New system of ventilation, which has been thoroughly tested under the patronage of many distinguished persons : being adapted to parlors, dining and sleeping rooms, kitchens, basements, cellars, vaults ... / by Henry A. Gouge.

  • Gouge, Henry A. (Henry Albert)
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: New system of ventilation, which has been thoroughly tested under the patronage of many distinguished persons : being adapted to parlors, dining and sleeping rooms, kitchens, basements, cellars, vaults ... / by Henry A. Gouge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    120/194 (page 108)
    ations, proi3ortions, &c., tliat now enable ns to construct a ventilating system certain to exhaust and rej^lace the exact volume of air per minute required, in any room or any building, large or small. It is most remarkable that the draft power developed by a small flame, through the ai3par- atus invented by Mr. Gouge, increases with every induction orilice opened, so far as we have had occasion to carry the experiment in ventilating large office buildings. There is nothing theoretical about this. The fact was never theoret- ically discovered. But it can now be verified by any person with his own breath, by means of an instrument to be found in the philosophical apparatus of certain schools: a miniature flue on the Gouge ]3rincij)le, in detachable joints, the addition of each of which, with its additional inlet, is found to multiply many fold the force of the blast from the mouth as it issues at the extreme end. In the absence of gas, an ordinary (argand) oil burner answers the purpose in our ventilators. In any case, the ascending current once established requires but a small ex- penditure of gas, from one to three cubic feet per hour, to sustain it with its tributaries in lively action all the year around. III. The fact last noted—perhaps the hardest to believe without ocular demonstration, which however can be had by anybody wishing to inquire, in hundreds of places—brings us to our third characteristic, viz.: that the first cost of the apparatus is also substantially the last. Ample, uniform and certain ventilation goes on thenceforward through day and night, at a nominal cost for gas. The most vexatious and fruitless, yet common, of all expenses—that of putting in and turning out again, one after another, a succession of useless ventilating contrivances—is stopped or prevented, and the same demonstrated, from the moment of setting our apparatus in motion. IV. An adequate suction, by which the whole move- ment of air from and into the apartment is sustained, is one of the essential characteristics of true ventilation. You may dri'Ge a great deal of fresh air through a room without re- moving what there was there before. But a vigorous suc- tion, located at the proper points, must draw equally from all directions, and from every corner, crack and cranny, and