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Smashes Baggage Safely

By M. Glen Fling

3F you are a traveler who has suffered the pangs of seeing your precious baggage tossed hither and yon before finally finding a resting place in the hold of a vessel, then you have prayed for a system whereby luggage could be swung from the wagons at the docks to the hold of the vessel.

Maybe you are owner of a freight vessel or a liner carrying a full-limit cargo. Ah, then you have spent sleepless nights figuring how some of those precious hours spent in loading and unloading your vessel could be cut down. You have longed for a machine which would handle a mixed cargo with expedition and safety.

Or you may be manager of a large warehouse. Your problem then has been for years how to get your goods from floor to floor of your storage house without being obliged to handle it at every floor. Whichever of this trio you are, or whether you belong to the merchants who import or export, the quick and careful handling of your goods is the all-important matter and it has never been quite satisfactorily adjusted.

Many a tourist has suffered loss at the hands of incompetent baggage handlers. Scores of vessels with full cargo capacity leave our shores. but lightly ladened because it is such slow and hazardous work to load a "mixed" cargo. Firms have gone into bank ruptcy because of injury to their goods sustained in transportation to or

from the hold of a vessel. All this is to be obviated.

And all this because loading and unloading at the docks was done by a very imperfect system that included manual labor, trucks, derricks and cranes. The need of one machine which would do the entire work-a machine which would do everything but think-was felt. The conditions as told and their remedy impressed themselves upon the mind of Edwin C. Clark of Washington, D. C., who, though an artist of note has also a practical mind and a comprehensive knowledge of engineering, with the result that he has constructed an apparatus which will handle all kinds of freight from bananas to iron without so much as necessitating a change of gearing. This invention means a great saving of labor, power, time and money.

In the first place whatever is stored aboard a steamer with one of these loaders is handled but once.

The wagons containing, say, barrels of

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MODEL OF FREIGHT-HANDLING DEVICE.

apples which are to form the cargo of a vessel, are driven down to the dock, the great grappler of the loader is sent swinging over them, is lowered, clasped around the barrel which is sent along the almost automatic chain road to the ship, over the deck and down to the hold, where it scarcely has time to make room for the one which follows.

What has been done with apples in a test can be done with coal, baggage, etc., or with any number of different bulks and weights.

When it is known that the United Fruit Company has a fleet of about 80 vessels constantly delivering bananas from various points in the tropics to ports in the United States and that it requires 250 men ten hours to load or unload 48,000 bunches of bananas at a cost of from eight to twelve dollars per man a week, and that in so handling the bananas about one-tenth of the company's annual shipping is ruined, a fair realization can be had of the benefit of a machine which will cut down the loading force about eighty-seven per cent and save thousands of dollars a year in wages and fruit.

This new loading and unloading device has a continuous and reversible action. The action itself is simple, embracing a loose end, anti-friction chain, the links of which are inserted or taken out readily according to the maximum of height required.

The tongs or clasps can be regulated as to size and distances apart, according to the bulk of the commodity to be handled.

The machine is so constructed that it practically furnishes its own power by the method of its operation. After the first load is lifted and carried to the deck level the weight of that article going down in the hold of the vessel counterbalances that being lifted from the dock, or vice versa. The machine lifts a package, carries it over any intervening obstruction, at right angles, and places it at any higher, equal, or lower level, to and from two movable platforms, as in the instance of loading from one vessel to another, or from an immovable to a movable base, as from dock to deck. The same principle holds good in stock

ing a warehouse, so that after the start it requires but little more power to operate the machine heavily loaded, than when it is carrying no freight.

The machine is run by cog-chain belting driven by steam, or, preferably, by electric power, and by reversing the power the carrying of the freight in the opposite direction is effected, so that the same machine can be used for loading and unloading. The speed can be regulated at will, and the machine is under perfect control at all times.

It is built of trestle steel and varies in design and size according to the use to which it is to be put. As it has very few working parts the cost of repairing and operation are minimized.

As a deck-installed machine its vital feature is, that combined passenger and freight vessels will generally use the deck machine because this machine is easily erected and can be taken apart to be stowed during the voyage. The advantage of the deck machine is that the vessel carries it for use at all ports, or may utilize the track and chain on board for other purposes.

Another feature of the deck installed machine is that no matter how varied would be the rise and fall of the vessel by reason of the tides, or from its own loading or unloading, the operation of the machine would in no wise be affected.

The field is extended to an enormous warehouse business which to-day is even more antiquated than that of handling mixed freight on vessels and wharves.

To-day we have untold and incalculable energy and money wasted from the use of trucks and derricks. By the former method, the weight to be trucked is necessarily limited to the strength of the man who wheels, and to his ability to keep up the work day after day. By the derrick system, there is not only to be considered the carrying of the dead weight and the swinging back of the empty arm, but also this fact:-no derrick can operate or lift higher than itself nor when operating in an enclosed warehouse, higher than the ceiling. That means that freight for the different floors of a warehouse must be handled over and over again, a thing that causes expenses to pile up enormously.

T

Electric Light in Crypt

By Henry Guthrie

HE most modern of industrial agents-electricity, is being used extensively in connection with churches in Germany. The Hohenzollern crypt of the newly-built.Berlin cathedral is lighted by electricity; the three bells in that church are rung by the same power.

An interesting feature is the indirect illumination which has been used

throughout the cathedral, and it is thought that this form of lighting has been used for the first time, in connection with churches here. A number of arc lamps are hidden above the cornices in the main cathedral, on the galleries of the cupola, and by means of reflectors distributed uniformly throughout the vast hall the beams of light that are damped by diaphragms. Other illuminants of the same kind. throw their light upward from magnificent candelabra placed on the aisles and this remarkable diffusion of light thus prevents the formation of any disturbing shadows. Hundreds of glow lamps are likewise provided, and are mounted on the same candelabra and on brackets and chandeliers. An extensive use has likewise been made of Nernst lamps, which fill with their soft glow the peaceful vaults of the crypt. No less than

1,900 glow lamps of fifteen to twentyfive normal candle power, 100 Nernst lamps and about lamps and about seventy arc lamps of six to fifteen amperes have been installed.

Electricity is also used as motive power, one ten horse power motor actuating the organ blowers, while two nine horse power motors are set apart for the bell works and three motors for propelling fans and to operate an elevator.

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CATHEDRAL CHIMES RUNG BY ELECTRIC POWER.

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