TERRA-COTTA, BRICK, ETC. 
123 
Bhick-Maktxg Machinery. 
Space and time botb prevent the coasideration of this sub- 
ject in detail, permitting only briet notices of some of the 
machines. 
The two principal types are the piston machines, and those 
for continuous delivery through dies of the size and form of 
the section of the brick. Of the formet- there was an example 
in the United States section, and of the latter in the Austrian. 
Gregg’s Excelsior Brick Press.—The celebrated brick 
press, invented by William L. Gregg, of Chicago, and which 
was honored with a prize meda.1 at Paris in 1867, was exhibited 
in model. This invention, which has been improved since 
1867, is competent to produce fifty-six bricks per minute, 01 
twenty-six thousand to thirty thousand bricks in a day of ten 
hours. And it is claimed by the iuventor that bricks of the 
lower grades can be made by this machine for less than one- 
half, and face or front bricks for about one-third the cost of 
making by band. 
The machine has two sets ot moulds, seven in each set, 
fixed upon a movable fable which passes back and forth undei 
a feeder through which clay is forced into the moulds. When 
tilled, the contents receive, in the movement, two distinct 
downward pressures from a wheel above. The bottoms ot 
the moulds are movable, and are attached to a piston which 
slides up on an inclined plane as the carriage or table rnoves 
out from under the wheel. This forces the bottom of each 
mould upward, carrying with it the brick, and when all are 
out of the moulds they are swept oft to one side, the empty 
moulds return under the hopper and the process is repeated. 
The clay is taken directly from the bank, and is prepared for 
the moulds by two grinding rollers. From the discharge of 
these Tollers it is elevated to the hopper of the machine. 
The rapidity of the production of the moulded clay bricks is 
not the only great advantage ot this System. The clay need 
not be so wet as is necessary for hand-moulding, and thus a 
great saving of time in drying results. 1 land-mude bricks as 
they come from the moulds must lose twenty-five per cent. of 
water by artificial drying or spontaneous evapoiation befoie it