History of Sanitation

80 HISTORY OF SANITATION raising devices made, and in the later improved designs amount actually to hydraulic engines. That pumping en- gines of this period and steam boilers to operate them were of crude design there can be no doubt, indeed, many years later, in 1800, when waterworks and a pumping sta- tion were introduced in Philadelphia, the pumps and boilers were of the crudest design. A sectional illustration of the pumping house, taken from Volume 17 of Engineer- ing News, conveys a fair idea of the design of the pumps. The engine was built mostly of wood and had cylinders 6 feet long by 38^ inches inside diameter. A double acting pump had a cylinder of 18% inches diameter and 6-foot stroke. In these engines the lever arms, flywheel shaft and arms, flywheel bearings, the hot well, hot and cold water pumps, cold water cistern, and even the external shell of the boilers were made of wood. The boilers were rectan- gular chests, made of 5-inch white pine planks of the general dimensions shown in the illustration. They were braced on the sides, top and bottom with white oak scant- ling, 10 inches square, all bolted together with iX-inch iron rods passing through the planks. Inside the chest was an iron fire-box, 12 feet 6 inches long by 6 feet wide and i foot 10 inches deep, and 8 vertical flues, 6 of 15 inches and 2 of 12 inches diameter, through which the water circulated, the fire acting around them and passing up an oval flue situated just above the fire box and carried from the back of the boiler to near the front and then returned to the chimney at the back. These wooden boilers were used at the Centre Street waterworks from 1801 to 1815, but did not give general Wooden Boilers used in the Philadelphia Water Supply