Experience as Member of the Board of Judges At the Philadelphia
Centennial Exhibition.
One day in April I was surprised to receive by mail a commission as
a member of the Board of Judges in Group Twenty of the Philadelphia
International Exhibition. I was at a loss to know how I got it, but
learned afterwards that I had been appointed on the recommendation of
Mr. Holley, who was consulted by the commissioners about the judges
in several groups. The exhibition was opened on May 1, but the judges
were not to assemble until the 24th, and on that day we had quite a
ceremony in the judges’ hall. The American judges were seated at one
side of the hall and rose to receive the foreign judges who filed in
from some place where they had been corralled, while a fine band played
the national airs of all nations that had any airs. After a time spent
in welcoming and responsive addresses, we were marched to a large café
and given luncheon, after which the different groups were organized.
There I had the pleasure of first meeting Mr. James Moore, also
Professor Reuleaux of Berlin and Colonel Petroff of St. Petersburg; and
Emil Brugsch the interesting Egyptian commissioner, also serving as a
judge in our group. I observed that these foreigners used the English
language more accurately than I did. We organized by the election as
president of Horatio Allen, formerly president of the Novelty Iron
Works (then extinct), he being the oldest and the biggest man among
us. Under Mr. Allen’s administration we had a fine illustration of
how not to do anything--of endless preparation and never getting to
work. He had an interminable series of subjects for discussion and
was accustomed to say: “These questions must be all settled before
we can enter upon the discharge of our duties, gentlemen.” This had
the effect upon our foreign judges that they absented themselves from
our meetings. I remember Mr. Moore saying to me: “Porter, if you and I
had had this work to do we would have had it half done by this time.”
Directly after that Mr. Moore resigned, ostensibly pleading want of
time to attend to it, but really disgusted at the waste of time. Our
work was in a state of chaos. The field was very extensive, as it
embraced all exhibits pertaining to steam and water except locomotives.
One morning I came to the meeting with a copy of the catalogue on which
I had divided the exhibits into three classes, lettered A, B, and C:
class A embraced steam-engines and their accessories, class B boilers
and their accessories and class C pumps and their accessories; I had
prefixed these letters to the names of all our exhibits according to
their class. At this meeting, at which I had procured the attendance of
the foreign judges, this classification was unanimously adopted, and
the judges formed themselves into these classes accordingly. Our work
was then undertaken in earnest; it was found to be really too extensive
to be accomplished otherwise.
Mr. Charles E. Emery was appointed a judge to fill the vacant place
made by Mr. Moore’s resignation, and he proved most efficient. As is
well known, medals were not awarded, but brief written reports were
made on those exhibits which were deemed most deserving; these reports
were signed by all the judges.
[Illustration: Professor FRANCIS REULEAUX]
The firm of E. P. Allis & Co. of Milwaukee, exhibited a sawmill.
This exhibit consisted of two large circular saws, each driven by a
horizontal engine. The two engines were united by a common shaft on
the ends of which the cranks were set at right angles with each other.
The center lines of these engines were nearly 20 feet apart; the shaft
carried two belt drums 8 or 10 feet in diameter, one of them near to
the bed of each engine; at the middle of the shaft was a fly-wheel
about 16 feet in diameter. The rim of this fly-wheel was in eight or
ten segments, with an arm attached to the middle of each segment; the
segments were bolted together and the arms were bolted to a hub on
the shaft. The saws were set behind the cylinders, and the belts were
carried from the drums on the shaft past the cylinders to smaller drums
on the saw arbors. On starting these engines the two bearings of the
main shaft heated so badly that the engines had to be stopped. The
gentleman in charge of the exhibit applied to me for advice. I told him
that although his shaft was large it was long, and the weight of the
fly-wheel bent it so much that the two journals ran on the inner edges
of their bottom boxes, which caused the heating. I told him he did not
need the fly-wheel at all; the cranks being quartering, the momentum
of the belt-drums was amply sufficient to maintain uniform motion, and
I advised him to take off the fly-wheel. This he did at once, leaving
only the hub on the shaft; the engines then ran with cold bearings and
uniform motion throughout the exhibition. They had made a cut-off gear
for these engines, but it was found not to suit the purpose and was
taken off. This firm then did a great stroke of business: they came to
the sensible conclusion that they could do a great deal better than
to attempt to work out a new system of engineering for themselves, so
they offered to Mr. Edwin Reynolds, the manager of Mr. Corliss’ works,
and to his head draftsman, inducements sufficient for them to leave
Mr. Corliss’ employment and take the same positions in the Allis works
at Milwaukee for the manufacture of the Corliss engine there. With the
magnificent result of this action the engineering world is familiar.
