The record-union., 1898-07-10
Acres OF the Arctic Can Be Put in
a Pint Cup.
Sacramento Houses Could Have Mountain
Air and Rival of Steam in
One Little Jar.

If the assertions Of Professor Charles
Z. Tripler of New York concerning his
! discovery of a cheap process for manu-
featuring liquid air are true the world
of mechanics, refrigeration and eXplo-
sives will soon be revolutionized.
AS Sacramento possesses some chem
lists of note, the Record Union pre-
sents their opinions of the alleged dis
coVery side by side with the claims of
the discoverer himself, though it should
be said that Professor Tripler has kept
| the details Of his discovery so secret
that any chemist who speaks on the
| subject is somewhat handicapped.
| II the common air in which We live
! and breathe possesses the elements
/ that may be turned into Titanic forces
hundreds of times stronger than dyna-
mite; if the same air may be made to
pump and wind, drive locomotives and
ships, and if the same element that
| sighs in the zephyrs of spring may
/ in fifteen minutes be made ten times
colder than the widest night in the
Arctics, it is certainly the most mar
velous discovery of all the ages.
/ Yet this wizard of New York seems
/ to have made the invisible air to do
all these wonders, and more, as if he
/ had suddenly put on the cap of For
] tunatus and forthwith acquired the
power to make the air do his bidding,
as if he had pried into the storehouse Of
nature and stolen her most secret al
| chemy.
The most elaborate description of
what liquid air will do has been writ
ten by the man who first harnessed it
| in a modern and practical Way-Profes-
sor Tripler. In an article in The Cos
mopolitan'' for June he says, among
other things, that this air is a cheaply
made and readily handled fluid. 1t pos
| sesses the strange quality of boiling
and evaporating at the enormous point
of frigidity marked as 3D. degrees be-
! low zero, Fahrenheit; so that is as
warm as it can be made. Greater heat
causes it to pass away in gases, just as
| boiling water passes away in steam
| He says the mechanical contrivance
with which he makes this marvellous
fluid is not expensive, and that after it
has been in operation, condensing the
common air around us for fifteen min
utes, clear, frosty looking liquid, blue
as the skies of June, begins to pour out
of a tube and into a vessel. Each
ly 500 feet of atmosphere, and in it's
expansion as it returns to its gaseous
state, lies power Of the highest known
efficiency, easy to control and ready to
be harnessed and used 1t promises to
supplant steam and electricity, if the
Professor is a good prophet.
| A tumbler filled with this liquid air
! begins to boil, though it is 312 de-
/ hn1n nd
meat so hard in few minutes that it
| rings like bell metal, and may be pull
verized as fine as flour by blow. By
enclosing this tumbler in another and
| having vacuum between, the evap-
oration is much slower, and by cover
| ing the vessel also with a hair felt
| cover. so as to shut off exterior heat,
and at the same time allow the expan-
| sion and escape of gases, the liquid air
will be many hours in disappearing,
and it will purify the air in the room by
diffusing pure oxygen.
| The Government is now experiment.
ing at Professor Tripler's New York Ia
| boratory to learn whether any practi-
cal use can be made of his invention in
| cooling the rapid fire guns of the navy.
| There are other uses that are in the
claimed may be believed. A projectile
| holding as much as hogshead Of this
| fluid, securely inclosed next to a fuse
that might be set off by an electric or
| other spark, would expand and burst
| with such force as to sink every vessel
within an area of q mile. Tripler says
such an explosion would turn the sea
into a surging storm in which no yes
sells could live would hurl mountains
of water against the shores, while the
concussion would shatter with infinite
| ly more force than pure nitro -glycerine.
| Tanned down and harnessed within
the proper receptacle, allowed to expand
| in some such way as steam expands in a
| cylinder, it is alleged that the work of
| this air would be enough TO increase
| the velocity of trains and ships and
greatly reduce the cost of moving them.
| 1t is predicted that the future refrig-
| orators Of the world will be made with
receptacles of liquid air. An open yes
sci containing the frigidity OF twenty
acres of Alaska boiled down to a half
pint at a temperature 312 degrees below
zero might be put in an obscure corner