Chapter 3

Two hands shoveling, two more taking off, and one at the barrow, constitute a gang of five persons who turn out from 30,000 to 35,000 per day of ten hours. As brick makers' days are from sun to sun, say twelve working hours per day, during the season, from 46 to 50,000 bricks, per day, may be made by a single machine. This is, however, by no means the most important feature in the invention.

In the ordinary mode of making bricks, the manufacturer cannot begin operations for the season, until the spring has so far advanced that working in wet clay will no longer chill his moulders' hands. On the same account, he loses also morning hours, until the advance of summer enables his hands to put in the whole period of daylight. He loses, also, sometimes days together--from the entire stoppage of his operations in the rainy weather, which forbids the bricks being put out to dry. In making press brick, all these difficulties are obviated. As a theory, operations in this mode can go on throughout the entire winter, frost never extending into solid clay; but as a practical business, it can be conveniently carried on two months earlier and one month later than in the ordinary mode. Pressed brick, made by these machines, are also stronger than their competitive article, the last of equal hardness in burning, always giving way when struck by the pressed bricks, as I have witnessed. Indeed, it cannot be otherwise, the one being porous and the other as compact as the enormous pressure employed can make it.

The machine, it must be apparent, offers peculiar advantages in turning out brick without occupying the ordinary brick yard space necessary for spreading wet brick out to dry. It affords great economy in time, owing to its operations being independent of frost or rains. To every new and thriving place commencing the making of bricks, it dispenses with the necessity of bringing skilful workmen from other places--in short, it enables every man to be his own brick-maker. Under these considerations, I anticipate an extensive sale of these machines, especially for places at a distance.

=Marble Saw Mills.=

We are informed that a large mill for sawing marble is in course of erection at Brandon, Vt. The marble in that vicinity is principally of a beautiful white, and of a fine texture, though not very hard.

=Railroad Locks.=

It is reported that locks for elevating railroad trains, from one level to another, are coming into successful use in France. It appears to us to be much behind the age, since, by certain American inventions, an ordinary train may be elevated 100 feet in five minutes, by the engine alone.

We have alluded to this subject in a former number, and now present one of the several plans which have been introduced within the present year, although we are not fully authorised to give the name of the inventor of this particular plan. We have preferred to represent the paddles and crank unconnected with an apparent vessel or section thereof, but must require the reader to suppose that the line A B is the level of the railing of the boat, and that the crank-shaft E projects from the side, while the crank-pivot governs the motion of the walking bar D E, and with it the paddles, which are supposed to be just now dipping in the surface of the water. It will be understood that the motion of the walking bar being circular, and that of the heads of the paddles being vertical and nearly rectilinear, the motion of the blades of the paddles must be elliptical, inclining to the horizontal; and that the position of the paddles is kept so nearly vertical that they will meet with less resistance in entering or leaving the water than those of a common paddle wheel, while the atmospheric resistance to be encountered thereby is much less. There appears no reasonable doubt that this plan might be made to succeed well on a larger scale, though it is very doubtful whether any of the steamboat proprietors can be persuaded to adopt it until it has been more thoroughly tested by experiment.

=A Great Astronomical Discovery.=

A late number of an astronomical journal published at Altona, near Hamburg, contains a long article by Dr. Maedler, director of the Dorpat Observatory, Russia, well known to the astronomical world, in which he announces the extraordinary discovery of the _grand central star or sun_, about which the universe of stars is revolving, our own sun and system among the rest.

This discovery, the result of many years of incessant toil and research, has been deduced by a train of reasoning and an examination of facts scarcely to be surpassed in the annals of science.

He announces his discovery in the following language: 'I therefore pronounce the Pleiades to be the central group of that mass of fixed stars limited by the stratum composing the Milky Way and Alcyene as the individual star of this group, which, among all others, combines the greatest probability of being the true Central Sun.'

By a train of reasoning, which I shall not attempt to explain, he finds the probable parallax of this great central star to be six thousandths of one second of arc, and its distance to be 34 millions of times the distance of the sun, or so remote that light, with a velocity of 12 millions of miles per minute, requires a period of 537 years to pass from _the great centre_ to our sun.

As a first rough approximation, he deduces the period of the revolution of our sun, with all its train of planets, satellites and comets, about the grand centre, to be _eighteen millions two hundred thousand years_.

=Ocean Steam Navigation.=

The 'Ocean Steam Company,' which has the patronage of the United States Government to the amount of $400,000 per annum, are getting on rapidly with the first steamship of their line. She is to be completed and commence running on the first of March next.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

NEW YORK, OCTOBER 10, 1846.

