COMPRESSED AIR AND ITS APPLICATION IN 

 MECHANICAL LINES. 



BY W. O. DUNTLEY. 



[W. O. Duntley, vice-president and general manager of the Chicago Pneumatic Tool 

 company; born Wyandotte, Mich., July 21, 1867; educated in the public schools of 

 Detroit ; began his business career in an electrical supply house in that city and in 

 1887 removed to Chicago and became connected with Baggot & Co.; joined the 

 Pneumatic Tool company in 1895, becoming vice-president in 1899 and adding 

 the duties of general manager in 1902.] 



The power of the winds, and a very uncertain power at 

 that, has, it is true, from the earUest times lent man some aid 

 in the Ufting of water and the locomotion of his ships, but 

 it has served him in its own whimsical fashion, compelling 

 him to await its pleasure; in other words, to adapt himself 

 and his work to the natural conditions. Much the same may 

 be said of water power which is, if anything, less amenable 

 to direction than the winds, and which has only within the 

 last two decades been really harnessed to the chariot of prog- 

 ress. For many years we have been dependent upon a 

 combination of heat and water for our great power, which in 

 that time we have learned to control remarkably well, but 

 which we have not yet been able to utilize at anything but 

 ruinous expense. Experimenters are day and night work- 

 ing upon ideas or plans to make available a greater percent- 

 age of the heat units in a pound of coal. Through all the 

 stages from the open exhaust steam engine, the condensing 

 compound, triple, quadruple, even to quintuple expansion 

 engines has the race been run until now the latest is the tur- 

 bine whose only merit thus far seems to be high speed without 

 vibration. But is it economical to run? Already in the 

 closing years of the nineteenth century steam had its rivals; 

 gas, electricity and air. These did not materially affect 

 its popularity at first as an original power; for gas was too 

 little known and except in isolated cases, electricity and air 

 were dependent upon steam for their generation as com- 



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