09 



HAMMER, POWER, AND STEAM. 



HANSE TOWNS. 



610 



edge tools, files, and knives, may be set to work either by hand, water, 

 or steam power ; there is a driving shaft which, when once made to 

 rotate by any source of power, effects all the rest, through the medium 

 of a heavy hammer-head, guide-rod, cones, and a vertical spring ; the 

 mechanism is subject to modification, by which both the rapidity and 

 the force of the blows can be varied. Button's power-hammer is 

 raised by a band, strap, or chain, attached to a drum or pulley on an 

 axis : the ends of the axis are connected with cones driven by bands 

 from any source of power ; when the blow is struck, the momentum 

 is made to assist in elevating the hammer again ; the axis has an end- 

 way as well as a rotary motion, by which one or other of the cones 

 may be disconnected ; a handle, commanded by the workman, deter- 

 mines the rapidity of the action of the hammer ; and the arrangement 

 altogether is such as to render this machine useful for hammering iron 

 and steel between pairs of dies. Eassie's frictional action hammer, for 

 small general work, can be worked by any continuously-revolving 

 power-shaft, and can be brought up to an activity of a hundred and 

 tifty blows per minute, with a very heavy hammer-head. Cotton's 

 air tilt-hammer, worked by any source of power through the interven- 

 tion of a shaft, fly-wheel, fast-and-loose pulleys, and cones, is provided 

 with an air-cylinder, to regulate the force and rapidity of the blow ; 

 there is a piston-rod in the cylinder, with a piston at the top and the 

 hammer at the bottom ; and the admission of air into the cylinder is 

 so regulated as to give complete command over the action of the 

 hammer. Waterhouse's compressed-air forge-hammer, intended for 

 general light work in a smith's shop, and working up to a rapidity of a 

 hundred and fifty blows per minute, acts something in the same way 

 as Cotton's. There are many other kinds : but these will suffice as 

 illustrations of the whole class. 



Steam Hammer. This remarkable and powerful machine, without 

 the aid of which many modern forgings in iron could scarcely by any 

 possibility have been fabricated, is the invention of Mr. Nasmyth of 

 Patricroft. Whatever modifications have since been introduced by 

 other inventors, to him is due the main principle of the contrivance ; 

 and there is a good deal of justice in the prevailing appellation, ' Nas- 

 myth's hammer,' as applied to the whole group. Mr. Nasmyth's first 

 patent was taken out in 1842, since which date he has secured several 

 others for minor improvements. A steam-hammer may be said to 

 consist of a ponderous hammer which carries its own steam-engine with 

 it ; the cylinder, it is true, is fixed ; but the piston always moves when 

 the hammer moves, and a vertical rod connects them both. The action 

 of the steam is direct upon the hammer-rod, without the intervention 

 of any levers, fly-wheels, or cranks. The steam-cylinder is supported 

 vertically, at a considerable height above the anvil. The hammer 

 moves up and down in a true vertical plane by sliding in the grooves 

 of a frame ; it falls by its own weight, but is Uf ted by the force of steam 

 driving the piston upwards in the cylinder. The steam is derived from 

 a boiler placed at any convenient distance, through a pipe connected 

 with the cylinder ; and there is a complete apparatus of valves, &c., to 

 regulate the admission and shutting off of the steam. As the hammer 

 is in all cases very ponderous, it will fall heavily by its own weight ; 

 but the rapidity and force of this fall are susceptible of modification 

 by the mode in which steam is admitted to act above or below the 

 piston. The self-acting apparatus is the most beautiful part of the 

 machine. A workman lightly touches a handle, whereupon the 

 whole internal mechanism BO modifies itself, that the hammer will 

 in one instant give a blow sufficient to crush a bar of iron, and 

 in the next a 'tap so light as to crack a nut-shell without crushing 

 the kernel. 



Very numerous minor improvements in steam hammers have re- 

 cently been made by Kirk, Pearce, Eastwood, Naylor, Morrison, Farrot, 

 i , C'ondy, Sykes, Wilson, M'Dowall, Rigby, and other inventors ; 

 but these need not be separately noticed. In some instances the 

 hammer-block constitutes a sort of ram or plunger working within the 

 cylinder, instead of a mass suspended from a piston-rod ; some have 

 the hammer, piston, and piston-rod all cast in one piece, to produce 

 firmness in action, and to render the blows more effective ; some are 

 so arranged as to increase the fall, or space through which the hammer 

 fall* to the anvil a space which has been made to reach full seven feet : 

 some have the adjusting apparatus so exquisitely arranged, that even 

 a child could vary the force between one blow and the next ; some, 

 not intended to equal Nasmyth's in range of application, are made 

 simpler and cheaper for certain special kinds of work ; some vary 

 the power and rapidity of the blow without changing the depth of 

 fall, whereas others vary their depth likewise; some economically 

 lubricate the hammer-guides by collecting the grease and oil which 

 fall from the stuffing-box; gome are so planned that they can be 

 employed, as occasion may require, in iron-forging, boiler-rivettiug, 

 or ore-crushing ; some can be worked by compressed air or by steam 

 at pleasure ; some have the cylinder placed at the tide of the hammer, 

 t<> render lens height necessary, and to give more firmness to certain 

 parts. 



Steam hammers are now made of enormous magnitude and power. 

 The 50 cwt. 'Nasmyth,' at Portsmouth Dockyard is no longer a 

 marvel of mechanical power. A steam hammer of 120 cwt. has been 

 net up at the Bowling Iron Works, near Bradford. The shaft and 

 crank forging* for the Great Eastern were made at the Lancefield 

 in ( Jlasgow, by the aid of a 120 cwt. hammer, with 6 feet stroke. 



