---------------------------------------------------------------------
| | | | | | L P A |
| | | | Air Pressure | Loss of | o e i |
| | | | in Mains. | Pressure. | s r r |
| | | |---------------|-------------| s |
| | | | B | | | | C D |
| |System of Mains | Length. | e T| | | | o e e |
|N| Tried. | | g r| At | | | f n l |
|u| | |A i o i| End |During| Per | t i |
|m| | |t n f a| of |Trials|Hour. | A . v |
|b| | | n l|Trials.| | | i e |
|e| | | i s| | | | r o r |
|r| | | n .| | | | f e |
| | | | g | | | | d |
--+-----------------+---------+-------+-------+------+------+-------|
| | | yards. | atm. | atm. | | | |
|1|Southern reseau | | | | | | |
| | to Place de la | | | | | | |
| | Concorde. | 9,980 | 6.5 | 6.0 | 0.5 | 1.5 | 3 |
|2| Total reseau | 18,500 | 6.9 | 5.9 | 1.0 | 1.5 | 6.3 |
|3|To Place de | | | | | | |
| | la Concorde | 9,980 | 7.0 | 6.43 | 0.57 | 0.75 | 2.16 |
|4|Total reseau | 18,500 | 6.7 | 5.28 | 0.88 | 1.32 | 5.5 |
|5|Northern reseau | | | | | | |
| | to Rue de Belle-| | | | | | |
| | ville. | 1,530 | 6.0 | 5.0 | 1.0 | 0.6 | 2.3 |
|6|To the Rue des | | | | | | |
| | Pyrenees. | 600 | 6.1 | 3.7 | 2.4 | 0.56 | 2.2 |
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These trials refer to the mains running from the St. Fargeau station
to the Place de la Concorde, a length of 9.142 kilometers; to the
whole system of mains, 16.5 kilometers; to the northern mains running
from St. Fargeau to the Rue de Belleville, 1.4 kilometers; and from
St. Fargeau to the Rue des Pyrenees, 6.5 kilometers. It will be seen
from the figures given in the table that the actual loss is small, and
it is stated that this is due chiefly to the elastic joint employed
throughout the system, excepting in the Rue de Belleville, where rigid
couplings are used, and continual trouble is experienced from loss by
leakage. In all cases the losses given are the maximum, which only
occur under the most unfavorable conditions.
It was found, during the first, second, and fourth tests, that
considerable leakage occurred between the St. Fargeau central station
and the Rue de Belleville. During the trials two and four, an
uncertain amount of loss occurred from the consumption of air required
to work the pneumatic clocks, and also motors in the circuit, that
could not be stopped. The tests two and four include all losses in the
service pipes, as well as the mains.
The production of compressed air at the central station is assumed at
30,000 cubic feet per hour (atmospheric pressure), and in all cases
the loss in the mains is taken as a percentage of the total
production.
The losses due to resistance in the mains were also examined with
great care, over independent sections, as well as through the complete
_réseau_. During the early part of these trials, an unusual and
excessive loss was recorded, the cause of which could not be at first
ascertained. At intervals along these mains are placed a number of
water reservoirs which receive the water injected into the mains; in
addition to these the direct flow of the air is interrupted by
numerous siphons, the stop valves to branches, etc. Investigation
showed that the presence of these reservoirs created considerable
resistance on account of an increased and subsequently reduced
section. The exact loss from this cause was, therefore, carefully
measured, as well as the losses existing in the mains not so
interrupted. The results show that the loss by expansion at one
reservoir, when the speed of the air flow was 23 ft. per second, was
equal to 0.15 atmosphere; with a speed of 29 ft. 6 in. per second, it
amounted to 0.2 atmosphere.
Therefore, the presence of five such reservoirs would cause a loss in
pressure equal to one atmosphere. This very undesirable arrangement is
not repeated in the new system, the sumphs being connected in such a
way as not to modify the section of the tube, nor consequently the
pressure of the air. The presence of the siphons and stop valves did
not seem to affect the pressure to any measurable extent. The
following table contains a list of the more important mains tested,
and it may be mentioned that the resistance, due to the reservoirs,
was at first partially included. The trials were carried out while the
mains were not being drawn upon by subscribers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| |
Section of Mains Tested. | Length. |No. of
| |Tests.
| |
---------------------------------------------------+------------+------
| yards. |
From the central station to the end of reseau and | |
back to central station by return circuit | 18,100 | 7
From the central station to the Rue Fontaine au |\ 14,600 |/ 3
Roi |/ 9,900 |\ 4
From the central station to the Rue de la | |
Charonne | 9,490 | 5
From the Rue de la Charonne to Fontaine au | |
Roi | 4,770 | 3
From the central station to the Avenue de la | |
Republique | 1,860 | 8
Various trials on different lengths of mains |770 to 8,000| 11
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the whole system of 16.5 kilometers, which was also tested when
no air was being taken off, there were four reservoirs of considerable
size, and which offered a large resistance with a corresponding loss
of pressure; on the line there were also 23 siphons and 42 stop
valves.
