Chap. 1.] Bellows Forcing Pumps. A plain within th' Arcadian land I know, That earth contains the great Atrides' son; Take him and conquer: Tegea then is won. 241 On the receipt of this, search was again made for the body without intermission, and at last it was discovered in a singular manner. At the time a commercial intercourse existed between the two countries, a Spartan cavalry officer, named LICHAS, being in Tegea, happened to visit a smith at his forge, and observing with particular curiosity the process of working the iron, the smith desisted from his labor and addressed him thus: "Stranger of Sparta, you seem to admire the art which you contemplate; but how much more would your wonder be excited, if you knew all that I am able to communicate! Near this place, as I was sinking a well, I found a coffin seven cubits long. I never believed that men were formerly of larger dimensions than at present, but when I opened it, I discovered a body equal in length to the coffin-1 correctly measured it, and placed it where I found it." Lichas, after hearing this relation, was induced to believe that this might be the body of Orestes, concerning which the oracle had spoken. He was further persuaded, when he recollected that the bellows of the smith might intimate the two winds; the anvil and the hammer might express one form opposing another; the iron also, which was beaten, might signify ill succeeding ill, rightly conceiving that the use of iron operated to the injury of mankind. The result proved the sagacity of the Spartan: the body was recovered, and finally the Tegeans, says Herodotus, were conquered. Clio, 67, 68. No. 106. Double Lantern Bellows Pump. No. 107. Single Forcing Pump. The application of lantern bellows as forcing pumps is, without doubt, of great antiquity: their adaptation to raise water was too obvious not to have been early perceived, and hence we infer that they were at least occasionally employed for that purpose by most of the nations of old. Such pumps are mentioned in old works on hydraulics; but as they have never 242 Bellows Forcing Pumps. [Book III come into general use, even in modern times, a particular account of them previous to the art of printing, is not to be expected. A writer in the Grande Description of Egypt, describing the smith's bellows of that country, observes :-" Ces sortes de soufflets étoient employés verticalement dans le seizieme siècle tant pour animer le feu des forges que pour élever l'eau, soit en rarefiant l'air soit en le comprimant; ils sont décrits dans l'ouvrage de Ramelli, imprimé en 1558." No. 106 represents a double lantern bellows-pump, as used in the 16th century. The mode of its operation is too obvious to require detailed description. As one bellows is distended by working the lever, the atmosphere drives water up the suction-pipe into its cavity; and the other at the same time being compressed, expels its contents through the ascending or forcing pipe: the valves at the lower part of the latter, and those over the orifices of the two branches of the suction-pipe opening and closing, as shown in the figure. There is a pump similar to this, but geared in a different manner, in Hachette's Traite elementaire des machiPapin, in a way to raise water, which he proposed enigmatically in the Philosophical Transactions in 1685, used the lantern bellows as a, forcing-pump. In a solution by another writer, it is said:" A vessel made like the body of a pair of bellows, or those puffs heretofore used by barbers being filled with water, a piece of clockwork put under it, may produce the jets." Phil. Trans. Abridg., vol. i. 539. A similar application of the bellows was described in Besson's Theatre, in 1579, the moveable board being impelled by a spring. nes. No. 107 is another example of bellows forcing-pumps. It consists of the frictionless piston of Gosset and Deville, (No. S3,) but without a valve; a forcing or ascending pipe, having its lower orifice covered by a valve, is attached to the cylinder below the piston. Pumps of this kind. have also been made double acting, by passing the piston rod through a stuffing box on the top of the cylinder, and by a double set of valves arranged as in the pump of La Hire. Of late years machines like those figured in the two last cuts, have been reintroduced into Europe and this country. Although we have not heard of any one having run out of his wits for joy at their discovery, like the blacksmith mentioned by Cardan, we have heard of some who were nearly in that predicament from disappointment in having found themselves anticipated. A few years ago they were announced in this city as a new and very important discovery; and several gentlemen allowed their names to go abroad as vouchers of their originality and superiority over the common pump. The proofs of the antiquity of many of our ordinary utensils are derived from representations of them on vases, candelabra, and other works of art that have come down. Of this, the