532 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



Amkkican Institute Polytechnic Association, ) 

 March \Uh, 1865. j 



Prof. S. D. Tillman occupied the chair. 



The chairman read a communication from Joseph Dixon, Esq., of Jersey 

 City, relating to an account of Shaw & Justice's Steam Gauge, described 

 in the last annual volume of Transactions of the American Institute. It 

 would appear from the description there given that their mode of measur- 

 ing the pressure of steam by means "of a short mercurial column pressing 

 on a piston of comparatively large diameter, was new; but he, Mr. D., had 

 used the same mode for years in his manufacturing establishment. To 

 prove which he sent to the Institute the identical gauge, now broken, for 

 the inspection of members. It was a French invention, manufactured how- 

 ever in this country. The only difference between this and that of Shaw & 

 Justice is that, in the former, the pressure of the mercury is on the bottom 

 of a piston and the pressure of steam is on the top of a piston (-f smaller 

 diameter, the two being separated by a diaphragm of India-rubber, while in 

 the latter, the application of the pressures is reversed. The arrangement 

 used by Messrs. Shaw & Justice was admitted to be, on the whole, the 

 most convenient and desirable. 



Hicks' New Steam Engine. 



Mr. Wm. Cleveland Hicks, Civil Engineer, and Professor of Mechanical 

 Engineering in Trinity College, Hartford, exhibited drawings and made 

 explanations of his newly patented Steam Engine, patented Feb. 21, 1865, 

 He said the chief f<?ature of this invention is its matchless simplicity. While 

 retaining the entire principle and action of the best approved reciprocating- 

 piston engines, and doing no violence to the convictions of our most intel- 

 ligent engineers that this principle and action cannot be superseded as long 

 as the present mode of applying steam continues; the details are so far 

 simplified that the pistons connected directly to the crank, form the only 

 moving parts, and these with the cylinders compose the whole machine. 

 This is done by making the pistons of suitable form and arrangement to 

 enable them to perform also the offices of valves and cut-offs, dispensing 

 not only with these contrivances, but also with the whole array of valve- 

 rods, eccentrics, rock-shafts, packing-boxes, slides, levers, cross-heads, and 

 external attachments of every kind which they necessitate. The action of 

 the pistons is alike simple and uniform, each being a slide-valve for the 

 one next preceding it. This invention, therefore, forms the most radical 

 and entire change in steam engines which has occurred since the days of 

 Watt, and gives a better machine, simple, compact, light, durable, accu- 

 rate, and economical in operation beyond all comparison with the past, and 

 at far less orig-inal cost than tver before attained. 



In the arrangement, four cylinders are employed, the pistons in which 

 receive the pressure of the steam or other fluid in one direction only, or 

 are what is called single-acting. In the annexed engravings, these are 

 Bhown as standing at right angles to each other, or in the form of a cross, 

 the inner ends being open and having a crank in the centre or equidistant 

 from each of the inner ends and as shown in fig. 1, in which a is the first 

 cylinder, b the second, c the third, and d the fourth. The cylinders aro 



