Inventions in the Century Part 17

Springing out of these inventions, as from a fruitful soil, came the metal-boring machines, one cla.s.s for turning the outside of cylinders to make them true, and another cla.s.s for boring and drilling holes through solid metal plates. The principle of the lathe was applied to those machines in which the shaft carrying the cutting or boring tool was held either in a vertical or in a horizontal position.

Now flowed forth, as from some Vulcan's t.i.tanic workshop, machines for making bolts, nuts, rivets, screws, chains, staples, car wheels, shafts, etc., and other machines for applying them to the objects with which they were to be used.

The progress of screw-making had been such that in 1840, by the machines then in use for cutting, slotting, shaving, threading, and heading, twenty men and boys were enabled to manufacture 20,000 screws in a day.

Thirty-five years later two girls tending two machines were enabled to manufacture 240,000 screws a day. Since then the process has proceeded at even a greater rate. So great is the consumption of screws that it would be utterly impossible to supply the demand by the processes in vogue sixty years ago.

In England's first great International Fair, in 1851, a new world of metallurgical products, implements, processes, and metal-working tools, were among the grand results of the half century's inventions which were exhibited to the a.s.sembled nations. The leading exhibitor in the line of self-acting lathes, planing, slotting, drilling and boring machines was J. Whitworth & Co., of Manchester, England. Here were for the first time revealed in a compact form those machines which shaped metal as wood alone had been previously shaped. But another quarter of a century brought still grander results, which were displayed at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, in 1876.

As J. Whitworth & Co. were the leading exhibitors at London in 1851, so were William Sellers & Co., of Philadelphia, the leading exhibitors in the 1876 exhibition. As showing the progress of the century, the official report, made in this cla.s.s by citizens of other countries than America, set forth that this exhibit of the latter company, "in extent and value, in extraordinary variety and originality, was probably without parallel in the past history of international exhibitions."

Language seemed to be inadequate to enable the committee to describe satisfactorily the extreme refinement in every detail, the superior quality of material and workmans.h.i.+p, the mathematical accuracy, the beautiful outlines, the perfection in strength and form, and the scientific skill displayed in the remarkable a.s.semblage of this cla.s.s of machinery at that exhibition.

An exhibit on that occasion made by Messrs. Hoopes & Townsend of Philadelphia attracted great attention by the fact that the doctrine of the flow of solid metal, so well expounded by that eminent French scientist, M. Tresca, was therein well ill.u.s.trated. It consisted of a large collection of bolts and screws which had been _cold-punched_, as well as of elevator and carrier chains, the links of which had been so punched. This punching of the cold metal without cutting, boring, drilling, hammering, or otherwise shaping the metal, was indeed a revelation.

So also at this Exhibition was a finer collection of machine-made horseshoes than had ever previously been presented to the world. A better and more intelligent and refined treatment of that n.o.ble animal, the horse, and especially in the care of his feet, had sprung up during the last half century, conspicuously advocated by Mr. Fleming in England, and followed promptly in America and elsewhere. Within the last forty years nearly two hundred patents have been taken out in the United States alone for machines for making horseshoes. Prejudices, jealousies and objections of all kinds were raised at first against the machine-made horseshoe, as well as the horseshoe nail, but the horses have won, and the blacksmiths have been benefited despite their early objections. The smiths make larger incomes in buying and applying the machine-made shoes. The shoes are not only hammered into shape on the machine, but there are machines for stamping them out from metal at a single blow; for compressing several thicknesses of raw hide and moulding them in a steel mould, producing a light, elastic shoe, and without calks; furnis.h.i.+ng shoes for defective hoofs, flexible shoes for the relief and cure of contracted or flat feet, shoes formed with a joint at the toe, and light, hard shoes made of aluminium.

_Tube Making._--Instead of heating strips of metal and welding the edges together, tubes may now be made seamless by rolling the heated metal around a solid heated rod; or by placing a hot ingot in a die and forcing a mandrel through the ingot. And as to tube and metal bending, there are wonderful machines which bend sheets of metal into great tubes, funnels, s.h.i.+p masts and cylinders.

_Welding._--As to welding--the seams, instead of being hammered, are now formed by melting and condensing the edges, or adjoining parts, by the electric current.

_Annealing and Tempering._--Steel wire and plates are now tempered and annealed by electricity. It is found that they can be heated to a high temperature more quickly and evenly by the electric current pa.s.sed through them than by combustion, and the process is much used in making clock and watch springs.

One way of hardening plates, especially armour plates, by what is called the Harveyized process, is by embedding the face of the plate in carbon, protecting the back and sides with sand, heating to about the melting point of cast iron, and then hardening the face by chilling, or otherwise.