domestic bellows is an example; the only evidence of its having been known to the Greeks or Romans, is furnished by a lamp; but for the preservation of which, it might have been deemed a modern invention. Of no other article of ancient household furniture are more specimens extant than of lamps, and not a little of the public and private economy of the ancients has been illustrated by them. Among those in private collections and public museums, are some that were once suspended in temples, others that illuminated theatres and baths that decorated the banqueting-rooms of wealthy patricians, as well as such as glimmered in the dwellings of plebeians; the former are of bronze, elaborately wrought and enriched, the latter mostly of earthenware. The fertility of conception displayed in these utensils is wonderful. All nature seems to have been ransacked for devices, and in modifying Chap. 1.] Bellows Pumps from Kircher. 243 them, the imaginations of the designers ran perfectly wild; while many are in their forms and decorations exquisitely chaste, others are bizarre and some are obscene. There is one of bronze on which an individual is represented blowing the flame with his mouth, as in the act of kindling a fire; and in another the artist has introduced, as an appropriate embellishment, a person performing the same operation with a pair of bellows, of precisely the same form as those in our kitchens. No. 108 is a figure of this lamp, from the 5th volume of Montfaucon's Antiquities. An example of the application of such bellows as atmospheric pumps has already been given, page 207. The adjoining figure (No. 109) is copied from Kircher's Mundus Subterraneus, tom. i., p. 230, Amsterdam, 1665: it represents two large bellows employed as sucking and forcing pumps, being worked by a water wheel, to the axis of which the crank represented was attached. Bellows like the last and worked in a similar manner, were among ancient devices for ventilating mines: the various modes of adapting them to the purpose may be adduced as another example of their analogy to pumps. Sometimes they were used to force down fresh air in sufficient quantities to render the impure and stagnant atmosphere below respirable; at others they drew the foul air up. In the first case, they were placed near the mouth of the shaft, a pipe was attached to the nozzle and continued down to the place where the miners worked, and when the bellows were put in motion, currents of fresh air were supplied. In the latter case, the pipe was connected to the opening in the under board, i. e. to the aspirating valve, through which the impure air was drawn, and then expelled out of the nozzle; but in this case an expiring valve was required in the nozzle, opening outwards to prevent air from entering through it when the bellows were again distended. The same result was sometimes obtained in the following manner : An opening was made and covered by a valve in the upper board instead of the lower one, and when the bellows were distended, the impure air rushed up the pipe which was attached to the nozzle, and was expelled through the opening covered by the flap when the bellows were closed. Several figures representing these and other applications of bellows are given by Agricola. Goguet observes that draft furnaces were probably invented early, but bellows were not. We should suppose the reverse was the fact; for the advantages of an artificial blast must have been obvious from the first of fire, and naturally led to the use of the mouth to blow it, then the reed, sack, and subsequently a slit or valve in the latter, would follow as an almost necessary sequence; and long before the idea of increasing the intensity of heat by flues or chimneys could have been thought of. No natural occurrence could have led to the invention of these before the other, nor has there, as yet, been found any account or representation of draft furnaces of equal antiquity with those of bellows. CHAPTER II. PISTON Bellows: Used in water organs-Engraved on a medal of Valentinian-Used in Asia and Africa. Bellows of Madagascar. Chinese bellows: Account of two in the Philadelphia MuseumRemarks on a knowledge of the pump among the ancient Chinese-Chinese bellows similar in their construction to the water-forcer of Ctesibius, the double acting pump of La Hire, the cylindrical steamengine, and condensing and exhausting air-pumps. Double acting bellows of Madagascar-Alledged ignorance of the old Peruvian and Mexican smiths of bellows: Their constant use of blowing tubes no proof of this-Examples from Asiatic gold and silver smiths-Balsas Sarbacans-Mexican Vulcan. Natural bellows-pumps: Blowing apparatus of the whale-Elephant-Rise and descent of marine animals-Jaculator fish-Llama-Spurting Snake-Lamprey-Bees-The heart of man and animals-Every human being a living pump: Wonders of its mechanism, and of the duration of its motions and materials -Advantages of studying the mechanism of animals. THE bellows