Elisha Noyce

“ Think of the beautiful colours of our carpets, draperies, silks, &c.—the chemist has devised the dyes with which they are stained; and in our chemical factories, what tons of vitriol, soda, bleaching powder, and scores of other chemical agents are daily produced. All this is the result of study and perseverance. Neither have the Fine Arts been behind in contributing to civilisation, as may be seen in the structure and decoration of our houses, churches, and public buildings; in our glass and pottery ware ”

“ Wood is an article of universal application; its lightness, strength, and the facility with which it can be worked, render it almost invaluable; although in ship-building and many of its applications to house-building iron has to some extent superseded it, yet there are so many other ways in which it is indispensable, that it may be looked upon as one of the greatest boons to mankind. ”

“ During the bubbling up of the whole mass of iron and the extreme elevation of temperature caused by the union of the carbon of the impure iron with the oxygen of the air, the oxide of iron as fast as it forms fuses into a sort of glass, and this unites with the earthy matters of the impure iron and floats on the upper part as a flux, thus ridding the cast-iron of all its impurities, with no other fuel than that contained in the iron itself and the air. ”

“ There is scarcely a use to which wood may not be applied, whether as fuel for fires, timber for building, furniture both useful and ornamental, various parts of machinery, vessels to contain wine and other fluids, handles to instruments, (for in cold climates and cold weather metal cannot be handled with impunity) , and indeed for all uses in which lightness, dryness, warmth, and variety of form are desirable, wood serves as an excellent material. The kind of trees that produce wood fit for building and other useful purposes are those called by the botanists exogenous. ”

“ When the surface of any portion of land has to be drained of its accumulated water, where the soil is of an impervious nature, like clay, it is usual to cut deep furrows from the higher to the lower parts and fill these up with gravel stones or brushwood; the moisture which collects in these is made to flow into the lowest part, and there form a pond, from which it evaporates as fast as the drains supply it; or if the quantity be too great, a main drain or ditch carries it onwards to some stream or river. ”

“ Water-gilding (a process, however, in which no water is used) consists in covering the surface of metal with a thin coating of gold; the best metal for water-gilding is either brass, or a mixture of brass and copper. A mixture of gold and mercury, in the proportion of one part of gold to eight of mercury, is made hot over a fire till they have united; it is then put into a bag of chamois-leather, and the superfluous mercury pressed out. What remains is called an “amalgam;” it is soft, and of a greasy nature, so that it can be smeared over any surface with the fingers. ”

“ The manufacture of needles is one of those arts in which manual dexterity is acquired by minute subdivision of labour, each artisan performing only a small part of the process, but so often, that the most wonderful rapidity and accuracy are obtained, insomuch that although each needle has to pass through nearly 150 hands (together with expensive machinery) before finishing, yet they may be bought at an astonishingly low price. ”

“ It matters not whether the object to be wrought is the head of a pin, or the crank of a steam-ship, it is done with both delicacy of touch and power of arm, a hundredfold beyond what could be effected by hand in the same time. The motive power of steam is derived from the property which water has of being expanded into vapour when heated to a certain degree, and of again resuming the form of water when cooled; this moreover takes place in the most easily manageable manner, and either by degrees or suddenly, according as the heat and pressure balance each other ”

“ The art of making vessels of earth is one of the oldest of all arts; the “potter’s wheel” is frequently named in Scripture, and pottery is found in all the remains of ancient nations. Earthenware is made from a mixture of clay and powdered flints; the clay is freed from all its coarser parts by being stirred with water and drawn off after the gross matters have settled; the fluid is then allowed at leisure to let fall the pure clay which was mixed with it, and is then fit for use. ”

“ FIG. 2.
Artificial gems are all but varieties of glass. What is called “paste,” “French diamonds,” &c., are glasses of peculiar brilliancy, well cut and polished. Garnets, emeralds, and other precious stones are imitated by coloring the “paste” with various substances, chiefly metallic oxides, as oxide of cobalt, which produces a blue color, oxide of copper a red, and oxide of chromium a green color, &c.
Glass is used for a variety of purposes besides the one great purpose of admitting light to houses while air and damp are excluded. ”

