Report the result to the class and ask the pupils who disagreed with the class decision on the invention which deserves first place to give their reasons for their choice for first place. Keep a record of the class vote for later use.

ADDITIONAL READINGS. 1. "Industry's Greatest Asset Steel," W. J. Showalter, in National Geographic Magazine, 32:121-156. 2. "Foundations of Lofty Buildings," W. Skinner, in Century Magazine, 55:771-781. 3. "Wright Brothers," M. H. Wade, Light Bringers, 112–141. 4. "Manhattan," Walt Whitman. 5. "The Wright Brothers' Aeroplane," O. Wright and W. Wright, in C. L. Barstow's Progress of a United People, 125-134. 6. "When Reapers Were New," A. H. Sanford, Story of Agriculture in the United States, 144-158. 7. “Airships and Flying Machines," A. Williams, How It Works, 456-474. 8. "The Conquest of the Air," H. Thompson, Age of Invention, 220-245. 9. "Making the World's Agricultural Machinery," B. J. Hendrick, Age of Big Business, 149–169.

CLASS-LIBRARY READINGS

INVENTIONS OF MODERN MEN

I. "The Story of the Heavy-Gun Pointer," G. Flint, in Vocational Reader, 157-161.

2. “Eli Whitney, Inventor of the Cotton Gin,” Makers of Our History, 123-134.

3. "Cyrus Hall McCormick, Inventor of the Reaper,” ibid., 254–265. 4. "The Story in the Talking Machine," Wonder Book of Knowl

edge, 43-49.

5. "The Story in Elevators and Escalators," ibid., 232–241.

6. "The Reaper," Stories of Useful Inventions, 85-96.

7. "The Most Ingenious of Americans," Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, 3: 1083-1084.

8. "The Machines that Lift You Upstairs," ibid., 3: 1132-1134. 9. "Harnessing Explosions - the Story of the Gas Engine," ibid., 4: 1403-1406.

10. "How Cyrus McCormick Rode to Fame on a Reaper," ibid.,

5: 2095.

II. "Six Principles that Rule All Machines," ibid., 5: 2187-2190.

I 2. How the Phonograph Was Taught to Talk," ibid., 7: 2774–2776. 13. "Tools, the Builders of Civilization," ibid., 8: 3514-3516. 14. "The Story of Architecture," World Book, 1: 322-329.

15. "American Inventors and Inventions," Book of Knowledge. 9: 2667–

2670.

Much of the fascination of the story of Robinson Crusoe lies in the ingenious way in which he made things to satisfy his wants. This selection describes many of his achievements. Read it through first in order to find the different articles he made; read it again for details; then see if you can answer the questions at the end.

I now began to make such articles as I found I most wanted, particularly a chair and a table, for without these I was not able to enjoy the few comforts I had in the world; I could not write, or eat, or do several things with so much pleasure without a table, so I went to work. I had never handled a tool in my life; and yet in time, by labor, application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have made, especially if I had had tools. I made abundance of things, even without tools; and some with no more tools than an adze and a hatchet, which perhaps were never made that way before.

For example, if I wanted a board, I had no other way but to cut down a tree, set it on an edge before me, and hew it flat on either side with an axe, till I had brought it to be as thin as a plank, and then dab it smooth with an adze. By this method, it is true, I could make but one board of a whole tree, but this I had no remedy for but patience; my time or

labor was little worth, and so it was as well employed one way as another.

Within doors, when it rained and I could not go out, I found employment, diverting myself with talking to my parrot, and teaching him to speak. I quickly taught him to know his own name and at last to speak it out pretty loud, "Poll." This was the first word I ever heard spoken on the island by any mouth but my own.

I had long studied how to make myself some earthen vessels, which indeed I wanted very much. Considering the heat of the climate I did not doubt that if I could find any clay, I might botch up some such pot as might, being dried in the sun, be hard and strong enough to bear handling, and to hold anything that was dry and required to be kept so.

