Considerable interest has been evinced as to what a pound of coal could do. An experienced engineer has taken the time to figure out the power in a pound of coal and the results of his calculations are as follows:

A pound of coal can produce sufficient power to pull a large express train a distance of one-sixth of a mile, going at the rate of 50 miles an hour. A pound of average coal contains about 10,000 heat units. This would be somewhat smaller in size than a man's fist. If this pound of coal could be burned completely and entirely under water, and all of its heat should go into the water, 625 pounds of water could be raised to the height of one foot.

If the same pound of coal could be burned in water one foot deep, with a temperature of 64 degrees, and all the heat from this coal should be imparted to the water, it would become 16 degrees hotter, thus being suitable for a bath. If adapted to mechanical work, the 10,000 heat units in one pound of coal would be equivalent to 236 horse power. This amount of potential energy is sufficient to haul a train of eight cars for a period of one fifth of a minute, or a distance of one sixth of a mile. It is also capable of drawing a cable train, including the grip car and trailer, for a distance of two miles, at the rate of nine miles an hour. It will also pull an electric car well filled with passengers for two miles and a half, at the rate of ten miles an hour.

Compared with the work of a strong man, this pound of coal would do the work of five men for one minute. Another line of work in which the superiority of a pound of coal is shown beside the labor of a man, is that of sawing wood. A man may consider himself a swift sawyer by making sixty strokes a minute, each stroke of the blade having progressed five feet a minute, but a circular saw drawn by machinery, may be put through 70 times that distance, and saw 70 times as much wood. Still, this little pound of coal has the power to keep in operation 180 such saws.

THE CYCLONE
FIRE FIGHTING TO-DAY
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© 1998, 2002 by Lynn Waterman

The general ideas on the subject of cyclones are rather vague. Take a small butter pot, and set it down on your largest map of the world at about 20 degrees north latitude, anywhere in the Atlantic between two continents, say east of the West Indies.

Then, with a piece of whalebone twice as long as from the butter pot to the North Pole, bent into a parabola, with one end at the pole, the other at the butter pot, mark out thus the path of the cyclone. The apex of the bent whalebone will be somewhere in the western United States. Imagine your butter pot to be revolving on its own center in the manner of the hands of a watch, at the rate 100 miles in hour.

Its northwestern edge will be the dangerous storm rim, blowing a hurricane, lashing the seas, and precipitating the rain; the other edges will be breezy, but not so stormy, as they contain less moist air.

The center will be the low barometer and calm area, because here the air has less weight and is flowing upward. Now, move your pot slowly along the parabola, still supposing it to be turning. By the time you reach the center of the United States, exchange the pot for a saucer, with the same supposed conditions, only by this time, if wintry, a snow storm will take the place of the rain. Keep it moving circularly, and northward also along the parabola, and about Hudson Bay, change to a breakfast plate, and in Greenland, to a dinner plate, and about the 80th degree north, before the storm reaches the size of a buggy wheel, it breaks up.

Thus you see the space over which the storm travels enlarges as it passes north, the winds blow around its rim, and the calm center moves with it.

Mariners now carry what is called a horn-card, a transparent piece of flat cow's horn, with a circle on it, inside which are several smaller circles, with arrows pointing as a watch's hands travel. Whenever the barometer changes and clouds scud by, this horn-card is placed on the chart at the ship's position. Knowing the wind's direction and the weight of the air, the horn-card tells whereabouts in the cyclone's course the ship is, and from this is reasoned how to sail to avoid its violence, or if unavoidable, how to manage in it, and if possible to profit by it.

The formation and development of a cyclone is thus described by the intelligent observer of its progress, who furnished the accompanying illustration.

"In the afternoon a cloud of smoke was noticed on the horizon a few miles away. Spiral puffs arose from time to time, and we wondered whose house was burning. Presently we noticed a cloud in the sky above the burning house, of the same color, only darker.

By courtesy of "The Oaks." A cyclone as it strikes. (From a photograph.)

"The cloud was quite a distance above, and entirely detached from the smoke below. While we looked a long finger suddenly descended from the upper cloud and touched the 'burning house,' and the two united and moved rapidly forward. Then we knew there was no burning house, and that we had witnessed the formation of a cyclone. Those who were nearer than we were told us that they first noticed a little whirl of dust, such as one often sees in a dusty road. Only a foot or two high at first, it usually scatters and disappears in a few minutes. This one did not. It rapidly grew larger and clung to the same spot. The cloud we saw in the sky did not come from anywhere. It suddenly formed in the sky above the little whirl of dust, grown larger by that time.

