246 DEVEI.OPMENTS IN Oil, BURNING. 



and, following the necessity, the better methods have been developed, first 

 in naval practice, and now in wider fields. 



By better methods I do not mean merely the substitution, for steam and 

 compressed air as atomizing agents, of the relatively high oil pressure and 

 centrifugal force utilized in the mechanical burner — there is nothing very 

 new about that — but furnace arrangement, air distribution and control, and 

 improvements in the process have all been necessary to meet the severe 

 requirements of modem practice and to realize the conditions which make 

 for success. 



I have not had occasion to hunt up the history of the art to the extent 

 of determining who was the actual pioneer in the use of the mechanical 

 atomizer, but it is certain that over twenty years ago oil was atomized by 

 mechanical means, along very much the same lines as those employed to-day. 



Messrs. L. Schutte & Co., of Philadelphia, in 1888 issued a catalogue 

 describing their "cyclone burner." This burner, as its name implies, was 

 constructed with a mechanism for delivering a spiral air blast around the 

 oil tip, but the tip itself and the description of it bear all the earmarks of a 

 perfectly good mechanical atomizer — and it should be remembered that this 

 was in the early days, twenty-four years ago. With all due respect, however, 

 to early inventors, the importance of whose work I do not underestimate, 

 the situation is very well summed up by an eminent engineer who, writing 

 recently from England, says of mechanical oil-burning systems: — -"The pri- 

 ority of invention is very doubtful, but there is not the slightest doubt that the 

 credit for the actual application, in practice, is due to the British Admiralty, 

 as, when they first took the field, not one of the systems up till that time in 

 use (about eight or nine years ago) had shown itself capable of developing 

 the full power from a boiler as demanded by the naval requirements and as 

 obtainable with coal, and it was the Admiralty who first showed that it was 

 possible to force a boiler to the high degree required for naval work, with oil 

 firing, at the same time obtaining a high efficiency and no smoke. After they 

 had once indicated the practicability of this, naturally the others all followed 

 suit, and although they have claimed against the Admiralty priority of 

 patents, not one of them has succeeded in maintaining this claim, and there- 

 fore, on this side, the credit for the actual application and development of the 

 system, I think, must be given to the Admiralty." 



We must, in this country, gracefully accord to our English cousins the 

 credit for this first modern development of the mechanical oil burner, for it 

 was not until 1907 that our navy started the reform by calling for the system 

 to be used in conjunction with coal in ordinary furnaces. 



It is true that the United States Naval "Liquid Fuel Board" appointed 



