Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881
Various
Science -- Periodicals
then, with 700 lb. to the inch, the loss under such circumstances
would be only two per cent. in transmission. There is no doubt that
this transmission of power hydraulically has been of the greatest
possible use. It has enabled work to be done which could not be done
before. Enormous weights are raised with facility wherever required,
as by the aid of power hydraulically transmitted, it is perfectly easy
for one man to manage the heaviest cranes. Moreover, as I have said in
other places, the system which we owe to Sir William Armstrong has
gone far to elevate the human race, and it has done so in this manner.
So long as it is competent for a man to earn a living by mere
unintelligent exercise of his muscles, he is very likely to do it. You
may see in the old London docks the crane-heads covered by structures
that look like paddle-boxes. If you go to them, there is, I am glad to
say, nothing now to fill them up; but when the British Association
first met, these paddle-boxes covered large tread-wheels, in which men
trod, so as to raise a weight. Now, although I know that in fact there
is nothing more objectionable in a man turning a wheel by treading
inside of it than there is if he turn it round by a winch-handle, yet
somehow it strikes one more as being merely the work of an animal, a
turnspit, or a squirrel, or, indeed, as the task imposed on the
criminal. But, nevertheless, in this way there were a large number of
persons getting their living by the mere exercise of their muscles,
but, as might be expected, a very poor living, derived as it was from
unintelligent labor. That work is no longer possible, and is not so,
for the powerful reason that it does not pay. Those persons,
therefore, who would now have been thus occupied, are compelled to
elevate themselves, and to become competent to earn their living in a
manner which is more worthy of an intelligent human being. It is on
these grounds that I say we owe very much the elevation of the working
classes, especially of the class below the artisan, to this invention
of our distinguished president.
ELECTRIC TRANSMISSION OF POWER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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