Water Pressure Engines or Water Motors of a great variety as to useful details have been invented to take advantage of a natural head of water from falls wherever it exists, or from artificial accumulators or from street mains. They resemble steam engines, in that the water under pressure drives a piston in a cylinder somewhat in the manner of steam. The underlying principle of this class of machinery is the admission of water under pressure to a cylinder which moves the piston and is allowed to escape on the completion of the stroke. They are divided into two great classes, single and double acting engines, accordingly as the water is admitted to one side of the piston only, or to both sides alternately. Both kinds are provided with a regulator in the form of a turn-cock, weight, or spring valve to regulate and control the flow of water and to make it continuous. They are used for furnishing a limited amount of power for working small printing presses, dental engines, organs, sewing machines, and for many other purposes where a light motor is desired.
The nineteenth century has seen a revolution in baths and accompanying closets. However useful, luxurious, and magnificent may have been the patrician baths of ancient Rome, that system, which modern investigators have found to be so complete to a certain extent, was not nor ever has been in the possession of the poor. It is within the memory of many now living everywhere how wretched was the sanitary accommodations in every populous place a generation or two ago. Now, with the modern water distribution systems and cheap bathing apparatuses which can be brought to the homes of all, with plunger, valved siphon and valved and washout closets, air valve, liquid seal, pipe inlet, and valve seal traps, and with the flushing and other hydraulic cleaning systems for drains and cesspools, little excuse can be had for want of proper sanitary regulations in any intelligent community. The result of the adoption of these modern improvements in this direction on the health of the people has been to banish plagues, curtail epidemics, and prolong for years the average duration of human life.
How multiplied are the uses to which water is put, and how completely it is being subjected to the use of man!
Rivers and pipes have their metres, so that now the velocity and volume of rivers and streams are measured and controlled, and floods prevented. The supplies for cities and for families are estimated, measured and recorded as easily as are the supplies of illuminating gas, or the flow of food from elevators.
Among the minor, but very useful inventions, are water scoops for picking up water for a train while in motion, consisting of a curved open pipe on a car, the mouth of which strikes a current of water in an open trough between the tracks and picks up and deposits in a minute a car load of water for the engine. Nozzles to emit jets of great velocity, and ball nozzles terminating in a cup in which a ball is loosely seated, and which has the effect, as it is lifted by the jet, to spread it into an umbrella-shaped spray, are of great value at fires in quenching flame and smoke.
Next to pure air to breathe we need pure water to drink, and modern discoveries and inventions have done and are doing much to help us to both. Pasteur and others have discovered and explained the germ theory of disease and to what extent it is due to impure water. Inventors have produced filters, and there is a large class of that character which render the water pure as it enters the dwelling, and fit for all domestic purposes. A specimen of the latter class is one which is attached to the main service pipe as it enters from the street. The water is first led into a cylinder stored with coarse filtering material which clears the water of mud, sediment and coarser impurities, and then is conducted into a second cylinder provided with a mass of fine grained or powdered charcoal, or some other material which has the quality of not only arresting all remaining injurious ingredients, but destroys organisms, neutralises ammonia and other deleterious matter. From thence the water is returned to the service pipe and distributed through the house. The filter may be thoroughly cleansed by reversing the movement of the water, and carrying it off through a drain pipe until it runs clear and sweet, whereupon the water is turned in its normal course through the filter and house.
In a very recent report of General J. M. Wilson, Chief of Engineers, U.S.A., the subject of filtration of water, and especially of public water supplies in England, the United States, and on the Continent, is very thoroughly treated, and the conclusion arrived at there is that the system termed “the American,” or mechanical system, is the most successful one.
This consists, first, in leading the water into one or more reservoirs, then coagulating suspended matter in the water by the use of the sulphate of alumina, and then allowing the water to flow through a body of coarse sand, by which the coagulated aluminated matter is caught and held in the interstices of the sand, and the bacteria arrested. All objectionable matter is thus arrested by the surface portion of the sand body, which portion is from time to time scraped off, and the whole sand mass occasionally washed out by upward currents of water forced through the same.
By this system great rapidity of filtration is obtained, the rate being 120,000,000 gallons a day per acre.
The English system consists more in the use of extended and successive reservoirs or beds of sand alone, or aided by the use of the sulphate. This also is extensively used in many large cities.
“The march of the human mind is slow,” exclaimed Burke in his great speech on “Conciliation with the Colonies.” It was at the beginning of the last quarter of the 18th century that he was speaking, and he was referring to the slow discovery of the eternal laws of Providence as applied in the field of political administration to distant colonies. The same could then have been said of the march of the human mind in the realms of Nature. How slow had been the apprehension of the forces of that kind but silent Mother whose strong arms are ever ready to lift and carry the burdens of men whenever her aid is diligently sought! The voice of Burke was, however, hardly silent when the human mind suddenly awoke, and its march in the realms of government and of natural science since then cannot be regarded as slow.
More than fifteen centuries before Burke spoke, not only had Greece discovered the principles of political freedom for its citizens and its colonies, but the power of steam had been discovered, and experimental work been done with it.
Yet when the famous orator made his speech the Grecian experiment was a toy of Kings, and the steam engine had just developed from this toy into a mighty engine in the hands of Watt. The age of mechanical inventions had just commenced with the production of machines for spinning and weaving. And yet, in view of the rise of learning, and the appearance from time to time of mighty intellects in the highest walks of science, the growth of the mind in the line of useful machinery had indeed been strangely slow. “Learning” had revived in Italy in the 12th and 13th centuries and spread westward in the 14th. In the 15th, gunpowder and printing had been discovered, and Scaliger, the famous scholar of Italy, and Erasmus, the celebrated Dutch philosopher, were the leading restorers of ancient literature. Science then also revived, and Copernicus, the Pole, gave us the true theory of the solar system. The 16th century produced the great mathematicians and astronomers Tycho Brahe, the Dane, Cardan and Galileo, the illustrious Italians, and Kepler, the German astronomer, whose discovery of the laws of planetary motion supplemented the works of Copernicus and Galileo and illuminated the early years of the 17th century.