We had all sorts of queer experiences. One day I was demanded by Mr.
Jerome Wheelock to tell him _why_ the engine exhibited by him was not
a _perfect_ engine. I glanced over the long slender bed, a copy of the
Corliss bed without its rigidity, and declined to answer his question.
Mr. Emery was more compliant; on receiving the same demand, he kindly
pointed out to Mr. Wheelock one respect in which his engine could
hardly be considered perfect; the steam was exhausted into a large
chamber embracing the lower half of the cylinder from end to end. This
comparatively cold bath produced the condensation of a large quantity
of the entering steam. From the middle of this chamber a pipe took away
the exhaust from the opposite ends of the cylinder alternately. Mr.
Wheelock admitted the defect, and said in future he would avoid it, so,
as I learned, having two exhaust pipes instead of one, he gave to each
pipe one half the area of the single one.
I had the pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with Professor Sweet,
who was superintending the exhibit of the mechanical work of his boys
at Cornell; this was very creditable and included quite a show of
surface plates.
The Corliss engine in this exhibition was far the most imposing, and to
the multitude the most attractive single exhibit ever shown anywhere.
It consisted of two distinct engines, each having a cylinder 40 inches
in diameter, with 10 feet stroke of piston, the motion of which was
transmitted through cast-iron walking beams to cranks set at right
angles with each other on the opposite ends of a common shaft. This
shaft made 36 revolutions per minute and carried a gear-wheel 30 feet
in diameter; this wheel engaged with a pinion 10 feet in diameter on
the line of shaft under the floor, giving to this shaft a speed of 108
revolutions per minute.
One day I said to Professor Sweet: “Do you know, Professor, that an
engine with a single cylinder of the same bore as these and 5 feet
stroke directly connected with a line shaft and making 150 revolutions
per minute, with a fly-wheel 10 or 12 feet in diameter, would exert
more power than is afforded by this monster and would run with far
greater economy, because the internal surfaces to be heated by the
condensation of the entering steam would be one piston instead of
two, two heads instead of four, and 5 feet length of exposed cylinder
instead of 20 feet?” He replied: “That is all very true, but how would
you get the steam in and out of the cylinder properly with a piston
travel of 1500 feet per minute?” I was not prepared to answer that
question on the instant, but I afterwards found no difficulty about it.
The accompanying figures illustrate this engine and my high-speed
equivalent drawn to the same scale; it will be seen that the small
engine occupies about one tenth of the floor space needed for the large
one, and would cost less than ten per cent. of the money. It would also
have a more nearly uniform motion, the impulses received by the crank
being 300 per minute, against only 144 per minute received by both
cranks of the large engine, besides which in the latter the full force
of the steam is exerted at the commencement of each stroke and falls
to nothing at the end, while in the smaller engine, by the inertia of
the reciprocating parts, the forces exerted at the opposite ends of
the stroke would be practically equalized. The reader will doubtless
inquire, as Mr. Green did why, with these enormous advantages, does not
everybody use the high-speed engines and every builder make them?
[Illustration: The Corliss Engine Exhibited at the Centennial
Exhibition.]
[Illustration: Porter-Allen Engine Equal in Power to the Exhibited
Corliss Engine.]
