A USEFUL INVENTION

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 49, 26 August 1922, Page 12

A USEFUL INVENTION

KAISING WATER BY ITS OWN . • ■ .' GRAVITY^.-■;;■■/{..;> Writing in the "Manchester Guardian" last month, Sir Oliver Lodge, the well-known British scientist, referred to the utilisation of simple, natural forces such as those of wind'and; water as being. of great antiquity, /and stated that the invention of any new device in this direction may be regarded as ex: tremely unlikely. . "Nevertheless," he says, "what seems to be a new "method of automatically raising water by its own. gravity in combination .with atmospheric pressure, wherever a small head of water is. available, has been recently invented by an Anglo-American British citizen, M*-' Thomas' Gaskell Allen', whose name is 1 already associated with a modified oxy-acetylene process. His water-raising apparatus' (known as: the hydrautomat) works on a principle entirely, different from that of the hydraulic ram : it is a. quiet and static affair, involving no machinery, no impetus or shock, and only one, necessary mechanical valve. The method has been described in several of the technical, papers,, and' a model plant now working at Carshalton has been depicted. , But it is so simple and interesting a contrivance.: as to deserve a, more general notice,, since the raising of water for irrigation and other purposes, is, of vital importance in many countries; ana it is. surprising that bo convenient1 and practical a plan for making it quietly raise itself baa not been devised before the twentieth century A.D.,'... . ' "The hydrostatic, arrangement attributed to Hero of Alexandria, and sometimes, used for scent fountains, may be said to contain the. germ of the idea; and on working out the theory of the new instrnment I find that it enables water to be raised to very considerable heights with&it any solid moving part* except one sluice, or possibly two, without involving a v great pressure^ in any part of the instrument, and with quite considerable efficiency. >' "I know nothing about the commercial prospects of the invention, but I can imagine several useful applications for it, and think that a hydraulic system which can. secure a result of this, kind is bound to be of service to man-' kind." . ;