Part 3
The most remarkable digger of all is the one you’ll see on the next page. It rolls along a track deep underground until it comes to the place where its operator wants to cut coal. He pushes a control, and the machine’s long neck reaches up. The cutting head, at the end of the neck, starts biting into the coal. The head does its work much faster and easier than men with hand tools ever could.
Outside the mine, machines sort the coal according to size and load it into railroad cars.
Unloading machinery empties the cars in many places, too. There’s one coal yard where a woman, pushing buttons, controls machines that do everything--unload cars, store the coal according to its size in tall bins, and load the trucks that will deliver it to customers. This is how the yard works:
Each railroad car empties its coal in a stream onto a moving belt. The belt carries the coal to a machine called a giraffe, which works like an escalator. The giraffe lifts the coal into a tall hopper.
The woman who runs the coal yard sits in an office with a big window, where she can look out and see everything that’s going on. When a truck has backed up to a hopper, ready to load, she pushes a button. Coal drops down out of the hopper onto another giraffe which lifts it into the body of the truck. As soon as the truck is filled, push goes a button and the loading stops.
LOADERS, LIFTERS AND SUCH
Moving belt machines work at other jobs, too. They load sand into trucks and cargo into ships.
On some piers, huge vacuum cleaners empty ships full of sugar or wheat. At ports on the Great Lakes, machines reach down into ore-carrying ships and unload them with great speed. At the end of each of these unloaders hangs a clamshell bucket. Just above the bucket is a little room where a man sits and watches what goes on. He signals to the operator, telling him just where to drop the bucket so it can pick up a mouthful of ore. The ship can be unloaded by two men who do nothing but signal to each other and push levers. But usually there are several machines working at the same time so that the job goes as quickly as possible.
When iron ore has been turned into steel bars or wheels or gears, another kind of lifter can handle them. This one does its work with a huge electro-magnet that holds heavy weights when electricity is running through it. The operator drops the magnet onto the load of iron or steel that he wants to lift. Then he turns on the electricity which makes the magnet and the piece of metal stick together. The operator moves the load wherever it is supposed to go. Then he turns off the electricity. The magnet lets loose and is ready for another job.
MACHINES FOR LUMBER, TOO
Machines dug and loaded and delivered the coal that keeps your house warm. Machines helped cut the lumber that went into building your house, too.
Far out in the woods, power-driven saws sliced quickly through the trunks of great trees. Caterpillar tractors hauled the logs out along rough forest trails.
Perhaps the cats, using booms, lifted the logs onto extra-long trailers behind trucks and started them on the way to the sawmill. Or the cats may have snaked the logs to a river so they could float downstream to a sawmill.
No matter how the logs reached the sawmill, they were put at last onto belts which pushed them against huge whirling saws. A whole set of saws, all whining and screaming at once, turned the thick log into boards. Other machines planed the boards to make them smooth and then cut them to exactly the right sizes. Finally lift-trucks picked up great piles of board at once, whizzed them away and hoisted them elevator-fashion into high stacks.
BRAIN POWER
The operators of most machines sit where they can see what they are doing, or where they can get signals from helpers. But there is one that does things in a new way. Its operator just watches television in his cab. He never sees the parts of his machine at work. Instead, he looks at the television screen. A television camera on the roof of the building photographs what is going on below. This is what the eye of the camera sees: One machine that gathers up pieces of scrap metal and dumps them into a squeezer; the squeezer that presses the scraps into neat bundles; a conveyor that loads the bundles into a railroad car.
The operator watches the moving picture. Then he pushes levers that control the loaders and other levers that send a car on its way when it is full. The only thing he can’t do is switch on a regular TV program and watch a show while he works!
The time may come when people who operate other kinds of machines will find television helpful in many ways. Meantime, scientists who know how television works also know how to make the most wonderful machines of all. Instead of saving muscle-power, these machines save brain-power. They solve very complicated mathematical problems at lightning speed. In fact, they are called “thinking machines.” They add, subtract, multiply, divide and do figuring that many college professors can’t even do.
