AN EXPERIMENT WORTHY OF REPETITION, 
135 
speed that could be divided from a single- 
acting pump : these arrangements were as is 
below stated. The pump was strongly fixed, 
horizontally, in the iron tank. The rod of 
its piston was restrained to perfect perpen- 
dicularity of action by a strong guide. In 
the parts which may be denominated the 
continuations of the piston-rod, was a joint 
just without the guide ; at about 1 8 inches 
beyond this was another, a double joint, 
where was united, at right angles to the line 
of direction of the piston-rod, a rod from 
the lever or handle ; and at about 20 inches 
farther was another joint near to the fulcrum, 
which was as firmly fixed as our ingenuity 
could contrive. When the machine was 
worked, by raising and depressing the lever 
or handle, the- double -joint oscillated past 
the line of direction of the piston-rod. When 
the continuations of the piston-rod were in 
a right line, the piston was at the bottom of 
its stroke ; when these continuations were 
at their extreme angle, the piston was at the 
top of its stroke. The piston of the pump 
was thus worked by an oblique leverage ; 
such as is, I believe, regarded as the pecu- 
liar principle of the Russel printing-press, 
According to theory, the force moving the 
piston of the pump, is augmentable to any 
extent, by shortening the oscillations of the 
double -joint. 
By thus uniting the principle of the Rus- 
sel printing-press, to be worked by a com- 
mon lever — that of the double-acting pump 
of De la Hire, made to double its celerity of 
motion by an arrangement of parts of its 
piston-rod, and that of Bramah’s hydrosta- 
tic-press, to move the piston of a common 
double-acting steam -cylinder, so as that as 
little as possible of the resulting force should 
be neutralised by friction, I did hope to 
obtain an efficient power, which might be 
advantageously employed to propel heavily 
laden, slowly moving vehicles. But the 
Z is the cast-iron water-tank ; y the dou- 
ble-acting pump of De la Hire, strongly 
fixed horizontally in the tank, under water ; 
X the guide of the piston rod ; W the end 
of the eduction -pipe from the working 
experiment failed, in as much as the motion 
afforded was manifestly too slow for the 
purpose. When two men were working the 
lever, the engineer dryly remarked, “ the 
principle throughout is good and correct, no 
doubt ; it only wants a steam-engine to 
.work the pump.” 
If — in mechanical pursuits, ^is often a 
stiffly perverse monosyllable : it sometimes 
sticks, like a totally insuperable obstacle, 
right in the way of what you would do. If 
the resulting velocity had been satisfactory, 
the advantages contemplated were numer- 
ous. Amongst them are the following. The 
stock of water, costing nothing, would have 
circulated somewhat like the sanguineous 
fluid of an animal, and lasted an indefinite 
time. The expenses of fuel, of repair of 
injuries from fire, &c, &c., to which the 
steam-engine is liable, would have been avoid- 
ed. Almost any imaginable force, at all 
events any force likely to be required to 
propel the most heavily laden carrier’s wag- 
gon up the steepest roads in England, would 
have been obtained from the bodily strength 
of two or three men, simply by shortening 
the oscillations of the double-joint ; but the 
machine would have crawled more slowly. 
When the machine was moving upon a plain 
road, or down a slight descent, the oscilla- 
tions might have been augmented and the 
speed increased. Whilst descending the 
steepest declivity, the velocity could have 
been entirely governed, either restrained or 
the machine quite stopped, through the 
incompressibility of the water, at the will 
of the men working the lever. 
Lest my verbal description of the pump 
used be unintelligible, I subjoin a rude 
sketch of its working parts. This, however, 
Mr. Editor, you are, of course, quite at 
liberty to suppress, if you consider that it 
is superfluous, or that it would be a waste 
of space in your valuable pages. 

cylinder, which returns thewater to the tank,, 
to be used over again ; « 1, « 2, are the 
induetion pipes of the pump, having valves 
opening towards the pump, or upwards. In 
using this pump for a common well, these 
