52

the house; as it might have a good effect upon the mental vision of the members, as well as upon their health.

Mr. Pitkin thought it ought to go to a committee of the whole, if gentlemen wished it. Referred accordingly.

Ordered for Friday.

Committee to warm the Hall of Congress.—1811.

Mr. Gould, New-York, Chairman.
Mr. Milnor, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Brekenridge, Virginia.
Mr. Johnson, Kentucky.
Mr. Helms, New-Jersey.

Report the following Bill, for warming and ventilating the hall of the House of Representatives by a Rarefying Air-Stove.

BE it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That it shall and may be lawful for the surveyor of the public buildings, under the direction of the President of the United States, and he is hereby required to contract with Daniel Pettibone for warming and ventilating the hall of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States upon the principle of his rarefying air-stove: Provided, That such contract can be obtained upon reasonable terms, not exceeding the sum of two thousand dollars in the whole.

Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That the sum of two thousand dollars is hereby appropriated for the purpose aforesaid, payable out of any monies in the treasury not otherwise appropriated.

I take the liberty of introducing the following certificate from Mr. James Cutbush, Lecturer on Chemistry.

THIS is to certify, that I have examined, by the request of Mr. Pettibone and several gentlemen of Philadelphia, atmospheric air heated by Pettibone's rarefying air-stove, which is erected in the Free-school house situated in Walnut-street (the length of which is about 70 feet, and width 34 feet) and find, that the proportion of oxygen gas (vital air) and azotic gas are the same as in atmospheric air in general. The quantity of oxygen gas was 22.91, azotic gas 76.00, and carbonic acid gas 1.09 in the hundred.* The air, therefore, does not undergo any alteration with respect to its

* This gas is generally found in the atmosphere, but the proportion which it bears to the oxygen and azotic gases varies in different situations, under different circumstances. Azote constitutes in general about four-fifths of the atmosphere.

53

vital principle, nor are the proportions of azotic and carbonic acid
gases, upon an average, different from that of other atmospheric
air, and especially the air of rooms.

It may be proper to remark, that the room was not heated until
41 o'clock, A. M. and the air was collected for the experiments
at 1 P. M. The temperature at this time was 65 degrees.

The thermometer, in the open air, stood at 40.

The temperature of the air, which passed over the heated metal, and which ascended in a current, immediately on leaving the aperture of the pipe, was ascertained to be 140 degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer.

Several gentlemen have supposed, in consequence of the external
air coming in contact with the heated iron, that the air loses a portion
of its oxygen; the iron becoming oxydized. But this is not true;
for unless the iron be heated to a high temperature, no effect of
this kind could follow: if it were, the decomposition would be so
small, that it would be imperceptible, as a column of air is continually rushing in to supply the equilibrium. This principle, were it
admitted, would be applicable to every stove. In the combustion
of the fuel, however, a diminution of oxygen gas ensues. Mr. P.
has, in several instances, brought the air for the combustion from
without; and in this way has rendered the air far more healthy,
using at the same time a proper ventilation.

JAMES CUTBUSH

November 23, 1810.

WE, the subscribers, do hereby certify, that we have tried Mr.
Pettibone's method of warming apartments by means of heated
air, and having found it to answer the purpose completely, we
have the apparatus in our places respectively, and can recommend
it to others, from our experience of its usefulness.

THOMAS DOBSON, No. 41, S. Second-st.

C. W. BAZELEY, No. 13, S. Fifth-st.

JAMES M'ALPIN, No. 122, Chesnut-st.

Philadelphia, Nov. 22, 1810.

Washington, March 3d, 1810.

Dear Sir,

I RECEIVED your letter of the 22nd ultimo, and shall do
whatever shall be in my power, to encourage the warming of the
hall of the House of Representatives upon the principles of your
discovery.

Your affectionate friend,

J. B. VARNUM

Mr. Daniel Pettibone.

54

MR. DANIEL PETTIBONE.

SIR,

BELIEVING it may afford you satisfaction to receive any in-
formation, particularly if the result of actual experiment, tending
to prove the efficacy of your rarefying air-stove; we have pleasure
in stating, that the one constructed under your direction, for the
use of the Philadelphia Bank, has hitherto proved efficient to the
end contemplated—sufficiently warming the Banking-room with-
out other aid, although four open fire-places had previously been
found inadequate to this purpose.—It is true, that last winter, for
the first two or three days after it was put in operation, a small
portion of smoke escaped from the smoke flue, and found its way
into the air-pipes, and which was consequently thrown into the
Banking rooms; and a like temporary inconvenience was expe-
rienced in the early part of the present season, after the works had
undergone some improvement; but it being apparent that the de-
fect was in the masonry, the remedy was easy, and the inconve-
nience soon removed; and it has since been, and still continues, in
successful operation.

Yours,

JOSEPH D. DRINKER, Com.
QUINTIN CAMPBELL, Cashier.

Philadelphia Bank, 22d, Dec. 1810.

MR. PETTIBONE,

Inventor of a number of useful improvements, has received the follow-
ing very satisfactory letters from MR. ROBERT FULTON, and other
gentlemen of the first respectability.

SIR,

THE mode which you propose for warming rooms by creating
a chamber of warm air, to be communicated through flues, will cer-
tainly be an economy of fuel, and improvement on our imperfect
fire-places, which, in most cases, in proportion to the heat of the
fire, draws a current of cold air on the backs of those who sit
round it.

The Russians, Poles and Germans, have long felt the necessity
of a uniform heat throughout their apartments, which they have
effected by excellent stoves, composed of earthen ware and orna-
mental tiles. Our country will be much indebted to any ingenious
individual, who can succeed to give uniform warmth to one or more
apartments from one magazine of heat, and that with heated air
which shall not be deprived of its oxygen. It appears to me, that
your plan will effect this important object. Perseverance and skill-
ful modifications are only required.

55

The new invented earthen tubes, originally intended to carry water, might perhaps be used by you to great advantage to convey the air from the magazine; such tubes will not create any disagreeable smell, nor deprive the air of its oxygen.

Respectfully yours,

ROBERT FULTON.

Washington City, Feb. 8, 1811.

Mr. Pettibone.

Mr. Pettibone,

I ENTIRELY agree with Mr. Fulton in the testimony which he has given to your mode of warming apartments, in his letter of 8th February, 1811, and hope to see it generally adopted, not only in public but in private buildings.

I am, with respect, yours,

B. HENRY LATROBE.

HAVING examined Mr. Pettibone's plan for warming rooms and parlours, I entirely agree with Mr. Fulton in its utility.

ANDREW ELLICOTT.

I AM fully impressed with the importance of the above improvement in the economy of heat, and doubt not but it may be rendered practicable in ordinary houses.

JOEL BARLOW.

Copy of a letter from Joel Barlow, Esq. to Alexander Wolcott, Esq. of Middletown, Connecticut.

Washington City, 5th March, 1811.

DEAR SIR,

Mr. Daniel Pettibone's method of warming large apartments appears to me to be more economical, and more salubrious, than any other now in use. But its application to your factory, or to any part thereof, must be judged of on the spot, and by the knowledge of several facts, which can only be obtained there. He may apply to you with a proposition, which I should advise you to examine, as it is probably worthy your attention.

JOEL BARLOW.

Alexander Wolcott, Esq.

56

I HAVE been for several years familiar with Daniel Pettibone's method of warming rooms by means of heated air, in theory: and in the course of the last year, without knowing any thing of the nature of his invention or patent, I applied the principle in practice, on a scale of considerable magnitude.* (though perhaps with a less perfect apparatus than he recommends;) I now can say, from experience, that I think it preferable to any other method of warming apartments with which I am acquainted, as it regards health, economy and safety.

THOMAS MOORE.

4th mo. 5th day.

P. S. Notwithstanding I have heretofore reflected on this subject, as appears by the above statement, yet I entirely disclaim any title or interest in the patent of D. Pettibone, fully believing him entitled to all the emoluments arising therefrom.

T. M.

The Reverend President SMITH, and Dr. MACLEAN.

Trenton, 11th July, 1811.

GENTLEMEN,

I DO myself the pleasure of introducing Mr. Pettibone, who, in 1808, obtained a patent of a rarefying air-stove, for warming of rooms.

Mr. Pettibone is solicitous to explain the operation and usefulness of his invention, that, upon your representation, the Trustees may take into consideration the economy of introducing the same, into the large halls of the College of New-Jersey; and, if approved, that he may be favoured with your certificate and recommendation.

I am, very respectfully,

Your friend, and most obedient,

JOSEPH BLOOMFIELD.

FROM the experience I have had of Mr. Daniel Pettibone's air-furnace, erected at the Church of St. Augustine,—I am of opinion, that it may be successfully used for the warming of the largest buildings. The aforesaid Church is in length 126 feet, in breadth about 60, and in height about 50.

MICHAEL HURLEY, Pastor.

Philadelphia, Jan. 2, 1811.

* At the Triadelphia Cotton Factory, in the state of Maryland.

57

Philadelphia, Jan. 1st, 1811.

MR. DANL. PETTIBONE,

Dear Sir,

AT your request, we cheerfully give you a statement of the effects produced by the air-heater, (in our store) constructed agreeably to your directions.—The room, you may recollect, is about 60 feet long, by 24 broad, having 10 windows and three doors, two of them outside doors.—Yet, notwithstanding these numerous inlets for cold air, so large a column of heated air is introduced from the cellar, as in a few minutes to render the room perfectly comfortable.—We therefore hesitate not to recommend, in the strongest terms, your method of warming rooms by heated air.

I DO hereby certify, that I have one of Mr. Pettibone's airstoves in use in my Bookstore, and have found it (with the exception of occasionally emitting some smoke, owing to some cause or defect in the stove itself) to equal my expectation. I believe, that in large rooms Mr. Pettibone's air-stove will supply a more pleasant and purer air, with a smaller quantity of fuel, than any other mode I am acquainted with.

ANTHONY FINLEY.

Philadelphia, Dec. 28, 1811.

I DO hereby certify, that I have two of Mr Pettibone's airstoves, one in my front store, the other in my work shop;—the advantages are, that the rooms are in all parts equally warmed, the air pleasant and pure, very different from the common stove, and free from the effects of dust and smoke.

CHAS. C. WATSON.

Philadelphia, 30th Dec. 1811.

AN EXTRACT

From the "Useful Cabinet," published at Boston, in monthly numbers, for the Massachusetts Association of Inventors, and Patrons of Useful Arts, for the year 1808, commenced at page 26.

"The superiority of edge-tools, made of cast-steel, is too well known to need any recommendation. The art of welding the best kind of cast-steel to iron, without injuring its texture, is an American discovery. Mr. Daniel Pettibone, of Roxbury, Massachusetts, is the inventor; for which he has a patent, dated March, 1806. This is a valuable invention; as tools made of cast-steel welded to iron, by his process, sufficiently prove.

"Although we have tools imported from England, which are said to be cast-steel welded to iron; yet, according to the account of sir T. Frankland, communicated in 1795, to the Royal Society of London, it appears that the cast-steel which they weld to iron is a soft kind; little better, if any, than common steel. For he says, that the heat which they find necessary to weld their cast-steel would either melt the best kind, (such as Mr. Pettibone

H

58

uses) or render it unable to bear the hammer; in which case, the goodness of the steel would be wholly ruined: so that Mr. Pettibone's discovery may be justly considered a great and valuable improvement, in extending the use of the best cast-steel to those tools which require a part of them to be iron; and this too without the least injury to the goodness of the steel which it possesses before it is welded. His process is simple, not expensive, and easy to be understood. Edge tool makers will find it advantageous to them to obtain of him a right to use this valuable art."

The following certificate was handed to the patentee, signed by the Director, and other gentlemen of the United States' Mint; as also the celebrated Mr. Evans.

AT the desire of Mr. Pettibone, we have evidenced and examined his process for welding iron and cast-steel together, and have seen several of the edged tools formed from the welded masses, by means of rollers, as described in his specification, which appear to us to be very good; and we have no hesitation in declaring, that we consider this invention of Mr. Pettibone as likely to be of great benefit to the public, and well worth of their patronage.

R. PATTERSON,
JOSEPH CLOUD,
ADAM ECKFELDT,
OLIVER EVANS.

Philadelphia, June 20, 1812.

The following articles were omitted in page 47.

1802. A method to make a musket to discharge 8 or 10 times after once loaded, as fast as it can be cocked and snapped. The powder is placed in 8 or 10 small short cylinders, and covered; and the balls supply themselves, or nearly so.

Another mode—cartridges of powder are put into a wheel, properly fitted, and balls supply themselves from their magazine as before.

Another mode—20 or more balls may be discharged one after another in the space of two minutes—It is loaded with powder from the breech with perfect safety, and sarce-ly differs in its shape from the common musket.

Another mode, useful for ships or gun-boats; the use or application of highly rarefied and compressed steam to propel musket balls:—similar to the common air-gun.

1812. Instead of posts or cheeks as usual, I make a strong wrought or cast-iron hoop of a suitable diameter, (the hoop may be oval or not) and fellicies, as the wheel of a cart, or any other form, or frame of wood, or of iron work fitted within the hoop.—This press is very strong and light, and has several valuable improvements, which cannot here be described.

A machine for cutting many hundreds of garments per day, such as coats, vests, pantaloons, shirts, &c. and also for cutting articles of leather. Well calculated for the military.

MODE
OF OBTAINING
PATENTS,
EXTRACTED FROM A PUBLICATION
BY WILLIAM THORNTON, ESQ.

“ BEFORE an application be made for a patent, I would advise the inventor to examine well the Dictionaries of the Arts and Sciences, the Repertory of the Arts and other publications that treat of the mechanic arts, to endeavour to ascertain if the invention be new; also to make enquiry of scientific characters, whether or not the invention or discovery be practicable. These previous enquiries will sometimes prevent great trouble, and save the expense of much time, labour and money; for a patent does not confer rights, where just claims do not exist; and as there is at present no discretionary power to refuse a patent, even where no just claim exists, it may be proper to caution the purchaser of patent rights against the supposition, that the invention patented is always valuable, or new, or that it interferes with no previous patent. The respectable names of the President, the Secretary of State, and Attorney General, are requisite to give validity to a patent; but ought never to be considered in any degree as an evidence of the originality or utility of the invention. The issuing of patents is grounded, not only on a desire to promote the progress of useful arts, but also to prevent the loss of valuable secrets; for many have been buried with the inventors, previous to the organization of this system of protection for the property of talent, mind and genius.

“ The general law concerning the issuing of patents will be found in the 2d Vol. of the laws of the United States, page 200.— This law provides for citizens only; but a subsequent law, Vol. 5th, page 88, provides also for applicants who have resided two years or upwards, in the United States and who are not citizens.

“ In applying for a patent it is necessary to attend to every legal form, for, in consequence of inattention to forms* only, some of the patents, issued formerly, have in the courts of law been declared null and void.

* Oliver Evans's among the number.

60

MODE OF APPLICATION.

* "Every Inventor, before he presents his petition to the Secretary of State, signifying his desire of obtaining a Patent, shall pay into the Treasury of the United States thirty† dollars, for which he will be furnished with duplicate receipts, one of which he shall deliver to the Secretary of State when he presents his petition: and the money thus paid shall be in full for the sundry services to be performed in the office of the Secretary of State, consequent to such petition. This petition must be addressed to the Secretary of State, and may be in the following or in a similar stile.

TO THE HONORABLE __________ SECRETARY OF STATE
OF THE UNITED STATES.

The petition of A. B. —of ________ in the county of ________ and state of ________ respectfully represents—

That your petitioner has invented a new and useful improvement "[for art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement in any art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter] in ________ not known or used before his application," the advantages of which he is desirous of securing to himself and his legal representatives: he therefore prays that letters patent of the United States may be issued, granting unto your petitioner, his heirs, administrators or assigns, the full and exclusive right of making, constructing, using, and vend-ing to others to be used, his said improvement, [art, invention, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, &c.] agreeably to the acts of Congress in such case made and provided; your pe-titioner having paid thirty dollars into the treasury of the United States, and complied with the other provisions of the said acts.

[Date.] A. B.

"The specification or description of the machine, art, discovery, or invention, must be given in clear and specific terms, designat-ing it from all other inventions, and describing the whole in such a manner as to comprehend not only the form and construction, (if a machine) but also the mode of using the same; and if it be only an improvement on a certain machine already invented by the applicant, or any other, it ought to be so mentioned or described: and as this specification, description or schedule, enters into and forms part of the patent, it must be without any references to a model or drawing, and must be signed by the applicant or appli-cants, before two witnesses. It is material that this be in good language, and correctly written, as it is transcribed into the pa-

* See Laws of the U. S. vol. 2d. chap. XI. § 11. p. 205.
† Notes of any of the Banks of the U. S.

§ 1st of the above p. 200.

61

tent, and the original papers will be deposited in an office that will
hand them down to posterity, by which the honour of the country
is concerned in this attention. The modest inventor will no doubt
exclude those panegyrics on the excellence of his invention or
discovery, which abound sometimes in the productions of the infef-
rior genius, but which ought not to enter into the Patent.

"The following or a similar oath or affirmation, taken [before a judge of any of the courts, or a justice of the peace, or any person qualified to administer an oath] by the applicant or applicants, must be subjoined to the specification, if citizens of the United States.

FORM.

County of
State of 88.

On this — of — 181 — before the subscriber, a justice
of the peace, in and for the county aforesaid, personally appeared
the above named A. B. and made solemn oath [or affirmation] ac-
cording to law, that he verily believes himself to be the true and
original inventor or discoverer of the art [machine, invention or
improvement, composition of matter, &c.] above specified and
described, for —————— (mention here the object or intention)
——— and that he is a citizen of the United States.

J. P.

"If not a citizen (or citizens) the following addition must be
made to the declaration, that he verily believes himself to be the
true and original inventor or discoverer of the art, &c.

* And that the same hath not, to the best of his or her know-
ledge and belief, been known or used either in this or any foreign
country ——————" Also that he (or she) hath resided in the
United States two years and upwards.

J. P.

"The specification must be accompanied by a good drawing, in
perspective, of the whole machine or apparatus—" † where the
nature of the case admits of drawings; or with specimens of the
ingredients, and of the composition of matter, sufficient in quan-
tity for the purpose of experiment, where the invention is of a
composition of matter." "And such inventor shall, moreover,
deliver a model of his machine, provided the Secretary shall deem
such model to be necessary." It is requisite, in giving a drawing
of the machine, to give also sectional drawings of the interior,
when the machine is complex : and every drawing should be ac-
companied with explanatory references. When a machine is com-
plex, a model will likewise be necessary, not only to explain and
render it comprehensible to a common capacity, but also to pre-
vent infringements of rights; for many will plead ignorance of
drawings, who cannot avoid the conviction of wheels and pinions.

* Laws of the U. S. vol. v. ch. XXV. p. 89.

† Ibid. vol. ii. ch. xi. p. 202.

62

"The drawings ought not to exceed a quarto size, and if confined to octavo they would be still better, where it can be done conveniently and distinctly.

"The papers must all be sent under cover to the Secretary of State, which of course renders them free of postage: but if models be sent, their freight or carriage hither must be paid; and before packing them the name or names of the Inventor or Inventors should be written thereon, with the name of the machine, and the date: —for sometimes on receiving them it is difficult to know to whom they appertain.

"The Congress, being impressed with a high sense of the value of the inventions of our citizens, have purchased an elegant and extensive building, wherein preparations are now making for the accommodation of a very numerous collection of the machines illustrative of the ingenuity displayed; and this museum of the arts, it is presumed, will stimulate the ingenious to send the models of their machines and inventions in a style that will rather honour than discredit our country.

