Part 8

Not so many years before that, in England, James Watt was complaining about the difficulty of boring a six-inch cylinder for his steam engine with sufficient accuracy to make it a commercial success. No matter how he packed the piston with cork, oiled rags and old hats, the irregularities in the cylinder let the steam escape, and it was believed that neither the tools nor the workmen existed for making a steam engine with sufficient precision. When a young manufacturer named Wilkinson invented a guide for the boring tool, and machined cylinders of fifty inches diameter so accurately that, as Watt testified, they did not err the thickness of an old shilling in any part, it seemed as though the last refinement in machinery had been achieved. That was not very accurate by present-day standards of the thousandth part of an inch, for a shilling is about one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness.

[Illustration: OLD BORING TOOL]

Remington was right in the thick of development with a gunmaking plant, of course, for as his business grew he had to invent and adapt machines to increase output. The lap-welded barrel was standard until 1850, and he got together a battery of trip hammers for forging and welding his barrels. Finer dimensions became a factor in his business when the output grew large enough to warrant carrying a stock of spare parts for his customers, and so he improved those parts in ways that gave at least the beginnings of interchangeability.

Materials were very crude. There was no buying of foundry iron by analysis, no high carbon steels, no fancy tool steels--nor any “efficiency experts” with their stop watches and scientific speed-and-feed tables. Iron was secured by sending teams around the neighborhood to pick up scrap, and when the scrap iron was all cleaned up, fresh metal was brought from ore beds in Oneida County. Coal was scarce, and charcoal made the chief fuel, burnt in the hills round about Ilion.

And the world was fairly swarming with inventors!

That was long before invention became a research department full of engineers. The individual inventor, with a queer-shaped factory process, carried on by a head and a rough model in his carpet-bag, had a chance to influence industry. Few of the useful contrivances had been invented yet, and almost any one of these chaps might be a genius. So, from the very first, Remington was interested in inventors. He was an inventor himself! His pioneer spirit was so strong that Ilion became a place of pilgrimage for men with ideas. Inventors came from everywhere, and Remington listened to them all. Some brought models, others drawings, still others a bare idea, and a few, of course, had just a plain “bug.”

[Illustration: POLE LATHE OF 1800]

The First Government Contract.

The first government contract came in 1845. War with Mexico loomed up on the horizon. William Jencks had invented a carbine, and Uncle Sam wanted several thousand guns made in a hurry under the patent. A contract had been let to Ames & Co., of Springfield, Mass., and they had made special machinery for the job. Remington took over the contract and the machinery, added to his power, secured by putting in another water race, erected the building now known as the “Old Armory,” and made the carbines.

In 1850 the art of gunmaking began to improve radically. The old lap-welded barrel gave way to the barrel drilled from solid steel. This was accomplished for the first time in America at the Remington plant, in making Harper’s Ferry muskets. Then followed the drilling of small-bore barrels from solid steel, the drilling of doubled-barrel shotguns from one piece of steel, the drilling of fluid steel and nickel steel barrels, all done for the first time in this country at the Ilion shops. Three-barrel guns were also made from one piece of steel, two bores for shot and the third rifled for a bullet. A customer wanted some special barrels with nine bores in a single piece of steel. These were made at Ilion, and the Remington plant soon became noted for its ability to bore almost anything in the shape of a gun, from the tiniest squirrel calibers up to boat guns weighing sixty pounds or more, which were really small caliber cannon.

[Illustration: SHIPPING REMINGTONS IN THE EARLY DAYS]

Between the time when Remington made his first rifle at Ilion Gulph and the outbreak of the Civil War, most of the basic things in machine tools had been adapted to general production--the slide-rest lathe, planer, shaper, drill press, steam hammer, taps and dies, the vernier caliper that enabled a mechanic at the bench to measure to one-thousandth of an inch, and so on.