At this exhibition the Bell telephone was first shown to a select
company, among which were President Grant and Dom Pedro, the last
emperor of Brazil. This exhibition was given on Sunday, that being the
only day when silence could be had. Human speech, both in talking and
singing, was transmitted through the whole length of the main building,
about 1800 feet; it has since been transmitted somewhat further.
The exhibitors of hand pumps all talked about the ease with which their
own pumps could be worked; one man touched bottom in this respect.
He had set his pump so that the spout was nearly on a level with the
surface of the pool from which it drew its water; he boldly claimed
that his pumps required no power at all. I was invited, as I suppose
multitudes were, to take hold of the handle and see for myself that
his claim was true. I never heard of but one man who I think would be
satisfied with this demonstration; that was the engineering editor of
the New York _Tribune_. Shortly before this he had published an account
of a wonderful pump invented by a Mr. George, which he concluded by
saying that the superiority of Mr. George’s pump lay in the fact that
at each stroke not the whole column of water had to be lifted, but only
that which was to be discharged. We had a waterfall maintained by a
centrifugal pump, which received its water on one side only; the maker
evidently knowing nothing about the method of balancing these pumps by
admitting the water equally on the opposite sides.
The boiler-makers abounded. My old acquaintance, the Harrison boiler,
turned up. Mr. Allen urged a favorable award to Mr. Harrison because
of the motives of humanity by which he knew Mr. Harrison was actuated
in designing that boiler. A Mr. Pierce invited all the judges to visit
his boiler and hear him explain it. He informed us that this boiler had
been the subject of three scientific tests by Professor Thurston, but
he did not tell us the results of those tests.
As we were coming away Professor Reuleaux said to me: “That _is_
foolishness, isn’t it?”
An inventor named Smith came several times to our judges’ room to urge
upon us the merits of his boiler. He had two on exhibition, one in
use in the boiler-house and the other in Machinery Hall; these were
quite different from each other. One day not long after the close of
the exhibition I received a note from a stranger requesting me to call
upon him at the Astor House. I thought, “This man doubtless wants an
engine, but his time is too precious to come out to Newark,” so at the
hour appointed I was there. When I entered the room the first object I
saw was a sectional model of this Smith boiler, and I found that the
gentleman wanted to know our reasons for overlooking that boiler. I
replied to him that I had a question to which I would like an answer at
his earliest convenience; we observed that the two boilers exhibited
by Mr. Smith were quite different from each other, and I saw that this
model differed in essential details from both of them, and I would
like to know which one he wished us to approve of and bade him good
afternoon.
One day afterwards I happened to be in Mr. Holley’s office in New
York when a man came in with a drawing of a boiler which he wished
Mr. Holley to recommend. Mr. Holley turned him over to me, and he
explained to me that the great novel feature of his boiler was that
the feed-water was admitted by spraying it into the steam space, thus
avoiding the cooling of any part of the boiler by its admission at one
point; so I found one freak boiler that was not at the exhibition.
We had a fine exhibit of steam fire-engines. I think every maker in
this country was represented, and we had a trial of these engines
lasting three or four days. The committee desired to make a thorough
comparative test of their performance, but the man (a lieutenant in the
navy) appointed to keep the record put down so few items that we found
we had no record at all. We could only guess how he came to do this.
An exhibitor from Canada brought an engine that presented a very fine
appearance; it was made up of a collection of what he believed to be
the best features of every steam-engine made in the United States. The
experts looked his machine over and saw where he had got every one of
them, but his different appropriations did not work well together; his
engine broke down every day and he worked all night to be ready for the
next day’s trial. It afforded a good commentary on the narrow-minded
laws of Canada, which forbade a citizen of the United States from
taking out a patent there.
The show of steam-engines was not large, and the indicator was not
applied to any engines, so I had no use for the indicators I had
imported from England. If I remember rightly, we had only two engines
from abroad, one of these sent by the Government of Brazil. This was
what was called a “table” engine, in which the cylinder stands on
a table in a vertical position and two connecting-rods extend down
from the cross-head and connect with the crank under the table. It
was copied from a Scotch elementary drawing-book from which I learned
mechanical drawing. One of these engines had been made by Mr. Hoe
to drive the press of the New York _Daily Times_ when that paper
was started in 1851 or 1852. The other foreign engine was made by a
Brussels manufacturer with the assistance of the Belgian Government. It
had an American cut-off which was used by Mr. Delamater on his engines,
and it had the eccentric between the main bearing and the crank, giving
to the latter therefore three or four inches of unnecessary overhang;
it had my condenser, which I learned was then coming into considerable
use on the Continent.
