Gadget

“ Specifically, it is designed to influence roulette and dice games."
I looked at the gadget with a little more interest this time. There was nothing new in the idea of inventing a gadget to cheat the red-and-black wheels, of course; the local cops turn up a dozen a day here in the city. Most of them either don't work at all or else they're too obvious, so the users get nabbed before they have a chance to use them. ”

“ Broadly speaking, they must pick their way warily through the maze of artifacts, gadgets and gimmicks produced by human ingenuity during the current world revolution. Most of them are superficial and time consuming. ”

“ By erasing the paragraph immediately before the words, 'What I claim as my invention is,' and substituting therefor the following: 'The combination of ten finger-rest, D, with the burnishing tool and the rest for the face of the sole is the main feature of my invention; all the other points of novelty in my machine also relate to new combinations of old elements.' This also would indicate that the rest for the face of the sole was something distinct, both from the finger-rest and from the burnishing tool, which is impossible, as it must necessarily form a part of one of them. ”

“ Indeed, if our winter had been as long as poor Captain Greely's was, and if you had met me every week, we should have had a new invention for each one. Here are the telephone and the telegraph. Here is the use of the electric light. Here is the sewing-machine, with all its nice details, like the button-hole maker. Nay, every button is made by its own machinery. Here are carpets one quarter cheaper than they were only four years ago; cotton cloths made more by machinery and less by hand labor; nay, they tell us that the cotton is to be picked by a machine before long. ”

“ All the other wonderful inventions of the human brain sink pretty nearly into commonplaces contrasted with this awful mechanical miracle. Telephones, telegraphs, locomotives, cotton-gins, sewing- machines, Babbage calculators, jacquard looms, perfecting presses, all mere toys, simplicities! The Paige Compositor marches alone and far in the land of human inventions.
In one paragraph of Orion's letter he refers to the machine as a "cunning devil, knowing more than any man that ever lived." ”

“ No, except he says he’s an inventor. He came into my place yesterday, and got me to fix some sort of a tool. I never saw one like it before. It was like a long chisel, or a big tack lifter. I thought it might be for taking up carpets, and I asked him, but he said it was a new tool he had invented, and that he wasn’t at liberty to tell me what it was for. ”

“ The simplest application of a principle of mechanics to an every-day hand-tool may convert it into what is called a machine. Take a three-pronged fork—one of the universal tools;—fasten a rope to the end of the handle; put a log under the fork as a fulcrum; and we have a lever, when pulled down by the rope, which will grub up a strongly-rooted large shrub in a few minutes. The labourer has called in a powerful ally. The tool has become a machine. ”

“ As a matter of fact a fine machine-tool is more liable than a watch to get out of order through careless handling, and it no more than a watch, can be properly repaired by a bungler. It follows that skill in the use of machine-tools is as essential to a successful mechanical career now, as skill in the use of hand-tools was formerly. ”

“ What a picture of the influence of tools upon civilization! It is through the use of tools that man has [8] reached the place of absolute supremacy among animals. As he increases his stock of tools he recedes from the state of savagery. The great gulf between the aboriginal savage and the civilized man is spanned by the seven hand-tools—the axe, the saw, the plane, the hammer, the square, the chisel, and the file. These are the universal tools of the arts, and the modern machine-shop is an aggregation of them rendered automatic and driven by steam. ”

“ The great and small tools, the automata of the machine-shop, are no less triumphs of mechanical genius than the “powerful oscillating engines of the Warrior.” The prime difficulty of the hand-worker was to make two things exactly alike, then followed the impossibility of making many things—the narrow limit of human capacity to produce. At that point the inventor appeared with a machine which would make a thousand things in the time the hand-worker required to make one, and each one of them the exact counterpart of every other. ”

“ When you want proper instruments for any work you are about, use all expedients you can invent, rather than leave your work undone. For instance, if the poker be out of the way, or broken, stir the fire with the tongs; if the tongs be not at hand, use the muzzle of the bellows, the wrong end of the fireshovel, the handle of the firebrush, the end of a mop, or your master's cane. If you want paper to singe a fowl, tear the first book you see about the house. Wipe your shoes, for want of a clout, with, the bottom of a curtain, or a damask napkin. Strip your livery lace for garters. ”

“ Now while all of the above devices have been invented and patented the point is that every one of them has a bug, that is a flaw in it somewhere; by which I mean that in each and every case, except the toys and amusements, the device is too hard to work, costs too much, takes too much time, is too troublesome, is too poorly made or is not as comfortable as the old-fashioned thing. ”

“ However this may be, the machine had lain hidden by dust and the flotsam and jetsam of the house for twenty years, when, as I have said, I came upon it unexpectedly. Old man as I am--I shall soon be thirty--the fascination of a machine has lost none of its potency. I am as pleased to-day watching the wheels of my watch "go round" as ever I was, and to "monkey" with a type-writing apparatus has always brought great joy into my heart--though for composing give me the pen. ”

“ The amateur who would like to possess table-ware, jewelry, or miscellaneous articles plated with silver or gold by his own hands, and the intelligent boy in a plater's shop who wants to supplement his oral instruction with a record of facts and figures that he can not well carry in his memory, will both find their needs supplied by this manual. Much or little electrical and mechanical knowledge may be used in electro-plating: the amateur may make his own battery or dynamo if he desires, or he may buy apparatus of one of the kinds and makes named in this book. ”

“ When steam is “turned on” the aspect of the Machine-tool Laboratory is completely changed. Steam is, indeed, the arch-revolutionist; it breathes the breath of life into inanimate things—makes them think, speak, and act. The low hum of unused machinery first salutes the ear; then [99] the students take their places. They are three years older than when we encountered them in the engine-room. They are from seventeen to twenty years of age. They are no longer boys; they are young men—robust, hearty-looking young men. ”

