heir virtues, combined and intensified by tireless processes, and tested unsparingly at every stage, are u

e rope is a combination of twisted wires, just as men are bipeds. That is where the similarity ends. In outward appearance as well as inw

ell you every rope has temperament. He spends his life knowing other people's business-rope business-and working out their rope problems. The answers to these problems are the four hundred differ

MS AND THE ENGIN

ith construction and installation problems from all over the world. In its files there is exhaustive record of every contract of magnitude, for construction, haulage, mine work, ship work-for any sort

NE-A WIRE R

or which rope is to be recommended and manufactured. When these are answered the engineer is ready to begin work, which starts with the selec

ialized engineers busily engaged solving the problems of wire rope us

aying in the Roebling establishment that

Y" OF T

the number of days it will add to the rope's life under varying conditions. The wide difference in ropes consists not only in the materials employed, which have much to do with their resistance to divers strains and the manner of their use, but in skillful selection of

E

b the impact which the strands make under the tension of service. The fibre cores, for this reason, are usually treated with some lubricant. In the majority of ropes hemp

where the haul is from great depths and twisting is to be avoided. These are made in all widths and thicknesses, and are constructed by placin

ST

y-seven wires, according to the work the rope is meant to do. In the rope mills you come upon long, low "stranding machines," reaching down a long room and carrying in horizontal arrangement, wide apart but in circular formation, the wires that are to form the str

ight or left, is of moment in determinin

OR GENERAL

skill and the utilization of experimental record. This freedom in selection and adjustment extends through almost every process. For example, in the twists: when wires in the strands and strands in the rope are twisted in the same direction, which ordinarily they are not, the rope has what is known as a "Lang lay," after a rope man who devised th

NG TH

bout eighty-two. Part of this failure is due to the angle of wires in the strand, with a resultant stress on wires in excess of applied load; therefore, the greater the number of wires in the rope, the lower the efficiency. The other reason is that the contiguous strands in the rope nick each other under high tension, and so are

SHOVELS BY MEAN

rope is a business of exactitude and eternal vigilance. You have to deal with breaking strengths of from 40,000 to 340,000 pounds to the square inch of transverse section, but the wire that will lift weights at the rate of more than a hundred tons has entirely different characteristics than the lower strength

HE ROPE T

and up under the swift tensions of a storm or in the lightning man?uvers of a race. Therefore, like a few ropes built for other purposes, the composite parts are not mere strands of wire, but little ropes in themselves,

with a multiplicity of ropes and safety devices. What taxes his conscience and spurs him to the last possible effort, is the rope that goes to the "deep

making has been treated as an exact science, because it dealt with materials that were more or less standardized. They are learning now that rope has a large unknown quantity that defies formula past a certain point. For the l

got their jobs almost by heredity. Their fathe

d gave it to his workmen in the shape of orders-today somewhat different methods are utilized. To the cumulative experience of over eighty years of wire-rope making, the Roeblings have al

THE ROPE A

protection and use, figuring out with nicety the speeds to be maintained, the size of the sheaves or drums around which it should travel to minimize the strain, prescribing its lubrication, providing printed warnings against all forms of misuse or neglect, with pictures to show the reason why, and other instr

the unabridged, more than a small part of the uses for which rope-and much of it special rope-is mad

PE AND

rope is used in quantity for guying, and for hoisting the blocks of stone out of their beds, and then on aerial cable ways, to carry them on high over long distances to be loaded; there are the oil fields, in which just now, in the mad search for petroleum to supply the world's shortage, interminable miles of wire rope are being used, some of it an inch thick or over, to carry the drills, or for casing and sand lines. There is shipping-the battleship and the merchantman and the liner; the yacht, the riverman and the tug-all strung with wire rope from stem to stern, and some of them from truck to keel as well-not to mention mooring lines which have their own plan and formula; there is towi

ES OF W

been able to run cars out on an aerial roadbed of wire, over impassable gorges and morasses, to make fills for railway or other construction; cableways, the forms and uses of which, in transferring materials, are without number; tramways and traction systems, which have now, save in particular instances, given way to trolley, and the copper wire for this, again, comes in large and continuous to

outward appearance, is the same, and impressive in the simplicity to which it has been reduced. From the tiny specimen, made for some finical scientific experiment, to the three-inch monster that contains single wires nearly a quarter of

AKING

e. His first product was made by hand in the old "rope walk" way. Today the ground where he did it is covered with buildings full of speeding machinery that has little rest-devices that stand in long

strands which are to be twisted into rope. These are led from the bobbins in toward the center, and pass into the column, which carries also the core and which in its turning twists the strands together. The complete rope passes out over a pulley

NAVAL GUN WITH

irst, for the purpose of carrying a greater number of strands. In this type the arms carrying the bobbins are somewhat shorter, allowing for a great rate of speed. There is something mysterious in the sight of these flying reels of steel, or copper maybe, for many ropes of substantial size are made of copper for marine use, whizzing round and round like indefatigable moths around a big steel candle, or a dervish round his own spinal column on a sp

L CONS

en loaded for shipment. Such were the huge street railway cables, made for Australia, for Kansas City, for Chicago and New York. There is an amusing story of the New York street railway engineer who insisted that the cable be made in one section, 33,000 feet in length, but w

for the purpose. An ordinary car would crumble under the lo

fast and so far, in a rapidly widening world, that the cable orders, big as they were, have never been missed. It furnishes a significant index of the growth in all industria

THE ROEBL

rs with 25,000 horse-power. The coal consumption on the three plants is approximately 1000 tons a day, and the fuel oil consumpti