Various

“ In adopting any new method, the mind of the gas manager must to a great extent be influenced by the circumstances of the times, and the enormous importance of the labor question is a main factor at the present moment; with masters and men living in a strained condition which may at any moment break into open warfare, the adoption of such water gas processes would relieve the manager of a burden which is growing almost too heavy to be borne. ”

“ There is a people who to-day lives much as a cave man of France lived so long ago, who hunts and fishes as he did, who dresses as he did, who builds houses in whose architecture some think they can see evidence of a cavern original, who above all still carves batons from ivory, and implements from bone, adorning them with skillfully cut figures of animals and scenes from the chase. ”

“ Confining ourselves to freight and passenger service, and to cast iron and steel wheels in the general acceptation of the term as being the most interesting, we know that cast iron is not as strong as wrought iron or steel, that the tendency of a rotating wheel to burst is directly proportional to its diameter, and that the difficulty of making a suitable and perfect casting increases with the diameter. ”

“ The Van Steenbergh plant, with which I have been experimenting for some time, stands apart from all other forms of carbureted water gas plant, in that the upper layer of the fuel itself forms the superheater, and that no second part of any kind is needed for the fixation of the hydrocarbons, an arrangement which reduces the apparatus to the simplest form, and leaves no part which can choke or get out of order, an advantage which will not be underrated by any one who has had experience of these plants. ”

“ Just now some form of gun-cotton is most in use mixed with nitrate of ammonia, camphor and other articles. The tendency of these mixtures is to absorb moisture, and the gun-cotton in them to decompose, and there is no smokeless powder which can to-day be considered successful. Such a powder, however, will undoubtedly be an accomplished fact in the near future. Military men seem to be a great deal at variance as to its value in the field, but there can be no doubt of its value for naval purposes; it is a necessity forced upon us by the development of torpedo warfare. ”

“ On the other hand, there is no doubt a car wheel may be too small, for the tires of small wheels probably do not get as much working up under the rolls, and therefore are not as tough or homogeneous. Small wheels are more destructive to frogs and rail joints. They revolve faster at a given speed, and when below a certain size increase the liability to hot journals if carrying the weight they can bear without detriment to the rest of the wheel. Speed alone I am not willing to admit is the most prolific source of hot boxes. The weight per square inch upon the bearing is a very important factor. ”

“ Fortunately we are not so situated, but singularly enough what we have done in the field of high explosive projection has been accomplished by private enterprise, and we have attacked the problem at exactly the opposite point from which European nations have undertaken it. While they have assumed that the powder gun with its powerful and relatively irregular pressures was a necessity and have endeavored to modify the explosive to suit it, we have taken the explosive as we have found it, and have adapted the gun to the explosive. ”

“ The chief efficiency of small quantities of high explosives having reduced itself to the case of armor-piercing projectiles, it next became evident that there was an entirely new field for high explosives into which powder had entered but little, and this was the introduction of huge torpedo shells, which did nor rely for their efficiency upon the dispersion of the pieces of the shell, but upon the devastating force of the bursting charge itself upon everything within the radius of its explosive effect. ”

“ The amateur performer on the banjo, if he be of a mechanical turn, is often tempted to exercise his skill by making an instrument for himself; and the temptation is the greater because he can confine himself to the essentials. The excellence of a banjo in respect to power and tone depends mainly upon the rim and the neck, that is, supposing the parchment head to be of proper quality; but then the preparation of the heads is a business of itself, and the amateur is no more expected to make the head than to make the strings. ”

“ Of the intermittent processes, the one most in use in America is the "Lowe," in which the coke or anthracite is heated to incandescence in a generator lined with firebrick, by an air blast, the heated products of combustion as they leave the generator and enter the superheaters being supplied with more air, which causes the combustion of the carbon monoxide present in the producer gas, and heats up the firebrick "baffles" with which the superheater is filled. ”

“ Taking up the consideration of the diameter of the wheel now, and allowing that on the score of economy cast iron must be used for wheels in freight service, we are led to reflect that here heavy loads are carried, and there is a growing tendency to increase them by letting the floor of the car down to a level with the draft timbers. All this makes it desirable to have the wheels strong and small to avoid bent axles and broken flanges, to enable us to build a strong truck, to reduce the dead weight of cars to a minimum, and have wrecks quickly cleared away. ”

“ It has been known for some years that all explosives (including gunpowder) are capable of two orders of explosion according as they are merely ignited or excited by a weak fuse or as they are powerfully shocked by a more vigorous excitant. Fulminate of mercury has been found most serviceable for the latter purpose. With melenite the French have reproduced all the results that the Germans have effected with gun-cotton and have found that a shell containing 119 pounds of it will penetrate nearly ten feet of solid cement, but will not penetrate armored turrets six to eight inches thick. ”

