ANOTHER DEVICE FOR REPRODUCING LETTERS.

with one of the metallic plates on the keyboard the current passes through the plate into the corresponding magnet and thence to the disk in the center of the machine.

A typewriter which will print music has recently been successfully tested, and now can be bought by anybody who may desire thus to contribute to the output of melody. At any rate, the machine will prove a great convenience to persons who have to copy the written scores of composers. The musical typewriter registers the notes, bars, and rests, and, in addition, makes lines as it goes along the staff line. The machine resembles the ordinary typewriter, except that in addition to registering characters it forms the scales as the writer proceeds with his work.

The mechanical cashier, or cash register, also has undergone recently such wonderful development that it quite outdistances its human prototype. In its various forms, and combined in a single machine, it is a banker, cash register, money changer, book-keeper, and auditor, and it does all these duties with an absolute accuracy of which no human being would be capable.

The combination machine which does all these things is fed, say, in the morning with sufficient cash to provide it with

change for the day's business. This is in its capacity as bank. Let us suppose that it receives a twenty-dollar bill from a customer who has bought goods worth seventy-five cents. It pockets the money and registers the purchase, thus performing its duties as a cash register. Simultaneously it picks out the change, amounting to $19.25, thus performing its duties as a money changer. While getting this change, which it does before the customer can count two, it acts as bookkeeper by making at the same time a printed record of the transaction, and gives the customer a receipt.

While it was providing the change it was also simultaneously adding the 75 cents to its bank, and showing the total amount on hand-in other words, auditing its accounts and striking its balance. If only change is required all that the operator has to do is to touch one key,

and in return for the twenty dollars the machine in one moment provides a variety of small change.

The mechanical cashier can never go wrong, and it would baffle the ingenuity of any operator to cheat it. It will be seen that this invention just carries the operations of other cash registers one step further.

It closes the one door which they leave open. It prevents the person in charge from touching any cash at all, and he will promptly be faced with a mistake if he touches the wrong key, or convicted of theft if he inserts false money-and this in the presence of a witness.

In appearance the machine does not differ greatly from other cash registers, except that the keyboard is like that of a typewriter. It has a drum or wheel containing receptacles for holding money. The receptacles for notes and coins are all arranged in rows. The drum is locked when it receives its cash in the morning.

When the attendant receives $5, for instance, for a purchase, he presses down a lever to receive the money. The wheel immediately goes up one notch, and the money is secured in the bank in the $5 receptacle. This movement unlocks the keyboard, and the attendant presses down the figures, say, 75 cents, the amount of the purchase, gives one turn to the crank, and immediately the correct change is delivered by the machine, and the amount of purchase added to the total, as already

described. The machine will do the work of six ordinary clerks.

The counting and assorting of coin have brought into existence some very remarkable machines. At the United States mint some of the new coins are slightly over weight and others are under; so that it becomes necessary to sort them into three classes-light, heavy, and good. This delicate operation is performed with unerring accuracy by a long row of remarkable machines. Into these machines single piles of the new coins are put, and, automatically, each coin is taken by the machines and put into a scale and weighed, at a rate of twentyfive a minute. According as the coin is light, heavy, or of the proper weight it is then shot into its proper receptacle.

Another form of coin-counting and wrapping machine is now in use in New York, Chicago and a few other large cities, which handles the great numbers of small coins which form part of the daily receipts of the transportation companies, the department stores, the restaurants and the banks. Upwards of $200,000 a day is received and packed away in small rolls about the size of a cartridge in the basement of a single bank in New York which makes a spe

bank in New York which has been referred to there are twenty machines, each about the size of a sewing maIchine, which sort and count and wrap up this money. The coin, in bags and boxes, is shot into the vaults of the bank exactly as coal might be dumped into a cellar. At each money machine is a sin

ADDING MACHINE.

Saves time of several clerks.

gle girl who with both hands feeds the coin into a glass slot, down which the money rolls through a glass groove to the mouth of a small automatic device which works like a cartridge machine, running a strip of paper around the coins when the required number is assembled. Two small hooks crimp the edges of the paper, turning it over in double thicknesses like a hem to a garment, and instantly the roll drops into a receptacle, the coins securely fastened and labeled, with the name and amount printed on each package. These little cartridge-like rolls of money drop out of the machine as though by magic, the girl operator being kept busy the while feeding dimes,

half-dollars, pennies or nickels into the glass slot.

