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Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . A SLEDGE-RIDE here CHAPTER XXIV. A SLEDGE-RIDE Formentera was at once recognized by Servadac and the count as the name of one of the smallest of the Balearic Islands. It was more than probable that the unknown writer had thence sent out the mysterious documents, and from the message just come to hand by the carrier-pigeon, it appeared all but certain that at the beginning of April, a fortnight back, he had still been there. In one important particular the present communication differed from those that had preceded it: it was written entirely in French, and exhibited none of the ecstatic exclamations in other languages that had been remarkable in the two former papers. The concluding line, with its intimation of failing provisions, amounted almost to an appeal for help. Captain Servadac briefly drew attention to these points, and concluded by saying, “My friends, we must, without delay, hasten to the assistance of this unfortunate man.” “For my part,” said the count, “I am quite ready to accompany you; it is not unlikely that he is not alone in his distress.” Lieutenant Procope expressed much surprise. “We must have passed close to Formentera,” he said, “when we explored the site of the Balearic Isles; this fragment must be very small; it must be smaller than the remaining splinter of Gibraltar or Ceuta; otherwise, surely it would never have escaped our observation.” “However small it may be,” replied Servadac, “we must find it. How far off do you suppose it is?” “It must be a hundred and twenty leagues away,” said the lieutenant, thoughtfully; “and I do not quite understand how you would propose to get there.” “Why, on skates of course; no difficulty in that, I should imagine,” answered Servadac, and he appealed to the count for confirmation of his opinion. The count assented, but Procope looked doubtful. “Your enterprise is generous,” he said, “and I should be most unwilling to throw any unnecessary obstacle in the way of its execution; but, pardon me, if I submit to you a few considerations which to my mind are very important. First of all, the thermometer is already down to 22 degrees below zero, and the keen wind from the south is making the temperature absolutely unendurable; in the second place, supposing you travel at the rate of twenty leagues a day, you would be exposed for at least six consecutive days; and thirdly, your expedition will be of small avail unless you convey provisions not only for yourselves, but for those whom you hope to relieve.” “We can carry our own provisions on our backs in knapsacks,” interposed Servadac, quickly, unwilling to recognize any difficulty in the way. “Granted that you can,” answered the lieutenant, quietly; “but where, on this level ice-field, will you find shelter in your periods of rest? You must perish with cold; you will not have the chance of digging out ice-huts like the Esquimaux.” “As to rest,” said Servadac, “we shall take none; we shall keep on our way continuously; by traveling day and night without intermission, we shall not be more than three days in reaching Formentera.” “Believe me,” persisted the lieutenant, calmly, “your enthusiasm is carrying you too far; the feat you propose is impossible; but even conceding the possibility of your success in reaching your destination, what service do you imagine that you, half-starved and half-frozen yourself, could render to those who are already perishing by want and exposure? you would only bring them away to die.” The obvious and dispassionate reasoning of the lieutenant could not fail to impress the minds of those who listened to him; the impracticability of the journey became more and more apparent; unprotected on that drear expanse, any traveler must assuredly succumb to the snow-drifts that were continually being whirled across it. But Hector Servadac, animated by the generous desire of rescuing a suffering fellow-creature, could scarcely be brought within the bounds of common sense. Against his better judgment he was still bent upon the expedition, and Ben Zoof declared himself ready to accompany his master in the event of Count Timascheff hesitating to encounter the peril which the undertaking involved. But the count entirely repudiated all idea of shrinking from what, quite as much as the captain, he regarded as a sacred duty, and turning to Lieutenant Procope, told him that unless some better plan could be devised, he was prepared to start off at once and make the attempt to skate across to Formentera. The lieutenant, who was lost in thought, made no immediate reply. “I wish we had a sledge,” said Ben Zoof. “I dare say that a sledge of some sort could be contrived,” said the count; “but then we should have no dogs or reindeers to draw it.” “Why not rough-shoe the two horses?” “They would never be able to endure the cold,” objected the count. “Never