern or model of the article to be turned was also
-hung in the swinging frame, and made to slowly revolve and bear against
-a pattern wheel, which, acting upon the swinging frame carrying the
-work, caused it to advance to or recede from the cutting disc exactly in
-proportion to the contour of the model, and thus cause the revolving
-cutters to cut the block as it turns synchronously with the model, to a
-shape exactly corresponding to said model.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 247.--BLANCHARD LATHE.]
-
-In Fig. 247 is shown a perspective view of Blanchard's lathe, as
-patented January 20, 1820. H is a swinging frame, carrying the model T
-of a shoe last, and a roughed-out block U, partly converted into a shoe
-last. A sliding frame, fed horizontally by a screw, carries a pattern
-wheel K, that bears against the pattern T, and a rotary cutter E, acting
-against the roughed-out block U. The revolving disk-shaped cutter E is
-rotated by a pulley and belt from a drum, which latter is made long
-enough to accommodate the travel of the frame. The pattern T and block U
-are advanced to contact respectively, with pattern wheel K and cutter E
-by the swinging action of frame H, and as the pattern T and block U are
-slowly revolved, the travel of T against K is made to react on frame H
-and regulate the advance of U against E, with the result that the rough
-block U is cut to the identical shape of the pattern T.
-
-Among modern developments in this art may be mentioned the patents to
-Kimball, No. 471,006, March 15, 1892, and No. 498,170, May 23, 1893, the
-latter showing ingenious means whereby shoe lasts of the same length,
-but varying widths, may be turned. A polygonal-form lathe is shown in
-patent to Merritt, No. 504,812, September 12, 1893; a multiple lathe in
-patents to Albee, No. 429,297, June 3, 1890, and Aram, No. 550,401,
-November 26, 1895; a tubular lathe in patent to Lenhart, No. 355,540,
-January 4, 1887; and a spiral cutting lathe in patent to Mackintosh, No.
-396,283, January 15, 1889.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 248.--MORTISING MACHINE.]
-
-_Mortising Machines_ have exercised an important influence in mill work
-in the joining of the stiles in doors, sashes and blinds, and in the
-making of furniture. The Fay & Egan machine is seen in Fig. 248. The
-self acting mortising machine was among the numerous early contributions
-of Gen. Bentham in woodworking machinery, and was described in his
-British patent No. 1,951, of 1793, a number of them having been made by
-him for the British Admiralty. Brunel's mortising machine for making
-ships' blocks is another early form described in British patent No.
-2,478, of 1801. As representing novel departures in this art, the
-endless chain mortising machine shown in Douglas patent, No. 379,566,
-March 20, 1888, may be mentioned, and reissue patent, No. 10,655,
-October 27, 1885, to Oppenheimer, and No. 461,666, October 20, 1891, to
-Charlton, are examples of mortising augers.
-
-_Special Woodworking Machines._--Of these there have been great numbers
-and variety. No sooner does an article become extensively used than a
-machine is made for turning it out automatically. Indeed, machines for
-cheaply turning out articles have, in many cases, led the way to popular
-use of the article by the extreme cheapness of its production.
-
-Among various automatic machines for making special articles may be
-mentioned those for making clothes pins, scooping out wood trays,
-pointing skewers, dovetailing box blanks, cutting sash stile pockets,
-cutting and packing toothpicks, making matches, boxing matches,
-duplicating carvings, cutting bungs, cutting corks, making umbrella
-sticks, making brush blocks, boring chair legs, screw-driving machines,
-box nailing machines, making cigar boxes, nailing baskets, wiring box
-blanks, applying slats, gluing boxes, gluing slate frames, making
-veneers, bushing mortises, covering piano hammers, making staves and
-barrels, making fruit baskets, etc.
-
-It is impossible to give in any brief review a proper conception of the
-immensity of the woodworking industry in the United States. It is
-estimated in the Patent Office that about 8,000 patents have been
-granted for woodworking machines. Besides this there are about 5,000
-patents in the separate class of wood sawing, about an equal number for
-woodworking tools, and these, with other patented inventions in wood
-turning, coopering, or the making of barrels, wheelwrighting, and other
-minor classes, give some idea of the activity in this great field of
-industry.
-
-The exports of wood and wooden manufactures from the United States in
-1899 amounted to $41,489,526, of which $15,031,176 were for finished
-boards, $4,107,350 for barrels, staves and heads, and $3,571,375 for
-household furniture, but this is only an insignificant portion, for with
-a prosperous country, an abundance of wood, and a thrifty and ambitious
-nation of home builders, the home consumption has been incalculable.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIX.
-
-METAL WORKING.
-
- EARLY IRON FURNACE--OPERATIONS OF LORD DUDLEY, ABRAHAM DARBY AND
- HENRY CORT--NEILSON'S HOT BLAST--GREAT BLAST FURNACES OF MODERN
- TIMES--THE PUDDLING FURNACE--BESSEMER STEEL AND THE CONVERTER--OPEN
- HEARTH STEEL--SIEMENS' REGENERATIVE FURNACE--SIEMENS-MARTIN PROCESS
- --ARMOR PLATE--MAKING HORSE SHOES--SCREWS AND SPECIAL MACHINES--
- ELECTRIC WELDING, ANNEALING AND TEMPERING--COATING WITH METAL--METAL
- FOUNDING--BARBED WIRE MACHINES--MAKING NAILS, PINS, ETC.--MAKING
- SHOT--ALLOYS--MAKING ALUMINUM, AND METALLURGY OF RARER METALS--THE
- CYANIDE PROCESS--ELECTRIC CONCENTRATOR.
-
-
-Take away iron and steel from the resources of modern life, and the
-whole fabric of civilization disintegrates. The railroad, steam engine
-and steamship, the dynamo and electric motor, the telegraph and
-telephone, agricultural implements of all sorts, grinding mills,
-spinning machines and looms, battleships and firearms, stoves and
-furnaces, the printing press, and tools of all sorts--each and every one
-would be robbed of its essential basic material, without which it cannot
-exist. Steam and electricity may be the heart and soul of the world's
-life, but iron is its great body. King among metals, it gives its name
-to the present cycle, as the "Iron Age," and the Nineteenth Century has
-crowned it with such refinements of shape, and endowed it with such
-attributes of utility, and such grandeur of estate, that its powers in
-organized machinery have, for effective service, risen to all the
-functions and dignity of human capacity--except that of thought.
-
-A crude gift of nature, in the mountain side, it remained, however, a
-sodden mass until extracted, refined, and wrought into shape by the
-genius of man. Yielding to the magical touch of invention, it has been
-cast in moulds into cannon, mills, plowshares, and ten thousand
-articles; it has been drawn into wire of any fineness and length to form
-cables for great suspension bridges; it has been rolled into rails that
-grill the continents; into sheets that cover our roofs; and into nails
-that hold our houses together. It has been wrought into a softness that
-lends its susceptible nature to the influence of magnetism, and has been
-hardened into steel to form the sword and cutting tool. From the
-delicate hair spring of a watch to the massive armor plate of a
-battleship, it finds endless applications, and is nature's most enduring
-gift to man--abundant, cheap, and lasting.
-
-Metallurgy is an ancient art, and the working of gold, silver and copper
-dates back to the beginning of history. Being found in a condition of
-comparative purity, and needing but little refinement, they were, for
-that reason, the first metals fashioned to meet the wants of man. Iron,
-somewhat more refractory, appeared later, but it also has an early
-history, and is mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible (Genesis
-iv., 22), in which reference is made to Tubal Cain as an artificer in
-brass and iron. The iron bedstead of Og, King of Bashan, is another
-reference. That it was known to the Egyptians and the Greeks at least
-1000 B. C., seems reasonably certain. The Assyrians were also acquainted
-with iron, as is clearly established by the explorations of Mr. Layard,
-whose contributions to the British Museum of iron articles from the
-ruins of Ninevah include saws, picks, hammers, and knives of iron, which
-are believed to be of a date not later than 880 B. C.
-
-Iron ore is usually found in the form of an oxide (hematite), and its
-reduction to the metallic form consists in displacing the oxygen, which
-is effected by mixing carbon in some form with the ore, and subjecting
-the mixture to a high heat by means of a blast. The carbon unites with
-the oxygen and forms carbonic acid gas, which escapes, while the
-metallic iron fuses and runs out at the bottom of the furnace, and when
-collected in trough-shaped moulds, is known as pig iron.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 249.--PRIMITIVE IRON FURNACE OF HINDOSTAN.]
-
-The first iron furnaces were known as _air bloomeries_, and had no
-forced draft. The first step of importance in iron making was the forced
-blast. An early form of blast furnace is shown in Fig. 249, which
-represents an iron furnace of the Kols, a tribe of iron smelters in
-Lower Bengal and Orissa. An inclined tray terminates at its lower end in
-a furnace inclosure. Charcoal in the furnace being well ignited, ore and
-charcoal resting on the tray are alternately raked into the furnace. The
-blowers are two boxes, connected to the furnace by bamboo pipes, and
-provided with skin covers, which are alternately depressed by the feet
-and raised by cords from the spring poles. Each skin cover has a hole in
-the middle, which is stopped by the heel of the workman as the weight of
-the person is thrown upon it, and is left open by the withdrawal of the
-foot as the cover is raised. The heels of the workman, alternately
-raised, form alternately acting valves, and the skin cover, when
-depressed, acts as a bellows. The fused metal sinks to a basin in the
-bottom of the furnace, and the slag or impurities run off above the
-level of the basin at the side of the furnace.
-
-The great modern art of iron working dates from Lord Dudley's British
-patent, No. 18, of 1621, which related to "The mistery, arte, way and
-meanes of melting iron owre, and of makeing the same into cast workes or
-barrs with seacoales or pittcoales in furnaces with bellowes of as good
-condicon as hath bene heretofore made of charcoale."
-
-The next step of importance after the blast furnace was the substitution
-of coke for coal for the reduction of the ore, which was introduced by
-Abraham Darby, about 1750.
-
-Next came the conversion of cast iron into wrought iron. This was mainly
-the work of Mr. Henry Cort, of Gosport, England, who, in 1783-84,
-introduced the processes of puddling and rolling, which were two of the
-most important inventions connected with the production of iron since
-the employment of the blast furnace. Mr. Cort obtained British patents
-No. 1,351, of 1783, and No. 1,420, of 1784, for his invention. His first
-patent related to the hammering, welding, and rolling of the iron, while
-in his second patent he introduced what is known as the reverberatory
-furnace, having a concave bottom, into which the fluid metal is run from
-the smelting furnace, and which is converted from brittle cast iron,
-containing a certain per cent. of carbon, into wrought iron, which has
-the carbon eliminated, and is malleable and tough. This process is
-called _puddling_, and consists in exposing the molten metal to an
-oxidizing current of flame and air. The metal boils as the carbon is
-burned out, and as it becomes more plastic and stiff it is collected
-into what are called blooms, and these are hammered to get rid of the
-slag, and are reduced to marketable shape as wrought iron by the
-process described in his previous patent. Mr. Cort expended a fortune in
-developing the iron trade, and was one of the greatest pioneers in this
-art.
-
-The first notable development of the Nineteenth Century was the
-introduction of the hot air blast in forges and furnaces where bellows
-or blowing apparatus was required. This was the invention of J. Beaumont
-Neilson, of Glasgow, and was covered by him in British patent No. 5,701
-of 1828. This consisted in heating the air blast before admitting it to
-the furnace, and it so increased the reduction of refractory ores in the
-blast furnace as to permit three or four times the quantity of iron to
-be produced with an expenditure of little more than one-third of the
-fuel.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 250.--MODERN HOT BLAST FURNACE.]
-
-An illustration of a modern blast furnace plant is given in Fig. 250. A
-is the furnace, in which the iron ore and fuel are arranged in alternate
-layers. The hot air blast comes in through pipes _t_ at the bottom,
-called tuyeres. As gas escapes through the opening _b_ at the top, it is
-first cleared of dust in the settler and washer B, and then passes
-through the pipe C to the regenerators D D D, where it is made to heat
-the incoming air. The gas mixed with some air burns in the
-regenerators, and, after heating a mass of brick within the regenerators
-red hot, escapes by the underground passageway to the chimney on the
-right. When the bricks are sufficiently hot in one of the regenerators,
-gas is turned off therefrom, and into another regenerator, and fresh air
-from pipe H is passed through the bricks of the heated regenerator, and
-being heated passes out pipe F at the top and thence to the pipe G and
-tuyeres _t_, to promote the chemical reactions in the blast furnace.
-
-In the earlier blast furnaces a vast amount of heat was allowed to
-escape and was wasted. The utilization of this heat engaged the
-attention of Aubertot in France, 1810-14; Teague in England (British
-patent No. 6,211, of 1832); Budd (British patent No. 10,475, of 1845),
-and others. To enable the escaping hot gases to be employed for heating
-the hot blast regenerators a charging device is now used, as seen at a
-in Fig. 250, in which the admission of ore and fuel is regulated by a
-large conical valve, and the gases are compelled to pass out at _b_ and
-be utilized.
-
-Among the world's largest blast furnaces may be mentioned the Austrian
-Alpine Montan Gesellschaft, which concern owns thirty-two furnaces. This
-is said to be the largest number owned by any one concern in the world,
-but most of them are of small size and run on charcoal iron. The
-furnaces of the United States are, however, of the largest yield, and
-the leading ones of these are:
-
- No. Annual capacity
- Furnaces. in tons.
- Carnegie Steel Co. 17 2,200,000
- Federal Steel Co. 19 1,900,000
- Tennessee Coal and Iron Co. 20 1,307,000
- National Steel Co. 12 1,205,000
-
-The present annual output of pig iron in the United States is about ten
-million tons, of which these four companies make about one-half.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 251.--PUDDLING FURNACE.]
-
-When the iron runs from the bottom of the blast furnace it is allowed to
-flow into trough-like moulds in the sand of the floor, and forms pig
-iron. Pig iron can be remelted and cast into various articles in moulds,
-but it cannot be wrought with the hammer, nor rolled into rails or
-plates, nor welded on the anvil, because it is still a compound of iron
-and carbon with other impurities, and is crystalline in character. To
-bring it into wrought iron, which is malleable and ductile, it is
-puddled and refined, which involves chiefly the burning out of the
-carbon and silicon. The pig iron is remelted (see Fig. 251) in the
-tray-shaped hearth _b_ from the heat of the fire in the reverberatory
-furnace _a_, the reverberatory furnace being one in which the materials
-treated are exposed to the heat of the flame, but not to contact with
-the fuel. The hot flame mixed with air beating down upon the melted iron
-on hearth _b_ for two hours or so, burns out the silicon and carbon, the
-process being facilitated by stirring and working the mass with tools.
-During the operation the oxygen of the air combines with the carbon and
-forms carbonic acid gas, which, in escaping from the metal, appears to
-make it boil. When the iron parts with its carbon it loses its fluidity
-and becomes plastic and coherent, and is formed into balls called
-_blooms_. These blooms consist of particles of nearly pure iron
-cohering, but retaining still a quantity of slag or vitreous material,
-and other impurities, which slag, etc., is worked out while still, hot
-by a squeezing, kneading, and hammering process to form wrought iron
-that may be worked into any shape between rolls or under the hammer.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 252.--BESSEMER CONVERTER DURING THE "BLOW."]
-
-_Bessemer Steel._--Steel is a compound of iron and carbon, standing
-between wrought iron and cast iron. Wrought iron has, when pure,
-practically no carbon in it, while cast iron has a considerable
-proportion in excess of steel. Steel making consists mainly in so
-treating cast iron as to get rid of a part of the carbon and other
-impurities. Of all methods of steel making, and in fact of all the steps
-of progress in the art of metal working, none has been so important and
-so far reaching in effect as the Bessemer process: It was invented by
-Henry Bessemer, of England, in 1855. About fifty British patents were
-taken by Mr. Bessemer relating to various improvements in the iron
-industry, but those representing the pioneer steps of the so-called
-Bessemer process are No. 2,321, of 1855; No. 2,768, of 1855, and No.
-356, of 1856. The process is illustrated in Figs. 252, 253 and 254. The
-converter in which the process is carried out is a great bottle-shaped
-vessel 15 feet high and 9 feet wide, consisting of an iron shell with a
-heavy lining of refractory material, capable of holding eight or more
-tons of melted iron, and with an open neck at the top turned to one
-side. It is mounted on trunnions, and is provided with gear wheels by
-which it may be turned on its trunnions, so that it may be maintained
-erect, as in Fig. 252, or be turned down to pour out the contents into
-the casting ladle, as in Figs. 253 and 254. At the bottom of the
-converter there is an air chamber supplied by a pipe leading from one of
-the trunnions, which is hollow, and a number of upwardly discharging air
-openings or nozzles send streams of air into the molten mass of red hot
-cast iron. The red hot cast iron contains more or less carbon and
-silicon, and the air uniting with the carbon and silicon burns it out,
-and in doing so furnishes the heat for the continuance of the operation.
-When the pressure of air is turned into the mass of molten iron a tongue
-of flame increasing in brilliancy to an intense white, comes roaring out
-of the mouth of the converter, and a violent ebullition takes place
-within, and throws sparks and spatters of metal high in the air around,
-producing the impression and scenic effect of a volcano in eruption. In
-fifteen minutes the volume and brilliancy of the flame diminish, and
-this indicates the critical moment of conversion into tough steel, which
-must be adjusted to the greatest nicety. When the carbon is sufficiently
-burned out the blast is stopped and the converter turned down to receive
-a quantity of ferro-manganese or spiegeleisen (a compound of iron
-containing manganese), which unites with and removes the sulphur and
-oxide of iron, and then the lurid monster, with its breath of fire
-abated, and its energy exhausted, bows its head and vomits forth its
-charge of boiling steel, to be wrought or cast into ten thousand useful
-articles.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 253.--POURING THE MOLTEN METAL.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 254.--SIDE VIEW, SHOWING TURNING GEARS.]
-
-Like most all valuable inventions, Mr. Bessemer's claim to priority for
-the invention was contested. An American inventor, William Kelly, in an
-interference with Mr. Bessemer's United States patent, successfully
-established a claim to the broad idea of forcing air into the red hot
-cast iron, and United States patent No. 17,628, June 23, 1857, was
-granted to Mr. Kelly. The honor of inventing and introducing a
-successful process and apparatus for making steel by this method,
-however, fairly belongs to Mr. Bessemer, to whose work was to be added
-the valuable contribution of Robert F. Mushet (British patent No. 2,219,
-of 1856) of adding spiegeleisen, a triple compound of iron, carbon and
-manganese, to the charge in the converter. This step served to regulate
-the supply of carbon and eliminate the oxygen, and completed the process
-of making steel. The Holly converter, covered by United States patents
-No. 86,303, and No. 86,304, January 26, 1869, represented one of the
-most important American developments of the Bessemer converter.
-
-The importance of Bessemer steel in its influence upon modern
-civilization is everywhere admitted. It has so cheapened steel that it
-now competes with iron in price. Practically all railroad rails, iron
-girders and beams for buildings, nails, etc., are made from it at a cost
-of between one and two cents per pound.
-
-In recognition of the great benefits conferred upon humanity by this
-process, Queen Victoria conferred the degree of knighthood upon the
-inventor, and his fortune resulting from his invention is estimated to
-have grown for some time at the rate of $500,000 a year. In a historical
-sketch of the development of his process, delivered by Sir Henry
-Bessemer in December, 1896, before the American Society of Mechanical
-Engineers at New York, Mr. Bessemer was reported as saying that the
-annual production of Bessemer steel in Europe and America amounted to
-10,000,000 tons. The production of Bessemer steel in the United States
-for 1897 was for ingots and castings 5,475,315 tons, and for railroad
-rails 1,644,520 tons. The extent to which steel has displaced iron is
-shown by the fact that in the same year iron rails to the extent of
-2,872 tons only were made, as compared with more than a million and a
-half tons of Bessemer steel.
-
-In the popular vote taken by the _Scientific American_, July 25, 1896,
-as to what invention introduced in the past fifty years had conferred
-the greatest benefit upon mankind, Bessemer steel was given the place of
-honor.
-
-A recent improvement in the handling of iron from the blast furnace is
-shown in Fig. 255. Heretofore, the iron was run in open sand moulds on
-the floor and allowed to cool in bars called "pigs," which were united
-in a series to a main body of the flow, called a "sow." To break the
-"pigs" from the "sow," and handle the iron in transportation, was a very
-laborious and expensive work. The illustration shows two series of
-parallel trough moulds, each forming an endless belt, running on wheels.
-The molten cast iron is poured direct into these moulds, and as they
-travel along they pass beneath a body of water, which cools and
-solidifies the iron into pigs, and then carries them up an incline and
-dumps them directly into the cars.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 255.--CASTING AND LOADING PIG IRON.]
-
-_Open Hearth Steel_ is not so cheap as Bessemer steel, but it is of a
-finer and more uniform quality. Bessemer steel is made in a few minutes
-by the most energetic, rapid and critical of processes, while the open
-hearth steel requires several hours, and its development being thus
-prolonged it may be watched and regulated to a greater nicety of result.
-For railroad rails and architectural construction Bessemer steel still
-finds a great field of usefulness, but for the finest quality of steel,
-such as is employed in making steam boilers, tools, armor plate for war
-vessels, etc., steel made by the open hearth process is preferred. It
-consists in the decarburization of cast iron by fusion with wrought
-iron, iron sponge, steel scrap, or iron oxide, in the hearth of a
-reverberatory furnace heated with gases, the flame of which assists the
-reaction, and the subsequent recarburization or deoxidation of the bath
-by the addition, at the close of the process, of spiegeleisen or
-ferro-manganese. The period of fusion lasts from four to eight hours.
-The advantages over the Bessemer process are, a less expensive plant and
-the greater duration of the operation, permitting, by means of
-sampling, more complete control of the quality of the product and
-greater uniformity of result.
-
-The British patents of Siemens, No. 2,861, of 1856; No. 167, of 1861,
-and No. 972, of 1863, for regenerative furnaces, and the British patents
-of Emile and Pierre Martin, No. 2,031, of 1864; No. 2,137, of 1865, and
-No. 859, of 1866, represent the so-called _Siemens-Martin_ process,
-which is the best known and generally used open hearth process.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 256.--SIEMENS REGENERATIVE FURNACE.]
-
-_The Siemens Regenerative Furnace_, in which this process is carried
-out, is seen in Fig. 256. Four chambers, C, E, E´, C´, are filled with
-fire brick loosely stacked with spaces between, in checker-work style.
-Gas is forced in the bottom of chamber C, and air in bottom of chamber
-E, and they pass up separate flues, G, on the left, and being ignited in
-chamber D above, impinge in a flame on the metal in hearth H, the hot
-gases passing out flues F on the right, and percolating through and
-highly heating the checker-work bricks in chambers E´ and C´. As soon as
-these are hot, gas and air are shut off by valves from chambers C and E,
-and gas and air admitted to the bottoms of the now hot chambers C´ and
-E´. The gas and air now passing up through these chambers C´, E´, become
-highly heated, and when burned above the melted iron on hearth H produce
-an intense heat. The waste gases now pass down flues G, and impart
-their heat to the checker-work bricks in chambers C and E. When the
-bricks in E´ C´ become cooled by the passage of gas and air, the valves
-are again adjusted to reverse the currents of gas and air, sending them
-now through chambers C and E again. In this way the heat escaping to
-the smoke stack is stored up in the bricks and utilized to heat the
-incoming fuel gases before burning them, thus greatly increasing the
-effective energy of the furnace, saving fuel, and keeping the smoke
-stack relatively cool.
-
-_Armor Plate._--In these late days of struggle for supremacy between the
-power of the projectile and the resistance of the battleship, the
-production of armor plate has become an interesting and important
-industry.
-
-Three methods are employed. One is to roll the massive ingots directly
-into plates between tremendous rolls, a single pair of which, such as
-used in the Krupp works, are said to weigh in the rough as much as
-100,000 pounds. Usually there are three great rollers arranged one above
-the other, and automatic tables are provided for raising and lowering
-the plates in their passage from one set of rolls to the other. The man
-in charge uses a whistle in giving the signals which direct these
-movements, and without the help of tongs and levers the glowing blocks
-move easily back and forth between the rollers. The men standing on both
-sides of the rollers have only to wipe off the plates with brooms and
-occasionally turn the plates.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 257.--14,000-TON HYDRAULIC PRESS FORGING AN ARMOR
-PLATE.]
-
-The second method utilizes great steam hammers weighing 125 tons, and
-striking Titanic blows upon the yielding metal. The most modern method,
-however, is by the hydraulic press forge, now used in the shops of the
-Bethlehem steel works in the production of Harveyized armor plate. In
-Fig. 257 is seen the great 14,000-ton hydraulic press-forge squeezing
-into shape a port armor plate for the battleship "Alabama." After
-leaving the forge, the plate is trimmed to shape by the savage bite of a
-rotary saw and planer, seen in Figs. 258 and 259, whose insatiable
-appetites tear off the steel like famished fiends. The plate is then
-taken to be Harveyized by cementation, hardening, and tempering, as seen
-in Figs. 260, 261, and 262. The 125-ton mass of metal representing the
-plate in the rough, and weighing more than a locomotive, is thus handled
-and brought to shape with an ease and dispatch that inspires the
-observer with mixed emotions of admiration and awe.
-
-_Making Horse Shoes._--Anthony's patent, April 8, 1831; Tolles', of
-October 24, 1834, and H. Burden's, of November 23, 1835, were pioneers
-in horse-shoe machines. Mr. Burden took many subsequent patents, and to
-him more than any other inventor belongs the credit of introducing
-machine-made horse shoes, which greatly cheapened the cost of this
-homely, but useful article. Nearly 400 United States patents have been
-granted for horse-shoe machines.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 258.--ROTARY SAW, CUTTING HEAVY ARMOR PLATE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 259.--ROTARY PLANER, TRIMMING HEAVY ARMOR PLATE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 260.--THE CEMENTATION FURNACE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 261.--HARDENING THE PLATE BY JETS OF WATER.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 262.--OIL TEMPERING.]
-
-_Making Screws, Bolts, Nuts, Etc._--Screw-making according to modern
-methods began between 1800-1810 with the operations of Maudsley. Sloan,
-in 1851, and Harvey, in 1864, made many improvements in machines,
-operating upon screw blanks. The gimlet-pointed screw, which allows the
-screw to be turned into wood without having a hole bored for it, was an
-important advance in the art. It was the invention of Thomas J. Sloan,
-patented August 20, 1846, No. 4,704, and was twice re-issued and
-extended. In later years the rolling of screws, instead of cutting the
-threads by a chasing tool, has attained considerable importance, and
-provides a simpler and cheaper method of manufacture. Knowles' United
-States patent of April 1, 1831, re-issued March 1, 1833, described such
-a process, while Rogers, in patents No. 370,354, September 20, 1887; No.
-408,529, August 6, 1889; No. 430,237, June 17, 1890, and No. 434,809,
-August 19, 1890, added such improvement in the process as to make it
-practical.
-
-In the great art of metal working the names of Bramah, Whitworth,
-Clements and Sellers appear conspicuously in the early part of the
-century as inventors of planing, boring and turning machinery for
-metals. Our present splendid machine shops, gun shops, locomotive works,
-typewriter and bicycle factories, are examples of the wonderful
-extensions of this art. In later years the field has been filled so full
-of improvements and special machines for special work, that only a brief
-citation of a few representative types is possible, and even then
-selection becomes a very difficult task. Many special tools,
-particularly those designed for _bicycle work_, have been devised, as
-exhibited by patent to Hillman, August 11, 1891, No. 457,718. In
-_turning car wheels_, an improvement consists in bringing the wheel to
-be dressed into close proximity to the edge of a rapidly revolving
-smooth metal disk, whereby the surface of the wheel is melted away
-without there being any actual contact between the wheel surface and the
-disk. This is shown in patent to Miltimore, August 24, 1886, No.
-347,951. In _metal tube manufacture_ three processes are worthy of
-mention: (1) Passing a heated solid rod endwise between the working
-faces of two rapidly rotating tapered rolls, set with their axes at an
-angle to each other, as shown in Mannesmann's patent, April 26, 1887,
-No. 361,954 and 361,955. (2) Forcing a tube into a rapidly rotating die,
-whereby the friction softens the tube, and the pressure and rotation of
-the die spin it into a tube of reduced diameter, shown in patent to
-Bevington, January 13, 1891, No. 444,721. (3) Placing a hot ingot in a
-die and forcing a mandrel through the ingot, thereby causing it to
-assume the shape of the interior of the die, and greatly condensing the
-metal, shown in patents to Robertson, November 26, 1889, No. 416,014,
-and Ehrhardt, April 11, 1893, No. 495,245.
-
-In _welding_, the employment of electricity constitutes the most
-important departure. This was introduced by Elihu Thomson, and is
-covered in his patents Nos. 347,140 to 347,142, August 10, 1886, and No.
-501,546, July 18, 1893. In _annealing_ and _tempering_, electricity has
-also been employed as a means of heating (see patent to Shaw, No.
-211,938, February 4, 1879). It supplies an even heat and uniform
-temperature, and is much used in producing clock and watch springs. The
-making of iron castings malleable by a prolonged baking in a furnace in
-a bed of metallic oxide was an important, but early, step. It was the
-invention of Samuel Lucas, and is disclosed in his British patent No.
-2,767, of 1804.
-
-The _Harvey process_ of making armor plate is an important recent
-development in _cementation_ and _case hardening_, and is covered by his
-United States patents No. 376,194, January 10, 1888, and No. 460,262,
-September 29, 1891. It consists, see Fig. 260, in embedding the face of
-the plate in carbon, protecting the back and sides with sand, heating to
-about the melting point of cast iron, and subsequently hardening the
-face. The Krupp armor plate, now rated as the best, is made under the
-patent to Schmitz and Ehrenzberger, No. 534,178, February 12, 1895.
-
-In _coating with metals_, the so-called "galvanizing" of iron is an
-important art. This was introduced by Craufurd (British patent No.
-7,355, of April 29, 1837), and consisted in plunging the iron into a
-bath of melted zinc covered with sal ammoniac. In more recent years the
-tinning of iron has become an important industry, and machines have been
-made for automatically coating the plates and dispensing with hand
-labor, examples of which are found in patents No. 220,768, October 21,
-1879, Morewood; No. 329,240, October 27, 1885, Taylor, _et al._, and No.
-426,962, April 29, 1890, Rogers and Player.
-
-In _metal founding_ the employment of chill moulds is an important step.
-Where any portion of a casting is subjected to unusual wear, the mould
-is formed, opposite that part of the casting, out of metal, instead of
-sand, and this metal surface, by rapidly extracting the heat at that
-point by virtue of its own conductivity, hardens the metal of the
-casting at such point. The casting of car wheels by chill moulds, by
-which the tread portion of the wheel was hardened and increased in
-wearing qualities, is a good illustration. Important types are found in
-patents to Wilmington, No. 85,046, December 15, 1868; Barr, No. 207,794,
-September 10, 1878, and Whitney, re-issue patent, No. 10,804, February
-1, 1887.
-
-In _wire-working_ great advances have been made in machines for making
-_barbed wire fences_. The French patent to Grassin & Baledans, in 1861,
-is the first disclosure of a barbed wire fence. This art began
-practically, however, with the United States patent to Glidden and
-Vaughan for a barbed wire machine, No. 157,508, December 8, 1874,
-re-issued March 20, 1877, No. 7,566, and has assumed great proportions.
-A machine for making wire net is shown in patent to Scarles, No.
-380,664, April 3, 1888, and wire picket fence machines are shown in
-patents to Fultz, No. 298,368, May 13, 1884, and Kitselman, No. 356,322,
-January 18, 1887. Machines for making wire nails were invented at an
-early period, but the product found but little favor until about 1880,
-when they began to be extensively used, and have almost entirely
-supplanted cut nails for certain classes of work, since their round
-cross section and lack of taper give great holding power and avoid
-cutting the grain of the wood. In 1897 the wire nails produced in the
-United States amounted to 8,997,245 kegs of 100 pounds each, which
-nearly doubled the output of 1896. The output of cut nails for the same
-year was 2,106,799 kegs.
-
-The bending of wire to form chains without welding the links has long
-been done for watch chains, etc., but in late years the method has
-extended to many varieties of heavy chains. The patents to Breul, No.
-359,054, March 8, 1887, and No. 467,331, January 19, 1892, are good
-examples.
-
-An interesting class of machines, but one impossible of illustration on
-account of their complication, are machines for making pins. In earlier
-times pins had their heads applied in a separate operation. Making pins
-from wire and forming the heads out of the cut sections began in the
-Nineteenth Century with Hunt's British patent No. 4,129, of 1817. This
-art received its greatest impetus, however, under Wright's British
-patent No. 4,955, of 1824. A paper of pins containing a pin for every
-day in the year, and costing but a few cents, gives no idea to the
-purchaser of the time, thought and capital expended in machines for
-making them, and yet were it not for such machines, rapidly cutting
-coils of wire into lengths, pointing and heading the pins, and sticking
-them into papers, the world would be deprived of one of its most
-ubiquitous and useful articles. Many tons of pins are made in the United
-States weekly, and it is said that 20,000,000 pins a day are required to
-meet the demand.
-
-In the metal working art the making of firearms and projectiles has
-grown to wonderful proportions. Cutlery and builders' hardware is an
-enormous branch; wire-drawing, sheet metal-making, forging, and the
-making of tools, springs, tin cans, needles, hooks and eyes, nails and
-tacks, and a thousand minor articles, have grown to such proportions
-that only a bird's-eye view of the art is possible.
-
-In the _making_ of _shot_, the old method was to pour the melted metal
-through a sieve, and allow it to drop from a tower 180 feet or more in
-height. David Smith's patent, No. 6,460, May 22, 1849, provided an
-ascending current of air through which the metal dropped, and which, by
-cooling the shot by retarding its fall and bringing a greater number of
-air particles in contact with them, avoided the necessity of such high
-towers. In 1868, Glasgow and Wood patented a process of dropping the
-shot through a column of glycerine or oil. Still another method is to
-allow the melted metal to fall on a revolving disk, which divides it
-into drops by centrifugal action.
-
-_Alloys._--Over 300 United States patents have been granted for various
-alloys of metals. The so-called _babbit metal_ was patented in the
-United States by Isaac Babbit, July 17, 1839, and in England, May 15,
-1843, No. 9,724. This consists of an antifriction compound of tin, 10
-parts, copper, 1 part, and antimony, 1 part, and is specially adapted
-for the lubricated bearings of machinery. _Phosphor bronze_, introduced
-in 1871, combines 80 to 92 parts copper, 7 of tin, and 1 of phosphorus
-(see United States patents to Lavroff, No. 118,372, August 22, 1871, and
-Levi and Kunzel, No. 115,220, May 23, 1871). The addition of phosphorus
-promotes the fluidity of the metal and makes very clean, fine and strong
-castings. In alloys of iron, _chromium steel_ is covered by patents to
-Baur, No. 49,495, August 22, 1865; No. 99,624, February 8, 1870, and
-No. 123,443, February 6, 1872; _manganese steel_, by Hadfield's patent,
-No. 303,150, August 5, 1884; _aluminum steel_, by Wittenström's patent,
-No. 333,373, December 29, 1885, and _phosphorus steel_, by Kunkel's
-patent, No. 182,371, September 19, 1876. The most recent and perhaps
-most important, however, is _nickel steel_, used in making armor for
-battleships. This is covered by Schneider's patents, Nos. 415,655, and
-415,657, November 19, 1889.
-
-In 1878 England led the world in the iron industry with a production of
-6,381,051 tons of pig iron, as compared with 2,301,215 tons by the
-United States. In 1897 the United States leads the world in the
-following ratios:
-
- Tons Pig Iron. Tons Steel.
- United States 9,652,680 7,156,957
- Great Britain 8,789,455 4,585,961
- Germany 6,879,541 4,796,226
- France 2,472,143 1,312,000
-
-The United States made in that year 29.30 per cent. of the world's
-production of pig iron, and 34.58 per cent. of its steel. The total
-output of the whole world in that year was 32,937,490 tons pig iron, and
-20,696,787 tons of steel.
-
-_Metallurgy of Rarer Metals._--Although less in evidence than iron, this
-has engaged the attention of the scientist from the earliest years of
-the century. The full list of metals discovered since 1800 may be found
-under "Chemistry." The more important only are here given. Palladium and
-rhodium were reduced by Wollaston in 1804. Potassium and sodium were
-first separated in metallic form by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1807, through
-the agency of the voltaic arc; barium, strontium, calcium and boron by
-the same scientist in 1808; iodine by Courtois in 1811; selenium by
-Berzelius in 1817; cadmium by Stromeyer in 1817; silicon by Berzelius in
-1823, and bromium by Balard in 1826. Magnesium was first prepared by
-Bussey in 1829. Aluminum was first separated in 1828 by Wohler, by
-decomposing the chloride by means of potassium. Oersted, in 1827,
-preceded him with important preliminary steps, and Deville, in 1854,
-followed in the first commercial applications. In late years the
-metallurgy of aluminum has made great advances. The Cowles process heats
-to incandescence by the electric current a mixture of alumina, carbon
-and copper, the reduced aluminum alloying with the copper. This process
-is covered by United States patents to Cowles and Cowles, No. 319,795,
-June 9. 1885, and Nos. 324,658 and 324,659, August 18, 1885. It has,
-however, for the most parts been superseded by the process patented by
-Hall, April 2, 1889, No. 400,766, in which alumina dissolved in fused
-cryolite is electrically decomposed.
-
-In the metallurgy of the precious metals probably the most important
-step has been the _cyanide process_ of obtaining gold and silver. In
-1806 it was known that gold was soluble in a solution of cyanide of
-potassium. In 1844 L. Elsner published investigations along this line,
-and demonstrated that the solution took place only in the presence of
-oxygen. McArthur and Forrest perfected the process for commercial
-application, and it is now extensively used in the Transvaal and
-elsewhere. It is covered by their British patent, No. 14,174, of 1887,
-and United States patents No. 403,202, May 14, 1889, and No. 418,137,
-December 24, 1889, which describe the application of dilute solutions of
-cyanide of potassium, not exceeding 8 parts cyanogen to 1,000 parts of
-water: the use of zinc in a fine state of division to precipitate the
-gold out of solution, and the preparatory treatment of the partially
-oxidized ores with an alkali or salts of an alkali. By this
-solution-process gold, in the finest state of subdivision, which could
-not be extracted by other processes from the earthy matters, may be
-recovered and saved in a simple, practical and cheap way.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 263.--EDISON MAGNETIC CONCENTRATING WORKS. THE GIANT
-CRUSHING ROLLS.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 264.--EDISON MAGNETIC CONCENTRATOR.]
-
-In the working of ores of gold and silver the old method of comminution
-of the rock and the separation of the gold and silver by amalgamation
-with mercury has given birth to thousands of inventions in stamp mills,
-amalgamators, ore washers, concentrators and separators. In the
-treatment of iron ores, and especially those of low grade, the magnetic
-concentrator is an interesting and striking departure. This method goes
-back to the first half of the Nineteenth Century, an example being found
-in the patent to Cook, No. 6,121, February 20, 1849. Edison's patent,
-No. 228,329, June 1, 1880, is however, the basis of the first practical
-operations in which magnets, operating by attraction upon falling
-particles of iron ore, are made to separate the particles rich in iron
-from the sand. In Fig. 263 is shown the Edison magnetic concentrating
-apparatus. The ore, in masses of all sizes up to boulders of five or six
-tons weight, is dumped between the giant rolls, and these enormous
-masses are crunched and comminuted more easily than a dog crunches a
-bone. These gigantic rolls are six feet in diameter, six feet long, and
-their surfaces are covered with crushing knobs. They weigh with the
-moving machinery seventy tons, and when revolved at a circumferential
-speed of 3,500 feet in a minute, their insatiable and irresistible bite
-soon chews the rock into fragments that pass into similar crushing rolls
-set closer together until reduced to the desired fineness. The sand is
-then raised to the top of the concentrating devices, shown in Fig. 264,
-and is allowed to fall in sheets from inclined boards in front of a
-series of magnets, of which four sets are shown in the figure. These
-magnets deflect the fall of the particles rich in iron (which are
-attracted), while the non-magnetic particles of sand drop straight down.
-A thin knife-edge partition board, arranged below the falling sheets of
-sand, separates the deflected magnetic particles from the
-straight-falling sand. These magnetic particles are then collected and
-pressed into little bricks, which are now so rich in iron, by virtue of
-concentration, as to make the final reduction of the iron in the blast
-furnace easy and profitable. More recent developments in this art are
-shown in patents to Wetherill, No. 555,792, March 3, 1896, and Payne,
-No. 641,148, January 9, 1900.
-
-In the production of copper the well-known Bessemer process for refining
-iron is now largely used, as shown in patent to Manhes, No. 456,516,
-July 21, 1891, in which blasts of air are forced through the melted
-copper to remove sulphur and other impurities. Electrolytic processes of
-refining copper are also largely used, as described in Farmer's patent,
-No. 322,170, July 14, 1885.
-
-The production of metals, other than iron, in the United States for the
-year 1897, was as follows:
-
- Gold, 2,774,935 ounces; worth $57,363,000.
- Silver, 53,860,000 ounces; worth $32,316,000.
- Copper, 220,571 long tons.
- Lead, 212,000 short tons.
- Zinc, 99,980 short tons.
- Aluminum, 4,000,000 lbs.; worth (37½ cents lb.) $1,500,000.
- (This was three times the product of 1896.)
- Mercury, 26,691 flasks; worth $993,445.
- Nickel, 23,707 pounds; worth (33 cents pound) $7,823.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXX.
-
-FIREARMS AND EXPLOSIVES.
-
- THE CANNON THE MOST ANCIENT OF FIREARMS--MUZZLE AND BREECH LOADERS
- OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY--THE ARMSTRONG GUN--THE RODMAN, DAHLGREN
- AND PARROTT GUNS--BREECH LOADING ORDNANCE--RAPID FIRE BREECH LOADING
- RIFLES--DISAPPEARING GUN--GATLING GUN--DYNAMITE GUN--THE COLT AND
- SMITH & WESSON REVOLVERS--GERMAN AUTOMATIC PISTOL--BREECH LOADING
- SMALL ARMS--MAGAZINE GUNS--THE LEE, KRAG-JORGENSEN, AND MAUSER
- RIFLES--HAMMERLESS GUNS--REBOUNDING LOCKS--GUN COTTON--NITRO-
- GLYCERINE AND SMOKELESS POWDER--MINES AND TORPEDOES.
-
-
-Strange as it may appear, the evolution of an enlightened civilization
-and the deadly use of firearms have developed in parallel lines. What
-relation there may be between the adoption of the teachings of Christ to
-men to love one another, and the invention of increased facilities among
-men for killing one another, is a problem for the philosopher. Is it
-because killing at long range is less brutal, or does the deterrent
-influence of this increased facility operate as a check appealing to the
-fear of the individual, or is the cannon one of God's missionaries in
-working out the great law of the survival of the fittest? Whatever it
-may be, there does seem to be some relation of cause and effect between
-the two factors, and doubtless all three of the causes have exercised a
-contributory influence. In the olden days the wage of battle was almost
-universally decided by the strength of brawn, and the higher qualities
-of mind were subservient. The advent of firearms has changed all this.
-It has made the weakest arm equal to the strongest when supported by the
-same or a superior mental equipment, and this has made a great step
-toward the supremacy of the intellectual against the attack of the
-physically strong. In the fifth century the great civilization of Rome
-fell under the ruthless attack of the northern barbarian. Could such a
-thing have been possible with the gates defended by Gatling guns,
-magazine rifles, and dynamite shells? On the contrary, we find to-day a
-handful of trained soldiers equipped with modern firearms putting to
-flight a horde of ignorant savages. The history of modern wars is filled
-with illustrations of the shifting of the contest among men from an
-issue of brute force to a contest of brains, and of the support rendered
-the latter by firearms. But is war really necessary, and may we not
-hope that it shall cease? We can only say that the ideal sentiment of
-beating the sword into the plowshare is as yet the dream of the
-optimist, for man has gone right along in perfecting the arts of war and
-raising the execution of firearms to such a deadly efficacy, that the
-Nineteenth Century in a paramount degree has been conspicuously notable
-for its advances in this art. Invention after invention has followed in
-such rapid succession, even to the last years of the Nineteenth Century,
-until war now assumes the conditions of suicide and annihilation.
-
-No coherent history of firearms and explosives is possible in any short
-review. The cannon, bombard or mortar, musket, pistol and petard, all
-belong to former centuries, and in one form or another extend back to
-the most ancient times, but they have grown in the Nineteenth Century
-into such accuracy and distance of range, into such rapidity of action,
-into such multiplied efficiency in repeating systems, into such energy
-of explosives, and such convenient embodiment and penetration of
-projectile, that these subjects must needs be considered in separate
-divisions.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 265.--MUZZLE LOADING CANNON OF THE SIXTEENTH
-CENTURY.]
-
-_The Cannon_ is the most ancient of all firearms, and, like gunpowder,
-is believed to have had its origin with the Chinese. In the Eleventh
-Century the vessels of the King of Tunis, in the attack on Seville, are
-said to have had on board iron pipes from which a thundering fire was
-discharged. Condé, in his history of the Moors in Spain, speaks of them
-as used in that country as early as 1118. Ferdinand, in 1309, took
-Gibraltar from the Moors by cannon, and in 1346 the English used them at
-the battle of Crécy, and from that time on they became a common weapon
-of warfare. In the first cannon used the balls were of stone, and some
-of them were of enormous size. The bronze cannon of Mohammed II., A.
-D., 1464, had a bore of 25 inches, and threw a stone ball of 800 pounds.
-The _Tsar-Pooschka_, the great bronze gun of Moscow, cast in 1586, was
-even larger, and had a bore 36 inches in diameter. Early in the history
-of the cannon the breech-loading feature was introduced. In Figs. 265
-and 266 are shown illustrations from the Sixteenth Century, Fig. 265
-representing a muzzle loader, and Fig. 266 a breech-loader.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 266.--BREECH LOADING CANNON OF THE SIXTEENTH
-CENTURY.]
-
-Passing through various stages of development, the cannon came down to
-the Nineteenth Century, and was known generally as ordnance or
-artillery, and specifically as cannon or heavy guns, mortars for
-throwing shell at a great elevation, and howitzers for field, mountain,
-or siege, and which latter are lighter and shorter than cannon, and
-designed to throw hollow projectiles with comparatively small charges.
-The feature of importance in the cannon which contributed most to its
-efficiency was the rifling of the bore with spiral grooves. This, by
-giving a rotating effect to the projectile, caused it to maintain a
-truer flight by taking advantage of the law of physics that a rotating
-body tends to preserve its plane of rotation. The rifling of the barrels
-of firearms is, however, of very ancient origin. The British patent to
-Rotsipen, No. 71, of 1635, is an early disclosure of this art. The
-patent was granted him for
-
- "Fourteen yeares if he live soe long." *  *  * "To draw or to shave
- barrells for pieces of all sortes straight even and smooth, and to
- make anie crooked barrell perfectly straight with greate ease, and
- to _rifle cutt out_ or screwe barrells as wyde or as close or as
- deepe or as shallowe as shalbe required, with greate ease."
-
-The rifle grooves, however, were first made spiral or "screwed" by
-Koster, of Birmingham, about 1620, while straight grooves are said to
-have been in use as far back as 1498. In Berlin there is a rifled cannon
-of 1664 with thirteen grooves. Rifled cannon were first employed in
-actual service in Louis Napoleon's Italian campaign of 1859, and were
-first introduced in the United States service by General James in 1861.
-
-About the middle of the Nineteenth Century a great impetus was given to
-the development of artillery by the Crimean War, followed by the Civil
-War of the United States.
-
-In England the Armstrong gun was introduced about 1855, and was covered
-by British patents No. 401, of 1857; No. 2,564, of 1858; No. 611, of
-1859, and No. 743, of 1861. This originally consisted of an internal
-tube of wrought iron or gun metal, with cylindrical casings of wrought
-iron shrunk on. It was afterwards improved in what was known as the
-Fraser gun. In Germany the operations of Krupp as a gun maker began to
-be notable about this period. In the United States, Colonel Rodman
-devised a means of casting guns of large calibre, by having a hollow
-core through which water was circulated to rapidly cool and harden the
-metal in the vicinity of the bore, and to relieve the unequal strain in
-cooling. He obtained patent No. 5,236, August 14, 1847, for the same.
-The Dahlgren gun was patented August 6, 1861, Nos. 32,983, 32,984, and
-32,985, by Admiral Dahlgren, U. S. N. The improvement covered the
-adjustment of the thickness of the metal at the breech of the gun to the
-varying pressure strains along the bore. These guns were distinguishable
-by the smooth bulbous breech of great thickness and curvilinear contour.
-The Parrott gun, patented October 1, 1861, No. 33,401, and May 6, 1862,
-No. 35,171, comprehended a form of hooped ordnance in which the breech
-was re-enforced by an encompassing hoop or sleeve, which was shrunk on.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 267.--THE KRUPP BREECH MECHANISM.]
-
-_Breech-Loading Ordnance._--While the breech-loading cannon is several
-centuries old, and was, in fact, one of the first forms of that firearm,
-it is to this principle of action that the rapid fire and great
-execution of the modern weapon are chiefly due. The earliest of existing
-forms of breech mechanism is that which comprehends the channeling of
-the breech transversely to receive a tapered plug, which permits the
-charge to be placed in the open rear end of the gun in front of the
-channel, and the transverse plug then closed behind the charge. This is
-described in Hadley's British patent No. 577, of 1741; was first
-patented in the United States in a modified form by Wright and Gould,
-No. 22,325, December 14, 1858, and afterwards came to be known as the
-Broadwell system, being developed by him and covered in patents No.
-33,876, of December 10, 1861; No. 43,553, July 12, 1864, and No. 55,762,
-June 19, 1866. This general principle is still employed by Krupp in
-some of his guns, and as used by him is shown in Fig. 267. The
-transverse channel through the breech is tapered, and the sliding breech
-block X is slightly wedge-shaped to fit tightly therein. When the breech
-block is withdrawn for loading, as shown, a sleeve S, shown in dotted
-lines, is temporarily arranged in alignment with the bore and gives
-smooth passage way to the charge to a position in front of the breech
-block. This sleeve is then withdrawn, the breech block forced in, and is
-there locked by a turn of the threads of a locking screw _b_ into the
-corresponding recesses _a_ in the breech. A detachable wrench _e_ may be
-applied either to the screw _d b_ to turn it to lock or unlock, or to
-the traversing screw _c_, which, by engaging with a nut (not shown),
-runs the breech block in and out.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 268.--INTERRUPTED THREAD BREECH MECHANISM.]
-
-By far the most popular principle of the breech block, however, is that
-of the interrupted thread, shown in Fig. 268, in which the plug, when
-closed, has its axis in alignment with the axial bore of the gun. Its
-threads are interrupted by longitudinally arranged channels, and the
-breech of the gun has corresponding threads and channels. When the plug
-is pushed into the gun, the screw threads of the plug enter the channels
-of the breech, and a rotary turn of the screw plug then locks its
-threads into those of the breech. The screw plug is supported by a
-carrier hinged at one side to the gun, and arranged to swing the plug
-into axial alignment with the bore, or be thrown to one side to admit
-the charge. The patents to Chambers, No. 6,612, July 31, 1849 (re-issue
-No. 237, April 19, 1853), and to Cochran, No. 26,256, November 29, 1859,
-are the earliest American examples of this principle of action, and are
-believed to be the original inventions of the same.
-
-In one form or another this construction enters into most all modern
-breech mechanisms. Among the forms used by the United States are the
-Driggs-Seabury, the Dashiell, and the Vickers-Maxim. To prevent the
-expanding gases from driving through the crevices of the breech block,
-expanding or swelling rings, known as gas checks, are arranged on the
-front of the breech block. De Bange's patent, No. 301,220, July 1, 1884,
-covers the most popular form.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 269.--SIGHTING A SIX-INCH RAPID FIRE GUN.]
-
-The elements of efficiency of the modern rapid-fire breech-loading rifle
-are to be found in the following features: First, in the increased
-length of the gun, which, for a 6-inch gun is now as much as 25 feet,
-the increased length lending a longer period of expansion for the
-explosion of the powder charge, and imparting a correspondingly higher
-momentum; secondly, in the fixed ammunition, which means a cartridge
-case in which a metallic shell encloses the powder charge, and is
-connected with the projectile, and third, in the great improvement and
-rapidity of action of the breech mechanism, which permits as many as
-eight rounds per minute to be fired. In Fig. 269 is shown a 6-inch
-rapid-fire gun of the United States Navy, loaded, and being sighted for
-fire. Rapid-fire guns of this class represent the most effective form of
-modern ordnance. It was largely such rapid fire batteries of Admiral
-Dewey's squadron that swept the Spanish fleet out of existence at
-Manila, and that demolished the fleet of Cervera at Santiago by the
-awful hail of shells poured into his ships. These relatively small guns
-throw a shell six miles, and the striking energy of their projectiles at
-the muzzle is equal to the penetration of iron plate 21 inches thick, or
-16 inches of steel. When the gun is loaded, it is held in the forward
-position by coil springs, inclosed in cylinders and holding a recoil
-seat for the trunnions, and also has two pistons traveling in cylinders
-filled with glycerine. When the gun is fired, the recoil causes it to
-slide back, carrying the pistons, and the recoil is checked by the
-resistance of the glycerine traveling through an opening past the
-pistons. After full recoil, the gun is automatically returned to its
-forward position by the action of the coil springs, which are compressed
-during the recoil. The gun crew is protected by Harveyized steel plate 4
-inches thick, and the gun is so delicately mounted on ball bearings that
-its great weight of 7½ tons responds readily to the slight pressure in
-training the same.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 270.--RANGE OF SIXTEEN-INCH GUN.]
-
-Powerful as these guns appear to be, their big brothers in the revolving
-turrets are far more so. While not so nimble in action, the great power
-of these guns of the main battery, and the elaboration and completeness
-of mechanism for operating them, for supplying them with ammunition, and
-for rotating the turrets, constitute a complete world in ordnance in
-itself. As the gun increases in size, its cost both in construction and
-service increases in a greatly disproportionate ratio. A 6-inch
-breech-loading rifle costs $64.40 for each discharge, while a 12-inch
-gun costs $458 for each discharge. The largest guns of our battleships
-are of 13 inch calibre, and about 40 feet long, but larger ones are
-employed for sea coast defenses. The great 16-inch 126-ton gun, now
-building for the United States at the Watervliet arsenal, is 49¼ feet
-long, over 6 feet in diameter at the breech, and it will have an extreme
-range of over twenty miles. Its projectile will weigh 2,370 pounds, and
-it will cost $865 to fire the gun once. The accompanying view, Fig. 270,
-will give graphic illustration of the range of this gun. If fired at its
-maximum elevation from the battery at the south end of New York in a
-northerly direction, its projectile would pass over the city of New
-York, over Grant's Tomb, Spuyten Duyvil, Riverdale, Mount St. Vincent,
-Ludlow, Yonkers, and would land near Hastings-on-the-Hudson, nearly
-twenty miles away, as shown in our map, Fig. 271. The extreme height of
-its trajectory would be 30,516 feet, or nearly six miles. This means
-that if Pike's Peak, of the Western Hemisphere, had piled on top of it
-Mont Blanc, of the Eastern Hemisphere, this gun would hurl its enormous
-projectile so high above them both as to still leave space below its
-curve to build Washington's Monument on top of Mont Blanc, as shown in
-Fig. 270.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 271.--RADIUS OF ACTION OF SIXTEEN-INCH GUN.]
-
-_The Disappearing Gun._--The importance of secreting the location of the
-battery in coast defences, and the better protection of the gunners,
-have suggested a species of gun carriage which would permit the gun to
-be normally hidden behind and under the protection of the parapet, and
-be only temporarily elevated to a position above the parapet while
-firing. Various forms of this have been devised. General R. E. De Russy,
-Corps Engineers, U. S. A., devised such a carriage in 1835. Moncrieff,
-of England, was one of the first to put in practice such a form of
-carriage. United States patents covering this invention were granted him
-as follows: No. 83,873, November 10, 1868; No. 115,502, May 30, 1871,
-and No. 144,120, October 28, 1873. Its principle of operation was to
-utilize the force of the recoil as a power to raise the gun into firing
-position. The gun is fulcrumed in a lever frame provided with a
-counterpoise which more than balances the gun. When the gun is fired the
-recoil raises the counterweight, and the gun descends and is locked in
-its lower position. When loaded and released the counterpoise raises the
-gun again to firing position.
-
-Among later gun carriages of this type of American construction may be
-mentioned those devised by Spiller, Gordon, Howell, and others, but the
-one most generally known is the Buffington-Crozier, covered by patents
-No. 555,426, February 25, 1896, and No. 613,252, November 1, 1898. This
-carriage, sustaining the 8 and 10 inch breech-loading rifles at Fort
-Wadsworth for the defence of New York harbor, is shown in Figs. 272
-and 273, Fig. 272 representing it in its lowered position, and Fig. 273
-in its elevated position for firing. The trunnions of the gun rest in
-bearings at the upper ends of the pair of levers, which latter are
-fulcrumed near the middle to horizontally sliding carriages connected to
-hydraulic cylinders that move backward as the gun recoils. These
-cylinders move over stationary pistons which have orifices that allow
-the liquid to pass from one side of the piston to the other. As the gun
-recoils and the levers turn to the horizontal position, the forward ends
-of the levers are made to raise vertically an immense leaden
-counterweight, weighing 32,000 pounds, which ordinarily over-balances
-the weight of the gun on the levers. This cylindrical counterweight is
-seen raised on the left of Fig. 272. In firing, the energy of the recoil
-is absorbed partly by raising the counterweight, and partly by the
-resistance of the hydraulic cylinders, and when the gun reaches its
-lowest position it is caught and retained by pawls. After loading the
-pawls are tripped, and the greater gravity of the counterweight raises
-the gun to firing position again. Ten shots from an 8-inch gun on this
-carriage have been fired in 12 minutes 21 seconds.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 272.--BUFFINGTON-CROZIER DISAPPEARING GUN, LOWERED.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 273.--BUFFINGTON-CROZIER DISAPPEARING GUN, ELEVATED
-FOR FIRING.]
-
-_The Machine Gun._--During the Civil War a gun made its appearance
-which, although of small calibre, rivaled in its deadly effectiveness
-the wholesale slaughter of the cannon. It was a new type, and was known
-as the machine gun, or battery gun, in which balls of comparatively
-small size were discharged uninterruptedly and in incredible succession.
-It was the invention of Dr. R. J. Gatling, and was covered by him in
-patents No. 36,836, November 4, 1862, and No. 47,631, May 9, 1865, and
-in many subsequent patents for minor improvements, and is now
-universally known as the Gatling gun. It consisted of a circular series
-of barrels mounted on a central shaft, and revolved by suitable gears
-and a hand crank. The cartridges were automatically and successively fed
-into the chambers of the barrel, and its several hammers were so
-arranged in connection with the barrels that the whole operation of
-loading, closing the breech, discharging and expelling the empty
-cartridge cases was conducted while the barrels were kept in a
-continuous revolving movement by turning the hand crank. In Fig. 274 is
-shown a modern example of the Gatling gun equipped with the Accles feed.
-Ordinarily the gun has ten barrels, with ten corresponding locks, which
-revolve together during the working of the gun. When the gun is in
-action there are always five cartridges going through the process of
-loading, and five empty shells in different stages of being extracted,
-and many hundred shots a minute can be fired. Many modifications of this
-gun have been made by Hotchkiss and others. Maxim, Nordenfelt, and
-Benet have each made valuable inventions in machine guns of a somewhat
-different type, some of which utilize the force of the exploding charges
-to react on the feed and firing mechanism, and thus furnish the power to
-continue the consecutive operation of the gun, so that no hand crank is
-required, but the gun works itself with an incessant hail of balls until
-its supply of cartridges is exhausted.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 274.--GATLING GUN ON UNITED STATES ARMY MODEL
-CARRIAGE.]
-
-_The Dynamite Gun._--Most impressive to the layman, and most
-demoralizing to the enemy, is this latter day form of ordnance. The
-first efforts to hurl dynamite shells from a gun were made with
-compressed air for fear of prematurely exploding the sensitive dynamite
-in the gun, which would be more disastrous to the gunners themselves
-than to the enemy. The Zalinski dynamite gun was of this class, and the
-first which attained any notoriety. Foolhardy as it might appear, Yankee
-genius was led to believe that dynamite shells could be fired with
-powder charges, and this is now done in a practical and safe way in the
-Sims-Dudley Dynamite Gun. This is manufactured under the fundamental
-patents of Dudley, Nos. 407,474, 407,475, 407,476, of July 23, 1889,
-which cover a method of exploding a charge of powder in one gun barrel,
-and causing it to compress the air in front of it, and force it into
-another barrel behind the dynamite shell, so that this relatively cool
-body of air is interposed between the hot powder gases and the
-dynamite. Fig. 275 represents Dudley's patent drawing. C is the powder
-charge in barrel A, and H is the dynamite shell in barrel G. The front
-of barrel A is connected to the rear of barrel G behind the dynamite
-shell by the tube F. When the powder C explodes, all the air in barrel A
-and tube F is driven out and acts on the dynamite shell H to discharge
-it without allowing it to come in contact with the hot powder gases. A
-frangible plate D closes the end of barrel A, but blows out above a
-certain pressure to avoid bursting strain in the gun. The Sims patent,
-No. 619,025, February 7, 1899, covers a more simple and practical form
-of constructing a gun on this principle, and the gun as used in the
-United States is constructed in accordance with this latter improvement.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 275.--DYNAMITE GUN, DUDLEY'S PATENT, JULY 23, 1889.]
-
-_Small Arms._--Pistols and guns are the two classes into which the
-layman divides small arms, although in latter years this classification
-has been much disturbed by the western frontiersman, who calls his
-pistol a gun, and by the artillerist, who also calls his cannon a gun.
-
-_The pistol_ may be defined as a small arm held in one hand to be fired.
-It is an ancient weapon, but had attained no special importance or
-popularity prior to the Nineteenth Century. The duelling pistol, with
-its long barrel, its hair trigger and inlaid stock, and the derringer,
-with its short barrel of large bore, were the popular forms. Not until
-the revolver made its appearance did the pistol attain any importance.
-Colt is popularly credited with having invented this, but it is really a
-very old principle. In the Alte Deutscher Drehling Der Ruckladungs
-Gewehre, by Edward Zernin, 1872, Darmstadt and Leipzig, is shown an
-ancient form of match lock revolver, said to belong to the period
-1480-1500. It is probably the same as the match-lock revolver in the
-museum of the Tower of London, which is also credited to the Fifteenth
-Century. In the British patent to Puckle, No. 418, of 1718, is shown and
-described a well-constructed revolver carried on a tripod, and of the
-dimensions of the modern machine gun. The inventor naïvely states that
-it has round chambers for round balls, designed for Christians, and
-square chambers, with square balls, for the Turks. The first revolving
-firearm in the United States was made by John Gill, of Newberne, N. C.,
-in 1829. It had fourteen chambers, and was a percussion gun, but was
-never patented. The first revolver patented in the United States was
-that to D. G. Colburn, June 29, 1833. The revolver of Col. Samuel Colt
-was patented February 25, 1836, (re-issue No. 124, October 24, 1848),
-and again August 29, 1839, No. 1,304; September 3, 1850, No. 7,613, and
-September 10, 1850, No. 7,629. It was the first practical invention of
-this kind, and it embodied as a leading feature the automatic rotation
-of the cylinder in cocking by a pawl on the hammer engaging a ratchet on
-the end of the cylinder.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 276.--SMITH & WESSON REVOLVER DISCHARGING SHELLS.]
-
-Various types followed, such as the old pepper box, patented by Darling
-April 13, 1836; the self-cocking pepper box, patented by Allen, No.
-3,998, April 16, 1845; the four sliding barrels of Sharp, No. 6,960,
-December 18, 1849, and many others. The most popular and successful,
-however, of the succeeding types is that of Smith & Wesson, shown in
-Fig. 276, and covered by many patents. One of its most important
-features is the simultaneous extraction of the shells by an ejector,
-having a stem sliding through the cylinder. This was the invention of W.
-C. Dodge, patented January 17, 1865, No. 45,912, re-issue No. 4,483,
-July 25, 1871. In Fig. 277 is shown Smith & Wesson's latest pattern of
-Hammerless Safety Revolver, with automatic shell extractor and
-rebounding lock.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 277.--SMITH & WESSON SELF ACTING HAMMERLESS
-REVOLVER.]
-
-The latest development in this class of arms is the _automatic magazine
-pistol_, designed for the use of the officers of the German army, and
-adapted to fire ten shots in as many seconds. Only a slight pressure on
-the trigger is necessary, as it is not required to perform the work of
-turning any other part by the trigger, as is the case in the
-self-cocking revolver. The pressure of gas at each explosion does all
-the work of pushing back the closing piece of the breech through the
-recoil of the shell, extracts and ejects the shell, cocks the hammer,
-and also compresses recuperative springs, which effect the reloading and
-closing of the weapon, all of these functions being performed in proper
-sequence at each explosion in a fraction of a second. The act of firing
-thus prepares the pistol for the next shot automatically. In Fig. 278
-are shown two makes of pistol of this type. No. 1 is known as the Mauser
-(United States patent No. 584,479, June 15, 1897); No. 2 shows it with
-an extemporized stock, to be used as a carbine in firing from the
-shoulder. This stock is hollow and forms the holster or case for the
-pistol. At No. 3 is shown the Mannlicher pistol (United States patent
-No. 581,296, April 27, 1897), which is another form of the same type. In
-the Mauser the breech moves to the rear during recoil. In the Mannlicher
-the barrel moves to the front, leaving space for a fresh cartridge to
-come up from the magazine below. The calibre of this pistol is 0.3
-inch, and the initial velocity 1,395 feet. At 33 feet the ball passes
-through 10¾ inches of spruce, at 490 through 5 inches, and its extreme
-range is 3,000 feet, or more than half a mile. When empty it is quickly
-re-charged with cartridges, which are made up in sets of ten in a case
-and inserted in one movement.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 278.--AUTOMATIC PISTOLS.]
-
-_Breech-Loading Guns._--Although the breech-loading principle was well
-known prior to the Nineteenth Century, it remained for this period to
-give it effective development. The first United States patent for a
-breech-loading gun was to Thornton and Hall, May 21, 1811. It was a
-flint lock, and many of these arms were made at Harper's Ferry Armory in
-1814, and issued to the troops, one being given by order of Congress to
-each member of Congress to take home with him to show to his
-constituents. The present style of break-down gun was invented by Pauly,
-in France, and is to be found in his British patent No. 3,833, of 1814.
-Lefaucheux, of Paris, however, made this form of gun practical.
-Minesinger, in United States patent No. 6,139, February 27, 1849,
-supplied the important improvement of making the front edge of the
-metallic cartridge shell thinner than elsewhere, so as to expand by the
-pressure of the exploding charge, and swell to a tight fit of the
-barrel. The Maynard rifle, first patented May 27, 1851, No. 8,126, was
-one of the earliest practical forms of breech-loaders.
-
-_Magazine Guns._--Walter Hunt's United States patent No. 6,663, August
-21, 1849, was the first on a magazine firearm of modern type. It had a
-sliding breech block carrying the main spring and firing pin. The
-Spencer rifle was one of the early ones that came into use. This had a
-row of cartridges in the stock, and was first patented March 6, 1860,
-No. 27,393. It was this weapon which in the Civil War gave proof of the
-deadly efficacy of the breech-loading magazine gun, and its superiority
-to the old style military arm. Another type of magazine firearm which in
-the last half century has gained great prominence and popularity is the
-so-called "Winchester." This has its cartridges arranged in a tube below
-and parallel with the barrel, and they are fed in a column to the rear
-by a helical spring as fast as they are used up at the breech. The
-pioneer of this type is the arm patented by Smith & Wesson February 14,
-1854, No. 10,535, re-issued December 30, 1873, No. 5,710. This was
-subsequently improved as to the extractor by B. F. Henry in patent No.
-30,446, October 16, 1860, re-issued December 7, 1868, No. 3,227, and was
-manufactured and favorably known for many years as the _Henry rifle_.
-This rifle was also used in the Civil War. O. F. Winchester subsequently
-re-organized it in patent No. 57,808, September 4, 1866, and the arm in
-late years has taken his name.
-
-_The Needle Gun_, of Prussia, represents an early form of breech loader,
-and may be considered the prototype of the modern bolt gun. The needle
-gun has in the place of the swinging hammer a rectilinearly sliding
-bolt, carrying in front a needle which pierces the charge and ignites
-the fulminate by its friction. Its construction permits the fulminate
-to be placed in advance of the powder, which thus burns from the front,
-and is entirely consumed in the gun, instead of being partially blown
-out of the gun, as may occur when ignited in the rear. The needle gun
-was invented by Dreyse in 1838, was first introduced about 1846, and
-gave effective service in the Prusso-Austrian war of 1866. The
-_Chassepot_, brought out in 1867, United States patent No. 60,832, was a
-French development of the Prussian needle gun.
-
-About 1879 two forms of magazine guns appeared which have become types
-for most all subsequent guns of this class. Both of them employed the
-bolt system as previously embodied in the needle gun, but added to it
-the magazine principle and changed the method of supplying and feeding
-the cartridges. One was the invention of James Lee, and the other was
-the joint invention of Colonel Livermore, of the Corps of Engineers, and
-Major Russell, of the Ordnance Department, U. S. A. In the Lee, whose
-name has been much in evidence in late years, there was a relatively
-small detachable box (see Fig. 279) capable of holding five cartridges
-and designed to be filled and then placed in a slot opening centrally
-under the gun, below the receiver, and directly in front of the trigger
-guard. A spring within the magazine fed the cartridges up into alignment
-with the barrel. Lee's first patent was No. 221,328, November 4, 1879.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 279.--LEE'S MAGAZINE RIFLE, PATENTED NOVEMBER 4,
-1879.]
-
-The Livermore-Russell gun, patented October 28, 1879, No. 221,079, had a
-magazine opening transversely in the upper edge of the stock behind the
-bolt, and the cartridges were fed to the barrel beneath the bolt. The
-important feature of the gun, however, was a cartridge case slotted on
-its side and detachable from the gun, and each bearing a group of five
-cartridges, which were to be thus made up in small packets and carried
-in the belt or cartridge box of the soldier. This idea was subsequently
-developed by Livermore and Russell in patent No. 230,823, August 3,
-1880, and this feature, viewed in the light of the importance
-subsequently attained by the "clip" in the Mauser and Mannlicher guns,
-may be fairly considered the pioneer of this idea of grouping cartridges
-in made-up packets for bolt guns. Its great advantage is the large
-number of shots that may be fired in a short space of time without an
-excessive weight in the gun itself.
-
-Subsequent patents for improvements were taken by Lee as follows: No.
-513,647, January 30, 1894, and No. 547,583, October 8, 1895, and the gun
-used by the United States Navy is modeled along the lines of Lee's
-invention.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 280.--KRAG-JORGENSEN MAGAZINE RIFLE.]
-
-_The Krag-Jorgensen Magazine Rifle_ was patented June 10, 1890, No.
-429,811, and February 21, 1893, No. 492,212. It is the arm adopted by
-the United States infantry service, and is seen in Fig. 280. The fixed
-magazine chamber, shown in the cross section, passes through the breech
-laterally below the barrel, and is filled with cartridges on one side of
-the gun, which cartridges pass through the breech laterally, and,
-turning a curve, enter the barrel from the opposite side. When the bolt
-is drawn back by the knob handle a cartridge is fed up into position to
-enter the barrel, and when pushed forward the cartridge is forced into
-the bore of the gun, and at the same time a spiral spring is put under
-tension to set the hammer of the gun, which carries a firing pin at its
-front end. When the trigger is pulled the hammer and firing pin plunge
-forward to explode the cap in the cartridge, and when the handle of the
-bolt is drawn back again to extract the empty shell, a fresh cartridge
-rises to take its place.
-
-_The Mauser Rifle_ is shown in Fig. 281. This is the arm of which so
-much was heard during the recent war with Spain, and against which our
-soldiers had to contend. Five cartridges are carried in a magazine
-immediately in front of the trigger, and are fed up by a subjacent
-spring, one at a time, centrally through the breech into line with the
-barrel, as the bolt with the knobbed handle is worked back and forth.
-The cartridges are carried by the soldier in groups of five in a "clip,"
-which is a simple strip of metal with inturned parallel edges, which
-enclose the flanged heads of the cartridges as they project at right
-angles to the clip. To transfer the cartridges to the magazine, the
-clip with its cartridges is placed above the barrel, and the cartridges
-forced down out of the clip into the magazine. In the Mannlicher gun,
-adopted by the German army, the clip which holds the cartridges is
-itself inserted into the magazine, along with the cartridges.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 281.--THE MAUSER RIFLE AND CLIP.]
-
-The modern trend of development in firearms has been toward the
-reduction of calibre, the standard for small arms being 30/100. The lead
-bullets are covered with a seamless jacket of harder metal (Geiger's
-patents, No. 306,738 and 306,739, October 21, 1884), which prevents the
-"leading" and fouling of the gun, and the distortion of the bullet.
-Modern magazine guns permit twenty-five to thirty shots a minute as
-single loaders, and besides they hold in reserve five cartridges. They
-have a killing range of a mile, and the cost of the cartridge is 3.2
-cents. At a trial at the Washington Navy Yard a few years past a steel
-projectile 1.07 inches long and 32/100 calibre penetrated solid iron
-1.15 inch thick, fired at an angle of 80°. It also penetrated 50 inches
-of pine boards, and its range was estimated at three miles.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 282.--THE GREENER HAMMERLESS GUN.]
-
-_Hammerless Guns._--Among improvements in shot guns the so-called
-"hammerless" feature is a noteworthy departure. This hides the hammers
-in the breech and cocks them by the act of breaking down the gun. In
-Fig. 282 is given a section and plan view of the Greener mechanism,
-which was patented July 6, 1880, No. 229,604, and was one of the first
-guns of this kind put on the market. The hammers A are constructed as
-elbow levers. Their upper ends have each a round point adapted to strike
-through a small hole in the breech onto the cap of the cartridge. The
-lower front portions of the hammers are extended forward and curved
-inwardly toward each other, so that their inner ends nearly meet. C is a
-pendent hook jointed to the barrel, and when the latter is tilted, as
-shown in dotted lines, the hook acting upon the forwardly projecting
-arms of the hammers turns them backward to the cocked position, in which
-they are retained by the dogs B engaging with their notches. As the
-hammers move back the mainspring is compressed, and when the dog B is
-removed from the notch by pulling on the trigger, the hammers are
-released and the gun fired.
-
-_The rebounding lock_, now universally applied to shot guns, is another
-comparatively recent improvement. This promotes safety by causing the
-hammers to be normally and automatically held away from the firing pins.
-The first practical form of this lock was patented by Hailer, July 26,
-1870, No. 105,799, in which a single spring serves to deliver the blow
-of the hammer and also withdraws the hammer from the firing pin. A
-marked tendency in shot guns in late years is toward a reduction in
-bore, many sportsmen now using a 28 gauge in preference to the old
-regulation 12.
-
-Nearly 5,000 patents have been granted in the United States for
-firearms, and about 2,400 for projectiles. The most important of the
-latter is the torpedo, of which the Whitehead, or fish torpedo, which
-supplies its own means of propulsion, is the best known and most used.
-It was first brought out in 1866 by Whitehead, at Fiume, a port of
-Hungary. The Gathmann aerial torpedo, weighing 1,800 pounds and carrying
-625 pounds of wet gun cotton, is designed to be fired from a gun 44 feet
-long and 18 inch bore, and is supposed to have a range of ten miles.
-Tests are about to be made under special appropriation of Congress, and
-if its claim can be substantiated, it may become the most destructive
-engine of warfare known.
-
-_Explosives._--The invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese,
-and at a period so far back that its origin is buried in antiquity. It
-is believed to have been known since the time of Moses, something very
-like it being mentioned in the ancient Gentoo laws of India 1,500 to
-2,000 B. C. For many years it was thought that Roger Bacon invented it
-in 1249, but it is now known that he was only a factor in its
-development. Most likely the saltpetre of the plains of China came first
-in accidental contact with the charred embers of a prehistoric fire, and
-to the observant man the oxygen-giving saltpetre furnished the charcoal
-with its means of energetic combustion for the first time.
-
-Gunpowder consists of about 75 parts of saltpetre (nitrate of potash),
-15 of charcoal, and 10 of sulphur, the proportions varying somewhat with
-the use to which it is to be applied. In ordinary combustion the air
-supplies the necessary oxygen. In gunpowder the presence of the air is
-not necessary, as the saltpetre has imprisoned in its composition a
-large quantity of oxygen which furnishes to the carbon and sulphur the
-means for its combustion, gasification and enormous expansion.
-Originally, gunpowder was pulverulent, like that used in fire works, and
-had but little propelling force. The making of it in grains ("corned")
-is ascribed to Berthold Schwarz, a German monk, about 1320, and this, by
-promoting the rapidity of its burning, added greatly to its effective
-force, and gave a new impetus to firearms.
-
-In the early part of the Nineteenth Century there were but few
-improvements in either the composition or manufacture of gunpowder. The
-introduction of the percussion cap, which exploded the charge by a blow,
-in the place of the old flint lock, was, however, a notable advance.
-Alexander John Forsyth, a Scotch clergyman, was the first to apply a
-percussion or detonating compound, as set forth in his British patent
-No. 3,032, of 1807. The embodiment of such compounds in the little
-copper caps was made about 1818, and has been claimed by various
-parties. Manton's British patent No. 4,285, of 1818, describes a thin
-copper tube filled with fulminate and struck sidewise by the hammer to
-explode it. Joshua Shaw took a United States patent on a percussion gun,
-June 19, 1822, and the copper percussion cap was said to have been
-introduced in the United States by him in 1842. The embodiment of the
-charge of powder and ball in brass and copper shells was done in France
-by Galay Cazalat as early as 1826. Drawn metallic shells were made by
-Flobert and Lefaucheux, in 1853, and Palmer, in 1854. Drawn copper
-cartridges with center fire were introduced in the United States, and
-patented by Smith & Wesson August 8, 1854, No. 11,496, and solid headed
-shells by Hotchkiss, August 31, 1869, No. 94,210.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 283.--SUBMARINE MINE. CHARGE, 250 POUNDS DYNAMITE.]
-
-In 1846 a new and distinct development in explosives was made in the
-discovery of gun cotton by Schönbein, and of nitro-glycerine in 1847 by
-Sobrero. The former is made by the reaction of nitric acid, aided by
-sulphuric acid, on ordinary raw cotton, which, while changing the
-physical aspects of the cotton but little, gives to it a terrific
-explosive energy. Nitro-glycerine is made in a somewhat similar way by
-treating glycerine with nitric and sulphuric acids. At first it found no
-practical applications, except as a homoeopathic medicine for headache,
-but about 1864 Nobel commenced its manufacture for explosive uses, and
-since that time nearly all the great blasting operations have been
-performed through its agency. Its most familiar form is _dynamite_, or
-giant powder, Nobel's patent, No. 78,317, May 26, 1868, which is simply
-nitro-glycerine held in absorption by some inert granular solid, such as
-infusorial earth, and is thus rendered safer to handle and more
-convenient to use. A suggestive application of the terrible power of
-these explosives is in submarine mines. The instantaneous and dastardly
-destruction of our battleship, "The Maine," with 250 of her crew, in
-Havana harbor, February 15, 1898, by one of these agencies, is a
-harrowing illustration. Fig. 283 represents one of these submarine mines
-carrying 250 pounds of dynamite, and Fig. 284 is an instantaneous
-photograph at the moment of explosion.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 284.--EXPLOSION OF A MINE. BASE OF WATER COLUMN, 100
-FEET WIDE, HEIGHT, 246 FEET.]
-
-_White gunpowder_, or wood powder, was invented by Captain Schultz, of
-the Prussian army. It is made by treating granulated wood with a mixture
-of nitric and sulphuric acids, which, acting upon the cellulose of the
-wood, convert it into an explosive something of the nature of gun
-cotton. The grains are afterward saturated with saltpetre. This was
-patented in the United States June 2, 1863, No. 38,789, and in Great
-Britain, No. 900, of 1864. Dittmar's powder is another of the same
-general nature, covered by United States patents No. 98,854, January
-18, 1870; No. 99,069, January 25, 1870, and No. 145,403, December 9,
-1873.
-
-Among the high explosives of more recent date may be mentioned:
-
- _Tonite_ (gun cotton and barium nitrate), British patents No. 3,612,
- of 1874, and No. 2,742, of 1876.
-
- _Rack-a-rock_ (potassium chlorate and nitro-benzene), United States
- patent No. 243,432, June 28, 1881; British patent No. 5,584, of
- 1881.
-
- _Bellite_ (ammonium nitrate and nitro-benzene), United States
- patent No. 455,217, June 30, 1891; British patent No. 13,690, of
- 1885.
-
- _Melinite_ (picric acid and gun cotton), British patent No. 15,089,
- of 1885.
-
- _Lyddite_, not patented, but believed to be substantially same as
- melinite, and containing for its active ingredient picric acid,
- which is a compound formed by the reaction of nitric acid on
- carbolic acid.
-
- _Cordite_ (nitro-glycerine, gun cotton, and mineral jelly or oil),
- British patent No. 5,614, of 1889; United States patent No.
- 409,549, August 20, 1889.
-
- _Indurite_ (gun cotton and nitro-benzene, indurated), United States
- patent, No. 489,684, January 10, 1893; British patent, No. 580, of
- 1893.
-
-In recent years smokeless powders have largely superseded all others.
-These contain usually nitro-cellulose (gun cotton), or nitro-glycerine,
-or both, made up into a plastic, coherent, and homogeneous compound of a
-gluey nature, and fashioned into horn-like sticks or rods by being
-forced under pressure through a die plate having small holes, through
-which the plastic material is strained into strings like macaroni, or
-else is molded into tablets, pellets, or grains of cubical shape.
-Prominent among those who have contributed to this art are the names of
-Turpin, Abel and Dewar, Nobel, Maxim, Munroe, Du Pont, Bernadou and
-others.
-
-In the recent years of the Nineteenth Century great activity has been
-manifest in this field of invention. In the United States more than 600
-different patents have been granted for explosives, the larger portion
-of them being for nitro-compounds, which partake in a greater or less
-degree of the qualities of gun cotton or nitro-glycerine. The influence
-exerted by them has been incalculable. Subtile as is the force
-imprisoned in inter-atomic relation, it has been the power behind the
-boom of the cannon; it has lent itself to the driving of great tunnels
-through the solid rock; it has lifted the coal and ore from the solid
-embrace of the mountain, and the building stone from its sleep in the
-quarry; it has opened up channels to the sea, canals on land, and in
-both war and peace has been one of the great agencies of civilization.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXI.
-
-TEXTILES.
-
- SPINNING AND WEAVING AN ANCIENT ART--HARGREAVES' SPINNING JENNY--
- ARKWRIGHT'S ROLL-DRAWING SPINNING MACHINE--CROMPTON'S MULE
- SPINNER--THE COTTON GIN--RING SPINNING--THE RABBETH SPINDLE--JOHN
- KAY'S FLYING SHUTTLE AND ROBERT KAY'S DROP BOX--CARTWRIGHT'S POWER
- LOOM--THE JACQUARD LOOM--CROMPTON'S FANCY LOOM--BIGELOW'S CARPET
- LOOMS--LYALL POSITIVE MOTION LOOM--KNITTING MACHINES--CLOTH PRESSING
- MACHINERY--ARTIFICIAL SILK--MERCERIZED CLOTH.
-
-
-Far back in the obscuring gloom of a prehistoric antiquity, man wore
-probably only the hirsute covering which nature gave him. As he emerged
-from barbarism, sentiments of modesty marked the evolution of his mind,
-and this, together with the need for a more sufficient protection
-against cold and heat, suggested an artificial covering for his body. At
-first he robbed the brute of his fleecy skin and wore it bodily. Later
-he learned to spin and weave; next to food and drink, clothing became a
-fundamental necessity, for without it his life could not extend outside
-of the limited zone of the tropics. Food and drink were to be found as
-nature's free gifts, but clothing had to be made, and its manufacture
-constituted probably the oldest of all the living arts. The making of
-cloth may be said to be coeval with history. The Old Testament of the
-Bible is replete with references to spinning and weaving, and the cloths
-wrapped about the mummies of ancient Egypt, although thousands of years
-old, were of exceeding regularity and fineness.
-
-So old an art, and so great and continuous a need for its products
-necessarily must have resulted in much development and progress. When
-the Nineteenth Century began, the world already enjoyed the results of
-Hargreaves' spinning-jenny, Arkwright's roll-drawing spinning machine,
-the mule spinner, the cotton gin, and the power loom, all of which were
-most radical inventions, equaling in importance, perhaps, any that have
-followed.
-
-Prior to the invention of the _spinning-jenny_, the loose fibre was spun
-into yarns and thread by hand on the old-fashioned spinning wheel, each
-thread requiring the attention of one person. In 1763 Hargreaves
-invented the spinning-jenny (see Fig. 285), in which a multiplicity of
-spindles was employed, whereby one person could attend to the making of
-many threads simultaneously. For this purpose the spindles were set
-upright at the end of the frame, and the rovings or strips of untwisted
-fibre were carried on bobbins on the inclined frame. The rovings
-extended from these bobbins to a reciprocating "clasp" held in the left
-hand of the workman, and thence extended to the spindles at the end of
-the frame. The workman drew out the rovings by moving the clasp back and
-forth, and at the same time turned the crank with his right hand to
-rotate the spindles. Hargreaves' machine is shown and described in his
-British patent, No. 962 of 1770.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 285.--HARGREAVES' SPINNING JENNY.]
-
-The next important step in spinning was the introduction of drawing
-rolls, which were a series of rolls running at different speeds for
-drawing out or elongating the roving as it was spun into a thread. This
-was mainly due to Arkwright, a contemporary of Hargreaves. The principle
-of the drawing rolls had been foreshadowed in the British patents of
-Louis Paul, No. 562, of 1738, and No. 724, of 1758, but Arkwright made
-the first embodiment of it in practically useful machines, which were
-covered by him in British patents No. 931, of 1769, and No. 1,111, of
-1775. Arkwright's spinning machine is shown in Fig. 286, the drawing
-rolls being shown at the top of the figure.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 286.--ARKWRIGHT'S ROLL-DRAWING SPINNING MACHINE.]
-
-Following these important inventions came the mule spinner. This was
-invented by Crompton between 1774 and 1779, but was never patented. It
-combined the leading features of Hargreaves and Arkwright. The spindles
-were mounted on a wheeled carriage that traveled back and forth a
-considerable distance from the drawing rolls, which were mounted in
-bearings in a stationary frame. The long travel of the carriage back and
-forth, and the simultaneous twisting and drawing of the yarns, produced
-threads of great fineness and regularity. The value of the long travel
-of the carriage may be briefly noted as follows: When the threads or
-slivers emerge from the drawing rolls they are not absolutely of uniform
-size, and the thick portions do not twist as tightly as the thinner
-portions. The stretching and drawing of these thicker parts down to a
-uniform size by the receding of the carriage is the distinctive feature
-of its action. As the thread has greater tensile strength at the thinner
-hard-twisted parts than it has at the thicker untwisted parts, it will
-be seen that the stretching action is localized on the thicker untwisted
-parts of the thread, which are thus brought down to uniform size by
-elongation. The drawing and twisting of the thread is effected as the
-carriage runs out, and when the carriage runs in these twisted lengths
-are wound around the spindles. The rendering of the action of the mule
-automatic or self-acting in its travel back and forth was the invention
-of Richard Roberts, of England, and was covered by him in British
-patents No. 5,138 of 1825, and No. 5,649 of 1830. The mule spinner shown
-in Fig. 287 is a good modern example of this machine.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 287.--MULE SPINNING MACHINE.]
-
-One of the most important of the early inventions in the textile art was
-the _cotton gin_. This was the invention of Eli Whitney, of
-Massachusetts, and was patented by him March 14, 1794. Prior to its use
-the picking of the cotton fibre from the bean-like seed with which it is
-compactly stored in the boll was entirely effected by hand, and it was a
-slow and tedious process, and about 4 pounds per day was the average
-work of one man. The cotton gin, shown in Fig. 288, is a device for
-doing this by machinery in a rapid, thorough, and expeditious manner.
-The cotton, mixed with seed, is fed to the roll box J, in which a sort
-of reel F continually turns the cotton. The bottom of the roll box is
-formed with a grating of parallel ribs E, between which project the
-teeth of a gang of circular saws C, which pull the fibre through between
-the ribs and deliver it to the revolving brush B, which beats the fibre
-off the teeth of the saws and produces a blast that discharges the
-fleece through the rear of the gin. The cotton seed, which are too
-large to pass between the ribs with the fibre, drop out the bottom of
-the roll-box. With the aid of the cotton gin the efficiency of one man
-is raised from four pounds per day to several thousand pounds per day,
-and the culture and manufacture of cotton fibre was revolutionized and
-greatly stimulated by providing a mode of putting it into merchantable
-condition at a reasonable price. It is said that the crop of cotton
-increased from 189,316 pounds in 1791 to 2,000,000,000 pounds in 1859.
-The cotton gin, as invented by Whitney more than a hundred years ago, is
-still in use, substantially unchanged in principle, but its efficiency
-has been raised from 70 pounds per day to several thousands. The cotton
-crop of the United States for 1899, which was handled by the modern gins
-at this rate, amounted to 11,274,840 bales, of about 500 pounds each, or
-more than five thousand million pounds. But for the cotton gin this
-great staple would have only a very limited use, and one of the greatest
-of the world's industries would have practically no existence.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 288.--COTTON GIN.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 289.--MODERN SPINNING SPINDLE.]
-
-A modern step of importance in spinning was the _ring frame_. Ring
-spinning was invented by John Thorp, of Rhode Island, who took out two
-patents for the same November 20, 1828. The leading feature of the ring
-frame is the substitution of a light steel hoop or traveler running upon
-the upper edge of a ring surrounding the spindle in lieu of the flyer
-formerly employed. The thread passes through the hoop as it is wound
-upon the spindle. In modern times ring spinning has attained
-considerable proportions, especially in cotton manufactures.
-
-Nearly 3,000 United States patents have been granted in the class of
-spinning, and many valuable improvements in the details of construction
-in spinning machinery have been made in recent years. The most
-important, perhaps, are those relating to spindle structure, whereby the
-speed and efficiency of spinning machines have been greatly increased.
-Prior to 1878 the speed of the average spindle was limited to 5,000
-revolutions a minute. In 1878 improvements were made which doubled its
-working speed and permitted as high as 20,000 revolutions a minute. This
-result was accomplished by making a yielding bolster. The bolster is an
-upright sleeve bearing, in which the spindle revolves, and against which
-is sustained the pull of the band that drives the spindle. By making
-this bolster or sleeve bearing to yield laterally by means of an elastic
-packing which surrounds it, a much greater freedom and speed of
-revolution were obtained. The preliminary step in this direction was
-made by Birkenhead in patent No. 205,718, July 9, 1878. In the same year
-this idea was perfected by Rabbeth. The bolster was placed loosely in a
-bolster case of slightly larger diameter than the bolster, and the
-bottom of the spindle had a free lateral movement as well as the top, as
-shown in his patent No. 227,129, May 4, 1880. With such perfect freedom
-of movement, the spindle at high speed could find its own center of
-revolution, and an indefinitely high speed and quadrupled efficiency
-were attained. The Draper Spindle is shown in Fig. 289 as one of the
-most modern and representative of spinning spindles. Considering the
-great speed of the modern spindle and the fact that a single workman
-attends a thousand or more of them, the record of progress in this art
-becomes impressive. In 1805 there were only 4,500 cotton spindles at
-work in the United States. In 1899 there were 18,100,000.
-
-_Weaving._--A woven fabric consists of threads which run lengthwise,
-called the "warp," crossed by threads running transversely, called the
-"woof," "weft," or "filling," which latter are imprisoned or locked in
-by the warp. In a simple loom the warp threads are divided into two
-groups, the threads of one group alternating with those of the other,
-and means are provided for separating these groups to form a
-wedge-shaped space between them called a "shed." Through this shed the
-shuttle which carries the woof or filling thread is sent crosswise the
-warp threads. Means are provided for changing the inclination and
-position of the two groups of warp threads in relation to each other, so
-as to lock in the filling, and put the warp threads in position to
-receive the next filling thread. For this purpose the warp threads,
-usually horizontal, are each passed through a loop, and every alternate
-loop is attached to a frame called a "heddle." The intervening loops and
-threads are attached to another frame or "heddle," and the two heddles
-by being worked, one up and the other down, separate the warp threads to
-form the shed. Formerly the shuttle was thrown by hand through the shed.
-In 1733 John Kay, of England, took out British patent No. 542, for the
-flying shuttle and picking stick, by which the shuttle was struck a
-hammer-like blow and driven like a ball from a bat across the warp, and
-was struck by a similar stick on the other side, to be returned in the
-same way. This gave a much more rapid action than could be obtained by
-hand-throwing, and enabled one weaver to do the work of two or three. In
-1760 Robert Kay invented the drop box, by which different shuttles
-carrying different colors of thread were employed.
-
-The _power loom_, however, marked the first great growth in the art of
-weaving. The enormously increased quantity of cotton spun by Arkwright's
-machinery made a demand for increased facilities for weaving it into
-cloth. Dr. Cartwright, of England, foresaw and met this demand in his
-_power loom_, in which all of the intricate operations were performed by
-power-driven machinery. His invention was not extensively introduced
-until about the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. One difficulty
-experienced was that the warp threads, from their fuzzy nature, had to
-be dressed with size, and this required the loom to be stopped from time
-to time, and necessitated the services of a man to dress or size the
-warp threads. This difficulty was overcome, however, by Johnson &
-Radcliffe, about 1803, by the sizing and dressing of the yarns by
-passing them between rollers and coating them with a thin layer of paste
-before being put into the loom. Dr. Cartwright was granted British
-patents No. 1,470, of 1785; No. 1,565, of 1786; No. 1,616, of 1787, and
-No. 1,676, of 1788, but being unable to maintain any monopoly under his
-patents he was compensated by Parliament with a grant of £10,000.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 290.--MODERN JACQUARD LOOM.]
-
-_Jacquard Loom._--This most notable step in the art of weaving was made
-at the very beginning of the Nineteenth Century. It enabled all kinds of
-fabrics, from the finest to the coarsest, to be cheaply woven into
-patterns having figured or ornamental designs. Jacquard, a native of
-Lyons, conceived the plan of his great invention in the last decade of
-the Eighteenth Century, and on December 28, 1801, took out French patent
-No. 245, on the same. His invention was not, in fact, a new form of
-loom, but rather an attachment to a loom which was universally
-applicable to all looms. Before his invention, figured patterns of cloth
-could only be made by slow and laborious processes. Jacquard's invention
-consisted in individualizing and differentiating the movement of the
-warp threads, instead of operating them in constant groups. This
-individualizing of the movement of the warp threads allowed any warp
-thread to be held up automatically any length of time, or let down,
-according as was necessary to form the figure of the pattern. This was
-accomplished by making a chain of articulated cards, like a slatted
-belt, and perforating these cards with varying arrangements of holes.
-The cards were successively and intermittently fed to a set of needles,
-which latter, by rising and falling, raise or lower the warp threads
-attached to the same. By perforating these cards differently, and
-arranging them so that when one card was brought in front of the needles
-it would let certain needles through the perforations and hold the
-others back, it will be seen that each card controlled the action of a
-different set of needles, and the sequence of the series of cards
-effected the necessary change in the needles and movement of the warp
-threads to form the growth of the figure in the fabric.
-
-In Fig. 290 is seen a modern form of Jacquard loom, showing at the far
-end the chain of perforated cards. Jacquard received a bronze medal at
-the French Exposition in 1801, was decorated with the Cross of the
-Legion of Honor, and the gratitude of his countrymen was attested by a
-pension of 6,000 francs, and a statue erected to his memory at Lyons in
-1840.
-
-Subsequent improvements and developments of the Jacquard loom have
-carried its work to great nicety and refinement of action. In the chain
-of pattern cards it is said that as many as 25,000 separately punched
-cards or plates are sometimes used in weaving a single yard of brocade.
-The great variety of elaborate designs of delicate tracery in silk, rich
-patterns in brocades, and gorgeous figures in carpets, attest the value
-of Jacquard's important step in this art.
-
-Nearly 5,000 United States patents have been granted in the class of
-weaving. In the early part of the century much notable work was done.
-Steam was applied to looms by William Horrocks (British patent No.
-2,699, 1803). From 1830 to 1842 there were brought out the fancy looms
-of Crompton, the application of the Jacquard mechanism to the lace frame
-by Draper, and the carpet looms of Bigelow. In 1853 Bonelli sought to
-improve on the Jacquard mechanism by employing electro-magnets to effect
-the selection of the needles, instead of perforated cards (British
-patent No. 1,892, of 1853).
-
-Among more recent developments is the _Positive Motion_ loom of Lyall,
-patented December 10, 1872, No. 133,868, re-issue No. 9,049, January 20,
-1880. The distinguishing feature of this is that the shuttle is not
-thrown or impelled as a projectile through the wedge-shaped space
-(shed), between the two sets of warp threads, but is positively dragged
-back and forth through the same by an endless belt attached to the
-shuttle carriage and running first in one direction and then in the
-other to drag the shuttle through.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 291.--CROMPTON FANCY LOOM.]
-
-It is not to be understood that the positive motion loom has superseded
-the flying shuttle. The latter is still the leading type, of which the
-Crompton fancy loom, shown in Fig. 291, is a representative
-illustration.
-
-The tendency in late years in the art of weaving has been toward
-labor-saving devices, a reduction in the cost to the consumer of all
-kinds of textile fabrics, and the extension of the loom to the weaving
-of new kinds of materials. Prominent among these are the inventions in
-the loom for weaving plain fabrics made between the years 1881 and 1895,
-shown in patents to Northrop, No. 454,810, June 23, 1891; No. 529,943,
-November 27, 1894, and Draper, No. 536,948, April 2, 1895. This loom, as
-usual, employs a single shuttle, but as the weft becomes exhausted
-another bobbin is automatically supplied to the shuttle without
-stopping the operation of the machine. During the year 1895 the first
-loom for weaving an open mesh cane fabric having diagonal strands was
-invented. Patents to Morris, No. 549,930, and to Crompton, No. 550,068,
-November 19, 1895, were obtained for this. Prior to this time two
-distinct machines were necessary to produce this fabric, and the
-operation was slow and expensive. Between 1893 and 1895 two machines
-were invented, upon either of which the well-known Turkish carpets can
-be woven. Patents to Youngjohns, No. 510,755, December 12, 1893, and to
-Reinhart von Seydlitz, No. 533,330, January 29, 1895, disclose this. The
-drawing of warp threads into the eyes of the heddles and through the
-reed of a loom requires great skill, and prior to 1880 was performed by
-hand at great expense. In 1882, however, a machine for doing this was
-invented, thereby dispensing with the old hand method and cheapening the
-operation. Patents to Sherman and Ingersoll, No. 255,038, March 14,
-1882, and Ingersoll, No. 461,613, October 20, 1891, were granted for
-this machine.
-
-To-day the shuttle flies at the rate of 180 to 250 strokes a minute, and
-yet the complex organization of the machine works with an energy, a
-uniformity, an accuracy and a continuity that leaves far behind the
-strength of the arm, the memory of mind, and the accuracy of the human
-eye, and yet, if the tiny thread breaks, the whole organization
-instantly stops and patiently waits the remedial care of its watchful
-master.
-
-_Knitting Machines._--Knitting differs from weaving, braiding, or
-plaiting in the following respects: In weaving there are longitudinal
-threads called warp threads, which are crossed on a separate weft or
-filling thread. In braiding or plaiting all the threads may be
-considered warp threads, since they are arranged to run longitudinally,
-and instead of locking around a separate transverse thread at right
-angles, they extend diagonally and are interwoven with each other. In
-netting and knitting, however, there is but a single thread, which, in
-netting, is knotted into itself at definite intervals to leave a mesh of
-definite size, while in knitting the single thread is merely looped into
-itself without any definite mesh. Knitted goods have the peculiarity of
-great elasticity in consequence of this formation of the fabric, and for
-that reason find a special application in all garments which are
-required to snugly conform to irregular outlines, such as stockings for
-the feet, gloves for the hands, and underwear for the body.
-
-Weaving, braiding, and netting are very old arts, but the art of
-knitting is comparatively modern. It is believed to have originated
-about the year 1500 in Scotland. In 1589 William Lee, of England, is
-credited with making the first knitting machine. It is said that the
-girl with whom he was in love, and to whom he was paying his attention,
-was so busy with her work of hand knitting that she could not give him
-the requisite attention, and he invented the knitting machine that they
-might have more time to devote to their love affairs. Another version is
-that he married the girl and invented the machine to relieve her weary
-fingers from the work of the knitting needle, and still another is that
-the machine was the leading object of his affections, to the neglect of
-his sweetheart, who "gave him the mitten" before he had knitted one on
-his machines.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 292.--BRANSON 15/16 AUTOMATIC KNITTER.]
-
-The earliest circular knitting machine was by Brunel, described in
-British patent No. 3,993, of 1816. Power was applied to the knitting
-frame by Bailey in 1831, and the latch needle was patented in the United
-States by Hibbert, January 9, 1849, No. 6,025. This patent was extended
-for seven years from January 9, 1863, and covered a very important and
-universally used feature of the knitting machine. Research has shown,
-however, that the latch was not broadly new with Hibbert, as it appeared
-in the French patent to Jeandeau, No. 1,900, of April 25, 1806. Among
-the earlier knitting machines, the straight reciprocating type was most
-in evidence, and of which the Lamb machine was a popular form. The
-increased speed and capacity of the circular machine have, however,
-caused it to largely supersede the others. In the circular machine a
-circular series of vertical parallel needles slide in grooves in a
-cylinder, and are raised and lowered successively by an external
-rotating cylinder which has on the inner side cams that act upon the
-needles. The Branson 15/16 Automatic Knitter, shown in Fig. 292, is a
-good modern illustration. It performs automatically fifteen-sixteenths
-of the various movements which ordinarily would be performed by hand on
-a hand machine. Its salient features are covered by patents No. 333,102,
-December 29, 1885, and No. 519,170, May 1, 1894. About 2,000 United
-States patents have been granted in the class of knitting and netting,
-and the value of hosiery and knit goods in the United States in 1890 was
-$67,241,013.
-
-An important branch of the textile art is cloth finishing, whereby the
-rough surface of the cloth as it comes from the loom is rendered soft
-and smooth. One method is to raise the nap of the cloth by pulling out
-the fibre by a multitude of fine points. Originally this was done by
-combing it with teasles, a sort of dried burr of vegetable growth,
-having a multitude of fine hook-shaped points. Machines with fine metal
-card teeth are now largely used for this purpose, and of which the
-planetary napping machine of Ott, patent No. 344,981, July 6, 1886, is
-an example. Another method of finishing the cloth is to iron or press
-it. Plate presses were first used in which smooth plates were folded in
-alternate layers with the cloth and pressure then applied, but in later
-years continuous rotary presses have been employed, that of Gessner,
-patent No. 206,718, August 6, 1878, re-issue No. 9,076, 9,077, February
-17, 1880, is one of the earliest examples of a continuous rotary press.
-The old Gessner presses of Saxony were the pioneers in this field. A
-modern Gessner cloth press is seen in Fig. 293.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 293.--MODERN "GESSNER" CLOTH PRESSING MACHINE.]
-
-In the field of textiles there are many related arts and machines. There
-are hat felting and finishing machines, darning machines, quilting
-machines, embroidering machines, processes and apparatus for dyeing and
-sizing, machines for printing fabrics, machines for making rope and
-cord, machines for winding and working silk, and in treating the raw
-material there are cotton-pickers, cotton baling presses, cotton openers
-and cleaners, flax brakes and hackling machines, feeding devices, wool
-carding and cleaning apparatus, all in variety and numbers that defy
-both comment and count.
-
-In fabrics every class of fibre has been called into requisition. Flax,
-wool, silk, and cotton have been supplemented with the fibres of metal,
-of glass, of cocoanut, pine needles, ramie, wood-pulp, and of many other
-plants, leaves and grasses.
-
-_Artificial silk_ is made out of a chemically prepared composition, and
-the fibres are spun by processes simulating not only the act of the
-silkworm, but its product in quality. Vandura silk was spun from an
-aqueous solution of gelatine by forcing it through a fine capillary
-tube, but it attained little or no practical value. A far more important
-artificial silk is covered by the patents to De Chardonnet, No.
-394,559, December 18, 1888; No. 460,629, October 6, 1891, and No.
-531,158, December 18, 1894, and also in subsequent patents to Lehner and
-to Turk. These all relate to the manufacture of artificial silk by
-spinning threads or filaments from pyroxiline (solution of gun cotton),
-collodion, or some such glutinous solution which evaporates rapidly,
-leaving a tiny thread, having most of the characteristics of silk and
-produced by the same method employed by the silk worm when it expresses
-and draws out its viscid liquid. The De Chardonnet artificial silk took
-a "Grand Prix" at the Paris Exposition in 1889, and the industry is
-growing to considerable proportions. Large works are in operation at
-Besançon, in France, producing 7,000 pounds per week, and it is said
-that the plant is to be increased to a capacity of 2,000 pounds a day.
-Similar works at Avon, near Coventry, England, have an equal capacity,
-and other factories are about to be established in Belgium and Germany.
-
-_Polished_ or _diamond cotton_ is a lustrous looking article of a soft
-silky nature, formed by plating the threads with a liquid emulsion of a
-waxy and starchy substance, and polishing the threads with rapidly
-revolving brushes.
-
-_Mercerized Cloth._--In late years a distinct novelty has appeared on
-the shelves of the dry goods stores. Beautiful, filmy fabrics, and
-lustrous embroidery thread, not of silk, but so close to it in
-appearance as to be scarcely distinguishable, have gained much
-popularity and attained a large sale. They are known as _mercerized_
-goods. About the middle of the century John Mercer, of England, found
-that when cotton goods were treated with chemicals (either alkalies or
-acids), a change was produced in the fibre which caused it to shrink and
-become thicker, and which imparted also an increased affinity for dyes.
-He took out British patent No. 13,296, of 1850, for his invention, but
-practically nothing further was done with the process. Recently the
-important step of Thomas and Prevost of mercerizing under tension gave
-some new and wonderful results. United States patents No. 600,826 and
-No. 600,827, of May 15, 1898, disclose this process. The cloth or
-thread, while being treated chemically, is at the same time subjected to
-a powerful tension that causes the fibres (softened and rendered
-glutinous by the chemicals) to be elongated or pulled out like fibres of
-molten glass, giving it the same striated texture and fine luster that
-silk has, and by substantially the same mechanical agency, for it is the
-elongation of the plastic glutinous thread from the silk worm that gives
-the thread its silky luster, by a process which has a familiar
-illustration in the molecular adjustment that imparts luster to spun
-glass or drawn taffy.
-
-Standing in the light of the Twentieth Century, and looking back through
-past ages, we find the art of spinning and weaving in an ever present
-and unbroken thread of evidence all along the path of history--through
-wars and famine, floods and conflagrations; through the progress and
-decay of nations, through all phases of change, and the vicissitudes of
-centuries, it has never been relegated to the domain of the lost arts,
-but has remained a persisting invention. It has been a paramount
-necessity to the human race, indissolubly locked up with its continuity
-and welfare, and will ever continue to supply its work in maintaining
-the greater fabric of human existence.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXII.
-
-ICE MACHINES.
-
- GENERAL PRINCIPLES--FREEZING MIXTURES--PERKINS' ICE MACHINE, 1834--
- PICTET'S APPARATUS--CARRÉ'S AMMONIA ABSORPTION PROCESS--DIRECT
- COMPRESSION AND CAN SYSTEM--THE HOLDEN ICE MACHINE--SKATING RINKS--
- WINDHAUSEN'S APPARATUS FOR COOLING AND VENTILATING SHIPS.
-
-
-Very few people have any correct conception of the principles of
-ice-making. Most persons have heard in a vague sort of way that
-chemicals are employed in its manufacture, and many a fastidious
-individual has been known to object to artificial ice on the ground that
-he could taste the chemicals, and that it could not therefore be
-wholesome. Such is the power of imagination, and such the misconception
-in the public mind. Nothing could be more erroneous, nor more amusing to
-the physicist, since no chemicals ever come in contact with either the
-water or the ice. An intelligent understanding of the operations of an
-ice machine involves only a correct appreciation of one of the physical
-laws governing the relation of heat to matter, and the forms which
-matter assumes under different degrees of heat. We see water passing
-from solid ice to liquid water and gaseous steam, by a mere rise in
-temperature, and conversely, by abstraction of heat, steam passes back
-to water, and then to ice.
-
-When one's hands get wet they get cold. A commonplace, but convenient
-proof of this is to wet the finger in the mouth and hold it in the air.
-A sensible reduction of temperature is instantly noticeable. A more
-pronounced illustration is to wet the hands in a basin of water, and
-then plunge them in the blast of hot, dry air coming from a furnace
-register. Instead of warming the hands, as many would suppose, this
-will, as long as the hands are wet, produce a distinct sensation of
-increased cold. It is due to rapid evaporation, which in changing the
-water from a liquid to a gaseous form, abstracts heat from the hands.
-
-Evaporation may be effected in two ways. The common one is by applying
-extraneous heat, as under a tea kettle, in which case the evaporated
-vapor is hot by virtue of the heat absorbed from the fire. The other way
-is to reduce pressure or produce a partial vacuum over the liquid
-without any application of heat, in which case the vapor is made cold.
-As early as 1755 Dr. Cullen observed this, and discovered that the cold
-thus produced was sufficient to make ice. An incident of evaporation is
-the passing from the limited volume of a liquid to the greatly increased
-volume of a gas. Water, for instance, when it changes to a vapor,
-increases in volume about 1,700 times; that is, a cubic inch of water
-makes about a cubic foot of steam, and when evaporation takes place from
-a reduction of pressure, this involves a dissipation of heat throughout
-the increased volume, and the corresponding production of cold. When,
-however, matter changes from a liquid to a gas, or from a solid to a
-liquid, a peculiar phenomenon manifests itself, in that a great amount
-of heat is absorbed and, so far as the evidence of the senses goes,
-disappears in the mere change of state. It is called _latent heat_. In
-such case the heat becomes hidden from the senses by being converted
-into some other form of intermolecular force not appreciable as sensible
-heat, and producing no elevation of temperature. In illustration, if a
-pound of water at 212° F. be mixed with a pound of water at 34° (both
-being matter in the same state), there results two pounds of water at
-the mean temperature of 123°. If, however, a pound of water at 212° be
-mixed with a pound of _ice_ at 32° (matter in another state), there will
-not be two pounds of water at the mean temperature of 122°, as might be
-expected, but two pounds at 51° only, an amount of heat sufficient to
-raise two pounds of water 71° being absorbed in the mere change of ice
-to water without any sensible raise in temperature. This absorbed heat
-is called latent heat, and it plays an important part in artificial
-freezing. A familiar illustration of the absorption of heat in changing
-from a solid to a liquid is found in the admixture of salt and ice
-around an ice-cream freezer. These two solids, when brought together,
-liquefy rapidly with an absorption of heat that produces in a limited
-time a far greater degree of cold than that which could be obtained from
-the ice by mere conduction, since the reduction of temperature proceeds
-faster by liquefaction than can be compensated for by the absorption of
-heat from the air. Were this not true, ice cream could not be frozen by
-a mixture of salt and ice. Many such freezing mixtures are known, and a
-few have been made commercially available, but they cannot be
-economically employed in ice-making, and it is therefore only necessary
-to consider the development of the more common principle of evaporation
-and expansion, in which the change from a liquid to a gas occurs. The
-volatile liquid which was first employed was water, but as it did not
-vaporize as readily as some other liquids, more volatile substitutes
-were soon found, among which may be named ether, ammonia, liquid
-carbonic acid, liquid sulphurous acid, bisulphide of carbon and
-chymogene, which latter is a petroleum product lighter and more volatile
-than benzine or gasoline. As these liquids were expensive, it is obvious
-that their vaporization could not be allowed to take place in the open
-air, since the reagent would thus be quickly dissipated and lost, and
-hence means were devised to condense and save this valuable volatile
-liquid to be used over again. The vaporization of the volatile liquid to
-produce cold, and its re-condensation to liquid form to be used over
-again in an endless cycle of circulation, seems to have been first
-effected by Mr. Perkins, of England, whose British patent No. 6,662, of
-1834, affords a simple and clear illustration of the fundamental
-principles of most modern ice machines. His apparatus is shown in Fig.
-294. A tank _a_ is filled with water to be frozen or cooled. A
-refrigerating chamber _b_, submerged in the water, is charged internally
-with some volatile liquid, such as ether. When the piston of suction
-pump _c_ rises a partial vacuum is formed beneath it, and the volatile
-liquid in _b_ being relieved of pressure, evaporates and expands into
-greater volume, the vapor passing out through pipe _f_ and upwardly
-opening valve _e_. This vapor is rendered intensely cold by expansion,
-and this cold is imparted to the water in tank _a_ to freeze it. A more
-scientific statement, however, is that the cold vapor absorbs the heat
-units of the water, and taking them away with it, lowers the temperature
-of the water to the freezing point. When the piston of pump _c_
-descends, valve _e_ closes, and the vapor, laden with the heat units
-absorbed from the water, is forced through the downwardly opening valve
-_e´_, and through pipe _g_ to a cooling coil _d_, around which a body of
-cold water is continually flowed. This water, in turn, takes the heat
-units from the vapor, and passes off with them in a constant flow, while
-the vapor of ether is condensed into a liquid again by the cold water,
-and passing through a weighted valve _h_, goes into the evaporating or
-refrigerating chamber to be again vaporized in an endless circuit of
-flow. It will be seen that the heat units from the water in tank _a_ are
-first handed over to the cold ether vapors passing out from chamber _b_,
-and by this vapor are then transferred to the flowing body of water
-surrounding the coil _d_. The result is that the heat units carried off
-by the water flowing around coil _d_ are the same heat units abstracted
-from the water in tank _a_, which water is thus reduced to congealation.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 294.--PERKINS' ICE MACHINE, 1834.]
-
-Among later ice machines of this type the Pictet machine was a
-conspicuous example. This employed anhydrous sulphurous acid as the
-volatile agent, and is described in United States patent No. 187,413,
-February 13, 1877; French patent No. 109,003, of 1875.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 295.--THE PICTET ICE MACHINE.]
-
-In Fig. 295 is represented a vertical longitudinal and also a vertical
-transverse section of a Pictet ice machine. A is a double acting suction
-and compression pump, D and E are two cylinders which are similarly
-constructed in the respect that they are both provided with flue pipes
-and heads for a double circulation of fluids, one fluid passing through
-the pipes while the other passes through the spaces between the pipes,
-much like the condenser of a steam engine. The cylinder D is the
-refrigerator where the volatile liquid is evaporated to produce cold,
-and the cylinder E is the condenser where the gasified vapor is cooled
-and condensed again to liquid form to be returned to the refrigerator.
-The action is as follows: The pump A by pipe B draws from the chamber in
-the refrigerator D containing the volatile liquid, causing it to
-evaporate and produce an intense degree of cold which is imparted to the
-liquid surrounding it and filling the tank. This liquid is either brine,
-or a mixture of glycerine and water, or a solution of chloride of
-magnesium, or other liquid which does not freeze at a temperature
-considerably below the freezing point of water. Now, this
-non-congealable liquid being below the freezing point, it will be seen
-that if cans H be filled with pure water, and are immersed in this
-intensely cold non-congealable liquid, the water in the cans will
-freeze. This is exactly what takes place, and this is how the ice is
-formed. As the volatile liquid is drawn out of the refrigerator D
-through pipe B by the pump A it is forced by the pump through pipe C and
-into the chamber of the condenser E. A current of cold water is kept
-flowing around the pipes in E, coming in through a pipe at one end and
-passing out through a pipe at the other end. The compressed and
-relatively hot gases are by the contact of this cold water along the
-sides of the pipes cooled and condensed into a liquid again, which
-passes up the small curved pipe F and is returned to the refrigerator D,
-to be again evaporated by the suction of the pump to continue the
-production of cold. In large plants the non-congealable liquid and cans
-of water to be frozen are (in order to get larger capacity) carried to a
-large floor tank in a removed situation.
-
-One of the earliest methods of producing ice in a limited quantity was
-by evaporating water by a reduction of pressure and causing the vapor to
-be absorbed by sulphuric acid, which has a great affinity for the water
-vapor. Mr. Nairne, in 1777, was the first to discover the affinity that
-sulphuric acid had for water vapor, and in 1810 Leslie froze water by
-this means. In 1824 Vallance obtained British patents No. 4,884 and
-5,001, operating on this principle, in which leaden balls were coated
-with sulphuric acid to increase the absorbing surfaces, and which
-apparatus was effective in freezing considerable quantities of ice.
-
-The _carafes frappees_ of the Parisian restaurant were decanters in
-which water was frozen by being immersed in tanks of sea water whose
-temperature was reduced below freezing by the vaporization of ether in a
-reservoir immersed in the sea water. Edmond Carré's method of preparing
-_carafes frappees_ involved the use of the sulphuric acid principle of
-absorption, and to that end the aqueous vapor was directly exhausted
-from the decanter by a pump, and the said vapor was absorbed by a large
-volume of sulphuric acid so rapidly as to freeze the water remaining in
-the decanter.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 296.--COMPRESSION PUMPS OF ICE PLANT.]
-
-Probably the earliest practical ice machine to be organized on a
-commercial basis was the _ammonia absorption machine_ of Ferdinand
-Carré, which was a continuously working machine. It is disclosed in
-French patents Nos. 81 and 404, of 1860, and No. 75,702, of 1867; United
-States patent No. 30,201, October 2, 1860. In this case advantage is
-taken first of the very volatile character of anhydrous ammonia, in the
-expansion part of the process, and, secondly, of the great affinity
-which water has for absorbing such gas. Strange as it may appear, the
-production of ice in the Carré process begins with the application of
-heat. It must be understood, however, that this forms no part of the
-refrigerating process proper, but only a means of driving off or
-distilling the anhydrous ammonia gas (the refrigerant) from its aqueous
-solution. Ammonia dissolved in water, known as aqua ammonia, is placed
-in a boiler or still above a furnace. The pure ammonia gas is thus
-driven off from the water by heat under pressure, similar to that in a
-steam boiler, and passes direct to a condenser, where, by cold water
-flowing through pipes, the pure gas is liquefied under pressure. The
-liquefied gas is then admitted to the evaporating or refrigerating
-chamber, where it expands to produce the cold, and is afterward
-re-absorbed by the water from which it was originally driven off in the
-still, to be used over again. Machines of this type are known as
-absorption machines, for the reason that the volatile gas is after
-expansion re-absorbed by the liquid in which it was dissolved, and is
-continuously driven off therefrom by the heat of a still. Absorption
-machines were the outgrowth of Faraday's observations in 1823. A bent
-glass tube was prepared containing at one end a quantity of chloride of
-silver, saturated with ammonia and hermetically sealed. When the mixture
-was heated, the ammonia was driven over to the other end of the tube,
-immersed in a cold bath, and the ammonia gas became liquefied. It was
-found by him then that if the end containing the chloride was plunged in
-a cold bath and the end containing liquid ammonia was immersed in water,
-the heat of the water made the ammonia rapidly evaporate, the chloride
-at the other end of the tube absorbed the ammonia vapors, and the water
-around the end of the tube containing the liquefied ammonia was
-converted into ice, by the loss of its heat imparted to the ammonia to
-volatilize it. It only needed the substitution of water for the chloride
-of silver, as an absorbing agent for the ammonia, and mechanical means
-for economically working the process in a continuous way to produce the
-Carré absorption machine. The most common form of ice machine to-day is,
-however, what is known as the _compression_ or _direct_ system, in which
-the absorption principle is dispensed with, the ammonia being compressed
-by powerful steam pumps, then cooled to liquid form by condensers, and
-then allowed to expand from its own pressure through pipes immersed in
-brine in a large floor tank, in which cans containing pure water are
-immersed, and the water frozen. Fig. 296[5] shows the compression pumps,
-and Fig. 297 the floor tanks, of such a system. Many hundred cans
-filled with pure water are lowered into the cold brine of the tank, and
-their upper ends form a complete floor, as seen in Fig. 297. When the
-water in the cans is frozen, the cans are raised out of the floor by a
-traveling crane and carried to one of the four doors seen at the far end
-of the room. The ice in the can is then loosened by warm water, and the
-block dumped through the door into a chute, whence it passes into the
-storage room below, seen in Fig. 298. In the can system the water is
-frozen from all four sides to the center, and imprisons in the center
-any air bubbles or impurities that may exist in the water. The plate
-system freezes the water on the exterior walls of hollow plates, which
-contain within them the freezing medium. In freezing the water
-externally on these plates all impurities and air bubbles are repelled
-and excluded, and the ice rendered clear and transparent.
