264 JOSEPH HORNER 



operation, has been designed. Any number of wheels 

 can be cut in it, all exactly alike, and absolutely correct, 

 without any attendance, save that of putting the pieces 

 in the machine and taking them out again. But these ma- 

 chines are built to cut one kind, and one size of wheel only, 

 and no other. 



Slowly, and but very slowly, are British firms awaken- 

 ing to the importance of good wheel teeth. Only a very 

 few firms here as yet make high class machines for this work. 

 They cannot imitate the latest and best American machines, 

 for they are covered by patents. The automatic types, 

 therefore, which are used in the best British shops to-day, 

 still come chiefly from the United States. This case is par- 

 alleled by that of the gauges for measurement. The Amer- 

 icans have got a big headway, and have acquired so much 

 and so rich experience that it seems nearly hopeless to try 

 to oust them from their supremacy in this line. Certain 

 continental firms also have developed the manufacture of 

 gear cutting machines more highly than the British firms 

 have done, and they, too, will have to be counted on in the 

 years to come. 



A milling machine is one in which rotary cutting tools 

 are employed. Improved and developed in scores of forms, 

 it is the most important machine tool, the lathe excepted, 

 in the American shop. Its keen, strong, tireless cutters 

 will tear off great, curling, stubborn chips of hard steel, 

 or the finest films. Imagine a small circular saw increased 

 in thickness to several inches, and you have the typical 

 milling cutter which has supplanted the single cutting tool, 

 It matters not how large or how small the work, whether 

 a width of one inch, or one of twenty four inches, it is all the 

 same, for machines are made to take it. Two years ago 

 most British firms looked askance at this milling machine; 

 it is even now distrusted in some of our shops. Even in 

 many of those where it is appreciated and used, it is not 

 employed to one half, indeed, one fourth, of the extent to 

 which it might be with advantage. Thousands of these 

 machines have come across from the United States, and 



