The Romance of Modern Mechanism With Interesting Descriptions in Non-technical Language of Wonderful Machinery and Mechanical Devices and Marvellously Delicate Scientific Instruments

Owing to the universal use of watches, resulting from their cheapness, the possessor of a pocket timepiece soon ceases to take a pride in the delicate mechanism which at first a...

The simplest form of calculating machine was the Abacus, on which the schoolboys of ancient Greece did their sums. It consisted of a smooth board with a narrow rim, on which wer...

"When I first entered this city," said Mr. William Fairbairn, in an inaugural address to the British Association at Manchester in 1861, "the whole of the machinery was executed...

This is as true in the workshop as outside;--Mahomet being the tool, the mountain the work on which it must be used. With the increase in size of machinery and engineering mater...

Have you ever watched carefully a steam-roller's action on the road when it is working on newly laid stones? If you have, you noticed that the stones, gravel, etc., in front of...

If carbon and oxygen be made to combine chemically, the process is accompanied by the phenomenon called _heat_. If heat be applied to a liquid or gas in a confined space it caus...

The development of the motor-car has been phenomenal. Early in 1896 the only mechanically moved vehicles to be seen on our roads were the traction-engine, preceded by a man bear...

Having made such conquests on land, and rendered possible aerial feats which could scarcely have been performed by steam, the explosion motor further vindicates its versatility...

In 1884 the Count de Dion, working in partnership with Messrs. Bouton and Trépardoux, produced a practical steam tricycle. Two years later appeared a somewhat similar vehicle by...

A good motto to blazon over the doors of a fire-brigade station would be "He gives help twice who gives help quickly." The spirit of it is certainly shown by the brave men who,...

Assuming that a town has a well-appointed fire brigade, equipped with the most up-to-date engines, it still cannot be considered efficiently protected against the ravages of the...

With many travellers by sea the first impulse, after bunks have been visited and baggage has been safely stored away, is to saunter off to the hatches over the engine-room and p...

Just as a navy requires floating distilleries, floating coal stores and floating docks, so does it find very important uses for a floating workshop, which can accompany a fleet...

Diving being a profession which can be carried on in its simplest form with the simplest possible apparatus--merely a rope and a stone--its history reaches back into the dim and...

It is somewhat curious that, while the sciences connected with the building of ships have progressed with giant strides, little attention has been paid to the art of raising ves...

On or near the quays of our large seaports, London, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Hull, Leith, Dublin, may be seen huge buildings of severe and ugly outline, utterly devoid of...

A man carrying a sack of coal over a plank laid from the wharf to the ship's side, a bricklayer's labourer moving slowly up a ladder with his hod of mortar--these illustrate the...

Scarcely less important than the rapid transference of materials from one place to another is the quick and accurate weighing of the same. If a pneumatic grain elevator were use...

When the writer was in Rouen, in 1898, two lofty iron towers were being constructed by the Seine: the one on the Quai du Havre, the other on the Quai Capelier, which borders the...

In modern locomotion, whether by land or water, it becomes increasingly necessary to keep the way unobstructed where traffic is confined to the narrow limits of a pair of rails,...

At the American Exhibition, held in the Crystal Palace in 1902, there was shown a staircase which, on payment of a penny, transported any sufficiently daring person from the gro...

You put your money on the counter. The shop assistant makes out a bill; and you wonder what he will do with it next. These large stores know nothing of an open till. Yet there a...

Thirty miles an hour is the speed proposed for the pneumatic tube system mentioned in our last chapter. An Italian, Count Roberto Taeggi Piscicelli, has elaborated an electric p...

Agriculture is at once the oldest and most important of all national industries. Man being a graminivorous animal--witness his molar, or grinding, "double" teeth--has, since the...

The farm labourer, perched on a three-legged stool, his head leaning against the soft flank of a cow as he squirts the milk in snowy jets into the frothing pail, is, like the bl...

The savage who, with a flint point or bone splinter, laboriously scratched rude figures on the walls of his cave dwelling, did the best he was capable of to express the emotions...

While science works ceaselessly to cure the ills that human flesh is heir to, invention as persistently devises weapons for man's destruction. Yesterday it was the discoveries o...