=Employment.=

It is dangerous for a man of superior ability to find himself thrown upon the world without some regular employment. The restlessness inherent in genius, being thus undirected by any permanent influence, frames for itself occupations out of accidents. Moral integrity sometimes falls a prey to the want of a fixed pursuit, and the man who receives his direction in active life from the fortuitous impulse of circumstances, will be very apt to receive his principles likewise from chance. Genius, under such guidance, attains no noble ends, but resembles rather a copious spring conveyed in a falling aqueduct, where the waters continually escape through the frequent crevices, and waste themselves ineffectually on their passage. The law of nature is here, as elsewhere, binding, and no powerful results ever ensue from the trivial exercise of high endowments. The finest mind, when thus destitute of a fixed purpose, passes away without leaving permanent traces of its existence; losing its energy by turning aside from its course, it becomes as harmless and inefficient as the lightning, which, of itself irresistible, may yet be rendered powerless by a slight conductor.

=The Editor.=

Write--keep writing--is the motto of an editor. If he has no ideas, he must dig for them; if he has but little time to arrange them, no matter, the work must be done. Sickness may come upon him; want may stare him in the face, but he must cogitate something for the dear public. Perhaps in his darkest moments, he indites a paragraph that cheers thousands. When almost desponding, his words may put courage into the hearts of millions. Who would be an editor? Yet he has much to encourage him. If he can call no time his own, he is not rusting out, or in unprofitable society. A faithful contributor of the public press, is a man of great influence. No person has more power than himself. He instructs tens of thousands, and leads them to virtue, to honor, to happiness. No man will have more to answer for than the conductor of a corrupt and vacillating press.

=A Mountain in Labor.=

The workmen, says a Paris paper, are still busily engaged in excavating Montmarte in quest of holy vases and other riches said to have been deposited there in the early days of the French revolution by the orders of the Lady Superior of the Abbey of Montmarte.--Two workmen, who were at the time charged with transporting the wealth to the place designated, were never after seen, and it is supposed that they were sacrificed to the necessity of the secret. The Superior, at her death, bequeathed the secret to a lady friend, who, in turn, on her death bed, divulged it to her daughter, then thirteen years of age. The child, now a sexagenary, disclosed it to the municipality. Her statements have thus far been found scrupulously correct. The _cesarian_ operation is actively going on, an excavation of 50 feet having been made, and the mountain's speedy deliverance of a mine of wealth is anticipated. May it not prove a mouse!

=That Editorial Committee.=

We are informed that the Editorial Committee of the National Association of Inventors have by _their own request_ been discharged from the supervision of the new periodical which has recently appeared under the title of 'The Eureka.'

=News by Telegraph.=

The news by the Great Western which arrived on Wednesday week, was published within four hours in Boston, New Haven, Springfield, Albany, Utica, Rochester, Buffalo, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

The following beautiful extract we find in a recent number of the New York Sun. It is from the pen of Mr. C. D. Stuart, the able correspondent of that paper, now in London.

"On remarking to an Englishman, that I did not see here in London as at home, the artizan, the drayman, the laborer of every kind, with a newspaper in his pocket, which at intervals in his toil he could glance at and be as learned in the condition of his country and the world as the man of fortune, he replied--"No, they have something better to do, they attend to their work." Here lies the rub, and it may be a fear of the sedition of thought that has put these close hampers upon the English press. It would seem by such an argument that the differences of condition are not induced by unholy oppressions, by the trampling for ages of one class upon another until servitude became almost a birth-right--and the law of strength that proved itself in barbarous times the "Supremacy" had at last from concession so long made, become the law of human justice and divine right. The steer may work under his yoke an appointed time, the slave bow mutely through his whole life, but the freeman--has he so fallen, that while the lord revels in his "club-room" and reads not only papers, but gilt edged and velvet bound books, he forsooth being a common "poor devil" not able to enjoy a tithe of his unearned luxury--has something better than reading to do. Let him dig then! There are those in the young republic whose spirit begins to animate the world, who, though they toil, remember, that it was said in the beginning to all men, "thou shalt earn thy bread by the sweat of thy brow," and will read freely as they drink in the common air, and enjoy the common light. There are classes in England intelligent no doubt beyond any other people in the world--classes that enjoy the means of making themselves so, but as a mass they will in no-wise compare with their progeny, the Anglo-Saxons. All that they have here in the main we have got, and our wits have not been blunted by a contact with the wilderness, and the difficulties of founding an empire "in the Woods." I see now more clearly than ever where our faults lie; contrast exposes them; but they are all twigs upon the rising trunk, which the keen knife of national experience, age, and the calm that must succeed the rush and tumult of our giant and boisterous infancy will cut off.--With greater pride than ever, however much I may like the Old World, and especially England, I look over the Ocean to America for an exemplification of what the world has not known, an _Earthly_ paradise for humanity.--It is but three quarters of a century, remember, since we were nationally born: give as the fourteen hundred years that have nursed and cultivated this Island, and where is the limit of our perfection and strength? On either side of that Mississippi back-bone of ours to the Oceans, and as far north and south as freedom and knowledge can pierce, America must be a garden and a goal, filled with every excellence and beauty, beyond which there can be no advance. We shall not live to see it, but it will come, only let us pull careful and steady. We have been Dickens'd and Trollop'd, and it should do us good. Nothing but the grandeur that lies germinating in our heart provokes this idle spleen from our neighbors, and the moment we cool down and think and curb ourselves the rest is secure."

