The Independent Press

Thompson's Life Preserver.

We described to our readers this valuable invention, and we can now state that it was fully tested at the Navy Yard on Friday, in the presence of a party of naval officers, members of Congress, and others, and received many expressions of approbation. The Union states that an experimenter, who had never before seen the machine, threw himself with it into eighteen feet water, and managed it many ways with perfect ease. He got in and out of it several times in different ways, sometimes raising it with one hand out of the water, and putting it over his head and shoulders, and then drawing the arms through; sometimes putting in his feet first as it lay on the water, sitting, lying upon it, holding to it, dc. He also moved it rapidly through the water at will, and in any direction, using his hands and feet without embarrassment; and it was evident that a person with such a machine might hold up several others, in case of emergency, while a supply of them on board vessels of any kind, in many cases of peril by shipwreck, fire, &c., might save scores and hundreds of lives.—Nat. Intelligencer.