446 PROCEEDINGS OF 



most extended limits, snialli r than was the State of New York ten years since. 

 Steam cars have been moved, as an experiment, botli liere and abroad, majiy liun- 

 dred miles, at llie rate of sixty miles an hour; but what will be the highest velocity 

 ultimately attained in common use, either upon the water or the land, is a most 

 important problem, as yet entirely unsolved. Our respected citizens, Morey and 

 Drake, have endeavored to substitute the force of explosion of gaseous compounds 

 for steam. The first was the pioneer, and the second has shown that the problem 

 is still worth pursuing to solution. An energetic western mechanic made a bold 

 but unsuccessful effort to put in operation an engine acting by the expansion of air 

 by iieat; and a similar most ingenious attempt was made by Mr. Walter Byrnes, of 

 Concordia, Louisiana; as also to substitute compressed air, and air compressed and 

 expanded, as a locomotive power. All attempts to use air as a motive power, 

 except the baloon, the sail vessel, the air gun, and the windmill, have thus far 

 failed; but what inventive genius may yet accomplish in this respect, remains yet 

 undetermined. There is, it is true, a mile or more of pneumatic railway used between 

 Dublin and Kingston. An air pump driven by steam exhausts the air from a 

 cylinder in which a piston moves; this cylinder is laid the whole length of the 

 road, and the piston is connected to a car above, so that, as the piston moves for- 

 ward on the exhaustion of the air in front of it, the car is also carried forward . 

 The original idea of this pneumatic railway was derived from the contrivance of 

 an American, quite unknown to fame, who, as his sign expressed it, showed to 

 visitors a new mode of carrying the mail, more simple, and quite as valuable, prac- 

 tically, as this atmospheric railway. The submerged propeller of Ericsson, and 

 the submerged paddle wheel, the rival experiments of our two distinguished naval 

 officers, Stockton and Hunter, are now candidates for public favor; and the Prince- 

 ton on the ocean as she vnoves in noiseless majesty, at a speed never before attain- 

 ed at sea, seems to attest the value of one of these experiments, whilst the other is 

 yet to be determined. The impenetrable iron steam vessel of Mr. Stevens is not 

 yet completed, nor have those terrific engines of war, his explosivo shells, 3'et been 

 brought to the test of actual conflict. Success to these great efforts of our gallant 

 navy and patriotic mechanics, to increase our comforts in peace and augment our 

 power and resources in war; and may the West soon participate more largely in 

 these great enterprises, by the establishment of naval depots upon their waters, as 

 first suggested by the vigorous and original mind of Capt. John Sanders, of the 

 Engineer Corps, and sustained and advocated b)' the patriotic and accomplished 

 Maury . 



In curious and useful mechanical inventions, our countrymen are unsurpassed, 

 and a visit to our new and beautiful Patent Office will convince the close observer 

 that the inventive genius of America never was more active than at the present 

 moment. The machines for working up cotton, hemp, and wool, from their most 

 crude slate to the finest and most useful fabrics, have ail been improved among us. 

 The cotton gin of Eli Whitney has altered llio destinies of one-third of our conn- 

 try, and doubled the exports of the Union. The ingenious improvements for imita- 

 ting medals, by parallel lines upon a plain surface, wliich, by the distances between 

 them, give all the effects of light and shade that belong to a raised or depressed sur- 

 face, invented by liobrecht and perfected by Spencer, has been rendered entirely 

 automatic by Saxton, so that it not only rules its lines at proper distances and of 

 suitable lengths, but when its work is done it stops. In hydraulics, we have suc- 

 ceeded well ; and the great aqueduct over the Potomac at Georgetown, constructed 



