Among various improvements, which may tend to reduce the price of coal, we may look with confidence to the increased use of coal-cutting machinery as a substitute for manual labour; and to the discovery of methods by which the consumption of fuel may be reduced. The experiments, which have been tried with the machines invented by Captain Beaumont, R.E., and others, have been eminently satisfactory; and these machines are now being made in large numbers in Glasgow and Birmingham.
Waste of coal in domestic consumption.
Our domestic consumption is undoubtedly wasteful; and the inventor of an effective improvement in the form of grate in common use will be a real benefactor to his fellow-man. Already we have, in the cooking-stove for yachts, the invention of Mr. Atkey, of Cowes, a highly successful apparatus. A letter from Mr. Vale, Ex-President of the Liverpool Architectural Society, addressed to The Times in August last, describes a cooking stove for a party of nine persons and a crew of thirteen men, which measured only one foot four inches by one foot four inches in area, and one foot nine inches in height, the actual fuel-space being less than one cubic foot. The fuel required in his yacht for one day’s consumption was forty-seven pounds of coke at twenty shillings a ton, and the cost per head per day amounted to less than one farthing.
Captain Galton’s fireplace.
In his lecture, delivered at Bradford during the meeting of the British Association in the present year, Mr. Siemens described Captain Galton’s ventilating fireplace as a most valuable invention.
‘The chief novelty and merit,’ he said, ‘of Captain Galton’s fireplace consists in providing a chamber at the back of the grate, into which air passes directly from without, becomes moderately heated (to 84° Fah.), and, rising in a separate flue, is injected into the room under the ceiling with a force due to the heated ascending flue. A plenum of pressure is thus established within the room whereby indraughts through doors and windows are avoided, and the air is continually renewed by passing away through the fireplace chimney as usual. Thus the cheerfulness of an open fire, the comfort of a room filled with fresh but moderately warmed air, and great economy of fuel, are happily combined with unquestionable efficiency and simplicity; and yet this grate is little used, although it has been fully described in papers communicated by Captain Galton, and in an elaborate report made by General Morin, le Directeur du Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers of Paris, which has also appeared in the English language.’
Mr. Bessemer’s inventions.
But economy in the consumption of coal, in the manufacture of iron, is a far larger question than economy, however desirable in itself, in the consumption for domestic purposes; and, as an illustration of what may be achieved in this direction, I will quote some extracts from a letter from Mr. Bessemer, detailing the results, which have actually been attained through his most valuable discoveries.
The average quantity of coal required to make a ton of pig iron is about two tons of coal to a ton of pig; and, as pig iron forms the raw material for the several processes of manufacturing both malleable iron and steel, we may treat the pig simply as the raw material employed, and consider only how much coal is required to make a ton of finished rails. About two tons of coal are required in order to convert pig iron into iron railway bars.
To produce one ton of steel rails by the old process of making steel in Sheffield, a total consumption of ten tons eight cwt. of coal is required; and the conversion of iron bars into blistered bars occupies from 18 to 20 days.