Hydraulic tube

The hydraulic tube is an installation that creates compressed air from a waterfall. By means of the Venturi effect, the air is sucked into a tube and then compressed due to the height of the waterfall. Several inventions from late antiquity can be identified as antecedents of the hydraulic tube. For example, the “water bellows” was used in the fourth century by the Sassanian Empire. However, it was in 16th century, in Italy, that the first mentions of its existence were made. In 1629, Giovanni Branca published The Machine, in which he illustrated the principle of the water horn used to bring wind to the hearth of a forge or to power an organ. It was from this moment onwards that the principle of the horn spread among Renaissance scholars, and that it spread throughout the world. The use of the hydraulic horn became widespread in the Pyrenean region in the second half of the 17th century. The invention reached its peak in Ariège (09), becoming inseparable from the Catalan forge. Its use gradually disappeared at the beginning of the 19th century, at the same time as the low furnaces and the natural steel processes.