In the 17th century appeared Torricelli, the inventor of the barometer; Guericke, the German, inventor of the air pump; Fahrenheit, the inventor of the mercurial thermometer bearing his name; Leibnitz, eminent in every department of science and philosophy; Huygens, the great Dutch astronomer and philosopher; Pascal of France and Sir Isaac Newton of England, the worthy successors of Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus; and yet, with the exception of philosophical discoveries and a few experiments, the field of invention in the way of motor engines still remained practically closed. But slight as had been the discoveries and experiments referred to, they were the mine from which the inventions of subsequent times were quarried.
One of the earliest, if not the first of pneumatic machines, was the bellows. Its invention followed the discovery of fire and of metals. The bladders of animals suggested it, and their skins were substituted for the bladders.
The Egyptians have left a record of its use, thirty-four centuries ago, and its use has been continuous ever since.
Mention has been made of the cannon. It was probably the earliest attempt to obtain motive power from heat. The ball was driven out of an iron cylinder by the inflammatory power of powder. Let a piston be substituted for the cannon ball, as was suggested by Huygens in 1680 and by Papin in 1690, and the charge of powder so reduced that when it is exploded the piston will not be thrown entirely out of the cylinder, another small explosive charge introduced on the other side of the piston to force it back, or let the cylinder be vertical and the piston be driven back by gravity, means provided to permit the escape of the gas after it has done its work, and means to keep the cylinder cool, and we have the prototype of the modern heat engines. The gunpowder experiments of Huygens and Papin were not successful, but they were the progenitors of similar inventions made two centuries thereafter.
Jan Baptista van Helmont, a Flemish physician (1577-1644), was the first to apply the term, gas to the elastic fluids which resemble air in physical properties. Robert Boyle, the celebrated Irish scholar and scientist, and improver of the air pump, and Edwin Mariotte, the French physicist who was first to show that a feather and a coin will drop the same distance at the same time in a reservoir exhausted of air, were the independent discoverers of Boyle’s and Mariotte’s law of gases (1650-1676). This was that at any given temperature of a gas which is at rest its volume varies inversely with the pressure put upon it. It follows from this law that the density and tension, and therefore the expansive force of a gas, are proportional to the compressing force to which it is subjected. It is said that Abbé Hauteville, the son of a baker of Orleans, about 1678 proposed to raise water by a powder motor; and that in 1682 he described a machine based on the principle of the circulation of the blood, produced by the alternate expansion and contraction of the heart.
The production of heat by concentrating the rays of the sun, and for burning objects had been known from the time of Archimedes, and been repeated from time to time.
Thus stood this art at the close of the 17th century, and thus it remained until near the close of the 18th.
In England Murdock, the Cornish Steam Engineer, was the first to make and use coal gas for illuminating purposes, which he did in 1792 and 1798. Its utilisation for other practical purposes was then suggested.
Gas engines as motive powers were first described in the English patent to John Barber, in 1791, and then in one issued to Robert Street in 1794. Barber proposed to introduce a stream of carbonated hydrogen gas through one port, and a quantity of air at another, and explode them against the piston. Street proposed to drive up the piston by the expansive force of a heated gas, and anticipated many modern ideas. Phillipe Lebon, a French engineer, in 1799 and in 1801 anticipated in a theoretical way many ideas since successfully reduced to practice. He proposed to use coal gas to drive a piston, which in turn should move the shaft that worked the pumps which forced in the gas and air, and thus make the machine double-acting; to introduce a charge of inflammable gas mixed with sufficient air to ignite it; to compress the air and gas before they entered the motor cylinder; to introduce the charge alternately on each side of the piston; and he also suggested the use of the electric spark to fire the mixture. But Lebon was assassinated and did not live to work out his ideas.
At the very beginning of the 19th century John Dalton in England, 1801-1807, and Gay-Lussac in France began their investigations of gases and vapours. Dalton was not only the author of the atomic theory, but the discoverer of the leading ideas in the “Constitution of Mixed Gases.” These features were the diffusion of gases, the action of gases on each other in vacuum—the influence of different temperatures upon them, their chemical constituents and their relative specific gravity.
Gay-Lussac, continuing his investigations as to expansion of air and gases under increased temperatures, in 1807-10, established the law that when free from moisture they all dilate uniformly and to equal amounts for all equal increments of temperature. He also showed that the gases combine, as to volume, in simple proportions, and that several of them on being compounded contracted always in such simple proportions as one-half, one-third, or one-quarter, of their joint bulk. By these laws all forms of engines which were made to work through the agency of heat are classed as heat engines—so that under this head are included steam engines, air engines, gas engines, vapour engines and solar engines. The tie that binds these engines into one great family is temperature. It is the heat that does the work. Whether it is a cannon, the power of which is manifested in a flash, or the slower moving steam engine, whose throbbing heart beats not until water is turned to steam, or the sun, the parent of them all, whose rays are grasped and used direct, the question in all cases is, what is the amount of heat produced and how can it be controlled?
It, then, can make no difference what the agent is that is employed, whether air, or gas, or steam, or the sun, or gunpowder explosion, but what is the temperature to be attained in the cylinder or vessel in which they work. Power is the measure of work done in a given time. Horse power is the unit of such measurement, and it consists of the amount of power that is required to raise one pound through a vertical distance of one foot. This power is pressure and the pressure is heat. The unit of heat is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of a pound of distilled water one degree—from 39 degrees to 40 degrees F. Its amount or measurement is determined in any instance by a dynamometer.
These were the discoveries with which Philosophy opened the nineteenth century so brilliantly in the field of Pneumatics.
Before that time it seemed impossible that explosive gases would ever be harnessed as steam had been and made to do continual successful work in a cylinder and behind a piston. As yet means were to be found to make the engine efficient as a double-acting one—to start the untamed steed at the proper moment and to stop him at the moment he had done his work.
As Newcomen had been the first in the previous century to apply the steam engine to practical work—pumping water from mines—so Samuel Brown of England was the first in this century to invent and use a gas engine upon the water.
Brown took out patents in 1823 and 1826. He proposed to use gunpowder gas as the motive power. His engine was also described in the Mechanics’ Magazine published in London at that time. In the making of his engine he followed the idea of a steam engine, but used the flame of an ignited gas jet to create a vacuum within the cylinder instead of steam. He fitted up an experimental boat with such an engine, and means upon the boat to generate the gas. The boat was then operated upon the Thames. He also succeeded experimentally in adapting his engine to a road carriage. But Brown’s machines were cumbrous, complicated, and difficult to work, and therefore did not come into public use.