"Copy-rights of Books, Prints, Charts, Maps, &c. are secured, " by* depositing before publication a printed copy of the title of such Map, Chart, Book, or Books, in the Clerk's office of the District Court where the author or proprietor shall reside, who will record the same; and the author or proprietor shall, within two months from the date of the record, cause a copy of the said record to be published in one or more of the newspapers printed in the United States, for the space of four weeks, †and within six months after publishing the Map, Chart, Book or Books, the author or proprietor shall deliver, or cause to be delivered, to the Secretary of State, a copy of the same; and when deposited and entered in the patent office, a certificate will be returned of its being received." ‡This will secure the sole right of publication for fourteen years to the author or proprietor, if a citizen of the United States, or resident therein—"And if, at the expiration of the said term, the author or authors, or proprietors, or any of them, be living, and a citizen or citizens of these United States, or residents therein, the same exclusive right shall be continued to him or them, his or their executors, administrators or assigns, for the further term of fourteen years: Provided he or they shall cause the title thereof to be a second time recorded, and published in the above manner, within six months before the expiration of the first term of fourteen years aforesaid."

*Patent Office, (Washington City,)* March 1811.

* See an act for the encouragement of learning, &c.—Laws of the U. S. vol. 1. ch. xv. § 3. p. 121.

† Ibid. Sect. 4. p. 122.

‡ Ibid. Sect. 1. p. 118, 119.

ADVERTISEMENT.

All letters or orders (post paid) respec ting the patent Air-Stoves, Grates, Pipes, &c. &c. directed to the patentee, or to NICHODEMUS LLOYD, North Seventh-street, will be duly attended to.

REGULATIONS

FOR

THE PROOF AND INSPECTION

OF

Small Arms,

Made under Contract with the United States.

THE model arm referred to in the contract, and furnished by the government to the contractor, will be considered a standard of reference. The arms manufactured should conform in all their parts, in pattern or form, to the standard model; and should be equal in workmanship to the arms of similar denomination, made at the National Armouries during the same period. The several parts of the arms should be browned, blued, case hardened, or polished, as in the standard model.

MUSKETS.

PROOF AND INSPECTION OF BARRELS.

The inspector will first examine the barrel, and ascertain whether it is reduced to its proper weight,

6

which is four pounds when the breech is screwed in; and whether the external and internal parts of the barrel are of the prescribed dimensions, and free from ring bores, cinder holes, flaws, cracks, and other defects. The diameter of the bore should be a little less than the smallest diameter allowable in finished muskets. To ascertain this, a small gauge plug should be used, which differs as much from the smallest of the two used in finished muskets, as those two differ from one another. The bore should be made to admit the passage of the smallest plug freely through it; but not so large as to receive the second size plug.

All the barrels which may pass this examination, will be closed at the breech, either with proving plugs or breech pins, and proved as follows, viz:

1st charge.—One-eighteenth part of a pound of powder; one lead bullet, weighing one-fifteenth part of a pound; and two paper wads, each to measure three-fourths of an inch in length; after being well rammed. One of the wads to be placed on the top of the powder, the other on the top of the bullet. The whole to be well rammed with copper rods.

2nd charge.—One-twenty-second part of a pound of powder, with one bullet and two wads, as in the first charge.

The powder used in proving barrels, must be of the full proof, which is or may be established by the

7

Ordnance Department; and should, in all respects, be equal to that used for proving barrels at the National Armouries.

The inspector will be careful in ascertaining the quality of the powder, before he proceeds to proving.

The barrels which resist the proof will be cleaned and examined; and, if no defects are discovered, the vents will be stopped, and the bores will be filled with water. If proving plugs have been used, they will be removed, and the breach pins will be screwed in before the water is applied. The barrels, when filled with water, will be left standing about six hours, when they will be again examined; and if no water has passed through the breech, or made its appearance on the exterior of the barrel, nor any other defects observed, they will be received. The marks of reception will be as follows, viz: The letters U. S. to be placed on the top of the barrel, one inch distant from the breech; the initial letters of the inspector's name, with the letter P. under them, to be placed to the left of the letters U. S. which marks will be made by the Inspector.

## INSPECTION OF FINISHED MUSKETS.

Every musket should be taken to pieces; the breech pin turned out of the barrel; the screws turned

8

ed out of the lock, and every component part se-
parated. When the Inspector will proceed to ex-
amine each part, in the following manner, viz :

FIRST—THE BARREL.

The Inspector will first examine the exterior and interior surface of the barrel, to see if it is free from flaws, cracks, cinder holes, or ring bores. He will then stretch a line through the barrel, and apply it to at least four sides of the bore, to ascertain if the interior is straight. The calibre of the bore will then be verified by the gauge plugs; the small plug should pass freely through the barrel, and the large plug should not enter its whole length. If the barrel will not receive the small plug, or if it will admit the large plug, the barrel will be rejected.

The inspector will carefully examine the threads of the screw on the inside of the barrel, and will be particular to ascertain that they do not project inwards, beyond the surface of the bore. The small gauge plug should pass freely through, without touching the threads. The exterior dimensions of the barrel will then be verified, by applying the gauges to the breech, middle, and muzzle. The breech pin should be case hardened, but the temper of the tang should be reduced, or it will be too easily broken; the proper temper can be ascertained by trying it with the edge of a fine cut file. The hole in the tang must be exactly in the centre of its

9

width, and at the same distance from the end of the
barrel, as in the model musket. The breech pin
should be screwed into its place in the barrel; when
the dimensions of the breech of the barrel, with the
breech pin and tang, will be verified by the breech
gauge. The vent will be carefully examined; it
should enter the bore of the barrel, in front of, but
close to the end of, the breech-pin; care should be
taken that the latter does not obstruct it. The di-
ameter of the vent should be the same as in the mo-
del musket. The barrel will next be placed in the
stock, to see if it fits the wood closely all along,
and that it is sunk nearly one half its diameter into
the stock.

SECOND—THE LOCK.

The various parts of the lock will be closely ex-
amined, to see that the limbs are sound, well filed,
and of the proper form; that the pins have good
threads on them; and that the holes in the plate
and cock, have also good threads, and correspond
with those on the pins, and are of the same size,
with those in the pattern locks. After examining all
the limbs separately, the lock will be put together,
in doing which, it will be ascertained, whether the
pins turn in and out freely. The lock will then be
applied to the lock-gauge, to ascertain the size of
the plate, and position of the other parts of the lock;
after which the following points will be noted, viz:

B

10

Observe, first, if the sear moves freely after screw-
ing its pin as closely as possible, and that its point
is sufficiently strong, and falls properly into the
notches of the tumbler. 2nd. If the bridle has no
cracks nor flaws in its pin-holes, or the hole of the
tumbler pivot. 3rd. If the springs are well adjusted
to the lock plate, and play freely when working the
lock. 4th. If the neck of the tumbler fits exactly
its hole in the lock plate, that the pivot fits its hole
in the bridle, and that the hook of the tumbler does
not pass below the edge of the lock plate. 5th. Ob-
serve whether the cock works freely and steadily,
without rubbing against the lock-plate, when screw-
ed up tight. 6th. See that the hammer plays free-
ly, and covers the pan closely. To ascertain if all
the parts be well hardened, try them with a fine cut
file. Try the action of the lock generally, to observe
the harmony of all its movements. Snap the lock, and
if the hammer does not uncover the pan, the ham-
mer spring is then too strong for the main spring;
if the hammer flies open too freely, the main spring
is then too strong for the hammer spring. In either
case, there will be but little fire, and the sparks will
not fall fairly into the pan. Observe, in drawing up
the cock, if the point of the sear falls properly into
the notches of the tumbler, and that in snapping, it
does not stop at the half cock. Try the hardness
of the face of the hammer, by snapping the lock
several times with a good flint, and observe if it

11

makes fire freely. In returning the lock to its place,
see that it has been well fitted into the stock.—
The springs and other moving parts, on the interior
side of the lock, should have sufficient room to work
freely, without being obstructed by the wood. The
part of the stock, upon which the inner surface of
the lock plate rests, should be smooth and straight,
so that the plate should rest firmly upon the wood
in all its touching points. See that the cavities
made in the stock, for the bridle and heads of the
screws, are not sunk deeper than is necessary, and
that the trigger is not uncovered thereby; also, that
the cavity made for the reception of the main spring,
is not so deep as to expose the barrel. The lining
of the lock, should fit the flat side of the barrel close-
ly. The inner edge of the seat of the hammer,
should fit the barrel closely, but not to chafe in its
movements.

The lock should be drawn firmly into its place,
by the side pins, and its action tried again by half
cocking, cocking, and snapping. This will de-
termine whether the interior parts are bound, or
their movements obstructed by the wood; also,
whether the trigger be well hung, and properly ad-
justed to the sear. When the lock is at half cock,
pull the trigger hard to ascertain if it will go off.
The action of the lock should be as free and clear,
when secured in its place, as when separate.

12

THIRD—MOUNTING.

The form and dimensions of every part of the mounting will be verified by comparing them with the pattern musket. After been critically examined, and the bands verified by the gauge, they will be put in their proper places on the stock, and every part must be well fitted in its place. The guard plate must be sunk even with the surface of the stock, and the hole which receives the tang pin, must have a full and perfect thread. The trigger must have as little lateral play in its groove, as possible, to admit its free movement. It should not be susceptible of any other motion, than one perpendicular to the axis of its wire. The side plates must have full square edges, and be so fitted in the stock, that when screwed up tightly by the side pins, the surface of the plate, shall not sink below the surface of the stock. The side pins must be straight and cylindrical, and the shoulders of the heads, should rest evenly upon the side plate. The heel plate must fit the end of the breech closely, and be made to cover it exactly. The edge of the plate, should be full and equal in its thickness, and should neither project beyond, nor recede within the wood. The tang of the heel plate should be sunk into the wood a depth equal to its thickness, so that its upper surface shall be even with that of the stock. The screws which secures the heel plate and guard, should have full deep threads, corresponding with the pattern. The holes

13

in the stock, which receive the screws, should be closely examined, to see if they are of the proper size, and have full well-formed threads; it is essential that the screws fit very closely in their holes. The upper, middle, and lower bands, should fit both in their shoulders and over the barrel and stock, so as to secure both firmly together. The wood below the middle and lower bands, should project so much, as will make it even with the external surface of the bands. The band-springs must not be sunk too deep in the wood, nor their beds reach to the inside of the stock; they should move freely, so as to fall back naturally to their proper position, when no longer pressed. They should be so placed, as to keep the bands in a fixed position, not permitting them to slide upon the stock, only when the springs are forced down.

FOURTH—THE STOCK.

The stock should be examined, when the barrel, lock, and mounting, are separated from it. Observe if the groove for the barrel, is so formed, as to fit the barrel closely its whole length; and that the butt of the barrel fits closely against the wood behind it; and also, that the breech pin and tang are closely fitted. Observe, also, if there be any cracks, splits, or worm-holes in any part of the stock. To detect these defects, (the splits especially,) requires a close scrutiny; as it is not uncommon for work-

14

men to endeavour to conceal them, by filling up the cavities with glue and saw-dust.

The form and dimensions of the stock will also be observed: see that it is the proper length, from the butt of the barrel to the butt of the stock, and that it has the same fall or crook as the pattern musket; to ascertain which, apply the gauge.

The quality of the wood, of which the stock is made, must be examined. It should be hard and firm. Light, porous, or brittle wood, such as is taken from old trees, should not be received. The stocks should be well seasoned. This may be ascertained by the following methods: viz. When the lock is first removed from the stock, the inner surface of it will be rusted, if the stock is unseasoned. Take a thin shaving from the stock, and roll it between the fingers; if the stock be seasoned, the shaving will crumble, but not if it be unseasoned. The smell of the wood at a place fresh cut, will assist in determining whether the wood be seasoned or not. No stocks should be used, which have not been cut from the plank at least three years, and have been stored in a dry place for two years. Kiln dried, or steamed stocks, should not be received.

### FIFTH—RAMROD.

The rod should be first tested in its dimensions. To ascertain its length, let it fall into the barrel, the head resting on the breech-pin; the small end of

15

the rod should then project from three to five tenths
of an inch beyond the muzzle. The diameter of
the rod will be verified by gauges, which have been
adjusted upon the pattern rod; the rods should be
tried in three places, in the middle, and near to each
end. See that the head is formed like the pattern,
and that the screws at the end have well-formed
threads. Try the temper of the rods by springing
them in four different directions, so that the middle
of the rod will be six inches from a straight line,
drawn from the head to the point. Observe, after
bending, that they are not made crooked by the
operation; they should spring back by their elasti-
city and remain straight. Observe also, that they
have no flaws nor cross cracks; these defects some-
times exist without being visible, and to detect them,
suspend the rod by a thread at one end, and strike
it gently with a piece of metal, the sound will indi-
cate whether there be any flaws or not. Try the
rod in the groove, see that it fits snugly, that it can
be pushed down, and withdrawn without much ef-
fort, and at the same time be not too loose. The
rod should go down so far, that its head shall not
project above the end of the barrel. Observe
whether the covered part of the groove is in the
centre of the stock, and that it does not interfere
with the front side pin.

16

SIXTH—BAYONET.

The bayonet must be tried in the following manner: drive a staple into a work bench, about fifteen inches from the edge, the staple to project just sufficient to receive the point of the bayonet; place a piece of hard wood an half inch thick, equi-distant between the staple and edge of the bench, insert the point of the bayonet in the staple, the middle resting upon the block of wood, and bear upon the other end until it touches the bench. It should be tried with both the face and back uppermost, which will spring it each way one inch. The bayonet should stand this trial without remaining bent, or exhibiting any cracks or flaws. The neck of the bayonet should be tried, by placing the point on the floor, when the bayonet is fixed to the musket; hold the breech of the musket with one hand, and with the other bear firmly upon the barrel, and observe whether the neck of the bayonet bends, or exhibits any other signs of weakness. The socket of the bayonet should be bored straight and cylindrical, and should fit the muzzle of the barrel with such exactness, as not to play or move easily, but not to require a greater effort, than can be given with the hand, to fix or remove it. The canal cut in the socket, for passing the bayonet stud, should agree in form and dimensions with the pattern.

The stud should also be agreeably to the prescribed dimensions. The bayonet, when fixed, should

17

have one end of its socket resting upon the upper band and the extremity of the stock; the other end of the socket should be even with, or fall a little below, the end of the barrel. The blade of the bayonet should diverge a little from the line of the axis of the bore, it being more open at the point than at the neck. The blades should be made to pass freely, into the scabbard gauge.

## MARKS.

Muskets will be marked by the manufacturer, before they are offered for inspection, in the following manner, viz: The letters U. S. and the name of the contractor, will be stamped upon the lock plate, under the pan; the name of the place where the musket is manufactured, and the year within which it is made, will be stamped upon the lock plate, in the rear of the cock; the letters U. S. will be placed on the tang of the heel plate; the year will be placed on the tang of the breech pin, near the breech of the barrel; and the letters U. S. will be placed on the face of the bayonet blade, near the neck. For the marks upon the barrel; (see "proof of bars,rels.")

Care should be taken, that none of the marks upon the arms should be stamped so deep as to be injurious.

C

18

# PROOF AND INSPECTION OF RIFLES.

## PROOF OF BARRELS.

Rifle barrels will be examined and proved in the same manner, as is directed for musket barrels, except the proof charge, which will be as follows, viz:

*   **First charge:** One twenty-eighth part of a pound of powder, and two lead bullets, each weighing one thirty second part of a pound; and two paper wads, each measuring one half an inch in length after being well rammed. One of the wads to be placed on the top of the powder, and the other on the top of the bullets.

*   **Second charge:** One thirty-second part of a pound of powder, with one bullet and with two wads, as in the first charge.

The barrels to be loaded and fired in the same manner as musket barrels.

## INSPECTION OF FINISHED RIFLES.

'The grooves in the bore of the barrel will be carefully examined, to ascertain that they are formed according to the pattern, and, that they are even and uniform throughout. All the component parts of the Rifle will be examined in the same manner as is directed for muskets, except the ramrod, which is required to spring only four inches.

The marks upon the rifles will be the same as those directed for muskets.

19

## PROOF AND INSPECTION OF PISTOLS.

Pistol barrels, where the calibre is the same as the rifle, will be proved as follows, viz :

*First charge:* One thirty-second part of a pound of powder, with one bullet and two wads, as directed for rifle barrels.

*Second charge:* One fortieth part of a pound of powder, with one bullet and two wads, as above.

The examination of the component parts of the pistol, will be made according to the general instructions given above for other arms.

## GENERAL REMARKS.

The inspector will not consider himself restricted to the particular examinations above mentioned; but he will make any other examinations which he may deem necessary, to ascertain more minutely the quality of any part of the arms. And whenever he discovers, or suspects, that attempts have been made by the workmen, to cover or conceal material defects, he will be very cautious and vigilant, and will subject the arms to the severest scrutiny in order to detect them.

It being the intention of the Government to provide arms of an uniform model, for the public service generally, the contractors are required to con-

20

form to the model, and the workmanship of the arms
made at the National Armouries. The inspector
will therefore decide upon the quality of materials,
and of workmanship, by the rules which govern in
like cases at the National Armouries; that is, he will
reject such arms, or parts of arms, as would be re-
jected at the Armouries, and he will receive such as
would be received there. He will not, however, in
any case, exact more rigid conditions, than are en-
forced at the National Armouries.

After the examinations are concluded, all the
arms which are of an approved quality, will be mark-
ed by the inspector with the initials of his name;
to be stamped on the stock opposite the lock, when
they will be set apart for packing.

PACKING BOXES.

The contractor will provide suitable boxes for
packing the arms, which will be subject to the in-
spection of the inspector.

The boxes are to be planed both on the inside and
on the outside, and should be made of good, sound,
well, seasoned white pine boards, and free from splits,
knots, and worm holes; and, to be full one inch
thick when worked. In each corner of the box,
there should be a post of hard wood, two and a half

21

inches wide, and one and a quarter inches thick; the
flat side laid against the end of the box. Each of
the angles of the box will be secured by eight 8d.
cut nails, driven through the end piece into the post;
and by nine 12d. cut nails driven through the side
piece, four of them into the post, and five into the
end piece, making in all seventeen nails in each
angle. The space between the posts, at the ends,
will be filled with boards one inch thick. The bottom
of the box will be secured by four 2 inch screws, and
by twelve 12d. and fourteen 10d. cut nails. Two of
the screws, and four of the nails, to be driven at each
end of the bottom. The lid will be secured by six-
teen 8d. cut nails, viz: five in each side and three
in each end. Each box is to be furnished with two
beckets or handles, (one at each end,) made of strong
rope, at least half an inch in diameter. The holes
for the beckets will be made through the end piece
of the box, a little above the centre, but not through
the inner lining of the end; so that the knots at the
end of the rope will lie between the two pieces.
The lining will be cut away, to make room for the
knots. The inspector will be particular to ascer-
tain that the boards used in making the boxes, and
also the cleets, bars, and wedges used in packing,
are perfectly seasoned; he can ascertain this by bor-
ing into the wood with a small gimblet, and examin-
ing the chips or borings. No materials should be
used for boxes, which have not been placed under
cover in a dry place at least eighteen months.

22

The dimensions of the boxes will be as follows, viz: For muskets 4 feet, 10 1-4 inches long, 15 1-2 inches wide, and 12 1-2 inches deep.

