The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated: With an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain axioms for railway speculatorsLardner, Dionysius
History
The Steam Engine Familiarly Explained and Illustrated: With an historical sketch of its invention and progressive improvement; its applications to navigation and railways; with plain axioms for railway speculators
Lardner, Dionysius
Steam-engines -- Early works to 1850
Messrs. _Lloyd_ and _Kingston_ were employed by government to examine
and report the effects of Mr. Hall's boilers, and they stated in their
report, already referred to, that the result is so successful as to
leave nothing to be wished for. Among the advantages which they
enumerate are the increased durability of the engines; the prevention
of accidents through carelessness, or otherwise, arising from the
condenser and air-pump becoming choked with injection water; and the
additional security against the boilers being burnt in consequence of
the water being suffered to get too low. But the greatest advantages,
compared with which they consider all others to be of secondary
importance, are the increased durability of the boilers and the saving
of fuel.
About 16 engines, built either wholly upon Mr. Hall's principle or
having his condenser attached to them, have now (October, 1835) been
working in different parts of England, and on board different vessels
for various periods, from three years to three months; and it appears
from the concurrent testimony of the proprietors and managers of them,
that they are attended with all the advantages which the patentee
engaged for. The part of the contrivance the performance of which
would have appeared most doubtful would have been the maintenance of a
sufficiently good vacuum in the condenser, in the absence of the usual
method of condensation by the injection of cold water; nevertheless it
appears that a better vacuum is sustained in these engines than in the
ordinary engines which condense by jet. The barometer-gauge varies
from 29 to 29-1/2 inches, and in some cases comes up to 30 inches,
according to the state of the barometer: this is a vacuum very nearly
perfect, and indeed may be said to be so for all practical purposes.
The _Prince Llewellyn_ and the _Air_ steam packets, belonging to the
St. George Steam Packet Company, have worked such a pair of these
engines for about a year. The _City of London_ steam packet, the
property of the General Steam Navigation Company, has been furnished
with two fifty-horse engines, and has worked them during the same
period. In all cases the boilers have been found perfectly free from
scale or incrustation; and the deposite is either absolutely nothing
or very trifling, requiring the boiler to be swept about once in half
a year, and sometimes not so often. The trial which has been made of
these engines in the navy has proved satisfactory, so far as it has
been carried. The Lords of the Admiralty have lately ordered a pair of
seventy-horse engines to be constructed on this principle for a vessel
now (October, 1835) in process of construction;[36] and another vessel
in all respects similar, except having copper boilers, is likewise
ordered; so that a just comparison may be made. It would, however,
have been more fair if both vessels had been provided with iron
boilers, since copper does not receive incrustation as readily as
iron.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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