Scientific.

Evening Star, Issue 6915, 30 May 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

Scientific.

On April 1 the first steam cars iulroduccil on any tramway in the metropolitan district commenced running for public traffic on the North London Tramways Company’s lines, which extend from Stamford Hill through Tottenham and Edmonton, and terminate at Ponders End. The engines are so constructed that under no circumstances can they attain a greater rate than eight miles an hour. They are so constructed that they would stop on acquiring that speed. They are almost noiseless, weigh nine tons each, and are able to draw two cars weighing four tons each up the steep incline at .Stamford Hill. The running of the cars created considerable interest right along the line. An eminent English engineer says that there is not a railway line in America that has rails weighing more than 0011) to the yard. On the Great Western line in England the rails weigh 981b. The ‘ Popular Scientific Monthly ’ records the interesting fafct that an Italian ship has been sheathed in glass plates, cast like iron plates, so as to fit the hull, to take the place of copper sheetings. The joints of the plates are made watertight by the’use of waterproof mastic. The advantages claimed for glass over copper are its insensibility to oxidation and its exemption from incrustation.

At the Paris Electrical Exhibition, amongst the most astounding of the wonders exhibited is the thermo-microphone of Dr Ochorowiez, shaped like horns, and hung in the centre of the great hall, from which issues the airs played by a military band 300 yards away, and hoard by all the people in the hall; a typographic press by M. Alauzet, worked by electricity; and the Bunckroff coil, producing an exact imitation of lightning. But the wonder of wonders is the electro-galvanic transformation of plants and flowers into solid metal under the eyes of the spectators, who can hardly believe the evidence of their senses.

Electric lighting seems to be making very rapid strides in Canada. The city of Ottawa, the capital, is to discard gas altogether for street lighting, and is putting in a large plant to be run by water power, of which there is ample and to spare all the year round.

An important change has been made in the rifle practice in the United States Army by the substitution of elliptical for circular targets. This has been introduced because the chief object of army marksmanship is not to make a big record so much as it is to make good line shots.