| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII | HTML | PDF ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: Inventions in the Century
Author: Doolittle, William Henry
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Inventions in the Century" ***
(This file was produced from images generously made
Transcriber's Notes:
Misspellings in the source text have been corrected.
The oe-ligature is indicated with [oe] in this text version.
Missing page entries for "Wooden shoes" was assigned a page number by
the transcriber.
Index entry for "Stamfield, Jas." was removed since this name does not
occur in the main text.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SERIES
EDITOR:
JUSTIN McCARTHY.
ASSOCIATE EDITORS:
REV. W. H. WITHROW, M.A., D.D., F.R.S.C.
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS, M.A., F.R.C.I.
J. CASTELL HOPKINS, F.R.S.L.
T. G. MARQUIS, B.A.
REV. T. S. LINSCOTT, F.R.C.I.
INVENTIONS IN THE CENTURY
BY
WILLIAM H. DOOLITTLE
_Expert and Patent Solicitor, Ex-Examiner in the Patent Office and
Assistant Commissioner of Patents at Washington, Writer of Inventions,
Etc._
THE LINSCOTT PUBLISHING COMPANY
TORONTO AND PHILADELPHIA
W. & R. CHAMBERS, Limited
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
1903
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the Year One Thousand Nine
Hundred and Two, by the Bradley-Garretson Co., Limited, in the Office
of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Entered, according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the Year One
Thousand Nine Hundred and Two, by the Bradley-Garretson Co., Limited,
in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture.
_All Rights Reserved._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES.
Inventions and Discoveries.--Distinctions and Contrast.--The
One, Useful Contrivances of Man; the Other, New Things Found
in Nature.--Galileo and the Telescope.--Newton and the Law of
Gravitation.--Often United as Soul and Body.--Inventions and
Discoveries do not Precede or Succeed in Order.--Inventions--
Alphabetical Writing; Arabic Notation; The Mariner's Compass;
The Telescope; The Steam Engine.--Discoveries;--Attraction of
Gravitation; Planetary Motions; Circulation of Blood; Velocity
of Light.--Nineteenth Century Inventions and Discoveries.--
Further Definitions.--Law of Development.--Contrivances, not
Creations.--Man Always an Inventor.--Prof. Langley on Slow
Growth of Inventions.--Inventions of this Century Outgrowth of
Past Ones.--Egyptian Crooked Stick, Precursor of Modern
Plough.--Hero of Alexandria and James Watt.--David's Harp and
the Grand Piano.--Electrical Science in 1600 and the Present
Day.--Evolution and Interrelation of the Arts.--Age of Machine
Inventions.--Its Beginning.--The Inducements to Invention.--
Necessity not Always the Mother.--Wants of Various Kinds.--
Accident.--Governmental Protection the Greatest Incentive.--
Origin and Growth of Patent Laws.--Influence of Personal,
Political and Intellectual Freedom and Education.--Arts of
Civilization Due to the Inventor.--Macaulay's Estimate.--
Will Inventions Continue to Increase or Decrease.--Effect of
Economic, Industrial and Social Life upon Inventions.--What
Inventions have Done for Humanity.--Thread of the Centuries.--
The Roll of Inventions too Vast for Enumeration. 1
CHAPTER II.
AGRICULTURE AND ITS IMPLEMENTS.
The Egyptians the Earliest and Greatest Agriculturists.--
Rome and Farming.--Cato, Varro, Virgil.--Columella.--Pliny.--
Palladius.--The Decline of Agriculture.--Northern Barbarism.--
Lowest Ebb in the Middle Ages.--Revival in the Fifteenth and
Sixteenth Centuries.--With Invention of Printing.--Publications
then, Concerning.--Growth in Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries.--Jethro Tull.--Arthur Young.--Washington.--
Jefferson.--The Art Scientifically Commenced with Sir Humphry
Davy's Lectures on Soils and Plants, 1802-1812.--Societies.--
"Book Farming" and Prejudice of Farmers.--A Revisit of Ruth
and Cincinnatus at Beginning of Nineteenth Century.--Their
Implements still the Common Ones in Use.--The Plough and its
History.--Its Essential Parts and their Evolution to Modern
Forms.--Originated in Holland.--Growth in England and
America.--Small, Jefferson, Newbold.--Lord Kames' Complaint.--
The American Plough.--Cutting Disks.--Steam Ploughs: Implements
for Preparing the Soil for Planting.--Various Forms of Harrows. 13
CHAPTER III.
AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS.
The Sowing of Grain.--The Sower of the Parables.--His Art and
its Defects Lasted until Nineteenth Century.--The Problems to
be Solved.--Assyrian and Chinese Seeding Implements.--India.--
Italy First to Introduce a Grain Sowing Machine, Seventeenth
Century.--Zanon's Work on Agriculture, 1764.--Austria and
England.--A Spaniard's Invention.--Don Lescatello.--The Drill
of Jethro Tull.--A Clergyman, Cooke's Machine.--Washington
and Others.--Modern Improvements in Seeders and their Operation
and Functions.--Force Feed and Gravity Feed.--Graduated Flow.--
Divided Feeds for Separate Grains and Fertilizing Material.--
Garden Ploughs and Seeders.--Gangs of Heavy Ones.--Operated by
Steam.--Corn Planters.--Walking and Riding.--Objects of Proper
Planting.--How Accomplished by Machinery.--Variety of
Machines.--Potatoes and the Finest Seeds.--Transplanters.--
Cultivators.--Their Purposes and Varieties.--Primitive and
Modern Toilers.--Millet.--Tillers of the Soil no Longer
"Brothers of the Ox." 23
CHAPTER IV.
AGRICULTURAL INVENTIONS.
Harvesting in Ancient Times.--The Sickle.--Pliny's Machine.--
Now the Clover Header.--Palladius' Description.--Improved in
1786.--Scotchman's Grain Cradle in 1794.--The Seven Ancient
Wonders and the Seven Modern Wonders.--The Modern Harvester
and the Cotton Gin.--Requirements of the Harvester.--Boyce.--
Meares.--Plucknett.--Gladstone and the First Front Draft
Machine, 1806.--Salonen introduced Vibrating Knives over
Stationary Blades, 1807.--Ogle and Reciprocating Knife Bar,
1822.--Rev. Patrick Bell, 1823, Cuts an Acre of Grain in an
Hour.--Mowers and Reapers in America in 1820.--Reaper and
Thresher combined by Lane, of Maine, 1828.--Manning's Harvester,
1831.--Schnebly.--Hussey.--McCormick, 1833-34.--Harvesters and
Mowers at World's Fair, London, 1851.--Automatic Binders.--Wire
and Twine.--Advances Shown at Centennial Exhibition, 1876.--
Inventions Beyond the Wildest Dreams of Former Farmers.--One
Invention Generates Another.--Lawn Mowers.--Hay Forks and
Stackers.--Corn, Cotton, Potato, Flax Harvesters.--Threshing.--
The Old Flail.--Egyptian and Roman Methods.--The First Modern
Threshing Machine.--Menzies, Leckie, Meikle.--Combined
Harvesters and Threshers.--Flax Threshers and Brakes.--Cotton
Gins.--Eli Whitney.--Enormous Importance of this Machine in
Cotton Products.--Displacement of Labour. 32
CHAPTER V.
AGRICULTURAL INVENTIONS (_continued_).
Harvest Ended, Comes the Preparation of Grain and Fruits for
Food.--Cleaning.--Separating.--Grinding.--Fanning Mills and
Sir Walter Scott.--The Rudimentary Mills.--Egyptian.--Hebrew,
Grecian, and Roman Methods, Prevailed until Middle of Eighteenth
Century.--The Upper and Nether Mill Stone in Modern Dress.--
Modern Mills Invented at Close of Eighteenth Century.--Oliver
Evans of America, 1755-1819.--Evans' System Prevailed for Three
Quarters of a Century.--New System.--Middlings.--Low Milling.--
High Milling.--Roller Mills.--Middlings Separators.--Dust
Explosions and Prevention.--Vegetable Cutters.--Choppers.--Fruit
Parers and Slicers.--Great Range of Mechanisms to Treat the
Tenderest Pods and Smallest Seeds.--Crushing Sugar Cane.--
Pressing and Baling.--Every Product has its own Proper Machine
for Picking, Pressing, Packing, or Baling.--Cotton Compress.--
Extensive and Enormous Cotton Crops of the World.--Cotton
Presses of Various Kinds.--Hay and its Baling.--Bale Ties.--
Fruits and Foods.--Machines for Gathering, Packing, Preserving,
etc., all Modern.--Drying and Evaporating.--Sealing.--
Transporting.--Tobacco.--Its Enormous Production.--The Interdict
of James I., and of Popes, Kings, Sultans, etc.--Variety of
Machines for its Treatment. 45
CHAPTER VI.
CHEMISTRY, MEDICINES, SURGERY, DENTISTRY.
Chemistry among the Ancients.--Egyptians.--Ph[oe]nicians.--
Israelites.--Greeks and Romans.--Chinese.--Became a Science in
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.--Libavius.--Van
Helmont.--Glauber--Tachenius.--Boyle.--Lémery.--Becher.--
Stahl.--Boerhaave.--Black.--Cavendish.--Lavoisier.--Priestley.--
Chemistry of Nineteenth Century a New World.--Atomic and
Molecular Theories.--Light, Heat, and Electricity.--Correlation
and Conservation of Forces.--Spectrum Analysis.--Laws of
Chemical Changes.--John Dalton.--Wollaston.--Gay.--Lussac.--
Berzelius.--Huygens'and Newton's Discoveries in Light in
Seventeenth Century.--Unfolded and Developed by Fraunhofer,
Kirchoff.--Bunsen in the Nineteenth.--Young of America.--
Combination of Spectroscope and Telescope.--Huggins of England,
Spectrum Analysis of the Stars.--Heat and other Forces.--Count
Rumford.--Davy.--Mayer.--Helmholtz.--Colding.--Joule.--Grove.--
Faraday.--Sir William Thomson.--Le Conte and Martin.--French
Revolution and Agricultural Chemistry.--Lavoisier, Berthollet.--
Guyton.--Fourcroy.--Napoleon.--Sir Humphry Davy.--Liebig.--
Fermentation.--Alcohol.--Yeast.--Malt.--Wines.--Beer.--Huxley's
Lecture on Yeast, 1871.--Protein.--Protoplasm.--Evolution from
one all-pervading Force.--Alcohol and Pasteur.--Manufacture of
Liquors.--Carbonating.--Soils and Fertilisers.--Liquids, Oils,
Sugar and Fats.--Bleaching and Dyeing.--Aniline Colours.--
Perfumes.--Electro-Chemical Methods.--Applied to the Production
of Artificial Light.--Abradants.--Disinfectants.--Pigments.--
Mineral Analysis.--Purification of Water and Sewage.--
Electroplating Metals.--Chemicals and the Fine Arts.--Redemption
of Waste Materials.--Medicines and Surgery.--Their Growth from
Empiricism.--Anæsthetics.--Davy.--Morton.--Jackson.--Innumerable
Medical Compounds.--Antiseptic Treatment of Wounds.--Vast
Variety of Surgical Instruments Invented.--Four Thousand Patents
in United States Alone.--Dentistry.--Its Ancient Origin.--
Account of Herodotus.--Revolution in, during Nineteenth
Century.--Instruments.--Artificial Teeth.--Vast Relief from Pain. 58
CHAPTER VII.
STEAM AND STEAM ENGINES.
Prophecy of Dr. Darwin in Eighteenth Century.--Review of the Art
from Hero to James Watt.--Pumping Engines.--Road Carriages.--
Watt.--Cugnot.--Rumsey.--Fitch.--Oliver Evans.--Read.--
Symington.--Trevithick.--Locomotives.--Blenkinsop.--Griffith.--
Bramah.--Horse Engine.--Hancock.--Blackett.--George
Stephenson.--Hackworth.--Braithwaite.--Ericsson.--Huskisson
First Victim of Railroad Accident.--Seguin.--John C. Stevens.--
Horatio Allen.--Peter Cooper.--Symington.--Lord Dundas.--Fulton
and Livingston.--The First Successful Steamboat.--Transatlantic
Steam Navigation.--Scarborough of Georgia.--Bell of Scotland.--
Cunard Line; Paddle Wheels.--Screw Propellers.--The Age of
Kinetic Energy.--Professor Thurston.--Variety of Engines and
Boilers.--Corliss.--Bicycle and Automobile Engines.--Napoleon's
Stage Trip and Present Locomotion.--Daniel Webster's Survey of
the Art. 73
CHAPTER VIII.
ENGINEERING AND TRANSPORTATION.
The Duties of a Civil Engineer.--Great Engineering of the
Past.--The Divisions.--Steam.--Mining.--Hydraulic.--
Electrical.--Marine.--Bridge Making, Its Development.--First
Arched Iron Bridge.--Darby.--Telford.--Leading Bridges of the
Century.--Suspension.--Tubular.--Tubular Arch.--Truss.--
Cantilever.--Spider's Web and Suspension.--Sir Samuel Brown.--
The Tweed.--Menai Straits and Telford.--M. Chaley and
Fribourg.--J. K. Brunel and Isle of Bourbon.--British America
and the United States united in 1855--Niagara.--John A.
Roebling.--The Brooklyn Bridge.--Caissons and the Caisson
Disease.--Tubular Bridge at Menai.--"The Grandest Lift in
Engineering."--Robert Stephenson.--The Tubular Arch at
Washington.--Captain Meigs and Captain Eads.--St. Louis
Bridge.--Truss System and Vast Modern Bridges.--Cantilever
Succeeded the Suspension.--New Niagara and River
Forth.--Schneider.--Hayes.--Fowler and Baker.--Milton's
Description.--Lighthouses.--Smeaton.--Douglass.--Bartholdi.--
Eiffel.--Excavating, Dredging, Draining.--Road-making.--
Railroads.--Canals.--Tunnels.--Excavating.--Desert Lands
Reclaimed.--Holland and Florida Swamps.--The Tunnels of the
Alps.--Suez Canal.--Engineering, as seen from a Pullman
Car.--Cable Transportation.--Pneumatic Lock System.--Grain
Elevators--Progress in Civilisation. 93
CHAPTER IX.
ELECTRICITY.
Theories and Definitions.--Franklin's and a Modern One.--
Varieties of the Force.--Generation.--Dynamic Energy.--
Discoveries before the Nineteenth Century.--Magnetism and
Electricity.--Fathers of the Science.--Doctor Gilbert.--Otto
von Guericke.--Sir Isaac Newton.--Gray.--Dufay.--Professor
Muschenbroeck.--Cuneus.--Charles Morrison.--Franklin and
Galvani.--Volta.--The Door to Nineteenth Century Inventions
then Opened.--Fabroni.--Sir Humphry Davy, Wollaston, Nicholson,
and Carlisle.--Ritter Followed--Electrolysis.--Faraday and its
Laws.--Davy and the Electric Light.--Batteries.--Daniell.--
Grove.--Bunsen.--Brilliant Discoveries from 1800 to 1820.--
Oersted, Schweigger.--Magnetising Helix.--Indicators.--Arago
and Davy.--Ampère's Discoveries.--Sturgeon and the first
Electro-Magnet, 1825.--Telegraphy.--Gauss, Weber, Schilling.--
Professor Barlow's Demonstration that Telegraphy was
Impracticable.--Joseph Henry.--Powerful Magnets.--Modern and
Ancient Telegraphy of Various Kinds.--The Third Decade.--George
Simon Ohm.--Steinheil.--Telegraph of Morse, Vail, Dana, Gale.--
Wheatstone.--U.S. Supreme Court on Morse System.--His Alphabet
and Submarine Telegraph.--Michael Faraday and Science of
Magnets.--Steam and Magneto-Dynamo Machines.--Chemical Affinity
and Electricity.--Helmholtz, Faraday, Henry, and Pixii.--
Ruhmkorff Coil.--Page.--Electrical Light.--Decomposition of
Water.--Professor Nollet.--First Practical Electric Light
Shone on the Sea, 1858.--Faraday and Holmes.--Lighthouse
Illumination.--Dr. W. Siemens.--Wilde's Machine.--Other
Powerful Magnetic Machines.--Field Magnets.--Z. Gramme.--
The Various Ways and Means of Developing Electric Light.--
Geissler Tubes.--First House Lighted in America.--Moses
G. Farmer.--Jablochoff's Candle.--French Regulators.--Outdoor
and Indoor Illumination.--Siemens, Farmer, Brush, Maxim,
Westinghouse, Edison, Swan, Lane--Fox and Others.--Arc Lamps
of Heffner von Alteneck.--Ocean Cables.--Cyrus W. Field.--John
Bright's Expression.--Weak Currents.--Thomson's Remedy.--Mirror
Galvanometer.--Centennial Exhibition and the Telephone.--
Alexander Graham Bell, 1875.--The Telephone and Helmholtz'
Theory of Tone.--Scott's Phonautograph.--Page's Production of
Galvanic Music and Researches of Reis.--Its Slow Growth.--The
Ideas of Faraday and Henry still the Basis of the Great
Machines.--"Lines of Force."--Electric Railway.--Storage
Batteries.--Dynamos.--First Railway at Berlin, 1879.--Then
Saxony, Paris, London, New York.--Telpherage by Professor
Jenkin.--Problems Solved.--Electrical Magicians.--Edison and
Tesla.--Recent Improvements in Telegraphy.--The Talks Both Ways
at Same Time and Multiplied.--Printing Systems by Types and
Otherwise.--Electrical Elevators.--Microphone.--Ticks of a
Watch and the Tread of a Fly Recorded.--Musical Sounds from
Minerals and Other Substances.--Signalling and Other
Appliances.--The X Rays.--Wireless Telegraphy. 111
CHAPTER X.
HOISTING, CONVEYING, AND STORING.
Drudgery of Ancient Times Relieved by Modern Inventions.--
The Labour of Men and Beasts now Done by Steam Giants.--
Labour-Saving Appliances for Transportation.--Tall Buildings
and Elevators.--Evolution Slow until 19th Century.--Carrying
of Weights.--The Pyramids.--Modern Methods.--Ship-Loading.--
The Six Ordinary Powers Alone Used until the Time of Watt.--
Elevator Mills of Oliver Evans.--The Hydraulic Press of
Bramah.--The Lifting of Tubular Bridge by Robt. Stephenson.--
Compressed Air Elevator of Slade.--Counterbalance Lifts of
Van Elvean.--Modern Elevator of Otis, 1859.--Steam-Water.--
Compressed Air.--Electricity: Elevators, how Controlled.--
Store Service Conveyors.--Pneumatic Transmission: Dodge's
Air Blast Conveyor.--Mode of Switching Conveyors.--"Lazy
Tongs" Conveyors.--Buffers.--Endless Cables.--Clutches,
Safety.--Labour-Saving Devices and Derangement of Labour.--
In One Sense, Inventions Labour-Increasing Devices. 152
CHAPTER XI.
HYDRAULICS.
Old as the Thirst of Man.--Prehistoric Inventions.--China.--
Pliny's Record.--Egyptian, Carthaginian, Greek and Roman Water
Works.--"Pneumatics of Hero."--Overshot, Undershot, and Breast
Wheels, Ancient.--Screw of Archimedes.--Frontinus, a Roman
Inspector.--1593, Servière Invents the Rotary Pump.--1586,
Stevinus of Holland, Father of the Elementary Science.--Galileo,
Torricelli, Pascal, and Sir Isaac Newton in the Seventeenth
Century.--Bernoulli, D'Alembert, Euler, Abbé Bossut, Venturi,
and Eylewein in the Eighteenth.--Water Distribution then
Originated.--Peter Maurice and the London Bridge Pumps.--La
Hire's Double Acting Pump.--Dr. John Allen and David Ramsey of
England.--Franklin's Force Pump.--Water Ram of Whitehurst and
Montgolfier.--Nineteenth Century Opens with Bramah's Pumps.--
Water and Steam.--Pumps the Strong Hands of Hydraulics.--Review
of Past Inventions: Pascal's Paradox.--Turbines of Forneyron.--
Power of Niagara and Turbines there.--Jonval's.--Euler's Old
Centrifugal Pumps Revived.--Massachusetts and Appold Systems.--
Lowlands of Holland, Marshes of Italy, Swamps of Florida,
Drained.--Injectors.--Giffard.--Intensifiers.--Hydraulicising.--
Hydraulic Jack and Cleopatra's Needle.--Flow of Cold Metal.--
Lead Pipe Made, and Cold Steel Stretched by Water Pressure.--
Cotton Presses, Sir Wm. Armstrong's Inventions.--Tweddle and Sir
Wm. Fairbairn.--Water Motors.--Baths and Closets.--Results of
Modern Improvements.--Germ Theory and Filters. 164
CHAPTER XII.
PNEUMATICS AND PNEUMATIC MACHINES.
The Slow March of the Human Mind.--Burke.--The Age of Mechanical
Inventions not until nearly Watt's Steam Engine.--Review of
"Learning" until that Time.--Motor Engines not Produced until
Seventeenth Century.--Suggested by the Bellows and the
Cannon.--Huygens and Papin.--Van Helmont the Author of the
Term "Gas," 1577-1644.--Robert Boyle and the Air Pump.--Law
of Gases.--Mariotte.--Abbé Hauteville, 1682.--The Heart and
a Motor.--Sun Burner.--Murdock, 1798, Uses Coal Gas for
Illumination.--John Barber and Carburetted Hydrogen.--
Street's Heated Gas.--1801, Lebon Proposes Coal Gas Motor.--
Investigations of Dalton and Gay-Lussac, 1810.--Heat engines:
Air, Gas, Steam, Vapor, Solar.--Explosive.--Temperature the Tie
that Binds them as One Family.--1823-26, Sir Samuel Brown.--
Gunpowder and Gas Engine.--Davy and Faraday.--Gas to a Liquid
State.--Wright, 1833.--Burdett's Compressed Air Engine, 1838.--
Lenoir's.--Hugon's.--Beau de Rohes' Investigations.--Oil Wells
of United States, 1860.--Petroleum Engines.--Brayton, Spiel.--
Otto's Gas Engine and Improvements.--Ammoniacal Gas Engines.--
Nobels' Inventions.--Storm's Gunpowder Engine.--Gas and Vapour
Compared with Steam.--Prof. Jenkins' Prediction.--Gas to
Supplant Steam.--Compressed Air Engines.--Innumerable
Applications of Pneumatic Machines.--A Number Mentioned.--
Their Universal Application to the Useful and Fine Arts. 182
CHAPTER XIII.
ART OF HEATING, VENTILATING, COOKING, REFRIGERATING AND LIGHTING.
Prometheus and the Modern Match.--1680, Godfrey Hanckwitz
Invented First Phosphorous Match.--Other Forms of Matches.--
Promethean Matches in 1820.--John Walker.--Lucifer.--Tons of
Chemicals, Hundreds of Pine Trees Yearly Made into Matches.--
Splints and Machines.--Reuben Partridge.--Poririer.--Pasteboard
Box.--Machines for Assorting and Dipping, Drying and Boxing.--
Cooking and Heating Stoves.--History of, from Rome to Ben
Franklin.--The Old-Fashioned Fireplace.--Varieties of Coal
Stoves.--Stove Fireplace.--Ventilation.--Hot Air Furnaces.--
How Heat is Distributed, Retained, and Moistened.--Hot Water
Circulation.--Incubators.--Baking Ovens, the Dutch and the
Modern.--Vast Number of Stove and Furnace Foundries in United
States.--Ventilation.--Parliament Buildings and U. S. Capitol.--
Eminent Scientific Men who have Made Ventilation a Study.--Best
Modes.--Its Great Importance.--Car Heaters.--Grass and Refuse
Burning Stoves.--Oil, Vapour, and Gas Stoves, their Construction
and Operation.--Sterilising.--Electric Heating and Cooking.--
Refrigeration.--Messrs. Carré of France, 1870.--Artificial
Ice.--Sulphuric Acid and Ammonia Processes.--Absorption and
Compression Methods Described.--Refrigerating Cars.--Liquid Air. 199
CHAPTER XIV.
METALLURGY.
The Antiquity of the Art.--The "Lost Arts" Rediscovered.--
The Earliest Forms of Smelting Furnaces.--Ancient Iron and
Steel.--India and Africa.--Early Spain and the Catalan
Furnace.--The Armour of Don Quixote.--Bell's History of the
Art.--Germany.--Cast Iron Made by Ancients, Disused for 15
Centuries.--Reinvented by Page and Baude in England, 1543.--
German Furnaces.--Dud Dudley, the Oxford Graduate and his
Furnace, 1619.--Origin of Coke in England.--Use in United
States.--Revival of Cast Iron.--Cast Steel in England, Huntsman,
1740.--Henry Cort and Puddling, 1784, and its Subsequent
Wonderful Value.--Steam Engine of Watt and Iron.--Refining of
Precious Metals.--Amalgamating Process.--Review of the 18th
Century.--Herschel's Distinction of Empirical and Scientific
Art.--The Nineteenth Century, Scientific Metallurgy.--Steam,
Chemistry, Electricity.--Rogers' Iron Floor.--Neilson's Hot Air
Blast, 1828, Patent Sustained.--Anthracite Coal.--Colossal
Furnaces.--Gas Producers.--Bunsen's Experiments.--Constituents
of Ores.--Squeezing Process.--Burden's Method.--Mechanical
Puddlers.--Rotary.--Henry Bessemer's Great Process--1855-1860.--
Steel from Iron.--Holley's Apparatus.--Effects of and Changes in
Bessemer Process.--Old Methods and Means Revived and Improved.--
Eminent Inventors.--New Metals and New Processes Discovered.--
Harveyised Steel.--Irresistible Projectiles and Impenetrable
Armour Plate.--Krupp's Works.--Immense Manufactures in United
States.--Treatment of Gold, Silver, Copper, Lead, etc.; Mining
Operations, Separation, Reduction.--Chemical Methods:
Lixiviation or Leaching.--MacArthur.--Forrest.--Sir Humphry
Davy.--Scheele.--Chlorine and Cyanide Processes.--Alloys.--
Babbitting.--Metallic Lubricants.--Various Alloys and Uses.--
Reduction of Aluminium and other Metals.--Electro-Metallurgy.--
Diamonds to be Made.--All Arts have Waited on Development of
this Art. 218
CHAPTER XV.
METAL WORKING PROCESSES AND MACHINES.--TUBE MAKING.--WELDING.--ANNEALING
AND TEMPERING.--COATING AND METAL FOUNDING.--METAL WARE.--WIRE WORKING.
Metal Working Tools One of the Glories of 19th Century.--Wood
Working and Metal Working.--Ancient and Modern Lathe.--Turning
Metal Lathe.--A Lost Art in Use in Egypt and in Solomon's
Time.--Revived in Sixteenth Century.--Forgotten and Revived
again in Eighteenth.--Sir Samuel Bentham and Joseph Bramah
Laid Foundation of Nineteenth Century Tools.--The Slide Rest
and Henry Maudsley.--Nasmyth's Description.--Vast Rolls, and
Most Delicate Watch Mechanisms, cut by the Lathe and its
Tools.--Metal Planing.--Eminent Inventors, 1811-1840.--
Many Inventions and Modifications Resulting in a Wonderful
Evolution.--Metal-Boring Machines.--Modern Vulcan's Titanic
Work-Shop.--Screw Making.--Demand Impossible to Supply under
Old Method.--Great Display at London Exhibition, 1851, and
Centennial, Philadelphia, 1876.--J. Whitworth & Co., of England,
Sellers & Co., of America, and Others.--The Great Revelation.--
Hoopes and Townsend and the Flow of Cold, Solid Metal.--Cold
Punching, etc.--Machine-Made Horse-Shoes.--The Blacksmith
and Modern Inventions.--Making of Great Tubes.--Welding by
Electricity, and Tempering and Annealing.--How Armour Plate
is Hardened.--Metals Coated.--Electro-Plating and Casting.--
Great Domes Gilded.--Moulds for Metal Founding.--Machines
and Methods.--Steel Ingots.--Sheet Metal and Personal Ware.--
Great Variety of Machines for Making.--Wire Made Articles.--
Description of Great Modern Work-Shop. 240
CHAPTER XVI.
ORDNANCE, ARMS, AMMUNITION, AND EXPLOSIVES.
This Art Slow in Growth, but no Art Progressed Faster.--The
Incentives to its Development.--The Greatest Instruments in
the New Civilisation.--Peace and its Fruits Established by
them.--Its History.--Chinese Cannon.--India.--The Moors.--
Arabs.--Cannon at Cordova in 1280.--The Spaniards and Gibraltar,
1309.--The Spread of Artillery through Europe.--Description of
Ancient Guns.--Breech Loaders and Stone Cannon Balls.--Wrought
Iron Cannon and Shells in 15th Century.--Big Cannon of the
Hindoos and Russians.--Strange Names.--France under Louis
XI.--Improvements of the Sixteenth Century.--Holland's Mortar
Shells and Grenades in the Seventeenth.--Coehorn Mortars and
Dutch Howitzers.--Louis XIV.--French Artillery Conquers Italy.--
Eighteenth Century.--"Queen Ann's Pocket Piece."--Gribeauval
the Inventor of the Greatest Improvements in the Eighteenth.--
His System Used by Bonaparte at Toulon, the French Revolution,
and in Italy.--Marengo, 1800.--Small Arms, their History.--From
the Arquebus to the Modern Rifle.--Rifle, the Weapon of the
American Settler, and the Revolution.--Puckle's Celebrated
Breech-Loading Cannon Patent, and Christian and Turk Bullets.--
1803, Percussion Principle in Fire-arms, Invented by a
Clergyman, Forsyth.--1808, Genl. Shrapnel.--Bormann of
Belgium.--1814, Shaw and the Cap.--Flint Locks Still in Use,
1847.--Colt's Revolvers, 1835-1851.--History of Cannon again
Reverted to.--Columbiads of Bomford.--Paixhan in 1822.--Shells
of the Crimea.--Kearsarge and Alabama.--Requirements of Modern
Ordnance.--Rodman One of the Pioneers.--Woodbridge's Wire Wound
Guns, Piezometer, and Shell Sabot.--Sir William Armstrong and
Sir Jos. Whitworth.--Krupp's Cannon and Works.--The Latest
Improvements.--Compressed Air Ordnance.--Constructions of
Metals and Explosives.--The "Range Finder."--Small Arms again
Considered.--History of the Breech Loader and Metallic
Cartridges.--Wooden Walls and Stone Forts disappeared.--Monitor
and Merrimac.--Blanchard and Hall.--Gill.--Springfield Rifle.--
Machine Guns.--Electric Battery.--Gatling's, Hotchkiss'.--
Explosives.--Torpedoes.--Effect of Modern Weapons. 252
CHAPTER XVII.
PAPER AND PRINTING, TYPEWRITING AND THE LINOTYPE.
Paper-making Preceded the Art of Printing.--The Wasp Preceded
Man.--The Chinese, the Hindoos, Egyptians, and other Orientals
had Invented Both Arts.--History of Papyrus.--Parchment.--
Twelfth Century Documents Written on Linen Paper still
Extant.--Water Marks.--Wall Paper, Substitute for Tapestry,
1640.--Holland in Advance, Seventeenth Century.--Rittenhouse
of Holland Introduces Paper-Making in America, Eighteenth
Century.--Paper a Dear Commodity.--The Revolution of the
Nineteenth Century.--400 Different Materials now Used.--
Nineteenth Century Opens with Robert's Paper-Making Machine.--
Messrs. Fourdrinier.--Immense Growth of their System.--Modern
Discoveries of Chemists.--Soda Pulp and Sulphite Processes.--
Paper Mills.--Paper Bag Machines, etc.--Printing.--Chinese
Invented Both Block and Movable Types.--European Inventors.--
The Claims of Different Nations.--From Southern Italy to
Sweden.--Spread of the Art.--Printing Press and the
Reformation.--First Printing Press in New World Set up in
Mexico, 1536.--Then in Brazil.--Then in 1639 in
Massachusetts.--Types and Presses.--English and American.--
Ramage and Franklin.--Blaew of Amsterdam.--Nineteenth Century
Opens with Earl of Stanhope's Hand Press.--Clymer of
Philadelphia, 1817.--The First Machine Presses.--Nicholson in
Eighteenth.--Konig and Bauer in Nineteenth Century, 1813.--
London Times, 1814.--1815, Cowper's Electrotype plates.--1822,
First Power Press in United States.--Treadwell.--Bruce's Type
Casting Machines.--Hoe's Presses.--John Walter's.--German and
American Presses.--Capacities of Modern Presses.--Mail
Marking.--Typewriting.--Suggested in Eighteenth Century.--
Revived by French in 1840.--Leading Features Invented in
U. S., 1857.--Electro-Magnet Typewriters.--Cahill.--
Book-binding.--Review of the Art.--Linotype "Most Remarkable
Machine of Century."--Merganthaler.--Rogers.--Progress and
Triumphs of the Art. 273
CHAPTER XVIII.
TEXTILES.
The Distaff and the Spindle, without a Change from Ancient
Days to Middle of Fourteenth Century.--Ancient and Modern Cloth
Making.--Woman the Natural Goddess of the Art.--The Ancient and
Isolated Weavers of Mexico.--After 40 Centuries of Hand-Weaving
Comes John Kay, of England, 1733.--The Spinning Machines of
Wyatt and Hargreaves.--1738-1769, Richard Arkwright.--The
"Spinning Jenny" and the "Throstle."--The Steam Engine and
Weaving.--1776, Crompton and the "Mule."--1785, Cartwright
and Power Looms.--1793, Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin.--
1793-1813, Samuel Slater, Lowell, and Cotton Factories of
America.--The Dominion of the Nineteenth Century.--What it
Comprises in the Art of Spinning and Weaving.--Description
of Operations.--Bobbins of Asa Arnold and the Ring Frame of
Jenks.--Spooling Machines.--Warping and Dressing and other
Finishing Operations.--Embroidery.--Cloth Finishing.--The
Celebrated Jacquard Loom.--Jacquard and Napoleon.--Bonelli's
Electric Loom.--Fancy Woollen Looms of George Crompton.--
Bigelow's Carpet Looms.--Figuring, Colouring, Embossing.--
Cloth Pressing and Creasing.--Felting.--Ribbons.--Comparison
of Penelopes of Past and Present.--Knitting Days of our
Grandmothers and Knitting Machines.--A Mile of Stockings.--
Fancy Stocking and Embroidery Machines.--Netting and Turkish
Carpets.--Matting.--Spun Glass, etc.--Hand, and the Skilled
Labour of Machinery. 292
CHAPTER XIX.
GARMENTS.
"Man is a Tool-using Animal, of which Truth, Clothes are
but one Example."--Form of Needle not Changed until 1775.--
Weisenthal.--Embroidery Needle.--Saint's Sewing Machine,
1790.--John Duncan's Tamboring Machine, 1804.--Eye Pointed
Needles for Rope Matting, 1807.--Madersperger's Sewing Machine,
1814.--France and the Thimonnier Machine, 1830-1848-50, Made of
Wood.--Destroyed by Mob.--English Embroidering Machine, 1841.--
Concurrent Inventions in Widely Separated Countries.--Thimonnier
in France, Hunt in America, 1832, 1834.--Elias Howe, 1846.--
Description of Howe's Inventions.--Recital of his Struggles and
final Triumphs.--The Test of Priority.--Leather Sewing Machines
of Greenough and Corliss, 1842-43.--Bean's Running Stitch,
1843.--The Decade of 1849-1859, Greatest in Century in Sewing
Machine Inventions.--Hood's "Song of the Shirt," a Dying
Drudgery.--Improvements after Howe.--Blodgett and Lerow's Dip
Motion.--Wilson's Four-Motion Feed.--Singer's Inventions, their
Importance, his Rise from Poverty to Great Wealth.--The Grover
and Baker.--The Display in 1876 at the Centennial.--Vast Growth
of the Industry.--Extraordinary Versatility of Invention in
Sewing and Reaping Machines, and Breech-Loading Fire-arms.--
Commercial Success due to Division of Labour and Assembling
of Parts.--Innumerable Additions to the Art.--Seventy-five
Different Stitches.--Passing of the Quilting Party.--Embroidery
and Button-hole Machines.--Garment-cutting Machines.--Bonnets
and Inventions of Women.--Hat Making.--Its History.--Bonjeau's
Improvements in Plain Cloths, 1834.--Effect of Modern Inventions
on Wearing Apparel and Condition of the Poor.--The Epoch of Good
Clothes. 310
CHAPTER XX.
INDUSTRIAL MACHINES.
Inventions Engender Others.--Co-operative Growth.--Broom
Making.--Crude Condition until the Modern Lathe, Mandrel,
Shuttle and Sewing Machine.--Broom Sewing Machines.--Effect
on Labour.--The Brush and Brush Machines.--A Hundred Species
of Brushes, each Made by a Special Machine.--First Successful
Brush Machine, Woodbury's, 1870.--Wonderful Operations.--
Street-Sweeping Machines, 1831.--Most Effective Form.--Abrading
Machines.--Application of Sand Blast.--Nature's Machine
Patented by Tilghman in 1870.--Things Done by the Sand Blast
and How.--Emery and Corundum Machines.--Vast Application in
Cutting, Grinding, Polishing.--Washing and Ironing Machines.--
Their Contribution to Cleanliness and Comfort.--Laundry
Appliances.--Old and the New Mangle.--Starch Applying.--Steam
Laundry Machinery.--Description of Work done in a Modern Laundry. 328
CHAPTER XXI.
WOOD-WORKING.
Contrast of Prehistoric Labour and Implements and Modern
Tools.--The Ages of Stone, Bronze, Iron, and the Age of
Wood.--The Slow Growth of Wood-working Inventions.--Tools
of the Egyptians.--Saw of the Greeks.--Known to Hindoos
and Africans.--Accounts of Pliny and Ansonius as to Planes
and Marble Sawing.--Saw-mills of France, Germany, Norway,
Sweden.--Holland 100 Years ahead of England, and Why.--William
Penn Found Saw-mills in America in 1682.--What made Americans
Inventors.--Progress Unknown where Saw-mills are not.--Steam
and Saw Mills.--Splendid System and Inventions of Samuel
Bentham, Bramah and Branch at Close of Eighteenth Century.--
First Decade of Nineteenth Century Produces Wonderful Inventor,
Thomas Blanchard.--His Life and Inventions.--Machines for
Turning Irregular Forms in Wood and Metal.--The Boring Worm
and Boring Machine.--Gun-making and Mortising Machines.--
Complicated Ornamental Wood-cutting and Carving Machines.--
Whatever Made by Hand can be Better Made by Machinery.--
Pattern-Cutting Machines.--Xyloplasty.--Art of Hand Carving
Revived.--Bending of Wood by Fire and Steam.--The Problems
Solved by Wood-working Inventors.--Great Saws at the Vienna
Exposition, 1873.--Boring Tools, Augers, Planes, Lathes, etc.
How Improved and by Whom.--"The Universal Wood Workers."--
Flexible Shafting.--Shingles and Tiles.--A Great Log, how
Turned into Bundles of Shingles.--Veneering.--What Pliny
Thought of It.--Brunel's Machines, 1805-1808.--Homes Made
Beautiful by Modern Wood-working.--Objects without and Within
a House, Made by Such Machinery.--Array of Wood-working
Machinery at International Expositions.--The Art of Forestry. 339
CHAPTER XXII.
FURNITURE.--BOTTLING, PRESERVING, AND LAMPLIGHTING.
Universal Supply of Convenient and Ornamental Furniture Due
to Modern Inventions and Machinery.--The Furniture of the
Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.--Tables.--Modern Improvements.--
Combined Tables, Desks, and Chairs.--Special Forms of Each.--
Beds: Advance from the Ponderous Bedsteads of Former Times.--
Modern, Ornamental, Healthful Styles.--Iron, Brass, Springs,
Surgical and Invalid Chairs and Beds.--Kitchen Utensils.--Vast
Amount of Drudgery Relieved.--Curtains, Shades, and Screens.--
Great Changes Produced by Steaming and Bending Wood.--The
Bentwood Ware Factories of Austria, Hungary, Moravia (1870-73),
in Vast Beech Forests Followed in other Countries.--Modern
Chairs of Various Kinds.--The Dentist and the Theatre.--Bottle
Stoppers.--Enormous Demand for Cork Exhausting the Supply.--
Modern Substitutes.--Fruit Jars, etc.--Lamplighting, Ancient
and Modern.--Revolution Produced by Petroleum.--Wickless and
Electric Lamps. 354
CHAPTER XXIII.
LEATHER.
Leather and Prehistoric Man.--Earliest Implements and Processes
Forerunners of Modern Inventions.--Modern Leather Unknown to
the Earliest Races.--Tanning.--Leathers of Different Nations.--
Hand Tools and Variety of Operations.--Inventions of Nineteenth
Century--Labour-Saving Machinery and New Processes.--Epoch of
Modern Machinery.--1780, John Bull and his Scraping Machine,
Hide-mill, Pioneer Machine of Century.--Fleshing Machines.--
Tanning Apparatus.--Reel Machines.--Tanning Processes and the
Chemists.--Machines for Different Operations.--Pendulum Lever
Machine.--Leather Splitting, and other Remarkable Machines.--
Boots and Shoes, their Character before Modern Inventions.--
Randolph's Riveting Machine of 1809.--Great Civil Engineer,
J. M. Brunel's Machines.--1818, Walker Invents the Wooden
Peg.--Peg-making Machines.--1858, Sturtevant's Great
Improvement.--Fifty-five Million Pairs of Boots and Shoes then
Annually Pegged.--Metal Wire, and Screw Pegs.--Last-turning
Machines of Blanchard.--McKay's Shoe Sewing Machine.--
Revolution in Shoe Making.--Special Machines for Making Every
Part.--One Machine Makes 300 Pairs a Day.--Many Millions made
Daily.--Vast Increase of Labourers as the Art Advances.--
Illustrations of Yankee Enterprise.--Modern and Ancient
Harnesses.--Embossed Leather.--Book Covers and the many Useful
and Beautiful Leather Articles.--The Vast and Important Leather
Manufactures. 361
CHAPTER XXIV.
MINERALS.--WELLS.
Ancient Tools and the Art of Building.--The Parthenon.--
Aqueducts of Rome.--Tombs of India.--Halls of Alhambra.--
Gothic Cathedrals.--Steam First Drew Coal, then Sawed Wood and
then Stone.--Stone-cutting Machinery.--Carving.--Dressing.--
Drilling.--Tunnels.--Wonderful Work of Stone-Boring Machine
on Pillars of Ohio State Capitol.--Stone Drills and Compressed
Air.--Hell Gate.--Crushing Stones and Ores.--Blake's Crusher.--
"Road Metal."--Different Form of Crushers.--Assorting Coal.--
Steam and Coal, strong Brothers.--Compressed Air for Mining
Machinery.--Mighty Picks Driven by Air.--Electric Motor.--
Machines for Screening, Loading, and Weighing.--Ore Mills.--
Separators.--Centrifugal Action.--Ore Washing.--Amalgamators:
Electric, Lead, Mercury, Plate, Vacuum, Vapour, etc.--The
Revolution in Mining.--Well Boring an Ancient Art.--Artesian
Wells.--Coal Oil and Coal Wells.--Preceded by Discovery of
Paraffine and its Uses.--Reichenbach, Young.--Petroleum
Discovery.--New Industry.--Col. Drake and First Oil Well.--
Sudden Riches of Farmers.--Boring Water Wells.--Green's Driven
Wells.--The Deserts Made to Bloom as the Rose. 373
CHAPTER XXV.
HOROLOGY AND INSTRUMENTS OF PRECISION.
Time Measuring Instruments of Antiquity.--Sun-dial.--Clepsydra,
Hour-glass, Graduated Candle.--Plato's Bell.--The Clepsydra
of Ctesibius.--Incense Sticks of Chinese.--Sun-dials of Greeks
and Romans.--Candles of Alfred the Great.--Wonderful Clocks
of the Middle Ages.--Henry de Vick of France, 1370.--Two
Hundred Years without Advance.--Astronomers, Brache and
Valherius.--1525, Zech's Fusee.--Progenitors of Modern Watch,
1500.--1582, Swinging Lamp of Galileo.--1639, Galileo's
Book.--Huygens and the Pendulum.--Dr. Hooke's and David Ramsey's
Inventions.--Hair-Spring Balances.--George the Third's Small
Time-Piece.--Eighteenth Century Division of Time Pieces into
Hours, Minutes and Seconds.--Stem Winders.--Astronomical
Discoveries and Chronometers.--Dutch, Leading Clockmakers;
Germany, Switzerland.--Systems Followed in these Countries.--
Minute Sub-divisions of Labour.--Watch and Clock Making in the
United States.--American System.--Wonderful Machines for every
Part.--Watch factories.--Pope's Simile.--Revolution in
Nineteenth Century.--Electric System.--4000 Patents in U.S.
since 1800.--Registering Devices.--"A Mechanical Conscience."--
Cash Registers.--Voting Machines.--Electrical Recorders.--
Cyclometers.--Speed Indicators.--Weighing Scales and Machines,
History of.--The Fairbanks of Vermont, 1831.--Platform and other
Scales.--Spring Weighing.--Automatic Recorders of Weight and
Prices.--Testing Machines, English, German, American.--The Emery
Scales.--Gages, Dynamometers.--Hydraulic Testing.--Delicate
Operations.--Strength of a Horse-hair and Great Steel Beam,
Tested by Same Machine.--Effect on Public Works. 384
CHAPTER XXVI.
MUSIC, ACOUSTICS, OPTICS, PHOTOGRAPHY, FINE ARTS.
Musical Instruments Old as Religion.--Abounded before the Lyre
of Apollo or the Harp of Orpheus.--Their Evolution.--To Meet
Wants and Growing Tastes.--Nineteenth Century and the Laws
of Helmholtz.--The Story of the Piano, the Queen, Involves
whole History of the Art of Music.--Ancient Harp and Growth.--
Psaltery and Dulcimer of Assyrians and Hebrews.--No Inventions
by Greeks and Romans in this Art.--Fifteenth Century and the
Clavicitherium.--Sixteenth Century, the Virginal and the
Spinet.--Seventeenth Century, the Clavichord and Harpsichord.--
Italian Cembello.--Bach, Mozart, Handel, Haydn.--Cristofori of
Florence, Schreiber of Germany and Modern Piano.--Eighteenth
Century, Pianos of Broadwood and Clementi of London, Erard of
Strasburg, Petzold of Paris and Others.--Two Thousand Years
Taken to Ripen the Modern Piano.--Description of Piano Parts.--
Helmholtz's Great Work, 1862.--Effect on System of Music and
Musical Instruments.--The Organ, King in the Realm of Music.--
History of, from Earliest Times.--Improvements of the Nineteenth
Century.--The Auto-harp.--Self-playing Instruments.--The Science
of Acoustics and Practical Applications.--Auricular Tubes.--
Telephone, Phonograph, Graphophone, Gramophone.--Their
Evolution and their Inventors.--Optical Instruments.--Their
Growth.--Lippersheim, Galileo, Lieberkulm, John Dolland.--The
Improvements and Inventors of the Nineteenth Century.--Brewster
and the Kaleidoscope, Stereoscope.--Lenticular Lenses.--
Lighthouse Illumination.--Faraday and Tyndall.--Abbé Moigno's
Troubles.--Ophthalmoscope.--Spectroscope.--Making of Great
Lenses.--Solarmeter.--Measuring the Position and Distances
of Unseen Objects.--Light Converted into Music.--Daguerre and
Photography.--History and Development.--Colour Reproduction.--
Pencils.--Painting.--Air Brushes.--Telegraphic Photographs. 400
CHAPTER XXVII
SAFES AND LOCKS.
Safes, how Constructed before this Century.--Classification.--
Century Starts out to Make Safes Fireproof.--Scott in 1801.--
Marr, 1834.--Result of Great Fire in New York, 1835.--Wilder's
and Herring's Safes.--Burglar-proof Safes, 1835.--Chubb, Newton,
Thompson, Hall, Marvin and Others.--Electricity.--Seal Locks
from 1815.--Locks of Various Kinds in Ancient Days.--Of
Ponderous Size.--Key of the House of David.--Lock of Penelope's
House.--Locks of the Middle Ages.--Letter Locks of the Dutch,
1650.--Carew's Verse.--Eighteenth Century Locks.--Tumblers.--
Joseph Bramah's Locks.--Combination, Permutation and Time
Locks.--Yale Locks.--Modern Locks Invented for Special Uses.--
Master or Secondary Key Locks.--Value of Simple, Cheap,
Effective Locks.--Mail Locks and Others.--Greater General
Security for Property of all Kinds now Obtained. 420
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CARRIAGES AND CARRYING MACHINES GENERALLY.
Review of Conveyances from Time of Ptolemy's Great Procession,
270 B. C., until Nineteenth Century.--The Old Stage Coaches.--
Coaches of the Rich, the Middle Classes and the Poor.--The Past
Art Compared with the Art as Exhibited at Centennial Exhibition
in 1876 at Philadelphia.--The Varieties of Different Vehicles
there Displayed by Different Nations.--Velocipedes and
Bicycles.--1800 to 1869.--French, German, English, Scotch.--
The "Draisine" of Von Drais, 1816.--Johnson's "Curricle,"
1818.--Gompertz's "Dandy" and "Hobby Horse," 1821.--Michaux's,
1863.--Lallement's of France, 1866, Crank and Pedal.--America
and Europe Adopts it, 1866, 1869.--Pneumatic Rubber Tire
Invented by Thomson, 1845.--Sleeps Forty Years.--Improvements
since 1869.--Motor Vehicles and Automobiles.--Traction
Engines.--Brakes, Railway, Air and Electric.--Automatic
Couplers, Buffers, and Vestibule Trains. 428
CHAPTER XXIX.
SHIPS AND SHIP BUILDING.
"Ships are but Boards."--"The Great Harry."--Noah's Ark the
Prototype of the Modern "Whale-back."--Ph[oe]nicians.--
Northmen.--Dutch, French, English, and American Types.--
Nineteenth Century, the Yankee Clippers.--Donald McKay.--
"Great Republic."--Steam as Motive Power in Ships the Leading
Event in the Art.--Lord Dundas and Steam Canal Boats.--Iron
Ships in Place of Wood, 1829-30.--John Laird of Birkenhead.--
Sir William Fairbairn.--Clyde Works.--Comparison of Wood and
Iron.--1844, the Great Britain.--John Ericsson.--Monitor and
Merrimac.--Composite Style of Vessels.--Marine Propulsion.--
Paddle Wheels.--Screws.--1804, John Stevens.--1807, Fulton.--
Screw Propeller of Ericsson.--The Ogden, the Stockton and the
Princeton, the First Naval Warship of its Kind.--The Two
Revolutions Produced by Ericsson.--Pneumatic Propellers.--
Description of a Warship.--The Deutschland.--Torpedo Boats.--
Franklin and Oil on the Waves.--Air Ships.--Count Zeppelin's
Boat.--Other Plans of Air Navigation.--The Problems to be Solved. 438
CHAPTER XXX.
ILLUMINATING GAS.
What Artificial Light has done for Man.--Its Condition before
the Nineteenth Century.--Experiments of Dr Clayton, Hon. R.
Boyle, Dr. Hales, Bishop Watson, Lord Dundonald, Dr. Rickel,
and William Murdock in Eighteenth Century.--1801, Le Bon Makes
Gas, Proposes to Light Paris.--1803, English Periodicals
Discuss the Subject.--1806, Melville of Newport, U. S., Lights
House and Street.--1817, First Lighthouse Lit by Gas.--The
Beaver Tail on Atlantic Coast.--Parliament in 1813, London
Streets Lit in 1815, Paris, 1820, American Cities 1816-25.--
Gas Processes.--Chemistry.--Priestley and Dalton.--Berthollet,
Graham, and Others.--Clegg of England and his Gas Machines.--
Art Revolutionised by Invention of Water Gas, 1823-1847.--
Donovan, Lowe, White.--T. S. C. Lowe, Anthracite Process,
1873.--Competition with Electricity.--Siemens' Regenerative
System.--The Generators, Carburetors, Retorts, Mixers,
Purifiers, Meters, Scrubbers, Holders, Condensers, Governors,
Indicators, Registers, Chargers, Pressure Regulators, etc.--
Portable Gas Apparatus.--Argand Burners.--Acetylene Gas.--
Calcium Carbide.--Magnesium.--Bunsen Burner and Welsbach Mantle. 450
CHAPTER XXXI.
POTTERY, PLASTICS, PORCELAINS, STONEWARE, GLASS, RUBBER, CELLULOID.
Brickmaking from the Earliest Ages to Nineteenth Century.--
Pottery, its Origin Unknown.--Its Evolution.--Women the First
Inventors in Ceramic and Textile Arts.--Progress of Man Traced
in Pottery.--Review of Pottery from Time of Homer to the
Wedgwood Ware of Eighteenth Century.--Labour-Saving Devices
of Nineteenth.--Operations in Brickmaking and Machinery.--The
Celebrated Pug Mill, the Pioneer.--Moulding and Pressing.--
Drying and Burning.--The Slow Growth of Methods.--Useful
Contrivances never wholly Supplanted.--Modern Heat
Distributors.--Hoffman's Kilns.--Wedgwood's Pottery in
Eighteenth.--Siemens' Regenerators in Nineteenth, and other
Kilns.--Susan Frackelton's.--The Filter Press.--Chinese and
French Porcelains--Battam's Imitations of Marbles and Plaster
Moulds.--Faience.--Porcelain Moulding and Colours.--Atomisers
and Backgrounds.--Rookwood Pottery and Miss Fry.--Enamelled
Ware.--Artificial Stone.--Modern Cements.--Glass the Sister
of Pottery.--The Inventors of Blowing, Cutting, Trimming by
Shears and Diamond Cutting, Ancient and Unknown.--Glass Windows
and Mirrors Unknown to the Poor Prior to Eighteenth Century.--
The Nineteenth Century the Scientific Age of Glass.--Its
Commercial Development.--Crystal Palace of 1851.--Description
of Modern Discoveries.--Materials.--Colours and Faraday's
Discovery in 1824.--Gaffield's Extensive Experiments in
Producing Colours.--The German Glass Works at Jena of Abbe
and Schott.--Methods Followed for Different Varieties.--
Machines for Different Purposes.--Cut Glass and other
Beautiful Ware.--Cameo Cutting.--Porcelain Electroplating.--
Rubber, History of, in Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Centuries.--Sketch of Goodyear.--His Inventions and Present
State of the Art.--Glass Wool of Volcano of Kilauea and Krupp's
Blast Furnaces. 457
INVENTIONS IN THE CENTURY.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY--INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES--THEIR DEVELOPMENT.
In treating of the subject of Inventions it is proper to distinguish
them from their scientific kindred--Discoveries.
The history of inventions is the history of new and useful contrivances
made by man for practical purposes. The history of scientific
discoveries is the record of new things found in Nature, its laws,
forces, or materials, and brought to light, as they exist, either
singly, or in relation, or in combination.
Thus Galileo invented the telescope, and Newton discovered the law of
gravitation. The practical use of the invention when turned to the
heavenly bodies served to confirm the truth of the discovery.
Discovery and invention may be, and often are, united as the soul is to
the body. The union of the two produces one or more inventions. Thus the
invented electro-telegraph consists of the combination of discoveries of
certain laws of electricity with an apparatus, by which signs are
communicated to distances by electrical influence.
Inventions and discoveries do not precede or follow each other in order.
The instrument may be made before the laws which govern its operation
are discovered. The discovery may long precede its adaptation in
physical form, and both the discovery and adaptation may occur together.
Among the great _inventions_ of the past are alphabetical writing,
Arabic notation, the mariner's compass, the telescope, the
printing-press, and the steam-engine. Among the great _discoveries_ of
the past are the attraction of gravitation, the laws of planetary
motion, the circulation of the blood, and velocity of light. Among the
great inventions of the nineteenth century are the spectroscope, the
electric telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the railways, and the
steam-ships. Among the great discoveries of this century are the
correlation and conservation of forces, anæsthetics, laws of electrical
energy, the germ theory of disease, the molecular theory of gases, the
periodic law of Mendeljeff in chemistry, antiseptic surgery, and the
vortex theory of matter. This short enumeration will serve to indicate
the different roads along which inventions and the discoveries of
science progress.
By many it is thought that the inventions and discoveries of the
nineteenth century exceed in number and importance all the achievements
of the kind in all the ages of the past.
So marvellous have been these developments of this century that, not
content with sober definitions, men have defined _invent_, even when
speaking only of mechanical productions, as "creating what had not
before existed;" and this period has been described as an age of new
creations. The far-off cry of the Royal Preacher, "There is no new thing
under the sun: Is there anything whereof it may be said, see this is
new, it hath been already of old time which was before us," is regarded
as a cry of satiety and despair, finding no responsive echo in the array
of inventions of this bright age.
But in one sense the Preacher's words are ever profoundly true. The
forces and materials of Nature always exist, awaiting man's discovery,
and at best he can but vary their relations, re-direct their course, or
change their forms. In a still narrower sense the truth of the
Preacher's declaration is apparent:--
In an address before the Anthropological Society of Washington in 1885,
the late Prof. F. A. Seely, of the United States Patent Office, set
forth that it was one of the established laws of Invention, that,
"Every human invention has sprung from some prior invention, or from
some prior known expedient."
Inventions, he said, do not, like their protectress, Pallas Athene,
spring forth full grown from the heads of their authors; that both as to
modern inventions and as to those whose history is unrecorded, each
exhibits in itself the evidence of a similar sub-structure; and that,
"in the process of elimination we go back and back and find no resting
place till we reach the rude set of expedients, the original endowment
of men and brutes alike."
Inventions, then, are not creations, but the evolution of man-made
contrivances.
It may be remarked, however, as was once said by William H. Seward: "The
exercise of the inventive faculty is the nearest akin to that of the
Creator of any faculty possessed by the human mind; for while it does
not create in the same sense that the Creator did, yet it is the nearest
approach to it of anything known to man."
There is no history, rock-record, or other evidence of his existence as
man, which discloses a period when he was not an inventor.
Invention is that divine spark which drove, and still drives him to the
production of means to meet his wants, while it illuminates his way.
From that inward spark must have soon followed the invention of that
outer fire to warm and cheer him, and to melt and mould the earth to his
desires. Formed for society, the necessity of communication with his
fellows developed the power of speech. Speech developed written
characters and alphabets. Common communication developed concert of
action, and from concert of action sprung the arts of society.
But the evolution of invention has not been uniform. Long periods of
slowness and stagnation have alternated with shorter or longer periods
of prolific growth, and these with seasons of slumber and repression.
Thus, Prof. Langley has said that man was thousands of years, and
possibly millions, in evolving a cutting edge by rubbing one stone on
another; but only a few thousand years to next develop bronze tools, and
a still shorter period tools of iron.
We cannot say how long the period was from the age of iron tools to the
building of the pyramids, but we know that before those stupendous
structures arose, the six elementary mechanical powers, the lever, the
wheel, the pulley, the inclined plane, the wedge and the screw, were
invented. And without those powers, what mechanical tool or machine has
since been developed? The age of inventions in the times of the ancients
rested mainly upon simple applications of these mechanical powers. The
middle ages slumbered, but on the coming of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, the inventions of the ancients were revived, new ones added,
and their growth and development extended with ever-increasing speed to
the present time.
The inventions of the nineteenth century, wonderful and innumerable as
they are, and marvellous in results produced, are but the fruit of the
seed sown in the past, and the blossom of the buds grown upon the stalks
of former generations. The early crude stone hatchet has become the keen
finished metal implement of to-day, and the latter involves in itself
the culmination of a long series of processes for converting the rough
ore into the hard and glistening steel.
The crooked and pointed stick with which the Egyptian turned the sands
of the Nile has slowly grown to be the finished plough that is now
driven through the sod by steam.
The steam-operated toys of Hero of Alexandria were revived in principle
and incorporated in the engines of Papin and the Marquis of Worcester in
the seventeenth century; and the better engines of Savery, Newcomen, and
more especially of James Watt in the eighteenth century, left the
improvements in steam-engines of the nineteenth century--great as they
are--inventions only in matter of detail.
It has been said that electrical science began with the labours of Dr.
Gilbert, published in 1600. These, with the electrical discoveries and
inventions of Gray, Franklin, Galvani, and others in the next century,
terminating with the invention of his battery by Volta in 1800,
constituted the framework on which was built that world of flashing
light and earth-circling messages in which we now live.
The study of inventions in any one or all eras cannot proceed
intelligently unless account is taken not only of their mode of
construction, and of their evolution one from another, but of the
evolution of distinct arts, their relation, their interdependence in
growth, and their mutual progress.
The principles adopted by the ancients in weaving and spinning by hand
are those still in force; but so great was the advance of inventions
from hand-operated mechanisms to machines in these and other arts, and
especially in steam, in the last half of the eighteenth century, that it
has been claimed that the age of machine production or invention then
for the first time really began.
When the humble lift became the completed elevator of to-day, the
"sky-scraper" buildings appeared; but these buildings waited upon the
invention of their steel skeletons, and the steel was the child of the
Bessemer process.
The harp with which David stirred the dead soul of Saul was the
prototype of the sweet clavichord, the romantic virginal, the tinkling
harpsichord, and the grand piano. The thrumming of the chords by the
fingers was succeeded by the striking keys; and the more perfect
rendition of tones awaited the application of new discoveries in the
realm of musical sounds. The keys and the levers in the art of musical
instruments were transferred to the art of printing, and are found
to-day striking a more homely music on the type-writer and on those
other and more wonderful printing instruments that mould, and set, and
distribute the type. But these results of later days did not reach their
perfected operations and forms until many other arts had been discovered
and developed, by which to treat and improve the wood, and the wire, and
all the other materials of which those early instruments were composed,
and by which the underlying principles of their operations became known.
Admitting that man possesses the faculty of invention, what are the
motives that induce its exercise? Why so prolific in inventions now? And
will they continue to increase in number and importance, or decrease?
An interesting treatise of bulky dimensions might be written in answer
to these queries, and the answers might not then be wholly satisfactory.
Space permits the submission of but a few observations and suggestions
on these points:----
_Necessity_ is still the mother of inventions, but not of all of them.
The pressing needs of man in fighting nakedness and hunger, wild beasts
and storms, may have driven him to the production of most of his early
contrivances; but as time went on and his wants of every kind
multiplied, other factors than mere necessity entered into the problem,
and now it is required to account for the multiplicity of inventions
under the general head of _Wants_.
To-day it is the want of the luxuries, as well as of the necessities of
life, the want of riches, distinction, power, and place, the wants of
philanthropy and the wants of selfishness, and that restless, inherent,
unsatisfied, indescribable want which is ever pushing man onward on the
road of progress, that must be regarded as the springs of invention.
_Accident_ is thought to be the fruitful source of great inventions. It
is a factor that cannot be ignored. But accidents are only occasional
helps, rarely occurring,--flashes of light suddenly revealing the end of
the path along which the inventor has been painfully toiling, and
unnoticed except by him alone. They are sudden discoveries which for the
most part simply shorten his journey. The rare complete contrivance
revealed by accident is not an invention at all, but a discovery.
The greatest incentive in modern times to the production of inventions
is governmental protection.
When governments began to recognize the right of property in inventions,
and to devise and enforce means by which their author should hold and
enjoy the same, as he holds his land, his house, or his horse, then
inventions sprung forth as from a great unsealed fountain.
This principle first found recognition in England in 1623, when
parliament, stung by the abuse of the royal prerogative in the grant of
exclusive personal privileges that served to crush the growth of
inventions and not to multiply them, by its celebrated Statute of
Monopolies, abolished all such privileges, but excepted from its
provisions the grant of patents "for the sole working or making of any
manner of new manufactures within this realm to the true and first
inventor" thereof.
This statute had little force, however, in encouraging and protecting
inventors until the next century, and until after the great inventions
of Arkwright in spinning and James Watt in steam-engines had been
invaded, and the attention of the courts called more seriously thereby
to the property rights of inventors, and to the necessity of a liberal
exposition of the law and its proper enforcement.
Then followed in 1789 the incorporation of that famous provision in the
Constitution of the United States, declaring that Congress shall have
the power "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by
securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right
to their respective writings and discoveries."
In 1791 followed the law of the National Assembly of France for the
protection of new inventions, setting forth in the preamble, among other
things, "that not to regard an industrial invention as the property of
its author would be to attack the essential rights of man."
These fundamental principles have since been adopted and incorporated in
their laws by all the nations of the earth.
Inventions in their nature being for the good of all men and for all
time, it has been deemed wise by all nations in their legislation not to
permit the inventor to lock up his property in secret, or confine it to
his own use; and hence the universal practice is to enact laws giving
him, his heirs, and assigns, exclusive ownership to this species of his
property for a limited time only, adjudged sufficient to reward him for
his efforts in its production, and to encourage others in like
productions; while he, in consideration for this protection, is to fully
make known his invention, so that the public may be enabled to freely
make and use it after its exclusive ownership shall have expired.
In addition to the motives and incentives mentioned inducing this modern
mighty outflow of inventions, regard must be had to the conditions of
personal, political and intellectual freedom, and of education. There is
no class of inventors where the mass of men are slaves; and when dense
ignorance abounds, invention sleeps.
In the days of the greatest intellectual freedom of Greece, Archimedes,
Euclid, and Hero, its great inventors, flourished; but when its
political _status_ had reduced the mass of citizens to slaves, when the
work of the artisan and the inventor was not appreciated beyond the gift
of an occasional crown of laurel, when manual labour and the labourer
were scorned, inventions were not born, or, if born, found no
nourishment to prolong their lives.
In Rome, the labourer found little respect beyond the beasts of burden
whose burdens he shared, and the inventor found no provision of
fostering care or protection in her mighty jurisprudence. The middle
ages carefully repressed the minds of men, and hid away in dark recesses
the instruments of learning. When men at length awoke to claim their
birthright of freedom, they invented the printing-press and rediscovered
gunpowder, with which to destroy the tyranny of both priests and kings.
Then arose the modern inventor, and with him came the freedom and the
arts of civilisation which we now enjoy.
What the exercise of free and protected invention has brought to this
century is thus summarised by Macaulay:
"It has lengthened life; it has mitigated pain; has extinguished
diseases; has increased the fertility of the soil; given new security to
the mariner; furnished new arms to the warrior; spanned great rivers and
estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers; it has guided the
thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth; it has lighted up the
night with splendour of the day; it has extended the range of human
vision; it has multiplied the power of the human muscles; it has
accelerated motion; it has annihilated distance; it has facilitated
intercourse, correspondence, all friendly offices, all despatch of
business; it has enabled man to descend to the depths of the sea, to
soar into the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious recesses of
the earth; to traverse the land in carts which whirl along without
horses; to cross the ocean in ships which run many knots an hour against
the wind. Those are but a part of its fruits, and of its first fruits,
for it is a philosophy which never rests, which is never perfect. Its
law is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible is its goal
to-day, and will be its starting point to-morrow."
The onward flow of inventions may be interrupted, if not materially
stayed, by the cessation of some of the causes and incentives which now
give them life. When comfort for all and rest for all, and a suitable
division of labour, and an equal distribution of its fruits are reached,
in that state of society which is pictured in the visions of the social
philosopher, or as fast as such conditions are reached, so soon will
cease the pricking of those spurs of invention,--individual rewards, the
glorious strife of competition, the harrowing necessities, and the
ambitions for place and power. If all are to co-operate and share alike,
what need of exclusive protection and fierce and individual struggle?
Why not sit down now and break the loaf and share it, and pour the wine,
and enjoy things as they are, without a thought for the morrow?
The same results as to inventions may be reached in different but less
pleasant ways: When all the industries are absorbed by huge combinations
of capital the strife of competition among individuals, and the making
of individual inventions to meet such competition, will greatly
disappear. Or, the same results may be effected by stringent laws of
labour organisations, in restricting or repressing all individual
independent effort, prescribing what shall be done or what shall not be
done along certain lines of manufacture or employment. So that the
progress of future inventions depends on the outcome of the great
economic, industrial, and social battles which are now looming on the
pathway of the future.
But what the inventions of the nineteenth century were and what they
have done for Humanity, is a chapter that must be read by all those now
living or to come who wish to learn the history of their race. It is a
story which gathers up all the threads of previous centuries and weaves
them into a fabric which must be used in all the coming ages in the
attainment of their comforts, their adornments, and their civilisations.
To enumerate all the inventions of the century would be like calling up
a vast army of men and proclaiming the name of each. The best that can
be done is to divide the wide field into chapters, and in these chapters
give as best one may an idea of the leading inventions that have
produced the greatest industries of the World.
CHAPTER II.
AGRICULTURE AND ITS IMPLEMENTS.
The Egyptians were the earliest and greatest agriculturists, and from
them the art was learned by the Greeks. Greece in the days of her glory
greatly improved the art, and some of her ablest men wrote valuable
treatises on its different topics. Its farmers thoroughly ploughed and
fertilised the soil, used various implements for its cultivation, paid
great attention to the raising of fruits,--the apple, pear, cherry,
plum, quince, peach, lemon, fig and many other varieties suitable to
their climate, and improved the breeds of cattle, horse and sheep. When,
however, social pride and luxurious city life became the dominant
passions, agriculture was left to menials, and the art gradually faded
with the State. Rome in her best days placed farming in high regard. Her
best writers wrote voluminously on agricultural subjects, a tract of
land was allotted to every citizen, which was carefully cultivated, and
these citizen farmers were her worthiest and most honoured sons. The
condition and needs of the soil were studied, its strength replenished
by careful fertilisation, and it was worked with care. There were
ploughs which were made heavy or light as the different soils required,
and there were a variety of farm implements, such as spades, hoes,
harrows and rakes. Grains, such as wheat, barley, rye and oats, were
raised, a variety of fruits and vegetables, and great attention paid to
the breeding of stock. Cato and Varro, Virgil and Columella, Pliny and
Palladius delighted to instruct the farmer and praise his occupation.
But as the Roman Empire grew, its armies absorbed its intelligent
farmers, the tilling of the soil was left to the menial and the slave,
and the Empire and agriculture declined together.
Then came the hordes of northern barbarians pouring in waves over the
southern countries and burying from sight their arts and civilisation.
The gloom of the middle ages then closed down upon the European world.
Whatever good may have been accomplished in other directions by the
crusades, agriculture reached its lowest ebb, save in those instances
where the culture of the soil received attention from monastic
institutions.
The sixteenth century has been fixed upon as the time when Europe awoke
from its long slumber. Then it was after the invention of the printing
press had become well established that publications on agriculture began
to appear. The _Boke of Husbandrie_, in 1523, by Sir Anthony
Fitzherbert; Thomas Tusser's _Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry_;
Barnaby Googe's _The Whole Art of Husbandry_; _The Jewel House of Art
and Nature_, by Sir Hugh Platt; the _English Improver_ of Walter Blithe,
and the writings of Sir Richard Weston on the husbandry of Brabant and
Flanders, were the principal torches by which the light on this subject
was handed down through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Further
awakening was had in the eighteenth century, the chief part of which was
given by Jethro Tull, an English agriculturist, who lived, and wrote,
and laboured in the cause between 1680 and 1740. Tull's leading idea was
the thorough pulverisation of the soil, his doctrines being that plants
derived their nourishment from minute particles of soil, hence the need
of its pulverisation. He invented and introduced a horse hoe, a grain
drill, and a threshing machine.
Next appeared Arthur Young, of England, born in 1741, whose life was
extended into the 19th century, and to whom the world was greatly
indebted for the spread of agricultural knowledge. He devoted frequent
and long journeys to obtaining information on agricultural subjects, and
his writings attracted the attention and assistance of the learned
everywhere. His chief work was the making known widely of the beneficial
effects of ammonia and ammoniacal compounds on vegetation. Many other
useful branches of the subject, clearly treated by him, are found in his
_Annals of Agriculture_. It was this same Arthur Young with whom
Washington corresponded from his quiet retreat at Mount Vernon. After
the close of the War of Independence in 1783 and before the adoption of
the Constitution in 1789 and his elevation to the Presidency in that
year, Washington devoted very much of his time to the cultivation of his
large estate in Virginia. He took great interest in every improvement in
agriculture and its implements. He invented a plough and a rotary seed
drill, improved his harrows and mills, and made many inquiries relative
to the efficacy of ploughs and threshing machines made in England and
other parts of Europe. It was during this period that he opened an
interesting correspondence with Young on improvements in agriculture,
which was carried on even while he was President, and he availed himself
of the proffer of Young's services to fill an order for seeds and two
ploughs from a London merchant. He also wrote to Robert Cary & Co.,
merchants in London, concerning an engine he had heard of as being
constructed in Switzerland, for pulling up trees and their stumps by the
roots, and ordered one to be sent him if the machine were efficient.
Jefferson, Washington's great contemporaneous statesman and Virginia
planter, and to whom has been ascribed the chief glory of the American
patent system, himself also an inventor, enriched his country by the
full scientific knowledge he had gained from all Europe of agricultural
pursuits and improvements.
The progress of the art, in a fundamental sense, that is in a knowledge
of the constituents, properties, and needs of the soil, commenced with
the investigations of Sir Humphry Davy at the close of the 18th century,
resulting in his celebrated lectures before the Board of Agriculture
from 1802 to 1812, and his practical experiments in the growth of plants
and the nature of fertilisers. Agricultural societies and boards were a
characteristic product of the eighteenth century in Europe and America.
But this birth, or revival of agricultural studies, the enthusiastic
interest taken therein by its great and learned men, and all its
valuable publications and discoveries, bore comparatively little fruit
in that century. The ignorance and prejudice of the great mass of
farmers led to a determined, and in many instances violent resistance to
the introduction of labour-saving machinery and the practical
application of what they called "book-farming." A fear of driving people
out of employment led them to make war upon new agricultural machines
and their inventors, as they had upon weaving and spinning inventions.
This war was more marked in England than elsewhere, because there more
of the new machines were first introduced, and the number of labourers
in those fields was the greatest. In America the ignorance took the
milder shape of contempt and prejudice. Farmers refused, for instance,
to use cast-iron ploughs as it was feared they would poison the soil.
So slow was the invention and introduction of new devices, that if Ruth
had revisited the earth at the beginning of the nineteenth century, she
might have seen again in the fields of the husbandmen everywhere the
sickle of the reapers behind whom she gleaned in the fields of Boaz,
heard again the beating on the threshing floor, and felt the old
familiar rush of the winnowing wind. Cincinnatus returning then would
have recognised the plough in common use as about the same in form as
that which he once abandoned on his farm beyond the Tiber.
But with the spread of publications, the extension of learning, the
protection now at last obtained and enforced for inventions, and with
the foundations laid and the guide-posts erected in nearly every art and
science by previous discoverers, inventors and writers, the century was
now ready to start on that career of inventions which has rendered it so
glorious.
As the turning over and loosening of the sod and the soil for the
reception of seed was, and still is the first step in the art of
agriculture, the plough is the first implement to be considered in this
review.
A plough possesses five essential features,--a frame or beam to which
the horses are attached and which is provided with handles by which the
operator guides the plough, a share to sever the bottom of a slice of
land--the furrow--from the land beneath, a mould board following the
share to turn the furrow over to one side, and a landside, the side
opposite the mould board and which presses against the unploughed ground
and steadies the plough. To these have been commonly added a device
called the coulter, which is a knife or sharp disk fastened to the frame
in advance of the share and adapted to cut the sod or soil so that the
furrow may be more easily turned, an adjustable gauge wheel secured to
the beam in advance of the coulter, and which runs upon the surface of
the soil to determine by the distance between the perimeter of the wheel
at the bottom and the bottom of the plough share the depth of the
furrow, and a clevis, which is an adjustable metal strap attached to the
end of the beam to which the draught is secured, and by which the pitch
of the beam and the depth and width of the furrow are regulated. The
general features, the beam, handles, and share, have existed in ploughs
from the earliest ages in history. A plough with a metal share was
referred to by the prophecy of Isaiah seven centuries before Christ,
"They shall beat their swords into plough-shares;" and such a plough
with the coulter and gauge wheel added is found in the Caylus collection
of Greek antiquities. The inventions of centuries in ploughs have
proceeded along the lines of the elements above enumerated.
The leading features of the modern plough with a share and mould board
constructed to run in a certain track and turn its furrows one over
against the other, appear to have originated in Holland in the 18th
century, and from there were made known to England. James Small of
Scotland wrote of and made ploughs having a cast-iron mould board and
cast and wrought iron shares in 1784-85.
In America, about the same time, Thos. Jefferson studied and wrote upon
the proper shape to be given to the mould board.
Charles Newbold in 1797 took out the first patent in the United States
for a plough--all parts cast in one piece of solid iron except the beam
and handles.
It is a favourite idea with some writers and with more talkers, that
when the necessity really arises for an invention the natural inventive
genius of man will at once supply it. Nothing was more needed and sought
after for thirty centuries among tillers of the soil than a good plough,
and what finally supplied it was not necessity alone, but improved
brains. Long were the continued efforts, stimulated no doubt in part by
necessity, but stimulated also by other motives, to which allusion has
already been made, and among which are the love of progress, the hope of
gain, and legislative protection in the possession of inventive
property.
The best plans of writers and inventors of the eighteenth century were
not fully developed until the nineteenth, and it can be safely said that
within the last one hundred years a better plough has been produced than
in all of the thousands of years before. The defects which the
nineteenth century's improvements in ploughs were designed to remedy can
best be understood by first realising what was the condition of ploughs
in common use when the century opened.
Different parts of the plough, such as the share and coulter, were
constructed of iron, but the general practice among farmers was to make
the beam and frame, handles and mould board of strong and heavy timber.
The beam was straight, long, and heavy, and that and the mould generally
hewed from a tree. The mould board on both sides to prevent its wearing
out too rapidly was covered with more or less thick plates of iron. The
handles were made from crooked branches of trees. "The beam," it is
said, "was set at any pitch that fancy might dictate, with the handles
fastened on almost at right angles with it, thus leaving the ploughman
little control over his implement which did its work in a very slow and
imperfect manner." It was some such plough that Lord Kames complained
about in the _Gentleman Farmer_ in 1768, as being used in Scotland--two
horses and two oxen were necessary to pull it, "the ridges in the fields
were high and broad, in fact enormous masses of accumulated earth, that
could not admit of cross ploughing or cultivation; shallow ploughing
universal; ribbing, by which half the land was left untilled, a general
practice over the greater part of Scotland; a continual struggle between
the corn and weeds for superiority." As late as 1820 an American writer
was making the same complaint. "Your furrows," he said, "stand up like
the ribs of a lean horse in the month of March. A lazy ploughman may sit
on the beam and count every bout of his day's work; besides the greatest
objection to all these ploughs is that they do not perform the work well
and the expense is enormous for blacksmith work." It was complained by
another that it took eight or ten oxen to draw it, a man to ride upon
the beam to keep it on the ground, and a man followed the plough with a
heavy iron hoe to dig up the "baulks."
The improvements made in the plough during the century have had for
their object to lessen the great friction between the wide, heavy,
ill-formed share and mould board, and the ground, which has been
accomplished by giving to the share a sharp clean tapering form, and to
the mould board a shape best calculated to turn the furrow slice; to
improve the line of draught so that the pull of the team may be most
advantageously employed, which has been effected after long trials,
study and experiment in the arrangement of beam, clevis and draft rod,
setting the coulter at a proper angle and giving the landside a plane
and parallel surface; to increase the wear and lessen the weight of the
parts, which has been accomplished by ingenious processes in treating
the metal of which the parts are composed, and lessening the number of
parts; to render the plough easily repairable by casting the parts in
sets and numbering them, by which any part may be replaced by the
manufacturer without resort to the blacksmith. In short there is no part
of the plough but what has received the most careful attention of the
inventor. This has been evidenced by the fact that in the United States
alone nearly eleven thousand patents on ploughs were issued during the
nineteenth century. When it is considered that all the applications for
these patents were examined as to their novelty, before the grant of the
patent, the enormous amount of study and invention expended on this
article can be appreciated. Among the century's improvements in this
line is the use of disks in place of the old shovel blades to penetrate
the earth and revolve in contact therewith. Cutting disks are harnessed
to steam motors and are adapted to break up at one operation a wide
strip of ground. The long-studied problem of employing a gang of ploughs
to plough back and forth and successfully operated by steam has been
solved, and electricity is now being introduced as a motor in place of
steam. Thus millions of broad acres which never would have been
otherwise turned are now cultivated. The tired muscle-strained ploughman
who homeward plodded his weary way at night may now comfortably ride at
his ease upon the plough, while at the same time the beasts that pull it
have a lighter load than ever before.
Next to the plough among the implements for breaking, clearing and
otherwise preparing the soil for the reception of seed, comes the
_harrow_. From time immemorial it has been customary to arm some sort of
a frame with wooden or iron spikes to scratch the earth after the
ploughing. But this century has greatly improved the old constructions.
Harrows are now found everywhere made in sections to give flexibility to
the frame; collected in gangs to increase the extent of operation; made
with disks instead of spikes, with which to cut the roots of weeds and
separate the soil, instead of merely scratching them. A still later
invention, curved spring teeth, has been found far superior to spikes or
disks in throwing up, separating and pulverising the soil. A harrow
comprising two ranks of oppositely curved trailing teeth is especially
popular in some countries. These three distinct classes of harrows, the
disk type, the curved spring tooth type, and gangs of sections of
concavo-convex disks, particularly distinguish this class of implements
from the old forms of previous ages.
CHAPTER III.
AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS.
It is wonderful for how many generations men were contented to throw
grain into the air as the Parable relates:
"Behold, a sower went forth to sow, and when he sowed some seeds fell by
the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: some fell on
stony places where they had not much earth, and forthwith they sprung
up, because they had no deepness of earth; and when the sun was up they
were scorched; and because they had no root they withered away. And some
fell among thorns and the thorns sprung up and choked them. But others
fell into good ground and brought forth fruit, some a hundredfold, some
sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold."
Here are indicated the defects in depositing the seed that only the
inventions of the century have fully corrected. The equal distribution
of the seed and not its wide scattering, its sowing in regular drills or
planting at intervals, at certain and uniform depths, the adaptation of
devices to meet the variations in the land to be planted, and in short
the substitution of quick, certain, positive mechanisms for the slow,
uncertain, variable hand of man. Not only has the increase an
hundredfold been obtained, but with the machines of to-day the sowing
and planting of a hundredfold more land has been made possible, the
employment of armies of men where idleness would have reigned, and the
feeding of millions of people among whom hunger would otherwise have
prevailed. Not only did this machinery not exist at the beginning of the
century, but the agricultural machines and devices in this line of the
character existing fifty years ago are now discarded as useless and
worthless.
It is true that, as in the case of the ploughs, attempts had been made
through the centuries to invent and improve seeding implements. The
Assyrians 500 years B. C. had in use a rude plough in which behind the
sharp wooden plough point was fixed a bowl-shaped hopper through which
seed was dropped into the furrow, and was covered by the falling back of
the furrow upon it. The Chinese, probably before that time, had a
wheelbarrow arrangement with a seed hopper and separate seed spouts. In
India a drilling hopper had been attached to a plough. Italy claims the
honour among European nations of first introducing a machine for sowing
grain. It was invented about the beginning of the seventeenth century
and is described by Zanon in his _Work on Agriculture_ printed at Venice
in 1764. It was a machine mounted on two wheels, that had a seed box in
the bottom of which was a series of holes opening into a corresponding
number of metal tubes or funnels. At their front these tubes at their
lower ends were sharpened to make small furrows into which the seed
dropped.
Similar single machines were in the course of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries devised in Austria and England. The one in Austria
was invented by a Spaniard, one Don Joseph de Lescatello, tested in
Luxembourg in 1662. The inventor was rewarded by the Emperor,
recommended to the King of Spain, and in 1663 and 1664 his machines were
made and sold at Madrid. The knowledge of this Spaniard's invention was
made known in England in 1699 by the Earl of Sandwich and John Evelyn.
Jethro Tull in England shortly after invented and introduced a combined
system of drilling, ploughing and cultivating. He sowed different seeds
from the same machine, and arranged that they might be covered at
different depths. Tull's machines were much improved by James Cooke, a
clergyman of Lancashire, England; and also in the last decade of the
eighteenth century by Baldwin and Wells of Norfolk, England.
Washington and others in America had also commenced to invent and
experiment with seeding machines. But as before intimated, the
nineteenth century found the great mass of farmers everywhere sowing
their wheat and other grains by throwing them into the air by hand, to
be met by the gusts of wind and blown into hollows and on ridges, on
stones and thorny places,--requiring often a second and third repetition
of the same tedious process.
In 1878 Mr. Coffin, a distinguished journalist of Boston, in an address
before the Patent Committee of the U. S. Senate, set forth the
advantages obtained by the modern improvements in seeders as follows:
"The seeder covers the soil to a uniform depth. It sows evenly, and sows
a specific quantity. You may graduate it so that, after a little
experience, you can determine the amount per acre even to a quart of
wheat. They sow all kinds of grain,--wheat, clover, and superphosphate,
if need be, at once. They harrow at the same time. They make the crop
more certain. It is the united testimony of manufacturers and farmers
alike that the crop is increased from one-eighth to one-fourth,
especially in the winter wheat. Winter wheat, you are aware, in the
freezing and thawing season, is apt to heave out. It is desirable to
bury the seed a uniform and proper depth and to throw over the young
plant such an amount of soil that it shall not heave with the freezing
and thawing. Of the 360,000,000 bushels of wheat raised last year I
suppose more than 300,000,000 was winter wheat. One-eighth of this is
37,700,000 bushels."
It would seem to many that after the adoption of a seed hopper, and
spouts with sharpened ends that cut the drill rows in the furrows and
deposited the seed therein, that little was left to be done in this
class of inventions; but a great many improvements were necessary.
Gravity alone could not be depended upon for feeding the seed. Means had
to be devised for a continuous and regular discharge from each grain
tube; for varying the quantity of the seed fed by varying the escape
openings, or by positive mechanical movements variable in speed; for
fixing accurately the quantity of seed discharged; for changing the
apparatus to feed coarse or fine seed; and for rendering the apparatus
efficient on different surfaces--steep hillsides, level plains,
irregular lands.
An important step was the substitution of what is called the "force
feed" for the gravity feed. There is a variety of devices for this
purpose, the principle of one of them being a revolving feed wheel
located beneath the hopper, and above each spout, the two casings
between which the feed wheel revolves forming the outer walls of a
complete measuring channel, or throat, through which the grain is
carried by the rotary motion of the wheel, thus providing the means of
measuring the seed with as much accuracy as could be done by a small
measure. The quantity sown per acre is governed by simply increasing or
diminishing the speed of the feed wheel. In one form of device this
change of speed is altered by a system of cone gearing. A graduated flow
of the seed has also been effected by the employment of a cylinder
having a smooth and fluted part working in a cup beneath the hopper with
provision for adjustment of the smooth part towards and from the fluted
part to cut off or increase the flow.
To avoid the use of a separate apparatus for separate sizes of grain and
other seed, the seed holder has been divided into parts--one part for
containing wheat, barley and other medium-sized grains, and another for
corn, peas and the larger seeds. And as these parts are used on separate
occasions, the respective apertures are opened or closed by a sliding
bottom and by a single movement of the hand.
Rubber tubes for conducting the seed through the hollow holes were
introduced in place of the metal spouts that answered both as a spout
and a hoe.
In place of the common hoe drill of a form used in the early part of the
century, the hoes being forced into the soil by the use of levers and
weights, what are known as "shoe drills" have largely succeeded. A
series of shoes are pivoted to the frame, extend beneath the seed box,
and are provided with springs for depressing or raising them.
All kinds of seeds and fertilisers, separately or together, may be now
sown, and the broadcast sowing of a larger area than that covered by the
throw of the hand can now be given by machinery.
Corn and cotton seed are thus also planted, mixed or unmixed with the
fertilising material.
Not only have light ploughs been combined with small seed boxes and one
or more seed tubes, for easy work in gardens, but the arrangements
varied and graded for different uses until is reached that great machine
run by steam power, in which is assembled a gang of heavy harrows in
front to loosen and pulverise the soil, then the seed and fertilising
drill of capacious width for sowing the grain in rows, followed by a
lighter broad harrow to cover the seed, and all so arranged that the
steam lifts the heavy frames on turning, and all controlled easily by
the man who rides upon the machine.
In planting at intervals or in hills, as corn and potatoes, and other
like larger seeds, no longer is the farmer required to trudge across the
wide field carrying a heavy load in bag or box, or compel his boys or
women folk to drop the seed while he follows on laboriously with the
hoe. He may now ride, if he so choose, and the machine which carries him
furnishes the motive power for operating the supply and cut-off of the
grain at intervals.
The object of the farmer in planting corn is to plant it in straight
lines about four feet apart each way, putting from three to five grains
into each spot in a scattered and not huddled condition. These objects
are together nicely accomplished by a variety of modern machines.
The planting of great fields of potatoes has been greatly facilitated by
machinery that first slices them and then sows the slices continuously
in a row, or drops them in separate spots or hills, as may be desired.
The finest seeds, such as grass and clover, onion and turnip seed, and
delicate seed like rice, are handled and sown by machines without
crushing or bruising, and with the utmost exactness. Just what seed is
necessary to be supplied to the machine for a given area is decided
upon, and the machine distributes the same with the same nicety that a
doctor distributes the proper dose of pellets upon the palm of his
patient.
Transplanters as well as planters have been devised. These transplanters
will dig the plant trench, distribute the fertiliser, set the plant,
pack the earth and water the plant, automatically.
The class of machines known as cultivators are those only, properly
speaking, which are employed to cultivate the plant after the crop is
above the ground. The duties which they perform are to loosen the earth,
destroy the weeds, and throw the loosened earth around the growing
plant.
Here again the laborious hoe has been succeeded by the labour-saving
machine.
Cultivators have names which indicate their construction and the crop
with which they are adapted to be used. Thus there are "corn
cultivators," "cotton cultivators," "sugar-cane cultivators," etc.
Riding cultivators are known as "sulky cultivators" where they are
provided with two wheels and a seat for the driver.
If worked between two rows they are termed single, and when between
three rows, double cultivators. A riding cultivator adapted to work
three rows has an arched axle to pass over the rows of the growing
plants and cultivate both sides of the plants in each row. Double
cultivators are constructed so that their outside teeth may be adjusted
in and out from the centre of the machine to meet the width of the rows
between which they operate. A "walking cultivator" is when the operator
walks and guides the machine with the hands as with ploughs. Ordinary
ploughs are converted into cultivators by supplying them with double
adjustable mould boards. Ingenious arrangements generally exist for
widening or narrowing the cultivator and for throwing the soil from the
centre of the furrow to opposite sides and against the plant. The depth
to which the shares or cultivator blades work in the ground may be
adjusted by a gauge wheel upon the draught beam, or a roller on the back
of the frame.
Disk cultivators are those in which disk blades instead of ploughs are
used with which to disturb the soil already broken. As with ploughs, so
with cultivators, steam-engines are employed to draw a gang of
cultivating teeth or blades, their framework, and the operator seated
thereon, to and fro across the field between two or more rows, turning
and running the machine at the end of the rows.
Millet's recent celebrated painting represents a brutal, primitive type
of a man leaning heavily on a hoe as ancient and woful in character as
the man himself. It is a picture of hopeless drudgery and blank
ignorance. Markham, the poet, has seized upon this picture, dwelt
eloquently on its horrors, and apostrophised it as if it were a
condition now existing. He exclaims,
"O masters, lords and rulers in all lands
How will the future reckon with this man?"
