IMPROVE- MENTS IN ENGINES TO BE WORKED BY ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE OR STEAM, OR BY BOTH IN COMBINATION, AND ALSO IN STEAM GENERATORS TO BE USED THEREWITH
Year: 1857

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by James Henry Bennett at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 27th July
1857.
I, JAMES HENRY BENNETT, of Birmingham, in the County of Warwick,
Mechanic, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVE-
MENTS IN ENGINES TO BE WORKED BY ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE OR STEAM, OR BY BOTH
IN COMBINATION, AND ALSO IN STEAM GENERATORS TO BE USED THEREWITH," to be
as follows:-
Upon one end of a crank shaft is mounted the ordinary fly wheel, and
upon the opposite end of the shaft, but supported in independent bearings,
is a stationary hollow wheel or circular cylinder; upon the outer and inner
peripheries of this cylinder are fitted bands or slides following the entire peri-
pheries, and acting as wheels under and upon the cylinder; these are both
attached to a diaphragm piston working in the cylinder. The action of steam
or air, or both, when both are used, propelling the diaphragm round the inside
of the cylinder; the outside bands or slides are by the same power propelled
round the periphery of the cylinder; the band on the inside periphery of the
cylinder being formed as a wheel, has the crank shaft for its axis, through
which motion is imparted to the fly wheel.
I admit the steam or air either into the cylinder direct, or through the
crank axle and one of the spokes of the inner wheel, as may be preferred;

page_text: and I sometimes employ, in connection with the mechanism already described,
an ordinary vertical cylinder, beam, and connecting rods, when I require extra
power.
When air is employed, it is first raised to a high pressure by any
of the ordinary means in a receiver before it is admitted to the circular
cylinder.
My improvements in steam generators are as follows:-I form a box
or outer casing of iron, the door of which box is furnished with proper
apertures for the admission of air; at the bottom of the case is fixed a gas
pipe, having any required number of jets; above each jet is fixed vertically
a small boiler, made by preference of cast steel, and formed in two parts, the
upper part screwing into the lower. These boilers are somewhat of the shape
of a bottle, having a high conical hollow in the bottom, in which hollow the
gas from the jet burns. Water is admitted from the pipe of a force pump
under the bottom of the outer case, and by separate distribution pipes is
conveyed to about the top of each of the small boilers. A steam pipe is con-
nected to the top of each boiler, and all these steam pipes meet in one large
pipe near the top of the case, which pipe conducts the steam generated in all
the boilers into a receiver upon the top of the boiler case, whence by another
pipe the steam is conveyed to the cylinder.
I can employ any number of boilers according to the power required, using
of course a corresponding number of gas jets.
The object of my improvements being to generate steam as rapidly as
possible, by causing the flame of a gas jet to evaporate a small quantity of
water almost as rapidly as it is supplied into the boiler. I can also employ
other heating agents besides gas.