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LEATHER. · Inventions of the Century

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Section twenty four of Inventions in the Century. This is the LibriVox recording.
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All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
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please visit LibriVox dot org. Inventions in the Center by William Henry Doolittle
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Leather. It is interesting to speculate how prehistoric men came to use the skin
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of the beasts of the field wire warmth and shelter. Originally, no doubt,
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and for own toll centuries, the use was confined to the hairy,
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undressed, fresh or dried skins known as pelts. Then came the use of
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better tools. The garments have perished, but the tools of stone and of
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bronze survived, which, when compared with those employed among the earliest disturbed tribes
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of men, were found to be adapted to cut and strip the hairy covering
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when the bodies of animals and clean pound scrape, and otherwise adapt them to
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use. And ever since the story of man began to be preserved in lasting
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records and farther soriental to the northernmost limits of Europe and America, memorials of
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the early implements of labor in the preparation of IDEs for human wear have been
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found. The Aborigines knew how to sharpen bones of animals, they killed,
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the scrape, clean, soften, or roughen their skins. They knew how
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to sweat, dry, and smoke the skins, and this crude seasoning process
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was the war runner of modern tanning. But leather as we know it now,
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that soft, flexible, insoluble combination of the gelatine and fibrine of the
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skin with tannic acid, producing a durable and imputrescible article that overstand decay from
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the joint attack of moisture, warmth, and air, was unknown to the
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earlier races of men, where its production was due to thorough tanning, and
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thorough tanning was the later art. When men with skin dressed animals, they
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knew little or nothing of tanning. Tannic Acid is found in nearly every plant
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that grows, and its combination with the fresh skin spread or thrown thereon may
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have given rise to the observation of the beneficial result and subsequent practice. But
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whether discovered by chance, accident, or experience, or invented from necessity,
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the art of tanning should have rendered the name of the discoverer immortal. The
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earliest records, however, described the art, but not the inventor, from
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the time the Hebrews covered the altars of their tabernacles with ramed skin dyed red,
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as recorded in Exodus, when they and the Egyptians worked their leather,
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currying and stretching it with their knives, awls, stones, and other implements,
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making leather water buckets resembling very much those now made by machinery. Covering
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their harps and shields with leather ornamental and embossed, from the days of the
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early Africans, famous for their yellow, red and black Morocco, from the
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days of the old national dress of the Persians with their leather trowsers, aprons,
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helmets, belts, and shirts, from the time that the ancient Scythians
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utilized the skins of their enemies. And Erodotus described the beauty and other good
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qualities of the human hide from the early days of that peculiar, fine and
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agreeable leather of the Russians, fragrant with the oil of the birch, from
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the days of the white leather of the Hungarians, the olive tanned leather of
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the Saracens, from the time of the celebrated Cordovan leather of the Spaniards from
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the ancient cold periods of the Equabox, and the Scandinavians, who claden the
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warm skins of the Arctic bears, stretched tough, tanned seal skin over the
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work their boats. From the time of the introduction of the art of the
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leather work into the naked Britain down to almost the nineteenth century, substantially the
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same hand tools, hard hand labor and the old elbow lubricant were known and
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practiced. Hand tools have improved, of course, as other arts of wooden
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iron making have developed, but the operations are about the same they were,
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and must be flushing knives to scrape from off the hinde the adherent flesh and
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lime. But this the hide is placed over the convex edge of an inclined
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beam, and the work is called beaming. The curious knife for removing the
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hair, skiving, or the cutting off the rough edges and fleshy parts on
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the border of the hide. Shaving and flattening, the cutting away of the
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inequalities left after skiving, Stoning, the rubbing of the leather bious couring stone
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to render its smooth slicking to remove the water increase, or to smooth and
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polish by erectangiass sharpened stone, steel or glass tuol. Whitening to shave all
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thin strips of the flesh, leaving the leather thinner, white and more pliable.