The present has already reckoned with him, and he and his awkward
implement of drudgery nowhere exist, except as left-over specimens of
ancient and pre-historic misery occasionally found in some benighted
region of the world.
The plough and the hoe are the chief implements with which man has
subdued the earth. Their use has not been confined to the drudge and the
slave, but men, the leaders and ornaments of their race, have stood
behind them adding to themselves graces, and crowning labor with
dignity. Cincinnatus is only one of a long line of public men in ancient
and modern times who have served their country in the ploughfield as
well as on the field of battle and in the halls of Legislation. We hear
the song of the poet rising with that of the lark as he turns the sod.
Burns, lamenting that his share uptears the bed of the "wee modest
crimson-tipped flower" and sorrowing that he has turned the "Mousie"
from its "bit o' leaves and stibble" by the cruel coulter. The finest
natures, tuned too fine to meet the rude blasts of the world, have
shrunk like Cowper to rural scenes, and sought with the hoe among
flowers and plants for that balm and strength unfound in crowded marts.
But the dignity imparted to the profession of Agriculture by a few has
now by the genius of invention become the heritage of all.
While prophets have lamented, and artists have painted, and poets
sorrowed over the drudgeries of the tillers of the soil, the tillers
have steadily and quietly and with infinite patience and toil worked out
their own salvation. They no longer find themselves "plundered and
profaned and disinherited," but they have yoked the forces of nature to
their service, and the cultivation of the earth, the sowing of the seed,
the nourishment of the plant, have become to them things of pleasurable
labour.
With the aid of these inventions which have been turned into their hands
by the prolific developments of the century they are, so far as the soil
is concerned, no longer "brothers of the ox," but king of kings and lord
of lords.
CHAPTER IV.
AGRICULTURAL INVENTIONS.
If the farmer, toward the close of the 18th century, tired with the
sickle and the scythe for cutting his grass and grain, had looked about
for more expeditious means, he would have found nothing better for
cutting his grass; and for harvesting his grain he would have been
referred to a machine that had existed since the beginning of the
Christian era. This machine was described by Pliny, writing about A. D.
60, who says that it was used on the plains of Rhætia. The same machine
was described by Palladius in the fourth century. That machine is
substantially the machine that is used to-day for cutting and gathering
clover heads to obtain the seed. It is now called a header.
A machine that has been in use for eighteen centuries deserves to be
described, and its inventor remembered; but the name of the inventor has
been lost in oblivion. The description of Palladius is as follows:
"In the plains of Gaul, they use this quick way of reaping, and without
reapers cut large fields with an ox in one day. For this purpose a
machine is made carried upon two wheels; the square surface has boards
erected at the side, which, sloping outward, make a wider space above.
The board on the fore part is lower than the others. Upon it there are a
great many small teeth, wide set in a row, answering to the height of
the ears of corn (wheat), and turned upward at the ends. On the back
part of the machine two short shafts are fixed like the poles of a
litter; to these an ox is yoked, with his head to the machine, and the
yoke and traces likewise turned the contrary way. When the machine is
pushed through the standing corn all the ears are comprehended by the
teeth and cut off by them from the straw and drop into the machine. The
driver sets it higher or lower as he finds it necessary. By a few goings
and returnings the whole field is reaped. This machine does very well in
plain and smooth fields."
As late as 1786 improvements were being attempted in England on this old
Gallic machine. At that time Pitt, in that country, arranged a cylinder
with combs or ripples which tore off the heads of the grain-stalks and
discharged them into a box on the machine. From that date until 1800
followed attempts to make a cutting apparatus consisting of blades on a
revolving cylinder rotated by the rotary motion of the wheels on which
the machine was carried.
In 1794, a Scotchman invented the grain cradle. Above the blade of a
scythe were arranged a set of fingers projecting from a post in the
scythe snath. This was considered a wonderful implement. A report of a
Scottish Highland Agricultural Society about that time said of this new
machine:
"With a common sickle, seven men in ten hours reaped one and one-half
acres of wheat,--about one-quarter of an acre each. With the new machine
a man can cut one and one-half acres in ten hours, to be raked, bound,
and stacked by two others."
It was with such crude and imperfect inventions that the farmers faced
the grain and grass fields of the nineteenth century.
The Seven Wonders of the ancient world have often been compared with the
wonders of invention of this present day.
Senator Platt in an address at the Patent Centennial Celebration in
Washington, in 1891, made such a contrast:
"The old wonders of the world were the Pyramids, the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon, the Phidian statue of Jupiter, the Mausoleum, the Temple of
Diana at Ephesus, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Pharos of Alexandria.
Two were tombs of kings, one was the playground of a petted queen, one
was the habitat of the world's darkest superstition, one the shrine of a
heathen god, another was a crude attempt to produce a work of art solely
to excite wonder, and one only, the lighthouse at Alexandria, was of the
slightest benefit to mankind. They were created mainly by tyrants; most
of them by the unrequited toil of degraded and enslaved labourers. In
them was neither improvement nor advancement for the people." With some
excess of patriotic pride, he contrasts these with what he calls "the
seven wonders of American invention." They were the cotton-gin; the
adaptation of steam to methods of transportation; the application of
electricity to business pursuits; the harvester; the modern
printing-press; the ocean cable; and the sewing machine. "How
wonderful," he adds, "in conception, in construction, in purpose, these
great inventions are; how they dwarf the Pyramids and all the wonders of
antiquity; what a train of blessings each brought with its entrance into
social life; how wide, direct and far-reaching their benefits. Each was
the herald of a social revolution; each was a human benefactor; each was
a new Goddess of Liberty; each was a great Emancipator of man from the
bondage of labour; each was a new teacher come upon earth; each was a
moral force."
Of these seven wonders, the harvester and the cotton-gin will only be
described in this chapter. "Harvester" has sometimes been used as a
broad term to cover both mowers and reapers. In a recent and more
restricted sense, it is applied to a machine that cuts grain, separates
it into gavels, and binds it.
The difficulty that confronted the invention of mowers was the
construction, location and operation of the cutting part. To convert the
scythe or the sickle, or some other sharp blade into a fast
reciprocating cutter, to hang such cutter low so that it would cut near
the ground, to protect it from contact with stones by a proper guard, to
actuate it by the wheels of the vehicle, to hinge the cutter-bar to the
frame so that its outer end might be raised, and to arrange a seat on
the machine so that the driver could control the operating parts by
means of a lever, or handles, were the main problems to be solved.
In 1799, Boyce, of England, had a vertical shaft with six rotating
scythes beneath the frame of the implement. This died with the century.
In 1800, Meares, his countryman, tried to adapt shears. He was followed
there, in 1805, by Plucknett, who introduced a horizontal, rotating,
circular blade. Others, subsequently, adopted this idea, both in England
and America. It had been customary, as in olden times, to push the
apparatus forward by a horse or horses hitched behind. But, in 1806,
Gladstone had patented a front draft machine, with a revolving wheel
armed with knife-blades cutting at one side of the machine and a
segment-bar with fingers which gathered the grain and held the straw
while the knife cut it.
Then, in 1807, Salonen introduced vibrating knifes over stationary
blades, fingers to gather grain to the cutters, and a rake to carry the
grain off to one side.
In 1822, Ogle, also of England, was the first to invent the
_reciprocating_ knife-bar. This is the movement that has been given in
all the successful machines since. Ogle's was a crude machine, but it
furnished the ideas of projecting the cutter-bar at the side of a reel
to gather the grain to the cutter and of a grain platform which was
tilted to drop the sheaf.
The world is indebted also to the Rev. Patrick Bell, of Scotland, who
had invented and built as early as 1823-26, a machine which would cut an
acre of grain in an hour, and is thus described by Knight:
"The machine had a square frame on two wheels which ran loose on the
axle, except when clutched thereto to give motion to the cutters. The
cutter-bar had fixed triangular cutters between each of which was a
movable vibrating cutter, which made a shear cut against the edge of the
stationary cutter, on each side. It had a reel with twelve vanes to
press the grain toward the cutters, and cause it to fall upon a
travelling apron which carried away cut grain and deposited it at the
side of the machine. The reel was driven by bevel-gearing."
It was used but a few years and then revived again at the World's Fair
in London, in 1851.
In the United States, inventions in mowers and reapers began to make
their appearance about 1820. In 1822, Bailey was the first to patent a
mowing machine. It was a circular revolving scythe on a vertical axis,
rotated by gearing from the main axle, and so that the scythe was
self-sharpened by passing under a whet-stone fixed on an axis and
revolving with the scythe and was pulled by a horse in front. In 1828,
Lane, of Maine, combined the reaper and thresher. In 1831, Manning had a
row of fingers and a reciprocating knife, and in 1833, Schnebly
introduced the idea of a horizontal endless apron on which the grain
fell, constructed to travel intermittently so as to divide the grain
into separate parts or gavels, and deliver the gavels at one side.
Hussey, of Maryland, in 1833, produced the most useful harvester up to
that time. It had open guard fingers, a knife made of triangular
sections, reciprocating in the guard, and a cutter-bar on a hinged
frame.
Then came the celebrated reaper of McCormick, of Virginia, in 1834, and
his improvements of 1845-1847, and by 1850 he had built hundreds of his
machines. Other inventors, too numerous to mention, from that time
pushed forward with their improvements. Then came many public trials and
contests between rival manufacturers and inventors.
One of the earliest and most notable was the contest at the World's
Fair, in London, in 1851. This exhibition, the first of the kind the
world had seen, giving to the nations taking part such an astonishing
revelation of each other's productions, and stimulating in each such a
surprising growth in all the industrial and fine arts, revealed nothing
more gratifying to the lover of his kind than those inventions of the
preceding half-century that had so greatly lifted the farm labourer from
his furrow of drudgery.
Among the most conspicuous of such inventions were the harvesters.
Bell's machine, previously described, and Hussey's and McCormick's were
the principal contesting machines. They were set to work in fields of
grain, and to McCormick was finally awarded the medal of honour.
This contest also opened the eyes of the world to the fact that vast
tracts of idle land, exceeding in extent the areas of many states and
countries, could now be sown and reaped--a fact impossible with the
scythe and the sickle. It was the herald of the admission into the
family of nations of new territories and states, which, without these
machines, would unto this day be still wild wildernesses and trackless
deserts.
This great trial also was followed by many others, State and
International. In 1852, there was in the United States a general trial
of reapers and mowers at Geneva, New York; in 1855, at the French
Exposition, at Paris, where again McCormick met with a triumph; in 1857,
at Syracuse, New York, and subsequently at all the great State and
International Expositions. These contests served to bring out the
failures, and the still-existing wants in this line of machinery. The
earlier machines were clumsy. They were generally one-wheeled machines,
lacked flexibility of parts and were costly. They cut, indeed, vast
tracts of grain and grass, but the machines had to be followed by an
army of men to bind and gather the fallen grain. This army demanded high
wages and materially increased the cost of reaping the crop, and sadly
diminished the profits.
When the Vienna Exposition, in 1873, was held, a great advance was shown
in this and all other classes of agricultural machinery. Reapers and
mowers were lighter in construction, and far less in cost, and stronger
and more effective in every way. The old original machines of McCormick
on which he had worked for twenty years prior to the 1851 triumph, had
been succeeded by another of his machines, on which an additional twenty
years of study, experiment and improvement had been expended. An endless
number of inventors had in the meantime entered the lists. The frame,
the motive gearing, the hinged cutter-bar and knives, the driver's seat,
the reel, the divider, for separating the swath of grain to be cut from
the uncut, the raising and depressing lever, the self-raker, and the
material of which all the parts were composed had all received the
greatest attention, and now was awaiting the coming of a perfect
mechanical binder that would roll the grain on the machine into a
bundle, automatically bind it, and drop the bound bundles on the ground.
The latter addition came in an incomplete shape to Vienna. The best form
was a crude wire binder. In 1876 at the Centennial Exhibition at
Philadelphia, the mowers and reapers blossomed still more fully, but not
into full fruition; for it was not until two or three years thereafter
that the celebrated _twine_ binders, which superseded the wire, were
fully developed.
Think of the almost miraculous exercise of invention in making a machine
to automatically cut the grain, elevate it to a platform, separate and
roll it into sheaves, seize a stout cord from a reel, wrap it about the
sheaf, tie a knot that no sailor could untie, cut the cord, and throw
the bound sheaf to one side upon the ground!
So great became the demand for this binders' twine that great
corporations engaged in its manufacture, and they in turn formed a great
trust to control the world's supply. This one item of twine, alone,
amounted to millions of dollars every year, and from its manufacture
arose economic questions considered by legislators, and serious
litigation requiring the attention of the courts.
At this Centennial Exhibition, besides twenty or more great
manufacturing firms of the United States who exhibited reapers and
mowers, Canada, far-away Australia, and Russia brought each a fine
machine of this wonderful class. And not only these countries, but
nearly all of Europe sent agricultural machines and implements in such
numbers and superior construction that they surpassed the wildest dreams
of the farmer of a quarter of a century before.
Up to this time, about eleven thousand patents have been granted in the
United States, all presumably on separate improvements in mowers and
reapers alone. This number includes, of course, many patents issued to
inventors of other countries.
Before leaving this branch of the subject the lawn-mower should not be
overlooked, with its spiral blades on a revolving cylinder, a hand lever
by which it can be pushed over a lawn and the grass cut as smooth as the
green rug upon a lady's chamber.
It is the law of inventions that one invention necessitates and
generates another. Thus the vastly increased facilities for cutting
grass necessitated new means for taking care of it when cut. And these
new means were the hay tedder to stir it, the horse hay-rake, the great
hay-forks to load, and the hay-stackers. Harvesters for grass and grain
have been supplemented by Corn, Cotton, Potato and Flax Harvesters.
The threshing-floor still resounds to the flail as the grain is beaten
from the heads of the stalks. Men and horses still tread it out, the
wooden drag and the heavy wain with its gang of wheels, and all the old
methods of threshing familiar to the Egyptians and later among the
Romans may still be found in use in different portions of the world.
Menzies of Scotland, about the middle of the eighteenth century, was the
first to invent a threshing machine. It was unsuccessful. Then came
Leckie, of Stirlingshire, who improved it. But the type of the modern
threshing machine was the invention of a Scotchman, one Meikle, of
Tyningham, East Lothian, in 1786. Meikle threw the grain on to an
inclined board, from whence it was fed between two fluted rollers to a
cylinder armed with blades which beat it, thence to a second beating
cylinder operating over a concave grating through which the loosened
grain fell to a receptacle beneath; thence the straw was carried over a
third beating cylinder which loosened the straw and shook out the
remaining grain to the same receptacle, and the beaten straw was then
carried out of the machine. Meikle added many improvements, among which
was a fan-mill by which the grain was separated and cleaned from both
straw and chaff. This machine, completed and perfected about the year
1800, has seen no departure in principle in England, and in the United
States the principal change has been the substitution of a spiked drum
running at a higher speed for Meikle's beater drum armed with blades.
In countries like California, says the U.S. Commissioner of Patents in
his report for 1895, "Where the climate is dry and the grain is ready
for threshing as soon as it is cut, there is in general use a type of
machine known as a combined harvester and thresher in which a thresher
and a harvester machine of the header type are mounted on a single
platform, and the heads of grain are carried directly from the harvester
by elevators into the threshing machine, from which the threshed grain
is delivered into bags and is then ready for shipment. Some of these
machines are drawn by horses and some have a portable engine mounted on
the same truck with the harvester propelling the machine, while
furnishing power to drive the mechanism at the same time. Combined
harvesters and threshers have been known since 1836, but they have been
much improved and are now built on a much larger scale."
Flax-threshers for beating the grain from the bolls of the cured flax
plant, removing the bolls, releasing and cleaning the seed, are also a
modern invention.
Flax and Hemp Brakes, machines by which the woody and cellular portion
of the flax is separated from the fibrous portion, produced in practical
shape in the century, and flanked by the improved pullers, cutters,
threshers, scutchers, hackles, carders, and rovers, have supplanted
Egyptian methods of 3,000 years' standing, for preparing the flax for
spinning, as well as the crude improvements of the 18th century.
After the foundation of cotton manufacture had been laid "as one of the
greatest of the world's industries," in the 18th century by those five
great English inventors, Kay, who invented the fly-shuttle, Hargreaves,
the "Spinning Jenny," Arkwright, the water-frame, Crompton, the
spinning-mule, and Cartwright, the power-loom, came Eli Whitney in 1793,
a young school teacher from Massachusetts located in Georgia, who
invented the _cotton-gin_. His crude machine, worked by a single person,
could clean more cotton in a single day than could be done by a man in
several months, by hand.
The enormous importance of such a machine began to be appreciated at the
beginning of the century, and it set cotton up as a King whose dominion
has extended across the seas.
Prior to 1871, inventions in this art were mainly directed to perfecting
the structure of this primary gin. By that machine only the long staple
fibre was secured, leaving the cotton seed covered with a short fibre,
which with the seed was regarded as a waste product. To reclaim this
short fibre and secure the seed in condition for use, have been the
endeavours of many inventors during the last twenty years. These objects
have been attained by a machine known as the _delinter_, one of the
first practical forms of which appeared about 1883.
In a bulletin published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1895,
entitled, "Production and Price of Cotton for One Hundred Years," the
period commences with the introduction of Whitney's saw gin, and ends
with the year mentioned and with the production in that year of the
largest crop the world had ever seen. No other agricultural crop
commands such universal attention. Millions of people are employed in
its production and manufacture. How insignificant compared with the
wonder wrought by this one machine seems indeed any of the old seven
wonders of the world! Although the displacement of labour occasioned by
the introduction of the cotton-gin was not severely felt, as it was
slave labour, yet that invention affords a good illustration of the fact
that labour-saving machines increase the supply of the article, the
increased supply lowers its price, the lower price increases the demand,
the increased demand gives rise to more machines and develops other
inventions and arts, all of which results in the employment of ten
thousand people to every one thousand at work on the product originally.
CHAPTER V.
AGRICULTURAL INVENTIONS (_continued_).
When the harvest is ended and the golden stores of grains and fruits are
gathered, then the question arises what shall be next done to prepare
them for food and for shipment to the distant consumer.
If the cleaning of the grain and separating it from the chaff and dirt
are not had in the threshing process, separate machines are employed for
fanning and screening.
It was only during the 18th century that fanning mills were introduced;
and it is related by Sir Walter Scott in one of his novels that some of
his countrymen considered it their religious duty to wait for a natural
wind to separate the chaff from the wheat; that they were greatly
shocked by an invention which would raise a whirlwind in calm weather,
and that they looked upon the use of such a machine as rebellion against
God.
As to the grinding of the grain, the rudimentary means still exist, and
are still used by rudimentary peoples, and to meet exceptional
necessities; these are the primeval hollowed stone and mortar and
pestle, and they too were "the mills of the Gods" in Egyptian, Hebrew
and Early Greek days: the _quern_--that is, the upper running stone and
the lower stationary grooved one--was a later Roman invention and can be
found described only a century or two before the Christian era.
Crude as these means were they were the chief ones used in milling until
within a century and a quarter ago.
In a very recent bright work published in London, by Richard Bennett and
John Elton, on Corn Mills, etc., they say on this point: "The mill of
the last century, that, by which, despite its imperfections, the
production of flour rose from one of the smallest to one of the greatest
and most valuable industries of the world, was essentially a structure
of few parts, whether driven by water or wind, and its processes were
exceedingly simple. The wheat was cleaned by a rude machine consisting
of a couple of cylinders and screens, and an air blast passed through a
pair of mill-stones, running very close together, in order that the
greatest amount of flour might be produced at one grinding. The meal was
then bolted, and the tailings, consisting of bran, middlings and
adherent flour, again sifted and re-ground. It seems probable that the
miller of the time had a fair notion of the high grade of flour ground
from middlings, but no systematic method of procedure for its production
was adopted."
The upper and the nether mill-stone is still a most useful device. The
"dress," which consists of the grooves which are formed in the meeting
faces of the stones, has been changed in many ways to meet the
requirements in producing flour in varying degrees of fineness. Machines
have been invented to make such grooves. A Swiss machine for this
purpose consists of two disks carrying diamonds in their peripheries,
which, being put in rapid revolution, cut parallel grooves in the face
of the stone.
A great advance in milling was made both in America and Europe by the
inventions of Oliver Evans. Evans was born in the State of Delaware,
U.S., in 1755, and died in 1819. He was a poor boy and an apprentice to
a wheelwright, and while thus engaged his inventive powers were
developed. He had an idea of a land carriage propelled without animal
power. At the age of 22 he invented a machine for making card teeth,
which superseded the old method of making them by hand. Later he
invented steam-engines and steam-boats, to which attention will
hereafter be called. Entering into business with his brothers within the
period extending from 1785 to 1800, he produced those inventions in
milling which by the opening of the 19th century had revolutionised the
art. A description of the most important of these inventions was
published by him in 1795 in a book entitled _The Young Millwright and
Miller's Grist_. Patents were granted Evans by the States of Delaware,
Maryland and Pennsylvania in 1787, and by the U.S. Government in 1790
and 1808.
As these inventions formed the basis of the most important subsequent
devices of the century, a brief statement of his system is proper:
From the time the grain was emptied from the waggon to the final
production of the finest flour at the close of the process, all manual
labour was dispensed with. The grain was first emptied into a box hung
on a scale beam where it was weighed, then run into an elevator which
raised it to a chamber over cleaning machines through which it was
passed, and reclaimed by the same means if desired; then it was run down
into a chamber over the hoppers of the mill-stones; when ground it fell
from the mill-stones into conveyors and as carried along subjected to
the heated air of a kiln drier; then carried into a meal elevator to be
raised and dropped on to a cooling floor where it was met by what is
called a hopper boy, consisting of a central round upright shaft
revolving on a pivot, and provided with horizontal arms and sweeps
adapted to be raised and lowered and turned, by which means the meal was
continually stirred around, lifted and turned on the floor and then
gathered on to the bolting hoppers, the bolts being cylindrical sieves
of varying degrees of fineness to separate the flour from its coarser
impurities, and when not bolted sufficiently, carried by a conveyor
called a drill to an elevator to be dumped again into the bolting
hoppers and be re-bolted. When not sufficiently ground the same drill
was used to carry the meal to the grind stones. It was the design of the
process to keep the meal in constant motion from first to last so as to
thoroughly dry and cool it, to heat it further in the meantime, and to
run the machines so slowly as to prevent the rise and waste of the flour
in the form of dust.
The Evans system, with minor modifications and improvements, was the
prevailing one for three-quarters of a century. New mills, when erected,
were provided with this system, and many mills in their quiet retreats
everywhere awoke from their drowsy methods and were equipped with the
new one.
But the whole system of milling has undergone another great change
within the last thirty years:
During that time it has been learned that the coarser portion or kernel
of wheat which lies next to the skin of the berry and between the skin
and the heart is the most valuable and nutritious part, as it consists
largely of gluten, while the interior consists of starch, which when dry
becomes a pearly powder. Under the old systems this coarser part, known
as middlings, was eliminated, and ground for feed for cattle, or into
what was regarded as an inferior grade of flour from which to make
coarse bread. It was customary, therefore, under the old method to set
the grinding surfaces very close with keen sharp burrs, so that this
coarser part was cut off and mixed with the small particles of bran,
fine fuzz and other foreign substances, which was separated from the
finer part of the kernel by the bolting.
The new process consists of removing the outer skin and adherent
impurities from the middlings, then separating the middlings from the
central finer part and then regrinding the middlings into flour.
This middlings flour being superior, as stated, to what was called
straight grade, it became desirable to obtain as much middlings as
possible, and to this end it was necessary to set the grinding surfaces
further apart so as to grind _high_, hence the _high_ milling process as
distinguished from _low_ milling. For the better performance of the high
rolling process, roller mills were invented. It was found that the
cracking process by which the kernel could be cracked and the gluten
middlings separated from the starchy heart could best be had by the
employment of rollers or cylinders in place of face stones, and at the
same time the heating of the product, which injures it, be avoided.
The rollers operate in sets, and successive crackings are obtained by
passing and repassing, if necessary, the grain through these rollers,
set at different distances apart. The operation on grains of different
qualities, whether hard or soft, or containing more or less of the
gluten middlings, or starchy parts, and their minute and graded
separation, thus are obtained with the greatest nicety.
The Hungarians, the Germans, the Austrians, the Swiss, the English and
the Americans have all invented useful forms of these rollers.
This process was accompanied by the invention of new forms of middlings
separators and purifiers, in which upward drafts of air are made to pass
up through flat, graded shaking bolts, in an enclosed case, by which the
bran specks and fuzz are lifted and conveyed away from the shaken
material. In some countries, such as the great wheat state of Minnesota,
U.S., where the wheat had before been of inferior market value owing to
the poorer grade of flour obtained by the old processes, that same wheat
was made to produce the most superior flour under the new processes,
thus increasing the yearly value of the crops by many millions of
dollars.
Disastrous flour dust explosions in some of the great mills at
Minneapolis, in 1877-78, developed the invention of dust collectors, by
which the suspended particles of flour dust are withdrawn from the
machinery and the mill, and the air is cleared for respiration and for
the production of the finest flour, while the mill is kept closed and
comfortable in cold seasons. One of the latest forms of such a collector
has for its essential principle the vertical or rotatory air current,
which it is claimed moves and precipitates the finest particles.
The inventions in the class of mills have so multiplied in these latter
days, that nearly every known article that needs to be cleaned and
hulled, or ground, or cracked or pulverized, has its own specially
designed machine. Wind and water as motive powers have been supplanted
by steam and electricity. It would be impossible in one volume to
describe this great variety. Knight, in his Mechanical Dictionary, gives
a list under "Mills," of more than a hundred distinct machines and
processes relating to grinding, hulling, crushing, pulverising and
mixing products.
_Vegetable Cutters._--Modern ingenuity has not neglected those more
humble devices which save the drudgery of hand work in the preparation
of vegetables and roots for food for man and beasts, and for use
especially when large quantities are to be prepared. Thus, we find
machines armed with blades and worked by springs and a lever, for
chopping, others for cutting stalks, other machines for paring and
slicing, such as apple and potato parers and slicers, others for grating
and pulping, others for seeding fruits, such as cherries and raisins,
and an entire range of mechanisms, from those which handle delicately
the tenderest pod and smallest seed, to the ponderous machines for
cutting and crushing the cane in sugar making.
_Pressing and Baling._--The want of pressing loose materials and packing
bulky ones, like hay, wool, cotton, hops, etc, and other coarser
products, into small, compact bales and bodies, to facilitate their
transportation, was immediately felt on the great increase of such
products in the century.
From this arose pressing and baling machines of a great variety, until
nearly every agricultural product that can be pressed, packed or baled
has its special machine for that operation. Besides those above
indicated relating to agricultural products, we have cane presses,
cheese presses, butter presses, cigar and tobacco presses, cork presses,
and flour packers, fruit and lard presses, peat presses, sugar presses
and others. Leading mechanical principles in presses are also indicated
by name, as screw presses, toggle presses, beater press, revolving
press, hydraulic press, rack and pinion press, and rolling pressure
press and so on.
There are the presses also that are used in compressing cotton. When it
is remembered that cotton is raised in about twenty different countries,
and that the cotton crop of the United States of 1897-98 was 10,897,857
bales, of about 500 lbs. each; of India, (estimated) for the same
period, 2,844,000, of 400 lbs each; of China about 1,320,000, of 500 lbs
each, and between two and three million bales in the other countries, it
is interesting to consider how the world's production of this enormous
mass of elastic fibre, amounting to seventeen or eighteen million bales,
of four and five hundred pounds each, is compressed and bound.
The screw press was the earliest form of machine used, and then came the
hydraulic press. Later it has been customary to press the cotton by
screw presses or small hydraulic presses at the plantation, bind it with
ropes or metal bands and then transport it to some central or seaboard
station where an immense establishment exists, provided with a great
steam-operated press, in which the bale from the country is placed and
reduced to one-fourth or one-third its size, and while under pressure
new metallic bands applied, when the bale is ready for shipment. This
was a gain of a remarkable amount of room on shipboard and on cars, and
solved a commercial problem. But now this process, and the commercial
rectangular bale, seem destined to be supplanted by roller presses set
up near the plantations themselves, into which the cotton is fed
directly from the gin, rolled upon itself between the rollers and
compressed into round bales of greater density than the square bale,
thus saving a great amount of cost in dispensing with the steam and
hydraulic plants, with great additional advantages in convenience of
handling and cost of transportation.
It is so arranged also that the cotton may be rolled into clean, uniform
dense layers, so that the same may be unwound at the mill and directly
applied to the machines for its manufacture into fabrics, without the
usual tedious and expensive preliminary operations of combing and
re-rolling.
It has also remained for the developed machine of the century to convert
hay into an export commodity to distant countries by the baling process.
Bale ties themselves have received great attention from inventors, and
the most successful have won fortunes for their owners.
Most ingenious machines have been devised for picking cotton in the
fields, but none have yet reached that stage of perfection sufficient to
supplant the human fingers.
_Fruits and Foods._--To prepare and transport fruits in their natural
state to far distant points, while preserving them from decay for long
times, is, in the large way demanded by the world's great appetites,
altogether a success of modern invention.
To gather the fruit without bruising by mechanical pickers, and then to
place the fruit, oranges for instance, in the hands of an intelligent
machine which will automatically, but delicately and effectually, wrap
the same in a paper covering, and discharge them without harm, are among
the recent inventive wonders. In the United States alone 67 patents had
been granted up to 1895 for fruit wrapping machines.
Inventions relating to drying and evaporating fruit, and having for
their main object to preserve as much as possible the natural taste and
colour of the fruit, have been numerous. Spreading the fruit in the air
and letting the sun and air do the rest is now a crude process.
These are the general types of drying and evaporating machines:
First, those in which trays of fruit are placed upon stationary ledges
within a heated chamber; second, those in which the trays are raised and
lowered by mechanical means toward or farther from the source of heat as
the drying progresses; third, those in which the fruit is placed in
imperforate steam jacketed pans. Many improvements, of course, have been
made in detail of form, in ventilation, the supplying and regulating of
heat and the moving of trays.
The hermetically sealed glass or earthenware fruit jar, the lids of
which can be screwed or locked down upon a rubber band, after the jar is
filled and the small remainder of air drawn out by a convenient steam
heater, now used by the million, is an illustration of the many useful
modern contrivances in this line.
_Sterilisation._--In preserving, the desirability of preventing disease
and keeping foods in a pure state has developed in the last quarter of a
century many devices by which the food is subjected to a steam heat in
chambers, and, by devices operated from the outside, the cans or bottles
are opened and shut while still within the steam-filled chamber.
_Diastase._--By heating starchy matters with substances containing
diastase, a partial transformation is effected, which will materially
shorten and aid its digestion, and this fact has been largely made use
of in the preparation of soluble foods, especially those designed for
infants and invalids, such as malted milk and lactated food.
_Milkers._--Invention has not only been exercised in the preservation
and transportation of milk, but in the task of milking itself. Since
1860 inventors have been seeking patents for milkers, some having tubes
operated by air-pumps, others on the same principle in which the vacuum
is made to increase and decrease or pulsate, and others for machines in
which the tubes are mechanically contracted by pressure plates.
_Slaughtering._--Great improvements have been made in the slaughtering
of animals, by which a great amount of its repulsiveness and the
unhealthfulness of its surroundings have been removed. These
improvements relate to the construction of proper buildings and
appliances for the handling of the animals, the means for slaughtering,
and modes of taking care of the meat and transporting the same.
Villages, towns, and even many cities, are now relieved of the formerly
unsavoury slaughter-houses, and the work is done from great centres of
supply, where meats in every shape are prepared for food and shipment.
It would be impossible in a bulky volume, much less in a single chapter,
to satisfactorily enumerate those thousands of inventions which, taking
hold of the food products of the earth, have spread them as a feast
before the tribes of men.
_Tobacco._--Some of the best inventive genius of the century has been
exercised in providing for man's comfort, not a food, but what he
believes to be a solace.
"Sublime Tobacco! which from East to West
Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest."
In the United States alone, in the year 1885, there were 752,520 acres
of land devoted to the production of tobacco, the amount in pounds grown
being 562,736,000, and the value of which was estimated as $43,265,598.
These amounts have been somewhat less in years since then, but the
appetite continues, and any deficiency in the supply is made up by
enormous importation. Thus, in 1896, there were imported into the United
States, 32,924,966 pounds of tobacco, of various kinds, valued at
$16,503,130. There are no reliable statistics showing that, man for man,
the people of that country are greater lovers of the weed than the
people of other countries, but the annual value of tobacco raised and
imported by them being thus about $60,000,000, it indicates the strength
of the habit and the interest in the nurture of the plant throughout the
world. Neither the "Counterblaste to Tobacco" of King James I., and the
condemnations of kings, popes, priests and sultans, that followed its
early introduction into Europe, served to choke the weed in its infancy
or check its after growth. Now it is attended from the day of its
planting until it reaches the lips of the consumer by contrivances of
consummate skill to fit it for its destined purpose. Besides the
ploughs, the cultivators and the weeders of especial forms used to
cultivate the plant, there are, after the grown plant is cut in the
field, houses of various designs for drying it, machines for rolling the
leaves out smoothly in sheets; machines for removing the stems from the
leaves and for crushing the stem; machines for pressing it into shape,
and for pressing it, whether solid or in granular form, into boxes, tubs
and bags; machines for granulating it and for grinding it into snuff;
machines for twisting it into cords; machines for flavouring the leaf
with saccharine and other matters; machines for making cigars, and
machines of a great variety and of the most ingenious construction for
making cigarettes and putting them in packages.
Samples of pipes made by different ages and by different peoples would
form a collection of wonderful art and ingenuity, second only to an
exhibition of the means and methods of making them.
CHAPTER VI.
CHEMISTRY.
Chemistry, having for its field the properties and changes of matter,
has excited more or less attention ever since men had the power to
observe, to think, and to experiment.
Some knowledge of chemistry must have existed among the ancients to have
enabled the Egyptians to smelt ores and work metals, to dye their
cloths, to make glass, and to preserve their dead from decomposition;
so, too, to this extent among the Ph[oe]nicians, the Israelites, the
Greeks and the Romans; and perhaps to a greater extent among the
Chinese, who added powder to the above named and other chemical
products. Aristotle speculated, and the alchemists of the middle ages
busied themselves in magic and guess-work. It reached the dignity of a
science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by the labours of
such men, in the former century, as Libavius, Van Helmont, Glauber,
Tachenius, Boyle, Lémery and Becher; Stahl, Boerhaave and Hamberg in
both; and of Black, Cavendish, Lavoisier, Priestley and others in the
eighteenth.
But so great have been the discoveries and inventions in this science
during the nineteenth century that any chemist of any previous age, if
permitted to look forward upon them, would have felt
"Like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken."
Indeed, the chemistry of this century is a new world, of which all the
previous discoveries in that line were but floating nebulæ.
So vast and astonishingly fast has been the growth and development of
this science that before the century was two-thirds through its course
Watts published his _Dictionary of Chemistry_ in five volumes, averaging
a thousand closely printed pages, followed soon by a thousand-page
supplement; and it would have required such a volume every year since to
adequately report the progress of the science. Nomenclatures, formulas,
apparatuses and processes have all changed. It was deemed necessary to
publish works on _The New Chemistry_, and Professor J. P. Cooke is the
author of an admirable volume under that title.
We can, therefore, in this chapter only step from one to another of some
of the peaks that rise above the vast surrounding country, and note some
of the lesser objects as they appear in the vales below.
The leading discoveries of the century which have done so much to aid
Chemistry in its giant strides are the atomic and molecular theories,
the mechanics of light, heat, and electricity, the correlation and
conservation of forces, their invariable quantity, and their
indestructibility, spectrum analysis and the laws of chemical changes.
John Dalton, that humble child of English north-country Quaker stock,
self-taught and a teacher all his life, in 1803 gave to the world his
atomic theory of chemistry, whereby the existence of matter in ultimate
atoms was removed from the region of the speculation of certain ancient
philosophers, and established on a sure foundation.
The question asked and answered by Dalton was, what is the relative
weight of the atoms composing the elementary bodies?
He discovered that one chemical element or compound can combine with
another chemical element, to form a new compound, in two different
proportions by weight, which stand to each other in the simple ratio of
one to two; and at the same time he published a table of the _Relative
weight of the ultimate particles of Gaseous and other Bodies_. Although
the details of this table have since been changed, the principles of his
discovery remain unchanged. Says Professor Roscoe:
"Chemistry could hardly be said to exist as a science before the
establishment of the laws of combination in multiple proportions, and
the subsequent progress of chemical science materially depended upon
the determination of these combined proportions or atomic weights of
the elements first set up by Dalton. So that among the founders of our
science, next to the name of the great French Philosopher, Lavoisier,
will stand in future ages the name of John Dalton, of Manchester."
Less conspicuous but still eminently useful were his discoveries and
labours in other directions, in the expansion of gases, evaporation,
steam, etc.
Wollaston and Gay-Lussac, both great chemists, applied Dalton's
discovery to wide and most important fields in the chemical arts.
Also contemporaneous with Dalton was the great German chemist,
Berzelius, who confirmed and extended the discoveries of Dalton. More
than this, it has been said of Berzelius:
"In him were united all the different impulses which have advanced the
science since the beginning of the present epoch. The fruit of his
labors is scattered throughout the entire domain of the science.
Hardly a substance exists to the knowledge of which he has not in some
way contributed. A direct descendant of the school of his countryman,
Bergman, he was especially renowned as an analyst. No chemist has
determined by direct experiment the composition of a greater number of
substances. No one has exerted a greater influence in extending the
field of analytical chemistry."
As to light, the great Huygens, the astronomer and mathematician, the
improver of differential calculus and of telescopes, the inventor of the
pendulum clock, chronometers, and the balance wheel to the watch, and
discoverer of the laws of the double refraction of light and of
polarisation, had in the 17th century clearly advanced the idea that
light was propagated from luminous bodies, not as a stream of particles
through the air but in waves or vibrations of ether, which is a
universal medium extending through all space and into all bodies. This
fundamental principle now enters into the explanation of all the
phenomena of light.
Newton in the next century, with the prism, decomposed light, and in a
darkened chamber reproduced all the colours and tints of the rainbow.
But there were dark lines in that beam of broken sunlight which Newton
did not notice.
It was left to Joseph von Fraunhofer, a German optician, and to the 19th
century, and nearly one hundred years after Newton's experiments with
the prism, to discover, with finer prisms that he had made, some 590 of
these black lines crossing the solar spectrum. What they were he did not
know, but conjectured that they were caused by something which existed
in the sun and stars and not in our air. But from that time they were
called Fraunhofer's dark lines.
From the vantage ground of these developments we are now enabled to step
to that mountain peak of discovery from which the sun and stars were
looked into, their elements portrayed, their very motions determined,
and their brotherhood with the earth, in substance, ascertained.
The great discovery of the cause of Fraunhofer's dark bands in the
broken sunlight was made by Gustave Robert Kirchoff, a German physician,
in his laboratory in Heidelberg, in 1860, in conjunction with his fellow
worker, Robert Bunsen.
Kirchoff happened to let a solar ray pass through a flame coloured with
sodium, and through a prism, so that the spectrum of the sun and the
flame fell one upon another. It was expected that the well known yellow
line of sodium would come out in the solar spectrum, but it was just the
opposite that took place. Where the bright yellow line should have
fallen appeared a dark line.
With this observation was coupled the reflection that heat passes from a
body of a higher temperature to one of a lower, and not inversely.
Experiments followed: iron, sodium, copper, etc., were heated to
incandescence and their colours prismatically separated. These were
transversed with the same colours of other heated bodies, and the latter
were absorbed and rendered black. Kirchoff then announced his law that
all bodies absorb chiefly those colours which they themselves emit.
Therefore these vapours of the sun which were rendered in black lines
were so produced by crossing terrestrial vapors of the same nature.
Thus by the prism and the blowpipe were the same substances found in the
sun, the stars, and the earth. The elements of every substance submitted
to the process were analysed, and many secrets in the universe of matter
were revealed.
Young, of America, invented a splendid combination of spectroscope and
telescope, and Huggins of England was the first to establish by spectrum
analysis the approach and retreat of the stars.
It was prior to this time that those wonderful discoveries and labours
were made which developed the true nature of heat, which demonstrated
the kinship and correlation of the forces of Nature, their conservation,
or property of being converted one into another, and the
indestructibility of matter, of which force is but another name.
The first demonstrations as to the nature of heat were given by the
American Count Rumford, and then by Sir Humphry Davy, just at the close
of the 18th century, and then followed in this the brilliant labours and
discoveries of Mayer and Helmholtz of Germany, Colding of Denmark, and
Joule, Grove, Faraday, Sir William Thomson of England, of Henry, Le
Conte and Martin of America, as to the correlation and convertibility of
all the forces.
The French revolution, and the Napoleonic wars, isolating France and
exhausting its resources, its chemists were appealed to devote their
genius and researches to practical things; to the munitions of war, the
rejuvenation of the soil, the growing of new crops, like the sugar beet,
and new manufacturing products.
Lavoisier had laid deep and broad in France the foundations of
chemistry, and given the science nomenclature that lasted a century. So
that the succeeding great teachers, Berthollet, Guyton, Fourcroy and
their associates, and the institutions of instruction in the sciences
fostered by them, and inspired in that direction by Napoleon, bent their
energies in material directions, and a tremendous impulse was thus given
to the practical application of chemistry to the arts and manufactures
of the century.
The same spirit, to a less extent, however, manifested itself in
England, and as early as 1802 we find Sir Humphry Davy beginning his
celebrated lectures on the _Elements of Agricultural Chemistry_ before a
board of agriculture, a work that has passed through many editions in
almost every modern language.
When the fact is recalled that agricultural chemistry embraces the
entire natural science of vegetable and animal production, and includes,
besides, much of physics, meteorology and geology, the extent and
importance of the subject may be appreciated; and yet such appreciation
was not manifested in a practical manner until the 19th century. It was
only toward the end of the 18th century that the vague and ancient
notions that air, water, oil and salt formed the nutrition of plants,
began to be modified. Davy recognized and explained the beneficial
fertilizing effects of ammonia, and analysed and explained numerous
fertilizers, including guano. It is due to his discoveries and
publications, combined with those of the eminent men on the continent,
above referred to, that agricultural chemistry arose to the dignity of a
science. The most brilliant, eloquent and devoted apostle of that
science who followed Davy was Justus von Liebig of Germany, who was born
in Darmstadt in 1803, the year after Davy commenced his lectures in
England. It was in response to the British Association for the
Advancement of Science that he gave to the world his great publications
on _Chemistry in its application to Agriculture, Commerce, Physiology,
and Pathology_, from which great practical good resulted the world over.
One of his favorite subjects was that of fermentation, and this calls up
the exceedingly interesting discoveries in the nature of alcohol, yeast,
mould--aging malt, wines and beer--and their accompanying beneficial
results.
In one of Huxley's charming lectures--such as he delighted to give
before a popular audience--delivered in 1871, at Manchester, on the
subject of "Yeast," he tells how any liquid containing sugar, such as a
mixture of honey and water, if left to itself undergoes the peculiar
change we know as fermentation, and in the process the scum, or thicker
muddy part that forms on top, becomes yeast, carbonic acid gas escapes
in bubbles from the liquid, and the liquid itself becomes spirits of
wine or alcohol. "Alcohol" was a term used until the 17th century to
designate a very fine subtle powder, and then became the name of the
subtle spirit arising from fermentation. It was Leeuwenhoek of Holland
who, two hundred years ago, by the use of a fine microscope he invented,
first discovered that the muddy scum was a substance made up of an
enormous multitude of very minute grains floating separately, and in
lumps and in heaps, in the liquid. Then, in the next century the
Frenchman, Cagniard de la Tour, discovered that these bodies grew to a
certain size and then budded, and from the buds the plant multiplied;
and thus that this yeast was a mass of living plants, which received in
science the name of "torula," that the yeast plant was a kind of fungus
or mould, growing and multiplying. Then came Fabroni, the French
chemist, at the end of the 18th century, who discovered that the yeast
plant was of bag-like form, or a cell of woody matter, and that the cell
contained a substance composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen.
This was a vegeto-animal substance, having peculiarities of "animal
products."
Then came the great chemists of the 19th century, with their delicate
methods of analysis, and decided that this plant in its chief part was
identical with that element which forms the chief part of our own blood.
That it was protein, a substance which forms the foundation of every
animal organism. All agreed that it was the yeast plant that fermented
or broke up the sugar element, and produced the alcohol. Helmholtz
demonstrated that it was the minute particles of the solid part of the
plant that produced the fermentation, and that such particles must be
growing or alive, to produce it. From whence sprang this wonderful
plant--part vegetable, part animal? By a long series of experiments it
was found that if substances which could be fermented were kept entirely
closed to the outer air, no plant would form and no fermentation take
place. It was concluded then, and so ascertained, that the torulae in
the plant proceeded from the torulae in the atmosphere, from "gay motes
that people the sunbeams." Concerning just how the torulae broke up or
fermented the sugar, great chemists have differed.
After the discovery that the yeast was a plant having cells formed of
the pure matter of wood, and containing a semi-fluid mass identical with
the composition which constitutes the flesh of animals, came the further
discovery that all plants, high and low, are made up of the same kind of
cells, and their contents. Then this remarkable result came out, that
however much a plant may otherwise differ from an animal, yet, in
essential constituents the cellular constructure of animal and plant is
the same. To this substance of energy and life, common in the minute
plant cell and the animal cell, the German botanist, Hugo von Mohl,
about fifty years ago gave the name "protoplasm." Then came this
astounding conclusion, that this _protoplasm_ being common to both plant
and animal life, the essential difference consisted only in the manner
in which the cells are built up and are modified in the building.
And from that part of these great discoveries which revealed the fact
that the sugary element was infected, as it were, from the germs of the
air, producing fermentation and its results, arose that remarkable
theory of many diseases known as the "germ theory." And, as it was found
in the yeast plant that only the solid part or particle of the plant
germinated fermentation and reaction, so, too, it has been found by the
germ theory that only the solid particle of the contagious matter can
germinate or grow the disease.
In this unfolding of the wonders of chemistry in the nineteenth century,
the old empirical walls between forces and organisms, and organic and
inorganic chemistry, are breaking down, and celestial and terrestrial
bodies and vapours, living beings, and growing plants are discovered to
be the evolution of one all-pervading essence and force. One is reminded
of the lines of Tennyson:
"Large elements in order brought
And tracts of calm from tempest made,
And world fluctuation swayed
In vassal tides that followed thought.
* * * * *
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves."
In the class of alcohol and in the field of yeast, the work of Pasteur,
begun in France, has been followed by improvements in methods for
selecting proper ferments and excluding improper ones, and in improved
processes for aging and preserving alcoholic liquors by destroying
deleterious ferments. Takamine, in using as ferment, koji, motu and
moyashi, different forms of mould, and proposing to do entirely away
with malt in the manufacture of beer and whiskey, has made a noteworthy
departure. Manufacturing of malt by the pneumatic process, and stirring
malt during germination, are among the improvements.
_Carbonating._--The injecting of carbonic acid gas into various waters
to render them wholesome, and also into beers and wines during
fermentation, and to save delay and prevent impurities, are decided
improvements.
The immense improvements and discoveries in the character of soils and
fertilisers have already been alluded to. Hundreds of instruments have
been invented for measuring, analysing, weighing, separating,
volatilising and otherwise applying chemical processes to practical
purposes.
To the chemistry of the century the world is indebted for those devices
and processes for the utilisation and manufacture of many useful
products from the liquids and oils, sugar from cane and beets,
revivifying bone-black, centrifugal machinery for refining sugar, in
defecating it by chemicals and heat, in evaporating it in pans, in
separating starch and converting it into glucose, etc.
_Oils and Fats._--Up to within this century the vast amount of cotton
seed produced with that crop was a waste. Then by the process, first of
steaming the seed and expressing the oil, now by the process of
extraction by the aid of volatile solvents, and casting off the solvents
by distillation, an immensely valuable product has been obtained.
The utilising of oils in the manufacture of oilcloth and linoleum and
rubber, has become of great commercial value. Formerly sulphur was the
vulcanising agent, now chloride of sulphur has been substituted for pure
sulphur.
Steam and the distillation processes have been applied with great
success to the making of glycerine from fat and from soap underlye and
in extracting fat from various waste products.
_Bleaching and Dyeing._--Of course these arts are very old, but the old
methods would not be recognised in the modern processes; and those who
lived before the century knew nothing of the magnificent colours, and
certain essences, and sweet savours that can be obtained from the black,
hand-soiling pieces of coal. In the making of illuminating gas, itself a
finished chemical product of the century, a vast amount of once wasted
products, especially coal tar, are now extensively used; and from coal
tar and the residuum of petroleum oils, now come those splendid aniline
dyes which have produced such a revolution in the world of colours. The
saturation of sand by a dye and its application to fabrics by an air
blast; the circulation of the fluid colors, or of fluids for bleaching
or drying, or oxidising, through perforated cylinders or cops on which
the cloths are wound; devices for the running of skeins through dyes,
the great improvements in carbon dyes and kindred colours, the processes
of making the colours on the fibre, and the perfumes made by the
synthetic processes, are among the inventions in this field.
The space that a list of the new chemical products of this age and their
description would fill, has already been indicated by reference to the
great dictionary of Watts. Some of the electro-chemical products will be
hereinafter referred to in the Chapter on Electricity, and the chemistry
of Metallurgy will be treated under the latter topic.
_Electro-chemical Methods._--Space will only permit it to be said that
these methods are now employed in the production of a large number of
elements, by means of which very many of them which were before mere
laboratory specimens, have now become cheap and useful servants of
mankind in a hundred different ways; such as aluminium, that light and
non-corrosive metal, reduced from many dollars an ounce a generation
ago, to 30 and 40 cents a pound now; carborundum, largely superseding
emery and diamond dust as an abradant; artificial diamonds; calcium
carbide, from which the new illuminating acetylene gas is made;
disinfectants of many kinds; pigments, chromium, manganese, and
chlorates by the thousand tons. The most useful new chemical processes
are those used in purifying water sewage and milk, in electroplating
metals and other substances, in the application of chemicals to the fine
arts, in extracting grease from wool, and the making of many useful
products from the waste materials of the dumps and garbage banks.
_Medicines and Surgery._--One hundred years ago, the practice of
medicine was, in the main, empirical. Certain effects were known to
usually follow the giving of certain drugs, or the application of
certain measures, but why or how these effects were produced, was
unknown. The great steps forward have been made upon the true scientific
foundation established by the discoveries and inventions in the fields
of physics, chemistry and biology. The discovery of anaesthetics and
their application in surgery and the practice of medicine, no doubt
constitutes the leading invention of the century in this field.
Sir Humphry Davy suggested it in 1800, and Dr. W. T. Morton was the
first to apply an anaesthetic to relieve pain in a surgical operation,
which he did in a hospital in Boston in 1846. Both its original
suggestion and application were also claimed by others.
Not only relief from intense pain to the patient during the operation,
but immense advantages are gained by the long and careful examination
afforded of injured or diseased parts, otherwise difficult or impossible
in a conscious patient.
The exquisite pain and suffering endured previous to the use of
anaesthetics often caused death by exhaustion. Many delicate operations
can now be performed for the relief of long-continued diseases which
before would have been hazardous or impossible. How many before suffered
unto death long-drawn-out pain and disease rather than submit to the
torture of the knife! How many lives have been saved, and how far
advanced has become the knowledge of the human body and its painful
diseases, by this beneficent remedy!
Inventions in the field of medicine consist chiefly in those innumerable
compositions and compounds which have resulted from chemical
discoveries. Gelatine capsules used to conceal unpalatable remedies may
be mentioned as a most acceptable modern invention in this class.
Inventions and discoveries in the field of surgery relate not only to
instrumentalities but processes. The antiseptic treatment of wounds, by
which the long and exhausting suppuration is avoided, is among the most
notable of the latter. In instruments vast improvements have been made;
special forms adapted for operation in every form of injury; in
syringes, especially hypodermic, those used for subcutaneous injections
of liquid remedies; inhalers for applying medicated vapours and devices
for applying volatile anaesthetics, and devices for atomising and
spraying liquids. In the United States alone about four thousand patents
have been granted for inventions in surgical instruments.
_Dentistry._--This art has been revolutionised during the century. Even
in the time of Herodotus, one special set of physicians had the
treatment of teeth; and artificial teeth have been known and used for
many ages, but all seems crude and barbarous until these later days. In
addition to the use of anaesthetics, improvements have been made in
nearly every form of dental instruments, such as forceps, dental
engines, pluggers, drills, hammers, etc., and in the means and materials
for making teeth. Later leading inventions have reference to utilising
the roots of destroyed teeth as supports on which to form bridges to
which artificial teeth are secured, and to crowns for decayed teeth that
still have a solid base.
There exists no longer the dread of the dentist's chair unless the
patient has neglected too long the visit. Pain cannot be all avoided,
but it is ameliorated; and the new results in workmanship in the saving
and in the making of teeth are vast improvements over the former
methods.
CHAPTER VII.
STEAM AND STEAM ENGINES.
"Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam! afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car;
Or in wide waving wings expanded bear
The flying chariot through the field of air."
Thus sang the poet prophet, the good Dr. Darwin of Lichfield, in the
eighteenth century. Newcomen and Watt had not then demonstrated that
steam was not unconquerable, but the hitching it to the slow barge and
the rapid car was yet to come. It has come, and although the prophecy is
yet to be rounded into fulfilment by the driving of the "flying chariot
through the field of air," that too is to come.
The prophecy of the doctor poet was as suggestive of the practical means
of carrying it into effect as were all the means proposed during the
first seventeen centuries of the Christian Era for conquering steam and
harnessing it as a useful servant to man.
Toys, speculations, dreams, observations, startling experiments, these
often constitute the framework on which is hung the title of Inventor;
but the nineteenth century has demanded a better support for that proud
title. He alone who first transforms his ideas into actual work and
useful service in some field of man's labor, or clearly teaches others
to do so, is now recognised as the true inventor. Tested by this rule
there was scarcely an inventor in the field of steam in all the long
stretches of time preceding the seventeenth century. And if there were,
they had no recording scribes to embalm their efforts in history.
We shall never know how early man learned the wonderful power of the
spirit that springs from heated water. It was doubtless from some sad
experience in ignorantly attempting to put fetters on it.
The history of steam as a motor generally commences with reference to
that toy called the aeolipile, described by Hero of Alexandria in a
treatise on pneumatics about two centuries before Christ, and which was
the invention of either himself or Ctesibius, his teacher.
This toy consisted of a globe pivoted on two supports, one of which was
a communicating pipe leading into a heated cauldron of water beneath.
The globe was provided with two escape pipes on diametrically opposite
sides and bent so as to discharge in opposite directions. Steam admitted
into the globe from the cauldron escaped through the side pipes, and its
pressure on these pipes caused the globe to rotate.
Hero thus demonstrated that water can be converted into steam and steam
into work.
Since that ancient day Hero's apparatus has been frequently reinvented
by men ignorant of the early effort, and the principle of the invention
as well as substantially the same form have been put into many practical
uses. Hero in his celebrated treatise described other devices, curious
siphons and pumps. Many of them are supposed to have been used in the
performance of some of the startling religious rites at the altars of
the Greek priests.
From Hero's day the record drops down to the middle ages, and still it
finds progress in this art confined to a few observations and
speculations. William of Malmesbury in 1150 wrote something on the
subject and called attention to some crude experiments he had heard of
in Germany. Passing from the slumber of the middle ages, we are assured
by some Spanish historians that one Blasco de Garay, in 1543, propelled
a ship having paddle wheels by steam at Barcelona. But the publication
was long after the alleged event, and is regarded as apocryphal.
Observations became more acute in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, experiments more frequent, and publications more full and
numerous.
Cardan Ramelli and Leonardo da Vinci, learned Italians, and the
accomplished Prof. Jacob Besson of Orleans, France, all did much by
their writings to make known theoretically the wonderful powers of
steam, and to suggest modes of its practical operation, in the latter
part of the sixteenth century.
Giambattista della Porta, a gentleman of Naples, possessing high and
varied accomplishments in all the sciences as they were known at that
day, 1601, and who invented the magic-lantern and _camera obscura_, in a
work called _Spiritalia_, described how steam pressure could be employed
to raise a column of water, how a vacuum was produced by the
condensation of steam in a closed vessel, and how the condensing vessel
should be separated from the boiler. Revault in France showed in 1605
how a bombshell might be exploded by steam.
Salomon de Caus, engineer and architect to Louis XIII, in 1615 described
how water might be raised by the expansion of steam.
In 1629 the Italian, Branco, published at Rome an account of the
application of a steam jet upon the vanes of a small wheel to run it,
and told how in other ways Hero's engine might be employed for useful
purposes.
The first English publication describing a way of applying steam
appeared in 1630 in a patent granted to David Ramseye, for a mode of
raising water thereby. This was followed by patents to Grant in 1632 and
to one Ford in 1640. During that century these crude machines were
called "fire engines." It seems to have been common in some parts of
Europe during the seventeenth century to use a blast of steam to improve
the draft of chimneys and of blast furnaces. This application of steam
to smoke and smelting has been frequently revived by modern inventors
with much flourish of originality.
It is with a certain feeling of delight and relief, after a prolonged
search through the centuries for some evidence of harnessing this mighty
agent to man's use, that we come to the efforts of the good Marquis of
Worcester--Edward Somerset. He it was who in 1655 wrote of the
_Inventions of the Sixteenth Century_. He afterwards amplified this
title by calling his book _A Century of Names and Scantlings of such
Inventions as at present I call to mind to have tried and perfected_,
etc.
There are about one hundred of these "Scantlings," and his descriptions
of them are very brief but interesting. Some, if revived now and put to
use, would throw proposed flying machines into the background, as they
involved perpetual motion.
But to his honor be it said that he was the first steam-engine builder.
A patent was issued to him in 1663. It was about 1668 that he built and
put in successful operation at Raglan Castle at Vauxhall, near London, a
steam engine to force water upward. He made separate boilers, which he
worked alternately, and conveyed the steam from them to a vessel in
which its pressure operated to force the water up. Unfortunately he did
not leave a description of his inventions sufficiently full to enable
later mechanics to make and use them. He strove in vain to get capital
interested and a company formed to manufacture his engines. The age of
fear and speculation as to steam ceased when the Marquis set his engine
to pumping water, and from that time inventors went on to put the arm of
steam to work.
In 1683 Sir Samuel Morland commenced the construction of the Worcester
engines for use and sale; Hautefeuille of France taught the use of gas,
described how gas as well as steam engines might be constructed, and was
the first to propose the use of the piston. The learned writings of the
great Dutch scientist and inventor, Huygens, on heat and light steam and
gas, also then came forth, and his assistant, the French physicist and
doctor, Denis Papin, in 1690, proposed steam as a universal motive
power, invented a steam engine having a piston and a safety valve, and
even a crude paddle steamer, which it is said was tried in 1707 on the
river Fulda. Then in 1698 came Thomas Savery, who patented a steam
engine that was used in draining mines.
The eighteenth century thus commenced with a practical knowledge of the
power of steam and of means for controlling and working it.
Then followed the combined invention of Newcomen, Cawley and Savery, in
1705, of the most successful pumping engine up to that time. In this
engine a cylinder was employed for receiving the steam from a separate
boiler. There was a piston in the cylinder driven up by the steam
admitted below it, aided by a counterpoise at one end of an engine beam.
The steam was then cut off from the boiler and condensed by the
introduction beneath the piston of a jet of water, and the condensed
steam and water drawn off by a pipe. Atmospheric pressure forced the
piston down. The piston and pump rods were connected to the opposite
ends of a working beam of a pumping engine, as in some modern engines.
Gauge cocks to indicate the height of water, and a safety valve to
regulate the pressure of steam, were employed. Then came the ingenious
improvement of the boy Humphrey Potter, connecting the valve gear with
the engine beam by cords, so as to do automatically what he was set to
do by hand, and the improvement on that of the Beighton plug rod. Still
further improved by others, the Newcomen engine came into use through
out Europe.
Jonathan Hulls patented in England in 1736 a marine steam engine, and in
1737 published a description of a Newcomen engine applied to his system
for towing ships. William Henry, of Pennsylvania, tried a model
steamboat on the Conestoga river in 1763.
This was practically the state of the art, in 1763, when James Watt
entered the field. His brilliant inventions harnessed steam to more than
pumping engines, made it a universal servant in manifold industries, and
started it on a career which has revolutionized the trade and
manufactures of the world.
To understand what the nineteenth century has done in steam motive power
we must first know what Watt did in the eighteenth century, as he then
laid the foundation on which the later inventions have all been built.
Taking up the crude but successful working engine of Newcomen, a model
of which had been sent to him for repairs, he began an exhaustive study
of the properties of steam and of the means for producing and
controlling it. He found it necessary to devise a new system.
Watt saw that the alternate heating and cooling of the cylinder made the
engine work slowly and caused an excessive consumption of steam. He
concluded that "the cylinder should always be as hot as the steam that
entered it." He therefore closed the cylinder and provided a separate
condensing vessel into which the steam was led after it raised the
piston. He provided an air-tight jacket for the cylinder, to maintain
its heat. He added a tight packing in the cylinder-head for the
piston-rod to move through, and a steam-tight stuffing-box on the top of
the cylinder. He caused the steam to alternately enter below and above
the piston and be alternately condensed to drive the piston down as well
as up, and this made the engine double-acting, increasing its power and
speed. He converted the reciprocating motion of the piston into a rotary
motion by the adoption of the crank, and introduced the well-known
parallel motion, and many other improvements. In short, he demonstrated
for the first time by a practical and efficient engine that the
expansive force of steam could be used to drive all ordinary machinery.
He then secured his inventions by patents against piracy, and sustained
them successfully in many a hard-fought battle. It had taken him the
last quarter of the 18th century to do all these things.
Watt was the proper precursor of the nineteenth century inventions, as
in him were combined the power and attainments of a great scientist and
the genius of a great mechanic. The last eighteen years of his life were
passed in the 19th century, and he was thus enabled to see his
inventions brought within its threshold and applied to those arts which
have made this age so glorious in mechanical achievements.
Watt so fitly represents the class of modern great inventors in his
character and attainments that the description of him by Sir Walter
Scott is here pertinent as a tribute to that class, and as a delineation
of the general character of those benefactors of his race of which he
was so conspicuous an example:--
Says Sir Walter:--
"Amidst this company stood Mr. Watt, the man whose genius discovered
the means of multiplying our national resources to a degree, perhaps,
even beyond his own stupendous powers of calculation and combination;
bringing the treasures of the abyss to the summit of the earth--giving
to the feeble arm of man the momentum of an Afrite--commanding
manufactures to rise--affording means of dispensing with that time and
tide which wait for no man--and of sailing without that wind which
defied the commands and threats of Xerxes himself. This potent
commander of the elements--this abridger of time and space--this
magician, whose cloudy machinery has produced a change in the world,
the effects of which, extraordinary as they are, are perhaps only
beginning to be felt--was not only the most profound man of science,
the most successful combiner of powers and calculator of numbers, as
adapted to practical purposes, was not only one of the most generally
well-informed, but one of the best and kindest of human beings."
The first practical application of steam as a working force was to
pumping, as has been stated. After Watt's system was devised,
suggestions and experiments as to road locomotives and carriages were
made, and other applications came thick and fast. A French officer,
Cugnot, in 1769 and 1770, was the first to try the road carriage engine.
Other prominent Frenchmen made encouraging experiments on small
steamboats--followed in 1784-86 by James Rumsey and John Fitch in
America in the same line. Watt patented a road engine in 1784. About the
same time his assistant, Murdock, completed and tried a model locomotive
driven by a "grasshopper" engine. Oliver Evans, the great American
contemporary of Watt, had in 1779 devised a high-pressure non-condensing
steam engine in a form still used. In 1786-7 he obtained in Pennsylvania
and Maryland patents for applying steam to driving flour mills and
propelling waggons. Also about this time, Symington, the Scotchman,
constructed a working model of a steam carriage, which is still
preserved in the museum at South Kensington, London. Symington and his
fellow Scotchmen, Miller and Taylor, in 1788-89 also constructed working
steamboats. In 1796 Richard Trevithick, a Cornish marine captain, was
producing a road locomotive. The century thus opened with activity in
steam motive power. The "scantlings" of the Marquis of Worcester were
now being converted into complete structures. And so great was the
activity and the number of inventors that he is a daring man who would
now decide priority between them. The earliest applications in this
century of steam power were in the line of road engines.
On Christmas eve of 1801, Trevithick made the initial trip with the
first successful steam road locomotive through the streets of Camborne
in Cornwall, carrying passengers. In one of his trips he passed into the
country roads and came to a tollgate through which a frightened keeper
hastily passed him without toll, hailing him as the devil.
Persistent efforts continued to be made to introduce a practical steam
road carriage in England until 1827. After Trevithick followed
Blenkinsop, who made a locomotive which ran ten miles an hour. Then came
Julius Griffith, in 1821, of Brompton, who patented a steam carriage
which was built by Joseph Bramah, one of the ablest mechanics of his
time. Gordon, Brunton and Gurney attempted a curious and amusing steam
carriage, resembling a horse in action--having jointed legs and feet,
but this animal was not successful. Walter Hancock, in 1827, was one of
the most persistent and successful inventors in this line; but bad roads
and an unsympathetic public discouraged inventors in their efforts to
introduce steam road carriages, and their attention was turned to the
locomotive to run on rails or tracks especially prepared for them.
Wooden and iron rails had been introduced a century before for heavy
cars and wagons in pulling loads from mines and elsewhere, but when at
the beginning of the century it had been found that the engines of Watt
could be used to drag such loads, it was deemed necessary to make a rail
having its top surface roughened with ridges and the wheels of the
engine and cars provided with teeth or cogs to prevent anticipated
slipping.
In England, Blackett and George Stephenson discovered that the adhesion
of smooth wheels to smooth rails was sufficient. Without overlooking the
fact that William Hendley built and operated a locomotive called the
_Puffing Billy_ in 1803, and Hackworth one a little later, yet to the
genius of Stephenson is due chiefly the successful introduction of the
modern locomotive. His labours and inventions continued from 1812 for
twenty years, and culminated at two great trials: the first one on the
Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1829, when he competed with
Hackworth and Braithwaite and Ericsson, and with the _Rocket_ won the
race; and the second at the opening of the same road in 1830, when with
the _Northumbrian_, at the head of seven other locomotives and a long
train of twenty-eight carriages, in which were seated six hundred
passengers, he ran the train successfully between the two towns.
On this occasion Mr. Huskisson, Home Secretary in the British Cabinet,
while the cars were stopping to water the engines, and he was out on the
track talking with the Duke of Wellington, was knocked down by one of
the engines and had one of his legs crushed. Placed on board of the
_Northumbrian_, it was driven at the rate of thirty-six miles an hour by
Stephenson to Eccles. Mr. Huskisson died there that night. This was its
first victim, and the greatest speed yet attained by a locomotive.
The year 1829 therefore can be regarded as the commencement of the life
of the locomotive for transportation of passengers. The steam blast
thrown into the smokestack by Hackworth, the tubular boiler of Seguin
and the link motion of Stephenson were then, as they now are, the
essential features of locomotives.
In the meantime America had not been idle. The James Watt of America,
Oliver Evans, in 1804 completed a flat-bottomed boat to be used in
dredging at the Philadelphia docks, and mounting it on wheels drove it
by its own steam engine through the streets to the river bank. Launching
the craft, he propelled it down the river by using the same engine to
drive the paddle wheels. He gave to this engine the strange name of
_Oruktor Amphibolos_.
John C. Stevens of New Jersey was, in 1812, urging the legislature of
the State of New York to build railways, and asserting that he could see
nothing to hinder a steam carriage from moving with a velocity of one
hundred miles an hour. In 1829 George Stephenson in England had made for
American parties a locomotive called _The Stourbridge Lion_, which in
that year was brought to America and used on the Delaware and Hudson R.
R. by Horatio Allen. Peter Cooper in the same year constructed a
locomotive for short curves, for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.
Returning now to steam navigation:--Symington again entered the field in
1801-2 and constructed for Lord Dundas a steamboat, named after his
wife, the _Charlotte Dundas_, for towing on a canal, which was
successfully operated.
Robert Fulton, an American artist, and subsequently a civil engineer,
built a steamboat on the Seine in 1803, assisted by R. Livingston, then
American Minister to France. Then in 1806 Fulton, having returned to the
United States, commenced to build another steamboat, in which he was
again assisted by Livingston, and in which he placed machinery made by
Boulton and Watt in England. This steamboat, named the _Clermont_, was
130 ft. long, 18 ft. beam, 7 ft. depth and 160 tons burden. It made its
first trip on the Hudson, from New York to Albany and return, in August,
1807, and subsequently made regular trips. It was the first commercially
successful steamboat ever made, as George Stephenson's was the first
commercially successful locomotive. In the meantime Col. John Stevens of
New Jersey was also at work on a steamboat, and had in 1804 built such a
boat at his shops, having a screw propeller and a flue boiler. Almost
simultaneously with Fulton he brought out the _Ph[oe]nix_, a side-wheel
steamer having hollow water lines and provided with feathering paddle
wheels, and as Fulton and Livingston had a monopoly of the Hudson,
Stevens took his boat by sea from New York around to Delaware bay and up
the Delaware river. This was in 1808, and was the first sea voyage ever
made by a steam vessel.
Transatlantic steamship navigation was started in 1819. A Mr.
Scarborough of Savannah, Ga., in 1818 purchased a ship of about three
hundred and fifty tons burden, which was named the _Savannah_. Equipped
with engine and machinery it steamed out of New York Harbour on the 27th
day of March, 1819, and successfully reached Savannah, Georgia. On the
20th of May in the same year she left Savannah for Liverpool, making the
trip in 22 days. From Liverpool she went to Copenhagen, Stockholm, St.
Petersburg, Cronstadt and Arundel, and from the latter port returned to
Savannah, making the passage in twenty-five days.
But Scottish waters, and the waters around other coasts of the British
Islands, had been traversed by steamboats before this celebrated trip of
the _Savannah_. Bell's steamboat between Glasgow and Greenock in 1812
was followed by five others in 1814; and seven steamboats plied on the
Thames in 1817.
So the locomotives and the steamboats and steamships continued to
multiply, and when the first forty years of the century had been reached
the Iron Horse was fairly installed on the fields of Europe and America,
and the rivers and the oceans were ploughed by its sisters, the steam
vessels.
It was in 1840 that the famous Cunard line of transatlantic steamers was
established, soon followed by the Collins line and others.
A few years before, John C. Stevens in America and John Ericsson in
England had brought forward the screw propeller; and Ericsson was the
first to couple the engine to the propeller shaft. It succeeded the
successful paddle wheels of Fulton in America and Bell in England.
The nineteenth century is the age of kinetic energy: the energy of
either solid, liquid, gaseous or electrical matter transformed into
useful work.
It has been stated by that eminent specialist in steam engineering,
Prof. R. H. Thurston, that "the steam engine is a machine which is
especially designed to transform energy originally dormant or potential
into active and useful available kinetic energy;" and that the great
problem in this branch of science is "to construct a machine which shall
in the most perfect manner possible convert the kinetic energy of heat
into mechanical power, the heat being derived from the combustion of
fuel, and steam being the receiver and conveyor of that heat."
Watt and his contemporaries regarded heat as a material substance called
"Phlogiston." The modern kinetic theory of heat was a subsequent
discovery, as elsewhere explained.
The inventors of the last part of the eighteenth century and of the
nineteenth century have directed their best labours to construct an
engine as above defined by Thurston.
First as to the boiler: Efforts were made first to get away from the
little old spherical boiler of Hero. In the 18th century Smeaton devised
the horizontal lengthened cylindrical boiler traversed by a flue. Oliver
Evans followed with two longitudinal flues. Nathan Read of Salem,
Massachusetts, in 1791, invented a tubular boiler in which the flues and
gases are conducted through tubes passing through the boiler into the
smokestack. Such boilers are adapted for portable stationary engines,
locomotives, fire and marine engines, and the fire is built within the
boiler frame. Then in the 19th century came the use of sectional
boilers--a combination of small vessels instead of a large common one,
increasing the strength while diminishing capacity--to obtain high
pressure of steam. Then came improved weighted and other safety valves
to regulate and control this pressure. The compound or double cylinder
high-pressure engine of Hornblower of England, in 1781, and the
high-pressure non-condensing steam engine devised by Evans in 1779, were
reconstructed and improved in the early part of the century.
To give perfect motion and the slightest friction to the piston; to
regulate the supply of steam to the engine by proper valves; to
determine such supply by many varieties of governors and thus control
the speed; to devise valve gear which distributes the steam through its
cycles of motion by which to admit the steam alternately to each end of
the steam cylinder as the piston moves backward and forward, and exhaust
valves to open and close the parts through which the steam escapes; to
automatically operate such valves; to condense the escaping steam and to
remove the water of condensation; to devise powerful steam brakes--these
are some of the important details on which inventors have exercised
their keenest wits. Then again the extensive inventions of the century
have given rise to a great classification to designate their forms or
their uses: condensing and non-condensing, high-pressure or
low-pressure--the former term being applied to engines supplied with
steam of 50 lbs. pressure to the square inch and upward, and the latter
to engines working under 40 lbs. pressure--and the low pressure are
nearly always the condensing and the high pressure the non-condensing;
reciprocating and rotary--the latter having a piston attached to a shaft
and revolving within a cylinder of which the axis is parallel with the
axis of rotation of the piston.
Direct acting, where the piston rod acts directly upon the connecting
rod and through it upon the crank, without the intervention of a beam or
lever; oscillating, in which the piston rods are attached directly to
the crank pin and as the crank revolves the cylinder oscillates upon
trunnions, one on each side of it, through which the steam enters and
leaves the steam chest.
Then as to their use, engines are known as stationary, pumping,
portable, locomotive or marine.
The best-known engine of the stationary kind is the Corliss, which is
very extensively used in the United States and Europe.
Among other later improvements is the duplex pumping engine, in which
one engine controls the valve of the other; compensating devices for
steam pumping, by which power is accumulated by making the first half of
the stroke of the steam piston assist in moving the piston the other
half of the stroke during the expansion of steam; steam or air hand
hammers on which the piston is the hammer and strikes a tool projecting
through the head into the cylinder; rock drilling, in which the movement
of the valves is operated by the piston at any portion of its stroke;
shaft governors, in which the eccentric for operating the engine valves
is moved around or across the main or auxiliary shaft; multiple
cylinders, in which several cylinders, either single or double, are
arranged to co-operate with a common shaft; impact rotary, known as
steam turbines, a revival in some respects of Hero's engine. And then,
finally, the delicate and ingenious bicycle and automobile steam
engines.
Then there are steam sanding devices for locomotives by which sand is
automatically fed to the rails at the same time the air brake is
applied.
Starting valves used for starting compound locomotives on ascending
steep grades, in which both low and high pressure cylinders are supplied
with live steam, and when the steam, exhausted from either high or low
pressure cylinders into the receivers, has reached a predetermined
pressure, the engine works on the compound principle. Single acting
compound engines, in which two or more cylinders are arranged tandem,
the steam acting only in one direction, and the exhaust steam of one
acting upon the piston in the cylinder next of the series, are arranged
in pairs, so that while one is acting downward the other is acting
upward.
Throttle valves automatically closed upon the bursting of a pipe, or the
breaking of machinery, are operated by electricity, automatically, or by
hand at a distance.
Napoleon, upon his disastrous retreat from Moscow, anxious to reach
Paris as soon as possible, left his army on the way, provided himself
with a travelling and sleeping carriage, and with relays of fresh horses
at different points managed, by extraordinary strenuous efforts day and
night, to travel from Smorgoni to Paris, a distance of 1000 miles,
between the 5th and 10th of December, 1812. This was at the average rate
of about two hundred miles a day, or eight or nine miles an hour. It was
a most remarkable ride for any age by horse conveyance.
Within the span of a man's life after that event any one could take a
trip of that distance in twenty-four hours, with great ease and comfort,
eating and sleeping on the car, and with convenient telegraph and
telephone stations along the route by which to comunicate by pen, or
word of mouth, with distant friends at either end of the journey.
If Napoleon had deemed it best to have continued his journey across the
Atlantic to America he would have been compelled to pass several weeks
on an uncomfortable sailing vessel. Now, a floating palace would await
him which would carry him across in less than six days.
Should mankind be seized with a sudden desire to replace all the
locomotives in the world by horse power it would be utterly impossible
to do it. It was recently estimated that there were one hundred and
fifty thousand locomotives in use on the railroads of the world; and as
a fair average would give them five hundred horse power each, it will be
seen that they are the equivalent of seventy-five million horses.
Space and time will not admit of minute descriptions, or hardly a
mention, of the almost innumerable improvements of the century in steam.
Having seen the principles on which these inventions have been
constructed, enumerated the leading ones and glanced at the most
prominent facts in their history, we must refer the seeker for more
particulars to those publications of modern patent offices, in which
each regiment and company of this vast army is embalmed in its own
especial and ponderous volume.
A survey of the field will call to mind, however, the eloquent words of
Daniel Webster:--
"And, last of all, with inimitable power, and with a 'whirlwind sound'
comes the potent agency of steam. In comparison with the past, what
centuries of improvement has this single agent compressed in the short
compass of fifty years! Everywhere practicable, everywhere efficient, it
has an arm a thousand times stronger than that of Hercules, and to which
human ingenuity is capable of fitting a thousand times as many hands as
belonged to Briareus. Steam is found triumphant in operation on the
seas; and under the influence of its strong propulsion, the gallant
ship,
'Against the wind, against the tide
Still steadies with an upright keel.'
It is on the rivers, and the boatman may repose upon his oars; it is on
highways, and exerts itself along the courses of land conveyances; it is
at the bottom of mines, a thousand feet below the earth's surface; it is
in the mills and in the workshops of the trades. It rows, it pumps, it
excavates, it carries, it draws, it lifts, it hammers, it spins, it
weaves, it prints. It seems to say to men, at least to the class of
artisans: 'Leave off your manual labour, give up your bodily toil;
bestow but your skill and reason to the directing of my power and I will
bear the toil, with no muscle to grow weary, no nerve to relax, no
breast to feel faintness!' What further improvement may still be made in
the use of this astonishing power it is impossible to know, and it were
vain to conjecture. What we do know is that it has most essentially
altered the face of affairs, and that no visible limit yet appears
beyond which its progress is seen to be impossible."
CHAPTER VIII.
ENGINEERING AND TRANSPORTATION.
The field of service of a civil engineer has thus been eloquently stated
by a recent writer in _Chambers's Journal_:
"His duties call upon him to devise the means for surmounting obstacles
of the most formidable kind. He has to work in the water, over the
water, and under the water; to cause streams to flow; to check them from
overflowing; to raise water to a great height; to build docks and walls
that will bear the dashing of waves; to convert dry land into harbours,
and low water shores into dry land; to construct lighthouses on lonely
rocks; to build lofty aqueducts for the conveyance of water, and
viaducts, for the conveyance of railway trains; to burrow into the
bowels of the earth with tunnels, shafts, pits and mines; to span
torrents and ravines with bridges; to construct chimneys that rival the
loftiest spires and pyramids in height; to climb mountains with roads
and railways; to sink wells to vast depths in search of water. By
untiring patience, skill, energy and invention, he produces in these
several ways works which certainly rank among the marvels of human
power."
The pyramids of Egypt, the roads, bridges and aqueducts built by the
Chinese and by Rome; the great bridges of the Middle Ages, and
especially those built by that strange fraternal order known as the
"Brothers of the Bridge"; the ocean-defying lighthouses of a later
period--these, and more than these, attest the fact that there were
great engineers before the nineteenth century.
But the engineering of to-day is the hand-maid of all the Sciences; and
as they each have advanced during the century beyond all that was
imagined, or dreamed of as possible in former times, so have the labours
of engineering correspondingly multiplied. No longer are such labours
classified and grouped in one field, called Civil Engineering, but they
have been necessarily divided into great additional new and independent
fields, known as Steam Engineering, Mining Engineering, Hydraulic
Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Marine Engineering. Within each
of these fields are assembled innumerable appliances which are the
offspring of the inventive genius of the century just closed.
We have seen how one discovery, or the development of a certain art,
brings in its train and often necessitates other inventions and
discoveries. The development and dedication of the steam engine to the
transportation of goods and men called for improvements in the roads and
rails on which the engine and its load were to travel, and this demand
brought forth those modern railway bridges which are the finest examples
in the art of bridge making that the world has ever seen.
The greatest bridges of former ages were built of stone and solid
masonry. Now iron and steel have been substituted, and these light but
substantial frameworks span wide rivers and deep ravines with almost the
same speed and gracefulness that the spider spins his silken web from
limb to limb. These, too, waited for their construction on that next
turn in the wheel of evolution, which brought better processes in the
making of iron and steel, and better tools and appliances for working
metals, and in handling vast and heavy bodies.
The first arched iron bridge was over the Severn at Coalbrookdale,
England, erected by Abraham Darby in 1777. In 1793 one was erected by
Telford at Buildwas, and in the same year Burden completed an arch
across the weir at Sunderland. The most prominent classes of bridges in
which the highest inventive and constructive genius of the engineers of
the century are illustrated are known as the _suspension_, the _tubular_
and the _tubular arch_, the _truss and cantilever_.
Suspension bridges consisting of twisted vines, of iron chains, or of
bamboo, or cane, or of ropes, have been known in different parts of the
world from time immemorial, but they bear only a primitive and
suggestive resemblance to the great iron cable bridges of the nineteenth
century. The first notable structure of this kind was constructed by Sir
Samuel Brown, across the Tweed at Berwick, England, in 1819. Brown was
born in London in 1776 and died in 1852. He entered the navy at the age
of 18, was made commander in 1811, and retired as captain in 1842. We
have alluded to the spider's web, and Smiles, in his _Self Help_,
relates as an example of intelligent observation that while Capt Brown
was occupied in studying the character of bridges with the view of
constructing one of a cheap description to be thrown across the Tweed,
near which he lived, he was walking in his garden one dewy autumn
morning when he saw a tiny spider's web suspended across his path. The
idea immediately occurred to him of a bridge of iron wires. In 1829
Brown also was the engineer for suspension bridges built over the Esk at
Montrose and over the Thames at Hammersmith. Before that time, a span in
a bridge of 100 feet was considered remarkably long. Suspension bridges
are best adapted for long spans, and have been constructed with spans
more than twice as long as any other form. Sir Samuel Brown's bridge had
a span of 449 feet. This class of bridges is usually constructed with
chains or cables passing over towers, with the roadway suspended
beneath. The ends of the chains or cables are securely anchored. The
cables are then passed over towers, on which they are supported in
movable saddles, so that the towers are not overthrown by the strain on
the cables. Nice calculations have to be made as to the tension to be
placed on the cables, the allowance for deflection, and the equal
distribution of weight. The floor-way in the earlier bridges of this
type was supported by means of a series of equidistant vertical rods,
and was lacking stiffness, but this was remedied by trussing the road
bed, using inclined stays extending from the towers and partially
supporting the roadway for some distance out from the tower.
The next finest suspension bridge was constructed by Thomas Telford and
finished in 1826, across the Menai Strait to connect the island of
Anglesea with the mainland of Wales. Telford was born in Dumfriesshire,
Scotland, in 1757, and died in Westminster in 1834. Beginning life as a
stone mason, he rose by his own industry to be a master among architects
and a prince among builders of iron bridges, aqueducts, canals, tunnels,
harbours and docks.
The Menai bridge was composed of chains or wire ropes, each nearly a
third of a mile in length, and which descended 60 feet into sloping pits
or drifts, where they were screwed to cast-iron frames embedded in the
rocks. The span of the suspended central arch was 560 feet, and the
platform was 100 feet above high water. Seven stone arches of 52½
feet span make up the rest of the bridge.
But a suspension bridge was completed in 1834 by M. Challey of Lyon over
the Saane at Fribourg, Switzerland, which greatly surpassed the Menai
bridge. The span is 880 feet from pier to pier, and the roadway is 167
feet above the river. It is supported by four iron wire cables, each
consisting of 1056 wires. It was tested by placing 15 pieces of
artillery, drawn by 50 horses and accompanied by 300 men crowded
together as closely as possible, first at the centre, and then at each
extreme, causing a depression of 39½ inches, but no sensible
oscillation was experienced.
Isambard K. Brunel was another great engineer, who constructed a
suspension bridge at the Isle of Bourbon in 1823, and the Charing Cross
over the Thames at Hungerford in 1845, which was a footbridge, having a
span of 675 feet, the longest span of any bridge in England. Then
followed finer and larger suspension bridges in other parts of the
world. It was across the Niagara in front of the great falls that in
1855 British America and the United States were joined by a magnificent
suspension bridge, one of the finest in the world, and the two English
speaking countries were then physically and commercially united. At the
opening of the bridge, one portion of which was for a railway, the
shriek of the locomotive and the roar of the train mingled with the roar
of the wild torrent 250 feet below. The bridge, 800 feet long, is a
single span, supported by four enormous cables of wire stretching from
the Canadian cliff to the opposite United States cliff. The cables pass
over the tops of lofty stone towers arising from these cliffs, and each
cable consists of no less than 4,000 distinct wires. The roadway hangs
from these cables, suspended by 624 vertical rods.
The engineer of this bridge was John A. Roebling, a native of Prussia,
born there in 1806, and who died in New York in 1869. He was educated at
the Polytechnic School in Berlin, and emigrated to America at the age of
25. His labors were first as a canal and railway engineer, then he
became the inventor and manufacturer of a new form of wire rope, and
then turned his attention to the construction of aqueducts and
suspension bridges. After the Niagara bridge, above described, he
commenced another bridge of greater dimensions over the same river,
which was finished within two or three years. His next work was the
splendid suspension bridge at Cincinnati, Ohio, which has a clear span
of 1057 feet. In 1869, in connection with his son, Washington A.
Roebling, he commenced that magnificent suspension bridge to unite the
great cities of New York and Brooklyn, and which, by its completion,
resulted in the consolidation of those cities as Greater New York. The
Roeblings, father and son, were to the engineering of America what
George Stephenson and his son Robert were to the locomotive and railway
and bridge engineering of Great Britain.
The Brooklyn bridge, known also as the East River bridge, was formally
opened to the public on the 24th of May 1883. Most enormous and
unexpected technical difficulties were met and overcome in its
construction. Its total length is nearly 6,000 feet. The length of the
suspended structure from anchorage to anchorage is 3,454 feet. A
statement of the general features of this bridge indicates the nature of
the construction of such bridges as a class, and distinguishes them from
the comparatively simple forms of past ages. This structure is supported
by two enormous towers, having a height of 276 feet above the surface of
the water, carrying at their tops the saddles which support the cables,
and having a span between them of 1,595 feet. The towers are each
pierced by two archways, 31½ feet wide, and 120½ feet high,
through which openings passes the floor of the bridge at the height of
118 feet above high water mark. There are four supporting cables, each
16 inches in diameter, and each composed of about 5,000 single wires.
The wire is one-eighth size; 278 single wires are grouped into a rope,
and 19 ropes bunched to form a cable. The iron saddles at the top of the
lofty towers, and on which the cables rest, are made movable to permit
its expansion and compression--and they glide through minute distances
on iron rollers in saddle plates embedded and anchored in the towers, in
response to strains and changes of temperature. The enormous cables pass
from the towers shoreward to their anchorages 930 feet away, and which
are solid masses of masonry, each 132 x 119 feet at base and top, 89
feet high, and weighing 60,000 tons. The bridge is divided into five
avenues: one central one for foot passengers, two outer ones for
vehicles, and the others for the street cars. The cost of the bridge was
nearly $15,000,000.
Twenty fatal and many disabling accidents occurred during the
construction of the bridge. The great engineer Roebling was the first
victim to an accident. He had his foot crushed while laying the
foundation of one of the stone piers, and died of lockjaw.
It was necessary to build up the great piers by the aid of caissons,
which are water-tight casings built of timber and metal and sunk to the
river bed and sometimes far below it, within which are built the
foundations of piers or towers, and into which air is pumped for the
workmen. A fire in one of the caissons, which necessitated its flooding
by water, and to which the son, Washington Roebling, was exposed,
resulted in prostrating him with a peculiar form of caisson disease,
which destroyed the nerves of motion without impairing his intellectual
faculties. But, although disabled from active work, Mr. Roebling
continued to superintend the vast project through the constant mediation
of his wife.
_Tubular Bridges._--These are bridges formed by a great tube or hollow
beam through the center of which a roadway or railway passes. The name
would indicate that the bridge was cylindrical in form, and this was the
first idea. But it was concluded after experiment that a rectangular
form was the best, as it is more rigid than either a cylindrical or
elliptical tube. The adoption of this form was due to Fairbairn, the
celebrated English inventor and engineer of iron structures. The Menai
tubular railway bridge, adjacent to the suspension bridge of Telford
across the same strait, and already described, was the first example of
this type of bridge. Robert Stephenson was the engineer of this great
structure, aided by the suggestions of Fairbairn and other eminent
engineers. This bridge was opened for railway traffic in March, 1850. It
was built on three towers and shore abutments. The width of the strait
is divided by these towers into four spans--two of 460 feet each, and
two of 230 feet. In appearance, the bridge looked like one huge, long,
narrow iron box, but it consisted really of four bridges, each made of a
pair of rectangular tubes, and through one set of tubes the trains
passed in going in one direction, and through the other set in going the
opposite direction. These ponderous tubes were composed of wrought-iron
plates, from three-eighths to three-fourths of an inch thick, the
largest 12 feet in length, riveted together and stiffened by angle
irons. They varied in height--the central ones being the highest and
those nearest the shore the lowest. The central ones are 30 feet high,
and the inner ones about 22 feet. Their width was about 14 feet. They
were built upon platforms on the Caernarvon shore, and the great problem
was how to lift them and put them in place, especially the central ones,
which were 460 feet in length. Each tube weighed 1,800 pounds, and they
were to be raised 192 feet. This operation has been described as "the
grandest lift ever effected in engineering." It was accomplished by
means of powerful hydraulic presses. Another and still grander example
of this style of bridge is the Victoria at Montreal, Canada. This also
was designed by Robert Stephenson and built under his direction by James
Hodges of Montreal. Work was commenced in 1854 and it was completed in
December, 1859, and opened for travel in 1860. It consists of 24 piers,
242 feet apart, except the centre one, from which the span is 330 feet.
The tube is in sections and quadrangular in form. Every plate and piece
of iron was made and punched in England and brought across the Atlantic.
In Canada little remained to be done but to put the parts together and
in position. This, however, was in itself a Herculean task. The enormous
structure was to be placed sixty feet above the swift current of the
broad St. Lawrence, and wherein huge masses of ice, each block from
three to five feet in thickness, accumulated every winter. The work was
accomplished by the erection of a vast rigid stage of timber, on which
the tubes were built up plate by plate. When all was completed the great
staging was removed, and the mighty tube rested alone and secure upon
its massive wedge-faced piers rising from the bedrock of the flood
below.
_The Tubular Arch Bridge._--This differs from the tubular bridge proper,
in that the former consists of a bridge the body of which is supported
by a tubular archway of iron and steel, whereas in the latter the body
of the bridge itself is a tube. The tubular arch is also properly
classed as a girder bridge because the great tube which covers the span
is simply an immense beam or girder, which supports the superstructure
on which the floor of the bridge is laid. A fine illustration of this
style of bridge is seen in what is known as the aqueduct bridge over
Rock Creek at Washington, D. C., in which the arch consists of two
cast-iron jointed pipes, supporting a double carriage and a double
street car way, and through which pipes all the water for the supply of
the City of Washington passes. General M. C. Meigs was the engineer.