-
- [5] By courtesy of "Ice and Refrigeration."
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 297.--FLOOR TANK OF CAN SYSTEM.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 298.--STORAGE ROOM OF ICE PLANT.]
-
-An ice plant, employing what is known as the "can" system and capable of
-producing 100 tons of ice in twenty-four hours, requires a building
-about 100 feet wide and 150 feet long, on account of the great floor
-space needed to accommodate the freezing tank, and the great number of
-cans which are immersed in the same. A radical departure from this style
-of plant is presented in the Holden ice machine. This does not require a
-multitude of cans and a great floor space, but a lot 25 by 50 feet is
-sufficient, for the ice is turned out in a continuous process like
-bricks from a brick machine. The machine works on the ammonia absorption
-principle, but the freezing is done on the outer periphery of a
-revolving cylinder, from which the film of ice is scraped off
-automatically and the ice slush carried away by a spiral conveyor to one
-of two press molds, in which a heavy pressure solidifies the ice into
-blocks, which are successively shot down from the presses on a chute to
-the storage room, as seen in Fig. 299.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 299.--HOLDEN ICE MACHINE.]
-
-The foregoing examples of ice machines give no idea of the great
-activity in this field of refrigeration in the Nineteenth Century. Over
-600 United States patents have been granted for ice machines alone, to
-say nothing of refrigerating buildings, refrigerator cars, domestic
-refrigerators, and ice cream freezers, etc. Among the earlier workers in
-ice machines, in addition to those already named, may be mentioned the
-names of Gorrie, patent No. 8,080, May 6, 1851, followed by Twining,
-1853-1862; Mignon and Rouart, in 1865; Lowe, in 1867; Somes, in
-1867-1868; Windhausen, in 1870; Rankin, in 1876-1877, and many others.
-
-An application of the ice machine which attracted much attention and
-attained great popularity for a while was that made in the production of
-artificial _skating rinks_, in which a floor of ice was frozen by means
-of a system of submerged pipes, through which the cold liquid from the
-ice machine was made to circulate. The earliest artificial skating rink
-is to be found in the British patent to Newton, No. 236, of 1870, but
-it was Gamgee, in 1875 and 1876, who devised practical means for
-carrying it out and brought it into public use. His inventions are
-described in his British patents No. 4,412, of 1875, and No. 4,176, of
-1876, and United States patent. No. 196,653, October 30, 1877, and
-others in 1878.
-
-The Windhausen machine was one of the earliest applications for
-_cooling_ and _ventilating_ ships. This machine operated upon the
-principle of alternately compressing and expanding air, and is described
-in United States patents No. 101,198, March 22, 1870 (re-issue No.
-4,603, October 17, 1871), and No. 111,292, January 24, 1871. To-day
-every ocean liner is equipped with its own cold storage and ice-making
-plant, refrigerator cars transport vast cargoes of meats, fish, etc.,
-across the continent, and bring the ripe fruits of California to the
-Eastern coast; every market house has its cold storage compartments, and
-to the brewery the refrigerating plant is one of its fundamental and
-important requisites.
-
-The great value of refrigerating appliances is to be found in the
-retardation of chemical decomposition or arrest of decay, and as this
-has relation chiefly to preserving the food stuffs of the world, its
-value can be easily understood. This branch of industry has grown up
-entirely in the Nineteenth Century, and the activity in this field is
-attested by the 4,000 United States patents in this class.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIII.
-
-LIQUID AIR.
-
- LIQUEFACTION OF GASES BY NORTHMORE, 1805; FARADAY, 1823; BUSSY,
- 1824; THILORIER, 1834, AND OTHERS--LIQUEFACTION OF OXYGEN, NITROGEN
- AND AIR BY PICTET AND CAILLETET IN 1877--SELF-INTENSIFICATION OF
- COLD BY SIEMENS IN 1857, AND WINDHAUSEN IN 1870--OPERATIONS OF
- DEWAR, WROBLEWSKI, AND OLSZEWSKI--SELF-INTENSIFYING PROCESSES OF
- SOLVAY, TRIPLER, LINDÉ, HAMPSON, AND OSTERGREN AND BERGER--LIQUID
- AIR EXPERIMENTS AND USES.
-
-
-Until quite recently the physicist divided gaseous matter into
-condensable vapors and permanent vapors. To-day it is known that there
-are no permanent gases, since all the so-called permanent gases, even to
-the most tenuous, such as hydrogen, may be made to assume the liquid and
-even the solid form. The average individual knows very little about
-hydrogen, but he is very well acquainted with air, and when he was told
-that the air that he breathes--the gentle zephyr that blows--the wind
-that storms from the north, or twists itself into the rage of a cyclone
-in Kansas--may be bound down in liquid form, and imprisoned within the
-limits of an open tumbler, or be bottled up in a flask or even frozen
-solid, he was at first impressed with the suspicion of a fairy story.
-Seeing is believing, however, to him, and the striking experiments from
-the lecture platform, the approval of the scientists, and the
-sensational accounts of it in the press, have not only been convincing,
-but have completely turned his head and made him a too willing victim of
-the speculator. Liquid air is a real achievement, however, and while it
-is astonishing to the layman, the physicist looks upon it in the most
-matter-of-fact way, for it is only a fulfilment of the simplest of
-nature's laws, and entirely consonant with what he has been led to
-expect for many years.
-
-The liquefaction of gases has engaged the attention of the scientist
-almost from the beginning of the century. In 1805-6 Northmore liquefied
-chlorine gas. This was done again in 1823 by Faraday. In 1824 Bussy
-condensed sulphurous acid vapors to liquid form. In 1834 Thilorier made
-extensive experiments and demonstrations in the liquefaction of carbonic
-acid gas. In 1843 Aime experimented with the liquefaction of gases by
-sinking them in suitable vessels to great depths in the ocean. Natterer,
-in 1844, greatly advanced the study of this subject by both novel
-methods and apparatus. Liquefaction of air was attempted as early as
-1823 by Perkins, and again in 1828 by Colladon, but it was not
-accomplished until 1877. In this year the liquefaction of oxygen, by
-Pictet, of Geneva, and Cailletet, of Chatillon-sur-Seine, was
-independently accomplished. Pictet used a pressure of 320 atmospheres
-and a temperature of -140°, obtained by the evaporation of liquid
-sulphurous acid and liquid carbonic acid. Cailletet used a pressure of
-300 atmospheres and a temperature of -29°, which latter was obtained by
-the evaporation of liquid sulphurous acid. In 1883 Dewar, Wroblewski and
-Olszewski commenced operations in this field, and greatly advanced the
-study of this subject. In January of 1884, Wroblewski confirmed the
-liquefaction of hydrogen, which had been imperfectly accomplished by
-Cailletet before. In the liquefaction of oxygen and nitrogen, the
-principal component gases of air, the liquefaction of air itself
-followed immediately as a matter of course.
-
-Air has usually been held to consist of four volumes of nitrogen and one
-volume of oxygen, with a very small proportion of carbonic acid gas and
-ammonia. Recent discoveries have definitely identified new gases in it,
-however, chief among which is argon. For all practical purposes,
-however, air may be considered simply a mixture of the two gases;
-nitrogen, which is inert and neither maintains life nor combustion; and
-oxygen, which performs both of these functions in a most energetic way.
-Air is more dense at the surface of the earth, and becomes continually
-more rarified as the altitude increases, until it becomes an
-indefinitely tenuous ether. Light as we are accustomed to regard it, the
-weight of a column of air one inch square is 15 pounds, and this tenuous
-and unfelt covering presses upon our globe with a total weight of
-300,000 million tons.
-
-Liquid air is simply air which has been compressed and cooled to what is
-called its critical temperature and pressure, _i. e._, the temperature
-and pressure at which it passes into another state of matter, as from a
-gas to a liquid. To liquefy air it is compressed until its volume is
-reduced to 1/800, that is to say, 800 cubic feet of air are reduced to
-one cubic foot. This requires a pressure of 1,250 to 2,000 pounds to the
-square inch.
-
-The important step in liquefying air cheaply and on a large scale was
-accomplished by the discovery of what is known as the
-_self-intensifying_ action. This dispenses with auxiliary refrigerants,
-and causes the expanding gases to supply the cold required for their own
-liquefaction by an entirely mechanical process. It consists in
-compressing the air (which produces heat), then cooling it by a flowing
-body of water, then passing it through a long coil of pipes and
-expanding the cool compressed air by allowing it to escape through a
-valve into an expansion chamber, where its pressure falls from 1,250
-pounds to 300 pounds, which produces a great degree of cold; then taking
-this very cold current of air back in reverse direction along the walls
-of the coil of pipes, and causing said returning cold air to further
-cool the air flowing from the compressor to the expansion tank, and
-finally delivering the cold return flow to the compressors and
-compressing it again from a lower initial point than it started with on
-the first round, and so continuing this cycle of circulation through the
-alternating compressing and cooling stages until the air condenses in
-liquid form in the bottom of the expansion chamber. This successive
-reduction of temperature by the air acting upon itself is called
-_self-intensification_ of cold, and it has an analogy in the
-regenerative furnace, where the augmentation of heat corresponds to the
-augmentation of cold in the self-intensifying action.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 300.--THE SELF-INTENSIFYING PRINCIPLE OF PRODUCING
-COLD, USED TO LIQUEFY AIR.]
-
-This principle of self-intensification was first announced by Prof. C.
-W. Siemens in the provisional specification of his British patent No.
-2,064, of 1857, but it does not seem at that time to have been carried
-out with any practical result. The first embodiment of the principle in
-a refrigerating apparatus is by Windhausen--United States patent No.
-101,198, March 22, 1870. Solvay, in British patent No. 13,466, of 1885,
-gave further development to the idea, and following him came the
-operations of Prof. Tripler, who was the first to liquefy large
-quantities of air and to introduce it to the American people. Lindé,
-Hampson and Ostergren and Berger are more recent operators in this field
-of self-intensification, and Lindé's British patent, No. 12,528, of
-1895, may be regarded as a representative exposition of the principle. A
-simplified form of the Lindé apparatus is seen in Fig. 300. C is an air
-compressing pump, whose plunger descending compresses the air and forces
-it out through valve I, pipe 2, and coil 3. The coil 3 is immersed in a
-flowing body of water in the condenser W, the water entering at Y and
-passing out at Z. The cold compressed air then passes through pipes 4
-and 5, pipe 5 being arranged concentrically within a larger coil 7. The
-cold air flowing down pipe 5 escapes through a valve adjusted by handle
-6, into the subjacent chamber L, and expanding to a larger volume,
-produces a great degree of cold; this cold expanded air then passing up
-the larger and outer pipe 7 flows back over the incoming stream of air
-in pipe 5, chilling it still lower than the condenser W did, and this
-cold return flow then passing from the top of coil 7 descends through
-pipe 8 to the compressing pump C, and as its piston rises, it enters the
-pump through the inwardly opening valve 9, and here it undergoes another
-compression and circuit through the pipes 2, 3, 4, 5, but it is
-compressed on its second round of travel at a lower temperature than it
-had initially, and so this circulation of air going to the chamber L,
-expanding, and returning over the inlet flow pipe 5, successively
-cooling the latter and also successively entering the compressor at a
-continually lower temperature at each cycle of circulation, finally
-issues through the valve at the lower end of pipe 5, and expands to such
-a low temperature that it condenses in chamber L in liquid form. Fresh
-accessions of air are furnished to the apparatus through valve 10 as
-fast as the air is liquefied. The inlet flow to the liquefying chamber
-is shown by the full line arrows, and the return flow to the compressor
-by the dotted arrows, and the explanation of the term
-_self-intensification_ is to be found in the cooling of the incoming air
-in pipe 5 by the outflowing air in the surrounding pipe 7, and the
-repeated reductions of temperature at which the air is returned to the
-compressor.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 301.--COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION OF LIQUID AIR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 302.--VESSEL FOR TRANSPORTING LIQUID AIR.]
-
-In Fig. 301 is shown the liquefier of a modern liquid air plant, in
-which liquid air is being drawn into a pail from the liquefier. Liquid
-air evaporates very rapidly, and produces the intense cold of 312° below
-zero. There is no known way to preserve it beyond a limited time, for,
-if put in strong, tightly closed vessels, it would soon absorb enough
-heat to vaporize, and in time would acquire a tension of 12,000 pounds
-per square inch, and would burst the vessel with a disastrous explosion.
-If left exposed to the air, which is the only safe way to transport it,
-it is quickly dissipated. A shipment of eight gallons from New York to
-Washington for lecture purposes shrunk to three gallons in two days'
-time. It may usually be kept longer than this, however, as the jarring
-of a railway train promotes its evaporation and loss. A small quantity,
-such as a half pint, will boil away in twenty-five to thirty minutes.
-The only way to preserve it for any length of time is to surround it
-with a heat-excluding jacket. The simplest and most effective means for
-doing this in the laboratory is to surround it with a vacuum. Fig. 302
-shows a specially devised vessel for the commercial transportation of
-liquid air. A double walled globular vessel has between its walls air
-spaces and non-conducting packing. The liquid air in the interior
-chamber vaporizes gradually, and escaping through the outwardly opening
-valve at the top, expands around the air space surrounding the inner
-vessel. From this space it reaches the outer air by a valve at the
-bottom of the outer vessel. The liquid air in evaporating is thus
-carried around the body of liquid air in the center, and surrounding it
-with an intensely cold envelope, prevents the transmission of heat to
-the inner vessel. To withdraw the liquid air, a pipette or so-called
-siphon tube, shown in detached view, is substituted for the valve at the
-top.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 303.--SEPARATION OF LIQUID AIR INTO ITS
-CONSTITUENTS.
-
-Evaporation of Nitrogen.
-
-Evaporation of Nitrous Oxide.
-
-Evaporation of Pure Oxygen.]
-
-As to the uses of liquid air it may be said that up to the present time
-it has attained little or no practical application. There are two
-principal ways in which it may be utilized; one is to employ its
-enormous expansive force to produce mechanical power, and the other is
-as a refrigerant. As a means for obtaining motive power it is a fallacy
-to suppose that any more power can be obtained from its expansion than
-was originally required to make it. It is like a resilient spring in
-this respect, that it can give out no more power than was required to
-compress it. In some special applications, however, as for propelling
-torpedoes, where its cost is entirely subordinate to effective results,
-it might prove to be of value. For blasting purposes also it presents
-the promise of possible utilization. As a refrigerant for commercial
-purposes, and for supplying a dry, cool temperature to the sick room,
-and for the preparation of chemicals requiring a low temperature to
-manufacture, it might find useful application. Inasmuch as the nitrogen
-of liquid air evaporates first, and leaves nearly pure liquid oxygen, it
-may also be employed as a means for producing and applying oxygen. Good
-illustration of this is given in Fig. 303, in which at 1 is shown a
-vessel filled with liquid air. The gas first evaporating is nitrogen,
-and a lighted match applied to the surface of the liquid is quickly
-extinguished, since nitrogen does not support combustion. As the level
-of the liquid falls by evaporation, the remaining portions become richer
-in oxygen and poorer in nitrogen, and nitrous oxide gas is then given
-off, which supports combustion as seen at 2; and when the last portions
-of the liquid are being evaporated, as at 3, it is practically pure
-oxygen, which gives a brilliant combustion of a carbon pencil, or even
-of a steel spring when the latter is heated red hot. Already Prof.
-Pictet has formulated a plan for the commercial production and
-separation of the ingredients of liquid air--the nitrogen, carbonic
-acid, and oxygen being separated by their different evaporating
-temperatures with a view to applying them to various industrial uses.
-All of the commercial applications of liquid air, however, depend upon
-its cost of production, which seems at present an uncertain factor.
-According to the claims of some it may be produced at a cost of a few
-cents a gallon. More conservative physicists say that it costs $5 a
-gallon.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 304.--LIQUID AIR EXPERIMENTS.
-
-1. Magnetism of oxygen. 2. Steel burning in liquid oxygen. 3. Frozen
-sheet iron. 4. Explosion of confined liquid air. 5. Burning paper. 6.
-Explosion of sponge. 7. Freezing rubber ball. 8. Double walled vacuum
-bulb. 9. Boiling liquid air.]
-
-However this may be, the phenomena which it presents are both
-interesting and instructive. In Figs. 304 and 305 are shown some of the
-experiments. At No. 1 a test tube containing liquid air, from which the
-nitrogen has escaped, is strongly attracted by an electro-magnet,
-showing the magnetic quality of oxygen. At No. 2 is shown the combustion
-of a heated piece of steel in liquid air, which has become rich in
-oxygen by the evaporation of the nitrogen. At No. 3 a tin dipper, which
-has been immersed in liquid air, has become so cold and crystalline that
-it breaks like glass when dropped. At No. 4 liquid air imprisoned in a
-tube and tightly corked up, blows the stopper out in a few minutes with
-explosive effect. At No. 5 a piece of paper saturated with liquid air
-burns with great energy, and at No. 6 a piece of sponge or raw cotton
-similarly saturated explodes when ignited. At No. 7 a rubber ball
-floated on liquid air in a tumbler is frozen so hard that when dropped
-it flies into fragments like a glass ball. The white, snow-like vapor
-seen falling over the edges of the tumbler is intensely cold and heavier
-than ordinary air. At No. 8 is illustrated the preservation of liquid
-air by surrounding it with a vacuum in a Dewar bulb. At No. 9 a flask of
-liquid air is made to boil by the mere heat of the hand. A more striking
-experiment still of the same kind is to place a tea kettle containing
-liquid air on a block of ice. The block of ice is relatively so much
-hotter than the liquid air that the liquid air in the kettle is made to
-boil. At No. 10, Fig. 305, a heavy weight is suspended by a link
-composed of a bar of mercury frozen solid in liquid air. So hard is the
-mercury frozen that a hammer made of it will drive a tenpenny nail up to
-its head in a pine board. In No. 11 a layer of liquid air on water at
-first floats because it is lighter than water. As the lighter nitrogen
-evaporates, the heavier oxygen sinks in drops through the water. At No.
-12 a tumbler of whiskey is frozen solid by immersing a tube containing
-liquid air in it. The frozen block of whiskey with the cavity formed by
-the tube is shown on the left. It is a whiskey tumbler made out of
-whiskey. A more sensational experiment is to substitute a tapering tin
-cup for the tube, then fill it with liquid air and immerse it in water.
-In a few minutes the tapering tin cup has frozen on its outer walls a
-tumbler of ice. This may be carefully removed, and the ice tumbler is
-then filled with liquid air rich in oxygen, which, by maintaining the
-cold of the ice tumbler, keeps it from melting. A carbon pencil or a
-steel spring heated to redness will now, if dipped in the liquid oxygen
-in the ice tumbler, burn with vehement brilliancy and beautiful
-scintillations, involving the anomalous conditions of a white hot heat
-and active combustion in the center of a tumbler of ice, without melting
-the tumbler. In experiment 13, Fig. 305, a jet of carbonic acid gas
-directed into a dish floating in a glass of liquid air is immediately
-frozen into minute flakes, producing a miniature snow storm of carbonic
-acid. In experiment 14 an electric light carbon heated to a red heat at
-its tip, is plunged vertically into a deep glass of liquid oxygen. A
-most singular combustion takes place. The heat of the carbon evaporates
-the oxygen in its immediate vicinity, and the carbon burns with great
-brilliancy and violence, forming carbonic acid, which is largely frozen
-in the liquid before it reaches the surface, and falls back to the
-bottom of the dish, so that the combustion is maintained and its
-products retained within the dish. A beefsteak may be frozen in liquid
-air to such brittleness that it is shattered like a china plate when
-struck a slight blow. The intense cold of liquid air does not destroy
-the vitality or germinating power of seed, but produces serious
-so-called burns on the flesh that destroy the tissues and do not heal
-for many months, and yet for a moment the finger may be dipped in liquid
-air with impunity because of the gaseous envelope with which the finger
-is temporarily surrounded.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 305.--LIQUID AIR EXPERIMENTS.
-
-10. Frozen mercury. 11. Liquid oxygen in water. 12. Frozen whisky. 13.
-Carbonic acid snow. 14. Combustion of carbon pencil.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIV.
-
-MINOR INVENTIONS
-
-AND
-
-PATENTS IN PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
-
-
-If the reader has been patient enough to have reviewed the preceding
-pages, the impression may have been formed that the notable inventions
-referred to represent all that is worth while to consider in this great
-field of human achievement. It would be a fallacy to entertain such a
-thought, for the little stars out-number the big ones, and the twigs of
-the tree are far more numerous than its branches. The great things in
-life are comparatively few and far between, and the bulk of human
-existence is made up of an unclassified mass of little things, sown like
-sands along the shore of time between the boulders of great events. So
-also in invention is its warp and woof made up of a multitude of little
-threads behind the gorgeous patterns of meteoric genius. Every hour of
-the day of modern life is replete with the achievements of invention.
-Look around the room, and there is not a thing in sight that does not
-suggest the material advance of the age; the books, the furniture, the
-carpets, the curtains, the wall paper, the clock, the mantels, the house
-trimmings, the culinary utensils, and the clothing, all represent
-creations of this century. So full is the daily life of these things,
-and so much of a necessity have they all become, that their commonplace
-character dismisses them from conspicuous notice. Take the most
-matter-of-fact and prosy half hour of the day, that at the time of
-rising, and see what a faithful account of the average man's everyday
-life would present. The awakening is definitely determined by an alarm
-clock, and the sleepy Nineteenth Century man rolling over under the
-seductive comfort of a spring bed, takes another nap, because he knows
-that the rapid transit cars will give him time to spare. Rising a little
-later his bare feet find a comfortable footing on a machine-made rug,
-until thrust into full fashioned hose, and ensconced in a pair of
-machine-sewed slippers. Drawing the loom-made lace curtains, he starts
-up the window shade on the automatic Hartshorn roller and is enabled to
-see how to put in his collar button and adjust his shirt studs. He
-awakens the servant below with an electric bell, calls down the
-speaking tube to order breakfast, and perhaps lights the gas for her by
-the push button. He then proceeds to the bath, where hot and cold water,
-the sanitary closet, a gas heater, and a great array of useful modern
-articles present themselves, such as vaseline, witch hazel, dentifrices,
-cold cream, soaps and antiseptics, which supply every luxurious want and
-every modern conception of sanitation. His bath concluded, he proceeds
-to dress, and maybe puts in his false teeth, or straps on an artificial
-leg. Donning his shirt with patented gussets and bands, he quickly
-adjusts his separable cuff buttons, puts on his patented suspenders,
-and, winding a stem-winding watch, proceeds down stairs to breakfast. A
-revolving fly brush and fly screens contribute to his comfort. A cup of
-coffee from a drip coffee-pot, a lump of artificial ice in his tumbler,
-sausage ground in a machine, batter cakes made with an egg beater,
-waffles from a patented waffle iron, honey in artificial honey comb,
-cream raised by a centrifugal skimmer, butter made in a patented churn,
-hot biscuits from the cooking range, and a refrigerator with a well
-stocked larder, all help to make him comfortable and happy. The picture
-is not exceptional in its fullness of invented agencies, and one could
-just as well go on with our citizen through the rest of the day's
-experience, and start him off after breakfast with a patented match, in
-a patented match case, and a patented cigarette, with his patented
-overshoes and umbrella, and send him along over the patented pavement to
-the patented street car, or automobile, and so on to the end of the day.
-
-Some of the minor inventions are really of too much importance to be
-passed without comment. The _cable car_ is a factor which has cut no
-small figure in the activities of city life. The first patent on a
-slotted underground conduit between the rails, with traction cable
-inside and running on pulleys, was that to E. A. Gardner, No. 19,736,
-March 23, 1858. Hallidie, in San Francisco, in 1876, directed his
-energies to a development of this system, and brought it to a degree of
-perfection and general adoption that made it for many years the leading
-system of street car propulsion. To-day, however, it represents but a
-decadent type, being largely supplanted by the superior advantages of
-electricity.
-
-_Passenger elevators_ constitute one of the conspicuous features of
-modern locomotion. Without them the tall office buildings, hotels, and
-department stores would have no existence; the Eiffel Tower would never
-have been dreamed of, and the expenditure of vital force in stair
-climbing would have been greatly augmented. The passenger elevator has
-for its prototype the ancient hoist or lift for mines, but in the latter
-half of the Nineteenth Century it has developed into a distinct
-institution--a luxurious little room, gliding noiselessly up and down,
-actuated by a power that is not seen, and supplied with every appliance
-for safety and comfort, such as governors, safety catches, automatic
-stops, mirrors and cushioned seats. The principle of the screw, of
-balance weights, of the lazy tongs, and other mechanical powers have
-each found application in the elevator, but steam, hydraulic power, and
-electricity constitute the moving agencies of the modern type. The
-patent to E. G. Otis, No. 31,128, January 15, 1861, marks the beginning
-of its useful applications.
-
-Of close kin to the elevator are the _fire escape_, _dumb waiter_ and
-_grain elevator_, each of which fills a more or less important function
-in the life of to-day.
-
-What more ubiquitous or ingenious illustration of modern progress than
-the _American stem winding watch!_ Up to the middle of the century all
-watches were made by hand throughout. Each watch had its own
-individuality as a separate creation, and only the privileged few were
-able to carry them. In 1848 Aaron L. Dennison, a Boston watch maker,
-began making watches by machinery, and the foundation of the system of
-interchangeable parts was laid. A small factory at Roxbury, Mass., was
-established in 1850, which four years later was moved to Waltham. In
-1857 it passed into the hands of Appleton, Tracy & Co., and was
-subsequently acquired by the American Watch Co. As presenting some idea
-of the great elaboration involved in this art, it was estimated a few
-years ago that 3,746 distinct mechanical operations were required to
-make an ordinary machine made watch. A single pound of steel wire is
-sometimes converted into a couple of hundred thousand tiny screws, and
-another pound of fine steel wire furnishes 17,280 hair springs, worth
-several thousand dollars. The absolute uniformity and perfect
-interchangeability of parts in the American watch have been obtained by
-substituting the invariable and mathematical accuracy of the machine for
-the nervous fingers and dimming eyes of the old time watchmaker, and the
-American machine made watch, discredited as it was at first, stands
-to-day the greatest modern advance in horology.
-
-_Friction Matches._--In 1805 Thenard, of Paris, made the first attempt
-to utilize chemical agencies for the ordinary production of fire. In
-1827 John Walker, an English druggist, made friction matches called
-"congreves." In 1833 phosphorus friction matches were introduced on a
-commercial scale by Preschel, of Vienna. In 1845 red phosphorus matches
-(parlor matches) were made by Von Schrotter, of Vienna, and in 1855
-safety matches, which ignited only on certain substances, were made by
-Lundström, of Sweden. Prior to the Nineteenth Century, and in fact
-until about 1833, the old flint and steel and tinder box were the
-clumsy and uncertain means for producing fire. To-day the friction match
-is turned out by automatic machinery by the million, and constitutes
-probably the most ubiquitous and useful of all the minor inventions.
-
-Step into any of the great department stores and the genius of the
-inventor confronts you in the _cash carrier_ whisking its little cars
-back and forth from the cashier's desk to the most remote corners of the
-great building. The first of these mechanical carriers adapted for store
-service was patented by D. Brown, July 13, 1875, No. 165,473. Not until
-about 1882, however, was there any noticeable adoption of the system,
-when practical development was given in Martin's patents, No. 255,525,
-March 28, 1882; No. 276,441, April 24, 1883, and No. 284,456, September
-4, 1883. Go to the lunch counter, and the _cash register_ reminds you
-that the millenium of absolute honesty is not yet realized. The _bell
-punch_ on the street car and the burglar proof safe with its
-_combination locks_ are other suggestions in the same line. The first
-_fire proof safe_ is disclosed in the British patent to Richard Scott,
-No. 2,477, of 1801. The _time lock_, which prevents the safe from being
-opened by anyone except at a certain period of daylight, was invented by
-J. V. Savage, and was covered by him in United States patent No. 5,321,
-October 9, 1847. The practical adoption of time locks began about 1875
-with the operations of Sargent, Stockwell and others, and to-day they
-constitute one of the most important features of bank safes and vaults,
-and represent a marvelously beautiful and accurate example of mechanical
-skill.
-
-The Otto _gas-engine_, and the Ericsson _air-engine_ are important
-developments in power producing motors, and the improvements in
-_pavements_ and in _street sweepers_ for cleaning them, contribute to
-the cleanliness, sanitation, and æsthetic values of city life. The
-_cigarette machine_, which continuously curls a ribbon of paper around a
-core of tobacco to form a rope, and then cuts it off into cigarettes, is
-an important invention in the tobacco industry, however doubtful its
-hygienic value to the world may be. The _lightning rod_ has brought
-protection to homes and lives, and the _incubator_ has become the hen's
-wet nurse. In agriculture, the reaper has been supplemented with
-threshing machines, seeders, drills, cultivators, horse rakes and plows.
-In the farm yard appear the improved carriage and wagon, the well pump,
-the wind wheel, the fruit drier, the bee hive, and the cotton and cider
-press. In the kitchen, the washing machine, the churn, the cheese press,
-ironing machine, wringer, the rat trap, and fruit jar. In the house, the
-folding bed, tilting chair, carpet sweeper, and the piano. In heating
-appliances, steam and water heating systems, base burning and Latrobe
-stoves, hot air furnaces, gas and oil stoves. In plastics there are
-brick machines, pressed glass ware, enameled sheet iron ware, tiles,
-paper buckets, celluloid and rubber articles. In hydraulics there are
-rams, water closets, pumps, and turbine water wheels. In mining there
-are stamp mills, ore crushers, separators, concentrators, and
-amalgamators. In the leather and boot and shoe industry there is a great
-variety of machines and appliances. The paper industry, with book
-binding machines, and paper box machines, is a fertile field of
-invention. Steam boilers, metallurgical appliances, soap making,
-chemical fire extinguishers, fountain pens, the sand blast, bottle
-stoppers, and a thousand other things present themselves in
-miscellaneous and endless array. These are, however, only some of the
-things which the limitation of space precludes from individual
-treatment, but which are none the less important in making up the great
-resources of modern life, and, for the most part, represent the
-contributions of the Nineteenth Century not heretofore considered.
-
-The observant and thoughtful reader finds just here occasion to inquire
-the meaning of this great rising tide of progress which has so
-distinguished the Nineteenth Century. It is largely due to the Patent
-Law, which justly regards the inventor as a public benefactor, and seeks
-to make for him some protection in the enjoyment of his rights. If a man
-be in the possession of a legacy by the accident of birth, the law of
-inheritance rules that it is rightfully his. The finding of a thing,
-whether by jetsam, flotsam, or the lucky accident of a first discovery,
-this also makes good his title, if there be no other owner. There is,
-however, a right of property which is higher than all others, and in
-which there is coupled with the possession of the thing the sacred
-function of its creation. The right of a mother to her child is of this
-nature, and like unto it is the right of the inventor to the creation of
-his genius. In the last two centuries of the world's history this right
-has been recognized by an enlightened civilization, and provision made
-for its enjoyment in the grant of patents, and if there be any right
-more strongly entrenched than another in the eternal verities of equity
-and justice it is this. Our first crude patent law was enacted in 1790,
-but not until 1836 was the present system adopted. Our own and
-comparatively new country has, therefore, not yet had a hundred years of
-existence under our present Patent System, and yet to-day it outstrips
-the world both in its material resources and in its wealth of patented
-inventions. The accompanying diagram, Fig. 306, illustrates in a graphic
-way just what relation the United States bears to the other leading
-countries of the world in the matter of patents granted, and when it is
-remembered that under our system a patent can only be granted for a new
-invention, while in some of the other countries it is not essential to
-the grant, the richness in invention of the United States, with its six
-hundred and fifty thousand patents, can be better appreciated. This is a
-greater number than has been issued by Great Britain and France put
-together. Connecticut is the most productive State in invention in
-proportion to its people, and Edison is the most prolific inventor. From
-1870 to 1900 he has taken 727 United States patents, and there are from
-twenty-five to thirty other American inventors each of whom has taken
-100 or more patents.
-
-[Illustration: TOTAL NUMBER PATENTS TO JAN 1^{ST.} 1900
-
-(FOREIGN PATENTS FOR 1899, ESTIMATED)
-
-RATE OF ISSUE OF U.S. PATENTS
-
-FIG. 306.]
-
-The year 1790 was notable in two events, the birth of our patent system
-and the death of Benjamin Franklin. That grand old philosopher, with a
-prescience of future greatness to come from the genius of the inventor,
-is said to have expressed the wish before he died that he might be
-sealed up in a cask of old Madeira and be brought to life a hundred
-years in the future, that he might witness the growth of the world. Who
-can tell what his emotions would be if he were with us to-day? It is
-said, when he first saw the fibres of the string diverge, and the spark
-pass from the cord of his kite, and the lightning was for the first time
-obedient to the will of man, that he uttered a deep sigh and wished that
-that moment were his last. To this poor knowledge of electricity he
-would now have added all the wonders and powers of the telegraph, the
-dynamo, the telephone, and the great modern electrical science; to his
-primitive hand press he would have contrasted the Octuple perfecting
-press, turning out papers at the rate of 1,600 a minute; his modest
-type-setting case would be replaced by a great array of linotype
-machines, and he would find several acres of woodland sacrificed to
-produce the wood-pulp paper of a single edition of a New York daily.
-Would he not realize indeed that truth is stranger than fiction, and
-fact more wonderful than fancy's dream!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXV.
-
-EPILOGUE.
-
-
-Whatever the future centuries may bring in new and useful inventions,
-certain it is that the Nineteenth Century stands pre-eminent in this
-field of human achievement, so far excelling all other like periods as
-to establish on the pages of history an epoch as remarkable as it is
-unique. Never before has human conception so expressed itself in
-materialized embodiment, never has thought been so fruitfully wedded to
-the pregnant possibilities of matter, never has the divine function of
-creation been so closely approximated, never has such an accretion of
-helpful instrumentalities and material resources been added to the
-world's wealth--not merely the miserly and inert wealth of gold and
-gems, but the wealth of an enlarged human existence. This life itself is
-but a limited span; beginning in infancy, expanding to highest
-achievement in middle age, and declining at the end, it quickly passes
-away, and another generation follows. Growth and decay with all living
-things mark the immutable law of nature, and the inevitable fate of
-mortality. The rose blossoms into beauty, fades, and decays. The bird in
-the air, and the beast in the field, each plays his part and passes to
-the great unknown, leaving no record; man himself is mortal, but his
-work is immortal. The inspired conception of his best thought, the
-materialized embodiment of his work in useful agencies, and the
-subjugation of the laws of nature to his service, all endure and live
-forever in his inventions. These partake of the breath of life, and in
-their immortality are of kin to the soul. Cities may grow up and vanish,
-civilizations may decay, and man himself may degenerate, but the
-principle of the lever and the screw, once discovered, is for all time
-perfect, invariable and immortal. Every invention made is another
-permanent gift to posterity. All of enduring wealth that the present
-gets from the past are its ideas reduced to a working basis. All else is
-but dross, or evanescent dreams which vanish into oblivion in the light
-of a larger knowledge. But ideas wrought into practical, substantive
-things, tried and proven true, these are inventions--immortal
-creations--and of these the Nineteenth Century has borne fruit in
-paramount abundance, and this legacy it now bequeaths to the coming
-century.
-
-To follow conventional methods, the final chapter of a book should be an
-"In conclusion" with a "finis" and a dismantled torch, but the history
-of invention will ever be a continued story. There is no end in this
-field. The trusteeship of the Twentieth Century man is great, and great
-his responsibilities; but his restless and dominant spirit knows no
-decadence, and his mental endowment and material equipment, without
-parallel in history, are a guarantee of future achievements. Will not
-the chemist learn how to produce electricity direct from the combustion
-of coal, or solve the problem of the synthesis of food? Will not the
-American continent be parted by an inter-oceanic canal, or the rough
-waters of the English Channel be avoided with a submarine tunnel? May
-not a ship canal through France to the Mediterranean give to that
-country the connected enjoyment of riparian rights, without passing the
-frowning battlements of Gibraltar, or might not a tunnel under the
-Straits of Gibraltar put Europe and Africa in direct railway
-communication? The relation of electricity to life is a field of
-pregnant possibilities, and may we not also learn to swap the surplus
-heat of summer for the winter's cold, and by an equalization of their
-two extremes bring eternal spring and joy to the animated world? Shall
-we not yet stand on the North Pole, or looking away into space may we
-not extend a neighborly welcome to our brothers in Mars, if any there
-be? It is permitted to dream in this field, for it is this reaching out
-into the unknown that plats the boundaries of an extended world, and
-adds to the possessions of man.
-
-The old man in his dreams of the past rejoices in his achievements, for
-he has stolen the fires of Prometheus and forged anew the thunderbolts
-of Jove for the arts of peace. Delving into the secret recesses of the
-earth, he has tapped the hidden supplies of nature's fuel, has invaded
-her treasure house of gold and silver, robbed Mother Earth of her
-hoarded stores, and possessed himself of her family record, finding on
-the pages of geology sixty millions of years' existence. Peering into
-the invisible little world, the infinite secrets of microcosm have
-yielded their fruitful and potent knowledge of bacteria and cell growth.
-Pain has been robbed of its terrors by anæsthesia; the heat of the sun
-has been brought down in the electric furnace, and the cold of
-inter-stellar space in the ice machine and liquid air. With telescope
-and spectroscope he has climbed into limitless space above, and defined
-the size, distance, and constitution of a star millions of miles away.
-The north star has been made his sentinel on the sea. The lightning is
-made his swift messenger, and thought flashes in submarine depths
-around the world. Dead matter is made to speak in the phonograph, the
-invisible has been revealed in the X-Rays, coal has been made his black
-slave, steam the breath of the world's life, and all of nature's forces
-have been made his constant servants in attendance.
-
-With such a retrospect, the sage of the Nineteenth Century may lie down
-to quiet rest, with an assuring faith that what God hath wrought is
-good, and what is not may yet be.
-
-
-
-
-INDEX.
-
-
- Abbe's Stereo-Binocular, 289
- Absorption Process, Ice Making, 441
- Acetylene Gas, 333
- Adirondack, Steamer, 141
- Agricultural Chemistry, 225
- Aids to Digestion, 243
- Air Blast, 374
- Air Brakes, 129
- Air, Carburetted, 336
- Alloys, 389
- Aluminum, 225-390
- Ambrotype, 304
- Anæsthesia, 246
- Anæsthesia by Chloroform, 247
- Ancient Iron Furnace, 372
- Aniline, 222
- Annealing and Tempering, Electricity in, 387
- Antikamnia (Acetanilide), 248
- Antipyrine, 248
- Antiseptic Surgery, 256
- Antiseptics, Coal Tar, 223
- Archer's Collodion Process Photos, 304
- Arc Lamp Feed, 66
- Arc Lamp, Simple, 64
- Arc Lamp, Weston, 65
- Arc Lamp, Large, 65-69
- Arkwright's Drawing Rolls, 421
- Arlberg Tunnel, 346
- Armored Cruiser, 150
- Armor Plates, Manufacture of, 383
- Artesian Wells, 350
- Artificial Limbs, 251
- Atlantic Cable, 32-37
- Automatic Ball Governor, 104
- Automatic Telegraph, 22
- Automobile, 265-272
- Automobile Statistics, 271
-
- Babbitt Metal, 389
- Bachelder Sewing Machine Feed, 186
- Bacteriology, 252
- Bain's Telegraph, 22
- Baldwin's Locomotives, 126
- Band Saws, 364
- Barbed Wire Fences, 388
- Barlow's Electric Wheel, 48
- Battery, Storage, 88
- Battleships, 150
- Beach, Alfred E., Tunneling Shield, 346
- Beach's Typewriter, 174
- Bell & Tainter's Improved Phonograph, 276
- Bell's Telephone, 77
- Bentham, Sir S., Invents Woodworking Machinery, 360
- Berliner's Telephone, 82
- Bessemer Steel, 376
- Beverages, 244
- Blake Telephone Transmitter, 83
- Blanchard's Lathe, 368
- Blast Furnace, 374-375
- Blasting, 351
- Blasting, Electro, 99
- Blenkinsop's Locomotive, 119
- Blickensderfer Typewriter, 180
- Bloomeries, Air, 373
- Body Appliances, Electric, 97
- Book Typewriter, 181
- Bourdon's Steam Gauge, 107
- Bicycle, 259-265
- Bicycle Speed, 264
- Bicycle Statistics, 265
- Binding Devices for Reaper, 203
- Biograph, 298
- Bipolar Dynamo, 42
- Brake, Bicycle, 264
- Bramah's Planer, 366
- Branca's Steam Turbine, 109
- Branson's Automatic Knitter, 431
- Breech Mechanism, Interrupted Thread, 399
- Bridge, Brooklyn, 342
- Bridge, Cabin John, 344
- Bridge, Forth, 340
- Bridges, Masonry, 342
- Bridge, Trezzo, 344
- Bright's Disease, 250
- Brooklyn, Armored Cruiser, 151
- Brooklyn Bridge, 342
- Buildings, High, 353
- Burt's Typewriter, 172
- Butchering and Dressing Meats, 237
- Buttonhole Machine, 191
-
- Cabin John Bridge, 344
- Cablegrams, First, 33
- Cable Statistics, 36
- Cable, Submarine, 32
- Cable Tolls, 37
- Cableway, Lidgerwood, 349
- Caissons, 345
- Calcium Carbide, 225
- Calcium Carbide Factories, 336
- Calcium Carbide Furnace, 46
- Caligraph Typewriter, 177
- Calotype, 303
- Camera, 306
- Camera Obscura, 306
- Camera Shutter, 307
- Canal, Chicago Drainage, 350
- Canal, Suez, 347
- Candle, Jablochkoff, 64
- Canning Industry, 235
- Cannon, Breech-Loading, 397
- Cannon Invention, 395
- Caoutchouc, 210
- Capitol Building, 357
- Caps, Percussion, 416
- Carafes, Frozen, 441
- Carbolic Acid, 247
- Carbon Microphone, 82
- Carbon-Printing, Photography, 305
- Carborundum, 225
- Carborundum Furnace, 45
- Carburetted Air, 336
- Car Coupling, 129
- Carpet Sewing Machine, 192
- Carré's Ice Machine, 441
- Cartwright Invents Power Loom, 426
- Car Wheels, Turning, 387
- Cash Carrier, 461
- Casting Pig Iron, 379
- Castalia, Steamer, 140
- Cathode Ray, 321
- Celestial Photography, 310
- Cementation, 385-387
- Centrifugal Filter, 243
- Centrifugal Milk Skimmer, 235
- Chain Bicycle, 263
- Chair, Electrocution, 44
- Champion Reaper, 202
- Charlotte Dundas, Steamboat, 134
- Chemical Telegraph, 22
- Chemistry, 221-227
- Chicago Drainage Canal, 350
- Chill Molds, 388
- Chipping Logs, Wood Pulp, 162
- Chloral Hydrate, 247
- Chronology of Inventions, 7-14
- Circular Saw, Hammering to Tension, 362
- Circulation of Blood, 246
- Civil Engineering, 340-359
- Clermont, Steamboat, 136
- Cloth, Finishing, 432
- Cloth Presser, 432
- Coal Gas Works, 330
- Coal Tar Dyes, Statistics, 226
- Coal Tar Products, 222
- Coating with Metal, 387
- Code, Morse, 20
- Collecting Rubber, 211
- Collodion Process Photography, 304
- Color Photography, 311
- Color Printing Press, 159
- Columbia Electric Automobile, 270
- Columbian Press, 156
- Compound Expansion Engine, 115
- Compound Locomotive, 128-130
- Compound Steam Turbine, 109
- Concentrator, Magnetic, 392
- Continuous Web Press, 157
- Cooper, Peter, Rolls Iron Beams for Buildings, 354
- Cord Binding Reaper, 203
- Corliss Valve Gear, 106
- Cort Makes Wrought Iron, 373
- Cotton, Diamond, 434
- Cotton Gin, 423
- Cracker and Cake Machine, 234
- Crompton Invents Mule Spinner, 422
- Cryptoscope, Salvioni's, 322
- Cuisine, Ocean Steamer, 145
- Culture, Bacteria, 255
- Cut-Off, Sickel's, 105
- Cut-Off, Steam, 104
- Cyanide Process, 391
-
- Daguerreotype, 303
- Daguerre's Invention, 303
- Dahlgren Gun, 397
- Dal Negro Electric Motor, 49
- Daniell Battery, 16
- Darby Makes Iron with Coke, 373
- De Laval's Steam Turbine, 111
- De Lesseps Builds Suez Canal, 347
- Demologos, First War Vessel, 146
- Densmore Typewriter, 180
- Dentistry, 250
- Desk Telephone, 86
- Deutschland's Engines, 115
- Digesters, Wood Pulp, 163
- Digestion, 252
- Disease Germs, 253
- Double Hull Steamer, 140
- Dough Mixer, 232
- Draisine Bicycle, 260
- Drawing Rolls, Spinning, 421
- Dredges, 349
- Drill Jar, 350
- Drills, Rock, 351
- Drinks, 244
- Drummond Light, 338
- Dry Plate Photography, 306
- Dudley's Early Ironworking, 373
- Duplex Telegraph, 23
- Duplicating Phonograph Records, 279
- Dust Collector, Flour Mills, 232
- Dyes, Coal Tar, 223
- Dynamite Gun, 405
- Dynamo Armature, 43
- Dynamo, Bipolar, 42
- Dynamo, Description of, 42
- Dynamos, Different Kinds, 42
- Dynamo Electric Machine, 38-47
- Dynamo, Gramme and D'Ivernois, 41
- Dynamo, Hjorth, 40
- Dynamo, Multipolar, 47
- Dynamo, Siemens', 41
- Dynamo, Wilde, 41
-
- Eads, Caissons of, 345
- Earthquake-Proof Palace, 355
- Edison's Electric Lamp, 67-73
- Edison's Carbon Microphone, 82
- Edison's Concentrating Works, 392
- Edison's Electric Pen, 96
- Edison's Kinetoscope, 297
- Edison's Three Wire System, 72-74
- Edison's X-Ray Apparatus, 323
- Eiffel Tower, 355
- Electric Automobile, 270
- Electric Body Appliances, 97
- Electric Cautery, 97
- Electric Furnace, 44
- Electric Furnace, Acheson, 45
- Electric Furnace, Bradley, 46
- Electric Lamp, Edison's, 67-73
- Electric Lamp, Sawyer-Man, 67-73
- Electric Lamp, Starr-King, 66
- Electric Launch, 93-94
- Electric Light, 63-75
- Electric Light Beacon, 65-69
- Electric Light Circuit, 74
- Electric Locomotive, 59
- Electric Motor, 48-62
- Electric Motor, Barlow's Wheel, 48
- Electric Motor, Dal Negro, 49
- Electric Motor, Davenport, 51-52
- Electric Motor, Dr. Page, 51
- Electric Motor, Faraday, 48
- Electric Motor, Henry, 50
- Electric Motor, Jacobi, 51
- Electric Motor, Neff, 52
- Electric Motor, Prof. Henry's, 50
- Electric Motor, Railway, 58
- Electric Motor, Westinghouse, 53
- Electric Musical Instruments, 98
- Electric Pen, Edison's, 96
- Electric Piano, 98
- Electric Railway, First, 54
- Electric Railway Statistics, 60
- Electric Telephone, 76
- Electric Welding, 91
- Electrical Generation, Polyphase, 43
- Electrical Navigation, 92
- Electricity Direct from Fuel, 92
- Electricity in Medicine, 96
- Electricity, Miscellaneous, 88-99
- Electro-Blasting, 99
- Electro-Chemistry, 225
- Electrocution, 44
- Electro-Magnet, Henry's, 17-18
- Electro-Magnetism by Oersted, 18
- Electro-Magnet, Sturgeon's, 18-19
- Electro-Plating, 93
- Elements, New, 227
- Elevators, Passenger, 459
- Elliott & Hatch Typewriter, 182
- Emulsions, Photography, 305
- Engine, Gas, 337
- Engine, Rotary, 109
- Epilogue, 465-467
- Ericsson's Monitor, 148
- Ericsson's Screw Propeller, 137
- Etherization, 246
- Excavating Quicksand by Freezing, 345
- Explosives, High, 419
-
- Facsimile Telegraph, 24
- False Teeth, 251
- Faraday Converts Electricity Into Power, 48
- Farmer Utilizes Electric Light, 67
- Farms, Large, 207
- Fastest Railway Speed, 131
- Fastest Speed, Steam Vessel, 146
- Faure Storage Battery, 90
- Feathering Paddle Wheel, 138-141
- Feed, Sewing Machine, 186-187
- Fermenting and Brewing, 223
- Field, Cyrus W., 32
- Fields, Large, 207
- Films, Photographic, 308
- Filter, Centrifugal, 243
- Fire Alarm Telegraph, 24
- Firearms and Explosives, 394-419
- Firearms, Early, 395
- Fire Engine, Steam, 114
- First Cable Message, 33
- First Dynamo, 40
- First Electric Light in Dwelling, 67
- First Gas Company, 330
- First Incandescent Lamp, 66-72
- First Locomotive, 119
- First Ocean Voyage, 137-145
- First Phonograph, 274
- First Photographic Portrait, 310
- First Railway in U. S., 131
- First Rubber Shoes, 212
- First Telegraphic Message, 15
- First Telegraphic Signal, 18
- First War Vessel, 146
- Flood Rock, Destruction of, 352
- Flour Mills, 230
- Fluorometer (X-Ray), 326
- Fluoroscope, Edison's, 323
- Focus Tube, X-Ray, 326
- Food and Drink, 228-244
- Food Products, Statistics, 229
- Foods, Patented, 244
- Forging Press, 383
- Forth Bridge, 340
- Fourdrinier Machine, 161
- Franklin's Printing Press, 155
- Fulton, Robert, 134
- Fulton's Demologos, 146
-
- Galvani's Experiment, 16
- Galvanizing, 387
- Gas, Acetylene, 333
- Gas Checks, Ordnance, 398
- Gas, Coal, 330
- Gas Engine, 337
- Gases, Liquefaction of, 447
- Gas Lighting, 329-339
- Gas Meter, 337
- Gasoline Automobile, 268
- Gas, Water, 332
- Gatling Gun, 405
- Gauge, Steam, 107
- Gelatine Films, Photography, 308
- Germs, Disease, 253
- Gessner's Cloth Press, 432
- Giffard Injector, 105
- Glucose, 223
- Gold, Cyanide Process, 391
- Goodyear Discovers Vulcanization, 214
- Goodyear Introduces Rubber Into Europe, 214
- Goodyear's Experiments With Rubber, 212
- Gramophone, 280
- Grande Lunette Telescope, 287
- Grape Sugar, 223
- Graphophone, 277
- Great Eastern, 138
- Greathead Improves Tunneling Shield, 347
- Grove, Prof., Electric Lamp, 66-72
- Gun Cotton, Making, 224
- Gun, Magazine, 411
- Gun, Disappearing, 401
- Gunpowder, 416
- Gun, 16-inch, 401
- Gunpowder, White, 417
- Guns, Hammerless, 414
- Gutenberg's Movable Type, 154
-
- Hackworth's Locomotive, 121
- Half Tone Engraving, 314
- Hammer, Steam, 112
- Hammond Typewriter, 178
- Hargreaves Invents the Spinning-Jenny, 421
- Harvester, 195
- Harvest Scene, 208
- Harvey Process, 387
- Hayward Adds Sulphur to Rubber, 213
- Heddle, 426
- Hedley's "Puffing Billy", 120
- Heliography, Niépce, 302
- Henry's Electric Motor, 50
- Henry's First Telegraph, 18
- Hero's Engine, 101
- Hjorth Dynamo, 40
- Hoe Printing Press, 157
- Holden Ice Machine, 443
- Holland Submarine Boat, 152
- Homoeopathy, 250
- Horrocks Applies Steam to Looms, 428
- Horseshoes, Manufacture of, 383
- Hot Blast Furnace, 374
- House Printing Telegraph, 24
- House Sanitation, 256
- Howe's Sewing Machine, 184
- Hussey's Reaper, 196
- Hydraulic Dredges, 349
- Hydropathy, 250
-
- Ice Machine, Holden, 443
- Ice Machines, 436-446
- Ice Plant, 442
- Ice Skating Rinks, 445
- Incandescent Lamp, 66
- India Rubber Statistics, 217
- Injector, Giffard, 105
- Instantaneous Photos, 308
- Iron and Steel Statistics, 390
- Ironclad Monitors Cross Ocean, 148
- Ironclads, 147
-
- Jablochkoff Candle, 64
- Jacobi's Electric Boat, 92
- Jacobi's Electric Motor, 51
- Jacquard Loom, 427
- Janney Car Coupling, 129
- Jenkins' Phantascope, 299
- Jetties, Mississippi, 352
- John Bull, Locomotive, 124
-
- Kaiser Wilhelm, Steamer, 142
- Kaleidoscope, 294
- Kelly's Process Making Steel, 377
- Kinetoscope, 297
- Kirchhoff's Spectroscope, 293
- Kneading Machines, 233
- Knitting Machines, 430
- Kodak Camera, 307-309
- König's Rotary Press, 157
- Krag-Jorgensen Magazine Rifle, 413
- Krupp Gun, 398
-
- Laryngoscope, 249
- Latch Needle for Knitting Machine, 432
- Lathe, Blanchard's, 368
- Laughing Gas, 246
- Launches, Electric, 94
- Leading Inventions, Nineteenth Century, 7-14
- Lee Invents Knitting Machines, 431
- Lee's Magazine Rifle, 412
- Lick Telescope, 286
- Light, Electric, 63
- Light, Rapidity of Travel, 299
- Lime Light, 338
- Link Motion, 128
- Linotype Printing, 165
- Liquid Air, 447-457
- Lister's Antiseptic Surgery, 256
- Lithography, 170
- Lithotrity, 250
- Locke Wire Binder, 203
- Locks, Pneumatic Lift, 300
- Locomobile, Steam, 267
- Locomotive, Electric, 59
- Locomotive, Largest, 132
- Locomotive, Steam, 118
- Loom, Jacquard, 427
- Loom, Positive Motion, 429
- Loom, Power, 426
- Lovers' Telegraph, 76
- Lowe's Water Gas Apparatus, 332
- Lyall Positive Motion Loom, 429
-
- Machine Gun, 405
- Magazine Pistol, 409
- Magnetic Concentrator, 392
- Magneto-Electric Machine, 38-39
- Malarial Parasite, 254
- Mann Harvester, 200
- Mantles for Welsbach Burner, 338
- Marconi's Wireless Telegraphy, 27
- Marsh Harvester, 201
- Matches, Friction, 460
- Matching Machines, 366
- Materia Medica, 247
- Mauser Rifle, 413
- McCormick Reaper, 197-199
- McKay Shoe Sewing Machine, 190
- Meats, Dressing, 238
- Medical Electricity, 96
- Medicines, Coal Tar, 223
- Medicine, Surgery, Sanitation, 245-258
- Mege's Oleomargarine, 239
- Melville Introduces Gas in U. S., 330
- Mercerized Cloth, 434
- Mergenthaler Linotype Machine, 166
- Metal Founding, 388
- Metallurgy, Early History of, 372
- Metal Production in the United States, 393
- Metal Tube Making, 387
- Metal Turning, 387
- Metal Working, 371-393
- Meter, Gas, 337
- Michaux's Bicycle, 261
- Micro-photographs in Beleaguered Paris, 291
- Microscope, 290
- Middlings Purifier, 231
- Milk Skimmer, 235
- Milling, Flour, 230
- Mills' Typewriter, 171
- Mines, Submarine, 417
- Minor Inventions, 458-464
- Molding Machines, 366
- Monitor Monadnock, 149
- Mont Cenis Tunnel, 345
- Monument, Washington, 356
- Morrow Bicycle Brake, 264
- Morse Telegraph, 19
- Mortising Machines, 369
- Morton and Jackson Patent Anæsthesia, 247
- Moving Pictures, 295
- Mule Spinner, 422
- Musical Instruments, Electric, 98
- Muybridge's Photos Trotting Horses, 297
-
- Nails, Wire, 388
- Nasmyth's Steam Hammer, 112
- Natural Gas, 329-339
- Navies' Tonnage, 146
- Navigation, Electric, 92
- Navigation, Steam, 133
- Needle Gun, 411
- Newcomen's Engine, 102
- Nicholson's Rotary Press, 156
- Niépce's Heliography, 302
- Nitro-Glycerine, 224
- Nitrous Oxide Gas, 246
- Northrop Loom, 429
-
- Oceanic, Largest Steamer, 139-143
- Octuple Printing Press, 158
- Old Ironsides, Locomotive, 125
- Oleomargarine, 239
- Oliver Typewriter, 181
- Open Hearth Steel, 380
- Opthalmometer, 249
- Opthalmoscope, 249
- Optics, 284-300
- Ordnance, Breech-Loading, 397
- Oregon, Battleship, 150
- Ore Separator, Magnetic, 392
- Ostergren and Berger Liquid Air, 450
- Otto Gas Engine, 338
-
- Pacific Railway, 131
- Paddle Wheel, Feathering, 138
- Panorama Camera, 311
- Paper Making, 159-165
- Paper Making, Speed in, 165
- Paper Making Statistics, 165
- Paper Pulp Beater, 160
- Parsons Steam Turbine, 109
- Patented Foods, 244
- Patents, 462
- Perfumes, Coal Tar, 223
- Perkins Invents Ice Machines, 438
- Persistence of Vision, 295
- Phantascope, 299
- Phenacetin, 248
- Phenakistoscope, 295
- Phoenix, Steamboat, 136
- Phonautograph, 276
- Phonograph, 273-283
- Phosphor Bronze, 389
- Photo-engraving, 312
- Photographic Experiments, First, 302
- Photographic Positives, 303
- Photographic Roll Film, 308
- Photographs by Artificial Light, 308-316
- Photography, 301-318
- Photography, Celestial, 310
- Photography, Half Tone Engraving, 314
- Photography in Colors, 311
- Photo-lithography, 312
- Photo-micrographs, 253
- Piano, Electric, 98
- Pictet Ice Machine, 439
- Pictet's Researches, 455
- Pieper Automobile, 271
- Pig Iron, 375
- Pigs, Casting, 379
- Pins, The Manufacture of, 389
- Pintsch Gas, 336
- Pistols, 407
- Pixii Electric Machine, 39
- Planing Machines, 366
- Planté Storage Battery, 88-89
- Plate Printing, 169
- Platinotypes, 305
- Pneumatic Caissons, 345
- Pneumatic Tires, 263
- Poetsch Method of Tunneling, 345
- Polarization of Light, 294
- Polyphase Generation, 43
- Ponton, Mungo, Photography, 305
- Precious Metals, Statistics, 393
- Premo Camera, 309
- Preparing Rubber, 215
- Preserving Food, 235
- Printing, 154-170
- Printing Telegraph, 23-24
- Priscilla, Steamer, 142
- Progin's Typewriter, 172
- Progress Photographic Art, 306
- Puddling Furnace, 373
- Pulp, Wood, 161
- Pulse Recorder, 249
- Purifier, Middlings, 231
-
- Quadruplex Telegraph, 23
- Quarter Sawing, 363
- Queen Victoria, First Cablegram, 33
- Quinine Discovered, 247
-
- Rabbeth Spinning Spindle, 425
- Railway Motor, Electric, 58
- Railway Statistics, 131
- Railway, Steam, 118
- Range Finder, 295
- Rapid Fire Gun, 400
- Rare Metals, Metallurgy, 390
- Reaper, 195-209
- Reaper Statistics, 205-206
- Rebounding Lock, 415
- Recorder, Siphon, 35
- Reece Buttonhole Machine, 191
- Regenerative Furnace, 381
- Register, Morse, 21-22
- Reis' Telephone, 78
- Remington Typewriter, 176
- Return Circuit, Earth, 18
- Review of Century, 3-6
- Revolvers, 408
- Revolving Turret, 147
- Rifling of Firearms, 396
- Ring Frame, Spinning, 425
- Rock Drills, 351
- Rocket, Locomotive, 122
- Rodman's Method of Casting Guns, 397
- Roentgen Rays, 319-328
- Rogues' Gallery, 310
- Roller Mill, Flour, 230
- Roll Film, Photography, 308
- Rotary Engine, 109
- Rotary Hook Sewing Machine, 187
- Rotary Press, 156
- Rover Bicycle, 263
- Rubber Cloth, 216
- Rubber, India, 210-220
- Rubber Shoes, 217-218
-
- Safes, Fireproof, 461
- Safety Bicycle, 264
- Safety-Lamp, 359
- Saint's Sewing Machine, 184
- Salol, 248
- Salvioni's X-Ray Tube, 322
- Sanitation, 245
- Sanitation, House, 256
- Savannah, Steamer, 137-145
- Saw, 360
- Saw, Circular, 361
- Sawmill Carriage, 362
- Sawyer-Man Electric Lamp, 67-73
- Saxton Electric Machine, 39
- Schlick System, 116
- Schools of Medicine, 250
- Screw Propeller, 135-137
- Screws, Bolts, etc., 383
- Screws, Gimlet Pointed, 385
- Screws, Rolling, 386
- Screw Steamer, Stevens', 134
- Search Light, 70-71
- Seidlitz Powders, 247
- Self-Binding Reaper, 203
- Self-Raking Reaper, 202
- Sewerage, Sanitary, 256
- Sewing Machine, 183-194
- Sewing Machine Statistics, 188-193
- Sheathing Railway Train, 132
- Shield, Tunneling, 346-347
- Shoe Sewing Machine, 190
- Sholes' Typewriter, 176
- Shot Making, 389
- Shuttle, Flying, 426
- Sickel's Cut-off, 105
- Siemens' Electric Railway, 54
- Siemens-Martin Steel, 381
- Siemens' Regenerative Furnace, 381
- Silk, Artificial, 433
- Silver Printing, 305
- Singer Sewing Machine, 187
- Siphon Recorder, 35
- Skating Rinks, Ice, 445
- Skeleton Construction, 353
- Skimmer, Milk, 235
- Sleeping Car, 131
- Small Arms, 407
- Smith-Premier Typewriter, 178
- Snap-Shot Camera, 309
- Solarometer, 295
- Spectroscope, 292
- Spectrum, 292
- Spectrum Analysis, 293
- Speed Across Atlantic, 145
- Speed, Railway, 131
- Sphygmograph, 249
- Sphygmometrograph, 249
- Spindle, Spinning, 425
- Spinning-Jenny, 420
- Spinning Spindle, 425
- Statistics, Steam Navigation, 152
- Steam Automobile, 266
- Steamboat, 133
- Steamboat, Fulton's, 136
- Steam Cut-off, 104
- Steam Engine, 100-117
- Steam Engine, Hero's, 101
- Steam Engine, Newcomen, 102
- Steam Engine, Watt's, 103
- Steamer, Swinging Cabin, 140
- Steam Feed Saw Carriage, 363
- Steam Fire Engine, 113
- Steam Gauge, 107
- Steam Hammer, 112
- Steam Harvester and Thresher, 206
- Steam Locomotive, 118
- Steam Navigation, 133-153
- Steam Navigation Statistics, 152
- Steam Planting, 206
- Steam Power Statistics, 116
- Steam Railway, 118-132
- Steam Turbine, 109
- Steel Alloys, 389
- Steel, Open Hearth, 380
- Stephenson's Link Motion, 128
- Stephenson's Locomotives, 121-123
- Stereo-Binocular Field Glass, 289
- Stereoscope, 294
- Stereoscopic Camera, 310
- Stereotyping, 159
- Sterilizing Food Stuffs, 236
- Stethoscope, 249
- Stevens' "Phoenix", 136
- Stevens' Screw Steamer, 134-135
- St. Gothard Tunnel, 346
- Stockton & Darlington Railway, 121
- Storage Battery, 88
- Storage Battery, Faure, 90
- Storage Battery, Planté, 88
- Storage Battery, Ritter, 88
- Stourbridge Lion, Locomotive, 123
- Submarine Boat, 152
- Suez Canal, 347
- Sugar Making, 241
- Sulfonal, 248
- Surgery, 245
- Surgical Instruments, 249
- Symington's Steamboat, 134
- Synthesis Organic Compounds, 222
- System, Third Rail, 57
-
- Talbot's Photographic Prints, 303
- Talbotype, 303
- Taupenot's Dry Plates, 306
- Telegraph, Edison's Quadruplex, 23
- Telegraph, Electric, 15-31
- Telegraphic Conductor, 17
- Telegraphing by Induction, 25
- Telegraph Statistics, 30
- Telegraph, Wireless, 26
- Telephone, 76-87
- Telephone, Bell, 77
- Telephone, Blake Transmitter, 83
- Telephone, Bourseul, 77
- Telephone, Drawbaugh, 77
- Telephone Exchange, 86-87
- Telephone, Gray, 77
- Telephone, Reis, 78
- Telephone Statistics, 86
- Telephone, Undulatory Current, 79
- Telephone, Variable Resistance, 82
- Telescope, 285
- Telescopic Discoveries, 284
- Textiles, 420-435
- Thaumatrope, 295
- Thimonnier's Sewing Machine, 184
- Third-Rail System, 57
- Thompsonian System Medicine, 250
- Thompson, Sir William, 35
- Thorp Invents Ring Spinning, 425
- Three Wire System, 72-74
- Thurber's Typewriter, 173
- Ticker, Stock Broker's, 23-24
- Timby's Revolving Turret, 147
- Time Locks, 461
- Tolls, Suez Canal, 347
- Tonnage World's Navies, 146
- Tools, Machine, 386
- Traction Engine, 206
- Transformer, 43
- Trevithick's Locomotive, 118
- Trevithick's Steam Carriage, 266
- Tripler, Liquid Air, 450
- Trolley, Overhead, 55
- Trolley, Underground, 56
- Trouvé Electric Boat, 92
- Tube Manufacture, 387
- Tunneling Shield, 346
- Tunnels, 345
- Turbine, Steam, 109
- Turbinia, Steamer, 111
- Turret Monitor, 148
- Typewriter, 171-182
- Typewriter, Oldest, 171
- Typewriter for Blind, 174
- Typewriter Statistics, 182
-
- Utilizing Heat from Blast Furnace, 375
-
- Vaccination, 245
- Vacuum Pan, Sugar, 242
- Vacuum Tubes, 321
- Valve Gear, Corliss, 106
- Velocipede, 261
- Vertical Fork Bicycle, 262
- Viper, Torpedo Boat, 111
- Vitascope, 297
- Voltaic Arc, 63
- Voltaic Pile, 16
- Vulcanized Rubber, 210
-
- Wall Telephone, 85
- Washington Monument, 356
- Washington Press, 156
- Watch, Stem-Winding, 460
- Water Closets, 256
- Water Gas, 331
- Watt's Steam Engine, 103
- Wax Cylinder, Phonograph, 277
- Weaving, 425
- Wegmann's Roller Mill, 230
- Welding, Electric, 91
- Wells, Artesian, 350
- Wells, Petroleum, 350
- Wells, Dr., Produces Anæsthesia, 246
- Welsbach Gas Burner, 338
- Westinghouse Air Brake, 129
- Westinghouse Electric Motor, 53
- Wheat Produced, 209
- Whitney Invents Cotton Gin, 423
- Willis Invents Platinotypes, 305
- Wilson's Sewing Machine, 186
- Windhausen Cold Storage Device, 445
- Winsor Introduces Gas in London, 330
- Winton Automobile, 269
- Wire Bending, 388
- Wire Fences, 388
- Wireless Telegraphy, 26
- Wood Pulp, 161
- Woodruff Sleeping Car, 131
- Wood Turning, 368
- Woodworker, Universal, 367
- Woodworking, 360-370
- Woodworth Wood Planer, 367
- World's Blast Furnaces, 375
-
- X-Rays, 319
- X-Ray Apparatus, 324
- X-Ray Focus Tube, 326
- X-Ray Photograph, 322
- X-Ray Surgery, 325
-
- Yerkes Telescope, 287
- Yost Typewriter, 180
-
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-half-horse power engine is taken up, step by step, showing in detail the
-making of a Gas Engine. First come directions for making the patterns;
-this is followed by all the details of the mechanical operations of
-finishing up and fitting the castings, and is profusely illustrated with
-beautiful engravings of the actual work in progress, showing the modes
-of chucking, turning, boring and finishing the parts in the lathe, and
-also plainly showing the lining up and erection of the engine.
-Dimensioned working drawings give clearly the sizes and forms of the
-various details. The entire engine, with the exception of the
-fly-wheels, is designed to be made on a simple eight inch lathe, with
-slide rest. The book closes with a chapter on American practice in Gas
-Engine design, and gives simple rules so that anyone can figure out the
-dimensions of similar engines of other powers. Every illustration in
-this book is new and original, having been made expressly for this work.
-
-SEND FOR DESCRIPTIVE CIRCULAR.
-
-MUNN & CO., Publishers,
-
- SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN OFFICE
- 361 Broadway, New York
-
-
-
-
- Transcriber's notes
-
- This text uses the text from the original work, including
- inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation, punctuation, etc., except as
- mentioned below. The spelling of English (omniverous, millenium), non-
- English words (licht, tuyeres, frappees) and names (Swammerden, Mege)
- has not been corrected either, except as listed below.
- Depending on the hard- and software and their settings used to read
- this text, not all characters and symbols may display properly or
- display at all.
-
- Remarks on the text:
- p. vii and 371: the list of contents lists Electric Concentrators, the
- text deals with Magnetic Concentrators.
- p. 171/172 (text of patent): one closing quote mark is missing.
- p. 291, Swammerden: this refers to Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680).
- p. 373, condicon: possibly error for condicion or a similar word.
- p. 239, M. Mege, a French chemist: this refers to Hippolyte Mège-
- Mouriès (1817-1880).
- p. 408, Alte Deutscher Drehling Der Ruckladungs Gewehre: the reference
- is to Alte Rückladegewehre: Alt-Deutscher Drehling.
- p. 428, photograph: the chain of perforated cards is hardly visible in
- the original work.
- Index: the entries are not fully alphabetically sorted; this has not
- been changed.
- The order of subjects as given in the table of contents and in the
- chapter headings is not always the order in which the text gives them;
- the table of contents is sometimes slightly different from the chapter
- headings; this has not been changed. The table of contents is not
- complete: many subjects are not listed.
- In several instances the author uses knots for distance and knots per
- hour and feet for speed; this has not been changed.
-
- Changes made:
- Footnotes and illustrations have (where appropriate) been moved in
- order not to interrupt the text.
- Some obvious punctuation errors have been corrected silently.
- If both ligature and single letters occur in the same word in the text
- (with the exception of the advertisements), these have been
- standardised: ae/æ to æ (anæsthetics); e/é to é (Carré, Lindé,
- Niépce).
- The original work uses fractions of the form 1/2 as well as 15-16.
- These have been standardised to x/y.
- p. v: Nitroglycerine changed to Nitro-Glycerine as elsewhere
- p. vi, Chapter Photography: The Platinotype added as in the chapter
- heading
- p. 6: Kinetescope changed to Kinetoscope as elsewhere
- p. 7: Hahneman changed to Hahnemann
- p. 9: Perkin's changed to Perkins'
- p. 10: Rhumkorff changed to Ruhmkorff
- p. 11: Foucalt changed to Foucault; Herman's changed to Hermann's
- p. 15: ecomony changed to economy
- p. 29: choking coils _k k_ changed to choking coils _k k´_ as in
- illustration
- p. 35: Gallilee changed to Galilee
- p. 37: Somnenberg changed to Sonnenberg
- p. 41: and other changed to and others
- p. 47: corruscations changed to coruscations
- p. 51: Badensburg changed to Bladensburg
- p. 87: Chrstian Era changed to Christian Era
- p. 88: Plante changed to Planté
- p. 89: PLANTE changed to PLANTÉ (2x)
- p. 92: commerical changed to commercial
- p. 93: electrictiy changed to electricity; TROUVE'S changed to
- TROUVÉ'S
- p. 95: St. Petersburg changed to St. Petersburgh
- p. 97: atached changed to attached
- p. 98: whch changed to which
- p. 105: colon in list of patents changed to comma (2x) as elsewhere
- p. 108: Ninetenth Century changed to Nineteenth Century
- p. 129: air-brake changed to air brake as elsewhere
- p. 133: Pennsylvaina changed to Pennsylvania
- p. 150: greater that changed to greater than
- p. 153: for from changed to far from
- p. 159: sterereotyping changed to stereotyping; Edinburg changed to
- Edinburgh as elsewhere
- p. 160: the the wire cloth changed to the wire cloth
- p. 182: vearly changed to yearly
- p. 188: Manufacturning changed to Manufacturing
- p. 235: ilustrative changed to illustrative
- p. 237: half a millions changed to half a million
- p. 240: carry- a fractional per cent. changed to carrying a fractional
- per cent.
- p. 247: irresitable changed to irresistible
- p. 248: acetanalide changed to acetanilide; OPHTHALMOMETER changed to
- OPTHALMOMETER as elsewhere
- p. 250: rationallen Heilkunde changed to rationellen Heilkunde
- p. 253: bactilli changed to bacilli
- p. 260: vélocipéde changed to vélocipède; celérifère changed to
- célérifère
- p. 261: vélocipéde changed to vélocipède
- p. 265: Metiers changed to Métiers
- p. 285: Middeburg, Middleburg changed to Middelburg
- p. 301: Niepce's changed to Niépce's
- p. 309: advertisment changed to advertisement
- p. 324: currrent changed to current
- p. 389: fire-arms changed to firearms as elsewhere
- p. 395: must must changed to must
- p. 401: Moncrief changed to Moncrieff
- p. 412: Livermore-Russel changed to Livermore-Russell; Russel changed
- to Russell
- p. 416: pulvurulent changed to pulverulent
- p. 425: effciency changed to efficiency
- p. 462: latrobe stoves changed to Latrobe stoves
- p. 469: Acetanalide changed to Acetanilide
- p. 470: Cemementation changed to Cementation.
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Progress of Invention in the
-Nineteenth Century., by Edward W. Byrn
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-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION ***
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth
-Century., by Edward W. Byrn
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
-
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-Title: The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.
-
-Author: Edward W. Byrn
-
-Release Date: December 2, 2012 [EBook #41538]
-
-Language: English
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41538 ***</div>
<div class="tnboxtop">
<p class="center">Please see the <a href="#TN">Transcriber&#8217;s Notes</a> at the end of this document.</p>
@@ -3907,7 +3867,7 @@ the other plate, and both plates remain coated
with lead monoxide (PbO).</p>
<div class="figc500"><a name="Fig64" id="Fig64"></a>
-<img src="images/illo099a.jpg" alt="Planté's storage battery" width="500" height="417" />
+<img src="images/illo099a.jpg" alt="Planté's storage battery" width="500" height="417" />
<p class="caption">FIG. 64.&mdash;PLANT&Eacute; STORAGE BATTERY.</p>
</div>
@@ -10773,7 +10733,7 @@ village, and country store. The Columbia two-seated Dos-a-Dos<span class="pagenu
Wagon are representative types of the modern electric automobile.</p>
<div class="figc400"><a name="Fig188" id="Fig188"></a>
-<img src="images/illo280.jpg" alt="Columbia dos-à-dos" width="400" height="330" />
+<img src="images/illo280.jpg" alt="Columbia dos-à-dos" width="400" height="330" />
<p class="caption">FIG. 188.&mdash;THE COLUMBIA &#8220;DOS-A-DOS.&#8221;</p>
</div>
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth
-Century., by Edward W. Byrn
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
-
-
-Title: The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.
-
-Author: Edward W. Byrn
-
-Release Date: December 2, 2012 [EBook #41538]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROGRESS OF INVENTION ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Chris Curnow, Harry Lame and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- Transcriber's notes:
-
- Text pinted in italics in the original work has been transcribed as
- _text_, bold text as =text=. Text printed in small capitals in the
- original work has been transcribed in ALL-CAPITALS. Superscript texts
- are transcribed as ^{text}.
-
- Greek texts have been transcribed as [Greek: text]. Where the original
- work uses an oe-ligature, this text uses oe (as in Phoenix). In the
- advertisements, [-->] represents a right-pointing hand.
-
- More Transcriber's notes have been added at the end of the text.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: STEAM AND ELECTRICITY.
-
-The 70,000 Horse-Power Station of the Metropolitan Street Railway, New
-York.]
-
-
-
-
- THE PROGRESS
- OF
- INVENTION
- IN THE
- NINETEENTH CENTURY
-
-
- BY
-
- EDWARD W. BYRN, A.M.
-
-
- [Greek: "Dhos pou stho, kahi tehn ghen kinheso."]
- (Give me where to stand, and I'll move the earth.)
- --_Archimedes._
-
-
- MUNN & CO., PUBLISHERS
-
- SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN OFFICE
- 361 BROADWAY, NEW YORK
-
- 1900
-
-
-
-
- COPYRIGHTED, 1900, BY MUNN & CO.
-
-
- ENTERED AT STATIONER'S HALL
- LONDON, ENGLAND
-
-
- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
-
-
- Printed in the United States of America by
- The Manufacturers' and Publishers' Printing Company,
- New York City.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE.
-
-
-For a work of such scope as this, the first word of the author should be
-an apology for what is doubtless the too ambitious effort of a single
-writer. A quarter of a century in the high tide of the arts and
-sciences, an ardent interest in all things that make for scientific
-progress, and the aid and encouragement of many friends in and about the
-Patent Office, furnish the explanation. The work cannot claim the
-authority of a text-book, the fullness of a history, nor the exactness
-of a technical treatise. It is simply a cursory view of the century in
-the field of invention, intended to present the broader bird's-eye view
-of progress achieved. In substantiation of the main facts reliance has
-been placed chiefly upon patents, which for historic development are
-believed to be the best of all authorities, because they carry the
-responsibility of the National Government as to dates, and the attested
-signature and oath of the inventor as to subject matter. Many
-difficulties and embarrassments have been encountered in the work. The
-fear of extending it into a too bulky volume has excluded treatment of
-many subjects which the author recognizes as important, and issues in
-dispute as to the claims of inventors have also presented themselves in
-perplexing conflict. A discussion of the latter has been avoided as far
-as possible, the paramount object being to do justice to all the worthy
-workers in this field, with favor to none, and only expressing such
-conclusions as seem to be justified by authenticated facts and the
-impartial verdict of reason in the clearing atmosphere of time. For sins
-of omission a lack of space affords a reasonable excuse, and for those
-of commission the great scope of the work is pleaded in extenuation. It
-is hoped, however, that the volume may find an accepted place in the
-literature of the day, as presenting in compact form some comprehensive
-and coherent idea of the great things in invention which the Nineteenth
-Century has added to the world's wealth of ideas and material resources.
-
-In acknowledging the many obligations to friends who have aided me in
-the work, my thanks are due first to the Editors of the _Scientific
-American_ for aid rendered in the preparation of the work; also to
-courteous officials in the Government Departments, and to many
-progressive manufacturers throughout the country.
-
- E. W. B.
-
-_Washington, D. C., October, 1900._
-
-
-
-
-TABLE OF CONTENTS.
-
-
- CHAPTER I.
-
- THE PERSPECTIVE VIEW.
-
-
- CHAPTER II.
-
- CHRONOLOGY OF LEADING INVENTIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
-
-
- CHAPTER III.
-
- THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.
-
- The Voltaic Pile. Daniell's Battery. Use of Conducting Wire by Weber.
- Steinheil Employs Earth as Return Circuit. Prof. Henry's Electro-
- Magnet, and First Telegraphic Experiment. Prof. Morse's Telegraphic
- Code and Register. First Line Between Washington and Baltimore. Bain's
- Chemical Telegraph. Gintl's Duplex Telegraph. Edison's Quadruplex.
- House's Printing Telegraph. Fac Simile Telegraphs. Channing and Farmer
- Fire Alarm. Telegraphing by Induction. Wireless Telegraphy by Marconi.
- Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER IV.
-
- THE ATLANTIC CABLE.
-
- Difficulties of Laying. Congratulatory Messages Between Queen Victoria
- and President Buchanan. The Siphon Recorder. Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER V.
-
- THE DYNAMO AND ITS APPLICATIONS.
-
- Observations of Faraday and Henry. Magneto-Electric Machines of Pixii,
- and of Saxton. Hjorth's Dynamo of 1855. Wilde's Machine of 1866.
- Siemens' of 1867. Gramme's of 1870. Tesla's Polyphase Currents.
-
-
- CHAPTER VI.
-
- THE ELECTRIC MOTOR.
-
- Barlow's Spur Wheel. Dal Negro's Electric Pendulum. Prof. Henry's
- Electric Motor. Jacobi's Electric Boat. Davenport's Motor. The Neff
- Motor. Dr. Page's Electric Locomotive. Dr. Siemens' First Electric
- Railway at Berlin, 1879. First Electric Railway in United States,
- between Baltimore and Hampden, 1885. Third Rail System. Statistics.
- Electric Railways, and General Electric Company. Distribution
- Electric Current in Principal Cities.
-
-
- CHAPTER VII.
-
- THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.
-
- Voltaic Arc by Sir Humphrey Davy. The Jablochkoff Candle. Patents of
- Brush, Weston, and Others. Search Lights. Grove's First Incandescent
- Lamp. Starr-King Lamp. Moses Farmer Lights First Dwelling with
- Electric Lamps. Sawyer-Man Lamp. Edison's Incandescent Lamp. Edison's
- Three-Wire System of Circuits. Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER VIII.
-
- THE TELEPHONE.
-
- Preliminary Suggestions and Experiments of Bourseul, Reis, and
- Drawbaugh. First Speaking Telephone by Prof. Bell. Differences between
- Reis' and Bell's Telephones. The Blake Transmitter. Berliner's
- Variation of Resistance and Electric Undulations, by Variation of
- Pressure. Edison's Carbon Microphone. The Telephone Exchange.
- Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER IX.
-
- ELECTRICITY, MISCELLANEOUS.
-
- Storage Battery. Batteries of Plante, Faure and Brush. Electric
- Welding. Direct Generation of Electricity by Combustion. Electric
- Boats. Electro-Plating. Edison's Electric Pen. Electricity in
- Medicine. Electric Cautery. Electric Musical Instruments. Electric
- Blasting.
-
-
- CHAPTER X.
-
- THE STEAM ENGINE.
-
- Hero's Engine, and Other Early Steam Engines. Watt's Steam Engine. The
- Cut-Off. Giffard Injector. Bourdon's Steam Gauge. Feed Water Heaters,
- Smoke Consumers, etc. Rotary Engines. Steam Hammer. Steam Fire Engine.
- Compound Engines. Schlick and Taylor Systems of Balancing Momentum of
- Moving Parts. Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER XI.
-
- THE STEAM RAILWAY.
-
- Trevithick's Steam Carriage. Blenkinsop's Locomotive. Hedley's
- "Puffing Billy." Stephenson's Locomotive. The Link Motion. Stockton
- and Darlington Railway, 1825. Hackworth's "Royal George." The
- "Stourbridge Lion" and "John Bull." Baldwin's Locomotives.
- Westinghouse Air Brakes. Janney Car Coupling. The Woodruff Sleeping
- Car. Railway Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER XII.
-
- STEAM NAVIGATION.
-
- Early Experiments. Symington's Boat. Col. John Stevens' Screw
- Propeller. Robt. Fulton and the "Clermont." First Trip to Sea by
- Stevens' "Phoenix." "Savannah," the First Steam Vessel to Cross the
- Ocean. Ericsson's Screw Propeller. The "Great Eastern." The Whale Back
- Steamers. Ocean Greyhounds. The "Oceanic," largest Steamship in the
- World. The "Turbinia." Fulton's "Demologos," First War Vessel. The
- Turret Monitor. Modern Battleships and Torpedo Boats. Holland
- Submarine Boat.
-
-
- CHAPTER XIII.
-
- PRINTING.
-
- Early Printing Press. Nicholson's Rotary Press. The Columbian and
- Washington Presses. Koenig's Rotary Steam Press. The Hoe Type Revolving
- Machine. Color Printing. Stereotyping. Paper Making. Wood Pulp. The
- Linotype. Plate Printing. Lithography.
-
-
- CHAPTER XIV.
-
- THE TYPEWRITER.
-
- Old English Typewriter of 1714. The Burt Typewriter of 1829. Progin's
- French Machine of 1833. Thurber's Printing Machine of 1843. The Beach
- Typewriter. The Sholes Typewriter, the First of the Modern Form,
- Commercially Developed into the Remington. The Caligraph, Smith-
- Premier, and Others.
-
-
- CHAPTER XV.
-
- THE SEWING MACHINE.
-
- Embroidery Machine the Forerunner of the Sewing Machine. Sewing
- Machine of Thomas Saint. The Thimonnier Wooden Machine. Greenough's
- Double-Pointed Needle. Bean's Stationary Needle. The Howe Sewing
- Machine. Bachelder's Continuous Feed. Improvements of Singer. Wilson's
- Rotary Hook, and Four-Motion Feed. The McKay Shoe Sewing Machine.
- Button Hole Machines. Carpet Sewing Machine. Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER XVI.
-
- THE REAPER.
-
- Early English Machines. Machine of Patrick Bell. The Hussey Reaper.
- McCormick's Reaper and Its Great Success. Rivalry Between the Two
- American Reapers. Self Rakers. Automatic Binders. Combined Steam
- Reaper and Threshing Machine. Great Wheat Fields of the West.
- Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER XVII.
-
- VULCANIZED RUBBER.
-
- Early Use of Caoutchouc by the Indians. Collection of the Gum. Early
- Experiments Failures. Goodyear's Persistent Experiments. Nathaniel
- Hayward's Application of Sulphur to the Gum. Goodyear's Process of
- Vulcanization. Introduction of his Process into Europe. Trials and
- Imprisonment for Debt. Rubber Shoe Industry. Great Extent and Variety
- of Applications. Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER XVIII.
-
- CHEMISTRY.
-
- Its Evolution as a Science. The Coal Tar Products. Fermenting and
- Brewing. Glucose, Gun Cotton, and Nitro-Glycerine. Electro-Chemistry.
- Fertilizers and Commercial Products. New Elements of the Nineteenth
- Century.
-
-
- CHAPTER XIX.
-
- FOOD AND DRINK.
-
- The Nature of Food. The Roller Mill. The Middlings Purifier. Culinary
- Utensils. Bread Machinery. Dairy Appliances. Centrifugal Milk Skimmer.
- The Canning Industry. Sterilization. Butchering and Dressing Meats.
- Oleomargarine. Manufacture of Sugar. The Vacuum Pan. Centrifugal
- Filter. Modern Dietetics and Patented Foods.
-
-
- CHAPTER XX.
-
- MEDICINE, SURGERY AND SANITATION.
-
- Discovery of Circulation of the Blood by Harvey. Vaccination by
- Jenner. Use of Anaesthetics the Great Step of Medical Progress of the
- Century. Materia Medica. Instruments. Schools of Medicine. Dentistry.
- Artificial Limbs. Digestion. Bacteriology, and Disease Germs.
- Antiseptic Surgery. House Sanitation.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXI.
-
- THE BICYCLE AND AUTOMOBILE.
-
- The Draisine, 1816. Michaux's Bicycle, 1855. United States Patent to
- Lallement and Carrol, 1866. Transition from "Vertical Fork" and "Star"
- to Modern "Safety." Pneumatic Tire. Automobile the Prototype of the
- Locomotive. Trevithick's Steam Road Carriage, 1801. The Locomobile of
- To-day. Gas Engine Automobiles of Pinkus, 1839; Selden, 1879; Duryea,
- Winton, and Others. Electric Automobiles a Development of Electric
- Locomotives as Early as 1836. Grounelle's Electric Automobile of 1852.
- The Columbia, Woods, and Riker Electric Carriages. Statistics.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXII.
-
- THE PHONOGRAPH.
-
- Invention of Phonograph by Edison. Scott's Phonautograph. Improvements
- of Bell and Tainter. The Graphophone. Library of Wax Cylinders.
- Berliner's Gramophone.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXIII.
-
- OPTICS.
-
- Early Telescopes. The Lick Telescope. The Grande Lunette. The Stereo-
- Binocular Field Glass. The Microscope. The Spectroscope. Polarization
- of Light. Kaleidoscope. Stereoscope. Range Finder. Kinetoscope, and
- Moving Pictures.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXIV.
-
- PHOTOGRAPHY.
-
- Experiments of Wedgewood and Davy. Niepce's Heliography. Daguerre and
- the Daguerreotype. Fox Talbot Makes First Proofs from Negatives. Sir
- John Herschel Introduces Glass Plates. The Collodion Process. Silver and
- Carbon Prints. Ambrotypes. Emulsions. Dry Plates. The Kodak Camera. The
- Platinotype. Photography in Colors. Panorama Cameras. Photo-engraving
- and Photo-lithography. Half Tone Printing.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXV.
-
- THE ROENTGEN OR X-RAYS.
-
- Geissler Tubes. Vacuum Tubes of Crookes, Hittorf, and Lenard. The
- Cathode Ray. Roentgen's Great Discovery in 1895. X-Ray Apparatus.
- Salvioni's Cryptoscope. Edison's Fluoroscope. The Fluorometer. Sun-
- burn from X-Rays. Uses of X-Rays.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXVI.
-
- GAS LIGHTING.
-
- Early Use of Natural Gas. Coal Gas Introduced by Murdoch. Winsor
- Organizes First Gas Company in 1804. Melville in United States Lights
- Beaver-Tail Lighthouse with Gas in 1817. Lowe's Process of Making
- Water Gas. Acetylene Gas. Carburetted Air. Pintsch Gas. Gas Meter.
- Otto Gas Engine. The Welsbach Burner.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXVII.
-
- CIVIL ENGINEERING.
-
- Great Bridges, Pneumatic Caissons, Tunnels. The Beach Tunnel Shield.
- Suez Canal. Dredges. The Lidgerwood Cable Ways. Canal Locks. Artesian
- Wells. Compressed-Air Rock Drills. Blasting. Mississippi Jetties. Iron
- and Steel Buildings. Eiffel Tower. Washington's Monument. The United
- States Capitol.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXVIII.
-
- WOODWORKING.
-
- Early Machines of Sir Samuel Bentham. Evolution of the Saw. Circular
- Saw. Hammering to Tension. Steam Feed for Saw Mill Carriage. Quarter
- Sawing. The Band Saw. Planing Machines. The Woodworth Planer. The
- Woodbury Yielding Pressure Bar. The Universal Woodworker. The
- Blanchard Lathe. Mortising Machines. Special Woodworking Machines.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXIX.
-
- METAL WORKING.
-
- Early Iron Furnace. Operations of Lord Dudley, Abraham Darby, and
- Henry Cort. Neilson's Hot Blast. Great Blast Furnaces of Modern Times.
- The Puddling Furnace. Bessemer Steel and the Converter. Open Hearth
- Steel. Regenerative Furnace. Siemens-Martin Process. Forging Armor
- Plate. Making Horse Shoes. Screws and Special Machines. Electric
- Welding, Annealing and Tempering. Coating with Metal. Metal Founding.
- Barbed Wire Machines. Making Nails, Pins, etc. Making Shot. Alloys.
- Making Aluminum, and Metallurgy of Rarer Metals. The Cyanide Process.
- Electric Concentrator.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXX.
-
- FIRE ARMS AND EXPLOSIVES.
-
- The Cannon, the Most Ancient of Fire Arms. Muzzle and Breech Loaders
- of the Sixteenth Century. The Armstrong Gun. The Rodman, Dahlgren, and
- Parrott Guns. Breech-Loading Ordnance. Rapid Fire Breech-Loading
- Rifles. Disappearing Gun. Gatling Gun. Dynamite Gun. The Colt, and
- Smith & Wesson Revolvers. German Automatic Pistol. Breech-Loading
- Small Arms. Magazine Guns. The Lee, Krag-Jorgensen, and Mauser Rifles.
- Hammerless Guns. Rebounding Locks. Gun Cotton. Nitro Glycerine, and
- Smokeless Powder. Mines and Torpedoes.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXXI.
-
- TEXTILES.
-
- Spinning and Weaving an Ancient Art. Hargreaves' Spinning Jenny.
- Arkwright's Roll-Drawing Spinning Machine. Crompton's Mule Spinner.
- The Cotton Gin. Ring Spinning. The Rabbeth Spindle. John Kay's Flying
- Shuttle and Robt. Kay's Drop Box. Cartwright's Power Loom. The
- Jacquard Loom. Crompton's Fancy Loom. Bigelow's Carpet Looms. Lyall
- Positive Motion Loom. Knitting Machines. Cloth Pressing Machinery.
- Artificial Silk. Mercerized Cloth.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXXII.
-
- ICE MACHINES.
-
- General Principles. Freezing Mixtures. Perkins' Ice Machine, 1834.
- Pictet's Apparatus. Carre's Ammonia Absorption Process. Direct
- Compression, and Can System. The Holden Ice Machine. Skating Rinks.
- Windhausen's Apparatus for Cooling and Ventilating Ships.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXXIII.
-
- LIQUID AIR.
-
- Liquefaction of Gases by Northmore--1805, Faraday--1823, Bussy--1824,
- Thilorier--1834, and others. Liquefaction of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Air,
- by Pictet and Cailletet in 1877. Self-Intensification of Cold by
- Siemens in 1857, and Windhausen in 1870. Operations of Dewar,
- Wroblewski, and Olszewski. Self-Intensifying Processes of Solvay,
- Tripler, Linde, Hampson, and Ostergren and Berger. Liquid Air
- Experiments and Uses.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXXIV.
-
- MINOR INVENTIONS,
-
- AND
-
- Patents of Principal Countries of the World.
-
-
- CHAPTER XXXV.
-
- EPILOGUE.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-THE PERSPECTIVE VIEW.
-
-
-Standing on the threshold of the Twentieth Century, and looking back a
-hundred years, the Nineteenth Century presents in the field of invention
-a magnificent museum of thoughts crystallized and made immortal, not as
-passive gems of nature, but as potent, active, useful agencies of man.
-The philosophical mind is ever accustomed to regard all stages of growth
-as proceeding by slow and uniform processes of evolution, but in the
-field of invention the Nineteenth Century has been unique. It has been
-something more than a merely normal growth or natural development. It
-has been a gigantic tidal wave of human ingenuity and resource, so
-stupendous in its magnitude, so complex in its diversity, so profound in
-its thought, so fruitful in its wealth, so beneficent in its results,
-that the mind is strained and embarrassed in its effort to expand to a
-full appreciation of it. Indeed, the period seems a grand climax of
-discovery, rather than an increment of growth. It has been a splendid,
-brilliant campaign of brains and energy, rising to the highest
-achievement amid the most fertile resources, and conducted by the
-strongest and best equipment of modern thought and modern strength.
-
-The great works of the ancients are in the main mere monuments of the
-patient manual labor of myriads of workers, and can only rank with the
-buildings of the diatom and coral insect. Not so with modern
-achievement. The last century has been peculiarly an age of ideas and
-conservation of energy, materialized in practical embodiment as
-labor-saving inventions, often the product of a single mind, and
-partaking of the sacred quality of creation.
-
-The old word of creation is, that God breathed into the clay the breath
-of life. In the new world of invention mind has breathed into matter,
-and a new and expanding creation unfolds itself. The speculative
-philosophy of the past is but a too empty consolation for short-lived,
-busy man, and, seeing with the eye of science the possibilities of
-matter, he has touched it with the divine breath of thought and made a
-new world.
-
-When the Nineteenth Century registered its advent in history, the world
-of invention was a babe still in its swaddling clothes, but, with a
-consciousness of coming power, was beginning to stretch its strong
-young arms into the tremendous energy of its life. James Watt had
-invented the steam engine. Eli Whitney had given us the cotton gin. John
-Gutenberg had made his printing type. Franklin had set up his press. The
-telescope had suggested the possibilities of ethereal space, the compass
-was already the mariner's best friend, and gunpowder had given proof of
-its deadly agency, but inventive genius was still groping by the light
-of a tallow candle. Even up to the beginning of this century so strong a
-hold had superstition on the human mind, that inventions were almost
-synonymous with the black arts, and the struggling genius had not only
-to contend with the natural laws and the thousand and one expected
-difficulties that hedge the path of the inventor, but had also to
-overcome the far greater obstacles of ignorant fear and bigoted
-prejudice. A labor-saving machine was looked upon askance as the enemy
-of the working man, and many an earnest inventor, after years of arduous
-thought and painstaking labor, saw his cherished model broken up and his
-hopes forever blasted by the animosity of his fellow men. But with the
-Nineteenth Century a new era has dawned. The legitimate results of
-inventions have been realized in larger incomes, shorter hours of labor,
-and lives so much richer in health, comfort, happiness, and usefulness,
-that to-day the inventor is a benefactor whom the world delights to
-honor. So crowded is the busy life of modern civilization with the
-evidences of his work, that it is impossible to open one's eyes without
-seeing it on every hand, woven into the very fabric of daily existence.
-It is easy to lose sight of the wonderful when once familiar with it,
-and we usually fail to give the full measure of positive appreciation to
-the great things of this great age. They burst upon our vision at first
-like flashing meteors; we marvel at them for a little while, and then we
-accept them as facts, which soon become so commonplace and so fused into
-the common life as to be only noticed by their omission.
-
-To appreciate them let us briefly contrast the conditions of to-day with
-those of a hundred years ago. This is no easy task, for the comparison
-not only involves the experiences of two generations, but it is like the
-juxtaposition of a star with the noonday sun, whose superior brilliancy
-obliterates the lesser light. But reverse the wheels of progress, and
-let us make a quick run of one hundred years into the past, and what are
-our experiences? Before we get to our destination we find the wheels
-themselves beginning to thump and jolt, and the passage becomes more
-difficult, more uncomfortable, and so much slower. We are no longer
-gliding along in a luxurious palace car behind a magnificent locomotive,
-traveling on steel rails, at sixty miles an hour, but we find ourselves
-nearing the beginning of the Nineteenth Century in a rickety, rumbling,
-dusty stage-coach. Pause! and consider the change for a moment in some
-of its broader aspects. First, let us examine the present more closely,
-for the average busy man, never looking behind him for comparisons, does
-not fully appreciate or estimate at its real value the age in which he
-lives. There are to-day (statistics of 1898), 445,064 miles of railway
-tracks in the world. This would build seventeen different railway
-tracks, of two rails each, around the entire world, or would girdle
-mother earth with thirty-four belts of steel. If extended in straight
-lines, it would build a track of two rails to the moon, and more than a
-hundred thousand miles beyond it. The United States has nearly half of
-the entire mileage of the world, and gets along with 36,746 locomotives,
-nearly as many passenger coaches, and more than a million and a quarter
-of freight cars, which latter, if coupled together, would make nearly
-three continuous trains reaching across the American continent from the
-Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The movement of passenger trains is
-equivalent to dispatching thirty-seven trains per day around the world,
-and the freight train movement is in like manner equal to dispatching
-fifty-three trains a day around the world. Add to this the railway
-business controlled by other countries, and one gets some idea of how
-far the stage-coach has been left behind. To-day we eat supper in one
-city, and breakfast in another so many hundreds of miles east or west as
-to be compelled to set our watches to the new meridian of longitude in
-order to keep our engagement. But railroads and steam-cars constitute
-only one of the stirring elements of modern civilization. As we make the
-backward run of one hundred years we have passed by many milestones of
-progress. Let us see if we can count some of them as they disappear
-behind us. We quickly lose the telephone, phonograph and graphophone. We
-no longer see the cable-cars or electric railways. The electric lights
-have gone out. The telegraph disappears. The sewing machine, reaper, and
-thresher have passed away, and so also have all india-rubber goods. We
-no longer see any photographs, photo-engravings, photolithographs, or
-snap-shot cameras. The wonderful octuple web perfecting printing press;
-printing, pasting, cutting, folding, and counting newspapers at the rate
-of 96,000 per hour, or 1,600 per minute, shrinks at the beginning of the
-century into an insignificant prototype. We lose all planing and
-wood-working machinery, and with it the endless variety of sashes,
-doors, blinds, and furniture in unlimited variety. There are no
-gas-engines, no passenger elevators, no asphalt pavement, no steam fire
-engine, no triple-expansion steam engine, no Giffard injector, no
-celluloid articles, no barbed wire fences, no time-locks for safes, no
-self-binding harvesters, no oil nor gas wells, no ice machines nor cold
-storage. We lose air engines, stem-winding watches, cash-registers and
-cash-carriers, the great suspension bridges, and tunnels, the Suez
-Canal, iron frame buildings, monitors and heavy ironclads, revolvers,
-torpedoes, magazine guns and Gatling guns, linotype machines, all
-practical typewriters, all pasteurizing, knowledge of microbes or
-disease germs, and sanitary plumbing, water-gas, soda water fountains,
-air brakes, coal-tar dyes and medicines, nitro-glycerine, dynamite and
-guncotton, dynamo electric machines, aluminum ware, electric
-locomotives, Bessemer steel with its wonderful developments, ocean
-cables, enameled iron ware, Welsbach gas burners, electric storage
-batteries, the cigarette machine, hydraulic dredges, the roller mills,
-middlings purifiers and patent-process flour, tin can machines, car
-couplings, compressed air drills, sleeping cars, the dynamite gun, the
-McKay shoe machine, the circular knitting machine, the Jacquard loom,
-wood pulp for paper, fire alarms, the use of anaesthetics in surgery,
-oleomargarine, street sweepers, Artesian wells, friction matches, steam
-hammers, electro-plating, nail machines, false teeth, artificial limbs
-and eyes, the spectroscope, the Kinetoscope or moving pictures,
-acetylene gas, X-ray apparatus, horseless carriages, and--but, enough!
-the reader exclaims, and indeed it is not pleasant to contemplate the
-loss. The negative conditions of that period extend into such an
-appalling void that we stop short, shrinking from the thought of what it
-would mean to modern civilization to eliminate from its life these
-potent factors of its existence.
-
-Returning to the richness and fullness of the present life, we shall
-first note chronologically the milestones and finger boards which mark
-this great tramway of progress, and afterward consider separately the
-more important factors of progress.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-CHRONOLOGY OF LEADING INVENTIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
-
-
-1800--Volta's Chemical Battery for producing Electricity. Louis Robert's
-Machine for Making Continuous Webs of Paper.
-
-1801--Trevithick's Steam Coach (first automobile). Brunel's Mortising
-Machine. Jacquard's Pattern Loom. First Fire Proof Safe by Richard
-Scott. Columbium discovered by Hatchett.
-
-1802--Trevithick and Vivian's British patent for Running Coaches by
-Steam. Charlotte Dundas (Steamboat) towed canal Boats on the Clyde.
-Tantalum discovered by Ekeberg. First Photographic Experiments by
-Wedgewood and Davy. Bramah's Planing Machine.
-
-1803--Carpue's Experiments on Therapeutic Application of Electricity.
-Iridium and Osmium discovered by Tenant, and Cerium by Berzelius. Wm.
-Horrocks applies Steam to the Loom.
-
-1804--Rhodium and Palladium discovered by Wollaston. First Steam Railway
-and Locomotive by Richard Trevithick. Capt. John Stevens applies twin
-Screw Propellers in Steam Navigation. Winsor takes British patent for
-Illuminating Gas, lights Lyceum Theatre, and organizes First Gas
-Company. Lucas' process making Malleable Iron Castings.
-
-1805--Life Preserver invented by John Edwards of London. Electro-plating
-invented by Brugnatelli.
-
-1806--Jeandeau's Knitting Machine.
-
-1807--First practical Steamboat between New York and Albany (Fulton's
-Clermont). Discovery of Potassium, Sodium and Boron by Davy. Forsyth's
-Percussion Lock for Guns.
-
-1808--Barium, Strontium, and Calcium discovered by Davy. Polarization of
-Light from Reflection by Malus. Voltaic arc discovered by Davy.
-
-1809--Sommering's Multi-wire Telegraphy.
-
-1810--System of Homoeopathy organized by Hahnemann.
-
-1811--Discovery of Metal Iodine by M. Courtois. Blenkinsop's Locomotive.
-Colored Polarization of Light by Arago. Thornton and Hall's Breech
-Loading Musket.
-
-1812--London the First City lighted by Gas. Ritter's Storage Battery.
-Schilling proposes use of Electricity to blow up mines. Zamboni's Dry
-Pile (prototype of dry battery).
-
-1813--Howard's British patent for Vacuum Pan for refining sugar.
-Hedley's Locomotive "Puffing Billy." Introduction of Stereotyping in the
-United States by David Bruce.
-
-1814--London Times printed by Koenig's rotary steam press. Stephenson's
-First Locomotive. Demologos built by Fulton (the first steam war
-vessel). Heliography by Niepce. Discovery of Cyanogen by Gay Lussac. The
-Kaleidoscope invented by Sir David Brewster.
-
-1815--Safety Lamp by Sir Humphrey Davy. Seidlitz Powders invented. Gas
-Meter by Clegg.
-
-1816--The "Draisine" Bicycle. Circular Knitting Machine by Brunel.
-
-1817--Discovery of Selenium by Berzelius, Cadmium by Stromeyer, and
-Lithium by Arfvedson. Hunt's Pin Machine.
-
-1818--Brunel's patent Subterranean and Submarine tunnels.
-Electro-Magnetism discovered by Oersted of Copenhagen.
-
-1819--American Steamer Savannah from New York first to cross Atlantic.
-Laennec discovers Auscultation and invents Stethoscope. Blanchard's
-Lathe for turning Irregular Forms.
-
-1820--Electro-Magnetic Multiplier by Schweigger. Discoveries in
-Electro-magnetism by Ampere and Arago. Bohnenberg's Electroscope.
-Discovery of Quinine by Pelletier and Caventou. Malam's Gas Meter.
-
-1821--Faraday converts Electric Current into Mechanical Motion.
-
-1822--Babbage Calculation Engine.
-
-1823--Liquefaction and Solidification of Gases by Faraday, and
-foundation of ammonia absorption ice machine laid by him. Seebeck
-discovers Thermo-electricity. Silicon discovered by Berzelius.
-
-1824--Discovery of metal Zirconium by Berzelius. Wright's Pin Machine.
-
-1825--First Passenger Railway in the world opened between Stockton and
-Darlington. Sturgeon invents prototype of Electro Magnet. Beaumont's
-discoveries in Digestion (Alexis San Martin 1825-32).
-
-1826--Discovery of Bromine by M. Balard. Barlow's Electrical Spur Wheel.
-First Railroad in United States built near Quincy, Mass.
-
-1827--Aluminum reduced by Wohler. Ohm's Law of Electrical Resistance.
-Hackworth's Improvements in Locomotive. Friction Matches by John
-Walker.
-
-1828--Neilson's Hot Blast for Smelting Iron. Professor Henry invents the
-Spool Electro Magnet. Tubular Locomotive Boiler by Seguin. First
-Artificial production of organic compounds (urea) by Wohler. Thorium
-discovered by Berzelius. Yttrium and Glucinum discovered by Wohler.
-Nicol's prism for Polarized Light. Woodworth's wood planer. Spinning
-Ring invented by John Thorp.
-
-1829--Becquerel's Double Fluid Galvanic Battery. George Stephenson's
-Locomotive, "Rocket," takes prizes of Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
-Importation of "Stourbridge Lion," the first locomotive to run in the
-United States. Daguerreotype invented. Discovery of Magnesium by Bussey.
-
-1830--Vanadium discovered by Sefstroem. Abbe Dal Negro's Electrically
-operated pendulum. Ericsson's Steam Fire Engine.
-
-1831--Faraday discovers Magnetic Induction. Professor Henry telegraphs
-signals. Professor Henry invents his Electric Motor. Locomotive "John
-Bull" put in service on Camden and Amboy R. R. Chloroform discovered by
-Guthrie. McCormick first experiments with Reaper.
-
-1832--Professor Morse conceives the idea of Electric Telegraph. First
-Magneto-Electric Machines by Saxton in United States and Pixii in
-France. Sturgeon's Rotary Electric Motor. Baldwin's first locomotive,
-"Old Ironsides," built. Link Motion for Locomotive Engine invented by
-James. Chloral-hydrate discovered by Liebig.
-
-1833--Steam Whistle adopted by Stephenson. Hussey's Reaper patented.
-
-1834--Jacobi's Rotary Electric Motor. Henry Bessemer electro-plates lead
-castings with copper. Faraday demonstrates relation of chemical and
-electrical force. McCormick Reaper patented. Carbolic Acid discovered by
-Runge. Perkins' Ice Machine.
-
-1835--Forbes proves the absence of heat in Moonlight. Burden's horse
-shoe Machine.
-
-1836--The Daniell Constant Battery invented. Acetylene Gas produced by
-Edmond Davy. Colt's Revolver.
-
-1837--Cooke and Wheatstone's British patent for Electric telegraph.
-Steinheil discovered feasibility of using the earth for return section
-of electric circuit. Davenport's Electric Motor. Spencer's experiments
-in electrotyping. Galvanized Iron invented by Craufurd.
-
-1838--Professor Morse's French patent for Telegraph. Jacobi's
-Galvano-plastic process for making Electrotype Printing Plates.
-Reflecting Stereoscope by Wheatstone. Dry Gas Meter by Defries.
-
-1839--Wreck of Royal George blown up by Electro Blasting. Jacobi builds
-first Electrically propelled Boat. Fox Talbot makes Photo Prints from
-Negatives. Professors Draper and Morse make first Photographic
-Portraits. Mungo Ponton applies Bichromate of Potash in Photography.
-Goodyear discovers process of Vulcanizing Rubber. Lanthanum and Didymium
-discovered by Mosander. Babbit Metal invented.
-
-1840--Professor Morse's United States patent for Electric Telegraph.
-Professor Grove makes first Incandescent Electric Lamp. Celestial
-Photography by Professor Draper.
-
-1841--Artesian well bored at Grenelle, Paris. Sickel's Steam Cut-off.
-Talbotype Photos. M. Triger invents Pneumatic Caissons.
-
-1842--First production of Illuminating Gas from water (water gas) by M.
-Selligue. Robt. Davidson builds Electric Locomotive. Nasmyth patents
-Steam Hammer.
-
-1843--Joule's demonstration as to the Nature of Force. Erbium and
-Terbium discovered by Mosander. The Thames Tunnel Opened.
-
-1844--First Telegraphic Message sent by Morse from Washington to
-Baltimore. Application Nitrous Oxide Gas as an Anaesthetic by Dr. Wells.
-
-1845--Ruthenium discovered by Klaws. The Starr-King Incandescent
-Electric Lamp. The Hoe Type Revolving Machine.
-
-1846--House's Printing Telegraph. Howe's Sewing Machine. Suez Canal
-Started (fourteen years building). Crusell of St. Petersburgh invents
-Electric Cautery. Use of Ether as Anaesthetic by Dr. Morton. Artificial
-Legs. Discovery of Planet Neptune. Sloan patents Gimlet Pointed Screw.
-Gun Cotton discovered by Schoenbein.
-
-1847--Chloroform introduced by Dr. Simpson. Nitro-Glycerine discovered
-by Sobrero. Time-Locks invented by Savage.
-
-1848--Discovery of Satellites of Saturn by Lassell. Bain's Chemical
-Telegraph. Bakewell's Fac-Simile Telegraph.
-
-1849--Bourdon's Pressure Gauge. Lenticular Stereoscope by Brewster.
-Hibbert's Latch Needle for Knitting Machine. Corliss Engine.
-
-1850--First Submarine Cable--Dover to Calais. Collodion Process in
-Photography. Mercerizing Cloth. American Machine-made Watches.
-
-1851--Dr. Page's Electric Locomotive. The Ruhmkorff Coil. Scott Archer's
-Collodion Process in Photography. Seymour's Self-Raker for Harvesters.
-Helmholtz invents Opthalmoscope. Maynard Breech Loading Rifle.
-
-1852--Channing and Farmer Fire Alarm Telegraph. Fox Talbot first uses
-reticulated screen for Half Tone Printing.
-
-1853--Gintl's Duplex Telegraph invented. Electric Lamps devised by
-Foucault and Duboscq. Watt and Burgess Soda Process for Making Wood
-Pulp.
-
-1854--Wilson's Four Motion Feed for Sewing Machines. Melhuish invents
-the Photographic Roll Films. Hermann's Diamond Drill. Smith and Wesson
-Magazine Firearm (Foundation of the Winchester).
-
-1855--Bessemer Process of Making Steel. Hjorth invents Dynamo Electric
-Machine. Ericsson's Air Engine. Niagara Suspension Bridge. Dr. J. M.
-Taupenot invents Dry Plate Photography. The Michaux Bicycle.
-
-1856--Hughes Printing Telegraph. Alliance Magneto Electric Machine.
-Woodruff Sleeping Car. First commercial Aniline Dyes by Perkins. Siemens
-Regenerative Furnace.
-
-1857--Rogues' Gallery established in New York. Introduction of Iron
-Floor Beams in building Cooper Institute. Siemens describes principle of
-Self Intensification of Cold (now used in ice and liquid air machines).
-
-1858--Phelps Printing Telegraph invented. First Atlantic Cable Laid.
-Paper pulp from Wood by Voelter. First use of Electric Light in Light
-House at South Foreland. Giffard Steam Injector. Gardner patents first
-Underground Cable Car System.
-
-1859--Discovery Coal Oil in United States. Moses G. Farmer subdivides
-Electric Current through a number of Electric Lamps, and lights first
-dwelling by Electricity. Great Eastern launched. Osborne perfects modern
-process of Photolithography. Professors Kirchhoff and Bunsen map Solar
-Spectrum, and establish Spectrum Analysis.
-
-1860--Rubidium and Caesium discovered by Bunsen. Gaston Plante's Storage
-Battery. Reis' Crude Telephone. Thallium discovered by Crookes, and
-Indium by Reich and Richter. Spencer and Henry Magazine Rifles. Carre's
-Ammonia Absorption Ice Machine.
-
-1861--McKay Shoe Sewing Machine. Calcium Carbide produced by Wohler.
-Col. Green invents Drive Well. Otis Passenger Elevator. First Barbed
-Wire Fence.
-
-1862--Ericsson's Iron Clad Turret Monitor. Emulsions and improvements in
-Dry Plate Photography by Russell and Sayce. The Gatling Gun. Timby's
-Revolving Turret.
-
-1863--Schultz white gunpowder.
-
-1864--Nobel's Explosive Gelatine. Rubber Dental Plates. Cabin John
-(Washington Aqueduct) Bridge finished (longest masonry span in the
-world).
-
-1865--Louis Pasteur's work in Bacteriology begun. Martin's Process of
-making Steel.
-
-1866--Wilde's Dynamo Electric Machine. Burleigh's Compressed Air Rock
-Drill. Whitehead Torpedo.
-
-1867--Siemens' Dynamo Electric Machine. Dynamite Invented. Tilghman's
-Sulphite Process for making Wood Pulp.
-
-1868--Brickill's Water Heater for Steam Fire Engines. Moncrieff's
-Disappearing Gun Carriage. Oleomargarine invented by Mege. Sholes
-Typewriter.
-
-1869--Suez Canal Opened. Pacific Railway Completed. First Westinghouse
-Air-Brakes.
-
-1870--The Gramme Dynamo Electric Machine. Windhausen Refrigerating
-Machines. Beleaguered Paris communicates with outer world through
-Micro-Photographs. Hailer's Rebounding Gun Lock. Dittmar's Gunpowder.
-
-1871--Hoe's Web Perfecting Press set up in Office New York Tribune. The
-Locke Grain Binder. Bridge Work in Dentistry. Mount Cenis Tunnel opened
-for traffic. Phosphorus Bronze. Ingersoll Compressed Air Rock Drill.
-
-1872--Stearns perfects Duplex Telegraph. Westinghouse Improved automatic
-Air Brake. Lyall Positive Motion Loom.
-
-1873--Janney Automatic Car Coupler. Oleomargarine patented in United
-States by Mege.
-
-1874--Edison's Quadruplex Telegraph. Gorham's Twine Binder for
-Harvesters. Barbed Wire Machines. St. Louis Bridge finished.
-
-1875--Lowe's patent for Water Gas (illuminating gas made from water).
-Roller Mills and Middlings Purifier for making flour. Gallium discovered
-by Boisbaudran. Pictet Ice Machine. Gamgee's Skating Rinks. First Cash
-Carrier for Stores.
-
-1876--Alexander Graham Bell's Speaking Telephone. Hydraulic Dredges.
-Cigarette Machinery. Photographing by Electric Light by Vander Weyde.
-Edison's Electric Pen. Steam Feed for Saw Mill Carriages. Introduction
-of Cable Cars by Hallidie.
-
-1877--Phonograph invented by Edison. Otto Gas Engine. Jablochkoff
-Electric Candle. Sawyer-Man Electric Lamp. Berliner's Telephone
-Transmitter of variable resistance (pat. Nov. 17, '91). Edison's Carbon
-Microphone (pat. May 3, '92). Discovery of Satellites of Mars by
-Professor Asaph Hall, and its so-called Canals by Schiaparelli.
-Liquefaction of Oxygen, Nitrogen and Air by Pictet and Cailletet.
-
-1878--Development of Remington Typewriter. Edison invents Carbon
-Filament for Incandescent Electric Lamp. Gelatino-Bromide Emulsions in
-Photography. Ytterbium discovered by Marignac. Birkenhead Yielding
-Spinning Spindle Bearing. Gessner Cloth Press.
-
-1879--Dr. Siemens' Electric Railway at Berlin. Mississippi Jetties
-completed by Capt. Eads. Samarium discovered by Boisbaudran, Scandium by
-Nilson, and Thulium by Cleve. The Lee Magazine Rifle.
-
-1880--Faure's Storage Battery. Eberth and Koch discover Bacillus of
-Typhoid Fever, and Sternberg the Bacillus of Pneumonia. Edison's
-Magnetic Ore Concentrator. Greener's Hammerless Gun. Rabbeth Spinning
-Spindle patented.
-
-1881--Telegraphing by Induction by Wm. W. Smith. Blake Telephone
-Transmitter. Reece Button Hole Machine. Rack-a-rock (explosive)
-patented.
-
-1882--Bacillus of Tuberculosis identified by Koch, and Bacillus of
-Hydrophobia by Pasteur. St. Gothard Tunnel opened for traffic.
-
-1883--Brooklyn Suspension Bridge Completed.
-
-1884--Antipyrene. Mergenthaler's first Linotype Printing Machine
-invented. Bacillus of Cholera identified by Koch, Bacillus of Diphtheria
-by Loeffler, and Bacillus of Lockjaw by Nicolaier.
-
-1885--Cowles' Process of Manufacturing Aluminum. First Electric Railway
-in America installed between Baltimore and Hampden. Neodymium and
-Praseodymium discovered by Welsbach. Welsbach Gas Burner invented.
-Blowing up of Flood Rock, New York Harbor. "Bellite" produced by Lamm,
-and "Melinite" by Turpin.
-
-1886--Graphophone invented. Electric Welding by Elihu Thomson. Gadolinum
-discovered by Marignac, and Germanium by Winkler.
-
-1887--McArthur and Forrest's Cyanide Process of Obtaining Gold. Tesla's
-System of Polyphase Currents.
-
-1888--Electrocution of Criminals adopted in New York State. Harvey's
-Process of Annealing Armor Plate. De Laval's Rotary Steam Turbine.
-"Kodak" Snap-Shot Camera. Lick Telescope. De Chardonnet's Process of
-Making Artificial Silk.
-
-1889--Nickel Steel. Hall's Process of Making Aluminum. Dudley Dynamite
-Gun. "Cordite" (Smokeless Powder) produced by Abel and Dewar.
-
-1890--Mergenthaler's Improved Linotype Machine. Photography in Colors.
-The Great Forth Bridge finished. Krag-Jorgensen Magazine Rifle.
-
-1891--Parsons' Rotary Steam Turbine. The Northrup Loom.
-
-1892--The explosive "Indurite" invented by Professor Munroe.
-
-1893--Acheson's process for making Carborundum. The Yerkes Telescope.
-Edison's Kinetoscope. Production of Calcium Carbide in Electric Furnace
-by Willson.
-
-1894--Discovery of element Argon by Lord Rayleigh and Professor Ramsey.
-Thorite produced by Bawden.
-
-1895--X-Rays discovered and applied by Roentgen. Acetylene Gas from
-Calcium Carbide by Willson. Krupp Armor Plate. Linde's Liquid air
-apparatus.
-
-1896--Marconi's System of Wireless Telegraphy. Buffington-Crozier
-Disappearing Gun.
-
-1897--Schlick's System of Balancing Marine Engines. Discovery of Krypton
-by Ramsey and Travers.
-
-1898--Horry and Bradley's process of making Calcium Carbide. Discovery
-of Neon and Metargon by Ramsey and Travers; Coronium by Nasini; Xenon by
-Ramsey; Monium by Crookes, and Etherion by Brush. Mercerizing Cloth
-under tension to render it Silky.
-
-1899--Marconi Telegraphs without wire across the English Channel.
-Oceanic launched, the largest steamer ever built.
