The Opelousas courier., 1892-01-09
SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL.

Pipes are made of ramie fibre.
Aluminium bicycles are announced.
Sweden has q locomotive steamboat. +"
Steam-riveted boilers are not so good.
A gas is made from wood and crude
oil.
Southern Pacific locomotives will soon
use for fuel bricks made Of coal dust and
asphaltum.
Pennsylvania makes tifty-two out of
every 100 tots of rolled iron in the
United States. aud sixts-nine out OF
every leo tons of steel rails.
Large manufacturing establishments
are now using electric tramways for
transporting heavy materials from one
part of the works to another.
Making wrought iron pipe direct from
bars is the process recently started in a
r%olling-mill at Steubenville, o. If it
works it means a complete change i'll
pipe manufacture.
The Dusseldorf Company while pros
pectlng on the right bank of the Rhine,
near Radeuweiler, Germany, discovered
ore, with eigaty per cent. lead, sixteen
of copper and the rest silver.
French ingenuity has contrived an
improved stone-cutting saw of remarka-
BILE efficiency-a circular saw having its
edge set with black diamonds in the
same way as the straight blades; but as
the strain on the diamond is all in one
direction the setting can be made much
firner.
Corn husks boiled in caustic soda are
being utilized for the manufacture OF
paper. The cooking process results in
the formation of a spongy, glutiuous
paste, which is subjected to heavy pres
sure so as to eliminate the gluten, the
fiber remaining being made into paper
III the ordinary way.
A new extract is prepared in France,
and made into tablets which are said to
be as digestible as raw meat. Lean beef,
free from fat, bone and tendon, is
pounded to q pulp, mixed with sugar,
and heated to about 100 degrees, when
the mixture is converted into a saccharine
extract. Further heating gives this any
desired degree of concentration.
An English electrical firm is intro
ducing Il small pump, suitable to sup
plying house tanks in country districts,
where there is neither sufficient fall nor
machinery for pumping. 1t consists of
Il rotary pump driven by screw gearing
direct from an electric motor, which is
influenced by a primary battery placed
in the cellar. The pump and motor do
not weigh more than twenty-five pounds
and occupy a very small space.
The United States naval flagship Phil
adelphia is fitted with telephone COM
m%unication between the office of the *
ecutive officer and yeoman storeroons
and between the poop deck and the
bridge. The present system is deemed
a great improvement over the speaking
tube plan. Aboard large vessels it often
happens that the speaking-tubes prove
wholly inefficient. This is especially the
case with upper deck tubes during use
in high winds. The telephone system
aboard the Philadelphia is reported as
operating successfully under all condi-
tions of weather.
The lake on the Colorado Desert.
which has. excited so much interest
among scientists, shows no sigus Of
leaving it's new home at Salton. It is
now thirty miles long by tea wtde, aud
though the inflow doesn't equal the evap-
oratiaaasire waters apparently ara not
receding. The owners Of the salt works
al Salton will probably attempt to stop
the crevasse in the Colorado River
through which the flood water is now
pouring INTO the desert. Manager Dur.
brow of the salt works has made a trip
of inspection to the break i'll the Col
orada banks aud is satisfied that the
water can be permanently prevented from
running into the desert.
Experiments lately made in Hartford,
Conn, show that light can be seen
through a cleau-cu opening of not more
than one forty-thousaadth of an inch.
This fact was determined by taking two
thoroughly clean straight edges, placing
q piece of paper between the surfaces at
n end, the opposite end being allowed
to eone together. The straight edges
being placed between the eye aud a
strong light in a dark room, a wedge of
|; sht wa seen from the ends between
which the paper was placed and .he OPP
posite, which were brought together.
Tie thickness of the paper being known,
the distance apart at the two edges OF
the small end Of the wedge of light was
easily calculated, aud the result was