AN IMPROVEMENT OR IMPROVEMENTS IN AN APPARATUS FOR CHEMICAL AND DENTAL LABORATORIES OR OTHER MANUFACTURING OR EXPERIMENTAL USES, WHICH I PROPOSE CALLING A PARAGON LABORATORY FORGE
Year: 1859

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Hugh William Patrick at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 7th March
1859.
I, HUGH WILLIAM PATRICK, of No. 4, Mill Hill Terrace, Acton, in the
County of Middlesex, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for
"AN IMPROVEMENT OR IMPROVEMENTS IN AN APPARATUS FOR CHEMICAL AND DENTAL
LABORATORIES OR OTHER MANUFACTURING OR EXPERIMENTAL USES, WHICH I PROPOSE
CALLING A PARAGON LABORATORY FORGE," to be as follows:-
It consists in the construction and arrangement or combination in an
apparatus of a smelting furnace, cupelling furnace, an annealing furnace or
oven, a digester with a dry hot bath for dry heats, a sand bath and a steam
bath, a brazeing lamp to be used seperately or detached and portable, and the
whole so constructed as to be heated by coal gass or any other gasses, or fuel,
or combination of them, and by means of a portable funnel, to connect the
same with the flue of a chimney, or it can be used without such connexion.
The portion of the apparatus which is for smelting or calcining minerals or
metals, and fusing the same, may be constructed of square, round, oblong, oval,
or straight and smooth sides, but I prefer a round and somewhat tapering
to the bottom, and slightly like a vertical oval, or in form like an egg, and
horizontally grooved or corrugated with small strips of mica to hold a crucible
or other vessel in the centre, and with a portable cover, with or without a
funnel in it, and a sand bath used in connection with this portion of .the
apparatus, and that part for a cupeling furnace may be constructed of a square

page_text: round, oval, oblong, or straight sides, but I would prefer the same form as
that of the smelting furnace, egg-like, and grooved or corrugated horizontally,
and with strips of mica arrranged as in the smelting furnace, and to hold
muffles, retorts, or any other like vessel for testing, assaying or any thing of
like character, and also for baking, fusing, or vitrifying porcelain or metallic
bodies, dentist porcelain teeth, continuous gum work, enamelling, or anything
of like character when a great heat is required, or to which a furnace of the
kind is needed or applicable. I also arrange near this furnace or over it, in
the upper portion of it, an annealing oven. This furnace has a moveable
crown or head, with funnel to attach it to a chimney flue by piping or the
capelling furnace may be made so as to receive within it the smelting furnace
by first removing muffles and the like, the smelting furnace being of similar
shape, but of a less size, and the crown or head of the capelling furnace would
answer both, if the one were used within the other at choice or convenience,
in the joint forms of the lower parts of the body of the furnaces and the
upper part of the box, or which is usually called ash-box or pit, or draught
chamber, though mine is of a less size, I prefer them being of a form some-
what like a double ellipses, and when any of these furnaces or fireplaces I
prefer to loosely pack in asbastos and use coal gas, with or without other
gases for heat, the chambers or muffle tubes, or the like, to be of mica, or
made like the body of the furnaces of asbostos, Cornish clay, plaster of Paris,
and fire-clay and silex.
The next part or arrangement in the apparatus is for a digester, which may
be made round, oblong, square, straight sided, or of any other shape, bottom
or top flat or otherwise, or of any other form, but I prefer an oval or egg-like
shape, made of wrought or cast iron, with a double chamber in the upper
portion of it, or with a single chamber in a portable head, the doors of which
in either case to close perfectly tight and secure, as the lower portion of the
digester, when steam is required, may have water placed in it, and a safety
valve, or a thermometer, or both, so fixed as to know the heat and pressure of
steam let into the chambers for vulcanizing or hardening any substance having
that tendency, with its application allowed, if required, to enter the chamber
or chambers; or the digester may be parted near the top, midway, or any
distance from the top, done either with a complete closed or open work
parting, or not at all, and can be used at any time without water as a dry heat
or hot bath with or without sand, or any like material or substance for
manufacturing or chymical or experimental purposes, such as hardening india-
rubber, gutta percha, or vulcanyzing the same, or any gums, oils, or substances
for dental purposes, or any other manufacture having a tendency to become

page_text: hard by a dry heat, and also for obtaining highly consentrated forms of
vegetable and animal matter by this dry heat aloue or by steam, if desired.
The braizing gas lamp is for blow-pipe uses, and the like operations, and
this is set in a convenient position on the top of the iron framework which
contains the entire apparatus; any portion, however, can be detached and
used seperately and portable; the doors close tightly, and the passages, to admit
draught air, of conical or elliptic form, allowing a free current of air, and
if need be a small pair of bellows or a fan can be placed at one end or
underneath, the whole being portable.