These trials were repeated several times to secure accuracy, and the
speed of the air was brought to 49 ft. a second. The results obtained
in one of these trials may be taken as an example. The main between
the Rue St. Fargeau and the Fontaine au Roi, on which there are no
collecting reservoirs, but three siphons and eight stop valves, gave,
with an average speed of 21 ft. 3 in., a loss in pressure of 0.05
atmosphere for each kilometer of main.
From these experiments it would appear that, assuming a speed of 21
ft. per second, a loss in pressure of one atmosphere would correspond
to a distance of 20 kilometers; that is to say, a central station
could extend its mains on all sides with a radius of 20 kilometers,
and the motors at the ends of the lines would receive the air at a
pressure 15 lb. less than at the central station. Professor Riedler
states that as an actually measured result, the velocity of the air
through the mains of the St. Fargeau system is 19 ft. 8 in. per
second, and that the loss in pressure per kilometer is 0.07
atmosphere. From this it follows that including the resistances due to
the four reservoirs, and other obstructions actually existing, an
allowance of one atmosphere loss on a 14 kilometer radius is ample. By
increasing the initial pressure of the air, much better results can be
obtained, and future attention in practice should be devoted to this
point. The amount of work required to compress air does not increase
in the same ratio as the pressure, and for this reason considerable
economy can be effected at the first stage, and the loss in the mains
will be reduced.
Passing to another point of the same subject, Professor Riedler
considers the best dimensions that should be given to the mains.
Resistance decreases with an increase in the diameter of these and in
direct ratio to their diameter; for this reason--still assuming a
pressure corresponding to a velocity of 20 ft. per second--with a fall
of one atmosphere, a length of 40 kilometers could be succesfully
worked.
The mains of the new _réseau_ for the Quai de la Gare station are
19.69 in. in diameter; they are built up of steel plates riveted, and
this Professor Riedler considers to have been a serious error on
account of the extra resistance offered by the large number of rivet
heads.
The following may be taken as a brief summary of Professor Riedler's
conclusions: Recent improvements in central station practice have
resulted in an increased efficiency of about 30 per cent. in the
compressors, but this benefit can only be realized when the new
station is in operation. That the small and very imperfect air engines
in use on the system give an efficiency of 50 per cent., while with
ordinary steam engines driven by air an efficiency of 80 per cent. can
be reached with a very small expenditure of fuel for heating the air
before admitting it into the motor. That special attention should be
given to the improvement of air engines, and that with increased
initial pressures at the central station the distance of the
transmission can be very considerably augmented. Finally, Professor
Riedler claims that power can be transmitted by compressed air more
conveniently and more economically than by any other means.
* * * * *
[Continued from SUPPLEMENT, No. 802, page 12810.]
THE BUILDERS OF THE STEAM ENGINE--THE FOUNDERS OF MODERN INDUSTRIES
AND NATIONS.[1]
[Footnote 1: An address delivered at the Centennial Celebration of the
American Patent System, Washington, April, 1891.]
By Dr. R.H. THURSTON, Director of Sibley College, Cornell University.
Papin, Worcester, Savery, were the authors of the period of
application of the power of steam to useful work in our later days.
The world was, in their time, just waking into a new life under the
stimulus of a new freedom that, from the time of Shakespeare, of
Newton, and of Gilbert, the physicist, has steadily become wider,
higher, and more fruitful year by year. All the modern sciences and
all the modern arts had their reawakening with the seventeenth
century. Every aspect of freedom for humanity came into view in those
days of a new birth. Both the possibility of the introduction of new
sciences and of new arts and the power of utilizing all new
intellectual and physical forces came together. The steam engine could
not earlier have taken form, and, taking form, it could not have
promoted the advance of civilization in the earlier centuries. The
invention becoming possible of development and application, the
promotion of the arts and of all forms of human activity became a
possible consequence of its final successful introduction into the
rude arts that it was to so effectively promote and improve.
But the work of these inventors was in itself but little more
important than that of the Greek inventor of the steam ælopile, for
each brought forward a machine which was, from a business point of
view, utterly impracticable, and which, in each case, only served to
show that a better device might prove useful and lead the way to its
introduction. The merit of the inventors of the eighteenth century was
that they were _able_ to lead the way, to point out the path to
success, to furnish evidence of the value of the coming, crowning
invention. The "fire engines," as they were then called, of these now
famous men were merely contrivances by the use of which the pressure
of confined steam of high tension could be brought to act on the
surface of a mass of confined water, forcing it downward into pipes
through which it was led off and upward to a higher level; and thus a
mine could be drained, ineffectively and expensively to be sure, but
vastly more satisfactorily than by the animal power of the time. The
machine of Savery was the best of all; but that was only a somewhat
improved and manageable rearrangement of the engines of Papin and
Worcester. And, after all, Papin, the greatest man of science perhaps
of his time, died in poverty; Worcester languished in prison his whole
life, and the later efforts of his widow brought nothing by way of a
return for his invention; nor did either they or their successor,
Morland, make the introduction of the engine either general or
remunerative.
