It would take a larger book than this to tell all the things that are done in the making of wire for various uses. In the main, the entire volume produced either goes to market as wire of one sort and another, to be applied to its various objects or for sale, or else it is twisted into rope, of which the Roebling Company manufactures four hundred kinds, sizes and many qualities. The common fence wires are not among the Roebling specialties, but wire nettings are manufactured from a soft variety of basic steel which lends itself to the weaving process with almost the ease of animal and vegetable fibres.
THE ENDLESS MANUFACTURES FROM “FLAT WIRE”
The “flat wire,” which has now attained immense volume of production, is, for the most part, rolled down from the round, in many qualities, and shipped as material to the makers of many things. There are wide, thin, beautiful ribbons which find their way to the shoestring factories and are cut and clinched to the laces as tips. The list of novelties and parts that are made from various forms and widths of flat wire is as long as the list of Smiths in a New York directory. In the novelty shop, which does a million things, wires are cut and mechanically bent in hundreds of thousands of shapes, for clothes hangers, pail ear staples, daubers for bottles, meat skewers, hog rings, thread guards for textile machinery, basket fasteners, shackles for car seals, saddlery parts, Welsbach mantles, clips and links for bedsprings, wiring for toys of all descriptions—and so on and on and on. And all this novelty business is a side line, like the square and triangular wires that are used by oil well drillers to keep the sand from getting into the oil.
The special shapes of high quality wire that are made to order, to provide hard-wearing parts for typewriters and many other machines, are almost without number.
SALVAGING “MILL ENDS”
With the increasing cost of labor and materials effort has been made to salvage and make use of “mill ends” of wire, running sometimes to large quantity, which formerly were accounted waste. These are now passed through a straightening machine, which lays them out in uniform bundles of some ten feet in length, which again may be cut to shorter lengths for special purposes. In the buildings where this is done, at the Upper Plant, are piles of neat bundles of all shapes and sizes and grades, which once went to the scrap for reworking but now are utilized without additional cost.
COPPER WIRE AND COPPER ROPE
Copper wire is manufactured by the Roebling mills in very large quantities and in many sizes and forms, principally for electrical use and for service where water corrosion shortens the life of steel. The little bond wires that link the rails of railways to perfect the carriage of current in the block signal system are mostly steel, but copper is used at stations and on sidings where the leakage from standing cars is apt to contain acids. Copper wire of all sizes down to the very fine is spooled and sold for use in arts and manufactures. For marine uses a deal of copper rope is made, and copper strand is twisted for lightning rods, the fixtures and supports of which, in turn, are manufactured from round and flat steel wire. The piles of this equipment, waiting shipment in the Roebling storerooms, give proof that the satire of the cartoonist and the mockery of the funny writer cannot destroy an ancient faith.
The telephone and telegraph companies use uncountable miles of copper wire in line service and other miles in fine sizes for instrument coils and divers other functions. Electricity as an agent would be a halting cripple without wire. The dynamo would have little more utility than a washtub. Armatures, frames for which are formed from flat steel wire, are wound in the Roebling plant in impressive number.