globes, and an immense volume of electricity is generated, varying in tension with the pressure of the steam and the rapidity of rotation. The first machine constructed on these principles, and of these dimensions, supplied five hundred incandescent lamps with current enough to keep them at their full brightness. Considering that the usual number of incandescent lamps which a horse-power of force will supply is only ten, we should say that an account of a machine which will supply a thousand, with the same expenditure of force, might be taken with a grain of allowance; but there is a wide margin between ten and a thousand, and, if the apparatus will do only a fiftieth part of what is claimed for it, the world will welcome it with enthusiasm.
LA SEMAINE EES GONSTRUGTEURS gives some
details of the appropriations made by the French Government for the promotion of the fine arts, which will be particularly interesting to Americans. In our country, although a good deal of public money is spent on what purports to be fine art, the result is anything but encouraging to artists who have no political “pull,” or who do not possess rosy cheeks and long curls, and it is worth noting how small are the sums which, judiciously applied, have made France the centre of the artistic world.
THE School of Fine Arts, in Paris, including all its many departments, costs the French Treasury only seventy-one
thousand dollars a year, although tuition in it is absolutely free to all students, and the instructors are the most renowned artists of the modern world. This year, a special effort is to be made to develop the provincial schools of drawing and fine art, and nearly eighty thousand dollars has been appropriated for the purpose; and the “Academy of France at Rome,” the school of the Villa Medici, where all the Grand Prize students from all the departments of the School of Fine Arts live and work for four years, costs thirty thousand a year more. The National Conservatory of Music and Declamation, in Paris, takes fifty-one thousand dollars, and its provincial branches and general public music-schools have forty thousand. The National School of Decorative Art, in Paris, costs twenty-eight thousand dollars a year; and the subsidized manufactories, of tapestry at Gobelins, of porcelain at Sevres, of furniture at Beauvais and of mosaic in Paris, draw two hundred thousand dollars a year from the Treasury, one hundred and twenty-five thousand going to the porcelain factory at Sevres, and nearly fifty thousand to the Gobelins, while the mosaic-factory, which is a modern affair, gets only five thousand. The museums in Paris and the provinces get about two hundred thousand, and the Government will subscribe this year to publications and artistic undertakings to the extent of sixteen thousand dollars. Two hundred thousand is appropriated for the purchase of works of art and the decoration of public buildings, and two hundred and sixty thousand for the care and restoration of “historical monuments.” Forty-four thousand dollars is required for pensions and gratuities to artists, including actors; and about three hundred and sixty thousand goes as subsidy to opera-houses and theatres, the Government contribution, of thirteen thousand dollars, toward “popular concerts and musical societies ” in the provinces being included in this sum. The salary list of officials and inspectors in the Department of Fine Arts, with the necessary allowance for expenses, completes the Fine-Arts budget, the total for the year being sixteen hundred thousand dollars, or less than is paid out of the United States Treasury, for the single item of pensions alone, every five working-days.
I
T is rather surprising to learn, from Indian Engineering, that some one has brought forward the time-honored notion of utilizing the power of the surf on the seashore as a new invention. The editor of Indian Engineering says that it seems wonderful “ that no one before thought out so simple a discovery.” It is a good deal more wonderful, we think, that the editor of a technical journal should not remember that inventions to utilize the power of surf have been brought forward at short intervals for at least fifty years. Until within the past decade, all of them have been hopeless failures, for the reason that the force of the breakers is too irregular to be made available for driving mechanism in the ordinary way; but, quite recently, several devices have been tried for converting the irregular impulses into electric currents, and storing them in an
accumulator, from which they can be taken subsequently, with the steadiness requisite for securing useful results. There are obviously many ways in which the force of the surf can be thus transmuted; as, for example, by anchoring a floating raft with cables, coiled around the shaft of a small dynamo, and attached, beyond, to a spring. In this case, the pull on the anchor, as the float was lifted by a wave, would draw out the spring, causing the shaft of the dynamo to revolve, and generating a certain amount of electricity, to be added to the store in the accumulator ; and, in course of time, a considerable amount of available force might be collected. Probably the inventions now in use depend on something of this sort. If we are not mistaken, electric light has been successfully furnished by means of one of them, and the force that would produce a steady light would be quite available for many other purposes.
