Fig. 17 illustrates a combined steam and air indicator card taken from one of these cylinders. It will be observed that with steam and air cylinders equal in diameter and stroke, an air pressure of 77 pounds is reached with a steam pressure of only 58 pounds. The reason for this is plainly shown in the cards, their areas being nearly equal. What is made up in the air card by high pressure is represented in the steam card by greater volume. The indicated efficiency deduced from these cards is 95 per cent., that is, the area of the air card divided by the area of the steam card, representing the resistance divided by the power, results in 95 per cent. While several cards have been taken on the cylinders showing a loss by friction of only 5 per cent., yet on the average the best practice shows a loss of 6 per cent. or an efficiency of 94 per cent. This result indicates an almost perfect proportion between power and resistance, and good workmanship in air-compressing machinery. It is difficult to conceive an engine of this size being worked with a less expenditure for friction than 5 or 6 per cent. Were it possible to retain the heat which is in the air, and which is represented by the space between the dotted isothermal curve and the actual curve, we might attain high efficiency in using compressed air power, but it is evident that the power represented by the area of this space will be lost by radiation of heat before it is used in an engine situated several hundred feet away. These indicator cards show at a glance that heat is responsible for the important air losses, and that so far as the design of the compressing engine is concerned, we have attained a point very near perfection. All the devices, past, present and future, on which inventors spend so much time, and in the development of which capitalists are innocently inveigled, _aim to save this six per cent. loss!_ We hear a good deal about "Centrifugal Air Compressors," "Rotaries," "Plunger Pumps," etc., designs involving expensive complications without any heat advantage, and which seem to be based upon the "iridescent dream" of a large loss in the present method of compressing air. Here we have a simple engine, compact and complete in itself, capable of high speed without injury, constructed on the basis of our best steam engine practice, which produces compressed air power at a loss of only six per cent.