Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1880 — A Remarkable Discovery. [ARTICLE]

A Remarkable Discovery.

Mr. Fleuss, a young-man of tfae age of twenty-eight yean, has made the remarkable discovery of a means whereby a person accustomed to diving can exist for hours underneath the water without connenction with the surface. Heretofore all submarine divers have been dependent for air, at the bottom of the sea, upon tubes through which the air was forced from a pumping apparatus placed in a vessel anchored over the spot where the diver was operating. The deflect of this arrangement \was that, being connected with his helmet U obstructed the diver in his work, and If the tube was fouled ot x fractured from any cause the supply of air was cut off, and the diver was in danger of suffocating, unless he promptly gave the signal to be drawn up by pulling the cord that for this purpose was also attached to his dress. The discovery made by Mr. Fleuss does away with these encumbrances, and ,enables him to move about under the water independent of all external aid except the cord for signalling, .when, from great ..depths, he wants to be drawn to the surface. Clothed in a special water-tight dress and helmet, a person can exist tor hours, not only in deep waters, but can venture into f daces where noxious gases would be fatal a a few minutes to any one who breathed them. By a very simple process Mr. Fleuss manufactures the air he breathes and gets rid of the carbonic acid gas he exhales within the sphere of the helmet and drees. To understand how this is done a preliminary explanation may be necessary. The atmosphere consists of one fifth oxygen and four fifths nitrogen, These two gases, in the proportions we have named, constitute the air we breathe. The oxygen is the active supporter of life. 1 It-is modified by the nitrogen to adapt it to the uses ot the lungs. We Inhale oxygen, which nature renders fit for our breathing by diluting it with nitrogen. We exhale carbonic acid gas, which, if not gotten rid of, would poison the blood.* With these facta understood the simplicity of the invention of Mr. Ficuss is easy to comprehend. He charges a part of his helmet with a supply ot compressed oxygen gas, the delivery of which, as he needs it, is regulated by a vslve. The n itrogen contained in the lungs and in the diving-dress is ample, for itis, unchangeable, and, by a due admixture of fresh Oxygen from time’to time, can lie breathed over and over again. In this way he provides, by a simple process, the air required to sustain life. The difficulty wu to neutralize or get rid of the exhaled carbonic acid gas within a drees hermetically closed. Here again lie brought his knowledge of chemistry to his aid. He causes the carbonic acid gas given off by the lungs to be converted ’ into carbonate of sods, by passing the gas through caustic soda. The way in which this is done is described in Chamber’s Journal of March 27, as follows: “The-causticsoda is don-

jAiped in a small tin or ebOiite case, placed in the body of the drees. It is in solution and confined in the' pores of spongy india-rubber. A proper arrangement of tubing causes the whole of the exhaled air to pass through this case, where, coining in contact with the solution, it is neutralized, and as carbonate of soda loses its poisonous propertied” Mr. Fleurs has been giving exhibitions in London in the of scientific men, and W4te explaining to them his invention has personally demonstrated its adaptation to submarine diving by remaining under water for more than one hour at a time.

The experimental tests included choke damp as well as water. At the request of sqme of the gentlemen present Mr. Flense emend a vessel filledwlth carburetted •hydrogen gas, and came out of it at the end of twenty minutes, without having experienced any ill effects from this, the deadliest gas to which coal miners are subjected. If he had been unprotected by his dress and the means of breathing within it, “he could not have lived,*' said one jpi the gentlemen present, “sixty seconds.” [.The discovery is declared by all who [have assisted at these exhibitions to bn a ■noct valuable one, especially in exploring wrecks, and mines after explosions have taken place, and in entering buildings where the smoke would suffocate