TWISTED IRON: MINING BUILDING.
Holding a pen as in writing, the sender marks down his message, draws a design, inscribes his name—in fact, uses the pen as freely as if it had “no connection with the establishment across the way.” But two cords extend out from this pen and work an electric apparatus so as to pull two other cords or wires just as the first ones are moved: if he makes a mark down, the other pen is pulled down too; whatever one pen does, the other must do. Of course, then, any drawing or writing made upon one machine is also made on the other—no matter whether it is in the next room, the next county, or the next State. That is the telautograph—the name being Greek for “far-self-writer.”
In the exhibit of the Commercial Cable Company were shown the method of writing messages in wavy lines, and bits of cable where the covering had been injured, and the injury—sometimes no larger than a tack would make—traced and located many miles from shore by means of delicate tests.
Down-stairs were great dynamos, electric cars, the Edison-light tower, which they had already seen in operation on their first evening at the Fair, and such an array of complicated measures, meters, and tests that the boys walked humbly out, feeling very small indeed as they passed the heroic statue of Benjamin Franklin in the portico. They felt that for the first time they understood how great a man was the printer’s boy who began by carrying two rolls under his arms and ended by carrying a thunderbolt under one arm and a scepter under the other.
“But even he,” said Harry, as he jingled a pocketful of expensive souvenirs, “once paid too dear for his whistle.”
The Electricity Building’s stocky twin, the Mining Exhibit, was right next door, and came next upon Philip’s neat list. But they did not intend to give a very long time to this building. They knew it to be full of minerals and mining machinery, and now felt small enough to admit there were two or three things in each display that they did not understand.
The first distinct feature was the Stumm exhibit, which, behind a most imposing gateway of wrought-iron, showed rails and pipes in sizes ranging from mammoth to midget, built into two towering obelisks, and two trophies that resembled iron fountains. They gazed upon these with vague admiration, and then set out to find the Tiffany diamond show; they “found it, indeed, but it made their hearts bleed” to see the crowd piled three or four deep against every loophole and knot-hole where a wheel or a band was visible.
The same result followed an attempt to inspect the Kimberley diamond-washing. They did see an enormous Zulu with embroidered suspenders pour a bucket of bluish mud into a great hopper, but though they lingered round in a most lamblike way, nothing else was to be observed.
Iowa showed a life-size model of a coal-miner at work in his gallery; and at one glance the boys learned how it would feel to be “down in a coal-mine, underneath the ground, where a ray of sunlight never can be found.” They also enjoyed hearing and seeing the steam-drills, and gazed curiously at a model of “Lot’s wife,”—a woman built of salt,—in the Louisiana Exhibit. Various mines had sent models showing just how their galleries were built, and the boys inspected them critically. But they did not find very much to detain them in the Mining Building. Other people, too, seemed more interested in the souvenir stands than in the profusion of ores and stone blocks. Montana’s silver statue of Justice seemed to the boys more of a curiosity than a work of art, and they had no patience with the long arrays of machinery that meant nothing to them. Those who were examining the exhibits were few, and the large crowds were watching the counters where small metal articles were plated, or were sitting in corners where they could rest themselves.