Our attention has been invited to an invention of a very remarkable
character, which, if realising the claims asserted in its behalf, will
fully equal, if it does not far exceed in importance, any discovery of
the age. It consists in an entirely new application of the power of
the lever, an application capable of being multiplied to an almost
unlimited extent. To render our account of this new marvel quite
incredible in the outset, we will state on the inventor's authority,
that the steam of an ordinary tea-kettle may be made to produce
sufficient momentum to propel a steamship of any size across the
Atlantic! Or, again, one man may exert a power equal to that of a
thousand horses, and that, too, without the aid of steam or any
auxiliary other than his own stout arm. It overcomes or disproves the
heretofore-received principle in mechanics, of not gaining power
without a loss of speed. Archimedes, in declaring his ability to move
the world, if he had a suitable position for his fulcrum, conveyed an
apt illustration of the measureless power of the lever when exerted to
its fullest extent. This fullest extent Mr Archard claims to have
attained in the action of a succession of parallel levers--one lever
upon a second, the second upon a third, the third upon a fourth, and
so on progressively; each succeeding lever of the same length as the
first, and all operating simultaneously, the one lever upon, and with
all the others. This marvellous property of multiplying leverage, is
attained without any diminution in speed, since, to whatever extent
the additional levers may be carried, the entire succession is moved
as one compact mass, operated upon at the same instant, the last lever
moving at the same moment with the first. This simultaneous movement
of a succession of parallel levers, acting the one upon the other,
with a force successively increasing and in geometrical proportion, is
the grand desideratum, the _ne plus ultra_, in the science of
mechanics, which the inventor professes to have achieved. To place
this multiplied _ad infinitum_ power in its plainest light, we may
observe that a given power--say that of one horse--will impart to a
lever of a given dimension a sixteenfold power; that sixteenfold power
gives the succeeding lever sixty-fourfold increase; that to the third
lever, 256; that gives to the fourth lever an increase of 1024; while
this fourth lever, with its largely increased ability, gives to the
fifth lever the enormous increase of 4096. If, therefore, this
succession of leverage is rightly stated, a single horse is enabled to
exert the power of four thousand and ninety-six horses!--_American
Courier_.