Volume 08 (1864) (474 pages)

306: Che Mining antl Scientific Dress, Alechanical Deparhuent. — Home Industry. We have already, we claim, fulfilled our promise to make this paper a faithful and reliablo expositor of the material wealth and progress of the Pacific Coast. To render it thus worthy the great interests it represents, we have-spared, so far, neither expense nor labor; and in our enlarged condition will be found every week as copious and complete an account of mining’ intellixénce “of every description, . and from every section of the country, asitis profitable, to the reader, to collate. .-. Tn its second capacity, as a mechanical and scientifie organ, we intend it to be equally complete. Our pages have always been freely opened to the illustration of local inventions, or improvements in machinery, both .agricultural.and. mining, and to the prog Through our large cireulation, all interested; by being made familiar with, may have the advantage: of the collective mechanical and inventive genius of the State. Up to this time, however, we have not had it in our power to render this department as complete as desirable, but we now propose to supply the deficieney. Few persons, even residing in San Francisco, whose pursuits, or habits of observation, do not bring them in contact therewith, have anything like a correct estimato of the extent and cbaracter of the different mannfactories of this city. We propose, therefore, to commence next week @ series of articles, to appear permanontly and regularly, on all the branches of incchanieal art in the city, giving a conciso. history of each uutil we: have exhausted the subject. ‘By this means we hope to gather and distribute much important matter, relating to the progressive history of the State, and mako our paper, what we desire it to be, a -valuable and desirable weekly visitor to every. household, counting-room aud-shop in the State. A gentlcnian, known favorably as a writer in our pages has been selected for this duty, and. we feel assured, our friends and patroas will gladly afford him, when he calls upon them, such information as may be necessary, to make our efforts in this respect, successful aud satisfactory. Wuatis Hear Licuinino ?—The flashes of lightning, often observed on a summer evening, unaceompoled by thunder, and popularly known as “heat ightning,” are merely the ligbt trom discharges of electricity from an ordinary ‘thunder cloud beneath the horizon of the observer, reflected from clouds, or perhaps from the air itself, as‘ inthe case of twilight: Professor Henry says that Mr. Brooks, one ot the direetors of the telegraph: lino between. Pittsburg and Philadelphia, on one occasion, to satisfy himself on this point,asked for information from a distant operator during the appearance of Hashes of this:kind m the distant-horizon,and learned that they proeeeded from a thunder storm. then raging two hundred and fifty ‘miles eustward of his place of observation. Screwine on Nurs—Wc have sometimes known! nuts to be found so tight that uo wreneh would remove them. ‘This was beeauso they had been held ju the hand till they beeame warm, and being then applied to very cold screws in winter, they contracted by cooling on, and thus held the screw with an imniovable grasp. Always avoid putting a warm nut ona cold serew ; and to remove it, apply a large beated irou in coutaet with tho nut, so as to heat and ex pand it, and it will loosen at onee—or a cloth wet with boiling water will aceomplish the same purpose. Ix proving some 68-pounder's, lately received at Woolwich from the Lowmoor Iron Contraet Works, one of the guns gave way at the breech, and was, shattered to pieces—-a very unusui cireamstance. . It was diseovered that a bar of wrought iron, weighjag eight or ten ponnds, had fallen into the casting maehine, as the bar was found imbeddeéd in one of the fragments, ~~ Barrens witsour Hoors——A workman in Paris has succeeded, it is Said, in making barrels witbout hoops as solid as the best hooped barrels in the world. The diseoyery, which has been a desideratun for some three thousand years, is now undergoiug examiuatiou before the Academy of La Rochelles.; [Written for the Mining and Scientific Press.] “Latent Heat” Compatible with Thermodynamios. HY J. i. CHUNCHILL, A. M. “Latent heat l’—a force in any one of its forms may still exist, althougb latent.To Dr. Black we are indebted for tho first application of