August 8, 1895] 



NA TURE 



349 



Aichihald Barr being Secrelarj', and very complete arrange- 

 ments had been made for the instruction and entertainment of 

 members taking part in the meeting. In a great engineering 

 centre there can be no lack of objects of interest to afford ex- 

 cursions for a meeting of this Institution, and the organising 

 ronmiittee had taken full advantage of the facilities put at their 

 disposal by owners of works who had liberally thrown them open 

 to members. 



The meeting commenced on Tuesday, July 30, and was 

 brought to a conclusion on the Friday following. The mornings 

 ' 'f the two first days were devoted to the reading of papers, of 

 which the following is a list : — 



Hydraulic stoking machinery and labour-saving appliances in 

 modern gas works, by Andrew S. Biggart. 



Notes on modern steel-\Nork machinery, by James Riley. 



Recent engineering improvements of the Clyde Navigation, by 

 lames Deas, Kngineer of the Clyde Navigation. 



Notes on hydraulic jxiwer supply in towns : GKisgow , Man- 

 chester, Buenos Ayres, i:c. , by Edward B. Ellington. 



I'apers on telemeters and range-finders for naval and other 

 purposes, by Profs. Barr and -Stroud, and on the electric light- 

 ing of Edinburgh, by Henry K. J. Kurstall, were also on the 

 agenda, but had to be adjourned until the next meeting. 



On members assembling in the Institute of Fine Arts, they 

 were welcomed by the Lord Provost of Glasgow, Sir James 

 Hell, and the usual formal business having been disposed of, the 

 Hrst paper wa.s taken, namely, that of Mr. Biggan, on gas 

 works machinery. In this the author described an extensive 

 liyilraulic plant which has recently been laid down at the 

 Dawsholm Gas Works in Glasgow. The apparatus is designed 

 I" supersede hanil labour in the charging of retorts, and clearing 

 them of the residual ctrke when the gas has been abstracted from 

 the fuel. The usual method of performing these operations by 

 hand must be known to mo»t people. The coal having been 

 broken to suitable size by hand, is placed in the retort by 

 uieans of a long half-round scoop or trough. This is pushed 

 into the retort and then turned over, the coal then being spilled 

 and spread evenly throughout the length of the retort. This is 

 \er)- laborious work, and moreover the smoke and dust accom- 

 I inying it are very injurious. It is, however, less trying than 

 the discharging of the retorts, an operation which consists of 

 raking out a mass of coke almost at a white heat. It will be 

 easily understood, even by those not jiersonally acquainted with 

 gas works, that labour of this nature docs not tend to the 

 advancement of the labourer, for though good wages are paid 

 they are apt to be spent in ways not all that could be desired. 

 The introduction of machiner)- to supersede this somewhat de- 

 moralising work is therefore a distinct boon to the workman as 

 Hcll as the proprietors of gas works, and thus, indirectly, the 

 users of gas ; in fact, it is the oft-told tale of intelligent work 

 being required to produce machines which take the place of the 

 unthinking lalx)urer. That is very nearly the whole history of 

 llie elevation of the working classes. In the machinery de. 

 scribed by Mr. Biggart, and illustrated by wall-cartoons 

 displayed at the meeting, the coal is broken by a machine 

 having rolls with powerful steel claws which draw in the coal 

 and break it to pieces of the required size. The coal is con- 

 veyed by means of buckets travelling on chains : the.se scoop it 

 up and take it to the machine or to the required spot after it is 

 broken. The charging machine consists first of a steel frame 

 mountetl on a carriage which runs on rails laid on the platform 

 in front of the battery of retorts. Attached to the frame is a 

 hopper, and from this a given quantity of coal is allowed to fall 

 in front of a " pusher-plate."' The function of the latter is to 

 thrust the coal into the retort, the neceswarj- forward motion 

 being obtained by means of a hydraulic ram. .\ second ram is 

 used to withdraw the pusher, .\bout six or seven pushes are 

 required to place the coal in a retort, the quantity that has to be 

 placed at the far end naturally going in first. The arrangement 

 "f the mechanism is such that the coal is practically level in the 

 retort, a fact which the gas manager looks on as im]x>rtant. 

 There are many very ingenious devices incorporated in the 

 design of this machine, which we have described in so elementary 

 a manner, but to make them clear we should require somewhat 

 elaborate illustrations. .\I1 charging ojierations are performed 

 by means of a single lever. Having charged one retort, the 

 machine is run along the lines of rail to the next retort, and so 

 on through the whole range. 



