[Illustration: MARCONI READING A MESSAGE]

STORIES OF INVENTORS

The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers. True Incidents And Personal Experiences

By

RUSSELL DOUBLEDAY

1904

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author and publishers take pleasure in acknowledging the courtesy of

 _The Scientific American_ _The Booklovers Magazine_ _The Holiday Magazine_, and Messrs. Wood & Nathan Company

for the use of a number of illustrations in this book. 

From _The Scientific American_, illustrations facing pages 16, 48, 78, 80, 88, 94, 118, 126, 142, and 162. 

From _The Booklovers Magazine_, illustrations facing pages 184, 190, 194, and 196. 

From _The Holiday Magazine_, illustrations facing pages 100 and 110. 

CONTENTS

 How Guglielmo Marconi Telegraphs Without Wires Santos-Dumont and His Air-Ship How a Fast Train Is Run How Automobiles Work The Fastest Steamboats The Life-Savers and Their Apparatus Moving Pictures--Some Strange Subjects and How They Were Taken Bridge Builders and Some of Their Achievements Submarines in War and Peace Long-Distance Telephony--What Happens When You Talk into a Telephone Receiver A Machine That Thinks--A Type-Setting Machine That Makes Mathematical Calculations How Heat Produces Cold--Artificial Ice-Making

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

 Marconi Reading a Message _Frontispiece_

 Marconi Station at Wellfleet, Massachusetts The Wireless Telegraph Station at Glacé Bay Santos-Dumont Preparing for a Flight Rounding the Eiffel Tower The Motor and Basket of "Santos-Dumont No. 9" Firing a Fast Locomotive Track Tank Railroad Semaphore Signals Thirty Years' Advance in Locomotive Building The "Lighthouse" of the Rail A Giant Automobile Mower-Thrasher An Automobile Buckboard An Automobile Plow The _Velox_, of the British Navy The Engines of the _Arrow_ A Life-Saving Crew Drilling Life-Savers at Work Biograph Pictures of a Military Hazing Developing Moving-Picture Films Building an American Bridge in Burmah Viaduct Across Canyon Diablo Beginning an American Bridge in Mid-Africa Lake's Submarine Torpedo-Boat _Protector_ Speeding at the Rate of 102 Miles an Hour Singing Into the Telephone "Central" Telephone Operators at Work Central Making Connections The Back of a Telephone Switchboard A Few Telephone Trunk Wires The Lanston Type-Setter Keyboard Where the "Brains" are Located The Type Moulds and the Work They Produce

INTRODUCTION

There are many thrilling incidents--all the more attractive because oftheir truth--in the study, the trials, the disappointments, theobstacles overcome, and the final triumph of the successful inventor. 

Every great invention, afterward marvelled at, was first derided. Eachgreat inventor, after solving problems in mechanics or chemistry, had toface the jeers of the incredulous. 

The story of James Watt's sensations when the driving-wheels of hisfirst rude engine began to revolve will never be told; the visions ofRobert Fulton, when he puffed up the Hudson, of the fleets of vesselsthat would follow the faint track of his little vessel, can never be putin print. 

It is the purpose of this book to give, in a measure, the adventurousside of invention. The trials and dangers of the builders of thesubmarine; the triumphant thrill of the inventor who hears for the firsttime the vibration of the long-distance message through the air; thedaring and tension of the engineer who drives a locomotive at onehundred miles an hour. 

The wonder of the mechanic is lost in the marvel of the machine; thedoer is overshadowed by the greatness of his achievement. 

These are true stories of adventure in invention. 

STORIES OF INVENTORS

HOW GUGLIELMO MARCONI TELEGRAPHS WITHOUT WIRES

A nineteen-year-old boy, just a quiet, unobtrusive young fellow, whotalked little but thought much, saw in the discovery of an olderscientist the means of producing a revolutionising invention by whichnations could talk to nations without the use of wires or tangibleconnection, no matter how far apart they might be or by what they mightbe separated. The possibilities of Guglielmo (William) Marconi'sinvention are just beginning to be realised, and what it has alreadyaccomplished would seem too wonderful to be true if the people of thesemarvellous times were not almost surfeited with wonders. 

It is of the boy and man Marconi that this chapter will tell, andthrough him the story of his invention, for the personality, thetalents, and the character of the inventor made wireless telegraphypossible. 

It was an article in an electrical journal describing the properties ofthe "Hertzian waves" that suggested to young Marconi the possibility ofsending messages from one place to another without wires. Many mendoubtless read the same article, but all except the young Italian lackedthe training, the power of thought, and the imagination, first toforesee the great things that could be accomplished through thisdiscovery, and then to study out the mechanical problem, and finally tosteadfastly push the work through to practical usefulness. 

It would seem that Marconi was not the kind of boy to produce arevolutionising invention, for he was not in the least spectacular, but, on the contrary, almost shy, and lacking in the aggressive enthusiasmthat is supposed to mark the successful inventor; quiet determinationwas a strong characteristic of the young Italian, and a studious habitwhich had much to do with the great results accomplished by him at soearly an age. 

He was well equipped to grapple with the mighty problem which he hadbeen the first to conceive, since from early boyhood he had madeelectricity his chief study, and a comfortable income saved him from thegrinding struggle for bare existence that many inventors have had toendure. Although born in Bologna (in 1874) and bearing an Italian name, Marconi is half Irish, his mother being a native of Britain. Having beeneducated in Bologna, Florence, and Leghorn, Italy's schools may rightlyclaim to have had great influence in the shaping of his career. Certainit is, in any case, that he was well educated, especially in his chosenbranch. 

Marconi, like many other inventors, did not discover the means by whichthe end was accomplished; he used the discovery of other men, and turnedtheir impractical theories and inventions to practical uses, and, inaddition, invented many theories of his own. The man who does old thingsin a new way, or makes new uses of old inventions, is the one whoachieves great things. And so it was the reading of the discovery ofHertz that started the boy on the train of thought and the series ofexperiments that ended with practical, everyday telegraphy without theuse of wires. To begin with, it is necessary to give some idea of themedium that carries the wireless messages. 

It is known that all matter, even the most compact and solid ofsubstances, is permeated by what is called ether, and that thevibrations that make light, heat, and colour are carried by thismysterious substance as water carries the wave motions on its surface. This strange substance, ether, which pervades everything, surroundseverything, and penetrates all things, is mysterious, since it cannot beseen nor felt, nor made known to the human senses in any way;colourless, odourless, and intangible in every way, its properties areonly known through the things that it accomplishes that are beyond thepowers of the known elements. Ether has been compared by one writer tojelly which, filling all space, serves as a setting for the planets, moons, and stars, and, in fact, all solid substances; and as a bowl ofjelly carries a plum, so all solid things float in it. 

Heinrich Hertz discovered that in addition to the light, heat, andcolour waves carried by ether, this substance also served to carryelectric waves or vibrations, so that electric impulses could be sentfrom one place to another without the aid of wires. These electric waveshave been named "Hertzian waves, " in honour of their discoverer; but itremained for Marconi, who first conceived their value, to put them topractical use. But for a year he did not attempt to work out his plan, thinking that all the world of scientists were studying the problem. Theexpected did not happen, however. No news of wireless telegraphyreached the young Italian, and so he set to work at his father's farm inBologna to develop his idea. 

[Illustration: THE MARCONI STATION AT GLACÉ BAY, CAPE BRETONFrom the wires hung to these towers are sent the messages that carryclear across to England. ]

And so the boy began to work out his great idea with a doggeddetermination to succeed, and with the thought constantly in mindspurring him on that it was more than likely that some other scientistwas striving with might and main to gain the same end. 

His father's farm was his first field of operations, the smallbeginnings of experiments that were later to stretch across manyhundreds of miles of ocean. Set up on a pole planted at one side of thegarden, he rigged a tin box to which he connected, by an insulated wire, his rude transmitting apparatus. At the other side of the garden acorresponding pole with another tin box was set up and connected withthe receiving apparatus. The interest of the young inventor can easilybe imagined as he sat and watched for the tick of his recordinginstrument that he knew should come from the flash sent across thegarden by his companion. Much time had been spent in the planning andthe making of both sets of instruments, and this was the first test;silent he waited, his nerves tense, impatient, eager. Suddenly the Morsesounder began to tick and burr-r-r; the boy's eyes flashed, and hisheart gave an exultant bound--the first wireless message had been sentand received, and a new marvel had been added to the list of world'swonders. The quiet farm was the scene of many succeeding experiments, the place having been put at his disposal by his appreciative father, and in addition ample funds were generously supplied from the samesource. Different heights of poles were tried, and it was found that thedistance could be increased in proportion to the altitude of the polebearing the receiving and transmitting tin boxes or "capacities"--thehigher the poles the greater distance the message could be sent. Thesuccess of Marconi's system depended largely on his receiving apparatus, and it is on account of his use of some of the devices invented by othermen that unthinking people have criticised him. He adapted to the use ofwireless telegraphy certain inventions that had heretofore been merelyinteresting scientific toys--curious little instruments of no apparentpractical value until his eye saw in them a contributory means to agreat end. 

Though Hertz caught the etheric waves on a wire hoop and saw theanswering sparks jump across the unjoined ends, there was no way torecord the flashes and so read the message. The electric current of awireless message was too weak to work a recording device, so Marconimade use of an ingenious little instrument invented by M. Branly, calleda coherer, to hitch on, as it were, the stronger current of a localbattery. So the weak current of the ether waves, aided by the strongercurrent of the local circuit, worked the recorder and wrote the messagedown. The coherer was a little tube of glass not as long as your finger, and smaller than a lead pencil, into each end of which was tightlyfitted plugs of silver; the plugs met within a small fraction of an inchin the centre of the tube, and the very small space between the ends ofthe plugs was filled with silver and nickel dust so fine as to be almostas light as air. Though a small instrument, and more delicate than aclinical thermometer, it loomed large in the working-out of wirelesstelegraphy. One of the silver plugs of the coherer was connected to thereceiving wire, while the other was connected to the earth (grounded). To one plug of the coherer also was joined one pole of the localbattery, while the other pole was in circuit with the other plug of thecoherer through the recording instrument. The fine dust-like silver andnickel particles in the coherer possessed the quality of highresistance, except when charged by the electric current of the etherwaves; then the particles of metal clung together, cohered, and allowedof the passage of the ether waves' current and the strong current of thelocal battery, which in turn actuated the Morse sounder and recorder. The difficulty with this instrument was in the fact that the metalparticles continued to cohere, unless shaken apart, after the etherwaves' current was discontinued. So Marconi invented a little devicewhich was in circuit with the recorder and tapped the coherer tube witha tiny mallet at just the right moment, causing the particles toseparate, or decohere, and so break the circuit and stop the localbattery current. As no wireless message could have been received withoutthe coherer, so no record or reading could have been made without theyoung Italian's improvement. 

In sending the message from one side of his father's estate at Bolognato the other the young inventor used practically the same methods thathe uses to-day. Marconi's transmitting apparatus consisted of electricbatteries, an induction coil by which the force of the current isincreased, a telegrapher's key to make and break the circuit, and apair of brass knobs. The batteries were connected with the inductioncoil, which in turn was connected with the brass knobs; thetelegrapher's key was placed between the battery and the coil. It wasthe boy scarcely out of his teens who worked out the principles of hissystem, but it took time and many, many experiments to overcome theobstacles of long-distance wireless telegraphy. The sending of a messageacross the garden in far-away Italy was a simple matter--the depressedkey completed the electric circuit created by a strong battery throughthe induction coil and made a spark jump between the two brass knobs, which in turn started the ether vibrating at the rate of three or fourhundred million times a minute from the tin box on top of a pole. Thevibrations in the ether circled wider and wider, as the circular wavesspread from the spot where a stone is dropped into a pool, but with thespeed of light, until they reached a corresponding tin box on top of alike pole on the other side of the garden; this box, and the wireconnected with it, caught the waves, carried them down to the coherer, and, joining the current from the local battery, a dot or dash wasrecorded; immediately after, the tapper separated the metal particlesin the coherer and it was ready for the next series of waves. 

One spark made a single dot, a stream of sparks the dash of the Morsetelegraphic code. The apparatus was crude at first, and workedspasmodically, but Marconi knew he was on the right track andpersevered. With the heightening of the pole he found he could sendfarther without an increase of electric power, until wireless messageswere sent from one extreme limit of his father's farm to the other. 

It is hard to realize that the young inventor only began his experimentsin wireless telegraphy in 1895, and that it is scarcely eight yearssince the great idea first occurred to him. 

After a year of experimenting on his father's property, Marconi was ableto report to W. H. Preece, chief electrician of the British postalsystem, certain definite facts--not theories, but facts. He had actuallysent and received messages, without the aid of wires, about two miles, but the facilities for further experimenting at Bologna were exhausted, and he went to England. 

Here was a youth (scarcely twenty-one), with a great invention alreadywithin his grasp--a revolutionising invention, the possibilities ofwhich can hardly yet be conceived. And so this young Italian, quiet, retiring, unassuming, and yet possessing Jove's power of sendingthunderbolts, came to London (in 1896), to upbuild and link nation tonation more closely. With his successful experiments behind him, Marconiwas well received in England, and began his further work with all theencouragement possible. Then followed a series of tests that were fairlybewildering. Messages were sent through brick walls--through houses, indeed--over long stretches of plain, and even through hills, provingbeyond a doubt that the etheric electric waves penetrated everything. For a long time Marconi used modifications of the tin boxes which were afeature of his early trials, but later balloons covered with tin-foil, and then a kite six feet high, covered with thin metallic sheets, wasused, the wire leading down to the sending and receiving instrumentsrunning down the cord. With the kite, signals were sent eight miles bythe middle of 1897. Marconi was working on the theory that the higherthe transmitting and receiving "capacity, " as it was then called, orwire, or "antenna, " the greater distance the message could be sent; sothat the distance covered was only limited by the height of thetransmitting and receiving conductors. This theory has since beenabandoned, great power having been substituted for great height. 

Marconi saw that balloons and kites, the playthings of the winds, wereunsuitable for his purpose, and sought some more stable support for hissending and receiving apparatus. He set up, therefore (in November, 1897), at the Needles, Isle of Wight, a 120-foot mast, from the apex ofwhich was strung his transmitting wire (an insulated wire, instead of abox, or large metal body, as heretofore used). This was the forerunnerof all the tall spars that have since pointed to the sky, and which havebeen the centre of innumerable etheric waves bearing man's messages overland and sea. 

With the planting of the mast at the Needles began a new series ofexperiments which must have tried the endurance and determination of theyoung man to the utmost. A tug was chartered, and to the sixty-foot masterected thereon was connected the wire and transmitting and receivingapparatus. From this little vessel Marconi sent and received wirelesssignals day after day, no matter what the state of the weather. Witheach trip experience was accumulated and the apparatus was improved; themoving station steamed farther and farther out to sea, and the etherwaves circled wider and wider, until, at the end of two months ofsea-going, wireless telegraphy signals were received clear across to themainland, fourteen miles, whereupon a mast was set up and a stationestablished (at Bournemouth), and later eighteen miles away at Poole. 

By the middle of 1898 Marconi's wireless system was doing actualcommercial service in reporting, for a Dublin newspaper, the events at aregatta at Kingstown, when about seven hundred messages were sent from afloating station to land, at a maximum distance of twenty-five miles. 

It was shortly afterward, while the royal yacht was in Cowes Bay, thatone hundred and fifty messages between the then Prince of Wales and hisroyal mother at Osborne House were exchanged, most of them of a veryprivate nature. 

One of the great objections to wireless telegraphy has been theinability to make it secret, since the ether waves circle from thecentre in all directions, and any receiving apparatus within certainlimits would be affected by the waves just as the station to which themessage was sent would be affected by them. To illustrate: the wavesradiating from a stone dropped into a still pool would make a dead leafbob up and down anywhere on the pool within the circle of the waves, andso the ether waves excited the receiving apparatus of any station withinthe effective reach of the circle. 

Of course, the use of a cipher code would secure the secrecy of amessage, but Marconi was looking for a mechanical device that would makeit impossible for any but the station to which the message was sent toreceive it. He finally hit upon the plan of focussing the ether waves asthe rays of a searchlight are concentrated in a given direction by theuse of a reflector, and though this adaptation of the searchlightprinciple was to a certain extent successful, much penetrating power waslost. This plan has been abandoned for one much more ingenious andeffective, based on the principle of attunement, of which more later. 

It was a proud day for the young Italian when his receiver at Doverrecorded the first wireless message sent across the British Channel fromBoulogne in 1899--just the letters V M and three or four words in theMorse alphabet of dots and dashes. He had bridged that space of stormy, restless water with an invisible, intangible something that could beneither seen, felt, nor heard, and yet was stronger and surer thansteel--a connection that nothing could interrupt, that no barrier couldprevent. The first message from England to France was soon followed byone to M. Branly, the inventor of the coherer, that made the receivingof the message possible, and one to the queen of Marconi's country. Theinventor's march of progress was rapid after this--stations wereestablished at various points all around the coast of England; vesselswere equipped with the apparatus so that they might talk to the mainlandand to one another. England's great dogs of war, her battle-ships, fought an imaginary war with one another and the orders were flashedfrom the flagship to the fighters, and from the Admiral's cabin to theshore, in spite of fog and great stretches of open water heavingbetween. 

[Illustration: THE WIRELESS TELEGRAPH STATION AT GLACÉ BAY]

A lightship anchored off the coast of England was fitted with theMarconi apparatus and served to warn several vessels of impendingdanger, and at last, after a collision in the dark and fog, saved themen who were aboard of her by sending a wireless message to the mainlandfor help. 

From the very beginning Marconi had set a high standard for himself. Heworked for an end that should be both commercially practical anduniversal. When he had spanned the Channel with his wireless messages, he immediately set to work to fling the ether waves farther and farther. Even then the project of spanning the Atlantic was in his mind. 

On the coast of Cornwall, near Penzance, England, Marconi erected agreat station. A forest of tall poles were set up, and from the wiresstrung from one to the other hung a whole group of wires which were inturn connected to the transmitting apparatus. From a little distance thestation looked for all the world like ships' masts that had been takenout and ranged in a circle round the low buildings. This was the stationof Poldhu, from which Marconi planned to send vibrations in the etherthat would reach clear across to St. Johns, Newfoundland, on the otherside of the Atlantic--more than two thousand miles away. A power-drivendynamo took the place of the more feeble batteries at Poldhu, convertersto increase the power displaced the induction coil, and manysending-wires, or antennae, were used instead of one. 

On Signal Hill, at St. Johns, Newfoundland--a bold bluff overlooking thesea--a group of men worked for several days, first in the little stonehouse at the brink of the bluff, setting up some electric apparatus; andlater, on the flat ground nearby, the same men were very busy flying agreat kite and raising a balloon. There was no doubt about theearnestness of these men: they were not raising that kite for fun. Theyworked with care and yet with an eagerness that no boy ever displayswhen setting his home-made or store flyer to the breeze. They had hardluck: time and time again the wind or the rain, or else the fog, baffledthem, but a quiet young fellow with a determined, thoughtful face urgedthem on, tugged at the cord, or held the kite while the others ran withthe line. Whether Marconi stood to one side and directed or took holdwith his men, there was no doubt who was master. At last the kite wasflying gallantly, high overhead in the blue. From the saggingkite-string hung a wire that ran into the low stone house. 

One cold December day in 1901, Guglielmo Marconi sat still in a room inthe Government building at Signal Hill, St. Johns, Newfoundland, with atelephone receiver at his ear and his eye on the clock that tickedloudly nearby. Overhead flew his kite bearing his receiving-wire. It was12:30 o'clock on the American side of the ocean, and Marconi had orderedhis operator in far-off Poldhu, two thousand watery miles away, to beginsignalling the letter "S"--three dots of the Morse code, three flashesof the bluish sparks--at that corresponding hour. For six years he hadbeen looking forward to and working for that moment--the final test ofall his effort and the beginning of a new triumph. He sat waiting tohear three small sounds, the br-br-br of the Morse code "S, " humming onthe diaphragm of his receiver--the signature of the ether waves that hadtravelled two thousand miles to his listening ear. As the hands of theclock, whose ticking alone broke the stillness of the room, reachedthirty minutes past twelve, the receiver at the inventor's ear began tohum, br-br-br, as distinctly as the sharp rap of a pencil on atable--the unmistakable note of the ether vibrations sounded in thetelephone receiver. The telephone receiver was used instead of the usualrecorder on account of its superior sensitiveness. 

Transatlantic wireless telegraphy was an accomplished fact. 

Though many doubted that an actual signal had been sent across theAtlantic, the scientists of both continents, almost without exception, accepted Marconi's statement. The sending of the transatlantic signal, the spanning of the wide ocean with translatable vibrations, was a greatachievement, but the young Italian bore his honours modestly, andimmediately went to work to perfect his system. 

Two months after receiving the message from Poldhu at St. Johns, Marconiset sail from England for America, in the _Philadelphia_, to carry out, on a much larger scale, the experiments he had worked out with the tugthree years ago. The steamship was fitted with a complete receiving andsending outfit, and soon after she steamed out from the harbor she beganto talk to the Cornwall station in the dot-and-dash sign language. Thelong-distance talk between ship and shore continued at intervals, therecording instrument writing the messages down so that any one whounderstood the Morse code could read. Message after message came andwent until one hundred and fifty miles of sea lay between Marconi andhis station. Then the ship could talk no more, her sending apparatus notbeing strong enough; but the faithful men at Poldhu kept sendingmessages to their chief, and the recorder on the _Philadelphia_ kepttaking them down in the telegrapher's shorthand, though the steamshipwas plowing westward at twenty miles an hour. Day after day, at theappointed hour to the very second, the messages came from the station onland, flung into the air with the speed of light, to the young man inthe deck cabin of a speeding steamship two hundred and fifty, fivehundred, a thousand, fifteen hundred, yes, two thousand and ninety-ninemiles away--messages that were written down automatically as they came, being permanent records that none might gainsay and that all mightobserve. 

To Marconi it was the simple carrying out of his orders, for he saidthat he had fitted the Poldhu instruments to work to two thousand onehundred miles, but to those who saw the thing done--saw the narrowstrips of paper come reeling off the recorder, stamped with the blueimpressions of the messages through the air, it was astounding almostbeyond belief; but there was the record, duly attested by those whoknew, and clearly marked with the position of the ship in longitude andlatitude at the time they were received. 

It was only a few months afterward that Marconi, from his first stationin the United States, at Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass. , sent a messagedirect to Poldhu, three thousand miles. At frequent intervals messagesgo from one country to the other across the ocean, carried through fog, unaffected by the winds, and following the curvature of the earth, without the aid of wires. 

Again the unassuming nature of the young Italian was shown. There wasno brass band nor display of national colours in honour of the greatachievement; it was all accomplished quietly, and suddenly the worldwoke up to find that the thing had been done. Then the great personageson both sides of the water congratulated and complimented each other byMarconi's wireless system. 

At Marconi's new station at Glacé Bay, Cape Breton, and at the powerfulstation at Wellfleet, Cape Cod, the receiving and sending wires aresupported by four great towers more than two hundred feet high. Manywires are used instead of one, and much greater power is of courseemployed than at first, but the marvellously simple principle is thesame that was used in the garden at Bologna. The coherer has beendisplaced by a new device invented by Marconi, called a magneticdetector, by which the ether waves are aided by a stronger current torecord the message. The effect is the same, but the method is entirelydifferent. 

The sending of a long-distance message is a spectacular thing. Currentof great power is used, and the spark is a blinding flash accompanied bydeafening noises that suggest a volley from rifles. But Marconi isexperimenting to reduce the noise, and the use of the mercury vapourinvented by Peter Cooper Hewitt will do much to increase the rapidity insending. 

