Kitabı oku: «Inventions in the Century», sayfa 21
The generic idea of Blanchard's lathe for turning irregular forms consists in the use of a pattern of the device which is to be shaped from the rough material, placing such pattern in a lathe, alongside of the rough block, and having a guide wheel which has an arm having cutters, and which guide follows all the lines of the pattern, and which cutters, extending to the rough material, chip it away to the depth and in the direction imparted by the pattern lines to the guide, thus producing from the rough block a perfect representation of the pattern.
In the midst of his studies in the construction of his inventions Blanchard's attention was drawn to the operations of a boring worm upon an old oak log. Closely examining and watching the same by the aid of a microscope, he gained valuable ideas from the work of his humble teacher, which he incorporated into his new cutting and boring machines.
His series of machines in gun-making were designed to make and shape automatically every part of the gun, whether of wood or metal. His machines, and subsequent improvements by others, for boring, mortising and turning, display wonderful ingenuity. A modern mortising machine, for instance, is adapted to quickly and accurately cut a square or oblong hole to any desired depth, width, and length by cutting blades; to automatically reciprocate the cutters both vertically and horizontally in order to cut the mortise, both as to length and depth, at one time, and to automatically withdraw the cutters when they have finished cutting the mortise. They are provided with simple means for setting and feeding the cutters to do this work, and while giving the cutters a positive action, ample clearance is provided for the removal of the chips as fast as they are cut.
From what such inventions will produce in the way of complicated and ornamental workmanship we may conclude that it is a law of invention that whatever can be made by hand may be made by a machine, and made better.
Carving Machines made their appearance early in the century. In 1800 a Mr. Watt of London produced one, on which he carved medallions and figures in ivory and ebony. Also subsequently, John Hawkins of the same city, and a Mr. Cheverton, invented machines for the same purpose. Another Englishman, Braithwaite, in 1840, invented a most attractive carving process in which, instead of cutting tools, he employed burning as his agent. Heated casts of previously carved models were pressed into or on to wet wood, and the charcoal surfaces then brushed off with hard brushes.
After Blanchard's turning-lathes and boring apparatus, appeared machines in which a series of cutters were employed, guided by a tracing lever attached to a carved model, and actuating the cutter to reproduce on material placed upon an adjusting table a copy of the model.
Machines have been invented which consist of hard iron or steel rollers on the surface of which are cut beautiful patterns, and between which wood previously softened by steam is passed, and designs thus impressed thereon. A similar process of embossing, was devised in Paris and called Xyloplasty, by which steam-softened wood is compressed in carved moulds, which give it bas-relief impressions.
But in the carving of wood by hand, a beautiful art, which has been revived within the past generation, there are touches of sentiment, taste and human toil, which, like the touches of the painter and the master of music, appeal to cultivated minds in a higher than mechanical sense. The mills of the modern gods, the inventors, grind with exceeding and exact fineness, but the work of a human hand upon a manufactured article still appeals to human sympathy.
The bending of wood when heated by fire or steam had been known and practised to a limited extent, but Blanchard invented a clamping machine, to which improvements have been added, and by which ship timbers, furniture, ploughs, piano frames, carriage bows, stair and house banisters and balusters, wheel rims, staves, etc., etc., are bent to the desired forms, and without breaking. Bending to a certain extent does not weaken wood, but stretching the same has been found to impair and destroy its strength.
The principal problems which the inventors of the century have solved in the class of wood-working have been the adaptation to rapid-working machinery of the saw and other blades, to sever; the plane to smooth, the auger, the bit and the gimlet to bore, the hammer to drive, and a combination of all or a part of these to shape and finish the completed article.
It was a great step from the reciprocating hand saw, worked painfully by one or two men, to the band saw, invented by a London mechanic, William Newbury, in 1808. This was an endless steel belt serrated on one edge, mounted on pulleys, and driven continuously by the power of steam through the hardest and the heaviest work. Pliable, to conform to the faces of the wheels over which it is carried, it will bend with all the sinuosities of long timber, no time is lost in its operation, and no labour of human hands is necessary to guide it or the object on which it works.
At the Vienna Exposition in 1873, the first mammoth saw of this description was exhibited. The saw itself was made by the celebrated firm of Perin & Co., of Paris, upon machinery the drawings of which were made by Mr. Van Pelt of New York, and constructed by Richards, Loudon and Kelly of Philadelphia. The saw was fifty-five feet long, and sawed planks from a pine log three feet thick, at the rate of sixty superficial feet per minute. The difficulty of securing a perfectly reliable weld in the endless steel band was overcome by M. Perin, who received at the Paris Exhibition in 1867 the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. Now gangs of such saws may be found in America and elsewhere, and circular saws have also been added. Saws that both cut, form, and plane the boards at the same time are now known.
