Page images
PDF
EPUB

cessful beginning with these bores, and so has golden Western Australia. The colony of Victoria, on the other hand, which does not need artesian reserves owing to her fine rivers, is utterly without them, so strangely does Nature come to the rescue wherever necessary.

When this salvation of the Australian Continent was begun the appliances were naturally primitive and cumbersome. But when the vast experience of the American oil and water borers became available and American contractors found their way to Australia, the American systems were first adopted and then adapted to meet special local requirements. The cost, too, has been steadily falling, until now $3.50 per foot will cover sinking and casing in most in

stances. Thus a farmer with $3,000 or $4,000 to spend can secure a "desert" tract for next to nothing and soon turn it into a land of plenty.

There is, therefore, good reason for thinking that the old horrors of an Australian drought are now a thing of the past. It is only a few years ago that word would be sent to London saying that stock was dying in hundreds of thousands, and farmers and pastoralists alike face to face with utter ruin for want of water.

Immigration, too, has been quick to respond to the new conditions; and altogether there is every prospect that the "Dead Heart" of Australia will leap into life in a few years, and send its rich products coursing everywhere to market.

[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small]

New Gas Engine Fuel

By Howard Greene

[graphic]

JINCE the passage of the measure providing for the removal of the internal revenue tax on denatured alcohol little has been done toward bringing this fuel into the market as a competitor of gasoline. As matters stand at present, alcohol is not in a position to compete with gasoline as a fuel for internal combustion engines.

Chief among the engineering reasons for this state of affairs is the fact that alcohol, vaporized and mixed with air, burns slowly as compared with the combustion of gasoline vapor. To use alcohol advantageously the engine speed must be low and the compression high. Stationary motors for burning alcohol, running at three hundred revolutions a minutes or less and highly compressing the charge, have given excellent results; but this only goes to indicate the unsuitability of alcohol for automobile motors as now built. But a new method of using alcohol, developed from the idea of altering the characteristics of alcohol without impairing its fuel value, has been devised and covered by letters patent issued to F. W. Barker and Thomas L. White, of New York, on December 25, 1906.

Briefly, the Barker-White system consists in vaporiz

ing alcohol in a carbureter of the ordinary gasoline type and passing the vapor of alcohol, mixed with the proper volume of air, through calcium carbide. Commercial alcohol always contains water, usually to the extent of about ten per cent, and this water is absorbed by the carbide, whereupon acetylene gas is liberated by the carbide, mixes with the alcohol vapor and air and is carried into the cylinder. Now, acetylene gas and air form a mixture of very high explosive power; experiments made with this gas as a fuel for internal combustion motors have shown it to be too quick and powerful in its action for such work, and it will stand very little compression before igniting spontaneously. These qualities are just the opposite of the characteristics of alcohol vapor. The admixture of a certain proportion of acetylene gas, therefore, tends to counteract the

APPARATUS FOR TESTING ALCOHOL-ACETYLENE PROCESS.
There are shown the DeDion engine and connections from
float-feed carbureter to large calcium carbide
chamber, and from latter to

engine cylinder.

sluggishness of the

alcohol in combustion and to make it more easily ignited. By adding sufficient acetylene the alcohol can be made to burn with the same rapidity as gasoline vapor and air; and by still further increasing the proportion of acetylene the rate of combustion can be brought up as high as may be desired, within the limits of safety.

The quantity of acetylene in the mixture is regulated by varying the percentage of water in the al

[graphic]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small]

ried over with the vapor, is removed. Tests of the new fuel gas have brought out no trouble of this kind.

The tests are being carried out by Joseph Tracy, of New York, who in everyday life is a consulting engineer. A single-cylinder water-cooled De Dion engine of 31⁄2 horsepower is used, and its output is absorbed by a dynamo feeding incandescent lamps. The alcohol is first sprayed in an ordinary gasoline carbureter and mixed with air in the usual way. This mixture passes to the carbide chamber, a brass cylinder, of four or five times the capacity of the engine cylinder, having a wire netting for the support of a

istics that have not yet been worked out. The motor can be started cold on alkothine, there being no need to first warm up the engine by running on gasoline, as with pure alcohol. Owing to the volume of air originally present in the carbide chamber the motor would have to be turned by hand a number of times before the gas could fill the space; so the expedient is adopted of throwing a little alcohol and water on the carbide. The gas thus generated at once passes into the cylinder and starting is effected with a single turn of the crank. When alcohol is as cheap as gasoline, the new gas will be quite likely to be very largely used.

[graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small]

Why Not?

WHEN Maggie, a recent arrival from over the sea, had finished cleaning the windows her mistress was amazed to discover that they had been washed upon the inside only. She inquired the reason for this half-completed task, thinking that, perhaps, the girl was afraid to sit outside the windows. Maggie's reply was delivered with fine concern:

"I claned 'em inside so's we could look out, mum, but I lift the dirt on the outside so the people couldn't look in."-Harper's Weekly.

Bait Was All Right

"OH, I've forgotten the bait!" exclaimed the first fisherman.

"What?" yelled the other. "Why, you puddin' headed, blank idiot, how in thunder did you

"What's the matter with you?" retorted the other. "You had as much right to remember the can as I had. When I put the worms in it"

"Oh, the can," interrupted the other, with a look of relief, "I thought you meant the bottle." -Philadelphia Press.

Our New Organ

BOBBY had early shown a great interest in anatomy, and always drank in information about the various parts of the body most eagerly. One day he came to his mother in great perplexity and said:

"Mother, I know where my liver is, but where is my bacon?"-Harper's Weekly.

Not Very Much

TOMMY-Pop, a man's wife is his better half, isn't she?

TOMMY'S POP-So we are told, my son.

[merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[graphic][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed]
« PreviousContinue »