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Book, page 131 / 445 During the early part of 1901 a Committee appointed by the British Home Office, "to advise as to the conditions of safety to which acetylene generators should conform, and to carry out tests of generators in the market in order to ascertain how far those conform with such conditions," issued a circular to the trade suggesting that apparatus should be sent them for examination. In response, forty-six British generators were submitted for trial, and were examined in a fashion which somewhat exceeded the instructions given to the Committee, who finally reported to the Explosives Department of the Home Office in a Blue Book, No. Cd. 952, which can be purchased through any bookseller. This report comprises an appendix in which most of the apparatus are illustrated, and it includes the result of the particular test which the Committee decided to apply. Qualitatively the test was useful, as it was identical in all instances, and only lacks full utility inasmuch as the trustworthiness of the automatic mechanism applied to such generators as were intended to work on the automatic system was not estimated. Naturally, a complete valuation of the efficiency of automatic mechanism cannot be obtained from one or even several tests, it demands long-continued watching; but a general notion of reliability might have been obtained. Quantitatively, however, the test applied by the Committee is not so free from reproach, for, from the information given, it would appear to have been less fair to some makers of apparatus than to others. Nevertheless the report is valuable, and indicates the general character of the most important apparatus which were being offered for sale in the United Kingdom in 1900-1901. It is not possible to give a direct answer to the question as to which is the best type of acetylene generator. There are no generators made by responsible firms at the present time which are not safe. Some may be easier to charge and clean than others; some require more frequent attention than others; some have moving parts less likely to fail, when handled carelessly, than others; some have no moving mechanism to fail. For the illumination of a large institution or district where one man can be fully occupied in attending to the plant, cleaning, lighting, and extinguishing the lamps, or where other work can be found for him so as to leave him an hour or so every day to look after the apparatus, the hand-fed carbide-to-water generator L (Fig. 6) has many advantages, and is probably the best of all. In smaller installations choice must be made first between the automatic and the non-automatic principle--the
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