November 15. 190x3] 



NA TURE 



71 



civil and sanitary engineering classes, and metallurgy — for which 

 a laboratory is to be built and a lecturer appointed — will be 

 taken by mechanical engineering students. Botany, biology 

 and microscopy are sciences which have a direct bearing on many 

 ■of Bradford's industries, and they have also been taken up. The 

 evening classes consist of specialised courses in chemistry and 

 dyeing for advanced students and persons already engaged 

 in trade. 



Engineering Department. 



The work of the engineering department, which is under 

 Mr. G. F. Charnock, is divided into four sections, viz. (i) civil 

 engineering, (2) mechanical engineering, (3) electrical engineer- 

 ing, and (4) building trades and architecture, the last named 

 being in conjunction with the art department. Some much- 

 needed additions to the machinery are to be made. Several 

 new machine tools have been ordered, and, as opportunity 

 offers, it is intended to substitute the newest examples for 

 all machines of an old-fashioned type. The new syllabus in 



Arrangements have been made for the proper teaching of 

 electrical engineering, and a laboratory has been fitted up for 

 practical work. 



A room has also been reserved as a mathematical laboratory, 

 and is fitted with apparatus and models to render the teaching 

 as concrete as possible. Special attention is given to the slide 

 rule, and there is a useful collection of measuring instruments. 

 A calculating machine and other similar apparatus have also 

 been provided. 



A SUSPENDED RAILWAY. 



'T'HE curious railway represented in the accompanying illus- 

 tration from La Nature runs from Vohwinkel to Barmen, 

 through Elberfeld, along the Wupper Valley, in Rhenish 

 Prussia. It is now working regularly, and was to have been 

 formally opened recently by the Emperor of Germany, but the 



Fig. 3. — Workshop of the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Bradford Municipal Technical College. 



civil engineering has been framed to meet the requirements 01 

 the various professional bodies. A special feature is to be made 

 of sanitary work, and some attention, including laboratory 

 work, will be given to the new methods of sewage treatment. 

 The mechanical engineering department has an increasingly 

 important part to play in the industrial life of Bradford, and by no 

 means the least important part of the work of this department 

 will be to assist in training up a class of men suitable for the 

 position of power superintendent in mills and factories. In 

 the development of new ideas the department has also its 

 place. The systematic study of mechanism and the method of 

 designing mechanical motions would enable many a good idea 

 which would otherwise be lost to its inventor to be worked out 

 to a successful issue Almost every technical school of any 

 note on the Continent and in America has its collection of models 

 systematically arranged to lead up from the simplest motions to 

 the most complicated contrivances, but Bradford as yet can give 

 the inventor no such aid. 



NO. 1620. VOL. d'^ 



ceremony was postponed on account of the illness of the 

 Empress Frederick. Brief descriptions of the railway have 

 been given in several periodicals, and an illustrated account 

 appears in the October number of the English Illustrated 

 Afagazine, from which some of the following particulars have 

 been derived. 



The total length of the railway is about 8 J miles, of which 

 more than three-quarters is over the river Wupper. The rail- 

 way is supported above the river on A-shaped trestles, with the 

 sides rising from each bank, and are placed at intervals of 30 

 metres. In the highway, along the roads, the supports take the 

 form of an inverted U. The lower part of the latticed girders 

 at the top of the supports contains the rail from which the 

 carriages are suspended. Upon the upper face of this rail' 

 runs a two-wheeled truck or trolley containing the electric 

 motors. Two of these trucks, placed nearly thirty feet apart, 

 are supplied to each carriage. From each truck a heavy hook, 

 fastened to the roof of the carriage, projects round the rail, as 



