Messrs. Westgarth and Richardson, of Middlesbrough; the John Cockerill Company, of Seraing, Belgium; and the De la Vergne Company, of New York, are among the chief makers of the largest gas engines in the world, ranging up to 3,750 h.p. each. These immense machines, some with fly-wheels 30 feet in diameter, and cylinders spacious enough for a man to stand erect in, work blowers for furnaces or drive dynamos. At the works of the manufacturers mentioned the engines helped to make the steel, and turn the machinery for the creation of brother monsters.
GIGANTIC GAS ENGINES
Five of sixteen 2,000 h.p. Körting Gas Engines built by the De la Vergne Company of New York City for blowing the blast furnaces of the Lackawanna Steel Company. The gas-engine plant at these works is the largest in the world. Notice the man to the left.
This use of a "bye-product" of industry is remarkable, but it can be paralleled. Furnace slag, once cast away as useless, is now recognised to be a valuable manure, or is converted into bricks, tiles, cement, and other building materials. Again, the former waste from the coal-gas purifier assumes importance as the origin of aniline dyes, creosote, saccharine, ammonia, and oils. We really appear to be within sight of the happy time when waste will be unknown. And it therefore is curious that we still burn gas as an illuminant, when the same, if made to work an engine, would give more lighting power in the shape of electric current supplying incandescent lamps.
FOOTNOTE:
[11.] The fact that air is heated to combustion point by compression has long been known to the Chinese. In The River of Golden Sand, Captain Gill writes: "The natives have an apparatus by which they strike a light by compressed air. The apparatus consists of a wooden cylinder 2 1 / 2 inches long by 3 / 4 inch in diameter. This is closed at one end; the bore being about the size of a stout quill pen, an air-tight piston fits into this with a large flat knob at the top. The other end of the piston is slightly hollowed out, and a very small piece of tinder is placed on the top thus formed. The cylinder is held in one hand, the piston inserted and pushed about half-way down; a very sharp blow is then delivered with the palm of the hand on to the top of the knob; the hand must at the same time close on the knob, and instantly withdraw the piston, when the tinder will be found alight. The compression of the air produces heat enough to light the tinder; but this will go out again unless the piston is withdrawn very sharply. I tried a great many times, but covered myself with confusion in fruitless efforts to get a light, for the natives never miss it."