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Continuing his investigation of the basement, he came to the three huge fifty-horse-power engines, whose duty it is to suck the air from the pneumatic telegraph tubes in the great hall above. Here the detective became quite an engineer, asked with much interest and intelligence about governors, pistons, escape-valves, actions, etcetera, and wound up with a proposition.
Frank had been examining the machinery with some care. Even as a prisoner he felt some interest in the completeness of the engine room of the Japanese dirigible. He bent over her twin fifty-horse-power motors with admiring appreciation and examined the other machinery with intense interest.
In running a fifty-horse-power engine high-priced coal had to be burnt but now the coal grates are replaced by petroleum burners, and crude coal-oil is the cheap fuel. This does not make sparks to set the fields on fire like burning coal or straw and so is safer to use. On large ranches wheat can be grown for less than a cent a pound, while it has brought two cents or double the money when sold.
A dynamo was installed in Bergmann's shop to permit him to test the various small devices which he was then making for the system. He rented power from a Jew who owned the building. Power was supplied from a fifty-horse-power engine to other tenants on the several floors.
There are upwards of thirty such tubes, and the suction business is done by two enormous fifty-horse-power steam-engines in the basement of our splendid building. There is a third engine, which is kept ready to work in case of a break-down, or while one of the others is being repaired." "Ah! May, wouldn't there be the grand blow-up if you were to burst your boilers in the basement?" said Phil.
These have been so perfected that eight ounces of battery yield one horse power for six hours, so that two pounds of battery will supply a horse power for twenty-four hours; a small fifty-horse-power aeroplane being therefore able to fly four days with a battery weight of but four hundred pounds. "Limestone and clarified acid are the principal parts of these batteries.
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