-
-1900--The Grande Lunette Telescope of Paris Exposition.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.
-
- THE VOLTAIC PILE--DANIELL'S BATTERY--USE OF CONDUCTING WIRE BY
- WEBER--STEINHEIL EMPLOYS EARTH AS RETURN CIRCUIT--PROF. HENRY'S
- ELECTRO MAGNET, AND FIRST TELEGRAPHIC EXPERIMENT--PROF. MORSE'S
- TELEGRAPHIC CODE AND REGISTER--FIRST LINE BETWEEN WASHINGTON
- AND BALTIMORE--BAIN'S CHEMICAL TELEGRAPH--GINTL'S DUPLEX
- TELEGRAPH--EDISON'S QUADRUPLEX--HOUSE'S PRINTING TELEGRAPH--FAC
- SIMILE TELEGRAPHS--CHANNING AND FARMER FIRE ALARM--TELEGRAPHING BY
- INDUCTION--WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY BY MARCONI--STATISTICS.
-
-
-In the effort to lengthen out the limited span of life into a greater
-record of results, time becomes an object of economy. To save time is to
-live long, and this in a pre-eminent degree is accomplished by the
-telegraph. Of all the inventions which man has called into existence to
-aid him in the fulfillment of his destiny, none so closely resembles man
-himself in his dual quality of body and soul as the telegraph. It too
-has a body and soul. We see the wire and the electro-magnet, but not the
-vital principle which animates it. Without its subtile, pulsating,
-intangible spirit, it is but dead matter. But vitalized with its
-immortal soul it assumes the quality of animated existence, and through
-its agency thought is extended beyond the limitations of time and space,
-and flashes through air and sea around the world. Its moving principle
-flows more silently than a summer's zephyr, and yet it rises at times to
-an angry and deadly crash in the lightning stroke. At once powerful and
-elusive, it remained for Professor Morse to capture this wild steed,
-and, taming it, place it in the permanent service of man. On May 24,
-1844, there went over the wires between Washington and Baltimore the
-first message--"What hath God wrought?" This was both prayer and praise,
-and no more lofty recognition of the divine power and beneficence could
-have been made. It was indeed the work of God made manifest in the hands
-of His children.
-
-Popular estimation has always credited Prof. Morse with the invention of
-the telegraph, but to ascribe to him all the praise would do great
-injustice to many other worthy workers in this field, some of whom are
-regarded by the best judges to be entitled to equal praise.
-
-The practical telegraph as originally used is resolvable into four
-essential elements, viz., the battery, the conducting wire, the
-electro-magnet, and the receiving and transmitting instruments.
-
-The development of the battery began with Galvani in 1790, and Volta in
-1800. Galvani discovered that a frog's legs would exhibit violent
-muscular contraction when its exposed nerves were touched with one metal
-and its muscles were touched with another metal, the two metals being
-connected. The effect was due to an electric current generated and
-acting with contractile effect on the muscles of the frog's legs.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
-
-From this phenomenon, the chemical action of acids upon metals and the
-production of an electric current were observed, and the voltaic pile
-was invented. This consisted of alternate discs of copper and zinc,
-separated by layers of cloth steeped in an acidulated solution. This was
-the invention of Volta. From this grew the Daniell battery, invented in
-1836 by Prof. Daniell of London, quickly followed by those of Grove,
-Smee, and others. These batteries were more constant or uniform in the
-production of electricity, were free from odors, and did not require
-frequent cleaning, as did the plates of the voltaic pile, which were
-important results for telegraphic purposes. The Daniell battery in its
-original form employed an acidulated solution of sulphate of copper in a
-copper cell containing a porous cup, and a cylinder of amalgamated zinc
-in the porous cup and surrounded by a weak acid solution. In the
-illustration, which shows a slightly modified form, a cruciform rod of
-zinc within a porous cup is surrounded by a copper cell, the whole being
-enclosed within a glass jar.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 2.--DANIELL'S BATTERY.]
-
-The second element of the telegraph--the conducting wire--was scarcely
-an invention in itself, and the fact that electricity would act at a
-distance through a metal conductor had been observed many years before
-the Morse telegraph was invented. In 1823, however, Weber discovered
-that a copper wire which he had carried over the houses and church
-steeples of Goettingen from the observatory to the cabinet of Natural
-Philosophy, required no special insulation. This was an important
-observation in the practical construction of telegraph lines. One of
-even greater importance, however, was that of Prof. Steinheil, of
-Munich, who, in 1837, made the discovery of the practicability of using
-the earth as one-half, or the return section, of the electric conductor.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 3.--PROF. HENRY'S INTENSITY MAGNET.]
-
-The third element of the telegraph is the electro-magnet. This, and its
-arrangement as a relay in a local circuit, was a most important
-invention, and contributed quite as much to the success of the telegraph
-as did the inventions of Prof. Morse. It may be well to say that an
-electro-magnet is a magnet which attracts an iron armature when an
-electric current is sent through its coil of wire, and loses its
-attractive force when the circuit is cut off, thereby rendering it
-possible to produce mechanical effects at a distance through the agency
-of electrical impulses only. For the electro-magnet the world is chiefly
-indebted to Prof. Joseph Henry, formerly of Princeton, N. J., but later
-of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1828 he invented the energetic modern
-form of electro-magnet with silk covered wire wound in a series of
-crossed layers to form a helix of multiple layers around a central soft
-iron core, and in 1831 succeeded in making practical the production of
-mechanical effects at a distance, by the tapping of a bell by a rod
-deflected by one of his electro-magnets. This experiment may be
-considered the pioneer step of the telegraph.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 4.
-
-HENRY.
-
-STURGEON.
-]
-
-Great as was the work of Prof. Henry, he must share the honors with a
-number of prior inventors who made the electro-magnet possible.
-Electro-magnetism, the underlying principle of the electro-magnet, was
-first discovered in 1819 by Prof. Oersted, of Copenhagen. In 1820
-Schweigger added the multiplier. Arago in the same year discovered that
-a steel rod was magnetized when placed across a wire carrying an
-electric current, and that iron filings adhered to a wire carrying a
-voltaic current and dropped off when the current was broken. M. Ampere
-substituted a helix for the straight wire, and Sturgeon, of England, in
-1825 made the real prototype of the electro-magnet by winding a piece of
-bare copper wire in a single coil around a varnished and insulated iron
-core of a horse shoe form, but the powerful and effective electro-magnet
-of Prof. Henry is to-day an essential part of the telegraph, is in
-universal use, and is the foundation of the entire electrical art. It is
-unfortunate that Prof. Henry did not perpetuate the records of his
-inventions in patents, to which he was opposed, for there is good reason
-to believe that he was also the original inventor of the important
-arrangement of the electro-magnet as a relay in local circuit, and other
-features, which have been claimed by other parties upon more enduring
-evidence, but perhaps with less right of priority.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 5.--MORSE'S FIRST MODEL PENDULUM INSTRUMENT.]
-
-The fourth and great final addition to the telegraph which crowned it
-with success was the Morse register and alphabetical code, the invention
-of Prof. Samuel F. B. Morse, of Massachusetts. Prof. Morse's invention
-was made in 1832, while on board ship returning from Europe. He set up
-an experimental line in 1835, and got his French patent October 30,
-1838, and his first United States patent June 20, 1840, No. 1647. In
-1844 the United States Congress appropriated $30,000 to build a line
-from Baltimore to Washington, and on May 24, 1844, the notable message,
-"What Hath God wrought?" went over the wires.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 6.--THE MORSE CODE.]
-
-Morse's first model, his pendulum instrument of 1837, is illustrated in
-Fig. 5. A pendulum carrying a pencil was in constant contact with a
-strip of paper drawn beneath the pencil. As long as inactive the pencil
-made a straight line. The pendulum carried also an armature, and an
-electro-magnet was placed near the armature. A current passed through
-the magnet would draw the pendulum to one side. On being released the
-pendulum would return, and in this way zigzag markings, as shown at 4
-and 5, would be produced on the strip of paper, which formed the
-alphabet. A different alphabet, known as the Morse Code, was
-subsequently adopted by Morse, and in 1844 the receiving register shown
-at Fig. 7 was adopted, which finally assumed the form shown at Fig. 8.
-
-The alphabet consisted simply of an arrangement of dots and dashes in
-varying sequence. The register is an apparatus operated by the combined
-effects of a clock mechanism and electro-magnet. Under a roll, see Fig.
-8, a ribbon of paper is drawn by the clockwork. A lever having an
-armature on one end arranged over the poles of an electro-magnet,
-carries on the other end a point or stylus. When an electric impulse is
-sent over the line the electro-magnet attracts the armature, and the
-stylus on the other end of the lever is brought into contact with the
-paper strip, and makes an indented impression. A short impulse gives a
-dot, and a long impulse holds the stylus against the paper long enough
-to allow the clock mechanism to pull the paper under the stylus and make
-a dash. By the manipulation of a key for closing the electric circuit
-the short or long impulse may be sent, at the pleasure of the operator.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 7.--MORSE RECEIVER.]
-
-This constituted the completed invention of the telegraph, and on
-comparing the work of Profs. Henry and Morse, it is only fair to say
-that Prof. Henry's contribution to the telegraph is still in active use,
-while the Morse register has been practically abandoned, as no expert
-telegrapher requires the visible evidence of the code, but all rely now
-entirely upon the sound click of the electro-magnet placed in the local
-circuit and known as a sounder, the varying time lengths of gaps between
-the clicks serving every purpose of rapid and intelligent communication.
-The invention of the telegraph has been claimed for Steinheil, of
-Munich, and also for Cooke and Wheatstone, in England, but few will
-deny that it is to Prof. Morse's indefatigable energy and inventive
-skill, with the preliminary work of Prof. Henry, that the world to-day
-owes its great gift of the electric telegraph, and with this gift the
-world's great nervous forces have been brought into an intimate and
-sensitive sympathy.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 8.--PERFECTED MORSE REGISTER.]
-
-Whenever an invention receives the advertisement of public approval and
-commercial exploitation, the development of that invention along various
-lines follows rapidly, and so when practical telegraphic communication
-was solved by Henry, Morse, and others, further advances in various
-directions were made. Efforts to increase the rapidity in sending
-messages soon grew into practical success, and in 1848 _Bain's Chemical
-Telegraph_ was brought out. (U. S. Pats. No. 5,957, Dec. 5, 1848, and
-No. 6,328, April 17, 1849.) This employed perforated strips of paper to
-effect automatic transmission by contact made through the perforations
-in place of the key, while a chemically prepared paper at the opposite
-end of the line was discolored by the electric impulses to form the
-record. This was the pioneer of the automatic system which by later
-improvements is able to send over a thousand words a minute.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 9.--HOUSE PRINTING TELEGRAPH.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 10.--STOCK BROKER'S "TICKER," WITH GLASS COVER
-REMOVED.]
-
-In line with other efforts to increase the capacity of the wires, the
-_duplex telegraph_ was invented by Dr. William Gintl, of Austria, in
-1853, and was afterwards improved by Carl Frischen, of Hanover, and by
-Joseph B. Stearns, of Boston, Mass, who in 1872 perfected the duplex (U.
-S. Pats. No. 126,847, May 14, 1872, and No. 132,933, Nov. 12, 1872).
-This system doubles the capacity of the telegraphic wire, and its
-principle of action permits messages sent from the home station to the
-distant station to have no effect on the home station, but full effect
-on the distant station, so that the operators at the opposite ends of
-the line may both telegraph over the same wire, at the same time, in
-opposite directions. This system has been further enlarged by the
-quadruplex system of Edison, which was brought out in 1874 (and
-subsequently developed in U. S. Pat. No. 209,241, Oct. 22, 1878). This
-enabled four messages to be sent over the same wire at the same time,
-and is said to have increased the value of the Western Union wires
-$15,000,000.
-
-In 1846 Royal C. House invented the _printing telegraph_, which printed
-the message automatically on a strip of paper, something after the
-manner of the typewriter (U. S. Pat. No. 4,464, April 18, 1846). The
-ingenious mechanism involved in this was somewhat complicated, but its
-results in printing the message plainly were very satisfactory. This was
-the prototype of the familiar "_ticker_" of the stock broker's office,
-seen in Figs. 10 and 11. In 1856 the Hughes printing telegraph was
-brought out (U. S. Pat. No. 14,917, May 20, 1856), and in 1858 G. M.
-Phelps combined the valuable features of the Hughes and House systems
-(U. S. Pat. No. 26,003, Nov. 1, 1859).
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 11.--RECEIVING MESSAGE ON STOCK BROKER'S "TICKER."]
-
-_Fac Simile_ telegraphs constitute another, although less important
-branch of the art. These accomplished the striking result of reproducing
-the message at the end of the line in the exact handwriting of the
-sender, and not only writing, but exact reproductions of all outlines,
-such as maps, pictures, and so forth, may be sent. The fac simile
-telegraph originated with F. C. Bakewell, of England, in 1848 (Br. Pat.
-No. 12,352, of 1848).
-
-The Dial Telegraph is still another modification of the telegraph. In
-this the letters are arranged in a circular series, and a light needle
-or pointer, concentrically pivoted, is carried back and forth over the
-letters, and is made to successively point to the desired letters.
-
-Among other useful applications of the telegraph is the _fire alarm
-system_. In 1852 Channing and Farmer, of Boston, Mass., devised a
-system of telegraphic fire alarms, which was adopted in the city of
-Boston (U. S. Pat. No. 17,355, May 19, 1857), and which in varying
-modifications has spread through all the cities of the world,
-introducing that most important element of time economy in the
-extinguishment of fires. Hundreds of cities and millions of dollars have
-been thus saved from destruction.
-
-Similar applications of local alarms in great numbers have been extended
-into various departments of life, such as _District Messenger Service_,
-_Burglar Alarms_, _Railroad-Signal Systems_, _Hotel-Annunciators_, and
-so on.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 12.--TELEGRAPHING BY INDUCTION.]
-
-For furnishing current for telegraphic purposes the dynamo, and
-especially the storage battery, have in late years found useful
-application. In fact, in the leading telegraph offices the storage
-battery has practically superseded the old voltaic cells.
-
-_Telegraphing by induction_, _i. e._, without the mechanical connection
-of a conducting wire, is another of the developments of telegraphy in
-recent years, and finds application to telegraphing to moving railway
-trains. When an electric current flows over a telegraph line, objects
-along its length are charged at the beginning and end of the current
-impulse with a secondary charge, which flows to the earth if connection
-is afforded. It is the discharge of this secondary current from the
-metal car roof to the ground which, on the moving train, is made the
-means of telegraphing without any mechanical connection with the
-telegraph lines along the track. As, however, this secondary circuit
-occurs only at the making and breaking of the telegraphic impulse, the
-length of the impulse affords no means of differentiation into an
-alphabet, and so a rapid series of impulses, caused by the vibrator of
-an induction coil, is made to produce buzzing tones of various duration
-representing the alphabet, and these tones are received upon a telephone
-instead of a Morse register. The diagram, Fig. 12,[1] illustrates the
-operation.
-
- [1] From "Electricity in Daily Life," by courtesy of Charles
- Scribner's Sons.
-
-To receive messages on a car, electric impulses on the telegraph wire W,
-sent from the vibrator of an induction coil, cause induced currents as
-follows: Car roof R, wire _a_, key K, telephone _b c_, car wheel and
-earth. In sending messages closure of key K works induction coil I C,
-and vibrator V, through battery B, and primary circuit _d_, _c_, _f_,
-_g_, and the secondary circuit _a_, _h_, _i_, charges the car roof and
-influences by induction the telegraph wire W and the telephone at the
-receiving station.
-
-In 1881 William W. Smith proposed the plan of communicating between
-moving cars and a stationary wire by induction (U. S. Pat. No. 247,127,
-Sept. 13, 1881). Thomas A. Edison, L. J. Phelps, and others have further
-improved the means for carrying it out. In 1888 the principle was
-successfully employed on 200 miles of the Lehigh Valley Railroad.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 13.--WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY, INTERNATIONAL YACHT RACES,
-OCTOBER, 1899.]
-
-_Wireless Telegraphy_, or telegraphing without any wires at all, from
-one point to another point through space, is the most modern and
-startling development in telegraphy. To the average mind this is highly
-suggestive of scientific imposition, so intangible and unknown are the
-physical forces by which it is rendered possible, and yet this is one of
-the late achievements of the Nineteenth Century. Many scientists have
-contributed data on this subject, but the principles and theories have
-only begun to crystallize into an art during the first part of the last
-decade of the Nineteenth Century. Heinrich Hertz, the German scientist,
-was perhaps the real pioneer in this line in his studies and
-observations of the nature of the electric undulations which have taken
-his name, and are known as "Hertzian" waves, rays, or oscillations.
-Tesla in the United States, Branly and Ducretet in France, Righi in
-Italy, the Russian savant, Popoff, and Professor Lodge, of England, have
-all made contributions to this art. It will aid the understanding to
-say, in a preliminary way, that electric undulations are generated and
-emitted from a plate or conductor a hundred feet or more high in the
-air, are thence transmitted through space to a remote point, which may
-be many miles away, and there influencing a similar plate high in the
-air give, through a special form of receiving device known as a
-"coherer," a telegraphic record. The "coherer," invented by Branly in
-1891, is a glass tube containing metal filings between two circuit
-terminals. The electric waves cause these filings to cohere, and so vary
-the resistance to the passage of the current as to give a basis for
-transformation into a record.
-
-In March, 1899, Signor Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian student, then
-residing in England, successfully communicated between South Foreland,
-County of Kent, and Boulogne-sur-mer, in France, a distance of
-thirty-two miles across the English Channel. Signor Marconi used the
-vertical conductors and the Hertz-oscillation principle, and his system
-is described in his United States patent. No. 586,193, July 13, 1897.
-
-His patent comprehends many claims, a leading feature of which is the
-means for automatically shaking the "coherer" to break up the cohesion
-of the metal filings as embodied in his first claim, as follows:
-
- "In a receiver for electrical oscillations, the combination of an
- imperfect electrical contact, a circuit through the contact, and
- means actuated by the circuit for shaking the contact."
-
-The Marconi system of wireless telegraphy was practically employed with
-useful effect April 28, 1899, on the "Goodwin Sands" light-ship to
-telegraph for assistance when in collision twelve miles from land and in
-danger of sinking. It was also used in October, 1899, on board the
-"Grande Duchesse" to report the international yacht race between the
-"Columbia" and the "Shamrock" at Sandy Hook, as seen in Fig. 13. Lord
-Roberts also made good use of it in his South African campaign against
-the Boers. According to Signor Marconi its present range is limited to
-eighty-six miles, but it is expected that this will be soon extended to
-150 miles.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 13A.--THE COHERER.]
-
-Marconi's receiving apparatus is shown in Fig. 13A, and consists of a
-small glass tube called the coherer, about 11/2 inches in length, into the
-ends of which are inserted two silver pole pieces, which fit the tube,
-but whose ends are 1/50 inch apart. The space between the ends is filled
-with a mixture composed of fine nickel and silver filings and a mere
-trace of mercury, and the other ends of the pole pieces are attached to
-the wires of a local circuit. In the normal condition the metallic
-filings have an enormous resistance, and constitute a practical
-insulator, preventing the flow of the local current; but if they are
-influenced by electric waves, coherence takes place and the resistance
-falls, allowing the local current to pass. The coherence will continue
-until the filings are mechanically shaken, when they will at once fall
-apart, as it were, insulation will be established, and the current will
-be broken. If, then, a coherer be brought within the influence of the
-electric waves thrown out from a transmitter, coherence will occur
-whenever the key of the transmitter at the distant station is depressed.
-Mr. Marconi has devised an ingenious arrangement, which is the subject
-of his patent referred to, in which a small hammer is made to rap
-continuously upon the coherer by the action of the local circuit, which
-is closed when the Hertzian waves pass through the metal filings. As
-soon as the waves cease, the hammer gives its last rap, and the tube is
-left in the decohered condition ready for the next transmission of
-waves. It is evident that by making the local circuit operate a relay,
-in the circuit of which is a standard recording instrument, the messages
-may be recorded on a tape in the usual way.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 13B.--DIAGRAM OF THE TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER.]
-
-In Fig. 13B is shown the diagram of circuits. The letters _d d_ indicate
-the spheres of the transmitter, which are connected, one to the vertical
-wire w, the other to earth, and both by wires _c' c'_, to the terminals
-of the secondary winding of induction coil, c. In the primary circuit is
-the key _b_. The coherer _j_ has two metal pole pieces, _j¹ j squared_,
-separated by silver and nickel filings. One end of the tube is connected
-to earth, the other to the vertical wire _w_, and the coherer itself
-forms part of a circuit containing the local cell _g_, and a sensitive
-telegraph relay actuating another circuit, which circuit works a
-trembler _p_, of which _o_ is the decohering tapper, or hammer. When the
-electric waves pass from _w_ to _j¹ j squared_ the resistance falls, and the
-current from _g_ actuates the relay _n_, the choking coils _k k'_, lying
-between the coherer and the relay, compelling the electric waves to
-traverse the coherer instead of flowing through the relay. The relay _n_
-in its turn causes the more powerful battery _r_ to pass a current
-through the tapper, and also through the electro-magnet of the
-recording instrument _h_.
-
-The alternate cohering by the waves and decohering by the tapper
-continue uninterruptedly as long as the transmitting key at the distant
-station is depressed. The armature of the recording instrument, however,
-because of its inertia, cannot rise and fall in unison with the rapid
-coherence and decoherence of the receiver, and hence it remains down and
-makes a stroke upon the tape as long as the sending key is depressed.
-
-The principal applications of wireless telegraphy so far have been at
-sea, where the absence of intervening obstacles gives a free path to the
-electrical oscillations. The system is also applicable on land, however,
-and no one can doubt that if the Ministers of the Legations shut up in
-Pekin had been supplied with a wireless telegraphy outfit, neither the
-walls of Pekin nor the strongest cordon of its Chinese hordes could have
-prevented the long sought communication. The full story of mystery and
-massacre would have been promptly made known, and the civilized world
-have been spared its anxiety, and earlier and effective measures of
-relief supplied.
-
-As the art of telegraphy grows apace toward the end of the Nineteenth
-Century, individuality of invention becomes lost in the great maze of
-modifications, ramifications, and combinations. Inventions become merged
-into systems, and systems become swallowed up by companies. In the
-promises of living inventors the wish is too often father to the
-thought, and the conservative man sees the child of promise rise in
-great expectation, flourish for a few years, and then subside to quiet
-rest in the dusty archives of the Patent Office. They all contribute
-their quota of value, but it is so difficult to single out as
-pre-eminent any one of those which as yet are on probation, that we must
-leave to the coming generation the task of making meritorious selection.
-
-To-day the telegraph is the great nerve system of the nation's body, and
-it ramifies and vitalizes every part with sensitive force. In 1899 the
-Western Union Telegraph Company alone had 22,285 offices, 904,633 miles
-of wire, sent 61,398,157 messages, received in money $23,954,312, and
-enjoyed a profit of $5,868,733. Add to this the business of the Postal
-Telegraph Company and other companies, and it becomes well nigh
-impossible to grasp the magnitude of this tremendous factor of
-Nineteenth Century progress. Figures fail to become impressive after
-they reach the higher denominations, and it may not add much to either
-the reader's conception or his knowledge to say that the statistics for
-the _whole world_ for the year 1898 show: 103,832 telegraph offices,
-2,989,803 miles of wire, and 365,453,526 messages sent during that year.
-This wire would extend around the earth about 120 times, and the
-messages amounted to one million a day for every day in that year. This
-is for land telegraphs only, and does not include cable messages.
-
-What saving has accrued to the world in the matter of time, and what
-development in values in the various departments of life, and what
-contributions to human comfort and happiness the telegraph has brought
-about, is beyond human estimate, and is too impressive a thought for
-speculation.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-THE ATLANTIC CABLE.
-
- DIFFICULTIES OF LAYING--CONGRATULATORY MESSAGES BETWEEN QUEEN
- VICTORIA AND PRESIDENT BUCHANAN--THE SIPHON RECORDER--STATISTICS.
-
-
-Among the applications of the telegraph which deserve special mention
-for magnitude and importance is the Atlantic Cable. For boldness of
-conception, tireless persistence in execution, and value of results,
-this engineering feat, though nearly a half century old, still
-challenges the admiration of the world, and marks the beginning of one
-of the great epochs of the Nineteenth Century. It was not so brilliant
-in substantive invention, as it added but little to the telegraph as
-already known, beyond the means for insulating the wires within a gutta
-percha cable, but it was one of the greatest of all engineering works.
-It was chiefly the result of the energy and public spirit of Mr. Cyrus
-W. Field, an eminent American citizen. Three times was its laying
-attempted before success crowned the work. The first expedition sailed
-August 7, 1857, and consisted of a fleet of eight vessels, four American
-and four English, starting from Valentia on the Irish coast. On August
-11 the cable parted, and 344 miles of the cable were lost in water two
-miles deep. In 1858 a renewal of the effort to lay the cable was made.
-Improvements were added in the paying out machinery, and a different
-manner of coiling the enormous load of cable on the vessels was resorted
-to, and provisions also were made to protect the propeller from contact
-with the cable. On June 10 the telegraphic fleet steamed out of Plymouth
-harbor. It consisted of the U. S. frigate "Niagara," with the
-paddle-wheel steamer "Valorous" as a tender, and the British frigate
-"Agamemnon," with the paddle-wheel steamer "Gorgon" as a tender. After
-three days at sea, terrible gales were encountered and much damage
-resulted. The vessels were to proceed to midocean, and the portions of
-the cable carried by the "Niagara" and "Agamemnon" were to be spliced,
-and the two vessels were then to sail in opposite directions to their
-respective coasts. The first splice was made on the 26th of June. After
-paying out two and a half miles each, the cable parted. Again meeting
-and splicing, forty miles each were paid out, and the cable again
-parted. On the 28th another splicing was effected, and 150 miles each
-were paid out, and again the cable parted, and the expedition had to be
-abandoned. After much financial embarrassment and adverse criticism, the
-courageous and public-spirited directors who had control of the
-enterprise dispatched another expedition, which sailed July 17, 1858.
-The two vessels, "Niagara" and "Agamemnon," with their tenders,
-proceeded to midocean, and following the same method of connecting the
-ends of their respective cable sections, they sailed in opposite
-directions. On August 5, 1858, Mr. Cyrus Field announced by telegram
-from Trinity Bay, on the coast of Newfoundland, that Trinity Bay in
-America, and Valentia in Ireland, 2,134 miles apart, had been connected,
-and the great Atlantic cable was an established fact.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 14.--ORIGINAL ATLANTIC CABLE, FULL SIZE.
-
-Consists of seven copper wires (4) to form the conductor, a wrapping (3)
-of thread, soaked in tallow and pitch, several layers (2) of gutta
-percha, all surrounded by a protecting coat of mail (1) of twisted
-wires.]
-
-On August 16, 1858, the first message came over from Queen Victoria to
-President Buchanan of the United States, as follows:
-
- "_To the President of the United States, Washington:_
-
- "The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the
- successful completion of this great international work, in which
- the Queen has taken the deepest interest.
-
- "The Queen is convinced that the President will join with her in
- fervently hoping that the Electric Cable which now connects Great
- Britain with the United States will prove an additional link
- between the nations whose friendship is founded upon their common
- interest and reciprocal esteem.
-
- "The Queen has much pleasure in thus communicating with the
- President, and renewing to him her wishes for the prosperity of the
- United States."
-
-to which the President replied as follows:
-
- "WASHINGTON CITY, Aug. 16, 1858.
-
- "_To Her Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain:_
-
- "The President cordially reciprocates the congratulations of Her
- Majesty, the Queen, on the success of the great international
- enterprise accomplished by the science, skill, and indomitable
- energy of the two countries. It is a triumph more glorious,
- because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror
- on the field of battle.
-
- "May the Atlantic Telegraph, under the blessing of Heaven, prove to
- be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred
- nations, and an instrument destined by Divine Providence to diffuse
- religion, civilization, liberty and law throughout the world. In
- this view will not all nations of Christendom spontaneously unite
- in the declaration that it shall be forever neutral, and that its
- communications shall be held sacred in passing to their places of
- destination, even in the midst of hostilities?
-
-(Signed)
-
-"JAMES BUCHANAN."
-
-Great rejoicing on both sides of the ocean followed, and the public
-print was filled with accounts of the enterprise. The following
-selection from the _Atlantic Monthly_ of October, 1858, is an apostrophe
-in lofty sentiments of verse, which to-day stirs the Twentieth Century
-heart as a joyous prophecy fulfilled:
-
- Thou lonely Bay of Trinity,
- Ye bosky shores untrod,
- Lean, breathless, to the white-lipped sea
- And hear the voice of God!
-
- From world to world His couriers fly,
- Thought-winged and shod with fire;
- The angel of His stormy sky
- Rides down the sunken wire.
-
- What saith the herald of the Lord?
- "The world's long strife is done!
- Close wedded by that mystic cord,
- Her continents are one.
-
- "And one in heart, as one in blood,
- Shall all her peoples be;
- The hands of human brotherhood
- Shall clasp beneath the sea.
-
- "Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain,
- And Asian mountains borne,
- The vigor of the Northern brain
- Shall nerve the world outworn.
-
- "From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
- Shall thrill the magic thread;
- The new Prometheus steals once more
- The fire that wakes the dead.
-
- "Earth, gray with age, shall hear the strain
- Which o'er her childhood rolled;
- For her the morning stars again
- Shall sing their song of old.
-
- "For, lo! the fall of Ocean's wall,
- Space mocked and Time outrun!
- And round the world the thought of all
- Is as the thought of one!"
-
- O, reverently and thankfully
- The mighty wonder own!
- The deaf can hear, the blind may see,
- The work is God's alone.
-
- Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat
- From answering beach to beach!
- Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,
- And melt the chains of each!
-
- Wild terror of the sky above,
- Glide tamed and dumb below!
- Bear gently, Ocean's carrier dove,
- Thy errands to and fro!
-
- Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,
- Beneath the deep so far,
- The bridal robe of Earth's accord,
- The funeral shroud of war!
-
- The poles unite, the zones agree,
- The tongues of striving cease;
- As on the Sea of Galilee,
- The Christ is whispering, "Peace!"
-
-After a few months of working, the cable became inoperative, but its
-success was a demonstrated fact, and in 1866 a new cable was laid by the
-aid of that monster steamer "The Great Eastern," since which time the
-cable has become one of the great factors of modern civilization.
-
-Probably the most important of the inventions relating to submarine
-telegraphs is the siphon recorder, invented by Sir William Thompson, now
-Lord Kelvin (U. S. Pat. No. 156,897, Nov. 17, 1874). It is called a
-siphon recorder because the record is made by a little glass siphon down
-which a flow of ink is maintained like a fountain pen. This siphon is
-vibrated by the electric impulses to produce on the paper strip a zigzag
-line, whose varying contour is made to represent letters. In the
-illustration, Fig. 15, _m_ is an ink well, _o_ a strip of paper, and _n_
-the ink siphon, one end of which is bent and dips down into the ink
-well, and the other end of which traces the record on the moving paper
-strip _o_. The siphon is sustained on a vertical axis _l_, and its
-lateral vibration is effected as follows: A light rectangular coil _b
-b_, of exceedingly fine insulated wire, is suspended between the poles N
-S of a powerful electro-magnet energized by a local battery. In the
-coil _b b_ is a stationary soft iron core _a_, magnetized by the poles N
-S. The coil _b b_ is suspended upon a vertical axis consisting of a fine
-wire _f f_, and the delicate electrical impulses over the submarine
-cable enter the coil _b b_ through the axial wire _f f_ as a conductor,
-and cause a greater or less oscillation of the coil _b b_ between the
-poles N S of the electro-magnet. The coil _b b_ is connected by a thread
-_k_ to the siphon, and pulls the siphon in one direction, while the
-siphon is pulled in the opposite direction by a helical spring attached
-to an arm on the siphon axis _l_. The jagged lines seen in Fig. 16 spell
-the words "siphon recorder."
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 15.--SIPHON RECORDER.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 16.--SIPHON RECORDER MESSAGE.]
-
-To-day there lie in submerged silence, but pulsating with the life of
-the world, no less than 1,500 submarine telegraphs. Their aggregate
-length is 170,000 miles; their total estimated cost is $250,000,000, and
-the number of messages annually transmitted over them is 6,000,000.
-Thirteen cables work daily across the Atlantic, and an additional one is
-being laid from Germany. Messages now go across the Atlantic and are
-received on the siphon recorder at the rate of fifty words a minute,
-and at a cost of twenty-five cents a word. Our guns may thunder in the
-Philippines, and the news by cable, traveling faster than the earth on
-its axis, may reach the Western Hemisphere under the paradoxical
-condition of several hours earlier than it occurred. Cablegrams to
-Manila cost $2.38 a word, and the cable tolls for our War Department
-alone are costing at the rate of $325,000 a year. The logical outcome is
-a Pacific cable, a bill for which, connecting San Francisco and
-Honolulu, has already passed the United States Senate.
-
-Messages from the Executive Mansion at Washington to the battlefield at
-Santiago were sent and responses received within twelve minutes, while a
-message dispatched from the House of Representatives in Washington to
-the House of Parliament in London, in the chess match of 1898, was
-transmitted and a reply received in thirteen and one-half seconds.
-
-To-day the cable with the still small voice, more divine than human,
-speaks with one accent to all the nations of the earth. Differing though
-they may in tongue and skin, in thought and religion, in physical
-development and clime, the telegraph speaks to them all alike, and by
-all is understood. Truly it fulfils the prophecy so gracefully expressed
-in the verses quoted, and has become the common bond of union among the
-nations of the earth.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-THE DYNAMO AND ITS APPLICATIONS.
-
- OBSERVATIONS OF FARADAY AND HENRY--MAGNETO-ELECTRIC MACHINES OF
- PIXII AND OF SAXTON--HJORTH'S DYNAMO OF 1855--WILDE'S MACHINE OF
- 1866--SIEMENS' OF 1867--GRAMME'S OF 1870--TESLA'S POLYPHASE
- CURRENTS.
-
-
-In the last thirty-five years of the Nineteenth Century there has grown
-up into the full stature of mechanical majority this stalwart son of
-electrical lineage. As the means for furnishing electrical power it
-stands to-day the great fountain head of electrical generation, and in
-its peculiar field ranks as of equal importance with the steam engine.
-Until about 1865 the voltaic battery, which generated electricity by
-chemical decomposition, was practically the only means for producing
-electricity for industrial and commercial purposes. It was through its
-agency that the telegraph, the electric light, and many other
-discoveries in electricity were made and rendered possible. Its cost and
-limited amount of current, however, restricted the limits of its
-practical application, and although its current could furnish beautiful
-laboratory experiments, its mechanical work was more in the nature of
-illustration than utilization. But with the advent of the dynamo
-electricity has taken a new and very much larger place in the commercial
-activities of the world. It runs and warms our cars, it furnishes our
-light, it plates our metals, it runs our elevators, it electrocutes our
-criminals; and a thousand other things it performs for us with secrecy
-and dispatch in its silent and forceful way. But what is a dynamo? To
-the average mind the most satisfactory answer would be--that it is
-simply a machine which converts mechanical power into electricity.
-Attach a dynamo to a steam engine, and the power of the steam engine
-will, through the dynamo, become transformed or converted into a
-powerful electric current. Any other source of mechanical power, such as
-a water wheel, gas engine, wind wheel, or even a horse or man, will
-serve to operate the dynamo; its primary and sole function being to take
-power and convert it into electricity.
-
-The stepping stone to the dynamo in its development was the
-_magneto-electrical machine_. This is a machine founded upon the general
-principle observed by Faraday in 1831 and 1832, and also by Prof. Henry
-about the same time, that when a magnet is made to approach a helix of
-insulated wire it causes a current of electricity to flow in the helix
-as long as the magnet advances. If the magnet is passed through the
-helix, the current is reversed as soon as the magnet passes the middle
-point. The principle is the same if the magnet be made to approach and
-recede from the poles of an electro-magnet having a helix wound around a
-soft iron core. Likewise the same result occurs if the electro-magnet
-with its helix is made to approach and recede from a permanent magnet,
-the current in the helix flowing in one direction when it approaches the
-permanent magnet, and in the opposite direction when leaving the said
-magnet. The movement of the two elements in relation to each other
-requires some force to overcome the repellent and attractive actions,
-and this force is converted into electrical energy. This is the
-principle of the magneto-electric machine.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 17.--PIXII MAGNETO-ELECTRIC MACHINE, 1832.]
-
-Saxton in the United States and Pixii in France were the first to
-produce organized devices of this class for generating electricity from
-magnetism. Pixii's machine (1832) consisted of a permanent horse-shoe
-magnet which was caused to revolve in proximity to an armature upon
-which was wound a coil of insulated wire. On March 30, 1852, Sonnenberg
-and Rechten obtained a United States patent, No. 8,843, for an
-electrical machine for killing whales, and on August 19, 1856, Shepard
-obtained U. S. Pat. No. 15,596 for the machine which came to be known as
-the "Alliance" machine. Both of these machines had permanent field
-magnets, and were early types of magneto-electric machines. The
-efficiency of these magneto-electric machines was necessarily limited to
-the strength of the inducing field magnets, which, being permanent
-magnets, were a positive and fixed factor. It was an easy step to
-substitute electro-magnets for permanent magnets, as the field or
-inducing magnets, and also to excite the (electro) field magnet by
-voltaic batteries, but the important step which resulted in the machine
-which is called the "dynamo" (from the Greek "[Greek: Dynamis]"--power)
-was yet to come.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 18.--HJORTH'S DYNAMO ELECTRIC MACHINE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 19.--HJORTH'S DYNAMO ELECTRIC MACHINE, PLAN VIEW.]
-
-This step consisted in taking the current induced in the revolving helix
-or armature (by the field magnets) and sending it back through the coils
-of the field magnets which produced it, thereby increasing the energy of
-the field magnet coils, and they in turn with an increased efficiency
-and reciprocal action induce still stronger currents in the armature
-coils, and so a building up process, or principle of mutual and
-reciprocal excitation, is carried on until the maximum efficiency is
-reached. This principle was the discovery of Soren Hjorth, of
-Copenhagen, and is fully described in his British patent, No. 806 of
-1855, for "An Improved Magneto-Electric Battery." As the prototype of
-the dynamo, it is worthy of illustration. In the illustration, Figs. 18
-and 19, _a_ is a revolving wheel bearing the armature coils, _C_
-permanent magnets, _d_ electro-magnets (field magnets), and _g_ the
-commutator. Quoting from his specifications, he says: "The permanent
-magnets acting on the armatures brought in succession between their
-poles, induce a current in the coils of the armatures, which current,
-after having been caused by the commutator to flow in one direction,
-passes round the electro-magnets (field magnets), charging the same and
-acting on the armatures. By the mutual action between the
-electro-magnets and the armatures an accelerating force is obtained,
-which in result produces electricity greater in quantity and intensity
-than has heretofore been obtained by similar means."
-
-Although the principle of the dynamo was clearly embodied in the Hjorth
-patent, its value was not appreciated until some time later. Eleven
-years later Wilde (U. S. Pat. No. 59,738, Nov. 13, 1866), employed a
-small machine with permanent magnets to excite the coil-wound field
-magnets of a larger machine. But Siemens (British Pat. No. 261 of 1867),
-taking up the principle employed by Hjorth, dispensed with his
-superfluous permanent magnets, having found that the residual magnetism,
-which always remained in iron which has once been magnetized, was
-sufficient as a basis to start the building up process. Farmer,
-Wheatstone and Varley also recognized this fact about the same time.
-Siemens' patent also was the first embodiment of what is known as the
-bobbin armature. Gramme and D'Ivernois (British Pat. 1,668 of 1870, and
-U. S. Pat. No. 120,057, of Oct. 17, 1871), were the first to bring out
-the continuously wound ring armature.
-
-Active development now began in various types and by various inventors,
-including Weston, Brush, Edison, Thomson and Houston, Westinghouse, and
-others, who have brought the dynamo to its present high efficiency.
-
-The revolving coils of the dynamo are called the armature, and the fixed
-electro-magnets are called the field magnets, and these latter may be
-two or more in number. When two are used they are arranged on opposite
-sides of the armature, and form what is known as the bipolar machine. A
-larger number constitutes the multipolar machine. The field magnets in
-the multipolar machine usually are arranged in radial position around
-the entire circumference of the revolving armature, and are held in a
-fixed circular frame. To give a clear idea of the principles of the
-dynamo, the bipolar machine is best suited for illustration, and is here
-given in Figs. 20 and 21, in which Fig. 20 represents the dynamo
-complete, and Fig. 21 a detail of the end of the armature and
-commutator. This armature consists of coils or bobbins of insulated
-wire, each section having its terminals connected with separate
-insulated plates on the hub, which plates are known as the commutator.
-When any section of the armature approaches the pole of a field magnet,
-the current induced in that section of the armature coils by the field
-magnet, is taken off from a corresponding plate of the commutator by
-flat springs, seen in Fig. 20, and known as brushes. The field magnets A
-and B, Fig. 20, are shown with only a few turns of wire about them for
-clearer illustrations of the connections, which are made as follows: The
-wire _a_ is extended in coils around the field magnet B, and thence
-around field magnet A, and thence to the upper brush on the commutator,
-thence through the wire coils or bobbins of the rotary armature C, and
-thence by the lower brush to the wire _b_. The terminals of the wires
-_a_ and _b_ extend to the point of utilization of the current, whether
-this be electric lights, motors, or other applications. In this
-illustration, the circuit, it will be seen, passes through both the
-coils of the field magnets and the coils of the armature, involving the
-principle of mutual excitation.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 20.--BIPOLAR DYNAMO.]
-
-There are two principal kinds of dynamos--those producing the
-alternating currents, and those producing the continuous current. In the
-first the current alternates in direction, or is composed of an infinite
-number of impulses of opposite polarity: one polarity when a section of
-the armature coil is approaching a north field magnet pole or receding
-from a south pole, and the other polarity when receding from a north
-field magnet pole and approaching a south pole. In the continuous
-current machine, the commutator and brushes are so arranged as to take
-up all the impulses of the same polarity and conduct them away by one
-brush, and gathering all the impulses of the opposite polarity and
-conducting them away by another brush. Thus the current of each brush,
-in the continuous current machine, is always of the same polarity, and
-the polarity of one being always positive, and that of the other
-negative, the current flows continuously in the same direction. A third
-species of dynamo is the pulsatory, in which the current flow is
-invariable in direction, but proceeds in waves.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 21.--ARMATURE OF BIPOLAR DYNAMO.]
-
-A change in the character of the current generated by the dynamo is made
-by what is known as the "transformer," in which the principle of the
-induction coil is made available. In this way, for instance, the high
-potential currents generated by the powerful water wheels at Niagara
-Falls are taken twenty miles to Buffalo, and are there transformed into
-other currents of lower potential, suited to incandescent lighting and
-other various uses. A similar scheme is in process of fulfillment in the
-establishment of a water power electric plant near Conowingo, Maryland,
-on the Susquehanna River, to furnish electrical power to Baltimore,
-Wilmington and Philadelphia.
-
-An important development in electrical generation and transmission is to
-be found in what is known as the _polyphase_, _multiphase_, or
-_rotating_ current, pioneer patents for which were granted to Tesla May
-1, 1888, Nos. 381,968, 381,969, 382,279, 382,280, 382,281 and 382,282.
-
-Realizing the possibilities of the dynamo, the Legislature of New York
-in 1888 passed a law, which went into effect in 1889, in that State,
-substituting death by electricity for the hangman's noose. The criminal
-is strapped in the chair, seen in Fig. 22, one terminal of the wire from
-the dynamo is strapped upon his forehead, and the other to anklets on
-his legs, and like a flash of lightning the deadly energy of the dynamo
-performs its work.
-
-Not the least of the applications of the dynamo is its use in
-electro-metallurgy for plating metals, and also for promoting chemical
-reactions. The electric furnace, stimulated into higher heat by the
-dynamo than can be otherwise obtained, has brought about many valuable
-discoveries, and made great advances in various arts. The metal
-aluminum, and the hard abrasive or polishing and grinding material known
-as "carborundum" are the products of the electric furnace, and so is the
-product known as "calcium carbide," which, when immersed in water, gives
-off acetylene gas and is a product now universally used for that
-purpose, and rapidly increasing in commercial importance.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 22.--ELECTROCUTION CHAIR.]
-
-In Fig. 23 is seen the Acheson electric furnace for producing
-carborundum. The electric current traverses the furnace through a series
-of horizontal electrodes at each end, and highly heats a central core of
-carbon, which is disposed in a mass of silicious and carbonaceous
-material, and which latter is converted by the heat into silicide of
-carbon, or carborundum. In Fig. 24 is shown a continuous electric
-furnace constructed as a revolving wheel, under the Bradley patents. Rim
-sections 5 are placed on the wheel on one side and filled with a mixture
-of carbon and lime, through which the electric current is passed from
-the dynamo _g_. The heat of the current fuses the mass and converts it
-into calcium carbide, and as the wheel slowly revolves the rim sections
-5 are removed from the opposite side, and the mass of calcium carbide,
-seen at _x_, is broken off. The electrolytic production of copper
-through the agency of the dynamo amounts to 150,000 tons annually, and
-the commercial reduction of aluminum by the electric furnace has grown
-from eighty-three pounds in 1883 to 5,200,000 pounds in 1898, and its
-cost has been reduced to about 33 cents per pound.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 23.--PART SECTIONAL VIEW OF CARBORUNDUM FURNACE.]
-
-The storage battery, holding in reserve its stored up electric energy,
-also owes its practical value entirely to the dynamo which charges it,
-and thus makes available a portable source of supply.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 24.--BRADLEY ELECTRIC FURNACE FOR PRODUCING CALCIUM
-CARBIDE.]
-
-To contemplate the dynamo with its clumsy, enormous spools, it suggests
-to the imagination of the average observer the gigantic toy of some
-Brobdingnagian boy--but the dynamo is no toy. It is the most compact,
-business-like, and dangerous of all utilitarian devices. To touch its
-brushes may be instant death, for the dynamo is the prison house of the
-lightning, and resents intrusion. Hidden away from public gaze in some
-sequestered power house, and working night and day like some tireless,
-dumb, and mighty genii, it sends its magnetic thrills of force silently
-through the many miles of wire extending like radii from some great
-nerve center through the conduits in our streets, and stretching from
-pole to pole like giant cobwebs through the air. Responding to its
-force, thousands of little incandescent threads leap into radiant
-brightness and shed their mellow and genial light in our offices, our
-stores, hotels, and homes. Brilliant arc lamps, rivaling the sun in
-power, make night into day, and produce along our streets coruscations,
-silhouettes, and dancing shadows in spectacular and unceasing pageants.
-From the towering lighthouses of our coasts its beams are thrown
-seaward, and a beacon for the mariner shines beyond all other lights.
-The great search light of our ships is in itself but a hollow mockery
-until the dynamo whispers in its ear the word "light!" and then its
-beam, reaching for miles along the horizon, discovers a stealthy enemy,
-or signals the safe return to port. The mighty force of the dynamo
-entering the electric motors on the street cars turns the wheels and
-transports its load with scarcely a passenger inside realizing how it is
-all done. The same energy turns the electric fan, and with kindly
-service soothes the weary sufferer, and at another place remorselessly
-takes the life of the condemned criminal. The dynamo is one of the great
-factors of modern civilization, and its potential name, like that of
-"dynamite," rightly defines its character.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 25.--MODERN MULTIPOLAR DYNAMO.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-THE ELECTRIC MOTOR.
-
- BARLOW'S SPUR WHEEL--DAL NEGRO'S ELECTRIC PENDULUM--PROF. HENRY'S
- ELECTRIC MOTOR--JACOBI'S ELECTRIC BOAT--DAVENPORT'S MOTOR--THE NEFF
- MOTOR--DR. PAGE'S ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE--DR. SIEMENS' FIRST ELECTRIC
- RAILWAY AT BERLIN, 1879--FIRST ELECTRIC RAILWAY IN UNITED STATES,
- BETWEEN BALTIMORE AND HAMPDEN, 1885--THIRD RAIL SYSTEM--STATISTICS
- ELECTRIC RAILWAYS AND GENERAL ELECTRIC CO.--DISTRIBUTION ELECTRIC
- CURRENT IN PRINCIPAL CITIES.
-
-
-Although the electric motor of to-day depends for practical value
-entirely upon the dynamo which supplies it with electric power,
-nevertheless the motor considerably antedated the dynamo. The genesis of
-the electric motor began in 1821 with Faraday's observation of the
-phenomenon of the conversion of an electric current into mechanical
-motion. In his experiment a copper wire was supported in a vertical
-position so as to dip into a cup of mercury, while a small bar magnet
-was anchored at one end by a thread to the bottom of the cup and floated
-in the mercury in upright position. The mass of mercury being connected
-to one pole of a battery, and the vertical wire to the other, it was
-found that when the circuit was completed by clipping the wire into the
-mercury, the floating bar magnet would revolve around the wire as a
-center.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 26.--BARLOW'S WHEEL.]
-
-In 1826 Barlow, of Woolwich, made his electrical spur wheel, Fig. 26,
-and in 1830 the Abbe Dal Negro, in Padua, is said to have constructed a
-sort of vibrating electrical pendulum, both of which devices were crude
-forms of magnetic engines. Dal Negro's machine, see Fig. 27, consisted
-of a magnet A, movable about an axis situated about one-third of its
-length, and the upper extremity of which was capable of oscillating
-between the two branches of an electro-magnet E. A current being sent
-into the electro-magnet, passed through an eight-cupped mercurial
-commutator C, which the oscillating magnet controlled by means of a rod
-_t_ and a fork F. When the magnet had been attracted toward one of the
-poles of the electro-magnet this very motion of attraction acting upon
-the commutator changed the direction of the current, and the magnet was
-repelled toward the other branch of the electro-magnet, and so on.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 27.--DAL NEGRO'S ELECTRIC MOTOR.]
-
-In 1828 Prof. Joseph Henry produced his energetic electro-magnets
-sustaining weights of some thousands of pounds, and gave prophetic
-suggestion of the possibilities of electricity as a motive power. In
-1831 he devised the electric motor shown in Fig. 28, which is described
-in Prof. Henry's own words as follows:
-
-"A B is the horizontal magnet, about seven inches long, and movable on
-an axis at the center; its two extremities when placed in a horizontal
-line are about one inch from the north poles of the upright magnets C
-and D. G and F are two large tumblers containing diluted acid, in each
-of which is immersed a plate of zinc surrounded with copper; _l m s t_
-are four brass thimbles soldered to the zinc and copper of the batteries
-and filled with mercury.
-
-"The galvanic magnet A B is wound with three strands of copper bell
-wire, each about twenty-five feet long; the similar ends of these are
-twisted together so as to form two stiff wires _q r_, which project
-beyond the extremity B, and dip into the thimbles _s t_.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 28.--PROF. HENRY'S ELECTRIC MOTOR.]
-
-"To the wires _q r_ two other wires are soldered so as to project in an
-opposite direction, and dip into the thimbles _l m_. The wires of the
-galvanic magnet have thus, as it were, four projecting ends; and by
-inspecting the figure it will be seen that the extremity _p_, which dips
-into the cup _m_, attached to the copper of the battery in G,
-corresponds to the extremity _r_ which dips into the cup _t_,
-connecting, with the zinc in battery F. When the batteries are in
-action, if the end B is depressed until _q r_ dips into the cups _s t_,
-A B instantly becomes a powerful magnet, having its north pole at B;
-this, of course, is repelled by the north pole D, while at the same time
-it is attracted by C; the position is consequently changed, and _o p_
-comes in contact with the mercury in _l m_; as soon as the communication
-is formed, the poles are reversed, and the position again changed. If
-the tumblers be filled with strong diluted acid, the motion is at first
-very rapid and powerful, but it soon almost entirely ceases. By
-partially filling the tumblers with weak acid, and occasionally adding a
-small quantity of fresh acid, a uniform motion, at the rate of
-seventy-five vibrations in a minute, has been kept up for more than an
-hour; with a large battery and very weak acid the motion might be
-continued for an indefinite length of time."
-
-Following Prof. Henry came Sturgeon's rotary motor of 1832, Jacobi's
-rotary motor of 1834, Fig. 29, which had electro-magnets both in the
-field and armature; Davenport's motor of 1834, Zabriskie's motor of
-1837, in which a vibrating magnet converted reciprocating into rotary
-motion; Davenport's motor of 1837 (U. S. Pat. No. 132, Feb. 25, 1837),
-Fig. 30; Page's rotary motor of 1838, Walkley's motor of 1838 (U. S.
-Pat. No. 809, June 27, 1838); Stimson's motor of 1838 (U. S. Pat. No.
-910, Sept. 12, 1838); Page's motor of 1839, Cook's of 1840 (U. S. Pat.
-No. 1,735, Aug. 25, 1840); Elias' motor of 1842, invented in Holland;
-Lillie's motor of 1850 (U S. Pat. No. 7,287, April 16, 1850); the Neff
-motor of 1851 (U. S. Pat. No. 7,889, Jan. 7, 1851), of which
-illustration is given in Fig. 31, and Page's motor of 1854 (U. S. Pat.
-No. 10,480, Jan. 31, 1854). In 1835 Davenport constructed a small
-circular railway at Springfield, Mass.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 29.--JACOBI'S ROTARY ELECTRIC MOTOR.]
-
-In 1839 Prof. Jacobi, with the aid of Emperor Nicholas, applied his
-electric motor to a boat 28 feet long, carrying fourteen passengers, and
-propelled the same at a speed of three miles an hour. About the same
-time Robert Davidson, a Scotchman, experimented with an electric railway
-car sixteen feet long, weighing six tons, and attaining a speed of four
-miles an hour. In 1840 Davenport, by means of his electric motor,
-printed a news sheet called the _Electro Magnet and Mechanics'
-Intelligencer_. In 1851 an electric locomotive made by Dr. Page in
-accordance with his subsequent patent of 1854, drew a train of cars from
-Washington to Bladensburg at a rate of nineteen miles an hour.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 30.--DAVENPORT MOTOR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 31.--NEFF MOTOR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 32.--WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC MOTOR.]
-
-All these motors were operated by voltaic batteries, and on account of
-the cost of the latter but little practical use of the electric motor
-was made until the dynamo was invented. In 1873 an accidental
-discovery led to the rapid practical development of the electric motor.
-It is said that at the industrial exhibition at Vienna in that year, a
-number of Gramme dynamos were being placed in position, and a workman
-in making the electrical connections for one of these machines,
-inadvertently connected it to another dynamo in active operation, and
-was surprised to find that the dynamo he was connecting began to revolve
-in the opposite direction. This was the clue that led to the important
-recognition of the structural identity of the dynamo and the modern
-type of electric motor. The dynamo and the electric motor then grew into
-development together, and the same inventors who brought the dynamo to
-its present high efficiency, produced electric motors of corresponding
-principles and value. In the illustration, Fig. 32, is shown a modern
-electric motor. It is a Westinghouse two-phase machine, of 300 horse
-power, of the self starting induction type, designed to operate at a
-speed of 500 revolutions per minute when supplied with two-phase
-currents of 3,000 alternations per minute and 2,000 volts pressure.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 33.--SIEMENS' FIRST ELECTRIC RAILWAY.]
-
-The most important application of the electric motor is for street car
-operation. The first electric railway was that of Dr. Werner Siemens, at
-Berlin, in 1879, an illustration of which is given in Fig. 33. The first
-electric railway in America was installed at Baltimore in 1885, and ran
-to Hampden, a distance of two miles.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 34.--OVERHEAD TROLLEY CAR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 35.--UNDERGROUND ELECTRIC TROLLEY SYSTEM.]
-
-The familiar overhead trolley cars, and the far superior conduit trolley
-system, represent perhaps the largest use made of electric motors. The
-motors are arranged under the cars in varying forms adapted to the
-structure of the car. In the overhead trolley, shown in Fig. 34, the
-current is taken from the overhead wire by a flexible trolley pole, and
-in the conduit system a trolley known as a plow extends from the bottom
-of the car through a narrow slot in the top of the conduit and makes a
-traveling contact with the conductor rails within the conduit, which
-carry the electric current. Fig. 35 is an end view of a street car of
-the latter type, with the conduit and conductor rails in cross section.
-The current goes from one rail to one bearing surface of the plow,
-thence to the motor on the car and back to the other bearing surface of
-the plow and the other conductor rail in the conduit.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 36.--THIRD RAIL SYSTEM ON THE N. Y., N. H. & H.
-RAILROAD--FRONT END OF MOTOR CAR.]
-
-A third system, which has supplanted to some extent the use of steam on
-short line railways, is the so-called third rail system, of which an
-example is seen in Fig. 36. A third conductor rail is placed between the
-usual track rails, and from this conductor the current is taken by a
-sliding shoe on the car, and carried to the motor and thence through the
-car wheels to the track rails. To reduce danger from the live rail, the
-third rail in some systems is made in sections, and, by an automatic
-switching process as the car moves along, only the sections of the rail
-beneath the car are brought into circuit, all other portions being cut
-out.
-
-The use of electric motors has greatly extended, cheapened, and
-expedited the street car service. All the principal thoroughfares of
-cities and even towns are now so equipped, and radiating suburban lines
-extend for miles from the city, affording for five cents a pleasant and
-cheap excursion for the poor to the green fields and fresh air of the
-country.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 37.--ELECTRIC RAILWAY MOTOR, CLOSED.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 38.--ELECTRIC RAILWAY MOTOR, OPENED.]
-
-Figs. 37 and 38 show an electric motor used on street cars, as made by
-the General Electric Company. Externally it presents the appearance of
-some curious, uncouth, cast iron box, which, to the uninitiated, piques
-the curiosity, and when opened adds no explanation of its real
-character. In it, however, the electrician finds a most interesting
-combination of metal and magnetism.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 39.--ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE OF B. & O. TUNNEL IN
-BALTIMORE.]
-
-In Fig. 39 is shown one of the most powerful electric locomotives ever
-constructed. It was built in 1895 by the General Electric Company for
-the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, to draw trains through the long tunnel
-from the Camden Street Station in Baltimore, for the purpose of avoiding
-smoke and gas in the tunnel, which is 7,339 feet long. The locomotive
-weighs ninety-six tons, or twenty-five tons above the average steam
-locomotive. It was designed to draw 100 trains daily each way, moving
-passenger trains of a maximum weight of 500 tons at thirty-five miles an
-hour, and freight trains of 1,200 tons at fifteen miles an hour. It has
-two trucks, and eight drive wheels of sixty-two inches diameter. There
-are four motors, two to each truck, each rated at 360 horse power.
-
-Other important applications of the electric motor are, the propelling
-of automobile carriages, small boats, and fish torpedoes, operating
-steering gear for ships, passenger elevators, rock drills in mines,
-running printing presses, fans, sewing machines, graphophones, and in
-all applications where space is limited and cleanliness a desideratum.
-
-According to Mulhall there were in 1890 in the United States and Canada
-about 645 miles of street railway operated by electricity. This about
-concluded the first decade of the life of the electric railway. Some
-idea of the rapid increase in this field may be had by the statement of
-the same authority that there were in 1890, at the end of this first
-decade, forty-five additional electric railroads in course of
-construction, aggregating 512 miles of way, which nearly doubled the
-previous existing mileage.
-
-In 1898 it was estimated that there were in the United States 14,000
-miles of electric railroads, with a nominal capital of $1,000,000,000,
-and employing 170,000 men. In the same year a single electrical contract
-was entered into between the Third Avenue Railroad and the Union Railway
-Company of New York, acting as one, and the Westinghouse Electrical and
-Manufacturing Company, amounting to $5,000,000. This was for the
-electrical equipment of their respective railway lines, and is the
-largest electrical contract ever made. The change in equipment from
-other motive power to the electric is rapidly going on in all
-directions, and the rapid succession of trains will doubtless cause it,
-for passenger traffic on short lines, to eventually supersede steam.
-
-The eighth annual report of the General Electric Company shows for the
-year 1899 orders received for railway and other electrical equipment
-amounting to $26,323,626; goods shipped, $22,379,463.75; profit on same,
-$3,805,860.18. The growth of its business from 1893 to 1899 shows the
-following per cent. of increase: In 1893, 36 per cent. above 1892; in
-1894, 126 per cent. above 1893; in 1895, 10 per cent. above 1894; in
-1896, 60 per cent. above 1895; in 1897, 60 per cent. above 1896; in
-1898, 21 per cent. above 1897; in 1899, 51 per cent. above 1898.
-
-The capitalization in electrical appliances in the United States in 1898
-is estimated at $1,900,000,000, most of which is devoted to industries
-in which the electric motor is used. The export of electrical apparatus
-from this country amounts to more than three million dollars annually,
-and it is said that there are eight times as many electric railways in
-the United States as in all the rest of the world combined.
-
-The use of electrical current in twelve principal cities in the United
-States was distributed in 1898 as follows:
-
-Lamps, arcs, and motors in sixteen candle power equivalents.
-
- Boston 616,000
- New York 1,718,000
- Chicago 1,278,000
- Brooklyn 322,000
- Baltimore 224,000
- Philadelphia 488,000
- St. Louis 303,000
- San Francisco 231,000
- Buffalo 125,000
- Rochester 184,000
- Cincinnati 201,000
- New Orleans 81,000
-
-Boston makes the largest use of electrical current in proportion to its
-population of any city in the world. Rochester is next. Both of these
-cities employ in electrical units of 16 c. p. equivalents, more than one
-electric lamp for every man, woman and child in their respective
-populations.
-
-The dynamo and the electric motor have together wrought this great
-development. The dynamo takes mechanical power and converts it into
-electrical energy, and the electric motor takes the electrical energy
-and converts it back into mechanical power. Standing behind them both,
-however, is the steam engine, and these three afford a beautiful
-illustration of the law of correlation of forces. The force starts with
-the combustion of coal under the boiler of the steam engine. When carbon
-unites chemically with oxygen, it is an exothermic reaction that gives
-off heat as correlated energy. The influence of heat on the molecules of
-water in the boiler causes them, by repellent action, to assume the
-qualities of an elastic gas, and this expanding as steam drives the
-piston of the steam engine. The steam engine overcomes by force the
-resistance existing between the dynamo's field magnets and armature
-coil, and sets up in the latter the correlated force of an electric
-current, and the electric current, traveling to its remote destination
-by suitable conductors, enters the coils of the electric motor in
-reverse relation to that of the dynamo, and in producing the reverse
-effect between the armature and field magnets, electrical energy is
-converted back into mechanical power. It is not possible to obtain in
-the electric motor the full equivalent of the dynamo's current, nor in
-the dynamo the full equivalent of the steam engine's power, nor in the
-steam engine the full equivalent of the chemical energy in the
-combustion of coal. Loss by radiation, by conduction, by friction, and
-by electrical resistance precludes this, but while there is loss in a
-utilitarian sense there is no real loss, for force like matter, is
-indestructible, and the proof of this universal law by Joule, in 1843,
-constitutes one of the highest triumphs of philosophy and one of the
-most important discoveries of the Nineteenth Century.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.
-
- VOLTAIC ARC BY SIR HUMPHREY DAVY--THE JABLOCHKOFF CANDLE--PATENTS OF
- BRUSH, WESTON AND OTHERS--SEARCH LIGHTS--GROVE'S FIRST INCANDESCENT
- LAMP--STARR-KING LAMP--MOSES FARMER LIGHTS FIRST DWELLING WITH
- ELECTRIC LAMPS--SAWYER-MAN LAMP--EDISON'S INCANDESCENT LAMP--
- EDISON'S THREE-WIRE SYSTEM OF CIRCUITS--STATISTICS.
-
-
-The popular idea of the electric light is, that it is a very recent
-invention, since even the younger generation remembers when there was no
-such thing in general use. It will surprise many readers, then, to know
-that the electric light had its birth in the first decade of the
-Nineteenth Century. In 1809 Sir Humphrey Davy discovered that when two
-pieces of charcoal, which formed the terminals of a powerful voltaic
-battery, were separated after having been brought into contact with each
-other, at the moment of separation a brilliant arc of flame passed from
-one piece of charcoal to the other, producing a temperature of 4,800 deg.
-F., and that the intensity of the light exceeded all other known forms
-of light. Various improvements in the organization of devices were made
-for holding the two pieces of carbon, which in time assumed the form of
-two pencils in alignment, as in Fig. 40, and devices were provided for
-feeding one carbon toward the other as they burned away. Clock mechanism
-for thus regulating the feed was first employed, which served to
-automatically keep the carbons a definite distance apart, this being a
-necessary condition of the arc. For many years, however, the use of such
-a light was confined to laboratory illustration, for the reason that it
-could only be produced at great expense by a large number of voltaic
-batteries. Nevertheless very efficient electric lamps working by voltaic
-batteries were devised by Foucault, Duboscq, Deleuil and others as early
-as 1853. With the advent of the dynamo, however, the electric light grew
-rapidly and developed into conspicuous use. Even before the true dynamo
-was invented the magneto-electric machine was employed for producing an
-electric current to supply electric light. The so-called "Alliance"
-generator was, in 1858, used in the South Foreland lighthouse in England
-to supply the arc lamps, and the beams of the electric light then, for
-the first time, were turned seaward as a beacon for the mariner.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 40.--SIMPLE ELECTRIC ARC LAMP.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 41.--JABLOCHKOFF CANDLE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 42.--WESTON ARC LAMP.]
-
-Among the early developments of the electric light was the Jablochkoff
-candle, see Fig. 41, brought out in 1877. In this device two parallel
-sticks of carbon G G were separated by a non-conducting layer of kaolin
-I, and were held in an asbestos ferrule A. Metal tubes T T connected the
-conducting wires F F to the carbons. The arc of flame passed from the
-top of one carbon to the other, fusing the separating layer of kaolin,
-and the whole burned down together as a candle. This form of electric
-light was extensively used in Paris in 1877, and also in London, and
-attracted considerable attention.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 43.--ARC LAMP FEED MECHANISM.]
-
-From the Jablochkoff candle the arc light has resumed the form of two
-vertically aligned carbons, and after passing through various forms and
-patterns, of which the Weston lamp, Fig. 42, is a modern type, has come
-into such universal and conspicuous use for lighting the streets of our
-cities, and is so well known to-day, that but little need be said of its
-development, since its real character has undergone no change in
-principle, the improvements relating chiefly to means for regulating the
-feed of the carbons and maintaining them at a uniform distance apart, so
-as to avoid flickering. This result is obtained by automatic mechanism
-operated by the electric current acting upon electro-magnets, as shown
-in Fig. 43, in which the electro-magnets raise the upper carbon when it
-is too close to the lower carbon, and lower the upper carbon when the
-space becomes too great from burning away. Among those who have
-contributed to the development of the arc light the names of Brush,
-Weston, and Thomson and Houston are most conspicuous, and the patents of
-Brush, No. 203,411, May 7, 1878, and No. 212,183, Feb. 11, 1879, and
-Weston, No. 285,451, Sept. 25, 1883, are the most representative
-developments.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 44.--NINE THOUSAND CANDLE POWER ARC LAMP.]
-
-The applications of the arc light have been brilliant beyond the dreams
-of the most sanguine inventor. In the illustrations number 44, 45 and
-46, is shown a gigantic electric light beacon manufactured by Henry
-Lepaute, of Paris, and first exhibited in this country at the Chicago
-World's Fair, in 1893. It consists of two great lenses, each nine feet
-in diameter, between which, in their focus, is placed a 9,000 candle
-power arc light. The great lantern, Fig. 45, is carried by a vertical
-shaft, which terminates at its lower end in a hollow drum, which latter
-floats in a bath of mercury. Although the weight is estimated at several
-tons, so sensitive is its poise on the mercury that the enormous lantern
-may be easily rotated by the pressure of one's finger. Each lens
-consists of concentric segments, see Fig. 46, 190 in number, surrounding
-a central disk, which together cause the rays to issue in parallel
-lines. The nine-foot beam of light thus projected is of 90,000,000
-candle power, and if placed at a sufficient altitude to avoid the
-curvature of the earth's surface, its light would be visible at the
-range of 146.9 nautical miles.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 45.--NINETY MILLION CANDLE POWER BIVALVE LENS.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 46.--FRONT VIEW OF LENS.]
-
-Better known to the patrons of our excursion boats and the visitors to
-our splendid battleships, are the electric search lights. The greatest
-example of all search lights, however, is not to be found on the sea,
-but in the picturesque altitudes of the Sierra Madres in Southern
-California. At the summit of Mount Lowe, in the neighborhood of
-Pasadena, is the largest search light in the world, shown in
-illustration, Fig. 48. It is of 3,000,000 candle power, stands eleven
-feet high, and its total weight is 6,000 pounds. Its light may be seen
-for 150 miles out on the ocean, and as its powerful beam is thrown from
-mountain top to mountain top hundreds of miles apart, it adds the
-illumination of art to the sublimity of nature, and seems a fitting
-jewel to this lofty crown of Mother Earth.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 47.--SEARCH LIGHT WITH MACHINE GUN REPELLING NIGHT
-ATTACK OF TORPEDO BOAT.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 48.--SEARCH LIGHT ON MOUNT LOWE, CALIFORNIA.]
-
-Brilliant as is the arc lamp, far more in evidence is the incandescent
-lamp. The little glass bulb with its tiny thread of light we find
-everywhere. Popular opinion and the decision of the courts accord this
-invention to Thomas A. Edison. The evolution of the incandescent lamp
-is, however, interesting, and may be briefly sketched as follows:
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 49.--FIRST INCANDESCENT LAMP, BY PROFESSOR GROVE,
-1840.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 50.--STARR-KING LAMP.]
-
-In 1845 there appeared in the _Philosophical Magazine_ a description of
-what was probably the first incandescent electric light. It was devised
-in 1840 by William Robert Grove, the inventor of the Grove battery, and
-is illustrated in Fig. 49. It is stated that he experimented and read by
-it for hours. It was described as follows:
-
-"A coil of platinum wire is attached to two copper wires, the lower
-parts of which, or those most distant from the platinum, are well
-varnished; these are fixed erect in a glass of distilled water, and
-another cylindrical glass, closed at the upper end, is inverted over
-them, so that its open mouth rests on the bottom of the former glass;
-the projecting ends of the copper wires are connected with a voltaic
-battery (two or three pairs of the nitric acid combination), and the
-ignited wire now gives a steady light. Instead of making the wires pass
-through the water, they may be fixed to metallic caps well luted to the
-necks of a glass globe."
-
-In 1845 August King patented, in England, an incandescent lamp, having
-an unsealed platinum burner, and also a carbon in a vacuum. Mr. King
-acted as agent for an American inventor, Mr. Starr, and the lamp came
-to be known as the Starr-King lamp, shown in Fig. 50. The burner was a
-thin plate or pencil of carbon B, enclosed in a Torricellian vacuum at
-the end of an inverted barometer tube, and held between the terminals of
-the connecting wires leading to a battery. In 1859 Moses G. Farmer
-lighted his house at Salem, Mass., by a series of subdivided electric
-lights, which was the first private dwelling lighted by electricity, and
-probably the first illustration of the feasibility of subdividing the
-electric current through a number of electric lamps.
-
-In 1877 William E. Sawyer applied for a United States patent for an
-electric engineering and lighting system, and in January, 1878, entered
-into a partnership with Albon Man, and the "Sawyer-Man" lamp, see Fig.
-51, was produced. In this an incandescent rod of carbon was inclosed in
-an atmosphere of nitrogen. This marked the beginning of a period of
-great activity in this field, which finally resulted in the well known
-form of electric lamp shown in Fig. 52, which was patented by Edison,
-No. 223,898, January 27, 1880. The distinctive features of this lamp
-consisted in a bowed filament of carbon of very thin, thread-like
-character, which was made of paper or carbonized cellulose. This, when
-sealed in a vacuum, would not burn away, but would give the proper
-incandescence, and by its small transverse dimension and high
-resistance to the current, permitted a proper distribution of the
-electric current to a number of lamps, without a special regulator for
-each lamp; and which could also be made so cheaply that the lamp could
-be thrown away when the burner was finally broken. Edison's claim on
-this feature of the electric lamp was sharply contested in an
-interference in the Patent Office by Sawyer and Man, with the decisions
-alternating first in favor of one and then of the other, but which
-finally resulted in the grant of a patent to Sawyer and Man, on May 12,
-1885. A struggle then began in the courts, which on October 4, 1892,
-terminated in a decision by the United States Court of Appeals (Edison
-Electric Light Company vs. United States Lighting Company), awarding the
-incandescent lamp to Edison.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 51.--SAWYER-MAN LAMP.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 52.--EDISON'S ELECTRIC LAMP.
-
-_A_--Exhausted globe. _B_--Carbon filament. _CC_--Wires sealed in glass.
-_D_--Line of fusion of two parts of globe. _EF_--Insulating material.
-_G_--Screw-threads. _HI_--Metal socket. _J_--Fixture arm _K_--Circuit
-controlling key.]
-
-In the early demonstration given by Edison great disturbance was caused
-in the stock exchanges among the holders of gas shares, as the
-sensational reportings in the press seemed to indicate that gas was to
-be superseded entirely. This uneasiness on the London Stock Exchange
-amounted on October 11, 1878, to a veritable panic, but while the
-electric light has more than fulfilled the prophecy made for it in many
-directions, gas shares still continue to be good stocks.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 53.--ELECTRIC LIGHT CIRCUIT.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 54.--EDISON'S THREE WIRE SYSTEM OF ELECTRIC LIGHT
-CIRCUITS.]
-
-Closely allied to the practical use of the incandescent lamp is the
-method of supplying and regulating the current from the dynamo. Although
-the alternating current is used for arc light, only the continuous
-current can be used for the incandescent lights, and the relation of
-the dynamo and the incandescent lamps is shown in Fig. 53, in which L
-represents the lamps between the main conducting wires leading from the
-dynamo, which latter has the coils of the field magnets arranged in a
-shunt or branch circuit, in which is interposed a regulator R in the
-form of a resistance coil with movable switch lever, by which more or
-less of the current is allowed to flow through the field magnet coils to
-suit the work being done. In late years automatic regulators have been
-provided for accomplishing this result. In Fig. 54 is shown what is
-known as the Edison "three wire system," patented March 20, 1883, No.
-274,290. In this two dynamos are used as at D¹ D squared, and the three wires
-emerge from the dynamos, one from the negative pole of one dynamo,
-another from the positive pole of the other dynamo, and the third or
-middle one is connected to both the other poles (positive and negative),
-of the two dynamos. For purposes of illustration, this may be compared
-to a three-storied arrangement of current, the upper wire representing
-the third story, the middle wire the second story, and the bottom one
-the first story. The fall from either story to the next represents the
-working energy, but from the top wire to the bottom would be equal to a
-fall from the third story to the first. The purpose of this arrangement
-is to save expense in copper wire, for while three main wires are used
-instead of two, the aggregate weight of the wires (when the lamps are
-arranged as shown), may be made so much less than two heavy wires as to
-make a very great saving in copper.
-
-The uses of the incandescent light are legion. Besides those which are
-of common observation it is used for lighting the interior of mines,
-caves, and the dark apartments of ships, and does not foul the air. It
-is also used by divers in submarine operations; in the formation of
-advertising signs, and in pyrotechnics, but perhaps one of the most
-extraordinary uses to which it has been put is in exploring the interior
-of the human stomach and other cavities of the body, a patent for which
-was granted to M. C. F. Nitze, No. 218,055, July 29, 1879.
-
-When an electric lamp is arranged with the opposite ends of the carbon
-burner connected, one to the outgoing, the other to the incoming wires
-from a dynamo, so as to be bridged across, this arrangement is said to
-be "in multiple" or "in parallel," and the lamps bear the analogy of
-horses drawing abreast, and when the opposite ends of the carbon burner
-are placed in a gap or break in either the outgoing or the incoming
-wire, the arrangement is said to be "in series," and the lamps bear the
-analogy of horses in tandem.
-
-Explanation of electric nomenclature can best be given by the analogy in
-hydrostatics of a stream of water passing in the hose pipe from a
-fire-engine. The "watt" indicates the sum total unit of electrical power
-for a definite period of time, and in the hose pipe would be
-represented by the effective force of a definite volume of water,
-passing at a definite pressure, during a definite period of time. "Volt"
-is a pressure unit of electro-motive force, and would be represented by
-the power of the engine. "Ampere" would be the quantity, or volume unit,
-or cross section of the hose pipe, and the "ohm" would be the unit of
-frictional resistance. The "watt" then would be the "volt" multiplied by
-the "ampere"; thus 500 watts would be 10 amperes at 50 volts, or 50
-amperes at 10 volts. Low tension circuits, such as are used for
-incandescent lights, range from 100 to 240 volts and are harmless.
-Trolley circuits are usually 500 volts, and will kill an animal, but are
-not necessarily fatal to man. High tension currents from 2,000 to 5,000
-volts, such as are used for arc lights, are fatal.
-
-Of all modern inventions, not one has advertised itself in such a
-spectacular way as the electric light. Those who have seen the
-magnificent electrical displays at the Chicago Fair, the electrical
-celebrations in New York, and the Omaha Exhibition, need no introduction
-to its marvelous splendors and beauties. In the annual report for 1898
-of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, its statement
-shows that for that city alone the gross earnings were $2,898,021. There
-were 9,990 users of the electric light, 443,074 incandescent lamps, and
-7,353 arc lights. It is estimated that the electric light stations and
-plants in the United States alone amount to $600,000,000. In the year
-1899 a single manufacturing concern (The General Electric Company)
-received orders for 10,000,000 incandescent lamps, which is about
-one-half of the present annual production. Sixteen years ago the lamps
-were $1 each; to-day they can be bought for 18 cents.
-
-What the future has in store for the further development of the electric
-light no one may dare predict. Already a different form or manifestation
-of electric light has been demonstrated, in which neither the electric
-arc nor the incandescent filament is used, but a peculiar glow is seen
-disassociated from a direct material habitation, and produced by
-currents of enormous frequency and high potential, in accordance with
-the patent to Tesla, No. 454,622, June 23, 1891. Other worthy inventors
-in this field are at work, and its development will be one of the
-interesting problems of the Twentieth Century.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-THE TELEPHONE.
-
- PRELIMINARY SUGGESTIONS AND EXPERIMENTS OF BOURSEUL, REIS AND
- DRAWBAUGH--FIRST SPEAKING TELEPHONE BY PROF. BELL--DIFFERENCES
- BETWEEN REIS' AND BELL'S TELEPHONES--THE BLAKE TRANSMITTER--
- BERLINER'S VARIATION OF RESISTANCE, AND ELECTRIC UNDULATIONS BY
- VARIATION OF PRESSURE--EDISON'S CARBON MICROPHONE--THE TELEPHONE
- EXCHANGE--STATISTICS.
-
-
-[Greek: Tele] (far), and [Greek: phone] (sound), are the Greek roots
-from which the word telephone is derived. It has the significance of
-transmitting sound to distant points, and is a word antedating the
-present speaking telephone, although this fact is generally lost sight
-of in the dazzling brilliancy of this latter invention. In the effort to
-hear better, the American Indian was accustomed to place his ear to the
-ground. Children of former generations also made use of a toy known as
-the "lovers' telegraph"--a piece of string held under tension between
-the flexible bottoms of two tin boxes--which latter when spoken into
-transmitted through the string the vibrations from one box to the other,
-and made audible words spoken at a distance. These expedients simply
-made available the superior conductivity of the solid body over the air
-to transmit sound waves. The electro-magnetic telephone operates on an
-entirely different principle. It is a marvelous creation of genius, and
-stands alone as the unique, superb, and unapproachable triumph of the
-Nineteenth Century. For subtilty of principle, impressiveness of action,
-and breadth of results, there is nothing comparable with it among
-mechanical agencies. In its wonderful function of placing one
-intelligent being in direct vocal and sympathetic communication with
-another a thousand miles away, its intangible and mysterious mode of
-action suggests to the imagination that unseen medium of prayer rising
-from the conscious human heart to its omniscient and responsive God. The
-telegraph and railroad had already brought all the peoples of the earth
-into intimate communication and made them close kin, but the telephone
-transformed them into the closer relationship of families, and the tiny
-wire, sentient and responsive with its unlimited burden of human
-thoughts and human feelings, forms one of the great vital cords in the
-solidarity of the human family.
-
-It is a curious fact that many, and perhaps most, great inventions have
-been in the nature of accidental discoveries, the by-products of thought
-directed in another channel, and seeking other results, but the
-telephone does not belong to this class. It is the logical and
-magnificent outcome of persistent thought and experiment in the
-direction of the electrical transmittal of speech. Prof. Bell had his
-objective point, and keeping this steadily in view, worked faithfully
-for the accomplishment of his object in producing a speaking telephone,
-until success crowned his work. He probably did not realize at first the
-full magnitude of the achievement, but looking at it from the end of the
-Nineteenth Century, he might well exclaim in the language of Horace:
-"_Exegi monumentum acre perennius_."
-
-Prof. Bell's conception of the telephone dates back as far as 1874. His
-first United States patent, No. 174,465, was granted March 7, 1876, and
-his second January 30, 1877, No. 186,787. It is generally the fate of
-most inventions, even of a meritorious order, to languish for many
-years, and frequently through the whole term of the patent, before
-receiving full recognition and adoption by the public, but the meteoric
-brilliancy of this invention at its first public announcement astonished
-the masses, and inspired the admiration of the savants of the world.
-When exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, in 1876, it
-was spoken of by Sir William Thomson, and Prof. Henry, as the "greatest
-by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph."
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 55.--PHILIP REIS' TELEPHONE.]
-
-It is always the fate of the author of any great invention to be
-compelled to defend himself against the claims of others. It is one of
-the failings of human nature to lay claim to that which somebody else
-has obtained, and is an old story which finds its first illustration in
-the squabbles of childhood. When a troop of prattling boys hunt
-butterflies among the daisies, and some sharp-eyed youngster has
-captured a prize, there are always others of his mates to cry, "I saw it
-first," and men are but grown-up boys. So in the history of the
-telephone, Prof. Bell has found competitors for this honor, and it is
-astonishing to know how close some of these prior experimenters came to
-success without reaching it. In 1854 Bourseul, of Paris _suggested_ an
-electric telephone, and in 1861 Philip Reis _devised_ an electric
-telephone which would transmit musical tones. Daniel Drawbaugh, of
-Pennsylvania, is alleged to have made an electric telephone in
-1867-1868, and his claims against the Bell interests were fought
-vigorously in the Patent Office, and in the courts, but without success.
-Elisha Gray's claims perhaps came nearer to establishing for him a share
-in the honor of inventing the speaking telephone than any other, for he
-filed a caveat in the United States Patent Office upon the same day
-(February 14, 1876), upon which Prof. Bell's application for a patent
-was made. But in the contest in the Patent Office with Gray, Edison,
-Berliner, Richmond, Holcombe, Farmer, Dolbear, Volker, and others, it
-was decided that Prof. Bell was the first to make a practically
-effective speaking telephone, and this conclusion has been sustained by
-the courts. Reis was a poor German school teacher at Friedrichsdorf, and
-in 1860 he took a coil of wire, a knitting needle, the skin of a German
-sausage, the bung of a beer barrel, and a strip of platinum, and
-constructed the first electric telephone. A typical form of his
-transmitter, see Fig. 55, was a box covered with a vibrating membrane E,
-and provided with a mouth-piece at one side. A platinum strip F was
-attached to the membrane or vibrating diaphragm E, and a platinum
-pointed hammer G rested lightly on the platinum strip F. The hammer G
-and platinum strip F were connected to the opposite ends of a wire,
-which had in its circuit a battery and a receiver. Air vibrations in the
-nature of sound waves in the box caused the diaphragm E to vibrate, and
-a separating make-and-break contact between the platinum strip F and the
-platinum point of hammer G caused a series of separate and distinct
-broken impulses to traverse the battery circuit and be received upon the
-receiver, which latter consisted of an iron rod with a coil of wire
-around it. That Reis' transmitter did alternately make and break the
-circuit, seems clear from his own memoir. A translation from this
-memoir, taken from the annual report (Jahresberichte) of the Physical
-Society of Frankfurt am Main for 1860-1861, reads as follows:
-
-"At the first condensation (of air vibrations) the hammer-shaped little
-wire _d_ (G in our illustration), will be pushed back. At the succeeding
-rarefaction it cannot follow the return vibration of the membrane, and
-the current going through the little strip (of platinum) remains
-interrupted so long as until the membrane driven by a new condensation
-presses the little strip against _d_ (the hammer G) once more. In this
-way each sound wave effects an opening and closing of the current."
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 56.--PROF. BELL'S TELEPHONE, MARCH 7, 1876.]
-
-Reis evidently did not know how to make the vibrations of his diaphragm
-translate themselves into exactly commensurate and correlated electric
-impulses of equal rapidity, range, and quality. If he had done this, he
-would have had a speaking telephone, but a make-and-break contact could
-never do it, and hence he in his later instruments attached to them a
-telegraphic key in order that the sending operator might communicate
-with the receiving operator. If Reis' telephone had been a speaking
-telephone, this would have been unnecessary. Furthermore, it is
-inconceivable how the intelligent, progressive, and scientific Germans
-could have failed to have given to a speaking telephone in 1860 the
-immediate honor and attention that it deserved. In America, the Bell
-speaking telephone, invented in 1876, was known all over the civilized
-world the same year. Reis' broken contact circuit would transmit musical
-tones, because musical tones vary chiefly in rapidity of vibration,
-rather than in range, or quality, and the chattering contacts of Reis'
-telephone would transmit musical tones because said contracts could be
-adjusted to the practically uniform range of vibration. Prof. Bell,
-however, had made a special study of articulate speech, and knew that
-speech was not essentially musical, but was composed of an irregular and
-discordant medley of vowel and consonant sounds, whose vibrations varied
-not only in pitch or rapidity like musical tones, but also in the
-quality or kind of vibrations as to range and loudness. In his
-invention, therefore, he did not make and break the circuit as did Reis,
-through the contact points, but he used the more sensitive plan of a
-constantly closed circuit, and merely caused the current to undulate in
-it by a principle of magnetic induction. This principle was first
-discovered by Oersted, and developed into the well known fact that when
-a piece of iron is moved back and forth from the poles of an
-electro-magnet an induced current is made to oscillate in the helix of
-the electro-magnet. The difference between Reis' separating
-make-and-break circuit, and the Bell continuous but undulating current,
-might be illustrated by the difference between the impulses delivered by
-the beating of the drum sticks on the head of a drum, on the one hand,
-and the alternate pulling and slackening of a kite cord, on the other.
-In the successive impacts on the head of a drum there could not be so
-sensitive a transfer of motion to the lower head of the drum as there
-would be transferred to the kite by the movement of the hand holding the
-kite cord. Reis' plan resembled the broken drum beats, and Bell's the
-kite cord, which always preserved a certain amount of tension. Bell
-accomplished his object by the means shown in Figs. 56 and 57, in which
-Fig. 56 represents his first patent of March 7, 1876, and Fig. 57 his
-second patent of January 30, 1877. In both cases the current was a
-continuously closed one, and was not alternately made and broken as by
-the separating contacts of Reis. Prof. Bell caused the vocal air
-vibrations to undulate or oscillate the continuously closed circuit by
-the principle of magnetic induction as follows (see Fig. 56): He caused
-diaphragm _a_, when spoken against, to vibrate the armature _c_ in front
-of the electro-magnet _b_, but without touching it, and as the armature
-approached and receded from the electro-magnet it induced an undulating
-but never broken current in the helix of this electro-magnet and along
-the line to and through the helix of the electro-magnet _f_ at the
-distant receiver, and this undulating current, influencing the armature
-_h_, which touched the diaphragm _i_ but not the electro-magnet,
-produced in the attractive influence of the magnet on this armature and
-diaphragm, vibrations of the same rapidity, range, and quality as those
-vocal vibrations that acted upon the first diaphragm _a_. In other
-words, the sequence of transference was air vibrations in A, mechanical
-vibrations of diaphragm _a_, electrical undulations traversing the line,
-induced vibrations in armature _h_ and diaphragm _i_, and air vibrations
-again resolved back into sounds of articulate speech, the same as those
-spoken into A. It will be perceived that in the Bell telephone both
-transmitter and receiver were of identical construction. This is better
-shown in Fig. 57 of his later patent, in which the horizontal line below
-the electro-magnet on one side represents a metal transmitting
-diaphragm, and the horizontal line under the electro-magnet at the other
-side was the receiving diaphragm. Not only were the sounds thus
-reproduced, but as the circuit was continuous and never broken by any
-separating contacts, the extreme sensitiveness of the electric
-vibrations set up by magnetic induction was such that the discordant and
-irregular quality of the vibrations of articulate speech were
-transferred and reproduced with exact fidelity, as well as the musical
-tones, and this rendered the speaking telephone a success. In later
-telephones the current is actually transmitted through the contacting
-points, but this only became practicable after the carbon microphone
-transmitter was invented, in which the essential undulations of the
-electric current were produced in another way, _i. e._, by the
-application of the important discovery that the varying of the pressure
-on carbon, by vibration, varied its conductivity, and in this way
-produced the same result of undulating a current without breaking it.
-This in no wise detracts from the value of the principle of the
-continuous undulating current discovered and employed by Prof. Bell,
-between which and the breaks of the hard platinum points of Reis there
-is a difference as wide as the difference between success and failure.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 57.--PROF. BELL'S TELEPHONE, JANUARY 30, 1877.]
-
-The form in which Prof. Bell's telephone was placed before the public
-was not that shown in the patents, but it quickly assumed the well-known
-shape of an elongated cylinder forming a handle, with a flaring
-mouth-piece at one end. This development in form is credited to Dr.
-Channing in 1877, and it is the familiar form to-day, whose internal
-construction is shown in Fig. 58. The handle is made of hard rubber, and
-the cap or mouth-piece, which is screwed thereon, is also of hard
-rubber. The diaphragm A, of thin ferrotype plate, is clamped at its
-edges between the cap, or mouth-piece, and the handle. The compound
-magnet B is composed of four thin flat bar magnets, arranged in pairs on
-opposite sides of the flat end of the soft iron pole piece _c_ at one
-end, and the soft iron spacing piece _d_ at the other end, the magnets
-being clamped to these pieces with like poles all in one direction. The
-end of the pole piece _c_ extends to within 1/100 to 2/100 of an inch of
-the diaphragm, or as near as possible so that the diaphragm does not
-touch it when it vibrates. On the pole piece _c_ is placed a wooden
-spool on which is wound silk-covered wire (No. 34, Am. W. G.). This wire
-fills the spool, and its ends are soldered to two insulated wires which
-pass through a flexible rubber disc _f_ below the spool and extend
-respectively to the two binding posts at the opposite end of the handle.
-The current passes from one binding post and its connecting wire,
-through the wire on the spool, and thence to the other connecting wire
-and binding post. When used as a transmitter, vocal vibrations acting
-mechanically on the diaphragm A produce undulatory vibrations by
-magnetic induction in the spool of wire, which are transmitted to the
-other end of the line; and when used as a receiver, the undulatory
-vibrations from the remote end of the line produce mechanical vibrations
-in the diaphragm, which set up air vibrations that are reproductions of
-articulate sounds.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 58.--LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF BELL TELEPHONE.]
-
-Although the Bell telephone is both a transmitter and receiver, in
-practice a more sensitive and better form of transmitter has taken its
-place. That most generally used and best known is the "Blake
-transmitter," which was brought out about 1880. This employs two
-important elements. The first is the carbon microphone, which is a means
-for producing the undulations in the current by the variations in
-pressure on carbon contacts, and the second is an induction coil
-operated by a local battery, whose primary circuit passes through the
-contacts of the carbon microphone, and whose secondary circuit passes
-over the line. These fundamental elements of the Blake transmitter were
-the inventions of Berliner and Edison, and were made in 1877. The broad
-idea of producing electric undulations by varying the pressure between
-electrodes by vocal vibrations, was a large bone of contention in the
-Patent Office between various inventors. An application for a patent for
-the same was filed in the Patent Office by Emile Berliner, June 4, 1877,
-which was contested in an interference by Gray, Edison, Richmond,
-Dolbear, Holcombe, Prof. Bell, and others. After fourteen years of
-litigation the patent was finally awarded to Berliner. The patent
-granted to him November 17, 1891, No. 463,569, is a valuable one, and
-has become the property of the American Bell Telephone Company. The
-application of a low resistance conductor (carbon) in a microphone was
-invented by Edison as early as 1877, but his patent, No. 474,230, did
-not issue until May 3, 1892, on account of the interference with
-Berliner on the broader principle.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 59.--BLAKE TRANSMITTER.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 60.--DIAGRAM OF CIRCUITS IN BLAKE TRANSMITTER.]
-
-The Blake transmitter takes its name from the inventor of its mechanical
-features, who has assembled in it the fundamental principles of Berliner
-and Edison in a sensitive and practical mechanical construction, covered
-by minor patents, dated November 29, 1881. It is the little box in the
-middle of the familiar telephone outfit into which the talking is done.
-Its internal construction is shown in Fig. 59. To the rear of the door
-is secured the cast iron circular ring A, inside of which lies the
-Russia iron diaphragm B, cushioned at its edges with a rubber band. A
-circular seat a little larger than the diaphragm is formed in the iron
-ring, and on this seat the diaphragm rests. A short, thin metal plate
-attached to the ring A on the right hand side clamps the diaphragm in
-position by resting squarely on the rubber edge of the diaphragm. Its
-function is like that of a hinge, which allows the diaphragm to freely
-swing inward. A steel damping spring is secured to the ring at the
-opposite edge of the diaphragm, and has its free end provided with a
-rubber glove on which is cemented a thin piece of fluffy woolen
-material. The padded end of the damping spring rests against the
-diaphragm and prevents excessive vibration. The iron ring A has at its
-bottom a projection holding an adjusting screw, and to a similar top
-projection is attached by screws a brass spring, from which depends
-another casting C, supporting the microphone apparatus, which is best
-shown in the diagram, Fig. 60. In this diagram A is one terminal of the
-battery connected by wire S to the hinge H of the box. From the other
-leaf of the hinge the wire M passes to K, where it is soldered to the
-upper end of a German silver spring I. At K this spring is clamped and
-insulated from the iron work by two pieces of hard rubber. On the lower
-end of the spring I is soldered a short piece of thick platinum wire,
-whose ends are rounded into heads, one of which bears against the
-diaphragm N, and the other against the carbon button J. This button is
-attached to a small brass weight, and is supported by a spring R,
-clamped at its upper end to the metal support T. This spring is
-surrounded its entire length by rubber tubing to deaden vibration. The
-transmitter is adjusted by screw O, which, acting upon casting T, brings
-the carbon button, the platinum heads, and also the diaphragm N, against
-each other with a regulated pressure. The current passes from the part K
-to the spring I, the platinum head, carbon button J, and its supporting
-spring R, to metal casting T, and ring V, thence by wire L to the lower
-hinge G, by wire P to the primary of the induction coil, and thence by
-wire Y to binding post B, the two binding posts A B being the two
-battery terminals. The secondary wire E of the induction coil has its
-ends connected by wires X and W with the two binding posts C B, which
-are the line terminals, or one the line terminal and the other the
-ground connection. It will thus be seen that the primary current passes
-through the transmitter, and the secondary traverses the line. The most
-familiar forms of the telephone are those seen in Figs. 61 and 62, but
-the ideal form is rigged in a cabinet or little room, which excludes all
-extraneous interfering sounds.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 61.--WALL TELEPHONE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 62.--DESK TELEPHONE.]
-
-With the Bell receiver and the Blake transmitter a good practical
-telephone system may be constructed, but the improvements which have
-been made in the short life of the telephone are beyond adequate
-description, or even mention. They relate to the call bell, the battery,
-the switchboard, meters for registering calls, conductors, conduits,
-connections, lightning arresters, switches, anti-induction devices,
-repeaters, and systems. Among those most prominently identified with its
-development are Bell, Edison, Berliner, Hughes, Gray, Dolbear and
-Phelps. The activity in this field is best illustrated by the fact that
-the art of telephony, begun practically in 1876, has at the end of the
-Nineteenth Century grown into some 3,000 United States patents on the
-subject.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 63.--TELEPHONE EXCHANGE.]
-
-That which has given the telephone its greatest commercial value is the
-"exchange" system, by which at a central office any member of a
-telephonic community may be instantly put into communication with any
-other member of that community. For this purpose, see Fig. 63, a
-continuous switchboard is arranged along the side of a large room and
-occupies most of that side of the wall. It comprises a great array of
-annunciator drops, spring jacks with plug seats, and connecting cords
-with metal plugs at their opposite ends. Each subscriber is connected to
-his own spring jack and annunciator drop, and his call to central
-office (from his magneto-bell) throws down the annunciator drop which
-bears the number of his telephone, and announces to the attendant his
-desire to communicate with another. To insure the attention of the
-attendant, a tiny electric lamp is by the same action lighted directly
-in front of her, which acts as a pilot signal to call her attention to
-the drop. The attendant now puts a plug in that spring jack, which
-automatically restores the drop, and she then asks the number which the
-subscriber wants, and, upon ascertaining this, puts the plug at the
-other end of the connecting cord into the spring jack of the subscriber
-wanted, and by this action disconnects her own telephone. As every
-telephone subscriber has in the central office an apparatus exclusively
-his own, it will be seen that a telephone community of several thousands
-of subscribers involves an imposing array of multiple connections, and a
-great expense in construction. Girls are chosen as exchange attendants
-because their voices are clearer. Every telephone jack, however, does
-not have its Jill, for each girl has charge of a hundred or more jacks,
-and wears constantly on her head a telephone of special shape, embracing
-her head like a child's hoop comb, but terminating with an ear-piece at
-one end that covers one ear. She is too busy to waste time in adjusting
-an ordinary telephone to her ear, and so wears one of special design all
-the time.
-
-In the twentieth annual report of the American Bell Telephone Company,
-for the year 1899, the number of telephones in use January 1, 1900, by
-that company alone, in the United States, was 1,580,101; the miles of
-wire were 1,016,777, and the daily connections for persons using the
-telephone were 5,173,803. The gross earnings of the company were
-$5,760,106.45, and it paid in dividends $3,882,945. The total number of
-exchange stations of the Bell Company in the principal countries of the
-world are: United States, 632,946; Germany, 212,121; Great Britain,
-112,840; Sweden, 63,685; France, 44,865; Switzerland, 35,536; Russia,
-26,865; Austria, 26,664; Norway, 25,376. The United States has nearly
-85,000 more than all the others put together.
-
-Since the expiration of the Bell patents many smaller companies have
-sprung up, and the number of telephones in use has more than doubled in
-the last five years. Long distance telephony is now carried on up to
-nearly 2,000 miles, and one may to-day lie in bed in New York and listen
-to a concert in Chicago, and the vocal exchange of business and social
-intercourse between cities has become so large a feature of modern life
-as to justify the organization of a great company for this service
-alone.
-
-In the Old Testament, Book of Job, xxxviii. chapter, 35th verse, it is
-written: "Canst thou send lightnings that they may go and say unto
-thee--'Here we are?'" For thousands of years this challenge to Job has
-been looked upon as a feat whose execution was only within the power of
-the Almighty; but to-day the inventor--that patient modern Job--has
-accomplished this seemingly impossible task, for at the end of this
-Nineteenth Century of the Christian Era, the telephone makes the
-lightning man's vocal messenger, tireless, faithful, and true, knowing
-no prevarication, and swifter than the winged messenger of the gods.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-
-ELECTRICITY--MISCELLANEOUS.
-
- STORAGE BATTERY--BATTERIES OF PLANTE, FAURE AND BRUSH--ELECTRIC
- WELDING--DIRECT GENERATION OF ELECTRICITY BY COMBUSTION--ELECTRIC
- BOATS--ELECTRO-PLATING--EDISON'S ELECTRIC PEN--ELECTRICITY IN
- MEDICINE--ELECTRIC CAUTERY--ELECTRICAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS--ELECTRIC
- BLASTING.
-
-
-A prominent factor in the electrical art is the _Storage Battery_,
-Secondary Battery, or Accumulator, as it is variously called. A storage
-battery acts upon the same general principle as the ordinary galvanic or
-voltaic battery in giving forth electrical current as the correlated
-equivalent of the chemical force, but differs from it in this respect,
-that when the elements of a primary battery are used up, the battery is
-exhausted beyond repair. With the storage battery, it may be regenerated
-at will by simply subjecting it to an electric current from a dynamo.
-The dynamo stores up in this battery its electric force by converting it
-into chemical force, which is imprisoned in chemical compounds that are
-formed while the power of the dynamo is being applied. These chemical
-compounds are, however, in a condition of unstable chemical equilibrium,
-which is undisturbed so long as the poles of the storage battery are not
-connected, but when connected through a circuit, the instability of the
-chemical compounds asserts itself, and in passing back to a condition of
-normal equilibrium the disruption gives off the correlative equivalent
-of electric current stored up in it by the dynamo.
-
-Probably the earliest suggestion of a storage battery is by Ritter in
-1812, in his "secondary pile." This device consisted of alternate discs
-of copper and moistened card, and was capable of receiving a charge from
-a voltaic pile and of then producing the physical, chemical, and
-physiological effects obtained from the ordinary pile. The first storage
-battery of importance, however, was made by Gaston Plante in 1860, which
-consisted of leaden plates immersed in a 10 per cent. solution of
-sulphuric acid in water. In Fig. 64 is shown a modification of the
-Plante type of storage battery, composed of a series of plates shown on
-the left. Each of these plates is built up, as shown in detail in Fig.
-65, of lead strips corrugated and arranged in layers alternately with
-flat strips, within perforated leaden cases. The corrugation of the
-leaden laminae gives greater superficial area, and the alternation of
-flat and corrugated strips keeps them properly spaced, so the sulphuric
-acid solution may penetrate and act upon the same. Each plate section
-has a rod to connect it with its proper terminal. When the charging
-current is applied, the positive lead plate becomes covered with lead
-peroxide (PbO_{2}) and finely divided metallic lead is deposited on the
-negative plate. When the battery is being discharged the peroxide of
-lead gives up one of its atoms of oxygen to the spongy metallic lead
-deposited on the other plate, and both plates remain coated with lead
-monoxide (PbO).
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 64.--PLANTE STORAGE BATTERY.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 65.--ENLARGED DETAIL OF PLANTE PLATE.]
-
-The most important development of the storage battery was made by
-Camille A. Faure, in 1880 (U. S. Pat. No. 252,002, Jan 3, 1882). In the
-early part of 1881 there was sent from Paris to Glasgow a so-called "box
-of electric energy" for inspection and test by Sir William Thomson, the
-eminent electrician. It was one of the first storage batteries of M.
-Faure. The illustration, Fig. 66, shows a battery of this type in which
-the lead plates covered with red lead (Pb_{3}O_{4}) replace the plain
-lead plates in the Plante cell. The action of the battery is that when a
-current of electricity is passed into the same, the red lead on one
-plate (the negative) is reduced to metallic lead, and that on the other
-is oxidized to a state of peroxide (PbO_{2)}. These actions are reversed
-when the charged cell is discharging itself. The elements of this
-battery consist of alternate layers of sheet lead, and a paste of red
-oxide of lead. These are immersed in a 10 per cent. solution of
-sulphuric acid in water. Many minor improvements have been made in the
-storage battery, covered by 716 United States patents, most of which
-relate to cellular construction for holding the mass of red lead in
-place. The most notable are those of Brush, to whom many patents were
-granted in 1882 and 1883.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 66.--STORAGE BATTERY--FAURE TYPE.]
-
-The storage battery finds many important applications. For furnishing
-current for the propulsion of electric street cars it has proved a
-disappointment, on account of the vibrations to which it is subjected,
-and the great weight of the lead, which in batteries of suitable
-capacity runs up into many thousands of pounds. The storage battery
-finds a useful place, however, for equalizing the load in lighting and
-power stations, and is there brought into action to supplement the
-engine and dynamo during those hours of the day when the tax or load is
-greatest. It is also used to keep up electrical pressure at the ends of
-long transmission lines; for telegraphing purposes; for isolated
-electric lighting; for boat propulsion; the propulsion of automobile
-carriages; and in all cases where a portable source of electric current
-would find application. The great growth of automobile carriages in the
-past year has greatly stimulated the output of storage batteries. One
-large company (The Electric Storage Battery Company), manufactured and
-sold storage batteries for the year ending June 1, 1899, to the amount
-of $2,387,049.91, and there are many other manufacturers.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 67.--ELECTRIC WELDING.]
-
-_Electric Welding_ was invented by Prof. Elihu Thomson, of Lynn, Mass.,
-and patented by him August 10, 1886, No. 347,140-42, and July 18, 1893,
-No. 501,546. It is useful for the making of chains, tools, carriage
-axles, joining shafting, wires, and pipes, mending bands, tires, hoops,
-and lengthening and shortening bolts, bars, etc. For electric welding a
-current of great volume or quantity, and very low electro-motive force,
-is required. Thus a current of from one to two volts, and one to several
-thousand amperes, is best suited. Referring to Fig. 67, the current from
-the dynamo is conducted to one binding post of the commutator 3, which
-is arranged to send the current through one-sixth, one-third or one-half
-of the primary wire P of a transformer or induction coil. The other
-binding post of the commutator 3 extends to one terminal of an isolated
-primary coil 4, and the other terminal of this coil connects with the
-dynamo. The coil 4 is provided with a switch to regulate the amount of
-current. The rods to be welded are placed in clamps C C', C being
-connected with one terminal of the secondary conductor S, and the
-movable clamp C' with the other. When the current is turned on C' is
-moved so as to project one of the surfaces to be welded against the
-other, and as they come in contact they heat and fuse together, as shown
-at W. Larger apparatus has been devised to weld railroad joints on the
-roadbed, and for other applications.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 68.--GENERATION OF ELECTRICITY BY COMBUSTION.]
-
-_The generation of electricity_ for commercial purposes is almost
-entirely dependent upon the dynamo, as this is cheaper than the voltaic
-battery. The dynamo, however, must be energized by a steam engine. The
-direct production of electric energy by the combustion of coal would be
-the ideal method. A process invented by Edison (Pat. No. 490,953, Jan.
-31, 1893), is interesting as an effort in this direction, and is
-presented in Fig. 68. A carbon cylinder D is suspended in an air-tight
-vessel B, and is surrounded by oxide of iron F, the whole being placed
-above a furnace. The temperature being raised to a point where the
-carbon will be attacked by the oxygen, carbonic oxide and carbonic acid
-will be formed, which are exhausted by the suction fan E. A constant
-current of electricity is given off from the two electrodes through the
-wires, the metallic oxide being reduced and the carbon consumed.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 69.--RUDDER AND MOTOR OF TROUVE'S ELECTRIC BOAT,
-1881.]
-
-_Electrical Navigation_ began with Jacobi, who made the first attempt on
-the Neva in 1839. He used voltaic apparatus consisting of two Grove
-batteries, each containing sixty-four pairs of cells, but little
-progress was made in this field until the secondary battery was
-perfected. In 1881 Mr. G. Trouve made an application of the storage
-battery and electric motor to a small boat on the Seine. The electric
-motor, which was located on top of the rudder, as seen in Fig. 69, was
-furnished with a Siemens armature connected by an endless belt with a
-screw propeller having three paddles arranged in the middle of an iron
-rudder. In the middle of the boat were two storage batteries connected
-with the motor by two cords that both served to cover the conducting
-wires and work the rudder. Electric launches have in later years rapidly
-gained in popularity. Visitors to the Chicago fair will remember the
-fleet of electric launches, which afforded both pleasure and
-transportation on the water, at that great exposition, and to-day every
-safe harbor has its quota of these silently gliding and fascinating
-pleasure crafts. Fig. 70 is a longitudinal section and a general view of
-one of these launches.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 70.--MODERN ELECTRIC LAUNCH.]
-
-_Electro-plating_ is one of the great industrial applications of
-electricity which had its origin in, and has grown into extensive use
-in, the Nineteenth Century. It originated with Volta, Cruikshank, and
-Wollaston in the very first year of the century. In 1805 Brugnatelli, a
-pupil of Volta, gilded two large silver medals by bringing them into
-communication by means of a steel wire with the negative pole of a
-voltaic pile and keeping them one after the other immersed in a solution
-of gold. In 1834 Henry Bessemer electro-plated lead castings with copper
-in the production of antique relief heads. In 1838 Prof. Jacobi
-announced his galvano-plastic process for the production of electrotype
-plates for printing. In the same year he superintended the gilding, by
-electro-plate, of the iron dome of the Cathedral of St. Isaac at St.
-Petersburgh, using 274 pounds of ducat gold. In 1839 Spencer described
-an electrotype process and carried the date of his operations back to
-September, 1837. In 1839 Jordan also describes an electro-plating
-process. In 1840 Murray used plumbago to make non-conducting surfaces
-conductive for electro-plating. In 1840 De Le Rive made known his
-process of electro-gilding, employed by him in 1828, and in the same
-year (1840) De Ruolz took out a French patent for electro-gilding, and
-in the following year formed electro deposits of brass from cyanides of
-zinc and copper. In 1841 Smee employed his battery for electro-plating
-with various metals. In 1844 there were published the electro-plating
-experiments of Dancer, made in 1838. In 1847 Prof. Silliman imitated
-mother-of-pearl by electro-plating process.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 71.--ELECTRO-PLATING ESTABLISHMENT.]
-
-In the last half of the century the production of electrotype plates for
-printing in books, and for the production of rollers for printing
-fabrics, and the extensive art of electro-plating with gold, silver,
-nickel and copper, has grown to enormous proportions, but the
-fundamental principles have not materially changed. The dynamo, however,
-has generally supplanted the voltaic battery in this art. The deposition
-of silver and gold on baser metals not only increases the ornamental
-effect, but prevents oxidation. Silver plated goods for the table and
-articles of vertu are to be found everywhere. Nickel is employed for
-cheaper ornamental effect, and copper finds a large application for
-electrotypes for printing and for coating iron castings as a protection
-against rust. In Fig. 71, which shows the interior of an electro-plating
-establishment, the dynamo is shown on the right connected by wires with
-two horizontal rods running along the wall and across the various tanks
-containing the plating solution. On the tanks are rods supporting the
-articles to be plated, which are suspended in the solution. Similar rods
-support the opposite electrodes of the tank. Wires connect these rods to
-the rods on the side of the wall, and to the opposite poles of the
-dynamo.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 72.--EDISON'S ELECTRIC PEN.]
-
-_The electric pen of Edison_, brought out in 1876 (U. S. Pat. No.
-196,747, Nov. 6, 1877), is one of the simple applications of
-electricity, which for a number of years was in quite general use for
-making manifold copies of manuscript. In the illustration, Fig. 72, this
-is shown. It comprises a stylus _b_ reciprocated in a tube _a_ by the
-vibratory action of an armature _k_ over the poles of an electro-magnet,
-supplied with a suitable current and vibrating contacts _l h_. The
-stylus was rapidly reciprocated, and as the operator traced the letters
-on the paper, the stylus produced a continuous trail of punctures which
-permitted the paper to be used as a stencil to make any number of
-copies. It has, however, been rotated out of existence by manifolding
-carbon paper, and the almost universal use of the typewriter.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 73.--ELECTRIC CAUTERY.]
-
-_Electricity in Medicine._--The superstitious mind is prone to resort to
-mysterious agencies for the cure of diseases, and for many years men of
-no scientific knowledge whatever have been employing this seductive
-instrumentality for all the ills that flesh is heir to. That it has
-valuable therapeutic qualities when rightly applied no intelligent
-person will doubt, and it is unfortunate that for the most part it has
-been in the hands of charlatans who sell their wares, and rely upon a
-faith-cure principle for the result. Still there have been intelligent
-experimenters in this field, and it is one of much promise for further
-research.
-
-In the first century of the Christian Era (A. D. 50) Scribonius Largus
-relates that Athero, a freedman of Tiberius, was cured of the gout by
-the shocks of the torpedo or electric eel. In 1803 M. Carpue published
-experiments on the therapeutic action of electricity. The discovery of
-induction currents by Faraday in 1831 brought a new era in the medical
-application of electricity, in the use of what is known as the Faradaic
-current. The first apparatus for medical use, which operated on this
-principle, was made by M. Pixii in France, and the first physician who
-employed such currents was Dr. Neef, of Frankfort. The medical battery
-is a well-known and useful adjunct to the physician's outfit. Electric
-baths are also common and effective modes of applying the electric
-current. An early example of such a device is shown in the U. S. patent
-to Young, No. 32,332, May 14, 1861. The electric cautery and probe are
-also scientific and useful instruments. The cautery consists of a loop
-of platinum wire carried by a suitable non-conducting handle, with means
-for constricting the white hot loop of wire about the tumor or object to
-be excised. It was invented in 1846 by Crusell, of St. Petersburgh. A
-form of the electric cautery is shown in Fig. 73, in which _a_ is the
-platinum wire loop whose branches slide through guide tubes, the ends
-being attached to a sliding ring B. The current enters through the wire
-at the binding posts at the end of non-conducting handle A, and heats
-the platinum loop, _a_, red hot. The loop, _a_, being around the object
-to be excised, is constricted by drawing down the handle ring B.
-
-Of the various applications of electricity in body wear and appliances
-there is scarcely any end. There are patents for belts without number,
-for electric gloves, rings, bracelets, necklaces, trusses, corsets,
-shoes, hats, combs, brushes, chairs, couches, and blankets. Patents have
-also been granted for electric smelling bottles, an adhesive plaster,
-for electric spectacles, scissors, a foot warmer, hair singer, syringes,
-a drinking cup, a hair cutter, a torch, a catheter, a pessary, gas
-lighters, exercising devices, a door mat, and even for an electric hair
-pin and a pair of electric garters.
-
-_Electrical Musical Instruments_ include pianos, banjos, and violins,
-all of which are to be played automatically by the aid of electrical
-appliances. In the illustration, Fig. 74, is shown a modern electrical
-piano. A small electrical motor 1, run by a storage battery or electric
-light wires, turns a belt 3, and rotates pulley 4 and a long horizontal
-cylinder 5 running beneath the keyboard. Above this cylinder is the
-mechanism that acts upon the keys. It consists of a series of brake
-shoes which, when brought into frictional contact with the cylinder 5,
-are made to act on small vertical rods which bring down the keys just as
-the fingers do in playing. The selection of the proper keys is made by a
-traveling strip of paper perforated with dots and dashes representing
-the notes, which strip of paper passes between two metal contact faces,
-which are terminals of an electric battery. When the contacts are
-separated by the non-conducting paper the current does not flow, but
-when the contacts come together through the perforations the current is
-completed through an electro-magnet, and this is made to bring the
-proper brake shoe into position to be lifted by the cylinder 5, which
-rotates constantly.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 74.--ELECTRIC PIANO.]
-
-_Electro-blasting._--In 1812 Schilling proposed to blow up mines by the
-galvanic current. In 1839 Colonel Pasley blew up the wreck of the "Royal
-George" by electro-blasting. On Jan. 26, 1843, Mr. Cubitt used
-electro-blasting to destroy Round Down Cliff, and in our own time the
-extensive excavations in deepening the channel and removing the rocks at
-Hell Gate, from the mouth of New York harbor, was a notable operation in
-electro-blasting, and doubtless owes its success largely to the electric
-current employed.
-
-Only the briefest mention can be made of the induction coil and the
-electrical transformer, of electric bells and hotel annunciators, of
-electric railway signalling, and electric brakes, of electric clocks and
-instruments of precision, of heating by electricity, of electrical
-horticulture, and of the beautiful electric fountains. These, however,
-all belong to the Nineteenth Century, and include interesting
-developments.
-
-_Electro-chemistry_ and the _electrolytic refining of metals_ represent
-also, in the applications of electricity, a large and important field,
-more fully treated under the chapters devoted to chemistry and metal
-working.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X.
-
-THE STEAM ENGINE.
-
- HERO'S ENGINE, AND OTHER EARLY STEAM ENGINES--WATT'S STEAM
- ENGINE--THE CUT-OFF--GIFFARD INJECTOR--BOURDON'S STEAM GAUGE--FEED-
- WATER HEATERS, SMOKE CONSUMERS, ETC.--ROTARY ENGINES--STEAM HAMMER--
- STEAM FIRE ENGINE--COMPOUND ENGINES--SCHLICK AND TAYLOR SYSTEMS OF
- BALANCING MOMENTUM OF MOVING PARTS--STATISTICS.
-
-
-When the primeval man first turned upon himself the critical light of
-introspection, and observed his own deficiencies, there were born within
-him both the desire and the determination to supplement his weakness,
-and become the ruling factor in the world's destiny. The strength of his
-arm unaided could not cope with that of the wild beast, he could not
-travel so fast as the animal, nor soar so high as the bird, nor traverse
-the waters of the sea like the fish. The magnificent power of the
-elements first inspired him with awe, then was worshiped as a god, and
-he trembled in his weakness. Then he began to invent, and seeing in
-physical laws an escape from his fears, and a solution for his
-ambitions, he trained these forces and made them subservient to his
-will, and established his right to rule. Out of the maze of the
-centuries a steam engine is born--not all at once, for that would be
-inconsistent with the law of evolution--but gradually growing first into
-practicability, then into efficiency, and finally into perfection, it
-stands to-day a beautiful monument of man's ingenuity, throbbing with
-life and energy, and moving the world. What has not the steam engine
-done for the Nineteenth Century? It speeds the locomotive across the
-continent faster and farther than the birds can fly; no fish can equal
-the mighty steamship on the sea; it grinds our grain; it weaves our
-cloth; it prints our books; it forges our steel, and in every department
-of life it is the ubiquitous, tireless, potent agency of civilization.
-Does the ambitious young philosopher predict that electricity will
-supersede steam? It is not yet a rational prophecy, for the direct
-production of electricity from the combustion of coal is still an
-unsolved problem, and behind the electric generator can always be found
-the steam engine, modestly and quietly giving its full life's work to
-the dynamo, which it actuates, and caring nothing for the credit,
-unmindful of the beautiful and striking manifestations of electricity
-which astonish the world, but humbly doing its duty with a silent faith
-that the law of correlation of force will always lead the way back to
-the steam engine, and place it where it belongs, at the head of all
-useful agencies of man.
-
-The Nineteenth Century did not include in its discoveries the invention
-of the steam engine. The great gift of James Watt was one of the
-legacies which it received from the past, but the economical, efficient,
-graceful, and mathematically perfect engine of to-day is the product of
-this age.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 75.--HERO'S ENGINE, 150 B. C.]
-
-The genesis of the steam engine belongs to ancient history, for in the
-year 150 B. C. Hero made and exhibited in the Serapeum of Alexandria the
-first steam engine. It was of the rotary type and was known as the
-"aeolipile." During the middle ages the spirit of invention seems to
-have slept, for nearly eighteen centuries passed from the time of Hero's
-engine before any active revival of interest was manifested in this
-field of invention. Giovanni Branca in 1629, the Marquis of Worcester in
-1633, Dr. Papin in 1695, Savary in 1698, and Newcomen in 1705, were the
-pioneers of Watt, and gave to him a good working basis. Strange as it
-may appear, there was in 1894 and probably still is in existence in
-England an old Newcomen steam engine (see Fig. 76), which for at least a
-hundred years has stood exposed to the weather, slowly rusting and
-crumbling away. It is to be found in Fairbottom Valley, half way between
-Ashton-under-Lyne and Oldham, and is the property of the trustees of the
-late Earl of Stamford and Warrington. It is erected on a solid masonry
-pillar 14 by 7 feet at the base, which carries on its top, on trunnions,
-an oak beam 20 feet long and 12 by 14 inches thick. This beam is braced
-with iron, and has segmental ends with a piston at one end, and a
-balance weight at the other. The piston and pump rods are attached by
-chains. The cylinder is of cast iron, 27 inches in diameter, and about
-six foot stroke, the steam entering at the bottom only. It was formerly
-used for pumping a mine.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 76.--OLD NEWCOMEN ENGINE.]
-
-The distinct and valuable legacy, however, which the Nineteenth Century
-received from the past, was the double acting steam engine of James
-Watt, disclosed in his British Pat. No. 1,321, of 1782. Prior to this
-date steam engines had been almost exclusively confined to raising
-water, but with the invention of Watt it extended into all fields of
-industrial use. Watt's double acting engine is shown in Fig. 77. It
-comprised a cylinder A, with double acting piston and valve gear E F G
-H; the parallel motion R for translating the reciprocating motion of the
-piston into the curved oscillatory path of the walking beam; a condenser
-chamber K, with spray I, for condensing the exhaust steam; a pump L J to
-remove the water from the condenser, and also the air, which is drawn
-out of the water by the vacuum; a water supply pump N; the automatic
-ball governor D, and throttle valve B. Two pins on the pump rod L strike
-the lever H and work the valve gear, and a collecting rod P and crank Q
-convert the oscillations of the walking beam into the continuous
-rotation of the fly wheel.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 77.--WATT'S DOUBLE ACTING STEAM ENGINE.]