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Stuffing to soften the scraped and pounded hides and make them porous, graining
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the giving to the hater or grain side a granular appearance by rubbing with the
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rude or roughened piece of wood. Bruising or boarding to make the leather supple
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and pliable by bringing the two flesh sides together and rubbing with the graining board.
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Scouring by aid at a stream of water, to whiten the leather by
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rubbing with a slicking stone or steel. The inventions of the sentry consist in
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lay per saving machinery for these purposes, new tanning and dressing processes, and
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innumerable machines for making special articles of leather. As before stay. The epoch
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of modern machinery commenced with the practical application of water power to other than grinding
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mills, and of steam in place of water, contemporaneously with the invention of
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spinning and weaving machinery in the last half of the eighteenth century. These got
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fairly to work at the beginning of the century, and the uses of machinery
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spread to the treatment of leather. John Blow was the appropriate name of the
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man who first patented a scraping machine in England about seventeen eighty, and Joseph
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Weeks the next one some years later. One of the earliest machines of the
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century was the hyde mill, which, after the hand tools had scraped and
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stoned, shaved and hardened the hides, was used to rub and dub them
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and soften its swell and a tanning Taked rollers were the earliest form for this
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purpose, and later corrugated rollers and power work pammers or employed hundreds of hides
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could be softened daily by these means. Then came ingenious machines to take the
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place of the previous operations of the hand tools. The fleshing machine in one
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form of which the hides are placed on a curved bed and the fleshy parts
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graped off or removed by revolving glass blades or by current teeth of steel and
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wood. In a roller under which a table is given a to and for
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a movement tanning apparatus of a great variety bird, which hides after they are
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thoroughly washed and softened, and the poils opened by swelling are subjected to movements
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in the tanning liquid vats, such as rocking or oscillating, rotary or vertical,
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or truated by an air exhaust, known as the vacuum process, in
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all of which the object is to thoroughly impregnate in the shortest time all the
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interstices and poise of the skin with the dannic acid, by which the fibrous
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in gelatinous matter is made to combine to form leather, and by which process
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also the hide is greatly increased in weight. Real machines are then employed to
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transfer the hives from one vat to another, thus subjecting them to liquors of
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increasing strength. Sulking in vants formerly occupied twelve or eighteen months, but under
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the NO methods the time has been greatly reduced, and now since eighteen eighty
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the chemist are pushing aside the vegetable processes and substituting mineral processes, by which
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tanning is still further shortened and cheapened. The NO processes depend chiefly on the
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use of chromium compounds. Then came scouring machines, in which are rapidly revolving
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stiff brushes used to scour the grain or hair side, removing the superfluous coloring
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matter called the bloom, and sawing and cleansing the hide. The slicking of
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polishing machines to clean stretches forth the leather by glass stone or capper blades on
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a rapidly moving belt carried over pulleys, Whitening, buffing, scything, flushing,
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and shaving machines all for cutting off certain portions and inequalities of the leather
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and reducing its thickness. In one form of the glass machines, an oscillating
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pendulum lepper is employed, carrying at its end a revolving cylinder having thirty or
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more spiral blades. The pendulum swings to and fro with the rate of ninety
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movements a minute on the cylinder. Rolls of the leather at the rate are
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two thousand, seven hundred and eighty revolutions per minute. Scarfing, skything,
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shampoo, beveling, feather edging appear to be synonymous terms for a variety of
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machines for cutting the edges of leather obliquely with the prefose chief of making lamp
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seams, scarf joints, and reducing the thickness and stiffness of leather at those
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in certain other points. Then there are leather splitting machines consisting of one or
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more rollers in a pressure bar which drawn press the leather against a horizontally arranged
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in adjustable knife, which nicely splits the leather in two parts and thus doubles
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the quantity. This thin split leather is much used in making a cheap quality
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of boots and shoes and other articles. These are also corrugating, creasing,
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fluting, pebbling, piercing, and punching machines, machines for grinding the bark
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and also for grinding the leather, machines for gluing sections of leather together and
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machines for sewing them, Machines for rounding flood strips of leather with the making
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of whips and tubes, machines for scalloping the edges, and a very ingenious
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machine or splitting leather strips of strings according to their size of thickness. The
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most important improvements of the century and leather working relate to the manufacture of boots
