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CURTIS'S SAFETY-BREAK FOR RAILWAY

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CARRIAGES.

Sir, I forward a drawing of my safety-break as applied to the engines of the London and Greenwich Railway, and shall feel much obliged by your publishing the same in your valuable miscellany for the public information. The leading features of this invention are its simplicity and effectiveness, producing a degree of resistance to the progress of the engine and train far greater than can be effected by any other brake at present in use; and, at the same time, no shock or jar is felt either by engine or train. These results are produced by a cycloidal cam placed behind the crank-wheels, which, when brought into contact with the rail by the lever , lifts the wheels off the rail, when they assume the position shown by the dotted line, thus throwing them out of gear; the whole weight of the engine resting upon the crankwheels are thus transferred to the cam (in the present instance, about seven tons), producing thus a degree of friction greater than can be obtained by any other force however applied. The lever l is only necessary to bring the cam into contact with the rail, as the momentum, of the engine turns the cam round until it reaches the stop e, when the distance lifted is about 1 inches, as shown by the dotted line; then the wheel is off the rail 1-8th of an inch clear, the difference being taken up by the recoil of the springs r, the engine and train at the top of their speed have been pulled up within about 40 yards, and without stopping the wheels; so that for pumping water into the boiler, taking up passengers, avoiding accidents on the line, the crank-axle breaking, &c., the engineer is supplied with an important auxiliary.

Too much praise cannot be conceded to the enlightened management directing the interests of this undertaking, for the promptness with which my suggestions were at once taken up, in order that a degree of security might be assured to the public, which will render accidents upon this railway in future almost impossible.

Description of the Engravings.

Fig. 1 is a side, and fig. 2 an end view; a, crank-wheels; b, fore-wheels; c, engine-frame; d, cycloidal cam; e, stopper; f, beam, connecting the two stan

dards of cam-shaft; g, shaft; 7, lever fixed to shaft g; m, handles of lever; r, springs of crank-wheels.-Yours, &c. W. J. CURTIS.

11, Grange-road, Bermondsey, April 28, 1936.

HALE'S HYDRAULIC APPARATUS.

Sir,-A paragraph having appeared in a Morning Paper a few months since, eulogising the extraordinary ingenuity of a wonderful machine for producing motive power, which was patented, or about being patented, by a Mr. Hale, of Colchester. I naturally felt a desire, being curious in these matters, to become acquainted with the invention, which having accomplished, the result I will now briefly narrate.

:

The machine is composed of a horizontal cylinder closed at both ends, fluidtight; through the centre of these ends project the shaft of a drum working in stuffings, which drum fills the chamber of the external cylinder all to about one quarter of an inch all round the ends of the said drum, working fluid-tight against the ends of the external eylinder; on the upper side of the drum, and between it, and the external cylinder, there is a stop which is also fluid-tight, being kept to the surface of the revolving drum by springs for that purpose; and on each side of this stop, there is an aperture in the external cylinder for the admission and emission of water. The action is shortly this the chamber of one quarter of an inch in thickness, extending over the whole of the drum, excepting that part covered by the stop, is filled with water, which is termed a fluid band: this water, it is stated, is put in motion and caused to flow out through one of the apertures, whilst a supply is admitted by the other, either through the agency of a fall of water, a pump, or a fire, applied to one side of the external cylinder; and the power giving motion to the said drum, is also stated to be solely derived from the friction of the said fluid band passing round its external surface. It is unnecessary to offer any comment on this apparatus-but millwrights will, doubtless, immediately knock off the float-boards from all the water-wheels in the country as useless appendages! Yours, &c.

Oxford-street.

ALAN MACKENZIE.

Fig. 1 is a side view of the wheels, &e. of a railroad-carriage; and AA represent buffers fixed, as is, I believe, usual on the ends of the lower framework of the coach bodies. Fig. 2 is a plan of my improvement. B1 is a buffer, situate, as I propose, on the end of a frame of iron-work, CCCC, in line with the axletrees; DD are breaks fixed in this frame to press against the wheels when the buffer is struck; E E are sockets fixed to the axletree-blocks, or any where convenient, through which

the side rods of the iron frame acts; and FF are stops by which the carriage is drawn. Now it will be seen, that when the buffer B1 is struck, the breaks DD will close against the periphery of the wheels; and as all the carriages of a train are pressing upon each other, the application of the breaks would be instant and effective. B 2, at the hind end, is the drawing-buffer fixed firm to the carriage, independent of CCCC; and G G are the wheels of the carriage.

