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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[June, 



MR. CHARLES WYE WILLIAMS AND HIS BOILER 

 PROJECTS. 



In extirpating the heresies of hollow and obtrusive pretension, in 

 our review of this gentleman's projects in the February number, we 

 are generally conceived to have rendered an important service to the 

 cause of practical science. It required little penetration to foresee 

 that the performance of this service would subject us to much abuse 

 and misrepresentation. An advertising patentee can hardly be ex- 

 pected to be thankful for any exposition of the fallacy of his projects; 

 nor can the demonstration of the inefficacy of these schemes be sup- 

 posed to be peculiarly acceptable to those compliant analysts who have 

 ventured to speak most highly in their favour. We were willing, 

 however, to encounter the opposition and obloquy of this party, 

 from our sense of the necessity of resisting the growing practice of 

 disguising empiricism in the garb of science. With this conviction we 

 shall proceed to make a few observations upon the several rejoinders 

 we have received to our former remarks ; — not that we feel any sort of 

 anxiety as to their effect upon our own reputation, or the conehisive- 

 ness of our former arguments, but that the articulate defence of the 

 projects we condemned affords the fairest opportunity of exposing 

 still more clearly their inefficacy and extravagance. 



There is one point to which, at the outset, we think it right to 

 advert, as it materially influences the complexion of the case. It is 

 this: not only are the various arguments adduced in support of these 

 projects intrinsically without any weight or moment, but they are 

 actually inconsistent with one another. Thus Mr. Williams calls upon 

 us to believe in the excellency of his boiler spikes, because their effi- 

 cacy is "neither more nor less than the practical application of the 

 ■well-known theory of conduction," whilst his more acute disciple 

 A. S. calls upon us to put faith in the virtue of the spikes, upon the 

 strength of something which he says is "sufficient to destroy all con- 

 fidence in reasonings founded upon the ordinary hypothesis." So 

 that, while one of these preceptors requires us to believe in the spikes 

 because the received theory is certainly right, the other requires us to 

 believe in them because the received theory is probably fallacious. 



In our former article, when speaking of the spikes, we observed 

 that they would speedily attain the temperature of that part of the 

 flue where they were introduced. Mr. Williams has entered into a 

 long and ponderous dissertation, for the purpose of showing that this 

 is not strictly correct ; a thing manifest enough if we be understood 

 to have said that the small portion of the spike in the planes of the 

 iron of the flue, or the portion thereto adjoining, is as hot as any part 

 of the body of the spike upon which the hot air impinges : but this 

 ■we neither meant nor said. Our statement may want precision, for it 

 was not meant to be precise, but in the gross, and as applied to spikes 

 of considerable length, it is substantially true ; and this gentleman's 

 objection to it is about as v.eighty as an objection to the statement of 

 the distance between two continents in miles, instead of in feet, inches, 

 and decimals of an inch. 



The modus operandi of the spikes is thus explained by A. S. : — 

 " We naturally expect that the lower extremities of the pms will 

 attain a higher temperature than the exterior surface of the boiler, 

 and we may conceive that that section of the pins which lies in the 

 plane of the outer surface of the boiler may differ more or less in 

 temperature from that of the outer surface itself; but the rapidity of 

 the transmission of heat may proceed according to very different hws, 

 and the greater difference of temperature between the extremities of 

 the pins, combined with the greater facility afforded by increase of 

 surface for the reception and giving out of heat, may occasion such an 

 increased intensity of transniissive action as to cause a greatly in- 

 creased flow of heat into the boiler." Mr. Williams, on the contrary, 

 says "So far from these spikes attaining such high temperature, 

 practice proves that so long as water is the recipient of the heat they 

 convey, their temperature is in fart so low as to be touched without 

 inconvenience, the heat passing through them as fast as it is received." 

 Thus, whilst A. S. endeavours to persuade us that the spikes may be 

 conceived to operate beneficially, by virtue of an increased transmis- 

 sive action arising from the high temperature of their lower extremi- 

 ties, Mr. Williams assures us that the temperature of the spikes is not 

 at all high — that they may be even touched without inconvenience — 

 and that the heat passes through them as fast as it is received, so that 

 no part of the spikes can ever be either hotter or colder than the 

 vfater in the boiler. Yet these are the gentlemen to whom we are 

 asked to pin our faith. With much of tlie dogmatism of infallibility, 

 they are consistent in nothing but in being inconsistent. 



