SEVERAL MECHANICAL INVENTIONS. 141 



to form the wire-cards of such sizes and kinds as are re- 

 quired for car ding -engines. 



In the old system of card-making several rude machines 

 were made (i) for cutting the wires into the required 

 lengths for the teeth ; (2) for bending them into staples 

 and giving the knee-bend ; and (3) for piercing the holes 

 in the sheets of leather ; but the setting the teeth in the 

 leather was the work of children, in which a large number 

 were employed in and near Halifax, which had become 

 the principal seat of the trade ; and this card-setting was 

 very bad for the eyes, sometimes even destroying the sight 

 of the children so employed, and otherwise injuring them 

 through the long hours and the very low wages paid for 

 this work. Apart, therefore, from the saving of labour to 

 be effected by a machine that would complete the cards with- 

 out any hand-work, it would allow those children to be sent 

 to school, instead of being thus injured by improper confine- 

 ment at a kind of work unfitting them for other employ- 

 ment when grown up. However, the direct stimulus to 

 Mr. Whittemore was, as above stated, to supply a pressing 

 want of the time. When we look to the many delicate 

 and distinct movements required for making and setting 

 the card-teeth in rapid succession, so as to render the ma- 

 chine practically successful, as against the old plan of 

 working, it must be seen that he had undertaken a task 

 of no small difl&culty, requiring high inventive powers and 

 an indomitable will to realize the object in view. Still, as 

 he had the idea of a complete machine matured in his 

 mind, he persevered amidst great difficulties in his experi- 

 ments, until he constructed a working model, on which his 

 American patent was obtained. 



Having thus found it practicable to perform the opera- 

 tions required in due succession by the rotation of a shaft, 

 viz. (i) the feeding, (2) holding, (3) cutting off, and (4) 

 bending the wires into the staples or teeth, (5) piercing 



