An anvil is an instrument on which pieces of metal are laid for the purpose of being hammered. The common smith's anvil is generally made of seven pieces, namely, the core or body; the four corners for the purpose of enlarging its base; the projecting end, which contains a square hole for the reception of a set or chisel to cut off pieces of iron; and the beak or conical end, used for turning pieces of iron into a circular form, etc. These pieces are each separately welded to the core and hammered so as to form a regular surface with the whole. When the anvil has received its due form, it is faced with steel, and is then tempered .in cold water. The smith's anvil is generally placed loose upon a wooden block. The anvil for heavy operations, such as the forging of ordnance and shafting, consists of a huge iron block deeply embedded, and resting on piles of masonry. Research Anvil
A bick iron was a type of tall anvil used in coopering for riveting the iron hoops, and tall enough to support the two ends of the hoop. Research Bick Iron
Engraving is the art of representing objects and depicting characters on metal, wood, precious stones, etc, by means of incisions made with instruments variously adapted to the substances operated upon and the description of work intended.
Impressions from metal plates are named engravings, prints, or plates those printed from wood being called indifferently wood engravings and wood-cuts. While, however, these impressions are not altogether dissimilar in appearance, the processes are distinct. In plates the lines intended to print are incised, and in order to take an impression the plate is daubed over with a thick ink which fills all the lines. The surface is then wiped perfectly clean, leaving only the incised lines filled with ink. A piece of damp paper is now laid on the face of the plate, and both are passed through the press, which causes the ink to pass from the plate to the paper. This operation needs to be repeated for every impression, for the wood block, on the contrary, the spaces between the lines of the drawing are cut out, leaving the lines standing up like type, the printing being from the inked surface of the raised lines, and effected much more rapidly than plate printing.
Engraving on wood, intended for printing or taking impressing from, long preceded engraving on metals. The art is of eastern origin, and at least as early as the 10th century engraving and printing from wood blocks was common in China. We first hear of wood engraving being cultivated in Europe by the Italians and Germans in the 13th century. For a hundred and fifty years, however, there is small indication of the practice of the art, which was at first confined to the production of block-books, playing cards, and religious prints. In the 15th century the art of printing from engraved plates was discovered in Florence by Maso Finiguerra.
Engraving had long been used as a means of decorating armour, metal vessels, etc, the engravers generally securing duplicates of their works before laying in the niello (a species of metallic enamel) by filling the lines with dark colour, and taking casts of them in sulphur. The discovery of the practicability of taking impressions upon paper led to engraving upon copper plates for the purpose of printing from.
The date of the earliest known niello proof upon paper is 1452. The work of the Florentine engravers, however, was almost at once surpassed in Venice and elsewhere in North Italy by Andrea Mantegna, Girolamo Mocetto, Giovanni Batista del Porto, and others. In Marc Antonio Raimondi, who wrought under the guidance of Raphael, and reproduced many of his works, the art reached its highest point of the earlier period, and Rome became the centre of a new school, which included Marco da Ravenna, Giulio Bonasone, and Agostino de Musis.
In the meantime, in Germany the progress of the art had been not less rapid. Of the oldest school the most important engraver is Martin Schongauer. He was, however, surpassed a generation later by Albert Durer who excelled both in copper and wood engraving, especially in the latter. Among his most famous contemporaries and successors were Burgkmair and Lucas Cranach. The Dutch and Flemish schools, of which Durer's contemporary Lucas van Leyden was the head, did much to enlarge the scope of the art, either by paying increased attention to the rendering of light and shade, and the expression of local colour, as in the case of Cornelius Cort and Bloemart; or by developing freedom and expression of line, as in the case of Goltzius and his pupils.
Rubens influenced engraving through the two Bolswerts, Vorstermann, Pontius, and de Jode, who engraved many of his works on a large size. Towards the end of the 17th century etching, which had before been rarely used, became more common, and was practised with great success by Rembrandt and other painters of that period. In France Noel Garnier founded a school of engraving about the middle of the 16th century; but it produced no work of any high distinction until the reign of Louis XIV, when Nanteuil's pupil Gerard Edelinck and Gerard Audran flourished. The former was skilled in using his graver to produce colour effects, the latter is famed for his engravings from Nicolas Poussin and Le Brun. But these were all surpassed about the middle of the 18th century by Wille, a German resident in Paris.
