Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1890 — SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. [ARTICLE]

SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY.

Geneva, N. Y., moulders struck. Fresno, Cal., bricklayers struck. Ceylon coolies lives on $1 a month. California Chinamen won a strike. Syracuse and Utica tailors are out. New York has women watchmakers. Cincitfhati brewers talk of organizing. The olty of Toronto will run the street cars. • aPennsylvania mines half Uncle Sam’s coal. Labor s libraries and reading rooms are increasing, Mahoning Valley, 0., miners are out for an advance. London unionists have been assessed $5 a man for strike. Boston cigar makers sent SI,OOO to the Binghamton strikers. First grade cooks of St. Paul get SIOO a month; second, $75; third, SSO. One of the most excellent of the recent innovations is the introduction of metal ceilings in place of wood and plaster. These ceilings do not shrink or burn like woefa; they will not stain, crack, or fall off like plaster, but; being permanent, durable, fire-proof, and ornamental, will eventually' supersede, both wood and plaster, besides being; in the end far more economical thani either. A suggestive use of photography has been recently made. Landscape features are photographed here and there, figures being posed to fit the theme; the different parts are then col*! lected into an effective group and the assembled group are rephotographed ; to form one complete picture. Some-' thing of this kind has been done byi artists in cycloramic painting, tho different views being grouped together! in sections and painted on the canvas in connected groups to form a complete representation of a vast stretch of landscape. Until lately cotton waste has bedn cleaned and reused hut the grease exs tracted from it has been thrown away., It is now found that the oil thus extracted can be made, after very simple treatment, to yield fir3t-class printing ink. A ton of this spent waste will yield about fourteen hundred pounds of oil, from which ink of a Superior, quality can be manufactured at a very reduced price. The cotton waste is placed in steam chambers, and a solus tion of bisulphate of carbon is pumped into the vessels. This disengages the oil and grease, which is then passed into a series of heated coppers, from, which it emerges as varnish, Irom! which the printing ink is made. ;

A traveler on the London & North-: western railway, while going south-! ward from Edinburgh by the West, Coast route, states that noticing the great speed of the train he took the trouble to reckon what it was. In the snace of six miles he found that It averaged eighty miles an hour. He was, sitting in a compartment of an eight-j wheeled coach weighing about nineteen! tons, and notwithstanding the extra-' ordinary speed there was an entire ) absence of oscillation, and both the, carriage and the permanent way are; described as being in a state of per-, section. So far as any motion of the carriage was concerned it was impossible for thd passenger to tell whether! he was going at the rate of eighty j miles an hour or eighteen. In the sham fight at Portsmouth Ini honor of the Emperor William an ad- j vancing column was so affected by the j. fumes of the smoke-ball whioh was; used to raise a cloud of impenetrable; obscurity under which they could ad* vance that the men had to keep their hands to their noses to avoid suffocation. It is now proposed that tho smoke-ball shall receive a further development. It has occurred to some military men that instead of half-suffo-cating their own troops it would bo better to follow the exam)?! 0 of the Chinese pirates with their stinkpots, j and asphyxiate the enemy. A Vienna| scientist has accordingly invested a, bomb of such power and virulence; that every one who is within a certain j radius of it when it explodes is ren-j dered unconscious. Devices such as these would soon modify the art of j war, and probably the next develop- j ment will be an anti-asphyxiating' bomb whose fumes will neutralize those, of the other - It is said that many' years ago a scheme based on the, throwing of poisonou s gases over) a tract of country was put before the ! war office in England for the purpose j of devastating the country in tho face l of an invading army, but the agency ! employed was so terrible in its effect j that it was not made public and was l consigned to the secret records of the, war office.