Boring tools, both for hand and machinery, demanded improvement. Formerly augers and similar boring tools had merely a curved sharpened end and a concavity to hold the chips, and the whole tool had to be withdrawn to empty the chips. It was known as a pod auger. In 1809, L'Hommedieu, a Frenchman, invented an auger with two pods and cutting lips, a central screw and a twisted shank. About the same time Lilley of Connecticut made a twisted auger, and these screw-form, twisted, cutting tools of various kinds, with their cutting lips, and by which the shavings or chips were withdrawn continuously from the hole as the cutting proceeded, became so improved in the United States that they were known as the American augers and bits. The planing machines of General Bentham were improved by Bramah, and he and Maudsley also greatly improved other wood-working machines and tools in England – 1802-1810.
We have before, in the chapter on metal-working, shown the importance of the slide-rest, planer and lathe, when combined, and which also are extensively adapted to wood-working. In Bramah's machine, a vertical spindle carried at its lower extremity a horizontal wheel having twenty-eight cutter blades, followed by a plane also attached to a wheel. A board was by these means perfectly trimmed and smoothed from end to end, as it was carried against the cutters by suitable moving means. William Woodworth of New York, in 1828, patented a celebrated planing machine which became so popular and its use was regarded so necessary in the wood-working trades, that the patent was looked upon as an odious monopoly. It consisted of a combination of rollers armed with cutters, attached to a horizontal shaft revolving at a great speed, and of means for feeding the boards to the cutters. With Bentham's, Bramah's, Blanchard's, and Woodworth's ideas for a basis, those innumerable improvements have been made in machinery, by which wood is converted with almost lightning rapidity into all the forms in which we see it, whether ornamental or useful, in modern homes and other structures.
Some machines are known as "Universal Wood Workers." In these a single machine is provided with various tools, and adapted to perform a great variety of work by shifting the position of the material and the tools. The following operations can be performed on such a machine: – Planing, bevelling, tapering, tenoning, tongueing and grooving (grooves straight, circular or angular), making of joints, twisting and a number of other operations.
The later invention by Stow of Philadelphia of a flexible shaft, made up of a series of coils of steel wire, given a leather covering, and to which can be attached augers, bits, or metal drills, the tool applied to its work from any direction, and its direction varied while at work, has excited great attention.
Shingles are as old in the art as the framework of buildings. Rome was roofed with shingles for centuries, made of oak or pine.
Tiles, plain and fancy, and slates, have to a certain extent superseded wood shingling, but the wood will always be used where it can be found in plenty, as machines will now turn them out complete faster than they can be hauled away. A shingle is a thin piece of wood, thicker at one end than at the other, having parallel sides, about three times as long as it is wide, having generally smooth surfaces and edges. All these features are now given to the shingle by modern machines.
A great log is rolled into a mill at one end and soon comes out at the other in bundles of shingles; the logs sawed into blocks, the blocks split or sawed again into shingle sizes, tapered, planed in the direction of the grain of the wood, the complete shingles collected and bound in bundles, each operation by a special machine, or by a series of mechanisms.
Veneering, that art of covering cheap or ordinary wood with a thin covering of more ornamental and valuable wood, known from the days of the Egyptians, has been vastly extended by modern machinery. The practice, however, so emphatically denounced centuries ago by Pliny, as "the monstrous invention of paint and dyes applied to the woods or veneers, to imitate other woods," has yet its practitioners and admirers.
T. M. Brunel, in 1805-1808, devised a set of circular saws run by a steam engine, which cut sheets of rosewood and mahogany, one-fourteenth of an inch thick, with great speed and accuracy. Since that day the veneer planing machine, for delicately smoothing the sheets, the straightening machine, for straightening scrolls that have been cut from logs, the polishing machines for giving the sheets their bright and glossy appearance, the pressing machine for applying them to the surfaces to which they are to be attached, the hammering machine for forcing out superfluous glue from between a veneer and the piece to which it is applied; all of these and numerous modifications of the same have been invented, and resulted in placing in the homes everywhere many beautiful ornamental articles of furniture, which before the very rich only could afford to have.
Special forms of machinery for making various articles of wood are about as numerous as the articles themselves.
We appear before the house and know before entering that its doors and sills, clapboards and window frames, its sashes and blinds, its cornices, its embrasures and pillars, and shingles, each or all have had a special machine invented for its manufacture. We enter the house and find it is so with objects within – the flooring may be adorned with the beautiful art of marquetry and parquetry, wood mosaic work, the wainscoting and the frescoes and ceilings, the stairs and staircases, its carved and ornamental supporting frames and balusters, the charming mantel frames around the hospitable fireplaces, and every article of furniture we see in which wood is a part. So, too, it is with every useful wooden implement and article within and without the house, – the trays, the buckets, the barrels, the tubs, the clothes-pins, the broom-handles, the mops, the ironing and bread boards; and outside the house, the fences, railings and posts – many of these objects entirely unknown to the poor of former generations, uncommon with the rich, and the machinery for making them unknown to all.