mind,” said Servadac, “let us get our sledge and put them to the test. Something must be done!” “I think,” said Lieutenant Procope, breaking his thoughtful silence, “that I can tell you of a sledge already provided for your hand, and I can suggest a motive power surer and swifter than horses.” “What do you mean?” was the eager inquiry. “I mean the ’s yawl,” answered the lieutenant; “and I have no doubt that the wind would carry her rapidly along the ice.” Dobryna The idea seemed admirable. Lieutenant Procope was well aware to what marvelous perfection the Americans had brought their sail-sledges, and had heard how in the vast prairies of the United States they had been known to outvie the speed of an express train, occasionally attaining a rate of more than a hundred miles an hour. The wind was still blowing hard from the south, and assuming that the yawl could be propelled with a velocity of about fifteen or at least twelve leagues an hour, he reckoned that it was quite possible to reach Formentera within twelve hours, that is to say, in a single day between the intervals of sunrise and sunrise. The yawl was about twelve feet long, and capable of holding five or six people. The addition of a couple of iron runners would be all that was requisite to convert it into an excellent sledge, which, if a sail were hoisted, might be deemed certain to make a rapid progress over the smooth surface of the ice. For the protection of the passengers it was proposed to erect a kind of wooden roof lined with strong cloth; beneath this could be packed a supply of provisions, some warm furs, some cordials, and a portable stove to be heated by spirits of wine. For the outward journey the wind was as favorable as could be desired; but it was to be apprehended that, unless the direction of the wind should change, the return would be a matter of some difficulty; a system of tacking might be carried out to a certain degree, but it was not likely that the yawl would answer her helm in any way corresponding to what would occur in the open sea. Captain Servadac, however, would not listen to any representation of probable difficulties; the future, he said, must provide for itself. The engineer and several of the sailors set vigorously to work, and before the close of the day the yawl was furnished with a pair of stout iron runners, curved upwards in front, and fitted with a metal scull designed to assist in maintaining the directness of her course; the roof was put on, and beneath it were stored the provisions, the wraps, and the cooking utensils. A strong desire was expressed by Lieutenant Procope that he should be allowed to accompany Captain Servadac instead of Count Timascheff. It was unadvisable for all three of them to go, as, in case of there being several persons to be rescued, the space at their command would be quite inadequate. The lieutenant urged that he was the most experienced seaman, and as such was best qualified to take command of the sledge and the management of the sails; and as it was not to be expected that Servadac would resign his intention of going in person to relieve his fellow-countryman, Procope submitted his own wishes to the count. The count was himself very anxious to have his share in the philanthropic enterprise, and demurred considerably to the proposal; he yielded, however, after a time, to Servadac’s representations that in the event of the expedition proving disastrous, the little colony would need his services alike as governor and protector, and overcoming his reluctance to be left out of the perilous adventure, was prevailed upon to remain behind for the general good of the community at Nina’s Hive. At sunrise on the following morning, the 16th of April, Captain Servadac and the lieutenant took their places in the yawl. The thermometer was more than 20 degrees below zero, and it was with deep emotion that their companions beheld them thus embarking upon the vast white plain. Ben Zoof’s heart was too full for words; Count Timascheff could not forbear pressing his two brave friends to his bosom; the Spaniards and the Russian sailors crowded round for a farewell shake of the hand, and little Nina, her great eyes flooded with tears, held up her face for a parting kiss. The sad scene was not permitted to be long. The sail was quickly hoisted, and the sledge, just as if it had expanded a huge white wing, was in a little while carried far away beyond the horizon. Light and unimpeded, the yawl scudded on with incredible speed. Two sails, a brigantine and a jib, were arranged to catch the wind to the greatest advantage, and the travelers estimated that their progress would be little under the rate of twelve leagues an hour. The motion of their novel vehicle was singularly gentle, the oscillation being less than that of an ordinary railway-carriage, while the diminished force of gravity contributed to the swiftness. Except that the clouds of ice-dust