For rifles 4 feet 4 1-2 inches long, 14 3-4 inches wide, and 12 3-4 inches deep. All the dimensions are taken on the inside, "in the clear," when the box is completed.

## PACKING ARMS.

When the boxes are approved by the inspector, the contractor will cause the arms to be packed in the manner directed in the contract. Each box of muskets will contain twenty muskets and bayonets, twenty screw drivers, twenty wipers, two ball screws, two spring vices, and twenty spare lead flint caps. Each musket to be furnished with a good flint and a lead flint cap.

Each box of rifles will contain twenty rifles, two bullet moulds, twenty screw drivers, twenty wipers, two ball screws, two spring vices, and twenty spare lead flint caps. Each rifle to be furnished with a good flint and a lead flint cap. The arms are to be so placed, that they will be firmly secured without touching each other.

The bayonets and small articles are to be well secured to the bottom of the box.

23

Before the arms are placed in the boxes, they will be oiled and lackered in the following manner, viz : the inside of the barrel and lock will be made clean, and well oiled, with pure oil, in the usual manner. The vent will then be closed with wax, and the muzzle with a good soft cork that fits it closely. The whole of the exterior surface of the arm, including both the wood and metallic parts is then covered with lacker prepared for the purpose. The exterior surface of the arm should be wiped clean, and entirely freed from oil before the lacker is applied. To apply the lacker, it should be put into a glazed earthen or stoneware vessel, of convenient size, and heated in a stove or sand bath, just sufficient to keep the ingredients in a state of fusion. As the ingredients are very inflamable, much caution should be used in heating them.

The lacker, in this warm state, is spread upon the arms with a small paint brush, it is afterwards smooth-ed and spread more evenly with a large brush made of camel's hair. The brushes should be dipped into pure spirits of turpentine, before they are put into the lacker.

Spirits of turpentine forms one of the principal ingredients of the mixture, and a portion of it is evaporated by heating; it will, therefore, be necessary to add small quantities of spirits of turpentine to the lacker, occasionally, in order that its proper consistence may be preserved.

24

When the arms are well covered with the lacker, they will be set aside in a dry cool place, and they should not be packed before they are perfectly dried.

The lacker, properly prepared, will be furnished to the contractors by the United States.

The packing will be done under the immediate inspection of the inspector, who will be careful to see that the work is properly done. The inspector will place on the inside of each box, in a secure manner, a card giving a list of all the articles packed in the box, and the date of inspection. He will also place his signature upon the card.

The ends of the box on the outside, will be marked by the contractor, with his name, the number of arms contained in the box, and the year within which they were inspected.

## CERTIFICATES OF INSPECTION.

When the inspection and package of the arms has been completed, the inspector will furnish the contractor with three certificates, according to the following form:—

I hereby certify, that I have this day inspected and approved five hundred muskets, five hundred screw drivers, five hundred wipers, fifty ball screws, fifty

26

The above certificates will be marked by the
inspector, "original," "duplicate," "triplicate."
Two of them will be forwarded by the contractor,
with his accounts, to the Ordnance Department, the
third he will retain for his own security.

The inspector will also furnish the contractor
with an invoice of the arms inspected and approved,
according to the following form, viz :

Invoice of Arms Manufactured by A B, of Pittsfield,
Ms. and Inspected and Approved by C D, U. S.
Inspector of Arms.

<table><thead><tr><th>NOS.</th><th>PACKAGES.</th><th>MARKS.</th><th>CONTENTS.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1 a 25,....</td><td>25 boxes,..</td><td>A. B.<br>20 muskets,..<br>1823.</td><td>500 muskets and bayonets.<br>500 screw drivers.<br>500 wipers.<br>50 ball screws.<br>50 spring vices.<br>500 spare flint caps.</td></tr></tbody></table>

C D,
U. S. Inspector of Arms.

Pittsfield, Ms.
1823.

The invoice will be transmitted by the contrac-
tor, with the arms, to the person who is authorized
to receive them.

## ROTATING BREECH FIRE ARMS—
Samuel Colt, of Hartford, Conn. Patented in England March 3, 1853; I am aware that the many-chambered breech, in repeating fire arms, has been rotated to shift the chambers, and the several chambers in succession held in line with the barrel during the discharge, by means of a driving pin receiving motion from the cock, and working in longitudinal and diagonal grooves made, sometimes, on the outer surface of the said breech, and sometimes on the inner surface of the central bore; and I am also aware that the breech has also been thus operated by the driving pin working in radial and diagonal grooves made on the rear flat face thereof, but when so made, the grooves being formed in a flat surface, and the cock, which imparts motion to the driving pin, working on a fulcrum or central pin, it was necessary either to connect the driver with the cock by a joint pin, or to give the driver, a considerable end play to compensate for the difference between the curvilinear motion which the driver would receive from the cock, if directly attached to it, and the flat surface in which the grooves are formed. These defects I have avoided by making the radial and diagonal grooves in the rear end or face of the rotating breech, which is so concaved that the surface thereof will correspond with the curvilinear motion of the driver vibrating on the axis of the cock. I do not therefore wish to be understood as making claim, broadly, to the method of rotating the breech by a driving pin working in grooves, but to limit my claim to the special improvement which I have made thereon.

I claim making the series of grooves to be acted upon by the driving pin, to rotate and hold the breech in a concavity in the rear end of the rotating breech, substantially as and for the purpose specified.

Upright Rim Store Door Latches.

No. 6, with Pearl furniture,

" 7, " " "

PER DOZ.

$33.00

28.00

Elm City Rim Knob Locks.

No. 214, Brass Bolts and Key,

per dozen,

WITHOUT
FURNITURE.
$7.75

MINERAL
FURNITURE.
$9.50

PEARL JAPANNED
FURNITURE.
$10.25

Builders' Upright Rim Knob Locks.

No. 601, Iron Bolts, Brass Key, 1 Tumbler, . per dozen,

" 604, Brass " and Key, 3 Tumbler, . " "

" 605, " " " with Thumb Bolt, " "

WITHOUT
FURNITURE.
$12.75
20.00
21.00

MINERAL
FURNITURE.
$14.50
21.75
22.75

PEARL JAPANNED
FURNITURE.
$15.25
22.50
23.50

List price for all other goods remain as per list January 1st, 1869.

DISCOUNTS AND TERMS.

Padlocks and Padlock Keys, discount 10 and 7 1-2 per cent. for cash.

All other goods net, 7 1-2 per cent. discount for cash.

When $1500 worth—at list, exclusive of Padlocks—is purchased in one lot, or having been purchased, discount 10 and 7 1-2 per cent. for cash, and the same discount on all subsequent orders until further notice.

Our own prices and terms are guaranteed for the season ending December 1st, 1869.

Parties will be credited for any reductions during that time on the full amount purchased of us.

The inside work and keys of all our locks are made of Wrought and Malleable Iron, and are warranted in all respects.

Any Locks failing by fair usage will be exchanged for others at our expense.

MALLORY, WHEELER & CO.

NEW HAVEN, June 12th, 1869.

ple who could
know, and who in some cases became lo-
cally noted as "Munson's witnesses."

A SKILLED MECHANIC.

Death of a Springfield Armory Man Notable For an Important Discovery.

Thomas Warner, an inventor widely known, died in Springfield, Mass., yester day, in his 92d year. He was instrumental in putting the idea of revolutionizing the gun manufacture in government and other factories into practice many years ago, and by some is accredited with the priority of inventing the interchangeable system of making firearms. He went to learn a millwright's trade, when 14, at North Amherst, and when a young man found work at the Springfield armory, where, in 1830, he was made inspector and, four years later, inspector of the contract system. He was appointed master armorer in 1837, and held the position till 1842, fighting the prejudices of officials and the difficulties of the interchangeable system, until the Springfield armory became famous in the manufacturing of firearms.

Mr. Warner was drawn from Springfield to Whitneyville, Conn., and the well-known arms works at that place, where the new system was gradually put into operation also. In 1848 and 1849 he joined D. B. Wesson of Springfield in executing a contract for the Wesson rifle in Edwin Wesson's rifle factory at Hartford. Finally Mr. Warner sought his fortune in Chicopee Falls, but he failed in several ventures there. His Massachusetts arms company got into difficulties with the Colt company over an infringement, and finally went under. Mr. Warner was engaged for a while in Millbury and at New York, after which he returned to Chicopee Falls. For some years he lived at the Falls, having built a fine residence there, but he returned to Springfield, where he continued to work at his trade until 86 years of age; and his feat of walking from the depot, after a day's work at Chicopee Falls, to his home on Walnut street—at least two miles—was considered a notable one for an octogenarian.

Thomas Warner was among the claimants to the honor of "the interchangeable system of manufacture," which idea spread to all kinds of manufacturing. The Magazine of American History recently published an article by Charles H. Fitch of New Haven, which accorded to Warner the honor of first taking up the interchangeable system.

The funeral takes place to-morrow afternoon at Springfield.

Registrants Forfeited.
The bonds in the fall.

Saturday.
best quality of fresh meats.

J. H. KEARNEY,
Elm City Cash Grocery,
74 and 76 CONGRESS AVE., Corner Hill St.

GUILFORD CLAMS,
LIVE LOBSTERS,
RED SNAPPERS,
STRIPED BASS,
SALMON,
BLUE FISH,
SMELT,
PERCH,
BLACK FISH,
FROST FISH
SCOLLOPS
ROUND CLAMS, &C., &C.

AT
A. FOOTE & CO'S,
353 STATE STREET, 353

RECEIVED EVERY DAY

lue Fish, Spanish Mackere
Soft Crabs.
Fresh Mackerel, Porgies, Halibut and
Bass. Also Live and Boiled Lobsters
at prices that can't be beat, at

A. K. BROWN'S,
OLD NO. 178 GRAND ST. NEW NO. 744

Orders by Telephone.

M. M. GOWER.

Dealer in

Grain and Feed of all kinds

ALSO, FARWELL & RHINE'S
GLUTENFLOUR

Best quality Patent and Family Flour
Oat Meal, Corn Meal, &c.

Choice Teas, Coffees and Spices

316 (New No. 946) GRAND-ST.

Corner of Olive, New Haven, Ct.

Telephone connection.

al ood

Turkeys, Chickens, Ducks,

Goslings, Grouse, Venison, Wild
Turkeys.

Cranberries, Lettuce, Spinach

A FULL LINE OF

THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

DXLIX.*

# THE HISTORY AND MODERN DEVELOPMENT OF THE ART OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION IN MECHANISM.

BY W. F. DURFEE, WEST NEW BRIGHTON, N. Y.

(Member of the Society.)

I AM to speak to you of the history and modern development of the art of interchangeable construction in mechanism.

This subject is so vast that it is impossible to treat it exhaustively in a single paper; nothing short of a copiously illustrated volume can convey an adequate understanding of the long, devious, and weary way traversed by mankind in the journey toward the highest attainable perfection in handiwork, tools, machinery, and their products.

The most that I hope to succeed in doing on this occasion is to excite an interest in the history of the development of mechanical processes and apparatus, by brief notices of the more important inventions which, like mile-stones, mark the various stages of the road along which improvement has journeyed.

The study of the development of the mechanical adaptation of means to ends is as essential to the thorough education of an engineer as a knowledge of biblical history and the *Lives of the Fathers* to a theologian, or an acquaintance with *Cæsar's Commentaries* and *Jomini's Art of War* to a soldier who aspires to command. Study of the laws of success is always assisted by an investigation of the causes of failure. Mechanical progress in the future can receive no more powerful acceleration than that furnished by a thorough knowledge of the laws underlying the successes and failures of past time.

That great Scotch-Englishman, Thomas Carlyle, tells us that "Man is a tool-making animal, weak in himself, and of small stature; he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of

* Presented at the Chicago Meeting (August, 1893) of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and forming part of Volume XIV. of the *Transactions*.

1226 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

some half square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out
his legs lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds,
three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the
meadow tosses him aloft like a waste rag. Nevertheless, he can
make tools, can devise tools; with these the granite mountain
melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron as if
it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire
his unvarying steeds; nowhere do we find him without tools;
without tools he is nothing; with tools, he is all" Let us
examine some of the work of this tool-devising and tool-using
animal, and note his exercise of the creative power with which
he has been endowed, in the invention of tools and processes
that enable the artisans of our day to produce those marvels of
interchangeable mechanism which are the crowning glory of
human skill in these closing years of the nineteenth cen-
tury.

In looking backward through the long perspective of the
receding centuries for the first indication of an appreciation by
man of the advantages of interchangeable construction, we rec-
ognize in the hands of the pioneers of the race, as they emerge
from that "great deep" which, "without form and void," lies
beyond the limits of authentic history, weapons and tools that
possess the elements of interchangeability in as high a degree
of development, relative to the knowledge of the times, as the
most refined illustration of the art in our own day.

The bow of the primeval man had a sinewy string that would
fit any other bow; his arrows were adapted to any bow-string,
his paddle could be used in any canoe; the head of his spear
would fit any shaft, and his uncouth hammer of stone, from the
great interchangeable manufactory of nature, would drive a tent
peg into the earth, or a skull into fragments.

There is nothing improbable in the supposition that all the
primitive arts originated in man's necessities; and that a very
general diffusion of a successful practice of those first essential
processes was not only the explanation of their preservation,
but was the creator of wants more or less artificial, to satisfy
which, other arts were devised, which in their turn led the way to
more complex needs—one satisfied want creating an unsatisfied
desire, which inventive genius gratified.

Thus, step by step, through long ages past, mankind has
progressed.

THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION. 1227

This slow engrafting of the artificial upon the natural man
has been noticed by many ancient writers. Virgil says :

> "Jove willed that man, by long experience taught,
> Should various arts invent by gradual thought."

Those who undertake to trace backward the development of
civilization cannot fail to note that all the more important
inventions and discoveries have had, as a rule, more than one
claimant. This rule has so frequently asserted itself, that it
seems to justify the belief that when, in the fulness of time, the
world had become prepared for a decisive advance in the sci-
ences or the arts, an overruling power indicated simultaneously
to minds separated, oftentimes by continents and oceans, some
way to satisfy the growing needs of mankind.

Those whose prophetic minds are caused to see clearly not
only the scope of a pressing need, but also the means of satis-
fying it, we call discoverers and inventors; and such are
deserving of honor and reward commensurate to the value of
their services in the cause of human progress. But, unfortu-
nately, they have too often been defrauded of a just recognition,
and some paltry pilferer has been allowed to appropriate a rec-
ompense to which he had no righteous claim. A conspicuous
instance of honor bestowed upon the undeserving is furnished
by the name of the western world. Emerson tells us that
Amerigo Vespucci was a "pickle-dealer at Seville, who went out
in 1499, a subaltern with Hojeda, and whose highest naval rank
was boatswain's mate in an expedition that never sailed,
and who managed in this lying world to supplant Columbus and
baptize half the earth with his own dishonest name."

Names long established in geography and politics are not
readily interchangeable, but were it otherwise, one of the just
results of this grand gathering of the nations on the soil of the
continent discovered by Columbus would be the substitution of
his name in all coming time for that of the "pickle-dealer of
Seville."

The term "interchangeable," as applied to mechanism,
implies an ability to make a machine and all its component
details exactly like a model; and it is obvious, in the making
of a multitude of examples of a specific machine, if the sev-
eral details are made exactly like those of the model, that
any one of these details can take its appropriate place and

1228 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

perform perfectly its allotted functions in any one of the ma-
chines.

In decorative art, what is sought is a systematic and pleasing
adaptation of ornamental variety to the requirements of a par-
ticular object or situation, and uniformity of detail is generally
a sacrifice of artistic effect; but in the design of mechanism,
true art consists in the fitness of all its parts for their intended
structural and functional purposes; and in the duplication of
machines conspicuous uniformity never advertises the poverty
of art, but rather furnishes, by a satisfying sense of the "eternal
fitness of things" mechanical, a material realization of true
beauty, which has been defined as "the completeness of the
whole, and the perfection of the parts." *

The more prevalent modern idea of the interchangeable in
mechanism supposes a super-refinement of accuracy of outline
and general proportions that is not always necessary or even
desirable. It would be a criminal waste of time and substance
to fit a harrow tooth with mathematical accuracy, but yet any
harrow tooth should have a practical interchangeable relation to
all harrows for which it is designed. The instructive rewards
of folly would certainly overtake him who should attempt to
make ploughshares and coulters with radical exactness; never-
theless, these essential parts of ploughs should be interchange-
able among all ploughs to which they are adapted.

It is fortunate that there is a recognized practical roughness
of interchangeability, and that the refinements of agriculture
have not in our day reached the point that that great captain of
romance, Lemuel Gulliver, tells us had been attained in the won-
derful kingdom of Laputa, which he claimed to have discovered.
This allusion to the common practice of our time, of making the
parts of agricultural implements and mechanism roughly inter-
changeable, naturally calls to mind the earliest method of mak-
ing the metallic parts of implements and apparatus in like
manner—the art of casting. This art has come down to us from
a period of which history is ignorant, and from a people whose
foot-prints have been obliterated by the dust and débris of
uncountable centuries. We shall never know who made the
first crude casting, or the circumstances attending its produc-
tion. In that rude period, doubtless—

* 'True beauty consists in the completeness of the whole, and the perfection of the parts.'—Rev. Theodore Parker.

THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION. 1229

“Th’ invention all admir’d, and each how he
To be th’ inventor miss’d; so easy it seem’d,
Once found, which yet unfound most would have thought
Impossible!”

Few if any of the arts have had more potent influence upon
the progress of humanity on its long journey from primitive
barbarism to what each succeeding age, even to our own day,
has complacently described as “modern civilization.” Whoever
the discoverer of this art was, whether the Vulcan of mythology
or Tubal Cain of the Scriptures, he is deserving of most honor-
able recognition; and if present civilization was disposed to be
as just to its creators as that of ancient Greece, it would imitate
its altars “to the unknown god,” by the erection of a monument
of no mean proportion to the unknown inventors who by their
discoveries laid broad and deep the foundations of the arts of
our time.

It is not germane to our purpose to dilate upon what has
been accomplished by the art of casting among ancient peoples;
examples of castings in brass and bronze, designed both for
ornament and utility, abound in the museums of the world. But
perhaps it may not be without interest to call your attention to
an evidence of the antiquity of castings of iron, that has not
hitherto received much attention. It is well known that the
heads of the battering-machines used in ancient warfare were
sometimes made of iron, and were shaped like the head of a
ram; from this fact, and the suggestion of its movement when
in action, these machines were called battering-rams. The
heads of these machines were exposed to a terribly destruc-
tive impact when in use, and therefore it is justifiable to sup-
pose that they would have been made of a material easily
shaped and from which duplicate heads could quickly be sup-
plied. Forged iron does not fulfil these conditions, being diffi-
cult to obtain in large masses at the time, and it is absurd to
suppose that the ancients would have expended the time and
labor necessary to carve a lump of wrought-iron in the elabo-
rate, realistic way indicated by all the representations of batter-
ing-rams shown on ancient monuments. As it is certain that these
rams’ heads were often made of iron, it appears to be more than
probable that some tough variety of cast-iron was used, in which
case a new head could readily take the place of a broken one, and
the business of the siege go on without serious interruption.

1230 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

Another evidence of the appreciation of the value of inter-
changeability of similar parts, in ancient weapons of the heavier
sort, is found in the gearing for twisting the funicular springs of
catapults. This gearing is described by Rollin * as being made
of cast brass or iron, but the Chevalier Folard † states that it
was made of cast-iron.

