AN IMPROVED CONSTRUCTION OF PADDLE WHEELS, USUALLY TERMED FEATHERING PADDLE WHEELS
Year: 1856

page_text: application for Letters Patent was not given within the time prescribed
by the Act.)
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION :left by John Bourne at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 16th July 1856.-A
communication..
I, JOHN BOURNE, of No. 9, Billiter Street, in the City of London, Civil
Engineer and Patent Agent, do hereby declare the nature of the said In-
vention for "AN IMPROVED CONSTRUCTION OF PADDLE WHEELS, USUALLY TERMED
FEATHERING PADDLE WHEELS," to be as follows:-
The kind of paddle wheel to which the said Invention relates is that kind,
which is formed with moveable floats, and which is usually termed the feather-
ing paddle wheel. The floats are so formed as to turn on a central horizontal
spindle, as is usual in feathering paddles; but instead of the movements of
those floats being governed by means of rods proceeding from a pin fixed on
the paddle box, eccentric to the main shaft, as is the usual practice, they are
governed by means of arms proceeding from two excentrics, placed so that one
is fixed on the side of the ship and one on the paddle box at the extreme end
of the shaft. Each float has an arm at each end to work it, and each set
of arms is combined into a wheel by means of suitable segments proceeding
from arm to arm, so that each-paddle wheel has a ring or thin wheel on each
side of it, but set eccentric to the main shaft, so as to govern the movements
of the floats in the proper manner. The movement is communicated from the

page_text: eccentric rings to the floats by means of short levers or cranks, attached at one
end to the spindles of the paddle floats, and to the eccentric rings at the other
end. The eccentrics may be so set as to cause the floats either to enter
and leave the water vertically, or to enter the water in any intermediate
position between the radial and the vertical, remaining, however, in all positions
parallel to one another; or they may be made so that the faces of the entering
and emerging floats converge to a centre in the vertical central line of the
wheel, exterior to its circumference. The floats may also be made to converge
to a point in the vertical line of the shaft within the circumference of the wheel,
and in this last case the floats may be attached to their central spindles by
pipes, affording a bearing surface from end to end; and the arms proceeding
from the eccentric to govern the movements of the floats must be bent in
at the points.where they join the floats, which may be done without interfering
with the arms of the paddle wheel. In both the cases in which the floats do not
remain parallel to one another throughout the revolution of the wheel, short
links must be interposed between the eccentric rings and the levers, or other.
attachments which govern the motion of the floats. The benefit of this new
species of paddle wheel is that it permits of a far more secure and substantial
mode of construction than is possible in the usual form of feathering wheels, in
which there is only one driving arm, which if broken causes the whole wheel
to be disabled. To ensure durability as regards wear, the surfaces of the
moving joints are made unusually large, and are also so formed that the pins.
turn in bushes, which are themselves also moveable, so that the wear of each
bearing is distributed over a number of rubbing surfaces turning in one
another, instead of being confined to the single surfaces of the pin and socket
in which it is fitted, as in ordinary wheels is the case.