=New Glass Factory.=

Erastus Corning & Co. are about establishing a factory near the ferry at Troy, for the manufacture of all kinds of glass ware. The work is fast progressing, and in about four weeks they will commence blowing. It will afford employment to a large number of men, and will, no doubt, meet with that success which it certainly merits.

=Result of Observation.=

The editor of the New Haven Herald sets it down as a fact in natural history, proved by his experience for years, that when a traveller rides up to a toll gate, the keeper--if a man, invariably brings out a box, or a handful of change; but if a woman, she comes out and takes the traveller's coin, and then goes back for the change.

* * * * *

Snags and other obstructions in the Western rivers, are now denominated _Polk stalks_.

=The Science of Astronomy.=

DESCRIPTIVE ASTRONOMY.

Mercury, the nearest planet to the sun, is a globe of about 3140 miles in diameter, rotating on its axis in 24 hours and 5 1-2 minutes, and revolving round the central luminary, at a distance of 37,000,000 of miles, in 88 days.--From the earth it can only be seen occasionally in the morning or evening, as it never rises before, or sets after the sun, at a greater distance of the time than 1 hour and 50 minutes. It appears to the naked eye as a small and brilliant star, but when observed through a telescope, is horned like the moon, because we only see a part of the surface which the sun is illuminating. Mountains of great height have been observed on the surface of this planet, particularly in its lower or southern hemisphere. One has been calculated at 10 3-4 miles in height, being about eight times higher, in proportion to the bulk of the planet, than the loftiest mountains upon earth. The matter of Mercury is of much greater density than that of the earth, equalling lead in weight; so that a human being placed upon its surface would be so strongly drawn towards the ground as scarcely to be able to crawl.

Venus is a globe of about 7800 miles in diameter, or nearly the size of the earth, rotating on its axis in 23 hours, 21 minutes, and 19 seconds, and revolving round the sun, at the distance of 68,000,000 of miles in 225 days.--Like Mercury, it is visible to an observer on the earth only in the morning and evening, but for a greater space of time before sunrise and after sunset. It appears to us the most brilliant and beautiful of all the planetary and stellar bodies, occasionally giving so much light as to produce a sensible shadow. Observed through a telescope, it appears horned, on account of our seeing only a part of its luminous surface. The illuminating part of Venus occasionally presents slight spots. It has been ascertained that its surface is very unequal, the greatest mountains being in the southern hemisphere, as in the case of both Mercury and the Earth. The higher mountains in Venus range between 10 and 22 miles in altitude. The planet is also enveloped in an atmosphere like that by which animal and vegetable life is supported on earth; and it has consequently a twilight. Venus performs its revolution round the sun in 225 days. Mercury and Venus have been termed the Inferior Planets, as being placed within the orbit of the Earth.

The Earth, the third planet in order, and one of the smaller size, though not the smallest, is important to us, as the theatre on which our race have been placed to 'live, move, and have their being.' It is 7902 miles in mean diameter, rotating on its axis in 24 hours, at a mean distance of 95,000,000 of miles from the sun, round which it revolves in 365 days, 5 hours, 50 minutes, and 57 seconds. As a planet viewed from another of the planets, suppose the moon, 'It would present a pretty, variegated, and sometimes a mottled appearance. The distinction between its seas, oceans, continents, and islands, would be clearly marked; they would appear like brighter and darker spots upon its disc. The continents would appear bright, and the ocean of a darker hue, because water absorbs the greater part of the solar light that falls upon it. The level plains, (excepting perhaps, such regions as the Arabian deserts of sand) would appear of a somewhat darker color than the more elevated and mountainous regions, as we find to be the case on the surface of the moon. The islands would appear like small bright specks on the darker surface of the ocean; and the lakes and mediterranean seas like darker spots or broad streaks intersecting the bright parts, or the land. By its revolution round its axis, successive portions of the surface would be brought into view, and present a different aspect from the parts which preceded,'--(Dick's Celestial Scenery, 135.)

