THE MACHINE-TOOL LABORATORY.
The Foundery and Smithy are Ancient, the Machine-tool Shop is Modern.
-- The Giant, Steam, reduced to Servitude. -- The Iron Lines of
Progress. -- They converge in the Shop; its triumphs from the
Watchspring to the Locomotive. -- The Applications of Iron in Art is
the Subject of Subjects. -- The Story of Invention is the History of
Civilization. -- The Machine-maker and the Tool-maker are the best
Friends of Man. -- Watt’s Great Conception waited for Automatic Tools;
their Accuracy. -- The Hand-made and the Machine-made Watch. -- The
Elgin (Illinois) Watch Factory. -- The Interdependence of the Arts. --
The Making of a Suit of Clothes. -- The Anteroom of the Machine-tool
Laboratory. -- Chipping and Filing. -- The File-cutter. -- The Poverty
of Words as compared with Things. -- The Graduating Project. -- The
Vision of the Instructor.
[Illustration: THE MACHINE-TOOL LABORATORY.]
The transition from the laboratories for founding and forging to the
Machine-tool Laboratory symbolizes a mighty revolution in the practical
arts--a revolution so stupendous as to defy description, and so
far-reaching as to appall the spirit of prophecy. The foundery and the
smithy date back to the dawn of history; the machine-tool shop is a
creation of yesterday. About the early manipulations of iron mythology
wove a web of fancy: Vulcan forged Jove’s thunderbolts, the iron sword
of the savage was a god, and even far down the course of time, late in
the Middle Ages, Tancred, the crusader, paid an almost fabulous sum for
King Arthur’s famous sword Excalibar--but the modern machine-tool shop
is a huge iron automaton, without sentiment, and possessing no poetry
except the rhythmic harmony of motion. In this shop steam is reduced to
servitude, and compelled with giant hands to bore, mortise, plane,
polish, fashion, and fit great masses of iron, and, anon, with delicate
fingers to spin gossamer threads of burnished steel. With the hot steam
coursing through its steel-ribbed veins the brain of this automaton
thinks the thoughts foreordained by its inventor; its hands do his
bidding, its arms fetch and carry for him, its feet come and go at his
beck and nod. This automaton feeds on iron, steel, copper, and brass,
and produces the watch-spring and the locomotive, the revolver and the
Krupp gun, the surgeon’s lancet and the shaft of a steamship, the steel
pen and the steam-hammer, the vault-lock and the pile-driver, the
sewing-machine and the Corliss engine. The lever which wakens this
automaton to life, which endows its brain with genius and its fingers
with cunning, is the rod of empire. All the lines of modern development
converge in the machine-tool shop, and they are all lines of iron,
whether consisting of a fine wire strung on poles in mid-air or of huge
bars resting on the solid earth. Iron is the king of metals but the
slave of man. Its magnetic quality guides the mariner on the sea, and
its tough fibre and density sustain the weight of the locomotive on the
land. It constitutes the foundation of every useful art, from the plough
of the husbandman to the Jacquard loom of the weaver. But it is only in
the machine-tool shop that the great steam-driven machines of commerce
and manufacture can be produced. The ancients possessed iron, which they
cast in the foundery and forged in the smithy; they knew the power of
steam, and the magicians of the time amused the populace with
exhibitions of it, but they had no machine-tool shops in which steam
could be harnessed for the journey across continents and seas. The
thousand and one modern applications of iron to the needs of man have
originated in the machine-tool shop. It is through these applications of
iron, not through iron itself, that human pursuits have been so widely
diversified, and human powers so richly developed and enlarged.
The contrasts presented by the development of the useful arts during the
last hundred years are startling: The toilsome journey of a day reduced
to an hour with the maximum of comfort; the few yards of fabric
painfully woven by hand expanded into webs of cotton, linen, woollen,
and silk cloths, rolling from thousands of steam-driven looms; the
stocking once requiring hours to make, now dropping second by second
from the iron fingers of the knitting-machine; the nails, screws, pins,
and needles, forged one by one in the old village smithy, now flying
from the hands of automatic machines by the thousand million; the
numberless stitches of the sewing-machine as compared with the few of
the olden time, which made the fingers and the hearts of women ache; the
vast crop of cereals planted, cultivated, and gathered into barns with
iron hands in contrast with the toilsome processes of even fifty years
ago. These are only a few of the many illustrations that might be given
of progress in the useful arts, and they all emanate from the
machine-tool shop.
