The need of irrigating prairies, inundating vines, drying marshes, and
accumulating electricity cheaply has, for some time past, led to a
search for some means of utilizing the forces of nature better than
has ever hitherto been done. Wind, which figures in the first rank as
a force, has thus far, with all the mills known to us, rendered
services that are much inferior to those that we have a right to
expect from it with improved apparatus; for the work produced,
whatever the velocity of the wind, has never been greater than that
that could be effected by wind of seven meters per second. But, thanks
to the experiments of recent years, we are now obtaining an effective
performance double that which we did with apparatus on the old system.
Desirous of making known the efforts that have been made in this
direction, we lately described Mr. Dumont's atmospheric turbine. In
speaking of this apparatus we stated that aerial motors generally stop
or are destroyed in high winds. Recently, Mr. Sanderson has
communicated to us the result of some experiments that he has been
making for years back by means of an apparatus which he styles a
pantanemone.
The engraving that we give of this machine shows merely a cabinet
model of it; and it goes without saying that it is simply designed to
exhibit the principle upon which its construction is based.
[Illustration: THE PANTANEMONE.]
Two plane surfaces in the form of semicircles are mounted at right
angles to each other upon a horizontal shaft, and at an angle of 45°
with respect to the latter. It results from this that the apparatus
will operate (even without being set) whatever be the direction of the
wind, except when it blows perpendicularly upon the axle, thus
permitting (owing to the impossibility of reducing the surfaces) of
three-score days more work per year being obtained than can be with
other mills. Three distinct apparatus have been successively
constructed. The first of these has been running for nine years in the
vicinity of Poissy, where it lifts about 40,000 liters of water to a
height of 20 meters every 24 hours, in a wind of a velocity of from 7
to 8 meters per second. The second raises about 150,000 liters of
water to the Villejuif reservoir, at a height of 10 meters, every 24
hours, in a wind of from 5 to 6 meters. The third supplies the
laboratory of the Montsouris observatory.
The first is not directible, the second may be directed by hand, and
the third is directed automatically. These three machines defied the
hurricane of the 26th of last January.--_La Nature._
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