After much experimenting Marconi discovered that the longer the waves inthe ether the more penetrating and lasting the quality they possessed, just as long swells on a body of water carry farther and endure longerthan short ones. Moreover, he discovered that if many sending-wires wereused instead of one, and strong electric power was employed instead ofweak, these long, penetrating, enduring waves could be produced. All thenew Marconi stations, therefore, built for long-distance work, arefitted with many sending-wires, and powerful dynamos are run which arecapable of producing a spark between the silvered knobs as thick as aman's wrist. 

Marconi and several other workers in the field of wireless telegraphyare now busy experimenting on a system of attunement, or syntony, bywhich it will be possible to so adjust the sending instruments that nonebut the receiver for whom the message is meant can receive it. He isworking on the principle whereby one tuning-fork, when set vibrating, will set another of the same pitch humming. This problem is practicallysolved now, and in the near future every station, every ship, and eachinstallation will have its own key, and will respond to none other thanthe particular vibrations, wave lengths, or oscillations, for which itis adjusted. 

All through the wonders he has brought about, Marconi, the boy and theman, has shown but little--he is the strong character that does thingsand says little, and his works speak so amazingly, so loudly, that thepersonality of the man is obscured. 

The Marconi station at Glacé Bay, Cape Breton, is now receiving messagesfor cableless transmission to England at the rate of ten cents aword--newspaper matter at five cents a word. Transatlantic wirelesstelegraphy is an everyday occurrence, and the common practical uses arealmost beyond mention. It is quite within the bounds of possibility forEngland to talk clear across to Australia over the Isthmus of Panama, and soon France will be actually holding converse with her strange ally, Russia, across Germany and Austria, without asking the permission ofeither country. Ships talk to one another while in mid-ocean, separatedby miles of salt water. Newspapers have been published aboardtransatlantic steamers with the latest news telegraphed while en route;indeed, a regular news service of this kind, at a very reasonable rate, has been established. These are facts; what wonders the future has instore we can only guess. But these are some of the possibilities--newsservice supplied to subscribers at their homes, the important items tobe ticked off on each private instrument automatically, "Marconigraphed"from the editorial rooms; the sending and receiving of messages frommoving trains or any other kind of a conveyance; the direction of asubmarine craft from a safe-distance point, or the control of asubmarine torpedo. 

One is apt to grow dizzy if the imagination is allowed to run on toofar--but why should not one friend talk to another though he be milesaway, and to him alone, since his portable instrument is attuned to butone kind of vibration. It will be like having a separate language foreach person, so that "friend communeth with friend, and a strangerintermeddleth not--" and which none but that one person can understand. 

SANTOS-DUMONT AND HIS AIR-SHIP

There was a boy in far-away Brazil who played with his friends the gameof "Pigeon Flies. "

In this pastime the boy who is "it" calls out "pigeon flies, " or "batflies, " and the others raise their fingers; but if he should call "foxflies, " and one of his mates should raise his hand, that boy would haveto pay a forfeit. 

The Brazilian boy, however, insisted on raising his finger when thecatchwords "man flies" were called, and firmly protested against payinga forfeit. 

Alberto Santos-Dumont, even in those early days, was sure that if mandid not fly then he would some day. 

Many an imaginative boy with a mechanical turn of mind has dreamed andplanned wonderful machines that would carry him triumphantly over thetree-tops, and when the tug of the kite-string has been felt has wishedthat it would pull him up in the air and carry him soaring among theclouds. Santos-Dumont was just such a boy, and he spent much time insetting miniature balloons afloat, and in launching tiny air-shipsactuated by twisted rubber bands. But he never outgrew this interest inoverhead sailing, and his dreams turned into practical workinginventions that enabled him to do what never a mortal man had donebefore--that is, move about at will in the air. 

Perhaps it was the clear blue sky of his native land, and the dense, almost impenetrable thickets below, as Santos-Dumont himself hassuggested, that made him think how fine it would be to float in the airabove the tangle, where neither rough ground nor wide streams couldhinder. At any rate, the thought came into the boy's mind when he wasvery small, and it stuck there. 

His father owned great plantations and many miles of railroad in Brazil, and the boy grew up in the atmosphere of ponderous machinery and puffinglocomotives. By the time Santos-Dumont was ten years old he had learnedenough about mechanics to control the engines of his father's railroadsand handle the machinery in the factories. The boy had a natural bentfor mechanics and mathematics, and possessed a cool courage that madehim appear almost phlegmatic. Besides his inherited aptitude formechanics, his father, who was an engineer of the Central School of Artsand Manufactures of Paris, gave him much useful instruction. LikeMarconi, Santos-Dumont had many advantages, and also, like the inventorof wireless telegraphy, he had the high intelligence and determinationto win success in spite of many discouragements. Like an explorer in astrange land, Santos-Dumont was a pioneer in his work, each trial beingdifferent from any other, though the means in themselves were familiarenough. 

[Illustration: SANTOS-DUMONT PREPARING FOR A FLIGHT IN "SANTOS-DUMONT NO. 6"The steering-wheel can be seen in front of basket, the motor issuspended in frame to the rear, the propeller and rudder at extremeend. ]

The boy Santos-Dumont dreamed air-ships, planned air-ships, and readabout aerial navigation, until he was possessed with the idea that hemust build an air-ship for himself. 

He set his face toward France, the land of aerial navigation and thecountry where light motors had been most highly developed forautomobiles. The same year, 1897, when he was twenty-four years old, he, with M. Machuron, made his first ascent in a spherical balloon, the onlykind in existence at that time. He has described that first ascensionwith an enthusiasm that proclaims him a devotee of the science for alltime. 

His first ascension was full of incident: a storm was encountered; theclouds spread themselves between them and the map-like earth, so thatnothing could be seen except the white, billowy masses of vapour shiningin the sun; some difficulty was experienced in getting down, for the aircurrents were blowing upward and carried the balloon with them; thetree-tops finally caught them, but they escaped by throwing out ballast, and finally landed in an open place, and watched the dying balloon as itconvulsively gasped out its last breath of escaping gas. 

After a few trips with an experienced aeronaut, Santos-Dumont determinedto go alone into the regions above the clouds. This was the first of aseries of ascensions in his own balloon. It was made of very light silk, which he could pack in a valise and carry easily back to Paris from hislanding point. In all kinds of weather this determined sky navigatorwent aloft; in wind, rain, and sunshine he studied the atmosphericconditions, air currents, and the action of his balloon. 

The young Brazilian ascended thirty times in spherical balloons beforehe attempted any work on an elongated shape. He realised that manythings must be learned before he could handle successfully the much moredelicate and sensitive elongated gas-bag. 

In general, Santos-Dumont worked on the theory of the dirigibleballoon--that is, one that might be controlled and made to go in anydirection desired, by means of a motor and propeller carried by abuoyant gas-bag. His plan was to build a balloon, cigar-shaped, ofsufficient capacity to a little more than lift his machinery andhimself, this extra lifting power to be balanced by ballast, so that theballoon and the weight it carried would practically equal the weight ofair it displaced. The push of the revolving propeller would be dependedupon to move the whole air-ship up or down or forward, just as themotion of a fish's fins and tail move it up, down, forward, or back, itsweight being nearly the same as the water it displaces. 

The theory seems so simple that it strikes one as strange that theproblem of aerial navigation was not solved long ago. The story ofSantos-Dumont's experiments, however, his adventures and his successes, will show that the problem was not so simple as it seemed. 

Santos-Dumont was built to jockey a Pegasus or guide an air-ship, for heweighed but a hundred pounds when he made his first ascensions, andadded very little live ballast as he grew older. 

Weight, of course, was the great bugbear of every air-ship inventor, and the chief problem was to provide a motor light enough to furnishsufficient power for driving a balloon that had sufficient liftingcapacity to support it and the aeronaut in the air. Steam-engines hadbeen tried, but found too heavy for the power generated; electric motorshad been tested, and proved entirely out of the question for the samereason. 

Santos-Dumont has been very fortunate in this respect, his success, indeed, being largely due to the compact and powerful gasoline motorsthat have been developed for use on automobiles. 

Even before the balloon for the first air-ship was ordered the youngBrazilian experimented with his three-and-one-half horse-power gasolinemotor in every possible way, adding to its power, and reducing itsweight until he had cut it down to sixty-six pounds, or a little lessthan twenty pounds to a horse-power. Putting the little motor on atricycle, he led the procession of powerful automobiles in theParis-Amsterdam race for some distance, proving its power and speed. Themotor tested to his satisfaction, Santos-Dumont ordered his balloon ofthe famous maker, Lachambre, and while it was building he experimentedstill further with his little engine. To the horizontal shaft of hismotor he attached a propeller made of silk stretched tightly over alight wooden framework. The motor was secured to the aeronaut's basketbehind, and the reservoir of gasoline hung to the basket in front. Allthis was done and tested before the balloon was finished--in fact, theaeronaut hung himself up in his basket from the roof of his workshop andstarted his motor to find out how much pushing power it exerted and ifeverything worked satisfactorily. 

On September 18, 1898, Santos-Dumont made his first ascension in hisfirst air-ship--in fact, he had never tried to operate an elongatedballoon before, and so much of this first experience was absolutely new. Imagine a great bag of yellow oiled silk, cigar-shaped, fully inflatedwith hydrogen gas, but swaying in the morning breeze, and tugging at itsrestraining ropes: a vast bubble eighty-two feet long, and twelve feelin diameter at its greatest girth. Such was the balloon ofSantos-Dumont's first air-ship. Suspended by cords from the greatgas-bag was the basket, to which was attached the motor and six-footpropeller, hung sixteen feet below the belly of the great air-fish. 

Many friends and curiosity seekers had assembled to see the aeronautmake his first foolhardy attempt, as they called it. Never before had aspark-spitting motor been hung under a great reservoir of highlyinflammable hydrogen gas, and most of the group thought the daringinventor would never see another sunset. Santos-Dumont moved around hissuspended air-ship, testing a cord here and a connection there, for hewell knew that his life might depend on such a small thing as a lengthof twine or a slender rod. At one side of a small open space on theoutskirts of Paris the long, yellow balloon tugged at its fastenings, while the navigator made his final round to see that all was well. Atwist of a strap around the driving-wheel set the motor going, and amoment later Santos-Dumont was standing in his basket, giving the signalto release the air-ship. It rose heavily, and travelling with the freshwind, the propellers whirling swiftly, it crashed into the trees at theother side of the enclosure. The aeronaut had, against his betterjudgment, gone with the wind rather than against it, so the power of thepropeller was added to the force of the breeze, and the trees wereencountered before the ship could rise sufficiently to clear them. Thedamage was repaired, and two days later, September 20, 1898, theBrazilian started again from the same enclosure, but this time againstthe wind. The propeller whirled merrily, the explosions of the littlemotor snapped sharply as the great yellow bulk and the tiny basket withits human freight, the captain of the craft, rose slowly in the air. Santos-Dumont stood quietly in his basket, his hand on the controllingcords of the great rudder on the end of the balloon; near at hand was abag of loose sand, while small bags of ballast were packed around hisfeet. Steadily she rose and began to move against the wind with the slowgrace of a great bird, while the little man in the basket steered rightor left, up or down, as he willed. He turned his rudder for the lateralmovements, and changed his shifting bags of ballast hanging fore andaft, pulling in the after bag when he wished to point her nose down, anddoing likewise with the forward ballast when he wished to ascend--thepropeller pushing up or down as she was pointed. For the first time aman had actual control of an air-ship that carried him. He commanded itas a captain governs his ship, and it obeyed as a vessel answers itshelm. 

A quarter of a mile above the heads of the pygmy crowd who watched himthe little South American maneuvered his air-ship, turning circles andfigure eights with and against the breeze, too busy with his rudder, his vibrating little engine, his shifting bags of ballast, and the greatpalpitating bag of yellow silk above him, to think of his triumph, though he could still hear faintly the shouts of his friends on earth. For a time all went well and he felt the exhilaration that noearth-travelling can ever give, as he experienced somewhat of thefreedom that the birds must know when they soar through the airunfettered. As he descended to a lower, denser atmosphere he felt ratherthan saw that something was wrong--that there was a lack of buoyancy tohis craft. The engine kept on with its rapid "phut, phut, phut"steadily, but the air-ship was sinking much more rapidly than it should. Looking up, the aeronaut saw that his long gas-bag was beginning tocrease in the middle and was getting flabby, the cords from the ends ofthe long balloon were beginning to sag, and threatened to catch in thepropeller. The earth seemed to be leaping up toward him and destructionstared him in the face. A hand air-pump was provided to fill an airballoon inside the larger one and so make up for the compression of thehydrogen gas caused by the denser, lower atmosphere. He started thispump, but it proved too small, and as the gas was compressed more andmore, and the flabbiness of the balloon increased, the whole thingbecame unmanageable. The great ship dropped and dropped through the air, while the aeronaut, no longer in control of his ship, but controlled byit, worked at the pump and threw out ballast in a vain endeavour toescape the inevitable. He was descending directly over the greensward inthe centre of the Longchamps race-course, when he caught sight of someboys flying kites in the open space. He shouted to them to take hold ofhis trailing guide-rope and run with it against the wind. Theyunderstood at once and as instantly obeyed. The wind had the same effecton the air-ship as it has on a kite when one runs with it, and the speedof the fall was checked. Man and air-ship landed with a thud thatsmashed almost everything but the man. The smart boys that had savedSantos-Dumont's life helped him pack what was left of "Santos-Dumont No. 1"into its basket, and a cab took inventor and invention back to Paris. 

In spite of the narrow escape and the discouraging ending of his firstflight, Santos-Dumont launched his second air-ship the following May. Number 2 was slightly larger than the first, and the fault that wasdangerous in it was corrected, its inventor thought, by a ventilatorconnecting the inner bag with the outer air, which was designed tocompensate for the contraction of the gas and keep the skin of theballoon taut. But No. 2 doubled up as had No. 1, while she was stillheld captive by a line; falling into a tree hurt the balloon, but theaeronaut escaped unscratched. Santos-Dumont, in spite of his quiet waysand almost effeminate speech, his diminutive body, and wealth thatpermitted him to enjoy every luxury, persisted in his work with rarecourage and determination. The difficulties were great and the availableinformation meager to the last degree. The young inventor had toexperiment and find out for himself the obstacles to success and theninvent ways to surmount them. He had need of ample wealth, for thebuilding of air-ships was expensive business. The balloons were made ofthe finest, lightest Japanese silk, carefully prepared and still morevigorously tested. They were made by the most famous of the world'sballoon-makers, Lachambre, and required the spending of moneyunstintedly. The motors cost according to their lightness rather thantheir weight, and all the materials, cordage, metal-work, etc. , wereexpensive for the same reason. The cost of the hydrogen gas was verygreat also, at twenty cents per cubic meter (thirty-five cubic feet);and as at each ascension all the gas was usually lost, the expense ofeach sail in the air for gas alone amounted to from $57 for the smallestship to $122 for the largest. 

[Illustration: SANTOS-DUMONT IN HIS AIR-SHIP "NO. 6" ROUNDING THE EIFFELTOWER ON HIS PRIZE-WINNING TRIP]

Nevertheless, in November of 1899 Santos-Dumont launched anotherair-ship--No. 3. This one was supported by a balloon of much greaterdiameter, though the length remained about the same--sixty-six feet. Thecapacity, however, was almost three times as great as No. 1, being17, 655 cubic feet. The balloon was so much larger that the lessexpensive but heavier illuminating gas could be used instead ofhydrogen. When the air-ship "Santos-Dumont No. 3" collapsed and dumpedits navigator into the trees, Santos-Dumont's friends took it uponthemselves to stop his dangerous experimenting, but he said nothing, andstraightway set to work to plan a new machine. It was characteristic ofthe man that to him the danger, the expense, and the discouragementscounted not at all. 

In the afternoon of November 13, 1899, Santos-Dumont started on hisfirst flight in No. 3. The wind was blowing hard, and for a time thegreat bulk of the balloon made little headway against it; 600 feet inair it hung poised almost motionless, the winglike propeller whirlingrapidly. Then slowly the great balloon began nosing its way into thewind, and the plucky little man, all alone, beyond the reach of anyhuman voice, could not tell his joy, although the feeling of triumph wasstrong within him. Far below him, looking like two-legged hats, soforeshortened they were from the aeronaut's point of view, were thepeople of Paris, while in front loomed the tall steel spire of theEiffel Tower. To sail round that tower even as the birds float about hadbeen the dream of the young aeronaut since his first ascension. Themotor was running smoothly, the balloon skin was taut, and everythingwas working well; pulling the rudder slightly, Santos-Dumont headeddirectly for the great steel shaft. 

The people who were on the Eiffel Tower that breezy afternoon saw asight that never a man saw before. Out of the haze a yellow shape loomedlarger each minute until its outlines could be distinctly seen. It was abig cigar-shaped balloon, and under it, swung by what seemed gossamerthreads, was a basket in which was a man. The air-ship was going againstthe wind, and the man in the basket evidently had full control, for theamazed people on the tower saw the air-ship turn right and left as hernavigator pulled the rudder-cords, and she rose and fell as her masterregulated his shifting ballast. For twenty minutes Santos-Dumontmaneuvered around the tower as a sailboat tacks around a buoy. While thepeople on that tall spire were still watching, the aeronaut turned hisship around and sailed off for the Longchamps race-course, the greenoval of which could be just distinguished in the distance. 

On the exact spot where, a little more than a year before, the same manalmost lost his life and wrecked his first air-ship, No. 3 landed assoftly and neatly as a bird. 

Though he made many other successful flights, he discovered so manyimprovements that with the first small mishap he abandoned No. 3 andbegan on No. 4. 

The balloon "Santos-Dumont No. 4" was long and slim, and had an innerair-bag to compensate for the contraction of the hydrogen gas. Thisair-ship had one feature that was entirely new; the aeronaut hadarranged for himself, not a secure basket to stand in, but a frail, unprotected bicycle seat attached to an ordinary bicycle frame. Thecranks were connected with the starting-gear of the motor. 

Seated on his unguarded bicycle seat, and holding on to thehandle-bars, to which were attached the rudder-cords, Santos-Dumont madevoyages in the air with all the assurance of the sailor on the sea. 

But No. 4 was soon too imperfect for the exacting Brazilian, and inApril, 1901, he had finished No. 5. This air-cruiser was the longest ofall (105 feet), and was fitted with a sixteen horse-power motor. Insteadof the bicycle frame, he built a triangular keel of pine strips andstrengthened it with tightly strung piano wires, the whole frame, thoughsixty feet long, weighing but 110 pounds. Hung between the rods, beingsuspended by piano wires as in a spider-web, was the motor, basket, andpropeller-shaft. 

The last-named air-ship was built, if not expressly at least with theintention of trying for the Deutsch Prize of 100, 000 francs. This was abig undertaking, and many people thought it would never be accomplished;the successful aeronaut had to travel more than three miles in onedirection, round the Eiffel Tower as a racing yacht rounds a stake-boat, and return to the starting point, all within thirty minutes--_i. E. _, almost seven miles in two directions in half an hour. 

The new machine worked well, though at one time the aerial navigator'sfriends thought that they would have to pick him up in pieces and carryhim home in a basket. This incident occurred during one of the firstflights in No. 5. Everything was going smoothly, and the air-shipcircled like a hawk, when the spectators, who were craning their necksto see, noticed that something was wrong; the motor slowed down, thepropeller spun less swiftly, and the whole fabric began to sink towardthe ground. While the people gazed, their hearts in their mouths, theysaw Santos-Dumont scramble out of his basket and crawl out on theframework, while the balloon swayed in the air. He calmly knotted thecord that had parted and crept back to his place, as unconcernedly as ifhe were on solid ground. 

It was in August of 1901 that he made his first official trial for theDeutsch Prize. The start was perfect, and the machine swooped toward thedistant tower straight as a crow flies and almost as fast. The firsthalf of the distance was covered in nine minutes, so twenty-one minutesremained for the balance of the journey: success seemed assured; theprize was almost within the grasp of the aeronaut. Of a sudden assuredsuccess was changed to dire peril; the automatic valves began to leak, the balloon to sag, the cords supporting the wooden keel hung low, andbefore Santos-Dumont could stop the motor the propeller had cut them andthe whole system was threatened. The wind was drifting the air-shiptoward the Eiffel Tower; the navigator had lost control; 500 feet belowwere the roofs of the Trocadero Hotels; he had to decide which was theleast dangerous; there was but a moment to think. Santos-Dumont, deathstaring him in the face, chose the roofs. A swift jerk of a cord, and abig slit was made in the balloon. Instantly man, motor, gas-bag, andkeel went tumbling down straight into the court of the hotels. The greatballoon burst with a noise like an explosion, and the man was lost in aconfusion of yellow-silk covering, cords, and wires. When the firemenreached the place and put down their long ladders they found himstanding calmly in his wicker basket, entirely unhurt. The long, staunchkeel, resting by its ends on the walls of the court, prevented him frombeing dashed to pieces. And so ended No. 5. 

Most men would have given up aerial navigation after such an experience, but Santos-Dumont could not be deterred from continuing his experiments. The night of the very day which witnessed his fearful fall and thedestruction of No. 5 he ordered a new balloon for "Santos-Dumont No. 6. "It showed the pluck and determination of the man as nothing else could. 

Twenty-two days after the aeronaut's narrow escape his new air-ship wasfinished and ready for a flight. No. 6 was practically the same as itspredecessor--the triangular keel was retained, but an eighteenhorse-power gasoline motor was substituted for the sixteen horse-powerused previously. The propeller, made of silk stretched over a bambooframe, was hung at the after end of the keel; the motor was a little aftof the centre, while the basket to which led the steering-gear, theemergency valve to the balloon, and the motor-controlling gear wassuspended farther forward. To control the upward or downward pointing ofthe new air-ship, shifting ballast was used which ran along a wire underthe keel from one end to the other; the cords controlling this ran tothe basket also. 

The new air-ship worked well, and the experimental flights weresuccessful with one exception--when the balloon came in contact with atree. 

It was in October, 1901 (the 19th), when the Deutsch Prize Committee wasasked to meet again and see a man try to drive a balloon against thewind, round the Eiffel Tower, and return. 

The start took place at 2:42 P. M. Of October 19, 1901, with a beam windblowing. Straight as a bullet the air-ship sped for the steel shaft ofthe tower, rising as she flew. On and on she sped, while the spectators, remembering the finish of the last trial, watched almost breathlessly. With the air of a cup-racer turning the stake-boat she rounded the steelspire, a run of three and three-fifth miles, in nine minutes (at therate of more than twenty-two miles an hour), and started on thehome-stretch. 

For a few moments all went well, then those who watched were horrifiedto see the propeller slow down and nearly stop, while the wind carriedthe air-ship toward the Tower. Just in time the motor was speeded up andthe course was resumed. As the group of men watched the speck growlarger and larger until things began to take definite shape, the whiteblur of the whirling propeller could be seen and the small figure in thebasket could be at last distinguished. Again the motor failed, the speedslackened, and the ship began to sink. Santos-Dumont threw out enoughballast to recover his equilibrium and adjusted the motor. With butthree minutes left and some distance to go, the great dirigible balloongot up speed and rushed for the goal. At eleven and a half minutes pastthree, twenty-nine minutes and thirty-one seconds after starting, Santos-Dumont crossed the line, the winner of the Deutsch Prize. And sothe young Brazilian accomplished that which had been declaredimpossible. 

