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Title: Inventors at Work, with Chapters on Discovery
Author: George Iles
Release date: March 10, 2015 [eBook #48454]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INVENTORS AT WORK, WITH CHAPTERS ON DISCOVERY ***
Please see the Transcriber’s Notes at the end of this text.
INVENTORS AT WORK
Copyright by Park & Co., Brantford, Ontario.
PROFESSOR ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL.
Inventors at Work
With Chapters on Discovery
By George Iles
Author of “Flame, Electricity and the Camera”
Copiously Illustrated
New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1907
Copyright, 1906, by
George Iles
Published October, 1906
All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian
TO MY FRIEND
JOSEPHUS NELSON LARNED
OF BUFFALO, NEW YORK
CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
| LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS | xiii | |
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | xxi | |
| CHAPTER | ||
| I. | INTRODUCTORY | 1 |
| II. | FORM Form as important as substance. Why a joist is stiffer than a plank. The girder is developed from a joist. Railroad rails are girders of great efficiency as designed and tested by Mr. P. H. Dudley |
5 |
| III. | FORM CONTINUED. BRIDGES Roofs and small bridges may be built much alike. The queen-post truss, adapted for bridges in the sixteenth century, neglected for two hundred years and more. A truss replaces the Victoria Tubular Bridge. Cantilever spans at Niagara and Quebec. Suspension bridges at New York. The bowstring design is an arch disguised. Why bridges are built with a slight upward curve. How bridges are fastened together in America and in England |
18 |
| IV. | FORM CONTINUED. LIGHTNESS, EASE IN MOTION Why supports are made hollow. Advantages of the arch in buildings, bridges and dams. Tubes in manifold new services. Wheels more important than ever. Angles give way to curves |
39 |
| V. | FORM CONTINUED. SHIPS Ships have their resistances separately studied. This leads to improvements of form either for speed or for carrying capacity. Experiments with models in basins. The Viking ship, a thousand years old, of admirable design. Clipper ships and modern steamers. Judgment in design |
52 |
| VI. | FORM CONTINUED. RESISTANCE LESSENED Shapes to lessen resistance to motion. Shot formed to move swiftly through the air. Railroad trains and automobiles of somewhat similar shape. Toothed wheels, conveyors, propellers and turbines all so curved as to move with utmost freedom |
65 |
| VII. | FORM CONTINUED. ECONOMY OF LIGHT AND HEAT Light economized by rightly-shaped glass. Heat saved by well-designed conveyors and radiators. Why rough glass may be better than smooth. Light is directed in useful paths by prisms. The magic of total reflection is turned to account. Holophane Globes. Prisms in binocular glasses. Lens grinding. Radiation of heat promoted or prevented at will |
72 |
| VIII. | FORM CONTINUED. TOOLS AND IMPLEMENTS Tools and implements shaped for efficiency. Edge tools old and new. Cutting a ring is easier than cutting away a whole circle. Lathes, planers, shapers, and milling machines far out-speed the hand. Abrasive wheels and presses supersede old methods. Use creates beauty. Convenience in use. Ingenuity spurred by poverty in resources |
89 |
| IX. | FORM CONTINUED. ABORIGINAL ART Form in aboriginal art, as affected by materials. Old forms persist in new materials. Nature’s gifts first used as given, then modified and copied. Rigid materials mean stiff patterns. New materials have not yet had their full effect on modern design |
108 |
| X. | SIZE Heavenly bodies large and small. The earth as sculptured a little at a time. The farmer as a divider. Dust and its dangers. Models may mislead. Big structures economical. Smallness of atoms. Advantages thereof. Dust repelled by light |
120 |
| XI. | PROPERTIES Food nourishes. Weapons and tools are strong and lasting. Clothing adorns and protects. Shelter must be durable. Properties modified by art. High utility of the bamboo. Basketry finds much to use. Aluminium, how produced and used. Qualities long unwelcome or worthless are now gainful. Properties created at need |
135 |
| XII. | PROPERTIES CONTINUED Producing more and better light from both gas and electricity. The Drummond light. The Welsbach mantle. Many rivals of carbon filaments and pencils. Flaming arcs. Tubes of mercury vapor |
154 |
| XIII. | PROPERTIES CONTINUED Steel: its new varieties are virtually new metals, strong, tough, and heat resisting in degrees priceless to the arts. Minute admixtures in other alloys are most potent |
163 |
| XIV. | PROPERTIES CONTINUED Glass of new and most useful qualities. Metals plastic under pressure. Non-conductors of heat. Norwegian cooking box. Aladdin oven. Matter seems to remember. Feeble influences become strong in time |
180 |