The $200,000 a day, which is the capacity of the machines in this one bank, equal in weight about six tons avoirdupois. Trucks go to the transportation companies, to the banks, department stores and telephone offices and collect the day's accumulation of coin, which is delivered generally in canvas bags about a foot long.

A sorting machine which will sort a thousand dollars' worth of coin in three minutes is a kindred invention. This machine consists of a small cabinet of aluminum or zinc containing five drawers. Each drawer is perforated like a sieve, with round holes of the proper size to allow a coin to pass through. The half-dollar drawer is on top, the quarterdollar drawer next below, and, in succession, the dime, the nickel and the penny drawers.

A scuttleful of miscellaneous coins are poured into the hopper which opens into the top drawer, and as the machine is

cargoes of freight, especially on vessels rising and falling with the tide. With the systems previously in use the endless chains have had to pass around permanently stationed end wheels. These fixed end wheels have made the machines ineffective between a permanent object and a floating one, on account of the rise and fall of the vessel.

shaken the coins sift through the perforations, each finding its proper receptacle. Through the top drawer, of course, everything passes except the half-dollar pieces; the next drawer captures the quarters, the next the nickels, then the dimes and last the pennies. Twenty-five cents for five hundred dollars' worth of assorted halves, quarters or dimes is the charge made for the sorting, counting and wrapping; thirty cents is charged for one hundred and fifty dollars' worth of nickels, and twenty-five cents for fifty dollars' worth of pennies.

In the new invention there is a continuous slot, through which hooks to sustain the load travel. These hooks, with their cargoes, travel in the slot the entire distance covered by the moving chain; from a wagon on shore, for example, to the hold of a vessel, or to freight cars on a track, or from the interior of a building to a vehicle outside, or from the vehicle outside to the interior of a building, through a door or window. Both ends of the broad, flat chain hang loose from the frame on which they run. All kinds of packages, bales, barrels or boxes may be hooked to this chain and swung along, traveling in procession between. any two points, and elevated or lowered at any desired height. The machine simply lifts the package, carries it over any intervening object at right angles, and places it at any higher, equal or lower level, to and from two movable platforms, or movable to immovable, or vice versa, by simply reversing the power.

A machine recently invented for loading and unloading all sorts and shapes of articles, on the endless chain principle but vastly improved over all previous adaptations, is another example of seeming mechanical intelligence. The machine is, indeed, an endless chain, made up of broad, flat links, working somewhat like a bicycle chain. The links are interchangeable, and the chain can be lengthened and shortened at will.

This machine, with its double chain running on rollers with little noise and friction, solves a problem which heretofore has prevented the endless chain system from being a complete success as a carrier. The desire has long been felt for a simple device for handling mixed

A machine which is designed to take the place of a railroad ticket agent has recently been patented by an Italian en

AUDITOR.

Issues sales check, discharges copy of same, and foots up day's transactions.

gineer, and is now in use on the line between Naples and Rome. The machine. automatically makes on demand every kind of ticket used on the road; indicates the price of the ticket; registers this price in a total figure, in the manner of a cash register; totals separately the different items corresponding to the different tickets; numbers progressively these different tickets; keeps account of the number of tickets issued for each class, and of the total number; duplicates the ticket on a continuous ribbon, and stamps advertisements on the backs of the tickets. To obtain a ticket the traveler simply applies to the employee of the company, and with the turn of a handle the ticket is printed, duplicated and delivered to the purchaser.

Automatic ticket agents of the Italian sort are not in use in the United States, but there is a machine for printing railroad tickets which also is quite wonderful. Railroad tickets are not printed in large sheets, as might be supposed. The cardboard from which the tickets are made is cut into ticket size in considerable quantities, but these are printed one by one after

wards. The blank cards are put in a pile in a sort of perpendicular spout, and the machine then slips a bit of metal underneath the bottom of the spout, and pushes out the lowest ticket in the pile to be printed and consecutively numbered. A bad ticket cannot be printed. The machine detects an imperfect blank instantly and refuses to have anything to do with it.

An automatic fire-kindler, regulated by an ordinary alarm clock, is a good deal of a "thinker," if you consider only the results of its operation. All that is necessary to be done to have the fire kindle itself whenever wanted is to put the fuel in the stove or fireplace, connect an attachment to the clock, and set the latter at any desired hour. When the alarm sounds, a fulminate is ignited, which, communicating with the fuel in the stove or grate, immediately starts a fire. By the time the person in bed is up and

THE MONEY COUNTER IN USE.