Before the middle of the 17th century England produced little noteworthy work, availing herself principally of the work of foreign engravers, of whom many took up temporary and even permanent residence. The first English engraver of marked importance was William Hogarth, whose works are distinguished for character and expression. Vivares, a Frenchman by birth, laid the foundation of the English school of landscape-engraving, which was still further developed by William Woollet, who was also an excellent engraver of the human figure.
In historical engraving a not less remarkable advance was made by Sir Robert Strange, and Richard Earlom produced some admirable works in mezzotint. In succession to these came William Sharp, James Bazire, Bartolozzi, James Heath, Bromley, Raimbach, and others.
The substitution of steel for copper plates around 1820 to 1830 gave the power of producing a much larger number of fine impressions, and opened new possibilities for highly-finished work.
During the closing years of the 18th century line engraving attained a depth of colour and fulness of tone in which earlier works generally are deficient, and during the following century it reached a perfectness of finish which it had not previously attained. A picture, whether figure or Landscuape, may be translated by line engraving with all its depth of colour, delicacy of tone, and effect of light and shade; the various textures, whether of naked flesh, silk, satin, woollen, or velvet, all successfully rendered by ingenious modes of laying the lines and combinations of lines of varying strength, width, and depth. Among engraverswho have produced historical works of large size and in the line manner the names of Raphael Mrghen, Longhi, Anderloni, Garavaglia, and Toschi, in Italy; of Forster, Henriquel-Dupont, Bridoux, and Blanchard, in France; of John Burnet, J H Robinson, Doo, J H Watt, and Lumb Stocks, in England, stand pre-eminent.
Among historical and portrait engravers in the stipple or dotted manner the names of H T Ryall, Henry Robinson, William Holl and Francis Holl, may well be mentioned.
In the period 1820 to 1860 landscape engraving attained a perfection in Great Britain which it had not attained in any other country, or at any other time. Among landscape engravers the names of George Gooke, William Miller, E Goodall, J Cousen, K Brandard, and William Forrest hold the foremost places. In mezzotinto engraving Samuel Cousins is unrivalled.
In the period 1830 to 1845 various publications called Annuals, composed of light literature in prose and verse, and illustrated by highly-finished engravings in steel, were very popular. The engravings were necessarily of small size, and are generally of great excellence. A number of them both figure and landscape are executed with such finish and completeness as to be esteemed perfect works. The unrivalled illustrations of Rogers' Poems and Rogers' Italy after Turner and Stothard belong to this period. Many of the originals of the engravings in the Annuals were finished pictures of large size.
A great part of the difficulty in engraving on a small scale from a large picture, consists in determining what details can be left out, and still preserve the full effect and character of the original. The most noted engravers for work of small size are Charles Heath, Charles Bolls, W Finden, E Finden, E. Portbury, J Goodyear, F Engleheart, Henry Le Keux, E Goodall, and W Miller.
After 1870 many plates were produced by a combination of etching and dry point, a comparatively cheap and rapid process. Such works were fashionable and very popular with collectors. But while some of them have been excellent of their kind, the process is of limited resource, and the best works in this manner will not stand comparison with the masterpieces of line engraving. Through lack of encouragement, change of fashion, and the adoption of other methods of reproduction such as photography, line engraving rapidly becoming a lost art in Great Britain. The men who made line engraving famous died, and there was no sufficient inducement for younger men to pursue that art. In France and in Germany some able line engravers were still in practice at the start of the 20th century.
Line Engraving, as implied by the term, is executed entirely in lines. The tools are few and simple. They consist of the graver or burin, the point, the scraper, and the burnisher; an oil-stone or hone, dividers, a parallel square, a magnifying lens; a bridge on which to rest the hand; a blind or shade of tissue paper, to make the light fall equally on the plate, callipers for levelling important erasures, a small steelanvil, a small pointed hammer, and punches. In etching, the following articles are required: a resinous mixture called etching-ground, capable, when spread very thinly over the plate, of resisting the action of the acids used; a dauber for laying the ground equally; a hand-vice; some hair-pencils of different sizes, and bordering wax, made of burgundy-pitch, bees'-wax, and a little oil.