When Fort Sumter was fired upon, Uncle Sam turned to the Remington plant, among others, for help out of his dilemma of “unpreparedness.” The first contract was given for 5,000 Harper’s Ferry rifles, and it took two years to complete it. Five thousand Harper’s Ferry muskets came in to be changed so that bayonet or sabre could be attached, and this particular job was finished in two weeks, every man and boy in Ilion working at it. There was a big contract for army revolvers, and that had to be taken care of by starting a separate plant in Utica, which ran until the end of the war, when its machinery and tools were moved to Ilion. Steam power was now installed, and the plant, increased by new buildings and machinery, ran day and night.

[Illustration: MASTER OF THE SITUATION

The modern sportsman with his automatic rifle is prepared for all emergencies.]

In 1863, the Remington breech-loading rifle was perfected, and proved to be so great an improvement over previous inventions in military arms that an order for 10,000 of them was obtained from our government. The Ilion plant being taxed to its utmost capacity, the contract was transferred to the Savage Arms Company, of Middletown, Conn., which completed the job in 1864.

[Illustration: _Illustrations by courtesy of the Winchester Repeating Arms Co._

TURNING GUN STOCKS

40 YARD RANGE]

The tools and fixtures used in making Remington breech-loading rifles for the United States were brought back from Connecticut in 1866, and an inventive genius named John Rider was set to work, with a staff of the best mechanics obtainable, to develop this gun still further. He devised the famous system of a dropping breech block, backed up by the hammer.

Uncle Sam had a great number of muzzle-loading Springfield rifles left from the Civil War. By the Berdan system, these were turned into breech-loaders at the Ilion plant, the breech being cut out of the barrel and a breech-block inserted, swinging upward and forward. Spain had 10,000 muskets to modernize by the same system, and the breech-block attachments were made at Ilion.

The Berdan system, with a slight alteration, was the foundation of the Allen gun, made by the United States government for the army until superseded by the Krag-Jorgensen.

The repeating rifle now seemed an interesting possibility and large sums were spent in developing a weapon of this type. It did not prove to have merit, however.

Then James P. Lee designed the first military rifle with the bolt type of cartridge chamber, the parent of the military rifle of today. The model was made at Ilion, but another type of bolt gun, the Keene, seemed to offer still greater possibilities at the moment, and the plant was being prepared to manufacture this. The Lee gun was taken up at Bridgeport, but not made successfully, and finally, as the Keene gun had not met expectations, falling short of government tests, the Lee type was brought back to Ilion, tools worked out and manufacture undertaken in quantities. It afterwards became the basis for the famous British army rifle, the Lee-Metford.

[Illustration: ACTION TESTING

EXTREME CARE IN TESTING IS NECESSARY TO ACCURACY OF AIM IN THE FINISHED PRODUCT

_Illustrations by courtesy of the Winchester Repeating Arms Co._]

At this period the plant made many other interesting guns. The Whitmore double-barrel breech-loading shotgun was designed, and later developed into the Remington breech-loading shotgun. Eliott hammerless breech-loading pistols with one, two, four and five barrels, discharged by a revolving firing pin, were made in large quantities, as well as a single-barrel Eliott magazine pistol. The Eliott magazine pump rifle was perfected in Ilion, but afterwards made in New England. Vernier and wind gauge sights, attachable to any rifle, were made, and novelties like the “gun cane,” which had the appearance of a walking-stick, but was a perfect firearm, carried as a protection against robbery.

[Illustration: ASSEMBLING REPEATING SHOTGUNS AND RIFLES]

Making Barrels.

One of the most important features is, of course, the making of barrels. The machines for drilling and boring are the best that money can buy, and the operatives the most skilful to be found anywhere. Care at this stage reduces the necessity for straightening later. Every point is given the minutest attention. In drilling 22-calibers, for example, the length of the hole must be from 100 to 125 times the diameter of the drill.

Improvements have made it possible to drill harder steel than formerly. This reduces the weight of the gun, and is important to the man who carries it.

Taking off 2/1000 of an Inch.

