The Wonder Book Of Knowledge Part 34

Loft Manufacturing.

Aside from these special instances of electricity in construction, one must think of electricity as responsible for nearly all the manufacturing, large and small, that goes on in the ever-increasing number of loft-buildings throughout all large cities. For example, New York City serves as the center of the garment-making industry for the entire country, there being fully a quarter of a million garment-trade workers in the Greater City. Along Fifth and Fourth Avenues are found the large establishments, electrically equipped throughout for cutting, st.i.tching and pressing, while even in the smallest shops on the East Side foot-power machines have become almost a thing of the past.

Electric Heating.

The commercial use of electric heating is one of the more recent electrical developments. For the most part, this also applies to the garment trade and its closely allied clothing industries. In the modernly equipped factories one finds electric flat irons, velvet steamers and coffee urns. In the printing trade, electrically heated linotype melting pots are being introduced successfully, while glue-pots and sealing-wax melters can be seen in binderies and banking inst.i.tutions. Absence of fire risk accounts for the introduction of electric heating units of different kinds into the motion-picture film manufacturing industry, a rapidly growing province. The same element of safety where inflammable substances are employed has produced the electric j.a.pan oven and similar apparatus.

Electricity and Safety.

The importance of electricity in factory work cannot be over-estimated.

A shop fully equipped with electric machinery is the best possible kind of shop for employee as well as for the owner. Motor-driven machines are the safest possible kind, while absence of overhead shafting and dangerous belts mean health as well as security. In the electric shop, motor-driven blowers carry fumes and dust away from the worker and bring fresh air in. Electrically driven machinery is now regarded as the standard machinery. In the various vocational schools in New York City at present both boys and girls are taught to operate electrically driven machines, it being a.s.sumed that those will be what the pupils will be called upon to operate when they leave the school for the shop.

Electricity in Medicine.

Another domain of electric enterprise of the greatest value for the country at large is the increasing use of electricity in medicine. The most conspicuous element in this is the wide-spread acceptance of the X-ray as a necessary tool of the medical profession. Newspapers and magazines were full of the remarkable X-ray achievements of surgeons in charge of the various European war hospitals. Those, of course, were spectacular instances, but it should not be forgotten that every day, in our great hospitals, the X-ray is proving itself almost indispensable in the examination of the sick and injured. Besides utilizing X-ray in the diagnosis of disease, the rays themselves are employed in treatment of cancer and skin diseases. The oculist, the dentist, indeed medical specialists of all kinds, are coming to recognize the immense aid that electricity can give in its various forms and applications.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREAT PRESS ROOM OF "THE NEW YORK TIMES" IS ALL ELECTRICALLY OPERATED]

Electric Vehicles.

The electric truck has already demonstrated itself as a safer and less expensive rival of the gasoline delivery truck in many kinds of service.

In the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx alone, in New York City, there were more than 2,000 such trucks in operation in 1916. Counting both pleasure and business vehicles, the borough of Manhattan boasted about 2,500 storage-battery driven wagons in active use. It is rather interesting to note that Chicago operates many more electric pleasure cars than New York, while New York does far more of its business by means of the electric vehicle. Recently, there was established in New York an electric co-operative garage, the joint enterprise of the electric pa.s.senger car manufacturers and an electric company. It was believed that by providing proper and adequate facilities for garaging electric pleasure vehicles the use of pa.s.senger-electrics in New York City would be greatly increased.

Electricity and the Home.

