Thanks to the fact that nowadays more and more books are digitized we are able to read books that are some times for decades no longer available for the public for several reasons. That’s quite a pity while these books contains useful information while the archives are destroyed, incomplete or nor accessible.
P. 248: “Dr. Payerne, of France, is the constructor of a submarine iron boat, on the screw principle, measuring twenty-seven feet long and nine-and-a-half feet wide, which is said to accomplish the purposes for which the inventor designed it; by, first, alimentation of vital air constantly made under water, without any communication with the atmosphere above water; and, second, direct contact of the screw with the water at any depth, down to one hundred and fifty feet The alimentation of air is made by a double process, mechanical and chemical, which maintains, almost without expense, the air perfectly pure and respirable in all hermetical places, such as diving-bells, submarine vessels, ships' holds, mines, &c. The apparent impossibility of maintaining under water a furnace with a current of air is alleged to be completely conquered by chemistry in its pyrotechnical branch; a certain fuel is consumed in a hermetical furnace, and generates steam in the boilers.”
Source
Isaac Smith Homans. Hunt’s merchants’ magazine and commercial review, volume 40, 1859.
