A NEW ENGINE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 593, 17 December 1920, Page 3

A NEW ENGINE.

BRITISH SKILL TRIUMPHS.

Considerable interest has been aroused amongst engineers by recent disclosures regarding developments made during the war in the construction of uniflow engines. In these engines, as the name indicates, the steam flows always in the same direction, entering the Cylinder at the ends,, and leaving it by exhaust openings situated in the middle of the cylinder. In a paper read before the Institution of Mechanical Engineers it was stated that the efficiency of such engines is very high, and a succeeding speaker stated that the efficiency was of such an order-as to challenge the title for maximum efficiency for power plant claimed by the steam turbine and electrical machinery makers. The manufacturers of slow-speed engines in this, country, about thirty in ■umber, are to take concerted action, first, to carry on propaganda work to make known the merits of the* system, and, secondly, to conduct research into the thermodynamic possibilities of the engine. In iny industrial applications, such as for Bessemer blowing engines and rolling mills, the advantage of quick response to control and load placed this type of engine above all other systems.

It is interesting to note that this engine, which is sometimes wrongly ascribed to a German inventor, was probably first invented by an Englishman named Jacob Perkins, about 1823 27. and subsequently patented by another Englishman in 1885. It was not until 1908 that Professor Stumpf, by devising a- special type of valve gear, caused the engine to be- re-introduced. German. science was, however, unable to produce a reversing engine on the uniflow principle, and before the war a German manufacturer offered £40,000 1o a British manufacturer if he could produce such an engine. Developments in valve gear made during the war by I British manufacturers enable reversing to be done satisfactorily.