



Produced by Olaf Voss, Don Kretz, Juliet Sutherland, Charles
Franks and the Distributed Proofreaders Team










[Illustration]




SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT NO. 362




NEW YORK, DECEMBER 9, 1882

Scientific American Supplement. Vol. XIV, No. 362.

Scientific American established 1845

Scientific American Supplement, $5 a year.

Scientific American and Supplement, $7 a year.


       *       *       *       *       *

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

I.    ENGINEERING AND MECHANICS--Recent Improvements in
      Textile Machinery.--Harris's revolving ring spinning frame.--
      New electric stop motion.--New positive motion loom. 6 figures.

      Spinning Without a Mule.--Harris's improvements in ring
      spinning.

      New Binding Machines. 3 figures.

      Flumes and their construction. 1 figure.

      Chuwab's Rolling Mill for Dressing and Rounding Bar Iron.
      9 figures.

      Burning of Town Refuse at Leeds. 6 figures.--Sections and
      elevations of destructor and carbonizer.

II.   TECHNOLOGY AND CHEMISTRY.--Friedrich Wohler.--His
      labors and discoveries.

      New Gas Burner. 3 figures.--Grimstone's improved gas burner.

      Defty's Improvements in Gas Burners and Heaters. 4 figures.

      The Collotype in Practice.

      Determination of Potassa in Manures.--By M. E. DREYFUS.

III.  HYGIENE, MEDICINE, ETC.--The Air in Relation to Health.
      By Prof. C. F. CHANDLER.

      The Plantain as a Styptic.

      Bacteria.

IV.   ELECTRICITY, ETC.--Gustavo Trouve and his Electrical Inventions.
      --Portrait of Gustave Trouve.--Trouve's electric boat competing
      in the regatta at Troyes.

      Domestic Electricity.--Loiseau's electric naphtha and gas
      lighters.--Ranque's new form of lighter with extinguisher.

      Theiler's Telephone Receiver. 2 figures.

      An Electric Power Hammer. By MARCEL DEPRETZ. 1 figure.

      Solignac's New Electric Lamp. 3 figures.

      Mondos's Electric Lamp. 2 figures.

V.    METALLURGY AND MINERALOGY.--Aluminum.--Its properties,
      cost, and uses.

      The Origin and Relations of the Carbon Minerals.
      By J.S. NEWBERRY.--An elaborate and extremely valuable review
      of the genesis of carbon minerals, and the modes and conditions
      of their occurrence.

      Estimation of Sulphur in Iron and Steel. By GEORGE CRAIG.
      1 figure.

VI.   ARCHITECTURE, ETC.--The Armitage House.

      Suggestions in Architecture.--An English country residence.

VII.  BOTANY, HORTICULTURE, ETC.--The Soy Bean. 1 figure.--
      The Soy bean (_Soja hispida_).

      Erica Cavendishiana. 1 figure.

      Philesia Buxifolia. 1 figure.

      Mahogany.

VIII. MISCELLANEOUS.--Our Hebrew Population.

      The Mysteries of Lake Baikal.

      Traveling Sand Hills on Lake Ontario.

      Animals in the Arts.--Corals.--The conch shell.--Living beetles,
      etc.--Pearls.--Sepia and silk.

       *       *       *       *       *




GUSTAVE TROUVE.


The accompanying portrait of M. Gustave Trouve is taken from a small
volume devoted to an account of his labors recently published by M.
Georges Dary. M. Trouve, who may be said to have had no ancestors from
an electric point of view, was born in 1839 in the little village of
Haye-Descartes. He was sent by his parents to the College of Chinon,
whence he entered the Ecole des Arts et Metiers, and afterward went
to Paris to work in the shop of a clock-maker. This was an excellent
apprenticeship for our future electrician, since it is in small works
that electricity excels; and, if its domain is to be increased, it is
only on condition that the electric mechanician shall never lose sight
of the fact that he should be a clock-maker, and that his fingers, to
use M. Dumas's apt words, should possess at once the strength of those
of the Titans and the delicacy of those of fairies. It was not long ere
Trouve set up a shop of his own, whither inventors flocked in crowds;
and the work he did for these soon gave up to him the secrets of the art
of creating. The first applications that he attempted related to the use
of electricity in surgery, a wonderfully fecund branch, but one whose
importance was scarcely suspected