The origin of the catapult is uncertain, but it is believed to
have been used by Nebuchadnezzar at the sieges of Jerusalem
and of Tyre (586, 588 B.C.). Thus early did the military engi-
eers perceive the advantages of interchangeability among the
more important similar metallic parts of machines of war; and
thus early does cast-iron appear as a material from which some
of these parts were constructed.

Neglecting minor examples of the interchangeability of parts
produced by the art of casting, we come to the making of mov-
able types. This art is without doubt the most important
exemplification of the grand results that have sprung from
the original discovery that metals could be given any desired
form by melting and pouring them into appropriate moulds.
The printer's art rests firmly and solidly upon the art of cast-
ing; for the experience and skill of man for the past four hun-
dred and fifty years has utterly failed to find a satisfactory sub-
stitute for the art of casting by which to produce with requisite
economy and precision the interchangeable type, whose inven-
tion marks distinctly the beginning of a new era in the life of
man upon the earth. As soon as movable types were invented,
it became evident that extreme accuracy was essential in their
production; in each variety of character in a font, all types of
the same letter must be alike both in face and body, and the
bodies of all the types must be so related to each other, and to
the "quads" and "spaces," that a given length of line can be
perfectly filled. In the history of mechanical development noth-
ing possible of attainment by ingenuity and handiwork has ever
been asked of the artisans of the world, that they did not imme-
diately supply; so this demand for a precision of execution un-
heard of before was met by workmen whose skill was quite
equal, if not superior, to any of our time.

Some recent careful examinations and measurements of repe-

* *The History of the Arts and Sciences of the Ancients.* By Mr. Rollin. 3 vols.
London, 1768.

† *Histoire de Polybe*, Amsterdam, 1729.

THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION. 1231

titions of the same word in black-letter volumes about four cen-
turies old, prove the correctness of the statement just made, for
the agreement is quite as close as noted in modern publications.
In estimating the skill of the original type-founders, we must
not fail to remember that they were destitute of all those tools
which are considered essential by modern skilled workmen for
the production of accurate work in metal.

Lathes were crude and sporadic.

The "planing machine" was three hundred years in the
future, and the "shaping machine" fifty years more remote.

The "micrometer" was one hundred and eighty years ahead
of them.

The "milling machine" was far below their horizon of time.

The "black-lead pencil" had not been invented, and the Eng-
lish unit of measurement was a "barley-corn."

Besides the art of casting, their dependence for the execution
of good work (such as that required on the moulds for type) was
on hammers, chisels, files, gravers, scrapers, grinding, the bow-
drill, and burnishers; these were the tools which skilful hands
and keen eyes used in those days in the working of metals.

While the originators and early practitioners of the art of
printing were successful in casting (the early printers were also
type-founders) types that would interchange among those of the
same founder, the types made by different founders would not
interchange with each other; and it is to the credit of American
artisans that they have perfected a system of manufacture by
which it is quite possible to "make up" a "form of type" as
large as the side of an ordinary newspaper, and, notwithstanding
the fact of the types having come from half a dozen foundries,
there will not a type leave its place when the form is held hori-
zontally by its "chase."

In recent years the art of casting type has been combined
with the art of "composing" or assembling them into words and
sentences. By means of exquisite mechanism actuated by
power and controlled by keys properly fingered by the composi-
tor, certain letter matrices are arranged in exact order at the
bottom of a mould. Whenever a sufficient number of such
matrices are assembled to form a line of predetermined length,
melted type-metal is forced into the mould, and as soon as it
solidifies, the solid line of type (hence the name, Linotype, of
the apparatus) is thrown out of the machine. This machine is

1232 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

a splendid example of the modern system of interchangeable construction, and for accuracy of workmanship and the perfect adaptation of means to ends, as well as for its rapidity of operation, it deserves to take rank among the wonders of human ingenuity.

The art of stereotyping is only an amplification of the art of casting single type; and to such perfection has the art attained in some of the larger newspaper offices that it is not unusual to make a papier-maché mould from the flat form of type, curve this mould to a proper radius, cast the stereotype from the mould, secure it to the cylinder of the fast press, and have the newsboys crying the nth edition of the *Heraldic Tribune and Cosmopolitan Sun* within twenty minutes after the arrival of the "form" in the stereotype room of the printing-office.

For the invention of the art of printing the world is indebted to Germany; and if that great nation,

> "Renowned for arts and arms,
> For manly talent and for female charms,"

had never made any other contribution to the commonwealth of knowledge, it would still be entitled to the grateful homage of mankind throughout the ages yet to be. So noble an art as that of printing deserves the best that thought of brain and skill of hand can give. It has made the possibility and potentiality of knowledge the common heritage of all lands and peoples, and constituted itself the integrator and conservator of the science of the whole world. Nations may rise or fall, dynasties may perish; but so long as man dominates the earth, the art of printing will be the educator of the succeeding generations, and will hand down from father to son, even unto the end of time, the ever accumulating wisdom of the rolling years.

For more than a century after the invention of printing, very little progress was made in mechanical invention. Feebly and with uncertain grasp the intellectual powers of man contended with the physical forces of nature; and all the world seemed to be awaiting the coming of some dominant genius like that of the great Sir Francis Bacon, through whom came such revelations of the force and scope of inductive reasoning as changed the currents of civilized thought, and conferred new powers and possibilities upon the mind of man.

From the time of Lord Bacon, human intelligence seemed to

arouse itself from the torpor of past ages, and to assert, by manifestations of a latent ingenuity, with an ever growing confidence, its creative power and supremacy over material things. This growing belief in the vast possibilities of the future, respecting discoveries in science and inventions in art, was quaintly expressed by Sir Hugh Platt, who, writing in 1595,* says "that it is time, and high time, to let the world and all posterity to understand, that if our English artist (whereof sundrie in my knowledge are of such rare and singular conceipt, as they are, yea, and would also be found willing, if the stipend of honor and merit were now propounded, fully to discover a world of new inventions) . . .

"They would bring forth so many, so rich, and so inestimable buds and blossoms of skill, as neither any civil policy that hath been hitherto shut up in printed books, nor any religious charity that hath been so often and so divinely sounded in at our deaf ears, could yet produce or show any comparable effects unto them." After briefly specifying a dozen inventions, for each of which large claims are made, Sir Hugh says: "I have always found it in mine own experience, an easier matter to devise many and very profitable inventions, than to dispose of one of them to the good of the author himself." In which conclusion, probably, most modern inventors will agree.

Among the first elements of mechanism to be made interchangeable by means of machine tools was the toothed gear wheel. An appreciation of the advantages of accuracy in the form of its teeth, and uniformity in their spacing, was first decisively manifested by makers of clocks and watches.

A general idea of a wheel dividing and cutting machine was suggested by Dr. Hook in the latter part of the seventeenth century, but the first tool of the kind actually used is believed to have been made in France, and to have been similar to one described in Bion's work on mathematical instruments, published in 1702. The French were very much in advance of other nations in the invention of tools and apparatus for the making of clocks and watches. In a work published in Paris in 1741† there are detailed engravings of three gear-cutting engines, two of which

* A discoverie of certaine English wants which are royally supplied in this treatise. By H. Platt of Lincoln's Inn, Esquire. Printed at London by P. S. for William Ponsonby, 1595.

† *Traité de l'Horlogerie mécanique et pratique.* Par Thiout. Paris, 1741.

78

1234 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

have perforated dial plates, and the third a worm wheel and screw, for regulating the spacing of the teeth in the wheel being cut. The method of originating the divisions in the plates of these French machines is not described, but about the same period, Henry Hindley (the inventor of the "hour-glass worm"), a clock- and watchmaker of York, England, constructed a machine for cutting gears which had a perforated dial plate. In a letter to John Smeaton (dated November 14, 1748, he explains the method of dividing the plate of this machine. This method involved the employment of a mechanical device which, in the language of the workshops, we would now call a "jig" (see Tomlinson's *Cyclopedia*, article "Graduation"); and Hindley is believed to have made the first record of the use of such a tool.*

*Hindley's method of dividing was an original and highly ingenious method of "stepping." It is described as follows in a letter which he addressed to Smeaton on November 14, 1748, and as he entrusted it as a secret to Smeaton, it was not published until 1786. Hindley says: "First choose the largest number you want, and then choose a long plate of thin brass :—mine was about 1 inch in breadth and 8 feet in length, which I bent like a hoop for a hogshead, and soldered the ends together, and turned it of equal thickness upon a block of smooth-grained wood, upon my great lathe, in the air, (that is, upon the end of the mandrel) :—one side of the hoop must be rather wider than the other, that it may fit the better to the block, which will be a short piece of a cone of large diameter :—when the hoop was turned I took it off, cut and opened it straight again. The next step was to have a piece of steel bent into the form as per margin, [Fig. 419] which had two small holes bored in it of equal bigness, one to receive a small pin, and the other a drill of equal size. I ground the holes after they were hardened, to make them round and smooth. The chaps formed by this steel plate were as near together as just to let the long plate through. Being open at one end, the chaps so formed would spring a little, and would press the long plate close by setting in the vice. Then I put the long plate to a right angle to the length of the steel chaps, and bored one hole through the long plate, into which I put the small pin; then bored through the other hole; and by moving the steel chaps a hole forward, and putting in the pin in the last hole, I proceeded till I had divided the whole length of the plate. The next thing was to make this into a circle again. After the plate was cut off at the end of the intended number, I then proceeded to join the ends, which I did thus: I bored two narrow short brass plates as I did the long one, and put one on the inside and the other on the outside of the hoop, whose ends were brought together; and put 2 or 3 turned screw-pins, with flat heads and nuts to them, into each end, which held them together till I riveted two little plates, one on each side of the narrow plate, on the outside of the hoop. Then I took out the screws, and turned my block down till the hoop would fit close on; and by that means my right line was made into an equal divided circle of what number I pleased. The engine-plate

FIG. 419.

THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION. 1235

In the year 1783 an English mechanician by the name of Rehé made a gear-cutting machine having a dial plate nineteen inches in diameter. Some of the cutters used in this machine were made of solid steel, and others had steel teeth inserted in a hub. The teeth of the cutters were shaped to give the proper profile to the teeth of the wheel being cut, and their general form is very suggestive of certain popular cutters used at the present time. As showing the estimation in which good machinery was held in England at the close of the eighteenth century, the fact that this machine was sold, after the death of Mr. Rehé, for the sum of £700 may be of interest. As a companion to his gear-cutting machine Mr. Rehé made a special machine for grinding and shaping its cutters. The work was done by revolving disks and cylinders of copper, fed with emery and oil. This cutter grinder is believed to have been the first of a race whose various representatives in our day are regarded as indispensable aids to the production of accurate interchangeable work.

In the year 1775 Jesse Ramsden completed in London the most ingenious and perfect piece of mechanism that, up to that date, had been produced for accurate reduplication—his dividing engine, by which circles within its capacity could be divided into any desired number of equal parts. This machine immediately occasioned important changes in the construction of nautical instruments, and furnished the means for increasing the accuracy of the perforated dial plates of wheel-cutting machines; in fact, the plate of Rehé's machine, already mentioned, was divided upon Ramsden's engine. Although in the best modern dividing engines an automatic feature has been incorporated, they in the general principles of their construction are but copies of the invention of Ramsden, which conferred new powers upon science, and a greater refinement of skill upon the fingers of art.

The facility with which the cutters used in the various early gear-cutting machines removed the metal in front of them when in operation, naturally suggested the employment of similar

was fixed on the face of the block, with a steel hole fixed before it, to bore through; and I had a point that would fall into the holes of the divided hoop; so by cutting shorter, and turning the block less, I got all the numbers on my plate. I need not tell you that you get as many prime numbers as you please; nor that the distance of the holes in the steel chaps must be proportioned to the length of the hoop."

1236 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

cutters for finishing flat surfaces, and the irregular outlines of a
large variety of shapes in metal; but the progress of the idea
was exceedingly slow, and in its development for general
purposes, mechanicians failed to study carefully the behavior
of the cutters of that parent of all milling machines—the gear-
cutting engine. This lack of careful reasoning from one use to
another resulted in the fact that milling cutters, until very
recent years, have been run utterly wrong with a degree of pre-
cision most wonderful in its results, but which is not especially
creditable to the powers of observation and analysis of those
responsible for doing so right a thing in so wrong a way. A
boy whittling a stick should have been a good object lesson in
this connection. The first milling machine for shaping the
surface of metal of which we have any account is illustrated in
the French encyclopedia whose publication was completed in
1772. This machine was designed for finishing the exterior of
musket barrels, and if properly managed it could not fail to
make every barrel of precisely the same shape. Milling
machines were designed and used by Eli Whitney for use in
manufacturing muskets in the early years of the century, and
James Nasmyth introduced the use of milling cutters (rotary
files, they were then called) into England in 1829 for finishing
hexagonal nuts, and later extended their use to other work. In
America the milling machine in its various forms and adapta-
tions, as manufactured by the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing
Co., the Brainard Milling Machine Co., the Pratt & Whitney
Manufacturing Co., and many other makers of repute, executes
a large proportion of the interchangeable work made. In the
manufacture of fire-arms about 40% of the machine tools used
are some form of milling machines. Of one well-known and
approved type of milling machine, known as the "Lincoln
Miller" (originally designed by Mr. F. A. Pratt), it is believed
that at least 150,000, or substantial copies thereof, have been
sold within the past thirty years.

Although in America the milling machine is perhaps more
generally used than in any other country for small work, yet we
have been very slow to recognize its great value for the larger
purposes for which it has been successfully employed abroad.

Forty-five years ago there was built in England a milling
machine for cutting out of the solid metal and finishing at one
operation the inside cranks of locomotives. This machine had a

cutting disk 51 inches in diameter, armed with inserted cutters
moving at a circumferential speed of 28 feet per minute, with a
forward feed of 3¼ inches per hour. The width of the cut was 4
inches, its thickness 11 inches, and its length, exclusive of the
crank pin, 15 inches. After the throat of the crank was cut out,
the forward feed was stopped, and the shaft then given a rotation
about the centre of the crank pin, and the whole operation of
cutting out the throat and finishing the pin was completed in
9½ hours. Notwithstanding the hints furnished (certainly as
early as the year 1702) by the use of circular revolving cutters for
the purposes named, the mechanicians of the eighteenth century
were many weary years in discovering that the same general
ideas so successfully used in metal cutting could be made avail-
able in machinery for the working of wood; and it was not until
the year 1777, seventy-five years after the first edition of Mr.
Bion's work was published in France, and fifty-four years after
it had been translated into English,* that the first patent for
the construction of circular saws for wood working was issued.
This patent was granted to Samuel Miller, of Southampton,
England, on August 5, 1777. Among all the workers in wood
at that time there appears to have been no one able to
transform the revolving cutter—that had been so long used
for cutting metal—into the circular saw for the working of
wood; and it was reserved for this Miller, a sailmaker, who by
no conceivable accident ever used a saw of any kind in his
handicraft, to invent what may fairly be regarded as the founda-
tion of all the various rotary devices used in the manufacture of
interchangeable articles of wood. In the year 1794 Sir Samuel
Bentham, in association with his brother, the famous political
economist Jeremy Bentham, established at Queen's Square Place,
Westminster, the first manufactory of machines for the working
of wood. These premises being soon found too small, No. 19
York Street was also occupied. The extent of the buildings
justifies the inference that a large business was carried on. We
are told by Professor Willis, in an address before the Society of
Arts in 1852, that "there were constructed machines for all gen-
eral operations in woodwork; including ploughing, moulding,
rabbeting, grooving, mortising, and sawing, both in coarse and

* The Construction and Principal Uses of Mathematical Instruments. Trans-
lated from the French of M. Bion, chief instrument maker to the French King,
etc., by Edmund Stone. London, 1723.

1238 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

fine work, in curved, winding, and transverse directions, shaping wood in complicated forms, and that further, as an example, all parts of a highly finished window-sash were prepared, also all the parts of an ornamental carriage wheel were made, so that *nothing required to be done by hand but to put the component parts together.*" In 1797 the British Admiralty consented to the introduction of Sir Samuel Bentham's wood-working machinery into the dockyards at Portsmouth and Plymouth. This machinery was made under the direction of Jeremy Bentham at the factory before named. That the machinery made by Jeremy Bentham was thoroughly effective, was amply proved by evidence before a government commission which awarded him £23,000 for the right to use it in the prisons and dockyards of the kingdom.

The machines for the shaping of wood that were invented by Sir Samuel Bentham, and carried into practice before the beginning of the present century, were very numerous and important; among them we find an improved rotary planing and moulding machine, a segmental circular saw, conical cutters for dovetailing, an undulating carriage for producing wave mouldings, cutter heads for working two or more sides at once, tubular boring tools, cylinder saws (these, however, had been known as surgical instruments in the time of Hippocrates, 340 years B.C.), reciprocating and rotary mortising machines, bevel and curvilinear saws, rotary cutters for forming screw-threads on wooden screws, and a large variety of other machinery for wood-working. In the year 1799 Sir Samuel Bentham recommended the adoption of the plans of Mark Isambard Brunel for the manufacture of ship blocks by machinery. The Admiralty authorized the construction of the machines, which were completed in 1806; and so efficient was their operation that the first year's saving was computed at £24,000, two-thirds of which was awarded to Brunel for the right to use his ingenious inventions.

It has long been a popular belief that most if not all of the ideas involved in the construction of machinery for the manufacture of interchangeable constructions of wood originated in America; but in view of the remarkable achievements of the Benthams and Brunel, that opinion cannot be successfully defended, and we must take off our hats in acknowledgment of their great originality, and content ourselves with asserting

THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION. 1239

that we have done mighty work in developing the ideas we have
inherited, and that America is the largest employer of wood-
working machinery among the nations.

The "Lathe" may safely be accounted the oldest of machine
tools. Save that of the husbandman, the tailor, and the art of
lying, there is no art older than that of turning; for we are told
that Adam and Eve were turned out of Eden, and the first turn-
ing tool ever mentioned in history is the flaming sword of the
sentinel cherubim, which "turned every way."

It is certain that the potter's wheel, doubtless the parent of
all lathes, has been known from the earliest times. Potsherds
are mentioned in the Book of Job, and no ruins are so ancient
that fragments of the work of the potter are not found therein.
The transition from a rotation about a vertical axis to revolu-
tion about a horizontal axis, and from shaping a soft mass of
clay, with the fingers for turning tools, to the shaping of wood
with a tool of iron or steel, seems to us at this day to be very
simple and easy; but, judging from the exceedingly slow prog-
ress of the development of the art of wood-turning after its
discovery, it is pretty safe to assume that several hundred years
elapsed after the invention of the potter's wheel before anything
like the rudest form of the wood-working lathe became known.

Diodorus Siculus attributes its invention to a nephew of Dæda-
lus, named Talus, about 1240 B. C., but Pliny states that it was
first used by Theodore of Samos about 740 B.C., and mentions
one Thericles, who rendered himself famous by his dexterity
therewith. The ancients employed it for turning a large variety
of forms of vases, some of which they enriched with carvings.
Centuries afterward, mankind began to perceive that the idea
buried in the rotating mud of the potter's wheel could be still
further expanded and made useful for the shaping of metals,
and at this point in its history the lathe begins to assume import-
ance as a contributor to the art of interchangeable construction.

In 1578 Jacob Bessoni published * at Lyons a remarkable
folio containing sixty full page copper-plate illustrations of a
variety of instruments and machines, among which are three
engravings of lathes.

