Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1903-04-18

Boiler - Constantly Checks the
Driver and Kecpe a Reeofo OF the
Tracks cqnJition4
! company is nov being organized
In Milwaukee, to finance an invention
which. It's inventor claims. will pre-
vent many of the wrecks and acct
dents which now alright a world with
their grewsome record when Its use
becomes general, says the Milwaukee
Sentinel. This company viii control
ia the United States the patent rights
of the railway c~llronograph," as it
has been styled by its inventor, II. G.
Sedgwick, formerly Of Beloit, Wis.,, but
now a resident of New York city.
The machine which is TO do this won
iron box about twelve inches square
and three inches thick. 1t is devised
to keep a record of the work of the
locomotive to which it is attached and
of it's engineer.
The mechanism Is such that it re-
cords on a tape every blast of the
whistle, together with is exact time
and place; the speed of the train at
every moment of time, the time and
| place any accident occurs, the speed
approaching. the arrival. the delay and
the departure from any station. the
number Of miles and the amount OF
time consumed in switching at any
station, when and where the airbrake
was applied, how long any engineer is
on duty and every trip, just where the
locomotive was at any moment and
what it was doing at the time and how
much steam is wasted through the
pop or escape valve.
The device is entirely automatic and
simple to a degree. 1t is attached to
the engine just in front of the cab and
over the boiler. Various levers project
from the machine. and these are at.
tached to the parts of whose action a
record Is desired.
Inside the box of the machine Is a
self winding clock, which records its
time upon a tape that winds through
the mechanism by punctured dots one
~ Va Ga AhNh pa A<eNNH NV ASR
resents twelve seconds of time. The
tape is about n and a half inches
vide and is always in motion. 1t Is
ruled off into seven columns, each one
for a particular record, and designated
respectively as the whistle column, the
air column, the bell column, the pop or
escape valve column, the time column,
the one-tenth mile column and the en-
gineer's punch column.
A rod from one of the levers is at
tached to the crosshead of the engine,
and every time the locomotive moves
one-tenth of a mile this makes a pune
ture in the one-tenth mile column. By
the distances between these points the
speed of the train can at all times be
determined. Another lever is attached
to the bell, and at every stroke of the
bell it makes a record dot ON the tape
In the proper column. The same is done
In the whistle column when the whis-
tie is used. in the air column when the
brakes are set and in the pop column
when the escape valve is opened.
The last column is for the engineers
record. BY means of Il lever in his cab
he makes a punch in this column when
ever desired. He punches in the time
of arrival at q station and his depar-
lures, as ordered in his rules. He can
also mark any other occurrence that he
wants to have recorded. For instance,
the inventor declares that on one of the
test trips on the New York Central rail-
road n jam nut was dropped from the
engine. The engineer made a record of
it. and when Poughkeepsie was
reached, eighty miles east, the place
where the nut was dropped was com
puted from the tape, and the nut was
found by a section man. The same de-
vice serves to keep record of the condi-
ton of the track. If the engineer notes
a bad section in the track, he makes a
record of it, and its position is easily
determined on the tape.
From the time and one-tenth mile
columns the place and time of the
marks In the other column can easily
be determined. .
>, The tape is renewed at the end of
every run and is preserved for record.
1t acts MS a check on the engineer at
all times. thus preventing his doing
things which he might do if he did
not know that the little machine in
front of his cab kept an unerring rec
ord of his every action.
, By watching the escape valve II
records the amount of steam wasted
I'm this manner on each run. On one
/, run recorded by this machine recently
] 1t was found that in lightweight miles
this valve had been opened 794 times,
, a waste of almost six tons of coal
| The record Of the machine quickly
caused n decrease in this needless
waste of steam and mower.
MARRIAGES LICENSES.