The growing world, or Progress of civilization and the wonders of nature, science, literature and art, interspersed with a useful and entertaining ... of miscellany by the best authors of our day

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 Excerpt: ...On the back side a light belt descends from a long shaft at the ceiling that drives all the machines, ranfring in rows on the floor. On the left side of our machine on a peg hangs a small reel of wire, that has been straightened by running through a compound system of small rollers. This wire descends and the end of it enters the machine. This is the food consumed by this snappish, voracious little dwarf. It pulls it in and bites it off by inches incessantly, one hundred and forty bites a minute. Just as he seizes each bite a saucy little hammer, with a concave face, hits the end of the wire three taps and "upsets" it to a head, while he gripe it in a counter-sunk hole between his teeth. With an outward tum of his tongue he then lays the pic sideways in a little groove across the rim of a small wheel that Blowly revolves just under his nose. By the external pressure of a stationary hoop these pins roll into their places, as they are carried under two series of small files, three in each. These flies grow smaller toward the end of the series. They lie at a slight inclination on the points of the pins, and a series of cams, levers and springs are made to play "like lightning." Thus the pins are pointed and dropped in a little shower into a box. Twentyeight pounds of pins is a day's work for one of these erking little automatons. Forty machines make five hundred and sixty pounds daily. Two very intelligent machines reject every crooked pin, even a slight irregularity of form being detected. Another automaton assorts half a dozen lengths in as many different boxes, all at once, and unerringly, when a careless operation has mixed the boxes from various machines. Lastly, a perfect genius of a machine hangs the pins by the heads in an inclined ...