One of these contains a suggestion of a guide bar with a ser-

* Tractarum Instrumentorum Jacobi Bessoni Delphinatis, Mathematici in-
geniosissime. Lugduni, Apud Barth Vincentini. Cum privilegio Regis MDLXX-
VIII.

1240 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

pentine groove, and various holes designed to direct and assist in controlling the peculiar hand tool employed. This clumsy machine tool gives us a hint—somewhat feeble, it is true, but still a reminder—that there was a feeling among the mechanicians of that day that some machinery for turning irregular forms was desired, and that they had begun to grope around in the dark realm of studious thought, that vast empire of mechanical possibilities from whence have come to light and life all past inventions, in the hope of discovering some means to satisfy that desire. Another of the plates in Bessoni's work furnishes the first published suggestion for a screw-cutting lathe provided with a guide screw, and the beginning of a slide rest, in means to solidly hold the cutting tool, while the screw being cut was moved longitudinally as it revolved in contact with it. The guide screw, and in fact the whole structure of this lathe, is a crystallization of the uncouth, both in idea and in execution; but, nevertheless, it affords conclusive proof that there was a slowly developing demand for more exact work than had hitherto been possible, and that inventors were endeavoring to satisfy that demand.

The lathes described by Bessoni were all "dead centre" lathes, and the work did not have a continuous rotation, but was alternately revolved by a cord, in a manner similar to a bow drill. This feature seems to have been common to all lathes prior to Bessoni's time. It seems strange that the economy of time and the other advantages of a continuous rotation, as exemplified in the "potter's wheel," were not regarded by the makers of the early lathes.

The royal license and protection granted to Bessoni by Charles IX., of France, for the publication of his invention, was really a royal patent for all the machines described, and therefore Bessoni's book may properly be regarded as the drawings and specifications of this early patent, which, if not the first, is certainly more comprehensive in its scope than any other ever granted to an inventor of machinery.

The license of the king is such a curiosity of brevity and emphasis that it is quite justifiable to quote it entire:

> "THE LICENSE OF THE KING.

> "By full and special license of the King given to Master Jacques Bessoni, author of this present work, for ten years in the near future, dating from the

THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION. 1241

day when the work is finished by the printer; all persons of whatever rank or
condition, they may be, are prohibited to make, counterfeit, engrave, sell or to
consent thereto, even to the drawings for manufacturing, the inventions con-
tained in the present work, without the permission of its author. Upon the
penalties contained and specified by said license. Given at Orleans in the year
One thousand, five hundred sixty-nine, on the twenty-seventh day of June.

"By the King in Council.

(Signed)

"BRULLART."

It may aid the comprehension of the relations of this work of Bessoni to the science of the time, to know that when the above license was granted Copernicus had been dead but twenty-five years. Tycho Brahe was but twenty-three years old; Galileo was in his fifth year; Elizabeth had reigned but ten years in England, and the Pilgrims were not to effect a landing on the "stern and rock-bound coast" of New England until fifty-one years thereafter. Among all the improvements which have combined to make the lathe in its various forms the most important of machine tools for promoting the art of interchangeable construction, the device known as the slide rest is most conspicuous. Like most important inventions, this has more than one claimant.

It is a commonly expressed opinion by writers that the slide rest was invented by Sir Samuel Bentham, as it is clearly described in his patent of 1793; and there is no doubt whatever but that Henry Maudslay made a tool of that kind while in the employ of Joseph Bramah in 1794, which was named by his shopmates "Maudslay's go-cart." Joseph Clement is also deserving of great credit as an improver of the slide rest, in the early part of the present century; but it is certain that the evidence, relative to the ideas embodied in the slide rest, amply justifies the assignment of its origin to France, not only in virtue of the suggestion contained in Bessoni's work already referred to, but more particularly in view of the fact that in the great encyclopedia of Diderot there is an elaborate engraving of a "slide rest" which anticipates anything of the kind claimed to have been made in England by at least twenty years.

The first lathe for cutting metallic screws was devised by some French watchmaker,* early in the last century, for cutting the thread on the fusees of watches. The lathe used is remark-

* *Traité de l'Horlogerie mécanique et pratique.* Par Thiout. Paris, 1741. There are several fusee lathes described in this work; these tools were in use several years before the work was published.—W. F. D.

1242 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

able for a taper attachment quite similar in its idea and functions to that used in modern tools.

The next step in the direction of the modern screw-cutting lathe was made in 1775 by Jesse Ramsden, who constructed a small lathe for cutting the "endless screw" or "worm" of his "dividing engine." This lathe had "change wheels" and a tool holder on a slide moved by a "lead screw."

In the year 1816, Richard Roberts, of Manchester, invented the modern form of screw-cutting lathe, and in 1830 a Mr. Parsson, of London, invented the swivelling tool post, and in 1831 was awarded the silver medal of the Society of Arts for his ingenuity. Prior to 1828 Joseph Clement invented a surfacing lathe, in which the speed was automatically reduced and the feed automatically regulated as the tool travelled from the centre to the circumference of the work being faced. This lathe was a "gap lathe;" it had flat surfaces for the top of its bed, conical bearings for its main spindle, whose end shake was taken by a pivot set-screw in an oil-tight box, and was provided with a two-speed cone pulley, and a slow speed equivalent to modern "back gear" which could be thrown out at pleasure. It also had a compound "slide rest."

The invention of the "apron" on the front of the "tool carriage," and the idea of attaching the various feed-controlling mechanisms thereto, is believed to have originated with Baxter D. Whitney, of Winchendon, Mass., the well-known inventor of the "gauge lathe," who also devised the first "universal swiveling bearing" for line shafting.

The form of lathe known as the "turret lathe," which has occupied a very important relation to the manufacture of interchangeable mechanisms during the past thirty years, is believed to be of American origin, although no record of any patent can be found, and no one appears to know who designed the first tool of that kind.

So far as ascertained, it seems to have been first made to meet some special emergency, and to have been copied, with more or less variation, from shop to shop, until at last the Robins & Lawrence Co., of Windsor, Vt., at the request of F. W. Howe, made the first machines that were regularly made for sale. Some of these machines were put at work in the factory of the Savage Fire-arms Co. about 1860, and one of the first lot made was purchased by the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Co., of

THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION. 1243

Providence, R. I., and soon after they commenced to make this tool for the market, and were followed by the Pratt & Whitney Co., of Hartford, Conn. The successors of the Robins & Lawrence Co., the Jones & Lamson Machine Co., of Springfield, Vt., and the other eminent firms named, have doubtless built a large majority of the turret lathes thus far sold. This tool has commended itself to all makers of interchangeable mechanism for a large variety of work, and for the special service of manufacturing machine screws it has been made automatic by Sharpe, of Hartford, Conn., and as its capabilities are carefully studied its field of usefulness continues to expand.

Lathes for ornamental turning and the decoration of wood, ivory, and metal, doubtless originated in France. In Bessoni's work (1578) already referred to, there are two "swash lathes" shown, for turning a variety of intoxicated vases and balusters, which were in that day doubtless regarded as ornamental.

A modification of the lathe which has had a very important influence upon the production of interchangeable work is that known as "the Blanchard lathe." This celebrated tool was patented by Thomas Blanchard, January 20, 1820, and his patent was twice renewed, by special act of Congress, for terms of fourteen years, the last renewal being dated January 20, 1848.

If we are to believe all that has been written in commendation of this machine tool, we shall certainly conclude that Blanchard's invention was an original conception, and that it is American genius and inventive talent that the world must thank for an idea that conferred upon mechanism automatic imitative powers that were wholly unknown before. We have not time to discuss all of the evidence of the erroneous character of this view, but we will note a few of its more conspicuous features. As early as 1772, sixteen years before Blanchard was born, we find in the great French encyclopedia an engraving of machinery for turning irregular forms, in which there is a roller operating against a revolving pattern, and controlling the movement of the tool in such a way as to produce on the substance being turned a copy of the outlines of the pattern. In Bourgeron's *L'Art de Tourneur*, published in 1816, we are shown methods of reproducing medallion portraits by automatic machinery, and it is well known that in the latter years of the life of James Watt (died in 1819) he successfully duplicated busts by mechanism of his contriving. In the famous block machinery of Brunel, which

1244 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

was put in operation in 1806, a revolving cutter was regulated in
its action by a profile plate.

Although the invention of Blanchard was not in its chief ele-
ments entirely original, nevertheless the combination was suf-
ficiently novel and useful to entitle it to high rank among the
more important improvements that have contributed to the
perfecting of the art of interchangeable construction.

Grinding machines for the production of flat and cylindrical
surfaces by the action of emery or corundum wheels had their
origin in America, and have largely augmented the possibility of
cheaply producing accurate work in metal. The grinding lathe
as perfected by J. Morton Pool in 1868 is believed to have been
the first apparatus by which long cylindrical rolls could be given,
automatically and at once, an accurate surface and uniform
diameter. So delicate is the action of the very simple mechan-
ism employed, that a uniform reduction of diameter of $\frac{1}{80000}$ of
an inch is quite within its powers. The invention and suc-
cessful operation of this admirable tool has made possible the
manufacture of widths of paper unknown and unattainable
before.

The success, and possibility even, of the various grinding
lathes and similar machine tools that have been developed in
the past twenty years is due to a very simple American inven-
tion—the solid emery or corundum wheel—which has ground its
way into recognition and universal employment in all the
machine shops of the world.

The modification of the lathe known as the boring machine
probably originated in Germany, for in a work published in
Nuremberg, 1662,* there is an engraving of a duplex boring
mill, operating upon two musket barrels at the same time; and
in a treatise on artillery, published in France in 1647,† there is
a vignette in which a cannon is shown as being bored by a ver-
tical bar.

About the middle of the last century cannon and pump
cylinders, also cylinders for Newcomen engines, were bored
horizontally in rude boring mills at Carron Iron-works in Scot-
land, and in 1769 that celebrated engineer, John Smeaton, de-
signed new boring machinery for these works. It does not ap-

* *Tractarum Machinarum novum et cet.* Per Georgius Andream Bocklerum. 1662.

† *Memoires d'Artillerie.* Par le Sr. Surirey de Saint Remy.

pear that this machinery was perfectly satisfactory, as in a pro-
posal from Boulton & Watt to the Carron Iron Co., in 1776, for
the construction of an engine to return the water to their water-
wheels, Mr. Boulton says: "Mr. Wilkinson has bored us several
cylinders almost without error; that of fifty inches diameter,
which we have put up at Tipton, does not err the thickness of
an old shilling in any part, so you must either improve your
method of boring, or we must furnish the cylinders to you."
"The thickness of an old shilling" seems to have been regarded
as a very satisfactory standard of permissible error in such
work one hundred years ago.* The Mr. Wilkinson spoken of
by Mr. Boulton was John Wilkinson, of Bersham, near Chester,
who had invented improvements in boring machinery in 1775.
He it was who first moved a cutter head along a boring bar, sup-
ported at each end; and, simple as this idea now seems, it
was not perceived by such acute men as Smeaton and Boulton
and Watt.

The first planing machine of which we have any account is
said by Rennie (Buchanan on Mill-work) to have been invented
by Nicholas Torq, a French clockmaker, in 1751, and to have
been actually used in planing the interior of the wrought-iron
pump barrels used in the machine erected by order of Louis
XVI. for the supply of the water-works at Versailles.

We are told that the pumps varied in size from 10 inches to
4 feet in diameter, and were from 7 to 10 feet in length; made
of wrought-iron staves, planed on their edges before they were

* The first account of cylinder boring in America is of the boring of the cylinder for the engine erected at the Centre Square pumping station in Philadelphia, which commenced supplying that city with water on January 27, 1801.

This engine was built by Nicholas Rosevelt, at Soho Works on the Passaic River, New Jersey. The boring of its cylinder—which was 36 inches in diameter and 6 feet 6 inches in length—occupied *nearly four months*.

At that time there were but three other engines in the United States; one an imported engine put up in 1763, by a son of Hornblower, at the "Schuyler Mine" on the Passaic River, New Jersey; one at a sawmill in New York; and a third in Philadelphia, used by Oliver Evans to grind plaster.

The enormous increase of steam power since the beginning of the century is at the same time a measure of and a most prominent reason for the wonderful development of the United States during the last hundred years. In the belief that a knowledge of the total horse-power of the engines now in use in this country would be of interest, I applied to the Census Bureau for information relative thereto, but was very much surprised to learn that the statistics of steam power had not been collected.—W. F. D.

1246 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

assembled, and confined with encircling wrought-iron hoops
3 inches wide and ½ inch thick. A pump barrel 10 inches
in diameter and 7 feet long was made up of 9 staves secured by
12 hoops.

If Rennie's account is correct, M. Torq had a large job for a
newly invented machine, of which it is recorded that it did the
work in a perfectly satisfactory manner.

I shall not attempt to discuss the question of who was
entitled to the credit of first introducing the metal-planing
machine into England. Claims have been made for Bramah,
Fox, Clement, Murray, Roberts, and possibly some others.
There is little doubt that all the persons named constructed,
independently of each other, during the thirty years preceding
the year 1820, some form of mechanism for planing metal. The
best description we have of any of these early planing machines
is of one built by Joseph Clement in 1825, as an improvement
on one constructed by him prior to 1820. In this machine the
bed was 2 feet 8 inches wide and 12 feet long, and was sup-
ported upon stationary bearing wheels 2 feet in diameter and
2 inches face. The bed was moved by two pinions working into
two racks on its under side. The planer was driven by a belt
3 inches wide, running upon a pulley 4 feet in diameter. This
tool was said to be a practical success, and, at the rate of 18
shillings per square foot of surface planed, earned for its
owner £10 for each day it was employed.

This machine was no mere experiment, as it is known to have
been in regular use in 1863, thirty-eight years after its con-
struction, and nineteen years after the death of its inventor.
Another interesting type of planer was built by Benjamin Hicks,
of Bolton, about the year 1840.

This was a "pit planer," the piece operated upon being
stationary, and the cross head and tool moved by two steel belts
3 inches wide, running on pulleys 3 feet in diameter. This
planer could plane a piece of work 30 feet long and 9 feet 6
inches wide.

The style of planer known as the "shaping machine" was
invented by the late James Nasmyth (the inventor of the steam
hammer) in 1836. It was at first called "Nasmyth's steam arm."
It has been greatly improved by Whitworth and other leading
tool builders.

The first machine for planing the teeth of wheels, in which

THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION. 1247

the action of the tool was regulated by a guide curve, was invented, in 1839, by the brothers Glovet.

The vertical planer or "slotting machine" was doubtless suggested by the mortising machine for wood. Machines of this kind were built by J. Nasmyth in 1836. America has done its full share in the development and improvement of construction of machine tools of all kinds, and the work of Wm. Sellers & Co., Bement & Miles, Brown & Sharpe, Pratt & Whitney, the Putnam Machine Co., Niles Tool Works, and scores of other makers of American machinery is known and honored wherever hammers beat and wheels turn.

The art of wire-drawing has been a liberal contributor to the development of the art of interchangeable construction. The making of wire was originally accomplished by beating the metal into thin strips, then shearing it into strands of a more or less square cross section, and then hammering these strands until their angles disappeared and the strands became approximately round.

Until early in the fourteenth century this had been the only method of making wire from remote antiquity, and was probably practised in Egypt in the time of Moses (1450 B.C.), for we are told in Exodus xxxix. 3 that "they did beat the gold into thin plates, and cut it into wires, to work it in the blue, and in the purple, and in the scarlet, and in the fine linen, with cunning work."

This rude method was improved in Germany by the invention of the draw-plate, which was in use at Augsburg as early as 1350. So long as the rounding was accomplished by the hammer, the workmen were called "wire-smiths;" but after the invention of drawing they were named "wire-drawers" or "wire-millers." So slowly did improvement travel in the middle ages, that "wire-drawing" was not introduced into England until about two hundred years after its invention in Germany.

In order to protect and stimulate the manufacture of wire in England, his Majesty King Charles I., in the sixth year of his reign (1631), absolutely prohibited the importation of foreign iron wire, and of cards made from the same. This prohibitory act accomplished its intended purpose so well that, eight years thereafter, the king prohibited the importation of brass wire. There is abundant evidence that England's infant industries were carefully nurtured by adequate legal protection.

1248 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

The relation of wire to interchangeable mechanism is very close; the manufacture of pins, needles, wire nails, wood-screws, and fish-hooks rests solidly upon a substratum of manufactured wire. English chronicles tell us that "the making of Spanish needles (as the fine sewing-needles were formerly designated) was first taught in England by Elias Crowse, a German, about the eighth year of Queen Elizabeth; and in Queen Mary's time there was a negro made fine Spanish needles in Cheapside, but would never teach his art to any."

The first stage in the making of the assembling screws of all classes of small machinery is the making of wire.

Wires have been produced, by a combination of mechanical and chemical operations, of a fineness of 1/500,000 of an inch, and so smooth and uniform as to rival the spider's web, for use in micrometers and similar instruments. The process of wire-drawing is not confined to products of a circular cross section, and a great variety of shapes have been made; but the most interesting form is doubtless that known as "pinion wire," from which the pinions and arbors used in watches were for many years made. Pinion wire was also used in the beginning of the century in the construction of clocks. The preparation of wheels and pinions for clockmakers' use seems to have been at that time a distinct industry, for in Rees's *Encyclopedia* (1819) we are told that "ironmongers and tool sellers have on sale sets of wheels and arbors with pinions of different numbers ready slit, and also pinion steel wire drawn in proper shape for the teeth of small pinions, of which all clockmakers usually avail themselves, instead of preparing them." Thus early does the interchangeability of the parts of clocks manifest itself.

Another application of the principle of wire-drawing was originally introduced in the British mint by Sir John Barton, for equalizing the thickness of the "fillets" of gold and silver from which the blanks for the coin were cut. This consists in drawing the "fillet" (after it has been nearly reduced to the proper thickness by rolls) between stationary hardened steel cylinders, one of which is adjustable by mechanism which enables 1/100,000 of an inch to be readily appreciated.

The art of drawing tubes of metal through fixed dies is a natural outgrowth of the art of wire-drawing; and a further development of this art is exemplified by the manufacture of metallic cartridges, in which we have an admirable illustration

1249

of one of the most recent and most important developments of
the art of interchangeable construction.

The art of making a cartridge shell of sheet metal originated
in France. In the year 1824 M. Cazalet patented a cartridge
of this material; and in 1834 M. Roberts, of Paris, invented a
metallic cartridge in which the fulminate was deposited in an
annulus around its base, which was made of a separate piece of
metal from the body of the cartridge. The idea of using a
metallic cartridge did not attract much attention until M. Flo-
bert, about 1850, commenced the manufacture of a pistol in-
tended for use for practice at short range. This pistol could
only use a small metallic cartridge, charged exclusively with
fulminate. Flobert's pistol and ammunition met with consider-
able favor for its purpose, and doubtless it had a stimulating
influence upon the development of the manufacture of metallic
cartridges of an improved type.

To Smith & Wesson, of Springfield, Mass., without doubt
belongs the credit of making the first metallic cartridge suited
to the requirements of actual service in war. In 1854 they
patented a form of cartridge that has always been used in the
well-known pistol made by this firm.

Since the above date, the idea has been adapted to breech-
loading muskets of a large variety of styles, and at the present
time metallic cartridges are made for quick-firing guns of 3-inch
calibre.

It is believed that the general system adopted in the manu-
facture of the modern metallic cartridge is purely American.

