594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with such establishments, it will require but a slight effort of 

 the imagination to impart to the picture all the attributes of 

 real life ; and to fill the sooty air with the hissing of steam, the 

 jigging jingle of coupling-boxes and spindles, and the groaning 

 of rolls, among which sounds are injected the resounding blows 

 of a steam hammer, answered by the clattering scream of a 

 " cutting-off saw," mingled with the hum of revolving wheels, and 

 scores of minor sounds and reverberations ; over all, the lurid 

 glare of furnaces and hot iron, amid which the busy workmen 

 move in orderly activity at the work in hand; the whole making 

 a scene in which the strength of man and iron, the energy of 

 fuel and fire, and the power of steam and machinery are com- 

 bined as in no other industry on the surface of the round 

 world.* 



The rolls for making heavy bar iron of a rectangular sec- 

 tion, hitherto described, have been provided with a number of 

 "grooves" or "passes" of varying dimensions suited to the sizes 

 of the bars required ; but the manifest objection to this very 

 common arrangement is that, in order to be able to produce a 

 large variety of bars, a great number of rolls must be kept in 

 stock. But the mill represented in Fig. 48 is so contrived that it 

 will roll an almost unlimited number of sizes of rectangular bars 

 by the use of a combination of four plain cylindrical rolls, two 

 of which revolve on horizontal axes, and the other two on verti- 

 cal ones. In the figure, for the purpose of clearness, the driving 

 mechanism of the vertical rolls is omitted. Each of the pairs of 

 rolls is driven at an appropriate velocity, and is adjustable, so 

 as to adapt their relative positions to the particular cross-section 

 of bar about to be made. The horizontal rolls can be adjusted 

 vertically and the vertical rolls horizontally, and therefore any 

 proportion of width and thickness can be turned out, up to the 

 limitations imposed by the width of the cylindrical portion of 

 the horizontal rolls and the length of the body of the vertical 

 rolls. This highly ingenious mechanical combination was in- 

 vented by Herr Daelen, a German engineer, and it was first erected 



* The Plutonic appearance of most iron-works was fully appreciated by the poet Burns. 

 Sir John Sinclair, in his Statistical Account of Scotland (1191), states that the "Ayrshire 

 poet " was refused admission to the Carron Iron Works, and, " upon returning to the inn at 

 Carron, he wrote the following lines upon a pane of glass in a window of the parlor : 



" ' We cam na here to view your warks 

 In hopes to be mair wise ; 

 But only, lest we gang to hell, 



It may be nae surprise. 

 But when we tirl'd at your door, 



Your porter dought na bear us ; 

 So may, should wo to hell's getts come, 

 Your billy, Satan, sair us.' " 