[Illustration: THE MOTOR AND BASKET OF "SANTOS-DUMONT NO. 9"The gasoline holder, from which a tube leads to the motor, can be seenon the side of the basket. ]

The following winter the aerial navigator, in the same No. 5, sailedmany times over the waters of the Mediterranean from Monte Carlo. Theseflights over the water, against, athwart, and with the wind, some ofthem faster than the attending steamboats could travel, continued untilthrough careless inflation of the balloon the air-ship and navigatorsank into the sea. Santos-Dumont was rescued without being harmed in theleast, and the air-ship was preserved intact, to be exhibited later toAmerican sightseers. 

"Santos-Dumont No. 6, " the most successful of the series built by thedetermined Brazilian, looks as if it were altogether too frail tointrust with the carrying of a human being. The 105-foot-long balloon, alight yellow in colour, sways and undulates with every passing breeze. The steel piano wires by which the keel and apparatus are hung to theballoon skin are like spider-webs in lightness and delicacy, and themotor that has the strength of eighteen horses is hardly bigger than abarrel. A little forward of the motor is suspended to the keel thecigar-shaped gasoline reservoir, and strung along the top rod are thebatteries which furnish the current to make the sparks for the purposeof exploding the gas in the motor. 

Santos-Dumont himself says that the world is still a long way frompractical, everyday aerial navigation, but he points out the apparentfact that the dirigible balloon in the hands of determined men willpractically put a stop to war. Henri Rochefort has said: "The day whenit is established that a man can direct an air-ship in a given directionand cause it to maneuver as he wills--there will remain little for thenations to do but to lay down their arms. "

The man who has done so much toward the abolishing of war can rest wellcontent with his work. 

HOW A FAST TRAIN IS RUN

The conductor stood at the end of the train, watch in hand, and at themoment when the hands indicated the appointed hour he leisurely climbedaboard and pulled the whistle cord. A sharp, penetrating hiss ofescaping air answered the pull, and the train moved out of the greattrain-shed in its race against time. It was all so easy and comfortablethat the passengers never thought of the work and study that had beenspent to produce the result. The train gathered speed and rushed on atan appalling rate, but the passengers did not realise how fast they weregoing unless they looked out of the windows and saw the houses andtrees, telegraph poles, and signal towers flash by. 

It is the purpose of this chapter to tell how high speed is attainedwithout loss of comfort to the passengers--in other words, to tell how afast train is run. 

When the conductor pulled the cord at the rear end of the long train awhistling signal was thus given in the engine-cab, and the engineer, after glancing down the tracks to see that the signals indicated a cleartrack, pulled out the long handle of the throttle, and the great machineobeyed his will as a docile horse answers a touch on the rein. He openedthe throttle-valve just a little, so that but little steam was admittedto the cylinders, and the pistons being pushed out slowly, thedriving-wheels revolved slowly and the train started gradually. When theend of the piston stroke was reached the used steam was expelled intothe smokestack, creating a draught which in turn strengthened the heatof the fire. With each revolution of the driving-wheels, eachcylinder--there is one on each side of every locomotive--blew its steamybreath into the stack twice. This kept the fire glowing and made thechou-chou sound that everybody knows and every baby imitates. 

As the train gathered speed the engineer pulled the throttle open widerand wider, the puffs in the short, stubby stack grew more and morefrequent, and the rattle and roar of the iron horse increased. 

Down in the pit of the engine-cab the fireman, a great shovel in hishands, stood ready to feed the ravenous fires. Every minute or two hepulled the chain and yanked the furnace door open to throw in thecoal, shutting the door again after each shovelful, to keep the firehot. 

[Illustration: "FIRING" A FAST LOCOMOTIVE An operation that ispractically continuous during a fast trip. ]

The fireman on a fast locomotive is kept extremely busy, for he mustkeep the steam-pressure up to the required standard--150 or 200pounds--no matter how fast the sucking cylinders may draw it out. Hekept his eyes on the steam-gage most of the time, and the minute thequivering finger began to drop, showing reduced pressure, he opened thedoor to the glowing furnace and fed the fire. The steam-cylinders act onthe boiler a good deal as a lung-tester acts on a human being; thecylinders draw out the steam from the boiler, requiring a roaring fireto make the vapour rapidly enough and keep up the pressure. 

Though the engineer seemed to be taking it easily enough with his handresting lightly on the reversing-lever, his body at rest, the firemanwas kept on the jump. If he was not shovelling coal he was looking aheadfor signals (for many roads require him to verify the engineer), oradjusting the valves that admitted steam to the train-pipes and heatedthe cars, or else, noticing that the water in the boiler was gettinglow--and this is one of his greatest responsibilities, which, however, the engineer sometimes shares--he turned on the steam in the injector, which forced the water against the pressure into the boiler. All thesethings he has to do repeatedly even on a short run. 

The engineer--or "runner, " as he is called by his fellows--has much todo also, and has infinitely greater responsibility. On him depends thesafety and the comfort of the passengers to a large degree; he mustnurse his engine to produce the greatest speed at the least cost ofcoal, and he must round the curves, climb the grades, and make theslow-downs and stops so gradually that the passengers will not bedisturbed. 

To the outsider who rides in a locomotive-cab for the first time itseems as if the engineer settles down to his real work with a sigh ofrelief when the limits of the city have been passed; for in the townsthere are many signals to be watched, many crossings to be looked outfor, and a multitude of moving trains, snorting engines, and tootingwhistles to distract one's attention. The "runner, " however, seemed notto mind it at all. He pulled on his cap a little more firmly, and, afterglancing at his watch, reached out for the throttle handle. A verylittle pull satisfied him, and though the increase in speed was hardlyperceptible, the more rapid exhaust told the story of faster movement. As the train sped on, the engineer moved the reversing-lever notch bynotch nearer the centre of the guide. This adjusted the "link-motion"mechanism, which is operated by the driving-axle, and cut off the steamentering the cylinders in such a way that it expanded more fully andeconomically, thus saving fuel without loss of power. 

When a station was reached, when a "caution" signal was displayed, orwhenever any one of the hundred or more things occurred that mightrequire a stop or a slow-down, the engineer closed down the throttle andvery gradually opened the air-brake valve that admitted compressed airto the brake-cylinders, not only on the locomotive but on all the cars. The speed of the train slackened steadily but without jar, until thepower of the compressed air clamped the brake-shoes on the wheels sotightly that they were practically locked and the train was stopped. Bymeans of the air-brake the engineer had almost entire control of thetrain. The pump that compresses the air is on the engine, and keeps thepressure in the car and locomotive reservoirs automatically up to therequired standard. 

Each stage of every trip of a train not a freight is carefully charted, and the engineer is provided with a time-table that shows where histrain should be at a given time. It is a matter of pride with theengineers of fast trains to keep close to their schedules, and theirgood records depend largely on this running-time, but delays of variouskinds creep in, and in spite of their best efforts engineers are notalways able to make all their schedules. To arrive at their destinationson time, therefore, certain sections must be covered in better thanschedule time, and then great skill is required to get the speed withouta sacrifice of comfort for the passenger. 

To most travellers time is more valuable than money, and so everythingabout a train is planned to facilitate rapid travelling. Almost everypart of a locomotive is controlled from the cab, which preventsunnecessary stopping to correct defects; from his seat the engineer canlet the condensed water out of the cylinders; he can start a jet ofsteam in the stack and create a draft through the fire-box; by thepressure of a lever he is able to pour sand on a slippery track, or bythe manipulation of another lever a snow-scraper is let down from thecowcatcher. The practised ear of a locomotive engineer often enables himto discover defects in the working of his powerful machine, and he isgenerally able, with the aid of various devices always on hand, toprevent an increase of trouble without leaving the cab. 

As explained above, a fast run means the use of a great deal of steamand therefore water; indeed, the higher the speed the greaterconsumption of water. Often the schedules do not allow time enough tostop for water, and the consumption is so great that it is impossible tocarry enough to keep the engine going to the end of the run. There areprovided, therefore, at various places along the line, tanks eighteeninches to two feet wide, six inches deep, and a quarter of a mile long. These are filled with water and serve as long, narrow reservoirs, fromwhich the locomotive-tenders are filled while going at almost fullspeed. Curved pipes are let down into the track-tank as the train speedson, and scoop up the water so fast that the great reservoirs are veryquickly filled. This operation, too, is controlled from the engine-cab, and it is one of the fireman's duties to let down the pipe when thewater-signal alongside the track appears. The locomotive, when takingwater from a track-tank, looks as if it was going through a river: thewater is dashed into spray and flies out on either side like the wavesbefore a fast boat. Trainmen tell the story of a tramp who stole a rideon the front or "dead" end platform of the baggage car of a fast train. This car was coupled to the rear end of the engine-tender; it was quitea long run, without stops, and the engine took water from a track-tankon the way. When the train stopped, the tramp was discovered prone onthe platform of the baggage car, half-drowned from the water thrown backwhen the engine took its drink on the run. 

"Here, get off!" growled the brakeman. "What are you doing there?"

"All right, boss, " sputtered the tramp. "Say, " he asked after a moment, "what was that river we went through a while ago?"

Though the engineer's work is not hard, the strain is great, and fastruns are divided up into sections so that no one engine or its runnerhas to work more than three or four hours at a time. 

It is realised that in order to keep the trainmen--and especially theengineers--alert and keenly alive to their work and responsibilities, itis necessary to make the periods of labour short; the same thing isfound to apply to the machines also--they need rest to keep themperfectly fit. 

Before the engineer can run his train, the way must be cleared for him, and when the train starts out it becomes part of a vast system. Eachpart of this intricate system is affected by every other part, so eachtrain must run according to schedule or disarrange the entire plan. 

[Illustration: TRACK TANK]

Each train has its right-of-way over certain other trains, and thefastest train has the right-of-way over all others. If, for any reason, the fastest train is late, all others that might be in the way must waittill the flyer has passed. When anything of this sort occurs the wholeplan has to be changed, and all trains have to be run on a new schedulethat must be made up on the moment. 

The ideal train schedules, or those by which the systems are regularlygoverned, are charted out beforehand on a ruled sheet, as a ship'scourse is charted on a voyage, in the main office of the railroad. Eachengineer and conductor is provided with a printed copy in the form of atable giving the time of departure and arrival at the different points. When the trains run on time it is all very simple, and the work of thedespatcher, the man who keeps track of the trains, is easy. When, however, the system is disarranged by the failure of a train to keep toits schedule, the despatcher's work becomes most difficult. From longtraining the despatchers become perfectly familiar with every detail ofthe sections of road under their control, the position of every switch, each station, all curves, bridges, grades, and crossings. When a trainis delayed and the system spoiled, it is the despatcher's duty to makeup another one on the spot, and arrange by telegrams, which are repeatedfor fear of mistakes, for the holding of this train and the movement ofothers until the tangle is straightened out. This problem isparticularly difficult when a road has but one track and trains movingin both directions have to run on the same pair of rails. It is on roadsof this sort that most of the accidents occur. Almost if not quite alldepends on the clear-headedness and quick-witted grasp of thedespatchers and strict obedience to orders by the trainmen. To remove asmuch chance of error as possible, safety signalling methods have beendevised to warn the engineer of danger ahead. Many modern railroads aredivided into short sections or "blocks, " each of which is presided overby a signal-tower. At the beginning of each block stand poles withprojecting arms that are connected with the signal-tower by wiresrunning over pulleys. There are generally two to each track in eachblock, and when both are slanting downward the engineer of theapproaching locomotive knows that the block he is about to enter isclear and also that the rails of the section before that is clear aswell. The lower arm, or "semaphore, " stands for the second block, and ifit is horizontal the engineer knows that he must proceed cautiouslybecause the second section already has a train in it; if the upper armis straight the "runner" knows that a train or obstruction of some sortmakes it unsafe to enter the first block, and if he obeys the strictrules he must stay where he is until the arm is lowered At night, red, white, and green lights serve instead of the arms: white, safety; green, caution; and red, danger. Accidents have sometimes occurred because theengineers were colour-blind and red and green looked alike to them. Mostroads nowadays test all their engineers for this defect in vision. 

In spite of all precautions, it sometimes happens that the block-signalsare not set properly, and to avoid danger of rear-end collisions, conductors and brakemen are instructed (when, for any reason, theirtrain stops where it is not so scheduled) to go back with lanterns atnight, or flags by day, and be ready to warn any following train. If forany reason a train is delayed and has to move ahead slowly, torpedoesare placed on the track which are exploded by the engine that comesafter and warn its engineer to proceed cautiously. 

All these things the engineer must bear in mind, and beside hisjockey-like handling of his iron horse, he must watch for signals thatflash by in an instant when he is going at full speed, and at the sametime keep a sharp lookout ahead for obstructions on the track and fordamaged roadbed. 

The conductor has nothing to do with the mechanical running of thetrain, though he receives the orders and is, in a general way, responsible. The passengers are his special care, and it is his businessto see that their getting on and off is in accordance with theirtickets. He is responsible for their comfort also, and must be ananimated information bureau, loaded with facts about every conceivablething connected with travel. The brakemen are his assistants, and staywith him to the end of the division; the engineer and fireman, withtheir engine, are cut off at the end of their division also. 

The fastest train of a road is the pride of all its employees; all thetrainmen aspire to a place on the flyer. It never starts out on any runwithout the good wishes of the entire force, and it seldom puffs out ofthe train-shed and over the maze of rails in the yard withoutreceiving the homage of those who happen to be within sight. It isimpossible to tell of all the things that enter into the running of afast train, but as it flashes across States, intersects cities, thunderspast humble stations, and whistles imperiously at crossings, it attractsthe attention of all. It is the spectacular thing that makes fame forthe road, appears in large type in the newspapers, and makes havoc withthe time-tables, while the steady-going passenger trains and labouringfreights do the work and make the money. 

[Illustration: THIRTY YEARS' ADVANCE IN LOCOMOTIVE BUILDING]

HOW AUTOMOBILES WORK

Every boy and almost every man has longed to ride on a locomotive, andhas dreamed of holding the throttle-lever and of feeling the greatmachine move under him in answer to his will. Many of us have protestedvigorously that we wanted to become grimy, hard-working firemen for thesake of having to do with the "iron horse. "

It is this joy of control that comes to the driver of an automobilewhich is one of the motor-car's chief attractions: it is the longing ofthe boy to run a locomotive reproduced in the grown-up. 

The ponderous, snorting, thundering locomotive, towering high above itssteel road, seems far removed from the swift, crouching, almostnoiseless motor-car, and yet the relationship is very close. In fact, the automobile, which is but a locomotive that runs at will anywhere, isthe father of the greater machine. 

About the beginning of 1800, self-propelled vehicles steamed along theroads of Old England, carrying passengers safely, if not swiftly, and, strange to say, continued to run more or less successfully untilprohibited by law from using the highways, because of their interferencewith the horse traffic. Therefore the locomotive and the railroadsthrove at the expense of the automobile, and the permanent iron-boundright of way of the railroads left the highways to the horse. 

The old-time automobiles were cumbrous affairs, with clumsy boilers, andsteam-engines that required one man's entire attention to keep themgoing. The concentrated fuels were not known in those days, andheat-economising appliances were not invented. 

It was the invention by Gottlieb Daimler of the high-speed gasolineengine, in 1885, that really gave an impetus to the building ofefficient automobiles of all powers. The success of his explosivegasoline engine, forerunner of all succeeding gasoline motor-carengines, was the incentive to inventors to perfect the steam-engine foruse on self-propelled vehicles. 

Unlike a locomotive, the automobile must be light, must be able to carrypower or fuel enough to drive it a long distance, and yet must be almostautomatic in its workings. All of these things the modern motor caraccomplishes, but the struggle to make the machinery more efficientstill continues. 

The three kinds of power used to run automobiles are steam, electricity, and gasoline, taken in the order of application. The steam-engines inmotor-cars are not very different from the engines used to runlocomotives, factory machinery, or street-rollers, but they are muchlighter and, of course, smaller--very much smaller in proportion to thepower they produce. It will be seen how compact and efficient theselittle steam plants are when a ten-horse-power engine, boiler, water-tank, and gasoline reservoir holding enough to drive the machineone hundred miles, are stored in a carriage with a wheel-base of lessthan seven feet and a width of five feet, and still leave ample room forfour passengers. 

It is the use of gasoline for fuel that makes all this possible. Gasoline, being a very volatile liquid, turns into a highly inflammablegas when heated and mixed with the oxygen in the air. A tank holdingfrom twenty to forty gallons of gasoline is connected, through anautomatic regulator which controls the flow of oil, to a burner underthe boiler. The burner allows the oil, which turns into gas on coming incontact with its hot surface, to escape through a multitude of smallopenings and mix with the air, which is supplied from beneath. Theopenings are so many and so close together that the whole surface ispractically one solid sheet of very hot blue flame. In getting up steama separate blaze or flame of alcohol or gasoline is made, which heatsthe steel or iron with which the fuel-oil comes in contact until it issufficiently hot to turn the oil to gas, after which the burner worksautomatically. A hand air-pump or one automatically operated by theengine maintains sufficient air pressure in the fuel-tank to keep aconstant flow. 

Most steam automobile boilers are of the water-tube variety--that is, water to be turned into steam is carried through the flames in pipes, instead of the heat in pipes through the water, as in the ordinary flueboilers. Compactness, quick-heating, and strength are thecharacteristics of motor-car boilers. Some of the boilers are less thantwenty inches high and of the same diameter, and yet are capable ofgenerating seven and one-half horse-power at a high steam pressure (150to 200 pounds). In these boilers the heat is made to play directly on agreat many tubes, and a full head of steam is generated in a fewminutes. As the steam pressure increases, a regulator that shuts offthe supply of gasoline is operated automatically, and so the pressureis maintained. 

[Illustration: THE "LIGHTHOUSE" OF THE RAILThe switchman's house (on the left), commanding a view of the railroadyard, from which the switches of the complicated system are worked andthe semaphore signals operated. ]

The water from which the steam is made is also fed automatically intothe boiler, when the engine is in motion, by a pump worked by the enginepiston. A hand-pump is also supplied by which the driver can keep theproper amount when the machine is still or in case of a breakdown. Awater-gauge in plain sight keeps the driver informed at all times as tothe amount of water in the boiler. From the boiler the steam goesthrough the throttle-valve--the handle of which is by the driver'sside--direct to the engine, and there expands, pushes the piston up anddown, and by means of a crank on the axle does its work. 

The engines of modern automobiles are marvels of compactness--socompact, indeed, that a seven-horse-power engine occupies much lessspace than an ordinary barrel. The steam, after being used, is admittedto a coil of pipes cooled by the breeze caused by the motion of thevehicle, and so condensed into water and returned to the tank. Theengine is started, stopped, slowed, and sped by the cutting off oradmission of the steam through the throttle-valve. It is reversed bymeans of the same mechanism used on locomotives--the link-motion andreversing-lever, by which the direction of the steam is reversed and theengine made to run the other way. 

After doing its work the steam is made to circulate round the cylinder(or cylinders, if there are more than one), keeping it extrahot--"superheated"; and thereafter it is made to perform a like duty tothe boiler-feed water, before it is allowed to escape. 

All steam-propelled automobiles, from the light steam runabout to theclumsy steam roller, are worked practically as described. Some machinesare worked by compound engines, which simply use the power of expansionstill left in the steam in a second larger cylinder after it has workedthe first, in which case every ounce of power is extracted from thevapour. 

The automobile builders have a problem that troubles locomotive buildersvery little--that is, compensating the difference between the speeds ofthe two driving-wheels when turning corners. Just as the inside man of amilitary company takes short steps when turning and the outside mantakes long ones, so the inside wheel of a vehicle turns slowly while theoutside wheel revolves quickly when rounding a corner. As mostautomobiles are propelled by power applied to the rear axle, to whichthe wheels are fixed, it is manifest that unless some device were madeto correct the fault one wheel would have to slide while the otherrevolved. This difficulty has been overcome by cutting the axle in twoand placing between the ends a series of gears which permit the twowheels to revolve at different speeds and also apply the power to bothalike. This device is called a compensating gear, and is worked out invarious ways by the different builders. 

The locomotive builder accomplishes the same thing by making his wheelslarger on the outside, so that in turning the wide curves of therailroad the whole machine slides to the inside, bringing to bear thelarge diameter of the outer wheel and the small diameter of the inner, the wheels being fixed to a solid axle. 

The steam machine can always be distinguished by the thin stream ofwhite vapour that escapes from the rear or underneath while it is inmotion and also, as a rule, when it is at rest. 

The motor of a steam vehicle always stops when the machine is notmoving, which is another distinguishing feature, as the gasoline motorsrun continually, or at least unless the car is left standing for a longtime. 

As the owners of different makes of bicycles formerly wrangled over themerits of their respective machines, so now motor-car owners discuss thevalue of the different powers--steam, gasoline, and electricity. 

Though steam was the propelling force of the earliest automobiles, andthe power best understood, it was the perfection of the gasoline motorthat revived the interest in self-propelled vehicles and set theinventors to work. 

A gasoline motor is somewhat like a gun--the explosion of the gas in themotor-cylinder pushes the piston (which may be likened to theprojectile), and the power thus generated turns a crank and drives thewheels. 

The gasoline motor is the lightest power-generator that has yet beendiscovered, and it is this characteristic that makes it particularlyvaluable to propel automobiles. Santos-Dumont's success in aerialnavigation is due largely to the gasoline motor, which generated greatpower in proportion to its weight. 

A gasoline motor works by a series of explosions, which make the noisethat is now heard on every hand. From the gasoline tank, which is alwaysof sufficient capacity for a good long run, a pipe is connected with adevice called the carbureter. This is really a gas machine, for it turnsthe liquid oil into gas, this being done by turning it into fine sprayand mixing it with pure air. The gasoline vapour thus formed is highlyinflammable, and if lighted in a closed space will explode. It is theexplosive power that is made to do the work, and it is a series of smallgun-fires that make the gasoline motor-car go. 

All this sounds simple enough, but a great many things must beconsidered that make the construction of a successful working motor adifficult problem. 

In the first place, the carbureter, which turns the oil into gas, mustwork automatically, the proper amount of oil being fed into the machineand the exact proportion of air admitted for the successful mixture. Then the gas must be admitted to the cylinders in just the rightquantity for the work to be done. This is usually regulatedautomatically, and can also be controlled directly by the driver. Sincethe explosion of gas in the cylinder drives the piston out only, andnot, as in the case of the steam-engine, back and forward, someprovision must be made to complete the cycle, to bring back the piston, exhaust the burned gas, and refill the cylinder with a new charge. 

In the steam-engine the piston is forced backward and forward by theexpansive power of the steam, the vapour being admitted alternately tothe forward and rear ends of the cylinder. The piston of the gasolineengine, however, working by the force of exploded gas, produces powerwhen moving in one direction only--the piston-head is pushed out by theforce of the explosion, just as the plunger of a bicycle pump issometimes forced out by the pressure of air behind it. The piston isconnected with the engine-crank and revolves the shaft, which is in turnconnected with the driving-wheels. The movement of the piston in thecylinder performs four functions: first, the downward stroke, the resultof the explosion of gas, produces the power; second, the returningup-stroke pushes out the burned gas; third, the next down-stroke sucksin a fresh supply of gas, which (fourth) is compressed by thefollowing-up movement and is ready for the next explosion. This iscalled a two-cycle motor, because two complete revolutions are necessaryto accomplish all the operations. Many machines are fitted with heavyfly-wheels, the swift revolution of which carries the impetus of thepower stroke through the other three operations. 