raised by the metal runners were an evidence that they had not actually left the level surface of the ice, the captain and lieutenant might again and again have imagined that they were being conveyed through the air in a balloon. Lieutenant Procope, with his head all muffled up for fear of frost-bite, took an occasional peep through an aperture that had been intentionally left in the roof, and by the help of a compass, maintained a proper and straight course for Formentera. Nothing could be more dejected than the aspect of that frozen sea; not a single living creature relieved the solitude; both the travelers, Procope from a scientific point of view, Servadac from an aesthetic, were alike impressed by the solemnity of the scene, and where the lengthened shadow of the sail cast upon the ice by the oblique rays of the setting sun had disappeared, and day had given place to night, the two men, drawn together as by an involuntary impulse, mutually held each other’s hands in silence. There had been a new moon on the previous evening; but, in the absence of moonlight, the constellations shone with remarkable brilliancy. The new pole-star close upon the horizon was resplendent, and even had Lieutenant Procope been destitute of a compass, he would have had no difficulty in holding his course by the guidance of that alone. However great was the distance that separated Gallia from the sun, it was after all manifestly insignificant in comparison with the remoteness of the nearest of the fixed stars. Observing that Servadac was completely absorbed in his own thoughts, Lieutenant Procope had leisure to contemplate some of the present perplexing problems, and to ponder over the true astronomical position. The last of the three mysterious documents had represented that Gallia, in conformity with Kepler’s second law, had traveled along her orbit during the month of March twenty millions of leagues less than she had done in the previous month; yet, in the same time, her distance from the sun had nevertheless been increased by thirty-two millions of leagues. She was now, therefore, in the center of the zone of telescopic planets that revolve between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and had captured for herself a satellite which, according to the document, was Nerina, one of the asteroids most recently identified. If thus, then, it was within the power of the unknown writer to estimate with such apparent certainty Gallia’s exact position, was it not likely that his mathematical calculations would enable him to arrive at some definite conclusion as to the date at which she would begin again to approach the sun? Nay, was it not to be expected that he had already estimated, with sufficient approximation to truth, what was to be the true length of the Gallian year? So intently had they each separately been following their own train of thought, that daylight reappeared almost before the travelers were aware of it. On consulting their instruments, they found that they must have traveled close upon a hundred leagues since they started, and they resolved to slacken their speed. The sails were accordingly taken in a little, and in spite of the intensity of the cold, the explorers ventured out of their shelter, in order that they might reconnoiter the plain, which was apparently as boundless as ever. It was completely desert; not so much as a single point of rock relieved the bare uniformity of its surface. “Are we not considerably to the west of Formentera?” asked Servadac, after examining the chart. “Most likely,” replied Procope. “I have taken the same course as I should have done at sea, and I have kept some distance to windward of the island; we can bear straight down upon it whenever we like.” “Bear down then, now; and as quickly as you can.” The yawl was at once put with her head to the northeast and Captain Servadac, in defiance of the icy blast, remained standing at the bow, his gaze fixed on the horizon. All at once his eye brightened. “Look! look!” he exclaimed, pointing to a faint outline that broke the monotony of the circle that divided the plain from the sky. In an instant the lieutenant had seized his telescope. “I see what you mean,” said he; “it is a pylone that has been used for some geodesic survey.” The next moment the sail was filled, and the yawl was bearing down upon the object with inconceivable swiftness, both Captain Servadac and the lieutenant too excited to utter a word. Mile after mile the distance rapidly grew less, and as they drew nearer the pylone they could see that it was erected on a low mass of rocks that was the sole interruption to the dull level of the field of ice. No wreath of smoke rose above the little island; it was manifestly impossible, they conceived, that any human being could there have survived the cold; the sad presentiment forced itself upon their minds that it was a mere cairn to which they had been hurrying. Ten minutes