Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/98

90 air takes place at the ceiling, and is assisted by the heat from the gas flames.

The French engineer Péclet, an authority on heating and ventilation, suggested a similar system of upward ventilation, but instead of allowing the foul air to pass out through the roof, he conducted it downward into an underground channel which had exhaust draught. Trélat, another French engineer, followed practically the same method.

A large number of theaters are ventilated on the upward system. I will mention first the large Vienna Opera House, the ventilation of which was planned by Dr. Boehm. The auditorium holds about three thousand persons, and a fresh-air supply of about fifteen cubic feet per minute, or from nine hundred to one thousand cubic feet per hour, per person is provided. The fresh air is taken in from the gardens surrounding the theater and is conducted into the cellar, where it passes through a water spray, which removes the dust and cools the air in summer. A suction fan ten feet in diameter is provided, which blows the air through a conduit forty-five square feet in area into a series of three chambers located vertically over each other under the auditorium. The lowest of these chambers is the cold-air chamber; the middle one is the heating chamber and contains steam-heating stacks; the highest chamber is the mixing chamber. The air goes partly to the heating and partly to the mixing chamber; from this it enters the auditorium at the rate of one foot per second velocity through openings in the risers of the seats in the parquet, and also through vertical wall channels to the boxes and upper galleries. The total area of the fresh-air openings is 750 square feet. The foul air ascends, assisted by the heat of the central chandelier, and is collected into a large exhaust tube. The foul air from the gallery passes out through separate channels. In the roof over the auditorium there is a fan which expels the entire foul air. Telegraphic thermometers are placed in all parts of the house and communicate with the inspection room, where the engineer in charge of the ventilation controls and regulates the temperature.

The Vienna Hofburg Theater was ventilated on the same system.

The new Frankfort Opera House has a ventilation system modeled upon that of the Vienna Opera House, but with improvements in some details. The house has a capacity of two thousand people, and for each person fourteen hundred cubic feet of fresh air per hour are supplied. A fan about ten feet in diameter and making ninety to one hundred revolutions per minute brings in the fresh air from outdoors and drives it into chambers under the