-
-Watt's automatic ball governor is shown in Fig. 78 and its function is
-as follows: When the working strain on an engine is relieved by the
-throwing out of action of a part of the work being performed, the engine
-would run too fast, or if more than a normal tax were placed on the
-engine, it would "slow up." To secure a regular and uniform motion in
-the performance of his engine Watt invented the automatic or
-self-regulating ball governor and throttle valve. A vertical shaft D is
-rotated constantly by a band on pulley _d_. Any tendency in the engine
-to run too fast throws the balls up by centrifugal action, and this
-through toggle links _f h_, pulls down on a lever F G H, and partially
-closes the throttle valve Z, reducing the flow of steam to the engine.
-When the engine has a tendency to run too slow the balls drop down, and,
-deflecting the lever in the opposite direction, open the throttle valve,
-and increase the flow of steam to the engine. This double acting engine
-of Watt marks the beginning of the great epoch of steam engineering, and
-his patent expired just in time to give to the Nineteenth Century the
-greatest of all natal gifts.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 78.--WATT'S AUTOMATIC GOVERNOR AND THROTTLE VALVE.]
-
-Steam engines are divided into two principal classes, the low pressure
-engine, using steam usually under 40 pounds to the square inch, and the
-high pressure engine, using steam from 50 to 200 pounds. In the low
-pressure engine there is the expansive pressure of the steam on one side
-of the piston, aided by the suction of a vacuum on the opposite side of
-the piston, which vacuum is created by the condensation of the
-discharging, or exhaust steam, by cold water. As there are two factors
-at work impelling the piston, only a relatively low pressure in the
-boiler is required. In the high pressure engines there is no
-condensation of the exhaust steam, but it is discharged directly into
-the air, and this type was originally called "puffers." Familiar
-examples of the low pressure type are to be found in our side wheel
-passenger steamers, and of the high pressure type in the steam
-locomotive.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 79.--PRINCIPLE OF CUT-OFF.]
-
-One of the most important steps in the development of the steam engine
-was the addition of the cut-off. Prior to its adoption steam was
-admitted to the cylinder during the whole time the piston was making
-its stroke from one end of the cylinder to the other. In the cut-off
-(see Fig. 79), when steam is being admitted through the port _p_, and
-the piston is being driven in the direction of the arrow, it was found
-that if the steam were cut off when the piston arrived at the position
-1, the expansive action of the steam behind it in chamber _a_ would
-continue to carry the piston with an effective force to the end of its
-stroke, or to position 2. This of course effected a great saving in
-steam. Various cut-offs have been devised. Perhaps that most easily
-recognized by most persons is the one seen in the engine room of our
-side wheel steamers, of which illustration is given in Fig. 80. This was
-invented in 1841 by F. E. Sickels, and was the first successful drop
-cut-off. It was covered by his patents, May 20, 1842, July 20, 1843,
-October 19, 1844, No. 3,802, and September 19, 1845, No. 4,201. A rock
-shaft _s_ is worked by an eccentric rod _e_ from the paddle wheel shaft.
-The rock shaft has lifting arms _a_ that act upon and alternately raise
-the feet _c_ on rods _b b_. One of these rods _b_ works the valves that
-admit steam, and the other the valves that discharge steam. The valve
-rod that admits steam has a quick drop, or fall, to cut off the live
-steam before the piston reaches the end of its stroke. In Fig. 81 is
-shown the celebrated Corliss cut-off and valve gear, in which a central
-wrist plate and four radiating rods work the valves. This valve gear was
-covered in Corliss patents, No. 6,162, March 10, 1849, and No. 8.253,
-July 29, 1851.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 80.--SICKELS' DROP CUT-OFF VALVE GEAR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 81.--CORLISS CUT-OFF AND VALVE GEAR.]
-
-Among other important improvements in the steam engine are those for
-replenishing the water in the boiler, and the Giffard Injector is the
-simplest and most ingenious of all boiler feeds. It was invented in 1858
-and covered by French patent No. 21,457, May 8, 1858, and U. S. patent
-No. 27,979, April 24, 1860. Prior to the Giffard Injector, steam boilers
-were supplied with water usually by steam pumps, which forced the water
-into the boiler against the pressure of the steam. The Giffard Injector
-takes a jet of steam from the boiler, and causes it to lift the water in
-an external pipe, and blow it directly into the boiler against its own
-pressure. So paradoxical and inoperative did this seem at first that it
-was met with incredulity, and not until repeated demonstrations
-established the fact was it accepted as an operative device. Its
-construction is shown in Fig. 82. A is a steam pipe communicating with
-the boiler, B another pipe receiving steam from A through small holes
-and terminating in a cone. C is a screw rod, cone-shaped at its
-extremity, turned by the crank M, and serving to regulate and even
-intercept the passage of steam. D is a water suction pipe. The water
-that is drawn up introduces itself around the steam pipe and tends to
-make its exit through the annular space at the conical extremity of the
-latter steam pipe. This annular space is increased at will by means of
-the lever L, which acts upon a screw whose office is to cause the pipe B
-and its attached parts to move backward or forward. E is a diverging
-tube which receives the water injected by the jet of steam that
-condenses at I, and imparts to the water a portion of its speed in
-proportion to the pressure of the boiler. F is a box carrying a check
-valve to keep the water from issuing from the boiler when the apparatus
-is not at work. G is a pipe that leads the injected water to the boiler.
-H is a purge or overflow pipe, K a sight hole which permits the
-operation of the apparatus to be watched, the stream of water being
-distinctly seen in the free interval. Fig. 83 shows the application of
-the injector to locomotives, which are now almost universally supplied
-with this device.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 82.--GIFFARD INJECTOR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 83.--INJECTOR ON LOCOMOTIVE.]
-
-To keep the pressure in the boiler within the limit of safety, and
-adjusted to the work being performed, is an important part of the
-engineer's duty, and this he could not do without the steam gauge. One
-of the best known is the Bourdon gauge, shown in Fig. 84, constructed on
-the principle of the barometer invented by Bourdon of Paris in 1849 and
-patented in France June, 1849, and in the United States August 3, 1852,
-No. 9,163. A screw threaded thimble B, with stop cock A, is screwed in
-the shell of the boiler, and a coiled pipe C communicates at one end
-with the thimble and is closed at the other end E and connected by a
-link F, with an arm on an axle, carrying an index hand that moves over a
-graduated scale. The coiled pipe C is in the nature of a flattened
-tube, as shown in the enlarged cross section, and is enclosed in a case.
-When the steam pressure varies in this flat tube its coil expands or
-contracts, and in moving the index hand over the scale indicates the
-degree of pressure.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 84.--BOURDON'S PRESSURE GAUGE.]
-
-In line with the development of the steam engine must be considered the
-efforts to economize fuel. These may be divided into the following
-classes: Increased steam generating surface in boiler construction;
-surface condensers for exhaust steam; devices for promoting the
-combustion of fuel and burning the smoke, and feed water heaters. Even
-before the Nineteenth Century Smeaton devised the cylindrical boiler
-traversed by a flue, but the multitubular steam boiler of to-day
-represents a very important Nineteenth Century adjunct to the steam
-engine. Our locomotives, fire engines, and torpedo boat engines would be
-of no value without it. Sectional steam boilers made in detachable
-portions fastened together by packed or screw joints also represent an
-important development. These permit of the removal and replacement of
-any one section that may become defective, and are also capable of being
-built up section by section to any size needed. For promoting the
-combustion of fuel the draft is energized by blasts of air or steam, or
-both, either through hollow grate bars, jet pipes in the fire box, or by
-discharging the exhaust steam in the smoke pipe. Surface condensers pass
-the exhaust steam over the great surface area of a multitubular
-construction having cold water flowing through it. Feed water heaters
-utilize the waste heat escaping in the smoke flue to heat the water that
-is being fed to the boiler, so that it is warm when it is injected into
-the boiler, and the furnace is relieved of that much work.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 85.--BRANCA'S STEAM TURBINE, 1629.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 86.--SECTION OF PARSONS TURBINE OF 1891.]
-
-In the reciprocating type of steam engine the inertia of the piston must
-be overcome at the beginning of each stroke and its momentum must be
-arrested at the end of each stroke, and this involves a great loss of
-power. If the power of the steam could be applied so as to continuously
-move the piston in the same direction this loss would be avoided. The
-effort to do this has engaged the attention of many inventors, and the
-devices are called rotary engines. The most successful engines of this
-kind are those of the impact type, in which jets of steam impinge upon
-buckets after the manner of water on a water wheel, and which are known
-to-day as steam turbines. The earliest of these is Branca's steam
-turbine of 1629 (see Fig. 85) and the most important of this class in
-use to-day are those of Mr. Parsons, of England, and De Laval, of
-Sweden. The internal construction of the Parsons turbine is seen in Fig.
-86 and is covered by British patent No. 10,940, of 1891, and United
-States patent No. 553,658, January 28th, 1896. A series of turbines are
-set one after the other on the same axis, so that each takes steam from
-the preceding one, and passes it on to the next. Each consists of a ring
-of fixed steam guides on the casing, and a ring of moving blades on the
-shaft. The steam passes through the first set of guides, then through
-the first set of moving blades, then through the second set of guides,
-and then through the second set of moving blades, and so on.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 87.--PARSONS COMPOUND STEAM TURBINE, ON PLURALITY OF
-PROPELLER SHAFTS.]
-
-In the application of his turbine to marine propulsion Mr. Parsons
-employs a plurality of propeller shafts and steam turbines, as seen in
-Fig. 87, and covered under United States patent No. 608,969, August 9,
-1898.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 88.--DE LAVAL'S STEAM TURBINE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 89.--DE LAVAL TURBINE GEARED TO DYNAMO.]
-
-The De Laval turbine, as shown in Fig. 88, is of very simple
-construction, consisting only of a steel wheel with a series of buckets
-at its periphery enclosed by a circular rim, and a series of steam
-nozzles on the side with diverging jet orifices directing steam jets
-against the buckets. A speed of 30,000 revolutions a minute may be
-attained by this construction. In Fig. 89 is shown a 300 horse-power
-steam turbine of the De Laval type applied to a dynamo; to which this
-type of engine is peculiarly adapted. The dynamo is seen on the extreme
-right, the steam turbine on the extreme left, and the drum-shaped
-casing between contains cog-gearing by which the high revolution of the
-turbine wheel is reduced to a proper working speed for the dynamo.
-Within the last few years application of the Parsons steam turbine has
-been made to marine propulsion with very remarkable results as to speed.
-The small steam craft, "The Turbinia," built in 1897, and supplied with
-three of Parsons' compound steam turbines, developed a speed of 323/4
-knots, and more recently the torpedo boat "Viper" has with steam
-turbines attained the remarkable speed of 37.1 knots, or over 40 statute
-miles an hour. About 2,000 United States patents have been granted on
-various forms of rotary engines.
-
-In the transportation building of the World's Fair at Chicago in 1893
-one of the most conspicuous objects of attention was the model of the
-great Bethlehem Iron Co.'s steam hammer, standing with its feet apart
-like some great "Colossus of Rhodes" and towering 91 feet high among the
-models of the great ocean steamers and battleships which are so largely
-dependent upon the work of this Titanic machine. Its hammer head, in the
-working-machine, weighs 125 tons, and many of the seventeen inch thick
-armor plates for our battleships have been forged by its tremendous
-blows.
-
-In 1838, during the construction of the "Great Britain," the largest
-steamship up to that time ever built, it was found that there was not a
-forge hammer in England or Scotland powerful enough to forge a paddle
-shaft for that vessel. The emergency was met by Mr. Nasmyth, of England,
-who invented the steam hammer and covered it in British patent No.
-9,382, of 1842 (U. S. Pat. No. 3,042, April 10, 1843). A modern example
-of it is seen in Fig. 90. It consists of a steam cylinder at the top
-whose piston is attached to a block of iron, forming the hammer head and
-sliding vertically in guides between the two legs of the frame. Valve
-gear is arranged to control the flow of steam to and from the opposite
-sides of the piston, and so nicely adjusted is the valve gear of such a
-modern steam hammer that it is said that an expert workman can
-manipulate the great mass of metal with such accuracy and delicacy as to
-crack an egg in a wineglass without touching the glass. To the steam
-hammer we owe the first heavy armor plate for our battle ships and the
-propeller shafts of our earlier steamships. In fact it was the steam
-hammer which first rendered the large steamship possible. Mr. Nasmyth
-not only invented the steam hammer, but the steam pile driver as well.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 90.--STEAM HAMMER.]
-
-For quick action, nicely adjusted machinery, and showy finish the steam
-fire engine is a familiar and conspicuous application of steam power. A
-dude among engines when on dress parade, and a sprinter when on the run,
-it gets to work with the vim and efficiency of a thoroughbred, and is a
-most business-like and valuable custodian of life and property. The
-first portable steam fire engine was built about 1830 by Mr. Brathwaite
-and Capt. Ericsson in London. In 1841 Mr. Hodges produced a similar
-engine in New York City. Cincinnati was the first city to adopt the
-steamer as a part of its fire department apparatus. To-day all the
-important cities and towns of the civilized world rely upon the steam
-fire engines for their longevity and existence. Time economy in getting
-into action is the great objective point of most improvements of the
-fire-engine, and one of the most important is the keeping of the water
-in the boiler hot when the engine is out of action at the engine house,
-so that when the fire is built and the run is made to the scene of
-action, the water will be hot to start with. This attachment was the
-invention of William A. Brickill, and was patented by him August 18,
-1868, No. 81,132. In the illustration, Fig. 91, the two pipes passing
-from the engine through the trap door in the floor connect with a water
-heater in the basement below, which heater maintains a constant
-circulation of hot water in the steam boiler. Couplings in these pipes
-serve to quickly disconnect the engine when the run to the fire is to be
-made.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 91.--STEAM FIRE ENGINE WITH WATER HEATING
-ATTACHMENT.]
-
-Among other useful applications of the steam engine are the steam plow,
-steam drill, steam dredge, steam press, and steam pump, of which latter
-the Blake, Knowles, and Worthington are representative types.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 92.--THE SIX-CYLINDER QUADRUPLE EXPANSION ENGINES OF
-THE "DEUTSCHLAND," 35,640 HORSE POWER.]
-
-The highest type of modern steam engines is to be found in the compound
-multiple-expansion engine, in which three or more cylinders of different
-diameters with corresponding pistons are so arranged that steam is made
-to act first upon the piston in the smallest cylinder at high pressure,
-and then discharging into the next larger cylinder, called the
-intermediate, acts expansively upon its piston, and thence, passing into
-the still larger low pressure cylinder, imparts its further expansive
-effect upon its piston. The fundamental principle of the compound engine
-dates back to the time of Watt, its first embodiment appearing in the
-Hornblower compound engine, as described in British patent No. 1,298, of
-1781, but modern improvements have differentiated it into almost a new
-invention. A fine example is shown in Fig. 92, which represents the
-quadruple expansion engines of the "Deutschland," the new steamer of the
-Hamburg-American Line. The two high pressure cylinders, however, do not
-appear in the illustration, being too high for the shops. They stand
-vertically, however, upon the two bed plates which appear at the top of
-the two low pressure cylinders. In each set of six cylinders the two low
-pressure cylinders are in the middle, the two high pressure cylinders
-immediately above them or arranged tandem, while at the forward end is
-the first intermediate cylinder, and at the after end is the second
-intermediate. The low pressure cylinders are 106 inches in diameter, the
-intermediate cylinders are 73.6 inches and 103.9 inches respectively,
-and the two high pressure cylinders are 30.6 inches, and the steam
-pressure is 225 pounds. Its improvements comprehend the systems of
-Schlick, patented in the United States November 23, 1897, No. 594,288
-and 594,289, and Taylor, patented November 22, 1898, No. 614,674, which
-embody fine mathematical principles for balancing the momentum of the
-great masses of moving parts, so that the engine may run up to high
-speed without vibrations and damaging strains upon the hull.
-
-Mulhall gives the steam horse power of the world in 1895, not including
-war vessels, as follows:
-
- Stationary. Railway. Steamboat. Total.
- The World 11,340,000 32,235,000 12,005,000 55,580,000
- United States 3,940,000 10,800,000 2,200,000 16,940,000
-
-The increase in steam power in the United States has been from 3,500,000
-horse power in 1860, to 16,940,000 horse power in 1895, or about five
-fold within thirty-five years.
-
-Prof. Thurston says that in 1890 the combined power of all the steam
-engines of the world was not far from 100,000,000[2] horse power, of
-which the United States had 15,000,000, Great Britain the same, and the
-other countries smaller amounts. Taking the horse power as the
-equivalent of the work of five men, the work of steam is equivalent to
-that of a population of 500,000,000 working men. It is also said that
-one man to-day, with the aid of a steam engine, performs the work of 120
-men in the last century.
-
- [2] Prof. Thurston's estimate doubtless includes war vessels, which
- Mulhall's later estimate does not (see Mulhall's "Industries and
- Wealth of Nations," 1896, pages 4 and 379).
-
-The influence of the steam engine upon the history and destiny of the
-world is an impressive subject, far beyond any intelligent computation
-or estimate. It has been the greatest moving force of the Nineteenth
-Century. The labor of 100,000 men for twenty years might build a great
-pyramid in Egypt, and it remains as a monument of patience only, but the
-genius of the modern inventor has organized a machine with muscles of
-steel, far more patient and tireless than those of the Egyptian slave.
-He gave it but a drink of water and making coal its black slave, and
-himself the master of both, he has in the Nineteenth Century hitched his
-chariot to a star and driven to unparalleled achievement.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI.
-
-THE STEAM RAILWAY.
-
- TREVITHICK'S FIRST LOCOMOTIVE--BLENKINSOP'S LOCOMOTIVE--HEDLEY'S
- "PUFFING BILLY"--STEPHENSON'S LOCOMOTIVE--THE LINK MOTION--STOCKTON
- AND DARLINGTON RAILWAY, 1825--HACKWORTH'S "ROYAL GEORGE"--
- "STOURBRIDGE LION"--"JOHN BULL"--BALDWIN'S LOCOMOTIVES--WESTINGHOUSE
- AIR BRAKES--JANNEY CAR COUPLING--THE WOODRUFF SLEEPING CAR--RAILWAY
- STATISTICS.
-
-
-The fact that more patents have been granted in the class of carriages
-and wagons than in any other field, shows that means of transportation
-has engaged the largest share of man's inventive genius, and has been
-most closely allied to his necessities. The moving of passengers and
-freight seems to be directly related to the progress of civilization,
-and the factor whose influence has been most felt in this field is the
-steam locomotive. Sir Isaac Newton in 1680 proposed a steam carriage
-propelled by the reaction of a jet of steam. Dr. Robinson in 1759
-suggested the steam carriage to Watt. Cugnot in 1769 built a steam
-carriage. Symington, in 1770, and Murdock, in 1784, built working
-models, and in 1790 Nathan Read also made experiments in steam
-transportation, but the Nineteenth Century dawned without any other
-results than a few abandoned experiments, and the criticism and
-disappointment of the inventors in this field.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 93.--TREVITHICK'S LOCOMOTIVE, 1804. THE FIRST TO RUN
-ON RAILS.]
-
-The father of the locomotive and the first inventor of the Nineteenth
-Century who directed his energy to its development was Richard
-Trevithick, of Camborne, Cornwall. In 1801 he built his first steam
-carriage, adapted to carry seven or eight passengers, which was said to
-have "gone off like a bird," but broke down, and was taken to the home
-of Capt. Vivian, who afterward became a partner of Trevithick. An old
-lady, upon seeing this novel and, to her, frightful engine, is said to
-have cried out: "Good gracious! Mr. Vivian, what will be done next? I
-can't compare it to anything but a walking, puffing devil." On the 24th
-of March, 1802, Trevithick and Vivian obtained British patent No. 2,599
-for their steam carriage, and a second one was built in 1803 which was
-popularly known as Capt. Trevithick's "Puffing Devil." In 1804, at Pen y
-Darran, South Wales, a third engine was built, which was the first
-steam locomotive ever to run on rails. It is seen in the illustration,
-No. 93. It had a horizontal cylinder inside the boiler, a cross head
-sliding on guides in front of the engine, the cross head being connected
-to a crank on a rear gear wheel, which in turn meshes with an
-intermediate gear wheel above and between two other gear wheels on the
-running wheels. A fly wheel was on the crank shaft. The steam was
-discharged into the chimney, and the whole engine weighed five tons, and
-it ran, when loaded, at five miles an hour. In 1808 Trevithick built a
-circular railway at London within an inclosure, and charged a shilling
-for admission to his steam circus and a ride behind his locomotive. The
-engine here employed was the "Catch Me Who Can," and had a vertical
-cylinder and piston, without the toothed gear wheels shown in the
-illustration.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 94.--BLENKINSOP'S LOCOMOTIVE, 1811.]
-
-In Fig. 94 is shown Blenkinsop's locomotive of 1811. This was employed
-at the Middleton Colliery in hauling coal. It had cog wheels engaging
-teeth on the side of the rail. The fire was built in a large tube
-passing through the boiler and bent up to form a chimney. Two vertical
-cylinders were placed inside the boiler, and the pistons were connected
-by cross heads, and, by connecting rods, to cranks on the axles of small
-cog wheels engaging with the main cog wheels. It drew thirty tons weight
-at three and three-quarter miles an hour.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 95.--HEDLEY'S "PUFFING BILLY," 1813.]
-
-In 1813 "Puffing Billy" was built by Wm. Hedley. There were (see Fig.
-95) four smooth drive wheels running on smooth rails, which wheels were
-coupled together by intermediate gear wheels on the axle, and all
-propelled by a gear wheel in the middle, driven by a connecting rod from
-the walking beam overhead. Hedley's locomotive was used on the Wylam
-railway, and was said to have been at work more or less until 1862.
-
-Most prominent among those who took an active interest in the
-development of the locomotive were George Stephenson and his son,
-Robert. Stephenson's first locomotive was tried on the Killingworth
-Railway on July 27, 1814. In 1815 Dodds and Stephenson patented an
-arrangement for attaching the connecting rods to the driving wheels,
-which took the place of cog wheels heretofore employed, and in the
-following year Stephenson, in connection with Mr. Losh, patented the
-application of steam cushion-springs for supporting the weight of the
-locomotive in an elastic manner.
-
-In 1825 the Stockton and Darlington Railway, in England, was opened for
-traffic, with George Stephenson's engine, "Locomotion," and was put
-permanently into service for the transportation of freight and
-passengers.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 96.--HACKWORTH'S LOCOMOTIVE, "ROYAL GEORGE," 1827.]
-
-In 1827 Hackworth produced the "Royal George" (see Fig. 96), whose
-cylinders were arranged vertically at the rear end of the boiler, and
-whose pistons emerged from the cylinders at the lower ends of the
-latter, and imparted their power through connecting rods to cranks on
-the opposite ends of the axle of the rear driving wheels in a more
-direct manner than heretofore, and doing away with the overhead
-mechanism heretofore employed in most engines. Hackworth also improved
-the steam blast, put on the bell, and greatly simplified and modernized
-the appearance of the locomotive.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 97.--GEORGE STEPHENSON'S "ROCKET," 1829.]
-
-In 1829 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was completed, and the
-directors offered a prize of L500 for the best locomotive. George
-Stephenson's "Rocket," shown in Fig. 97, attained a speed of 24-1/6
-miles an hour, and took the prize. Its success, however, was marred by
-the first railroad fatality, for it ran over and killed a man on this
-occasion. It embodied, as leading features, the steam blast and the
-multitubular boiler, which latter was six feet long and had twenty-five
-three-inch tubes. The fire box was surrounded by an exterior casing that
-formed a water jacket, which, by means of pipes, was in open
-communication with the water space of the boiler.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 98.--"STOURBRIDGE LION," 1829.]
-
-The first practical locomotive to run on a railroad in the United States
-was the "Stourbridge Lion," seen in Fig. 98. This was imported from
-England, and arrived in New York in May, 1829, and was tried in that
-year on a section of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company's railroad. The
-boiler was tubular, and the exhaust steam was carried into the chimney
-by a pipe in front of the smoke stack as shown. It had vertical
-cylinders of thirty-six inch stroke, with overhead grasshopper beams and
-connecting rods.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 99.--LOCOMOTIVE "JOHN BULL," 1831.]
-
-In Fig. 99 is shown the "John Bull," now in the National Museum at
-Washington, D. C. It was built by Stephenson & Co. for the Camden &
-Amboy Railroad, and was brought over from England and put into service
-in 1831. During the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, after a
-long rest in the Washington Museum, it made its way under its own steam
-to Chicago, drawing a train of two cars a distance of 912 miles without
-assistance. It further distinguished itself while there by carrying
-50,000 passengers over the exhibition tracks, and although sixty-two
-years of age at the time, showed itself quite capable of performing
-substantial work.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 100.--BALDWIN'S "OLD IRONSIDES," 1832.]
-
-Most of the early locomotives used in America were imported from
-England, but our inventors soon commenced making them for themselves.
-The Baldwin Locomotive Works, of Philadelphia, has had a notable career
-in the field of locomotive construction. "Old Ironsides," built in
-1832, was the first Baldwin locomotive, and it did duty for over a
-score of years. It is shown in Fig. 100. It had four wheels and weighed
-a little over five tons. The drive wheels were 54 inches in diameter,
-and the cylinder 91/2 inches in diameter, 18 inches stroke. The wheels had
-heavy cast iron hubs with wooden spokes and rims and wrought iron tires,
-and the frame was of wood placed outside the wheels. The boiler was 30
-inches in diameter and had 72 copper flues 11/2 inches in diameter, 7 feet
-long. The price of the locomotive was $4,000, and it attained a speed of
-30 miles an hour, with its train.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 101.--EIGHT-WHEEL PASSENGER EXPRESS LOCOMOTIVE,
-1863.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 102.--EXPRESS PASSENGER LOCOMOTIVE, 1881.]
-
-In Fig. 101 is shown a standard type of passenger locomotive of the
-period of 1863, and in Fig. 102 is illustrated the period of 1881, which
-latter represents perhaps the greatest epoch of railroad building in the
-history of the world. According to Poor's Manual, $1,000,000 a day was
-the estimated cash outlay on this account for the three years up to the
-close of 1882, during which period 28,019 miles of railroad were opened
-up in the United States, or more than enough to girdle the entire earth.
-Some idea of the wonderful growth of the railroad industry during this
-period is given by the following tables, which represent the yearly
-production of locomotives by the Baldwin Company alone for forty years
-prior to this period:
-
- 1842 14
- 1843 12
- 1844 22
- 1845 27
- 1846 42
- 1847 39
- 1848 20
- 1849 30
- 1850 37
- 1851 50
- 1852 49
- 1853 60
- 1854 62
- 1855 47
- 1856 59
- 1857 66
- 1858 33
- 1859 70
- 1860 83
- 1861 40
- 1862 75
- 1863 96
- 1864 130
- 1865 115
- 1866 118
- 1867 127
- 1868 124
- 1869 235
- 1870 280
- 1871 331
- 1872 442
- 1873 437
- 1874 205
- 1875 130
- 1876 232
- 1877 185
- 1878 292
- 1879 398
- 1880 517
- 1881 555
- 1882 563
- 1883 557
-
-The present capacity of the Baldwin works is one thousand locomotives a
-year, and they have built up to this date about fifteen thousand
-locomotives, or nearly one-half of all the locomotives in use in the
-United States.
-
-The successive steps of the development in detail of the various
-features of the locomotive are distributed over a long period, and are
-somewhat difficult to trace. The turning of the exhaust steam into the
-smoke stack was done by Trevithick as early as 1804, but its effect was
-greatly increased by Hackworth about 1827, who augmented its power by
-directing it into the chimney through a narrow orifice. This and the
-tubular locomotive boiler by Seguin in 1828, the link-motion in 1832,
-the steam whistle by Stephenson in 1833, the Giffard injector in 1858,
-and the Westinghouse air brake of 1869, are the most prominent features
-of the locomotive.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 103.--STEPHENSON'S LINK MOTION.]
-
-The link motion has been claimed both for the younger Stephenson and W.
-T. James, of New York, the latter being probably its real inventor. Its
-purpose is to reverse the engine and also to cut off steam in either
-direction, so that it may act expansively. The form of link motion most
-generally used is shown in Fig. 103, and is known as Stephenson's. A B
-are two eccentrics projecting in opposite directions from the center of
-the common drive shaft, their rods being connected at their outer ends
-by a curved and slotted link C D. In the slot of this link plays a pin
-E, carried by a pendent swinging lever G F, which lever is jointed at
-its lower end to the slide valve rod H. A T-shaped lever I L K M has one
-arm at I connected by a rod with the slotted link at C. The opposite arm
-is provided with a counter weight at K to balance the weight of the link
-C D and eccentric rods, and the upright arm is connected at M to a rod
-operated by a hand lever P within easy access of the engineer. When the
-link C D is lowered the eccentric B imparts its throw to pendent lever G
-F and valve rod H, and the eccentric A will only swing the end C of the
-link without imparting any effect to the valve. When link C D is drawn
-up so that pin E is in the bottom of the slot, the eccentric A is active
-and B inactive, and as A has an opposite throw to B, the action of the
-valve is reversed. If link C D be drawn half way up, the pin E becomes
-the center of the oscillation of the link, and the valve rod is not
-moved at all. By adjusting the link nearer to or further from the
-central position, the throw of the slide valve may be made shorter or
-longer, and the steam cut off at a later or earlier period in the stroke
-of the piston.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 104.--LOCOMOTIVE ENGINE NO. 999.]
-
-Fig. 104 is a type of the best modern express locomotive. This is the
-famous 999 of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad. Its
-cylinders are 19 x 24 inches, driving wheels 861/2 inches in diameter,
-weight 62 tons, steam pressure 190 pounds. This engine hauls the Empire
-State Express at a speed of 64.22 miles an hour, excluding stops, or
-more than a mile a minute.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 105.--COMPOUND LOCOMOTIVE.]
-
-In securing a higher efficiency and a greater economy in the use of
-steam, the most recent developments in the locomotive have been in the
-application of the principle of the compound expansion engine, in which
-two or more cylinders of different diameters are used, the steam at high
-pressure acting in the smaller cylinder, and being then exhausted into
-and acting expansively upon the piston of the larger cylinder. A fine
-example of the compound locomotive is shown in Fig. 105. The cylinders
-are arranged in pairs, the small high pressure cylinder above, and the
-larger low pressure cylinder below, both piston rods engaging a common
-cross head. The application of this principle of the compound engine is
-said to involve a saving in coal of over 25 per cent.
-
-Prominent among modern improvements in steam railways is the air brake.
-This invention is chiefly the result of the ingenuity of Mr. George
-Westinghouse, Jr., who, beginning his experiments in 1869, took out his
-first patents on the automatic air brake March 5, 1872, Nos. 124,404 and
-124,405, which have since been followed up by many others in perfecting
-the system. The principle of the air brake is to store up compressed air
-in a reservoir on the locomotive by means of a steam pump. This air
-passing through a train pipe connected by hose couplings between cars
-charges an auxiliary reservoir under each car. This reservoir is
-arranged beside a cylinder having a piston and a triple valve. Pressure
-in the train pipe is maintained constantly, and the power to work the
-piston to apply the brakes comes from the auxiliary reservoir beside it,
-which is set into action by a sudden reduction of pressure in the train
-pipe by the engineer through a special form of valve on the locomotive.
-The air brake is capable of stopping a train at average speed within the
-distance of its own length, and so great a safeguard to life and
-property is it, that its application to a certain number of cars on
-every train is made compulsory by law.
-
-The automatic car coupling is another important life-saving improvement.
-Many thousands of these have been patented, but the "Janney" coupling,
-patented April 29, 1873, No. 138,405, is the most representative type.
-The year 1900 is to witness the compulsory adoption of automatic car
-couplings on all cars. The "block system" of signals, by which no train
-is admitted on to a given section of track until the preceding train has
-left that section, improved switches, which are not dependent upon the
-memory of men, and steel rails, which constitute nine-tenths of all
-tracks and serve to increase the stability of the track, are further
-modern safeguards against danger.
-
-Sleeping cars were invented by Woodruff, and patented Dec. 2, 1856, Nos.
-16,159 and 16,160. These, with the palace cars of Pullman and Wagner,
-the special refrigerator cars for perishable goods, cars for cattle, and
-cars for coal, multiply the equipment, swell the traffic, and supply
-every want of the great railroad systems of modern times.
-
-The first railroad in the United States was built near Quincy, Mass., in
-1826. The Pacific Railway, the first of our half a dozen
-transcontinental railways, was completed in 1869. The great
-Trans-Siberian Railway is nearing completion, and in the Twentieth
-Century a Trans-Sahara Railway will probably relieve the burdens of the
-camel, as it has already done those of the horse.
-
-At the end of the year 1898 there were in use in the United States
-36,746 locomotives, 1,318,700 cars, and the mileage in tracks, including
-second track and sidings, was 245,238.87, which, if extended in a
-straight line, would build a railway to the moon. The money investment
-represented in capital stock and bonds was $11,216,886,452. The gross
-earnings for the year 1898 were $1,249,558,724. The net earnings were
-$389,666,474. Tons of freight moved were 912,973,853. Receipts from
-freight were $868,924,526. Number of passengers carried was 514,982,288.
-Receipts from passengers were $272,589,591, and dividends paid were
-$94,937,526. Add to the above the elevated railroads and street
-railroads, which are not included, and the immensity of the railroad
-business in the United States becomes apparent. In 1898 the United
-States exported 468 locomotives, worth $3,883,719. Mulhall estimates
-that the steam horse power of railroads in the world amounted in 1896 to
-40,420,000, of which the United States had more than one-third. He also
-states that the railways in the United States carry _every day_, in
-merchandise, a weight equal to that of the whole of the seventy millions
-of persons constituting its population; that the total railway traffic
-of the world in 1894 averaged ten million passengers and six million
-tons of merchandise _daily_; and that the total railway capital of the
-world reached in that year, 6,745 million sterling, or about
-thirty-three billion dollars.
-
-It is said that the highest railway speed ever attained by steam prior
-to 1900 was by locomotive No. 564 of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern
-Railroad, made during part of a run from Chicago to Buffalo. In this run
-86 miles were made at an average rate of 72.92 miles an hour. The train
-load was 304,500 pounds, and the 86 mile run included one mile at 92.3
-miles an hour, eight miles at 85.44 miles an hour, and thirty-three
-miles at 80.6 miles an hour. On May 26, 1900, however, an experiment on
-the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, made by Mr. F. U. Adams between Baltimore
-and Washington, demonstrated that by sheathing the train to prevent
-retardation by the air, an average speed of 78.6 miles an hour was
-obtained, and for five miles on a down grade a speed of 102.8 miles an
-hour was reached.
-
-The largest and most powerful locomotives in the world are those being
-built for the Pittsburg, Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad for hauling long
-trains of iron and ore, one of which has just been completed. Its
-cylinders are 24 x 32 inches; drive wheels, 54 inches diameter; weight,
-125 tons; draw bar pull 56,300 pounds, and hauling capacity 7,847 tons.
-One of these mammoth engines is capable of drawing a train of box cars,
-loaded with wheat, and more than a mile long, at a speed of ten miles an
-hour. This load of wheat would represent the yield of 14 square miles of
-land. No doubt it would greatly astonish our forefathers to know that at
-the end of the century we would have iron horses capable of carting
-away, at a single load, the products of 14 square miles of the country
-side, and do it at a gait faster than that of their local mail coach.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII.
-
-STEAM NAVIGATION.
-
- EARLY EXPERIMENTS--SYMINGTON'S BOAT--COL. JOHN STEVENS' SCREW
- PROPELLER--ROBT. FULTON AND THE "CLERMONT"--FIRST TRIP TO SEA BY
- STEVENS' "PHOENIX"--"SAVANNAH," THE FIRST STEAM VESSEL TO CROSS THE
- OCEAN--ERICSSON'S SCREW PROPELLER--THE "GREAT EASTERN"--THE
- WHALEBACK STEAMERS--OCEAN GREYHOUNDS--THE "OCEANIC," LARGEST
- STEAMSHIP IN THE WORLD--THE "TURBINIA"--FULTON'S "DEMOLOGOS," FIRST
- WAR VESSEL--THE TURRET MONITOR--MODERN BATTLESHIPS AND TORPEDO
- BOATS--HOLLAND SUBMARINE BOAT.
-
-
-The application of steam for the propulsion of boats engaged the
-attention of inventors along with the very earliest development of the
-steam engine itself. Blasco de Garay in 1543, the Marquis of Worcester
-in 1655, Savary in 1698, Denys Papin in 1707, Dr. John Allen in 1730,
-Jonathan Hulls in 1737, Bernouilli and Genevois in 1757, William Henry
-(of Pennsylvania) in 1763, Count D'Auxiron and M. Perier in 1774, the
-Marquis de Jouffroy in 1781, James Rumsey (on the Potomac) in 1782,
-Benjamin Franklin and Oliver Evans in 1786 and 1789, John Fitch in 1786,
-and also again in 1796, and William Symington in 1788-89 were the early
-experimenters. Papin's boat was said to have been used on the Fulda at
-Cassel, and was reported to have been destroyed by bargemen, who feared
-that it would deprive them of a livelihood. Allen, Rumsey, Franklin, and
-Evans (1786) proposed to employ a backwardly discharged column of water
-issuing from a pump. Jonathan Hulls and Oliver Evans (1789) had stern
-wheels. Bernouilli, Genevois, and the Marquis de Jouffroy used paddles
-on the duck's foot principle, which closed when dragged forward, and
-expanded when pushed to the rear. Fitch's first boat employed a system
-of paddles suspended by their handles from cranks, which, in revolving,
-gave the paddles a motion simulating that which the Indian imparts to
-his paddle. Symington's boat of 1788 (Patrick Miller's pleasure boat)
-had side paddle wheels. Symington's next boat, built in 1789, and also
-owned by Patrick Miller, was of the catamaran type, _i. e._, it had two
-parallel hulls with paddle wheels between them.
-
-Such was the state of this art when the Nineteenth Century commenced its
-wonderful record. No practical steam vessel had been constructed, as
-the efforts in this direction were handicapped by the crudeness of all
-the arts, and were to be regarded as experiments only, most of which had
-to be abandoned. The seed of this invention, however, had been sown in
-the fertile soil of genius, conception of its great possibilities had
-fired the zeal of the inventors in this field, and the new century was
-shortly to number among its great resources a practical and efficient
-steamboat.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 106.--SYMINGTON'S STEAMBOAT, 1801.]
-
-The first steamboat of the Nineteenth Century was the "Charlotte
-Dundas," built by William Symington in 1801, see Fig. 106, and used on
-the Forth and Clyde Canal in 1802. She had a double acting "Watt
-engine," which transmitted power by a connecting rod to a crank on the
-paddle-wheel shaft. The boat had a single paddle wheel in the middle
-near the stern, and was intended only for canal use, in the place of
-horses. It was abandoned for fear of washing the banks.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 107.--STEVENS' TWIN SCREW PROPELLER AND ENGINE,
-1804.]
-
-In 1804 Col. John Stevens constructed a boat on the Hudson, driven by a
-Watt engine, and having a tubular boiler of his own invention and a twin
-screw propeller. The engine, boiler, and twin screws are shown in Fig.
-107. The same year Oliver Evans used a stern paddle wheel boat on the
-Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It was driven by a double acting high
-pressure engine, and geared so as to rotate wagon wheels by which it was
-transported on land, as well as the paddle wheels when on the water. It
-was in primitive form both a locomotive and a steamboat.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 108.--THE "CLERMONT," 1807.]
-
-In 1807 Robert Fulton built the "Clermont," and permanently established
-steam navigation on the Hudson River between New York and Albany. Fulton
-in 1802-1803, while living in Paris with Mr. Joel Barlow, and with the
-aid and encouragement of Chancellor Livingston, of New Jersey, had built
-an earlier steamboat 86 feet long, and although it broke down owing to
-defects in the strength of the hull, he was so encouraged that he
-ordered Messrs. Boulton & Watt, of England, to send to America a new
-steam engine, and upon his return to America he built the "Clermont."
-This vessel, although not the first steamboat, was nevertheless the
-first to make a voyage of any considerable length, and to run regularly
-and continuously for practical purposes, and Fulton was the first
-inventor in this field whose labors were not to be classed as an
-abandoned experiment. The "Clermont" as originally built was quite a
-different looking boat from that usually given in the histories. A model
-of the original construction is to be found in the National Museum at
-Washington. In the winter of 1807-8 she was remodeled as shown in Fig.
-108. She then appeared as a side wheel steamer, whose wheels were
-provided with outer guards and enclosed in side wheel houses, and whose
-shaft had outer bearings in the guards, which were not in the original
-boat. The hull was 133 feet long, 18 feet beam, and 7 feet depth. The
-"Clermont's" engines were coupled to the crank shaft by a bell crank,
-and the paddle wheel shaft was separated from the crank shaft, but
-connected with it by gearing. The cylinders were 24 inches in diameter,
-and 4 foot stroke. The paddle wheels had buckets 4 feet long with a dip
-of 2 feet. She made the first trip from New York to Albany of 150 miles
-in 32 hours, and returned in 30 hours, which was the first voyage of any
-considerable length ever made by steam power.
-
-The honor of inventing the steamboat has been claimed for many
-inventors, and that many worthy experimenters had been working in this
-field, and that Fulton had the benefit of their experience is true. The
-fact is, however, that the evolution of any great, invention is a slow
-and cumulative process, the product of many minds, and while the
-proposers, suggesters, and experimenters are entitled to their share of
-the credit, it is the man who achieves success and gives to the public
-the benefit of his labors whom the world honors, and in this connection
-the name of Fulton stands pre-eminent, for although the "Clermont" was
-264 years later than the steamboat of Blasco de Garay, the "Clermont"
-marks the beginning of practical steam navigation, and whatever the
-claims of other inventors may be, it is certain that steam navigation,
-established by Fulton in 1807, on the Hudson, preceded the practical use
-of the steamboat in any other country by at least five years, for it was
-not until 1812 that Henry Bell, of Scotland, built the "Comet," that
-plied between Glasgow and Greenock, on the Clyde, and not until 1814 was
-a steam packet used for hire on the Thames in England.
-
-At the same time that Fulton was in Paris making his first experiments
-with the steamboat, Col. John Stevens, the most celebrated boat builder
-and engineer of his day, was actively experimenting in America in the
-same line. Having in 1804 made the first application of steam to the
-screw propeller, he in 1807 built the "Phoenix," which was driven by
-paddle wheels. The "Phoenix" was constructed shortly after Fulton's
-boat, but was barred from use on the Hudson by the exclusive monopoly
-obtained by Fulton and Livingston from the State Legislature, and she
-was accordingly taken from New York to Philadelphia by sea, which was
-the first ocean voyage by a steam vessel.
-
-The first steamboat on the Mississippi was the "Orleans," of 100 tons,
-built at Pittsburg by Fulton and Livingston in 1811. She had a stern
-wheel, and went from Pittsburg to New Orleans in 14 days.
-
-Although the first trip out to sea was made in 1808 by Col. Stevens' son
-in taking the "Phoenix" from New York to Philadelphia, no attempt had
-been made to cross the ocean until 1819. In this year the "Savannah," an
-American steamer of 380 tons, performed this feat, and had the honor of
-being the first steam vessel to cross the Atlantic. In 1824 the
-"Enterprise," an English steamer, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and went
-to India.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 109.--SCREW PROPELLER OF THE "ROBT. F. STOCKTON,"
-ERICSSON'S PATENT, 1836.]
-
-The screw propeller employed by Colonel Stevens in 1804 was not a new
-invention with him, as popularly supposed, but had its origin early in
-the preceding century, being a mere development of the ancient wind
-wheel. In 1836 it was further developed by Francis P. Smith and by Capt.
-John Ericsson, then living in England. Ericsson took out British patent
-No. 7,149, of 1836, and United States patent No. 588, of Feb. 1, 1838,
-and built several screw steamers, and through Capt. Robert F. Stockton,
-of the United States Navy, succeeded in having a screw steamer, the
-"Robert F. Stockton," built in accordance with the plans of his patent
-and sent to the United States. The arrangement of her machinery is seen
-in Fig. 109. She had two propellers on the same axis, but revolving in
-opposite directions, one being on the central shaft and the other on a
-concentric tube. The engines were coupled directly to the propeller
-shafts, which feature was one of Ericsson's improvements, and has
-continued to be the approved form to this day.
-
-In the early history of steam navigation the side wheel steamer was the
-favorite, and was employed for ocean travel as well as for inland
-waters. In 1840 the "Brittania," the first Cunarder, commenced the
-career of that celebrated line. This vessel had side wheels, as did also
-the "United States," shown in Fig. 110, which was the first American
-steamer built expressly for the Atlantic trade. In 1852 the United
-States mail steamer "Arctic," of the Collins line, was regarded as the
-greyhound of the Atlantic, her time being 9 days, 17 hours and 12
-minutes. She also had side wheels.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 110.--STEAMER "UNITED STATES," 1847.]
-
-Side wheel steamers for inland waters, and screw propellers for sea
-service, however, in time established their fitness for their respective
-scenes of action. In side wheel steamers the most notable improvements
-have been in stiffening the hull by braces, and the adoption of
-feathering paddle wheels, whose function is to cause the paddles to
-enter and leave the water in vertical position without dragging dead
-water. Manley in 1862, and Morgan in 1875, patented practical forms of
-the feathering paddle wheel. In screw propellers, Woodcroft in 1832, and
-Griffiths at a later period, made valuable improvements. The surface
-condenser was used by Hall in 1838 on the steamship "Wilberforce," and
-Sickels in 1841 invented the drop cut-off.
-
-[Illustration:
-
- {"GREAT EASTERN," SCREW AND PADDLE WHEELS, 1858. LENGTH,
- FIG. 111.--{692 FEET, SPEED 12 KNOTS.
- {"OCEANIC," TWIN SCREW, 1899. LENGTH, 704 FEET, SPEED, 20
- {KNOTS.]
-
-In 1854 the "Great Eastern" was begun and was finished in 1858. This was
-the largest steam vessel ever built up to this time, and has continued
-to hold the record for size up to the year 1899, when her dimensions
-were exceeded by the "Oceanic," which ships are put in comparison in
-Fig. 111. The length of the "Great Eastern" was 692 feet, beam 83 feet,
-depth 571/2 feet, draft 251/2 feet, displacement 27,000 tons, and speed 12
-knots. She was designed by the English engineer Brunel, and was intended
-for the Australian trade. She had both a screw propeller and paddle
-wheels at the side, with four engines coupled to each. The paddle wheel
-engines had steam cylinders 74 inches in diameter, with 14 foot stroke,
-and those of the screw engines were 84 inches in diameter and 4 foot
-stroke. Collectively they were of 10,000 horse power. The paddle wheels
-were 56 feet in diameter, and the screw propeller 24 feet. On her first
-voyage to New York, across the Atlantic, in 1860, she carried from 15 to
-24 pounds of steam and consumed 2,877 tons of coal. Her cost was
-$3,831,520. This mammoth vessel was too large and unwieldy for the uses
-for which she was designed, and proved a bad investment. She served,
-however, a most useful purpose, by virtue of her great bulk, steadiness,
-and carrying capacity, for relaying the Atlantic cable in 1866, and
-others in 1873-1874.
-
-In 1874 the "Castalia" was built. This was a steamer with two parallel
-hulls, decked across, and designed for greater steadiness in crossing
-the English Channel. The "Bessemer" steamer, designed for the same
-purpose, and built about the same time, had four paddle wheels, and the
-entire cabin was hung on pivots, so that it could not partake of the sea
-motion.
-
-In later years great improvements have been made in reducing the weight
-of the engines, in forced blast, steam steering gear, anchor hoisting
-devices, water-tight bulkheads, surface condensers, electric lights, and
-signalling devices. By the year 1880 the standard form of marine engine
-for large powers had become the compound double cylinder type, expanding
-steam from an initial pressure as high as 90 pounds. In 1890 triple
-expansion engines had become common, employing three cylinders, and
-using steam with an initial pressure as high as 180 pounds. In 1890
-McDougal's whale-back steamers were introduced. See United States
-patents No. 429,467 and 429,468, June 3, 1890, and No. 500,411, June 27,
-1893.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 112.--STEAMBOAT "PRISCILLA."]
-
-In no country in the world are such fine examples of side wheel steamers
-to be found as in the United States, and in no country are there such
-splendid reaches of inland waters as theatres for their performances.
-The "Priscilla," shown in Fig. 112, of the Fall River Line, plying on
-Long Island Sound, and the "Adirondack," on the Hudson, are fine
-examples of this type. The "Priscilla," which is said to be the largest
-river boat in the world, is 440 feet 6 inches long and 93 feet breadth
-over the guards. She is driven by double compound inclined engines, has
-feathering paddle wheels 35 feet in diameter and 14 feet face, and her
-speed is over 20 miles an hour. The "Adirondack," whose engines and
-feathering paddle wheel are shown in Fig. 113, is 412 feet long and 90
-feet breadth over guards. The engines and paddle wheels of the
-"Adirondack" are distinctly representative of the modern American side
-wheel steamer.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 113.--ENGINES AND PADDLE WHEEL OF STEAMER
-"ADIRONDACK" ON THE HUDSON RIVER.]
-
-The largest and in many respects the highest type of marine architecture
-is to be found in the modern ocean greyhound for transatlantic trade. In
-recent years the rival companies have vied with each other in the effort
-to excel, and steamships of larger size, greater speed, and more perfect
-equipment have followed each other, until it would seem that the limit
-had been reached. In the accompanying table the largest and most recent
-steamers are placed in comparison with the "Great Eastern."
-
-DIMENSIONS OF THE LARGEST OCEAN STEAMERS.
-
- ==============+======+=======+======+======+========+=========+=======
- NAME OF | DATE.|LENGTH | BEAM.|DEPTH.|DRAUGHT.|DISPLACE-|MAXIMUM
- SHIP. | | OVER | | | | MENT. |SPEED.
- | | ALL. | | | | |
- --------------+------+-------+------+------+--------|---------+-------
- | | FEET. | FEET.| FEET.| FEET. | TONS. | KNOTS.
- Great Eastern | 1858 | 692 | 83 | 571/2 | 251/2 | 27,000 | 12
- Paris | 1888 | 560 | 63 | 42 | 261/2 | 13,000 | 20
- Teutonic | 1890 | 585 | 571/2 | 42 | 26 | 12,000 | 20
- Campania | 1893 | 625 | 65 | 411/2 | 28 | 19,000 | 22
- St. Paul | 1895 | 554 | 63 | 42 | 27 | 14,000 | 21
- Kaiser Wilhelm| 1897 | 649 | 66 | 43 | 29 | 20,000 | 22.35
- der Grosse | | | | | | |
- Oceanic | 1899 | 704 | 68 | 49 | 321/2 | 28,500 | 20
- Deutschland | 1900 | 6861/2 | 67- | 44 | 29 | 22,000 | 231/2
- | | | 1/3 | | | |
- ==============+======+=======+======+======+========+=========+=======
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 114.--"KAISER WILHELM DER GROSSE."]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 115.--"OCEANIC" COMPARED WITH BROADWAY BUILDINGS.]
-
-The "Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse," owned by the North German Lloyd
-Company, and built in 1897, is shown in Fig. 114, and for three years
-held the record as the fastest steamship afloat. The "Kaiser Wilhelm"
-was followed by the "Oceanic," in 1899, of the White Star Company, which
-is the largest ocean steamer ever built, exceeding the proportions of
-the "Great Eastern." Just what the dimensions of the "Oceanic" mean, as
-given in the preceding tables, can be best illustrated by the
-accompanying Fig. 115, in which she is juxtaposed with several blocks of
-large buildings on Broadway, New York, opposite City Hall Park. If the
-"Oceanic" were placed on end beside Washington's Monument, at the United
-States Capital, she would tower 150 feet above the top of the same. An
-ordinary brick house four rooms deep and three stories high could be
-built with its length crosswise in her hull. There is accommodation for
-410 first-class passengers, 300 second-class passengers, and 1,000 third
-class, and as her crew will number 390, the total number of souls on
-board, when she carries her full complement, will be 2,100.
-
-The latest achievement in marine architecture, however, is the
-"Deutschland," built for the Hamburg-American Company. The "Deutschland"
-is not quite so large as the "Oceanic," but is of higher speed, her
-maximum speed of 231/2 knots an hour exceeding that of any other ocean
-steamer. The "Savannah," the first steam vessel to cross the Atlantic,
-made the trip in 1819 in 26 days. The "Deutschland" in her eastward trip
-September 4, 1900, crossed the Atlantic in 5 days 7 hours and 38
-minutes, which is the fastest time on record. The "Deutschland" is of
-35,640 horse power, her two bronze propellers are 23 feet diameter, and
-weigh 30 tons, and her propeller shafts are 25 inches in diameter. The
-cranks of her propeller shafts, like those of the "Kaiser Wilhelm" and
-the "Oceanic," are set according to the Schlick system, to reduce
-vibration. The "Deutschland's" engines are seen in Fig. 92, and in
-general appearance the ship resembles the "Kaiser Wilhelm." Still larger
-and possibly swifter steamships are in process of construction, viz.:
-the "Kaiser Wilhelm II.," by the North German Lloyd Company, and a
-mammoth unnamed ship by the White Star Line, whose length of 750 feet
-will exceed all others.
-
-It may be interesting to note in familiar terms what these enormous
-traveling palaces comprehend in equipment. For the safety and comfort of
-passengers, the great length reduces the pitching, bilge keels prevent
-rolling, and the Schlick system of cranks neutralizes vibration in the
-engine. Strong bulkheads, and double bottoms with air-tight
-compartments, impart buoyancy in case of collision. Boilers are placed
-in separate water-tight compartments, so that damage to one does not
-disable the others. Powerful pumps are arranged to discharge inflowing
-water, and the best of life boats are provided. Spacious dining rooms,
-promenade decks, drawing rooms, pianos, library, smoking room, state
-rooms, cabins for children, toilets, baths, medicine stores, a printing
-office, and electric lights everywhere, furnish every want and satisfy
-every luxurious taste. The cuisine includes a refrigerating plant, the
-finest ranges, and provisions galore. It may be interesting to the
-housewife to see the market list of a modern transatlantic steamer. A
-specimen is partially represented in the following: 25,450 pounds of
-fresh meat, 3,250 pounds of fish, 6,370 pounds of game and poultry,
-12,715 pounds of bread, 43 barrels of flour, 3,938 pounds of butter,
-1,307 pounds of coffee, 2,790 pounds of sugar, 102 pounds of tea, 7,220
-pounds of fresh fruit; 1,230 gallons of milk, 26,106 eggs, 29,180
-oranges and lemons, 7,033 bottles of mineral water, 1,800 bottles of
-beer, 2,688 gallons of beer in casks, 1,240 bottles of wine, 630 bottles
-of champagne, 1,600 heads of lettuce, 800 jars of preserved fruits, and
-other things in proportion.
-
-In the matter of size the "Oceanic" surpasses all previous efforts in
-ship building, but ocean steamers do not reach the highest speed
-attainable. The little "Turbinia," a 40 ton craft equipped with a
-compound rotary steam turbine of the Parsons type, has attained a speed
-of 323/4 knots an hour. An even greater speed has recently been attained
-by the larger boat, "Hai Lung," constructed in England for the Chinese
-Government, which vessel was equipped with reciprocating engines, and is
-credited with having made a run of 181/2 knots at an average speed of 35
-knots an hour. The highest speed ever attained, however, is by the
-British torpedo boat "Viper," which is 210 feet long, and, like the
-"Turbinia," is equipped with the Parsons steam turbines. In a recent
-trial the "Viper" covered a measured mile at the rate of 37.1 knots, or
-about 43 miles an hour.
-
-In many respects the most important branch of steam navigation in recent
-years has been its war vessels. The great navies of the world at the end
-of 1898[3] ranked as follows: England, 1,557,522 tons; France, 731,629
-tons; Russia, 453,899 tons; United States, 303,070 tons; Germany,
-299,637 tons; Italy, 286,175 tons, and they all owe their efficiency
-entirely to steam. The first steam war vessel was built in 1814 by
-Fulton for the defence of New York Harbor, during the then existing war
-times. She was known as the "Demologos" (voice of the people), or
-"Fulton the First." As shown in the original designs, Fig. 116, she is a
-double ender, whose sides were to be 5 feet thick. In her middle was a
-channel way or well containing a protected paddle wheel 16 feet in
-diameter, 14 feet wide, and having a dip of 4 feet. A single cylinder
-engine turned the paddle wheel on one side, and was balanced by the
-boiler on the other side. Although intended to have only twenty guns,
-she was equipped, when finished, with thirty long 32-pounder guns and
-two Columbiad 100-pounders. It was proposed also to have submarine guns
-suspended from each bow. An engine was also to be used to discharge hot
-water on the enemy, and a furnace was to be provided for heating the
-cannon balls red hot. She was 156 feet long, 20 feet deep, and 56 feet
-broad, and was regarded as a very formidable vessel. Her cost was
-$278,544. Iron-clad floating batteries were first used in 1855 in the
-Crimean war, and shortly afterward the French built the first sea-going
-iron-clad, "Gloire," followed in 1859 by the British iron-clad,
-"Warrior."
-
- [3] The figures represent a selective list which excludes about 15 per
- cent. of old and inefficient vessels.
-
-[Illustration: "DEMOLOGOS"
-
-Figure I^{st} Transverse section A _her Boiler,_ B _the steam Engine,_ C
-_the water-wheel,_
-
-EE _her wooden walls 5 feet thick, diminishing to below the waterline as
-at_ FF.
-
-_draught of water 9 feet_ DD _her gun deck._
-
-Figure II^{d} _This shews her gun deck. 140 feet long,
-
-24 feet wide; mounting 20 guns_ A _the Water wheel_
-
-Figure III^{d}
-
-_Side View_
-
-FIG. 116.]
-
-The civil war in 1861 brought with it a novel and striking form of war
-vessel known as the "Monitor."[4] It was built from plans of Capt.
-Ericsson, an engineer of the ripest experience, skill, and attainments,
-who had then come to make his home in the United States. He undertook to
-construct for the Navy Department of the United States some form of iron
-clad steam batteries of light draft, suitable to navigate the rivers and
-harbors of the Confederate States. The "Monitor" was the result. The
-salient features, shown in vertical cross section in Fig. 117, are a low
-deck projecting but a few inches above the water line, so as to present
-as little target as possible to the enemy, and a revolving and heavily
-armored turret containing the battery of guns. In 1862 the Confederate
-forces had reconstructed a steam vessel with a chicken-coop-shaped
-covering of armor, that proved a formidable engine of war, which was
-practically invulnerable to the attacks of ordinary war vessels, and was
-doing great damage to the Union vessels. In the spring of 1862 the
-"Monitor" met the "Merrimac" in engagement in Hampton Roads, and
-established the great value of the turret monitor.
-
- [4] The revolving turret was invented and patented by Theodore R.
- Timby, No. 35,846, July 8, 1862, and No. 36,593, September 30,
- 1862.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 117.--CROSS SECTION OF "MONITOR."]
-
-Vessels of the "Monitor" type still form useful parts of the United
-States Navy, in which the "Monterey" and "Monadnock" are its most
-representative types. The "Monadnock," which is a double-turret coast
-defence monitor, is shown in Fig. 118. Although regarded by some as
-unseaworthy on account of the low seaboard and small buoyancy, the
-monitor has cleared itself of such suspicion, for in the recent war with
-Spain both the "Monadnock" and "Monterey" sailed across the Pacific
-Ocean by way of Honolulu to Manila, a distance of 7,000 miles, and
-joined the fleet of Admiral Dewey without mishap or delay.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 118.--MONITOR "MONADNOCK."]
-
-No patriotic American citizen would expect to read an account of modern
-war vessels without finding special mention of those two splendid
-types of their class, the battleship "Oregon" and the armored cruiser
-"Brooklyn," whose performances during the late war with Spain
-contributed so much to the honor and glory of the United States Navy,
-and demonstrated the skill and efficiency of our American shipbuilders.
-Before the war began the "Oregon" was stationed on the Pacific Coast,
-where she had been built, and it was desired that she should join the
-fleet of Admiral Sampson in Cuban waters. Leaving Puget Sound on March
-6, 1898, this floating fortress of steel, weighted with her enormous
-guns and 18-inch thick armor, made the long journey of over 14,500 miles
-around the southern end of the western continent, and up to Jupiter
-Inlet on the Florida coast, arriving there on the 24th day of May, and
-was not delayed an hour on account of her machinery, the only stops
-being made for coal. Immediately after coaling at Key West she took her
-place in the blockading line at Santiago, and in the great battle of
-July 3 quickly developed a power greater than that attained on her trial
-trip and a speed only slightly less, easily distancing all other ships
-immediately engaged except the "Brooklyn," and in connection with the
-"Brooklyn" forced the fleetest of the Spanish cruisers to surrender.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 119.--BATTLESHIP "OREGON."]
-
-The "Oregon" is shown in Fig. 119. She is an armored battleship of the
-first class, built by the Union Iron Works of San Francisco, and
-launched Oct. 26, 1893. Her length is 348 feet, beam 691/4 feet, draft 24
-feet, displacement 10,288 tons, maximum speed 16.79 knots, and coal
-capacity 1,594 tons. Her side armor is of steel plates 18 inches thick,
-and her deck is, 23/4 inches thick. On the turrets the armor is from 6 to
-15 inches thick, and on the barbettes it is from 6 to 17 inches thick.
-Her engines are of the twin screw, vertical triple expansion direct
-acting inverted cylinder type. The stroke is 42 inches, and the
-diameters of the cylinders are 341/2, 48, and 75 inches, respectively. The
-battery consists of four 13-inch breech loading rifles, eight 8-inch
-breech loading rifles, four 6-inch, twenty 6-pounder rapid fire guns,
-six 1-pounder rapid fire, two Colts, one 3-inch rapid fire field gun,
-and three torpedo tubes. The 13-inch guns weigh 136,000 pounds each, are
-39 feet 91/4 inches long, are set 18 feet above the water, can be moved
-through an arc of 270 degrees, and throw a projectile of 1,100 pounds a
-distance of 12 miles, and with a power which at 1,000 yards would
-perforate a mass of steel 21/2 feet in thickness. The cost of the "Oregon"
-was $3,180,000.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 120.--ARMORED CRUISER "BROOKLYN."]
-
-The "Brooklyn" is shown in Fig. 120, and enjoys the distinction of
-having borne the brunt of the fight of July 3, 1898, having been hit
-over forty times in that engagement without being disabled. She was
-built by the William Cramp & Sons Ship and Engine Building Company, of
-Philadelphia, was launched Oct. 2, 1895, and cost $2,986,000. She is an
-armored cruiser, and is one of the latest and most speedy of that type.
-She is 400 feet 6 inches long, 64 feet 8 inches breadth, 24 feet draft,
-9,215 tons displacement. Her engines are the twin-screw vertical triple
-expansion type, imparting a speed of 21.91 knots an hour. Her maximum
-indicated horse power is 18,769, and her coal capacity is 1,461 tons.
-Her battery consists of eight 8-inch breech loading rifles, twelve
-5-inch rapid fire guns, twelve 6-pounder rapid fire, four 1-pounder
-rapid fire, four Colts, two 3-inch rapid fire field guns, and four
-Whitehead torpedo tubes. Her side armor is 3 inches thick, her turrets
-51/2 inches, her barbettes from 4 to 8 inches, and her deck from 3 to 6
-inches. She also has a water line protection of cocoa fibre to
-automatically close up an opening made by a shot.
-
-Although not a steam vessel, it would be regarded as an omission not to
-mention among war vessels the "Holland" submarine boat, brought into
-notice in 1898 by the Spanish American war, and designed to dive below
-the surface and make attack below the water level. Torpedo boats of this
-type have been acquired by, and now form a part of, the United States
-Navy.
-
-Among all the types of steam war vessels which have claimed popular
-attention the most interesting in proportion to its size is the torpedo
-boat, for none represent such concentrated pent-up energy and deadly
-effect as this little demon of the sea. A mere shell in construction,
-with engine and boiler built for highest speed, and crew suffering
-untold discomforts and dangers below, this modern engine of destruction,
-with the speed of an express locomotive, and the helplessness and deadly
-intent of a scorpion, darts up to the monster battleship under cover of
-darkness, and before being discovered discharges a torpedo and delivers
-a mortal wound in the side of the big ship which sends her to the
-bottom, perishing perhaps itself in the destruction which it works. The
-United States has 37 of these torpedo boats. The torpedo boat destroyer
-is a larger and swifter boat, whose special duty it is to overtake and
-destroy this dangerous little fighter.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 121.--SHIPPING OF ALL NATIONS. RATIO OF STEAM TO
-SAILS.]
-
-The growth of steam navigation during the present generation has been
-wonderfully rapid. The accompanying diagram, Fig. 121, from Mulhall's
-"Industries and Wealth of Nations," shows in 1860 30 per cent. of steam
-to 70 per cent. of sailing vessels, while in 1894 the ratio is 80 per
-cent. of steam to 20 of sailing vessels. The same authority estimated
-the total horse power of steam vessels in the merchant marine of the
-world in 1895 to be 12,005,000. Add to this the growth of the past five
-years, and about 4,000,000 horse power for the steam war vessels of the
-world's navies, which were not included, and the total horse power of
-the steam vessels of the world would not be far from twenty million.
-
-This cursory review, in a single chapter, cannot adequately treat this
-great subject, for a whole library is needed to cover the field. Suffice
-it to say, however, that among the great scenes and acts in the theatre
-of human action, no figure has occupied so much attention, and none
-played so important a part in the drama of life, as the steam vessel.
-Its stage setting has been the majestic waters of the earth, and on it
-the play of the great warships has vied in power and grandeur with the
-flash and vehemence of the lightning, and the whirl and turmoil of the
-elements. Tense with a deep meaning which no stage simulation could
-approximate, and with the smoke of conflict for a drop curtain, it has
-laid tragedies upon the pages of history, and changed the maps of the
-world; while behind the scenes the great passenger steamers, with their
-uninterrupted traffic of human freight, are more silently, but none the
-less surely, stirring the peoples of the earth into the homogeneous
-ferment of civilization, and slowly moulding nations into the solidarity
-of a common brotherhood.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII.
-
-PRINTING.
-
- EARLY PRINTING PRESSES--NICHOLSON'S ROTARY PRESS--THE COLUMBIAN AND
- WASHINGTON PRESSES--KOeNIG ROTARY STEAM PRESS--THE HOE TYPE REVOLVING
- MACHINE--COLOR PRINTING--STEREOTYPING--PAPER MAKING--WOOD PULP--THE
- LINOTYPE--PLATE PRINTING--LITHOGRAPHY.
-
-
-The art preservative of all arts it has been rightfully called. Before
-its birth generation after generation of the human family lived and
-died, and each was but little wiser, and but little better than its
-predecessor. Tradition was the misty, vague, and sometimes wholly false
-dependence of the living, and the experiences of mankind were, in the
-words of an eminent writer, but like the stern lights of a vessel, which
-only illumined the pathway over which each had passed. But printing
-gives to the present the cumulative wisdom of the past, and marks a
-great era of growth in civilization. It conserves and preserves man's
-thoughts and makes them immortal, so that each generation comes into
-existence with a richer legacy of ideas, and is guaranteed a higher
-plane of existence, and a more exalted destiny.
-
-Printing from letters engraved on blocks of wood is an ancient art,
-having had its origin in China many centuries before the Christian era.
-The Chinese method, which is still followed, was to write their
-characters with a brush on a sheet of paper, and while still wet, the
-piece of paper was laid face downward on a smooth piece of board to
-transfer the ink lines, and then all except the ink lines on the board
-was cut away. Thus they have one type plate for each book page. Printing
-with movable type, _i. e._, with a separate type for each letter, which
-may be repeatedly set up into forms of varying composition, is
-practically the beginning of the modern art of printing. This invention
-is usually ascribed to Johann Gutenberg, of Mentz, about 1436.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 122.--BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S PRESS, 1725.]
-
-In the earliest printing presses the form was locked up in a tray, and
-placed upon a platform, and the platen was then brought down upon it by
-turning a screw in a cross bar above. The first printing press of this
-type was made by Blaew, of Amsterdam, in 1620, which had a spring to
-cause the screw to fly back after the impression was taken. The press
-upon which Benjamin Franklin worked in London in 1725 is of this
-pattern, and is to be seen in the National Museum at Washington. It is
-almost entirely of wood, and is shown in Fig. 122. About the beginning
-of the Nineteenth Century Lord Stanhope invented a press entirely of
-cast iron, in which the oscillating handle operated a toggle to force
-down the platen in taking the impression. The bed traveled on guide
-ways, and the tympan and frisket were hinged to fold back and lay in
-elevated position.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 123.--THE WASHINGTON PRESS.]
-
-The "Columbian" press was the first important American improvement. It
-was invented by George Clymer, of Philadelphia, and is shown in his
-British Pat. No. 4,174 of 1817. A compound lever was employed for
-applying the power. The "Washington" press was patented in the United
-States by Samuel Rust, April 17, 1829. In this press (see Fig. 123) the
-platen is forced downwardly by a compound lever applied to a toggle
-joint and is raised by springs on each side. The bed is run in and out
-by turning a crank on a shaft which has a pulley and belt passing around
-it.
-
-As so far described the presses were worked by hand power. An important
-step in the advancement of this art was made by the introduction of
-_power presses_ worked by steam. These arranged the type on the surface
-of a cylinder. Probably the earliest form of rotary cylinder press is
-that invented by Nicholson, British Pat. No. 1,748 of 1790. Its main
-features are described as follows: "The types, being rubbed or scraped
-narrower toward the foot, were to be fixed radially upon a cylinder.
-This cylinder with its type was to revolve in gear with another cylinder
-covered with soft leather (the impression cylinder), and the type
-received its ink from another cylinder, to which the inking apparatus
-was applied. The paper was impressed by passing between the type and the
-impression cylinder."
-
-The first practical success, however, in rotary steam presses was
-achieved by Koenig, a German, who in 1814 set up for the _London Times_
-two machines, by which that newspaper was printed at the rate of 1,100
-impressions per hour. He obtained British Pat. No. 3,321 of 1810, No.
-3,496 of 1811, No. 3,725 of 1813, and No. 3,868 of 1814. Koenig's machine
-was in 1827 succeeded by that of Applegath and Cowper, which was simpler
-and more rapid.
-
-Many improvements upon the methods for handling the paper were
-subsequently devised, and double cylinder presses were made which were
-able to print 4,000 sheets an hour. In 1845 the firm of R. Hoe & Co.,
-which had already been for years engaged in the manufacture of printing
-presses, brought out the Hoe Type Revolving Machine. The first one of
-these was placed in the office of the _Philadelphia Ledger_ in 1846, and
-had four impression cylinders, printing 8,000 papers per hour. The
-constantly increasing circulation of newspapers, however, continued to
-make insatiable demands for more rapid work, and to meet this demand the
-Hoe company in 1871 brought out their continuous web press, in which the
-paper was furnished to the machine in the form of a roll, and after
-being printed was separated into sheets. This principle of action gave
-promise of unlimited speed, and required important reorganization in all
-parts of the machine. To meet these conditions of increased speed more
-rapid drying ink had to be produced to prevent blurring, paper of
-uniform quality and strength had to be made, means had to be devised for
-printing the opposite side of the web, and severing devices for cutting
-the web into sheets were needed, but perhaps the most important feature
-was the device called a gathering and delivering cylinder, whereby the
-papers could be gathered and disposed of as fast as they could be
-printed, and much faster than human hands could work. This was the
-invention of Stephen D. Tucker, and it is the mechanism upon which the
-speed of the modern press depends, for it would obviously be useless to
-print papers faster than they could be taken from the machine in proper
-condition. Many patents were taken by Messrs. Hoe & Tucker covering
-various improvements, prominent among which were No. 18,640, Nov. 17,
-1857; No. 25,199, Aug. 23, 1859 (re-issue No. 4,429); No. 84,627, Dec.
-1, 1868 (re-issue No. 4,400); No. 113,769, April 18, 1871; No. 124,460,
-March 12, 1872; No. 131,217, Sept. 10, 1872. The first rapid printing
-press of the Hoe Company was set up in the office of the _New York
-Tribune_ in 1871, and its maximum output was 18,000 an hour. This marked
-the great era of rapid newspaper printing, and following it many further
-improvements, such as devices for folding and counting the papers
-automatically, have been added, until to-day the great Hoe Octuple
-Press, shown in Fig. 124, is the wonder of the Nineteenth Century. It
-prints 96,000 papers of four, six, or eight pages in an hour, or at the
-rate of 1,600 a minute, and these papers are not only printed, but in
-the same operation and by the same machine are cut, pasted, folded, and
-counted automatically. Fifty miles of paper of the width of an ordinary
-newspaper pass through it each hour from its several rolls. The machine
-weighs over 60 tons, and is composed of about 16,000 parts, and yet its
-touch is so deft, and its members so delicately and accurately adjusted
-that it does not tear the tender sheet as it flies through the
-machine--so fast that one-fifth of a second only is required to print a
-page.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 124.--HOE OCTUPLE PRESS. PRINTS, CUTS, PASTES, FOLDS
-AND COUNTS NEWSPAPERS AT RATE OF 1,600 A MINUTE.]
-
-The latest development in the printing press has been in color printing,
-which has recently been introduced in the illustration of some of the
-largest daily newspapers. Such a press contains from 50,000 to 60,000
-parts, and its cost is from $35,000 to $45,000.
-
-Collateral with the development of the printing press are three
-important branches of the art--stereotyping, paper making, and type
-setting.
-
-_Stereotyping_ was the invention of William Ged, of Edinburgh, in 1731,
-and was introduced into the United States by David Bruce, of New York,
-in 1813. The stereotype is simply a moulded duplicate of the type face
-as set up, the duplicate being cast in the form of a single block of
-metal, by first taking an impression in plastic material from the faces
-of the type, after being set up, to form the mould, and then casting, in
-an easily fusible metal, an exact duplicate of this type face in this
-mould. This art prevents the wear on the movable type involved in
-printing, and also avoids the locking up into permanent forms of a large
-body of valuable type, since a form may be set up, stereotyped, and the
-type then distributed and set up into another form. Stereotyping,
-although used in book printing, was not thought practical for newspaper
-work until about 1861, because of the length of time required for the
-formation and drying of the mould and the casting of the plate; but
-about this time great expedition in the formation of the plate was
-attained by the employment of a steam bed to dry the mould, and a novel
-form of papier mache matrix, or mould, which could be conveniently
-disposed around the cylinders of type. The dampened and plastic papier
-mache sheets are beaten into the face of the type form by means of
-brushes, are then removed, dried, and used as moulds to cast the
-stereotype plate from. A stereotype plate can now be made in about seven
-minutes.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 125.--PAPER PULP BEATING ENGINE.]
-
-_Paper Making_ is an important adjunct of the printing art, and its
-formation cheaply into long rolls of uniform strength is an essential
-condition of success in the rapid web-perfecting printing press. A
-Frenchman named Louis Robert about 1799 was the first to make a
-continuous web of paper, and in 1800 he received from the French
-Government a reward of 8,000 francs for his discovery. His invention was
-subsequently taken up and carried to a success by the great English
-paper makers, the Fourdrinier Brothers, whose name has been given to the
-machine. In the Fourdrinier process rags are ground to a pulp by a
-revolving beater (Fig. 125) working in a tank of water. The pulp, duly
-beaten, refined, screened, and diluted with water, is then piped into
-the "flow-box" of the Fourdrinier machine. The "flow-box," shown on
-right of Fig. 126, is a deep rectangular chamber extending across the
-full width of the machine, from which the pulp flows out in a thin
-stream onto an endless belt of 70-mesh wire cloth which runs over end
-rollers. To prevent the stream of pulp from flowing laterally over the
-edges of the belt, two endless rubber guides or bands, two inches square
-in cross section, travel with the belt over the first twenty feet of its
-length, and run over two pulleys above the wire cloth. The upper half of
-the wire cloth belt is supported by and runs over a series of closely
-juxtaposed rollers. As the pulp passes from the "flow-box" the particles
-of fibre float in it just as an innumerable multitude of particles of
-cotton fibre would float in a stream of water. To unite and interlace
-the fibres the wire cloth belt is given a lateral oscillating or shaking
-movement, which serves to interlock the fibres. Meanwhile the water
-strains through the wire cloth, leaving a thin layer of moist interlaced
-fibre spread in a white sheet over the surface of the belt. The
-separation of the water is further assisted by suction boxes which
-extend across close beneath the upper run of the belt and are connected
-to suction pumps.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 126.--FOURDRINIER PAPER MACHINE.]
-
-The wire cloth with its layer of moist pulp now passes below a roll
-which compresses the fibre, and then leaving the machine seen in Fig.
-126 it passes below a second and larger roll covered with felt, which
-presses out more of the water. The fibre next passes to the "first
-press," where it is caught up on an endless belt and passed between two
-rollers where more water is pressed out of the sheet. Then it passes
-through a "second press," and finally the sheet commences a long journey
-up and down over a series of steam-heated drying rolls, by which the
-sheet is dried.
-
-_Wood-Pulp._--When a purchaser of one of the New York dailies reads the
-morning's voluminous edition, he little realizes that he holds in his
-hands the remains of a billet of wood as large as a good-sized club, yet
-such is the case. Originally made from the fibres of the papyrus plant,
-and later from rags beaten into a pulp, paper for the printing of books
-and newspapers is now made almost entirely of wood. In the formation of
-paper pulp from wood two processes are employed, one known as the soda
-process, and the other the sulphite process. In both cases the wood is
-cut into fine chips, and then digested in great drums with chemicals to
-extract the resinous matter and leave the pure fibrous cellulose, which
-resembles raw cotton in texture. This industry was developed by Watt and
-Burgess in 1853 (U. S. Pat. No. 11,343, July 18, 1854), who invented the
-soda process; by Voelter (U. S. Pat. No. 21,161, Aug. 10, 1858), who
-devised means for comminuting or shredding the wood; and by Tilghman (U.
-S. Pat. No. 70,485, Nov. 5, 1867), who invented the sulphite process.
-
-The logs, usually of spruce or poplar, are first split, as seen at the
-bottom of Fig. 127, then placed in the chipper, where a revolving disc
-with knives cuts them into small chips, which are fed to an elevator and
-raised to a screening device, seen at the top, to remove saw-dust, dirt
-and knots. In the sulphite process the chips are then delivered into the
-digesters shown in Fig. 128, which are supplied with sulphurous acid
-generated in a plant shown in Fig. 129. In the digesters the gummy and
-resinous matters are dissolved by the heat and chemicals, and the woolly
-fibre left behind is bleached, washed, and dried, and afterwards made
-into paper upon the Fourdrinier machine.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 127.--CHIPPING LOGS FOR PAPER PULP.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 128.--DIGESTER FOR WOOD PULP.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 129.--SULPHUROUS ACID PLANT FOR MAKING WOOD PULP.]
-
-It was stated by the _Paper Trade Journal_ in 1897 that the increase in
-paper making in the United States during the 15 years preceding amounted
-to 352 per cent., due chiefly to the growth of the wood pulp industry.
-The Androscoggin Pulp Mill, established in Maine in 1870, was one of the
-pioneers in this field. In that State the industry had grown in 1897 to
-over $13,000,000 and gave employment to more than 5,000 men, but the
-State of Maine is excelled by both New York and Wisconsin in this
-industry, for in the same year New York mills had a daily capacity of
-1,800,000 pounds; Wisconsin, 670,000; Maine, 665,000, and other States a
-less capacity. There are over 1,000 paper mills in the United States,
-and their combined daily capacity amounts to over 13,000 tons. In 1898
-the United States exported over five million dollars' worth of paper,
-and over fifty million pounds of wood pulp. Of the total amount of paper
-produced in the world Mulhall estimated it in 1890 to be 2,620,000,000
-tons annually. This amount is greatly increased at the present time, and
-by far the larger part of it is manufactured from wood.
-
-In 1891 the _Philadelphia Record_ in an experimental test as to speed,
-cut trees from the forest, converted them into paper, and then into
-printed newspapers, all within the space of 22 hours. At a later period
-in Germany, where the wood pulp art began, even this expeditious work
-has been excelled. The trees were felled in the morning at 7:35,
-converted into paper, and presented at 10 A. M. in the form of printed
-newspapers, with a record of the news of the forenoon. The great naval
-edition of the _Scientific American_ of April 30, 1898, consumed a
-hundred tons of wood pulp paper, and was therefore built upon a material
-foundation of 125 cords of wood, which cleared off over six acres of
-well-set spruce timber land. It is mainly wood pulp that has enabled
-books and newspapers to be made so cheaply, for they are now furnished
-at a less price than the cost of the paper made in the old way from
-rags.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 130.--LINOTYPE MACHINE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 131.--LINOTYPE MATRIX.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 132.--SPACING OF ASSEMBLED LINE OF MATRICES.]
-
-_The Linotype._--The most revolutionary and perhaps the most important
-development in the printing art of this century has been the linotype
-machine. The laborious, painstaking, and expensive feature of printing
-has always been the setting and redistribution of the types, since each
-little piece had to be separately selected and placed in the composing
-stick, and the line afterwards "justified," which means an apportionment
-of the space between the words so as to make each line of type about the
-same length in the column. The same separate handling of each piece was
-again involved in restoring the type to the case. Machines for thus
-setting and distributing the type had been devised, but the operation
-was so involved, and required so nearly the discretion of the thinking
-mind, that all automatic machinery proved too complicated and
-impracticable. In 1886, however, a machine was placed in the office of
-the _New York Tribune_ whose performances astonished and alarmed the
-old-time compositor. It rendered it unnecessary to handle the type, or
-even to have any separate type at all. It was the Mergenthaler Linotype
-machine, which automatically formed its own type by casting a whole line
-of it at a time. The first machine was invented in 1884, and patented in
-1885, but it was subsequently reorganized and greatly improved in Pats.
-No. 425,140, April 8, 1890; Nos. 436,531 and 436,532, Sept. 16, 1890,
-and No. 438,354, Oct. 14, 1890. It is shown in the accompanying
-illustration (Fig. 130). By manipulating the keyboard, which resembles
-that of a typewriter, each lettered key is made to bring down from an
-inclined elevated magazine a little brass plate of the shape shown in
-Fig. 131, and which plate is called a matrix, because it bears on its
-edge at _x_ a mould of the type letter. There is a matrix plate for
-every letter and character used. These little matrices are spaced by
-wedges, as seen in Fig. 132, and are assembled, as in Fig. 133, along
-the side of a mould wheel having a slot in it which forms a channel
-between the aligned type-moulds or matrices on one side and the
-discharge mouth of a melting pot, in which molten type metal is
-maintained in a fluid state by a subjacent gas-burner. In the melting
-pot there is a cylinder and plunger, and when the plunger descends, it
-forces the molten metal up through the discharge spout into the slot of
-the mould wheel, and against the letter mould _x_ of each one of the
-composed or aligned matrices. The wheel is then turned with the
-matrices, and the metal in its slot is afterwards discharged in the form
-of a linotype slug, seen in Fig. 134, which is a metal plate bearing on
-its edge a completely moulded line of type ready for setting up in the
-form for printing. The jagged notches in the tops of the matrices (Fig.
-131) are for co-operation with a distributer bar (not easily explained)
-for restoring the matrices to their appropriate magazines after being
-used. There are altogether about 1,500 of the little brass matrices. The
-machine is about five feet square, weighs 1,750 pounds, and costs $3,000
-each. Notwithstanding this expense these Linotype machines have to-day
-made their way into nearly all the daily newspaper offices of the
-civilized world, even to Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. In the
-composing rooms of the daily newspapers and the larger book printing
-offices we find great rows of these Linotype machines, each doing the
-work of from four to five men. There are now in use in America something
-over 5,000 Linotype machines; and in other countries about 2,000, making
-7,000 in all. Each machine may be adjusted in five minutes to produce
-any size or style of type, and it gives new, clean faces for each day's
-issue, with none of the ordinary troubles of distributing type. The
-cheapness of composition, due to the machine, has led to an enormous
-increase in the size of papers, in the frequency of the editions, and
-has correspondingly increased the demand for labor in all the attendant
-lines, such as paper-making, press-making, the attendants on presses,
-stereotyping, etc. In the Boston Library, which keeps its catalogues
-printed up to within 24 hours of date, the Linotypes print in 23
-languages.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 133.--CASTING THE LINE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 134.--A LINOTYPE.]
-
-When the Linotype machine was first patented it was not regarded by
-printers generally as a practical machine, but only one of the many
-complicated, theoretical, but impracticable organizations which the
-Patent Office has to deal with. Its history, however, has been unique.
-It is practically the product of the brain of a single man, Ottmar
-Mergenthaler, a most ingenious and indefatigable inventor living in
-Baltimore. It was exploited under the powerful patronage of a syndicate
-of newspaper men, and hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent in
-perfecting it before any practical results were obtained. To-day it
-stands a triumph of human ingenuity, ranking in importance with the
-rotary web-perfecting press, and is probably the most ingenious piece of
-practical mechanism in existence.
-
-Of the three forms of printing attention has been given thus far only to
-the leading branch of the art, which is _type printing_, or "_letter
-press_," as it is called, in which the characters are raised in relief
-and receive ink on their raised surfaces only. A second branch of the
-art is _plate printing_, in which the lines and characters are engraved
-in intaglio in a plate, and which, being covered with ink, and the
-surface of the plate wiped clean, leaves the ink in the undercuts, which
-is taken up by the paper when pressure is applied through a roller.
-Plate printing is a very old art, the plate printing press having been
-ascribed to Tomasso Finiguerra, of Florence, in 1460. The reciprocating
-table bearing the engraved plate, and the superposed pressure roller
-turned by hand through its long radial arms, is an ancient and familiar
-form of press which has been in use for many years. This method of
-printing finds application in fine line engraving in works of art, card
-invitations, and bank note engraving. Very ingenious automatic machines
-have been invented and were in use a few years ago by the United States
-Government for printing its bank notes, but have since been displaced by
-the old hand machines. To the credit of the machine, it should be said,
-that it was from no fault in the machine that this retrograde step was
-taken, but rather the disfavor of the labor organizations.
-
-_Lithography_ is another and quite important branch of the printing art,
-in which the lines and characters are drawn upon stone with a kind of
-oily ink to which printers' ink will adhere, while it is repelled from
-the other moistened surfaces of the stone. Lithography was invented in
-1798 by Alois Senefelder, of Munich. It finds its greatest application
-in artistic and fanciful work in inks of various colors, and its
-development into chromo-lithography in the Nineteenth Century has grown
-into a fine art. Our beautifully colored chromos, prints, labels, maps,
-etc., are made by this process. A more recent and quite important
-development of this art is photo-lithography, which will be more fully
-considered under photography.
-
-Many collateral branches of the printing art are interesting in their
-development, such as calico printing, the printing of wall papers, of
-oil cloth, printing for the blind, book binding, type founding, and
-folding and addressing machines, but lack of space forbids more than a
-casual mention.
-
-Printing is perhaps the greatest of all the arts of civilization, and
-the libraries and newspapers of the Nineteenth Century attest its value.
-If Benjamin Franklin could wake from his long sleep and enter the
-composing rooms of our great dailies, and witness the imposing array of
-linotype machines, more resembling a machine shop than a printing
-office, and then visit the press room and see the avalanche of finished
-papers flying at the rate of 1,600 a minute, neatly folded, and counted
-for delivery, he would doubtless be overwhelmed with emotions of wonder
-and incredulity, for broad-minded man as he was, he could have no
-conception of such progress.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV.
-
-THE TYPEWRITER.
-
- OLD ENGLISH TYPEWRITER OF 1714--THE BURT TYPEWRITER OF 1829--
- PROGIN'S FRENCH MACHINE OF 1833--THURBER'S PRINTING MACHINE OF
- 1843--THE BEACH TYPEWRITER--THE SHOLES TYPEWRITER, THE FIRST OF THE
- MODERN FORM, COMMERCIALLY DEVELOPED INTO THE REMINGTON--THE
- CALIGRAPH--SMITH-PREMIER--THE BOOK TYPEWRITER AND OTHERS.
-
-
-Occupying an intermediate place between the old-fashioned scribe and the
-printer, the typewriter has in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century
-established a distinct and important avocation, and has become a
-necessary factor in modern business life. Chirography, or hand writing,
-reflecting, as it did, the idiosyncrasies of each writer, was not only
-slow, but when employed was, in most cases, in the haste and press of
-active business reduced to an illegible scrawl. For the use of reporters
-and others requiring extra speed, stenography, or short hand, was
-resorted to, but there was a distinct need for some easy, quick,
-legible, and uniform record of the busy man's correspondence and copy
-work, and this the modern typewriter has supplied.
-
-Like most other important inventions, the typewriter did not spring into
-existence all at once, for while the practical embodiment in really
-useful machines has only taken place since about 1868, there had been
-many experiments and some success attained at a much earlier date. The
-British patent to Henry Mills. No. 395 of 1714, is the earliest record
-of efforts in this direction. At this early date no drawings were
-attached to patents, and the specification dwells more on the function
-of the machine than the instrumentalities employed. No record of the
-construction of this machine remains in existence, and it may fairly be
-considered a lost art. In quaint and old-fashioned English, the patent
-specification proceeds as follows:
-
-"_ANNE_, by the grace of God, &c., to all whom these presents shall
-come, greeting: _WHEREAS_, our trusty and well-beloved subject, Henry
-Mills, hath by his humble peticon represented vnto vs, that he has by
-his greate study, paines, and expence, lately invented, and brought to
-perfection "_An Artificial Machine_ or _Method_ for the _Impressing_ or
-_Transcribing Letters Singly_ or _Progressively_ one after another as in
-_Writing_, whereby all _Writing whatever_ may be _Engrossed_ in _Paper_
-or _Parchment_ so _Neat_ and _Exact_ as not to be Distinguished from
-_Print_, that the said _Machine_ or Method, may be of greate vse in
-_Settlements_ and _Publick Recors_, the Impression being deeper and more
-Lasting that any other _Writing_, and not to be erased, or
-_Counterfeited_ without _Manifest Discovery_, and having therefore
-humbly prayed vs to grant him our Royall Letters Patents, for the sole
-vse of his said Invention for the term of fourteen yeares."
-
-"_Know Yee_, that wee," etc.
-
-The first American typewriter of which any record remains is that
-described in the patent granted to W. A. Burt, July 23, 1829. It was
-called a "Typographer." It had a segment bearing the letters of the
-alphabet and corresponding notches acting as an index. A superposed
-lever, which could be worked up and down, and also moved laterally, was
-provided with a series of type, arranged in a segmental curve, so that
-any type could be brought into place on the subjacent paper by swinging
-the lever over to and down into the proper notch in the index segment
-below. A restored model of this is to be found in the U. S. Patent
-Office.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 135.--FRENCH TYPEWRITER, 1833.]
-
-The first organized typewriter in which separate key levers were
-provided for each type is a French invention. It is to be found in the
-French patent to M. Progin (Xavier), of Marseilles, No. 3,748, Sept. 6,
-1833 (Brevets d'Invention, Vol. 37, 1st Series, pl. 36). It was called a
-Typographic Machine, and is shown in the illustration (Fig. 135).
-Upright key levers _s_ are arranged in a circle around a circular plate
-_n_. They have hook-shaped handles at the upper end, and terminate
-below in forks that are pivoted to the shanks of type hammers, to raise
-and lower them. These hammers are inked from a pad, and at a central
-point deliver a printing blow on the paper below. The paper is held
-stationary, and the whole nest of levers was moved over the paper for
-each letter printed. The circular index plate _n_ had marked on it
-opposite the respective levers the letters and characters represented by
-said levers. Besides printing letters, the device was to be used for
-printing music, and for making stereotype plates.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 136.--THURBER TYPEWRITER.]
-
-On Aug. 26, 1843, Charles Thurber, of Worcester, Mass., took out Pat.
-No. 3,228 for a Printing Machine. Under the patent he constructed the
-machine shown in Fig. 136. This differed somewhat from the form shown in
-his patent, in that the machine shows a paper feed roller which does not
-appear in the patent. This machine was found among the effects of Mr.
-Thurber after having lain neglected and unnoticed for many years, and
-its damaged parts were restored by Mr. H. R. Cummings, of Worcester. The
-types are carried on the lower ends of a circular series of depressible
-bars, which are spring seated in a horizontal rotatable wheel. By
-turning the wheel any type can be brought to the front, and a stationary
-guide controls its descent as it makes the impression. An inking roller
-is seen on the right, which inks the faces of the type. In front of the
-type wheel is a horizontal roller to which the sheet of paper is
-attached by clips. Finger pawls, working into ratchets at the ends of
-the roller, serve to rotate it after each line is printed. By means of a
-handle, seen projecting from the right hand side of the frame, the
-roller is shifted longitudinally on its axis rod after each letter has
-been printed. This appears to be the first embodiment of the feed roller
-rotating to bring a new line into range, and having also a longitudinal
-feed, but as these movements were required to be separately executed by
-the operator, the work of the machine was necessarily very slow. Just at
-what time this old Thurber machine was constructed it is impossible to
-state in the light of present information, but as the feed roller did
-not appear in Thurber's patent of 1843, it is possible that the claim to
-authorship of the feed roller having both a rotary and a longitudinal
-movement may be maintained in behalf of J. Jones, whose Pat. No. 8,980
-of June 1, 1852, appears to be the first dated record of such a feed
-roller. Jones was also the first to provide a spring to automatically
-retract the paper carriage to the position for beginning a new line, the
-spring being put under tension by the movement of the paper carriage in
-printing.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 137.--BEACH TYPEWRITER.]
-
-Prominent among those whose genius has served to perfect the typewriter
-occurs the name of A. E. Beach, for many years of the firm of Munn &
-Co., and well known to the readers of the _Scientific American_. Mr.
-Beach's first model of a typewriter was made in 1847. It printed upon a
-sheet of paper supported on a roller, carried in a sliding frame worked
-by a ratchet and pawl. It had a weight for running the frame, letter and
-line spacing keys, paper feeding devices, line signal bell, and carbon
-tissue. It had a series of finger keys connected with printing levers
-which were arranged in a circle, and struck at a common center. This
-machine was said to have worked well, but was laid aside for further
-improvement. In the meantime he constructed a typewriter to print in
-raised letters, without ink. This machine, which was intended primarily
-for the use of the blind, is illustrated in Figs. 137 and 138. It was
-first publicly exhibited in operation at the Crystal Palace Exhibition
-of the American Institute in the fall of 1856, where it attracted great
-attention and took the gold medal. The embossed letters were printed on
-a ribbon of paper which ran centrally through the machine. The printing
-levers were arranged in a circle in pairs, one riding on the top of the
-other. When the operator pressed a key, the two printing levers of each
-pair answering to the letter key were brought together, the paper being
-between them. The printing type were at the extremities of the levers,
-one lever having a raised letter, and its mate a sunken or intaglio
-letter, which, seizing the paper strip between them, like the jaws of a
-pair of pincers, impressed therein an embossed letter. The patent for
-this machine was granted June 24, 1856, No. 15,164, but the machine
-showed a much higher degree of development than appeared in the patent.
-This machine was the earliest representative of the circular basket of
-radially swinging type levers, combined with finger keys assembled in a
-keyboard at one side, which is now an almost universal feature, and the
-suggestion which it handed down to subsequent inventors has doubtless
-done much to make the typewriter the practical machine that it is
-to-day.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 138.--CENTRAL SECTION OF BEACH TYPEWRITER.]
-
-Up to the year 1868, however, typewriting machines were mere
-illustrations of sporadic genius occuring here and there as the pet
-hobby of some humanitarian seeking to help the blind, or supplement the
-deficiencies of the tremulous fingers of the paralytic. It had not yet
-come to be regarded as of any special use, nor had even the demand for
-such a device been forcibly felt, until the last quarter of the
-Nineteenth Century began to accumulate its wonderful momentum of
-progress and prosperity. The man whose genius finally brought forth a
-practical typewriter, and made a permanent place for it in the daily
-business of the world, was C. Latham Sholes. As joint inventor with C.
-Glidden and S. W. Soule, all of Milwaukee, he took out patents No.
-79,265, of June 23, 1868, and No. 79,868, of July 14, 1868. These,
-together with Sholes' Pat. No. 118,491, of Aug. 29, 1871, formed the
-working basis of the first typewriters that went into office use. These
-typewriters were first introduced to the general public under the
-management of the original inventors (Sholes, Soule and Glidden) about
-1873, and at first used only capital letters. On Aug. 27, 1878, a
-further patent. No. 207,559, was granted to Sholes, and about this time,
-after five years of uncertain and precarious business existence, the
-machine was taken for manufacture to E. Remington & Sons, at Ilion, N.
-Y. Since this time the well-known "Remington" has built up for itself a
-reputation and a commercial importance that has given it first place
-among typewriters. In the nine years from 1873 to 1882, it is said that
-less than 8,000 machines had been manufactured. In the year 1882
-Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict obtained control of the machine, and during
-the fourteen years following it is said that nearly 200,000 "Remingtons"
-were made and sold. It is said that 1,000 men are now employed in
-making this machine, and that the present output is about 800 machines a
-week, despite the fact that it has a half dozen worthy competitors for
-public favor. The modern Remington, seen in Fig. 139, is too well known
-to require special description. Besides the Sholes patents, it embodies
-the improvements covered by patents to Clough & Jenne, No. 199,263, Jan.
-15, 1878; Jenne, No. 478,964, July 12, 1892, and No. 548,553, Oct. 22,
-1895, and also a patent to Brooks, No. 202,923, April 30, 1878, a
-characteristic feature of which latter is the location of both a capital
-and small letter on the same striking lever, and the shifting of the
-paper roller by a key to bring either the large or small letter into
-printing range.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 139.--REMINGTON TYPEWRITER.]
-
-The earliest rival of the Remington was the Caligraph, made by the
-American Writing Machine Co. This well-known machine, introduced in the
-decade of the eighties, was made under the patents of G. Y. N. Yost,
-March 18, 1884, No. 295,469; March 17, 1885, No. 313,973; and July 30,
-1889, No. 408,061. The most modern form of the Caligraph is known as the
-"New Century," which is shown in the accompanying illustration, Fig.
-140. The Caligraph uses a separate type lever and key for each letter,
-and by a system of compound key levers the touch is rendered easy, even,
-and elastic, and perfect alignment and freedom from noise are among the
-objects sought in its mechanical construction.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 140.--NEW CENTURY CALIGRAPH.]
-
-Next among the earlier typewriters is to be mentioned the "Hammond,"
-made under the patents to J. B. Hammond, No. 224,088, Feb. 8, 1880, and
-290,419, Dec. 18, 1883. A distinguishing feature of the machine is that
-the printed work is in full view, so that the operator can see what he
-is doing. The impression is made by an oscillating type wheel, to which
-a variable throw is imparted by the key letters to bring any desired
-letter into printing position. When the letter is brought into printing
-position a hammer, arranged in the rear of the sheet of paper, is made
-to force the latter against the type to produce the impression by the
-same movement of the key that brought the type wheel into printing
-position.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 141.--SMITH-PREMIER TYPE BAR RING.]
-
-Of later machines, none has met with more popular favor than the
-Smith-Premier, manufactured under the patent to A. T. Brown, No.
-465,451, Dec. 22, 1891, and others. A leading feature of this is the
-type-bar ring of its printing mechanism. In all typewriters accurate
-location of the impression is essential to proper alignment of the
-letters, and proper alignment is the _sine qua non_ of typewriting. The
-old pivoted type bars were liable to wear at the joint, and the
-slightest looseness at this point would so multiply the lateral play at
-the end carrying the type that the letters would soon become irregularly
-placed and out of alignment. In the Smith-Premier this is reduced to a
-minimum by making a short type bar, and arranging each upon an
-oscillating rock shaft, the bearings at whose ends are so widely
-separated as to permit little or no lateral play in the type bar. A view
-of this type bar ring with tangentially arranged rock shafts disposed in
-circular series is seen in Fig. 141, while the full machine is given in
-Fig. 142. In this latter view there is also shown the cleaning brush for
-quickly cleaning at one operation all of the types of the outer ring. It
-is simply a circular brush mounted upon the end of a tool resembling a
-carpenter's brace, and is a useful and convenient adjunct to the
-machine.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 142.--SMITH-PREMIER AND CLEANING BRUSH.]
-
-In 1891 the "Densmore" typewriter first made its appearance before the
-public. It was named after James and Amos Densmore, who had been
-connected with typewriting interests from the time of Sholes' first
-practical machine. The Densmore is made under patents to A. Densmore,
-No. 507,726 and 507,727, of Oct. 31, 1893. It has ball-bearing type bar
-joints, giving accurate alignment and light key action, the platen rolls
-to show the work, and the carriage locks at the end of the line,
-protecting the writing.
-
-Noted for its clear, sharp print, the "Yost" typewriter comes in for its
-share of praise. It is made under the patent to Felbel and Steiger,
-March 26, 1889, No. 400,200. It does not employ an inked ribbon
-interposed between the type and the paper, as do most typewriters, but
-its type-bearing levers, when at rest, occupy a position in which the
-type are all arranged within and bear against a circular inking ring or
-pad, and when a key is struck, its lever, by a peculiar and ingenious
-movement, leaves the inking pad, moves inward and backward toward the
-center, and then rises and strikes an upwardly directed blow in the
-center, and prints the letter on the paper. As the printing is done
-directly from the type, the letters are formed with sharp and clear
-outlines that give beauty and neatness to the print. Alignment is
-insured by a center guide hole through which the type end of the lever
-passes in striking the paper.
-
-Among machines of simple organization may be mentioned the
-Blickensderfer, which is a wonderfully simple and effective little
-machine, first made under the patent to Blickensderfer, No. 472,692,
-April 12, 1892. Like the Hammond, it belongs to the class of typewriters
-which employ a rotary type wheel, which is given a variable throw, from
-the depression of the keys, to bring the proper letter into printing
-position; but unlike the Hammond, its type wheel advances to contact
-with the paper, a little felt ink-roller being brought into contact with
-the type wheel to ink it as the latter moves. The printed work is in
-full view, the line spacing may be varied to any fractional adjustment,
-and the action is quite free from noise. With its mechanism reduced to
-the fewest and simplest parts, the whole machine weighs only six pounds,
-and it differs in many respects from the ordinary typewriter. Since its
-introduction a few years ago, its growth in popularity has been very
-rapid.
-
-Another recently appearing machine is the "Oliver." This has type bars
-which are normally above the work. Each bar is loop shaped, hinged at
-its lower ends, and bearing the type letter on the bend at the upper
-end. They are arranged in two series, one on each side of the center,
-and in printing each loop swings down like the wing of a bird. As the
-printing is from the top, and the ribbon is moved away from in front of
-the line immediately after the printing blow, the writing is always
-visible to the operator. This machine is manufactured under various
-patents to Thomas Oliver, the first of which was No. 450,107, granted
-April 7, 1891. Further improvements are covered by subsequent patents,
-Nos. 528,484, 542,275, 562,337, and 599,863. The Oliver has made many
-friends for itself by its fine alignment and visible writing, and shares
-with the other standard machines a considerable patronage.
-
-It is not practicable to give a full illustration of the state of the
-art in typewriters, as it has grown to an industry of large proportions.
-Nearly 1,700 patents have been granted for such machines, and more than
-100 useful and meritorious machines have been devised and put upon the
-market. Among these may be mentioned the Hall, Underwood, Manhattan,
-Williams, Jewett, and many others.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 143.--ELLIOTT & HATCH BOOK TYPEWRITER.]
-
-Besides the regular typewriters, various modifications have been made to
-suit special kinds of work. The "Comptometer" used in banks is a species
-of typewriter, as is also the Dudley adding and subtracting machine,
-known as the "Numerograph," and covered by patents Nos. 554,993,
-555,038, 555,039, 579,047 and 579,048. Typewriters for short hand
-characters, and for foreign languages, and for printing on record and
-blank books, are also among the modern developments of this art. In the
-latter the whole carriage and system of type levers move over the book.
-The Elliott & Hatch book typewriter, Fig. 143, is a well-known example.
-In attachments, holders for the copy have received considerable
-attention, and simple and practical billing and tabulating attachments
-have been devised which expedite and facilitate the statements of
-accounts and other work requiring numeration in columns. The Gorin
-Tabulator is one of those in practical use.
-
-In point of speed the typewriter depends entirely upon the aptness of
-the operator. For ordinary copying work, where much time is occupied in
-deciphering the illegible scrawl, probably forty words a minute is the
-average work. When taken from dictation, seventy-five words a minute may
-be written, and in special cases, when copying from memory, a speed of
-150 words a minute has been maintained for a limited time. It was
-estimated that there were in use in the United States in 1896 150,000
-typewriters, and that up to that time 450,000 had been made altogether.
-In the last four years this number has been greatly increased, and a
-fair estimate of the present output in the United States is between
-75,000 and 100,000 yearly. In 1898 there were exported from the United
-States typewriting machines to the value of $1,902,153.
-
-The typewriter has not only revolutionized modern business methods, by
-furnishing a quick and legible copy that may be rapidly taken from
-dictation, and also at the same time a duplicate carbon copy for the use
-of the writer, but it has established a distinct avocation especially
-adapted to the deftness and skill of women, who as bread winners at the
-end of the Nineteenth Century are working out a destiny and place in the
-business activities of life unthought of a hundred years ago. The
-typewriter saves time, labor, postage and paper; it reduces the
-liability to mistakes, brings system into official correspondence, and
-delights the heart of the printer. It furnishes profitable amusement to
-the young, and satisfactory aid to the nervous and paralytic. All over
-the world it has already traveled--from the counting house of the
-merchant to the Imperial Courts of Europe, from the home of the new
-woman in the Western Hemisphere to the harem of the East--everywhere its
-familiar click is to be heard, faithfully translating thought into all
-languages, and for all peoples.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV.
-
-THE SEWING MACHINE.
-
- EMBROIDERING MACHINE, THE FORERUNNER OF THE SEWING MACHINE--SEWING
- MACHINE OF THOMAS SAINT--THE THIMONNIER WOODEN MACHINE--GREENOUGH'S
- DOUBLE POINTED NEEDLE--BEAN'S STATIONARY NEEDLE--THE HOWE SEWING
- MACHINE--BACHELDER'S CONTINUOUS FEED--IMPROVEMENTS OF SINGER--
- WILSON'S ROTARY HOOK AND FOUR-MOTION FEED--THE MCKAY SHOE SEWING
- MACHINE--BUTTONHOLE MACHINES--CARPET SEWING MACHINE--STATISTICS.
-
- "With fingers weary and worn,
- With eyelids heavy and red,
- A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
- Plying her needle and thread--
- Stitch! Stitch! Stitch!
- In poverty, hunger and dirt,
- And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,
- She sang the 'Song of the Shirt.'"
-
-
-In 1844 Thomas Hood wrote and published his famous "Song of the Shirt,"
-in which the drudgery of the needle is portrayed with pathetic fidelity.
-It is not to be supposed that any relation of cause and effect exists
-between the events, but it is nevertheless a singular fact that about
-this time Howe commenced work on his great invention, which was patented
-in 1846, and was the prototype of the modern sewing machine. If the
-sewing machine had appeared a few years earlier, the "Song of the Shirt"
-would doubtless never have been written.
-
-From the time of Mother Eve, who crudely stitched together her fig
-leaves, sewing seems to have been set apart as an occupation peculiarly
-belonging to women, and it may be that this was the reason why in the
-history of mechanical progress the sewing machine was so late appearing,
-for women are not, as a rule, inventors, and none of the sewing machines
-were invented by women.
-
-In all the preceding centuries of civilization hand sewing was
-exclusively employed, and it was reserved for the Nineteenth Century to
-relieve women from the drudgery which for so many centuries had enslaved
-them.
-
-Embroidery machines had been patented in England by Weisenthal in 1755,
-and Alsop in 1770, and on July 17, 1790, an English patent, No. 1,764,
-was granted to Thomas Saint for a crude form of sewing machine, having a
-horizontal arm and vertical needle. In 1826 a patent was granted in the
-United States to one Lye for a sewing machine, but no records of the
-same remain, as all were burned in the fire of 1836. In 1830 B.
-Thimonnier patented a sewing machine in France, 80 of which, made of
-wood, were in use in 1841 for sewing army clothing, but they were
-destroyed by a mob, as many other labor-saving inventions had been
-before. Between 1832 and 1835 Walter Hunt, of New York, made a
-lock-stitch sewing machine, but abandoned it. On Feb. 21, 1842, U. S.
-Pat. No. 2,466 was granted to J. J. Greenough for a sewing machine
-having a double pointed needle with an eye in the middle, which needle
-was drawn through the work by pairs of traveling pincers. It was
-designed for sewing leather, and an awl pierced the hole in advance of
-the needle. On March 4, 1843, U. S. Pat. No. 2,982 was granted to B. W.
-Bean for a sewing machine in which the needle was stationary, and the
-cloth was gathered in crimps or folds and forced over the stationary
-needle. In 1844, British Pat. No. 10,424 was granted to Fisher and
-Gibbons for working ornamental designs by machinery, in which two
-threads were looped together, one passing through the fabric, and the
-other looping with it on the surface without passing through.
-
-The great epoch of the sewing machine, however, begins with Elias Howe
-and the sewing machine patented by him Sept. 10, 1846, No. 4,750. Almost
-everyone is familiar with the modern Howe sewing machine, and it will be
-therefore more interesting to present the form in which it originally
-appeared. This is shown in Fig. 144. A curved eye-pointed needle was
-carried at the end of a pendent vibrating lever, which had a motion
-simulating that of a pick-ax in the hands of a workman. The needle took
-its thread from a spool situated above the lever, and the tension on the
-thread was produced by a spring brake whose semicircular end bore upon
-the spool, the pressure being regulated by a vertical thumb screw. The
-work was held in a vertical plane by means of a horizontal row of pins
-projecting from the edge of a thin metal "baster plate," to which an
-intermittent motion was given by the teeth of a pinion. Above, and to
-one side of the "baster plate" was the shuttle race, through which the
-shuttle carrying the second thread was driven by two strikers, which
-were operated by two arms and cams located on the horizontal main shaft.
-As will be seen, this machine bears but little resemblance to any of the
-modern machines, but it embodied the three essential features which
-characterize most all practical machines, viz.: a grooved needle with
-the eye at the point, a shuttle operating on the opposite side of the
-cloth from the needle to form a lock stitch, and an automatic feed.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 144.--HOWE'S SEWING MACHINE, 1846.]
-
-Howe first commenced his work on the sewing machine in 1844, and
-although he had made a rough model of that date, he was too poor to
-follow it up with more practical results until a former schoolmate,
-George Fisher, provided $500 to build a machine and support his family
-while it was being constructed, in consideration of which Mr. Fisher was
-to receive a half interest in the invention. In April, 1845, the machine
-was completed, and in July he sewed two suits of clothes on it, one for
-Mr. Fisher and the other for himself. Notwithstanding the success of
-his machine, which on public exhibition beat five of the swiftest hand
-sewers, he met only discouragement and disappointment. He, however,
-built a second machine, which was the basis of his patent, and is the
-one shown in the illustration. After obtaining his United States patent
-Howe went to England with the hope of introducing his machine there,
-but, failing, he returned to America, some years later, only to find
-that his invention had been taken up by infringers, and that sewing
-machines embodying his invention were being built and sold. These
-infringers sought to break his patent by endeavoring to prove, but
-without success, that Howe's invention was anticipated by the abandoned
-experiments of Walter Hunt in 1834. Howe won his suit, and the
-infringers were obliged to pay him royalties, which, for a time,
-amounted to $25 on each machine. Howe then bought the outstanding
-interest in his patent, established a factory in New York, and from the
-profits of his manufacture, and the royalties, he soon reaped a princely
-fortune of several million dollars. In six years his royalties had grown
-from $300 to $200,000 a year, and in 1863 his royalties were estimated
-at $4,000 a day.
-
-A patent that occupied an important place in sewing machine feeds was
-that granted to Bachelder May 8, 1849, No. 6,439, in which a spiked and
-endless belt passed horizontally around two pulleys. This patent
-contained the first continuous feed, and it was re-issued and extended,
-and ran with dominating claims on the continuous feed, until 1877.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 145.--WILSON SEWING MACHINE, 1852.]
-
-In connection with the development of the sewing machine the name of A.
-B. Wilson stands next in rank to that of Howe. Wilson invented the
-rotary hook carrying a bobbin, which took the place of the reciprocating
-shuttle. This was patented by him June 15, 1852, No. 9,041, and is shown
-in Fig. 145. He also invented the far more important improvement of the
-four-motion feed, which is a characteristic feature of nearly all
-practical family sewing machines. This four-motion feed was pooled in
-the early sewing machine combination with the Bachelder and other
-patents, and earned for its promotors a far greater pecuniary return
-than the original Howe sewing machine itself. Estimates place this
-profit high in the millions. The four-motion feed was patented December
-19, 1854, No. 12,116, and it is a comparatively simple affair. Divested
-of its operating mechanism, it consists simply of a little metal bar
-serrated with forwardly projecting saw teeth on its upper surface, to
-which bar, by means of an operating cam, a motion in four directions in
-the path of a rectangle is given. The serrated bar first rises through a
-slot in the table, then moves horizontally to advance the cloth, then
-drops below the table, and finally moves back again horizontally below
-the table to its starting point.
-
-Upon these two important features--the rotating hook patented by Wilson
-in 1852, and the four-motion feed, patented in 1854--a large and
-important business was built. In this business Mr. Nathaniel Wheeler was
-associated with Mr. Wilson, and the well-known Wheeler & Wilson machines
-are the result of their enterprise and ingenuity.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 146.--ORIGINAL SINGER SEWING MACHINE.]
-
-Contemporaneous with the Wheeler & Wilson machine were other excellent
-machines, among which may be mentioned the Singer machine, patented Aug.
-12, 1851, No. 8,294, by Isaac M. Singer, the original model of which is
-shown in Fig. 146. The Singer machine met the demands of the tailoring
-and leather industries for a heavier and more powerful machine. A
-characteristic feature was the vertical standard with horizontal arm
-above the work table, which was afterwards adopted in many other
-machines. Singer was the first to apply the treadle to the sewing
-machine for actuating it by foot power in the place of the hand-driven
-crank wheel. In 1851 W. O. Grover and W. E. Baker patented a machine
-which made the double chain stitch, characteristic of the Grover & Baker
-machine. James E. A. Gibbs invented and covered in several patents from
-1856 to 1860 the single-thread rotating hook, which was embodied in the
-Wilcox & Gibbs machine. In addition to these, the "Weed" machine, made
-under Fairfield's patents; the "Domestic" machine, made under Mack's
-patents; and the "Florence" machine, made under Langdon's patents, were
-other representative machines, which, in a few years after Howe's
-patent, helped to revolutionize the art of tailoring, introduced the
-great era of ready-made clothing and ready-made shoes, emancipated women
-from the drudgery of the needle, and increased the efficiency of one
-pair of hands fully ten fold.
-
-In 1856 the owners of the original sewing machine patents formed the
-famous "sewing machine combination," for the establishment of a common
-license fee, and for the protection of their mutual interests. The
-combination included Elias Howe, the Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing
-Company, the Grover & Baker Sewing Machine Company, and I. M. Singer &
-Co. The following summary of machines made by the leading companies from
-1853 to 1876 illustrates the early growth of this industry:
-
- Manufacturer. 1853. 1859. 1867. 1871. 1873. 1876.
-
- Wheeler & Wilson
- Manufacturing Co. 799 21,306 38,055 128,526 119,190 108,997
-
- The Singer
- Manufacturing Company 810 10,953 43,053 181,260 232,444 262,316
-
- Grover & Baker Sewing
- Machine Co. 657 10,280 32,999 50,838 36,179 ....
-
- Howe Sewing Machine
- Company .... .... 11,053 134,010 90,000 109,294
-
- Wilcox & Gibbs
- Sewing Machine Co. .... .... 14,152 30,127 15,881 12,758
-
- Domestic Sewing
- Machine Company .... .... .... 10,397 40,114 23,587
-
-From the foregoing table it will be seen that as far back as a quarter
-of a century ago the output of machines was over a half a million a
-year. By 1877 all of the fundamental patents on the sewing machine had
-expired, but the continued activity of inventors in this field is
-attested by the fact that to-day there are many thousands of patents
-relating to the sewing machine and its parts. Besides those relating to
-the organization of the machine itself there is an endless variety of
-attachments, such as hemmers, tuckers, fellers, quilters, binders,
-gatherers and rufflers, embroiderers, corders and button hole
-attachments. Every part of the machine has also received separate
-attention and separate patents, all tending to the perfection of the
-machine, until to-day, with all fundamental principles public property,
-and endless improvements in details, it is difficult to discriminate as
-to comparative excellence.
-
-There is to-day a great variety of sewing machines on the market,
-standard machines for ordinary work, and special machines for numerous
-special applications. It is said that one concern alone manufactures
-over four hundred different varieties of sewing machines.
-
-One of the most important and revolutionary of the applications of the
-sewing machine is for making shoes. Prior to 1861 shoemaking was
-confined to the slow, laborious hand methods of the shoemaker. Cheap
-shoes could only be made by roughly fastening the soles to the uppers by
-wooden pegs, whose row of projecting points within has made many a man
-and boy do unnecessary penance. Hand sewed shoes cost from $8 to $12 a
-pair, and were too expensive a luxury for any but the rich. With the
-McKay shoe sewing machine in 1861, however, comfortable shoes were made,
-with the soles strongly and substantially sewed to the uppers, at a less
-price even than the coarse and clumsy pegged variety. The McKay machine
-was the result of more than three years patient study and work. It was
-covered by United States patents No. 35,105, April 29, 1862; No. 35,165,
-May 6, 1862; No. 36,163, Aug. 12, 1862; and No. 45,422, Dec. 13, 1864,
-and its development cost $130,000 before practical results were
-obtained. A modern form of it is shown in Fig. 147. In preparing a shoe
-for the machine, an inner sole is placed on the last, the upper is then
-lasted and its edges secured to the inner sole. An outer sole, channeled
-to receive the stitches, is then tacked on so that the edges of the
-upper are caught and retained between the two soles. The shoe is then
-placed on the end of a rotary support called a horn, which holds it up
-to the needle. A spool containing thread coated with shoemakers' wax is
-carried by the horn, and the thread, with its wax kept soft by a lamp,
-runs up the inside of the horn to the whirl. The latter is a small ring
-placed at the upper end of the horn, and through which there is an
-opening for the passage of the needle. The needle has a barb, or hook,
-and as it descends through the sole the whirl lays the thread in this
-hook, and as the needle rises it draws the thread through the soles and
-forms a chain stitch in the external channel of the outer sole. As the
-sewing proceeds, the horn is rotated so as to bring every part of the
-margin of the sole under the needle. With this machine a single operator
-has been able to sew nine hundred pairs of shoes in a day of ten hours,
-and five hundred to six hundred pairs is only an average workman's
-output. It is said that up to 1877 there were 350,000,000 pairs of shoes
-made on this machine in the United States, and probably an equal or
-greater number in Europe. Shoes made on this machine were strongly made
-and comfortable, but they could not be resoled by a shoemaker, except by
-pegging or nailing, and the soles were furthermore somewhat stiff and
-lacking in flexibility. To meet these difficulties, a new machine known
-as the "Goodyear Welt Machine," was patented in 1871 and 1875, and
-brought out a little later. This sewed a welt to an upper, which welt in
-a subsequent operation was sewed by an external row of stitches to the
-sole. This gave much greater flexibility, and the further advantage of
-enabling a shoemaker to half sole the shoe by the old method of hand
-sewing. This advanced the art of shoemaking in the finer varieties of
-shoes, and to-day nearly all men's fine shoes are made in this way. The
-introduction of the sewing machine into the shoe industry made a new era
-in foot wear, and it is said that no nation on earth is so well and
-cheaply shod as the people of the United States.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 147.--MCKAY SHOE SEWING MACHINE.]
-
-A buttonhole does not strike the average person as a thing of any
-importance whatever. The needlewoman, however, who has to patiently
-stitch around and form the buttonholes, knows differently, and when this
-needlewoman, working in the great shirt factories and shoe factories, is
-confronted with the many millions of buttonholes in collars, cuffs,
-shirts and shoes, the great amount of this painstaking and nerve
-destroying labor becomes appalling. For cheapening the cost of
-buttonholes, and reducing the hand labor, various buttonhole machines
-and attachments to sewing machines have been devised. Patents Nos.
-36,616 and 36,617, to Humphrey, Oct. 7, 1862, covered one of the
-earliest forms, but the Reece buttonhole machine, which is specially
-devised for the work, is one of the most modern and successful. It was
-patented April 26, 1881, Sept. 21, 1886, and Aug. 20, 1895. These
-machines mark an important departure, which consists in working the
-buttonhole by moving the stitch forming mechanism about the buttonhole,
-instead of moving the fabric. An illustration of the machine is given in
-Fig. 148. Upon this machine 10,010 button holes have been made in nine
-hours and fifty minutes. The machine first cuts the buttonhole, then
-transfers it to the stitching devices, which stitch and bar the
-buttonhole, finishing it entirely in an automatic manner. The saving
-involved to the manufacturer by this machine over the hand method is
-several hundred per cent., but the relief to the needlewoman is of far
-greater consequence.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 148.--REECE BUTTONHOLE MACHINE.]