Savery, coming on the stage at more nearly the right time to seize
upon an opportunity, gained more than either of his predecessors; but
we have no evidence that he ever acquired any large compensation or
met with any remarkable business success in the introduction of the
rude engine which bore his name; nor did Desaguliers, the great
philosopher, or even Smeaton, the great engineer, of the later years
of that century, make any great success of it. It was reserved for
Watt to reap the harvest. But, though he so effectively reaped where
his predecessors had sown, Watt is not the greatest of the inventors
of the steam engine, if we rate his standing by the magnitude of the
improvement which marked his reconstruction of the engine.
It was NEWCOMEN who made the modern steam engine.
When Newcomen came forward the labors of Worcester in Great Britain
had sufficed to attract the attention of all intelligent men to the
character of the problem to be solved, and to convince them of its
importance and promise. The work of Savery had shown the
practicability of the solution of the problem, both in mechanics and
finance. He succeeded, though under great disadvantages and
comparatively inefficiently. Once the task had been performed, though
ever so rudely, the rest came easily and promptly. The defects of the
Savery system were at once recognized; its great wastes of heat and of
steam were noted, and the fact that they were inherent in the system
itself was perceived. A complete change of type of machine was
obviously requisite; it was this which constituted the greatest
invention in the whole history of the steam engine, from Hero's time
to our own; and to Newcomen we owe more than to any other man who ever
lived, the value of the invention itself being considered, and the
importance of the services of its introducer being left out of
consideration. No such complete and vital improvement and modification
of the machine has ever been effected by any other man, Watt and
Corliss not excepted. Newcomen and his comrade Calley--we do not know
how the honors should be divided--produced the modern steam engine.
Its predecessor, the Savery engine, had been a mere steam "squirt."
Newcomen constructed an engine. Savery built a simple combination of
cylindrical or ellipsoidal vessels which wastefully and at once
performed all the several offices of engine, pump, condenser, and
boiler; Newcomen divided the several elements among as many parts,
each especially adapted to the performance of its task in the most
effective manner--the condenser excepted; for that was Watt's
principal invention--and thus produced the first steam engine in the
modern sense of that term.
It was Newcomen, not Watt, who gave us the train of mechanism that we
now call the steam engine. It is to Newcomen, rather than Watt, that
we owe the highest honors as an inventor in this series of the most
important of all the products of the inventive genius of mankind.
Newcomen brought into existence a new, the modern, type of engine, and
effected the greatest revolution that has been recorded in the history
of the arts. Without Newcomen, there might have been no Watt; without
Watt, there very possibly may not even yet have been brought into
existence that giant of our time, whose mighty powers are employed
more effectively than ever those of Aladdin's genii, in building
palaces, in transporting men and material, in doing the work of the
whole world; promoting the welfare of the race, in a single century,
more than had all the forces of matter and mind together in the whole
previous history of the world. Newcomen laid down a foundation beneath
our whole economic system, out of sight, almost, but the essential
base, nevertheless, on which Watt and his successors have carried up
the great superstructure which seems to us to-day so imposing; which
is so tremendous in magnitude, importance, and result. If to any one
man could be assigned the credit, it is Newcomen who is to be
considered the inventor of the steam engine.
James Watt, indisputably the great inventor that he was, found the
steam engine ready to his hand, applied himself to its improvement,
and made it substantially what it is to-day. His most important work,
the most unique service performed by him, was, however, that of its
adaptation and introduction to do the work of the world. James Watt
was the inaugurator of the era of refinement of the machine already
invented, and the greatest of its builders and distributors. His
inventions were all directed to the improvement of its details, and
his labors to its introduction and its application to the myriad tasks
awaiting it. By the hands of Watt it was made to pump water, to spin,
to weave, to drive every mill; and he it was who gave it the form
demanded by Stephenson, by Fulton, by the whole industrial world, for
use on railway and steamboat, and in mill and factory, throughout the
civilized countries of the globe. It was this great mechanic who
showed how it might be made to do its work with least expense, with
highest efficiency, with greatest regularity, with utmost
concentration of power.
The grand secret of his success was historical and economic, as much
as scientific and mechanical. He brought out his inventions just when
the world was economically and historically ready for them. The age of
authority was past, that of freedom was come; the period of political
and ecclesiastical tyranny was gone by, and that of the spontaneous
development of man was arrived. The great invention was offered to a
world ready and needing it, and, more than all, competent, for the
first time in history, to make and use it.
