. Bulletin. Science. The Ericsson and Her Engine The Ericsson was a finely modeled wooden ship about 250 feet long, with a beam of 40 feet and depth of hold of 27 feet. Her registered tonnage was 1,903. By way of comparison, the Collins Line ships were about 285 feet long, with a beam of 45 feet and tonnage of 2,750. The four working cylinders of the engine, vertical and in-line, each 14 feet in diameter and having a stroke of 6 feet, were individually connected to four supply, or compressor, cylinders, each 11}^ feet in diameter. A supply cylinder was located above each working cylinder. This
. Bulletin. Science. The Ericsson and Her Engine The Ericsson was a finely modeled wooden ship about 250 feet long, with a beam of 40 feet and depth of hold of 27 feet. Her registered tonnage was 1,903. By way of comparison, the Collins Line ships were about 285 feet long, with a beam of 45 feet and tonnage of 2,750. The four working cylinders of the engine, vertical and in-line, each 14 feet in diameter and having a stroke of 6 feet, were individually connected to four supply, or compressor, cylinders, each 11}^ feet in diameter. A supply cylinder was located above each working cylinder. This ponderous air engine, with a working displacement two and a half times that of the largest steam engines, was connected to a crankshaft on which turned 32-foot paddle wheels at a speed of about 9 revolutions per minute. No drawings of the Ericsson's engine were ever published, and Captain Ericsson's beautifully exe- cuted working drawings have not survived; however, the arrangement of each cylinder was similar to that shown in figure 3, which is a copy of the patent specification drawing of 1851.^ A conjectural sketch of the arrangement of the driving mechanisni is given in figure 5. Two sets of working and supply cylinders were forward of the paddleshaft and two sets were abaft of it. A pivoted horizontal working beam transmitted power from the two forward units through a connecting rod to the crank; a second working beam and connecting rod were provided for the after units. The two connecting rods shared a single crankpin.^ The device that was designed to make possible the repeated use of caloric was the regenerator. Each regenerator—one was provided for each cylinder— consisted of a chamber 6 feet high, 4 feet wide, and 1 foot thick. This space was filled with 150 sheets of iron wire mesh, which had about 10 wires to the inch in each direction; each wire was about a thirty- second of an inch in diameter.'' Atmospheric air was drawn into the upper cylinder as its piston
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Keywords: ., bookauthorunitedstatesdepto, bookcentury1900, booksubjectscience
