BUSINESS ROMANCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 16328, 26 August 1913, Page 3

BUSINESS ROMANCE.

;, » , | INVENTORS AS AN INVESTMENT. (By FRANK J. AIKINS, in "Harper's Weekly.") " What happens to copper ore when the heat in the furnace reaches a temperaturo of 2200 Fahrenheit t The question was asked by a sharpeyed man. The person to whom he was speaking said dispiritedly: I don't know. No one ever looked inside a furnace whoa it was that hot. " Well, wo must- look in and see. The orders were plain if they did demand a seeming impossibility. Hie next furnace built in that plant could be looked into. The scientists found what happened to copper under those conditions. „ ~ At the bottom of every furnace the air blast is introduced through little tubes of steel called twyors. In this new furnace, on the outer sido of the twyer pipe, a window of heavy mica was inserted. The metallurgist had only to place his eyes to it to look in and study the fire within the furnace walls. With the aid of a microscopeand perfectly protected from the heat ho could note every effect of the fusing mass. . , . When they came to get a good look at the way copper acted in the furnace these metallurgists discovered several new things. The mica windo'w made it possiblo very nearly to revolutionise the entire process of smelting. lhe experts saw. that the first effect of the air blast was chillrng. So they wrapped the "line" with steam pipes to heat the air, thereby hastening the smelting period and taking far more metal out of the ore. .They noticed that in some parts of the Furnace the charge actually froze while others were so hot that the metals passed off in vapour. THE RESULT WAS LOSS. It is but a few years since copper sold for forty cents a pound and only the richest ores would profitably yield their metal contents. The window in the twyer pipe marked the startingpoint of a new day in metal production that has been to the vast advantage of every boy who owns a pocketknife, every man who builds a skyscraper, steamship, or railroad. That window has so cheapened the- cost of all metals that the use of them is an every-day necessity in the life of every man. Just such a story—differing only li> its details—might be told of every other article of American manufacture. As the years go by these tales of business romance multiply at a greater and greater rate. This is due to the new inventor, who is very iar from the shabby, vacant-eyed, long-haired man of a generation ago worKing in a grimy attic or a shanty and making discoveries, hit or miss. Some were of enormous value, others quite worthless. He-was seldom at the best able to turn anv of them to his own advantage. The new inventor lives in the lap of luxury. Big corporations pay him well and attach him permanently to their staffs. By cheapening production and developing processes he is the mart that can bring them their greatest success. The big American manufacturer has too much at stake to sit at his desk and wait for people of ideas to come to him. That was the old system. It often happened that a concern of minor importance by pure chance picked up something revolutionary from someone whose family were close to starvation, bought it for a song and elbowed out the "big fellows" in their line, making a fortune thereby! The business groups of to-day would laugh at such a policy as suicidal. The man who can /really invent is an asset worth pay'ing big money for. Take a case in point. Up in Schenectady, in New York State, is a manufacturing plant so big that its buildings and its men make up a great city in themselves. The present Avriter could not estimate by a thousand the number of emplovees on its pay-roll. In one of the many buildings, whose annual cost of maintenance is alone more than the total annual outgo of many plants, is a little bearded German who is what might be called A MASTER INVENTOR. Next to Edison he has more great inventions to his credit than any other American. In some little workshop of his own, with few tools and next to no laboratory facilities, he might—he probably would —have dreamed great practical dreams and translated them into profitable processes. But much of his wonderful achievement has been due to the great department he has been encouraged to create, for the development of which money has never been lacking. The old inventor worked alone. He had neither money to hiro nor could he take the risk of letting anyone into the secret of his simmering* idea. The new man simply presses button after button on his desk and highly-paid assistants, or perhaps independent investigators—"cracks" in their especial fields of chemistry, electricity, metallurgy, mechanics or science—come in to be sent to make researches that-may consume months or years. Aii order blank filled out brings any quantity of material, equipment or instruments. Not long ago Edison had a typewriter idea. He. summoned his executive man.

' "Send for one of every typewriter made in this country," he ordered, " and the day after to-morrow have an expert from each company -here to domonstrate his machine Get out for me every book in the library that deals with typewriters." In some such way this expert and every other great new inventor works. At the Schenectady plant not far from fifty men do nothing but inventing, a scientific corps generalled andCAPTAINED IN MILITARY UNISON. .

Some 250 mechar ).cs and labourers aid them. This force is a varying quantity, according to what the experiments are, now and again diminished, at other times greatly increased. It pays to equip mert who can devise practical ideas and gives them staffs with assistants not far behind then: in capability. A problem that beset the printing world for a long time was to make the first fold in the turning off of newspapers from tho presses keep pace with the increasing speed of the machines. It was realised that some simple idea would solve the problem, but just what that simple idea was could not be seen. The high-speed press could not take definite form until this first fold was made faster. Tho presses delivered ' tho papers to the folding-machines so fast-that the latter were clogged. Inventors sat up nights and experimented.

One day while working on. tho perplexing problem which tho factory was determined to solve, in order to satisfy a publisher whose press-room facilities were limited, one of the inventors suddenly conceived an idea. He raised two broom handles so that the widest angles touched that portion of the press from, which the printed sheet oniertred. Over these he trained tho web forming the first fold. It was apparent at once that, no matter how fast the press was speeded, it could never clog by this method. Out of this, by a very practical evolution, crew the "former" that looks like an Inverted &now-plough.