In emphasizing the important part which electricity plays in the business of a great metropolis, the home should not be forgotten. It is now possible, by means of electric appliances, practically to eliminate all drudgery from housework. The use of many of these domestic machines is familiar to all: vacuum cleaners, was.h.i.+ng machines, fans, and the more usual electric cooking devices. Within the next decade, one looks to see a remarkable advance in this direction. One antic.i.p.ates the more extensive use of electric refrigeration and other electric labor-saving devices, to the great improvement of city homes, making them pleasanter and more healthy as toilsome operations are done away with. And it must not be forgotten that the city home, like the country home, is the backbone of the well-being of the community. Electricity can have no greater mission than improving, strengthening and upbuilding good homes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELECTRIC TRAIN CHART AND SWITCH CONTROL]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SUBWAY CONSTRUCTION

In the upper view the electric chart on the wall facing the switch operator indicates the location of every train in the New York subway system at all times. The lower view shows typical subway construction for third rail train and surface cars. The material used is reinforced concrete.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE TYPE OF ELECTRIC CONSTRUCTION ON RAILROADS

The system shown here is used upon the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. It consists of pairs of wire cables supported by bridges placed about 300 feet apart. Rigid triangles of iron pipe are secured to these cables and the trolley wire attached to the triangles. The trolley wire is kept rigid and free from slack in this manner.]

Decreased Cost of Electricity.

Closely akin to this is another electrical development most pleasing to consider. Years ago, electricity was considered the luxury of the rich.

Now electric light is coming to be shed on rich and poor alike. Little by little the shops, factories and dwellings of more humble inhabitants are provided with electricity, so that cleanliness, safety and comfort are by no means confined even to the well-to-do or the more comfortable homes.

One great factor in this change has been the decreasing cost of electricity. Within the last decade, the cost of almost all necessities of life has ascended with leaps and bounds, so that a dollar now, expended in ordinary household goods, will purchase hardly more than what thirty cents would in 1890. But all this while, the cost of electricity has steadily decreased. With centralized generating plants, improved machinery and better lamps, one dollar today will buy eighteen times as much electric light as it would in 1884. With such facts before us, it is fairly easy to predict the still further electrical development of all important centers. There will be more and better light in homes; there will be more and better light in offices and factories, thus greatly lessening the chances for injury or eye-strain.

In all industry, great and small, laborious hand processes will be replaced by safely operated electric machinery, while wider use of electric labor-saving appliances will extend into the home.

Hospitals, by aid of electricity, will be able to increase still more their splendid work for the relief of suffering, while cleaner and safer ways of living will serve as a preventive of disease. One can easily say that with increasing electrical development the country will come to be still greater, a country where electricity shall provide for the safety and well-being of all its people.

How is Die-Sinking Done?

Die-sinking is the art of preparing dies for stamping coins, b.u.t.tons, medallions, jewelry, fittings, etc. The steel for the manufacture of dies is carefully selected, forged at a high heat into the rough die, softened by careful annealing, and then handed over to the engraver.

After the engraver has worked out the design in intaglio the die is put through the operation of hardening, after which, being cleaned and polished, it is called a "matrix." This is not, however, generally employed in multiplying impressions, but is used for making a "punch" or steel impression for relief. For this purpose another block of steel of the same quality is selected, and, being carefully annealed or softened, is compressed by proper machinery upon the matrix until it receives the impression. When this process is complete the impression is retouched by the engraver, and hardened and collared like the matrix. Any number of dies may now be made from this punch by impressing upon it plugs of soft steel.

The Story in the Making of a Magazine[19]

The printing of a few thousand copies of one of the great American magazines would not be a difficult feat for any large first-cla.s.s printing plant. The putting of the pages into type and running them through the modern job presses could easily be accomplished. But when, instead of a few thousand copies, millions of copies of the magazine are printed, and these millions are produced unfailingly, week after week, month after month, in a quality of printing rivaling the production of but a few thousand copies, then, indeed, is it marvelous how results are attained.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE OF THE SCORES OF PRESSES ON WHICH THE INSIDE PAGES OF "THE SAt.u.r.dAY EVENING POST" ARE PRINTED]

Obviously, one of the first necessities towards such quant.i.ty production is extra speed. This is secured to a certain degree by feeding the paper into the presses from rolls instead of sheet by sheet. But as the quality of the print must be retained, there is a limit in this speeding beyond which it is not safe to go. Some other method of increasing the production without lowering the quality of the printed sheet must be resorted to--and this is duplication. By the process of electrotyping, plates of metal duplicating exactly the printing surface of the type and engravings in the original page, can be made. By providing as many presses as may be needed, and by supplying each press with duplicates, or electrotype plates as they are called, the problem of vast quant.i.ty requirements has been solved, so far as the actual printing is concerned.