At the threshold of the most important inquiry that ever occupied the
mind of man stand the twenty-four students we have followed, with more
or less regularity, through the various laboratories which constitute
the preliminary steps in the manual training course. It is the most
important inquiry that ever engaged the attention of man, because it
touches modern civilization at more points than any other. It consists
of an investigation into the subject of the diversity of the
applications of iron in art, a study both of the minute and the
ponderous in iron tools and machines, and it is by these tools and
machines that the bulk of the great enterprises of the men of modern
times are carried forward. These students are familiar with the details
of the laboratories for founding and forging, but the manipulations of
those branches of iron manufacture are coarse and heavy as compared with
those of the Machine-tool Laboratory. In a word, the difference between
the iron manipulations of the Machine-tool Laboratory and those of the
founding and forging laboratories is the exact measure of the difference
between the modern and the ancient systems of civilization.
The ancient civilizations culminated in that of Rome. The Romans
possessed iron, but confined their manipulations of it to the foundery
and the smithy. Under the Roman empire the enterprises of
man--commercial, manufacturing, and industrial generally--reached the
limit marked by the applications of iron to the useful arts. It is not
important in this connection to inquire why inventions and discoveries
ceased. It is enough that they ceased. There was a pause; man, risen to
a giddy height, looked backward instead of forward and upward; the
struggle to advance came to an end, ambition died out of life, and a
saturnalia of bloody crime and savage brutality ensued. Exhaustion
followed, then stagnation, moral and intellectual, and then the decay of
all the arts. The world stood still, and in that state of quiescence
remained until printing was invented and America discovered. Still it
waited two hundred and fifty years before receiving the first hint of
steam-driven machines and the machines and the machine tool-shop, and
during all that time progress was painfully slow. Something was required
to give to human ambition a grand impulse, and to open to human energy
and industry a broad field. That something did not come until the middle
of the eighteenth century, and it should never be forgotten
that it came then through the humble men of the workshop. To their
inventive genius mankind owes more than to all the philosophers,
_litterateurs_, professors, and statesmen of all time. These men of the
workshop--Huntsman, Cort, Roebuck, Watt, Fulton, Mushet, Hargreaves,
Neilson, Whitney, Bramah, Maudslay, Clement, Murray, Roberts, the
Stephensons, father and son, and Nasmyth--invented machines which seem
to rival human intelligence, and in fact far excel human precision in
the execution of their work. In endowing iron with the cunning of genius
and the terrific power of the fabled cyclops, the modern mechanic has
revolutionized the field of human effort, transferring it from the
foundery and the smithy to the machine-tool shop. It is here, and here
alone, that steam-driven machines can be made. They may be conceived in
the mind of a Watt or a Stephenson, but they can be made only by the
automatic tools of a Maudslay, a Clement, a Bramah, or a Nasmyth. Man
was helpless without steam-driven machines, and he could not have
steam-driven machines until machine-made tools had been devised with
which to make them. The experience of Watt strikingly illustrates this
point. When he had completed his invention of the steam-engine, he found
it nearly impossible to realize his idea in a working machine, owing to
the incompetency of the workmen of that time. In reply to the inquiry of
Dr. Roebuck, “What is the principal hinderance in erecting engines?” he
responds, “It is always the smith-work.” His first cylinder, made of
hammered iron soldered together by a whitesmith, was a complete failure.
But even such workmen were so scarce that upon the death of this
“white-iron man” Watt was reduced almost to a state of despair. “His
next cylinder was cast and bored at Carron, but it was so untrue that it
proved next to useless. The piston could not be kept steam-tight,
notwithstanding the various expedients which were adopted of stuffing it
with paper, cork, putty, pasteboard, and old hats.” Smeaton, the best
workman of the time, “expressed the opinion, when he saw the engine at
work, that notwithstanding the excellence of the invention it could
never be brought into general use because of the difficulty of getting
its various parts manufactured with sufficient precision.” Watt
constantly complained of “villanous bad workmanship.” “Machine-made
tools were unknown, hence there were no good tools. Attempting to run an
engine of the old regime, the foreman of the shop gave it up in despair,
exclaiming, “I think we had better leave the cogs to settle their
differences with one another; they will grind themselves right in time.”
