By John L. Phillips. 256 pp. New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1998. $30. ISBN 0-300-07125-6.
The spanning of deep rivers and estuaries, the extraction ofminerals from wet ground, and the exploration of the continentalshelf were possible only when it became feasible for men towork under conditions of increased air pressure. Blacksmithsused leather bellows to generate compressed air as early asthe 14th century, and natural philosophers experimented withair pumps in the 16th and 17th centuries, but these hand-powereddevices could not conveniently compress the large volume ofair needed to provide a practical work space. In the third decadeof the 19th century, when engineers developed air pumps poweredby . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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