The Fargo forum and daily republican. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1894-1957, 1914-01-30
ART OF WEIGHING
Wonderful Scales That Are Not
Made Of Anything.

Edgar Lucien Larkin in New York
American: The art Of weighing has
expanded into a comprehensive science
art. Scales are made of metal, but
the set herein described is not made
Of anything. Scales are in hourly use
that can weigh q pencil mark whose
length is one-fourth of an inch; or a
section of a hair of equal length. The
usual practice in weighing runs from
| grains, ounces, pounds up to tons, US
ually one ton, and up to fifty or more
tons in railroad weighing, costing
hundreds and thousands of dollars.
But humans would find it quite diff
cult to make scales that would weigh
millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions,
quintillions. sextillions, septillions, oc-
tillions and nonillions of tons, or de-
cillionS. An instrument able to weigh
a decillion tons can now be purchased
for l cent-a pencil. The scales are
not made Of metal; instead a set and
fixed specific speed is the next to all
powerful engine used. But it is far
more easy to run a. locomotive or
steamship without knowing a single
law of these complex machines than
to even attempt to use the speed
scales without knowing every minute
detail Of every velocity law Of NOV
ing bodies. e.. ..-.. 49, >.
Let a street car start from rest and
keep moving faster and faster until it's
rate of motion is, say. twenty miles,
per hour, at the end OF, one minute. If
the speed of the a increased uni
formly during the entire minute it's
average speed is ten miles per hour.
because it. started from rest and in,
creased to twenty miles per hour. IL
a body moves during one minute at
twenty miles per hour the distance
traversed will be speed multiplied by
time, or twenty miles multiplied by
one-slXtieth of an hour, or one-third
of a mile; but the average speed i'm
case Of the a is ten miles per hour
so that the distance moved over is half
as Great or one-sixth mile. This is. a,
fundamental law of nature and is Of
enormous Importance.
Law: For uniformly increasing
speed, starting from rest, the velocity
increases with the time, but the dis
lance traversed is that moved owe by
the moving body. with it's average
speed. or one-half.
If measuring the distance fallen
through by a body let fall at the rig
IDLY exact beginning of one second of
time to the rigidly exact end thereon
is difficult, what shall be said of find
ing how fast it is falling at the end Of
the second. Go try; work from the
ages of twenty to sixty years daily,
and vol: will fail. The fact is, the time
required to find the mathematically
exact specific speed of a falling body
IN Still air was almost that required
to measure the distance Of the nearest
star, about 100 years.
Then Atwood invented his machine.
and this finally came to some near ap-
proach to accuracy. But this instru-
ment of precision fell far short of the
electrical chronographic apparatus.
Wnen all OF this very complex mech
anism is in perfect order it releases
the ball at the exact beginning of a,
second and records the absolute time
on the cylinder Of a c~hronograph cleo
trically and repeats the process at the
absolute end of the second so far as