436

EMBROIDERY.

account of this remarkable invention will therefore be acceptable to many readers. Itwas displayed at the national exposition of the products of industry in Paris for 1834, andwas unquestionably the object which stood highest in public esteem ; for whether at-restor in motion, it was always surrounded with a crowd of curious visiters, admiring thefigures which it had formed, or inspecting its movements and investigating its mechanism.130 needles were occupied in copying the same pattern with perfect regularity, all set inmotion by one person.

Several of these machines are now mounted in France, Germany, and Switzerland .I have seen one factory in Manchester, where a great many of them are doing beautifulwork.

The price of a machine having 130 needles, and of consequence 260 pincers or fingersand thumbs to lay hold of them, is 5000 francs, or 2001. sterling; and it is estimated todo daily the work of 15 expert hand embroiderers, employed upon the ordinary frame. Itrequires merely the labor of one grown-up person, and two assistant children. Theoperative must be well taught to use the machine, for he has many things to attend to;with the one hand he traces out, or rather follows the design with the point of the pan-tograph ; with the other he turns a handle to plant and pull all the needles, which areseized by pincers and moved along by carriages, approaching to and receding from theweb, rolling all the time along an iron railway; lastly, by means of two pedals, uponwhich he presses alternately with the one foot and the other, he opens the 130 pincersof the first carriage, which ought to give up the needles after planting them in the stuff,and he shuts with the same pressure the 130 pincers of the second carriage, which is toreceive the needles, to draw them from the other side, and to bring them back again.The children have nothing else to do than to change the needles when all their threadsare used, and to see that no needle misses its pincers.

This machine deserves particular attention, because it is no less remarkable for thehappy arrangement of its parts, than for the effects which it produces. It may be descri-bed under four heads: 1. the structure of the frame; 2. the disposition of the web; 3. thearrangement of the carriages; and 4. the construction of the pincers.

1. The structure of the frame. It is composed of cast-iron, and is very massive.Fig. 371 exhibits a front elevation of it. The length of the machine dependsupon the number of pincers to be worked. The model at the exposition had 260pincers, and was 2 metres and a half (about 100 inches or 8 feet 4 inches English )long. The figure here given has been shortened considerably, but the other propor-tions are not disturbed. The breadth of the frame ought to be the same for every ma-chine, whether it be long or short, for it is the breadth which determines the length ofthe thread to be put into the needles, and there is an advantage in giving it the fullbreadth of the model machine, fully 100 inches, so that the needles may carry a thread atleast 40 inehes long.

Disposition of the piece, to he embroidered. —We have already stated that the pincerswhich hold the needles always present themselves opposite to the same point, and that inconsequence they would continually pass oackwards and forwards through the same hole,but the piece is displaced with sufficient precision to bring opposite the tips progressivelyof the needles, every point upon which they are to work a design, such as a flower.

The piece is strained perpendicularly upon a large rectangular frame, whosesides are visible in fig. 371; namely, the two vertical sides at f f, and the two horizontasides, the upper and lower at f' f". We see also in the figure two long wooden rollersG and g, whose ends, mounted with iron studs, are supported upon the sides f of theframe, so as to turn freely. These form a system of beams upon which the piece des-tined to receive the embroidery, is wound and kept vertically stretched to a proper degree,for each of these beams bears upon its end a small ratchet wheel g, g ; the teeth of onof them being inclined in the opposite direction to those of the other. Besides this s 7 st ®,.of lower beams, there is another of two upper beams, which is however but imperfec .seen in the figure, on account of the interference of other parts in this view of thechine. One of these systems presents the web to the inferior needles, and the ° t “ er pthe upper needles. As the two beams are not in the same vertical plane, the pla n .® _the web would be presented obliquely to the needles were it not for a straight bar ol i ’round whose edge the cloth passes, and which renders it vertical. The piece is keptension crosswise by small brass templets, to which the strings g" are attached,, an'which it is pulled towards the sides of the frame f. It remains to show by vhut _ous means this frame may be shifted in every possible direction. M. Heilmann■ployed for this purpose the pantograph which draughtsmen use for reducing or enlarg =>their plans in determinate proportions. ~ t are

b b'fb" (fig- 371) represents a parallelogram of which the four angles bb,f ’jointed in such a way that they may become very acute or very obtuse at pl ^ r0 -while the sides of course continue of the same length j the sides b, b' and b, b are p ^longed, the one to the point d, and the other to the noint c, and these points c