CHAPTER V. 



MECHANICAL. 



Machine belting. Well ropes. Deckel straps. Elevators. Cane elevators. Printing tympans. 

 Printers' rolls. Compressing apparatus. Preserving apparatus. Improved portable preserving 

 apparatus. Steelyards and scales. Bakers' belting. Printing aprons. Match dies. Windmill 

 sails. Thimbles. Sail-makers' thimbles. Stereotype plates. Stereotype moulds. Tool 

 handles. 



The appliance of the fabrics, and particularly of the elastic 

 compound, to machinery, and also its uses in facilitating in 

 various ways the manipulation of different departments of nu- 

 merous manufactures, continue to increase ; descriptions of 

 such of them as are ascertained to be certainly useful, are given 

 in this chapter. 



MACHINE BELTING. 



This was one of the first manufactures of India rubber in the 

 United States. It was manufactured to a considerable extent 

 by the Roxbury Company, as early as 1836. The gum being 

 used upon the inside only, as a cement for holding the different 

 layers of canvas together. It was found to answer tolerably, so 

 that the manufacture of it was continued during the existence 

 of the Roxbury Company. Upon the application of vulcanized 

 gum-elastic to the same use in 1843, the right for that branch 

 was disposed of by the writer to Henry Edwards, Esq., of Bos- 

 ton, who, in 1845, purchased also of him the celebrated Roxbury 

 machinery, and employed it in the manufacture of machine 

 belting. In the manufacture of this article, the gum is used for 



