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- Bell's Telephone in March, 1876
- Curved Stereotype Plate
- Howe's Improved Sewing Machine
- Lock Stitch (above) and Chain Stitch (below)
- Dom Pedro II
- Stock Indicator or 'Ticker'
- Alexander Graham Bell in 1900
- Cheapside in London
- Kitchen in which Goodyear made his Experiments
- Wellesley College in 1886
- Daniel Webster
- Birthplace of Charles Goodyear
- Jonathan and his Uncle William in the One-horse Chaise
- Elias Howe
- Sextuple Perfecting Press
- Edison's First Phonograph
- McCormick's Reaping Machine
- The Old Way of Reaping
- The Earliest Printers at Work
- Charles Goodyear
- A Monk Copying Manuscript Books
- Edison in his Library
- Faneuil Hall, Boston, Adjoining Quincy Market
- Engineers in Camp
A full surveying party consists of the front flag-man, with his corps of axe-men to cut away trees and bushes; the transit-man, who records the distances and angles of the line, assisted by his chain-men and flag-men; and lastly the leveller, who takes and records the levels, with his rod-men and axe-men. The chief of the party exercises a general supervision over all, and is sometimes assisted by a topographer, who sketches in his book the contours of the hills and direction and size of the watercourses. One tent contains the cook, the commissary, and the provisions; another tent or two the working party, and another the superior engineers, with their drawing instruments and boards. In a properly regulated party the map and profile of the day's work should be plotted before going to bed, so as to see if all is right. If it turns out that the line can be improved and easier grades got, or other changes made, now is the time to do it. - Making an Embankment
After the railway line has been finally located, the next duty of the engineers is to prepare the work for letting. Land-plans are made, from which the right of way is secured. From the sections, the quantities are taken out. Plans of bridges and culverts are made; and a careful specification of all the works on the line is drawn up. The works are then let, either to one large contractor or to several smaller ones, and the labor of construction begins. The duties of the engineers are to stake out the work for the contractors, make monthly returns of its progress, and see that it is well done and according to the specifications and contract. The line is divided into sections, and an engineer, with his assistants, is placed in charge of each. Where the works are heavy, the contractors build shanties for their men and teams near the heavy cuttings or embankments. It is the custom to take out heavy cuttings by means of the machine called a steam shovel, which will dig as many yards in a day as 500 men. - Franklin's Printing Press
- Natives Drying Rubber
- Howe's First Sewing Machine
- Pope's Cantilever in Process of Erection
The most notable invention of latter days in bridge construction is that of the cantilever bridge, which is a system devised to dispense with staging, or false works, where from the great depth, or the swift current, of the river, this would be difficult, or, as in the case of the Niagara River, impossible to make. The first design of which we have any record was that of a bridge planned by Thomas Pope, a ship carpenter of New York, who, in 1810, published a book giving his designs for an arched bridge of timber across the North River at Castle Point, of 2,400 feet span. Mr. Pope called this an arch, but his description clearly shows it to have been what we now call a cantilever. As was the fashion of the day, he indulged in a poetical description: "Like half a Rainbow rising on yon shore, While its twin partner spans the semi o'er, And makes a perfect whole that need not part Till time has furnish'd us a nobler art." Note : This bridge was never built - it would be impossible in wood. - Silhouettes of Grandfather and Grandmother
- The First Type of McCormick Reaper
- Horizontal Bar and Chest-bars, for Home Use
All that people need for their daily in-door exercises is a few pieces of apparatus which are fortunately so simple and inexpensive as to be within the reach of most persons. Buy two pitchfork handles at the agricultural store. Cut off enough of one of them to leave the main piece a quarter of an inch shorter than the distance between the jambs of your bedroom door, and square the ends. On each of these jambs fasten two stout hard-wood cleats, so slotted that the squared ends of the bar shall fit in snugly enough not to turn. Let the two lower cleats be directly opposite each other, and about as high as your shoulder; the other two also opposite each other, and as high above the head as you can comfortably reach. - General View of the Poughkeepsie Bridge
