Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-10-23
THE DAY OF BIG THINGS.
Tendency to Concentrate Capital Into
Large Machinery.

Tendency to Concentrate Capital Into
Large Machinery.
There is notable tendency in in
dustrial enterprises in recent times,
says the Engineering and Mining Jour-
ndt not only to concentrate capital
into large concerns, but to have struc-
lures and machinery of the largest
possible kind, and to drive it with ex-
IRENE rapidity. This is pre-eminently
the day OF big things, using the word
in its ordinary sense to mean large,
massive, heavy, and bulky. Ocean
steamships are growing larger and
more powerful. Locomotives, cars,
railway tracks, bridges. are all made
heavier. But furnaces have increased
in size, and their output has increased
enormously, 50 that a product of 800
tons day is no more uncommon than
one Of 800 tons a week was twenty
years ago. A Bessemer steel works
has recently made the record of 80
600 tons of steel in one month. Open
hearth furnaces are now erected with
capacity OF 80 tons, or three times the
capacity of those of 10 years ago. In
rolling mills the same progress has
been shown. A plate was rolled in
Pittsburg 80 inches wide by IS feet
long, rs inch thick, weighing 7,48O
pounds.
In steam and electric engineering
the same tendency is seen. At the
Homestead steelworks, Pittsburgh
there is about to be placed one of the
largest Corliss engines in the world,
which has a horizontal cylinder "a by y
inches. The fly-Wheel will weigh 200,
600 pounds. The whole weight Of the
engine will be over 500 600 pounds, and
it is expected to develop $500 horse
power. The Corliss engine, the large
est in the world, was built at the Soho
iron-works, Bolton, England. 1t is OF
5.000-horse power of the vertical type,
and stands 48 feet high. 1t is designed
to drive the Ferranti dynamos. 40 feet
in diameter, mentioned below. The
West-end electric railway station in
Boston is to have thirteen engines of
1,O0O-horse power each. They are to
be triple compound, with cylinders
Fl, SO, and 80 inches diameter The
power is transmitted by two belts
for each engine, each belt five feet
wide. Steam will be furnished by
tWenty-four water-tube boilers. each
rated at 500-horse power. The new
cable railway in Chicago has two
Greene engines, each 36 inchs by 70
inches; each engine weighs 238 900
pounds and has capacity of 1920
horsepower. We recently described
the large Belpaire boilers and Leayitt
hosting engines at the Calumet and
Hecla mine, and now we have de-
scriptiOn of a new water-tube boiler
designed by T. F. Morrin of JERSEY
City which is located at the Westing-
|, house electric-light station in twenty
fourth street, New York city. 1t con-
tains 600 three inch water tubes of
peculiar bent shape, expanded at eacn
end into an internal cylinder forty
eight inches in diameter. The aggre-
gate length of the tubes is 1920 feet,
or about a mile and half, and the
boiler has 5000 feet Of heating surface,
and is said to be capable of developing
1,O0O-horse power.
In foreign countries the same ten
dency toward bigness is shown, and in
electrical engineering they have even
surpassed us. The Ferranti dynamos
used in the Deptford lighting stations
near London weigh 500 tons each,
stand forty-five feet high, run at sixty
revolutions to the minute, and can
each supply about 200, 600 incandescent
lights.
Two dvnamos of 10,O0O-lamp capac-
ity are being made for Berlin, each of
which will require about 1000 horse
power.
There are no data now existing
which will enable any one to predict
what will be the size of boilers,
engines, dynamos, steamships, bridges,
cars locomotives, office buildings, and
other structures ten years hence. Ev
erything in the engineering line seems
to be changing at a more rapid rate
than at any previous period. Certainly
the limit to increase of size does not
yet appear. When the single engine
reached its limit in shipbuilding the
compound engine came in. When
shafts and screws seemed to have
grown as large as they could be made,
twin screws and shafts were used, and
at the same time facilities for making
still larger shafts and screws were
perfected, So it is in every branch of
engineering; as soon as a limit is fixed
some one finds way of overlapping it,
! and the limit is placed farther ahead.
1t Is Good Plan to Keep Books.
The advice which Daniel Webster