described in the last chapter are all formed of leather or skins, and are obvious modifications of the primitive bag or sack; the wooden ends of some of them being adopted merely to facilitate their distension and collapsion. From the simplicity of their construction and general efficiency they still retain a place in our workshops and dwellings, and are in no danger of being replaced by modern substitutes : but the ingenuity of ancient bellows makers was not exhausted on these, for they had others, differing both in form, materials and mode of action; viz: piston bellows; machines identical with cylindrical forcingpumps. At what time these were first devised we have no account; but as they are described by Vitruvius, in his account of hydraulic organs, without the slightest intimation of their being then of recent date, they may safely be classed among those inventions, the origin of which is too remote to be discovered. No. 110 represents a person working two of them to supply wind for a water organ, from Barbaro's Vitruvius, Venice, 1567. They are substantially the same as those figured by Perrault and Newton in their translations, and by Kircher in his Musurgia Universalis, (tom. ii, 332.) No. 110. Roman Piston Bellows. Chap. 2.] Piston Bellows of Mindanao. 245 The blower, by alternately raising one piston and depressing the other, pumped air into a large reservoir: this was an open vessel inverted into another containing water, and as the air accumulated in the former, the liquid was gradually displaced and rose in the latter, as in a gas holder. It was the constant pressure exerted by this displaced water that urged the air through the pipes of the organ, whenever the valves for its admission were opened. The question, perhaps may be asked, Why did the ancients prefer these bellows in their organs to those formed of leather and boards, such as are figured at Nos. 105, 108, 109? Probably because the pressure required to be overcome in forcing air into the reservoirs was greater than the form and materials of the latter could safely bear. It is very obvious from the brief description of the piston bellows of the Romans, that they were calculated to produce much stronger blasts than could be obtained from those made of leather. Vitruvius informs us that the cylinders and valves were made of brass, and the pistons were accurately turned and covered (or packed) with strips of unshorn sheepskins. They seem to have been perfect condensing air-pumps. A figure of an ancient hydraulic organ is preserved on a medal of Valentinian: two men, one on each side, are represented as pumping and listening to its music. This medal is engraved in the third volume of Montfaucon's Antiquities, (plate 26,) but the piston rods only are in sight; the top of the cylinders being level with the base on which the blowers stand. As piston bellows were known in the old world, it might be supposed they would still be employed in those parts of the East where the arts and customs of former ages have been more or less religiously retained. Such is the fact; for like other devices of ancient common life, they are used by several of the half civilized tribes of Asia and Africa-people, among whom we are sure to meet with numerous primitive contrivances, embodied in the same rude forms and materials as they were before Grecian taste or Roman skill improved them. It is chiefly to the incidental observations of a few travelers that we are indebted for a knowledge of these implements in modern days; but when the times arrive for voyages of discovery to be undertaken for the purpose of describing the machines, manufactures and domestic utensils of the various nations of the earth; (undertakings of equal importance with any other,) these bellows and their numerous modifications will furnish materials for a chapter in the history of the useful arts that will be replete with interesting information. As they are clearly identified with the forcing-pump, an account of some of them will not be out of place. Dampier thus describes the bellows used by the blacksmiths of Mindanao." They are made of a wooden cylinder, the trunk of a tree, about three feet long, bored hollow like a pump, and set upright on the ground; on which the fire itself is made. Near the lower end there is a small hole in the side of the trunk next the fire made to receive a pipe; through which the wind is driven to the fire by a great bunch of fine feathers, fastened to one end of a stick, which closing up the inside of the cylinder, drives the air out of the cylinder through the pipe. Two of these trunks, or cylinders, are placed so nigh together, that a man standing between them may work them both at once, one with each hand."a Here we have both the single and double chambered forcing-pump; and although Dampier has not noticed the valves, the instruments were certainly furnished with them, or with some contrivance analogous to them, but being out of a Dampier's Voyages, i. 332. |