FIRE PROOF DRESSES.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 170, 25 November 1876, Page 2

FIRE PROOF DRESSES.

Tub facility of remaining m the water for a greater or less period of time, which has been enjoyed by mankind over since the existence of the element itself, seems likely to be extended to five, in the advent of a fire-proof dress, the invention of a Swedish officer, Captain Alhstrom, and which has come triumphant out of every proving* ultimately successful. At a recent experiment in Silesia, four heaps, consisting of logs of wood, -were arranged in the form of a square, well covered with shavings and saturated with petroleum. They were then set light to, and speedily became a mass of flames* Into this fiery furnace, the glowing heat of which kept the spectators at a respectable distance, stepped Captain Ahlstrom, clad in his fire-proof dress. He moved freely about in the restricted—space some four feet square, formed by tbe heaps, leaning from time to time quite unconcernedly against the blazing piles, and finally taking his seat upon one of the heaps, glowing With intense hcat.he reclined there with as much nonchalance as though it had been a sofa. He remained thirty minutes in the flames without suffering in the smallest degree from the heat. Next day an experiment was made in the Hohenzollern mine, with the view of seeing whether the apparatus would avail in the event of an explosion of firedamp or any analogous accident. The principal of the gymnasium, who volunteredto test it personally, descended into a space which had been shut off from the rest of the mine and filled With gas, and remained there for twenty minutes without experiencing the slightest inconvenience from the poisonous atmosphere. Captain Ahlstrom has sold his invention to Prussia for 50,000 marks.