Condenser
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
one who or that which condenses. ducing to a liquid form the steam in front Steam-engine. An apparatus for reof the piston, so as to obtain a partial vacuum at that point, and thus utilize the natural pressure of the atmosphere. Watt invented the injection condenser and the separate condenser. The surface condenser has a series of flat chambers or tubes, usually the latter, in which the steam is cooled by a body of water sur rounding the tubes. Distilled water for ships' use is obtained by the condensation of steam in a surface condenser. Distilling. The still-condenser is an apparatus generally made of the wormtub form; the coil containing the alcoholic vapor traversing a tub which receives a constant accession of cold water, condensing the vapor in the coil. The liquid escapes at a cock valve below. Metal. An apartment in which metallic or deleterious gaseous fumes are condensed to prevent their escape into, and contamination of, the atmosphere. The device consists of a prolonged duct for the fumes, with showers of water to condense the volatile matters. Electricity. (1) An instrument for concentrating electricity by the effect of induction. It usually consists of a confolded sheet of tin-foil, whose layers are separated by a thin sheet having a nonconducting surface. (2) Wit With induction apparatus, a device for absorption or suppression of the extra current, induced by the rapid breaks in the main current. (3) An instrument in which an electric spark passes between the poles in a closed glass cylinder, so as to be employed in burning metals in an atmosphere of any given tenuity or specific chemical character, to obtain the spectra of metals or gases free from accidental characteristics of the general atmosphere for the time being.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Every machine Collier's described in 1921 is still with us, but one of its names is not: the electrical "condenser" of foil layers separated by an insulator is now universally called a capacitor, a term that took over in engineering and teaching through the mid-20th century and left "condenser" surviving mainly in old radio parts, car ignition systems and the condenser microphone. The steam side of the entry has aged hardly at all / surface condensers with water-cooled tube bundles remain standard equipment in coal, gas and nuclear power stations, still doing exactly what Watt's separate condenser did, and ships still distil drinking water this way. The spark-in-a-glass-cylinder instrument for obtaining clean metal spectra has been superseded by modern spectroscopic sources and detectors. The chief thing a reader must translate is the vocabulary, not the physics.
Written for this edition, 2026.