Trouble with the Evan Leigh Engine. Gear Patterns from the Whitworth
Works. First Order for a Governor. Introduction of the Governor into
Cotton Mills. Invention of my Condenser. Failure of Ormerod, Grierson &
Co.
The Evan Leigh engine was not quite ready to be started when I left
England. On my return I found an unexpected trouble and quite an
excitement. The engine had been started during my absence, and ran all
right, but it was found almost impossible to supply the boilers with
water. Two injectors were required, and two men feeding the furnaces,
and everybody was agreed that the fault lay with the engine. The
boilers were a pair of Harrison boilers, from which great results had
been expected. These were formed of cast-iron globes, 8 inches internal
diameter, with 3-inch necks, held together by bolts running through a
string of these globes. They were an American invention, and naturally
Mr. Luders (who was introducing them in England) and I fraternized. I
felt greatly disappointed. I did not then see Mr. Leigh, but had the
pleasure of an interview with his son. This young gentleman denounced
me in good Saxon terms as a fraud and an impostor, and assured me that
he would see to it that I never sold another engine in England. He
knew that the boilers were all right. His friend Mr. Hetherington, an
extensive manufacturer of spinning and weaving machinery, and who had
taken the agency to sell these boilers, had had one working for a long
time in company with a Lancashire boiler, and there was no difference
in their performance. He finished by informing me that the engine would
be put out as quickly as they could get another.
I put an indicator on the engine, and show here the diagrams it took. I
could not see that much fault was to be found with those diagrams. Old
Mr. Leigh, after looking at them, said nothing, but he did something.
He went to an old boiler-yard and bought a second-hand Lancashire
boiler, had it carted into his yard and set under an improvised shed
alongside his boiler-house, and in two or three days it was supplying
the steam for my engine, and all difficulties had vanished. The
consumption of steam and coal fell to just what it had been calculated
that it should be, and everybody felt happy, except my friend Mr.
Luders, who, notwithstanding his grievous disappointment, had never
gone back on me, and young Mr. Leigh, who owed me an apology which he
was not manly enough to render. Repeated efforts were tried to make the
Harrison boilers answer, but the result was always the same, and they
were abandoned.
[Illustration: Diagrams from Engine of Evan Leigh, Son & Co. Sixteen
Pounds to the Inch.]
And, after all, the fault was largely mine. I did not think of it
till long afterwards, and it did not occur to anybody else, not even
to those most deeply interested in the boiler. My surface condenser
was the cause of all the trouble, and that was why I have to this day
deeply regretted having put it in. The oil used in the cylinder was
all sent into the boilers, and accumulated there. It saponified and
formed a foam which filled the whole boiler and caused the water to be
worked over with the steam as fast as it could be fed in. I have always
wondered why the engine, being vertical, should not have exhibited any
sign of the water working through it at the upper end of the cylinder.
The explanation after all appears simple. The water on entering the
steam chest mostly fell to the bottom and little passed through the
upper ports. The trouble from oil was not felt at all in the Lancashire
boiler. This, I suppose, was due to three causes. The latter held a far
greater body of water, had a much larger extent of evaporating surface,
and far greater steam capacity. I was always sorry that I did not give
the Harrison boiler the better chance it would have had with a jet
condenser.
In this pair of diagrams, which are copied from the catalogue of
Ormerod, Grierson & Co., the low steam pressure, 29 pounds above the
atmosphere, will be observed. This was about the pressure commonly
carried. The pressure in the exhibition boilers, 75 pounds, was
exhibited by Mr. John Hick, of Bolton, as a marked advance on the
existing practice.
In preparing for the governor manufacture I had my first revelation of
the utter emptiness of the Whitworth Works. Iron gear patterns were
required, duplicates of those which had been cut for me at home by
Mr. Pratt. The blanks for these gears were turned as soon as possible
after I reached Manchester, and sent to the Whitworth Works to be cut.
