The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1898-02-19
MODERN USES FOR
COMPRESSED AIR
Almost Couutless Now and Are Rapidly
Multiplying.
CALLED HLeCrRlCITY'S BROTHER
AForce That Can Move Mountain
or Trace a Hair Line, Is Always
Ready and Easy TO BE Managed, {,
and Can He Roughly Handled With
Impuuity--New Applications.
From the New York Sun.

From the New York Sun.
The wonderful advances in the APP
plications of electricity to industrial
purposes during the last ten years have
attracted so much public attention that
the inroads made upon what was re-
garded as the inalienable domain of
the steam engine by another power
have been almost unobserved. This
power, which bids fair to claim a
brothers place beside the electric cur
rent in the field of distributing energy,
is compressed air. The fact is that
compressed air has made its way into
mans service in so many ways and
through so many channels that If it
were to cease to be mans servant he
would suffer widespread Inconvenience.
Before telling of the services of COM
pressed air ii may be we'll to forestall
any misrepresentation as to the rela-
tionship which this force or electricity
bears to steam. It is not uncommon
to hear persons say that the day Of
steam is passing. Soon" they say,
everything will be done by these new
powers, and the steam engines may be
sold for junk" This is far from the
truth. Every electric dynamo or motor
anu every tblllpltSStb tlll llliNIlllV biiet
has been added to the worlds supply
has made more work for the steam en-
gine, and such will continue to be the
case except in the few places where
some natural water power may be
brought into use with economy. Com
pressed air and electricity are rapidly
driving the steam engine with its
shaftings and beltngS out of use as
means for distributing power or for
producing it in small quantities for iso-
lated use. The steam engines of the
near future will all be enormous ma
chimes driving dynamos or air COM
pressors, and sending their energy out
through far-reaching networks of wires
or pipes to the places where the power
is to be used. Power stations are
springing up everywhere, and with
each increase in the size of boiler and
engine plants there comes a greater
economy in the consumption of fuel
and the working of the steam engine.
TWO FORCES COMPARED.
AS distributors of energy, air and
electricity go side by side and, although
like handy brothers, each can do many
of the things which the other does, each
has it's own special field of labor. Elec-
trical energy can be produced, distrib-
uted and converted into power with
far less loss than is possible with COM
pressed air, but the appliances for do
ing this are much more delicate and
expensive, and are fit only to be put
into the hands of experts for use and
care. Compressed air is a rougher-
handed workman. 1t can be set to
work in swamps and bitches and quar-
ries, digging mud, batterng rocks to
pieces, or loading and unloading cars,
and although the men who handle it
are rough handed, too, it remains a
faithful co-worker that does not be-
come a dangerous neighbor, like the
fiery lightning.
New Workers who would like to see
now compressed air is being used today
to do mans hard work can find a fine
example of it's application on the old
Jerome Park site where Contractor
Mcdonald is building the vast new Cro-
ton water reservoir. On d hilltop, al
most in the centre of the tract to be
reduced to a level, stands the old ball
room of the Jockey Club house and
within this great steam engines labor
in silence, driving pumps which suck
IN the free air and impriSOn it, squeezed
down to but small part of it's original
volume. Out from the power house run
steel pipes, some of them eight inches
in diameter, and these and their
branches reach to every place where
work is in progress. Three and a half
million cubic feet of solid rock must
be drilled and blasted and taken away
from the site Of the reservoir, and an
equal amount of earth. Where the
rocks rise one may see drills peggng
away at them, filing them with holes
for the blasts. All about these work.
ings rise derricks for handling the
broken rock. Drills and derricks are
worked by the compressed air. carried
to each by wire-wound rubber hose as
easily moved or connected as if the
pow er were water. 1t was in mines
and tunnels that compressed air first
made its success, for there it not only
supplied power in a handy form, but it
also assured to the workers a pure at
mosphere. Now the coal miners drills
and picks are run by it and in many
places the mine cars are drawn to the
surface by air locomotives.
PNEUMATIC TUBES.
In city life one depends upon COM
pressed air to carry messages through
pneumatic tubes and to TRANSPORT
money and change in many stores
soon air will carry on the entire eX-
change of mails between Brooklyn and
New York through tubes over the
-, Bridge. The foundation of the Brook
lyn bridge were sunk by means of COM
pressed air, end the new East River
brodge will ave it's foundations sunk
in the same way, Not piece of meat
comes to the table from the great
abattoirs of Chicago that has not been
cheapened by the compressed air lifts
which handled it in the many depart
ments through which it passed from
the living animal.
1t is, however, in the machine shop,
the foundry, the railroad shop, and on
railroads themselves, that compressed
air has proved itself of value in the
greatest variety of ways Other pow
ers might be just as good but for the
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