Recent Inventions

1882 Scientific American  
MARCH 4, I 882.] were placed in the lake. F'ine specimens are now being taken. •••• • Writing on Glass. The following formula of a good varnisb for writing on glass is given by M. Crova, in tbe Journal de Physique: Ether, 500 gr.; sandarac, 30 gr.; mastic, 30 gr. Dissolve, then add ben :>:ine in small quantities, till the varnish, spread on a piece of glass, gives it tbe aspect of rough ened glass, The varnisb is used cold. To have a homogeneous layer, pour over that already formed some oil of
more » ... etroleum, let it evaporate a little, then rub in all directions with cambric cloth till all is quite dry. With illk or lead pen cil, lines can be produced on this surface as fine a8 may be desired. Thus a drawing may be pre· pared in a few minutes and immediately pro jected. ••• Shrimp Canning. Shrimp canning has recently been added to tbe industries of New Orleans. One new estab lishment employs 150 boys and girls and from 20 to 30 skilled workm � n. Already the output is 10.000 cans a day, and it is expected that tbe product will soon be doubled, The shrimps are cooked and canned by a new process. It is intended to undertake also the cannillg of oysters, which are abundant along the Gulf coast, and, dur-THE "NEW YORK WORLD,"-TRIMMING THE STEREOTYPES, ing the proper seasons, tbe figs so diffident are English women that last year only fifty nine accepted these offers, and now the society, through Macmillan's Magazine, calls for " respectable and capa ble" loverless but not unlovely women to go forth for love of God, love of man, or love of money, as missionaries, as philanthropists, as housekeepers, or as helps, to subdue the colonies and replenish them, lest England become a kingdom of calico. There is no chance for an immigration of men; Englishmen even go . to America for wlves. The good women of England, therefore, standing on the census and seeing 900,000 more petticoats than pantaloons on the island, already behold a greater catastrophe than Macaulay's New Zealander is to see-a land without busbands! • I . . .. Novel Reacllons 01' Milk. u' 1 other fruits of the S ... ,lth. �ingular Explosion 01' Oxygen. I31 RECENT INVENTIONS. In tbe ordinary metbod of laying out sbip timbers the hull is first outlined by strips of wood, named' ribbands," and then moulds or patterns are made, which are strips of board made to conform in the curvature of their edges to tbe cur· vature of the sides of the hull, and which moulds are then laid upon the timber, and the ribs, knees, and frame pieces cnt in accordance with s�lCh patterns. In this method of shaping the timbers errors in measurement are likely to be exaggerated, and a great amount of time, labor, and mate rial is expended in the construction of the moulds. Mr. Charles E. Osenburg, of Baltimore, Md., has patented a device which he calls a" conformator," which pe�mits the work to be accurately and quickly accomplished, Hnd dis· penses entirely with the use of moulds and their attendant expense. It consists in. two bars held apart at their ends hy filling blocks and tie-bolts. wbich main bars bave two inde pendent series of adjustable arms crossing the same, which arms may be adjuBted so that their· outer edges conform to any shape of a �hip's side, and which sbape, when fixed in the conformator by means of set screws, mny, together with the bevels, be directly and exactly trallsferred to tbe timber to be cut. An improved machine for grounding wall paper has been patented by Messrs. Ira Robbins, of Camden, N. J., and David Heston, of Philadelphia, Pa. It relates to improve ments in macbines for grounding wall paper before printing. An improvement in oil pumps has been patented by Mr. AI fred J. Lewis, of Barnhart's Mills, Pa. The object of this invention is to provide a vacuum pump for oil wells whicb shall be adapted for agitating the oil, to keep all passages If a little tincture of guahwum is added to fresh milk a blue colur is produced. Milk heated to 80° or upwards remains uncolored. sand six hundred pounds, or a little more than two hundred growth of vibrios. After, however, the serial cultivation and fifty pounds per man. Thus equipped we would com-ha'S adapted the spores to the 'Llkalinity, either they or the mence the forward march by moving ten sleds at a time, spores of Aspergillus giaucils grow freely and hinder the de manned in the following order; To each sled one practical velopment of the vibrios of putrefaction. By injecting engineer, one doctor. and four able bodied men, all thor u u gh -small quantities of the acclimatized spores, 01' larger quan ti· bred Canadians; thus ten sleds would compri se sixty m ; n. ties of those which are 'imperfectly adapted to live in the These would advance ill order at intervals, all keeping the blood, he alleges that he has produced a trifling malady and due north course, and any deviation would be reported by a conferred immunity against the more active virus. Koch, halt from the advance sled. All the sleds would be ad . however, has denied the innocuity of the original form of vanced in this order until a complete ('hain of communica -Aspergillus glawu8, and asserts that Grawitz really experi tion was estahlished. men ted not with A. glaucus, but with A. niger, the latter I would commence this movement about the 1st of D ecem -being always inoffensive, the former always virulent. bel', 01' as soon as the ice formed on the mClre southern In a mixed growth the former gradually preponderates, rivers. Our route would lie by the west coast of the Gulf and after a series of cultures may exist alone, and hence, it of Boothia to Borrow Strait, thence