ON STEAM-BOILER-EXPLOSION LEGISLATION. tJ 



sideration of such of tlie plans " proposed for legislating on the subject of 

 steam-boiler explosions, with a view to their prevention," as have come 

 under their notice. 



Five systems of compulsory inspection appear to be now before the public. 

 These may each be stated and considered in turn. 



Plan No. 1. — It has been jiroposed that the inspection of all the boilers 

 in the kingdom should be carried out by the Board of Trade. To this plan 

 there are many objections. On the one hand, it would impose on the 

 Government additional burdens, which they have expressed themselves 

 unwilUng to incur; Avhile on the other it would prove harassing to the 

 steam-user. It would, it is feared, be found to work arbitrarily. Such a 

 system would lack that elasticity which is necessary to conform to the con- 

 venience of the individual steam-user. There would be a great danger of its 

 hampering progress. It would certainly not find favour -with the generality 

 of steam-users, nor ever be voluntarily accepted by them except as the 

 last resort. 



Plan No. 2. — A second proposition is, that, instead of the inspection being 

 caiTied out by the Board of Trade, it should be carried out by town councils 

 or other local authorities, such authorities appointing their own inspectors. 

 This plan would admit of more elasticity than the previous one, inasmuch as 

 the inspection would emanate from several centres instead of from one. 

 From the fact, however, of the inspections emanating from several centres 

 instead of from one, an element of discord would be introduced, from which 

 many contradictious and many absurdities would ensue. If it were a question 

 of establishing Greenwich time in every market town and country village 

 throughout the kingdom, there might be little difficulty in effecting such an 

 object by such an organization, since Greenwich time, by the help of the 

 Asti'ouomer Royal, could be put beyond all question, and the work of 

 estabhshing it throughout the kingdom would be one of diffusion and not of 

 origination. To regulate the construction of steam-boilers, however, is a 

 totally different matter. The science of boiler-making is a growing one. It 

 is in a transition state ; and, in spite of the amount of information constantly 

 disseminated, great ignorance prevails with regard to it. In consequence of this, 

 one corporation would declare a boiler safe which another corporation would 

 declare unsafe, so that a boiler carried by rail from one part of the country 

 to another might be counted safe at the beginning of its journey and unsafe 

 at the end. For instance : in Lancashire the practice of strengthening flue- 

 tubes at the ring-seams with flanged joints or hoops of T-iron, or other 

 suitable section, is highly approved. In fact it is thought that no high- 

 pressure boiler should be constructed nowadays without these appliances. 

 In Cornwall, however, nothing can convince steam-users of their necessity, 

 and Cornishmen persistently adhere to the ignorant superstition which the 

 Frankhn Institute of Pennsylvania endeavoured to dispel thirty-four years 

 ago, viz. that a boiler cannot explode as long as it is properly supplied with 

 water. They appear to believe that furnace- tubes, though of great length 

 and diameter, and though worked at high pressures of steam, can only 

 collapse from the neglect of the water-supply, or, in other words, from the 

 neglect of the attendant and not of the owner or the maker. In Cornwall, 

 boiler-flue after boiler-flue collapses, simply from weakness, till the Cornish 

 boiler stands in the return of explosions as one of the most dangerous. These 

 explosions are the result of gross malconstruction, coupled with neglected 

 condition. Yet Cornishmen wiU not see it, and they only attribute every 

 explosion to shortness of water. Local administration \inder such circum- 



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