Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-10-16
THE SMOKE OF LONDON.
Efforts to Deal With the Great soot
 Problem.

Efforts to Deal With the Great soot
 Problem.
 Let the Lendoner with leisure walk through the streets of this city on the next summers day that may chance to visit us and note the chimney tops It is not that which is, but that which Is not, that he should observe. No curling smoke issues, save from the cooking inferno of some huge hotel or the furnace Of seHle active factory. Above is the blue Armament actually to be seen over Lghdeal Then, hav- ing realized, to vary the poets line, Lovely London in luxurious August 7 let him store up the recollection, the mental photograph, and three or four months hence, when the evil days eetaae, chilly, cold, damp, foggy, look at those same chimney pots, belching forth black smoke, try to find a trace of blue sky, and, bringing out that mind picture, contrast now and then. We'll, Winter will be winter, and sum- n1eT isn't always summer; but if those same chimney pots were so free from black smoke in winter, fogs of the pure London variety would be no more, and even in November and January some rays of sunshine would reach us Under existing conditions they are extinguished in the murky pail
 Evidence was given recently before the recent commission on coal supplies to the effect that 50 per cent Of the engine fuel now used could be saved by the general adoption of engines and boilers Of the best types" Enor- nous saving might, competent wit 1lssses said, be effected by the use OF ventilating grates, better heating plant and the utilization for domestic pur- poses of the waste heat from from large power stations. Much has been lone; the engineer is always aiming at the economy of coal. Any moderately old marine engineer will tell you that a pound of coal does four or five times as much work as when he was young, and yet one-half of our coal is wasted. If that be so with scientifically con sfrueted furnaces and boilers. worked by skilled men, how much worse is it with our domestic sloveniy, i'll con sfructed grate. which is, with all ats ternpfs to mend it. the 1ie plus ultra Of extravagance?
 Breatres there a man who has thought ofi the pollution of our atrnos- phere who hasn't tried to invent bet. ter .grate? Napoleon III. setting down at Chiselhurst after Sedan. spent much Of his leisure fn trying to devise 4 sndokeless open fire grate. Iii 1915 MT Cutler patented a a smokelsss grHte for domestic piirposes--the very first hundreds have been patented since --fts secret being feeding u11lerneath, as it is called. the principle aftefward adopted bv ATnott We have advance ed but little on that idea. If we could put the coal on the top and then turn the fire upside down. the new coal be- ing below. the burning portion would be less chilled and there would be less smoke. Tn l843 a select committee virtuously recommended the introduc- ton of q bill prohibiting the pfoduc- ton of smoke from furnaces and steam engines Oh, excellent committed But the way to Inferno is paved with the recomni endafions of select com rnittees. Of course nothing was done. Doubtless life's htfu1 fever is only
 with that committee. They sleep peacefully. but the cfiiThneys still smoke as relentlessly d $ ever London Telegraph