The boring is an especially delicate task. In choke-boring your shotgun, for example, the final reamer took off only 2/1000 of an inch. Think of such a gossamer thread of metal! But it insures accuracy. No pains can be too great for that.

This exquisite painstaking will be seen still more in the barrel-inspection department, to which we will go now. In passing, we must not forget the grinding shop, where is, perhaps, the finest battery of grinding machines in the United States; or the polishers running at the dizzy speed of 1,500 to 1,700 revolutions per minute and making the inside of the barrel shine like glass. This high polish is important, for it resists rust and prevents leading.

[Illustration: SHOOTING ROOM OF BALLISTIC DEPARTMENT*

* The bullet breaks a metal tape at the moment of leaving the muzzle. This time and the time of striking target are electrically recorded on the Chronograph.]

[Illustration: SOME OF THE SHOOTING TESTS]

[Illustration: CHRONOGRAPH FOR MEASURING VELOCITIES]

[Illustration: WEIGHING BULLETS]

That is the atmosphere of the whole place. Every action has its reason. There is not an unnecessary motion made by any one, and there is not one necessary thing omitted, whatever the cost or trouble.

[Illustration: BORING GUN BARRELS

_Courtesy of the Winchester Repeating Arms Co._]

The Making of Ammunition Today.

It is no easy matter to secure a pass to the Bridgeport plant. Its great advantage over other concerns lies, to a large degree, in the exclusive machinery that has been developed at so much pains and expense and the secrets of which are so carefully guarded. In our case, however, there will be nothing to hinder us from getting a few general impressions, provided we do not go into mechanical details too closely.

The very size of the great manufactory is impressive--sixteen acres of floor space, crowded with machinery and resounding with activity. In building after building, floor above floor, the sight is similar: the long rows of busy machines, the whirling network of shafts and belts above, the intent operatives, and the steady clicking of innumerable parts blended into a softened widespread sound. It seems absolutely endless; it is a matter of hours to go through the plant. Stop at one of the machines and see the speed and accuracy with which it turns out its product; then calculate the entire number of machines and you will begin to gain a little idea as to what the total output of this vast institution must be.

[Illustration: PUTTING METAL HEADS ON PAPER SHOT SHELLS]

More than once you will find yourself wondering whether there can be guns enough in the world, or fingers enough to press their triggers, to use such a tremendous production of ammunition. But there are, and the demand is steadily increasing. This old world is a pretty big place after all.

[Illustration: ASSEMBLING AUTO SHOTGUNS]

[Illustration: EXAMINING PAPER SHELLS]

[Illustration: REPEATING SHOTGUN MACHINING DEPARTMENT]

[Illustration: INSPECTING METALLIC SHELLS]

Handling Deadly Explosives.

Operatives, girls in many cases, handle the most terrible compounds. We stop, for example, where they are making primers to go in the head of your loaded shell, in order that it may not miss fire when the bunch of quail whirrs suddenly into the air from the sheltering grasses. That grayish, pasty mass is wet fulminate of mercury. Suppose it should dry a trifle too rapidly. It would be the last thing you ever did suppose, for there is force enough in that double handful to blow its surroundings into fragments. You edge away a little, and no wonder, but the girl who handles it shows no fear as she deftly but carefully presses it into molds which separate it into the proper sizes for primers. She knows that in its present moist condition it cannot explode.

Extreme Precautions.

Or, perhaps, we may be watching one of the many loading machines. There is a certain suggestiveness in the way the machines are separated by partitions. The man in charge takes a small carrier of powder from a case in the outside wall and shuts the door, then carefully empties it into the reservoir of his machine, and watches alertly while it packs the proper portions into the waiting shells. He looks like a careful man, and needs to be. You do not stand too close.