Another far grander illustration of such a structure, in combination
with the truss system, is that of the Illinois and St. Louis bridge,
across the Mississippi, of which Captain James B. Eads was the engineer.
There are three great spans, the central one of which has a length of
about 520 feet, and the others a few feet less. Four arches form each
span, each arch consisting of an upper and lower curved member or rib,
extending from pier to pier, and each member composed of two parallel
steel tubes.
_Truss and truss arched bridges._--These, for the most part, are those
quite modern forms of iron or wooden bridges in which a supplementary
frame work, consisting of iron rods placed obliquely, vertically or
diagonally, and cemented together, and with the main horizontal beams
either above or below the same, to produce a stiff and rigid structure,
calculated to resist strain from all directions.
Previous to the 19th century, the greatest bridges being constructed
mostly of solid masonry piers and arches, no demand for a bridge of this
kind existed; but after the use of wrought iron and steel became
extensive in bridge making, and as these apparently light and airy
frames may be extended, piece by piece across the widest rivers,
straits, and arms of the sea, a substitute for the great, expensive, and
frequent supporting piers became a want, and was supplied by the system
of trusses and truss arches. The truss system has also been applied to
the construction of vast modern bridges in places where timber is
accessible and cheap. Each different system invented bears the name of
its inventor. Thus, we have the Rider, the Fink, the Bollman, the
Whipple, the Howe, the Jones, the Linville, the McCallum, Towne's
lattice and other systems.
What is called the cantilever system has of late years to a great extent
superseded the suspension construction. This consists of beams or
girders extending out from the opposite piers at an upward diagonal
angle, and meeting at the centre over the span, and there solidly
connected together, or to horizontal girders, in such manner that the
compression load is thrown on to the supporting piers, upward strains
received at the centre, and side deflections provided against. It is
supposed that greater rigidity is obtained by this means than by the
suspension, and, like the suspension, great widths may be spanned
without an under supporting frame work. Two fine examples of this type
are found, one in a bridge across the Niagara adjacent to the suspension
bridge above described and one across the river Forth at Queens Ferry in
Scotland. The Niagara Bridge is a combination of cast steel and iron. It
was designed by C. C. Schneider and Edmund Hayes. It was built for a
double-track railroad. The total length of the bridge is 910 feet
between the centres of the anchorage piers. The cantilevers rest on two
gigantic steel towers, standing on massive stone piers 39 feet high. The
clear span between the towers is 470 feet, and the height of the bridge,
from the mad rush of waters to the car track is 239 feet.
Messrs Fowler and Baker were the engineers of the Forth railway bridge.
It was begun in 1883 and finished in 1890. It is built nearly all of
steel, and is one of the most stupendous works of the kind. It crosses
two channels formed by the island of Inchgarvie, and each of the channel
spans is 1710 feet in the clear and a clear headway of 150 feet under
the bridge. Three balanced cantilevers are employed, poised on four
gigantic steel tube legs supported on four huge masonry piers. The
height of the bridge above the piers is 330 feet. The cantilever portion
has the appearance of a vast elongated diamond. Steel lattice work of
girders, forms the upper side of the cantilever, while the under side
consists of a hollow curve approaching in form a quadrant of a circle
drawn from the base of the legs or struts to the ends of the cantilever.
Such is the growth of these great bridges with their tremendous spans
across which man is spinning his iron webs, that when seen at night with
a fiery engine pulling its thundering train across in the darkness, one
is reminded of Milton's description, "over the dark abyss whose boiling
gulf tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length, from Hell continued,
reaching the utmost orb of this frail world."
The _lighthouses_ of the century, in masonry, do not greatly excel in
general principles those of preceding ones, as at Eddystone, designed by
Smeaton. Nicholas Douglass, however, invented a new system of
dovetailing, and great improvements have been made in the system of
illuminating.
Lighthouses are also distinguished from those of preceding centuries by
the substitution of iron and cast steel for masonry. The first cast-iron
lighthouse was put up at Point Morant, Jamaica, in 1842. Since then they
have taken the form of iron skeleton towers.
One of the latest and most picturesque of lighthouses is that of
Bartholdi's statue of Liberty enlightening the world, the gift of the
French government to the United States, framed by M. Eiffel, the great
French engineer, and set up by the United States at Bedloe's Island in
New York harbor. It consists of copper plates on a network of iron.
Although the statue is larger than any in the world of such composite
construction, its success as a lighthouse is not as notable as many
farther seaward.
In _excavating_, _dredging_ and _draining_, the inventions of the
century have been very numerous, but, like numerous advances in the
arts, such inventions, so far as great works are concerned, have
developed from and are closely related to steam engineering.
The making of roads, railroads, canals and tunnels has called forth
thousands of ingenious mechanisms for their accomplishment. A half dozen
men with a steam-power excavator or dredger can in one day perform a
greater extent of work than could a thousand men and a thousand horses
in a single day a few generations ago.
An excavating machine consisting of steel knives to cut the earth, iron
scoops, buckets and dippers to scoop it up, endless chains or cranes to
lift them, actuated by steam, and operated by a single engineer, will
excavate cubic yards of earth by the minute and at a cost of but a few
dollars a day.
Dredging machines of a great variety have been constructed. Drags and
scoops for elevating, and buckets, scrapers and shovels, and rotating
knives to first loosen the earth, suction pumps and pipes, which will
suck great quantities of the loosened earth through pipes to places to
be filled--these and kindred devices are now constantly employed to dig
and excavate, to deepen and widen rivers, to drain lands, to dig canals,
to make harbours, to fill up the waste places and to make courses for
water in desert lands.
Inventions for the excavating of clay, piling and burning it in a crude
state for ballast for railways, are important, especially for those
railways which traverse areas where clay is plentiful, and stones and
gravel are lacking.
Sinking shafts through quicksands by artificially freezing the sand, so
as to form a firm frozen wall immediately around the area where the
shaft is to be sunk, is a recent new idea.
Modern countries especially are waking up to the necessity of good
roads, not only as a necessary means of transportation, but as a
pre-requisite to decent civilisation in all respects. And, therefore,
great activity has been had in the last third of a century in invention
of machines for finishing and repairing roads.
In the matter of sewer construction, regarded now so necessary in all
civilised cities and thickly-settled communities as one of the means of
proper sanitation, great improvements have been made in deep sewerage,
in which the work is largely performed below the surface and with little
obstruction to street traffic.
In connection with excavating and dredging machines, mention should be
made of those great works in the construction of which they bore such
important parts, as drainage and land reclamation, such as is seen in
the modern extensions of land reclamation in Holland, in the Haarlem
lake district in the North part of England, the swamps of Florida and
the drainage of the London district; in modern tunnels such as the
Hoosac in America and the three great ones through the Alps: the Mont
Cenis, St. Gothard, and Arlberg, the work in which developed an entirely
new system of engineering, by the application of newly-discovered
explosives for blasting, new rock-drilling machinery, new
air-compressing machines for driving the drill machines and ventilating
the works, and new hydraulic and pumping machinery for sinking shafts
and pumping out the water.
The great canals, especially the Suez, developed a new system of canal
engineering. Thus by modern inventions of devices for digging and
blasting, dredging and draining and attendant operations, some of the
greatest works of man on earth have been produced, and evinced the
exercise of his highest inventive genius.
If one wishes an ocular demonstration of the wonders wrought in the 19th
century in the several domains of engineering, let him take a Pullman
train across the continent from New York to San Francisco. The distance
is 3,000 miles and the time is four days and four nights. The car in
which the passenger finds himself is a marvel of woodwork and
upholstery--a description of the machinery and processes for producing
which belongs to other arts. The railroad tracks upon which the vehicle
moves are in themselves the results of many inventions. There is the
width of the track, and it was only after a long and expensive contest
that countries and corporations settled upon a uniform gauge. The common
gauge of the leading countries and roads is now 4 feet 8½ inches. A
greater width is known as a broad gauge, a less width as a narrow gauge.
Then as to the rail: first the wooden, then the iron and now the steel,
and all of many shapes and weights. The T-rail invented by Birkensaw in
1820, having two flanges at the top to form a wide berth for the wheels
of the rolling stock, the vertical portion gripped by chairs which are
spiked to the ties, is the best known. Then the frogs, a V-shaped device
by which the wheels are guided from one line of rails to another, when
they form angles with each other; the car wheel made with a flange or
flanges to fit the rail, and the railway gates, ingenious contrivances
that guard railway crossings and are operated automatically by the
passing trains, but more commonly by watchmen. The car may be lighted
with electricity, and as the train dashes along at the rate of 30 to 80
miles an hour, it may be stopped in less than a minute by the touch of
the engineer on an air brake. Is it midwinter and are mountains of snow
encountered? They disappear before the railway snow-plough more quickly
than they came. It passes over bridges, through tunnels, across
viaducts, around the edges of mountain peaks, every mile revealing the
wondrous work of man's inventive genius for encompassing the earth with
speed, safety and comfort. Over one-half million miles of these railway
tracks are on the earth's surface to-day!
Not only has the railway superseded horse power in the matter of
transportation to a vast extent, but other modes of transportation are
taking the place of that useful animal. The old-fashioned stage coach,
and then the omnibus, were successively succeeded by the street car
drawn by horses, and then about twenty years ago the horse began to be
withdrawn from that work and the cable substituted.
_Cable transportation_ developed from the art of making iron wire and
steel wire ropes or cables. And endless cables placed underground,
conveyed over rollers and supported on suitable yokes, and driven from a
great central power house, came into use, and to which the cars were
connected by ingeniously contrived lever grips--operated by the driver
on the car. These great cable constructions, expensive as they were,
were found more economical than horse power. In fact, there is no
modernly discovered practical motive power but what has been found less
expensive both as to time and money than horse power. But the cable for
this purpose is now in turn everywhere yielding to electricity, the
great motor next to steam. The overhead cable system for the
transportation of materials of various descriptions in carriers, also
run by a central motor, is still very extensively used. The cable plan
has also been tried with some success in the propelling of canal boats.
_Canals_, themselves, although finding a most serious and in some
localities an entirely destructive rival in the railroad, have grown in
size and importance, and in appliances that have been substituted for
the old-style locks. The latest form of this device is what is known as
the pneumatic balance lock system.
It has been said by Octave Chanute that "Progress in civilisation may
fairly be said to be dependent upon the facilities for men to get about,
upon their intercourse with other men and nations, not only in order to
supply their mutual needs cheaply, but to learn from each other their
wants, their discoveries and their inventions." Next to the power and
means for moving people, come the immense and wonderful inventions for
lifting and loading, such as cranes and derricks, means for coaling
ships and steamers, for handling and storing the great agricultural
products, grain and hay, and that modern wonder, the _grain elevator_,
that dots the coasts of rivers, lakes and seas, receives the vast stores
of golden grain from thousands of steam cars that come to it laden from
distant plains and discharges it swiftly in mountain loads into vessels
and steamers to be carried to the multitudes across the seas, and to
satisfy that ever-continuing cry, "Give us this day our daily bread."
CHAPTER IX.
ELECTRICITY.
In 1900 the real nature of electricity appears to be as unknown as it
was in 1800.
Franklin in the eighteenth century defined electricity as consisting of
particles of matter incomparably more subtle than air, and which
pervaded all bodies. At the close of the nineteenth century electricity
defined as "simply a form of energy which imparts to material substances
a peculiar state or condition, and that all such substances partake more
or less of this condition."
These theories and the late discovery of Hertz that electrical energy
manifests itself in the form of waves, oscillations or vibrations,
similar to light, but not so rapid as the vibrations of light,
constitute about all that is known about the nature of this force.
Franklin believed it was a single fluid, but others taught that there
were two kinds of electricity, positive and negative, that the like
kinds were repulsive and the unlike kinds attractive, and that when
generated it flowed in currents.
Such terms are not now regarded as representing actual varieties of this
force, but are retained as convenient modes of expression, for want of
better ones, as expressing the conditions or states of electricity when
produced.
Electricity produced by friction, that is, developed upon the surface of
a body by rubbing it with a dissimilar body, and called frictional or
static electricity, was the only kind produced artificially in the days
of Franklin. What is known as galvanism, or animal electricity, also
takes its date in the 18th century, to which further reference will be
made. Since 1799 there have been discovered additional sources, among
which are voltaic electricity, or electricity produced by chemical
action, such as is manifested when two dissimilar metals are brought
near each other or together, and electrical manifestations produced by a
decomposing action, one upon the other through a suitable medium;
inductive electricity, or electricity developed or induced in one body
by its proximity to another body through which a current is flowing;
magnetic electricity, the conversion of the power of a magnet into
electric force, and the reverse of this, the production of magnetic
force by a current of electricity; and thermal electricity, or that
generated by heat. Electricity developed by these, or other means in
contra-distinction to that produced by friction, has been called
dynamic; but all electric force is now regarded as dynamic, in the sense
that forces are always in motion and never at rest.
Many of the manifestations and experiments in later day fields which, by
reason of their production by different means, have been given the names
of discovery and invention, had become known to Franklin and others, by
means of the old methods in frictional electricity. They are all,
however, but different routes leading to the same goal. In the midst of
the brilliant discoveries of modern times confronting us on every side
we should not forget the honourable efforts of the fathers of the
science.
We need not dwell on what the ancients produced in this line. It was a
single fact only:--The Greeks discovered that amber, a resinous
substance, when rubbed would attract lighter bodies to it.
In 1600 appeared the father of modern electricity--Dr. Gilbert of
Colchester, physician to Queen Elizabeth. He revived the one experiment
of antiquity, and added to it the further fact that many substances
besides amber, when rubbed, would manifest the same electric condition,
such as sulphur, sapphire, wax, glass and other bodies. And thus he
opened the field of electrodes. He was the first to use the terms,
electricity, electric and electrode, which he derived from the word
_elektron_, the Greek name for amber. He observed the actions of
magnets, and conjectured the fundamental identity of magnetism and
electricity. He arranged an electrometer, consisting of an iron needle
poised on a pivot, by which to note the action of the magnet. This was
about the time that Otto von Guericke of Magdeburg, Germany, was born.
He became a "natural" philosopher, and for thirty-five years was
burgomaster of his native town. He invented the air-pump, and he it was
who illustrated the force of atmospheric pressure by fitting together
two hollow brass hemispheres which, after the air within them had been
exhausted, could not be pulled apart. He also invented a barometer, and
as an astronomer suggested that the return of comets might be
calculated. He invented and constructed the first machine for generating
electricity. It consisted of a ball of sulphur rotated on an axis, and
which was electrified by friction of the hand, the ball receiving
negative electricity while the positive flowed through the person to the
earth. With this machine "he heard the first sound and saw the first
light in artificially excited electricity." The machine was improved by
Sir Isaac Newton and others, and before the close of that century was
put into substantially its present form of a round glass plate rotated
between insulated leather cushions coated with an amalgam of tin and
zinc, the positive or vitreous electricity thus developed being
accumulated on two large hollow brass cylinders with globular ends,
supported on glass pillars. Gray in 1729 discovered the conductive power
of certain substances, and that the electrical influence could be
conveyed to a distance by means of an insulated wire. This was the first
step towards the electric telegraph.
Dufay, the French philosopher and author, who in 1733-1737 wrote the
_Memoirs of the French Academy_, was, it seems, the first to observe
electrical attractions and repulsions; that electrified resinous
substances repelled like substances while they attracted bodies
electrified by contact with glass; and he, therefore, to the latter
applied the term _vitreous_ electricity and to the former the term
_resinous_ electricity. In 1745 Prof. Muschenbroeck of Leyden University
developed the celebrated Leyden jar. This is a glass jar coated both
inside and outside with tinfoil for about four-fifths of its height. Its
mouth is closed with a cork through which is passed a metallic rod,
terminating above in a knob and connected below with the inner coating
by a chain or a piece of tinfoil. If the inner coating be connected with
an electrical machine and the outer coating with the earth, a current of
electricity is established, and the inner coating receives what is
called a positive and the outer coating a negative charge. On connecting
the two surfaces by means of a metallic discharger having a
non-conducting handle a spark is obtained. Thus the Leyden jar is both a
collector and a condenser of electricity. On arranging a series of such
jars and joining their outer and inner surfaces, and connecting the
series with an electrical machine, a battery is obtained of greater or
less power according to the number of jars employed and the extent of
supply from the machine.
The principle of the Leyden jar was discovered by accident. Cuneus, a
pupil of Muschenbroeck, was one day trying to charge some water in a
glass bottle with electricity by connecting it with a chain to the
sparking knob of an electrical machine. Holding the bottle in one hand
he arranged the chain with the other, and received a violent shock. His
teacher then tried the experiment himself, with a still livelier and
more convincing result, whereupon he declared that he would not repeat
the trial for the whole Kingdom of France.
When the science of static electricity was thus far developed, with a
machine for generating it and a collector to receive it, many
experiments followed. Charles Morrison in 1753, in the _Scots Magazine_,
proposed a telegraph system of insulated wires with a corresponding
number of characters to be signalled between two stations. Other schemes
were proposed at different times down to the close of the century.
Franklin records among several other experiments with frictional
electricity accumulated by the Leyden jar battery the following results,
produced chiefly by himself: The existence of an attractive and a
repulsive action of electricity; the restoration of the equilibrium of
electrical force between electrified and non-electrified bodies, or
between bodies differently supplied with the force; the electroscope, a
body charged with electricity and used to indicate the presence and
condition of electricity in another body; the production of work, as the
turning of wheels, by which it was proposed a spit for roasting meat
might be formed, and the ringing of chimes by a wheel, which was done;
the firing of gunpowder, the firing of wood, resin and spirits; the
drawing off a charge from electrified bodies at a near distance by
pointed rods; the heating and melting of metals; the production of
light; the magnetising of needles and of bars of iron, giving rise to
the analogy of magnetism and electricity.
Franklin, who had gone thus far, and who also had drawn the lightning
from the clouds, identified it as electricity, and taught the mode of
its subjection, felt chagrined that more had not been done with this
subtle agent in the service of man. He believed, however, that the
day-spring of science was opening, and he seemed to have caught some
reflection of its coming light. Observing the return to life and
activity of some flies long imprisoned in a bottle of Madeira wine and
which he restored by exposure to the sun and air, he wrote that he
should like to be immersed at death with a few friends in a cask of
Madeira, to be recalled to life a hundred years thence to observe the
state of his country. It would not have been necessary for him to have
been embalmed that length of time to have witnessed some great
developments of his favorite science. He died in 1790, and it has been
said that there was more real progress in this science in the first
decade of the nineteenth century than in all previous centuries put
together.
Before opening the door of the 19th century, let us glance at one more
experiment in the 18th:
While the aged Franklin was dying, Dr Luigi Galvani of Bologna, an
Italian physician, medical lecturer, and learned author, was preparing
for publication his celebrated work, _De viribus Electricitatis in Motu
Musculari Commentarius_, in which he described his discovery made a few
years before of the action of the electric current on the legs and
spinal column of a frog hung on a copper nail. This discovery at once
excited the attention of scientists, but in the absence of any immediate
practical results the multitude dubbed him the "frog philosopher." He
proceeded with his experiments on animals and animal matter, and
developed the doctrine and theories of what is known as animal or
galvanic electricity. His fellow countryman and contemporary, Prof.
Volta of Pavia, took decided issue with Galvani and maintained that the
pretended animal electricity was nothing but electricity developed by
the contact of two different metals. Subsequent investigations and
discoveries have established the fact that both theories have truth for
their basis, and that electricity is developed both by muscular and
nervous energy as well as by chemical action. In 1799 Volta invented his
celebrated pile, consisting of alternate disks of copper and zinc
separated by a cloth moistened with a dilute acid; and soon after an
arrangement of cups--each containing a dilute acid and a copper and a
zinc plate placed a little distance apart, and thus dispensing with the
cloth. In both instances he connected the end plate of one kind with the
opposite end plate of the other kind by a wire, and in both arrangements
produced a current of electricity. To the discoveries, experiments, and
disputes of Galvani and Volta and to those of their respective
adherents, the way was opened to the splendid electrical inventions of
the century, and the discovery of a new world of light, heat, speech and
power. The discoveries of Galvani and Volta at once set leading
scientists at work. Fabroni of Florence, and Sir Humphry Davy and
Wollaston of England, commenced interesting experiments, showing that
rapid oxidation and chemical decomposition of the metals took place in
the voltaic pile.
By the discoveries of Galvani the physicians and physiologists were
greatly excited, and believed that by this new vital power the nature of
all kinds of nervous diseases could be explored and the remedy applied.
Volta's discovery excited the chemists. If two dissimilar metals could
be decomposed and power at the same time produced they contended that
practical work might be done with the force. In 1800 Nicholson and
Carlisle decomposed water by passing the electric current through the
same; Ritter decomposed copper sulphate, and Davy decomposed the
alkalies, potash and soda. Thus the art of electrolysis--the
decomposition of substances by the galvanic current, was established.
Later Faraday laid down its laws. Naturally inventions sprung up in new
forms of batteries. The pile and cup battery of Volta had been succeeded
by the trough battery--a long box filled with separated plates set in
dilute acid. The trough battery was used by Sir Humphry Davy in his
series of great experiments--1806-1808--in which he isolated the
metallic bases, calcium, sodium, potassium, etc. It consisted of 2000
double plates of copper and zinc, each having a surface of 32 square
inches. With this same trough battery Davy in 1812 produced the first
electric carbon light, the bright herald of later glories.
Among the most noted new batteries were Daniell's, Grove's and Bunsen's.
They are called the "two fluid batteries," because in place of a single
acidulated bath in which the dissimilar metals were before placed, two
different liquid solutions were employed.
John Frederick Daniell of London, noted for his great work,
_Meteorological Essays_, and other scientific publications, and as
Professor of Chemistry in King's College, in 1836, described how a
powerful and constant current of electricity may be continued for an
unlimited period by a battery composed of zinc standing in an acid
solution and a sheet of copper in a solution of sulphate of copper.
Sir William Robert Grove, first an English physician, then an eminent
lawyer, and then a professor of natural philosophy, and the first to
announce the great theory of the Correlation of Physical Forces, in 1839
produced his battery, much more powerful than any previous one, and
still in general use. In it zinc and platinum are the metals used--the
zinc bent into cylindrical form and placed in a glass jar containing a
weak solution of sulphuric acid, while the platinum stands in a porous
jar holding strong nitric acid and surrounded by the zinc. Among the
electrical discoveries of Grove were the decomposition by electricity of
water into free oxygen and hydrogen, the electricity of the flame of the
blow-pipe, electrical action produced by proximity, without contact, of
dissimilar metals, molecular movements induced in metals by the electric
current, and the conversion of electricity into mechanical force.
Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, a German chemist and philosopher and scientific
writer, who invented some of the most important aids to scientific
research of the century, who constructed the best working chemical
laboratory on the continent and founded the most celebrated schools of
chemistry in Europe, invented a battery, sometimes called the carbon
battery, in which the expensive pole of platinum in the Grove battery is
replaced by one of carbon. It was found that this combination gave a
greater current than that of zinc and platinum.
A great variety of useful voltaic batteries have since been devised by
others, too numerous to be mentioned here. There is another form of
battery having for its object the storing of energy by electrolysis, and
liberating it when desired, in the form of an electric current, and
known as an accumulator, or secondary, polarization, or storage battery.
Prof. Ritter had noticed that the two plates of metal which furnished
the electric current, when placed in the acid liquid and united, could
in themselves furnish a current, and the inventing of _storage_
batteries was thus produced. The principal ones of this class are
Gustave Planté's of 1860 and M. Camille Faure's of 1880. These have
still further been improved. Still another form are the _thermo-electric
batteries_, in which the electro-motive force is produced by the joining
of two different metals, connecting them by a wire and heating their
junctions. Thus, an electric current is obtained directly from heat,
without going through the intermediate processes of boiling water to
produce steam, using this steam to drive an engine, and using this
engine to turn a dynamo machine to produce power.
But let us retrace our steps:--As previously stated, Franklin had
experimented with frictional electricity on needles, and had magnetised
and polarised them and noticed their deflection; and Lesage had
established an experimental telegraph at Geneva by the same kind of
electricity more than a hundred years ago. But frictional electricity
could not be transmitted with power over long distances, and was for
practical purposes uncontrollable by reason of its great diffusion over
surfaces, while voltaic electricity was found to be more intense and
could be developed with great power along a wire for any distance. Fine
wires had been heated and even melted by Franklin by frictional
electricity, and now Ritter, Pfaff and others observed the same effect
produced on the conducting wires by a voltaic current; and Curtet, on
closing the passage with a piece of charcoal, produced a brilliant
light, which was followed by Davy's light already mentioned.
As early as 1802 an Italian savant, Gian D. Romagnosi of Trent, learning
of Volta's discovery, observed and announced in a public print the
deflection of the magnetic needle when placed near a parallel conductor
of the galvanic current. In the years 1819 and 1820 so many brilliant
discoveries and inventions were made by eminent men, independently and
together, and at such near and distant places, that it is hard telling
who and which was first. It was in 1819 that the celebrated Danish
physicist, Oersted of Copenhagen, rediscovered the phenomena that the
voltaic current would deflect a magnetic needle, and that the needle
would turn at right angles to the wire. In 1820 Prof. S. C. Schweigger
of Halle discovered that this deflecting force was increased when the
wire was wound several times round the needle, and thus he invented the
magnetising helix. He also then invented a galvano-magnetic indicator (a
single-wire circuit) by giving the insulated wire a number of turns
around an elongated frame longitudinally enclosing the compass needle,
thus multiplying the effect of the current upon the sensitive needle,
and converting it into a practical _measuring_ instrument--known as the
galvanometer, and used to observe the strength of currents. In the same
year Arago found that iron filings were attracted by a voltaic charged
wire; and Arago and Davy that a piece of soft iron surrounded spirally
by a wire through which such a current was passed would become magnetic,
attract to it other metals while in that condition, immediately drop
them the instant the current ceased, and that such current would
permanently magnetise a steel bar. The elements of the _electro-magnet_
had thus been produced. It was in that year that Ampère discovered that
magnetism is the circulation of currents of electricity at right angles
to the axis of the needle or bar joining the two poles of the magnet. He
then laid down the laws of interaction between magnets and electrical
currents, and in this same year he proposed an electric-magneto
telegraph consisting of the combination of a voltaic battery, conducting
wires, and magnetic needles, one needle for each letter of the alphabet.
The discoveries of Ampère as to the laws of electricity have been
likened to the discovery of Newton of the law of gravitation.
Still no practical result, that is, no useful machine, had been produced
by the electro-magnet.
In 1825 Sturgeon of England bent a piece of wire into the shape of a
horse-shoe, insulated it with a coating of sealing wax, wound a fine
copper wire around it, thus making a helix, passed a galvanic current
through the helix, and thus invented the first practical electro-magnet.
But Sturgeon's magnet was weak, and could not transmit power for more
than fifty feet. Already, however, it had been urged that Sturgeon's
magnet could be used for telegraphic purposes, and a futile trial was
made. In the field during this decade also labored the German professors
Gauss and Weber, and Baron Schilling of Russia. In 1829 Prof. Barlow of
England published an article in which he summarised what had been done,
and scientifically demonstrated to his own satisfaction that an
electro-magnetic telegraph was impracticable, and his conclusion was
accepted by the scientific world as a fact. This was, however, not the
first nor the last time that scientific men had predicted
impracticabilities with electricity which afterwards blossomed into full
success. But even before Prof. Barlow was thus arriving at his
discouraging conclusion, Prof. Joseph Henry at the Albany Institute in
the State of New York had commenced experiments which resulted in the
complete and successful demonstration of the power of electro-magnetism
for not only telegraph purposes but for almost every advancement that
has since been had in this branch of physics. In March 1829 he exhibited
at his Institute the magnetic "spool" or "bobbin," that form of coil
composed of tightly-wound, silk-covered wire which he had constructed,
and which since has been universally employed for nearly every
application of electro-magnetism, of induction, or of magneto-electrics.
And in the same year and in 1830 he produced those powerful magnets
through which the energy of a galvanic battery was used to lift hundreds
of tons of weight.
In view of all the facts now historically established, there can be no
doubt that previous to Henry's experiments the means for developing
magnetism in soft iron were imperfectly understood, and that, as found
by Prof. Barlow, the electro-magnet which then existed was inapplicable
and impracticable for the transmission of power to a distance. Prof.
Henry was the first to prove that a galvanic battery of "intensity" must
be employed to project the current through a long conductor, and that a
magnet of one long wire must be used to receive this current; the first
to magnetise a piece of soft iron at a distance and call attention to
its applicability to the telegraph; the first to actually sound a bell
at a distance by means of the electro-magnet; and the first to show that
the principles he developed were applicable and necessary to the
practical operation of an effective telegraph system.
Sturgeon, the parent of the electro-magnet, on learning of Henry's
discoveries and inventions, wrote: "Professor Henry has been enabled to
produce a magnetic force which totally eclipses every other in the whole
annals of magnetism; and no parallel is to be found since the miraculous
suspension of the celebrated oriental impostor in his iron coffin."
(_Philosophical Magazine and Annals_, 1832.)
The third decade was now prepared for the development of the telegraph.
As to the telegraph in its broadest sense, as a means for conveying
intelligence to a distance quickly and without a messenger, successful
experiments of that kind have existed from the earliest times:--from the
signal fires of the ancients; from the flag signals between ships at
sea, introduced in the seventeenth century by the Duke of York, then
Admiral of the English fleet, and afterwards James II of England; from
the semaphore telegraph of M. Chappe, adopted by the French government
in 1794, consisting of bars pivoted to an upright stationary post, and
made to swing vertically or horizontally to indicate certain signals;
and from many other forms of earlier and later days.
As to electricity as an agent for the transmission of signals, the idea
dates, as already stated, from the discovery of Stephen Gray in 1729,
that the electrical influence could be conveyed to a distance by the
means of an insulated wire. This was followed by the practical
suggestions of Franklin and others. But when, as we have seen, voltaic
electricity entered the field, electricity became a more powerful and
tractable servant, and distant intelligent signals became one of its
first labors.
The second decade was also made notable by the discovery and
establishment by George Simon Ohm, a German professor of Physics, of the
fundamental mathematical law of electricity: It has been expressed in
the following terms: (a) the current strength is equal to the
electro-motive force divided by the resistance; (b) the force is equal
to the current strength multiplied by the resistance; (c) the resistance
is equal to the force divided by the current strength.
The historical development and evolution of the telegraph may be now
summarized:--
1. The discovery of galvanic electricity by Galvani--1786-1790.
2. The galvanic or voltaic battery by Volta in 1800.
3. The galvanic influence on a magnetic needle by Romagnosi (1802)
Oersted (1820).
4. The galvanometer of Schweigger, 1820--the parent of the needle
system.
5. The electro-magnet by Arago and Sturgeon--1820-1825--the parent of
the magnet system.
Then followed in the third decade the important series of steps in the
evolution, consisting of:--
_First_, and most vital, Henry's discovery in 1829 and 1830 of the
"intensity" or spool-wound magnet, and its intimate relation to the
"intensity" battery, and the subordinate use of an armature as the
signalling device.
_Second_, Gauss's improvement in 1833 (or probably Schilling's
considerably earlier) of reducing the electric conductors to a single
circuit by the ingenious use of a dual sign so combined as to produce a
true alphabet.
_Third_, Weber's discovery in 1833 that the conducting wires of an
electric telegraph could be efficiently carried through the air without
any insulation except at their points of support.
_Fourth_, Daniell's invention of a "constant" galvanic battery in 1836.
_Fifth_, Steinheil's remarkable discovery in 1837 that the earth may
form the returning half of a closed galvanic circuit, so that a single
conducting wire is sufficient for all telegraphic purposes.
_Sixth_, Morse's adaptation of the armature and electro-magnet of Henry
as a recording instrument in 1837 in connection with his improvement in
1838 on the Schilling, Gauss and Steinheil alphabets by employing the
simple "dot and dash" alphabet in a single line. He was also assisted by
the suggestions of Profs. Dana and Gale. To which must be added his
adoption of Alfred Vail's improved alphabet, and Vail's practical
suggestions in respect to the recording and other instrumentalities.
To these should be added the efforts in England, made almost
simultaneously with those of Morse, of Wheatstone and Cook and Davy, who
were reaching the same goal by somewhat different routes.
Morse in 1837 commenced to put the results of his experiments and
investigations in the form of caveats, applications and letters patent
in the United States and in Europe. He struggled hard against
indifference and poverty to introduce his invention to the world. It was
not until 1844 that he reduced it to a commercial practical success. He
then laid a telegraph from Washington to Baltimore under the auspices of
the United States Government, which after long hesitation appropriated
$30,000 for the purpose. It was on the 24th day of May, 1844, that the
first formal message was transmitted on this line between the two cities
and recorded by the electro-magnet in the dot and dash alphabet, and
this was immediately followed by other messages on the same line.
Morse gathered freely from all sources of which he could avail himself
knowledge of what had gone before. He was not a scientific discoverer,
but an inventor, who, adding a few ideas of his own to what had before
been discovered, was the first to combine them in a practical useful
device. What he did as an inventor, and what anyone may do to constitute
himself an inventor, by giving to the world a device which is useful in
the daily work of mankind, as distinguished from the scientific
discoverer who stops short of successful industrial work, is thus stated
by the United States Supreme Court in an opinion sustaining the validity
of his patents, after all the previous art had been produced before
it:--
"Neither can the inquiries he made nor the information or advice he
received from men of science in the course of his researches impair his
right to the character of an inventor. No invention can possibly be
made, consisting of a combination of different elements of power,
without a thorough knowledge of the properties of each of them, and the
mode in which they operate on each other. And it can make no difference
in this respect, whether he derives his information from books, or from
conversation with men skilled in the science. If it were otherwise, no
patent in which a combination of different elements is used would ever
be obtained, for no man ever made such an invention without having first
obtained this information, unless it was discovered by some fortunate
accident. And it is evident that such an invention as the
electro-magnetic telegraph could never have been brought into action
without it; for a very high degree of scientific knowledge and the
nicest skill in the mechanic arts are combined in it, and were both
necessary to bring it into successful operation. The fact that Morse
sought and obtained the necessary information and counsel from the best
sources, and acted upon it, neither impairs his rights as an inventor
nor detracts from his merits."--_O'Reilly vs. Morse, 5 Howard_.
The combination constituting Morse's invention comprised a main wire
circuit to transmit the current through its whole length whenever
closed; a main galvanic battery to supply the current; operating keys to
break and close the main circuit; office circuits; a circuit of
conductors and batteries at each office to record the message there;
receiving spring lever magnets to close an office circuit when a current
passes through the main circuit; adjusting screws to vary the force of
the main current; marking apparatus, consisting of pointed pieces of
wire, to indent dots and lines upon paper; clockwork to move the paper
indented; and magnet sounders to develop the power of the pointer and of
the armatures to produce audible distinguishable sounds.
It was soon learned by operators how to distinguish the signs or letters
sent by the length of the "click" of the armature, and by thus reading
by sound the reading of the signs on paper was dispensed with, and the
device became an electric-magnetic acoustic telegraph.
What is known as the Morse system has been improved, but its fundamental
principles remain, and their world-wide use constitute still the daily
evidence of the immense value of the invention to mankind.
Before the 1844 reduction to practice, Morse had originated and laid the
first submarine telegraph. This was in New York harbour in 1842. In a
letter to the Secretary of the United States Treasury, August 10, 1843,
he also suggested the project of an Atlantic telegraph.
While Henry was busy with his great magnets and Morse struggling to
introduce his telegraph, Michael Faraday was making those investigations
and discoveries which were to result in the application of electricity
to the service of man in still wider and grander fields.
Faraday was a chemist, and Davy's most brilliant pupil and efficient
assistant. His earliest experiments were in the line of electrolysis.
This was about 1822, but it was not until 1831 that he began to devote
his brilliant talents as an experimentalist and lecturer wholly to
electrical researches, and for a quarter of a century his patient,
wonderful labours and discoveries continued. It has been said that
"although Oersted was the discoverer of electro-magnetism and Ampère its
expounder, Faraday made the science of magnets electrically what it is
at the present day."
Great magnetic power having been developed by passing a galvanic current
around a bar of soft iron, Faraday concluded that it was reasonable to
suppose that as mechanical action is accompanied by an equal amount of
reaction, electricity ought to be evolved from magnetism.
"It was in 1831 that Faraday demonstrated before the Royal Society that
if a magnetized bar of steel be introduced into the centre of a helix of
insulated wire, there is at the moment of introduction of the magnet a
current of electricity set up in a certain direction in the insulated
wire forming the helix, while on the withdrawal of the magnet from the
helix a current in an opposite direction takes place.
"He also discovered that the same phenomenon was to be observed if for
the magnet was substituted a coil of insulated wire, through which the
current from a voltaic element was passing; and further that when an
insulated coil of wire was made to revolve before the poles of a
permanent magnet, electric currents were induced in the wires of the
coil."--_Journal of the Society of Arts._
On these discoveries were based the action of all magneto-dynamo
electric machines--machines that have enabled the world to convert the
energy of a steam engine in its stall, or a distant waterfall, into
electric energy for the performance of the herculean labours of lighting
a great city, or an ocean-bound lighthouse, or transporting quickly
heavy loads of people or freight up and down and to and fro upon the
earth.
As before stated, Faraday was also the first to proclaim the laws of
electrolysis, or electro-chemical decomposition. He expressed conviction
that the forces termed chemical affinity and electricity are one and the
same. Subsequently the great Helmholtz, having proved by experiment that
in the phenomena of electrolysis no other force acts but the mutual
attractions of the atomic electric charges, came to the conclusion,
"that the very mightiest among the chemical forces are of electric
origin."
Faraday having demonstrated by his experiments that chemical
decomposition, electricity, magnetism, heat and light, are all
inter-convertible and correlated forces, the inventors of the age were
now ready to step forward and put these theories at work in machines in
the service of man. Faraday was a leader in the field of discovery. He
left to inventors the practical application of his discoveries.
Prof. Henry in America was, contemporaneously with Faraday, developing
electricity by means of magnetic induction.
In 1832, Pixii, a philosophical instrument-maker of Paris, and Joseph
Saxton, an American then residing in London, invented and constructed
magneto-machines on Faraday's principle of rendering magnetic a core of
soft iron surrounded with insulated wire from a permanent magnet, and
rapidly reversing its polarity, which machines were used to produce
sparks, decompose liquids and metals, and fire combustible bodies.
Saxton's machine was the well-known electric shock machine operated by
turning a crank. A similar device is now used for ringing telephone call
bells.
Prof. C. G. Page of Washington and Ruhmkorff of Paris each made a
machine, well known as the Ruhmkorff coil, by which intense
electro-magnetic currents by induction were produced. The production of
electrical illumination was now talked of more than ever. Scientists and
inventors now had two forms of electrical machines to produce light: the
voltaic battery and the magneto-electric apparatus. But a period of
comparative rest took place in this line until 1850, when Prof. Nollet
of Brussels made an effort to produce a powerful magneto-electric
machine for decomposing water into its elements of hydrogen and oxygen,
which gases were then to be used in producing the lime light; and a
company known as "The Alliance" was organized at Paris to make large
machines for the production of light.
We have seen that Davy produced a brilliant electric light with two
pieces of charcoal in the electric circuit of a voltaic battery. Greener
and Staite revived this idea in a patent in 1845. Shortly after Nollet's
machine, F. H. Holmes of England improved it and applied the current
directly to the production of electric light between carbon points. And
Holmes and Faraday in 1857 prepared this machine for use.
On the evening of December 8, 1858, the first practical electric light,
the work of Faraday and Holmes, flashed over the troubled sea from the
South Foreland Lighthouse. On June 6, 1862, this light was also
introduced into the lighthouse at Dungeness, England. The same light was
introduced in French lighthouses in December, 1863, and also in the work
on the docks of Cherbourg. At this time Germany was also awake to the
importance of this invention, and Dr. Werner Siemens of Berlin was at
work developing a machine for the purpose into one of less cost and of
greater use. Inventors were not yet satisfied with the power developed
from either the voltaic battery or the magneto-electric machine, and
continued to improve the latter.
In 1867, the same year that Faraday died, and too late for him to
witness its glory, came out the most powerful magneto-electric machine
that had yet been produced. It was invented by Wilde of London, and
consisted of very large electro-magnets, or field magnets, receiving
their electric power from the "lines of force" discovered by Faraday,
radiating from the poles of a soft iron magnet, combined with a small
magneto-electric machine having permanent magnets, and by which the
current developed in the smaller machine was sent through the coils of
the larger magnets. By this method the magnetic force was vastly
multiplied, and electricity was produced in such abundance as to fuse
thick iron wire fifteen inches long and one-fourth of an inch in
diameter, and to develop a magnificent arc light. Quickly succeeding the
Wilde machine came independent inventions in the same direction from
Messrs. G. Farmer of Salem, Mass., Alfred Yarley and Prof. Charles
Wheatstone of England, and Dr. Siemens of Berlin, and Ladd of America.
These inventors conceived and put in practice the great idea of
employing the current from an electro-magnetic machine to excite its own
electric magnet. They were thus termed "self-exciting." The idea was
that the commutator (an instrument to change the direction, strength or
circuit of the current) should be so connected with the coils of the
field magnets that all or a part of the current developed in the
armature would flow through these coils, so that all permanent magnets
might be dispensed with, and the machine used to excite itself or charge
its own field magnets without the aid of any outside charging or feeding
mechanism.
Mr. Z. Gramme, of France, a little later than Wilde made a great
improvement. Previously, machines furnished only momentary currents of
varying strength and polarity; and these intermittent currents were hard
to control without loss in the strength of current and the frequent
production of sparks. Gramme produced a machine in which, although as in
other machines the magnetic field of force was created by a powerful
magnet, yet the armature was a ring made of soft iron rods, and
surrounded by an endless coil of wire, and made to revolve between the
poles of the magnet with great rapidity, producing a constant current in
one direction. By Faraday's discovery, when the coil of the closed
circuit was moved before the poles of the magnet, the current was
carried half the time in one direction and half in the other,
constituting what is called an alternating current. Gramme employed the
commutator to make the current direct instead of alternating.
Dynamo-electric machines for practical work of many kinds had now been
born and grown to strength.
In addition to these and many other electrical machines this century has
discovered several ways by which the electricity developed by such
machines may be converted into light. I. By means of two carbon
conductors between which passes a series of intensely brilliant sparks
which form a species of flame known as the _voltaic arc_, and the heat
of which is more intense than that from any other known artificial
source. II. By means of a rod of carbon or kaolin, strip of platinum or
iridium, a carbon filament, or other substance placed between two
conductors, the resistance opposed by such rod, strip, or filament to
the passage of the current being so great as to develop heat to the
point of incandescence, and produce a steady white and pure light.
Attempts also have been made to produce illumination by what is called
stratified light produced by the electric discharge passing through
tubes containing various gases. These tubes are known as Geissler tubes,
from their inventor. Still another method is the production of a
continuous light from a vibratory movement of carbon electrodes to and
from each other, producing a bright flash at each separation, and
maintaining the separations at such a rate that the effect of the light
produced is continuous. But these additional methods do not appear as
yet to be commercially successful.
It must not be overlooked that before dynamo-magneto-electric machines
were used practically in the production of the electric light for the
purposes of illumination, the voltaic battery was used for the same
purpose, but not economically.
The first private dwelling house ever lighted in America, or doubtless
anywhere else, by electricity, was that of Moses G. Farmer, in Salem,
Massachusetts, in the year 1859. A voltaic battery furnished the current
to conducting wires which led to two electric lamps on the mantel-piece
of the drawing-room, and in which strips of platinum constituted the
resisting and lighting medium. A soft, mild, agreeable light was
produced, which was more delightful to read or sew by than any
artificial light ever before known. Either or both lamps could be
lighted by turning a button, and they were maintained for several weeks,
but were discontinued for the reason that the cost of maintaining them
was much greater than of gas light.
It was in connection with the effective dynamo-electric apparatus of
M. Gramme above referred to that the electric candle invented by
M. Paul Jablochoff became soon thereafter extensively employed for
electric lighting in Paris, and elsewhere in Europe. This invention,
like the great majority of useful inventions, is noted for its
simplicity. It consists of two carbon pencils placed side by side and
insulated from each other by means of a thin plate of some refractory
material which is a non-conductor at ordinary temperatures, but which
becomes a conductor, and consequently a light, when fused by the action
of a powerful current. Plaster of Paris was found to be the most
suitable material for this purpose, and the light produced was soft,
mellow, slightly rose-coloured, and quite agreeable to the eye.
It having been found that carbon was better adapted for lighting
purposes than platinum or other metals, by reason of its greater
radiating power for equal temperatures, and still greater infusibility
at high temperatures, inventors turned their attention to the production
of the best carbon lamp.
The two pointed pieces of hard conducting carbon used for the separated
terminals constitute the voltaic arc light--a light only excelled in
intense brilliancy by the sun itself. It is necessary in order to make
such a light successful that it should be continuous. But as it is found
that both carbons waste away under the consuming action of the intense
heat engendered by their resistance to the electric current, and that
one electrode, the positive, wastes away twice as fast as the opposite
negative electrode, the distance between the points soon becomes too
great for the current longer to leap over it, and the light is then
extinguished. Many ingenious contrivances have been devised for
correcting this trouble, and maintaining a continuously uniform distance
between the carbons by giving to them a self-adjusting automatic action.
Such an apparatus is called a _regulator_, and the variety of regulators
is very great. The French were among the first to contrive such
regulators,--Duboscq, Foucault, Serrin, Houdin, and Lontin invented most
useful forms of such apparatus. Other early inventors were Hart of
Scotland, Siemens of Germany, Thompson and Houston of England, and
Farmer, Brush, Wallace, Maxim, and Weston and Westinghouse of America.
Gramme made his armature of iron rods to prevent its destruction by
heat. Weston in 1882 improved this method by making the armature of
separate and insulated sheets of iron around which the coil is wound.
The arc light is adapted for streets and great buildings, etc.; but for
indoor illumination, when a milder, softer light is desirable, the
_incandescent_ light was invented, and this consists of a curved
filament of carbon about the size of a coarse horsehair, seated in a
bulb of glass from which the air has been exhausted. In exhausted air
carbon rods or filaments are not consumed, and so great ingenuity was
exercised on that line. Among the early noted inventors of incandescent
carbon filament lamps were Edison and Maxim of New York, Swan, and
Lane-Fox of England.
Another problem to be solved arose in the proposed use of arc lamps upon
an extended scale, or in series, as in street lighting, wherein the
current to all lamps was supplied by a single wire, and where it was
found that owing to the unequal consumption of the carbons some were
burning well, some poorly, and some going out. It was essential,
therefore, to make each lamp independent of the resistance of the main
circuit and of the action of the other lamps, and to have its regulating
mechanism governed entirely by the resistance of its own arc. The
solution of this difficult problem was the invention by Heffner von
Alteneck of Germany, and his device came into use wherever throughout
the world arc lamps were operated. Westinghouse also improved the direct
alternating system of lighting by one wire by the introduction of two
conducting wires parallel to each other, and passing an interrupted or
alternating current through one, thereby inducing a similar and always
an alternating current through the other. Brush adopted a three-wire
system; and both obtained a uniform consumption of the carbons.
In a volume like this, room exists for mention only of those inventions
which burn as beacon lights on the tallest hills--and so we must now
pass on to others.
Just as Faraday was bringing his long series of experimental researches
to a close in 1856-59, and introducing the fruits of his labours into
the lighthouses of England, Cyrus W. Field of New York had commenced his
trials in the great scheme of an ocean cable to "moor the new world
alongside the old," as John Bright expressed it. After crossing the
ocean from New York to England fifty times, and baffled often by the
ocean, which broke his cables, and by the incredulous public of both
hemispheres, who laughed at him, and by electricity, which refused to do
his bidding, he at last overcame all obstacles, and in 1866 the cable
two thousand miles in length had been successfully stretched and
communication perfected. To employ currents of great power, the cable
insulation would have been disintegrated and finally destroyed by heat.
Therefore only feeble currents could be used. But across that long
distance these currents for many reasons grew still weaker. The
inventor, Sir William Thomson, was at hand to provide the remedy. First,
by his _mirror galvanometer_. A needle in the shape of a small magnet
and connected to the current wires, is attached to the back of a small
concave mirror having a hole in its centre; opposite the mirror is
placed a graduated scale board, having slits through it, and a lighted
lamp behind it. The light is thrown through the slits across to the hole
at the center of the mirror and upon the needle. The feeblest imaginable
current suffices to deflect the needle in one direction, which throws
back the little beam of light upon it to the graduated front of the
scale. When the current is reversed the needle and its shadow are
deflected in the other direction, and so by a combination of right and
left motions, and pauses, of the spots of light to represent letters,
the message is spelled out. Second, a more expeditious instrument called
the _syphon recorder_. In this the galvanometer needle is connected to a
fine glass syphon tube conducting ink from a reservoir on to a strip of
paper which is drawn under the point of the tube with a uniform motion.
The irregular movements given the galvanometer needle by the varying
current are clearly delineated on the paper. Or in writing very long
cables the point of the syphon may not touch the paper, but the ink by
electrical attraction from the paper is ejected from the syphon upon the
paper in a succession of fine dots. The irregular lines of dots and
dashes were translated into words in accordance with the principles of
the Morse telegraph.
An instrument was exhibited at the Centennial International Exhibition
at Philadelphia in 1876, which was considered by the judges "the
greatest marvel hitherto achieved by the electric telegraph." Such was
the language used both by Prof. Joseph Henry and Sir Wm. Thomson, and
concurred in by the other eminent judges from America, Germany, France,
Austria and Switzerland. This instrument was the _Telephone_. It
embodied, for the practical purpose of transmitting articulate speech to
distances, the union of the two great forces,--sound and electricity. It
consisted of a method and an apparatus. The apparatus or means consisted
of an electric battery circuit, a transmitting cone placed at one end of
the line into which speech and other vocal sounds were uttered, a
diaphragm against which the sounds were projected, an armature secured
to or forming a part of the diaphragm, an electro-magnet loosely
connected to the armature, a wire connecting this magnet with another
precisely similar arrangement of magnet, armature, diaphragm, and cone,
at the receiving end. When speech was uttered in the transmitter the
sound vibrations were received on the diaphragm, communicated to the
electricised armature, from thence by induction to the magnet and the
connecting wire current, which, undulating with precisely the same form
of sound vibrations, carried them in exactly the same form to the
receiving magnet. They were then carried through the receiving armature
and reproduced on the receiving diaphragm, with all the same
characteristics of pitch, loudness and quality.
The inventor was Alexander Graham Bell, by nativity a Scotchman, then a
resident of Canada, and finally a citizen of the United States. His
father was a teacher of vocal physiology at Edinburgh, and he himself
became a teacher of deaf mutes. This occupation naturally led him to a
thorough investigation of the laws of sound. He acknowledged the aid he
received from the great work of Helmholtz on the _Theory of Tone_. His
attention was called to sounds transmitted and reproduced by the
electric current, especially by the ease with which telegraph operators
read their messages by the duration of the "click" of their instruments.
He knew of the old device of a tightly-stretched string or wire between
two little boxes. He had read the publication of Prof. C. G. Page, of
America, in 1837, on the _Production of Galvanic Music_, in which was
described how musical notes were transmitted and reproduced by an
interrupted magnetic circuit. He became acquainted with the experimental
musical telephonic and acoustic researches of Reis, and others of
Germany, and those of celebrated scientists in France, especially the
phonautograph of Scott, a delicate instrument having a cone membrane and
pointer, and used to reproduce on smoked glass the waves of sound. He
commenced his experiments with magneto instruments in 1874, continued
them in 1875, when he succeeded in reproducing speech, but poorly, owing
to his imperfect instruments, and then made out his application, and
obtained a patent in the United States in July, 1876.
Like all the other remarkable inventions recorded in these pages, this
"marvel" did not spring forth as a sudden creation, but was a slow
growth of a plant derived from old ideas, although it blossomed out
suddenly one day when audible sounds were accidentally produced upon an
apparatus with which he was experimenting.
It is impossible here to narrate the tremendous conflict that Bell now
encountered to establish his title as first inventor, or to enumerate
the multitude of improvements and changes made which go to make up the
successful telephone of to-day.
The messages of the voice are carried on the wings of electricity
wherever any messages are carried, except under the widest seas, and
this difficulty inventors are now seeking to overcome.
The story of the marvellous inventions of the century in electricity is
a fascinating one, but in length and details it is also marvellous, and
we must hasten unwillingly to a close. Numerous applications of it will
be mentioned in chapters relating to other arts.
In the generation of this mighty force improvements have been made, but
those of greatest power still involve the principles discovered by
Faraday and Henry seventy years ago. The ideas of Faraday of the "lines
of force"--the magnetic power streaming from the poles of the magnet
somewhat as the rays of heat issue on all sides from a hot body, forming
the magnetic field--and that a magnet behaves like an electric current,
producing an electric wave by its approach to or recession from a coil
of wire, joined with Henry's idea of increasing the magnetising effect
by increasing the number of coils around the magnet, enter into all
powerful dynamo electric machines of to-day. In them the lines of force
must flow around the frame and across the path of the armature; and
there must be a set of conductors to cut the lines of force twice in
every revolution of the cylinder carrying the armature from which the
current is taken.
When machines had been produced for generating with some economy
powerful currents of electricity, their use for the world's business
purposes rapidly increased. Among such applications, and following
closely the electric lighting, came the _electric railway_. A substitute
for the slow animal, horse, and for the dangerous, noisy steam horse and
its lumbering locomotive and train, was hailed with delight. Inventors
came forward with adaptations of all the old systems they could think of
for the purpose, and with many new ones. One plan was to adapt the
storage battery--that silent chemical monster which carries its own
power and its own machine--and place one on each car to actuate a motor
connected to the driving wheels. Another plan was to conduct the current
from the dynamo machine at its station along the rails on one side of
the track to the motor on the car and the return current on the opposite
track; another was to carry the current to the car on a third rail
between the track, using both the other rails for the return; another to
use an overhead wire for the current from the dynamo, and connect it
with the car by a rod, one end of which had a little wheel or trolley
running on the overhead wire, to take up the current, the other end
being connected by a wire to the car motor; another plan to have a
trench made leading from the central station underneath the track the
whole length of the line, and put into this trench conducting wires from
the dynamo, to one of which the car motor should be connected by a
trolley rod or "brush," extending down through a central slot between
the rails of the track to carry the electric supply into the motor. In
all these cases a lever was supplied to cut off communication between
the conducting wire and the motor, and a brake lever to stop the car.
All of these plans have been tried, and some of them are still being
tried with many improvements in detail, but not in principle.
The first electrical railway was constructed and operated at Berlin in
1879, by Messrs Siemens and Halske. It was two thousand seven hundred
feet long and built on the third rail system. This was an experiment but
a successful one. It was followed very soon by another line near Berlin
for actual traffic; then still another in Saxony. At the Paris
Exposition in 1881, Sir Wm. Siemens had in operation a road about one
thousand six hundred feet in length, on which it is estimated
ninety-five thousand passengers were conveyed in seven weeks. Then in
the next year in London; and then in the following year one in the
United States near New York, constructed by Edison. And thus they
spread, until every important town and city in the world seems to have
its electric plant, and its electric car system, and of course its
lighting, telephone and telegraph systems.
In 1882 Prof. Fleeming Jenkin of England invented and has put to use a
system called _Telpherage_, by which cars are suspended on an overhead
wire which is both the track and electrical conductor. It has been found
to be advantageous in the transportation of freight from mines and other
places to central stations.
With the coming of the electric railway, the slow, much-abused horse,
the puffing steam engine blowing off smoke and cinders through the
streets, the great heavy cars, rails and roadbeds, the dangerous
collisions and accidents, have disappeared.
The great problems to solve have related to generation, form,
distribution and division of the electric current at the dynamos at the
central stations for the purposes of running the distant motors and for
furnishing independent supplies of light, heat, sound and power. These
problems have received the attention of the keenest inventors and
electrical engineers and have been solved.
The description of the inventions made by such electrical magicians as
Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla would fill volumes.
The original plan of sending but one message over a wire at a time has
also been improved; and duplex, quadruplex and multiplex systems have
been invented (by Stearns, Farmer, Edison and others) and applied, which
have multiplied the capacity of the telegraphs, and by which even the
alleged all-talk-at-the-same-time habit of certain members of the great
human family can be carried on in opposite directions on the same wire
at the same time between their gatherings in different cities and
without a break.
To understand the manner of multiplying messages or signals on the same
line, and using apparently the same electric current to perform
different operations, the mind must revert to the theory already
referred to, that a current of electricity does not consist of a stream
of matter flowing like water through a conductor in one direction, but
of particles of subtle ether, vibrating or oscillating in waves from and
around the conductor which excites them; that the vibration of this line
of waves proceeds at the rate of many thousand miles per second, almost
with the velocity of waves of light, with which they are so closely
related; that this wave current is susceptible of being varied in
direction and in strength, according to the impulse given by the initial
pressure of the transmitting and exciting instrument; and that some wave
currents have power by reason of their form or strength to penetrate or
pass others coming from an opposite direction. So that in the multiplex
process, for instance, each transmission having a certain direction or
strength and its own set of transmitting and receiving instruments, will
have power to give its own peculiar and independent signal or message.
Apparently there is but one continuous current, but in reality each
transmission is separated from the others by an almost inconceivably
short interval of time.
Among the inventions in the class of Telegraphy should also be mentioned
the dial and the printing systems. Ever since the electric telegraph was
invented, attempts have been made to use the electric influence to
operate either a pointer to point out the letters of the message sent on
a dial, or to print them on a moving strip of paper; and also to
automatically reproduce on paper the handwriting of the sender or writer
of the message. The earliest efforts were by Cooke and Prof. Wheatstone
of London, in 1836-37; but it was not until 1839, after Prof. Henry had
succeeded in perfecting the electromagnet, that dial and printing
telegraphs were successfully produced. Dial telegraphs consist of the
combination with magnets, armatures and printed dial plate of a
clock-work and a pointer, means to set the pointer at the communicating
end (which in some instances has been a piano keyboard) to any letter,
the current operating automatically to indicate the same letters at the
receiving end. These instruments have been modified and improved by
Brequet and Froment of France, Dr. Siemens and Kramer, and Siemens and
Halske of Germany, Prof. Wheatstone of England, Chester and Hamblet of
America, and others. They have been used extensively upon private and
municipal lines both in Europe and the United States.
The type-printing telegraph was coeval with the dial, and originated
with Morse and Vail as early as 1837. The printing of the characters is
effected in various ways; sometimes by clockwork mechanism and sometimes
by the direct action of an electromagnet. Wheatstone exhibited one in
1841. House of Vermont invented in 1845-1846 the first printing
telegraph that was brought into any extensive use in the United States.
Then followed that of David E. Hughes of Kentucky in 1855, aided by his
co-inventor George M. Phelps of Troy, New York, and which was
subsequently adopted by the French government, by the United Kingdom
Telegraph Co. of Great Britain, and by the American Telegraph Co in the
United States. The system was subsequently greatly improved by Hughes
and others. Alexander Bain of Edinburgh in 1845-46 originated the modern
automatic chemical telegraph. In this system a kind of punch was used to
perforate two rows of holes grouped to represent letters on a strip of
paper conducted over a metal cylinder and arranged so as to permit
spring levers to drop through the perforations and touch the cylinder,
thus forming an electrical contact; and a recording apparatus consisting
of a strip of paper carried through a chemical solution of an acid and
potash and over a metal roller, and underneath one or two styles, or
pens, which pens were connected by live wires with the poles of two
batteries at the sending station. The operation is such that colored
marks upon the paper were made by the pens corresponding precisely to
the perforations in the strip at the sending station. Siemens,
Wheatstone and others also improved this system; but none of these
systems have as yet replaced or equalled in extensive use the Morse key
and sounder system, and its great acoustic advantage of reading the
messages by the click of the instrument. The type-printing system,
however, has been recently greatly improved by the inventions of Howe,
C. L. Buckingham, Fiske and others in the United States. Special
contrivances and adaptations of the telegraph for printing stock reports
and for transmitting fire alarm, police, and emergency calls, have been
invented.
The erection of tall office and other buildings, some to the height of
more than twenty stories, made practicable by the invention of the
elevator system, has in turn brought out most ingenious devices for
operating and controlling the elevators to insure safety and at the same
time produce economy in the motive power.
The utility of the telephone has been greatly increased by the
inventions of Hughes and Edison of the _microphone_. This consists, in
one form, of pieces of carbon in loose contact placed in the circuit of
a telephone. The very slightest vibrations communicated to the wood are
heard distinctly in the telephone. By these inventions and certain
improvements not only every sound and note of an opera or concert has
been carried to distant places, but the slightest whispers, the minute
movements of a watch, even the tread of a fly, and the pressure of a
finger, have been rendered audible.
By the aid of the electric current certain rays of light directed upon
the mineral selenium, and some other substances, have been discovered to
emit musical sounds.
So wonderful and mysterious appear these communications along the
electric wire that each and every force in the universe seems to have a
voice awaiting utterance to man. The hope is indulged that by some such
means we may indeed yet receive the "touch of a vanished hand and the
sound of a voice that is still."
In 1879 that eminent English scientist, Prof. Wm. Crookes, published his
extensive researches in electrical discharges as manifested in glass
tubes from which the air had been exhausted. These same tubes have
already been referred to as Geissler tubes, from the name of a young
artist of Bonn who invented them. In these tubes are inclosed various
gases through which the sparks from an induction coil can be passed by
means of platinum electrodes fused into the glass, and on the passage of
the current a soft and delicately-tinted light is produced which streams
through the tube from pole to pole.
In 1895, Wm. Konrad Roentgen, professor of Physics in the Royal
University of Würzburg, while experimenting with these Crookes and
Geissler tubes, discovered with one of them, which he had covered with a
sort of black cardboard, that the rays emanating from the same and
impinging on certain objects would render them self-luminous, or
fluorescent; and on further investigation that such rays, unlike the
rays of sunlight, were not deflected, refracted or condensed; but that
they proceeded in straight lines from the point at which they were
produced, and penetrated various articles, such as flesh, blood, and
muscle, and thicknesses of paper, cloth and leather, and other
substances which are opaque to ordinary light; and that thus while
penetrating such objects and rendering them luminous, if a portion of
the same were of a character too dense to admit of the penetration, the
dark shadow of such obstacle would appear in the otherwise luminous
mass.
Unable to explain the nature or cause of this wonderful revelation,
Roentgen gave to the light an algebraic name for the unknown--the X
rays.
This wonderful discovery, at first regarded as a figment of scientific
magic, soon attracted profound attention. At first the experiments were
confined to the gratification of curiosity--the interior of the hand was
explored, and on one occasion the little mummified hand of an Egyptian
princess folded in death three or four thousand years ago, was held up
to this light, and the bones, dried blood, and muscle of the ancient
Pharaohs exhibited to the startled eyes of the present generation. But
soon surgery and medicine took advantage of the unknown rays for
practical purposes. The location of previously unreachable bullets, and
the condition of internal injuries, were determined; the cause of
concealed disease was traced, the living brain explored, and the
pulsations of the living heart were witnessed.
Retardation of the strength of the electric current by the inductive
influence of neighboring wires and earth currents, together with the
theory that the electric energy pervades all space and matter, gave rise
to the idea that if the energy once established could be set in motion
at such point above the ordinary surface of the earth as would free this
upper current from all inductive disturbance, impulses of such power
might be conveyed from one high point and communicated to another as to
produce signals without the use of a conducting wire, retaining only the
usual batteries and the earth connection. On July 30th, 1872, Mahlen
Loomis of Washington, D. C., took out a patent for "the utilization of
natural electricity from elevated points" for telegraphic purposes,
based on the principle mentioned, and made successful experiments on the
Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia near Washington, accounts of which were
published in Washington papers at the time; but being poor and receiving
no aid or encouragement he was compelled to give it up. Marconi of Italy
has been more successful in this direction, and has sent electric
messages and signals from high stations over the English Channel from
the shores of France to England. So that now wireless telegraphy is an
established fact.
It is certainly thrilling to realize that there is a mysterious, silent,
invisible and powerful mechanical agent on every side of us, waiting to
do our bidding, and to lend a hand in every field of human labour, and
yet unable to be so used without excitement to action and direction in
its course by some master, intermediate between itself and man. The
principal masters for this purpose are steam and water power. A small
portion of the power of the resistless Niagara has been taken, diverted
to turn the machinery which excites electricity to action, and this
energy in turn employed to operate a multitude of the most powerful
motors and machines of many descriptions.
So great is the might of this willing agent that at a single turn of the
hand of man it rushes forth to do work for him far exceeding in wonder
and extent any labour of the gods of mythological renown.
CHAPTER X.
HOISTING, CONVEYING AND STORING.
Allusion has been made to the stupendous buildings and works of the
ancients and of the middle ages; the immense multitude of workers and
great extent of time and labour employed in their construction; and how
the awful drudgery involved in such undertakings was relieved by the
invention of modern engineering devices--the cranes, the derricks, and
the steam giants to operate them, so that vast loads which required
large numbers of men and beasts to move, and long periods of time in
which to move them, can now be lifted with ease and carried to great
heights and distances in a few minutes by the hands of one or of a few
men.
But outside of the line of such undertakings there is an immense field
of labor-saving appliances adapted for use in transportation of smaller
loads from place to place, within and without buildings, and for
carrying people and freight from the lower to the upper stories of tall
structures. In fact the tall buildings which we see now in almost every
great city towering cloudward from the ground to the height of fifteen,
twenty and twenty-five stories, would have been extravagant and useless
had not the invention of the modern elevator rendered their highest
parts as easy of access as their lowest, and at the same time given to
the air space above the city lot as great a commercial value in feet and
inches as the stretch of earth itself.
Many of the "sky-scrapers" so called, are splendid monuments of the
latest inventions of the century.
It is by means of the modern elevator that the business of a whole town
may be transacted under a single roof.
In the multiplicity of modern human contrivances by which the sweat and
drudgery of life are saved, and time economised for worthier objects, we
are apt to overlook the painful and laborious steps by which they were
reached, and to regard with impatience, or at least with indifference,
the story of their evolution; and yet no correct or profound knowledge
of the growth of humanity to its higher planes can be obtained without
noting to what extent the minor inventions, as well as the startling
ones, have aided the upward progress.
For instance, consider how few and comparatively awkward were the
mechanical means before this century. The innumerable army of men when
men were slaves, and when blood and muscle and brain were cheap, who,
labouring with the beast, toiled upward for years on inclined ways to
lay the stones of the stupendous pyramids, still had their counterpart
centuries later in the stream of men carrying on their shoulders the
loads of grain and other freight and burdens from the shore to the holds
of vessels, from vessels to the shore, from the ground to high buildings
and from one part of great warehouses to another. Now look at a vessel
moved to a wharf, capable of holding fifty thousand or one hundred
thousand bushels of grain and having that amount poured into it in three
hours from the spouts of an elevator, to which the grain has been
carried in a myriad buckets on a chain by steam power in about the same
time; or to those arrangements of carriers, travelling on ropes, cords,
wires, or cables, by which materials are quickly conveyed from one part
of some structure or place to another, as hay and grain in barns or
mows, ores from mines to cars, merchandise of all kinds from one part of
a great store to another; or shot through pipes underground from one
section of a city or town to their destination by a current of air.
True, as it has before been stated, the ancients and later generations
had the wedge, the pulley, the inclined plane, the screw and the
windlass, and by these powers, modified in form and increased in size as
the occasion demanded, in the form of cranes, derricks, and operated by
animal power, materials were lifted and transported; but down to the
time of the practical and successful application of steam by Watt in the
latter part of the 18th century, and until a much later period in most
places in the world, these simple means actuated alone by men or animals
were the best means employed for elevating and conveying loads, and even
they were employed to a comparatively limited extent.
The century was well started before it was common to employ cups on
elevator bands in mills, invented by Oliver Evans in 1780, to carry
grain to the top of the mill, from whence it was to fall by gravity to
the grinding and flouring apparatus below. It was not until 1795 that
that powerful modern apparatus--the hydraulic, or hydrostatic, press was
patented by Bramah in England. The model he then made is now in the
museum of the Commissioner of Patents, London. In this a reservoir for
water is provided, on which is placed a pump having a piston rod worked
by a hand lever. The water is conveyed from the reservoir to a cylinder
by a pipe, and this cylinder is provided with a piston carrying at its
top a table, which rises between guides. The load to be carried is
placed on this table, and as the machine was at first designed to
compress materials the load is pressed by the rising table against an
upper stationary plate. The elevation of the table is proportionate to
the quantity of water injected, and the power proportionate to the
receptive areas of the pump and the cylinder. The first great
application of machines built on this principle was by Robert Stephenson
in the elevation of the gigantic tubes for the tubular bridge across the
Menai straits, already described in the chapter on Civil Engineering.
The century was half through with before it was proposed to use water
and steam for passenger elevators.
In 1852 J. T. Slade in England patented a device consisting of a drum to
be actuated by steam, water, or compressed air, around which drum ropes
were wound, and to which ropes were attached separate cages in separate
wells, to counterbalance each other, the cages moving in guides, and
provided with brakes and levers to stop and control the cages and the
movement of the drum. Louis T. Van Elvean, also of England, in 1858
invented counterbalance weights for such lifts. Otis, an American,
invented and patented in America and England in 1859 the first approach
to the modern passenger elevator for hotels, warehouses, and other
structures. The motive power was preferably a steam engine; and the
elevating means was a large screw placed vertically and made to revolve
by suitable gearing, and a cylinder to which the car was attached,
having projections to work in the threads of the screw. Means were
provided to start and to stop the car, and to retard its otherwise
sudden fall and stoppage.
Elevators, which are now so largely used to raise passengers and freight
from the lower to the upper stories of high edifices, have for their
motive power steam, water, compressed air, and electricity. With steam a
drum is rotated over which a hoisting wire-rope is wound, to which the
elevator car is attached. The car for passengers may be a small but
elegantly furnished room, which is carried on guide blocks, and the
stationary guides are provided with ratchet teeth with which pawls on
the car are adapted to engage should the hoisting rope give way. To the
hoisting rope is attached a counterbalance weight to partly meet the
weight of the car in order to prevent the car from sticking fast on its
passage, and also to prevent a sudden dropping of the car should the
rope become slack. A hand rope for the operator is provided, which at
its lower end is connected with a starting lever controlling the valves
of the cylinders into which steam is admitted to start the piston shaft,
which in turn actuates the gear wheels, by which movement the ropes are
wound around the drums.
In another form of steam elevator the drums are turned in opposite
directions, by right and left worms driven by a belt.
In the hydraulic form of elevator, a motor worked by water is employed
to lift the car, although steam power is also employed to raise the
water. The car is connected to wire cables passing over large sheaves at
the top of the well room to a counterbalancing bucket. This bucket fits
closely in a water-tight upright tube, or stand-pipe, about two feet in
diameter, extending from the basement to the upper story. Near this
stand-pipe in the upper story is placed a water supply tank. A pipe
discharges the water from the tank into the bucket, which moves up and
down in the stand pipe. There is a valve in the tank which is opened by
stepping on a treadle in the car, and this action admits to the bucket
just enough weight of water to overbalance the load on the car. As soon
as the bucket is heavier than the car it descends, and of course draws
the car upward, thus using the minimum power required to raise each
load, rather than, when steam is employed, the full power of the engine
each and every time. The speed is controlled by means of brakes or
clamps that firmly clasp wrought-iron slides secured to posts on each
side of the well room, the operator having control of these brakes by a
lever on the car. When the car has ascended as far as desired, the
operator steps upon another treadle in the car connected with a valve in
the bottom of the bucket and thus discharges the water into the
receiving tank below until the car is heavier than the bucket, when it
then of course descends. The water is thus taken from the upper tank
into the bucket, discharged through the stand-pipe into the receiving
tank under the floor of the basement and then pumped back again to the
upper tank, so that it is used over and over again without loss.
Various modifications have been made in the hydraulic forms. In place of
steam, electricity was introduced to control the hydraulic operation.
Again, an electric motor has been invented to be placed on the car
itself, with connected gearing engaging rack bars in the well.
Elevators have been contrived automatically controlled by switch
mechanisms on the landings; and in connection with the electric motor
safety devices are used to break the motor circuit and thus stop the car
the moment the elevator door is opened; and there are devices to break
the circuit and stop the car at once, should an obstruction, the foot
for instance, be accidentally thrust out into the path of the car frame.
Columns of water and of air have been so arranged that should the car
fall the fall will be broken by the water or air cushion made to yield
gradually to the pressure. So many safety devices have been invented
that there is now no excuse for accidents. They result by a criminal
neglect of builders or engineers to provide themselves with such
devices, or by a most ignorant or careless management and operation of
simple actuating mechanisms.
Between 1880 and 1890 there was great activity in the invention of what
is known as store service conveyors. One of the earliest forms, and one
which had been partly selected from other arts, was to suspend from a
rigid frame work connected to the floor, roof, or side of the building,
a long platform in the direction through the building it was desired the
road to run, giving this platform a slight inclination. On this platform
were placed tracks, and from the tracks were suspended trucks, baskets,
or other merchandise receptacles, having wheels resting on and adapted
to roll on the tracks. Double or single tracks could be provided as
desired. The cars ran on these tracks by gravity, and considerable
ingenuity was displayed in the feature alone of providing the out-going
and returning inclined tracks; in hand straps and levers for raising and
lowering the carriage, part or all of it, to or from the tracks, and in
buffers to break the force of the blow of the carriages when arriving at
their stopping places.
Then about 1882-83 it was found by some inventors if moderately fine
wires were stretched level, and as tight as possible, they would afford
such little friction and resistance to light and nicely balanced wheels,
that no inclination of the tracks was necessary, and that the carriages
mounted on such wheels and tracks would run the entire length of a long
building and turn corners not too sharp by a single initial push of the
hand. In other arrangements a carrier is self-propelled by means of a
coiled spring on the carrier, which begins its operation as soon as the
carrier is given a start; and to meet the exhausted strength of such
spring, coiled springs at different points on the line are arranged to
engage and give the carrier an additional push. Before the carrier is
stopped its action is such as to automatically rewind its spring.
A system of pneumatic transmission was invented, by which a carrier is
caused to travel through a tube by the agency of an air current, created
therein by an air compressor, blower, or similar device. The device is
so arranged that the air current is caused to take either direction
through the tube; and in some instances gravity may be used to assist a
vacuum formed behind the carrier. The tube is controlled at each end by
one or more sliding gates or valves, and the carrier is made to actuate
the gates, and close the one behind it, so that the carrier may be
discharged without permitting the escape of the air and consequent
reduction of pressure.
An interesting invention has been made by James M. Dodge of Philadelphia
in the line of conveyors, whereby pea coal and other quite heavy
materials introduced by a hopper into a trough are subjected to a
powerful air blast which pushes the material forward; and as the trough
is provided with a series of frequently occurring slots or perforations
open to the outer air and inclined opposite the direction of travel, the
powerful current from the blower in escaping through such outlets tends
to lift or buoy the material and carry it forward in the air current,
thereby greatly reducing frictional contact and increasing the impelling
operation. The inventor claims that with such an apparatus many tons of
material per hour may be conveyed with a comparatively small working air
pressure.
In order that a conveyor carriage may be automatically switched off at a
certain place or station on the line, one mode adopted was to arrange at
a gate or station a sort of pin or projection or other deflector to
engage some recess or corresponding feature on the carriage, so as to
arrest and turn the carriage in its new direction at that point. Another
mode was the adoption of electro-magnets, which would operate at a
certain place to arrest or divert the carriage; and in either case the
carriage was so constructed that its engaging features would operate
automatically only in conjunction with certain features at a particular
place on the line.
Signals have been also adopted, in some cases operated by an electric
current, by which the operator can determine whether or not the
controlling devices have operated to stop the carrier at the desired
place. By electric or mechanical means it is also provided that one or
more loop branches may be connected with or disconnected from the main
circuit.
The "lazy tongs" principle has been introduced, by which a long
lazy-tongs is shot forth through a tube or box to carry forward the
carriage; and the same principle is employed in fire-escapes to throw up
a cage to a great height to a window or other point, which cage is
lowered gently and safely by the same means to the ground. Buffers of
all kinds have been devised to effect the stoppage of the carrier
without injury thereto under the different degrees of force with which
it is moved upon its way, to prevent rebounding, and to enable the
carrier to be discharged with facility at the end of its route.
Among the early mechanical means of transporting the carriage was an
endless cable moved continuously by an engine, and this adoption of
cable principle in store service was co-eval with its adoption for
running street cars. Also the system of switching the cars from the main
line to a branch, and in different parts of a city, at the same time
that all lines are receiving their motive power from the main line,
corresponds to the manner of conveying cash to all parts of a building
at the same time from many points.
To the great department store or monstrous building wherein, as we have
said, the whole business of a town may be transacted, the assemblage and
conjoint use of elevators and conveyors seem to be actually necessary.
A very useful and important line of inventions consists in means for
forming connections between rotary shafts and their pulleys and
mechanisms to be operated thereby, by which such mechanism can be
started or stopped at once, or their motion reversed or retarded; or by
which an actuating shaft may be automatically stopped. These means are
known as _clutches_.
They are designed often to afford a yielding connection between the
shaft and a machine which shall prevent excessive strain and wear upon
starting of the shaft. They are also often provided with a spring
connection, which, in the rotation of the shaft in either direction,
will operate to relieve the strain upon the shaft, or shafts, and its
driving motor. Safety clutches are numerous, by which the machine is
quickly and automatically stopped by the action of electro-magnets
should a workman or other obstruction be caught in the machinery.
Electric auxiliary mechanism has also been devised to start or stop the
main machine slowly, and thus prevent injury to small or delicate parts
of complicated machines, like printing presses for instance. Clutches
are arranged sometimes in the form of weights, resembling the action of
the weights in steam governors, whereby centrifugal action is relied
upon for swinging the weights outward to effect a clutching and coupling
of the shaft, or other mechanism, so that two lines of shafting are
coupled, or the machine started, or speeded, at a certain time during
the operation. In order to avoid the great mischief arising sometimes
from undue strain upon and the breaking of a shaft, a weak coupling
composed of a link is sometimes employed between the shaft and the
driven machine, whereby, should the force become suddenly too great, the
link of weaker metal is broken, and the connection between the shaft
thereby destroyed and the machine stopped.
To this class of inventions, as well as to many others, the phrase,
"labour-saving", is applied as a descriptive term, and as it is a
correct one in most instances, since they save the labour of many human
hands, they are regarded by many as detrimental to a great extent, as
they result in throwing out of employment a large number of persons.
This derangement does sometimes occur, but the curtailment of the number
of labourers is but temporary after all.
The increased production of materials, resulting from cheaper and better
processes, and from the reduced cost of handling them, necessitates the
employment of a larger number of persons to take care of, in many ways,
the greater output caused by the increased demand; the new machinery
demands the labour of additional numbers in its manufacture; the
increase in the size and heights of buildings involves new modes of
construction and a greater number of artisans in their erection; new
forms of industry springing from every practical invention which
produces a new product or results in a new mode of operation,
complicates the systems of labour, and creates a demand for a large
number of employers and employees in new fields. Hence, it is only
necessary to resort to comparative, statistics (too extensive to cite
here) to show that the number of unemployed people in proportion to
the populations, is less in the present age than in any previous
one. In this sense, therefore, inventions should be classed as
labour-_increasing_ devices.
CHAPTER XI.
HYDRAULICS.
The science of Hydraulics appears to be as old as the thirst of man.
When prehistoric men had only stone implements, with which to do their
work, they built aqueducts, reservoirs and deep wells which rival in
extent many great similar works that are the boast of their modern
descendants. Modern inventors have also produced with a flourish nice
instrumentalities for raising water, agencies which are covered with the
moss of untold centuries in China.
It was more than an ancient observation that came down to Pliny's time
for record, that water would rise to a level with its source. The
observation, however, was put into practical use in his time and long
before without a knowledge of its philosophical cause.
Nothing in Egyptian sculpture portraying the arts in vogue around the
cradle of the human race is older than the long lever rocking upon a
cleft stick, one arm of the lever carrying a bracket and the other arm
used to raise a bucket from a well. Forty centuries and more have not
rendered this device obsolete.
Among other machines of the Egyptians, the Carthaginians, the Greeks,
and the Romans for raising water was the _tympanum_, a drum-shape wheel
divided into radial partitions, chambers, or pockets, which were open to
a short depth on the periphery of the wheel, and inclined toward the
axis, and which was driven by animal or manual power. These pockets
scooped up the water from the stream or pond in which the wheel was
located as the wheel revolved, and directed it toward the axis of the
wheel, where it ran out into troughs, pipes, or gutters. The _Noria_, a
chain of pots, and the screw of Archimedes were other forms of ancient
pumps. The bucket pumps with some modifications are known in modern
times as scoop wheels, and have been used extensively in the drainage of
lands, especially by the Dutch, who at first drove them by windmills and
later by steam.
The division of water-wheels into overshot, undershot and breast wheels
is not a modern system.
In the _Pneumatics of Hero_, which compilation of inventions appeared in
225 B. C., seventy-nine illustrations are given and described of simple
machines, between sixty and seventy of which are hydraulic devices.
Among these, are siphon pumps, the force pump of Ctesibius, a
"fire-pump," having two cylinders, and two pistons, valves, and levers.
We have in a previous chapter referred to Hero's steam engine. The fact
that a vacuum may be created in a pump into which water will rise by
atmospheric pressure appears to have been availed of but not explained
or understood.
The employment of the rope, pulley and windlass to raise water was known
to Hero and his countrymen as well as by the Chinese before them. The
chain pump and other pumps of simple form have only been improved since
Hero's day in matters of detail. The screw of Archimedes has been
extended in application as a carrier of water, and converted into a
conveyor of many other materials.
Thus, aqueducts, reservoirs, water-wheels (used for grinding grain),
simple forms of pumps, fountains, hydraulic organs, and a few other
hydraulic devices, were known to ancient peoples, but their limited
knowledge of the laws of pneumatics and their little mechanical skill
prevented much general progress or extensive general use of such
inventions.
It is said that Frontinus, a Roman Consul, and inspector of public
fountains and aqueducts in the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, and who wrote
a book, _De Aquaeductibus Urbis Romae Commentarius_, describing the
great aqueducts of Rome, was the first and the last of the ancients to
attempt a scientific investigation of the motions of liquids.
In 1593 Serviere, a Frenchman, born in Lyons, invented the rotary pump.
In this the pistons consisted of two cog wheels, their leaves
intermeshing, and rotated in an elliptical shaped chamber. The water
entered the chamber from a lower pipe, and the action of the wheels was
such as to carry the water around the chamber and force it out through
an opposite upper pipe. Subsequent changes involved the rotating of the
cylinder instead of the wheels and many modifications in the form of the
wheels. The same principle was subsequently adopted in rotary steam
engines.
In 1586, a few years before this invention of Serviere, Stevinus, the
great engineer of the dikes of Holland, wrote learnedly on the
_Principles of Statics and Hydrostatics_, and Whewell states that his
treatment of the subject embraces most of the elementary science of
hydraulics and hydrostatics of the present day. This was followed by the
investigations and treatises of Galileo, his pupil Torricelli, who
discovered the law of air pressure, the great French genius, Pascal, and
Sir Isaac Newton, in the 17th century; and Daniel Bernoulli, d'Alembert,
Euler, the great German mathematician and inventor of the centrifugal
pump, the Abbé Bossut, Venturi, Eylewein, and others in the 18th
century.
It was not until the 17th and 18th centuries that mankind departed much
from the practice of supplying their towns and cities with water from
distant springs, rivers and lakes, by pipes and aqueducts, and resorted
to water distribution systems from towers and elevated reservoirs.
Certain cities in Germany and France were the first to do this, followed
in the 18th century by England. This seems strange, as to England, as in
1582 one Peter Maurice, a Dutch engineer, erected at London, on the old
arched bridge across the Thames, a series of forcing pumps worked by
undershot wheels placed in the current of the river, by which he forced
a supply of water to the uppermost rooms of lofty buildings adjacent to
the bridge. Before the inventions of Newcomen and Watt in the latter
part of the 18th century of steam pumps, the lift and force pumps were
operated by wheels in currents, by horses, and sometimes by the force of
currents of common sewers.
When the waters of rivers adjacent to towns and cities thus began to be
pumped for drinking purposes, _strainers_ and _filters_ of various kinds
were invented of necessity. The first ones of which there is any printed
record made their appearance in 1776.
After the principles of hydraulics had thus been reviewed and discussed
by the philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries and applied, to the
extent indicated, further application of them was made, and especially
for the propelling of vessels. In 1718 La Hire revived and improved the
double-acting pump of Ctesibius, but to what extent he put it into use
does not appear. However, it was the double-acting pump having two
chambers and two valves, and in which the piston acted to throw the
water out at each stroke.
In 1730 Dr. John Allen of England designed a vessel having a tunnel or
pipe open at the stern thereof through which water was to be pumped into
the air or sea--the reaction thus occasioned driving the vessel forward.
He put such a vessel at work in a canal, working the pumps by manual
labor, and suggested the employment of a steam engine. A vessel of this
kind was patented by David Ramsey of England in 1738. Rumsey of America
in 1782 also invented a similar vessel, built one 50 feet long, and ran
it experimentally on the Potomac river. Dr. Franklin also planned a boat
of this kind in 1785 and illustrated the same by sketches. His plan has
since been tried on the Scheldt, but two turbines were substituted for
his simple force pump. Further mention will be made later on of a few
more elaborate inventions of this kind.
It also having been discovered that the fall of a column of water in a
tube would cause a portion of it to rise higher than its source by
reason of the force of momentum, a machine was devised by which
successive impulses of this force were used, in combination with
atmospheric pressure, to raise a portion of the water at each impulse.
This was the well-known _ram_, and the first inventor of such a machine
was John Whitehurst of Cheapside, England, who constructed one in 1772.
From a reservoir, spring, or cistern of water, the water was discharged
downward into a long pipe of small diameter, and from thence into a
shorter pipe governed by a stop-cock. On the opening of the stop-cock
the water was given a quick momentum, and on closing the cock water was
forced by the continuing momentum through another pipe into an air
chamber. A valve in the latter-mentioned pipe opened into the air
chamber. The air pressure served to overcome the momentum and to close
the chamber and at the same time forced the water received into the air
chamber up an adjacent pipe. Another impulse was obtained and another
injection of water into the chamber by again opening the stop-cock, and
thus by successive impulses water was forced into the chamber and
pressed by the air up through the discharge pipe and thence through a
building or other receptacle. But the fact that the stop-valve had to be
opened and closed by hand to obtain the desired number of lifts rendered
the machine ineffective.
In 1796 Montgolfier, a Frenchman and one of the inventors of the
balloon, substituted for the stop-cock of the Whitehurst machine a loose
impulse valve in the waste pipe, whereby the valve was raised by the
rush of the water, made to set itself, check the outflow and turn the
current into the air chamber. This simple alteration changed the
character of the machine entirely, rendered it automatic in action and
converted it into a highly successful water-raising machine. For this
invention Montgolfier obtained a Gold Medal from the French Exposition
of 1802. Where a head can be had from four to six feet, water can be
raised to the height of 30 feet. Bodies of water greater in amount than
is desired to be raised can thus be utilised, and this simple machine
has come into very extensive use during the present century.
Allusion was made in the last chapter to the powerful hydraulic press of
Joseph Bramah invented in 1795-1800, its practical introduction in this
century and improvements therein of others. After the great improvements
in the steam engine made by Watt, water, steam and air pressure joined
their forces on the threshold of this century to lift and move the
world, as it had never been moved before.
The strong hands of hydraulics are pumps. They are divided into classes
by names indicating their purpose and mode of operation, such as single,
double-acting, lift or force, reciprocating or rotary, etc.
Knight, in his celebrated _Mechanical Dictionary_, enumerates 100
differently constructed pumps connected with the various arts. In a
broader enumeration, under the head of _Hydraulic Engineering and
Engineering Devices_, he gives a list of over 600 species. The number
has since increased. About nine-tenths of these contrivances have been
invented during the 19th century, although the philosophical principles
of the operation of most of them had been previously discovered.
The important epochs in the invention of pumps, ending with the 18th
century, were thus the single-acting pump of Ctesibius, 225 B. C., the
double-acting of La Hire in 1718, the hydraulic ram of Whitehurst, 1772,
and the hydraulic press of Bramah of 1795-1802.
Bramah's press illustrates how the theories of one age often lie
dormant, but if true become the practices of a succeeding age. Pascal,
150 years before Bramah's time, had written this seeming hydraulic
paradox: "If a vessel closed on all sides has two openings, the one a
hundred times as large as the other, and if each be supplied with a
piston which fits it exactly, then a man pushing the small piston will
equilibrate that of 100 men pushing the piston which is 100 times as
large, and will overcome the other 99." This is the law of the hydraulic
press, that intensity of pressure is everywhere the same.
The next important epoch was the invention of Forneyron in 1823, of the
water-wheel known as the Turbine and also as the Vortex Wheel. If we
will return a moment to the little steam engine of the ancient Hero of
Alexandria, called the Eolipile, it will be remembered that the steam
admitted into a pivoted vessel and out of it through little opposite
pipes, having bent exits turned in contrary directions, caused the
vessel to rotate by reason of the reaction of the steam against the
pipes. In what is called Barker's mill, brought out in the 18th century,
substantially the same form of engine is seen with water substituted for
the steam.
A turbine is a wheel usually placed horizontally to the water. The wheel
is provided with curved internal buckets against which the water is led
by outer curved passages, the guides and the buckets both curved in such
manner that the water shall enter the wheel as nearly as possible
without shock, and leave it with the least possible velocity, thereby
utilising the greatest possible amount of energy.
In the chapter on Electrical inventions reference is made to the mighty
power of Niagara used to actuate a great number of electrical and other
machines of vast power. This utilisation had long been the dream of
engineers. Sir William Siemens had said that the power of all the coal
raised in the world would barely represent the power of Niagara. The
dream has been realised, and the turbine is the apparatus through which
the power of the harnessed giant is transmitted. A canal is dug from the
river a mile above the falls. It conducts water to a power house near
the falls. At the power house the canal is furnished with a gate, and
with cribs to keep back the obstructions, such as sticks. At the gate is
placed a vertical iron tube called a penstock, 7½ feet in diameter
and 160 feet deep. At the bottom of the penstock is placed a turbine
wheel fixed on a shaft, and to which shaft is connected an electric
generator or other power machine. On opening the gate a mass of water
7½ feet in diameter falls upon the turbine wheel 160 feet below. The
water rushing through the wheel turns it and its shaft many hundred
revolutions a minute. All the machinery is of enormous power and
dimensions. One electric generator there is 11 feet 7 inches in diameter
and spins around at the rate of 250 revolutions a minute. Means are
provided by which the speed of each wheel is regulated automatically.
Each turbine in a penstock represents the power of 5,000 horses, and
there are now ten or more employed.
After the water has done its work on the wheels it falls into a tunnel
and is carried back to the river below the falls. Not only are the
manufactures of various kinds of a large town at the falls thus supplied
with power, but electric power is transmitted to distant towns and
cities.
Turbine pumps of the Forneyron type have an outward flow; but another
form, invented also by a Frenchman, Jonval, has a downward discharge,
and others are oblique, double, combined turbine, rotary, and
centrifugal, embodying similar principles. The term _rotary_, broadly
speaking, includes turbine and centrifugal pumps. The centrifugal pump,
invented by Euler in 1754, was taken up in the nineteenth century and
greatly improved.