It was a noble array of woodwork and machinery with which the nations surprised and greeted the world, at each of its notable international Expositions during the century. Each occasion surpassed its predecessor in the beauty of construction of the machines displayed and efficiency of their work. The names of the members of this array were hard and uncouth, such as the axe, the adze, and the bit, the auger, bark-cutting and grinding machines, blind-slat boring, and tenoning, dovetail, mortising, matching and planing, wood splitting, turning, wheeling and planing, wood-bending, rim-boring dowelling, felly-jointing, etc., etc. These names and the clamour of the machines were painful to the ear, but to the thoughtful, they were converted into sweeter music, when reflection brought to mind the hard toil of human hands they had saved, the before unknown comforts and blessings of civilisation they had brought and were bringing to the human race, and the enduring forms of beauty they had produced.
To the invention of wood-working machinery we are also indebted for the awakening of interest in the qualities of wood for a vast number of artistic purposes. It was a revelation, at the great Philadelphia Exposition of 1876, to behold the specimens of different woods from all the forests of the earth, selected and assembled to display their wonderful grain and other qualities, and showing how well nature was storing up for us in its silent shades those growths which were waiting the genius of invention to convert into forms of use and beauty for every home.
CHAPTER XXII.
FURNITURE
So far as machinery is concerned for converting wood into furniture, the same has been anticipated in the previous chapter, but much remains to be said about the articles of furniture themselves.
Although from ancient days the most ancient countries provided by hand elaborate and beautiful articles of furniture of many descriptions, yet it has been left for modern advances in machinery and kindred arts to yield that universal supply of convenient and ornamental furniture which now prevails.
The Egyptians used chairs and tables of a more modern form than the Greeks or Romans, who lolled about on couches even at their meals; but the Egyptians did not have the convenient section tables built in sliding sections, which permit the table to be enlarged to accommodate an increased number of guests. And now recently this modern form of table has been improved, by arranging the sections and leaves so that when the sections are slid out the leaves are automatically raised and placed in position, which is done either by lazy-tongs mechanism, or by a series of parallel links: Tables constructed with folding detachable and adjustable legs, tables constructed for special purposes as sewing machines, and typewriting machine tables, by which the machine head may be dropped beneath the table top when not in use; tables combined with desks wherein the table part may be slid into the desk part when not in use and the sliding cover pulled down to cover and lock from sight both the table and desk; surgical tables, adapted to be raised or lowered at either end or at either side and to be extended; "knock down" tables, adapted to be taken all apart for shipment or storage; tables combined with chairs to be folded down by the side of the chair when not in use; and many other useful forms have been added to the list.
Much ingenuity has been displayed in the construction of desks, to save and economise space. Mention has been made of a combined folding desk and extensible table. Another form is an arrangement of desk drawers, whereby when one drawer is locked or unlocked all the rest are locked or unlocked automatically. Whatever shape or function anyone desires in a desk may be met, except, perhaps, the performance of the actual work of the occupant.
In the matter of beds, the principal developments have been due to the advancement of wood-working machinery, and the manufacture of iron, steel, and brass. The old-fashioned ponderous bedsteads, put together by heavy screws, have given way to those mortised and tenoned, joined and matched, and by which they can easily be put up and taken down; and to iron and brass bedsteads, which are both ornamental and more healthful. No bed may be without an inexpensive steel spring frame or mattress for the support of the bedding. Folding beds made to economise space, and when folded upright become an ornamental bureau; and invalid bedsteads, designed for shifting the position of the invalid, are among the many modern improvements.
Kitchen Utensils.– A vast amount of drudgery in the kitchen has been relieved by the convenient inventions in labor-saving appliances: coffee and spice mills, can-openers, stationary washtubs, stopper extractors, superseding the old style of hand-corkscrews where large numbers of bottles are to be uncorked; refrigerators and provision safes, attaching and lifting devices and convenient culinary dishes and utensils of great variety.
Curtains, shades and screens have been wonderfully improved and their use made widely possible by modern inventions and new adaptation of old methods. Wood, cotton, silk, paper, combined or uncombined with other materials, in many novel ways unknown to our ancestors, have rendered these articles available in thousands of homes where their use was unknown and impossible a century ago. Among the most convenient attachments to shades is the spring roller, invented by Hartshorn of America, in 1864, whereby the shade is automatically rolled upon its stick to raise or lower it.
Window screens for the purpose of excluding flies, mosquitoes, and other insects, while freely admitting the air, are now made extensible and adjustable in different ways to fit different sizes of windows. Curtains and shades are provided with neat and most attractive supporting rods, to which they are attached by brass or wooden rings, and provided with easily manipulated devices to raise and securely hold them in any desired position.
