THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT COMPLETED. 501 



only requires twenty minutes. The rim and the web are rolled to form in one 

 heat by rollers similar to those employed for rolling tires. In the same heat the 

 center is finished under a fifteen-ton ham.mer. Steel centers are annealed by 

 being raised to a cherry-red heat and cooled slowly, covered by iron plates. 

 Centers of steel and of iron have been tested for strength by the falling of a weight 

 of seven tons upon the nave, the center being supported horizontally at the rim. 

 The steel center resisted without fracture 210 blows of. the hammer falling from 

 eight to eighteen inches. The nave was depressed four inches. An iron wheel 

 broke with 150 blows on a fall of from eight to twelve inches. 



WASHINGTON MONUMENT COMPLETED. 



The long expected completion of the Washington Monument obelisk was 

 accomplished on December 6th by the setting in place of a marble cap stone and 

 its pyramidal apex of aluminum. The ceremonies were few and simple, an 

 elaborate celebration of the event being reserved for Washington's birthday. 

 Shortly after 2 o'clock Col. Thos. L. Casey, Government Engineer-in-charge, and 

 his assistants, Capt. Davis, United States Army, and Bernard R. Green, civil 

 engineer, together with Master Mechanic McLaughlin and several workmen, 

 standing on a narrow platform built around the stopped marble roof near the 

 summit, proceeded to set the capstone weighing 3,300 pounds, which was sus- 

 pended from a quadropod of heavy joists supported by the platform and tower- 

 ing forty feet above them. As soon as the capstone was set, the American flag 

 was unfurled overhead and a salute of twenty-one guns fired by a battery in the 

 White House lot far below, the sound of cheers also came up faintly from a 

 crowd of spectators gathered around the base of the monument, while a number 

 of invited guests were on the 500 foot platform, and on the interior of the foot of 

 the monument at that level spontaneously struck up "The Star Spangled Ban- 

 ner " and other patriotic songs. A steady downpour of rain had given place a 

 little while previously to a brisk gale of wind which, at this elevation, was blowing 

 about fifty-five miles an hour, and very few invited guests cared to avail them- 

 selves of the privileges of climbing the nearly perpendicular ladder from the 500 

 foot platform to the dizzy height of 533 feet from which three or four journalists 

 and a half dozen other adventurers climbed and witnessed the setting of the cap- 

 stone, and subsequently ascended to its pinnacle. 



Meanwhile the Washington Monument Society, represented by Dr. Joseph 

 M. Toner, Hon. Horalio King, Gen. William McKee Dunn, Dr. Daniel B. 

 Clark, and T. L. Harvey, Secretary, held a meeting on the elevated platform at 

 a height of eight feet, and when the artillery firing announced the setting of the 

 capstone, adopted a resolution offered by Gen. Dunn congratulating the Ameri- 

 ican people on the completion of this enduring monument of our nation's grati- 

 tude to the father of his country. 



Among those present to-day at the completion of the structure was one of 



