494

Raising Water by Currents of Steam.

[Book V.

one. On applying a vessel of sand, and another of water, to the end ofthe tube, the contents of both were raised and discharged in the same way.

The vacuum tube of No. 220 was connected to a soda fountain, and anopening one-sixteenth of an inch diameter made in the latter to admit air.The mercury previous to making this opening stood at 16 inches, and itstill remained at that height. The opening was next widened to one-eighth of an inch, when the mercury feil to 12 inches. The opening wasthen made as large as the bore of the vacuum tube, (about five-sixteenths)upon which the mercury feil to six inches.

It is obvious that by connecting one of these blowing instruments to anair-tight vessel, water may be raised into the latter by the atmosphere, andto an elevation eorresponding with the vacuum. In one of our earliestexperiments, we attached a blowing tube to a soda fountain placed 22 feetabove the surface of the water in a well, into which a pipe descended fromthe upper part of the fountain. But by arranging a series of close vesselsat certain distances above each other, (according to the extent of the vacu-um obtained by the apparatus) water may be raised in this manner to anyelevation—the pressure of the atmosphere transferring it from one vesselto- another tili it arrive at the place of discharge, as in Papin’s plan, de-scribed at page 447-8. An English patent was granted in 1839 for a veryelaborate French machine of this kind. See Civil Engineer and Architect’sJournal, vol. iii, page 51. In December 1840, an American patent wasobtained for the same thing by a French merchant of this city. This gen-tleman has had one constructed from drawings sent from Paris . The re-ceiving vessels were 12 feet apart. The mode of applying the steam isto discharge it at the orifice of the vacuum pipe, over a small part of theperiphery, as at A No. 216. The steam however does not come in contactwith the sides of the vacuum tube, as in the preceding figures No. 217 to220, for this tube does not form one of the Walls of the small steam cham-ber behind its orifice—the chamber being a separate part complete in itself,and having a semicircular recess formed at one side, into which the va-cuum pipe is received. There is therefore, between the interior of thevacuum tube and the steam without, not only the thickness of the metal ofwhich that tube is fabricated, but also the thickness of the plate of whichthe steam chamber is made. Floats are arranged in the interior of thereceiving vessels, so that when one of the latter is filled with water fromthe one below, the float opens a valve to admit the atmosphere to pressthe contents into the vessel next above it.

There is another mode of raising water to considerable elevations by anapparatus like Nos. 217 and 220, and for which they seem much betteradapted than any other, viz. by admitting portions of air to mix with theascending liquid, as in the examples given at pp. 224, 225. No air-tightreceiver would then be required, as both the air and water would be dis-charged with the steam at the open end of the blowing tube, which, forthe reason already stated, should be inclined downwards.

Wherever large volumes of air are required to be withdrawn, as in theVentilation of mines, these instruments we believe would be found as effi-cient and economical as any device yet tried. A number of vacuum tubes,whose lower ends were made to terminate in different parts of a mine—(they might be of leather or other flexible materials, so as readily to bemoved wherever required)—and whose upper ones were connected toone or more blowing tubes through which currents of steam were con-stantly passing, would effectually withdraw the noxious vapors from below,and induce a more copious supply of fresh air than any forcing apparatuscould ever furnish. The waste steam of engines at coal or other mines