St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1890-06-19
BIG MACHINES.
The Modern Tendency Is Toward
Huge, Powerful Engines.

LILO TuOuoTH LcuucIiCy Is IOWdfu
Huge, Powerful Engines.
Engineering and Mining journal.
There is notable tendency in in
dustrial enterprises in recent times not
only to concentrate capital into large
concerns, but to have structures and
machinery of the largest possible kind,
and to drive it with extreme rapidity.
This is pre-eminently the day OF big
things, using the word in Its
ordinary sense to mean large, mass
i've. heavy and bulky. Ocean steam
ships are growing larger and more
powerful. Locomotives, cars, railway
tracks, bridges are all made heavier.
Blast furnaces have increased in size,
mously, so that product of 800 tons a
day is no more uncommon than one of
800 tons week was twenty years ago.
A BesSemer steel works has recently
mode the record of $4,000 tons of steel
in one month. Open hearth furnaces
are now erected with capacity Of
thirty tons. or three times the capacity
of those of ten years ago. In rolling
mills the same progress has been
shown. A plate was rolled i'll pittsburg
so inches wide by S. feet long, q inch
thick, weighing 7.4S0 pounds.
In steam and electric engineering the
same tendency is seen. At the Home
stead Steel works, Pittsburg, there is
about to be placed one OF the largest
Coffiss engines in the world, with
HORIZONTAL cylinder "a by u inches. The
fly wheel will weigh 100000 pounds.
THE whole weight of the engine will be
=3OYer 100000 pounds, ond it is expected
to develop $500 horsepower. The Cor
liss engine, the largest in the world,
was built at the Soho Iron work, Bolton,
England. 1t is of 5000 horsepower,
of the vertical type, and stands As
feet high. 1t is designed to drive the
Ferranti dynamos, forty-five feet in
diameter, mentioned below. The West
end electric railway station in Boston is
to have thirteen engines of 1000 horse
power each. They are to be triple
compound, with cylinders, 81, Sc and SO
inches in diameter. The power is trans
mitted by two belts for each engine,
each belt five feet wide. Steam will be
furnished by twenty-four water tube
boilers, each rated at 500 horse
power. The new cable railway station
of the West Side Cable railway, in
Chicago, has two Greene engines. each
SO inches by ~ inches; each engine
weighs 23S,000 pounds, and has ca
pacity of 1000 horse power. We re-
Gently described the large Belpaire boil
ers and Leavitt hosting engines at the
Calumet and Hecla mines, and now we
have a description of new water-tube
bailer designed by 7. F. Morrin. of
Jersey City, which is located at the
Westinghouse electric light station in
Twenty-fourth street, New York city.
1t contains 600 three-inch water tubes of
peculiar bent shape, expanded at
each end into an internal cylinder forty
eight inches in diameter. The aggre-
gate length of the tubes is 1900 feet, or
about a mile and half, and the boiler
has 5000 feet OF heating surface, and is
said to be capable of developing LOCO
horse power.
In foreign countries the same tend
ency toward bigness is shown, and in
electrical engineering they have even
surpassed us. The Ferranti dynamos
used in the Deptford lighting stations
near London weigh 500 TONS each, stand
10 feet high, run at 60 revolutions per
minute, and can each supply about
100000 incandeseent lights.
Two dynamos of 100, O0O-lamp capacity
are being made for Bellin. each one of
which will require about 1000 horse
power.
There are no dBta now existing which
| will enable any one to predict what will
be the size of boilers, engines, dyna-
mos, steamships, bridges, cars, locomo-
tives, Office buildings and other struc-
lures ten years hence. Everything in
the engineering line seems to be chang
ing at more rapid rate than at any pre-
vipus period. Certainly the limit to in
crease of size does not yet appear.
When the single engine reached its limit
in ship building the compound engine
came in. When shafts and screws
seemed to have grown as large as they
could be made, twin screws and shafts
were used, and at the same time facili
ties for making still larger shafts and
screws were perfected. So it is in every
branch of engineering; as soon as a
3 limit is fixed some one finds way of
overlapping it. and the limit is placed
further ahead.