[Illustration: A GIANT AUTOMOBILE MOWER-THRASHERThis machine cuts a swath 35 feet wide and thrashes and sacks the grainas it moves along. Seventy to 100 acres of grain a day are harvested bythis machine, and 1, 000 to 1, 500 sacks are produced each working day. ]

To keep a practically continuous forward movement on the driving-shaft, many motors are made with four cylinders, the piston of each beingconnected with the crank-shaft at a different angle, and each cylinderdoing a different part of the work; for example, while No. 1 cylinder isdoing the work from the force of the explosion, No. 2 is compressing, No. 3 is getting a fresh supply of gas, and No. 4 is cleaning out wastegas. A four-cylinder motor is practically putting forth powercontinuously, since one of the four pistons is always at work. 

While this takes long to describe, the motion is faster than the eye canfollow, and the "phut, phut" noise of the exhaust sounds like the tattooof a drum. Almost every gasoline motor vehicle carries its own electricplant, either a set of batteries or more commonly a little magnetodynamo, which is run by the shaft of the motor. Electricity is used tomake the spark that explodes the gas at just the right moment in thecylinders. All this is automatic, though sometimes the driver has toresort to the persuasive qualities of a monkey-wrench and an oil-can. 

The exploding gas creates great heat, and unless something is done tocool the cylinders they get so hot that the gas is ignited by the heatof the metal. Some motors are cooled by a stream of water which, flowinground the cylinders and through coils of pipe, is blown upon by thebreeze made by the movement of the vehicle. Others are kept cool by arevolving fan geared to the driving-shaft, which blows on the cylinders;while still others--small motors used on motor bicycles, generally--havewide ridges or projections on the outside of the cylinders to catch thewind as the machine rushes along. 

The inventors of the gasoline motor vehicles had many difficulties toovercome that did not trouble those who had to deal with steam. Forinstance, the gasoline motor cannot be started as easily as asteam-engine. It is necessary to make the driving-shaft revolve a fewtimes by hand in order to start the cylinders working in their properorder. Therefore, the motor of a gasoline machine goes all the time, even when the vehicle is at rest. Friction clutches are used by whichthe driving-shaft and the axles can be connected or disconnected at thewill of the driver, so that the vehicle can stand while the motor isrunning; friction clutches are used also to throw in gears ofdifferent sizes to increase or decrease the speed of the vehicle, aswell as to drive backward. 

[Illustration: AN AUTOMOBILE BUCKBOARD]

The early gasoline automobiles sounded, when moving, like an artillerycompany coming full tilt down a badly paved street. The exhausted gascoughed resoundingly, the gears groaned and shrieked loudly whenimproperly lubricated, and the whole machine rattled like a runawaytin-peddler. Ingenious mufflers have subdued the sputtering exhaust, thegears are made to run in oil or are so carefully cut as to meshperfectly, rubber tires deaden the pounding of the wheels, and carefullydesigned frames take up the jar. 

Steam and gasoline vehicles can be used to travel long distances fromthe cities, for water can be had and gasoline bought almost anywhere;but electric automobiles, driven by the third of the three powers usedfor self-propelled vehicles, must keep within easy reach of the chargingstations. 

Just as the perfection of the gasoline motor spurred on the inventors toadapt the steam-engine for use in automobiles, so the inventors of thestorage battery, which is the heart of an electric carriage, werestirred up to make electric propulsion practical. 

The storage battery of an electric vehicle is practically a tank thatholds electricity; the electrical energy of the dynamo is transformedinto chemical energy in the batteries, which in turn is changed intoelectrical energy again and used to run the motors. 

Electric automobiles are the most simple of all the self-propelledvehicles. The current stored in the batteries is simply turned off andon the motors, or the pressure reduced by means of resistance whichobstructs the flow, and therefore the power, of the current. To reverse, it is only necessary to change the direction of the current's flow; andin order to stop, the connection between motor and battery is broken bya switch. 

Electricity is the ideal power for automobiles. Being clean and easilycontrolled, it seems just the thing; but it is expensive, and sometimeshard to get. No satisfactory substitute has been found for it, however, in the larger cities, and it may be that creative or "primary" batteriesboth cheap and effective will be invented and will do away with the oneobjection to electricity for automobiles. 

The astonishing things of to-day are the commonplaces of to-morrow, andso the achievements of automobile builders as here set down may begreatly surpassed by the time this appears in print. 

The sensations of the locomotive engineer, who feels his great machinestrain forward over the smooth steel rails, are as nothing to the almostnumbing sensations of the automobile driver who covered space at therate of eighty-eight miles an hour on the road between Paris and Madrid:he felt every inequality in the road, every grade along the way, andeach curve, each shadow, was a menace that required the greatest nerveand skill. Locomotive driving at a hundred miles an hour is but mildexhilaration as compared to the feelings of the motor-car driver whotravels at fifty miles an hour on the public highway. 

Gigantic motor trucks carrying tons of freight twist in and out throughcrowded streets, controlled by one man more easily than a driver guidesa spirited horse on a country road. 

Frail motor bicycles dash round the platter-like curves of cycle tracksat railroad speed, and climb hills while the riders sit at ease withfeet on coasters. 

An electric motor-car wends the streets of New York every day withthirty-five or forty sightseers on its broad back, while a groom inwhipcord blows an incongruous coaching-horn in the rear. 

Motor plows, motor ambulances, motor stages, delivery wagons, street-cars without tracks, pleasure vehicles, and even baby carriages, are to be seen everywhere. 

In 1845, motor vehicles were forbidden the streets for the sake of thehorses; in 1903, the horses are being crowded off by the motor-cars. Themotor is the more economical--it is the survival of the fittest. 

[Illustration: AN AUTOMOBILE PLOWA form of automobile that can be applied to all sorts of uses on thefarm. ]

THE FASTEST STEAMBOATS

In 1807, the first practical steamboat puffed slowly up the Hudson, while the people ranged along the banks gazed in wonder. Even the grimwalls of the Palisades must have been surprised at the strange intruder. Robert Fulton's _Clermont_ was the forerunner of the fleets upon fleetsof power-driven craft that have stemmed the currents of a thousandstreams and parted the waves of many seas. 

The _Clermont_ took several days to go from New York to Albany, and thetrip was the wonder of that time. 

During the summer of 1902 a long, slim, white craft, with a single brasssmokestack and a low deck-house, went gliding up the Hudson with a kindof crouching motion that suggested a cat ready to spring. On her deckseveral men were standing behind the pilot-house with stop-watches intheir hands. The little craft seemed alive under their feet and quiveredwith eagerness to be off. The passenger boats going in the samedirection were passed in a twinkling, and the tugs and sailing vesselsseemed to dwindle as houses and trees seem to shrink when viewed fromthe rear platform of a fast train. 

Two posts, painted white and in line with each other--one almost at theriver's edge, the other 150 feet back--marked the starting-line of ameasured mile, and were eagerly watched by the men aboard the yacht. Shesped toward the starting-line as a sprinter dashes for the tape; almostinstantly the two posts were in line, the men with watches cried "Time!"and the race was on. Then began such a struggle with Father Time as wasnever before seen; the wind roared in the ears of the passengers andsnatched their words away almost before their lips had formed them; thewater, a foam-flecked streak, dashed away from the gleaming white sidesas if in terror. As the wonderful craft sped on she seemed to settledown to her work as a good horse finds himself and gets into his stride. Faster and faster she went, while the speed of her going swept off theblack flume of smoke from her stack and trailed it behind, a dense, low-lying shadow. 

"Look!" shouted one of the men into another's ear, and raised his arm topoint. "We're beating the train!"

[Illustration: THE STEAM TURBINE-DRIVEN _VELOX_, OF THE BRITISH NAVYThe fastest torpedo-boat destroyer. ]

Sure enough, a passenger train running along the river's edge, thewheels spinning round, the locomotive throwing out clouds of smoke, wasdropping behind. The train was being beaten by the boat. Quivering, throbbing with the tremendous effort, she dashed on, the water climbingher sides and lashing to spume at her stern. 

"Time!" shouted several together, as the second pair of posts came inline, marking the finish of the mile. The word was passed to thefrantically struggling firemen and engineers below, while those on deckcompared watches. 

"One minute and thirty-two seconds, " said one. 

"Right, " answered the others. 

Then, as the wonderful yacht _Arrow_ gradually slowed down, they triedto realise the speed and to accustom themselves to the fact that theyhad made the fastest mile on record on water. 

And so the _Arrow_, moving at the rate of forty-six miles an hour, followed the course of her ancestress, the _Clermont_, when she made herfirst long trip almost a hundred years before. 

The _Clermont_ was the first practical steamboat, and the _Arrow_ thefastest, and so both were record-breakers. While there are not manypoints of resemblance between the first and the fastest boat, one isclearly the outgrowth of the other, but so vastly improved is the moderncraft that it is hard to even trace its ancestry. The little _Arrow_ isa screw-driven vessel, and her reciprocating engines--that is, enginesoperated by the pulling and pushing power of the steam-driven pistons incylinders--developed the power of 4, 000 horses, equal to 32, 000 men, when making her record-breaking run. All this enormous power was used toproduce speed, there being practically no room left in the little130-foot hull for anything but engines and boilers. 

There is little difference, except in detail, between the _Arrow's_machinery and an ordinary propeller tugboat. Her hull is very light forits strength, and it was so built as to slip easily through the water. She has twin engines, each operating its own shaft and propeller. Theseare quadruple expansion. The steam, instead of being allowed to escapeafter doing its work in the first cylinder, is turned into a larger oneand then successively into two more, so that all of its expansive poweris used. After passing through the four cylinders, the steam iscondensed into water again by turning it into pipes around whichcirculates the cool water in which the vessel floats. The steam thuscondensed to water is heated and pumped into the boiler, to be turnedinto steam, so the water has to do its work many times. All this savesweight and, therefore, power, for the lighter a vessel is the moreeasily she can be driven. The boilers save weight also by producingsteam at the enormous pressure of 400 pounds to the square inch. Steadily maintained pressure means power; the greater the pressure themore the power. It was the inventive skill of Charles D. Mosher, who hasbuilt many fast yachts, that enabled him to build engines and boilers ofgreat power in proportion to their weight. It was the ability of theinventor to build boilers and engines of 4, 000 horse-power compact andlight enough to be carried in a vessel 130 feet long, of 12 feet 6inches breadth, and 3 feet 6 inches depth, that made it possible for the_Arrow_ to go a mile in one minute and thirty-two seconds. The speed ofthe wonderful little American boat, however, was not the result of anynew invention, but was due to the perfection of old methods. 

In England, about five years before the _Arrow's_ achievement, a littletorpedo-boat, scarcely bigger than a launch, set the whole world talkingby travelling at the rate of thirty-nine and three-fourths miles anhour. The little craft seemed to disappear in the white smother of herwake, and those who watched the speed trial marvelled at the railroadspeed she made. The _Turbina_--for that was the little record-breaker'sname--was propelled by a new kind of engine, and her speed was all themore remarkable on that account. C. A. Parsons, the inventor of theengine, worked out the idea that inventors have been studying for a longtime--since 1629, in fact--that is, the rotary principle, or the rollingmovement without the up-and-down driving mechanism of the piston. 

The _Turbina_ was driven by a number of steam-turbines that worked agood deal like the water-turbines that use the power of Niagara. Just asa water-wheel is driven by the weight or force of the water striking theblades or paddles of the wheel, so the force of the many jets of steamstriking against the little wings makes the wheels of the steam-turbinesrevolve. If you take a card that has been cut to a circular shape andcut the edges so that little wings will be made, then blow on thiswinged edge, the card will revolve with a buzz; the Parsonssteam-turbine works in the same way. A shaft bearing a number of steeldisks or wheels, each having many wings set at an angle like the bladesof a propeller, is enclosed by a drumlike casing. The disks at one endof the shaft are smaller than those at the other; the steam enters atthe small end in a circle of jets that blow against the wings and setthem and the whole shaft whirling. After passing the first disk and itslittle vanes, the steam goes through the holes of an intervening fixedpartition that deflects it so that it blows afresh on the second, and soon to the third and fourth, blowing upon a succession of wheels, eachset larger than the preceding one. Each of Parsons's steam-turbineengines is a series of turbines put in a steel casing, so that they useevery ounce of the expansive power of the steam. 

It will be noticed that the little wind-turbine that you blow with yourbreath spins very rapidly; so, too, do the wheels spun by the steamybreath of the boilers, and Mr. Parsons found that the propeller fastenedto the shaft of his engine revolved so fast that a vacuum was formedaround the blades, and its work was not half done. So he lengthened hisshaft and put three propellers on it, reducing the speed, and allowingall of the blades to catch the water strongly. 

The _Turbina_, speeding like an express train, glided like a ghost overthe water; the smoke poured from her stack and the cleft wave foamed ather prow, but there was little else to remind her inventor that 2, 300horse-power was being expended to drive her. There was no jar, no shock, no thumping of cylinders and pounding of rapidly revolving cranks; themotion of the engine was rotary, and the propeller shafts, spinning at2, 000 revolutions per minute, made no more vibration than a windmillwhirling in the breeze. 

To stop the _Turbina_ was an easy matter; Mr. Parsons had only to turnoff the steam. But to make the vessel go backward another set ofturbines was necessary, built to run the other way, and working on thesame shaft. To reverse the direction, the steam was shut off the engineswhich revolved from right to left and turned on those designed to runbackward, or from left to right. One set of the turbines revolved thepropellers so that they pushed, and the other set, turning them theother way, pulled the vessel backward--one set revolving in a vacuum anddoing no work, while the other supplied the power. 

The Parsons turbine-engines have been used to propel torpedo-boats, fastyachts, and vessels built to carry passengers across the EnglishChannel, and recently it has been reported that two new transatlanticCunarders are to be equipped with them. 

[Illustration: THE ENGINES OF THE _ARROW_]

A few years after the Pilgrims sailed for the land of freedom in thetiny _Mayflower_ a man named Branca built a steam-turbine that worked ina crude way on the same principle as Parsons's modern giant. Thepictures of this first steam-turbine show the head and shoulders of abronze man set over the flaming brands of a wood fire; his metalliclungs are evidently filled with water, for a jet of steam spurts fromhis mouth and blows against the paddles of a horizontal turbine wheel, which, revolving, sets in motion some crude machinery. 

There is nothing picturesque about the steel-tube lungs of the boilersused by Parsons in the _Turbina_ and the later boats built by him, andplain steel or copper pipes convey the steam to the whirling blades ofthe enclosed turbine wheels, but enormous power has been generated andmarvellous speed gained. In the modern turbine a glowing coal fire, keptintensely hot by an artificial draft, has taken the place of the blazingsticks; the coils of steel tubes carrying the boiling water surroundedby flame replace the bronze-figure boiler, and the whirling, tightlyjacketed turbine wheels, that use every ounce of pressure and save allthe steam, to be condensed to water and used over again, have grown outof the crude machine invented by Branca. 

As the engines of the _Arrow_ are but perfected copies of the enginethat drove the _Clermont_, so the power of the _Turbina_ is derived fromsteam-motors that work on the same principle as the engine built byBranca in 1629, and his steam-turbine following the same old, old, agesold idea of the moss-covered, splashing, tireless water-wheel. 

THE LIFE-SAVERS AND THEIR APPARATUS

Forming the outside boundary of Great South Bay, Long Island, a long rowof sand-dunes faces the ocean. In summer groups of laughing batherssplash in the gentle surf at the foot of the low sand-hills, while thesun shines benignly over all. The irregular points of vessels' sailsnotch the horizon as they are swept along by the gentle summer breezes. Old Ocean is in a playful mood, and even children sport in his waters. 

After the last summer visitor has gone, and the little craft that sailover the shallow bay have been hauled up high and dry, the pavilionsdeserted and the bathing-houses boarded up, the beaches take on a newaspect. The sun shines with a cold gleam, and the surf has an angrysnarl to it as it surges up the sandy slopes and then recedes, draggingthe pebbles after it with a rattling sound. The outer line of sand-bars, which in summer breaks the blue sea into sunny ripples and flashingwhitecaps, then churns the water into fury and grips with a mighty holdthe keel of any vessel that is unlucky enough to be driven on them. Whenthe keen winter winds whip through the beach grasses on the dunes andthrow spiteful handfuls of cutting sand and spray; when the great wavespound the beach and the crested tops are blown off into vapour, then thelife-saver patrolling the beach must be most vigilant. 

All along the coast, from Maine to Florida, along the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes, and the Pacific, these men patrol the beach as apoliceman walks his beat. When the winds blow hardest and sleet addscutting force to the gale, then the surfmen, whose business it is tosave life regardless of their own comfort or safety, are most alert. 

All day the wind whistled through the grasses and moaned round thecorners of the life-saving station; the gusts were cold, damp, andpenetrating. With the setting of the sun there was a lull, but when thepatrols started out at eight o'clock, on their four-hours' tour of duty, the wind had risen again and was blowing with renewed force. Separatingat the station, one surf man went east and the other west, following theline of the surf-beaten beach, each carrying on his back a recordingclock in a leather case, and also several candle-like Coston lightsand a wooden handle. 

[Illustration: A LIFE-SAVING CREW DRILLING WITH BEACH APPARATUSHauling in a breeches-buoy and a passenger. ]

"Wind's blowing some, " said one of the men, raising his voice above thehowl of the blast. 

"Hope nothing hits the bar to-night, " the other answered. Then bothtrudged off in opposite directions. 

With pea-coats buttoned tightly and sou'westers tied down securely, thesurfmen fought the gale on their watch-tour of duty. At the end of hisbeat each man stopped to take a key attached to a post, and, insertingit in the clock, record the time of his visit at that spot, for by thismeans is an actual record kept of the movements of the patrol at alltimes. 

With head bent low in deference to the force of the blast, and eyesnarrowed to slits, the surfman searched the seething sea for the shadowyoutlines of a vessel in trouble. 

Perchance as he looked his eye caught the dark bulk of a ship in a seaof foam, or the faint lines of spars and rigging through the spume andfrozen haze--the unmistakable signs of a vessel in distress. Aninstant's concentrated gaze to make sure, then, taking a Coston signalfrom his pocket and fitting it to the handle, he struck the end on thesole of his boot. Like a parlour match it caught fire and flared out abrilliant red light. This served to warn the crew of the vessel of theirdanger, or notified them that their distress was observed and that helpwas soon forthcoming; it also served, if the surfman was near enough tothe station, to notify the lookout there of the ship in distress. If thedistance was too great or the weather too thick, the patrol raced backwith all possible speed to the station and reported what he had seen. The patrol, through his long vigils under all kinds of weatherconditions, learns every foot of his beat thoroughly, and is able totell exactly how and where a stranded vessel lies, and whether she islikely to be forced over on to the beach or whether she will stick onthe outer bar far beyond the reach of a line shot from shore. 

In a few words spoken quickly and exactly to the point--for upon theaccuracy of his report much depends--he tells the situation. Fordifferent conditions different apparatus is needed. The vessel reportedone stormy winter's night struck on the shoal that runs parallel to theouter Long Island beach, far beyond the reach of a line from shore. Deepwater lies on both sides of the bar, and after the shoal is passed thebroken water settles down a little and gathers speed for its rush forthe beach. These conditions were favourable for surf-boat work, and asthe surfman told his tale the keeper or captain of the crew decided whatto do. 

The crew ran the ever-ready surf-boat through the double doors of itshouse down the inclined plane to the beach. Resting in a carriageprovided with a pair of broad-tired wheels, the light craft was hauledby its sturdy crew through the clinging sand and into the very teeth ofthe storm to the point nearest the wreck. 

The surf rolled in with a roar that shook the ground; fringed with foamthat showed even through that dense midnight darkness, the waves werehungry for their prey. Each breaker curved high above the heads of themen, and, receding, the undertow sucked at their feet and tried to dragthem under. It did not seem possible that a boat could be launched insuch a sea. With scarcely a word of command, however, every man, knowingfrom long practice his position and specific duties, took his station oneither side of the buoyant craft and, rushing into the surf, launchedher; climbing aboard, every man took his appointed place, while thekeeper, a long steering-oar in his hands, stood at the stern. Allpulled steadily, while the steersman, with a sweep of his oar, kept herhead to the seas and with consummate skill and judgment avoided the mostdangerous crests, until the first watery rampart was passed. Adaptingtheir stroke to the rough water, the six sturdy rowers propelled theirtwenty-five-foot unsinkable boat at good speed, though it seemedinfinitely slow when they thought of the crew of the stranded vessel offin the darkness, helpless and hopeless. Each man wore a cork jacket, butin spite of their encumbrances they were marvellously active. 

As is sometimes the case, before the surf-boat reached the distressedvessel she lurched over the bar and went driving for the beach. 

The crew in the boat could do nothing, and the men aboard the ship werehelpless. Climbing up into the rigging, the sailors waited for thevessel to strike the beach, and the life-savers put for shore again toget the apparatus needed for the new situation. To load the surf-boatwith the wrecked, half-frozen crew of the stranded vessel, when therewas none too much room for the oarsmen, and then encounter the fearfulsurf, was a method to be pursued only in case of dire need. To reach thewreck from shore was a much safer and surer method of saving life, notonly for those on the vessel, but also for the surfmen. 

The beach apparatus has received the greatest attention from inventors, since that part of the life-savers' outfit is depended upon to rescuethe greatest number. 

With a rush the surf-boat rolled in on a giant wave amid a smother offoam, and no sooner had her keel grated on the sand than her crew wereout knee-deep in the swirling water and were dragging her up high anddry. 

A minute later the entire crew, some pulling, some steering, dragged outthe beach wagon. A light framework supported by two broad-tired wheelscarried all the apparatus for rescue work from the beach. Each member ofthe crew had his appointed place and definite duties, according toprinted instructions which each had learned by heart, and when thecommand was given every man jumped to his place as a well-trainedman-of-war's-man takes his position at his gun. 

Over hummocks of sand and wreckage, across little inlets made by thewaves, in the face of blinding sleet and staggering wind, thelife-savers dragged the beach wagon on the run. 

Through the mist and shrouding white of the storm the outlines of thestranded vessel could just be distinguished. 

Bringing the wagon to the nearest point, the crew unloaded theirappliances. 

Two men then unloaded a sand-anchor--an immense cross--and immediatelyset to work with shovels to dig a hole in the sand and bury it. Whilethis was being done two others were busy placing a bronze cannon (twoand one-half-inch bore) in position; another got out boxes containingsmall rope wound criss-cross fashion on wooden pins set upright in thebottom. The pins merely held the rope in its coils until ready for use, when board and pegs were removed. The free end of the line was attachedto a ring in the end of the long projectile which the captain carried, together with a box of ammunition slung over his shoulders. Thecylindrical projectile was fourteen and one-half inches long and weighedseventeen pounds. All these operations were carried on at once and withutmost speed in spite of the great difficulties and the darkness. 

While the surf boomed and the wind roared, the captain sighted thegun--aided by Nos. 1 and 2 of the crew--aiming for the outstretched armsof the yards of the wrecked vessel. With the wind blowing at an almosthurricane rate, it was a difficult shot, but long practice under allkinds of difficulties had taught the captain just how to aim. As hepulled the lanyard, the little bronze cannon spit out fire viciously, and the long projectile, to which had been attached the end of thecoiled line, sailed off on its errand of mercy. With a whir the linespun out of the box coil after coil, while the crew peered out over thebreaking seas to see if the keeper's aim was true. At last the linestopped uncoiling and the life-savers knew that the shot had landedsomewhere. For a time nothing happened, the slender rope reached outinto the boiling waves, but no answering tugs conveyed messages to thewaiting surfmen from the wrecked seamen. 

