Industrial Biography: Iron-workers and Tool-makers

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Ticknor and Fields, 1864 - Industrial arts - 410 pages
 

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Page 204 - Man is a Tool-using Animal (Handthierendes Thier). Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools, can devise Tools: with these the granite mountain...
Page 206 - So it came to pass in the day of battle, that there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people that were with Saul and Jonathan : but with Saul and with Jonathan his son was there found.
Page 215 - Instruments may be made by which the largest ships, with only one man guiding them, will be carried with greater velocity than if they were full of sailors. Chariots may be constructed that will move with incredible rapidity, without the help of animals. Instruments of flying may be formed, in which a man, sitting at his ease and meditating on any subject, may beat the air with his artificial wings, after the manner of birds.
Page 59 - I am sure heretofore one ship of her Majesty's was able to beat ten Spaniards ; but now, by reason of our own ordnance, we are hardly matched one to one.
Page 131 - The antiquity of the Indian process is no less astonishing than its ingenuity. We can hardly doubt that the tools with which the Egyptians covered their obelisks and temples of porphyry and syenite with hieroglyphics were made of Indian steel.
Page 260 - It is nearly half a century since I first became acquainted with the engineering profession, and at that time the greater part of our mechanical operations were done by hand. On my first entrance into Manchester, there were no self-acting tools ; and the whole stock of an engineering or machine establishment might be summed up in a few ill-constructed lathes, and a few drills and boring machines of rude construction.
Page 28 - Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel, for the Philistines said, "Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears." But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share and his coulter and his axe and his mattock.
Page 32 - India colonies; hides or dressed leather in some other countries; and there is at this day a village in Scotland where it is not uncommon, I am told, for a workman to carry nails instead of money to the baker's shop or the alehouse.
Page 29 - They sallied from the mountains;25 a sceptre was the reward of his advice; and the annual ceremony, in which a piece of iron was heated in the fire, and a smith's hammer was successively handled by the prince and his nobles, recorded for ages the humble profession and rational pride of the Turkish nation.
Page 106 - The last effort that was made in this country for making iron with pit-coal, was with raw coal, by a Mr. Blewstone, a German, who built his furnace at Wednesbury, so ingeniously contrived (that only the flame of the coal should come to the ore, with several other conveniences), that many were of opinion he would succeed in it. But experience, that great baffler of speculation, showed it...

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