The rapidity, accuracy, and economy with which they are
manufactured is the result of the perfecting of a large number
of special automatic machines, whose work is so exact that any
cartridge will fit accurately—that is, will never be too large for,
and never more than $\frac{1}{10000}$ of an inch smaller than, the chamber
of the arm in which it is intended to be fired.

The Union Metallic Cartridge Co., of Bridgeport, Conn.,
which for thirty years was under the skilful management of the
late A. C. Hobbs, has been the leader in the development of
this industry, and has supplied the principal foreign govern-
ments with large quantities of ammunition and cartridge-mak-
ing machinery; and it is only just to say that the system of
manufacturing metallic cartridges, now regarded as the best
throughout the world, was brought to its present state of per-

1250 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

fection in these works during their administration by Mr.
Hobbs.

The art of cold punching of sheet metal has important col-
lateral relations to the art of interchangeable construction.
Perhaps the best exemplification of the art of punching is fur-
nished by the gold and silver blanks which are punched in the
several mints of the world for subsequent coining into money.
The weight of these blanks must be uniform for the specific
coin for which they are intended, and this can only be insured
by extraordinary care in the making of the punches and dies.
The flat links of the chains used in the old fusee watches were
punched as early as the middle of the last century.

The punch was made of the same contour as the link, and
was guided in its work by two conical pins projecting from its
face; these pins entered the holes, intended for the rivets, which
had previously been punched in the sheet steel from which the
links were to be made. The metal was thus guided to its
proper position on the die, so that when the punch took effect,
the exterior of the resulting link was symmetrical with regard
to the rivet holes through it. This principle thus early discov-
ered is of frequent application in all similar operations. The
art of punching has, in comparatively recent times, had coupled
with it the art of shaping the metal blank into various forms
immediately after the punching operation is completed; boxes
and their covers, "percussion caps," the cups for metallic car-
tridges, and the metal bases of shot shells are made in this way.

The art of interchangeable construction was strongly rein-
forced by the discovery of the method of forging in dies. This
idea was but an application of the art of coining cold metal, for
use in money (which had been known since the time of Darius,
500 years B.C.), to the shaping of metal while hot. The art of
forging in dies is believed to have originated in France about
the middle of the twelfth century; and numerous examples of
hinges, grills, and wrought-iron ornaments of various kinds re-
main as elegant testimonials to the cultivated taste and wonder-
ful skill of these ancient artists in iron. Forged ornaments
shaped by dies were common on all the pleasure carriages made
in the last century; and it is certain that the wonderful "one-
horse shay" would not have been the masterpiece it was, if its
"step-irons" had not been decorated with "swaged" orna-
ments.

1251

It seems but a very short step indeed from the forging of ornamental iron work in dies, to the forging of the smaller parts of machinery in the same way; but as short as it undoubtedly was, it does not appear that it was taken until the late Albert Eames introduced the practice of forging parts of muskets and pistols in " dies or swages," at Chicopee, Mass., in 1842.

One more step forward in the art of forging the parts of interchangeable mechanisms brings us to what is known as "drop forging." This art is believed to be of American origin, and was first used at Harper's Ferry, Md., in the year 1827, in the works of J. H. Hall. An improved form of drop-forging machine was made by the late Albert Eames for the Remington works at Ilion, N. Y., in 1846. From this date the use of the process of drop forging has rapidly increased, and it has been applied to the manufacture of very intricate as well as delicate articles. The Billings & Spencer Co., of Hartford, have for the past twenty-five years turned out annually large numbers of shuttles for sewing-machines, so nearly exact to size as to require little work and polishing to render them fit for their intended service. The art of drop forging is also used for producing the heavier parts of bicycles, and for an endless variety of forgings in iron, steel, and copper, forging of the latter metal having come into use for electrical machinery within the last eight years. So important has the art of drop forging become as a factor in manufacturing, that at the present time no establishment for the manufacture of interchangeable mechanism, of which forgings are a component part, can afford to ignore its advantages. In the making of drop forgings the preparation of the dies is a matter of the first importance, and so high has American skill in this particular been appreciated abroad, that from time to time, large numbers of finished dies have been sent from America to foreign countries. The Billings & Spencer Co., of Hartford, Conn., who are pioneers in the art of drop forging, shipped at one time forty-two tons of dies to Prussia, for the making of forgings for the parts of muskets.

The economical production of interchangeability in mechanism necessitated instruments for rapid and accurate measurement. These were slowly supplied. The invention of the micrometer by William Gascoigne, of Yorkshire, England, about 'the year 1637, at once placed in the hands of science the power of measuring to a degree of minuteness unknown before. Gascoigne

1252 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

was killed, when thirty-two years of age, at the battle of Marston Moor, on the 2d of July, 1644, while fighting for his king. The principle of Gascoigne's micrometer consisted in moving two parallel edges or pointers to or from each other by means of a screw provided with a divided head. Dr. Robert Hook proposed to use in this micrometer parallel wires or hairs; but with such slow, hesitating steps did improvement move in the days of the youth of the micrometer, that it was not until 1755, more than one hundred years after its birth, that the first suggestion of the use of spider webs therein was made by Prof. Felice Fontana, of Florence, and it was not until John Troughton's attention was called to the matter by David Rittenhouse, of Philadelphia, that it was carried into practice in 1788, the idea, curiously enough, reaching England by way of America. There is no certainty that Rittenhouse had ever heard of Professor Fontana's suggestion, but before calling Troughton's attention to the value of the spider lines for micrometers, he had already used them himself in the fixed diaphragm of a transit instrument. Since the application of the spider lines to the micrometer, this instrument has received endless modifications. to adapt it to special service, from the hands of some of the ablest scientists and mechanicians of Europe and America, Neither my allotted time nor your patience will permit a description of what has been accomplished in the invention of special types of this instrument; but a brief account of the origin of the micrometer caliper, now so commonly used by the best workmen all over our land, may be of interest. It appears that the first of this form of caliper used in America was made in the year 1867, in the machine shop of the Bridgeport Brass Co., at Bridgeport, Conn., from sketches furnished by S. R. Wilmot, who at that time was superintendent of that company. This instrument was made to measure in thousandths of an inch, the thickness of sheet brass then being rolled for the Union Metallic Cartridge Co., to use for the manufacture of cartridges.

The requirements of the late A. C. Hobbs, then the superintendent of the cartridge works, had so narrow limits of variation, that some more accurate means of measurement than the ordinary wire gauge was required to regulate the rolling. This is doubtless the first instance in which common sense asserted itself successfully against more than a century of rolling-mill prac-

tice, in determining the thickness of sheet metal, and it deserves
to be regarded as the initial step in the movement that promises
ere long to consign all *wire gauges* to the tomb of defunct mechan-
ical expedients.

It is also in evidence that a representative of the Brown &
Sharpe Manufacturing Co., of Providence, R. I., saw at the
Paris Exposition in 1867 an instrument of similar form and
purpose to that made by Mr. Wilmot, save that the French
instrument had a revolving scale attached to its screw. This
instrument was invented in 1848 by Jean Laurent Palmer, a
machinist of Paris, and was duly patented in France on Sep-
tember 7th of that year. The Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing
Co. commenced the manufacture of this form of "micrometer
caliper" in the latter months of 1867, and from the time it was
put on the market by them (1868), its use has rapidly extended;
but there is no small amount of humiliating interest in the fact
that it was *nineteen years* after the publication of the invention
of Mr. Palmer, in France, before the mechanics of America dis-
covered the value of this very convenient tool.

The discovery, by the late Sir Joseph Whitworth, of a way
to produce plane surfaces on metal by "scraping," has had a
marked influence in increasing the accuracy of work intended to
be interchangeable, and so accurate have surfaces been made by
the method, described in a paper read by him before the Insti-
tute of Mechanical Engineers, at Glasgow, in 1856, that it has
been demonstrated that when two such surfaces are placed
in contact it requires more force to separate them than the
equivalent of the pressure of the atmosphere upon them, thus
showing that the surfaces were approaching the condition of
actual molecular cohesion.

Thus far I have discoursed of the development of methods
and apparatus which have rendered possible the art of inter-
changeable construction as it is understood to-day, and have
had little to say of special industries whose products are repre-
sentatives of the degree of perfection to which the art has
attained.

When the idea of interchangeability was first promulgated, it
was advocated with special reference to the manufacture of
muskets, and it is a common belief that the idea of making the
parts of muskets interchangeable originated in America; but the
facts of history compel us to say that this view is not correct.

1254 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

Thomas Jefferson, writing from Paris to John Jay, under date
May 30, 1785, says:

"An improvement is made here in the construction of muskets, which it may be interesting to Congress to know, should they at any time propose to procure any.

"It consists in the making of every part of them so exactly alike, that what belongs to any one, may be used for every other musket in the magazine.

"The government here has examined and approved the method, and is establishing a large manufactory for the purpose of putting it into execution.

"As yet the inventor has only completed the lock of the musket on this plan; he will proceed immediately to have the barrel, stock and other parts executed in the same way. Supposing it might be useful in the United States, I went to the workman. He presented me the parts of fifty locks, taken to pieces, and arranged in compartments. I put several together myself, taking pieces at hazard as they came to hand, and they fitted in the most perfect manner. The advantages of this when arms are out of repair, are evident. He effects it by tools of his own contrivance, which, at the same time, abridge the work, so that he thinks he shall be able to furnish the musket two livres cheaper than the common price. But it will be two or three years before he will be able to furnish any quantity. I mention it now, as it may have an influence in the plan for furnishing our magazines with this arm."—(The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, edited by H. A. Washington, 1853.)

On January 24, 1786, Mr. Jefferson writes a similar letter to the governor of Virginia, in which he is even more emphatic in regard to the gun locks he has examined, saying that "I found them to fit interchangeably in the most perfect manner."

In the year 1798, thirteen years after Jefferson had found that gun locks were manufactured in France which "interchanged in the most perfect manner," Eli Whitney, the inventor of the saw cotton-gin, contracted with the United States to furnish them with ten thousand stand of arms. In regard to this work, his biographer says: * "The object at which he aimed, and which he fully accomplished, was to make the same part of different muskets, as the locks, for example, as much like each other as the successive impressions of a copper-plate engraving." This was a very high standard; and Mr. Whitney struggled energetically against all sorts of difficulties, and doubtless realized to some considerable degree his intention of making the parts of the muskets interchangeable, and is entitled to great credit for the pioneer work in the art of interchangeable construction which he accomplished, and the large measure of success which he achieved in carrying out, with the limited resources available in

* *Memoir of Eli Whitney, Esq.*, by Denison Olmstead, 1886.

1255

America at the time, the idea which Thomas Jefferson stated, thirteen years before the date of Mr. Whitney's contract, was being prosecuted successfully in France.

Looking backward at the art of interchangeable construction as exemplified in the work done at the beginning of the century, and viewing it in the light of the exact requirements of to-day, it is certain that very little of the work done at that time would pass inspection now; most of the parts of the old muskets would doubtless interchange, but the exactness of the relations of the parts would not be found up to present standards. The demand for such precision was not made, and could not, with the means at command, have been realized if it had been insisted upon. Even the mechanical means of attaining interchangeability in some of the parts of muskets were not invented until 1853.

As a consequence of the pioneer work of Eli Whitney, and the enthusiastic zeal with which the path he blazed through unknown regions has been followed, widened, and extended by multitudes of ingenious and skilful mechanicians, America has become the great school of the world for all who are seeking instruction in the art of interchangeable construction. As the result of the excellent work on a small exhibit of rifles by Robins & Lawrence, of Windsor, Vt., at the International Exposition of 1851 in London, the British government sent a commission to America to study the methods of manufacture by which interchangeable construction was attained.

This commission visited Springfield Arsenal and a number of other public and private armories, and as a result they at once ordered a large quantity of American gun-making machinery, and secured the services of a number of American mechanicians to accompany it to England, and there establish the Enfield rifle factory, the first in Europe in which arms were made on the American interchangeable system.

As an illustration of the perfection which this system had attained when the English commission visited Springfield Armory, in 1853. Major Ripley, who was then in command there, ordered ten guns, manufactured from 1843 to 1853, to be taken apart, the parts indiscriminately mixed, and the ten guns were then successfully assembled by selecting the parts at random from the general mass.

Since the year 1853, American gun-making machinery has

1256 THE HISTORY OF INTERCHANGEABLE CONSTRUCTION.

been supplied to the governments of England, Spain, Prussia, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, and Egypt; and large quantities of American arms and ammunition have been shipped to all quarters of the world. So manifest were the manifold advantages of the system of interchangeable construction as applied to the manufacture of arms, that it has been extended to a great variety of other industries, in which large numbers of the same kind of product are produced—locks, sewing-machines, steam valves, steam engines, hardware, and agricultural implements, clocks and watches. The idea of manufacturing watches by the interchangeable plan is distinctly American, and was first carried into effect on a large scale at Waltham, Mass., in 1854. Since that date watch factories have increased and multiplied in the land, and foreign nations have been compelled by American competition to adopt the idea which is the crowning triumph of the American system of interchangeable construction.

In the foregoing outline of the development of those arts which are distinctly tributary to the art of interchangeable construction, I have endeavored to show that the idea of interchangeability in the construction of mechanism is of no recent origin—that in fact, if not in name, the commencement of its practical development was coeval with the satisfaction of the most primitive of the artificial demands of man upon the materials of the world in which he found himself placed; that as man-kind increased, and multiplied his requirements of nature, the elements from which to create the art of interchangeable construction were necessarily augmented by the discovery of new methods and the invention of apparatus for their utilization; that this process of mental demand and material supply changed gradually from the simple and easy to the complex and difficult; but, nevertheless, every demand within what we have been irreverently taught to call the laws of nature has been successfully met by the crystallization in its work of enough of the immortal soul of each succeeding generation to enable the world of our day to enjoy the usufruct of the labors of all time past, and to rejoice in the practical perfection to which the art of interchangeable construction has attained.

Contemplating the magnitude of past achievements; realizing the vast power which the concentration of the inspired thought and best work of all ages have placed at our disposal; perceiving, as "through a glass, darkly," a suggestion of the manifold glories

of that future which will be the living present of some unknown
generation, we seem to see Science in command of a grand ship
called Art, fully rigged, manned, and equipped for a voyage of
unknown length, its prow pointed westward, as with adventurous
keel, flowing sails, and a crowning glory of flags, pennons, and
streamers, it speeds over the uncharted waters of the ocean of
time toward undiscovered shores. As we view the picture and
reflect upon the persistent faith that has guided the noble vessel
to the discovery of fair islands and grand continents in time past,
the mind naturally reverts to the voyage of that great discover-
er in whose name we have erected these temples and invited
all lands to do him honor by offerings of "gold and silver, frank-
incense and myrrh."

It is by such persistence as his, in following the directing
compass of an o'ermastering faith, that Science and its argosy
will make discoveries of new lands under skies and stars to us
unknown. On such a voyage Science will permit of Art no sug-
gestion of turning, and when Doubt shakes its skeptical head,
and Fear asks timorous questions, the reply of Science will be as
sternly decisive as was that of Columbus, when—

“Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind, the gates of Hercules ;
Before him only ghosts of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said, ‘What shall I say
If we sight naught but seas at dawn?’
‘Why, you shall say at break of day,
Sail on—sail on—sail on—and on!’”*

* Joaquim Miller.

## The Whitney Armory.

Previous to the establishment of Eli Whitney's Armory in the south end of the town in 1798 and indeed during the American Revolution, the United States had imported its firearms from France. The latter country in 1798 fabricated the finest muskets in the world. But the government recognizing the growing uncertainty of French relations advertised for the domestic delivery of ten thousand stand of arms. Whitney, who, by his invention of the cotton gin had whitened the fields of the South to harvest, undertook the contract. He argued that countries were powerful only as their military arm was efficient. And he expressly stated that one object with him in the arduous task he took up was to strengthen the siny arm of freedom. This gun shop was the largest private establishment of the kind in the country. And at the request of the government officials this mechanic-al Marco Polo sent workmen trained by him to introduce his system into the first government armory established about 1800 in Springfield, Mass. As Whitney in the South cut the Gordian knot in cotton culture so in the north on the banks of the Mill River in Hamden he lopped off the national dependence on foreign arsenals and laid deep and wide the foundations of American mechanical supremacy. This firearm business established by his indomitable father the son sold in 1888 to the Winchester Arms Co.

The town father and his father Joseph Smith cover the life of this famous manufactory from 1798 to 1888. Joseph Smith knew Eli Whitney before the latter started operations in Whitneyville. Joseph Smith who was a chairmaker by trade started down Long Wharf to ship as a sailor again as he was out of work. Part way down he met Whitney who said, "Hello Smith, where are you going?"

"I am going to ship for the West Indies."

"How much are you going to make?"

The result of the conversation was that Whitney agreed to give him more wages than he would make shipping as a sailor. Smith was hired as a carpenter on the new buildings Whitney was contemplating. And when these buildings were contemplated he worked as a mechanic in the stocking shop of the Armory altogether from 1798 to 1850. In this way Whitney who was immensely popular prowled about New Haven saying to likely youth "Follow thou me" and thus securing his workmen. For there were no machine shops or manufactures in those days and Whitney had to make his ma-

ishing room.

More men worked in the filing shop than in any of the other buildings. Here were the presses. In the stocking shop the stocks were fitted to the barrels and here some beautiful work was done. The wood for this stocking was black walnut and was brought from Pennsylvania. The town father, John G. Smith went to work in the stocking shop in 1837 and with one intermission worked there till shortly before Eli Whitney second sold the business to the Winchester Arms Co. He remembers when cotton gins were stored in the basement of this building. In the blacksmith shop triphammers were used for welding the barrels. A flat piece of iron was wound around a wooden rod and welded together by these triphammers. The rod was withdrawn and the bore bored smooth. The first batches of muskets produced at this armory was modeled after the French musket with improvements by Whitney. One of Whitney's employees was a man who had deserted from one of the Hessian regiments hired by the British in the Revolutionary war. He had not become well versed in the Yankee literature. The superintendent sent him on an errand to the office for a book. When he got there he had forgotten the name. "Say it

chines and mechanics out of whole cloth. Until he was married which was late in life when he married a daughter of Governor Edwards. Eli Whitney lived with his men in the boarding house which stood on the site of Whitney Avenue in front of the filtration plant and was kept by an aunt of our townfather, Mrs. Annie Hall. The boarding house was not capacious enough to lodge all the help so some of them occupied beds in a loft over one of the shop buildings.

Joseph Smith related that on the occasion of one of these loft dwellers being out late at night to see his girl the unloved ones left behind rigged up a pail of water so that when the amatory youth returned and opened the loft door the pail was upset and he got its full contents. Another story Joseph Smith told to his son related to Mr. Whitney. Whitney set two men to trimming a tree. "There," said he to the men, "cut off that limb." Then going around, "cut off that one." "And that one." But still the amateur forester was not satisfied. "There," said Whitney pointing to the trunk, "cut it off there."

Standing on Whitney avenue opposite the Armory buildings which are now occupied by the Acme Wire Co. one sees a row of elms stretching north through the shop yard to the dam wall. This was the Farmingto Turnpike and it continued on to about opposite the point of rocks which has lately been blasted away to widen Whitney avenue at which point the Hartford Turnpike branched off to the north-east. A few rods from this junction on the Hartford Turnpike stood an old covered bridge beneath which Mill River flowed. Just to the left of this covered bridge was the Whitney Armory dam, close in front of the dam stood the filing shop. Now it would be called the water shop. A little south of the filing shop, stood the stocking shop. A little west of the stocking shop and southwest of the filing shop and close to the Farmington Turnpike stood the blacksmith shop. A little to the east of these buildings and across Mill River stood the powder houses and the proving house. The government furnished powder and ball and sent on an inspector to oversee the proving. Three dozen barrels were put in the proving house, filled up with ammunition and a train of powder was laid to them and set off. The report caused the ravine to echo and echo again. When the gun barrels had been proved they were sent to the fin-

as near as you can," was the command.

