AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 



333 



being provided on its under side with a number of angular corru- 

 gations, so that it is somewhat suggestive of the jaw and teeth of 

 an alligator. The " ball " from the puddling-furnace was placed 

 between the upper and lower jaws of this squeezer, and the work- 

 men turned it with tongs at each upward movement of the upper 

 jaw (always moving it toward the fulcrum of the lever), thus 

 causing the ball to be forcibly squeezed by each downward move- 

 ment ; and when the operation was completed the most of the 

 liquid cinder had been expelled from the ball, which had assumed 

 the form of a bloom. 



Although this apparatus was of sufficient capacity for shingling 

 a very much larger product than the trip-hammer which it dis- 

 placed, yet it required the assistance of a workman, or " shingler," 

 as he was called ; and, as the number of puddling-furnaces in- 

 creased in the mills, it soon became evident that more rapid and 

 purely automatic machinery for shingling puddle-balls was desira- 

 ble. This want was supplied by the inventive genius of Henry 

 Burden, of Troy, 

 1ST. Y., who in 

 1840 invented 

 the " rotary 



squeezer." Fig. 

 27 is an eleva- 

 tion of the origi- 

 nal form of this 

 machine, and 

 Fig. 28 is a hori- 

 zontal section of 

 Fig. 27 on line A 

 B. The construc- 

 tion consisted 

 substantially of 

 a heavy cast- 

 iron casing or 

 "scroll," a a (Fig. 

 28), firmly at- 

 tached to four 

 surrounding col- 

 umns, which 

 stood upon a heavy bed-plate and also sustained a massive casting 

 which formed the upper support and bearing of a vertical shaft to 

 which the heavy cast-iron drum b (Fig. 28) was firmly attached ; 

 below the bed-plate is seen (in Fig. 27) the gearing for giving mo- 

 tion to the shaft and drum. 



The " puddle-ball " was thrown into the machine at the place 

 indicated by the arrow (Fig. 28), and, as the drum b revolved rap- 



Fig. 27. The Eotary Squeezer. 



