CHAPTER XIX
Boiler Tests in Exhibition of 1871. We Lose Mr. Allen. Importance of Having a Business Man as President. Devotion of Mr. Hope.
The next year we were not exhibitors at the Institute fair, but our boiler remained in its place and was run by the Institute. This boiler and its setting are shown correctly in the [accompanying reproduction] of a drawing made about that time, except that it consisted of nine sections instead of six. At the close of the exhibition a boiler test was made by the Institute, through a committee of which Professor Thurston, at that time Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the Stevens Institute, afterwards until his death Director of the Sibley College of Mechanic Arts, in Cornell University, was the chairman. Five boilers, including the Allen boiler, were tested, one on each day, in a continuous run of twelve hours. The four besides our own were all different from the boilers exhibited the year before.
A week was spent in preparation for this test. A large wooden tank was constructed, in which was built a surface condenser, consisting of a pile of sections of the Root boiler, laid horizontally, having a total of 1100 square feet of cooling surface. The steam was exhausted into the pipes which were surrounded by the cooling water, thus reversing the construction of surface condensers.
Professor Robert H. Thurston
ALLEN BOILER.
OF
80 HORSE POWERS.
Area of Effective Heating Surface 810-Square Feet.
Area of Grate 24-Square Feet.