So far as America and Britain, the home of the lifting-magnet, have been concerned, progress has been slow and uneventful. The Germans set out to reap advantage from our manufacturing apathy, and to a certain degree succeeded. It remained for the war, with its drain upon cheap labour on the one hand and the necessity to speed up and to increase output on the other, which compelled us to regard the lifting-magnet with enhanced favour. This tendency was accentuated by the urgent requests circulated far and wide to save all waste metal and to turn it over to the country for the production of munitions. In this manner vast quantities of waste metal of every conceivable description were released, which, in turn, led to a demand for handling appliances. Under the conditions which obtained it was imperative that this potential raw material should be handled with the utmost economy, both of time and labour, but native ingenuity had nothing at its command to compare with the lifting-magnet in this connection. Those firms which had been sufficiently enterprising to equip themselves with the German appliance found themselves in an overwhelming superior position, while their lifting-magnets paid for themselves over and over again in the course of a single year. The national deficiency in supply and its far-reaching adverse effects were remedied through the combined enterprise and initiative of a young electrical engineer and a British manufacturer. The former had followed the German developments very closely and had discovered that, notwithstanding their extravagant claims, these appliances really fell somewhat short of the mark in point of efficiency and economy in operation. Fortified with this knowledge he had promptly designed an appliance of this character, in which the obvious Teuton defects were eliminated, thereby giving a lifting-magnet which represented a decided advance upon the best which Germany could offer. The Pickett-West lifting-magnet, so named after its designer and manufacturer respectively, is one fully complying with traditional British standards of production, while it also possesses many novel features which have already emphasized their value. It is built along robust lines, so that it completely fulfils the conditions peculiar to its field of application. Moreover, its design can be modified within wide limits to meet the individual requirements of the service for which it is intended, one distinctly ingenious feature being the model fitted with moving fingers, each of which constitutes a magnet in itself, and wherewith the magnet is able to exercise the maximum magnetic gripping power upon the article for the movement of which it is being used.