Fig. 3 is a theoretic view of the buffers as acted upon at different heights from the line of the axletrees. I will

suppose B in this figure about the usual height of the buffers above the axletrees; C I have placed at an extreme, to show

148

the disadvantage of deviating from the line of the axletrees, A; now I can conceive, that when the buffers at C come in contact, the hind wheels of one carriage, and the fore wheels of the other, might be lifted from the rails. The same principle and proportionate tendency would be found at B, the rebound tending to raise each end of the carriages so struck throughout the whole train; and if such is the case, the present method must tend to increase the shaking of the carriages as well as to retard them; hence the great lapse before they can be brought to a stand. Now by the arrangement of the buffers and breaks I propose, the check to the wheels would be much more effective, and, to the passengers, I think, more agreeable; the frame-work of the carriages would be also considerably relieved from the destructive effects which must result from the present method; and, lastly, as every wheel would have a break against its periphery, a whole train of carriages would be brought to a stand in a third the space of distance they possibly can be by the present method.

I think the method which I have described is worthy of a trial, but as I have not any knowledge of persons likely to introduce it, your Magazine may be the means of putting it into practice.

I remain most respectfully, Sir,
Your very obliged servant,
G. MILLICHAP.

$5, Aston-street, Birmingham,
May 11, 1836.

MACKINTOSH'S ELECTRICAL THEORY OF THE UNIVERSE.

"If the voice of the scientific world should pronounce it visionary and absurd, no one will smile with more complacency than the author himself."-Vide Introduction.

Sir,-As in my motto, so thought Whiston when he dispatched the comets, in his whimsical reveries, alternately from the hot region of the sun into the dark and chilled regions of far-off-space, carrying with them the perplexed spirits of the lost-he "smiled" with equal "complacency" upon his own ingeniousness, and the verdict of the "world." So also smiled Dante at his purgatorial theorizing, and his visions of Limbo. So

but

smiled, likewise, a more recent author at his own serio-comic speculations respect ing the interior of the earth, in which he planted a race of beings, and an order of things fit for existing in a place devoid of an atmosphere, and of all fluids; in which the forked lightnings" played a part less harmonious, but not less effective or universal, than does the elec tricity of Mr. Mackintosh in his economy of the universal scene above.

Some years ago, when I was an infant (I am yet but a very youth) in such matters, I, like Mr. Mackintosh, conceived a vast notion of the powers of electricity. It was an all-efficient agent, invisible-delightful from its very mys teriousness. It was possessed of every quality that man could conceive to exist. It had the power of attracting, of repulsing, of compounding, and decomposing-of creating and exterminating; was the origin of light, of heat, of magnetisin; had the first principle of life and motion, universally. It gave birth to vegetation; was the parent of all progression and of all changes, either in the inorganic or the organic world: it was perchance, the very essence of matter itself, as well as the author of its varied changes, and its varied forms. It sucked up the juices of the earth into heaven in peace, and threw them back in wrath, with all the havoc of angry and contending elements. It was alike the creator of the earthquake, the volcano, the tempest-or the fall of the gentlest shower, and the budding of the prettiest leaf. As it willed, it peppered the earth with hail, or sprinkled it with refreshing dew. It was procreative of all meteors-of falling stars; the aurora of phosphorescence of all growth and all decay-of all rest and of all motion. It was omnipotent, omnipresent in things physical; the parent of all good and of all ill: in short, to express myself with precision, it was the wondorous originator of "both the larger operations exhibited in the motions of the planets, and the minuter processes of vegetation, oxidation, and vitrification !" All this, and much more, alas! was put into my head by a certain learned work, called a 66 Key to the Knowledge of Nature," written about twelve years ago by a Rev. Mr. Taylor, of Hart, in the county of Durham. It was a philosophical excrescence, and was touched with