In the centrifugal pump of the ordinary form the water is received at
the centre of the wheel and diverted and carried out in an upward
direction, but in most of its modern forms derived from the turbine, the
principle is adopted of so shaping the vanes that the water, striking
them in the curved direction, shall not have its line of curvature
suddenly changed.
Among modern inventions of this class of pumps was the "Massachusetts"
of 1818 and McCarty's, in 1830, of America, that of some contemporary
French engineers, and subsequently in France the Appold system, which
latter was brought into prominent notice at the London Exposition of
1851. Improvements of great value were also made by Prof. James Thompson
of England.
Centrifugal pumps have been used with great success in lifting large
bodies of water to a moderate height, and for draining marshes and other
low lands.
Holland, Germany, France, England and America have, through some of
their ablest hydraulic engineers and inventors, produced most remarkable
results in these various forms of pumps. We have noted what has been
done at Niagara with the turbines; and the drainage of the marshes of
Italy, the lowlands of Holland, the fens of England and the swamps of
Florida bear evidence of the value of kindred inventions.
That modern form of pump known as the _injector_, has many uses in the
arts and manufactures. One of its most useful functions is to
automatically supply steam boilers with water, and regulate the supply.
It was the invention of Giffard, patented in England in 1858, and
consists of a steam pipe leading from the boiler and having its nozzle
projecting into an annular space which communicates with a feed pipe
from a water supply. A jet of steam is discharged with force into this
space, producing a vacuum, into which the water from the feed pipe
rushes, and the condensed steam and water are driven by the momentum of
the jet into a pipe leading into the boiler. This exceedingly useful
apparatus has been improved and universally used wherever steam boilers
are found. This idea of injecting a stream of steam or water to create
or increase the flow of another stream has been applied in
_intensifiers_, to increase the pressure of water in hydraulic mains,
pipes, and machines, by additional pressure energy. Thus the water from
an ordinary main may be given such an increased pressure that a jet from
a hydrant may be carried to the tops of high houses.
In connection with pumping it may be said that a great deal has been
discovered and invented during this century concerning the force and
utilisation of jets of water and the force of water flowing through
orifices. In the art of mining, a new system called _hydraulicising_ has
been introduced, by which jets of water at high pressure have been
directed against banks and hills, which have crumbled, been washed away,
and made to reveal any precious ore they have concealed.
To assist this operation _flexible nozzles_ have been invented which
permit the stream to be easily turned in any desired direction.
Returning to the idea of raising weights by hydraulic pressure, mention
must be made of the recent invention of the _hydraulic jack_, a portable
machine for raising loads, and which has displaced the older and less
efficient screw jack. As an example of the practical utility of the
hydraulic jack, about a half century ago it required the aid of 480 men
working at capstans to raise the Luxor Obelisk in Paris, whilst within
30 years thereafter Cleopatra's Needle, a heavier monument, was raised
to its present position on the Thames embankment by four men each
working one hydraulic jack.
By the high pressures, or stresses given by the hydraulic press it was
learned that cold metals have plasticity and can be moulded or stretched
like other plastic bodies. Thus in one modification a machine is had for
making lead pipes:--A "container" is filled with molten lead and then
allowed to cool. The container is then forced by the pump against an
elongated die of the size of the pipe required. A pressure from one to
two tons per square inch is exerted, the lead is forced up through the
die, and the pipe comes out completed. Wrought iron and cold steel can
be forced like wax into different forms, and a rod of steel may be drawn
through a die to form a piano wire.
By another modification of the hydraulic press pipes and cables are
covered with a coating of lead to prevent deterioration from rust and
other causes.
Not only are cotton and other bulky materials pressed into small compass
by hydraulic machines, but very valuable oils are pressed from cotton
seed and from other materials--the seed being first softened, then made
into cakes, and the cakes pressed.
If it is desired to line tunnels or other channels with a metal lining,
shield or casing, large segments of iron to compose the casing are put
in position, and as fast as the tunnel is excavated the casing is
pressed forward, and when the digging is done the cast-iron tunnel is
complete.
If the iron hoops on great casks are to be tightened the cask is set on
the plate of a hydraulic press, the hoops connected to a series of steel
arms projecting from an overhanging support, and the cask is pressed
upward until the proper degree of tightness is secured.
In the application of hydraulic power to machine tools great advances
have been made. It has become a system, in which Tweddle of England was
a pioneer. The great force of water pressure combined with comparatively
slow motion constitutes the basis of the system. Sir William Fairbairn
had done with steam what Tweddle and others accomplished with water.
Thus the enormous force of men and the fearful clatter formerly
displayed in these huge works where the riveting of boilers was carried
on can now be dispensed with, and in place of the noisy hammer with its
ceaseless blows has come the steam or the hydraulic riveting machine,
which noiselessly drives the rivet through any thickness of metal,
clinches the same, and smooths the jointed plate. The forging and the
rolling of the plates are performed by the same means.
William George Armstrong of England, afterward Sir William, first a
lawyer, but with the strongest bearing toward mechanical subjects,
performed a great work in the advancement of hydraulic engineering. It
is claimed that he did for hydraulic machinery, in the storage and
transmission of power thereby, what Watt did for the steam engine and
Bessemer did for steel. In 1838 he produced his first invention, an
important improvement in the hydraulic engine. In 1840, in a letter to
the _Mechanics' Magazine_, he calls attention to the advantages of water
as a mechanical agent and a reservoir of power, and showed how water
pumped to an elevated reservoir by a steam engine might have the
potential energy thus stored utilised in many advantageous ways. How,
for instance, a small engine pumping continuously could thus supply many
large engines working intermittently. In illustration of this idea he
invented a crane, which was erected on Newcastle quay in 1846; another
was constructed on the Albert dock at Liverpool, and others at other
places. These cranes, adapted for the lifting and carrying of enormous
loads, were worked by hydraulic pressure obtained from elevated tanks or
reservoirs, as above indicated. But as a substitute for such tanks or
reservoirs he invented the _Accumulator_. This consists of a large
cast-iron cylinder fitted with a plunger, which is made to work
water-tight therein by means of suitable packing. To this plunger is
attached a weighted case filled with one or many tons of metal or other
coarse material. Water is pumped into the cylinder until the plunger is
raised to its full height within the cylinder, when the supply of water
is cut off by the automatic operation of a valve. When the cranes or
other apparatus to be worked thereby are in operation, water is passed
from the cylinder through a small pipe which actuates the crane through
hydraulic pressure. This pressure of course depends upon the weight of
the plunger. Thus a pressure of from 500 to 1,000 pounds per square inch
may be obtained. The descending plunger maintains a constant pressure
upon the water, and the water is only pumped into the cylinder when it
is required to be filled. With sensitive accumulators of this character
hydraulic machinery is much used on board ships for steering them, and
for loading, discharging and storing cargoes.
_Water Pressure Engines_ or _Water Motors_ of a great variety as to
useful details have been invented to take advantage of a natural head of
water from falls wherever it exists, or from artificial accumulators or
from street mains. They resemble steam engines, in that the water under
pressure drives a piston in a cylinder somewhat in the manner of steam.
The underlying principle of this class of machinery is the admission of
water under pressure to a cylinder which moves the piston and is allowed
to escape on the completion of the stroke. They are divided into two
great classes, single and double acting engines, accordingly as the
water is admitted to one side of the piston only, or to both sides
alternately. Both kinds are provided with a regulator in the form of a
turn-cock, weight, or spring valve to regulate and control the flow of
water and to make it continuous. They are used for furnishing a limited
amount of power for working small printing presses, dental engines,
organs, sewing machines, and for many other purposes where a light motor
is desired.
The nineteenth century has seen a revolution in _baths_ and accompanying
_closets_. However useful, luxurious, and magnificent may have been the
patrician baths of ancient Rome, that system, which modern investigators
have found to be so complete to a certain extent, was not nor ever has
been in the possession of the poor. It is within the memory of many now
living everywhere how wretched was the sanitary accommodations in every
populous place a generation or two ago. Now, with the modern water
distribution systems and cheap bathing apparatuses which can be brought
to the homes of all, with plunger, valved siphon and valved and washout
closets, air valve, liquid seal, pipe inlet, and valve seal traps, and
with the flushing and other hydraulic cleaning systems for drains and
cesspools, little excuse can be had for want of proper sanitary
regulations in any intelligent community. The result of the adoption of
these modern improvements in this direction on the health of the people
has been to banish plagues, curtail epidemics, and prolong for years the
average duration of human life.
How multiplied are the uses to which water is put, and how completely it
is being subjected to the use of man!
Rivers and pipes have their metres, so that now the velocity and volume
of rivers and streams are measured and controlled, and floods prevented.
The supplies for cities and for families are estimated, measured and
recorded as easily as are the supplies of illuminating gas, or the flow
of food from elevators.
Among the minor, but very useful inventions, are _water scoops_ for
picking up water for a train while in motion, consisting of a curved
open pipe on a car, the mouth of which strikes a current of water in an
open trough between the tracks and picks up and deposits in a minute a
car load of water for the engine. _Nozzles_ to emit jets of great
velocity, and ball nozzles terminating in a cup in which a ball is
loosely seated, and which has the effect, as it is lifted by the jet, to
spread it into an umbrella-shaped spray, are of great value at fires in
quenching flame and smoke.
Next to pure air to breathe we need pure water to drink, and modern
discoveries and inventions have done and are doing much to help us to
both. Pasteur and others have discovered and explained the germ theory
of disease and to what extent it is due to impure water. Inventors have
produced _filters_, and there is a large class of that character which
render the water pure as it enters the dwelling, and fit for all
domestic purposes. A specimen of the latter class is one which is
attached to the main service pipe as it enters from the street. The
water is first led into a cylinder stored with coarse filtering material
which clears the water of mud, sediment and coarser impurities, and then
is conducted into a second cylinder provided with a mass of fine grained
or powdered charcoal, or some other material which has the quality of
not only arresting all remaining injurious ingredients, but destroys
organisms, neutralises ammonia and other deleterious matter. From thence
the water is returned to the service pipe and distributed through the
house. The filter may be thoroughly cleansed by reversing the movement
of the water, and carrying it off through a drain pipe until it runs
clear and sweet, whereupon the water is turned in its normal course
through the filter and house.
In a very recent report of General J. M. Wilson, Chief of Engineers,
U.S.A., the subject of filtration of water, and especially of public
water supplies in England, the United States, and on the Continent, is
very thoroughly treated, and the conclusion arrived at there is that the
system termed "the American," or mechanical system, is the most
successful one.
This consists, first, in leading the water into one or more reservoirs,
then coagulating suspended matter in the water by the use of the
sulphate of alumina, and then allowing the water to flow through a body
of coarse sand, by which the coagulated aluminated matter is caught and
held in the interstices of the sand, and the bacteria arrested. All
objectionable matter is thus arrested by the surface portion of the sand
body, which portion is from time to time scraped off, and the whole sand
mass occasionally washed out by upward currents of water forced through
the same.
By this system great rapidity of filtration is obtained, the rate being
120,000,000 gallons a day per acre.
The English system consists more in the use of extended and successive
reservoirs or beds of sand alone, or aided by the use of the sulphate.
This also is extensively used in many large cities.
CHAPTER XII.
PNEUMATICS AND PNEUMATIC MACHINES.
"The march of the human mind is slow," exclaimed Burke in his great
speech on "Conciliation with the Colonies." It was at the beginning of
the last quarter of the 18th century that he was speaking, and he was
referring to the slow discovery of the eternal laws of Providence as
applied in the field of political administration to distant colonies.
The same could then have been said of the march of the human mind in the
realms of Nature. How slow had been the apprehension of the forces of
that kind but silent Mother whose strong arms are ever ready to lift and
carry the burdens of men whenever her aid is diligently sought! The
voice of Burke was, however, hardly silent when the human mind suddenly
awoke, and its march in the realms of government and of natural science
since then cannot be regarded as slow.
More than fifteen centuries before Burke spoke, not only had Greece
discovered the principles of political freedom for its citizens and its
colonies, but the power of steam had been discovered, and experimental
work been done with it.
Yet when the famous orator made his speech the Grecian experiment was a
toy of Kings, and the steam engine had just developed from this toy into
a mighty engine in the hands of Watt. The age of mechanical inventions
had just commenced with the production of machines for spinning and
weaving. And yet, in view of the rise of learning, and the appearance
from time to time of mighty intellects in the highest walks of science,
the growth of the mind in the line of useful machinery had indeed been
strangely slow. "Learning" had revived in Italy in the 12th and 13th
centuries and spread westward in the 14th. In the 15th, gunpowder and
printing had been discovered, and Scaliger, the famous scholar of Italy,
and Erasmus, the celebrated Dutch philosopher, were the leading
restorers of ancient literature. Science then also revived, and
Copernicus, the Pole, gave us the true theory of the solar system. The
16th century produced the great mathematicians and astronomers Tycho
Brahe, the Dane, Cardan and Galileo, the illustrious Italians, and
Kepler, the German astronomer, whose discovery of the laws of planetary
motion supplemented the works of Copernicus and Galileo and illuminated
the early years of the 17th century.
In the 17th century appeared Torricelli, the inventor of the barometer;
Guericke, the German, inventor of the air pump; Fahrenheit, the inventor
of the mercurial thermometer bearing his name; Leibnitz, eminent in
every department of science and philosophy; Huygens, the great Dutch
astronomer and philosopher; Pascal of France and Sir Isaac Newton of
England, the worthy successors of Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus; and
yet, with the exception of philosophical discoveries and a few
experiments, the field of invention in the way of motor engines still
remained practically closed. But slight as had been the discoveries and
experiments referred to, they were the mine from which the inventions of
subsequent times were quarried.
One of the earliest, if not the first of pneumatic machines, was the
bellows. Its invention followed the discovery of fire and of metals. The
bladders of animals suggested it, and their skins were substituted for
the bladders.
The Egyptians have left a record of its use, thirty-four centuries ago,
and its use has been continuous ever since.
Mention has been made of the cannon. It was probably the earliest
attempt to obtain motive power from heat. The ball was driven out of an
iron cylinder by the inflammatory power of powder. Let a piston be
substituted for the cannon ball, as was suggested by Huygens in 1680 and
by Papin in 1690, and the charge of powder so reduced that when it is
exploded the piston will not be thrown entirely out of the cylinder,
another small explosive charge introduced on the other side of the
piston to force it back, or let the cylinder be vertical and the piston
be driven back by gravity, means provided to permit the escape of the
gas after it has done its work, and means to keep the cylinder cool, and
we have the prototype of the modern heat engines. The gunpowder
experiments of Huygens and Papin were not successful, but they were the
progenitors of similar inventions made two centuries thereafter.
Jan Baptista van Helmont, a Flemish physician (1577-1644), was the first
to apply the term, _gas_ to the elastic fluids which resemble air in
physical properties. Robert Boyle, the celebrated Irish scholar and
scientist, and improver of the air pump, and Edwin Mariotte, the French
physicist who was first to show that a feather and a coin will drop the
same distance at the same time in a reservoir exhausted of air, were the
independent discoverers of Boyle's and Mariotte's law of
gases(1650-1676). This was that at any given temperature of a gas which
is at rest its volume varies inversely with the pressure put upon it. It
follows from this law that the density and tension, and therefore the
expansive force of a gas, are proportional to the compressing force to
which it is subjected. It is said that Abbé Hauteville, the son of a
baker of Orleans, about 1678 proposed to raise water by a powder motor;
and that in 1682 he described a machine based on the principle of the
circulation of the blood, produced by the alternate expansion and
contraction of the heart.
The production of heat by concentrating the rays of the sun, and for
burning objects had been known from the time of Archimedes, and been
repeated from time to time.
Thus stood this art at the close of the 17th century, and thus it
remained until near the close of the 18th.
In England Murdock, the Cornish Steam Engineer, was the first to make
and use coal gas for illuminating purposes, which he did in 1792 and
1798. Its utilisation for other practical purposes was then suggested.
Gas engines as motive powers were first described in the English patent
to John Barber, in 1791, and then in one issued to Robert Street in
1794. Barber proposed to introduce a stream of carbonated hydrogen gas
through one port, and a quantity of air at another, and explode them
against the piston. Street proposed to drive up the piston by the
expansive force of a heated gas, and anticipated many modern ideas.
Phillipe Lebon, a French engineer, in 1799 and in 1801 anticipated in a
theoretical way many ideas since successfully reduced to practice. He
proposed to use coal gas to drive a piston, which in turn should move
the shaft that worked the pumps which forced in the gas and air, and
thus make the machine double-acting; to introduce a charge of
inflammable gas mixed with sufficient air to ignite it; to compress the
air and gas before they entered the motor cylinder; to introduce the
charge alternately on each side of the piston; and he also suggested the
use of the electric spark to fire the mixture. But Lebon was
assassinated and did not live to work out his ideas.
At the very beginning of the 19th century John Dalton in England,
1801-1807, and Gay-Lussac in France began their investigations of gases
and vapours. Dalton was not only the author of the atomic theory, but
the discoverer of the leading ideas in the "Constitution of Mixed
Gases." These features were the diffusion of gases, the action of gases
on each other in vacuum--the influence of different temperatures upon
them, their chemical constituents and their relative specific gravity.
Gay-Lussac, continuing his investigations as to expansion of air and
gases under increased temperatures, in 1807-10, established the law that
when free from moisture they all dilate uniformly and to equal amounts
for all equal increments of temperature. He also showed that the gases
combine, as to volume, in simple proportions, and that several of them
on being compounded contracted always in such simple proportions as
one-half, one-third, or one-quarter, of their joint bulk. By these laws
all forms of engines which were made to work through the agency of heat
are classed as heat engines--so that under this head are included steam
engines, air engines, gas engines, vapour engines and solar engines. The
tie that binds these engines into one great family is temperature. It is
the heat that does the work. Whether it is a cannon, the power of which
is manifested in a flash, or the slower moving steam engine, whose
throbbing heart beats not until water is turned to steam, or the sun,
the parent of them all, whose rays are grasped and used direct, the
question in all cases is, what is the amount of heat produced and how
can it be controlled?
It, then, can make no difference what the agent is that is employed,
whether air, or gas, or steam, or the sun, or gunpowder explosion, but
what is the temperature to be attained in the cylinder or vessel in
which they work. Power is the measure of work done in a given time.
Horse power is the unit of such measurement, and it consists of the
amount of power that is required to raise one pound through a vertical
distance of one foot. This power is pressure and the pressure is heat.
The unit of heat is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature
of a pound of distilled water one degree--from 39 degrees to 40 degrees
F. Its amount or measurement is determined in any instance by a
dynamometer.
These were the discoveries with which Philosophy opened the nineteenth
century so brilliantly in the field of Pneumatics.
Before that time it seemed impossible that explosive gases would ever be
harnessed as steam had been and made to do continual successful work in
a cylinder and behind a piston. As yet means were to be found to make
the engine efficient as a double-acting one--to start the untamed steed
at the proper moment and to stop him at the moment he had done his work.
As Newcomen had been the first in the previous century to apply the
steam engine to practical work--pumping water from mines--so Samuel
Brown of England was the first in this century to invent and use a gas
engine upon the water.
Brown took out patents in 1823 and 1826. He proposed to use gunpowder
gas as the motive power. His engine was also described in the
_Mechanics' Magazine_ published in London at that time. In the making of
his engine he followed the idea of a steam engine, but used the flame of
an ignited gas jet to create a vacuum within the cylinder instead of
steam. He fitted up an experimental boat with such an engine, and means
upon the boat to generate the gas. The boat was then operated upon the
Thames. He also succeeded experimentally in adapting his engine to a
road carriage. But Brown's machines were cumbrous, complicated, and
difficult to work, and therefore did not come into public use.
About this time (1823), Davy and Faraday reawakened interest in gas
engines by their discovery that a number of gases could be reduced to a
liquid state, some by great pressure, and others by cold, and that upon
the release of the pressure the gases would return to their original
volume. In the condensation heat was developed, and in re-expansion it
was rendered latent.
Then Wright in 1833 obtained a patent in which he expounded and
illustrated the principles of expansion and compression of gas and air,
performed in separate cylinders, the production of a vacuum by the
explosion and the use of a water jacket around the cylinder for cooling
it.
For William Burdett, in 1838, is claimed the honour of having been the
first to invent the means of compressing the gas and air previous to the
explosion, substantially the same as adopted in gas engines of the
present day.
The defects found in gas engines thus far were want of proper
preliminary compression, then in complete expansion, and finally loss of
heat through the walls.
Some years later, Lenoir, a Frenchman, invented a gas engine of a
successful type, of which three hundred in 1862 were in use in France.
It showed what could be accomplished by an engine in which the fuel was
introduced and fired directly in the piston cylinder. Its essential
features were a cylinder into which a mixture of gas and air was
admitted at atmospheric pressure, which was maintained until the piston
made half its stroke, when the gas was exploded by an electric spark. A
wheel of great weight was hung upon a shaft which was connected to the
piston, and which weight absorbed the force suddenly developed by the
explosion, and so moderated the speed. Another object of the use of the
heavy wheel was to carry the machine over the one-half of the period in
which the driving power was absent.
Hugon, another eminent French engineer, invented and constructed a gas
engine on the same principle as Lenair's.
About this time (1850-60) M. Beau de Rohes, a French engineer,
thoroughly investigated the reasons of the uneconomical working of gas
motors, and found that it was due to want of sufficient compression of
the gas and air previous to explosion, incomplete expansion and loss of
heat through the walls of the cylinder, and he was the first to
formulate a "cycle" of operations necessary to be followed in order to
render a gas engine efficient. They related to the size and dimensions
of the cylinder; the maximum speed of the piston; the greatest possible
expansion, and the highest pressure obtainable at the beginning of the
act of expansion. The study and application of these conditions created
great advancements in gas engines.
With the discovery and development of the oil wells in the United States
about 1860 a new fuel was found in the crude petroleum, as well as a
source of light. The application of petroleum to engines, either to
produce furnace heat, or as introduced directly into the piston cylinder
mixed with inflammable gas to produce flame heat and expansion, has
given a wonderful impetus to the utilisation of gas engines.
G. H. Brayton of the United States in 1873 invented a very efficient
engine in which the vapour of petroleum mixed with air constituted the
fuel. Adolf Spiel of Berlin has also recently invented a petroleum
engine.
Principal among those to whom the world is indebted for the revolution
in the construction of gas engines and its establishment as a successful
rival to the steam engine is Nicolaus A. Otto of Deutz on the Rhine.
In the Lenair and Hugon system the expansive force of the exploded gas
was used directly upon the piston, and through this upon the other
moving parts. A great noise was produced by these constant explosions.
In the Otto system the explosion is used indirectly and only to produce
a vacuum below the piston, when atmospheric pressure is used to give the
return stroke of the piston and produce the effective work. The Otto
engine is noiseless. This is accomplished by his method of mixing and
admitting the gases. He employs two different mixtures, one a "feebly
explosive mixture," and the other "a strongly explosive mixture," used
to operate on the piston and thus prolong the explosions.
The mode of operation of one of Otto's most successful engines is as
follows: The large fly wheel is started by hand or other means, and as
the piston moves forward it draws into the cylinder a light charge of
mixed coal gas and air, and the gas inlet is then cut off. As the piston
returns it compresses this mixture. At the moment the down stroke is
completed the compressed mixture is ignited, and, expanding, drives the
piston before it. In the second return stroke the burnt gases are
expelled from the cylinder and the whole made ready to start afresh.
Work is actually done in the piston only during one-quarter of the time
it is in motion. The fly-wheel carries forward the work at the outset
and the gearing the rest of the time.
Otto was associated with Langen in producing his first machine, and its
introduction at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876
excited great attention. Otto and E. W. and W. J. Crossley jointly, and
then Otto singly, subsequently patented notable improvements.
Simon Bischof and Clark, Hurd and Clayton in England; Daimler of Deutz
on the Rhine, Riker and Wiegand of the United States, and others, have
made improvements in the Otto system.
Ammoniacal gas engines have been successfully invented. _Aqua ammonia_
is placed in a generator in which it is heated. The heat separates the
ammonia gas from the water, and the gas is then used to operate a
suitable engine. The exhaust gas is cooled, passed into the previously
weakened solution, reabsorbed and returned to the generator. In 1890
Charles Tellier of France patented an ammoniacal engine, also means for
utilising solar heat and exhaust steam for the same purpose; and in the
same year De Susini, also of France, patented an engine operated by the
vapour of ether; A. Nobel, another Frenchman, in 1894, patented a
machine for propelling torpedoes and other explosive missiles, and for
controlling the course of balloons, the motive power of which is a gas
developed in a closed reservoir by the chemical reaction of metallic
sodium or potassium in a solution of ammonia. These vapour engines are
used for vapour launches, bicycles and automobiles.
In 1851 the ideas of Huygens and Papin of two hundred years before were
revived by W. M. Storm, who in that year took out a gunpowder engine
patent in the United States, in which the air was compressed by the
explosions of small charges of gunpowder. About fifteen other patents
have been taken out in America since that time for such engines. In some
the engines are fed by cartridges which are exploded by pulling a
trigger.
As to gas and vapor engines generally, it may now be said, in comparison
with steam, that although the steam engine is now regarded as almost
perfect in operation, and that it can be started and stopped and
otherwise controlled quietly, smoothly, instantaneously, and in the most
uniform and satisfactory manner, yet there is the comparatively long
delay in generating the steam in the boiler, and the loss of heat and
power as it is conducted in pipes to the working cylinder, resulting in
the utilisation of only ten per cent of the actual power generated,
whereas gas and vapour engines utilise twenty-five per cent of the power
generated, and the flame and explosions are now as easily and
noiselessly controlled as the flow of oil or water. The world is coming
to agree with Prof. Fleeming Jenkins that "Gas engines will ultimately
supplant the steam."
The smoke and cinder nuisance with them has been solved.
The sister invention of the gas engine is the air engine. There can be
no doubt about the success of this busy body, as it is now a swift and
successful motor in a thousand different fields. Machines in which air,
either hot or cold, is used in place of steam as the moving power to
drive a piston, or to be driven by a piston, are known generally as air,
caloric, or hot-air engines, air compressors, or compressed air engines,
and are also classed as pneumatic machines, air brakes, or pumps. They
are now specifically known by the name of the purpose to which they are
applied, as air ship, ventilator, air brake, fan blower, air pistol, air
spring, etc.
The attention of inventors was directed towards compressed and heated
air as a motor as soon as steam became a known and efficient servant;
but the most important and the only successful air machine existing
prior to this century was the air pump, invented by Guericke in 1650,
and subsequently perfected by Robert Boyle and others. The original pump
and the Magdeburg hemispheres are still preserved.
It is recorded that Amontons of France, in 1699, had an atmospheric fire
wheel or air engine in which a heated column of air was made to drive a
wheel.
It has already been noted what Papin (1680-1690) proposed and did in
steam. His last published work was a Latin essay upon a new system for
raising water by the action of fire, published in 1707.
The action of confined and compressed steam and gases, and air, is so
nearly the same in the machines in which they constitute the motive
power that the history, development, construction, and operation of the
machines of one class are closely interwoven with those of the others.
Taking advantage of what had been taught them by Watt and others as to
steam and steam engines, and of the principles and laws of gases as
expounded by Boyle, Mariotte, Dalton, and Gay-Lussac, that many of the
gases, such as air, preserve a permanent expansive gaseous form under
all degrees of temperature and compression to which they had as yet been
subjected, that when compressed and released they will expand, and exert
a pressure in the contrary direction until the gas and outside
atmospheric pressure are in equilibrium, that this compressed gas
pressure is equal, and transmitted equally in all directions, and that
the weight of a column of air resting on every horizontal square inch at
the sea level is very nearly 14.6 pounds, the inventors of the
nineteenth century were enabled by this supreme illumination to enter
with confidence into that work of mechanical contrivances which has
rendered the age so marvellous.
It was natural that in the first development of mechanical appliances
they should be devoted to those pursuits in which men had the greatest
practical interest. Thus as to steam it was first applied to the raising
of water from mines and then to road vehicles. And so in 1800 Thos.
Parkinson of England invented and patented an "hydrostatic engine or
machine for the purpose of drawing beer or any other liquid out of a
cellar or vault in a public house, which is likewise intended to be
applied for raising water out of mines, ships or wells. By the use of a
sort of an air pump he maintained an air pressure on the beer in an
air-tight cask situated in the cellar, which was connected with pipes
having air-tight valves, with the upper floor. The liquid was forced
from the cellar by the air pressure, and when turned off, the air
pressure was resumed in the cask, which "preserved the beer from being
thrown into a state of flatness." Substantially the same device in
principle has been reinvented and incorporated in patents numerous times
since.
In the innumerable applications of the pneumatic machines and air tools
of the century, especially of air-compressing devices, to the daily uses
of life, we may, by turning first to our home, find its inner and outer
walls painted by a pneumatic paint-spraying machine, for such have been
made that will coat forty-six thousand square feet of surface in six
hours; and it is said that paint can be thus applied not only more
quickly, but more thoroughly and durably than by the old process. The
periodical and fascinating practice of house cleaning is now greatly
facilitated by an air brush having a pipe with a thin wide end in which
are numerous perforations, and through which the air is forced by a
little pump, and with which apparatus a far more efficient cleaning
effect upon carpets, mattresses, curtains, clothes, and furniture can be
obtained than by the time-honoured broom and duster.
Is the home uncomfortable by reason of heat and summer insects? A
compressor having tanks or cisterns in the cellar filled with cool or
cold air may be set to work to reduce the temperature of the house and
fan the inmates with a refreshing breeze.
Air engines have been invented which can be used to either heat or cool
the air, or do one or the other automatically. The heating when wanted
is by fuel in a furnace forced up by a working cylinder, and the cooling
by the circulation of water around small, thin copper tubes through
which the air passes to the cylinder.
Do the chimes of the distant church bells lead one to the house of
worship? The worshipper goes with the comforting assurance that the
chimes which send forth such sweet harmonies are operated not by
toiling, sweating men at ropes, but by a musician who plays as upon an
organ, and works the keys, valves and stops by the aid of compressed
air, and sometimes by the additional help of electricity.
Mention has already been made of office and other elevators, in which
compressed air is an important factor in operating the same and for
preventing accidents.
If a waterfall is convenient, air is compressed by the body of
descending water, and used to ventilate tunnels, and deep shafts and
mines, or drive the drills or other tools.
The pneumatic mail tube despatch system, by which letters, parcels,
etc., are sent from place to place by the force of atmospheric pressure
in an air-exhausted tube, is a decidedly modern invention, unknown in
use even by those who are still children. Tubes as large as eight inches
in diameter are now in use in which cartridge boxes are placed, each
holding six hundred or more letters, and when the air is exhausted the
cartridge is forced through the tubes to the distance sometimes of three
miles and more in a few minutes.
In travelling by rail the train is now guided in starting or in stopping
on to the right track, which may be one out of forty or fifty, by a
pneumatic switch, the switches for the whole number of tracks being
under the control of a single operator. The fast-moving train is stopped
by an air brake, and the locomotive bell is rung by touching an air
cylinder. The "baggage smashing," a custom more honoured in the breach
than in the observance, is prevented by a pneumatic baggage arrangement
consisting of an air-containing cylinder, and an arm on which to place
the baggage, and which arm is then quickly raised by the cylinder piston
and is automatically swung around by a cam action carrying the baggage
out of or into the car.
Bridge building has been so facilitated by the use of pneumatic machines
for raising heavy loads of stone and iron, and for riveting and
hammering, and other air tools, aided by the development in the art of
quick transportation, that a firm of bridge builders in America can
build a splendid bridge in Africa within a hundred days after the
contract has been entered upon.
Ship building is hastened by these same air drilling and riveting
machines.
The propelling of cars, road vehicles, boats, balloons, and even ships,
by explosive gases and compressed air is an extensive art in itself, yet
still in its infancy, and will be more fully described in the chapter on
carrying machines.
The realm of Art has received a notable advancement by the use of a
little blow-pipe or atomiser by which the pigments forming the
background on beautiful vases are blown with just that graduated force
desired by the operator to produce the most exquisitely smooth and
blended effects, while the varying colours are made to melt
imperceptibly into one another as delicately as the mingled shade and
coloured sunlight fall on a forest brook.
But to enumerate the industrial arts to which air and other pneumatic
machines have been adapted would be to catalogue them all. Mention is
made of others in chapters in which those special arts are treated.
CHAPTER XIII.
ART OF HEATING, VENTILATING, COOKING, REFRIGERATION AND LIGHTING.
That Prometheus stole fire from heaven to give it to man is perhaps as
authentic an account of the invention of fire as has been given. It is
also reported that he brought it to earth in a hollow tube. If a small
stick or twig had then been dipped into the divine fire the suggestion
of the modern match may be supposed to have been made.
But men went on to reproduce the fire in the old way by rubbing pieces
of wood together, or using the flint, the steel and the tinder until
1680, when Godfrey Hanckwitz of London, learning of the recent discovery
of phosphorus and its nature, and inspired by the Promethean idea,
wrapped the phosphorus in folds of brown paper, rubbed it until it took
fire, and then ignited thereat one end of a stick which he had dipped in
sulphur; and this is commonly known as the first invented match. There
followed the production of a somewhat different form of match, sticks
first dipped in sulphur, and then in a composition of chlorate potash,
sulphur, colophony, gum of sugar, and cinnabar for coloring. These were
arranged in boxes, and were accompanied by a vial containing sulphuric
acid, into which the match was dipped and thereby instantly ignited.
These were called chemical matches and were sold at first for the high
price of fifteen shillings a box.
They were too costly for common use, and so our fathers went on to the
nineteenth century using the flint, the steel and the tinder, and
depending on the coal kept alive upon their own or their neighbour's
hearth.
Prometheus, however, did reappear about 1820-25, when a match bearing
the name "Promethean" was invented. It consisted of a roll of paper
treated with sugar and chlorate of potash and a small cell containing
sulphuric acid. This cell was broken by a pair of pliers and the acid
ignited the composition by contact therewith.
It was not until 1827-29 that John Walker, chemist, at
Stockton-upon-Tees, improved upon the idea of Prometheus and Hanckwitz
of giving fire to men in a hollow tube. He used folded sanded paper--it
may have been a tube--and through this he drew a stick coated with
chlorate of potash and phosphorus. This successful match was named
"Lucifer," whose other name was Phosphor, the Morning Star, and the King
of the Western Land. Faraday, to whom also was given Promethean
inspiration, procured some of Walker's matches and brought them to
public notice.
In many respects the mode of their manufacture has been improved, but in
principle of composition and ignition they remain the same as Walker's
to-day. In 1845, Schrotter of Vienna discovered amorphous or allotropic
phosphorus, which rendered the manufacture of matches less dangerous to
health and property. Tons of chemicals and hundreds of pine trees are
used yearly in the making of matches, and many hundreds of millions of
them are daily consumed.
But this vast number of matches could not be supplied had it not been
for the invention of machines for making and packing them. Thus in 1842
Reuben Partridge of America patented a machine for making splints.
Others for making splints and the matches separately, quickly followed.
Together with these came match dipping and match box machines. The
splint machines were for slitting a block of wood of the proper height
downward nearly the whole way into match splints, leaving their butts in
the solid wood. These were square and known as block matches. Other
mechanisms cut and divided the block into strips, which were then dipped
at one end, dried and tied in bundles. By other means, a swing blade,
for instance, the matches were all severed from the block. Matches are
made round by one machine by pressing the block against a plate having
circular perforations, and the interspaces are beveled so as to form
cutting edges.
Poririer, a Frenchman, invented a machine for making match boxes of
pasteboard. Suitable sized rectangular pieces of pasteboard rounded at
the angles for making the body of the box are first cut, then these
pieces are introduced into the machine, where by the single blow of a
plunger they are forced into a matrix or die and pressed, and receive by
this single motion their complete and final shape. The lid is made in
the same way.
By one modern invention matches after they are cut are fed into a
machine at the rate of one hundred thousand an hour, on to a horizontal
table, each match separated from the other by a thin partition. They are
thus laid in rows, one row over another, and while being laid, the
matches are pushed out a little way beyond the edge of the table, a
distance far enough to expose their ends and to permit them to be
dipped. When a number of these rows are completed they are clamped
together in a bundle and then dipped--first, into a vessel of hot
sulphur, and then into one of phosphorus, or other equivalent
ingredients may be used or added. After the dipping they are subjected
to a drying process and then boxed. Processes differ, but all are
performed by machinery.
In many factories where phosphorus is used without great care workmen
have been greatly affected thereby. The fumes of the phosphorus attack
the teeth, especially when decayed, and penetrate to the jaw, causing
its gradual destruction, but this has been avoided by proper
precautions.
The greatly-increased facility of kindling a fire by matches gave an
impetus to the invention of _cooking and heating stoves_. Of course
stoves, generically speaking, are not a production of the nineteenth
century. The Romans had their _laconicum_ or heating stove, which from
its name was an invention from Laconia. It probably was made in most
cases of brick or marble, but might have been of beaten iron, was
cylindrical in shape, with an open cupola at the top, and was heated by
the flames of the _hypocaust_ beneath. The _hypocaust_ was a hot-air
furnace built in the basement or cellar of the house and from which the
heat was conducted by flues to the bath rooms and other apartments. The
Chinese ages ago heated their hollow tiled floors by underground furnace
fires. We know of the _athanor_ of the alchemists of the middle ages.
Knight calls it the "original base-burning furnace." A furnace of iron
or earthenware was provided on one side with an open stack or tower
which opened at the bottom into the furnace, and which stack was kept
filled with charcoal, or other fuel, which fed itself automatically into
the furnace as the fuel on the bed thereof burned away. Watt introduced
an arrangement on the same principle in his steam boiler furnace in
1767, and thousands of stoves are now constructed within England and the
United States also embodying the same principle.
The earthenware and soapstone stoves of continental Europe were used
long before the present century.
In Ben Franklin's time in the American Colonies there was not much of a
demand for stoves outside of the largest cities, where wood was getting
a little scarce and high, but the philosopher not only deemed it proper
to invent an improvement in chimneys to prevent their smoking and to
better heat the room, but also devised an improved form of stove, and
both inventions have been in constant use unto this day. Franklin
invented and introduced his celebrated stove, which he called the
Pennsylvania Fire Place, in 1745, having all the advantages of a
cheerful open fireplace, and a heat producer; and which consisted of an
iron stove with an open front set well into the room, in which front
part the fire was kindled, and the products of combustion conducted up a
flue, and thence under a false back and up the chimney. Open heat spaces
were left between the two flues. Air inlets and dampers were provided.
In his description of this stove at that time Franklin also referred to
the iron box stoves used by the Dutch, the iron plates extending from
the hearths and sides, etc., chimneys making a double fireplace used by
the French, and the German stove of iron plates, and so made that the
fuel had to be put into it from another room or from the outside of the
house. He dwells upon the pleasure of an open fire, and the destruction
of this pleasure by the use of the closed stoves. He also describes the
discomforts of the fireplace in cold weather--of the "cold draught
nipping one's back and heels"--"scorched before and frozen behind"--the
sharp draughts of cold from crevices from which many catch cold and from
"whence proceed coughs, catarrhs, toothaches, fevers, pleurisies and
many other diseases." Added to the pleasure of seeing the crackling
flames, feeling the genial warmth, and the diffusion of a spirit of
sociability and hospitality, is the fact of increased purity of the air
by reason of the fireplace as a first-class ventilator. Hence it will
never be discarded by those who can afford its use; but it alone is
inadequate for heating and cooking purposes. It is modernly used as a
luxury by those who are able to combine with it other means for heating.
The great question for solution in this art at all times has been how to
produce through dwelling houses and larger buildings in cold and damp
weather a uniform distribution and circulation of pure heated air. The
solution of this question has of course been greatly helped in modern
times by a better knowledge of the nature of air and other gases, and
the laws which govern their motions and combinations at different
temperatures.
The most successful form of heating coal stove of the century has been
one that combined in itself the features of base-burning: that is, a
covered magazine at the centre or back of the stove open at or near the
top of the stove into which the coal is placed, and which then feeds to
the bottom of the fire pot as fast as the coal is consumed, a heavy open
fire pot placed as low as possible, an ash grate connected with the
bottom of the pot which can be shaken and dumped to an ash box beneath
without opening the stove, thus preventing the escape of the dust, an
illuminating chamber nearly or entirely surrounding the fire pot,
provided with mica windows, through which the fire is reflected and the
heat radiated, a chamber above the fire pot and surrounding the fuel
chamber and into which the heat and hot gases arise, producing
additional radiating surface and permitting the gases to escape through
a flue in the chimney, or, leading them first through another chamber to
the base of the stove and thence out, and dampers to control and
regulate the supply of air to the fuel, and to cut off the escape or
control the course of the products of combustion.
The cheerful stove fireplace and stove of Franklin and the French were
revived, combined and improved some years ago by Capt. Douglas Galton of
the English army for use in barracks, but this stove is also admirably
adapted for houses. It consists of an open stove or grate set in or at
the front of the fireplace with an air inlet from without, the throat of
the fireplace closed and a pipe extending through it from the stove into
the chimney. Although a steady flow of heat, desirable regulation of
temperature and great economy in the consumption of fuel, by reason of
the utilisation of so much of the heat produced, were obtained by the
modern stove, yet the necessity of having a stove in nearly every room,
the ill-ventilation due to the non-supply of pure outer air to the room,
the occasional diffusion of ash dust and noxious gases from the stove,
and inability to heat the air along the floor, gave rise to a revival of
the hot-air furnace, placed under the floor in the basement or cellar,
and many modern and radical improvements therein.
The heat obtained from stoves is effected by radiation--the throwing
outward of the waves of heat from its source, while the heat obtained
from a hot-air furnace is effected by convection--the moving of a body
of air to be heated to the source of heat, and then when heated bodily
conveyed to the room to be warmed. Hence in stoves and fireplaces only
such obstruction is placed between the fire and the room as will serve
to convey away the obnoxious smoke and gases, and the greatest facility
is offered for radiation, while in hot-air furnaces, although provision
is also made to carry away the smoke and impure gases, yet the radiation
is confined as closely as possible to chambers around the fire space,
which chambers are protected by impervious linings from the outer air,
and into which fresh outdoor air is introduced, then heated and conveyed
to different apartments by suitable pipes or flues, and admitted or
excluded, as desired, by registers operated by hand levers.
There are stationary furnaces and portable furnaces; the former class
enclose the heating apparatus in walls of brick or other masonry, while
in the latter the outer casing and the inner parts are metal structures,
separable and removable. In both classes an outer current of pure air is
made to course around the fire chamber and around among other flues and
chambers through which the products of combustion are carried, so that
all heat possible is utilised. Vessels of water are supplied at the most
convenient place in one of the hot-air chambers to moisten and temper
the air, and dampers are placed in the pipes to regulate and guide the
supply of heat to the rooms above.
After Watt had invented his improvements on the steam engine the idea
occurred to him of using steam for heating purposes. Accordingly, in
1784, he made a hollow sheet-iron box of plates, and supplied it with
steam from the boiler of the establishment. It had an air-escape cock,
and condensed-water-escape pipe; and in 1799 Boulton and Watt
constructed a heating apparatus in Lee's factory, Manchester, in which
the steam was conducted through cast-iron pipes, which also served as
supports to the floor. Patents were also taken out by others in England
for steam-heating apparatuses during the latter part of the 18th
century.
Heating by the circulation of hot water through pipes was also
originated or revived during the 18th century, and a short time before
Watt's circulation of steam. It is said that Bonnemain of England, in
1777, desiring to improve the ancient methods of hatching poultry by
artificial heat--practised by both ancient and modern Egyptians ages
before it became a latter day wonder, and taught the Egyptians by the
ostriches--conceived the idea of constructing quite a large incubator
building with shelves for the eggs, coops for holding the chickens, and
a tube for circulating hot water leading from a boiler below and above
each shelf, and through the coops, and back to the boiler. This
incubator contains the germs of modern water heaters. In both the steam
and water heating systems the band or collection of pipes in each room
may be covered with ornamental radiating plates, or otherwise treated or
arranged to render them sightly and effective. In one form of the
hot-water system, however, the collection of a mass of pipes in the
rooms is dispensed with, and the pipes are massed in an air chamber over
or adjacent to the furnace, where they are employed to heat a current of
air introduced from the outside, and which heated pure air is conveyed
through the house by flues and registers as in the hot-air furnace
system.
The hanging of the crane, the turning of the spit, the roasting in ashes
and on hot stones, the heating of and the baking in the big "Dutch"
ovens, and some other forms of cooking by our forefathers had their
pleasures and advantages, and still are appreciated under certain
circumstances, and for certain purposes, but are chiefly honoured in
memory alone and reverenced by disuse; while the modern cooking stove
with its roasting and hot water chambers, its numerous seats over the
fire for pots, pans, and kettles, its easy means of controlling and
directing the heat, its rotating grate, and, when desired, its rotating
fire chamber, for turning the hot fire on top to the bottom, and the
cold choked fire to the top, its cleanliness and thorough heat, its
economy in the use of fuel, is adopted everywhere, and all the glowing
names with which its makers and users christen it fail to exaggerate its
qualities when rightly made and used.
It would appear that the field of labour and the number of labourers,
chiefly those who toiled with brick and mortar, were greatly reduced
when those huge fireplaces were so widely discarded. This must have
seemed so especially in those regions where the houses were built up to
meet the yearning wants of an outside chimney, but armies of men are
engaged in civilised countries in making stoves and furnaces, where
three-quarters of a century ago very few were so employed. As in every
industrial art old things pass away, but the new things come in greater
numbers, demand a greater number of workers, develop new wants, new
fields of labour, and the new and increasing supply of consumers refuse
to be satisfied with old contrivances.
In the United States alone there are between four and five hundred stove
and furnace foundries, in which about ten thousand people are employed,
and more than three million stoves and furnaces produced annually, which
require nearly a million tons of iron to make, and the value of which is
estimated as at least $100,000,000.
The matter of _ventilation_ is such a material part of heating that it
cannot escape attention. There can be no successful heating without a
circulation of air currents, and fortunately for man in his house no
good fire can be had without an outflow of heat and an inflow of cooler
air. The more this circulation is prevented the worse the fire and the
ventilation.
It seems to many such a simple thing, this change of air--only to keep
open the window a little--to have a fireplace, and convenient door. And
yet some of the brightest intellects of the century have been engaged in
devising means to accomplish the result, and all are not yet agreed as
to which is the best way.
How to remove the heated, vitiated air and to supply fresh air while
maintaining the same uniform temperature is a problem of long standing.
The history of the attempts to heat and ventilate the Houses of
Parliament since Wren undertook it in 1660 has justly been said to be
history of the Art of Ventilation since that time, as the most eminent
scientific authorities in the world have been engaged or consulted in
it, and the most exhaustive reports on the subject have been rendered by
such men as Gay-Lussac, Sir Humphry Davy, Faraday and Dr. Arnott of
England and Gen. Morin of France. The same may be said in regard to the
Houses of Congress in the United States Capitol for the past thirty-five
years. Prof. Henry, Dr. Billings, the architect, Clark, of that country,
and many other bright inventors and men of ability have given the
subject devoted attention. Among the means for creating ventilation are
underground tunnels leading to the outer air, with fans in them to force
the fresh air in or draw the poor air out, holes in the ceiling, fire
places, openings over the doors, openings under the eaves, openings in
the window frames, shafts from the floor or basement with fires or gas
jets to create an upward draught, floors with screened openings to the
outer air, steam engines to work a suction pipe in one place and a blow
pipe in another, air boxes communicating with the outer air, screens,
hoods, and deflectors at these various openings,--all these, separately
or in combination, have been used for the purpose of drawing the
vitiated air out and letting the pure air in without creating draughts
to chill the sensitive, or overheating to excite the nervous.
There seems to have been as many devices invented to keep a house or
building closed up tight while highly heating it, as to ventilate the
same and preserve an even, moderate temperature.
The most approved system of ventilation recognises the fact that air is
of the same weight and is possessed of the same constituents in one part
of a room as at another, and to create a perfect ventilation a complete
change and circulation must take place. It therefore creates a draught,
arising from the production of a vacuum by a current of heat or by
mechanical means, or by some other way, which draws out of a room the
used up, vitiated air through outlets at different places, while pure
outer air is admitted naturally, or forced in if need be, through
numerous small inlets, such outlets and inlets so located and
distributed and protected as not to give rise to sensible draughts on
the occupants.
The best system also recognises the fact that all parts of a house, its
cellars and attic, its parlours and kitchens, its closets, bathrooms and
chambers, should be alike clean and well ventilated, and that if one
room is infected all are infected.
The laurels bestowed on inventors are no more worthily bestowed than on
those who have invented devices which give to our homes, offices,
churches and places of amusement a pure and comfortable atmosphere.
_Car Heaters._--The passing away of the good old portable foot stove for
warming the feet, especially when away from home, and while travelling,
is not to be regretted, although in some instances it was not at first
succeeded by superior devices. For a long time after the introduction of
steam, railroad cars and carriages, in which any heat at all was used,
were heated by a stove in each car--generally kept full of red hot coal
or wood--an exceedingly dangerous companion in case of accident. Since
1871 systems have been invented and introduced, the most successful of
which consists of utilising the heat of the steam from the locomotive
for producing a hot-water circulation through pipes along the floor of
each car, and in providing an emergency heater in each car for heating
the water when steam from the locomotive is not available.
_Grass-burning Stoves._--There are many places in this world where
neither wood nor coal abound, or where the same are very scarce, but
where waste grass and weeds, waste hay and straw, and similar
combustible refuse are found in great abundance. Stoves have been
invented especially designed for the economical consumption of such
fuel. One requisite is that such light material should be held in a
compressed state while in the stove to prevent a too rapid combustion.
Means for so holding the material under compression appear to have been
first invented and patented by Hamilton of America in 1874.
Some means besides the sickle and scythe, hoe and plough, were wanted to
destroy obnoxious standing grass and weeds. A weed like the Russian
thistle, for instance, will defy all usual means for its extermination.
A fire chamber has been invented which when drawn over the ground will
burn a swath as it advances, and it is provided with means, such as a
wide flange on the end of the chamber, which extinguishes the fire and
prevents its spreading beyond the path. A similar stove with jets of
flame from vapour burners has been used to soften hard asphalt pavement
when it is desired to take it up.
The art of heating and cooking by oil, vapour and gas stoves is one that
has arisen during the latter half of this century, and has become the
subject of a vast number of inventions and extensive industries. Stoves
of this character are as efficient and economical as coal stoves, and
are in great demand, especially where coal and wood are scarce and
high-priced.
_Oil stoves_ as first invented consisted of almost the ordinary lamp,
without the glass shade set in the stove and were similar to gas stoves.
But these were objectionable on account of the fumes emitted. By later
inventions the lamp has been greatly improved. The wick is arranged
within tubular sliding cylinders so as to be separated from the other
parts of the stove when it is not lit, and better regulating devices
adopted, whereby the oil is prevented from spreading from the wick on to
the other parts of the stove, which give rise to obnoxious fumes by
evaporation and heating. Some recent inventors have dispensed with the
wick altogether and the oil is burned practically like vapour.
_Gasoline_, and other heavy oily vapours are in many stoves first
vapourised by a preliminary heating in a chamber before the gas is
ignited for use. These vapours are then conducted by separate jets to
different points in the stove where the heat is to be applied. The
danger and unpleasant flame and smoke arising from this vapourising in
the stove have been obviated by inventions which vapourise the fuel by
other means, as by carbonating, or loading the air with the vapour in an
elevated chamber and conducting the saturated air to the burners; or by
agitation, by means of a quick-acting, small, but powerful fan.
_Sterilising._--The recent scientific discoveries and investigations of
injurious bacteria rendered it desirable to purify water by other means
than filtering, especially for the treatment of disease-infected
localities; and this gave rise to the invention of a system of heat
sterilising and filtering the water, in one process, and out of contact
with the germ-laden air, thus destroying the bacteria and delivering the
water in as pure and wholesome condition as possible. West in 1892
patented such a system.
_Electric Heating and Cooking._--Reference has already been made in the
Chapter on Electricity to the use of that agent in heating and cooking.
The use of the electric current for these purposes has been found to be
perfectly practical, and for heating cars especially, where electricity
is the motive power, a portion of the current is economically employed.
The art of heating and cooking naturally suggests the other end of the
line of temperature--_Refrigeration_.
A refrigeration by which ordinary ice is artificially produced,
perishable food of all kinds preserved for long times, and transported
for great distances, which has proved an immense advantage to mankind
everywhere and is still daily practised to the gratification and comfort
of millions of men, must receive at least a passing notice. The Messrs.
E. and F. Carré of France invented successful machines about 1870 for
making ice by the rapid absorption and evaporation of heat by the
ammonia process. The discoveries and inventions of others in the
artificial production of cold by means of volatile liquids, whether for
the making of ice or other purposes, constituted a great step in the art
of refrigeration.
Vaporisation, absorption, compression or reduction of atmospheric
pressure are the principal methods of producing cold. By vaporisation,
water, ether, sulphuric acid, ammonia, etc., in assuming the vaporous
form change sensible heat to latent heat and produce a degree of cold
which freezes an adjacent body of water. The principle of making ice by
evaporation and absorption may be illustrated by two examples of the
Carré methods:--It is well known what a great attraction sulphuric acid
has for water. Water to be frozen is placed in a vessel connected by a
pipe to a reservoir containing sulphuric acid. A vacuum is produced in
this reservoir by the use of an air pump, while the acid is being
constantly stirred. Lessening of the atmospheric pressure upon water
causes its evaporation, and as the vapour is quietly absorbed by the
sulphuric acid the water is quickly congealed. It is known that ammonia
can be condensed into liquid form by pressure or cold, and is absorbed
by and soluble in water to an extraordinary degree. A generator
containing a strong solution of ammonia is connected by a pipe to an
empty receiver immersed in cold water. The ammonia generator is then
heated, its vapour driven off and conducted to a jacket around the
centre of the receiver and is there condensed by pressure of an air
pump. The central cylindrical space in the receiver is now filled with
water, and the operation is reversed. The generator is immersed in cold
water and pressure on the liquid ammonia removed. The liquid ammonia now
passes into the gaseous state, and is conducted to and reabsorbed by the
water in the generator. But in this evaporation great cold is produced
and the water in the receiver is soon frozen.
Twining's inventions in the United States in 1853 and 1862 of the
compression machine, followed by Pictet of France, and a number of
improvements elsewhere have bid fair to displace the absorption method.
In dispensing with absorption these machines proceed on the now
well-established theory that air and many other gases become heated when
compressed; that this heat can then be drawn away, and that when the gas
is allowed to re-expand it will absorb a large amount of heat from any
solid or fluid with which it is brought in contact, and so freeze it.
Accordingly such machines are so constructed that by the operation of a
piston, or pistons, in a cylinder, and actuated by steam or other motive
power, the air or gas is compressed to the desired temperature, the heat
led off and the cold vapour conducted through pipes and around chambers
where water is placed and where it is frozen. By the best machines from
five hundred to one thousand pounds of ice an hour are produced.
The art of refrigeration and of modern transportation have brought the
fruits of the tropics in great abundance to the doors of the dwellers of
the north, and from the shores of the Pacific to the Atlantic and across
the Atlantic to Europe. A train of refrigerator cars in California laden
with delicious assorted fruits, and provided with fan blowers driven by
the car axles to force the air through ice chambers, from whence it is
distributed by perforated pipes through the fruit chambers, and wherein
the temperature is maintained at about 40° Fah., can be landed in New
York four days after starting on its journey of 3,000 miles, with the
fruits in perfect condition.
But the public is still excited and wondering over the new king of
refrigeration--_liquid air_.
As has been stated, the compression of air to produce cold is a modern
discovery applied to practical uses, and prominent among the inventors
and discoverers in this line have been Prof. Dewar and Charles E.
Tripler.
Air may be compressed and heat generated in the process withdrawn until
the temperature of the air is reduced to 312° below zero, at which point
the air is visible and to a certain extent assumes a peculiar material
form, in which form it can be confined in suitable vessels and used as a
refrigerant and as a motor of great power when permitted to re-expand.
It is said that it was not so long ago when Prof. Dewar produced the
first ounce of liquid air at a cost of $3,000, but that now Mr. Tripler
claims that he can produce it by his apparatus for five cents a gallon.
Refrigeration is at present its most natural and obvious use, and it is
claimed that eleven gallons of the material when gradually expanded has
the refrigerating power of one ton of ice. Its use of course for all
purposes for which cold can be used is thus assured. It is also to be
used as a motor in the running of various kinds of engines. It is to be
used as a great alleviator of human suffering in lowering and regulating
the temperature of hospitals in hot weather, and in surgical operations
as a substitute for anæsthetics and cauterising agents.
It was one of the marvellous attractions at the great Paris Exposition
of 1900.
Lighting is closely allied to the various subjects herein considered,
but consideration of the various modes and kinds of lamps for lighting
will be reserved for the Chapter on Furniture for Houses, etc.
CHAPTER XIV.
METALLURGY.
"Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared,
That underneath had veins of liquid fire
Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude
With wondrous art founded the massy ore;
Severing each kind, and scumm'd the bullion dross;
A third as soon had formed within the ground
A various mould, and from the boiling cells
By strange conveyance fill'd each hollow nook;
As in an organ, from one blast of wind,
To many a row of pipes the sound board breathes."
--_Paradise Lost._
Ever since those perished races of men who left no other record but that
engraven in rude emblems on the rocks, or no other signs of their
existence but in the broken tools found buried deep among the solid
leaves of the crusted earth, ever since Tubal Cain became "an instructor
of every artificer in brass and iron," the art of smelting has been
known. The stone age flourished with implements furnished ready-made by
nature, or needing little shaping for their use, but the ages of metal
which followed required the aid of fire directed by the hand of man to
provide the tool of iron or bronze.
The Greeks claimed that the discovery of iron was theirs, and was made
at the burning of a forest on the mountains of Ida in Crete, about 1500
B. C., when the ore contained in the rocks or soil on which the forest
stood was melted, cleansed of its impurities, and then collected and
hammered. Archeologists have deprived the Greeks of this gift, and
carried back its origin to remoter ages and localities.
Man first discovered by observation or accident that certain stones were
melted or softened by fire, and that the product could be hammered and
shaped. They learned by experience that the melting could be done more
effectually when the fuel and the ore were mixed and enclosed by a wall
of stone; that the fire and heat could be alone started and maintained
by blowing air into the fuel--and they constructed a rude bellows for
this purpose. Finding that the melted metal sank through the mass of
consumed fuel, they constructed a stone hearth on which to receive it.
Thus were the first crude furnace and hearth invented.
As to gold, silver and lead, they doubtless were found first in their
native state and mixed with other ores and were hammered into the
desired shapes with the hardest stone implements.
That copper and tin combined would make bronze was a more complex
proceeding and probably followed instead of preceding, as has sometimes
been alleged, the making of iron tools. That bronze relics were found
apparently of anterior manufacture to any made of iron, was doubtless
due to the destruction of the iron by that great consumer--oxygen.
What was very anciently called "brass" was no doubt gold-coloured
copper; for what is modernly known as brass was not made until after the
discovery of zinc in the 16th century and its combination with copper.
Among the "lost arts" re-discovered in later ages are those which
supplied the earliest cities with ornamented vessels of gold and copper,
swords of steel that bent and sprung like whalebones, castings that had
known no tool to shape their contour and embellishments, and monuments
and tablets of steel and brass which excite the wonder and admiration of
the best "artificers in brass and iron" of the present day.
To understand and appreciate the advancements that have been made in
metallurgy in the nineteenth century, it is necessary to know, in
outline at least, what before had been developed.
The earliest form of a smelting furnace of historic days, such as used
by the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, and probably by the Hindoos and other
ancient peoples, and still used in Asia, is thus described by Dr Ure:
"The furnace or bloomary in which the ore is smelted is from 4 to 5 feet
high; it is somewhat pear-shaped, being about 5 feet wide at bottom and
1 at top. It is built entirely of clay. There is an opening in front
about a foot or more in height which is filled with clay at the
commencement, and broken down at the end of each smelting operation. The
bellows are usually made of two goatskins with bamboo nozzles, which are
inserted into tubes of clay that pass into the furnace. The furnace is
filled with charcoal, and a lighted coal being introduced before the
nozzle, the mass in the interior is soon kindled. As soon as this is
accomplished, a small portion of the ore previously moistened with water
to prevent it from running through the charcoal, but without any flux
whatever, is laid on top of the coals, and covered with charcoal to fill
up the furnace. In this manner ore and fuel are supplied and the bellows
urged for three or four hours. When the process is stopped and the
temporary wall in front broken down the bloom is removed with a pair of
tongs from the bottom of the furnace."
This smelting was then followed by hammering to further separate the
slag, and probably after a reheating to increase the malleability.
It will be noticed that in this earliest process pure carbon was used as
a fuel, and a blast of air to keep the fire at a great heat was
employed. To what extent this carbon and air blast, and the mixing and
remixing with other ingredients, and reheating and rehammering, may have
been employed in various instances to modify the conditions and render
the metal malleable and more or less like modern steel, is not known,
but that an excellent quality of iron resembling modern steel was often
produced by this simple mode of manufacture by different peoples, is
undoubtedly the fact. Steel after all is iron with a little more carbon
in it than in the usual iron in the smelting furnace, to render it
harder, and a little less carbon than in cast or moulded iron to render
it malleable, and in both conditions was produced from time immemorial,
either by accident or design.
It was with such a furnace probably that India produced her keen-edged
weapons that would cut a web of gossamer, and Damascus its flashing
blades--the synonym of elastic strength.
Africa, when its most barbarous tribes were first discovered, was making
various useful articles of iron. Its earliest modes of manufacture were
doubtless still followed when Dr Livingstone explored the interior, as
they now also are. He thus describes their furnaces and iron: "At every
third or fourth village (in the regions near Lake Nyassa) we saw a
kiln-looking structure, about 6 feet high and 2½ feet in diameter. It
is a clay fire-hardened furnace for smelting iron. No flux is used,
whether with specular iron, the yellow hematite, or magnetic ore, and
yet capital metal is produced. Native manufactured iron is so good that
the natives declare English iron "rotten" in comparison, and specimens
of African hoes were pronounced at Birmingham nearly equal to the best
Swedish iron." The natives of India, the Hottentots, the early Britons,
the Chinese, the savages of North and South America, as discovery or
research brought their labours to light, or uncovered the monuments of
their earliest life, were shown to be acquainted with similar simple
forms of smelting furnaces.
Early Spain produced a furnace which was adopted by the whole of Europe
as fast as it became known. It was the Catalan furnace, so named from
the province of Catalonia, where it probably first originated, and it is
still so known and extensively used. "It consists of a four-sided cavity
or hearth, which is always placed within a building and separated from
the main wall thereof by a thinner interior wall, which in part
constitutes one side of the furnace. The blast pipe comes through the
wall, and enters the fire through a flue which slants downward. The
bottom is formed of a refractory stone, which is renewable. The furnace
has no chimneys. The blast is produced by means of a fall of water
usually from 22 to 27 feet high, through a rectangular tube, into a
rectangular cistern below, to whose upper part the blast pipe is
connected, the water escaping through a pipe below. This apparatus is
exterior to the building, and is said to afford a continuous blast of
great regularity; the air, when it passes into the furnace, is, however,
saturated with moisture."--_Knight._
No doubt in such a heat was formed the metal from which was shaped the
armour of Don Quixote and his prototypes.
Bell in his history of Metallurgy tells us that the manufacture of
malleable iron must have fallen into decadence in England, especially
before the reign of Elizabeth and Charles I., as no furnaces equal even
to the Catalan had for a long time been in use; and the architectural
iron column found in ancient Delhi, 16 inches in diameter, about 48 feet
long and calculated to weigh about 17 tons, could not have been formed
by any means known in England in the sixteenth century. This decadence
was in part due to the severe laws enacted against the destruction of
forests, and most of the iron was then brought to England from Germany
and other countries.
From time immemorial the manufacture of iron and steel has been followed
in Germany, and that country yet retains pre-eminence in this art both
as to mechanical and chemical processes. It was in the eighteenth
century that the celebrated Freiberg Mining Academy was founded, the
oldest of all existing mining schools; and based on developing mining
and metallurgy on scientific lines, it has stood always on the battle
line in the fight of progress.
The early smelting furnaces of Germany resembled the Catalan, and were
called the "Stückofen," and in Sweden were known as the "Osmund." In
these very pure iron was made.
The art of making cast iron, which differs from the ordinary smelted
iron in the fact that it is _melted_ and then run into moulds, although
known among the ancients more than forty centuries ago, as shown by the
castings of bronze and brass described by their writers and recovered
from their ruins, appears to have been forgotten long before the
darkness of the middle ages gathered. There is no record of its practice
from the time the elder Pliny described its former use (40-79 A. D.), to
the sixteenth century. It is stated that then the lost art was
re-invented by Ralph Page and Peter Baude of England in 1543--who in
that year made cast-iron in Sussex.
The "Stückofen" furnace above referred to was succeeded in Germany by
higher ones called the "Flossofen," and these were followed by still
higher and larger ones called "Blauofen," so that by the middle of the
eighteenth century the furnaces were very capacious, the blast was good,
and it had been learned how to supply the furnaces with ore, coal and
lime-stone broken into small fragments. The lime was added as a flux,
and acted to unite with itself the sand, clay and other impurities to
form a slag or scoria. The melted purified iron falling to the bottom
was drawn off through a hole tapped in the furnace, and the molten metal
ran into channels in a bed of sand called the "Sow and pigs." Hence the
name, "pig iron."
The smelting of ore by charcoal in those places where carried on
extensively required the use of a vast amount of wood, and denuded the
surrounding lands of forests. So great was this loss felt that it gave
rise to the prohibitory laws and the decadence in England of the
manufacture of iron, already alluded to. This turned the attention of
iron smelters to coal as a substitute. Patents were granted in England
for its use to several unsuccessful inventors. Finally in 1619 Dud
Dudley, a graduate of Oxford University, and to whom succeeded his
father's iron furnaces in Worcestershire, obtained a patent and
succeeded in producing several tons of iron per week by the use of the
pitcoal in a small blast furnace.
This success inflamed the wood owners and the charcoal burners and they
destroyed Dudley's works. He met with other disasters common to worthy
inventors and discontinued his efforts to improve the art.
It is said that in 1664 Sir John Winter of England made coke by burning
sea coal in closed pots. But this was not followed up, and the use of
charcoal and the destruction of the forests went on until 1735, when
Abraham Darby of the Coalbrookdale Iron Works at Shropshire, England,
commenced to treat the soft pit coal in the same way as wood is treated
in producing charcoal. He proposed to burn the coal in a smouldering
fire, to expel the sulphur and other impurities existing in the form of
phosphorus, hydrogen and oxygen, etc. while saving the carbon. The
attempt was successful, and thus _coke_ was made. It was found cheaper
and superior to either coal or charcoal, and produced a quicker fire and
a greater heat. This was a wonderful discovery, and was preserved as a
trade secret for a long time. It was referred to as a curiosity in the
_Philosophical Transactions_ in 1747. In fact it was not introduced in
America until a century later, when in 1841 the soft coal abounding
around Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and in the neighbouring regions of
Ohio was thus treated. Even its use then was experimental, and did not
become a practical art in the United States until about 1860.
With the invention of coke came also the revival of cast iron.
The process of making cast steel was reinvented in England by Benjamin
Huntsman of Attercliff, near Sheffield, about 1740. Between that time
and 1770 he practised melting small pieces of "blistered" steel (iron
bars which had been carbonised by smelting in charcoal) in closed clay
crucibles.
In 1784 Henry Cort of England introduced the puddling process and
grooved rolls. Puddling had been invented, but not successfully used
before. The term "puddling" originated in the covering of the hearth of
stones at the bottom of the furnace with clay, which was made plastic by
mixing the clay in a puddle of water; and on which hearth the ore when
melted is received. When in this melted condition Cort and others found
that the metal was greatly improved by stirring it with a long iron bar
called a "rabble," and which was introduced through an opening in the
furnace. This stirring admitted air to the mass and the oxygen consumed
and expelled the carbon, silicon, and other impurities. The process was
subsequently aided by the introduction of pig iron broken into pieces
and mixed with hammer-slag, cinder, and ore. The mass is stirred from
side to side of the furnace until it comes to a boiling point, when the
stirring is increased in quickness and violence until a pasty round mass
is collected by the puddler. As showing the value of Cort's discovery
and the hard experience inventors sometimes have, Fairbairn states that
Cort "expended a fortune of upward of £20,000 in perfecting his
invention for puddling iron and rolling it into bars and plates; that he
was robbed of the fruits of his discoveries by the villainy of officials
in a high department of the government; and that he was ultimately left
to starve by the apathy and selfishness of an ungrateful country. His
inventions conferred an amount of wealth on the country equivalent to
£600,000,000, and have given employment to 600,000 of the working
population of our land for the last three or four generations." This
process of puddling lasted for about an hour and a half and entailed
extremely severe labour on the workman.
The invention of mechanical puddlers, hereinafter referred to,
consisting chiefly of rotating furnaces, were among the beneficent
developments of the nineteenth century.
Prior to Cort's time the plastic lump or ball of metal taken from the
furnace was generally beaten by hammers, but Cort's grooved rollers
pressed out the mass into sheets.
The improvements of the steam engine by Watt greatly extended the
manufacture of iron toward the close of the 18th century, as powerful
air blasts were obtained by the use of such engines in place of the
blowers worked by man, the horse, or the ox.
So far as the art of refining the precious metals is concerned, as well
as copper, tin and iron, it had not, previous to this century, proceeded
much beyond the methods described in the most ancient writings; and
these included the refining in furnaces, pots, and covered crucibles,
and alloying, or the mixture and fusion with other metals. Furnaces to
hold the crucibles, and made of iron cylinders lined with fire brick,
whereby the crucibles were subjected to greater heat, were also known.
The amalgamating process was also known to the ancients, and Vitruvius
(B. C. 27) and Pliny (A. D. 79), describe how mercury was used for
separating gold from its impurities. Its use at gold and silver mines
was renewed extensively in the sixteenth century.
Thus we find that the eighteenth century closed with the knowledge of
the smelting furnaces of various kinds, of coke as a fuel in place of
charcoal, of furious air blasts driven by steam and other power, of cast
iron and cast steel, and of refining, amalgamating, and compounding
processes.
Looking back, now, from the threshold of the nineteenth century over the
path we have thus traced, it will be seen that what had been
accomplished in metallurgy was the result of the use of ready means
tested by prolonged trials, of experiments more or less lucky in fields
in which men were groping, of inventions without the knowledge of the
real properties of the materials with which inventors were working or of
the unvarying laws which govern their operations. They had accomplished
much, but it was the work mainly of empirics. The art preceding the
nineteenth century compared with what followed is the difference between
experience simply, and experience when combined with hard thinking,
which is thus stated by Herschel: "Art is the application of knowledge
to a practical end. If the knowledge be merely accumulated experience
the art is empirical; but if it is experience reasoned upon and brought
under general principles it assumes a higher character and becomes a
scientific art."
With the developments, discoveries and inventions in the lines of steam,
chemistry and electricity, as elsewhere told, the impetus they gave to
the exercise of brain force in every field of nature at the outset of
the century, and with their practical aid, the art of metallurgy soon
began to expand to greater usefulness, and finally to its present
wonderful domain.
The subject of metallurgy in this century soon became scientifically
treated and its operations classified.
Thus the physical character and metallic constituents of ores received
the first consideration; then the proper treatment to which the ores
were to be subjected for the purpose of extracting the metal--which are
either mechanical or chemical. The mechanical processes designed to
separate the ore from its enclosing rock or other superfluous earthy
matter called _gangue_ became known as _ore dressing_ and _ore
concentrating_. These included mills with rollers, and stamps operated
by gravity, or steam, for breaking up the ore rocks; abrasion apparatus
for comminuting the ore by rubbing the pieces of ore under pressure; and
smelting, or an equivalent process, for melting the ore and driving off
the impurities by heat, etc. The chemical processes are those by which
the metal, whatever it may be, is either dissolved or separated from
other constituents by either the application to the ore of certain
metallic solutions of certain acids, or by the fusion of different ores
or metals in substantially the old styles of furnaces; or its
precipitation by amalgamating, or by electrolysis--the art of
decomposing metals by electricity.
In the early decades of the century, by the help of chemistry and
physics, the nature of heat, carbon, and oxygen, and the great affinity
iron has for oxygen, became better known; and particularly how in the
making of iron its behaviour is influenced by the presence of carbon and
other foreign constituents; also how necessary to its perfect separation
was the proper elimination of the oxygen and carbon. The use of
manganese and other highly oxidisable metals for this purpose was
discovered.
Among the earliest most notable inventions in the century, in the
manufacture of iron, was that of Samuel B. Rogers of Glamorganshire,
Wales, who invented the iron floor for furnaces with a refractory
lining--a great improvement on Cort's sand floor, which gave too much
silicon to the iron; and the _hot air blast_ by Neilson of Glasgow,
Scotland, patented in 1828. The latter consisted in the use of heated
air as the blast instead of cold air--whereby ignition of the fuel was
quickened, intensity of the heat and the expulsion of oxygen and carbon
from the iron increased, and the operation shortened and improved in
every way. The patent was infringed and assailed, but finally sustained
by the highest courts of England. It produced an immense forward stride
in the amount and quality of iron manufactured.
By the introduction of the hot air blast it became practicable to use
the hard anthracite coal as a fuel where such coal abounded; and to use
pig iron, scrap iron, and refractory ore and metals with the fuel to
produce particular results. Furnaces were enlarged to colossal
dimensions, some being a hundred feet high and capable of yielding 80 or
100 tons of metal per day.
The forms of furnaces and means for lining and cooling the hearth and
adjacent parts have received great attention.
The discovery that the flame escaping from the throat of the blast
furnace was nothing else than burning carbon led Faber du Faur at
Wasseralfugen in 1837 to invent the successful and highly valuable
method of utilising the unburnt gas from the blast furnace for heating
purposes, and to heat the blast itself, and drive the steam engine that
blew the blast into the furnace, without the consumption of additional
fuel. This also led to the invention of separate gas producers. Bunsen
in 1838 made his first experiments at Hesse in collecting the gases from
various parts of the furnace, revealing their composition and showing
their adaptability for various purposes. Thus, from a scientific
knowledge of the constituents of ores and of furnace gases, calculations
could be made in advance as to the materials required to make pig iron,
cast iron, and steel of particular qualities.
In the process of puddling difficulty had been experienced in handling
the bloom or ball after it was formed in the furnace. A sort of
squeezing apparatus, or tongs, called the alligator, had been employed.
In 1840 Henry Burden of America invented and patented a method and means
for treating these balls, whereby the same were taken directly from the
furnace and passed between two plain converging metal surfaces, by which
the balls were gradually but quickly pressed and squeezed into a
cylindrical form, while a large portion of the cinders and other foreign
impurities were pressed out.
We have described how by Cort's puddling process tremendous labour was
imposed on the workmen in stirring the molten metal by hand with
"rabbles." A number of mechanical puddlers were invented to take the
place of these hand means, but the most important invention in this
direction was the revolving puddlers of Beadlestone, patented in 1857 in
England, and of Heaton, Allen and Yates, in 1867-68. The most
successful, however, was that of Danks of the United States in 1868-69.
The Danks rotary puddler is a barrel-shaped, refractory lined vessel,
having a chamber and fire grate and rotated by steam, into which pig
iron formed by the ordinary blast furnaces, and then pulverised, is
placed, with the fuel. Molten metal from the furnace is then run in,
which together with the fuel is then subjected to a strong blast.
Successive charges may be made, and at the proper time the puddler is
rotated, slowly at some stages and faster at others, until the operation
is completed. A much more thorough and satisfactory result in the
production of a pure malleable iron is thus obtained than is possible by
hand puddling.
But the greatest improvements in puddling, and in the production of
steel from iron, and which have produced greater commercial results than
any other inventions of the century relating to metallurgy, were the
inventions of Henry Bessemer of Hertfordshire, England, from 1855 to
1860. In place of the puddling "rabbles" to stir the molten metal, or
_matte_, as it is called, while the air blast enters to oxidise it, he
first introduced the molten metal from the furnace into an immense
egg-shaped vessel lined with quartzose, and hung in an inclined position
on trunnions, or melted the metal in such vessel, and then dividing the
air blast into streams forced with great pressure each separate stream
through an opening in the bottom of the vessel into the molten mass,
thus making each stream of driven air a rabble; and they together blew
and lifted the white mass into a huge, surging, sun-bright fountain. The
effect of this was to burn out the impurities, silicon, carbon, sulphur,
and phosphorus, leaving the mass a pure soft iron. If steel was wanted a
small amount of carbon, usually in the form of spiegeleisen, was
introduced into the converter before the process was complete.
A. L. Holley of the United States improved the Bessemer apparatus by
enabling a greater number of charges to be converted into steel within a
given time.
Sir Henry Bessemer has lived to gain great fortunes by his inventions,
to see them afford new fields of labour for armies of men, and to
increase the riches of nations, from whom he has received deserved
honours.
The Bessemer process led to renewed investigations and discoveries as to
heat and its utilisation, the constituents of different metals and their
decomposition, and as to the parts played by carbon, silicon, and
phosphorus. The carbon introduced by the charge of pig iron in the
Bessemer process was at first supposed to be necessary to produce the
greatest heat, but this was found to be a mistake; and phosphorus, which
had been regarded as a great enemy of iron, to be eliminated in every
way, was found to be a valuable constituent, and was retained or added
to make phosphorus steel.
The Bessemer process has been modified in various ways: by changing the
mode of introducing the blast from the bottom of the converter to the
sides thereof, and admitting the blast more slowly at certain stages; by
changing the character of the pig iron and fuel to be treated; and by
changing the shape and operation of the converters, making them
cylindrical and rotary, for instance.
The Bessemer process is now largely used in treating copper. By this
method the blowing through the molten metal of a blast of air largely
removes sulphur and other impurities.
The principles of reduction by the old style furnaces and methods we
have described have been revived and combined with improvements. For
instance, the old Catalan style of furnace has been retained to smelt
the iron, but in one method the iron is withdrawn before it is reduced
completely and introduced into another furnace, where, mixed with
further reducing ingredients, a better result by far is produced with
less labour.
It would be a long list that would name the modern discoverers and
inventors of the century in the manufacture of iron and steel. But
eminent in the list, in addition to Davy and Bessemer, and others
already mentioned, are Mushet, Sir L. Bell, Percy, Blomfield, Beasley,
Giers and Snellus of England; Martin, Chennot, Du Motay, Pernot and
Gruner of France; Lohage, Dr. C. L. Siemens and Höpfer of Germany; Prof
Sarnstrom and Akerman of Sweden; Turner of Austria; and Holley, Slade,
Blair, Jones, Sellers, Clapp, Griffiths and Eames of the United States.
Some of the new metals discovered in the last century have in this
century been combined with iron to make harder steel. Thus we have
nickel, chromium, and tungsten steel. Processes for hardening steel, as
the "Harveyized" steel, have given rise to a contest between
"irresistible" projectiles and "impenetrable" armour plate.
If there are some who regard modern discoveries and inventions in iron
and steel as lessening the number of workmen and cheapening the product
too much, thus causing trouble due to labour-saving machinery, let them
glance, among other great works in the world, at Krupp's at Essen, where
on January 1st, 1899, 41,750 persons were employed, and at which works
during the previous year 1,199,610 tons of coal and coke were consumed,
or about 4000 tons daily. Workers in iron will not be out of employment
in the United States, where 16,000,000 tons of coke are produced
annually, 196,405,953 tons of coal mined, 11,000,000 tons of pig iron
and about 9,000,000 tons of steel made. The increase of population
within the last hundred years bears no comparison with this enormous
increase in iron and fuel. It shows that as inventions multiply, so does
the demand for their better and cheaper products increase.
As the other metals, gold, silver, copper and lead often occur together,
and in the same deposits with iron, the same general modes of treatment
to extract them are often applied. These are known as the dry and the
wet methods, and electro-reduction.
Ever since Mammon bowed his head in search for gold, every means that
the mind of man could suggest to obtain it have been tried, but the
devices of this century have been more numerous and more successful than
any before. The ancient methods of simply melting and "skimming the
bullion dross" have been superseded. Modern methods may be divided into
two general classes, the mechanical and the chemical. Of the former
methods, when gold was found loose in sand or gravel, washing was the
earliest and most universally practised, and was called panning. In this
method mercury is often used to take up and secure the fine gold.
Rockers like a child's cradle, into which the dirt is shovelled and
washed over retaining riffles, were used; coarse-haired blankets and
hides; sluices and separators, with or without quicksilver linings to
catch the gold; and powerful streams of water worked by compressed air
to tear down the banks. Where water could not be obtained the ore and
soil were pulverised and dried, and then thrown against the wind or a
blast of air, and the heavier gold, falling before the lighter dust, was
caught on hides or blankets. For the crushing of the quartz in which
gold was found, innumerable inventions in stamp mills, rollers,
crushers, abraders, pulverisers and amalgamators have been invented; and
so with roasters, and furnaces, and crucibles to melt the precious
metal, separate the remaining impurities and convert it to use.
As to chemical methods for the precious metals, the process of
_lixiviation_, or _leaching_, by which the ore is washed out by a
solution of potash, or with dilute sulphuric acid, or boiling with
concentrated sulphuric acid, is quite modern. About 1889 came out the
great cyanide process, also known as the MacArthur-Forrest process (they
being the first to obtain patents and introduce the invention),
consisting of the use of cyanide potassium in solution, which dissolves
the gold, and which is then precipitated by the employment of zinc. This
process is best adapted to what are known as free milling or porous
ores, where the gold is free and very fine and is attracted readily by
mercury.
In 1807, Sir Humphry Davy discovered the metal potassium by subjecting
moistened potash to the action of a powerful voltaic battery; the
positive pole gave off oxygen and the metallic globules of pure
potassium appeared at the negative pole. It is never found uncombined in
nature. Now if potassium is heated in cyanogen gas (a gas procured by
heating mercury) or obtained on a large scale by the decomposition of
yellow prussiate of potash, a white crystalline body very soluble in
water, and exceedingly poisonous, is obtained. When gold, for instance,
obtained by pulverising the ore, or found free in sand, is treated to
such a solution it is dissolved from its surrounding constituents and
precipitated by the zinc, as before stated.
Chlorine is another metal discovered by Scheele in 1774, but not known
as an elementary element until so established by Davy's investigations
in 1810, when he gave it the name it now bears, from the Greek
_chloras_, yellowish green. It is found abundantly in the mineral world
in combination with common salt. Now it was found that chlorine is one
of the most energetic of bodies, surpassing even oxygen under some
circumstances, and that a chlorine solution will readily dissolve gold.
These, the cyanide and chlorination processes, have almost entirely
superseded the old washing and amalgamating methods of treating free
gold--and the cyanide seems to be now taking the lead.
_Alloys._--The art of fusing different metals to make new compounds,
although always practised, has been greatly advanced by the discoverers
and inventors of the century. As we have seen, amalgamating to extract
gold and silver, and the making of bronze from tin and copper were very
early followed. One of the most notable and useful of modern inventions
or improvements of the kind was that of Isaac Babbitt of Boston in 1839,
who in that year obtained patents for what ever since has been known as
"babbitting." The great and undesirable friction produced by the rubbing
of the ends of journals and shafts in their bearings of the same metal,
cast or wrought iron, amounting to one-fifth of the amount of power
exerted to turn them, had long been experienced. Lubricants of all kinds
had been and are used; but Babbitt's invention was an anti-friction
metal. It is composed of tin, antimony, and copper, and although the
proportions and ingredients have since been varied, the whole art is
still known as babbitting.
Other successful alloys have been made for gun metal, sheathing of
ships, horseshoes, organ pipes, plough shares, roofing, eyelets,
projectiles, faucets, and many and various articles of hardware,
ornamental ware, and jewelry.
Valuable metals, such as were not always rare or scarce, but very hard
to reduce, have been rendered far less in cost of production and more
extensive in use by modern processes. Thus, aluminium, an abundant
element in rocks and clay, discovered by the German chemist Wöhler, in
1827, a precious metal, so light, bright, and tough, non-oxidizing,
harder than zinc, more sonorous than silver, malleable and ductile as
iron, and more tenacious, has been brought to the front from an
expensive and mere laboratory production to common and useful purposes
in all the arts by the processes commencing in 1854 with that of St.
Clair Deoville, of France, followed by those of H. Rose, Morin, Castner,
Tissier, Hall, and others.
_Electro-metallurgy_, so far, has chiefly to do with the decomposition
of metals by the electric current, and the production of very high
temperatures for furnaces, by which the most refractory ores, metals,
and other substances may be melted, and results produced not obtainable
in any other way. By placing certain mixtures of carbon and sand, or of
carbon and clay, between the terminals of a powerful current, a material
resembling diamonds, but harder, has been produced. It has been named
carbonundrum. The production of diamonds themselves is looked for. Steel
wire is now tempered and annealed by electricity, as well as welding
done, of which mention further on will be made.
Thus we have seen how the birth of ideas of former generations has given
rise in the present age to children of a larger growth. Arts have grown
only as machinery for the accomplishment of their objects has developed,
and machinery has waited on the development of the metals composing it.
The civilisation of to-day would not have been possible if the
successors of Tubal Cain had not been like him, instructors "of every
artificer in brass and iron."
CHAPTER XV.
METAL WORKING.
We referred in the last chapter to the fact that metal when it came from
the melting and puddling furnace was formerly rolled into sheets; but,
when the manufacturers and consumers got these sheets then came the
severe, laborious work by hand of cutting, hammering, boring, shaping
and fitting the parts for use and securing them in place.
It is one of the glories of this century that metal-working tools and
machinery have been invented that take the metal from its inception,
mould and adapt it to man's will in every situation with an infinite
saving of time and labour, and with a perfection and uniformity of
operation entirely impossible by hand.
Although the tools for boring holes in wood, such as the gimlet, auger,
and the lathe to hold, turn and guide the article to be operated on by
the tool, are common in some respects with those for drilling and
turning metal, yet, the adaptation to use with metal constitutes a class
of metal-working appliances distinct in themselves, and with some
exceptions not interchangeable with wood-working utensils. The
metal-working tools and machines forming the subject of this chapter are
not those which from time immemorial have been used to pierce, hammer,
cut, and shape metals, directed by the eye and hand of man, but rather
those invented to take the place of the hand and eye and be operated by
other powers.
It needs other than manual power to subdue the metals to the present
wants of man, and until those modern motor powers, such as steam,
compressed air, gas and electricity, and modern hydraulic machinery,
were developed, automatic machine tools to any extent were not invented.
So, too, the tools that are designed to operate on hard metal should
themselves be of the best metal, and until modern inventors rediscovered
the art of making cast steel such tools were not obtainable. The
monuments and records of ancient and departed races show that it was
known by them how to bore holes in wood, stone and glass by some sharp
instruments turned by hand, or it may be by leather cords, as a top is
turned.
_The lathe_, a machine to hold an object, and at the same time revolve
it while it is formed by the hand, or cut by a tool, is as old as the
art of pottery, and is illustrated in the oldest Egyptian monuments, in
which the god Ptah is shown in the act of moulding man upon the throwing
wheel. It is a device as necessary to the industrial growth of man as
the axe or the spade. Its use by the Egyptians appears to have been
confined to pottery, but the ancient Greeks, Chinese, Africans, and
Hindoos used lathes, for wood working in which the work was suspended on
horizontal supports, and adapted to be rotated by means of a rope and
treadle and a spring bar, impelled by the operator as he held the
cutting tool on the object. Joseph Holtzapffel in his learned work on
_Turning and Mechanical Manipulation_, gives a list of old publications
describing lathes for turning both wood and metal. Among these is
Hartman Schapper's book published at Frankfort, in 1548. A lathe on
which was formed wood screws is described in a work of Jacques Besson,
published at Lyons, France, in 1582.
It is stated that there is on exhibition in the Abbott museum of the
Historical Society, New York, a bronze drinking vessel, five inches in
diameter, that was exhumed from an ancient tomb in Thebes, and which
bears evidence of having been turned on a lathe. It is thought by those
skilled in the art that it was not possible to have constructed the
works of metal in Solomon's Temple without a turning lathe. One of the
earliest published descriptions of a metal turning lathe in its leading
features is that found in a book published in London, in 1677-83, by
Joseph Moxon, "hydographer" to King Charles II., entitled, _Mechanical
Exercises, or the Doctrine of Handy Works_. He therein also described a
machine for planing metal. Although there is some evidence that these
inventions of the learned gentleman were made and put to some use, yet
they were soon forgotten and were not revived until a century later,
when, as before intimated, the steam engine had been invented and
furnished the power for working them.
Wood-working implements in which the cutting tool was carried by a
sliding block were described in the English patents of General Sir
Samuel Bentham and Joseph Bramah, in 1793-94. But until this century,
and fairly within its borders, man was content generally to use the
metal lathe simply as a holding and turning support, while he with such
skill and strength as he could command, and with an expenditure of time,
labour and patience truly marvellous, held and guided with his hands the
cutting tool with which the required form was made upon or from the
slowly turning object before him. The contrivance which was to take the
place of the hand and eye of man in holding, applying, directing and
impelling a cutting tool to the surface of the metal work was the
_slide-rest_. In its modern successful automatic form Henry Maudsley, an
engineer in London, is claimed to be the first inventor, in the early
part of the century. The leading feature of his form of this device
consists of an iron block which constitutes the rest, cut with grooves
so as to adapt it to slide upon its iron supports, means to secure the
cutting tool solidly to this block, and two screw handles, one to adjust
the tool towards and against the object to be cut in the lathe, and the
other to slide the rest and tool lengthwise as the work progresses,
which latter motion may be given by the hand, or effected automatically
by a connection of the screw handle of the slide and the rotating object
on the lathe.
A vast variety of inventions and operations have been effected by
changes in these main features. Of the value of this invention, Nasmyth,
a devoted pupil of Maudsley and himself an eminent engineer and
inventor, thus writes:--"It was this holding of a tool by means of an
iron hand, and constraining it to move along the surface of the work in
so certain a manner, and with such definite and precise motion, which
formed the great era in the history of mechanics, inasmuch as we
thenceforward became possessed, by its means, of the power of operating
alike on the most ponderous or delicate pieces of machinery with a
degree of minute precision, of which language cannot convey an adequate
idea; and in many cases we have, through its agency, equal facility in
carrying on the most perfect workmanship in the interior parts of
certain machines where neither the hand nor the eye can reach, and
nevertheless we can give to these parts their required form with a
degree of accuracy as if we had the power of transforming our-selves
into pigmy workmen, and so apply our labour to the innermost holes and
corners of our machinery."
The scope of the lathe, slide-rest and operating tool, by its adaptation
to cut out from a vast roll of steel a ponderous gun, or by a change in
the size of parts to operate in cutting or drilling the most delicate
portions of that most delicate of all mechanisms, a watch, reminds one
of that other marvel of mechanical adaptation, the steam hammer, which
makes the earth tremble with its mighty blows upon a heated mass of
iron, or lightly taps and cracks the soft-shelled nut without the
slightest touch of violence upon its enclosed and fragile fruit.
The adaptation of the lathe and slide to wood-working tools will be
referred to in the chapter relating to wood-working.