It seemed as though we should never get them. Finally, after repeated
urging, the patterns came. I was sent for to come into the shop and
see them. They were in the hands of the best fitter we had, who, by
the way, was a Swedenborgian preacher and preached every Sunday. The
foreman told me he had given them to this man to see if it was possible
to do anything with them, and he thought I ought to see them before he
set about it. I could hardly believe my eyes. There was no truth about
them. The spaces and the teeth differed so much that the same tooth
would be too small for some spaces and could not be wedged into others;
some would be too thick or too thin at one end. They were all alike
bad, and presented all kinds of badness. It was finally concluded to
make the best of them, and this careful man worked on them more than
two days to make them passable.
The first governor order that was booked was the only case that ever
beat me. I went to see the engine. It was a condensing beam-engine of
good size, made by Ormerod, Grierson & Co. to maintain the vacuum in a
tube connecting two telegraph offices in Manchester, and had been built
to the plans and specifications of the telegraph company’s engineer.
The engine had literally nothing to do. A little steam air-pump that
two men could have lifted and set on a bench would have been just
suitable for the work. They could not carry low enough pressure nor run
slowly enough. On inspection I reported that we should have nothing to
do with it.
The custom of making whatever customers order and taking no
responsibility was first illustrated to me in this curious way. I saw a
queer-looking boiler being finished in the boiler-shop. In reply to my
question the foreman told me they were making it for a cotton-spinner,
according to a plan of his own. It consisted of two boilers, one within
the other. The owner’s purpose was to carry the ordinary steam pressure
in the outer boiler, and a pressure twice as great in the inner one,
when the inner boiler would have to suffer the stress of only one half
the pressure it was carrying.
I asked the superintendent afterwards why they did not tell that man
that he could not maintain steam at two different temperatures on the
opposite sides of the same sheets. He replied: “Because we do not find
it profitable to quarrel with our customers. That is his idea. If we
had told him there was nothing in it, he would not have believed us,
but would have got his boiler made somewhere else.”
Perhaps the most curious experience I ever had was that of getting
the governor into cotton-mills. There was a vast field all around us,
and we looked for plenty of orders. This was the reception I met with
every time. After listening to the winning story I had to tell, the
cotton lord would wind up with this question: “Well, sir, have you got
a governor in a large cotton-mill?” After my answer in the negative
I was bowed out. I early got an order from Titus Salt & Son, of
Saltaire, for two large governors but these did not weigh at all with
a cotton-spinner; they made alpaca goods.
The way the governor was finally got into cotton-mills, where
afterwards its use became general, was the most curious part. A mill
in the city of Manchester was troubled by having its governor fly in
pieces once in a while. After one of these experiences the owners
thought that they might cure the difficulty by getting one of my
governors. That flew in pieces in a week. I went to see the engine.
The cause of all the trouble appeared at a glance. The fly-wheel was
on the second-motion shaft which ran at twice the speed of the main
shaft, and the gearing between them was roaring away enough to deafen
one. The governor was driven by gearing. The vibrations transmitted to
the governor soon tired the arms out. I saw the son of the principal
owner, and explained the cause of the failure of every governor they
had tried, and told him the only remedy, which would be a complete
one, would be to drive the governor by a belt. That, he replied, was
not to be thought of for an instant. I told him he knew himself that a
governor could not endure if driven in any other way, and that I had
hundreds of governors driven by belts, which were entirely reliable in
all cases. “But,” said he, “supposing the belt runs off the pulley.”
“The consequence,” I replied, “cannot be worse than when the governor
flies in pieces.” After wasting considerable time in talk, he said,
“Well, leave it till my father comes home; he is absent for a few
days.” “No,” said I, “if I can’t convince a young man, I shall not try
to convince an old man.” Finally, with every possible stipulation to
make it impossible for the belt to come off, he yielded his assent, and
I had the governor on in short order, lacing the belt myself, to make
sure that it was butt-jointed and laced in the American fashion.
More than three years afterwards, two days before I was to sail for
home, I met this man on High Street, in Manchester. It was during the
Whitsuntide holidays, and the street was almost deserted. He came up to
me, holding out both hands and grasping mine most cordially. “Do you
know,” said he, “that we have increased our product 10 per cent., and
don’t have half as many broken threads as we had before, and _it’s all
that belt_.”
[Illustration: Condenser and Air-pump designed by Mr. Porter.
