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Among modern devices in the laundry, worked by hand, is, first, the washing-machine, in which the principle is adapted of rolling over or kneading the clothes. By moving a lever by hand up and down, the clothes are thoroughly rubbed, squeezed and lifted at each stroke. Then comes the wringer, a common form of which consists of two parallel rolls of vulcanized and otherwise specially treated rubber, fitted to shafts which, by an arrangement of cog-wheels, gearing and springs in the framework at the ends of rolls, and a crank handle, are made to roll on each other. The clothes are passed between the rollers, the springs permit the rollers to yield and part more or less, according to the thickness of the clothes.

Then the old-fashioned, or the new-fashioned mangle is brought into play. The old-style mangle had a box, weighted with stone, which was reciprocated on rollers, and was run back and forth upon the clothes spread upon a polished table beneath. One of the more modern styles is on the principle of the wringer above described, or a series of rollers arranged around a central drum, and each having a rubber spring attached, by which means the clothes are not subjected to undue pressure at one or two points, as in the first mentioned kind.

Starch is also applied by a similar machine. The cloth is dipped into a body of starch, or the same is applied by hand, and then the superfluous starch squeezed out as the clothes are passed through the rollers.

But for hotels and other large institutions washing is now done by steam-power machinery.

It is an attractive sight to step into a modern laundry, operated with the latest machinery on the largest scale. The first thing necessary in many localities is

to clarify the water. This is done by attaching to the service pipe tanks filled with filtering material, through which the water flows before reaching the boiler. The driving engine and shafting are compactly placed at one end or side of the room, with boilers and kettles conveniently adjacent. The water and clothes are supplied to the washing-machine, and operated by the engine. Steam may be used in addition to the engine to keep it boiling hot, or steam may be substituted entirely for the water.

The machine may be one of several types selected especially for the particular class of goods to be washed. There is the dash-wheel, constructed on the principle of the cylinder churn; the outer case being stationary and the revolving dash-wheel watertight, or perforated, which is the preferred form for collars and cuffs. In place of the dash-wheel cylinders are sometimes used, having from sixty to seventy revolutions a minute. Another form has vibrating arms or beaters, giving between four hundred and five hundred strokes a minute, and by which the clothes are squeezed between rubbing corrugated boards. The rubbing boards also roll the clothes over and over until they are thoroughly washed. In another form a rotating cylinder for the clothes is provided with an arrangement of pipes by which either steam, water or blueing can be introduced as desired, into the cylinder, through its hollow journals, so that the clothes can be washed, rinsed, and blued without removal from the machine.

Another type has perforated, reciprocating pistons, between which the clothes are alternately squeezed and released, a supply of fresh water being constantly introduced through one of the hollow cylinder journals, while the used water is discharged

through the opposite journal; and in still another the clothes are placed in a perforated cylinder within an outer casing, and propeller blades, assisted by other spiral blades, force a continuous current of water through the clothes.

In ironing, hollow polishing rolls of various sizes are used, heated either by steam or gas. The articles to be ironed are placed in proper position upon a table and carried under and in contact with the rolls. Or the goods are ironed between a heated cylinder and a revolving drum covered with felting, and the polishing effected by the cylinder revolving faster than the drum. Ingenious forms of hand-operated ironing machines for turning over and ironing the edges of collars, and other articles, are in successful

use.

CHAPTER XXI.

WOOD-WORKING.

IN surveying the wonderful road along which have travelled the toiling inventors, until the splendid fields of the present century have been reached, the mind indulges in contrasts and reverts to the far gone period of man's deprivations, when man, the animal, was fighting for food and shelter.

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"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?"

King Lear III, IV.

When the implements of labour and the weapons of war were chiefly made of stone, or bronze, or iron, such periods became the "age" of stone, or bronze, or iron; and we sometimes hear of the ages of steam, steel and electricity. But the age of wood has always existed, wherever forests abounded. It was, doubtless, the earliest "age" in the industries of man, but is not likely to be the latest, as the class of inventions we are about to consider, although giving complete dominion to man over the forests, are hastening their destruction.

As in every other class of inventions, there had been inventions in the class of wood-working through the ages preceding this century, in tools, imple ments and machines; but not until near the close of the eighteenth century had there been much of a

break in the universal toil by hand. The implements produced were, for the most part, the result of the slow growth of experience and mechanical skill, rather than the product of inventive genius.

True, the turning-lathe, the axe, the hammer, the chisel, the saw, the auger, the plane, the screw, and cutting and other wood-shaping instruments in simple forms existed in abundance. The Egyptians used their saws of bronze. The Greeks deified their supposed inventor of the saw, Talus, or Perdix, and they claimed Theodore of Lamos as the inventor of the turning-lathe; although the main idea of pivoting an object between two supports, so that it could be turned while the hands were free to apply a tool to its shaping, was old in the potter's wheel of the Egyptians, which was turned while the vessel resting upon it was shaped and ornamented by the hand and tools. It appears also to have been known by the Hindoos and the Africans.

Pliny refers to the curled chips raised by the plane, and Ansonius refers to mills driven by the waters of the Moselle for sawing marble into slabs. Early records mention saw-mills run by water-power in the thirteenth century in France, Germany and Norway; and Sweden had them in the next century. Holland had them one hundred years at least before they were introduced into England.

Fearful of the entire destruction of the forests by the wood used in the manufacture of iron, and incited by the opposition and jealousy of hand sawyers, England passed some rigid laws on the subject in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which, although preserving the forests, gave for a long time the almost exclusive manufacture of iron and lumber to Germany and Holland. Even as late as 1768,

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