The herald., 1898-06-28
desire more detail.

ueSlTe more detail.
"The great problem Of naval war to-
day." continued Mr.. Tripler. ."is coal.
A ship without coal is like gun with
out powder. The difficulty of obtaining
and conveying the enormous quantity
now needed by our big battleships is
the most serious obstacle encountered
in a marine campaign. The solution.
however, is in sight, and liquid air will
furnish it. Don't for a moment con-
found liquid air with compressed air
as motive force; the two things are
no more alike than water power and
steam.
Heat Is the equivalent of force, as
everybody knows, and heat is all around
us. Hitherto, however we have been able
to utilize only the heat which rises con-
siderably above the ordinary tempera-
ture Of things. The heat of coal, for in
stance, becomes effective in the steam
engine only when the boiling point of
water is reached; all that lies between
this and the absolute zero-supposed to
be about 46O degrees below zero. Fahr-
enheit-is wholly wasted. More than
80 per cent. of the potential energy of
the coal consumed, representing 672
degrees of temperature, is thrown away
even in the most perfect engines.
But liquid air, from the fact that it
boils and develops enormous pressure
at temperature 312 degrees below
zero, enables us to utilize this waste
not quite all, but most of it. Under
stand me, liquid air is not force in
itself-no more so than water standing
in pail. 1t is heat that does the work,
but this substance, which boils and ex-
pands at temperature where all else
is frozen solid, enables us to get work
out of the ordinary low-tension heat
which is in everything. Confined in q
properly constructed boiler, it acts pre-
cisely like steam, though with even
greater energy, the difference being
that no fire is needed to boil it. Its
condition at 80 degrees Fahrenheit is
like water at, say, 1900 degrees. You
would not need fire to boil water if the
whole earth were red-hot, as it is rela-
lively to liquid air.
1t is entirely possible, therefore, for a
warship. furnished with my apparatus
and equipped with suitable engines-all
very easily provided-to be driven in
definitely at the highest rate of speed
which her construction enables her to
endure, propelled by the heat Of the
waters that buoy her up eXerted upon
liquid air. Where would she get the
liquid air? She would make it as need
ed from the winds blowing over her
decks by the use of simple and by no
means expensive apparatus, which I
can show you in actual operation at my
laboratory. She should have q little
coal on board to start the process-that
is all. She could then plough through
the waves for year at a stretch with
out requiring fresh supply, and no
vessels dependent on steam could COM
pete with her. Yet if Uncle Sam is dis
trustful, he might at first fit up a few
ships with auxiliary engines of this
sort, still keeping steam as reserve
force, to be used if needed.
And incidentally that inferno of a
battleship, the deadly stoke-room, deep
in the hold, where men are now fairly
roasted alive by the intolerable heat of
the furnaces, would be made as cool
and sweet as a mountain summer re-
sort
How do make the stuff? I am not
yet quite ready to tell you that in de-
tail. You must not ask me to give away
the result of years of labor in a news
paper interview. 1t is SIMPLY elmlnat-
ing heat, and easy if you know how-as
easy as sliding down hill. which is what
the process amounts to, scientifically
considered. How does nature make
cold? Consider that You have only
to travel toward the poles, or to climb
little way up into the sky and you
find it in abundance Anyhow 1 do
make liquid air, as you yourself have
ie,i 70 ,ft-o1 1iat faa
yet every such discovery has to bat
tie with incredulity for a season. 1t
was so with electricity; it was so with
steam. Telephone and trolley stock