Contrast with this clumsy machine of the hand-tool era the Corliss
engine of the present day, whose every movement possesses the noiseless
grace of a woman and the conscious power of a giant; and this giant
springs full-armed from the machine-tool shop as Minerva sprang from the
brain of Jupiter. Mr. Smiles says, “When the powerful oscillating
engines of the _Warrior_ were put on board that ship, the parts,
consisting of some five thousand separate pieces, were brought from the
different workshops of the Messrs. Penn & Sons, where they had been made
by workmen who knew not the places they were to occupy, and fitted
together with such precision that so soon as the steam was raised and
let into the cylinders the immense machine began as if to breathe and
move like a living creature, stretching its huge arms like a new-born
giant; and then, after practising its strength a little, and proving its
soundness in body and limb, it started off with the power of above a
thousand horses, to try its strength in breasting the billows of the
North Sea.”
The great and small tools, the automata of the machine-shop, are no less
triumphs of mechanical genius than the “powerful oscillating engines of
the _Warrior_.” The prime difficulty of the hand-worker was to make two
things exactly alike, then followed the impossibility of making _many_
things--the narrow limit of human capacity to produce. At that point the
inventor appeared with a machine which would make a thousand things in
the time the hand-worker required to make one, and each one of them the
exact counterpart of every other.
A hundred years ago John Arnold, the inventor of the chronometer,
accomplished a marvel of patience and ingenuity in the form of a watch
the size of twopence and the weight of sixpence. The workmanship was so
delicate that he was compelled not only to fashion every part with his
own hand, but to design and make the tools employed in its construction.
The watch was presented to George III., of England, who showed his
appreciation of Arnold’s mechanical skill in a present of five hundred
guineas. The Emperor of Russia offered Arnold $5000 for a duplicate of
the wonderful little time-piece, which offer was, however, declined. It
was so difficult for the expert watch-maker of a century ago to make two
things exactly alike, that Arnold could not afford to undertake to make
another miniature watch even for the exorbitant price of $5000. But for
ten dollars the Elgin (Illinois) National Watch Company will supply the
Emperor of Russia with a machine-made watch more nearly perfect than
Arnold’s masterpiece, and on the same day turn out one thousand others
exactly like it. Imagine yourself now in the watch factory of the Elgin
Company; observe that artisan holding in his hand a coil of fine steel
wire weighing a pound. He approaches a machine, places one end of the
wire in its iron fingers, presses a lever, and in a few minutes the coil
is converted into two hundred thousand minute screws, each and every one
as perfect as the best that Arnold made for his George III. gem.
It is with the greatest effort of painstaking care that the expert
sewing-woman draws two stitches closely resembling each other, yet while
she is making the toilsome exertion of her utmost skill the
sewing-machine sets hundreds of stitches so exactly alike that a
microscopic examination would fail to detect the least dissimilarity.
The sewing-machine affords an admirable illustration of the
interdependence of the practical arts. The sewing-woman was able to keep
pace with the slow and toilsome processes of the distaff and loom, but
upon the application of steam-power to spinning and weaving the demand
for sewing was augmented a thousand-fold. If the sewing-machine has not
emancipated woman from the drudgery so pathetically depicted by Tom
Hood, it has multiplied the production of garments almost beyond the
power of figures to express. Note this instance illustrative of the
triumph of automatic machinery in its application to manufactures. “The
Emperor of Austria was lately presented with a suit of clothes
possessing this remarkable history: The wool from which the garments
were made was clipped from the sheep only eleven hours before the suit
was completed. At 6.08 in the morning the sheep were sheared; at 6.11
the wool was washed; at 6.37 dyed; at 6.50 picked; at 7.34 the final
carding process was finished; at eight o’clock it was spun; at 8.15
spooled; at 8.37 the warp was in the loom; at 8.43 the shuttles were
ready; at 11.10 seven and three-fourth ells of cloth were completed; at
12.03 the cloth was fulled; at 12.14 washed; at 12.17 sprinkled; at
12.31 dried; at 12.45 sheared; at 1.07 napped; at 1.10 brushed; and at
1.15 prepared and ready for the shears and needle. At five o’clock the
suit, consisting of a hunting-jacket, waistcoat, and trousers, was
finished.”
