MODELS AND MODEL-MAKING. The making of models is one of the oldest hobbies of mankind. The Egyp tians, for instance, believed that the human spirit, after death, was capable of travelling on land, but required assistance across the waters of the Nile, so they buried with their dead a model boat called a "Spirit Ship" to assist the soul across the river.
An early model dealing with steam is described by Hero of Alex andria, about A.D. 120. A reconstruction of this model is in the South Kensington museum, London, and consists of a boiler with a flat top supported by a frame over a wood fire. The top of the boiler has a hollow ball mounted between two pivots, one of which acts as a steam-pipe leading through the boiler. On opposite sides of the ball are two nozzles bent at right angles so that when steam is generated and passes into the atmosphere it causes the ball' to revolve rapidly. An early model-maker was the famous James Watt. He was born in 1736 and spent some of his early days in improving the model of a Newcomen engine which formed part of the Glasgow college equipment, from which experiment we gained the first practical steam engine. Later, William Murdock, who in vented gas lighting, joined James Watt, and the experimental locomotive which Murdock built in 1786 was probably the first model locomotive in existence. It had a cylinder a in. diameter.
Models are now commonly used for the demonstration of patents, inventions and experimental work both by engineering firms and private inventors. A few of the leading uses may be here enumerated. (I) For instructional purposes by schools, rail way companies, technical colleges, physical laboratories, Ad miralty, War Office and other Government departments. (2) For exhibition and publicity purposes, accurate reproductions to scale make it possible to show an article in precise detail within a lim ited space. Complete scale models are made for shipping com panies and for engineering exhibitions. Sectional models are often made to explain internal constructions and the operation of special details. Architects now make extensive use of models for housing details, town-planning, suggestions for extensions to fac tories, the laying out of estates and the rearrangement of trans port facilities. The law courts also make use of models in legal
disputes about ancient lights or disagreements about extensions to buildings. Railway and motor-car accidents are modelled to show the positions of the trains or vehicles involved. (3) Last, but not least, there is the use of models for the instruction and amusement of the young, in the form of model railways, model power boats, sailing yachts and other high-class toys, in which scientific data play an important part.
Model-making as a hobby is almost peculiar to the British Isles and has many enthusiastic adherents, as witness the annual ex hibitions held in London where amateur-made models are entered for competition. The production of scale models is almost ex clusively in the hands of very small groups of craftsmen, in some cases working in their own homes or in small workshops ; the chief reason being that very little machinery is required. The work de mands great personal skill, repetition being almost unknown.
The commercial production of models on a large scale is mainly carried on in England, America and Germany; several firms in these countries give employment to roo or 200 workpeople ; one British firm, established at Northampton, covers the whole range of model-making, from the mass production of popular models to elaborate scale models costing hundreds of pounds each.
In addition to firms who devote themselves exclusively to model-making as a business, many of the leading engineering and shipbuilding companies have established model or experimental workshops where the new ideas are worked out in miniature. The South Kensington science museum, and other institutions have workshops where exhibits are made and repaired.
One of the finest examples of recent model-making, to which hundreds of craftsmen and artists contributed, was the Queen's doll's house designed by Sir Edward Lutyens. It represents the amenities of domestic life in the present century and is built to a scale of I in. to the foot. When shown at the Wembley Exhibition, it was seen by hundreds of thousands. In centuries to come this model, protected under its glass cover, will visualise civilization at the outset of the loth century. (W. J. B.-L.)