The new bridge at Poughkeepsie has three of these cantilevers, connected by two fixed spans, as shown in the illustration. The fixed spans have horizontal lower chords, and really extend beyond each pier and up the inclined portions, to where the bottom chord of the cantilever is horizontal. At these points the junctions between the spans are made, and arranged in such a way, by means of movable links, that expansion and contraction due to changes of temperature can take place. The fixed spans are 525 feet long. Their upper chord, where the tracks are placed, is 212 feet above water. These spans required stagings to build them upon. These stagings were 220 feet above water, and rested on piles, driven through 60 feet of water and 60 feet of mud, making the whole height of the temporary staging 332 feet, or within 30 feet of the height of Trinity Church steeple, in New York. The time occupied in building one of these stagings and then erecting the steel-work upon it was about four months. The cantilever spans were erected without any stagings at all below, and entirely from the two overhead travelling scaffolds, shown in the engraving. These scaffolds were moved out daily from the place of beginning over the piers, until they met in the centre. The workmen hoisted up the different pieces of steel from a barge in the river below and put them into place, using suspended planks to walk upon. The time saved by this method was so great that one of these spans of 548 feet long was erected in less than four weeks, or one-seventh of the time which would have been required if stagings had been used. - Noiseless Pulley-weights
... a sketch of a pair of pulley-weights recently made, designed by Dr. Sargent, which are excellent. Their merits will be seen at a glance. Instead of the weights swaying sideways and banging against the boxes, as they are liable to do in the ordinary old-fashioned pulley-weight boxes, they travel in boxes, A A, between the rods B B. A rubber bed also prevents the weight from making a noise as it strikes the floor, while another capital feature is the arrangement of boxes, in which you may graduate the weight desired by adding little plates of a pound each, instead of the unchanging weight of the old plan. - The earth with a segment removed to show supposed internal zones
Crust (6-30 miles) Mantle (1800 miles) Outer core (1400 miles) Inner core (750 miles) The core is the innermost zone of the earth. It is mainly iron with some nickel and cobalt. The inner core probably is solid, but the outer core may consist of the same elements in a molten form. The core is the most dense (heaviest) of the three zones. - Tapping a Rubber Tree
- Appliance for developing the Sides of the Waist
If one prefers to use apparatus made specially, the cut shows a simple device of Dr. Sargent's, which he made purposely to bring up and strengthen these muscles. Standing in front of it, with head and neck erect and chest out, and grasping the ends of the bar A A', the operator simply turns it, first well up to the right, then to the left, and then repeats the movements until he has enough. As he turns, the rubber straps B B stretch more and more, of course getting stiffer the farther the bar is turned. It would scarcely be possible to hit upon a [p.218]better appliance for improving these valuable side muscles, and yet without fear of overdoing them. - Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio
The Opera House, a new and handsome building, is on Euclid avenue. There are, besides, an Academy of Music and the Globe Theatre and several minor theatres. The business portion of Euclid avenue extends from the Park to Erie street, beyond which it is lined with handsome residences, elegant cottages and superb villas, the grounds around each being more and more extensive as it approaches the country. It is one of the finest avenues in the world, and is not less than ten miles in length, embracing during its course several suburbs which a generation since were remote from the city, and are now considerably surprised to find themselves brought so near it. Euclid avenue crosses the other streets diagonally, and was evidently one of the original roads leading into the city before it attained its present dimensions. The majority of the streets are parallel with the lake front, which pursues a course from the northeast to the southwest. But Euclid avenue runs directly eastward for about three miles, to Doane's Corners, one of the historic spots in the neighborhood of Cleveland, and then turns to the northeast, following nearly parallel to the course of the lake. Prospect street runs parallel to Euclid avenue, and is only second to it in the beauty and elegance of its residences. St. Clair street is also a favorite suburban avenue, extending parallel to the lake, a little distance from it, far out into the country, and containing many handsome residences. - A Chest-widener
