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Fig.: Urgent; intense; as, a high-pressure business or social life. High-pressure engine, an engine in which steam at high pressure is used. It may be either a condensing or a noncondensing engine. Formerly the term was used only of the latter. See Steam engine.

ompound engine (Mech.), a form of steam engine in which the steam that has been used in a high-pressure cylinder is made to do further service in a larger low-pressure cylinder, sometimes in several larger cylinders, successively. -- Compound ether. (Chem.) See under Ether. -- Compound flower (Bot.), a flower head re…

invented by Sir William Armstrong of England for generating electricity by the escape of high-pressure steam from a series of jets connected with a strong boiler, in which the steam is produced.

To increase the power of (a single-cylinder beam engine) by adding a small high-pressure cylinder with a piston acting on the beam between the center and the flywheel end, using high-pressure steam and working as a compound engine, -- a plan introduced by M'Naught, a Scottish engineer, in 1845.

A vessel for receiving the exhaust steam from the high-pressure cylinder before it enters the low-pressure cylinder, in a compound engine.

es applied to superheated steam. -- Exhaust steam. See under Exhaust. -- High steam, or High-pressure steam, steam of which the pressure greatly exceeds that of the atmosphere. -- Low steam, or Low-pressure steam, steam of which the pressure is less than, equal to, or not greatly above, that of the atmosphere. -- S…