Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-04-10
ARACE OF INVENTORS.
Americas Resources Not More in Her
Coal and Iron Than in
THE INGENUITY OF HER PEOPLE.
How the Faculty Night Be Developed BY
Systematic Education.
SOME EXAMPLES OF IMPROVEMENT
WRITTEN FOB THE D1sPArcH.]

WRITTEN FOR THE DIsPArcH.]
One of the characteristics of an inventive
mind is judicious skepticism. The very
fact that method or process dates from q
distant past incites such a mind to chal-
lenge; for how at time of scant knowledge
and limited experience was the best way Of
doing anything to be discovered?
Sometimes improvement takes the form,
not Of abandoning some old and useless ele-
ment in construction, but in doing exactly
the opposite of an established practice
When buildings were first heated by steam
the coils of piping were placed at the floor,
since warm air, it was said, ascenda So it
does But by new way, which finds
special favor in factories, the coils are
attached not to the floor but to the ceiling.
Here heating by radiation is found pleas
anter than heating by currents of warm air
sent up from an iron surface. Beyides,
space Is saved, and rubbish cannot gather
about the pipes, with liability to burst into
flame.
For the most part, however. the labors of
inventors do not lie in the by-paths such as
| these, but in the highway, where familiar
instrument or machine receives transform
ing addition, as when the carbon trans
mitter raised the message Of the telephone
from a whisper to loudness; or when the
grooved needle arm which ties up a sheaf
with yard of twine was combined with the
harvester-the last step in making farming
sedentary occupation. 20,
Eclipse of Knife-Edged Scales.
Take for example the ordinary weighing
balance. The cross beam carrying the scale
pans vibrates on knife edge. This knife edge
is subject to serious injuries which impair
its accuracy. The sharper it is the sooner
does usage make it dull; dirt grinds its
surface; rust attacks it. Yet until our day
inventors have never thought of making the
balance better except in using harder metal
for its knife, or in more carefully shaping
the angle of that knife. In the scale which
MI. Albert H. Emery of Stamford, Conn.,,
has devised, he has dismissed the knife
edge and all its liability to harm. In its
stead he uses a short piece of thin, we'll
tempered steel, from which the cross beam
is suspended The principle is the same as
that long ago adopted in pendulum clocks,
where the upper part of the pendulum wire
is t1attened out so thin that the bob moves
W dlu AO WALL sColCCAs any 1IlCtlOu-
certainly with much less than if it were
hung from one surface rubbing on another.
In an Emery balance, weighing 200 pounds,
one portion in 2, $50, 600 of its load has
moved the scale. The best performance of
knife-edge balance, when new, has never
shown more than one-thirteenth this re-
sponsiveness. And the Emery scale has
the further advantage of not becoming i'm
paired in USE Its inventor has stood upon
the pans of small balance and moved his
feet as if he were working treadle. On
his dismounting the scale has proved to be
as accurate as before. Applied to his test
ing machine Mr.. Emery's thin steel plates
enable him to register with the utmost pre-
cision the strain required either to rupture
a stout steel bar or to sever horse hair.
The OIL Can Discarded.
As some 200 patents testify, favorite at
tempt of inventors has been to discover
means of abolishing the need for lubricants.
The aim has been to find for the rubbing
surfaces of machinery metal so smooth as
to need no oiling. As long ago as 1927,
Jacob Perkins, an American domiciled in
England, devised an engine in which steam
at pressure Of 300 pounds to the square
inch was used. This pressure meant a tenn
perature so high as to char the lubricating
oils. Perkins overcame the difficulty by
making the parts. in contact of an alloy
which, working with less friction than iron
oiled in the ordinary way, required no
fabrication. Through lack of durability,
the general fault in alloys Of this class, the
Perkins compound failed to do away with
the oil can. The gem of permanent sue
cess was to come at q later day, when pow
dered black lead was first employed to
reduce the friction of machinery. This
metals puts as smooth polish on an axle
or bearing as on the surface of stove.
On introduction it was soon widely used,
oil. But a difficulty with the mixture was
that it would not stay mi1ed-a bond of
some kind was needed. In seeking this
bond Mr.. P. H. Holmes, experimenting in
a machine shop at Gardiner, Me-, tried cot
ton, wool and cloth in turn, without sue
cess. At length, as he was in a country
producing wood pulp on large scale, it
occurred to him to blend the black lead
with moist pulp and compress the mass.
He was now seeking to make the metal
serve as material for. bearings instead of
lubricant applied externally to bearings
In the process to which he came after q
good many trials he found the best proper
tions to be one part of pulp to ten parts of
black lead, or graphite, the compound being
squeezed in mold suitably perforated for
drainage. After being dried by air, the
bearing is saturated with linseed oil and
thoroughly baked.
Perfect If Not So Brittle.
In its finished state it looks like graphite,
but is so strengthened that it can bear Sc
we're pressure and be used without oil or at
tention. Though strong, it is somewhat
brittle, and, like anti-frictional alloys, is Sc
cured in an iron or steel casing. It has
done excellent service on wagon shafts, the
bearings Of cotton machinery, and the ten
sion pits of cable railroads. On the axles
of cars its fails, the severe blows struck in
rapid locomotion-especially on a rough
track-being too much for it. Experiments
are in progress which may result in giving
this fber-graphite, as it is called, more
strength. Even in its present form it fur
theirs the economy of power in vast vari-
ETY. Of machinery, promotes cleanliness, and,
WHAT is Of most Importance, removes the
chief cause of fire in factories.
A new and advantageous form in which
metal or other constructive material is dis |
posed may lead to decided advance in
manufacture. A strip Of paper rolled as q |
spiral tube as in making a lamplighter, will |
illustrate recent invention of much i'm |
portance to the engineer. Shut one end of
the paper tube firmly and blow in the other. |
You will tighten the seams, and the paper
would burst before any air could leak out
between the edges in contact. The prin-
ciple is embodied in steel tubes OF q new
strength and ightness. Tubes of older pat
terms are made in three ways: By casting,
which turns out mass Of metal much too
heavy for the strength required of it; by
riveting a rounded strip, which presents
crr 1xr okf al Nv md hxyl