Dr. Sargent's ingenuity has provided a simple and excellent chest expander. He rigs two ordinary pulleys over blocks some feet above the head, and from five to six feet apart, and attaching weights at the floor ends of the ropes, puts ordinary handles on the other ends, and has the ropes just long enough so that when the weights are on the floor the handles are about a foot above the head. Now stand between and directly under them, erect, with the chest as full as you can make it, and keeping the elbows straight, and grasping the handles draw your hands slowly downward out at arm's-length, say about two feet. Next, let the weights drop gradually back, repeat, and so go on. This is excellent for enlarging the whole chest, but especially for widening it. A better present to a consumptive person than one of these appliances could hardly be devised. - Lexington
April 19th 1775 Birthplace of American Liberty - The Monitor, the famous little ship that revolutionized warship design
The upper figure is a broadside view, the lower one a transverse section amidships. The upper portion of the hull was very like a raft, and was heavily armoured all over, as was the turret and the little pilot-box forward. - A Correct Position for Fast Walking
- A Switchback
Another American invention is the switchback. By this plan the length of line required to ease the gradient is obtained by running backward and forward in a zigzag course, instead of going straight up the mountain. As a full stop has to be made at the end of every piece of line, there is no danger of the train running away from its brakes. This device was first used among the hills of Pennsylvania over forty years ago, to lower coal cars down into the Nesquehoning Valley. It was afterwards used on the Callao, Lima, and Oroya Railroad in Peru, by American engineers, with extraordinary daring and skill. It was employed to carry the temporary tracks of the Cascade Division of the Northern Pacific Railroad over the "Stampede" Pass, with grades of 297 feet per mile, while a tunnel 9,850 feet long was being driven through the mountains. - Steam Excavator
On the prairies of the West the road-bed is thrown up from ditches on each side, either by men with wheelbarrows and carts, or by means of a ditching-machine, which can move 3,000 yards of earth daily. In this case the track follows immediately after the embankment, and the men live in cars fitted up as boarding-shanties, and moved forward as fast as required. - The Alarm
- A Sharp Curve—Manhattan Elevated Railway, 110th Street, New York
Equally valuable improvements were made in cars, both for passengers and freight. Instead of the four-wheeled English car, which on a rough track dances along on three wheels, we owe to Ross Winans, of Baltimore, the application of a pair of four-wheeled swivelling trucks, one under each end of the car, thus enabling it to accommodate itself to the inequalities of a rough track and to follow its locomotive around the sharpest curves. There are, on our main lines, curves of less than 300 feet radius, while, on the Manhattan Elevated, the largest passenger traffic in the world is conducted around curves of less than 100 feet radius. There are few curves of less than 1,000 feet radius on European railways. - Part of a Telephone Exchange
- Reconstruction of coal-forming swamp
Coal is a combustible rock that was formed by the accumulation and partial decay of vegetation. When coal was forming millions of years ago, most of the state was a low coastal plain bordered on the west and southwest by a shallow sea. A large variety of plants grew in great swamps which covered this coastal plain. When the plants died, they accumulated in the swamps to form thick masses of peat that were eventually covered by shallow seas and buried beneath mud and sand. Periodically, the region was above sea level, new swamps developed, new peat deposits accumulated, and more sediments were laid down. This process occurred repeatedly until over 3,000 feet of sediments had been deposited. Then the sediments were slowly compacted and hardened so that sandstones, shales, limestones, and coals were formed. - A warped Professional Sculler, imperfectly developed in Muscles not used in Rowing
The figure represents one of the swiftest and most skilful professional scullers of the country to-day. - Pioneer Wagons
About 1820, the State of Illinois was being rapidly settled by people from the eastern states. Prior to this time, very few white settlements had been made in the state. These early pioneers, drawn from the population of the eastern states, were composed of almost all nationalities. They pushed their way across the mountains of Pennsylvania and Virginia in crude wagons, drawn by oxen, bringing with them their household goods and a few milk cows. - Rail Making
- Apples
- Erection of a Cantilever