later, and they were so near the rock that the lieutenant took in his sail, convinced that the impetus already attained would be sufficient to carry him to the land. Servadac’s heart bounded as he caught sight of a fragment of blue canvas fluttering in the wind from the top of the pylone: it was all that now remained of the French national standard. At the foot of the pylone stood a miserable shed, its shutters tightly closed. No other habitation was to be seen; the entire island was less than a quarter of a mile in circumference; and the conclusion was irresistible that it was the sole surviving remnant of Formentera, once a member of the Balearic Archipelago. To leap on shore, to clamber over the slippery stones, and to reach the cabin was but the work of a few moments. The worm-eaten door was bolted on the inside. Servadac began to knock with all his might. No answer. Neither shouting nor knocking could draw forth a reply. “Let us force it open, Procope!” he said. The two men put their shoulders to the door, which soon yielded to their vigorous efforts, and they found themselves inside the shed, and in almost total darkness. By opening a shutter they admitted what daylight they could. At first sight the wretched place seemed to be deserted; the little grate contained the ashes of a fire long since extinguished; all looked black and desolate. Another instant’s investigation, however, revealed a bed in the extreme corner, and extended on the bed a human form. “Dead!” sighed Servadac; “dead of cold and hunger!” Lieutenant Procope bent down and anxiously contemplated the body. “No; he is alive!” he said, and drawing a small flask from his pocket he poured a few drops of brandy between the lips of the senseless man. There was a faint sigh, followed by a feeble voice, which uttered the one word, “Gallia?” “Yes, yes! Gallia!” echoed Servadac, eagerly. “My comet, my comet!” said the voice, so low as to be almost inaudible, and the unfortunate man relapsed again into unconsciousness. “Where have I seen this man?” thought Servadac to himself; “his face is strangely familiar to me.” But it was no time for deliberation. Not a moment was to be lost in getting the unconscious astronomer away from his desolate quarters. He was soon conveyed to the yawl; his books, his scanty wardrobe, his papers, his instruments, and the blackboard which had served for his calculations, were quickly collected; the wind, by a fortuitous Providence, had shifted into a favorable quarter; they set their sail with all speed, and ere long were on their journey back from Formentera. Thirty-six hours later, the brave travelers were greeted by the acclamations of their fellow-colonists, who had been most anxiously awaiting their reappearance, and the still senseless , who had neither opened his eyes nor spoken a word throughout the journey, was safely deposited in the warmth and security of the great hall of Nina’s Hive. savant END OF FIRST BOOK About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (1998). Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1353/pg1353-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

A SLEDGE-RIDE

Like most people in tech, I have been enthralled by the possibilities of this new wave of AI. Machine learning has been in the zeitgeist for the greater part of the 2000s. It has powered things like your and recommendations long before ChatGPT came along. However, the simplicity of outcomes and how achievable this now is for the average joe is the real headline grabber. Amazon Spotify I am on a quest to better understand the foundational blocks of where this space is at. I expect this to be the bedrock of most modern software application building from this point on. As I continue to expand into the fog of war ( ), I expect this map to be refined and updated with time. shoutout to all the Age of Empires players out there Here is the skeletal outline of the pieces I have encountered so far — Basics about ML models Foundation Models Large Language Models Making the models useful Fine tuning RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) Inference Local LLMs You have to, of course, start with LLMs (Large Language Models), the space that OpenAI broke into with a sledgehammer. While there were plenty of incumbents in this space (namely models like BERT or proprietary domain models held closed-source by companies like Google or Meta or Spotify), ChatGPT pulled the rug on this space and brought things out in the open. Basics about ML models There is plenty of literature out there on LLMs and how they work (check the resources section for some of the good ones I encountered), but let’s get into some of the basics — Foundation Models Foundation Models [FMs] (or base models) are built using a LOT of data — the data we are talking about could be in the 100s of petabytes range, if not more. The purpose of this process is to go wide, not deep. Datasets could span