At length the line began to slip through the fingers of the keeper whoheld it and moved seaward, so those on shore knew that the rope had beenfound and its use understood. The line carried out by the projectileserved merely to drag out a heavy rope on which was run a sort oftrolley carrying a breeches-buoy or sling. 

The men on the wreck understood the use of the apparatus, or read theinstructions printed in several languages with which the heavy rope wastagged. They made the end of the strong line fast to the mast well abovethe reach of the hungry seas, and the surfmen secured their end to thedeeply buried sand-anchor, an inverted V-shaped crotch placed under therope holding it above the water on the shore end. When this had beendone, as much of the slack was taken up as possible, and the wreck wasconnected with the beach with a kind of suspension bridge. 

All this occupied much time, for the hands of the sailors were numb withcold, the ropes stiff with ice, while the wild and angry wind snatchedat the tackle and tore at the clinging figures. 

In a trice the willing arms on shore hauled out the buoy by means of anendless line reaching out to the wreck and back to shore. Then with ajoy that comes only to those who are saving a fellow-creature fromdeath, the life-savers saw a man climb into the stout canvas breeches ofthe hanging buoy, and felt the tug on the whip-line that told them thatthe rescue had begun. With a will they pulled on the line, and the buoy, carrying its precious burden, rolled along the hawser, swinging in thewind, and now and then dipping the half-frozen man in the crests of thewaves. It seemed a perilous journey, but as long as the wreck heldtogether and the mast remained firmly upright the passengers on thisimprovised aerial railway were safe. 

One after the other the crew were taken ashore in this way, thelife-savers hauling the breeches-buoy forward and back, working likemadmen to complete their work before the wreck should break up. None toosoon the last man was landed, for he had hardly been dragged ashore whenthe sturdy mast, being able to stand the buffeting of the waves nolonger, toppled over and floated ashore. 

The life-savers' work is not over when the crew of a vessel is saved, for the apparatus must be packed on the beach wagon and returned to thestation, while the shipwrecked crew is provided with dry clothing, fed, and cared for. The patrol continues on his beat throughout the nightwithout regard to the hardships that have already been undergone. 

The success of the surfmen in saving lives depends not only on theircourage and strength, supplemented by continuous training which has beenproved time and again, but the wonderful record of the life-savingservice is due as well to the efficient appliances that make the work ofthe men effective. 

Besides the apparatus already described, each station is provided with akind of boat-car which has a capacity for six or seven persons, and isbuilt so that its passengers are entirely enclosed, the hatch by whichthey enter being clamped down from the inside. When there are a greatmany people to be saved, this car is used in place of the breeches-buoy. It is hung on the hawser by rings at either end and pulled back andforth by the whip-line; or, if the masts of the vessel are carried awayand there is nothing to which the heavy rope can be attached so that itwill stretch clear above the wave-crests, in such an emergency thelife-car floats directly on the water, and the whip-line is used to pullit to the shore with wrecked passengers and back to the wreck for more. 

Everything that would help to save life under any condition is provided, and a number of appliances are duplicated in case one or more should belost or damaged at a critical time. Signal flags are supplied, and thesurfmen are taught their use as a means of communicating with peopleaboard a vessel in distress. Telephones connect the stations, so that incase of any special difficulty two or even three crews may be combined. When wireless telegraphy comes into general use aboard ship the stationswill doubtless be equipped with this apparatus also, so that ships maybe warned of danger. 

[Illustration: LIFE-SAVERS AT WORKThe two men in the center are burying the sand-anchor; of the two at theright, one is ready with the crotch support the hawser and the othercarries the breeches-buoy; the other three men are hauling the linewhich has already been shot over the wrecked vessel. ]

The 10, 000 miles of the United States ocean, gulf, and Great Lakescoasts, exclusive of Alaska and the island possessions, are guarded by265 stations and houses of refuge at this writing, and new ones areadded every year. Practically all of this immense coast-line ispatrolled or watched over during eight or nine stormy months, and thosethat "go down to the sea in ships" may be sure of a helping hand in timeof trouble. 

The dangerous coasts are more thickly studded with stations, and thesections that are comparatively free from life-endangering reefs areprovided with refuge houses where supplies are stored and where wreckedsurvivors may find shelter. 

The Atlantic coast, being the most dangerous to shipping, is guarded bymore than 175 stations; the Great Lakes require fifty or more to carefor the survivors of the vessels that are yearly wrecked on theirharbourless shores. For the Gulf of Mexico eight are consideredsufficient, and the long Pacific coast also requires but eight. 

The Life-Saving Service, formerly under the Treasury Department, now animportant part of the Department of Commerce and Labour, was organisedby Sumner I. Kimball, who was put at its head in 1871, and the greatsuccess and glory it has won is largely due to his energy and efficiententhusiasm. 

The Life-Saving Service publishes a report of work accomplished throughthe year. It is a dry recital of facts and figures, but if the readerhas a little imagination he can see the record of great deeds of heroismand self-sacrifice written between the lines. 

As vessels labour through the wintry seas along our coasts, and theon-shore winds roar through the rigging, while the fog, mist or snowhangs like a curtain all around, it is surely a comfort to those at seato know that all along the dangerous coast men specially trained, andequipped with the most efficient apparatus known, are always ready tostretch out a helping hand. 

MOVING PICTURES

Some Strange Subjects and How They Were Taken

The grandstand of the Sheepshead Bay race-track, one spring afternoon, was packed solidly with people, and the broad, terra-cotta-colouredtrack was fenced in with a human wall near the judges' stand. The famousSuburban was to be run, and people flocked from every direction to seeone of the greatest horse-races of the year. While the band playedgaily, and the shrill cries of programme venders punctuated the hum ofthe voices of the multitude, and while the stable boys walked theiraristocratic charges, shrouded in blankets, exercising them sedately--inthe midst of all this movement, hubbub, and excitement a man a little toone side, apparently unconscious of all the uproar, was busy with a bigbox set up on a portable framework six or seven feet above the ground. The man was a new kind of photographer, and his big box was a camerawith which he purposed to take a series of pictures of the race. Abovethe box, which was about two and a half feet square, was an electricmotor from which ran a belt connecting with the inner mechanism; fromthe front of the box protruded the lens, its glassy eye so turned as toget a full sweep of the track; nearby on the ground were piled thestorage batteries which were used to supply the current for the motor. 

As the time for the race drew near the excitement increased, figuresdarted here, there and everywhere, the bobbing, brightly coloured hatsof the women in the great slanting field of the grandstand suggestingbunches of flowers agitated by the breeze. Then the horses paraded in athoroughbred fashion, as if they appreciated their lengthy pedigrees andunderstood their importance. 

At last the splendid animals were lined up across the track, their smalljockeys in their brilliantly coloured jackets hunched up like monkeys ontheir backs. Then the enormous crowd was quiet, the band was still, eventhe noisy programme venders ceased calling their wares, and thephotographer stood quietly beside his camera, the motor humming, hishand on the switch that starts the internal machinery. Suddenly thestarter dropped his arm, the barring gate flew up, and the horses sprangforward. "They're off!" came from a thousand throats in unison. The bandstruck up a lively air, and the vast assemblage watched with excitedeyes the flying horses. As the horses swept on round the turn and downthe back stretch the people seemed to be drawn from their seats, and bythe time the racers made the turn leading into the home-stretch almostevery one was standing and the roar of yelling voices was deafening. 

All this time the photographer kept his eyes on his machine, which wasrattling like a rapidly beaten drum, the cyclopean eye of the cameramaking impressions on a sensitised film-ribbon at the rate of forty asecond, and every movement of the flying legs of the urging jockeys, even the puffs of dust that rose at the falling of each iron-shod hoof, was recorded for all time by the eye of the camera. 

The horses entered the home-stretch and in a terrific burst of speedflashed by the throngs of yelling people and under the wire, a mere blurof shining bodies, brilliant colours of the jockeys' blouses, and yellowdust. The Suburban was over, and the great crowd that had come miles tosee a race that lasted but a little more than two minutes (a grandstruggle of giants, however), sank back into their seats or relaxedtheir straining gaze in a way that said plainer than words could say it, "It is over. "

It was 4:45 in the afternoon. The photographer was all activity. Theminute the race was over the motor above the great camera was stoppedand the box was opened. From its dark interior another box about sixinches square and two inches deep was taken: this box contained therecord of the race, on a narrow strip of film two hundred and fifty feetlong, the latent image of thousands of separate pictures. 

Then began another race against time, for it was necessary to take thatlong ribbon across the city of Brooklyn, over the Bridge, across NewYork, over the North River by ferry to Hoboken on the Jersey side, develop, fix, and dry the two-hundred-and-fifty-foot-long film-negative, make a positive or reversed print on another two-hundred-and-fifty-footfilm, carry it through the same photographic process, and show thespirited scene on the stereopticon screen of a metropolitan theatre thesame evening. 

That evening a great audience in the dark interior of a New York theatresat watching a white sheet stretched across the stage; suddenly itswhite expanse grew dark, and against the background appeared "TheSuburban, run this afternoon at 4:45 at Sheepshead Bay track; won byAlcedo, in 2 minutes 5 3-5 seconds. "

[Illustration: BIOGRAPH PICTURE OF A MILITARY HAZING SCENEThese pictures are not consecutive. The difference between those thatfollow each other is so slight as to be almost imperceptible because ofthe rapidity with which they are taken. These pictures were probablytaken at the rate of thirty to forty per second. ]

Then appeared on the screen the picture of the scene that the thousandshad travelled far to see that same afternoon. There were the wide, smooth track, the tower-like judges' stand, the oval turf of the innerfield, and as the audience looked the starter moved his arm, and therank of horses, life-size and quivering with excitement, shot forth. From beginning to end the great struggle was shown to the people seatedcomfortably in the city playhouse, several miles from the track wherethe race was run, just two hours and fifteen minutes after the winninghorse dashed past the judges' stand. Every detail was reproduced; everymovement of horses and jockeys, even the clouds of dust that rose fromthe hoof-beats, appeared clearly on the screen. And the audience rosegradually to their feet, straining forward to catch every movement, thrilled with excitement as were the mighty crowds at the actual race. 

To produce the effect that made the people in the theatre forget theirsurroundings and feel as if they were actually overlooking therace-track itself, about five thousand separate photographs were shown. 

It was discovered long ago that if a series of pictures, each of whichshowed a difference in the position of the legs of a man running, forinstance, was passed quickly before the eye so that the space betweenthe pictures would be screened, the figure would apparently move. Theeyes retain the image they see for a fraction of a second, and if a newimage carrying the movement a little farther along is presented in thesame place, the eyes are deceived so that the object apparently actuallymoves. An ingenious toy called the zoltrope, which was based on thisoptical illusion, was made long before Edison invented the vitascope, Herman Caster the biograph and mutoscope, or the Lumiere brothers inFrance devised the cinematograph. All these different moving-picturemachines work on the same principle, differing only in their mechanism. 

A moving-picture machine is really a rapid-fire repeating cameraprovided with a lens allowing of a very quick exposure. Internalmechanism, operated by a hand-crank or electric motor, moves theunexposed film into position behind the lens and also opens and closesthe shutter at just the proper moment. The same machinery feeds down afresh section of the ribbon-like film into position and coils theexposed portion in a dark box, just as the film of a kodak is rolled offone spool and, after exposure, is wound up on another. The film used inthe biograph when taking the Suburban was two and three-fourth incheswide and several hundred feet long; about forty exposures were made persecond, and for each exposure the film had to come to a dead stop beforethe lens and then the shutter was opened, the light admitted for aboutone three-hundredth of a second, the shutter closed, and a new sectionof film moved into place, while the exposed portion was wound upon aspool in a light-tight box. The long, flexible film is perforated alongboth edges, and these perforations fit over toothed wheels which guideit down to the lens; the holes in the celluloid strip are also used bythe feeding mechanism. In order that the interval between the picturesshall always be the same, the film must be held firmly in each positionin turn; the perforations and toothed mechanism accomplish thisperfectly. 

In taking the picture of the Suburban race almost five thousandseparate negatives (all on one strip of film, however) were made duringthe two minutes five and three-fifths seconds the race was being run. Each negative was perfectly clear, and each was different, though if onenegative was compared to its neighbour scarcely any variance would benoted. 

After the film has been exposed, the light-tight box containing it istaken out of the camera and taken to a gigantic dark-room, where it iswound on a great reel and developed, just as the image on a kodak filmis brought out. The reel is hung by its axle over a great troughcontaining gallons of developer, so that the film wound upon it issubmerged; and as the reel is revolved all of the sensitised surface isexposed to the action of the chemicals and gradually the latent picturesare developed. After the development has gone far enough, the reel, still carrying the film, is dipped in clean water and washed, and then adip in a similar bath of clearing-and-fixing solution makes thenegatives permanent--followed by a final washing in clean water. It issimply developing on a grand scale, thousands of separate pictures onhundreds of feet of film being developed at once. 

A negative, however, is of no use unless a positive or print of somekind is made from it. If shown through a stereopticon, for instance, anegative would make all the shadows on the screen appear lights, andvice versa. A positive, therefore, is made by running a fresh film, withthe negative, through a machine very much like the moving-picturecamera. The unexposed surface is behind that of the negative, and at theproper intervals the shutter is opened and the admitted light prints theimage of the negative on the unexposed film, just as a lantern slide ismade, in fact, or a print on sensitised paper. The positives are made bythis machine at the rate of a score or so in a second. Of course, thepositive is developed in the same manner as the negative. 

Therefore, in order to show the people in the theatre the Suburban, fivehundred feet of film was exposed, developed, fixed, and dried, andnearly ten thousand separate and complete pictures were produced, in thespace of two hours and fifteen minutes, including the time occupied intaking the films to and from the track, factory, and theatre. 

Originally, successive pictures of moving objects were taken forscientific purposes. A French scientist who was studying aerialnavigation set up a number of cameras and took successive pictures of abird's flight. Doctor Muybridge, of Philadelphia, photographed trottinghorses with a camera of his own invention that made exposures in rapidsuccession, in order to learn the different positions of the legs ofanimals while in rapid motion. 

A Frenchman also--M. Mach--photographed a plant of rapid growth twice aday from exactly the same position for fifty consecutive days. When thepictures were thrown on the screen in rapid order the plant seemed togrow visibly. 

The moving pictures provide a most attractive entertainment, and it wasthis feature of the idea, undoubtedly, that furnished the incentive toinventors. The public is always willing to pay well for a goodamusement. 

The makers of the moving-picture films have photographic studiossuitably lighted and fitted with all the necessary stage accessories(scenery, properties, etc. ) where the little comedies shown on thescreens of the theatres are acted for the benefit of the rapid-firecamera and its operators, who are often the only spectators. One ofthese studios in the heart of the city of New York is so brilliantlylighted by electricity that pictures may be taken at full speed, thirtyto forty-five per second, at any time of day or night. Another companyhas an open-air gallery large enough for whole troops of cavalry tomaneuver before the camera, or where the various evolutions of a workingfire department may be photographed. 

Of course, when the pictures are taken in a studio or place prepared forthe work the photographic part is easy--the camera man sets up hismachine and turns the crank while the performers do the rest. But someextra-ordinary pictures have been taken when the photographer had toseek his scene and work his machine under trying and even dangerouscircumstances. 

During the Boer War in South Africa two operators for the BiographCompany took their bulky machine (it weighed about eighteen hundredpounds) to the very firing-line and took pictures of battles between theBritish and the Burghers when they were exposed to the fire of botharmies. On one occasion, in fact, the operator who was turning themechanism--he sat on a bicycle frame, the sprocket of which wasconnected by a chain with the interior machinery--during a battle, wasknocked from his place by the concussion of a shell that explodednearby; nevertheless, the film was saved, and the same man rode onhorseback nearly seventy-five miles across country to the nearestrailroad point so that the precious photographic record might be sent toLondon and shown to waiting audiences there. 

Pictures were taken by the kinetoscope showing an ascent of Mount Blanc, the operator of the camera necessarily making the perilous journey also;different stages of the ascent were taken, some of them far above theclouds. For this series of pictures a film eight hundred feet long wasrequired, and 12, 800 odd exposures or negatives were made. 

Successive pictures have been taken at intervals during an ocean voyageto show the life aboard ship, the swing of the great seas, and therolling and pitching of the steamer. The heave and swing of the steamerand the mountainous waves have been so realistically shown on the screenin the theatre that some squeamish spectators have been made almostseasick. It might be comforting to those who were made unhappy by thesight of the heaving seas to know that the operator who took one seriesof sea pictures, when lashed with his machine in the lookout place onthe foremast of the steamer, suffered terribly from seasickness, andwould have been glad enough to set his foot on solid ground;nevertheless, he stuck to his post and completed the series. 

[Illustration: DEVELOPING MOVING-PICTURE FILMSThe films are wound on the great drums and run through the developer inthe troughs as the drums are slowly revolved. ]

It was a biograph operator that was engaged in taking pictures of afire department rushing to a fire. Several pieces of apparatus hadpassed--an engine, hook-and-ladder company, and the chief; the operator, with his (then) bulky apparatus, large camera, storage batteries, etc. , stood right in the centre of the street, facing the stream of engines, hose-wagons, and fire-patrol men. In order to show the contrast, anold-time hand-pump engine, dragged by a dozen men and boys, came alongat full speed down the street, and behind and to one side of themfollowed a two-horse hose-wagon, going like mad. The men running withthe old-time engine, not realising how narrow the space was and unawareof the plunging horses behind, passed the biograph man on one side onthe dead run. The driver of the rapidly approaching team saw that therewas no room for him to pass on the other side of the camera man, and hishorses were going too fast to stop in the space that remained. He hadbut an instant to decide between the dozen men and their antiquatedmachine and the moving-picture outfit. He chose the latter, and, with awarning shout to the photographer, bore straight down on the camera, which continued to do its work faithfully, taking dozens of pictures asecond, recording even the strained, anxious expression on the face ofthe driver. The pole of the hose-wagon struck the camera-box squarelyand knocked it into fragments, and the wheels passed quickly over thepieces, the photographer meanwhile escaping somehow. By some luckychance the box holding the coiled exposed film came through the wreckunscathed. 

When that series was shown on the screen in a theatre the audience sawthe engine and hook-and-ladder in turn come nearer and nearer and thenrush by, then the line of running men with the old engine, and then--andtheir flesh crept when they saw it--a team of plunging horses comingstraight toward them at frightful speed. The driver's face could be seenbetween the horses' heads, distorted with effort and fear. Straight onthe horses came, their nostrils distended, their great musclesstraining, their fore hoofs striking out almost, it seemed, in the facesof the people in the front row of seats. People shrank back, some womenshrieked, and when the plunging horses seemed almost on them, at thevery climax of excitement, the screen was darkened and the pictureblotted out. The camera taking the pictures had continued to work to thevery instant it was struck and hurled to destruction. 

In addition to the stereopticon and its attendant mechanism, which isonly suitable when the pictures are to be shown to an audience, amachine has been invented for the use of an individual or a small groupof people. In the mutoscope the positives or prints are made on longstrips of heavy bromide paper, instead of films, and are generallyenlarged; the strip is cut up after development and mounted on acylinder, so they radiate like the spokes of a wheel, and are set in thesame consecutive order in which they were taken. The thousands of cardsbearing the pictures at the outer ends are placed in a box, so that whenthe wheel of pictures is turned, by means of a crank attached to theaxle, a projection holds each card in turn before the lens through whichthe observer looks. The projection in the top of the box acts like thethumb turning the pages of a book. Each of the pictures is presented insuch rapid succession that the object appears to move, just as thescenes thrown on the screen by a lantern show action. 

The mutoscope widens the use of motion-photography infinitely. TheUnited States Government will use it to illustrate the workings of manyof its departments at the World's Fair at St. Louis: the life aboardwar-ships, the handling of big guns, army maneuvers, the life-savingservice, post-office workings, and, in fact, many branches of thegovernment service will be explained pictorially by this means. 

Agents for manufacturers of large machinery will be able to show toprospective purchasers pictures of their machines in actual operation. Living, moving portraits have been taken, and by means of a hand machinecan be as easily examined as pictures through a stereoscope. It is quitewithin the bounds of possibility that circulating libraries of movingpictures will be established, and that every public school will have aprojecting apparatus for the use of films, and a stereopticon or amutoscope. In fact, a sort of circulating library already exists, filmsor mutoscope pictures being rented for a reasonable sum; and thus manyof the most important of the world's happenings may be seen as theyactually occurred. 

Future generations will have histories illustrated with vivid motionpictures, as all the great events of the day, processions, celebrations, battles, great contests on sea and land are now recorded by theall-seeing eye of the motion-photographer's camera. 

BRIDGE BUILDERS AND SOME OF THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS

In the old days when Rome was supreme a Caesar decreed that a bridgeshould be built to carry a military road across a valley, or orderedthat great stone arches should be raised to conduct a stream of water toa city; and after great toil, and at the cost of the lives of unnumberedlabourers, the work was done--so well done, in fact, that much of it isstill standing, and some is still doing service. 

In much the same regal way the managers of a railroad order a steelbridge flung across a chasm in the midst of a wilderness far fromcivilisation, or command that a new structure shall be substituted foran old one without disturbing traffic; and, lo and behold, it is done ina surprisingly short time. But the new bridges, in contrast to the oldones, are as spider webs compared to the overarching branches of a greattree. The old type, built of solid masonry, is massive, ponderous, whilethe new, slender, graceful, is built of steel. 

One day a bridge-building company in Pennsylvania received thespecifications giving the dimensions and particulars of a bridge that anEnglish railway company wished to build in far-off Burma, above a greatgorge more than eight hundred feet deep and about a half-mile wide. Fromthe meagre description of the conditions and requirements, and from themeasurements furnished by the railroad, the engineers of the Americanbridge company created a viaduct. Just as an author creates a story or apainter a picture, so these engineers built a bridge on paper, exceptthat the work of the engineers' imagination had to be figured outmathematically, proved, and reproved. Not only was the soaring structurecreated out of bare facts and dry statistics, but the thickness of everybolt and the strain to be borne by every rod were predeterminedaccurately. 

And when the plans of the great viaduct were completed the engineersknew the cost of every part, and felt so sure that the actual bridge infar-off Burma could be built for the estimated amount, that they put ina bid for the work that proved to be far below the price asked byEnglish builders. 

And so this company whose works are in Pennsylvania was awarded thecontract for the Gokteik viaduct in Burma, half-way round the worldfrom the factory. 

[Illustration: BUILDING AN AMERICAN BRIDGE IN BURMAHThis structure stretches 820 feet above the bottom of the Gokteik Gorge. The viaduct was built entirely from above, as shown in this picture. ]

In the midst of a wilderness, among an ancient people whose language andhabits were utterly strange to most Americans, in a tropical countrywhere modern machinery and appliances were practically unknown, a smallband of men from the young republic contracted to build the greatestviaduct the world had ever seen. All the material, all the tools andmachinery, were to be carried to the opposite side of the earth anddumped on the edge of the chasm. From the heaps of metal the small bandof American workmen and engineers, aided by the native labourers, wereto build the actual structure, strong and enduring, that was conceivedby the engineers and reduced to working-plans in far-off Pennsylvania. 

From ore dug out of the Pennsylvania mountains the steel was made and, piece by piece, the parts were rolled, riveted, or welded together sothat every section was exactly according to the measurements laid out onthe plan. As each part was finished it was marked to correspond with theplan and also to show its relation to its neighbour. It was like agigantic puzzle. The parts were made to fit each other accurately, sothat when the workmen in Burma came to put them together the tangle ofbeams and rods, of trusses and braces should be assembled into aperfect, orderly structure--each part in its place and each doing itsshare of the work. 

