Life, 1916-04-27 · page 3 of 44
Life — April 27, 1916 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is **not a political cartoon or satire**—it's a straightforward advertisement for Timken Roller Bearings, published in *Life* magazine (page 783). The page displays technical diagrams of automobile bearing components: wheel hubs, transmission gears, differentials, and pinion shafts. The accompanying text explains where bearings are used in vehicles and why Timken bearings specifically perform well under stress. The headline "Where?" poses a rhetorical question answered by the detailed technical explanation: Timken bearings belong in critical automotive locations where friction and load are heaviest. The advertisement emphasizes durability and precision engineering as selling points. This represents typical early-20th-century industrial advertising, using educational content about mechanical components to build brand credibility among vehicle owners and mechanics.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Any good anti-friction bearing will give satisfactory service at some place in a motor car—such as the clutch, the stem gear of the transmission, the fan shaft of the motor or the steering gear. The question of real importance to car owners is, “ What bearings gi In the wheel hubs—front and rear— there is always terrific pressure on the bearings, most of the time from two di- rections at once. The whole weight of the car presses steadily down from above, And, in addition, it presses sidewise when you round a corner or when the wheels fall into ruts or skid on a slip- pery pavement. In the rear axle the power of the en- gine is delivered to the wheels by means of a pinion which meshes with the big hevel driving gear. Because the teeth of the pinion and driving gear operate at right angles, the pinion is constantly try- ing to climb on the teeth of the driving gear, and this gear in turn has a tendency to back away from the pinion. Unless the bearings on the pinion shaft are able to hold these gears in accurate mesh and resist the destructive forces of load and the best servic the heaviest loads and the s at the places where bearings get crest jolts?” end-thrust, they wear out and go to pieces, In the transmission and at the differ- ential the bearings must also resist the destructive forces of radial load and end-thrust. While the stresses and shocks these points are not as the axle spindles and pin ally essential fully as impor § in its effects can nission gears and axle shafts will drop out of teue alignment These hard jobs are the very ones for which en Bearings are designed and built. Their ical form and tapered rollers enable them to resist, to the uttermost, the destructive forces that cause wear, and when wear comes its effect be instantly corrected by a simple adjust- It is not simply that Timken Bearings are used by so many well-known car builders that is important, but that they are used at the points of hard service. Send for, booklet J-7, "The Companies Tim- ken Keeps.” and learn, not only WHO. uses Timken Bearings but WHERE they are used. THE TIMKEN ROLLER BEARING COMPANY Canton, Ohio THE TIMKEN-DETROIT AXLE COMPANY Detroit, Michigan ROLLER BEARINGS There are many sizes of Timken Bearings. but only one quality. comicbooks.com