IMPROVED MEANS AND APPLIANCES FOR RESISTING IMPACT OR SUPPORTING PRESSURE IN CONNECTION WITH SHIPS AND BUILDINGS (STRUCTURES), SUCH MEANS AND APPLIANCES WITH SOME MODIFICATIONS BEING AVAILABLE FOR OBTAINING FLEXIBILITY IN RINKING FLOORS AND THE LIKE
Year: 1876

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by James Plaister Harriss-Gastrell at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents on the 26th October 1876.
JAMES PLAISTER HARRISS-GASTRELL, formerly of Stanley Hall, Wakefield, in the
County of York, England, but now of the British Embassy, Vienna, in the Empire
of Austria-Hungary. "IMPROVED MEANS AND APPLIANCES FOR RESISTING IMPACT
OR SUPPORTING PRESSURE IN CONNECTION WITH SHIPS AND BUILDINGS (STRUCTURES),
SUCH MEANS AND APPLIANCES WITH SOME MODIFICATIONS BEING AVAILABLE FOR
OBTAINING FLEXIBILITY IN RINKING FLOORS AND THE LIKE."
This Invention relates to improved means and appliances for resisting impact or
supporting pressure in connection with ships and buildings (structures), such means
and appliances with some modifications being available for obtaining flexibility in
rinking floors and the like, and consists in using a liquid, water, or brine, or other,
as a cushion or layer to resist impact or support pressure, and I do so by shutting
such liquid in a liquid or water-tight, or nearly liquid or water-tight enclosed
space.
I apply this principle to the flooring and supports, and generally to materials
and articles for building and the like; to walls, and roofs, and the like in forts and
fortifications; to decks, bulwarks, and iron plates of vessels, and generally to the
construction of ships; and I likewise apply it to flooring for the purpose of
supporting pressure and of obtaining a more or less flexible surface, as, for example,
to the flooring of a skating rink.
Taking water, for instance, chemically compounded or not with salt, with or
without one or more other substances, for the purpose of increased specific gravity,
or of sweetness, or of anti-corrosion, or of any or all of these, I use it with or with-
out anti-corrosive lining,-
(a). In hollow girders, pillars, and the like.
(b). In hollow blocks, or compartments, or tanks, or the like, for or in the con-
struction of walls, roofing, bulwarks, decks, and the like, with or without apparatus
for filling or re-filling.
(c). In hollow iron blocks or plates with dovetailing flanges or equivalents for
joining, for ship building, or armour protection to ships or forts, with or without
apparatus for filling or re-filling.
977

page_text: (d.) In a water-tight or nearly water-tight tank, compartment, or enclosed
space, with or without annexed force-pump or apparatus on the Bramah press
principle for regulating upward pressure of water and for aiding in removing
unevenness of surface in flooring and in combination with a water-tight or nearly
water-tight flooring stretched across, suspended over, and more or less floating upon
the upper surface of said enclosed water, which flooring shall be more or less flexibly
constructed of one or more materials, and for large areas may be buoyed by buoyant
substances or pontoons, or the like, or be supported by buffer spring supports or
the like, or be both buoyed and thus supported.
In applying this method (d) to skating rinks and dancing floors, and whenever a
slightly elastic and strongly cohesive, woven, or otherwise manufactured material,
as india-rubber and the like, cannot by itself be used for forming the flooring and
receiving the smooth surface, I use for the flooring, for example, a strong woven or
felted material, waterproofed, or nearly so, or not; also strengthened and protected
or not at the joints or elsewhere whenever necessary by strips of cork or laths, or
tin, or the like, or even altogether floating on strips of cork or laths, or the like,
and likewise spread with a layer, thin or otherwise, of more or less flexible asphalte
or the like, or otherwise covered with a smooth surface; and the said combination
of materials for flooring under supported or not with ropes, or network of roping,
or the like, stretched more or less tightly over the whole enclosed area of water.