[Illustration:  FIG. 2.]

In the automatic reeling machine this is the method employed for regulating the supply of cocoons.  The counterweight being suitably adjusted, the lever falls when the thread has become fine enough to need another cocoon.  The stop, T, and the lever serve as two parts of an electric contact, so that when they touch each other a circuit is completed, which trips a trigger and sets in motion the feed apparatus by which a new cocoon is added.  In practice the two drums or pulleys are mounted on the same shaft, D (Fig. 1), difference of winding speed being obtained by making them of slightly different diameters.

The lever is mounted as a horizontal pendulum, and the less or greater stress required according to the size to be reeled is obtained by inclining its axis to a less or greater degree from the vertical.  An arrangement is also adopted by which the strains existing in the thread when it arrives at the first drum are neutralized, so far as their effect upon the lever is concerned.  This is accomplished by simply placing upon the lever an extra guide pulley, L¹, upon the side opposite to that which corresponds to the guide shown in the diagram, Fig. 2.

An electric contact is closed by a slight movement of the lever whenever the thread requires a new filament of cocoon, and broken again when the thread has been properly strengthened.  It is evident that a delicate faller movement might be employed to set the feed mechanism in motion instead of the electric circuit, but, under the circumstances, as the motion is very slight and without force, being, in fact, comparable to the swinging of the beam of a balance through the space of about the sixteenth of an inch, it is simpler to use a contact.

The actual work of supplying the cocoons to the running thread is performed as follows:  The cleaned cocoons are put into what is called the feeding basin, B1 (Fig. 1), a receptacle placed alongside of the ordinary reeling basin, B, of a filature.  A circular elevator, E, into which the cocoons are charged by a slight current of water, lifts them over one corner of the reeling basin and drops them one by one through an aperture in a plate about six inches above the water of the reeling basin.

The end of the filament having been attached to a peg above the elevator, it happens that when a cocoon has been brought into the corner of the reeling basin, the filament is strung from it to the edge of the hole in the plate in such a position as to be readily seized by a mechanical finger, K (Fig. 3), attached to a truck arranged to run backward and forward along one side of the basin.  This finger is mounted on an axis, and has a tang projecting at right angles to the side of the basin, so that the whole is in the form of a bell crank mounted on the truck.

[Illustration:  FIG. 3.]