Following the invention of the lathe and the slide-rest, came the
_metal-planing_ machines. It is stated in Buchanan's _Practical Essays_,
published in 1841, that a French engineer in 1751, in constructing the
Marly Water Works on the Seine in France, employed a machine for planing
out the wrought iron pump-barrels used in that work, and this is thought
to be the first instance in which iron was reduced to a plane surface
without chipping or filing. But it needed the invention of the
slide-rest and its application to metal-turning lathes to suggest and
render successful metal-planing machines. These were supplied in England
from 1811 to 1840 by the genius of Bramah, Clement, Fox, Roberts,
Rennie, Whitworth, Fletcher, and a few others. When it is considered how
many different forms are essential to the completion of metal machines
of every description, the usefulness of machinery that will produce them
with the greatest accuracy and despatch can be imagined. The many
modifications of the planing machine have names that indicate to the
workman the purpose for which they are adapted--as the _jack_, a small
portable machine, quick and handy; the _jim crow_, a machine for planing
both ways by reversal of the movement of the bed, and it gets its name
because it can "wheel about and turn about and do just so"; the key
groove machine, the milling machine with a serrated-faced cutter bar,
shaping machine and shaping bar, slotting machine, crank planer, screw
cutting, car-wheel turning, bolt and nut screwing, etc.
As to the mutual evolution and important results of these combined
inventions, the slide-rest and the planer, we again quote Nasmyth:--
"The first planing machine enabled us to produce the second still
better, and that a better still, and then slide rests of the most
perfect kind came streaming forth from them, and they again assisted in
making better still, so that in a very short time a most important
branch of engineering business, namely, tool-making, arose, which had
its existence not merely owing to the pre-existing demand for such
tools, but in fact raised a demand of its own creating. One has only to
go into any of these vast establishments which have sprung up in the
last thirty years to find that nine-tenths of all the fine mechanisms in
use and in process of production are through the agency, more or less
direct, of the _slide rest and planing machine_."
Springing out of these inventions, as from a fruitful soil, came the
metal-boring machines, one class for turning the outside of cylinders to
make them true, and another class for boring and drilling holes through
solid metal plates. The principle of the lathe was applied to those
machines in which the shaft carrying the cutting or boring tool was held
either in a vertical or in a horizontal position.
Now flowed forth, as from some Vulcan's titanic workshop, machines for
making bolts, nuts, rivets, screws, chains, staples, car wheels, shafts,
etc., and other machines for applying them to the objects with which
they were to be used.
The progress of screw-making had been such that in 1840, by the machines
then in use for cutting, slotting, shaving, threading, and heading,
twenty men and boys were enabled to manufacture 20,000 screws in a day.
Thirty-five years later two girls tending two machines were enabled to
manufacture 240,000 screws a day. Since then the process has proceeded
at even a greater rate. So great is the consumption of screws that it
would be utterly impossible to supply the demand by the processes in
vogue sixty years ago.
In England's first great International Fair, in 1851, a new world of
metallurgical products, implements, processes, and metal-working tools,
were among the grand results of the half century's inventions which were
exhibited to the assembled nations. The leading exhibitor in the line of
self-acting lathes, planing, slotting, drilling and boring machines was
J. Whitworth & Co., of Manchester, England. Here were for the first time
revealed in a compact form those machines which shaped metal as wood
alone had been previously shaped. But another quarter of a century
brought still grander results, which were displayed at the Centennial
Exhibition at Philadelphia, in 1876.
As J. Whitworth & Co. were the leading exhibitors at London in 1851, so
were William Sellers & Co., of Philadelphia, the leading exhibitors in
the 1876 exhibition. As showing the progress of the century, the
official report, made in this class by citizens of other countries than
America, set forth that this exhibit of the latter company, "in extent
and value, in extraordinary variety and originality, was probably
without parallel in the past history of international exhibitions."
Language seemed to be inadequate to enable the committee to describe
satisfactorily the extreme refinement in every detail, the superior
quality of material and workmanship, the mathematical accuracy, the
beautiful outlines, the perfection in strength and form, and the
scientific skill displayed in the remarkable assemblage of this class of
machinery at that exhibition.
An exhibit on that occasion made by Messrs. Hoopes & Townsend of
Philadelphia attracted great attention by the fact that the doctrine of
the flow of solid metal, so well expounded by that eminent French
scientist, M. Tresca, was therein well illustrated. It consisted of a
large collection of bolts and screws which had been _cold-punched_, as
well as of elevator and carrier chains, the links of which had been so
punched. This punching of the cold metal without cutting, boring,
drilling, hammering, or otherwise shaping the metal, was indeed a
revelation.
So also at this Exhibition was a finer collection of machine-made
horseshoes than had ever previously been presented to the world. A
better and more intelligent and refined treatment of that noble animal,
the horse, and especially in the care of his feet, had sprung up during
the last half century, conspicuously advocated by Mr. Fleming in
England, and followed promptly in America and elsewhere. Within the last
forty years nearly two hundred patents have been taken out in the United
States alone for machines for making horseshoes. Prejudices, jealousies
and objections of all kinds were raised at first against the
machine-made horseshoe, as well as the horseshoe nail, but the horses
have won, and the blacksmiths have been benefited despite their early
objections. The smiths make larger incomes in buying and applying the
machine-made shoes. The shoes are not only hammered into shape on the
machine, but there are machines for stamping them out from metal at a
single blow; for compressing several thicknesses of raw hide and
moulding them in a steel mould, producing a light, elastic shoe, and
without calks; furnishing shoes for defective hoofs, flexible shoes for
the relief and cure of contracted or flat feet, shoes formed with a
joint at the toe, and light, hard shoes made of aluminium.
_Tube Making._--Instead of heating strips of metal and welding the edges
together, tubes may now be made seamless by rolling the heated metal
around a solid heated rod; or by placing a hot ingot in a die and
forcing a mandrel through the ingot. And as to tube and metal bending,
there are wonderful machines which bend sheets of metal into great
tubes, funnels, ship masts and cylinders.
_Welding._--As to welding--the seams, instead of being hammered, are now
formed by melting and condensing the edges, or adjoining parts, by the
electric current.
_Annealing and Tempering._--Steel wire and plates are now tempered and
annealed by electricity. It is found that they can be heated to a high
temperature more quickly and evenly by the electric current passed
through them than by combustion, and the process is much used in making
clock and watch springs.
One way of hardening plates, especially armour plates, by what is called
the Harveyized process, is by 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 then hardening the face by chilling, or
otherwise.
_Coating with Metal._--Although covering metal with metal has been
practised from the earliest times, accomplished by heating and
hammering, it was not until this century that electro-plating, and
plating by chemical processes, as by dipping the metal into certain
chemical solutions, and by the use of automatic machinery, were adopted.
It was in the early part of the century that Volta discovered that in
the voltaic battery certain metallic salts were reduced to their
elements and deposited at the negative pole; and that Wollaston
demonstrated how a silver plate in bath of sulphate of copper through
which a current was passed became covered with copper. Then in 1838,
Spencer applied these principles in making casts, and Jacobi in Russia
shortly after electro-gilded a dome of a cathedral in St. Petersburg.
Space will not permit the enumeration of the vast variety of processes
and machines for coating and gilding that have since followed.
_Metal Founding._--The treatment of metal after it flows from the
furnaces, or is poured from the crucibles into moulds, by the operations
of facing, drying, covering, casting and stripping, has given rise to a
multitude of machines and methods for casting a great variety of
objects. The most interesting inventions in this class have for their
object the chilling, or chill hardening, of the outer surfaces of
articles which are subject to the most and hardest wear, as axle boxes,
hammers, anvils, etc., which is effected by exposing the red-hot metal
to a blast of cold air, or by introducing a piece of iron into a mould
containing the molten metal.
In casting steel ingots, in order to produce a uniform compact
structure, Giers of England invented "soaking pits of sand" into which
the ingot from the mould is placed and then covered, so that the heat
radiating outward re-heats the exterior, and the ingot is then rolled
without re-heating.
_Sheet Metal Ware._--Important improvements have been made in this line.
Wonderful machines have been made which, receiving within them a piece
of flat metal, will, by a single blow of a plunger in a die, stamp out a
metal can or box with tightly closed seams, and all ready for the cover,
which is made in another similar machine; or by which an endless chain
of cans are carried into a machine and there automatically soldered at
their seams; and another which solders the heads on filled cans as fast
as they can be fed into the machine.
_Metal Personal Ware._--Buckles, clasps, hooks and eyelets, shanked
buttons, and similar objects are now stamped up and out, without more
manual labour than is necessary to supply the machines with the metal,
and to take care of the completed articles.
_Wire Working._--Not only unsightly but useful barbed wire fences, and
the most ornamental wire work and netting for many purposes, such as
fences, screens, cages, etc., are now made by ingenious machines, and
not by hand tools.
In stepping into some one of the great modern works where varied
industries are carried on under one general management, one cannot help
realising the vast difference between old systems and the new. In one
portion of the establishment the crude ores are received and smelted and
treated, with a small force and with ease, until the polished metal is
complete and ready for manipulation in the manufacture of a hundred
different objects. In another part ponderous or smaller lathes and
planing machines are turning forth many varied forms; in quiet corners
the boring, drilling, and riveting machines are doing their work without
the clang of hammers; in another, an apparently young student is
conducting the scientific operation of coating or gilding metals; in
another, girls may be seen with light machines, stamping, or burnishing,
or assembling the different parts of finished metal ware; and the motive
power of all this is the silent but all-powerful electric current
received from the smooth-running dynamo giant who works with vast but
unseen energy in a den by himself, not a smoky or a dingy den, but
light, clean, polished, and beautiful as the workshop of a god.
CHAPTER XVI.
ORDNANCE, ARMS AND EXPLOSIVES.
Although the progress in the invention of fire-arms of all descriptions
seems slow during the ages preceding the 19th century, yet it will be
found on investigation that no art progressed faster. No other art was
spurred to activity by such strong incentives, and none received the
same encouragement and reward for its development. The art of war was
the trade of kings and princes, and princely was the reward to the
subject who was the first to invent the most destructive weapon. Under
such high patronage most of the ideas and principles of ordnance now
prevailing were discovered or suggested, but were embodied for the most
part in rude and inefficient contrivances.
The art waited for its success on the development of other arts, and on
the mental expansion and freedom giving rise to scientific investigation
and results.
The cannon and musket themselves became the greatest instruments for the
advancement of the new civilisation, however much it was intended
otherwise by their kingly proprietors, and the new civilisation returned
the compliment through its trained intellects by giving to war its
present destructive efficiency.
To this efficiency, great as the paradox may seem, Peace holds what
quiet fields it has, or will have, until most men learn to love peace
and hate the arts of war.
As to the Chinese is given the credit for the invention of gunpowder, so
they must also be regarded as the first to throw projectiles by its
means. But their inventions in these directions may be classed as
fireworks, and have no material bearing on the modern art of Ordnance.
It is supposed that the word "cannon," is derived from the same root as
"cane," originally signifying a hollow reed; and that these hollow reeds
or similar tubes closed at one end were used to fire rockets by powder.
It is also stated that the practice existed among the Chinese as early
as 969 A. D. of tying rockets to their arrows to propel them to greater
distances, as well as for incendiary purposes.
This basic idea had percolated from China through India to the Moors and
Arabs, and in the course of a few centuries had developed into a crude
artillery used by the Moors in the siege of Cordova in 1280. The
Spaniards, thus learning the use of the cannon, turned the lesson upon
their instructors, when under Ferdinand IV. they took Gibraltar from the
Moors in 1309. Then the knowledge of artillery soon spread throughout
Europe. The French used it at the siege of Puy Guillaume in 1338, and
the English had three small guns at Crecy in 1346. These antique guns
were made by welding longitudinal bars of iron together and binding them
by iron rings shrunk on while hot. Being shaped internally and
externally like an apothecary's mortar, they were called mortars or
bombards. Some were breech-loaders, having a removable chamber at the
breech into which the charge of powder was inserted behind the ball. The
balls were stone. These early cannon, bombards, and mortars were mounted
on heavy solid wooden frames and moved with great difficulty from place
to place. Then in the fifteenth century they commenced to make
wrought-iron cannon, and hollow projectiles, containing a bursting
charge of powder to be exploded by a fuse lit before the shell was
fired. In the next century cannon were cast.
The Hindoos, when their acquaintance was made by the Europeans, were as
far advanced as the latter in cannon and fire-arms. One cannon was found
at Bejapoor, in India, cast of bronze, bearing date 1548, and called the
"Master of the Field," which weighed 89,600 pounds, and others of
similar size of later dates. Great cast bronze guns of about the same
weight as the Hindoo guns were also produced at St. Petersburg, Russia,
in the sixteenth century.
Many and strange were the names given by Europeans to their cannon in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to denote their size and the
weight of the ball they carried: such as the Assick, the Bombard, the
Basilisk, the cannon Royal, or Carthoun, the Culverin, Demi-culverin,
Falcon, Siren, Serpentine, etc.
The bombards in the fifteenth century were made so large and heavy,
especially in France, that they could not be moved without being taken
apart.
When the heavy, unwieldy bombards with stone balls were used, artillery
was mostly confined to castles, towns, forts, and ships. When used in
the field they were dragged about by many yokes of oxen. But in the
latter part of the fifteenth century, when France under Louis XI. had
learned to cast lighter brass cannon, to mount them on carriages that
could be drawn by four or six horses, and which carriages had trunnions
in which the cannon were swung so as to be elevated or depressed, and
cast-iron projectiles were used instead of stones, field artillery took
its rise, and by its use the maps of the world were changed. Thus with
their artillery the French under Charles VIII., the successor of Louis
XI., conquered Italy.
In the sixteenth century Europe was busy in adopting these and other
changes. Cannon were made of all sizes and calibres, but were not
arranged in battle with much precision. Case shot were invented in
Germany but not brought into general use. Shells were invented by the
Italians and fired from mortars, but their mode of construction was
preserved in great secrecy. The early breech-loaders had been discarded,
as it was not known how to make the breech gas-tight, and the explosions
rendered the guns more dangerous to their users than to the enemy.
In the seventeenth century Holland began to make useful mortar shells
and hand grenades. Maurice and Henry Frederick of Nassau, and Gustave
Adolphus, made many improvements in the sizes and construction of
cannon. In 1674, Coehorn, an officer in the service of the Prince of
Orange, invented the celebrated mortar which bears his name, and the use
of which has continued to the present time. The Dutch also invented the
howitzer, a short gun in which the projectiles could be introduced by
hand. About the same time Comminges of France invented mortars which
threw projectiles weighing 550 pounds. In this part of that century also
great improvements were made under Louis XIV. Limbers, by which the
front part of the gun carriage was made separable from the cannon part
and provided with the ammunition chest; the prolonge, a cord and hook by
which the gun part could be moved around by hand; and the elevating
screw, by which the muzzle of the gun could be raised or
depressed,--were invented.
In the early part of the eighteenth century it was thought by
artillerists in England that the longer the gun the farther it would
carry. One, called "Queen Ann's Pocket Piece" still preserved at Dover,
is twenty-five feet long and carries a ball only twenty-five pounds in
weight. It was only after repeated experiments that it was learned that
the shorter guns carried the projectile the greatest distance.
The greatest improvements in the eighteenth century were made by
Gribeauval, the celebrated French artillerist, about 1765. He had guns
made of such material and of such size as to adapt them to the different
services to which they were to be put, as field, siege, garrison, and
sea coast. He gave greater mobility to the system by introducing
six-pound howitzers, and making gun carriages lighter; he introduced the
system of fixed ammunition, separate compartments in the gun carriages
for the projectiles, and the charges of powder in paper or cloth bags or
cylinders; improved the construction of the elevating screw, adapted the
tangent scale, formed the artillery into horse batteries, and devised
new equipments and a new system of tactics.
It was with Gribeauval's improved system that "Citizen Bonaparte, young
artillery officer," took Toulon; with which the same young "bronze
artillery officer" let go his great guns in the Cul-de-Sac Dauphin
against the church of St. Roch; on the Port Royal; at the Theatre de la
Republique; "and the thing we specifically call French Revolution is
blown into space by it, and became a thing that was."
It was with this system that this same young officer won his first
brilliant victories in Italy. When the fruit of these victories had been
lost during his absence he reappeared with his favorite artillery, and
on the threshold of the century, in May 1800, as "First Consul of the
Republic" re-achieved at Marengo the supremacy of France over Austria.
As to _small arms_, as before suggested, they doubtless had their origin
in the practice of the Chinese in throwing fire balls from bamboo
barrels by the explosion of light charges of powder, as illustrated to
this day in what are known as "Roman Candles." Fire-crackers and
grenades were also known to the Chinese and the Greeks.
Among ancient fire-arms the principal ones were the arquebus, also
bombardelle, and the blunderbuss. They were invented in the fourteenth
century but were not much used until the fifteenth century. These guns
for the most part were so heavy that they had to be rested on some
object to be fired. The soldiers carried a sort of tripod for this
purpose. The gun was fired by a slow-burning cord, a live coal, a lit
stick, or a long rod heated at one end, and called a match. The
blunderbuss was invented in Holland. It was a large, short,
funnel-shaped muzzle-loader, and loaded with nails, slugs, etc. The
injuries and hardships suffered by the men who used it, rather than by
the enemy, rendered its name significant. Among the earliest fire-arms
of this period one was invented which was a breech-loader and revolver.
The breech had four chambers and was rotated by hand on an arbour
parallel to the barrel. The extent of its use is not learned. To ignite
the powder the "wheel-lock" and "snap-haunce" were invented by the
Germans in the sixteenth century. The wheel lock consisted of a furrowed
wheel and was turned by the trigger and chain against a fixed piece of
iron on the stock to excite sparks which fell on to the priming. The
snap-haunce, a straight piece of furrowed steel, superseded the
wheel-lock. The sixteenth century had got well started before the
English could be induced to give up the cross-bow and arrow, and adopt
the musket. After they had introduced the musket with the snap-haunce
and wooden ramrod, it became known, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, as
the "Brown Bess."
The "old flint-lock" was quite a modern invention, not appearing until
the seventeenth century. It was a bright idea to fix a piece of flint
into the cock and arrange it to strike a steel cap on the priming pan
when the trigger was fired; and it superseded the old match, wheel-lock,
and snap-haunce. The flint-lock was used by armies well into the
nineteenth century, and is still in private use in remote localities. As
the arquebus succeeded the bow and arrow, so the musket, a smooth and
single-barrel muzzle-loader with a flint-lock and a wooden ramrod,
succeeded the arquebus. Rifles, which were the old flint-lock muskets
with their barrels provided with spiral grooves to give the bullet a
rotary motion and cause it to keep one point constantly in front during
its flight, is claimed as the invention of Augustin Kutler of Germany in
1520, and also of Koster of Birmingham, England, about 1620. Muskets
with straight grooves are said to have been used in the fifteenth
century.
The rifle with a long barrel and its flint-lock was a favourite weapon
of the American settler. It was made in America, and he fought the
Indian wars and the war of the Revolution with it.
It would not do to conclude this sketch of antique cannon and fire-arms
without referring to Puckle's celebrated English patent No. 418, of May
15, 1718, for "A Defence." The patent starts out with the motto:
"Defending King George, your Country, and Lawes,
Is defending Yourselves and Protestant Cause."
It proceeds to describe a "Portable Gun or Machine" having a single
barrel, with a set of removable chambers which are charged with bullets
before they are placed in the gun, a handle to turn the chambers to
bring each chamber in line with the barrel, a tripod on which the gun is
mounted and on which it is to be turned, a screw for elevating and
turning the gun in different directions, a set of square chambers "for
shooting square bullets against Turks," a set of round chambers "for
shooting round bullets against the Christians;" and separate drawings
show the square bullets for the Turks and the round bullets for the
Christians. History is silent as to whether Mr. Puckle's patent was put
in practice, but it contained the germs of some modern inventions.
Among the first inventions of the century was a very important one made
by a clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Forsyth, a Scotchman, who in 1803 invented
the percussion principle in fire-arms. In 1807 he patented in England
detonating powder and pellets which were used for artillery. About 1808
General Shrapnel of the English army invented the celebrated shell known
by his name. It then consisted of a comparatively thin shell filled with
bullets, having a fuse lit by the firing of the gun, and adapted to
explode the shell in front of the object fired at. This fuse was
superseded by one invented by General Bormann of Belgium, which greatly
added to the value of case shot.
In 1814 Joshua Shaw of England invented the percussion cap. Thus, by the
invention of the percussion principle by Forsyth, and that little copper
cylinder of Shaw, having a flake of fulminating powder inside and
adapted to fit the nipple of a gun and be exploded by the fall of the
hammer, was sounded the death knell of the old flint-locks with which
the greatest battles of the world had been and were at that time being
fought. The advantages gained by the cap were the certain and
instantaneous fire, the saving in time, power, and powder obtained by
making smaller the orifice through which the ignition was introduced,
and the protection from moisture given by the covering cap. And yet so
slow is the growth of inventions sometimes that all Europe continued to
make the flint-locks for many years after the percussion cap was
invented; and General Scott, in the war between the United States and
Mexico in 1847, declined to give the army the percussion cap musket. The
cap suggested the necessity and invention of machines for making them
quickly and in great quantities.
The celebrated "Colt's" revolver was invented by Colonel Samuel Colt of
the United States, in 1835. He continued to improve it, and in 1851
exhibited it at the World's Fair, London, where it excited great
surprise and attention. Since then the revolver has become a great
weapon in both private and public warfare. The next great inventions in
small arms were the readoption and improvement of the breech-loader, the
making of metallic cartridges, the magazine gun, smokeless powder and
other explosives, to which further reference will be made.
To return to cannons:--In 1812 Colonel Bomford, an American officer,
invented what is called the "Columbiad," a kind of cannon best adapted
for sea-coast purposes. They are long-chambered pieces, combining
certain qualities of the gun, howitzer and mortar, and capable of
projecting shells and solid shot with heavy charges of powder at high
angles of elevation, and peculiarly adapted to defend narrow channels
and sea-coast defences. A similar gun was invented by General Paixhans
of the French army in 1822. The adoption of the Paixhans long-chambered
guns, designed to throw heavy shells horizontally as well as at a slight
elevation and as easily as solid shot, was attended with great results.
Used by the French in 1832, in the quick victorious siege of Antwerp, by
the allies at Sebastopol, where the whole Russian fleet was destroyed in
about an hour, and in the fight of the Kearsarge and the doomed Alabama
off Cherbourg in the American civil war, it forced inventors in the
different countries to devise new and better armour for the defence of
ships. This was followed by guns of still greater penetrative power.
Then as another result effected by these greater guns came the passing
away of the old-fashioned brick and stone forts as a means of defence.
In an interesting address by Major Clarence E. Dutton of the Ordnance
Department, U.S.A., at the Centennial Patent Congress at Washington in
1891, he thus stated what the fundamental improvements were that have
characterised the modern ordnance during the century:
1. The regulation and control of the action of gunpowder in such a
manner as to exert less strain upon the gun, and to impart more energy
to the projectile.
2. To so construct the gun as to transfer a portion of the strain from
the interior parts of the walls which had borne too much of it, to the
exterior parts which had borne too little, thus nearly equalising the
strain throughout the entire thickness of the walls.
3. To provide a metal which should be at once stronger and safer than
any which had been used before.
In the United States General Rodman, "one of the pioneers of armed
science," commenced about 1847 a series of investigations and
experiments on the power and action of gunpowder and the strains
received by every part of the gun by the exploding gases, of very great
importance; and in this matter he was assisted greatly by Dr. W. E.
Woodbridge, who invented an ingenious apparatus termed a "piezometer,"
or a pressure measurer, by which the pressure of the gases at the
various parts of the gun was determined with mathematical certainty.
Dr. Woodbridge also added greatly to the success of rifled cannon. The
success in rifling small arms, by which an elongated ball is made to
retain the same end foremost during its flight, led again to the
attempts of rifling cannon for the same purpose, which were finally
successful. But this success was due not to the spiral grooves in the
cannon bore, but in attachments to the ball compelling it to follow the
course of the grooves and giving it the proper initial movement. The
trouble with these attachments was that they were either stripped off,
or stripped away, by the gun spirals. Woodbridge in 1850 overcame the
difficulty by inventing an improved _sabot_, consisting of a ring
composed of metal softer than the projectile or cannon, fixed on the
inner end of the projectile and grooved at its rear end, so that when
the gun is fired and the ball driven forward these grooves expand,
acting valvularly to fill the grooves in the gun, thus preventing the
escape of the gases, while the ring at the same time is forced forward
on to the shell so tightly and forcibly that the projectile is
invariably given a rotary motion and made to advance strictly in the
line of axis of the bore, and in the same line during the course of its
flight. This invention in principle has been followed ever since,
although other forms have been given the sabot, and it is due to this
invention that modern rifled cannon have been so wonderfully accurate in
range and efficient in the penetrating and destructive power both on sea
and land.
Woodbridge also invented the _wire-wound cannon_, and a machine for
winding the wire upon the gun, thus giving the breach part, especially,
immense strength.
In England, among the first notable and greater inventors in ordnance
during the latter half of the century, a period which embraces the
reduction to practice of the most wonderful and successful inventions in
weapons of war which the world had up to that time seen, are Lancaster,
who invented the elliptical bore; Sir William Armstrong, who, commencing
in 1885, constructed a gun built of wrought-iron bars twisted into coils
and applied over a steel core and bound by one or more wrought-iron
rings, all applied at white heat and shrunk on by contraction due to
cooling, by which method smooth-bore, muzzle-loading cannon of immense
calibre, one weighing one hundred tons, were made. They were followed by
Armstrong, inventor of breech-loaders; Blakely, inventor of cannon made
of steel tubes and an outer jacket of cast iron; and Sir Joseph
Whitworth, inventor of most powerful steel cannon and compressed steel
projectiles.
In Germany, Friedrich Krupp at Essen, Prussia, invented and introduced
such improvements in breech-loading cannon as revolutionised the
manufacture of that species of ordnance, and established the foundation
of the greatest ordnance works in the world. The first of his great
breech-loading steel guns was exhibited at the Paris Exhibition in 1867.
A Krupp gun finished at Essen in the 70's was then the largest steel gun
the world had ever seen. It weighed seventy-two tons, and was thirty-two
feet long. The charge consisted of 385 pounds of powder, the shell
weighed 1,660 pounds, having a bursting charge of powder of 22 pounds,
and a velocity of 1,640 feet per second. It was estimated that if the
gun were fired at an angle of 43° the shell would be carried a distance
of fifteen miles. It was in the Krupp guns, and also in the Armstrong
breech-loaders, that a simple feature was for the first time introduced
which proved of immense importance in giving great additional expansive
force to the explosion of the powder. This was an increase in the size
of the powder chamber so as to allow a vacant space in it unfilled with
powder.
In the United States, Rodman, commencing in 1847, and Dahlgren in 1850,
and Parrott in 1860, invented and introduced some noticeable
improvements in cast-iron, smooth-bore, and rifled cannon.
In France General Paixhans and Colonel Treuille de Beaulieu improved the
shells and ordnance.
The latest improvements in cannon indicate that the old smooth-bore
muzzle-loader guns are to be entirely superseded by breech-loaders, just
as in small arms the muzzle-loading musket has given way to the
breech-loading rifle.
A single lever is now employed, a single turn of which will close or
open the breech, and when opened expel the shell by the same movement.
Formerly breech-loaders were confined to the heaviest ordnance; now they
are a part of the lightest field pieces.
As to the operation of those immense guns above referred to, which
constitute principally sea-coast defences and the heavy armament for
forts, gun carriages have been invented whereby the huge guns are
quickly raised from behind immense embrasures by pneumatic or hydraulic
cylinders, quickly fired (the range having been before accurately
ascertained) and then as quickly lowered out of sight, the latter
movement being aided by the recoil action of the gun.
It is essential that the full force of the gases of explosion shall be
exerted against the base of the projectile, and therefore all escape of
such gases be prevented. To this end valuable improvements in _gas
checks_ have been made,--one kind consisting of an annular canvas sack
containing asbestos and tallow placed between the front face of the
breech block and a mushroom-shaped piece, against which the explosion
impinges.
As among projectiles and shells for cannon those have been invented
which are loaded with dynamite or other high explosive, a new class of
_Compressed air ordnance_ has been started, in which air or gas is used
for the propelling power in place of powder, whereby the chances of
exploding such shells in the bore of the gun are greatly lessened.
The construction of metals, both for cannon to resist most intense
explosives and for plates to resist the penetration of the best
projectiles, have received great attention. They are matters pertaining
to metallurgy, and are treated of under that head. The strife still
continues between impenetrable armour plate and irresistible
projectiles. Within the last decade or so shells have been invented with
the design simply to shatter or fracture the plate by which the way is
broken for subsequent shots. Other shells have been invented carrying a
high explosive and capable of penetrating armour plates of great
thickness, and exploding after such penetration has taken place.
A great accompaniment to artillery is "The Range Finder," a telescopic
apparatus for ascertaining accurately the location and distance of
objects to be fired at.
Returning to _small arms_,--at the time percussion caps were invented in
England, 1803-1814, John H. Hall of the United States invented a
breech-loading rifle. It was in substance an ordinary musket cut in two
at the breech, with the rear piece connected by a hinge and trunnion to
the front piece, the bore of the two pieces being in line when clamped,
and the ball and cartridge inserted when the chamber was thrown up. A
large number were at once manufactured and used in the U.S. Army. A
smaller size, called _carbines_, were used by the mounted troops. After
about twenty years' use these guns began to be regarded as dangerous in
some respects, and their manufacture and use stopped, although the
carbines continued in use to some extent in the cavalry. A
breech-loading rifle was also invented by Colonel Pauly of France in
1812, and improved by Dreyse in 1835; also in Norway in 1838, and in a
few years adopted by Sweden as superior to all muzzle-loading arms.
About 1841 the celebrated "Needle Gun" was invented in Prussia, and its
superiority over all muzzle-loaders was demonstrated in 1848 in the
first Schleswig-Holstein war.
_Cartridges_, in which the ball and powder were secured together in one
package, were old in artillery, as has been shown, but their use for
small arms is a later invention. _Metallic_ cartridges, made of sheet
metal with a fulminate cap in one end and a rim on the end of the shell
by which it could be extracted after the explosion, were invented by
numerous persons in Europe and America during the evolution of the
breech-loader. Combined metal case and paper patented in England in
1816, and numerous wholly metallic cartridge shells were patented in
England, France, and United States between 1840 and 1860. M. Lefaucheux
of France, in the later period, devised a metal _gas check_ cartridge
which was a great advance.
A number of inventors in the United States besides Hall had produced
breech-loading small arms before the Civil War of 1861, but with the
exception of Colt's revolver and Sharp's carbine, the latter used by the
cavalry to a small extent, none were first adopted in that great
conflict. Later, the Henry or Winchester breech-loading rifle and the
Spencer magazine gun were introduced and did good service. But the whole
known system of breech-loading small arms was officially condemned by
the U.S. Military authorities previous to that war. The absence of
machines to make a suitable cartridge in large quantities and vast
immediate necessities compelled the authorities to ignore the tested
Prussian and Swedish breech-loaders and those of their own countrymen
and to ransack Europe for muskets of ancient pattern. These were worked
by the soldiers under the ancient tactics, of load, ram, charge and
fire, until a stray bullet struck the ramrod, or the discharge of a few
rammed cartridges so over-heated the musket as to thereby dispense with
the soldier and his gun for further service in that field. However,
private individuals and companies continued to invent and improve, and
the civil war in America revolutionised the systems of warfare and its
weapons. The wooden walls of the navies disappeared as a defence after
the conflict between the Monitor and the Merrimac, and muzzle-loading
muskets became things of the past.
Torpedoes, both stationary and movable, then became a successful weapon
of warfare. Soon after that war, and when the United States had adopted
the Springfield breech-loading rifle, the works at Springfield were
equipped with nearly forty different machines, each for making a
separate part of a gun in great quantities. Many of these had been
invented by Thomas Blanchard forty years before. That great inventor of
labour-saving machinery had then designed machines for the shaping and
making of gun stocks and for forming the accompanying parts. Blanchard
was a contemporary of Hall, and Hall, to perfect his breech-loader, was
the first to invent machines for making its various parts. His was the
first interchangeable system in the making of small arms.
Army officers had come to regard "the gun as only the casket while the
cartridge is the jewel;" and to this end J. G. Gill at the U.S. Arsenal
at Frankford, Philadelphia, devised a series of cartridge-making
machines which ranked among the highest triumphs of American invention.
The single breech-loader is now being succeeded by the magazine gun, by
which a supply of cartridges in a chamber is automatically fed into the
barrel. The Springfield, has been remodelled as a magazine loader. Among
later types of repeating rifles, known from the names of their
inventors, are the "Krag-Jorgensen," and the "Mauser," and the crack of
these is heard around the world. Modern rifles are rendered more deadly
by the fact that they can be loaded and fired in a recumbent position,
and with smokeless powder, by which the soldier and his location remain
concealed from his foe.
The recoil of the gun in both large and small arms is now utilised to
expel the fired cartridge shell, and to withdraw a fresh one from its
magazine and place it in position in the chamber. _Compressed air and
explosive gases_ have been used for the same purpose. A small _electric
battery_ has been placed in the stock to explode the cartridge when the
trigger is pulled.
Sporting guns have kept pace with other small arms in improvements, and
among modern forms are those which discharge in alternative succession
the two barrels by a single trigger. Revolvers have been improved and
the Smith and Wesson is known throughout the world.
The idea of _Machine Guns_, or _Mitrailleuses_, was not a new one, as we
have seen from Puckle's celebrated patent of 1718. Also history mentions
a gun composed of four breech-loading tubes of small calibre, placed on
a two-wheeled cart used in Flanders as early as 1347, and of four-tubed
guns used by the Scotch during the civil war in 1644. The machine gun
invented by Dr. Gatling of the United States during the Civil War and
subsequently perfected, has become a part of the armament of every
civilised nation. The object of the gun is to combine in one piece the
destructive effect of a great many, and to throw a continuous hail of
projectiles. The gun is mounted on a tripod; the cartridges are
contained in a hopper mounted on the breech of the gun and are fed from
locks into the barrels (which are usually five or ten in number) as the
locks and barrels are revolved by a hand crank. As the handle is turned
the cartridges are first given a forward motion, which thrusts them into
the barrels, closes the breech and fires the cartridges in succession,
and then a backward motion which extracts the empty shells. The gun
weighs one hundred pounds and firing may be kept up with a ten-barreled
gun at one thousand shots a minute.
The _Hotchkiss_ revolving cannon is another celebrated American
production named from its inventor, and constructed to throw heavier
projectiles than the Gatling. It also has revolving barrels and great
solidity in the breech mechanism. It has been found to be of great
service in resisting the attacks of torpedo boats. It is adapted to fire
long-range shells with great rapidity and powerful effect, and is
exceedingly efficient in defence of ditches and entrenchments.
_Explosives._--The desire to make the most effective explosives for
gunnery led to their invention not only for that purpose but for the
more peaceful pursuit of blasting. _Gun Cotton_, that mixture of nitric
acid and cotton, made by Schönbein in 1846, and experimented with for a
long time as a substitute for gunpowder in cannon and small arms and
finally discarded for that purpose, is now being again revived, but used
chiefly for blasting. This was followed by the discovery of
nitro-glycerine, a still more powerful explosive agent--too powerful and
uncontrollable for guns as originally made. They did not supersede
gunpowder, but smokeless powders have come, containing nitro-cellulose,
or nitro-glycerine rendered plastic, coherent and homogeneous, and
converted into rods or grains of free running powder, to aid the
breech-loaders and magazine guns, while the high explosives, gun-cotton,
nitro-glycerine, dynamite, dualine, etc., have become the favorite
agencies for those fearful offensive and defensive weapons, the
_Torpedoes_. From about the time of the discovery of gunpowder,
stationary and floating chambers and mines of powder, to be discharged
in early times by fuses (later by percussion or electricity), have
existed, but modern inventions have rendered them of more fearful
importance than was ever dreamed of before this century. The latest
invention in this class is the _submarine torpedo boat_, which, moving
rapidly towards an enemy's vessel, suddenly disappears from sight
beneath the water, and strikes the vessel at its lowest or most
vulnerable point.
To the inquiry as to whether all this vast array of modern implements of
destruction is to lessen the destruction of human life, shorten war,
mitigate its horrors and tend toward peace, there can be but one answer.
All these desirable results have been accomplished whenever the new
inventions of importance have been used. "Warlike Tribes" have been put
to flight so easily by civilised armies in modern times that such tribes
have been doubted as possessing their boasted or even natural courage.
Nations with a glorious past as to bravery but with a poor armament have
gone down suddenly before smaller forces armed with modern ordnance. The
results would have been reversed, and the derision would have proceeded
from the other side, if the conditions had been reversed, and those
tribes and brave peoples been armed with the best weapons and the
knowledge of their use. The courage of the majority of men on the
battle-field is begot of confidence and enthusiasm, but this confidence
and enthusiasm, however great the cause, soon fail, and discretion
becomes the better part of valour, if men find that their weapons are
weak and useless against vastly superior arms of the enemy. The
slaughter and destruction in a few hours with modern weapons may not be
more terrible than could be inflicted with the old arms by far greater
forces at close quarters in a greater length of time in the past, but
the end comes sooner; and the prolongation of the struggle with renewed
sacrifices of life, and the long continued and exhausting campaigns,
giving rise to diseases more destructive than shot or shell, are thereby
greatly lessened, if not altogether avoided.
CHAPTER XVII.
PAPER AND PRINTING.
_Paper-making._--"The art preservative of all arts"--itself must have
means of preservation, and hence the art of paper-making precedes the
art of printing.
It was Pliny who wrote, at the beginning of the Christian era, that "All
the usages of civilised life depend in a remarkable degree upon the
employment of paper. At all events the remembrance of past events."
Naturally to the Chinese, the Hindoo, and the Egyptian, we go with
inquiries as to origin, and find that as to both arts they were making
the most delicate paper from wood and vegetable fibres and printing with
great nicety, long before Europeans had even learned to use papyrus or
parchment, or had conceived the idea of type.
So far as we know the wasp alone preceded the ancient Orientals in the
making of paper. Its gray shingled house made in layers, worked up into
paper by a master hand from decayed wood, pulped, and glutinised,
waterproofed, with internal tiers of chambers, a fortress, a home, and
an airy habitation, is still beyond the power of human invention to
reproduce.
Papyrus--the paper of the Egyptians: Not only their paper, but its pith
one of their articles of food, and its outer portions material for
paper, boxes, baskets, boats, mats, medicines, cloths and other articles
of merchandise.
Once one of the fruits of the Nile, now no longer growing there. On its
fragile leaves were recorded and preserved the ancient literatures--the
records of dynasties--the songs of the Hebrew prophets--the early annals
of Greece and Rome--the vast, lost tomes of Alexandria. Those which were
fortunately preserved and transferred to more enduring forms now
constitute the greater part of all we have of the writings of those
departed ages.
In making paper from papyrus, the inner portion next to the pith was
separated into thin leaves; these were laid in two or more layers,
moistened and pressed together to form a leaf; two or more leaves united
at their edges if desired, or end to end, beaten smooth with a mallet,
polished with a piece of iron or shell, the ends, or sides, or both, of
the sheet sometimes neatly ornamented, and then rolled on a wooden
cylinder. The Romans and other ancient nations imported most of their
papyrus from Egypt, although raising it to considerable extent in their
own swamps.
In the seventh century, the Saracens conquered Egypt and carried back
therefrom, papyrus, and the knowledge of how to make paper from it to
Europe.
Parchment manufactured from the skins of young calves, kids, lambs,
sheep, and goats, was an early rival of papyrus, and was known and used
in Europe before papyrus was there introduced.
The softening of vegetable and woody fibre of various kinds, flax and
raw cotton and rags, and reducing it into pulp, drying, beating, and
rolling it into paper, seem to have been suggested to Europe by the
introduction of papyrus, for we learn of the first appearance of such
paper by the Arabians, Saracens, Spaniards and the French along through
the eighth, ninth, and tenth and eleventh centuries. Papyrus does not,
however, appear to have been superseded until the twelfth century.
Public documents are still extant written in the twelfth century on
paper made from flax and rags; and paper mills began to put in an
appearance in Germany in the fourteenth century, in which the fibre was
reduced to pulp by stampers. England began to make paper in the next
century. Pulping the fibre by softening it in water and beating the same
had then been practised for four centuries. Rollers in the mills for
rolling the pulp into sheets were introduced in the fifteenth century,
and paper makers began to distinguish their goods from those made by
others by water marks impressed in the pulp sheets. The jug and the pot
was one favourite water mark in that century, succeeded by a fool's cap,
which name has since adhered to paper of a certain size, with or without
the cap. So far was the making of paper advanced in Europe that about
1640 wall paper began to be made as a substitute for tapestry; although
as to this fashion the Chinese were still ahead some indefinite number
of centuries.
Holland was far advanced in paper-making in the seventeenth century. The
revolution of 1688 having seriously interrupted the art in England, that
country imported paper from Holland during that period amounting to
£100,000. It was a native of Holland, Rittenhouse, who introduced
paper-making in America and erected a mill near Philadelphia in the
early years of the eighteenth century, and there made paper from linen
rags.
The Dutch also had substituted cylinders armed with blades in place of
stampers and used their windmills to run them. The Germans and French
experimented with wood and straw.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century some manufacturers in
Europe had learned to make white paper from white rags, and as good in
quality, and some think better, than is made at the present day. The
essentials of paper making by hand from rags and raw vegetable fibres,
the soaking of fibres in water and boiling them in lyes, the beating,
rolling, smoothing, sizing and polishing of the paper, were then known
and practised. But the best paper was then a dear commodity. The art of
bleaching coloured stock was unknown, and white paper was made alone
from stock that came white into the mill. The processes were nearly all
hand operations. "Beating" was pounding in a mortar. The pulp was laid
by hand upon moulds made of parallel strands of coarse brass wire; and
the making of the pulp by grinding wood and treating it chemically to
soften it was experimental.
The nineteenth century produced a revolution. It introduced the use of
modern machinery, and modern chemical processes, by which all known
varieties and sizes of paper, of all colours, as well as paper vessels,
are made daily in immense quantities in all civilised countries, from
all sorts of fibrous materials.
Knight, in his _Mechanical Dictionary_, gives a list of nearly 400
different materials for paper making that had been used or suggested,
for the most part within the century and up to twenty years ago, and the
number has since increased.
The modern revolution commenced in 1799, when Louis Robert, an employee
of François Didot of Essones, France, invented and patented the first
machine for making paper in a long, wide, continuous web. The French
government in 1800 granted him a reward of 8,000 francs. The machine was
then exhibited in England and there tested with success. It was there
that Messrs. Fourdrinier, a wealthy stationery firm, purchased the
patents, expended £60,000 for improvements on the machine, and first
gave to the world its practical benefits. This expenditure bankrupted
them, as the machines were not at once remunerative, and parliament
refused to grant them pecuniary assistance. Gamble, Donkin, Koops, the
Fourdriniers, Dickenson, and Wilkes, were the first inventors to improve
the Robert machine, and to give it that form which in many essential
features remains to-day. They, together with later inventors, gave to
the world a new system of paper making.
By 1872 two hundred and ninety-nine Fourdrinier machines were running in
the United States alone. In the improved Fourdrinier machine or system,
rags, or wood, or straw are ground or otherwise reduced to pulp, and
then the pulp, when properly soaked and drained, is dumped into a
regulating box, passing under a copper gate to regulate the amount and
depth of feed, then carried along through strainers, screeners or
dressers, to free the mass from clots and reduce it to the proper
fineness, over an endless wire apron, spread evenly over this apron by a
shaking motion, subjected to the action of a suction box by which the
water is drawn off by air-suction pumps, carried between cloth-covered
rollers which press and cohere it, carried on to a moving long felt
blanket to further free it from moisture, and which continues to hold
the sheet of pulp in form; then with the blanket through press rolls
adjustable to a desired pressure and provided with means to remove
therefrom adhering pulp and to arrest the progress of the paper if
necessary; then through another set of compression rollers, when the
condensed and matted pulp, now paper, is carried on to a second blanket,
passed through a series of steam cylinders, where the web is partially
dried, and again compressed, thence through another series of rollers
and drying cylinders, which still further dry and stretch it, and now,
finally completed, the sheet is wound on a receiving cylinder. The
number of rollers and cylinders and the position and the length of the
process to fully dry, compact, stretch and finish the sheet, may be, and
are, varied greatly. If it is desired to impress on or into the paper
water marks, letters, words, or ornamental matter, the paper in its
moist stage, after it passes through the suction boxes, is passed under
a "dandy" or fancy scrolled roll provided on its surface with the
desired design. When it is desired to give it a smooth, glossy surface,
the paper, after its completion, is passed through animal sizing
material, and then between drying and smoothing rollers. Or this sizing
may be applied to the pulp at the outset of the operation. Colouring
material, when desired, is applied to the pulp, before pressing. By the
use of machines under this system, a vast amount of material, cast-off
rags, etc., before regarded as waste, was utilised for paper making.
The modern discoveries of the chemists of the century as to the nature
of fibres, best modes and materials for reducing them to pulp, and
bleaching processes, have brought the art of paper making from wood and
other fibrous materials to its present high and prosperous condition.
What are known as the soda-pulp and the sulphite processes are examples
of this. The latter and other acid processes were not successful until
cement-lined digesters were invented to withstand their corroding
action. But now it is only necessary to have a convenient forest of
almost any kind of wood to justify the establishment of a paper mill.
It was the scarcity of rags, especially of linen rags, that forced
inventors to find other paper-producing materials.
It would be impossible and uninteresting in a work of this character to
enumerate the mechanical details constituting the improvements of the
century in paper-making machinery of all kinds. Thousands of patents
have been granted for such inventions. With one modern Fourdrinier
machine, and a few beating engines, a small paper mill will now turn out
daily as much paper as could be made by twelve mills a hundred years
ago.
In moulding pulp into articles of manufacture, satisfactory machines
have been invented, not only for the mere forming them into shape, but
for water-proofing and indurating the same. From the making of a
ponderous paper car wheel to a lady's delicate work basket, success has
been attained.
_Paper bag machines_, machines for making _paper boxes_, applying and
staying corners of such boxes, for making _cell cases_ used in packing
eggs and fruit, and for wrapping fruit; machines for affixing various
forms of labels and addresses, are among the wonders of modern
inventions relating to paper. It is wonderful how art and ingenuity
united about thirty years ago to produce attractive _wall papers_.
Previous to that time they were dull and conventional in appearance. Now
beautiful designs are rolled out from machines.
_Printing._--We have already seen how paper making and printing grew up
together an indefinite number of centuries ago in the Far East. Both
block printing and movable types were the production of the Chinese,
with which on their little pages of many-coloured paper they printed
myriads of volumes of their strange literature in stranger characters
during centuries when Europeans were painfully inscribing their thoughts
with the stylus and crude pens upon papyrus and the dried skins of
animals.
But the European and his descendants delight to honour most the early
inventors of their own countries. Italy refers with pride to the
printing from blocks practised by the Venetians, and at Ravenna, from
1280 to 1300; from type at Subiaco in the Roman territory in 1465, and
to the first Roman book printed in 1470; the Dutch to Laurens Coster,
whom they allege invented movable type in 1423. Some of the Dutch have
doubted this, and pin their faith on Jacob Bellaert, as the first
printer, and Gerard Leeu, his workman, who made the types at Haarlem, in
1483. The Germans rely with confidence on John Guttenberg, who at
Strasburg, as early as 1436, had wooden blocks, and wooden movable
types, and who, two or three years after, printed several works; on the
partnership of Faust and Guttenberg in 1450 at Mentz, and their Bible in
Latin printed in 1456 on vellum with types imitating manuscript in form,
and illustrated by hand; and, finally, on Peter Schoeffer of Gernsheim,
who then made matrices in which were cast the letters singly, and who
thereby so pleased his master, Faust, that the latter gave him his
daughter, Christina, in marriage.
From Germany the art spread to Paris and thence to England. About 1474
Caxton was printing his black-letter books in England. Spain followed,
and it is stated that in 1500 there were two hundred printing offices in
Europe. The religious and political turmoils in Germany in the sixteenth
century gave an immense impetus to printing there. The printing press
was the handmaid of the Reformation. In America the first printing press
was set up in Mexico in 1536, and in Lima, Brazil, in 1586. In 1639,
nineteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims on the bleak rock at
Plymouth, they set up a printing press at Cambridge, Mass.
The art of printing soon resolved itself into two classes: first,
_composition_, the arranging of the type in the proper order into words
and pages; and second, _press work_; the taking of impressions from the
types, or from casts of types in plates--being a _facsimile_ of a type
bed. This was _stereotyping_--the invention of William Ged, of
Edinburgh, in 1731.
Types soon came to be made everywhere of uniform height; that of England
and America being 92-100 of an inch, and became universally classified
by names according to their sizes, as pica, small pica, long primer,
minion, nonpareil, etc.
After movable types came the invention of _Presses_. The earliest were
composed of a wooden frame on which were placed the simple screw and a
lever to force a plate down upon a sheet of paper placed on the bed of
type which had been set in the press, with a spring to automatically
raise the screw and plate after the delivery of the impression. This was
invented by Blaew of Amsterdam in 1620. Such, also, was the Ramage
press, and on such a one Benjamin Franklin worked at his trade as a
printer, both in America and in London. His London press, on which he
worked in 1725, was carried to the United States, and is now on
exhibition in Washington. This was substantially the state of the art at
the beginning of the century.
Then Earl Stanhope in England invented a press entirely of iron, and the
power consisted of the combination of a toggle joint and lever. The
first American improvement was invented by George Clymer, of
Philadelphia, in 1817, the power being an improved lever consisting of
three simple levers of the second order. This was superseded by the
"Washington" press invented by Samuel Rust in 1829. It has as essential
parts the toggle joint and lever, and in the frame work, as in the
Stanhope, type bed, rails on which the bed was moved in and out, means
to move the bed, the platen, the tympan on which the sheet is placed,
the frisket, a perforated sheet of paper, to preserve the printed sheet,
an inking roller and frame. In this was subsequently introduced an
automatic device for inking the roller, as it was moved back from over
the bed of type on to an inking table. This, substantially, has been the
hand press ever since.
With one of these hand-presses and the aid of two men about two hundred
and fifty sheets an hour could be printed on one side. The increase in
the circulation of newspapers before the opening of the 19th century
demanded greater rapidity of production and turned the attention of
inventors to the construction of power or machine presses. Like the
paper-making machine, the power press was conceived in the last decade
of the eighteenth century, and like that art was also not developed
until the nineteenth century. William Nicholson of England is believed
to have been the first inventor of a machine printing press. He obtained
an English patent for it in 1720. The type were to be placed on the face
of one cylinder, which was designed to be in gear, revolved with, and
press upon another cylinder covered with soft leather, the type cylinder
to be inked by a third cylinder to which the inking apparatus, was
applied, and the paper to be printed by being passed between the type
and the impression cylinder. These ideas were incorporated into the best
printing machines that have since been made. But the first successful
machine printing press was the invention of two Saxons, König and Bauer,
in 1813, who introduced their ideas from Germany, constructed the
machine in London, and on which on the 28th of November, 1814, an issue
of the _London Times_ was printed. The _Times_ announced to its readers
that day that they were for the first time perusing a paper printed upon
a machine driven by steam power. What a union of mighty forces was
heralded in this simple announcement! The union of the steam engine, the
printing press, and a great and powerful journal! An Archimedean lever
had been found at last with which to move the world.
The production of printed sheets per hour over the hand-press was at
once quadrupled, and very shortly 1800 sheets per hour were printed.
This machine was of that class known as cylinder presses. In this
machine ordinary type was used, and the type-form was flat and passed
beneath a large impression cylinder on which the paper was held by
tapes. The type-form was reciprocated beneath an inking apparatus and
the paper cylinder alternately. The inking apparatus consisted of a
series of rollers, to the first of which the ink was ejected from a
trough and distributed to the others. In 1815 Cowper patented in England
electrotype plates to be affixed to a cylinder. Applegath and Cowper
improved the König machine in the matter of the ink distributing
rollers, and in the adaptation of four printing cylinders to the
reciprocating type bed, whereby, with some other minor changes, 5000
impressions on one side were produced per hour. Again Applegath greatly
changed the arrangement of cylinders and multiplied their number, and
the number of the other parts, so that in 1848 the sheets printed on one
side were first 8000 and then 12,000 an hour.
In the United States, Daniel Treadwell of Boston invented the first
power printing machine in 1822. Two of these machines were at that time
set up in New York city. It was a flat bed press and was long used in
Washington in printing for the government. David Bruce of New York, in
1838, invented the first successful type-casting machine, which, when
shortly afterward it was perfected, became the model for type-casting
machines for Europe and America. Previous to that time type were
generally made by casting them in hand-moulds--the metal being poured in
with a spoon.
Robert Hoe, an English inventor, went to New York in 1803, and turned
his attention to the making of printing presses. His son, Richard March
Hoe, inherited his father's inventive genius. While in England in
1837-1840, obtaining a patent on and introducing a circular saw, he
became interested in the printing presses of the London Times. Returning
home, he invented and perfected a rotary machine which received the name
of the "Lightning Press." It first had four and then ten cylinders
arranged in a circle. As finally completed, it printed from a continuous
roll of paper several miles in length, and on both sides at the same
time, cutting off and folding ready for delivery, 15,000 to 20,000
newspapers an hour, the paper being drawn through the press at the rate
of 1,000 feet in a minute. Before it was in this final, completed shape,
it was adopted by the _London Times_. John Walter of London in the
meantime invented a machine of a similar class. He also used a sheet of
paper miles long. It was first damped, passed through blotting rolls,
and then to the printing cylinders. It gave out 11,000 perfected sheets,
or 22,000 impressions an hour, and as each sheet was printed, it was cut
by a knife on the cylinder, and the sheets piled on the paper boards. It
was adopted by the London _Times_ and the New York _Times_.
A German press at Augsburg, and the Campbell presses of the United
States, have also become celebrated as web perfecting presses, in which
the web is printed, the sheets cut, associated, folded, and delivered at
high speed. One of the latest quadruple stereotype perfecting presses
made by Hoe & Co. of New York has a running capacity of 48,000 papers
per hour. On another, a New York paper has turned off nearly six hundred
thousand copies in a single day, requiring for their printing
ninety-four tons of paper. Among other celebrated inventors of printing
presses in the United States were Isaac Adams, Taylor, Gordon, Potter,
Hawkins, Bullock, Cottrell, Campbell, Babcock, and Firm.
_Mail-marking Machines_, in which provision is made for holding the
printing mechanism out of operative position in case a letter is not in
position to be stamped; address-printing machines, including machines
for printing addresses by means of a stencil; machines for automatically
setting and distributing the type, including those in which the
individual types are caused to enter the proper receptacle by means of
nicks in the type, which engage corresponding projections on a
stationary guard plate, and automatic type justifying machines. All such
have been invented, developed, and perfected in the last half century.
Another invention which has added wonderfully to push the century along,
is the _Typewriter_. It has long been said that "The pen is mightier
than the sword," but from present indications, it is proper to add that
the typewriter is mightier than the pen.
A machine in which movable types are caused to yield impressions on
paper to form letters by means of key levers operated by hand, has been
one of slow growth from its conception to its present practical and
successful form.
Some one suggested the idea in England in a patent in 1714. The idea
rested until 1840, when a French inventor revived it in a patent. At the
same time patents began to come out in England and the United States;
and about forty patents in each of these two countries were granted from
that time until 1875. Since that date about 1400 patents more have been
issued in the United States, and a large number in other countries. It
was, however, only that year and before 1880, that the first popular
commercially successful machines were made and introduced.
The leading generic idea of all subsequent successful devices of this
kind was clearly set forth in the patent of S. W. Francis of the United
States in 1857. This feature is the arranging of a row of hammers in a
circle so that when put in motion they will all strike the same place,
which is the centre of that circle. The arrangement of a row of pivoted
hammers or type levers, each operated by a separate key lever to strike
an inked ribbon in front of a sheet of paper, means to automatically
move the carriage carrying the paper roll from right to left as the
letters are successfully printed, leaving a space between each letter
and word, and sounding a signal when the end of a line is reached, so
that the carriage may be returned to its former position--all these and
some other minor but necessary operations may seem simple enough when
stated, but their accomplishment required the careful study of many
inventors for years.
One of the most modern of typewriters has a single electro-magnet to
actuate all the type bars of a set, and to throw each type from its
normal position to the printing centre. By an extremely light touch
given to each key lever the circuit is closed and causes the lever to
strike without the necessity of pressing the key down its whole extent
and releasing it before the next key strikes. By this device, the
operator is relieved of fatigue, as his fingers may glide quickly from
one key to another, the printing is made uniform, and far greater speed
attained by reason of the quick and delicate action. Mr. Thaddeus Cahill
of Washington appears to be the first to have invented the most
successful of this type of machines.
_Book-binding Machinery_ is another new production of the century. It
may be that the old hand methods would give to a book a stronger binding
than is found on most books to-day, but the modern public demands and
has obtained machinery that will take the loose sheets and bind them
ready for delivery, at the rate of ten or fifteen thousand volumes a
day.
The "quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore," the Latin folios in
oak or ivory boards with brass clasps, or bound in velvet, or in crimson
satin, ornamented with finest needlework or precious stones, or the more
humble beech boards, and calf and sheep skins with metal edges and iron
clasps, in all of which the sheets were stoutly sewed together and
glued, when glue was known, to the covers, are now but relics of the
past. Machinery came to the front quite rapidly after 1825, at which
time cloth had been introduced as cheaper than leather, and as cheap and
a more enduring binder than paper. The processes in book-binding are
enumerated as follows; and for each process a machine has been invented
within the last sixty years to do the work:
Folding the sheets;
Gathering the consecutive sheets;
Rolling the backs of folded sheets;
Saw cutting the backs for the combs;
Sewing;
Rounding the back of the sewed sheets.
Edge cutting;
Binding, securing the books to the sides, covering with muslin,
leather or paper. Tooling and lettering.
Edge gilting.
One of the best modern illustrations of human thought and complicated
manual operations contained in automatic machinery is the _Linotype_.
It is a great step from the humble invention of Schoeffer five hundred
and fifty years ago of cast movable type to that of another German,
Mergenthaler, in 1890-92.
The Linotype (a line of type) was pronounced by the _London Engineering_
"as the most remarkable machine of this century." It was the outcome of
twelve years of continuous experiment and invention, and the expenditure
of more than a million dollars. A brief description of this invention is
given in the report of the United States commissioner of patents for
1895 as follows: "In the present Mergenthaler construction there is a
magazine containing a series of tubes for the letter or character
moulds, each of which moulds is provided with a single character. There
are a number of duplicates of each character, and the moulds containing
the same character are all arranged in one tube. The machine is provided
with a series of finger keys, which, when pressed like the keys of a
typewriter, cause the letter moulds to assemble in a line in their
proper order for print. A line mould and a melting pot are then brought
into proper relation to the assembled line of letter moulds and a cast
is taken, called the linotype, which represents the entire line, a
column wide, of the matter to be printed. The letter moulds are then
automatically returned to their proper magazine tube. The Mergenthaler
machine is largely in use in the principal newspaper offices, with the
result that a single operator does at least the work of four average
compositors."
Mr Rogers obtained a United States patent, September 23, 1890, for a
machine for casting lines of type, the principal feature of which is
that the letter moulds are strung on wires secured on a hinged frame.
"When the frame is in one position, the letter moulds are released by
the keys, slide down the wires by gravity and are assembled in line at
the casting point. After the cast is taken, the lower ends of the guide
wires are elevated, which causes the letter moulds to slide back on the
wires to their original position, when the operation is repeated for the
next line." Operated by a single person, the Mergenthaler produces and
assembles linotypes ready for the press or stereotyping table at the
rate of from 3,600 to 7,000 ems (type characters) per hour. It permits
the face or style of type to be changed at will and it permits the
operator to read and correct his matter as he proceeds.
To the aid of the ordinary printing press came _electrotyping_,
stenographic colour printing, engraving, and smaller job and card
presses, all entirely new creations within the century, and of infinite
variety, each in itself forming a new class in typographic art, and a
valuable addition to the marvellous transformation.
The introduction of the linotype and other modern machines into printing
offices has without doubt many times reduced and displaced manual
labour, and caused at those times at least temporary suffering among
employees. But statistics do not show that as a whole there are fewer
printers in the land. On the contrary, the force seems to increase, just
as the number of printing establishments increase, with the
multiplication of new inventions. As in other arts, the distress caused
by the displacement of hand-labour by machinery is local and temporary.
The whole art rests for its development on the demand for reading
matter, and the demand never seems to let up. It increases as fast as
the means of the consumers increase for procuring it. One hundred years
ago a decent private library, consisting of a hundred or so volumes, one
or two weekly newspapers, and an occasional periodical, was the badge
and possession alone of the wealthy few. Now nearly every reading
citizen of every village has piled up in some corner of his house a
better supply than that, of bound or unbound literature, and of a far
superior quality. Besides the tons of reading matter of all kinds turned
out daily by the city presses, every village wants its own paper and its
town library, and every one of its business men has recourse to the
typewriter and the printer for his letters, his cards, and his
advertisements.
To supply the present demand for printed matter with the implements of a
hundred years ago, it would be necessary to draw upon and exhaust the
supply of labourers in nearly every other occupation. Printing would
become the one universal profession.
The roar of the guns at Waterloo and the click of the first power
printing press in London were nearly simultaneous. The military Colossus
then tumbled, and the Press began to lead mankind. Wars still continue,
and will, until men are civilised; but the vanguard of civilisation are
the printers, and not the warriors. The marvellous glory of the
nineteenth century has proceeded from the intelligence of the people,
awakened, stimulated, and guided by the press. But the press itself, and
its servitors and messengers, speeding on the wings of electricity, are
the children of the inventors.
These inventions have made the book and the newspaper the poor man's
University. They are mirrors which throw into his humble home
reflections of the scenes of busy life everywhere. By them knowledge is
spread, thought aroused, and universal education established.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TEXTILES.
_Spinning_:--A bunch of combed fibre fixed in the forked end of a stick
called a distaff, held under the left arm, while with the right
forefinger and thumb the housewife or maiden deftly drew out and twisted
a thread of yarn of the fibre and wound it upon a stick called a
spindle, was the art of spinning that came down to Europe from Ancient
Egypt or India without a change through all the centuries to at least
the middle of the fourteenth century, and in England to the time of
Henry VIII. Then the spinning wheel was introduced, which is said to
have also been long in use in India. By the use of the wheel the spindle
was no longer held in the hand, but, set upon a frame and connected by a
cord or belt to the wheel, was made to whirl by turning the wheel by
hand, or by a treadle. The spindle was connected to the bunch of cotton
by a cord, or by a single roving of cotton or wool attached to the
spindle, which was held between the finger and thumb, and as the spindle
revolved the thread was drawn out and twisted and wound by the spindle
upon itself.
In the cloth of the ancient East the warp and weft were both of cotton.
In England the warp was linen and the weft was cotton. The warp was made
by the cloth and linen manufacturers, and the weft yarns furnished by
the woman spinsters throughout the country. By both these methods only a
single thread at a time was spun. The principle of the spinning
operation, the drawing out and twisting a thread or cord from a bunch or
roll of fibre, has remained the same through all time.
The light and delicate work, the pure and soft material, and the beauty
and usefulness of raiments produced, have all through time made woman
the natural goddess, the priestess, the patroness, and the votary of
this art. The object of all modern machinery, however complicated or
wonderful, has simply been to increase the speed and efficiency of the
ancient mode of operation and to multiply its results. The loom, that
antique frame on which the threads were laid in one direction to form
the warp, and crossed by the yarns in the opposite direction, carried
through the warp by the shuttle thrown by hand, to form the woof, or
weft, comprised a device as old as, if not older than, the distaff and
spindle.
The ancient and isolated races of Mexico had also learned the art of
spinning and weaving. When the Spaniards first entered that country they
found the natives clothed in cotton, woven plain, or in many colours.
After forty centuries of unchanged life, it occurred to John Kay of
Bury, England, that the weaving process might be improved. In 1733 he
had succeeded in inventing the picker motion, "picker peg," or "fly."
This consisted of mechanical means for throwing the shuttle across the
web by a sudden jerk of a bar--one at each side--operated by pulling a
cord. He could thus throw the shuttle farther and quicker than by
hand--make wider cloth, and do as much work in the same time as two men
had done before. This improvement put weaving ahead of spinning, and the
weavers were continually calling on the spindlers for more weft yarns.
This set the wits of inventors at work to better the spinning means.
At the same time that Kay was struggling with his invention of the
flying shuttle, another poor man, but with less success, had conceived
another idea, as to spinning. John Wyatt of Lichfield thought it would
be a good thing to draw out the sliver of cotton or wool between two
sets of rollers, one end of the sliver being held and fed by one set of
rollers, while the opposite end was being drawn by the other set of
rollers moving at a greater speed. His invention, although not then
used, was patented in 1738 by Lewis Paul, who in time won a fortune by
it, while Wyatt died poor, and it was claimed that Paul and not Wyatt
was the true inventor.
About 1764 a little accident occurring in the home of James Hargreaves,
an English weaver of Blackburn, suggested to that observant person an
invention that was as important as that of Kay. He was studying hard how
to get up a machine to meet the weavers' demands for cotton yarns. One
day while Hargreaves was spinning, surrounded by his children, one of
them upset the spinning wheel, probably in a children's frolic, and
after it fell and while lying in a horizontal position, with the spindle
in a vertical position, and the wheel and the spindle still running, the
idea flashed into Hargreaves' mind that a number of spindles might be
placed upright and run from the same power. Thus prompted he commenced
work, working in secret and at odd hours, and finally, after two or
three years, completed a crude machine, which he called the spinning
jenny, some say after his wife, and others that the name came from
"gin," the common abbreviated name of an engine. This machine had eight
or ten spindles driven by cords or belts from the same wheel, and
operated by hand or foot. The rovings at one end were attached to the
spindles and their opposite portions held together and drawn out by a
clasp held in the hand. When the thread yarn was drawn out sufficiently
it was wound upon the spindles by a reverse movement of the wheel. Thus
finally were means provided to supply the demand for the weft yarns. One
person with one of Hargreaves' machines could in the same time spin as
much as twenty or thirty persons with their wheels. But those who were
to be most benefited by the invention were the most alarmed, for fear of
the destruction of their business, and they arose in their wrath, and
demolished Hargreaves' labours. It was a hard time for inventors. The
law of England then was that patents were invalid if the invention was
made known before the patent was applied for, and part of the public
insisted on demolishing the invention if it was so made known, so that
to avoid the law and the lawless the harassed inventors kept and worked
their inventions in secret as long as they could. Hargreaves fled to
Nottingham, where works were soon started with his spinning jennys. The
ideas of Kay, Wyatt and Hargreaves are said to have been anticipated in
Italy. There were makers of cloths at Florence, and also in Spain and
the Netherlands, who were far in advance of the English and French in
this art, but the descriptions of machinery employed by them are too
vague and scanty to sustain the allegation.
And now the long ice age of hand working was breaking up, and the age of
machine production was fast setting in. Hargreaves was in the midst of
his troubles and his early triumphs, in 1765-1769, when Richard
Arkwright entered the field. Arkwright, first a barber, and then a
travelling buyer of hair, and finally a knight, learned, as he travelled
through Lancashire, Lichfield, Blackburn and Nottingham, of the
inventions and labours of Wyatt, Kay and Hargreaves. Possessed as he was
of some mechanical skill and inventive genius, and realising that the
harvest was ripe and the labourers few, entered the field of inventions,
and with the help of Kay, revived the old ideas of John Wyatt and Lewis
Paul of spinning by rollers, which had now slumbered for thirty years.
Kay and Arkwright constructed a working model, and on this Arkwright by
hard pushing and hard work obtained capital, and improved, completed and
patented his machine. The machine was first used by him in a mill
erected at Nottingham and worked by horses; then at Cromford, and in
this mill the power used to drive the spinning machine was a water
wheel. His invention was therefore given the name of the _water_ frame,
which it retained long after steam had been substituted for water as the
driving power. It was also named the _throstle_, from the fact that it
gave a humming or singing sound while at work; but it is commonly known
as the _drawing_ frame. Arkwright patented useful improvements. He had
to contend with mobs and with the courts, which combined to destroy his
machines and his patent, but he finally succeeded in establishing mills,
and in earning from the Government, manufacturers, and the public a
great and well-merited munificence.
It is a remarkable coincidence that Watt's steam engine patent and
Arkwright's first patent for his spinning machine were issued in the
same year--1769. The new era of invention was dawning fast.
Then, in 1776, came Samuel Crompton of Bolton, who invented a
combination of the jenny of Hargreaves and the roller water frame of
Arkwright, and to distinguish his invention from the others he named it
the "mule." The mule was a carriage on wheels to which the spindles were
attached. When the mule was drawn out one way on its frame the rovings
were drawn from bobbins through rollers on a stationary frame, stretched
and twisted into threads, and then as the mule was run back the spun
threads were wound on spools on the spindles. The mule entirely
superseded the use of the jenny. Notwithstanding the advantage in names
the mule did more delicate work than the jenny. It avoided the
continuous stretch on the thread of the jenny by first completing the
thread and then winding it. Crompton's mule was moved back and forth by
hand. Roberts subsequently made it self-acting. Next, followed in
England the Rev. Edward Cartwright, who, turning his attention to
_looms_, invented the first loom run by machinery, the _first power
loom_, 1784-85. Then the rioters turned on him, and he experienced the
same attentions received by Hargreaves and Arkwright. The ignorance of
ages died in this branch of human progress, as it often dies in others,
with a violent wrench. But the age of steam had at last come, and with
it the spinning machine, the power loom, the printing press, and the
discovery among men of the powers of the mind, their freedom to exercise
such powers, and their right to possess the fruits of their labours.
The completed inventions of Arkwright and others, combined with Watt's
steam engine, revolutionised trade, and resulted in the establishment of
mills and factories. A thousand spindles whirled where one hummed
before. The factory life which drew the women and girls from their
country homes to heated, and closely occupied, ill ventilated buildings
within town limits, was, however, not regarded as an improvement in the
matter of health; and it was a long time before mills were constructed
and operated with the view to the correction of this evil.
The great increase in demand for cotton produced by these machine
inventions could not have been met had it not been for Eli Whitney's
invention of the saw gin in America in 1793. The cleaning of the seed
from the cotton accomplished by this machine produced as great a
revolution in the culture of cotton in America as the inventions of
Arkwright and others accomplished in spinning and weaving in England.
America had also learned of Arkwright's machinery. Samuel Slater, a
former employee of Arkwright, introduced it to Rhode Island in 1789, and
built a great cotton mill there in 1793. Others followed in
Massachusetts. Within twenty years after the introduction of Arkwright's
machines in the United States there were a hundred mills there with a
hundred thousand spindles.
As has been said, it was customary for weavers to make the warp on their
looms at one place, and the spinners to furnish the yarns for the weft
from their homes, and even after the spinning machines were invented the
spinning and weaving were done at separate places. It remained for
Francis C. Lowell of Boston, who had been studying the art of spinning
and weaving in England and Scotland and the inventions of Arkwright and
Crompton, to establish in 1813 at Waltham, Mass., with the aid of Paul
Moody, machinist, the first factory in the world wherein were combined
under one roof all the processes for converting cotton into cloth.
The task of the century in this art has been to greatly extend the
dominion of machinery in the treatment of cotton and wool in all stages,
from the reception of the raw material at the door of the factory to its
final completion in the form of the choicest cloth, and to increase the
capacity of machines sufficiently to meet an ever-increasing and
enormous consumption. There are from twenty to forty separate and
distinct operations performed both in spinning and weaving and the
completion of a piece of cloth from cotton or wool, and nearly all of
these operations are accomplished by machinery.
The century's improvements and inventions in machines for treating and
spinning cotton comprise machines for first opening and tearing the
matted mass apart as it is taken from the bales, then cleaning, carding,
drawing, roving, stretching, spinning, winding, doubling, dressing,
warping, weaving, etc. Formerly, the opening machines were simply
cylinders armed with spikes, to which the cotton was led through nipping
rollers, and then delivered in a loose, fluffy condition. When such a
machine was associated with a blowing machine to blow out the dust and
cleanse the fibre, the loose and scattered condition in which the cotton
was left gave rise to a great danger from fire, and destructive fires
often occurred. The object of the later opening machinery is to confine
the cotton within a casing in its passage through the machine, during
which passage it is thoroughly stretched, beaten and blown and then
rolled into a continuous sheet or lap. At the same time, by nice
devices, it is evened, that is, freed from all knots, and made of
uniform thickness, while a certain quantity only of cotton of known
weight is allowed to pass through to constitute the required lap.
Finally the lap is wound upon a roller, which when filled is removed to
the carder. Although the cotton is now a white, soft, clean, downy
sheet, still the fibres cross each other in every direction, and they
require to be straightened and laid parallel before the spinning. This
is done by carding. Paul, Hargreaves, Robert Peel, and Arkwright had
worked in constructing a machine to take the place of hand carding, and
it was finally reduced by Arkwright, towards the close of the 18th
century, to its present form and principle.
But to make those narrow, ribbon-like, clean, long lines of rolled
cotton, known as slivers, by machinery with greater precision and
uniformity than is possible by hand, and with a thousand times greater
rapidity, has been the work of many inventors at different times and in
different countries. The machine cards are cylinders clothed with
leather and provided with separate sets of slender, sharp, bent fingers.
The different cards are arranged to move past each other in opposite
directions, so as to catch and disentangle the fibres. Flat, overhead
stationary cards are also used through which the cotton is carried. As
one operation of carding is not sufficient for most purposes the cotton
is subjected to one or more successive cardings. So ingenious is the
structure in some of its parts that as the stream of cotton passes on,
any existing knots do not fail to excite the attention of the machine,
which at once arrests them and holds them until disentangled. In
connection with the cards, combers and strippers are used to assist in
further cleaning and straightening the fibre, which is finally removed
from the cards and the combs by the doffer. The cotton is stripped from
the doffer by the doffer knife and in the form of delicate, flat narrow
ribbons, which are drawn through a small funnel to consolidate them, and
finally delivered in a coiled form into a tall tin can. The material is
then carried to a drawing frame, which takes the spongy slivers, and,
carrying them through successive sets of rollers moving at increased
speed, elongates, equalises, straightens and "doubles" them, and finally
condenses them into two or more rolls by passing the same through a
trumpet-shaped funnel. As the yarns still need to be twisted, they are
passed through a roving frame similar to a drawing frame. An ingenious
device connected with the winding of the roving yarns upon bobbins may
be here noted. Formerly the bobbins on which the yarns were wound
increased in speed as they were filled, thus endangering and often
breaking the thread, and at all times increasing the tension. In 1823
Asa Arnold of Rhode Island invented "a differential motion" by which the
velocity of the bobbin is kept uniform. The roving having been reduced
to proper size for the intended number of yarns, now goes to the
spinning machine, to still further draw out the threads and give to them
a more uniform twist and tenuity. The spinning machine is simply an
improved form of Crompton's mule, already described.
Great as have been the improvements in many matters in spindle
structure, the drawing, the stretching and the twisting still remain
fundamentally the same in principle as in the singing throstle of
Arkwright and the steady mule of Crompton. And yet so great and rapid
has been the advancement of inventions as to details and to meet the
great demand, that the machinery of half a century ago has been almost
entirely discarded and supplanted by different types. A great
improvement on the spinning frame of the 18th century is the ring frame
invented by Jenks. In this the spindles, arranged vertically in the
frame, are driven by bands from a central cylinder, and project through
apertures in a horizontal bar. A flanged ridge around each aperture
forms a ring and affords a track for a little steel hoop called a
traveller, which is sprung over the ring. The traveller guides the
thread on to the spool. As the spindles revolve, the thread passing
through the traveller revolves it rapidly, and the horizontal bar rising
and falling has the effect of winding the yarn alternately and regularly
upon the spools.
The bobbins of the spindle frame were found not large enough to contain
a sufficient amount of yarn to permit of a long continuous operation
when the warp came to be applied, and besides there were occasional
defects in the thread which could not be detected until it broke, if the
yarn was used directly from the bobbins. So to save much time and
trouble spooling machines were invented which wind the yarn from the
bobbins holding 1200 to 1800 yards, to large spools, each holding 18,000
to 20,000 yards; and then by passing the yarn through fine slots in
guides which lead to the spool, lumps or weak places, which would break
the yarns at the guide, could at once be discovered and the yarn retied
firmly, so that there would be no further breaking in the warper. After
the yarn is finally spooled it is found that its surface is still rough
and covered with fuzz. It is desirable, therefore, that it shall be
smoothed out and be given somewhat of a lustre before weaving. These
final operations are performed by the warping and dressing machines. In
the warping machine the threads are drawn between rollers, the tension
of which can be regulated, and then through a "reed," a comb-shaped
device which separates the threads, and then finally wound upon a large
cylinder. In this machine a device is also arranged which operates to
stop the machine at once if any thread is broken. When the cylinder is
filled it is then taken to the dresser, which in its modern and useful
form is known as the "slusher," by which the yarns are drawn through hot
starch, the superfluous starch squeezed out, and the yarns, kept
separated all the time, dried by passing them around large drying
cylinders, or through a closed box heated by steam pipes, and then wound
upon the loom beam or cylinder.
In weaving, as in spinning, however advanced, complicated and improved
the means may be beyond the hand methods and simple looms of past ages,
the general principles in the process are still the same. These means,
generally and broadly speaking, consist of a frame for two sets of
threads, a roller, called the warp beam, for receiving and holding the
threads which form the warp, a cloth beam upon which the cloth is wound
as it is woven, the warp threads, being first laid parallel, carried
from the warp beam and attached to the cloth beam; means called heddles,
which with their moving frames constitute "a harness," consisting of a
set of vertical strings or rods having central loops through which the
threads are passed, two or more sets of which receive alternate threads,
and by the reciprocation of which the threads are separated into sets,
_decussated_, forming between them what is called a shed through which
the shuttle is thrown; means for throwing the shuttle; and means, called
the batten, lay or lathe, for forcing or packing the weft tight into the
angle formed by the opened warp and so rendering the fabric tight and
compact, and then the motive power for turning the cloth beam and
winding the cloth as fast as completed. It is along these lines that the
inventors have wrought their marvellous changes from hand to power
looms.
Prior to 1800, in the weaving of figures into cloths, it was customary
to employ boys to pull the cords in the loom harness in order to arrange
the coloured threads in their relative positions. In that year appeared
at the front Joseph Marie Jacquard, a French mechanician and native of
Lyons, whose parents were weavers, a prolific inventor in his youth, a
wayward wanderer after fortune and a wife, a soldier in the Revolution,
losing a son fighting by his side, eking out a poor living with his
wife's help at straw weaving, finally employed by a silk manufacturer,
and while thus engaged, producing that loom which has ever since been
known by his name. This loom was personally inspected by Napoleon, who
rewarded the inventor with honours and a pension. It was then demolished
by a mob and its inventor reviled, but it afterward became the pride of
Lyons and the means of its renown and wealth in the weaving of silks of
rich designs.
The leading feature of the Jacquard loom consists of a chain of
perforated pattern cards made to pass over a drum, through which cards
certain needles pass, causing certain threads of the warp to rise and
fall, according to the holes in the cards, and thus admitting at certain
places in the warp coloured weft threads thrown by the shuttle, and
reproducing the pattern which is perforated in the cards. The Jacquard
device could be applied to any loom, and it worked a revolution in the
manufacture of figured goods. The complexity and expensiveness of
Jacquard's loom were greatly reduced by subsequent improvements. In 1854
M. Bonelli constructed an electric loom in which the cards of the
Jacquard apparatus are superseded by an endless band of tin-foiled
paper, which serves as an electrical conductor to operate the warp
thread needles, which before had each been actuated by a spiral spring.
The Jacquard loom was also greatly improved by the English inventors,
Barlow, Taylor, Martain and others.
Radcliffe and Johnson, also of England, had invented and introduced the
machines for dressing the yarns in one operation before the weaving;
Horrocks and Marsland of Stockport greatly improved the adaptation of
steam to the driving of looms, and Roberts of Manchester made striking
advances in their mechanical parts and in bringing them to their present
state of wonderful efficiency.
In America, in 1836, George Crompton of Taunton, Massachusetts,
commenced a series of inventions in power looms for the manufacture of
fancy woollen goods, and in the details of such looms generally,
particularly in increasing the speed of the shuttle, which vastly
increased the production of such goods and gave to his looms a
world-wide reputation.
E. B. Bigelow of Massachusetts in 1848 invented a power loom, which was
exhibited at the Exhibition at London in 1851, and astonished the world
by his exhibition of carpets superior to any woven by hand. By the later
improvements, and the aid of steam power, a single American Bigelow
carpet loom can turn out now one hundred yards of Brussels carpet in a
day, far superior in quality to any carpet which could possibly be made
by hand, when a man toiled painfully to produce five yards a day. Mr.
Bigelow was also a pioneer inventor of power machines for weaving coach
lace, and cotton checks and ginghams. James Lyall of New York invented a
power loom applicable either to the weaving of very wide and heavy
fabrics, such as jute canvas for the foundation of floor oil cloth, or
to fabrics made of the finest and most delicate yarns.
It would be interesting, if space permitted, to describe the great
variety of machines that have been invented for dressing, finishing and
treating cloths after they are woven: The _teasling_ machine, by which
the nap of woollen cloth is raised; the cloth _drying_ machine, with
heated rollers, over which the cloth is passed to drive off the moisture
acquired in dyeing, washing, etc., the cloth _printing_, _figuring_,
_colouring_ and _embossing_ machines, with engraved cylinders; cloth
pressing and _creasing_ machines, and the _cloth_ cutting machines for
cutting the cloth into strips of all lengths, or for cutting piles of
cloth in a single operation into parts of garments corresponding to the
prearranged pattern; machines for making _felt_ cloth, and stamping or
moulding different articles of apparel from felt, etc., etc.
For the making of ribbons and other kind of narrow ware, the needle
power loom has been invented, in which the fine weft thread is carried
through the web by a needle instead of a shuttle. This adaptation of the
needle to looms has placed ribbons within the reach of the poor as well
as the rich girl.
What a comparison between the work of the virtuous Penelopes and the
weavers of a century ago and to-day! Then with her wheel, and by walking
to and from it as the yarn was drawn out, and wound up, a maiden could
spin twelve skeins of thread in ten hours, producing a thread a little
more than three miles in length, while the length of her walk to and fro
was about five miles. Now one Penelope can attend to six or eight
hundred spindles, each of which spins five thousand yards of thread a
day, or, with the eight hundred spindles, four million yards, or nearly
twenty-one hundred miles of thread in a day, while she need not walk at
all.
It was when the weaver threw the shuttle through the warp by hand that
Job's exclamation, "My days are like a weaver's shuttle" was an
appropriate text on the brevity of human life. It may be just as
appropriate now, but far more striking, when it is realised that
machines now throw the shuttle one hundred and eighty times a minute, or
three times a second. Flying as fast as it does, when the shuttle
becomes exhausted of yarn a late invention presents a new bobbin and a
new supply of yarn to the shuttle without stopping the machine.
As to _knitting_, the century has seen the day pass when all hosiery was
knit by hand. First, machines were invented for knitting the leg or the
foot of the stocking, which were then joined by hand, and then came
machines that made the stocking complete. The social industry so quietly
but slowly followed by the good women in their chimney corners with
their knitting needles, by which a woman might possibly knit a pair a
day, was succeeded a quarter of a century ago by machines, twelve of
which could be attended to by a boy, which would knit and complete five
thousand pairs a week. Such a machine commences with the stocking at the
top, knits down, widening and narrowing, changes the stitch as it goes
on to the heel, shapes the heel, and finishes at the end of the toe, all
one thread, and then it recommences the operation and goes on with
another and another. Fancy stockings, with numerous colours blended, are
so knit, and if the yarn holds out a mile of stockings may be thus knit,
without a break and without an attendant. By these machines the
astounding result was reached of making the stockings at the cost of
one-sixth of a mill per pair.
The wonderful reduction in the cost of all kinds of textile fabrics due
to the perfection of spinning and loom mechanisms, and its power to meet
the resulting enormous increase in demand, has enabled the poor of
to-day to be clad better and with a far greater variety of apparel than
it was possible for the rich a hundred years ago; and the increased
consumption and demand have brought into these fields of labour, and
into other fields of labour created by these, great armies of men and
women, notwithstanding the labour-saving devices.
The wants of the world can no longer be supplied by skilled hand labour.
And it is better that machines do the skilled labour, if the product is
increased while made better and cheaper, and the number of labourers in
the end increased by the development and demands of the art.
Among the recent devices is one which dispenses with the expensive and
skilful work by hand of drawing the warp threads into the eyes of the
heddles and through the reed of the loom.
Cane-backed and bottomed chairs and lounges only a few years ago were a
luxury of the rich and made slowly by hand. Now the open mesh cane
fabric, having diagonal strands, and other varieties, are made rapidly
by machinery. Turkish carpets are woven, and floors the world over are
carpeted with those rich materials the sight of which would have
astonished the ordinary beholder a half century ago. Matting is woven;
wire, cane, straw, spun glass; in fact, everything that can be woven by
hand into useful articles now finds its especially constructed machine
for weaving it.
CHAPTER XIX.
GARMENTS.
"Man is a tool-using animal. Weak in himself, and of small stature, he
stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half square
foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs lest the very wind
supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for
him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag.
Nevertheless he can use tools, can devise tools; with these the granite
mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron as if
it were paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his
unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools
he is nothing, with tools he is all.... Man is a tool-using animal, of
which truth, clothes are but one example."--_Sartor Resartus._
In looking through the records of man's achievements to find the
beginnings of inventions, we discover the glimmering of a change in the
form of the immemorial needle, in an English patent granted to Charles
F. Weisenthal, June 24, 1775. It was a needle with a centrally located
eye, and with both ends pointed, designed for embroidery work by hand,
and the object of the two points was to prevent the turning of the
needle end for end after its passage through the cloth. But it was not
until the 19th century that the idea was reduced to practice in sewing
machines.
To Thomas Saint, a cabinet maker by trade, of Greenhills Rents, in the
Parish of St. Sepulchre, Middlesex County, England, the world is
indebted for the first clear conception of a sewing machine. Saint's
attention was attracted to the slow way of sewing boots and shoes and
other leather work, so he determined to improve the method. He took out
a patent September 17, 1790, and although the germs of some of the
leading parts of the modern sewing machine are there described, it does
not appear that his patent was applied to practice. In fact, it
slumbered in the archives of the British patent office for two
generations, and after the leading sewing machines of the century had
been invented and introduced, before it was rediscovered, and its
contents appreciated in the light of more recent developments. Probably
Saint's machine, if constructed in accordance with his plans, would not
have done much good work, certainly not with woven cloth, as he proposed
to employ a hooked needle to carry a loop through the material, which
would have been snarled by the cloth threads; but from his drawings and
description it is clearly established that he was first to conceive of a
vertically reciprocating needle for forming a seam from a continuous
thread drawn from a spool; a seam in which each loop is locked, or
enchained with a subsequent loop, to form what is known as the chain, or
single thread stitch; and a horizontal sliding plate, to support the
material to be sewed, and by which the material was also moved sideways
after each stitch.
May 30, 1804, John Duncan received an English patent for "tamboring on
cloth." He proposed to employ a series of hooked needles attached in a
straight line to a horizontal bar, which, when threaded, were first
thrust forward and their hooked ends carried through the cloth, where
each needle hook was supplied with a thread by a thread carrier. Then
the motion of the bar was reversed, which drew the thread back through
the cloth in the form of loops, and through the loops first formed, thus
producing a chain stitch. The cloth was automatically shifted to
correspond to the pattern to be produced, and thus was chain stitch
embroidery first manufactured. From this point of time successful
embroidery machines were made.
In 1807 another Englishman patented a machine for making a sort of rope
matting, in which he describes two eye-pointed, thread-carrying,
perforating needles, each held in a reciprocating needle bar, and
designed to unite several small ropes laid parallel, by a reciprocating
movement.
A German publication, the _Kunst_ and _Generbe Blatt_, for 1817, and
_Karmarsch's History of Technology_, made mention of a sewing machine
invented by one Mr. Joseph Madersperger of Vienna, formerly from
Kuefstein in the Tyrol, and for which he received royal letters patent
in 1814. From these descriptions it appears Madersperger used a needle
pointed at both ends, and the eye in the centre, invented many years
before by Weisenthal, as above stated, which was moved vertically up and
down, piercing alternately the top and bottom of the stuff, and which
carried a short thread, enough to make about one hundred and thirty
stitches, which machine was driven by a crank and handle, on which
sewing was made of many different shaped forms, by slight changes, and
which sewed with far greater accuracy and rapidity than hand work. The
inventor was striving to simplify the machine, but to what extent it had
been used or had been improved, or what finally became of it, does not
appear. Yet it is a bit of evidence showing that Germany came next to
England in the earlier ideas, conceptions of, and struggles after a
sewing machine.
France then entered the list, and it was in 1830 that Barthelmy
Thimonnier there produced and patented a sewing machine, which he
continued to improve and to further patent in 1848 and in 1850 in
France, England, and the United States. The Thimonnier resembled in some
prominent respects the machine that had been described in the Saint
patent, but unlike Saint's, it was reduced to successful practice, and
possessed some points in common with more modern machines. These were
the flat cloth plate, vertical post, overhung arm, vertically
reciprocating needle, and continuous thread. The crochet or barbed
needle was worked by a treadle, and upon pushing the needle down through
the cloth, it there caught a thread from a carrier, carried the loop to
and laid it upon the upper surface of the cloth. Again descending, it
brought up another loop, enchained it with the one last made, making a
chain stitch, consisting of a series of loops on the upper side.
Thimonnier made quite a large number of machines, constructed mostly of
wood, and which were used to make army clothing at Paris. They were best
adapted to work on leather and in embroidering. They were so far
successful as to arouse the jealousy and fear of the workmen and working
women, and, as in the case of Hargreaves, Jacquard, and others, a mob
broke into his shop, destroyed his machines, ruined his business, and he
died penniless in 1857.
In the meantime an English patent, No. 8948, of May 4, 1841, had been
issued to Newton and Archbold for a machine for embroidering the backs
of gloves, having an eye-pointed needle, worked by a vibrating lever,
and adapted to carry a thread through the back of the glove, held on a
frame--the frame and glove moving together after each stitch.
The germs of inventions often develop and fructify simultaneously in
distant places, without, so far as any one can ascertain, the slightest
mutual knowledge or co-operation on the part of the separate inventors.
Between 1832 and 1834, while Thimonnier was in the midst of his early
struggles in Paris, Walter Hunt was inventing a sewing machine in New
York, which he completed at that time and on which he sewed one or two
garments. But as it was experimental in form, and Hunt was full of other
inventions and schemes, he put it aside, and it probably would never
have been heard of had not Elias Howe of Massachusetts, ten years after
Hunt had abandoned his invention, but without knowledge of Hunt's
efforts, made the first practical successful sewing machine for
commercial purposes the world had ever seen, obtained his patent, and
made claims therein which covered not only his special form of
improvements, but Hunt's old device as well.
Howe's patent was issued September 10, 1846. In that he claimed to be
the first and original inventor of "A sewing machine, constructed and
operated to form a seam, substantially as described."
Also "The combination of a needle and a shuttle, or equivalent, and
holding surfaces, constructed and operating substantially as described."
Also "The combination of holding surfaces with a baster plate or
equivalent, constructed and operating substantially as described."
Also "A grooved and eye-pointed needle, constructed and adapted for
rapid machine sewing substantially as described."