"Rabster's Dispetary," replied the ex member of the Prince of Hesses regiment.

He was sent back with a Webster's Dictionary which proved to be the book he wanted.

The Methodists on the Plains thought they would convert him to the Yankee religion. Joseph Smith met him and said: "I hear you have joined the Methodists. Isn't it better than it was before?"

"It was better as it was before. Trink little brandy," was the reply. Eli Whitney when he expected to reach ere long the inevitable hour had a talk with Joseph Smith about the carrying on of the business. Smith said he thought the Blakes could carry on the business which appeared to please Whitney very much. There were four of those Blakes, nephews to Eli Whitney who came from the same Massachusetts town that Whitney did. Philos, Eli Whitney, John and Elihu Blake. Col. Philos Blake lived in the first stucco house which stood under where Whitney avenue passes west of the dam wall. Eli Blake lived in the second house now farthest east. Elihu Blake was a dentist in New York city and the father of Prof. William P. Blake, author of the history of Hamden. These Blakes carried on the business very creditably. And Eli Blake appeared to have some of the inventive genius of his uncle. Governor Edwards a trustee of the property undertook to carry on the business but though a very fine man he had no business faculty. Eli Whitney second appeared to have more of the Edwards mental characteristics than the Whitney. During the Whitney and Blake request, Jacob Whiting and Nathan Whiting furnished much entertainment. Nathan Whiting went on strike all by his lonesome. He stopped work and went to Col. Blake and said he wanted more wages. Col. Blake said, "If you don't go to work I won't pay you anything at all."

Nathan said, "I 'spec I go to work then." John G. Smith, now 90 years old and Prof. Wm. P. Blake over 80 both aver that Whitneyville has sadly deteriorated since those good old times. And with them Whitneyville hovers only over those loved Armory buildings and stucco houses.

passed.

FAIR HAVEN WATER COMPANY.

The amendment to the Fair Haven Water Co.
pany was then taken up, the question recurring on
the House amendment, providing that the company
shall not dig up the streets of New Haven without
the consent of a majority of the voters of the
town.

Mr. Gallagher said he did not want to speak
again on this subject, but arose simply to state that
the House amendment had no effect on this mat-
ter, as the town of New Haven had no control of
the streets, that right being vested in the city au-
thorities. The President then put the vote on the
House amendment, which was rejected, by a vote
of 4 to 9.

Mr. Gallagher then offered the following amend-
ment:

Provided that this act shall not take effect until
the City of New Haven in its corporate capacity
shall within one year vote to purchase the works,
franchises and privileges of both the New Haven
Water Company and the Fair Haven Water Co.,
at a price to be agreed on by the parties; and pro-
vided they cannot agree, by three commissioners—
one to be appointed by each of the parties, and the
third by them jointly. And the City of New
Haven is hereby authorized to make such pur-
chase, provided that the legal voters of said city
at a meeting duly warned and held for that pur-
pose, shall vote to do so.

Mr. Street, of the 12th, then moved to amend
this amendment as follows:

Provided that the city of New Haven shall vote
to confirm the right of the Fair Haven Water
Company to lay pipes and supply water in said
city, then it shall be the duty of the proper officers
of said City of New Haven to call a meeting of
the voters of said city within thirty days after the
passage of such vote, for the purpose of allowing
said city to vote whether they will purchase the
property and franchises of both the New Haven
and Fair Haven Water Companies; and if a ma-
jority of the legal voters of said city in the meet-
ing so called shall vote to purchase the property
and franchises of both companies, as provided in
the charter of said companies; and said city is
hereby authorized to issue bonds of said city for
such amount of purchase at a rate of interest not
exceeding 7 per cent.

This was rejected, and the amendment of Sena-
tor Gallagher passed.

Mr. Johnson then offered the following amend-
ment:

Provided that the Mayor of the City of New
Haven and the first Selectman of the town of New
Haven shall at all times be allowed to examine
into all contracts entered into on the part of said
company; also that they shall be provided with
duplicates of all contracts and vouchers pertaining
to the construction of said water works.

This was adopted; and the bill as amended
then passed, without opposition.

Report of Committee on Education on the in-
crease of the salary of the secretary of the Board
of Education from $1,800 to $3,000. Accepted
and passed.

Bill validating the doings of selectmen when
they have neglected to correct and increase the
rate bills for 1865, in adding bank stock to the as-
session bills; passed.

Resolution allowing the town of Woodbury
to pay $100 war bounty to Jacob Shindler;—
passed.

Substitute bill giving power to selectmen to
assess and estimate betterments accruing from the
opening or laying out of new streets or public
highways; tabled.

Sundry bills were tabled without being read.

Adjourned to Monday next at 2 P. M.

HOUSE.

WEDNESDAY, July 3.

This is an age of enterprise, and it has only to be de-
monstrated that a Railroad, anywhere, is feasible and will
pay, and forthwith the men are found ready to put their
money and their hands to the work. As these great works
progress, men of enterprise and genius are constantly on
the watch to secure some personal advantage from them.
The most important stroke of policy in this regard, of
which we ever heard, has just come to our knowledge —
By a careful scientific calculation by one of the generals
engaged on the Air Line, it has been ascertained that that
great trunk line will go right through the back yard of

No. 101 Church Street,

And the enterprising proprietor of that establishment has
made arrangements to have a nice little draw-bridge right
there, and has closed a contract with David Lyman, Esq.
to set up one of his Wringing Machines to "wring in" the
passengers to

Catlin's Boot and Shoe Store.

It is said by well-informed sailing masters that THIS
draw will not interfere with navigation, and the best of it
is that Hartford don't insist upon a suspension bridge, but is
ready to do something handsome to aid this "little draw."

Another shrewd piece of financiering on the part of the
same gentleman, is an arrangement with the Derby R. R.
Co. to have them run their trains right down Congress
Avenue, and stop directly in front of the door of

THE GREAT EMPORIUM,

NO. 101 CHURCH STREET.

The announcement has already been made that the Wes
Haven Railroad Co. had been forced by public opinion to
run its line to the same point—the people of that village
insisting that the main thing for which they wished to vis
it the city was to

VISIT CATLIN'S,

And they wouldn't take a dollar of stock if the Road didn't
go right to his door.

Catlin has Hosts of Friends

IN ALL THE COMMUNITY ROUND ABOUT.

They stand on (or in) his good works.

They know that the place is at

No. 101 CHURCH STREET,

je24

NEW HAVEN, CONN.

HALL'S
VEGETABLE SICILIAN
HAIR

RENEWED

No. 11,768

## McCLINTOCK YOUNG,

### ATTORNEY AND COUNSELLOR AT LAW,

HAVING resigned the office of Chief Clerk of the Treasury Department, which he has held for the last sixteen years, has resumed the practice of his profession.

He will devote his principal attention to the prosecution of cases before Congress, the several Departments, and Commissioners on Foreign Indemnities. To ensure early attention to claims against the War, Navy, Home, and Post Office Departments, including business with the Patent Office, he has made arrangements with the most efficient agents in Washington to assist him, by which business of any nature connected with the Government confided to him will be certain to be acted on in the most prompt manner. He has made arrangements to superintend a Land Agent for the purchase, sale, leasing, or renting of lands in the General States and Territories. Terms made known on applications, post paid.

Office at his residence on F, between 12th and 13th streets.

References.—Hon. R. B. Taney, Chief Justice of the United States, and gentlemen who have been heads of Departments of either House of Congress since the year 1835. The 16th—ly

## FALL AND WINTER GOODS.

### W. BROWNING, Messrs. Tailor, &c.

A large and superior stock of Fall and Winter Goods, such as Cloths, Cassimeres, and Vestings, of superior quality, which he will make to order in a fashionable style, and at low rates for cash, or on time to punctual men. He thinks that he can presume to say, from the liberal patronage extended to him by members of Congress, citizens, and others, that his goods have been sold at the lowest rate of prices. He assures citizens generally, and strangers especially visiting this city, and in want of clothing, that they will always have a large stock of the most fashionable goods in the market at his establishment, which will be out and made with great dispatch, in a style not inferior to that of any establishment in this city or the city of New York, as or low or lower prices. A coat ordered at 7 o'clock in the morning can be delivered to the purchaser at 7 o'clock in the evening of the same day. Please call before purchasing either.

He has on hand a beautiful assortment of ready-made Clothing, of his own make, and is making up an entirely new style. Overcoat, a very beautiful garment. Also, a general assortment of fancy articles, such as Shirts, Umbrellas, Stocks, Cravats, Gloves, and, in fine, every article necessary to complete a gentleman's wardrobe. Under the United States Hotel, Pennsylvania avenue, between 3d and 4th street.

AND AGENCY.—I have, as agent, several valuable farms for sale, situated within two, four, six, and eight miles of Washington and Alexandria, in the counties of Alexandria and Fairfax, ranging in prices from $100, down to $5 per acre. Any persons desirous of purchasing lands, improved or unimproved, will do well to address me (post paid) at Alexandria, Va., or call on me at my residence, Hygeian Hall, our miles west of Alexandria, near the intersection of the Leesburg and Columbia turnpikes, when I will at any time make pleasure in showing them such places as will not fail to sell them.

In the mean time, any one having land to sell would not miss by addressing to me the locality, quality, and their very best price, at the most liberal terms of payment, &c., as will not fail to get a ready and prompt sale. All postage must be paid no attention will be given.

RICHARD B. LLOYD.

## PUBLIC SALE OF THE MOST VALUABLE

### PROPERTY IN THE CITY OF WASHINGTON.—

By virtue of a decree of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, sitting in chancery for Washington county, in a certain cause, wherein John Withers is complainant and the heirs and representatives of James Long are defendants, we will offer for sale at public auction, to the highest bidder therefor, 4 o'clock P. M. on Saturday, the 30th day of November instant, on the premises, the houses and premises at the corner of Pennsylvania avenue and 6th street, in the city of Washington, running back on 6th street to the two-story houses adjoinent thereto.

The terms of sale, as prescribed by the decree, are: one—½ of the purchase money to be paid at the time of sale, and a balance in equal instalments, bearing interest from the day of sale, of one, two, and three years, secured by the bond of the purchaser; upon the full payment of which the deed will not give pleasure in showing them such places as will not fail to sell them.

JOSEPH H. BRADLEY,

RICHARD WALLACH,

Trustees.

The Baltimore American, Philadelphia Ledger, and

The New York Express will please copy, and send their bills to trustees.

A CARD.—Mrs. DOW has three or four very pleasant and genteel rooms, neatly furnished, and suitable for the accommodation of small families or single gentlemen.

Persons desiring board are invited to call at her residence, on G street, near the State Department, nov 15—c06t.

FURNISHED ROOMS, with or without board, can be had in a private family, near the War and Navy Departments. Please inquire at Dr. RIDGELY'S Drug Store, Seven nov 15—3d.

DESPITE FURNISHED ROOMS, with or without board, can be obtained on B street, the first three-story house east of St. Charles Hotel, upon the most pleasing terms.

N. B. A Chambermaid wanted, with recommendations, nov 15—3t.

FURNISHED ROOM FOR RENT.—A large Front Room, neatly furnished, on E street between 9th and 10th, (in a private family,) will be rented without board to one or two single gentlemen on reasonable terms.

Apply to
DYER & MCGUIRE, Auctrs.,
nov 16—e03t
(Union)

FEMALE SERVANT WANTED.—Wanted to hire, a Colored Servant, capable of cooking, washing, and ironing, to whom liberal wages will be given. A slave would be preferred. Testimonials of good character and qualifications will be required. Inquire next door above Beers' Temperance Hotel, on Third street. nov 15—dt

CARRIAGE FOR SALE.—An excellent carriage, suitable for one or two horses, for sale; to be sent at Mr. Brown's Livery Stable, on 8th street, between D and E, nov 15—dt

LENZ POWERS, OR THE REGULATORS, a Romanade of Kentucky, by James Weir, Esq., 2 vols. The Practical Cook Book, containing upwards of one thousand receipts, by Mrs. Bliss, of Boston, nov 14

FRANK TAYLOR.

CUMBERLAND COAL.—One hundred tons Cumberland Coal now landing from the canal-boat Mountaineer, and for sale by E. WATERS. nov 15—e03d

FRESH TEAS, FRUIT, &c.—

700 half chests fresh Teas

200 boxes new Raisins

200 half and quarter boxes Raisins

75 baga Laguyna Coffee

Now landing, and for sale by

nov 15—3t
GEO. LOWRY, Georgetown.

AGENCY FOR HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.—

Stringer and Townsend's International Monthly Magazine.

Godey's Lady's Book

Graham's Magazine

Sartain's Magazine

Littell's Living Age.

Yearly subscriptions received or single numbers sold at

TAYLOR & MAURY'S

Book Store, near 9th street. nov 15

THE WORLD'S PROGRESS, a Dictionary of Dates, with tabular views of general history, edited by G. P.

Putnam.

Home, by Miss Bremer, Putnam's revised edition

Success in Life, the Mechanic, by Mrs. L. C. Tuthill

Jamaica in 1850, by John Bigelow

History of Propellers and Steam Navigation, by John MacFurralie, C. E.

Rural Hours, by Miss Cooper, large edition, beautifully illustrated.

Berganger's Lyric, translated by Wm. Young, illustrated with fine steel engravings.

The Picturesque Tourist, by William Bryant, with illustrations. A General View of the Fine Arts, critical and historical, with an introduction, by D. Huntington

The Artist's Chromatic Hand-book, by John P. Kidner

Just published and for sale by
FRANK TAYLOR. nov 8

THE GREEN HAND, a Short Yarn, complete, price 25 cents.

History of Madame Roland, with engravings, (Abbott's series.)
Lile of John Randolph of Roanoke, 2 volumes, by Hugh A. Garland.

The Queens of England, one volume, with portraits, beautifully bound.

nov 12
FRANK TAYLOR.

FOR RENT, the house lately occupied by Mr. Calderon de la Barca, on F street, between 20th and 21st streets. For terms apply either to Mrs. East

JOS. H. BRADLEY,

RICHARD WALLACH,

Trustees.

FRIEND'S ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE.

["if the terms are not complied with within one week from\nday of issue.", "JOS. H. BRADLEY,\nRICHARD WALLACH,\nTrustees.", "nov 5—Stawtts", "The Baltimore American, Philadelphia Ledger, and\nNew York Express will please copy, and send their bills to\ntrustees.", "## FRIENDS' ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE.", "THIS INSTITUTION is established in a pleasant and healthy\npart of the country, about five miles north of\nPhiladelphia. It is under the care of Dr. Joshua H. Worth-\nton, Superintendent, and William and Mary D. Birdsall,\nEdward and Matron, and is visited weekly by a Committee\nthe Managers.", "The Asylum was founded in the year 1813, by members of\nSociety of Friends, with a view of assuring to the af-\ntected with insanity the domestic comforts usually found in a\nvative family, combined with kind and efficient moral and\nmedical treatment.", "Application for the admission of patients may be made either\neitherly or by letter addressed to", "CHARLES ELLIS,", "Clerk of the Board of Managers, No. 56 Chestnut street,\nPhiladelphia ; or to", "WILLIAM BETTLE,", "Secretary of the Committee on Admissions,\nNo. 14th St. in Philadelphia.", "## MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF\nNEW YORK, No. 35 Wall street.", "TENTAMENT of the affairs of the Company for the quar-\nter ending July 31st, 1850 :", "It accumulated fund April 30, 1850. $1,035,781 89\nreceipts during the quarter, after paying all\nlosses and expenses. 79,948 81\nmount due and paid at agencies, and in course\nof remittance. 15,000 00", "reduct losses unpaid. $1,130,733 70\n26,940 00", "Nett accumulated fund July 31, 1850. $1,103,793 70", "INVESTMENTS.", "ocks of United States and State and City of\nNew York. $150,213 59\npans on real estate in the cities of New York\nand Brooklyn, valued at double the sum loan-\ned thereon. 957,331 22\nsh on hand and in bank, &c. 12,927 82", "Policies issued during the quarter. 729", "JOSEPH B. COLLINS, President.", "CHAS. GILL, Actuary.", "SAAC ABBATT, Secretary.", "CHARLES DE SELDING, No. 11 Todd's Buildings, Pennsyl-\nla avenue, Agent.", "W. P. JOHNSON, M. D., opposite City Post Office, 7th\nest, Physician.", "Bamphamptons explanatory of the principles and operations of\ncompany can be had on application at the Agent's office.\ning 22—2awtf (Union)", "## LTIMORE LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY.\nNo. 15 SOUTH STREET.", "JOHN I. DONALDSON, PRESIDENT.", "THIS COMPANY proposes to insure lives for one or\nmore years, or for life, at the REDUCED rates specified in\nfollowing table, being as low as safety to the assured and\nthe Company would justify; with these rates the assured\nas the benefit of an immediate in lien of a prospective premium\nand certain bonus. He risks neither his policy nor the premium\nhe has paid.", "### Insurance on Lives on every Hundred Dollars.", "One year. Seven years. For life.\n0..................87..................94..................95..................95", "0..................97..................1.07..................1.90..................1.90", "0..................1.25..................1.37..................2.55..................2.55", "0..................1.65..................1.78..................3.47..................3.47", "0..................3.46..................4.34..................6.68..................6.68", "intermediate ages at proportionate rates, and these premi-\nmay be made payable annually, semi-annually, or quar-\nral at the option of the assured,\nand sells Annuities.", "As Endowments for children.", "kinds of endowments in which life or the interest of money is\nved.\nRICHARD B. DORSEY, Secretary.", "ARLES W. PAIROG Agent for the Baltimore Life In-\nco Company, would call public attention to the reduced\nof premium now charged. All Premiums or Policies in\nDistrict to be paid at his office, corner of F and 15th\nas, where applications for new policies can be made.\n(—tf", "## EATISE ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE\nNavigation of Rivers, by Wm. E. Brooks, civil en-\nr ; 1 volume, London.", "the Improvement of Tidal Rivers, by David Stevenson,\nengineer ; 1 volume, London.", "the Improvement of Harbors and Bars, by William B.\nhard, civil engineer ; 1 volume, London.", "Harbors of Refuge and the Improvement of Rivers and\norts, by Capt. J. N. Taylor, Royal Navy ; one volume,\nmouth, (Eng.)", "neaton's Reports on Engineering.\nmms on Tunnelling.", "askell on Boring, Brees's Railway Practice\ntransactions of the Civil Engineers.", "Professional Papers of the Royal Engineers, and a variety\nof works on Bridge-building, on Mining, on Mortars and Ce-\ns, on Architecture, on Marine Surveying, and on Civil\nMilitary Engineering generally. Imported from London\nnov 12", "FRANCK TAYLOR.", "History of Madame Roland, with engravings. (Abbott's\nseries.)", "Life of John Randolph of Roanoke, 2 volumes, by Hugh\nA. Garland.", "The Queens of England, one volume, with portraits, beau-\ntifully bound. nov 12 FRANCK TAYLOR.", "FOR RENT, the house lately occupied by Mr.\nCalderon de la Barca, on F street, between 20th and\n21st streets. For terms apply either to Mrs. Edmond\nBEALE, or to", "nov 14—cod2w", "TRUXTON D. BEALE.", "FINE GOSHEN BUTTER, CHEESE, & BUCK-\nWHEAT.—Just received by the Senator and other\nPackets.", "25 tubs superior Butter; suitable for families", "50 boxes Eastern Cheese", "15 barrels extra hulled Buckwheat Flour", "60 bags do do do", "15 barrels Rye Flour.", "100 do family medium and superfine Flour", "30 bags of Ross, Ray, Brothers' family do", "15 boxes Sperm Candles", "10 do hydraulic-pressed, superior article", "50 do", "10 do Pearl Stareli, Beadel & Colgate", "10 do shelled Almonds, Currants, and Citron", "5 bales Almonds", "5 do Cream Nuts", "5 do Filberts", "75 barrels Mackerel, Nos. 3 and 4", "15 boxes sealed Herring", "Potomac and Eastern ditto in barrels", "1 cask Stewart's Sirup (on draught)", "1 do Sugar House", "Porto Rico, West India, and New Orleans Molasses", "25 boxes fine Chewing Tobacco, Virginia, Olive, and other\nfavorite brands", "25 half-chests Imperial Gunpowder, Blk. and Y. Hyson,\npart of fine grade", "1 cask pale London Dock Brandy, Vintage 1840, of fine\nflavor and quality", "1 cask Oatrd.", "2 do Seignette", "1 do superior Jamaica Rum", "1 do Holland Gin", "A general assortment of Wines and Cordials", "100 barrels fine old Whiskey", "50 do", "10 do New York Brandy", "Brown, Loaf, Crushed, and Powdered Sugars", "1 bale Hops", "20 dozen Painted Buckets", "5 nests Flour do.", "Covered and uncovered Baskets, Brooms, Whips, Wash-\nboards, shoe and scrub Brushes, &c., with a good assortment\nof goods generally found in a well-assorted grocery store,\nwhich I will sell for cash or to punctual customers.", "Also 20 bags fresh Canary and Hemp Seed, which I will sell\nlow to close the lot. RICHARD J. RYON.", "Market Space, opposite Centre Market.", "nov 13—", "TREDGOLD'S CARPENTRY—Price reduced. —\nA large quarter volume, with several hundred engrav-\nings. Price, in leather binding. $1.25.", "Renwick's Elements of Mechanics; one volume of 500 oc-\ntavo pages, in full leather binding; published at $4.00—price\nreduced to $1.25.", "Jamieson's Mechanics for Practical Men; one octavo vol-\nume, filled with engravings; issued at $5.00, reduced to\n$1.75. A few copies only.", "oct 31", "FRANCK TAYLOR.", "NEW PUBLICATIONS from the press of Messrs.\nGould, Kendall & Lincoln, of Boston, for sale by their\nagents in Washington, TAYLOR & MAURY.", "\"The Footprints of the Creator, by Hugh Miller, having\npassed through its third edition, is now reprinted\nin handsome style at Boston, with the addition of a Memoir\nof Professor Louis Gassias, and many illustrations. The work\nis highly spoken of by Dr. Buckland and other eminent geo-\nlogists, and by the North British Review and other magazines.", "The Poetry of Science, or Studies of the Physical Pheno-\nmena of Nature, by Robert Hunt, author of Researches on\nLight, &c., from the second London edition.", "The Pre-Adamite Earth: contributions to theological sci-\nence, by John Harris, D. D.", "Religious Progress : discourses on the development of the\nChristian character in which life or the interest of money is\nved.\nnov 13", "A. G. BAGLEY & CO'S. SUPERIOR GOLD\nPENS and Penel Cases. — A large assortment of\nBagley's Penns of different styles just received direct from\nthe manufacturer.\nthe trade supplied at manufacturer's prices.", "nov 9 FRANCK TAYLOR.", "A TREATISE on the Diseases and Surgical Operations\nof the Mouth and parts adjacent, with Notes of interest-\ning cases, ancient and modern, by M. Jourdan, Dentist, and\nmember of the College of Surgery; translated from the last\nFrench edition. This day received, and for sale by\nnov 9 R. FARNHAM.", "COLTS \"IMPROVED REPEATING PISTOLS.\"\nExpecting to be absent in Europe for some months, all\ninquiries in relation to said arms may be addressed to J. Knox\nWalker, Washington, who is empowered as my attorney and\ngeneral agent to contract and receive orders for the delivry\nof said Pistols.\nmay 18—Stawtf", "MOUNT SAVAGE FIRE-BRICKS.—We are daily\nexpecting per canal boats from Cumberland a full sup-\nply of Fire Bricks of the above celebrated manufacture, and\nare prepared to furnish all sizes and patterns at short notice\nand on liberal terms.\nFOWLE & CO.\nAlexandria,", "SAMUEL COLT.", "", {"bbox":