_Coating with Metal._--Although covering metal with metal has been practised from the earliest times, accomplished by heating and hammering, it was not until this century that electro-plating, and plating by chemical processes, as by dipping the metal into certain chemical solutions, and by the use of automatic machinery, were adopted.

It was in the early part of the century that Volta discovered that in the voltaic battery certain metallic salts were reduced to their elements and deposited at the negative pole; and that Wollaston demonstrated how a silver plate in bath of sulphate of copper through which a current was pa.s.sed became covered with copper. Then in 1838, Spencer applied these principles in making casts, and Jacobi in Russia shortly after electro-gilded a dome of a cathedral in St. Petersburg.

s.p.a.ce will not permit the enumeration of the vast variety of processes and machines for coating and gilding that have since followed.

_Metal Founding._--The treatment of metal after it flows from the furnaces, or is poured from the crucibles into moulds, by the operations of facing, drying, covering, casting and stripping, has given rise to a mult.i.tude of machines and methods for casting a great variety of objects. The most interesting inventions in this cla.s.s have for their object the chilling, or chill hardening, of the outer surfaces of articles which are subject to the most and hardest wear, as axle boxes, hammers, anvils, etc., which is effected by exposing the red-hot metal to a blast of cold air, or by introducing a piece of iron into a mould containing the molten metal.

In casting steel ingots, in order to produce a uniform compact structure, Giers of England invented "soaking pits of sand" into which the ingot from the mould is placed and then covered, so that the heat radiating outward re-heats the exterior, and the ingot is then rolled without re-heating.

_Sheet Metal Ware._--Important improvements have been made in this line.

Wonderful machines have been made which, receiving within them a piece of flat metal, will, by a single blow of a plunger in a die, stamp out a metal can or box with tightly closed seams, and all ready for the cover, which is made in another similar machine; or by which an endless chain of cans are carried into a machine and there automatically soldered at their seams; and another which solders the heads on filled cans as fast as they can be fed into the machine.

_Metal Personal Ware._--Buckles, clasps, hooks and eyelets, shanked b.u.t.tons, and similar objects are now stamped up and out, without more manual labour than is necessary to supply the machines with the metal, and to take care of the completed articles.

_Wire Working._--Not only unsightly but useful barbed wire fences, and the most ornamental wire work and netting for many purposes, such as fences, screens, cages, etc., are now made by ingenious machines, and not by hand tools.

In stepping into some one of the great modern works where varied industries are carried on under one general management, one cannot help realising the vast difference between old systems and the new. In one portion of the establishment the crude ores are received and smelted and treated, with a small force and with ease, until the polished metal is complete and ready for manipulation in the manufacture of a hundred different objects. In another part ponderous or smaller lathes and planing machines are turning forth many varied forms; in quiet corners the boring, drilling, and riveting machines are doing their work without the clang of hammers; in another, an apparently young student is conducting the scientific operation of coating or gilding metals; in another, girls may be seen with light machines, stamping, or burnis.h.i.+ng, or a.s.sembling the different parts of finished metal ware; and the motive power of all this is the silent but all-powerful electric current received from the smooth-running dynamo giant who works with vast but unseen energy in a den by himself, not a smoky or a dingy den, but light, clean, polished, and beautiful as the workshop of a G.o.d.

CHAPTER XVI.

ORDNANCE, ARMS AND EXPLOSIVES.

Although the progress in the invention of fire-arms of all descriptions seems slow during the ages preceding the 19th century, yet it will be found on investigation that no art progressed faster. No other art was spurred to activity by such strong incentives, and none received the same encouragement and reward for its development. The art of war was the trade of kings and princes, and princely was the reward to the subject who was the first to invent the most destructive weapon. Under such high patronage most of the ideas and principles of ordnance now prevailing were discovered or suggested, but were embodied for the most part in rude and inefficient contrivances.

The art waited for its success on the development of other arts, and on the mental expansion and freedom giving rise to scientific investigation and results.

The cannon and musket themselves became the greatest instruments for the advancement of the new civilisation, however much it was intended otherwise by their kingly proprietors, and the new civilisation returned the compliment through its trained intellects by giving to war its present destructive efficiency.

To this efficiency, great as the paradox may seem, Peace holds what quiet fields it has, or will have, until most men learn to love peace and hate the arts of war.

As to the Chinese is given the credit for the invention of gunpowder, so they must also be regarded as the first to throw projectiles by its means. But their inventions in these directions may be cla.s.sed as fireworks, and have no material bearing on the modern art of Ordnance.

It is supposed that the word "cannon," is derived from the same root as "cane," originally signifying a hollow reed; and that these hollow reeds or similar tubes closed at one end were used to fire rockets by powder.

It is also stated that the practice existed among the Chinese as early as 969 A. D. of tying rockets to their arrows to propel them to greater distances, as well as for incendiary purposes.

