296 



Ht/draulics for Farmers. 



[June' 



hospital, being twice the height of the supplying cistern: but 

 when, to the great surprise of those who constructed the work, 

 some water still issued. A cistern was therefore placed to receive 

 this w^ater, which was found very convenient, since it was thus 

 raised to the highest floors of the building, without any extra 

 labor. Here circumstances led the workman to the construction 

 of a water ram, without knowing that such a machine had been 

 previously devised. 



It is now more than fifty years since the first discovery was 

 made known, and it has, until within a few years, been regarded 

 more as a scientific toy, than of practical utility. It is a matter 

 of surprise, too, that so beautiful a contrivance should have laid 

 dormant and neglected, and scarcely known, except to the 

 scientific. 



The first person who is known to have raised water by a ram, 

 designed for the purpose, was Mr. Whitehurst, a watch-maker of 

 Derby, in England. He erected a machine similar to the one 

 represented by the next figure, in 1772. 



Whitehurst's Ram— Fig. 2. 



A represents the spring or fountain, the surface of the water 

 in which wa& of about the same level as the bottom of the cis- 

 tern, B. The main pipe, from A to the cock at the end of C, 

 was nearly six hundred leet in length, and one and a half inch 

 bore. The cock was sixteen feet below A, and furnished water 

 for the kitchen, &c. When opened, the liquid column in A C 

 was put in motion, and acquired a velocity due to a fall of sixteen 

 feet, and as soon as the cock was shut, the momentum of this long 

 column opened the valve, upon which part of the water rushed 

 into the air-vessel and up the vertical pipe into B. This eflfect 

 took place every time the cock was used ; and as water was drawn 

 from it at short intervals, for houshold purposes, " from morning 

 till night, all the days in the year," an abundance was raised into 

 B, without any exertion or expense. 



Such was the first water ram. As an original device, it is 

 highly honorable to the sagacity and ingenuity of its author; and 