When the machine commenced to be a practical success this patent was
infringed, and when Howe sued upon it a few years after its issue, it
woke up Hunt and all other alleged prior inventors; and all prior
patents and publications the world over, relating to sewing machines,
were raked up to defeat Howe's claims.
But the courts, after long deliberation, held that although, so far as
Hunt was concerned he had without doubt made a machine in many respects
like Howe's machine, that it had a curved, eye-pointed needle similar to
Howe's operated by a vibrating arm and going through the cloth, a
shuttle carrying the thread that passed through the loop made by the
needle thread, thus making a lock stitch by drawing it up to one side of
the cloth, and that this machine did, to a certain extent, sew, yet that
it ended in an experiment, was laid aside, destroyed, and never
perfected nor used so as to give to the public the knowledge and benefit
of a completed invention, and was not therefore an anticipation in the
eye of the law of Howe's completed, more successful and patented
machine.
Public successful use is the fact in many cases which alone establishes
the title of an inventor, when all other tests fail. And this is right
in one sense, as the laws of all countries in respect to protection by
patents for inventions are based upon the primary condition of benefit
to society. This benefit is not derived from the inventor who hides his
completed invention for years in his closet, or throws it on a dust
heap. As to previous patents and publications, some were not published
before Howe's inventions were made, and others were insufficient in
showing substantially the same machine and mode of operation. And as to
prior use abroad, it was not regarded under the law of his country as
competent evidence.
Seldom have the lives of great inventors presented a more striking
example of the vicissitudes, the despair, and the final triumphs of
fortune, which are commonly their lot, than is shown in the case of
Howe. A machinist with a wife and children to support, his health too
feeble to earn hardly a scanty living, he watches his faithful wife ply
her constant needle, and wonders why a machine cannot be made to do the
work. The idea cannot be put aside, and with such poor aids as he can
command he commences his task.
At last, amid the trials of bitter poverty, he brings his invention to
that stage in which he induces a friend to advance some money, by the
promise of a share in the future patent, and thereby gains a temporary
home for his family and a garret for his workshop. Day after day and
night after night he labours, and finally, in April, 1845, the rather
crude machine is completed, and two woollen suits of clothing are sewed
thereon, one for a friend, and one for himself.
Then came the effort to make more machines and place them on the market.
People admired the machines as a curiosity, but none were induced to buy
them or help him pecuniarily. Finally, in September, 1846, he obtained
his patent, but by that time his best friends had become discouraged,
and he was compelled to return with his family to his father's house in
Cambridge, Mass. To earn his bread he sought and found employment on a
railway locomotive. By some means his brother sold one of his machines
to Mr. William Thomas, a corset maker of London, and Howe was induced to
go there to make stays, and his machines. He took his wife and children
with him. The arrangement made with his employer was not such as to
enable him to keep his family there, and he soon sent them home.
Unable to sell his machines, he was soon reduced to want. He pawned his
patent and his last machine, and procured money to return to New York,
where he arrived penniless in 1849. He then learned that his wife was
dying of consumption at Cambridge. He was compelled to wait until money
could be sent him to pay his passage home, and reached there just before
his wife's death.
He then learned that during his absence his patent and machine had
attracted attention, that others had taken the matter up, added their
improvements to his machines, and that many in various places were being
made and sold which were infringements of his patent. A great demand for
sewing machines had sprung up. He induced friends to again help him.
Suits were commenced which, although bitterly fought for six years, were
finally successful.
Now fortune turned her smiling face upon him. Medals and diplomas, the
Cross of the Legion of Honour, and millions of money became his. When
the great civil war broke out in 1861, he entered the army as a private
soldier, and advanced the money to pay the regiment to which he
belonged, when the Government paymaster had been long delayed. His life
was saddened by the fact that his wife had not lived to share his
fortune. He died in Brooklyn, New York, October 3, 1867, in the midst of
life, riches, and honour, at the comparatively early age of forty-eight.
In referring to the early inventors of sewing machines in America who
entered the field about the same time with Howe, mention should be made
of J. J. Greenough and George Corliss, who had machines patented
respectively in 1842 and 1843, for sewing leather, with double pointed
needles; and the running stitch sewing machine used for basting, made
and patented by B. W. Bean in 1843. About this time, both in England and
America, machines had been devised for sewing lengths of calico and
other cloths together, previous to bleaching, dyeing or printing. The
edges of the cloths were first crimped or fluted and then sewed by a
running stitch.
The decade of 1849-1859, immediately following the development of the
Howe machine, was the greatest in the century for producing those
successful sewing machines which were the foundation of the art,
established a new industrial epoch, and converted Hood's "Song of the
Shirt" into a lament commemorative of the miseries of a slavish but
dying industry.
It was during that decade that, in the United States, Batcheller
invented the perpetual feed for moving the cloth horizontally under and
past the needle. In Howe's the cloth could be sewed but a certain
distance at a time, and then the machine must be readjusted for a new
length. Then Blodgett and Lerow imparted to the eye-pointed needle what
is called the "dip motion,"--the needle being made to descend completely
through the material, then to rise a little to form a loop; the shuttle
then entered the loop, the needle descended again a short distance,
while the shuttle passed through the loop of the needle thread, and then
the needle was raised above the cloth.
It was then that Allen B. Wilson invented the still more famous
"four-motion feed" for feeding the cloth forward. He employed a bar
having saw like teeth on one edge which projected up through a slotted
plate and engaged the cloth. He then first moved the bar forward
carrying the cloth; second, dropped the bar; third, moved it back under
the plate; and fourth, raised it to its first position to again engage
the cloth. These motions were so timed with the movement of the needle
and so quickly done that the cloth was carried forward while the needle
was raised, the passage and quick action of the needle was not
interfered with, and the feeding and the sewing seem to be simultaneous.
The intermittent grasp and feed of the cloth were hardly perceptible,
and yet it permitted the cloth to be turned to make a curved seam.
Wilson also invented the rotating hook which catches the loop of the
upper thread, and drops a disk bobbin through it to form the stitch. The
shuttle was thus dispensed with, and an entirely new departure was made
in the art. These with other improvements made up the celebrated
"Wheeler and Wilson" machine.
Now also appeared "the Singer," consisting chiefly of the invention of
T. M. Singer. He improved the operation of the needle bar, devised a
roughened feed wheel, as a substitute for Wilson's serrated bar,
introduced a spring presser foot, alongside the needle, to hold the work
down in proper position while permitting it to be moved forward or in
any other direction. A "friction pad" was also placed between the cloth
seam and the spool, to prevent the thread from kinking or twisting under
the point of the descending needle. He was the first to give the shuttle
an additional forward movement after it had once stopped, to draw the
stitch tight,--such operation being taken while the feed moved the cloth
in the reverse direction, and while, the needle completed its upward
motion, so that the two threads were simultaneously drawn, and finally a
spring guide upon the shuttle to control the slack of the thread, and
prevent its catching by the needle.
By reason of these improvements it is thought by many that Singer was
the first to furnish the people with a successful operating and
practical sewing machine. At any rate, the world at last so highly
appreciated his machines, that it lifted him from poverty to an estate
which was valued at between eight and ten millions of dollars at the
time of his death in 1875. Singer was also the first to invent the
"ruffler," a machine for ruffling or gathering cloth, and a device which
laid an embroidering thread upon the surface of the cloth under the
needle thread.
The "Grover and Baker" another celebrated American machine, was invented
by William O. Grover and William E. Baker in 1851. By certain changes
they made in the thread carrier and connections, they were enabled to
make a double looped stitch. This required more thread, but the stitch
made was unexcelled in strength.
And so the work went on, from step to step, and from the completion of
one machine after another, until when the Centennial Exhibition came to
be held in Philadelphia in 1876, a fine array of excellent sewing
machines was had, from the United States, principally, but also those of
inventors and manufacturers in Great Britain, Canada, France, Germany,
Belgium, Sweden and Denmark.
Up to that time about twenty-two hundred patents had been granted in the
United States, all of which, with the exception of a very few, were for
inventions made within the preceding quarter of a century. And during
the last quarter of the century about five thousand more United States
patents have been issued for devices in this art. This number includes
many, of course, to inventors of other countries. When it is remembered
that these patents were issued only after an examination in each case as
to its novelty, and although slight as may have been the changes or
additions, yet substantially different they must have been in nearly all
respects, it may to some extent be realized how great and incessant has
been the exercise of invention in this useful class of machines.
On this point of the exercise of invention in sewing machines, as well
as on some others growing out of the subject, Knight, writing in his
_Mechanical Dictionary_, about twenty years ago, remarks: "If required
to name the three subjects on which the most extraordinary versatility
of invention has been expended, the answer would be without hesitation,
the _sewing machine_, _reaping machine_ and _breech-loading firearm_.
Each of these has thousands of patents, and although each is the growth
of the last forty years, it is only during the last twenty-five years
that they have filled any notable place in the world. It was then only
by a combination of talents that any of these three important inventions
was enabled to achieve remarkable success. The sewing machine previous
to 1851, made without the admirable division of labour which is a
feature in all well conducted factories, was hard to make, and
comparatively hard to run. The system of _assembling_, first introduced
in the artillery service of France by General Gribeauval in 1765 and
brought to proximate perfection by Colonel Colt in the manufacture of
the revolver at Hartford, Connecticut, has economised material and time,
improved the quality as well as cheapened the product. There is to-day,
and in fact has been for some years, more actual invention in the
special machines for _making_ sewing machines than in the machines
themselves. The assembling system, that is, making the component parts
of an article in distinct pieces of pattern, so as to be
interchangeable, and the putting them together, is the only system of
order. How else should the Providence Tool Company execute their order
for 600,000 rifles for the Turkish Government? How otherwise could the
Champion Harvesting Machine Company of Springfield, Ohio, turn out an
equipped machine every four minutes each working day of ten hours? Or,
to draw the illustration from the subject in hand, how by any other than
the nicest arrangement of detail can the Singer Sewing Machine Company
make 6,000 machines per week at Elizabethport, New Jersey?"
When sewing machines were so far completed as to be easily run by a hand
crank, or treadle, the application of power to run them singly, or in
series, and to run machines of a larger and more powerful description,
soon naturally followed--so that garment-making factories of all kinds,
whether of cloth or leather, have been established in many countries--in
which steam or electric power is utilised as the motor, and thus human
strain and labour saved, while the amount of production is increased.
No radical changes in the principle or mode of operation of sewing
machines have been made in the last twenty-five years; but the efforts
of inventors have been directed to improve the previously established
types, and to devise attachments of all kinds, by the aid of which
anything that can be sewed, can be sewed upon a machine. Tucking,
ruffling, braiding, cording, hemming, turning, plaiting, gaging, and
other attachment devices are numerous. Inventors have rivalled one
another in originating new forms of stitches. About seventy-five
distinct stitches have been devised, each of which must of course be
produced by a change in mechanism.
When sewing machines were in their infancy, and confined to sewing
straight seams and other plain sewing, it was predicted that it was not
possible to take from the hands of women the making of fine embroidery
from intricate patterns, or the working of button-holes, and the
destruction of the quilting party was not apprehended. Nor was it
expected that human hands could be dispensed with in the cutting out of
garments. And yet these things have followed. Machines, by a beautiful
but complex system of needles, working to some extent on the Jacquard
system of perforated card boards, and by the help of pneumatic or
electrical power, will work out on most delicate cloths embroidery of
exquisite patterns.
The button-hole machines will take the garment, cut the button-hole at
the desired point, and either, as in one class of machines, by moving
the fabric about the stitch-forming mechanism, or, as in another class,
moving the stitch-forming mechanism about the button-hole, complete the
delicate task in the nicest and most effective manner.
Quilting machines have their own bees, consisting of a guide which
regulates the spaces between the seams, and adjusts them to any width,
and a single needle, or gang of needles, the latter under the control of
cams which force the needles to quilt certain desired patterns.
And as to cutting, it is only necessary to place the number of pieces of
fabric desired to be cut in cutting dies, or upon a table, and over them
an "over-board" cutter, which comprises a reciprocating band-saw, or a
rotary knife, all quick, keen and delicate, in an apparatus guided by
hand, in order to produce in the operation a great pile of the parts
formerly so slowly produced, one at a time, by scissors or shears.
If men were contented with that single useful garment of some savages, a
blanket with a slit cut in it for the passage of the head and neck, not
only would a vast portion of the joys and sorrows of social philosophy
have been avoided, but an immense strain and trouble on the part of
inventors of the century would have been obviated.
But man's propensity for wearing clothes has led to the invention of
every variety of tools for making them faster, cheaper, and better.
No machine has yet been invented that will take the place of the deft
fingers of women in certain lines of ornamentation, as in final
completion and trimming of their hats. The airy and erratic demands of
fashion are too nimble to be supplied by the slow processes of
machinery, although the crude ground-work, the frame, has been shaped,
moulded and sewed by machines; and women themselves have invented and
patented _bonnet frames_ and _patterns_.
But no such difficulty in invention has occurred in _hat-making_ for
men. From the treating and cutting of the raw material, from the outer
bound edge, and the band about the body, to the tip of the crown, a
machine may be found for performing each separate step. Especially is
this the case with the hard felt and the high silk hats.
Seventy-five years ago the making of hats was by hand processes. Now in
all hat factories machines are employed, and the ingenuity displayed in
the construction of some of them is marvellous. It is exceedingly
difficult to find many of the old hand implements existing even as
relics.
Wool and fur each has its special machines for turning it into a hat.
The operations of cleaning and preparing the material, felting the fur,
when fur is used, shaping the hat body, and then the brim, washing,
dying, hardening and stiffening it, stretching, smoothing, finishing,
sizing, lining, trimming, all are now done by machines devised for each
special purpose. A description of these processes would be interesting,
but even in an abbreviated form would fill a book.
The wonderful things done in the manufacture of boots and shoes and
rubber goods will be referred to in subsequent chapters.
Although it was old from time immemorial to colour cotton goods, and the
calico power printing cylinder was invented and introduced into England
in the latter part of the 18th century and began to turn out at once
immense quantities of decorated calicoes and chintz, yet _figured_ woven
goods were a novelty sixty years ago.
In 1834, Mr. Bonjeau, a prominent wool manufacturer in Sedan, France,
and an _élève_ of the Polytechnic School, conceived the idea of
modifying the plain cloths, universally made, by the union of different
tints and patterns. This he was enabled to do by the Jacquard loom. The
manufacture of fancy woven cloths, cassimeres, worsted coatings, etc.,
of great beauty, combined with strength of fabrication, followed in all
civilised countries, but their universal adoption as wearing apparel was
due in part to the lessening of the expense in the making them into
garments by the sewing machine.
As to the effect of modern inventions on wearing apparel, it is not
apparent that they were necessary to supply the wardrobes of the rich.
The Solomons and the Queen of Sheba of ancient days, and all their small
and great successors in the halls of Fortune, have had their rich robes,
their purple and their fine linen, whether made in one way or another;
but modern inventions have banished the day when the poor man's hard
labour of a long day will not suffice to bring his wife a yard of
cheapest cloth. Toil, then, as hard as he and his poor wife and children
might, their united labours would hardly suffice to clothe them in more
than the poorly-dressed skins of animals and the coarsest of homespun
wool.
Now, cottons and calicoes are made and sold at a profit for three cents
a yard; and the poorest woman in the land may appear in neat,
comfortable and tasteful dress, the entire cost of material and labor of
which need not exceed fifty cents. The comfort, respectability and
dignity of a large family, which depend so much on clothes, may be
ensured at the cost of a few dollars.
And as to the condition of the sewing woman, trying and poor as it is in
many instances, yet she can earn more money with less physical
exhaustion than under the old system.
The epoch of good clothes for the people, with all that it means in the
fight upward from degradation, began in this century, and it was due to
the inventions which have been above outlined.
CHAPTER XX.
INDUSTRIAL MACHINES.
One invention engenders another, or co-operates with another. None
lives, or stands, or dies, alone.
So, in the humble but extensive art of _broom-making_, men and women
worked along through ages binding with their hands the supple twigs of
trees or bushes, or of corn, by thongs, or cords, or wire, upon the
rudely-formed collar of a hand-smoothed stick, until the modern lathe
and hollow mandrel armed with cutters, the power-driven shuttle, and the
sewing machine, were invented.
The lathe and mandrel to hold the stick while it was cut was used
before, but it was long within the century that a hollow mandrel was
first invented, which was provided internally with cutting bevelled
knives, and into which the stick was placed, carried through
longitudinally, and during its passage cut smooth and finished. As broom
corn became the chief product from which brooms are made, it became
desirable to have a machine, after the corn had been scraped of its
seed, to size and prepare the stems in regular lengths for the various
sizes of brooms, and accordingly such a machine was invented. Then a
machine was needed and invented to wind the corn-brush with the cord or
wire and tie it in a round bunch, preparatory to flattening and sewing
it.
Then followed different forms of broom-sewing machines. Among the
pioneers was one which received the round bunch between two compressing
jaws, and pressed it flat. While so held a needle with its coarse thread
was forced through the broom above the binding and the cord twined
around it. Then a shuttle, also carrying a stout thread, was thrown over
the cord, the needle receded and was then forced through the broom again
_under_ the binding cord. Thus in conjunction with the shuttle the
stitches were formed alternately above and below the binding twine, the
holding jaws being raised intermittently for that purpose. As each
stitch was formed the machine fed the broom along laterally and
intermittently. By another ingenious device the cord was tied and cut,
when the sewing was completed.
It is only by such machines which treat the entire article from the
first to the last step, that the immense number of brooms now necessary
to supply the market are made. True it is that at first labour was
displaced. At one time seventeen skilled workmen would manufacture five
hundred dozen brooms per week.
They had reduced the force of earlier times by making larger quantities
by better processes. Then when the broom-sewing machines and other
inventions got fairly to work, nine men would turn out twelve hundred
dozen brooms per week. Thus, while the force was reduced nearly
one-half, the quantity of product was more than doubled. But as the cost
of labour decreased and the product increased, the product became more
plentiful and cheaper, the demand and use became greater, more
broom-corn was raised, more broom-factories started, and soon the
temporary displacement of labour was succeeded by a permanent increase
in manufacture and in labourers, an increase in their wages, and an
improvement in their condition.
Useful and extensive as is its use, the broom does not compare in
variety and wide application to the _brush_. The human body, cloth,
leather, metals, wood and grains, everything that needs rubbing,
cleaning, painting and polishing, meets the acquaintance of the brush.
Nearly a hundred species of brushes might be enumerated, each having an
especial construction for a particular use.
Although the majority of brushes are still made by hand, yet a few most
ingenious machines have been made which greatly facilitate and speed the
operation, and many mechanical appliances have been invented in aid of
hand-work. These machines and appliances, together with those which cut,
turn, bore, smooth, and polish the handles and backs, to which the brush
part is secured, have greatly changed and improved the art of
brush-making during the last fifty years.
The first machine which attracted general attention was invented by
Oscar D. and E. C. Woodbury of New York, and patented in 1870. As in
hand-making and before subjected to the action of the machine, the
bristles are sorted as to length and color. A brush-back, bored with
holes by a gang of bits, which holes do not extend, however, all the way
through the back, is placed in the machine under a cone-jointed plunger,
adapted to enter the hole in the brush-back. A comb-shaped slitted plate
in the machine has then each slit filled with bristles, sufficient in
number to form a single tuft. When the machine is started, the bristles
in a slit are forced out therefrom through a twisted guideway, which
forms them into a round tuft, and which is laid horizontally beneath a
plunger, which, descending, first doubles the tuft, and as the plunger
continues to descend, forces the double end down into the hole. The
plunger is supplied with a wire from a reel, turns as it descends, and
twists the wire around the lower end of the tuft, the wire being
directed in that way by a spiral groove within the plunger. The
continuing action of the plunger is such as to screw the wire into the
back. The wire is cut when the rotary plunger commences its descent, and
when the tuft is thus secured the plunger ascends, the block is moved
for another hole, and another set of bristles is presented for
manipulation. Brushes with 70 holes can be turned out by this machine at
the rate of one a minute.
Another most ingenious machine for this purpose is that of Kennedy,
Diss, and Cannan, patented in the United States in 1892. In this, brush
blocks of varying sizes, but of the same pattern, are bored by the same
machine which receives the bristles, and the tufts are inserted as fast
as the holes are bored. Both machines are automatic in operation.
_Street-sweeping machines_ began to appear about 1831 in England,
shortly after in France, and then in cities in other countries.
The simplest form and most effective sweeper comprises a large cylinder
armed with spiral rows of splints and hung diagonally on the under side
and across a frame having two or four wheels. This cylinder is connected
by bevelled gearing with the wheels, and in revolving throws the dirt
from the street into a ridge on one side thereof, where it is swept into
heaps by hand sweepers, and is then carted off. King of the United
States was the inventor.
A more recent improvement consists in the use of pneumatic means for
removing the dust that is caused by the use of revolving brooms or
brushes, such removal being effected by means of a hood that covers the
area of the street beneath the body of the machine, and incloses an air
exhaust, the sweepings being drawn through the exhaust mechanism and
deposited in a receptacle for the purpose, or in some instances
deposited in a furnace carried by the machine and there burned.
In cities having hard, smooth, paved streets and sufficient municipal
funds, the most effective, but most expensive way, has been found to
keep a large force of men constantly at work with hoes, shovels, brooms,
bags and carts, removing the dirt as fast as it accumulates.
_Abrading Machines._
One of the most striking inventions of the century is the application of
the sand-blast to industrial and artistic purposes.
For ages the sands of the desert and wild mountain plains, lifted and
driven by the whirling winds, had sheared and polished the edges and
faces of rocks, and cut them into fantastic shapes, and the sands of the
shore, tossed by the winds of the sea, had long scratched and bleared
the windows of the fisherman's hut, before it occurred to the mind of
man that here were a force and an agent which could be harnessed into
his service.
It was due finally to the inventive genius of B. F. Tilghman of
Philadelphia, Pa., who, in 1870, patented a process by which common
sand, powdered quartz, emery, or other comminuted sharp cutting
material, may be blown or driven with such force upon the surface of the
hardest materials, as to cut, clean, engrave, and otherwise abrade them,
in the most wonderful and satisfactory manner.
Diamonds are abraded; glass depolished, or engraved, or bored; metal
castings cleaned; lithographic zinc plates grained; silverware frosted;
stone and glass for jewelry shaped and figured; the inscriptions and
ornaments of monuments and tombstones cut thereon; engravings and
photographs copied; steel files cleaned and sharpened, and stones and
marble carved into forms of beauty with more exactness and in far less
time than by the chisel of the artisan.
The gist of the process is the employment of a jet of sand or other hard
abrading material, driven at a high velocity by a blast of air or steam,
under a certain pressure, in accordance with the character of the work
to be done. The sand is placed in a box-like receptacle into which the
air or steam is forced, and the sand flowing into the same chamber is
driven through a narrow slit or slits in the form of a thin sheet,
directly on to the object to be abraded.
By one method the surface of the object is first coated with tinfoil on
which the artist traces his design, and this is then coated with melted
transparent wax. Then when the wax is hardened it is cut away along the
lines already indicated, and seen through the wax. The object now is
subjected to the blast, and as the sand will not penetrate a softened
material sufficient to abrade a surface beneath, the exposed portions
alone will be cut away. The sand after it strikes is carried off by a
blast to some receptacle, from which it is returned to its former place
for further use. Other means may be used in the place of a slitted box,
as a small or larger blow-pipe; but the driving of the sand, or similar
abrading material, with great force by the steam or air blast, is the
essential feature of the process.
_Emery_, that variety of the mineral corundum, consisting of crystalline
alumina, resembling in appearance dark, fine-grained iron ore, ranking
next to the diamond in hardness, and a sister of the sapphire and the
ruby, has long been used as an abradant. The Eastern nations have used
corundum for this purpose for ages. Turkey and Greece once had a
monopoly of it. Knight says: "The corundum stone used by the Hindoos and
Chinese is composed of corundum powdered, two parts; lac resin, one
part. The two are intimately mixed in an earthen vessel, kneaded and
flattened, shaped and polished. A hole in the stone for the axis is made
by a heated copper rod."
However ancient the use of artificial stones for grinding and polishing,
nevertheless it is true that the solid emery wheel in the form that has
made it generally useful, in machines known as _emery grinders_, is a
modern invention, and of American origin.
In the manufacture of such machines great attention and the highest
scientific skill has been paid, first, to the material composing the
wheel, and to the cementing substances by which the emery is compacted
and bound in the strongest manner, to prevent bursting when driven at
great speed; secondly, to the construction of machines and wheels of a
composition varying from the finest to the coarsest; and thirdly, to the
proper balancing of the wheels in the machines, an operation of great
nicety, in order that the wheel may be used on delicate tools, when
driven at high speed, without producing uneven work, marking the
objects, or endangering the breaking, or bursting of the wheel.
Such machines, when properly constructed, although not adapted to take
the place of the file, other steel-cutting tools, and the grindstone for
many purposes, yet have very extensively displaced those tools for
cutting edges, and the grinding and polishing of hardened metals, by
reason chiefly of their greater convenience, speed, and general
adaptability. Not only tools of all sizes are ground and polished, but
ploughshares, stove and wrought-iron plates, iron castings, the inner
surfaces of hollow ironware, the bearings of spindles, arbours, and the
surfaces of steel, chilled or cast-iron rolls, etc.
In the great class of Industrial Mechanics, no machines of the century
have contributed more to the comfort and cleanliness of mankind than
those by which wearing apparel in its vast quantities is washed and
ironed more thoroughly, speedily, and satisfactorily in every way than
is possible by the old hand systems. When it is remembered how under the
old system such a large part of humanity, and this the weaker part,
devoted such immense time and labour to the universal washing and
ironing days, the invention of these machines and appliances must be
regarded as among the great labour-saving blessings of the century.
True, the individual washerwoman and washerman, and ironers, have by no
means disappeared, and are still in evidence everywhere, yet the
universal and general devotion of one-half the human race to the
wash-tub and ironing-table for two or more days in the week is no longer
necessary. And even for the individual worker, the convenient appliances
and helps that have been invented have greatly relieved the occupation
of pain and drudgery.
Among modern devices in the laundry, worked by hand, is, first, the
_washing-machine_, in which the principle is adapted of rolling over or
kneading the clothes. By moving a lever by hand up and down, the clothes
are thoroughly rubbed, squeezed and lifted at each stroke. Then comes
the _wringer_, a common form of which consists of two parallel rolls of
vulcanized and otherwise specially treated rubber, fitted to shafts
which, by an arrangement of cog-wheels, gearing and springs in the
framework at the ends of rolls, and a crank handle, are made to roll on
each other. The clothes are passed between the rollers, the springs
permit the rollers to yield and part more or less, according to the
thickness of the clothes.
Then the old-fashioned, or the new-fashioned mangle is brought into
play. The old-style mangle had a box, weighted with stone, which was
reciprocated on rollers, and was run back and forth upon the clothes
spread upon a polished table beneath. One of the more modern styles is
on the principle of the wringer above described, or a series of rollers
arranged around a central drum, and each having a rubber spring
attached, by which means the clothes are not subjected to undue pressure
at one or two points, as in the first mentioned kind.
Starch is also applied by a similar machine. The cloth is dipped into a
body of starch, or the same is applied by hand, and then the superfluous
starch squeezed out as the clothes are passed through the rollers.
But for hotels and other large institutions washing is now done by
steam-power machinery.
It is an attractive sight to step into a modern laundry, operated with
the latest machinery on the largest scale. The first thing necessary in
many localities is to clarify the water. This is done by attaching to
the service pipe tanks filled with filtering material, through which the
water flows before reaching the boiler. The driving engine and shafting
are compactly placed at one end or side of the room, with boilers and
kettles conveniently adjacent. The water and clothes are supplied to the
washing-machine, and operated by the engine. Steam may be used in
addition to the engine to keep it boiling hot, or steam may be
substituted entirely for the water.
The machine may be one of several types selected especially for the
particular class of goods to be washed. There is the dash-wheel,
constructed on the principle of the cylinder churn; the outer case being
stationary and the revolving dash-wheel water-tight, or perforated,
which is the preferred form for collars and cuffs. In place of the
dash-wheel cylinders are sometimes used, having from sixty to seventy
revolutions a minute. Another form has vibrating arms or beaters, giving
between four hundred and five hundred strokes a minute, and by which the
clothes are squeezed between rubbing corrugated boards. The rubbing
boards also roll the clothes over and over until they are thoroughly
washed. In another form a rotating cylinder for the clothes is provided
with an arrangement of pipes by which either steam, water or blueing can
be introduced as desired, into the cylinder, through its hollow
journals, so that the clothes can be washed, rinsed, and blued without
removal from the machine.
Another type has perforated, reciprocating pistons, between which the
clothes are alternately squeezed and released, a supply of fresh water
being constantly introduced through one of the hollow cylinder journals,
while the used water is discharged through the opposite journal; and in
still another the clothes are placed in a perforated cylinder within an
outer casing, and propeller blades, assisted by other spiral blades,
force a continuous current of water through the clothes.
In ironing, hollow polishing rolls of various sizes are used, heated
either by steam or gas. The articles to be ironed are placed in proper
position upon a table and carried under and in contact with the rolls.
Or the goods are ironed between a heated cylinder and a revolving drum
covered with felting, and the polishing effected by the cylinder
revolving faster than the drum. Ingenious forms of hand-operated ironing
machines for turning over and ironing the edges of collars, and other
articles, are in successful use.
CHAPTER XXI.
WOOD-WORKING.
In surveying the wonderful road along which have travelled the toiling
inventors, until the splendid fields of the present century have been
reached, the mind indulges in contrasts and reverts to the far gone
period of man's deprivations, when man, the animal, was fighting for
food and shelter.
"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?"
--_King Lear III, IV._
When the implements of labour and the weapons of war were chiefly made
of stone, or bronze, or iron, such periods became the "age" of stone, or
bronze, or iron; and we sometimes hear of the ages of steam, steel and
electricity. But the age of wood has always existed, wherever forests
abounded. It was, doubtless, the earliest "age" in the industries of
man, but is not likely to be the latest, as the class of inventions we
are about to consider, although giving complete dominion to man over the
forests, are hastening their destruction.
As in every other class of inventions, there had been inventions in the
class of wood-working through the ages preceding this century, in tools,
implements and machines; but not until near the close of the eighteenth
century had there been much of a break in the universal toil by hand.
The implements produced were, for the most part, the result of the slow
growth of experience and mechanical skill, rather than the product of
inventive genius.
True, the turning-lathe, the axe, the hammer, the chisel, the saw, the
auger, the plane, the screw, and cutting and other wood-shaping
instruments in simple forms existed in abundance. The Egyptians used
their saws of bronze. The Greeks deified their supposed inventor of the
saw, Talus, or Perdix, and they claimed Theodore of Lamos as the
inventor of the turning-lathe; although the main idea of pivoting an
object between two supports, so that it could be turned while the hands
were free to apply a tool to its shaping, was old in the potter's wheel
of the Egyptians, which was turned while the vessel resting upon it was
shaped and ornamented by the hand and tools. It appears also to have
been known by the Hindoos and the Africans.
Pliny refers to the curled chips raised by the plane, and Ansonius
refers to mills driven by the waters of the Moselle for sawing marble
into slabs. Early records mention saw-mills run by water-power in the
thirteenth century in France, Germany and Norway; and Sweden had them in
the next century. Holland had them one hundred years at least before
they were introduced into England.
Fearful of the entire destruction of the forests by the wood used in the
manufacture of iron, and incited by the opposition and jealousy of hand
sawyers, England passed some rigid laws on the subject in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, which, although preserving the forests, gave
for a long time the almost exclusive manufacture of iron and lumber to
Germany and Holland. Even as late as 1768, a saw-mill, built at
Limehouse, under the encouragement of the Society of Arts, by James
Stansfield, was destroyed by a mob. Saw-mills designed to be run by
water-power had been introduced into the American colonies by the Dutch
more than a century before they made their appearance in England.
William Penn found that they had long been at work on the Delaware when
he reached its shores in 1682.
It was nothing indigenous to the climate or race that rendered the
Americans inventors. The early colonists, drawn from the most civilised
countries of Europe, carried to the new world knowledge of the latest
and best appliances known to their respective countries in the various
arts. With three thousand miles of water between them and the source of
such appliances, and between them and the source of arbitrary power and
laws to hamper efforts and enterprise, with stern necessity on every
hand prompting them to avail themselves of every means to meet their
daily wants, all known inventions were put to use, and brains were
constantly exercised in devising new means to aid, or take the place of,
manual labour, which was scarce. Surrounded, too, by vast forests, from
which their houses, their churches and their schools must be
constructed, these pioneers naturally turned their thoughts toward
wood-working machinery. The attention to this art necessarily created
interest in and developed other arts. Thus constant devotion to pursuits
strenuously demanding labour-saving devices evolved a race of keen
inventors and mechanics. So that when Watt had developed his wonderful
application of steam to industrial purposes, America was ready to
substitute steam for water-power in the running of saw-mills.
Steam saw-mills commenced to buzz with the opening of the century.
As to the relation of that humble machine, the saw-mill, to the progress
of civilisation, it was once said: "The axe produces the log hut, but
not until the saw-mill is introduced do framed dwellings and villages
arise; it is civilisation's pioneer machine; the precursor of the
carpenter, wheelwright and turner, the painter, the joiner, and legions
of other professions. Progress is unknown where it is not. Its
comparative absence in the Southern American continent was not the least
cause of the trifling advancement made there during three centuries and
a half. Surrounded by forests of the most valuable and variegated
timber, with water-power in mountain streams, equally neglected, the
masses of the people lived in shanties and mud hovels, not more
commodious than those of the aborigines, nor more durable than the
annual structures of birds. Wherever man has not fixed and comfortable
homes, he is, as regards civilisation, stationary; improvement under
such circumstances has never taken place, nor can it."
Miller, in England, in 1777, had described in his patent a circular saw,
and Hatton, in 1776, had vaguely described a planing machine; but the
inception of the marvellous growth in wood-working machinery in the
nineteenth century occurred in England during the last decade of the
eighteenth. It was due to the splendid efforts of General Samuel
Bentham, and of Bramah and Branch, both as to metal-working and
wood-working machinery.
General Bentham, a brother of the celebrated jurist, Jeremy Bentham, had
his attention drawn to the slow, laborious, and crude methods of working
in wood, while making a tour of Europe, and especially in Russia, and
engaged in inspecting the art of ship-building in those countries, in
behalf of the British Admiralty. On his return, 1791-1792, he converted
his home into a shop for making wood-working machines. These included
"Planing, moulding, rabbeting, grooving, mortising, and sawing, both in
coarse and fine work, in curved, winding, and transverse directions, and
shaping wood in complicated forms."
Of the amount of bills presented to and paid for by the Admiralty for
these machines, General Bentham received about £20,000.
These machines were developed and in use just as the new century
approached. Thus, with the exception of the saw-mill, it may be again
said that prior to this century the means mankind had to aid them in
their work in metals and in wood were confined to hand tools, and these
were for the most part of a simple and crude description.
The ground-work now being laid, the century advanced into a region of
invention in tools and machinery for wood-working of every description,
far beyond the wildest dreams of all former carpenters and joiners. Not
only were the machines themselves invented, but they gave rise in turn
to a host of inventions in metal-working for making them.
In the same line of inventions there appeared in the first decade of the
century one of the most ingenious of men, and a most fitting type of
that great class of Yankee inventors who have carved their way to renown
with all implements, from the jack-knife to the electrically-driven
universal shaping machine.
Thomas Blanchard, born in Massachusetts in 1788, while a boy, was
accustomed to astonish his companions by the miniature wind-wheels and
water-wheels that he whittled out with his knife. While attending the
parties of young people who gathered on winter evenings at different
homes in the country to pare apples, the idea of a paring machine
occurred to him, and when only thirteen years of age, he invented and
made the first apple-paring machine, with which more apples could be
pared in a given time than any twelve of his girl acquaintances could
pare with a knife.
At eighteen, while working in a shop, driving the heads down on tacks,
on an anvil, with a hammer, he invented the first tack-forming machine,
which, when perfected by him, made five hundred tacks a minute, and
which has never since been improved in principle. He improved the steam
engine, and invented one of the first envelope machines. He made the
first metal lathe for cutting out the butts of gun-barrels. But his
greatest triumphs were in wood-working machinery.
Challenged to make a machine that would make a gun stock, always before
that time regarded an impossible task, its every part being so irregular
in form, he secluded himself in his workshop for six months, and after
constant labour and experiments he at the end of that time had produced
a machine that more than astonished the entire world, and which worked a
revolution in the making of all irregular forms from wood. This was in
1819. This machine would not only make a perfect gun-stock, but shoe
lasts, and ships' tackle-blocks, axe-handles, and a multitude of
irregular-shaped blocks which before had always required the most expert
hand operatives to produce. This machine became the subject of
parliamentary inquiry on the part of England, and so great were the
doubts concerning it, that successive commissions were appointed to
examine and report upon it. Finally the English government ordered eight
or ten of such machines for the making of gun-stocks for its army, and
paid Blanchard about $40,000 for them. He was once jestingly asked at
the navy department at Washington if he could turn a seventy-four? He at
once replied, "Yes, if you will furnish me the block." Of course
infringers appeared, but he maintained his rights and title as first and
original inventor after the most searching trials in court.
The generic idea of Blanchard's lathe for turning irregular forms
consists in the use of a pattern of the device which is to be shaped
from the rough material, placing such pattern in a lathe, alongside of
the rough block, and having a guide wheel which has an arm having
cutters, and which guide follows all the lines of the pattern, and which
cutters, extending to the rough material, chip it away to the depth and
in the direction imparted by the pattern lines to the guide, thus
producing from the rough block a perfect representation of the pattern.
In the midst of his studies in the construction of his inventions
Blanchard's attention was drawn to the operations of a boring worm upon
an old oak log. Closely examining and watching the same by the aid of a
microscope, he gained valuable ideas from the work of his humble
teacher, which he incorporated into his new cutting and boring machines.
His series of machines in gun-making were designed to make and shape
automatically every part of the gun, whether of wood or metal. His
machines, and subsequent improvements by others, for boring, mortising
and turning, display wonderful ingenuity. A modern mortising machine,
for instance, is adapted to quickly and accurately cut a square or
oblong hole to any desired depth, width, and length by cutting blades;
to automatically reciprocate the cutters both vertically and
horizontally in order to cut the mortise, both as to length and depth,
at one time, and to automatically withdraw the cutters when they have
finished cutting the mortise. They are provided with simple means for
setting and feeding the cutters to do this work, and while giving the
cutters a positive action, ample clearance is provided for the removal
of the chips as fast as they are cut.
From what such inventions will produce in the way of complicated and
ornamental workmanship we may conclude that it is a law of invention
that whatever can be made by hand may be made by a machine, and made
better.
_Carving Machines_ made their appearance early in the century. In 1800 a
Mr. Watt of London produced one, on which he carved medallions and
figures in ivory and ebony. Also subsequently, John Hawkins of the same
city, and a Mr. Cheverton, invented machines for the same purpose.
Another Englishman, Braithwaite, in 1840, invented a most attractive
carving process in which, instead of cutting tools, he employed
_burning_ as his agent. Heated casts of previously carved models were
pressed into or on to wet wood, and the charcoal surfaces then brushed
off with hard brushes.
After Blanchard's turning-lathes and boring apparatus, appeared machines
in which a series of cutters were employed, guided by a tracing lever
attached to a carved model, and actuating the cutter to reproduce on
material placed upon an adjusting table a copy of the model.
Machines have been invented which consist of hard iron or steel rollers
on the surface of which are cut beautiful patterns, and between which
wood previously softened by steam is passed, and designs thus impressed
thereon. A similar process of embossing, was devised in Paris and called
Xyloplasty, by which steam-softened wood is compressed in carved moulds,
which give it bas-relief impressions.
But in the carving of wood by hand, a beautiful art, which has been
revived within the past generation, there are touches of sentiment,
taste and human toil, which, like the touches of the painter and the
master of music, appeal to cultivated minds in a higher than mechanical
sense. The mills of the modern gods, the inventors, grind with exceeding
and exact fineness, but the work of a human hand upon a manufactured
article still appeals to human sympathy.
The bending of wood when heated by fire or steam had been known and
practised to a limited extent, but Blanchard invented a _clamping
machine_, to which improvements have been added, and by which ship
timbers, furniture, ploughs, piano frames, carriage bows, stair and
house banisters and balusters, wheel rims, staves, etc., etc., are bent
to the desired forms, and without breaking. Bending to a certain extent
does not weaken wood, but stretching the same has been found to impair
and destroy its strength.
The principal problems which the inventors of the century have solved in
the class of wood-working have been the adaptation to rapid-working
machinery of the saw and other blades, to sever; the plane to smooth,
the auger, the bit and the gimlet to bore, the hammer to drive, and a
combination of all or a part of these to shape and finish the completed
article.
It was a great step from the reciprocating hand saw, worked painfully by
one or two men, to the band saw, invented by a London mechanic, William
Newbury, in 1808. This was an endless steel belt serrated on one edge,
mounted on pulleys, and driven continuously by the power of steam
through the hardest and the heaviest work. Pliable, to conform to the
faces of the wheels over which it is carried, it will bend with all the
sinuosities of long timber, no time is lost in its operation, and no
labour of human hands is necessary to guide it or the object on which it
works.
At the Vienna Exposition in 1873, the first mammoth saw of this
description was exhibited. The saw itself was made by the celebrated
firm of Perin & Co., of Paris, upon machinery the drawings of which were
made by Mr. Van Pelt of New York, and constructed by Richards, Loudon
and Kelly of Philadelphia. The saw was fifty-five feet long, and sawed
planks from a pine log three feet thick, at the rate of sixty
superficial feet per minute. The difficulty of securing a perfectly
reliable weld in the endless steel band was overcome by M. Perin, who
received at the Paris Exhibition in 1867 the Grand Cross of the Legion
of Honour. Now gangs of such saws may be found in America and elsewhere,
and circular saws have also been added. Saws that both cut, form, and
_plane_ the boards at the same time are now known.
_Boring tools_, both for hand and machinery, demanded improvement.
Formerly augers and similar boring tools had merely a curved sharpened
end and a concavity to hold the chips, and the whole tool had to be
withdrawn to empty the chips. It was known as a _pod_ auger. In 1809,
L'Hommedieu, a Frenchman, invented an auger with two pods and cutting
lips, a central screw and a twisted shank. About the same time Lilley of
Connecticut made a twisted auger, and these screw-form, twisted, cutting
tools of various kinds, with their cutting lips, and by which the
shavings or chips were withdrawn continuously from the hole as the
cutting proceeded, became so improved in the United States that they
were known as the American augers and bits. The planing machines of
General Bentham were improved by Bramah, and he and Maudsley also
greatly improved other wood-working machines and tools in
England--1802-1810.
We have before, in the chapter on metal-working, shown the importance of
the _slide-rest_, _planer_ and _lathe_, _when combined_, and which also
are extensively adapted to wood-working. In Bramah's machine, a vertical
spindle carried at its lower extremity a horizontal wheel having
twenty-eight cutter blades, followed by a plane also attached to a
wheel. A board was by these means perfectly trimmed and smoothed from
end to end, as it was carried against the cutters by suitable moving
means. William Woodworth of New York, in 1828, patented a celebrated
planing machine which became so popular and its use was regarded so
necessary in the wood-working trades, that the patent was looked upon as
an odious monopoly. It consisted of a combination of rollers armed with
cutters, attached to a horizontal shaft revolving at a great speed, and
of means for feeding the boards to the cutters. With Bentham's,
Bramah's, Blanchard's, and Woodworth's ideas for a basis, those
innumerable improvements have been made in machinery, by which wood is
converted with almost lightning rapidity into all the forms in which we
see it, whether ornamental or useful, in modern homes and other
structures.
Some machines are known as "Universal Wood Workers." In these a single
machine is provided with various tools, and adapted to perform a great
variety of work by shifting the position of the material and the tools.
The following operations can be performed on such a machine:--Planing,
bevelling, tapering, tenoning, tongueing and grooving (grooves straight,
circular or angular), making of joints, twisting and a number of other
operations.
The later invention by Stow of Philadelphia of a _flexible_ shaft, made
up of a series of coils of steel wire, given a leather covering, and to
which can be attached augers, bits, or metal drills, the tool applied to
its work from any direction, and its direction varied while at work, has
excited great attention.
_Shingles_ are as old in the art as the framework of buildings. Rome was
roofed with shingles for centuries, made of oak or pine.
Tiles, plain and fancy, and slates, have to a certain extent superseded
wood shingling, but the wood will always be used where it can be found
in plenty, as machines will now turn them out complete faster than they
can be hauled away. A shingle is a thin piece of wood, thicker at one
end than at the other, having parallel sides, about three times as long
as it is wide, having generally smooth surfaces and edges. All these
features are now given to the shingle by modern machines.
A great log is rolled into a mill at one end and soon comes out at the
other in bundles of shingles; the logs sawed into blocks, the blocks
split or sawed again into shingle sizes, tapered, planed in the
direction of the grain of the wood, the complete shingles collected and
bound in bundles, each operation by a special machine, or by a series of
mechanisms.
_Veneering_, that art of covering cheap or ordinary wood with a thin
covering of more ornamental and valuable wood, known from the days of
the Egyptians, has been vastly extended by modern machinery. The
practice, however, so emphatically denounced centuries ago by Pliny, as
"the monstrous invention of paint and dyes applied to the woods or
veneers, to imitate other woods," has yet its practitioners and
admirers.
T. M. Brunel, in 1805-1808, devised a set of circular saws run by a
steam engine, which cut sheets of rosewood and mahogany, one-fourteenth
of an inch thick, with great speed and accuracy. Since that day the
veneer planing machine, for delicately smoothing the sheets, the
straightening machine, for straightening scrolls that have been cut from
logs, the polishing machines for giving the sheets their bright and
glossy appearance, the pressing machine for applying them to the
surfaces to which they are to be attached, the hammering machine for
forcing out superfluous glue from between a veneer and the piece to
which it is applied; all of these and numerous modifications of the same
have been invented, and resulted in placing in the homes everywhere many
beautiful ornamental articles of furniture, which before the very rich
only could afford to have.
Special forms of machinery for making various articles of wood are about
as numerous as the articles themselves.
We appear before the house and know before entering that its doors and
sills, clapboards and window frames, its sashes and blinds, its
cornices, its embrasures and pillars, and shingles, each or all have had
a special machine invented for its manufacture. We enter the house and
find it is so with objects within--the flooring may be adorned with the
beautiful art of marquetry and parquetry, wood mosaic work, the
wainscoting and the frescoes and ceilings, the stairs and staircases,
its carved and ornamental supporting frames and balusters, the charming
mantel frames around the hospitable fireplaces, and every article of
furniture we see in which wood is a part. So, too, it is with every
useful wooden implement and article within and without the house,--the
trays, the buckets, the barrels, the tubs, the clothes-pins, the
broom-handles, the mops, the ironing and bread boards; and outside the
house, the fences, railings and posts--many of these objects entirely
unknown to the poor of former generations, uncommon with the rich, and
the machinery for making them unknown to all.
It was a noble array of woodwork and machinery with which the nations
surprised and greeted the world, at each of its notable international
Expositions during the century. Each occasion surpassed its predecessor
in the beauty of construction of the machines displayed and efficiency
of their work. The names of the members of this array were hard and
uncouth, such as the axe, the adze, and the bit, the auger, bark-cutting
and grinding machines, blind-slat boring, and tenoning, dovetail,
mortising, matching and planing, wood splitting, turning, wheeling and
planing, wood-bending, rim-boring dowelling, felly-jointing, etc., etc.
These names and the clamour of the machines were painful to the ear, but
to the thoughtful, they were converted into sweeter music, when
reflection brought to mind the hard toil of human hands they had saved,
the before unknown comforts and blessings of civilisation they had
brought and were bringing to the human race, and the enduring forms of
beauty they had produced.
To the invention of wood-working machinery we are also indebted for the
awakening of interest in the qualities of wood for a vast number of
artistic purposes. It was a revelation, at the great Philadelphia
Exposition of 1876, to behold the specimens of different woods from all
the forests of the earth, selected and assembled to display their
wonderful grain and other qualities, and showing how well nature was
storing up for us in its silent shades those growths which were waiting
the genius of invention to convert into forms of use and beauty for
every home.
CHAPTER XXII.
FURNITURE.
So far as machinery is concerned for converting wood into furniture, the
same has been anticipated in the previous chapter, but much remains to
be said about the articles of furniture themselves.
Although from ancient days the most ancient countries provided by hand
elaborate and beautiful articles of furniture of many descriptions, yet
it has been left for modern advances in machinery and kindred arts to
yield that universal supply of convenient and ornamental furniture which
now prevails.
The Egyptians used chairs and tables of a more modern form than the
Greeks or Romans, who lolled about on couches even at their meals; but
the Egyptians did not have the convenient section tables built in
sliding sections, which permit the table to be enlarged to accommodate
an increased number of guests. And now recently this modern form of
table has been improved, by arranging the sections and leaves so that
when the sections are slid out the leaves are automatically raised and
placed in position, which is done either by lazy-tongs mechanism, or by
a series of parallel links: Tables constructed with folding detachable
and adjustable legs, tables constructed for special purposes as sewing
machines, and typewriting machine tables, by which the machine head may
be dropped beneath the table top when not in use; tables combined with
desks wherein the table part may be slid into the desk part when not in
use and the sliding cover pulled down to cover and lock from sight both
the table and desk; surgical tables, adapted to be raised or lowered at
either end or at either side and to be extended; "knock down" tables,
adapted to be taken all apart for shipment or storage; tables combined
with chairs to be folded down by the side of the chair when not in use;
and many other useful forms have been added to the list.
Much ingenuity has been displayed in the construction of desks, to save
and economise space. Mention has been made of a combined folding desk
and extensible table. Another form is an arrangement of desk drawers,
whereby when one drawer is locked or unlocked all the rest are locked or
unlocked automatically. Whatever shape or function anyone desires in a
desk may be met, except, perhaps, the performance of the actual work of
the occupant.
In the matter of _beds_, the principal developments have been due to the
advancement of wood-working machinery, and the manufacture of iron,
steel, and brass. The old-fashioned ponderous bedsteads, put together by
heavy screws, have given way to those mortised and tenoned, joined and
matched, and by which they can easily be put up and taken down; and to
iron and brass bedsteads, which are both ornamental and more healthful.
No bed may be without an inexpensive steel spring frame or mattress for
the support of the bedding. Folding beds made to economise space, and
when folded upright become an ornamental bureau; and invalid bedsteads,
designed for shifting the position of the invalid, are among the many
modern improvements.
_Kitchen Utensils._--A vast amount of drudgery in the kitchen has been
relieved by the convenient inventions in labor-saving appliances: coffee
and spice mills, can-openers, stationary washtubs, stopper extractors,
superseding the old style of hand-corkscrews where large numbers of
bottles are to be uncorked; refrigerators and provision safes, attaching
and lifting devices and convenient culinary dishes and utensils of great
variety.
_Curtains_, _shades_ and _screens_ have been wonderfully improved and
their use made widely possible by modern inventions and new adaptation
of old methods. Wood, cotton, silk, paper, combined or uncombined with
other materials, in many novel ways unknown to our ancestors, have
rendered these articles available in thousands of homes where their use
was unknown and impossible a century ago. Among the most convenient
attachments to shades is the spring roller, invented by Hartshorn of
America, in 1864, whereby the shade is automatically rolled upon its
stick to raise or lower it.
Window screens for the purpose of excluding flies, mosquitoes, and other
insects, while freely admitting the air, are now made extensible and
adjustable in different ways to fit different sizes of windows. Curtains
and shades are provided with neat and most attractive supporting rods,
to which they are attached by brass or wooden rings, and provided with
easily manipulated devices to raise and securely hold them in any
desired position.
The art of steaming wood and bending it, by iron pattern forms
adjustable to the forms desired, as particularly devised in principle by
Blanchard in America in 1828-1840, referred to in Wood-working, has
produced great changes in the art of furniture making, especially in
chairs. A particularly interesting illustration of the results of this
art occurred in Austria. About forty years ago the manufacture in
Germany and Austria of furniture by machinery, especially of bent
wood-ware, became well established there; and by the time of the Vienna
Exposition in 1873, factories on a most extensive scale for the
construction of bed furniture were in operation among the vast mountain
beech forests of Moravia and Hungary. The greatest of these works were
located in Great Urgroez, Hungary, and Bisritz, Moravia, with twenty or
more auxiliary establishments. Between five and six thousand work people
were employed, the greater part of whom were females, and it was
necessary to use steam and water motors, to the extent of many hundred
horse power.
The forests were felled, and the tree-tops removed and made into
charcoal for use in the glass works of Bohemia. The trunks were hauled
to the mills and sawed into planks of suitable thickness by gang-saws.
The planks in turn were cut with circular saws into square pieces for
turning, and then the pieces turned and cut on lathes, to give them the
size required and the rounded shape; the pieces then steamed while in
their green state for twenty-four hours in suitable boilers, then taken
out and bent to the desired shape on a cast-iron frame by hand, then
subjected, with the desired pattern, to the pattern-turning table, and
cut; then kept locked in the pattern's iron embrace until the pieces
were dried and permanently set in shape, then clamped to a bench, filed,
rasped, stained, and French polished by the deft hands of the women;
then assembled in proper position in frames of the form of the chair or
other article to be made, their contact surface sawed to fit at the
joints, and then finally the parts glued together and further secured by
the addition of a few screws or balls.
Chairs, lounges and lighter furniture were thus made from bent pieces of
wood with very few joints, having a neat and attractive appearance, and
possessing great strength. The art has spread to other forests and other
countries, and the turned, bent, highly polished and beautiful furniture
of this generation would have been but a dream of beauty to the
householder of a century ago.
Children's chairs are made so that the seat may be raised or lowered, or
the chair converted into a perambulator. Dentist's chairs have been
developed until it is only necessary for the operator to turn a valve
governing a fluid, generally oil, under pressure to raise or lower the
chair and the patient. In the more agreeable situation at the theatre or
concert one may hang his hat on the bottom of the chair, upturned to
afford access to it through a crowded row, and turning down the chair,
sit with pleasure, as the curtain is rolled up by compressed air, or
electricity, at the touch of a button.
To the unthinking and unobserving, the subject of _bottle stoppers_ is
not entrancing, but those acquainted with the art know with what long,
continuous, earnest efforts, thousands of inventors have sought for the
best and cheapest bottle stopper to take the place of corks--the
enormous demand for which was exhausting the supply and rendering their
price almost prohibitive.
One of the most successful types is a stopper of rubber combined with a
metal disk, and hung by a wire on the neck of the bottle, so that the
stopper can be used over and over again; another form composed of glass,
or porcelain, and cork; another is a thin disk of cork placed in a thin
metal cap which is crimped over a shoulder on the neck of the bottle,
and still another is a thin disk of pasteboard adapted for milk bottles
and pressed tightly within a rim on the inside of the neck of the
bottle.
In this connection should be mentioned that self-sealing fruit jar,
known from its inventor as "Mason's fruit jar," which came into such
universal use--that combination of screw cap, screw-threaded jar-neck
and the rubber ring, or gasket, on which the cap was screwed so tightly
as to seal the jar hermetically.
In lamplighting, what a wonderful change from the old oil lamps of
former ages! The modern lamp may be said to be an improved means of
grace, as it will hold out much longer, and shed a far more attractive
light for the sinner, whose return, by its genial light, is, even to the
end, so greatly desired.
The discovery of petroleum and its introduction as a light produced a
revolution in the construction of lamps. Wicks were not discarded, but
changed in shape from round to flat, and owing to the coarseness and
disagreeable odour of coal oil, especially in its early unrefined days,
devices first had for their object the easy feeding of the wick, and
perfect combustion. To this end the burner portion through which the
wick passed was perforated at its base to create a proper draft, and
later the cap over the base was also perforated. But with refined oil
the disagreeable odour continued. It was found that this was mainly due
to the fact that both in lamps and stoves the oil would ooze out of the
wick on to the adjacent parts of the lamps or stove, and when the wick
was lit the heat would burn or heat the oil and thus produce the odour.
Inventors therefore contrived to separate the oil reservoir and wick
part when the lamp or stove were not in use; and finally, in stoves, to
dispense with the wick altogether. As wickless oil stoves are now in
successful use the wickless lamp may be expected to follow.
The lamp, however, that throws all others into the shade is that
odourless, heatless, magic, mellow, tempered light of electricity, that
springs out from the little filament, in its hermetically sealed glass
cage, and shines with unsurpassed loveliness on all those fortunate
enough to possess it.
CHAPTER XXIII.
LEATHER.
It is interesting to speculate how prehistoric man came to use the skin
of the beasts of the field for warmth and shelter. Originally no doubt,
and for untold centuries, the use was confined to the hairy, undressed,
fresh, or dried skins, known as pelts. Then came the use of better
tools. The garments have perished, but the tools of stone and of bronze
survived, which, when compared with those employed among the earliest
historic tribes of men, were found to be adapted to cut and strip the
hairy covering from the bodies of animals, and clean, pound, scrape and
otherwise adapt them to use.
And ever since the story of man began to be preserved in lasting records
from farthest Oriental to the northernmost limits of Europe and America,
memorials of the early implements of labour in the preparation of hides
for human wear have been found. The aborigines knew how to sharpen bones
of the animals they killed to scrape, clean, soften or roughen their
skins. They knew how to sweat, dry, and smoke the skins, and this crude
seasoning process was the forerunner of modern tanning. But leather as
we know it now, that soft, flexible, insoluble combination of the
gelatine and fibrine of the skin with tannic acid, producing a durable
and imputrescible article, that will withstand decay from the joint
attack of moisture, warmth and air, was unknown to the earlier races of
men, for its production was due to thorough tanning, and thorough
tanning was a later art.
When men were skin-dressed animals they knew little or nothing of
tanning. Tannic acid is found in nearly every plant that grows, and its
combination with the fresh skins spread or thrown thereon, may have
given rise to the observation of the beneficial result and subsequent
practice. But whether discovered by chance, accident or experience, or
invented from necessity, the art of tanning should have rendered the
name of the discoverer immortal. The earliest records, however, describe
the art, but not the inventor.
From the time the Hebrews covered the altars of their tabernacles with
rams' skins dyed red, as recorded in Exodus; when they and the Egyptians
worked their leather, currying and stretching it with their knives,
awls, stones, and other implements, making leather water buckets,
resembling very much those now made by machinery, covering their harps
and shields with leather, ornamental and embossed; from the days of the
early Africans, famous for their yellow, red and black morocco; from the
days of the old national dress of the Persians with their leather
trousers, aprons, helmets, belts and shirts; from the time that the
ancient Scythians utilised the skins of their enemies, and Herodotus
described the beauty and other good qualities of the human hide; from
the early days of that peculiar fine and agreeable leather of the
Russians, fragrant with the oil of the birch; from the days of the white
leather of the Hungarians, the olive-tanned leather of the Saracens;
from the time of the celebrated Cordovan leather of the Spaniards; from
the ancient cold periods of the Esquimaux and the Scandinavians, who,
clad in the warm skins of the Arctic bears, stretched tough-tanned
sealskin over the frame work of their boats; from the time of the
introduction of the art of the leather worker to the naked Briton, down
to almost the nineteenth century, substantially the same hand tools,
hard hand labour, and the old elbow lubricant were known and practised.
Hand tools have improved, of course, as other arts in wood and iron
making have developed, but the operations are about the same. There were
and must be fleshing knives to scrape from off the hide the adherent
flesh and lime,--for this the hide is placed over the convex edge of an
inclined beam and the work is called beaming; the curriers' knife for
removing the hair; skiving, or the cutting off the rough edges and
fleshy parts on the border of the hide; shaving and flattening; the
cutting away of the inequalities left after skiving; _stoning_, the
rubbing of the leather by a scouring stone to render it smooth;
_slicking_, to remove the water and grease; or to smooth and polish, by
a rectangular sharpened stone, steel or glass tool; _whitening_, to
shave off thin strips of the flesh, leaving the leather thinner, whiter
and more pliable; _stuffing_, to soften the scraped and pounded hides
and make them porous; _graining_, the giving to the hair or grain side a
granular appearance by rubbing with a grooved or roughened piece of
wood; _bruising_ or boarding to make the leather supple and pliable by
bringing the two flesh sides together and rubbing with a graining board;
_scouring_, by aid of a stream of water to whiten the leather by rubbing
with a slicking stone or steel.
The inventions of the century consist in labour-saving machinery for
these purposes, new tanning and dressing processes, and innumerable
machines for making special articles of leather.
As before stated, the epoch of modern machinery commenced with the
practical application of water power to other than grinding mills, and
of steam in place of water, contemporaneously with the invention of
spinning and weaving machinery in the last half of the eighteenth
century. These got fairly to work at the beginning of the century, and
the uses of machinery spread to the treatment of leather. John Bull was
the appropriate name of the man who first patented a scraping machine in
England, about 1780, and Joseph Weeks the next one, some years later.
One of the earliest machines of the century was the hide mill, which,
after the hand tools had scraped and stoned, shaved and hardened the
hides, was used to rub and dub them, and soften and swell them for
tanning. Pegged rollers were the earliest form for this purpose, and
later corrugated rollers and power-worked hammers were employed.
Hundreds of hides could be softened daily by these means.
Then came ingenious machines to take the place of the previous
operations of the hand tools,--the fleshing machine, in one form of
which the hides are placed on a curved bed, and the fleshy parts scraped
off or removed by revolving glass blades, or by curved teeth of steel
and wood in a roller under which a table is given a to-and-fro movement;
tanning apparatus of a great variety, by which hides, after they are
thoroughly washed and softened, and the pores opened by swelling, are
subjected to movements in the tanning liquor vats, such as rocking or
oscillating, rotary, or vertical; or treated by an air exhaust, known as
the vacuum process; in all of which the object is to thoroughly
impregnate in the shortest time all the interstices and pores of the
skin with the tannic acid, by which the fibrous and gelatinous matter is
made to combine to form leather, and by which process, also, the hide is
greatly increased in weight.
Reel machines are then employed to transfer the hides from one vat to
another, thus subjecting them to liquors of increasing strength. Soaking
in vats formerly occupied twelve or eighteen months, but under the new
methods the time has been greatly reduced. And now since 1880, the
chemists are pushing aside the vegetable processes, and substituting
mineral processes, by which tanning is still further shortened and
cheapened. The new processes depend chiefly on the use of chromium
compounds.
Then came scouring machines, in which a rapidly revolving stiff brush is
used to scour the grain or hair side, removing the superfluous colouring
matter, called the bloom, and softening and cleansing the hide; the
slicking or polishing machines to clean, stretch and smooth the leather
by glass, stone, or copper blades on a rapidly-moving belt carried over
pulleys; whitening, buffing, skiving, fleshing and shaving machines, all
for cutting off certain portions and inequalities of the leather, and
reducing its thickness.
In one form of this class of machines an oscillating pendulum lever is
employed, carrying at its end a revolving cylinder having thirty or more
spiral blades. The pendulum swings to and fro at the rate of ninety
movements a minute, while the cylinder rolls over the leather at the
rate of 2780 revolutions per minute. Scarfing, skiving, chamfering,
bevelling, feather-edging, appear to be synonymous terms for a variety
of machines for cutting the edges of leather obliquely, for the purpose
chiefly of making lap seams, scarf-joints, and reducing the thickness
and stiffness of leather at those and certain other points.
Then there are leather-splitting machines, consisting of one or more
rollers and a pressure bar, which draw and press the leather against a
horizontally arranged and adjustable knife, which nicely splits the
leather in two parts, and thus doubles the quantity. This thin split
leather is much used in making a cheap quality of boots and shoes and
other articles.
There are also corrugating, creasing, fluting, pebbling, piercing and
punching machines; machines for grinding the bark and also for grinding
the leather; machines for gluing sections of leather together, and
machines for sewing them; machines for rounding flat strips of leather,
for the making of whips and tubes; machines for scalloping the edges;
and a very ingenious machine for assorting leather strips or strings
according to their size or thickness.
The most important improvements of the century in leather working relate
to the manufacture of boots and shoes. It could well be said of boots
and shoes, especially those made for the great mass of humanity, before
the modern improvements in means and processes had been invented: "Their
feet through faithless leather met the dirt."
It is true that in the eighteenth century, both in Europe and America,
the art of leather and boot and shoe making had so far advanced that
good durable foot wear was produced by long and tedious processes of
tanning, and by careful making up of the leather into boots and shoes by
hand; the knife, the awl, the waxed thread, the nails and hammer and
other hand tools of the character above referred to being employed. But
the process was a tedious and costly one and the articles produced were
beyond the limits of the poor man's purse. Hence the wooden shoes, and
those made of coarse hide and dressed and undressed skins, and of coarse
cloth, mixed or unmixed with leather.
In 1809, David Mead Randolph of England patented machinery for riveting
soles and heels to the uppers instead of sewing them together.
The celebrated civil engineer, Isambard M. Brunel, shortly thereafter
added several machines of his own invention to Randolph's method, and he
established a large manufactory for the making chiefly of army shoes.
The various separate processes performed by his machines involved the
cutting out of the leather, hardening it by rolling, securing the welt
on to the inner sole by small nails, and studding the outer sole with
larger nails. Divisions of men were employed to work each separate step,
and the shoes were passed from one process to another until complete.
Large quantities of shoes were made at reduced prices, but complaints
were made as to the nails penetrating into the shoe and hurting the
feet. The demand for army shoes fell off, and the system was abandoned;
but it had incited invention in the direction of machine-made shoes and
the day of exclusive hand labour was doomed.
About 1818 Joseph Walker of Hopkinston, Massachusetts invented the
wooden peg. Making and applying pegs by hand was too slow work, and
machines were at once contrived for making them. As one invention
necessitates and begets others, so special forms of machines for sawing
and working up wood into pegs were devised.
Such machinery was for first sawing the selected log of wood into slices
across the grain a little thicker than the length of a peg and cutting
out knots in the wood; then planing the head of the block smooth;
grooving the block with a V-shaped cutting tool; splitting the pegs
apart, and then bleaching, drying, polishing and winnowing them.
It took forty or fifty years to perfect these and kindred machines, but
at the end of that time there was a factory at Burlington, Vermont,
which from four cords of wood, made every day four hundred bushels of
shoe pegs.
About 1858 B. F. Sturtevant of Massachusetts made a great improvement in
this line. He was a very poor man, getting a living by pegging on the
soles of a few pair of shoes each day. He devised a pegging machine, and
out of his scanty earnings and at odd hours, with much pain and labour,
and by borrowing money, he finally completed it. The machine made what
was called "peg wood," a long ribbon strip of seasoned wood, sharpened
on one edge and designed to be fed into the machine for pegging shoes.
The shoes were punctured by awls driven by machinery, and then as the
peg strip was carried to it the machine severed the strip into
chisel-edged pegs, and peg-driving mechanism drove them into the holes.
Nine hundred pegs a minute were driven. It soon almost supplanted all
other peg-driving machines, and after the machines were quite generally
introduced, there were made in one year alone in New England fifty-five
million pairs of boots and shoes pegged by the Sturtevant machines.
Other forms of pegs followed, such as the metal screw pegs, and machines
to cut them off from a continuous spiral wire from which they were made.
Lasts on which the shoes were made had been manufactured by the hundred
thousand on the wood-turning lathes invented by Blanchard, described in
the chapter on Wood-Working.
In 1858 also, about the same time the Sturtevant pegging machine was
introduced, the shoe-sewing machine was developed. The McKay Shoe-Sewing
Machine Co. of Massachusetts after an expenditure of $130,000, and three
years' time in experiments, were enabled to put their machines in
practical operation. The pegging machines and sewing machines worked a
revolution in shoemaking.
A revolution in the art of shoemaking thus started was followed up by
wondrous machines invented to meet every part of the manufacture.
Lasting machines for drawing and fitting the leather over lasts, in
which the outer edges of the leather are drawn over the bottom of the
last and tacked thereto by the hands and fingers of the machine instead
of those of the human hand, were invented.
_Indenting machines_:--The welt is known as that strip of leather around
the shoe between the upper and the sole, and machines were invented for
cutting and placing this, indenting it for the purpose of rendering it
flexible and separating the stitches, all a work until recently entirely
done by hand. Machines for twining the seams in the uppers, and forming
the scallops; machines especially adapted to the making of the heel, as
heel trimming and compressing, rounding and polishing, and for nailing
the finished heel to the boot or shoe; machines for treating the sole in
every way, rolling it, in place of the good old way of pounding it on a
lap stone; trimming, rounding, smoothing, and polishing it; machines for
cutting out gores; machines for marking the uppers so that at one
operation every shoe will be stamped by its size, number, name of
manufacture, number of case, and any other convenient symbols; machines
for setting the buttons and eyelets; all these are simply members in the
long line of inventions in this art.
The old style of boot has given way to the modern shoe and gaiter, but
for the benefit of those who still wear them, special machines for
shaping the leg, called boot trees, have been contrived.
So far had the art advanced that twenty years ago one workingman with
much of this improved machinery combined in one machine called the
"bootmaker," could make three hundred pairs of boots or shoes a day.
Upward of three thousand such machines were then at work throughout the
world; and one hundred and fifty million pairs of boots were then being
made annually thereon. Now the number of machines and pairs of boots and
shoes has been quadrupled.
And the world is having its feet clothed far more extensively, better
and at less cost than was ever possible by the hand system. The number
of workers in the art, both men and women, has vastly increased instead
of being diminished, while their wages have greatly advanced over the
old rates.
As an illustration of how rapidly modern enterprise and invention
proceeds in Yankeeland, it has been related that some years ago in
Massachusetts, after many of these shoe-making machines had got into
use, a factory which was turning out 2400 pairs of shoes every day was
completely destroyed by fire on a Wednesday night. On Thursday the
manufacturer hired a neighbouring building and set carpenters at work
fitting it up. On Friday he ordered a new and complete outfit of
machinery from Boston; on Saturday the machinery arrived and the men set
it up; on Monday work was started, and on Tuesday the manufacturer was
filling his orders to the full number of 2400 pairs a day.
There are very many people in the world who still prefer the hand-made
shoe, and there is nothing to prevent the world generally from going
back to that system if they choose; but St. Crispin's gentle art has
blossomed into a vaster field of blessings for mankind under the
fruitful impetus of invention than if left to vegetate under the simple
processes of primitive man.
Horses, no less than man, have shared in the improvement in leather
manufacture. The harnesses of the farmer's and labouring man's horses a
century ago, when they were fortunate enough to own horses, were of the
crudest description. Ropes, cords, coarse bands of leather were the
common provisions. Now the strength and cheapness of harnesses enable
the poor man to equip his horse with a working suit impossible to have
been produced a hundred years ago.
To the beautiful effects produced by the use of modern embossing
machines on paper and wood have been added many charming patterns in
_embossed_ leather. Books and leather cases, saddlery and household
ornamentation of various descriptions have been either moulded into
forms of beauty, or stamped or rolled by cameo and intaglio designs cut
into the surface of fast-moving cylinders.
The leather manufactures have become so vastly important and valuable in
some countries, especially in the United States--second, almost to
agricultural products--that it would be very interesting to extend the
description to many processes and machines, and to facts displaying the
enormous traffic in leather, now necessarily omitted for want of space.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MINERALS--WELLS.
Dost thou hear the hammer of Thor,
Wielded in his gloves of iron?
As with leather, so with stone, the hand tools and hard labour have not
changed in principle since the ancient days. The hammer for breaking,
the lever for lifting, the saw for cutting, rubbing-stones and irons for
smoothing and polishing, sand and water for the same purpose, the mallet
and chisel, and other implements for ornamenting, the square, the level,
and the plumb for their respective purposes, all are as old as the art
of building.
And as for buildings and sculpture of stone and marble made by hand
tools, we have yet to excel the pyramids, the Parthenon of Athens, which
"Earth proudly wears as the best gem upon her zone," the palaces,
coliseums, and aqueducts of Rome, the grand and polished tombs of India,
the exquisite halls of the Alhambra, and the Gothic cathedrals.
But the time came when human blood and toil became too dear to be the
possession solely of the rulers and the wealthy, and to be used alone to
perpetuate and commemorate riches, power and glory.
Close on the expansion of men's minds came the expansion of steam and
the development of modern inventions. The first application of the steam
engine in fields of human labour was the drawing of water from the coal
mines of England; then in drawing the coal itself.
It was only a step for the steam engine into a new field of labour when
General Bentham introduced his system of wood-sawing machinery in 1800;
and from sawing wood to sawing stone was only one more step. We find
that taken in 1803 in Pennsylvania, when Oliver Evans of Philadelphia
drove with a high-pressure steam engine, "twelve saws in heavy frames,
sawing at the rate of one hundred feet of marble in twelve hours." How
long would it have taken hand sawyers of marble at ancient Paros and
Naxos to have done the same?
_Stone-cutting_ machines of other forms than sawing then followed.
It was desired to divide large blocks generally at the quarries to
facilitate transportation. Machines for this purpose are called
stone-channelling machines. They consist of a gang of chisels bound
together and set on a framework which travels on a track adjacent to the
stone to be cut, and so arranged that the cutters may be set to the
stone at desired angles, moved automatically forward and back in the
grooves they are cutting, be fed in or out, raised or lowered, detached,
and otherwise manipulated in the operation.
Other stone-cutting machines had for their objects the cutting and
moulding the edges of tables, mantels and slabs; and the cutting of
circular and other curved work. In the later style of machine the cutter
fixed on the end of a spindle is guided in the desired directions on the
surface of the stone by a pointer, which, attached to the cutter
spindle, moves in the grooves of a pattern also connected to the
rotating support carrying the cutter.
Other forms of most ingenious stone-dressing and carving machines have
been devised for cutting mouldings, and ornamental figures and devices,
in accordance with a model or pattern fixed to the under side of the
table which carries the stone or marble to be dressed; and in which, by
means of a guide moving in the pattern, the diamond cutter or cutters,
carried in a circular frame above the work and adjusted to its surface,
are moved in the varying directions determined by the pattern. A stream
of water is directed on the stone to clear it of the dust during the
operations. The carving of stone by machinery is now a sister branch of
wood carving. Monuments, ornamentation, and intricate forms of figures
and characters are wrought with great accuracy by cutting and dressing
tools guided by the patterns, or directed by the hand of the operator.
For the dressing of the faces of grindstones, special forms of cutting
machines have been devised.
It was a slow and tedious task to drill holes through stone by hand
tools; and it was indeed a revolution in this branch of the art when
steam engines were employed to rotate a rod armed at its end with
diamond or other cutters against the hardest stone. This mode of
drilling also effected a revolution in the art of blasting. Then,
neither height, nor depth, nor thickness of the stone could prevent the
progress of the drill rod. Tunnels through mountain walls, and wells
through solid quartz are cut to the depth of thousands of feet.
One instance is related of the wonderful efficiency on a smaller scale
of such a machine: The immense columns of the State Capitol at Columbus,
Ohio, were considered too heavy for the foundation on which they rested.
The American Diamond Rock Boring Company of Providence, Rhode Island,
bored out a twenty-four inch core from each of the great pillars, and
thus relieved the danger.
In the most economical and successful stone drills _compressed air_ is
employed as the motive power to drive the drills, which may be used
singly or in gangs, and which may be adjusted against the rock or quarry
in any direction. When in position and ready for work a few moments will
suffice to bore the holes, apply the explosive and blast the ledge. The
cleaning away of submarine ledges in harbours, such as the great work at
Hell Gate in the harbour of New York, has thus been effected.
_Crushing_:--Among the most useful inventions relating to stone working
are machines for crushing stones and ores, and assorting them. The old
way of hammering by hand was first succeeded by powerful stamp hammers
worked by steam. Both methods of course are still followed, but they
demand too great an expenditure of force and time.
About a third of a century ago, Eli Whitney Blake of New Haven,
Connecticut, was a pioneer inventor of a new and most successful type of
stone breaking machine, which ever since has been known as the "Blake
Crusher." This crusher consists of two ponderous upright jaws, one fixed
and the other movable, between which the stones or ores to be crushed
are fed. Each of the jaws is lined with the hardest kind of chilled
steel. The movable jaw is inclined from its lower end from the fixed jaw
and at its upper end is pivoted to swing on a heavy round iron bar. The
movable jaw is forced toward the fixed jaw by two opposite toggle levers
set, in one form of the crusher, at their inner ends in steel bearings
of a vertical vibrating, rocking lever, one of the toggles bearing at
its outer end against the movable jaw and the outer toggle against a
solid frame-work. The rocking lever is operated through a crank by a
steam engine, and as it is vibrated, the toggle joint forces the lever
end of the movable jaw towards the fixed jaw with immense force,
breaking the hardest stone like an eggshell.
The setting of the movable jaw at an incline enables the large stone to
be first cracked, the movable jaw then opens, and as the stone falls
lower between the more contracted jaws, it is broken finer, until it is
finally crushed or pulverized and falls through at the bottom. The
movable jaw is adjustable and can be set to crush stones to a certain
size.
As the rock drill made a revolution in blasting and tunnelling, so the
Blake crusher revolutionised the art of road making. "Road metal," as
the supply of broken stones for roads is now called, is the fruit of the
crusher. Hundreds of tons of stone per day can be crushed to just the
size desired, and the machine may be moved from place to place where
most convenient to use.
Other crushers have been invented, formed on the principle of abrasion.
The stones, or ore, fall between two great revolving disks, having
corrugated steel faces, which are set the desired distance apart, and
between which the stones are crushed by the rubbing action. In this
style of machine the principle of a gradual breaking from a coarse to a
finer grade, is maintained by setting the disks farther apart at the
centre where the stone enters, and nearer together at their peripheries
where the broken stone is discharged. Large smooth or corrugated
rollers, conical disks, concentric rollers armed with teeth of varying
sizes, and yet so arranged as to preserve the feature of the narrowing
throat at the bottom or place of discharge, have also been devised and
extensively used.
A long line of inventions has appeared especially adapted to break up
and separate coal into different sizes. To view the various monstrous
heaps of assorted coals at the mouth of a coal mine creates an
impression that some great witch had imposed on a poor victim the
gigantic and seemingly impossible task of breaking and assorting a vast
heap of coal into these separate piles within a certain time--a task
which also seems to have been miraculously and successfully performed
within such an exceedingly short time as to either satisfy or confuse
the presiding evil genius.
Modern civilisation has been developed mostly from steam and coal, and
they have been to each other as strong brothers, growing more and more
mutually dependent to meet the demands made upon them.
The mining of coal, and its subsequent treatment for burning, before the
invention of the steam engine, were long, painful, and laborious tasks,
and the steam engine could never have had its modern wants supplied if
its power had not been used to supplement, with a hundredfold increased
effect, the labour of human hands.
It being impracticable to carry steam or the steam engine to the bottom
of the mine for work there, compressed air is there employed, which is
compressed by a steam engine up at the mouth. By this compressed air
operated in a cylinder to drive a piston, and a connecting rod and a
pick, a massive steel pick attached to the rod may be driven in any
direction against the wall of coal at the rate of from ninety to one
hundred and twenty blows per minute; and at the same time the discharged
compressed, cold, pure, fresh air flows into and through the mine,
affording ventilation when and where most needed.
In addition to these great drills, more recent inventors have brought
out small machines for single operators, worked by the electric motor.
After the coal is lifted out, broken and assorted, it needs to be washed
free of the adhering dust and dirt; and for this purpose machines are
provided, as well as for screening, loading and weighing. The operations
of breaking, assorting and washing are often combined in one machine,
while an intermediate hand process for separating the pieces of slate
from the coal may be employed; but additional automatic means for
separating the coal and slate are provided, consisting in forcing with
great power water through the coal as it falls into a chamber, which
carries the lighter slate to the top of the chamber, where it is at once
drawn off.
The chief of machines with _ores_ is the _ore mill_, which not only
breaks up the ore but grinds or pulverises it.
Some chemical and other processes for reducing ores have been referred
to in the Chapter on Metallurgy.
Other mechanical processes consist of _separators_ of various
descriptions--a prominent one of which acts on the principal of
centrifugal force. The crushed material from a spout being led to the
centre of a rapidly rotating disk is thrown off by centrifugal force;
and as the lighter portions are thrown farther from the disk, and the
heavier portions nearer to the same, the material is automatically
assorted as to size and weight. As the disk revolves these assorted
portions fall through properly graded apertures into separate channels
of a circular trough, from whence they are swept out by brushes secured
to a support revolving with the disk.
Many forms of ore washing machines have been invented to treat the ore
after it has been reduced to powder. These are known by various names,
as jiggers, rifflers, concentrators, washing frames, etc. A stream of
water is directed on, into, and through the mass of pulverised ore and
dirt, the dirt and kindred materials, lighter than the ore, are raised
and floated towards the top of the receptacle and carried away, while
the ore settles.
This operation is frequently carried on in connection with amalgamated
surfaces over which the metal is passed to still further attract and
concentrate the ore. An endless apron travelling over cylinders is
sometimes employed, composed of slats the surface of each of which is
coated with an amalgam, and on this belt the powdered ore is spread
thinly and carried forward. The vibrations of the belt tend to shake and
distribute the ore particles, the amalgam attracts them, the refuse is
thrown off as the belt passes down over the cylinder, while the ore
particles are retained and brushed off into a proper receptacle.
_Amalgamators_ themselves form a large class of inventions. They are
known as electric, lead, mercury, plate, vacuum, vapour, etc.
By the help of these and a vast number of other kindred inventions, the
business of mining in all its branches has been revolutionised and
transformed, even within the last half century. With the vast increase
in the output of coal, and of ores, and the incalculable saving of hand
labour, the number of operators has been increased in the same
proportion, their wages increased, their hours of labour shortened, and
their comforts multiplied in variety and quantity, with a diminished
cost. The whole business of mining has been raised from ceaseless
darkness and drudgery to light and dignity. Opportunity has been created
for miners to become men of standing in the community in which they
live; and means provided for educating their children and for obtaining
comfortable homes adorned with the refinements of civilisation.
_Well boring_ is an ancient art--known to the Egyptians and the Chinese.
Wells were coeval with Abraham when his servant had the celebrated
interview with Rebecca. "Jacob's well at Sychar--the ancient
Shechim--has been visited by travellers in all ages and has been
minutely described. It is nine feet in diameter and one hundred and five
feet deep, made entirely through rock. When visited by Maundrel it
contained fifteen feet of water."--_Knight._ Some kind of a drill must
have been used to have cut so great a depth through rock. The Chinese
method of boring wells from time immemorial has been by the use of a
sharp chisel-like piece of hard iron on the end of a heavy iron and wood
frame weighing four or five hundred pounds, lifted by a lever and turned
by a rattan cord operated by hand, and by which wells from fifteen
hundred to eighteen hundred feet in depth and five or six inches in
diameter have been bored.
This method has lately been improved by attaching the chisel part, which
is made very heavy, to a rope of peculiar manufacture, which gives the
chisel a turn as it strikes, combined with an air pump to suck up from
the hole the accumulating dirt and water.
Artesian wells appear to have first been known in Europe in the province
of Artois, France, in the thirteenth century. Hence their name. The
previous state of the art in Egypt, China and elsewhere was not then
known.
Other modern inventions in well-making machinery have consisted in
innumerable devices to supplant manual labour and to meet new
conditions.
_Coal Oil_:--Reichenbach, the German chemist, discovered paraffine.
Young, soon after, in 1850, patented paraffine oil made from coal. These
discoveries, added to the long observed fact of coal oil floating on
streams in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, led to the search for its natural
source. The discovery of the reservoirs of petroleum in Pennsylvania in
1855-1860, and subsequently of gas, which nature had concealed for so
long a time, gave a great impetus to inventions to obtain and control
these riches. With earth-augurs, drills, and drill cleaning and clearing
and "fishing" apparatus, and devices for creating a new flow of oil, and
tubing, new forms of packing, etc., inventors created a new industry.
Colonel E. Drake sank the first oil well in Pennsylvania in 1859. Since
then, 125,000 oil wells have been drilled in that and neighbouring
localities. The world has seldom seen such excitement, except in
California on the discovery of gold, as attended the coal oil discovery.
The first wells sunk gushed thousands of barrels a day. Farmers and
other labouring men went to bed poor and woke up rich. Rocky
wildernesses and barren fields suddenly became Eldorados. The burning
rivers of oil were a reflection of the golden treasures which flowed
into the hands and pockets of thousands as from a perpetual fountain
touched by some great magician's wand.
Old methods of boring wells were too slow, and although the underlying
principle was the same, the new methods and means invented enabled wells
to be bored with one-tenth the labour, in one-tenth the time, and at
one-tenth the cost. Many great cities and plains and deserts have been
provided with these wells owing to the ease with which they can now be
sunk.
Another ingenious method of sinking wells was invented by Colonel N. W.
Greene at Cortland, New York, in 1862. It became known as the "driven
well," and consisted of a pointed tube provided with holes above the
pointed end, and an inclosed tube to prevent the passage of sand or
gravel through the holes in the outer tube. When the pointed tube was
driven until water was reached the inner tube was withdrawn and a pump
mechanism inserted. This well, so simple, so cheap and effective, has
been used in all countries by thousands of farmers on dry plains and by
soldiers in many desert lands. With these and modern forms of artesian
wells the deserts have literally been made to blossom as the rose.
CHAPTER XXV.
HOROLOGY AND INSTRUMENTS OF PRECISION.
"Time measures all things, but I measure it."
So far as we at present know there were four forms of time-measuring
instruments known to antiquity--the sun-dial, the clepsydra or water
clock, the hour-glass, and the graduated candle.
The sun-dial, by which time was measured by the shadow cast from a pin,
rod or pillar upon a graduated horizontal plate--the graduations
consisting of twelve equal parts, in which the hours of the day were
divided, were, both as to the instrument and the division of the day
into hours, invented by the Babylonians or other Oriental race, set up
on the plains of Chaldea, constructed by the Chinese and Hindoos--put
into various forms by these nations, and adapted, but unimproved, by the
learned Greeks and conquering Romans. It appears to have been unknown to
the Assyrians and Egyptians, or if known, its knowledge confined to
their wise men, as it does not appear in any of their monuments.
The clepsydra, an instrument by which in its earliest form a portion of
time was measured by the escape of water from a small orifice in the
bottom of a shell or vase, or by which the empty vase, placed in another
vessel filled with water, was gradually filled through the orifice and
which sank within a certain time, is supposed by many to have preceded
the invention of the sun-dial. At any rate they were used
contemporaneously by the same peoples.
In its later form, when the day and night were each divided into twelve
hours, the vessel was correspondingly graduated, and a float raised by
the inflowing water impelled a pointer attached to the float against the
graduations.
Plato, it is said, contrived a bell so connected with the pointer that
it was struck at each hour of the night. But the best of ancient
clepsydras was invented by Ctesibius of Alexandria about the middle of
the third century B. C. He was the pupil of Archimedes, and adopting his
master's idea of geared wheels, he mounted a toothed wheel on a shaft
extending through the vessel and carrying at one end outside of the
vessel a pointer adapted to move around the face of a dial graduated
with the 24 hours. The vertical toothed rod or rack, adapted to be
raised or lowered by a float in a vessel gradually filled with water,
engaged a pinion fixed on another horizontal shaft, which pinion in turn
engaged the larger wheel. It was not difficult to proportion the parts
and control the supply of water to make the point complete its circuit
regularly. Then the same inventor dispensed with the wheel, rack, and
pinion, and substituted a cord to which a float was attached, passing
the cord over a grooved pulley and securing a weight at its other end.
The pulley was fixed on the shaft which carried the hour hand. The float
was a counterbalance to the weight, and as it was lifted by the water
the weight stretched the cord and turned the pulley, which caused the
pointer to move on the dial and indicate the hour. The water thus acted
as an escapement to control the motive power. In one form the water
dropped on wheels which had their motion communicated to a small statue
that gradually rose and pointed with a rod to the hour upon the dial.
Thus the essential parts of a clock--an escapement, which is a device to
control the power in a clock or watch so that it shall act
intermittently on the time index, a motive power, which was then water
or a weight, a dial to display the hours, and an index to point them
out--were invented at this early age. But the art advanced practically
no further for many centuries.
The hour-glass is too familiar to need description.
The incense sticks of the Chinese, the combustion of which proceeded so
slowly and regularly as to render them available for time measures, were
the precursors of the graduated candles.
With the ungraduated sun-dial the Greeks fixed their times for bathing
and eating. When the shadow was six feet long it was time to bathe, when
twice that length it was time to sup. The clepsydra became in Greece a
useful instrument to enforce the law in restricting loquacious orators
and lawyers to reasonable limits in their addresses. And in Rome the
sun-dials, the clepsydras and the hour-glass were used for the same
purpose, and more generally than in Greece, to regulate the hours of
business and pleasure.
The graduated candles are chiefly notable as to their use, if not
invention, by Alfred the Great in about 883. They were 12 inches long,
divided into 12 parts, of which three would burn in one hour. In use
they were shielded from the wind by thin pieces of horn, and thus the
"horn lantern" originated. With them he divided the day into three equal
parts, one for religion, one for public affairs, and one for rest and
recreation.
Useful clocks of wondrous make were described in the annals of the
middle ages, especially in Germany, made by monks and others for Kings,
monasteries and churches. The old Saxon and Teutonic words _cligga_, and
_glocke_, signifying the striking of a bell, and from which the name
clock is derived, indicates the early combination of striking and
time-keeping mechanism. The records are scant as to the particulars of
inventions in horology during the middle ages and down to the sixteenth
century, but we know that weights, and trains of wheels and springs, and
some say pendulums, were used in clockwork, and that the tones of hourly
bells floated forth from the dim religious light of old cathedrals. They
all appear to have involved in different forms the principle of the old
clepsydra, using either weights or water as the motive power to drive a
set of wheels and to move a pointer over the face of a dial.
Henry de Vick of France about 1370 constructed a celebrated clock for
Charles V., the first nearest approach to modern weight clocks. The
weight was used to unwind a cord from a barrel. The barrel was connected
to a ratchet and there were combined therewith a train of toothed wheels
and pinions, an escapement consisting of a crown wheel controlled by two
pallets, which in turn were operated alternately by two weights on a
balanced rod. An hour hand was carried by a shaft of the great wheel,
and a dial plate divided into hours. This was a great advance, as a more
accurate division of time was had by improving the isochronous
properties of the vibrating escapement. But the world was still wanting
a time-keeper to record smaller portions of the day than the hour and a
more accurate machine than Vick's.
Two hundred years, nearly, elapsed before the next important advance in
horology. By this time great astronomers like Tycho Brahe and Valherius
had divided the time-recording dials into minutes and seconds.
About 1525 Jacob Zech of Prague invented the fusee, which was
re-invented and improved by the celebrated Dr. Hooke, 125 years later.
Small portable clocks, the progenitors of the modern watch, commenced to
appear about 1500. It was then that Peter Hele of Nuremberg substituted
for weights as the motive power a ribbon of steel, which he wound around
a central spindle, connecting one end to a train of wheels to which it
gave motion as it unwound.
Then followed the famous observation of the swinging lamp by the then
young Galileo, about 1582, while lounging in the cathedral of Pisa. The
isochronism of the vibrations of the pendulum inferred from this
observation was not published or put to practical application in clocks
for nearly sixty years afterward. In 1639 Galileo, then old and blind,
dictated to his son one of his books in which he discussed the
isochronal properties of oscillating bodies, and their adaptation as
time measures. He and others had used the pendulum for dividing time,
but moved it by hand and counted its vibrations. But Huygens, the great
Dutch scientist, about 1556 was the first to explain the principles and
properties of the pendulum as a time measurer and to apply it most
successfully to clocks. His application of it was to the old clock of
Vick's.
