ON THE DEVELOPMENTS OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING. 509 



smaller pieces of work are commonly prepared either in forging machines 

 or under rapidly-moving hammers, and -when needed in sufficient num- 

 bers, are made in dies ; and applicable to all the three industries of the 

 fitting shop, the boiler shop, and the smith's shop, and also to that other 

 industry carried on in the foundry, are the travelling and swing cranes, 

 commonly worked by shafting or by quick-moving ropes for the travellers, 

 and by hydraulic power or by steam-engines for the swing cranes. It 

 may safely be said that without the aid of these implements it would be 

 impossible to handle the weights that are met with in machinery of the 

 present day. 



I now come to one class of machine which, humble and small as it is, 

 has probably had a greater effect upon industry and ujion domestic life 

 than almost any other. I mean the Sewing Machine. In 1831 there 

 was no means of making a seam except by the laborious pi'ocess of the 

 hand needle. In 1846 Eldred Walker patented a machine for passing 

 the basting thread through the gores of umbrellas — a machine which was 

 very ingenious and very simple, but utterly unlike the eye-pointed needle 

 sewing machine of the present day, using sometimes two threads — the 

 second being put in by a shuttle or by another needle — and making 

 stitches at twentyfold the rapidity with which the most expert needle- 

 woman could woi'k. By means of the sewing-machine not only are all 

 textile fabrics operated upon, but even the thickest leather is dealt with, 

 and, as a totir de force, but as a matter of fact, sheet-iron plates them- 

 selves have been pierced and have been united by a seam no boiler-maker 

 ever contemplated, the piercing and the seam being produced by a Blake 

 sewing machine. I believe all in this Section will agree that the use 

 of the sewing machine has been unattended by loss to those who earn 

 their living by the needle — in fact, it would not be too much to say that 

 there has been a positive improvement in their wages. 



The next matter I have to touch upon is that of Agriculhiral 

 Machinery . In 1831 we had threshing machines and double ploughs, 

 and even multiple ploughs had been proposed, tried, and abandoned. 

 Reaping machines had been experimented with and abandoned ; sowing 

 machines were in use, but not many of them ; clod-crushers and horse- 

 rakes were also in use, but, as a fact, ploughing was done by horse- 

 power a single furrow at a time, mowing and reaping were done by 

 the scythe or the sickle, sheaves were bound by hand, hay was tedded 

 by hand-rakes, while all materials and produce Avere moved about in carts 

 and waggons drawn by horses. At the present time we have multiple 

 ploughs, making five or six furrows at a time ; these, and cultivators also, 

 being driven by steam, commonly from two engines, one on each head- 

 land, the plough being in between, and being worked backward and 

 forward by a rope from each engine alternately ; or, one engine only is 

 used, with a capstan on the other headland, by another mode known as 

 the roundabout system, where the engine is fixed, and the rope carried 

 round about the field. Or else ploughs and cultivators are worked by 

 ropes from two capstans placed on the two headlands, and driven by 

 means of a light quick-going rope, actuated by an engine the position 

 of which is not changed. And then we have reaping machines, worked 

 at present by horses, but how long it Mill be before the energy residing 

 in a battery or that in a reservoir of compressed air will supersede horse- 

 power, to drive the reaping-machine, I don't know, but I don't suppose 

 it will be very long. The mowing and reaping machines not only cut 



