Los Angeles herald., 1910-02-08

IM KYN to the men whose inge-
i'm "a III nuity has produced in
E struments which permit
Ia N Mhal the scientist to go far
llSzz2Esszsgs6ls beyond the ordinary
range of his senses.
Through the modern telescope the
| scientist looks far into space and be-
! holds millions of suns outshinlng our
own, objects of such immenslty that
our minds cannot grasp them, and of
such distance that the unaided eye
cannot see them. Through the micro
scope he discovers billions of little
creatures of whose existence he was
ments the scientist is able to measure
distance and quantity~a million times
more accurately than with his eye;
heat thousand times more accurately
than with the sense of feeling, and
time a thousand times more accurately
than with the unaided mind.
The bolometer, devised by the late
Professor Langley to measure the heat
of the stars, is a marvellous inStru
ment. The heat Of the average star
is no greater to us than the heat of Il
candle placed three miles away, yet
this delicate instrument will measure
the varying degrees of heat given off
by different stars. A spiders web, a
| thread of spun glass, the gauze of
llN >. NlilS ana b HlltIOI dS Slitdll DIS u
pin head are some of the things that
enter into its construction. 1t is so
sensitive to heat that the image of
mans face thrown upon it at a dis
tance of a half mile will be registered
sharply
The dividing engine. used by scien-
lists to make spectroscope gratings
for analyzing rays of light, is perhaps
41eI5s IL -
has contriYed The Rowland dividing
engine viii rule 10000 parallel lines on
q single inch Of surface. Another will
draw fourteen lines on the edge of the
finest tissue paper. 1t was almost an
insuperable task to get the wheels
perfect enough to do the work, but a
little electroplating brush of the most
ingenious construction finally served
the purpose. When the machine is in
operation it must be let alone, as even
the proximity of a human being will
interfere with the trueness of it's lines.
1t goes on necessarily drawing its
diamond point across the hardened
steel and when the grating is finished
it sells for as much as $50 a square
inch.
Another very perfect machine is the
Whiteworth measuring machine, which
will determine thickness down to the
mllionth part OF an inch. When one
desires such a degree of accuracy it
is an easy matter to set the machine
a shade too tight. To overcome THIS
the inventor placed a pair of 'feelerS'
on it, enabling the operator to tell
when it is exactly right. The machine
is so accurate that if a man places his
finger nail against bar of iron thir-
ty-siX inches long it will register the
expansion caused by the communicated
heat.
The Shaw measuring machine will
determine length down 10 the hundred
millionth part of an inch. As the Sc
ries of wheels on watch multiply the
motion of a single turn of the main
spring into thousands of revolutions
by the balance wheel, so there is
series of little levers in the Shaw ma
chine which reduce the movement of
an inch on the lever operated by the
hand to the hundredth-mllionth part
of an inch on the one at the other
end of the series. One well may won-
der how such an instrument can be
turned to human u.s., yet it was this
machine which discovered that the vi
bration of the diaphragm in a tele-
phone receiver, in registering the faint
est audible sound, moves through the
ne-fifty-mi!lionth part of an inch. This
machine is so delicate that unaided
human perception cannot interpret its
registrations, therefore a small micro
phonic telephone has been attached to
it for this purpose. These measuring
machines were used to determine the
length of the tuberculosis germ.
one of the greatest aids to human
knowledge is the spectrOscope. In its
simplest form this instrument is d tri-
angular prism through which the sun
shines, revealing the colors of the rain
bow. In it's complex form it takes the
shape of a telescope broken in two,
with the two parts placed at about the
angle of the two marks of the letter V,
except that they do not join at the
apex Instead there are a number of
prisms placed between them, which
bend the ray of light going into one
barrel until the eye can behold it while
looking in the corresponding end of the
other barrel.
The powers of this instrument seem
almost miraculous, 1t will discover
the presence of ne-eighteen- -millionth
of a grain of sodium, while the human
taste can perceive only the presence of
one part of salt in a few hundred parts
of water. 1t can take the thousandth