several domains, formats, and timespans — all in the hope of pre-training the base model with unlabeled and self-supervised data. Foundation models are capable of performing a variety of general tasks such as generating text, visual comprehension, and conversing in natural language. Foundation models can be refined to develop more specialized downstream models for specific applications. You can think of Foundation models as being a superset of LLMs. Large Language Models Large language models are foundational models specifically trained on a massive text dataset. The refined output produced is a subset (or instances) of the Foundation models that are applied specifically to text and text-like things (eg. code). LLMs are still huge models when it comes to parameter count. A parameter is a value the model can change independently as it learns new things and the more parameters a model has, the more complex it can be. For eg. GPT is the LLM behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT. GPT-3 has 175 million parameters. GPT-4 is estimated to have a total of 1.76 trillion parameters. Creating LLMs consists of 3 main steps: Collecting the “right” datasets Determining the architecture used to process the datasets Executing training by processing the datasets using the architecture A bit more about the architecture The “Transformer” architecture allows the model to handle sequences of data like sentences and it allows understanding the meaning of each word in the context of the other words in the sentence. This way the model can comprehensively understand what the sentence is and what it means in aggregate. This architecture is trained on the datasets mentioned above and during the training process, the model is constantly adjusting its parameters based on how close the actual output is compared to the predictive output. It is trained until it produces about as close to the expected sentence structure in various scenarios. : Now that you know this, you know what GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) means. In reverse, to follow things chronologically — > — The deep learning architecture used on the data > — The fact that it is already trained for usage, by using the datasets and parameters I mentioned before > — The ability of the model to construct expected sentence structures based on inputs (prompts) from the external world. Fun fact Transformer Pre-trained Generative Making the models usable Now you have these enormous models — either Foundation models or LLMs, but you want to use them to assist you in very specific problem domains. How would you do that? Well, there are 2 broad ways to do so: Fine-tuning RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) 1. Fine-tuning Large models can be trained on specific subsets/corpus of data to make them experts at certain tasks. This process is called “Fine tuning”. Fine-tuning helps with understanding the context of the question without requiring the prompter to provide additional information. It must be noted, that fine-tuning is a far less computationally intensive process than the training step for LLMs/FMs. (For more details, you can read ) this 2. RAG RAG or Retrieval Augmented Generation is a really complicated way of saying “Knowledge base + LLM”. It describes a system that adds extra data, in addition to what the user provided, before querying the LLM. Where did that extra data come from? Well, it could be from any number of external sources. As shown in the diagram above, based on the prompt provided by the user, the server system could fabricate a query that it believes would enhance the quality of the response provided by the LLM. To do so, it could query external knowledge sources (outside of the training data of the LLM) like: ephemeral data using vector database search indexes using Lucene another pre-trained LLM that responds with a very specific set of context This is the “Retrieval” step. Once the extra data has been received, the server then sends the prompt with this additional data (the “augmentation” step) to the LLM which “generates” the response sent back to the user. I recently read which rang the death knell on RAG by proposing an “Intelligent Agent” approach, but this approach doesn’t have widespread adoption thus far. this article Inference We already discussed how models get trained. The process of using these trained models to accept “live” inputs (i.e. prompts) from the user to make deductions of the response from the data, is called “Inference”. Naturally, this step can be pretty expensive if this is being run in the cloud, since for low latency outputs to be provided to the user, these inference systems need to be run on GPU compute. Local LLMs Something that I have been fascinated by is the “recent” (maybe 8 or so months old) phenomenon of running LLM inferences locally. Local could be your personal computer, your trusted network host, etc. It just means