Partly for fun, and partly to discover new things, the thinking-machine experts have also invented mechanical animals. They’ve made turtles that can walk all around a room without bumping into anything. They’ve made a little wire-whiskered mechanical mouse that can actually sniff about until it finds something it is supposed to find--just the way a real mouse sniffs out a piece of cheese. The machine-mouse even “remembers” where it went, and it runs straight to its cheese the next time.
The machines you’ve read about in this book are mostly outdoor machines, operated by one man or a small crew of men. These are only a few of the marvellous inventions that you can find at work every day. Of course, there are hundreds and thousands of others in factories, making cloth, shaping automobile parts, printing books, doing the important work the world needs done. But, no matter how marvellous and complicated they are, they will never be as wonderful as the men who have invented them and built them and used them. When we talk about machines, we’re really talking about people.
FUNNY NAMES
Some machines resemble animals in the way they look or the things they do, and so they have animal names. Besides the caterpillar with its crawler treads and the crane with its long neck, here are some others:
ALLIGATOR GRAB--a tool used to pick up things that get dropped into oil well holes.
CAMEL-BACK CRANE--this one has a hump in its boom.
FISHTAIL BIT--a drilling tool which is shaped like a fish’s tail.
KANGAROO PLOW--a plow equipped with strong springs so it can hop over rocks or tree stumps, instead of getting caught on them.
SHEEP’S FOOT TAMPER--a heavy road roller with spikes that pack earth down, the way a flock of sheep does.
WORM LOADER--a long screw that twists round and round to push its load along.
INDEX
airplane duster, 26
asphalt spreader, 65
bailer, 34
baler, automatic, 26-27
beet digger, 42
bit, 69
blower, 28
boom, 9, 49, 51, 55, 74, 85
“box seat,” 22
bucker, 53
bulldozer, 45, 55, 57, 61, 67, 74, 77
bull wheel, 73, 74
cable rig, 72
catcher, 53
caterpillar, 45, 46, 60, 67, 68, 74, 77, 85
cats, 68
cement mixer, 65
chicken picker, 24-25
Chinese drillers, 73-74
chisel plow, 32
clamshell, 49, 84
coal digger, 81
coal loaders, 81
coal mining, 9, 78-83
corn cutter, 25
corn picking machine, 21
corn planter, 19
cotton picker, 37-38
cotton planter, 37
crane, 10, 49-52, 54, 85
crawler tractor, 45
crawlers, 10, 48, 49
crowd shovel, 49
“cub” tractor, 44
cultivator, 21
cutter heads, 15
cutting head, 81
cyclone, 39
derrick, 69
Diesel engine, 47
dipper, 49
“dogging,” 52
dredges, 14-15
driller, 72
driverless plow, 32-35
earth mover, 58
egg machinery, 24
egg sorter, 24
electro-magnet, 84
escalators, 83-84
farm machines, 18-45
giraffe, 83
go-devil, 77-78
gooseneck trailer, 48
grader, 61-64
grass planter, 26
harrow, 18
hay baler, 26-27
hay blower, 67
hay rake, 27
hay stacker, 28-29
heater, 53
hoe, compressed air, 36, 37
“hot-dope gang,” 74
house, 49
house moving, 58
jackhammers, 12
jib, 52
joint, 70
lumbering machinery, 85-86
magnet crane, 84
“making hole,” 72
manure scoop, 24
mechanical mouse, 89
milking machine, 29-32
mining, machinery 78-83
motor grader, 61-64, 67
motor scraper, 57
mowing machine, 26
Muskeg schooner, 69
nut harvester, 41
oil wells, 69-74
ore unloaders, 84
overhead crane, 10
“package job,” 22
piggy-back crane, 10
pile driver, 13
pipelines, 74-78
plow, 17, 18, 32, 33, 34, 35
post-hole digger, 16
potato digger, 42
powder monkey, 60
power shovel, 47-48
pull-shovel, 49
pumps, 78-80
reaper, 22, 42 rig, 70
ripper, 61
rivet gun, 53
rivet man, 53
road building machines, 55-68
rock crusher, 12
rock rake, 60
rotary rig, 72
rotolactor, 30-32
roughnecks, 72
scraper, 61
seed planter, 67
shovel, 9, 47-48, 49
signals, 52, 84, 88
silage blower, 26
skull cracker, 54
snow plow, 45, 67
spraying machines, 38-39
spud, 15
squeezer, 89
steam engines, 80
steam roller, 66
steam shovel, 47-48
suction dredge, 57
tandem roller, 65
tassel picker, 40-41
television, 88, 89