the term. Tho foree is concealed from our senses, ns heat, is its literal meaniag. He thus defined it in his lectures when James Watt studied amoag his pupils in Glasgow, just a hundred years ago. Cautious, a3 a true man of science, to admit nothing beyond the present span of his experience, his’ definition tallies to-day with tbe increased-growth of knowledge. Dr. Robigon, another of his pupils and his successor, thus reports him: “ Many have been the speculations and views by ingenious men‘about this uaion of bodies with heat. A niceadaptation of conditions will make almost any--hypothesis-:agree with tho phenontena. I therefore avoid such speculation as taking up time which may be bettor employed in learning more of the general laws of chemical operations. I content myself with saying, that iu liquefaction and vaporization, water absorbs a great quantity of heat, because’ this expression immotliately raises the notion of a sudden and somewhat copious accumulation of heat; and I. say. that. this great quantity of aecumulated beat ig lateot iu the water or vapor, merely because tho thermometer; our nsual tost, does not give us any indieation of its presence—of which presence we are not allowed to doxbt when we see the same quantity emerge again in its usual thermometrical activity when the water freezes or the vapor collapses. Without.saying that I lave any clear conceptiou of the union between bodies and heat, I am well entitled by the plecomena to say that this yaporous combiuation differs in some peenliar manner from that which merely produces expausion”—i. 0. expansion or extension of the fluid ia the thermometer without any other change. . .” “We havo leamed that whenice molts,or when water boils, the cause of the phenomenon is the . same with that of the expansion, because we ob‘serve that what produces a double or triple cxpausion also produces a double or triple liquefaction or vaporization, and that congelation'aud condensation accompany contractiou, whieh is always produeed by the abstraction of what was the cause of expausion” —i. e. as in the thermometer. “But.we seo reagon to . think that the manner in whieh the general eause of these phenomena, acts in produciug.its effects is somehow different.” ; The differenee thus noted by Black is determined by the laws of. thermodynanies and tbe correlation of forces to be due to a conversion of force, in tho form of heat, into foree in the forms of modified physical and chemical properties. Towards the close of the eentury, Dr. Thomas Young discovered the mode of interference of dif ferent waves. Hence has grown up the ntathematical theory of. undulations which explains so completely the various phenomena which are common to the different forms of force, whether developed as light, or heat, or souud,-or cleetricity, ete., ete., a3 to: have obtained almost uuiversal eredenee. pari passu with the more elearly demonstrable doetrine of the convertibility of each of the forms of" force into another in definite proportions. The following phenomenon will have come under’ the notice of most. When a Stone.is cast into a pool of water, circular waves start off from the point where it struck. These waves consist in © succession of ridges, separated from -each other by hollows, Suppose two stones throwu in alittle apart, the waves starting off from one eenter will cross, those starting from tho other, ‘[hreecases will now oceur—one ridge will eross another ridge, one hollow will eross another hollow, or one ridge will erossa hollow. In the first two cases the forecs of the-deseendiog' stones, which have assumed the visible shape of wavés, will coneur. ‘They will unite in raising the water in-one case and in lowering it in the other. ‘The ‘ridge will be higher, the hollow lower; but where ridge meets hollow— where one waye “interferes” with the other—tbere the one ueutralizes its owu amouut of force in the ‘other, and if the original forees were equal, the result is an undisturbed spot among’ these, sets of . waves—one balauces the other.