Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century

apparatus represented in Fig. 316 is acted on by currents through the wires, G, H. The point attached to its armature traces a plain spiral line on the revolving cylinder, except at the instant when the current is established or interrupted. And the phenomenon to be timed is in some way made to accomplish the making and breaking of this circuit. This may be perhaps better understood by an example. It has sometimes happened that the boxes employed in the pneumatic dispatch stick fast in the tubes, and resist all efforts to dislodge them by manœuvres with the compressed or rarefied air, or other means. In such a case it becomes necessary to ascertain with tolerable accuracy the position of the obstruction, so that the tube may be cut at the right place and the obstacle removed. The known velocity of sound has been ingeniously used for this purpose; the electric chronograph being made 659the means of ascertaining, to a small fraction of a second, the time required for the report of a pistol to be propagated through the air of the tube and reflected back from the obstruction. An elastic membrane is spread over the open extremity of the pneumatic tube; this membrane has in the centre a little disc of platinum, in electric connection with one of the wires, G, H. The other wire passes to a galvanic cell or battery, and the return wire from the battery is connected with a platinum point, the distance of which from the disc can be adjusted with nicety by means of a screw, so that the circuit may be complete only when the platinum point and the platinum disc are in contact. The screw is adjusted so as to bring the point as near as possible to the disc without actual contact. The chronograph cylinder having been set in motion, a small pistol is fired into the pneumatic tube through a side opening. Sound-waves of alternate compression and rarefaction pass along the tube, and are reflected backwards and forwards many times in succession between the obstacle and the membrane. By these the membrane is alternately forced out and drawn in, making and breaking the electric contact accordingly, and thus causing the point of the electro-magnet to describe in the cylinder an indented line, the intervals of which indicate the time the sound requires to traverse the tube to the obstruction; and thus the position of the latter may be known with sufficient accuracy. A very interesting application of the electric chronograph is to the measurement of the velocities of projectiles. The science of gunnery has acquired an exactness unknown before electricity was made to carry messages from the cannon-ball in its swiftest flight, and to write the record of its own course. Instruments for thus measuring the velocities of projectiles have been contrived by several electricians, among whom Wheatstone appears to have been the first. The principle in most of these chronographs is precisely the same as that on which the apparatus represented in Fig. 316 is constructed. The action of the projectile which is electrically indicated is the severing of a slender wire, which is stretched from side to side of a wooden frame, so that it passes continuously backwards and forwards in parallel lines. Thus a kind of screen is formed, through which the missile must pass, and in its passage must rupture the wire. If the wire conveys a current of electricity, this current is therefore interrupted at the moment the ball passes. Sometimes the immediate effect of the breaking of the wire is mechanical, as in Wheatstone’s arrangement, where the wire is stretched by a weight over a series of pulleys, and attached to a contact-maker, which completes the circuit when it is set free by the rupture of the wire. A similar arrangement in the screens has been proposed by Mr. Siemens for the establishment of circuits in connection with charged Leyden jars, the sparks of the discharges being made to take place at the surface of a revolving cylinder of polished steel, where the place is shown by the spot they leave on the metal. M. Pouillet’s chronoscope dispenses with the revolving cylinder, and measures the duration of the current established by the projectile at one part of its course and cut off at another, by the arc through which the needle of a galvanometer is impelled. The instrument which has been most employed in this country by artillerists is that invented by Professor Bashforth. Its indications are extremely accurate, for readings may be taken to the two-thousandth part of a second. From ten to fifteen screens are placed in the path of the projectile at distances asunder which may vary from 15 ft. to 150 ft., but which, of course, are carefully measured. Each screen is formed of a wire 660carrying an independent current, which also circulates in the coils of an electro-magnet. The ten electro-magnets have styles attached to their armatures in such a manner that when all the currents are passing, ten parallel spiral lines are traced on the surface of a vertical revolving cylinder, about 12 in. long and 4 in. diameter. The cylinder is covered with a sheet of highly-glazed paper coated with lampblack; and when the sheet is removed, the lampblack may be fixed on the paper if desired, and the record made permanent. The equal intervals of time are marked on the same cylinder by another electro-magnet connected with a pendulum beating half-seconds. The axis of the revolving cylinder, &c., carries a heavy flywheel, which is set in motion by the hand at the rate of about three revolutions in two seconds, and the rest of the mechanism is thrown into gear just before the signal to fire is given. The arrangement of the electric connections at the screens is such that at the moment of the rupture of the wire, the circuit is broken for an instant only. At this moment, the iron of the corresponding electro-magnet ceasing to attract its armature, the latter is drawn away by