On the means of safety in Steam Boats. 9 
sequent incompetency of the supply pump, or some other mechani- 
cal defect, in which case, he would be exonerated and the cause for- 
tunately discovered in season. 
2d. It is applicable to all existing flue boilers, and by making 
steam boats safe, adds to their value and security as an investment. 
3d. By obviating the greatest objection to investment in steam 
vessels, it makes this kind of navigation as a business, more calcula- 
ble, and lessens the premium of insurance thereon. 
4th. It affords to passengers a consciousness of safety ‘and. thus 
increases the use of steam boats. 
th. It brings all the causes of danger more definitely within the 
reach of Legislative remedy, or of definite provisions of law regard- 
ing the proof of boilers originally and periodically, as to size, form, 
and number of safety valves, &c. 
6th. And more especially it will be the means of absolutely pre- 
venting those calamitous explosions that have been often destructive 
of life; for it may be fairly presumed that with this apparatus, few if 
any of those accidents would have occurred, which, according to au- 
thentic information, have destroyed at least, fifteen hundred persons 
in the United States, and caused great suffering to many who sur-_ 
vived the first injuries. 
And pursuant to the provisions of the law of Congress relative 
to letters patent, I explicitly claim and declare the principle of my 
aforesaid invention to be the use or employment of combined bells, 
or other sonorous body or bodies, so placed within the steam boiler 
in relative elevation as to indicate by their sound when rung by wires, 
leading out to hand, the actual place of the surface of the water 
within the limits of the vertical space between their rims by the ring- 
ing of the one next above the surface, and the refusal of the one in 
contact with it to emit sound. 
Also, as above described, an alarm bell, or oibier sonorous body, 
within or near the boiler to receive a blow and be sounded by means 
of mechanical apparatus connecting it and this effect with a float on 
the water within the boiler, the weight of which operates as a power, 
as the water unduly subsiding causes the aforesaid, or other equiva- 
lent apparatus to work; and by the blow of the tongue or hammer, 
give notice or alarm as aforesaid, at the near occurrence of that bare- 
ness and heat of the flue or furnace, or sides of the boiler, whence 
danger of explosion arises.  ~ . L. Suiiivan. 
New York, eighteenth of January, A. D. eighteen hundred and thirty one. 
Vou. XX.—No. 1. 2 
