Pioneers on new ground have a great liability to generalize and jump at conclusions, and the necessary exact work and detail must, to a great extent, be left to those who follow on tracks already roughly marked out.
Of the special trades which have come under my observation, I have only had time to mention a very few. It appears to me that there are very few manufacturing processes of any kind which could not be simplified by the use of gas as a fuel, from the production of electric light apparatus to the manufacture of explosives, cotton stockings, beer, catgut, glue, umbrellas, ink, fish-hook, medals, stained glass windows, brushes, and other trades equally various, which come daily under my own notice.
A man was received into the Laborisière Hospital, Paris, the other day, with a yard of rope hanging from his mouth. Traction upon the cord revealed a section of clothes line measuring eight feet. He had been surprised in an attempt at suicide and had tried to conceal his design by swallowing the cord. He lived, of course--they generally do.
A certain number of the readers of this journal are occupied with photography, and all assuredly are interested in this marvelous art, whose progress is so remarkable. So it has seemed to us that it would be of interest to treat of a question that is the order of the day. We desire to speak of those photographic apparatus called instantaneous shutters.
Numerous apparatus of this kind have been proposed to the public, and several even have been described in this journal, but we have to state that, despite the success in certain cases, none of them has proved remarkable for its qualities and superiority. This is due, we believe, to the fact that inventors, while showing arrangements that were often ingenious, have not always taken into account the end that the shutter is to subserve, and the qualities that it must possess in order to attain such end.
In face of the progress made by extra rapid dry processes, the question of shutters has become the most important, since cabinet-making, optics, and photographic chemistry give us apparatus, objectives, and products which, although they will doubtless be improved upon, satisfy for the present all our needs.