There is a sort of anteroom to the Machine-tool Laboratory with which
the students are thoroughly familiar. It is called the Chipping, Filing,
and Fitting Laboratory, has twenty-four vises, a great assortment of
cold-chisels and files, and is devoted to vise work. The course in the
Chipping Filing and Fitting Laboratory consists of a score or more
lessons involving various file and chisel manipulations, as, “filing to
line,” “dovetailing,” “parallel fitting tongues and grooves,” “ring-work
and free-hand filing,” “chipping bevels,” “ward-filing and key-fitting,”
“screw-filing,” “scraping,” etc., each lesson being so devised as to
insure the introduction of variously shaped tools, and their application
to the forms of work for which they are designed.
This anteroom to the Machine-tool Laboratory is like most anterooms
plain in its appointments, and it is also like the conventional
anteroom, a place where the student does not desire to remain long. The
witchery of the great laboratory beyond has already cast its spell over
the boy at the vise. But there is excellent hand and eye training work
in the Chipping, Filing, and Fitting Laboratory.
[Illustration: THE CHIPPING, FILING, AND FITTING LABORATORY.]
The file is a humble tool, but it is older than history, dating back to
the Greek Mythological period. “From the smallest mouse-tail file used
in the delicate operations of the watch and philosophical instrument
maker, to the square file for the smith’s heaviest work, there is a
multifarious diversity in shape, size, and gauge of cutting.” Some of
the files made by the Swiss for the watch-maker “are of so fine a cut
that the unaided eye cannot discern the ridges.”
In no department of the useful arts did the hand-worker attain to
greater dexterity than in file-cutting. With a sharp-edged chisel the
file-cutter made from one hundred and fifty to two hundred “burs” a
minute, and they were so fine as to be traced by the sense of touch
alone, but as straight as though ruled by a machine. The hand-working
file-cutter held his ground until 1859, when a Frenchman, M. Bernot,
invented a file-cutting machine which superseded the old method of
manufacture, except in cases requiring delicacy of manipulation,
reducing the cost of files to one-eighth of their former price.
The lessons in the Machine-tool Laboratory will not be described in
detail as in the other laboratories. The processes are so delicate and
so intricate, and the resulting products in machines so closely approach
the marvellous, as to beggar description. The poverty of words as
compared with things asserts itself with unexampled force in the
presence of a great variety of tools, each of which seems to be endowed
with the power of reflection, and each of which, instead of whispering a
word in your ear, drops into your hand a thing of use to man.
The laboratory is silent, the tools are dumb, but how eloquently they
proclaim the era of comfort and luxury! They have no tongue, but through
their lips you shall speak across continents and under seas. They have
no legs, but through their aid you shall, in a race round the world,
outstrip Mercury. The machines they make shall bear all your burdens;
with their brawny arms they lift a thousand tons, and with their fingers
of fairy-like delicacy pick up a pin; with the augur of Hercules they
bore a channel through the mountain of granite, and with a Liliputian
gimlet tunnel one of the hairs of your head.
These ingenious tools are worthy of careful inspection both on account
of the marvels they perform and the delicacy of their construction and
adjustments. One of them, a screw-engine lathe, for example, is taken to
pieces, and each piece described in order that the students may be made
familiar with the construction of the tool, and so rendered capable of
taking good care of it. During this inspection the instructor outlines
the history of the tool. The main feature is the slide-rest, invented by
Maudslay while in the employ of Bramah, the lock-maker. It is not too
much to say that two things exactly alike, or near enough alike,
practically, to serve the same purpose very well, were never produced on
the old-fashioned turning lathe. This the instructor endeavors to make
clear to the class. He also explains precisely how Maudslay’s
improvement remedied the defects of the old-fashioned lathe. Still there
remained something to be done to make it perfect, and putting the pieces
together the instructor shows where Maudslay’s work ended and that of
Clement began. Clement made two improvements in the slide-rest, one
involving the principle of self-correction, for which he received the
gold Isis medal of the Society of Arts in 1827, and the other
consisting of the “self-adjusting double-driving centre check,” for
which he was awarded the silver medal of the same society in 1828. Thus
improved or perfected, the slide-lathe became the acknowledged king of
machine-tools, the self-adjusting two-armed driver taking the strain
from the centre and dividing it between the two arms, and so correcting
all tendency to eccentricity in the work.
