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L VI. Experiments on the Electricity of High- Pressure Steam. 

 By H. L. Pattinson, Esq., F.G.S. 



To the Editors of the Philosophical Magazine and Journal. 



Gentlemen, 

 \ VERY singular phenomenon, viz. the production of 

 •**• electricity by two steam-boilers, has been observed in 

 this neighbourhood within the last few weeks, the particulars 

 of which I have the pleasure of transmitting to you for publi- 

 cation in your valuable Journal. The boilers in question are 

 situated at Cramlington Colliery, eight miles north-east of 

 Newcastle, where they supply steam to a high-pressure en- 

 gine of 28 -horse power, employed on the waggon-way to 

 haul full and empty waggons to the top of two inclined planes, 

 leading to the Colliery on the one hand, and to the river 

 Tyne on the other. The boilers are cylindrical, with circu- 

 lar ends, each twenty-one feet long, and five feet diameter. 

 They are supplied with water from an adjacent pond by iron 

 feed-pipes, four inches diameter, and the steam they produce 

 is conveyed to the working cylinder by other iron pipes, six 

 inches diameter, which pipes form also a direct metallic com- 

 munication between the tops of the boilers. By means of ap- 

 propriate valves the steam is supplied to the cylinder from one 

 or other boiler at pleasure. A pipe, two inches diameter, leads 

 from the bottom of one boiler on the outside of the brick-work 

 to the ash-pit, through which the sediment deposited by the 

 water is occasionally blown from one of Scott's patent collect- 

 ing cones, and a similar pipe is attached to the other boiler. 

 The boilers are set in brick-work in the usual way, the fires 

 below, with flues reaching all round, and passing into the 

 chimney also in the usual manner. The flues are covered 

 with large flat bricks, and in the space between the boilers the 

 two flues are necessarily separated by a brick wall. The 

 safety-valves are attached to the boilers by flange joints ; and 

 between the flanges, to render them steam-tight, is placed a 

 ring of plaited hemp covered with a cement of litharge, sand 

 and linseed oil, mixed up together, and when applied of the 

 consistence of glaziers' putty. This cement, as it soon becomes 

 hard, is used about the engine for steam joints which occasionally 

 fail ; but all the joints of the pipes are made of iron borings and 



a much smaller scale, and about which there are as yet doubts whether it 

 is to be referred to mere evaporation, as Harris says, or to chemical action, 

 according to others. This point it neither settles nor illustrates ; but it 

 gives us the evolution of electricity during the conversion of water into 

 vapour, upon an enormous scale, and therefore brings us much nearer to 

 the electric phaenomena of volcanos, water-spouts and thunder-storms, 

 than before. — M. F. 



