Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/346

332 innovation on the practice then prevailing, but it was a complete success." Whereat the wise fools who had been posing as "observers," promptly swallowed all their observations, and with the characteristic agility of their race turned each a back somerset,



and, coming up blandly smiling, with the remark "We always told you so," forthwith proceeded to foolishly praise that which they had more foolishly condemned.

The rapid increase of the manufacture of iron in consequence of the introduction of the puddling process naturally called for a



more expeditious method than the blows of a "trip-hammer" for expelling the cinder from the "puddle-balls" and forming them into "blooms"; and this necessity resulted in the invention of the "alligator squeezer," which consisted (as shown in Fig. 26) of a lever whose long arm was operated by a crank, the short arm