you don’t need to use cloud providers or 3rd party sources to run inferences. This has a few amazing benefits — Avoid the costs of running inference on the cloud or a third-party provider. Avoid vendor lock-in, since you could run these inferences on your commodity hardware. Data is yours, and you don’t need to worry about data corruption or leakage. There are a couple of pre-eminent players in this space particularly and . I have been using Ollama for the last week or so and have been amazed by the capabilities it unlocks. I can get into this in an upcoming post. Ollama LMStudio There are a couple of things required to make local LLMs happen — Now I must express, that these two points are not specific ONLY to local LLMs but to the broader model definition process. However, they become doubly as important when we talk about the local constraints. — When you can’t rely on cloud scale, obviously you are limited by the storage and memory constraints of your local hardware, There are several ways to reduce model sizes such as sharding, compression etc. One such technique is called . An LLM is represented by a bunch of weights and activations. These values are generally represented by the usual 32-bit floating point (float32) datatype. Quantization is the process of representing an LLM using something that has lower fidelity than 32 bits. It does mean that the accuracy of the model reduces, but so does its size and thereby memory requirements. Depending on the type of task you are conducting, that could be a worthy tradeoff. Model sizes quantization — There are several file formats to store LLM models for inference. Examples of these include GGML(GPT-Generated Model Language), GGUF (GPT-Generated Unified Format), GPTQ and the list goes on. GGUF has been a pretty popular format, especially for local LLMs since it allows for inference execution on the CPU, and uses the GPU (if available) only to speed up specific layers. While the CPU is slower than the GPU for executing this ( to get a look behind the curtains for the why), it enables inference on local computers like Windows and Macbooks. What a time to be alive! Model formats this is a great article That’s all I have for now. I’ll cover some other interesting aspects of Local LLMs and developing using them in an upcoming post. 👏 If this content is interesting to you, hit that button or subscribe to my newsletter here → . It gives me the feedback that I need to do more or less of something! Thanks ❤️ https://a1engineering.beehiiv.com/subscribe Resources https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sLYAQS9sWQ&t=2s&ab_channel=IBMTechnology https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/foundation-models/ https://deepchecks.com/glossary/model-parameters/ https://www.projectpro.io/article/foundational-models-vs-large-language-models/893 https://www.maartengrootendorst.com/blog/quantization/ https://medium.com/@phillipgimmi/what-is-gguf-and-ggml-e364834d241c https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/retrieval-augmented-generation

Decoding LLMs, Local LLMs, and RAG

MECHANICAL TRANSPORTERS AND CONVEYERS

The Future of Social Networking: User Empowerment, Privacy, and Freedom From Censorship

Sources of the Advantages arising from Machinery and Manufactures

LOVEDAY GROWS MYSTERIOUS

The Romance of Modern Mechanism by Archibald Williams is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . CHAPTER IV here PORTABLE TOOLS "If the mountain won't come to Mahomet," says the proverb, "Mahomet must go to the mountain." This is as true in the workshop as outside;—Mahomet being the tool, the mountain the work on which it must be used. With the increase in size of machinery and engineering material, methods half a century old do not, in many cases, suffice; especially at a time when commercial competition has greatly reduced the margin of profits formerly expected by the manufacturer. To take the case of a large shaft, which must have a slot cut along it on one side to accommodate the key-wedge, which holds an eccentric for moving the steam valves of a cylinder, or a screw-propeller, so that it cannot slip. The mass weighs, perhaps, twenty tons. One way of doing the job is to transport the shaft under a drill that will cut a hole at each end of the slot area, and then to turn it over to the planer for the intermediate metal to be scraped out. This is a very toilsome and expensive business, entailing the use of costly machinery which might be doing more useful work, and the sacrifice of much valuable time. Inventors have therefore produced portable tools which can perform work on big bodies just as efficiently as if it had been done by larger machinery, in a fraction of the time and at a greatly reduced cost. To quote an example, the cutting of a key-way of the kind just described by big machines would consume perhaps a whole day, whereas the light, portable, easily attached miller, now