The form of the earth, and probably that of every other planet, is not strictly spheroidal; that is, flattened a little at the poles, or extremities of the axis. The diameter of the earth at the axis is 56 miles less than in the cross direction. This peculiarity of the form is a consequence of the rotatory motion, as will be afterwards explained.

=Late Foreign News.=

The steamer Hibernia arrived at Boston on Saturday last, thirteen days from Liverpool.

The British Government and people have manifested so much violent opposition to the marriage of the youngest son of Louis Phillipe to a sister of the Queen of Spain, that the celebration of the nuptials has been postponed for the present, if not forever; and there is apparent danger of a rupture between England and France on this account.

In Spain, Don Carlos having escaped from imprisonment, it is expected that a serious insurrection will immediately take place.

Property to the amount of $800,000 has been destroyed by incendiary fires at Leipsic. A line of electric telegraph has been put in operation between Brussels and Antwerp.

Twenty thousand bales of cotton were sold at Liverpool on the 14th of September.

=Latest from the Army.=

According to recent intelligence by private letters, Gen. Kearney has taken quiet possession of Santa Fe, notwithstanding the considerable preparations which the Mexicans had made to defend it. Gen. Armijo had assembled 5000 troops to defend the Canon Pass, but on account of the disaffection and insubordination of his officers and men, he was constrained to retreat on the approach of a few companies of Americans.

Gen. Taylor had advanced steadily, though slowly on Monterey, and has probably ere this, taken possession, notwithstanding the strong force, and full supply of well mounted cannon, concentrated to oppose him. Should he prove successful in this, it would seem that Mexico is destined to fall under the protection of the United States, whether our Government desires it or not. What can we do? The Mexicans will neither treat nor fight; and although our armies move as slow as possible, they cannot well avoid progressing through the country in time, and are bound to furnish protection as far as they go. We shall see.

=The Sea and Wave Roaring.=

The steamer Great Western, which arrived at this port last week, reports having encountered one of the most terrific storms ever known on the Atlantic Ocean. Capt. Mathews is said to have remarked that at three different times the ship was approached by seas of such magnitude and power that he thought destruction inevitable; but unexpectedly each broke just before reaching the vessel. The passengers assembled in the cabin where they joined in religious service, and in the solemn administration of the Lord's supper. Their lives were preserved, but some of them appeared to forget their obligations to their preserver very quick after getting safe on shore.

=An American Slave in England.=

Douglas, who escaped from slavery and found his way to England, has received marked attention from the nobility and gentry of England. He has attended their soirees, occupied the most honorable positions at their dinner parties, rode in their carriages, flirted with their daughters, walked arm in arm through their gardens with lords, viscounts, counts and mayors of cities.

* * * * *

Many of the girls employed in the mills of the Nashua Corporation, have refused to work by candlelight. They may be right.

THE =SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN=.

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Observations on the more recent Researches concerning the operations of the Blast Furnace in the Manufacture of Iron.

BY DR. J. L. SMITH.

The great difference existing between metallurgical operations of the present day, and those of a former period, is owing chiefly to the ameliorations produced by the application of the science of chemistry to the _modus operandi_ of the various changes taking place during the operations, from their commencement to their termination.

Copper and some other metals are now made to assume forms in the chemist's laboratory, that formerly required great artistical skill for their production--the chemist simply making use of such agents and forces as are at his command, and over which he has, by close analytical study, acquired perfect control. Our object, at present, is only to advert to the chemical investigations more recently made on the manufacture of iron, treating of those changes that occur in the ore, coal and flux, that are thrown in at the mouth of the furnace, and in the air thrown in from below. For most that will be said on this subject, we are principally indebted to the recent interesting researches of M. Ebelman.

The importance of a knowledge of the facts to be brought forward, in this article, will be apparent to every one in any way acquainted with the manufacture of iron. It will be seen that the time is not far distant when the economy in the article of fuel will amount in value to the present profit of many of the works. The consequences must be, that many of those works that are abandoned will be resumed, and others erected in localities formerly thought unfit.