CHAPTER VII - EXERTING FORCES TOO GREAT FOR HUMAN POWER, AND EXECUTING OPERATIONS TOO DELICATE FOR HUMAN TOUCH

Summary

(40.) It requires some skill and a considerable apparatus to enable many men to exert their whole force at a given point, and when this number amounts to hundreds or to thousands, additional difficulties present themselves. If ten thousand men were hired to act simultaneously, it would be exceedingly difficult to discover whether each exerted his whole force, and consequently, to be assured that each man did the duty for which he was paid. And if still larger bodies of men or animals were necessary, not only would the difficulty of directing them become greater, but the expense would increase from the necessity of transporting food for their subsistence.

The difficulty of enabling a large number of men to exert their force at the same instant of time has been almost obviated by the use of sound. The whistle of the boatswain occasionally performs this service; and in removing, by manual force, the vast mass of granite, weighing above 1400 tons, on which the equestrian figure of Peter the Great is placed at St. Petersburgh, a drummer was always stationed on its summit to give the signal for the united eiforts of the workmen.

An interesting discovery was made a few years since, by Champollion, of an ancient Egyptian drawing, in which a multitude of men appeared harnessed to a huge block of stone, on the top of which stood a single individual with his hands raised above his head, apparently in the act of clapping them, for the same purpose of insuring the exertion of their combined force at the same moment of time.