A NEW MOTIVE POWER
Year: 1857

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Bartholomew Predavalle at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 6th
April 1857.
I, BARTHOLOMEW PREDAVALLE, of 470, New Oxford Street, Bloomsbury, in
the County of Middlesex, Civil Engineer, do hereby declare the nature of the
said Invention for "A NEW MOTIVE POWER," to be as follows:-(that is to say,)
that the said Invention consists in the action, alternately intercepted and
restored, of the vertical pressure of liquids on a base, and the ascent of liquids
by capillary attraction. For this purpose, twice the liquid, for instance, water,
wanted to rise a piston in a cylinder is put in a vessel, large in size and small
in depth, communicating with the said cylinder. A reservoir, above the vessel
and of the same size is put in communication with the cover of the vessel
by a pipe, and both the reservoir and pipe are filled with water. In the
cover of the vessel there are fixed some capillary tubes in glass, communi-
cating with the water inside the vessel, and such in number as to contain
about the quantity of water required to raise the piston, these capillary
tubes passing throughout the bottom of the reservoir into the water; they
are vertical for about one inch, then horizontal for about half an inch then
vertical to the top. This particular construction of the capillary tubes is
indispensable to the purpose for which they are intended. A valve in the cover
of the vessel when cut off the communication of the pipe with the water in
the vessel, opens the communication between the water in the vessel and the
capillary tubes.

page_text: An another similar machine and arrangement is made in which the valve is
acting inversely; for instance, when on one side the valve cuts off the pressure
of the water, the other is put in communication. All being so arranged, when
the valve is open, the vertical pressure of the water in the vessel forces up the
piston in the cylinder, and when the valve cuts off such pressure of the water
the piston is compelled to follow the descending water by the pressure of the
atmosphere; at the same instant, the level of the water being lower in
the vessel than in the cylinder, it rises in the capillary tubes, pressing up the
water in them, which do not present any resistence, the gravitation of the
water being destroyed by the capillary attraction not only in the vertical inch
of the capillary tubes, but much more in the horizontal half an inch, which
present a rest to the gravitation of the water, in order to renew the same
action of the capillary attraction in the other vertical inch, and so on, till it
arrives at the top of the capillary tubes in the water of the reservoir, where
the water is absorbed and attracted into the whole in such manner that the
quantity of water which has been discharged from the reservoirs through the
pipe into the vessel is supplied in the reservoirs by the same capillary
attraction, and the action of such a machine will continue till there is water in
-the reservoirs, the pipes, and the vessel, producing a continuous new motive
power, which is suitable for stationary, marine, and locomotive engines of
every kind.
What I claim altogether new is the action of the vertical pressure of liquids
in general, mixed or separated, combined with the capillary attraction in
every kind of arrangement.