twisted, yet, after much training, the workmen were taught to twist these very uniformly, following the plan which can be best understood by an inspection of the drawings in Plate 55 which show the loops more clearly than they can be described. After the loops had been properly twisted, soft solder was run all through the twist in order to unite firmly the twists of the wire. Although special grades of wire were found which showed very high tensile strength when the wire was [p172] tested without having loops formed in its ends, yet it appeared that the twisting of these high-grade wires so seriously affected them that in the case of guy-wires with loops at the ends, better final results could be obtained by using softer grades of steel. The wire which was actually found best, after much experiment, was a good grade of Bessemer steel of a medium hardness, which had been “coppered” to prevent rusting. However, even with the softer grades of steel wire, it was found that there were sometimes hard spots in the wire which revealed themselves only upon test, and that when a hard spot occurred in the twisted portion where the loop was formed, the final strength of the completed guy-wire was sometimes only twenty-five per cent of what it should be. The precaution was then taken to subject each of the completed guys to a test strain at least twenty-five per cent greater than it was calculated the wire would have to stand in actual use, so that no accident from defective wires would be likely to occur.