IMPROVED APPARATUS FOR SUPPLYING AIR, MEDICATED OR PURE, TO PERSONS IN CONFINED APARTMENTS; AND OTHER PLACES REQUIRING VEN- TILATION
Year: 1857

page_text: (This Invention received Provisional Protection, but notice to proceed with the
application for Letters Patent was not given within the time prescribed
by the Act.).
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by William Howard at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 8th September
1857.
I, WILLIAM HOWARD, of Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in the
County of Middlesex, Type Founder, do hereby declare the nature of the
said Invention for "IMPROVED APPARATUS FOR SUPPLYING AIR, MEDICATED OR
PURE, TO PERSONS IN CONFINED APARTMENTS; AND OTHER PLACES REQUIRING VEN-
TILATION," to be as follows:-
My Invention of improved apparatus for supplying air to persons in con-
fined apartments, and other places requiring ventilation, is intended to be
applied to such places as hospitals, ships' cabins, or holes, mines, and other
analogous places, and consists in the use and application of an arrangement of
pipes or tubes communicating with the open air, and fixed in any convenient
manner along the roof or other suitable part of the room or place. These
supply pipes or mains, as they may be called, are provided with any suitable
number of flexible branch pipes, to the ends of which are adapted mouth-
pieces, furnished with clack valves, one of which opens inwards to admit air
from the main, and the other valve opens outwards to allow the vitiated air
expired by the wearer to escape.
In hospitals two or more sets of tubes, with their branch pipes, may be
employed, so that either pure air may be conveyed from the external atmo-

page_text: sphere to the patient, or warm or medicated air may be supplied. The branch
pipes with their valve mouthpieces should be so arranged that the latter may
be applied to the patient's respiratory organs while he is lying in bed. The
same may also be done in ships' cabins. A pure air main may be laid along the
roof of some of the main passages of a mine, and should be provided with
branch pipes and mouthpieces at convenient distances, so arranged that the
men can obtain immediate access to them when desired, so that should any
foul air or choke damp suddenly manifest itself in the mine, the men may
instantly resort to the breathing tubes, and there remain until the foul air is
cleared out.
In some cases, both in mines as well as in ships or hospitals, it may be
found necessary and advisable to force the air from the external atmosphere
into the pipes by means of pumps or other suitable apparatus.
Medicated air may also be forced into rooms in which are persons in an
infirm or debilitated state of health.
By providing suitable means for the exit of the vitiated air, and forcing
medicated air into the room under pressure, persons suffering from some forms
of disease may be greatly benefitted.
Locomotive engine drivers and stokers may be supplied with warm air to
breathe in winter and severe weather by causing the air to pass through a
tube connected with and warmed by the boiler, and adapting to the end of
such tube a flexible branch pipe and mouthpiece.
I also propose to make a portable apparatus to be used by persons having
occasion to enter sewers or other places where they will be liable to be exposed
to a fetid or impure atmosphere that would be deleterious to health. Such
an apparatus would consist simply of a double valve mouthpiece to cover the
nose and mouth, attached to one end of any convenient length of flexible pipe
or tube, the other end of which should remain open.