Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/883

 The Intelligent Motor Milk-Wagon

Like the milkman's trained horse it ambles mechan- ically on while deliveries are made from door to door

���A half - nut enmeshes with the threaded - shaft and is moved by it when the wagon is running. The farther to the left it is placed the longer it will take it to move the control-lever and stop the car

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��T LAST the iiUflligcnce of a niilh- man's or baker's horse in nioxini^ from house to house during deli\eries has been duplicated by a de\ice applicable to any type of motor vehicle. It consists of a mechanism which may be set to bring the \ehicle automatically to a stop at any desired distance from its position.

The operator of a truck fitted with the new device ma\- fill his crate with enough loaves of bread or bottles of milk to suppK' a block or row of houses and set the control mechanism to run the truck to the end of the row while he goes from house to house.

The mechanism, the work of C. M. Manly, the in\entor of the Manly hydraulic dri\e for motor-trucks, is shown in the accompanying sketches apjilied to a ^■ehicle with that t\pe of dri\-e, although by suit- able attachment to the clutch and brake- operating pedals it ma\- be fittetl to trucks with ordinary- spur-gear transmissions that have shifting control members.

The device consists of two parallel shafts mounted on brackets on one side of the truck frame, forward of the jackshaft, as shown in the accompanying illustration. The outer of the two shafts, driven by means of a bevel-gear at its rear, which

��meshes with another on the extreme end of the jackshaft, drives the inner shaft through a pair of spur-gears. The outer shaft carries loosely a half-nut, the threaded portions of which engage the threads on the inner shaft. The nut can also be disengaged from the shafts and stored away when the driver is running the car from the seat. In its course along the threaded portions of the inner shaft liie half-nut comes into contact with a \eriical arm of the vehicle which is connected with the speed-control bar at- tached to the hydraulic pump through a shaft crosswise.

In operation, the driver sets the half- nut on the rearmost of the threaded por- tions of the inner shaft, according to graduations marked on the outer shaft. He then moves the vertical hand-control Ie\cr for%vard a short distance to start the truck at slow speed. Then as the vehicle mo\es for^vard, the inner shaft is re\olved antl with it the half-nut is moved forward until it comes in contact with the control- lever, at which time the nut moves this vertical lever on the crosswise control- shaft to its middle position, and causes the vehicle to stop.

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