Ingenious Applications of Steam Power
In the Latter Half of the 19th Century Steam's Power Drove some Interesting Inventions
November/December 2003
Dr. Robert T. Rhode
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Henri Giffard's steam-powered dirigible of 1852 was in fact the first full-size airship.
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THE GIFFARD STEAM DIRIGIBLE
While manufacturers busied themselves with increasingly
successful farm steam engines, inventors were experimenting with a
host of steam machines many of them fascinating, some of them zany,
and a few of them bizarre. Here is a look at some noteworthy steam
devices culled from the pages of history.
On Sept. 24, 1852, French inventor Henri Giffard, using a steam
engine for power, designed and flew the first full-size airship.
His flight took him from a Paris racecourse to the small town of
Trappes some 15 miles west at a speed of roughly 6 mph.
Giffard's airship consisted of a net surrounding a gas-filled,
cigar-shaped balloon. A pole hung from the net, horizontally and in
line with the balloon, and a gondola was suspended beneath the
pole. The ship supported a boiler weighing 100 pounds and an engine
weighing 250 pounds; relatively light, but still heavy for an
airship. Aware of the potential for fire or explosion, Giffard
surrounded the boiler's stoke hole with wire gauze. He also
pointed the boiler's exhaust down and away from the
balloon.
Giffard's next experimental craft barely escaped disaster.
Giffard tried to suspend a boiler and engine beneath what he hoped
was an improved bag, but escaping gas caused the balloon to
flatten. In turn, the gondola's nose tilted upward, some lines
broke and the balloon slipped from the net and burst. Giffard and a
passenger miraculously survived with only minor injuries. Following
this, Giffard planned a mammoth, steam-powered airship weighing 30
tons, but prohibitive costs caused him to scrap the project.
Giffard is best known in the farm steam engine community as the
inventor of the injector.
THE WINANS STEAM GUN
In 1861, Ross Winans, a locomotive builder in Baltimore, Md.,
manufactured a steam-powered gun invented by a Charles S.
Dickenson. Winans welcomed novelty, a trait he was known for in his
locomotive designs, and he applied his enthusiasm for innovation
when he produced the steam gun that came to bear his name.
The idea behind the gun was to use steam to hurl a cannonball;
his 'gun' was supposedly capable of throwing 200 balls a
minute (weight unknown) up to 2 miles, of projecting a 100-pound
cannon ball and even of firing bullets. The Winans device could be
considered an early machine gun, and certain writers have described
it by that term. A hopper fed the pivoted gun barrel of the Winans
gun, which itself ran on railroad tracks. Winans evidently hoped it
might be used to bring the rapidly escalating Civil War to a quick
conclusion.
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