About this time (1823), Davy and Faraday reawakened interest in gas engines by their discovery that a number of gases could be reduced to a liquid state, some by great pressure, and others by cold, and that upon the release of the pressure the gases would return to their original volume. In the condensation heat was developed, and in re-expansion it was rendered latent.
Then Wright in 1833 obtained a patent in which he expounded and illustrated the principles of expansion and compression of gas and air, performed in separate cylinders, the production of a vacuum by the explosion and the use of a water jacket around the cylinder for cooling it.
For William Burdett, in 1838, is claimed the honour of having been the first to invent the means of compressing the gas and air previous to the explosion, substantially the same as adopted in gas engines of the present day.
The defects found in gas engines thus far were want of proper preliminary compression, then in complete expansion, and finally loss of heat through the walls.
Some years later, Lenoir, a Frenchman, invented a gas engine of a successful type, of which three hundred in 1862 were in use in France. It showed what could be accomplished by an engine in which the fuel was introduced and fired directly in the piston cylinder. Its essential features were a cylinder into which a mixture of gas and air was admitted at atmospheric pressure, which was maintained until the piston made half its stroke, when the gas was exploded by an electric spark. A wheel of great weight was hung upon a shaft which was connected to the piston, and which weight absorbed the force suddenly developed by the explosion, and so moderated the speed. Another object of the use of the heavy wheel was to carry the machine over the one-half of the period in which the driving power was absent.
Hugon, another eminent French engineer, invented and constructed a gas engine on the same principle as Lenair’s.
About this time (1850-60) M. Beau de Rohes, a French engineer, thoroughly investigated the reasons of the uneconomical working of gas motors, and found that it was due to want of sufficient compression of the gas and air previous to explosion, incomplete expansion and loss of heat through the walls of the cylinder, and he was the first to formulate a “cycle” of operations necessary to be followed in order to render a gas engine efficient. They related to the size and dimensions of the cylinder; the maximum speed of the piston; the greatest possible expansion, and the highest pressure obtainable at the beginning of the act of expansion. The study and application of these conditions created great advancements in gas engines.
With the discovery and development of the oil wells in the United States about 1860 a new fuel was found in the crude petroleum, as well as a source of light. The application of petroleum to engines, either to produce furnace heat, or as introduced directly into the piston cylinder mixed with inflammable gas to produce flame heat and expansion, has given a wonderful impetus to the utilisation of gas engines.
G. H. Brayton of the United States in 1873 invented a very efficient engine in which the vapour of petroleum mixed with air constituted the fuel. Adolf Spiel of Berlin has also recently invented a petroleum engine.
Principal among those to whom the world is indebted for the revolution in the construction of gas engines and its establishment as a successful rival to the steam engine is Nicolaus A. Otto of Deutz on the Rhine.
In the Lenair and Hugon system the expansive force of the exploded gas was used directly upon the piston, and through this upon the other moving parts. A great noise was produced by these constant explosions. In the Otto system the explosion is used indirectly and only to produce a vacuum below the piston, when atmospheric pressure is used to give the return stroke of the piston and produce the effective work. The Otto engine is noiseless. This is accomplished by his method of mixing and admitting the gases. He employs two different mixtures, one a “feebly explosive mixture,” and the other “a strongly explosive mixture,” used to operate on the piston and thus prolong the explosions.
The mode of operation of one of Otto’s most successful engines is as follows: The large fly wheel is started by hand or other means, and as the piston moves forward it draws into the cylinder a light charge of mixed coal gas and air, and the gas inlet is then cut off. As the piston returns it compresses this mixture. At the moment the down stroke is completed the compressed mixture is ignited, and, expanding, drives the piston before it. In the second return stroke the burnt gases are expelled from the cylinder and the whole made ready to start afresh. Work is actually done in the piston only during one-quarter of the time it is in motion. The fly-wheel carries forward the work at the outset and the gearing the rest of the time.
Otto was associated with Langen in producing his first machine, and its introduction at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876 excited great attention. Otto and E. W. and W. J. Crossley jointly, and then Otto singly, subsequently patented notable improvements.
Simon Bischof and Clark, Hurd and Clayton in England; Daimler of Deutz on the Rhine, Riker and Wiegand of the United States, and others, have made improvements in the Otto system.
Ammoniacal gas engines have been successfully invented. Aqua ammonia is placed in a generator in which it is heated. The heat separates the ammonia gas from the water, and the gas is then used to operate a suitable engine. The exhaust gas is cooled, passed into the previously weakened solution, reabsorbed and returned to the generator. In 1890 Charles Tellier of France patented an ammoniacal engine, also means for utilising solar heat and exhaust steam for the same purpose; and in the same year De Susini, also of France, patented an engine operated by the vapour of ether; A. Nobel, another Frenchman, in 1894, patented a machine for propelling torpedoes and other explosive missiles, and for controlling the course of balloons, the motive power of which is a gas developed in a closed reservoir by the chemical reaction of metallic sodium or potassium in a solution of ammonia. These vapour engines are used for vapour launches, bicycles and automobiles.
In 1851 the ideas of Huygens and Papin of two hundred years before were revived by W. M. Storm, who in that year took out a gunpowder engine patent in the United States, in which the air was compressed by the explosions of small charges of gunpowder. About fifteen other patents have been taken out in America since that time for such engines. In some the engines are fed by cartridges which are exploded by pulling a trigger.
As to gas and vapor engines generally, it may now be said, in comparison with steam, that although the steam engine is now regarded as almost perfect in operation, and that it can be started and stopped and otherwise controlled quietly, smoothly, instantaneously, and in the most uniform and satisfactory manner, yet there is the comparatively long delay in generating the steam in the boiler, and the loss of heat and power as it is conducted in pipes to the working cylinder, resulting in the utilisation of only ten per cent of the actual power generated, whereas gas and vapour engines utilise twenty-five per cent of the power generated, and the flame and explosions are now as easily and noiselessly controlled as the flow of oil or water. The world is coming to agree with Prof. Fleeming Jenkins that “Gas engines will ultimately supplant the steam.”