‘hese two mechanieal forees are now latent—naseen. One sound may eqnally be made to.overeome another—the two result iv silence. One wave of light lias been made to extinguish another—darkuess the eommon end. This is the basis of that wonderful instrument of modem science, spectrum aualysis. Dut a mneb more interesting result #@ those who are charmed with the beauty of a natural phenomenon, ocenrs when light is made.to meet the thin film of a soap bubble. Part of it is then refleeted from each surface of the film, just asa stage ghost is reflected from the polished surfaco of plate glass; but in the soap bubble the thickness varies. Here the light reflected Jrom the inner surface coincides with and intensifies the red ray ; there where the film is thinner it coincides with and intensifies the blue ray, and so of others, while those lost to view are neutralized. An illustration perhaps better known to Californiaas will impress this idea. Peacock ore owes its beautiful tints to the varied thickness of the film of oxide on its surface., The writer recently found several instanees of such tints on .somo waste tin that bad been weather worn on our sandhills. We owe it to chemistry that we know that matter is indestruetible. We are indebted to the science of heat for the recognitioa of the fact that force ever changing its form is no less immutable in quantity. » Treating Mingrat Orns.—Mr. Louis Martin, of Paris, proposes tbat, after the oils or hydro carbons have been treated with sulphuric acid and soda, to mix them with from 1 to 10 per cent. of a mixture composed of 1 part bichromato of potash and 2 parts caustie soda, at 36°, and distil. Any salt of ehrominm may be used, and any alkali may be substituted for soda, The oils are then distilled with sulphuric acid and soda, as befure. ADVANTAOE OF Raitways.—aA single generation since, the town of Middlesborough-on-the'Tees, in England, consisted of but ono house. A railway, making it a port tor the-eoal shipping trade, had raised its population to 7,893: at the-ceusus of 1851 ; then came the discovery of the valne of the ironstoue in the noighborhood, and the result is that the population now exeeceds 23,000. Preventine -Inorustarion or Srvam Bortrns.— Mr. John Travis, -of Royston, Lanedshire, proposes the nse of Irish moss, or silicate, arseniate, ur pliosphate of soda, to prevent incrustation of eteam boilers. From 6 ths. to 8 ths. per week usually suffices for a 40 or 50 borse-power boiler. . F. S. Barry, Dublin, for preserving and bardening briek, stoue aud other surfaces, aad timber, proposes to use soluble silicate of soda_or of potash, by preferenco the silicate of potash, with a mixture of sulphate of barytes and carbonate of lime. The mixture is laid‘on with abrush. * : Masses of platinum, weighing 53 onnces, are frequently smelted in. 13 minutes: by the oxhydroveu blow-pipe, by Dr.Roberts, dentist, New York. So says the Scientific American. Tus milk condensors have begyn to condense eider by the same process as that by whieh lacteal fluid is converted into laetcal solid. It is redueed to one-seventh -of its: bulk; a beautiful amber-evlored jelly. By the, addition of six times its bulk o water, it becomes elear cider again. <i Iyntan Wronas.—Ross Brown, in one of his recently published letters, lays the blame of the preseut Indian hostilities in Arizona, upon the whites. He conviets an army officer of perfidy, in -having, under pretense of friendship and to forin a treaty, allured some forty Indians unarmed into his eamp, and then sect upon aud.slaughtered them without merey. ~ Thus and other similar outrages, so alarmed aud inceased the savages that they have formed an alliaaco between many tribes; and are now waging a war of extermination against whites and Mexieans. Tne United States has sold some 70,000 acres of land in ‘Tulare county, says the Delta, and yet we havo not 20,000 in cultivation. Besides, there aro yet more than 200,000 aeres of good agricultural land in tbe county; lands, whieh in other States would be considered of the very bost quality, and every forty acres of which would constitute a yaluable homestead for some thrifty family. Farry Nau, ov.raz Hoap.—A new way to get higher wages was latcly devised by tho nuil cutters in Dudley and East Worcestershire, England. They notified the owuers of the mills that unless they received an advance of six eents per thousand, they inteaded to strike for twelve cents. An Iren rrom Cuina.—Hongkong is to be blessed with a new coiu, which will do away with tho miserable substitutes for chango so long eurrent. The new eoinage. consists of dimes, eents aad mills, in exact accordaace with our eurrency. The mills are to take the plaee of the copper ‘ cash,” aad have 2 hole drilled iu them after the Chinese fashion for the purpose of stringing them.