But there are other factors to be considered. For example, the printed sheets, as they come from the press, must be folded to the size of the magazine. This is done in two ways. Machines which take the sheets, one by one, from the completed pile, and fold them to the required size, are used on some publications, while on others a folding machine and a binding attachment are included as integral parts of the press itself.

The paper, as it comes from the printing section of the press, is mechanically folded, cut apart, the previously-printed cover sheet wrapped around it, and the whole stapled together with wire st.i.tches.

Thus the white paper, which enters the press from the roll in one long ribbon, is delivered at the other end of the press printed, folded and bound up into complete magazines at the rate of sixty each minute.

Issues of a magazine of thirty-two, forty-eight, or even more pages, are produced in this manner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE OF THE SEVERAL BATTERIES OF PRESSES NECESSARY TO PRINT "THE LADIES' HOME JOURNAL"]

Many magazines, however, have more pages than this. Then it is necessary to print on separate presses the various sections, or signatures as they are called, which, when combined, will make up a complete magazine. If only a few thousand were printed, these signatures could be collected together by hand, and then fed into the wire-st.i.tching machine, also by hand. This method of collecting the sections and binding them together was the one used until editions became so large that mechanical methods became necessary.

Now, however, the various sections which go to make up the magazine are piled in certain troughs of a binding machine, which, with seeming human intelligence, clasps one copy of each section in turn, and combining them with a copy of the cover sheet, conducts them all, properly collated, into the wire-st.i.tching device, from which they are ejected into orderly piles. Some magazines are bound together in a different manner, however, and are not st.i.tched with wire, but have the inside pages and the cover glued together, and an ingenious binding machine has been perfected which does this automatically.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GROUP OF FOLDING MACHINES WHICH AUTOMATICALLY GRASP THE FLAT SHEET AND FOLD IT UP TO THE SIZE OF THE MAGAZINE]

Another marvel of the periodical of our day is the printing of some of the pages in the full colors of the original paintings. To get this result, it is necessary to print the sheet in four colors and to have each printing in exactly the correct spot on the sheet (a variation of only a hundredth of an inch being detrimental). The process would normally be quite slow--too slow, in fact, for the tremendous quant.i.ties necessary for the large editions of the modern magazine. Both of these objections have been overcome, however, by arranging four small cylinders, each printing its designated color--yellow, red, blue or black--so that as the sheet of paper travels around a larger cylinder it is brought into contact with the four printing cylinders in rapid succession.

Many magazines print two colors for covers and inside pages, instead of full four-color printings. Presses of a nature somewhat similar to those explained above are used.

So much for the princ.i.p.al mechanical problems and their solutions, in producing millions of magazines of a high quality each week. But there must be some force that keeps this maze of machinery constantly at work, so that all the parts properly co-ordinate. A slip-up at one spot might cause such a delay as would result if, for instance, hundreds of thousands of the inside pages were printed and ready for binding, but lacked the printed covers. To prevent any such calamity in the work rooms, there is usually prepared a daily schedule which plots out what operation, on each issue of the magazine, is to be completed that day; and if by chance any operation is not up to the schedule, immediate steps are taken to speed up the work until the production has been brought back to where it should be.

And this schedule reaches out into the s.h.i.+pping and mailing departments, so arranging it that the first copies off the press are speeded to the far sections of the country. In this way all the copies as they come from the presses are dispatched, so that the man in San Francisco and the man in Philadelphia find the magazine on the news-stand on the same day.