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.

We have seen no Letter from any private gen-
tleman on the subject of the ruling topic in the po-
litical discussions of the day, which more forcibly
and clearly expresses our own general views of it
than the following, elicited from the Hon. RICHARD
RUSH in answer to a casual invitation by some of
his political friends to be present on a recent pub-
lic occasion. The Letter, though the writer be
now in private life, loses none of its attraction, nor
any of its just weight, upon a consideration of the
eminent posts which he has occupied in public life.
with occasional interruptions, for more than forty
years, under the successive Administrations of
MADISON, MONROE, ADAMS, and the succeeding
Presidents of the United States. With such an
opportunity for observation as he has had, at home
and abroad, the testimony of Mr. RUSH, upon
historical points particularly, is of real value to all
inquirers after truth.

CORRESPONDENCE.

DISTRICT OF PENN, OCTOBER 30, 1850.
To the Hon. RICHARD RUSH.

DEAR SIR: The Democratic citizens of the District of
Penn intend, on Monday, the 4th of November next, at the
house of LEWIS H. TRIMBLE, to celebrate the success of the
Democratic party in our county and State at the late election.
They earnestly solicit the honor of your company on the oc-
casion, satisfied, from your past life, both private and public,
that you are ever ready to assist or rejoice in the success of
the principles of the Union.
We remain yours, your own, a foreign
國(signed by GEORGE Esher, JOHN S. NICHOLAS, SAMUEL
ODEN, JAMES WAGGONSELLER, ANTHONY FELTON,
Committee.)

MR. RUSH'S REPLY.

SYDENHAM, PHILADELPHIA COUNTY,
Saturday, November 2, 1850.

GENTLEMEN: Your kind invitation of the 30th of October
on behalf of the Democratic citizens of Penn District, to at-
tend after celebration at Mr. Trimble's on the evening of the
day after to-morrow, in honor of the success of the Demo-
cratic cause in this county and State at the late election, was
received yesterday. The invitation is the more gratifying as
I recognise among the names signed to it those whom I have
long known as neighbors and been in friendly intercous-
with here, around my own home and in the county; circumstan-
ces which increase my regret at being prevented accepting it
by a previous engagement not in my power to give up. You
have rightly anticipated my readiness to rejoice with you in
the success of our cause; and although I am deprived of the
pleasure of being with you in person on that evening I will be
with you in feeling.

Festive occasions like these being generally improved for
expressing political sentiments, I would, if present, have
frankly expressed some of mine. It is a duty all owe to their
country, and none should shrink from it at a time so moment-
cious in our public affairs. It is of the slavery question I would
have spoken; for this has become a vital question, absorbing
all others in importance. I am of those who think that our
Union has been in danger from it; not a visionary danger,
worked up in the heated fancies of a few ultras at each end
of the Union, but a danger decided, fearful, and wide-spread.
The question has such deep broad roots, and they have been
gathering strength so long, that the compromise act of i
however good it may have been as far as it went, (and for
one I would have voted for it,) can never cure the bitter dis-
sensions and menacing aspects it has been endangering and
exasperating. That act, framed as it was among complicat-
ed difficulties, and supported as it was by extraordinary men-
ual force, exerted by great men to whom the nation looked in
its difficulty, must be followed up by mutual conciliation and
forbearance; above all, by the faithful performance of consti-
tutional obligations. Our Union is otherwise gone forever,
and sooner than we think. It is not good speaking, good
writing, or any mere array of its advantages, however point-
edly or eloquently put forth, that can any longer save it. It
must be saved by deeds, by conduct, by things palpable to be
done and avoided by. I would have alluded, if with you, to
the sentiments lately expressed by Judge GRIEN, of the Su-

active. As a citizen of the Middle States I have desired to
avoid the bias of North and South; to view this angry ques-
tion calmly, as from middle ground; to view it, as an Ame-
rican, on national ground; and to view it internationally, as
between the United States and Europe. This international
phase, which has worked itself into and aggravated the ques-
tion, has been contributing its disproportionate share to hur-
ry us on to our destruction. The phase is a very broad one.
We hide it too much from ourselves, notwithstanding its po-
tency of influence and mischief. In its nature it is affront-
ing, and merits emphatic notice, if only brief.

When I have been in Europe in public capacities, and then
justly proud of my whole country, in whose great name, one
and indivisible, regardless of all party, I was permitted to
speak, nothing wounded me so much as the errors, preju-
dices, and delusions with which I found our slavery question
so invariably and passionately assailed. These, if not always
produced, were always inflamed by opinions and acts flowing
into that hemisphere from our own people. Even the Red
Republicans of France—the most fanciful of them, they who
were ignorant of fundamental maxims essential to the security
of political liberty in popular government, as we have inhe-
rited and adapted them to our new condition—these republi-
cans, whilst daily bewildering each other with their unintelli-
gible, contradictory, and sometimes horrible theories, could
yet, under their eustatics at the sudden liberation of the slave
in Guadeloupe and Martinique, after the revolution of '48—y
yes, these identical republicans could, and did, rail and snee
at our slavery ! They could, and did, eute American publ-
cations to give countenance to their virtuous indignation and
f compliant sarcasms ! Fit moral and political teachers they
were ; good monitors these for the American people ! Con-
siderate judges, to be sure, they were of the consequences
likely to flow, even to the Africans themselves in those French
islands, from this sudden, naked decree of abolition ! All
know, and none better than the French, what has happened
in St. Domingo. Let us, just for a moment, consider the
with the freedom of our political institutions? Let us ask
also where our own independence is if we allow ourselves so
be schooled, and be told, as we are apt to be told, that the
e spirit of mankind is opposed to slavery, and therefore we must
succumb ? Let us pause under these slavery ethics from
abroad to suggest a few inquiries. Are we not prone to
dwell upon the distinctive peculiarities of our own systems ?
Do we not exult, and with reason, in our rapid advances,
physically, politically, intellectually, under the conjoint work-
ing of them all? Do we not point to the quick, the prodi-
gious expansion in every field of our opulence, power, and
renown ? Would we not exclude all European colonization
or interference from this hemisphere ? Do we not delight in
thinking it our own ? Do we not sometimes imagine it to
our mission finally to oversee, by our example, imperial an-
monarchal Governments, and establish our better forms, as
to think them, in their place ? Do we not incline to sig-
matize them all, and even to favor popular movements that
look to their overthrow ? Indeed, we are somewhat given to
these things. I do but state it. I only recall the existence
of what all must perceive.

Now, it is precisely the imperial and royal Governments
of Europe, or republics like them in spirit, that set themselves
against our slavery; and they do the same, the very same,
against our democracy ! Most of them hate it. Some of
them would destroy it. None of them like it. We do not
allow them to dictate to us in government; and why are they
to guide our opinions, control our conduct, fulminate upon
us the sense of their lacerated sensibilities and shocked hu-
manities in this field of slavery? They know as little of the
one, as we practise it, as they do of the other; and we should
as little bow to them in the one as the other. Can we forget
the extraordinary attack made a few years ago, upon the floor
of the British House of Common, on the American Minister
in London, and that Minister a distinguished Southern man,
because he owned slaves ? That very attack was based on
publications from the United States.

Thus abolitionism and modern free soiisme, by fortifying
Europe in its denunciations of our slavery, are helping Europe
to undermine our democracy. Who can fail to see the con-
nexion? If their co-operating efforts, which our Northern
people are so prone to encourage and stimulate, terminate in
destroying our UNIOX, our democracy will thenceforward as-
suredly be trumpeted over Europe as nothing better than a huge
failure, an enormous mockery; a topic for their jeers, a beacon
to be shunned.

Europe forced slavery upon us. We cannot merely eat it
loose. We strove to check it while colonies, but could not not-

tutional obligations. Our Union is not good gone forever, and sooner than we think. It is not good writing, good writing, or any mere array of its advantages, however pointedly or eloquently put forth, that can any longer save it. It must be saved by deeds, by conduct, by things palpable to be done and abided by. I would have alluded, if with you, to the sentiments lately expressed by Judge GRIER, of the Supreme Court of the United States, on the fugitive slave law. I would have approved them with my whole judgment and heart.

In this same connexion I would have asked permission to mention a case that once came under my own knowledge. It was this: When Judge Washington was on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, and holding, as such, a circuit court in Philadelphia, he lost one of his slaves. Whether he had run away from Mount Vernon, the home of his immortal ancestor, and then the judge's home, or had come with the judge from Mount Vernon as a body servant and absconded on reaching Philadelphia, I am not sure, writing only from memory. At all events, he had absconded, and was in Philadelphia. I was then Attorney General of our State. It was shortly before the war of 1812. Judge Washington applied to me to assist him in the legal steps for the recovery of his slave. I did, and the slave was recovered. There was nothing more than a brief hearing before a justice of the common pleas of this county. No excitement was raised, no noise of any kind. It was simply a question of law and evidence under the Constitution. Did the slave belong to Judge Washington, and had he absconded? Both points being settled in the affirmative, the judge recovered him as a matter of course, and all acquiesced in the decision.

Now mark the difference. Nobody dreamed that Judge Washington was an inhuman man or bad citizen. Like his immortal ancestor, he owned slaves. General Washington liberated his by will, as many other Southern people have, and as thousands more would, if the Northern people would case to injure and insult them on this head. The South were the efficient pioneers in forming the Colonization Society. They organized, they put it into operation, on purpose that they might be able to send their emancipated slaves to Africa. Judge Washington was its first president—it's leading patron. Mr. Crawford, another distinguished Southern man, was, I think, its second president, and Mr. Clay its third. But mark the difference. Mark the vast, the almost incredible strides of intermediate palpable aggression upon the South. Witness the Northern uproar, not alone since the fugitive slave bill passed, but for ten, twenty years anterior, when a Southern man has ventured upon a claim for his fugitive slave! Has it not been treated as an outrage, an enormity? Has not rage been enkindled; have not blasts been blown, as from "Boreas and Eurus loues?" This is fact. This is history. Men, otherwise good citizens, have long been inculcating resistance to the claim, and, at last, have carried their opposition to the very verge of treason. Yet, the claim has ever rested on the same constitutional grounds, the same explicit, solemn guaranties as in Judge Washington's time, when he, peaceably and quietly, recovered his slave in Philadelphia. Who that reflects upon so amazing a progress in popular delusion and the spirit of anti-federalism aggression upon the South, can fail to see that their rights have been deliberately trodden upon, in this prominent particular at least, even if the list of encroachments had never gone any further. And are present philanthropists superior, as pure men, wise men, patriotic men, to Washington and his great associates—the Franklins, Adamses, Madisons, Jeffersons, Hamiltons, Ellsworths, Rutledges, and others, illustrious in genius, virtue, and services, the founders of this nation, long its boasts, and growing to be the admiration of other nations, who signed or approved the federal constitution with all its sanctions of slavery? Alas, painful contrasts might be found if we were to look for them! The name of Washington alone, the great Virginian, and greatest of Americans, whose purity and wisdom fill the world, ought to put them all to shame. Who is it would trade him by affecting to be better and wiser than the constitution which he helped to frame and so thoroughly understood?

The history of the downfall of this republic, if our own fatuity has predestinated its downfall, will point to the anticipation by England of her West India slaves as the epoch when our Northern hostility to slavery assumed its furor and inveteracy. Until then it was mainly speculative rather than

people are so prone to encourage and stimulate, terminate in destroying our UNION, our democracy will thenforward assuredly be trumpeted over Europe as nothing better than a huge failure, an enormous mockery; a topic for their jeers, a beacon to be shunned.

Europe forced slavery upon us. We cannot madly cut it loose. We strove to check it while colonies, but could not—the mother country objecting. We stopped it as soon as legislating for ourselves as a nation. We have infinitely meliorated the condition of the African race. England sent them here from a state of terrible bondage in Africa; from a condition barbarous beyond description. The three millions now in these fertile States have risen in the scale of human beings beyond all example, perhaps, in the annals of the world, within a time so relatively brief for changing the characteristics of a race. This great and progressive improvement has been effected in the Southern portions of our confederacy, where the general treatment of the slaves has been eminently just, humane, and wise. It was once my good lot—never can I forget it—to pass a week at Montpelier, the seat of Mr. Madison, in Virginia, just after he had ceased to be President of the United States. A hundred slaves or so had descended to him from his father. I rode on horseback with him over his estate. I saw them at their various work; well clothed, well fed, well lodged—I saw how contented they appeared. The sick were attended to, the old exempted from labor and made comfortable, and I could not have been deceived, this was impossible, in the signs of attachment I saw in them all to the common head and friend of them all. Very recently, within a month, I have been on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. There, too, on landed estates, some large, some small, worked by the same race—a race so adept in some of the great branches of our agriculture—scenes much of the same nature fell under my observation; and I could not refrain the wish that enlightened people of the North could behold such scenes, with the tone of manners, hospitable intercourse, and traditional courtesy going hand in hand with them, in the proprieties of those estates. It might serve to mitigate or dispel many of the unfavorable opinions now entertained of our Southern brother from want of knowledge. As statesmen, ought not all to bear in mind how the industry of this race, in their improved aggregate condition, through Southern instrumentation, in spite of all exaggerated exceptions to the contrary, has aided in augmenting, beyond all power of safe computation from the magnitude of the item, the incalculable resources of our common country; where all are parts of a grand, harmonious whole. The North have their abundant share, and have had from the first, in the wonderful, unparalleled results. Good results they may prove to mankind at large, if our example is yet to go for any thing among nations. To the Africans themselves, the results may eventually become preeminently beneficent. Even whilst I write, comes to us the news of that noble bequest from a Southern man, the late Mr. McDonogh, of New Orleans, in aid of the Colonization Society, the funds of which have heretofore been enriched by Southern liberality, giving hope more and more that our Africans may yet get back to their original shores, not only improved and civilized themselves, but diffusing the rays of civilization through the darkness of Africa. But deplorable will be the results, all round, for ages unnumbered to come, if this our magnificent Union is to be dashed to pieces by sectional short-sightedness and unscrupulous fanaticism. Let the God of our fathers be thanked that there are not wanting in the North patriots of towering fame and giants in intellect, and in the sunny South, too, who still keep to the holy work of striving to open the eyes of the blind around them, and rescue from destruction this glorious and united land.

These are some of the sentiments I would have expressed on Monday evening, had it been in my power to be with you. Please to accept them from me, thrown together in this form, since your kind invitation got to my hands. My answer must be taken as an earnest of the value I have set upon the invitation; and I ask leave to subjoin a sentiment, to be proposed to the company who will assemble at the supper table.

I pray you, gentle men, in conclusion, to accept for yourselves and those whom you represent, assurances of the respect and cordiality with which I am your much obliged neighbor and friend, RICHARD RUSH.

"THE UNION: Our prosperity, safety, and glory have arisen from its existence, and will perish when it falls."

* Mr. Stevenson.