Stories of Invention, Told by Inventors and their FriendsHale, Edward Everett
History
Stories of Invention, Told by Inventors and their Friends
Hale, Edward Everett
Inventions; Inventors; Technology -- Juvenile literature
The glasses are blown as nearly as possible in the form of hemispheres,
having each an open neck or socket in the middle. The thickness of the
glass near the brim about a tenth of an inch, or hardly quite so much,
but thicker as it comes nearer the neck, which in the largest glasses is
about an inch deep, and an inch and a half wide within, these dimensions
lessening as the glasses themselves diminish in size, except that the
neck of the smallest ought not to be shorter than half an inch. The
largest glass is nine inches diameter, and the smallest three inches.
Between these two are twenty-three different sizes, differing from each
other a quarter of an inch in diameter. To make a single instrument
there should be at least six glasses blown of each size; and out of this
number one may probably pick thirty-seven glasses (which are sufficient
for three octaves with all the semitones) that will be each either the
note one wants or a little sharper than that note, and all fitting so
well into each other as to taper pretty regularly from the largest to
the smallest. It is true there are not thirty-seven sizes, but it often
happens that two of the same size differ a note or half-note in tone, by
reason of a difference in thickness, and these may be placed one in the
other without sensibly hurting the regularity of the taper form.
The glasses being thus turned, you are to be provided with a case for
them, and a spindle on which they are to be fixed. My case is about
three feet long, eleven inches every way wide at the biggest end; for it
tapers all the way, to adapt it better to the conical figure of the set
of glasses. This case opens in the middle of its height, and the upper
part turns up by hinges fixed behind. The spindle, which is of hard
iron, lies horizontally from end to end of the box within, exactly in
the middle, and is made to turn on brass gudgeons at each end. It is
round, an inch in diameter at the thickest end, and tapering to a
quarter of an inch at the smallest. A square shank comes from its
thickest end through the box, on which shank a wheel is fixed by a
screw. This wheel serves as a fly to make the motion equable, when the
spindle with the glasses is turned by the foot like a spinning-wheel.
My wheel is of mahogany, eighteen inches diameter, and pretty thick, so
as to conceal near its circumference about twenty-five pounds of lead.
An ivory pin is fixed in the face of this wheel, and about four inches
from the axis. Over the neck of this pin is put the loop of the string
that comes up from the movable step to give it motion. The case stands
on a neat frame with four legs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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