It would make the reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how many awkward ways I took; what odd, misshapen, ugly things I made; how many of them fell in and how many fell out, the clay not being stiff enough to bear its own weight; how many were cracked by the over violent heat of the sun, being set out too hastily; how many fell in pieces when moved; and, in a word, how, after having labored hard to find the clay, to dig it, to temper it, to bring it home and work it, I could not make above two large earthen ugly things (I cannot call them jars) in about two months' labor.

However, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted them gently, and set them down again in two great wicker baskets, which I had made on purpose for them, that they might not break. As between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I stuffed it full of straw. These two pots I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the meal, when the corn was bruised.

But all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to hold liquids and bear the fire, which none of these could do. It happened some time after, making a pretty large fire for cooking my meat, when I went to put the fire out after I had done with it, I found a broken piece

of one of my earthenware vessels in the fire, burnt as hard as a stone, and as red as a tile. I was agreeably surprised and said to myself that certainly they might be made to burn whole if they would burn broken.

This set me to study how to build my fire so as to make it burn some pots. I had no notion of a kiln, such as potters use; but I placed three large jars and two or three pots in a pile, one upon another, and placed my firewood all around it with a great heap of embers under them. I piled the fire with fresh fuel around the outside and upon the top, till I saw the pots in the inside red-hot quite through, and observed that they did not crack at all.

I let them stand in that heat about five or six hours, till I found one of them (though it did not crack) begin to melt. So I slaked my fire gradually, till the pots began to lose the red color; and watching them all night, that I might not let the fire die too fast, in the morning I had three very good, I will not say handsome, jars, and two other earthen pots, as hard burnt as could be desired.

After this experiment I need not say that I wanted no sort of earthenware for my use; but I must say, as to the shapes of them, they were very indifferent, as any one may suppose, as I had no way of making them but as children make dirt pies.

No joy at an article of so mean a nature was ever equal to mine, when I found I had made an earthen pot that would bear the fire; and I had hardly patience to wait till they were cold, before I set one on the fire again, with some water in it, to boil me some meat, which it did admirably well.

My next concern was to get a stone mortar in which to stamp or beat corn. To supply this want I was at a great loss; for I was perfectly unqualified to serve as a stone-cutter; neither had I any tools to go about the task.

I spent many a day to find a great stone big enough to cut hollow and make fit for a mortar, but could find none at all, except what was in the solid rock, and which I had no

way to dig or cut out; nor, indeed, were the rocks in the island of sufficient hardness, as they were all of a sandy crumbling stone, which would neither bear the weight of a heavy pestle, nor would break the corn without filling it with sand.

So after a great deal of time lost in searching for a stone, I gave it up, and resolved to look for a great block of hard wood, which I found indeed much easier. Getting one as big as I had strength to move, I rounded it, and formed it on the outside with my axe and hatchet. Then, with the help of the fire and infinite labor, I made a hollow place in it as the Indians in Brazil make their canoes. After this I made a great heavy pestle, or beater, of the wood called ironwood; and this I prepared and laid by until I had my next crop of corn, when I proposed to myself to grind, or rather pound, my corn into meal to make my bread.

My next difficulty was to make a sieve to separate my meal from the bran and the husk. Here I was at a full stop for many months, but at last I remembered that I had among the seamen's clothes which were saved out of the ship some neckcloths of calico or muslin, and with some pieces of these I made three small sieves.

The baking was the next to be considered. For an oven I was indeed puzzled. At length I made some earthen vessels, very broad but not deep; that is to say, about two feet in diameter, and not above nine inches deep. These I burned in the fire and laid them by. When I wanted to bake, I made a great fire upon my hearth, which I had paved with some square tiles of my own making and burning also. When the firewood was burned into embers, or live coals, I drew them forward upon the hearth, so as to cover it all over, and there let them lie till the hearth was very hot.

Then, sweeping away all the embers, I set down my loaf or loaves and, covering them with the earthen pot, drew the embers all around the outside of the pot to keep in and add to the heat. Thus, as well as in the best oven in the world, I baked my barley loaves, and became, in a little time, a good