The Wonder Book Of Knowledge Part 45

To get an idea of the capacity of this machine, suppose that your income is $1,000,000 a second. At this rate for twenty-four hours a day, with no stops for eating or sleeping, it would take you 352,331,022,041,828,731,333,333,333 years to acc.u.mulate a duodecillion dollars. All the hairs on the heads of all human beings, which are supposed to be numberless, are only a small fraction of a duodecillion.

This machine has a practical use in adding several sums simultaneously, and takes the place of from ten to a dozen smaller machines.

Adding machines are made that figure in English pence, s.h.i.+llings and pounds; in j.a.panese yen, and in the monetary system of most civilized countries. They will change inches into feet, pounds into bushels, and do other "stunts" that would make the average schoolboy envious when it comes to arithmetic.

The most complicated problems of multiplication, division and fractions may be handled with ease on these machines. They have taken a great part in the day's work of modern business, and it would be hard to imagine how the world's finance and industry could be handled without them.

Adding and calculating machines have become almost as necessary in modern business as the telephone and the typewriter.

How are Adding Machines Used?

Adding machines may be found at work in all kinds of business places from corner groceries to department stores and manufacturing plants. In the various offices and plants of the Western Electric Company, which are scattered through the country, more than 1,600 machines are in use.

Other big users are railroads, banks, mail-order houses, and city, state and government offices.

The Bank of France, the Bank of England, and other of the world's largest financial inst.i.tutions do the burden of their figure work on adding machines made in the United States. The German post-office uses more than 1,200 machines. There are individual American banks, like the Corn Exchange National Bank of New York, that employ as many as 150 adding machines in their work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ONE OF THE SMALLEST ADDING MACHINES IS ADAPTED FOR USE BY RETAIL MERCHANTS AND OTHERS WHO DO NOT ADD FIGURES OF MORE THAN FIVE DIGITS

_Courtesy of the Burroughs Adding Machine Company._]

Some surprising uses are found for adding machines. One is used in a j.a.panese boarding house in California; another is used by a retired Dayton millionaire to count the coupons he clips; the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission uses a machine in fighting the hook-worm; the United States government uses thousands in making census tabulations and in other ways. Others are used by newsboys, egg farmers, housewives, undertakers, dentists, judges in automobile races, and by persons in a thousand different lines of business. Without adding machines the public would be obliged to wait for days for the results of most elections.

In this way, the idea of a tired bank clerk came to change the figuring methods of the world.

The words "Almighty Dollar" have been generally adopted since Irving first used them in his "Creole Village," and the use of "lynching" to represent mob law and the action of mobs has become common since a Virginia farmer by that name inst.i.tuted the first vigilance committee in America.

Where does Ermine Come From?

The ermine fur, with which we are all familiar, is furnished by the stoat, a small animal of the weasel tribe. It is found over both temperate Europe and North America, but is common only in the north.

Because of that change which occurs in the color of its fur at different seasons--by far most marked in the Arctic regions--it is not generally known that the ermine and stoat are the same. In winter, in cold countries or severe seasons, the fur changes from a reddish-brown to a yellowish-white, or almost pure white, under which shade the animal is recognized as the ermine. In both states the tip of the tail is black.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ERMINE (_Mustela Erminea_)]

Like many other species of this genus, the ermine has the faculty of ejecting a fluid of a musky odor.

Its fur is short, soft and silky; the best skins being brought from Russia, Sweden and Norway and Hudson Bay territories. Its fur was formerly one of the insignia of royalty, and is still used by judges.

When used as linings of cloaks the black tuft from the tail is sewed to the skin at irregular distances.

What is the Principle of "Foreign Exchange"?

Exchange, in commerce, is a transaction by which the debts of people residing at a distance are canceled by a draft or bill of exchange, without transfer of any actual money.

A merchant in New York who owes $1,000 worth of goods in London, gives a bill or order for that amount which can be negotiated through banking agencies or otherwise against similar debts owing by other parties in London who have payments to make in New York. This obviates the expense and risk of transmitting money.

The process of liquidating obligations between different nations is carried on in the same way by an exchange of foreign bills. When all the accounts of one country correspond in value with those of another, the exchange between the countries will be at par, that is, the sum for which the bill is drawn in the one country will be the exact value of it in the other.

