150 RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR FREEBOARD. 
In closing I want to describe the Fisher burner which the company I am now with 
is experimenting on in connection with the Navy Department. Commander Fisher, 
now fleet engineer of the Atlantic fleet, is the inventor of this principle. During the 
war, while Commander Fisher was at the Bureau of Engineering in charge of the sub- 
marines, he became very much interested in the internal combustion engine. Being 
familiar with the mechanical atomizer as used in the Navy, he conceived the idea of 
spraying the oil into the internal-combustion engine by means of this mechanical ato- 
mizer, but when he tried it he could not make it work, and the reason is quite apparent. 
As you alternately close and open the orifice, you stop the flow of oil to the burner 
and so lose your atomizing effect of the oil. Iam assuming that you are familiar with the 
principle on which the mechanical atomizer works. There is, as you know, the air and 
steam atomizer which uses an atomizing medium for spraying the oil. In the mechan- 
ical atomizer the oil is delivered through small tangential channels to the central cham- 
ber in the burner, where it receives a rapid whirling motion and issues from the orifice 
in the form of spray, induced by centrifugal force. 
In all the mechanical burners which have been used heretofore, all the oil, which 
enters the central chamber through these small tangential slots, finds an exit through 
the orifice of the burner, and in changing the capacity of the burner the only means 
available is to vary the pressure under which the oil is delivered to the burner. For 
instance, a burner designed for a capacity of 800 pounds per hour, avoirdupois, at 
200-pound pressure can be operated also at about s50-pound pressure, in which case it 
will deliver about 400 pounds per hour; but you cannot reduce the capacity materially 
below 400 pounds because through friction and other causes you then begin to lose your 
rotary motion and spraying action. 
In connection with this experiment in the internal-combustion engine, Commander 
Fisher conceived the idea of passing some of the oil instead of making it all go through 
the orifice. Thus, if he carried it back through the by-pass, he could close the orifice 
and still keep the oil moving in the central chamber. I would like to ask you to look 
at Plate 68. 
This shows the form of the Fisher burner, which has been used in the Navy. I 
am indebted to the Navy Department for permission to publish this data. The oil 
enters through the annular space, between an inner and outer pipe. It goes through 
openings in the copper disc, passes along the longitudinal slots in the plug shown to the 
left, and enters the central chamber through the tangential channels shown in the end 
view of the plug, and there the oil receives the whirling motion. If the outlet leading 
from the spindle shown in the center is closed, the burner works in the same way as the 
ordinary mechanical atomizer. All the oil then finds exit through the orifice. 
If the spindle is drawn back, some of the oil can be passed around the spindle into 
the annular space, between that and the pipe next to it, so that by regulating the pres- 
sure of the oil to the outlet, or in this case by varying the position of the spindle, the 
amount of oil by-passed can be varied. The effect of this is, as applied to the internal- 
combustion engine, that he can stop the flow through the orifice entirely and then open 
the valve and stop again and again open, and during all these processes, still keep 
up the atomizing action. The effect of this on a continuous flow burner under a boiler 
is that you can go much below the former limit of 50 per cent of the maximum owing to 
the fact that you are continually keeping up the maximum whirling effect in the central 
chamber. ‘The rotary effect is the same, because the maximum amount of oil is entering 
