The herald., 1896-06-26
THE WIZARD AND THR
WONDERS HE WORKS

NEW YoRY. June 14.-somebody
asked the manager of the Wizard's
workshop the other day:
'Is there anything Mr.. Edison cant
do?" 49,
stop or retard In the slightest degree the
progress of time. But his strong point
and one that you hear very little about
is to prevent the waste Of that precious
article"
And the manager spent an hour giving
a dozen illustrations of how a too llDeral
expenditure of golden moments on me.
chanical details causes Edison 10 exert
his powers of resource to their utmost.
In the Wizards workshop almost every
substance known to the chemist Is lev
led upon as material for all sorts OF ex.
perimepts. In the compromising OF
these substances the utmost delicacy OIL
measurement is necessary so that pro
portions shall be exact This operation
with the aid Of the ordinary apothecary
scales is tedious in the extreme. once
Edison, while in q fever OF experimental
ton, was kept waitlng WINE assls osnhs
perspired over delicate balances weigh
ing out the desired quantities of differ
ent chemicals. For the first time his
attention was riveted upon the time
destroying qualities of the apothecary'
scales Almost simultaneously the rem
edy flashed into his mind. He saw tnat
the greatest amount of time was wasted
in handling the many weights OF diner
ent sizes in manipulating the balances.
The experiment upon which he was
engaged was forgotten for an hour or
two, while the inventor, with his own
hands, constructed the time saving
Weighing machine he has used ever
since. Discarding the ordinary weights,
he made little chain, each link of which
corresponded in weight to the smallest
subdivision Of the unit required in his
experiments. One end of the chain was
attached to a perpendicular graduated
rod sliding through a cross piece above
one side of the balance. With the rod
Indicating zero the chain hung clear of
the balance When it was desired to
weigh the smallest fraction of the unit
the rod was passed down until the link
of the chain rested on the balance-and
so on, according to the amount required
of a given substance. the operation
being performed with precision ana
without hesitation.
One day Edison was watching one OF
| his men operating the machlne Whlch
| brushes stone and extracts from the
| crushed product, with the aid or mag
| nets. every particle of iron ore 1T con-
| tains. In order to discover how much
! ore a given amount of stone would
yield it was necessary to weigh and keep
record OF Ine dIIlOuut VI law i"i
used. Edison was suddenly made con-
| scious of the fact that this weighing was
accomplished at the expense OF great
deal of time.
stop the mill, boys" he said.
The mill was stopped, and, in few
| hours. when it was started again, the
weighing and recording of the quanti-
| ties of stone crushed was performed
automatically.
The process whereby the Wizard ac-
| complished his object was, like all his
| processes, exceedingly simple. lie dis
| carded the old hopper above the crusher
| into which the stone was dumped after
being weighed and built two in it's
| place, these being attached to opposite
| ends of a beam pivoted at it's center to
| an upright, All that was necessary
| therefore, was to fill each hopper as it
| rose at the end of the beam after dis
| charging it's contents-the mechanism
| did everything else
| The party made two visits to the
| building in which the films for the vi
| tascope We're being manufactured At
| the first visit the manager had referred
| to the necessity of bright sunlight for
| this work. 1t was then early in the aft
| ernoon. At the time of their second
| visit the sun was due west. The blonde
| lady was amazed.
"Why, this is certainly the same build
| ing" she said, land yet am certain that
it was o south window at which these