With men trained to work with ropes and tackle collected from an Indianseaport, and native riveters gathered from another place, Mr. J. C. Turk, the engineer in charge, set to work with the American bridgemen and theconstructing engineer to build a bridge out of the pieces of steel thatlay in heaps along the brink of the gorge. First, the traveller, orderrick, shipped from America in sections, was put together, and itslong arm extended from the end of the tracks on which it ran over theabyss. 

From above the great steel beams were lowered to the masonry foundationsof the first tower and securely bolted to them, and so, piece by piece, the steel girders were suspended in space and swung this way and thatuntil each was exactly in its proper position and then rivetedpermanently. The great valley resounded with the blows of hammers onred-hot metal, and the clangour of steel on steel broke the silence ofthe tropic wilderness. The towers rose up higher and higher, until thetops were level with the rim of the valley, and as they were completedthe horizontal girders were built on them, the rails laid, and thetraveller pushed forward until its arm swung over the foundation of thenext tower. 

And so over the deep valley the slender structure gradually won its way, supporting itself on its own web as it crawled along like a spider. Indeed, so tall were its towers and so slender its steel cords and beamsthat from below it appeared as fragile as a spider's web, and the men, poised on the end of swinging beams or standing on narrow platformshundreds of feet in air, looked not unlike the flies caught in the web. 

The towers, however, were designed to sustain a heavy train andlocomotive and to withstand the terrific wind of the monsoon. Thepressure of such a wind on a 320-foot tower is tremendous. The bridgewas completed within the specified time and bore without flinching allthe severe tests to which it was put. Heavy trains--much heavier thanwould ordinarily be run over the viaduct--steamed slowly across thegreat steel trestle while the railroad engineers examined with utmostcare every section that would be likely to show weakness. But thedesigners had planned well, the steel-workers had done their full duty, and the American bridgemen had seen to it that every rivet was properlyheaded and every bolt screwed tight--and no fault could be found. 

The bridge engineer's work is very diversified, since no two bridges arealike. At one time he might be ordered to span a stream in the midst ofa populous country where every aid is at hand, and his next commissionmight be the building of a difficult bridge in a foreign wilderness farbeyond the edge of civilisation. 

Bridge-building is really divided into four parts, and each partrequires a different kind of knowledge and experience. 

First, the designer has to have the imagination to see the bridge as itwill be when it is completed, and then he must be able to lay it out onpaper section by section, estimating the size of the parts necessary forthe stress they will have to bear, the weight of the load they will haveto carry, the effect of the wind, the contraction and expansion of coldand heat, and vibration; all these things must be thought of andconsidered in planning every part and determining the size of each. Alsohe must know what kind of material to use that is best fitted to standeach strain, whether to use steel that is rigid or that which is soflexible that it can be tied in a knot. On the designer depends theprice asked for the work, and so it is his business to invent, for eachbridge is a separate problem in invention, a bridge that will carry therequired weight with the least expenditure of material and labour and atthe same time be strong enough to carry very much greater loads than itis ever likely to be called upon to sustain. The designer is often theconstructor as well, and he is always a man of great practicalexperience. He has in his time stepped out on a foot-wide girder over arushing stream, directing his men, and he has floundered in the mud of ariver bottom in a caisson far below the surface of the stream, while thecompressed air kept the ooze from flowing in and drowning him and hisworkmen. 

The second operation of making the pieces that go into the structure issimply the following out of the clearly drawn plans furnished by thedesigning engineers. Different grades of steel and iron are moulded orforged into shape and riveted together, each part being made the exactsize and shape required, even the position of the holes through whichthe bolts or rivets are to go that are to secure it to the neighbouringsection being marked on the plan. 

The foundations for bridges are not always put down by the builders ofthe bridge proper; that is a work by itself and requires specialexperience. On the strength and permanency of the foundation depends thelife of the bridge. While the foundries and steel mills are making themetal-work the foundations are being laid. If the bridge is to cross avalley, or carry the roadway on the level across a depression, theplacing of the foundations is a simple matter of digging or blasting outa big hole and laying courses of masonry; but if a pier is to be builtin water, or the land on which the towers are to stand is unstable, thenthe problem is much more difficult. 

For bridges like those that connect New York and Brooklyn, the towers ofwhich rest on bed-rock below the river's bottom, caissons are sunk andthe massive masonry is built upon them. If you take a glass and sink itin water, bottom up, carefully, so that the air will not escape, it willbe noticed that the water enters the glass but a little way: the airprevents the water from filling the glass. The caisson works on the sameprinciple, except that the air in the great boxlike chamber is highlycompressed by powerful pumps and keeps the water and river ooze outaltogether. 

The caissons of the third bridge across the East River were as big as agood-sized house--about one hundred feet long and eighty feet wide. Ittook five large tugs more than two days to get one of them in its properplace. Anchored in its exact position, it was slowly sunk by buildingthe masonry of the tower upon it, and when the lower edges of the greatbox rested on the bottom of the river men were sent down through anair-lock which worked a good deal like the lock of a canal. The men, twoor three at a time, entered a small round chamber built of steel whichwas fitted with two air-tight doors at the top and bottom; when theywere inside the air-lock, the upper door was closed and clamped tight, just as the gates leading from the lower level of a canal are closedafter the boat is in the lock; then very gradually the air in thecompartment is compressed by an air-compressor until the pressure in theair-lock is the same as that in the caisson chamber, when the lower dooropened and allowed the men to enter the great dim room. Imagine a roomeighty by one hundred feet, low and criss-crossed by massive timberbraces, resting on the black, slimy mud of the river bottom; electriclights shine dimly, showing the half-naked workmen toiling withtremendous energy by reason of the extra quantity of oxygen in thecompressed air. The workmen dug the earth and mud from under theiron-shod edges of the caisson, and the weight of the masonry beingcontinually added to above sunk the great box lower and lower. From timeto time the earth was mixed with water and sucked to the surface by agreat pump. With hundreds of tons of masonry above, and the watery mudof the river on all sides far below the keels of the vessels that passedto and fro all about, the men worked under a pressure that was two orthree times as great as the fifteen pounds to the square inch that everyone is accustomed to above ground. If the pressure relaxed for a momentthe lives of the men would be snuffed out instantly--drowned by theinrushing waters; if the excavation was not even all around, the balanceof the top-heavy structure would be lost, the men killed, and the workdestroyed entirely. But so carefully is this sort of work done that suchan accident rarely occurs, and the caissons are sunk till they rest onbed-rock or permanent, solid ground, far below the scouring effect ofcurrents and tides. Then the air-chamber is filled with concrete andleft to support the great towers that pierce the sky above the waters. 

[Illustration: THE SPIDER-WEB-LIKE VIADUCT ACROSS CANON DIABLOThe slender steel structure supporting a loaded train that stretchesalong its entire length. ]

The pneumatic tube, which is practically a steel caisson on a smallscale operated in the same way, is often used for small towers, and manyof the steel sky-scrapers of the cities are built on foundations of thissort when the ground is unstable. 

Foundations of wooden and iron piles, driven deep in the ground belowthe river bottom, are perhaps the most common in use. The piles aresawed off below the surface of the water and a platform built upon them, which in turn serves as the foundation for the masonry. 

The great Eads Bridge, which was built across the Mississippi at St. Louis, is supported by towers the foundations of which are sunk 107 feetbelow the ordinary level of the water; at this depth the men working inthe caissons were subjected to a pressure of nearly fifty pounds to thesquare inch, almost equal to that used to run some steam-engines. 

The bridge across the Hudson at Poughkeepsie was built on a crib orcaisson open at the top and sunk by means of a dredge operated fromabove taking out the material from the inside. The wonder of this ishard to realise unless it is remembered that the steel hands of thedredge were worked entirely from above, and the steel rope sinewsreached down below the surface more than one hundred feet sometimes;yet so cleverly was the work managed that the excavation was perfect allaround, and the crib sank absolutely straight and square. 

It is the fourth department of bridge-building that requires thegreatest amount not only of knowledge but of resourcefulness. In thefinal process of erection conditions are likely to arise that were notconsidered when the plans were drawn. 

The chief engineer in charge of the erection of a bridge far fromcivilisation is a little king, for it is necessary for him to have thepower of an absolute monarch over his army of workmen, which is oftencomposed of many different races. 

With so many thousand tons of steel and stone dumped on the ground atthe bridge site, with a small force of expert workmen and a greaternumber of unskilled labourers, in spite of bad weather, floods, orfearful heat, the constructing engineer is expected to finish the workwithin the specified time, and yet it must withstand the most exactingtests. 

In the heart of Africa, five hundred miles from the coast and the sourceof supplies, an American engineer, aided by twenty-one Americanbridgemen, built twenty-seven viaducts from 128 to 888 feet long withina year. 

The work was done in half the time and at half the cost demanded by theEnglish bidders. Mr. Lueder, the chief engineer, tells, in his accountof the work, of shooting lions from the car windows of the temporaryrailroad, and of seeing ostriches try to keep pace with the locomotive, but he said little of his difficulties with unskilled workmen, foreigncustoms, and almost unspeakable languages. The bridge engineer the worldover is a man who accomplishes things, and who, furthermore, talkslittle of his achievements. 

Though the work of the bridge builders within easy reach of the steelmills and large cities is less unusual, it is none the less adventurous. 

In 1897, a steel arch bridge was completed that was built around the oldsuspension bridge spanning the Niagara River over the Whirlpool Rapids. The old suspension bridge had been in continuous service since 1855 andhad outlived its usefulness. It was decided to build a new one on thesame spot, and yet the traffic in the meantime must not be disturbed inthe least. It would seem that this was impossible, but the engineersintrusted with the work undertook it with perfect confidence. To any onewho has seen the rushing, roaring, foaming waters of unknown depth thatrace so fast from the spray-veiled falls that they are heaped up in themiddle, the mere thought of men handling huge girders of steel above thetorrent, and of standing on frail swinging platforms two hundred or morefeet above the rapids, causes chills to run down the spine; yet the workwas undertaken without the slightest doubt of its successful fulfilment. 

It was manifestly impossible to support the new structure from below, and the old bridge was carrying about all it could stand, so it wasnecessary to build the new arch, without support from underneath, overthe foaming water of the Niagara rapids two hundred feet below. Steeltowers were built on either side of the gorge, and on them was laid theplatform of the bridge from the towers nearest to the water around andunder the old structure. The upper works were carried to the solidground on a level with the rim of the gorge and there securely anchoredwith steel rods and chains held in masonry. Then from either side thearch was built plate by plate from above, the heavy sheets of steelbeing handled from a traveller or derrick that was pushed out fartherand farther over the stream as fast as the upper platform was completed. The great mass of metal on both sides of the Niagara hung over thestream, and was only held from toppling over by the rods and chainssolidly anchored on shore. Gradually the two ends of the uncompletedarch approached each other, the amount of work on each part beingexactly equal, until but a small space was left between. The work was socarefully planned and exactly executed that the two completed halves ofthe arch did not meet, but when all was in readiness the chains on eachside, bearing as they did the weight of more than 1, 000, 000 pounds, werelengthened just enough, and the two ends came together, clasping handsover the great gorge. Soon the tracks were laid, and the new bridge tookup the work of the old, and then, piece by piece, the old suspensionbridge, the first of its kind, was demolished and taken away. 

Over the Niagara gorge also was built one of the first cantileverbridges ever constructed. To uphold it, two towers were built close tothe water's edge on either side, and then from the towers to the shores, on a level with the upper plateau, the steel fabric, composed of slenderrods and beams braced to stand the great weight it would have to carry, was built on false work and secured to solid anchorages on shore. Thenon this, over tracks laid for the purpose, a crane was run (the sameprocess being carried out on both sides of the river simultaneously), and so the span was built over the water 239 feet above the seethingstream, the shore ends balancing the outer sections until the two armsmet and were joined exactly in the middle. This bridge required buteight months to build, and was finished in 1883. From the car windowshardly any part of the slender structure can be seen, and the trainseems to be held over the foaming torrent by some invisible support, yethundreds of trains have passed over it, the winds of many storms havetorn at its members, heat and cold have tried by expansion andcontraction to rend it apart, yet the bridge is as strong as ever. 

Sometimes bridges are built a span or section at a time and placed ongreat barges, raised to just their proper height, and floated down tothe piers and there secured. 

A railroad bridge across the Schuylkill at Philadelphia was judgedinadequate for the work it had to do, and it was deemed necessary toreplace it with a new one. The towers it rested upon, therefore, werewidened, and another, stronger bridge was built alongside, the new oneput upon rollers as was the old, and then between trains the oldstructure was pushed to one side, still resting on the widened piers, and the new bridge was pushed into its place, the whole operationoccupying less than three minutes. The new replaced the old between thepassing of trains that run at four or five-minute intervals. The EadsBridge, which crosses the Mississippi at St. Louis, was built on a novelplan. Its deep foundations have already been mentioned. The great"Father of Waters" is notoriously fickle; its channel is continuallychanging, the current is swift, and the frequent floods fill up andscour out new channels constantly. It was necessary, therefore, in orderto span the great stream, to place as few towers as possible and buildentirely from above or from the towers themselves. It was a bold idea, and many predicted its failure, but Captain Eads, the great engineer, had the courage of his convictions and carried out his planssuccessfully. From each tower a steel arch was started on each side, built of steel tubes braced securely; the building on each side of everytower was carried on simultaneously, one side of every arch balancingthe weight on the other side. Each section was like a gigantic seesaw, the tower acting as the centre support; the ends, of course, notswinging up and down. Gradually the two sections of every archapproached each other until they met over the turbid water and werepermanently connected. With the completion of the three arches, builtentirely from the piers supporting them, the great stream was spanned. The Eads Bridge was practically a double series of cantilevers balancingon the towers. Three arches were built, the longest being 520 feet longand the two shorter ones 502 feet each. 

Every situation that confronts the bridge builder requires differenthandling; at one time he may be called upon to construct a bridgealongside of a narrow, rocky cleft over a rushing stream like the RoyalGorge, Colorado, where the track is hung from two great beams stretchedacross the chasm, or he may be required to design and construct aviaduct like that gossamer structure three hundred and five feet highand nearly a half-mile long across the Kinzua Creek, in Pennsylvania. Problems which have nothing to do with mechanics often try his courageand tax his resources, and many difficulties though apparently trivial, develop into serious troubles. The caste of the different native gangswho worked on the twenty-seven viaducts built in Central Africa is acase in point: each group belonging to the same caste had to beprovided with its own quarters, cooking utensils, and camp furniture, and dire were the consequences of a mix-up during one of the frequentmoves made by the whole party. 

[Illustration: BEGINNING AN AMERICAN BRIDGE IN MID-AFRICA]

And so the work of a bridge builder, whether it is creating out of amere jumble of facts and figures a giant structure, the shaping ofglowing metal to exact measurements, the delving in the slime underwater for firm foundations, or the throwing of webs of steel acrossyawning chasms or over roaring streams, is never monotonous, is oftenadventurous, and in many, many instances is a great civilisinginfluence. 

SUBMARINES IN WAR AND PEACE

During the early part of the Spanish-American war a fleet of vesselspatrolled the Atlantic coast from Florida to Maine. The Spanish AdmiralCervera had left the home waters with his fleet of cruisers andtorpedo-boats and no one knew where they were. The lookouts on all thevessels were ordered to keep a sharp watch for strange ships, andespecially for those having a warlike appearance. All the newspapers andletters received on board the different cruisers of the patrol fleettold of the anxiety felt in the coast towns and of the fear that theSpanish ships would appear suddenly and begin a bombardment. To add tothe excitement and expectation, especially of the green crews, the menwere frequently called out of their comfortable hammocks in the middleof the night, and sent to their stations at guns and ammunitionmagazines, just as if a battle was imminent; all this was for thepurpose of familiarising the crews with their duties under warconditions, though no enlisted man knew whether he was called toquarters to fight or for drill. 

These were the conditions, then, when one bright Sunday the crew of anauxiliary cruiser were very busy cleaning ship--a very thorough andabsorbing business. While the men were in the thick of the scrubbing, one of the crew stood up to straighten his back, and looked out throughan open port in the vessel's side. As he looked he caught a glimpse of alow, black craft, hardly five hundred yards off, coming straight for thecruiser. The water foamed at her bows and the black smoke poured out ofher funnels, streaking behind her a long, sinister cloud. It was one ofthose venomous little torpedo-boats, and she was apparently rushing inat top speed to get within easy range of the large warship. 

"A torpedo-boat is headed straight for us, " cried the man at the port, and at the same moment came the call for general quarters. 

As the men ran to their stations the word was passed from one to theother, "A Spanish torpedo-boat is headed for us. "

With haste born of desperation the crew worked to get ready for action, and when all was ready, each man in his place, guns loaded, firinglanyards in hand, gun-trainers at the wheels, all was still--no commandto fire was given. 

From the signal-boys to the firemen in the stokehole--for news travelsfast aboard ship--all were expecting the muffled report and the rending, tearing explosion of a torpedo under the ship's bottom. The terriblepower of the torpedo was known to all, and the dread that filled thehearts of that waiting crew could not be put into words. 

Of course it was a false alarm. The torpedo-boat flew the Stars andStripes, but the heavy smoke concealed it, and the officers, perceivingthe opportunities for testing the men, let it be believed that a boatbelonging to the enemy was bearing down on them. 

The crews of vessels engaged in future wars will have, not only swifter, surer torpedo-boats to menace them, but even more dreadful foes. 

The conning towers of the submarines show but a foot or two above thesurface--a sinister black spot on the water, like the dorsal fin of ashark, that suggests but does not reveal the cruel power below; for aninstant the knob lingers above the surface while the steersman gets hisbearings, and then it sinks in a swirling eddy, leaving no mark showingin what direction it has travelled. Then the crew of the exposedwarship wait and wonder with a sickening cold fear in their hearts howsoon the crash will come, and pray that the deadly submarine torpedowill miss its mark. 

Submarine torpedo-boats are actual, practical working vessels to-day, and already they have to be considered in the naval plans for attack anddefense. 

Though the importance of submarines in warfare, and especially as aweapon of defense, is beginning to be thoroughly recognised, it took along time to arouse the interest of naval men and the public generallysufficient to give the inventors the support they needed. 

Americans once had within their grasp the means to blow some of theirenemies' ships out of the water, but they did not realise it, as will beshown in the following, and for a hundred years the progress in thisdirection was hindered. 

It was during the American Revolution that a man went below the surfaceof the waters of New York Harbour in a submarine boat just big enough tohold him, and in the darkness and gloom of the under-water worldpropelled his turtle-like craft toward the British ships anchored inmid-stream. On the outside shell of the craft rested a magazine with aheavy charge of gunpowder which the submarine navigator intended toscrew fast to the bottom of a fifty-gun British man-of-war, and whichwas to be exploded by a time-fuse after he had got well out of harm'sway. 

Slowly and with infinite labour this first submarine navigator workedhis way through the water in the first successful under-water boat, thecrank-handle of the propelling screw in front of him, the helm at hisside, and the crank-handle of the screw that raised or lowered the craftjust above and in front. No other man had made a like voyage; he hadlittle experience to guide him, and he lacked the confidence that awell-tried device assures; he was alone in a tiny vessel with but halfan hour's supply of air, a great box of gunpowder over him, and ahostile fleet all around. It was a perilous position and he felt it. With his head in the little conning tower he was able to get a glimpseof the ship he was bent on destroying, as from time to time he raisedhis little craft to get his bearings. At last he reached hisall-unsuspecting quarry and, sinking under the keel, tried to attach thetorpedo. There in the darkness of the depths of North River this unnamedhero, in the first practical submarine boat, worked to make the firsttorpedo fast to the bottom of the enemy's ship, but a little iron plateor bolt holding the rudder in place made all the difference between afailure that few people ever heard of and a great achievement that wouldhave made the inventor of the boat, David Bushnell, famous everywhere, and the navigator a great hero. The little iron plate, however, prevented the screw from taking hold, the tide carried the submarinepast, and the chance was lost. 

David Bushnell was too far ahead of his time, his invention was notappreciated, and the failure of his first attempt prevented him fromgetting the support he needed to demonstrate the usefulness of hisunder-water craft. The piece of iron in the keel of the British warshipprobably put back development of submarine boats many years, forBushnell's boat contained many of the principles upon which thesuccessful under-water craft of the present time are built. 

One hundred and twenty-five years after the subsurface voyage describedabove, a steel boat, built like a whale but with a prow coming to apoint, manned by a crew of six, travelling at an average rate of eightknots an hour, armed with five Whitehead torpedoes, and designed andbuilt by Americans, passed directly over the spot where the firstsubmarine boat attacked the British fleet. 

The Holland boat _Fulton_ had already travelled the length of LongIsland Sound, diving at intervals, before reaching New York, and was onher way to the Delaware Capes. 

She was the invention of John P. Holland, and the result of twenty-fiveyears of experimenting, nine experimental boats having been built beforethis persistent and courageous inventor produced a craft that came up tohis ideals. The cruise of the _Fulton_ was like a march of triumph, andproved beyond a doubt that the Holland submarines were practical, sea-going craft. 

At the eastern end of Long Island the captain and crew, six men in all, one by one entered the _Fulton_ through the round hatch in the conningtower that projected about two feet above the back of the fish-likevessel. Each man had his own particular place aboard and definite dutiesto perform, so there was no need to move about much, nor was there muchroom left by the gasoline motor, the electric motor, storage batteries, air-compressor, and air ballast and gasoline tanks, and the Whiteheadtorpedoes. The captain stood up inside of the conning tower, with hiseyes on a level with the little thick glass windows, and in front ofhim was the wheel connecting with the rudder that steered the craftright and left; almost at his feet was stationed the man who controlledthe diving-rudders; farther aft was the engineer, all ready for the wordto start his motor; another man controlled the ballast tanks, andanother watched the electric motor and batteries. 

With a clang the lid-like hatch to the conning tower was closed andclamped fast in its rubber setting, the gasoline engine began its rapidphut-phut, and the submarine boat began its long journey down LongIsland Sound. The boat started in with her deck awash--that is, with twoor three feet freeboard or of deck above the water-line. In thiscondition she could travel as long as her supply of gasoline heldout--her tanks holding enough to drive her 560 knots at the speed of sixknots an hour, when in the semi-awash condition; the lower she sank thegreater the surface exposed to the friction of the water and the greaterpower expended to attain a given speed. 

As the vessel jogged along, with a good part of her deck showing abovethe waves, her air ventilators were open and the burnt gas of the enginewas exhausted right out into the open; the air was as pure as in thecabin of an ordinary ship. Besides the work of propelling the boat, the engine being geared to the electric motor made it revolve, soturning it into a dynamo that created electricity and filled up thestorage batteries. 

[Illustration: LAKE'S SUBMARINE TORPEDO-BOAT _PROTECTOR_This boat is designed to travel on the surface, or fully submerged, oron the ocean's bottom. She is provided with wheels that support her whenon the bottom, and with a divers' compartment from which divers can workon submarine cables or the enemies' explosive mines. ]

From time to time, as this whale-like ship plowed the waters of theSound, a big wave would flow entirely over her, and the captain would belooking right into the foaming crest. The boat was built for under-watergoing, so little daylight penetrated the interior through the few smalldeadlights, or round, heavy glass windows, but electric incandescentbulbs fed by current from the storage batteries lit the interiorbrilliantly. 

