APPLIED MECHANICS.
The various applications of the natural forces to the requirements of man are included under the general term of Technics, which is divided into two main subdivisions—namely, Chemical Technics and Mechanical Technics.
While it is the province of Agriculture and of Forestry, as 1 as of Mining, to gain from nature the substances available for useful require ments, and, besides utilizing its stores, to direct its processes for the pur pose of more fruitful production, the chief objects of Technics are the con version of the crude products thus obtained into articles of use, and the transportation and distribution of these articles.
Like all other branches of science, which by reason of the increasing mass and variety of material subdivide and ramify in various directions, the general field of Technics is divided into the specific departments of Tech nology and Technics proper, the former relating to the science of indus trial processes, the latter to their practical application.
Chemical Technics embraces the various means and processes by which raw materials are converted into available condition by chemical action, thus constituting the department of Applied Chemistry.
Mechanical Technics deals with the means and appliances by which such crude products are fabricated into useful forms and transported from place to place, thus constituting the department of Applied Mechanics.
To a material extent all the methods by which the nascent products of nature are primarily obtained include in varying degrees the elements of both Chemical and Mechanical Technics. Various functions of all these methods are effected to the best advantage by the application of mechan ical means, and such mechanisms may properly be included in a consid eration of the subject of Applied Mechanics. The present treatise, how ever, is restricted to a review of typical mechanisms whose operations are purely mechanical, and whose functions are wholly independent of chem ical processes.
Generally considered, the department of Applied Mechanics includes also the Technics of Engineering and Construction. These two branches,
which deal chiefly with static force, may properly be embraced under the term " Static Technics," while that portion of Applied Mechanics which vol.. 11.-2 17 deals primarily with force in motion may be designated "Dynamic Technics." Latterly, all the different branches of Mechanics have been organized into a body of science termed Kinematics, which correlates the various phenomena of Mechanics and explains the relations between the specific motion and the form of construction requisite for the production of that motion. Apart, however, from these features of the subject, there yet remains that department of Applied Mechanics which deals primarily with the aims of fabrication, and with the means and appliances by which the various technical purposes are subserved.
It has, furthermore, become customary, mainly in view of the historic development of the subject, to assign to the Technics of Construction and Engineering an entirely separate position between Architecture and Me chanical Technics, and thus the latter subject, excluding the distinct branches of Naval and Military Technics as non-industrial, is limited to a definite field which may be specified as embracing the application of mechanical force to the change of shape, size, surface, temperature, configuration, and position of material substances. In producing these changes this force is brought into activity by means of appliances or tools.
The fabrication of tools is one of the most salient of the features that distinguish man from the rest of animate nature; for though many mem bers of the brute creation utilize various organs as tools, and though apes are known to use stones as missiles and limbs of trees as weapons, yet man is the only animal that actually fashions implements for specific require ments, and that utilizes them as auxiliary agents in accomplishing de sired ends.