IMPROVEMENTS IN APPARATUS FOR OBTAINING MOTIVE POWER, BASED UPON THE HYDROSTATIC PARADOX
Year: 1860

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'PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by William Edward Gedge at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 21st
August 1860.-A communication from abroad by Louis Leygoine, of
Limoges, France, Geologist.
I, WILLIAM EDWARD GEDGE, of the Firm of John Gedge and Son, of No. 11,
Wellington Street, Strand, in the County of Middlesex, Patent Agent, do
hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN
APPARATUS FOR OBTAINING MOTIVE POWER, BASED UPON THE HYDROSTATIC PARADOX,"
communicated to me from abroad by Louis Leygoine, of Limoges, Franco,
Geologist, to be as follows:-
This Invention is based upon the pressure which liquids exercise according
to their density, and the dispositions which are given to them. The effects
which a small quantity of liquid will produce when contained in a vertical
tube, the lower end of which rests in a basin or reservoir scarcely more than
an inch in height, but of a surface.ten thousand times greater than that of the
small tube, are very extraordinary. Suppose, for example, that the small tube
is an inch square, and, that the-basin has ten thousand square inches of surface
at its base, if the basin be filled with mercury through the top of the tube, and
the operation continued until the mercury is three feet high within the tube

page_text: (calculating from the bottom of the basin), the bottom of the basin will
support a pressure of not less than twenty-six tons weight, although to arrive
at this result but from twenty to twenty-five quarts of mercury have been
expended.
To employ this natural agent as a motive power is the object of this
Invention, and it has been found necessary to construct an apparatus, which,
arranged to engender enormous pressure, must also possess within itself the
means of destroying this pressure, and reproducing it without manual
assistance. The apparatus consists of an oblong square case of about four
yards in length and four feet three inches in depth and width, and within this
case are contained the parts which, by their arrangement, and the aid of a
liquid of any description, engender a force proportioned to the dimensions of
the apparatus and the density of the liquid. These parts consist, firstly, in two
hollow pistons, each having about one square yard of surface, and a height of
about six inches; each of these pistons is provided in the interior with a small
apparatus acting at given moments as valves, and preventing in turn (by the
faculty which they possess of sliding up and down) and intercepting the com-
munication between the mercury in the tubes herein-after mentioned with
that contained in the pistons by openings in the sides of two pistons in juxta-
position to those already mentioned. The above-mentioned tubes are solidly
fixed to the pistons. To set the apparatus in motion, the two pistons and the
above-mentioned tubes should be filled to the top with mercury, when it will
be seen that the mercury in the left tube is in communication with the
mercury in the piston, and that then this latter must support a pressure pro-
portioned to the surface of the interior void, which is about one square yard,
and of the height of the mercury in the tube, which makes about three yards
of vertical height, (calculating from the centre of the said tube,) and finally to
the density of the mercury, which will give, according to calculation, a
pressure upon the piston of not less than eighty-one thousand pounds. By
this statement it will be understood that the piston must be pushed from right
to left until it meets a cross piece, but two small tubes placed at the end of
the rods connected with the lozenge-shaped valves before mentioned meet the
cross piece sooner than the piston, and then by the faculty which they possess of
sliding between the sides of the piston they will be pushed from top to bottom,
and by their movement will force the valve to mount to the upper part of the
piston, which will have the result of destroying this enormous pressure by
intercepting the communication between the mercury in the tube and that in
the piston; but at the moment this pressure is destroyed in the left piston it

page_text: will bo established in the right; thus two cross pieces unite the two pistons,
and as the left piston arrives at ono cross piece the two heads of the rods of
the right-hand apparatus open a communication with the mercury by lowering
the valve, and the piston on the right is submitted to the same pressure as was
previously exercised upon the left, and effects the same results, that is to say,
that the right-hand piston will descend on to ono cross piece while the left
piston will go to the other, and vice versa as long as may be required.