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Show THE SUN AS A MOTOR. The Chicago Herald lately published a lengthy description of the latest fashionable craze at Washington, nearly every man and boy in that city being engaged experimenting upon this patented invention. It is nothing less than the production of an intense heat by a peculiar arrangement of mirrors. Dr. Calver, the inventor, was born in England, but came to this country when young. He had for some time been engaged in studying out a method of working cheaply his mines and reducing the ores on his property in Arizona. By chance he stumbled upon his present discovery. The simple invention consists of an arrangement whereby the rays of the sun are reflected from any number of mirrors upon a given point. It had never hitherto been suspected that lapping one ray of sunlight upon another, would materially increase the heat. By the patentee's method any number of glasses can be placed upon a frame and the light conveyed upon a given spot. The inventor in his experiment used forty mirrors, 33 x 53 inches, which, properly radiating upon a door, produced a flame in one minute. It was then shifted to a piece of zinc, which in a minute turned color, and in three minutes was literally melting, drop by drop. To melt zinc requires a temperature of over 200 degrees, Fahrenheit. Dr. Calver claims that his concentrated mirrors will make a kettle boil "in less than no time," and that meat and vegetables can be cooked in ten or fifteen minutes. Engines can be run, wells dug, mines worked, ore melted and refined, and in short, there is no variety of industry in which sunlight cannot compete successfully against steam or electricity. Another anomaly is that the heat mirrors will make ice as easily as they will melt steel. All who desire to ascertain the power of this new and powerful agent, will act wisely on experimenting at a sufficient distance from valuable buildings and all inflammable property, or they may have to pay dearly for their experience. The intense heat is now a seasonable topic, and if with the aid of the sun we can be kept cool, we shall hail the inventor as a general benefactor. |