The smoke and cinder nuisance with them has been solved.
The sister invention of the gas engine is the air engine. There can be no doubt about the success of this busy body, as it is now a swift and successful motor in a thousand different fields. Machines in which air, either hot or cold, is used in place of steam as the moving power to drive a piston, or to be driven by a piston, are known generally as air, caloric, or hot-air engines, air compressors, or compressed air engines, and are also classed as pneumatic machines, air brakes, or pumps. They are now specifically known by the name of the purpose to which they are applied, as air ship, ventilator, air brake, fan blower, air pistol, air spring, etc.
The attention of inventors was directed towards compressed and heated air as a motor as soon as steam became a known and efficient servant; but the most important and the only successful air machine existing prior to this century was the air pump, invented by Guericke in 1650, and subsequently perfected by Robert Boyle and others. The original pump and the Magdeburg hemispheres are still preserved.
It is recorded that Amontons of France, in 1699, had an atmospheric fire wheel or air engine in which a heated column of air was made to drive a wheel.
It has already been noted what Papin (1680-1690) proposed and did in steam. His last published work was a Latin essay upon a new system for raising water by the action of fire, published in 1707.
The action of confined and compressed steam and gases, and air, is so nearly the same in the machines in which they constitute the motive power that the history, development, construction, and operation of the machines of one class are closely interwoven with those of the others.
Taking advantage of what had been taught them by Watt and others as to steam and steam engines, and of the principles and laws of gases as expounded by Boyle, Mariotte, Dalton, and Gay-Lussac, that many of the gases, such as air, preserve a permanent expansive gaseous form under all degrees of temperature and compression to which they had as yet been subjected, that when compressed and released they will expand, and exert a pressure in the contrary direction until the gas and outside atmospheric pressure are in equilibrium, that this compressed gas pressure is equal, and transmitted equally in all directions, and that the weight of a column of air resting on every horizontal square inch at the sea level is very nearly 14.6 pounds, the inventors of the nineteenth century were enabled by this supreme illumination to enter with confidence into that work of mechanical contrivances which has rendered the age so marvellous.
It was natural that in the first development of mechanical appliances they should be devoted to those pursuits in which men had the greatest practical interest. Thus as to steam it was first applied to the raising of water from mines and then to road vehicles. And so in 1800 Thos. Parkinson of England invented and patented an “hydrostatic engine or machine for the purpose of drawing beer or any other liquid out of a cellar or vault in a public house, which is likewise intended to be applied for raising water out of mines, ships or wells.” By the use of a sort of an air pump he maintained an air pressure on the beer in an air-tight cask situated in the cellar, which was connected with pipes having air-tight valves, with the upper floor. The liquid was forced from the cellar by the air pressure, and when turned off, the air pressure was resumed in the cask, which “preserved the beer from being thrown into a state of flatness.” Substantially the same device in principle has been reinvented and incorporated in patents numerous times since.
In the innumerable applications of the pneumatic machines and air tools of the century, especially of air-compressing devices, to the daily uses of life, we may, by turning first to our home, find its inner and outer walls painted by a pneumatic paint-spraying machine, for such have been made that will coat forty-six thousand square feet of surface in six hours; and it is said that paint can be thus applied not only more quickly, but more thoroughly and durably than by the old process. The periodical and fascinating practice of house cleaning is now greatly facilitated by an air brush having a pipe with a thin wide end in which are numerous perforations, and through which the air is forced by a little pump, and with which apparatus a far more efficient cleaning effect upon carpets, mattresses, curtains, clothes, and furniture can be obtained than by the time-honoured broom and duster.
Is the home uncomfortable by reason of heat and summer insects? A compressor having tanks or cisterns in the cellar filled with cool or cold air may be set to work to reduce the temperature of the house and fan the inmates with a refreshing breeze.
Air engines have been invented which can be used to either heat or cool the air, or do one or the other automatically. The heating when wanted is by fuel in a furnace forced up by a working cylinder, and the cooling by the circulation of water around small, thin copper tubes through which the air passes to the cylinder.
Do the chimes of the distant church bells lead one to the house of worship? The worshipper goes with the comforting assurance that the chimes which send forth such sweet harmonies are operated not by toiling, sweating men at ropes, but by a musician who plays as upon an organ, and works the keys, valves and stops by the aid of compressed air, and sometimes by the additional help of electricity.
Mention has already been made of office and other elevators, in which compressed air is an important factor in operating the same and for preventing accidents.
If a waterfall is convenient, air is compressed by the body of descending water, and used to ventilate tunnels, and deep shafts and mines, or drive the drills or other tools.
The pneumatic mail tube despatch system, by which letters, parcels, etc., are sent from place to place by the force of atmospheric pressure in an air-exhausted tube, is a decidedly modern invention, unknown in use even by those who are still children. Tubes as large as eight inches in diameter are now in use in which cartridge boxes are placed, each holding six hundred or more letters, and when the air is exhausted the cartridge is forced through the tubes to the distance sometimes of three miles and more in a few minutes.
In travelling by rail the train is now guided in starting or in stopping on to the right track, which may be one out of forty or fifty, by a pneumatic switch, the switches for the whole number of tracks being under the control of a single operator. The fast-moving train is stopped by an air brake, and the locomotive bell is rung by touching an air cylinder. The “baggage smashing,” a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance, is prevented by a pneumatic baggage arrangement consisting of an air-containing cylinder, and an arm on which to place the baggage, and which arm is then quickly raised by the cylinder piston and is automatically swung around by a cam action carrying the baggage out of or into the car.
Bridge building has been so facilitated by the use of pneumatic machines for raising heavy loads of stone and iron, and for riveting and hammering, and other air tools, aided by the development in the art of quick transportation, that a firm of bridge builders in America can build a splendid bridge in Africa within a hundred days after the contract has been entered upon.
Ship building is hastened by these same air drilling and riveting machines.
The propelling of cars, road vehicles, boats, balloons, and even ships, by explosive gases and compressed air is an extensive art in itself, yet still in its infancy, and will be more fully described in the chapter on carrying machines.