This basic idea had percolated from China through India to the Moors and Arabs, and in the course of a few centuries had developed into a crude artillery used by the Moors in the siege of Cordova in 1280. The Spaniards, thus learning the use of the cannon, turned the lesson upon their instructors, when under Ferdinand IV. they took Gibraltar from the Moors in 1309. Then the knowledge of artillery soon spread throughout Europe. The French used it at the siege of Puy Guillaume in 1338, and the English had three small guns at Crecy in 1346. These antique guns were made by welding longitudinal bars of iron together and binding them by iron rings shrunk on while hot. Being shaped internally and externally like an apothecary's mortar, they were called mortars or bombards. Some were breech-loaders, having a removable chamber at the breech into which the charge of powder was inserted behind the ball. The b.a.l.l.s were stone. These early cannon, bombards, and mortars were mounted on heavy solid wooden frames and moved with great difficulty from place to place. Then in the fifteenth century they commenced to make wrought-iron cannon, and hollow projectiles, containing a bursting charge of powder to be exploded by a fuse lit before the sh.e.l.l was fired. In the next century cannon were cast.

The Hindoos, when their acquaintance was made by the Europeans, were as far advanced as the latter in cannon and fire-arms. One cannon was found at Bej.a.poor, in India, cast of bronze, bearing date 1548, and called the "Master of the Field," which weighed 89,600 pounds, and others of similar size of later dates. Great cast bronze guns of about the same weight as the Hindoo guns were also produced at St. Petersburg, Russia, in the sixteenth century.

Many and strange were the names given by Europeans to their cannon in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to denote their size and the weight of the ball they carried: such as the a.s.sick, the Bombard, the Basilisk, the cannon Royal, or Carthoun, the Culverin, Demi-culverin, Falcon, Siren, Serpentine, etc.

The bombards in the fifteenth century were made so large and heavy, especially in France, that they could not be moved without being taken apart.

When the heavy, unwieldy bombards with stone b.a.l.l.s were used, artillery was mostly confined to castles, towns, forts, and s.h.i.+ps. When used in the field they were dragged about by many yokes of oxen. But in the latter part of the fifteenth century, when France under Louis XI. had learned to cast lighter bra.s.s cannon, to mount them on carriages that could be drawn by four or six horses, and which carriages had trunnions in which the cannon were swung so as to be elevated or depressed, and cast-iron projectiles were used instead of stones, field artillery took its rise, and by its use the maps of the world were changed. Thus with their artillery the French under Charles VIII., the successor of Louis XI., conquered Italy.

In the sixteenth century Europe was busy in adopting these and other changes. Cannon were made of all sizes and calibres, but were not arranged in battle with much precision. Case shot were invented in Germany but not brought into general use. Sh.e.l.ls were invented by the Italians and fired from mortars, but their mode of construction was preserved in great secrecy. The early breech-loaders had been discarded, as it was not known how to make the breech gas-tight, and the explosions rendered the guns more dangerous to their users than to the enemy.

In the seventeenth century Holland began to make useful mortar sh.e.l.ls and hand grenades. Maurice and Henry Frederick of Na.s.sau, and Gustave Adolphus, made many improvements in the sizes and construction of cannon. In 1674, Coehorn, an officer in the service of the Prince of Orange, invented the celebrated mortar which bears his name, and the use of which has continued to the present time. The Dutch also invented the howitzer, a short gun in which the projectiles could be introduced by hand. About the same time Comminges of France invented mortars which threw projectiles weighing 550 pounds. In this part of that century also great improvements were made under Louis XIV. Limbers, by which the front part of the gun carriage was made separable from the cannon part and provided with the ammunition chest; the prolonge, a cord and hook by which the gun part could be moved around by hand; and the elevating screw, by which the muzzle of the gun could be raised or depressed,--were invented.

In the early part of the eighteenth century it was thought by artillerists in England that the longer the gun the farther it would carry. One, called "Queen Ann's Pocket Piece" still preserved at Dover, is twenty-five feet long and carries a ball only twenty-five pounds in weight. It was only after repeated experiments that it was learned that the shorter guns carried the projectile the greatest distance.

The greatest improvements in the eighteenth century were made by Gribeauval, the celebrated French artillerist, about 1765. He had guns made of such material and of such size as to adapt them to the different services to which they were to be put, as field, siege, garrison, and sea coast. He gave greater mobility to the system by introducing six-pound howitzers, and making gun carriages lighter; he introduced the system of fixed ammunition, separate compartments in the gun carriages for the projectiles, and the charges of powder in paper or cloth bags or cylinders; improved the construction of the elevating screw, adapted the tangent scale, formed the artillery into horse batteries, and devised new equipments and a new system of tactics.