James Watt was himself a product of the modern scientific spirit. He
was a man so constituted mentally that he could apply scientific
methods to problems which his logical and clairvoyant mind could
readily and exactly formulate the instant he was led to their
consideration in the natural course of his progress. He was the ideal
great inventor and mechanic. With inventive genius he combined strong
common sense--not always a quality distinguishing the inventor--clear
perception, breadth of view, and scientific method and spirit in the
treatment of every question. His natural talent was re-enforced by an
experience and an environment which led him to develop these ways and
this mental habit. His trade was that of an instrument maker, his
position was that of custodian and repairer of the apparatus of
Glasgow University. He had for his daily companions and stimulus the
great men and ozonized atmosphere of that famous institution. He kept
pace with advancing science, and was imbued, both naturally and
through contact with its promoters, with that ambition and those
aspirations which are the life element of all progress, whether
scientific or other. He was aware of the nature of the problems
seeking solution at the time, and familiar with the state of his own
art and that of the great mechanicians about him. Everything was
favorable to his progress, so soon as he should be given an
opportunity to take a step in advance and to come into sight at the
front. The man and the time were both ready, and all conditions,
internal and external, social and personal, were favorable to his
development.
The invention upon which Watt was to improve was at his hand. A word
in regard to its status at the moment will throw some light upon that
of Watt and his creation. Newcomen had, as we have seen, produced the
modern type of steam engine as an original and wholly novel invention.
But this machine, marvelous as an advance upon pre-existing forms of
the steam engine, was still, as seen in the light of recent knowledge
and experience, exceedingly defective. The purpose of a steam engine
is to convert into usefully applicable power the hidden energy of
fuel, stored ages ago in the earth, by transformation, through the
action of vegetation, from the original form, the heat of the sun,
into an available form for reconversion, through thermodynamic
operations. In this process of reconversion, whatever the nature of
the machine used in the operation, there are invariably wastes, both
of heat required for conversion into power and of the power thus
produced. That machine which effects the most complete transmutation
of the heat supplied it into mechanical power, which wastes the least
amount of heat supplied and of power produced, is the best engine, and
constitutes an advance over every other.
It was this reduction of wastes that made the Newcomen engine so much
superior to that of Savery. The latter was by far the simpler and less
costly construction; but its enormous losses, both of heat and of
power, mainly the former, however, made it an extravagant expenditure
of money to buy and use it. The Newcomen engine, costly and cumbrous,
comparatively, nevertheless wasted so much less heat and steam and
fuel that no one could afford to buy the cheaper machine. Before
considering what Watt accomplished, we may find it profitable to
examine into the nature of the wastes which characterized this later
and better machine on which he effected his improvements.
The Newcomen engine consisted of a steam boiler, a steam cylinder, a
beam and a set of pumps. By making the boiler do its work separately,
the engine acting independently, and the pumps as a detached portion
of the mechanism, this inventor had reduced to an enormous extent
those wastes of heat and of steam and of fuel which were unavoidable
in the older machines in which all these parts were represented by a
single vessel, or by two at most, in each element. In the Savery
engine, the steam entering first heated up the interior of the working
vessel to its own temperature, and held it at that temperature in
spite of the cooling influence of the water present. This consumed
large quantities of heat. It then was compelled to surrender probably
much greater quantities still to the water itself, coming in direct
contact as it did with its surface. If the water was agitated, either
by the currents produced during its ingress or by the impact of the
steam entering the vessel, this heating action penetrated to
considerable depths and perhaps even warmed the whole mass very far
above its initial temperature. This constituted another and a very
serious loss. Then, again, as the water was gradually driven out of
the containing vessel by the steam pressing on its surface, new
portions of the vessel and new masses of water were continually
brought in contact with the hot steam, taking its full temperature,
and thus, often, probably, finally heating the whole mass of the
forcing vessel, and a large proportion of the water as well, up to the
temperature, approximately at least, of the steam itself. Thus in many
instances, if not always, vastly more heat and steam were wasted, in
this undesirable heating of water and forcing vessel, than were
usefully employed in the legitimate work of raising the water to a
higher level. In fact, in some cases in which these quantities were
measured, the wastes were one hundred times as much as the work done.
One per cent. of the heat supplied did the work; while ninety-nine per
cent. was thrown away. One dollar or one shilling expended for fuel to
do the work was accompanied by an expenditure of ninety-nine dollars
or shillings thrown away, because of the imperfections of the system
and machine. The whole history of the development of the steam engine
has been one of gradual reduction of these wastes; until to-day, our
best engines only compel us to spend five dollars for wastes to each
dollar paid out for useful work. A business man would think that amply
extravagant, however, and the man of science is continually seeking
methods of evading these losses, a large proportion of which are now
apparently unavoidable in heat engines, by finding some new system of
heat and energy transformation.
