A PREVENTION OF THEATRE FIRES.

A PREVENTION OF THEATRE FIRES.

A Cincinnati man has invented what he considers a preventive of disaster in the event of theatre fires. The essential element is electricity, and a local paper thus describes the way it works:

"In one corner of the room was a miniature stage, and as the inventor shouted 'fire!' a tiny flame was seen to shoot upward from the floor of the structure. In a few moments a gong in another part of the room sounded an alarm; the drop curtain slowly descended; a fan went into motion and sucked the smoke through trap-doors in the roof; the gas was lighted; the stage was flooded with water, and the exit doors were thrown wide open. Mr. Shaffer stated that he was (he co in ventor with Dr. Sam'l M. Plush, the electrician, and that what the invention u . intended for principally was to prevent asphyxia in the event of theatre fires, which was really more prolific of fatality than all others causes in fires of this kind In the first place he explained that the invention was electrical. The circuit is maintained through thermostads, which are distributed at distances of from ten to sixteen feet apart on the stage. The small fire which broke out on the stage while the inventor was talking to the company came in contact with one of the thermostads on the left side, at 125 degrees of heat. The circuit was broken, and the machinery was at once put in motion. In the flies on that side of the stage was a train of wheels acting on the same principle as a clock movement. The breaking of the circuit released the hold of an armature on the cogs of one of these wheels, and this in turn released the curtain, which, being heavily weighted, descended slowly : the descent put in steady motion other wheels, which set a fan in revolution; the two movements being dependent one upon the other, the descent of the curtain is retarded by the movement of the fan. The curtain being made of asbestos is indestructible by fire, and when down it shuts out draughts to the stage from the auditorium. The fan sucks the smoke from the auditorium through the proscenium arch into, large pipes, and it then finds its way to the open air through trapdoors in the roof, which are thrown open by the broken electrical current. The detached circuit also throws open the exit doors, and lights up a set of jets in the exits, which are supplied by an extra gas meter in the event of the regular lights having been put out by an explosion of the regular meter on the stage. The falling of a weight in a trough sets an alarm in motion at the nearest Engine-house, and one of the wheels in the clock movement turns a water cock and the stage is flooded with water. In order that the system may be available in whatever part of the stage the fire may occur, strings or ropes are stretched through the flics, and the burning of one of these will disarrange the adjustment and set the machinery in motion. The movement is entirely automatic, and when once adjusted it cannot b« disarranged except by the breaking of the circuit or the burning of one of ti e strings stretched through the files.''