-
-Many striking applications of the sewing machine to various kinds of
-work have been made. A recent one is the automatic power carpet sewing
-machine, made and sold by the Singer Manufacturing Company. It was
-patented by E. B. Allen in 1894. This machine in general appearance
-resembles a miniature elevated railroad. It consists of an elevated
-track about thirty-six feet long, sustained every three or four feet
-upon standards, and having clamping jaws, which hold together the upper
-edges of the two lengths of carpet to be sewed together. A compact
-little stitching apparatus, not larger than a tea-pot, is actuated by an
-endless belt from an electric motor at one end. The little machine runs
-along and stitches together the upper edges of the suspended carpet
-lengths, and as it crawls along at its work, it strikingly reminds one
-of the movements of a squirrel along the top of a rail fence. This
-machine will sew five yards of seam every minute, fastening together
-evenly and strongly ten yards of carpet, and entirely dispensing with
-all hand labor in this roughest and most trying of all fabrics.
-
-Probably no organized piece of machinery has ever been so systematically
-exploited, so thoroughly advertised, so persistently canvassed, and so
-extensively sold as the sewing machine. With their main central offices,
-their branch offices, sub-agencies and traveling canvassers in wagons,
-every city, village, hamlet, and farmhouse has been actively besieged,
-and with the enticing system of payment by instalments there is scarcely
-a home too humble to be without its sewing machine. The retail price of
-sewing machines bears no proper relation to their cost, but this price
-to the consumer results from the liberal commissions to agents, and the
-expensive methods of canvassing. In the early days of the sewing machine
-its sales were chiefly for family use, but this is now no longer the
-case. While almost every family owns a sewing machine, it is only
-brought into requisition for finer and special varieties of work, since
-nearly all the clothing of men, women and children can now be purchased
-ready made, at a price much less than the cost of the material and the
-labor of making it up. A man to-day buys a ready-made shirt for fifty
-cents, which fifty years ago would have cost him $2. This has largely
-transferred the sphere of action of the sewing machine from the family
-to the factory. Great factories now make ready-made clothing for men,
-women and children, shirts, collars and cuffs, shoes, hats, caps,
-awnings, tents, sails, bags, flags, banners, corsets, gloves,
-pocketbooks, harness, saddlery, rubber goods, etc., and all these
-industries are founded upon the sewing machine, which may be seen in
-long rows beside the factory walls, busily supplying the demand of the
-world. With this transition in the sewing machine foot treadles are no
-longer relied on, but the machines are run by power from countershafts.
-This, in turn, has opened up possibilities of much higher speed and
-greater efficiency in the machine. Inventors have found, however, that
-high speed is handicapped with certain limitations. Beyond a certain
-speed the needle gets hot from friction, which burns off the thread and
-draws the temper. Cams and springs, moreover, are not positive enough in
-action, as the resilience of the spring does not act quickly enough, and
-so more positive gearings, such as eccentrics and cranks, must be
-employed. Despite these difficulties, however, the modern factory
-machine has raised the speed of the old-time sewing machine from a few
-hundred stitches a minute to three and four thousand stitches a minute.
-
-The United States is the home of the sewing machine, and New York City
-is the center of the industry, probably 90 per cent. of the sewing
-machine trade being managed and handled there. German manufacturers are
-making great efforts to compete in this field, but American machines are
-generally regarded as the best in the world.
-
-Among those prominently interested in the machine in its early days were
-Orlando B. Potter and the law firm of Jordan & Clarke. The latter were
-attorneys representing some of the prominent inventors in litigation,
-and in this way Mr. Edward Clarke became interested in the business, and
-it was he who in 1856 instituted the system of selling on the instalment
-plan. For some years before his death Mr. Clarke was the president of
-the Singer Company.
-
-Recent statistics in relation to the sewing machine industry are
-difficult to obtain, partly by reason of the great extent and
-ramifications of the business, and partly by reason of the unwillingness
-of the larger companies to give out data for publication. At the Patent
-Centennial in Washington, in 1891, Ex-Commissioner of Patents
-Butterworth made the statement that "Caesar conquered Gaul with a force
-numerically less than was employed in inventing and perfecting the parts
-of the sewing machine." The great Singer Company, with headquarters at
-New York, operates not only a factory at Elizabethport, N. J., employing
-5,000 men, but also other factories in Europe and Canada, the one at
-Kilbowie, Scotland, employing 6,000 men. Of the total of 13,500,000
-machines made by this company from 1853 to the end of 1896, nearly
-6,000,000 have been made in factories located abroad, but directly
-controlled and managed by the New York office. It is stated that the
-present output of the American factory of the Singer Company amounts to
-over 11,000 weekly, or more than half a million annually. Although so
-many sewing machines are made abroad, the exports from the United States
-for 1899 amounted to $3,264,344.
-
-In the early days of the Howe sewing machine it was denounced as a
-menace to the occupations of the thousands of men and women who worked
-in the clothing shops, and the struggles of the inventor against this
-opposition and discouragement form an interesting page of history. But
-it had come to stay and to grow. Some 7,000 United States patents attest
-the interest and ingenuity in this field, in the neighborhood of 100,000
-persons make a living from the manufacture and sale of the machine,
-millions find profitable employment in its use, and from 700,000 to
-800,000 machines are annually manufactured in the United States. The
-output of all countries is estimated to be from 1,200,000 to 1,300,000
-annually.
-
-The sewing machine has for its objective result only the simple and
-insignificant function of fastening one piece of fabric to another, but
-its influence upon civilization in ministering to the wants of the race
-has been so great as to cause it to be numbered with the epoch-making
-inventions of the age. It has created new industries. It has given
-useful employment to capital, has extended the lists of the wage earner,
-and increased his daily pay. It has clothed the naked, fed the hungry,
-and warded off the ravages of cold and death; but, best of all its
-tuneful accompaniment has lightened the heart and smoothed the pathway
-of life for Hood's weary working woman, to whose tired fingers and
-aching eyes it has brought the balm of much-needed rest.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI.
-
-THE REAPER.
-
- EARLY ENGLISH MACHINES--MACHINE OF PATRICK BELL--THE HUSSEY
- REAPER--MCCORMICK'S REAPER AND ITS GREAT SUCCESS--RIVALRY BETWEEN
- THE TWO AMERICAN REAPERS--SELF RAKERS--AUTOMATIC BINDERS--COMBINED
- STEAM REAPER AND THRESHING MACHINE--GREAT WHEAT FIELDS OF THE
- WEST--STATISTICS.
-
-
-In the harvest scenes upon the tombs of ancient Thebes the thirsty
-reaper is depicted, with curved sickle in hand, alternately bending his
-back to the grain and refreshing himself at the skin bottle. For more
-than thirty centuries did man thus continue to earn his bread by the
-sweat of his brow. Even to the present time the scythe, with its cradle
-of wooden fingers, is occasionally met with, and it is to the older
-generation a familiar suggestion of the sweat, toil, bustle and
-excitement of the old harvest time. But all this has been changed by the
-advent of the reaper, and ere long the grain cradle will hang on the
-walls of the museum as an ethnological specimen only.
-
-The first reaper of which we find historical evidence is that described
-by Pliny in the first century of the Christian Era (A. D. 70). He says:
-"The mode of getting in the harvest varies considerably. In the vast
-domains of the province of Gaul a large hollow frame, armed with
-comb-like teeth, and supported on two wheels, is driven through the
-standing grain, the beasts being yoked behind it (in contrarium juncto),
-the result being that the ears are torn off and fall within the frame."
-
-This crude machine has in late years been many times re-invented, and it
-finds a special application to-day for the gathering of clover seeds,
-and is called a "header."
-
-The first attempt of modern times to devise a reaper was the English
-machine of Pitt, in 1786, which followed the principle of the old Gallic
-implement, in that it stripped the heads from the standing grain. The
-Pitt machine, however, had a revolving cylinder on which were rows of
-comb teeth, which tore off the heads of grain and discharged them into a
-receptacle. In 1799 Boyce, of England, invented the vertical shaft, with
-horizontally rotating cutters. In 1800 Mears devised a machine
-employing shears. In 1806 Gladstone devised a front-draft, side-cut
-machine, in which a curved segment-bar with fingers gathered the grain
-and held it while a horizontally revolving knife cut the same. In 1811
-Cumming introduced the reel, and in 1814 Dobbs described a wheelbarrow
-arrangement of reaper in which he used the divider. In 1822 the
-important improvement of the reciprocating knife bar was made by Ogle,
-which became a characteristic feature of all subsequent successful
-reapers. It was drawn by horses in front. The cutter bar projected at
-the side. It had a reel to gather the grain to the cutter, and the grain
-platform was tilted to drop the gavel. In 1826 Rev. Patrick Bell, of
-Scotland, devised a reaper that had a movable vibrating cutter working
-like a series of shears, a reel, and a traveling apron, which carried
-off the grain to one side. This machine was pushed from behind, and,
-with a swath of five feet, cut an acre in an hour. It was, however, for
-some reason laid aside till 1851, when it was reorganized and put in
-service at the World's Fair in London in competition with the American
-machines. All the earlier experiments in the development of the reaper
-were made in England. Grain raising was in its infancy in the United
-States, and near the end of the Eighteenth Century the Royal
-Agricultural Society of England had stimulated its own inventors by
-offering a prize for the production of a successful reaper, and
-continued thus to offer it for many years. There is no evidence,
-however, that the preceding machines attained any practical results,
-and it remained for the fertility of American genius to invent a
-practical reaper which satisfactorily performed its work, and continued
-to do so. Quite a number of patents for reapers were granted to American
-inventors in the early part of the century, among which may be mentioned
-that to Manning, of Plainfield, N. J., May 3, 1831, which embodied
-finger bars to hold the grain and a reciprocating cutter bar with
-spear-shaped blades.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 149.--PATENT OFFICE DRAWING, HUSSEY'S REAPER,
-DECEMBER 31, 1833.]
-
-Cyrus H. McCormick, of Virginia, and Obed Hussey, of Maryland, were the
-men who brought the reaper to a condition of practical utility.
-The commercial development of their machines was practically
-contemporaneous, and their respective claims for superiority had about
-an equal number of supporters among the farmers of that day. Hussey,
-originally of Cincinnati, but afterwards of Maryland, was the first to
-obtain a patent, which was granted December 31, 1833. An illustration of
-the patent drawing is given in Fig. 149. It embodied a reciprocating saw
-tooth cutter _f_ sliding within double guard fingers _e_. It had a front
-draft, side-cut, and a platform. The cutter was driven by a pitman from
-a crank shaft operated through gear wheels from the main drive wheels.
-His specification provided for the locking or unlocking of the drive
-wheels; also for the hinging of the platform, and states that the
-operator who takes off the grain may ride on the machine.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 150.--PATENT OFFICE DRAWING, McCORMICK'S REAPER,
-JUNE 21, 1834.]
-
-On June 21, 1834, Cyrus H. McCormick, of Virginia, obtained a patent on
-his reaper. In Fig. 150 appears an illustration of his patent drawing.
-This had two features which were not found in the Hussey patent, viz., a
-reel on a horizontal axis above the cutter, and a divider L, at the
-outer end of the cutter, which divider projected in front of the cutter,
-and separated in advance the grain which was to be cut from that which
-was to be left standing. McCormick's machine had two cutters or knives,
-reciprocated by cranks in opposite directions to each other. This
-feature he afterward abandoned, adopting the single knife, described by
-him as an alternative. This machine was to be pushed ahead of the team,
-which was hitched to the bar C of the tongue B in the rear, but
-provision was made for a front draft by a pair of shafts in front, shown
-in dotted lines. The curved dotted line beside the shafts indicated a
-bowed guard to press the standing grain away from the horse. The divider
-L had a cloth screen extending to the rear of the platform.
-
-Neither Hussey nor McCormick appears at that time to have been cognizant
-of the prior state of the art, and as the patent law of 1836 had not yet
-been enacted, there was little or no examination as to novelty, and no
-interference proceedings as to priority of invention, and consequently
-their respective claims were drawn to much that was old, and probably
-much that would have been in conflict with each other under the present
-practice of the Patent Office. In the _Scientific American_, of December
-16 and 23, 1854, in a most interesting series of articles on the reaper,
-the Hussey machine is fully described. The first public trial was on
-July 2, 1833, before the Hamilton County Agricultural Society, near
-Carthage, O., and its success was attested by nine witnesses. Great
-stress was laid by Mr. Hussey on the double finger bar, _i. e._, a
-finger bar having one member above and the other below the knife. The
-_Scientific American_ said the machine was a success from the first;
-that "in 1834 the machine was introduced into Illinois and New York, and
-in 1837 into Pennsylvania, and in 1838 Mr. Hussey moved from Ohio to
-Baltimore, Md., and continued to manufacture his reapers there up to the
-present time."
-
-In 1836 Hussey was invited by the Maryland Agricultural Society for the
-Eastern Shore to exhibit his machine before them. On July 1 he did so,
-and made practical demonstration of its working to the society at
-Oxford, Talbot County, and again on July 12 at Easton. On the following
-Saturday it was shown at Trappe, and it was afterwards used on the farm
-of Mr. Tench Tilghman, where 180 acres of wheat, oats and barley were
-cut with it. The report of the Board of Trustees of the society was an
-unqualified commendation of the practicability, efficiency and value of
-the machine, and a handsome pair of silver cups was awarded to the
-inventor. The report was signed by the following well-known residents of
-the Eastern Shore: Robert H. Goldsborough, Samuel Stevens, Samuel T.
-Kennard, Robert Banning, Samuel Hambleton, Sr., Nichol Goldsborough, Ed.
-N. Hambleton, James L. Chamberlain, Martin Goldsborough, Horatio L.
-Edmonson, and Tench Tilghman.
-
-Hussey made and sold his machine for years. In the _American Farmer_, of
-October, 1847, an agricultural journal printed at Baltimore, the
-advertisement of his machine appears with full price lists of the
-different sizes of machines, and also of an improvement in the manner of
-disposing of the grain, which was the invention of Mr. Tench Tilghman,
-and was adopted by Hussey on his reaper.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 151.--THE McCORMICK REAPER OF 1847.]
-
-While Hussey was at work at his reaper, McCormick also was busily
-engaged with his, and he took his second patent January 31, 1845, No.
-3,895. This related to the cutter bar, the divider, and reel post.
-McCormick's next patent was dated October 23, 1847, No. 5,335, and in
-this the raker's seat was to be mounted on the platform as shown in Fig.
-151. McCormick's last named patent also covered the arrangement of the
-gearing and crank in front of the drive wheel, so as to balance the
-weight of the raker. In the same year Hussey took out his patent of
-August 7, 1847, No. 5,227, for the open top and slotted finger guard,
-which is an important part of all successful cutter bars.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 152.--THE MANN HARVESTER OF 1849.]
-
-The rivalry between the McCormick and Hussey machines continued for many
-years, and they were frequently in competition both in America and
-England. The stimulus of this rivalry doubtless had much to do with the
-development and success of the reaper. Both Hussey and McCormick asked
-for extensions of their patents, but they failed to get them. In 1848,
-pending McCormick's extension proceedings, facts were introduced by him
-to show that his invention of the reaper antedated Hussey's, and that he
-had made his machine as early as 1831, and had used it then on the farm
-of Mr. John Steele, in Virginia. This claim to priority was supported by
-the publication of a description of the machine, and certificate of its
-use, in the _Union_, a newspaper published at Lexington, Va., September
-28, 1833, and although no adjudication was ever made on this issue, this
-fact, together with Mr. McCormick's success in the contest in England in
-1851, and his subsequent persistence and activity in improving,
-developing and introducing the reaper, has so distinguished him in this
-connection, that to-day his name is as commonly associated with the
-reaper as is Fulton's with the steamboat, or that of Morse with the
-telegraph. To Mr. McCormick more than to anybody else the perfection of
-the reaper is due. In the spring of 1851 McCormick placed his reaper on
-exhibition at the World's Fair in London. Hussey also had his machine
-there, and they were the only ones represented. The machines were tested
-in the field, and astonished all who saw them operate. The Grand Council
-medal, which was one of four special medals awarded for marked epochs in
-progress, was given to McCormick, and the judges referred to the
-McCormick machine as being worth to the people of England "the whole
-cost of the exposition." It is only fair to state that Hussey was not
-present to direct the trial of his machine, and that in a subsequent
-trial another jury decided in his favor, and His Royal Highness, Prince
-Albert, ordered two of Hussey's machines in 1851--one for Windsor and
-the other for the Isle of Wight. The Duke of Marlborough also gave his
-personal testimonial to Mr. Hussey as to the excellence of his machine.
-In 1855, at a competitive trial of reapers near Paris, three machines
-were entered. The American machine cut an acre of oats in twenty-two
-minutes, the English machine in sixty-six minutes, and the Algerian in
-seventy-two. In 1863, at the great International Exposition at Hamburg,
-the McCormick reaper again took the grand prize. While in Paris in 1878
-Mr. McCormick was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences as
-"having done more for the cause of agriculture than any living man." Mr.
-McCormick continued to the end of his days, in 1884, to devote his
-entire energies to the development of the reaper, and well deserved the
-princely fortune that resulted from his indefatigable labors, a good
-portion of which fortune he spent during his life in the cause of
-education and acts of philanthropy. The inventory of his estate, filed
-in the Probate Court of Cook County, Ill., showed $10,000,000 as the
-reward of his genius and industry, and is an object lesson of the reward
-of merit for the ambitious youth of the Twentieth Century.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 153.--THE MARSH HARVESTER OF 1858.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 154.--THE CHAMPION REAPER.]
-
-In the development of the reaper one of the first deficiencies to be
-supplied was automatic mechanism for taking the grain from the
-platform. In November, 1848, F. S. Pease took out patent No. 5,925 for
-a rake whose teeth projected up through slots in the platform, and moved
-back and forth to deposit the grain upon the ground. On June 19, 1849,
-J. J. & H. F. Mann took out patent No. 6,540 on a machine employing the
-principle of an endless band for carrying the cut grain to the side of
-the machine, where it passed up an inclined plane and accumulated in a
-receptacle to form a gavel, which was clumped upon the ground. This
-machine is shown in Fig. 152. On July 8, 1851, W. H. Seymour took out
-patent No. 8,212 for a self-raker, and this machine marks the beginning
-of the era of self-raking reapers, which for a quarter of a century in
-various modifications continued to be used, until displaced by
-subsequent improvements in binding devices. In 1853 the Sylla and Adams
-machine was brought out, the patents for which were bought by the
-Aultmans, and the Aultman and Miller, or "Buckeye" harvester, was
-manufactured thereunder. The general form of the modern harvester has
-followed along the lines of the Mann machine of 1849. The development
-began by replacing the gavel receptacle on the right of that machine
-(Fig. 152) with a platform on which stood men who rode on the machine as
-they bound the grain. An early and important example of a harvester of
-this class is given in the Marsh machine, patented August 15, 1858, No.
-21,207, and shown in Fig. 153. To this type of machine the self-binding
-devices were subsequently applied, but before they materialized many
-other improvements in self-rakers were made and applied, among which may
-be mentioned the combined rake and reel of Owen Dorsey, of Maryland
-(1856), sweeping horizontally across the quadrantal platform; the
-McClintock Young revolving reel, carrying a rake; the Henderson rake
-(1860) used on the Wood machine; the Seiberling dropper (1861), which
-consisted of a slotted platform which moved to discharge the gavel; and
-the various improvements covered by Whiteley's patents, which were
-embodied in the Champion reaper, of Springfield, O., and which is shown
-in Fig. 154. This machine had a combined rake and reel of the Dorsey
-type, whose arms moved over a circular inclined and stationary cam, and
-whose rakes had a horizontal sweep over the platform, and a vertical
-return over the wheels.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 155.--THE LOCKE WIRE BINDER OF 1873.]
-
-The next step, and, perhaps the most important one, in the development
-of the reaper, was in providing automatic devices for binding the gavels
-of grain into sheaves. John E. Heath, of Ohio, in patent No. 7,520, of
-July 22, 1850, was the pioneer, and he used cord. Watson, Renwick &
-Watson, in patent No. 8,083, of May 13, 1851, and C. A. McPhitridge, in
-patent No. 16,097, of November 18, 1856, quickly followed in the attempt
-to provide such a device, the former using cord and the latter wire. But
-the problem was not an easy one to solve. On November 16, 1858, W. Grey
-took out patent No. 22,074, for starting the binding mechanism by the
-weight of the bundle. Probably the first to complete a binding
-attachment that was partly automatic, and to attach it to a reaping
-machine, were H. M. & W. W. Burson, of Illinois. On June 26, 1860, and
-October 4, 1864, W. W. Burson patented a cord binder, and in 1863 one
-thousand machines were built. These machines, however, used wire, and
-being assisted in their operations by hand labor, were not truly
-automatic. On February 16, 1864, Jacob Behel, of Illinois, obtained a
-patent, No. 41,661, for a very important invention in binders. He showed
-and claimed for the first time the knotting bill, which loops and forms
-the knot, and the turning cord holder for retaining the end of the cord.
-On May 31, 1870, George H. Spaulding took out patent No. 103,673 for a
-binder which automatically regulated the bundles to a uniform size.
-Sylvanus D. Locke, of Wisconsin, was the next inventor who undertook to
-solve the problem. He took out patents No. 121,290, November 28, 1871,
-and No. 149,233, March 31, 1874, and many others. In 1873 he associated
-himself with Walter A. Wood, and they built and sold probably the first
-automatic self-binding harvester that was ever put upon the market. The
-Locke wire binder of 1873 is shown in Fig. 155. The use of wire,
-however, for binding grain, involved certain objections in that it
-required a special cutting tool for cutting the sheaves at the thresher,
-and it was not easy to remove the wire, and parts of it were likely to
-go through the thresher. Inventors accordingly concentrated their
-attention on the use of twine or cord. Marquis L. Gorham, of Illinois,
-built a successful twine binder, and had it at work in the harvest field
-in 1874. This machine, covered by patent No. 159,506, February 9, 1875,
-not only bound by cord, but produced bundles of the same size. The grain
-in this machine is delivered by the elevator of the harvester upon a
-platform, where it is seized by packers and carried forward into a
-second chamber, where it is compacted by the packers against a yielding
-trip, so that when sufficient grain is accumulated, the trip will yield
-and start the binding mechanism into operation. The ball of cord carried
-on the machine has one end threaded through the needle and fastened in a
-holder. The grain is forced against the cord by the packers, and when
-the binder starts the needle encircles the gavel, carrying the cord to a
-knotting bill, and the end is again seized by the rotating holder, the
-loop formed, the ends of the band severed, and the bound bundle is
-discharged from the machine. A gate, which has in the meantime shut off
-the flow of grain, is now drawn back, and the operation is repeated. On
-February 18, 1879, John F. Appleby took out a patent, No. 212,420, for
-an improvement on the Gorham binder. In Fig. 156 is shown a modern
-automatic self-binding reaper which embodies the fundamental principles
-of McCormick and Hussey, the inclined elevator and platform shown by
-Marsh, and the automatic binding devices of Behel, Gorham and Appleby.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 156.--MODERN AUTOMATIC SELF-BINDING REAPER.]
-
-This machine, under favorable conditions, with one driver, cuts twenty
-acres of wheat in a day, binds it, and carries the bound bundles into
-windrows, and with one shocker, performs the work of twenty men, and
-does it better, the saving in the waste of grain over hand labor being
-sufficient to pay for the twine used in binding. It is said that the
-self-binding reaper has reduced the cost of harvesting grain to less
-than half a cent a bushel.
-
-It is estimated that more than 180,000 machines of the self-binding type
-are now produced yearly, the manufacturers in Chicago alone turning out
-more than three-fourths of this number. It is not possible to do justice
-to all the worthy workers in this great industry. Nearly 10,000 patents
-have been granted on reaping and mowing machines, and the conspicuous
-names of Whiteley, Wood, Atkins, Manny, Yost, and Ketchum, in addition
-to those already mentioned, are only a small part of the great army of
-inventors who have contributed to the development and perfection of the
-reaper.
-
-In 1840 it is said there were but three reapers made. To-day the total
-number of self-binding harvesters, reapers and mowers in use is
-estimated to be two millions. The growth of this industry in the four
-earlier decades is as follows (the relatively small increase between
-1860 and 1870 being accounted for by the Civil War):
-
- 1840. 1850. 1860. 1870. 1880.
-
- Machines made 3 3,000 20,000 30,000 60,000
-
-Immediately succeeding this period the automatic cord binder was put
-into use, and within five years the increase in output of reapers and
-mowers was very great. In 1885 more than 100,000 self-binding harvesters
-and 150,000 reapers and mowers were built and sold. In 1890 two
-manufacturing establishments in Chicago made more than 200,000 machines,
-half of which were self-binders and the other half reapers and mowers,
-and these two institutions alone employed in their various branches of
-manufacturing and selling 10,000 employees. In 1895 the output of the
-largest of these manufacturing establishments was 60,000 self-binding
-harvesters, fitted with bundle carriers and trucks, 61,000 mowers,
-10,000 corn harvesters, and 5,000 reapers, making 136,000 machines in
-all. In 1898 the output of this one factory for the year was 74,000
-self-binding harvesters, 107,000 mowers, 9,000 corn harvesters, and
-10,000 reapers, amounting to 200,000 machines. This output, together
-with 75,000 horse rakes, also made, averaged a complete machine for
-every forty seconds in the year, working ten hours a day. The estimated
-annual production of all factories in this class of agricultural
-implements is 180,000 self-binding harvesters, 250,000 mowing machines,
-18,000 corn harvesters, and 25,000 reapers.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 157.--STEAM HARVESTER AND THRESHER.
-
-The wheat is headed, threshed, cleaned and sacked by this machine in one
-continuous operation.--Cutter, 26 feet wide; Capacity, 75 acres per
-day.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 158.--FIFTY HORSE POWER STEAM PLANTING COMBINATION.
-
-Traction engine pulling sixteen 10-inch plows, four 6-foot harrows, and
-a drill.]
-
-There were exported in the year 1880 about 800 self-binding harvesters,
-2,000 reapers, and 1,000 mowers. In 1890 this was increased to 3,000
-self-binding harvesters, 4,000 reapers, and 2,000 mowers. The total
-value of mowers and reapers exported in 1890 was $2,092,638. The growth
-subsequent to 1890 is well attested by the exports for 1899, which for
-mowers and reapers was $9,053,830, or more than four times what it was
-in 1890. These exported machines harvest the crops of the Argentine
-Republic, Paraguay, and Uruguay, of South America; carry their
-labor-saving values to Australia and New Zealand; traverse the wheat
-fields along the banks of the Red Sea and the Volga, and are used
-throughout all the continent of Europe.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 159.--A WESTERN HARVEST SCENE (LEFT SECTION OF
-VIEW).]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 159.--A WESTERN HARVEST SCENE (RIGHT SECTION OF
-VIEW).]
-
-With the self-binding harvester performing the work of twenty men,
-cutting and binding the grain, and arranging the bundles in windrows, it
-would seem that perfection in this art had been reached, but the
-tendency of the age is to do things on a constantly increasing scale,
-and so the latest developments in harvesters comprise a mammoth machine
-(Fig. 157) propelled across the grain fields by steam, and which by the
-same power cuts a swath from 26 to 28 feet wide, threshes it at once as
-it moves along, blows out the chaff, and puts the grain in bags at the
-rate of three bags per minute, each bag containing one hundred and
-fifteen pounds, and requiring two expert bag sewers to take the grain
-away from the spout, sew the bags, and dump them on the ground.
-Seventy-five acres a day is its task. A companion piece to this machine
-is illustrated in Fig. 158, which shows the same power utilized for
-planting. A powerful steam traction engine of fifty horse power hauls
-across the field a planting combination of sixteen ten-inch plows, four
-six-foot harrows and a seeding drill in the rear. Such great reaping
-machines only find useful application in the enormous wheat fields of
-California and the Pacific Coast States, where the dry climate permits
-the grain to ripen and dry sufficiently while standing in the field.
-Moreover, only the heads of the grain are cut, the straw being left
-standing. Some conception of the enormous scale upon which grain is
-raised in the Western States may be gotten from the dimensions of the
-farms. It is said that Dr. Glenn's wheat farm comprises 45,000 acres;
-the Dalrymples', in North Dakota, 70,000; and Mr. Mitchell, in the San
-Joaquin Valley, in California, has 90,000 acres. The Dalrymple farms in
-1893 had 54,000 acres in wheat, and employed 283 self-binding reapers to
-harvest the crop. There is a single unbroken wheat field on the banks of
-the San Joaquin River, near the town of Clovis, in Madera County,
-California, which comprises 25,000 acres, or nearly forty square miles
-of wheat--a veritable sea of waving grain. The field is nearly square;
-each side is a little over six miles long. If its shape were changed to
-the width of one mile, the field would then be forty miles long. It has
-been said of the grain fields of the West, that the men and teams eat
-breakfast at one end of a furrow, take dinner in the middle of the
-row, and at night camp and sup at the end of the same row. With a field
-of such proportions it is not difficult to see how this may be true. The
-cultivation and garnering of crops from such vast areas can only be
-appreciated by comparisons. If it were one man's work to plow such a
-field, even with a double gang plow, cutting a furrow twenty-four inches
-wide, he would travel 105,600 miles, which would be equivalent to going
-around the world four times. If he plowed twenty miles a day, it would
-take 5,280 days. To harrow would require as long, and to plant would
-take about the same time, or about forty-three years altogether. A full
-lifetime would be required to plant the crop, and a second generation
-would be required to reap it. But great results require great agencies,
-and so great labor-saving machines, operated by armies of men, are
-brought into requisition, and with these the crop is both planted and
-reaped. A long procession of self-binding harvesters, following close
-one behind the other, makes quick work of it, and before the weather
-changes this great field is mowed, its crop garnered, and bread supplied
-for the hungry of all lands.
-
-The exports of wheat to foreign lands in 1898 were 148,231,261 bushels,
-worth $145,684,659, and the exports of wheat flour for the same year
-were 15,349,943 barrels, worth $69,263,718. The total yield of wheat in
-the United States for 1898 was 675,148,705 bushels.
-
-With the fertile earth, and its prolific inventors, the United States
-has become the richest country in the world. What its future is to be no
-man may say, but its destiny is not yet fulfilled, and it is pregnant
-with potential possibilities.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVII.
-
-VULCANIZED RUBBER.
-
- EARLY USE OF CAOUTCHOUC BY THE INDIANS--COLLECTION OF THE GUM--EARLY
- EXPERIMENTS FAILURES--GOODYEAR'S PERSISTENT EXPERIMENTS--NATHANIEL
- HAYWARD'S APPLICATION OF SULPHUR TO THE GUM--GOODYEAR'S PROCESS OF
- VULCANIZATION--INTRODUCTION OF HIS PROCESS INTO EUROPE--TRIALS AND
- IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT--RUBBER SHOE INDUSTRY--GREAT EXTENT AND
- VARIETY OF APPLICATIONS--STATISTICS.
-
-
-Most all important inventions have grown into existence by slow stages
-of development, and by successive contributions from many minds, not a
-few having descended by gradual processes of evolution from preceding
-centuries. Vulcanized rubber, however, is not of this class. It belongs
-exclusively to the Nineteenth Century, and owes its existence to the
-tireless energy of one man. The value of the crude gum had been
-previously speculated upon, and for years attempts had been made to
-utilize it, but not until Goodyear invented his process of vulcanizing
-it did it have any real value. This process was an important, distinct
-and unique step, entirely the work of Mr. Goodyear, and it has never
-been superseded nor improved upon to any extent. Charles Goodyear was
-born in New Haven, December 29, 1800, and his life, beginning two days
-in advance of the Nineteenth Century, furnishes an extraordinary
-illustration of the struggles and trials of the inventor against adverse
-fortune, and is a pathetic example of self denial, indefatigable labor,
-and unrequited toil. Of feeble health, small stature, poor, and
-frequently in prison for debt, he made the development of this art the
-paramount object of his life, and with a pious faith and unfaltering
-courage for thirty years he devoted himself to this work. Money he cared
-nothing for, except in so far as it was necessary to carry on his work,
-and he died July 1, 1860, poor in this world's goods, but rich in the
-consciousness of the great benefit conferred by his invention upon the
-human race.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 160.--COLLECTING THE GUM.]
-
-India rubber, or caoutchouc, as it is more properly called, is a
-concentrated gum derived from the evaporation of the milky juice of
-certain trees found in South America, Mexico, Central America and the
-East Indies. The South American variety is called _Jatropha elastica_,
-and the East Indian variety the _Ficus elastica_. The South American
-Indians called it _cahuchu_. The province of Para, south of the equator,
-in Brazil, furnishes the largest part and best quality of gum. The tree
-from which the gum exudes grows to the height of eighty, and sometimes
-to one hundred feet. It runs up straight for forty or fifty feet without
-a branch. Its top is spreading, and is ornamented with a thick and
-glossy foliage. The gum is collected by chopping through the bark with a
-hatchet and placing under each series of cuts a little clay cup formed
-by the hands of the workman. About a gill of the sap accumulates in each
-cup in the course of a day, and it is then transferred to receiving
-vessels and taken to camp. The first use of the gum was made by the
-South American Indians, who made shoes, bottles, playing balls and
-various other articles from it. Their method for making a shoe was to
-take a crude wooden last, which they covered with clay to prevent the
-adhesion of the gum. It was then dipped in the sap, or the latter was
-poured over it, which gave it a thin coating. It was then held over a
-smoky fire, which gave it a dark color and dried the gum. When one
-coating became sufficiently hard another was added, and smoked in turn,
-and so successive coatings were applied until a sufficient thickness was
-obtained. When the work was completed it was exposed for some days in
-the sun, and while still soft the shoes were decorated as the fancy or
-taste of the maker suggested. The clay forms were then broken out, and
-the shoe stuffed with grass to keep it in shape for use or sale. In 1820
-a pair of these clumsy shoes was brought to Boston and exhibited as a
-curiosity. They were covered with gilding, and resembled the shoe of a
-Chinaman. Subsequently considerable numbers of these shoes were brought
-from South America, and being sold at a large price, they served to
-stimulate Yankee ingenuity into devising methods of making them from the
-raw material, which being brought as ballast in the ships from Brazil,
-could be had cheaply. In France some attention had been given to the
-material, and the rubber bottles of the Indians had been cut into narrow
-threads which were woven into strips of cloth to form suspenders and
-garters. In England an application of it in thin solution had been made
-by a Mr. Macintosh, who spread it between two thicknesses of thin cloth
-to form Macintosh water-proof coats. The first practical use of the gum
-on a large scale was instituted by Mr. Chaffee in Roxbury, Mass., about
-1830. He dissolved the gum in spirits of turpentine and invented
-steam-heated rolls for spreading it upon cloth. Companies were formed to
-exploit the products, and in the fall and winter of 1833 and 1834 many
-thousands of dollars' worth of goods were made by the Roxbury Company,
-but the business proved a total failure, for in the summer the goods
-melted, decomposed and became so offensive as to be worse than useless,
-while the cold of winter rendered them stiff and liable to crack. With a
-knowledge of these facts and conditions Charles Goodyear commenced his
-experiments, believing that there was a great future for this material
-if it could only be prevented from melting in summer and stiffening in
-winter. He tried mixing it with many materials, first using magnesia,
-which, however, proved ineffective. On June 17, 1837, he took out patent
-No. 240, in which he proposed to destroy the adhesive properties of
-caoutchouc by superficial application of an acid solution of the metals,
-nitric acid with copper or bismuth being specially recommended. He also
-claimed the incorporation of lime with the gum to bleach it. Under this
-process Mr. Goodyear made various articles in the form of fabrics, toys
-and ornamental articles, using the fabric to make clothing for himself,
-which he wore to demonstrate its value and wearing qualities. A striking
-word picture of Mr. Goodyear at this time is given by the reply of a
-gentleman who, being asked by a man looking for Mr. Goodyear as to how
-he might recognize him, replied, "If you meet a man who has on an India
-rubber cap, stock, coat, vest, and shoes, and an India rubber money
-purse in his pocket, without a cent of money in it, that is he."
-
-Many useful and artistic articles were made under this first patented
-process, including maps, surgical bandages, etc., and were brought by
-Mr. Goodyear to the notice of President Jackson, Henry Clay and John C.
-Calhoun, from whom he received very encouraging letters. His efforts,
-however, to introduce his process commercially were not attended with
-success. Capitalists and manufacturers had been rendered so conservative
-by the large loss of money in the Roxbury Company, that they were
-disinclined to have anything further to do with it. Practically alone he
-was obliged to continue his work. By the kindness of Mr. Chaffee and Mr.
-Haskins he was allowed the use of the valuable machinery standing idle
-in their factory at Roxbury, and he made shoes, piano covers, table
-cloths and carriage covers of superior quality, and from the sale of
-these, and of licenses to manufacture, he for the first time was able to
-support his family in comfort. Mr. Goodyear had not yet discovered,
-however, the process of vulcanization, upon which the rubber industry is
-founded. In 1838 Mr. Nathaniel Hayward, of Woburn, Mass., who had been
-employed in the bankrupt rubber company, discovered that the stickiness
-of the rubber could be prevented by spreading a small quantity of
-sulphur on it. The same result had also been noticed by a German
-chemist. On Feb. 24, 1839, Mr. Hayward procured the patent, No. 1,090,
-on his process, and assigned it to Mr. Goodyear. The patent covered a
-process of dissolving sulphur in oil of turpentine and mixing it with
-the gum, and also included the incorporation of the dry flowers of
-sulphur with the gum, the product afterwards being treated by Mr.
-Goodyear's metallic salt process. This was the starting point of
-vulcanization, for vulcanization consists simply in admixing sulphur
-with the rubber, and then subjecting it for six to eight hours to a
-temperature of about 300 deg.. Its effect is to so change the nature of the
-gum to prevent it from melting or becoming sticky under the influence of
-heat, or of hardening and becoming stiff under the influence of cold,
-the vulcanized gum remaining elastic, impervious, and unchangeable under
-all ordinary conditions. This great discovery of the influence of heat
-on the sulphur treated gum was quite accidental and wholly unexpected.
-Heat above all things was the agency which in all previous observations
-was most to be feared, for it was this more than anything else that
-melted down, decomposed and destroyed all of his manufactured articles.
-While sitting near a hot stove engaged in an animated discussion
-concerning his experiments, a piece of the gum treated with sulphur,
-which he held in his hand, was, by a rapid gesture, thrown upon the
-stove. To his astonishment, he found that this relatively high heat did
-not melt it, as heretofore, and while it charred slightly, it was not
-made at all sticky. He nailed the piece of gum outside the kitchen door
-in the intense cold, and upon examining it the next morning found it as
-perfectly flexible as when he put it out. Goodyear had discovered the
-process which afterwards came to be known as "vulcanization." The
-discovery was made in 1839, but was not accepted by those to whom it was
-submitted as possessing any importance. Prof. Silliman, of Yale College,
-however, in the fall of 1839 testified to the results claimed for it by
-Mr. Goodyear--that it did not melt with heat, nor stiffen with the cold.
-On June 15, 1844, Mr. Goodyear took out his celebrated patent, No.
-3,633, covering this process, in which he not only used sulphur, but
-added a proportion of white lead. The proportions named were 25 parts of
-rubber, 5 parts of sulphur, and 7 parts of white lead, the ingredients
-either to be ground in spirits of turpentine, or to be incorporated dry
-between rolls. The odor imparted by the sulphur was to be destroyed by
-washing with potash or vinegar. This patent was reissued in two
-divisions Dec. 25, 1849, and again on Nov. 20, 1860, and was extended
-for seven years from June 15, 1858, which was the end of the first term.
-Under this patent two kinds of rubber were made and sold--"soft rubber,"
-containing only a small proportion of sulphur, while the other, known as
-the "vulcanite," "ebonite," or "hard rubber," had from 25 to 35 per
-cent. of sulphur and was subjected to a longer heat.
-
-The history of this patent is a remarkable one. Immensely valuable as it
-was, Goodyear reaped but a small share of the profit, for in the midst
-of his poverty and necessities he was obliged to sell licenses and
-establish royalties at a figure far below the real value of the rights
-conveyed. Some idea of the great value of the business which Mr.
-Goodyear had developed may be had from the fact that the companies who
-held rights under the patent for the manufacture of shoes paid at one
-time to Daniel Webster the enormous fee of $25,000 for defending their
-patent interests.
-
-With the idea of extending his invention Mr. Goodyear visited England in
-1851, where he found that Thomas Hancock, of the house of Macintosh &
-Co., had forestalled him, although not the inventor. A peculiar
-provision of the English patent law, which gives the patent to the first
-introducer, permitted this. Nothing daunted, however, he organized a
-magnificent exhibit for the Great International Exhibition held in
-Crystal Palace at Hyde Park, London, in 1851. This exhibit cost him
-$30,000, and he called it the Goodyear Vulcanite Court. It comprehended
-an elegantly constructed suite of open rooms made of hard rubber
-ornamented with handsome carvings, and furnished with rubber furniture,
-musical instruments, and globes made of rubber, and it was also carpeted
-with the same material. For his exhibit he received the "Grand Council
-Medal," which was one of the highest testimonials of the exposition.
-This exhibit was afterwards moved from London to Sydenham, where it was
-exposed and used as an agency for some years for the sale of rubber
-goods.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 161.--MACHINE FOR GRINDING AND WASHING CRUDE
-RUBBER.]
-
-Mr. Goodyear had obtained a French patent for his invention, and at the
-Exposition Universelle in Paris, in 1855, he fitted up at an expense of
-$50,000 two elegant courts with India rubber furniture, caskets and rich
-jewelry, and for this exhibit he had conferred upon him by the Emperor
-Napoleon the "Grand Medal of Honor" and the "Cross of the Legion of
-Honor." It was a singular instance of the irony of fate that the
-decoration of the "Cross of the Legion of Honor" should have been
-conveyed to him while imprisoned for debt in "Clichy," the debtors'
-prison in Paris. The lofty courage of the man was well illustrated at
-this time in his reply to his wife's solicitous inquiries as to how he
-had spent the night while in prison. He said, "I have been through
-nearly every form of trial that human flesh is heir to, and I find that
-_there is nothing in life to fear but sin_." The declining years of his
-life were full of sorrow, pain and affliction, and at his death in 1860
-his estate was $200,000 in debt. He lived long enough, however, to see
-his material applied to nearly five hundred uses, giving employment in
-England, France and Germany to 60,000 persons, and producing in this
-country alone goods worth $8,000,000 a year.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 162.--MAKING RUBBER CLOTH.]
-
-The greatest of all applications of rubber are to be found in the
-manufacture of boots and shoes. The number of attacks of cold,
-rheumatism, and death-dealing diseases from wet feet, that have been
-averted by the use of rubber shoes, can never be estimated, but perhaps
-it is safe to say that the rubber shoe has done more to conserve the
-health of the human family than any other single article of apparel.
-
-In the manufacture of shoes the finest quality of rubber is received in
-wooden boxes 4 x 2 x 11/2 feet, containing about 350 pounds in lumps of 1
-to 75 pounds. These lumps are cut to suitable size, and are then ground
-and washed in the machine shown in Fig. 161, water and steam being
-sprayed on the rubber during the operation. It is then worked into
-sheets or mats between rolls. From the grinding room the sheets are
-taken to the mixing room, where lampblack, sulphur and other ingredients
-are added, and worked into it by being passed many times between heated
-rolls, the sheets being finally reduced to a thickness of less than 1/32
-of an inch. The rubber sheets are then applied to a cloth backing by
-cloth calendering rolls, shown in Fig. 162, which are steam heated and
-by great pressure serve to incorporate the sheets of rubber and cloth
-into intimate and inseparable union. Out of this rubber fabric, which is
-made of different thicknesses for the upper, sole and heel, the patterns
-for the shoe are cut, and the parts are deftly fitted around the forms
-by girls, and secured by rubber cement, as shown in Fig. 163. The shoes
-are then covered with a coat of rubber varnish, and are put into cars
-and run into the vulcanizing ovens, where they remain from six to seven
-hours at a temperature of about 275 deg.. The goods are then taken out, and
-after being inspected are boxed for the market. The vulcanizing is a
-very important part of the manufacture of a rubber shoe, for it is
-absolutely necessary in order to give them stability and wearing
-qualities. A shoe that had not been vulcanized would mash down, spread,
-become sticky and go to pieces after a few hours' wear.
-
-The rubber shoe industry of the United States is carried on by about
-fifteen large companies, representing an investment of many millions of
-dollars, most of which companies are located in Massachusetts, Rhode
-Island and Connecticut.
-
-Some idea of the immensity of this industry may be obtained from the
-import statistics. In 1899 the United States alone imported crude rubber
-to the extent of 51,063,066 pounds, as much as 1,000,000 pounds a month
-coming from the single port of Para. The export of manufactured rubber
-goods for the same year amounted to $1,765,385. The statistics for Great
-Britain for 1896 showed the imports of rubber to that country to be
-one-third more than the imports of the United States. Germany also is a
-large consumer. The great Harburg-Vienna factories cover sixty-seven
-acres, are capitalized at 9,000,000 marks, and employ 3,500 hands. Much
-fine technical apparatus, toys, and balls are made here, the daily
-output of balls reaching 8,000. These, with the Noah's arks of India
-rubber animals, are the delight of the little ones all over the world.
-
-Although so much in evidence about us, India rubber is not by any means
-a cheap material. Costing only five cents a pound when Goodyear
-commenced his experiments, it is now worth a dollar a pound, and is
-therefore much more expensive than any of the ordinary metals, woods, or
-building materials. Many substitutes in the form of compositions of
-various ingredients have been devised and patented, but no real
-substitute for nature's product has yet been found. For many years old
-and worn out rubber goods were thrown away as worthless. Now all such
-rubber is reclaimed, and used in many grades of goods which do not
-require a pure gum. Insatiable as the demands of the trade may appear,
-there is no need to fear a rubber famine, for the forests of trees in
-South America and the East Indies are practically inexhaustible, and in
-the rich alluvial soil of their habitat nature's processes of growth
-rapidly restore the decimation.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 163.--MAKING RUBBER SHOES.]
-
-Since the time of Goodyear, the amplification of this art and the
-multiplication of uses for rubber, and its increased commercial
-importance, have gone on at such a rate of increase that to-day we may
-be said to be living in the rubber age. Its uses and applications are
-legion, and they extend literally from the cradle to the grave. When the
-baby comes into the world its introduction to India rubber begins at
-once with the nursing bottle and the gum cloth, and when the aged
-invalid takes leave of the world his last moments are soothed with the
-water bag and the rubber bed, and between these extremes we find it in
-evidence everywhere about us. In wearing apparel it extends from the
-crown of the head to the sole of the foot--rubber cap, coat, gloves, and
-shoes. The man has it in his suspenders and his pipe stem, the woman in
-her garters and dress shields, and the baby in its teething ring and
-rattle. The soldier stands on picket duty in the rain, and the rubber
-blanket protects him from rheumatism. If wounded, the surgeon dresses
-his mangled limb with rubber bandages, and when he gets well he has a
-rubber cushion on the end of his crutch, or on the foot of his
-artificial leg. If wounded in the mouth perhaps the government gives him
-a set of artificial teeth on a rubber plate. The rubber mat greets you
-at the front door, a little pad cushions the door stops and the backs of
-chairs, and a ring seals the mouth of the fruit jar. The whole array of
-toilet articles, including combs, brushes, mirrors, shoe horns, etc.,
-are made from it. In the parlor it is found in picture frames and the
-piano cover; in the bath room the wash rag, water bag, rubber cup, and
-hose pipe of the shower bath are all made of it; in the play room are
-found rubber balls and toys of all kinds; in the kitchen the clothes
-wringer and the table cloth; in the dining room the handles of knives,
-and the tea tray, and what is more useful and more ubiquitous in the
-office than the rubber band, the rubber ruler, the pencil eraser, or the
-fountain pen? But these are only a few of the personal and indoor uses
-and applications. Rubber belting for machinery, fire engine and garden
-hose, steam engine packing, car springs, covers for carriages and the
-big guns of the navy, life preservers, billiard table cushions, and
-chemical and surgical apparatus in endless variety. The electrical world
-is almost entirely dependent upon it for the insulation of our ocean
-cables and electric light wires, for battery cups, and the insulating
-mountings of all electrical apparatus. The pneumatic bicycle tire could
-not exist without rubber, and the modern application of it to this use
-alone amounts to nearly four million pounds annually. Every automobile
-carriage takes twenty-five pounds of rubber for each tire, or 100 pounds
-altogether. This great and growing industry, together with the now
-common use of rubber tires on horse-drawn vehicles, raises the sum total
-of rubber employed in the arts to an enormous figure.
-
-That the sap of an uncultivated tree in a swampy, tropical, and malarial
-forest, thousands of miles from civilization, should cut so great a
-figure in the necessities of modern life, seems strange and
-unaccountable on any basis of probabilities. It is only another
-illustration of the possibilities of the patient and persistent work of
-the inventor. Charles Goodyear took this nearly worthless material, and
-made of it, as Parton said in 1865--"not a new material merely, but a
-new class of materials, applicable to a thousand divers uses. It was
-still India rubber, but its surface would not adhere, nor would it
-harden at any degree of cold, nor soften at any degree of heat. It was a
-cloth impervious to water; it was a paper that would not tear; it was a
-parchment that would not crease; it was leather which neither rain nor
-sun would injure; it was ebony that could be run into a mould; it was
-ivory that could be worked like wax; it was wood that never cracked,
-shrunk nor decayed. It was metal, 'elastic metal,' as Daniel Webster
-termed it, that could be wound round the finger, or tied into a knot,
-and which preserved its elasticity like steel. Trifling variations in
-the ingredients, in the proportion and in the heating, made it either
-pliable as kid, tougher than ox hide, as elastic as whalebone, or as
-rigid as flint."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVIII.
-
-CHEMISTRY.
-
- ITS EVOLUTION AS A SCIENCE--THE COAL TAR PRODUCTS--FERMENTING AND
- BREWING--GLUCOSE, GUN COTTON AND NITRO-GLYCERINE--ELECTRO-CHEMISTRY
- --FERTILIZERS AND COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS--NEW ELEMENTS OF THE
- NINETEENTH CENTURY.
-
-
-The foundation stones of empirical discovery, upon which this science is
-based, had been crudely shaped by the workmen of preceding centuries,
-but the classification and laying of them into the structure of an exact
-science is the work of the Nineteenth Century. The glass of the
-Phoenicians, and the dyes and metallurgical operations of the Egyptians,
-involved some chemical knowledge; much more did the operations of the
-alchemists, who vainly sought to convert the baser metals into gold, but
-these were only the crude building stones, out of which the great
-complex modern structure has been raised. In the Sixteenth Century the
-study of chemistry, apart from alchemy, began, and some attention was
-given to its application to the uses of medicine. Aristotle's four
-elements--fire, air, earth and water--were no longer accepted as
-representing a correct theory, and new ones were proposed only to be
-found as erroneous, and to be superseded in time by others.
-
-Briefly traversing the more important of the earlier steps, there may be
-mentioned the phlogiston theory of Stahl in the earlier part of the
-Eighteenth Century; the discovery of the composition of water by
-Cavendish in 1766; of oxygen by Priestly and Scheele in 1774; the
-electro-chemical dualistic theory of Lavoisier in the latter part of the
-Eighteenth Century, followed by a rational nomenclature established by
-Guyton de Morveau, Berthollet and Fourcroy; the doctrine of chemical
-equivalents by Wenzel in 1777 and Richter in 1792; Dalton's atomic
-theory; Wollaston's scale of chemical equivalents; Gay Lussac's law of
-combining volumes; Berzelius' system of chemical symbols and theory of
-compound radicals; contributions of Sir Humphrey Davy and Faraday in
-electro-chemistry, and Thenard's grouping of the metals. These
-interesting phases of development of the old chemistry have been
-followed by the new theory of substitution, by Dumas and others. This
-change, beginning about 1860 and running through a period of nearly
-twenty years, has gradually supplanted the old electro-chemical
-dualistic theory and established the present system.
-
-Among the important and interesting achievements of chemistry in the
-Nineteenth Century is the _artificial production of organic compounds_.
-All such compounds had heretofore been either directly or indirectly
-derived from plants or animals. In 1828 Wohler produced urea from
-inorganic substances, which was the first example of the synthetic
-production of organic compounds, and it was for many years the only
-product so formed. Berthelot, of Paris, by heating carbonic oxide with
-hydrate of potash produced formiate of potash, from which formic acid is
-obtained; by agitating olefiant gas with oil of vitriol a compound is
-produced from which, upon the addition of water and distillation,
-alcohol is formed; he also re-combined the fatty acids with glycerine to
-form the original fats.
-
-In the classification of this science, it has been divided into
-inorganic chemistry, relating to metals, minerals and bodies not
-associated with organic life, and organic chemistry, which was formerly
-limited to matter associated with or the result of growth or life
-processes, but which is now extended to the broader field of all carbon
-compounds. In later years the most remarkable advances have been made in
-the field of organic chemistry. The four elements carbon, hydrogen,
-oxygen and nitrogen have been juggled into innumerable associations, and
-in various proportions, and endless permutations, have been combined to
-produce an unlimited series of useful compounds, such as dyes,
-explosives, medicines, perfumes, flavoring extracts, disinfectants, etc.
-
-The most interesting of these compounds are the _coal tar products_.
-Coal tar, for many years, was the waste product of gas making. Forty
-years ago about the only use made of it was by the farmer, who painted
-the ends of his fence posts with it to prevent decay, or by the
-fisherman, who applied it to the bottoms of his boats and his fishing
-nets. To-day the black, offensive and unpromising substance, with
-magical metamorphosis, has been transformed by the chemist into the most
-beautiful dyes, excelling the hues and shades of the rainbow, the most
-delightful perfumes and flavoring extracts, the most useful medicines,
-the most powerful antiseptics, and a product which is the very sweetest
-substance known. The aniline dyes represent one of the great
-developments in this field. In 1826 Unverdorben obtained from indigo a
-substance which he called "Crystalline." In 1834 Runge obtained from
-coal tar "Kyanol." In 1840 Fritzsch obtained from indigo a product which
-he called "Aniline," from "Anil," the Portuguese for indigo. Zinin soon
-after obtained "Benzidam." All these substances were afterward proved to
-be the same as aniline. Perkins' British patent, No. 1,984, of 1856, is
-the first patented disclosure of the aniline dyes, and represents the
-beginning of their commercial production. This combines sulphate of
-aniline and bichromate of potash to produce an exquisite lilac, or
-purple color. The first United States patent was in 1861, and now there
-are about 1,400 patents on carbon dyes and compounds, the most of which
-belong to the coal tar group. In dyes artificial alizarine, by Graebe
-and Lieberman (Pat. No. 95,465, Oct. 5, 1869); aniline black, by
-Lightfoot (Pat. No. 38,589, May 19, 1863); naphthazarin black, by Bohn
-(Pat. No. 379,150, March 6, 1888); artificial indigo, by Baeyer (Pat.
-No. 259,629, June 13, 1882); the azo-colors, by Roussin (Pat. No.
-210,054, Nov. 19, 1878); and the processes for making colors on fibre,
-by Holliday (Pat. No. 241,661, May 17, 1881), are the most important.
-The artificial production of salicylic acid, by Kolbe (Pat. No. 150,867,
-May 12, 1874), marks an important step in antiseptics. Artificial
-vanilla, by Fritz Ach (Pat. No. 487,204, Nov. 29, 1892), represents
-flavoring extracts; and artificial musk, by Baur (Pat. No. 536,324,
-March 26, 1895), is an example of perfumes. In medicines a great array
-of compounds has been produced, such as antipyrin, the fever remedy, by
-Knorr (Pat. No. 307,399, Oct. 28, 1884); phenacetin, by Hinsberg (Pat.
-No. 400,086, March 26, 1889); salol, by Von Nencki (Pat. No. 350,012,
-Sept. 28, 1886), and sulfonal by Bauman (Pat. No. 396,526, Jan. 22,
-1889). To these may be added antikamnia (acetanilide), the headache
-remedy, and saccharin, by Fahlberg (Pat. No. 319,082, June 2, 1885),
-which latter is a substitute for sugar, and thirteen times sweeter than
-sugar. Among the more familiar products of coal tar or petroleum are
-moth balls, carbolic acid, benzine, vaseline, and paraffine.
-
-In the commercial application of chemistry the work of Louis Pasteur in
-_fermenting_ and _brewing_ deserves special notice as making a great
-advance in this art. His United States patent, No. 141,072, July 22,
-1873, deals with the manufacture of yeast for brewing.
-
-The manufacture of _sugar_ and _glucose_ from starch is an industry of
-great magnitude, which has grown up in the last twenty-five years.
-Water, acidulated with 1/100th part of sulphuric acid, is heated to
-boiling, and a hot mixture of starch and water is allowed to flow into
-it gradually. After boiling a half hour chalk is added to neutralize the
-sulphuric acid, and when the sulphate of lime settles the clear syrup is
-drawn off, and either sold as syrup, or is evaporated to produce
-crystallized grape sugar, which latter is only about half as sweet as
-cane sugar. Glucose syrup, however, has largely superseded all other
-table syrups, and is extensively used in brewing, for cheap candies, and
-for bee food. Our exports of glucose and grape sugar for 1899 amounted
-to 229,003,571 pounds, worth $3,624,890.
-
-An important discovery, made in 1846, was that carbohydrates, such as
-starch, sugar, or cellulose, and glycerine, when acted upon by the
-strongest nitric acid, produced compounds remarkable for their explosive
-character. _Gun cotton and nitro-glycerine_ are the most conspicuous
-examples. Gun cotton is made by treating raw cotton with nitric acid, to
-which a proportion of sulphuric acid is added to maintain the strength
-of the nitric acid and effect a more perfect conversion. Besides its use
-as an explosive, gun cotton when dissolved in ether has found an
-important application as collodion in the art of photography.
-Nitro-glycerine only differs in its manufacture from gun cotton in that
-glycerine is acted upon by the acids, instead of cotton. Pyroxiline,
-xyloidine, and celluloid are allied products, which have found endless
-applications in toilet articles and for other uses, as a substitute for
-hard rubber.
-
-The applications of chemistry in the commercial world have been in
-recent years so numerous and varied that it is not possible to do more
-than to refer to its uses in the manufacture of soda and potash, of
-alcohol, ether, chloroform, and ammonia, in soap making, washing
-compounds and tanning, the production of gelatine, the refining of
-cotton seed and other oils, the art of oxidizing oils for the
-manufacture of linoleum and oil cloth, the manufacture of fertilizers,
-white lead and other paints, the preparation of proprietary medicines,
-of soda water and photographic chemicals, the manufacture of salt and
-preserving compounds, in the fermentation of liquors and brewing of
-beer, the preparation of cements and street pavements, the manufacture
-of gas, and the embalming of the dead.
-
-The most interesting and, in many respects, the most important,
-development of the last twenty-five years has been in
-_electro-chemistry_. Electro-chemical methods are now employed for the
-production of a large number of elements, such as the alkali and
-alkaline earth metals, copper, zinc, aluminum, chromium, manganese, the
-halogens, phosphorus, hydrogen, oxygen, and ozone; various chemicals,
-including the mineral acids, hydrates, chlorates, hypochlorites,
-chromates, permanganates, disinfectants, alkaloids, coal tar dyes, and
-various carbon compounds; white lead and other pigments; varnish; in
-bleaching, dyeing, tanning; in extracting grease from wool; in
-purifying water, sewerage, sugar solutions, and alcoholic beverages. The
-present low price of _aluminum_, reduced from $12 per pound in 1878 to
-33 cents now, is due to its production by electrical methods. Among the
-earliest successful processes is that described in patents to Cowles and
-Cowles, No. 319,795, June 9, 1885, and No. 324,658, August 18, 1885, in
-which a mixture of alumina, carbon and copper is heated to incandescence
-by the passage of a current, the reduced aluminum alloying with the
-copper. This has now been superseded by the Hall process (Pat. No.
-400,766, April 2, 1889), in which alumina, dissolved in fused cryolite,
-is electrolytically decomposed. Practically all the copper now produced,
-except that from Lake Superior, is refined electrolytically by
-substantially the method of Farmer's patent (Pat. No. 322,170, July 14,
-1885). All metallic sodium and potassium are now obtained by
-electrolysis of fused hydroxides or chlorides (Pats. No. 452,030, May
-12, 1891, to Castner, and No. 541,465, June 25, 1895, to Vautin). The
-production of caustic soda, sodium carbonate, and chlorine by the
-electrolysis of brine, is carried on upon a large scale, and will
-probably supersede all other methods. Nolf's process (Pat. No. 271,906,
-Feb. 6, 1883), and Caster's (No. 528,322, Oct. 30, 1894), employ a
-receiving body or cathode of mercury, alternately brought in contact
-with the brine undergoing decomposition, and with water to oxidize the
-contained sodium. _Carborundum_, or silicide of carbon, is largely
-superseding emery and diamond dust as an abradant. It is produced by
-Acheson (Pat. No. 492,767, Feb. 28, 1893), by passing a current of
-electricity through a mixture of silica and carbon. _Calcium carbide_, a
-rare compound a few years ago, is now cheaply produced by the action of
-an electric arc on a mixture of lime and carbon, as described by Willson
-(Pats. Nos. 541,137, 541,138, June 18, 1895). Calcium carbide resembles
-coke in general appearance, and it is used for the manufacture of
-acetylene gas, for which purpose it is only necessary to immerse the
-calcium carbide in water, and the gas is at once given off by the mutual
-decomposition of the water and the carbide.
-
-_Agricultural chemistry_ is another one of the practical developments of
-the Nineteenth Century. A hundred years ago the farmer planted his
-crops, prayed for rain, and trusted to Providence for the increase; he
-was not infrequently disappointed, but was wholly unable to account for
-the failure. To-day the intelligent farmer understands the value of
-nitrogen, has ascertained how it may be fed to his crops through the
-agency of nitrifying organisms, or he has his soil analyzed at the
-Agricultural Department, finds out what element it lacks for the crop
-desired, and in chemically prepared fertilizers supplies that
-deficiency. The chemical analysis of drinking water has also
-contributed much to the knowledge of right living and to the avoidance
-of disease and death, which our forefathers were accustomed to regard as
-dispensations of Providence.
-
-America has furnished some eminent chemists in the Nineteenth Century,
-who have made valuable contributions to the science, notably in the
-field of metallurgy. It is a fact, however, which must be admitted with
-regret, that America has not in the field of chemical research occupied
-the leading place she has in mechanical progress. The European
-laboratory is the birthplace of most modern inventions in the chemical
-field, and this is so simply by reason of the fact that these more
-patient investigators have set themselves studiously, systematically and
-persistently to the work of chemical invention. It is said that some of
-the large commercial works in Germany have over 100 Ph. D.'s in a single
-manufacturing establishment, whose work is not directed to the
-management of the manufacture, but solely to original research, and the
-making of inventions. The laboratories in such works differ from those
-in the universities only in being more perfectly equipped, and more
-sumptuously appointed. The result of this is seen in the fact that in
-1899 the United States imported coal tar dyes alone to the extent of
-$3,799,353, and 5,227,098 pounds of alizarine, most of which came from
-Germany, and for which we paid a good price, since the German
-manufacturers control the United States patents. The alizarine dyes are
-for the most part the artificial kind made by German chemists. Prior to
-1869 the red alizarine dye was of plant origin, being obtained from
-madder root, and it cost $2 a pound. The German chemist produced an
-artificially made product, which took the place of the madder dye, and
-was sold at $1.20 a pound. At the end of the patent term (seventeen
-years) the price fell to 15c. a pound, showing that the product was
-produced at a profit of more than $1.05 a pound, and as millions of
-pounds were imported annually, it is estimated that $35,000,000 was the
-price paid the German chemists for their foresight in combining science
-with business. Many United States patents granted to foreign chemists
-are still in force, and the rich reward of their skill is reaped at our
-expense.
-
-_Discovery of elements._--In the early days of chemical knowledge, fire,
-air, earth and water constituted the insignificant category of the
-elements, which was as faulty in classification as it was small in size.
-Gradual splitting up of compounds, and an increase in the number of
-elements, has gone on progressively for some hundreds of years, until
-to-day the list extends well on to one hundred elementary bodies. Those
-which belong to the credit of the Nineteenth Century are given in the
-table following, with the name of the discoverer, and the date of its
-discovery.
-
-ELEMENTS DISCOVERED IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
-
- ELEMENTS. DISCOVERER. YEAR.
-
- Columbium Hatchett 1801
- Tantalum Ekeberg 1802
- Iridium Tenant 1803
- Osmium Tenant 1803
- Cerium Berzelius 1803
- Palladium Wollaston 1804
- Rhodium Wollaston 1804
- Potassium Davy 1807
- Sodium Davy 1807
- Barium Davy 1808
- Strontium Davy 1808
- Calcium Davy 1808
- Boron Davy 1808
- Iodine Courtois 1811
- Cyanogen Gay Lussac 1814
- (Comp. rad.)
- Selenium Berzelius 1817
- Cadmium Stromeyer 1817
- Lithium Arfvedson 1817
- Silicon Berzelius 1823
- Zirconium Berzelius 1824
- Bromine Balard 1826
- Thorium Berzelius 1828
- Yttrium Wohler 1828
- Glucinum Wohler 1828
- Aluminum Wohler 1828
- Magnesium Bussey 1829
- Vanadium Sefstroem 1830
- Lanthanum Mosander 1839
- Didymium Mosander 1839
- Erbium Mosander 1843
- Terbium Mosander 1843
- Ruthenium Claus 1845
- Rubidium Bunsen 1860
- Caesium Bunsen 1860
- Thallium Crookes 1862
- Indium {Reich } 1863
- {Richter}
- Gallium Boisbaudran 1875
- Ytterbium Marignac 1878
- Samarium Boisbaudran 1879
- Scandium Nilson 1879
- Thulium Cleve 1879
- Neodymium Welsbach 1885
- Praseodymium Welsbach 1885
- Gadolinium Marignac 1886
- Germanium Winkler 1886
- Argon {Raleigh} 1894
- {Ramsey }
- Krypton { Ramsey } 1897
- { Travers }
- Neon {Ramsey } 1898
- {Travers}
- Metargon { Ramsey } 1898
- { Travers }
- Coronium Nasini 1898
- Xenon Ramsey 1898
- Monium Crookes 1898
- Etherion (?) Brush 1898
-
-Whether or not these so-called elements are really true elementary forms
-of matter, which are absolutely indivisible, is a problem for the
-chemists of the coming centuries to solve. The classification has the
-approval of the present age. What new elements may be found no one may
-predict. Mendelejeff's _periodic law_, however, suggests great
-possibilities in this field. Allotropism, in which the same element will
-present entirely different physical aspects, is also a significant and
-suggestive phenomenon, for in it we see carbon appearing at one time as
-a crude, black and ungainly mass of coal, and at another it appears as
-the limpid and flashing diamond. In more than one mind there is a
-lurking suspicion that there may, after all, be only one form of
-primordial matter, from which all others are derived by some wondrous
-play of the atoms, and if so the old idea of the alchemist as to the
-transmutation of metals may not be entirely wrong. The Twentieth Century
-may give us more light.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIX.
-
-FOOD AND DRINK.
-
- THE NATURE OF FOOD--THE ROLLER MILL--THE MIDDLINGS PURIFIER--
- CULINARY UTENSILS--BREAD MACHINERY--DAIRY APPLIANCES--CENTRIFUGAL
- MILK SKIMMER--THE CANNING INDUSTRY--STERILIZATION--BUTCHERING AND
- DRESSING MEATS--OLEOMARGARINE--MANUFACTURE OF SUGAR--THE VACUUM
- PAN--CENTRIFUGAL FILTER--MODERN DIETETICS AND PATENTED FOODS.
-
-
-If called upon to name the most important of all factors of human
-existence, that which underlies and sustains all others, even to life
-itself, everyone must agree that it is _food_. A remarkable fact in this
-connection is that all animal life lives and thrives by eating some
-other thing that is or has been alive, or is the product of organic
-growth. The vegetarian may pride himself upon his higher ideals of
-living, but after all his fruit, vegetables, and cereals belong to the
-great category of living organisms, and are to a certain extent sentient
-and conscious, for even the plant will turn to the sun. The beasts of
-the field and fowls of the air live by preying upon other weaker animals
-and birds, these upon plants and grasses, and the plants and grasses
-upon the decaying mosses and organic mould of the soil, and the mosses
-upon still lower organisms. The big fish of the sea eat the little fish,
-the little fish the small fry, and these in turn live upon worms and
-animalcula, and so on all the way down to protoplasm. Omniverous man, in
-spite of his boasted civilization and enlightment, not only eats them
-all, flesh, fowl, fish, grain and plants, but lives exclusively upon
-them. But he can _only_ live on that which has been produced by the
-mysterious agency of life, and this furnishes a significant suggestion
-for the philosopher, for it may be that life itself is only an
-accumulated active power or unitary force regenerated in some
-metamorphic way from vital force stored up in the bacteria of organic
-food, and necessarily connected therewith in an endless chain of
-reproductions, and if this be true, the hope of the scientist as to the
-synthesis of food from its elements must ever remain a philosophic
-dream, because the scientist cannot create a bacterium.
-
-It has been said that when a man eats meat he thinks meat, and when he
-eats bread he thinks bread, and when he eats fruit he thinks fruit. It
-is not clear that the quality or character of man's food is so closely
-correlated to his thought, but that it has its influence cannot be
-doubted. It would be safer to say, however, that when a man eats meat he
-acts meat, and when he eats bread he acts bread, for the muscular energy
-and aggressive potentiality appear to be much more closely related to
-the quality of his food than are his thoughts. May it not be that the
-powerful achievement of the British Empire was directly related to its
-roast beef? Is not the listless apathy of the Chinese due to a diet of
-rice? Is not the dominant and masterful power of the lion or the eagle
-related to a carniverous diet, and the mild and placid temper of the ox
-the reflex expression of his vegetable food? It is quite true that our
-potentialities are largely represented by what we eat, and our food
-therefore becomes a most interesting topic, not only by virtue of its
-indispensable quality, but by reason also of the possibilities of
-development in the betterment and elevation of the human race.
-
-From the earliest times even down to the present day man's food has been
-the same--flesh, fish, cereals, fruits and vegetables. The development
-of the present century has not extended this category, but it has been
-directed to an increase in the supply, an improvement in quality, the
-preservation against decay and waste, and its intelligent selection and
-adaptation to the special needs of the body. Progress manifests itself
-in the great field of agriculture, in improved processes and machines
-for milling; in butchering, packing and handling meats; in preserving
-and drying fruits; in the preparation of canned goods, in dairy
-appliances, in cake and cracker machines; in the manufacture of sugar;
-in the great advance in cookery; in the science of dietetics, and in
-thousands of minor industries.
-
-In agriculture the raising of grain has extended in the Nineteenth
-Century to enormous proportions. More than ten thousand patents for
-plows, as many for reapers, and a proportionate number of planters,
-cultivators, threshers, and other implements and tools represent the
-extent to which inventive genius has been directed to the increase of
-the yield in the harvest field.
-
-This yield in the United States for the year 1898 was:
-
- Corn 1,924,184,660 bushels
- Wheat 675,148,705 bushels
- Oats 730,906,643 bushels
- Rye 25,657,522 bushels
- Barley 55,792,257 bushels
- Buckwheat 11,721,927 bushels
- Potatoes 192,306,338 bushels
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 164.--ROLLER PROCESS OF MAKING FLOUR, WEGMANN'S
-PATENT.]
-
-For converting the grain into flour, the inventors of the Nineteenth
-Century have made revolutionary changes. Milling processes within the
-last twenty-five years have been completely transformed by the
-introduction of the roller mill and middlings purifier. Formerly two
-horizontal disk-shaped stones or burrs were employed, the lower one
-stationary and the upper one revolving in a horizontal plane and crudely
-crushing the grain between them. In all modern mills these have been
-entirely displaced by porcelain rolls revolving on horizontal axes and
-crushing the grain between them. The first of these roller mills is
-shown in pat. No. 182,250, to Wegmann, Sept. 12, 1876. (See Fig. 164).
-The outer rolls _d e_ are pressed against the inner ones _a c_ by a
-system of weighted levers, and scrapers below remove the crushed grain
-from the periphery of the rolls. Many subsequent improvements have been
-made, one type of which employs a succession of rolls which act in pairs
-on the grain one after the other and reduce it by successive gradations.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 165.--MIDDLINGS PURIFIER.]
-
-The _middlings purifier_, see Fig. 165, comprehends a flat bolt or
-shaker screen _b_, of bolting cloth, arranged as a horizontal partition
-in an enclosing case through which passes an upward draft of air
-produced by suction fan D at the top. This air passing up through the
-bolting screen lifts the bran specks and fuzz from the shaken material
-as it passes downward through the screen, brushes K being arranged below
-to keep the screen constantly clean. A representative and pioneer type
-of this machine is seen in Pat. No. 164,050 to George T. Smith, June 1,
-1875, from which the view is taken. The useful effect of the roller mill
-and middlings purifier is to save the most nutritious and valuable part
-of the grain, which lies between the outer cuticle and the white starch
-within, and which breaks up in fine grains and is of a golden hue. This
-portion of the grain was formerly unseparated, and was mixed with the
-middlings and bran as an inferior product. Modern analysis has disclosed
-its superior food value, and the roller mill and middlings purifier have
-provided means by which it can be separated from the bran and
-incorporated with the flour, thereby greatly adding to its wholesome
-character and nutritive value, and imparting to the flour the rich
-creamy tint which characterizes all higher grades.
-
-Minneapolis, Minn., is the great center of the milling interests of the
-United States. The Pillsbury Mills are located there, and the "Pillsbury
-A." which is said to be the largest in the world, has a capacity of
-7,000 barrels per day.
-
-In 1877-78 disastrous flour dust explosions at Minneapolis brought
-about the development of the dust collector, for withdrawing from the
-air of the mills the suspended particles of flour dust, which not only
-invited explosion, but rendered the air unfit to breathe. Washburn's
-Pat. No. 213,151, March 11, 1879, is an early example.
-
-The use of crushing rolls has also developed a great variety of new
-foods, such as cracked wheat, oatmeal grits, etc. These crushing rolls
-have sometimes been made hollow, and are steam heated, and as they crush
-the grain they simultaneously effect the cooking or partial conversion
-of the starch, and the product is known as hominy flake, ceraline,
-coralline, etc., which furnish popular breakfast foods when served with
-cream.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 166.--DOUGH MIXER.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 167.--BRAKE, OR KNEADING MACHINE.]
-
-In the field of cookery such activity has been displayed that the
-average kitchen to-day is a veritable museum of modern inventions. Egg
-beaters, waffle irons, toasters, broilers, baking pans, apple parers,
-cherry stoners, cheese cutters, butter workers, coffee mills, corn
-poppers, cream freezers, dish washers, egg boilers, flour sifters, flat
-irons, knife sharpeners, can openers, lemon squeezers, potato mashers,
-meat boilers, nutmeg graters, sausage grinders, and frying pans in
-endless array; all patented and clustered around the modern cooking
-range as a central figure, and all presenting points of excellence in
-the matter of economy and convenience, or the betterment of result. The
-most extensive application of inventive genius is to be found in the
-large manufacturing bakeries, which make and sell the millions of pounds
-of crackers and cakes that fill the bins and shelves of the grocery
-store. In these manufactories the dough is prepared by a mixer, see Fig.
-166, which consists of a spiral working blade revolving in a trough, and
-capable of handling half a dozen barrels of flour at a time. It is then
-put through a kneading machine, called a "brake," shown in Fig. 167, and
-is then ready to be converted into crackers or cakes on a great machine
-25 feet long, which finishes the crackers and puts them in the pan ready
-for the oven. This machine, see Fig. 168, receives the dough at A, where
-it is coated with flour and flattened into a sheet between rolls. It is
-then received on a traveling apron B, has the flour brushed off by a
-rotary brush C, and is then cut into crackers or cakes by vertically
-reciprocating dies D. At E a series of fingers press the cakes down
-through the sheet of dough, while the surrounding scraps are raised on a
-belt F and delivered into a suitable receptacle. The separated cakes at
-B' are then delivered into pans at G, the pans being fed on the
-subjacent belt at G'. Such machines, costing nearly a thousand dollars,
-produce from forty to sixty barrels of crackers a day, enabling them to
-be sold at about 5 cents a pound at retail.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 168.--CRACKER AND CAKE MACHINE.]
-
-_Dairy Appliances_ have come in for a large share of attention at the
-hands of the Nineteenth Century inventor. There are about sixteen
-million milch cows in the United States, and their contribution to the
-food stuffs of the day in milk, butter, and cheese is no insignificant
-factor. There have been over 2,700 patents granted for churns alone, and
-besides these there are milk coolers, cheese presses, milk skimmers, and
-even cow milkers. The centrifugal milk skimmer is an interesting type of
-this class of machine. In the old way the milk was set for the cream to
-rise, which it did slowly from its lighter specific gravity. In the
-centrifugal skimmer the milk is continuously poured in through a funnel,
-and the cream runs out continuously through one spout, and the skimmed
-milk at the other. An illustrative type of this machine is shown in
-Fig. 169. A steam turbine wheel near the base turns a vertical shaft
-bearing at its upper end a pan which rotates within the outer case. The
-milk enters through the faucet at the top, and as the pan within
-rotates, the heavier milk, by its greater specific gravity, is thrown to
-the outer part of the pan and passes out through the larger of the two
-spouts, while the lighter cream is crowded to the center and passes out
-of the upper spout, which opens into the center of the pan. Patents to
-Lefeldt & Lentsch, No. 195,515, Sept. 25, 1877, and Houston and Thomson,
-No. 239,659, April 5, 1881, represent pioneer milk skimmers of this
-type.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 169.--CENTRIFUGAL MILK SKIMMER.]
-
-Closely allied to the dairy appliances are the incubator and the bee
-hive, both of which have claimed a large share of attention, and for
-which many patents have been granted.
-
-One important and characteristic feature of the present age is the
-conservation of waste in perishable foodstuffs. Fruits, vegetables, fish
-and oysters were suitable food to our forefathers only when freshly
-taken, and any superabundance in supply was either wasted by natural
-processes of decay, or was fed to the hogs. To-day thousands of patented
-fruit dryers, cider mills, and preserving processes save this waste and
-carry over for valuable use through the unproductive winter months these
-wholesome and valuable articles of diet. Even more important is the
-_canning industry_, by which not only fruits are maintained in a
-practically fresh condition for an indefinite time, but oysters, meats,
-fish, soups, and vegetables are also put up in enormous quantities.
-To-day the grocer's shelves present an endless array of canned tomatoes,
-peaches, corn, peas, beans, fish, oysters, condensed milk, and potted
-meats, which constitute probably three-fourths of his staple goods. The
-tin can is in itself a very insignificant thing, not entitled to rank
-with any of the great inventions, but in the every-day campaign of life
-it is playing its part, and working its influence to an extent that is
-little dreamed of by the casual observer. It renders possible our
-military and exploring expeditions; it holds famine and starvation in
-abeyance; it gives wholesome variety to the diet of both rich and poor;
-and it transfers the glut of the full season to the want of future days.
-Perhaps no single factor of modern life has so great an economic value.
-Simple as is the tin can, quite complex machines are required to make
-it. Originally such machines were operated by hand or foot power, but
-within the last 25 years power machines have been devised which
-automatically convert a simple blank or plate of sheet metal into a
-finished can. Of the many patents granted for such machines the most
-representative ones are 243,287, 250,096, 267,014, 384,825, 450,624,
-465,018, 480,256, 495,426, 489,484.
-
-In the process of putting up canned goods the products are filled into
-the cans, and the caps, or heads, are soldered on. These caps have a
-minute hole in the center for the escape of air and steam in the process
-of cooking and sterilizing, which is conducted as follows: A large
-number of cans are placed on a tray swung from a crane and the cans
-lowered into one of a series of great cooking boilers. The cover of the
-boiler is then closed and fastened by lugs, and steam turned on until
-the goods in the can are thoroughly heated through. During this process
-the air and steam escape through the little vent hole from the interior
-of each can. The cans are then removed, the vent hole closed by a drop
-of solder, and the goods thus hermetically sealed in a cooked or
-sterilized condition will keep for a long period of time.
-
-_Sterilizing._--During the last quarter of the century, which has
-witnessed the growth of the wonderful science of bacteriology, a class
-of devices known as sterilizers has come into existence, whose primary
-function is to kill the germs of decay by heat. This has had in the
-canning industry an important commercial application. An example is
-found in the patent to Shriver, No. 149,256, March 31, 1874. In some of
-these devices the receptacles containing the food stuffs are in large
-numbers placed within the heating chamber, and by devices operated from
-the outside the cans or bottles are opened and shut while within the
-steam filled chamber. A late illustration is found in patent to Popp _et
-al._, 524,649, August 14, 1894.
-
-_Butchering and Dressing Meats._--Chicago is the leading city of the
-world in this industry, and Armour & Co. the largest packers. In the
-year ending April 1, 1891, they killed and dressed 1,714,000 hogs,
-712,000 cattle, and 413,000 sheep. They had 7,900 employees, and 2,250
-refrigerating cars were employed for the transportation of their
-products. The ground area covered by their buildings was fifty acres,
-giving a floor area of 140 acres, a chill room and cold storage area of
-forty acres, and a storage capacity of 130,000 tons. In addition to its
-meat packing business the firm has separate glue works, with buildings
-covering fifteen acres, where 600 hands are employed, their production
-in 1890 being 7,000,000 pounds of glue, and 9,500 tons of fertilizer.
-Since 1891 this great business has increased until to-day it is said
-that the army of workmen employed is greater than that of Xenophon, that
-the firm pays out in wages alone, half a million dollars every month,
-that four thousand cars are required to carry the products of their
-factory, and whose business amounts to the enormous sum of one hundred
-million dollars annually.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 170.--KILLING AND DRESSING PORK.]
-
-There are from forty to fifty million cattle raised in the United
-States, and an equal amount of sheep. The number of hogs raised has
-diminished somewhat in the past few years, but from 1889 to 1892 more
-than fifty million were maintained. The process of slaughtering and
-dressing pork, as practiced to-day, is a continuous one, and is well
-illustrated in Fig. 170, in 13 operations. The animals are driven into a
-catching pen at 1, where they are strung up by one leg, and secured to a
-traveling pulley on an overhead rail. At 2 the animal is instantly
-killed by a knife thrust that reaches the heart; at 3 he is dumped into
-a vat of scalding water, kept hot by steam pipes, where the hair is
-loosened (see detail view Fig. 171). A series of oscillating curved
-arms, shaped like a horse hay-rake, dips the carcass out of the scalding
-vat and deposits it upon the table 4 (Fig. 170), where it is attached to
-an endless cable that drags it through a scraping machine at 5. This
-takes off the hair, as shown in detail view Fig. 172. At 6 (Fig. 170)
-the remnants of hair are removed by hand, and at 7 the skin is washed
-clean. At 8 the carcass is inspected, and the throat cut across; at 9
-the entrails are removed; at 10 the leaf lard is taken out; at 11 the
-heads are severed and tongues removed; at 12 the carcass is split into
-halves, and at 13 the sections are ready to be run into the cooling
-room.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 171.--SCALDING TO LOOSEN THE HAIR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 172.--SCRAPING OFF THE HAIR BY MACHINERY.]
-
-From 10 to 15 minutes only are required to convert the living animal
-into dressed pork. Every part of the animal is utilized. The lungs,
-heart, liver and trimmings go to the sausage department. The feet are
-pickled or converted into glue. The intestines are stripped and
-cleaned for sausage casings. The soft parts of the head are made into
-so-called cheese, and the fat is rendered into lard. The finer quality
-of bristles goes to the brushmakers, and the balance is used by
-upholsterers for mixing with horse hair. The blood is largely used for
-making albumen for photographic uses, as well as in sugar refining, for
-meat extracts, and for fertilizers. The bones are ground for fertilizer,
-and even the tank waters are concentrated and used for the same purpose.
-
-_Oleomargarine._--About 1868 M. Mege, a French chemist, commissioned by
-his government to investigate certain questions of domestic economy, was
-led into the study of beef fat, and to make comparisons of the same with
-butter. He found that when cows were deprived of food containing fat
-they still continued to give milk yielding cream or fatty products. He
-therefore concluded that the stored-up fat in the animal was then
-converted into cream, and that it was practicable, therefore, to convert
-beef fat into butter fat. Physiology taught that in the living animal
-the change was wrought through the withdrawal of the larger part of the
-stearine by respiratory combustion, while the oleomargarine was secreted
-by the milk glands, and its conversion into butyric oleomargarine
-effected in the udder under the influence of the mammary pepsin. In the
-process of making butter by the ordinary method of churning the cream,
-the finely divided butter fat globules are united into masses,
-containing by mechanical admixture from 12 to 14 per cent. of water or
-buttermilk carrying a fractional per cent. of cheese. This buttermilk
-contributes somewhat to the flavor, but at the same time furnishes a
-ferment which ultimately spoils the butter by making it rancid. It is a
-purely accidental ingredient, and one not at all desirable. To some
-extent the same may be said of the soluble fats which give to the butter
-its variable though characteristic flavor. They are unstable compounds,
-decomposing readily, and furnish the acrid products which make "strong"
-butter. M. Mege sought to imitate the natural process of butter-making,
-which was first to separate from the oily fat of suet the cellular
-tissue and excess of stearine or hard fat; second, to add to the oil a
-sufficient proportion of butyric compounds to give the necessary flavor,
-and third, to consolidate the butter fat without grain, and to add at
-the same time the requisite proportion of water, salt, and coloring
-matter, to make a compound substantially the same in composition,
-flavor, and appearance, as butter churned from the cream, and all this
-without adding to the original fat anything dietetically objectionable,
-and without submitting it to any process capable of impairing its
-wholesome quality. These objects were fairly obtained in the product
-known as oleomargarine, the United States patent for which was granted
-to Mege Dec. 30, 1873, No. 146,012.
-
-The process in brief is to take fresh beef fat, which is first chopped
-up and thoroughly washed. It is then placed in melting tanks at a
-temperature of 122 deg. to 124 deg. F, and the clear yellow oil is drawn off and
-allowed to stand until it granulates. The fat is then packed in cloths
-set in moulds and a slowly increasing pressure squeezes out the pure
-amber colored oil, leaving the stearine behind. This sweet and pure
-yellow oil is then churned with milk for 20 minutes until the oil is
-completely broken up, and a small quantity of annato, a vegetable
-coloring matter, is added to give a yellow color. The product is then
-cooled in ice, and after a second churning with milk it is salted and
-finished like butter. Chemical analysis shows oleomargarine to have
-substantially the same constituents and in almost the identical
-proportions of pure butter. It is equally wholesome, and while it does
-not have the same rich flavor, it has the advantage that it keeps
-better, and is not so liable to become rancid or strong. The
-oleomargarine industry is closely related to the beef packing industries
-of the United States, and its growth has been enormous. Notwithstanding
-the stringent laws on the subject, much of the oleomargarine made is
-sold for, and by the average purchaser is not distinguishable from, pure
-butter. In 1899 there were 80,495,628 pounds of oleomargarine made in
-the United States, or more than a pound for every man, woman, and child
-in the country. The internal revenue tax paid on it was $1,609,912.56.
-The exports for the year 1899 were 5,549,322 pounds of the artificial
-butter, and 142,390,492 pounds of the oleo oil prepared for conversion
-into the complete product by simply churning with milk.
-
-_Sugar._--Sugar-cane, beets, and the sap of the maple constitute the
-sources from which sugar is extracted, but the cane furnishes by far the
-largest supply. When crushed between rolls it yields 65 per cent. of its
-weight as juice, and 18 per cent. of this juice is sugar. It is
-concentrated by evaporation at a low temperature, the crystallized
-portion being known as "raw" or brown sugar, which is subsequently
-refined, while the uncrystallized portion forms molasses.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 173.--VACUUM PAN FOR EVAPORATING THE SYRUP TO
-PRODUCE SUGAR.]
-
-In the process of refining, 2 or 3 parts of raw sugar, with one of water
-containing a little lime, ground bone black, and the serum of bullocks'
-blood, is heated by the passage of steam through it. The albumen of the
-serum coagulates and rises to the surface in a scum which entangles the
-impurities and bone black, leaving the syrup light in color. The latter
-is then filtered through bone black until it is colorless and is then
-evaporated in the vacuum pan, which is the important invention of the
-century in sugar making. Heat has the effect of converting the
-crystallized sugar into the uncrystallized variety, and hence the
-evaporation must, to prevent this, be conducted at a low temperature.
-Contact with the air is also objectionable. These conditions are
-provided for by conducting the evaporation in a vacuum, which lowers the
-evaporating temperature and avoids contact with the air. The vacuum pan
-was the invention of Howard, an Englishman. (British Pat. No. 3,754, of
-1813). As constructed to-day it is an enormous vessel (see Fig. 173),
-capable of holding 7,000 or more gallons, and yielding 250 barrels of
-sugar at a strike. In this a vacuum is maintained by a condenser, the
-vapors passing from the pan to the condenser through the great curved
-pipe rising from the top, which pipe is five feet in diameter. A gentle
-heat is applied through internal steam-heated coils which connect with
-an external series of steam inlet pipes on one side, and a corresponding
-series of steam outlet pipes on the other. A large discharge valve for
-the concentrated syrup closes the bottom of the pan. After concentration
-the crystallized sugar is separated from the syrup by a centrifugal
-filter, in which the liquid is thrown from the crystallized sugar by
-centrifugal action. The first centrifugal filter is shown in British
-patent to Joshua Bates, No. 6,068, of 1831. This, however, revolved
-about a horizontal axis. The present form of centrifugal filter is a
-cylinder revolving about a vertical axis, the sides of the cylinder
-being formed of filtering medium, through which the liquid is thrown by
-centrifugal action, while the sugar is retained within. This was the
-invention of Joseph Hurd, of Mass., U. S. Pat. No. 3,772, Oct. 3, 1844;
-re-issue No. 607, Sept. 29, 1858, which patent was extended for seven
-years, from Oct. 3, 1858. The diffusion process, which extracts the
-juice by cutting the cane in slices and soaking in water; the bagasse
-furnace, which dries and burns the expressed cane stalks as fuel, and
-the manufacture of glucose and grape sugar by the reaction of sulphuric
-acid on starch, are interesting allied features of this industry which
-can only be briefly mentioned. Most of the sugar consumed in the United
-States is imported, much raw sugar being imported and refined here. The
-imports for the year 1899 were 3,980,250,569 pounds, and the per capita
-consumption in 1898 was 61.1 pounds a year.
-
-_Aids to Digestion._--It is only during the last part of the Nineteenth
-Century that the world has learned how to live. "What is one man's food
-is another man's poison" has been a trite old saying for many years, but
-the reason why has only in late years been fully understood. The
-physiology of digestion, the relative digestibility of different
-articles of food, and their nutritive values, have received of late
-years the earnest attention of physicians and students of dietetics and
-have contributed much to the quality and kind of food, and a knowledge
-of when and how to eat it. We know that the starchy foods are digested
-by the saliva, which is an alkaline digestion; that meat, fish, eggs,
-cheese and the albumenoids are digested in the stomach by the gastric
-juices (pepsin and hydrochloric acid) which is an acid digestion, and
-that the remaining portions of starch, the sugars, and fats are digested
-in the intestines, and that this is also an alkaline digestion, and this
-has helped to solve the problem for us. We also know that starch is an
-excellent food, provided the vital powers are sufficiently stimulated by
-fresh air, sunlight, and exercise to digest it, as do the horse and the
-ox when they eat corn, but we know furthermore that the sedentary
-occupations of modern life leave many stomachs in a condition unable to
-assimilate starch, and so bread, oatmeal, potatoes and such simple
-staples, instead of nourishing the body, ferment in the enfeebled
-stomach, produce acids and gas, and lay the foundation for serious
-chronic diseases. The student of chemistry and dietetics knows to-day
-that one part of diastase will effect the conversion of 2,000 parts of
-starch into grape sugar, as a preliminary step to its digestion, and so
-by treating starchy matter with substances containing diastase (derived
-from malt) a partial transformation is effected which will materially
-shorten and assist its digestion. This fact has been largely made use of
-in the preparation of easily soluble or pre-digested foods, examples of
-which are found in patent to Horlick (malted milk), No. 278,967, June 5,
-1883; to Carnrick (milk-wheat food), Dec. 27, 1887, No. 375,601; and
-Boynton and Van Patten (cereals and diastase), 344,717, June 29, 1886.
-
-_Beverages._--Pure water, nature's own gift, has ever supplied every
-legitimate need of the human race, but civilized life has greatly
-extended its list of drinks, much to its own detriment. Soda water,
-whiskey, beer, ginger ale, tea, coffee, and chocolate represent enormous
-industries, and probably all do more harm than they do good. Much
-inventive genius in the Nineteenth Century has been bestowed upon the
-soda water fountain, on stills, and processes for aging liquors and
-processes for brewing beer, on cider and wine presses, on bottling
-machines and bottle stoppers, on devices for carbonating waters, and in
-coffee and teapots. The trend of the times is shown in the following
-figures, which represent the per capita consumption of beverages in the
-United States for 1898: tea, .91 of a pound; coffee, 11.45 pounds;
-wines, .28 of a gallon; distilled spirits, 1.10 gallons; and malt
-liquors 15.64 gallons. The largest per capita increase since 1870 has
-been in malt liquors, and the next in coffee. In tea and distilled
-spirits there has been a decrease, while the consumption of wines is the
-smallest of all and has varied but little.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XX.
-
-MEDICINE, SURGERY, SANITATION.
-
- DISCOVERY OF CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD BY HARVEY--VACCINATION BY
- JENNER--USE OF ANAESTHETICS THE GREAT STEP OF MEDICAL PROGRESS OF THE
- CENTURY--MATERIA MEDICA--INSTRUMENTS--SCHOOLS OF MEDICINE--DENTISTRY
- --ARTIFICIAL LIMBS--DIGESTION--BACTERIOLOGY, AND DISEASE GERMS--
- ANTISEPTIC SURGERY--HOUSE SANITATION.
-
-
-In the early gropings through the uncertain light of first progress, man
-was accustomed to ascribe the ills of his flesh to the anger of the
-gods, and in his craven and abject superstition made peace offerings.
-Later he learned to locate the cause within himself, and constructed the
-theory that the fluids of the body had become disordered. The
-characteristic feature of progress in the Nineteenth Century, in this
-field, has been in the accurate tracing of the relation of cause and
-effect, and with the discovery of true causes has grown efficient means
-of treatment. The old expedients of charms, incantations, conjuration
-and exorcism gave place first to intelligent medication, and this in
-turn is rapidly giving way to the prevention of disease by improved
-conditions of sanitation and right living. The ounce of prevention has
-been found to be worth more than the pound of cure. With the improved
-knowledge of physiology, anatomy, chemistry and biology, which the
-century has brought, the intelligent physician was able to make a
-logical and for the most part a correct diagnosis, but supplemented with
-the microscope, that great revealer of the unseen world of small things,
-corporeal existence itself becomes an open book, and from the principles
-of organic evolution to the germ theory of disease the mystery of life
-and death is being slowly revealed.
-
-When the Eighteenth Century gave birth to the Nineteenth, its great
-natal gift in medicine was vaccination. Jenner in 1798 for the first
-time announced his discovery of this great boon to the human race. In
-1799 Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, in Boston, obtained virus from Jenner and
-vaccinated four of his children, and in 1801 Dr. Valentine Seaman
-obtained virus from Dr. Waterhouse and performed the first vaccination
-in New York. During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries the annual
-death rate from smallpox in London ranged from 2 to 4 per 1,000 of
-population. In 1892 it was only 0.073 per 1,000.
-
-It is also stated on good authority that the mortality from smallpox in
-England alone, was 20,000 a year less after the introduction of
-vaccination than it was in the preceding century, and that its benefits
-to the world at large have been so great that the lancet of Jenner has
-saved more lives than were sacrificed by the sword of Napoleon.
-
-Each century in modern history has been marked by some important
-discovery in the field of medicine. The Seventeenth Century was notable
-for the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Harvey; the
-Eighteenth Century brought with it vaccination by Jenner. The Nineteenth
-Century's greatest gift in this field has been anaesthesia, or
-insensibility to pain. Nature has wisely endowed man with nerves of
-sensation as danger signals for the conservation of life. Accident and
-disease, however, are the inseparable concomitants of human existence,
-and suffering and pain the ineffaceable legacies of mortality. Sometimes
-these nerves of sensation are no longer useful as monitors, and in the
-unavoidable emergency of accident, surgical operations, child birth, and
-certain diseases, suffering can do no good, and then pain--that Prince
-of Terrors--thrusting his presence upon the hapless victim, racks body
-and limb, calling forth groans, and shrieks and writhings, till the poor
-sufferer, possessed with a dominating agony which displaces all thought
-of life, memory of friends, and love of God, breaks down in unutterable
-distress, and prays for death and oblivion. To this poor sufferer
-insensibility is next to heaven. For the past half century all the
-formidable operations of the surgeon have been performed with the aid of
-anaesthetics and without suffering to the patient, producing happy
-recoveries, and greatly contributing to the success of the result by
-relieving the surgeon of the distraction of the patient's pain, and the
-interference of his involuntary movements. Quite a number of anaesthetics
-are known and used to-day. Those more generally employed are--naming
-them in the order of their first application--nitrous oxide gas, ether,
-and chloroform. Nitrous oxide gas is chiefly used for the extraction of
-teeth. Sir Humphrey Davy, in 1800, was the first to observe the peculiar
-quality of nitrous oxide gas, which gave it the name of "laughing gas,"
-from the fact that it caused those inhaling it to act in a manner
-exhibiting an abnormal exhilaration. Dr. Horace Wells, a dentist of
-Hartford, Conn., in 1844, had the gas administered, experimentally, to
-himself during the operation of extracting a tooth, and was the
-discoverer of its useful application as an anaesthetic.
-
-The greatest discovery, however, in anaesthetics is the application of
-ether for this purpose. Ether as a chemical product has been known for
-several centuries, and as early as 1818 Faraday pointed out the
-similarity between the effects of ether and nitrous oxide gas. Dr.
-Morton, a dentist, of Boston, first applied it as an anaesthetic Oct. 16,
-1846, being guided largely in its selection and use by Dr. Jackson, an
-eminent chemist of the same city. On Nov. 12, 1846, U. S. Pat. No. 4,848
-was issued to them for this invention. In the latter part of December of
-the same year Dr. Liston, an eminent English surgeon, performed the
-operation of amputating the thigh while the patient was under the
-influence of ether.
-
-Chloroform, discovered by Guthrie in 1831, was first applied as an
-anaesthetic by Sir James Y. Simpson, of Edinburgh, in 1847. Of the two
-leading anaesthetics, ether is more generally used in the United Sates
-and chloroform in Europe. Ether is less dangerous, but its
-administration is more difficult and disagreeable. It is said on the
-highest authority that in the Crimean War chloroform was administered
-25,000 times without a single death, and ether is even safer than
-chloroform. In the hands of a skillful physician practically no danger
-is to be apprehended from the use of either of the two agents. A little
-over fifty years ago any severe or prolonged surgical operation involved
-such irresistible pain that the patient's writhings were required to be
-restrained by powerful muscular assistants, and by straps which bound
-the patient to the table, and when it is remembered that a false cut of
-a hundredth part of an inch might be fatal, the haste, the disquieting
-influence upon the surgeon, and the interference with the accuracy of
-his hand, added greatly to the percentage of unsuccessful operations, as
-well as to the prolonged agony of the patient. Contrast this with the
-present methods of using anaesthetics, and we find the patient dropping
-into a quiet and peaceful sleep before the operation, and awakening
-thereafter to find, to his astonishment, that it is all over, and that
-recovery is only a question of careful nursing.
-
-_Materia Medica._--Many important contributions have been made to the
-pharmacopoeia in the century. In 1807 the remedy known as ergot was
-brought to the notice of the profession by Dr. Stearns, and named by him
-pulvis parturiens. Iodine was first used as a medicine in 1819 by Dr.
-Coindet, Sr., of Geneva. Quinine was discovered by Pelletier and
-Caventou in 1820, although Peruvian bark had long been used for the same
-purpose. Chloral hydrate, discovered by Liebig in 1832, was applied in
-medicine in 1869 by Dr. Liebreich, of Berlin. Carbolic acid was
-discovered in 1834 by Runge. Artificial seidlitz powders were first put
-up under Savory's British Pat. No. 3,954, of 1815. Veratrum viride,
-lobelia, worm seed, and chloroform were all introduced in the first part
-of the century. The sulphates of morphia, strychnia, atropia and other
-alkaloids are of comparatively recent addition to the pharmacopoeia, and
-the iodide of potash, tincture of iron, digitalis, bichloride of
-mercury, sub-nitrate of bismuth, boracic acid and gallic acid, chlorate
-of potash and Dover's powders have become standard remedies within a
-hundred years. In the latter part of the century the new remedies
-derived from coal tar have occupied an important place. Of these may be
-mentioned antipyrine, by Knorr (pat. Oct. 28, 1884), phenacetin, by
-Hinsberg (pat. March 26, 1889), salol, by Von Nencki (pat. Sept. 28,
-1886), sulfonal, by Bauman (patented Jan. 22, 1889), antikamnia
-(acetanilide), and many others, besides new and valuable antiseptic
-compounds, such as salicylic acid and formalin. A characteristic feature
-of the modern practice of medicine is in improved forms of its
-administration. Sugar-coated pills, gelatine capsules and cod liver oil
-emulsions make the remedy much less disagreeable to take, and very
-ingenious and effective machines have been devised for putting up
-remedies in such forms.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 174.--THE OPHTHALMOMETER.]
-
-_Instruments._--Laennec's discovery in 1819 of auscultation, and the
-stethoscope, for determining internal conditions by sound, was a great
-step in diagnosing diseases. The binaural stethoscope was invented by
-Cammann in 1854, and a later improvement is the phonendoscope, by
-Bianchi. The opthalmoscope is an instrument for inspecting the interior
-of the eye, which was invented by Prof. Helmholtz, and described by him
-in 1851. The laryngoscope, for obtaining a view of the larynx, was said
-to have been constructed by Mr. John Avery, of London, as early as 1846.
-The opthalmometer, Fig. 174, is a comparatively recent invention. It is
-designed to ascertain variations in corneal curvature for the correction
-of corneal astigmatism. Electric lights with reflectors are arranged on
-each side of the patient's head, while the operator looks into the eye
-with a telescope. The sphygmograph, a little instrument to be strapped
-on to the wrist to record the action of the pulse, was first reduced to
-a practically useful form by Marey in 1860. A later development of these
-devices, by Verdin, known as the sphygmometrograph, is shown in Fig.
-175. The endoscope, for looking into the urethra, and the cystoscope,
-for looking into the bladder, are other useful instruments of the modern
-practitioner. Greater than them all, however, is the modern X-ray
-apparatus, for locating foreign substances in the body and making
-visible the bones through the flesh, for which see special chapter. The
-use of the thermometer in recording the progress of fevers is also a
-valuable modern application, and the list of instruments and small tools
-is beyond enumeration. There are series of obstetrical appliances,
-instruments relating to bone surgery, to the taking up of arteries,
-cupping instruments, trepanning instruments, speculums, hypodermic
-syringes, electric cauteries, fracture appliances, instruments for
-lithotrity, bandages for varicose veins, atomizers, breast pumps,
-inhalers, nasal douches, trusses, pessaries, catheters, abdominal
-supporters, and an endless variety of proprietary articles, such as
-electric baths and belts, plasters, chest protectors, liver pads, and so
-forth, all of which are practically the products of the Nineteenth
-Century. The surgeon of to-day can straighten the eyes of a cross-eyed
-man, or take the bow out of his bandy legs, can make him a new nose of
-his own flesh, patch his skull with a silver plate, remove the stone
-from his bladder, supply him with a wind-pipe, wash out his stomach, and
-perform many other operations even more difficult. Among such more
-important operations may be mentioned ovariotomy, which was first
-performed by Dr. Ephraim McDowell, of Danville, Kentucky, in 1809, and
-the tying of the great arteries. The operation of lithotrity, for
-removing stone from the bladder by crushing the stone, was introduced by
-Civiale, 1817-1824, who devised successful instruments and modes of
-using them. In 1836 to 1840 Richard Bright, an English physician, made
-important researches and discoveries in relation to the functions and
-diseases of the kidneys, and established the nature of the so-called
-"Bright's disease."
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 175.--VERDIN'S SPHYGMOMETROGRAPH, FOR RECORDING THE
-ACTION OF THE PULSE.]
-
-_Schools of Medicine._--While the regular school of medicine (called by
-some "Allopathy") has held the leading place in medicine, various other
-schools have sprung up in the Nineteenth Century, all of which represent
-advances in a knowledge of the laws of health, and the modes of
-preventing and curing diseases. Hahnemann, in his "_Organon der
-Rationellen Heilkunde_," in 1810, gave homoeopathy its name, and reduced
-it to a system. The doctrine of _similia similibus curantur_ (like cures
-like), has gained great popularity in the latter part of the century.
-Hydropathy, as a school, also made its appearance in the early part of
-the Nineteenth Century. Priessnitz was its first disciple, and the
-_Grafenberg cure_, established in 1826, was a noted institution for many
-years. The useful application of water in the form of baths and cold
-packs, has been known for centuries, and will always be used as a
-valuable agency in sickness and in health. The "Thompsonian" system of
-treating diseases was covered by patents in 1813, 1823 and 1836, and
-attained considerable notoriety in the early half of the century.
-Sweating by hot bricks and hot tea made of "Composition Powders,"
-vomiting with lobelia to produce relaxation, and a fiery liquid for
-cramps, called "No. 6," were the chief remedies, and very few boys who
-had once taken the treatment were ever willing afterwards to admit that
-they were sick. In the latter part of the Nineteenth Century
-_electro-therapeutics_ has received a large share of attention, many
-forms of medical batteries have been devised, and probably no more
-promising field of study and research exists in the whole domain of
-medicine.
-
-_Dentistry._--George Washington had false teeth, and it is said that the
-teeth of some of the mummies of Egypt had gold fillings, but it
-remained for the Nineteenth Century to establish dentistry as an art,
-and its influence in securing better mastication and digestion of food,
-more sanitary mouths and shapely faces, cannot be estimated. Few people
-can be found to-day who have not either filled teeth, bridge work, gold
-caps, or artificial sets of teeth. The most important advance in the art
-was in the invention of the rubber plate for holding the porcelain
-teeth. This was the invention of J. A. Cummings, and was covered by him
-in his patent No. 43,009, June 7, 1864. In more recent years
-"bridge-work" represents the most important advance. In this practice
-one or more artificial teeth are firmly held in the place of missing
-teeth by a strong bridge-piece of metal, which at its ends is anchored
-to the adjacent natural teeth. This was first done by Bing (British Pat.
-No. 167, of 1871), and was afterwards patented in somewhat different
-form in the United States by J. E. Lowe, No. 238,940, March 15, 1881,
-No. 313,434, March 3, 1885, and Richmond, May 22, 1883, No. 277,933.
-Porcelain and gold crowns and dental pluggers run by electricity
-represent other important advances in this art. It is said that there
-are 20,425 dentists in the United States, and that in 1899 they employed
-in their practice 20,499,000 false teeth.
-
-_Artificial Limbs._--With the successful work of the surgeon came the
-effort to repair, as far as possible, the loss of the limb. Until about
-the middle of the Nineteenth Century the survivor of an operation was an
-unsymmetrical, unique, and pitiful object. The peg-leg of Peter
-Stuyvesant lives in history, and the arm-hook of Capt. Cuttle is
-familiar to every reader. The first United States patent for an
-artificial leg was granted to B. F. Palmer, Nov. 4, 1846, No. 4,834.
-Wooden legs with a restricted back and forward ankle motion and a
-spring, were constructed by A. A. Marks from 1853 to 1863. On Dec. 1,
-1863, a patent, No. 40,763, was granted to Mr. Marks for the use of
-sponge rubber for constructing artificial feet and hands that dispensed
-with the articulated joints, and made a great improvement. In patent No.
-366,494, July 12, 1887, to G. E. Marks, the foot and leg portion of a
-wooden leg are made from wood which grows with a crook, as at the root
-of a tree, where the strength and lightness of a continuous natural
-grain is obtained at the instep. About 300 patents have been granted for
-artificial legs and arms. Modern improvements have extended to every
-detail of construction, and so perfect to-day is the average wooden leg
-that it is hardly to be detected. Men with wooden legs ride horseback,
-are expert users of the bicycle, and have even performed feats on the
-tight rope. The inventor's genius has not stopped at repairing limbs,
-however, for artificial eyes, artificial ear drums, the audiphone, foot
-extensions for short legs, crutches, braces, abdominal supporters, and
-various other applications to supplement the defects of the body have
-been devised.
-
-_Digestion._--The physiology of digestion had, perhaps, the first real
-light shed upon it by Beaumont's observations from 1825 to 1832. A
-Canadian boatman, Alexis San Martin, was wounded in the abdomen from a
-charge of buckshot, and the wound healed, leaving a permanent opening in
-the stomach, through which the operation of digestion could be observed.
-This furnished visible evidence of the relative digestibility of
-different kinds of foods, and the general functions of the stomach. The
-peculiar and different conditions governing the digestion of the starch
-foods, the albumenoids (such as meat and fish), and the sugars and fats,
-have been clearly ascertained, and "what is one man's food is another
-man's poison" is now susceptible of intelligent diagnosis and effective
-adjustment. Of late years the stomach has been greatly aided in its
-functions by prepared or predigested foods. The action of diastase, in
-converting starch into grape sugar, has been taken advantage of, and
-cereals treated with diatase, malted milk, lactated and peptonized
-foods, have proven a boon to the enfeebled digestion, while the
-intelligent study of dietetics has done much to relieve the physician
-and promote the health of the individual by right living.
-
-_Bacteriology._--Although Leeuwenhoeck discovered the bacterium in
-1668-1675, up to 100 years ago disease and death were largely regarded
-as dispensations of Providence, and with fatuous resignation were
-accepted as inevitable. The microscope and the study of bacteriology,
-however, have revealed to us the presence of minute living organisms or
-germs, which are everywhere around us, infesting the air, the earth, the
-water, our food, our bodies, and all organic matter in countless
-millions. These infinitely small beings multiply with a rapidity and
-fecundity that bewilders the imagination. Their method of multiplication
-is by fissiparism--that is to say, each splits into two independent
-beings that separate and afterwards lead independent lives. It is said
-that there is one species in which not more than six or seven minutes
-are required for the division to take place. A single individual might
-consequently produce more than a thousand offspring in an hour, more
-than a million in two hours, and in three hours more than the number of
-inhabitants on the globe. They are known as micro-organisms, of which
-the bacteria are the most important. The bacteria are further divided
-into species, and names are given them to distinguish the different
-forms. The little rod-shaped ones are called _bacilli_: the spheroidal
-ones _micrococci_ or _cocci_. If they cling together in chains they are
-called _streptococci_; if of a spiral or corkscrew form they are called
-_spirallae_. The curved bacilli are called "_comma_" _bacilli_, from
-their resemblance to the punctuation mark of that name. The presence of
-peculiar forms of these bacteria in diseases has so suggested the
-relation of cause and effect as to have given rise to the so-called
-"germ theory" of disease. Now we know with reasonable certainty that
-cholera, diphtheria, typhoid fever, whooping cough, mumps,
-cerebro-spinal meningitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis, hydrophobia, and
-many other diseases have each its specific cause in the form of a
-microbe.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 176.
-
-BACILLUS OF TUBERCULOSIS IN SPUTUM. BACILLUS OF DIPHTHERIA
-(KLEBS-LOEFFLER).
-
-BACILLUS OF TYPHOID FEVER.
-
-(Photo-Micrographs, 1,000 diam., by William M. Gray, M. D.)]
-
-[Illustration: TERTIAN FORM. AESTIVO-AUTUMNAL FORM.
-
-FIG. 177.--BLOOD OF MAN. SHOWING PARASITE OF MALARIA (LAVERAN).
-
-(Photo-Micrographs, 1,000 diam., by William M. Gray, M. D.)]
-
-Henle, a German physiologist, as early as 1840, maintained the doctrine
-of _contagium vivum_, or contagion by the transmission of living germs.
-Certain classes of diseases have also long been known as zymotic, or
-ferment diseases. Louis Pasteur's work, however, marks the first
-definite and important results in the study of bacteriology, and he is
-the father of the "germ theory" of disease. He exploded the previously
-held theories of scientists concerning the spontaneous generation of
-living things, and clearly established and promulgated the knowledge of
-disease germs. Commencing his great work about 1865 with the
-investigation of the silk worm plague in France, he discovered it to be
-due to parasites, and checked it. He also gave great attention to the
-subject of fermentation, proving it to be caused by micro-organisms.
-Taking up the diseases of men and animals, he gave practical value to
-the truths of his theory in the treatment of hydrophobia, diphtheria,
-and other diseases, using the principle of vaccination to destroy or
-render innocuous the toxins or disease-producing poisons derived from
-living germs. Working along the same lines must be mentioned Dr. Koch,
-whose success in detecting the microbes which cause consumption and
-cholera has made him famous the world over. Of the great variety of
-these little microbes which have been separately identified, many are
-innocuous, and, in fact, subserve many important and useful purposes in
-nature, while others are to be as much dreaded as the deadly cobra or
-the rattlesnake. A few typical examples of the latter are given in Figs.
-176 and 177, multiplied 1,000 diameters. The illustrations represented
-in Fig. 177 show the parasites that cause malaria, or fever and ague.
-The dark bean-shaped cells are the normal blood corpuscles, and the few
-speckled cells are those infested with the malarial parasites. It is now
-believed that the mosquito is the active factor in the dissemination of
-malaria, and it is, therefore, to be remembered that this pestiferous
-little insect not only inflicts a painful and disagreeable sensation
-with his puncture, but innoculates the system with poisonous malarial
-germs at the same time.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 178.
-
-TUBE CONTAINING CULTURE OF BACILLI OF TUBERCULOSIS.
-
-TUBE CONTAINING CULTURE OF COMMA BACILLI OF CHOLERA.]
-
-For the study of bacteria they are propagated artificially in a test
-tube--_i. e._, a substance called a "culture" is prepared from some
-organic material which, like the substances of the human body, is
-favorable to their propagation. Such culture media are found in beef
-blood, gelatine, beef extracts, meat broth, milk, etc. An ordinary
-test-tube is supplied with some of the culture medium, and is then
-sterilized over the fire to destroy all interfering germs. Material
-infected with the microbe is then placed in the test-tube by a
-sterilized platinum wire and the tube closed by raw cotton. It is then
-placed in an incubator oven and is subjected to a gentle heat. In a
-little while the microbes begin to develop and increase, forming
-colonies, in which they swarm by the million, and present the clotted
-appearance seen in Fig. 178. The separation of different bacteria
-existing in the same material, so as to isolate each species and get
-what is called a "pure culture," has been greatly promoted by Prof.
-Koch's method of _plate culture_. In this the propagation of bacteria is
-effected upon a sterilized glass plate under a bell jar in such a thin
-layer as to facilitate the segregation of species, enabling them to be
-counted under the microscope and picked out and sown in another culture
-to get an unmixed crop of a definite species. Such a culture so
-multiplies the same microbe, to the exclusion of others, as to permit it
-to be easily identified and studied.
-
-According to the practice in modern municipal health regulations, the
-test as to when a child recovering from diphtheria is incapable of
-disseminating the disease is by test culture. A swab of cotton is rubbed
-against the interior walls of the child's throat to secure the germs (if
-present), and the swab is then placed in a "culture" in a test-tube and
-the tube put in an incubator. If, after the period of incubation, no
-colonies of the germs develop, it is accepted as evidence that the
-diphtheria germs are no longer present in the throat, and the child is
-released from quarantine.
-
-It is the presence of these specific microbes in the fluids or solids of
-the system which constitutes the disease, and for the cure of the same
-the intelligent physician of to-day looks less to medication, and more
-for some agent that will destroy the germ, neutralize its effect, or
-render the body tolerant thereto. Out of the knowledge of disease germs
-has grown the great era of antiseptic surgery, inaugurated by Sir Joseph
-Lister, about 1865. Carbolic acid, the bichloride of mercury, and
-formalin are the most efficient weapons against the dreaded microbe.
-To-day every surgeon in the civilized world sterilizes his knife, and
-conducts the treatment of wounds and all operations by antiseptic
-methods, in accordance with a knowledge of the deadly influence of the
-ubiquitous microbe, and the result has been to so reduce the risk to
-life that even capital operations are no longer coupled with the
-apprehensions of death. Every hospital, board of health, and organized
-medical and sanitary body predicates its laws and modes of treatment
-upon the principles of bacteriology.
-
-_House Sanitation._--The permanent home of the microbe is the sewer, and
-sanitary plumbing, designed to exclude from the house the germ-laden and
-disease-breeding gases from the sewer, constitutes one of the great
-advances of the century. About 3,500 patents have been granted for water
-closets and bath appliances, and about 900 patents on sewerage alone,
-the most of which are directed to improved conditions of sanitation.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 179A.--STREET CONNECTIONS, MODERN SANITARY HOUSE
-PLUMBING.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 179.--MODERN SANITARY HOUSE PLUMBING.]
-
-An illustration of the plumbing and sewer connections of a modern house
-is given in Figs. 179 and 179A. The sewer pipes are shown in solid
-black, the unshaded pipes (in outline only) are air ventilation pipes,
-the single black lines are cold water pipes, and the dotted lines hot
-water pipes. The important sanitary feature in modern plumbing is to
-keep all sewer gas and disease germs out of the house. For this purpose
-traps have long been used under the wash basins, closet hoppers, and
-sinks; but the back pressure of sewer gas would sometimes bubble through
-the trap into the house, and besides the water in passing out from a
-basin would sometimes, by a siphon effect, pass entirely out of the
-trap, leaving it unsealed. Both these results are prevented by the air
-ventilation pipes which connect with the discharge side of every trap in
-the house and lead to a stack extending out through the roof. This
-prevents pressure of sewer gas on the water seal of the trap, destroys
-the siphon action of the trap and allows a circulation of air to be
-taken in from the sidewalk on the house side of the running trap and
-through the sewer pipe of the house, and thence through the air vent
-pipes to the roof.
-
-The great science of bacteriology, dealing with these smallest of living
-things, only came into existence with the microscope, and it was a field
-which was not only wholly unknown and unexplored a few years ago, but
-there was no suggestion visible to the eye to direct attention to it,
-until the lens began to reveal the secrets of microcosm. What
-development the future may bring no one can predict, but to the
-biologist and the physician no more promising field exists. Certain it
-is that the knowledge already gained is of incalculable benefit, and
-constitutes one of the greatest eras of progress the world has known,
-for with the noble army of patient, devoted, and self-sacrificing
-physicians, the discoveries of the scientist, our boards of health, our
-hospitals and asylums for the insane, our quarantine laws, our modern
-plumbing and improved sanitation in the home and public departments,
-there is no reason why the life of man should not be extended far beyond
-the three-score and ten years, and the 50 per cent. of population dying
-in childhood saved for useful lives and citizenship.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXI.
-
-THE BICYCLE AND AUTOMOBILE.
-
- THE DRAISINE, 1816--MICHAUX'S BICYCLE, 1855--UNITED STATES PATENT TO
- LALLEMENT AND CARROL, 1866--TRANSITION FROM "VERTICAL FORK" AND
- "STAR" TO MODERN "SAFETY"--PNEUMATIC TIRE--AUTOMOBILE, THE PROTOTYPE
- OF THE LOCOMOTIVE--TREVITHICK'S STEAM ROAD CARRIAGE, 1801--THE
- LOCOMOBILE OF TO-DAY--GAS ENGINE AUTOMOBILES OF PINKUS, 1839;
- SELDEN, 1879; DURYEA, WINTON AND OTHERS--ELECTRIC AUTOMOBILES A
- DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVES AS EARLY AS 1836--GROUNELLE'S
- ELECTRIC AUTOMOBILE OF 1852--THE COLUMBIA, AND OTHER ELECTRIC
- CARRIAGES--STATISTICS.
-
-
-However superior to other animals man may be in point of intellect, it
-must be admitted that he is vastly inferior in his natural equipment for
-locomotion. Quadrupeds have twice as many legs, run faster, and stand
-more firmly. Birds have their two legs supplemented with wings that give
-a wonderfully increased speed in flight, and fish, with no legs at all,
-run races with the fastest steamers; but man has awkwardly toddled on
-two stilted supports since prehistoric time, and for the first year of
-his life is unable to walk at all. That he has felt his inferiority is
-clear, for his imagination has given wings to the angels, and has
-depicted Mercury, the messenger of the gods, with a similar equipment on
-his heels. We see the ambition for speed exemplified even in the baby,
-who crows in exhilaration at rapid movement, and in the boy when the
-ride on the flying horses, the glide on the ice, or the swift descent on
-the toboggan slide, brings a flash to his eye and a glow to his cheeks.
