Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/533

 Popular Science Monthly

��17

��Buttons Are Now Made as a By -Product of Beer

THE spent yeast which collects in breweries and distilleries is put through a process which turns it out in the form of buttons, door- bell plates and knife handles. Formerly this left-over ma- terial was considered to be a bothersome waste; now it is utilized, every bit of it. As it is gathered from the vats the yeast is of a dirty, gray- brown color. The first op- eration is to dye rt and the 1 to work it over until it assumes the form of pow- der and can be hot-presssi into any form. In this stage it is called "ernolith." It may be sawed, scraped, filed, drilled, engraved, turned to an edge, and polished. The material has a particularly close and fine structure, and possesses sufficient hard- ness and elasticity for all ordinary purposes.

���Where the rigid teeth of a steel gear would scrape to- gether those of the gears made from cotton yield

��A hydraulic pressure of from six to eight thou- sand tons is required to make the fiber gears

��This Truck Loader Will Lift One Ton Ten Inches Per Second

MECHANICAL loading devices are not rare, but the one shown in the illustration below has several novel features. It is in three parts: a supporting frame, a traveling crane and a dynamo for generat- ing the necessary electricity. The travel- ing crane comprises a motor, a clutch, a driving mechanism and a lifting winch. The hoist is carried on a transverse track which is part of the traveling crane, so that it can lift a load from any point across the width of the ma- chine. It can be locked in any position desired. The winch has a capacity lift of o;i3 ton at the rate of ten inches per second. E. Fourhee, of Paris, is the inventor.

�� �IP"

�v "^^

� �' L L .;. . _

� � �Ce, 1 — 7 1 ■ — fmu.

�— Jgr3

��A brewer's wagon supplied with a travel- ing hoisting crane, which is electrically driven by a dynamo under the floor

��Gear Wheels Made of Cotton. They Outlast Steel Gears

GEARS are now being made of ordinary cotton which outwear those made from the finest steel. It seems incredible, but it is true.

The very hardness of the metal gears causes the teeth surfaces to scrape over each other when they mesh, producing hideous screeches and groans. Every one of these scrapings means a cer- tain amount of wear. Teeth made out of compressed cotton yield. They are there- fore perfectly noise- less. Compared with the metal gears, they are indestructible. To make these fiber gears, a large cylinder built up of cotton disks is compressed to but one sixteenth of its former length!

�� �