512 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



"Wm. Fairbairn, in an address lately delivered, said that 200 

 lbs. pressure is now used with more economy and convenience 

 than a lower pressure, and he believes that before many years, 

 500 lbs. of pressure will be used and found advantageous. An- 

 gler Perkins states that 1,500 lbs. of pressure has been practi- 

 cally used, and with advantage and safety. And I am credibly 

 informed that 200 lbs. is sometimes used on our railways, and 

 that the engines work better than with a lower pressure. With 

 such facts, and such authority, we should not blindly follow the 

 blind lead of our marine engineers, and fill up ships with huge 

 low-pressure boilers that reach above the water line. 



Since the foregoing was written, we have received accounts of 

 a disaster which illustrates the policy of boilers of this class. 

 The gun-boat Essex, during the attack on Fort Henry, received 

 a shot through her boiler, which caused the scalding to death of 

 thirty-two men, and the injury of others; and this will be repeated 

 whenever these boilers come within range of the best guns, served 

 by expert gunners. The boilers of the twenty-three gun-boats 

 which have already been built on one untried plan, are eleven 

 feet high. Locomotive boilers of the patterns built by Baldwin & 

 Co., or by Allan, or Mulholland, would not be half as high, and 

 boilers of equal power may be made of less than four feet height, 

 and that without departure from plans that have long been in 

 successful use. Other plans, which have not come into use, pro- 

 mise still better, and ought to be tried — but not twenty trials at 

 a time of each plan. 



Here is the last page of this paper. I devote it to a suggestion. 

 New York is the chief city of the Union ; the American Institute 

 is the free rendezvous of the promoters of practical science • 

 this Club is the scientific branch of the Institute ; all engineers 

 and inventors are invited to attend it, and speak in it as mem- 

 bers. If in any place on the continent it is proper to propose 

 the organization of a patriotic association to improve the means 

 of warfare, it is proper to propose it here. But such an associa- 

 tion must not be made up entirely of inventors, who wish to ex- 

 periment at the cost of the public ; nor entirely of engineers, 

 who neither invent, nor advance new inventions ; nor entirely of 

 patriotic citizens, who neither invent, nor select wisely from old 

 inventions. It should include all of these. There must be pro- 

 gressive talent, and conservative talent ; there must be capital ; 



