Pumps and Hydraulics, Part 1 (of 2)Hawkins, N. (Nehemiah)
Science
Pumps and Hydraulics, Part 1 (of 2)
Hawkins, N. (Nehemiah)
Hydraulic machinery; Pumping machinery
NOTE.—When an ox or a horse plunges his mouth into a stream, he
dilates his chest and the atmosphere forces the liquid up into his
stomach precisely as up the pipe of a pump. It is indeed in imitation
of these natural pumps that water is raised in artificial ones. The
thorax is the pump; the muscular energy of the animal, the power that
works it; the throat is the pipe, the lower orifice of which is the
mouth, and which he must necessarily insert into the liquid he thus
pumps into his stomach. The capacious chest of the tall camel, or of
the still taller cameleopard or giraffe, whose head sometimes moves
twenty feet from the ground, is a large bellows-pump which raises
water through the long channel or pipe in his neck. The elephant
by a similar pneumatic apparatus, elevates the liquid through that
flexible “suction pipe,” his proboscis; and those nimble engineers,
the common house-flies, raise it through their minikin trunks in the
manner of the gigantic animals which in remote ages roamed over this
planet, and which quenched their thirst as the ox does. There could
have been none which stood so high as to have their stomachs thirty
feet above the water they thus raised into them.
_Rope Pump._ This machine consists of one or more endless ropes, all
stretched on two pulleys as shown in Figs. 171 and 172. These pulleys
have grooves formed in their surfaces for the reception of the ropes.
A rapid rotary motion is communicated to the upper pulley, by a
multiplying wheel, and the ascending side of each rope carries up the
water absorbed by it, and which is separated from it while passing over
the upper pulley, partly by centrifugal force, and partly by being
squeezed in the deep groove.
[Illustration: FIG. 171.]
[Illustration: FIG. 172.]
In the beginning of the motion, the column of water adhering to the
rope, is always less than when it has been worked for some time, and
continues to increase till the surrounding air partakes of its motion.
By the utmost efforts of a man, nine gallons of water were raised
by one of these machines from a well, ninety-five feet deep, in one
minute. (_Adam’s Philos._)
_The hydraulic belt_ is a similar contrivance. It is an endless double
band of woolen cloth, passing over two rollers, not here shown. It is
driven with a velocity of not less than a thousand feet per minute;
when the water contained between the two surfaces is carried up and
discharged as it passes over the upper roller, by the pressure of the
band. Some machines of this kind are stated to have produced an effect
equal to seventy-five per cent. of the power expended, while that of
ordinary pumps seldom exceeds sixty per cent. (_Lon. Mechan. Mag._)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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