19. Electric Bedroom Heater.—One of the boys constructed a heater for his own room as follows: He procured a box eight inches deep by eighteen inches square on the bottom. This he lined with asbestos paper. He then stood it upon its side and arranged four incandescent light sockets as shown in [Fig. 88]. These were connected by a flexible cord to a plug which he could insert in place of a lamp in the chandelier. He placed this heater on the floor underneath the window and usually had 16-candle-power lamps in the sockets. He claimed that it was a jolly foot warmer and kept the room comfortable without other heat. He turned on from one to four lamps according to his need and replaced the 16-candle-power lamps by 32-candle-power lamps when the weather was extremely cold. I remarked that he must have light along with heat by this arrangement, and I should think that might be objectionable when he desired to sleep at night. He said that he always turned it off, and opened the window at night, always preferring a cold room to sleep in.
Fig. 89
20. Cooking with Incandescent Lamps.—This piece of apparatus was devised by the boys and used in my laboratory. A sheet iron basin a, was inverted over four 16-candle-power incandescent lamps, shown in elevation by [Fig. 89], and shown in plan by [Fig. 90]. The sides of the basin were cut so as to admit the glass globes of the lamps, but the sockets and keys were outside, so that it was convenient to turn on and off the lamps separately, thus using one half to two amperes of current, as desired. This rested upon another basin, b. Basin b was covered with asbestos for the lamps to lie on and the whole was attached to a board base, c. A flexible cord and plug allowed us to attach this to the chandelier. A pint of water was boiled upon this stove in fifteen minutes, and refreshments have been served hot from it repeatedly.
Fig. 90
21. Electric Fireless Cooker.—There are five indictments against ordinary cooking processes.
1. They heat the house in summer.