-
-A characteristic trend of the present age is toward increased speed in
-everything, and the most conspicuous example of accelerated speed in
-late years is the bicycle. It has, with its fascination of silent motion
-and the exhilaration of flight, driven the younger generation wild with
-enthusiasm, has limbered up the muscles of old age, has revolutionized
-the attire of men and women, and well-nigh supplanted the old-fashioned
-use of legs. It is the most unique and ubiquitous piece of organized
-machinery ever made. The thoroughfares and highways of civilization
-fairly swarm with thousands of glistening and silently gliding wheels.
-It is to be found everywhere, even to the steppes of Asia, the plains
-of Australia, and the ice fields of the Arctic.
-
-The true definition of the bicycle is a two-wheeled vehicle, with one
-wheel in front and the other in the rear, and both in the same vertical
-plane. Its life principle is the physical law that a rotating body tends
-to preserve its plane of rotation, and so it stands up, when it moves,
-on the same principle that a top does when it spins or a child's hoop
-remains erect when it rolls.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 180.--THE DRAISINE, 1816.]
-
-A form of carriage adapted to be propelled by the muscular effort of the
-rider was constructed and exhibited in Paris by Blanchard and Magurier,
-and was described in the _Journal de Paris_ as early as July 27, 1779,
-but the true bicycle was the product of the Nineteenth Century. It was
-invented by Baron von Drais, of Manheim-on-the Rhine. See Fig. 180. It
-consisted of two wheels, one before the other, in the same plane, and
-connected together by a bar bearing a saddle, the front wheel being
-arranged to turn about a vertical axis and provided with a handle for
-guiding. The rider supported his elbows on an arm rest and propelled the
-device by striking his toes upon the ground, and in this way thrusted
-himself along, while guiding his course by the handle bar and swivelling
-front wheel. This machine was called the "Draisine." It was patented in
-France for the Baron by Louis Joseph Dineur, and was exhibited in Paris
-in 1816. In 1818 Denis Johnson secured an English patent for an improved
-form of this device, but the principle of propulsion remained the same.
-This device, variously known as the "Draisine," "velocipede,"
-"celerifere," "pedestrian curricle," "dandy horse," and "hobby-horse,"
-was introduced in New York in 1819, and was greeted for a time with
-great enthusiasm in that and other cities.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 181.--VELOCIPEDE OF 1868.]
-
-On June 26, 1819, William K. Clarkson was granted a United States patent
-for a velocipede, but the records were destroyed in the fire of 1836. In
-1821 Louis Gompertz devised an improved form of "hobby-horse," in which
-a vibrating handle, with segmental rack engaging with a pinion on the
-front wheel axle, enabled the hands to be employed as well as the feet
-in propelling the machine. Such devices all relied, however, upon the
-striking of the ground with the toes. Their fame was evanescent,
-however, and for forty years thereafter little or no attention was paid
-to this means of locomotion, except in the construction of children's
-carriages and velocipedes having three or more wheels.
-
-In 1855 Ernst Michaux, a French locksmith, applied, for the first time,
-the foot cranks and pedals to the axle of the drive wheel. A United
-States patent, No. 59,915, taken Nov. 20, 1866, in the joint names of
-Lallement and Carrol, represented, however, the revival of development
-in this field. Lallement was a Frenchman, and built a machine having the
-pedals on the axle of the drive wheel, and it was at one time believed
-that it was he who deserved the credit for this feature, but it is
-claimed for Michaux, and the monument erected by the French in 1894 to
-Ernest and Pierre Michaux at Bar le Duc gives strength to the claim. The
-bicycle, as represented at this stage of development, is shown in Fig.
-181. In 1868-'69 machines of this type went extensively into use.
-Bicycle schools and riding academies appeared all through the East, and
-notwithstanding the excessive muscular effort required to propel the
-heavy and clumsy wooden wheels, the old "bone-shaker" was received with
-a furor of enthusiasm.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 182.--VERTICAL FORK OF 1879.]
-
-In 1869 Magee, in Paris, made the entire bicycle of iron and steel,
-solid rubber tires and brakes followed, and the front wheel began to
-grow to larger size, until in 1879 the bicycle presented the form shown
-in Fig. 182. This placed the weight of the rider more directly over the
-drive wheel, and was known as the "vertical fork." It gave good results
-but for the accidents from "headers," to which it was especially
-liable. Means to overcome the danger were resorted to, and the "Star"
-bicycle represented such a construction. In this the high wheel was
-behind and the small one in front, and straps and ratchet wheels
-connected the pedals to the axle. In 1877 Rousseau, of Marseilles,
-removed the pedals from the wheel axle and applied the power to the axle
-by a chain extending from a sprocket wheel on the pedal shaft to a
-sprocket wheel on the wheel axle. By gradual steps, initiated in
-Starley's "Rover" in 1880, (see Fig. 183), the high front wheel was
-reduced in size, until the proportions of the modern "Safety" (Fig. 184)
-have been obtained. Strange to say, these proportions have, through
-nearly a century of evolution, gone back to those employed in the old
-"Draisine," where the two wheels were of the same size. The modern
-"Safety," however, is quite a different machine. Its diamond frame of
-light but strong tubular steel, its ball bearings, its suspension wheels
-and pneumatic tires impart to the modern bicycle strength with
-lightness, and beauty with efficiency, to a degree scarcely attained by
-any other piece of organized machinery designed for such trying work.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 183.--"ROVER," 1880.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 184.--MODERN "SAFETY."]
-
-The most important of all modern improvements on the bicycle was perhaps
-the pneumatic tire. This was not originally designed for the bicycle,
-but was patented in England by R. W. Thompson in 1845 and in the United
-States May 8, 1847, No. 5,104. Its application to the bicycle was made
-in 1889 by Dunlop, United States patent No. 435,995, Sept. 9, 1890, and
-453,550, June 2, 1891. It furnishes not only an elastic bearing which
-cushions the jar, but also makes a broader tread that renders cycling on
-the soft roads of the country at once practical and delightful. The
-chainless wheel, which connects the axle of the pedal crank with the
-axle of the rear wheel by a shaft with bevel gears, is the most recent
-form exploited by the manufacturers, but it is doubtful whether it
-presents any points of superiority over the chain type. All of the parts
-of the bicycle have come in for a share of attention at the hands of
-inventors, differential speed gears and brakes having received especial
-attention. The Morrow hub brake, which applies friction to the rear
-wheel hub by back pressure on the pedal, is a popular modern form. The
-first back-pedal brake is shown in United States Pat. No. 418,142, to
-Stover & Hance, Dec. 24, 1889.
-
-Among the many modifications of the bicycle as used to-day may be
-mentioned the drop frame, which has made cycling possible for ladies,
-the tandem, for two riders, the sextet or octet, carrying six or eight
-riders and resembling a centipede in movement and an express train in
-speed: the ice velocipede, in which two runners are combined with a
-spiked driving wheel, and the hydrocycle, or water velocipede, in which
-the drive wheel, formed with paddles, is used to propel a buoyant hull
-through the water.
-
-In point of speed there seems to be no limit to the bicycle. In a test
-made on the Long Island Railroad in the summer of 1899 between a wheel
-and an express train, the bicyclist, riding on a plank road between the
-rails and protected behind the train by a wind break, covered a mile in
-57-4/5 seconds, and while going at top speed of more than a mile a
-minute, overtook the train, was caught by his friends on a rear platform
-and pulled on board, bicycle and all. This is the first instance on
-record of overtaking and boarding an express train going at the rate of
-sixty-four miles an hour, and yet it is said that the rider (Murphy) was
-not doing his best.
-
-Nearly 5,000 patents have been granted on velocipedes and bicycles. Most
-of them were for bicycles which, as improved to-day, are not only as
-fleet as the birds, but almost as countless in numbers. It is estimated
-that in 1889 the total product of bicycles in this country reached
-200,000 machines annually. In 1892, after the general adoption of the
-pneumatic tire, a great increase followed, which has grown from year to
-year until in the year 1899 a conservative estimate for the output in
-the United States is 1,000,000 wheels annually, worth from thirty to
-fifty million dollars. Each bicycle tire takes about two pounds of pure
-rubber, or four pounds to the wheel. The annual output in wheels
-consequently consumes about 4,000,000 pounds, or 2,000 tons of rubber.
-Ten years ago there were not more than twenty-five legitimate
-manufacturers of bicycles in the United States. In 1897 there were over
-200 concerns in the business. It is estimated that there are to-day
-between 150 and 155 regular manufacturers, exclusive of the mere
-assemblers of parts. The Pope Manufacturing Company, which occupies the
-leading place, employed in 1888 about 500 hands. To-day their shops give
-employment to 3,800 workmen, which furnishes a significant object lesson
-as to the importance and growth of the industry.
-
-_The Automobile._--Gliding silently along our city streets without the
-customary accompaniment of the clatter of the horse's hoofs, the
-automobile suggests to the average observer a very recent invention.
-This is, however, not the case. The automobile is older even than the
-locomotive, and is, in fact, the early model from which the rail
-locomotive was evolved. As early as 1680 Sir Isaac Newton proposed a
-steam carriage in which the propelling power was the reactionary
-discharge of a rearwardly directed jet of steam. Cugnot, in 1769, built
-a steam carriage, which is still preserved in the museum of the
-Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in Paris. Hornblower also in the same
-year devised a steam carriage. Watt's patents of 1769 and 1784
-contemplated the application of his steam engines to carriages running
-on land. Symington in 1770, and Murdoch in 1784, built experimental
-models. In 1787 Oliver Evans obtained a patent in Maryland for the
-exclusive right to make steam road wagons. Nathan Read in 1790 also
-patented and built a steam carriage.
-
-Of these, Cugnot represents the pioneer in the heavier forms of
-self-propelled vehicles, but the steam carriage which best deserves to
-be regarded as the prototype of the modern passenger automobile is that
-of Trevithick, in England, who may also be considered as the father of
-the locomotive. On Christmas eve, 1801, this steam carriage made its
-experimental trip along the high road carrying seven or eight
-passengers. The next day the party, with Trevithick in charge of the
-engine, visited Tehidy House, the home of Lord Dunstanville. They met
-with an accident, however, and the carriage turned over. It was placed
-under shelter, and while the party were at the hotel regaling themselves
-with roast goose and popular drinks, the water in the engine boiled
-away, the iron became red hot, and nothing combustible was left either
-of the carriage or the building in which it was sheltered. On March 24,
-1802, Trevithick and Vivian obtained a British patent, No. 2,599, on
-this device, and another carriage was built, and in the spring of 1803
-started a run from Camborne to Redruth, but it stuck in the mud. It was
-popularly known as Capt. Trevithick's "Puffing Devil." It was
-subsequently reconstructed in London and run upon the streets of that
-city. Fig. 185 presents an illustration of the first steam automobile.
-The cylinders and pistons were enclosed within the fire box in the rear.
-Clutches (called striking boxes) on the axle of the front gear wheel
-allowed either running wheel to move independently of the other in
-turning. A pair of small front steering wheels was arranged to turn
-about a vertical axis and was manipulated by a handle bar. A brake was
-provided for in the specification, as were also variable gears for
-changing speed, and an automatic blower for the fire. The carriage had
-an elevated coach body mounted on springs, and the running wheels were
-of large size, adapted to the higher speed and lighter uses of passenger
-traffic.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 185.--TREVITHICK'S STEAM CARRIAGE, 1801.]
-
-It is not possible to trace the succeeding steps in steam carriage
-development by James and Anderson, by Gurney, in 1822, by Marcerone and
-Squire in 1833, by Russel in 1846, and many others; it is sufficient to
-know that bad roads and the success attending the steam locomotive on
-rails diverted attention from the steam road carriage, and not until the
-latter part of the Nineteenth Century was there any marked revival of
-interest in this field. Then came first the ponderous road engine, known
-as a traction engine, and used for heavy hauling; and this in the last
-decade has been followed by the modern steam motor carriage, an example
-of which is seen in Figs. 186 and 186A, which represent the "Locomobile"
-and its actuating mechanism. The fuel used is gasoline, stored in a
-three-gallon tank under the footboard. The boiler, which is arranged
-under the seat, is a vertical cylinder wrapped with piano wire for
-greater tensile strength, and contains 298 copper tubes. The engine,
-which is seen in Fig. 186A, is arranged in upright position under the
-seat, in front of the boiler, has two cylinders, 21/2-inch diameter and
-4-inch stroke, a Stephenson link-motion and an ordinary D-valve.
-Sprocket wheels and a chain connect the engine shaft to the rear axle.
-The engine runs from 300 to 400 revolutions per minute and develops
-from four to five horse power. It has a muffle for the steam exhaust
-and the whole weight is 550 pounds. It is one of the lightest and
-cheapest of automobiles, runs easily at ten to twelve miles an hour, and
-is an efficient hill-climber. Although naming the steam automobile first
-because of its earlier genesis, it is not to be understood as
-representing at present the most popular type of motor carriage,
-although it bids fair to become so.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 186.--"LOCOMOBILE" STEAM CARRIAGE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 186A.--THE FOUR HORSE POWER ENGINES OF
-"LOCOMOBILE."]
-
-In France and the continent of Europe the type employing an explosive
-mixture of gasoline and air is most frequently found, and in England and
-the United States the electric motor with the storage battery is chiefly
-used.
-
-In automobiles of the explosive gas type probably the earliest example
-is found in the British patent to Pinkus, No. 8,207, of 1839. In France
-Lenoir, in 1860, is credited with being the pioneer. Among modern
-applications the patent to George B. Selden, No. 549,160, occupies a
-prominent place. This was only granted Nov. 5, 1895, but the application
-for the patent was filed in the Patent Office May 8, 1879 so that the
-invention described has quite an early date, and some broad claims have
-been allowed to the inventor. In the last decade many applications of
-the explosive gas engine to road carriages and tricycles have been made,
-especially in France. Representative motor carriages of this type are to
-be found in the United States in the Duryea and the Winton. An
-illustration of the latter is given in Fig. 187. The form shown
-represents a phaeton weighing 1,400 pounds; the motor is of the single
-hydrocarbon type, and is simple, powerful and compact. It is also free
-from noise and vibration, and is under control at all times. The maximum
-speed is eighteen miles an hour.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 187.--WINTON AUTOMOBILE. HYDROCARBON TYPE.]
-
-Probably the most popular type of the automobile in the United States is
-the "electric." The application of the electric motor to the propulsion
-of vehicles dates back to quite an early period. It is said that as far
-back as 1835 Stratingh and Becker, of Groeningen, and in 1836 Botto, of
-Turin, constructed crude electric carriages. Davenport, in 1835,
-Davidson, in 1838, and Dr. Page, in 1851, built electric locomotives
-which ran on rails. The prototype of the electric automobile, however,
-is best represented in the French patent to M. Grounelle, No. 7,728,
-Feb. 7, 1852 (2 Ser., Vol. 25, p. 220, pl. 46.) This shows a perfectly
-equipped electric automobile. It did not have a practical electric
-generator, however, for the storage battery was not then known. A large
-sulphate of copper battery was employed, which could through the agency
-of a train of gears give only a very slow speed. This road carriage,
-however, only needed a storage battery to make it a well organized and
-efficient electric automobile. It is believed by many that electricity
-fulfills more of the necessary conditions of a successful motive power
-for motor carriages than any other power. It is clean, compact,
-noiseless, free from vibration, heat, dirt and gases, and is under
-perfect control. Its chief objection is that it is only possible to
-recharge it where electric power is available, and in this respect it is
-inferior to the gasoline motor, whose supply may be conveniently
-obtained at every city, village, and country store. The Columbia
-two-seated Dos-a-Dos (Fig. 188), Woods' Victoria Hansom Cab, and the
-Riker Electric Delivery Wagon are representative types of the modern
-electric automobile.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 188.--THE COLUMBIA "DOS-A-DOS."]
-
-All of the motor carriages illustrated are of American make, and for
-lightness, grace, and efficiency they have no superiors. A peculiar and
-recent type which attracted much attention and took the gold medal at
-the Motor Carriage Exposition at Berlin, held in September, 1899, is the
-Pieper double motor carriage. It has both a benzine motor and an
-electric motor, which can be worked separately or together, and yet is
-said to be lighter than most electric carriages. On a long journey,
-remote from electrical supply, the benzine motor is used not only to
-propel the carriage, but by running the electric motor as a dynamo or
-generator, recharges the storage battery. On level, easy roads, where
-the power required falls below the maximum power exerted by the benzine
-motor, the electric motor changes automatically to a dynamo and the
-surplus force of the benzine motor is converted into current and stored.
-In running down hill or stopping the carriage, the momentum of the
-vehicle is also received by the electric motor acting as a dynamo and
-brake, and is stored as electricity in the battery, which is thus in an
-ordinary journey kept constantly charged.
-
-It is not probable that man will ever be able to get along without the
-horse, but the release of the noble animal from the bondage of city
-traffic, which was begun only a few years ago with mechanical street car
-propulsion, promises now to be extensively advanced by the substitution
-of the motor carriage and the auto-truck for team-drawn vehicles. The
-rapidity with which this industry has grown, and its promise for the
-future may be realized when it is remembered that so far as practical
-results are concerned it has all grown up in the last decade of the
-Nineteenth Century, and yet to-day it is said that there are already in
-the United States about 200 incorporated concerns with an aggregate
-capitalization of some $500,000,000, organized to build automobiles, to
-say nothing of the vast number of individuals who are experimenting in
-this field. The greatest activity, however, is to be found in France,
-which claims over 600 manufacturers and has in use 6,000 automobiles out
-of a total of 11,000 in all of Europe.
-
-The most significant suggestion for the future of the automobile is that
-the cost of maintenance and all things considered, it is in some
-applications cheaper than the horse-drawn vehicles of the same
-efficiency. In a consular report of Oct. 16, 1899, forwarded to the
-State Department by Mr. Marshal Halsted, consul at Birmingham, Mr. E. H.
-Bayley, an English authority, is quoted as saying that in operating
-heavy motor vehicles for hauling, the cost is three half-pence (three
-cents) per net ton per mile, as compared with 18 to 24 cents per net ton
-per mile by horse-drawn vehicles. In England much attention is being
-given to this subject.
-
-As before stated, the modern automobile cannot be considered as a new
-invention so far as fundamental principles are concerned. Its success,
-in late years, is to be credited to the perfection of the arts in
-general, and as essential factors contributing to this may be named the
-refinement of steel, giving increased strength with lightness, the
-increased efficiency of motive power, the vulcanization of rubber, the
-mathematical nicety of mechanical adjustment, the reduction of friction
-by ball bearings, the wonderful developments in electricity and
-improvement in roads.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXII.
-
-THE PHONOGRAPH.
-
- INVENTION OF PHONOGRAPH BY EDISON--SCOTT'S PHONAUTOGRAPH--
- IMPROVEMENTS OF BELL AND TAINTER--THE GRAPHOPHONE--LIBRARY OF WAX
- CYLINDERS--THE GRAMOPHONE.
-
-
-Following closely upon the discovery of the telephone the phonograph
-came, literally speaking for itself, and adding another surprise to the
-wonderful inventions of that prolific period. It was in the latter part
-of 1877 that Thomas A. Edison showed to a few privileged friends a
-modest looking little machine. He turned the crank, and to the
-astonishment of those present it said. "Good morning! How do you do? How
-do you like the phonograph?" Its voice was a little metallic, it is
-true, but here was presented an insignificant looking piece of mechanism
-which was undeniably a talking machine and one with an unlimited
-vocabulary. So-called talking machines had been made before, of which
-the Faber machine was a type. These, by an arrangement of bellows to
-furnish air, and flexible pipes in imitation of the larynx and vocal
-organs, made laborious and wheezy efforts to imitate the mechanical
-functions of the throat and tongue in articulate speech, but the method
-was fundamentally faulty and no success was attained. Edison followed no
-such leading. His phonograph made no attempt at imitating in
-construction the complex organization of the human throat, but was as
-wonderful in its divergence therefrom and in its simplicity as it was in
-the success of its results. The machine was patented by him Feb. 19,
-1878, No. 200,521, and its life principle is simply and clearly defined
-in the first claim of the patent, as follows:
-
- "The method herein specified of reproducing the human voice, or
- other sounds, by causing the sound vibrations to be recorded
- substantially as specified, and obtaining motion from that record as
- set forth for the reproduction of sound vibrations."
-
-The invention was a striking and interesting novelty and at once
-attracted the attention of scientific men as well as the general public.
-Its first public exhibition was about the latter part of January, 1878,
-before the Polytechnic Association of the American Institute, at New
-York. It spoke English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Hebrew with
-equal facility. It imitated the barking of a dog and crowing of a cock,
-and then catching cold, coughed and sneezed and wheezed until it is said
-a physician in the audience proposed sending a prescription for it. It
-was also suggested by an irreverent man that it might take the place of
-preachers in the rendition of sermons, while another thought that as it
-reproduced music with equal facility it might take the place of preacher
-and choir both. In the spring of 1878 it was exhibited at Washington by
-Edison and his assistant, Mr. Batchelor. Mr. Edison was the guest of Mr.
-U. H. Painter, and in his parlors it was shown to a party of gentlemen.
-
-From Mr. Painter's house the machine was taken to the office of the
-Assistant Secretary of the Interior, thence to the Academy of Sciences,
-in session at the Smithsonian Institution, and at night it was taken to
-the White House and exhibited to President and Mrs. Hayes.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 189.--FIRST PHONOGRAPH.]
-
-The form of the first phonograph is shown in Fig. 189. It consisted of
-three principal parts--the mouthpiece A, into which speech was uttered,
-the spirally grooved cylinder B, carrying on its periphery a sheet of
-tin foil, and a second mouthpiece D. The cylinder B and its axial shaft
-were both provided with spiral grooves or screw threads of exactly the
-same pitch, and when the shaft was turned by its crank its screw
-threaded bearings caused the cylinder to slowly advance as it rotated.
-The mouthpiece A had adjacent to the cylinder a flexible diaphragm
-carrying a little point or stylus which bore against the tin foil on the
-cylinder. When the mouthpiece A was spoken into and the cylinder B was
-turned, the little stylus, vibrating from the voice impulses, traced by
-indentations a little jagged path in the tin foil that formed the
-record. To reproduce the record in speech again, the mouthpiece A was
-adjusted away from the cylinder, the cylinder run back to the starting
-point, and mouthpiece D was then brought up to the cylinder. This
-mouthpiece had a diaphragm and stylus similar to the other one, only
-more delicately constructed. This stylus was adjusted to bear lightly in
-the little spiral path in the tin foil traced by the other stylus, and
-as the tin foil revolved with the cylinder its jagged irregularities set
-up the same vibrations in the diaphragm of mouthpiece D as those caused
-by the voice on the other diaphragm, and thus translated the record into
-sounds of articulate speech, exactly corresponding to the words first
-spoken into the instrument. In Fig. 190 is shown a further development
-of the phonograph, in which a single mouthpiece with diaphragm and
-stylus serves the purpose both of recorder for making the record and a
-speaker for reproducing it, a trumpet or horn being used, as indicated
-in dotted lines, to concentrate the vibrations in recording and to
-augment the sound in reproducing.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 190.--SECOND FORM OF PHONOGRAPH.]
-
-The phonograph is in reality a development of the phonautograph, which
-was an instrument invented by Leon Scott in 1857 to automatically record
-sounds by diagrams. There is a model of Scott's phonautograph in the
-National Museum at Washington, D. C, and it consists of a chamber to
-catch the sound waves and an elastic diaphragm with stylus working on a
-revolving cylinder bearing a sheet of paper coated with lampblack. The
-phonograph's record-making mouthpiece, with its diaphragm and stylus, is
-substantially a phonautograph, but instead of simply causing the stylus
-to trace a record on carbon-coated paper and stopping with this result,
-Edison traced a record in a substance--tinfoil--which was capable of
-mechanically translating that record into sound again by a mere reversal
-of the function of the stylus and diaphragm. This was the very essence
-of simplicity and logical reasoning. All records had been heretofore
-traced for visual inspection only. Edison's record was not for visual
-inspection, but was endowed with the mechanical function of reproducing
-sound.
-
-From the first Edison believed that his phonograph was to fill an
-important place in the business activities of the world, since here
-seemed a silent but faithful stenographer which reproduced the words of
-the speaker with absolute fidelity, even to the quality of emphasis and
-inflection, and which made no mistakes, was always even with the speaker
-in its work, and asked no questions. For a number of years, however, the
-invention lay dormant and served no other purpose than that of a
-scientific curiosity or an amusing toy. The difficulty of its practical
-application largely existed in the perishable form of the record, which,
-being in tinfoil, was liable to be mutilated and distorted, and was not
-well adapted for storage or transportation.
-
-A few years after the announcement of Mr. Edison's invention. Dr.
-Alexander Graham Bell, the distinguished inventor of the telephone, with
-his associates, Messrs. Chichester A. Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter,
-directed their attention to the improvement of the phonograph. Dr. Bell
-had received from the French government, upon the recommendation of the
-French Academy of Sciences, the Volta prize of 50,000 francs as a
-recognition of his successful work in acoustics and the invention of the
-telephone, and with this sum he built the Volta Institute in Washington
-and carried on the work of developing the phonograph.
-
-On May 4, 1886, Chichester A. Bell and Sumner Tainter obtained patents
-Nos. 341,214 and 341,288, which covered a great improvement in the
-record of the phonograph. This invention substituted for the tinfoil
-sheet a surface of wax, which was finally fashioned into a cylinder, and
-instead of merely indenting the record on tinfoil the stylus cut a
-distinct groove or kerf in the wax cylinder as it revolved, dislodging
-therefrom a minute filament or shaving and forming a record which was
-not only far more positive in its translating effect and more easily
-transported and stored, but was also less perishable, and besides it
-could be easily effaced without loss of the cylinder by simply smoothing
-off the surface of the cylinder again when it was desired to make a new
-record. This invention quickly grew into practical use, and is known as
-the "Graphophone."
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 191.--THE GRAPHOPHONE, RECORDING AND REPRODUCING
-DEVICES.]
-
-In Fig. 191 is shown on the left a cross section of the diaphragm,
-recording stylus, and wax cylinder, of the graphophone, the stylus
-plowing a tiny groove in the wax cylinder in the act of recording the
-speech, and on the right is shown the reproducing stylus traversing the
-record groove in the wax cylinder, and the diaphragm chamber with which
-the ear tubes are connected. The grooves in the wax, although giving
-forth mechanical movement that is translated into sound, are very
-minute, being only 6/10,000 of an inch deep.
-
-When the possibilities of the graphophone became known, capital was
-quickly supplied for its commercial exploitation, and the Columbia
-Phonograph Company was organized. At the present time, owing to the
-great increase in the business, the control of the graphophone business
-is vested in two branches, the Columbia Phonograph Company, which has
-charge of the selling, and which has offices throughout all the
-principal cities of this country and some of the larger ones of Europe,
-and the American Graphophone Company, which attends to the manufacturing
-branch, and whose factory is located at Bridgeport, Conn., where, it is
-said, that in 1898 the production of the factory reached the point of
-one graphophone for every minute of the day, making a total daily output
-of 600 machines. Although the Bell and Tainter patents of 1886 represent
-the basic principles of the graphophone, its development and perfection
-have been contributed to in many subsequent improvements by Messrs.
-Bell, Tainter, McDonald, and others. The more important of these are
-covered by patents No. 375,579, Dec. 27, 1887; No. 380,535, April 3,
-1888; No. 527,755, Oct. 16, 1894, and No. 579,595, March 30, 1897.
-
-At the beginning of this industry it was thought that the principal use
-of the instrument would be found in business applications, to take the
-place of the stenographer, but it proved difficult to revolutionize
-office methods, especially as the earlier machines were somewhat
-intricate, and the business man had no time to divide in engineering a
-machine. These difficulties, however, have been so far overcome by
-modern improvements and simplification of the machine that its use in
-business houses as an amanuensis has become quite common. The greatest
-use of the graphophone is, however, for amusement purposes. Its songs,
-orchestral and solo renditions, and its humorous monologue reproductions
-constitute to-day a great library of wax cylinders, regularly catalogued
-and sold by the thousands. It will readily be understood that the
-formation of the cylinders must constitute a great business of itself
-when it is remembered that many record cylinders accompany each
-graphophone, and that the latter are turned out at the rate of one a
-minute by a single company. Many thousands of these cylinders are made
-daily. Some are sent out simply as plain wax cylinders, onto which the
-records are made by the voice of the purchaser, while others have
-records made for them of popular music, monologues in dialect, humorous
-speeches, etc. The waxy composition, which is in reality a species of
-soap, is melted in huge pots, and then passes from one floor to
-another, undergoing a refining process in its progress, and finally
-reaches the molds. These molds are arranged in rows around a horizontal
-wheel about eight feet in diameter. The wheel is kept revolving, and a
-man on one side is kept constantly busy in filling the molds with the
-molten material as they reach him. A half revolution of the wheel brings
-the filled molds to the other side of the room, and by that time the
-material has hardened sufficiently to enable another attendant,
-stationed there, to remove the cylinders from the molds. Thus the wheel
-is kept going, receiving at one side a charge of the melted wax and
-discharging at the other molded cylinders, which are afterwards turned
-true on the surface. The record-making department is both unique and
-interesting. Here the records of music are produced, and they are made
-by bands and performers engaged for the purpose, many of which,
-operating at the same time, produce such a medley as to be scarcely
-distinguishable to the visitor. The records are tested by about half a
-hundred women, each of whom has a little compartment or booth framed in
-by glass partitions. The duty of the tester is to decide upon the merits
-of the record by actually listening to it on the graphophone.
-
-A very important feature in record-making, from a commercial standpoint,
-is in means for cheaply duplicating records. If every record cylinder
-had to be made by the separate act of a performer such records would be
-very expensive. An original record is first made by some celebrated
-musician or speaker, and this record is afterwards multiplied and
-reproduced in large numbers. For this purpose an original record by
-suitable mechanism is made to take the place of the speaker or singer,
-and so multiplies and reproduces the original record. The duplicating of
-records was contemplated by Edison from the first, as seen in his
-British patent, 1,644 of 1878, and later appliances for accomplishing
-such results are covered under Tainter's patent, No. 341,287, Bettini's,
-No. 488,381, and McDonald's, No. 559,806. The diaphragms used in the
-recorders and reproducers are made of French rolled plate glass, thinner
-than a sheet of ordinary writing paper. The recording stylus is shaped
-like a little gouge to cut the little grooves in the wax, while the
-corresponding stylus of the reproducer has a ball-shaped end to travel
-in the groove. Both the recording stylus and reproducing ball are made
-of sapphire, chosen on account of its hardness, to resist the great
-frictional wear to which they are subjected. When a record is to be
-effaced from a cylinder, it is turned off smooth on a sort of lathe, and
-the cutting tool or knife for this purpose is also made of sapphire.
-
-The latest, loudest, and most impressive form of the talking machine is
-the "Graphophone Grand." This has a horn attachment exceeding the big
-horn of a brass band in size, and the wax cylinder is about four inches
-in diameter. Its reproductions in music and speech are so full and
-strong as to be clearly heard at the most remote part of a large hall,
-and its versatile voice lends effective rendition to all sorts and kinds
-of sounds, from the inspiring chords of "A Choir Invisible" to the
-grandiloquent and facetious rattle of a noisy and hustling auctioneer.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 192.--MODERN PHONOGRAPH.]
-
-It is not to be understood, however, that the graphophone is the only
-speaking machine on the market, for about 250 patents have been granted
-on phonographs and graphophones. The National Phonograph Company, under
-many later patents granted to Mr. Edison, manufactures and sells the
-phonograph shown in Fig. 192, which is a very ingenious and effective
-instrument. This modern form of phonograph is actuated either by
-electricity or spring power, is regulated by a speed governor, and
-bifurcated ear tubes connect with the diaphragm case, which tubes are
-placed in the ears when the instrument is operated.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 193.--THE GRAMOPHONE RECORDER.]
-
-The gramophone is also another speaking machine. This is the invention
-of Mr. E. Berliner and covered by him in patent No. 372,786, Nov. 8,
-1887. An illustration of the gramophone recorder is given in Fig. 193.
-Instead of a wax cylinder this machine employs a flat disc on which the
-record is formed as a volute spiral groove, gradually drawing toward the
-center. It is produced as follows: A zinc disc is covered by a thin film
-of acid resisting material, such as wax or grease, and is placed in a
-horizontal pan, mounted to revolve as a turn table about a vertical
-axis. A stylus and diaphragm, with speaking tube attached, are arranged
-above the disc, and when spoken into the vibrations of the diaphragm
-cause, through the stylus, a record to be traced through the wax, down
-to the zinc. As the waxed disc and pan are revolved, the stylus and
-diaphragm are gradually moved by gears toward the center of the disc.
-While the record is being traced the waxed disc is kept flooded with
-alcohol from a glass jar, seen in the cut, to soften the film and
-prevent the clogging of the stylus. The disc, when completed, is then
-rinsed off and etched with acid, chromic acid being used, to prevent
-liberation of hydrogen bubbles. The etched disc is then electrotyped to
-form a matrix, and from this electrotype hard rubber duplicates of the
-original record are molded, which are capable of giving 1,000
-reproductions. These rubber discs are placed on the reproducing
-instrument, which is arranged to cause the stylus to freely trail along
-in the spiral groove, and when the disc is rotated under the said stylus
-its record is converted into articulate speech. Such flat disc records
-give quite loud reproductions, are not easily destroyed, and may be
-compactly stored and transported. In the gramophone the diaphragm stands
-at right angles to the record disc and the stylus does not vibrate
-endwise to make a path of varying depth, as in the phonograph and
-graphophone, but the stylus vibrates laterally and traces a little
-zigzag line.
-
-The cost of a talking machine is from $5 to $150. The wax cylinders cost
-from 25 cents to $3.00, and the cylinders will hold a record of from 800
-to 1,200 words, equivalent to about three or four pages of print in an
-octavo volume. An important part of such machines is the motor, which
-must maintain a uniform rate of speed, and much ingenuity has been
-displayed on this part of the machine. Probably the largest use of the
-phonograph or graphophone is for home amusement and exhibition purpose.
-The coin operated, or "nickel-in-the-slot" machine, finds a popular
-demand, while its utilitarian use as an amanuensis, or stenographer, is
-as yet a subordinate one.
-
-Although twenty-one years of age, and of full growth, the phonograph is
-ever a wonderfully new and impressive device. When listening to it for
-the first time the conflict of emotions which it excites is difficult to
-analyze. A voice full of human quality, of clear and familiar
-enunciation, and speaking in the most matter of fact way about the most
-matter of fact things, proceeds from an insignificant and insensible bit
-of metal, presenting the apparently anomalous condition of speech
-without a speaker. When convinced that there is no trick, astonishment
-struggles with admiration and a desire for a personal introduction. We
-speak into it, and have the unique experience of listening to our own
-voice emanating from a different part of the room, instead of our own
-mouths. It is really difficult to believe one's own senses, and no
-wonder that it inspires the superstitious with a feeling of awe. If Mr.
-Edison had lived a few centuries earlier, and had produced such an
-instrument, his life might have paid the penalty of his ingenuity, for
-without doubt he would have been classed as a wizard, and of close kin
-to the evil one.
-
-The phonograph is the truth-telling and incontrovertible witness whose
-memory is never at fault, and whose nerves are never discomposed by any
-cross-examination. As evidence in court its word cannot be doubted, and
-the witness confronted by his own utterances from the phonograph must
-yield to its infallible dictum. The dying father, unable to write, may
-dictate to it his last will and testament, and leave a message for his
-loved ones, and long after the sod is green on his grave, that message
-would still be audible, and fresh and true to all the tender inflections
-of the heart's emotions. By its aid the Holy Father, at Rome, may give
-his personal and audible blessing to his children throughout the world,
-though separated by thousands of miles. Who can tell what stories of
-interesting and instructive knowledge would be in our possession if the
-phonograph had appeared in the ages of the past, and its records had
-been preserved? The voices of our dead ancestors, whose portraits hang
-on the wall, and the eloquent words of Demosthenes and Cicero would be
-preserved to us. In fact, we should be brought into vocal contact with
-the world's heroes, martyrs, saints, and sages, and all the great actors
-and teachers whose personalities have made history, and whose teachings
-have given us our best ideals. But perhaps the most practical and best
-characterization of the phonograph is given in Mr. Edison's own terse
-words. He says: "In one sense it knows more than we know ourselves, for
-it retains the memory of many things which we forget, even though we
-have said them. It teaches us to be careful of what we say, and I am
-sure makes men more brief, more businesslike, and more
-straightforward."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIII.
-
-OPTICS.
-
- EARLY TELESCOPES--THE LICK TELESCOPE--THE GRANDE LUNETTE--THE
- STEREO-BINOCULAR FIELD GLASS--THE MICROSCOPE--THE SPECTROSCOPE--
- POLARIZATION OF LIGHT--KALEIDOSCOPE--STEREOSCOPE--RANGE FINDER--
- KINETOSCOPE AND MOVING PICTURES.
-
-
-"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the
-light that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness."
-Thus early in the account of the creation is evidenced man's
-appreciation of the value of vision. Of all the senses which place man
-in intelligent relation to his environment none is so important as
-sight. More than all the others does it establish our relation to the
-material world. When the babe is born, and its little emancipated soul
-is brought in contact with the world, its wondering gaze sees the
-panorama of visible things touching its eyes, and it stretches forth its
-tiny arms in the vain effort to pluck the stars, apparently within its
-reach. Distance and time add their values to light and vision, and as
-his life expands to greater fullness, the perspective of his existence
-creeps into his consciousness, and he finds himself farther away, but
-still peering beyond into the infinity of distance, searching for the
-visible evidence of knowledge. From the earliest times man learned to
-spurn the groveling things of earth, and to delight his soul with the
-marvelous infinity of the sky and its heavenly bodies. _Nunc ad astra_
-was his ambitious cry, and in no field has his quest for knowledge been
-more skillfully directed, faithfully maintained, or richly rewarded than
-in the study of astronomy. Many important discoveries in this field have
-been made in the Nineteenth Century, among which may be named the
-discovery of the planet Neptune by Adams, Leverrier and Galle in 1846;
-the satellites of Neptune in 1846, and those of Saturn in 1848 by Mr.
-Lassell; the two satellites of Mars by Prof. Asaph Hall in 1877; and the
-discovery of the so-called canals of Mars by Schiaparelli in 1877. But
-the purpose of this work is to deal with material inventions rather than
-scientific discoveries, and the leading invention in optics is the
-telescope.
-
-Who invented the telescope is a question that cannot now be answered.
-For many years Galileo was credited in popular estimation with having
-made this invention in 1609. But it is now known that, while he built
-telescopes, and discovered the mountains of the moon, the spots on the
-sun's disk, the crescent phases of Venus, the four satellites of
-Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and made the first important astronomical
-observations, the invention of the telescope, as an instrument, could
-not be rightly claimed for him. Borelli credits it to Jansen &
-Lippersheim, spectacle makers, of Middelburg, Holland, about 1590;
-Descartes credits it to James Metius; Humboldt says Hans Lippershey (or
-Laprey), a native of Wesel and a spectacle maker of Middelburg in 1608,
-naming also Jacob Adriansz, sometimes called Metius and also Zacharias
-Jansen.
-
-The great impetus given to the study of astronomy by Galileo, in 1609,
-was followed up by Huygens in 1655 with his improvement, by Gregory's
-reflecting telescope of 1663, and Newton's in 1668. In 1733 Chester More
-Hall invented the achromatic object glass of crown and flint glass. In
-1758 John Dolland reinvented and introduced the same in the manufacture
-of telescopes. In 1779 Herschel built his reflecting telescope, and in
-March, 1781, he discovered the planet Uranus. In 1789 he built his great
-reflector. It was while the latter telescope was exploring the heavens
-that the Nineteenth Century began, and in the early part of this century
-Herschel laid before the Royal Society a catalogue of many thousand
-nebulae and clusters of stars. Among the great telescopes of the
-Nineteenth Century may be mentioned that made in London in 1802 for the
-observatory of Madrid, which cost L11,000; the great reflecting
-telescope of the Earl of Rosse, erected at Parsonstown, in Ireland, in
-1842-45. This was 6 feet diameter, 54 feet focal length, and cost over
-L20,000; the magnificent equatorial telescopes set up at the National
-Observatories at Greenwich and Paris in 1860; Foucault's reflecting
-telescope at Paris, 1862, whose mirror was 311/2 inches diameter, and
-focal length 173/4 feet; Mr. R. S. Newall's telescope, set up at Gateshead
-by Cookes, of York, in 1870; object glass, 25 inches, tube, 30 feet; Mr.
-A. Ainslie Common's reflecting telescope, Ealing, Middlesex, 1879,
-mirror, 371/2 inches diameter, tube, 20 feet; the telescope at the United
-States Observatory, at Washington, 1873, object glass, 26 inches, tube,
-33 feet long; and the large refracting telescope by Howard Grubb, at
-Dublin, for Vienna, 1881.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 194.--TELESCOPE AT LICK OBSERVATORY.]
-
-In more recent times the great refracting telescope by Alvan Clark &
-Sons, for the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, California, in 1888,
-attracted attention as superior to anything in existence up to that
-time. This is shown in Fig. 194. The supporting column and base are of
-iron, weighing twenty-five tons. This rests on a masonry foundation,
-which forms the tomb of James Lick, its founder. The tube is 52 feet
-long, 4 feet diameter in the middle, tapering to a little over 3 feet at
-the ends. The object glass is 36 inches in diameter, and weighs, with
-its cell, 530 lbs. The steel dome is 75 feet 4 inches in diameter, and
-the weight of its moving parts is 100 tons. This instrument was
-perfectly equipped with all gauges, scales, photographic and
-spectroscope accessories, and fulfilled the condition imposed in the
-trust deed of James Lick, of being "superior to and more powerful than
-any telescope made." It is a giant among instruments of precision, and
-its ponderous aspect still asserts the dignity of its purpose, and
-impresses even the frivolous visitor with a silent and thoughtful
-respect.
-
-It is not to be understood, however, that the great Lick telescope still
-maintains its supremacy. The Yerkes telescope, which was exhibited at
-the World's Fair Exposition in 1893, at Chicago, had an object glass of
-3.28 feet in diameter and a focal distance of 65 feet, and it moved
-around a central axis in a vast cupola or dome 78 feet in diameter. The
-Grand Equatorial of Gruenewald, at the recent Berlin Exposition, was
-even still larger, since its object glass was 3 feet 7 inches, or nearly
-2 inches larger than the Yerkes.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 195.--GREAT TELESCOPE, PARIS EXPOSITION. 1900.]
-
-Even these great instruments have now been excelled in the Grande
-Lunette, of the Paris Exposition, in 1900. When it is remembered that an
-increase in the diameter of any circular body causes, for every
-additional inch, a vastly disproportionate increase in the
-cross-sectional area and weight, it will readily be seen how handicapped
-the instrument maker is in any increase in the power of such a
-telescope. An increased diameter of a few inches in the glass lens means
-an enormous increase in the cross section, its weight and the
-difficulties attending its successful casting free from imperfections,
-and the perfect grinding and polishing of the lens. An increased length
-of the tubular case of the telescope is liable to involve, from the
-great weight, a slight bending or springing out of axial alignment when
-supported near the middle for equatorial adjustment, and a few feet
-increase in the diameter of the massive and movable steel dome add
-greatly to the weight and incidental difficulties of constructing and
-delicately adjusting it. The great Lunette, see Fig. 195, changes
-entirely the method of manipulating the telescope, and also, in a
-measure, its principle of action, so as to avoid some of these
-difficulties. Its tube, instead of being pointed upwardly through the
-slot of a movable dome, and made adjustable with the dome, is laid down
-horizontally on a stationary base of supporting pillars, and an
-adjustable reflecting mirror and regulating mechanism, called a
-"siderostat," is arranged at one end, to catch the view of the star, or
-moon, and reflect it into the great tube, and through its lenses on to
-the screen at the other end. The tube is 197 feet long, and the object
-glass or lens is a fraction over 4 feet in diameter. There are two of
-these, which together cost $120,000. The siderostat is supported on a
-large cast iron frame, and is provided with clockwork and devices for
-causing the mirror to follow the movement of the celestial object which
-is being viewed. The entire weight of the siderostat and base is 99,000
-pounds, the movable part weighs 33,000 pounds, and the mirror and its
-cell weigh 14,740. The mirror itself is of glass, weighs 7,920 pounds,
-is 6.56 feet in diameter, and 10.63 inches thick. To facilitate the
-free and sensitive adjustment of this great mirror its base floats in a
-reservoir of mercury. The entire cost of the instrument is said to be
-over 2,000,000 francs. With the wonderful strides of improvement in all
-fields of invention, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the
-revelations in astronomy may keep pace with those of mundane interest,
-and that great discoveries may be made in the near future. The average
-individual does not bother himself much about the calculation of
-eclipses, or the laws which govern the movements of an erratic comet. He
-is, however, intensely personal and neighborly, and what he wants to
-know is, Is Mars inhabited? and if so, are its denizens men, and may we
-communicate with them? The wonderful regularity of the so-called canals,
-of apparently intelligent design, already discovered on the surface of
-Mars, has stimulated this neighborly curiosity into an expectant
-interest, and who knows what marvelous introductions the modern
-telescope may bring about?
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 196.--PROF. ABBE'S STEREO-BINOCULAR.]
-
-Many minor improvements have been made in recent years in the form of
-the telescope known as field and opera glasses. Probably the most
-important of these is the Stereo-Binocular, invented by Prof. Abbe, of
-Germany, and patented by him in that country in 1893, and also in the
-United States, June 22, 1897, No. 584,976. This gives a much increased
-field, and also an increased stereoscopic effect, or conception of
-relative distance, by having the object glasses wider apart than the
-eyes of the observer. The field is also flatter, the instrument rendered
-very much smaller and more compact, and no change of focus is required
-for changing from near-by to remote objects. The rays of light, see Fig.
-196, enter the object glasses, strike a double reflecting prism, and are
-first thrown away from the observer, and then striking another double
-reflecting prism, arranged after Porro's method, are returned to the
-observer in line with the eye-piece.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 197.--MODERN MICROSCOPE.]
-
-_The Microscope._--Just as the telescope reveals the infinity of the
-great world above and around us, so does the microscope reveal the
-infinity of the little world around, about, and within us. Its origin,
-like the telescope, is hidden in the dim distance of the past, but it is
-believed to antedate the telescope. Probably the dewdrop on a leaf
-constituted the first microscope. The magnifying power of glass balls
-was known to the Chinese, Japanese, Assyrians and Egyptians, and a lens
-made of rock crystal was found among the ruins of Ninevah. The
-microscope is either single or compound. In the single the object is
-viewed directly. In the compound two or more lenses are so arranged that
-the image formed by one is magnified by the others, and viewed as if it
-were the object itself. The single microscope cannot be claimed by any
-inventor. The double or compound microscope was invented by Farncelli in
-1624, and it was in that century that the first important applications
-were made for scientific investigation. Most of the investigations were
-made, however, by the single microscope, and the names of Borelli,
-Malpighi, Lieberkuhn, Hooke, Leeuwenhoek, Swammerden, Lyonnet, Hewson
-and Ellis were conspicuous as the fathers of microscopy. For more than
-two hundred and fifty years the microscope has lent its magnifying aid
-to the eye, and step by step it has been gradually improved. Joseph J.
-Lister's aplanatic foci and compound objective, in 1829, was a notable
-improvement in the first part of the century, and this has been followed
-up by contributions from various inventors, until the modern compound
-microscope, Fig. 197, is a triumph of the optician's art, and an
-instrument of wonderful accuracy and power. Its greatest work belongs to
-the Nineteenth Century.
-
-Multiplying the dimensions of the smallest cells to more than a thousand
-times their size, it has brought into range of vision an unseen world,
-developed new sciences, and added immensely to the stores of human
-knowledge. To the biologist and botanist it has yielded its revelations
-in cell structure and growth; to the physician its diagnosis in urinary
-and blood examinations; in histology and morbid secretions it is
-invaluable; in geology its contribution to the knowledge of the physical
-history of the world is of equal importance; while in the study of
-bacteriology and disease germs it has so revolutionized our conception
-of the laws of health and sanitation, and the conditions of life and
-death, and is so intimately related to our well being, as to mark
-probably the greatest era of progress and useful extension of knowledge
-the world has ever known. In the useful arts, also, it figures in almost
-every department; the jeweler, the engraver, the miner, the
-agriculturalist, the chemical manufacturer, and the food inspector, all
-make use of its magnifying powers.
-
-To the microscope the art of photography has lent its valuable aid, so
-that all the revelations of the microscope are susceptible of
-preservation in permanent records, as photomicrographs. A curious, but
-very practical, use of the microscope was made in the establishment of
-the pigeon-post during the siege of Paris in 1870-71. Shut in from the
-outside world, the resourceful Frenchmen photographed the news of the
-day to such microscopic dimensions that a single pigeon could carry
-50,000 messages, which weighed less than a gramme. These messages were
-placed on delicate films, rolled up, and packed in quills. The pigeons
-were sent out in balloons, and flying back to Paris from the outer
-world, carried these messages back and forth, and the messages, when
-reaching their destination, were enlarged to legible dimensions and
-interpreted by the microscope. It is said that two and a half million
-messages were in this way transmitted.
-
-_The Spectroscope._--To the popular comprehension, the best definition
-of any scientific instrument is to tell what it does. Few things,
-however, so tax the credulity of the uninformed as a description of the
-functions and possibilities of the spectroscope. To state that it tells
-what kind of materials there are in the sun and stars, millions of miles
-away, seems like an unwarranted attack upon one's imagination, and yet
-this is one of the things that the spectroscope does. A few commonplace
-observations will help to explain its action. Every schoolboy has seen
-the play of colors through a triangular prism of glass, as seen in Fig.
-198, and the older generation remembers the old-fashioned candelabras,
-which, with their brilliant pendants of cut glass cast beautiful colored
-patches on the wall, and whose dancing beauties delighted the souls of
-many a boy and girl of fifty years ago. This spread of color is called
-the _spectrum_, and it is with the spectrum that the spectroscope has to
-deal. The white light of the sun is composed of the seven colors: red,
-orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. When a sunbeam falls
-upon a triangular prism of glass the beam is bent from its course at an
-angle, and the different colors of its light are deflected at different
-angles or degrees, and consequently, instead of appearing as white
-light, the beam is spread out into a divergent wedge shape, that
-separates the colors and produces what is called the spectrum. This
-discovery was made by Sir Isaac Newton, in 1675.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 198.--PRISM AND SPECTRUM.]
-
-In 1802 Dr. Wollaston, in repeating Newton's experiments, admitted the
-beam of light through a very narrow slit, instead of a round hole, and
-noticed that the spectrum, as spread out in its colors, was not a
-continuous shading from one color into another, but he found black lines
-crossing the spectrum. These black lines were, in 1814, carefully mapped
-by a German optician, named Fraunhofer, and were found by him to be 576
-in number. The next step toward the spectroscope was made by Simms, an
-optician, in 1830, who placed a lens in front of the prism so that the
-slit was in the focus of the lens, and the light passing through the
-slit first passed through the lens, and then through the prism. This
-lens was called the "Collimating" lens. With these preliminary steps of
-development, Prof. Kirchhoff began in 1859 his great work of mapping the
-solar spectrum, and he, in connection with Prof. Bunsen, found several
-thousand of the dark lines in the spectrum, and laid the foundation of
-_spectrum-analysis_, or the determination of the nature of substances
-from the spectra cast by them when in an incandescent state.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 199.--KIRCHHOFF'S FOUR-PRISM SPECTROSCOPE.]
-
-The form of Kirchhoff's spectroscope is given in Fig. 199. The slit
-forming slide is seen on the far end of the tube A, and is shown in
-enlarged detached view on the right. The collimating lens is contained
-in the tube A. The beam of light entering the slit at the far end of the
-tube A, passes through the lens in that tube, and then passes
-successively through the four triangular prisms on the table, and is
-successively bent by these and thrown in the form of a spectrum into the
-telescopic tube B, and is seen by the eye at the remote end of said
-tube B. The greater the number of prisms the wider is the dispersion of
-the rays and the longer is the spectrum, and the more easily studied are
-the peculiar lines which Wollaston and Fraunhofer found crossing it. It
-was the presence of these black lines on the spectrum which led to the
-development of the spectroscope and established its significance and
-value. The work which the spectroscope does is simply to form an
-extended spectrum, but this spectrum varies with the different kinds of
-light admitted through the slit, the different kinds of light showing
-different arrangement of colored bands and dark lines, and such a
-definite relation between the light of various incandescing elementary
-bodies and their spectra has been found to exist, that the casting of a
-definite spectrum from the sun or stars indicates with certainty the
-presence in the sun or stars of the incandescing element which produces
-that spectrum. This application of the spectroscope is called
-_spectrum-analysis_, and by rendering any substance incandescent in the
-flame of a Bunsen burner, and directing the light of its incandescence
-through the spectroscope, its spectrum gives the basis of intelligent
-chemical identification. So delicate is its test that it has been
-calculated by Profs. Kirchhoff and Bunsen that the eighteen-millionth
-part of a grain of sodium may be detected.
-
-The useful applications of the spectroscope are found principally in
-astronomy and the chemical laboratory, but some industrial applications
-have also been made of it in metallurgical operations, as, for instance,
-in determining the progress of the Bessemer process of making steel, and
-also for testing alloys. Many hitherto unknown metals have also been
-discovered through the agency of the spectroscope, among which may be
-named caesium, rubidium, thallium, and indium.
-
-The field of optics is so large that many interesting branches can
-receive only a casual mention. The polarization of light, first noticed
-by Bartholinus in 1669, and by Huygens in 1678, in experiments in double
-refraction with crystals of Iceland spar, were followed in the
-Nineteenth Century by the discoveries of Malus, Arago, Fresnel,
-Brewster, and Biot. Malus, in 1808, discovered polarization by
-reflection from polished surfaces; Arago, in 1811, discovered colored
-polarization; Nicol, in 1828, invented the prism named after him. The
-Kaleidoscope was invented by Sir David Brewster in 1814, and British
-patent No. 4,136 granted him July 10, 1817, for the same. The reflecting
-stereoscope was invented by Wheatstone in 1838, and the lenticular form,
-as now generally used, was invented by Sir David Brewster in the year
-1849.
-
-Among the more recent inventions of importance in optics may be
-mentioned the Fiske range finder (Patent No. 418,510, December 31,
-1889), for enabling a gunner to direct his cannon upon the target when
-its distance is unknown, or even when obscured by fog or smoke. The
-Beehler solarometer (Patent No. 533,340, January 29, 1895), is also an
-important scientific invention, which has for its object to determine
-the position, or the compass error, of a ship at sea when the horizon is
-obscured. There is also in late years a great variety of entertaining
-and instructive apparatus in photography, and improvements in the
-stereopticon and magic lantern.
-
-The most interesting of the latter is the Kinetoscope, for producing the
-so-called moving pictures, in which the magic lantern and modern results
-in the photographic art, have wrought wonders on the screen. The
-old-fashioned magic lantern projections were interesting and instructive
-object lessons, but modern invention has endowed the pictures with all
-the atmosphere and naturalness of real living scenes, in which the
-figures move and act, and the scenes change just as they do in real
-life.
-
-The foundation principle upon which these moving pictures exist is that
-of persistence of vision. If a succession of views of the same object in
-motion is made, with the moving object in each consecutive figure
-changed just a little, and progressively so in a constantly advancing
-attitude in a definite movement, and those different positions are
-rapidly presented in sequence to the eye in detached views, the figures
-appear to constantly move through the changing position. The theory of
-the duration of visible impressions was taught by Leonardo da Vinci in
-the fifteenth century, and practical advantage has been taken of the
-same in a variety of old-fashioned toys, known as the phenakistoscope,
-thaumatrope, zoetrope, stroboscope, rotascope, etc.
-
-The phenakistoscope was invented by Dr. Roget, and improved by Plateau
-in 1829, and also by Faraday. A circular disk, bearing a circular series
-of figures is mounted on a handle to revolve. The figures following each
-other show consecutively a gradual progression, or change in position.
-The disk has radial slits around its periphery, and is held with its
-figured face before a looking glass. When the reflection is viewed in
-the looking glass through the slits, the figures rapidly passing in
-succession before the slits appear to have the movements of life. The
-thaumatrope, which originated with Sir John Herschel, consists of a thin
-disc, bearing on opposite sides two associated objects, such as a bird
-and a cage, or a horse and a man. This, when rotated about its diameter,
-to bring alternately the bird and cage into view, appears to bring the
-bird into the cage, or to put the rider on the horse's back, as the case
-may be. The zoetrope, described in the _Philosophical Magazine_,
-January, 1834, employs the general principle of the phenakistoscope,
-except that, instead of a disc before a looking glass, an upright
-rotating drum or cylinder is employed, and has its figures on the
-inside, and is viewed, when rotating, through a succession of vertical
-slits in the drum.
-
-The earliest patents found in this art are the British patent to Shaw,
-No. 1,260, May 22, 1860; United States patents, Sellers, No. 31,357,
-February 5, 1861, and Lincoln, No. 64,117, April 23, 1867. In Brown's
-patent, No. 93,594, August 10, 1869, the magic lantern was applied to
-the moving pictures, and Muybridge's photos of trotting horses in 1872,
-followed by instantaneous photography, which enabled a great number of
-views to be taken of moving objects in rapid succession, laid the
-foundation for the modern art.
-
-[Illustration: SHOOTING GLASS BALLS.
-
-FIRING DISAPPEARING GUN.
-
-FIG. 200.]
-
-In Fig. 200 is shown a succession of instantaneous photographs of a
-sportsman shooting a glass ball, and the firing of a disappearing gun. A
-multiplicity of views extending through all the phases of these
-movements, when successively presented in order, before a magic lantern
-projecting apparatus, gives to the eye the striking semblance of real
-movements. In practice these views are taken by special cameras, and are
-printed on long transparent ribbons that contain many hundreds, and even
-thousands of the views. Edison's Kinetoscope is covered by patent No.
-493,426, March 14, 1893, and his instrument known as the Vitascope, is
-one of those used for projecting the views upon a screen. In Fig. 201 a
-similar instrument, called the Biograph, is shown, in which the seeming
-approach of the locomotive makes those who witness it shudder with the
-apparent danger.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 201.--BIOGRAPH IN THE THEATRE.]
-
-To secure the best results, the ribbon with its views should remain with
-a figure the longest possible time between the light and the lens, and
-the shifting to the next view should be as nearly instantaneous as
-possible. This problem has been admirably solved by C. F. Jenkins, who,
-in 1894, devised means for accomplishing it, and was one of the first,
-if not the first, to successfully project the views on a large screen
-adapted to public exhibitions. His apparatus is shown in Fig. 202. An
-electric motor, seen on the left, drives, through a belt and pulley, a
-countershaft, and also through a worm gear turns another shaft parallel
-to the countershaft, and bearing a sprocket pulley, whose teeth
-penetrate little marginal holes in the ribbon of views, and, drawing it
-down from the reel above, deliver it to the receiving reel on the right.
-On the end of the countershaft, just in front of the sprocket wheel, is
-a revolving crank pin or spool, which intermittently beats down the
-ribbon of views, causing the latter to advance through the vertical
-guides in front of the lens by a succession of jerks. This holds each
-view for a maximum period before the lens, and then suddenly jerks the
-ribbon to bring the next view into position. In the Kinetoscope the
-animated pictures not only present the movements of life, but, by a
-combination with the phonograph, the audible speech, or music fitting
-the occasion, is also presented at the same time, making a marvelous
-simulation of real life to both the eye and the ear.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 202.--JENKINS' PHANTASCOPE.]
-
-Among the latest promises of the inventor is the "Distance Seer," or
-telectroscope, which, it is said, enables one to see at any distance
-over electric wires, just as one may telegraph or telephone over them.
-The surprises of the Nineteenth Century have been so many and so
-astounding, and the principles of this invention are so far correct,
-that it would be dogmatic to say that this hope may not be realized.
-
-To the sum total of human knowledge no department of science has
-contributed more than that of optics. With the telescope man has climbed
-into the limitless space of the heavens, and ascertained the infinite
-vastness of the universe. The flaming sun which warms and vitalizes the
-world, is found more than ninety millions of miles away. The nearest
-fixed stars visible to the naked eye are more than 200,000 times the
-distance of the sun, and their light, traveling at the rate of 190,000
-miles a second, requires more than three years to reach us. Although so
-far away, their size, distance, and constitution have been ascertained,
-and their movements are scheduled with such accuracy that the going and
-coming thereof are brought to the exactness of a railroad time table.
-The astronomer predicts an eclipse, and on the minute the spheres swing
-into line, verifying, beyond all doubt, the correctness of the laws
-predicated for their movements. The wonders of the telescope, the
-microscope, and the spectroscope are, however, but suggestions of what
-we may still expect, for science abundantly teaches that the eye may yet
-see what to the eye is now invisible, and that light exists in what may
-now seem darkness.
-
-No man may say with certainty what thought was uppermost in Goethe's
-mind when, grappling in the final struggle with the King of Terrors, he
-exclaimed "Mehr licht!" It may be that it was but the wish to dispel the
-gathering gloom of his dimming senses, or perchance the unfolding of an
-illuminated vision of a brighter threshold, but certain it is that no
-words so voice the aspirations of an enlightened humanity as that one
-cry of "More light!"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIV.
-
-PHOTOGRAPHY.
-
- EXPERIMENTS OF WEDGEWOOD AND DAVY--NIEPCE'S HELIOGRAPHY--DAGUERRE
- AND THE DAGUERREOTYPE--FOX TALBOT MAKES FIRST PROOFS FROM
- NEGATIVES--SIR JOHN HERSCHEL INTRODUCES GLASS PLATES--THE COLLODION
- PROCESS--SILVER AND CARBON PRINTS--AMBROTYPES--EMULSIONS--DRY
- PLATES--THE KODAK CAMERA--THE PLATINOTYPE--PHOTOGRAPHY IN COLORS--
- PANORAMA CAMERAS--PHOTO-ENGRAVING AND PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHY--HALF TONE
- ENGRAVING.
-
-"Art's proudest triumph is to imitate nature."
-
-
-When nature paints she does so with the brush of beauty, dipped in the
-pigment of truth. The tender affection of a ray of light touches the
-heart of a rose, brings a blush to its cheek, and life, becoming the
-bride of chemical affinity, blooms into surpassing beauty and
-loveliness. Photography is closely allied to nature's painting, for just
-as light brings into existence nature's living beauties, so does light
-fix, preserve, and perpetuate these beauties by the same subtile and
-mysterious agency of a quickened chemical affinity. Photography is both
-an art and a science, and as such is both beautiful and true. It is an
-art intimately associated with the tenderest affections of the human
-heart in keeping alive its precious memories. By it the youthful
-sweetheart of long ago, the loving face of the departed mother, and the
-cherished form of the dead child are brought back to us in familiar
-presence, while our great men have become the every-day friends and
-ideals of the common people. What an enrichment and satisfaction it
-would have added to our lives if the art had been coeval with history,
-and all the world's exalted scenes and faces had come to us through the
-camera with the knowledge of absolute truth and fidelity. But not only
-in portraiture is photography a great art, for it catches the stately
-pose of the mountain, the grandeur of the sea, the beauty of the forest,
-or the majesty of Niagara Falls, and brings them all home to us, even to
-the vision of the bed-ridden invalid. The camera alike records the
-secrets of the starry heavens and the bacteria of the microscopic world.
-Hanging on the tail of a kite it photographs the face of mother earth,
-and, acting quicker than the lightning, it catches and defines the path
-of that erratic flash. It plays the part of a private detective, and its
-testimony in court is never doubted. The architect, engineer, and
-illustrator find it in constant requisition. By the aid of the Roentgen
-Rays, it locates a bullet in a wounded soldier, and takes a picture of
-one's spinal column. In fact, it sees and records things both visible
-and invisible, acts with the rapidity of thought, and is never mistaken.
-
-The art of photography, named from the two Greek words [Greek: photos
-graphe] (the writing of light), is a comparatively new one, and belongs
-entirely to the Nineteenth Century. It was known to the ancient
-alchemists that "horn silver" (fused chloride of silver) would blacken
-on exposure to light, but there was neither any clear understanding of
-the nature of this action, nor any application made of it prior to the
-year 1800. We now know that the art of photography is dependent upon the
-actinic effect of certain of the rays of the spectrum upon certain
-chemical salts, notably those of silver and chromic acid, in connection
-with organic matter. The rays which have this effect are the blue and
-violet rays at one end of the spectrum, and even invisible rays beyond
-the violet, the red and yellow rays having little or no such actinic
-effect.
-
-That which made photography possible for the Nineteenth Century was the
-philosophical observation of Scheele, in 1777, upon the decomposing
-influence of light on the salts of silver, and the superior activity of
-the violet rays of the spectrum over the others in producing this
-effect. In 1801 Ritter proved the existence of such invisible rays
-beyond the violet end of the visible spectrum by the power they
-possessed of blackening chloride of silver.
-
-_Earliest Application of Principles._--The first attempt to render the
-blackening of silver salts by light available for artistic purposes, was
-made by Wedgewood and Davy in 1802. A sheet of white paper was saturated
-with a solution of nitrate of silver, and the shadow of the figure
-intended to be copied was projected upon it. Where the shadow fell the
-paper remained white, while the surrounding exposed parts darkened under
-the sun's rays. There was, however, no means of fixing such a picture,
-and in time the white parts would also turn black.
-
-_Introduction of Camera._--The camera obscura, a very old invention
-designed for the use of artists in copying from nature, was at a very
-early period brought into this art, but it was found that the chemicals
-employed by Wedgewood and Davy were not sufficiently sensitive to be
-affected by its subdued light. In 1814, however, Joseph Nicephore
-Niepce, of Chalons, invented a process that utilized the camera, and
-which was called "Heliography," or sun drawing. In 1827 he discarded
-the use of silver salts, and employed a resin known as "Bitumen of
-Judea" (asphaltum). A plate was coated with a solution of this resin and
-exposed. The light acting upon the plate rendered the resin insoluble
-where exposed, and left it soluble under the shadows. Hence, when
-treated with an oleaginous solvent the shadows dissolved out, and the
-lights, represented by the undissolved resin, formed a picture, which
-was in reality a permanent negative. The process, however, was slow,
-requiring some hours.
-
-_The Daguerreotype._--In 1829 Niepce and Daguerre became partners, and
-in 1839, after the death of the elder Niepce, the process named after
-Daguerre was perfected (British patent No. 8,194, of 1839). He abandoned
-the resin as a sensitive material, and went back to the salts of silver.
-He employed a polished silver surfaced plate, and exposed it to the
-action of the vapors of iodine, so as to form a layer of iodide of
-silver upon the surface, which rendered it very sensitive. By a short
-exposure in the camera an effect was produced, not visible to the eye,
-but appearing when the plate was subjected to the vapor of mercury. This
-process reduced the time required from hours to minutes, and as it
-involved the production of a latent image, which was subsequently
-developed by a chemical agent, it represented practically the beginning
-of the photographic art as practiced to-day. Daguerre sought also to
-permanently fix his pictures, but this was accomplished only imperfectly
-until 1839, when Sir John Herschel made known the properties of the
-hyposulphites for dissolving the salts of silver. In 1844 Hunt
-introduced the protosulphate of iron as a developer.
-
-_Production of Positive Proofs from Negatives._--This was first done by
-Mr. Fox Talbot, of England, between 1834 and 1839. In his first
-communication to the Royal Society, in January, 1839, it was directed
-that the paper should be dipped first in a solution of chloride of
-sodium, and then in nitrate of silver, which, by reaction, produced, on
-the face of the paper, chloride of silver, which was more sensitive to
-the light than nitrate of silver. The object to be reproduced was laid
-in contact with the prepared paper, and exposed to the light until a
-copy was produced which was a negative, having the lights and shadows
-reversed. A second sheet was then prepared, and the first or negative
-impression was laid upon it, and used as a stencil to produce a second
-print which, by a reversal of the lights and shadows, formed an exact
-reproduction of the original. In 1841, British patent No. 8,842 was
-obtained by Mr. Talbot, for what he called the "Calotype," and which was
-afterward known as the "Talbotype." A sheet of paper was first coated
-with iodide of silver, by soaking it alternately in iodide of potassium
-and nitrate of silver, and was then washed with a solution of gallic
-acid containing nitrate of silver, by which the sensitiveness to light
-was increased. An exposure of some seconds or minutes, according to the
-brightness of the light, produced an impression upon the plate, which,
-when treated with a fresh portion of gallic acid and nitrate of silver,
-developed into the image. After being fixed it formed a negative from
-which any number of prints might be obtained. The Talbot process
-represented a great advance in this art. Glass plates to retain the
-sensitive film were introduced by Sir John Herschel in 1839, and were a
-great improvement over the paper negatives, which latter, from lack of
-transparency and uniformity in texture, had prevented fine definition
-and sharpness of outline. Blue printing was also invented by Sir John
-Herschel in 1842, and he was the first to apply the term "negative" in
-photography. In 1848 M. Niepce de St. Victor, a nephew of Daguerre's
-former partner, applied to the glass a film of albumen to receive the
-sensitive silver coating.
-
-_Collodion Process._--The most important step in the preparation of the
-negative was the application of collodion. This is a solution of
-pyroxilin in ether and alcohol, which rapidly evaporates and leaves a
-thin film adhering to the glass. M. Le Gray, of Paris, was the first to
-suggest collodion for this purpose, but Mr. Scott Archer, of London, in
-1851, was the first to carry it out practically. A clean plate of glass
-is coated with collodion sensitized with iodides of potassium, etc., and
-is then immersed in a solution of nitrate of silver. Metallic silver
-takes the place of potassium, forming insoluble iodide of silver on the
-film. The plate is then exposed and the latent image developed by an
-aqueous solution of pyrogallic acid, or protosulphate of iron. When
-sufficiently developed, the plate is washed, and the image fixed by
-dissolving the unacted-upon iodide of silver with a solution of cyanide
-of potassium or hyposulphite of soda. This completed the negative or
-stencil from which the positives are printed by passing rays of light
-through it upon sensitive paper.
-
-_The Ambrotype_ succeeded the Daguerreotype, and was produced by making
-a very thin negative by under exposure on glass, using the collodion
-process, and, after drying, backing the glass with black asphaltum
-varnish or black velvet, causing the dense portions of the negative to
-appear white by reflected light, and the transparent portions black.
-Such pictures were quickly made, and were much in vogue forty years ago,
-but are now obsolete. A modification of the ambrotype, however, still
-survives in what is known as the "tin-type" or "ferro-type." In the
-tin-type the collodion picture is made directly upon a very thin iron
-plate, covered with black enamel, which both protects the plate from
-the action of the chemicals in the bath, and forms the equivalent of the
-black background of the ambrotype.
-
-_Silver Printing._--A sheet of paper, previously treated with a solution
-of chloride of sodium and dried, is sensitized in an alkaline bath of
-nitrate of silver. When the paper is exposed under a negative, the light
-through the transparent parts of the negative reduces the silver,
-converting the chloride, it is supposed, into a metallic sub-chloride of
-silver which becomes dark or black, and constitutes the main portion of
-the picture. The image is then fixed by dissolving out the chloride of
-silver unaltered by light in a bath of hyposulphite of soda. After
-fixation, the image is well washed in several changes of water to
-eliminate all traces of the hyposulphite of soda and prevent the
-subsequent fading of the darkened portions of the picture and the
-yellowing of the whites. If the printed image is immediately fixed, it
-will have a red color. To avoid this it is washed first in water and
-then immersed in a chloride of gold toning bath and fixed.
-
-_The Platinotype Process_ is one in which potassium chloroplatinite and
-ferric oxalate are converted by light into the ferrous state, and
-metallic platinum is reduced when in contact with the ferrous oxalate of
-potash solution. The unacted upon portions are dissolved out by dilute
-hydrochloric acid, leaving a black permanent image. This process is
-characterized by simplicity, sensitiveness in action, permanence of
-print, and a peculiarly soft and artistic quality in the picture.
-British Patent No. 2,011, of 1873, to Willis, is the first disclosure of
-the platinotype.
-
-_Carbon Printing_ is a process in which lampblack or other
-indestructible pigment is mixed with the chemicals to render the
-photograph more stable against fading from the gradual decomposition of
-its elements. Mungo Ponton, in 1838, discovered the sensitive quality of
-potassium bichromate, which led up to carbon printing. Becquerel and
-Poitevin, in Paris, in 1855, were the first to experiment in this
-direction, and Fargier, Swan, and Johnson were successors who made
-valuable contributions.
-
-_Emulsions._--A photographic emulsion is a viscous liquid, such as
-collodion or a solution of gelatine, containing a sensitive silver salt
-with which the glass plate is at once coated, instead of coating the
-plate with collodion or gelatine, and then immersing it in a sensitizing
-bath. The desirability of emulsions was recognized as early as 1850 by
-Gustave Le Gray, and in 1853 by Gaudin. Collodion emulsion with bromide
-of silver was invented by Sayce and made known in 1864. In 1871 Maddox
-published his first notice of gelatine emulsion, and in 1873 the
-gelatine emulsions of Burgess were advertised for sale. In 1878 Mr.
-Charles Bennett brought out gelatino-bromide emulsion of extreme
-sensitiveness, by the application of heat, and from this time gelatine
-began to supersede all other organic media.
-
-_Dry Plates_ were a great improvement over the old wet process, with its
-tray for baths, its bottles of chemicals, and other accessories.
-Especially was this the case with out of door work, which heretofore had
-involved the carrying along of much unwieldy and inconvenient
-paraphernalia. With the dry plate process only the camera and the plates
-were needed, and this step marks the beginning of the spread of the art
-among amateurs, and the great snap-shot era of photography, growing into
-a distinct movement about the year 1888, has since spread over the
-entire world. The first practical dry plate process (collodion-albumen)
-was published in 1855 by Dr. J. M. Taupenot, a French scientist.
-Russell, in 1862; Sayce, in 1864; Captain Abney, for photographing the
-transit of Venus in 1874; Rev. Canon Beechey, of England, in 1875; Prof.
-John W. Draper, of the University of New York, and the Eastman Walker
-Company, of Rochester, were the chief promoters of dry plate
-photography. The practical introduction began about 1862 with the
-application of the alkaline developer.
-
-The progress of the photographic art may be approximately noted as
-follows:
-
- _Process._ _Time Required._ _Introduced._
- Heliography 6 hours' exposure 1814
- Daguerreotype 30 minutes' exposure 1839
- Calotype or Talbotype 3 minutes' exposure 1841
- Collodion process 10 seconds' exposure 1851
- Collodion emulsion (dry plate) 15 seconds' exposure 1864
- Gelatine emulsion (dry plate) 1 second exposure 1878
-
-_Mechanical Development._--The photographic camera is but an adaptation
-of the optical principles of the old camera obscura, which has been
-credited to various persons, including Roger Bacon in 1297, Baptista
-Porta about 1569, and others. The essential elements of the camera
-obscura are a dark chamber, having in one end a perforation containing a
-lens, and opposite it on the back of the chamber a screen upon which an
-image of the object is projected by the lens for the purpose of enabling
-it to be directly traced by a pencil. The photographic camera,
-introduced by Daguerre in 1839, adds to the camera obscura some means
-for adjusting the distance between the lens and the screen on which the
-image falls. This was accomplished by making the dark chamber adjustable
-in length by forming it in two telescopic sections sliding over each
-other, and in later years by the well-known bellows arrangement. A
-luminous image of any object placed in front of the lens is thrown in an
-inverted position upon the screen, which is of ground glass, to permit
-the image to be seen in focusing. When the proper focus on this ground
-glass is obtained a sensitive plate is put in the plane of this screen
-to receive the image.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 203.--KODAK.]
-
-It is not possible to trace all the steps of development of the camera
-which have brought it to its present perfection. Most of the
-improvements have had relation to the lens in correcting chromatic and
-spherical aberration, and in shutters for regulating exposure, in stops
-for shutting out the oblique rays and holders for the sensitive plate.
-
-The "Iris" shutter, so-called from its resemblance in function to the
-iris of the eye, consists of a series of tangentially arranged plates
-which open or close a central opening symmetrically from all sides.
-
-The ordinary camera of the photographic artist is too familiar an object
-to require special illustration. It has been looked into by the rich and
-the poor, and the high and the low, all over the whole world. Between
-the traveling outfit, and the "look pleasant, please!" of the
-peripatetic artist, and the handsome studios of the cities, it is hard
-to find an individual in the civilized world who has not posed before
-its lens. Through its agency the great man of the day has found himself
-in evidence everywhere; the country maiden has many times experienced
-the delicious thrill of satisfied vanity as she posed before it, and the
-superstitious savage is paralyzed with fear lest the mysterious thing
-should steal his soul.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 204.--FOLDING KODAK.]
-
-In 1851 the first instantaneous views were made by Mr. Cady and Mr.
-Beckers, of New York, and also by Mr. Talbot, who employed as a flash
-light a spark from a Leyden jar. In 1864 magnesium light was employed by
-Mr. Brothers, of Manchester, for photographic purposes, and about 1876-8
-Van der Weyde made use of the electric light for the same purpose.
-
-The _roller slide_, or roll film, was invented by A. J. Melhuish, in
-England, in 1854 (British patent No. 1,139, of 1854). The films were,
-however, of paper. In 1856 Norris produced sensitized dry films of
-collodion or gelatine (British patent No. 2,029, of 1856). In later
-years apparatus for utilizing the roll film has been greatly improved
-and extensively applied by Eastman, Walker & Co., of Rochester, N. Y.
-
-About 1888 a new thing in the photographic world made its appearance. It
-was a little black leather-covered rectangular box, about six inches
-long, with a sort of blind eye at one end closed by a cylindrical
-shutter, substantially as seen in Fig. 203. This shutter was wound up by
-a spring operated by a pull cord. In the back of the box was a film or
-ribbon of sensitized paper wound upon one spool, and unwinding therefrom
-and winding onto another spool, and being distended as it passed so as
-to form a flat surface which was directly in rear of the lens. A thumb
-piece or key on the top, and a push button on the side, were the only
-suggestions of the operative mechanism within. When the button was
-pressed the shutter for an instant passed from in front of the lens, and
-as quickly covered it again, but in this brief interval an image had
-been flashed upon the sensitive ribbon or film, and a snap-shot picture
-was taken. By a simple movement of the thumb piece or key, the receiving
-roll was made to take up the exposed section of the sensitive film and
-bring another section into the range of the lens, for a repetition of
-the operation. This little instrument was slung in a case looking like a
-cartridge box, and its sensitive roll was able to receive 100 successive
-pictures. When the roll was exhausted, it was removed and developed in a
-dark room. The device was placed upon the market by the Eastman Company,
-and it was called the "Kodak." The advertisement of the company, that
-"You press the button and we do the rest," was soon realized to be
-founded in fact, and in a short while the great era of snap-shot
-photography had set in. To-day this form of camera is a part of the
-luggage of every tourist, traveler, scientist, and dilletante. In fact,
-it has become the familiar scientific toy of man, woman, and child,
-interesting, instructive, and useful to all. In Fig. 204 is shown a
-modern form of Kodak, which is made in various sizes and is foldable for
-compact and convenient portability.
-
-A very convenient and useful development in films is to be found in the
-cartridge system, by which the film may be placed in and removed from
-the camera in broad daylight. The film has throughout its length a
-backing of black paper which extends far enough beyond the ends of the
-film to allow it to be unwound, so far, in making connection with the
-roll holder, without exposing the film to light, and also to allow it to
-be removed without exposure to light, after all the exposures have been
-made.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 205.--HAND PREMO.]
-
-Among the many other ingenious and useful hand cameras may be mentioned
-the "Premo," made by the Rochester Optical Company, and shown in Fig.
-205. The "Premo" is arranged for either snap-shot or time exposure, is
-adapted to be either held in the hand or mounted upon a tripod, and is
-furnished for use either with glass plates or roll films. In Fig. 206 is
-shown the "Premo" for stereoscopic work, in which two pictures are taken
-at once, a sufficient distance from each other to produce the effect of
-binocular vision and give the appearance of relief when viewed through
-the stereoscope. Brett's British patent No. 1,629, of 1853, appears to
-be the earliest description of a stereoscopic camera.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 206.--STEREOSCOPIC CAMERA.]
-
-There have been 2,000 United States patents granted in photography, most
-of which have been taken in the past thirty years, and great efficiency
-and detail in both the chemical and mechanical branches of the art have
-been obtained.
-
-The useful applications of the art have been numerous and varied.
-_Portrait making_ is probably the largest field. This was first
-successfully accomplished in 1839 by Professor Morse, of telegraph fame,
-working with Prof. John W. Draper, of the University of New York.
-
-_Celestial Photography_ began with Prof. Draper's photograph of the moon
-in March, 1840, and Prof. Bond, of Cambridge, Mass., in 1851. In 1872
-Prof. Draper photographed the spectra of the stars, and in 1880-81 the
-nebulae of Orion, and in 1887 the Photographic Congress of Astronomers of
-the World, organized in Paris, began the work of photographing the
-entire heavens. In late years notable work has been done at the Lick
-Observatory by Prof. Holden. In 1861 Mr. Thompson, of Weymouth,
-photographed the bottom of the sea, and Prof. O. N. Rood, of Troy, N.
-Y., the same year described his application of it to the microscope. In
-1871 criminals were ordered to be photographed in England, and in
-America the Rogues' Gallery became an institution in New York as early
-as 1857, ambrotypes being first used. In 1876 the Adams Cabinet for
-holding and displaying the photos was invented. To-day the New York
-collection amounts to nearly 30,000, while that of the National Bureau
-of Identification at Chicago approximates 100,000. It is a striking
-illustration of the law of compensation that the counterfeiter who
-invokes the aid of photography to copy a bank note is, by the same
-agency of his photo in the Rogues' Gallery, identified and convicted.
-
-_Photography in Colors_ has been the goal of artists and scientists in
-this field for many years. Robt. Hunt, in England, in 1843, and Edmond
-Becquerel, in France, in 1848, made evanescent photographs in colors,
-but little progress was made until about the last decade of the
-Nineteenth Century. Franz Veress in 1890, F. E. Ives (United States
-patent No. 432,530, July 22, 1890), W. Kurtz (United States patent No.
-498,396, May 30, 1893), Gabriel Lippmann in 1892 and 1896, Ives in 1892,
-M. Lumiere in 1893, Dr. Joly in 1895, M. Villedien Chassagne, and Dr.
-Adrien, M. Dansac and M. Bennetto, all in 1897, represent active workers
-in this field.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 207.--PANORAM-KODAK.]
-
-Among recent developments of the camera may be mentioned the wide angle
-lens, which permits larger images to be made on the plate from small
-near-by objects, and the telephotographic camera, which gives a large
-image of remote objects, such as an enemy's fort, and the panorama
-camera, which is designed to cover a broad field. For this purpose the
-lens is movably mounted for a semi-circular swing, and the image is
-flashed across a curved film in the case. The Eastman Panoram-Kodak,
-seen in Fig. 207, is an external illustration of this type, and in Fig.
-207A is shown a sectional view of another make of panorama camera which
-clearly shows the internal construction.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 207A.--SECTIONAL PLAN OF PANORAMIC CAMERA.]
-
-As allied branches of the photographic art, photo-engraving,
-photo-lithographing, and half-tone engraving are important developments
-of the Nineteenth Century.
-
-Photo-engraving is a process by means of which photographs may be used
-in forming plates from which prints in ink can be taken. The process
-depends upon the property possessed by bichromate of potassium, and
-other chemicals, of rendering insoluble under the action of light,
-gelatine or some similar substance. A picture is thus produced on a
-metal plate, and the blank spaces are etched out by acid, leaving the
-lines in relief as printing surfaces. When the operation is reversed,
-and only the _darks_ are etched in _intaglio_, to be filled with ink, as
-in copper-plate engraving, it is called photo-gravure. Mungo Ponton, in
-1839, discovered the sensitive quality of a sheet of paper treated with
-bichromate of potash. In 1840 Becquerel discovered that the sizing had
-an important function, and Fox Talbot, in 1853, discovered and utilized
-the insolubility of gelatine exposed to light in presence of bichromate
-of potash. In 1854 Paul Pretsch observed that the exposed parts of the
-gelatine did not swell in water. One of the first suggestions of
-photo-engraving appears in the British patent No. 13,736, of 1851, of
-James Palmer. In recent times great perfection in details has been
-obtained by Mr. Moss, of the Photo-Engraving Company, and others. The
-Albert-type and Woodbury-type are early modifications of this art.
-
-In _photo-lithography_ the photograph is transferred to the stone, and
-the latter then used to print from, as in lithography. The operation
-consists: 1, in making the photographic negative; 2, printing with it
-upon transfer paper coated with gelatine and bichromate of potash: 3,
-the transfer paper is then given a coat of insoluble fatty transfer ink
-from an inking stone; 4, all ink on surfaces not reached by the light
-being on a soluble surface is washed off, leaving the insoluble lines
-acted upon by light forming the picture; 5, the washed transfer sheet is
-then applied to the stone, and the remaining inked lines of the design
-are transferred to the stone; 6, the stone with transferred lines will
-now receive ink from the ink rolls on these lines, and repels ink from
-all other surfaces, which latter are made repellent by being kept
-constantly wet, as in ordinary lithography. The first attempts in this
-art were by Dixon, of Jersey City, and Lewis, of Dublin, in 1841, who
-used resins. Joseph Dixon, in 1854, was the first to use organic matter
-and bichromate of potash upon stone to produce a photo-lithograph. In
-1859 J. W. Osborne patented in Australia, and in 1861 in the United
-States, a transfer process which gave such great impetus to the art that
-he may be considered its founder and chief promotor. His United States
-patents are No. 32,668, June 25, 1861, and No. 33,172, August 27, 1861.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 208.--PHOTOGRAPH GALLERY.]
-
-For photo-lithography only line drawing, type print, or script, without
-any smooth shading, can be employed. The most extensive application of
-photo-lithography is in the reproduction of the Patent Office drawings,
-which amount to about 60,000 sheets weekly. The contracting firm, which
-is probably the largest in the world, also prints each week by
-photo-lithography 7,000 copies of the _Patent Office Gazette_, of about
-165 pages each, including both drawings and claims, and also reproduces
-specifications without errors or proof reading, thus saving about 200
-per cent. in cost over type setting. This art is also largely employed
-for printing maps, and the reproduction of the pages of books by this
-process has flooded the stores and news stands with cheap literature.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 209.--DIAGRAM SHOWING PRODUCTION OF DOT.]
-
-_Half-tone engraving_ enables a photograph to be reproduced on a
-printing press, and for faithfulness in reproduction and low cost has
-revolutionized the art of illustrating, as nearly all books, magazines,
-and newspapers are now illustrated by this process. Before its
-introduction it was not possible to reproduce cheaply in printers' ink
-shaded pictures like photographs, brush drawings, paintings, etc.
-Half-tone engraving renders it possible to thus print on a press, with
-printers' ink, reproductions of photographs or any shaded picture, in
-which the soft shadows fade away in depth to white by an imperceptible
-tenuity. It does so by breaking up the soft shadows into minute stipples
-which form inkable printing faces in relief, by the interposition of a
-fine reticulated screen between the camera lens and the sensitive plate.
-This forms a sort of stencil negative through which the copper plate is
-etched, which latter is thus converted into a relief plate whose raised
-surfaces left by the etching may receive ink and print like an ordinary
-relief plate. By making the screen lines very fine (80 to 250 meshes to
-the inch), the visible effect of the shading is so far preserved that
-the photograph may be reproduced in printers' ink with but little
-depreciation. At first, bolting cloth was used for the screen, but at
-present two glass plates, with closely ruled lines, laid crosswise upon
-each other, form the screen. A characteristic distinction of half-tone
-work is the regularly stippled surface, formed by the stenciling out of
-a portion of the picture by the screen, which may be easily seen with
-any magnifying glass. It is called half-tone process because half of the
-tones or shadows are preserved, the other half being stenciled out. The
-use of gauze screens was first described by Fox Talbot in British patent
-No. 565, October 29, 1852.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 210.--TRIMMING FILM.]
-
-In the making of a half-tone negative, the photograph, painting, or wash
-drawing which is to be reproduced, is set up in front of the camera,
-which is arranged on an inclined runway, as seen in Fig. 208, and an
-exposure is made on a plate prepared by the wet collodion process (see
-page 304). The shadows of the picture are broken up into stipples or
-dots by the interposition of a cross-lined screen arranged in the plate
-holder between the lens and the sensitive plate, so that the picture
-taken is "half-toned" or stippled. Fig. 209 illustrates the relation of
-the parts, in which the picture to be copied is seen on the right, the
-camera lens in the middle, and the cross-lined screen on the left in
-front of the sensitive plate.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 211.--STRIPPING FILM.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 212.--PRINTING BY ELECTRIC LIGHT.]
-
-The image on the plate is then developed and fixed, and in order to
-secure a printed image exactly like the copy as to right and left
-position it is necessary to reverse the negative. This is done by
-cutting the film square, as seen in Fig. 210, and then peeling it off
-the glass, as seen at Fig. 211, and transferring it to another glass
-plate in reversed relation. The copper printing plate is produced as
-follows: The plate is first polished, as seen at the top of Fig. 213,
-and is then sensitized with a solution of organic matter and an alkaline
-bichromate. The face of the reversed negative is laid flat against and
-in direct contact with the face of the sensitized copper plate, and
-tightly held thereto by the screw clamps of the half tone printing
-frame. The printing on the sensitized copper face through the stippled
-or half-tone negative is then effected either by daylight or by the
-electric light. The application of the electric light for this purpose
-is shown in Fig. 212. The copper plate is then taken out and subjected
-to the three lower operations seen in Fig. 213. It is first developed
-under a stream of water from a faucet, seen on the left, and is then
-taken in a pair of pliers and held over a gas stove, as seen at the
-bottom, to "burn-in" the image, and then placed in a tray containing an
-etching bath of chloride of iron seen on the right, by which the copper
-is eaten away around the little stipples, and the latter, representing
-the half tones of the original picture, are left raised, or in relief,
-to form the inkable surfaces of the printing plate. So fine are these
-stipples, however, that the picture is to the eye perfectly reproduced.
-The several views illustrating this process are made in this way, the
-lines of the reticulated screen being 175 to the inch. The plate is next
-subjected to the mechanical operation of "routing out" or cutting away
-the undesirable portions by a routing machine, seen in Fig. 214. It then
-receives further mechanical treatment to correct imperfections and
-finish its edges, and is finally mounted upon a block ready for the
-printer.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 213.--TREATMENT OF COPPER PLATE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 214.--ROUTER AT WORK ON HALF-TONE PLATE.]
-
-The most striking application made of photography in recent years is in
-the production of so-called moving pictures, in which a series of
-photographic figures thrown upon the screen have all the motion of
-animated scenes which have been caught and imprisoned by the swiftly
-acting and never failing memory of the camera, to be again turned loose
-in active play through the Kinetoscope or Biograph. Perhaps the most
-valuable contribution to science at the end of the century made by this
-art is in surgery, for photographing through opaque bodies by the aid of
-the Roentgen rays, but for the latter subjects treatment in separate
-chapters must be reserved.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXV.
-
-THE ROENTGEN OR X-RAYS.
-
- GEISSLER TUBES--VACUUM TUBES OF CROOKES, HITTORF AND LENARD--THE
- CATHODE RAY--ROENTGEN'S GREAT DISCOVERY IN 1895--X-RAY APPARATUS--
- SALVIONI'S CRYPTOSCOPE--EDISON'S FLUOROSCOPE--THE FLUOROMETER--SUN
- BURN FROM X-RAYS--USES OF X-RAYS.
-
-
-The majority of people have been accustomed to regard light as something
-to be excluded and controlled by opaque screens just as effectively as
-rain is excluded by a tin roof, or cold is kept out by a brick wall. The
-shady retreat furnished relief from the garish day to the primitive man,
-and the opaque shades and Venetian blinds of modern civilization exclude
-the excess of light at our windows. Sunshine and shadow have, in fact,
-been correlated conditions to the ordinary observation of man since time
-began. The last few years of the Nineteenth Century, however, were to
-witness the discovery of a new kind of light ray which, in its behavior,
-subverted all previous conception of the nature and action of light. It
-was a species of electric light, which we are accustomed to regard as
-brilliant, but this light ray was invisible to the eye. It could not be
-refracted or bent from its course by a prism or lens, and it was so
-subtle, penetrating and insidious, that it could not be barred out like
-sunlight, but passed readily through many opaque substances, such as
-wood, flesh tissue, paper (even a book of 1,000 pages), as well as some
-of the metals. The lighter the weight of the substance, or less its
-density, the easier these rays passed through it, or the more
-transparent such bodies were to the rays. The heavier metals, like
-platinum, gold and lead, were practically opaque, or allowed none of the
-rays to pass through them, while the very light metal aluminum was about
-as transparent to these rays as was glass to ordinary light, and for
-that reason this metal could form window panes for such rays, while
-excluding other light. Most organic substances are transparent or
-semi-transparent to these rays, and hence such rays readily pass through
-the body of an individual, being only intercepted in part by the denser
-parts of the anatomy, such as the bones, so that a man in such light no
-longer casts a well-defined shadow of his outline, but the shadow
-disclosed is that of a skeleton, by virtue of the greater density of the
-bones. Any object of higher density, such as a ring upon the finger,
-clearly establishes its shadow by virtue of its greater density.
-Likewise, any foreign object in the body, such as a bullet from a
-gun-shot wound, or a foreign body accidentally swallowed, is perfectly
-disclosed and located by the shadow which it casts. As these light rays
-have been characterized as invisible, it may be difficult to understand
-how invisible rays can cast a visible shadow, and it should be here
-stated that when these unseen rays fall upon certain chemical substances
-the latter are made to glow with a peculiar fluorescence, and a screen
-made of such fluorescing materials will light up where the rays fall
-upon it, and remain dark at the points where the rays are intercepted by
-a substance opaque to such rays, thus outlining a shadow.
-
-Not only do these light rays in passing through the body tissues
-(transparent to them) cast a shadow of the bones or any foreign objects,
-but by the application of photography to these shadow pictures a species
-of photograph, called a radiograph, or skiagraph, may be taken, and thus
-any foreign body, such as a bullet, may be definitely located in the
-human body and quickly extracted, without the element of doubt which
-beset the old method of diagnosis, which, at best, was only intelligent
-guessing. Not only are foreign bodies so located, but the fractures of
-the bones may also be accurately observed, studied and adjusted. Stone
-in the bladder may be discovered, and the condition and movements of the
-heart and lungs ascertained.
-
-This new kind of light ray was discovered November 8, 1895, by Prof. W.
-C. Roentgen, of the Royal University of Wurzburg, and was named by him
-the "X-Ray," probably because the letter x in algebraic formula
-represents the unknown quantity, and the hitherto unknown and elusive
-quality of this light suggested to Prof. Roentgen this appropriate name.
-
-As before stated, a peculiar quality of the X-Rays is that they are not
-visible to the eye. A beam of X-Rays, thrown into a dark chamber through
-an aluminum window, would produce no illumination whatever in the room,
-but such rays would still penetrate the room, and if a fluorescing
-screen were placed in their path it would instantly light up. It is not
-surprising, therefore, that these subtle rays should have so long eluded
-the observation of the scientist.
-
-A brief sketch of the conditions leading up to the discovery of the rays
-is necessary to a proper understanding of the same.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 215.--THE CATHODE RAY.]
-
-Every student of physics remembers the old-time lecture room
-experiments in which the Geissler tubes, with their beautiful play of
-colored lights, illustrated the action of the electrical discharge from
-the glass plate machine or the Ruhmkorff coil, on rarified gaseous
-media. Electrical experiments in high vacua by Sir William Crookes, and
-by Hittorf and Lenard, have greatly added to the present knowledge in
-this field, and paved the way to the discovery of Prof. Roentgen. It was
-known that a vacuum tube, variously called after the names of these
-scientists, as a Crookes, Hittorf, or Lenard tube, having platinum
-electrodes sealed in its ends, would, under the static discharge of
-electricity through it, give peculiar manifestations of light. One of
-the conducting terminals of such tubes was called, in electrical
-parlance, the "anode," from the Greek [Greek: ana] (up) [Greek: hodos]
-(way), meaning the way up or into the tube, and referring to the
-entering path of an electric current, or its positive pole; while the
-other was called the "cathode," from [Greek: kata] (down), [Greek:
-hodos] (way), meaning the way down or out, and referring to the outgoing
-path of an electric current, or its negative pole. When such glass tube,
-partially exhausted of air, received through its anode and cathode
-terminals a discharge of static electricity, a peculiar manifestation of
-light is seen between the anode and cathode terminals. At the anode it
-appears as a peach blossom glow, and at the cathode it appears as a
-bluish green light. If the exhaustion of the air in the tube is carried
-very high, approaching a perfect vacuum, or to about one millionth of
-the atmospheric pressure, the glow light at the anode disappears, and
-that at the cathode increases until it fills the entire tube with its
-characteristic light. This is called the "cathode ray," or "cathodic
-ray," an illustration of which is given in Fig. 215, where the cathode
-ray is seen in a Crookes tube emanating from the negative pole N or
-cathode _a_, and casting a shadow of the Maltese cross _b_ into the end
-of the tube, as seen at _d_. Many of the characteristics of the cathode
-ray had been observed prior to Prof. Roentgen's discovery, which,
-briefly stated, grew out of the following observation: He noticed that
-when a vacuum tube illumined by the cathode ray was completely masked or
-covered up by an external shield of black paper, so that no illumination
-of the tube was visible to the eye, there still passed through it
-certain subtle rays of light, invisible to the eye, but which would
-instantly illuminate a sheet of paper coated on one side with barium
-platino-cyanide, even at a distance of two yards or more, and that these
-invisible light rays were capable of passing through many substances
-opaque to ordinary light. He also discovered that these rays could be
-made to take a shadow photograph on a sensitive plate without even
-exposing the plate in the usual way, the X-Rays passing freely through
-the opaque ebonite or pasteboard screen of the plate holder. It did not
-take the scientific world long to realize the immense importance of this
-discovery, and to-day X-Ray apparatus constitutes the greatest addition
-to the surgeon's resources that has ever been made in the form of
-mechanical appliances, since by its aid any foreign body in the human
-frame of greater density than the flesh may be at once definitely
-located and extracted, or any fracture of the bone disclosed, as the
-case may be. In the illustration, Fig. 216, is shown an X-Ray photograph
-of the hand of a gentleman whose thumb bone has been destroyed by
-disease.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 216.--X-RAY PHOTO OF HAND, SHOWING DISEASED THUMB
-BONE.]
-
-Soon after the announcement of Prof. Roentgen's discovery, apparatus was
-devised for seeing with the naked eye the image formed by the shadow of
-the X-Rays. Prof. Salvioni constructed such a device and described it
-before the Rome Medical Society as early as February 8, 1896. He called
-it the "cryptoscope." It was quite a simple affair, and consisted of an
-observation tube with a lens, having in front of it a screen of
-fluorescing material, such as platino-cyanide of barium. When the object
-to be examined, the hand, for instance, was held in front of the
-fluorescing screen, and the X-Rays from the vacuum tube fell upon the
-hand, located between the vacuum tube and the fluorescing screen, a
-shadow of the bones was cast on the fluorescing screen by virtue of the
-greater density of the bones, which shadow was clearly discernible to
-the eye at the end of the observation tube. By this device one was able
-to see his own bones through the flesh. A device, invented by Edison and
-called the "fluoroscope," was constructed on substantially the same
-principle. This used a tapered observation tube like the old-fashioned
-stereoscope box, which had at its outer wide end the fluorescing screen,
-and its small end fashioned to fit the forehead and strapped thereto so
-as to enclose both eyes. This device is shown in Fig. 217, in which an
-X-Ray vacuum tube is housed in a wooden box, on which the hand of the
-patient, or other part to be viewed, is laid, the X-Rays passing readily
-through the top of the box and casting a shadow of the bones of the
-hand, or foreign body, on the fluorescing screen of the observation
-tube. Edison's experiments also led him in constructing his fluorescing
-screen, after testing a great number of substances, to select the
-chemical known as calcium tungstate, instead of the barium
-platino-cyanide, since the calcium tungstate appeared to give better
-results in fluorescing. Many other chemicals can be used, however, for
-making the fluorescing screen, such as the sulphides of calcium, barium
-and strontium. A recently discovered and powerful fluorescing substance
-is the double fluoride of ammonium and uranium, discovered by Dr.
-Mecklebeke. Such fluorescing materials are spread in a thin layer on the
-side of the screen next to the observer in the viewing apparatus.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 217.--EDISON'S SURGEON'S X-RAY APPARATUS.]
-
-It is not to be understood that such viewing apparatus is necessary in
-taking a surgical photograph. In such case only the X-Ray tube, means
-for exciting it, the patient's body, and the sensitive photographic
-plate, are essential factors, the patient's limb or body being
-interposed between the light tube and photographic plate, so as to cause
-the X-Rays emanating from the tube to cast the shadow of the patient's
-bones, the bullet in his body, or other foreign object, directly upon
-the photographic plate, the sensitive and conscious plate obeying the
-will of these subtle rays, and receiving the impress of their actinic
-effect under conditions which it denies to ordinary light.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 218.--COMPLETE X-RAY APPARATUS IN USE.]
-
-For exciting the vacuum tube any electrical machine capable of throwing
-a series of sparks across a gap of about five inches is sufficient.
-Various electrical machines may be used for this purpose, the Holtz, or
-the Wimshurst glass plate machine, the Ruhmkorff, or induction coil, or
-even the high frequency transformer. A good example of a complete X-Ray
-apparatus is that in use at the Army Medical Museum at Washington, made
-by Otis Clapp & Son, and shown in Fig. 218. The electrical generator is
-of the Wimshurst type, and is shown in a large glass-enclosed cabinet on
-the right. The glass disks within are rotated either by a small electric
-motor shown on the floor, or by a hand crank above. The X-Ray tube, of
-globular or bulb shape, is shown just above the patient's hip, and its
-opposite poles are connected by wires to the opposite electrodes of the
-generator. When the current is switched on by the operator, the bulb is
-illuminated with the cathode rays, and the X-Rays, proceeding therefrom
-through the clothing and flesh of the patient, cast a shadow of the
-patient's hip joint upon the photographic plate placed on the cot
-beneath the patient.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 219.--X-RAY FOCUS TUBE.]
-
-In the effort to secure greater sharpness in the image cast by the
-X-Rays, various forms of vacuum tubes have been devised. That shown in
-Fig. 219 represents one of the most important improvements. K is the
-cathode plate, formed of a concave disk of aluminum, which focuses the
-rays at a point near the center of the bulb. At this point a plate of
-platinum A, which metal allows practically none of the X-Rays to pass
-through it, is mounted on the anode in such an angular position that it
-gathers the focused rays and reflects them through the side of the tube.
-They thus make a sharper shadow than when radiating from the more
-extended surface of the glass.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 220.--LOCATING A FOREIGN BODY IN THE BRAIN.]
-
-In Fig. 220 is shown an X-Ray tube, as applied for locating a foreign
-body in the brain cavity, in which view the patient's head is interposed
-between the X-Ray tube and the fluorescing screen, or photographic
-plate, as the case may be; while Fig. 221 shows the application of the
-same devices to the body. In both these views the particular form of
-X-Ray apparatus is known as the "Fluorometer," made under the Dennis
-Patent, No. 581,540, April 27, 1897, and it is devised with reference to
-more accurately locating the foreign object by its shadow, for which
-purpose adjustable bracket-sights, seen in Fig. 221 on opposite sides of
-the body, are provided for bringing the X-Rays into proper alignment for
-projecting the shadow of the foreign body in true indicative position on
-the fluorescing screen, while a cross hatched grating behind the body,
-graduated in aliquot spaces of an inch, furnishes a measured field, and
-forms an easy and quick means of platting the position of said object.
-In the position of parts in the two figures the horizontal line, on
-which the foreign object lies, would be determined, but it would not
-indicate how deep in the object was, _i. e._, whether it was in the
-middle, or on one side. To determine this the fluorescing screen and
-grating are placed under the patient, and the X-Ray tube above, and the
-vertical line of the object is thus obtained. Both the vertical line and
-horizontal line having been obtained, it will be obvious that the
-foreign object will lie at the intersection of these two lines, which
-establishes for the surgeon its definite location.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 221.--X-RAY APPARATUS APPLIED TO THE BODY.]
-
-It has been observed by Prof. Elihu Thomson, and also by Dr. Kolle, that
-the X-Rays are not absorbed and destroyed by the sensitive chemicals of
-a single photographic plate, but so potent and penetrating is their
-influence that the rays pass through and produce an image on a number of
-plates, placed one behind the other, thus affording means for
-multiplying the image at one exposure.
-
-Among other uses of the X-Ray may be mentioned its capacity to detect
-spurious from genuine gems, the diamond giving a distinct color from its
-imitations, as do also most other precious stones.
-
-A peculiar physiological effect of the X-Rays is their capacity to
-produce a severe effect on the skin, somewhat resembling sunburn. Such
-result, produced by long and continued exposure, has sometimes so
-deranged the skin tissues as to make sores that resulted in the entire
-loss of and renewal of the skin.
-
-The discovery of the X-Ray by Prof. Roentgen may be fairly considered
-one of the most wonderful scientific achievements of the century, and
-his first memoir in 1895 is so full, clear and exact, as to have left
-very little more to be said about it. It is to-day, as it was found by
-him in 1895, the same mysterious, unseen, but positive force, a species
-of electrical energy without a domicile, and needing no conductor, a
-form of light passing through closed doors, invisible itself, and yet
-lighting up certain substances with a halo of glory, and radically
-changing and decomposing others. Rivaling the sun in actinic power, and
-writing its autograph with an unseen hand, it is truly called the X-, or
-unknown, ray.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVI.
-
-GAS LIGHTING.
-
- EARLY USE OF NATURAL GAS--COAL GAS INTRODUCED BY MURDOCH--WINSOR
- ORGANIZES FIRST GAS COMPANY IN 1804--MELVILLE IN UNITED STATES
- LIGHTS BEAVER-TAIL LIGHTHOUSE WITH GAS IN 1817--LOWE'S PROCESS OF
- MAKING WATER GAS--ACETYLENE GAS--CARBURETTED AIR--PINTSCH GAS--GAS
- METER--OTTO GAS ENGINE--THE WELSBACH BURNER.
-
-
-For many centuries the going down of the sun marked a cessation of man's
-labors, and among his first efforts toward increasing his efficiency was
-the prolongation of his hours of vision by artificial illumination.
-Beginning with a shell for a lamp, a rush for a wick, and the fat of his
-game for oil, the first crude lamp was made, and while it shed but a
-feeble and flickering light, man ceased to go to sleep with the fowls
-and the beasts, and continued his labors and amusements into the night.
-For many centuries the lamp held its exclusive sway, and probably will
-ever find a useful place; but with the discovery of coal gas and its
-practical manufacture the nights of the Nineteenth Century have been
-made to represent illuminated illustrations of the world's progress.
-Coal gas can hardly be claimed as an invention, however, for natural gas
-from the bowels of the earth had been observed and used in China from
-time immemorial. The holy fires of Baku on the shores of the Caspian and
-elsewhere were also thus supplied. The first steps toward its artificial
-production began in the latter part of the Seventeenth Century with Dr.
-Clayton. Bishop Watson, in 1750, and Lord Dundonald, in 1786, also
-experimented with combustible gas made from coal, but the man who more
-than any other contributed to its practical manufacture and introduction
-was Mr. Murdoch, of Redruth, Cornwall, England. In 1792 Murdoch erected
-a gas distilling apparatus, and lighted his house and offices by gas
-distributed through service pipes. In 1798 he so lighted the steam
-engine works of Boulton & Watt, at Soho, near Birmingham; and in 1802
-made public illumination of the works by this means on the occasion of a
-public celebration. In 1801 Le Bon, of Paris, used a gas made from wood
-for lighting his house. In 1803-4 Frederick Albert Winsor lighted the
-Lyceum Theatre, took out a British patent No. 2,764, of 1804, for
-lighting streets by gas, and established the National Light and Heat
-Company, which was the first gas company. In 1804-5 Murdoch lighted the
-cotton factory of Phillips & Lee at Manchester, the light being
-estimated as equal to 3,000 candles, and this was the largest
-undertaking up to that date. In 1807 Winsor lighted one side of Pall
-Mall, London, and this was the first street lighting. A disastrous
-explosion occurred shortly afterwards, and such eminent men as Sir
-Humphrey Davy, Wollaston, and Watt expressed the opinion that it could
-not be safely used; but the so-called "coal smoke" had come to stay, and
-in 1813 Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament were lighted
-with gas. In 1815 there was general adoption of gas in the streets of
-London, and shortly afterwards in Paris. In 1805-6 David Melville, of
-Newport, R. I., invented a gas apparatus and lighted his house with it.
-He took out United States patent March 18, 1813, and in 1817 contracted
-with the United States to supply for a year the Beaver Tail Lighthouse.
-In 1815 James McMurtrie proposed the lighting of the streets of
-Philadelphia; Baltimore commenced the use of gas in 1816, Boston in
-1822, and New York in 1825.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 222.--A COAL GAS PLANT.]
-
-In Fig. 222 is shown a diagrammatic illustration of the principal
-features of a gas works, as employed throughout the greater part of the
-Nineteenth Century. On the left is seen the furnace, in which is
-arranged above the fire a series of retorts, which are in the nature of
-horizontal closed cast iron boxes. Only one of the series is visible in
-the view. Their ends project out beyond the furnace walls, and have
-doors for giving access to the interior, and each retort outside the
-furnace is connected by an upright pipe to an elevated cylinder called a
-_hydraulic main_. When the retort is charged with coal through its end
-door, and is heated red hot by the subjacent fire of the furnace, a
-heavy gas is driven off from the coal, which passes up the pipe to the
-_hydraulic main_, where it partially condenses and leaves its heavier
-portions in the form of coal tar and ammoniacal liquor. The gas then
-passes through the series of bent pipes, which form a _condenser_, where
-other remaining portions of the tar and other impurities are condensed,
-and drawn off from time to time in the little well shown on the left of
-the coil. From the condenser coils the gas passes into the _purifier_,
-shown on the right of the coils as an enclosed case having a series of
-shelves on which is spread slaked lime, which takes up from the gas
-impurities in the form of sulphuretted hydrogen and carbonic acid. From
-this _purifier_ the gas passes downwardly through a pipe into a large
-gas holder whose lower end is sealed in a water tank, and which gas
-holder is balanced by weights and chains passing over pulleys. With the
-gas holder, the distributing mains of the city are made to connect to
-receive their supply. When the gas holder is full it is buoyed up by the
-lighter gas, and occupies an elevated position, and as its supply is
-used up, the gas holder settles down into the water.
-
-In the operation of gas making many valuable secondary products are
-formed. The coal in the retorts is not entirely consumed, but is reduced
-to the condition of coke, and in this form is sold for fuel. The
-ammoniacal condensations are purified to form ammonia, while the coal
-tar, which but a few years ago was little more than a waste material, is
-now a valuable commercial product, being extensively used in the
-manufacture of the aniline, phenol, and naphthalene dyes, also in
-medicines and perfumes, and being used in crude form also as an
-important element in street paving compositions.
-
-_Water Gas._--In 1875 an important era in gas making was inaugurated by
-the introduction of what is known as "_water gas_," so called for the
-reason that water in the form of steam is decomposed and its hydrogen,
-mixed with carbonic oxide gas, is mingled with a heavier carbon gas from
-oil, and is converted at a high temperature into a permanent, stable
-illuminating gas, at a much lower cost than coal gas.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 223.--LOWE'S WATER GAS APPARATUS, PATENTED SEPTEMBER
-21, 1875.]
-
-Fontana was the first to notice the decomposition of steam by
-incandescent carbon to form hydrogen and carbonic oxide. Ibbetson's
-British patent, No. 4,954, of 1824, represents the first application of
-this principle. This was followed by Alexander Selligue, who, in 1834,
-obtained a French patent, No. 9,800, and in 1842 produced water gas at
-Batignolles, a suburb of Paris. Sanders' United States patent, 21,027,
-July 27, 1858, was the basis of an experiment tried at the Girard House
-in Philadelphia. These, with Siemens' British patents, Nos. 2,861, of
-1856, and 972, of 1863, for methods of constructing furnaces, constitute
-the earlier steps in the development of water gas, although many other
-patents were granted prior to the latter date for various methods and
-forms of apparatus. The practical production and successful commercial
-use of water gas, however, began with T. S. C. Lowe, who obtained United
-States patent No. 167,847, September 21, 1875, and revolutionized the
-gas making industry. In less than a dozen years from the date of his
-patent 150 cities and towns in the United States were using water gas,
-and in 1886 the Franklin Institute gave to Mr. Lowe a grand medal of
-honor for his invention, which of those exhibited that year was believed
-to contribute most to the welfare of mankind by cheapening the cost of
-light. Fig. 223 represents an illustration of the Lowe apparatus as
-shown in his patent, and whose operation is as follows: Valves 9 and 10
-being open, an anthracite coal fire in generator chamber 1 gives off
-carbonic oxide gas, which passes down pipe 2 and enters the base of
-superheater 3, where mixing with air coming down pipe 4, it burns to
-form an intense heat. The chamber, 3, is filled with loose pieces of
-fire brick, which are soon heated white hot. Valves 9 and 10 are then
-closed and steam is taken from an upright boiler, 6, and carried by a
-small pipe, 7, to the incandescent mass in chamber 3, and passing down
-through it is superheated. This superheated steam passes from the bottom
-of chamber 3 to the bottom of chamber 1, and then up through the mass of
-red hot coal. The intensely hot steam is thus decomposed into hydrogen
-and oxygen, and the oxygen unites with the carbon of the coal to form
-carbonic oxide gas. As hydrogen and carbonic oxide burn with only a
-feeble blue flame, these gases are now made richer in light giving
-carbon at this point by the addition of oil contained in an elevated
-tank, 8. This, dripping on the incandescent coal in chamber 1, is
-volatilized, and at the same time enriches and combines with the
-hydrogen and carbonic oxide to form a permanent illuminating gas (water
-gas) that passes up pipe 5 and through the flues in boiler 6, to outlet
-13, and thence on in the usual way to the condenser, scrubber and gas
-holder, which are not shown, and merely act to purify the gas. As the
-excessively hot water gas passes through the boiler flues it furnishes
-the necessary heat to generate the steam. The air used in the process is
-forced at 12 into a drum in the smokestack, 11, and is heated by the
-escaping products of combustion. In practical operation there are two
-(or more) of the steam superheating chambers 3, working alternately, and
-one of them is being heated up while the other is superheating the
-steam.
-
-Water gas has neither the illuminating nor the heating qualities of coal
-gas, and it is also much more poisonous. According to O. Wyss, one-tenth
-of 1 per cent. of uncarburetted water gas renders the air of a room
-injurious to health, and 1 per cent. is fatal to all warm-blooded
-animals. Notwithstanding these facts, however, its extreme cheapness and
-fairly satisfactory light have carried it into such general use that
-to-day it is said that two-thirds of all gas made in the United States
-is carburetted water gas.
-
-_Acetylene Gas_ is a combination of two parts carbon and two parts
-hydrogen. It was discovered in 1836 by Edmond Davy, who produced
-carburet of potassium, and evolved acetylene gas therefrom by
-decomposing it with water. It was long known as _klumene_, and when
-burned it produced an intense white light. For a long time it was only
-produced in a small way in the laboratory. It is now made commercially
-by the mutual decomposition of water and calcium carbide, the latter
-giving off, when brought in contact with the water, acetylene gas, which
-rises in bubbles. In the reaction the carbon of the carbide unites with
-a portion of the hydrogen of the water, producing acetylene gas
-(C_{2}H_{2}), while the calcium of the carbide unites with the oxygen of
-the water and the remaining portion of the hydrogen and forms calcium
-hydrate, or slaked lime, which precipitates as a slush.
-
-The union of carbon with an alkali metal, first accomplished by Davy in
-1836, was followed in 1861 by the combination of carbon with calcium by
-Wohler. It was not, however, until the electrical furnace became an
-agency in chemical reaction that calcium carbide was made on a
-commercial scale. The production of acetylene gas for illuminating
-purposes began with the operations of Thomas L. Willson in 1893, and his
-patents, Nos. 541,137 and 541,138, of June 18, 1895, and 563,527 and
-563,528 of July 7, 1896, cover the chemical process, the product, and
-the mode of operating. The reaction is a very simple one. A mixture of
-lime and carbon is subjected to the heat of an electric arc, and the
-carbon combines with the calcium of the lime to form calcium carbide,
-which appears on the market as dirty black stone-like lumps. The
-simplicity of the method of generating acetylene gas from this substance
-by merely bringing it in contact with water has greatly stimulated
-invention in this field. The art began practically in 1895, and since
-that time more than 500 patents have been granted for acetylene gas
-apparatus.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 224.--ACETYLENE GAS APPARATUS.]
-
-A very simple apparatus for the purpose is shown in Fig. 224, in which a
-vessel containing water has an inverted bell or cylinder within it, open
-at its lower end. A basket or cage is suspended within the inner
-cylinder, and contains a few lumps of calcium carbide, which are first
-immersed in the water by being forced down by the rod supporting the
-same, which passes through a stuffing box. Acetylene gas is immediately
-generated and its pressure forces the level of the water down in the
-inner cylinder, causing it to rise in the annular space between said
-cylinder and the case. As the water level descends in the inner chamber
-it passes out of contact with the calcium carbide, and the generation of
-gas is discontinued until some of the gas is drawn off or consumed at
-the burners, whose pipe is shown connecting with the gas space of the
-inner cylinder. When so drawn off, the pressure in the inner cylinder is
-relieved, and the water therein rises to contact again with the calcium
-carbide and renews the generation of gas. This principle of automatic
-action is a very old one, and will be recognized by the student as that
-of the Dobereiner lamp of the chemical laboratory, invented by Prof.
-Dobereiner, of Jena, in 1824.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 225.--MULTI-CHARGE ACETYLENE GAS GENERATOR.]
-
-In acetylene gas apparatus a great variety of methods are employed for
-bringing the water and carbide into contact. Instead of the automatic
-pressure level principle described, many devices discharge a regulated
-quantity of powdered calcium carbide into the water, while in another
-form the water is discharged upon the calcium carbide. An example of the
-latter is given in Fig. 225, which represents the Criterion generator. A
-number of receptacles containing charges of calcium carbide are made to
-successively receive a regulated quantity of water, the gas being
-collected in a rising and falling holder.
-
-Acetylene gas finds its principal uses for isolated plants, and in
-country houses. One form of using it is to compress it under high
-tension in cylinders, but this method has been attended with some
-disastrous explosions, and is discriminated against by the insurance
-companies.
-
-Calcium carbide is now made in a large way by the Willson Aluminum
-Company, at Spray, N. C., and also at Niagara Falls and at Sault St.
-Marie, Mich., and its cost is between 3 and 4 cents per pound.
-
-Acetylene gas has an acrid, garlicy odor, and burns with an intensely
-white flame, and so superior is it to coal gas in illuminating power
-that it only requires a pipe of one-third the diameter of that used for
-coal gas to produce the same illuminating effect.
-
-_Carburetted Air_ is another form of illuminating gas which has found
-some useful applications. This consists simply of air forced through
-some light hydrocarbon, such as naphtha, benzine or gasoline, and so
-saturated with the vapors of these volatile substances as to become an
-inflammable mixture. Many patents have been granted for apparatus
-operating on this principle, and it has been put to some practical use
-in country houses, and seaside resorts.
-
-_Pintsch Gas_ is another special application. It is a gas made from oil
-and compressed in storage cylinders by means of pumps for portable use.
-It is stored under a pressure sometimes as high as 150 pounds to the
-inch, its pressure being reduced at the burners through the agency of
-pressure regulators. It is used for lighting railway cars, buoys, and
-lightships.
-
-Gas making has probably been the most extensive and important of all the
-commercial chemical operations of the Nineteenth Century, and with it
-has come a great array of minor inventions as accessories. Among these
-first came the gas meter and pressure regulator. With the introduction
-of gas into houses some means of determining the amount consumed as a
-basis of payment was required, and for this purpose the gas meter was
-devised. The first gas meters were known as wet meters, and effected a
-measurement by passing the gas through a liquid and rotating a wheel
-therein. The wet meter was invented by Clegg (British patent No. 3,968,
-of 1815), and the dry meter, by Malam (British patent No. 4,458, of
-1820), and improved by Defries (British patent. No. 7,705, of 1838). The
-gas regulator is simply a little automatic apparatus whereby the
-variation of pressure in the gas main is reduced and the flow rendered
-perfectly uniform at the burner. It effects a saving of gas by
-preventing it from blowing when the pressure is too great, and also
-gives a more steady and uniform light.