The boat had not proceeded far when the captain ordered the crew toprepare to dive, and immediately the engine was shut down and the clutchconnecting its shaft with the electric apparatus thrown off and anotherconnecting the electric motor with the propeller thrown in; a switch wasthen turned and the current from the storage batteries set the motor andpropeller spinning. While this was being done another man was lettingwater into her ballast tanks to reduce her buoyancy. When all but theconning tower was submerged the captain looked at the compass to see howshe was heading, noted that no vessels were near enough to make asubmarine collision likely, and gave the word to the man at his feet todive twenty feet. Then a strange thing happened. The diving-helmsmangave a twist to the wheel that connected with the horizontal rudders aftof the propeller, and immediately the boat slanted downward at an angleof ten degrees; the water rose about the conning tower until the littlewindows were level with the surface, and then they were covered, and thecaptain looked into solid water that was still turned yellowish-green bythe light of the sun; then swiftly descending, he saw but the faintestgleam of green light coming through twenty feet of water. The _Fulton_, with six men in her, was speeding along at five knots an hour twentyfeet below the shining waters of the Sound. 

The diving-helmsman kept his eye on a gauge in front of him thatmeasured the pressure of water at the varying depths, but the dial wasso marked that it told him just how many feet the _Fulton_ was below thesurface. Another device showed whether the boat was on an even keel or, if not exactly, how many degrees she slanted up or down. 

With twenty feet of salt water above her and as much below, thismechanical whale cruised along with her human freight as comfortable asthey would have been in the same space ashore. The vessel containedsufficient air to last them several hours, and when it became vitiatedthere were always the tanks of compressed air ready to be drawn upon. 

Except for the hum of the motor and the slight clank of thesteering-gear, all was silent; none of the noises of the outer worldpenetrated the watery depths; neither the slap of the waves, the whir ofthe breeze, the hiss of steam, nor rattle of rigging accompanied theprogress of this submarine craft. As silently as a fish, as far as theouter world was concerned, the _Fulton_ crept through the submarinedarkness. If an enemy's ship was near it would be an easy thing todischarge one of the five Whitehead torpedoes she carried and get out ofharm's way before it struck the bottom of the ship and exploded. 

In the tube which opened at the very tip end of the nose of the craftlay a Whitehead (or automobile) torpedo, which when properly set andejected by compressed air propelled itself at a predetermined depth at aspeed of thirty knots an hour until it struck the object it was aimed ator its compressed air power gave out. 

The seven Holland boats built for the United States Navy, of which the_Fulton_ is a prototype, carry five of these torpedoes, one in the tubeand two on either side of the hold, and each boat is also provided withone compensating tank for each torpedo, so that when one or all arefired their weight may be compensated by filling the tanks with water sothat the trim of the vessel will be kept the same and her stabilityretained. 

The _Fulton_, however, was bent on a peaceful errand, and carried dummytorpedoes instead of the deadly engines of destruction that theman-o'-war's man dreads. 

"Dive thirty, " ordered the captain, at the same time giving his wheel atwist to direct the vessel's course according to the pointing finger ofthe compass. 

"Dive thirty, sir, " repeated the steersman below, and with a slighttwist of his gear the horizontal rudders turned and the submarineinclined downward; the level-indicator showed a slight slant and thedepth-gauge hand turned slowly round--twenty-two, twenty-five, twenty-eight, then thirty feet, when the helmsman turned his wheel backa little and the vessel forged ahead on a level keel. 

At thirty feet below the surface the little craft, built like a cigaron purpose to stand a tremendous squeeze, was subjected to a pressure of2, 160 pounds to the square foot. To realise this pressure it will benecessary to think of a slab of iron a foot square and weighing 2, 160pounds pressing on every foot of the outer surface of the craft. Ofcourse, the squeeze is exerted on all sides of the submarine boats whenfully submerged, just as every one is subjected to an atmosphericpressure of fifteen pounds to the square inch on every inch of his body. 

The _Fulton_ and other submarine boats are so strongly built andthoroughly braced that they could stand an even greater pressure withoutdamage. 

When the commander of the _Fulton_ ordered his vessel to the surface, the diving-steersman simply reversed his rudders so that they turnedupward, and the propeller, aided by the natural buoyancy of the boat, simply pushed her to the surface. The Holland boats have a reservebuoyancy, so that if anything should happen to the machinery they wouldrise unaided to the surface. 

Compressed air was turned into the ballast tanks, the water forced outso that the boat's buoyancy was increased, and she floated in asemi-awash, or light, condition. The engineer turned off the currentfrom the storage batteries, threw off the motor from the propellershaft, and connected the gasoline engine, started it up, and inside offive minutes from the time the _Fulton_ was navigating the waters of theSound at a depth of thirty feet she was sailing along on the surfacelike any other gasoline craft. 

And so the ninety-mile journey down Long Island Sound, partly underwater, partly on the surface, to New York, was completed. The greatervoyage to the Delaware Capes followed, and at all times the littlesixty-three-foot boat that was but eleven feet in diameter at hergreatest girth carried her crew and equipment with perfect safety andwithout the least inconvenience. 

Such a vessel, small in size but great in destructive power, is a forceto be reckoned with by the most powerful battle-ship. No defense has yetbeen devised that will ward off the deadly sting of the submarine'storpedo, delivered as it is from beneath, out of the sight and hearingof the doomed ships' crews, and exploded against a portion of the hullthat cannot be adequately protected by armour. 

Though the conning-dome of a submarine presents a very small target, its appearance above water shows her position and gives warning of herapproach. To avoid this tell-tale an instrument called a periscope hasbeen invented, which looks like a bottle on the end of a tube; this haslenses and mirrors that reflect into the interior of the submarinewhatever shows above water. The bottle part projects above, while thetube penetrates the interior. 

[Illustration: SPEEDING AT THE RATE OF 102-3/4 MILES AN HOUR]

The very unexpectedness of the submarine's attack, the mere knowledgethat they are in the vicinity of a fleet and may launch their deadlymissiles at any time, is enough to break down the nerves of thestrongest and eventually throw into a panic the bravest crew. 

That the crews of the war-ships will have to undergo the strain ofsubmarine attack in the next naval war is almost sure. All the greatnations of the world have built fleets of submarines or are preparing todo so. 

In the development of under-water fighting-craft France leads, as shehas the largest fleet and was the first to encourage the designing andbuilding of them. But it was David Bushnell that invented and built thefirst practical working submarine boat, and in point of efficiency andpractical working under service conditions in actual readiness forhostile action the American boats excel to-day. 

A PEACEFUL SUBMARINE

Under the green sea, in the total darkness of the great depths and theyellowish-green of the shallows of the oceans, with the seaweeds wavingtheir fronds about their barnacle-encrusted timbers and the creatures ofthe deep playing in and about the decks and rotted rigging, lie hundredsof wrecks. Many a splendid ship with a valuable cargo has gone down offa dangerous coast; many a hoard of gold or silver, gathered withinfinite pains from the far corners of the earth, lies intact indecaying strong boxes on the bottom of the sea. 

To recover the treasures of the deep, expeditions have been organised, ships have sailed, divers have descended, and crews have braved greatdangers. Many great wrecking companies have been formed which accomplishwonders in the saving of wrecked vessels and cargoes. But in certainplaces all the time and at others part of the time, wreckers have had toleave valuable wrecks a prey to the merciless sea because the ocean istoo angry and the waves too high to permit of the safe handling of theair-hose and life-line of the divers who are depended upon to do allthe under-water work, rigging of hoisting-tackle, placing of buoys, etc. Indeed, it is often impossible for a vessel to stay in one place longenough to accomplish anything, or, in fact, to venture to the spot atall. 

It was an American boy who, after reading Jules Verne's "Twenty ThousandLeagues Under the Sea, " said to himself, "Why not?" and from that timeset out to put into practice what the French writer had imagined. 

Simon Lake set to work to invent a way by which a wrecked vessel or aprecious cargo could be got at from below the surface. Though the wavesmay be tossing their whitecaps high in air and the strong wind may turnthe watery plain into rolling hills of angry seas, the water twenty orthirty feet below hardly feels any surface motion. So he set to work tobuild a vessel that should be able to sail on the surface or travel onthe bottom, and provide a shelter from which divers could go at will, undisturbed by the most tempestuous sea. People laughed at his idea, andso he found great difficulty in getting enough capital to carry out hisplan, and his first boat, built largely with his own hands, had littlein its appearance to inspire confidence in his scheme. Built of wood, fourteen feet long and five feet deep, fitted with three wheels, _Argonaut Junior_ looked not unlike a large go-cart such as boys makeout of a soap-box and a set of wooden wheels. The boat, however, madeactual trips, navigated by its inventor, proving that his plan wasfeasible. _Argonaut Junior, _ having served its purpose, was abandoned, and now lies neglected on one of the beaches of New York Bay. 

The _Argonaut, _ Mr. Lake's second vessel, had the regular submarinelook, except that she was equipped with two great, rough tread-wheelsforward, and to the underside of her rudder was pivoted another. She wasreally an under-water tricycle, a diving-bell, a wrecking-craft, and asurface gasoline-boat all rolled into one. When floating on the surfaceshe looked not unlike an ordinary sailing craft; two long spars, eachabout thirty feet above the deck, forming the letter A--these were thepipes that admitted fresh air and discharged the burnt gases of thegasoline motor and the vitiated air that had been breathed. A low deckgave a ship-shape appearance when floating, but below she was shapedlike a very fat cigar. Under the deck and outside of the hull properwere placed her gasoline tanks, safe from any possible danger ofignition from the interior. From her nose protruded a spar that lookedlike a bowsprit but which was in reality a derrick; below thederrick-boom were several glazed openings that resembled eyes and amouth: these were the lookout windows for the under-water observer andthe submarine searchlight. 

The _Argonaut_ was built to run on the surface or on the bottom; she wasnot designed to navigate half-way between. When in search of a wreck ormade ready for a cruise along the bottom, the trap door or hatch in herturret-like pilot house was tightly closed; the water was let into herballast tanks, and two heavy weights to which were attached strongcables that could be wound or unwound from the inside were lowered fromtheir recesses in the fore and after part of the keel of the boat to thebottom; then the motor was started connected to the winding mechanism, and, the buoyancy of the boat being greatly reduced, she was drawn tothe bottom by the winding of the anchor cables. As she sank, more andmore water was taken into her tanks until she weighed slightly more thanthe water she displaced. When her wheels rested on the bottom heranchor-weights were pulled completely into their wells, so that theywould not interfere with her movements. 

Then the strange submarine vehicle began her voyage on the bottom ofthe bay or ocean. Since the pipes projected above the surface plenty offresh air was admitted, and it was quite as easy to run the gasolineengine under water as on the surface. In the turrets, as far removed aspossible from the magnetic influences of the steel hull, the compass wasplaced, and an ingeniously arranged mirror reflected its readings downbelow where the steersman could see it conveniently. Aft of thesteering-wheel was the gasoline motor, connected with thepropeller-shaft and also with the driving-wheels; it was so arrangedthat either could be thrown out of gear or both operated at once. Shewas equipped with depth-gauges showing the distance below the surface, and another device showing the trim of the vessel; compressed-air tanks, propelling and pumping machinery, an air-compressor and dynamo whichsupplied the current to light the ship and also for the searchlightwhich illuminated the under-water pathway--all this apparatus left butlittle room in the hold, but it was all so carefully planned that not aninch was wasted, and space was still left for her crew of three or fourto work, eat, and even sleep, below the waves. 

Forward of the main space of the boat were the diving and lookoutcompartments, which really were the most important parts of the boat, asfar as her wrecking ability was concerned. By means of a trap door inthe diving compartment through the bottom of the boat a man fitted witha diving-suit could go out and explore a wreck or examine the bottomalmost as easily as a man goes out of his front door to call for an"extra. " It will be thought at once, "But the water will rush in whenthe trap door is opened. " This is prevented by filling the divingcompartment, which is separated from the main part of the ship by steelwalls, with compressed air of sufficient pressure to keep the water fromcoming in--that is, the pressure of water from without equals thepressure of air from within and neither element can pass into theother's domain. 

An air-lock separates the diver's section from the main hold so that itis possible to pass from one to the other while the entrance to the seais still open. A person entering the lock from the large room firstcloses the door between and then gradually admits the compressed airuntil the pressure is the same as in the diving compartment, when thedoor into it may be safely opened. When returning, this operation issimply reversed. The lookout stands forward of the diver's space. Whenthe _Argonaut_ rolls along the bottom, round openings protected withheavy glass permit the lookout to follow the beam of light thrown by thesearchlight and see dimly any sizable obstruction. When the divingcompartment is in use the man on lookout duty uses a portable telephoneto tell his shipmates in the main room what is happening out in the wet, and by the same means the reports of the diver can be communicatedwithout opening the air-lock. 

This little ship (thirty-six feet long) has done wonderful things. Shehas cruised over the bottom of Chesapeake Bay, New York Bay, HamptonRoads, and the Atlantic Ocean, her driving-wheels propelling her whenthe bottom was hard, and her screw when the oozy condition of thesubmarine road made her spiked wheels useless except to steer with. Herpassengers have been able to examine the bottom under twenty feet ofwater (without wetting their feet), through the trap door, with the aidof an electric light let down into the clear depths. Telephone messageshave been sent from the bottom of Baltimore Harbour to the top of theNew York _World_ building, telling of the conditions there in contrastto the New York editor's aerial perch. Cables have been picked up andexamined without dredging--a hook lowered through the trap door beingall that was necessary. Wrecks have been examined and valuablesrecovered. 

[Illustration: SINGING INTO THE TELEPHONEPart of the entertainment furnished by the telephone newspaper atBuda-Pest. ]

Although the _Argonaut_ travelled over 2, 000 miles under water and onthe surface, propelled by her own power, her inventor was not satisfiedwith her. He cut her in two, therefore, and added a section to her, making her sixty-six feet long; this allowed more comfortable quartersfor her crew, space for larger engines, compressors, etc. 

It was off Bridgeport, Connecticut, that the new _Argonaut_ did herfirst practical wrecking. A barge loaded with coal had sunk in a galeand could not be located with the ordinary means. The _Argonaut_, however, with the aid of a device called the "wreck-detector, " alsoinvented by Mr. Lake, speedily found it, sank near it, and alsosubmerged a new kind of freight-boat built for the purpose by theinventor. A diver quickly explored the hulk, opened the hatches of thefreight-boat, which was cigar-shaped like the _Argonaut_ and suppliedwith wheels so it could be drawn over the bottom, and placed thesuction-tube in position. Seven minutes later eight tons of coal hadbeen transferred from the wreck to the submarine freight-boat. Thehatches were then closed and compressed air admitted, forcing out thewater, and five minutes later the freight-boat was floating on thesurface with eight tons of coal from a wreck which could not even belocated by the ordinary means. 

It is possible that in the future these modern "argonauts" will beseeking the golden fleeces of the sea in wrecks, in golden sands likethe beaches of Nome, and that these amphibious boats will be ready alongall the dangerous coasts to rush to the rescue of noble ships and wrestthem from the clutches of the cruel sea. 

Mr. Lake has also designed and built a submarine torpedo-boat that willtravel on the surface, under the waves, or on the bottom; provided withboth gasoline and electric power, and, fitted with torpedo dischargetubes, she will be able to throw a submarine torpedo; her diver couldattach a charge of dynamite to the keel of an anchored warship, or shecould do great damage by hooking up cables through her diver's trap doorand cutting them, and by setting adrift anchored torpedoes and submarinemines. 

Thus have Jules Verne's imaginings come true, and the dream _Nautilus, _whose adventures so many of us have breathlessly followed, has beensucceeded by actual "Hollands" and practical "Argonauts" designed byAmerican inventors and manned by American crews. 

LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY

What Happens When You Talk into a Telephone Receiver

In Omaha, Nebraska, half-way across the continent and about forty hoursfrom Boston by fast train, a man sits comfortably in his office chairand, with no more exertion than is required to lift a portable receiveroff his desk, talks every day to his representative in the chief NewEngland city. The man in Boston hears his chief's voice and canrecognise the peculiarities in it just as if he stood in the same roomwith him. The man in Nebraska, speaking in an ordinary conversationaltone, can be heard perfectly well in Boston, 1, 400 miles away. 

This is the longest talk on record--that is, it is the longestcontinuous telephone line in steady and constant use, though the humanvoice has been carried even greater distances with the aid of thiswonderful instrument. 

The telephone is so common that no one stops to consider the wonder ofit, and not one person in a hundred can tell how it works. 

At this time, when the telephone is as necessary as pen and ink, it ishard to realise a time when men could not speak to one another from adistance, yet a little more than a quarter of a century ago the geniuswho invented it first conceived the great idea. 

Sometimes an inventor is a prophet: he sees in advance how his idea, perfected and in universal use, will change things, establish newmanners and customs, new laws and new methods. Alexander Graham Bell wasone of these prophetic inventors--the telephone was his invention, nothis discovery. He first got the idea and then sought a way to make itpractical. If you put yourself in his place, forget what has beenaccomplished, and put out of mind how the voice is transmitted fromplace to place by the slender wire, it would be impossible even then torealise how much in the dark Professor Bell was in 1874. 

The human speaking voice is full of changes; unlike the notes from amusical instrument, there is no uniformity in it; the rise and fall ofinflection, the varying sound of the vowels and consonants, thecombinations of words and syllables--each produces a differentvibration and different tone. To devise an instrument that wouldreceive all these varying tones and inflections and change them intosome other form of energy so that they could be passed over a wire, andthen change them back to their original form, reproducing each sound andevery peculiarity of the voice of the speaker in the ear of the hearer, was the task that Professor Bell set for himself. Just as you would sitdown to add up a big column of figures, knowing that sooner or later youwould get the correct answer, so he set himself to work out this problemin invention. The result of his study and determination is thetelephones we use to-day. Many improvements have been invented by othermen--Berliner, Edison, Blake, and others--but the idea and the workingout of the principle is due to Professor Bell. 

[Illustration: "CENTRAL" TELEPHONE OPERATORS AT WORKSince tiny lights have taken the place of bells to indicate the calls ofsubscribers the central stations are quiet except for the low hum ofcarefully modulated voices. The women standing behind the seatedoperators are inspectors. They watch for mistakes and disturbances ofany kind. ]

Every telephone receiver and transmitter has a mouth-and ear-piece toreceive or throw out the sound, a thin round sheet of lacqueredmetal--called a diaphragm, and an electromagnet; together they reproducehuman speech. An electric current from a battery or from the centralstation flows continuously through the wires wound round theelectromagnet in receiving and transmitting instruments, so when youspeak into the black mouthpiece of the wall or desk receiver thevibrations strike against the thin sheet-iron diaphragm at the small endof the mouthpiece; the sound waves of the voice make it vibrate to agreater or less degree; the diaphragm is placed so that the core of theelectromagnet is close to it, and as it vibrates the iron in itproduces undulations (by induction) in the current which is flowingthrough the wires wound round the soft iron centre of the magnet. Thewires of the coil are connected with the lines that go to the receivingtelephone, so that this undulating current, coiling round the core ofthe magnet in the receiver, attracts and repels the iron of thediaphragm in it, and it vibrates just as the transmitter diaphragm didwhen spoken into; the undulating current is translated by it into wordsand sentences that have all the peculiarities of the original. And sowhen speaking into a telephone your voice is converted into undulationsor waves in an electric current conveyed with incredible swiftness tothe receiving instrument, and these are translated back into thevibrations that produce speech. This is really what takes place when youtalk over a toy telephone made by a string stretched between the two tinmouth-pieces held at opposite sides of the room, with the differencethat in the telephone the vibrations are carried electrically, while thetoy carries them mechanically and not nearly so perfectly. 

For once the world realised immediately the importance of arevolutionising invention, and telephone stations soon began to beestablished in the large cities. Quicker than the telegraph, for therewas no need of an operator to translate the message, and more accurate, for if spoken clearly the words could be as clearly understood, thetelephone service spread rapidly. Lines stretched farther and fartherout from the central stations in the cities as improvements wereinvented, until the outlying wires of one town reached the outstretchedlines of another, and then communication between town and town wasestablished. Then two distant cities talked to each other through anintermediate town, and long-distance telephony was established. To-dayspecial lines are built to carry long-distance messages from one greatcity to another, and these direct lines are used entirely except whenstorms break through or the rush of business makes the roundabout routethrough intermediate cities necessary. 

As the nerves reaching from your finger-tips, from your ears, your eyes, and every portion of your body come to a focus in your brain and carryinformation to it about the things you taste, see, hear, feel, andsmell, so the wires of a telephone system come together at the centralstation. And as it is necessary for your right hand to communicate withyour left through your brain, so it is necessary for one telephonesubscriber to connect through the central station with anothersubscriber. 

The telephone has become a necessity of modern life, so that if throughsome means all the systems were destroyed business would be, for a timeat least, paralysed. It is the perfection of the devices for connectingone subscriber with another, and for despatching the vast number ofmessages and calls at "central, " that make modern telephony possible. 

To handle the great number of spoken messages that are sent over thetelephone wires of a great city it is necessary to divide the territoryinto districts, which vary in size according to the number ofsubscribers in them. Where the telephones are thickly installed thedistricts are smaller than in sections that are more sparsely settled. 

Then all the telephone wires of a certain district converge at a centralstation, and each pair of wires is connected with its own particularswitch at the switchboard of the station. That is simple enough; butwhen you come to consider that every subscriber must be so connectedthat he can be put into communication with every other subscriber, notonly in his own section but also with every subscriber throughout thecity, it will be seen that the switchboard at central is as marvellousas it is complicated. Some of the busy stations in New York have to takecare of 6, 000 or more subscribers and 10, 000 telephone instruments, while the city proper is criss-crossed with more than 60, 000 linesbearing messages from more than 100, 000 "'phones. " Just think of thebabel entering the branch centrals that has to be straightened out andeach separate series of voice undulations sent on its proper way, to betranslated into speech again and poured into the proper ear. It is nowonder, then, that it has been found necessary to establish a school fortelephone girls where they can be taught how to untangle the snarl andhandle the vast, complicated system. In these schools the operators gothrough a regular course lasting a month. They listen to lectures andwork out the instructions given them at a practice switchboard that isexactly like the service switchboard, except that the wires do not gooutside of the building, but connect with the instructor's desk; theinstructor calls up the pupils and sends messages in just the same waythat the subscribers call "central" in the regular service. 

At the terminal station of a great railroad, in the midst of a networkof shining rails, stands the switchman's tower. By means of steel leversthe man in his tower can throw his different switches and open one trackto a train and close another; by means of various signals the switchmancan tell if any given line is clear or if his levers do their workproperly. 

A telephone system may be likened, in a measure, to a complicatedrailroad line: the trunk wires to subscribers are like the tracks of therailroad, and the central station may be compared to the switch tower, while the central operators are like the switchmen. It is the centralgirls' business to see that connections are made quickly and correctly, that no lines are tied up unnecessarily, that messages are properlycharged to the right persons, that in case of a break in a line themessages are switched round the trouble, and above all that there shallbe no delay. 