Watt was the instrument maker and repairer at Glasgow University in
the year 1763. His companions were, among others, the professors of
natural philosophy and of mathematics in the university. Their
conversation and their frequent presentation of practical and
scientific questions and problems stimulated his naturally inquiring
and inventive mind to the pursuit of a thousand interesting and
promising schemes for the improvement of existing methods and
machinery. Dr. Robison, then a student, suggested the invention of a
steam carriage for use on common roads, and the young mechanician at
once began experiments that, resulting in nothing at the time, were
nevertheless continued, in one or another form, until all modern
applications of steam came into view. Dr. Black taught Watt chemistry,
then a newly constructed science, and led him on to the discovery,
finally made by them independently, of the fact and the magnitude of
the latent heat of steam; the discovery coming of a series of
scientifically planned and accurately conducted investigations, such
as the man of science of to-day would deem creditable. The treatises
of Desaguliers and others on physics gave Watt a knowledge of that
domain of natural phenomena which stood him in good stead later, when
he attempted to apply its principles to the reduction of the wastes of
the steam engine.
It was while at Glasgow University, working under such influences and
in such an atmosphere of intellectual activity, that the accident of
the Newcomen model engine needing repair brought to the mind of Watt
the opportunity which, availed of at once, made him famous and gave
the world its greatest aid, its most powerful servant. The observing
mind of the great mechanic immediately noted its defects, sought their
causes, found their remedy. He discovered, at once, that the quantity
of steam entering the cylinder of the little engine has four times the
volume of the cylinder receiving it: in other words, three-fourths of
that steam must be condensed immediately on entrance. This meant,
evidently, that only one-fourth of the steam supplied was utilized,
and even then inefficiently, in doing its work. The reason of this was
as easily seen, immediately the fact was revealed. As Watt himself
expressed it, the causes of this loss, causes which would obviously be
exaggerated in a small engine, were: "First, the dissipation of heat
by the cylinder itself, which was of brass and both a good conductor
and a good radiator. Secondly, the loss of heat consequent upon the
necessity of cooling down the cylinder at every stroke in producing
the vacuum. Thirdly, the loss of power due to the pressure of vapor
beneath the piston, which was a consequence of the imperfect method of
condensation." This much determined, the next step looked toward the
confirmation of his conclusions and the remedy of the defects.
To meet the first difficulty he made a cylinder of wood, soaked in oil
and baked, a non-conducting and non-radiating material. Then he was
able to determine with some accuracy the quantities of steam and
injection water used in the engine; and a comparison with the original
cylinder and its operation showed that not only four times the
quantity of steam, but also four times the amount of injection water
was used as was necessary, assuming wastes checked. Further scientific
research on the part of Watt gave him measures of specific heats of
the metals and of wood, the specific volumes of steam at various
working pressures, the evaporative efficiency of boilers, the
pressures and temperatures of steam in the boiler under specified
conditions, the quantities of steam and of water required for the
operation of his little condensing engine.
Then came his enunciation of the grand principle of economy in the
construction and operation of the steam engine: "Keep the cylinder as
hot as the steam which enters it," as he expressed it. This was Watt's
guiding principle, as it has been that of all his successors in the
improvement of the economic performance of the steam engine and of all
other heat engines. The great source of waste is the dispersion of
heat, uselessly, which should be applied to the production of work by
its transformation, thermodynamically, into the latter form of energy.
The second form of waste is that of power thus produced in the
unprofitable work of moving the parts of the engine itself; and the
third is that of heat by transfer, without transformation, by
conduction and radiation to surrounding bodies. In modern engines, the
latter is but three or five per cent., in the best cases; the second
waste constitutes perhaps ten per cent.; while the first of these
losses amounts very usually to seventy per cent., of which last
one-third or one-fourth is of the kind discovered by Watt, the rest
being the thermodynamic waste incident to all known methods of
operation of heat engines, and apparently unavoidable. In our very
best and largest engines, the waste found by Watt to constitute three
fourths of all heat supplied has been brought down to ten per cent., a
fact which well exemplifies the advances made since his time of
apprenticeship by himself and his successors of this nineteenth
century. The steam engine of to-day, in its most successful operation,
gives us twenty-five times as much power from a pound of coal as did
the engine that the great inventor sought to improve: this is the
magnificent fruit of that one discovery of James Watt, and of
application of the simple principle which he so concisely and clearly
stated.
The method adopted by Watt to secure a remedy, so far as practicable,
of this defect of the older machine was as simple and as perfect as
was the principle which it embodied. He first removed from the
cylinder the prime source of its wastes; providing a separate
condenser, and thus avoiding the repeated chilling of its surfaces by
the cold water used in condensing the steam at exhaust, and also
permitting its strokes to be made with far greater frequency, thus
giving less time for cooling by the influence of the remaining vapors
after condensation. He next went still further, and provided the
cylinder with a closed top, keeping out the air, and a "jacket" of hot
boiler steam to _keep_ it as hot as the steam which entered it. These
were the two great improvements which converted the first real steam
engine into an economical form of heat engine and essentially finished
the work so grandly begun by Newcomen and Calley. These changes gave
us the modern steam engine; and these are Watt's first and greatest,
but by no means only, contributions to the production of the modern
world with all its comforts, its luxuries and its opportunities for
material, intellectual and moral advancement of individual and of
race. His work was to this extent complete in 1765.