I
T is quite common to supply large cold-storage warehouses with apparatus for cooling the air by means of ammonia, and in Denver, as we recently stated, cold is distributed by mains through the streets, and branches to consumers, in the same way as heat. Steps are being taken for establishing a similar service in St. Louis, and the system promises to be convenient and profitable. In Boston, where a company which distributed steam by means of superheated water, under enormous pressure, has just collapsed, it seems as if the mains left in the streets might be utilized, with a change in the charter, for conveying cold instead of heat. If our recollection is not at fault, this company used two pipes, side by side, in a wooden conduit, packed with some non conductor. These pipes ought to answer for the supply and return, almost without change, and the plant is in the immediate neighborhood of a considerable number of cold-storage warehouses, markets, fruit-stores, restaurants and hotels, which would be likely to prove good customers of a well-planned system.
ANOTHER photographic novelty is described in the Revue Induslrielle. Every one knows that deaf persons, and occasionally those not deaf, are taught to understand what any one is saying by the motion of the speaker’s lips. M. Demeny, of Paris, has utilized this fact by making a series of photographs of a person speaking, taking them at intervals of a fraction of a second. The successive photographs, after completion, are placed in the toy called the “ zootrope,” which is rapidly whirled around, bringing the pictures successively before the eye. The persistence of the images on the retina gives rise to an illusion, by which a single picture seems to remain before the eye, but with the lips moving in accordance with their successive positions, as shown in the photographs. If the photographs have been arranged in the sequence in which they were taken, and brought before the eye with a rapidity corresponding to the intervals between the original exposures, the lips of the image will appear to move exactly as those of the person photographed did; and a deaf person, or any one else accustomed to interpreting the motion of the lips, can virtually hear the image speak. It is not likely that this curious invention will have a very extensive application, but it is thought that it may be useful in the education of the deaf.
A NEW sort of insurance has been devised in France. The company La Lutece, which has its office at 58 Rue
Laffitte, Paris, is now ready to insure owners of real estate, tenants, merchants and other persons against all sorts of damage caused by water, including the effect of floods and heavy rains, or the bursting or overflow of water supply-pipes or sewers, tanks, cisterns or other plumbing apparatus, whether due to natural causes or to negligence or forgetfulness. Not only does the company make good any damage proceeding from such sources, but it assumes the expense of necessary repairs to plumbing in buildings protected by its policies. We do not often do any gratuitous advertising in these columns ; but among the wide variety of insurance companies doing business here, and offering indemnity against damage from fire, storms at sea, hail, the breaking of plate-glass, the dishonesty of employes, accidents, death and so on, it is strange that none, at least none that is widely known, should have undertaken to insure against water-damage; and, if the rates charged are reasonable, it seems as if an American branch of the new company might do a large business among owners and tenants of real estate.
LA SEMAINE EES GONSTRUGTEURS gives some
details of the appropriations made by the French Government for the promotion of the fine arts, which will be particularly interesting to Americans. In our country, although a good deal of public money is spent on what purports to be fine art, the result is anything but encouraging to artists who have no political “pull,” or who do not possess rosy cheeks and long curls, and it is worth noting how small are the sums which, judiciously applied, have made France the centre of the artistic world.
THE School of Fine Arts, in Paris, including all its many departments, costs the French Treasury only seventy-one
thousand dollars a year, although tuition in it is absolutely free to all students, and the instructors are the most renowned artists of the modern world. This year, a special effort is to be made to develop the provincial schools of drawing and fine art, and nearly eighty thousand dollars has been appropriated for the purpose; and the “Academy of France at Rome,” the school of the Villa Medici, where all the Grand Prize students from all the departments of the School of Fine Arts live and work for four years, costs thirty thousand a year more. The National Conservatory of Music and Declamation, in Paris, takes fifty-one thousand dollars, and its provincial branches and general public music-schools have forty thousand. The National School of Decorative Art, in Paris, costs twenty-eight thousand dollars a year; and the subsidized manufactories, of tapestry at Gobelins, of porcelain at Sevres, of furniture at Beauvais and of mosaic in Paris, draw two hundred thousand dollars a year from the Treasury, one hundred and twenty-five thousand going to the porcelain factory at Sevres, and nearly fifty thousand to the Gobelins, while the mosaic-factory, which is a modern affair, gets only five thousand. The museums in Paris and the provinces get about two hundred thousand, and the Government will subscribe this year to publications and artistic undertakings to the extent of sixteen thousand dollars. Two hundred thousand is appropriated for the purchase of works of art and the decoration of public buildings, and two hundred and sixty thousand for the care and restoration of “historical monuments.” Forty-four thousand dollars is required for pensions and gratuities to artists, including actors; and about three hundred and sixty thousand goes as subsidy to opera-houses and theatres, the Government contribution, of thirteen thousand dollars, toward “popular concerts and musical societies ” in the provinces being included in this sum. The salary list of officials and inspectors in the Department of Fine Arts, with the necessary allowance for expenses, completes the Fine-Arts budget, the total for the year being sixteen hundred thousand dollars, or less than is paid out of the United States Treasury, for the single item of pensions alone, every five working-days.