The invention was by no means complete—but the great principle had been DISCOVERED AFTER WEEKS OF V WORK and experimentation. There were other things to do—to cut the paper, deliver it T 0 * ne second fold. etc.; but that tlies* 3 were nil successfully arcomnlished the press of to-day, capable of rintiiig- 2000 a minute, is an attestation. .;,

To-day a printer calls on a manufacturer and tells him that ho wants a machino that will fit in a room of a certain size, to print so many pages at a time, at such-and-such a speed, counted in bundles of twenty-five, and so on. The inventor is called in and straightway proceeds to design a press the like of which has not been constructed before. In this way a machine that will print a book and deliver it bound at the other end has been devised. Carborundum could never have been invented in a garret. One man hovered on the borderland of discovery for years. Clay, coke, and sawdust subjected to great heat produced an indefinable something that showed him ho was on tho right track. He sought more intense neat in an effort to magnify that something which ho did not as yet understand. Ho believed he was on the verge of grasping in unlimited quantity an abrasive purer thaTi any yet known. Emery comes from • an impure substanco in' nature known as corundum. Tho man in question was trying to combine the silica in the sand and the carbon in tho coal in an effort to produce a pure abrasive. So be went to Niagara. Falls. With the aid of water churning great electric units ho produced the most intense beat known to man. These substances he now placed in a furnace and FUSED BY ELECTRICITY.

The result was that they throw down prismatic crystals composed of • pure corundum combined with carbon. The discoverer came to New York with these first crystals. Stepping into a.diamond-cutter's laboratory, he asked tho cutter in charge what his crystal was. A series of tests developed that it would scratch a diamond. A diamond is pure carbon and the hardest natural thing in the world. He sold theso crystals for more than ho could have obtained for diamonds of the same weight. Ho had produced in a furnace material better, than nature itself could make. So carborundum could never have been discovered by the dreamy inventor who worked alone. A great plant employing scores of men and costing a fortune in excess of the wildest anticipation of tho seeker of bygone days was necessary. Each furnace was in itself a marvel of construction. Years of work and thousands of dollars had to be expended to produce a few crystals that one could drop into the end of a goose quill. But these few crystals opened the way for an artificial abrasive that could be produced by the millions of pounds cheaply and quickly. Tho vast plant that this inventor of the new day had assembled for his production of carborundum gavo him facilities that resulted in another now Eroduct of greater importance. Carorundum obtained the element of hardness, of course, from carbon. But carbon exists in a soft state also. So not satisfied with having done what no other man had ever accomplished, and in an endeavour to outdo his previous achievement, tho inventor placed the carborundum hack in the furnace and sealed it. Through this cruciblo ho turned on THE GREATEST HEAT MANUFACTURED BY MAN in an effort to burn out of his new product any secret that might lie concealed beneath its hardened .surface.

In a general way ho figured that something opposite to what ': o , had would result, and careful experimentation covering a period of months brought him to this point. The new heat disintegrated the carborundum and it fell in flakes of graphite so soft that they would not scratch the highly burnished surface of the most carefully annealed gold. Graphite is heavier than water and hence will sink. But these flakes were so tine that when dropped in water they remain in suspension indefinitely.. The result was a lubricant finer than anything over known before. To illustrate: If a aniline dye is placed in water and is poured through a filter paper (which is a fine grade of blotting paper) the water will pour out in a cloar stream, the dye remaining on the iipper side of the filter paper. AVhcn the same process is followed with artificial graphito (Aeheson's discovery) and water, the graphite passes through the paper just as easily as the water. Tho oil supply of the world is fast being exhausted, but as long as coal exists graphite lubricant is possible.

THE MACHINERY OF THE WORLD will not turn without lubricant. Great as is tho amount of oil used for lubricants every year, it is small compared with that used for paint. And graphite makes a paint that is more easily applied, penetrates deeper, holds tighter, is wind, heat, cold, rust, and water resisting. Millions of needles are sold daily, lb was not so long ago when the thread in tho needle was" cut by the sharp edges left in the eye after manufacture. The smaller the needle, the sharper the edge and the greater ihe annoyance to users. Then, again, the oyo would rust; for a woman will dampen the end of tho thread on her tongue in order to make a point so that the needle may be threaded more easily. Complaint was loud and long and orders were passed down the line to produce an eye in the smallest needle that could not cut the finest and softest thread in tho world. This was done by inventing a new machine in the shape of die-cutters for the making of'the eyes. ' Tho points on these minute augurs are so small that they cannot bo seen with the naked eye or detected by the most delicate sense of touch. A microscope is necessary. So it was essential to invent new machines to manufacture the dies and to sharpen the tiny drills. Polishers and burnishers had to bo made that would finish off every rough edge in an instant almost, because needles sell a dozen or so for a few cents. When thus was done the needles were placed in a rack through which the eyes projected and held so tightly that , when immersed in water only the eyes were covered. In this way the heads of tho needles became the negative polo of a powerful battery, and in n few moments the eyes of several million needles were gold plated and hence rendered rnst-proof.