a spring; but the re-establishment of the current immediately brings it back, and the style continues to trace the same spiral line as before. The passage of the ball through the screen is therefore marked by a little notch in the spiral line, thus, , and the point where the deviation begins indicates the time at which the ball passed. In order to read off this time, a straight-edge is applied to the cylinder parallel to its axis; and by means of a scale sliding upon the straight-edge the distances between the notches on the several spirals are compared with those between the pendulum marks. To record the instant at which a projectile passes determined points in a cannon’s bore, lateral plugs are screwed in, each having, just projecting into the bore, a small steel ball, which, pressed outwards by the passing projectile, causes a cutter to divide the primary wire of a Ruhmkorff coil, whereupon the spark that passes in the secondary circuit leaves its record on a uniformly moving disc. Each plug has its own battery, coil, and disc. A special feature of recording instruments may be exemplified by certain applications of the principle to the investigation of physiological actions. A skilled physician is often able to detect in the pulse of his patient certain characteristics besides the mere rate, which are highly significant as regards the condition of the circulatory system. The range of these indications has been greatly extended by an instrument invented by MM. Chauveau and Marey, by which the pulse is made to write down a graphic representation of its action. The patient’s arm having been placed on a suitable support, a little stud covered with soft leather is lightly pressed against the artery by a spring. The stud is in contact with the shorter end of a very light lever, the other extremity of which is furnished with a point, which registers its movements on a cylinder of blackened metal, made to rotate and advance longitudinally by clockwork; or the record is taken on strips of flat smoked glass. As the motion is much magnified by the lever, every variation in the pressure of the blood in the artery during the beat of the pulse is distinctly and faithfully indicated. From the line so traced the physician may obtain infallible data for judging of the condition of the heart, the action of its valves, &c. It is marvellous to observe the manner in which the curves of the sphygmograph, as the instrument is termed, change their form when certain drugs are administered: the change in some cases occurs immediately, so that the eye can detect by the inspection of the sphygmographic curve almost the instant at which the 661drug was introduced into the system, and the nature of its action on the heart. Fig. 317.—Negretti’s Deep-Sea Thermometer. Another instrument which is doing good service in the hands of medical investigators is the spirograph, in which the rise and fall of the chest in breathing are similarly traced by the motions of a lever. In this instrument a small pad, which presses on the chest, communicates its movements to an elastic membrane, which, like the skin of a drumhead, covers one end of a cylindrical box maintained in a fixed position relatively to the person of the patient. The air in this box is in communication, by means of a flexible tube, with the interior of another similarly closed box; the elastic membrane of the latter acts against the short end of a lever, which is made to register its movements as in the sphygmograph, for the compression of the air caused by the rise of the chest is conveyed to the second box through the flexible tube. The curves furnished by this instrument also give valuable indications, and exhibit marked changes under any influence in the least degree affecting the respiratory system. The value of a self-registering instrument for solving problems, the intricacy of which is increased by the multiplicity and rapidity of the actions to be observed, cannot be better illustrated than by the success with which Professor Marey has thus studied some complicated actions of locomotion, as related in his extremely interesting work entitled, “La Machine Animale,” a translation of which has appeared in “The International Series.” The action of the horse in the various paces, walking, trotting, galloping, &c., has been an endless subject of discussion, with no other data than the shoe-marks left in soft ground, and the general appearance of the animal’s movements to an observer. But M. Marey—by means of elastic bags containing air, communicating the pressure through flexible tubes, so as to move little levers, which write their traces on a revolving cylinder impelled by clockwork, and carried by the rider,—has completely and finally settled all the points in dispute. It is now definitely known how the horse’s feet are placed on the ground in each of his paces, and the actual and relative time that each foot remains down. The instruments are also made to register the vertical movements of the animal, so that a complete record of its motion can be obtained. Fig. 318.—Negretti’s Deep-Sea Thermometer, general arrangement. It was long a difficulty to obtain data as to the temperature of the sea at great depths below the surface. It is obvious that the ordinary maximum and minimum registering thermometers would not give the temperature at any particular depth to which they might be submerged, 662but merely the temperature of the warmest or coldest stratum of water through which they passed in their descent or ascent. No plan which has been devised to obviate these difficulties appears to have been attended with success, until a quite recent invention of Messrs. Negretti and Zambra supplied the desideratum, and furnished a convenient instrument for trustworthy determination of the temperature of the ocean at any required depth. The same firm long ago constructed thermometers for deep-sea soundings, with bulbs protected from the pressure of