In engraving, the plate, which is highly polished and must be free from all scratches, is first prepared by spreading over it a thin layer of ground. The surface is then smoked, and the outline of the picture transferred to it by pressure from the paper on which it has been drawn in fine outlines by a black-lead pencil. The picture is then drawn on the ground with the etching-needle, which removes the ground in every form produced by it, and leaves the bright metal exposed. A bank of wax is then put round the plate and diluted acid poured on it, which eats out the metal from the lines from which the ground has been removed, but leaves the rest of the plate untouched. The plate is then gone over with the graver, the etched lines clearly defuned, broken lines connected, new lines added, etc. Sometimes the plate is rebitten more than once, those parts which are sufficiently bitten in the first treatment being stopped with varnish, and only the selected parts exposed to after-biting. Finally the burnisher is brought into play alternately with the graver and point to give perfectness and finish.
Such is the process for landscape engraving. In historical and portrait engraving of the highest class, the lines are first drawn on the metal with a fine point and then cut in by the graver, first making a fine line and afterwards entering and re-entering till the desired width and depth of lines is attained. Much of the excellence of such engravings depends on the mode in which the lines are laid, their relative thickness, and the manner in which they cross each other. In historical engraving etching is but little used, and then only for accessories and the less important parts.
In Soft-ground Etching the ground, made by mixing lard with common etching-ground, is laid on the plate and smoked as before, but its extreme softness renders it very liable to injury. The outline of the subject is drawn on a piece of rough paper larger than the plate. The paper is then damped, and laid gently over the ground face upwards, and the margins folded over and pasted down on the back of the plate. When the paper is dry and tightly stretched the bridge is laid across, and with a hardish pencil and firm pressure the drawing is completed in the usual manner. The pressure makes the ground adhere to the back of the paper at all parts touched by the pencil, and on. the paper being lifted carefully off, these parts of the ground are lifted with it, and the corresponding parts of the plate thus left bare are exposed to the subsequent action of the acid. The granulated surface of the paper, causing similar granulations in the touches on the ground, gives the character of a chalk-drawing. The biting-in is effected in the same manner as already described, and the subject is finished by re-biting and dotting with the graver.
Stipple, or Chalk Engraving, in its pure state, is exclusively composed of dots, varying in size and form as the nature of the subject demands, but few stipple plates are now produced without a large admixture of line in all parts, flesh excepted. A great advance, however, was made in stipple engraving by the introduction of large and varied forms of dotting in the draperies, the results almost rivalling line engraving in richness and power.
The Mixed Style is based on mezzotinto, which, still forming the great mass of shading, is in this method combined with etching in the darker, and stipple in the more delicate parts. By this combination a plate will produce a larger number of good impressions than were it done entirely in mezzotinto.
