262 JOSEPH HORNER 



American machines, nearly as well known now in Great 

 Britain as in the United States. The marvelous economies 

 of these are scarcely conceivable by those who have not wit- 

 nessed their rapidity of operation; and though designed 

 primarily for making screws, any other class of small work 

 involving turning, screwing, boring, and so forth, is done 

 upon them cheaper than in any other way. 



A leading American firm was producing brass collar 

 studs on a screw machine at the Paris exposition. These 

 studs were being turned off at the rate of two and a half a 

 minute, or 1,500 in a day of ten hours. Each one involved 

 the separate action of six tools, and included stamping the 

 firm's name upon each stud, after which they were delivered 

 by the machine, cleaned from chips and oil, for presenta- 

 tion as souvenirs to visitors. I was informed that machines 

 of this class had been designed to run quicker than the earlier 

 t)q3es in order to meet the demands of the German clock 

 makers, who had bought several hundreds of them. 



Yet 1,500 articles for a day's work is not by any means 

 a big record with regard to number, because six tools have to 

 come into operation. In cases where fewer tools are used, 

 plenty of instances could be given of the product of such 

 a machine ranging as high as 5,000 pieces in ten hours! On 

 another type of American machine — the Acme — the day's 

 work has run as high as 9,600, or nearly sixteen a minute! 

 The makers of this last machine execute orders on curious 

 terms. A customer sends brass rod to the factor}^ to have 

 screws made from it. He receives his screws, and leaves 

 the brass chips only as payment ! 



American screw machines are stocked and sold by dozens 

 of British agents in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glas- 

 gow, and other big cities. Many hundreds of them are found 

 in British shops. They are being imitated by our manufac- 

 turers and in nearly every continental country, copied, in 

 some cases, very closely ; in others, with variations. But the 

 American machine still holds its place by very long odds. In 

 turret machines several tools are caused to operate in rapid 

 succession on a piece of work by the turret, or capstan — a 

 device which is applied to turning lathes and to screw making 



