The Mechanical Handling and Storing of Material

INTRODUCTORY 243 into such receptacles, they are handled individually by suitable supports in a succession of single loads. The form of the receptacles, when such are in use, varies according to the method adopted, and to the nature of the material being dealt with. The methods of intermittent handling described in the following pages include :— ( a) Endless Rope and Chain Haulage, in which the load is contained in narrow gauge trucks running on ordinary rails, and propelled by a continuous hauling rope between the receiving and delivery terminals. ( Z^) Ropeways, Aerial Cableways, and Appliances for Coaling at Sea, where a similar process to the preceding one is employed, with the exception that instead of the receptacles running on rails on the ground, they are suspended from a rope above the ground. o Mono-Rails and Telphers.—In this place of the rope, and instead of a traction propelled by means of small electro-motors built into the carriage, and the current is taken from a live cable fixed in close proximity to the rail, and parallel with it. (^) Blast Furnace Hoists, which generally consist of a pair of skips or buckets with wheels running on suitable rails up a sharp incline to the furnace top, the hauling cable raising a full and lowering at the same time an empty skip. (e) The Handling- of Coke from Coke Ovens, which includes a great variety of methods of dealing with individual charges from batteries of coke ovens. The choice of method of conveying must depend on the nature of the ground, and the elevation to which the material has to be conveyed. The rope plays a most important part in three.of the above methods of handling, and it may, therefore, be interesting to explore the history of the rope, as rope haulage in rope itself. method a solid iron or steel rail takes the or haulage rope, the load is generally Fig. 344. Primitive Chinese Ropeway, one form or another is almost as ancient as the The late Sir Henry Layard, whose discoveries at Nineveh laid bare the daily life of the Assyrians, unearthed in a palace at Nimrod, at the site of Calah, a bas-relief depicting the siege of a castle in the campaign of Tiglath-Pileser III., about b.c. 550. In the carving, Fig. 343, the principal figure is that of a warrior, who is depicted as cutting the rope to which the besieged had attached buckets with which they were attempting to draw water from a source outside the castle wall. The rope ran through a pulley-block, and had evidently a bucket attached to each end, one coming up full, whilst the other went down empty. This bas-relief is about 2,260 years old, and undoubtedly depicts ■a primitive form of rope haulage. Pulley-blocks, which are also closely connected with ropeways, are also of considerable age ; they were known to the ancient Egyptians, and in the museum of Leyden may be seen a sheave and pulley-block of Egyptian origin to which great antiquity is assigned. The sheave is of fir wood, and the block of tamarisk. The rope found with these relics of an almost pre-historic past has also