“thinking machines,” 89
tomato planter, 22
tongs, 70
tractor, 17, 18, 44, 45, 58, 61
trailer houses, 69
tree-dozer, 17
tree-shaker, 41
trencher, 74-77
turntable, 51
turtle, 89
two-gang plow, 18
vacuum unloaders, 84
welding crew, 74
well drilling, 69-74
wheat planting machine, 22
windrower, 27
wrecker, 54
The author and the artist wish to thank the following for their help in making this book possible: Miss Elsie Eaves, Manager, Business News Department, _Engineering News-Record_; Margaret Gossett; Mr. Harold Spitzer; _The Lamp_, published by the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey); the Caterpillar Corp.; the General Motors Corp., the New Jersey Bell Telephone Co.; the Florida Land Clearing Equipment Co.; the Walker-Gordon Laboratory Co.; the many manufacturers of digging, road-building and other specialized machines; a bumper crop of tractor and farm implement makers; and farmer friends who proudly showed their equipment in action.
* * * * *
$1.50
MACHINES AT WORK
_By_ Mary Elting
_Illustrated by_ Laszlo Roth
There are machines to dig, to hammer, to push--to do every kind of heavy job and to make work thousands of times easier and faster.
On farms, in the mines, in cities where huge buildings are built and out in the woods where powerdriven saws slice through great trees, many kinds of special machines do many kinds of remarkable jobs.
Can you imagine a giant shovel so huge that it took 45 freight cars to haul it from factory to mine? Do you know that there is a machine that plucks the feathers off chickens, ones that pick corn, dig potatoes? Inventors of machines work on everything--they even had fun making a mechanical mouse that can sniff about until it finds a piece of “cheese” and then “remember” and run straight to it next time!
As marvelous and complicated as all these machines are, the author points out that no inventions will ever be as wonderful as the men who invented them--and the men who make them work.
You will find this book an exciting companion to TRAINS AT WORK, SHIPS AT WORK, TRUCKS AT WORK.
Garden City Books
Garden City, New York
* * * * *
TRUCKS AT WORK
_By_ Mary Elting
_Illustrated by_ Ursula Koering
This is a book about the sort of trucks that you see every day, as well as the most wonderful out-of-the-way trucks that you may not yet have discovered. It tells of city trucks, with their endless and fascinating cargoes, trucks that help on the farm, and trucks that rumble along the country roads hauling anything from horse-stables to houses.
The author also tells you how the drivers arrange their routes, and how they learned to foil hijackers--and the pictures will tell you just as much as the text. You can see how a truck is loaded so that nothing gets smashed or spoilt; and how a truck Roadeo tests the skill of the men who drive the huge trailer rigs. There is lots of fun here besides useful information.
Garden City Books
Garden City, New York
* * * * *
FOUR INFORMATIVE BOOKS
Every kind of truck.... loads they haul, the way the drivers.... arrange their routes, how to foil.... hijackers and how a truck Roadeo.... is run are vividly presented in story and colorful pictures.
_ILLUSTRATED BY URSULA KOERING_
Freighters and tankers, tugs and giant ocean liners are shown in action. Vivid text and colorful pictures take you right through the world of ships and show you the life of the men who sail them.
_ILLUSTRATED BY MANNING DE V. LEE_
Many different kinds of locomotives, trains and special cars are all shown in action. You can see the different jobs engineers, brakemen and signalmen do. Colorful pictures show railroading realistically and in full detail.
_ILLUSTRATED BY DAVID LYLE MILLARD_
MACHINES AT WORK
Machines that dig, hammer, push--in non-technical language, the author explains the fascinating things they do, how they work and something about the men who run them. Full-color pictures show each machine in action.
_ILLUSTRATED BY LASZLO ROTH_
ALL BY MARY ELTING
GARDEN CITY BOOKS--GARDEN CITY--NEW YORK