In our former remarks we quoted a portion of a paper which 

 appeared in the Mechanics' Magazine, and which purported to be a 



report of a lecture delivered by Mr. Williams, in which, speaking of 

 he spikes, he said " The half-inch circular portion of the flue plates 

 which such pin has displaced is thus made to possess the faculty of 

 transmitting as much heat as is received and absorbed by nine half 

 inches superficial;" by which we understood, we said, that the pin had 

 the effect of transmitting to the water nine times as much heat as the 

 half-inch disc it displaced. "This," Mr. Williams now tells us, " is a 

 mere gratuitous understanding of a very plain position. I did not 

 give any measure or quantity of heat so transmitted; I merely said at 

 much heat as is received and absorbed." Did not give any measure 

 or quantity I What, then, is intended by a reference to inches 

 superficial but a reference to measure or quantity ? But we will not 

 higgle about trifles: we are willing to accept any amended meaning 

 that Mr. Williams thinks fit to give us; and he now wishes, it woultt 

 appear, to be understood as having only said that as much heat is 

 transmitted as is received and absorbed. Be it so. The improved 

 proposition, if it mean anything, only means that as much heat is 

 transmitted as is transmitted; — a truism we should have been sorry to 

 lay at Mr. Williams' door, except for his own requisition to that effect. 



We stated, too, in our former remarks, that if spikes were capable, 

 by virtue of their superior quantity of surface, of augmenting the 

 evaporative rate of a boiler, a small flue surface spiked would be 

 equal in evaporative elfioacy to a larger flue surface unspiked ; and a 

 certain ratio would subsist between the power of the spikes in accom- 

 plishing evaporation, and that of the ordinary flue surface. We did 

 not care, we said, whether this ratio were 9 to 1, as stated by Mr. 

 Williams, or 1000 to 999 ; but that, if the spikes were of any use at 

 all, in consequence of their extended surface, a certain number of 

 spikes would be equivalent in evaporative efficacy to a certain area of 

 flue surface, or a certain ratio would subsist between the efficacy of 

 flue surface and spike surface. If this were so, we observed, by 

 making the quantity of spike surface greater and greater, the quantity 

 of flue surface might be made less and less, the evaporative rate of 

 the boiler remaining the same ; so that by increasing the quantity of 

 spike surface sufliciently, the flue surface might be eliminated alto- 

 gether, and we might actually have a boiler generating steam without 

 any flue surface at all. We also observed, that if a spike three inches 

 long were capable of transmitting more heat to the water than a spike 

 of one-eighth of an inch long maintained at the same temperature, the 

 received theory of conduction could not be right, because in that case 

 rapidity of conduction could not vary as the temperatures simply, but 

 as the temperatures and masses conjointly ; so that it would be not the 

 degree of temperature which would determine the rate of conduction, 

 but the quantity of heat. According to this doctrine it was plain, we 

 observed, that a very large body, though cold, would communicate as 

 much heat as a very small body, tliough hot, provided the absolute 

 quantities of heat resident in them were the same ; so that a sufficient 

 extent of spikes, though cold, might boil water and generate steam, 

 without the aid of a fire. 



To all this what does Mr. Williams answer? That the auditory of 

 some Polytechnic Society could not see the absurdity imputed to his 

 projects; that he does not measure the quantity of heat transmitted 

 by the mere surface of the spikes; that spikes, though they are bene- 

 ficially available up to a certain length, yet that length is not infinite, 

 but the length of three inches is practically the best ; that the num- 

 ber, too, of the spikes must not be increased beyond a certain limit, 

 else the hot air will not obtain access to their surfaces; and that how 

 the extravagancies imputed to his projects are deducible from the 

 well-known theory of conduction it does not become him to say. Now 

 did ever any one hear such a reply to such an argument? We show 

 this gentleman that his doctrines lead to absurd conclusions, and he 

 answers us by saying that how such absurdity is chargeable upon the 

 received theory of conduction is incomprehensible to him. It is not 

 with the received theory we find fault, but with his theory ; nor do we 

 find fault with its absurdity alone, but also with the arrogance with 

 which it is advanced, and the equivocal character of the expedients 

 by which it has been attempted to uphold it. The received theory 

 of conduction is reasonable enough; the reductio ad absiirdum has no 

 power over it: but this gentleman's theory, turn it as you will, is irre- 

 ducible to anything except superlative nonsense, and yet it is ushered 

 forth with as much parade and ostentation as if it were the greatest 

 discovery that had been made for ages. But the Polytechnic Society 

 cannot see its absurdity. What have we to do with that ? Is it because 

 others happen to be blind that we are, therefore, to put our eyes out! 

 We know that there are persons in the world who have no very clear 

 conception of where it is the sublime terminates and the ridiculous 

 begins ; and it would be an anomaly in the history of delusion, if a 

 consummately preposterous project were not to have some admirers. 

 But as such persons are usually too incandescently wrong-headed to 

 attend to the dictates of sober reason, their conversion is as hopeless 



