If the wheels of a vehicle are of equal height, the load should rest in
the middle of the wheels. When the front wheels meet with an obstacle in
the road the horse will only have to lift half the weight of the load,
the other half being on the hind wheels. When the hind wheels come to
the same obstruction again only half the load will have to be lifted,
the other half being on the front wheels. But, as in English carriages,
the wheels are very rarely of equal height, we should proportion the
load more upon the higher wheels than upon the lower. As long ago as
1770 a Coachmaker, named Joseph Jacob, of St. Mary Axe, wrote thus:--“A
load should always be placed in a waggon over the highest wheels, and as
low as possible.” This was the Mr Jacob who assisted at some experiments
made at that time in the Strand, by direction of the Society of Arts,
for the purpose of ascertaining the proper height of wheels. Mr Cuthbert
Clarke was rewarded with a fifteen guinea gold medal. Mr Jacob had also
received a twenty guinea medal for improved carriage springs.
During my lectures I exhibited some full-sized drawings of carriages
made by M. Dupont, of Paris, to show how completely a Coachbuilder at a
distance might be guided in building carriages by his designs. These
drawings are quite works of art, and by means of them M. Dupont is
educating the artistic taste of every manufactory which procures his
aid. How much better our carriages would be if we worked from drawings
as carefully planned out and executed as these. Many of our artisans
could, with a little instruction, draw quite as well, and by degrees
would learn to draw with as much artistic taste and sense of the
beautiful. Some artisans are now being instructed in the art of design,
and I trust the day is not far distant when every workman will see that
his son learns drawing as part of his education, and as the essential
preliminary to any technical education which is to follow. The power of
producing on paper the images figured on the brain is an important part
and factor in all the arrangements of our social life, whether those
images and imaginations, and reasons and problems, are traced with the
pen in writing or with the pencil in a drawing, by both we record, we
discipline, and we clear up more or less the busy thoughts that nature
or surrounding circumstances have gifted and endowed us with. On the
Continent, and especially in Paris, this has long been understood, and
workmen have been carefully educated for this work. And, thanks to the
department of Science and Art of South Kensington, thousands of students
have past through the schools of design scattered all over England. If
the artisans of the Coach Trade would follow the example of those
engaged in the china and pottery trades, they would meet with the same
success, and restore their fame for Coachbuilding to its former
greatness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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