The Press.
London, England, 1854-08-26 00:00:00

THE ELECTRIC LOOM.

EXPERIMENTS are busily making in Sardinia for the
completion of the ingenious machine invented by
Cavaliere Bonelli for the application of electricity to
weaving. This invention is more simple, less em-
barrassing, and, what is of far greater importance,
more economical than the invention of Jacquard,
which, amid the general progress •of the age in
mechanical and technical matters, has undergone
but slight modifications in its material construction,
while no one has dared to make *change in its prin-
ciple. By the present invention, instead of the num-
berless and expensive cartoons, either full or hollow,
you see small iron bars magnetised only when in-
vested with the voltaic current, so that, while at every
passage of the shuttle it was heretofore necessary to
change a cartoon, it now suffices to vary the wires
which give passage to the electric fluid, and the load-
stones change their action every moment according
as the teeth of the comb under which the design
passes, and with which they correspond, rest upon
the conducting or insulating substance. As the
point of the pantograph reproduces a design dimi-
nished or enlarged, and as the point of Barn's tele •
graph exactly copies a signature at the distance of
hundreds of miles, so the loom of Bonelli reproduces
woven the designs which pass under the comb, and
all this without rendering necessary a change in the
1 thousands of Jacquard looms now existing, which, if
desired, may be worked alternately with electricity
and with cartoons.

urin first, then Genoa, Lyons, and Paris, saw iu
operation this ingenious innovation, and unani-
mously admired the simplicity and reliability of the
means with which it is carried into effect. In these
cities a loom on a small scale has been shown, but
the inventor intends shortly to exhibit in Paris and
London a loom on a scale worthy of the places and
the invention. After having secured the property in
his discovery throughout Europe, he has just sold
his patents to three eminent banking-houses, two of
them in Turin and one in Lyons, and very soon
several looms, which are now being constructed, will
be sent abroad to serve as models for the system of
electric weaving in most of the manufacturing coun-
tries of Europe; and for its introduction into the
United States of America 'n agent is now on the
point of starting. It is difficult to foresee the
changes which may spring from the application of
this new agent to the business of weaving, as not
only the economy consequent on it must lead to a
decline of prices, but the new means afforded by
this invention will render easily attainable results
such as are now only reached with difficulty or with
great expense, as Gobelins tapestry, dc., and others
utterly unattainable by any means hitherto known.
Even in the present age, so rich in useful and im-
portant inventions, no doubt this will rank among
the first.

ACCOUNTS of a sharp encounter with some Greek pirates
are given in the Dania in a letter from Samos of the 6th
inst. Two days reviously an attack had been made in the
little island of Lero, near Samos, on a band of Greek
pirates by the crew of the screw-corvette the Chapial,
Captain I'oultier. Having landed at daybreak, under the
command of Lieutenant Laurent and M. Souza Carrea, an
officer of the Brazilian navy in the service of France, the
assailants found the pirates about nine o'clock iu the
morning, and forced them to seek refuge in a strongly-
built house, where they barricaded themselves. In those
parts houses, being at all times exposed to pirates, espe-
cially those on the seashore, are built like blockhouses,
without exterior openings, by which they can be attacked,
provided with loopholes for musket-firing, and capable of
resisting musketry. It was in a building of this kind that
the pirates took up a position. It could not be hoped
to expel them with muskets, and it was necessary to send
a detatchment on hoard for a howitzer. The combat then
commenced, the pirates opposing the most energetic re-
sistance, which would have done them the greatest honour
if their cause had been honourable. After about five hours,
ammunition having begun to fail the French detachment,
the commander gave orders fur an attack, and his sailors
rushed on the house, and, amidst a shower of balls, bloke
open the door with hatchets. Some seconds after the affair
was at an end ; the pirates were all shot, with the excep-
tion of five of them, who were hanged the next day to the
yards of the corvette. The French had in this affair,
which was a very sharp one, one man killed and several
wounded.
THE SPANISH AUTHORITIES, after the subsidence of in-
surrection, are again at the old work of rehaptising the
streets of Madrid and Barcelona. This is among the
smaller miseries of revolutionary periods. The fine street
known as the Calle Alcala, from the gate which terminates
it opening on the road to the town of that name, has
within the last fourteen years undergone various changes
of the kind. In 1541.2 it received with all due solemnity
the name of Duque de la Vitoria, in honour of Espartero,
then fresh from the termination of the civil war. When
the regency of the duke was overthrown the obnoxious
appellation was effaced, and it resumed its primitive and
more proper one; and now again it seems it is to be
metamorphosed. The Calle Maria Christina will also
undergo a change, and will be called Calle O'Donnell—
until lion Leopoldo gets into a scrape.
A Costvier named Swinbum, under sentence of trans•
portation for life, effected his escape on Saturday afternoon
front Woolwich Dockyard, leaving all his convict clothes
behind him, and has not since been apprehended. He re-
ccived his sentence at Newcastle.

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