NA TURE 



[June 29, 1905 



water by special tanks they could be deeply immersed and 

 show oiilv a small target above the surface when making 

 an attack. There would be no necessity in such surface 

 vessels to use electric motors and storage batteries,^ since 

 internal combustion engines could be used in all circum- 

 stances. Hence it would be possible without increase of 

 size to construct vessels of greater speed and radius of 

 action, and to simplify designs in other important features. 

 It is not possible to predict whether this suggestion to 

 adopt surface-boats rather than submersibles will have a 

 practical result ; but it is unquestionable that improve- 

 ments in or alternatives to internal combustion engines 

 will favour the increase of power in relation to weight, 

 and so will tend to the production of vessels of higher 

 speed. 



Submarines and airships have certain points of re- 

 semblance, and proposals have been made repeatedly to 

 associate the two types, or to use airships as a means of 

 protection from submarine attacks. One French inventor 

 seriously suggested that a captive balloon attached to a 

 submarine should be the post of observation from which 

 information should be telephoned to the submarine as to 

 the position of an enemy. He evidently had little trust in 

 periscopes, and overlooked the dangers to which the 

 observers in the car of the balloon would be exposed from 

 an enemy's gun-fire. Quite recently a proposal has been 

 made by M. .Santos Dumont to use airships as a defence 

 against submarines, his idea being that a dirigible air- 

 ship of large dimensions and moving at a considerable 

 height above the surface of the sea could discover the 

 whereabouts of a submarine, even at some depth below 

 the surface, and could effect its destruction by dropping 

 high explosive charges upon the helpless vessel. Here 

 again, the inventor, in his eagerness to do mischief, has 

 not appreciated adequately the risks which the airship 

 would run if employed in the manner proposed, as sub- 

 marines are not likely to be used without supporting 

 vessels. Hitherto, submarines themselves have been armed 

 only with torpedoes, but it has been proposed recently to 

 add guns, and this can be done, if desired, in vessels 

 possessing relatively large freeboard. No doubt if gun 

 armaments are introduced, the tendency will be further to 

 increase dimensions and cost, and the decision will be 

 governed by the consideration of the gain in fighting 

 power as compared with increased cost. As matters stand, 

 submarines are practically helpless at the surface when 

 attacked bv small swift vessels, and it is natural that 

 advocates of the type should desire to remedy this con- 

 dition. Surface boats, if built, will undoubtedly carry 

 guns as well as torpedoes, and in them the gun fittings 

 would be permanent, whereas in submarines certain por- 

 tions of the armament would have to be removed when 

 vessels were prepared for diving. 



."^part from the use of submarine vessels for purposes 

 of war, their adoption as a means of navigation has found 

 favour in many quarters. Jules Verne, in his " Twenty 

 Thousand I^eagues Under the Sea," has drawn an attrac- 

 tive picture of what may be possible in this direction, and 

 others ha»'e favoured the idea of combining the supposed 

 advantages of obtaining buoyancy from bodies floating at 

 some depth below the surface with an airy promenade 

 carried high above water. Not many years ago an 

 eminent naval architect drew a picture of what might be 

 accomplished by utilising what he described as the " im- 

 troubled water below " in association with the freedom 

 and pure air obtainable on a platform carried high above 

 the waves. These suggestions, however, are not in accord 

 with the accepted theory of wave-motion, since thev take 

 no note of the great depths to which the disturbance due 

 to wave-motion penetrates the ocean. The problems of 

 stability, incidental to such plans, are also of a character 

 not easily dealt with, and consequently there is but a 

 remote prospect of the use of these singular combinations 

 of submarine and aerial superstructures. There is little 

 likelihood of the displacement of ocean steamships at an 

 early date by either navigable airships or submarines, 

 and the dreams of Jules Verne or Santos Dumont will 

 not be realised until much further advance has been 

 made in the design and construction of the vessels they 

 contemplate. 



NO. i86t, vol. 72] 



THE INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL 

 ENGINEERS. 



