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 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.