John Richards, once a resident of this city, and likely the best
designer of wood-working machinery this country, if not the world,
ever saw, pointed out in some of his letters the true form for
constructing machine framing, and in a way that it had never been
forced on my mind before. As dozens, yes, hundreds, of new designs
have been brought out by machine tool makers and engine builders since
John Richards made a convert of me, without any one else, so far as I
know, having applied the principle in its broadest sense, I hope to
present the case to you in a material form, in the hope that it may be
more thoroughly appreciated.

The usual form of lathe and planer beds or frames is two side plates
and a lot of cross girts; their duty is to guide the carriages or
tables in straight lines and carry loads resisting bending and
torsional strains. If a designer desires to make his lathe frame
stronger than the other fellows, he thinks, if he thinks at all, that
he will put in more iron, rather than, as he ought to think, How shall
I distribute the iron so it will do the most good?

In illustration of this peculiar way of doing things, which is not
wholly confined to machine designers, I should like to relate a story,
and as I had to carry the large end of the joke, it may do for me to
tell it.

While occupying a prominent position, and yet compelled to carry my
dinner, my wife thought the common dinner pail, with which you are
probably familiar (by sight, of course), was not quite the thing for a
professor (even by brevet) to be seen carrying through the streets. So
she interviewed the tinsmith to see if he could not get up something a