The art of steaming wood and bending it, by iron pattern forms adjustable to the forms desired, as particularly devised in principle by Blanchard in America in 1828-1840, referred to in Wood-working, has produced great changes in the art of furniture making, especially in chairs. A particularly interesting illustration of the results of this art occurred in Austria. About forty years ago the manufacture in Germany and Austria of furniture by machinery, especially of bent wood-ware, became well established there; and by the time of the Vienna Exposition in 1873, factories on a most extensive scale for the construction of bed furniture were in operation among the vast mountain beech forests of Moravia and Hungary. The greatest of these works were located in Great Urgroez, Hungary, and Bisritz, Moravia, with twenty or more auxiliary establishments. Between five and six thousand work people were employed, the greater part of whom were females, and it was necessary to use steam and water motors, to the extent of many hundred horse power.
The forests were felled, and the tree-tops removed and made into charcoal for use in the glass works of Bohemia. The trunks were hauled to the mills and sawed into planks of suitable thickness by gang-saws. The planks in turn were cut with circular saws into square pieces for turning, and then the pieces turned and cut on lathes, to give them the size required and the rounded shape; the pieces then steamed while in their green state for twenty-four hours in suitable boilers, then taken out and bent to the desired shape on a cast-iron frame by hand, then subjected, with the desired pattern, to the pattern-turning table, and cut; then kept locked in the pattern's iron embrace until the pieces were dried and permanently set in shape, then clamped to a bench, filed, rasped, stained, and French polished by the deft hands of the women; then assembled in proper position in frames of the form of the chair or other article to be made, their contact surface sawed to fit at the joints, and then finally the parts glued together and further secured by the addition of a few screws or balls.
Chairs, lounges and lighter furniture were thus made from bent pieces of wood with very few joints, having a neat and attractive appearance, and possessing great strength. The art has spread to other forests and other countries, and the turned, bent, highly polished and beautiful furniture of this generation would have been but a dream of beauty to the householder of a century ago.
Children's chairs are made so that the seat may be raised or lowered, or the chair converted into a perambulator. Dentist's chairs have been developed until it is only necessary for the operator to turn a valve governing a fluid, generally oil, under pressure to raise or lower the chair and the patient. In the more agreeable situation at the theatre or concert one may hang his hat on the bottom of the chair, upturned to afford access to it through a crowded row, and turning down the chair, sit with pleasure, as the curtain is rolled up by compressed air, or electricity, at the touch of a button.
To the unthinking and unobserving, the subject of bottle stoppers is not entrancing, but those acquainted with the art know with what long, continuous, earnest efforts, thousands of inventors have sought for the best and cheapest bottle stopper to take the place of corks – the enormous demand for which was exhausting the supply and rendering their price almost prohibitive.
One of the most successful types is a stopper of rubber combined with a metal disk, and hung by a wire on the neck of the bottle, so that the stopper can be used over and over again; another form composed of glass, or porcelain, and cork; another is a thin disk of cork placed in a thin metal cap which is crimped over a shoulder on the neck of the bottle, and still another is a thin disk of pasteboard adapted for milk bottles and pressed tightly within a rim on the inside of the neck of the bottle.
In this connection should be mentioned that self-sealing fruit jar, known from its inventor as "Mason's fruit jar," which came into such universal use – that combination of screw cap, screw-threaded jar-neck and the rubber ring, or gasket, on which the cap was screwed so tightly as to seal the jar hermetically.
In lamplighting, what a wonderful change from the old oil lamps of former ages! The modern lamp may be said to be an improved means of grace, as it will hold out much longer, and shed a far more attractive light for the sinner, whose return, by its genial light, is, even to the end, so greatly desired.
The discovery of petroleum and its introduction as a light produced a revolution in the construction of lamps. Wicks were not discarded, but changed in shape from round to flat, and owing to the coarseness and disagreeable odour of coal oil, especially in its early unrefined days, devices first had for their object the easy feeding of the wick, and perfect combustion. To this end the burner portion through which the wick passed was perforated at its base to create a proper draft, and later the cap over the base was also perforated. But with refined oil the disagreeable odour continued. It was found that this was mainly due to the fact that both in lamps and stoves the oil would ooze out of the wick on to the adjacent parts of the lamps or stove, and when the wick was lit the heat would burn or heat the oil and thus produce the odour. Inventors therefore contrived to separate the oil reservoir and wick part when the lamp or stove were not in use; and finally, in stoves, to dispense with the wick altogether. As wickless oil stoves are now in successful use the wickless lamp may be expected to follow.
The lamp, however, that throws all others into the shade is that odourless, heatless, magic, mellow, tempered light of electricity, that springs out from the little filament, in its hermetically sealed glass cage, and shines with unsurpassed loveliness on all those fortunate enough to possess it.
