At the Vienna Exposition in 1873, the first mammoth saw of this description was exhibited. The saw itself was made by the celebrated firm of Perin & Co., of Paris, upon machinery the drawings of which were made by Mr. Van Pelt of New York, and constructed by Richards, Loudon and Kelly of Philadelphia. The saw was fifty-five feet long, and sawed planks from a pine log three feet thick, at the rate of sixty superficial feet per minute. The difficulty of securing a perfectly reliable weld in the endless steel band was overcome by M. Perin, who received at the Paris Exhibition in 1867 the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. Now gangs of such saws may be found in America and elsewhere, and circular saws have also been added. Saws that both cut, form, and _plane_ the boards at the same time are now known. _Boring tools_, both for hand and machinery, demanded improvement. Formerly augers and similar boring tools had merely a curved sharpened end and a concavity to hold the chips, and the whole tool had to be withdrawn to empty the chips. It was known as a _pod_ auger. In 1809, L’Hommedieu, a Frenchman, invented an auger with two pods and cutting lips, a central screw and a twisted shank. About the same time Lilley of Connecticut made a twisted auger, and these screw-form, twisted, cutting tools of various kinds, with their cutting lips, and by which the shavings or chips were withdrawn continuously from the hole as the cutting proceeded, became so improved in the United States that they were known as the American augers and bits. The planing machines of General Bentham were improved by Bramah, and he and Maudsley also greatly improved other wood-working machines and tools in England--1802-1810. We have before, in the chapter on metal-working, shown the importance of the _slide-rest_, _planer_ and _lathe_, _when combined_, and which also are extensively adapted to wood-working. In Bramah’s machine, a vertical spindle carried at its lower extremity a horizontal wheel having twenty-eight cutter blades, followed by a plane also attached to a wheel. A board was by these means perfectly trimmed and smoothed from end to end, as it was carried against the cutters by suitable moving means. William Woodworth of New York, in 1828, patented a celebrated planing machine which became so popular and its use was regarded so necessary in the wood-working trades, that the patent was looked upon as an odious monopoly. It consisted of a combination of rollers armed with cutters, attached to a horizontal shaft revolving at a great speed, and of means for feeding the boards to the cutters. With Bentham’s, Bramah’s, Blanchard’s, and Woodworth’s ideas for a basis, those innumerable improvements have been made in machinery, by which wood is converted with almost lightning rapidity into all the forms in which we see it, whether ornamental or useful, in modern homes and other structures.