The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1895-01-22
TREMENDOUS PRESSURE.
A Machine ON the Hydraulic Principle
but Using Oil Instead of Water.

Boston Evening Transcript.
The Listener went the other day to see a
not only a prodigious and terrible piece of
enginery, but allegory. 1t is called a
testing machine, and it is used to ascertain
the resisting power of various materials.
1t is not content with finding out that a
beam Of oak, for instance, will bear without
breaking a pressure on one spot of 10000
pounds; the beam must be utterly crushed
each time the test is made, and note must
be taken of the exact weight that lay upon
Day after day this great machine Ieaves
and strains itself, and bears down with
slow and awful force upon some tough
beam or block of wood; and whether the
timber is placed fiatwse, and needs say,
but a paltry seventy-five tons to crush
it, or whether it is placed endwise, like
weight before it cries out and gives up the
ghost, it must yield just the same, and sur
render its pitiful' crushed frame eo to be
pieces for the benefit of science. That is
all very interesting, you may say, but it
is mere piece of brute machinery; where
lies in the thing by the force of which
this monstrous pressure Is exerted 1t is
resisting oil, the emblem of softness and
There is a certain piston in this mech
anism which, pressing against a quantity
of oil in confined space, forces this oil
against another iron surface, which in turn
presses forward upon the timber, so that
all this crushing power is eXerted by the
medium of nothing but oil. AS you watch
the machine. even In the most exciting
force, you cannot he conscious that it is
the oil that is doing it. The master stands
over his great machine, his pupils grouped
about. 1t lies down fat on its great back
like a giant bracing his shoulders against
a rock, to push with his feet. The thing
which he is pushing against is beam OF
the thing with which he is pushing is
another and lengthwise square beam of oak,
the end of which is directly against the
side of the beam to be crushed. OFF at
one side apparently unconnected with it,
is an apparatus where there are levers,
comparable to the throttle valve of a
locomotive. and a gauge. which registers
accurately the pressure that is being ex-
erted- A young learner, stands at these
levers and this gauge, and when the master
says. Turn on more OIL, he moves
lever, and the pressure rises. Seventy thou
sand pounds, ,r eighty thousand pounds it
ing itself deep into the sides of the victim
timber. but this still holds out bravely.
The pressure rises to ninty thousand
hundred thousand. The watchers all gather
around the center of the pressure in an
ticipation of the catastrophe; the length
wise timber is squeezing into the. solid oak
of the other one as ones thumb might be
driven into piece of cheese.
power u is turned on The The young ma man at at
the gauge calls '12o, co.," $780, 600, ''l4o oOO,"
100000" you hear the swapping of a
myriad of tendons within the beam, and
ali these sounds join in sort of low.
buzzng roar or cry. which suggests an
elemental agony. One hundred and sixty
thousand pounds-the beam sinks deeper
into the flesh of its victim-17o,000 pounds
more oilr' calls the master; and now the
crackle rises-the lengthwise beam itself
begins to crack, and the other beam, yield
ing at last. seems TO go to pieces all at
once; and when the pressure is removed
it is taken out, twisted, contorted, riven,
pierced, crushed.
1t is useful service, after all. though
it seems but an exhibition of the brutality
of mere mechanism that the testing ma
chine and its bed of oil have done; for since
the master began the work with it he has
proved that t:mbers will stand only about
half the weight which the accepted au-
thorities said they would stand and by in
PRODUCING a more conservative weighing
of wood he has doubtless saved many
human lives from destruction by the cell
lapse Of timber structures.