Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/377

* DIVIDEND. 323 DIVIDING ENGINE. in common use to describe a complete fund dis- tributed once and for all to the claimants or owners, as in tlic division of partnership assets or the distribution, upon an accounting, of the assets in the hands of an executor or adminis- trator; but it is rather employed to denote the sum available for partial or periodical jiavnients cut of such assets or out of current earninirs. In this restricted sense it is entirely ai)pro|)riate to the portion of the assets of an insolvent, or of a company in process of winding up, which is realized from time to time by the trustee or receiver and distributed among the creditors or shareholders. The most common use of the term however, is to describe those profits or earnings of a corporation or joint-stock company which are set apart for distribution among the members and stockholders. It will be noticed that such assets and earn- ings while yet unappropriated are not dividends, and that it is their formal a[>propriation to the purpose of distribution which gives them that character. As soon as this has been done, and not before, they are treated by the law as the property of the persons entitled thereto imder the terms of the appropriation, and such persons may accordingly demand and recover them as 'money had and received to their use.' As applied to corpoiatitms, the term dividend has been di'fincd to be "that portion of the profits and surplus funds of the corporation which has been actually set apart by a valid resolution of the board of directors, or by the shareholders at a corporate meeting, for distribution among the shareholders according to their respective interests, in such a sense as to become segregat- ed from the property of the corporation and to become the i)roperty of the shareholders dis- tributivcly." The declaration of dividends is one of the usual powers of directors, and, unless controlled by the charter or by-laws of the corporation, they may usually fix the amount of the divi- dend, and the time and place of payment, at their sole discretion, subject only to the obliga- tion of good faith with the stockholders. Divi- dends cannot usually be declared out of the capital, but only from the profits : but there is no obligation on the directors to appropriate all or any particular portion of the profits to this purpose, though the contrary has been held in England. It has also been held in England that dividends must be payable in money; but in the I'nited States dividends are often paid in the stock, bonds, or scrip of the corporation. When dividends declared from time to time do not exhaust the profits, the surplus thus accumu- lated may be appropriated in whole or part as an 'extra dividend' or bonus. As between a pers<m having a limited interest in corporate shares, as a life tenant, and the person entitled thereto in the future, the ques- tion may arise as to whether dividends earned but not declared during the ownership of the shares by the former, or dividends declared out of accumulated earnings, belong to the former as profits or to the latter as capital. Commonly this is solved by applying the rule, previously laid down, that no one becomes entitled to earn- ings until they have been appropriated in the form of a dividend. It is usually held also that extra dividends declared out of surplus earnings shall always be regarded as profits in the same way as those declared out of current earnings. See CoRi'ORATiox ; Dikectok : Stockholuer ; Stock ; DEBEXTrRE. and the authorities referred to under those titles. DIVIDING ENGINE, or RfLiNG Engine. A uuuliinc <lcvisi'd to rule fine lines at regular intervals by means of a diamond jioint or other sharp edge. The most common use of such ma- chines is for the purpose of dividing the cir- cumference of a circle into degrees and minutes or other divisions as is necessary in the construc- tion of surveying and astronomical insUunicnts, micrometer screws, spectrometers, and other physical instruments, as well as in many com- mercial machines; and also for the purpose of dividing a length into aliquot parts as in the making of meter rods and similar instruments. Another use to which they are ])Ut is that of the preparation of difi'raction gratings (q.v.), in which it is necessary to have the means of ruling a great number of lines, exactly parallel and at exactly equal small intervals apart. (Jratings are made with as many as 100,000 lines in a di.stance of five or six inches. The first instrmnent for the ruling of gratings was made by .Joseph von Fraunhofer ( q.v. ) ; others have been made by Rutherfurd, Rowland, and Jlichelson: but all are based on the same general principle. The machine consists of a cylinder on which a screw-thread is cut and which carries a large nut, the two together being like an ordinary bolt and nut. The ends of the screw are held in yokes, so that it can turn on its axis, and the nut is held on 'ways' parallel to the screw. Thus, as the screw is turned by a crank or otherwise, the nut advances or re- cedes. A nutting edge is set at some point above the screw, in such a manner that it can be made to make a line at right angles to the axis of the screw. The piece of glass or metal on whose surface the rulings are to be made is attached to the nut, and the ojieration is as follows: A line is made by the cutting edge; the screw is turned through a certain fraction of a complete revolution — e.g. one-thousandth — thus carrying the nut and the surface forward a small distance; a second line is ruled: the screw is again turned through the same angle as before; a third line is ruled, etc. Thus, if the pitch of the screw is 20 — i.e. if there are 20 threads or spirals on the screw in each inch along its length — there will be 20,000 lines per inch ruled on the grating sur- face. The nut is split in two, the halves being hinged at the top and having below two pro- jections or 'wings.' When the nuichine is to be used, these are clamped together. At the end of the ruling the wings are oj^ned. and the nut, being thus released from the screw, can be pushed back to the starting-point. It is evident that the machines must be rigid, the 'ways' exact, the screw of perfectly uniform pitch, the turning of the screw regular, the cutting of the line exactly straight. All modern nuichines are automatic; a large toothed wheel is attached to the screw at one end, and this turned by levers, one tooth at a time; the cutting edge is a diamond point which is al- lowed to drop on the ruled surface, is drawn across, then lifted, pushed back to the original position, etc. There are always periodic er- rors in the use of any dividing engine, oc- casioned by irregularities in the toothed wheel, the end of the screw which butts against some