Engineering industry gossip
What was happening in the engineering world in 1893? How did engineers cope with the challenges and opportunities of their time? How did they share their news and views with their peers and the public? These are some of the questions that can be answered by reading the vintage magazine Engineer & Inventor, which was published monthly in Canada from 1892 to 1894. This article is an excerpt from the April 1893 issue, which contains more industry gossip about various topics related to engineering, such as the patent office, the patent act, the electric street railways, the lithographic process, the glass factory, the shoe manufacturing, the church bells, the steam trials of HMS Hercules, and the heated journals. The article also has a painting of HMS Hercules and some notes from the re-editor. The article gives a glimpse into the history and culture of engineering in the late 19th century, as well as some insights into the inventions and innovations that shaped the modern world.
Electricity innovation
Electricity continues to dazzle the world with its wonderful achievements. Cucumbers and lettuce are now manufactured in large quantities, by the aid of electric lights, and raw spirit is converted in a minute, by an electric current, into 20-year old whiskey.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
A glass factory in Liverpool, England, has glass journal boxes for all its machinery, a glass floor, glass shingles on the roof, and a glass smokestack 105 feet high built wholly of glass bricks, a foot square.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Shoe Manufacturing
A Brockton manufacturer began shoe-making twenty-five years ago with a capital of three hundred dollars. At the expiration of the first year he had lost that sum and was six hundred dollars in debt. Not discouraged, he incurred additional obligations and continued business. When the second year ended he had made five thousand dollars. Since then he has been uniformly prosperous.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Church bells were first made by Paulinus, an Italian bishop, to drive away demons about 400 A.D.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Report on Steam trials of HMS Hercules
The British warship HMS Hercules has completed her steam trials off Portsmouth, England. Ever since this ship was re-engined with modern machinery she has given trouble. This trouble has arisen principally through the excessive noise and vibration produced by the propellers at all rates of speed; subsequently two blades were removed, and the remainder reduced in diameter. The clearance thus served to reduce the disturbance, but not entirely, and it was afterward experimentally decided to push the propeller about eight inches further to the rear, and to give the blades an outward twist, so as to throw the wash away from the ship's counter. The results obtained were so satisfactory that a fourbladed propeller of similar contour will be fitted.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
It only a few of the many schemes for the eliminating of smoke during combustion which are now being experimented will prove as efficacious as expected, the article a few years hence will be scarcely more than a tradition.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Heated Journals
Engineers are quite interested in a device lately brought forward for sounding an alarm whenever a bearing gets hot. The arrangement consists of a cup containing some mercury, this cup being set in the bearing, and wires are connected from the cup to a bell and annunciator, one of the wires leading from a screw that can be set at any desired distance from the surface of the mercury; this screw is screwed down until it touches the mercury, and the circuit completed through the mercury, causing the bell to ring, and the screw is then backed any distance required. Should the bearing become heated, the mercury expands, closing the circuit when it touches the screw, and thus giving the alarm. It is proposed to have one on each bearing, the belief being expressed that, though this would lead to a multiplicity of numbers, and probably some confusion at times, no doubt can be entertained that it would save fires very often in such places saw-mills: also in some portions of cotton mills, where dust is likely to get into a bearing and cause it to heat, the arrangement, it is thought, may serve a useful purpose.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
The planing machine was the work of Woodworth in 1828.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
For clinical work a Frenchman has devised an exceedingly delicate and quick-reading electrical thermometer, capable of showing a variation in temperature of 1/20th of a degree Centigrade.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Manufacturers, as well as the public in general, are pleased to learn that the so-called coal trust is on the verge of dissolution. If ever a combination was conceived in iniquity it was this. The manner in which the public has been compelled by the monopoly to pay exorbitant prices for coal has been absolutely excuseless.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
The Hamilton Steamboat Company's new wharf at the Beach will have to be rebuilt, as the ice smashed it completely. Most of the material was saved.
[Re-Editor's Notes] There is little specific information about the Hamilton Steamboat Company's new wharf at the Beach. It is likely that the wharf was built too close to the shore, which made it vulnerable to damage from ice floes during the winter. It was a common issue in the Great Lakes area, as the freeze and thaw cycles can cause a significant ice movement and damage to coastal structures. Depending on the details of the situation, rebuilding the wharf could have been a costly and time-consuming process for the Hamilton Steamboat Company.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
The Canadian party appointed to survey and locate the international boundry line between Alaska anb British Columbia left Ottawa for Victoria, B.C.
