Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

BRITAIN AT WORK. 368 electric power and lighting purposes, really a gigantic wheel, capable of far greater possi- bilities than Holbein’s “ Wheel of Fortune ” 5 there is an improved high - lift centrifugal pump, which, coupled to an electric motor, will force water to a head of 120 feet with TWO VIEWS OF THE FORTH BRIDGE. (1'holos: Cassell & Co., Ltd., and G. IC. Wilson & Co., Aberdeen.) a single chamber, or 360 feet with four, and at an efficiency of over 70 per cent. ; and yonder an electrically driven three-throw variable stroke pump, so nicely adjusted that, while the speed of the motor remains constant, the stroke of the plungers can be altered by hand even when the pump is running. These, and many other apparently cum- brous machines, are toyed with without any great physical strain. Yard and shop are equipped with ground or overhead travelling cranes ; and the heaviest castings are brought with celerity and placed in position in the fine erecting shop as easily as if they were feathers. The mech- anical engineer seems to be a swarthy and robust chrysalis of theelectrical engineer. The two departments are interdependent, and both go to make a perfect whole. The fact is demonstrated in a hundred ways in the various shops in which open or closed steel-clad mo to ns, compound engines, condensers, dynamos (including the Edi- son - II o p k i n s o n dynamos), pumps, and textile machinery (including electrically driven calico printing machines, and a very skilfully constructed sample colour print- ing machine for the Tokio School 01 Technology i n Japan), as well as all kinds of ingenious appliances for sewage purification and sani- tary engineering, are made. In every part of the works, from the pattern shop to the gallery of the erecting shop, where the great armatures are being equipped for their electric work, there is evidence of strenuous brain, originating and controlling mechanical and hand labour ; and with all this activity and responsibility the head of the firm, Sir William Mather, M.P., is essentially broad-minded, and has looked far beyond his workshops, in his well-doing, to the