respectable of blacksmiths forged his wire
we may presume that he did not draw it. It
is supposed that wire-drawing first
commenced at Nürnberg about five centuries
ago; the wire-smiths then changing their
designation to wire-drawers. The delicate
gold-work of Nürnberg was probably the
first to which the improvement was applied;
but copper and brass, iron and steel,
afterwards shared in the advantage; and the
French and English wire-smiths became also
in due time wire-drawers.

The making of wire is not only a simple
but an instructive process; for it shows that
cold iron is more like dough than we are in
the habit of supposing. It can be squeezed
and driven about, until that which was
a thick rod becomes a thin wire; as a
bulky lump of dough can be squeezed out
into a long roll. The iron is rolled hot into
rods before it reaches the wire-drawer. He
provides himself with hard steel plates,
pierced with holes varying from the size of
the original rod, down to that ot the smallest
wire. One end of a rod is tapered, pulled
through a hole, and grasped by nippers on
the other side; and then steam or any other
power draws the whole rod forcibly through;
necessarily reducing the thickness, and at the
same time increasing the length. Then it is
dragged through the next smaller hole, and
through the next, and through the next,
until it has attained the required degree of
dainty tenuity; the same wire may decrease
from one-third to one-fiftieth of an inch in
thickness, but it requires many gradations
in reduction, and many intermediate annealings
to prevent it from becoming too brittle.
It is not merely iron that is so treated;
any metal possessing a moderate degree of
ductility can be attenuated by drawing as
well as by hammering or melting, varied in
degree, and in the manner in which the
process is conducted. Steel, we know, is
made into wire for needles and fish-hooks,
and a vast number of other articles; brass
is made into wire for pins, among a countless
host of other applications; copper is made
into wire for electric telegraphs, bell-hanging
and scientific apparatus; gold and silver are
made into wire for ornaments; platinum is
made into wire for philosophers and chemists.

A rare list of names and numbers is met
with in relation to iron wire. There is in
the first place, Iron Wire, plainly so called,
varying in numerical designation according
to its thickness, and sold in bundles weighing
sixty-three pounds each. There is, in the
second place, Best Best Iron Wire—a tautology
which may be excused so long as we
talk about Baden Baden; this has numbers
similar to the former, and it is sold in
bundles of the same weight, but is slightly
higher in price. There is, in the next place,
Best Selected Charcoal Wire, a little
advanced again in price: and there is Card
Annealed and Bright Iron Wire, of larger
diameter, and much higher price; but we
need not enter into these trade secrets. Let
us be content to know that the wires of
various metals, and of greatly varied sizes,
find their way into the hands of artificers
innumerable, who fashion them into needles,
bodkins, pins, hooks and eyes, fish-hooks,
button rings, hair pins, card-teeth, wire-
brushes, brush-wires, spiral springs, bonnet
stiffeners, and a greater number of articles
than we can here afford to enumerate.

As unity is strength, so do many wires
bring their strength to bear upon one object
when they are twisted; and thus will a rope
of twenty wires often render braver service
than twenty ropes working separately. This
twisting of wires around each other is a
work not differing much in principle from
the making of hempen cables, hawsers, ropes,
cords, lines, and twines; each wire is a
component element of the group; and it is only
because the metal wire is stiffer than the
hempen yarn, that any more elaborate
manufacturing machinery becomes necessary.

The useful purposes to which wire rope, and
cord, and string, are now applied are
surprisingly numerous. Window-sash lines,
hothouse cords, lightning conductors, picture-frame
cord, clock cord, tent ropes, clothes
lines—all are gradually travelling from the
hempen region to the wire region. The wire-workers
stoutly assert that their favourite
material is cheaper, more durable, little less
flexible, and much less bulky than hempen
cords. And, instead of a single wire for fences,
railway signal cord, and the like, a much
stronger line is produced by a strand or
twisted cord of smaller wires. The makers
tell us that a wire rope one inch in
circumference, and weighing one pound per fathom,
will bear as great a strain, and render as
much useful service as a hempen rope two
inches and three-quarters in circumference,
and weighing two pounds per fathom: this
being the ratio maintained up to greater
sizes: a four inch wire-rope having as much
strength as a ten-inch hempen rope. Is it
not wonderful that a wire rope of four inches
circumference, or only an inch and a
quarter in thickness, will bear a weight of
thirty tons, more than sixty thousand
pounds, before it will break? On one
occasion the artillery officers at Woolwich
spliced an eight-inch hempen cable to a wire
rope three inches and a half in circumference;
they pulled and stretched, and pulled and
stretched again, until one of the two broke,
—it was the hempen cable that gave way,
leaving the wire rope as sound as at first.

Landsmen know little of the difference
between standing-rigging and running-
rigging on shipboards; but it may be easily
understood as referring—on the one hand,
to ropes which are fixed in definite positions
in a ship, and on the other to ropes which
have to be hauled in, and hauled out, hauled up,
and hauled down, during the daily working