| XV. | PROPERTIES CONTINUED. RADIO-ACTIVITY Properties most evident are studied first. Then those hidden from cursory view. Radio-activity revealed by the electrician. A property which may be universal, and of the highest import. Its study brings us near to ultimate explanations. Faraday’s prophetic views |
197 |
| XVI. | MEASUREMENT Methods beginning in rule-of-thumb proceed to the utmost refinement. Standards old and new. The foot and cubit. The metric system. Refined measurement as a means of discovery. The interferometer measures 15,000,000 inch. A light-wave as an unvarying unit of length |
208 |
| XVII. | MEASUREMENT CONTINUED Weight, Time, Heat, Light, Electricity, measured with new precision. Exact measurement means interchangeable designs, and points the way to utmost economies. The Bureau of Standards at Washington. Measurement in expert planning and reform |
219 |
| XVIII. | NATURE AS TEACHER Forces take paths of least resistance. Accessibility decides where cities shall arise. Plants display engineering principles in structure. Lessons from the human heart, eyes, bones, muscles, and nerves. What nature has done, art may imitate,—in the separation of oxygen from air, in flight, in producing light, in converting heat into work: Lessons from lower animals. A hammer-using wasp |
245 |
| XIX. | QUALIFICATIONS OF INVENTORS AND DISCOVERERS Knowledge as sought by disinterested inquirers. A plenteous harvest with few reapers. Germany leads in original research. The Carnegie Institution at Washington |
267 |
| XX. | OBSERVATION What to look for. The eye may not see what it does not expect to see. Lenses reveal worlds great and small otherwise unseen. Observers of the heavens and of seashore life. Collections aid discovery. Happy accidents applied to profit. Popular beliefs may be based on truth. An engineer taught by a bank swallow |
279 |
| XXI. | EXPERIMENT Newton, Watt, Ericsson, Rowland, as boys were constructive. The passion for making new things. Aid from imagination and trained dexterity. Edison tells how the phonograph was born. Telephonic messages recorded. Handwriting transmitted by electricity. How machines imitate hands. Originality in attack |
299 |
| XXII. | AUTOMATICITY AND INITIATION Self-acting devices abridge labor. Trigger effects in the laboratory, the studio and the workshop. Automatic telephones. Equilibrium of the atmosphere may be easily upset |
329 |
| XXIII. | SIMPLIFICATION Simplicity always desirable, except when it costs too dear. Taking direct instead of roundabout paths. Omissions may be gainful. Classification and signaling simpler than ever before |
340 |
| XXIV. | THEORIES HOW REACHED AND USED Educated guessing. Weaving power. Imagination indispensable. The proving process. Theory gainfully directs both observation and experiment. Tyndall’s views. Discursiveness of Thomas Young |
355 |
| XXV. | THEORIZING CONTINUED Analogies have value. Many principles may be reversed with profit. The contrary of an old method may be gainful. Judgment gives place to measurement, and then passes to new fields |
366 |
| XXVI. | NEWTON, FARADAY AND BELL AT WORK Newton, the supreme generalizer. Faraday, the master of experiment. Bell, the inventor of the telephone, transmits speech by a beam of light |
387 |
| XXVII. | BESSEMER, CREATOR OF CHEAP STEEL. NOBEL, INVENTOR OF NEW EXPLOSIVES Bessemer a man of golden ignorances. His boldness and versatility. The story of his steel process told by himself. Nobel’s heroic courage in failure and adversity. His triumph at last. Turns an accidental hint to great profit. Inventors to-day organized for attacks of new breadth and audacity |
401 |
| XXVIII. | COMPRESSED AIR An aid to the miner, quarryman and sculptor. An actuator for pumps. Engraves glass and cleans castings. Dust and dirt removed by air exhaustion. Westinghouse air-brakes and signals |
417 |
| XXIX. | CONCRETE AND ITS REINFORCEMENT Pouring and ramming are easier and cheaper than cutting and carving. Concrete for dwellings ensures comfort and safety from fire. Strengthened with steel it builds warehouses, factories and bridges of new excellence |
429 |
| XXX. | MOTIVE POWERS PRODUCED WITH NEW ECONOMY Improvements in steam practice. Mechanical draft. Automatic stokers. Better boilers. Superheaters. Economical condensers. Steam turbines on land and sea |
446 |
| XXXI. | MOTIVE POWERS, CONTINUED. HEATING SERVICES Producer gas. Mond gas. Gas engines. Steam and gas engines compared. Diesel engine best heat motor of all. Gasoline motors. Alcohol engines. Steam and gas motors united. Heat and power production together. District steam heating. Isolated plants. Electric traction. Gas for a service of heat, light and power |
457 |
| XXXII. | A FEW SOCIAL ASPECTS OF INVENTION Why cities gain at the expense of the country. The factory system. Small shops multiplied. Subdivided labor has passed due bounds and is being modified. Tendencies against centralization and monopoly. Dwellings united for new services. Self-contained houses warmed from a center. The literature of invention and discovery as purveyed in public libraries |
478 |
| INDEX | 489 | |