The empty carrier then passes through a little door at the side of the building, and drops into the yawning mouth of an automatic tube. In the twinkling of an eye it appears in front of the operator in one of the distributing stations, where it is refilled and returned to its proper loading machine, in order to keep the machine going at a perfectly uniform rate; while at the same time it allows but a minimum amount of powder to remain in the building at any moment. Each machine has but just sufficient powder in its hopper to run until a new supply can reach it. Greater precaution than this cannot be imagined, illustrating as it does, that no effort has been spared to protect the lives of the operators.

* * * * *

How does an Artesian Well Keep Up Its Supply of Water?

Artesian wells are named after the French Province of Artais, where they appear to have been first used on an extensive scale.

[Illustration: ARTESIAN WELL (_D_) IN THE LONDON BASIN]

They are perpendicular borings into the ground through which water rises to the surface of the soil, producing a constant flow or stream. As a location is chosen where the source of supply is higher than the mouth of the boring, the water rises to the opening at the top. They are generally sunk in valley plains and districts where the formation of the ground is such that that below the surface is bent into basin-shaped curves. The rain falling on the outcrops of these saturates the whole porous bed, so that when the bore reaches it the water by hydraulic pressure rushes up towards the level of the highest portion of the strata.

The supply is sometimes so abundant as to be used extensively as a moving power, and in arid regions for fertilizing the ground, to which purpose artesian springs have been applied from a very remote period. Thus many artesian wells have been sunk in the Algerian Sahara which have proved an immense boon to the district. The same has been done in the arid region of the United States. The water of most of these is potable, but a few are a little saline, though not to such an extent as to influence vegetation.

The hollows in which London and Paris lie are both perforated in many places by borings of this nature. At London they were first sunk only to the sand, but more recently into the chalk. One of the most celebrated artesian wells is that of Grenelle near Paris, 1,798 feet deep, completed in 1841, after eight years’ work. One at Rochefort, France, is 2,765 feet deep; at Columbus, Ohio, 2,775; at Pesth, Hungary, 3,182, and at St. Louis, Mo., 3,843-1/2. Artesian borings have been made in West Queensland 4,000 feet deep. At Schladebach, in Prussia, there is one nearly a mile deep.

As the temperature of water from great depths is invariably higher than that at the surface, artesian wells have been made to supply warm water for heating manufactories, greenhouses, hospitals, fishponds, etc. The petroleum wells of America are of the same technical description. These wells are now made with larger diameters than formerly, and altogether their construction has been rendered much more easy in modern times.

Boring in the earth or rock for mining, geologic or engineering purposes is effected by means of augers, drills or jumpers, sometimes wrought by hand, but now usually by machinery, driven by steam or frequently by compressed air.

In ordinary mining practice a bore-hole is usually commenced by digging a small pit about six feet deep, over which is set up a shear-legs with pulley, etc. The boring rods are from ten to twenty feet in length, capable of being jointed together by box and screw, and having a chisel inserted at the lower end. A lever is employed to raise the bore-rods, to which a slight twisting motion is given at each stroke, when the rock at the bottom of the hole is broken by the repeated percussion of the cutting tool. Various methods are employed to clear out the triturated rock.

The work is much quickened by the substitution of steam power, water power, or even horse power for manual labor. Of the many forms of boring machines now in use may be mentioned the diamond boring machine, invented by Leschot, a Swiss engineer. In this the cutting tool is of a tubular form, and receives a uniform rotatory motion, the result being the production of a cylindrical core from the rock of the same size as the bore or caliber of the tube. The boring bit is a steel thimble about four inches in length, having two rows of Brazilian black diamonds firmly embedded therein, the edges projecting slightly. The diamond teeth are the only parts which come in contact with the rock, and their hardness is such that an enormous length can be bored with but little appreciable wear.

Where do Dates Come From?

Besides the dried dates which we are accustomed to seeing in this country, they are used extensively by the natives of Northern Africa and of some countries of Asia.

It consists of an external pericarp, separable into three portions, and covering a seed which is hard and horny in consequence of the nature of the albumen in which the embryo plant is buried.

