Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/631

Rh These machines cost about five thousand dollars, and are built by the inventor, Mr. C. W. Dickinson, Sr.,of Belleville, N. J., who has invented and improved several other kinds of very useful bank-note machines.

It is said the American Bank-note Company, of New York, has a lathe, built by the company some years ago, which took about three years to build and cost more than ten thousand dollars.

The variety of forms that can be produced on one of these lathes is endless; and if Spencer could have had one of these, instead of the crude one he had, and could have started with the opening of this century and cut a new form every day, Sunday included, and every hour of each day up to the present time, he would still have possibilities enough left to fill out the next century.

This machine and its work have been thus minutely described because it is considered a most important security against counterfeiting; not exceeded in value even by the artistic perfection of the vignettes, or portraits, and lettering.

Doubt as to the character of a bank note has often been settled by a microscopic examination of the lathe-work. Even by means of the lathe on which a cutting has been made, it could not be absolutely reproduced; so, of course, it could not be done by hand or by another lathe. Possibly, after reading this article, some one will look upon a bank note as something more than simply cash.

results of observations taken by Mr. Hallock, of the Smithsonian Institution, at depths extending to 4,462 feet, in a nearly dry well at Wheeling, W. Va., were communicated to the British Association by the Committee on Underground Temperature. When the observations taken in 1891 were concluded, the well was plugged. The plug was withdrawn in July, 1893. and the observations were resumed. The well, which had been dry before, was filled with fresh water to within forty feet of the top. The results of measurements at various depths between 1,586 feet and 3,196 feet were practically identical with those obtained two years previously, when the well was full of air, the greatest certain difference being only one fifth of a degree. The temperatures at 103 feet, 206 feet, and 300 feet were also observed with suitable thermometers, the temperature at 103 feet being 52·53º, which is 1·2º higher than the true temperature of the soil at that depth, as determined by other observations in the immediate neighborhood.

four-hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the earliest Slavonic printing press in the country was celebrated throughout Montenegro in July, 1893. The press was set up at Obod by the ruling prince in 1493, before either Oxford or Cambridge had a permanent press. Some of the books printed then are still to be seen at the Monastery of Cajnice, just over the Bosnian frontier. On the occasion of the celebration, universities and learned societies of Europe, including the University of Oxford, sent addresses of congratulation.