[Illustration: Col. ALEXIS PETROFF]
The only American engines I now recall besides the Corliss were the
Buckeye and the Brown engines, and our awards to these engines did not
do them any harm; the Corliss engines were not within our jurisdiction
and we were not permitted to say anything about them; Mr. Corliss was
not a competitor but a patron of the exhibition.
Mr. Frederick E. Sickels made an extensive exhibit of his various
inventions, the models of which had been loaned to him for that purpose
by the Patent Office. Only two of these inventions came within our
province: the first was what is known as the celebrated trip cut-off,
patented by him in the year 1842; the latter an arrangement patented in
1848. The former invention was an improvement on the Stevens cut-off,
already in general use in steamboats on our Eastern waters. The Stevens
invention was applied to equilibrium valves, rising and falling in a
direction vertical to their seats. It enlarged the opening movement of
the valve in a degree increasing as the speed of the piston increased,
by means of the device known as the wiper cam; but the closing motion
of the valve, being the reverse of the opening movement, grew slower
and slower, until the valve was gently brought to its seat. It was
found that during the closing of the port a great deal of steam blew
into the cylinder through the contracting openings, with very little
addition to the useful effect. Mr. Sickels conceived the idea of
liberating the valve just before the opening movement was completed
and letting it fall instantly to its seat, which would effect a sharp
cut-off and a great economy in the consumption of steam. This action
involved the difficulty that the valves would strike their seats with
a violent blow, which would soon destroy both. This difficulty Mr.
Sickels met by the invention of the dash-pot. This apparatus performed
two functions: when its piston was lifted above the water it left a
vacuum under it, so the pressure of the atmosphere on this piston was
added to the weight of the valve and the pressure of the steam on it
to accelerate its fall. This was arrested by the piston striking the
surface of the water just in time to prevent the valve from striking
its seat, but not soon enough to prevent the complete closure of the
port. This nice point was determined by the ear. The engineer first
let water out of the dash-pot gradually, until he heard the valve
strike its seat faintly; then he admitted water drop by drop, until the
sound had died away. For these inventions and for his steam steering
gears the judges made an award.
Our foreign judges were enthusiastic about them; Horatio Allen had
fought Mr. Sickels during his whole business life and would never allow
a Sickels cut-off to be applied in the Novelty Iron Works. For example,
the directors of the Collins steamship line adopted the Sickels
cut-off, but it was put on only two of their ships, the “Arctic” and
the “Baltic,” the engines of which were built at the Allaire works. The
“Atlantic” and “Pacific,” which were engined at the Novelty Works, did
not have it, Mr. Allen absolutely refusing to allow it. To my surprise
Mr. Allen signed this award with a cordial expression of admiration of
Mr. Sickels’ genius; he had softened in his old age.
The following is a copy of this award.
INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
UNITED STATES CENTENNIAL COMMISSION,
PHILADELPHIA, 3d August, 1876.
REPORT ON AWARDS.
“Group No. XX.
“Catalogue No. 1027.
“Product, Models of Improvements in Steam-engines.
“Name and address of exhibitor, Frederick E. Sickels.
“The undersigned, having examined the products herein described,
respectfully recommend the same to the United States Centennial
Commission for Award for the following reasons, viz:
“These exhibits possess great historical interest.
“In the year 1842 Mr. Sickels patented the trip or liberating
cut-off, an invention which, in a variety of forms, has come into
use wherever steam-engines are made. In applying this invention to
poppet valves, Mr. Sickels prevented these valves from striking their
seats by his invention of the dash-pot, in which he availed himself
of the incompressibility, the indestructibility and the divisibility
of water, and which is now employed for this purpose in all such
applications.
