Fremont weekly freeman. [volume] (Fremont, Sandusky County, Ohio) 1850-1853, 1850-09-21
Ffre-Proof Cordnge

In a commercial city like New York, the
discovery of any process which, by improving
machinery, makes life more secure and the
transportation of merchandise less hazardous,
must be regarded with interest, and not only
this, but adopted the instant its merits shall be
made apparent, such discovery has, we think
been made, by professor ]. H. johnson, now in
| this city en- route for Europe Prof johnson
now offers to the test of the commercial inter
ests of the word, specimens of cordage and
wood which are incombustible; not utterly i'm
pervious to any and all degrees of heat for any
length of time, but cordage and wood whose
structure will remain as long as the iron that
enters into the composition of ships and fire.
proof safes.
The terrible wrecks of the Lexington, the
Atlantic, the Griffith and thousand other ac-
cidents where valuable lives have been wasted
from inefficient because perishable steering
apparatus,a and the untold losses of papers from
fire when their possessors depended upon safes
admonish every one of the value and the in
terest it is in the success of such discovery as
the one now challenging the closest scrutiny
Measures have been taken to secure the ben
efts of this invention to its author and we
shall attempt to give some idea of the process
We may say that the vegetable matter,
whether of wood, hemp or cotton, is first sub
mitted to process which has the same effect
upon it as is produced upon wood in a char
coal pit, by covering it from the atmosphere
while burning.
The process, all know, produces fuel def
cient in the most important property necessary
for rapid combustion, yet capable of making
most intense heat when burned in a position
1Iara oh f1,o ,6alA
il while burning in the pit This process of
abstracting from vegetable fibre the element
producing combustion so freely, is very simple
and cheap ;but the inventor does not stop with
simply reducing the elements for combustion,
charges the fibre with elements that are utterly
opposed to combustion: substance as impen-
etrable to fire as iron, and at an expense that
will allow its aplication as well to the eoarsest
cotton bagging as to the wheel rope upon
which so often depends thouaand lives
No one who has witnessed the ravages of
fire can examine this material and not feel that
remedy has been found which, if it cannot
place us in complete control of fire, will enable
us to check its course, when, by fastening up
on the dresses of our families and the cordage
of our ships, it may rob us of all we hold
dear By this process every fathom of cord
age and every yard of fabric from our looms
can be made ire-proof, at a cost so trifing as
to be almost below computation. As sub
stitute for the iron rudder chains, which are
so inconvenient, and which steamboats, refuse
to adopt, this is all that could be wished and
must for that purpose be universally used
Upon wood, for safes, its effects are almost ia
bulous, and the fact will hardly be credited
that small turned box, filed with papers,
stood the test of seven hours FIRE in safe, the
iron of which was either melted or burned out,
leaving the wood as bright and the papers as
clean as when they came from the turner's and
printers hand. N. Y. Express.