306: Che Mining antl Scientific Dress, Alechanical Deparhuent. — Home Industry. We have already, we claim, fulfilled our promise to make this paper a faithful and reliablo expositor of the material wealth and progress of the Pacific Coast. To render it thus worthy the great interests it represents, we have-spared, so far, neither expense nor labor; and in our enlarged condition will be found every week as copious and complete an account of mining’ intellixénce “of every description, . and from every section of the country, asitis profitable, to the reader, to collate. .-. Tn its second capacity, as a mechanical and scientifie organ, we intend it to be equally complete. Our pages have always been freely opened to the illustration of local inventions, or improvements in machinery, both .agricultural.and. mining, and to the prog Through our large cireulation, all interested; by being made familiar with, may have the advantage: of the collective mechanical and inventive genius of the State. Up to this time, however, we have not had it in our power to render this department as complete as desirable, but we now propose to supply the deficieney. Few persons, even residing in San Francisco, whose pursuits, or habits of observation, do not bring them in contact therewith, have anything like a correct estimato of the extent and cbaracter of the different mannfactories of this city. We propose, therefore, to commence next week @ series of articles, to appear permanontly and regularly, on all the branches of incchanieal art in the city, giving a conciso. history of each uutil we: have exhausted the subject. ‘By this means we hope to gather and distribute much important matter, relating to the progressive history of the State, and mako our paper, what we desire it to be, a -valuable and desirable weekly visitor to every. household, counting-room aud-shop in the State. A gentlcnian, known favorably as a writer in our pages has been selected for this duty, and. we feel assured, our friends and patroas will gladly afford him, when he calls upon them, such information as may be necessary, to make our efforts in this respect, successful aud satisfactory. Wuatis Hear Licuinino ?—The flashes of lightning, often observed on a summer evening, unaceompoled by thunder, and popularly known as “heat ightning,” are merely the ligbt trom discharges of electricity from an ordinary ‘thunder cloud beneath the horizon of the observer, reflected from clouds, or perhaps from the air itself, as‘ inthe case of twilight: Professor Henry says that Mr. Brooks, one ot the direetors of the telegraph: lino between. Pittsburg and Philadelphia, on one occasion, to satisfy himself on this point,asked for information from a distant operator during the appearance of Hashes of this:kind m the distant-horizon,and learned that they proeeeded from a thunder storm. then raging two hundred and fifty ‘miles eustward of his place of observation. Screwine on Nurs—Wc have sometimes known! nuts to be found so tight that uo wreneh would remove them. ‘This was beeauso they had been held ju the hand till they beeame warm, and being then applied to very cold screws in winter, they contracted by cooling on, and thus held the screw with an imniovable grasp. Always avoid putting a warm nut ona cold serew ; and to remove it, apply a large beated irou in coutaet with tho nut, so as to heat and ex pand it, and it will loosen at onee—or a cloth wet with boiling water will aceomplish the same purpose. Ix proving some 68-pounder's, lately received at Woolwich from the Lowmoor Iron Contraet Works, one of the guns gave way at the breech, and was, shattered to pieces—-a very unusui cireamstance. . It was diseovered that a bar of wrought iron, weighjag eight or ten ponnds, had fallen into the casting maehine, as the bar was found imbeddeéd in one of the fragments, ~~ Barrens witsour Hoors——A workman in Paris has succeeded, it is Said, in making barrels witbout hoops as solid as the best hooped barrels in the world. The diseoyery, which has been a desideratun for some three thousand years, is now undergoiug examiuatiou before the Academy of La Rochelles.; [Written for the Mining and Scientific Press.] “Latent Heat” Compatible with Thermodynamios. HY J. i. CHUNCHILL, A. M. “Latent heat l’—a force in any one of its forms may still exist, althougb latent.To Dr. Black we are indebted for tho first application of the term. Tho foree