Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1911-06-06
@iseellanruus Rsaains.
MACHINES ALMOST THINK.
Vast Amount of Mental Effort Now
Saved BY Ingenious Mechanical De-

Vast Amount of Mental Effort Now
Saved BY Ingenious Mechanical De-
vices.
1t Is an axiom of social evolution
lists that in the not far distant future
nearly all merely muscular industry
will be superseded by machinery. Any
one at all familiar with what Is be-
ing done by mechanism must also be
aware that a great deal of mental in
dustry Is being superseded, and, there
fore, 1t may be thought that in the in
| tellectual field mechanical inventions
are likely to go as far as in the mus
cular. That, Of course, Is a mistake.
gy which cannot be more or less sue
cessfully initiated by mechanism; but
| the brain work which may be taken
over by machinery is restricted within
narrow limits that can by no possibil-
ity be overstepped.
These limits, though they are very
real, are not always very obvious, and
to the casual observer 1t must some
times appear that kind Of mechanical
intelligence Is being evolved. From
the miller's little bell, that sets up
fussy tinkling the moment the hop
per runs empty, up to the calculating
machines that are now to be found In
banks and insurance offices, clearing
houses and observatories, there are so
many mechanical substitutes for brain
workers that it Is difficult at times to
realize that 1t is, after all, only me-
chanism, and not intelligence, that Is
being evolved.
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 anus
ing, 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 a rod Of metal, pulls 1t
rapidly along, gives the end Of it the
general shape of a screw, cuts the
thread around it and the slot in the
head, and then snips off a perfect
screws. II you watch the thing actually
making the screws, the idea strikes
you that it is merely a piece of mech
anism, 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 ex-
perience an uncanny feeling that the
thing is human.
The machine by which railway
tickets are printed gives an exhibition
of intelligence, or what looks very like
1t. Railway tickets are not, as might
be supposed, printed in large sheets
and afterward cut up. The cardboard
is cut into tickets first, and printed
one by one afterward. The little blank
cards are put in a pile in kind OF
perpendicular spout, and the machine
slips a bit of metal underneath the
bottom of the spout and pushes out
the lowest ticket in the pile to be
printed and consecutively 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 it.
Tear off the corner Of one Of the bits
of card and put 1t into the spout with
the others, in order to see what will
happen, and 1t refuses to bulge again
until somebody comes and removes the
impostor. Pull out the damaged ticket
and the mechanism will set briskly to
work again.
However, there are far higher flights
of mechanical intelligence than this.
The work of hundreds and thousands
of clerks has within the past few years
been taken over by small machines
very much like typewriters in appear
ance, by which columns Of money in
small or large items are instantly add
ed up with none of the risk OF error
which even the most practiced ac-
countants are liable to make. There
are, we will suppose, hundred checks
to be added. They are handed to the
operator Of an adding machine, by
whom the various amounts are regis
tered on a roll of paper by the mani
pulation of keys as in the case OF the
typewriter, and when the whole hun
dred checks have been printed 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 a column Of money by a single
process: that is, taking in columns of
dollars and cents at the same time.
The adding machine does that, in
some instances, within any number OF
checks, not only by single operation
for both columns, but by one motion
of it's mechanism. 1t beats the great
est achievement of the old bank clerk
hollow.
The work of these machines is quite
elemental compared with that of some
other mechanical arithmeticians. There
places of decimals, and will carry out
the most formidable computations In
ever 90 many modes of notation.
the clerical STATS Of many Of the
big insurance companies have Of late
years been considerably reduced by
the employment of mechanical calcu-
lators. One of these, the invention Of
a German, is a compact little affair, re
sembling music-boX. 1t may be |
made to perform almost instantane- J
ously the most portentous sums in ad-
dition, subtraction, multiplication by
one or two factors, division, squaring
and cubing. 1t is required, for in
stance, to multiply 531,975 by 924. The
first factor Is set by touching little
knobs representing 531,975. To multi |
ply by the other factors you turn a
handle four times push along q slide |