a margin.
The plaitings or corrugations of the metal in these iron boats pass along the sheets, in lines, instead of being, as in the case of the waiter, confined to the margin. The lines which they form can be seen in the drawing of the surf-boat, given on a subsequent page. The idea of thus corrugating or plaiting the metal was a very simple one; the main difficulty in the invention came, after getting the idea, in devising the ways and means by which such a corrugation could be made. It is a curious circumstance in the history of modern inventions that it often requires much more ingenuity and effort to contrive a way to make the article when invented, than it did to invent the article itself. It was, for instance, much easier, doubtless, to invent pins, than to invent the machinery for making pins.
The machine for making the corrugations in the sides of these metallic boats consists of a hydraulic press and a set of enormous dies. These dies are grooved to fit each other, and shut together; and the plate of iron which is to be corrugated being placed between them, is pressed into the requisite form, with all the force of the hydraulic piston—the greatest force, altogether, that is ever employed in the service of man.
THE HYDRAULIC PRESS.
The machinery referred to will be easily understood by the above engraving. On the left are the pumps, worked, as represented in the engraving, by two men, though four or more are often required. By alternately raising and depressing the break or handle, they work two small but very solid pistons which play within cylinders of corresponding bore, in the manner of any common forcing pump.
By means of these pistons the water is driven, in small quantities but with prodigious force, along through the horizontal tube seen passing across, in the middle of the picture, from the forcing-pump to the great cylinders on the right hand. Here the water presses upward upon the under surfaces of pistons working within the great cylinders, with a force proportioned to the ratio of the area of those pistons compared with that of one of the pistons in the pump. Now the piston in the force-pump is about one inch in diameter. Those in the great cylinders are about twelve inches in diameter, and as there are four of the great cylinders the ratio is as 1 to 576.5 This is a great multiplication, and it is found that the force which the men can exert upon the piston within the small cylinder, by the aid of the long lever with which they work it, is so great, that when multiplied by 576, as it is by being expanded over the surface of the large pistons, an upward pressure results of about eight hundred tons. This is a force ten times as great in intensity as that exerted by steam in the most powerful sea-going engines. It would be sufficient to lift a block of granite five or six feet square at the base, and as high as the Bunker Hill Monument.
Superior, however, as this force is, in one point of view, to that of steam, it is very inferior to it in other respects. It is great, so to speak, in intensity, but it is very small in extent and amount. It is capable indeed of lifting a very great weight, but it can raise it only an exceedingly little way. Were the force of such an engine to be brought into action beneath such a block of granite as we have described, the enormous burden would rise, but it would rise by a motion almost inconceivably slow, and after going up perhaps as high as the thickness of a sheet of paper, the force would be spent, and no further effect would be produced without a new exertion of the motive power. In other words, the whole amount of the force of a hydraulic engine, vastly concentrated as it is, and irresistible, within the narrow limits within which it works, is but the force of four or five men after all; while the power of the engines of a Collins' steamer is equal to that of four or five thousand men. The steam-engine can do an abundance of great work; while, on the other hand, what the hydraulic press can do is very little in amount, and only great in view of its extremely concentrated intensity.
Hydraulic presses are consequently very often used, in such cases and for such purposes as require a great force within very narrow limits. The indentations made by the type in printing the pages of this magazine, are taken out, and the sheet rendered smooth again, by hydraulic presses exerting a force of twelve hundred tons. This would make it necessary for us to carry up our imaginary block of granite a hundred feet higher than the Bunker Hill Monument to get a load for them.6
In Mr. Francis's presses, the dies between which the sheets of iron or copper are pressed; are directly above the four cylinders which we have described, as will be seen by referring once more to the drawing. The upper die is fixed—being firmly attached to the top of the frame, and held securely down by the rows of iron pillars on the two sides, and by the massive iron caps, called platens, which may be seen passing across at the top, from pillar to pillar. These caps are held by large iron nuts which are screwed down over the ends of the pillars above. The lower die is movable. It is attached by massive iron work to the ends of the piston-rods, and of course it rises when the pistons are driven upward by the pressure of the water. The plate of metal, when the dies approach each other, is bent and drawn into the intended shape by the force of the pressure, receiving not only the corrugations which are designed to stiffen it, but also the general shaping necessary, in respect to swell and curvature, to give it the proper form for the side, or the portion of a side, of a boat.
It is obviously necessary that these dies should fit each other in a very accurate manner, so as to compress the iron equally in every part. To make them fit thus exactly, massive as they are in magnitude, and irregular in form, is a work of immense labor. They are first cast as nearly as possible to the form intended, but as such castings always warp more or less in cooling, there is a great deal of fitting afterward required, to make them come rightly together. This could easily be done by machinery if the surfaces were square, or cylindrical, or of any other mathematical form to which the working of machinery could be adapted. But the curved and winding surfaces which form the hull of a boat or vessel, smooth and flowing as they are, and controlled, too, by established and well-known laws, bid defiance to all the attempts of mere mechanical motion to follow them. The superfluous iron, therefore, of these dies, must all be cut away by chisels driven by a hammer held in the hand; and so great is the labor required to fit and smooth and polish them, that a pair of them costs several thousand dollars before they are completed and ready to fulfill their function.
The superiority of metallic boats, whether of copper or iron, made in the manner above described, over those of any other construction, is growing every year more and more apparent. They are more light and more easily managed, they require far less repair from year to year, and are very much longer lived. When iron is used for this purpose, a preparation is employed that is called galvanized iron. This manufacture consists of plates of iron of the requisite thickness, coated on each side, first with tin, and then with zinc; the tin being used simply as a solder, to unite the other metals. The plate presents, therefore, to the water, only a surface of zinc, which resists all action, so that the boats thus made are subject to no species of decay. They can be injured or destroyed only by violence, and even violence acts at a very great disadvantage in attacking them. The stroke of a shot, or a concussion of any kind that would split or shiver a wooden boat so as to damage it past repair, would only indent, or at most perforate, an iron one. And a perforation even, when made, is very easily repaired, even by the navigators themselves, under circumstances however unfavorable. With a smooth and heavy stone placed upon the outside for an anvil, and another used on the inside as a hammer, the protrusion is easily beaten down, the opening is closed, the continuity of surface is restored, and the damaged boat becomes, excepting, perhaps, in the imagination of the navigator, as good once more as ever.
Metallic boats of this character were employed by the party under Lieut. Lynch, in making, some years ago, their celebrated voyage down the river Jordan to the Dead Sea. The navigation of this stream was difficult and perilous in the highest degree. The boats were subject to the severest possible tests and trials. They were impelled against rocks, they were dragged over shoals, they were swept down cataracts and cascades. There was one wooden boat in the little squadron; but this was soon so strained and battered that it
Areas being as the squares of homologous lines, the ratio would be, mathematically expressed, 1²: 4 × 12² = 1: 4 × 144 = 1: 576.
There are nine of these presses in the printing-rooms of Harper and Brothers, all constantly employed in smoothing sheets of paper after the printing. The sheets of paper to be pressed are placed between sheets of very smooth and thin, but
