Oil Burning

Four lectures called: History, Present Theories, Present Forms and Future of Oil buming, were delivered at Delft in April 1934 before members of the ,Koninklijk Instituut van Ingenieurs" (Royal Institute of Engineers - The Hague, Holland) on four afternoons consecutively. Although the subjects discussed are substantially the same, a certain amount of rearrangement was considered desirable for publication while moreover several problems, especially those raised in questions asked after the lectures, have been entered into more fully in this book, which therefore covers a good deal more ground than the actual lecture::.
There is such rapid progress in the development of cil burning that it became an exceedingly difficult task for the author to keep pace with the inventions and numerous changes in design made in the interval between the reading and the publication of the lectures. He was obliged to cry ,halt" towards the end of 1935, but he will be very grateful to his readers for any information they may be able and willing to fumish on later inventions, new features and errors of commission or omission. Such commur.ications will be duly acknowledged and the information utilized at the earliest opportunity.
The author long hesitated as to whether to quote names of manufacturers of the burners described in this book or not. On the one hand the omission of names, which has been accepted as a principle in most handbooks on oil burning, may look more impartial, but, on the other, knowledge of the trade-names of the burners is such a welcome help to those concerned with the practice or study of oil burning that the author finally decided in favour of quotation. As he is fully aware that in certain cases this might perhaps give rise to difficulties, he wishes to point out that any comments from burner manufacturers on possible mistakes in figures or des- criptions concerning their past and present products will be gratefully received in order that such discrepancies may be corrected in the event of a reprint.