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.