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
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the works were extended
from time to time, and occupied one after another of the arches. In the
first arch of the bridge was one wheel working sixteen force-pumps. In
the third arch were three wheels, working fifty-two pumps. The united
effect was 2,052 gallons per minute, raised 120 feet high.
In 1767 Smeaton added wheels in the fifth arch. Steam-engines were
added about this time to assist at low water and at neap-tides. Thus
the matter remained till 1821. Stow, the antiquarian and historian,
describes the works in 1600; and Beighton in 1731 gives an account of
them at that date.
The water-wheels at that time were placed under several of the
arches. The axis of these wheels was 19 feet long 3 feet diameter.
The radial arms supported the rings and twenty-six floats, 14 feet
long by 18 inches wide. The axis turned on brass gudgeons supported
by counterpoised levers, which permitted the vertical adjustment of
the wheel as the tide rose and fell. On the axis of the wheel was a
cog-wheel 8 feet in diameter and having forty-four cogs; meshing into a
trundle-wheel 4-1/2 feet in diameter and having 20 rounds, or pins and
whose iron axle revolved in brasses.
The axis of the trundle was prolonged at each end, and had quadruple
cranks which connected by rods to the ends of four walking beams 24
feet long, whose other ends worked the piston-rods of the pumps. The
axis of oscillation of the lever supporting the wheel, and by which it
was adjusted to the height of the tide, was coincident with the axis
of the trundle, so that the latter engaged the 8-feet cog-wheel in all
conditions of vertical adjustment. Cranks operated one end of the beams
while pumps were attached to the other end.
[Illustration: FIG. 116.]
Fig. 116 exhibits an _overshot water wheel_ employed at Laxey, Isle
of Man, for driving the pumps which drain the mines at that village;
these have an extreme depth of 1,380 feet. The wheel is 72 feet 6
inches in diameter, 6 feet in breadth, exerts a force of about 200
horse-power and is capable of pumping 250 gallons per min. from a depth
of 1,200 feet. Its crank-stroke is 10 feet. The water for driving it is
conducted by pipes from a reservoir on a neighboring hill, and ascends
in the column of masonry shown to the left of the wheel. (Knight Vol.
III.) An extra crank appears to be shown in the foreground of this
reproduction of an old drawing.
TURBINE WATER WHEELS.
The word turbine is derived from the Latin, “_turbo_”—that which spins
or whirls around—a whirlwind.
[Illustration: FIG. 117.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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