Year: 1879




Supposlng good and cheap small


engine to be available-an engine


that will be strong, simple, safe,


light, noiseless, and economical in


fuel-not only would all its indus


trial applications be extended. but


it would find new and wide sphere


of usefulness in ministering to do


mestic wants, one of the most wide


ly pervading OF which is the want If
simple motive power. In Ameri-


can hotels steam engines have long


been employed for brushing boots


and cleaning knives. They are the


docile and inexpensive Helots of


the age, and the domestic produc-


tion of the electric light is new


and important sphere for their en-


ergies. But besides these functions


domestic engine may be employed


in roasting meat, driving washing


machines and mangles, driving sew


ing machines, in brushing hair, in


preparing aerated waters, and in


the country for pumping, for saw


ing wood, and for performing many


other laborious operations. A steam


engine may be made to cool houses
in summer and to warm them in


winter, to maintain fountains in
conservatories, to work punkas, to
produce ice, and to create and
maintain a vacuum in safes for the
preservation of meat. For such
purposes the engine must obviously
be of the simplest, most compact,
and of the most inexpensive char
acter, and should be attached to
the boiler, so that the whole may be
lifted in a piece like a hall stove.
The boiler should be provided with
a self-acting feed of water, and the
fuel should be gas, which has only
to be lighted TO enable the engine
to be put in operation. Gas COM
panies will find ample compensation
for the loss of their lighting func-
tion in the creation of a new heat
ing function which will become
larger and more remunerative than
the lighting has ever been. Instead
of extracting from the coal only the
Illuminating gases, the whole fuel
should be turned into combustible
gas by the aid of superheated steam
and all the fires of houses could be
maintained by this cheap gas burn
.ng in jets amid pumice, which it
would keep red hot. There would
,hen be neither dust from CRATES or
smoke from chimneys, and the gas
works would supply the fuel that is
necessary for the generation of the |
electric light. The application of
he steam engine to the propulsion |
Of carriages, omnibuses and cabs is |
low only hindered by its too heavy |
weight and too high cost. Asphalt |
which arc objectionable |
or horses, afford for steam carri- |
lges surface as eligible for easy
raction as a railway, and without |
my countervailing fault. All
Wheeled vehicles, whether required
o travel at a high or low speed, |
Till be propelled by steam instead
# horses as soon as the steam en-
inc is made sufficiently light and
efficiently cheap to warrant the
ubstitution. Life boats, instead of
'eing open boats propelled by a


lumber of men, should be decked
oats propelled by a steam engine
nd managed by only two men, one
0 steer the boat and the other to
ttend to the engine. Such boats
hould be propelled by a water-jet
'hich will always act, whatever
lay be the roughness of the sea
nd whether the stern of the boat is
4 or out of the water. The use of
he steam engine for irrigation in
onEection with the centrifugal
ump is an application of which
ne sphere is limited only by the
ost and the deficient portability of
ne apparatus. To render the class
small engines so much more por
lble, so much more simple and so
luch less costly as to remove the
xisting impediments to their use
lay certainly be accounted one of
lie most important problems of the
resent time, and l trust it is not
resumptuous to hope that the cur
Dry hints here given may acceler-
5e the desired solution.