The seventeenth century thus opened up a new era in clock and watch
making. The investigations, discoveries, and inventions of Huygens and
other Dutch clock-makers, of Dr. Hooke and David Ramsey of England,
Hautefeuille of France, and a few others placed the art of clock and
watch making on the scientific basis on which it has ever since rested.
The pendulum and watch-springs needed to have their movements controlled
and balanced by better escapements. Huygens thought that the pendulum
should be long and swing in a cycloidal course, but Dr. Hooke found the
better way to produce perfect isochronous movements was to cause the
pendulum to swing in short arcs, which he accomplished by his invention
of the anchor escapement.
The fusee which Dr. Hooke re-invented consists of a conical
spirally-grooved pulley, around which a chain is wound, and which is
connected at one end to a barrel, in which the main actuating spring is
tightly coiled. The fusee is thus interposed between the wheel train and
the spring to equalise the power of the latter.
To Dr. Hooke must also be credited the invention of that delicate but
efficient device, the hair-spring balance for watches. His inventions in
this line were directed to the best means of utilising and controlling
the force of springs, his motto being "_ut tensio sic vis_," (as the
tension is so is the force.) Repeating watches to strike the hours,
half-hours and quarters, made their appearance in the seventeenth
century. In the next century Arnold made one for George III., as small
as an English sixpence. This repeated the hours, halves and quarters,
and in it for the first time in the art a jewel was used as a bearing
for the arbors, and this particular one was a ruby made into a minute
cylinder.
After the discovery and practical application of weights, springs,
wheels, levers and escapements to time mechanisms, subsequent
inventions, numerous as they have been, have consisted chiefly, not in
the discovery of new principles, but in new methods in the application
of old ones. Prior to the eighteenth century, however, clocks were
cumbrous and expensive, and the watches rightly regarded as costly toys;
and as to their accuracy in time-measuring, the cheaper ones were hardly
as satisfactory as the ancient sun-dials.
With the coming of the machine inventions and the new industrial and
social ideas of the eighteenth century came an almost sudden new
appreciation of the value of time. Hours, minutes and seconds began to
be carefully prized, both by the trades and professions, and the demand
from the common people for accurate time records became great. This
demand it has been the office of the nineteenth century to supply, and
to place clocks and watches within the reach of the poor as well as the
rich. While thus lessening the cost of time-keepers their value has been
enhanced by increasing their accuracy and durability.
Among the other ideas for which the eighteenth century was famous in
watch-making was that of dispensing with the key for winding, thus
saving the losing of keys and preventing access of dust, an idea which,
however, was perfected only in the last half of the nineteenth century.
The eighteenth century was chiefly distinguished by its scientific
improvements in time-keepers, to adapt them for astronomical
observations and for use at sea, in not only accurately determining the
time, but the degrees of longitude. Chronometers were invented,
distinguished from watches and clocks, by means by which the fluctuation
of the parts caused by the variations in temperature are obviated or
compensated. In clocks what are known as the mercurial and gridiron
pendulums were invented respectively toward the close of the eighteenth
century by Graham and Harrison, and the latter also subsequently
invented the expanding and contracting balance wheel for watches. The
principle in these appliances is the employment of two different metals
which expand unequally, and thus maintain an uniformity of operation.
The Dutch, with Huygens in the lead, were long among the leading
clock-makers. Germany ranked next. It was in the seventeenth century
that a wonderful industry in clock-making there commenced, which lasted
for two centuries. The Black Forest region of South Germany became a
famous locality for the manufacture of cheap wooden clocks. The system
adopted was a minute division of labour. From fourteen to twenty
thousand hands twenty years ago were employed in the Schwarzwald
district. Labour-saving machines were ignored almost entirely. The
annual production finally reached nearly two million clocks, of the
value of about five million dollars.
Switzerland in watch-making followed precisely the example of Germany in
clock-making. It commenced there in the seventeenth and culminated in
the nineteenth century. Many thousands of its population were engaged in
the business and it flourished under the fostering care of the
government--by the establishment of astronomical observations for
testing the adjustment of the best watches, the giving of prizes, and
the establishment and encouragement of schools of horology conducted on
thorough scientific methods. A quarter of a century ago it was estimated
that in Switzerland 40,000 persons out of a population of 150,000 were
engaged in watch-making, and that the annual production sometimes
reached 1,600,000 completed movements. The whole world was their market.
The United States alone was in 1875 importing 134,000 watches annually
from that country.
As in Germany, so one characteristic of the Swiss system was a minute
sub-division of the labour. Individuals and entire families had certain
parts only to make. It is said that the Swiss watch passed through the
hands of one hundred and thirty different workmen before it was put upon
the market. The use of machines was also, as in Germany, ignored. By
this national devotion to a single trade and its sub-division of labour,
the successful production of complicated watches became great and their
prices comparatively low.
The United States in the commencement of its career and at the opening
of the century had no clocks or watches of its own manufacture. But it
soon followed the example of Germany and Switzerland and established
cheap clock manufactories, first of wood, and then of metal, which
became famous and of world-wide use. But it could make no headway
against the cheap labour of Europe in watch-making, and the country was
flooded with watches of all qualities, principally from Switzerland and
England. Finally, at the half-way mark in the century, the inquiry arose
among Americans, why could not the system of the minute sub-division of
human labour followed in watch-making countries so cheaply and
profitably, be accomplished by machinery? The field was open, the prize
was great, and the government stood ready to grant exclusive patents to
every inventor who would devise a new and useful machine. The problem
was great, as the fields abroad had been filled for generations by
skilled artisans who had reduced the complicated mechanism of
watch-making to a fine art. Fortunately the habit had been established
in America in several of the leading industries, principally in that of
fire-arms, of fabricating separate machinery for the independent making
of numerous parts of the same implement, whereby uniformity and
interchangeability were established. Under such a practice, which was
known as the American system, a duplicate of the smallest part of a
complicated machine, lost or worn out thousands of miles from the
factory, could soon be furnished by simply sending the number or name of
such required part to the manufacturer, or to the nearest dealer in such
machines.
With such encouragement and example the scheme of watch-making was
commenced. Soon large factories were built, and by the time of the
Centennial Exhibition in 1876, the American Watch Company of Waltham,
Massachusetts, were enabled to present an exhibit of watch movements
made by machinery, which astonished the world. Other great companies in
different parts of the country soon followed with the same general
system. Machines, working with the apparent intelligence and facility of
human minds and hands, and with greater mathematical accuracy than was
possible with the hands, appeared:--for cutting out the finest teeth
from blank wheels stamped out from steel or brass; for making and
cutting the smallest, finest threaded screws by the thousands per hour
and with greatest uniformity and accuracy; for jewel-making; for cutting
and polishing by diamonds, or sapphire-armed tools, the rough,
unpolished diamond and ruby, crysolite, garnet, or aqua-marine, and for
boring, finishing and setting the same; for the formation of the most
delicate pins or arbors; for the making of the escapements, including
forks, pallets, rollers, and scape wheels; for making springs and
balances, including the main-springs and hair-springs; for making and
setting the stem-winding parts; for making the cases, and engraving the
same, etc. The list would be too long to simply name all the ingenious
machines there exhibited and subsequently invented for every important
operation.
It was the aim of these manufacturers to locate every great factory in
some quiet and attractive spot, free from the dust of town, and city,
and divide it into many departments, from the blacksmithing to the
packing and transportation of the completed article; and to conduct
every department with the best mechanical and mathematical skill that
money and brains could provide.
The same system was followed with equal success in producing the
first-class pocket-chronometer for the nicest work to which chronometers
can be put.
Thus with every watch and its every part made the exact duplicate of its
fellow, uniformity in time-keeping has been established; and the simile
of Pope is no longer so correct, "'Tis with our judgments as our
watches, none go just alike, yet each believes his own." A simple
statement of this system illustrates with greater force than an entire
volume the revolution the nineteenth century has produced in the useful
art of horology. And yet the story should not omit reference to the
application of the electric system to clocks, whereby clocks at distant
points of a city or country are connected, automatically corrected and
set to standard time from a central observatory or other time station.
Great as were the advances in horology during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, the number of inventions that have been made in
the nineteenth century is evidenced by the fact that in the United
States alone about 4,000 patents have been granted since 1800, which,
however, represent not only American inventors but very many of other
countries.
_Registering Devices._--Devices for recording fares and money have
employed the keenest wits of many inventors and is an art of quite
recent origin. Attention was first directed to fare registers in public
vehicles, the object of which is to accurately report to the proper
office of the company at the end of a trip, or of the day, the number of
passengers carried and the fares received. Portable registers, to be
carried by the conductor and operated in front of the passenger have
been almost universally succeeded by stationary ones set up at one end
of the vehicle in open view of all the passengers and operated by a
strap and lever by the conductor. These fare registers have been called
"A mechanical conscience for street car conductors."
_Cash Registers_, intended to compel honesty on the part of retail
salesmen, are required to be operated by them, and when the proper
lever, or levers, or it may be a crank handle, is or are touched, the
machine automatically records the amount of the sale, the amount of
change given, and the total amount of all the sales and money received
and paid out.
_Voting Machines_--designed to overcome the difficulties, expenditure of
time, and the commission of errors and frauds experienced in the reading
and counting of votes--have received great attention from inventors, and
are not yet in a satisfactory condition. The problem involves the
dispensing of printing the ballots, the prevention of fraudulent
deposition of ballots, the automatic correct counting of the same, and a
display of the result as soon as the balloting is closed.
Successful electrical devices have been made for recording the votes of
a great number of persons in a large assembly by the touch of an "aye"
or "nay" button at the seat of the voter and the recording of the same
on paper at a central desk.
The invention and extensive use of bicycles, automobiles, etc., have
given rise to the invention of _cyclometers_, which are small devices
connected to some part of the vehicle to indicate to the rider or driver
the rate at which he is riding, and the number of miles ridden.
_Speed Indicators._--Many municipalities having adopted ordinances
limiting the rate of speed for street and steam cars, bicycles,
automobiles, and other vehicles, a want was created, which has been met,
for devices to indicate to the passengers, drivers or conductors the
rate at which the vehicle is travelling, and to sound an alarm in case
of excess of speed, so that brakes can be applied and the speed reduced.
Or to relieve persons of anxiety and trouble in this respect, ingenious
devices have been contrived which automatically reduce the speed when
the prescribed limit has been exceeded.
_Weighing Scales and Machines._--"Just balances and just weights" have
been required from the day of the declaration, "a false weight is an
abomination unto the Lord." And therefore strict accuracy must always be
the measure of merit of a weighing machine. To this standard the
inventions of the century in weighing scales have come. Until this
century the ordinary balance with equal even arms suspended from a
central point, and each carrying means for suspending articles to be
weighed, or compared in weights, and the later steelyard with its
unequal arms, with its graduated long arms and a sliding weight and
holding pan, were the principal forms of weighing machines. Platform
scales were described in an English patent to one Salman in 1796, but
their use is not recorded. The compound lever scale on the principle of
the steelyard, but arranged to be used with a platform, was invented and
came into use in the United States about 1831. Thaddeus and Erastus
Fairbanks of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, were the inventors, and it was
found to meet the want of farmers in weighing hemp, hay, etc., by more
convenient means than the ordinary steelyard. They converted the
steelyard into platform scales. The leading characteristics of such
machines are, first, a convenient platform nicely balanced on knife
edges of steel levers, and second, a graduated horizontal beam, a
sliding weight thereon connected by an upright rod at one end to the
beam, and at its opposite end to the balance frame beneath the platform.
The modification in size and adaptation of this machine for the weighing
of different commodities amounted to some 400 different
varieties--running from the delicately-constructed apparatus for
weighing the fraction of a grain, to the ponderous machines for weighing
and recording the loaded freight car of fifty or sixty tons, or the
canal-boat or other vessel with its load of five or six hundred tons.
The adaptation of a balance platform on which to place a light load, or
to drive thereon with heavy loads, whether of horses, steam, or water
vehicles, was a great blessing to mankind. No wonder that they were soon
sold all over the world, and that monarchs and people hastened to heap
honors on the inventors.
Spring weighing scales have recently been invented, which will
accurately and automatically show not only the weight but the total
price of the goods weighed, the price per unit being known and fixed.
In the weighing of large masses of coarse material, such as grain, coal,
cotton seed, and the like, machines have been constructed which
automatically weigh such materials and at the same time register the
weight.
Previous to this century no method was known, except the exercise of
good judgment in the light of experience, of accurately testing the
strength of materials. Wood and metals were used in unnecessarily
cumbrous forms for the purpose to which they were put, in order to
ensure safety, or else the strength of the parts failed where it was
most needed.
The idea of testing the tensile, transverse, and cubical resisting
strength of materials has been applied to many other objects than beams
and bars of wood and metals; to belts, cloths, cables, wires, fibres,
paper, twine, yarn, cement, and to liquids. Kiraldy, Kennedy, and others
of England, Thomasset of France, Riehle of Germany, and Fairbanks,
Thurston and Emery of the United States, are among the noted inventors
of such machines.
In the Emery system of machines, consisting of scales, gages, and
dynamometers, the power exerted on the material tested is transmitted
from the load to an indicating device by means of liquid acting on
diaphragms. The same principle is employed in his weighing machines.
By one of these hydraulic testing machines the tensile strength of
forged links has been ascertained by the exertion of a power amounting
to over 700,000 pounds before breaking a link, the chain breaking with a
loud report.
The most delicate materials are tested by the same machine--the tensile
strength of a horsehair, some of which are found to stand the strain of
one and two pounds. Eggs and nuts are cracked without being crushed, and
the power exerted and the strain endured automatically recorded. Steel
beams and rods have been subjected to a strain of a million pounds
before breaking.
Governments, municipalities, and the people generally are thus provided
with means by which they can proceed with the greatest confidence in the
safe and economical construction and completion of their buildings and
public works.
CHAPTER XXVI.
MUSIC, ACOUSTICS, OPTICS, FINE ARTS.
Neither the historic nor prehistoric records find man without musical
instruments of some sort. They are as old as religion, and have been
found wherever evidence of religious rites of any description have been
found, as they constituted part of the instrumentalities of such rites.
They are found as relics of worship and the dance, ages after the
worshippers and the dancers have become part of the earth's strata. They
have been found wherever the earliest civilisations have been
discovered; and they appear to have been regarded as desirable and
necessary as the weapons and the labour implements of those
civilisations. They abounded in China, in India, and in Egypt before the
lyre of Apollo was invented, or the charming harp of Orpheus was
conceived.
There was little melody according to modern standards, but the musical
instruments, like all other inventions, the fruit of the brain of man,
were slowly evolved as he wanted them, and to meet the conditions
surrounding him.
There were the conch shell trumpet, the stone, bone, wood and metal
dance rattles, the beaks of birds, and the horns and teeth of beasts,
for the same rattling purpose. The simple reed pipes, the hollow wooden
drums, the skin drum-heads, the stretched strings of fibre and of
tendons, the flutes, the harps, the guitars, the psalteries, and
hundreds of other forms of musical instruments, varied as the skill and
fancy of man varied, and in accordance with their taste and wants, along
the entire gamut of noises and rude melodies. The ancient races had the
instruments, but their voices, except as they existed in the traditions
of their gods, were not harmonious.
As modern wants and tastes developed and music became a science the
demands of the nineteenth century were met by a Helmholtz, who
discovered and explained the laws of harmony, and by many ingenious
manufacturers, who so revolutionised the pianoforte action, and the
action of musical instruments constructed on these principles, that
their predecessors would hardly be recognised as prototypes.
The story of the piano, that queen of musical instruments, involves the
whole history of the art of music. Its evolution from the ancient harp,
gleaned by man from the wind, "that grand old harper, who smote his
thunder harp of pines," is too long a story to here recite in detail. It
must suffice to say, it started with the harp, in its simplest form,
composed of a frame with animal tendons stretched tight thereon and
twanged by the fingers. Then followed strings of varied length, size,
and tension, to obtain different tones, soon accompanied by an
instrument called the plectrum--a bone or ivory stick with which to
vibrate the strings, to save the fingers. This was the harp of the
Egyptians, and of Jubal, "the father of all such as handle the harp and
the organ," and half-brother of Tubal Cain, the great teacher "of every
artificer in brass and iron." Then the harp was laid prostrate, its
strings stretched over a sounding board, and each held and adapted to be
tightened by pegs, and played upon by little hammers having soft pellets
or corks at their ends. This was the psaltery and the dulcimer of the
Assyrians and the Hebrews.
The Greeks derived their musical instruments from the Egyptians, and the
Romans borrowed theirs from the Greeks, but neither the Greeks nor the
Romans invented any.
Then, after fourteen or fifteen centuries, we find the harp, both in a
horizontal and an upright position, with its strings played upon by
keys. This was the _clavicitherium_. In the sixteenth century came the
virginal, and the spinet, those soft, tinkling instruments favoured by
Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, and which, recently brought from
obscurity, have been made to revive the ancient Elizabethan melodies, to
the delight of modern hearers. These were followed in the seventeenth
century by the clavichord, the favourite instrument of Bach. Then
appeared the harpsichord, a still nearer approach to the piano, having a
hand or knee-worked pedal, and on which Mozart and Handel and Haydn
brought out their grand productions. The ancient Italian cembello was
another spinet.
Thus, through the centuries these instruments had slowly grown. By 1711
in Italy, under the inventive genius of Bartolommeo Cristofori of
Florence, they had culminated in the modern piano. The piano as devised
by him differed from the instruments preceding it chiefly in this, that
in the latter the strings were vibrated by striking and pulling on them
by pieces of quills attached to levers and operated by keys, whereas, in
the piano there were applied hammers in place of quills.
In the 1876 exhibition at Philadelphia, a piano The Greeks derived their
musical instruments from the Egyptians, and the Romans borrowed theirs
from the Greeks, but neither the Greeks nor the Romans invented any.
Then, after fourteen or fifteen centuries, we find the harp, both in a
horizontal and an upright position, with its strings played upon by
keys. This was the clavicitherium. In the sixteenth century came the
virginal, and the spinet, those soft, tinkling instruments favoured by
Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, and which, recently brought from
obscurity, have been made to revive the ancient Elizabethan melodies, to
the delight of modern hearers. These were followed in the seventeenth
century by the clavichord, the favourite instrument of Bach. Then
appeared the harpsichord, a still nearer approach to the piano, having a
hand or knee-worked pedal, and on which Mozart and Handel and Haydn
brought out their grand productions. The ancient Italian cembello was
another spinet.
Thus, through the centuries these instruments had slowly grown. By 1711
in Italy, under the inventive genius of Bartolommeo Cristofori of
Florence, they had culminated in the modern piano. The piano as devised
by him differed from the instruments preceding it chiefly in this, that
in the latter the strings were vibrated by striking and pulling on them
by pieces of quills attached to levers and operated by keys, whereas, in
the piano there were applied hammers in place of quills.
In the 1876 exhibition at Philadelphia, a piano was displayed which had
been made by Johannes Christian Schreiber of Germany in 1741.
Then in the latter part of the eighteenth century Broadwood and Clementi
of London and Erard of Strasburg and Petzold of Paris commenced the
manufacture of their fine instruments. Erard particularly made many
improvements in that and in the nineteenth century in the piano, its
hammers and keys, and Southwell of Dublin in the dampers.
By them and the Collards of London, Bechstein of Berlin, and Chickering,
Steinway, Weber, Schomacher, Decker and Knabe of America, was the piano
"ripened after the lapse of more than 2,000 years into the perfectness
of the magnificent instruments of modern times, with their better
materials, more exact appliances, finer adjustments, greater strength of
parts, increase of compass and power, elastic responsiveness of touch,
enlarged sonority, satisfying delicacy, and singing character in tone."
A piano comprises five principal parts: first, the framing; second, the
sounding board; third, the stringing; fourth, the key mechanism, or
action, and fifth, the ornamental case. To supply these several parts
separate classes of skilled artisans have arisen, the forests have been
ransacked for their choicest woods, the mines have been made to yield
their choicest stores, and the forge to weld its finest work. Science
has given to music the ardent devotion of a lover, and resolved a
confused mass of more or less pleasant noises into liquid harmonies. In
1862 appeared Helmholtz's great work on the "Law and Tones and the
Theory of Music." He it was who invented the method of analysing sound.
By the use of hollow bodies called _resonators_ he found that every
sound as it generally occurs in nature and as it is produced by most of
our musical instruments, or the human voice, is not a single simple
sound, but a compound of several tones of different intensity and pitch;
all of which different tones combined are heard as one; and that the
difference of quality or _timbre_ of the sounds of different musical
instruments resides in the different composition of these sounds; that
different compound sounds contain the same fundamental tone but
differently mixed with other tones. He explained how these fundamental
and compound tones might be fully developed to produce either harmonious
or dissonant sensations. His researches were carried farther and added
to by Prof. Mayer of New Jersey. These theories were practically applied
in the pianos produced by the celebrated firm of Steinway and Sons of
New York; and their inventions and improvements in the iron framing, in
laying of strings in relation to the centre of the sounding-board, in
"resonators" in upright frames, and in other features, from 1866 to
1876, produced a revolution in the art of piano making.
If the piano is properly the queen of musical instruments, the organ may
be rightly regarded, as it has been named, "King in the realm of music."
It is an instrument, the notes of which are produced by the rush of air
through pipes of different lengths, the air being supplied by bellows or
other means, and controlled by valves which are operated by keys, and by
which the supply of air is admitted or cut off.
The earliest description appears to be that in the "Spiritalia" of Hero
of Alexandria (150-200 B. C.) and Ctesibius of Alexandria was the
inventor. A series of pipes of varying lengths were filled by an
air-pump which was operated by a wind-mill. Organs were again originated
in the early Christian centuries; and a Greek epigram of the fourth
century refers to one as provided with "reeds of a new species agitated
by blasts of wind that rush from a leathern cavern beneath their roots,
while a robust mortal, running with swift fingers over the concordant
keys, makes them smoothly dance and emit harmonious sounds."
The same in principle to-day, but more complicated in structure, "yet of
easy control under the hands of experts, fertile in varied symphonious
effects, giving with equal and satisfying success the gentlest and most
sympathetic tones as well as complete and sublimely full utterances of
musical inspiration."
The improvements of the century have consisted in adding a great variety
of stops; in connections and couplers of the great keyboard and pipes;
in the pedal part; in the construction of the pipes and wind chests; and
principally in the adaptation of steam, water, air, and electricity, in
place of the muscles of men, as powers in furnishing the supply of air.
Some of the great organs of the century, having three or four thousand
pipes, with all the modern improvements, and combining great power with
the utmost brilliancy and delicacy of utterance, and with a blended
effect which is grand, solemn and most impressive, render indeed this
noble instrument the "king" in the realm of music.
In the report of 1895 of the United States Commissioner of patents it is
stated that "the _autoharp_ has been developed within the past few
years, having bars arranged transversely across the strings and provided
with dampers which, when depressed, silence all the strings except those
producing the desired chords.
"An ingenious musical instrument of the class having keyboards like the
piano or organ has been recently invented. All keyboard instruments in
ordinary use produce tones that are only approximately correct in pitch,
because these must be limited in number to twelve, to the octave, while
the tones of the violin are absolute or untempered. The improved
instrument produces untempered tones without requiring extraordinary
variations from the usual arrangement of the keys."
Self-playing musical instruments have been known for more than forty
years, but it is within the past twenty-five years that devices have
been invented for controlling tones by pneumatic or electrical
appliances to produce expressions. Examples of the later of these three
kinds of musical instruments may be found in the United States patents
of Zimmermann in 1882, Tanaka, 1890, and Gally, 1879.
The science of _acoustics_ and its practical applications have greatly
advanced, chiefly due to the researches of Helmholtz, referred to above.
When the nature and laws of the waves of sound became fully known a
great field of inventions was opened. Then came the telephone,
phonograph, graphophone and gramophone.
The telephone depends upon a combination of electricity and the waves of
the human voice. The phonograph and its modifications depend alone on
sound waves--the recording of the waves from one vibrating membrane and
their exact reproduction on another vibrating membrane.
The acoustic properties of churches and other buildings were improved by
the adaptation of banks of fine wires to prevent the re-echoing of
sounds. _Auricular tubes_ adapted to be applied to the ears and
concealed by the hair, and other forms of aural instruments, were
devised.
The _Megaphone_ of Edison appeared, consisting of two large funnels
having elastic conducting tubes from their apices to the aural orifice.
Conversation in moderate tones has been heard and understood by their
use at a distance of one and a half miles. The megaphone has been found
very useful in speaking to large outdoor crowds.
But let us go back a little: In 1845, Chas. Bourseuil of France
published the idea that the vibrations of speech uttered against a
diaphragm might break or make an electric contact, and the electric
pulsations thereby produced might set another diaphragm vibrating which
should produce the transmitted sound waves. In 1857, another Frenchman,
Leon Scott, patented in France his _Phonautograph_--an instrument
consisting of a large barrel-like mouth-piece into which words were
spoken, a membrane therein against which the voice vibrations were
received, a stylus attached to this vibrating membrane, and a rotating
cylinder covered with blackened paper, against which the stylus bore and
on which it recorded the sound waves in exact form received on the
vibrating diaphragm. Then came the researches and publications of
Helmholtz and König on acoustic science, 1862-1866. Then young Philip
Reis of Frankfort, Germany, attempted to put all these theories into an
apparatus to reproduce speech, but did not quite succeed. Then in
1874-1875, Bell took up the matter, and at the Philadelphia exhibition,
1876, astonished the world by the revelations of the telephone. In
April, 1877, Charles Cros, a Frenchman, in a communication to the
Academy of Sciences in Paris, after describing an apparatus like the
Scott phonautograph, set forth how traced undulating lines of voice
vibrations might be reproduced in intaglio or in relief, and reproduced
upon a vibrating membrane by a pointed stylus attached thereto and
following the line of the original pulsations. The communication seems
to have been pigeon-holed, and not read in open session until December,
1877, and until after Thomas A. Edison had actually completed and used
his phonograph in the United States. Cros rested on the suggestion.
Edison, without knowing of Cros' suggestion, was first to make and
actually use the same invention. Edison's cylinder, on which the sounds
were recorded and from which they were reproduced, was covered by tin
foil. A great advance was made by Dr Chichester A. Bell and Mr. C. S.
Tainter, who in 1886 patented in the United States means of cutting or
engraving the sound waves in a solid body. The solid body they employed
was a thin pasteboard cylinder covered with wax. This apparatus they
called the _graphophone_. Two years thereafter, Mr. Emile Berliner of
Washington had invented the _gramophone_, which consists in etching on a
metallic plate the record of voice waves. He has termed his invention,
"the art of etching the human voice." He prepares a polished metal
plate, generally zinc, with an extremely thin coating of film or fatty
milk, which dries upon and adheres to the plate. The stylus penetrates
this film, meeting from it the slightest possible resistance, and traces
thereon the message. The record plate is then subjected to a
particularly constituted acid bath, which, entering the groove or
grooves formed by the stylus, cuts or etches the same into the plate.
The groove thus formed may be deepened by another acid solution. When
thus produced, as many copies of the record as desired may be made by
the electrotyper or print plater.
The public is now familiar with the different forms of this wonderful
instrument, and like the telephone, they no longer seem marvellous. Yet
it is only within the age of a youth or a maiden when the allegations or
predictions that the human voice would soon be carried over the land,
and reproduced across a continent, or be preserved or engraven on
tablets and reproduced at pleasure anywhere, in this or any subsequent
generation, were themselves regarded as strange messages of dreamers and
madmen.
_Optical Instruments._--There were practical inventions in optical
instruments long before this century. Achromatic and other lenses were
known, and the microscope, the telescope and spectacles.
The inventive genius of this century in the field of optics has not
eclipsed the telescope and microscope of former ages. They were the
fruits of the efforts of many ages and of many minds, although Hans
Lippersheim of Holland in 1608 appears to have made the first successful
instrument "for seeing things at a distance." Galileo soon thereafter
greatly improved and increased its capacity, and was the first to direct
it towards the heavens. And as to the microscope, Dr. Lieberkulm, of
Berlin, in 1740, made the first successful solar microscope. As well
known, it consisted essentially of two lenses and a mirror, by which the
sun's rays are reflected on the first lens, concentrated on the object
and further magnified by the second lens.
The depths of the stars and the minutest mote that floats in the sun
beam reflect the glory of those inventions.
The invention of John Dolland of London, about 1758, of the achromatic
lens should be borne in mind in connection with telescopes, microscopes,
etc. He it was who invented the combination of two lenses, one concave
and the other convex, one of flint glass and the other of crown glass,
which, refracting in contrary ways, neutralised the dispersion of colour
rays and produced a clear, colourless light.
Many improvements and discoveries in optics and optical instruments have
been made during the century, due to the researches of such scientists
as Arago, Brewster, Young, Fresnel, Airy, Hamilton, Lloyd, Cauchy and
others, and of the labours of the army of skilled experts and
mechanicians who have followed their lead.
Sir David Brewster, born in Scotland in 1781, made (1810-1840) many
improvements in the construction of the microscope and telescope,
invented the kaleidoscope, introduced in the stereoscope the principles
and leading features which those beautiful instruments still embody, and
rendered it popular among scientists and artists.
It is said that Prof. Eliot of Edinburgh in 1834 was the first to
conceive of the idea of a stereoscope, by which two different pictures
of the same object, taken by photography, to correspond to the two
different positions of an object as viewed by the two eyes, are combined
into one view by two reflecting mirrors set at an angle of about 45°,
and conveying to the eyes a single reflection of the object as a solid
body. But Sir Charles Wheaton in 1838 constructed the first instrument,
and in 1849 Brewster introduced the present form of lenticular lenses.
Brewster also demonstrated the utility of dioptric lenses, and zones in
lighthouse illumination; and in which field Faraday and Tyndall also
subsequently worked with the addition of electrical appliances. The
labours of these three men have illuminated the wildest waters of the
sea and preserved a thousand fleets of commerce and of war from awful
shipwreck.
As illustrating the difficulties sometimes encountered in introducing an
invention into use, the American Journal of Chemistry some years ago
related that the Abbé Moigno, in introducing the stereoscope to the
savants of France, first took it to Arago, but Arago had a defect of
vision which made him see double, and he could only see in it a medley
of four pictures; then the Abbé went to Savart, but unfortunately Savart
had but one eye and was quite incapable of appreciating the thing. Then
Becquerel was next visited, but he was nearly blind and could see
nothing in the new optical toy. Not discouraged, the Abbé then called
upon Puillet of the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. Puillet was much
interested, but he was troubled with a squint which presented to his
anxious gaze but a blurred mixture of images. Lastly Brot was tried.
Brot believed in the corpuscular theory of light, and was opposed to the
undulatory theory, and the good Abbé not being able to assure him that
the instrument did not contradict his theory, Brot refused to have
anything to do with it. In spite, however, of the physical disabilities
of scientists, the stereoscope finally made its way in France.
Besides increasing the power of the eye to discover the secrets and
beauties of nature, modern invention has turned upon the eye itself and
displayed the wonders existing there, behind its dark glass doors. It
was Helmholtz who in 1851 described his _Ophthalmoscope_. He arranged a
candle so that its rays of light, falling on an inclined reflector, were
thrown through the pupil of the patient's eye, whose retina reflected
the image received on the retina back to the mirror where it could be
viewed by the observer. This image was the background of the eye, and
its delicate blood vessels and tissues could thus be observed. This
instrument was improved and it gave rise to the contrivance of many
delicate surgical instruments for operating on the eye.
The _Spectroscope_ is an instrument by which the colours of the solar
rays are separated and viewed, as well as those of other incandescent
bodies. By it, not only the elements of the heavenly bodies have been
determined, but remarkable results have been had in analysing well-known
metals and discovering new ones. Its powers and its principles have been
so developed during the century by the discoveries, inventions and
investigations of Herschel, Wollaston, Fraunhofer, Bronsen and Kirchoff,
Steinheil, Tyndall, Huggins, Draper and others, that spectrum analysis
has grown from the separation of light into its colours by the prism of
Newton, to what Dr. Huggins has aptly termed "a new sense."
We have further referred to this wonderful discovery in the Chapter on
Chemistry.
The inventions and improvements in optical instruments gave rise to
great advances in the making of lenses, based on scientific principles,
and not resting alone on hard work and experience. Alvan Clark a son of
America, and Prof. Ernst Abbe of Germany, have within the last third of
the century produced a revolution in the manufacture of lenses, and
thereby extended the realms of knowledge to new worlds of matter in the
heavens and on earth.
_Solarmeter._--In 1895 a United States patent was granted to Mr. Bechler
for an instrument called a solarmeter. It is designed for taking
observations of heavenly bodies and recording mechanically the parts of
the astronomical triangle used in navigation and like work. Its chief
purpose is to determine the position of the compass error of a ship at
sea independently of the visibility of the sea horizon. If the horizon
is clouded, and the sun or a known star is visible, a ship's position
can still be determined by the solarmeter.
_Instruments for Measuring the Position and Distances of Unseen
Objects._--Some of the latest of such instruments will enable one to see
and shoot at an object around a corner, or at least out of sight. Thus a
United States patent was granted to Fiske in 1889, wherein it is set
forth that by stationing observers at points distant from a gun, which
points are at the extremities of a known base line, and which command a
view of the area within the range of the gun, the observers discover the
position and range of the object by triangulation and set certain
pointers. By means of electrical connection between those pointers and
pointers at the gun station based on the system of the Wheatstone
bridge, the latter pointers, or the guns themselves serving as pointers,
may be placed in position to indicate the line of fire. By a nice
arrangement of mirror and lenses attached to a firearm the same object
may be accomplished. Similar apparatuses in which the reflectory
surfaces of mirrors mounted on an elevated frame-work, and known as
_Polemoscopes_ and _Altiscopes_ and _Range-Finders_, have also been
invented, and used with artillery. But such devices may be profitably
used for more peaceful and amusing purposes.
Born with the ear attuned to music and the eye to observe beauty, the
hand of Art was to trace and make permanent the fleeting forms which
melody and the eye impressed upon the soul of man.
In fact modern science has demonstrated that tones and colours are
inseparable. Bell and Tainter with their _photophone_ have converted the
undulatory waves of light into the sweetest music. Reversing the
process, beautiful flashes of light have been produced from musical
vibrations by the _phonophote_ of M. Coulon and the _phonoscope_ of
Henry Edmunds.
Entrancing as the story is, we can only here allude to a few of those
discoveries and inventions that have become the handmaidens of the art
which guided the chisel of Phidias and inspired the brush of Raphael.
_Photography._--The art of producing permanent images of the "human face
divine," natural scenes, and other objects, by the agency of light, is
due more to the discoveries of the chemist than to the inventions of the
mechanic; and to the chemists of this century. At the same time a
mechanical invention of old times became a necessary appliance in the
reduction of the theories of the chemists to practice:--The _Camera
Obscura_, that dark box in which a mirror is placed, provided also with
a piece of ground glass or white cardboard paper, and having a
projecting part at one end in which a lens is placed, whereby when the
lens part is directed to an object an image of the same is thrown by the
rays of light focused by the lens upon the mirror, and reflected by the
mirror to the glass or paper board, was invented by Roger Bacon about
1297, or by Alberta in 1437, described by Leonardo da Vinci in 1500 as
an imitation of the structure of the eye, again by Baptista Porta in
1589, and remodelled by Sir Isaac Newton in 1700. Until the 19th century
it was used only in the taking of sketches and scenes on or from the
card or glass on which the reflection was thrown.
Celebrated chemists such as Sheele of the 18th century, and Ritter,
Wollaston, Sir Humphry Davy, Young, Gay-Lussac, Thenard, and others in
the early part of the 19th century, began to turn their attention to the
chemical and molecular changes which the sunlight and its separate rays
effected in certain substances, and especially upon certain compounds of
silver. In sensitising the receiving paper, glass, or metal with such a
compound it must necessarily be protected from exposure to sunlight, and
this fact, together with the desire to sensitise the image produced by
the camera, not only suggested but seemed to render that instrument
indispensable to photography. Nevertheless the experiments of chemists
fell short of the high mark, and it was reserved for an artist to unite
the efforts of the sun and the chemists in a successful instrument.
It was Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, born at Corneilles, France, in
1789, and who died in 1851, who was the first to reduce to practice the
invention called after his name. He was a brilliant scene painter, and
especially successful in painting panoramas. In 1822, assisted by
Bouton, he had invented the _diorama_, by which coloured lights
representing the various changes of the day and season were thrown upon
the canvasses in his beautiful panoramas of Rome, London, Naples and
other great cities. Several years previous to 1839 he and Joseph N.
Niepce, learning of the efforts of chemists in that line, began
independently, and then together, to develop the art of obtaining
permanent copies of objects produced by the chemical action of the sun.
Niepce died while they were thus engaged. Daguerre prosecuted his
researches alone, and toward the close of 1838 his success was such that
he made known his invention to Arago, and Arago announced it in an
eloquent and enthusiastic address to the French Academy of Sciences in
January 1839. It at once excited great attention, which was heightened
by the pictures produced by the new process. The French Government, in
consideration of the details of the invention and its improvements being
made public and on request of Daguerre, granted him an annuity and one
also to Niepce's son.
At first only pictures of natural objects were taken; but in learning of
Daguerre's process Dr. John William Draper of New York, a native of
England and adopted son of America, the brilliant author of _The
Intellectual Development of Europe_, and other great works, in the same
year, 1839, took portraits of persons by photography, and he was the
first to do this. Draper was also the first in America to reveal the
wonders of the spectroscope; and he was first to show that each colour
of the spectrum had its own peculiar chemical effect. This was in 1847.
The sun was now fairly harnessed in the service of man in the new great
art of Photography. Natural philosophers, chemists, inventors,
mechanics, all now pressed forward, and still press forward to improve
the art, to establish new growths from the old art, and extend its
domains. Those domains have the generic term of _Photo-Processes_.
Daguerreotypy, while the father of them all, is now hardly practised as
Daguerre practised it, and has become a small subordinate sub-division
of the great class. Yet more faithful likenesses are not yet produced
than by this now old process. Among the children of the Photo-Process
family are the _Calotype_, _Ambrotype_, _Ferreotype_, _Collodion_ and
_Silver Printing_, _Carbon Printing_, _Heliotype_, _Heliogravure_,
_Photoengraving_ (relief intaglio-Woodburytype), _Photolithography_;
_Alberttype_; _Photozincograph_, _Photogelatine-printing_;
_Photomicrography_ (to depict microscopic objects), _Kinetographs_, and
_Photosculpture_. A world of mechanical contrivances have been
invented:--_Octnometers_, _Baths_, _Burnishing tools_, _Cameras and
Camera stands_, _Magazine and Roll holders_; _Dark rooms_ and _Focussing
devices_, _Heaters_ and _Driers_; _Exposure Meters_, etc. etc.
The _Kinetograph_, for taking a series of pictures of rapidly moving
objects, and by which the living object, person or persons, are made to
appear moving before us as they moved when the picture was taken, is a
marvellous invention; and yet simple when the process is understood.
Photography and printing have combined to revolutionise the art of
illustration. Exact copies of an original, whether of a painting or a
photograph, are now produced on paper with all the original shades and
colours. The long-sought-for problem of photographing in colours has in
a measure been solved. The "three _colour processes_" is the name given
to the new offspring of the inventors which reproduces by the camera the
natural colours of objects.
The scientists Maxwell Young and Helmholtz established the theory that
the three colours, red, green, and blue, were the primary colours, and
from a mixture of these, secondary colours are produced. Henry Collen in
1865 laid down the lines on which the practical reduction should take
place; and within the last decade F. E. Ives of Philadelphia has
invented the _Photochromoscope_ for producing pictures in their natural
colours. The process consists in blending in one picture the separate
photographic views taken on separate negative plates, each sensitised to
receive one of the primary colours, which are then exposed and blended
simultaneously in a triple camera.
Plates and films and many other articles and processes have helped to
establish the Art of Photography on its new basis.
Among the minor inventions relating to Art, mention may be made of that
very useful article the lead _pencil_, which all have employed so much
time in sharpening to the detriment of time and clean hands. Within a
decade, pencils in which the lead or crayon is covered instead of with
wood, with slitted, perforated or creased paper, spirally rolled
thereon, and on which by unrolling a portion at a time a new point is
exposed; or that other style in which a number of short, sharpened
marking leads, or crayons, are arranged in series and adapted to be
projected one after the other as fast as worn away.
_In Painting_ modern inventions and discoveries have simply added to the
instrumentalities of genius but have created no royal road to the art
made glorious by Titian and Raphael. It has given to the artists,
through its chemists, a world of new colours, and through its mechanics
new and convenient appliances.
_Air Brushes_ have proved a great help by which the paint or other
colouring matter is sprayed in heavy, light, or almost invisible showers
to produce backgrounds by the force of air blown upon the pigments held
in drops at the end of a fine spraying tube. Made of larger proportions,
this brush has been used for fresco painting, and for painting large
objects, such as buildings, which it admits of doing with great
rapidity.
A description of modern methods of applying colours to porcelain and
pottery is given in the chapter treating of those subjects.
_Telegraphic pictures_:--Perhaps it is appropriate in closing this
chapter that reference be made to that process by which the likeness of
the distant reader may be taken telegraphically. A picture in relief is
first made by the swelled gelatine or other process; a tracing point is
then moved in the lines across the undulating surface of the pictures,
and the movements of this tracer are imparted by suitable electrical
apparatus to a cutter or engraving tool at the opposite end of the line
and there reproduced upon a suitable substance.
CHAPTER XXVII.
SAFES AND LOCKS.
Prior to the century safes were not constructed to withstand the test of
intense heat. Efforts were numerous, however, to render them safe
against the entrance of thieves, but the ingenuity of the thieves
advanced more rapidly than the ingenuity of safe-makers. And the race
between these two classes of inventors still continues. For with the
exercise of a vast amount of ingenuity in intricate locks, aided by all
the advancement of science as to the nature of metals, their tough
manufacture and their resistance to explosives, thieves still manage to
break in and steal. The only sure protection against burglars at the
close of the nineteenth century appears to consist of what it was at the
close of any previous century--the preponderance of physical force and
the best weapons. Among the latest inventions are electrical connections
with the safe, whereby tampering therewith alarms one or more watchmen
at a near station.
A classification of safes embraces, _Fire-proof_, _Burglar-proof_, _Safe
Bolt Works_, _Express and Deposit Safes and Boxes_, _Circular Doors_,
_Pressure Mechanism_, and _Water and Air Protective Devices_.
The attention of the earliest inventors of the century were directed
toward making safes fire-proof. In England the first patent granted for
a fire-proof safe was to Richard Scott in 1801. It had two casings, an
inner and outer one, including the door, and the interspace was filled
in with charcoal, or wood, and treated with a solution of alkaline salt.
This idea of interspacing filled in with non-combustible material has
been generally followed ever since. The particular inventions in that
line consist in the discovery and appliance of new lining materials,
variations in the form of the interspacing, and new methods in the
construction of the casings, and the selection of the best metals for
such construction.
In 1834 William Marr of England patented a lining for a double metallic
chest, filled with non-combustible materials such as mica, or talc clay,
lime, and graphite. Asbestos commenced to be used about the same time.
The great fire in New York City in 1835, destroying hundreds of millions
of dollars' worth of property of every description, gave a great impetus
to the invention of fire-proof safes in America.
B. G. Wilder there patented in 1843 his celebrated safe, now extensively
used throughout the world. It consisted of a double box of wrought-iron
plates strengthened at the edges with bar iron, with a bar across the
middle; and as a filling for the interspaces he used hydrated gypsum,
hydraulic cement, plaster of paris, steatite, alum, and the dried
residuum of soda water.
Herring was another American who invented celebrated safes, made with a
boiler-iron exterior, a hardened steel inner safe, with the interior
filled with a casting of franklinite around rods of soft steel. Thus the
earth, air and water were ransacked for lining materials, in some cases
more for the purpose of obtaining a patent than to accomplish any real
advance in the art. Water itself was introduced as a lining, made to
flow through the safes, sometimes from the city mains, and so retained
that when the temperature in case of fire reached 212° F. it became
steam; and an arrangement for introducing steam in place of water was
contrived. Among other lining materials found suitable were soapstone,
alumina, ammonia, copperas, starch, Epsom salts, and gypsum, paper,
pulp, and alum, and a mixture of various other materials.
After safes were produced that would come out of fiery furnaces where
they had been buried for days without even the smell of fire or smoke
upon their contents, inventors commenced to direct their attention to
burglar-proof safes.
Chubb, in 1835, patented a process of rendering wooden safes burglar
proof by lining them with steel, or case-hardened iron plate. Newton in
1853 produced one made of an outer shell of cast iron, an interior
network of wrought iron rods, and fluid iron poured between these, so
that a compound mass was formed of different degrees of resistance to
turn aside the burglar's tools. Chubb again, in 1857, and in subsequent
years, and Chartwood, Glocker, and Thompson and Tann and others in
England invented new forms to prevent the insertion of wedges and the
drilling by tools. Hall and Marvin of the United States also invented
safes for the same purpose. Hall had thick steel plates dovetailed
together; and angle irons tenoned at the corners. Marvin's safe was
globeshaped, to present no salient points for the action of tools, made
of chrome steel, mounted in this shape on a platform, or enclosed in a
fire-proof safe. Herring also invented a safe in which he hinged and
grooved the doors with double casings, and which he hung with a
lever-hinge, provided the doors with separate locks and packed all the
joints with rubber to prevent the operation of the air pump--which had
become a dangerous device of burglars with which to introduce explosives
to blow open the doors.
Still later and more elaborate means have been used to frustrate the
burglars. Electricity has been converted into an automatic warder to
guard the castle and the safe and to give an alarm to convenient
stations when the locks or doors are meddled with and the proper
manipulation not used. Express safes for railroad cars have been made of
parts telescoped or crowded together by hydraulic power, requiring heavy
machinery for locking and unlocking, and this machinery is located in
machine shops along the route and not accessible to burglars.
About 1815 inventors commenced to produce devices to show with certainty
if a lock had been tampered with. The keyhole was closed by a revolving
metallic curtain, and paper was secured over the keyhole. As a further
means of detection photographs of some irregular object are made, one of
which is placed over the keyhole and the other is retained. This
prevents the substitution of one piece of paper for another piece
without detection. A large number of patents have been taken out on
glass coverings for locks which have to be broken before the lock can be
turned. These are called seal locks.
Locks of various kinds, consisting at least of the two general features
of a bolt and a key to move the bolt, have existed from very ancient
days. The Egyptians, the Hebrews and the Chinese, and Oriental nations
generally had locks and keys of ponderous size. Isaiah speaks of the key
of the house of David; and Homer writes sonorously of the lock in the
house of Penelope with its brazen key, the respondent wards, the flying
bars and valves which,
"Loud as a bull makes hills and valley ring,
So roared the lock when it released the spring."
The castles, churches and convents of the middle ages had their often
highly ornamental locks and their warders to guard and open them. Later,
locks were invented with complex wards. These are carved pieces of metal
in the lock which fit into clefts or grooves in the key and prevent the
lock from being opened except by its own proper key.
As early as 1650 the Dutch had invented the Letter lock, the progenitor
of the modern permutation lock, consisting of a lock the bolt of which
is surrounded by several rings on which were cut the letters of the
alphabet, which by a prearrangement on the part of the owner were made
to spell a certain word or number of words before the lock could be
opened. Carew, in verses written in 1621, refers to one of these locks
as follows:--
"As doth a lock that goes with letters; for, till every one be known,
The lock's as fast as though you had found none."
The art had also advanced in the eighteenth century to the use of
_tumblers_ in locks, the lever or latch or plate which falls into a
notch of the bolt and prevents it from being shot until it has been
raised or released by the action of the key. Barron in England in 1778
obtained a patent for such a lock.
Joseph Bramah, who has before been referred to in connection with the
hydraulic press he invented, also in 1784 invented and patented in
England a lock which obtained a world-wide reputation and a century's
extensive use. It was the first, or among the first of locks which
troubled modern burglars' picks. Its leading features were a key with
longitudinal slots, a barrel enclosing a spring, plates, called sliders,
notched unequally and resting against the spring, a plate with a central
perforation and slits leading therefrom to engage the notches of the
slides simultaneously and allow the frame to be turned by the key so as
to actuate the bolt. Chubb and Hobbs of England made important
improvements in tumbler locks, which for a long time were regarded as
unpickable.
Most important advances have been made during the century in
_Combination_ or _Permutation Locks_ and _Time Locks_. For a long time
permutation or combination locks consisted of modifications of one
general principle, and that was the Dutch letter lock already referred
to, or the wheel lock, composed of a series of disks with letters around
their edges. The interior arrangement is such as to prevent the bolt
being shot until a series of letters were in line, forming a combination
known only to the operator. Time locks are constructed on the principle
of clockwork, so that they cannot be opened even with the proper key
until a regulated interval of time has elapsed.
Among the most celebrated combination and time locks of the century are
those known as the Yale locks, chiefly the inventions of Louis Yale,
Jr., of Philadelphia. The Yale double dial lock is a double combination
bank or safe lock having two dials, each operating its own set of
tumblers and bolts, so that two persons, each in possession of his own
combination, must be present at a certain time in order to unlock it. If
this double security is not desired, one person alone may be possessed
of both combinations, or the combinations may be set as one. In their
time locks a safe can be set so as to not only render it impossible to
unlock except at a predetermined time each day, but the arrangement is
such that on intervening Sundays the time mechanism will entirely
prevent the operation of the lock or the opening of the door on that
day.
Another feature of the lock is the thin, flat keys with bevel-edged
notchings, or with longitudinal sinuous corrugations to fit a narrow
slit of a cylinder lock. To make locks for use with the corrugated keys
machines of as great ingenuity as the locks were devised. In such a lock
the keyhole, which is a little very narrow slit, is formed sinuously to
correspond to the sinuosities of the key. No other key will fit it, nor
can it be picked by a tool, as the tool must be an exact duplicate of
the key in order to enter and move in the keyhole.
Of late years numerous locks have been invented for the special uses to
which they are to be applied. Thus, one type of lock is that for safety
deposit vaults and boxes, in which a primary key in the keeping of a
janitor operates alone the tumblers or guard mechanism to set the lock,
while the box owner may use a secondary key to completely unlock the box
or vault.
Master, or secondary key locks, are now in common use in hotels and
apartment-houses, by which the key of the door held by a guest will
unlock only his door, but the master key held by the manager or janitor
will unlock all the doors. This saves the duplication and multiplicity
of a vast number of extra keys.
The value of a simple, cheap, safe, effective lock in a place where its
advantages are appreciated by all classes of people everywhere is
illustrated in the application of the modern rotary registering lock to
the single article of mail bags. Formerly it was not unusual that losses
by theft of mail matter were due in part to the extraction of a portion
of the mail matter by unlocking or removing the lock and then restoring
it in place.
The United States, with its 76,000,000 of people, found it necessary to
use in its mail service hundreds of thousands of mail pouches, having
locks for securing packages of valuable matter. But these locks are of
such character that it is impossible for anyone to break into the bag
and conceal the evidence of his crime. The unfortunate thief is reduced
to the necessity of stealing the whole pouch. Losses under this system
have grown so small "as to be almost incapable of mathematical
calculation."
Safe and convenient locks for so very many purposes are now so common,
even to prevent the unauthorised use of an umbrella, or the unfriendly
taking away of a bicycle or other vehicle, that notwithstanding the
nineteenth century dynamite with which burglars still continue to blow
open the best constructed safes and vaults, still a universal sense of
greater security in such matters is beginning to manifest itself; and
not only the loss of valuables by fire and theft is becoming the
exception, but the temptation to steal is being gradually removed.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CARRYING MACHINES.
The reflecting observer delights occasionally to shift the scenes of the
present stage and bring to the front the processions of the past. That
famous triumphal one, for instance, of Ptolemy of Philadelphus, at
Alexandria, about 270 B. C., then in the midst of his power and glory,
in which there were chariots and cumbrous wagons drawn by elephants and
goats, antelopes, oryxes, buffaloes, ostriches, gnus and zebras; then a
tribe of the Scythians, when with many scores of oxen they were shifting
their light, big round houses, made of felt cloth and mounted on road
carts, to a new camping place; next a wild, mad dash of the Roman
charioteers around the amphitheatre, or a triumphal march with chariots
of carved ivory bearing aloft the ensigns of victory; and now an army of
the ancient Britons driving through these same charioteers of Cæsar with
their own rude chariots, having sharp hooks and crooked iron blades
extending from their axles; now a "Lady's Chair" of the fourteenth
century--the state carriage of the time--with a long, wooden-roofed and
windowed body, having a door at each end, resting on a cumbrous frame
without springs, and the axles united rigidly to a long reach; next
comes a line of imposing clumsy state coaches of the sixteenth century,
with bodies provided with pillars to support the roof, and adorned with
curtains of cloth and leather, but still destitute of springs; and here
in stately approach comes a line of more curious and more comfortable
"royal coaches" of the seventeenth century, when springs were for the
first time introduced; and now rumbles forward a line of those famous
old English stage coaches originated in the seventeenth century, which
were two days flying from Oxford to London, a distance of fifty-five
miles; but a scene in the next century shows these ponderous vehicles
greatly improved, and the modern English stage mail-coaches of Palmer in
line. Referring to Palmer's coaches, Knight says: "Palmer, according to
De Quincey, was twice as great a man as Galileo, because he not only
invented mail-coaches (of more general practical utility than Jupiter's
satellites), but married the daughter of a duke, and succeeded in
getting the post-office to use them. This revolutionised the whole
business." The coaches were built with steel springs, windows of great
strength and lightness combined, boots for the baggage, seats for a few
outside passengers, and a guard with a grand uniform, to protect the
mail and stand for the dignity of his majesty's government.
By the system of changing horses frequently great speed was attained,
and the distance from Edinburgh to London, 400 miles, was made in 40
hours. Other lines of coaches, arranged to carry double the number of
passengers outside than in, fourteen to six, were made heavier, and took
the road more leisurely.
The carts and conveyances of the poor were cumbrous, heavy contrivances,
without springs, mostly two-wheel, heavy carts.
The middle classes at that time were not seen riding in coaches of their
own, but generally on horseback, as the coaches of the rich were too
expensive, and the conveyances of the poor were too rude in
construction, and too painful in operation.
Let the observer now pass to the largest and most varied exhibition of
the best types of modern vehicles of every description that the world
had ever seen, the International Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876, and
behold what wonderful changes art, science, invention, and mechanical
skill had wrought in this domain. Here were the carriages of the rich,
constructed of the finest and most appropriate woods that science and
experience had found best adapted for the various parts, requiring the
combination of strength and lightness, the best steel for the springs,
embodying in themselves a world of invention and discovery, and splendid
finish and polish in all parts unknown to former generations.
Here, too, were found vehicles of a great variety for the comfort and
convenience of every family, from the smallest to the largest means.
The farmer and the truckman were especially provided for. One
establishment making an exhibition at that time, employed some six
hundred or seven hundred hands, four hundred horse-power of steam,
turning out sixty wagons a day, or one in every ten minutes of each
working day in the year.
Here England showed her victoria, her broughams, landaus, phætons,
sporting-carts, wagonettes, drays and dog-carts; Canada her splendid
sleighs; France her superb barouches, carriages, double-top sociables,
the celebrated Collinge patent axle-trees and springs; Germany the best
carriage axles, springs and gears; Russia its famous low-wheeled
fast-running carriages; Norway its carryalls, or sulkies, and sleighs
strongly built, and made of wood from those vast forests that ever
abound in strength and beauty. One ancient sleigh there was, demurely
standing by its modern companions, said to have been built in 1625, and
it was still good. America stood foremost in carriage wheels of best
materials and beautiful workmanship, bent rims, turned and finished
spokes, mortised hubs, steel tires, business and farm wagons, carts and
baby carriages. Each trade and field of labour had its own especially
adapted complete and finished vehicle. There were hay wagons and
hearses; beer wagons and ice carts; doctors' buggies, express wagons,
drays, package delivery wagons; peddlers' wagons with all the shelves
and compartments of a miniature store, skeleton wagons, and sportsmen's,
and light and graceful two and four "wheelers." Beautiful displays of
bent and polished woods, a splendid array of artistic, elegant, and
useful harnesses, and all the traps that go to make modern means of
conveyance by animal power so cheap, convenient, strong and attractive
that civilisation seemed to have reached a stop in principles of
construction of vehicles and in their materials, and since contents
itself in improving details.
To this century is due the development of that class of carriages, the
generic term for which is _Velocipedes_--a word which would imply a
vehicle propelled by the feet, although it has been applied to vehicles
propelled by the hands and steered by the feet. This name originated
with the French, and several Frenchmen patented velocipedes from 1800 to
1821.
Tricycles having three wheels, propelled by the hands and steered with
the feet, were also invented in the early part of the century.
The term _Bicycle_ does not appear to have been used until about 1869.
Although such structures had been referred to in publications before,
yet the modern bicycle appears to have been first practically
constructed in Germany. In 1816 Baron von Drais of Manheim made a
vehicle consisting of two wheels arranged one before the other, and
connected by a bar, the forward wheel axled in a fork which was swiveled
to the front end of the bar and had handles to guide the machine, with a
seat on the bar midway between the two wheels, and arranged so that the
driver should bestride the bar. But there was no support for the rider's
feet, and the vehicle was propelled by thrusting his feet alternately
against the ground. This machine was called the "Draisine" and
undoubtedly was the progenitor of the modern bicycle. Denis Johnson
patented in England in 1818 a similar vehicle which he named the
"Pedestrian Curricle." Another style was called the "Dandy Horse."
Another form was that of Gompertz in England in 1821, who contrived a
segmental rack connected with a frame over the front wheel and engaging
a pinion on the wheel axle. With some improvements added by others, the
vehicle came into quite extensive and popular use in some of the cities
in Europe and America. It was also named the "Dandy" and the "Hobby
Horse." Treadles were subsequently applied, but after a time the machine
fell into disuse and was apparently forgotten. In 1863, however, the
idea was revived by a Frenchman, Michaux, who added the crank to the
front wheel axle of the "Draisine" (also called the "célérifèré.") In
1866 Pierre Lallement of France, having adapted the idea of the crank
and pedal movement and obtained a patent, went to America, where after
two years of public indifference the machine suddenly sprung into
favour. In 1869 a popular wave in its favour also spread over part of
Europe, and all classes of people were riding it.
But the wheels had hard tires, the roads and many of the streets were
not smooth, the vehicle got the name of the "bone-breaker" and its use
ceased. During the few years following some new styles of frames were
invented. Thus some very high wheels, with a small wheel in front, or
one behind, wheels with levers in addition to the crank, etc., and then
for a time the art rested again.
Some one then recalled the fact that McMillan, a Scotchman, about
1838-1841, had used two low wheels like the "Draisine" with a driving
gear, and that Dalzell, also of Scotland, had in 1845 made a similar
machine. Parts of these old machines were found and the wheel
reconstructed. Then in the seventies the entire field was thrown open to
women by the invention in England of the "drop frame," which removed
completely the difficulty as to arrangement of the skirts and thus
doubled the interest in and desire for a comfortable riding machine. But
they were still, to a great degree, "bone-breakers."
Then J. B. Dunlop, a veterinary surgeon of Belfast, Ireland, in order to
meet the complaints of his son that the wheel was too hard, thought of
the _pneumatic rubber tire_, and applied it with great success. This was
a very notable and original re-invention. A re-invention, because a man
"born before his time" had invented and patented the pneumatic tire more
than forty years before. It was not wanted then and everybody had
forgotten it. This man was Robert William Thomson, a civil engineer of
Adelphi, Middlesex county, England. In 1845 he obtained a patent in
England, and shortly after in the United States. In both patents he
describes how he proposed to make a tire for all kinds of vehicles
consisting of a hollow rubber tube, with an inner mixed canvas and
rubber lining, a tube and a screw cup by which to inflate it, and
several ways for preventing punctures. To obviate the bad results of
punctures he proposed also to make his tire in sectional compartments,
so that if one compartment was punctured the others would still hold
good. He also proposed to use vulcanised rubber, thus utilising the then
very recent discovery of Goodyear of mixing sulphur with soft rubber,
and to apply the same to the canvas lining.
And, now, when the last decade of the century had been reached, and
after a century's hard work by the inventors, the present wonderful
vehicle, known as the "safety bicycle," had obtained a successful and
permanent foothold among the vehicles of mankind. Proper proportions,
low wheels, chain-gearing, treadles, pedals and cranks, cushion and
pneumatic tires, drop frames, steel spokes like a spider's web,
ball-bearings for the crank and axle parts, a spring-supported cushioned
seat which could be raised or lowered, adjustable handles, and the
clearest-brained scientific mechanics to construct all parts from the
best materials and with mathematical exactness--all this has been done.
To these accomplishments have been added a great variety of tires to
prevent wear and puncturing, among which are _self-healing_ tires,
having a lining of viscous or plastic rubber to close up automatically
the air holes. Many ways of clamping the tire to the rim have been
contrived. So have brakes of various descriptions, some consisting of
disks on the driving shaft, brought into frictional contact by a touch
of the toe on the pedal, as a substitute for those applied to the
surface of the tire, known as "spoon brakes"; saddles, speed-gearings,
men's machines in which by the removal of the upper bar the machine is
converted into one for the use of women; the substitution of the direct
action, consisting of beveled gearing for the sprocket chain, etc., etc.
The ideas of William Thomson as to pneumatic and cushioned tires are
now, after a lapse of fifty years, generally adopted. Even sportsmen
were glad to seize upon them, and wheels of sulkies, provided with the
pneumatic tires, have enabled them to lower the record of trotting
horses. Their use on many other vehicles has accomplished his objects,
"of lessening the power required to draw carriages, rendering the motion
easier, and diminishing the noise."
It is impossible to overlook the fact in connection with this subject
that the processes and machinery especially invented to make the various
parts of a bicycle are as wonderful as the wheel itself. Counting the
spokes there are, it is estimated, more than 300 different parts in such
a wheel. The best and latest inventions and discoveries in the making of
metals, wood, rubber and leather have been drawn upon in supplying these
useful carriers. And what a revolution they have produced in the making
of good roads, the saving of time, the dispatch of business, and more
than all else, in the increase of the pleasure, the health and the
amusement of mankind!
It was quite natural that when the rubber cushion and pneumatic tires
rounded the pleasure of easy and noiseless riding in vehicles that
_Motor vehicles_ should be revived and improved. So we have the
_Automobiles_ in great variety. Invention has been and is still being
greatly exercised as to the best motive power, in the adaption of
electric motors, oil and gasoline or vapour engines, springs and air
pumps, in attempts to reduce the number of complicated parts, and to
render less strenuous the mental and muscular strain of the operator.
_Traction Engines._--The old road engines that antedated the locomotives
are being revived, and new ideas springing from other arts are being
incorporated in these useful machines to render them more available than
in former generations. Many of the principles and features of motor
vehicles, but on a heavier scale, are being introduced to adapt them to
the drawing of far heavier loads. Late devices comprise a spring link
between the power and the traction wheel to prevent too sudden a start,
and permit a yielding motion; steering devices by which the power of the
engine is used to steer the machine; and application of convenient and
easily-worked brakes.
An example of a modern traction engine may be found attached to one or
more heavy cars adapted for street work, and on which may be found
apparatus for making the mixed materials of which the roadbed is to be
constructed, and all of which is moved along as the road or street
surface is completed. When these fine roads become the possession of a
country light traction engines for passenger traffic will be found
largely supplanting the horse and the steam railroad engines.
_Brakes_, railway and electric, have already been referred to in the
proper chapters. In the latest system of railroading greater attention
has been paid to the lives and limbs of those employed as workmen on the
trains, especially to those of brakemen. And if corporations have been
slow to adopt such merciful devices, legislatures have stepped in to
help the matter. One great source of accidents in this respect has been
due to the necessity of the brakemen entering between the cars while
they are in motion to couple them by hand. This is now being abolished
by _automatic couplers_, by which, when the locking means have been
withdrawn from connection or thrown up, they will be so held until the
cars meet again, when the locking parts on the respective cars will be
automatically thrown and locked, as easily and on the same principle as
the hand of one man may clasp the hand of another.
The comfort of passengers and the safety of freight have also been
greatly increased by the invention of _Buffers_ on railroad cars and
trains to prevent sudden and violent concussion. Fluid pressure car
buffers, in which a constant supply of fluid under pressure is provided
by a pump or train pipe connected to the engine is one of a great
variety.
Another notable improvement in this line is the splendid vestibule
trains, in which the cars are connected to one another by enclosed
passages and which at their meeting ends are provided with yieldingly
supported door-like frames engaging one another by frictional contact,
usually, whereby the shock and rocking of cars are prevented in starting
and stopping, and their oscillation reduced to a minimum.
As collisions and accidents cannot always be prevented, car frames are
now built in which the frames are trussed, and made of rolled steel
plates, angles, and channels, whereby a car body of great resistance to
telescoping or crushing is obtained.
CHAPTER XXIX.
SHIPS AND SHIP-BUILDING.
"Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home."
"Ships are but boards," soliloquised the crafty Shylock, and were this
still true, yet this present period has seen wonderful changes in
construction.
The high castellated bows and sterns and long prows of _The Great
Harry_, of the seventeenth century, and its successors in the
eighteenth, with some moderation of cumbersome matter, gave way to
lighter, speedier forms, first appearing in the quick-gliding Yankee
clippers, during the first decade of the nineteenth century.
Eminent naval architects have regarded the proportions of Noah's ark,
300 cubits long, 50 cubits broad and 30 cubits high, in which the length
was six times the breadth, and the depth three-fifths of the breadth, as
the best combination of the elements of strength, capacity and
stability.
Even that most modern mercantile vessel known as the "whale-back" with
its nearly flat bottom, vertical sides, arched top or deck, skegged or
spoon-shaped at bow and stern, straight deck lines, the upper deck
cabins and steering gear raised on hollow turrets, with machinery and
cargo in the main hull, has not departed much from the safe rule of
proportions of its ancient prototype.
But in other respects the ideas of Noah and of the Ph[oe]nicians, the
best of ancient ship-builders, as well as the Northmen, the Dutch, the
French, and the English, the best ship-builders of later centuries, were
decidedly improved upon by the Americans, who, as above intimated, were
revolutionizing the art and building the finest vessels in the early
part of the century, and these rivalled in speed the steam vessels for
some years after steamships were ploughing the rivers and the ocean.
Discarding the lofty decks fore and aft and ponderous topsides, the
principal characteristics of the American "clippers" were their fine
sharp lines, built long and low, broad of beam before the centre, sharp
above the water, and deep aft. A typical vessel of this sort was the
clipper ship _Great Republic_, built by Donald McKay of Boston during
the first half of the century. She was 325 feet long, 53 feet wide, 37
feet deep, with a capacity of about 4000 tons. She had four masts, each
provided with a lightning rod. A single suit of her sails consisted of
15,563 yards of canvas. Her keel rose for 60 feet forward, gradually
curved into the arc of a circle as it blended with the stern. Vessels of
her type ran seventeen and eighteen miles an hour at a time when steam
vessels were making only twelve or fourteen miles an hour, the latter
speed being one which it was predicted by naval engineers could not with
safety be exceeded with ocean steamships.
These vessels directed the attention of ship-builders to two prominent
features, the shape of the bow and the length of the vessel. For the old
convex form of bow and stern, the principal of an elongated wedge was
substituted, the wedge slightly hollowed on its face, by which the
waters were more easily parted and thrown aside.
A departure was early made in the matter of strengthening the "ribs of
oak" to better meet the strains from the rough seas. In 1810 Sir Robert
Seppings, surveyor of the English navy, devised and introduced the
system of diagonal bracing. This was an arrangement of timbers crossing
the ribs on the inside of the ship at angles of about 45°, and braced by
diagonals and struts.
Of course the great and leading event of the nineteenth century in the
matter of inventions relating to ships was the introduction of steam as
the motive power. Of this we have treated in the chapter on steam
engineering. The giant, steam, demanded and received the obeisance of
every art before devoting his inexhaustible strength to their service.
Systems of wood-working and metal manufacture must be revolutionised to
give him room to work, and to withstand the strokes of his mighty arm.
Lord Dundas at the beginning of the century had an iron boat built for
the Forth and Clyde Canal, which was propelled by steam.
But the departure from the adage that "ships are but boards" did not
take place, however, until about 1829-30, when the substitution of iron
for wood in the construction of vessels had passed beyond the
experimental stage. In those years the firm of John Laird of Birkenhead
began the building of practical iron vessels, and he was followed soon
by Sir William Fairbairn at Manchester, and Randolph, Elder & Co., and
the Fairfield Works on the Clyde.
The advantage of iron over wood in strength, and in power to withstand
tremendous shocks, was early illustrated in the _Great Britain_ built
about 1844, the first large, successful, seagoing vessel constructed.
Not long thereafter this same vessel lay helpless upon the coast of
Ireland, driven there by a great storm, and beaten by the tremendous
waves of the Atlantic with a force that would have in a few hours or
days broken up and pulverised a "ship of boards," and yet the _Great
Britain_ lay there several weeks, was finally brought off, and again
restored to successful service.
Wood and iron both have their peculiar advantages and disadvantages.
Wood is not only lighter, but easily procured and worked, and cheaper,
in many small and private ship-yards where an iron frame and parts would
be difficult and expensive to produce. It is thought that as to the
fouling of ships' bottoms a wooden hull covered with copper fouls less,
and consequently impedes the speed less; that the damage done by shocks
or the penetration of shot is not so great or difficult to repair, and
that the danger of variation of the compass by reason of local
attraction of the metal is less.
But the advantages of iron and steel far outnumber those of wood. Its
strength, its adaptability for all sizes and forms and lines, its
increased cheapness, its resistance to shot penetration, its durability,
and now its easy procurement, constitute qualities which have
established iron ship-building as a great new and modern art. In this
modern revolution in iron-clad ships, their adaptation to naval warfare
was due to the genius of John Ericsson, and dates practically from the
celebrated battle between the iron-clads the _Merrimac_ and the
_Monitor_ in Hampton Roads on the Virginia coast in the Civil war in
America in April, 1862.
Although the tendency at first in building iron and steel vessels,
especially for the navy, was towards an entire metal structure, later
experience resulted in a more composite style, using wood in some parts,
where found best adapted by its capacity of lightness, non-absorption of
heat and less electrical conductivity, etc., and at the same time
protecting such interior portions by an iron shell or frame-work.
One great improvement in ship-building, whether in wood or metal,
thought of and practised to some extent in former times, but after all a
child of this century, is the building of the hull and hold in
compartments, water-tight, and sometimes fire-proof, so that in case of
a leakage or a fire in one or more compartments, the fire or water may
be confined there and the extension of the danger to the entire ship
prevented.
In the matter of _Marine Propulsion_, when the steam engine was made a
practical and useful servant by Watt, and men began to think of driving
boats and ships with it, the problem was how to adapt it to use with
propelling means already known. Paddle-wheels and other wheels to move
boats in place of oars had been suggested, and to some extent used from
time to time, since the days of the Romans; and they were among the
first devices used in steam vessels. Their whirl may still be heard on
many waters. Learned men saw no reason why the screw of Archimedes
should not be used for the same purpose, and the idea was occasionally
advocated by French and English philosophers from at least 1680, by
Franklin and Watt less than a century later, and finally, in 1794,
Lyttleton of England obtained a patent for his "aquatic propeller,"
consisting of threads formed on a cylinder and revolving in a frame at
the head, stern, or side of a vessel.
Other means had been also suggested prior to 1800, and by the same set
of philosophers, and experimentally used by practical builders, such as
steam-pumps for receiving the water forward, or amidships, and forcing
it out astern, thus creating a propulsive movement. The latter part of
the eighteenth century teemed with these suggestions and experiments,
but it remained for the nineteenth to see their embodiment and
adaptation to successful commercial use.
The earliest, most successful demonstrations of screw propellers and
paddle wheels in steam vessels in the century were the construction and
use of a boat with twin screws by Col. John Stevens of Hoboken, N. J.,
in 1804 and the paddle-wheel steamboat trial of Fulton on the Hudson in
1807.
But it was left to John Ericsson, that great Swedish inventor, going to
England in 1826 with his brain full of ideas as to steam and solar
engines, to first perfect the screw-propeller. He there patented in 1836
his celebrated propeller, consisting of several blades or segments of a
screw, and based on such correct principles of twist that they were at
once adopted and applied to steam vessels.
In 1837-1839 the knowledge of his inventions had preceded him to
America, where his propeller was at once introduced and used in the
vessels _Frances B. Ogden_ and the _Robert E. Stockton_ (the latter
built by the Lairds of Birkenhead and launched in 1837). In 1839 or 1840
Ericsson went to America, and in 1841 he was engaged in the construction
of the U.S. ship of war _Princeton_, the first naval screw warship built
having propelling machinery under the water line and out of reach of
shot.
The idea that steamships could not be safely run at a greater speed than
ten or twelve miles an hour was now abandoned.
Twice Ericsson revolutionised the naval construction of the world by his
inventions in America: first by the introduction of his screw-propeller
in the _Princeton_; and second, by building the iron-clad _Monitor_.
Since Ericsson's day other inventors have made themselves also famous by
giving new twists to the tail of this famous fish and new forms to its
iron-ribbed body.
_Pneumatic Propellers_ operated by the expulsion of air or gas against
the surrounding body of water, and chain-propellers, consisting of a
revolving chain provided with paddles or floats, have also been invented
and tested, with more or less successful results.
A great warship as she lies in some one of the vast modern ship-yards of
the world, resting securely on her long steel backbone, from which great
ribs of steel rise and curve on either side and far overhead, like a
monstrous skeleton of some huge animal that the sea alone can produce,
clothed with a skin, also of steel; her huge interior, lined at bottom
with an armoured deck that stretches across the entire breadth of the
vessel, and built upon this deck, capacious steel compartments enclosing
the engines and boilers, the coal, the magazines, the electric plant for
supplying power to various motors for lighting the ship and for
furnishing the current to powerful search-lights; having compartments
for the sick, the apothecary shop, and the surgeon's hospital, the men's
and the officers' quarters; above these the conning tower and the
armoured pilot-house, then the great guns interspersed among these
various parts, looking like the sunken eyes, or protruding like the bony
prominences of some awful sea monster, is a structure that gives one an
idea of the immense departure which has occurred during the last half
century, not only from the wooden walls of the navies of all the past,
but from all its mechanical arts.
What a great ocean liner contains and what the contributions are to
modern ship-building from other modern arts is set forth in the
following extract from _McClure's Magazine_ for September, 1900, in
describing the _Deutschland_. "The _Deutschland_, for instance has a
complete refrigerating plant, four hospitals, a safety deposit vault for
the immense quantities of gold and silver which pass between the banks
of Europe and America, eight kitchens, a complete post-office with
German and American clerks, thirty electrical motors, thirty-six pumps,
most of them of American and English make, no fewer than seventy-two
steam engines, a complete drug store, a complete fire department, with
pumps, hose and other fire-fighting machinery, a library, 2600 electric
lights, two barber shops, room for an orchestra and brass band, a
telegraph system, a telephone system, a complete printing establishment,
a photographic dark room, a cigar store, an electric fire-alarm system,
and a special refrigerator for flowers."
We have seen, in treating of safes and locks, how burglars keep pace
with the latest inventions to protect property by the use of dynamite
and nitro-glycerine explosions. The reverse of this practice prevails
when those policemen of the seas, the _torpedo boats_, guard the
treasures of the shore. It is there the defenders are armed with the
irresistible explosives. These explosives are either planted in harbours
and discharged by electricity from the shore, or carried by very swift
armoured boats, or by boats capable of being submerged, directed, and
propelled by mechanisms contained there and controlled from the shore,
or from another vessel; or by boats containing all instrumentalities,
crew, and commander, and capable of submerging and raising itself, and
of attacking and exploding the torpedo when and where desired. The
latter are now considered as the most formidable and efficient class of
destroyers.
No matter how staunch, sound and grand in dimensions man may build his
ships, old Neptune can still toss them. But Franklin, a century and a
half ago, called attention to his experiments of oiling his locks when
in a tempestuous mood, and thus rendering the temper of the Old Man of
the Sea as placid as a summer pond. Ships that had become unmanageable
were thus enabled, by spreading oil on the waves from the windward side,
to be brought under control, and dangerous surfs subdued, so that boats
could land. Franklin's idea of pouring oil on the troubled waters has
been revived during the last quarter of the century and various means
for doing it vigorously patented. The means have varied in many
instances, but chiefly consist of bags and other receptacles to hold and
distribute the oil upon the surrounding water with economy and
uniformity.
At the close of the century the world was still waiting for the
successful _Air-ship_.
A few successful experiments in balloon navigation by the aid of small
engines of different forms have been made since 1855. Some believe that
Count Zeppelin, an officer of the German army has solved the great
problem, especially since the ascent of his ship made on July 2, 1900,
at Lake Constance.
It has been asserted that no vessel has yet been made to successfully
fly unless made on the balloon principle, and Count Zeppelin's boat is
on that principle. According to the description of Eugen Wolf, an
aeronaut who took part in the ascent referred to and who published an
account of the same in the November number of _McClure's_, 1900, it is
not composed of one balloon, but of a row of them, and these are not
exposed when inflated to every breeze that blows, but enclosed and
combined in an enormous cylindrical shell, 420 feet in length, about 38
feet in diameter, with a volume of 14,780 cubic yards and with ends
pointed like a cigar. This shell is a framework made up of aluminium
trellis work, and divided into seventeen compartments, each having its
own gas bag. The frame is further strengthened and the balloons stayed
by a network of aluminium wire, and the entire frame covered with a soft
ramie fibre. Over this is placed a water-tight covering of pegamoid, and
the lower part covered with light silk. An air space of two feet is left
between the cover and the balloons. Beneath the balloons extends a
walking bridge 226 feet long, and from this bridge is suspended two
aluminium cars, at front and rear of the centre, adapted to hold all the
operative machinery and the operator and other passengers.
The balloons, provided with proper valves, served to lift the structure;
large four-winged screws, one on each side of the ship, their shafts
mounted on a light framework extending from the body of the ship, and
driven backward and forward by two light benzine engines, one on each
car, constituted the propelling force. Dirigibility (steering) was
provided for by an apparatus consisting of a double pair of rudders, one
pair forward and one aft, reaching out like great fins, and controlled
by light metal cords from the cars. A ballast of water was carried in a
compartment under each car. To give the ship an upward or a downward
movement the plane on which the ship rests was provided with a weight
adapted to slip back and forth on a cable underneath the balloon shell.
When the weight was far aft the tip of the ship was upward and the
movement was upward, when at the forward end the movement was downward,
and when at the centre the ship was poised and travelled in a horizontal
plane. The trip was made over the lake on a quiet evening. A distance of
three and three-quarter miles, at a height of 1300 feet, was made in
seventeen minutes. Evolutions from a straight course were accomplished.
The ship was lowered to the lake, on which it settled easily and rode
smoothly.
The other great plan of air navigation receiving the attention of
scientists and aeronauts is the aeroplane system. Although the cohesive
force of the air is so exceedingly small that it cannot be relied upon
as a sufficient resisting medium through which propulsion may be
accomplished alone by a counter-resisting agent like propeller blades,
yet it is known what weight the air has and it has been ascertained what
expanse of a thin plane is necessary without other means to support the
weight of a man in the air.
To this idea must be added the means of flight, of starting and
maintaining a stable flight and of directing its course. Careful
observation of the manner of the flight of large heavy birds, especially
in starting, has led to some successful experiments. They do not rise at
once, but require an initiative force for soaring which they obtain by
running on the ground before spreading their wings. The action of the
wings in folding and unfolding for maintaining the flight and
controlling its direction, is then to be noted.
It is along these lines that inventions in this system are now working.
An initiative mechanism to start the ship along the earth or water, to
raise it at an angle, to spread planes of sufficient extent to support
the weight of the machine and its operators on the body of the air
column, light engines to give the wing-planes an opening and closing
action, rudders to steer by, means for maintaining equilibrium, and
means when landing to float upon the water or roll upon the land, these
are the principal problems that navigators of the great seas above us
are now at work upon.
CHAPTER XXX.
ILLUMINATING GAS.
"How wonderful that sunbeams absorbed by vegetation in the primordial
ages of the earth and buried in its depths as vegetable fossils
through immeasurable eras of time, until system upon system of slowly
formed rocks have been piled above, should come forth at last, at the
disenchanting touch of science, and turn the light of civilised man
into day."--_Prof. E. L. Youmans._
"The invention of artificial light has extended the available term
of human life, by giving the night to man's use; it has, by the
social intercourse it encourages, polished his manners and refined
his tastes, and perhaps as much as anything else, has aided his
intellectual progress."--_Draper._
If one desires to know what the condition of cities, towns and peoples
was before the nineteenth century had lightened and enlightened them,
let him step into some poor country town in some out-of-the-way region
(and such may yet be found) at night, pick his way along rough
pavements, and no pavements, by the light of a smoky lamp placed here
and there at corners, and of weeping lamps and limp candles in the
windows of shops and houses, and meet people armed with tin lanterns
throwing a dubious light across the pathways. Let him be prepared to be
assailed by the odours of undrained gutters, ditches, and roads called
streets, and escape, if he can, stumbling and falling into them. Let him
take care also that he avoid in the darkness the drippings from the
overhanging eaves or windows, and falling upon the slippery steps of the
dim doorway he may be about to enter. Within, let him overlook, if he
can, in the hospitable reception, the dim and smoky atmosphere, and
observe that the brightest and best as well as the most cheerful
illuminant flashes from the wide open fireplace. Occasionally a glowing
grate might be met. The eighteenth century did have its glowing grates,
and its still more glowing furnaces of coal in which the ore was melted
and by the light of which the castings were made.
It is very strange that year after year for successive generations men
saw the hard black coal break under the influence of heat and burst into
flames which lit up every corner, without learning, beyond sundry
accidents and experiments, that this _gast_, or _geest_, or _spirit_, or
_vapour_, or _gas_, as it was variously called, could be led away from
its source, ignited at a distance, and made to give light and heat at
other places than just where it was generated.
Thus Dr. Clayton, Dean of Kildare, Ireland, in 1688 distilled gas from
coal and lit and burned it, and told his learned friend, the Hon. Robert
Boyle, about it, who announced it with interest to the Royal Society,
and again it finds mention in the _Philosophical Transactions_ fifty
years later. Then, in 1726, Dr. Hales told how many cubic inches of gas
a certain number of grains of coal would produce. Then Bishop Watson in
1750 passed some gas through water and carried it in pipes from one
place to another; and then Lord Dundonald in 1786 built some ovens,
distilled coal and tar, burned the gas, and got a patent. In the same
year, Dr. Rickel of Würzburg lighted his laboratory with gas made by the
dry distillation of bones; but all these were experiments. Finally,
William Murdock, the owner of large workshops at Redruth, in Cornwall, a
practical man and mechanic, and a keen observer, using soft coal to a
large extent in his shops, tried with success in 1792 to collect the
escaping gas and with it lit up the shops. Whether he continued steadily
to so use the gas or only at intervals, at any rate it seems to have
been experimental and failed to attract attention. It appears that he
repeated the experiment at the celebrated steam engine works of Boulton
and Watt at Soho, near Birmingham, in 1798, and again illuminated the
works in 1802, on occasion of a peace jubilee.
In the meantime, in 1801, Le Bon, a Frenchman at Paris, had succeeded in
making illuminating gas from wood, lit his house therewith, and proposed
to light the whole city of Paris.
Thus it may be said that illuminating gas and the new century were born
together--the former preceding the latter a little and lighting the way.
Then in 1803 the English periodicals began to take the matter up and
discuss the whole subject. One magazine objected to its use in houses on
the ground that the curtains and furniture would be ruined by the
saturation produced by the oxygen and hydrogen, and that the curtains
would have to be wrung out the next morning after the illumination.
There doubtless was good cause for objection to the smoky, unpleasant
smelling light then produced.
In America in 1806 David Melville of Newport, Rhode Island, lighted with
gas his own house and the street in front of it. In 1813 he took out a
patent and lighted several factories. In 1817 his process was applied to
Beaver Tail Lighthouse on the Atlantic coast--the first use of
illuminating gas in lighthouses. Coal oil and electricity have since
been found better illuminants for this purpose.
Murdoch, Winser, Clegg and others continued to illuminate the public
works and buildings of England. Westminster Bridge and the Houses of
Parliament were lighted in 1813, and the streets of London in 1815.
Paris was lighted in 1820, and the largest American cities from 1816 to
1825. But it required the work of the chemists as well as the mechanics
to produce the best gas. The rod of Science had touched the rock again
and from the earth had sprung another servant with power to serve
mankind, and waited the skilled brain and hand to direct its course.
Produced almost entirely from bituminous coal, it was found to be
composed chiefly of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen; but various other gases
were mixed therewith. To determine the proper proportions of these
gases, to know which should be increased or wholly or partly eliminated,
required the careful labours of patient chemists. They taught also how
the gas should be distilled, condensed, cleaned, scrubbed, confined in
retorts, and its flow measured and controlled.
Fortunately the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early part
of the nineteenth had produced chemists whose investigations and
discoveries paved the way for success in this revolution in the world of
light. Priestley had discovered oxygen. Dalton had divided matter into
atoms, and shown that in its every form, whether solid, liquid, or
gaseous, these atoms had their own independent, characteristic,
unalterable weight, and that gases diffused themselves in certain
proportions.
Berthollet, Graham, and a host of others in England, France, and
Germany, advanced the art. The highest skilled mechanics, like Clegg of
England, supplied the apparatus. He it was who invented a gas purifier,
liquid gas meter, and other useful contrivances.
As the character of the gas as an illuminator depends on the quantity of
hydro-carbon, or olefiant elements it contains, great efforts were made
to invent processes and means of carbureting it.
The manufacture of gas was revolutionised by the invention of water gas.
The main principle of this process is the mixture of hydrogen with the
vapour of some hydro-carbon: Hydrogen burns with very little light and
the purpose of the hydro-carbon is to increase the brilliancy of the
flame. The hydrogen gas is so obtained by the decomposition of water,
effected by passing steam through highly heated coals.
Patents began to be taken out in this line in England in 1823-24; by
Donovan in 1830; Geo. Lowe in 1832, and White in 1847. But in England
water gas could not compete with coal gas in cheapness. On the contrary,
in America, especially after the petroleum wells were opened up, and
nature supplied the hydro-carbon in roaring wells and fountains, water
gas came to the front.
The leading invention there in this line was that of T. S. C. Lowe of
Morristown, Pennsylvania, in 1873. In Lowe's process anthracite coal
might be used, which was raised in a suitable retort to a great heat,
then superheated steam admitted over this hot bed and decomposed into
hydrogen and carbonic oxide; then a small stream of naphtha or crude
petroleum was thrown upon the surface of the burning coal, and from
these decompositions and mixtures a rich olefiant product and other
light-giving gases were produced.
The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia in 1886 awarded Lowe, or his
representatives, a grand medal of honour, his being the invention
exhibited that year which in their opinion contributed most to the
welfare of mankind.
A number of inventors have followed in the direction set by Lowe. The
largest part of gas manufacture, which has become so extensive, embodies
the basic idea of the Lowe process.
The competition set up by the electricians, especially in the production
of the beautiful incandescent light for indoor illumination, has spurred
inventors of gas processes to renewed efforts--much to the benefit of
that great multitude who sit in darkness until corporations furnish them
with light.
It was found by Siemens, the great German inventor of modern gas
regenerative furnace systems, that the quality of the gas was much
improved, and a greater intensity of light obtained, by heating the
gases and air before combustion--a plan particularly adapted in lighting
large spaces.
To describe in detail the large number of inventions relating to the
manufacture of gas would require a huge volume--the generators,
carburetors, retorts, mixers, purifiers, metres, scrubbers, holders,
condensers, governors, indicators, registers, chargers, pressure
regulators, etc., etc.
It was a great convenience outside of towns and cities, where gas mains
could not be laid, to have domestic plants and portable gas apparatus,
worked on the same principles, but in miniature form, adapted to a
single house, but the exercise of great ingenuity was required to render
such adaptation successful.
In the use of liquid illuminants, which need a wick to feed them, the
_Argand burner_--that arrangement of concentric tubes between which the
wick is confined--although invented by Argand in 1784, yet has occupied
a vast field of usefulness in connection with the lamps of the
nineteenth century.
A dangerous but very extensively used illuminating liquid before coal
oil was discovered was camphene, distilled from turpentine. It gave a
good light but was not a safe domestic companion.
Great attention has recently been paid to the production of _acetylene_
gas, produced by the reaction between _calcium carbide_ and water. The
making of the calcium carbide by the decomposition of mixed pulverised
lime and coal by the use of a powerful electric battery, is a
preliminary step in the production of this gas, and was a subsequent
discovery.
The electric light, acetylene, magnesium, and other modern sources of
light, although they may be more brilliant and intense than coal gas,
cannot compete in cheapness of production with the latter. Thus far
illuminating coal gas is still the queen of artificial lights.
After gas was fairly started in lighting streets and buildings its
adaptation to lamps followed; and among the most noted of gas lamps is
that of Von Welsbach, who combined a bunsen gas flame and a glass
chimney with a "_mantle_" located therein. This mantle is a gauze-like
structure made of refractory quartz, or of certain oxides, which when
heated by the gas flame produce an incandescent glow of intense
brilliancy, with a reduced consumption of gas.
CHAPTER XXXI.
BRICK, POTTERY, GLASS, PLASTICS.
When the nineteenth century dawned, men were making brick in the same
way for the most part that they were fifty centuries before. It is
recorded in the eleventh chapter of Genesis that when "the whole earth
was of one language and one speech, it came to pass as they journeyed
from the east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they
dwelt there, and they said to one another, Go to, let us make brick and
burn them thoroughly, And they had brick for stone, and slime had they
for mortar." Then commenced the building of Babel. Who taught the trade
to the brick-makers of Shinar?
The journey from the east continued, and with it went brick making to
Greece and Rome, across the continent of Europe, across the English
channel, until the brick work of Cæsar, stamped by the trade mark of his
legions, was found on the banks of the Thames, and through the fields of
Caerleon and York.
Alfred the Great encouraged the trade, and the manufacture flourished
finely under Henry VIII., Elizabeth and Charles I.
As to Pottery:--Could we only know who among the peoples of the earth
first discovered, used, or invented fire, we might know who were the
first makers of baked earthenware. Doubtless the art of pottery arose
before men learned to bake the plastic clay, in that groping time when
men, kneading the soft clay with their fingers, or imprinting their
footsteps in the yielding surface and learning that the sun's heat
stiffened and dried those forms into durability, applied the discovery
to the making of crude vessels, as children unto this day make dishes
from the tenacious mud. But the artificial burning of the vessels was no
doubt a later imitation of Nature.
Alongside the rudest and earliest chipped stone implements have been
found the hollow clay dish for holding fire, or food, or water. "As the
fragment of a speech or song, a waking or a sleeping vision, the dream
of a vanished hand, a draught of water from a familiar spring, the
almost perished fragrance of a pressed flower call back the singer, the
loved and lost, the loved and won, the home of childhood, or the parting
hour, so in the same manner there linger in this crowning decade of the
crowning century bits of ancient ingenuity which recall to a whole
people the fragrance and beauty of its past." _Prof. O. T. Mason._ The
same gifted writer, adds: "Who has not read, with almost breaking heart,
the story of Palissy, the Huguenot potter? But what have our witnesses
to say of that long line of humble creatures that conjured out of
prophetic clay, without wheels or furnace, forms and decorations of
imperishable beauty, which are now being copied in glorified material in
the best factories of the world? In ceramic as well as textile art the
first inventors were women. They quarried the clay, manipulated it,
constructed and decorated the ware, burned it in a rude furnace and wore
it out in a hundred uses."
