Mechanics: The Science of Machinery

FROM the day when man began to assert his superiority over other animals he began to cast longing eyes at the sky. Fired with ambition and stirred with a spirit of mastery he ch...

THE POSSIBILITY that the wind was the first inanimate power utilized by man, has already been referred to. There are records of the use of sailing vessels in Egypt that date as...

IN MARKED contrast to the massive machinery and apparatus described in the last chapter, and fully as wonderful, is a class of machinery to which we might apply the term “animat...

AT THE VERY beginning of this book we observed that war is a most potent stimulus to invention among primitive men. Despite all our advances in civilization we still have our wa...

IT IS NOT very long since the spinning wheel and the clacking loom were an indispensable furnishing of every farmhouse and of many city dwellings as well. With infinite patience...

THE ALBANIAN people have a story that the Creator recently visited the earth and was astonished to find how it had changed. “Why, this is not the earth I created,” He said. “Eve...

FLOWING water exerts a strange fascination upon mankind, even to the present day. Tourists travel hundreds of miles to view the glorious spectacle of a riotous tumbling cataract...

YOU CAN measure civilization by its timepieces. The higher the civilization of a community the more it appreciates the value of time and the more minutely does it measure the pa...

IN ALL forms of transportation friction plays a most important part. If there were no such thing as friction, it would be impossible for us to set an object in motion by the mea...

THE STEAM engine had its origin in a kitchen; the modern clock was first conceived in a cathedral; our laws of motion were discovered under an apple tree, but, strangest of all,...

MANY an inventor has strayed off into the delusive pursuit of perpetual motion because he did not know that the pressure in a body of water at any given point is equal in all di...

WHILE we may glory in the wonderful mechanical progress of to-day, we must not overlook the marvelous skill of the ancient artisan nor forget that it is to his inventive genius...

EVERY animal is a complex machine, provided with its own motive power and a brain for directing the operation of its own mechanical elements. Not satisfied with the mechanism th...

ONE OF the handicaps of steam power is that the heat produced by the combustion of fuel is not used directly to drive the piston. A large part of the heat energy in coal goes up...

THE TERM “water power” is a misnomer. There is no power inherent in water. It is gravity that makes water fall in cataracts or flow down a river bed, and hence it is the force o...

UNLIKE water, air is a highly compressible, elastic fluid, and as such furnishes an excellent medium for the storage of energy. It acts just like a clock spring into which energ...

“WHO WON the war?” The question immediately brings forth numerous contenders who claim the honor, respectively, for the aviator, the chemist, the engineer, the mechanic, the far...

WHEN we review the marvelous achievements of modern civilization we are quite willing to agree with the ancient psalmist that man is “little lower than the angels.” But at the o...

THE FIRST efforts at directing the forces of nature and employing them in the service of man were made by the farmer. The task of growing food was quite the most important of pr...

IT USED to be that wars were fought for gold, but nowadays the possession of rich iron mines is enough to arouse the cupidity of neighboring nations less favored by nature. In f...

IN PREVIOUS chapters we have indulged in a great deal of historic retrospect. It may be well at this point, while we are dealing with the subject of power, to look into the futu...

THE MAKING of paper is closely related to that of textiles. In each case the same basic materials are used. A mass of interlacing fibers is formed into a continuous sheet, but t...

THE REAL beginning of the present age of machinery dates from Watt’s invention of the double-acting steam engine which was patented in 1782. Prior to that date the steam engine...

IN THE preceding chapter we dealt with high temperatures and their employment in melting, molding, and working steel into useful forms. It will be well for us to pause here to c...

and sometimes the temperature rises to such a point that there is an explosion of the air and the vapors coming from the oil used to lubricate the machine. The compressed air is...

ALTHOUGH strictly speaking the term “Mechanics” applies to that branch of Physics that deals with the actions of forces on material bodies, originally the word had a broader mea...