HERE AND THERE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18496, 23 June 1928, Page 4

HERE AND THERE.

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. The Leaning Tower at Pisa. Though the famous Leaning Tower at Pisa has been declared safe for the time being, the tilt of the tower is increasing. During nine years the tilt has increased by nine millimetres, which is, in exact decimals, 0.35433102-inch, or a little more than a third of an inch. The marble tower is 179 ft high, and is already overhanging the perpendicular by three times the length of a man. An increase of tilt, however, is nothing new at Pisa. About 100 years ago the tower w-as measured and found to be 15ft out of the perpendicular; and when it was measured again, eighty years later, it was found to be 16ft out. On the first measurements, it inclined about 3in for every yard of its height, but on the second measurement the .inclination had increased a quarter of an inch. The question was whether this had been a gradual increase every year or had taken place suddenly at some point in the interval, and there were those who said that the extra foot must have been caused by an earthquake in 1846. There is every evidence that while the tower was being built, about 600 years ago, the builders became aware that it was settling on one side. They tried to compensate for it by making each storey higher on the leaning side. Instead of pulling it down and building it again on a surer foundation, the architects decided to build up to the limit of stability for a leaning structure, a limit which mathematicians of the Middle Ages were quite able to compute. The foundations of this beautiful tower only go 10ft dow r n, and where they join the surrounding earth is a spring of water which has been the cause of serious damage. A committee of experts advised that the pools of water which collect at the base of the tower should be drained away, and the foundations made watertight, and this is being done. When the traveller goes up the 300 steps of the spiral staircase at Pisa, he does not notice that the structure leans. It is when he comes out on the top, from which there is a superb view of the mountains of Carrara, that he realises it by looking down and finding the walls of the tower receding. There are two other leaning towers in Pisa itself, and two at Bologna, one of which is mentioned by Dante. Two or three leaning towers are to be found in England. One of the most remarkable is the spire of Surfleet Parish Church in Lincolnshire, which is 6ft out of the perpendicular, and another is at Chesterfield, in Gluck’s Little Ways. Musicians are allowed a certain amount of license in the matter of eccentricities, and Gluck certainly availed himself of it. When conducting the rehearsals of “ Orphce,” he used to sit down in the orchestra, take off his coat and his wig, and put on a cotton nightcap. Tt is said that at the end of the rehearsal dukes and marquises contended for the honour of handing back his garments to the composer. While he was composing “ Orphce ” he used to .sit in a meadow with the piano in front of him, and a bottle of champagne on each side of him to warm his imagination and transport it to Sparta, or wherever the scene of his opera happened to be at the moment. The Invention of the Reaping Machine. Not long ago Scotsmen celebrated the centenary of the invention of the reaping machine by a Forfarshire minister, Patrick Beil. Later a rival claim was set tip by the farmers of the Lake Country. They say that Joseph Mann, of Raby Cote, in Cumberland, was the first to invent a machine of this kind, and the Holme Cultram Agricultural Society has decided to give him a memorial. Mann worked out his invention between 1810 and 1820, ami produced a working model before the Abbey Holme Agricultural Society. When the machine was built, though it did not fulfil the promise that it would cut an acre of grain an hour, it did its work with remarkable regularity and despatch. But the labourers were hostile to a labour-saving device, and the machine was allowed to rust.