The realm of Art has received a notable advancement by the use of a little blow-pipe or atomiser by which the pigments forming the background on beautiful vases are blown with just that graduated force desired by the operator to produce the most exquisitely smooth and blended effects, while the varying colours are made to melt imperceptibly into one another as delicately as the mingled shade and coloured sunlight fall on a forest brook.
But to enumerate the industrial arts to which air and other pneumatic machines have been adapted would be to catalogue them all. Mention is made of others in chapters in which those special arts are treated.
That Prometheus stole fire from heaven to give it to man is perhaps as authentic an account of the invention of fire as has been given. It is also reported that he brought it to earth in a hollow tube. If a small stick or twig had then been dipped into the divine fire the suggestion of the modern match may be supposed to have been made.
But men went on to reproduce the fire in the old way by rubbing pieces of wood together, or using the flint, the steel and the tinder until 1680, when Godfrey Hanckwitz of London, learning of the recent discovery of phosphorus and its nature, and inspired by the Promethean idea, wrapped the phosphorus in folds of brown paper, rubbed it until it took fire, and then ignited thereat one end of a stick which he had dipped in sulphur; and this is commonly known as the first invented match. There followed the production of a somewhat different form of match, sticks first dipped in sulphur, and then in a composition of chlorate potash, sulphur, colophony, gum of sugar, and cinnabar for coloring. These were arranged in boxes, and were accompanied by a vial containing sulphuric acid, into which the match was dipped and thereby instantly ignited. These were called chemical matches and were sold at first for the high price of fifteen shillings a box.
They were too costly for common use, and so our fathers went on to the nineteenth century using the flint, the steel and the tinder, and depending on the coal kept alive upon their own or their neighbour’s hearth.
Prometheus, however, did reappear about 1820-25, when a match bearing the name “Promethean” was invented. It consisted of a roll of paper treated with sugar and chlorate of potash and a small cell containing sulphuric acid. This cell was broken by a pair of pliers and the acid ignited the composition by contact therewith.
It was not until 1827-29 that John Walker, chemist, at Stockton-upon-Tees, improved upon the idea of Prometheus and Hanckwitz of giving fire to men in a hollow tube. He used folded sanded paper—it may have been a tube—and through this he drew a stick coated with chlorate of potash and phosphorus. This successful match was named “Lucifer,” whose other name was Phosphor, the Morning Star, and the King of the Western Land. Faraday, to whom also was given Promethean inspiration, procured some of Walker’s matches and brought them to public notice.
In many respects the mode of their manufacture has been improved, but in principle of composition and ignition they remain the same as Walker’s to-day. In 1845, Schrotter of Vienna discovered amorphous or allotropic phosphorus, which rendered the manufacture of matches less dangerous to health and property. Tons of chemicals and hundreds of pine trees are used yearly in the making of matches, and many hundreds of millions of them are daily consumed.
But this vast number of matches could not be supplied had it not been for the invention of machines for making and packing them. Thus in 1842 Reuben Partridge of America patented a machine for making splints. Others for making splints and the matches separately, quickly followed. Together with these came match dipping and match box machines. The splint machines were for slitting a block of wood of the proper height downward nearly the whole way into match splints, leaving their butts in the solid wood. These were square and known as block matches. Other mechanisms cut and divided the block into strips, which were then dipped at one end, dried and tied in bundles. By other means, a swing blade, for instance, the matches were all severed from the block. Matches are made round by one machine by pressing the block against a plate having circular perforations, and the interspaces are beveled so as to form cutting edges.
Poririer, a Frenchman, invented a machine for making match boxes of pasteboard. Suitable sized rectangular pieces of pasteboard rounded at the angles for making the body of the box are first cut, then these pieces are introduced into the machine, where by the single blow of a plunger they are forced into a matrix or die and pressed, and receive by this single motion their complete and final shape. The lid is made in the same way.
By one modern invention matches after they are cut are fed into a machine at the rate of one hundred thousand an hour, on to a horizontal table, each match separated from the other by a thin partition. They are thus laid in rows, one row over another, and while being laid, the matches are pushed out a little way beyond the edge of the table, a distance far enough to expose their ends and to permit them to be dipped. When a number of these rows are completed they are clamped together in a bundle and then dipped—first, into a vessel of hot sulphur, and then into one of phosphorus, or other equivalent ingredients may be used or added. After the dipping they are subjected to a drying process and then boxed. Processes differ, but all are performed by machinery.
In many factories where phosphorus is used without great care workmen have been greatly affected thereby. The fumes of the phosphorus attack the teeth, especially when decayed, and penetrate to the jaw, causing its gradual destruction, but this has been avoided by proper precautions.
The greatly-increased facility of kindling a fire by matches gave an impetus to the invention of cooking and heating stoves. Of course stoves, generically speaking, are not a production of the nineteenth century. The Romans had their laconicum or heating stove, which from its name was an invention from Laconia. It probably was made in most cases of brick or marble, but might have been of beaten iron, was cylindrical in shape, with an open cupola at the top, and was heated by the flames of the hypocaust beneath. The hypocaust was a hot-air furnace built in the basement or cellar of the house and from which the heat was conducted by flues to the bath rooms and other apartments. The Chinese ages ago heated their hollow tiled floors by underground furnace fires. We know of the athanor of the alchemists of the middle ages. Knight calls it the “original base-burning furnace.” A furnace of iron or earthenware was provided on one side with an open stack or tower which opened at the bottom into the furnace, and which stack was kept filled with charcoal, or other fuel, which fed itself automatically into the furnace as the fuel on the bed thereof burned away. Watt introduced an arrangement on the same principle in his steam boiler furnace in 1767, and thousands of stoves are now constructed within England and the United States also embodying the same principle.
The earthenware and soapstone stoves of continental Europe were used long before the present century.
