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mi. VOL. V.NO 10. CLEVELAND, O., MAR. 40 1883. $2.00 PER ANNUM THE METEOR—THE STEAMER In- TENDED ro GO TO EUROPE IN FLVE DAYS. We are pleased, says the Mechanical En- gineer, to be the first to lay before our read- ers, and the publicin general, an engraving of this vessel. Tn explanation of the want of details in the engine we have to say that positive information, or information what- ever, was repeatedly refused by the proprie- tors. Feeling that our readers would be pleased to know something of the vessel and her motive power, we took our own meas- ures for obtaining the facts in the case. So far as they go they are correct. The Meteorisa wooden vessel, very hand- somely modeled, and externally, as shown in the engraving, she has very fine lines and her topsides “tumble home” in a marked de- gree, and to an extent that cannot be shown inso smallan engraving. She has a flush deck fore and aft, and no structures rise above it save the smokestacks, boiler casing and pilot house. A sea might sweep her from end to end without damage. She isin fact, a steam lifebont, so tar as stability and staunchness is concerned, The Meteor was launched at Nvack on September 13, last. The chief constructing engineer was Mr. A. Perry Bliven, of Sonth street. Her Dimensions are as follows: Extreme length over all, 156 feet; extreme wood end, 153 feet; custom house measure- ment, 147 teet; depth of hold, 17 teet; beam, rangement is so complicated that a mere verbal explanation would be of no value. Water circulates through these tubes or colls, the working pressure being about 300 ponnds to the square inch. The propeller wheel is 10 feet diameter by 10 feet pitch, and it is intended to drive it at 300 revolutions per minute, In regard to her boilers the Nautical Ga- zette says that it she has coil boilers the rules of the United States- steamboat inspec- tors place a limit on the size of the coil, and more than this, when it comes to the test, it is more than likely that the tubes of which coils are usually made, will not stand the strain. which is claimed for them by tneir makers. We may be mistaken but it isa question in our minds whether the future ot this wonderful (!) motor will be as rose-col- ored as her projector would have people be- lieve. When we read-df such tremendous strides in the effort to annihilate tiine and distance, visions of the Keely motor rise up before us, and we are ccnstrained to pause and wait for—well, to see the bottom drop of the whole thing. If the Meteor is a suc- cess, thousands of able engincers will be very much mistaken; but that she or any type of vessel of her class will ever cross the ocean in five days, is just as impossible as it would be tor a codfish to shin up a greased barber’s pole forty feet high, tail . foremost, with a ten-pound loaf of bread in its ineuth. 21 feet 31g inches; beam,at_ water line, 16 feet 1034 inches; *onnibe,t547.0. Her builder was Mr. Smith. She carries two flag-staffs only, no other rigging being above deck. THE HISTORY OF THE MARINE : CHRONOMEVER: | BY CHARLES FRODSHAM, F. R. A. S, | The two chief instruments by which the | navigation of the seas has reached its pres- | SINGLE Copies 5 CENT The first true beginnings of horology, or the art of reckoning the natural day by the use of systematic and regulated machinery, is attributed by general congent to the elev- enth and twelfth centuries, in which the bulky turret Glocks erected in the larger monasteries, or in the more splendid town halls of the medisval city came into fre- quent use. ‘These early clocks were worked by the rndest machinery. ‘The chief motive power of the wheels was an immense weight suspended from a massive iron chain coiled around a heavy circular roller. ‘lhe princi- ples of inachinery, having been once applied to the notation of time, presented such fas- cinations-and attractions to the human, in tellect, that ina very short period skillful mechanicians learned to produce clocks not only adapted to mark the duration of time, but designed (like the still famous clocks of Strasburg, Augsburg and Lyons) to amuse and astonish the spectators by their long succession of marvelous performances. ‘The further invention ot a coiled. spring ag the motive power in the place of the original massive weight led to the construction in the fifteenth century of smaller timepieces, or watches, of every conceivable size, shape, dimension and device. ‘The watches, how- ever, were toys-and curiosities, to be looked at and admired, rather than articles for daily tise, and were eagerly sought after bv powerful princess and merchants as the Most coveted favors and most acceptable gifts. Their reputation for accuracy was of the lowest possible charaeter: ‘ Sa » % % A German clock Still a repairing,.ever out of frame, And never going aright, The first step towards a scientific notation fi < E ay VN AY I; Pet ET A rea ever, science could provide to the sailor 2( his constant and unerring companion) as timekeeper, or chronometer, which shonld inake him perpetually informed ot the hour, minute or second, as counted on any given place on the Globe’s surface, he could then, with aknowledge of his own time, and by a comparison of one with the other, ascertain with vertainty his own position on the sens. ‘The urgent need of some such instrument, and the belief that its construction was pos- sible, induced the governments of Spain, Hol- land and France to offer during the whole of the seventeenth century rich rewards in or- der to stimulate the zealand to quicken the inventive faculties of their philosophers and mecharicians. England followed in their wake. In the reign of. Queen Anne, A. D. 1714, Parliament offered a substantial re- ward of £20,000. pounds to any inventor of an instrument, whieh should, urder all cir- cumstances, keep time with such accuracy as to determine the longitude of a place with half'a degree, or thirty geographical miles. Under the stimulus alike of these rich prizes and of that noble impulse, com- mon to all good and great men, to promote by their scientific exertions the happiness and wellfare of their fellow-countrymea, the great mechanicians of every state in Europe directed their attention to the inven- tion of a chronometer which should enroll their naines in the annals of fame and enti- ue them to these rewards, To be continued. adit. eee Pee, SN ae pa ee SPEED OF AMERICAN VESSELS. A short time agoa naval engineer in- formed us that the commander of the vessel to which he was attached asked him why THE METEOR—THE STEAMER INTENDED ‘TO GO 'TO EUROPE