The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-07-05
WITHIN HIS GRASP
Capt. E. G. Nichols Dies on
Threshold of Success.
Worked Lifetime and Spent
Fortune on Invention.
HAD BEEN PERFECTED
Just Ready to Place 1t on the
Market.
His Plan For Sterilization OF
Air on Large Scale.
HAD BEEN PERFECTED

Captain Edwin Crane Nichols died
at his home just west of the city Sun
day evening, July 4, after an illness OF
over a month from hemorrhage of the
brain. He leaves wife and two
grown daughters. Captain Nichols
was a member of Lincoln Post G. A
R. and of lodge II of the Masons. He
had for many years been citizen OF
Kapsas, although his business com
PEELED him to make his temporary
home at times in other places. He
served through the war with distin-
guished honor and was very severely
wounded at Gettysburg making MIN u
sufferer to the end of his days. IN
that great battle he was in its hottest
and fiercest. His. profession had been
and was an architect and constructing
engineer, and while engaged IN II
many large and costly buildings IN the
west have been built under his super
intendence.
For the last twenty-five years of his
life he has been engaged in expert
menting with air, originally Tor me
purpose of ascertaining some means
of ventilation, but as he pursued his
experiments he discovered 1t was a
larger subject, which led him further
into the uses of air. He became one
of the worlds greatest experts on the
subject of air and its utilities.
After repeated experiments, running
through a quarter of century, he de-
system of machinery, within the pow
er of any skilled mechanic to operate,
bv which a pure, dry ster1lized air can
be furnished at any degree OF neat or
cold for the ventilation of a building
or a city, at any temperature, within
the extremes of heat or cold, and by
which hospitals, schools, mines, ships,
subways and the like can be kept
sterilized and furnished with pure dry
aid with any degree of heat or cold or
humidity required. He discovered a
ofv-
manipulated by his system of machin-
cry, vastly more powerful than steam
and at a largely reduced cost over any
other power. This he had already
his complete machinery. The furnish
ing of pure air to hospitals was be-
1ieved by him to be the source of both
cure and health, and in schools, i'm
munity of the pupils from every sort
of danger or disease.
He had failed time and again to ac-
complish the results he anticipated but
with undated zeal and courage he
continued his efforts, he put into them
once a hundred thousand dollars; he
made it the absorbing object of his life,
and finally he succeeded in everything
he had attempted and had proved the
same by actual demonstration and use
of the system of machinery he had
planned and built.
A corporation had been formed in
this city to utilize his discoveries. and
he was near the goal of his ambition.
By those who know what they are, and
are practically capable of doing, they
believe that in the case of i'll people,
in furnishing heat and cold ana in
greatest and most far reaching discov-
cry, and that he will be entitled to
be considered one of the worlds great
est benefactors. There ere but few men
who have given more to mankind and
none that deserve higher honors.
J. c. WATERS.