The Romance of Modern Invention: Containing Interesting Descriptions in Non-technical Language of Wireless Telegraphy, Liquid Air, Modern Artillery, Submarines, Dirigible Torpedoes, Solar Motors, Airships, &c. &c.Williams, Archibald
Science
The Romance of Modern Invention: Containing Interesting Descriptions in Non-technical Language of Wireless Telegraphy, Liquid Air, Modern Artillery, Submarines, Dirigible Torpedoes, Solar Motors, Airships, &c. &c.
Williams, Archibald
Inventions
In combination with oil and charcoal liquid air, under the name of
“oxyliquit,” becomes a powerful blasting agent. Cartridges of paper
filled with the oil and charcoal are provided with a firing primer.
When everything is ready for the blasting the cartridges are dropped
into a vessel full of liquid air, saturated, placed in position, and
exploded. Mr. Knudsen assured the writer that oxyliquit is twice as
powerful as nitro-glycerine, and its cost but one-third of that of the
other explosive. It is also safer to handle, for in case of a misfire
the cartridge becomes harmless in a few minutes, after the liquid air
has evaporated.
But the greatest use will be found for liquid air when it exerts its
force less violently. It is the result of power; its condition is
abnormal; and its return to its ordinary state is accompanied by a
great development of energy. If it be placed in a closed vessel it is
capable of exerting a pressure of 12,000 lbs. to the square inch. Its
return to atmospheric condition may be regulated by exposing it more
or less to the heat of the atmosphere. So long as it remains liquid
it represents so much _stored force_, like the electricity stored in
accumulators. The Liquid Air Company have at their Gillingham Street
depôt a neat little motor car worked by liquid air. A copper
reservoir, carefully protected, is filled with the liquid, which is by
mechanical means squirted into coils, in which it rapidly expands, and
from them passes to the cylinders. A charge of eighteen gallons will
move the car forty miles at an average pace of twelve miles an hour,
without any of the noise, dirt, smell, or vapour inseparable from the
employment of steam or petroleum. The speed of the car is regulated by
the amount of liquid injected into the expansion coils.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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