generally used, bites it out in ninety minutes. PNEUMATIC TOOLS The best known of these is the pneumatic hammer. It consists of a cylinder, inside which moves a solid piston having a stroke of from half an inch to six inches. Air is supplied through flexible tubing from a compressing pump worked by steam. The piston beats on a loose block of metal carried in the end of the tool, which does the actual striking. The piston suddenly decreases in diameter at about the centre of its length, leaving a shoulder on which air can work to effect the withdrawal stroke. By a very simple arrangement of air-ports the piston is made to act as its own valve. As the plane side of the piston has a greater area than that into which the piston-rod fits, the striking movement is much more violent than the return. Under a pressure of several hundreds of pounds to the square inch a pneumatic hammer delivers upwards of 7,000 blows per minute; the quick succession of comparatively gentle taps having the effect of a much smaller number of heavier blows. For the flat hammer head can be substituted a curved die for riveting, or a chipping chisel, or a caulking iron, to close the seams of boilers. The riveter is peculiarly useful for ship and bridge-building work where it is impossible to apply an hydraulic tool. A skilled workman will close the rivet heads as fast as his assistant can place them in their holes; certainly in less than half the time needed for swing-hammer closing. Even more effective proportionately is the pneumatic chipper. The writer has seen one cut a strip off the edge of a half-inch steel plate at the rate of several inches a minute. To the uninitiated beholder it would seem impossible that a tool weighing less than two stone could thus force its way through solid metal. The speed of the piston is so high that, though it scales but a few pounds, its momentum is great enough to advance the chisel a fraction of an inch, and the individual advances, following one another with inconceivable rapidity, soon total up into a big cut. Automatic chisels are very popular with ornamental masons, as they lend themselves to the sculpturing of elaborate designs in stone and marble. Their principle, modified to suit work of another character, is seen in percussive rock drills, such as the Ingersoll Sergeant. In this case the piston and tool are solid, and the air is let into the cylinder by means of slide valves operated by tappets which the piston strikes during its movements. Some types of the rock-drill are controllable as to the length of their stroke, so that it can be shortened while the "entry" of the hole is being made and gradually increased as the hole deepens. For perpendicular boring the drill is mounted on a heavily weighted tripod, the inertia of which effectively damps all recoil from the shock of striking; for horizontal work, and sometimes for vertical, the support is a pillar wedged between the walls of the tunnel, or shaft. An ingenious detail is the rifled bar which causes the drill to rotate slightly on its axis between every two strokes, so that it may not jam. The drills are light enough to be easily erected and dismantled, and compact, so that they can be used in restricted and out-of-the way places, while their simplicity entails little special training on the part of the workman. With pneumatic and other power-drills the cost of piercing holes for explosive charges is reduced to less than one-quarter of that of "jumping" with a crowbar and sledgehammers. With the hand method two men are required, usually more; one man to hold, guide, and turn the drill; and the other, or others, to strike the blows with hammers. The machine, striking a blow far more rapidly than can be done by hand, reduces the number of operators to one man, and perhaps his helper. So durable is the metal of these wonderful little mechanisms that the delivery of 360,000 blows daily for months, even though each is given with a force of perhaps half a ton, fails to wear them out; or at the most only necessitates the renewal of some minor and cheap part. The debt that civilisation owes to the substitution of mechanical for hand labour will be fully understood by anyone who is conversant with the history of tunnel-driving and mining. Another application of pneumatics is seen in the device for cutting off the ends of stay bolts of locomotive boilers. It consists of a cylinder about fifteen inches in diameter, the piston of which operates a pair of large nippers capable of shearing half-inch bars. The whole apparatus weighs but three-quarters of a hundredweight, yet its power is such that it can trim bolts forty times as fast as a man working with hammer and cold-chisel, and more thoroughly. Then there is the machine for breaking the short bolts which hold together the outer and inner shells of the water-jacket round a locomotive furnace. A threaded bar, along which travels a nut, has a hook on