HTHE summer meeting of the Institution of Mechanical 

 Engineers was held last week in Belgium. The open- 

 ing proceedings took place in the city of Li^ge, the presi- 

 dent, Mr. E. P. Martin, occupying the chair at the 

 preliminary sitting. Six papers were down for reading 

 and discussion, the mornings of June 20 and June 21 

 being devoted to their consideration. The following is a 

 list of the papers : — .Superheaters applied to locomotives 

 on the Belgian State railways, by M. J. B. Flamme ; 

 the growth of large gas-engines on the Continent, by 

 M. Rodolphe Mathot ; ferro-concrete, and some of its most 

 characteristic applications in Belgium, by M. Ed. Noaillon ; 

 electric winding machines, by M. Paul Habets ; strength 

 of columns, by Prof. VV. E. Lilly ; an investigation to 

 determine the effects of steam-jacketing upon the efficiency 

 of a horizontal compound steam engine, by Mr. A. L. 

 Mellanby. 



The first paper taken was the contribution by M. 

 Flamme on superheating for locomotives. The author first 

 dealt with the Schmidt superheater for simple expansion 

 locomotives as applied on the Belgian State railways. 

 Arrangements were made for superheating the steam, in 

 order further to increase the power of the engines. As a 

 result of experiments made, extending over some months, 

 it was recognised that the utilisation of steam slightly 

 superheated did not offer any appreciable economy of fuel 

 or increase of pov/er. On the other hand, with the 

 Schmidt apparatus, when the steam was superheated from 

 570° F. to 662° F., favourable results were obtained. Two 

 engines were tried, one using superheated steam and the 

 other saturated steam. The saving in favour of the super- 

 heated steam locomotive amountea to 12-5 per cent, for 

 fuel and 165 per cent, for water. Moreover, the speed 

 reached showed an average increase of 95 per cent., all 

 conditions being exactly the same. In regard to main- 

 tenance, the superheated steam locomotive type did not 

 require special attention during its one and a half years' 

 service. These favourable results led to the Belgian State 

 railways venturing on the application of superheat to 

 locomotives on a larger scale. With this in view, twenty- 

 five locomotives, comprising five different types, all pro- 

 vided with the .Schmidt superheater, were, at the time of 

 the reading of the paper, actually in course of construc- 

 tion, or were about to be put to work. The Belgian State 

 railway authorities had decided to persevere in their ex- 

 periments in combining superheating of steam with com- 

 pounding of the engine. The results obtained will be of 

 very great interest. It was desirable to find whether it 

 was more economical to divide the superheater into two 

 parts in such a manner as to raise the temperature at the 

 entrance to both high-pressure and low-pressure cylinders. 

 The Cockerill Co., of Seraing, had completed a super- 

 heater which would enable this question to be settled. 



The discussion on this paper was opened by Mr. 

 Robinson, of Messrs. Sharp, Stewart, and Co., who stated 

 that the .Schmidt superheater had been tried on the 

 Canadian Pacific Railway, and had been found to answer, 

 whilst on the Cape railways the results had not been so 

 satisfactory. He attributed the latter effect to the fact 

 that the superheating tubes were placed at the lower part 

 of the barrel of the boiler, instead of at the upper part 

 as they should have been. Mr. Mark H. Robinson and 

 the president also spoke. 



The next paper taken was that of Mr. Paul Habets 

 on electric winding machines. This was a long and some- 

 what abstruse paper, illustrated by many diagrams, and 

 containing a large number of formulae. It was read in 

 brief abstract by the secretary of the institution. The 

 author gave a dynamic investigation of haulage, dealing 

 with the questions of resistance, statical moments, inertia 

 of suspended loads, inertia of rope-roll, the head gear and 

 winding gears of motors, and other elements of design. 

 Formulae were given for moments of the accelerating forces 

 and power and expenditure of energy. Details of construc- 

 tion of motors were discussed, and some special devices 

 explained. As a practical conclusion, the author stated 

 that it might be safely concluded from trials of which 

 particulars were given that the electric haulage machine. 