When you take your receiver off the hook a tiny electric bulb glowsopposite the brass-lined hole that is marked with your number on theswitchboard of your central, and the telephone girl knows that you areready to send in a call--the flash of the little light is a signal toher that you want to be connected with some other subscriber. Whereupon, she inserts in your connection a brass plug to which a flexible wire isattached, and then opens a little lever which connects her with yourcircuit. Then she speaks into a kind of inverted horn which projectsfrom a transmitter that hangs round her neck and asks: "Number, please?"You answer with the number, which she hears through the receiverstrapped to her head and ear. After repeating the number the "hello"girl proceeds to make the connection. If the number required is in thesame section of the city she simply reaches for the hole or connectionwhich corresponds with it, with another brass plug, the twin of the onethat is already inserted in your connection, and touches the brasslining with the plug. All the connections to each central station are soarranged and duplicated that they are within the reach of each operator. If the line is already "busy" a slight buzz is heard, not only by"central, " but by the subscriber also if he listens; "central" notifiesand then disconnects you. If the line is clear the twin plug is thrustinto the opening, and at the same time "central" presses a button, whicheither rings a bell or causes a drop to fall in the private exchangestation of the party you wish to talk to. The moment the new connectionis made and the party you wish to talk to takes off the receiver fromhis hook, a second light glows beside yours, and continues to glow aslong as the receiver remains off. The two little lamps are a signal to"central" that the connection is properly made and she can then attendto some other call. When your conversation is finished and yourreceivers are hung up the little lights go out. That signals "central"again, and she withdraws the plug from both holes and pushes anotherbutton, which connects with a meter made like a bicycle cyclometer. Thislittle instrument records your call (a meter is provided for eachsubscriber) and at the same time lights the two tiny lamps again--asignal to the inspector, if one happens to be watching, that the call isproperly recorded. All this takes long to read, but it is done in thetwinkling of an eye. "Central's" hands are both free, and by longpractice and close attention she is able to make and break connectionswith marvellous rapidity, it being quite an ordinary thing for anoperator in a busy section to make ten connections a minute, while inan emergency this rate is greatly increased. 

[Illustration: "CENTRAL" MAKING CONNECTIONSThe front of a small section of a central-station switchboard. Each doton the face of the blackboard is a subscriber's connection. The cordsconnect one subscriber with another. The switches throwing in theoperator's "phone", and the pilot lamps showing when a subscriber wishesa connection, are set in the table or shelf before her. ]

The call of one subscriber for another number in the same section, asdescribed above--for instance, the call of 4341 Eighteenth Street for2165 Eighteenth Street--is the easiest connection that "central" has tomake. 

As it is impossible for each branch exchange to be connected with everyindividual line in a great city, when a subscriber of one exchangewishes to talk with a subscriber of another, two central operators arerequired to make the connection. If No. 4341 Eighteenth Street wants totalk to 1748 Cortlandt Street, for instance, the Eighteenth Streetcentral who gets the 4341 call makes a connection with the operator atCortlandt Street and asks for No. 1748. The Cortlandt Street operatorgoes through the operation of testing to see if 1748 is busy, and if notshe assigns a wire connecting the two exchanges, whereupon in EighteenthStreet one plug is put in 4341 switch hole; the twin plug is put intothe switch hole connecting with the wire to Cortlandt Street; atCortlandt Street the same thing is done with No. 1748 pair of plugs. Thelights glow in both exchanges, notifying the operators when theconversation is begun and ended, and the operator of Eighteenth Street"central" makes the record in the same way as she does when both numbersare in her own district. 

Besides the calls for numbers within the cities there are theout-of-town calls. In this case central simply makes connection with"Long Distance, " which is a separate company, though allied with thecity companies. "Long Distance" makes the connection in much the sameway as the branch city exchanges. As the charges for long-distance callsdepend on the length of the conversation, so the connection is made byan operator whose business it is to make a record of the length inminutes of the conversation and the place with which the city subscriberis connected. An automatic time stamp accomplishes this withoutpossibility of error. 

Sometimes the calls come from a pay station, in which case a record mustbe kept of the time occupied. This kind of call is indicated by the glowof a red light instead of a white one, and so "central" is warned tokeep track, and the supervisors or monitors who constantly pass to andfro can note the kind of calls that come in, and so keep tab on theoperators. 

Other coloured lights indicate that the chief operator wishes to sendout a general order and wishes all operators to listen. Anotherindicates that there is trouble somewhere on the line which needs theattention of the wire chief and repair department. 

[Illustration: THE BACK OF A TELEPHONE SWITCHBOARDA section of one of several central station switchboards necessary tocarry the telephone traffic of a great city. ]

The switchboards themselves are made of hard, black rubber, and arehoneycombed with innumerable holes, each of which is connected with asubscriber. Below the switchboard is a broad shelf in which are set theminiature lamps and from which project the brass plugs in rows. Theflexible cords containing the connecting wires are weighted and hangbelow, so that when a plug is pulled out of a socket and dropped itslides back automatically to its proper place, ready for use. 

Many subscribers nowadays have their own private exchanges and severallines running to central. Perhaps No. 4341 Eighteenth Street, forinstance, has 4342 and 4344 as well. This is indicated on theswitchboard by a line of red or white drawn under the threeswitch-holes, so that central, finding one line busy, may be able tomake connection with one of the other two, the line underneath showingat a glance which numbers belong to that particular subscriber. 

If a subscriber is away temporarily, a plug of one colour is insertedin his socket, or if he is behind in his payments to the company a plugof another colour is put in, and if the service to his house isdiscontinued still another plug notifies the operator of the fact, andit remains there until that number is assigned to a new subscriber. 

The operators sit before the switchboard in high swivel chairs in a longrow, with their backs to the centre of the room. 

From the rear it looks as if they were weaving some intricate fabricthat unravels as fast as it is woven. Their hands move almost fasterthan the eye can follow, and the patterns made by the criss-crossedcords of the connecting plugs are constantly changing, varying fromminute to minute as the colours in a kaleido-scope form new designs withevery turn of the handle. 

Into the exchange pour all the throbbing messages of a great city. Business propositions, political deals, scientific talks, and words ofcomfort to the troubled, cross and recross each other over the blackswitchboard. The wonder is that each message reaches the ear it wasmeant for, and that all complications, no matter how knotty, areimmediately unravelled. 

In the cities the telephone is a necessity. Business engagements aremade and contracts consummated; brokers keep in touch with theirassociates on the floors of the exchanges; the patrolmen of the policeforce keep their chief informed of their movements and the state of thedistricts under their care; alarms of fire are telephoned to thefire-engine houses, and calls for ambulances bring the swift wagons ontheir errands of mercy; even wreckers telephone to their divers on thebottom of the bay, and undulating electrical messages travel to the topsof towering sky-scrapers. 

[Illustration: A FEW TELEPHONE TRUNK WIRESThis shows a small section of a complicated telephone switchboard. ]

In Europe it is possible to hear the latest opera by paying a small feeand putting a receiver to your ear, and so also may lazy people andinvalids hear the latest news without getting out of bed. 

The farmers of the West and in eastern States, too, have learned to usethe barbed wire that fences off their fields as a means of communicatingwith one another and with distant parts of their own property. 

Mr. Pupin has invented an apparatus by which he hopes to greatly extendthe distance over which men may talk, and it has even been suggestedthat Uncle Sam and John Bull may in the future swap stories over atransatlantic telephone line. 

The marvels accomplished suggest the possible marvels to come. Automatic exchanges, whereby the central telephone operator is done awaywith, is one of the things that inventors are now at work on. 

The one thing that prevents an unlimited use of the telephone is theexpensive wires and the still more expensive work of putting themunderground or stringing them overhead. So the capping of the climax ofthe wonders of the telephone would be wireless telephony, eachinstrument being so attuned that the undulations would respond only tothe corresponding instrument. This is one of the problems that inventorsare even now working upon, and it may be that wireless telephones willbe in actual operation not many years after this appears in print. 

A MACHINE THAT THINKS

A Typesetting Machine That Makes Mathematical Calculations

For many years it was thought impossible to find a short cut fromauthor's manuscript to printing press--that is, to substitute a machinefor the skilled hands that set the type from which a book or magazine isprinted. Inventors have worked at this problem, and a number have solvedit in various ways. To one who has seen the slow work of handtypesetting as the compositor builds up a long column of metal piece bypiece, letter by letter, picking up each character from its allottedspace in the case and placing it in its proper order and position, andthen realises that much of the printed matter he sees is so produced, the wonder is how the enormous amount of it is ever accomplished. 

In a page of this size there are more than a thousand separate pieces oftype, which, if set by hand, would have to be taken one by one andplaced in the compositor's "stick"; then when the line is nearly set itwould have to be spaced out, or "justified, " to fill out the lineexactly. Then when the compositor's "stick" is full, or two and a halfinches have been set, the type has to be taken out and placed in a longchannel, or "galley. " Each of these three operations requiresconsiderable time and close application, and with each change there isthe possibility of error. It is a long, expensive process. 

A perfect typesetting machine should take the place of the handcompositor, setting the type letter by letter automatically in properorder at a maximum speed and with a minimum chance of error. 

These three steps of hand composition, slow, expensive, open to manychances of mistake, have been covered at one stride at five times thespeed, at one-third the cost, and much more accurately by a machineinvented by Mr. Tolbert Lanston. 

The operator of the Lanston machine sits at a keyboard, much like atypewriter in appearance, containing every character in common use (225in all), and at a speed limited only by his dexterity he plays on thekeys exactly as a typewriter works his machine. This is the sum total ofhuman effort expended. The machine does all the rest of the work;makes the calculations and delivers the product in clean, shining newtype, each piece perfect, each in its place, each line of exactly theright length, and each space between the words mathematicallyequal--absolutely "justified. " It is practically hand composition withthe human possibility of error, of weariness, of inattention, ofignorance, eliminated, and all accomplished with a celerity that isastonishing. 

[Illustration: THE LANSTON TYPE-SETTER KEYBOARDAs each key is pressed a corresponding perforation is made in the rollof paper shown at the top of the machine. Each perforation stands for acharacter or a space. ]

This machine is a type-casting machine as well as a typesetter. It caststhe type (individual characters) it sets, perfect in face and body, capable of being used in hand composition or put to press directly fromthe machine and printed from. 

As each piece of type is separate, alterations are easily made. The typefor correction, which the machine itself casts for the purpose--a lot ofa's, b's, etc. --is simply substituted for the words misspelled orincorrectly used, as in hand composition. 

The Lanston machine is composed of two parts, the keyboard and thecasting-setting machine. The keyboard part may be placed whereverconvenient, away from noise or anything that is likely to distract orinterrupt the operator, and the perforated roll of paper produced by it(which governs the setting machine) may be taken away as fast as it isfinished. In the setting-casting machine is located the brains. Thefive-inch roll of paper, perforated by the keyboard machine (a hole forevery letter), gives the signal by means of compressed air to themechanism that puts the matrix (or type mould) in position and casts thetype letter by letter, each character following the proper sequence asmarked by the perforations of the paper ribbon. By means of an indicatorscale on the keyboard the operator can tell how many spaces there arebetween the words of the line and the remaining space to be filled outto make the line the proper width. This information is marked byperforations on the paper ribbon by the pressure of two keys, and whenthe ribbon is transferred to the casting machine these spaceperforations so govern the casting that the line of type delivered atthe "galley" complete shall be of exactly the proper length, and thespaces between the words be equal to the infinitesimal fraction of aninch. 

The casting machine is an ingenious mechanism of many complicated parts. In a word, the melted metal (a composition of zinc and lead) is forcedinto a mold of the letter to be cast. Two hundred and twenty-five ofthese moulds are collected in a steel frame about three inches square, and cool water is kept circulating about them, so that almostimmediately after the molten metal is injected into the lines and dotsof the letter cut in the mould it hardens and drops into its slot, aperfect piece of type. 

All this is accomplished at a rate of four or five thousand "ems" perhour of the size of type used on this page. The letter M is the unit ofmeasurement when the amount of any piece of composition is to beestimated, and is written "em. "

If this page were set by hand (taking a compositor of more than averagespeed as a basis for figuring), at least one hour of steady work wouldbe required, but this page set by the Lanston machine (the operatorbeing of the same grade as the hand compositor) would require hardlymore than fifteen minutes from the time the manuscript was put into theoperator's hands to the delivery complete of the newly cast type ingalleys ready to be made up into pages, if the process were carried oncontinuously. 

This marvellous machine is capable of setting almost any size of type, from the minute "agate" to and including "pica, " a letter more thanone-eighth of an inch high, and a line of almost any desired width, thechange from one size to any other requiring but a few minutes. TheLanston machine sets up tables of figures, poetry, and all thosedifficult pieces of composition that so try the patience of the handcompositor. 

It is called the monotype because it casts and sets up the type piece bypiece. 

Another machine, invented by Mergenthaler, practically sets up themoulds, by a sort of typewriter arrangement, for a line at a time, andthen a casting is taken of a whole line at once. This machine is usedmuch in newspaper offices, where the cleverness of the compositor has tobe depended upon and there is little or no time for corrections. Severalother machines set the regular type that is made in type foundries, thetype being placed in long channels, all of the same sort, in the samegrooves, and slipped or set in its proper place by the machine operatedby a man at the keyboard. These machines require a separate mechanismthat distributes each type in its proper place after use, or else aseparate compositor must be employed to do this by hand. The machinesthat set foundry type, moreover, require a great stock of it, just asmany hundred pounds of expensive type are needed for hand composition. 

[Illustration: WHERE THE "BRAINS" ARE LOCATEDThe perforations in the paper ribbon (shown in the upper left-hand partof the picture) govern the action of the machine so that the propercharacters are cast in the proper order, and also the spaces between thewords. ]

Though a machine has been invented that will put an author's words intotype, no mechanism has yet been invented that will do away with typealtogether. It is one of the problems still to be solved. 

HOW HEAT PRODUCES COLD

ARTIFICIAL ICE-MAKING

One midsummers day a fleet of United States war-ships were lying atanchor in Guantanamo Bay, on the southern coast of Cuba. The sky wascloudless, and the tropic sun shone so fiercely on the decks that thebare-footed Jackies had to cross the unshaded spots on the jump to savetheir feet. 

An hour before the quavering mess-call sounded for the midday meal, whenthe sun was shining almost perpendicularly, a boat's crew from one ofthe cruisers were sent over to the supply-ship for a load of beef. Not abreath was stirring, the smooth surface of the bay reflected the brazensun like a mirror, and it seemed to the oarsmen that the salt waterwould scald them if they should touch it. Only a few hundred yardsseparated the two vessels, yet the heat seemed almost beyond endurance, and the shade cast by the tall steel sides of the supply-steamer, whenthe boat reached it, was as comforting as a cool drink to a thirstyman. The oars were shipped, and one man was left to fend off the boatwhile the others clambered up the swaying rope-ladder, crossed thescorching decks on the run, and went below. In two minutes they were inthe hold of the refrigerator-ship, gathering the frost from the frigidcooling-pipes and snowballing each other, while the boat-keeper outsideof the three-eighth-inch steel plating was fanning himself with his hat, almost dizzy from the quivering heat-waves that danced before his eyes. The great sides of beef, hung in rows, were frozen as hard as rock. Evenafter the strip of water had been crossed on the return journey and themeat exposed to the full, unobstructed glare of the sun the cruiser'smesscooks had to saw off their portions, and the remainder continuedhard as long as it lasted. But the satisfaction of the men who ate thatfresh American beef cannot be told. 

Cream from a famous dairy is sent to particular patrons in Paris, France, and it is known that in one instance, at least, a bottle ofcream, having failed to reach the person to whom it was consigned, madethe return transatlantic voyage and was received in New York three weeksafter its first departure, perfectly sweet and good. Throughout theentire journey it was kept at freezing temperature by artificialmeans. These are but two striking examples of wonders that are performedevery day. 

[Illustration: THE TYPE MOULDSMoulds for 225 different characters are contained in this frame. ]

Cold, of course, is but the absence of heat, and so refrigeratingmachinery is designed to extract the heat from whatever substance it isdesired to cool. The refrigerating agent used to extract the heat fromthe cold chamber must in turn have the heat extracted from it, and sothe process must be continuous. 

Water, when it boils and turns into steam or vapour, is heated by orextracts heat from the fire, but water vapourises at a high temperatureand so cannot be used to produce cold. Other fluids are much morevolatile and evaporate much more easily. Alcohol when spilt on the handdries almost instantly and leaves a feeling of cold--the warmth of thehand boils the alcohol and turns it into vapour, and in doing soextracts the heat from the skin, making it cold; now, if the evaporatedalcohol could be caught and compressed into its liquid form again youwould have a refrigerating machine. 

Alcohol is expensive and inflammable, and many other volatile substanceshave been discarded for the one or the other reason. Of all the fluidsthat have been tried, ammonia has been found to work mostsatisfactorily; it evaporates at a low temperature, is non-inflammable, and is comparatively cheap. 

The hold of the supply-ship mentioned at the head of this chapter was avast refrigerator, but no ice was used except that produced mechanicallyby the power in the ship. To produce the cold in the hold of the ship itwas necessary to extract the heat in it; to accomplish this, coils ranround the space filled with cold brine, which, as it grew warm, drew theheat from the air. The brine in turn circulated through a tankcontaining pipes filled with ammonia vapour which extracted the heatfrom it; the brine then was ready to circulate through the coils in thehold again and extract more heat. The heat-extracting or cooling powerof the ammonia is exerted continually by the process described below. Ammonia requires heat to expand and turn into vapour, and this heat itextracts from the substance surrounding it. In this marine refrigeratingmachine the ammonia got the heat from the brine in the tank, then it wasdrawn by a pump from the pipes in the tank, compressed by a powercompressor, and forced into a second coil. The second coil is called acondenser because the vapour was there condensed into a fluid again. Over the pipes of the condenser cool water dripped constantly andcarried off the heat in the ammonia vapour inside the coils and socondensed it into a fluid again--just as cold condenses steam intowater. The compressor-pump then forced the fluid, ammonia through asmall pipe from the condenser coils to the cooling coils in the tank ofbrine. The pipes of the cooling coils are much larger than those of thecondenser, and as the fluid ammonia is forced in a fine spray into theselarge pipes and the pressure is relieved it expands or boils into thelarger volume of vapour and in so doing extracts heat from the brine. The pump draws the heated vapour out, the compressor makes it dense, andthe coils over which the cool water flows condenses it into fluid again, and so the circuit continues--through cooler, pump, compressor, andcondenser, back into the cooling-tank. 

In the meantime, the cold brine is being pumped through the pipes in thehold of the ship, where it extracts the heat from the air and the rowsof sides of beef and then returns to the cooling-tank. In therefrigerating plant, then, of the supply-ship, there were twoheat-extracting circuits, one of ammonia and the other of brine. Brineis used because it freezes at a very low temperature and continues toflow when unsalted water would be frozen solid. The ammonia is not useddirect in the pipes in a big space like the hold of a ship, because somuch of it would be required, and then there is always danger of theexposed pipes being broken and the dangerous fumes released. 

Opposite as it may seem, heat is required to produce cold--for steam isnecessary to drive the compressor and pump of a refrigerating plant, andfire of some sort is necessary to make steam. 

The first artificial refrigerating machines produced cold by compressingand expanding air, the compressed air containing the heat being cooledby jets of cool water spirted into the cylinder containing it, then thecompressed air was released or expanded into a larger chamber andthereby extracted the heat from brine or whatever substance surroundedit. 

It is in the making of ice, however, that refrigerating machineryaccomplishes its most surprising results. It was said in the writer'shearing recently that natural ice costs about as much when it wasdelivered at the docks or freight-yards of the large cities of the Northas the product of the ice-machine. Of course, the manufactured ice isproduced near the spot where it is consumed, and there is little lossthrough melting while it is being stored or transported, as in the caseof the natural product. 

There are two ways of making ice--or, rather, two methods using the sameprinciple. 

In the can system, a series of galvanized-iron cans about three and ahalf feet deep, eight inches wide, by two and a half feet long aresuspended or rested in great tanks of brine connecting with thecooling-tank through which the pipes containing the ammonia vapourcirculates. The vapour draws the heat from the brine, and the brine, which is kept moving constantly, in turn extracts the heat from thedistilled water in the cans. While this method produces ice quickly, itis difficult to get ice of perfect clearness and purity, because thewater in the can freezes on the sides, gradually getting thicker, retaining and concentrating in the centre any impurities that may be inthe water. The finished cake, therefore, almost always has a white orcloudy appearance in the centre, and is frequently discolored. 

In an ice-plant operated on the can system a great many blocks arefreezing at once--in fact, the whole floor of a great room ishoneycombed with trap-doors, a door for each can. The freezing is donein rotation, so that one group of cans is being emptied of their blocksof ice while others are still in process of congealing, while stillothers are being filled with fresh water. When the freezing is complete, jets of steam or quick immersion of the can in hot water releases thecake and the can is ready for another charge. 

The plate system of artificial ice-making does away with thediscoloration and the cloudiness, because the water containing theimpurities or the air-bubbles is not frozen, but is drawn off anddiscarded. 

In the plate system, great permanent tanks six feet deep and eight totwelve feet wide and of varying lengths are used. These tanks containthe clean, fresh water that is to be frozen into great slabs of ice. Into the tanks are sunk flat coils of pipe covered with smooth, metalplates on either side, and it is through these pipes that the ammoniavapour flows. The plates with the coils of pipe between them fit in thetank transversely, partitioning it off into narrow cells six feet deep, about twenty-two inches wide, and eight or ten feet long. In operation, the ammonia vapour flows through the pipes, chilling the plates andfreezing the water so that a gradually thickening film of ice adheres toeach side of each set of plates. As the ice gets thicker the unfrozenwater between the slabs containing the impurities and air-bubbles getsnarrower. When the ice on the plates is eight or ten inches thick verylittle of the unfrozen water remains between the great cakes, but itcontains practically all the impurities. When the ice on the plates isthick enough, the ammonia vapour is turned off and steam forced throughthe pipes so the cakes come off readily, or else plates, cakes, and allare hoisted out of the tank and the ice melted off. The ice, clear andperfect, is then sawed into convenient sizes and shipped to consumers orstored for future use. Sometimes the plates or partitions are permanent, and, with the coils of pipes between them, cold brine is circulated, butin either case the two surfaces of ice do not come together, there beingalways a film of water between. 

Still another method produces ice by forcing the clean water inextremely fine spray into a reservoir from which the air has beenexhausted--into a vacuum, in other words; the spray condenses in theform of tiny particles of ice, which are attached to the walls of thereservoir. The ice grows thicker as a carpet of snow increases, oneparticle falling on and freezing to the others until the coating hasreached the required thickness, when it is loosened and cut up in cakesof convenient size. The vacuum ice is of marble-like whiteness andappearance, but is perfectly pure, and it is said to be quite as hard. 

More and more artificial ice is being used, even in localities where iceis formed naturally during parts of the year. 

Many of the modern hotels are equipped with refrigerating plants wherethey make their own ice, cool their own storage-rooms, freeze the waterin glass carafes for the use of their guests, and even cool the air thatis circulated through the ventilating system in hot weather. In manylarge apartment-houses the refrigerators built in the various separatesuites are kept at a freezing temperature by pipes leading to arefrigerating plant in the cellar. The convenience and neatness of thisplan over the method of carrying dripping cakes from floor to floor in adumb-waiter is evident. 

Another use of refrigerating plants that is greatly appreciated is themaking of artificial ice for skating-rinks. An artificial iceskating-rink is simply an ice machine on a grand scale--the ice beingmade in a great, thin, flat cake. Through the shallow tanks containingthe fresh water coils of pipe through which flows the ammonia vapour orthe cold brine are run from end to end or from side to side so that thewhole bottom of the tank is gridironed with pipes, the water coveringthe pipes is speedily frozen, and a smooth surface formed. When theskaters cut up the surface it is flooded and frozen over again. 

So efficient and common have refrigerating plants become thatartificially cooled water is on tap in many public places in the greatcities. Theatres are cooled during hot weather by a portion of the samemachinery that supplies the heat in winter, and it is not improbablethat every large establishment, private, or public, will in the nearfuture have its own refrigerating plant. 

Inventors are now at work on cold-air stoves that draw in warm air, extract the heat from it, and deliver it purified and cooled by manydegrees. 

Even the people of this generation, therefore, may expect to see theirfurnaces turned into cooling machines in summer. Then the ice-man willcease from troubling and the ice-cart be at rest.