JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

I’ve made a number of posts here about the Found-poetry in indexes, title pages, instruction booklets, maps, and some other places. The moment may escape the poetry, but the poetry doesn’t escape the moment.

What?

That’s correct. Anyway, here’s another example from Scientific American for July 31, 1877, discussing and explaining the operating practices of the Vapart Disintegrator. We’re not discussing Star Trek here, just a crunching tearing shredding pulverizing way of grinding and/or destroying things.  The machine was big, and heavy, and torquey, and had a lot of big metallic teeth.  Here’s part of the description of how the device works. poemetized (all text original, spacing and punctuation not):

Disintegration Can Be Carried To Any Desired Extent 

I.

The material to be disintegrated

is fed 

in from the top and

falls 

upon the upper disk,

 and the quick rotation of the latter drives the material 

forcibly against the corresponding 

toothed 

segments.

II.

From here it falls down 

the inclined plates, 

and is delivered 

on the middle portion 

of the second disk,

where the same operation is repeated on it, 

as well as on the bottom disk,

whence it is delivered 

into a hopper

below. 

III.

The disintegration can be carried to any desired extent.