26179 necessary to raise steam is wasted so far as the work to be done is concerned. Moreover, a steam engine requires continuous feeding of coal and close attention, so that a man must be always near it, having no other du ties but its care. In .the natural-gas regions a large number of gas engines are working, and in the oil regions a similar number of oil engines and gasoline engines, because the nearness to the supply makes the fuel cheaper than transported fuel, and the exploding engine is more efficient than the steam engine. It thus appears that in spite of the fact that the fuel element in the cost of power is high for engines burning crude oil, kerosene, and gasoline in compari son with those using coal, at the same time they pos sess advantages that do not exist in steam plants and gas-producer plants, which give them a very distinct field, as indicated by the following uses to which these engines are being put today: Driving boats, automo biles, and railroad motor cars; pumping water for private houses, for farms, for irrigation, and in some cases for municipal service in small towns; compress ing air for drilling, hoisting, riveting, etc.; operating small carpenter shops, machine shops, forge shops, and, in fact, any kind of small shop; operating venti lating fans in buildings and in mines; running small factories, such as creameries and butter factories; operating feed-cutting and grinding machinery, corn shredders, and threshing machines; operating other special machines, such as ice-cream freezers, printing presses, mostly small in size, and making electric light in isolated localities. Not only is this field a real one, but it is a large one, as is shown by the numbec of these small engines being sold today. Tlie exact figures on the sales are not available and it is impossible to secure them because of the unwilling ness of manufacturers to tell their business; but when a single manufacturer (as is the cas,,) is selling 425 of Brayton to use petroleum distillate came a series of inventions improving this class of engine, lasting for about twenty years, when the modern forms of kero sene, gasoline, and crude-oil engines may be said to have been developed. During this time the subject of alcohol as fuel in engines seems to have been either not thought of at all or not given any attention. The first serious attempt to examine into the possibility of alcohol as a fuel in competition with petroleum and its distillates seems to have been made in the year 1894 in Leipzig, Germany, by Prof. Hartmann for the Deutschen Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft. The engine used was built by Grobb, of Leipzig, to operate on kerosene, and used 425 grammes of kerosene per hour per brake horsepower , which is equivalent to 0.935 pound, or 1.1 pints, approximately. This indicates for the kerosene a thermal efficiency of 13.6 per cent. When operating on alcohol the engine used about twice as much, or 839 grammes, which with this kind of alcohol was equivalent to a thermal efficiency of 12.2 per cent, or a little less than wit...