But Watt did not stop here. There still remained for him the no less
important and the, in some senses, still more imposing, work of
finding employment for the new servant of mankind and of setting it at
its work of giving the human arm a thousand times greater strength, to
the mind of man uncounted opportunities to promote the advancement of
knowledge, of civilization, of every good of the race. His was still
the task of adapting the new machine to all the purposes of modern
industry. It had been hitherto confined to the task of raising water
from the depths of the mine; it was now to be harnessed to the railway
train; to be made to drive the machinery of the mill, to apply its
marvelous power to the impulsion of the river boat and ocean steamer;
to furnish energy, through endless systems of transfer and use, to
every kind of work that man could devise and should invent. All this
meant the giving of the machine forms as various as the purposes to
which it was to be devoted. It had previously only raised and
depressed a rod; it must now turn a shaft. It had then only operated a
pump; it must now turn a mill, grind our grain, spin our threads,
weave our cloths, drive our shops and factories, supply the powerful
blast of the iron furnace. It must be made to move with the utmost
conceivable regularity, and must, with all this, do its work in the
development of the hidden energy of the fuel, with the greatest
possible economy, through the expansion of its steam. All this was
achieved by James Watt.
The invention of the double-acting engine, in which the impulsion of
the steam is felt both in driving the piston forward and in forcing it
backward, both upward and downward, the application of its force
through crank and fly wheel, the creation of an automatic system of
governing its speed, and the discovery of the economy due to its
complete expansion, were all improvements of the first magnitude, and
of the greatest practical importance; and all these were in rapid
succession brought into existence by the creative mind that had
apparently been brought into the world for the express purpose of
giving to the hand of man this mighty agent, to perfect the mightiest
power that mind of man has yet conceived.
But to do the rest required more than inventive genius and mechanical
skill. It demanded capital and the stored energy of labor and genius
in other fields, directed by the mind of a great "captain of
industry." This came to Watt through Matthew Boulton, a manufacturer
of Birmingham, whose father and ancestors had gradually and
toilsomely, as always, accumulated the property needed for the
prosecution of a great business. The combination of genius and capital
is always an essential to success in such cases; and good fortune, a
Providence, we may well say, brought together the genius and the
capitalist to do their work, hand in hand, of providing the world with
the steam engine. Hand in hand they worked, and all the world to-day,
and the race throughout its future life, must testify gratitude for
the inexpressible obligations under which these two men have placed
them, doing the work of the world.
Boulton & Watt, the capitalist with the inventor, gave the world the
steam engine, finally, in such form and in such numbers that its
permanent establishment as the servant of man was insured. The
capitalist was as essential an element of success as was the inventor,
and, in this instance, as in a thousand others, the race is indebted
to that much-abused friend of the race, the capitalist, for much that
it enjoys of all that it desires. The industry and patience, the skill
and the wisdom required for the accumulation of this energy stored for
future use in great enterprises is as important, as essential, as
inventive power or any other form of genius. Talent and genius must
always aid each other. This firm was established in 1764 and its main
resources, aside from the bank account, were Watt's patent, about
expiring, and Watt's genius, and Boulton's talent as a man of
business. The patent was extended for twenty-four years, the new
inventions of Watt, now beginning to pour from his prolific brain in a
wonderful stream, were also patented, and the whole works were soon
employed upon the construction of engines for which numerous orders
soon began to pour in upon the now prosperous builders. The patent law
established Boulton and Watt and the firm paid back the nation with
handsome usury, giving it unimaginable profits indirectly through its
control of the work of the world and large profits directly through
the business brought them from all parts of the then civilized globe.
There has never, in the history of the world, been a more impressive
illustration of the value to a nation of that generous public policy,
that simply just legislation, which gives to the man of brain control
of the products of his mind. For a hundred years, Great Britain has,
largely through her encouragement of the inventor and her protection
of his mental property by securing the fruits of his labors, in fair
portion, to him, gained the power of dictating to the world and has
gained an advance that cannot be measured. Watt and Arkwright and
Stephenson and Crompton and their ilk, protected by their government
and its patent laws, made their country the peaceful conqueror of the
world. The story of the work of the inventor is a poem of mighty
meaning and of wonderful deeds. The inventor proved himself a mightier
magician than ever the world had seen.
"A creature he called to wait on his will,
Half iron, half vapor--a dread to behold;
Which evermore panted, and evermore rolled,
And uttered his words a millionfold."
Such was the outcome of this grand modern "trust," a combination of
the wisest legislation, the most brilliant invention, and the most
wisely applied capital. There are "trusts" of which the outcome is
most beneficent.