(Cross-section)]
The tendency towards the horizontal type of engine, in place of the
beam-engine, began to be quite marked in England about that time. This
was favorable to the use of the Allen engine. The only thing that
seemed wanting to its success was a directly connected jet condenser.
No one believed that an air-pump could be made to run successfully at
the speed of 150 double strokes per minute. Yet this had to be done,
or I could not look for any considerable adoption of the high-speed
engine. This subject occupied my mind continually. When I returned
from Oporto, I had thought out the plan of this condenser, and at once
set about the drawings for it. No alteration was ever made from the
first design of the condenser, which I intended to show with the engine
at the coming Paris Exposition in 1867, and which I finally did succeed
in showing there, but under very different and unexpected relations.
The philosophy of this condenser is sufficiently shown in the
accompanying vertical cross-section. A hollow ram, only equal in weight
to the water which it displaced, ran through a stuffing-box at the
front end of the chamber, and was connected with an extension of the
piston-rod of the engine. So the center line of the engine extended
through this single-acting ram, which had the full motion of the
piston. It ran through the middle of a body of water, the surface of
which fell as the ram was withdrawn, and rose as it returned. A quiet
movement of the water was assured by three means: First, the motion of
the ram was controlled by the crank of the engine, and so began and
ceased insensibly. Second, the motion of the ram, of two feet, produced
a rise or fall of the surface of the water of only about one inch.
Third, the end of the ram was pointed, a construction which does not
appear in this sectional view, permitting it to enter and leave the
water at every point gradually. Both the condenser and the hot-well
were located above the chamber in which the ram worked.
The problem was to obtain complete displacement by means of solid
water without any admixture of free air, the expansion of which as the
plunger was withdrawn would reduce the efficiency of the air-pump.
To effect this object the air must be prevented from mingling with
the water, and must be delivered into the hot-well first. This was
accomplished by two means: First, placing the condenser as well as the
hot-well above the air-pump chamber, as already stated, and secondly,
inclining the bottom of the condenser, so that the water would pass
through the inlet valves at the side farthest from, and the air at the
side nearest to, the hot-well. Thus the air remained above the water,
and as the latter rose it sent the air before it quite to the delivery
valves. Pains were taken to avoid any place where air could be
trapped, so it was certain that on every stroke the air would be sent
through the delivery valves first, mingled air and water, if there were
any, next, and the solid water last, insuring perfect displacement.
I have a friend who has often asked me, with a manner showing his
conviction that the question could not be answered, “How can you know
that anything will work until you have tried it?” In this case I _did_
know that this condenser would work at rapid speed before I tried it.
The event proved it, and any engineer could have seen that it must have
worked. The only question in my mind was as to the necessity of the
springs behind the delivery valves. Experiment was needed to settle
that question, which it did in short order. At the speed at which the
engine ran, the light springs improved the vacuum a full pound, showing
that without them these valves did not close promptly.
The following important detail must not be overlooked. The rubber disk
valves were backed by cast-iron plates, which effectually preserved
them from being cut or even marked by the brass gratings. These plates
were made with tubes standing in the middle of them, as shown. These
tubes afforded long guides on the stems, and a projection of them on
the under side held the valves in place without any wear. They also
determined the rise of the valves. The chambers, being long and narrow,
accommodated three inlet and three outlet valves. The jet of water
struck the opposite wall with sufficient force to fill the chamber with
spray.
When the plans for this condenser were completed, and the Evan Leigh
engine had been vindicated, I felt that the success of the high-speed
system was assured, and looked forward to a rapidly growing demand for
the engines. We got out an illustrated catalogue of sizes, in which I
would have put the condenser, but the firm decided that it would be
better to wait for that until it should be on the same footing with the
engine, as an accomplished fact.
Suddenly, like thunder from a clear sky, I received notice that
Ormerod, Grierson & Co. were in difficulties, had stopped payment,
placed their books in the hands of a firm of accountants, and called a
meeting of their creditors, and the works were closed. Some of their
enormous contracts had proved losing ones. I had made such provision in
my contract with them that on their failure my license to them became
void. Otherwise it would have been classed among their assets.