Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/277

 Popular- Science Monthh/

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��Killing the Boll-Weevil with a Deadly Gas

EVERY bale of cotton that comes into the United States must first be dis- infected be- fore it can be placed on the market. This is necessary because of the boll-weevil and other pests. The cotton is placed in a steel chamber from which the air is ex- tracted. Hy- drocyanic gas fumes, one of the most deadly poisons known, are then intro- duced. The gas permeates every part of the bale and all living

things are immediately killed. The boll weevil is an undesirable immigrant.

��Driving Eight Hundred and Fifty Rivets a Minute in a Trunk

FROM the time he w^as seventeen years old Thomas Gumming of Grand

���Underwood and UndLTwood

The cotton bale is placed in an air-tight steel chamber filled with hydrocyanic gas fumes, which kill all insects

���After twenty-five years of work Thomas Gumming in- vents the first machine for riveting trunks at high speed

��Rapids was an influential business man, devoting every spare moment to the con- struction of a machine which would do away with much of the hand labor required in making trunks. Now he steps before

the world with the invention here pictured. The ma- chine is about as high as a man. It oc- cupies a floor space measur- ing approxi- mately six by six feet. A child can run it and yet it is an intricate piece of mech- anism.

An a u t o- matic carriage holdsthetrunk firmly while it moves through the machine. An entire side is completed at one time. The rivets are driven in a straight line, something almost unheard of in trunk-making.

With the old one-man-power machine used in factories, the operator must hold the trunk and drive the rivets at the same time. If he is an expert, he may drive them in line. His speed is from eight to ten per minute. Gumming's inven- tion drives one hundred and eight per minute with each driver, four hundred and thirty-two for the machine.

When handled by an expert it drives a total of more than eight hundred and fifty each minute. Think of it! It does the work of forty to one hun- dred men. The operator simply places the trunk in position and controls the machine. More drivers can be added if necessary; each increases the speed of the machine by driv- ing one hundred and eight to two hundred and twenty-five rivets per minute.

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