Next to the cocoanut tree, the date is unquestionably the most interesting and useful of the palm tribe. Its stem shoots up to the height of fifty or sixty feet without branch or division, and of nearly the same thickness throughout its length. From the summit it throws out a magnificent crown of large feather-shaped leaves and a number of spadices, each of which in the female plant bears a bunch of from 180 to 200 dates, each bunch weighing from twenty to twenty-five pounds.

The fruit is eaten fresh or dried. Cakes of dates pounded and kneaded together are the food of the Arabs who traverse the deserts. A liquor resembling wine is made from dates by fermentation.

Persia, Palestine, Arabia and the north of Africa are best adapted for the culture of the date-tree, and its fruit is in these countries an important article of food. It is now being introduced into California.

The Story of Rubber

Rubber is the coagulated sap of more than 300 varieties of tropical trees and vines--the Landolphia of Africa, the Ficus of the Malay Peninsula, the Guayule shrub of Mexico and the Castilloa of South America, Central America and Southern Mexico are all important rubber producers, but far more important than all of the others together is the Hevea, a native of Brazil.

Hevea trees are scattered through the dense forests of practically every part of the Amazon Basin, a territory more than two-thirds as large as the United States.

How was Rubber First Used?

Down in Brazil, several hundred miles up the Amazon River, there stood a great forest of trees and in this forest--the same as in forests of today--were birds and animals and bugs and beetles, etc. All trees are protected by nature; some are protected from bugs eating their leaves, by other bugs eating up these bugs; other trees are protected by having a thorny or bristly bark.

[Illustration: INDIANS PLAYING WITH A RUBBER BALL WHEN COLUMBUS CAME IN SIGHT

_Courtesy of the United States Rubber Co._]

In these forests in which the rubber tree grows there was a wood-boring beetle, and this beetle would attack these rubber trees, boring into them; but the tree, in order to protect itself, had a poisonous juice, and as soon as the beetle bored into the tree, this juice killed him. Then the juice would fill up the hole the beetle had made, and the tree would go on growing as before.

In those days the natives around these forests (who were half Indian and half Negro) happened to find some of this juice sticking on the tree. They cut it off, rolled it together and made a ball, with which they would play games. The first mention of it was made by Herrera in his account of the second voyage of Columbus, wherein he speaks of a ball used by Indians, made from the gum of a tree which was lighter and bounced better than the far-famed balls of Castile.

[Illustration: IN THE JUNGLE

LLAMA, DOMESTIC ANIMAL OF THE ANDES, USED TO CARRY RUBBER OVER MOUNTAINS

RAILROAD AROUND THE RAPIDS OF THE MADEIRA TERMINAL

CRUDE RUBBER “BISCUITS” ON THE BANKS OF THE AMAZON

_Courtesy of the United States Rubber Co._]

The way they gather this rubber is very interesting. When it comes from the tree it is nothing but a milky juice. The natives of South America soon discovered that the white man was willing to pay them beads and other trinkets for chunks of this rubber, so they became active in gathering it.

[Illustration: ON THE BANKS OF THE RIO GUAPORE--BRAZIL

_Courtesy of the B. F. Goodrich Co._]

What is a Rubber Camp Like?

In this locality the rubber harvest commences as soon as the Amazon falls which is usually about the first of August. When this date approaches bands of natives set out from their primitive homes and go, in many instances, hundreds of miles into the forest lowlands. There, within easy reach of the rubber trees, they set up their camp and the actual work of harvesting the rubber crop begins. It usually covers a period of about six months, extending from August to January or February.

The camps are usually great distances from the nearest town and procuring supplies is not only difficult but very expensive as well. The natives build their huts out of small poles covered with palm thatch and live in little colonies while the rubber harvest is going on. The Brazilian name for a rubber gatherer is “seringuero.”

[Illustration: RUBBER GATHERER’S HUT NEAR THE AMAZON

_Courtesy of the B. F. Goodrich Co._]