Modern A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON MACHINES, MOTORS, AND THE TRANSMISSION OF POWER, Appletons' Cyclopedia of Applied Mechanics. INCLUDING SPECIAL CHAPTERS ON ELECTRIC WELDING, ALUMINIUM, COTTON-SPINNING WAGONS, CYCLES, ETC., ETC., ETC. EDITED BY PARK BENJAMIN, PH.D., LL.B. ILLUSTRATED BY THOUSANDS OF ENGRAVINGS, NEW YORK THE NORMAN W. HENLEY PUBLISHING CO. 132 NASSAU STREET SBH AP5 Sup PREFACE. APPLETONS' DICTIONARY OF ENGINEERING, published in 1851, was the first work in which were gathered, in cyclopedic form, descriptions of the products of American mechanical industry. It served the best purpose of such a publication, in that it crystallized existing knowledge into concrete shape, digested it, and so rendered it easily available to the busy mechanic and engineer. Thirty years afterward-so great had been the advances due to American invention in every department of the mechanic arts-it was found that, to bring the work abreast of the time, its complete reconstruction was necessary. As a result, appeared Appletons' Cyclopædia of Applied Mechanics, in which of the older publication nothing remained save the small proportion which was valuable in point of historical interest, or which dealt with subjects still instructtive when brought into contrast with later achievements. No work of a technical character so signally and so quickly demonstrated its own usefulness. It became at once the recognized standard of American mechanical practice. It found its way into the workshops and the manufactories and the technical schools all over the land. It has borne a prominent part in the education of the American mechanic as he is to-day; and, more than any other literary production, it has helped him toward the pre-eminence which he has attained. But modern progress in all the great fields of invention and discovery is moving with a constantly accelerating speed. In the bending of that great force of Nature which we call "electricity" to human needs, advances are becoming almost a matter of hours. A decade of such onward motion calls for a new record—a new crystallization of the results-and a new effort to bring them in the same tried and assimilable form to those who constitute "the hands of the nation." Hence the present volume. It is not a revision. It is a new book, dealing solely with the principal and most useful advances of the past ten years; and it is therefore issued under a new name which exactly describes its contents-Modern Mechanism. It does not supersede the Cyclopædia of Mechanics, but adds to it. A word, in conclusion, as to how the book has been made. Countless letters and circulars asking information on mechanical topics have been sent to manufacturers and engineers throughout the country. A large collection, not merely of trade literature but of valuable practical suggestions, has thus been gathered; and this has been supplemented by the best papers which have appeared in American and foreign technical periodicals and in the transactions of engineering societies. The great mass of accumulated material, carefully digested, has been intrusted to eminent experts on each subject, and by them has been winnowed and selected in the light of their special knowledge and judgment. The result is now submitted to the higher adjudication of the master-mechanics of the United States. |