The Portsmouth inquirer. [volume] (Portsmouth, O. [Ohio]) 1849-1855, 1851-02-17

at his side; an eternal source of mechanical
power, omnipresent, illimitable, constant,
free to all people, common to sea and land,
easily excited, and of endless application.
And what is this but the bland and silent
iirmamont, which, pressing with the weight
OF Ton on every foot of surface exposed to
1T, Offers power adapted apparently to eve
ry eMgence-one whose intensity can be
modified indefinitely pushing, if we wish
it, imperceptibly as the falling dew, and at
our nod descending, rcsistless as an ava
lanche? The breathrof living mechanisms,
why should it not become the animating
spirit Of artificial ones? What is there to
hinder atmospheric pressure from being adop-
ted as a common, if not general motor p
Little IS wanted TO make ii one-a cheap and
quick process of exciting it being alone re-
quired.
Tbessea is the receptacle of the worlds
waters, The armament of its gases. All Sub
stances are worn and washed into one, and
all exhale into the other. We detect the lat
ter in what are called odorous bodies, and we
might do so in all bodies, were it not for the
obtuseness of our senses. Had human Or
gans been fitted for micographic observation,
the color and taste of air had not eluded
them. The ceaseless streaming upward of
every variety of vapor makes the atmosphere
one of the most complex of compounds; yet
the mixture is found to be made up of two
ingredients chiehy--oxygen and nitrogen,
with a very slight dash of water, and much
slighter of carbonic acid-a result, however,
of approximate analysis. Further researches
will lessen or enlarge the number of constit-
uents, ascertain their qualities as well as
quantities, and most likely disclose the
means of producing among them instantane-
Gus collapsion; t. e., will enable us to call
into instant action the airs pressure on one
side of piston by destroying it at the other.
Could we by decomposition annihilate the
air in a given space, or by some quick process
displace it, we should have power adapted
to most of the purposes to which steam is
applied, and TO others to which it is inappli-
cable; power as ready to act in a parlor as
in workshop, above the earth as beneath it
or upon it, and one which can be invoked to
any degree of intensity, for the suspension
of fly to the overthrowing OF mountain.
Difficulties in the way present no formida-
BILE aspects, but rather court attempts to re-
move them.
We already know the capabilities of at
mospheric pressure; since to it the first steam
engines owed all their efficacy, and to il not a
few are still indebted. 1t is scarcely posi-
BILE to conceive more glorious source Of me
chanical force than the soft, invisible, and
quiet fluid in which we live and move; at
tending us everywhere, and ready to obey the
slightest invocation, it would seem designed
for universal motor. An object of more
legitimate andhigh ambition no chemist car
desire to achieve, than that of economically
and rapidly displacing air from cylinde
without introducing another substance fo
the purpose. Accomplish this, and human
drudgery is at ON end; ignorance and crime
our races jailors, loosoIa thoir holel-or thci
victims throats, and stink into outer dark
ness.