-
-Among the great number of mechanical devices which have grown out of the
-use of gas may be mentioned the gas range for heat, the gas engine for
-power, and the Welsbach burner for light. The gas range has contributed
-much to the domestic economy of the city house. It gives an immediate
-heat in the kitchen for all culinary and domestic purposes, without the
-incidental objections of having to transport fuel and remove ashes. It
-is put into or out of action in an instant, saves labor and time, and
-avoids the heat and discomfort of a coal stove during the hot months of
-summer. It is organized in principle after the Bunsen burner, whereby a
-perfect combustion of the carbon is obtained with maximum heating effect
-and without smoke or deposits of lampblack.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 226.--OTTO GAS ENGINE.]
-
-The Otto gas engine, seen in Fig. 226, is a pioneer and representative
-type of a great number of explosive gas engines, which in recent years
-have become active competitors of the steam engine where only small
-power is required. The Otto engine is covered by patent No. 194,047,
-August 14, 1877. Patents No. 222,467, 297,329, 336,505, 358,796,
-320,285, 386,211 and 549,160 represent important developments in this
-art.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 227.--WELSBACH GAS BURNER.]
-
-_The Welsbach burner_ for improving the quality of gaslight, and
-economizing its consumption, is also well and favorably known. It
-utilizes the Bunsen burner principle to make a very perfect combustion
-of the gas, with the greatest possible heat and the least smoke, and
-then directs its great heat on to a refractory body which will not burn,
-but glows with a brilliant white incandescence. The Welsbach burner was
-brought out in 1885. The United States patent therefor was granted
-October 7, 1890, to Carl Auer Von Welsbach, No. 438,125. The Welsbach
-light is a development of the Drummond, or limelight, invented by Lieut.
-Drummond, of England, in 1826. This latter exposed a piece of quick lime
-to the intensely hot flame of the oxy-hydrogen blow pipe, which was
-invented by Dr. Robt. Hare in 1802. The piece of lime glows with an
-intense brilliancy approximating that of the electric light. The
-Welsbach burner, see Fig. 227, operates on the same general principle,
-except that the refractory body, which is heated to incandescence, is a
-tubular sleeve of netted fabric first steeped in a solution of the salts
-of refractory earths, and then incinerated by heat to burn out the
-textile fibre and leave the refractory earthy oxides as a skeleton of
-the fabric, and which is called a "mantle." This mantle is suspended
-above the flame arising from a proper admixture of air and gas, and is
-heated thereby to a brilliant incandescence which furnishes the light.
-In the Welsbach burner the light seen does not proceed directly from the
-combustion of the gas, but from the white hot mantle. The light is a
-very pure white one, does not distort or falsify colors, and effects a
-great saving of gas. An important improvement upon the mantle is covered
-by Rawson's patent, July 30, 1889, No. 407,963, for coating the mantles
-with paraffine or analogous material to toughen them and prevent them
-from breaking in packing and transportation.
-
-_Natural Gas._--No review of gas lighting would be complete without some
-reference to the development incident to the use of the natural gas
-flowing from the internal reservoirs of the earth. Such gas has been
-known and utilized for centuries in China, and was conveyed by the
-Chinese in bamboo pipes to points of utilization. The discovery of coal
-oil in the United States in 1859, and the great advances made in the
-methods and apparatus for sinking oil wells, have resulted in the
-discovery of numerous wells of natural gas, whose values were quickly
-perceived and utilized by their owners. The village of Fredonia, N. Y.,
-was probably the first to be lighted by natural gas, and a flow from a
-well at West Bloomfield, N. Y., opened in 1865, was carried in a wooden
-main more than twenty miles to the city of Rochester. Many wells of
-natural gas have since been found at various points, and so extensive
-has been its use for cooking, heating, lighting and metallurgical
-processes, that thousands of patents have been taken for various forms
-of burners, pressure regulators and other appliances for utilizing the
-same. The annual production of natural gas in the United States for 1888
-was valued at $22,629,875. There has, however, been a steady decrease in
-the past ten years. The amount produced in 1897 was $13,826,422. The
-insatiable demands of modern civilization must some day exhaust the
-supply, and what will take place when the subterranean chambers are
-relieved of their burden is a question for the geologists to answer.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVII.
-
-CIVIL ENGINEERING.
-
- GREAT BRIDGES--PNEUMATIC CAISSONS--TUNNELS--THE BEACH TUNNEL SHIELD
- --SUEZ CANAL--DREDGES--THE LIDGERWOOD CABLEWAY--CANAL LOCKS--
- ARTESIAN WELLS--COMPRESSED AIR ROCK DRILLS--BLASTING--MISSISSIPPI
- JETTIES--IRON AND STEEL BUILDINGS--EIFFEL TOWER--WASHINGTON'S
- MONUMENT--THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL.
-
-
-Almost entirely of an outdoor character, and necessarily on public
-exhibition, the engineering achievements of the Nineteenth Century have
-always been conspicuously in evidence, challenging the admiration of the
-public eye. They represent man's attack upon the obstacles presented by
-nature to his irrepressible spirit of progress. Difficulties apparently
-insuperable have confronted him, only to melt away under his persistent
-genius until nothing seems impossible. He has connected continents with
-the telegraph, has crosshatched the land with railroads, penetrated the
-bowels of the earth with artesian wells, opened communication between
-oceans with the Suez Canal, reclaimed territory from the sea in Holland,
-pierced mountain ranges with tunnels, drained marshes, irrigated
-deserts, reared lofty structures of masonry and steel, spanned waters
-with magnificent bridges, opened channel-ways to the sea, built beacons
-for the mariner, and breakwaters for the storm beaten ship.
-
-Probably the most important branch of engineering work is railroad
-construction, already considered under steam railways. Closely related
-to the railroad, however, is bridge building, and many of these noble
-structures hang between heaven and earth, conspicuous monuments of the
-engineer's skill.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 228.--THE FORTH BRIDGE. LARGEST VIADUCT IN THE
-WORLD. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH WHEN IN PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTION. LENGTH, 8,290
-FEET; HEIGHT ABOVE WATER, 361 FEET; MAIN SPANS, 1,710 FEET LONG, 150
-FEET HIGH.]
-
-_The Forth Bridge._--This massive structure, of the cantilever type, is
-shown in Fig. 228. It was begun in 1882 and finished in 1890, and is the
-largest and most costly viaduct in the world. It is built across the
-Firth of Forth, and is the most important link in the direct railway
-communication of the North British Railway, and associated roads,
-between Edinburgh on the one side, and Perth and Dundee on the other.
-The total length of the viaduct is 8,296 feet, or nearly 1-5/8 miles.
-The extreme height of the structure is 361 feet above the water level,
-and the foundations extend 91 feet below the water level. The two main
-spans are 1,710 feet, and these both give a clear headway for navigation
-of 150 feet height. There are over 50,000 tons of steel in the
-superstructure, and about 140,000 cubic yards of masonry and concrete in
-the foundation piers. The three main piers consist each of a group of
-four masonry columns faced with granite, 49 feet in diameter at the top,
-and 36 feet high, which rest on solid rock, or on concrete carried down
-in most cases by means of caissons of a maximum diameter of 70 feet to
-rock or boulder clay.
-
-No intelligent conception of the enormous size of this great structure
-can be obtained except by comparison. Estimating from the bottom of the
-masonry piers to the towering heights of the cantilevers, it reaches
-above the dome of St. Peter's at Rome, and is only a little short of the
-height of the greatest of the pyramids of Egypt. The cost of the bridge
-is given as L3,250,000 or nearly $16,000,000.
-
-_The Brooklyn Bridge._--Having for its successful construction and
-maintenance the same foundation principle upon which the spider builds
-its web, this magnificent bridge of steel wires spans the East River
-between New York and Brooklyn, with a total length of 5,989 feet, and in
-length of span and cost is second only to the great Forth Bridge. It is
-shown in Fig. 229, and among suspension bridges it ranks first. It has a
-central span of 1,5951/2 feet between the two towers, over which the
-suspension cables are hung, and has a clear headway beneath of 135 feet.
-It has two side spans of 930 feet each between the towers and the shore.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 229.--THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. LONGEST SUSPENSION BRIDGE
-IN THE WORLD. TOTAL LENGTH, 5,989 FEET; SPAN BETWEEN TOWERS, 1,595 FEET
-6 INCHES.]
-
-The suspension towers stand on two piers founded in the river on solid
-rock at depths of 78 and 45 feet below high water, and they rise 277
-feet above the same level. There are four suspension cables 151/2 inches
-in diameter, each composed of 5,282 galvanized steel wires, placed side
-by side, without any twist, and arranged in groups of 19 strands bound
-up with wire. These cables have a dip in the center of the large span of
-128 feet, rest on movable saddles on the top of the towers to allow for
-slight movement of the cables due to expansion and contraction, and are
-held down at the shore ends by massive anchorages of masonry. The bridge
-has a width of 85 feet, and has two roadways, two lines of railway, and
-a foot way. It was begun in 1876 and opened for traffic in 1883, and its
-cost was about $15,000,000. It fulfills a great function for the busy
-metropolis, and it hangs in the air a monument in steel wire to the
-genius of the Roeblings.
-
-_Masonry Bridges._--The largest and finest single span of masonry in
-America, and believed to be the largest in the world, is to be found
-about 9 miles northwest of the city of Washington. It is known as the
-Washington Aqueduct or Cabin John Bridge, and is seen in Fig. 230. It
-extends across the small stream known as Cabin John Creek, and carries
-an aqueduct 9 feet in diameter, that supplies the National Capital with
-water, its upper surface above the water conduit being formed into a
-fine roadway. It is 450 feet long. Its span is 220 feet, the height of
-the roadway above the bed of the stream is 100 feet, and the width of
-the structure is 20 feet 4 inches. Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs was the
-engineer in charge of its construction. It was begun in 1857 and
-finished in 1864, with the exception of the parapet walls of the
-roadway, which were added in 1872-3. Its cost was $254,000. Only one
-other masonry arch has ever been built which equalled this in size. The
-Trezzo Bridge, built in the fourteenth century, over the Adda in North
-Italy, and subsequently destroyed, is said to have had a span of 251
-feet, but the Washington Aqueduct Bridge at Cabin John is a noble work
-in masonry, and when standing beneath its majestic sweep, and viewing
-the regular courses of masonry hanging nearly a hundred feet high in the
-air, and springing more than a hundred feet from the embankment upon
-either side, one loses sight of the principles of the arch, and the
-fear that the mass may fall upon him gives way to the impression that
-nature has bowed to the genius of man, and suspended the law of gravity.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 230.--CABIN JOHN BRIDGE, NEAR WASHINGTON, D. C.
-LARGEST MASONRY ARCH IN THE WORLD. LENGTH, 450 FEET; SPAN OF ARCH, 220
-FEET; HEIGHT, 100 FEET.]
-
-Among the patents granted for bridges the most important are those
-relating to the cantilever type, among which may be mentioned those to
-Bender, Latrobe, and Smith, No. 141,310, July 29, 1873; Eads, No.
-142,378 to 142,382, September 2, 1873, and Clarke, No. 504,559,
-September 5, 1893.
-
-_Caissons._--For submarine explorations the ancient diving bell, which
-was said to have been used more than 2,000 years ago, has given place to
-diving armor, while for more extensive local work the pneumatic caisson
-is employed. The latter was invented by M. Triger, a French engineer, in
-1841. An early example of it is also given in Cochrane's British patent
-No. 3,226, of 1861. It consists of a vertical cylinder divided into
-compartments, its lower open end resting on the river bottom. Compressed
-air forced into the lower compartment forces the water back, while the
-men are at work, the intermediate chamber forming an air lock, by which
-entrance to, or egress from, the lower working chamber is obtained. The
-pneumatic caissons of Eads (patents Nos. 123,002, January 23, 1872, and
-123,685, February 13, 1872) and Flad (patent No. 303,830, August 19,
-1884) are modern applications of the same principle. The sinking of
-shafts through quicksand, by artificially freezing the same and then
-treating it as solid material, is an ingenious modern method shown in
-patents to Poetsch, No. 300,891, June 24, 1884; and Smith, No. 371,389,
-October 11, 1887.
-
-_Tunnels._--Less conspicuous than bridges, by virtue of their
-underground character, but none the less important, are these mole-like
-means of communication. Especially difficult of construction for the
-reason that the nature of the soil or rock is largely unknown, and for
-the reason also that the work may have to encounter faults in rocks, and
-springs or quicksands in the earth; nevertheless the demands of the
-railroads for shortening the distance of travel and economizing time
-have stimulated the engineer to expend millions of dollars in piercing
-the earth with these great underground passageways.
-
-_The Mont Cenis Tunnel_ was constructed to establish railway
-communication between France and Italy through the Alps. It was begun in
-1857, and after having been in progress of construction for thirteen
-years, was opened for traffic in 1871. This tunnel was commenced by hand
-borings, being for the most part through solid rock, and its progress up
-to 1862 was so slow that it was estimated that thirty years would be
-required for its construction. Its earlier completion was due to the
-introduction of rock drills operated by compressed air, which trebled
-the rate of advance, and which device made a new epoch in all
-rock-boring and mining operations. This tunnel was cut from both ends at
-the same time, and so accurate were the surveys in establishing the
-alignment of the two headings through the mountain mass, that, although
-the tunnel was more than 71/2 miles long, when the two headings came
-together in the middle, only a difference of one foot in level existed
-between them. When it is remembered that most of the 71/2 miles of tunnel
-was cut through solid rock, by boring and blasting, the immensity of the
-undertaking can be appreciated. As completed the tunnel is 8 miles long,
-and wide enough for a double track railway.
-
-_The St. Gothard Tunnel_ is another tunnel through the Alps, which
-involved even a longer and deeper cut through the mountains than the
-Mont Cenis Tunnel. This is 91/4 miles long, and it was begun in 1872, the
-headings joined in 1880, and the tunnel opened for traffic in 1882.
-Although by far the largest undertaking yet made, the improvement in
-rock-boring machinery enabled it to be constructed much more rapidly and
-at less expense.
-
-The Arlberg is still another Alpine tunnel. It is 61/2 miles long, was
-commenced in 1880, and opened for traffic in 1884.
-
-Tunneling under rivers presents many more difficulties than driving
-through the hardest rock. This is so by reason of the inflow of water.
-Among successful tunnels of this kind may be named the Mersey and Severn
-tunnels in England, opened in 1886, and the St. Clair tunnel between the
-United States and Canada. The histories of the abandoned Detroit and
-Hudson river tunnels are object lessons of the difficulties encountered
-in this class of work.
-
-An important engineering invention for tunneling through silt or soft
-soil is the so-called "shield." This was first employed by the engineer
-Brunel in the construction of the Thames tunnel, which was begun in 1825
-and opened as a thoroughfare in 1843. The shield, as now used, is a sort
-of a cylinder or sleeve as large as the tunnel, which sleeve, as the
-excavation proceeds in front of it, is forced ahead to act both as a
-ring-shaped cutter and a protection to the workmen, its advance being
-effected by powerful hydraulic jacks or screws which find a back bearing
-against the completed wall of the tunnel. As the digging proceeds the
-shield is advanced, and a section of tunnel is built behind it which, in
-turn, furnishes a bearing for the jacks in the further advance of the
-shield.
-
-This latter improvement was the invention of the late Alfred E. Beach,
-of the _Scientific American_, and was covered by him in patent No.
-91,071, June 8, 1869, and was used in driving the experimental pneumatic
-subway constructed by him under Broadway, New York, in 1868-9, and also
-in the St. Clair River tunnel and the unfinished Hudson River tunnel and
-other works.
-
-Subsequent improvements made upon the shield by J. H. Greathead of
-England and covered by him in United States patents Nos. 360,959, April
-12, 1887; and 432,871, July 22, 1890, have greatly added to the value
-and efficiency of this device, and made it one of the leading
-instrumentalities in tunnel construction.
-
-_Suez Canal._--It is said that the undertaking of connecting the
-Mediterranean and Red Seas was considered as long ago as the time of
-Herodotus, and a small channel appears to have been opened twenty-five
-centuries ago, but was subsequently abandoned. In 1847 the subject was
-again taken up for serious consideration, the work begun in 1860, and
-finished in 1869, at a cost of L20,500,000, or more than a hundred
-million dollars. The canal starts at Port Said, on the Mediterranean, a
-view of which with its ships of all nations and the canal reaching far
-away in the distance is seen in Fig. 231. The canal extends nearly due
-south to Suez on the Red Sea, a distance of about 100 miles, through
-barren wastes of sand and an occasional lake. It was originally formed
-with a bottom width of 72 feet, spreading out to 196 to 328 feet at the
-top, and of a depth of 26 feet, but has since been increased in
-transverse dimension to accommodate the great increase in travel.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 231.--PORT SAID ENTRANCE TO SUEZ CANAL, SHOWING
-HARBOR WITH SHIPS OF ALL NATIONS, AND THE CANAL REACHING AWAY IN THE
-DISTANCE.]
-
-Sixty great dredges were employed on the work, and the dredged material
-was discharged in chutes on to the bank. The canal was the work of M. De
-Lesseps, the eminent French engineer, and has proved a great success
-from both an engineering and financial standpoint. The stock is mainly
-held in England, having been bought from the Khedive of Egypt. In 1898
-the ships passing through the canal during the year reached the
-remarkable number of 3,503. The rate of tolls is 10 francs (about $2)
-per net ton. The gross tonnage of ships passing through in 1898 was
-12,962,632, the net tonnage 9,238,603. The total receipts for the year
-were 87,906,255 francs (about $17,500,000), and the net profit
-63,441,987 francs (about $12,500,000). An average size ocean liner pays
-about $5,000 for the privilege of sailing through this great ditch.
-Admiral Dewey's ship, the "Olympia," returning from the Philippines,
-paid for her toll $3,516.04, and the "Chicago," $3,165.95. Going the
-other way, our supply ship "Alexander" paid $4,107.99, while the
-"Glacier" paid $5,052.38. Ships making the passage through the canal
-move slowly on account of the washing of the banks, about 22 hours
-being required, but the shortening of the travel of ships going east and
-west, and the saving of life, property, and time, involved in avoiding
-the circuitous and stormy passage around the Cape of Good Hope, has been
-of incalculable benefit to the world.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 232.--HERCULES DREDGER.]
-
-With the construction of canals and harbors, great improvements have
-been made in dredges. Some of these are of the clam-shell type, some
-employ the scoop and lever, others an endless series of buckets. An
-example of the latter, used on the Panama Canal, is seen in Fig. 232.
-Still another form, and the most recent if not the most important is the
-hydraulic dredger, which, by rotating cutters, stirs and cuts the mud
-and silt, and by powerful suction pumps and immense tubes draws up the
-semi-fluid mass and sends it to suitable points of discharge. The best
-known of the latter type is the Bowers hydraulic dredge, covered by many
-patents, of which Nos. 318,859 and 318,860, May 26, 1885; 388,253,
-August 21, 1888; and 484,763, October 18, 1892, are the most important.
-
-For surface excavations in solid earth the Lidgerwood Cableway is an
-important and labor saving device. A track cable is stretched from two
-distant towers, and a bucket holding well on to a ton of earth is made
-to travel on a trolley running on said cable track, rising at one end
-out of the excavation, and dumping at the other end to fill in the
-excavation as the cutting progresses, all in a continuous and
-economical manner. This device is made under the patent to M. W. Locke,
-No. 295,776, March 25, 1884, and comprehends many subsequent
-improvements patented by Miller, Delaney, North and others. The Chicago
-Drainage Canal is a work just completed, which largely employed these
-devices. This canal was designed to connect the Chicago River with the
-Mississippi River, so as to send the sewage of Chicago down the
-Mississippi instead of into Lake Michigan. Although it cost $33,000,000
-and required seven years for completion, the labor-saving cableways
-greatly cheapened its cost and shortened the time of its construction.
-
-Among the leading inventions relating to canal construction may be
-mentioned the bear-trap canal-lock gate (patents Nos. 229,682, 236,488
-and 552,063), and the Dutton pneumatic lift locks. The latter provide
-ease and rapidity of action by a principle of balancing locks in pairs,
-and are covered by his patent No. 457,528, August 11, 1891, and others
-of subsequent date.
-
-_Artesian Wells_ represent an important branch of engineering work, and
-they are so called from the province of Artois, in France, where they
-have for a long time been in use. Extending several thousand feet into
-the subterranean chambers of the earth, they have brought abundant water
-supply to the surface all over the world, from the desert sands of
-Sahara to the hotels of the modern city; they have contributed oil and
-gas in incredible quantities to supply light and heat, and have made
-valuable additions to the salt supply of the world.
-
-They are driven by reciprocating a ponderous chisel-shaped drill within
-an iron tube, six inches more or less in diameter, which is built up in
-sections, and moved down as the cutting descends. The drill is
-reciprocated by a suspending rope from machinery in a derrick, and in
-order to give a hammer-like blow to the chisel a pair of ponderous iron
-links coupled together like those of a chain, and called a "_drill jar_"
-connect the drill to the rope. As the sections of the link slide over
-each other they come together with a hammer blow at the moment of
-lifting that dislodges the drill from the rock, and on the descending
-movement they come together with a hammering blow immediately after the
-drill touches the rock to drive it into the same. The first United
-States patent for a drill jar is that to Morris, No. 2,243, September 4,
-1841. When an oil well ceases to flow, it is rejuvenated by being
-"shot," which is quite contrary to the ordinary conception of prolonging
-life. For this purpose a dynamite cartridge is exploded at the lower end
-of the well, which shatters the rock, and, in opening up new channels
-of flow for the oil, renews the yield. Many patented inventions have
-been made in the field of well boring, and the discovery of coal oil in
-the United States in 1859 has developed a great industry and built up
-enormous fortunes. The amount of petroleum produced in the United States
-in 1896 was 60,960,361 barrels, the largest yield on record. In 1897 the
-amount was 60,568,081 barrels.
-
-Of less consequence than the artesian well, but finding many useful
-applications, is the drive well. A metal tube with a perforated lower
-end is driven down by hammers into the ground, and furnishes a quick and
-cheap source of water supply. This was invented by Col. Green in 1861,
-in meeting the necessities of his military camp during the civil war,
-and was patented by him January 14, 1868, No. 73,425.
-
-_Rock Drills._--In mining and tunneling through rock, the rock drill has
-been the implement of paramount importance and utility. For boring by
-rotary action the diamond drill is most effective. This uses bits set
-with diamonds which, by their extreme hardness, cut through the most
-refractory rock with great rapidity. It was invented by Hermann and
-patented by him in France, June 3, 1854.
-
-More important, however, is the compressed air rock drill, in which a
-piston has the drill bit directly on its piston rod and cuts by a
-reciprocating action. The piston is actuated by compressed air admitted
-alternately to its opposite sides in an automatic manner by valves. The
-compressed air conveyed to the drill in the tunnel or mine not only
-operates the drill, but helps to ventilate the tunnel. As early as 1849
-Clarke and Motley, in England, invented a machine drill, and in 1851
-Fowle devised a similar machine, having the drill attached directly to
-the piston cross head. The Hoosac and Mont Cenis tunnels greatly
-stimulated invention in this field, and among the notable drills of this
-class may be named the Burleigh, Ingersoll, and Sergeant. The Burleigh
-drill was brought out in 1866, and was covered by patents Nos. 52,960,
-52,961 and 59,960 of that year, and 113,850 of 1871, and the Ingersoll
-drill, by patents No. 112,254, and No. 120,279, of 1871.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 233.--BLOWING UP FLOOD ROCK.]
-
-_Blasting._--The discovery of nitro-glycerine in 1846, followed by its
-convenient commercial preparation in the form of dynamite, gave a great
-impetus to blasting. Notable as the largest operation of the kind in the
-century is the blowing up of Flood Rock, in the path of commerce between
-New York City and Long Island Sound. The dangerous character of this and
-other rocks in this vicinity gave long ago to this channel the
-significant name of Hell Gate. The undermining of the rocks by shafts
-and galleries is seen in Fig. 233, and the final blowing up of the same
-in a single blast was the culmination of a series of similar operations
-at this point tending to safer navigation. On October 10, 1885, 40,000
-cartridges, containing 75,000 pounds of dynamite and 240,000 pounds of
-_rack-a-rock_, were, by the touching of a button and the closing of an
-electric circuit, simultaneously exploded. In the twinkling of an eye
-nine acres of solid rock were shattered into fragments by the prodigious
-force, and a vast upheaval of water 1,400 feet long, 800 feet wide, and
-200 feet high, sprang into the air in tangled and gigantic fountains. As
-the termination of the most stupendous piece of engineering of the kind
-the world has ever seen, and with spectacular features fitting the
-enormous expense of $1,000,000, which the work cost, this final scene
-put an end to the menaces of Flood Rock, and wiped out of existence the
-worst dangers of Hell Gate.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 234.--CROSS SECTION MISSISSIPPI JETTIES.]
-
-_Mississippi Jetties._--The broad bar and shallow waters at the mouth of
-the Mississippi involved such an obstruction to commerce that in 1872 it
-received the attention of Congress, resulting in the building, by Capt.
-Eads, of the celebrated jetties. They were begun in 1875 and finished in
-1879, and cost $5,250,000. The channel obtained was 30 feet deep and 200
-feet wide. Its construction involved the building across the bar and out
-into the Gulf of Mexico two long reaches of parallel embankments, called
-jetties. This was effected by sinking mattresses of willow branches
-bound together and weighted with stone. These were laid in four layers,
-and when submerged, and resting upon the bottom, were covered with a
-layer of loose stone, and this in turn was surmounted with a capping of
-concrete blocks, as seen in cross section in Fig. 234. These jetties so
-concentrated the flow of waters into a narrow channel as to cause its
-increased velocity to wash out the mud and silt and deepen the channel.
-The immensity of the work may be measured by the quantity of material
-used in its construction, which included 6,000,000 cubic yards of willow
-mattresses, 1,000,000 cubic yards of stone, 13,000,000 feet (board
-measure) of lumber, and 8,000,000 cubic yards of concrete. The
-mattresses were laid 35 to 50 feet wide at the bottom, which width was
-considerably increased by the superimposed layer of stone, and the
-jetties extended 21/4 miles into the sea. Their influence upon commerce is
-indicated by the fact that before their construction the annual grain
-export from New Orleans was less than half a million bushels, and in
-1880, the year following their completion, it was increased to
-14,000,000 bushels.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 235.--INTERIOR CONSTRUCTION MODERN STEEL BUILDING.]
-
-_High Buildings._--A distinct feature of modern architecture is the
-enormously tall steel frame building known as the "sky scraper." The
-increasing value of city lots first brought about the vertical extension
-of buildings to a greater number of stories, and the necessity for
-making them fireproof, coupled with the desire to avoid loss of interior
-space, due to thick walls at the base, made a demand for a different
-style of architecture. To meet this a skeleton frame of steel is bolted
-together in unitary structure, the floors being all carried on the steel
-frame, and the outer masonry walls being relatively thin, and carrying
-only their own weight. In Fig. 235 is shown an example of the interior
-structure of such a building. The vertical columns are erected upon a
-very firm foundation, and to them are bolted, on the floor levels,
-horizontal I-beams and girders, stayed by tie rods, which I-beams
-receive between them hollow fireproof tile to form the floor. The outer
-masonry walls are built around the skeleton frame, as seen in Fig. 236,
-and the details of connections for the floor members appear in Fig. 237.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 236.--ENCLOSURE OF STEEL FRAME BY MASONRY.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 237.--DETAILS OF INTERNAL CONSTRUCTION.]
-
-The construction of iron buildings began about the middle of the
-century. In 1845 Peter Cooper erected the largest rolling mill at that
-time in the United States for making railroad iron, and at this mill
-wrought iron beams for fireproof buildings were first rolled. In the
-building of the Cooper Institute in New York City in 1857 he was the
-first to employ such beams with brick arches to support the floors. The
-unifying of the iron work into an integral skeleton frame, for relieving
-the side walls of the weight of the floors is, however, a comparatively
-recent development, and this has so raised the height of the modern
-office building as to cause it to impress the observer as an obelisk
-rather than a place of habitation. An earthquake-proof steel palace for
-the Crown Prince of Japan is one of the modern applications of steel in
-architecture. It is being built by American engineers, and is to cost
-$3,000,000.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 238.--THE EIFFEL TOWER. HEIGHT, 984 FEET. TALLEST
-STRUCTURE IN THE WORLD.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 239.--WASHINGTON'S MONUMENT. HEIGHT 555 FEET, 51/2
-INCHES. HIGHEST MASONRY STRUCTURE IN THE WORLD.]
-
-_Eiffel Tower._--Loftiest among the high structures of the world, and
-significant as indicating the possibilities of iron construction, the
-Eiffel Tower of the Paris Exposition of 1889 was a distinct achievement
-in the engineering world. It is seen in Fig. 238. It is 984 feet high,
-and 410 feet across its foundation, and has a supporting base of four
-independent lattice work piers. In the top was constructed a scientific
-laboratory surmounted by a lantern containing a powerful electric light.
-The total weight of iron in the structure is about 7,000 tons, the
-weight of the rivets alone being 450 tons, and the total number of them
-2,500,000. The level of the first story is marked by a bold frieze, on
-the panels of which, around all four faces, were inscribed in gigantic
-letters of gold the names of the famous Frenchmen of the century. The
-summit of the tower was reached by staircases containing 1,793 steps,
-and by hydraulic elevators running in four stages. The cost of this
-structure was nearly $1,000,000.
-
-_Washington's Monument._--Next in height to the Eiffel Tower, and being,
-in fact, the tallest masonry structure in the world, this noble obelisk,
-by its simplicity, boldness and solidity, challenges the admiration of
-every visitor, and gratifies the pride of every patriot. It is seen in
-Fig. 239, and is 555 feet 51/2 inches high, 55 feet square at the base,
-and 34 feet square at the top. The walls are 15 feet thick at the base,
-and 18 inches at the top, and its summit is reached by an internal
-winding staircase and a central elevator. At the height of 504 feet the
-walls are pierced with port holes, from which a magnificent view is had
-of the capital city and surrounding country. The summit is crowned with
-a cap of aluminum, inscribed _Laus Deo_. The foundation of rock and
-cement is 36 feet deep and 126 feet square, and the total cost of the
-monument was $1,300,000. The corner stone was laid in 1848. In 1855 the
-work was discontinued at the height of 152 feet, from lack of funds. In
-1878 it was resumed by appropriation from Congress, and completed and
-dedicated in 1885, under the direction of Col. Thomas L. Casey, of the
-United States Corps of Engineers.
-
-_The Capitol Building._--Representing the heart of the great American
-Republic, and overlooking its Capital City, this grand building, shown
-in Fig. 240, is a poem in architecture. Massive, symmetrical and
-harmonious, its highest point reaches 3071/2 feet above the plaza on the
-east. It is 751 feet 4 inches long, 350 feet wide, and the walls of the
-building proper cover 31/2 acres. Crowning the center of the building is
-the imposing dome of iron, surmounted by a lantern, and above this is
-the bronze statue of Freedom, 19 feet 6 inches high, and weighing
-14,985 pounds, the latter being set in place December 2, 1863. The dome
-is 135 feet 5 inches in diameter at the base, and the open space of the
-rotunda within is 96 feet in diameter and 180 feet high.
-
-The corner stone of the original building was laid in 1793 by
-Washington. The first session of Congress held there was in 1800, while
-the building was still incomplete. The original building was finished
-in 1811. In 1814 it was partly burned by the British. In 1815
-reconstruction was begun, and completed in 1827. In 1850 Congress passed
-an act authorizing the extension of the Capitol, which resulted in the
-building of the north and south wings, containing the present Senate
-Chamber and Hall of the House of Representatives. The corner stones of
-the extension were laid by President Fillmore in 1851, Daniel Webster
-being the orator of the occasion, and the wings were finished in 1867.
-Since this time handsome additions in the shape of marble terraces on
-the west front have added greatly to the beauty and apparent size of the
-building.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 240.--THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL. LENGTH, 751-1/3
-FEET; WIDTH, 350 FEET; HEIGHT, 3071/2 FEET; BUILDING COVERS 31/2 ACRES.]
-
-It is not possible to give anything like an adequate review of the
-engineering inventions and achievements of the Nineteenth Century in a
-single chapter, and only the most noteworthy have been mentioned. The
-modern life of the world, however, has been replete with the resourceful
-expedients of the engineer, and the ingenious instrumentalities invented
-by him to carry out his plans. There have been about 1,000 patents
-granted for bridges, about 2,500 for excavating apparatus, and about
-1,500 for hydraulic engineering. In mining the safety-lamp of Sir
-Humphrey Davy, in 1815, has been followed by stamp mills, rock-drills,
-derricks, and hoisting and lowering apparatus, and lately by hydraulic
-mining apparatus, by which a stream of water under high pressure is made
-to wash away a mountain side. Apparatus for loading and unloading,
-pneumatic conveyors, great systems of irrigation, lighthouses,
-breakwaters, pile drivers, dry-docks, ship railways, road-making
-apparatus, fire escapes, fireproof buildings, water towers, and
-filtration plants have been devised, constructed and utilized. Many
-gigantic schemes, already begun, still await successful completion,
-among which may be named the draining of the Zuyder Zee, the Siberian
-railway, the Panama and Nicaraguan Canals, the Simplon tunnel, the new
-East River Bridge, and the Rapid Transit Tunnel under New York City;
-while a bridge or tunnel across the English Channel, a ship canal for
-France, connecting the Bay of Biscay with the Mediterranean, a tunnel
-under the Straits of Gibraltar, and a ship canal connecting the great
-lakes with the Gulf of Mexico, are among the possible achievements which
-challenge the engineer of the Twentieth Century.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVIII.
-
-WOODWORKING.
-
- EARLY MACHINES OF SIR SAMUEL BENTHAM--EVOLUTION OF THE SAW--CIRCULAR
- SAW--HAMMERING TO TENSION--STEAM FEED FOR SAW MILL CARRIAGE--QUARTER
- SAWING--THE BAND SAW--PLANING MACHINES--THE WOODWORTH PLANER--THE
- WOODBURY YIELDING PRESSURE BAR--THE UNIVERSAL WOODWORKER--THE
- BLANCHARD LATHE--MORTISING MACHINES--SPECIAL WOODWORKING MACHINES.
-
-
-Surrounded as we are in the modern home with beautiful and artistic
-furniture, and installed in comfortable and inexpensive houses, one does
-not appreciate the contrast which the life of the average citizen of
-to-day presents to that of his great-grandfather in the matter of his
-dwelling house appointments. A hundred years ago most of the dwellings
-of the middle and poorer classes were crudely made, with clap-boards and
-joists laboriously hewn with the broad ax, and the roof was covered with
-split shingles. Uncouth and clumsy doors, windows and blinds, were
-framed on the simplest utilitarian basis, and a scanty supply of rude
-hand-made furniture imperfectly filled the simple wants of the home.
-To-day nearly every cottage has beautifully moulded trimmings, paneled
-doors, handsomely carved mantels and turned balusters, all furnished at
-an insignificant price, and art has so added its aesthetic values to the
-furniture and other useful things in wood, that beautiful, artistic and
-tasteful homes are no longer confined to the rich, but may be enjoyed by
-all. This great change has been brought about by the sawmill, the
-planing machine, mortising and boring machines, and the turning lathe.
-
-Pre-eminent in the field of woodworking machinery, and worthy to be
-called the father of the art, is to be mentioned the name of Gen. Sir
-Samuel Bentham, of England, whose inventions in the last decade of the
-Eighteenth Century formed the nucleus of the modern art of woodworking.
-
-_The Saw_ was the great pioneer in woodworking machinery, and the
-circular saw has, in the Nineteenth Century, been the representative
-type. Pushing its way along the outskirts of civilization, its
-glistening and apparently motionless disk, filled with a hidden, but
-terrific energy, and singing a merry tune in the clearings, has
-transformed trees into tenements, forests into firesides, and altered
-the face of the earth, the record of its work being only measured by the
-immensity of the forests which it has depleted. It is not possible to
-fix the date of the first circular saw, for rotary cutting action dates
-from the ancient turning lathes. The earliest description of a circular
-saw is to be found in the British patent to Miller, No. 1,152, of 1777.
-It was not until the Nineteenth Century, however, that it was generally
-applied, and its great work belongs to this period. The preceding saws
-were of the straight, reciprocating kind. The old pit-saw is the
-earliest form, and in course of time the men were replaced by machinery
-to form the "muley" saw, the man in the pit being replaced by a
-mechanical "pitman," which accounts for the etymology of the word. With
-the "muley" saw the log was held at each end, and each end shifted
-alternately to set for a new cut. The first development was along the
-lines of this form of saw, and to increase its efficiency the saws were
-arranged in gangs, so as to make a number of cuts at one pass of the
-log. This type was especially used in Europe, but on the up stroke there
-was no work being done, and hence half of the time was lost. This and
-other difficulties led finally to the adoption of the circular type,
-whose continuous cut and high speed saved much time and presented many
-other advantages. A representative example of the circular saw is given
-in Fig. 241.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 241.--PORTABLE CIRCULAR SAW.]
-
-With the increased diameter and peripheral speed of the circular saw,
-however, a grave difficulty presented itself. The saw would heat at its
-periphery, and its rim portion expanding without commensurate expansion
-of the central portion, would cause the saw to crack and fly to pieces
-under the tremendous centrifugal force. This difficulty is provided for
-by what is known as "_hammering to tension_," _i. e._, the saw is
-hammered to a gradually increasing state of compression from the rim to
-the center, thus causing an initial expansion or spread of the molecules
-of metal of the central parts of the saw, which is stored up as an
-elastic expansive force that accommodates itself to the tension caused
-by the expansion of the rim, and prevents the unequal and destructive
-strain, due to the expansion of the rim from the great heat of friction
-in passing through the log.
-
-Mounted upon a portable frame, this machine was put to its great work
-upon the logs in the forests of America, and for many years this type of
-sawmill held its sway, and an enormous amount of work was done through
-its agency. Among its useful accessories were the set-works for
-adjusting the log holding knees to the position for a new cut, log
-turners for rotating the log to change the plane of the cut, and the
-rack and pinion feed, by which the saw carriage was run back and forth.
-Following the rack and pinion feed came the rope feed, in which a rope
-wrapped around a drum was carried at its opposite ends over pulleys and
-back to the opposite ends of the carriage, which was thereby carried
-back and forth by the forward or backward movement of the drum.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 242.--DIRECT-ACTING STEAM FEED SAWMILL CARRIAGE.]
-
-The greatest advance in sawmills in recent years, however, has been the
-steam feed, in which a very long steam cylinder was provided with a
-piston, whose long rod was directly attached to the saw carriage, and
-the latter moved back and forth by the admission of steam alternately
-to opposite sides of the piston. This type of feed, also known as the
-_shot gun_ feed, from the resemblance of the long cylinder to a gun
-barrel, was invented about twenty-five years ago, by De Witt C.
-Prescott, and is covered by his patent, No. 174,004, February 22, 1876,
-later improvements being shown in his patent, No. 360,972, April 12,
-1887. The value of the steam feed was to increase the speed and
-efficiency of the saw, by expediting the movement of its carriage, as
-many as six boards per minute being cut by its aid from a log of average
-length. An example of a modern steam feed for sawmill carriages is seen
-in Fig. 242. With the modern development of the art the ease and
-rapidity of steam action have recommended it for use in most all of the
-work of the sawmill, and the direct application of steam pistons
-working in cylinders has been utilized for canting, kicking, flipping
-and rolling the logs, lifting the stock, taking away the boards, etc.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 243.--METHOD OF SHAPING AND HOLDING LOG FOR QUARTER
-SAWING.]
-
-Beautifully finished furniture in quartered oak has always excited the
-pleasure, and piqued the curiosity of the uninformed as to how this
-result is obtained. Fig. 243 illustrates the method of sawing to produce
-this effect. The log is simply divided longitudinally into four
-quarters, and the quarter sections are then cut by the vertical plane of
-the saw at an oblique angle to the sawed sides, which brings to the
-surface of the boards the peculiar flecks or patches of the wood's grain
-so much admired when finished and polished.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 244.--AUTOMATIC BAND RIP SAW.]
-
-The _Band Saw_ is an endless belt of steel having teeth formed along one
-edge and traveling continuously around an upper and lower pulley, with
-its toothed edge presented to the timber to be cut, as seen in Fig. 244,
-which represents a form of band saw made by the J. A. Fay & Egan
-Company, of Cincinnati. A form of band saw is found as early as 1808, in
-British patent No. 3,105, to Newberry. On March 25, 1834, a French
-patent was granted for a band saw to Etiennot, No. 3,397. The first
-United States patent for a band saw was granted to B. Barker, January 6,
-1836, but it remained for the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century to
-give the band saw its prominence in woodworking machines. That it did
-not find general application at an earlier period was due to the
-difficulty experienced in securely and evenly joining the ends of the
-band. For many years the only moderately successful band saws were made
-in France, but expert mechanical skill has so mastered the problem that
-in recent years the band saw has gone to the very front in wood-sawing
-machinery. To-day it is in service in sizes from a delicate filament,
-used for scroll sawing and not larger than a baby's ribbon, to an
-enormous steel belt 50 feet in peripheral measurement, and 12 inches
-wide, traveling over pulleys 8 feet in diameter, making 500 revolutions
-per minute, and tearing its way through logs much too large for any
-circular saw, at the rate of nearly two miles a minute. A modern form of
-such a saw is seen in Fig. 245. Prescott's patents, Nos. 368,731 and
-369,881, of 1887; 416,012, of 1889, and 472,586 and 478,817, of 1892,
-represent some of the important developments in the band saw.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 245.--MODERN BAND SAW FOR LARGE TIMBER.]
-
-When the band saw is applied to cutting logs the backward movement of
-the carriage would, if there were any slivers on the cut face of the
-log, be liable to force those slivers against the smooth edge of the
-band saw, and distort and possibly break it. To obviate this the saw
-carriage is provided with a lateral adjustment on the back movement
-called an "off-set," so that the log returns for a new cut out of
-contact with the saw. Examples of such off-setting are found in patents
-to Gowen, No. 383,460, May 29, 1888, and No. 401,945, April 23, 1889,
-and Hinkley, No. 368,669, August 23, 1887. A modern form of the band
-saw, however, has teeth on both its edges, which requires no off-setting
-mechanism, but cuts in both directions. An example of this, known as
-the telescopic band mill, is made by the Edward P. Allis Company, of
-Milwaukee.
-
-A saw which planes, as well as severs, is shown in patents to Douglass,
-Nos. 431,510, July 1, 1890, and 542,630, July 16, 1895. Steam power
-mechanism for operating the knees is shown in patent to Wilkin, No.
-317,256, May 5, 1885. Means for quarter sawing in both directions of log
-travel are shown in patent to Gray, No. 550,825, December 3, 1895. Means
-for operating log turners and log loaders appear in patents to Hill, No.
-496,938, May 9, 1893; No. 466,682, January 5, 1892; No. 526,624,
-September 25, 1894, and Kelly, No. 497,098, May 9, 1893. A self cooling
-circular saw is found in patent to Jenks, No. 193,004, July 10, 1877;
-shingle sawing machines in patents to O'Connor, No. 358,474, March 1,
-1887, and No. 292,347, January 22, 1884, and Perkins, No. 380,346, April
-3, 1888; and means for severing veneer spirally and dividing it into
-completed staves, are shown in patent to Hayne, No. 509,534, November
-28, 1893.
-
-_Planing Machines._--While the saw plays the initial part of shaping the
-rough logs into lumber, it is to the planing machine that the
-refinements of woodworking are due. Its rapidly revolving cutter head
-reduces the uneven thickness of the lumber to an exact gauge, and
-simultaneously imparts the fine smooth surface. The planing machine is
-organized in various shapes for different uses. When the cutters are
-straight and arranged horizontally, it is a simple _planer_. When the
-cutters are short and arranged to work on the edge of the board they are
-known as _edgers_; when the edges are cut into tongues and grooves it is
-called a _matching machine_; and when the cutters have a curved
-ornamental contour it is known as a _molding machine_, and is used for
-cutting the ornamental contour for house trimmings and various
-ornamental uses.
-
-The planing machine was one of the many woodworking devices invented by
-General Bentham. His first machine, British patent No. 1,838, of 1791,
-was a reciprocating machine, but in his British patent No. 1,951, of
-1793, he described the rotary form along with a great variety of other
-woodworking machinery.
-
-Bramah's planer, British patent No. 2,652, of 1802, was about the first
-planing machine of the Nineteenth Century. It is known as a transverse
-planer, the cutters being on the lower surface of a horizontal disc,
-which is fixed to a vertical revolving shaft, and overhangs the board
-passing beneath it, the cutters revolving in a plane parallel with the
-upper surface of the board. The planing machine of Muir, of Glasgow,
-British patent No. 5,502, of 1827, was designed for making boards for
-flooring, and represented a considerable advance in the art.
-
-With the greater wooded areas of America, the rapid growth of the young
-republic, and the resourceful spirit of its new civilization, the
-leading activities in woodworking machinery were in the second quarter
-of the Nineteenth Century transferred to the United States, and a
-phenomenal growth in this art ensued. Conspicuous among the early
-planing machine patents in the United States was that granted to William
-Woodworth, December 27, 1828. This covered broadly the combination of
-the cutting cylinders, and rolls for holding the boards against the
-cutting cylinders, and also means for tongueing and grooving at one
-operation. The revolving cutting cylinder had been used by Bentham
-thirty-five years before, and rollers for feeding lumber to circular
-saws were described in Hammond's British patent No. 3,459, of 1811, but
-Woodworth did not employ his rolls for feeding, as a rack and pinion
-were provided for that, but his rolls had a co-active relation with a
-planer cylinder, or cutter head, in holding the board against the
-tendency of the cutter head to pull the board toward it. A patent was
-granted to Woodworth for these two features in combination, which patent
-was reissued July 8, 1845, twice extended, and for a period of
-twenty-eight years from its first grant, exerted an oppressive monopoly
-in this art, since it covered the combination of the two necessary
-elements of every practical planer.
-
-Following the Woodworth patent came a host of minor improvements, among
-which were the Woodbury patents, extending through the period of the
-third quarter of the Nineteenth Century, and prominent among which is
-the patent to J. P. Woodbury, No. 138,462, April 20, 1873, covering
-broadly a rotary cutter head combined with a yielding pressure bar to
-hold the board against the lifting action of the cutter head.
-
-In modern planing machinery the climax of utility is reached in the
-so-called _universal woodworker_. This is the versatile Jack-of-all-work
-in the planing mill. It planes flat, moulded, rabbeted, or beaded
-surfaces; it saws with both the rip and crosscut action; it cuts tongues
-and grooves; makes miters, chamfers, wedges, mortises and tenons, and is
-the general utility machine of the shop.
-
-In Fig. 246 is shown a well known form of planing machine. Its work is
-to plane the surfaces of boards, and to cut the edges into tongues and
-groves, such as are required for flooring. This machine planes boards up
-to 24 inches wide and 6 inches thick, and will tongue and grove 14
-inches wide.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 246.--24-INCH SINGLE SURFACER AND MATCHER.]
-
-_Wood Turning._--To this ancient art Blanchard added, in 1819, his very
-ingenious and important improvement for turning irregular forms. A few
-efforts at irregular turning had been made before, but in the arts
-generally only circular forms had been turned. With Blanchard's
-improvement, patented January 20, 1820, any irregular form, such as a
-shoe-last, gun-stock, ax-handle, wheel-spokes, etc., could be smoothly
-and expeditiously turned and finished in any required shape. In the
-ordinary lathe the work is revolved rapidly, and the cutting tool is
-held stationary, or only slowly shifted in the hand. In the Blanchard
-lathe the work is hung in a swinging frame, and turned very slowly to
-bring its different sides to the cutting action, and the cutting tool is
-constructed as a rapidly revolving disk, against which the work is
-projected bodily by the oscillation of the swinging frame, to
-accommodate the irregularities of the form. In order to do this
-automatically, a pattern or model of the article to be turned was also
-hung in the swinging frame, and made to slowly revolve and bear against
-a pattern wheel, which, acting upon the swinging frame carrying the
-work, caused it to advance to or recede from the cutting disc exactly in
-proportion to the contour of the model, and thus cause the revolving
-cutters to cut the block as it turns synchronously with the model, to a
-shape exactly corresponding to said model.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 247.--BLANCHARD LATHE.]
-
-In Fig. 247 is shown a perspective view of Blanchard's lathe, as
-patented January 20, 1820. H is a swinging frame, carrying the model T
-of a shoe last, and a roughed-out block U, partly converted into a shoe
-last. A sliding frame, fed horizontally by a screw, carries a pattern
-wheel K, that bears against the pattern T, and a rotary cutter E, acting
-against the roughed-out block U. The revolving disk-shaped cutter E is
-rotated by a pulley and belt from a drum, which latter is made long
-enough to accommodate the travel of the frame. The pattern T and block U
-are advanced to contact respectively, with pattern wheel K and cutter E
-by the swinging action of frame H, and as the pattern T and block U are
-slowly revolved, the travel of T against K is made to react on frame H
-and regulate the advance of U against E, with the result that the rough
-block U is cut to the identical shape of the pattern T.
-
-Among modern developments in this art may be mentioned the patents to
-Kimball, No. 471,006, March 15, 1892, and No. 498,170, May 23, 1893, the
-latter showing ingenious means whereby shoe lasts of the same length,
-but varying widths, may be turned. A polygonal-form lathe is shown in
-patent to Merritt, No. 504,812, September 12, 1893; a multiple lathe in
-patents to Albee, No. 429,297, June 3, 1890, and Aram, No. 550,401,
-November 26, 1895; a tubular lathe in patent to Lenhart, No. 355,540,
-January 4, 1887; and a spiral cutting lathe in patent to Mackintosh, No.
-396,283, January 15, 1889.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 248.--MORTISING MACHINE.]
-
-_Mortising Machines_ have exercised an important influence in mill work
-in the joining of the stiles in doors, sashes and blinds, and in the
-making of furniture. The Fay & Egan machine is seen in Fig. 248. The
-self acting mortising machine was among the numerous early contributions
-of Gen. Bentham in woodworking machinery, and was described in his
-British patent No. 1,951, of 1793, a number of them having been made by
-him for the British Admiralty. Brunel's mortising machine for making
-ships' blocks is another early form described in British patent No.
-2,478, of 1801. As representing novel departures in this art, the
-endless chain mortising machine shown in Douglas patent, No. 379,566,
-March 20, 1888, may be mentioned, and reissue patent, No. 10,655,
-October 27, 1885, to Oppenheimer, and No. 461,666, October 20, 1891, to
-Charlton, are examples of mortising augers.
-
-_Special Woodworking Machines._--Of these there have been great numbers
-and variety. No sooner does an article become extensively used than a
-machine is made for turning it out automatically. Indeed, machines for
-cheaply turning out articles have, in many cases, led the way to popular
-use of the article by the extreme cheapness of its production.
-
-Among various automatic machines for making special articles may be
-mentioned those for making clothes pins, scooping out wood trays,
-pointing skewers, dovetailing box blanks, cutting sash stile pockets,
-cutting and packing toothpicks, making matches, boxing matches,
-duplicating carvings, cutting bungs, cutting corks, making umbrella
-sticks, making brush blocks, boring chair legs, screw-driving machines,
-box nailing machines, making cigar boxes, nailing baskets, wiring box
-blanks, applying slats, gluing boxes, gluing slate frames, making
-veneers, bushing mortises, covering piano hammers, making staves and
-barrels, making fruit baskets, etc.
-
-It is impossible to give in any brief review a proper conception of the
-immensity of the woodworking industry in the United States. It is
-estimated in the Patent Office that about 8,000 patents have been
-granted for woodworking machines. Besides this there are about 5,000
-patents in the separate class of wood sawing, about an equal number for
-woodworking tools, and these, with other patented inventions in wood
-turning, coopering, or the making of barrels, wheelwrighting, and other
-minor classes, give some idea of the activity in this great field of
-industry.
-
-The exports of wood and wooden manufactures from the United States in
-1899 amounted to $41,489,526, of which $15,031,176 were for finished
-boards, $4,107,350 for barrels, staves and heads, and $3,571,375 for
-household furniture, but this is only an insignificant portion, for with
-a prosperous country, an abundance of wood, and a thrifty and ambitious
-nation of home builders, the home consumption has been incalculable.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIX.
-
-METAL WORKING.
-
- EARLY IRON FURNACE--OPERATIONS OF LORD DUDLEY, ABRAHAM DARBY AND
- HENRY CORT--NEILSON'S HOT BLAST--GREAT BLAST FURNACES OF MODERN
- TIMES--THE PUDDLING FURNACE--BESSEMER STEEL AND THE CONVERTER--OPEN
- HEARTH STEEL--SIEMENS' REGENERATIVE FURNACE--SIEMENS-MARTIN PROCESS
- --ARMOR PLATE--MAKING HORSE SHOES--SCREWS AND SPECIAL MACHINES--
- ELECTRIC WELDING, ANNEALING AND TEMPERING--COATING WITH METAL--METAL
- FOUNDING--BARBED WIRE MACHINES--MAKING NAILS, PINS, ETC.--MAKING
- SHOT--ALLOYS--MAKING ALUMINUM, AND METALLURGY OF RARER METALS--THE
- CYANIDE PROCESS--ELECTRIC CONCENTRATOR.
-
-
-Take away iron and steel from the resources of modern life, and the
-whole fabric of civilization disintegrates. The railroad, steam engine
-and steamship, the dynamo and electric motor, the telegraph and
-telephone, agricultural implements of all sorts, grinding mills,
-spinning machines and looms, battleships and firearms, stoves and
-furnaces, the printing press, and tools of all sorts--each and every one
-would be robbed of its essential basic material, without which it cannot
-exist. Steam and electricity may be the heart and soul of the world's
-life, but iron is its great body. King among metals, it gives its name
-to the present cycle, as the "Iron Age," and the Nineteenth Century has
-crowned it with such refinements of shape, and endowed it with such
-attributes of utility, and such grandeur of estate, that its powers in
-organized machinery have, for effective service, risen to all the
-functions and dignity of human capacity--except that of thought.
-
-A crude gift of nature, in the mountain side, it remained, however, a
-sodden mass until extracted, refined, and wrought into shape by the
-genius of man. Yielding to the magical touch of invention, it has been
-cast in moulds into cannon, mills, plowshares, and ten thousand
-articles; it has been drawn into wire of any fineness and length to form
-cables for great suspension bridges; it has been rolled into rails that
-grill the continents; into sheets that cover our roofs; and into nails
-that hold our houses together. It has been wrought into a softness that
-lends its susceptible nature to the influence of magnetism, and has been
-hardened into steel to form the sword and cutting tool. From the
-delicate hair spring of a watch to the massive armor plate of a
-battleship, it finds endless applications, and is nature's most enduring
-gift to man--abundant, cheap, and lasting.
-
-Metallurgy is an ancient art, and the working of gold, silver and copper
-dates back to the beginning of history. Being found in a condition of
-comparative purity, and needing but little refinement, they were, for
-that reason, the first metals fashioned to meet the wants of man. Iron,
-somewhat more refractory, appeared later, but it also has an early
-history, and is mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible (Genesis
-iv., 22), in which reference is made to Tubal Cain as an artificer in
-brass and iron. The iron bedstead of Og, King of Bashan, is another
-reference. That it was known to the Egyptians and the Greeks at least
-1000 B. C., seems reasonably certain. The Assyrians were also acquainted
-with iron, as is clearly established by the explorations of Mr. Layard,
-whose contributions to the British Museum of iron articles from the
-ruins of Ninevah include saws, picks, hammers, and knives of iron, which
-are believed to be of a date not later than 880 B. C.
-
-Iron ore is usually found in the form of an oxide (hematite), and its
-reduction to the metallic form consists in displacing the oxygen, which
-is effected by mixing carbon in some form with the ore, and subjecting
-the mixture to a high heat by means of a blast. The carbon unites with
-the oxygen and forms carbonic acid gas, which escapes, while the
-metallic iron fuses and runs out at the bottom of the furnace, and when
-collected in trough-shaped moulds, is known as pig iron.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 249.--PRIMITIVE IRON FURNACE OF HINDOSTAN.]
-
-The first iron furnaces were known as _air bloomeries_, and had no
-forced draft. The first step of importance in iron making was the forced
-blast. An early form of blast furnace is shown in Fig. 249, which
-represents an iron furnace of the Kols, a tribe of iron smelters in
-Lower Bengal and Orissa. An inclined tray terminates at its lower end in
-a furnace inclosure. Charcoal in the furnace being well ignited, ore and
-charcoal resting on the tray are alternately raked into the furnace. The
-blowers are two boxes, connected to the furnace by bamboo pipes, and
-provided with skin covers, which are alternately depressed by the feet
-and raised by cords from the spring poles. Each skin cover has a hole in
-the middle, which is stopped by the heel of the workman as the weight of
-the person is thrown upon it, and is left open by the withdrawal of the
-foot as the cover is raised. The heels of the workman, alternately
-raised, form alternately acting valves, and the skin cover, when
-depressed, acts as a bellows. The fused metal sinks to a basin in the
-bottom of the furnace, and the slag or impurities run off above the
-level of the basin at the side of the furnace.
-
-The great modern art of iron working dates from Lord Dudley's British
-patent, No. 18, of 1621, which related to "The mistery, arte, way and
-meanes of melting iron owre, and of makeing the same into cast workes or
-barrs with seacoales or pittcoales in furnaces with bellowes of as good
-condicon as hath bene heretofore made of charcoale."
-
-The next step of importance after the blast furnace was the substitution
-of coke for coal for the reduction of the ore, which was introduced by
-Abraham Darby, about 1750.
-
-Next came the conversion of cast iron into wrought iron. This was mainly
-the work of Mr. Henry Cort, of Gosport, England, who, in 1783-84,
-introduced the processes of puddling and rolling, which were two of the
-most important inventions connected with the production of iron since
-the employment of the blast furnace. Mr. Cort obtained British patents
-No. 1,351, of 1783, and No. 1,420, of 1784, for his invention. His first
-patent related to the hammering, welding, and rolling of the iron, while
-in his second patent he introduced what is known as the reverberatory
-furnace, having a concave bottom, into which the fluid metal is run from
-the smelting furnace, and which is converted from brittle cast iron,
-containing a certain per cent. of carbon, into wrought iron, which has
-the carbon eliminated, and is malleable and tough. This process is
-called _puddling_, and consists in exposing the molten metal to an
-oxidizing current of flame and air. The metal boils as the carbon is
-burned out, and as it becomes more plastic and stiff it is collected
-into what are called blooms, and these are hammered to get rid of the
-slag, and are reduced to marketable shape as wrought iron by the
-process described in his previous patent. Mr. Cort expended a fortune in
-developing the iron trade, and was one of the greatest pioneers in this
-art.
-
-The first notable development of the Nineteenth Century was the
-introduction of the hot air blast in forges and furnaces where bellows
-or blowing apparatus was required. This was the invention of J. Beaumont
-Neilson, of Glasgow, and was covered by him in British patent No. 5,701
-of 1828. This consisted in heating the air blast before admitting it to
-the furnace, and it so increased the reduction of refractory ores in the
-blast furnace as to permit three or four times the quantity of iron to
-be produced with an expenditure of little more than one-third of the
-fuel.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 250.--MODERN HOT BLAST FURNACE.]
-
-An illustration of a modern blast furnace plant is given in Fig. 250. A
-is the furnace, in which the iron ore and fuel are arranged in alternate
-layers. The hot air blast comes in through pipes _t_ at the bottom,
-called tuyeres. As gas escapes through the opening _b_ at the top, it is
-first cleared of dust in the settler and washer B, and then passes
-through the pipe C to the regenerators D D D, where it is made to heat
-the incoming air. The gas mixed with some air burns in the
-regenerators, and, after heating a mass of brick within the regenerators
-red hot, escapes by the underground passageway to the chimney on the
-right. When the bricks are sufficiently hot in one of the regenerators,
-gas is turned off therefrom, and into another regenerator, and fresh air
-from pipe H is passed through the bricks of the heated regenerator, and
-being heated passes out pipe F at the top and thence to the pipe G and
-tuyeres _t_, to promote the chemical reactions in the blast furnace.
-
-In the earlier blast furnaces a vast amount of heat was allowed to
-escape and was wasted. The utilization of this heat engaged the
-attention of Aubertot in France, 1810-14; Teague in England (British
-patent No. 6,211, of 1832); Budd (British patent No. 10,475, of 1845),
-and others. To enable the escaping hot gases to be employed for heating
-the hot blast regenerators a charging device is now used, as seen at a
-in Fig. 250, in which the admission of ore and fuel is regulated by a
-large conical valve, and the gases are compelled to pass out at _b_ and
-be utilized.
-
-Among the world's largest blast furnaces may be mentioned the Austrian
-Alpine Montan Gesellschaft, which concern owns thirty-two furnaces. This
-is said to be the largest number owned by any one concern in the world,
-but most of them are of small size and run on charcoal iron. The
-furnaces of the United States are, however, of the largest yield, and
-the leading ones of these are:
-
- No. Annual capacity
- Furnaces. in tons.
- Carnegie Steel Co. 17 2,200,000
- Federal Steel Co. 19 1,900,000
- Tennessee Coal and Iron Co. 20 1,307,000
- National Steel Co. 12 1,205,000
-
-The present annual output of pig iron in the United States is about ten
-million tons, of which these four companies make about one-half.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 251.--PUDDLING FURNACE.]
-
-When the iron runs from the bottom of the blast furnace it is allowed to
-flow into trough-like moulds in the sand of the floor, and forms pig
-iron. Pig iron can be remelted and cast into various articles in moulds,
-but it cannot be wrought with the hammer, nor rolled into rails or
-plates, nor welded on the anvil, because it is still a compound of iron
-and carbon with other impurities, and is crystalline in character. To
-bring it into wrought iron, which is malleable and ductile, it is
-puddled and refined, which involves chiefly the burning out of the
-carbon and silicon. The pig iron is remelted (see Fig. 251) in the
-tray-shaped hearth _b_ from the heat of the fire in the reverberatory
-furnace _a_, the reverberatory furnace being one in which the materials
-treated are exposed to the heat of the flame, but not to contact with
-the fuel. The hot flame mixed with air beating down upon the melted iron
-on hearth _b_ for two hours or so, burns out the silicon and carbon, the
-process being facilitated by stirring and working the mass with tools.
-During the operation the oxygen of the air combines with the carbon and
-forms carbonic acid gas, which, in escaping from the metal, appears to
-make it boil. When the iron parts with its carbon it loses its fluidity
-and becomes plastic and coherent, and is formed into balls called
-_blooms_. These blooms consist of particles of nearly pure iron
-cohering, but retaining still a quantity of slag or vitreous material,
-and other impurities, which slag, etc., is worked out while still, hot
-by a squeezing, kneading, and hammering process to form wrought iron
-that may be worked into any shape between rolls or under the hammer.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 252.--BESSEMER CONVERTER DURING THE "BLOW."]
-
-_Bessemer Steel._--Steel is a compound of iron and carbon, standing
-between wrought iron and cast iron. Wrought iron has, when pure,
-practically no carbon in it, while cast iron has a considerable
-proportion in excess of steel. Steel making consists mainly in so
-treating cast iron as to get rid of a part of the carbon and other
-impurities. Of all methods of steel making, and in fact of all the steps
-of progress in the art of metal working, none has been so important and
-so far reaching in effect as the Bessemer process: It was invented by
-Henry Bessemer, of England, in 1855. About fifty British patents were
-taken by Mr. Bessemer relating to various improvements in the iron
-industry, but those representing the pioneer steps of the so-called
-Bessemer process are No. 2,321, of 1855; No. 2,768, of 1855, and No.
-356, of 1856. The process is illustrated in Figs. 252, 253 and 254. The
-converter in which the process is carried out is a great bottle-shaped
-vessel 15 feet high and 9 feet wide, consisting of an iron shell with a
-heavy lining of refractory material, capable of holding eight or more
-tons of melted iron, and with an open neck at the top turned to one
-side. It is mounted on trunnions, and is provided with gear wheels by
-which it may be turned on its trunnions, so that it may be maintained
-erect, as in Fig. 252, or be turned down to pour out the contents into
-the casting ladle, as in Figs. 253 and 254. At the bottom of the
-converter there is an air chamber supplied by a pipe leading from one of
-the trunnions, which is hollow, and a number of upwardly discharging air
-openings or nozzles send streams of air into the molten mass of red hot
-cast iron. The red hot cast iron contains more or less carbon and
-silicon, and the air uniting with the carbon and silicon burns it out,
-and in doing so furnishes the heat for the continuance of the operation.
-When the pressure of air is turned into the mass of molten iron a tongue
-of flame increasing in brilliancy to an intense white, comes roaring out
-of the mouth of the converter, and a violent ebullition takes place
-within, and throws sparks and spatters of metal high in the air around,
-producing the impression and scenic effect of a volcano in eruption. In
-fifteen minutes the volume and brilliancy of the flame diminish, and
-this indicates the critical moment of conversion into tough steel, which
-must be adjusted to the greatest nicety. When the carbon is sufficiently
-burned out the blast is stopped and the converter turned down to receive
-a quantity of ferro-manganese or spiegeleisen (a compound of iron
-containing manganese), which unites with and removes the sulphur and
-oxide of iron, and then the lurid monster, with its breath of fire
-abated, and its energy exhausted, bows its head and vomits forth its
-charge of boiling steel, to be wrought or cast into ten thousand useful
-articles.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 253.--POURING THE MOLTEN METAL.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 254.--SIDE VIEW, SHOWING TURNING GEARS.]
-
-Like most all valuable inventions, Mr. Bessemer's claim to priority for
-the invention was contested. An American inventor, William Kelly, in an
-interference with Mr. Bessemer's United States patent, successfully
-established a claim to the broad idea of forcing air into the red hot
-cast iron, and United States patent No. 17,628, June 23, 1857, was
-granted to Mr. Kelly. The honor of inventing and introducing a
-successful process and apparatus for making steel by this method,
-however, fairly belongs to Mr. Bessemer, to whose work was to be added
-the valuable contribution of Robert F. Mushet (British patent No. 2,219,
-of 1856) of adding spiegeleisen, a triple compound of iron, carbon and
-manganese, to the charge in the converter. This step served to regulate
-the supply of carbon and eliminate the oxygen, and completed the process
-of making steel. The Holly converter, covered by United States patents
-No. 86,303, and No. 86,304, January 26, 1869, represented one of the
-most important American developments of the Bessemer converter.
-
-The importance of Bessemer steel in its influence upon modern
-civilization is everywhere admitted. It has so cheapened steel that it
-now competes with iron in price. Practically all railroad rails, iron
-girders and beams for buildings, nails, etc., are made from it at a cost
-of between one and two cents per pound.
-
-In recognition of the great benefits conferred upon humanity by this
-process, Queen Victoria conferred the degree of knighthood upon the
-inventor, and his fortune resulting from his invention is estimated to
-have grown for some time at the rate of $500,000 a year. In a historical
-sketch of the development of his process, delivered by Sir Henry
-Bessemer in December, 1896, before the American Society of Mechanical
-Engineers at New York, Mr. Bessemer was reported as saying that the
-annual production of Bessemer steel in Europe and America amounted to
-10,000,000 tons. The production of Bessemer steel in the United States
-for 1897 was for ingots and castings 5,475,315 tons, and for railroad
-rails 1,644,520 tons. The extent to which steel has displaced iron is
-shown by the fact that in the same year iron rails to the extent of
-2,872 tons only were made, as compared with more than a million and a
-half tons of Bessemer steel.
-
-In the popular vote taken by the _Scientific American_, July 25, 1896,
-as to what invention introduced in the past fifty years had conferred
-the greatest benefit upon mankind, Bessemer steel was given the place of
-honor.
-
-A recent improvement in the handling of iron from the blast furnace is
-shown in Fig. 255. Heretofore, the iron was run in open sand moulds on
-the floor and allowed to cool in bars called "pigs," which were united
-in a series to a main body of the flow, called a "sow." To break the
-"pigs" from the "sow," and handle the iron in transportation, was a very
-laborious and expensive work. The illustration shows two series of
-parallel trough moulds, each forming an endless belt, running on wheels.
-The molten cast iron is poured direct into these moulds, and as they
-travel along they pass beneath a body of water, which cools and
-solidifies the iron into pigs, and then carries them up an incline and
-dumps them directly into the cars.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 255.--CASTING AND LOADING PIG IRON.]
-
-_Open Hearth Steel_ is not so cheap as Bessemer steel, but it is of a
-finer and more uniform quality. Bessemer steel is made in a few minutes
-by the most energetic, rapid and critical of processes, while the open
-hearth steel requires several hours, and its development being thus
-prolonged it may be watched and regulated to a greater nicety of result.
-For railroad rails and architectural construction Bessemer steel still
-finds a great field of usefulness, but for the finest quality of steel,
-such as is employed in making steam boilers, tools, armor plate for war
-vessels, etc., steel made by the open hearth process is preferred. It
-consists in the decarburization of cast iron by fusion with wrought
-iron, iron sponge, steel scrap, or iron oxide, in the hearth of a
-reverberatory furnace heated with gases, the flame of which assists the
-reaction, and the subsequent recarburization or deoxidation of the bath
-by the addition, at the close of the process, of spiegeleisen or
-ferro-manganese. The period of fusion lasts from four to eight hours.
-The advantages over the Bessemer process are, a less expensive plant and
-the greater duration of the operation, permitting, by means of
-sampling, more complete control of the quality of the product and
-greater uniformity of result.
-
-The British patents of Siemens, No. 2,861, of 1856; No. 167, of 1861,
-and No. 972, of 1863, for regenerative furnaces, and the British patents
-of Emile and Pierre Martin, No. 2,031, of 1864; No. 2,137, of 1865, and
-No. 859, of 1866, represent the so-called _Siemens-Martin_ process,
-which is the best known and generally used open hearth process.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 256.--SIEMENS REGENERATIVE FURNACE.]
-
-_The Siemens Regenerative Furnace_, in which this process is carried
-out, is seen in Fig. 256. Four chambers, C, E, E', C', are filled with
-fire brick loosely stacked with spaces between, in checker-work style.
-Gas is forced in the bottom of chamber C, and air in bottom of chamber
-E, and they pass up separate flues, G, on the left, and being ignited in
-chamber D above, impinge in a flame on the metal in hearth H, the hot
-gases passing out flues F on the right, and percolating through and
-highly heating the checker-work bricks in chambers E' and C'. As soon as
-these are hot, gas and air are shut off by valves from chambers C and E,
-and gas and air admitted to the bottoms of the now hot chambers C' and
-E'. The gas and air now passing up through these chambers C', E', become
-highly heated, and when burned above the melted iron on hearth H produce
-an intense heat. The waste gases now pass down flues G, and impart
-their heat to the checker-work bricks in chambers C and E. When the
-bricks in E' C' become cooled by the passage of gas and air, the valves
-are again adjusted to reverse the currents of gas and air, sending them
-now through chambers C and E again. In this way the heat escaping to
-the smoke stack is stored up in the bricks and utilized to heat the
-incoming fuel gases before burning them, thus greatly increasing the
-effective energy of the furnace, saving fuel, and keeping the smoke
-stack relatively cool.
-
-_Armor Plate._--In these late days of struggle for supremacy between the
-power of the projectile and the resistance of the battleship, the
-production of armor plate has become an interesting and important
-industry.
-
-Three methods are employed. One is to roll the massive ingots directly
-into plates between tremendous rolls, a single pair of which, such as
-used in the Krupp works, are said to weigh in the rough as much as
-100,000 pounds. Usually there are three great rollers arranged one above
-the other, and automatic tables are provided for raising and lowering
-the plates in their passage from one set of rolls to the other. The man
-in charge uses a whistle in giving the signals which direct these
-movements, and without the help of tongs and levers the glowing blocks
-move easily back and forth between the rollers. The men standing on both
-sides of the rollers have only to wipe off the plates with brooms and
-occasionally turn the plates.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 257.--14,000-TON HYDRAULIC PRESS FORGING AN ARMOR
-PLATE.]
-
-The second method utilizes great steam hammers weighing 125 tons, and
-striking Titanic blows upon the yielding metal. The most modern method,
-however, is by the hydraulic press forge, now used in the shops of the
-Bethlehem steel works in the production of Harveyized armor plate. In
-Fig. 257 is seen the great 14,000-ton hydraulic press-forge squeezing
-into shape a port armor plate for the battleship "Alabama." After
-leaving the forge, the plate is trimmed to shape by the savage bite of a
-rotary saw and planer, seen in Figs. 258 and 259, whose insatiable
-appetites tear off the steel like famished fiends. The plate is then
-taken to be Harveyized by cementation, hardening, and tempering, as seen
-in Figs. 260, 261, and 262. The 125-ton mass of metal representing the
-plate in the rough, and weighing more than a locomotive, is thus handled
-and brought to shape with an ease and dispatch that inspires the
-observer with mixed emotions of admiration and awe.
-
-_Making Horse Shoes._--Anthony's patent, April 8, 1831; Tolles', of
-October 24, 1834, and H. Burden's, of November 23, 1835, were pioneers
-in horse-shoe machines. Mr. Burden took many subsequent patents, and to
-him more than any other inventor belongs the credit of introducing
-machine-made horse shoes, which greatly cheapened the cost of this
-homely, but useful article. Nearly 400 United States patents have been
-granted for horse-shoe machines.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 258.--ROTARY SAW, CUTTING HEAVY ARMOR PLATE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 259.--ROTARY PLANER, TRIMMING HEAVY ARMOR PLATE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 260.--THE CEMENTATION FURNACE.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 261.--HARDENING THE PLATE BY JETS OF WATER.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 262.--OIL TEMPERING.]
-
-_Making Screws, Bolts, Nuts, Etc._--Screw-making according to modern
-methods began between 1800-1810 with the operations of Maudsley. Sloan,
-in 1851, and Harvey, in 1864, made many improvements in machines,
-operating upon screw blanks. The gimlet-pointed screw, which allows the
-screw to be turned into wood without having a hole bored for it, was an
-important advance in the art. It was the invention of Thomas J. Sloan,
-patented August 20, 1846, No. 4,704, and was twice re-issued and
-extended. In later years the rolling of screws, instead of cutting the
-threads by a chasing tool, has attained considerable importance, and
-provides a simpler and cheaper method of manufacture. Knowles' United
-States patent of April 1, 1831, re-issued March 1, 1833, described such
-a process, while Rogers, in patents No. 370,354, September 20, 1887; No.
-408,529, August 6, 1889; No. 430,237, June 17, 1890, and No. 434,809,
-August 19, 1890, added such improvement in the process as to make it
-practical.
-
-In the great art of metal working the names of Bramah, Whitworth,
-Clements and Sellers appear conspicuously in the early part of the
-century as inventors of planing, boring and turning machinery for
-metals. Our present splendid machine shops, gun shops, locomotive works,
-typewriter and bicycle factories, are examples of the wonderful
-extensions of this art. In later years the field has been filled so full
-of improvements and special machines for special work, that only a brief
-citation of a few representative types is possible, and even then
-selection becomes a very difficult task. Many special tools,
-particularly those designed for _bicycle work_, have been devised, as
-exhibited by patent to Hillman, August 11, 1891, No. 457,718. In
-_turning car wheels_, an improvement consists in bringing the wheel to
-be dressed into close proximity to the edge of a rapidly revolving
-smooth metal disk, whereby the surface of the wheel is melted away
-without there being any actual contact between the wheel surface and the
-disk. This is shown in patent to Miltimore, August 24, 1886, No.
-347,951. In _metal tube manufacture_ three processes are worthy of
-mention: (1) Passing a heated solid rod endwise between the working
-faces of two rapidly rotating tapered rolls, set with their axes at an
-angle to each other, as shown in Mannesmann's patent, April 26, 1887,
-No. 361,954 and 361,955. (2) Forcing a tube into a rapidly rotating die,
-whereby the friction softens the tube, and the pressure and rotation of
-the die spin it into a tube of reduced diameter, shown in patent to
-Bevington, January 13, 1891, No. 444,721. (3) Placing a hot ingot in a
-die and forcing a mandrel through the ingot, thereby causing it to
-assume the shape of the interior of the die, and greatly condensing the
-metal, shown in patents to Robertson, November 26, 1889, No. 416,014,
-and Ehrhardt, April 11, 1893, No. 495,245.
-
-In _welding_, the employment of electricity constitutes the most
-important departure. This was introduced by Elihu Thomson, and is
-covered in his patents Nos. 347,140 to 347,142, August 10, 1886, and No.
-501,546, July 18, 1893. In _annealing_ and _tempering_, electricity has
-also been employed as a means of heating (see patent to Shaw, No.
-211,938, February 4, 1879). It supplies an even heat and uniform
-temperature, and is much used in producing clock and watch springs. The
-making of iron castings malleable by a prolonged baking in a furnace in
-a bed of metallic oxide was an important, but early, step. It was the
-invention of Samuel Lucas, and is disclosed in his British patent No.
-2,767, of 1804.
-
-The _Harvey process_ of making armor plate is an important recent
-development in _cementation_ and _case hardening_, and is covered by his
-United States patents No. 376,194, January 10, 1888, and No. 460,262,
-September 29, 1891. It consists, see Fig. 260, in embedding the face of
-the plate in carbon, protecting the back and sides with sand, heating to
-about the melting point of cast iron, and subsequently hardening the
-face. The Krupp armor plate, now rated as the best, is made under the
-patent to Schmitz and Ehrenzberger, No. 534,178, February 12, 1895.
-
-In _coating with metals_, the so-called "galvanizing" of iron is an
-important art. This was introduced by Craufurd (British patent No.
-7,355, of April 29, 1837), and consisted in plunging the iron into a
-bath of melted zinc covered with sal ammoniac. In more recent years the
-tinning of iron has become an important industry, and machines have been
-made for automatically coating the plates and dispensing with hand
-labor, examples of which are found in patents No. 220,768, October 21,
-1879, Morewood; No. 329,240, October 27, 1885, Taylor, _et al._, and No.
-426,962, April 29, 1890, Rogers and Player.
-
-In _metal founding_ the employment of chill moulds is an important step.
-Where any portion of a casting is subjected to unusual wear, the mould
-is formed, opposite that part of the casting, out of metal, instead of
-sand, and this metal surface, by rapidly extracting the heat at that
-point by virtue of its own conductivity, hardens the metal of the
-casting at such point. The casting of car wheels by chill moulds, by
-which the tread portion of the wheel was hardened and increased in
-wearing qualities, is a good illustration. Important types are found in
-patents to Wilmington, No. 85,046, December 15, 1868; Barr, No. 207,794,
-September 10, 1878, and Whitney, re-issue patent, No. 10,804, February
-1, 1887.
-
-In _wire-working_ great advances have been made in machines for making
-_barbed wire fences_. The French patent to Grassin & Baledans, in 1861,
-is the first disclosure of a barbed wire fence. This art began
-practically, however, with the United States patent to Glidden and
-Vaughan for a barbed wire machine, No. 157,508, December 8, 1874,
-re-issued March 20, 1877, No. 7,566, and has assumed great proportions.
-A machine for making wire net is shown in patent to Scarles, No.
-380,664, April 3, 1888, and wire picket fence machines are shown in
-patents to Fultz, No. 298,368, May 13, 1884, and Kitselman, No. 356,322,
-January 18, 1887. Machines for making wire nails were invented at an
-early period, but the product found but little favor until about 1880,
-when they began to be extensively used, and have almost entirely
-supplanted cut nails for certain classes of work, since their round
-cross section and lack of taper give great holding power and avoid
-cutting the grain of the wood. In 1897 the wire nails produced in the
-United States amounted to 8,997,245 kegs of 100 pounds each, which
-nearly doubled the output of 1896. The output of cut nails for the same
-year was 2,106,799 kegs.
-
-The bending of wire to form chains without welding the links has long
-been done for watch chains, etc., but in late years the method has
-extended to many varieties of heavy chains. The patents to Breul, No.
-359,054, March 8, 1887, and No. 467,331, January 19, 1892, are good
-examples.
-
-An interesting class of machines, but one impossible of illustration on
-account of their complication, are machines for making pins. In earlier
-times pins had their heads applied in a separate operation. Making pins
-from wire and forming the heads out of the cut sections began in the
-Nineteenth Century with Hunt's British patent No. 4,129, of 1817. This
-art received its greatest impetus, however, under Wright's British
-patent No. 4,955, of 1824. A paper of pins containing a pin for every
-day in the year, and costing but a few cents, gives no idea to the
-purchaser of the time, thought and capital expended in machines for
-making them, and yet were it not for such machines, rapidly cutting
-coils of wire into lengths, pointing and heading the pins, and sticking
-them into papers, the world would be deprived of one of its most
-ubiquitous and useful articles. Many tons of pins are made in the United
-States weekly, and it is said that 20,000,000 pins a day are required to
-meet the demand.
-
-In the metal working art the making of firearms and projectiles has
-grown to wonderful proportions. Cutlery and builders' hardware is an
-enormous branch; wire-drawing, sheet metal-making, forging, and the
-making of tools, springs, tin cans, needles, hooks and eyes, nails and
-tacks, and a thousand minor articles, have grown to such proportions
-that only a bird's-eye view of the art is possible.
-
-In the _making_ of _shot_, the old method was to pour the melted metal
-through a sieve, and allow it to drop from a tower 180 feet or more in
-height. David Smith's patent, No. 6,460, May 22, 1849, provided an
-ascending current of air through which the metal dropped, and which, by
-cooling the shot by retarding its fall and bringing a greater number of
-air particles in contact with them, avoided the necessity of such high
-towers. In 1868, Glasgow and Wood patented a process of dropping the
-shot through a column of glycerine or oil. Still another method is to
-allow the melted metal to fall on a revolving disk, which divides it
-into drops by centrifugal action.
-
-_Alloys._--Over 300 United States patents have been granted for various
-alloys of metals. The so-called _babbit metal_ was patented in the
-United States by Isaac Babbit, July 17, 1839, and in England, May 15,
-1843, No. 9,724. This consists of an antifriction compound of tin, 10
-parts, copper, 1 part, and antimony, 1 part, and is specially adapted
-for the lubricated bearings of machinery. _Phosphor bronze_, introduced
-in 1871, combines 80 to 92 parts copper, 7 of tin, and 1 of phosphorus
-(see United States patents to Lavroff, No. 118,372, August 22, 1871, and
-Levi and Kunzel, No. 115,220, May 23, 1871). The addition of phosphorus
-promotes the fluidity of the metal and makes very clean, fine and strong
-castings. In alloys of iron, _chromium steel_ is covered by patents to
-Baur, No. 49,495, August 22, 1865; No. 99,624, February 8, 1870, and
-No. 123,443, February 6, 1872; _manganese steel_, by Hadfield's patent,
-No. 303,150, August 5, 1884; _aluminum steel_, by Wittenstroem's patent,
-No. 333,373, December 29, 1885, and _phosphorus steel_, by Kunkel's
-patent, No. 182,371, September 19, 1876. The most recent and perhaps
-most important, however, is _nickel steel_, used in making armor for
-battleships. This is covered by Schneider's patents, Nos. 415,655, and
-415,657, November 19, 1889.
-
-In 1878 England led the world in the iron industry with a production of
-6,381,051 tons of pig iron, as compared with 2,301,215 tons by the
-United States. In 1897 the United States leads the world in the
-following ratios:
-
- Tons Pig Iron. Tons Steel.
- United States 9,652,680 7,156,957
- Great Britain 8,789,455 4,585,961
- Germany 6,879,541 4,796,226
- France 2,472,143 1,312,000
-
-The United States made in that year 29.30 per cent. of the world's
-production of pig iron, and 34.58 per cent. of its steel. The total
-output of the whole world in that year was 32,937,490 tons pig iron, and
-20,696,787 tons of steel.
-
-_Metallurgy of Rarer Metals._--Although less in evidence than iron, this
-has engaged the attention of the scientist from the earliest years of
-the century. The full list of metals discovered since 1800 may be found
-under "Chemistry." The more important only are here given. Palladium and
-rhodium were reduced by Wollaston in 1804. Potassium and sodium were
-first separated in metallic form by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1807, through
-the agency of the voltaic arc; barium, strontium, calcium and boron by
-the same scientist in 1808; iodine by Courtois in 1811; selenium by
-Berzelius in 1817; cadmium by Stromeyer in 1817; silicon by Berzelius in
-1823, and bromium by Balard in 1826. Magnesium was first prepared by
-Bussey in 1829. Aluminum was first separated in 1828 by Wohler, by
-decomposing the chloride by means of potassium. Oersted, in 1827,
-preceded him with important preliminary steps, and Deville, in 1854,
-followed in the first commercial applications. In late years the
-metallurgy of aluminum has made great advances. The Cowles process heats
-to incandescence by the electric current a mixture of alumina, carbon
-and copper, the reduced aluminum alloying with the copper. This process
-is covered by United States patents to Cowles and Cowles, No. 319,795,
-June 9. 1885, and Nos. 324,658 and 324,659, August 18, 1885. It has,
-however, for the most parts been superseded by the process patented by
-Hall, April 2, 1889, No. 400,766, in which alumina dissolved in fused
-cryolite is electrically decomposed.
-
-In the metallurgy of the precious metals probably the most important
-step has been the _cyanide process_ of obtaining gold and silver. In
-1806 it was known that gold was soluble in a solution of cyanide of
-potassium. In 1844 L. Elsner published investigations along this line,
-and demonstrated that the solution took place only in the presence of
-oxygen. McArthur and Forrest perfected the process for commercial
-application, and it is now extensively used in the Transvaal and
-elsewhere. It is covered by their British patent, No. 14,174, of 1887,
-and United States patents No. 403,202, May 14, 1889, and No. 418,137,
-December 24, 1889, which describe the application of dilute solutions of
-cyanide of potassium, not exceeding 8 parts cyanogen to 1,000 parts of
-water: the use of zinc in a fine state of division to precipitate the
-gold out of solution, and the preparatory treatment of the partially
-oxidized ores with an alkali or salts of an alkali. By this
-solution-process gold, in the finest state of subdivision, which could
-not be extracted by other processes from the earthy matters, may be
-recovered and saved in a simple, practical and cheap way.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 263.--EDISON MAGNETIC CONCENTRATING WORKS. THE GIANT
-CRUSHING ROLLS.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 264.--EDISON MAGNETIC CONCENTRATOR.]
-
-In the working of ores of gold and silver the old method of comminution
-of the rock and the separation of the gold and silver by amalgamation
-with mercury has given birth to thousands of inventions in stamp mills,
-amalgamators, ore washers, concentrators and separators. In the
-treatment of iron ores, and especially those of low grade, the magnetic
-concentrator is an interesting and striking departure. This method goes
-back to the first half of the Nineteenth Century, an example being found
-in the patent to Cook, No. 6,121, February 20, 1849. Edison's patent,
-No. 228,329, June 1, 1880, is however, the basis of the first practical
-operations in which magnets, operating by attraction upon falling
-particles of iron ore, are made to separate the particles rich in iron
-from the sand. In Fig. 263 is shown the Edison magnetic concentrating
-apparatus. The ore, in masses of all sizes up to boulders of five or six
-tons weight, is dumped between the giant rolls, and these enormous
-masses are crunched and comminuted more easily than a dog crunches a
-bone. These gigantic rolls are six feet in diameter, six feet long, and
-their surfaces are covered with crushing knobs. They weigh with the
-moving machinery seventy tons, and when revolved at a circumferential
-speed of 3,500 feet in a minute, their insatiable and irresistible bite
-soon chews the rock into fragments that pass into similar crushing rolls
-set closer together until reduced to the desired fineness. The sand is
-then raised to the top of the concentrating devices, shown in Fig. 264,
-and is allowed to fall in sheets from inclined boards in front of a
-series of magnets, of which four sets are shown in the figure. These
-magnets deflect the fall of the particles rich in iron (which are
-attracted), while the non-magnetic particles of sand drop straight down.
-A thin knife-edge partition board, arranged below the falling sheets of
-sand, separates the deflected magnetic particles from the
-straight-falling sand. These magnetic particles are then collected and
-pressed into little bricks, which are now so rich in iron, by virtue of
-concentration, as to make the final reduction of the iron in the blast
-furnace easy and profitable. More recent developments in this art are
-shown in patents to Wetherill, No. 555,792, March 3, 1896, and Payne,
-No. 641,148, January 9, 1900.
-
-In the production of copper the well-known Bessemer process for refining
-iron is now largely used, as shown in patent to Manhes, No. 456,516,
-July 21, 1891, in which blasts of air are forced through the melted
-copper to remove sulphur and other impurities. Electrolytic processes of
-refining copper are also largely used, as described in Farmer's patent,
-No. 322,170, July 14, 1885.
-
-The production of metals, other than iron, in the United States for the
-year 1897, was as follows:
-
- Gold, 2,774,935 ounces; worth $57,363,000.
- Silver, 53,860,000 ounces; worth $32,316,000.
- Copper, 220,571 long tons.
- Lead, 212,000 short tons.
- Zinc, 99,980 short tons.
- Aluminum, 4,000,000 lbs.; worth (371/2 cents lb.) $1,500,000.
- (This was three times the product of 1896.)
- Mercury, 26,691 flasks; worth $993,445.
- Nickel, 23,707 pounds; worth (33 cents pound) $7,823.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXX.
-
-FIREARMS AND EXPLOSIVES.
-
- THE CANNON THE MOST ANCIENT OF FIREARMS--MUZZLE AND BREECH LOADERS
- OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY--THE ARMSTRONG GUN--THE RODMAN, DAHLGREN
- AND PARROTT GUNS--BREECH LOADING ORDNANCE--RAPID FIRE BREECH LOADING
- RIFLES--DISAPPEARING GUN--GATLING GUN--DYNAMITE GUN--THE COLT AND
- SMITH & WESSON REVOLVERS--GERMAN AUTOMATIC PISTOL--BREECH LOADING
- SMALL ARMS--MAGAZINE GUNS--THE LEE, KRAG-JORGENSEN, AND MAUSER
- RIFLES--HAMMERLESS GUNS--REBOUNDING LOCKS--GUN COTTON--NITRO-
- GLYCERINE AND SMOKELESS POWDER--MINES AND TORPEDOES.
-
-
-Strange as it may appear, the evolution of an enlightened civilization
-and the deadly use of firearms have developed in parallel lines. What
-relation there may be between the adoption of the teachings of Christ to
-men to love one another, and the invention of increased facilities among
-men for killing one another, is a problem for the philosopher. Is it
-because killing at long range is less brutal, or does the deterrent
-influence of this increased facility operate as a check appealing to the
-fear of the individual, or is the cannon one of God's missionaries in
-working out the great law of the survival of the fittest? Whatever it
-may be, there does seem to be some relation of cause and effect between
-the two factors, and doubtless all three of the causes have exercised a
-contributory influence. In the olden days the wage of battle was almost
-universally decided by the strength of brawn, and the higher qualities
-of mind were subservient. The advent of firearms has changed all this.
-It has made the weakest arm equal to the strongest when supported by the
-same or a superior mental equipment, and this has made a great step
-toward the supremacy of the intellectual against the attack of the
-physically strong. In the fifth century the great civilization of Rome
-fell under the ruthless attack of the northern barbarian. Could such a
-thing have been possible with the gates defended by Gatling guns,
-magazine rifles, and dynamite shells? On the contrary, we find to-day a
-handful of trained soldiers equipped with modern firearms putting to
-flight a horde of ignorant savages. The history of modern wars is filled
-with illustrations of the shifting of the contest among men from an
-issue of brute force to a contest of brains, and of the support rendered
-the latter by firearms. But is war really necessary, and may we not
-hope that it shall cease? We can only say that the ideal sentiment of
-beating the sword into the plowshare is as yet the dream of the
-optimist, for man has gone right along in perfecting the arts of war and
-raising the execution of firearms to such a deadly efficacy, that the
-Nineteenth Century in a paramount degree has been conspicuously notable
-for its advances in this art. Invention after invention has followed in
-such rapid succession, even to the last years of the Nineteenth Century,
-until war now assumes the conditions of suicide and annihilation.
-
-No coherent history of firearms and explosives is possible in any short
-review. The cannon, bombard or mortar, musket, pistol and petard, all
-belong to former centuries, and in one form or another extend back to
-the most ancient times, but they have grown in the Nineteenth Century
-into such accuracy and distance of range, into such rapidity of action,
-into such multiplied efficiency in repeating systems, into such energy
-of explosives, and such convenient embodiment and penetration of
-projectile, that these subjects must needs be considered in separate
-divisions.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 265.--MUZZLE LOADING CANNON OF THE SIXTEENTH
-CENTURY.]
-
-_The Cannon_ is the most ancient of all firearms, and, like gunpowder,
-is believed to have had its origin with the Chinese. In the Eleventh
-Century the vessels of the King of Tunis, in the attack on Seville, are
-said to have had on board iron pipes from which a thundering fire was
-discharged. Conde, in his history of the Moors in Spain, speaks of them
-as used in that country as early as 1118. Ferdinand, in 1309, took
-Gibraltar from the Moors by cannon, and in 1346 the English used them at
-the battle of Crecy, and from that time on they became a common weapon
-of warfare. In the first cannon used the balls were of stone, and some
-of them were of enormous size. The bronze cannon of Mohammed II., A.
-D., 1464, had a bore of 25 inches, and threw a stone ball of 800 pounds.
-The _Tsar-Pooschka_, the great bronze gun of Moscow, cast in 1586, was
-even larger, and had a bore 36 inches in diameter. Early in the history
-of the cannon the breech-loading feature was introduced. In Figs. 265
-and 266 are shown illustrations from the Sixteenth Century, Fig. 265
-representing a muzzle loader, and Fig. 266 a breech-loader.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 266.--BREECH LOADING CANNON OF THE SIXTEENTH
-CENTURY.]
-
-Passing through various stages of development, the cannon came down to
-the Nineteenth Century, and was known generally as ordnance or
-artillery, and specifically as cannon or heavy guns, mortars for
-throwing shell at a great elevation, and howitzers for field, mountain,
-or siege, and which latter are lighter and shorter than cannon, and
-designed to throw hollow projectiles with comparatively small charges.
-The feature of importance in the cannon which contributed most to its
-efficiency was the rifling of the bore with spiral grooves. This, by
-giving a rotating effect to the projectile, caused it to maintain a
-truer flight by taking advantage of the law of physics that a rotating
-body tends to preserve its plane of rotation. The rifling of the barrels
-of firearms is, however, of very ancient origin. The British patent to
-Rotsipen, No. 71, of 1635, is an early disclosure of this art. The
-patent was granted him for
-
- "Fourteen yeares if he live soe long." * * * "To draw or to shave
- barrells for pieces of all sortes straight even and smooth, and to
- make anie crooked barrell perfectly straight with greate ease, and
- to _rifle cutt out_ or screwe barrells as wyde or as close or as
- deepe or as shallowe as shalbe required, with greate ease."
-
-The rifle grooves, however, were first made spiral or "screwed" by
-Koster, of Birmingham, about 1620, while straight grooves are said to
-have been in use as far back as 1498. In Berlin there is a rifled cannon
-of 1664 with thirteen grooves. Rifled cannon were first employed in
-actual service in Louis Napoleon's Italian campaign of 1859, and were
-first introduced in the United States service by General James in 1861.
-
-About the middle of the Nineteenth Century a great impetus was given to
-the development of artillery by the Crimean War, followed by the Civil
-War of the United States.
-
-In England the Armstrong gun was introduced about 1855, and was covered
-by British patents No. 401, of 1857; No. 2,564, of 1858; No. 611, of
-1859, and No. 743, of 1861. This originally consisted of an internal
-tube of wrought iron or gun metal, with cylindrical casings of wrought
-iron shrunk on. It was afterwards improved in what was known as the
-Fraser gun. In Germany the operations of Krupp as a gun maker began to
-be notable about this period. In the United States, Colonel Rodman
-devised a means of casting guns of large calibre, by having a hollow
-core through which water was circulated to rapidly cool and harden the
-metal in the vicinity of the bore, and to relieve the unequal strain in
-cooling. He obtained patent No. 5,236, August 14, 1847, for the same.
-The Dahlgren gun was patented August 6, 1861, Nos. 32,983, 32,984, and
-32,985, by Admiral Dahlgren, U. S. N. The improvement covered the
-adjustment of the thickness of the metal at the breech of the gun to the
-varying pressure strains along the bore. These guns were distinguishable
-by the smooth bulbous breech of great thickness and curvilinear contour.
-The Parrott gun, patented October 1, 1861, No. 33,401, and May 6, 1862,
-No. 35,171, comprehended a form of hooped ordnance in which the breech
-was re-enforced by an encompassing hoop or sleeve, which was shrunk on.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 267.--THE KRUPP BREECH MECHANISM.]
-
-_Breech-Loading Ordnance._--While the breech-loading cannon is several
-centuries old, and was, in fact, one of the first forms of that firearm,
-it is to this principle of action that the rapid fire and great
-execution of the modern weapon are chiefly due. The earliest of existing
-forms of breech mechanism is that which comprehends the channeling of
-the breech transversely to receive a tapered plug, which permits the
-charge to be placed in the open rear end of the gun in front of the
-channel, and the transverse plug then closed behind the charge. This is
-described in Hadley's British patent No. 577, of 1741; was first
-patented in the United States in a modified form by Wright and Gould,
-No. 22,325, December 14, 1858, and afterwards came to be known as the
-Broadwell system, being developed by him and covered in patents No.
-33,876, of December 10, 1861; No. 43,553, July 12, 1864, and No. 55,762,
-June 19, 1866. This general principle is still employed by Krupp in
-some of his guns, and as used by him is shown in Fig. 267. The
-transverse channel through the breech is tapered, and the sliding breech
-block X is slightly wedge-shaped to fit tightly therein. When the breech
-block is withdrawn for loading, as shown, a sleeve S, shown in dotted
-lines, is temporarily arranged in alignment with the bore and gives
-smooth passage way to the charge to a position in front of the breech
-block. This sleeve is then withdrawn, the breech block forced in, and is
-there locked by a turn of the threads of a locking screw _b_ into the
-corresponding recesses _a_ in the breech. A detachable wrench _e_ may be
-applied either to the screw _d b_ to turn it to lock or unlock, or to
-the traversing screw _c_, which, by engaging with a nut (not shown),
-runs the breech block in and out.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 268.--INTERRUPTED THREAD BREECH MECHANISM.]
-
-By far the most popular principle of the breech block, however, is that
-of the interrupted thread, shown in Fig. 268, in which the plug, when
-closed, has its axis in alignment with the axial bore of the gun. Its
-threads are interrupted by longitudinally arranged channels, and the
-breech of the gun has corresponding threads and channels. When the plug
-is pushed into the gun, the screw threads of the plug enter the channels
-of the breech, and a rotary turn of the screw plug then locks its
-threads into those of the breech. The screw plug is supported by a
-carrier hinged at one side to the gun, and arranged to swing the plug
-into axial alignment with the bore, or be thrown to one side to admit
-the charge. The patents to Chambers, No. 6,612, July 31, 1849 (re-issue
-No. 237, April 19, 1853), and to Cochran, No. 26,256, November 29, 1859,
-are the earliest American examples of this principle of action, and are
-believed to be the original inventions of the same.
-
-In one form or another this construction enters into most all modern
-breech mechanisms. Among the forms used by the United States are the
-Driggs-Seabury, the Dashiell, and the Vickers-Maxim. To prevent the
-expanding gases from driving through the crevices of the breech block,
-expanding or swelling rings, known as gas checks, are arranged on the
-front of the breech block. De Bange's patent, No. 301,220, July 1, 1884,
-covers the most popular form.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 269.--SIGHTING A SIX-INCH RAPID FIRE GUN.]
-
-The elements of efficiency of the modern rapid-fire breech-loading rifle
-are to be found in the following features: First, in the increased
-length of the gun, which, for a 6-inch gun is now as much as 25 feet,
-the increased length lending a longer period of expansion for the
-explosion of the powder charge, and imparting a correspondingly higher
-momentum; secondly, in the fixed ammunition, which means a cartridge
-case in which a metallic shell encloses the powder charge, and is
-connected with the projectile, and third, in the great improvement and
-rapidity of action of the breech mechanism, which permits as many as
-eight rounds per minute to be fired. In Fig. 269 is shown a 6-inch
-rapid-fire gun of the United States Navy, loaded, and being sighted for
-fire. Rapid-fire guns of this class represent the most effective form of
-modern ordnance. It was largely such rapid fire batteries of Admiral
-Dewey's squadron that swept the Spanish fleet out of existence at
-Manila, and that demolished the fleet of Cervera at Santiago by the
-awful hail of shells poured into his ships. These relatively small guns
-throw a shell six miles, and the striking energy of their projectiles at
-the muzzle is equal to the penetration of iron plate 21 inches thick, or
-16 inches of steel. When the gun is loaded, it is held in the forward
-position by coil springs, inclosed in cylinders and holding a recoil
-seat for the trunnions, and also has two pistons traveling in cylinders
-filled with glycerine. When the gun is fired, the recoil causes it to
-slide back, carrying the pistons, and the recoil is checked by the
-resistance of the glycerine traveling through an opening past the
-pistons. After full recoil, the gun is automatically returned to its
-forward position by the action of the coil springs, which are compressed
-during the recoil. The gun crew is protected by Harveyized steel plate 4
-inches thick, and the gun is so delicately mounted on ball bearings that
-its great weight of 71/2 tons responds readily to the slight pressure in
-training the same.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 270.--RANGE OF SIXTEEN-INCH GUN.]
-
-Powerful as these guns appear to be, their big brothers in the revolving
-turrets are far more so. While not so nimble in action, the great power
-of these guns of the main battery, and the elaboration and completeness
-of mechanism for operating them, for supplying them with ammunition, and
-for rotating the turrets, constitute a complete world in ordnance in
-itself. As the gun increases in size, its cost both in construction and
-service increases in a greatly disproportionate ratio. A 6-inch
-breech-loading rifle costs $64.40 for each discharge, while a 12-inch
-gun costs $458 for each discharge. The largest guns of our battleships
-are of 13 inch calibre, and about 40 feet long, but larger ones are
-employed for sea coast defenses. The great 16-inch 126-ton gun, now
-building for the United States at the Watervliet arsenal, is 491/4 feet
-long, over 6 feet in diameter at the breech, and it will have an extreme
-range of over twenty miles. Its projectile will weigh 2,370 pounds, and
-it will cost $865 to fire the gun once. The accompanying view, Fig. 270,
-will give graphic illustration of the range of this gun. If fired at its
-maximum elevation from the battery at the south end of New York in a
-northerly direction, its projectile would pass over the city of New
-York, over Grant's Tomb, Spuyten Duyvil, Riverdale, Mount St. Vincent,
-Ludlow, Yonkers, and would land near Hastings-on-the-Hudson, nearly
-twenty miles away, as shown in our map, Fig. 271. The extreme height of
-its trajectory would be 30,516 feet, or nearly six miles. This means
-that if Pike's Peak, of the Western Hemisphere, had piled on top of it
-Mont Blanc, of the Eastern Hemisphere, this gun would hurl its enormous
-projectile so high above them both as to still leave space below its
-curve to build Washington's Monument on top of Mont Blanc, as shown in
-Fig. 270.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 271.--RADIUS OF ACTION OF SIXTEEN-INCH GUN.]
-
-_The Disappearing Gun._--The importance of secreting the location of the
-battery in coast defences, and the better protection of the gunners,
-have suggested a species of gun carriage which would permit the gun to
-be normally hidden behind and under the protection of the parapet, and
-be only temporarily elevated to a position above the parapet while
-firing. Various forms of this have been devised. General R. E. De Russy,
-Corps Engineers, U. S. A., devised such a carriage in 1835. Moncrieff,
-of England, was one of the first to put in practice such a form of
-carriage. United States patents covering this invention were granted him
-as follows: No. 83,873, November 10, 1868; No. 115,502, May 30, 1871,
-and No. 144,120, October 28, 1873. Its principle of operation was to
-utilize the force of the recoil as a power to raise the gun into firing
-position. The gun is fulcrumed in a lever frame provided with a
-counterpoise which more than balances the gun. When the gun is fired the
-recoil raises the counterweight, and the gun descends and is locked in
-its lower position. When loaded and released the counterpoise raises the
-gun again to firing position.
-
-Among later gun carriages of this type of American construction may be
-mentioned those devised by Spiller, Gordon, Howell, and others, but the
-one most generally known is the Buffington-Crozier, covered by patents
-No. 555,426, February 25, 1896, and No. 613,252, November 1, 1898. This
-carriage, sustaining the 8 and 10 inch breech-loading rifles at Fort
-Wadsworth for the defence of New York harbor, is shown in Figs. 272
-and 273, Fig. 272 representing it in its lowered position, and Fig. 273
-in its elevated position for firing. The trunnions of the gun rest in
-bearings at the upper ends of the pair of levers, which latter are
-fulcrumed near the middle to horizontally sliding carriages connected to
-hydraulic cylinders that move backward as the gun recoils. These
-cylinders move over stationary pistons which have orifices that allow
-the liquid to pass from one side of the piston to the other. As the gun
-recoils and the levers turn to the horizontal position, the forward ends
-of the levers are made to raise vertically an immense leaden
-counterweight, weighing 32,000 pounds, which ordinarily over-balances
-the weight of the gun on the levers. This cylindrical counterweight is
-seen raised on the left of Fig. 272. In firing, the energy of the recoil
-is absorbed partly by raising the counterweight, and partly by the
-resistance of the hydraulic cylinders, and when the gun reaches its
-lowest position it is caught and retained by pawls. After loading the
-pawls are tripped, and the greater gravity of the counterweight raises
-the gun to firing position again. Ten shots from an 8-inch gun on this
-carriage have been fired in 12 minutes 21 seconds.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 272.--BUFFINGTON-CROZIER DISAPPEARING GUN, LOWERED.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 273.--BUFFINGTON-CROZIER DISAPPEARING GUN, ELEVATED
-FOR FIRING.]
-
-_The Machine Gun._--During the Civil War a gun made its appearance
-which, although of small calibre, rivaled in its deadly effectiveness
-the wholesale slaughter of the cannon. It was a new type, and was known
-as the machine gun, or battery gun, in which balls of comparatively
-small size were discharged uninterruptedly and in incredible succession.
-It was the invention of Dr. R. J. Gatling, and was covered by him in
-patents No. 36,836, November 4, 1862, and No. 47,631, May 9, 1865, and
-in many subsequent patents for minor improvements, and is now
-universally known as the Gatling gun. It consisted of a circular series
-of barrels mounted on a central shaft, and revolved by suitable gears
-and a hand crank. The cartridges were automatically and successively fed
-into the chambers of the barrel, and its several hammers were so
-arranged in connection with the barrels that the whole operation of
-loading, closing the breech, discharging and expelling the empty
-cartridge cases was conducted while the barrels were kept in a
-continuous revolving movement by turning the hand crank. In Fig. 274 is
-shown a modern example of the Gatling gun equipped with the Accles feed.
-Ordinarily the gun has ten barrels, with ten corresponding locks, which
-revolve together during the working of the gun. When the gun is in
-action there are always five cartridges going through the process of
-loading, and five empty shells in different stages of being extracted,
-and many hundred shots a minute can be fired. Many modifications of this
-gun have been made by Hotchkiss and others. Maxim, Nordenfelt, and
-Benet have each made valuable inventions in machine guns of a somewhat
-different type, some of which utilize the force of the exploding charges
-to react on the feed and firing mechanism, and thus furnish the power to
-continue the consecutive operation of the gun, so that no hand crank is
-required, but the gun works itself with an incessant hail of balls until
-its supply of cartridges is exhausted.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 274.--GATLING GUN ON UNITED STATES ARMY MODEL
-CARRIAGE.]
-
-_The Dynamite Gun._--Most impressive to the layman, and most
-demoralizing to the enemy, is this latter day form of ordnance. The
-first efforts to hurl dynamite shells from a gun were made with
-compressed air for fear of prematurely exploding the sensitive dynamite
-in the gun, which would be more disastrous to the gunners themselves
-than to the enemy. The Zalinski dynamite gun was of this class, and the
-first which attained any notoriety. Foolhardy as it might appear, Yankee
-genius was led to believe that dynamite shells could be fired with
-powder charges, and this is now done in a practical and safe way in the
-Sims-Dudley Dynamite Gun. This is manufactured under the fundamental
-patents of Dudley, Nos. 407,474, 407,475, 407,476, of July 23, 1889,
-which cover a method of exploding a charge of powder in one gun barrel,
-and causing it to compress the air in front of it, and force it into
-another barrel behind the dynamite shell, so that this relatively cool
-body of air is interposed between the hot powder gases and the
-dynamite. Fig. 275 represents Dudley's patent drawing. C is the powder
-charge in barrel A, and H is the dynamite shell in barrel G. The front
-of barrel A is connected to the rear of barrel G behind the dynamite
-shell by the tube F. When the powder C explodes, all the air in barrel A
-and tube F is driven out and acts on the dynamite shell H to discharge
-it without allowing it to come in contact with the hot powder gases. A
-frangible plate D closes the end of barrel A, but blows out above a
-certain pressure to avoid bursting strain in the gun. The Sims patent,
-No. 619,025, February 7, 1899, covers a more simple and practical form
-of constructing a gun on this principle, and the gun as used in the
-United States is constructed in accordance with this latter improvement.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 275.--DYNAMITE GUN, DUDLEY'S PATENT, JULY 23, 1889.]
-
-_Small Arms._--Pistols and guns are the two classes into which the
-layman divides small arms, although in latter years this classification
-has been much disturbed by the western frontiersman, who calls his
-pistol a gun, and by the artillerist, who also calls his cannon a gun.
-
-_The pistol_ may be defined as a small arm held in one hand to be fired.
-It is an ancient weapon, but had attained no special importance or
-popularity prior to the Nineteenth Century. The duelling pistol, with
-its long barrel, its hair trigger and inlaid stock, and the derringer,
-with its short barrel of large bore, were the popular forms. Not until
-the revolver made its appearance did the pistol attain any importance.
-Colt is popularly credited with having invented this, but it is really a
-very old principle. In the Alte Deutscher Drehling Der Ruckladungs
-Gewehre, by Edward Zernin, 1872, Darmstadt and Leipzig, is shown an
-ancient form of match lock revolver, said to belong to the period
-1480-1500. It is probably the same as the match-lock revolver in the
-museum of the Tower of London, which is also credited to the Fifteenth
-Century. In the British patent to Puckle, No. 418, of 1718, is shown and
-described a well-constructed revolver carried on a tripod, and of the
-dimensions of the modern machine gun. The inventor naively states that
-it has round chambers for round balls, designed for Christians, and
-square chambers, with square balls, for the Turks. The first revolving
-firearm in the United States was made by John Gill, of Newberne, N. C.,
-in 1829. It had fourteen chambers, and was a percussion gun, but was
-never patented. The first revolver patented in the United States was
-that to D. G. Colburn, June 29, 1833. The revolver of Col. Samuel Colt
-was patented February 25, 1836, (re-issue No. 124, October 24, 1848),
-and again August 29, 1839, No. 1,304; September 3, 1850, No. 7,613, and
-September 10, 1850, No. 7,629. It was the first practical invention of
-this kind, and it embodied as a leading feature the automatic rotation
-of the cylinder in cocking by a pawl on the hammer engaging a ratchet on
-the end of the cylinder.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 276.--SMITH & WESSON REVOLVER DISCHARGING SHELLS.]
-
-Various types followed, such as the old pepper box, patented by Darling
-April 13, 1836; the self-cocking pepper box, patented by Allen, No.
-3,998, April 16, 1845; the four sliding barrels of Sharp, No. 6,960,
-December 18, 1849, and many others. The most popular and successful,
-however, of the succeeding types is that of Smith & Wesson, shown in
-Fig. 276, and covered by many patents. One of its most important
-features is the simultaneous extraction of the shells by an ejector,
-having a stem sliding through the cylinder. This was the invention of W.
-C. Dodge, patented January 17, 1865, No. 45,912, re-issue No. 4,483,
-July 25, 1871. In Fig. 277 is shown Smith & Wesson's latest pattern of
-Hammerless Safety Revolver, with automatic shell extractor and
-rebounding lock.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 277.--SMITH & WESSON SELF ACTING HAMMERLESS
-REVOLVER.]
-
-The latest development in this class of arms is the _automatic magazine
-pistol_, designed for the use of the officers of the German army, and
-adapted to fire ten shots in as many seconds. Only a slight pressure on
-the trigger is necessary, as it is not required to perform the work of
-turning any other part by the trigger, as is the case in the
-self-cocking revolver. The pressure of gas at each explosion does all
-the work of pushing back the closing piece of the breech through the
-recoil of the shell, extracts and ejects the shell, cocks the hammer,
-and also compresses recuperative springs, which effect the reloading and
-closing of the weapon, all of these functions being performed in proper
-sequence at each explosion in a fraction of a second. The act of firing
-thus prepares the pistol for the next shot automatically. In Fig. 278
-are shown two makes of pistol of this type. No. 1 is known as the Mauser
-(United States patent No. 584,479, June 15, 1897); No. 2 shows it with
-an extemporized stock, to be used as a carbine in firing from the
-shoulder. This stock is hollow and forms the holster or case for the
-pistol. At No. 3 is shown the Mannlicher pistol (United States patent
-No. 581,296, April 27, 1897), which is another form of the same type. In
-the Mauser the breech moves to the rear during recoil. In the Mannlicher
-the barrel moves to the front, leaving space for a fresh cartridge to
-come up from the magazine below. The calibre of this pistol is 0.3
-inch, and the initial velocity 1,395 feet. At 33 feet the ball passes
-through 103/4 inches of spruce, at 490 through 5 inches, and its extreme
-range is 3,000 feet, or more than half a mile. When empty it is quickly
-re-charged with cartridges, which are made up in sets of ten in a case
-and inserted in one movement.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 278.--AUTOMATIC PISTOLS.]
-
-_Breech-Loading Guns._--Although the breech-loading principle was well
-known prior to the Nineteenth Century, it remained for this period to
-give it effective development. The first United States patent for a
-breech-loading gun was to Thornton and Hall, May 21, 1811. It was a
-flint lock, and many of these arms were made at Harper's Ferry Armory in
-1814, and issued to the troops, one being given by order of Congress to
-each member of Congress to take home with him to show to his
-constituents. The present style of break-down gun was invented by Pauly,
-in France, and is to be found in his British patent No. 3,833, of 1814.
-Lefaucheux, of Paris, however, made this form of gun practical.
-Minesinger, in United States patent No. 6,139, February 27, 1849,
-supplied the important improvement of making the front edge of the
-metallic cartridge shell thinner than elsewhere, so as to expand by the
-pressure of the exploding charge, and swell to a tight fit of the
-barrel. The Maynard rifle, first patented May 27, 1851, No. 8,126, was
-one of the earliest practical forms of breech-loaders.
-
-_Magazine Guns._--Walter Hunt's United States patent No. 6,663, August
-21, 1849, was the first on a magazine firearm of modern type. It had a
-sliding breech block carrying the main spring and firing pin. The
-Spencer rifle was one of the early ones that came into use. This had a
-row of cartridges in the stock, and was first patented March 6, 1860,
-No. 27,393. It was this weapon which in the Civil War gave proof of the
-deadly efficacy of the breech-loading magazine gun, and its superiority
-to the old style military arm. Another type of magazine firearm which in
-the last half century has gained great prominence and popularity is the
-so-called "Winchester." This has its cartridges arranged in a tube below
-and parallel with the barrel, and they are fed in a column to the rear
-by a helical spring as fast as they are used up at the breech. The
-pioneer of this type is the arm patented by Smith & Wesson February 14,
-1854, No. 10,535, re-issued December 30, 1873, No. 5,710. This was
-subsequently improved as to the extractor by B. F. Henry in patent No.
-30,446, October 16, 1860, re-issued December 7, 1868, No. 3,227, and was
-manufactured and favorably known for many years as the _Henry rifle_.
-This rifle was also used in the Civil War. O. F. Winchester subsequently
-re-organized it in patent No. 57,808, September 4, 1866, and the arm in
-late years has taken his name.
-
-_The Needle Gun_, of Prussia, represents an early form of breech loader,
-and may be considered the prototype of the modern bolt gun. The needle
-gun has in the place of the swinging hammer a rectilinearly sliding
-bolt, carrying in front a needle which pierces the charge and ignites
-the fulminate by its friction. Its construction permits the fulminate
-to be placed in advance of the powder, which thus burns from the front,
-and is entirely consumed in the gun, instead of being partially blown
-out of the gun, as may occur when ignited in the rear. The needle gun
-was invented by Dreyse in 1838, was first introduced about 1846, and
-gave effective service in the Prusso-Austrian war of 1866. The
-_Chassepot_, brought out in 1867, United States patent No. 60,832, was a
-French development of the Prussian needle gun.
-
-About 1879 two forms of magazine guns appeared which have become types
-for most all subsequent guns of this class. Both of them employed the
-bolt system as previously embodied in the needle gun, but added to it
-the magazine principle and changed the method of supplying and feeding
-the cartridges. One was the invention of James Lee, and the other was
-the joint invention of Colonel Livermore, of the Corps of Engineers, and
-Major Russell, of the Ordnance Department, U. S. A. In the Lee, whose
-name has been much in evidence in late years, there was a relatively
-small detachable box (see Fig. 279) capable of holding five cartridges
-and designed to be filled and then placed in a slot opening centrally
-under the gun, below the receiver, and directly in front of the trigger
-guard. A spring within the magazine fed the cartridges up into alignment
-with the barrel. Lee's first patent was No. 221,328, November 4, 1879.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 279.--LEE'S MAGAZINE RIFLE, PATENTED NOVEMBER 4,
-1879.]
-
-The Livermore-Russell gun, patented October 28, 1879, No. 221,079, had a
-magazine opening transversely in the upper edge of the stock behind the
-bolt, and the cartridges were fed to the barrel beneath the bolt. The
-important feature of the gun, however, was a cartridge case slotted on
-its side and detachable from the gun, and each bearing a group of five
-cartridges, which were to be thus made up in small packets and carried
-in the belt or cartridge box of the soldier. This idea was subsequently
-developed by Livermore and Russell in patent No. 230,823, August 3,
-1880, and this feature, viewed in the light of the importance
-subsequently attained by the "clip" in the Mauser and Mannlicher guns,
-may be fairly considered the pioneer of this idea of grouping cartridges
-in made-up packets for bolt guns. Its great advantage is the large
-number of shots that may be fired in a short space of time without an
-excessive weight in the gun itself.
-
-Subsequent patents for improvements were taken by Lee as follows: No.
-513,647, January 30, 1894, and No. 547,583, October 8, 1895, and the gun
-used by the United States Navy is modeled along the lines of Lee's
-invention.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 280.--KRAG-JORGENSEN MAGAZINE RIFLE.]
-
-_The Krag-Jorgensen Magazine Rifle_ was patented June 10, 1890, No.
-429,811, and February 21, 1893, No. 492,212. It is the arm adopted by
-the United States infantry service, and is seen in Fig. 280. The fixed
-magazine chamber, shown in the cross section, passes through the breech
-laterally below the barrel, and is filled with cartridges on one side of
-the gun, which cartridges pass through the breech laterally, and,
-turning a curve, enter the barrel from the opposite side. When the bolt
-is drawn back by the knob handle a cartridge is fed up into position to
-enter the barrel, and when pushed forward the cartridge is forced into
-the bore of the gun, and at the same time a spiral spring is put under
-tension to set the hammer of the gun, which carries a firing pin at its
-front end. When the trigger is pulled the hammer and firing pin plunge
-forward to explode the cap in the cartridge, and when the handle of the
-bolt is drawn back again to extract the empty shell, a fresh cartridge
-rises to take its place.
-
-_The Mauser Rifle_ is shown in Fig. 281. This is the arm of which so
-much was heard during the recent war with Spain, and against which our
-soldiers had to contend. Five cartridges are carried in a magazine
-immediately in front of the trigger, and are fed up by a subjacent
-spring, one at a time, centrally through the breech into line with the
-barrel, as the bolt with the knobbed handle is worked back and forth.
-The cartridges are carried by the soldier in groups of five in a "clip,"
-which is a simple strip of metal with inturned parallel edges, which
-enclose the flanged heads of the cartridges as they project at right
-angles to the clip. To transfer the cartridges to the magazine, the
-clip with its cartridges is placed above the barrel, and the cartridges
-forced down out of the clip into the magazine. In the Mannlicher gun,
-adopted by the German army, the clip which holds the cartridges is
-itself inserted into the magazine, along with the cartridges.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 281.--THE MAUSER RIFLE AND CLIP.]
-
-The modern trend of development in firearms has been toward the
-reduction of calibre, the standard for small arms being 30/100. The lead
-bullets are covered with a seamless jacket of harder metal (Geiger's
-patents, No. 306,738 and 306,739, October 21, 1884), which prevents the
-"leading" and fouling of the gun, and the distortion of the bullet.
