Omaha daily bee., 1911-07-16
TIME AND HEAD WORK SAVED
Ingenious Mechanical Devices 0bviate
Much Mental Effort.
SUBSTITUTES ZOE BRAIN woRKER
samples of Mechanical Intelligence
Found in odd Corners of Indus
trial and Commercial
World

II Is an axiom OF social evolutionists
that in the not for distant future nearly
all merely muscular industry will be super
seeded by machinery. And one at all famil-
Jar with what is being done by mechanism
must also be aware that a great deal Of
mental industry is being superseded. and
therefore It may be thought that in the
intellectual field mechanical inventions are
likely to go as far as in the muscular.
That, of course, is a mistake. There is
no exercise Of muscular energy which
cannot be more or less successfully imi-
tated by mechanism; but the brain work
which may be taken over by machinery is
restricted within narrow limits that can
by no possibility be overstepped.
Those limits, though they are very real,
are not always very obvious, and TO the
casual observed II must sometimes appear
that a kind OF mechanical intelligence is
being evolved. From the miler's little
bell, that sets up fussy tnkling the
moment the hopper runs empty, up to the
calculating machines that are now 70 be
found In banks and insurance offices
clearing houses and observatories, there
are so many mechanical substitutes for
brain workers thkt II is difficult at times
to realize that It is, after ALL only mechan-
ism and not intelligence that is being
evolved.
Some of the touches of what, for con-
venience, we may call mechanical intelll-
gence, to be met with in various odd cor
ners OF the Industrial and commercial
world are really quite amusing and they
have their prototype in that little bell Of
the old windmill
The Screw-MakinE Machine,
There is, for instance, to be seen in any
screw factory a different application of
that device. The machinery takes hold
OF rod of metal, pulls 1t rapidly along
giving the end of 1t the general shape of
a screw, cuts the thread around It and the
slot in the head. and then ships off
perfect screw. II you watch the thing
actually making the screws, the idea
strikes you that 1t is merely a piece of
mechanism, but when the machine comes
to the end OF its material and gives a
sharp. impatient ring OF a bell for the
attendant to bring more, you experience
an uncanny feeling that the thing is
human.
The machine by which railway tickets
are printed gives an exhibition of intelli-
gence. or what looks very like IT, Rail-
way tickets are not, as might be supposed
printed In large sheets and afterward cut
NR' AiN NolupOdTu cut INTO ICkeLS FIRST
and printed one by one afterward. The
little blank cards are put in pile in a
kind of perpendicular spout, and the ma
chine slips bit of metal underneath the
bottom Of the spout and pushes out the
lowest ticket In the pile to be printed and
consecutively numbered
II Is OF no use trying to print a bad
ticket. The machine finds out an imper-
feet blank in an instant and fatty refuses
to have anything to do with it Tear off
the corner OF one OF the bits OF card and !
put In into the spout with the others in
order to see what will happen and Il re-
fuses to bulge again until somebody comes
and removes the imposter. Pull out the
damaged ticket and the mechanism will set
briskly to work again.
Higher Flights of Intelligence,
However, there are far higher flights OF
mechanical intelligence than this. The
work OF hundreds and thousands of clerks
has within the last few years been taken
over by small machines very much like
typewriters in appearance, by which col
umns OF money in small or large items are
instantly added up with none Of the risk
of error which even the most practiced
accountants are liable TO make. There
are, we will suppose, a hundred checks to
be added. They are handed to the oper-
ator OF an adding machine, by whom the
various amounts are registered on a roll
of paper by the manipulation of keys as
in the case OF the typewriter. and when
the whole hundred checks have been
printed a lever is pulled and the sum total
Is shown instantly. Among the greatest
feats performed by the cleverest of bank
clerks in the old days was the running up,
OF column OF money by a single process;
that is, taking In columns of dollars and
cents at the same time. The adding ma
chine does that. in some instances, with
any number OF checks. not only by a single
operation for both columns, but by one
motion Of its mechanism. 1t beats the
greatest achievement OF the old bank clerk
hollow. ...
The work of these machines is quite ele-
mental compared with that of some other
mechanical arithmeticians. There are ma
chimes that calculate to fifteen places of
decimals. and will carry out the most
formidable computations in ever SO many
modes OF notation.
Mechanical Calculator,
The clerical staffs of many Of the big
insurance companies have Of late years
been considerably reduced by the employ
ment of mechanical calculators One of
these, the invention OF a German, is a
compact little affair. resembling a music
box. 1t may be made to perform almost
instantaneously the most portentious sums