The boiler built for this work was a beehive-shaped arrangement of coils of pipe. It consisted at first, as shown in Fig. 3, of three double coils of 3/8-inch copper pipe coiled up in the shape of a truncated cone, carrying in the central portion a pear-shaped receiver into the upper portion of which the water circulating through the coils discharged. Each of these receivers was connected at the top with the bottom of a long cylindrical drum, with hemispherical ends, which formed a steam space from which supply for the engines was drawn. The lower ends of the coils were connected with an injection pipe supplying the water. Each “beehive” had 23 turns of tubing, and had a base of 7.5 inches and a top diameter of 6 inches, the steam drum being 2.5 inches in diameter. I may here say that in the selection of the general type of boiler for the work to be done, there was never any hesitation regarding the use of the water-tube variety. Their superiority for the quick generation of large volumes of steam had been so pronounced that nothing else seemed capable of competing with [p035] them in this respect, regardless of the absolute economy of fuel that might or might not be exhibited. Hence, to the end of my experiments nothing else was used. Even before the “beehive” boiler was completed, I was anxious to ascertain what could be done with a coil of pipe with a stream of water circulating through it, as well as with various forms of burners, for I realized that the success of the apparatus depended not only upon getting an exceedingly effective heating surface, but also an equally effective flame to do the heating. For fuel I naturally turned to the liquids as being more compact and readily regulated. Whether to use some of the more volatile hydrocarbons or alcohol, was still an unsolved problem, but my opinion at the time was that, on the limited scale of the model, better results could probably be obtained with alcohol. In the experiments made with a coil preliminary to the trial of the “beehive” boiler, I tried a simple horizontal coil of 3/8-inch copper pipe into which two forked burners working on the Bunsen principle and using city illuminating gas, were thrust. The jets were about 1/2 inch apart. The arrangement primed so badly that the engines could not get rid of the entrained water, and would only make a few turns.