Untitled

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 307, 4 June 1889, Page 2

While the public mind is agitated with the promised development, among many other things that are wonderful, of marvellous new inventions for the preservation of food, the attention must be arrested by another invention for the prevention of smoke, Some witty person has suggested that the best preventative of smoke would be to light no fires, but that is hardly in keeping with the seriousness of the latter part of tha nineteenth century, and ths inventor that is in the field promises not only to let us have the advantage of the one and also to relieve us of ths sooty clouds that mark the presence of fire, but by the now method the consumption of fuel will be lessened, A Mr Don, of Sydney, is the discoverer of the principal which has for many years baffled the experiments ot clever men. From his boyhood upwards Mr Don has been untiring in his experimenting; he met with disappointment that would have been certain to discourage most men, but now it is claimed he has succeeded so well that all will wish him a full enjoyment of the fruits of his labors and patience. To Dr Storer and Mr Key is due the perfecting of the crude ideas of Mr Don. Broadly speaking the principle may be thus explained ;—A jet of steam in the shape ot a hollow tube, is injected into the boiler furnace and diffused over the eur. face of the fire, carrying with it a constant and terrific rush of air from the outer world. The eteam is a mere vehicle—the air does the work, and that work is by supplying a ceaseless current of oxygen to the top surface of the coal to produce a combustion so rapid and heat so intense that the gases, which under ordinary circumstances would generate slowly and as slowly liberate themselves in smoke, are caught and in their turn burnt as fuel before they have time to escape. And thus we have at once both smoke prevention and economy of fuel. The utility of ths invention is most obvious during the process of “firing up." Supposing the coal in the the furnace has burned down to a glowing mass, radiating heat from every side, the moment the fireman shovels on a heap of “ green ” coal he smothers the fire, reduces its heating power and simultaneously sends great black clouds of smoke up the chimney. That much we have all along understood and some of us bitterly deplored. The difficulty has been to flndja remedy. It is of all moments the most critical in the companionship of a steamboat chimney and a white silk dress, And here Mr Don comes to the relief of our lady friends by turning on his current of air. It falls, as Mr Keys says, like “ a shower of bullets” on the dead black coal that is just beginning to smoulder, and, converting the smoke as it creeps over it into a combustible gas, practically kindles a fire on the top of the coal to burn its way down until it unites with the bright red mass below. The consequence is that a newly replenished fire glows all over in a very few moments and in its fury devours its own smoke.