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* WINTHROP. win Brothertoft (1862); The Canoe and the Saddle (1862); Life in the Open Air, etc. (1803) ; and Life aiid Poems (edited by liis sis- ter, 1884). Winthrop's novels are full of narra- tive talent and indicate that their author might ultimately have taken an important position in American letters. They helped to introduce the Far ^Yest to American literature. WINTTJN, win-toon' (People). A group of tribes of Copehan linguistic stock, formerly occu- pying the country of the upper Sacramento and Trinity rivers, northern California. Although of inferior type, their disposition enabled them to maintain themselves in the face of civilization to better advantage than the more warlike tribes. Timid, gentle, and extremely sensual, they were also industrious, and were expert in diving for clams and spearing salmon. Their houses were conical lodges of bark over a frame of poles. Their weapons were the bow and the sling. Each harvest season of fish, nuts, or blossoms was the occasion of a tribal gathering and dance, many of the songs being sweet and melodious until repeated to iiionotony. They had also the scalp dance, the war dance, the gift dance, and the puberty dance for young girls. Polygamy was common. The dead were wrapped into bundles and buried with all their ornaments and smaller property, and the name never there- after mentioned. In the case of a woman a quantity of acorns was sometimes poured upon the corpse in the grave. Like the other Cali- fornia tribes, they excelled in liasketry. A few of them are now gathered upon Round Valley Reservation, but the majority of those surviving still wander along the Sacramento. WIRE (AS. Kir, wire; connected with OHG. iciura, fine-drawn gold, Lat. i>iri(g, armlets, Lith. veld, wire, and ultimately with Skt. ril, weave). An extremely elongated, slender bar of metal produced by drawing a short thick bar through a succession of holes of regularly decreasing sizes until its diameter has been materialh' reduced and its length greatly increased. Wire is gen- erally round, but flat wire, oval wire, and wire of other shapes is also made. The manufacture of wire has been traced by good authorities as far back as the period of early Egypt, and until the fourteenth century wire was manufactured by hammering out strips of metal. In the early history of the article, gold, silver, and bronze were practically the only metals used. It seems to be fairly well substantiated that the present method of producing wire by drawing was prac- ticed in Ciermany during the fourteenth cen- tury. In 18ti5 machine-drawn wire was first produced in England. Prooe.s.s of Manufacture. Wire is almost universally manufaeturod by drawing, and the facility with which any metal can be drawn into wire depends ujion its diu'tility. Most nietals have this property : but some, like antimony and bismuth, are so brittle that they can be drawn out only W'ith diiriculty. and wire made from such metals is useless from want of tenacity. All metals largely used for making wire, such as steel, brass, and copper, are drawn by essen- tially the same process. Steel billets first are rolled into round rods. The rods are cleaned of Bcale either by mechanical rubbing or more com- monly by being immersed in «n acid bath, and then dcacidizcd bv a bath of lime water. Each 582 WIRE. bar is then drawn into wire by pulling it through the holes of a draw plate. This is an oblong plate of hard steel pierced with conical holes, gradually diminishing in diameter and having the smaller ends of these tapering holes carefully prepared to the required size. Sometimes cubical shaped dies, each with a single trumpet-shaped hole, are used. The workman begins by making a point on the rod, so as to permit it to pass through the hole and be grasped by a pair of pincers attached to a chain. This chain is pulled along by suitable mechanism until the length of wire which has been drawn through the hole is sufficient to pass around a revolving drum, which is then set in motion and draws the rod slowly through the draw plate, winding it upon itself as it revolves. From this drum the wire is passed through a smaller hole and wound on another drum, and so the process is repeated until the wire has been reduced to the proper size. Fine wire may require from 20 to 30 drawings. The drum revolves slowly with a thick wire and the speed is increased as the size diminishes. After being passed a few times through the draw plate the metal becomes brittle and has to have its ductility restored by annealing. (See Anneal- ing.) From the annealing furnace the wire passes to the acid bath to remove the scale and then to the lime water to remove the acid. It is then ready to be further reduced by the draw plate until annealing is again required. Gener- ally a lubricant, wax, grease, soap, or other similar material, is employed during the drawing, especially for fine wires. For some very accurate purposes, such as chronometer springs and for gold and silver lace, the wire is drawn through holes perforated in rubies and other hard gems. Uses of Wire. The uses of various kinds of wire are practically innumerable, and involve numerous kinds of wire manufactured from va- rious materials. The metals used are silver, platinum, copper, bronze, brass, iron, and steel, and from them are drawn wires varying in size from 14 incli to wjVo inch, and possessing a ten- sile strength of from 20 tons to 150 tons per square inch of sectional area. The manufacture of wire netting, gauze, and clnth is among the many ingenious and serviceable applications of wire. IMany thousand tons of plain fencing wire, strands, and barliod wire are annually manufactured. Carding wire is a product of no less magnitude and importance. Beautiful types of wire are to be found in the' eyepieces of teles(?opes in the form of hair or spider lines for assisting in the observation of moving stars, planets, or bodies and their relative bearings and for measuring angles or determining evolutions and gradients. A platiniim wire as fine as 0.00003 inch in diameter has been obtained, of which 1060 yards weighed 0,75 grain, or 1^4 grains per mile. Tliis result was, however, ob- tained by covering the wire with silver, which, after being drawn down with the platinum to as fine a degree as possible, was dissolved olf by a solution of nitric acid. Platiiuim and other wires are also useil in galvanic cauteries, ccra- surcs, magnetic machines, probes, and other sur- gical instruments and appliances. Rotnewhat re- cently steel wire of high breaking strains has been employed for deep-sea soundings. (See Sound, SotmniNo.) One of the most important uses of wire in engineering is for making wire