“In 1848 he patented an improvement in the method of controlling
motive power, by which method steam is applied at the present time to
various uses, notable among which is the steering of steam vessels,
the steersmen turning the wheel precisely as in steering by hand, but
all the force being exerted by the steam.
“CHARLES T. PORTER,
“Reporting Judge.
“Approval of Group Judges,
HORATIO ALLEN, CHAS. E. EMERY, EMIL BRUGSCH,
F. REULEAUX, N. PETROFF.”
[Illustration: JAMES MOORE]
After our work was finished and I had gone home the awards were made
public; to my astonishment the award to Mr. Sickels was not among them,
so I wrote to General Walker, who was our medium of communication with
the Commission, asking the reason for this omission. He replied that
the award had been thrown out by the Committee of Revision. “Committee
of Revision!” I had never heard of such a thing. I asked for an
explanation and I learned that the judges did not make awards, they
only recommended them; the awards were made by the Commission after
they had passed the scrutiny of the Committee of Revision. Well, who
were the Committee of Revision? I learned that the Commission consisted
of two commissioners from each State appointed by the Governor; Mr.
Corliss was a commissioner from Rhode Island. At a meeting of the
commissioners Mr. Corliss proposed the novel scheme of a Committee of
Revision, to which the action of the judges should be submitted for
approval before the awards were made. The idea seemed to please the
members of the Commission, as tending to magnify their own importance,
and it was adopted; as a matter of usual courtesy Mr. Corliss was made
chairman of the committee, and the committee threw out the award to
Mr. Sickels. I made careful inquiry and could never learn that the
Committee of Revision threw out any other award, so it seemed evident
that with the throwing out of this award to Mr. Sickels the object of
its existence was accomplished.
In the Corliss valve system the liberation of the valve was the
fundamental idea; this was applied by him to valves moving in the
direction parallel with their seats. It not being necessary to arrest
their motion at any precise point, they were caught by air cushions
at any points after they had covered their ports. Mr. Corliss had
appropriated the liberating idea, according to “the good old rule, the
simple plan, that they may take who have the power, and they may keep
who can,” and all this machinery had been devised by him to prevent
the historical fact that the liberating idea had been invented by Mr.
Sickels from appearing in the records of the exhibition. By all this
enormous expenditure of ingenuity and influence he succeeded in giving
to this fact a prominence and importance which it would never otherwise
have had, besides advertising his efforts to suppress it.
Mr. Horatio Allen’s life-long aversion to Mr. Sickels was caused by
professional jealousy. Mr. Allen conceived himself to be an inventor,
and for years had been cherishing a cut-off invention of his own. The
original firm was Stillman, Allen & Co., and for years Mr. Stillman had
prevented the Novelty Iron Works from being sacrificed to Mr. Allen’s
genius, but later Mr. Allen had obtained supreme control of these works
by an affiliation with Brown Brothers, the bankers, his principal
stockholders, and Mr. Stillman sold out his interest and retired from
the firm. Mr. Allen, having a clear field, now determined to put his
invention on the new steamer of the Collins line, the “Adriatic,” and
American engineers were amused at the display of this amazing absurdity
on the largest possible scale. In this construction there were four
valves; each valve was a conical plug about six feet long and had four
movements; first it was withdrawn from its seat a distance of three
inches so that it could be rotated freely, then it was rotated first
to draw off the lap. Up to this point theoretically the port had not
been opened, but the steam had been blowing into the cylinder or out
of it, as the case might be, through these enormous cracks; the valves
then rotated further to produce the opening movement, for either
admission or release; the rotation was then reversed until it reached
its original position, then the fourth movement brought it to its seat.
