Читать книгу Inventors at Work, with Chapters on Discovery - George Iles - Страница 77

Table of Contents

Let the aeronaut continue his wistful and envious gaze at the birds in the sky while we turn our attention to mother earth, there to note how every day trade surrounds us with further illustrations of the law of size, of the gains which may attend bigness. We enter a department store, displaying a varied stock of foods, clothing, shoes, furniture, and so on. As we cast our eyes about its counters, shelves, and floor we see cans of vegetables, fruit, and fish; jars of olives and vinegar; boxes of rice, soap and crackers; paper sacks of flour and meal. Outside the door are piled kegs, barrels, and packing cases. Plainly the cost of paper, glass, tin, and lumber for packages must levy a large tax on retailing. Once more is recalled our old lesson with the inch-cubes; the bigger a jar, box, or sack, the less material it needs in proportion to its capacity. Wholesale packers of merchandise save money as they form packages of the largest size. The contents of each box, crate, and sack tell the familiar story once again. The coffee is ground from the bean that it may be readily infused in the coffee-pot; wheat is reduced to flour, oats to fine meal, that they may be quickly cooked; sugar is crushed that it may rapidly dissolve in the tea cup. This very task began long ago with the mastication of food by the teeth, diminishing the size of morsels while moistening them for digestion before they reached the stomach.