This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[for the Richmond Dispatch.]
Suppose a case to present itself demanding steam power in the lightest possible form, what should be the plan of the engine? There was much study devoted to thin subject in England in 1825-128 in the construction of steam coaches; but the plans were arrested by the railroads. The study ought to be resumed, if only for the city railroads, as a slight addition to the mechanism would make every such car a steam fire-engine. The railroad locomotive engine demands great weight as one of the indispensable conditions for doing its duty, and this has drawn away inventive minds from the purest of lightness as a desirable quality in the steam engine. Will some such mind do me the favor to investigate and teat the following hints ! The fuel to be charcoal, or the lightest procurable; the bottler tubular, copper tubes of a half inch diameter, capable of resisting an internal pressure of several hundred pounds, and forming a basket work around the fuel. Would a steam chamber be indispensable? What would be the objection to water from the boiler being thrown into the cylinder, as in Perkins' steam generator? As all our tubular steam-engines use their tubes only for conveying the flame, the machinist who shall attempt the engine I am calling for may not at first assent to the superiority of filling the tubes with water, and reserving the larger space for the fuel. Investigation will demonstrate that the change I suggest is indispensable for generating the greatest power with the least weight. Richmond, August 21, 1861. F. G. S.
The Daily Dispatch: August 24, 1861. Richmond Dispatch. 4 pages. by Cowardin & Hammersley. Richmond. August 24, 1861. microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mi : Proquest. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm.
Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.