In Ben Franklin’s time in the American Colonies there was not much of a demand for stoves outside of the largest cities, where wood was getting a little scarce and high, but the philosopher not only deemed it proper to invent an improvement in chimneys to prevent their smoking and to better heat the room, but also devised an improved form of stove, and both inventions have been in constant use unto this day. Franklin invented and introduced his celebrated stove, which he called the Pennsylvania Fire Place, in 1745, having all the advantages of a cheerful open fireplace, and a heat producer; and which consisted of an iron stove with an open front set well into the room, in which front part the fire was kindled, and the products of combustion conducted up a flue, and thence under a false back and up the chimney. Open heat spaces were left between the two flues. Air inlets and dampers were provided. In his description of this stove at that time Franklin also referred to the iron box stoves used by the Dutch, the iron plates extending from the hearths and sides, etc., chimneys making a double fireplace used by the French, and the German stove of iron plates, and so made that the fuel had to be put into it from another room or from the outside of the house. He dwells upon the pleasure of an open fire, and the destruction of this pleasure by the use of the closed stoves. He also describes the discomforts of the fireplace in cold weather—of the “cold draught nipping one’s back and heels”—“scorched before and frozen behind”—the sharp draughts of cold from crevices from which many catch cold and from “whence proceed coughs, catarrhs, toothaches, fevers, pleurisies and many other diseases.” Added to the pleasure of seeing the crackling flames, feeling the genial warmth, and the diffusion of a spirit of sociability and hospitality, is the fact of increased purity of the air by reason of the fireplace as a first-class ventilator. Hence it will never be discarded by those who can afford its use; but it alone is inadequate for heating and cooking purposes. It is modernly used as a luxury by those who are able to combine with it other means for heating.
The great question for solution in this art at all times has been how to produce through dwelling houses and larger buildings in cold and damp weather a uniform distribution and circulation of pure heated air. The solution of this question has of course been greatly helped in modern times by a better knowledge of the nature of air and other gases, and the laws which govern their motions and combinations at different temperatures.
The most successful form of heating coal stove of the century has been one that combined in itself the features of base-burning: that is, a covered magazine at the centre or back of the stove open at or near the top of the stove into which the coal is placed, and which then feeds to the bottom of the fire pot as fast as the coal is consumed, a heavy open fire pot placed as low as possible, an ash grate connected with the bottom of the pot which can be shaken and dumped to an ash box beneath without opening the stove, thus preventing the escape of the dust, an illuminating chamber nearly or entirely surrounding the fire pot, provided with mica windows, through which the fire is reflected and the heat radiated, a chamber above the fire pot and surrounding the fuel chamber and into which the heat and hot gases arise, producing additional radiating surface and permitting the gases to escape through a flue in the chimney, or, leading them first through another chamber to the base of the stove and thence out, and dampers to control and regulate the supply of air to the fuel, and to cut off the escape or control the course of the products of combustion.
The cheerful stove fireplace and stove of Franklin and the French were revived, combined and improved some years ago by Capt. Douglas Galton of the English army for use in barracks, but this stove is also admirably adapted for houses. It consists of an open stove or grate set in or at the front of the fireplace with an air inlet from without, the throat of the fireplace closed and a pipe extending through it from the stove into the chimney. Although a steady flow of heat, desirable regulation of temperature and great economy in the consumption of fuel, by reason of the utilisation of so much of the heat produced, were obtained by the modern stove, yet the necessity of having a stove in nearly every room, the ill-ventilation due to the non-supply of pure outer air to the room, the occasional diffusion of ash dust and noxious gases from the stove, and inability to heat the air along the floor, gave rise to a revival of the hot-air furnace, placed under the floor in the basement or cellar, and many modern and radical improvements therein.
The heat obtained from stoves is effected by radiation—the throwing outward of the waves of heat from its source, while the heat obtained from a hot-air furnace is effected by convection—the moving of a body of air to be heated to the source of heat, and then when heated bodily conveyed to the room to be warmed. Hence in stoves and fireplaces only such obstruction is placed between the fire and the room as will serve to convey away the obnoxious smoke and gases, and the greatest facility is offered for radiation, while in hot-air furnaces, although provision is also made to carry away the smoke and impure gases, yet the radiation is confined as closely as possible to chambers around the fire space, which chambers are protected by impervious linings from the outer air, and into which fresh outdoor air is introduced, then heated and conveyed to different apartments by suitable pipes or flues, and admitted or excluded, as desired, by registers operated by hand levers.
There are stationary furnaces and portable furnaces; the former class enclose the heating apparatus in walls of brick or other masonry, while in the latter the outer casing and the inner parts are metal structures, separable and removable. In both classes an outer current of pure air is made to course around the fire chamber and around among other flues and chambers through which the products of combustion are carried, so that all heat possible is utilised. Vessels of water are supplied at the most convenient place in one of the hot-air chambers to moisten and temper the air, and dampers are placed in the pipes to regulate and guide the supply of heat to the rooms above.
After Watt had invented his improvements on the steam engine the idea occurred to him of using steam for heating purposes. Accordingly, in 1784, he made a hollow sheet-iron box of plates, and supplied it with steam from the boiler of the establishment. It had an air-escape cock, and condensed-water-escape pipe; and in 1799 Boulton and Watt constructed a heating apparatus in Lee’s factory, Manchester, in which the steam was conducted through cast-iron pipes, which also served as supports to the floor. Patents were also taken out by others in England for steam-heating apparatuses during the latter part of the 18th century.
Heating by the circulation of hot water through pipes was also originated or revived during the 18th century, and a short time before Watt’s circulation of steam. It is said that Bonnemain of England, in 1777, desiring to improve the ancient methods of hatching poultry by artificial heat—practised by both ancient and modern Egyptians ages before it became a latter day wonder, and taught the Egyptians by the ostriches—conceived the idea of constructing quite a large incubator building with shelves for the eggs, coops for holding the chickens, and a tube for circulating hot water leading from a boiler below and above each shelf, and through the coops, and back to the boiler. This incubator contains the germs of modern water heaters. In both the steam and water heating systems the band or collection of pipes in each room may be covered with ornamental radiating plates, or otherwise treated or arranged to render them sightly and effective. In one form of the hot-water system, however, the collection of a mass of pipes in the rooms is dispensed with, and the pipes are massed in an air chamber over or adjacent to the furnace, where they are employed to heat a current of air introduced from the outside, and which heated pure air is conveyed through the house by flues and registers as in the hot-air furnace system.
