The engine may be made to revolve in the opposite direction to the arrow by turning the piston and connecting rod round so that the tail-piece upon the latter is above instead of below, and instead of the water casing, r, radial ribs may be formed upon the cylinder, e, from which the air passing between them inside the casing, f, absorbs the heat. The cylinder is arranged preferably in the inclined position shown, but it may, of course, be fixed in any other convenient position.—Engineering.
IMPROVED GAS ENGINE.
METERS FOR POWER AND ELECTRICITY.[1]
By Mr. C. Vernon Boys.
The subject of this evening's discourse—"Meters for Power and Electricity"—is unfortunately, from a lecturer's point of view, one of extreme difficulty, for it is impossible to fully describe any single instrument of the class without diving into technical and mathematical niceties which this audience might well consider more scientific than entertaining. If, then, in my endeavor to explain these instruments and the purposes which they are intended to fulfill, in language as simple and untechnical as possible, I am not as successful as you have a right to expect, I must ask you to lay some of the blame on my subject and not all on myself.
I shall at once explain what I mean by the term "meter," and I shall take the flow of water in a trough as an illustration of my meaning. If we hang in a trough a weighted board, then, when the water flows past it, the board will be pushed back; when the current of water is strong, the board will be pushed back a long way; when the current is less, it will not be pushed so far; when the water runs the other way, the board will be pushed the other way. So by observing the position of the board, we can tell how strong the current of water is at any time. Now suppose we wish to know, not how strong the current of water is at this time or at that, but how much water altogether has passed through the trough during any time, as, for instance, one hour. Then if we have no better instrument than the weighted board, it will be necessary to observe its position continuously to keep an exact record of the corresponding rates at which the water is passing every minute, or better every second, and to add up all the values obtained. This would, of course, be a very troublesome process.
There is another kind of instrument which may be used to measure the flow of the water—a paddle wheel or screw. When the water is flowing rapidly, the wheel will turn rapidly; when slowly, the wheel will turn slowly; and when the water flows the other way, the wheel will turn the other way, so that if we observe how fast the wheel is turning we can tell how fast the water is flowing. If, now, we wish to know how much water altogether has passed through the trough, the number of turns of the wheel, which may be shown by a counter, will at once tell us. There are, therefore, in the case of water, two kinds of instruments, one which measures at a time, and the other during a time. The term meter should be confined to instruments of the second class only.
As with water so with electricity, there are two kinds of measuring instruments, one of which, the galvanometer, may be taken as a type, which shows by the position of a magnet how strong a current of electricity is at a time; and the other which shows how much electricity has passed during any time. Of the first, which are well understood, I shall say nothing; the second, the new electric meters and the corresponding meters for power, are what I have to speak of to-night. It is hardly necessary for me to mention the object of making electric meters. Every one who has had to pay his gas bill once a quarter probably quite appreciates what the electric meters are going to do, and why they are at the present time attracting so much attention. So soon as you have electricity laid on in your houses, as gas and water are laid on now, so soon will a meter of some sort be necessary, in order that the companies which supply the electricity may be able to make out their quarterly bills, and refer complaining customers to the faithful indications of their extravagance in the mysterious cupboard in which the motor is placed. The urgent necessity for a good meter has called such a host of inventors into the field, that a complete account of their labors is more than any one could hope to give in an hour. Since I am one of this host, I hardly like to pick out those inventions which I consider of value. I cannot describe all, I cannot act as a judge and say, these only are worthy of your attention; and I do not think I should be acting fairly if I were to describe my own instruments only and ignore those of every one else. The only way I see out of the difficulty is to speak more particularly about my own work in this direction, and to speak generally on the work of others.
I must now ask you to give your attention for a few minutes to a little abstract geometry. We may represent any changing quantity, as, for instance, the strength of an electrical current, by a crooked line. For this purpose we must draw a straight line to represent time, and make the distance of each point of the crooked line above the straight line a measure of the strength of the current at the corresponding time. The size of the figure will then measure the quantity of electricity that has passed, for the stronger the current is the taller the figure will be, and the longer it lasts the longer the figure will be; either cause makes both the quantity of electricity and the size of the figure greater, and in the same proportion, so the one is a measure of the other. Now it is not an easy thing to measure the size of a figure; the distance round it tells nothing; there is, however, a geometrical method by which its size may be found. Draw another line, with a great steepness where the figure is tall, and with a less steepness where the height is less, and with no steepness or horizontal where the figure has no height. If this is done accurately, the height to which the new line reaches will measure the size of the figure first drawn; for the taller the figure is, the steeper the hill will be; the longer the figure, the longer the hill; either cause makes both the size of the figure and the height of the hill greater, and in the same proportion; so the one is a measure of the other, and so, moreover, is the height of the hill, which can be measured by scale, a measure of the quantity of electricity that has passed.