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Figure 7. — Patrick Lyon's Diligent, 1820, as rebuilt by John Agnew in 1836. 

 Lyon's engines employed vertical plunger pumps, located close to the central 

 pivot of the levers. Lithograph published in 1852; photo courtesy of The H. V. 

 Smith Museum of the Home Insurance Company, New York. 



the gates with common hand nippers. A long series 

 of experiments were tried to get a fusible metal hard 

 enough to stand the wear of dragging the hose over 

 the stone pavements, and yet not too hard and brittle 

 to rivet well. The first cast rivets were very badly 

 proportioned, the heads being 9/16 inch diameter 

 and 1/16 inch thick; the shanks of the rivets a di- 

 ameter equal to No. 6 Birmingham wire gauge [less 

 than 1/4 inch], the washers the same diameter and 

 thickness as the rivet heads. As to the length of time 

 that these cast rivets, and washers were used I am 

 uncertain. My elder brother and myself of evenings 

 and holidays cast and clipped from the gates many 

 hundred-weight of them. 



Next in order came copper rivets and washers. 

 These rivets were headed by hand. No. 8 copper 

 wire was cut into lengths by a machine turned by 

 hand crank, then headed in half dies closed by a lever 

 pressing together spring jaws that carried the dies. 

 This lever was operated by a foot treadle (the old 

 English wrought nail header) and the head was struck 

 by two regulated blows of a four-pound flat-faced 

 hand hammer. 



The sheet copper for washers was cut into strips 

 of a width that would admit of four or six washers 

 being cut from them; this was fed by hand under 

 two punches, a small one to punch the center rivet 

 hole, the large one that followed to punch out the 



