AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 567 



1,500 lbs., on a piston. By the second case, then, we obtain a 

 certain power at the expense of one ounce of coal; but in the 

 first case, by the use of tlie very same air, we obtain the very same 

 power, at one hundred times that cost, merely by the adoption of 

 a smaller heater. This is anomalous, and appears absurd ; but 

 if proven to be true, or approximately true, it establishes the 

 fact equally important in the case of other agents, that a certain 

 amount of expansion, by a given degree of heat, is due to vol- 

 ume, and not to weight. 



But the water employed to heat the wire gauze which regene- 

 rates this air, must itself be heated to 50U degrees, to double the 

 artificial pressure once. The attaining of a heat nearly 300 de- 

 grees above the boiling point, must be in the absence of air, and 

 under immense pressure; while any accidental break or leakage, 

 would cause a violent and fearful explosion; hence the appara- 

 tus is eminently unsafe; and cold water must be applied to a 

 wire gauze condenser; while incessant circulation, and artificial 

 pressure of both hot and cold must be preserved. The rapidity 

 with which wire gauze regenerators will absorb and impart 500 

 degrees or more, of heat, is also problematical. However com- 

 pletely such a machine may overcome radical and practical diffi- 

 culties, its success must be relative. Steam is susceptible of 

 similar changes in its method of application; and if this theory 

 be true, one method of applying steam indirectly, promises the 

 highest success. Let a stationary steam engine, consuming two 

 pounds of coal per hour, for one horse power, be employed to 

 condense air. This air will give back nearly as much power as 

 can be generated by a less economical locomotive, through the 

 use of the same fuel. Now if the air occupy 100 cubic feet, and 

 exert a pressure of 100 lbs. per square inch, the addition of as 

 much heat as would double 100 cubic feet at the atmospheric pres- 

 sure, will at once develope a power equal to 200 lbs. per quarter 

 inch . 



Allowing even fifty of these additional lbs. to balance the in- 

 creased fuel, and we gain fifty per cent over the ordinary loco- 

 motive, besides avoiding the difficulties and uncertainties of the 

 regenerator. By sufficiently increasing the original pressure and 

 the heat, the cost of locomotion might be reduced many hundred 

 per cent. Above all, the railway would no longer monopolize 

 the steam carriage. 



Locomotion, by atmospheric pressure, through the use of a 