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and shoes. It could well be set of boots and shoes, especially those
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made of the great mass of humanity, before the modern improvements and means and
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processes had been invented their feet through faithless leather beck the dirt. It is
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true that in the eighteenth century, both in Europe and America, the art
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of leather and boot and shoemaking had so far advanced that good durable foot whale
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was produced by long and tedious processes of tanning and by careful making up of
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the leather into boots and shoes by hand. The knife, the awl,
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the wax, thread, the nails and hammers, and other hand tools of
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the character above referred to being employed. But the process was a tedious and
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costly one, and the articles produced were beyond the limits of the poor man's
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place. Hence the wooden shoes and those made of course idn dressed in undressed
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skins, and of course cloth mixed or unmixed with leather. In eighteen o
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nine, David Meade Randolf of England patented machinery for ripeting soles and heels to
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the uppers instead of sewing them together. The celebrated silver engineer Issembard m Brunel
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shortly thereafter added several machines of his own invention to Randolph's method, and he
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established a large manufactory for the making, chiefly of army shoes. The various
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separate processes performed by his machines involved the cutting out of the leather, hardening
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by rolling, securing the wealth onto the inner sole by small nails, and
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studying the outer sole with larger nails. Divisions of men were employed to work
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on his separate step, and the shoes were passed from one process to another
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until complete. Large quantities of shoes were made at reduced prices, but complaints
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were made as to the nails penetrating into the shoe and earning the feed.
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The demand for army shoes fell off and the system was abandoned, but it
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had incited invention in the direction of machine made shoes, and the day of
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exclusive and labor was doomed. About eighteen eighteen, Joseph Walker of Hoppington,
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Massachusetts, invented the wooden peg. Making and applying pegs by handlers too slow
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work, and machines were at once contrived for making them. As one invention
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necessitates and begets others, so special forms of machine for sawing and working up
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wood into pegs were devised. Such machinery was for first sawing the selected log
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of wood into slices across the grain a little thicket in the length of a
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peg, and cutting out knots in the wood, then planing the head of
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the block smooth, grooving the block with a V schepped cut and tool,
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splitting the pigs apart, and then bleaching, drying, polishing, and won
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a wing them. It took forty or fifty years to perfect these enkindred machines.
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But at the end of that time there was a factory of Burlington,
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Vermont, which, from four cords of wood made every day four hundred bushels
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of shoe pegs about eighteen fifty eight bf. Stirred of aunt To, Massachusetts
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made a great improvement in this line. He was a very poor man,
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getting a living by pegging on the soles of a few pairs of shoes each
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day. He devised a pegging machine, and out of his scanty spurnings and
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at odd hours, with much pain and labor, and by borrowing money,
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he finally completed it. The machine made was called peg wood, a long
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ribbon strip of seasoned wood sharpened on one end, designed to be fed into
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the machine for pegging shoes. The shoes were punctured by awls driven by machinery,
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and then as the peg strip was carried to it, the machine severed
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the strip into chisel edged pegs, and peg driving mechanism drove them into the
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holes. Nine hundred pegs a minute were driven. It still almost supplanted all
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peg driving machines, and after the machines were quite generally introduced, they were
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made in one year alone in New England fifty five million pairs of boots and
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shoes pegged by the stirt event machines. Other forms of pegs followed, such
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as the metal screw pegs and machines to cut them off from a continuous spiral
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wire from which they were made. Last on which the shoes were made had
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been manufactured by one hundred thousand on the wood turning blaze, invented by Blanching
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described in the chapter on wood working in eighteen fifty eight. Also about the
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same time the stirred event pegging machine was introduced, the shoe sewing machine was
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developed. The Mackay Shoe Sewing Machine Company of Massachusetts. After an expenditure of
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one hundred thirty thousand dollars and three years time and experiments, were enabled to
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put their machines in practical operation. The pegging machines and sewing machines worked a
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revolution in shoemaking. A revolution in the arter's shoemaking, thus started, was
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followed by Wonder's machines invented to meet every part of the manufacture. Lasting machines
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for drawing and fitting the leather over last, in which the outer edges of
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the leather drawn over the bottom of the last and tacked thereto by the hands
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and fingers of the machine instead of those of the human hand, were invented.