It is probable that the ship would have gone to sea working steam
after this ridiculous fashion, if the complicated mechanism required
to produce the four movements had not broken down at the trial of the
engines at the dock, beyond the power of Mr. Allen’s genius to remedy;
so the valves had to be removed and the Stevens valves and Sickels
cut-off were substituted for them. The story that any sane man ever
designed a four-motion steam-engine valve, and that he made the first
application of it on the largest steamship, except the Great Eastern,
then in the world, is such a tax on credulity, that I was glad to find
the following corroboration of it in a letter to “Power,” from which I
copy the essential portion.
[Illustration: EMIL BRUGSCH]
“In one of Mr. Porter’s ‘Reminiscences,’ which I have mislaid, he
gives an account of the alterations to the last steamer of the E. K.
Collins lines, the ‘Adriatic.’ His description of Horatio Allen’s
cock-valves and their motions is absolutely correct. The writer made
the greater part of the detail drawings by which the new valves and
the Sickels cut-off were placed on the ‘Adriatic.’
PETER VAN BROCK.
Jefferson, Iowa.”
These engines, as further designed by Mr. Allen, were afterwards
described by Zerah Colburn in the London _Engineer_ in his usual
caustic style. His description began with this expression: “These
engines are fearfully and wonderfully made.”
I had hoped that my old friend Daniel Kinnear Clark might turn up as
the English member in our group of judges at the Centennial Exposition,
but in this I was disappointed. The English judge in our group was Mr.
Barlow, son of the celebrated author of “A Treatise on the Strength of
Materials,” which, if I remember rightly, was the first authoritative
treatise on that subject. Mr. Barlow, however, was not of much help to
us; he came late and attended but one meeting. That, I remember very
well, was the meeting at which I presented my classification. He left
Philadelphia with his son to visit Niagara Falls, and we never saw him
again. I remember his giving me a very cordial invitation to visit him
when I should find myself in England.
Two of my English engineering acquaintances appeared at this
exhibition. One of them was a judge in the group which embraced
sewing machines. I remember asking him what was the most interesting
mechanical device he had seen at the exhibition; he told me it was
the automatic tension in the Wilcox & Gibbs sewing machine. In a walk
with him through Machinery Hall one day, I called his attention to a
locomotive built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. After looking it over
cursorily he remarked that he did not see anything particular in it. I
could not help replying, “That may not be the fault of the locomotive.”
I had thought him a light weight in England, and that superficial
remark confirmed my opinion. The other friend, as I am proud to call
him, I have always considered mechanically the most interesting man
I ever met. It was Mr. Smith, of Smith & Coventry, the machine-tool
builders of Salford. Mr. Smith was the brains of the concern. He had
come over to learn what America could teach him, and the only thing he
took back, so far as I know, was the twist-drill, the manufacture of
which was begun by that firm after his return. I shall have something
to add later to what I have already said respecting his wonderful
improvements in machine tools. In one of the pleasant walks we took
together, our attention was arrested by the exhibit of Riehlé Brothers,
the celebrated scale manufacturers of Philadelphia. Among other novel
and interesting features of their exhibit this firm showed a ³⁄₄-inch
bolt broken by a stress applied to it through a nut of only one half
the standard thickness, or three eighths of an inch deep, and that run
on loosely by hand. This astonishing revelation drew from Mr. Smith
the ejaculation, “Why, old Whitworth lied.” Mr. Whitworth had stated
that he had ascertained by experiment that a nut to be as strong as the
bolt must have a depth equal to the diameter of the bolt, and this had
been accepted as mechanical truth by the entire engineering world, no
one ever thinking to make the simple measurement which would show that
the force required to strip the threads of any bolt in a nut of this
standard depth would be nearly three times the strength of the bolt. He
was, of course, highly interested in the wonderful steelyards made by
this firm, which would weigh anything that could be lifted by a crane.
His only discovery respecting machine tools was, that their manufacture
in the United States was generally very inferior.
It was fortunate that I had prepared the drawings according to my
revised model for three or four sizes of the engines, as otherwise I
should not have been able to accept the position offered me at the
Philadelphia exposition. I received two more orders before May 24, and
two more during the summer, but with the preparations I had made and
Mr. Goodfellow’s familiarity with the work, everything went on smoothly
during my absence.