Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: Scientific American Vol. XXXIX.—No. 24. [New Series.] December 14 1878 A Weekly Journal of Practical Information Art Science Mechanics Chemistry and Manufactures by Various
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 722 lines and 54220 words, and 15 pages
THE BELGIAN SHIP CANAL.
The earth excavated was carried to spoil, and in many cases was employed to form dikes inclosing large areas, which served as receptacles for the semi-liquid material excavated by the dredging machines with the long conductors; the Couvreux excavator used will be readily understood from the engraving. It had already done service on the Danube regulation works. The material with which it had to deal, however, was of a more difficult nature, being a fine sand charged with water and very adherent. The length of track laid for the excavator was about 3 miles along the side of the old canal, which had been previously lowered to the level of the water.
We are indebted to J. Pechar, Railway Director in Teplitz, Bohemia, for the first official report in English from the Paris International Exhibition which has come to hand. This volume contains the report on the coal and iron products in all countries of the world, and is valuable for its statistical and other information, giving, as it does, the places where the coal and minerals are found, and the quantities of each kind produced, for what it is used, and to what other countries it is exported. The able compiler of these statistics in the introduction of his report gives the following account of the means recommended by Professor Barff, of London, for preventing oxidation, which is being considerably used abroad. The writer says:
It is well known that the efficient preservation of iron against rusting is at present only provided for in cases where human life would be endangered by failure, as in the case of railway bridges and steamers. Thus, for example, at Mr. Cramer-Klett's ironworks at Nuremberg every piece of iron used for his bowstring bridges is dipped in oil heated to eight hundred degrees. The very great care which is at present taken in this matter may be judged from the current practice of most bridge and roofing manufacturers. Every piece of iron before being riveted in its place is cleaned from rust by being immersed in a solution of hydrochloric acid. The last traces of free acid having been cleared away, at first by quicklime and afterward by a copious ablution with hot water, the piece is immediately immersed in hot linseed oil, which protects every part of the surface from the action of the atmosphere. Afterward it is riveted and painted.
Notwithstanding all this, the painting requires continual and careful renewal. On the Britannia Bridge, near Bangor, the painter is permanently at work; yet, in spite of all this care and expense, rust cannot be entirely avoided. The age of iron railway bridges is still too short to enable us to draw conclusions as to the probabilities of accidents. Now, Professor Barff has discovered a process by which iron may be kept from rusting by being entirely coated with its own sesquioxide. A piece of iron exposed to the action of superheated steam, in a close chamber and under a certain pressure, becomes gradually covered by a skin of this black oxide, of a thickness depending upon the temperature of the steam and the duration of the experiment. For instance, exposure during five hours to steam superheated to five hundred degrees will produce a hermetical coating capable of resisting for a considerable time the application of emery paper and of preserving the iron from rust even in a humid atmosphere, if under shelter from the weather. If the temperature is raised to 1,200 degrees, and the time of exposure to six or seven hours, the skin of sesquioxide will resist every mechanical action, and the influence of any kind of weather. The sesquioxide being harder than the iron itself, and adhering to its surface even more firmly than the atoms of iron do to each other, there is an increased resistance not only to chemical but also to mechanical action. The surface is not altered by the process in any other respect, a plain forging retaining its roughness, a polished piece its smooth surface. If the skin is broken away oxidation takes place, but only just on the spot from which the oxide has been removed. If Professor Barff's experiments are borne out by practice, this invention may become of very great importance. It is within the bounds of probability that it may enable iron, by increasing its facility in competing with wood, to recover, at least for a considerable time, even more than the ground it has lost by the extraordinary extension of the use of steel. Iron is already being used for building purposes to a large extent; but oxidation once thoroughly prevented it will be able to take the place of wood and stone to a still greater degree. Iron roofing may be made quite as light as that of wood, and of greater strength, by a judicious arrangement and use of T iron.
WARNING TO LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
ESTABLISHED 1845
MUNN & CO., Editors and Proprietors.
PUBLISHED WEEKLY AT
NO. 37 PARK ROW, NEW YORK.
O. D. MUNN. A. E. BEACH.
TERMS FOR THE SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.
One copy, one year, postage included 20 One copy, six months, postage included 1 60
CLUBS.--One extra copy of THE SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN will be supplied gratis for every club of five subscribers at .20 each; additional copies at same proportionate rate. Postage prepaid.
-->Single copies of any desired number of the SUPPLEMENT sent to one address on receipt of 10 cents.
Remit by postal order. Address
MUNN & CO., 37 Park Bow, New York.
THE SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT
is a distinct paper from the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. THE SUPPLEMENT is issued weekly; every number contains 16 octavo pages, with handsome cover, uniform in size with SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. Terms of subscription for SUPPLEMENT, .00 a year, postage paid, to subscribers. Single copies 10 cents. Sold by all news dealers throughout the country.
The safest way to remit is by draft, postal order, or registered letter.
Address MUNN & CO., 37 Park Row, N. Y.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN EXPORT EDITION.
The SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN Export Edition is a large and splendid periodical, issued once a month. Each number contains about one hundred large quarto pages, profusely illustrated, embracing: Most of the plates and pages of the four preceding weekly issues of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, with its splendid engravings and valuable information; Commercial, trade, and manufacturing announcements of leading houses. Terms for Export Edition, .00 a year, sent prepaid to any part of the world. Single copies 50 cents. -->Manufacturers and others who desire to secure foreign trade may have large, and handsomely displayed announcements published in this edition at a very moderate cost.
The SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN Export Edition has a large guaranteed circulation in all commercial places throughout the world. Address MUNN & CO., 37 Park Row, New York.
TABLE OF OF
THE SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT
No. 154,
For the Week ending December 14, 1878.
Price 10 cents. For sale by all newsdealers.
The Algerian Exhibit. The street of Algiers, with 1 illustration.--Woolen Fabrics.
New Planets.
The Dutch Arctic Expedition. The Peak of Beerenburg, Spitzbergen, with 1 illustration.
Prof. Huxley on the Hand. Abstract of his inaugural lecture before the South London Workingmen's College.
Paint from a Sanitary Point of View. The required abolition of absorbent surfaces in dwellings. Lead poisoning from paint not thoroughly dry. Cases described in which white lead paint in dwellings never dries, but gives off poisonous particles, which are inhaled by the inmates, causing depression, weakness headache, and loss of appetite. Zinc recommended in paint to avoid lead poisoning, and the new oxy-sulphide of Zinc described, with covering qualities equal to white lead.
PROGRESS OF PETROLEUM.
The efforts of the great majority of the Western Pennsylvania petroleum producers to obtain relief from what they deem the oppressive acts of the Standard Oil Company and the unjust discriminations of the United Pipe Lines, and the various railroads traversing the oil regions, have attracted more than usual attention to the present condition of this industry and its possible future.
We would here explain that the Standard Oil Company originated in Cleveland, Ohio, about twelve years ago, and was incorporated under the laws of Ohio, with a nominal capital now, we are informed, of ,000,000, which, however, very inadequately represents the financial strength of its members. It is now a combination of the most prominent refiners in the country, and has before been credited with manipulating the transportation lines to its own special advantage.
We can recall no instance of such serious hostility between parties whose interests are at the same time of such magnitude and so nearly identical; nor can we see what substantial, enduring benefit would accrue to the producers in the event of their victory in the struggle.
They charge that the Standard Oil Company has become the controlling power to fix prices and to determine the avenues by which the oil shall be transported eastward for home consumption and for foreign exportation; that the railway companies have given this company lower rates than other parties for transporting the oil; and that through the rates given to it by the railways the value of their property is destroyed.
The reply, in effect, is, Granting all this to be true, what does it amount to? Neither more nor less than that the managers of the Standard Oil Company, by combination of capital, by intelligence and shrewdness in the management of their operations, have built up a successful business, and that they have so extended it by the use of all practicable appliances, and by the purchase of the property of competitors, that they do practically control the prices of oil, both crude and refined, and that the uncombined capital of the other oil producers, lacking the power, the intelligence, and the business skill which combined capital can secure, cannot compete with the Standard Oil Company. Now, is there any great wrong or injustice in this?
When brains can command capital it is always more successful in business matters than any amount of brains without capital or capital without brains. This result is the natural working out of the same principle that is everywhere to be seen--some men are successful and others are not.
It is the essence of communism to drag down those who succeed to the level of the unsuccessful.
If men cannot compete with others in any business they must accept the fact, and try some other employment.
If, through superior intelligence and capital, the Standard Oil Company can control the oil business of Pennsylvania, then, according to the principles of common sense, it must be permitted to do so.
What right, then, has the oil producer to complain? Why, if all that is alleged is true, will they persist in sinking more wells, when, as they say, they are controlled by the Standard Oil Company? No one forces them to lose money by continuing in the business. Let them find other employment. They do not show that the Standard Oil Company does anything that combined capital on their part and equal business ability could not effect.
The cry of monopoly in this case is altogether unfounded, those opposed to the Standard Oil Company having just as much right to do all that that company does, and, therefore, there can be no monopoly, because they have no exclusive powers.
As to the railway companies, they can afford and have a right to transport the tonnage offered them by the Standard Oil Company at less cost, because it costs them less to do a regular and large business than an irregular and smaller one. They would simply be acting in accordance with business principles the world over.
These are the arguments, the statement of the position of a successful combination confident in its resources and of victory in the coming struggle. The justness, the correctness of the doctrines enunciated, and the wisdom of so doing at this crisis, we do not propose to criticise; but it is very safe to say that if the prosperity of the complainants depends upon relief in this direction they may as well cease producing.
There are too many of them for harmonious and concerted action against the powerful corporations they complain of; and if they should succeed in securing equal transportation facilities the prices would still be regulated by the monopolists, who carry more than four-fifths of the accumulated stock of the oil regions.
The proposed appeal to Congress to pass some law whereby each producer can compel railroad companies to carry his produce at regular rates, amounts to a confession of the desperate straits of the producers and of their weakness as well; and even if successful, which is most improbable, would not remedy the deplorable existing state of things.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page