It was with Gribeauval's improved system that "Citizen Bonaparte, young artillery officer," took Toulon; with which the same young "bronze artillery officer" let go his great guns in the Cul-de-Sac Dauphin against the church of St. Roch; on the Port Royal; at the Theatre de la Republique; "and the thing we specifically call French Revolution is blown into s.p.a.ce by it, and became a thing that was."

It was with this system that this same young officer won his first brilliant victories in Italy. When the fruit of these victories had been lost during his absence he reappeared with his favorite artillery, and on the threshold of the century, in May 1800, as "First Consul of the Republic" re-achieved at Marengo the supremacy of France over Austria.

As to _small arms_, as before suggested, they doubtless had their origin in the practice of the Chinese in throwing fire b.a.l.l.s from bamboo barrels by the explosion of light charges of powder, as ill.u.s.trated to this day in what are known as "Roman Candles." Fire-crackers and grenades were also known to the Chinese and the Greeks.

Among ancient fire-arms the princ.i.p.al ones were the arquebus, also bombardelle, and the blunderbuss. They were invented in the fourteenth century but were not much used until the fifteenth century. These guns for the most part were so heavy that they had to be rested on some object to be fired. The soldiers carried a sort of tripod for this purpose. The gun was fired by a slow-burning cord, a live coal, a lit stick, or a long rod heated at one end, and called a match. The blunderbuss was invented in Holland. It was a large, short, funnel-shaped muzzle-loader, and loaded with nails, slugs, etc. The injuries and hards.h.i.+ps suffered by the men who used it, rather than by the enemy, rendered its name significant. Among the earliest fire-arms of this period one was invented which was a breech-loader and revolver.

The breech had four chambers and was rotated by hand on an arbour parallel to the barrel. The extent of its use is not learned. To ignite the powder the "wheel-lock" and "snap-haunce" were invented by the Germans in the sixteenth century. The wheel lock consisted of a furrowed wheel and was turned by the trigger and chain against a fixed piece of iron on the stock to excite sparks which fell on to the priming. The snap-haunce, a straight piece of furrowed steel, superseded the wheel-lock. The sixteenth century had got well started before the English could be induced to give up the cross-bow and arrow, and adopt the musket. After they had introduced the musket with the snap-haunce and wooden ramrod, it became known, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, as the "Brown Bess."

The "old flint-lock" was quite a modern invention, not appearing until the seventeenth century. It was a bright idea to fix a piece of flint into the c.o.c.k and arrange it to strike a steel cap on the priming pan when the trigger was fired; and it superseded the old match, wheel-lock, and snap-haunce. The flint-lock was used by armies well into the nineteenth century, and is still in private use in remote localities. As the arquebus succeeded the bow and arrow, so the musket, a smooth and single-barrel muzzle-loader with a flint-lock and a wooden ramrod, succeeded the arquebus. Rifles, which were the old flint-lock muskets with their barrels provided with spiral grooves to give the bullet a rotary motion and cause it to keep one point constantly in front during its flight, is claimed as the invention of Augustin Kutler of Germany in 1520, and also of Koster of Birmingham, England, about 1620. Muskets with straight grooves are said to have been used in the fifteenth century.

The rifle with a long barrel and its flint-lock was a favourite weapon of the American settler. It was made in America, and he fought the Indian wars and the war of the Revolution with it.

It would not do to conclude this sketch of antique cannon and fire-arms without referring to Puckle's celebrated English patent No. 418, of May 15, 1718, for "A Defence." The patent starts out with the motto:

"Defending King George, your Country, and Lawes, Is defending Yourselves and Protestant Cause."

It proceeds to describe a "Portable Gun or Machine" having a single barrel, with a set of removable chambers which are charged with bullets before they are placed in the gun, a handle to turn the chambers to bring each chamber in line with the barrel, a tripod on which the gun is mounted and on which it is to be turned, a screw for elevating and turning the gun in different directions, a set of square chambers "for shooting square bullets against Turks," a set of round chambers "for shooting round bullets against the Christians;" and separate drawings show the square bullets for the Turks and the round bullets for the Christians. History is silent as to whether Mr. Puckle's patent was put in practice, but it contained the germs of some modern inventions.

Among the first inventions of the century was a very important one made by a clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Forsyth, a Scotchman, who in 1803 invented the percussion principle in fire-arms. In 1807 he patented in England detonating powder and pellets which were used for artillery. About 1808 General Shrapnel of the English army invented the celebrated sh.e.l.l known by his name. It then consisted of a comparatively thin sh.e.l.l filled with bullets, having a fuse lit by the firing of the gun, and adapted to explode the sh.e.l.l in front of the object fired at. This fuse was superseded by one invented by General Bormann of Belgium, which greatly added to the value of case shot.