Issue 7

THE CHAIRMAN, inviting discussion, said that the information given in the paper was of the type which was not found in text books, and that type of information was always most valuable.

My subject is Some Lessons from Practical Experience, with special reference to Structural Work on Railways, and is intended chiefly for the younger members of the Institution. I am at a loss to know who is responsible for the title, the Literature Committee, or our very energetic and esteemed Secretary. I certainly did not choose the title, or elect to read a paper on this or any other subject; and I have been heard so often during the past three or four years, as President or otherwise, that I should have felt more happy and comfortable to have kept in the background for some considerable time yet. Major James Petrie

The folowing simple graphical method for finding the stress distribution on a rectangle loaded eccentrically about one axis only, has not been seen by the writer in any text book. Several methods ha,ve recently been described in "Engineering News Record," but the folowing method seems simpler than any. W.A. Green

With a little more latitude in headroom the upper laterals may be conveniently connected in the piane of the upper chord. Both struts and diabsnals consist, of four-angle members with lacing, Fig. 5. The diagonals intersect on a pair of horizontal gusset plates, and their axial lines should whenever possible intersect the axis of the main upper chords at 0. This sometimes entails larger gusset plates, but the advantage quite outweighs the cost of the slight amount of extra maherial required. Professor J. Husband

THE factory stack appears to symbolise a certain aspect of industrialism better than any other architectural feature. From the factory stack there belches forth smoke, the smoke which makes both town and country black. In times to come it is likely that this blackening effect of the industrialism of the nineteenth century will be held to be its salient characteristic. The factory stack has character, it expresses a certain power, but has it also beauty? To this latter question we are now in a position to give an answer, and we can say what kind of a factory stack is beautiful and why, and what kind of a factory stack is ugly. A. Trystan Edwards