^ On the means of safety in Steam Boats. 9 



sequent incompetency of the supply pump, or some other mechani- 

 cal defect, in which case, he vv'ould be exonerated and the cause for- 

 tunately discovered in season. 



2d. It is applicable to all existing fine boilejs, and by making 

 steam boats safe, adds to their value and security as an investment. 

 " 3d. By obviating the greatest objection to investment in steam 

 vessels, it makes this kind of navigation as a business, more calcula- 

 ble, and lessens the premium of insurance thereon. 



4th. It ajEFords to passengers a consciousness of safety and thus 

 increases the use of steam boats. 



5th. It brings all the causes of danger more definitely within the 

 reach of Legislative remedy, or of definite provisions of law regard- 

 ing the proof of boilers originally and periodically, as to size, form, 

 and number of safety valves, &;c. 



6th. And more especially it will be the means of absolutely pre- 

 venting those calamitous explosions that have been often destructive 

 of life ; for it may be fairly presumed that with this apparatus, few if 

 any of those accidents would have occurred, which, according to au- 

 thentic information, have destroyed at least, fifteen hundred persons 

 in the United States, and caused great suffering to many who sur- 

 vived the first injuries. 



And pursuant to the provisions of the law of Congress relative 

 to letters patent, I explicitly claim and declare the principle of my 

 aforesaid invention to be the use or employment of combined bells, 

 or other sonorous body or bodies, so placed within the steam boiler 

 in relative elevation as to indicate by their sound when rung by wires, 

 leading out to hand, the actual^ place of the surface of the water 

 within the limits of tHe vertical space between their rims by the ring- 

 mg of the one next above the surface, and the refusal of the one in 

 contact with it to emit sound. 



Also, as above described, an alarm bell, or other sonorous body, 

 within or near the boiler to receive a blow and be sounded by means 

 of mechanical apparatus connecting it and this effect with a float on 

 the water within the boiler, the weight of which operates as a power, 

 as the water unduly subsiding causes the aforesaid, or other equiva- 

 lent apparatus to work ; and by the blow of the tongue or hammer, 

 give notice or alarm as aforesaid, at the near occurrence of that bare- 

 ness and heat of the flue or furnace, or sides of the boiler, whence 

 danger of explosion arises. J. L. Sullivan. 



New York, eighteenth of January, A. D. eighteen hundred and thirty one. 



Vol. XX.— No. 1. 2 