The Machine-tool Laboratory contains a great variety of tools, of which
the chief are lathes, drills, and planers; but there are many auxiliary
tools, and in the advanced stages of the course a single lesson often
affords opportunity for the introduction of several of them. And, as in
the other school laboratories, each tool, upon its first presentation to
the class, forms the subject of a brief lecture--a practical lecture
too, for the instructor uses the tool while he sketches its history and
perhaps that of its inventor, shows what place it holds in the order of
machine-tool development, and how admirably it is adapted to its
particular work, and makes suggestions as to its care. Sometimes a
lesson involves the use of a drawing made by the students a year before,
and the piece of iron in which it is wrought is the product of a
previous lesson in forging; and it may also have been manipulated with
the file or the cold-chisel, or both, in the Chipping, Filing, and
Fitting Laboratory.
From the first lesson in the room devoted to drawing, to the last lesson
in the Machine-tool Laboratory, the course of training is orderly,
consecutive. Each step contains a hint of the nature of the next step,
and each succeeding step consists of a further application of the
principles and processes of the last preceding step. In a word, the
students follow their drawings through all the laboratories till the
designs “are brought out in a finished state either in cast or wrought
iron.”
The lathe is the fundamental machine-tool, but a completely equipped
machine-tool laboratory includes a great variety of supplementary or
auxiliary tools, a thorough knowledge of which is essential to a good
mechanical education. It does not follow, because these tools are in a
large degree automatic, that skill may be dispensed with in their use.
Many of them are very complicated in design and construction, and they
can no more be made to do efficient service under an unskilled hand than
a locomotive can be made to accomplish a series of successful “runs” by
an unskilled “driver.” Hence every tool in the laboratory is made the
subject of an exhaustive study. The principle of mechanics involved in
its construction is expounded, a practical illustration of its method of
operation is given, its peculiar liability to injury is explained, and
rules for its care are carefully formulated, and frequently repeated.
There is a prevalent theory that the wide application of so-called
automatic tools to mechanical work largely decreases the legitimate
demand for skilled mechanics, but it is fallacious. In the first place a
thousand things are now made where one thing was made fifty years ago.
In the second place the extensive use of steam and electricity greatly
enlarges the sphere wherein accurate work becomes absolutely essential
to human safety, and hence extends the field of operations of the
inventive faculty. In the third place the cost of machine-tool made
products having been greatly reduced, competition is proportionately
intensified, thus narrowing the margin of profit, and so rendering any
injury to machinery through want of skill in the operator relatively
more disastrous. As a matter of fact a fine machine-tool is more liable
than a watch to get out of order through careless handling, and it no
more than a watch, can be properly repaired by a bungler. It follows
that skill in the use of machine-tools is as essential to a successful
mechanical career now, as skill in the use of hand-tools was formerly.
[Illustration: COURSE IN THE MACHINE-TOOL LABORATORY.]
But another conclusion follows more irresistibly, namely--that the
mechanical engineer who devotes his attention to the construction and
management of massive machinery, such as pumps, hydraulic and lever
presses, looms, and steam-engines, whether locomotive, marine, or other,
must, in order to be master of his profession, be thoroughly familiar
with every step of their construction; and such familiarity can only be
acquired by a course of practical study in the machine-tool shop. It is
the province of the mechanical engineer to utilize certain forces of
nature in the service of man, and it is only through the machine-tool
shop that such utilization can be effected. It hence follows that a
practical acquaintance with the manipulations of the machine-tool shop
is an essential prerequisite to a successful career in the field of
higher mechanics. The man who aspires to construct any great mechanical
engineering work, like the Brooklyn Bridge, for example, must know the
exact mechanical power of every piece of machinery he employs, as also
the exact mechanical value of every piece of iron that enters into the
structure; and these things he cannot know unless he is familiar with
the entire series of iron manipulations, from those of the foundery to
those of the machine-tool shop.
The aspect of the Machine-tool Laboratory when in repose, so to speak,
is dull and uninteresting, not to say repellant. There are twenty-four
engine-lathes, as many adjustable vises, a milling machine, and a
variety of auxiliary tools. The lathes are supported by dingy-looking
cast-iron frames, and under each lathe there is a chest of drawers
containing a set of tools. Overhead there is a wilderness of pulleys and
shafting, which seems to the untrained eye to have very little relation
to the machines below. The working parts of the lathes show burnished
steel surfaces, which reflect coldly the glare of yellow sunlight
flooding the room. If it were moonlight instead of sunlight one might
summon the ghosts of those daring men who hundreds and thousands of
years ago dreamed audaciously of the future of applied mechanics. Roger
Bacon must have had a vision of the machine-tool shop when he said, “I
will now mention some of the wonderful works of art and nature in which
there is nothing of magic, and which magic could not perform.
