One day a lonely prisoner sat meditating in his cell in the Tower of
London. He was a Marquis of Worcester, a nobleman of high rank and large
fortune, who had been imprisoned for a political offense. But he had
always been a mechanic, and had passed the happiest hours of his life in
his workshop. As he watched, sad and almost hopeless in his prison, he
noticed that the cover of a kettle that was boiling on the fire was
raised up, and that a cloud of vapor escaped.
He examined the curious fact, and at last asked himself, What is it that
lifts the cover?--what power is there hidden in the boiling kettle? It
was evidently the white vapor; it was steam. The Marquis of Worcester
had made a wonderful discovery, and when he was liberated he gave much
of his time to the study of the new power. He felt the great value of
steam to mankind; and in his work, _A Century of Inventions_, thanked
God that he had been permitted to discover one of the "secrets of
nature."
No one before him seems ever to have thought of making steam useful. The
white vapor had risen from every boiling vessel since the first use of
fire. It was familiar to the Jew, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman. A Greek
man of science was even acquainted with some of its powers, and employed
it to frighten one of his neighbors for whom he had no good-will. He
placed a boiler in his cellar, and drove the steam through pipes around
his neighbor's house, shaking it with a loud noise.
But no one had thought of confining the vapor in a pipe, and making it
labor. No one in Shakspeare's time had fancied that there was a giant
strength in boiling water; no one foresaw in 1660 that all the chief
labors of the future would be carried on by the aid of a boiling kettle.
But soon the idea suggested by the Marquis of Worcester seems to have
excited the curiosity of other intelligent men. He left no machine
behind him, if he had ever made one. His only object was to force up
water. He wrote an account of his machine in 1663, and soon after died.
In 1681, Morland used steam to raise water. Its power began to be
discovered; it would burst, it was said, a gun, and inflict serious
injuries.
Next, about 1687, Papin, a French Huguenot exiled to London, almost
invented a real steam-engine. He filled a pipe or cylinder half full of
water; a piston or rod of iron rested on the water. A fire was kindled
underneath, the water boiled, the steam drove the piston to the top of
the cylinder, where it was secured by a peg or latch. The fire was then
taken away, the cold once more condensed the steam into water, the latch
was let loose, and the piston descended to its former position. Papin in
this way raised a weight of sixty pounds. He was full of ardor, believed
that he could raise ten thousand pounds, and even suggested a steamboat.
But as yet the rude machine consisted only of a pipe, a piston, and a
latch that was moved by an attendant. Soon after, in 1696, Savery
invented the first real steam-engine. It consisted of two boilers, a
cylinder, a stream of cold water to condense the steam, and was intended
to pump water into cities, houses, and ships. Savery addressed his
pamphlet describing his engine to King William, who had examined his
machine with interest at Hampton Court. In the year 1700 the
steam-engine was in its infancy.
It grew slowly. Savery's engine was improved, but was still for nearly a
century imperfect and almost useless. It could only move a piston or rod
up and down. No one had yet discovered a way to make it turn a wheel.
Until the American Revolution, and the age of Washington and Franklin,
the imperfect machine seemed of little real value.
James Watt, a young Scotch mechanic, almost made it what it is. He is
the author of the modern steam-engine. He was the son of a maker of
mathematical instruments. He was sickly, studious, and always fond of
mechanical contrivances; at six years old he is said to have worked out
problems in geometry in the sand; at fourteen he made an electrical
machine; and at fifteen, Arago tells us, studied the steam that came
from a tea-kettle, and planned some of his future labors. He was born in
1736.
His chief discovery was how to make the piston turn a wheel, and this he
did by using the crank. His machines became capable of turning mills,
moving spindles, and pumping out mines. He founded a great factory of
steam-engines that were sold all over the world; he grew wealthy,
famous, and was always benevolent. He never ceased to invent, write, and
labor, even in extreme old age, and at eighty-three produced a new
copying machine that imitated any piece of sculpture. Soon after he
died. No one has done more to add to the comfort and ease of his
fellow-men than Watt by his rare inventions.
The steam-engine is the finest example of the mechanical art. A thousand
parts make up the whole, all of which move together in harmony. The most
violent storm never disorders them. The piston moves, the crank turns,
the steam rises, and is condensed. It is nothing but the Marquis of
Worcester's kettle boiling over, Papin's rod or piston, Watt's crank,
improved by later inventors. Yet what a wonderful creature it is! how
beautiful and complete!