ii 4 PROPOSED SYSTEM. 



requirement of homogeneousness in such cases as chains, ropes, 

 belts, etc., also material glued or welded together in short any- 

 thing which may (like a man) be called one piece, because it is not 

 intended ever to be taken apart. The character for equality (=) 

 will be used to show connection between a name and its symbol. 

 A brief glance at the history of our system shows that at first we 

 (like many others) hit upon the plausible idea of using numbers 

 for machine symbols and letters for piece symbols. The num- 

 bers were somewhat " gapped," but not to such an extent as we 

 now should practice. Examples : If four sizes of pumps were 

 symboled I, 2, 3 and 4, their barrels might = i-A, 2-A, etc.. 

 and their handles = i-B, 2-B, etc. If the next product made 

 was a series of lathe dogs, they would probably be symboled 1 I, 

 12, 13, etc. Their frames would = n-A, I2-A, etc., and their 

 screws ii-B, etc. This all worked beautifully until the products 

 became so complicated as to contain more than 26 pieces. After 

 tampering a little with the Greek alphabet, which seemed calcu- 

 lated to scare our new workmen, and trying to use a mixture of 

 small and capital letters, which looked too near alike, we fell back 

 upon the clumsy device of repeating the alphabet, with letters 

 doubled or tripled. 



When we finally abandoned the above plan, several methods 

 were carefully studied. The next most obvious was to use let- 

 ters for machines and numbers for pieces. This allowed any 

 quantity of the latter, but limited the machines to 26, even with 

 no gaps provided. A certain modification of this method is, per- 

 haps, more in use than any other system. In it letters are used 

 for different sizes or styles of a certain kind of machine, and used 

 over again for some other kind, ad infinitum. This answers the 

 purpose, because there are not likely to be more than 26 varie- 

 ties of one machine. It has, however, the fatal objection of 

 requiring the whole machine name prefixed to each symbol, in all 

 cases where the symbol stands alone, and does not happen to be 

 written with the others of the set in tabular form. As the gen- 

 eral name of a machine usually consists of at least two words, a 

 complete piece symbol becomes too long for convenience in 

 labeling. Examples: Force pump, K 26; Lathe dog, H 2. 



