Filing the letters after enameling
This is done by girls, who, with very fine files, rub off the edges and any protuberances which may be there. Every letter is subject to this operation, and all are turned out smooth and well finished.
Part of a Telephone Exchange
Firing the letters
The disk containing the enameled letters is taken at the end of a long iron handle and carefully placed in a dome-shaped muffle. These muffles are all heated from the outside; that is, the fire is all round the chamber, but not in it, the fumes of the sulphur being destructive of the enamel if they are allowed to come into contact with it. So intense is the heat, however, that a muffle lasts only about nine days, and at the end of that time has to be renewed.
Mixing the enamel
Mixing the enamel
The Blacksmith
The Blacksmith
Dusting the letters before firing
The letters are now taken charge of by a girl, who lays them out on a wire tray, the hollow side up, and paints them over with a thin mordant. While they are in this position, and before the mordant dries, they are taken on the gridiron-like tray to a kind of large box, which is full of the powdered enamel, and, holding the tray in her left hand, the girl takes a fine sieve full of the powder and dusts it over the letter, all superfluous powder falling through the open wirework and into the bin again, so that there is absolutely no waste.
Tapping a Rubber Tree
The First Type of McCormick Reaper
Silhouettes of Grandfather and Grandmother
Franklin's Printing Press
Natives Drying Rubber
Howe's First Sewing Machine
Edison in his Library
Faneuil Hall, Boston, Adjoining Quincy Market
Charles Goodyear
A Monk Copying Manuscript Books
The Earliest Printers at Work
The Old Way of Reaping
McCormick's Reaping Machine
Birthplace of Charles Goodyear
Elias Howe
Edison's First Phonograph
Sextuple Perfecting Press
Jonathan and his Uncle William in the One-horse Chaise
Wellesley College in 1886
Daniel Webster
Kitchen in which Goodyear made his Experiments
Cheapside in London
Alexander Graham Bell in 1900
Dom Pedro II
Stock Indicator or 'Ticker'
Lock Stitch (above) and Chain Stitch (below)
Howe's Improved Sewing Machine
Curved Stereotype Plate
Bell's Telephone in March, 1876