Exchange is said to be at par when, for instance, a bill drawn in New York for the payment of $1,000 in London can be purchased there for $1,000. If it can be purchased for less, exchange is under par and is against London. If the purchaser is obliged to give more, exchange is above par and in favor of London.

Although the thousand circ.u.mstances which incessantly affect the state of debt and credit prevent the ordinary course of exchange from being almost ever precisely at par, its fluctuations are confined within narrow limits, and if direct exchange is unfavorable between two countries this can often be obviated by the interposition of bills drawn on other countries where an opposite state of matters prevails.

What do We Mean by "The Old Moon in the New Moon's Arms"?

"Earth-s.h.i.+ne," in astronomy, is the name given to the faint light visible on the part of the moon not illuminated by the sun, due to the illumination of that portion by the light which the earth reflects on her. It is most conspicuous when the illuminated part of the disc is at its smallest, as soon after new moon. This phenomenon is popularly described as "the old moon in the new moon's arms."

The Story in a Bowling Alley[27]

From the "stone age" onward the probabilities are that man has always had some kind of bowling game.

Bowling, as we know today, is an indoor adaptation of, and an improvement upon, the old Dutch game of "nine-pins." This game was brought from Holland by those colonists who settled Manhattan Island in 1623.

Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, in his story, "Rip Van Winkle," refers to the old Dutch fairy tale, that the rolling thunder on the mountain tops of the Catskill was the noise made by the rolling b.a.l.l.s as the elfs and gnomes engaged in their favorite pastimes of bowling.

That little section of New York City known as Bowling Green is the original spot which, in 1732, Peter Bayard, Peter Jay and John Chambers leased for eleven years and enclosed for a bowling green.

With the influx of German immigrants, who brought with them a game similar to the Dutch game, additional popularity was given to the sport.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOOP THE LOOP RETURN]

The game was originally played on the bare ground. The Germans used a board about a foot wide on which to roll the ball, and then improved on this by using cohesive mineral substances solidly packed together. At an early date, the Dutch had covered the alley with a roof, and later enclosed it in a rough shed, to protect it and make play possible in any kind of weather. But, great as these improvements were over the crudeness of previous centuries, they are not worthy of comparison with a modern bowling academy.

In the best hard-wood section of the United States, one of the large bowling equipment manufacturers owns about thirty thousand acres of maple. From this raw material is gathered the chief stock that goes into bowling alleys and the pins.

The company has its own logging crews that cut the timber and pile it on flat cars, whence it is transported over a private railroad until it arrives at the company sawmills. Here the raw material enters upon the manufacturing process.

The rough stock-strips for the alley "bed," "leveling strips," "return chute," "post" and "kick-backs" are sawed out of certain of the logs.

They are then s.h.i.+pped to a factory where they are seasoned, being kiln dried. The stock is next cut to the required sizes.

The bed stock is cut into strips, planed on all sides, and tongued and grooved on the widest sides. When finished, the strips measure 3 x 1 inch. Part of the bed stock, however, is hard pine, s.h.i.+pped from the Southern states in the rough boards. This is finished similar to the maple strips.

The "kick-backs" are the two part.i.tions, shaped somewhat like a s.h.i.+p's rudder, which form the two pit sides. Each consists of two facings of the best maple with a core of hard but resilient wood in the middle.

They are built in this way to make the pins that fly side-wise spring back on the bed and knock down other standing pins, and also to withstand the exceedingly rough usage to which they are subject by the flying pins and rolling b.a.l.l.s.

The cus.h.i.+on forms the rear end of the pit. The frame is stoutly constructed, and the face thickly upholstered with sc.r.a.p leather and a heavy but pliable covering. It swings on hinges which suspend it from the cross bar, running from each of the kick-backs across the pit end at the top. The cus.h.i.+on diminishes the force of the rolling b.a.l.l.s and flying pins, permitting them to fall gently into the pit.

The "gutters" are the concave boards that extend the complete length of the alley, from the foul line to the pit, on both sides of the bed. The purpose is to take care of the misdirected b.a.l.l.s that roll off the bed before reaching the pit.

The "return chute," or "loop-the-loop return," is the railway along which the b.a.l.l.s travel in their return from the pit to the bowler. It is usually placed on the right-hand side of the alley, or between a pair of alleys.