Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 April 1893 — POPULAR SCIENCE NOTES. [ARTICLE]

POPULAR SCIENCE NOTES.

Recording Wind Phenomena. —The new method of recording wind phenomena, which has now for some time been in use in the Odessa Observatory, hna accomplished very satisfy _ry and useful results. By means of this simple appatus the direction and velocity of the winds are alike marked on a cylinder by one symbol. The record consists in this case of arrows, which are printed on the paper covering the cylinder, their position showing the direction of the wind, and the number of them marked on a length of paper corresponding to one hour furnishes data for finding the velocity by an empirical scale, the special value of the readings being determined by an anemometer. The reoording appatus is actuated by clock work, and the indications are mude with great readiness and accuracy by electrical contacts, which are produced by a battery cell, the duration of this contact depending on the velocity of the wind—a light wind producing, of course, a contact of longer duration than a strong one.

How Zero was Adopted. —From a boy Fahrenheit was a close observer of nature. When only nineteen years old, in the cold winter of 1700, he experimented by putting snow and salt together, and noticed that it produced a degree of cold equal to the coldest day in the year. That day was the coldest the oldest inhabitant could remember. Gabriel was struck with the coincidence of his discovery, and concluded that he had found the lowest degree of temperature known in the world. He called the degree “zero,” and constructed a thermometer, or rude weather glass, with a scale graduating up from zero to boiling point, wnich he numbered 212, and the freezing point 82, because, as he thought, mercury contracted the thirty-second of its volume on being cooled down from the temperature of freezing water to zero, and expanded the 130th on being heated from the freezing to the boiling point. Time showed the arrangement arbitrary, and that these two points no more represented the real extremes of temperature than “from Dan to Beersheba” represented the exact extremes of Palestine. But Farenheit’s thermometer had been widely adopted with its convenient scale, and many people cling to the established scale. The three countries which use Farenheit are England, Holland and America. Ingenious Mechanical Devices.— Mechanical devices in the manufacture of shoesare claimed to have reached their ideal ingenuity in a recently invented contrivance for attaching heels to boots and shoes by driving staples from the inside through the inner sole, the counter and the outer sole, and nearly through the heel, the points of the staples reaching into and nearly through the top lift—thus, if desired, leaving the shoe heeled with a blind lift by the first and only operation of attaching. If it is desired to slug the heel, the apparatus is provided with a meehanicism for driving slugs into the top lift at the instant of attaching the heel to the shoe. The staples being thus driven from the inside, thfir crowns are left embedded in the inner sole entirely below its surface, and the inner and outer soles and the counters are drawn firmly together, making a most perfect heel seat. By other methods, as is well known, the heel seat has to he made first, so as to insure a tight joint at the point of contact between the heel and the outer sole, and to provide something solid to which the heel may be attached by the points of the nails. The claim is therefore put forward that, in the manufacture of boots and shoes, this mechanical wonder supplies the place of the heel-seating machine, the attaching machine, and the slugging machine—in fact, performing the whole work at one operation, and simultaneously.