“ Reading about a fact, or commiting to memory the literature of a subject, is desirable and even necessary, but knowledge of this character partakes more of the nature of faith than that gained by actual experience. ”

“ Many experiments have been made with the view of determining the percentage of carbon monoxide in air which is fatal to human or, rather, animal life, and the most reliable as well as the latest results are those obtained by Dr. Stevenson, of Guy's Hospital, in consequence of the two deaths which took place at the Leeds forge from inhaling uncarbureted water gas containing 40 per cent. of carbon monoxide. He found that one per cent. visibly affected a mouse in one and a half minutes, and in one hour and three quarters killed it, while one-tenth of a per cent. ”

“ I should point out that the smoke of London contains large quantities of these oils, and they, by coating the drops of mist on which they condense, give the fog that haunts our streets that peculiar richness which is so irritating and injurious to the system, and, further, by preventing the water from being again easily taken up by the air, prolong the duration of the fog. ”

“ All are theoretically better than any which have stood the test of battle; but each excels its predecessor in some particular feature. The use of high explosives is the direct cause of the very latest transformations in marine architecture, and is destined to work still greater changes; but it will require a war between the most civilized nations of the world, and a long war, to either confirm or condemn the many theoretical machines and methods of destruction that modern science has produced. ”

“ To pierce modern armor at all a shell must be made of forged steel, so thick that the capacity of the cavity for the bursting charge is reduced to one-fourth or one-fifth of what it is in the common shell; the result is that a charge of powder is frequently not powerful enough to burst the shell at all; it simply blows the plug out of the filling hole in the rear. In addition it is found that in passing through armor, the heat generated is so great that the powder is prematurely ignited. ”

“ A head full of theory is of little value without practice, and although the student may apply himself with all his energies for years, his time will, to a great extent, have been spent in vain, unless he by experiment rivets the ideas he gains by his study. ”

“ The streets of Gloversville and Johnstown are lined with pretty and tasteful homes, in which the hum of the sewing machine is constantly heard during the working hours of the day, but the workers are exceptionally fortunate in being able while earning good wages to enjoy all the comforts and surroundings of home, and in being practically their own masters and mistresses. ”

“ An ethnic impulse seems to have driven them on to such work, just as a similar impulse drives the Haida slate carver to-day; just as a similar impulse has driven the Bushman to cover the walls of his caves in South Africa with pictures whose boldness and fidelity are the amazement of all who see them. ”

“ The fact that oxygen gas is capable of undergoing condensation while chlorine and bromine are not is easily explained. The oxygen atom, being divalent, is capable of uniting itself to two other atoms of oxygen or other elements, and thus with oxygen forming ozone. The atoms of chlorine and bromine, however, being only monovalent, have all their affinity satisfied when they are united to a single other atom of chlorine and bromine. It is not possible, therefore, that condensation can take place if the atoms remain monovalent. ”

“ It is well known that mortar fire is very inaccurate, except at fixed long distances, in consequence of the high angle, the slowness of flight of the projectile, the variability of the powder pressure, and the inability to change the elevation and the charge of powder rapidly. In the pneumatic gun, the complete control of the pressure remedies the most important of the mortar's defects and makes the fire accurate from long ranges down to within a few yards of the gun. ”

“ Oil dressing or Indian dressing—which merely differ in application, but are founded upon the same principle—is the most simple method of curing skins. The principle of each is the soaking of the gelatine fibers of the skin with oil, the union of the latter and the gelatine appearing in the form of oxide, and resulting in the insoluble, undecomposable, pliant, and tough material known to the commercial world as leather. ”

“ The French war with China was equally unsatisfactory from a military point of view. The Chinese at Foochow were annihilated because the French opened fire first, and the only shell that penetrated a French ironclad was filled with lamp black instead of powder. The national riots that we are accustomed to hear of in South America are likewise of little instructive value; they buy their weapons of more civilized people, but there is always something fatally defective about the tactics pursued in using them. ”

“ If then we can fill the small cavity in the shell with an explosive which will not ignite prematurely, and yet will burst the shell properly after it has passed through the armor, the problem will be solved. Wet or paraffined gun-cotton can be made sluggish enough to satisfy the first condition; but at present the difficulty is to make it explode at all. The more sluggish the gun-cotton, the more powerful must be the fuse exploders to detonate it, and such exploders are themselves liable to premature ignition in passing through the armor. ”