Sunday Washington globe., 1902-05-18
VERY CHEEKY
Is This Attempt of Torpedo
Boat Contractors
WHO FAILED IN SPEED
To Secure Compensation over the
Contract Price-Instead of Being
Fined They Want More Money
Additional information on the
PaintOn Electrical Invention.

The government contractors who built
the sixteen torpedo boats and fell FIVE
knots short OF the contract rate Of speed are
asking Congress for compensation, mas
much as the cost of material advanced while
they were building the boats For impu-
dent nerve this takes the red ribbon
AT the time the bids were opened Paiutou
& Randall the former the inventor of
the principle of electrical application to
steamships written up last week, submitted
a bid guaranteeing thirty-fve aud forty
knots. This bid was not considered on the
fimsey pretext that Painton & Randall had
no ship building plant. The fourteen sue
cessful bidders were awarded the boats at
SI65,ooo to S2S5, 600 each. Painton IS bid for
IS or 40 knots was $685. each. The boats
built cannot exceed IS knots or Eve knots
less than the contracted speed. Aud yet
the contractors, instead Of being fined, as is
the usual custom for their failure in the
maximum speed, are now knocking at the
doors of Congress for compensation because
armor plate advanced in price while the
boats were being constructed.
The Englshmau and inventor, Richard
B. Painton, is having a hard road to travel
with our Navy Department. He has been
IN death struggle with Judge Advocate"
Lemly for some blue print drawings Of
cruisers and battleships he submitted a few
years ago. Repeated applications failed to
develop the prints, but finally portion Of
them was dug up and returned the past
week There are other valuable drawings
still missing.
Speaking Of his invention Mr.. Paintou
.af 1na
Sir William Armstrong made thirty-fve
knots with six screws by his electrical in-
vention, but chat owing to an error in its
application of a reversible character one of
their boats ran on the rocks with her own
momentum. She was being driven through
the water at a speed of thrty-ive knots
when she sighted the rocks, and although
her machinery was instantly stopped her
momentum was such that she ran on the
rocks. Now under the Painton reversible
device she could have been Immediately
backed within her own length. That the
invention is an applied and demonstrated
success Mr.. Painton has the best evidence
in his possession which he has already SUBJ
mitted to members of both houses.
He has bills now before Congress asking
for authority or appropriation to construct
an eight screw cruiser or battleship which
he guarantees will make forty knots per
hour
Wrestler the Swiss, or Tyrolese Aus.
trian, who invented the screw, received one
hundred pounds from the British govern
ment Mr. Painton asks nothing for his
immeasurably more important invention
but the opportunity to demonstrate by the
construction of cruiser, or rather de-
stroyer that the present motive power is an
tiquated and that the money being ex-
pended for twin-screw battleships aud
cruisers is simply wasted. By his methods
and applications, as explained in last Sum
days GLOBE, he guarantees forty or forty
FIVE knots per hour
Speaking of the article Mr.. Paiuton stated
that the GLOBE was the only newspaper in
which published free exactly
as he stated the merits Of his invention and
also the best and most comprehensive ex-
planation Of the same.
Recently the a-thor of the Three Amer
ica's Railway, Mr.. Hamilton Rowan, tes-
tilted under oath before Magistrate Bundy
that every newspaper in Washington
wanted from two to three hundred dollars
for article he desired published and that
the GLOBE published it without charge Of
any kind aud never mentioned tie question
Of price.