The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1880-11-25
POPULAR SCIENCE.
=, III \. Morley 4 Hs,ysss : a...s30 TIT

j. ii. Morley OF Holyoke has In
vented a machine for sewing. buttons
upon shoes. The buttons, being
thrown promiscuOusly into hop
per are shaken up and down, and drop
ole at a time through a valve into q
trough which is groovcd at the bots
tom to receive the eye of the button.
The buttons then slide along the
| trough and are received into holes in
a small wheel revolving horizontally.
DR.. Benjamin Ward Richardson,
who is given to somewhat hasty and
wide generalizations on insufficiently5
isolated ,imperfectly observed, and very
few instances, has this to say about
cases in which persons have lived q long
time on water: "The facts Of these
examples, painful as they are, are not
without their use. They in licate
that, water being admitted into the
body, life may go OH for periods far
beyond any that might be expected,
and they expose altogether the fallacy
about the value of alcohol, when, with
large quantities of water, it has been
administered as q supposed ife-sus-
tanning food" Unfortunately for DIR.
Richardson's conclusion, at the end Of
the recent alleged instance of a forty. :;
day fast in New York, although no
alcohol was used while the devitaliz-
ing process was going on, the person
who is said to have totally abstained
from food other than water and car
bonic acid for SO long time took not
little but great deal Of wine for his
stomach's sake and for his complete
restoration to health.
M. Marcel Deprez has just brought
out, says the Nature, new electro
motor in which q piston of. soft iSon
is attracted up and down in hollow
cylindrical electromagnetic coil with
motion like that Of an ordinary
steam-engine piston. The main prin-
ciple is not new, and it has been utf y
zed by other inventors, but, unlike
the other practical attempts to enl- H.
body it, there is no reversion or inter-
ruptiOn of flfe magnetism of thefsoft.
iron core or piston ofjtAa Doprez ma, l.
chine. This improvement, has been
effected by dividing the solenofdal
coil into sections, like the separate
coils Of. the ring armaturc rot the !
Grammc machine, the current being
Jnus Transmitted first to ono : part OF !,
the cylindrical coil ind then to an
othefg The comAi,Atator which dis 3a
tributes flle current successively TO- thei iu
various sections is worked by an &C.
centric on the shaft of the Ay.Wheel
In the, usilnh way, but the t.leada .aoes !;
not require to be SO much as q quarteF
revolution. ...--,..1 -.,.,.-.,
Why the magnetic needle points to
the north is thus explained by Prof.
G. T. Patterson, of the United States
coast survey "The earth is itself q
magnet, and attracts the needle just 40
ordinary magnets do, and it is found {
to be affected by the action of the sun,
in a manner not yet fully understood.
The magnetic poles of the earth are4
not IN line. with. the geographical
poles, but make an angle with them
of nearly % degrees. AT the present
time the northern magnetic pole is IS
near the arctic circle, OH the meridian i
of Omaha, and, from the nature of the
case, the pole may better be described
as a region rather than a fixed point.
The needle does not every where point f.
to the true astronomical north, but
varies within certain limits. At San 5
francisco it points Il degrees east Of Q
north, and at Calais, Me-, as much to
the west. At the northern magnetic l.
pole balanced needle points with its
north end downward in plumb line s.
at San Francisco it dips about 63 de-i
grees, and at the southern magnetic, :,
pole the south end points directly
DOWN. The action OF the earth upOniH
a magnetic needle at its surface is off
about the same force as of hard steel
magnet forty inches long, strongly II,
magnetized, ut a distance of one foot.
1t is very probable that study of
machines, now So q
much used in electric illumination,
will soon reveal some ffar-reachifig =
treths regarding magnetism in gener-
a." ssa5z as z-fI i.Gs -z1A,uCJ