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Published in June 1949, this work was was done at the University of Illinois Urbana, where the Institute of Boiler and Radiation Manufacturers once did all of their resea...

The Richardson System of vapor heating was popular in the 1910s and 1920s. It's very simple, and you must run it at very low pressure (less than 1 psig) on a vaporstat. T...

The return trap is like a mechanical condensate pump. This 1943 piece about Sarco Alternating Receivers and Lift Traps from the Sarco Company does a nice job of explainin...

Sarco made a boiler-return trap that was widely used back in the day. Here is their literature on the product, as well as the accessories that went with it. Thanks to Pat...

"Six Kinds of Steam Heat" subtitled, "Six ways to recapture the residential heating market," is an interesting article from the May, 1941 edition of Plumbing & Heating Bu...

Special thanks to Tim Parbs for sharing this literature from the Skidmore Corporation about their heating products. Tim writes, "One of our customers has an old Skidmore ...

This tech sheet about usage consequences with orifice drain devices was developed by the members of the Fluid Controls Institute in August, 2003. Thanks to T.P. Tunstall ...

Here is a turn-of-the-century home-study course about steam heating from the famous International Correspondence Schools of Scranton, PA.

This article about steam heating is from an 1871 edition of Van Nostrand's Engineering Magazine. Note the highly critical comments regarding those who tended the boilers.

Thanks to historian, Bernard Nagengast, for sharing this circa-1905 article from American Electrician magazine, which does a great job of explaining the steam traps, and ...