actual cautery from the Royal Institution, beneath which it withered! It was Brand-ed, as may be witnessed by referring to their journal. Electricity here, as with Mr. Mackintosh, was a mighty philosopher's stone-a universal solventa panacea-a mighty governor, or an abject slave; its sphere of domination extending throughout all space-of servitude, as a maid of all-work, throughout all the heavens and the earth. To its capabilities there was no end! But experiment speedily relieved me of this mental disorder. Legitimate reasoning from things known and palpable, curbed my senseless imaginings. I was relieved from the grasp of an overgrown and senseless giant, and became myself again. Mr. Mackintosh treats us to as much as did Mr. Taylor; but, in the end, the mind sickens of such excesses. It is a revelry carried to inebriation, and corresponding collapse. The mind will close itself in future against all such mighty generalizations; and this period of sickliness, will be also a period of renova tion. It is the faculties playing at leapfrog with reasoning undermost.

It would be easy, Mr. Editor, to show the illogical, as well as the unphilosophical spirit which pervades Mr. Mackintosh's papers. The whole might pass pleasingly for a whimsical speculation, or a philosophical reverie, but never for a sober exposition of a philosophic creed. The solar system, an immense electrifying machine! The sun its prime conductor! and the planets, (our unhappy earth among them) pieces of elder pith skipping between it and the nether negative region, at short intervals of millions of years! What an idea for an inheritor of mortality! and that Newton, too, should have "failed in not tracing the cause of motion to the all-pervading power of electricity!" But where is the battery-where the discharging rodwhere the musical bells? Perhaps the charge is being collected in the rolling of ages, and will be spent in dissipating our globe as we now mimic the impending catastrophe by the Leyden jar and a bit of steel!

.

Let me invite some happy genius to set up an opposing theory, in which some huge entity plants his foot upon the firm footing of the sun, and plays at

battledore and shuttlecock with the worlds about him!

Has it never occurred to Mr. Mackintosh, that where two theories, so conflicting as those of Franklin and Du Fay, can explain every phenomena of electri city, they must both be wrong? Some fortunate being is yet in reserve, like a second Newton, who will disentangle our minds from the prejudices derived from the contemplation of a past imperfect philosophy, which pervades (like Mr. Mackintosh's electricity, the universe) our present systems of philosophy. But it is surely unlikely that such a Herculean task will be accomplished in the "confusion worse confounded" of applying such an ill-digested science as that of electricity, to the ambitious project of explaining the varied economy of a whole universe. Would it not be more philosophic and admirable that such individuals as Mr. Mackintosh (talented and industrious as he evidently is), should devote themselves first to the establishing of certain and undisputed principles of electrical and galvanic action, which at present we possess not, rather than endeavour, without materials and without tools, to erect the stupendous theoretical edifice which he attempts?

Before concluding, I should wish, Mr. Editor, to ask you a question upon another topic. What has become of the decomposition of SULPHUR, announced in your journal some time ago? In the remoteness of such chances, has there no second thunder-storm passed over the city of Worcester, to enable our analyst to verify his first result? or was it a fallacy, an incompetency, or a hoax?

I beg leave, Mr. Editor, to add my testimony from this northern metropolis to the increasing value of your journal. Whilst you continue to make it the vehicle of such important documents as the Evidence of Accidents in Mines-the American Experiments on Explosions, as well as of original papers from so many intelligent correspondents as at present compose your list, it cannot fail to be held in deserved esteem.

I remain, Sir,

Your most obedient servant,
ZETA.

Edinburgh, June 1, 1836.

The different Amounts given credit for in this Table under the heads of Passengers, Tonnage, &c., are those which Committees of the House of Commons have reported to be verified to their satisfaction; or which, in the case of those Railways marked with an Asterisk, are authenticated by the Official Statements of their respective Companies.

+ Exclusive of prospective traffic from the re-establishment of Yarmouth and Harwich as packet stations. limited to 10 per cent.

By Act of Parliament the dividends of this Company are