is concealed from our senses, ns heat, is its literal meaniag. He thus defined it in his lectures when James Watt studied amoag his pupils in Glasgow, just a hundred years ago. Cautious, a3 a true man of science, to admit nothing beyond the present span of his experience, his’ definition tallies to-day with tbe increased-growth of knowledge. Dr. Robigon, another of his pupils and his successor, thus reports him: “ Many have been the speculations and views by ingenious men‘about this uaion of bodies with heat. A niceadaptation of conditions will make almost any--hypothesis-:agree with tho phenontena. I therefore avoid such speculation as taking up time which may be bettor employed in learning more of the general laws of chemical operations. I content myself with saying, that iu liquefaction and vaporization, water absorbs a great quantity of heat, because’ this expression immotliately raises the notion of a sudden and somewhat copious accumulation of heat; and I. say. that. this great quantity of aecumulated beat ig lateot iu the water or vapor, merely because tho thermometer; our nsual tost, does not give us any indieation of its presence—of which presence we are not allowed to doxbt when we see the same quantity emerge again in its usual thermometrical activity when the water freezes or the vapor collapses. Without.saying that I lave any clear conceptiou of the union between bodies and heat, I am well entitled by the plecomena to say that this yaporous combiuation differs in some peenliar manner from that which merely produces expausion”—i. 0. expansion or extension of the fluid ia the thermometer without any other change. . .” “We havo leamed that whenice molts,or when water boils, the cause of the phenomenon is the . same with that of the expansion, because we ob‘serve that what produces a double or triple cxpausion also produces a double or triple liquefaction or vaporization, and that congelation'aud condensation accompany contractiou, whieh is always produeed by the abstraction of what was the cause of expausion” —i. e. as in the thermometer. “But.we seo reagon to . think that the manner in whieh the general eause of these phenomena, acts in produciug.its effects is somehow different.” ; The differenee thus noted by Black is determined by the laws of. thermodynanies and tbe correlation

of forces to be due to a conversion of force, in tho form of heat, into foree in the forms of modified physical and chemical properties. Towards the close of the eentury, Dr. Thomas Young discovered the mode of interference of dif ferent waves. Hence has grown up the ntathematical theory of. undulations which explains so completely the various phenomena which are common to the different forms of force, whether developed as light, or heat, or souud,-or cleetricity, ete., ete., a3 to: have obtained almost uuiversal eredenee. pari passu with the more elearly demonstrable doetrine of the convertibility of each of the forms of" force into another in definite proportions. The following phenomenon will have come under’ the notice of most. When a Stone.is cast into a pool of water, circular waves start off from the point where it struck. These waves consist in © succession of ridges, separated from -each other by hollows, Suppose two stones throwu in alittle apart, the waves starting off from one eenter will cross, those starting from tho other, ‘[hreecases will now oceur—one ridge will eross another ridge, one hollow will eross another hollow, or one ridge will erossa hollow. In the first two cases the forecs of the-deseendiog' stones, which have assumed the visible shape of wavés, will coneur. ‘They will unite in raising the water in-one case and in lowering it in the other. ‘The ‘ridge will be higher, the hollow lower; but where ridge meets hollow— where one waye “interferes” with the other—tbere the one ueutralizes its owu amouut of force in the ‘other, and if the original forees were equal, the result is an undisturbed spot among’ these, sets of . waves—one balauces the other.