-Modern magazine guns permit twenty-five to thirty shots a minute as
-single loaders, and besides they hold in reserve five cartridges. They
-have a killing range of a mile, and the cost of the cartridge is 3.2
-cents. At a trial at the Washington Navy Yard a few years past a steel
-projectile 1.07 inches long and 32/100 calibre penetrated solid iron
-1.15 inch thick, fired at an angle of 80 deg.. It also penetrated 50 inches
-of pine boards, and its range was estimated at three miles.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 282.--THE GREENER HAMMERLESS GUN.]
-
-_Hammerless Guns._--Among improvements in shot guns the so-called
-"hammerless" feature is a noteworthy departure. This hides the hammers
-in the breech and cocks them by the act of breaking down the gun. In
-Fig. 282 is given a section and plan view of the Greener mechanism,
-which was patented July 6, 1880, No. 229,604, and was one of the first
-guns of this kind put on the market. The hammers A are constructed as
-elbow levers. Their upper ends have each a round point adapted to strike
-through a small hole in the breech onto the cap of the cartridge. The
-lower front portions of the hammers are extended forward and curved
-inwardly toward each other, so that their inner ends nearly meet. C is a
-pendent hook jointed to the barrel, and when the latter is tilted, as
-shown in dotted lines, the hook acting upon the forwardly projecting
-arms of the hammers turns them backward to the cocked position, in which
-they are retained by the dogs B engaging with their notches. As the
-hammers move back the mainspring is compressed, and when the dog B is
-removed from the notch by pulling on the trigger, the hammers are
-released and the gun fired.
-
-_The rebounding lock_, now universally applied to shot guns, is another
-comparatively recent improvement. This promotes safety by causing the
-hammers to be normally and automatically held away from the firing pins.
-The first practical form of this lock was patented by Hailer, July 26,
-1870, No. 105,799, in which a single spring serves to deliver the blow
-of the hammer and also withdraws the hammer from the firing pin. A
-marked tendency in shot guns in late years is toward a reduction in
-bore, many sportsmen now using a 28 gauge in preference to the old
-regulation 12.
-
-Nearly 5,000 patents have been granted in the United States for
-firearms, and about 2,400 for projectiles. The most important of the
-latter is the torpedo, of which the Whitehead, or fish torpedo, which
-supplies its own means of propulsion, is the best known and most used.
-It was first brought out in 1866 by Whitehead, at Fiume, a port of
-Hungary. The Gathmann aerial torpedo, weighing 1,800 pounds and carrying
-625 pounds of wet gun cotton, is designed to be fired from a gun 44 feet
-long and 18 inch bore, and is supposed to have a range of ten miles.
-Tests are about to be made under special appropriation of Congress, and
-if its claim can be substantiated, it may become the most destructive
-engine of warfare known.
-
-_Explosives._--The invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese,
-and at a period so far back that its origin is buried in antiquity. It
-is believed to have been known since the time of Moses, something very
-like it being mentioned in the ancient Gentoo laws of India 1,500 to
-2,000 B. C. For many years it was thought that Roger Bacon invented it
-in 1249, but it is now known that he was only a factor in its
-development. Most likely the saltpetre of the plains of China came first
-in accidental contact with the charred embers of a prehistoric fire, and
-to the observant man the oxygen-giving saltpetre furnished the charcoal
-with its means of energetic combustion for the first time.
-
-Gunpowder consists of about 75 parts of saltpetre (nitrate of potash),
-15 of charcoal, and 10 of sulphur, the proportions varying somewhat with
-the use to which it is to be applied. In ordinary combustion the air
-supplies the necessary oxygen. In gunpowder the presence of the air is
-not necessary, as the saltpetre has imprisoned in its composition a
-large quantity of oxygen which furnishes to the carbon and sulphur the
-means for its combustion, gasification and enormous expansion.
-Originally, gunpowder was pulverulent, like that used in fire works, and
-had but little propelling force. The making of it in grains ("corned")
-is ascribed to Berthold Schwarz, a German monk, about 1320, and this, by
-promoting the rapidity of its burning, added greatly to its effective
-force, and gave a new impetus to firearms.
-
-In the early part of the Nineteenth Century there were but few
-improvements in either the composition or manufacture of gunpowder. The
-introduction of the percussion cap, which exploded the charge by a blow,
-in the place of the old flint lock, was, however, a notable advance.
-Alexander John Forsyth, a Scotch clergyman, was the first to apply a
-percussion or detonating compound, as set forth in his British patent
-No. 3,032, of 1807. The embodiment of such compounds in the little
-copper caps was made about 1818, and has been claimed by various
-parties. Manton's British patent No. 4,285, of 1818, describes a thin
-copper tube filled with fulminate and struck sidewise by the hammer to
-explode it. Joshua Shaw took a United States patent on a percussion gun,
-June 19, 1822, and the copper percussion cap was said to have been
-introduced in the United States by him in 1842. The embodiment of the
-charge of powder and ball in brass and copper shells was done in France
-by Galay Cazalat as early as 1826. Drawn metallic shells were made by
-Flobert and Lefaucheux, in 1853, and Palmer, in 1854. Drawn copper
-cartridges with center fire were introduced in the United States, and
-patented by Smith & Wesson August 8, 1854, No. 11,496, and solid headed
-shells by Hotchkiss, August 31, 1869, No. 94,210.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 283.--SUBMARINE MINE. CHARGE, 250 POUNDS DYNAMITE.]
-
-In 1846 a new and distinct development in explosives was made in the
-discovery of gun cotton by Schoenbein, and of nitro-glycerine in 1847 by
-Sobrero. The former is made by the reaction of nitric acid, aided by
-sulphuric acid, on ordinary raw cotton, which, while changing the
-physical aspects of the cotton but little, gives to it a terrific
-explosive energy. Nitro-glycerine is made in a somewhat similar way by
-treating glycerine with nitric and sulphuric acids. At first it found no
-practical applications, except as a homoeopathic medicine for headache,
-but about 1864 Nobel commenced its manufacture for explosive uses, and
-since that time nearly all the great blasting operations have been
-performed through its agency. Its most familiar form is _dynamite_, or
-giant powder, Nobel's patent, No. 78,317, May 26, 1868, which is simply
-nitro-glycerine held in absorption by some inert granular solid, such as
-infusorial earth, and is thus rendered safer to handle and more
-convenient to use. A suggestive application of the terrible power of
-these explosives is in submarine mines. The instantaneous and dastardly
-destruction of our battleship, "The Maine," with 250 of her crew, in
-Havana harbor, February 15, 1898, by one of these agencies, is a
-harrowing illustration. Fig. 283 represents one of these submarine mines
-carrying 250 pounds of dynamite, and Fig. 284 is an instantaneous
-photograph at the moment of explosion.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 284.--EXPLOSION OF A MINE. BASE OF WATER COLUMN, 100
-FEET WIDE, HEIGHT, 246 FEET.]
-
-_White gunpowder_, or wood powder, was invented by Captain Schultz, of
-the Prussian army. It is made by treating granulated wood with a mixture
-of nitric and sulphuric acids, which, acting upon the cellulose of the
-wood, convert it into an explosive something of the nature of gun
-cotton. The grains are afterward saturated with saltpetre. This was
-patented in the United States June 2, 1863, No. 38,789, and in Great
-Britain, No. 900, of 1864. Dittmar's powder is another of the same
-general nature, covered by United States patents No. 98,854, January
-18, 1870; No. 99,069, January 25, 1870, and No. 145,403, December 9,
-1873.
-
-Among the high explosives of more recent date may be mentioned:
-
- _Tonite_ (gun cotton and barium nitrate), British patents No. 3,612,
- of 1874, and No. 2,742, of 1876.
-
- _Rack-a-rock_ (potassium chlorate and nitro-benzene), United States
- patent No. 243,432, June 28, 1881; British patent No. 5,584, of
- 1881.
-
- _Bellite_ (ammonium nitrate and nitro-benzene), United States
- patent No. 455,217, June 30, 1891; British patent No. 13,690, of
- 1885.
-
- _Melinite_ (picric acid and gun cotton), British patent No. 15,089,
- of 1885.
-
- _Lyddite_, not patented, but believed to be substantially same as
- melinite, and containing for its active ingredient picric acid,
- which is a compound formed by the reaction of nitric acid on
- carbolic acid.
-
- _Cordite_ (nitro-glycerine, gun cotton, and mineral jelly or oil),
- British patent No. 5,614, of 1889; United States patent No.
- 409,549, August 20, 1889.
-
- _Indurite_ (gun cotton and nitro-benzene, indurated), United States
- patent, No. 489,684, January 10, 1893; British patent, No. 580, of
- 1893.
-
-In recent years smokeless powders have largely superseded all others.
-These contain usually nitro-cellulose (gun cotton), or nitro-glycerine,
-or both, made up into a plastic, coherent, and homogeneous compound of a
-gluey nature, and fashioned into horn-like sticks or rods by being
-forced under pressure through a die plate having small holes, through
-which the plastic material is strained into strings like macaroni, or
-else is molded into tablets, pellets, or grains of cubical shape.
-Prominent among those who have contributed to this art are the names of
-Turpin, Abel and Dewar, Nobel, Maxim, Munroe, Du Pont, Bernadou and
-others.
-
-In the recent years of the Nineteenth Century great activity has been
-manifest in this field of invention. In the United States more than 600
-different patents have been granted for explosives, the larger portion
-of them being for nitro-compounds, which partake in a greater or less
-degree of the qualities of gun cotton or nitro-glycerine. The influence
-exerted by them has been incalculable. Subtile as is the force
-imprisoned in inter-atomic relation, it has been the power behind the
-boom of the cannon; it has lent itself to the driving of great tunnels
-through the solid rock; it has lifted the coal and ore from the solid
-embrace of the mountain, and the building stone from its sleep in the
-quarry; it has opened up channels to the sea, canals on land, and in
-both war and peace has been one of the great agencies of civilization.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXI.
-
-TEXTILES.
-
- SPINNING AND WEAVING AN ANCIENT ART--HARGREAVES' SPINNING JENNY--
- ARKWRIGHT'S ROLL-DRAWING SPINNING MACHINE--CROMPTON'S MULE
- SPINNER--THE COTTON GIN--RING SPINNING--THE RABBETH SPINDLE--JOHN
- KAY'S FLYING SHUTTLE AND ROBERT KAY'S DROP BOX--CARTWRIGHT'S POWER
- LOOM--THE JACQUARD LOOM--CROMPTON'S FANCY LOOM--BIGELOW'S CARPET
- LOOMS--LYALL POSITIVE MOTION LOOM--KNITTING MACHINES--CLOTH PRESSING
- MACHINERY--ARTIFICIAL SILK--MERCERIZED CLOTH.
-
-
-Far back in the obscuring gloom of a prehistoric antiquity, man wore
-probably only the hirsute covering which nature gave him. As he emerged
-from barbarism, sentiments of modesty marked the evolution of his mind,
-and this, together with the need for a more sufficient protection
-against cold and heat, suggested an artificial covering for his body. At
-first he robbed the brute of his fleecy skin and wore it bodily. Later
-he learned to spin and weave; next to food and drink, clothing became a
-fundamental necessity, for without it his life could not extend outside
-of the limited zone of the tropics. Food and drink were to be found as
-nature's free gifts, but clothing had to be made, and its manufacture
-constituted probably the oldest of all the living arts. The making of
-cloth may be said to be coeval with history. The Old Testament of the
-Bible is replete with references to spinning and weaving, and the cloths
-wrapped about the mummies of ancient Egypt, although thousands of years
-old, were of exceeding regularity and fineness.
-
-So old an art, and so great and continuous a need for its products
-necessarily must have resulted in much development and progress. When
-the Nineteenth Century began, the world already enjoyed the results of
-Hargreaves' spinning-jenny, Arkwright's roll-drawing spinning machine,
-the mule spinner, the cotton gin, and the power loom, all of which were
-most radical inventions, equaling in importance, perhaps, any that have
-followed.
-
-Prior to the invention of the _spinning-jenny_, the loose fibre was spun
-into yarns and thread by hand on the old-fashioned spinning wheel, each
-thread requiring the attention of one person. In 1763 Hargreaves
-invented the spinning-jenny (see Fig. 285), in which a multiplicity of
-spindles was employed, whereby one person could attend to the making of
-many threads simultaneously. For this purpose the spindles were set
-upright at the end of the frame, and the rovings or strips of untwisted
-fibre were carried on bobbins on the inclined frame. The rovings
-extended from these bobbins to a reciprocating "clasp" held in the left
-hand of the workman, and thence extended to the spindles at the end of
-the frame. The workman drew out the rovings by moving the clasp back and
-forth, and at the same time turned the crank with his right hand to
-rotate the spindles. Hargreaves' machine is shown and described in his
-British patent, No. 962 of 1770.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 285.--HARGREAVES' SPINNING JENNY.]
-
-The next important step in spinning was the introduction of drawing
-rolls, which were a series of rolls running at different speeds for
-drawing out or elongating the roving as it was spun into a thread. This
-was mainly due to Arkwright, a contemporary of Hargreaves. The principle
-of the drawing rolls had been foreshadowed in the British patents of
-Louis Paul, No. 562, of 1738, and No. 724, of 1758, but Arkwright made
-the first embodiment of it in practically useful machines, which were
-covered by him in British patents No. 931, of 1769, and No. 1,111, of
-1775. Arkwright's spinning machine is shown in Fig. 286, the drawing
-rolls being shown at the top of the figure.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 286.--ARKWRIGHT'S ROLL-DRAWING SPINNING MACHINE.]
-
-Following these important inventions came the mule spinner. This was
-invented by Crompton between 1774 and 1779, but was never patented. It
-combined the leading features of Hargreaves and Arkwright. The spindles
-were mounted on a wheeled carriage that traveled back and forth a
-considerable distance from the drawing rolls, which were mounted in
-bearings in a stationary frame. The long travel of the carriage back and
-forth, and the simultaneous twisting and drawing of the yarns, produced
-threads of great fineness and regularity. The value of the long travel
-of the carriage may be briefly noted as follows: When the threads or
-slivers emerge from the drawing rolls they are not absolutely of uniform
-size, and the thick portions do not twist as tightly as the thinner
-portions. The stretching and drawing of these thicker parts down to a
-uniform size by the receding of the carriage is the distinctive feature
-of its action. As the thread has greater tensile strength at the thinner
-hard-twisted parts than it has at the thicker untwisted parts, it will
-be seen that the stretching action is localized on the thicker untwisted
-parts of the thread, which are thus brought down to uniform size by
-elongation. The drawing and twisting of the thread is effected as the
-carriage runs out, and when the carriage runs in these twisted lengths
-are wound around the spindles. The rendering of the action of the mule
-automatic or self-acting in its travel back and forth was the invention
-of Richard Roberts, of England, and was covered by him in British
-patents No. 5,138 of 1825, and No. 5,649 of 1830. The mule spinner shown
-in Fig. 287 is a good modern example of this machine.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 287.--MULE SPINNING MACHINE.]
-
-One of the most important of the early inventions in the textile art was
-the _cotton gin_. This was the invention of Eli Whitney, of
-Massachusetts, and was patented by him March 14, 1794. Prior to its use
-the picking of the cotton fibre from the bean-like seed with which it is
-compactly stored in the boll was entirely effected by hand, and it was a
-slow and tedious process, and about 4 pounds per day was the average
-work of one man. The cotton gin, shown in Fig. 288, is a device for
-doing this by machinery in a rapid, thorough, and expeditious manner.
-The cotton, mixed with seed, is fed to the roll box J, in which a sort
-of reel F continually turns the cotton. The bottom of the roll box is
-formed with a grating of parallel ribs E, between which project the
-teeth of a gang of circular saws C, which pull the fibre through between
-the ribs and deliver it to the revolving brush B, which beats the fibre
-off the teeth of the saws and produces a blast that discharges the
-fleece through the rear of the gin. The cotton seed, which are too
-large to pass between the ribs with the fibre, drop out the bottom of
-the roll-box. With the aid of the cotton gin the efficiency of one man
-is raised from four pounds per day to several thousand pounds per day,
-and the culture and manufacture of cotton fibre was revolutionized and
-greatly stimulated by providing a mode of putting it into merchantable
-condition at a reasonable price. It is said that the crop of cotton
-increased from 189,316 pounds in 1791 to 2,000,000,000 pounds in 1859.
-The cotton gin, as invented by Whitney more than a hundred years ago, is
-still in use, substantially unchanged in principle, but its efficiency
-has been raised from 70 pounds per day to several thousands. The cotton
-crop of the United States for 1899, which was handled by the modern gins
-at this rate, amounted to 11,274,840 bales, of about 500 pounds each, or
-more than five thousand million pounds. But for the cotton gin this
-great staple would have only a very limited use, and one of the greatest
-of the world's industries would have practically no existence.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 288.--COTTON GIN.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 289.--MODERN SPINNING SPINDLE.]
-
-A modern step of importance in spinning was the _ring frame_. Ring
-spinning was invented by John Thorp, of Rhode Island, who took out two
-patents for the same November 20, 1828. The leading feature of the ring
-frame is the substitution of a light steel hoop or traveler running upon
-the upper edge of a ring surrounding the spindle in lieu of the flyer
-formerly employed. The thread passes through the hoop as it is wound
-upon the spindle. In modern times ring spinning has attained
-considerable proportions, especially in cotton manufactures.
-
-Nearly 3,000 United States patents have been granted in the class of
-spinning, and many valuable improvements in the details of construction
-in spinning machinery have been made in recent years. The most
-important, perhaps, are those relating to spindle structure, whereby the
-speed and efficiency of spinning machines have been greatly increased.
-Prior to 1878 the speed of the average spindle was limited to 5,000
-revolutions a minute. In 1878 improvements were made which doubled its
-working speed and permitted as high as 20,000 revolutions a minute. This
-result was accomplished by making a yielding bolster. The bolster is an
-upright sleeve bearing, in which the spindle revolves, and against which
-is sustained the pull of the band that drives the spindle. By making
-this bolster or sleeve bearing to yield laterally by means of an elastic
-packing which surrounds it, a much greater freedom and speed of
-revolution were obtained. The preliminary step in this direction was
-made by Birkenhead in patent No. 205,718, July 9, 1878. In the same year
-this idea was perfected by Rabbeth. The bolster was placed loosely in a
-bolster case of slightly larger diameter than the bolster, and the
-bottom of the spindle had a free lateral movement as well as the top, as
-shown in his patent No. 227,129, May 4, 1880. With such perfect freedom
-of movement, the spindle at high speed could find its own center of
-revolution, and an indefinitely high speed and quadrupled efficiency
-were attained. The Draper Spindle is shown in Fig. 289 as one of the
-most modern and representative of spinning spindles. Considering the
-great speed of the modern spindle and the fact that a single workman
-attends a thousand or more of them, the record of progress in this art
-becomes impressive. In 1805 there were only 4,500 cotton spindles at
-work in the United States. In 1899 there were 18,100,000.
-
-_Weaving._--A woven fabric consists of threads which run lengthwise,
-called the "warp," crossed by threads running transversely, called the
-"woof," "weft," or "filling," which latter are imprisoned or locked in
-by the warp. In a simple loom the warp threads are divided into two
-groups, the threads of one group alternating with those of the other,
-and means are provided for separating these groups to form a
-wedge-shaped space between them called a "shed." Through this shed the
-shuttle which carries the woof or filling thread is sent crosswise the
-warp threads. Means are provided for changing the inclination and
-position of the two groups of warp threads in relation to each other, so
-as to lock in the filling, and put the warp threads in position to
-receive the next filling thread. For this purpose the warp threads,
-usually horizontal, are each passed through a loop, and every alternate
-loop is attached to a frame called a "heddle." The intervening loops and
-threads are attached to another frame or "heddle," and the two heddles
-by being worked, one up and the other down, separate the warp threads to
-form the shed. Formerly the shuttle was thrown by hand through the shed.
-In 1733 John Kay, of England, took out British patent No. 542, for the
-flying shuttle and picking stick, by which the shuttle was struck a
-hammer-like blow and driven like a ball from a bat across the warp, and
-was struck by a similar stick on the other side, to be returned in the
-same way. This gave a much more rapid action than could be obtained by
-hand-throwing, and enabled one weaver to do the work of two or three. In
-1760 Robert Kay invented the drop box, by which different shuttles
-carrying different colors of thread were employed.
-
-The _power loom_, however, marked the first great growth in the art of
-weaving. The enormously increased quantity of cotton spun by Arkwright's
-machinery made a demand for increased facilities for weaving it into
-cloth. Dr. Cartwright, of England, foresaw and met this demand in his
-_power loom_, in which all of the intricate operations were performed by
-power-driven machinery. His invention was not extensively introduced
-until about the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. One difficulty
-experienced was that the warp threads, from their fuzzy nature, had to
-be dressed with size, and this required the loom to be stopped from time
-to time, and necessitated the services of a man to dress or size the
-warp threads. This difficulty was overcome, however, by Johnson &
-Radcliffe, about 1803, by the sizing and dressing of the yarns by
-passing them between rollers and coating them with a thin layer of paste
-before being put into the loom. Dr. Cartwright was granted British
-patents No. 1,470, of 1785; No. 1,565, of 1786; No. 1,616, of 1787, and
-No. 1,676, of 1788, but being unable to maintain any monopoly under his
-patents he was compensated by Parliament with a grant of L10,000.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 290.--MODERN JACQUARD LOOM.]
-
-_Jacquard Loom._--This most notable step in the art of weaving was made
-at the very beginning of the Nineteenth Century. It enabled all kinds of
-fabrics, from the finest to the coarsest, to be cheaply woven into
-patterns having figured or ornamental designs. Jacquard, a native of
-Lyons, conceived the plan of his great invention in the last decade of
-the Eighteenth Century, and on December 28, 1801, took out French patent
-No. 245, on the same. His invention was not, in fact, a new form of
-loom, but rather an attachment to a loom which was universally
-applicable to all looms. Before his invention, figured patterns of cloth
-could only be made by slow and laborious processes. Jacquard's invention
-consisted in individualizing and differentiating the movement of the
-warp threads, instead of operating them in constant groups. This
-individualizing of the movement of the warp threads allowed any warp
-thread to be held up automatically any length of time, or let down,
-according as was necessary to form the figure of the pattern. This was
-accomplished by making a chain of articulated cards, like a slatted
-belt, and perforating these cards with varying arrangements of holes.
-The cards were successively and intermittently fed to a set of needles,
-which latter, by rising and falling, raise or lower the warp threads
-attached to the same. By perforating these cards differently, and
-arranging them so that when one card was brought in front of the needles
-it would let certain needles through the perforations and hold the
-others back, it will be seen that each card controlled the action of a
-different set of needles, and the sequence of the series of cards
-effected the necessary change in the needles and movement of the warp
-threads to form the growth of the figure in the fabric.
-
-In Fig. 290 is seen a modern form of Jacquard loom, showing at the far
-end the chain of perforated cards. Jacquard received a bronze medal at
-the French Exposition in 1801, was decorated with the Cross of the
-Legion of Honor, and the gratitude of his countrymen was attested by a
-pension of 6,000 francs, and a statue erected to his memory at Lyons in
-1840.
-
-Subsequent improvements and developments of the Jacquard loom have
-carried its work to great nicety and refinement of action. In the chain
-of pattern cards it is said that as many as 25,000 separately punched
-cards or plates are sometimes used in weaving a single yard of brocade.
-The great variety of elaborate designs of delicate tracery in silk, rich
-patterns in brocades, and gorgeous figures in carpets, attest the value
-of Jacquard's important step in this art.
-
-Nearly 5,000 United States patents have been granted in the class of
-weaving. In the early part of the century much notable work was done.
-Steam was applied to looms by William Horrocks (British patent No.
-2,699, 1803). From 1830 to 1842 there were brought out the fancy looms
-of Crompton, the application of the Jacquard mechanism to the lace frame
-by Draper, and the carpet looms of Bigelow. In 1853 Bonelli sought to
-improve on the Jacquard mechanism by employing electro-magnets to effect
-the selection of the needles, instead of perforated cards (British
-patent No. 1,892, of 1853).
-
-Among more recent developments is the _Positive Motion_ loom of Lyall,
-patented December 10, 1872, No. 133,868, re-issue No. 9,049, January 20,
-1880. The distinguishing feature of this is that the shuttle is not
-thrown or impelled as a projectile through the wedge-shaped space
-(shed), between the two sets of warp threads, but is positively dragged
-back and forth through the same by an endless belt attached to the
-shuttle carriage and running first in one direction and then in the
-other to drag the shuttle through.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 291.--CROMPTON FANCY LOOM.]
-
-It is not to be understood that the positive motion loom has superseded
-the flying shuttle. The latter is still the leading type, of which the
-Crompton fancy loom, shown in Fig. 291, is a representative
-illustration.
-
-The tendency in late years in the art of weaving has been toward
-labor-saving devices, a reduction in the cost to the consumer of all
-kinds of textile fabrics, and the extension of the loom to the weaving
-of new kinds of materials. Prominent among these are the inventions in
-the loom for weaving plain fabrics made between the years 1881 and 1895,
-shown in patents to Northrop, No. 454,810, June 23, 1891; No. 529,943,
-November 27, 1894, and Draper, No. 536,948, April 2, 1895. This loom, as
-usual, employs a single shuttle, but as the weft becomes exhausted
-another bobbin is automatically supplied to the shuttle without
-stopping the operation of the machine. During the year 1895 the first
-loom for weaving an open mesh cane fabric having diagonal strands was
-invented. Patents to Morris, No. 549,930, and to Crompton, No. 550,068,
-November 19, 1895, were obtained for this. Prior to this time two
-distinct machines were necessary to produce this fabric, and the
-operation was slow and expensive. Between 1893 and 1895 two machines
-were invented, upon either of which the well-known Turkish carpets can
-be woven. Patents to Youngjohns, No. 510,755, December 12, 1893, and to
-Reinhart von Seydlitz, No. 533,330, January 29, 1895, disclose this. The
-drawing of warp threads into the eyes of the heddles and through the
-reed of a loom requires great skill, and prior to 1880 was performed by
-hand at great expense. In 1882, however, a machine for doing this was
-invented, thereby dispensing with the old hand method and cheapening the
-operation. Patents to Sherman and Ingersoll, No. 255,038, March 14,
-1882, and Ingersoll, No. 461,613, October 20, 1891, were granted for
-this machine.
-
-To-day the shuttle flies at the rate of 180 to 250 strokes a minute, and
-yet the complex organization of the machine works with an energy, a
-uniformity, an accuracy and a continuity that leaves far behind the
-strength of the arm, the memory of mind, and the accuracy of the human
-eye, and yet, if the tiny thread breaks, the whole organization
-instantly stops and patiently waits the remedial care of its watchful
-master.
-
-_Knitting Machines._--Knitting differs from weaving, braiding, or
-plaiting in the following respects: In weaving there are longitudinal
-threads called warp threads, which are crossed on a separate weft or
-filling thread. In braiding or plaiting all the threads may be
-considered warp threads, since they are arranged to run longitudinally,
-and instead of locking around a separate transverse thread at right
-angles, they extend diagonally and are interwoven with each other. In
-netting and knitting, however, there is but a single thread, which, in
-netting, is knotted into itself at definite intervals to leave a mesh of
-definite size, while in knitting the single thread is merely looped into
-itself without any definite mesh. Knitted goods have the peculiarity of
-great elasticity in consequence of this formation of the fabric, and for
-that reason find a special application in all garments which are
-required to snugly conform to irregular outlines, such as stockings for
-the feet, gloves for the hands, and underwear for the body.
-
-Weaving, braiding, and netting are very old arts, but the art of
-knitting is comparatively modern. It is believed to have originated
-about the year 1500 in Scotland. In 1589 William Lee, of England, is
-credited with making the first knitting machine. It is said that the
-girl with whom he was in love, and to whom he was paying his attention,
-was so busy with her work of hand knitting that she could not give him
-the requisite attention, and he invented the knitting machine that they
-might have more time to devote to their love affairs. Another version is
-that he married the girl and invented the machine to relieve her weary
-fingers from the work of the knitting needle, and still another is that
-the machine was the leading object of his affections, to the neglect of
-his sweetheart, who "gave him the mitten" before he had knitted one on
-his machines.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 292.--BRANSON 15/16 AUTOMATIC KNITTER.]
-
-The earliest circular knitting machine was by Brunel, described in
-British patent No. 3,993, of 1816. Power was applied to the knitting
-frame by Bailey in 1831, and the latch needle was patented in the United
-States by Hibbert, January 9, 1849, No. 6,025. This patent was extended
-for seven years from January 9, 1863, and covered a very important and
-universally used feature of the knitting machine. Research has shown,
-however, that the latch was not broadly new with Hibbert, as it appeared
-in the French patent to Jeandeau, No. 1,900, of April 25, 1806. Among
-the earlier knitting machines, the straight reciprocating type was most
-in evidence, and of which the Lamb machine was a popular form. The
-increased speed and capacity of the circular machine have, however,
-caused it to largely supersede the others. In the circular machine a
-circular series of vertical parallel needles slide in grooves in a
-cylinder, and are raised and lowered successively by an external
-rotating cylinder which has on the inner side cams that act upon the
-needles. The Branson 15/16 Automatic Knitter, shown in Fig. 292, is a
-good modern illustration. It performs automatically fifteen-sixteenths
-of the various movements which ordinarily would be performed by hand on
-a hand machine. Its salient features are covered by patents No. 333,102,
-December 29, 1885, and No. 519,170, May 1, 1894. About 2,000 United
-States patents have been granted in the class of knitting and netting,
-and the value of hosiery and knit goods in the United States in 1890 was
-$67,241,013.
-
-An important branch of the textile art is cloth finishing, whereby the
-rough surface of the cloth as it comes from the loom is rendered soft
-and smooth. One method is to raise the nap of the cloth by pulling out
-the fibre by a multitude of fine points. Originally this was done by
-combing it with teasles, a sort of dried burr of vegetable growth,
-having a multitude of fine hook-shaped points. Machines with fine metal
-card teeth are now largely used for this purpose, and of which the
-planetary napping machine of Ott, patent No. 344,981, July 6, 1886, is
-an example. Another method of finishing the cloth is to iron or press
-it. Plate presses were first used in which smooth plates were folded in
-alternate layers with the cloth and pressure then applied, but in later
-years continuous rotary presses have been employed, that of Gessner,
-patent No. 206,718, August 6, 1878, re-issue No. 9,076, 9,077, February
-17, 1880, is one of the earliest examples of a continuous rotary press.
-The old Gessner presses of Saxony were the pioneers in this field. A
-modern Gessner cloth press is seen in Fig. 293.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 293.--MODERN "GESSNER" CLOTH PRESSING MACHINE.]
-
-In the field of textiles there are many related arts and machines. There
-are hat felting and finishing machines, darning machines, quilting
-machines, embroidering machines, processes and apparatus for dyeing and
-sizing, machines for printing fabrics, machines for making rope and
-cord, machines for winding and working silk, and in treating the raw
-material there are cotton-pickers, cotton baling presses, cotton openers
-and cleaners, flax brakes and hackling machines, feeding devices, wool
-carding and cleaning apparatus, all in variety and numbers that defy
-both comment and count.
-
-In fabrics every class of fibre has been called into requisition. Flax,
-wool, silk, and cotton have been supplemented with the fibres of metal,
-of glass, of cocoanut, pine needles, ramie, wood-pulp, and of many other
-plants, leaves and grasses.
-
-_Artificial silk_ is made out of a chemically prepared composition, and
-the fibres are spun by processes simulating not only the act of the
-silkworm, but its product in quality. Vandura silk was spun from an
-aqueous solution of gelatine by forcing it through a fine capillary
-tube, but it attained little or no practical value. A far more important
-artificial silk is covered by the patents to De Chardonnet, No.
-394,559, December 18, 1888; No. 460,629, October 6, 1891, and No.
-531,158, December 18, 1894, and also in subsequent patents to Lehner and
-to Turk. These all relate to the manufacture of artificial silk by
-spinning threads or filaments from pyroxiline (solution of gun cotton),
-collodion, or some such glutinous solution which evaporates rapidly,
-leaving a tiny thread, having most of the characteristics of silk and
-produced by the same method employed by the silk worm when it expresses
-and draws out its viscid liquid. The De Chardonnet artificial silk took
-a "Grand Prix" at the Paris Exposition in 1889, and the industry is
-growing to considerable proportions. Large works are in operation at
-Besancon, in France, producing 7,000 pounds per week, and it is said
-that the plant is to be increased to a capacity of 2,000 pounds a day.
-Similar works at Avon, near Coventry, England, have an equal capacity,
-and other factories are about to be established in Belgium and Germany.
-
-_Polished_ or _diamond cotton_ is a lustrous looking article of a soft
-silky nature, formed by plating the threads with a liquid emulsion of a
-waxy and starchy substance, and polishing the threads with rapidly
-revolving brushes.
-
-_Mercerized Cloth._--In late years a distinct novelty has appeared on
-the shelves of the dry goods stores. Beautiful, filmy fabrics, and
-lustrous embroidery thread, not of silk, but so close to it in
-appearance as to be scarcely distinguishable, have gained much
-popularity and attained a large sale. They are known as _mercerized_
-goods. About the middle of the century John Mercer, of England, found
-that when cotton goods were treated with chemicals (either alkalies or
-acids), a change was produced in the fibre which caused it to shrink and
-become thicker, and which imparted also an increased affinity for dyes.
-He took out British patent No. 13,296, of 1850, for his invention, but
-practically nothing further was done with the process. Recently the
-important step of Thomas and Prevost of mercerizing under tension gave
-some new and wonderful results. United States patents No. 600,826 and
-No. 600,827, of May 15, 1898, disclose this process. The cloth or
-thread, while being treated chemically, is at the same time subjected to
-a powerful tension that causes the fibres (softened and rendered
-glutinous by the chemicals) to be elongated or pulled out like fibres of
-molten glass, giving it the same striated texture and fine luster that
-silk has, and by substantially the same mechanical agency, for it is the
-elongation of the plastic glutinous thread from the silk worm that gives
-the thread its silky luster, by a process which has a familiar
-illustration in the molecular adjustment that imparts luster to spun
-glass or drawn taffy.
-
-Standing in the light of the Twentieth Century, and looking back through
-past ages, we find the art of spinning and weaving in an ever present
-and unbroken thread of evidence all along the path of history--through
-wars and famine, floods and conflagrations; through the progress and
-decay of nations, through all phases of change, and the vicissitudes of
-centuries, it has never been relegated to the domain of the lost arts,
-but has remained a persisting invention. It has been a paramount
-necessity to the human race, indissolubly locked up with its continuity
-and welfare, and will ever continue to supply its work in maintaining
-the greater fabric of human existence.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXII.
-
-ICE MACHINES.
-
- GENERAL PRINCIPLES--FREEZING MIXTURES--PERKINS' ICE MACHINE, 1834--
- PICTET'S APPARATUS--CARRE'S AMMONIA ABSORPTION PROCESS--DIRECT
- COMPRESSION AND CAN SYSTEM--THE HOLDEN ICE MACHINE--SKATING RINKS--
- WINDHAUSEN'S APPARATUS FOR COOLING AND VENTILATING SHIPS.
-
-
-Very few people have any correct conception of the principles of
-ice-making. Most persons have heard in a vague sort of way that
-chemicals are employed in its manufacture, and many a fastidious
-individual has been known to object to artificial ice on the ground that
-he could taste the chemicals, and that it could not therefore be
-wholesome. Such is the power of imagination, and such the misconception
-in the public mind. Nothing could be more erroneous, nor more amusing to
-the physicist, since no chemicals ever come in contact with either the
-water or the ice. An intelligent understanding of the operations of an
-ice machine involves only a correct appreciation of one of the physical
-laws governing the relation of heat to matter, and the forms which
-matter assumes under different degrees of heat. We see water passing
-from solid ice to liquid water and gaseous steam, by a mere rise in
-temperature, and conversely, by abstraction of heat, steam passes back
-to water, and then to ice.
-
-When one's hands get wet they get cold. A commonplace, but convenient
-proof of this is to wet the finger in the mouth and hold it in the air.
-A sensible reduction of temperature is instantly noticeable. A more
-pronounced illustration is to wet the hands in a basin of water, and
-then plunge them in the blast of hot, dry air coming from a furnace
-register. Instead of warming the hands, as many would suppose, this
-will, as long as the hands are wet, produce a distinct sensation of
-increased cold. It is due to rapid evaporation, which in changing the
-water from a liquid to a gaseous form, abstracts heat from the hands.
-
-Evaporation may be effected in two ways. The common one is by applying
-extraneous heat, as under a tea kettle, in which case the evaporated
-vapor is hot by virtue of the heat absorbed from the fire. The other way
-is to reduce pressure or produce a partial vacuum over the liquid
-without any application of heat, in which case the vapor is made cold.
-As early as 1755 Dr. Cullen observed this, and discovered that the cold
-thus produced was sufficient to make ice. An incident of evaporation is
-the passing from the limited volume of a liquid to the greatly increased
-volume of a gas. Water, for instance, when it changes to a vapor,
-increases in volume about 1,700 times; that is, a cubic inch of water
-makes about a cubic foot of steam, and when evaporation takes place from
-a reduction of pressure, this involves a dissipation of heat throughout
-the increased volume, and the corresponding production of cold. When,
-however, matter changes from a liquid to a gas, or from a solid to a
-liquid, a peculiar phenomenon manifests itself, in that a great amount
-of heat is absorbed and, so far as the evidence of the senses goes,
-disappears in the mere change of state. It is called _latent heat_. In
-such case the heat becomes hidden from the senses by being converted
-into some other form of intermolecular force not appreciable as sensible
-heat, and producing no elevation of temperature. In illustration, if a
-pound of water at 212 deg. F. be mixed with a pound of water at 34 deg. (both
-being matter in the same state), there results two pounds of water at
-the mean temperature of 123 deg.. If, however, a pound of water at 212 deg. be
-mixed with a pound of _ice_ at 32 deg. (matter in another state), there will
-not be two pounds of water at the mean temperature of 122 deg., as might be
-expected, but two pounds at 51 deg. only, an amount of heat sufficient to
-raise two pounds of water 71 deg. being absorbed in the mere change of ice
-to water without any sensible raise in temperature. This absorbed heat
-is called latent heat, and it plays an important part in artificial
-freezing. A familiar illustration of the absorption of heat in changing
-from a solid to a liquid is found in the admixture of salt and ice
-around an ice-cream freezer. These two solids, when brought together,
-liquefy rapidly with an absorption of heat that produces in a limited
-time a far greater degree of cold than that which could be obtained from
-the ice by mere conduction, since the reduction of temperature proceeds
-faster by liquefaction than can be compensated for by the absorption of
-heat from the air. Were this not true, ice cream could not be frozen by
-a mixture of salt and ice. Many such freezing mixtures are known, and a
-few have been made commercially available, but they cannot be
-economically employed in ice-making, and it is therefore only necessary
-to consider the development of the more common principle of evaporation
-and expansion, in which the change from a liquid to a gas occurs. The
-volatile liquid which was first employed was water, but as it did not
-vaporize as readily as some other liquids, more volatile substitutes
-were soon found, among which may be named ether, ammonia, liquid
-carbonic acid, liquid sulphurous acid, bisulphide of carbon and
-chymogene, which latter is a petroleum product lighter and more volatile
-than benzine or gasoline. As these liquids were expensive, it is obvious
-that their vaporization could not be allowed to take place in the open
-air, since the reagent would thus be quickly dissipated and lost, and
-hence means were devised to condense and save this valuable volatile
-liquid to be used over again. The vaporization of the volatile liquid to
-produce cold, and its re-condensation to liquid form to be used over
-again in an endless cycle of circulation, seems to have been first
-effected by Mr. Perkins, of England, whose British patent No. 6,662, of
-1834, affords a simple and clear illustration of the fundamental
-principles of most modern ice machines. His apparatus is shown in Fig.
-294. A tank _a_ is filled with water to be frozen or cooled. A
-refrigerating chamber _b_, submerged in the water, is charged internally
-with some volatile liquid, such as ether. When the piston of suction
-pump _c_ rises a partial vacuum is formed beneath it, and the volatile
-liquid in _b_ being relieved of pressure, evaporates and expands into
-greater volume, the vapor passing out through pipe _f_ and upwardly
-opening valve _e_. This vapor is rendered intensely cold by expansion,
-and this cold is imparted to the water in tank _a_ to freeze it. A more
-scientific statement, however, is that the cold vapor absorbs the heat
-units of the water, and taking them away with it, lowers the temperature
-of the water to the freezing point. When the piston of pump _c_
-descends, valve _e_ closes, and the vapor, laden with the heat units
-absorbed from the water, is forced through the downwardly opening valve
-_e'_, and through pipe _g_ to a cooling coil _d_, around which a body of
-cold water is continually flowed. This water, in turn, takes the heat
-units from the vapor, and passes off with them in a constant flow, while
-the vapor of ether is condensed into a liquid again by the cold water,
-and passing through a weighted valve _h_, goes into the evaporating or
-refrigerating chamber to be again vaporized in an endless circuit of
-flow. It will be seen that the heat units from the water in tank _a_ are
-first handed over to the cold ether vapors passing out from chamber _b_,
-and by this vapor are then transferred to the flowing body of water
-surrounding the coil _d_. The result is that the heat units carried off
-by the water flowing around coil _d_ are the same heat units abstracted
-from the water in tank _a_, which water is thus reduced to congealation.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 294.--PERKINS' ICE MACHINE, 1834.]
-
-Among later ice machines of this type the Pictet machine was a
-conspicuous example. This employed anhydrous sulphurous acid as the
-volatile agent, and is described in United States patent No. 187,413,
-February 13, 1877; French patent No. 109,003, of 1875.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 295.--THE PICTET ICE MACHINE.]
-
-In Fig. 295 is represented a vertical longitudinal and also a vertical
-transverse section of a Pictet ice machine. A is a double acting suction
-and compression pump, D and E are two cylinders which are similarly
-constructed in the respect that they are both provided with flue pipes
-and heads for a double circulation of fluids, one fluid passing through
-the pipes while the other passes through the spaces between the pipes,
-much like the condenser of a steam engine. The cylinder D is the
-refrigerator where the volatile liquid is evaporated to produce cold,
-and the cylinder E is the condenser where the gasified vapor is cooled
-and condensed again to liquid form to be returned to the refrigerator.
-The action is as follows: The pump A by pipe B draws from the chamber in
-the refrigerator D containing the volatile liquid, causing it to
-evaporate and produce an intense degree of cold which is imparted to the
-liquid surrounding it and filling the tank. This liquid is either brine,
-or a mixture of glycerine and water, or a solution of chloride of
-magnesium, or other liquid which does not freeze at a temperature
-considerably below the freezing point of water. Now, this
-non-congealable liquid being below the freezing point, it will be seen
-that if cans H be filled with pure water, and are immersed in this
-intensely cold non-congealable liquid, the water in the cans will
-freeze. This is exactly what takes place, and this is how the ice is
-formed. As the volatile liquid is drawn out of the refrigerator D
-through pipe B by the pump A it is forced by the pump through pipe C and
-into the chamber of the condenser E. A current of cold water is kept
-flowing around the pipes in E, coming in through a pipe at one end and
-passing out through a pipe at the other end. The compressed and
-relatively hot gases are by the contact of this cold water along the
-sides of the pipes cooled and condensed into a liquid again, which
-passes up the small curved pipe F and is returned to the refrigerator D,
-to be again evaporated by the suction of the pump to continue the
-production of cold. In large plants the non-congealable liquid and cans
-of water to be frozen are (in order to get larger capacity) carried to a
-large floor tank in a removed situation.
-
-One of the earliest methods of producing ice in a limited quantity was
-by evaporating water by a reduction of pressure and causing the vapor to
-be absorbed by sulphuric acid, which has a great affinity for the water
-vapor. Mr. Nairne, in 1777, was the first to discover the affinity that
-sulphuric acid had for water vapor, and in 1810 Leslie froze water by
-this means. In 1824 Vallance obtained British patents No. 4,884 and
-5,001, operating on this principle, in which leaden balls were coated
-with sulphuric acid to increase the absorbing surfaces, and which
-apparatus was effective in freezing considerable quantities of ice.
-
-The _carafes frappees_ of the Parisian restaurant were decanters in
-which water was frozen by being immersed in tanks of sea water whose
-temperature was reduced below freezing by the vaporization of ether in a
-reservoir immersed in the sea water. Edmond Carre's method of preparing
-_carafes frappees_ involved the use of the sulphuric acid principle of
-absorption, and to that end the aqueous vapor was directly exhausted
-from the decanter by a pump, and the said vapor was absorbed by a large
-volume of sulphuric acid so rapidly as to freeze the water remaining in
-the decanter.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 296.--COMPRESSION PUMPS OF ICE PLANT.]
-
-Probably the earliest practical ice machine to be organized on a
-commercial basis was the _ammonia absorption machine_ of Ferdinand
-Carre, which was a continuously working machine. It is disclosed in
-French patents Nos. 81 and 404, of 1860, and No. 75,702, of 1867; United
-States patent No. 30,201, October 2, 1860. In this case advantage is
-taken first of the very volatile character of anhydrous ammonia, in the
-expansion part of the process, and, secondly, of the great affinity
-which water has for absorbing such gas. Strange as it may appear, the
-production of ice in the Carre process begins with the application of
-heat. It must be understood, however, that this forms no part of the
-refrigerating process proper, but only a means of driving off or
-distilling the anhydrous ammonia gas (the refrigerant) from its aqueous
-solution. Ammonia dissolved in water, known as aqua ammonia, is placed
-in a boiler or still above a furnace. The pure ammonia gas is thus
-driven off from the water by heat under pressure, similar to that in a
-steam boiler, and passes direct to a condenser, where, by cold water
-flowing through pipes, the pure gas is liquefied under pressure. The
-liquefied gas is then admitted to the evaporating or refrigerating
-chamber, where it expands to produce the cold, and is afterward
-re-absorbed by the water from which it was originally driven off in the
-still, to be used over again. Machines of this type are known as
-absorption machines, for the reason that the volatile gas is after
-expansion re-absorbed by the liquid in which it was dissolved, and is
-continuously driven off therefrom by the heat of a still. Absorption
-machines were the outgrowth of Faraday's observations in 1823. A bent
-glass tube was prepared containing at one end a quantity of chloride of
-silver, saturated with ammonia and hermetically sealed. When the mixture
-was heated, the ammonia was driven over to the other end of the tube,
-immersed in a cold bath, and the ammonia gas became liquefied. It was
-found by him then that if the end containing the chloride was plunged in
-a cold bath and the end containing liquid ammonia was immersed in water,
-the heat of the water made the ammonia rapidly evaporate, the chloride
-at the other end of the tube absorbed the ammonia vapors, and the water
-around the end of the tube containing the liquefied ammonia was
-converted into ice, by the loss of its heat imparted to the ammonia to
-volatilize it. It only needed the substitution of water for the chloride
-of silver, as an absorbing agent for the ammonia, and mechanical means
-for economically working the process in a continuous way to produce the
-Carre absorption machine. The most common form of ice machine to-day is,
-however, what is known as the _compression_ or _direct_ system, in which
-the absorption principle is dispensed with, the ammonia being compressed
-by powerful steam pumps, then cooled to liquid form by condensers, and
-then allowed to expand from its own pressure through pipes immersed in
-brine in a large floor tank, in which cans containing pure water are
-immersed, and the water frozen. Fig. 296[5] shows the compression pumps,
-and Fig. 297 the floor tanks, of such a system. Many hundred cans
-filled with pure water are lowered into the cold brine of the tank, and
-their upper ends form a complete floor, as seen in Fig. 297. When the
-water in the cans is frozen, the cans are raised out of the floor by a
-traveling crane and carried to one of the four doors seen at the far end
-of the room. The ice in the can is then loosened by warm water, and the
-block dumped through the door into a chute, whence it passes into the
-storage room below, seen in Fig. 298. In the can system the water is
-frozen from all four sides to the center, and imprisons in the center
-any air bubbles or impurities that may exist in the water. The plate
-system freezes the water on the exterior walls of hollow plates, which
-contain within them the freezing medium. In freezing the water
-externally on these plates all impurities and air bubbles are repelled
-and excluded, and the ice rendered clear and transparent.
-
- [5] By courtesy of "Ice and Refrigeration."
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 297.--FLOOR TANK OF CAN SYSTEM.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 298.--STORAGE ROOM OF ICE PLANT.]
-
-An ice plant, employing what is known as the "can" system and capable of
-producing 100 tons of ice in twenty-four hours, requires a building
-about 100 feet wide and 150 feet long, on account of the great floor
-space needed to accommodate the freezing tank, and the great number of
-cans which are immersed in the same. A radical departure from this style
-of plant is presented in the Holden ice machine. This does not require a
-multitude of cans and a great floor space, but a lot 25 by 50 feet is
-sufficient, for the ice is turned out in a continuous process like
-bricks from a brick machine. The machine works on the ammonia absorption
-principle, but the freezing is done on the outer periphery of a
-revolving cylinder, from which the film of ice is scraped off
-automatically and the ice slush carried away by a spiral conveyor to one
-of two press molds, in which a heavy pressure solidifies the ice into
-blocks, which are successively shot down from the presses on a chute to
-the storage room, as seen in Fig. 299.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 299.--HOLDEN ICE MACHINE.]
-
-The foregoing examples of ice machines give no idea of the great
-activity in this field of refrigeration in the Nineteenth Century. Over
-600 United States patents have been granted for ice machines alone, to
-say nothing of refrigerating buildings, refrigerator cars, domestic
-refrigerators, and ice cream freezers, etc. Among the earlier workers in
-ice machines, in addition to those already named, may be mentioned the
-names of Gorrie, patent No. 8,080, May 6, 1851, followed by Twining,
-1853-1862; Mignon and Rouart, in 1865; Lowe, in 1867; Somes, in
-1867-1868; Windhausen, in 1870; Rankin, in 1876-1877, and many others.
-
-An application of the ice machine which attracted much attention and
-attained great popularity for a while was that made in the production of
-artificial _skating rinks_, in which a floor of ice was frozen by means
-of a system of submerged pipes, through which the cold liquid from the
-ice machine was made to circulate. The earliest artificial skating rink
-is to be found in the British patent to Newton, No. 236, of 1870, but
-it was Gamgee, in 1875 and 1876, who devised practical means for
-carrying it out and brought it into public use. His inventions are
-described in his British patents No. 4,412, of 1875, and No. 4,176, of
-1876, and United States patent. No. 196,653, October 30, 1877, and
-others in 1878.
-
-The Windhausen machine was one of the earliest applications for
-_cooling_ and _ventilating_ ships. This machine operated upon the
-principle of alternately compressing and expanding air, and is described
-in United States patents No. 101,198, March 22, 1870 (re-issue No.
-4,603, October 17, 1871), and No. 111,292, January 24, 1871. To-day
-every ocean liner is equipped with its own cold storage and ice-making
-plant, refrigerator cars transport vast cargoes of meats, fish, etc.,
-across the continent, and bring the ripe fruits of California to the
-Eastern coast; every market house has its cold storage compartments, and
-to the brewery the refrigerating plant is one of its fundamental and
-important requisites.
-
-The great value of refrigerating appliances is to be found in the
-retardation of chemical decomposition or arrest of decay, and as this
-has relation chiefly to preserving the food stuffs of the world, its
-value can be easily understood. This branch of industry has grown up
-entirely in the Nineteenth Century, and the activity in this field is
-attested by the 4,000 United States patents in this class.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIII.
-
-LIQUID AIR.
-
- LIQUEFACTION OF GASES BY NORTHMORE, 1805; FARADAY, 1823; BUSSY,
- 1824; THILORIER, 1834, AND OTHERS--LIQUEFACTION OF OXYGEN, NITROGEN
- AND AIR BY PICTET AND CAILLETET IN 1877--SELF-INTENSIFICATION OF
- COLD BY SIEMENS IN 1857, AND WINDHAUSEN IN 1870--OPERATIONS OF
- DEWAR, WROBLEWSKI, AND OLSZEWSKI--SELF-INTENSIFYING PROCESSES OF
- SOLVAY, TRIPLER, LINDE, HAMPSON, AND OSTERGREN AND BERGER--LIQUID
- AIR EXPERIMENTS AND USES.
-
-
-Until quite recently the physicist divided gaseous matter into
-condensable vapors and permanent vapors. To-day it is known that there
-are no permanent gases, since all the so-called permanent gases, even to
-the most tenuous, such as hydrogen, may be made to assume the liquid and
-even the solid form. The average individual knows very little about
-hydrogen, but he is very well acquainted with air, and when he was told
-that the air that he breathes--the gentle zephyr that blows--the wind
-that storms from the north, or twists itself into the rage of a cyclone
-in Kansas--may be bound down in liquid form, and imprisoned within the
-limits of an open tumbler, or be bottled up in a flask or even frozen
-solid, he was at first impressed with the suspicion of a fairy story.
-Seeing is believing, however, to him, and the striking experiments from
-the lecture platform, the approval of the scientists, and the
-sensational accounts of it in the press, have not only been convincing,
-but have completely turned his head and made him a too willing victim of
-the speculator. Liquid air is a real achievement, however, and while it
-is astonishing to the layman, the physicist looks upon it in the most
-matter-of-fact way, for it is only a fulfilment of the simplest of
-nature's laws, and entirely consonant with what he has been led to
-expect for many years.
-
-The liquefaction of gases has engaged the attention of the scientist
-almost from the beginning of the century. In 1805-6 Northmore liquefied
-chlorine gas. This was done again in 1823 by Faraday. In 1824 Bussy
-condensed sulphurous acid vapors to liquid form. In 1834 Thilorier made
-extensive experiments and demonstrations in the liquefaction of carbonic
-acid gas. In 1843 Aime experimented with the liquefaction of gases by
-sinking them in suitable vessels to great depths in the ocean. Natterer,
-in 1844, greatly advanced the study of this subject by both novel
-methods and apparatus. Liquefaction of air was attempted as early as
-1823 by Perkins, and again in 1828 by Colladon, but it was not
-accomplished until 1877. In this year the liquefaction of oxygen, by
-Pictet, of Geneva, and Cailletet, of Chatillon-sur-Seine, was
-independently accomplished. Pictet used a pressure of 320 atmospheres
-and a temperature of -140 deg., obtained by the evaporation of liquid
-sulphurous acid and liquid carbonic acid. Cailletet used a pressure of
-300 atmospheres and a temperature of -29 deg., which latter was obtained by
-the evaporation of liquid sulphurous acid. In 1883 Dewar, Wroblewski and
-Olszewski commenced operations in this field, and greatly advanced the
-study of this subject. In January of 1884, Wroblewski confirmed the
-liquefaction of hydrogen, which had been imperfectly accomplished by
-Cailletet before. In the liquefaction of oxygen and nitrogen, the
-principal component gases of air, the liquefaction of air itself
-followed immediately as a matter of course.
-
-Air has usually been held to consist of four volumes of nitrogen and one
-volume of oxygen, with a very small proportion of carbonic acid gas and
-ammonia. Recent discoveries have definitely identified new gases in it,
-however, chief among which is argon. For all practical purposes,
-however, air may be considered simply a mixture of the two gases;
-nitrogen, which is inert and neither maintains life nor combustion; and
-oxygen, which performs both of these functions in a most energetic way.
-Air is more dense at the surface of the earth, and becomes continually
-more rarified as the altitude increases, until it becomes an
-indefinitely tenuous ether. Light as we are accustomed to regard it, the
-weight of a column of air one inch square is 15 pounds, and this tenuous
-and unfelt covering presses upon our globe with a total weight of
-300,000 million tons.
-
-Liquid air is simply air which has been compressed and cooled to what is
-called its critical temperature and pressure, _i. e._, the temperature
-and pressure at which it passes into another state of matter, as from a
-gas to a liquid. To liquefy air it is compressed until its volume is
-reduced to 1/800, that is to say, 800 cubic feet of air are reduced to
-one cubic foot. This requires a pressure of 1,250 to 2,000 pounds to the
-square inch.
-
-The important step in liquefying air cheaply and on a large scale was
-accomplished by the discovery of what is known as the
-_self-intensifying_ action. This dispenses with auxiliary refrigerants,
-and causes the expanding gases to supply the cold required for their own
-liquefaction by an entirely mechanical process. It consists in
-compressing the air (which produces heat), then cooling it by a flowing
-body of water, then passing it through a long coil of pipes and
-expanding the cool compressed air by allowing it to escape through a
-valve into an expansion chamber, where its pressure falls from 1,250
-pounds to 300 pounds, which produces a great degree of cold; then taking
-this very cold current of air back in reverse direction along the walls
-of the coil of pipes, and causing said returning cold air to further
-cool the air flowing from the compressor to the expansion tank, and
-finally delivering the cold return flow to the compressors and
-compressing it again from a lower initial point than it started with on
-the first round, and so continuing this cycle of circulation through the
-alternating compressing and cooling stages until the air condenses in
-liquid form in the bottom of the expansion chamber. This successive
-reduction of temperature by the air acting upon itself is called
-_self-intensification_ of cold, and it has an analogy in the
-regenerative furnace, where the augmentation of heat corresponds to the
-augmentation of cold in the self-intensifying action.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 300.--THE SELF-INTENSIFYING PRINCIPLE OF PRODUCING
-COLD, USED TO LIQUEFY AIR.]
-
-This principle of self-intensification was first announced by Prof. C.
-W. Siemens in the provisional specification of his British patent No.
-2,064, of 1857, but it does not seem at that time to have been carried
-out with any practical result. The first embodiment of the principle in
-a refrigerating apparatus is by Windhausen--United States patent No.
-101,198, March 22, 1870. Solvay, in British patent No. 13,466, of 1885,
-gave further development to the idea, and following him came the
-operations of Prof. Tripler, who was the first to liquefy large
-quantities of air and to introduce it to the American people. Linde,
-Hampson and Ostergren and Berger are more recent operators in this field
-of self-intensification, and Linde's British patent, No. 12,528, of
-1895, may be regarded as a representative exposition of the principle. A
-simplified form of the Linde apparatus is seen in Fig. 300. C is an air
-compressing pump, whose plunger descending compresses the air and forces
-it out through valve I, pipe 2, and coil 3. The coil 3 is immersed in a
-flowing body of water in the condenser W, the water entering at Y and
-passing out at Z. The cold compressed air then passes through pipes 4
-and 5, pipe 5 being arranged concentrically within a larger coil 7. The
-cold air flowing down pipe 5 escapes through a valve adjusted by handle
-6, into the subjacent chamber L, and expanding to a larger volume,
-produces a great degree of cold; this cold expanded air then passing up
-the larger and outer pipe 7 flows back over the incoming stream of air
-in pipe 5, chilling it still lower than the condenser W did, and this
-cold return flow then passing from the top of coil 7 descends through
-pipe 8 to the compressing pump C, and as its piston rises, it enters the
-pump through the inwardly opening valve 9, and here it undergoes another
-compression and circuit through the pipes 2, 3, 4, 5, but it is
-compressed on its second round of travel at a lower temperature than it
-had initially, and so this circulation of air going to the chamber L,
-expanding, and returning over the inlet flow pipe 5, successively
-cooling the latter and also successively entering the compressor at a
-continually lower temperature at each cycle of circulation, finally
-issues through the valve at the lower end of pipe 5, and expands to such
-a low temperature that it condenses in chamber L in liquid form. Fresh
-accessions of air are furnished to the apparatus through valve 10 as
-fast as the air is liquefied. The inlet flow to the liquefying chamber
-is shown by the full line arrows, and the return flow to the compressor
-by the dotted arrows, and the explanation of the term
-_self-intensification_ is to be found in the cooling of the incoming air
-in pipe 5 by the outflowing air in the surrounding pipe 7, and the
-repeated reductions of temperature at which the air is returned to the
-compressor.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 301.--COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION OF LIQUID AIR.]
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 302.--VESSEL FOR TRANSPORTING LIQUID AIR.]
-
-In Fig. 301 is shown the liquefier of a modern liquid air plant, in
-which liquid air is being drawn into a pail from the liquefier. Liquid
-air evaporates very rapidly, and produces the intense cold of 312 deg. below
-zero. There is no known way to preserve it beyond a limited time, for,
-if put in strong, tightly closed vessels, it would soon absorb enough
-heat to vaporize, and in time would acquire a tension of 12,000 pounds
-per square inch, and would burst the vessel with a disastrous explosion.
-If left exposed to the air, which is the only safe way to transport it,
-it is quickly dissipated. A shipment of eight gallons from New York to
-Washington for lecture purposes shrunk to three gallons in two days'
-time. It may usually be kept longer than this, however, as the jarring
-of a railway train promotes its evaporation and loss. A small quantity,
-such as a half pint, will boil away in twenty-five to thirty minutes.
-The only way to preserve it for any length of time is to surround it
-with a heat-excluding jacket. The simplest and most effective means for
-doing this in the laboratory is to surround it with a vacuum. Fig. 302
-shows a specially devised vessel for the commercial transportation of
-liquid air. A double walled globular vessel has between its walls air
-spaces and non-conducting packing. The liquid air in the interior
-chamber vaporizes gradually, and escaping through the outwardly opening
-valve at the top, expands around the air space surrounding the inner
-vessel. From this space it reaches the outer air by a valve at the
-bottom of the outer vessel. The liquid air in evaporating is thus
-carried around the body of liquid air in the center, and surrounding it
-with an intensely cold envelope, prevents the transmission of heat to
-the inner vessel. To withdraw the liquid air, a pipette or so-called
-siphon tube, shown in detached view, is substituted for the valve at the
-top.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 303.--SEPARATION OF LIQUID AIR INTO ITS
-CONSTITUENTS.
-
-Evaporation of Nitrogen.
-
-Evaporation of Nitrous Oxide.
-
-Evaporation of Pure Oxygen.]
-
-As to the uses of liquid air it may be said that up to the present time
-it has attained little or no practical application. There are two
-principal ways in which it may be utilized; one is to employ its
-enormous expansive force to produce mechanical power, and the other is
-as a refrigerant. As a means for obtaining motive power it is a fallacy
-to suppose that any more power can be obtained from its expansion than
-was originally required to make it. It is like a resilient spring in
-this respect, that it can give out no more power than was required to
-compress it. In some special applications, however, as for propelling
-torpedoes, where its cost is entirely subordinate to effective results,
-it might prove to be of value. For blasting purposes also it presents
-the promise of possible utilization. As a refrigerant for commercial
-purposes, and for supplying a dry, cool temperature to the sick room,
-and for the preparation of chemicals requiring a low temperature to
-manufacture, it might find useful application. Inasmuch as the nitrogen
-of liquid air evaporates first, and leaves nearly pure liquid oxygen, it
-may also be employed as a means for producing and applying oxygen. Good
-illustration of this is given in Fig. 303, in which at 1 is shown a
-vessel filled with liquid air. The gas first evaporating is nitrogen,
-and a lighted match applied to the surface of the liquid is quickly
-extinguished, since nitrogen does not support combustion. As the level
-of the liquid falls by evaporation, the remaining portions become richer
-in oxygen and poorer in nitrogen, and nitrous oxide gas is then given
-off, which supports combustion as seen at 2; and when the last portions
-of the liquid are being evaporated, as at 3, it is practically pure
-oxygen, which gives a brilliant combustion of a carbon pencil, or even
-of a steel spring when the latter is heated red hot. Already Prof.
-Pictet has formulated a plan for the commercial production and
-separation of the ingredients of liquid air--the nitrogen, carbonic
-acid, and oxygen being separated by their different evaporating
-temperatures with a view to applying them to various industrial uses.
-All of the commercial applications of liquid air, however, depend upon
-its cost of production, which seems at present an uncertain factor.
-According to the claims of some it may be produced at a cost of a few
-cents a gallon. More conservative physicists say that it costs $5 a
-gallon.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 304.--LIQUID AIR EXPERIMENTS.
-
-1. Magnetism of oxygen. 2. Steel burning in liquid oxygen. 3. Frozen
-sheet iron. 4. Explosion of confined liquid air. 5. Burning paper. 6.
-Explosion of sponge. 7. Freezing rubber ball. 8. Double walled vacuum
-bulb. 9. Boiling liquid air.]
-
-However this may be, the phenomena which it presents are both
-interesting and instructive. In Figs. 304 and 305 are shown some of the
-experiments. At No. 1 a test tube containing liquid air, from which the
-nitrogen has escaped, is strongly attracted by an electro-magnet,
-showing the magnetic quality of oxygen. At No. 2 is shown the combustion
-of a heated piece of steel in liquid air, which has become rich in
-oxygen by the evaporation of the nitrogen. At No. 3 a tin dipper, which
-has been immersed in liquid air, has become so cold and crystalline that
-it breaks like glass when dropped. At No. 4 liquid air imprisoned in a
-tube and tightly corked up, blows the stopper out in a few minutes with
-explosive effect. At No. 5 a piece of paper saturated with liquid air
-burns with great energy, and at No. 6 a piece of sponge or raw cotton
-similarly saturated explodes when ignited. At No. 7 a rubber ball
-floated on liquid air in a tumbler is frozen so hard that when dropped
-it flies into fragments like a glass ball. The white, snow-like vapor
-seen falling over the edges of the tumbler is intensely cold and heavier
-than ordinary air. At No. 8 is illustrated the preservation of liquid
-air by surrounding it with a vacuum in a Dewar bulb. At No. 9 a flask of
-liquid air is made to boil by the mere heat of the hand. A more striking
-experiment still of the same kind is to place a tea kettle containing
-liquid air on a block of ice. The block of ice is relatively so much
-hotter than the liquid air that the liquid air in the kettle is made to
-boil. At No. 10, Fig. 305, a heavy weight is suspended by a link
-composed of a bar of mercury frozen solid in liquid air. So hard is the
-mercury frozen that a hammer made of it will drive a tenpenny nail up to
-its head in a pine board. In No. 11 a layer of liquid air on water at
-first floats because it is lighter than water. As the lighter nitrogen
-evaporates, the heavier oxygen sinks in drops through the water. At No.
-12 a tumbler of whiskey is frozen solid by immersing a tube containing
-liquid air in it. The frozen block of whiskey with the cavity formed by
-the tube is shown on the left. It is a whiskey tumbler made out of
-whiskey. A more sensational experiment is to substitute a tapering tin
-cup for the tube, then fill it with liquid air and immerse it in water.
-In a few minutes the tapering tin cup has frozen on its outer walls a
-tumbler of ice. This may be carefully removed, and the ice tumbler is
-then filled with liquid air rich in oxygen, which, by maintaining the
-cold of the ice tumbler, keeps it from melting. A carbon pencil or a
-steel spring heated to redness will now, if dipped in the liquid oxygen
-in the ice tumbler, burn with vehement brilliancy and beautiful
-scintillations, involving the anomalous conditions of a white hot heat
-and active combustion in the center of a tumbler of ice, without melting
-the tumbler. In experiment 13, Fig. 305, a jet of carbonic acid gas
-directed into a dish floating in a glass of liquid air is immediately
-frozen into minute flakes, producing a miniature snow storm of carbonic
-acid. In experiment 14 an electric light carbon heated to a red heat at
-its tip, is plunged vertically into a deep glass of liquid oxygen. A
-most singular combustion takes place. The heat of the carbon evaporates
-the oxygen in its immediate vicinity, and the carbon burns with great
-brilliancy and violence, forming carbonic acid, which is largely frozen
-in the liquid before it reaches the surface, and falls back to the
-bottom of the dish, so that the combustion is maintained and its
-products retained within the dish. A beefsteak may be frozen in liquid
-air to such brittleness that it is shattered like a china plate when
-struck a slight blow. The intense cold of liquid air does not destroy
-the vitality or germinating power of seed, but produces serious
-so-called burns on the flesh that destroy the tissues and do not heal
-for many months, and yet for a moment the finger may be dipped in liquid
-air with impunity because of the gaseous envelope with which the finger
-is temporarily surrounded.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 305.--LIQUID AIR EXPERIMENTS.
-
-10. Frozen mercury. 11. Liquid oxygen in water. 12. Frozen whisky. 13.
-Carbonic acid snow. 14. Combustion of carbon pencil.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIV.
-
-MINOR INVENTIONS
-
-AND
-
-PATENTS IN PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
-
-
-If the reader has been patient enough to have reviewed the preceding
-pages, the impression may have been formed that the notable inventions
-referred to represent all that is worth while to consider in this great
-field of human achievement. It would be a fallacy to entertain such a
-thought, for the little stars out-number the big ones, and the twigs of
-the tree are far more numerous than its branches. The great things in
-life are comparatively few and far between, and the bulk of human
-existence is made up of an unclassified mass of little things, sown like
-sands along the shore of time between the boulders of great events. So
-also in invention is its warp and woof made up of a multitude of little
-threads behind the gorgeous patterns of meteoric genius. Every hour of
-the day of modern life is replete with the achievements of invention.
-Look around the room, and there is not a thing in sight that does not
-suggest the material advance of the age; the books, the furniture, the
-carpets, the curtains, the wall paper, the clock, the mantels, the house
-trimmings, the culinary utensils, and the clothing, all represent
-creations of this century. So full is the daily life of these things,
-and so much of a necessity have they all become, that their commonplace
-character dismisses them from conspicuous notice. Take the most
-matter-of-fact and prosy half hour of the day, that at the time of
-rising, and see what a faithful account of the average man's everyday
-life would present. The awakening is definitely determined by an alarm
-clock, and the sleepy Nineteenth Century man rolling over under the
-seductive comfort of a spring bed, takes another nap, because he knows
-that the rapid transit cars will give him time to spare. Rising a little
-later his bare feet find a comfortable footing on a machine-made rug,
-until thrust into full fashioned hose, and ensconced in a pair of
-machine-sewed slippers. Drawing the loom-made lace curtains, he starts
-up the window shade on the automatic Hartshorn roller and is enabled to
-see how to put in his collar button and adjust his shirt studs. He
-awakens the servant below with an electric bell, calls down the
-speaking tube to order breakfast, and perhaps lights the gas for her by
-the push button. He then proceeds to the bath, where hot and cold water,
-the sanitary closet, a gas heater, and a great array of useful modern
-articles present themselves, such as vaseline, witch hazel, dentifrices,
-cold cream, soaps and antiseptics, which supply every luxurious want and
-every modern conception of sanitation. His bath concluded, he proceeds
-to dress, and maybe puts in his false teeth, or straps on an artificial
-leg. Donning his shirt with patented gussets and bands, he quickly
-adjusts his separable cuff buttons, puts on his patented suspenders,
-and, winding a stem-winding watch, proceeds down stairs to breakfast. A
-revolving fly brush and fly screens contribute to his comfort. A cup of
-coffee from a drip coffee-pot, a lump of artificial ice in his tumbler,
-sausage ground in a machine, batter cakes made with an egg beater,
-waffles from a patented waffle iron, honey in artificial honey comb,
-cream raised by a centrifugal skimmer, butter made in a patented churn,
-hot biscuits from the cooking range, and a refrigerator with a well
-stocked larder, all help to make him comfortable and happy. The picture
-is not exceptional in its fullness of invented agencies, and one could
-just as well go on with our citizen through the rest of the day's
-experience, and start him off after breakfast with a patented match, in
-a patented match case, and a patented cigarette, with his patented
-overshoes and umbrella, and send him along over the patented pavement to
-the patented street car, or automobile, and so on to the end of the day.
-
-Some of the minor inventions are really of too much importance to be
-passed without comment. The _cable car_ is a factor which has cut no
-small figure in the activities of city life. The first patent on a
-slotted underground conduit between the rails, with traction cable
-inside and running on pulleys, was that to E. A. Gardner, No. 19,736,
-March 23, 1858. Hallidie, in San Francisco, in 1876, directed his
-energies to a development of this system, and brought it to a degree of
-perfection and general adoption that made it for many years the leading
-system of street car propulsion. To-day, however, it represents but a
-decadent type, being largely supplanted by the superior advantages of
-electricity.
-
-_Passenger elevators_ constitute one of the conspicuous features of
-modern locomotion. Without them the tall office buildings, hotels, and
-department stores would have no existence; the Eiffel Tower would never
-have been dreamed of, and the expenditure of vital force in stair
-climbing would have been greatly augmented. The passenger elevator has
-for its prototype the ancient hoist or lift for mines, but in the latter
-half of the Nineteenth Century it has developed into a distinct
-institution--a luxurious little room, gliding noiselessly up and down,
-actuated by a power that is not seen, and supplied with every appliance
-for safety and comfort, such as governors, safety catches, automatic
-stops, mirrors and cushioned seats. The principle of the screw, of
-balance weights, of the lazy tongs, and other mechanical powers have
-each found application in the elevator, but steam, hydraulic power, and
-electricity constitute the moving agencies of the modern type. The
-patent to E. G. Otis, No. 31,128, January 15, 1861, marks the beginning
-of its useful applications.
-
-Of close kin to the elevator are the _fire escape_, _dumb waiter_ and
-_grain elevator_, each of which fills a more or less important function
-in the life of to-day.
-
-What more ubiquitous or ingenious illustration of modern progress than
-the _American stem winding watch!_ Up to the middle of the century all
-watches were made by hand throughout. Each watch had its own
-individuality as a separate creation, and only the privileged few were
-able to carry them. In 1848 Aaron L. Dennison, a Boston watch maker,
-began making watches by machinery, and the foundation of the system of
-interchangeable parts was laid. A small factory at Roxbury, Mass., was
-established in 1850, which four years later was moved to Waltham. In
-1857 it passed into the hands of Appleton, Tracy & Co., and was
-subsequently acquired by the American Watch Co. As presenting some idea
-of the great elaboration involved in this art, it was estimated a few
-years ago that 3,746 distinct mechanical operations were required to
-make an ordinary machine made watch. A single pound of steel wire is
-sometimes converted into a couple of hundred thousand tiny screws, and
-another pound of fine steel wire furnishes 17,280 hair springs, worth
-several thousand dollars. The absolute uniformity and perfect
-interchangeability of parts in the American watch have been obtained by
-substituting the invariable and mathematical accuracy of the machine for
-the nervous fingers and dimming eyes of the old time watchmaker, and the
-American machine made watch, discredited as it was at first, stands
-to-day the greatest modern advance in horology.
-
-_Friction Matches._--In 1805 Thenard, of Paris, made the first attempt
-to utilize chemical agencies for the ordinary production of fire. In
-1827 John Walker, an English druggist, made friction matches called
-"congreves." In 1833 phosphorus friction matches were introduced on a
-commercial scale by Preschel, of Vienna. In 1845 red phosphorus matches
-(parlor matches) were made by Von Schrotter, of Vienna, and in 1855
-safety matches, which ignited only on certain substances, were made by
-Lundstroem, of Sweden. Prior to the Nineteenth Century, and in fact
-until about 1833, the old flint and steel and tinder box were the
-clumsy and uncertain means for producing fire. To-day the friction match
-is turned out by automatic machinery by the million, and constitutes
-probably the most ubiquitous and useful of all the minor inventions.
-
-Step into any of the great department stores and the genius of the
-inventor confronts you in the _cash carrier_ whisking its little cars
-back and forth from the cashier's desk to the most remote corners of the
-great building. The first of these mechanical carriers adapted for store
-service was patented by D. Brown, July 13, 1875, No. 165,473. Not until
-about 1882, however, was there any noticeable adoption of the system,
-when practical development was given in Martin's patents, No. 255,525,
-March 28, 1882; No. 276,441, April 24, 1883, and No. 284,456, September
-4, 1883. Go to the lunch counter, and the _cash register_ reminds you
-that the millenium of absolute honesty is not yet realized. The _bell
-punch_ on the street car and the burglar proof safe with its
-_combination locks_ are other suggestions in the same line. The first
-_fire proof safe_ is disclosed in the British patent to Richard Scott,
-No. 2,477, of 1801. The _time lock_, which prevents the safe from being
-opened by anyone except at a certain period of daylight, was invented by
-J. V. Savage, and was covered by him in United States patent No. 5,321,
-October 9, 1847. The practical adoption of time locks began about 1875
-with the operations of Sargent, Stockwell and others, and to-day they
-constitute one of the most important features of bank safes and vaults,
-and represent a marvelously beautiful and accurate example of mechanical
-skill.
-
-The Otto _gas-engine_, and the Ericsson _air-engine_ are important
-developments in power producing motors, and the improvements in
-_pavements_ and in _street sweepers_ for cleaning them, contribute to
-the cleanliness, sanitation, and aesthetic values of city life. The
-_cigarette machine_, which continuously curls a ribbon of paper around a
-core of tobacco to form a rope, and then cuts it off into cigarettes, is
-an important invention in the tobacco industry, however doubtful its
-hygienic value to the world may be. The _lightning rod_ has brought
-protection to homes and lives, and the _incubator_ has become the hen's
-wet nurse. In agriculture, the reaper has been supplemented with
-threshing machines, seeders, drills, cultivators, horse rakes and plows.
-In the farm yard appear the improved carriage and wagon, the well pump,
-the wind wheel, the fruit drier, the bee hive, and the cotton and cider
-press. In the kitchen, the washing machine, the churn, the cheese press,
-ironing machine, wringer, the rat trap, and fruit jar. In the house, the
-folding bed, tilting chair, carpet sweeper, and the piano. In heating
-appliances, steam and water heating systems, base burning and Latrobe
-stoves, hot air furnaces, gas and oil stoves. In plastics there are
-brick machines, pressed glass ware, enameled sheet iron ware, tiles,
-paper buckets, celluloid and rubber articles. In hydraulics there are
-rams, water closets, pumps, and turbine water wheels. In mining there
-are stamp mills, ore crushers, separators, concentrators, and
-amalgamators. In the leather and boot and shoe industry there is a great
-variety of machines and appliances. The paper industry, with book
-binding machines, and paper box machines, is a fertile field of
-invention. Steam boilers, metallurgical appliances, soap making,
-chemical fire extinguishers, fountain pens, the sand blast, bottle
-stoppers, and a thousand other things present themselves in
-miscellaneous and endless array. These are, however, only some of the
-things which the limitation of space precludes from individual
-treatment, but which are none the less important in making up the great
-resources of modern life, and, for the most part, represent the
-contributions of the Nineteenth Century not heretofore considered.
-
-The observant and thoughtful reader finds just here occasion to inquire
-the meaning of this great rising tide of progress which has so
-distinguished the Nineteenth Century. It is largely due to the Patent
-Law, which justly regards the inventor as a public benefactor, and seeks
-to make for him some protection in the enjoyment of his rights. If a man
-be in the possession of a legacy by the accident of birth, the law of
-inheritance rules that it is rightfully his. The finding of a thing,
-whether by jetsam, flotsam, or the lucky accident of a first discovery,
-this also makes good his title, if there be no other owner. There is,
-however, a right of property which is higher than all others, and in
-which there is coupled with the possession of the thing the sacred
-function of its creation. The right of a mother to her child is of this
-nature, and like unto it is the right of the inventor to the creation of
-his genius. In the last two centuries of the world's history this right
-has been recognized by an enlightened civilization, and provision made
-for its enjoyment in the grant of patents, and if there be any right
-more strongly entrenched than another in the eternal verities of equity
-and justice it is this. Our first crude patent law was enacted in 1790,
-but not until 1836 was the present system adopted. Our own and
-comparatively new country has, therefore, not yet had a hundred years of
-existence under our present Patent System, and yet to-day it outstrips
-the world both in its material resources and in its wealth of patented
-inventions. The accompanying diagram, Fig. 306, illustrates in a graphic
-way just what relation the United States bears to the other leading
-countries of the world in the matter of patents granted, and when it is
-remembered that under our system a patent can only be granted for a new
-invention, while in some of the other countries it is not essential to
-the grant, the richness in invention of the United States, with its six
-hundred and fifty thousand patents, can be better appreciated. This is a
-greater number than has been issued by Great Britain and France put
-together. Connecticut is the most productive State in invention in
-proportion to its people, and Edison is the most prolific inventor. From
-1870 to 1900 he has taken 727 United States patents, and there are from
-twenty-five to thirty other American inventors each of whom has taken
-100 or more patents.
-
-[Illustration: TOTAL NUMBER PATENTS TO JAN 1^{ST.} 1900
-
-(FOREIGN PATENTS FOR 1899, ESTIMATED)
-
-RATE OF ISSUE OF U.S. PATENTS
-
-FIG. 306.]
-
-The year 1790 was notable in two events, the birth of our patent system
-and the death of Benjamin Franklin. That grand old philosopher, with a
-prescience of future greatness to come from the genius of the inventor,
-is said to have expressed the wish before he died that he might be
-sealed up in a cask of old Madeira and be brought to life a hundred
-years in the future, that he might witness the growth of the world. Who
-can tell what his emotions would be if he were with us to-day? It is
-said, when he first saw the fibres of the string diverge, and the spark
-pass from the cord of his kite, and the lightning was for the first time
-obedient to the will of man, that he uttered a deep sigh and wished that
-that moment were his last. To this poor knowledge of electricity he
-would now have added all the wonders and powers of the telegraph, the
-dynamo, the telephone, and the great modern electrical science; to his
-primitive hand press he would have contrasted the Octuple perfecting
-press, turning out papers at the rate of 1,600 a minute; his modest
-type-setting case would be replaced by a great array of linotype
-machines, and he would find several acres of woodland sacrificed to
-produce the wood-pulp paper of a single edition of a New York daily.
-Would he not realize indeed that truth is stranger than fiction, and
-fact more wonderful than fancy's dream!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXV.
-
-EPILOGUE.
-
-
-Whatever the future centuries may bring in new and useful inventions,
-certain it is that the Nineteenth Century stands pre-eminent in this
-field of human achievement, so far excelling all other like periods as
-to establish on the pages of history an epoch as remarkable as it is
-unique. Never before has human conception so expressed itself in
-materialized embodiment, never has thought been so fruitfully wedded to
-the pregnant possibilities of matter, never has the divine function of
-creation been so closely approximated, never has such an accretion of
-helpful instrumentalities and material resources been added to the
-world's wealth--not merely the miserly and inert wealth of gold and
-gems, but the wealth of an enlarged human existence. This life itself is
-but a limited span; beginning in infancy, expanding to highest
-achievement in middle age, and declining at the end, it quickly passes
-away, and another generation follows. Growth and decay with all living
-things mark the immutable law of nature, and the inevitable fate of
-mortality. The rose blossoms into beauty, fades, and decays. The bird in
-the air, and the beast in the field, each plays his part and passes to
-the great unknown, leaving no record; man himself is mortal, but his
-work is immortal. The inspired conception of his best thought, the
-materialized embodiment of his work in useful agencies, and the
-subjugation of the laws of nature to his service, all endure and live
-forever in his inventions. These partake of the breath of life, and in
-their immortality are of kin to the soul. Cities may grow up and vanish,
-civilizations may decay, and man himself may degenerate, but the
-principle of the lever and the screw, once discovered, is for all time
-perfect, invariable and immortal. Every invention made is another
-permanent gift to posterity. All of enduring wealth that the present
-gets from the past are its ideas reduced to a working basis. All else is
-but dross, or evanescent dreams which vanish into oblivion in the light
-of a larger knowledge. But ideas wrought into practical, substantive
-things, tried and proven true, these are inventions--immortal
-creations--and of these the Nineteenth Century has borne fruit in
-paramount abundance, and this legacy it now bequeaths to the coming
-century.
-
-To follow conventional methods, the final chapter of a book should be an
-"In conclusion" with a "finis" and a dismantled torch, but the history
-of invention will ever be a continued story. There is no end in this
-field. The trusteeship of the Twentieth Century man is great, and great
-his responsibilities; but his restless and dominant spirit knows no
-decadence, and his mental endowment and material equipment, without
-parallel in history, are a guarantee of future achievements. Will not
-the chemist learn how to produce electricity direct from the combustion
-of coal, or solve the problem of the synthesis of food? Will not the
-American continent be parted by an inter-oceanic canal, or the rough
-waters of the English Channel be avoided with a submarine tunnel? May
-not a ship canal through France to the Mediterranean give to that
-country the connected enjoyment of riparian rights, without passing the
-frowning battlements of Gibraltar, or might not a tunnel under the
-Straits of Gibraltar put Europe and Africa in direct railway
-communication? The relation of electricity to life is a field of
-pregnant possibilities, and may we not also learn to swap the surplus
-heat of summer for the winter's cold, and by an equalization of their
-two extremes bring eternal spring and joy to the animated world? Shall
-we not yet stand on the North Pole, or looking away into space may we
-not extend a neighborly welcome to our brothers in Mars, if any there
-be? It is permitted to dream in this field, for it is this reaching out
-into the unknown that plats the boundaries of an extended world, and
-adds to the possessions of man.
-
-The old man in his dreams of the past rejoices in his achievements, for
-he has stolen the fires of Prometheus and forged anew the thunderbolts
-of Jove for the arts of peace. Delving into the secret recesses of the
-earth, he has tapped the hidden supplies of nature's fuel, has invaded
-her treasure house of gold and silver, robbed Mother Earth of her
-hoarded stores, and possessed himself of her family record, finding on
-the pages of geology sixty millions of years' existence. Peering into
-the invisible little world, the infinite secrets of microcosm have
-yielded their fruitful and potent knowledge of bacteria and cell growth.
-Pain has been robbed of its terrors by anaesthesia; the heat of the sun
-has been brought down in the electric furnace, and the cold of
-inter-stellar space in the ice machine and liquid air. With telescope
-and spectroscope he has climbed into limitless space above, and defined
-the size, distance, and constitution of a star millions of miles away.
-The north star has been made his sentinel on the sea. The lightning is
-made his swift messenger, and thought flashes in submarine depths
-around the world. Dead matter is made to speak in the phonograph, the
-invisible has been revealed in the X-Rays, coal has been made his black
-slave, steam the breath of the world's life, and all of nature's forces
-have been made his constant servants in attendance.
-
-With such a retrospect, the sage of the Nineteenth Century may lie down
-to quiet rest, with an assuring faith that what God hath wrought is
-good, and what is not may yet be.
-
-
-
-
-INDEX.
-
-
- Abbe's Stereo-Binocular, 289
- Absorption Process, Ice Making, 441
- Acetylene Gas, 333
- Adirondack, Steamer, 141
- Agricultural Chemistry, 225
- Aids to Digestion, 243
- Air Blast, 374
- Air Brakes, 129
- Air, Carburetted, 336
- Alloys, 389
- Aluminum, 225-390
- Ambrotype, 304
- Anaesthesia, 246
- Anaesthesia by Chloroform, 247
- Ancient Iron Furnace, 372
- Aniline, 222
- Annealing and Tempering, Electricity in, 387
- Antikamnia (Acetanilide), 248
- Antipyrine, 248
- Antiseptic Surgery, 256
- Antiseptics, Coal Tar, 223
- Archer's Collodion Process Photos, 304
- Arc Lamp Feed, 66
- Arc Lamp, Simple, 64
- Arc Lamp, Weston, 65
- Arc Lamp, Large, 65-69
- Arkwright's Drawing Rolls, 421
- Arlberg Tunnel, 346
- Armored Cruiser, 150
- Armor Plates, Manufacture of, 383
- Artesian Wells, 350
- Artificial Limbs, 251
- Atlantic Cable, 32-37
- Automatic Ball Governor, 104
- Automatic Telegraph, 22
- Automobile, 265-272
- Automobile Statistics, 271
-
- Babbitt Metal, 389
- Bachelder Sewing Machine Feed, 186
- Bacteriology, 252
- Bain's Telegraph, 22
- Baldwin's Locomotives, 126
- Band Saws, 364
- Barbed Wire Fences, 388
- Barlow's Electric Wheel, 48
- Battery, Storage, 88
- Battleships, 150
- Beach, Alfred E., Tunneling Shield, 346
- Beach's Typewriter, 174
- Bell & Tainter's Improved Phonograph, 276
- Bell's Telephone, 77
- Bentham, Sir S., Invents Woodworking Machinery, 360
- Berliner's Telephone, 82
- Bessemer Steel, 376
- Beverages, 244
- Blake Telephone Transmitter, 83
- Blanchard's Lathe, 368
- Blast Furnace, 374-375
- Blasting, 351
- Blasting, Electro, 99
- Blenkinsop's Locomotive, 119
- Blickensderfer Typewriter, 180
- Bloomeries, Air, 373
- Body Appliances, Electric, 97
- Book Typewriter, 181
- Bourdon's Steam Gauge, 107
- Bicycle, 259-265
- Bicycle Speed, 264
- Bicycle Statistics, 265
- Binding Devices for Reaper, 203
- Biograph, 298
- Bipolar Dynamo, 42
- Brake, Bicycle, 264
- Bramah's Planer, 366
- Branca's Steam Turbine, 109
- Branson's Automatic Knitter, 431
- Breech Mechanism, Interrupted Thread, 399
- Bridge, Brooklyn, 342
- Bridge, Cabin John, 344
- Bridge, Forth, 340
- Bridges, Masonry, 342
- Bridge, Trezzo, 344
- Bright's Disease, 250
- Brooklyn, Armored Cruiser, 151
- Brooklyn Bridge, 342
- Buildings, High, 353
- Burt's Typewriter, 172
- Butchering and Dressing Meats, 237
- Buttonhole Machine, 191
-
- Cabin John Bridge, 344
- Cablegrams, First, 33
- Cable Statistics, 36
- Cable, Submarine, 32
- Cable Tolls, 37
- Cableway, Lidgerwood, 349
- Caissons, 345
- Calcium Carbide, 225
- Calcium Carbide Factories, 336
- Calcium Carbide Furnace, 46
- Caligraph Typewriter, 177
- Calotype, 303
- Camera, 306
- Camera Obscura, 306
- Camera Shutter, 307
- Canal, Chicago Drainage, 350
- Canal, Suez, 347
- Candle, Jablochkoff, 64
- Canning Industry, 235
- Cannon, Breech-Loading, 397
- Cannon Invention, 395
- Caoutchouc, 210
- Capitol Building, 357
- Caps, Percussion, 416
- Carafes, Frozen, 441
- Carbolic Acid, 247
- Carbon Microphone, 82
- Carbon-Printing, Photography, 305
- Carborundum, 225
- Carborundum Furnace, 45
- Carburetted Air, 336
- Car Coupling, 129
- Carpet Sewing Machine, 192
- Carre's Ice Machine, 441
- Cartwright Invents Power Loom, 426
- Car Wheels, Turning, 387
- Cash Carrier, 461
- Casting Pig Iron, 379
- Castalia, Steamer, 140
- Cathode Ray, 321
- Celestial Photography, 310
- Cementation, 385-387
- Centrifugal Filter, 243
- Centrifugal Milk Skimmer, 235
- Chain Bicycle, 263
- Chair, Electrocution, 44
- Champion Reaper, 202
- Charlotte Dundas, Steamboat, 134
- Chemical Telegraph, 22
- Chemistry, 221-227
- Chicago Drainage Canal, 350
- Chill Molds, 388
- Chipping Logs, Wood Pulp, 162
- Chloral Hydrate, 247
- Chronology of Inventions, 7-14
- Circular Saw, Hammering to Tension, 362
- Circulation of Blood, 246
- Civil Engineering, 340-359
- Clermont, Steamboat, 136
- Cloth, Finishing, 432
- Cloth Presser, 432
- Coal Gas Works, 330
- Coal Tar Dyes, Statistics, 226
- Coal Tar Products, 222
- Coating with Metal, 387
- Code, Morse, 20
- Collecting Rubber, 211
- Collodion Process Photography, 304
- Color Photography, 311
- Color Printing Press, 159
- Columbia Electric Automobile, 270
- Columbian Press, 156
- Compound Expansion Engine, 115
- Compound Locomotive, 128-130
- Compound Steam Turbine, 109
- Concentrator, Magnetic, 392
- Continuous Web Press, 157
- Cooper, Peter, Rolls Iron Beams for Buildings, 354
- Cord Binding Reaper, 203
- Corliss Valve Gear, 106
- Cort Makes Wrought Iron, 373
- Cotton, Diamond, 434
- Cotton Gin, 423
- Cracker and Cake Machine, 234
- Crompton Invents Mule Spinner, 422
- Cryptoscope, Salvioni's, 322
- Cuisine, Ocean Steamer, 145
- Culture, Bacteria, 255
- Cut-Off, Sickel's, 105
- Cut-Off, Steam, 104
- Cyanide Process, 391
-
- Daguerreotype, 303
- Daguerre's Invention, 303
- Dahlgren Gun, 397
- Dal Negro Electric Motor, 49
- Daniell Battery, 16
- Darby Makes Iron with Coke, 373
- De Laval's Steam Turbine, 111
- De Lesseps Builds Suez Canal, 347
- Demologos, First War Vessel, 146
- Densmore Typewriter, 180
- Dentistry, 250
- Desk Telephone, 86
- Deutschland's Engines, 115
- Digesters, Wood Pulp, 163
- Digestion, 252
- Disease Germs, 253
- Double Hull Steamer, 140
- Dough Mixer, 232
- Draisine Bicycle, 260
- Drawing Rolls, Spinning, 421
- Dredges, 349
- Drill Jar, 350
- Drills, Rock, 351
- Drinks, 244
- Drummond Light, 338
- Dry Plate Photography, 306
- Dudley's Early Ironworking, 373
- Duplex Telegraph, 23
- Duplicating Phonograph Records, 279
- Dust Collector, Flour Mills, 232
- Dyes, Coal Tar, 223
- Dynamite Gun, 405
- Dynamo Armature, 43
- Dynamo, Bipolar, 42
- Dynamo, Description of, 42
- Dynamos, Different Kinds, 42
- Dynamo Electric Machine, 38-47
- Dynamo, Gramme and D'Ivernois, 41
- Dynamo, Hjorth, 40
- Dynamo, Multipolar, 47
- Dynamo, Siemens', 41
- Dynamo, Wilde, 41
-
- Eads, Caissons of, 345
- Earthquake-Proof Palace, 355
- Edison's Electric Lamp, 67-73
- Edison's Carbon Microphone, 82
- Edison's Concentrating Works, 392
- Edison's Electric Pen, 96
- Edison's Kinetoscope, 297
- Edison's Three Wire System, 72-74
- Edison's X-Ray Apparatus, 323
- Eiffel Tower, 355
- Electric Automobile, 270
- Electric Body Appliances, 97
- Electric Cautery, 97
- Electric Furnace, 44
- Electric Furnace, Acheson, 45
- Electric Furnace, Bradley, 46
- Electric Lamp, Edison's, 67-73
- Electric Lamp, Sawyer-Man, 67-73
- Electric Lamp, Starr-King, 66
- Electric Launch, 93-94
- Electric Light, 63-75
- Electric Light Beacon, 65-69
- Electric Light Circuit, 74
- Electric Locomotive, 59
- Electric Motor, 48-62
- Electric Motor, Barlow's Wheel, 48
- Electric Motor, Dal Negro, 49
- Electric Motor, Davenport, 51-52
- Electric Motor, Dr. Page, 51
- Electric Motor, Faraday, 48
- Electric Motor, Henry, 50
- Electric Motor, Jacobi, 51
- Electric Motor, Neff, 52
- Electric Motor, Prof. Henry's, 50
- Electric Motor, Railway, 58
- Electric Motor, Westinghouse, 53
- Electric Musical Instruments, 98
- Electric Pen, Edison's, 96
- Electric Piano, 98
- Electric Railway, First, 54
- Electric Railway Statistics, 60
- Electric Telephone, 76
- Electric Welding, 91
- Electrical Generation, Polyphase, 43
- Electrical Navigation, 92
- Electricity Direct from Fuel, 92
- Electricity in Medicine, 96
- Electricity, Miscellaneous, 88-99
- Electro-Blasting, 99
- Electro-Chemistry, 225
- Electrocution, 44
- Electro-Magnet, Henry's, 17-18
- Electro-Magnetism by Oersted, 18
- Electro-Magnet, Sturgeon's, 18-19
- Electro-Plating, 93
- Elements, New, 227
- Elevators, Passenger, 459
- Elliott & Hatch Typewriter, 182
- Emulsions, Photography, 305
- Engine, Gas, 337
- Engine, Rotary, 109
- Epilogue, 465-467
- Ericsson's Monitor, 148
- Ericsson's Screw Propeller, 137
- Etherization, 246
- Excavating Quicksand by Freezing, 345
- Explosives, High, 419
-
- Facsimile Telegraph, 24
- False Teeth, 251
- Faraday Converts Electricity Into Power, 48
- Farmer Utilizes Electric Light, 67
- Farms, Large, 207
- Fastest Railway Speed, 131
- Fastest Speed, Steam Vessel, 146
- Faure Storage Battery, 90
- Feathering Paddle Wheel, 138-141
- Feed, Sewing Machine, 186-187
- Fermenting and Brewing, 223
- Field, Cyrus W., 32
- Fields, Large, 207
- Films, Photographic, 308
- Filter, Centrifugal, 243
- Fire Alarm Telegraph, 24
- Firearms and Explosives, 394-419
- Firearms, Early, 395
- Fire Engine, Steam, 114
- First Cable Message, 33
- First Dynamo, 40
- First Electric Light in Dwelling, 67
- First Gas Company, 330
- First Incandescent Lamp, 66-72
- First Locomotive, 119
- First Ocean Voyage, 137-145
- First Phonograph, 274
- First Photographic Portrait, 310
- First Railway in U. S., 131
- First Rubber Shoes, 212
- First Telegraphic Message, 15
- First Telegraphic Signal, 18
- First War Vessel, 146
- Flood Rock, Destruction of, 352
- Flour Mills, 230
- Fluorometer (X-Ray), 326
- Fluoroscope, Edison's, 323
- Focus Tube, X-Ray, 326
- Food and Drink, 228-244
- Food Products, Statistics, 229
- Foods, Patented, 244
- Forging Press, 383
- Forth Bridge, 340
- Fourdrinier Machine, 161
- Franklin's Printing Press, 155
- Fulton, Robert, 134
- Fulton's Demologos, 146
-
- Galvani's Experiment, 16
- Galvanizing, 387
- Gas, Acetylene, 333
- Gas Checks, Ordnance, 398
- Gas, Coal, 330
- Gas Engine, 337
- Gases, Liquefaction of, 447
- Gas Lighting, 329-339
- Gas Meter, 337
- Gasoline Automobile, 268
- Gas, Water, 332
- Gatling Gun, 405
- Gauge, Steam, 107
- Gelatine Films, Photography, 308
- Germs, Disease, 253
- Gessner's Cloth Press, 432
- Giffard Injector, 105
- Glucose, 223
- Gold, Cyanide Process, 391
- Goodyear Discovers Vulcanization, 214
- Goodyear Introduces Rubber Into Europe, 214
- Goodyear's Experiments With Rubber, 212
- Gramophone, 280
- Grande Lunette Telescope, 287
- Grape Sugar, 223
- Graphophone, 277
- Great Eastern, 138
- Greathead Improves Tunneling Shield, 347
- Grove, Prof., Electric Lamp, 66-72
- Gun Cotton, Making, 224
- Gun, Magazine, 411
- Gun, Disappearing, 401
- Gunpowder, 416
- Gun, 16-inch, 401
- Gunpowder, White, 417
- Guns, Hammerless, 414
- Gutenberg's Movable Type, 154
-
- Hackworth's Locomotive, 121
- Half Tone Engraving, 314
- Hammer, Steam, 112
- Hammond Typewriter, 178
- Hargreaves Invents the Spinning-Jenny, 421
- Harvester, 195
- Harvest Scene, 208
- Harvey Process, 387
- Hayward Adds Sulphur to Rubber, 213
- Heddle, 426
- Hedley's "Puffing Billy", 120
- Heliography, Niepce, 302
- Henry's Electric Motor, 50
- Henry's First Telegraph, 18
- Hero's Engine, 101
- Hjorth Dynamo, 40
- Hoe Printing Press, 157
- Holden Ice Machine, 443
- Holland Submarine Boat, 152
- Homoeopathy, 250
- Horrocks Applies Steam to Looms, 428
- Horseshoes, Manufacture of, 383
- Hot Blast Furnace, 374
- House Printing Telegraph, 24
- House Sanitation, 256
- Howe's Sewing Machine, 184
- Hussey's Reaper, 196
- Hydraulic Dredges, 349
- Hydropathy, 250
-
- Ice Machine, Holden, 443
- Ice Machines, 436-446
- Ice Plant, 442
- Ice Skating Rinks, 445
- Incandescent Lamp, 66
- India Rubber Statistics, 217
- Injector, Giffard, 105
- Instantaneous Photos, 308
- Iron and Steel Statistics, 390
- Ironclad Monitors Cross Ocean, 148
- Ironclads, 147
-
- Jablochkoff Candle, 64
- Jacobi's Electric Boat, 92
- Jacobi's Electric Motor, 51
- Jacquard Loom, 427
- Janney Car Coupling, 129
- Jenkins' Phantascope, 299
- Jetties, Mississippi, 352
- John Bull, Locomotive, 124
-
- Kaiser Wilhelm, Steamer, 142
- Kaleidoscope, 294
- Kelly's Process Making Steel, 377
- Kinetoscope, 297
- Kirchhoff's Spectroscope, 293
- Kneading Machines, 233
- Knitting Machines, 430
- Kodak Camera, 307-309
- Koenig's Rotary Press, 157
- Krag-Jorgensen Magazine Rifle, 413
- Krupp Gun, 398
-
- Laryngoscope, 249
- Latch Needle for Knitting Machine, 432
- Lathe, Blanchard's, 368
- Laughing Gas, 246
- Launches, Electric, 94
- Leading Inventions, Nineteenth Century, 7-14
- Lee Invents Knitting Machines, 431
- Lee's Magazine Rifle, 412
- Lick Telescope, 286
- Light, Electric, 63
- Light, Rapidity of Travel, 299
- Lime Light, 338
- Link Motion, 128
- Linotype Printing, 165
- Liquid Air, 447-457
- Lister's Antiseptic Surgery, 256
- Lithography, 170
- Lithotrity, 250
- Locke Wire Binder, 203
- Locks, Pneumatic Lift, 300
- Locomobile, Steam, 267
- Locomotive, Electric, 59
- Locomotive, Largest, 132
- Locomotive, Steam, 118
- Loom, Jacquard, 427
- Loom, Positive Motion, 429
- Loom, Power, 426
- Lovers' Telegraph, 76
- Lowe's Water Gas Apparatus, 332
- Lyall Positive Motion Loom, 429
-
- Machine Gun, 405
- Magazine Pistol, 409
- Magnetic Concentrator, 392
- Magneto-Electric Machine, 38-39
- Malarial Parasite, 254
- Mann Harvester, 200
- Mantles for Welsbach Burner, 338
- Marconi's Wireless Telegraphy, 27
- Marsh Harvester, 201
- Matches, Friction, 460
- Matching Machines, 366
- Materia Medica, 247
- Mauser Rifle, 413
- McCormick Reaper, 197-199
- McKay Shoe Sewing Machine, 190
- Meats, Dressing, 238
- Medical Electricity, 96
- Medicines, Coal Tar, 223
- Medicine, Surgery, Sanitation, 245-258
- Mege's Oleomargarine, 239
- Melville Introduces Gas in U. S., 330
- Mercerized Cloth, 434
- Mergenthaler Linotype Machine, 166
- Metal Founding, 388
- Metallurgy, Early History of, 372
- Metal Production in the United States, 393
- Metal Tube Making, 387
- Metal Turning, 387
- Metal Working, 371-393
- Meter, Gas, 337
- Michaux's Bicycle, 261
- Micro-photographs in Beleaguered Paris, 291
- Microscope, 290
- Middlings Purifier, 231
- Milk Skimmer, 235
- Milling, Flour, 230
- Mills' Typewriter, 171
- Mines, Submarine, 417
- Minor Inventions, 458-464
- Molding Machines, 366
- Monitor Monadnock, 149
- Mont Cenis Tunnel, 345
- Monument, Washington, 356
- Morrow Bicycle Brake, 264
- Morse Telegraph, 19
- Mortising Machines, 369
- Morton and Jackson Patent Anaesthesia, 247
- Moving Pictures, 295
- Mule Spinner, 422
- Musical Instruments, Electric, 98
- Muybridge's Photos Trotting Horses, 297
-
- Nails, Wire, 388
- Nasmyth's Steam Hammer, 112
- Natural Gas, 329-339
- Navies' Tonnage, 146
- Navigation, Electric, 92
- Navigation, Steam, 133
- Needle Gun, 411
- Newcomen's Engine, 102
- Nicholson's Rotary Press, 156
- Niepce's Heliography, 302
- Nitro-Glycerine, 224
- Nitrous Oxide Gas, 246
- Northrop Loom, 429
-
- Oceanic, Largest Steamer, 139-143
- Octuple Printing Press, 158
- Old Ironsides, Locomotive, 125
- Oleomargarine, 239
- Oliver Typewriter, 181
- Open Hearth Steel, 380
- Opthalmometer, 249
- Opthalmoscope, 249
- Optics, 284-300
- Ordnance, Breech-Loading, 397
- Oregon, Battleship, 150
- Ore Separator, Magnetic, 392
- Ostergren and Berger Liquid Air, 450
- Otto Gas Engine, 338
-
- Pacific Railway, 131
- Paddle Wheel, Feathering, 138
- Panorama Camera, 311
- Paper Making, 159-165
- Paper Making, Speed in, 165
- Paper Making Statistics, 165
- Paper Pulp Beater, 160
- Parsons Steam Turbine, 109
- Patented Foods, 244
- Patents, 462
- Perfumes, Coal Tar, 223
- Perkins Invents Ice Machines, 438
- Persistence of Vision, 295
- Phantascope, 299
- Phenacetin, 248
- Phenakistoscope, 295
- Phoenix, Steamboat, 136
- Phonautograph, 276
- Phonograph, 273-283
- Phosphor Bronze, 389
- Photo-engraving, 312
- Photographic Experiments, First, 302
- Photographic Positives, 303
- Photographic Roll Film, 308
- Photographs by Artificial Light, 308-316
- Photography, 301-318
- Photography, Celestial, 310
- Photography, Half Tone Engraving, 314
- Photography in Colors, 311
- Photo-lithography, 312
- Photo-micrographs, 253
- Piano, Electric, 98
- Pictet Ice Machine, 439
- Pictet's Researches, 455
- Pieper Automobile, 271
- Pig Iron, 375
- Pigs, Casting, 379
- Pins, The Manufacture of, 389
- Pintsch Gas, 336
- Pistols, 407
- Pixii Electric Machine, 39
- Planing Machines, 366
- Plante Storage Battery, 88-89
- Plate Printing, 169
- Platinotypes, 305
- Pneumatic Caissons, 345
- Pneumatic Tires, 263
- Poetsch Method of Tunneling, 345
- Polarization of Light, 294
- Polyphase Generation, 43
- Ponton, Mungo, Photography, 305
- Precious Metals, Statistics, 393
- Premo Camera, 309
- Preparing Rubber, 215
- Preserving Food, 235
- Printing, 154-170
- Printing Telegraph, 23-24
- Priscilla, Steamer, 142
- Progin's Typewriter, 172
- Progress Photographic Art, 306
- Puddling Furnace, 373
- Pulp, Wood, 161
- Pulse Recorder, 249
- Purifier, Middlings, 231
-
- Quadruplex Telegraph, 23
- Quarter Sawing, 363
- Queen Victoria, First Cablegram, 33
- Quinine Discovered, 247
-
- Rabbeth Spinning Spindle, 425
- Railway Motor, Electric, 58
- Railway Statistics, 131
- Railway, Steam, 118
- Range Finder, 295
- Rapid Fire Gun, 400
- Rare Metals, Metallurgy, 390
- Reaper, 195-209
- Reaper Statistics, 205-206
- Rebounding Lock, 415
- Recorder, Siphon, 35
- Reece Buttonhole Machine, 191
- Regenerative Furnace, 381
- Register, Morse, 21-22
- Reis' Telephone, 78
- Remington Typewriter, 176
- Return Circuit, Earth, 18
- Review of Century, 3-6
- Revolvers, 408
- Revolving Turret, 147
- Rifling of Firearms, 396
- Ring Frame, Spinning, 425
- Rock Drills, 351
- Rocket, Locomotive, 122
- Rodman's Method of Casting Guns, 397
- Roentgen Rays, 319-328
- Rogues' Gallery, 310
- Roller Mill, Flour, 230
- Roll Film, Photography, 308
- Rotary Engine, 109
- Rotary Hook Sewing Machine, 187
- Rotary Press, 156
- Rover Bicycle, 263
- Rubber Cloth, 216
- Rubber, India, 210-220
- Rubber Shoes, 217-218
-
- Safes, Fireproof, 461
- Safety Bicycle, 264
- Safety-Lamp, 359
- Saint's Sewing Machine, 184
- Salol, 248
- Salvioni's X-Ray Tube, 322
- Sanitation, 245
- Sanitation, House, 256
- Savannah, Steamer, 137-145
- Saw, 360
- Saw, Circular, 361
- Sawmill Carriage, 362
- Sawyer-Man Electric Lamp, 67-73
- Saxton Electric Machine, 39
- Schlick System, 116
- Schools of Medicine, 250
- Screw Propeller, 135-137
- Screws, Bolts, etc., 383
- Screws, Gimlet Pointed, 385
- Screws, Rolling, 386
- Screw Steamer, Stevens', 134
- Search Light, 70-71
- Seidlitz Powders, 247
- Self-Binding Reaper, 203
- Self-Raking Reaper, 202
- Sewerage, Sanitary, 256
- Sewing Machine, 183-194
- Sewing Machine Statistics, 188-193
- Sheathing Railway Train, 132
- Shield, Tunneling, 346-347
- Shoe Sewing Machine, 190
- Sholes' Typewriter, 176
- Shot Making, 389
- Shuttle, Flying, 426
- Sickel's Cut-off, 105
- Siemens' Electric Railway, 54
- Siemens-Martin Steel, 381
- Siemens' Regenerative Furnace, 381
- Silk, Artificial, 433
- Silver Printing, 305
- Singer Sewing Machine, 187
- Siphon Recorder, 35
- Skating Rinks, Ice, 445
- Skeleton Construction, 353
- Skimmer, Milk, 235
- Sleeping Car, 131
- Small Arms, 407
- Smith-Premier Typewriter, 178
- Snap-Shot Camera, 309
- Solarometer, 295
- Spectroscope, 292
- Spectrum, 292
- Spectrum Analysis, 293
- Speed Across Atlantic, 145
- Speed, Railway, 131
- Sphygmograph, 249
- Sphygmometrograph, 249
- Spindle, Spinning, 425
- Spinning-Jenny, 420
- Spinning Spindle, 425
- Statistics, Steam Navigation, 152
- Steam Automobile, 266
- Steamboat, 133
- Steamboat, Fulton's, 136
- Steam Cut-off, 104
- Steam Engine, 100-117
- Steam Engine, Hero's, 101
- Steam Engine, Newcomen, 102
- Steam Engine, Watt's, 103
- Steamer, Swinging Cabin, 140
- Steam Feed Saw Carriage, 363
- Steam Fire Engine, 113
- Steam Gauge, 107
- Steam Hammer, 112
- Steam Harvester and Thresher, 206
- Steam Locomotive, 118
- Steam Navigation, 133-153
- Steam Navigation Statistics, 152
- Steam Planting, 206
- Steam Power Statistics, 116
- Steam Railway, 118-132
- Steam Turbine, 109
- Steel Alloys, 389
- Steel, Open Hearth, 380
- Stephenson's Link Motion, 128
- Stephenson's Locomotives, 121-123
- Stereo-Binocular Field Glass, 289
- Stereoscope, 294
- Stereoscopic Camera, 310
- Stereotyping, 159
- Sterilizing Food Stuffs, 236
- Stethoscope, 249
- Stevens' "Phoenix", 136
- Stevens' Screw Steamer, 134-135
- St. Gothard Tunnel, 346
- Stockton & Darlington Railway, 121
- Storage Battery, 88
- Storage Battery, Faure, 90
- Storage Battery, Plante, 88
- Storage Battery, Ritter, 88
- Stourbridge Lion, Locomotive, 123
- Submarine Boat, 152
- Suez Canal, 347
- Sugar Making, 241
- Sulfonal, 248
- Surgery, 245
- Surgical Instruments, 249
- Symington's Steamboat, 134
- Synthesis Organic Compounds, 222
- System, Third Rail, 57
-
- Talbot's Photographic Prints, 303
- Talbotype, 303
- Taupenot's Dry Plates, 306
- Telegraph, Edison's Quadruplex, 23
- Telegraph, Electric, 15-31
- Telegraphic Conductor, 17
- Telegraphing by Induction, 25
- Telegraph Statistics, 30
- Telegraph, Wireless, 26
- Telephone, 76-87
- Telephone, Bell, 77
- Telephone, Blake Transmitter, 83
- Telephone, Bourseul, 77
- Telephone, Drawbaugh, 77
- Telephone Exchange, 86-87
- Telephone, Gray, 77
- Telephone, Reis, 78
- Telephone Statistics, 86
- Telephone, Undulatory Current, 79
- Telephone, Variable Resistance, 82
- Telescope, 285
- Telescopic Discoveries, 284
- Textiles, 420-435
- Thaumatrope, 295
- Thimonnier's Sewing Machine, 184
- Third-Rail System, 57
- Thompsonian System Medicine, 250
- Thompson, Sir William, 35
- Thorp Invents Ring Spinning, 425
- Three Wire System, 72-74
- Thurber's Typewriter, 173
- Ticker, Stock Broker's, 23-24
- Timby's Revolving Turret, 147
- Time Locks, 461
- Tolls, Suez Canal, 347
- Tonnage World's Navies, 146
- Tools, Machine, 386
- Traction Engine, 206
- Transformer, 43
- Trevithick's Locomotive, 118
- Trevithick's Steam Carriage, 266
- Tripler, Liquid Air, 450
- Trolley, Overhead, 55
- Trolley, Underground, 56
- Trouve Electric Boat, 92
- Tube Manufacture, 387
- Tunneling Shield, 346
- Tunnels, 345
- Turbine, Steam, 109
- Turbinia, Steamer, 111
- Turret Monitor, 148
- Typewriter, 171-182
- Typewriter, Oldest, 171
- Typewriter for Blind, 174
- Typewriter Statistics, 182
-
- Utilizing Heat from Blast Furnace, 375
-
- Vaccination, 245
- Vacuum Pan, Sugar, 242
- Vacuum Tubes, 321
- Valve Gear, Corliss, 106
- Velocipede, 261
- Vertical Fork Bicycle, 262
- Viper, Torpedo Boat, 111
- Vitascope, 297
- Voltaic Arc, 63
- Voltaic Pile, 16
- Vulcanized Rubber, 210
-
- Wall Telephone, 85
- Washington Monument, 356
- Washington Press, 156
- Watch, Stem-Winding, 460
- Water Closets, 256
- Water Gas, 331
- Watt's Steam Engine, 103
- Wax Cylinder, Phonograph, 277
- Weaving, 425
- Wegmann's Roller Mill, 230
- Welding, Electric, 91
- Wells, Artesian, 350
- Wells, Petroleum, 350
- Wells, Dr., Produces Anaesthesia, 246
- Welsbach Gas Burner, 338
- Westinghouse Air Brake, 129
- Westinghouse Electric Motor, 53
- Wheat Produced, 209
- Whitney Invents Cotton Gin, 423
- Willis Invents Platinotypes, 305
- Wilson's Sewing Machine, 186
- Windhausen Cold Storage Device, 445
- Winsor Introduces Gas in London, 330
- Winton Automobile, 269
- Wire Bending, 388
- Wire Fences, 388
- Wireless Telegraphy, 26
- Wood Pulp, 161
- Woodruff Sleeping Car, 131
- Wood Turning, 368
- Woodworker, Universal, 367
- Woodworking, 360-370
- Woodworth Wood Planer, 367
- World's Blast Furnaces, 375
-
- X-Rays, 319
- X-Ray Apparatus, 324
- X-Ray Focus Tube, 326
- X-Ray Photograph, 322
- X-Ray Surgery, 325
-
- Yerkes Telescope, 287
- Yost Typewriter, 180
-
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-
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- Transcriber's notes
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- mentioned below. The spelling of English (omniverous, millenium), non-
- English words (licht, tuyeres, frappees) and names (Swammerden, Mege)
- has not been corrected either, except as listed below.
- Depending on the hard- and software and their settings used to read
- this text, not all characters and symbols may display properly or
- display at all.
-
- Remarks on the text:
- p. vii and 371: the list of contents lists Electric Concentrators, the
- text deals with Magnetic Concentrators.
- p. 171/172 (text of patent): one closing quote mark is missing.
- p. 291, Swammerden: this refers to Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680).
- p. 373, condicon: possibly error for condicion or a similar word.
- p. 239, M. Mege, a French chemist: this refers to Hippolyte Mege-
- Mouries (1817-1880).
- p. 408, Alte Deutscher Drehling Der Ruckladungs Gewehre: the reference
- is to Alte Rueckladegewehre: Alt-Deutscher Drehling.
- p. 428, photograph: the chain of perforated cards is hardly visible in
- the original work.
- Index: the entries are not fully alphabetically sorted; this has not
- been changed.
- The order of subjects as given in the table of contents and in the
- chapter headings is not always the order in which the text gives them;
- the table of contents is sometimes slightly different from the chapter
- headings; this has not been changed. The table of contents is not
- complete: many subjects are not listed.
- In several instances the author uses knots for distance and knots per
- hour and feet for speed; this has not been changed.
-
- Changes made:
- Footnotes and illustrations have (where appropriate) been moved in
- order not to interrupt the text.
- Some obvious punctuation errors have been corrected silently.
- If both ligature and single letters occur in the same word in the text
- (with the exception of the advertisements), these have been
- standardised: ae/ae to ae (anaesthetics); e/e to e (Carre, Linde,
- Niepce).
- The original work uses fractions of the form 1/2 as well as 15-16.
- These have been standardised to x/y.
- p. v: Nitroglycerine changed to Nitro-Glycerine as elsewhere
- p. vi, Chapter Photography: The Platinotype added as in the chapter
- heading
- p. 6: Kinetescope changed to Kinetoscope as elsewhere
- p. 7: Hahneman changed to Hahnemann
- p. 9: Perkin's changed to Perkins'
- p. 10: Rhumkorff changed to Ruhmkorff
- p. 11: Foucalt changed to Foucault; Herman's changed to Hermann's
- p. 15: ecomony changed to economy
- p. 29: choking coils _k k_ changed to choking coils _k k'_ as in
- illustration
- p. 35: Gallilee changed to Galilee
- p. 37: Somnenberg changed to Sonnenberg
- p. 41: and other changed to and others
- p. 47: corruscations changed to coruscations
- p. 51: Badensburg changed to Bladensburg
- p. 87: Chrstian Era changed to Christian Era
- p. 88: Plante changed to Plante
- p. 89: PLANTE changed to PLANTE (2x)
- p. 92: commerical changed to commercial
- p. 93: electrictiy changed to electricity; TROUVE'S changed to
- TROUVE'S
- p. 95: St. Petersburg changed to St. Petersburgh
- p. 97: atached changed to attached
- p. 98: whch changed to which
- p. 105: colon in list of patents changed to comma (2x) as elsewhere
- p. 108: Ninetenth Century changed to Nineteenth Century
- p. 129: air-brake changed to air brake as elsewhere
- p. 133: Pennsylvaina changed to Pennsylvania
- p. 150: greater that changed to greater than
- p. 153: for from changed to far from
- p. 159: sterereotyping changed to stereotyping; Edinburg changed to
- Edinburgh as elsewhere
- p. 160: the the wire cloth changed to the wire cloth
- p. 182: vearly changed to yearly
- p. 188: Manufacturning changed to Manufacturing
- p. 235: ilustrative changed to illustrative
- p. 237: half a millions changed to half a million
- p. 240: carry- a fractional per cent. changed to carrying a fractional
- per cent.
- p. 247: irresitable changed to irresistible
- p. 248: acetanalide changed to acetanilide; OPHTHALMOMETER changed to
- OPTHALMOMETER as elsewhere
- p. 250: rationallen Heilkunde changed to rationellen Heilkunde
- p. 253: bactilli changed to bacilli
- p. 260: velocipede changed to velocipede; celerifere changed to
- celerifere
- p. 261: velocipede changed to velocipede
- p. 265: Metiers changed to Metiers
- p. 285: Middeburg, Middleburg changed to Middelburg
- p. 301: Niepce's changed to Niepce's
- p. 309: advertisment changed to advertisement
- p. 324: currrent changed to current
- p. 389: fire-arms changed to firearms as elsewhere
- p. 395: must must changed to must
- p. 401: Moncrief changed to Moncrieff
- p. 412: Livermore-Russel changed to Livermore-Russell; Russel changed
- to Russell
- p. 416: pulvurulent changed to pulverulent
- p. 425: effciency changed to efficiency
- p. 462: latrobe stoves changed to Latrobe stoves
- p. 469: Acetanalide changed to Acetanilide
- p. 470: Cemementation changed to Cementation.
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Progress of Invention in the
-Nineteenth Century., by Edward W. Byrn
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