of a large dust room which did not keep the dust from the out. side buildings. This separator was very satisfactory; it is used in other places in Philadelphia. The PRESIDENT. You have heard the remarks of Mr. WELLS. I think this is quite an important subject, and from his statements it would appear that it would be cheaper to adopt this system than to go to the expense of building dust rooms and chimneys. There are some members of the Association who have adopted the system and know something about it, and perhaps they will give us some light on the subject. Mr. WELLS. I omitted to say that a special use of it is where a Robinson trunk is used, thus cleaning directly into the separator rather than into the dust room. The clean fibre in the trunks is saved, or some of it, and can go back into good work. I am running one cloth shear, into a separator six feet high by three feet, which takes the place of a dust room ten by fifteen feet in the basement. It formerly discharged into the wheel pit. This makes a clean arrangement, and there is no danger of fire. The PRESIDENT. I presume that the dust chimneys that are now in use could be utilized in placing the separators. Mr. WELLS. I suppose they might, but it would be hardly worth while, because the dust separator, if set in the roof, needs no chimney except what goes with it. If it is set outside the building it would be easier to carry it up in a separate pipe. Mr. BOURNE. I don't know that I can add anything to what Mr. WELLS has said. I have been experimenting with it for the past three or four months. I was in hopes to have had one on long enough to try it thoroughly and see what it would accomplish before this meeting took place. I have one story of the building that I now use for a dust room, which I need for machinery ; and I think I am going to be able to make that arrangement by using this device. It is wonderful how it separates the lint from the dust, the lint falling one way and the dust going off another. I have two separators hitched onto one system of dust flues that take the dust from eight fans, from the breaker and two finishers, and they work very satisfactorily. I tried to do with one, but could not make it work. You must have it big enough so that it will take care of the fans, not blow back. By putting two separators together, they will take eight fans. The agent sent me another one big enough to take care of eight fans, which I am going to put on top of the mill. It only arrived there this morning, so I didn't have time to put it up; but I have no doubt it will do its work. I think where one has a dust room which he wants to use for some other purpose this method will enable him to do so. The PRESIDENT. You will abandon your dust chimney? Mr. BOURNE. Yes, sir; because the dust chimney is not big enough. The separator recently sent me is about eight feet in diameter. I have one dust chimney now, but you could not put many separators in it; I shall have twelve separators. The waste will drop down into the room, where we bale it up. The PRESIDENT. Will you have twelve pipes? Mr. BOURNE. Yes, sir. The PRESIDENT. Of what diameter? Mr. BOURNE. About twenty-four inches. The PRESIDENT. They go through the rooms? Mr. BOURNE. Yes, sir. The PRESIDENT. I should think that would be quite an obstruction. Mr. BOURNE. It is; but it is the best I can do. Mr. JOHNSTON. Would you recommend dispensing with dust rooms where you already have them, and where you do not need the room for something else, and put in this arrangement? Mr. BOURNE. I don't know as I should want to advise that to-day. The insurance men are very quiet about it. Mr. JOHNSTON. Is there a fan connected with it? Mr. JOHNSTON. Do you have less dust go through these connections than through the dust chimney? Mr. KNIGHT. Mr. BOURNE'S mill is about one hundred feet from my office, and my friends may have noticed some peculiar hieroglyphics in my letters, caused by little bunches of cotton dust flying about and into my ink. I expect when Mr. BOURNE gets in all his separators I shall be able to write with a plain pen without a wad of cotton dust attached to it. Mr. ATKINSON. If theories come true in about the time they are usually supposed to, say in ten years, I will mention that some eight or ten years ago I called your attention to this cyclone dust collector, by which the chief hazard in a flour mill, which had rendered them explosive, had been removed. I have believed since then that after the first man put it into a cotton mill to take away the dust from his pickers, all the others would follow suit, not because the insurance men recommend it, but because it would be profitable and safe. Mr. WELLS. Soon after putting on the attachment to our pickers a picker caught fire, and the fire rolled round inside the cylinder; that was all. Mr. BARKER. Who makes these separators? Mr. WELLS. The Arlington & Curtis Company of East Saginaw, Mich. The PRESIDENT. Before introducing the last topic assigned for this session, I take occasion to say that at its close we shall adjourn to the Thorndike House, where a dinner has been provided for the members present, tickets for which will be issued as we pass out. Before we go, Mr. ATKINSON will have some pictures from lantern slides exhibited, showing some features of the subject which he will present after dinBefore the adjournment Mr. THOMPSON would like to say a few words in regard to a covering for cotton bales. ner. We will now take up the next topic, "Electrical transmission of power for cotton mills," by C. J. H. WOODBURY, Lynn, Mass. ELECTRICAL TRANSMISSION OF POWER FOR COTTON MILLS. By Mr. C. J. H. WOODBURY, Lynn, Mass. Every one of the numerous applications of electricity, excepting incandescent lighting and chemical processes, as electroplating, requires the use of electric motors; and some types of dynamos used for incandescent electric lighting contain a regulator which is operated by a motor. The telegraph receiver is a motor in which the electric impulses produced by the work at the operator's hands at the sending key converts the electricity from the batteries into work. In like manner, electric bells, watchmen's record clocks, railway signals, fire alarms, and even telephones, all are examples of motors. Mr. Edison once exhibited to me a telephone in which a small rod attached to the diaphragm of the receiving telephone was fitted with mechanism by which its rapid longitudinal vibration was converted into circular motion, causing a tiny wheel to revolve very rapidly. The experiments of Barlow in 1826, by which an electromagnet was used to cause a continuous revolution, gave rise to many ingenious inventions of devices for producing rotary motions by electricity; some of the experiments being on a large scale, so extensive, indeed, that a yacht was propelled by one fifty-four years ago, and a railway car forty-one years All of these used the alternate attraction and release of an electro-magnet, giving a reciprocating motion to an arm ago. ature, and this was easily converted into rotary motion. These devices obtained their electricity from batteries, and were comparable as a matter of principle to a device which might be made by attaching a tiny connecting rod and crank to a telegraph receiver. None of these early electric motors were of any practical value whatsoever in serving for motive power. The electric motor which is the live issue of to-day is based on the principle that, while a dynamo will generate electricity if power is applied to revolve the armature, yet, on the other hand, if electricity is applied to the dynamo, the armature will revolve. The machine is reversible; and this reversibility has been wisely called by that eminent mechanician, the late Clerk Maxwell, the greatest invention of the century. It undoubtedly resulted, as far as public attention was ever called to the matter, from a blunder of a workman engaged in putting up some electric lighting apparatus at the Vienna Exhibition in 1873, by which the wires were connected to one dynamo at one end and to another dynamo at the other end, and when one dynamo started, to the surprise of all, the other was set into rapid motion. As is usually the case with such inventions, there are others who allege that this well-attested incident was the result of design, to illustrate the discovery which they claim to have made previously. It has been recently found that Dr. Antonio Pacinotti, the inventor of a magneto-electric machine, wrote a description of his machine in an Italian periodical in June, 1864, in which he says that it can be used to generate electricity, or as a motor; and he therefore is entitled to the credit for the invention of the present electric motor. The relation between magnetism and electricity, by which the magnet of an electric motor can set in revolution by its attraction the copper wires conducting electricity in the armature of an electric motor, is well illustrated by applying a magnet to an incandescent lamp. When the lamp is not illuminated the magnet will not produce any effect upon it, but if the lamp is in use the magnet will attract the filament. |