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Indenting machines. The wealth is known as that strip of leather around the
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shoe between the upper and so, and machines were invented for cutting and place
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in this and denting it for the purpose of rendering in flexible and separating the
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stitches. All the work until recently entirely done by hand. Machines for twining
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the seams in the uppers and forming the scallops. Machines especially adapted to the
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making of the heel as heel trimming and compressing, rounding and polishing, and
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for nailing the finished heel to the bootle. Shoe machines for treating the sole
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in every way, rolling it in place of the good old way of pounding
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it on a lap stone, trimming, rounding, smoking, and polishing it.
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Machines for cutting out doors. Machines for making the uppers so that at
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one operation every shoe will be stamped by its size, number, name of
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manufacture, number of cays, and any other convenient symbols. Machines for setting
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the buttons and eyelids. All these are simple members in the long line of
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inventions. In this art. The old style of food is given way to
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the modern shoe and gaiter of for the benefit of those who still weigh them.
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Special machines for shaping the leg called boot trees, have been contrived so
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far. Had the art advanced, that twenty years ago, one working man
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with much of his improved machinery combined in one machine called the boot maker,
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could make three hundred pairs of boots of shoes a day. Upward are three
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thousand such machines would then have worked throughout the world, and one hundred fifty
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million pairs of boots, with them being made annually thereon. Now the number
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of machines and pairs of boots and shoes has been quadrupled, and the world
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is having its feet clothed far more extensively, better in it less cost than
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was ever possible by the ant system. The number of workers in the art,
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both men and women, has vastly increased instead of being diminished, while
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their wagers have greatly advanced over the old rates. As an illustration of how
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rapidly modern enterprise an indenture proceeds in Yankee Land, it has been related that
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some years ago in Massachusetts, after many of these shoemaking machines had got into
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use, a factory which us turning out two thousand, four hundred pairs of
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shoes every day, was completely destroyed by fire on a Wednesday night. On
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Thursday, the manufacturer hired a neighboring building and set carpenters at work fitting it
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up. On Friday, he ordered to go and complete output of machinery from
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Boston. On Saturday, the machinery arrived in the Bend, settered up.
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On Monday, work was started, and on Tuesday the manufacturer was filling his
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orders to the full number of two thousand, four hundred pairs a day.
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There are very many people in the world who still pre for the hand made
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true, and there is nothing to prevent the world generally from going back to
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that system if they choose. But Saint Crispin's gentle part has blossomed into a
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vaster field of blessings for mankind under the fruitful impetus of invention than if left
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to vegetate under the simple processes of permanent man horses. No less than man
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has shaded the improvement and leather manufacture the harnesses of the farmers and laboring man's
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horses. A century ago, when they were fortunate enough to own horses,
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were the crudest description ropes, cords, coarse bands of leather for the common
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provisions. Now the strength and cheapness of harnesses enabled the poor man to equip
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his horse with the working suit impossible to have been produced one hundred years ago.
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To the beautiful effects produced by the use of modern embossing machines on paper
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and wood have been added many charming patterns in embossed leather books and leather cases,
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saddlery, and household ornamentation of various descriptions have been either molded into forms
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of beauty, or stamped or rolls by cameo and entirely owed designs cut into
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the surface of fast moving cylinders. The leather manufacturers have become so vastly important
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and valuable in some countries, especially in the United States, second almost to
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agricultural products, that it would be very interesting to extend the description to many
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processes and machines, and to facts displaying the enormous traffic in leather now necessarily
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omitted for want of space. End of Section twenty four