“ Founding is the art of casting metals into various forms by means of moulds. The products of smelting are of a coarse kind, and have to be remelted before the process of casting or founding begins. Before any article can be cast in metal, a pattern must be formed in wood, clay, or other suitable substance. The floor of the foundry is made up of sand and powdered charcoal to the depth of several feet, serving to imbed the moulds which are used, and in several places deep pits full of the same material are formed for large castings ”

“ Of whatever form the boiler may be, it should be strong enough to well resist the pressure of the steam, but to make this sure, a contrivance called a safety-valve is always used; this consists of a valve held down by a weight, which would be raised by the steam if it should press so hard as to endanger the boiler in the least degree; when the safety-valve is forced up, the steam escapes and the pressure is taken off. Most steam engines require the up-and-down motion of the piston to be converted into a circular motion, and this is effected by means of a “crank,” (see “Cranks”) ”

“ NATIVE OXIDE OF IRON.
Iron stands first in usefulness of all the metals, for railways, bridges, ships, and a thousand other purposes; it can be both cast and wrought, having that peculiar property, the capability of being “welded,” that is to say, of softening while hot to such an extent that when two pieces are made white hot and laid together, a few blows of the hammer will cause them to unite into one piece, and it is by means of this most useful quality that large masses of wrought iron are produced, such, for instance, as anchors and cranks for steam-boats. ”

“ Sometimes land may be drained by boring through the clay or other impervious soil, down to a porous stratum, such as sand or gravel. A knowledge of the structure of the whole district is necessary to determine whether this is likely to be of service or not. By boring deep pits in the drains cut in peat mosses, the weight of the mosses will cause the water to be squeezed out, which rising in these holes flows off by the drain, producing the same effect as if it were cut to the depth of the pits. ”

“ Scarcely any kind of machinery can be constructed without wheels of some kind—they serve almost numberless purposes. The fly-wheel (fig. 1) serves to produce a continuous motion, from its size and weight giving it a tendency to go on, and in this way causing it to fill up the intervals of unequal action, as in the ascent and descent of the piston in a steam-engine. The toothed-wheel serves to give motion to other wheels, and this at a certain rate either greater or less than its own, according to its size, and consequently the number of its teeth ”

“ The combination of certain metals forming alloys, is often not exactly the mean of their respective qualities, for instance, a small quantity of silver is sometimes fused with cast steel for penknife blades, and although the silver is itself much softer than the steel, yet the combination is found to be both closer in the grain and harder; it is known as silver-steel in commerce. Bismuth, although itself not very fusible, increases the fusibility of other metals; a combination of 2 parts tin, 3 lead, and 5 bismuth, forms a metal fusible by boiling water. ”

“ The surface of a road should be slightly arched and a drain made on each side, that pools of water may not collect on its surface and soften it so that it will work into holes. Ordinary roads are made by laying down a stratum of broken granite or other hard stone a few inches deep, each piece being of about half a pound weight, when this first layer is worked in by traffic, a second is laid, and so on till the surface has become quite firm and level, but in the streets of towns more care is required. ”

“ When charcoal burns, it combines with part of the air, and is converted into a gas called carbonic acid, which, although invisible, is much heavier than air, and is a deadly poison; it is therefore necessary, where charcoal is burning, to always have some opening at the bottom of the room. Many fatal accidents have arisen from people sleeping in a small room with a pot of burning charcoal, and no outlet for the poisonous vapour but the chimney, up which it will not pass on account of its weight. ”

“ GUN-BORING MACHINE.
GUN-MOULD.
“Ordnance,” or great guns are made of cast-iron or of gun-metal (a mixture of copper and tin) , but experiments have lately been made with wrought-iron and cast-steel, with the view of obtaining a tougher and more durable material. They are cast solid, and afterwards bored with a machine. ”

