A cylinder of glass or metal, closed
at one end and open at the other, filled with water, and inverted in a
larger vessel containing the same liquid, may be charged almost
instantaneously with acetylene by dropping into the basin a lump of
carbide, which sinks to the bottom, begins to decompose, and evolves a
rapid current of gas, displacing the water originally held in the
inverted cylinder or "bell." If a very minute hole is drilled in the top
of the floating bell, acetylene at once escapes in a steady stream, being
driven out by the pressure of the cylinder, the surplus weight of which
causes it to descend into the water of the basin as rapidly as gas issues
from the orifice. As a laboratory experiment, and provided the bell has
been most carefully freed from atmospheric air in the first instance,
this escaping gas may be set light to with a match, and will burn with a
more or loss satisfactory flame of high illuminating power. Such is an
acetylene generator stripped of all desirable or undesirable adjuncts,
and reduced to its most elementary form; but it is needless to say that
so simple an apparatus would not in any way fulfil the requirements of
everyday practice.
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