78 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



niritOVED ALLOY FOR TYPE. 



The alloy commonly used in the manufacture of printing types is com- 

 posed of lead, tin, and antimony. The best metal is, however, imperfect, as 

 it is continually deteriorating while in a molten state by the evaporation of 

 the most important element, antimony, which action is taking place during 

 the whole time of the manufacture. In order to prevent this change of 

 quality, Mr. Besley proposes the addition of nickel, copper, metallic cobalt, 

 and bismuth, the nickel and cobalt being the materials used to give hard- 

 ness, and the copper being the medium by which these substances are 

 caused to unite with the antimony of the type-metal ; while by the introduc- 

 tion of bismuth, which has the well-known property of passing instantly 

 from fusion to fixity, the setting of the alloy is expedited. 



SCHEUTZ'S CALCULATING MACHINE. 



Specimens of Tables, Calculated, Stereomoulded, and Printed by Machinery 

 (Longman & Co.), is the title of a little publication, issued in London dur- 

 ing the past year. Adopting this title as a caption, the London Athenaeum 

 publishes the following article : 



Some eight years ago, we gave an account of the matter at issue between 

 the government and Mr. Babbage, as to the first of the calculating machines 

 invented by the latter. At that time the patience, energy, and ingenuity of 

 two unknown Swedes, George and Edward Scheutz, father and son, had 

 matured a plan of execution which has at last, by the assistance of the Swed- 

 ish government, actually produced results. Taking Mr. Babbagc's ideas, 

 as explained by Dr. Larclner in the Edinburgh Review for July, 1834, they 

 have made their own details, and by the work of their own heads and hands, 

 have produced the machine, from which the tables before us are calculated, 

 and stcreoglyphed. 



A large part of the scientific world looks very coldly on this invention. 

 They say it is of no use : that tables could be constructed for a small part of 

 the money, as many and as good as the machine would ever make. Dr. 

 Young thought, we believe, that a portion of what was to be spent on Mr. 

 Babbage's machine, invested in the funds, would keep computers enough at 

 work to supply the place of the machine. This argument was true enough, 

 after a sort. Mr. "Weller, senior, made use of the very same argument in a 

 manner which might have stopped railroads, if it had been duly weighed at 

 the time when Stephenson was laughed at for talking of ten miles an hour, 

 and was obliged to keep sixty miles an hour to himself. What rate could I 

 keep a coach at, said the veteran whip, for \ 00, 000 a mile, paid in advance. 

 The event has shown that the argument was wrong : the railroad is what it 

 is, and there is much reason to think that the telegraph would never have 

 been thought of in our day but for the railroad. On with the work, then 

 let every development of thought, and every adaptation of thought, be en- 

 couraged and welcomed, even though its ultimate uses we mean those 

 uses which the man of the day can see, were as distant as gravitation and 

 lunar distances from the conic sections of the Platonic school of geometers, 



