SCIENCE AND INVENTION-(Continued)

Hunter's Point Dry
Dock

SAN FRANCISCO, California, while the largest Pacific seaport city between Bering Straits and Cape Horn, is very fortunate in the number and capacity of her dry docks, of which there. are in all more than a dozen. The gigantic new dock at Hunter's Point water-front, is one of the largest in the world.

The main basin was literally hewed out of solid rock, the total cost of this great basin being about $700,000.

For a great many years the old dry dock, completed away back in 1868, was used for the accommodation of the larger vessels. Here, in 1896, the famous battleship Oregon was docked just before. she went into commission.

As steam craft, in later years, were constructed on a still greater scale, the building of a giant basin to accommodate such sea-monsters as the Siberia, Korea, Mongolia, Manchuria, Minnesota, and other vessels of that class became an imperative necessity.

The building of the present immense dock was begun in 1901, and completed early in 1904. It is 750 feet long from the gate seat, with a width of coping of 122 feet, and at bottom 74 feet, having a depth over sill of 30 feet at high water. At the entrance on either side, are located wharf approaches 60 feet wide and 200 feet long. The new basin and the old are connected by a tunnel under the pump-pit, and the pumping plant is capable of emptying the new dock at high water in two hours, and the old dock in 45 minutes. This means a solid stream of water 8 feet in diameter, with a velocity of 500 feet per minute. The pumppit is 35 feet in depth, and the pumping plant consists of three centrifugal double-suction pumps, each having a 38-inch discharge, with a combined capacity of 110,000 gallons per minute. These pumps are driven by three horizontal Corliss engines with 24-inch cylinders and 48-inch stroke, each having a rated capacity of 350 horse-power. The engines are connected to the pumps by means of an endless transmission rope, the engines being located on the surface, and the pumps in the pit on a level with the bottom of the dock. Steam is furnished by means of six water-tube boilers of 200 horse-power each; and there is also one 75-horse-power donkey boiler for serving drainage pump, steam capstan, etc. The water from either dock is controlled by means of large gate-valves 8 feet in diameter, hydraulically worked from the floor of the engine

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SCIENCE AND INVENTION-(Concluded)

Antiquity of the Asiatic Bank

IT

T has been customary to consider that the bank originated in the twelfth century, among the Italian money changers or Jews, thanks to the creation of the letter of exchange, and to the growing custom of depositing silver in their hands. Some writers, it is true, have assigned it to Asiatic sources, claiming that it was founded by the Phoenicians and taken into the West by the Jews, though they were unable to give any valid reason for the hypothesis. But recent researches give color to the idea.

Prof. Hilprecht has recently published an article on Babylon that dates the establishment of the bank back at least two thousand five hundred years. He found, in directing the excavations of the temple of Bel at Nippur, the archives of two large banking houses, Egibi and Son, of the seventh century B. C. and Muraschu and Son, of the fifth century B. C. These banks, which did a large business, changed silver or loaned it upon the security of titles to property or upon merchandise, for the very respectable interest of 20 per cent. In a city like Babylon, where business was very active, silver and gold were, nevertheless, very rare, and the taxes necessitated by the importance of the bureaucracy and the size of the army, were payable in the precious metals. The results were that the same causes which have placed the Egyptian fellaheen in the hands of the Greek usurers, laid the foundations for the wealth of these bankers. They were a necessity to the mass of the people; and in the brick writings that have been deciphered we find the names of Persians, Jews, and Chaldeans intermingled. The accounts were most minute. Every deposit of silver or merchandise, every loan, every commercial agreement was registered on a brick, with the seal of the contracting parties, and the signature, that is the imprint of the finger-nail of the witnesses whose number varied, with the importance and length of time covered by the contract, from two to thirty. All of these bricks were numbered and classified. The bricks of the Egibi bank bear inscriptions of Semitic writing mixed with Babylonian, which is indicative of the evolution of language in Mesopotamia.

T

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DEPARTMEN

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THE

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