18 THE DELAMATER IRON WORKS— 



intelligence to Captain Ericsson. He reached his home late in the afternoon. Erics- 

 son was overwhelmed at the news, but seeking a cause he finally concluded that her 

 steering gear must have become disarranged. The next morning, when Mr. Robin- 

 son reached his office, Ericsson's secretary, Mr. Taylor, was awaiting him with the 

 word that "the captain had been thinking things over and had concluded that the 

 Dictator's steering gear could not get disarranged, and that she would report at 

 Key West within twenty-four hours," and she actually arrived there only a few 

 hours later than the time predicted. 



In the early seventies Raoul Pictet, a Chemist of Geneva, Switzerland, had de- 

 veloped mechanical refrigeration, utilizing anhydrous sulphurous dioxide as the cool- 

 ing mixture. He exhibited a machine at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 

 and afterwards the Pictet Ice-Machine Company was formed and had machines 

 built at the works. Other ice-machine designs followed, and the first ammonia ice 

 machine which practically did continuous work was invented by a man named Smith 

 and was manufactured in numbers. John C. Delavergne spent considerable money 

 experimenting on ice machinery and finally formed the Delavergne Ice Machine 

 Company, which established its own plant at the foot of 138th Street and East 

 River in the Bronx. 



In 1880 Tessie Du Motay and Auguste J. Rossi, two New York chemists, de- 

 veloped a binary liquid for a refrigerant composed of ether semisaturated with sul- 

 phurous dioxide, and an ice machine was developed to utilize it. An experimental 

 plant was erected at the works and ice was manufactured there for demonstration 

 purposes and aroused considerable interest among the public, which visited it in great 

 numbers. Several breweries were equipped with these machines. 



Then Leicester Allen came with his Dense Air Ice Machine for marine service, 

 for chemicals were thought to be too dangerous to use on shipboard. Several types 

 of machines were tried without much success, and in 1888 Tom Rider designed the 

 first one used in the U. S. Navy, which is still there, being built now by Hugo B. 

 Roelker. He used a slide valve on the compressor to eliminate the noise and wear 

 of the poppet valves and leather packing in the pistons of both compressor and ex- 

 pander. Captain Zalinski, U. S. N., had his pneumatic-dynamite gun built there. 



It must not be supposed, because little mention has been made of other iron 

 works in this monograph on the DeLamater Iron Works, that as the city grew 

 there were no others established in it which were successful and took a pfomi- 

 nent part in the industrial advance of the times. On the contrary, there were many 

 on both the east and west sides of the city, with all of which the DeLamater Works 

 held the most friendly relations, one helping the other on many occasions to do 

 work for which it was especially equipped, or when it was hurried and crowded be- 

 yond its capacity. 



Fletcher, Harrison & Co. established themselves early in the forties at Vestry 

 and West Streets, one block above where the old Phoenix Foundry was, and re- 

 mained there for many years till they outgrew the site and moved to Hoboken where. 