The wood best adapted for engraving is box. It is cut across the grain in thicknesses equal to the height of type, these slices being subjected to a lengthened process of seasoning, and then smoothed for use. Every wood engraving is the representative of a finished drawing previously made on the block; the unshaded parts being cut away, and the lines giving form, shading, texture, etc, left standing in relief by excavations of varied size and character, made between them by gravers of different forms. Drawings on wood are made either with black-lead pencil alone or with pencil and indian ink, the latter being employed for the broader and darker masses. It is now much the practice to photograph drawings made in black and white upon the wood instead of making the drawing on the wood block. When the drawing is put on the wood by washes or by photography instead of being entirely done by pencil lines, the engraver has to devise the width and style of lines to be employed instead of cutting in facsimile, as is the case when the drawing is made entirely in lines. The tools required for wood engraving are similar but more numerous than those of the engraver on copper or steel. Research Engraving
Gold-beating is the art or process of producing the extremely thin leaves of gold used in gilding, etc. Traditionally, the gold is cast into ingots weighing about tow ounces each, and measuring about 0.75 inches broad. These ingots are passed between steel rollers until they form long ribbons of such thinness that a square inch will weigh 6.5 grains. Each one of these is now cut into 150 pieces, each of which is beaten on an anvil until it is about an inch square. These 150 plates are interlaid with pieces of fine vellum about four inches square, and beaten until the gold is extended nearly to the size of the vellum leaves. Each leaf is then divided into four, interlaid with goldbeater's skin, and beaten out to the dimensions of the skin. Another similar division and beating finishes the operation, after which the leaves are placed in paper books ready for use. Research Gold-Beating
Elihu Burritt (also known as the learned blacksmith) was an American writer and anti-slavery campaigner. He was born in 1810 at New Britain, Connecticut and died in 1879. He was apprenticed to a blacksmith, but, conceiving a strong desire for knowledge, he began to read English literature, and with great diligence and perseverance at length acquired proficiency not only in the ancient, but also most of the modern languages of Europe. He afterwards came into public notice as a lecturer on behalf of temperance, the abolition of slavery and war, etc, and In 1842 he established the 'Christian Citizen' in the interests of international peace and the abolition of slavery. In 1848 the first International Peace Congress was held under his guidance at Brussels. In 1865 he was consular agent at Birmingham. In 1868 he returned to live on his farm in America, and died March 7, 1879. His best-known writings are Sparks from the Anvil; Thoughts and Things at Home and Abroad; Chips from Many Blocks; etc. Research Elihu Burritt
The auditory ossicles (the incus, malleus, and stapes) are the bones of the middle ear. The incus is shaped like an anvil. The malleus is shaped like a hammer and the stapes is shaped like a stirrup. They are the smallest bones in the human body. The three bones are connected to each other by hinges and act as mechanical levers to carry and push the vibrations of the ear drum forward to the flexible membrane of the oval window. When sound waves cause the tympanic membrane to vibrate, the vibrations move the malleus, which in turn moves the incus. The incus moves the stapes which is attached to the oval window. The sound is then passed to the inner ear. The leverage of the middle ear bones increases the intensity of the sound wave by five decibels before the wave is funneled toward the oval window. Research Auditory Ossicles
The ear is the organ used for hearing. It converts sound into electrical impulses that are fed to the brain. The external ear is composed of the auricle (the pinna), and the auditory canal (the meatus auditorius externus). The Pinna or auricle surrounds the entrance to the auditory canal. It consists of cartilage covered by skin, with small muscles connecting it to the scalp. At the base of the ear is a fleshy lobe. The meatus auditorius is a canal about three centimeters long in the adult, partly bony and partly cartilaginous, leading from the pinna of the ear to the drum. The lining cells secrete the waxy substance found in the canal. In young children the canal is much shorter. The ear drum (tympanic membrane) is a thin oval-shaped membrane, inserted into a groove around the auditory canal. Normally it is white, glistening and somewhat transparent, so that some of the structures of the middle ear are partly visible when viewed through an auroscope. It separates the auditory canal from the middle ear.
The Tympanum or middle ear is a cavity within the temporal bone. It contains several important structures, including three small bones which connect the drum with the internal ear; they are the malleus or hammer, the incus or anvil, and the stapes or stirrupbone. They transmit the vibrations of sound waves to the inner ear. The Eustachian Tube is a channel of communication between the tympanum and the upper part of the pharynx. It admits air from the throat to the tympanum and so maintains an equal pressure on both sides of the drum. The Labyrinth or internal ear is a series of chambers through the petrous bone, comprising the vestibule, a three-cornered cavity within the tympanum; the semicircular canals communicating with the vestibule; and the cochlea, which makes two and a half turns around an axis called the modiolus. The human ear is capable of detecting sounds in the frequency range 20 hz to 20 khz, approximately. Research Ear
Operation Anvil (later known as Operation Dragoon) was the codename of the Allied invasion of southern France on August the 15th 1944 during the Second World War. The landing was originally discussed as a preliminary to Operation Overlord, but the British opposed the plan and Operation Anvil became a follow-up mounted by four American and three Free French divisions. The American Seventh Army and the French First Army landed in a combined sea and airborne assault between Toulon and Cannes, and met little resistance and quickly linked up with General Patton's forces in Dijon. Research Operation Anvil
A rifle is a firearm with spiral, parallel grooves cut into the bore to impart spin in the projectile giving flight stability to the projectile, and thus greatly improves the accuracy with which the projectile follows the aim.
