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قراءة كتاب The Boy's Book of Industrial Information
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Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation has been standardized.
This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless indicated with a Transcriber’s Note.
The symbol ‡ indicates the description in parenthesis has been added to an illustration. This may be needed if there is no caption or if the caption does not describe the image adequately.
Transcriber Notes are used when making corrections to the text or to provide additional information for the modern reader. These notes are not identified in the text, but have been accumulated in a single section at the end of the book.
NEARLY READY,
Cloth Gilt, Price Five Shillings, Elaborately and Profusely Illustrated by The BROTHERS DALZIEL, uniform with the Boy’s Book of Industrial Information.
OUTLINES OF CREATION. By Elisha Noyce.
The object of the Author is to give a simple, clear, and lucid description of the Universe under the following divisions:—
| The Sky. | The Earth. | The Vegetable Kingdom. |
| The Air. | The Waters. | The Animal Kingdom. |
London: Ward & Lock, 158, Fleet Street.
THE BOY’S BOOK
OF
INDUSTRIAL INFORMATION.
BY
ELISHA NOYCE.
ILLUSTRATED
WITH THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE ENGRAVINGS,
BY
THE BROTHERS DALZIEL.
LONDON:
WARD & LOCK, 158, FLEET STREET.
1858.
PREFACE.
In putting this work before the public, the Author has endeavoured to supply a clear and brief description of the materials, processes, and apparatus made use of in the various examples of industry and skill constantly before our eyes, so that the reader may acquire a knowledge of such things, and an interest in those, who, by their hard work and patient ingenuity, supply them; for every article and process can be made to have a value and an interest, in proportion to the amount of knowledge we possess respecting them.
There is no attempt in this work to describe every article and process, but such only as are most interesting and instructive. All the mere trades and handicrafts—the results of which are so various, and depend so completely upon the skill of the artisan, that any description of their particulars would scarcely be profitable or interesting to the reader—have been avoided. The illustrations of this work have been prepared with the greatest care, and drawn from reality. By the kind permission of Lord Panmure, the artists were allowed to make whatever drawings were necessary in the Arsenal at Woolwich; and thanks are due to many of our eminent manufacturers for similar favours with respect to their several factories and machinery.
In the first division of this work have been placed all those materials which exist in nature, either isolated or combined, and which have merely to be extracted or separated, as the earths, metals, &c. Under the second division, “Manufactured Products,” such results of manufacture as are known by the common designation “stuff,” and are of an uniform and particular quality, as soap, soda, &c., not existing in Nature as such. In the third division, individual articles, the result of skilled labour, each compounded and made up of several substances, or of particular forms. In the fourth section are the processes made use of in the production of the various necessaries or elegancies of life. Some of these might have been placed under the second and third divisions, but the Author thought proper to place them here, on account of the processes being more readily described than their results. The fifth division is devoted to the most usual forms of Apparatus and Machinery of general application, avoiding all mere tools and machines for specific purposes. The last division is a mere outline of those important engineering works which of late have acquired an increased interest from the addition of railways and electric telegraphs to their number.
INTRODUCTION.
The inquiring mind uses all its senses to obtain some new idea, and to apply it to some useful purpose; it is this spirit of research that has led to all the great results in Art and in the mechanical and chemical sciences, which we now enjoy and admire; but it is only by very slow degrees, and by great perseverance, that such results are obtained, although the accumulation of a few years makes an enormous aggregate. Look back a generation or two—where was then the steam engine, where the tall stalks which indicate the sites of complicated and ingenious manufactures? the blacksmith then worked at his anvil, and wrought out with his hands what he required in iron; but what is now done with this treasure of the mine? behold the Leviathan and the Britannia Bridge,—count their thousands of tons of plate iron rolled out by machinery, and think of the work of their removal, the millions of rivets to fix them together, the elevation of the one, and the launching of the other. Could this be done without that machinery which has become gradually perfected by thought and perseverance? Visit the iron works and see the powerful “steam hammer” moulding into form a mass of red-hot iron, many tons in weight; see the powerful and beautiful contrivances for rolling into plates, drawing into bars and wire, or cutting up this stubborn metal, and call it stubborn no more! See the powerful “locomotive” carrying along the trams hundreds of tons of goods at a rate that can hardly be equalled by the bird that flies through the air on its light pinions; and the huge steam ships which cut their rapid way across the seas, holding in contempt those very winds upon which alone the mariner used to depend! See with what rapidity and accuracy almost every kind of “textile” material is produced by the steam-worked loom, and remember that these have all arisen, with hundreds more, from small beginnings, and step by step.
Nor does the mechanical genius bound the works of civilisation. From studying the various properties of the elements of nature, and the results of their combination in various proportions and under various conditions, the chemist arrives, not only at their uses and applications, but obtains results before quite unthought of! Instance the electric telegraph, and think how it conveys one’s thoughts half round the globe before you can express an exclamation of surprise that such things can be! See also the wonderful results of the photographic art, copying the most elaborate picture, machine, or portrait, in a few seconds,