Chapter X.), so
that only the storage vessels ever need to have fresh solvent introduced.
Where it is procurable, the use of acetylene compressed in this fashion
is simplicity itself; for the cylinders have only to be connected with
the house service-pipes through a reducing valve of ordinary
construction, set to give the pressure which the burners require. When
exhausted, the bottle is simply replaced by another. Manifestly, however,
the cost of compression, the interest on the value of the cylinders, and
the carriage, &c., make the compressed gas more expensive per unit of
volume (or light) than acetylene locally generated from carbide and
water; and indeed the value of the process does not lie so much in the
direction of domestic illumination as in that of the lighting, and
possibly driving, of vehicles and motor-cars--more especially in the
illumination of such vehicles as travel constantly, or for business
purposes, over rough road surfaces and perform mostly out-and-home
journeys. Nevertheless, absorbed acetylene may claim close attention for
one department of household illumination, viz., the portable table-lamp;
for the base of such an apparatus might easily be constructed to imitate
the acetone cylinder, and it could be charged by simple connexion with a
larger one at intervals.
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