Nature's Teachings: Human Invention Anticipated by NatureWood, J. G. (John George)
History
Nature's Teachings: Human Invention Anticipated by Nature
Wood, J. G. (John George)
Inventions; Natural history
The press-cake, thus bitten to pieces, is passed through a series of
cylindrical sieves, each graduated with the utmost accuracy, and being
turned by means of machinery. Being set on a slope, the powder runs by
its own weight down them, and all those particles which cannot pass
through the meshes are poured out untouched at the lower end.
The portions which are too large to pass the openings of the first sieve
are then handed onwards by means of a machine called a “Jacob’s Ladder,”
which consists of a series of little vessels or buckets strung on a
tape, and revolving over a couple of wheels. The first set of buckets
takes the coarsely bitten press-cake to the second set of rollers, the
teeth of which are comparatively small. Thence it is passed over to a
third set, and so forth, until it is delivered in any quality of grain
which may be required.
The modern Mangle, again, affords a good example of this principle. The
old obtrusive, costly, and cumbrous Mangle, which was nothing more than
a heavy box of stones upon rollers, has given place to the modern system
of duplex action in rollers, and one of the old Mangles is not easily to
be seen, unless it be worked as a curiosity. In fact, it is nearly as
obsolete as the spinning-wheel, which yet may be seen in some of our
country villages, where scarcely one per cent, of the population has
ever been in a town, and many of them, the women especially, make it
their boast that they have never been beyond the outskirts of their
village.
This clumsy machine is now replaced by the very simple invention which
has been in vogue for some years, and which can not only release, but
regulate, the pressure at any moment, by means of springs, levers, and
weights. This machine is, in fact, exactly the same as that which is
represented in the illustration, except that the rollers are quite
smooth. They can be adjusted to almost any amount of pressure by levers
and weights which are attached to the upper roller, and, when the linen
has passed through them, it has undergone the double operation of
wringing and mangling. This disposition of the rollers has long been
anticipated in the jaws of the Skate which crush to pieces the shells of
the whelks, periwinkles, &c., on which the creature feeds.
THE GRINDSTONE.
Being on the subject of jaws and teeth as a mode of breaking to pieces
objects which are placed between them, we will take those implements
which grind to powder, or “triturate,” instead of breaking or
flattening.
From the very earliest ages, and as soon as man had begun to discover
the “staff of life,” the art of grinding naturally assumed an
ever-increasing importance.
The first and most primitive mode of grinding corn and converting it
into meal was that which was followed by Sarah, when she welcomed her
husband’s guests, which we know, from internal evidence, was followed by
the uncivilised races who formerly inhabited this island, and by many
semi-savages of the present day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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