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Cruder Construction: "King Cotton" furnished the impetus for a flourishing business in freight-ship construction. Usually smaller and cruder than the packets, freighters made up nearly 50 per cent of the American- Merchant Marine in the 1850's. The lion's share of the construction for this market went to the yards in Maine, making that state the center of American shipbuilding.
At that point lever escapement was able to make a cornel with these refinements for fine watches: it o ated with a double roller; the escape wheel blunt bent teeth, known as clubwheel te capable of providing improved locking and pulse surfaces; and the pallets were jeweled rubies to overcome extreme wear from frict Finally, when competition in the mass proc tion of inexpensive watches made it neces: to effect further economies, another kind of If escapement was developed known as the lever. It was unjeweled, operated on a sii roller, and was of cruder construction.
The cover was an in dustrial photograph by Margaret Bourke-White of th< construction of a great dam near Fort Peck, Montana, k the style for which, as a photographer for Fortune, she was noted. The opening picture story, however, focused not on the construction, but on the life of the builders oi the dam and their families in temporary cities in the desert. It was not what the editors had assigned, and they wrote, by way of introduction:
What the Editors expected—for use in some later issue-were construction pictures as only Bourke-White can take them. What the Editors got was a human document of frontier life which, to them at least, was a revelation. |
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