AHTS \yn sci. DIV. VOL. rv. 



Messrs. Morrison, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, have made a steam hammer 

 for the Russian government, in which the weight of the piston and 

 piston-rod alone is 100 cwt. besides the weight of the hammer ; and 

 there is a working space 1 4 feet in width between the framing of the 

 machine. The same engineers have made a steam hammer for the 

 Mersey Iron and Steel Company, 21 feet high, 14J feet working space 

 between the framework, a piston 36 inches in diameter, a hammer of 

 140 cwt., and a total weight of 30 tons. New York possesses a steam 

 hammer with a hammer-head weighing 150 cwt. It is indeed probable 

 that the maximum of size and power has not yet been reached ; if 

 greater be required by manufacturers, greater can be produced by 

 the machinists. 



HANAPER OFFICE, one of the offices belonging to the Court of 

 Chancery. Writs relating to the business of the subject, and their 

 returns, were originally kept in a hamper, in hanaperio ; and the 

 others, relating to matters wherein the Crown was immediately or 

 mediately concerned, were preserved in a little sack or bag, in pared 

 bagd ; whence the distinction of the Hanaper Office and Petty Bag 

 Office, both belonging to the Common-Law and of the Court of 

 Chancery. 



HAND-FASTING. [BETHOTHMEXT.] 



HANDGLASS is a name given by gardeners to a portable glazed 

 cover which they place over certain plants for one or two purposes ; 

 either to screen them from the effects of cold and wet without de- 

 priving them of much light, or to maintain around them an atmos- 

 phere of uniform humidity. Bellglasses differ from handglasses in no 

 respect with regard to the purpose they are intended to serve, but 

 instead of being composed of many pieces fastened together, they are 

 blown into t shape in a single piece. Glasses of this description are 

 principally used to assist cuttings of plants in the process of striking 

 root, or newly-planted individuals in establishing themselves in the 

 soil. The rationale of handglasses seems to be this : when cuttings 

 or newly-planted individuals are exposed freely to the atmosphere, they 

 part readily with the moisture they contain, in consequence of the 

 specific power possessed by light, especially direct solar light, of causing 

 perspiration. Under ordinary circumstances the moisture they part 

 with is lost in space, so that it cannot be re-absorbed ; and as the 

 atmosphere of the plants or cuttings remains dry, perspiration will go 

 on till the plant is exhausted or dead. The effect of a handglass is to 

 invert this state of things ; the moisture raised from the soil by evapo- 

 ration, or produced by vegetable perspiration, necessarily accumulates 

 beneath the handglass, the air enclosed by which gradually becomes 

 more and more moist, and at last is saturated ; this circumambient 

 humidity is re-absorbed by the leaves, or branches, or soil, and thus 

 restored to the plant which had lost it ; in addition to which, per- 

 spiration itself necessarily goes on the more slowly in proportion as the 

 air itself is charged with humidity. It may also be presumed that a 

 handglass, or .any such transjwrent cover, keeps the temperature in 

 which the plant breathes higher than the external air, and tints stimu- 

 lates the languid powers of vegetation. Some handglasses are made 

 with either moveable tops, or with a division to open, so as to permit 

 the escape of superfluous moisture or to admit air. 



HAND- WRITING, PROOF OF. [EviDEuci:.] 



HANSE TOWNS, called also the Hansa, and the Hanseatic League, 

 a celebrated commercial confederacy, which took its name from a now 

 antiquated German word, ' Hansa,' signifying an association for mutual 

 support, in which sense it is used in two charters granted by king 

 John, in 1199, to Dnnwich in Norfolk, and to the city of York. The 

 cities of Hamburg, Liibeck, and Bremen were in the middle ages the 

 depositories of the manufactures of Italy and Germany, imported by 

 sea, with which they supplied the northern countries of Europe in 

 exchange for their raw produce. The wealth which they acquired by 

 their commerce excited the envy and the rapacity of the princes and 

 nobles ; the imposition of new and the augmentation of old tolls were 

 great impediments to trade, which was likewise rendered unsafe by 

 numerous banditti and pirates who infested the roads and the neigh- 

 bouring seas and rivers. But it is noticeable that while the towns of 

 South Germany made this mutual protection almost their sole object, 

 those of the north became in a great degree commercial leaguers also. 

 It is not possible to fix the precise year of the establishment of the 

 Hansa ; and indeed it is probable that it was brought about by the 

 German merchants who, from different towns, associated abroad. In 

 1245 the German merchants in England ordered that no German vessel 

 should sail to Lyon, and the order being disobeyed by Rostock, and 

 some other Westphalian ports, the merchants of those places were 

 expelled from the body, which was in the enjoyment of certain privi- 

 leges, until the transgression had been atoned for. Hamburg and 

 Liibeck, there is no doubt, were the first towns to enter into an 

 avowed union in 1210, to protect the commerce on the Elbe and the 

 German Ocean : the two cities engaged to maintain ships and soldiers at 

 their joint expense, to clear the road between the Elbe and the Trave, 

 and the waters from Hamburg to the ocean, from robbers and pirates ; 

 and they further bound themselves to promote their commercial 

 interest, and to defend their rights and privileges. The city of 

 Brunswick, which was used by those two cities as a staple, joined the 

 alliance in 1247 ; for while Italy was in possession of the trade of the 

 Levant and India, a commercial route was opened, through the upper 

 Palatinate, Franconia, and to the east of the Harz, by way of Bruns- 



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