Instruments may be made by which the largest ships, with only one man
guiding them, will be carried with greater velocity than if they were
full of sailors; chariots may be constructed that will move with
incredible rapidity without the help of animals; a small instrument may
be made to raise or depress the greatest weights; an instrument may be
fabricated by which one man may draw a thousand men to him by force and
against their will; as also machines which will enable men to walk at
the bottom of seas or rivers without danger.”
When steam is “turned on” the aspect of the Machine-tool Laboratory is
completely changed. Steam is, indeed, the arch-revolutionist; it
breathes the breath of life into inanimate things--makes them think,
speak, and act. The low hum of unused machinery first salutes the ear;
then the students take their places. They are three years older than
when we encountered them in the engine-room. They are from seventeen to
twenty years of age. They are no longer boys; they are young
men--robust, hearty-looking young men. Their bearing is very
resolute--remarkably resolute; their attitude is erect. They are
full-chested, muscular-armed, frank-faced young men. In the three years’
course now drawing to a close they have learned how to do many things,
and hence they show a good degree of confidence. But the dominant
expression on all the interesting young faces is, after all, one of
modesty; so true is it that every acquisition of knowledge, and
especially useful knowledge, not only stimulates desire to learn more,
but enlightens perception as to the magnitude of the field of further
inquiry. As the addition of a useful thing to the world’s stock of
things creates a demand for a score more of useful things, so the
addition of a fact to the student’s stock of facts not only creates a
desire for more facts, but strengthens the mind for further
investigation.
It may be that there are vain statesmen, philosophers, priests, and
kings, but we should as little expect to find a vain mechanic as a vain
scientist.
These twenty-four students may go out into the world to-morrow to make
their way. Some of them will enter upon the stage of active life, others
will continue their studies in higher schools of literature, science,
and art; but whether they go or stay, if they have made the most of
their opportunities in the Manual Training School they will have learned
the lesson of modesty, and learned to respect labor, not only as a means
of earning one’s daily bread, but as the most powerful and the most
healthful mental and moral stimulant.
Steam is on, and the students standing at the lathes are impatient to
begin. It is not a lesson in the ordinary sense. Each student works
independently of special direction, for each is engaged in making a
machine--the graduating project. The instructor is at hand, not to
dictate but to advise, if requested. From his fund of experience as the
elder scholar he will answer questions propounded by his younger
fellow-students. In front of the students, parts of the working drawings
may be seen. It is plain that there is to be variety in the exhibit of
“projects.” There are several steam-engines, differing in model; there
is a steam-pump, a punching machine, a lathe, an electric machine, and a
steam-hammer.
At a sign work commences--a dozen varieties of work, emitting a dozen
tones of buzzing and whizzing. The instructor’s face lights up with a
pleased expression as he notes the progress of the work. There is no
sign of hesitation in the class; no questions are asked; the students
seem to be driving straight to the mark. The instructor’s heart swells
with pride; he can trust “his boys!” He has been regarding them with an
expression of affection, but now his eyes wander--they have a far-away
look. He no longer sees the students, he is looking beyond them. He
drops into a reclining attitude, sighs, falls into a reverie, and
dreams. In his dream he sees naked savages, emerging from caves, armed
with clubs, pursuing animals. These are succeeded by men bearing rude
stone implements--axes and hammers--and these in turn by men armed with
bows and arrows, but half-clothed with skins of beasts, and crouching
and shivering beneath the shelter of the branches of a tree pulled
downward and secured by clods of earth. This picture disappears, and is
replaced by a pastoral scene--a vast plain covered with flocks and
herds. In the foreground stands the shepherd, and in the distance his
tent, consisting of skins of beasts stretched on poles, and in the tent
door a woman sits pounding a fleece into felt. The shepherd, his flocks
and herds, his tent, and the woman in the tent door, vanish like the
mists of morning, and where the shepherd was, the husbandman is seen
harvesting the golden grain; and in the shadow of the cottage which has
replaced the tent a woman is grinding corn. The scene again changes--the
plain has become the site of a great city. The city is protected by
thick, high walls, surmounted with frowning battlements. Sentinels pace
back and forth along the parapet. Huge helmets protect their heads, and
their bodies are clothed in armor. Quivers full of bronze-tipped arrows
depend from their shoulders; in their hands they carry long bows, and
the clank, clank of their broad, two-edged, bronze swords breaks the
dull, monotonous routine of their march. A brazen gate swings back
noiselessly on brazen hinges, and, bowing to the sentinel, the dreamer
as noiselessly glides into the city. Suddenly he feels the hot breath of
the foundery furnace-fire, and is blinded by a glare of red light.
