The original and copies are turned about from time to time on their bases in a manner similar to that already described in treating the Wenzel. As many as twenty copies can be made on the largest machines.
Quite recently there has been installed in Southwark, London, a gigantic Bontempi which stands 27 feet high, and handles blocks 5 feet 6 inches square by 10 feet high, and some 20 tons in weight. Owing to the huge masses to be worked only one copy can be made at a time; though, doubtless, if circumstances warranted the expense, a machine could be built to do double, triple, or quadruple duty. The proprietors have discovered an abrasive to grind granite—ordinary steel chisels would be useless—and they expect a great demand for columns and monumental work in this stubborn material, as their machines turn out finished stuff a dozen times faster than the mason.
An interesting story is told about the early days of Signor Bontempi's invention. When he set up his experimental machine at Florence, the workmen, following the example of the Luddites, rose in a body and threatened both him and his apparatus with destruction. The police had to be called in to protect the inventor, who thought it prudent to move his workshop to Naples, where the populace had broader-minded views. The Florentines are now sorry that they drove Signor Bontempi away, for they find that instead of depressing the labour market, the mechanical sculptor is a very good friend to both proprietor and employé.
Note.—For information and illustrations the author has to thank Mr. W. Hanson Boorne, of the Machine Sculpture Company, Aldermary House, London, E.C., and Mr. E. W. Gaz, secretary of the Automatic Sculpture Syndicate, Sumner Street, Southwark.
[CHAPTER XXVII]
AN AUTOMATIC RIFLE
While science works ceaselessly to cure the ills that human flesh is heir to, invention as persistently devises weapons for man's destruction. Yesterday it was the discoveries of Pasteur and the Maxim gun; to-day it is the Finsen rays and the Rexer automatic rifle.
Though one cannot restrain a sigh on examining a new contrivance, the sole function of which is to deal out death and desolation—sadly wondering why such ingenuity might not have been directed to the perfecting of a machine which would render life more easy and more pleasant; yet from a book which deals with modern mechanisms we may not entirely exclude reference to a class of engines on which man has expended so much thought ever since gunpowder first entered the arena of human strife.
We therefore choose as our subject for this chapter a weapon hailing from Denmark, a country which, though small in area, contains many inventors of no mean repute.