From the early dawn of human history to its present noonday civilisation
the progress of man may be traced in his pottery. Before printing was an
art, he inscribed on it his literature. Poets and painters have adorned
it; and in its manufacture have been embodied through all ages the
choicest discoveries of the chemist, the inventor and the mechanic.
It would be pleasant to trace the history of pottery from at least the
time of Homer, who draws a metaphor from the potter seated before his
wheel and twirling it with both hands, as he shapes the plastic clay
upon it; to dwell upon the clay tablets and many-coloured vases, covered
with Egyptian scenes and history; to re-excite wonder over the arts of
China, in her porcelain, the production of its delicacy and bright
colours wrapped in such mystery, and stagnant for so many ages, but
revived and rejuvenated in Japan; to recall to mind the styles and
composition of the Ph[oe]nician vases with mythological legends burned
immortally therein; the splendid work of the Greek potteries; to lift
the Samian enwreathed bowl, "filled with Samian wine"; to look upon the
Roman pottery, statues and statuettes of Rome's earlier and better days;
the celebrated _Faience_ (enamelled pottery) at its home in Faenza,
Italy, and from the hands of its master, Luca della Robia; to trace the
history of the rare Italian majolica; to tread with light steps the
bright tiles of the Saracens; to rehearse the story of Bernard Palissy,
the father of the beautiful French enamelled ware; to bring to view the
splendid old ware of Nuremberg, the raised white figures on the deep
blue plaques of Florence, the honest Delft ware of Holland; and finally
to relate the revolution in the production of pottery throughout all
Europe caused by the discoveries and inventions of Wedgwood of England
in the eighteenth century. All this would be interesting, but we must
hasten on to the equally splendid and more practical works of the busy
nineteenth century, in which many toilsome methods of the past have been
superseded by labour-saving contrivances.
The application of machinery to the manufacture of brick began to
receive attention during the latter part of the eighteenth century,
after Watt had harnessed steam, and a few patents were issued in England
and America at that time for such machinery of that character, but
little was practically done.
The operations in _brickmaking_, to the accomplishment of which by
machines the inventors of the nineteenth century have devoted great
talent, relate:
First, to the preparation of the clay.--In ancient Egypt, in places
where water abounded, it appears that the clay was lifted from the
bottoms of ponds and lakes on the end of poles, was formed into bricks,
then sun-dried, modernly called _adobes_. The clay for making these
required a stiffening material. For this straw was used, mixed with the
clay; and stubble was also used in the different courses. Hence the old
metaphor of worthlessness of "bricks without straw," but of course in
burning, and in modern processes of pressing unburnt bricks, straw is no
longer used. Sand should abound in the clay in a certain proportion, or
be mixed therewith, otherwise the clay, whether burned or unburned, will
crumble. Stones, gravel and sticks must be removed, otherwise the
contraction of the clay and expansion of the stones on burning, produce
a weak and crumbling structure.
Brick clay generally is coloured by the oxide of iron, and in proportion
as this abounds the burned brick is of a lighter or a deeper red. It may
be desired to add colouring matter or mix different forms of clay, or
add sand or other ingredients. Clay treated by hand was for ages kneaded
as dough is kneaded, by the hand or feet, and the clay was often long
subjected, sometimes for years, to exposure to the air, frost and sun to
disintegrate and ripen it. As the clay must be first disintegrated,
ground or pulverised, as grain is first ground to flour to make and
mould the bread, so the use of a grinding mill was long ago suggested.
The first machine used to do all this work goes by the humble name of
_pug mill_.
Many ages ago the Chilians of South America hung two ponderous solid
wood or stone wheels on an axis turned by a vertical shaft and operated
by animal power; the wheels were made to run round on a deep basin in
which ores, or stones, or grain were placed to be crushed. This Chilian
mill, in principle, was adopted a century or so ago in Europe to the
grinding of clay. The pug mill has assumed many different forms in this
age; and separate preliminary mills, consisting of rollers of different
forms for grinding, alone are often used before the mixing operation. In
one modern form the pug mill consists of an inverted conical-shaped
cylinder provided with a set of interior revolving blades arranged
horizontally, and below this a spiral arrangement of blades on a
vertical axis, by which the clay is thoroughly cut up and crushed
against the surrounding walls of the mill, in the meantime softened with
water or steam if desired, and mixed with sand if necessary, and when
thus ground and tempered is finally pressed down through the lower
opening of the cylinder and directly into suitable brick moulds beneath.
Second.--The next operation is for moulding and pressing the brick. To
take the place of that ancient and still used mode of filling a mould of
a certain size by the hands with a lump of soft clay, scraping off the
surplus, and then dumping the mould upon a drying floor, a great variety
of machines have been invented.
In some the pug mill is arranged horizontally to feed out the clay in
the form of a long horizontal slab, which is cut up into proper lengths
to form the bricks. Some machines are in the form of a large horizontal
revolving wheel, having the moulds arranged in its top face, each mould
charged with clay as the wheel presents it under the discharging spout
of the grinding mill, and then the clay is pressed by pistons or
plungers worked by a rocking beam, and adapted to descend and fit into
the mould at stated intervals; or the moulds, carried in a circular
direction, may have movable bottom plates, which may be pressed upwards
successively by pistons attached to them and raised by inclines on which
they travel, forcing the clay against a large circular top plate, and in
the last part of the movement carrying the pressed brick through an
aperture to the top of the plate, where it is met by and carried away on
an endless apron.
In some machines two great wheels mesh together, one carrying the moulds
in its face, and the other the presser plate plungers, working in the
former, the bricks being finally forced out on to a moving belt by the
action of cam followers, or by other means.
In others the moulds are passed, each beneath a gravity-descending or
cam-forced plunger, the clay being thus stamped by impact into form; or
in other forms the clay in the moulds may be subjected to successive
pressure from the cam-operated pistons arranged horizontally and on a
line with the discharging belt.
Third, the drying and burning of the brick.--The old methods were
painfully slow and tedious. A long time was occupied in seasoning the
clay, and then after the bricks were moulded, another long time was
necessary to dry them, and a final lengthy period was employed to burn
them in crude kilns. These old methods were too slow for modern wants.
But they still are in vogue alongside of modern inventions, as in all
ages the use of old arts and implements have continued along by the side
of later inventions and discoveries.
No useful contrivances are suddenly or apparently ever entirely
supplanted. The implements of the stone age are still found in use by
some whose environment has deprived them of the knowledge of or desire
to use better tools. The single ox pulling the crooked stick plough, or
other similar ancient earth stirrer, and Ruth with her sickle and
sheaves, may be found not far from the steam plough and the automatic
binder.
But the use of antiquated machinery is not followed by those who lead
the procession in this industrial age. Consequently other means than the
slow processes of nature to dry brick and other ceramics, and the crude
kilns are giving way to modern heat distributing structures.
Air and heat are driven by fans through chambers, in which the brick are
openly piled on cars, the surplus heat and steam from an engine-room
being often used for this purpose, and the cars so laden are slowly
pushed on the tracks through heated chambers. Passages and pipes and
chimneys for heat and air controlled by valves are provided, and the
waste moisture drawn off through bottom drains or up chimneys, the draft
of which is increased by a hot blast, or blasts of heated air are driven
in one direction through a chamber while the brick are moved through in
the opposite direction, or a series of drying chambers are separated
from each other by iron folding-doors, the temperature increasing as
cars are moved on tracks from one chamber to another.
Dr. Hoffmann of Berlin invented different forms of drying and burning
chambers which attracted great attention. In his kiln the bricks are
stacked in an _annular_ chamber, and the fire made to progress from one
section of the chamber to another, burning the brick as the heat
advances; and as fast as one section of green brick is dried, or burned,
it is withdrawn, and a green section presented. Austria introduced most
successful and thorough systems of drying brick about 1870. In some
great kilns fires are never allowed to cease. One kiln had been kept
thus heated for fifteen years. Thus great quantities of green brick can
at any time be pushed into the kiln on tracks, and when burned pushed
out, and thus the process may go on continuously day and night.
To return to pottery: As before stated, Wedgwood of England
revolutionised the art of pottery in the eighteenth century. He was
aided by Flaxman. Before their time all earthenware pottery was what is
now called "soft pottery." That is, it was unglazed, simply baked clay;
_lustrous_ or _semi-glazed_ and _enamelled_ having a harder surface.
Wedgwood invented the hard porcelain surface, and very many beautiful
designs. To improve such earthenware and to best decorate it, are the
objects around which modern inventions have mostly clustered.
The "_regenerative_" principle of heating above referred to employed in
some kilns, and so successfully incorporated in the regenerators
invented since 1850 by Siemens, Frank, Boetius, Bicheroux, Pousard and
others, consisting in using the intensely hot wasted gases from
laboratories or combustion chambers to heat the incoming air, and
carrying the mingled products of combustion into chambers and passages
to heat, dry or burn materials placed therein, has been of great service
in the production of modern pottery; not only in a great saving in the
amount of fuel, but in reduction in loss of pieces of ware spoiled in
the firing.
The old method of burning wood, or soft coal, or charcoal at the bottom
of a small old-fashioned cylindrical fire brick kiln attended to by
hand, and heating the articles of pottery arranged on shelves in the
chamber above, is done away with to a great extent in large
manufactories for the making of stone and earthenware--although still
followed in many porcelain kilns.
Inventions in the line of pottery kilns have received the aid of woman.
Susan Frackelton of the United States invented a portable kiln for
firing pottery and porcelain, for which she obtained a patent in 1886.
As in drying clay for brick, so in drying clay for porcelain and pottery
generally, great improvements have been made in the drying of the clay,
and other materials to be mixed therewith. A great step was taken to aid
drying by the invention of the _filter press_, in which the materials,
after they are mixed and while still wet, are subjected to such pressure
that all surplus water is removed and all air squeezed out, by which the
inclosure of air bubbles in the clay is prevented.
Despairing of excelling the China porcelain, although French
investigators having alleged their discovery of such methods, modern
inventors have contented themselves in inventing new methods and
compositions. Charles Aoisseau, the potter of Tours, born in 1796,
rediscovered and revived the art of Palissy. About 1842, Thomas Battam
of England invented the method of imitating marble and other statuary by
a composition of silica, alumina, soda, and traces of lime, magnesia,
and iron, reducing it to liquid form and pouring it into plaster moulds,
forming the figure or group. His plaster casts soon became famous. In
the use of materials the aid of chemists was had in finding the proper
ingredients to fuse with sand to produce the best forms of common and
fine _Faience_.
_Porcelain Moulding_, and its accompanying ornamentation and the use of
apparatus for moulding by compression and by exhaustion of the air has
become since that time a great industry.
_Porcelain Colours._--Chemists also aided in discovering what metallic
ingredients could best be used when mixed with the clay and sand to
produce the desired colours. As soon as a new metal was discovered, it
was tested to find, among other things, what vitrifiable colour it would
produce. In the production of metallic glazes, the oxides generally are
employed. The colours are usually applied to ware when it is in its
unglazed or _biscuit_ form. In the _biscuit_ or _bisque_ form pottery is
bibulous, the prepared glaze sinks into its pores and when burned forms
a vitreous coating.
The application of oil colours and designs to ware before baking by the
"bat" system of printing originated in the eighteenth and was perfected
in the nineteenth century. It consists of impressing oil pictures on a
bat of glue and then pressing the bat on to the porous unbaked clay or
porcelain which transferred the colours. This was another revolution in
the art.
One manner for ages of applying colours to ware is first to reduce the
mixture to a liquid form, called "slip," and then, if the Chinese method
is followed, to dip the colour up on the end of a hollow bamboo rod,
which end is covered with wire gauze, then by blowing through the rod
the colour was sprayed or deposited on the ware. Another method is the
use of a brush and comb. The brush being dipped into the coloured
matter, the comb is passed over the brush in such manner as to cause the
paint to spatter the object with fine drops or particles. A very recent
method, by which the beautiful background and blended colours of the
celebrated Rookwood pottery of Cincinnati, Ohio, have become
distinguished, consists in laying the colour upon the ware in a cloud or
sheet of almost imperceptible mist by the use of an air atomiser blown
by the operator. By the use of this simple instrument, the laying on a
single colour, or the delicate blending and shadings of two or more
colours in very beautiful effects is easily produced.
This use of the atomiser commenced in 1884, and was claimed as the
invention of a lady, Miss Laura Fry, who obtained a patent for thus
blowing the atomised spray colouring matter on pottery in 1889; but it
was held by the courts that she was anticipated by experiments of
others, and by descriptions in previous patents of the spraying of paint
on other objects by compressed air apparatus known as the air brush.
However, this introduction of the use of the atomiser caused quite a
revolution in the art of applying colours to pottery in the forming of
backgrounds.
Enamelled ware is no longer confined to pottery. About 1878 Niedringhaus
in the United States began to enamel sheet iron by the application of
glaze and iron oxide, giving such articles a granite appearance; and
since then metallic cooking vessels, bath tubs, etc., have been
converted in appearance into the finest earthenware and porcelain, and
far more durable, beautiful and useful than the plain metal alone for
such purposes.
When we remember that for many centuries, wood and pewter, and to some
extent crude earthenware, were the materials from which the dishes of
the great bulk of the human family were made, as well as their table and
mantel ornaments, and compare them in character and plenteousness with
the table and other ware of even the poorest character of to-day, we can
appreciate how much has been done in this direction to help the human
family by modern inventions.
_Artificial Stone._--The world as yet has not so far exhausted its
supply of stone and marble as to compel a resort to artificial
productions on a great scale, and yet to meet the demands of those
localities wherein the natural supplies of good building stones and
marble are very scarce, necessitating when used a long and expensive
transportation, methods have been adopted by which, at comparatively
small cost, fine imitations of the best stones and marbles have been
produced, having all the durable and artistic qualities of the
originals, as for the most part, they are composed of the same materials
as the stone and marbles themselves.
The characteristic backgrounds, the veins and shadowings, and the soft
colours of various marbles have been quite successfully imitated by
treating dehydrated gypsum with various colouring solutions. Sand stones
have been moulded or pressed from the same ingredients, and with either
smooth or undressed faces. When necessary the mixture is coloured, to
resemble precisely the original stones.
One of the improvements in the manufacture and use of modern _cements_
and artificial stones consists in their application to the making of
streets and sidewalks. Neat, smooth, hard, beautiful pavements are now
taking the place everywhere of the unsatisfactory gravel, wood, and
brick pavements of former days. We know that the Romans and other
ancient peoples had their hydraulic cements, and the plaster on some of
their walls stands to-day to attest its good quality. Modern inventors
have turned their attention in recent years to the production of
machines to grind, crush, mix and set the materials, and to apply them
to large wall surfaces, in place of hand labour. _Ready-made plaster_ of
a fine quality is now manufactured in great quantities. It needs only
the addition of a little water to reduce it to a condition for use; and
a machine operated by compressed air may be had for spreading it quickly
over the lath work of wood or sheet metal, slats, or over rough cement
ceilings and walls.
_Glass._--The Sister of Pottery is Glass. It may have been an accidental
discovery, occurring when men made fire upon a sandy knoll or beach,
that fire could melt and fuse sand and ashes, or sand and lime, or sand
and soda or some other alkali, and with which may also have been mixed
some particles of iron, or lead, or manganese, or alumina to produce
that hard, lustrous, vitreous, brittle article that we call _glass_.
But who invented the method of blowing the viscid mass into form on the
end of a hollow tube? Who invented the scissors and shears for cutting
and trimming it when soft? Or the use of the diamond, or its dust, for
polishing it when hard? History is silent on these points. The tablets
of the most ancient days of Egypt, yet recovered, show glass blowers at
work at their trade--and the names of the first and original inventors
are buried in oblivion. Each age has handed down to us from many
countries specimens of glass ware which will compare favourably in
beauty and finish with any that can be made to-day.
Yet with the knowledge of making glass of the finest description
existing for centuries, it is strange that its manufacture was not
extended to supply the wants of mankind, to which its use now seems so
indispensable. And yet as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries glass windows were found only in the houses of the wealthy, in
the churches and palaces, and glass mirrors were unknown except to the
rich, as curiosities, and as aids to the scientists in the early days of
telescopy. Poor people used oiled paper, isinglass, thinly shaved
leather, resembling parchment, and thin sheets of soft pale crystalised
stone known as talc, and soapstone.
The nineteenth century has been characterised as the scientific century
of glass, and the term commercial, may well be added to that
designation.
Its commercial importance and the advancement in its manufacture during
the first half of the century is illustrated in the fact that the
Crystal Palace of the London Industrial Exhibition of 1851, although
containing nearly 900,000 square feet of glass, was furnished by a
single firm, Messrs. Chance & Co. of London, without materially delaying
their other orders. In addition to scientific discoveries, the
manufacture of glass in England received a great impetus by the removal
of onerous excise duties which had been imposed on its manufacture.
The principal improvements in the art of glass-making effected during
the nineteenth century may be summarised as follows:
First, Materials.--By the investigations of chemists and practical
trials it was learned what particular effect was produced by the old
ingredients employed, and it was found that the colours and qualities of
glass, such as clearness, strength, tenacity, purity, etc., could be
greatly modified and improved by the addition to the sand of certain new
ingredients. By analysis it was learned what different metallic oxides
should be employed to produce different colours. This knowledge before
was either preserved in secrecy, or accidentally or empirically
practised, or unknown. Thus it was learned and established that lime
hardens the glass and adds to its lustre; that the use of ordinary
ingredients, the silicates of lime, magnesia, iron, soda and potash, in
their impure form, will produce the coarser kinds of glass, such as that
of which green bottles are made; that silicates of soda and lime give
the common window glass and French plate; that the beautiful varieties
of Bohemian glass are chiefly a silicate of potash and lime; that
crystal or flint glass, so called because formerly pulverised flints
were used in making it, can be made of a suitable combination of
potassia plumbic silicate; that the plumbic oxide greatly increases its
transparency, brilliancy, and refractive power; that _paste_--that form
of glass from which imitations of diamonds are cut, may be produced by
adding a large proportion of the oxide of lead; that by the addition of
a trace of ferric oxide or uranic acid the yellow topaz can be had; that
by substituting cobaltic oxide the brilliant blue sapphire is produced;
that cuperic oxide will give the emerald, gold oxide the ruby, manganic
oxide the royal purple, and a mixture of cobaltic and manganic oxides
the rich black onyx.
Professor Faraday as early as 1824 had noticed a change in colour
gradually produced in glass containing oxide of manganese by exposure to
the rays of the sun. This observation induced an American gentleman, Mr.
Thomas Gaffield, a merchant of Boston, to further experiment in this
direction. His experiments commenced in 1863, and he subjected eighty
different kinds of glass, coloured and uncoloured, and manufactured in
many different countries, to this exposure of the sun's rays. He found
that not only glass having manganese as an element, but nearly every
species of glass, was so affected, some in shorter and some in longer
times; that this discoloration was not due to the heat rays of the sun,
but to its actinic rays; and that the original colour of the glass could
be reproduced by reheating the same.
Mr. Gaffield also extended his experiments to ascertain the power of
different coloured glasses to transmit the actinic or chemical rays, and
found that blue would transmit the most and red and orange the least.
Others proceeded on lines of investigation in ascertaining the best
materials to be employed in glass-making in producing the clearest and
most permanent uncoloured light; the best coloured lights for desired
purposes; glasses having the best effects on the growth of plants; and
the best class for refracting, dispersing and transmitting both natural
lights and those great modern artificial lights, gas and electricity.
Another illustration of modern scientific investigation and success in
glass-making materials is seen at the celebrated German glass works at
Jena under the management of Professors Ernst Abbe and Dr. Schott,
commenced in 1881. They, too, found that many substances had each its
own peculiar effect in the refraction and dispersion of light, and
introduced no fewer than twenty-eight new substances in glass making.
Their special work was the production of glass for the finest scientific
and optical purposes, and the highest grades of commercial glass. They
have originated over one hundred new kinds of glass. Their lenses for
telescopes and microscopes and photographic cameras, and glass and
prisms, and for all chemical and other scientific work, have a worldwide
reputation.
So that in materials of composition the old days in which there were
substantially but two varieties of glass--the old-fashioned standard
crown, and flint glass--have passed away.
_Methods._--The revolution in the production of glass has been greatly
aided also by new methods of treatment of the old as well as the new
materials. For instance, the application of the Siemens regenerative
furnace, already alluded to in referring to pottery, in place of
old-fashioned kilns, and by which the amount of smoke is greatly
diminished, fuel saved, and the colour of the glass improved. Pots are
used containing the materials to be melted and not heated in the
presence of the burning fuel, but by the heated gases in separate
compartments.
Another process is that of M. de la Bastie, added to by others, of
toughening glass by plunging it while hot and pasty and after it has
been shaped, annealed, and reheated, into a bath of grease, whereby the
rapid cooling and the grease changes its molecular condition so that it
is less dense, resists breaking to a greater degree, and presents no
sharp edges when broken.
Another process is that of making plate glass by the cylinder
process--rolling it into large sheets.
Other processes are those for producing hollow ware by pressing in
moulds; for decorating; for surface enamelling of sheet glass whereby
beautiful lace patterns are transferred from the woven or netted fabric
itself by using it as a stencil to distribute upon the surface the
pulverised enamel, which is afterwards burned on; of producing
_iridescent_ glass in which is exhibited the lights and shadows of
delicate soap bubble colours by the throwing against the surface of
hydrochloric acid under pressure, or the fumes of other materials
volatilised in a reheating furnace.
Then there is Dode's process for platinising glass, by which a
reflecting mirror is produced without silvering or otherwise coating its
back, by first applying a thin coating of platinic choride mixed with an
oil to the surface of the glass and heating the same, by which the
mirror reflects from its front face. The platinum film is so thin that
the pencil and hand of a draughtsman may be seen through it, the object
to be copied being seen by reflection.
Again there is the process of making _glass wool or silk_--which is
glass drawn out into such extremely fine threads that it may be used for
all purposes of silk threads in the making of fabrics for decorative
purposes and in some more useful purposes, such as the filtration of
water and other liquids.
We have already had occasion to refer to Tilghman's sand blast in
describing pneumatic apparatus. In glass manufacture the process is used
in etching on glass designs of every kind, both simple and intricate.
The sand forced by steam, or by compressed air on the exposed portions
of the glass on which the design rests, will cut the same deeply, or
most delicately, as the hand and eye of the operator may direct.
_Machines._--In addition to the new styles of furnaces, moulds and
melting, and rolling mills to which we have alluded, mention may be made
of annealing and cooling ovens, by which latter the glass is greatly
improved by being allowed to gradually cool. A large number of
instruments have been invented for special purposes, such as for making
the beautiful expensive cut glass, which is flint glass ground by wheels
of iron, stone, and emery into the desired designs, while water is being
applied, and then polished by wheels of wood, and pumice, or
rottenstone; for grinding and polishing glass for lenses; and for
polishing and finishing plate glass; for applying glass lining to metal
pipes, tubes, etc.; for the delicate engraving of glass by small
revolving copper disks, varying in size from the diameter of a cent down
to one-fifteenth of an inch, cutting the finest blade of grass, a tiny
bud, the downy wing of an insect, or the faint shadow of an exquisite
eyebrow.
_Cameo_ cutting and incrustation; porcelain electroplating and moulding
apparatus, and apparatus for making porcelain plates before drying and
burning, may be added to the list.
It would be a much longer list to enumerate the various objects made of
glass unknown or not in common use in former generations. The reader
must call to mind or imagine any article which he thinks desirable to be
made from or covered with this lustrous indestructible material, or any
practicable form of instrument for the transmission of light, and it is
quite likely he will find it already at hand in shops or instruments in
factories ready for its making.
_Rubber--Goodyear._
The rubber tree, whether in India with its immense trunk towering above
all its fellows and wearing a lofty crown, hundreds of feet in
circumference, of mixed green and yellow blossoms; or in South America,
more slender and shorter but still beautiful in clustered leaves and
flowers on its long, loosely pendent branches; or in Africa, still more
slender and growing as a giant creeper upon the highest trees along the
water courses, hiding its struggling support and festooning the whole
forest with its glossy dark green leaves, sweetly scented, pure white,
star-like flowers, and its orange-like fruit--yields from its veins a
milk which man has converted into one of the most useful articles of the
century.
The modes of treating this milky juice varies among the natives of the
several countries where the trees abound. In Africa they cut or strip
the bark, and as the milk oozes out the natives catch and smear it
thickly over their limbs and bodies, and when it dries pull it off and
cut it into blocks for transportation. In Brazil the juice is collected
in clay vessels and smoked and dried in a smouldering fire of palm nuts,
which gives the material its dark brown appearance. They mould the
softened rubber over clay patterns in the form of shoes, jars, vases,
tubes, etc., and as they are sticky they carry them separated on poles
to the large towns and sea ports and sell them in this condition. It was
some such articles that first attracted the attention of Europeans, who
during the eighteenth century called the attention of their countrymen
to them.
It was in 1736 that La Condamine described rubber to the French Academy.
He afterward resided in the valley of the Amazon ten years, and then he
and MM. Herissent, Macquer, and Grossat, again by their writings and
experiments interested the scientific and commercial world in the
matter.
In 1770 Dr. Priestley published the fact that this rubber had become
notable for rubbing out pencil marks, bits of it being sold for a high
price for that purpose. About 1797, some Englishman began to make
water-proof varnish from it, and to take out patents for the same. This
was as far as the art had advanced in caoutchouc, or rubber, in the
eighteenth century.
In 1819 Mr. Mackintosh, of Glasgow, began experimenting with the oil of
naphtha obtained from gas works as a solvent for India rubber; and so
successfully that he made a water-proof varnish which was applied to
fabrics, took out his patent in England in 1823, and thus was started
the celebrated "Mackintoshes."
In 1825 Thomas C. Wales, a merchant of Boston, conceived the idea of
sending American boot and shoe lasts to Brazil for use in place of their
clay models. This soon resulted in sending great quantities of rubber
overshoes to Europe and America.
The importation of rubber and the manufacture of water-proof garments
and articles therefrom now rapidly increased in those countries. But
nothing that could be done would prevent the rubber from getting soft in
summer and hard and brittle in the winter. Something was needed to
render the rubber insensible to the changes of temperature.
For fifty years, ever since the manufacturers and inventors of Europe
and America had learned of the water-proof character of rubber, they had
been striving to find something to overcome this difficulty. Finally it
became the lot of one man to supply the want. His name was Charles
Goodyear.
Born with the century, in New Haven, Connecticut, and receiving but a
public school education, he engaged with his father in the hardware
business in Philadelphia. This proving a failure, he, in 1830, turned
his attention to the improvement of rubber goods. He became almost a
fanatic on the subject--going from place to place clad in rubber
fabrics, talking about it to merchants, mechanics, scientists, chemists,
anybody that would listen, making his experiments constantly; deeply in
debt on account of his own and his father's business failures, thrown
into jail for debt for months, continuing his experiments there with
philosophical, good-natured persistence; out of jail steeped to his lips
in poverty; his family suffering for the necessaries of life; selling
the school books of his children for material to continue his work, and
taking a patent in 1835 for a rubber cement, which did not help him
much. Finding that nitric acid improved the quality of the rubber by
removing its adhesiveness, he introduced this process, which met with
great favour, was applied generally to the manufacture of overshoes, and
helped his condition. But his trials and troubles continued. Finally one
Nathaniel Haywood suggested the use of sulphurous acid gas, and this was
found an improvement; but still the rubber would get hard in winter, and
although not so soft in summer, yet the odour was offensive. Yet by the
use of this improvement he was enabled to raise more money to get
Haywood a patent for it, while he became its owner. In the midst of his
further troubles, and while experimenting with the sulphur mixed with
rubber he found by accidental burning or partly melting of the two
together on a stove, that the part in which the sulphur was embedded was
hard and inelastic, and that the part least impregnated with the sulphur
was proportionately softer and more elastic. At last the great secret
was discovered!
And now at this later day, when $50,000,000 worth of rubber goods are
made annually in the United States alone, the whole immense business is
still divided into but two classes--hard and soft--hard or vulcanized
like that called "ebonite," or soft, it may be, as a delicate wafer. And
these qualities depend on and vary as a greater or less amount of
sulphur is used, as described in the patents of Goodyear, commencing
with his French patent of 1844.
Then of course the pirates began their attacks, and he was kept poor in
defending his patents, and died comparatively so in 1860; but happy in
his great discovery. He had received, however, the whole world's
honours--the great council medal at the Nations Fair in London in 1851
the Cross of the Legion of Honour by Napoleon III., and lesser tributes
from other nations.
It can be imagined the riches that flowed into the laps of Goodyear's
successors; the wide field opened for new inventions in machines and
processes; and the vast added comforts to mankind resulting from
Goodyear's introduction of a new and useful material to man.--A material
which, takes its place and stands in line with wood, and leather, and
glass, and iron, and steel!
But rubber and steel as we now know them are not the only new fabrics
given to mankind by the inventors of the Nineteenth Century.
The work of the silk worm has been rivalled; and a _wool_ as white and
soft as that clipped from the cleanest lamb has been drawn by the hands
of these magicians from the hot and furious slag that bursts from a
blast furnace.
The silk referred to is made from a solution of that inflammable
material of tremendous force known as gun-cotton, or pyroxylin. Dr.
Chardonnet was the inventor of the leading form of the article, which he
introduced and patented about 1888. The solution made is of a viscous
character, allowed to escape from a vessel through small orifices in
fine streams; and as the solvent part evaporates rapidly these fine
streams become hard, flexible fibres, which glisten with a beautiful
lustre and can be used as a substitute for some purposes for the fine
threads spun by that mysterious master of his craft--the silk worm.
The gusts of wind that drove against the molten lava thrown from the
crater of Kilauea, producing as it did, a fall of white, metallic,
hairy-like material resembling wool, suggested to man an industrial
application of the same method. And at the great works of Krupp at
Essen, Prussia, for instance, may be witnessed a fine stream of molten
slag flowing from an iron furnace, and as it falls is met by a strong
blast of cold air which transforms it into a silky mass as white and
fine as cotton.
INDEX.
Abbe, Prof. Ernst, 412, 473.
Abbott Museum, N.Y., 242.
Abrading machines, 332.
Acetylene, 70, 456.
Accumulators, 177.
Achromatic lens, 410.
Acoustics, 406.
Addressing machines, 285.
Aeolipile, 74.
Affixers, 285.
African inventions, 340, 476.
Agriculture, Chap. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Agricultural chemistry, 64.
Agricultural societies, 16.
Aeronautics. (See Air Ships and Balloons, 169, 445, 448.)
Air Atomizers, 467.
Air brakes, 89, 108, 193.
Air Brushes, 195, 418.
Air Compressors and propellers, 195.
Air Drills, 194.
Air Engines, 89, 193, 194.
Air propellers. (See Pneumatics.)
Air Pumps, 55, 113, 194, 195, 196, 197, 404.
Air Ships, 446, 449.
Airy, 410.
"Alabama," The, 261.
Alarm Locks. (See Locks.)
Alchemistry and alchemists. (See Chemistry.)
Alcohol, 65.
Alfred the Great, 386, 457.
Alembert, D., 167.
Alhambra, 373.
Allen, Horatio, 83.
Allen, Dr. John, 168.
Allotropic phosphorus. (See Matches.)
Allen and Yates. (See Puddling.)
Alloys, 237, 238.
Altiscope, 413.
Aluminium, 238.
Amalgamators, 380.
American Inventions, 341.
Ammonia, 191, 215.
Ammoniacal gas engines, 191.
Ampère, 122, 130.
Amontons air engines, 193.
Ancient smelting. (See Metallurgy.)
Anæsthetics, 2, 71.
Aniline dyes, 69.
Annealing and tempering, 248.
Antiseptics, 2, 72.
Antwerp, Siege of, 261. (See Ordnance.)
Aoisseau, Chas., 466.
Apollo, 400.
Applegath, 283, 284.
Aqueducts, 93, 166, 167.
Arabs, 253, 274.
Arabic notation, 2.
Arago, 122, 410, 411, 416.
Arc Lamps, 137.
Archimedes, 9, 165, 185, 442.
Aristotle, 58.
Argand burner, 456.
Arkwright, Richard, 42, 296, 298, 301.
Arlberg tunnel, 107.
Armor, plate, 262, 264, 265, 266.
Arnold, Asa, 301.
Arnold, watchmaker, 389.
Armstrong, Sir William G., 176, 263, 264.
Arquebus. (See Ordnance.)
Artesian Wells, 38.
Artificial Stone. (See Pottery.)
Artificial Silk. (See Glass.)
Arts, Fine, 197, 347, 353, 371, 400, 414, 418.
Art, Scientific, 228.
Artificial Teeth. (See Dentistry.)
Artillery. (See Ordnance.)
Asbestos, 421.
Assembling machines and system.
(See Sewing machines, Watch, and Ordnance.)
Assyrians, 24.
Astronomical inventions, 390. (See Horology and Optics.)
Athens. (See Greece.)
Athanor, Alchemist's stone. (See Chemistry.)
Atmospheric and Gas pressure, 194.
Atoms--atomic theory, 59, 60, 453.
Atomizer, 197, 467.
Attraction of Gravitation, 2.
Augurs, 348, 349.
Auricular instruments, 406.
Australia, 40.
Austria, 24, 50, 358.
Autoharps, 405.
Automobiles, 89, 435.
Axes, 340.
B.
Babbitt, Isaac, metal, 237.
Babylonians, 384.
Bach. (See Pianos.)
Bacon, Roger, 214.
Bacteria, 213.
Bailey, 1822; 37.
Bain, Alex., 147.
Baling and Bale ties, 51, 52, 53.
Balloons, 169, 446.
Band Saw, 348.
Barber, John, 185.
Barker's Mill, 171.
Barlow looms, 305.
Barlow, Prof., 123.
Barrel making. (See Wood Working.)
Bartholdi, 105.
Bastie, 473.
Batcheller, 318.
Baths--closets, 178.
Bath system, Porcelain, 466.
Battam, Thomas, artificial marble, 466.
Baude, Peter, 224.
Beadlestone, metallurgist, 231.
Bean, B. W., 318.
Beaulieu, Col. (Ordnance), 264.
Beating engines. (See Paper.)
Becher, 58.
Bechler, 413.
Becquerel, 44.
Beds, 355.
Bed--printing, 282.
Beer. (See Chemistry.)
Bellaert, Jacob, 280.
Bell, Alex. Graham, 140, 141, 142, 407, 414.
Bell, C. A., 408.
Bell, Sir L., metallurgy, 223.
Bell's history of metallurgy, 223.
Bell, Rev. Patrick, 36, 38.
Bells and Bell making--Metallurgy.
Bending wood, 349, 357. (See Woodworking.)
Bennett, Richard, 46.
Bentham, Sir Sam'l, 242, 342, 349, 374.
Bergman, 61.
Berliner, Emile, 408.
Bernoulli, D., 167.
Berthollet, 64, 454.
Berzelius, 60.
Bessemer, Henry, and process, 176, 232, 233.
Besson, Prof. J., 75, 242.
Bicheroux, potter, 465.
Bicycles, 431.
Bigelow, E. B., 305.
Billings, Dr., 210.
Binding books. (See Printing.)
Binders, grain and twine, 39.
Bicycles, 431 to 435.
Bischof, Simon, 191.
Blacksmithing. (See Metallurgy.)
Blaew of Amsterdam, 281.
Black, chemist, 58.
Blair, iron and steel, 234.
Blakely Gun. (See Ordnance.)
Blake, Eli. W., Blake crusher, 376, 377.
Blanchard, Thos., 268, 343, 344, 350, 356, 369.
Blasting, 107.
Blast, steel. (See Bessemer.)
Blauofen furnace. (See Metallurgy.)
Bleaching and Dyeing, 69.
Blenkinsop, 82.
Blithe, Walter, 14.
Block Printing. (See Printing.)
Blodgett & Lerow, sewing machines, 318.
Bloomaries. (See Metallurgy.)
Blunderbuss, 257.
Bobbins--spinning, 302.
Boerhaave, 58.
Boetius, 365.
Bohemia, 357.
Boilers. (See Steam Engineering.)
"Boke of Husbandry," 1523, 14.
Bollman bridge, 103.
Bolting. (See Milling.)
Bolt making. (See Metal Working.)
Bombards, 254.
Bombs. (See Ordnance.)
Bomford, Col., 260.
Bonaparte, 89, 90, 256.
Bonnets and ladies' hats, 324.
Bonjeau, M., 325.
Bonelli, M., 305.
Book making and binding, 287, 288.
Boots and shoes, 366 to 371.
Boring machines, 345, 348.
Boring square holes, 346.
Bormann, Genl., 259.
Bottle stoppers, 358.
Boulton and Watt, 84, 452.
Bouton, 415.
Bourseuil, Chas., 407.
Boyce, 1799, 35.
Boyle, Robert, 58, 184, 193, 194.
Box making. (See Woodworking Machinery.)
Braiding. (See Sewing Machines.)
Braithwaite, 83.
Brakes, bicycle, 433-436.
Brakes, steam, Railway and Electric, 87, 436.
Brakes and gins, 297.
Bramah, Jos., 82, 154, 170, 242, 244, 342, 349, 424.
Branch, 342.
Branco, 75.
Brahe, Tycho, 183, 388.
Brass, 219.
Brayton, G. H., 190.
Brazil, 281, 476, 477.
Breech-loaders, 257, 263, 264, 265, 269.(See Ordnance.)
Brewster, Sir David, 410.
Brickmaking machines, kilns and processes, 457, 464.
Bridges and Bridge Building, 93 to 104, 197.
Bright, John, 138.
Broadwood piano, 403.
Bronsen, 412.
Broom-making, 328, 329.
Brot, 411.
Brothers of the Bridge, 94.
Bronze, 218, 219.
Brooklyn bridge, 98, 99.
Brown, Sir Saml., 95, 187, 188.
"Brown Bess," 258.
Bruce, David, 284.
Brunel, I. K., 97.
Brunel, I. M., 351, 367.
Brunton, 82.
Brush--Brush light, 137.
Brushes and Brush making, 330.
Buchanan's Practical Essays, 244.
Buckingham, C. L., 148.
Buffing machines, 365.
Builders' hardware, 250.
Buildings, tall, 152, 153.
Buffers, 437. (See Railways, Elevator, etc., 160, 161.)
Bunsen, Robt. W., 119, 120, 230.
Bunsen light, 456.
Burden, Henry, 95.
Burdett, Wm., 188.
Burke, Edmund, 182.
Burns, Robert, 31.
Butter, 54, 55.
Button-hole machines, 323.
Bunsen. (See Chemistry.)
C.
Cable transportation, 109.
Cæsar, 457.
Cahill, Thaddeus, 287.
Caissons, 100.
Calcium-carbide, 70, 456.
Calico making and printing, 325, 326.
California, 382.
Cameo cutting, 475.
_Camera obscura_, 414.
Campbell printing press, 285.
Canada, 40, 430.
Canals, and boats for, 84, 106, 107, 109, 110, 440.
Canal locks, 110.
Cane woven goods, 308.
Cannons and firearms, 252-272.
Cantilever bridges, 103, 104.
Caoutchouc. (See Rubber, 476.)
Caps,--gun, 259.
Car heating, 211.
Cars, sleeping, 431. (See Railways.)
Car tracks, 108.
Car rails, 108.
Car wheels, 108.
Carbines, 266. (See Ordnance.)
Carbon--chemistry.
Carbonating, 68.
Carborundum, 70.
Cardan, 183.
Carding, 298, 300.
Cardova. (See Leather.)
Carlyle, 310.
Carnot. (See Ordnance.)
Carpentry, 339, 352.
Carpets and Looms, 305.
Carré Brothers, 214.
Carriages and carrying machines, 82, 428-437.
Carthagenians, 164.
Carts. (See Coaches and Waggons.)
Cartridges, 267.
Cartwright, Rev. Edwd., 297.
Carving machinery, 346.
Case-shot. (See Ordnance.)
Cash registers, 395.
Cast iron, 223.
Catalan furnace, 222. (See Metallurgy.)
Cauchy, 410.
Caus, Salomon de, 75.
Cavendish, 58.
Caxton, 280.
Centennial Exhibition. 1876; 38, 39, 40, 140, 246, 320,
352, 353, 393, 402, 430.
Centrifugal machines (pumps), 172, 173.
Charcoal. (See Metallurgy.)
Chairs. (See Furniture.)
Chaff separator. (See Milling.)
Chain wheels--hydraulics, 156.
Chairs, tables, desks, etc. (See Furniture, 351, 358.)
Challey, M., 97.
"Champion harvesters"--Harvesters.
Chance & Co., Glass makers, 470.
Channelling shoes. (See Leather.)
Chanute, Octave, 110.
Chappe, M., 125.
Charles I. (See Ordnance;
Charles II., 242;
Charles V., 387;
Charles VIII., 265.)
Chemistry, 58, 70.
Chemical Telegraph. (See Telegraphy.)
Chester-dial telegraph, 146.
Chili, 461.
Chill hardening, 250.
Chickering pianos, 403.
Chimes, 196.
China and Chinese inventions, 24, 52, 165, 222, 241, 253,
257, 273, 275, 280, 384, 386, 400, 423, 465.
Chlorates, 70.
Chlorine, 237.
Chlorination, 237.
Chromium, 70.
Chronometers, 390, 394.
Chubb-safes, 422, 425.
Cigar and cigarette machines, 56, 57.
Cincinnati Bridge. (See Engineering.)
Cincinnatus, 17, 31.
Circulation of blood, 2.
Civil Engineering, 93-110.
Clark, Alvan, 412.
Clavichord, 402.
Clayton, Dr., 1688, 451.
Clay, Treatment of. (See Brick and Pottery making.)
Cleaning grain, etc. (See Mills.)
Clement, metal worker, 244.
Clementi, pianist, 403.
Clepsydra, 384, 385, 386.
"Clermont." (See Steam Ships.)
Clippers, Ships, 439.
Clocks, 384. (See Horology.)
Clocks, Essential parts of, 386.
Closets. (See Baths.)
Cloth, Making, Finishing, 306;
Drying, 306;
Printing, 306;
Creasing and pressing, 306;
Cutting, 306-324;
Fancy woven, 205-306.
Clothes. (See Garments.)
Clover Header, 32.
Clutches, 161-162.
Clymer, of Philadelphia, press, 282.
Coaches, stages, mail, etc., 428-431.
Coach lace, 306.
Coal, 225, 378, 380;
Coal breakers and cleaners, 378-380.
Coal gas, 450;
Coal tar colors. (See Chemistry.)
Coal mining. (See Ores.)
Coaling Ships, 110.
Coehorn, shell, 255.
Coffin, journalist, 25.
Coke. (See Metallurgy.)
Cold metal punching, working and rolling, 246-247.
Colding of Denmark, 63.
Collards, pianos, 403.
Collen, Henry, 417.
Collins line. (See Steam Ships.)
Collinge, 430.
Coloring cloth, 325.
Colors and coloring, 464-467.
Color process. (See Photography, 417, Printing, 290.)
Colt, revolvers, 260, 267, 322.
Columbiad, 261.
Colossus of Rhodes, 34.
Comminges of France, 255.
Comminuting machines. (See Grinding.)
Compartment vessels, 442.
Compass, 2.
Compensating devices, 391.
Compound engines, 87-89.
Compressed air drills, 376.
Compressed air and steam, 193, 194, 378.
Compressed air ordnance, 265, 269.
Condensers, 87.
Condamine, 477.
Conservation of forces, 2.
Constitution, U.S., 8.
Convertibility of forces, 2.
Containers, 175.
Conveyors, transportation, 152, 153, 154, 158, 159, 160.
Cook, Telegraphy, 127, 146.
Cooke, Prof. J. P., 59.
Cooke, James, 25.
Cooking. (See Stoves.)
Cooper, Peter, 84.
Coopering. (See Wood Working.)
Copernicus, 183.
Copper, 218, 219, etc.
Corliss, 88.
Corn: Cultivators, 29-30;
Mills, 46;
Planters, 28.
Correlation of forces, 2.
Cort, Henry, 226-231.
Corundum, 70, 334.
Coster, 280.
Cotton, 42, 43;
Gin, 42, 43, 297;
Harvester, 40.
Cotton seed oil, 69.
Cotton and wool machinery, 298. (See Textiles.)
"Counterblast to Tobacco," 155.
Couplers, 437.
Cowper, 31.
Cowper, printer, 283.
Cowley, 77.
Cradle, grain, 33.
Cranes and derricks, 110, 152, 153, 171.
Crecy, (1346). (See Ordnance.)
Cristofori, pianist, 402.
Crompton, Saml., 42, 297, 298, 301.
Crompton, George, 305.
Crookes, Prof. Wm., 149.
Crooke tubes, 149.
Cros, Charles, 407.
Crushers, stone and ore, 376.
Crystal Palace, 470.
Ctesibius, 74, 165, 168, 385.
Cultivators, 29, 30.
Curtet, 121.
Cugnot, 1769, 81.
Culverin. (See Cannon.)
Cunard line, 86.
Cuneus, 115.
Curtains Shades and Screens, 356.
Cyanide. Cyanide process, 236.
Cyclometers, 396.
D.
Daguerre, 415-416.
Daguerreotype, 415.
Dahlgren, Cannon, 264.
Danks, Rotary puddler, 231.
Dalton, John, 59-60, 186, 194, 453.
Damascus Steel, 221. (See Metallurgy.)
Dana, Prof., 126.
Daniell's battery, 119, 126.
Darby, Abraham, 1777, 95, 225.
Darwin, Dr., 18th cent., 73.
Davy, Humphry, Sir, 16, 63, 64, 70, 118, 122, 125,
188, 209, 236, 415.
David's harp, 6.
Decker, piano, 403.
Delinter, 43.
Dentistry, 72.
Dental Chairs, 72, 358;
Drills, 72;
Engines, 72;
Hammers, 72;
Pluggers, 72.
Deoville, St. Clair, 238.
Derricks, 110.
"Deutschland," The, 445.
Desks, 355.
De Susine, 192.
Dewar, Prof., 216.
Dial Telegraphs. (See Telegraphy.)
Diamonds. (See Milling; Polishing; Artificial, 70.)
Diamond Drill, 375.
Diana, Temple of, 34.
Diastase, 54.
Didot, Francois, 1800, 276.
Dickenson, 277.
Digesters. (See Chemistry.)
Differential motion, 301.
Dioptric Lens, 410.
Diorama, 415.
Direct Acting Engines, 88.
Direct Feed Engines, 88.
Discoveries, distinct from inventions, 1, 2.
Disk Plows, 21, 30.
Distaff and Spindle. (See Textiles, 292.)
Dodge, James M., 159.
Doffers, 301.
Dog Carts. (See Carriages.)
Dollond, John, 410.
Donkin, 277.
Donovan, 454.
Don Quixote, 222.
Douglass, Nicholas, 105.
Draining, 105, 106, 107.
Drags and Drays. (See Waggons, 430-431.)
Drais, Baron Von, 432.
Drake, E. S., Col., 382.
Draper, J. W., Prof., 412, 416, 450.
Drawing Machines, Spinning, 296, 298, 301.
Dredging, 105, 106, 107.
Dressing; of thread and cloths, 299, 302;
of skins. (See Leather.)
Drills, seeders, 20, 27.
Drills, stone ore and iron, 375, 378.
Drying apparatus. (See Kilns.)
Dreyse, 266.
Dualine, 270.
Duboscq, 137.
Dudley, Dud, 224.
Duncan, John, 311.
Dundas, Charlotte, 84.
Dundonald, Lord, 451.
Dundas, Lord, 83, 440.
Dunlop, J. B., Bicycles, 433.
Duplex Engines, 88.
Dulcimer. (See Music.)
Dust Explosions and Collectors, 50.
Dutch Paper, 277;
Printing, 280.
Dutch Canals, 107.
Dutch Clocks, 388, 391.
Dutch Furnaces and Stoves, 203.
Dutch Locks, 424.
Dutch Ships, 439.
Dutch Ware, 459.
Dutton, Maj. C. E., 261.
Dynamometer, 187, 398.
Dynamite, 270.
Dynamo Electric Machines, 130, 134, 251.
E.
Eads, James B., 102.
Eames of U. S., 234.
East River Bridge, 98, 99.
Eddystone Lighthouse, 105.
Edison, 137, 144, 145, 148, 407, 408.
Egyptian agriculture, arts and inventions, 5, 13, 42, 45, 58,
164, 184, 220, 241, 273, 292, 340, 354, 400, 402, 423,
457, 460, 470.
Eiffel, M., 105.
Electricity, 5, 111-151.
Electric Alarms. (See Locks.)
Electric Batteries, 117-132.
Electric Cable, 138.
Electric Heating, 213.
Electric Lighting, 108, 119, 121 to 137, 360, 456.
Electro-Chemistry, 70.
Electro-magnets, 120-133.
Electro Metallurgy, 70, 238, 249.
Electrodes, 113, 135.
Electrolysis, 129, 131.
Electrometer, 113, 122.
Electrical Music, 148.
Electro Plating, 249.
Electric Railway, 143, 144.
Electric Signals and Stops, 160, 162.
Electric Telegraphy, 2, 114, 122, 123, 145, 146, 147.
Electrotyping, 283, 290.
Electric Type Printing, 147, 148.
Electric Type Writer, 287.
Electric Voters, 396.
Elevators, 6, 148, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157.
Eliot, Prof., 410.
Elizabeth, Queen, 402.
Elton, John, 46.
Elvean, Louis T. van, 155.
Embossing, 346, 347.
Embossing, weaving, 306.
Embroidery, 310, 313.
Emery, abrading, 70, 334.
Emery, testing machines, 398.
England, 8, 17, 25, 50, 188.
Engraving Machines, 290.
Enamelling. (See Pottery.)
Enamelled Ware, 459, 468.
Engineering. (See Civil.)
Electric, 143;
Hydraulic, 168;
Marine, 442;
Mining, 373;
Steam, 2.
Eolipile. (See Hero.)
Erard, pianist, 403.
Erasmus, 183.
Ericsson, John, 83, 86, 441, 443, 444.
Euclid, 9.
Euler, 167, 173.
Evans, Oliver, 1755-1819; 46, 47, 48, 81, 83, 87, 154, 374.
Evaporating, 52.
Evelyn, John, 1699; 25.
Evolution of modern inventions, 153.
Excavating, 105, 106.
Explosives, 270.
Eylewein, 167.
F.
Fabroni, 66, 118.
Faience, 459, 466.
Fairbairn, Sir Wm., 100, 176, 226, 440.
Fairbanks, scales and testing, 397.
Fahrenheit, 183.
Fanning Mills, 45.
Faraday, Michael, 63, 118, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 138,
188, 209, 411, 472.
Fan mills, 41.
Fare registers, 395.
Farmer, Moses G., 133, 135, 145.
Factory life, 298.
Faure, M. Camille, 120.
Faur, Faber du, 230.
Faust, 280.
Felt making, 325.
Fermentation, 65, 66, 67.
Fertilizers--machines and compositions. (See Agriculture.)
Field, Cyrus W., 138.
Filament-carbon, 360.
(See Electric Lighting.)
Filters, filtering, 167, 180, 181.
Filter Press, 465.
Fink bridge, 103.
Fire-arms, 252-272.
Fire crackers, 252.
Fire engines, 76.
Fire place, 205.
Fiske, range finder, 266.
Fiske, 148, 413.
Fitch, John, 1784, 81.
Fitzherbert, Sir A., 1523, 14.
Fireproof safes. (See Locks.)
Flax machines, 42.
Flax brakes, 42.
Flaxman, 464.
Flax-threshers, 41, 42.
Fleming, 247.
Fleshing machines, 364.
Fletcher, 244.
Flexible shafts, 350.
Florence, 459.
Flour. (See Mills.)
Fly Shuttle. (See Spinning and Weaving.)
Foods, preparation of, 53, 54.
Force feed-seeders, 26.
Forneyron, 171, 172.
Forsythe, Rev. Mr., 259, 260.
Foucault, 137.
Fourcroy, 64.
Fourdrinier, 277. (See Paper making.)
Frackelton, Susan, portable kiln, 465.
France, 63, 203, 253, 274, 275, 313.
Francis, S. W., 286.
Frank, pottery, 463.
Franklin, Benj., 5, 111, 112, 115, 116, 117, 121, 125,
168, 203, 281, 446.
Franklin Institute, 455.
Fraunhofer, von, Jos., 61, 412.
Frederick, Henry, 255.
Freiberg Mining Academy, Metallurgy, 223.
Fresnel, 410.
Frictional Electricity, 111.
Frieburg Bridge. (See Bridges.)
Frogs, R. R., 108.
Flintlock, firearms, 258.
Froment, 146.
Frontinus, on Roman aqueducts, 166.
Fruits, Preparation of, 51, 53.
Fruit jars, 359.
Fry, Laura, 467.
Fulton, Robt., 84-85.
Furnaces, hot air; hot water, 206, 207.
Furniture, 351, 354, 359.
Furniture machinery, 351, 352.
Fuses, 259.
G.
Gaffield, Thos., glass, 472.
Gale, Prof., 126.
Galileo, 1, 166, 183, 388, 409.
Gally, self-playing pianos, 406.
Galton, Capt. Douglas, 205.
Galvani, 5, 117, 118, 125.
Galvanism, 112,121.
Galvanic batteries, 121, 122.
Galvanic music, 148, 406.
Galvanometer, 122, 139.
Gamble, 277.
Garay, Blasco de, 75.
Garments, 310-327.
Gas, 450;
illuminating, 69, 185, 450-456.
Gases, motors, 188, 190.
Gas checks, 266.
Gas engines, 76, 18, 184-194.
Gasoline and stoves, 213.
Gas pumps, 190.
Gatling, Dr., gun, 269.
Gaul, 32, 33.
Gauss, 126.
Gay-Lussac, 60, 185, 194, 209.
Ged, Wm., 281.
Geissler tubes, 135, 149.
Generator, Electric, 113.
Gentleman Farmer, 1768, 20.
George III., 389.
German inventions, 50, 203, 255, 313, 387, 391, 430, 473.
Germ theory, 67.
German clock and watch making, 387.
Gibraltar, 253.
Giffard-injector, 173.
Gilbert, Dr., 1600, 5, 113.
Gill, J. G., 268.
Giers, 234, 250.
Gin-cotton, 297.
Gladstone, inventor, 1806, 35.
Glass, 469, 474.
Glass, wool, and silk, 474, 480.
Glazes, 475. (See Porcelain.)
Glauber, 58.
Glycerine, 69.
Gold. (See Metallurgy.)
Goodyear, Chas., 434, 476, 478, 479, 480.
Googe, Barnaby, 14.
Gompertz, 432.
Gordon, 82.
Gothic architecture, 373.
Governors, 87.
Graham (chemist), 391.
Graham. (See Horology.)
Grain Binder. (See Harvesters.)
Grain cradles, drills, and seeders. (See Agriculture.)
Grain elevator, 110.
Grain Separators, 49.
Gramme, Z., 134, 136, 137.
Gramophone, 406, 408.
Graphophone, 406, 408.
Grass burning stoves, 211.
Gray, Elisha. (See Electricity.)
Gray, S., 1729, 114, 125.
"Great Britain," The, 440.
"Great Republic," The, 439.
Great Urgroez, 357.
Greece and Greek antiquities and inventions, 9, 13, 18, 45,
74, 113, 164, 182, 218, 257, 340, 386, 457, 459.
Grenades, 255.
Green, N. W., driven well, 383.
Greenough, J. J., 318.
Gribeauval, 256.
Griffith, Julius, 82.
Griffiths of U. S., 234.
Grinding by stones, 45 to 49.
Grinding glass, 475.
Grindstones, 375.
Grossat, 477.
Grover and Baker sewing mach., 320.
Grooving, 245.
Grove, Sir Wm. Robert, 119.
Gruner, 234.
Gun carriages. (See Ordnance.)
Gun cotton, 270.
Gun making, 345.
Gunpowder, 253, 262, 263, 270.
Gunpowder eng., 192.
Gun-stock, 345.
Guericke, Otto von, 113, 183, 193.
Guillaume, Puy, 253.
Gurney, 82.
Guttenberg, John, 280.
H.
Hales, Dr., 451.
Hall, John H., 267.
Hall safes, 422.
Hamberg, 58.
Hamblet, 146.
Hamilton (stove inventor), 212.
Hammers, steam and air, 88, 244.
Hanckwitz, Godfrey, 1680, 199.
Hancock, Walter, 82.
Handel, 402.
Hanging Gardens, 34.
Hardening metals, 249.
Hardware. (See Metal Working.)
Hargreaves, Jas., 42, 294, 297.
Harnesses, 431.
Harp, The, and the Harpsichord, 6, 402.
Harvesters, 32, 33, 35, 39, 40, 41, 322.
Hartshorn, spring roller shades, 356.
Harveyized steel, 234, 249.
Harrows, 22, 28.
Hautefeuille, 77.
Hauteville, Abbé, 185, 389.
Hat making, 325.
Haydn, 402.
Hay, rakes and tedders, 15, 40.
Headers, 32.
Heat as power, 186, 187.
Heating, 86, 199, 210.
Hebrews, 45, 362, 423.
Hele, P., 388.
Helmont, J. van, 58, 184.
Hell Gate, 107.
Helmholtz, 66, 131, 141, 403, 406, 407, 411, 417.
Hendley, Wm., 82.
Henry, Joseph, 63, 123, 124, 126, 131, 146, 210.
Henry, rifle, 267.
Henry, Wm., 78.
Herissent, M., 477.
Hermetical sealing, 359.
Herodotus, 362.
Hero of Alexander, 5, 9, 74, 76, 87, 89, 165, 171, 404.
Herring, safes, 421.
Herschel, 228, 412.
Hides, treatment of. (See Leather.)
Hide mills, 364.
High and low pressure engines, 87, 88.
Hindoos, 220, 241, 254, 273, 292, 340, 384.
Hodges, James, of Montreal, 101.
Hoe, Robert, and son, R. M., 284.
Hoe drill-seeders, 27.
Hoes, 29, 30.
Hoffman, Dr., 464.
Hoisting, conveying, and storing, 152-163.
Holland, 18, 255, 257, 275.
Holley, A. L., 232.
Holtzapffel, J., 241.
Homer, 459.
Hooke, Dr., 388, 389.
Hoopes and Townsend, 247.
Hoppers. (See Mills.)
Hopper boy. (See Mills.)
Hoosac tunnel, 107.
Hornblower, 1781, 87.
Horrocks, 305.
Horse power, 187.
Horseshoes, 248.
Horology, 384-395.
Hot air engines, 185.
Hot air blast, 231.
Hot furnaces. (See Heating.)
Hot water circulation. (See Heating.)
Hotchkiss gun, 270.
Houdin regulator, 137.
Houses, their construction, 351, 352.
Houston. (See Telegraphy.)
Howe, Elias, 314-318.
Howe bridge, 103.
Howitzer. (See Ordnance.)
Hunt, Walter, 314, 315.
Hungary, 357.
Huggins, Dr., 63, 412.
Hughes, D. E., 147.
Hugon, 189.
Hulls, Jonathan, 78.
Huntsman, Benj., 225.
"Husbandry, The whole art of." (See Agriculture.)
Huskisson, 83.
Hussey, 1833, 37, 38.
Huxley, 65.
Huygens, 61, 77, 183, 184, 192, 388, 391.
Hydraulicising, 174.
Hydraulic elevators, 156, 157, 164, 165, 166.
Hydraulic jacks, 174.
Hydraulic motors, 164-181;
pumps, rams, 166, 168;
press, 52, 53, 154, 155, 168, 171, 175;
testing, 398, 399.
Hydrogen gas, 454.
Hydrostatic engines and presses, 166, 190, 194.
I.
Ida, mountains of, iron, 218.
Illuminating gas. (See Gas.)
Impulse pump. (See Ram.)
Incandescent light, 135, 456.
Incubators, 207.
India, 373, 400.
Industrial mechanics, 328-338.
Injectors, 173.
Intensifiers, 174.
International Exposition, London, 246, 352.
Invention, what it is, how induced, distinctions, growth,
protection of, 1-8.
Iron, 218.
Iron Ships. (See Ships.)
Iridescent glass, 474.
Ironing machines, 338.
Italy, 255, 280.
Ives. F. E. (three-color process), 417.
J.
Jablochoff, M. Paul, 136.
Jacks, 245.
Jacobi, of Russia, 249.
Jackson, C. T., Dr., 71.
Jacquard Loom, The, 304, 323, 326.
Jacquard, Joseph Marie, 304, 305.
Jenk's ring frame, 302.
Jenkins, Prof. F., 192.
Jefferson, Thos., 16,18.
Jenkin, Prof. Fleeming, 144.
Jewelry, 333.
"Jimcrow," 245.
Johnson, Denis. (See Bicycle.)
Jones, iron and steel, 234.
Jonval, 172.
Joule, 2.
Jupiter, statue of, 34.
K.
Kaleidoscope, 410.
Karnes, Lord, 1768, 20.
Kaolin. (See Lighting.)
Kay, John, 293, 295.
"Kearsarge," The, 261.
Kepler, 183.
Kennedy, Diss and Cannan, 331.
Kilns, 463, 464, 465.
Kinetic energy, Age of, 86.
Kinetograph, 417.
Kirchoff, G. R., 62, 412.
Kitchen and table utensils, 356.
Knabe piano, 403.
Knight, Edward, 36, 51, 170, 202, 232, 276, 321, 429.
Knitting, 307, 308.
König and Bauer, 283.
König, acoustics, 407.
Koops, 277.
Koster, 1620, rifle, 258.
Krag-Jorgensen rifle, 268.
Kramer, 146.
Krupp, steel, 234.
Krupp, Fredk., guns, 264.
Krupp, glass, 480.
Kutler, Augustin, 258.
L.
La Condamine, 477.
Labor organizations, 11.
Labor, how affected by inventions; reducing, and increasing,
152, 153, 162, 163, 293, 308, 380, 381, 460.
Lace making, 306.
Laconium, 202.
Ladd electric machine, 133.
La Hire, 167, 170.
Laird, John, 440, 443.
Lallement, P. (See Bicycle.)
Lamps and lamp lighting, 359, 450.
Lancaster, cannon, 263.
Land reclamation, 107.
Lane, 1828, 37.
Lane-Fox light, 137.
Langen and Otto. (See Gas Engine.)
Langley, Prof., 4.
L'Hommedieu, 348.
Lapping-cotton, 299, 300.
Lasts, making of, 344, 345.
Lathes, 241-243, 340, 345, 349;
for turning irregular forms of wood, 344.
Lattice work bridges, 103.
Laundry, 335.
Lavoisier, 58, 60, 63.
Lawn mowers, 40.
Lazy tongs mechanism, 160.
Le Bon, 1801, 185, 452.
Leaching, 236.
Lead, 219. (See Metallurgy.)
Leather, 361-372.
Leeuwenhoek of Holland, 65.
Leeu, 280.
Leckie, 41.
Le Conte, 63.
Lefaucheux, M., 267.
Leibnitz, 183.
Lenoir, 189.
Lesage, 121.
Lescatello, 1662, 24.
Leyden jar, 114.
Libavius, 58.
Liebig, 64.
Lieberkulm, Dr., 409.
Light, 2.
Lighting. (See Lamps and Gas.)
Light Houses, illumination, 105, 410.
Linotype, 288, 289, 290.
Linville bridge, 103.
Lippersheim, 409.
Liquid air, 216, 217.
Livingstone, Dr., 221.
Livingston, Robt., 84, 85.
Lixiviation, 236.
Locks, 420-427.
Locomotives, 82, 83, 84, 88.
Looms, 293, 297, 302. (See Textiles.)
Loomis, Mahlen, 150.
"London Engineering," 288.
London exhibition, 1851, 470.
London Times, 283, 285.
Lontin regulator, 137.
Lost arts, 219.
Louis XI., XIV., 254, 255.
Lowell, Francis C., 298.
Lowe, T. S. C., gas, 454, 455.
Lubricants, 237.
Lyall, James, 306.
Lyttleton, 442.
M.
MacArthur-Forrest, cyanide process, 236.
Macaulay, Lord, 10.
Mackintosh, of Glasgow, 477.
Machine guns, 269.
Madersperger, Jos., 312.
Magdeburg, 193.
Magic lantern. (See Optics.)
Magnets and Magnetic Electricity, 112, 122, 123, 124, 130, 133.
Mail bags and locks, 427.
Mail service, 427.
Mail marking, 285.
Majolica. (See Pottery.)
Malt, 65, 66.
Man a tool-using animal, 310.
Manning, 1831, 37.
Marble, artificial, 468, 469.
Marine propulsion, 442.
Marconi, 151.
Mariotte's law of gases, 184, 194.
Markers and cutters, 324.
Markham, 30.
Marsland, looms, 301.
Marr, Wm., 421.
Martin, Prof., 63.
Marvin's safes, 421.
McClure's Magazine, 445, 447.
McCormick reaper, 37, 38.
McCallum bridge, 103.
McKay, ships, 439.
McKay, shoe machines, 369.
McMillan bicycle, 433.
Mary, Queen, 402.
Mason, Prof. O. T., 458.
Massachusetts, mills, 298, 369.
Massachusetts, shoe making, 370.
Master locks, 423, 426.
Matches, 199, 200, 201.
Matting, 309, 312.
Maudsley, Henry, 243, 349.
Maurice of Nassau, 255.
Maurice, Peter, 167.
Mauser rifle, 269.
Mausoleum, 34.
Maxim electric light, 137.
Maxwell, 417.
Mayer, Prof., 404.
Meares, 1800, 35.
Meat, Preparation of, 55.
Mechanical powers, 4.
Medicine and surgery, 70, 71, 72.
Meigs, General M. C., 102.
Meikle, 1786, 41.
Megaphone, 407.
Melville, David, 452.
Menai Straits bridges, 96.
Mendeljeff, 2.
Menzies of Scotland, 41.
Mergenthaler, 288.
Merrimac and Monitor, 268, 441.
Metals and Metallurgy, 218-239.
Metal founding, 249.
Metal working and turning, 240;
boring, planing, 251;
hammering, shaping, 240;
modern metal
working plant, 250.
Metal, personal ware, buckles, clasps, hooks, buttons, etc.,
250.
Meters, gas and water, 178.
Mexico, 281, 292.
Microphone, 148.
Microscope, 409.
Middlings purifier, 49, 50.
Milk, milkers, 54, 55.
Millet, 30.
Mills, 45 to 51.
Milling, high, low, 49.
Miller, wood working, 342.
Miller and Taylor, 81.
Millwright, The Young, 47.
Milton, 105, 218.
Mineral wool, minerals and mining, 373-383.
Minneapolis mills, 50.
Mitrailleuses, 269.
Modern machinery, its commencement, 364.
Mohl, von, Hugo, 67.
Moigno, Abbé, 411.
Mold, aging. (See Chemistry.)
Moulding. (See Wood-working and Glass making.)
Monks, 387.
"Monitor," The, 268, 441.
Montgolfier, 169.
Moody, Paul, 298.
Moors, 253.
Morin, Genl., 209, 238.
Morland, Sir Sam'l, 77.
Morrison, Chas., 115.
Morse, S. B. F., 126, 127, 128, 129.
Mortars, 253.
Mortise making, 345.
Morton, Dr. W. T. G., 71.
Motor vehicles, 435.
Mont Cenis Tunnel, 107.
Mowers, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39.
Moxon, Jos., 242.
Mozart, 402.
Murdock, Wm., 185, 452.
Music, 400-406.
Musical instruments, 6, 400.
Musical electrical apparatus, 406.
Muschenbroeck, Prof., 1745, 114, 115.
Mushet, iron and steel, 234.
Muskets. (See Ordnance.)
Muzzle loaders, 263, 264.
N.
National Assembly, France, 9.
Napoleon. (See Bonaparte.)
Naphtha, 454.
Nasmyth, 243, 245.
Needle, 310, 313.
Needle gun, 266.
Niedringhaus, 468.
Netting. (See Spinning.)
Newcomen, 5, 77, 78, 79, 167, 187.
Newbold, Chas., 19.
Newbury, Wm., 348.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 9, 11, 61, 114, 167, 183, 414.
Niagara bridges, 97, 98, 104.
Niagara power, 171, 172.
Nicholson and Carlisle, 118.
Nicholson, Wm., of England, 282.
Nickel. (See Metallurgy.)
Niepce, Jas. N., 415.
Nitro-glycerine, 270.
Noah's Ark, 438.
Nobel, A., 192.
Nollet, Prof., 132.
Noria, The, 165.
Norway, 266, 430, 439.
Nozzles, flexible, 174;
water, 179.
O.
Oersted, 121, 130.
Ogle, 1822, 36.
Ohm, G. S., 125.
Oils and fats, 69.
Oil cloth, 306.
Oil lamps, 359.
Oil stoves and furnaces, 190, 212.
Oiling waves, 446.
Oil wells, 190, 382.
Omnibus. (See Stages and Carriers.)
Opening and blowing machines, cotton, 299.
Opthalmoscope, 411.
Optical instruments, 409-412.
Ordnance, arms, explosives, 252 to 272.
Ores, treatment of, 229, 250, 251, 373 to 380.
Ore separators, 379. (See Metallurgy.)
Organs, 404.
Ornamental iron work. (See Metal Working.)
Ornamental wood work. (See Wood Working.)
Oscillating engines. (See Steam.)
Osmund furnaces. (See Metallurgy.)
Otis elevators, 155.
Otto, Nicolaus A., Otto engine, 190, 191.
Oxygen, 58, 453. (See Priestley.)
P.
Paddle wheels and vessels, 443.
Paints, 466.
Painting, 418, 419, 459.
Painting machines, 193, 418, 467.
Paixhans, Genl., 261, 264.
Page, Prof. C. G., 132, 141.
Page, Ralph, 224.
Palissy, Bernard, 458.
Palmer, stage-coaches, 429.
Palladius, 32.
Panoramas, 415.
Paper and printing, 273-291.
Paper bag machinery, 279.
Papin, 5, 77, 184, 192, 193.
Papyrus, 273, 274.
Paraffine. (See Oils.)
Parchment, 274.
Parkinson, Thos., 194.
Parliament, House of, 209.
Parquetry. (See Wood-working.)
Parrott, gun, 264.
Parthenon, 373.
Partridge, Reuben, matches, 200.
Pascal, 166, 168, 170, 183.
Pasteur, 68.
Patents, their origin and purpose, 8, 21.
Pattern making. (See Wood, Metal, and Textiles.)
Pauley, Col., 266.
Pegs, 367, 368.
Pencils, 418.
Pendulum. (See Horology.)
Pendulum machines, 365.
Penelope, 306.
Pennsylvania fireplace, 203.
Percussion caps, 259, 260.
Percy. (See Metallurgy.)
Permutation locks, 425.
Pernot, 234.
Perin & Co., saws, 348.
Persians, 362.
Petroleum, 359, 382.
Petzold, 403.
Pfaff, 121.
Pharos of Alexandria, 34.
Phelps, G. M., 147.
Ph[oe]nicians, 439, 459.
"Ph[oe]nix," The. (See Ships.)
Phonautograph, 141, 407.
Phonograph, 2, 406.
Phonophone, 414.
Phonoscope, 414.
Photophone, 414.
Phosphorus matches, 200.
Photochromoscope, 417.
Photography, 410, 414, 416, 418.
Photo-processes, 417.
Piano, 6, 401-404.
Picking machine, 298, 299.
Picker-motion, looms, 297.
Piezometer, 262.
Pigments, 70.
Pitt, inventor, 1786, 33.
Pixii, 131.
Planes, 340, 350. (See Wood-working.)
Planing machines, 245, 349, 350. (See Wood-working.)
Planté, G., 120.
Planters. (See Chap. III.)
Plaster, 469.
Plato, 385.
Platt, Sir Hugh, 14.
Platt, Senator, 35.
Pliny, 32, 164, 223, 227, 273, 340.
Ploughs, 5, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 27,
28, 29, 30.
Plucknett, 1808, 35.
Pneumatics, 165, 182 to 198.
Pneumatic machines, 195, 197, 198.
Pneumatic propellers, 444.
Pneumatic tires, 433.
Pneumatic tubes and transmission, 159, 196.
Polemoscope, 413.
Polishing glass, 475.
Pope, Alexander, 394.
Porcelain, 465, 466.
Poririer (match machine), 201.
Porta Baptista, 414.
Porta G. della, 75.
Portable engines, 88.
Potato planters, 28.
Potassium, 236.
Potter, Humphrey, 78.
Pottery, 457-469.
Pousard, 465.
Powder, 253.
Power, measure of, 187.
Prehistoric inventions. (See beginning of each Chapter.)
Pressing machines, 51, 52, 53.
Priestley, 58, 453, 477.
"Princeton," The, 443.
Printing press, 2, 6, 273-291.
Prince of Orange, 255.
Projectiles, 253-270.
Prometheus, 199, 200.
Protoplasm, 67.
Prussia, 266.
Providence, R. I., Tool Co., 322.
Psalteries, 401.
Ptah, 241.
Puckle's patent breech loader, 258, 259.
Puddling, 226, 227, 231.
Pug mills, 461.
Pullman car, 107.
Pulp, 275-279.
Pumps, 187.
Ptolemy, 428.
Puillet, 411.
Puy Guillaume, battle of, 1338, 258.
Pyramids, 34, 93.
Q.
Quadruplex telegraphy. (See Telegraphy.)
"Queen Ann's Pocket Piece," 256.
Queen of Sheba, 326.
Quern, 45.
Quilting machine, 324.
R.
Radcliffe, 305.
Radiation and radiators, 205, 206.
Railways, rails and tracks, 106, 108;
cars, 108, 109;
frogs, 108.
Railway cars, 436, 437.
Rakes. (See Agriculture.)
Ramage Press, 281.
Ramseye, David, 1630, 76.
Ramelli, Cardan, 75.
Ramsey, David, 1738, 168, 389.
Ram, water. (See Pumps.)
Randolph, David M., 367.
Randolph, Elder and Co., 440.
Ranges. (See Stoves.)
Range finder, 413.
Raphael, 418.
Rawhides. (See Leather.)
Read, Nathan, 1791, 87.
Reapers. (See Harvesters, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38.)
Reichenbach, 382.
Reis, Prof., 141, 407.
Refining metals, 227.
Refrigeration, 213, 214, 216.
Regenerators, 465.
Regenerative furnace. (See Metallurgy, also, 464.)
Registers, 395.
Regulators, Electric, 137;
time, 137.
Rennie, 244.
Repeating watches, 389.
Reservoirs, 166, 180.
Resonators, 404.
Revault, 1605, 75.
Revolvers. (See Fire Arms.)
Rhode Island, 298.
Ribbon making, 306.
Rickel, Dr., 451.
Rider bridge, 103.
Riehle, testing mach., 398.
Rifles, 258, 259, 260.
Rifled cannon, 262, 263.
Ring frame-spinning, 302.
Ritter, 118, 121.
Riveting, 176.
Road carriage, steam, 83.
Roads, 106, 107.
Road making, 106.
Robia, Luca della, 459.
Robert, Louis, 276.
Roberts, 244.
Rock drilling, 107.
Rockers, ore, 235.
Rockets, 253.
Rodman, General, gun, 264.
Roebling, John A., engineer, 98, 99.
Roebling, Washington, 98, 100.
Roentgen, X rays, 149.
Rohes, M. Beau de, 189.
Rogers, Saml. B., metallurgist, 229, 230.
Rogers, type maker, 289.
Roller press, 283, 284.
Roman arts, inventions, etc., 10, 13, 14, 45, 93, 164, 166,
178, 202, 274, 457, 459.
Rookwood pottery, 467.
Romagnosi, G. D., 121.
Roscoe, Prof. (See Chemistry.)
Rose, H., 238.
Rotary engines. (See Steam.)
Rotary printing press, 284. (See Printing.)
Rotary pumps. (See Water and Steam Eng.)
Roving, spinning, 298, 299.
Rubber, 69, 434.
Ruhmkorff coil, 132.
Rumford, Count, 63.
Rumsey, James, 81, 168.
Russia, 40, 254, 430.
Russian leather, 362.
Rust, Saml., 282.
Ruth, 16.
S.
Sabot, projectiles, 262, 263.
Safes and locks, 420-427.
Safety valves, 87.
Saint, Thomas, sewing machine, 311.
Salman, scales maker, 396.
Salonen, 1807, mower, 36.
Samians and Samos, 459.
Sand blast, 332, 334, 475.
Sand filters. (See Filters.)
Sandwich, Earl, 1699, 25.
Saracens, 274.
Sarnstrom, Prof., 234.
Savery, Thos., 5, 77.
Saws, 340, 341, 342, 348, 351.
Saw mills, 341, 342.
Saxton, Jos., 131.
Scales, 395.
Scaliger, 183.
Scandinavians, 363.
Scarborough, 85.
Schilling, Baron, 126.
Schönbein, 270.
Schapper, Hartman, 241.
Schoeffer, Peter, 270.
Schreiber, 403.
Schrotter (matches), 200.
Schweigger, S. C., 126.
Scoops, 178.
Scotland, 19, 20, 33.
Scott, phonautograph, 141, 407.
Scott, Sir Walter, 45, 80.
Scott, Gen. W., 260.
Scott, Rich'd, 420.
Scouring machines. (See Leather and Cloth, and Grain.)
Screw, Archimedean. (See Ships and Propeller.)
Screw, press, 52.
Screw propeller, 85, 443.
Screw making, 245, 246.
Scythians, 362, 428.
Scythes, 32, 33, 35.
Seed drills, 24, 25, 26, 27.
Seely, F. A., 3.
Self-playing Instruments, 406.
Seguin, 83.
Sellers, Wm., 234, 247.
Separators, Grain, 48, 49;
milk, 54;
ore, 379. (See Mills.)
Seppings, Sir Robert, 440.
Serrin, 137.
Serviere, 166.
Seward, Wm. H., 3.
Seven Wonders, The, 34, 35.
Sewing machines, 311-323.
Sewer construction, 107.
Shades and screens, 356.
Shaping machines, 245.
Sharp's carbine, 267.
Shaw, Joshua, 260.
Sheele, 415.
Sheet metal ware, 250.
Shells, 264.
Shingle making, 350.
Shinar, Brick making in, 457.
Ships, war, and others, 261, 343, 438-449.
Shoes and machinery, 365-371.
Sholes, inventor, type writing, 286.
Shrapnel, 259.
Shuttles, 293. (See Textiles.)
Sickle, 32, 33.
Side wheel steamboats, 85.
Siemens, Dr. Werner, 133.
Siemens, Wm., Sir., 144, 171.
Siemens and Halske, 144, 146.
Siemens, C. L., 147, 234, 465.
Silk making. (See Spinning.)
Silk, artificial. (See Glass.)
Silver, 219.
Singer, sewing machine, 319, 320.
Sinking shafts, Mode of, 106, 107.
Skiving. (See Leather.)
Slade, J. T., 155.
Slater, Thomas, 298.
Slaughtering, 55.
Sleighs, 430, 431.
Slide, rest, 243, 349.
Slotting machines, 245.
Small arms, 266. (See Ordnance.)
Small, Jas., 1784, 18.
Smeaton, 87, 105.
Smelting, 220. (See Metallurgy.)
Smiles, Self Help, 95.
Smith & Wesson, revolvers, 269.
Snellus, 234.
Snow ploughs, 109.
Soda, pulp, 278.
Solarmeter, 413.
Solomon's temple, 242.
Somerset, Marquis of Worcester. (See Steam.)
Sound, 406. (See Acoustics.)
Sowing, 23.
Spanish inventions, 25, 75, 253, 274, 280, 292.
Spectacles. (See Optics.)
Spectrum, analysis, 60, 61, 62, 63, 412.
Spectroscope, 2, 412.
Speed Indicators, 396.
Spencer, gun, 267.
Spencer, metal coating, 249.
Spinet, 402.
Spinning, 6, 292, 296, 300. (See Textiles.)
"Spinning Jenny," 297.
Spinning Mule, 297, 300.
"Spiritalia," 404.
Splitting, leather, 366.
Spooling, 302.
Springfield musket, 268.
Spun glass. (See Spinning and 474.)
Stamp mills and metal working, 236, 250.
Standard time, 394.
Stanhope, Earl, 282.
St. Gothard tunnel, 107.
St. Louis bridge, 102.
Steam engines, 2, 5, 73 to 95;
boilers, 86;
heating, 207;
pumps, 79, 81, 88.
Steam ships, 2, 84, 85, 440.
Stearns, 145.
Steel, manufacture of. (See Metallurgy.)
Steinheil, 126, 412.
Steinway, pianos, 403.
Stenographing, 290.
Stereoscope, 410, 411.
Stereotyping, 281.
Sterilisation, 54, 213.
Stephenson, Geo., 82, 83, 84, 85, 98.
Stephenson, Robert, 98, 100, 101, 155.
Stevens, John C., 84, 85, 86, 443.
Stevinus, 166.
Stitching machines. (See Sewing.)
Stocking making, 307.
Stone cutting, carving and dressing, 374, 375.
Stone crushing, 376.
Stone, artificial, 468.
Storage battery, 120.
Storm, W. M. (Gunpowder Engine,) 192.
Store service, 152, 153, 158, 159.
Stoves, 200-206.
Street, Robert, 185.
Street sweeping, 331.
Stow, 350.
Stückofen, metallurgy, 224.
Sturgeon, inventor, 122, 123, 124.
Sturtevant, B. F. (shoes), 368.
Submarine blasting, etc., 107.
Suez canal, 107.
Sugar, 69.
Sun-dial, 384.
Subdivision of labor, 392. (See Ordnance and Sewing Machines.)
Surgery and instruments, 70.
Suspension bridges, 95, 96-100.
Swan, light, 137.
Sweden, 266.
Sweeping machines, 331.
Swiss manufactures, (See Watches, etc.)
Switzerland, 16, 46, 391.
Symington, 81, 83, 85.
Syphon recorder, 139.
T.
T-rail, 108.
Tables, 354. (See Furniture.)
Tachenius, 58.
Tack making, 344.
Tainter, C. S., 408, 414.
Takamine, 68.
Talus, or Perdix, saw inventor, 340.
Tanning. (See Leather.)
Tapestry, 275.
Teasling, 306.
Tedders, 40.
Telegraph, 124-128, 139, 140.
Telegraphic pictures, 419.
Telephone, 2, 140, 141, 142, 406.
Telescope, 2, 409.
Telpherage, 144.
Telford, 95, 96.
Tennyson, 67.
Tesla, 145.
Testing machines, 398.
Textiles, 292-309.
Thermo-electricity, 112, 120.
Theodore of Samos, 340.
Thimonnier, 313.
Thomson, Sir Wm., 63, 139.
Thompson, Robt. Wm., 433, 435.
Thompson & Houston, 137.
"Three color process," 417.
Thread making. (See Spinning.)
Threshing machines, 40, 41.
Throstle, 296.
Thurston, Prof. R. H., 86.
Tiles, 350.
Tilghman, B. F., sand blast, 332, 475.
Time locks, 425.
Time measuring of the ancients, 384.
Tissier, 238.
Tobacco and machinery, 55, 56, 57.
Tools, primitive, 310, 328, 339.
Torpedo vessels, 271, 445.
Torpedoes, 271.
Torricelli, 166, 183.
Tour, Cagniard de la, 65.
Towne's lattice bridge, 103.
Traction railways and engines, 436.
Transplanters, 29.
Transportation, 107, 109.
Treadwell, Daniel, 284.
Tresca, M., 247.
Trevithick, Richard, 81, 82.
Tripler, C. E., liquid air, 216.
Trolley lines. (See Electric, etc.)
Trough batteries. (See Electricity.)
Truss bridges, 102, 103.
Tubal Cain, 218, 239.
Tubes and tubing, making, 248.
Tubular bridges, 100, 102.
Tull, Jethro, 1680-1740, 14, 25.
Tungsten. (See Metals.)
Tunnels, 106, 107.
Turbines, 89, 168, 171, 172.
Turning, Art of, 242, 339, 344.
Tusser, Thomas, 14.
Tweddle, 176.
Twine binders. (See Harvesters.)
Twinings (inventor, refrigerator), 215.
Tympanum, 164.
Tyndall, John, 411, 412.
Type, 280, 281.
Type Distributor, 279.
Type setter, 278, 279.
Type writers, 6, 286.
V.
Vail, Alfred, 126.
Valerius, 388.
Valves, valve gear, 87, 89.
Vapor engines, 190-192.
Vapor stoves, 200-206, 212.
Varley, Alfred, 133.
Varro, 32.
Vegetable cutters, 51.
Velocipedes, 431.
Venetians, 280.
Ventilation, 209.
Veneering, 351.
Vestibule cars, 437.
Vick, Henry de, clockmaker, 387.
Victoria bridge. (See Bridges.)
Vienna, 38.
Vienna exposition, 348.
Vince, Leonardo de, 75.
Virgil, 32.
Virginal, 6, 402.
Vitruvius, 227.
Volta, voltaic electricity, 112, 117, 118, 112 to 120, 125, 133, 134,
249.
Von Alteneck, H., 138.
Von Drais, 432.
Vortex theory, 2;
Vortex wheel, 171.
Voting machines, 395.
Vulcan, 246.
Vulcanisation. (See Rubber.)
W.
Waggons, 431.
Walker, John (matches), 200.
Walker, Joseph, 367.
Wales, Thos. C., 477.
Wallace and Maxim, 137.
Wall paper, 275, 279.
Walter, John, 285.
Watches, 391. (See Clocks.)
Waltham watches, 393.
War, effect on by inventions, 271, 272.
Washington, 15, 16.
Washing and ironing machines, 335-338.
Wasp, first paper maker, 273.
Watches. (See Horology.)
Water. (See Hydraulics.)
Water clocks, 385, 386.
Water closets, 178.
Water distribution, 167, 178;
gas, 454.
Water wheels, 165;
mills, 167;
engines, 178.
Water frame. (See Spinning.)
Water metres, 178;
scoops, 178.
Watts' Dictionary of Chemistry, 59.
Watt, James, 5, 8, 78, 79, 80, 81, 86, 154, 167, 170, 176,
182, 203, 206, 296, 341, 460.
Watson, Bishop, 451.
Weaving, 6, 292, 304. (See Textiles.)
Weaver's shuttle, 307.
Weber piano, 403.
Webster, Daniel, 91.
Wedgwood, 459, 460, 464.
Weeks, Jos., 364.
Weighing, scales, etc., 396, 397, 398.
Weisenthal, C. F., 310, 312.
Welding, 248.
Wellington, Duke of, 83.
Wells, making and boring of, 373, 379-383;
driven, 382;
Artesian, 381.
Welsbach lamp, 456.
Westinghouse, electric light, 137, 138.
Weston, Sir Richard, 14.
Weston, electrician, 137.
West (destroyer of bacteria), 213.
Whaleback ships, 438.
Wheat, its cultivation, 25, 26.
Wheatstone, Chas., 127, 133, 146, 147, 410.
Wheeler and Wilson, 319.
Wheelbarrow, seeder, 24.
Whewell, 166.
Whitehurst, Geo., 168.
Whitney, Eli, cotton gin, 42, 43, 297.
Whitworth, Sir J., 244, 246, 263.
Wilde, electric magnet, 133.
Wilder, safes, 421.
Wilkes, 277.
William of Malmesbury, 75.
Wilson, A. B., sewing machinery, 319.
Wilson, Genl. John M., 180.
Winchester rifle, 267.
Wind mills, wheels, etc., 404. (See Mills.)
Window glass, window screens, 359.
Wine making. (See Chemistry.)
Winter, Sir John, 225.
Wire working, 250.
Wire wound gun, 263.
Wireless telegraphy, 150, 151.
Wolf, aeronaut, 447.
Wöhler, chemist, 238.
Wollaston, 60, 249, 412.
Woodbridge, Dr. W. E., 262, 263.
Woodbury, Oscar D. and E. C., 330.
Woodworth, Wm., planing machinery, 349.
Wood, lathe turning, 344.
Wood, bending and trenting of, 347, 352, 356.
Wood working machinery, 242, 339, 352, 369.
Woods, variety and beauty, 352.
Wood carving, 346.
Wool. (See Spinning, Weaving, Textiles.)
Wool, mineral, 474, 480.
Wooden shoes, making of, 367.
Worcester, Marquis of, 5, 75, 77, 81.
Work shop, a modern, 251.
World's fair, 1851, 36, 38.
Woven goods, variety of, 308, 309.
Wright (gas engine), 188.
Wren, architect, 209.
Wyatt of Lichfield, 294, 295.
X.
X rays, 149, 150.
Xyloplasty, 347.
Y.
Yale, Linus, Jr., locks, 425.
Yankee clippers, 438.
Yarn. (See Weaving, etc.)
Yeast, 65.
York, Duke of, 124, 125.
Young of America, 63, 417.
Young, Arthur, 1741-1800, 14, 15.
Youmans, Prof., 450.
Z.
Zanon, 1764, 24.
Zech, Jacob, 388.
Zeppelin, Count, 446.
Zimmermann, self-playing pianos, 406.
Zinc, 236.
Zinc batteries. (See Electricity.)
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY SERIES.
_Price 5s. each net._
Religious Progress in the Century.
By W. H. Withrow, M. A., D. D., F. R. S. C.
Literature of the Century.
By Professor A. B. de Mille, M. A.
Progress of South Africa in the Century.
By George McCall Theal, D. Lit., LL. D.
Medicine, Surgery, and Hygiene in the Century.
By Ezra Hurlburt Stafford, M. D.
Progress of India, Japan, and China in the Century.
By Sir Richard Temple, Bart., LL. D., &c.
Progress of the United States of America in the Century.
By Prof. Wm. Peterfield Trent, M. A., LL. D.
Continental Rulers in the Century.
By Percy M. Thornton, LL. B., M. P.
British Sovereigns in the Century.
By T. H. S. Escott, M. A.
Progress of British Empire in the Century.
By James Stanley Little.
Progress of Canada in the Century.
By J. Castell Hopkins, F. S. S.
Progress of Australasia in the Century.
By T. A. Coghlan, F. S. S., and Thomas T. Ewing.
Progress of New Zealand in the Century.
By R. F. Irvine, M. A., and O. T. J. Alpers, M. A.
Political Progress of the Century.
By Thomas Macknight.
Discoveries and Explorations of the Century.
By Professor C. G. D. Roberts, M. A.
Economic and Industrial Progress of the Century.
By H. de Beltgens Gibbins, D. Lit., M. A., F. R. G. S.
Inventions of the Century.
By William H. Doolittle.
Wars of the Century, and the Development of Military Science.
By Professor Oscar Browning, M. A.
Naval Battles of the Century.
By Rear-Admiral Francis John Higginson.
Naval Development of the Century.
By Sir Nathaniel Barnaby, K. C. B.
Presidents of the United States in the Century (from Jefferson to
Fillmore).
By Francis Bellamy.
Presidents of the United States in the Century (from Pierce to
McKinley).
Francis Knowles.
The Fine Arts in the Century.
By William Sharp.
Progress of Education in the Century.
By James Laughlin Hughes and Louis R. Klemm, Ph. D.
Temperance and Social Progress of the Century.
By the Hon. John G. Woolley, M. A.
Progress of Science in the Century.
By Professor J. Arthur Thomson, M. A.
Edinburgh:
Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Inventions in the Century" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.