Shading his eyes he sees dusky forms hurrying to and fro with ladles
full of molten metal. Turning away he hears the heavy stroke of the
sledge, and looking, beholds a dusty, smoky smithy. The stalwart smith
drops the sledge at his side, rests one foot on the anvil-block, and
wipes the sweat from his brow; the helper thrusts the cooling metal into
the coals, bends to the bellows, and the forge-fire sings. At the sound
of a bell the dreamer starts, the old Assyrian city falls into ruins,
the ruins crumble into dust, and on this dust another city rises,
flourishes, falls, and piles the dust of its ruins. Over a waste of
years--twenty centuries--the dreamer’s thought flashes, and he stands in
the presence of the Alexandrian mechanic-philosopher. He sees Hero in
the public street, gazing abstractedly at his condensed-air fountain,
and follows him into his shop or laboratory, and observes him curiously
as he toys with the model of a queer little steam-engine. “This is the
Iron Age, but in its infancy,” he exclaims under his breath, as his eyes
wander from a fine Damascus blade hanging against the wall to some poor
hand-tools lying on the working-bench. “I will speak to this old man,”
he continues, “and ask him to step into my Machine-tool Laboratory, and
see my boys make steam-engines; it will be a revelation to him. Come,
old friend--there--look!” And the dreamer looks. Does he see double? The
laboratory is unchanged; steam is still on; the whir of machinery and
the buzzing sound of steam-driven tools salute the ear, and the students
are all busy at their benches finishing parts of “projects” and
adjusting them in their places, But there are twenty-four other
men--shades of men--in the laboratory. Most of them are old; some are in
working clothes, others in full dress, wearing ribbons and orders of
merit. Over each student one of these shades bends with an air of
absorbing attention. The dreamer recognizes Papin, Fulton, Watt, and
Stephenson shadowing the students engaged in the construction of
engines. They beckon Hero, and he joins the group, threading his way
timidly between the lines of lathes, and looking askance at the rapidly
revolving wheels and flying belts. Over the shoulders of other students
are seen the faces of Maudslay, Bramah, Clement, Roberts, Whitney,
Nasmyth, Huntsman, Cort, Murray, Dudley, Yarranton, Roebuck, and
Whitworth, besides several unfamiliar faces. Suddenly they all gather
about a nearly completed project--a stationary engine. They witness the
forcing home of the last screw; they see the miniature machine made fast
to the bench. Steam is let into the cylinders. The student’s flushed
face is in sharp contrast with the colorless faces of the group of old
men by whom he is surrounded. The piston-rod moves languidly--the
machine trembles as if awaking from slumber, the shaft oscillates
slowly, then faster, then regularly, like a strong pulse-beat. The
project is a success--the first one completed! The student’s face turns
pale--as pale as the white faces of the old men at his side. They open
their lips as if to cheer him, but no sound escapes them. He breathes
quick--almost gasps; his heart beats loudly; he tries to shout but
cannot utter a word. At last he claps his hands! The instructor starts
from his chair, rubs his eyes, and stares round the laboratory. All the
students are there, gathered in a group about the finished “project,”
but the ghostly shades of the old inventors have vanished like the
unsubstantial fabric of a vision.
The “projects” are not all finished on the same day. Some of them are
far more complicated than others, and some students are more skilled
than others. All are very busy. It is not improper to ask questions
relating to work on the graduating projects; the instructor is at hand
to answer such questions. But it is a point of honor not to ask a
question if the difficulty can possibly be otherwise overcome. Hence
very few questions are asked.
The last week of the term is a very trying one to all concerned. The
students are reticent and unusually silent; all are anxious, some are
timid--the nervous tension is extreme. The instructor becomes taciturn
under a painful sense of compulsory isolation from his class, towards
all the members of which he has, for three years, sustained fraternal
rather than dictatorial relations. But as the projects are, one by one,
completed, the atmosphere clears. When the student realizes that his
project is certain to be a success, his face brightens and he is pleased
to discuss its “points” with the instructor. The instructor is delighted
to resume his former relations with the class, the feeling of constraint
is dispelled, and the graduation-day exercises are contemplated with
confidence.