Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1883 — Cooling Off a Composing-Room. [ARTICLE]

Cooling Off a Composing-Room.

The composing-room of the New Orleans Picayune is situated in the upper story of its publication-house, just under the roof, and in summer is exceedingly hot. Last season an inspiration seems to have come to one of the oppressed occupants, and in accordance with it a vertical wooden box was constructed in the corner of the room, .with openings at the floor and ceiling, and furnished with a pipe for supplying water at the top and a pan and drain at the bottom for receiving and carrying it safely away. The supplypipe was bent over the upper end of the shaft, and fitted with a nose like that of a watering-pot, so as to deliver a shower of spray instead of a solid stream. On connecting it with the service-pipe, the movement of the water was found to cause an active circulation of the air in that part of the room, which was drawn in at the upper opening of the shaft and issued again, cool and fresh, at the floor level. The most surprising thing about the experiment seems to have been the effect of the water in cooling the air to a degree much below its own temperature. With Mississippi water, which when drawn from the service-pipe indicated a temperature of 84 degrees, the air of the room, in which the thermometer at the beginning of the trial stood at 96 degrees, was cooled in passing through the length of the shaft to 74 degrees, or about 20 degrees below the temperature at which it entered, and 10 degrees below that of the water which was used t© cool it. Of course the absorption of heat by the evaporation of a portion of the water accounts for its refrigerating effect, but the result seems to have been so easily and inexpensively attained, that the experimen t would be wor th.repeating.— Helen Campbell, in The Continent,