Another machine, invented by Mergenthaler, practically sets up the moulds, by a sort of typewriter arrangement, for a line at a time, and then a casting is taken of a whole line at once.  This machine is used much in newspaper offices, where the cleverness of the compositor has to be depended upon and there is little or no time for corrections.  Several other machines set the regular type that is made in type foundries, the type being placed in long channels, all of the same sort, in the same grooves, and slipped or set in its proper place by the machine operated by a man at the keyboard.  These machines require a separate mechanism that distributes each type in its proper place after use, or else a separate compositor must be employed to do this by hand.  The machines that set foundry type, moreover, require a great stock of it, just as many hundred pounds of expensive type are needed for hand composition.

[Illustration:  WHERE THE “BRAINS” ARE LOCATED The perforations in the paper ribbon (shown in the upper left-hand part of the picture) govern the action of the machine so that the proper characters are cast in the proper order, and also the spaces between the words.]

Though a machine has been invented that will put an author’s words into type, no mechanism has yet been invented that will do away with type altogether.  It is one of the problems still to be solved.

HOW HEAT PRODUCES COLD

ARTIFICIAL ICE-MAKING

One midsummers day a fleet of United States war-ships were lying at anchor in Guantanamo Bay, on the southern coast of Cuba.  The sky was cloudless, and the tropic sun shone so fiercely on the decks that the bare-footed Jackies had to cross the unshaded spots on the jump to save their feet.

An hour before the quavering mess-call sounded for the midday meal, when the sun was shining almost perpendicularly, a boat’s crew from one of the cruisers were sent over to the supply-ship for a load of beef.  Not a breath was stirring, the smooth surface of the bay reflected the brazen sun like a mirror, and it seemed to the oarsmen that the salt water would scald them if they should touch it.  Only a few hundred yards separated the two vessels, yet the heat seemed almost beyond endurance, and the shade cast by the tall steel sides of the supply-steamer, when the boat reached it, was as comforting as a cool drink to a thirsty man.  The oars were shipped, and one man was left to fend off the boat while the others clambered up the swaying rope-ladder, crossed the scorching decks on the run, and went below.  In two minutes they were in the hold of the refrigerator-ship, gathering the frost from the frigid cooling-pipes and snowballing each other, while the boat-keeper outside of the three-eighth-inch steel plating was fanning himself with his hat, almost dizzy from the quivering heat-waves that danced before his eyes.  The great sides of beef, hung in rows, were frozen as hard as rock.  Even after the strip of water had been crossed on the return journey and the meat exposed to the full, unobstructed glare of the sun the cruiser’s messcooks had to saw off their portions, and the remainder continued hard as long as it lasted.  But the satisfaction of the men who ate that fresh American beef cannot be told.