its end to catch the bolt. The nut is screwed up to make the proper adjustment, and a pneumatic cylinder pulls on the hook with a force of many tons, easily shearing through the bolt. We must not forget the for cutting holes in wood or metal, or enlarging holes already existing. The head of the borer contains three little cylinders, set at an angle of 120°, to rotate the drill, the valves opening automatically to admit air at very high pressures behind the pistons. Any carpenter can imagine the advantage of a drill which has merely to be forced against its work, the movement of a small lever by the thumb doing the rest! pneumatic borer Next on the list comes the , which acts on much the same principle as the scent-spray. Mechanical painting first came to the fore in 1893, when the huge Chicago Exposition provided many acres of surfaces which had to be protected from the weather or hidden from sight. The following description of one of the machines used to replace hand-work is given in Cassier's Magazine: "The paint is atomized and sprayed on to the work by a stream of compressed air. From a small air-compressor the air is led, through flexible hose, to a paint-tank, which is provided with an air-tight cover and clamping screws. The paint is contained in a pot which can be readily removed and replaced by another when a different colour is required. This arrangement of interchangeable tins is also important as facilitating easy cleaning. The container is furnished with a semi-rotary stirrer, the spindle passing through a stuffing-box in the cover, and ending in a handle by which the whole thing complete may be carried about. The compressor is necessarily fixed or stationary, but the paint-tank, connected to it by the single air-hose, can be moved close to the work, while the length of hose from the tank to the nozzle gives the freedom of movement necessary. Air-pressure is admitted to the tank by a bottom valve, and forces the paint up an internal pipe and along a hose from the tank to the spraying nozzle, to which air-pressure is also led by a second hose. The nozzle is practically an injector of special form. The flow of paint at the nozzle is controlled by a small plug valve and spring lever, on which the operator keeps his thumb while working, and which, on release, closes automatically. When it is required to change from one colour to another, or to use a different material, such as varnish, the can, previously in use, is removed, and air, or, if necessary, paraffin oil, is blown through the length of hose which supplies the paint until it is completely clean." The writer then mentions as an instance of the machine's efficiency that it has covered a 30 feet by 8 feet boiler in less than an hour, and that at one large bridge yard a 70 feet by 6 feet girder with all its projecting parts was coated with boiled oil in two hours—a job which would have occupied a man with a brush a whole day to execute. Apart from saving time, the machine produces a surface quite free from brush marks, and easily reaches surfaces in intricate mouldings which are difficult to get at with a brush. pneumatic painter The is used for a variety of purposes: for cleaning off old paint, or the weathered surface of stonework; for polishing up castings and forgings after they have been brazed. At the cycle factory you will find the sand-jet hard at work on the joints of cycle frames, which must be cleared of all roughness before they are fit for the enameller. The writer, a few days before penning these lines, watched a jet removing London grime from the face of a large hotel. Down a side street stood a steam-engine busily compressing air, which was led by long pipes to the jet, situated on some lofty scaffolding. The rapidity with which the flying grains scoured off smoke deposits attracted the notice of a large crowd, which gazed with upturned heads at the whitened stones. A peculiarity about the jet is that it proves much more effective on hard material than on soft, as the latter, by offering an elastic surface, robs the sand of its cutting power. pneumatic sand-jet After merely mentioning the for forcing sand into foundry moulds, we pass to the machine, which may be described briefly as a revolving disc carrying a circle of sand-paper on its face revolved between guards which keep it flat to its work. The disc flies round many hundreds of times per minute, rapidly wearing down the fibrous surface of the wood it touches. When the coarse paper has done its work a finely-grained cloth is substituted to produce the finish needful for painting. pneumatic rammer pneumatic sand-papering About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Archibald Williams (2014). The Romance of Modern Mechanism. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/46094/pg46094-images.html. This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

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