Rifled firearms existed in the Middle Ages, but didn't appear in wars until about the middle of the 17th century. They were not introduced into the British army until 1800, when the Baker rifle was issued. The problem encountered by early rifles was of manufacturing bullets which would fit the barrel tightly. The first improvement of any consequence was devised by Delvigne, a French officer, in 1826. At the breech end of the rifle was a chamber, of smaller diameter than the bore, to receive the charge of powder. But this did not prove satisfactory in practice. Delvigne suggested, further, the first cylindro-conical bullet. At that time, however, this was found not be the answer. Meanwhile the Brunswick rifle had succeeded the Baker. It had two grooves, and fired a spherical projectile with a narrow projecting ring or ' belt' around it, which was meant to take the grooving. It was necessary to place the bullet in a particular position in loading, so that the belt should touch the bore all round, and this caused considerable delay in loading. The Brunswick rifle also fouled very quickly, and was not accurate beyond 365 metres.
The first person to hit on the idea of causing the expansion of the bullet by the force of the explosion of the charge, and thus abolishing the crude method of expanding it by blows from the ramrod, was the English gun-maker Greener. In 1836 he proposed an egg-shaped bullet with an opening at one end, into which a separate taper plug entered. The explosion of the powder drove the plug into the bullet, and so caused it to expand at the base and fill the grooves. This principle was applied by Delvigne to an elongated bullet with a hollow base in 1841. the French war ministry adopted Thouvenin's 'tige' rifle in which a 'tige,' or pillar, served as a kind of anvil on which to crush out the bullet into the grooves by blows from the ramrod. In 1847 CaptainMinie, of the French army, introduced an improvement in the bullet, into the hollow base of which he inserted a hemispherical iron cup, which being pushed up the cavity by the force of the explosion of the charge, improved its expansion. A rifle of the Minie pattern was used in the Kaffir war of 1851 and in the earlier part of the Crimean campaign. But in 1855 it was superseded by the Enfield rifle. This weapon was of two patterns, the long and the short; the former which was issued to the infantry of the line, had three grooves; the short rifle had five grooves, and a sword-bayonet. The original Enfield rifle fired a bullet without cup or plug in its base, but the Minie iron cup was afterwards added. This subsequently gave way to a boxwood plug, which again was superseded in 1863 by a plug of baked clay. The Lancaster rifle came into the field at about the same period as the Enfield. Instead of grooves, this rifle had a smooth, spiral, elliptical bore of increasing twist. It was adopted in 1855 for the sappers and miners. In 1858 an improved short Enfield rifle was issued to the rifle regiments and to sergeants of line infantry, as well as to the royal navy.
In 1853 Sir Joseph Whitworth invented a rifle of which the bore was hexagonal, and which could fire either cylindrical or hexagonal projectiles. But although it gave better results than the Enfield, it was not adopted by the War Office. The next great change in military rifles was the general adoption of breech-loading. As early as 1848 Prussia alone of all European nations had armed her troops with the breech-loading Dreyse Needle Fire Rifle, pattern 1841. In this rifle the bolt which closed the breech contained a needle, which, on a spring being released, pierced the paper cartridge-case containing the powder, and struck the detonating composition placed between it and the base of the bullet, so that the ignition of the charge took place between the powder and the bullet, the idea being to prevent any of the powder being driven up the barrel with the bullet, and thus igniting in a larger space, and consequently with reduced force. The effects produced by the Needle Fire Rifle in the Danish war of 1864 caused all nations to decide on adopting breech-loading firearms, and the Prussian successes against Austria in 1866 stimulated the movement. England and France were the first to adopt the system in 1866; they were followed by Russia, Denmark, Sweden and Belgium in 1867, and by Austria and Italy in 1868.