Having described the main outline of the charging machine, 

 the action of the drawing machine hardly needs explanation. 



the two being so like in principle. In both the mechanism 

 for raising the pusher or rake, respectively from the coal 

 or coke so as to clear them, is ver)- ingeniously devised, 

 compared to hand labour. The saving in time and latmur is 

 considerable, as the machine will charge forty-eight retorts in 

 an hour under favouralile conditions. Not half the number 

 of men are required in the retort-house ; and it is said that 

 the sa\ing which this represents, averages about a shilling per 

 ton of coal carbonised. As, roughly, about 8,000,000 tons of 

 coal are annually used for gas-making in this country, it will be 

 seen that the universal use" of these machines should lead to a 

 .saving of ^400,000 every year, to say nothing of relieving the 

 working classes of exhausting and by no means elevating labour. 

 It is, however, worthy of note, as indicative of the spirit of the 

 age, that it was strikes, or the fear of strikes, that led to the 

 more general introduction of these labour-saving appliances. 



In the long discussion that followed the reading of the paper, 

 the most notable point was the testimony of experienced persons 

 as to the success of these machines. 



Mr. James Riley's paper, on modern steel works machiner)-, 

 was a valuable contribution to the pubV\s\\ed knowledge on this 

 subject. -Mr. Riley has taken a prominent position in the 

 manufacture of mild steel from the time the material was intro- 

 duced commercially, and he therefore speaks with authority. 

 He was connected with the now almost classic Landore Works 

 under Sir William Siem'-ns, but it was as head of the Steel 

 Company of Scotland that he made his name most widely known ; 

 indeed, there is no one to whom naval architects and ship 

 constructors owe more than to the author of the paper for what 

 has been done in the development of the steel-plate industry. 

 Mr. Riley has recently found a new field for his energies, and 

 it w,as largely in the description of the plant which he has been 

 fiitting up, that his paper dealt. 



Some of the most impressive examples of the mechanical 

 engineer's art are to be found in the modern steel works of this 

 countrj-. Massive cogging-mills, which wiU roll down an 

 ingot of ten tons of steel, almost at a white heat, into slabs ; 

 hydraulic shears which crop off the ends of these slabs, cut- 

 ting through a thickness of 12 inches and a width of 5 feet of 

 glowing steel ; the enormously powerfid hydraulic forging 

 presses— the casting for the cylinder alone, in an instance 

 mentioned by Mr. Riley, weighing 64 tons ; the plate mills, 

 rail mills, hot saws, the live rollers and hydraulic turning gear, 

 which deal with many ton ingots of steel as if they were but play- 

 things ; all these form an exemjilification of artificial force hardly 

 surpassed. The paper in question gave descriptions in detail of the 

 most recent examples of these machines, which it would be of 

 interest to repeat ; but the difficulty of making the forms of con- 

 struction clear without the diagrams shown on the walls, will 

 compel us again to confine ourselves to mere outline. In a cog- 

 ging mill described and illustrated, slabs up to 60 inches wide 

 could be produced, and these are rolled on their edges by ver- 

 tical rolls, the ordinary horizontal rolls being used for rolling 

 on the flat. Ingots and slabs are taken to and from the mill 

 by special carriages actuated by hydraulic rams. Hydraulic 

 slab shears, described in the paper, have a centre cylinder 

 of 31 inches in diameter, and two side ones 22 inches each ; 

 the work being held down by hydraulic power whilst being 

 sheared. The accumulator [iressure is one ton per square inch. 

 The table has two hydraulic cylinders, by which it is raised or 

 lowered. Steam slab cutting shears and plate mills are also de- 

 scribed. The author advocates the use of three-high plate mills 

 in place of the more usital reversing mill. .\ three -high mill 

 runs continuously, the work being passed forward lietwcen the 

 bottom and middle roll, and back between the top and middle 

 roll. The frequent reversing of the engine driving the ro 

 thus done away with, is naturally a source of loss. Hydraulic 

 power h.is also Iwen adopted for working plate shears, the 

 mechanism employed for actuating the bl.ades being of the nature 

 of a toggle arm worked" from a crank shaft by levers. 



.\ long discussion followed the reading of this paper, in 

 which the desirability of rolling plates trom the ingot, 

 withcuit previous cogging, was considered very fully. In 

 .America this practice is largely, indeed all but universaljy, 

 followed ; but the general opinion of the high authorities 

 who spoke, appeared to be that in England, owing to the 

 diversity of sizes of plates required, cogging into slabs was a 

 necessary part of plate rolling. It is jM.ssible, however, that by 

 properly apportioning mills to the description of work required, 

 the intermediate process may in time become less universal in this 



NO. 1345, VOL. 52] 



