Year: 1874

can to meet her obligations, and that is half
the battle


The Proposed Substitute for steam.
The interesting announcement Of substi-
tute for steam as motive power has Deen
recently made in Germany from source en-
titled to a hearing. The rapid consumption
of the earth's fuel supply and the drain on its
forests, attended by SO many disastrous con-
sequences, have stimulated scientific inventors
to find successor for steam, and it is to be
hoped the present discovery will prove sue
cess The new motor is carboleum, and its
application to machinery is claimed for Dr.
Beins, of Groningen, who has devoted many
years to its study and utilization. Expert
ment first taught him that when the bicar-
Donate of sodium is heated in q closed space,
at temperature of eight hundred degrees
Fahrenheit, liquid carbonic acid is distilled
out of it, having the expansive force Of fifty
or sixty atmospheres. Carboleum is not
dangerous as an explosive, and the fact
that thus employed as the German inventor
proposes, it is possessed Of enormous motive
power, was attested by scientific men to
whom the experiments were shown. The heat
required to bring out this motive power of the
carbonic acid in the new carboleum engine is
apparently very small when compared with
that requisite for producing high pressure
of steam in the ordinary engine. In the
former it is only three pounds Of coal per
hour for each horse power represented by the
engine-an amount so small that it would be
unnecessary in ships driven by the new pro-
cess to devote much space for fuel. The chief
value of the invention, however, is claimed
to be its practicability in large factories. The
author thinks that for the great industries the
carboleum engine can, in nearly every in
stance, take the place of steam.


The scientific value Of this discovery is i'm
mense, if mechanical ingenuity can success
fully apply it in the directions indicated by
DR.. Beins. If it is said that the supply of
carboleum is not as plentiful as that element
from which steam is made it may be an
swered it is almost as large as that Of coal
in some parts of the world Carboleum
is found inexhaustibly in the beds of
common chalk in all parts of the
earth. As common chalk contains carbonic
acid to the amount of half its weight it will
yield double its volume Of carboleum. And
the chalk resources Of the earth are vast be-
yond computation. The cretaceous rocks
cover large extent of subterranean Europe
and Eastern Asia and abound in North and
South America. The chalk beds which cross
under the English Channel at Dover have
been gagged at five hundred feet thickness,
and similar beds have been found in France
Germany and Denmark, while the soundings
of the ocean bottom show that they probably
exist in growing state in many geological
districts. In the United States few 1orma-
tions are more widely distributed than the
chalk, varying in thickness according to
some authorities) from four hundred feet
along the Atlantic seaboard to two thousand
five hundred feet in the Upper Missouri
Valley.


1t is evident, therefore, that the proposed
successor of steam, if mechanically applied,
would be used over the larger part of the
world as an invaluable auxiliary of steam,
with an enormous economy of coal and wood
The successful introduction Of such motive
power, minimizing the fuel consumption,
would be boon Of incalculable importance
in the manufactures and arts. That the prin-
ciple upon which its introduction is claimed
to be feasible is scientifically correct seems
hardly to be doubted. If the Unreasonable
chalk beds are stored with mechanical energy,
as we know the coal beds are, the anxiety of
physicists and economists, lest the world s
fuel supply may fall short in the lapse OF a
few centuries is dssipated. The utilization
of the new fuel would give an impetus to all
| industries, and might revolutionize the COM
merce Of manufacturing nations whose wealth
and political power are mainly due to their
coal supplies.


The SINGULAR RECOMMENDATION to which
the Evening Post devoted its leader yesterday,
that law be passed next winter requiring
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