Delaware inquirer. (Wilmington, Del.) 1859-18??, 1860-02-25
From the London Literary Gazettcl
Important Discovery in Ventilation

At a time when cholera, with an appalling
voice calls the most earnest attention to house
ventilation, and dreadful explosions and loss
of life in mines demand no less efforts to devise
means for the prevention of these calamtleE,
we have much satisfaction in anticipating that
human residences may easily be supplied with
q continual circulation of wholesome air, and
the most dangerous subterraneous works he
preserved against accident from foul currents
of fire-damp. Dr. Chowne has enrolled IL pa
tent for improvements in ventilatng rooms
and apartments, of the perfect efficacy ofwhch
we believe there cannot be q doubt and on
principle at once most simple and unexpected
Without going into details at present, VIC may
state that the improvements are based upon an
action in the siphon which had not previously
attracted the notice of any experimenter, via
that if fixed with legs of unequal length, the
air PUSHES into the shorter leg, and circulates
mp, and discharges itself from the longer leg
Ii is easy to see how readily this can be applied
to any chamber, in order to purify its atmos-
phere. Let the oriice Of the shorter leg be
disposed where il can receive the current, and
lead it into the chimney, lin mines, into the
shafts,) so as to convert that chimney or shaft
into the longer leg, and you have at once the
circulation complete. similar air-siphon
can be employed in ships and the lowest holds,
where disease is generated in the close berths
the upper decks. The curiosity of this discoy-
cry is that air in siphon reverses the action
Of water, or other liquid, which enters and de-
acends or moves down in the longer leg and
rises up in the shorter leg This is now de-
monstrable fact; but how is the principle to be
accounted for? 1t puzzles our philosophy
That air in the benttubels not to the surround
ing atmosphere as water, or. any heavier body,
is evident; and it must be from this relation
that the updraft in the longer legis caused, and
the constant circulation and withdrawal of
polluted gases carried on. But, be this as it
may, one thing is certain-that more useful
and important discovery has never been made
for the comfort and health of civilized man,
We see no end to this application. There is
no sanitary measure suggested to which 1t may
not form most beneficial adjunct There is
not hovel, a crypt, or black, close hole any
where, that it may not cleanse and disinfect.-
We trust that no time will be lost in bringing
il to the public test on large scale, and we
fsresee no impediment to its being Immediate
ly and universally adopted for the public veal.
We ought to remark, that fires or heating APP
paratus are not at all necessary; and that, as
the specification expresses it, "this action is
! not prevented by making the shorter leg hot
while the longer leg remains cold and no arti-
fetal heat is necessary TO the longer leg of the
air-siphon to caase this action to take place.
Extraordinary as this may appear, we have
witnessed the experiment made in various
ways, with tubes from less than an inch To
nearly foot in diameter, and we can vouch
for the fact being perfectly demonstrated
| Light gas does descend the shorter leg when
heated, and ascend the longer leg, where this
column ofair is much colder and heavier.