A NEW AND IMPROVED KIND OF FIRE ENGINES, PUMPS, OR OTHER ENGINES IN WHICH ARE USED PISTONS, WORKING IN BARRELS OR CYLINDERS
Year: 1819

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, PAUL
SLADE KNIGHT, of Lancaster Moor, in the County Palatine of Lancaster,
Gentleman, send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Third, by His
Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland, bearing date at Westminster, the Third day of April, in the
fifty-ninth year of His reign, did give and grant unto me, the said Paul
Slade Knight, my executors, administrators, and assigns, His special licence,
full power, sole privilege and authority, that I, the said Paul Slade Knight, my
exccutors, administrators, and assigns, during the term of years therein expressed,
should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and vend, within England,
Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, my Invention of "A NEW
AND IMPROVED KIND OF FIRE ENGINES, PUMPS, OR OTHER ENGINES IN WHICH ARE
USED PISTONS, WORKING IN BARRELS OR CYLINDERS;" in which said Letters
Patent there is contained a proviso obliging me, the said Paul Slade Knight,
by an instrument in writing under my hand and seal, to cause a particular
description of the nature of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is
to be performed, to be inrolled in His Majesty's High Court of Chancery
within two calendar months next and immediately after the date of the said in
part recited Letters Patent, as in and by the same, relation being thereunto
had, may more fully and at large appear.

page_text: NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the proviso in the said
Letters Patent, I, the said. Paul Slade Knight, do hereby declare that my
said Invention is fully described and ascertained in manner and form as follows,
that is to say-
My Invention consists in making the barrel or barrels of such engines or
pumps curved in the form of a segment of a circle, and which circular form
(it is evident) necessarily requires a corresponding form in the piston rod or
rods. In order to make this, Invention, to be clearly understood, I shall pro-
ceed to describe its application to the construction of what I conceive to be
the simplest form of fire engines or garden engines, observing that in the use
of my patent curved barrel I do not intend to confine myself to any particular
manner or form of its application, neither do I intend to confine myself to any
In the Drawings in
particular portion of a circle, or to the use of two pistons.
the margin of these presents, in Fig. 1 a fire or garden engine is represented;
a, b, c, d, the box or case containing the apparatus; e, e, the curved barrels
placed upon a box ff.f, of the usual construction, and containing the usual
valves of a fire engine; 9, 9, are pistons of the usual sort fixed to the extremities
of two, circular piston rods h, h, which are put in motion by means of the
handle or lever k, k; the fulcrum m of the handle or lever is a pin in the
cross piece L, L, which pin or fulcrum is placed in the centre of the circle of
which the barrels are segments, and in a plane passing through the axis of the
the
said barrels e, e; from n'to n, is a space in the barrels through which passes
handle or lever k, k, and which space in order to allow the pistons to work through
the greatest possible extent must be equal to one third the periphery of the
whole barrel, allowing for the space occupied by the pistons; O is the air vessel,
and P the ejection pipe, both being upon the usual construction. The mode
of constructing the "curved barrels " I have hitherto adopted is as follows:
I cast two rings. of brass or other metal, one of which is represented in Fig. 2,
and a transverse section of the same in Fig. 3;. the whole of the inner
surface a, b, a, of these rings I turn in a lath, making the hollow part b as
nearly semicircular as I am capable, and the edges or flanches a, a, I turn level
so that when the two rings are placed one upon the other, as in Fig. 4, they
form a tubular ring, the hollow part being circular, and the end or flanches a, a
fitting each other. These rings aro fixed together by screws passing thro
the flanches, as is represented in Fig. 5 and 1, and the junction is made air
tight by the use of white lead, putty, or other material, if necessary; a portion
being cut from this hollow ring and a space made, as explained above and
represented in Figure 5, (in which two pistons are to be used,) for working of the
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