“ It is the age of the machine. Mechanical processes are doing the work that formerly demanded mental skill. The village blacksmith no longer commands admiration by his picturesque and intelligent forging of the nail and shoe—he buys them ready made by machinery. The learned shoemaker no longer artfully fashions my lady’s dainty slipper—the shoe machine punches it out. We bawl letters and dinner invitations through that mechanical device, the telephone, instead of writing them in the old fashioned courtly way. ”

“ Likewise, an Instrument may be made to fly withal, if one sit in the midst of the Instrument, and do turn an engine, by which the wings being Artificially composed, may beat air after the manner of a flying Bird. By an Instrument of three fingers high, and three fingers broad, a man may rid himself and others from all Imprisonment: yea, such an Instrument may easily be made, whereby a man may violently draw unto him a thousand men, will they, nill they, or any other thing. ”

“ In other words, I acquired a mechanical sound-magnifier, a microphone, an instrument, of late called the dictaphone, which translates the lightest tap of a pencil-end into something which reached the ear with the force of a hammer-blow. And the whole thing, battery, coil, insulated wire, carbon bars and glass base, could be carried in its leather case or thrust under my coat as easily as a folded opera hat. ”

“ The inventor we now come to has apparently been in a wholesale business, where he has got into the habit of doing things on a large and exhaustive scale, for he takes out protection for a hat with a brim or peak adapted to receive certain useful articles, namely, a looking-glass, comb, pencil, &c. But this is nothing compared to the invention of another gentleman who patents a walking-stick which contains a pistol, powder, ball, screw, telescope, pen, ink, paper, pencil, knife, and drawing materials! ”

“ An entire volume might be filled with plans for electrical toys and yet not exhaust the innumerable forms that are within the ability of a boy to construct. There is room in this chapter for only a few, and I have selected simple ideas, those that can be carried out by a boy having no knowledge of working with electricity, with materials that can be obtained at an expenditure of little or nothing. ”

“ But your hand is a machine that, besides buttoning and unbuttoning buttons of various sizes, is doing continually a great variety of things that machines can not do. No machine can take up a pen and write, or even move a stick about as your hand can. When some ingenious man makes a machine that can do any one thing like what the hand does, it excites our wonder, and we say, How curious! ”

“ ELECTRIC TOY MAKING, DYNAMO BUILDING, AND ELECTRIC MOTOR CONSTRUCTION. By PROF. T. O'CONOR SLOANE. This work treats of the making at home of electrical toys, electrical apparatus, motors, dynamos and instruments in general, and is designed to bring within the reach of young and old the manufacture of genuine and useful electrical appliances. The work is especially designed for amateurs and young folks. Thousands of our young people are daily experimenting, and busily engaged in making electrical toys and apparatus of various kinds. ”

“ Darrow describe the great inventions of man, but he applies the principles underlying them to simple apparatus which the boy can construct for himself. The aëroplane, the balloon, the various kinds of engines, the telephone, the telegraph, the submarine, the telescope—all these and many more come in for consideration, followed in each case with simple experiments which the reader can make for himself, and in many cases with explicit directions for the construction of an adaptation of the machine or instrument. ”

“ My eldest hopeful, impelled by that spirit of enterprise and audacity characteristic of nine-year-old boys, had ventured to experiment with the kitchen automaton, and by sheer accident had effected a working connection between the battery and the indicator, and the machine, in “going off,” had given the boy a blow that made him feel, as he expressed it, “like a funny-bone all over.” ”

“ The ancients constructed automata which were exceedingly ingenious. In the statues that could walk and talk, the Chinese puppets and the marionettes of the Greeks there was a hint of the modern automatic tools, which, driven by steam, fashion with equal accuracy the delicate parts of the watch and the huge segments of the marine engine. ”

“ Neither the voice nor the ear is adapted to the task. But the hand fashions and presents the telephone, and the conversation proceeds even in a whisper. It will be said that the mind devises the telescope, the microscope, and the telephone. True, but their construction would be impossible without the hand. And is it at all probable that the mind would have devised these admirable instruments if man had been made without hands? ”

“ The pieces of apparatus I conceived were to me absolutely real and tangible in every detail, even to the minute marks and signs of wear. I delighted in imagining the motors constantly running, for in this way they presented to mind's eye a more fascinating sight. When natural inclination develops into a passionate desire, one advances towards his goal in seven-league boots. ”

“ Batteries, commutators, multipliers, switches, wires innumerable control those nimble fingers, the machinery of which may be set in motion as automatically as in a pianola, the player all the time chatting as if he had nothing to do in controlling the apparatus—habit again, the gradual acquisition of power by long practice and at the expense of many mistakes. ”

“ Fig. 281.—Magic toys.
A conducting wire leads from the pin into the waistcoat pocket, where a small “pile,” about the size of a cigarette, is hidden away. If any one particularly admires the scarf-pin, all you have to do is to insinuate your fingers into your pocket, and you will, by contact, cause the electric current to act upon the pin in your scarf. The death’s head will at once begin to roll its eyes and grind its teeth, while the rabbit, under similar circumstances, will begin to play its bell with the greatest energy. ”

“ Indicating as it does, in every line, the familiarity of the author with every detail of daily experience in the shop, it cannot fail to be of service to any man practically connected with the shaping or finishing of metals. There is nothing experimental or visionary about the book, all devices being in actual use and giving good results. It might be called a compendium of shop methods, showing a variety of special tools and appliances which will give new ideas to many mechanics, from the superintendent down to the man at the bench. ”