SCIENTIFIC.
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SCIENTIFIC.
The capacity of the Great Eastern is equal to 1330 coal cars.
The corner stone of the Manual Training School of Chicago, was laid Monday, Sept.24.
The completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad was marked by the driving of a golden spike.
The "Flying Dutchman," a tram running from London to Bristol, travels more rapidly than any other tram in the world. It completes a distance of 1184 miles, making no stops, in two hours.
Mr. Tromas Urguhart has made some successful experiments with petroleum refuse for fuel in locomotives, and has found that there is an economy of at least 50 per cent. on the side of petroleum over either coal or wood.
The longest single span double track bridge was completed some time ago, on the New York, Ontario & Western Railroad to Weehawkin. The span is 290 feet and weighs 1,160,585 pounds. It was built 25 feet to one side of the present site and moved to its place in six hours by means of hydraulic jacks.
Cincinnati is the birthplace of the latest smoke consumer, the invention of J. S. Bardwell. A section of fire-clay is constructed on the bridge wall, the tubes being two feet in length with a diameter of two inches. The fire is started with coke, and the tubes soon get red hot, and then no matter what fuel is used, the smoke disappears in passing the fire-clay tubes, and beyond them is pure white flame. The cost of reconstruction of a furnace is said to be about 15.—The American Engineer.
Leavenworth is to have a Union Depot built by the railroads entering that place.
—"Arabian," the first engine run on the Baltimore & Ohio railroad was lost a short time ago by the burning of the Cincinnati Exposition building. This little engine was built in 1834 by the above named road, and being its first it was kept as a relic after it was unable to serve its original purpose.
An Electric Gun. Colonel Fosbery created a sensation at a lecture he recently gave to an assembly of officers, small-arms inventors and other experts at the Royal United Service Institute, London, by suddenly drawing from its place of hiding, under the table, a wonderful new gun, which he had just brought from Liege. He called it a "baby electric gun." It looked like a pretty carbine, but it had no mechanism, and could not possibly go off until connected to the source of electric force. This done, it could be fired with amazing rapidity, 104 rounds having a few days before been fired from it by its inventor, M. Preper, of Liege, in two minutes. Colonel Fosbery fired two shots with infinitesimal powder charges. He had prepared himself by secreting under his vest a small circuit of wire and putting on a banderole, supporting what looked like a two-ounce vial, but was in fact an electric accumulator, with sufficient stored-up energy to discharge 2,000 rounds. The cartridges were innocent looking mites, and contained no detonating substance; nothing, in fact, but simple powder and a wad. The opinion was expressed by various speakers that the electric gun must revolutionize the manufacture of small arms within a brief period.—Electrical Journal.