Since the days of Watt, the improvement of the steam engine and the
work of inventors has been confined to matters of detail. All the
fundamental principles were developed by Watt and his predecessors and
contemporaries and it only was left to his successors to find the best
ways of carrying them into effect. But these matters of detail have
been found to involve opportunities to make enormous strides in the
direction of securing improved efficiency of the machine. The further
application of the principle which led Watt to his greatest
inventions; of the principle, keep the cylinder as hot as the steam
which enters it, of that which he enunciated relative to the advantage
of expanding steam, and of that affecting the regulation of the
machine; have reduced the costs of steam and of fuel to a small
fraction of their earlier magnitude. One ton of engine to-day does the
work of eight or ten in the time of Watt: one pound of fuel or of
steam gives to-day ten times the power then obtained from it. A
steamship now crosses the Atlantic in one-eighth the time required by
the famous "liner" of the "Black Ball Line." The wastes of the engine
have been brought down from above eighty per cent. to eight; and a
half-ounce of fuel on board ship will now transport a ton of cargo
over a mile of ocean.
FREDERICK E. SICKELS gave us the first practicable form of expansion
gear in 1841; GEORGE H. CORLISS gave a new type of engine of marvelous
perfection and economy in 1849; Noble T. Green, Wm. Wright and many
less well known but no less meritorious inventors have since done
their part in the transformation of the old engine of Watt into the
modern wonder of concentrated and economical power, and marvel of
accurate and beautiful design and workmanship. The "trip cut-off,"
with reduced clearances, increased boiler pressure, higher rates of
expansion, accelerated speeds of engine, better construction in all
respects, as well as improved design, have enabled us to avail
ourselves to the utmost of the principles of Watt, and our mills, our
railways, our steamers and our fields, even, have gained almost as
extraordinarily by these advances, since the days of the great
inventor, as through his immediate labors.
With the introduction of the new form of older energy, electricity,
with the reduction of the lightning into thraldom, has now come a new
impulse affecting all the industries. Through its mysterious, its
still unknown action, steam now reaches out far from its own place,
driving the electric car along miles of rail; giving light throughout
all the country about it, turning night into day, and repressing crime
while encouraging legitimate labor, reaching into distant chambers and
every little workshop, to offer its powerful aid in all the
distributed work of cities. Without the steam engine there would be
little work available for electricity, but the appearance of this, the
latest and most useful handmaid of steam, has given the engine work to
do in an uncounted number of new fields, has called in the inventor
once more to adapt steam to its new work. The "high-speed engine" is
the latest form of the universal helper. And such has been the
readiness and the intelligence of the contemporary inventor that we
now have engines capable of turning their shafts three hundred
rotations a minute and without a perceptible variation of velocity,
whatever the change of load or the suddenness with which it is varied.
In the days of Watt a fluctuation of five per cent. in speed was
thought wonderfully small; in those of Corliss, the variation was
restricted to two per cent. and we wondered at this unanticipated
success. To-day, thanks to Porter and Allen, to Hartnell, to Hoadley,
to Sims, to Thomson, to Sweet, to Ide, and to Ball, we have seen the
speed fluctuation restricted to even less than one per cent. of its
normal average.
The inventors of the steam engine are, through their representatives
of to-day, according to the statisticians, doing the equivalent of
twelve times the work of a horse, for every man, woman and child on
the globe. We have not less, probably, than a half million of miles of
railway, transporting something over 150,000,000,000 of tons a mile a
year. A horse is reckoned to haul a ton weight about six and a half
miles, day by day, by the year together. In the United States, it is
reckoned that the steam engine, on the railways alone, hauls a
thousand tons one mile, for every inhabitant of the country, every
year, or, if it is preferred to so state it, a ton a thousand miles.
This is the way in which the East and the West are, by the inventors
of the steam engine, enabled to help each other. This costs about $10
each individual; it would require some 25 millions of horses to do the
work, and would cost about $1,000 a family, which is more than twice
the average family earnings.
Dr. Strong, in that remarkable book, "Our Country," says: "One man, by
the aid of steam, is able to do the work which required two hundred
and fifty men at the beginning of the century. The machinery of
Massachusetts alone represents the labor of more than 100,000,000 men,
as if one-half of all the workmen of the globe had engaged in her
service." And again: "Some thirty years ago, the power of machinery in
the mills of Great Britain was estimated to be equal to 600,000,000
men, or more than all the adults, male and female, of all mankind."
Mr. Gladstone estimated that the aggregation of wealth on the globe
during the whole period from the birth of Christ to that of Watt was
equaled by the production in twenty years, at the middle of this
century, with the aid of machinery driven by the fruit of the brain of
the inventors of the steam engine. We may probably now safely estimate
the former quantity as rivaled in less than five years, while, since
the birth of Watt and his engine, and the production of the spinning
mule, the power loom, the cotton gin and our own patent system and its
marvelous mechanism, all events of a century ago, we may estimate that
they have, together, accomplished more in this period which we now
celebrate than could have been done in a millenium of milleniums
without these now subjected genii. But the power behind all these
curious inventions and their work is that of steam. The steam engine
even supplies power to the telegraph and transports words and thought
as well as cotton bales and coal.