"The two clouds moved forward at once on uniting. The long finger thickened at the top, forming an inverted cone. The lower cloud became absorbed in the upper, forming an immense, funnel-shaped, whirling horror, of inky blackness. Flashes of lightning constantly darted forth from its sides, and a sullen, thunderous roar was continuous. It moved with a swaying, graceful motion, rising and falling with the inequalities of the ground. It seemed to move slowly. A good horse could outrun it. As the long finger swayed back and forth whatever it touched vanished.

"Houses, barns, haystacks and trees, all were taken up by the suction of the cyclone. The whirling motion was so rapid the eye could not follow it, but the forward movement was so slow that anyone who saw it in time could easily get out of its way. For that reason few lives were lost. It lasted three-quarters of an hour, then it struck a slight shower cloud and dispersed. Its track was eighteen miles long and one-quarter mile wide. It came within a half mile of our home. The courageous photographer who took the picture was handicapped somewhat by his shrieking family clinging to him and trying to get him into the cyclone cave.

"The photograph does not do justice to the 'sitter,' as at the moment of taking the shot it was passing over a plowed field, and the dust it kicked up destroyed the symmetry of its funnel. There was no other cloud in the sky except the cyclone. We could see the blue sky above and on all sides of it all the time, in unique and startling contrast."

HOW MUSIC IS PRINTED
WHAT A POUND OF COAL CAN DO
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© 1998, 2002 by Lynn Waterman

Millions sing popular songs, but few know what a page of music represents. Just to give an idea of the subject, it may be put down in the outset that an ordinary piece, of three sheets, selling for 10 cents, involves the use of more than 5,000 separate types.

Chicago is one of the great music publishing centers of the country, and its daily output ranges through all the grades of vocal and instrumental literature—from the symphony for a full orchestra, reproduced for the first time from the manuscript of the Chicago composer, to the cheapest reprint of the newest thing in concert hall music.

Woman is on an equality with man in this department of the publishing trade. She commands a man's wages for "composition," and, as the work is of the most delicate and perplexing kind, her patience and dexterity usually give her a marked superiority over the men of the guild.

A composer with a piece of music to publish has his choice among four kinds of printing. If he is rich, he may have the score engraved on copper and printed as if it were an expensive picture, or he may have it stamped in zinc, or it may be lithographed. But if he is bent on money-making and celebrity, he will go to the musical type-setter.

The case of the music printer is divided into 700 boxes, one for each character, and the compositor must have learned her case perfectly or she will be able to make poor headway with her work. First, she sets the character for the clef, and the end of the staff. Then she inserts the sharps or flats of the signature, and spaces out the staff with short pieces of brass rule. Next, she pieces to get her figures and staff rules to indicate the time.

Suppose the first note of the piece of music is a quarter-note in the second space, with a sharp before it. The compositor puts in the sharp first and fills up the space with bits of brass rule to continue the staff; then she inserts the body of the quarternote with two lines below, and above it puts the two types necessary to make the stem of the note, and to keep the staff unbroken. Sometimes five more separate types must be inserted. A measure of eight consecutive notes, three-four time and a tenor clef indicated, seem to contain ten characters. As a matter of fact, the number is 78, at the very least, and more if the measure has accidentals or complicated harmony. It takes about five years for an apprentice to learn the trade. It is not necessary to have musicians to set music type, yet in correcting proof it is the aim of the typesetters to know enough music to avoid errors.

On this side of the Atlantic music type is made only in Philadelphia, and so great is its cost that it is never put to the wear and tear of the presses. As soon as the proof is corrected by the proofreader, the form of type is molded in wax and then an electrotype is cast from this matrix. After that comes the tedious work of distributing the several thousand types, for the wax sticks in between and makes the sorting of the type difficult.

Next in importance is the lithographic process of engraving for music. A plate of zinc is ruled off with the series of five lines of the staff. Then the music is copied in reverse on the zinc, and the engraver, with many separate dies and punches, stamps in the notes, bars and rests. When this is done and the plate is hammered straight, it is filled up with thick transfer ink. An etcher's proof is taken of this, and while the ink is yet wet, it is pressed upon a lithograph stone. From this point the work of printing is the same as that of a one-color lithograph, that is, the stone is kept wet and the ink adheres only to the characters of the music.

Sometimes, to avoid expense in printing small batches, music is printed direct from the stamped zinc sheets. In this case beeswax is filled into the lines and dots for some depth, as otherwise there would be so much ink taken up by the indentations that the sheet music would be blurred.

In printing the music, dampened paper is used. In the press, a heavy bed of iron supports the engraved plates with paper on them. By means of a big capstan wheel, this bed is moved in between two iron cylinders moving in the same direction. A heavy blanket of felt is wrapped about the upper roller, and the pressure causes the ink in the plate to be sucked up on the paper. These presses must be run by hand, and the plate inked and wiped off for each impression. Thus the cost of printing is about half a cent a sheet.

A BIG CLOCK
THE CYCLONE
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© 1998, 2002 by Lynn Waterman