Machinery for Special Purposes

In hundreds of articles on manufacturing and manufactured products there are excellent descriptions of the machinery employed. Cotton-Spinning Machinery (Vol. 7, p. 301), by Professor Fox, of Manchester University, gives details, with illustrations, of the modern systems of spinning, all founded on the inventions of Paul, Arkwright, Hargreaves and Crompton, while an historical account of primitive machines as well as much practical information, will be found under Spinning (Vol. 25, p. 685). Weaving has a section Weaving Machinery (Vol. 28, p. 443). An account of the special machinery and appliances used in the manufacture of woollens is included in Professor Barker’s illustrated article Wool, Worsted and Woollen Manufactures (Vol. 28, p. 805). In Hosiery (Vol. 13, p. 788) we learn about framework knitting and warp-knitting machines. It is recorded that up to the middle of the 19th century only a flat web could be knitted, and that a circular knitting machine of American origin is the type of machine on which is produced the seamless hosiery of to-day. This was introduced by J. W. Lamb in 1863. Rope and Rope Making (Vol. 23, p. 713), by Thomas Woodhouse, of the Dundee Technical College, is richly illustrated with pictures of the most modern type of machinery for the manufacture of fibre and wire ropes. The various machines and apparatus for sugar making are carefully described in Sugar, Sugar Manufacture (Vol. 26, p. 35). For milling machinery see Flour and Flour Manufacture (Vol. 10, p. 548), by George F. Zimmer, author of Mechanical Handling of Material. The latest designs in agricultural machines, with illustrations, as well as a history of their development, will be found under Plough and Ploughing (Vol. 21, p. 850), Sowing (Vol. 25, p. 523), Harrow (Vol. 13, p. 27), Reaping (Vol. 22, p. 944), Thrashing (Vol. 26, p. 887), etc. It is a matter of interest that the first successful reaping-machine was invented by a Scotch clergyman in 1826. For machinery used in the modern dairy see Dairy and Dairy Products (Vol. 7, p. 750). The germ of the sewing machine dates back to 1755, and the whole story of its development is told in Sewing Machines (Vol. 24, p. 744). |A Vast Encyclopaedia of Machinery| The descriptions of machinery of various kinds are continued under such headings as Brewing, Brewing Operations (Vol. 4, p. 506), illustrated; Bellows and Blowing Machines (Vol. 3, p. 705), illustrated; Pin (Vol. 21, p. 615); Needle (Vol. 19, p. 338); Typography, Modern Practical Typography (Vol. 27, p. 542), illustrated; Printing (Vol. 22, p. 350), illustrated; Bookbinding, Modern Methods (Vol. 4, p. 218), illustrated; Textile Printing (Vol. 26, p. 694); Alkali Manufacture (Vol. 1, p. 674), illustrated; Refrigerating and Ice Making (Vol. 23, p. 30); Silk, Silk Manufacture (Vol. 25, p. 102); Lace, Machine-made Lace (Vol. 16, p. 44), illustrated; Carpet, Modern Machinery (Vol. 5, p. 396); Leather (Vol. 16, p. 330), illustrated; Bicycle (Vol. 3, p. 913), illustrated; Typewriter (Vol. 27, p. 501), illustrated; Dredge and Dredging (Vol. 8, p. 562), illustrated; and Paper, Paper Manufacture (Vol. 20, p. 727), illustrated.

Biographies of many inventors, designers and builders of machines are included in the list of articles at the end of the chapter For Engineers in this Guide, and are therefore omitted in the following alphabetical summary.

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL MACHINES AND APPLIANCES DESCRIBED IN THE BRITANNICA AND GENERAL SUBJECTS AND ARTICLES ON MACHINERY

CHAPTER VII
FOR MERCHANTS AND MANUFACTURERS OF METALS, HARDWARE, GLASS AND CHINA

Elisée Reclus, the great French student of the origins of civilization, says, in the Britannica article Fire (Vol. 10, p. 399), that “human culture may be said to have begun with fire, of which the uses increased in the same ratio as culture itself.” The industries grouped in the present chapter all depend upon the curiously diverse effects of heat; the softening and tempering of metals, the hardening of clay and the changes by which sand becomes glass. It is for the reader himself to decide whether he wishes to begin his course of reading by a study of the article Heat (Vol. 13, p. 135), and the allied articles to which it refers, and thus to understand how temperature plays its dominant part in the most useful of manufacturing processes.

Knowledge in “Layers”

It is, indeed, one of the most attractive features of the Britannica that it presents knowledge in layers. In text-books, the theoretical and practical aspects of an industry are so interwoven that you cannot separate them. But in the Britannica, if you desire only to examine the finished products of any branch of industry, as you might see them and hear them described at an exhibition or in a manufacturer’s sample room, you can turn to articles and sections of articles in which critical comment and elaborate illustrations put clearly before you the varieties of, for example, plated ware, china or glass. Proceeding to the next “layer,” you find technical information about the manufacture of these and all other goods; you have been permitted to pass from the sample room into the factory, which is not usually so easy of access. And in the scientific articles you arrive at the very substratum and foundation of knowledge; you have what the experts in the factory could not give you if they would: the clear teaching that only the great masters of science can supply.

The manufacturer, of course, absolutely needs to know all that can be learned about the origin of his materials and the principles upon which his processes are based. But the dealer, in his turn, will be a shrewder buyer, a more convincing salesman and a better manager of the salesmen under him, if he knows the whole history of his wares, of the ingredients that enter into their composition and of their manufacture. Factory experience is hardly more universal among wholesale men, most of whom begin as clerks, than among retailers, and it is impossible for a business man who has got his foot fairly on the ladder to drop his work and go through an apprenticeship or take a thorough course at a technical college. If, however, he will for a few months devote his spare time to the studies he can pursue, unaided, in the Britannica, the insight he obtains will give a new value to all the knowledge he picks up in the course of his business.