We might linger with profit over the elaborate models of Chinese manufactures—sugar, rice, tobacco, paper, etc., showing the stages of cultivation, manufacture, and packing for transportation and market—but perhaps it will be as well to slip across the alley and visit the ancient island of Zipango.
Zipango, Nipon, Japon, have one consistent syllabic element, and the rulers of the country are so desirous that it should take its place among the civilized nations of the world that they have not shown to any liberal extent the native machinery, except in the form of models which attract but little attention, a few machines for winding and measuring silk, some curious articles of bamboo and ratan, fishpots and baskets, and cutlery of native shapes.
TOOL-GRINDING EMERY-WHEEL.
The exclusiveness which had marked the policy of Japan from time immemorial, and which was somewhat roughly intruded upon by Captain Perry, and subsequently by other explorers and diplomatists, has given place to a change which amounts to a revolution. Japan, under the name of Zipango, took its place on the map of the world some time before Columbus discovered, unwittingly to himself, that a continent intervened between Western Europe and Eastern Asia. When Columbus made his voyage in search of Asia, assisted by those very estimable persons Ferdinand and Isabella, it was on the part of the latter intended as a flank movement against the Portuguese, who, consequent upon the discovery of the passage of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama, had obtained a patent from the pope for the eastern route to India. The globe of Martin Behaim at that time depicted Zipango as off the coast of Asia and near the longitude actually occupied by the Carolinas and Florida, the eastward extension of Asia being fearfully exaggerated. The globe of John Schöner, of 1520, fourteen years after the death of Columbus, had Zipango in the same place, and Cuba alongside of it, ranging north and south. So loath were geographers to give up preconceived ideas. Columbus died supposing he had discovered "fourteen hundred islands and three hundred and thirty-three leagues of the coast of Asia," and hence our group are called the West Indies, and our aborigines Indians. Such are one's reflections as one wanders in the Japanese section, dreaming among the objects of a land which has just awaked from what may be called the sleep of centuries.
Italy has much that is valuable as well as beautiful in other classes, but her attempts in agricultural machinery are but rude. Here, for example, is a plough. Well, perhaps it is not exactly that which made the trench over which Remus leaped, to be slain by his twin wolf-nursling, but it is the plough of Bocchi Gaetano of Parma, is twelve feet long and weighs something under half a ton. Another, hard by, is two feet longer and has but one handle. Efforts are evident, however, to assimilate the country to the portions of Europe more advanced in mechanical matters. When we reflect upon how much we owe to Italy, we can but wish her well, but we cannot delay long with her in a search for objects of mechanical interest except to examine her models of tunnels, manner of scaffolding, boring and blasting. The Mont Cenis tunnel must stand as the grandest work of its kind until that of Saint Gothard is finished. An exemplification by a model constructed to a scale of the electric ballista of Spezzia for testing the hundred-ton gun lately made in England for Italy attracts a great many visitors, and the large photographs which give the condition of the butt after each impact of the projectiles brings up again the double problem as it is stated: How to construct a gun and projectile which shall be able to pierce the heaviest armor; and how to construct armor which shall be proof against the heaviest shot. Many saw with interest in the Machinery Building at the Centennial the eight-inch armor-plating made by Cammell of Sheffield, tested in one case by nine spherical shots overlapping, making an indentation of 3.12 inches with balls from a seven-inch gun driven by thirty pounds of powder at a range of seventy feet. They are here again, and so is the nine-inch armor with a much deeper indentation from a chilled Palisser bolt. Here is also a new-comer, John Brown, whose armor of four and a half inches of steel welded on to the same thickness of iron resists the Palisser bolt, which only penetrates the thickness of the steel. What might happen to it with a pointed steel bolt from a sixty- or one-hundred-ton gun is another matter. To set our minds at rest as to what would occur in the event supposed comes Sir Joseph Whitworth, who exhibits his gun with polygonal rifling, the bore being a hexagon with rounded corners. The projectiles are moulded of the same shape, and are fired as they are cast, without planing. One of these bolts, six diameters long and weighing twenty-nine and a half pounds, was fired from a twelve-pounder gun through a four and a half inch armor-plate. The exhibit also shows a flat-fronted Whitworth fluid-pressed steel shell, three diameters long, weighing eight hundred and eight pounds, which was fired at Gavre, France, without a bursting charge, from a Whitworth twelve-inch, thirty-five-ton gun, and penetrated iron sixteen inches thick and twelve inches of oak backing. The shell remained entire and was only slightly distorted. The question seems to be answered, unless the plates are made twenty inches thick, and that is impossible on a vessel to be manoeuvred.
Sweden comes next, and the scene changes; for the weapon which suggested the remarks was only, as it were, one gun in a garden. Instead of wine and olives we find iron and furs. Except some Indian steels, there is no better metal than that of Sweden, and horse-shoe nails are made of it all over Europe and the United States. Iron in ore, pig, rails, bars, rods, wire; iron in tools, files, wheels, balls, shells, pans, boilers, stoves, springs; iron ad lib.
The agricultural machines of Sweden, like those of Denmark, are copies of the American and English, and the same is true to a large extent of the engines, saw-mills, water-wheels and wood-working machinery. The statement would not be true of the very elaborate exercising-machines (la gymnastique médicale mécanique) invented by Gustave Zander of Stockholm. They embrace every conceivable variety of effort, and also another class of applications which may be termed shampooing, as they consist of kneading and rubbing. Among the twenty machines are those designed for flexing, stretching and extending the limbs, for kneading the back and neck, for rubbing the body and limbs to induce circulation and simulate the effect of exercise in the cases of weak persons or those confined to their beds by casualties. Some of these were in Philadelphia in 1876.
Steering-apparatus and gun-harpoons for whaling testify to the maritime character of the people, as do the boats and ropes. The great exhibit of pâte de bois shows the anxiety of the people to turn their extensive forests to good account in the markets of the world. White pine seems to be the principal wood thus used. Norway and Sweden have been shipping timber for some centuries, and yet seem to need no laws to restrain the denudation of their hills; certainly not to encourage rainfall. Bergen has 88.13 inches per annum, which is just double that of Philadelphia, and four inches greater than that of Sitka, where the people say it is always raining. Of course these figures are small when compared to spots on the Himalayas, where Hooker observed a fall of 470 inches in seven months, and on one occasion 30 inches in four hours; the latter equal to the average annual rainfall of France.
The American machinery, which occupies a position between Norway and England, is creditable in kind and quality, but fails very far in giving a correct idea of the multiplicity of our industries. Almost the only evidence of our textile manufactures are two of Tilt's Jacquard silk-weaving looms. The telephones of Edison and Gray excite unremitting astonishment and admiration, and have both received the highest possible awards. Our wood-working is practically shown in a large variety by Fay & Co. of Cincinnati, and one or two other special machines by other makers. The Wheelock engine, which drives all the machinery in our section of the main building, has very properly been awarded a grand prize. It is all that can be desired in an engine, and has a singular simplicity of construction, with few working parts. It is the same which drove the machinery in the Agricultural Building at the Centennial. The steam is admitted and exhausted by a valve at each end of the cylinder placed directly below the port. The cut-off valve is behind the main valve: the mechanism for operating the valves is on the outside of the steam-chest, and easily accessible. The valves and seats are made tapering in their general diameter, and the pressure of steam comes on one side, also acting to keep the collar in contact with the sleeve.