Hawaii Holomua, Volume I, Number 45, 9 November 1893 — FRICTION OF SHIP AND WATER. [ARTICLE]

FRICTION OF SHIP AND WATER.

Mr. Edison is esperimenting with a view to reducing the friction between the sido~ of sbip' and water. He fimls that “a sbip drags a lot of wuter with her. and gives the following illnstratiou:- Say the vcssel is _;iiug 20 uiiles an hour. two feet frora her side the water is going 10 miles an hour: four feet away 5 : miles au hour eight feet awav 2 ; ‘ O • miles an hour. nine feet otf 1 mile an hour, and so on in dimiui>hing ratio. All this water the vessel is dragging with her. This is what the engiue has got to do—not force the ship through the water, bot carry the water along. This all comes from the fact that the water sticks. as it ' were. to the sides of the >hip. Mr. Edisou wants to do away with this < *‘stieking. - ’ In certain experiments, made in a tank, he sought “to produce hydrogeu by electricitv along the sides of the ship, eliminating the salt in the water. He succeeded. and. “usiug a current through the sides of the ship, reduced the friction of the water to a minimum.” I thought,” he remarks, “that I had oue of the biggest thiugs of the centurv ti 11 I tried it iu gennine salt water.” He had beeu making bis salt water in the tauk bv emptyiug the salt into fresh water, but wheu he tried genuine sea-water from Sandy Hook the iuvention woukl not work, *‘becau.se the oeean contains other things than salt. ' He claims that if he were able to applv his invention successfully to the C(imjHtnia, “she could cross casilv iu fourdays.” In the ineantime, he suggests “forcing some eheap oil through the pores of the sides of the ship under the water-line. She woukl then slip across tlie oeean ou a bed of oil like greased lightning. '