The French adopted a new rifle, the Chassepot, an improved needle fire rifle, with which a paper cartridge was used similar in principle to the Prussian. In England the Enfield rifles were converted into breech-loaders. Finally, Snider's pattern was accepted, and the converted Enfield became known as the Snider rifle. According to the means used for closing the breech, breech-loading firearms are divided into two main classes - the 'bolt' system and the ' block' system. The PrussianNeedle Fire Rifle was fitted with a bolt mechanism, as also was the Chassepot. the Snider was given a block breech action, and in England it was determined ultimately that a block breech action was preferable to a bolt action. In 1869 the committee recommended the adoption of a combination of the block-action breech mechanism, invented by Martini with Henry's barrel, and the rifle was christened the Martini-Henry. In this weapon the breech action was a block which, pivoting on its rear end, sank to admit the cartridge. The block was moved by means of a lever beneath the breech, the forward action of which caused it to sink, and then extracted the empty case of the previously fired cartridge. the backward movement of the lever pushed up the block, and thus closed the breech. Germany replaced the Needle Fire Rifle with the Mauser rifle in 1871; Italy which had armed her infantry with Carcano rifle of 1868, abandoned it for the Vetterli, also in 1871; Austria which had adopted the Werndl in 1868, modified it in 1873; in 1874 France discarded the Chassepot for the Gras; the Russian Berdan of 1871 was improved in pattern in 1880. All these rifles, except the Werndl, had a bolt breech action. The next great departure in the history of military rifles was the introduction of the magazine. The idea of repeating firearms had been current in America since 1840, when Colt brought out his invention. His rifle was followed in 1860 by the Henry and the Spencer. In 1867 the Henry had been improved
renamed the Winchester. the effects of the Winchester in the hands of the Turks in their war with Russia of 1877 to 1878 showed the immense advantage of repeating firearms against an enemy armed with single-loading rifles. The earliest European repeating rifle was the Fruhwirth, with which Austria armed her gendarmerie in 1870. In 1878 the French supplied their marines with the Kropatschek magazine which had been adapted to the Gras rifle. The advantages of reducing the calibre of military rifles, and of using a lighter though comparatively longer bullet, were urged by Major Rubin of the Swiss army as early as 1883. the chief of these advantages are to increase the flatness of the trajectory, the range, the accuracy, and the penetration of the projectile, while recoil is diminished. Research Rifle
A file is a bar of cast-steel with small sharp-edged elevations on its surface called teeth, the use of which is to cut into or abrade metals, wood, ivory, horn, plastic etc.
Files are of various shapes, as flat, half-round, three-sided, square, or round, and are generally thickest in the middle, while their teeth are of various degrees of fineness and of different forms. A file whose teeth are in parallel ridges only is called single-cut or float-cut. Such are mostly used for brass and copper.
When there are two series of ridges crossing each other the file is double-cut, which is the file best suited for iron and steel.
Rasps are files which have isolated sharp teeth separated by comparatively wide spaces, and are used chiefly for soft materials such as wood, plastic and horn.
Each of these three classes of files is traditionally made in six different degrees of fineness, the coarsest being called rough, the next middle, followed by bastard, second-cut, smooth, and superfine or deadsmooth, each a degree finer than that which precedes it. Files were formerly made by the hand, The bionics, as the steel before it has teeth is called, were laid on the anvil and struck with the chisel, which rested obliquely on the blank, each blow raising a ridge or tooth. The strength of the blow depended on the hardness of the metal, and when one part is harder than another the workman altered his blows accordingly. When one side is covered with single cuts, if the file was to be double cut he added in the same manner a second series, crossing the others at a certain angle. In making fine files a good file-cutter would cut upwards of two hundred teeth within the space of an inch. The files, except those that are used for soft substances, were then hardened by heating them to a cherry-red colour and then dipping them in water. They were then finished by scouring and rubbing over with olive-oil and turpentine.
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
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Abbreviations
Research Anvil