‘hese two mechanieal forees are now latent—naseen. One sound may eqnally be made to.overeome another—the two result iv silence. One wave of light lias been made to extinguish another—darkuess the eommon end. This is the basis of that wonderful instrument of modem science, spectrum aualysis. Dut a mneb more interesting result #@ those who are charmed with the beauty of a natural phenomenon, ocenrs when light is made.to meet the thin film of a soap bubble. Part of it is then refleeted from each surface of the film, just asa stage ghost is reflected from the polished surfaco of plate glass; but in the soap bubble the thickness varies. Here the light reflected Jrom the inner surface coincides with and intensifies the red ray ; there where the film is thinner it coincides with and intensifies the blue ray, and so of others, while those lost to view are neutralized. An illustration perhaps better known to Californiaas will impress this idea. Peacock ore owes its beautiful tints to the varied thickness of the film of oxide on its surface., The writer recently found several instanees of such tints on .somo waste tin that bad been weather worn on our sandhills. We owe it to chemistry that we know that matter is indestruetible. We are indebted to the science of heat for the recognitioa of the fact that force ever changing its form is no less immutable in quantity. » Treating Mingrat Orns.—Mr. Louis Martin, of Paris, proposes tbat, after the oils or hydro carbons have been treated with sulphuric acid and soda, to mix them with from 1 to 10 per cent. of a mixture composed of 1 part bichromato of potash and 2 parts caustie soda, at 36°, and distil. Any salt of ehrominm may be used, and any alkali may be substituted for soda, The oils are then distilled with sulphuric acid and soda, as befure. ADVANTAOE OF Raitways.—aA single generation since, the town of Middlesborough-on-the'Tees, in England, consisted of but ono house. A railway, making it a port tor the-eoal shipping trade, had raised its population to 7,893: at the-ceusus of 1851 ; then came the discovery of the valne of the ironstoue in the noighborhood, and the result is that the population now exeeceds 23,000. Preventine -Inorustarion or Srvam Bortrns.— Mr. John Travis, -of Royston, Lanedshire, proposes the nse of Irish moss, or silicate, arseniate, ur pliosphate of soda, to prevent incrustation of eteam boilers. From 6 ths. to 8 ths. per week usually suffices for a 40 or 50 borse-power boiler. . F. S. Barry, Dublin, for preserving and bardening briek, stoue aud other surfaces, aad timber, proposes to use soluble silicate of soda_or of potash, by preferenco the silicate of potash, with a mixture of sulphate of barytes and carbonate of lime. The mixture is laid‘on with abrush. * : Masses of platinum, weighing 53 onnces, are frequently smelted in. 13 minutes: by the oxhydroveu blow-pipe, by Dr.Roberts, dentist, New York. So says the Scientific American. Tus milk condensors have begyn to condense eider by the same process as that by whieh lacteal fluid is converted into laetcal solid. It is redueed to one-seventh -of its: bulk; a beautiful amber-evlored jelly. By the, addition of six times its bulk o water, it becomes elear cider again. <i Iyntan Wronas.—Ross Brown, in one of his recently published letters, lays the blame of the preseut Indian hostilities in Arizona, upon the whites. He conviets an army officer of perfidy, in -having, under pretense of friendship and to forin a treaty, allured some forty Indians unarmed into his eamp, and then sect upon aud.slaughtered them without merey. ~ Thus and other similar outrages, so alarmed aud inceased the savages that they have formed an alliaaco between many tribes; and are now waging a war of extermination against whites and Mexieans. Tne United States has sold some 70,000 acres of land in ‘Tulare county, says the Delta, and yet we havo not 20,000 in cultivation. Besides, there aro yet more than 200,000 aeres of good agricultural land in tbe county; lands, whieh in other States would be considered of the very bost quality, and every forty acres of which would constitute a yaluable homestead for some thrifty family. Farry Nau, ov.raz Hoap.—A new way to get higher wages was latcly devised by tho nuil cutters in Dudley and East Worcestershire, England. They notified the owuers of the mills that unless they received an advance of six eents per thousand, they inteaded to strike for twelve cents. An Iren rrom Cuina.—Hongkong is to be blessed with a new coiu, which will do away with tho miserable substitutes for chango so long eurrent. The new eoinage. consists of dimes, eents aad mills, in exact accordaace with our eurrency. The mills are to take the plaee of the copper ‘ cash,” aad have 2 hole drilled iu them after the Chinese fashion for the purpose of stringing them.