I
T is rather surprising to learn, from Indian Engineering, that some one has brought forward the time-honored notion of utilizing the power of the surf on the seashore as a new invention. The editor of Indian Engineering says that it seems wonderful “ that no one before thought out so simple a discovery.” It is a good deal more wonderful, we think, that the editor of a technical journal should not remember that inventions to utilize the power of surf have been brought forward at short intervals for at least fifty years. Until within the past decade, all of them have been hopeless failures, for the reason that the force of the breakers is too irregular to be made available for driving mechanism in the ordinary way; but, quite recently, several devices have been tried for converting the irregular impulses into electric currents, and storing them in an
accumulator, from which they can be taken subsequently, with the steadiness requisite for securing useful results. There are obviously many ways in which the force of the surf can be thus transmuted; as, for example, by anchoring a floating raft with cables, coiled around the shaft of a small dynamo, and attached, beyond, to a spring. In this case, the pull on the anchor, as the float was lifted by a wave, would draw out the spring, causing the shaft of the dynamo to revolve, and generating a certain amount of electricity, to be added to the store in the accumulator ; and, in course of time, a considerable amount of available force might be collected. Probably the inventions now in use depend on something of this sort. If we are not mistaken, electric light has been successfully furnished by means of one of them, and the force that would produce a steady light would be quite available for many other purposes.
I
T is quite common to supply large cold-storage warehouses with apparatus for cooling the air by means of ammonia, and in Denver, as we recently stated, cold is distributed by mains through the streets, and branches to consumers, in the same way as heat. Steps are being taken for establishing a similar service in St. Louis, and the system promises to be convenient and profitable. In Boston, where a company which distributed steam by means of superheated water, under enormous pressure, has just collapsed, it seems as if the mains left in the streets might be utilized, with a change in the charter, for conveying cold instead of heat. If our recollection is not at fault, this company used two pipes, side by side, in a wooden conduit, packed with some non conductor. These pipes ought to answer for the supply and return, almost without change, and the plant is in the immediate neighborhood of a considerable number of cold-storage warehouses, markets, fruit-stores, restaurants and hotels, which would be likely to prove good customers of a well-planned system.
ANOTHER photographic novelty is described in the Revue Induslrielle. Every one knows that deaf persons, and occasionally those not deaf, are taught to understand what any one is saying by the motion of the speaker’s lips. M. Demeny, of Paris, has utilized this fact by making a series of photographs of a person speaking, taking them at intervals of a fraction of a second. The successive photographs, after completion, are placed in the toy called the “ zootrope,” which is rapidly whirled around, bringing the pictures successively before the eye. The persistence of the images on the retina gives rise to an illusion, by which a single picture seems to remain before the eye, but with the lips moving in accordance with their successive positions, as shown in the photographs. If the photographs have been arranged in the sequence in which they were taken, and brought before the eye with a rapidity corresponding to the intervals between the original exposures, the lips of the image will appear to move exactly as those of the person photographed did; and a deaf person, or any one else accustomed to interpreting the motion of the lips, can virtually hear the image speak. It is not likely that this curious invention will have a very extensive application, but it is thought that it may be useful in the education of the deaf.
A NEW sort of insurance has been devised in France. The company La Lutece, which has its office at 58 Rue
Laffitte, Paris, is now ready to insure owners of real estate, tenants, merchants and other persons against all sorts of damage caused by water, including the effect of floods and heavy rains, or the bursting or overflow of water supply-pipes or sewers, tanks, cisterns or other plumbing apparatus, whether due to natural causes or to negligence or forgetfulness. Not only does the company make good any damage proceeding from such sources, but it assumes the expense of necessary repairs to plumbing in buildings protected by its policies. We do not often do any gratuitous advertising in these columns ; but among the wide variety of insurance companies doing business here, and offering indemnity against damage from fire, storms at sea, hail, the breaking of plate-glass, the dishonesty of employes, accidents, death and so on, it is strange that none, at least none that is widely known, should have undertaken to insure against water-damage; and, if the rates charged are reasonable, it seems as if an American branch of the new company might do a large business among owners and tenants of real estate.