The new bridge at Poughkeepsie has three of these cantilevers, connected by two fixed spans, as shown in the illustration. The fixed spans have horizontal lower chords, and really extend beyond each pier and up the inclined portions, to where the bottom chord of the cantilever is horizontal. At these points the junctions between the spans are made, and arranged in such a way, by means of movable links, that expansion and contraction due to changes of temperature can take place. The fixed spans are 525 feet long. Their upper chord, where the tracks are placed, is 212 feet above water. These spans required stagings to build them upon. These stagings were 220 feet above water, and rested on piles, driven through 60 feet of water and 60 feet of mud, making the whole height of the temporary staging 332 feet, or within 30 feet of the height of Trinity Church steeple, in New York. The[35] time occupied in building one of these stagings and then erecting the steel-work upon it was about four months. The cantilever spans were erected without any stagings at all below, and entirely from the two overhead travelling scaffolds, shown in the engraving. These scaffolds were moved out daily from the place of beginning over the piers, until they met in the centre. The workmen hoisted up the different pieces of steel from a barge in the river below and put them into place, using suspended planks to walk upon. The time saved by this method was so great that one of these spans of 548 feet long was erected in less than four weeks, or one-seventh of the time which would have been required if stagings had been used. - Beginning a Tunnel
Tunnels are neither so long nor so frequent upon American railways as upon those of Europe. The longest are from two to two and a half miles long, except one, the Hoosac, about four miles. Sometimes they are unavoidable. The ridge called Bergen Hill, west of Hoboken, N. J., is a case in point. This is pierced by the tunnels of the West Shore, of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western, and of the Erie, the last two of which, are placed at different levels to enable one road to pass over the other. It is by our system of using sharp curves that we avoid tunnels. It may be said, in general terms, that American engineers have shown more skill in avoiding the necessity of tunnels than could possibly be shown in constructing them. When we are obliged to use tunnels, or to make deep cuttings in rocks, our labors are greatly assisted by the use of power-drills worked by compressed air and by the use of high explosives, such as dynamite, giant powder, rend-rock, etc. Rocks can now be removed in less than half the time formerly required, when ordinary blasting-powder was used in hand-drilled holes. - Device for developing the Abdominal Muscles
The latest invention purposely for these muscles is also one of Sargent's, on the following plan: The pupil lies on the plank A A', or, rather, sits on it, when A' is a little back of vertical, so as, for instance, to form with A the angle A B A'. With feet in the toe-straps C C', he sways gently forward and back as long as he can without fatigue. From day to day, as these muscles gain strength, A' is dropped lower and lower, until finally it is on a level with A. Or a strap may be placed over the forehead and fastened to A', and, with the feet in the toe-straps, the person may lift his body up till vertical, drawing the weight E with him as he rises. - A Chest-deepener
Again, to deepen the chest from front to back, he hangs two bars, B and C, and attaches the weight at the other end, A, of the rope, the bar B, when at rest, being about a foot above the height of the head. Standing, not under B, but about a foot to one side of it, and facing it, grasp its ends with both hands, and keeping the arms and legs straight and stiff, and breathing the chest brimful, draw downward until the bar is about level with the waist. Let the weight run slowly back, repeat, and go on. - View of Thomas Pope's Proposed Cantilever (1810)
The most notable invention of latter days in bridge construction is that of the cantilever bridge, which is a system devised to dispense with staging, or false works, where from the great depth, or the swift current, of the river, this would be difficult, or, as in the case of the Niagara River, impossible to make. The first design of which we have any record was that of a bridge planned by Thomas Pope, a ship carpenter of New York, who, in 1810, published a book giving his designs for an arched bridge of timber across the North River at Castle Point, of 2,400 feet span. Mr. Pope called this an arch, but his description clearly shows it to have been what we now call a cantilever. As was the fashion of the day, he indulged in a poetical description: "Like half a Rainbow rising on yon shore, While its twin partner spans the semi o'er, And makes a perfect whole that need not part Till time has furnish'd us a nobler art." - Physiographic provinces of Illinois
Physiography is the study of the creation and gradual change of land surface forms (the landscape). Thus, the land surface as we see it today in each of the physiographic provinces has had a particular history of development. Driftless Area Wisconsinan Moraines Illinoian Till Plain Mississippi River Wabash River Shawnee Hills Ohio River - Woolly mammoth
Scattered mammoth and mastodon remains have been found in glacial deposits at various localities in the state. Peat, which is an accumulation of partially decomposed plant materials, has been found, especially in the northern part of the state. It is marketed as an organic soil conditioner.