AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 521' 



is a great difference between the theoretical and the practical de- 

 livery of water from the pipe nozzle, in some cases nearly thirty 

 per cent. 



James S. Burnham — I am a working man, consequently, the 

 few disjointed remarks which I may make at this time, will savor 

 more of the shop than of the school room; they will not, perhaps, 

 be scientific; if they are practical, it will please me better. You 

 will excuse me then, if I discard speculative theories and have to 

 do with facts. First, then, it is a fact that steam is used in all 

 places for pumping water, (where a large quantity is required,) 

 except for extinguishing fires. Why is this '? Is it because steam 

 cannot just as well throw water on a burning building as out of a 

 mine 1 Certainly this is not the reason. Is it because steam en^ 

 gines, when combined with water engines, are too unwieldly for 

 practical purposes ? No, not necessarily so, but they are almost 

 always made too large to be useful ; not because mechanics know 

 no better, but they want, if possible, to meet the expectation of 

 the multitude, who think that there is no limit, or if there is, 

 there ought to be none, to the distance a stream of water will go 

 when thrown by steam. A machine can undoubtedly be con- 

 structed that will throw a stream of water across this island; but 

 it would puzzle the wildest theorist to build a boiler, even with 

 figures, capable of doing this work, and yet light enough to be 

 drawn easily by two horses. But all will agree that such a ma- 

 chine is not wanted — neither do we want a machine large enough 

 to concentrate to one point all the water that can be had in the 

 vicinity of a fire. I need not try to prove this assertion, it is a 

 self evident fact. What then is the use of building engines so 

 large as to render them useless, and then try to reduce the weight, 

 and keep the machine of the same capacity, by building a light, 

 untried, unsafe kind of boiler. When this vague theorizing on 

 light boilers, this aiming at useless impossibilities is at an end, 

 then I venture to predict, will steam fire engines, of practical di- 

 mensions, be universally adopted. 



Allow me to describe a practical steam fire engine : its weight 

 is the same as that of a first class hand engine, from forty to fifty 

 hundred; the boiler is a plain, old fashioned, well tried tubular 