The hanging of the crane, the turning of the spit, the roasting in ashes and on hot stones, the heating of and the baking in the big “Dutch” ovens, and some other forms of cooking by our forefathers had their pleasures and advantages, and still are appreciated under certain circumstances, and for certain purposes, but are chiefly honoured in memory alone and reverenced by disuse; while the modern cooking stove with its roasting and hot water chambers, its numerous seats over the fire for pots, pans, and kettles, its easy means of controlling and directing the heat, its rotating grate, and, when desired, its rotating fire chamber, for turning the hot fire on top to the bottom, and the cold choked fire to the top, its cleanliness and thorough heat, its economy in the use of fuel, is adopted everywhere, and all the glowing names with which its makers and users christen it fail to exaggerate its qualities when rightly made and used.
It would appear that the field of labour and the number of labourers, chiefly those who toiled with brick and mortar, were greatly reduced when those huge fireplaces were so widely discarded. This must have seemed so especially in those regions where the houses were built up to meet the yearning wants of an outside chimney, but armies of men are engaged in civilised countries in making stoves and furnaces, where three-quarters of a century ago very few were so employed. As in every industrial art old things pass away, but the new things come in greater numbers, demand a greater number of workers, develop new wants, new fields of labour, and the new and increasing supply of consumers refuse to be satisfied with old contrivances.
In the United States alone there are between four and five hundred stove and furnace foundries, in which about ten thousand people are employed, and more than three million stoves and furnaces produced annually, which require nearly a million tons of iron to make, and the value of which is estimated as at least $100,000,000.
The matter of ventilation is such a material part of heating that it cannot escape attention. There can be no successful heating without a circulation of air currents, and fortunately for man in his house no good fire can be had without an outflow of heat and an inflow of cooler air. The more this circulation is prevented the worse the fire and the ventilation.
It seems to many such a simple thing, this change of air—only to keep open the window a little—to have a fireplace, and convenient door. And yet some of the brightest intellects of the century have been engaged in devising means to accomplish the result, and all are not yet agreed as to which is the best way.
How to remove the heated, vitiated air and to supply fresh air while maintaining the same uniform temperature is a problem of long standing. The history of the attempts to heat and ventilate the Houses of Parliament since Wren undertook it in 1660 has justly been said to be history of the Art of Ventilation since that time, as the most eminent scientific authorities in the world have been engaged or consulted in it, and the most exhaustive reports on the subject have been rendered by such men as Gay-Lussac, Sir Humphry Davy, Faraday and Dr. Arnott of England and Gen. Morin of France. The same may be said in regard to the Houses of Congress in the United States Capitol for the past thirty-five years. Prof. Henry, Dr. Billings, the architect, Clark, of that country, and many other bright inventors and men of ability have given the subject devoted attention. Among the means for creating ventilation are underground tunnels leading to the outer air, with fans in them to force the fresh air in or draw the poor air out, holes in the ceiling, fire places, openings over the doors, openings under the eaves, openings in the window frames, shafts from the floor or basement with fires or gas jets to create an upward draught, floors with screened openings to the outer air, steam engines to work a suction pipe in one place and a blow pipe in another, air boxes communicating with the outer air, screens, hoods, and deflectors at these various openings,—all these, separately or in combination, have been used for the purpose of drawing the vitiated air out and letting the pure air in without creating draughts to chill the sensitive, or overheating to excite the nervous.
There seems to have been as many devices invented to keep a house or building closed up tight while highly heating it, as to ventilate the same and preserve an even, moderate temperature.
The most approved system of ventilation recognises the fact that air is of the same weight and is possessed of the same constituents in one part of a room as at another, and to create a perfect ventilation a complete change and circulation must take place. It therefore creates a draught, arising from the production of a vacuum by a current of heat or by mechanical means, or by some other way, which draws out of a room the used up, vitiated air through outlets at different places, while pure outer air is admitted naturally, or forced in if need be, through numerous small inlets, such outlets and inlets so located and distributed and protected as not to give rise to sensible draughts on the occupants.
The best system also recognises the fact that all parts of a house, its cellars and attic, its parlours and kitchens, its closets, bathrooms and chambers, should be alike clean and well ventilated, and that if one room is infected all are infected.
The laurels bestowed on inventors are no more worthily bestowed than on those who have invented devices which give to our homes, offices, churches and places of amusement a pure and comfortable atmosphere.
Car Heaters.—The passing away of the good old portable foot stove for warming the feet, especially when away from home, and while travelling, is not to be regretted, although in some instances it was not at first succeeded by superior devices. For a long time after the introduction of steam, railroad cars and carriages, in which any heat at all was used, were heated by a stove in each car—generally kept full of red hot coal or wood—an exceedingly dangerous companion in case of accident. Since 1871 systems have been invented and introduced, the most successful of which consists of utilising the heat of the steam from the locomotive for producing a hot-water circulation through pipes along the floor of each car, and in providing an emergency heater in each car for heating the water when steam from the locomotive is not available.
Grass-burning Stoves.—There are many places in this world where neither wood nor coal abound, or where the same are very scarce, but where waste grass and weeds, waste hay and straw, and similar combustible refuse are found in great abundance. Stoves have been invented especially designed for the economical consumption of such fuel. One requisite is that such light material should be held in a compressed state while in the stove to prevent a too rapid combustion. Means for so holding the material under compression appear to have been first invented and patented by Hamilton of America in 1874.
Some means besides the sickle and scythe, hoe and plough, were wanted to destroy obnoxious standing grass and weeds. A weed like the Russian thistle, for instance, will defy all usual means for its extermination. A fire chamber has been invented which when drawn over the ground will burn a swath as it advances, and it is provided with means, such as a wide flange on the end of the chamber, which extinguishes the fire and prevents its spreading beyond the path. A similar stove with jets of flame from vapour burners has been used to soften hard asphalt pavement when it is desired to take it up.
The art of heating and cooking by oil, vapour and gas stoves is one that has arisen during the latter half of this century, and has become the subject of a vast number of inventions and extensive industries. Stoves of this character are as efficient and economical as coal stoves, and are in great demand, especially where coal and wood are scarce and high-priced.