“ Nearly all the colors used in dyeing being of vegetable origin, it is necessary to apply some substances to the fabrics to be dyed which shall fix the colors in the grain. Of these (called “mordants”) the chief are acetate of alumina, acetate of iron, and chloride of tin (substances well known to chemists) , which have the property of making the coloring matter insoluble, so that it cannot be washed out.
There are various ways of dyeing. If the fabric has to be dyed all one color, it is dipped in the mordant, dried, and afterwards boiled in a solution of the dye-stuff. ”

“ The ore is then mixed with the flux and the whole raised to a great heat; as the metal is separated it melts, runs to the bottom of the “smelting furnace” and is drawn off into moulds made of sand; it is thus cast into short thick bars called “pigs,” so we hear of pig-iron, pig-lead, &c. Iron is smelted from “ironstone,” which is mixed with coke and limestone. The heat required to smelt iron is so very great, that a steam-engine is now always employed to blow the furnace (before the invention of the steam-engine, water-mills were used for the same purpose) . ”

“ Bricks have lately been made with perforations through them, which is done by having a mould with a number of iron rods projecting from its bottom, so that when the clay is forced on them they pass right through it, and leave holes. The objects gained by this are two; in the first place, the bricks are much lighter, a great advantage in building, and in the second place they do not get so much out of form in burning, as there is no great substance between the holes, and therefore the shrinking takes place more evenly. Most of these bricks are of a light straw color, and are used for facing. ”

“ Coke is produced by the partial burning of coal, in the same way that charcoal is from wood. The great source of coke is the gas manufactory, where it is sold in large quantities, being the result left in the retorts after the gas has all been driven off; but the consumption of coke by locomotive engines, &c., where coal would not be admissible on account of the smoke produced, has become so great that it is necessary to burn coals for its production ”

“ Alumina, in its various forms of clay, is used for brick and tile-making, and for pottery; hardened into the form of slate, it is much used for roofing and for making cisterns. Lime, in the form of carbonate, constitutes the best building stones, including marble, so valuable for ornamental carving and decoration, and when burnt, to separate the carbonic acid, forms lime itself, which is invaluable as a cement when mixed with sand ”

“ GOLD-LEAF. For the purpose of gilding very thin leaves of gold are required, so thin, that although gold is expensive, yet gilded articles (as picture-frames) are very far from being so. To produce this gold-leaf is the business of the gold-beater. He first obtains the gold in a state of purity from the refiner, in the form of small grains, which, mixed with a small quantity of borax and alloy, are put into an earthen pot called a crucible (coated beforehand with clay to keep it from cracking) , and then placed in a furnace which is raised to a white heat. ”

“ The chief alloys, or compound metals in use, are, brass, made of copper and zinc; pewter, made of lead and tin; bell metal and gun metal, made of copper and tin; and solder, which is a kind of pewter, and made of the same metals; the silvering for looking-glasses is made of mercury and tin; the gold and silver used for coin are not pure metals, but alloyed with two parts of silver or copper to every twenty-two of the pure metal, and this forms the “standard” gold or silver. ”

“ Glass is cut by means of wheels of different sizes and materials, turned by a treadle, as in a common lathe; some are made of fine sandstone, some of iron, others of tin or copper; the edges of some are square, some round, and some are sharp. They are used with sand and water, or emery and water, but stone wheels are used with water only. The glass-cutter also uses rods of copper with knobs at their ends, for making round indentations; these turn on their axis, so that the end cuts a round hollow in the glass. ”

“ For sporting purposes small shot are made, of different sizes; they consist of globules of lead with a small proportion of arsenic mixed with it—the object of mixing arsenic is to make the shot divide better, as it has been found by experience that lead alone does not divide so well—this mixture, while in a fluid state, is poured through a colander or sieve made of iron and having the bottom perforated with small holes, to suit the size of the shot to be made. ”

“ Nearly all houses are built of bricks, as they are less expensive than stone, and more durable than wood, besides being less liable to be burnt. Walls of brick may be formed of any required thickness, and as the length of a brick is twice its breadth, they admit of being so laid that the wall shall not part in pieces, which would be the case if laid as in fig. 1, as the seams of mortar run continuously through the wall, which in bricklaying is always avoided, by different methods. ”