And now what has this combination of legislation for private
protection and public good, of a genius producing great inventions,
and of the accumulated capital of earlier years, brought about?
It has given us the best fruits of science in permanent possession.
The study of science invariably aids, in a thousand ways, the progress
of mankind. It gives us new conceptions of nature and of the
possibilities of art; it promotes right ways of work and of study; it
teaches the inventor and the discoverer how most surely and promptly
to gain their several ends, it gives the world the results of all
acquired knowledge in concrete form. This one instance which we are
now especially interested in contemplating has performed more
wonderful miracles than ever Aladdin's genii attempted. One man, with
a steam engine at his hand, turns the wheels of a great mill, drives
forty thousand spindles, applies a thousand horse power to daily work
in the spinning of threads, the weaving of cloth, the impulsion of a
steamboat, or the drawing of great masses of hot iron into finest
wire. This puny creature, his mind in his finger tips, exerts the
power of ten thousand men, working with muscle alone, and, aided by a
handful of women, boys and girls, clothes a city. A half dozen men in
the engine room of an ocean steamer, with a hundred strong laborers in
the boiler room and on deck, transports colonies and makes new
nations, brings separated peoples together, unites countries on
opposite sides of the globe, brings about easy exchanges between pole
and equator. One man on the footboard of the locomotive, one man
shoveling into the furnaces the black powder that incloses the energy
stored in early geological ages, a half dozen men mounted on the long
train of following vehicles, combine to bring to the mill girl in
Massachusetts, the miner in Pennsylvania, the sewing woman, and the
wealthy merchant, her neighbor in New York, the flour made in
Minnesota from the grain harvested a few weeks earlier in Dakota. All
the world is served faithfully and efficiently by this unimaginable
power, this product of the brain of the inventor, protected by the
law, stimulated and aided by the capital that it has itself almost
alone produced.
And thus have the inventors of the steam engine set in motion and
placed at the disposal of mankind for every form of useful work all
the great forces of nature; thus Hero of Alexandria touched the then
concealed spring which called all the genii of earth, fire, water and
air to do the bidding of the race. Thus Papin, Worcester, Newcomen,
Watt, and Corliss and others of our own contemporaries, have applied
the genii to their task of leveling mountains, traversing seas,
continents, and the depths of the earth, building ships, locomotives,
hamlets and cities, cottages and palaces, turning the spindle,
operating the loom, and setting motion and giving energy to every
machine, doing the work of thousands of millions of men, converting
barbarism into civilization, giving necessaries of life in profusion,
comforts in plenty, and luxuries in superabundance.
Aiding and working hand in hand with those other genii of progress,
the inventors of the printing press and of the telegraph, the
telephone, and the electric railway, of the modern system of textile
manufactures, of iron and steel making, of the mowing machine and the
harvester, they have compressed into two centuries the progress of a
millennium, destitute of their aid. Every step taken under their
stimulus, and with their help, is a step toward a higher life for all,
intellectually and morally as well as physically; every advance in the
improvement of their work is a gain to every man, woman, and child;
every improvement of the steam engine is a help to the whole world.
This progress makes the day of the extinction of the system now
grinding the populations of the earth into the ground, the day of the
abolition of armies and the restoration to the people of that freedom
which characterized the times of the patriarchs, and of the
restoration of the rights of the citizen to his own time and strength
and producing power, perceptibly nearer.
When this final revolution shall have been accomplished, and when all
the world has settled down to the steady and undisturbed work of
production by daily and regular labor, aided by the genii of steam, of
electricity, of all nature, combined for good, the results of the
intellectual activity of the inventors of the steam engine will be
fully seen. Then no monument will be required to keep green the memory
of Watt, Corliss, or any other of these great men, but it will be said
of them, as of Sir Christopher Wren in the epitaph in St. Paul's:
"Seek you a monument, look about you!" Every wreath of steam rising to
the heavens from factory, mill or workshop will be a reminder of Hero
of Alexandria, every mine will possess a memorial to Papin, Worcester
and Savery; every steamship will bring into grateful memory Fitch and
Stevens, and Bell and Fulton; thousands of locomotives, crossing the
continents, will perpetuate the thought of the Stephensons and their
colleagues in the introduction of the railway; the hum of millions of
spindles and the music of the electric wire will tell of the work of
Corliss and his contemporaries and successors who made these things
possible, and all kingdoms and races, all nations, will revere the
name of James Watt, the genius to whom the world is most indebted for
the beginnings of all this later and grander civilization which has
converted the slow progress of earlier centuries into the meteor-like
advance of to-day toward a future as grand and as mighty and as noble
as humanity shall choose to make it.
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