The Savannah morning news., 1904-06-19
MECHANISM VS.. BRAINS.
Substitutes Found and Patented
Many Times Each Year.
From the washington Star.

From the Washington Star.
From the corn millers little bell
that sets up fussy tinkling the mo-
ment the hopper runs empty. up to the
calculating machines that are now TO
be found in banks and insurance Of
fees, clearing houses and observa tories,
there are so many mechanical substi-
tutes for brain workers that 1t is diff
cult at times to realize that it is, after
ALL only mechanism. and not intell-
gence that is being evolved" said an
empl0ye at the patent office to a Star
reporter to-day.
Some of the touches of what, for
convenience, we may call mechanical
intelligence to be met with in various
odd corners of the industrial and COM
mercial world are really quite amusing,
and they have their prototype in that
little bell of the old windmill.
There is. for instance. to be seen in
any screw factory, a different applica-
ton of that device. The machinery
takes hold of rod of metal, pulls it
rapidly along, gives the end of it the
general shape of a screw, cuts the
thread round it and the slot in the
head, and then ships off a perfect
screw.
IF you watch the thing actually
making the screws the idea strikes you
that it is really a piece of mechanism:
but when the machine comes to the
end of its material and gives a sharp
impatient ring of the bell for the at
tendant to bring more, you cannot help
laughing and you would scarcely be
surprised If. when the man came with
another rod, the busy screw maker
| gave him a sharp reprimand for mat
tention and dilatoriness. In these days
of monographs, of course, 1t would be
| quite practical to make it do so.
1.-THE machine by which railway tick
cts are printed gives another amusing
| little show of intelligence or what looks
to be very like it. Railway tickets are
not as might be supposed printed in
| large sheets and afterward cut up. The
cardboard is cut into tickets first and
they are printed one by one afterward
THE little blank cards are put in
a pile in a kind of perpendicular spout,
and the machine slips a bit of metal
underneath the bottom of the spouf
and pushes out the lowest ticket In
the pile to be printed and consecutive
ly numbered.
1t is of no use trying to print a bad
ticket. The machine finds out an I'M
perfect blank in an instant, and fatty
refuses to have anything to do with ii.
These are simple instances of a
good imitation of watchfulness and
hlSSi hlIudliOHS lnueeQ, the latter looks
almost like conscientious care. They
afford droll suggestion of the train
ed intelligence of the learned pig or
the performing dog; and we may find
various degrees of the same. At the
United States mint they have weigh
Ing machines for coins to which II is
difficult to deny very acute inteIli-
gence. The mint apparatus is more
remarkable of the two.
THE new coins at the mint. how
ever, are sometimes a trife over
weight, while sometimes, of course.
they are under, 50 1t is necessary Ia
sort them out in three cateRorIes-
light, heavy and good. This delicate
business Is done with unerrinR preci-
sion by long row of wonderfully
clever little machines.
Into these machines single piles Of
shining new coins are put, and quit .
automatically the mechanism takes
each coin, puts II into the scale and
in fraction over two seconds-at the
rate Of twenty-five a minute-weighs
1t. IF the coin is light the machine
shoots II into its proper receptacle: n
heavy. into another, and IL 1t Is Of
correct weight, or with a margin. I'd
they call It, 1t is pushed into a third
receptacle"