Oil stoves as first invented consisted of almost the ordinary lamp, without the glass shade set in the stove and were similar to gas stoves. But these were objectionable on account of the fumes emitted. By later inventions the lamp has been greatly improved. The wick is arranged within tubular sliding cylinders so as to be separated from the other parts of the stove when it is not lit, and better regulating devices adopted, whereby the oil is prevented from spreading from the wick on to the other parts of the stove, which give rise to obnoxious fumes by evaporation and heating. Some recent inventors have dispensed with the wick altogether and the oil is burned practically like vapour. Gasoline, and other heavy oily vapours are in many stoves first vapourised by a preliminary heating in a chamber before the gas is ignited for use. These vapours are then conducted by separate jets to different points in the stove where the heat is to be applied. The danger and unpleasant flame and smoke arising from this vapourising in the stove have been obviated by inventions which vapourise the fuel by other means, as by carbonating, or loading the air with the vapour in an elevated chamber and conducting the saturated air to the burners; or by agitation, by means of a quick-acting, small, but powerful fan.
Sterilising.—The recent scientific discoveries and investigations of injurious bacteria rendered it desirable to purify water by other means than filtering, especially for the treatment of disease-infected localities; and this gave rise to the invention of a system of heat sterilising and filtering the water, in one process, and out of contact with the germ-laden air, thus destroying the bacteria and delivering the water in as pure and wholesome condition as possible. West in 1892 patented such a system.
Electric Heating and Cooking.—Reference has already been made in the Chapter on Electricity to the use of that agent in heating and cooking. The use of the electric current for these purposes has been found to be perfectly practical, and for heating cars especially, where electricity is the motive power, a portion of the current is economically employed.
The art of heating and cooking naturally suggests the other end of the line of temperature—Refrigeration.
A refrigeration by which ordinary ice is artificially produced, perishable food of all kinds preserved for long times, and transported for great distances, which has proved an immense advantage to mankind everywhere and is still daily practised to the gratification and comfort of millions of men, must receive at least a passing notice. The Messrs. E. and F. Carré of France invented successful machines about 1870 for making ice by the rapid absorption and evaporation of heat by the ammonia process. The discoveries and inventions of others in the artificial production of cold by means of volatile liquids, whether for the making of ice or other purposes, constituted a great step in the art of refrigeration.
Vaporisation, absorption, compression or reduction of atmospheric pressure are the principal methods of producing cold. By vaporisation, water, ether, sulphuric acid, ammonia, etc., in assuming the vaporous form change sensible heat to latent heat and produce a degree of cold which freezes an adjacent body of water. The principle of making ice by evaporation and absorption may be illustrated by two examples of the Carré methods:—It is well known what a great attraction sulphuric acid has for water. Water to be frozen is placed in a vessel connected by a pipe to a reservoir containing sulphuric acid. A vacuum is produced in this reservoir by the use of an air pump, while the acid is being constantly stirred. Lessening of the atmospheric pressure upon water causes its evaporation, and as the vapour is quietly absorbed by the sulphuric acid the water is quickly congealed. It is known that ammonia can be condensed into liquid form by pressure or cold, and is absorbed by and soluble in water to an extraordinary degree. A generator containing a strong solution of ammonia is connected by a pipe to an empty receiver immersed in cold water. The ammonia generator is then heated, its vapour driven off and conducted to a jacket around the centre of the receiver and is there condensed by pressure of an air pump. The central cylindrical space in the receiver is now filled with water, and the operation is reversed. The generator is immersed in cold water and pressure on the liquid ammonia removed. The liquid ammonia now passes into the gaseous state, and is conducted to and reabsorbed by the water in the generator. But in this evaporation great cold is produced and the water in the receiver is soon frozen.
Twining’s inventions in the United States in 1853 and 1862 of the compression machine, followed by Pictet of France, and a number of improvements elsewhere have bid fair to displace the absorption method. In dispensing with absorption these machines proceed on the now well-established theory that air and many other gases become heated when compressed; that this heat can then be drawn away, and that when the gas is allowed to re-expand it will absorb a large amount of heat from any solid or fluid with which it is brought in contact, and so freeze it. Accordingly such machines are so constructed that by the operation of a piston, or pistons, in a cylinder, and actuated by steam or other motive power, the air or gas is compressed to the desired temperature, the heat led off and the cold vapour conducted through pipes and around chambers where water is placed and where it is frozen. By the best machines from five hundred to one thousand pounds of ice an hour are produced.
The art of refrigeration and of modern transportation have brought the fruits of the tropics in great abundance to the doors of the dwellers of the north, and from the shores of the Pacific to the Atlantic and across the Atlantic to Europe. A train of refrigerator cars in California laden with delicious assorted fruits, and provided with fan blowers driven by the car axles to force the air through ice chambers, from whence it is distributed by perforated pipes through the fruit chambers, and wherein the temperature is maintained at about 40° Fah., can be landed in New York four days after starting on its journey of 3,000 miles, with the fruits in perfect condition.
But the public is still excited and wondering over the new king of refrigeration—liquid air.
As has been stated, the compression of air to produce cold is a modern discovery applied to practical uses, and prominent among the inventors and discoverers in this line have been Prof. Dewar and Charles E. Tripler.
Air may be compressed and heat generated in the process withdrawn until the temperature of the air is reduced to 312° below zero, at which point the air is visible and to a certain extent assumes a peculiar material form, in which form it can be confined in suitable vessels and used as a refrigerant and as a motor of great power when permitted to re-expand. It is said that it was not so long ago when Prof. Dewar produced the first ounce of liquid air at a cost of $3,000, but that now Mr. Tripler claims that he can produce it by his apparatus for five cents a gallon.
Refrigeration is at present its most natural and obvious use, and it is claimed that eleven gallons of the material when gradually expanded has the refrigerating power of one ton of ice. Its use of course for all purposes for which cold can be used is thus assured. It is also to be used as a motor in the running of various kinds of engines. It is to be used as a great alleviator of human suffering in lowering and regulating the temperature of hospitals in hot weather, and in surgical operations as a substitute for anæsthetics and cauterising agents.
It was one of the marvellous attractions at the great Paris Exposition of 1900.
Lighting is closely allied to the various subjects herein considered, but consideration of the various modes and kinds of lamps for lighting will be reserved for the Chapter on Furniture for Houses, etc.