Word: compressors
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...ferret. His bosses tie a length of fishing line to his collar; to the fishing line they attach another length of electrical wiring. Then, while Freddie is held at one end of a piece of pipe designed to protect wires, another man, with a dead rabbit and an air compressor, goes to the other...
...compressor wafts the scent of the dead rabbit down the pipe to Freddie's eager nose. Released, Freddie scuttles up the pipe in pursuit of the rabbit, and, simultaneously, lays the wiring. In one morning recently, Freddie laid wiring in 60 pipes, the longest of which was 130 ft. By hand, the job would have taken a human electrician a month, cost...
...high-pressure exhaust gases from the cylinders spin a two-stage turbine that drives a compressor. The air from the compressor passes through a cooler, which gets rid of the heat of compression, makes the air contract and become denser, able to burn more fuel. The dense supercharged air goes into the piston engine, burns with the fuel and passes on to the turbine. As it shoots out through a tailpipe, it exerts several hundred pounds of jet thrust...
...called the "flying stovepipe" before its proper design was found to be enormously difficult. The ramjet does look simple. It is a hollow cylinder open at both ends and subtly shaped inside. When it is moving rapidly, the air coming in the nose is compressed as if by the compressor of the turbojet. Fuel is burned near the point of highest compression. The energy added to the compressed air by combustion shoves a jet of hot, high-speed gas out the rear end with a noise like thunder. There is nothing inside a typical ramjet except fuel nozzles...
...silence seemed vibrant. From the street outside came the occasional voices of pedestrians. A cable car clanged at the corner. An air compressor muttered in the distance. A plane growled overhead. When the half hour was over, newcomers moved into empty seats for the second part of the service. Said one of them: "It was the strangest thing, the quiet when I came in . . . like coming into a cathedral...