57 
electric circuit whenever the thread becomes so weak as to permit of a 
certain amount of stretching under the tension applied to it. The 
electric current due to this circuit-closing is then employed in releasing 
the detent of a suitable feeding device, by which a new cocoon filament 
is added to the main thread and its size augmented. 
In the operation of the automatic silk-reel the thread is made as in an 
ordinary hand-reel, and passed through the centre of a filament-attaching 
device, Bb, thence through the croisure M. Thence, as in the serigraph, it 
is passed around a small drum, S, around a pulley, R, situated at the end 
of a pendulum, U, which is called in the reeler the control-lever, thence 
around the larger drum 7, and in the ordinary way over the guiding 
pulley H, to the reel. On the end of the control lever U is a circuit- 
closing contact piece, a, which acts when the pulley R, overcoming the 
resistance of the thread, recedes from the drums Sand 7. The tension 
thus resisted by the thread may be regulated by the movable weight X, 
or an equivalent device. 
We will now suppose the thread to be running at the desired size, and 
that the tension due to the stretch imparted to it by the difference in 
the circumferential speed of the two drums is sufficient to keep open the 
circuit-closing device of the control lever. it continues in this condi- 
tion until, through the diminution in the size of the constituent filaments, 
or the rupture of one of them, the thread falls below the standard, and 
the addition of a new cocoon becomes necessary. Then the pendulum 
falls back, and the contact at a is closed. 
Just above the water of the basin, with its edge dipping beneath the 
surface, is a cocoon-holding device, O. This apparatus, usually called 
the magazine, rests on a support which is mounted on a shaft around 
whose axis the magazine may be rotated. The magazine consists of a 
number of compartments, c, situated around the circumference of a lower 
disk and a number of small pins, d, mounted on a parallel disk a short 
distance above the lower one. In each compartment is placed a cocoon 
previously prepared for reeling, while its filamentis conducted upwards 
and wound around one of the pins d. A magazine thus filled is set 
upon its support in readiness to furnish cocoons to the running thread 
as desired. Its position is such that the hook of the filament-attaching 
device passes just below the disk holding the pins d, and in such a way 
that a thread passing from its cocoon to the pin, which for the moment 
is opposite the attaching device, will fall in the path of the hook and be 
caught by it in its revolution. 
The shaft on which the magazine turns is connected with a suitable 
feed movement, W, which consists in general of a cam to which a rotary 
motion may be given by a proper connection with the shafting of the 
filature, of a lever to which the cam imparts a to-and-fro motion, and 
of a magnet to whose armature is attached a detent which, when no 
current is passing, prevents the rotation of the cam. 
Now, as we have seen above, no current passes through the electric 
