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the days of long trains and 100,000pound cars. The freighter gets the worst of it under existing conditions. Fairly treated, the passenger engine, as compared with the freight engine, stands a chance of a one-third to one-half longer life, and then prolongs its life on a branch line or in some special service.

In the twenty years' estimated life of an engine, the expenditure for repairs. will reach, in all probability, $30,000, or about twice the original cost.

Everything possible is done to keep the engine in commission, until at last a stage of decrepitude is reached that seems to preclude further repairs. At this point it is a question of "scrapping" the locomotive, or of selling it for about $2,500 to dealers in second-hand equipment, who will repair it for about as much more and sell it to a logging or similar road, where it may do service. for several more years.

An old locomotive is worth as scrap

applied by those who have to do with its operation. Even in the days of scrapping, careful management guards against wastefulness. Steel, brass, and iron are taken off separately; everything usable is saved out; and frames, axles, and good parts are set aside for further use. What is left goes to the scrap bins and eventually to the foundry or the junk dealer.

Generally speaking, railroads prefer to sell their old engines and cars, if possible, and save the expense of scrapping, which naturally is considerable. That is why a number of concerns do a profitable business in old rolling-stock, and there is a demand from small railroads or selfcontained lines for engines and cars which the trunk lines do not think it profitable to keep in stock.

In all railroad centers a constant watchful warfare is waged against thieves, who, many times in organized gangs, plan the removal of all detachable pieces of locomotives or cars. These

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Its Mechanism Popularly Described-Its Advantages over Manual Operation

T

By H. S. DURANT

HE SPIRIT of the present age is not better shown forth than by the ever-increasing demand which industry, pressed by the keenness of competition, is making upon genius for the invention of labor-saving and time-saving machinery; and nothing pays higher tribute to the breadth of the human intellect than the character of the machinery which has been evolved as the result of this insistent call. Indeed, we are sliding rapidly into an automatic age. The work that once was done by hand, then by hand-guided machines, is now done by automatic devices. Scarcely a large, up-to-date factory but has in one or more of its departments a battery of automatic machines busily engaged in turning out such things as screws, buttons, tin cans, cloth, shoes, or a thousand other varieties of useful articles from the raw material, with surprising nicety and tremendous speed, reducing the cost of manufacture to a minimum and widening the field of sale. We have wondered at the ingenuity of these machines and marveled at their cleverness,

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Few of us, however, as we have stood before a telephone box, wiggling a switch hook, or whirling the crank of the hand generator, and impatiently waiting for time and the "Hello girl" to bring us our connections, have ever gone so far as to hope, or even conceive the idea, that this genius who had so long presided over the central office, would ever be unseated and her place occupied by an iron machine whose speed and accuracy would discount her best performances; and yet that day is here. The States are already dotted with automatic telephone exchanges, which are giving service to thousands and thou

sands of subscribers, and with such success that it is not hazarding anything to predict that a few years will see the absolute divorce of the operator from the exchange room-except, of course, for long-distance calls, for which her services will probably always be needed.

Historical Retrospect

The application of the automatic idea. to telephony is not new. It is considerably more than a decade since Strowger, an obscure Chicago engineer, brought out the first automatic telephone. The Strowger Automatic Telephone Company and the installation of a number of small

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Ten years passed, ten years of experiment and persistent effort. Strowger died. The Automatic Electric Company was organized to take over the Strowger patents. Further experimenting was done, and greater capital expended. The result has been a system from which the imperfections have been eliminated, a system which is scarcely more complex. than the manual switchboards now in general use. The limit of capacity is no longer reached at 1,000 stations. In fact, the business of the very largest city can be handled as efficiently and conveniently as that of a town which requires but a hundred telephones. In Chicago to-day an automatic exchange of 10,000 stations

phone itself resembles, in many particulars, the manually operated telephones with which we are so familiar. It consists of the usual transmitter, receiver, bells, battery, and induction coil, adding only a calling dial, a circular metal piece, on the periphery of which are ten finger holes numbered 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0. A stop is provided at the lower of the holes to limit the distance which the dial may be made to revolve.

How a Call is Made

The method of calling is very simple. To secure a number, say 761, the subscriber first takes the receiver from the hook; then, placing his finger in hole

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WALL TELEPHONE.

Showing Method of Operating Dial and Making Call.

switches, which we may call the "seven hundredth" group. In the same manner he calls 6 and 1 in this group. Having turned the number desired, he presses a button underneath the dial, which rings. the bell of the person wanted, and the connection is completed. In the event that the 'phone of the subscriber called is busy at the time of the call, a vibratory sound in the receiver of the caller notifies him that such is the case.

The keyboard or internal mechanism. of the telephone, occupies a space 5x3x2 inches, and consists of an impulse-sending mechanism, which, in response to the rotations of the dial, communicates to the subscriber's switch a number of impulses corresponding to the number of the hole in which the finger is placed, lifting the shaft which occupies the central position of the switch, up to the proper row of contacts, and bringing the "wiping fingers" fastened thereto into connection with the proper contact in that row.

It should be understood that, when the call is made, no impulses are sent over the line on the down movement of the

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