IN FIVE DAYS. of time and towxrd the development of the subject of the ensuing paper, was made in the The pilot-house is a circular structure of mahogany, very strongly built, with the up- per portion glazed all round except the ex- treme apex of the dome. The funnels are two in number, fore and aft the vessel, and aurmounted by red, white, and blue bands, alternating. ‘I'he engines are not yet com- pleted, parts of them being sul in the shop. The cylinders and frames are in place, how- ever, and the eral design is well shown in thesketch. ‘'here are two engines, fore- and aft, compounded, with the high pressure cylinder inside the low pressure. ‘The latter is twenty inches diameter, and the high pressure nine and a half inches, by twenty inches stroke. This plan of construction makes the low pressure piston a ring only, with two piston rods on opposite sides; the high pressure piston rod, and connecting rod being in the middle, as usual; the low pressure piston having two connecting rods. The valve gearing is peculiar, the valve making a complete revolution in the chest or receiver, between the cylinders. It is driven by bevel-gears, as shown, and appar- ently serves both eylinders at the same time. We judge this to be the case, for the reason that there are sixteen steam openings in the chest, which would hardly be needed unless all four cylinders were supplied from the same chest. We regret that our information as to these details is so limited, but as there were no drawings at hand and no informa- tion was vouchsafed, we touk what we could see. The boilers are peculiar, and these we can give no description of, except that they are made of faielnoh lap-welded tube, some- thing on the plan of a coil boiler, the ar- ent state of perfection are the Mariners’ Compass and the (two days and eight days) Marine Chronometer. ‘Io the jfirst, which simply indicates the direction of the ship’s course over the trackless deep, we owe the discovery of the great continents of North and South America, and the many long voy- ages of the merchant adventurers from the naval European States in the sixteenth cen- tury. ‘To the second we are indebted for the veeuracy which distinguishes our present widely-multiplied, ever-extending, —inter- oceanic intercourse with all nations; for the wonderful precision with which travelers, the pioneers of civilization, cut their way througn the scrub and forests of the untrod- agen wilderness; and for the facility with which the submarine telegraph cable is either laid down between countries, or re- covered again froin its acqueous bed when broken, or otherwise required for repara- tion and refitment. Itis the purpose of this chapter to give a short history of the Ma rine Chronometer, as affording the best test” imony tothe importance of the principle™ which the ensuing “Address’’is designed t8 illustrate 9 ‘The earliest modes of marking time wer® of the rudest construction. ‘They consisted of the lighted candles (whose use in attrib- uted to our King Alfred) marked with cir- cular lines to indicate the lapse of the hours; of sun-dials erected on pillars; or of clepsy- dra, water vessels constructed to mark allot- ted portions of time by the dropping of wa- ter trom one receptacle to another, like the sands of the hour-glass in modern use; or by the fall of water on a wheel, making ite evolutions in a certain fixed interval. latter part of the sixteenth century. As the fall of an apple from its parent tree in an orchard first imparted to Newton the great law of the earth’s gravitation, so the swing- ing of a lamp in the cathedral at Pisa led Galileo, the famous Italian philosopher, to suspect and to establish the ‘isochronism of the pendulum. He observed, it is said, that a lamp suspended from the roof ot a church performed its oscillations, whether of a greater or smaller reach, iu equal periods of time, and hence he ascertained the fact that all the vibrations and swings of the same pendulum are equal whether the arcs de- scribed be longer or shorter. This discovery of the isochronism of the »endulum led to consequences far in excess of the expect tions or anticipations of its discoverer. ‘The great impulse given to navigation in the sixteenthen ctury bad already established the fact thatone great want of the mariner was the power of ascertaining at any mo- ment the exact position of his vessel on the trackless bosom of the ocean. ‘The latitude, or the distance north or south from the equator, was to be found: with comparative ease. But the longitude, the distance of any spot east or west trom the first known me- ridian, was a more difficult: matter, depend- ent in these early days on intricate ealcula- tions based on the position of the moon and stars, on the altitude of the sun, and on reckonings of time, which calculations re- quired the sight of the heavens day and night, not always attainable, besides an ex- perience and knowledge in which, in many cases, the mariners were decfiient. If how- they could not make the speed attained by the Arizona. The question struck our engineer friend as so ridiculous, that he po- litely hinted to the commander that his high- ness did not know enough about engineering to be able to comprehend any explanation he, the engineer, could offer. Knowing the particular vessel, its lines, and its defective macninery, the reply seemed to be a fitting one, as indeed the mere fact of its being a Uniied States man-of-war would in any ease be sufficient Indication that no speed ap- proaching that of the Arizona could be ob- tained. We know of one or two American steam engine builders who for years past have been attempting to build high speed yachts, whose method of procedure was sech as to produce such disastrous. failures in respect lo speed that we might well ex- pect them to ask why their small yachts do not attain the speeds obtained by other build- ers, especially in) foreign lands. A fitting answer would be that they should study the work of the others, and not work up inde- pendently, discarded, poor ideas. ‘There are other way} of acquiring knowledge than by personal experience; we refer to the ac- quisition of the laws and,results of the ex- perience of others. When we have acquired the knowledge of the work that others have done, we are prepared to make further pro- gress; but itisonly a loss of time, energy and money to undertake again the same de- signs which have elsewhere proved them- selves complete failures. ‘The real way is whenever possible, to study the work of others and to adopt what has proved itself successful, enconraging or in the right direction.