to North D evon and is suggested, the results obtained. LoftIer was unable to North Lincoln by Jone�' Sound, having land the whole dis -corroborate the alleged immunity obtained by inoculation. tance, except Borrow Strait and Jones' Sound, which would He injected small quantities of the spores of Aspergillus be frozen. At North Lincoln we would be distant from gil lucu8 into three rabbits, of which two survived, and three Chesterfield Inlet 786 miles, and from the Pole 780 miles. weeks afterward were quickly killed by a fresh injection. To North Lincoln we would push all the sleds , e x cept sev -The assertions of Koch and LoftIer have been indignantly enty-eight, wbich we would leave by relays of ten miles, all denied by Grawitz, but they ate confirmed by the results anchored with signal�, so as to fOI' n l a complete chain of obtained by Kaufmann. He finds that the Aspergillus glau. refuge in our real', and if foundnecessnr ,Y, would establish cus grown upon bread causes death when injected into a rab a system of telephone from each sled by means of tripod bit, even in so small a quantity as one-tenth of a milligramme, poles. This would give us daily communication with W inni -and that its previous adaptation to a liquid and alkaline peg, and govern our dog transportation trains, which would medium, and to the temperature of the animal body, is quite be in const.ant attendance throughout the whole line. W i l e n unessential for its infective property. If buch adaptation this was done we would commellce our advance alollg the has any influence, it only very slightly increases its viru third 01' polar division in the same order as before, only by lence. -He also iir,ds that spores exposed to tbe ordinary shorter relays, as we wl)uld have 122 sledhuts to station over temperature of the ail' for six months do not, in any degree, 780 miles, or about six miles apart, 80 that each hut could be lose their pathogenic power.-Lancet. seen or reached with safety. It might be necessary to have __ _ -_u _u_ ... • , .. . ---some of these sleds constructed upon a boat pri nciple. in A CODlmercial View-oi"Lile and Death. case open water was reached, amI could be used for towing The London Sanitary Record quotes a recent writer on others, as they would all be watertigh t and capa ble of being vital statistics who calculates that of ten children born in floated. But as I do not contemplate finding open waterthis Norway a little over seven reach their twentieth year; that lntt�r point would not offer any s('rious diflicuity. The only in England and the United States of America som('what less obstacles likely to be encountered are rough and irreglilar than seven reach that stage; that in France only five reach ice ledges, which might have to be leveled or tunneled in it, and in Ireland less than five. He tells liS that in Norway, places. In this manner I wOlild expect to overcome the out of 10,000 born, rather more than one out of three reaches whole distance from Chesterfield Inlet to the Pole by the 1st the age of seventy; in England ODe out of four; in the of July, 18tH. that being the best season for obser vations at United States, if both sexes be computed, less than one out thePole. The whole cost of the expedition in this wa y, not of four; in France less than one out of eight, and in Ireland including the telegraph line to Winnipeg City, wo u ld be less than one out of eleven, and he adds this significant com· about $70,0 '0. putation, based on what may be called the commercial view -----.--.-���--�-----of the vital question. In producing dead machinery the Value of' Mechanical Invention to Civilization. ('ost of all that is broken in the making is charged to the Mr. Frederic Harrison lately delivered a lecture at the cost of that which is completed. If we estimated by this London Institution on "The Real Value of Mechanical In-same rule the cost of rearing children to manhood, if we vention to Civilization." No century, he remarked, had ever calculate up the number of years lived by those who fell been so praised as our own for its marvelous mechanical in-with the years of those who passed successfully to manhood, ventions. But after all, our century was undeniably the there would be found between the two extremes presented heir of great and worthy predecessors. For 4,000 years and in Norway and Ireland-both, be it observed, unnatural-a more men could travel as fast as their legR could carry them, loss of 120 per cent greater in the first year of life, now they were carried by rail. In oUl' days newswas flashed 75 per cent greater in the first four years of life, and in a minute whIch not so long ago would have taken a year 120 per cent greater in the years between the fifth and to arrive. Ten thousand shirts were now woven b.y steam the twentieth, in Ireland than in Norway. In Norway the in as short a t.ime as the fingers took: to make one. Gas and average length of life of the effective population is 39 and electricity had superseded tallow nnd oil. But these and rather more than a 1mlf years, in England 35Y2 years, III other like achievements of invention were merely signs of France not quite 33 years, and in Ireland not quite 29 years. material, physical, visible, ann external life. Were we so Thus, again comparing the best with the worRt of a scale of much the happier for theRe things? The answer must. be no. vitality. in which both are bad. in Norway the proportion The nineteenth century was not an age of complete achieve' of the population that reaches 20 sunives nearly 40 years,
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican03041882-131 fatcat:bo4rcgsvczcb3e4jmuie62js5u