SIR SAMUEL MORLAND--DR. DIONYSIUS PAPIN.
After the death of the Marquis of Worcester, the Marchioness, his
widow, made various efforts to turn his inventions to account. Sceptical
though the world was as to their utility, she fully believed in them;
and now that he was gone, it would have been dishonouring to his memory
to entertain a doubt as to his engine being able to do all that he had
promised. The Marchioness had not only to maintain the fame of her dear
husband, but to endeavour, if possible, to pay the debts he had contracted
in prosecuting his inventions. She accordingly sought to interest persons
of authority and influence in the water-commanding engine, and seized
every opportunity of bringing it into notice.
To such an extent did the Marchioness carry her zeal, that her
friends began to fear lest her mind was becoming disordered; and
her father-confessor was requested to expostulate with her as to the
impropriety of her conduct. He accordingly implored her to desist from
her vain endeavours to get “great sums of money from the King to pay her
deceased lord’s debts, enriching herself by the great machine, and the
like.” He added that he feared “the devil, to make his suggestions the
more prevalent, doth make use of some motives that seem plausible, as of
paying your lord’s debts, of founding monasteries, and the like;” pointing
out that the end did not justify the means, and that such undertakings
were improper for her ladyship, and by no means likely to be attended
with success. It is not improbable that these representations had their
effect; the more especially as the Marchioness was no more successful in
inducing the public to adopt the invention than the Marquis himself had
been. Accordingly, the water-commanding engine very shortly dropped out
of sight, and in the course of a few years was almost entirely forgotten.
The steam-engine project, however, did not die; it only slept. It had
been the fruit thus far of noble effort, of persevering self-denial, and
unquestionable skill. What was good in it would yet live, and reappear
perhaps in other forms, to vindicate the sagacity and foresight of its
inventor. Even during the Marquis’s lifetime other minds besides his were
diligently pursuing the same subject. Indeed, his enthusiasm was of a
kind especially calculated to inflame other minds; and the success he had
achieved with his engine, imperfect though it might be, was of so novel
and original a character that it could not fail to excite a warm interest
amongst men of like mechanical genius.
One of the most distinguished of these was Sir Samuel Morland, appointed
Master of Mechanics to Charles II. immediately after the Restoration. He
had been for some time previously in the employment of the Protectorate.
He formed one of the embassy to Sweden, with Whitlocke, in 1653. Some
years later he took an active part in the relief of the sufferings of
the persecuted Protestants of Piedmont--whose history he afterwards
wrote,--having been appointed Commissioner Extraordinary for the
distribution of the collected moneys. For some time he officiated as
assistant to Thurloe, Cromwell’s secretary; and it was while acting
in this capacity that he became cognisant of a plot against the life
of Charles II., then in exile. Morland divulged the plot to the king’s
friends, and thereby perhaps saved his life. For this service, Charles,
on his Restoration, presented him with a medal, as a badge of his signal
loyalty, and also appointed him Master of Mechanics.
From that time until the close of his life, Morland devoted himself
entirely to mechanical studies. Among his various inventions may be
mentioned the speaking-trumpet;[17] two arithmetical machines, of which
he published an illustrated description; the capstan to heave ships’
anchors; and various kinds of pumps and water engines. His pumps were of
a very powerful and effective kind. One of them, worked by eight men,
forced water from the Thames at Blackmoor Park, near Winkfield, to the
top of Windsor Castle. He also devoted himself to the improvement of
the fire-engine, in which he employed a cylinder and piston, as well as
a stuffing-box. Towards the later years of his life, he applied himself
more particularly to the study of the powers and uses of steam.[18] In
1677, we find him taking a lease of Vauxhall, most probably the identical
house occupied by the Marquis of Worcester, where he conducted a series
of experiments as to the power requisite to raise water by cylinders of
different dimensions.[19] It is not, however, known that he ever erected
a steam-engine. If he did, no account of its performances has been
preserved.
[17] We are informed that Morland’s _Tuba Stentorphornica_, or
speaking-trumpet, is still to be seen at Trinity College,
Cambridge. Butler, in his ‘Hudibras,’ alludes to the
invention:--
“I heard a formidable voice
Loud as the stentorphornic noise.”
[18] His first idea seems to have been to employ gunpowder for
the production of motive power, for in the ‘Calendar of State
Papers’ (Dom) we find the following entry:--“Decr. 11th,
1691.--Warrant for a grant to Sir Samuel Morland of the sole use
for 14 years of his invention for raising water out of pits,
&c., to a reasonable height, by the force of powder and air
conjointly.”--(‘Entry Book,’ V., p. 85.) In vol. XLVI., p. 49,
we find this entry under the same date:--“Warrant for a grant
to Sir S. Morland of the sole making of an engine invented by
him for raising water in mines or pits, draining marshes, or
supplying buildings with water.”
[19] The ‘Harleian Miscellany’ (Brit. Mus.), No. 5771, contains
the following brief tract in French, written by Morland in 1682.
It is on vellum, and entitled ‘Les Principes de la Nouvelle
Force de Feu:’--“L’eau estant evaporée par la force de feu, ces
vapeurs demandent incontinant une plus grand’espace [environ
deux mille fois] que l’eau n’occupoiet auparavant, et plus tost
que d’etre toujours emprisonnés, feroient crever une piece
de canon. Mais estant bien gouvernées selon les regles de la
statique, et par science reduites a la mesure au poids, et à la
balance, alors elles portent paisiblement leurs fardeaux [comme
des bons chevaux] et ainsy seroient elles du grand usage au
gendre humain, particulièrement pour l’elevation des eaux, selon
la table suivante que marque les nombres des livres qui pourrant
estre levés 1800 fois par heure, à 6 pouces de levée, par de
cylindres à moitie remplies d’eau, ausi bien que les divers
diametres et profondeurs des dit cylindres.” Tables are then
given, showing the power requisite to raise given quantities of
water to certain heights by cylinders of different dimensions.
Morland’s inventions proved of no greater advantage to him than those of
the Marquis of Worcester had done. His later years were spent in poverty
and blindness, and he must have perished but for the charitable kindness
of Archbishop Tenison and a few other friends. Evelyn gives the following
interesting account of a visit to him in October, 1695, two months before
his death:--“The Archbishop and myself went to Hammersmith to visit
Sir Samuel Morland, who was entirely blind; a very mortifying sight. He
showed me his invention of writing, which was very ingenious; also his
wooden calendar, which instructed him all by feeling, and other pretty
and useful inventions of mills, pumps, &c., and the pump he had erected
that serves water to his garden, and to passengers, with an inscription,
and brings from a filthy part of the Thames now near it, a most perfect
and pure water. He had newly buried 200_l._ worth of music books, being,
as he said, love songs and vanity. He plays himself psalms and religious
hymns on the theorbo.” The inscription to which Evelyn refers was on a
stone tablet fixed on the wall of his house, still preserved, which runs
thus:--“SIR SAMUEL MORLAND’S WELL, the use of which he freely gives to
all persons: hoping that none who shall come after him, will adventure
to incur God’s displeasure, by denying a cup of cold water (provided
at another’s cost and not their own) to either neighbour, stranger,
passenger, or poor thirsty beggar. July 8, 1695.”
[Illustration: DIONYSIUS PAPIN, M.D., F.R.S.]
The next prominent experimenter on the powers of steam was Dr. Dionysius
Papin. He was born at Blois about the middle of the seventeenth century,
and educated to the profession of medicine. After taking his degree
at Paris, he turned his attention more particularly to the study of
physics, which soon occupied his whole attention; and under the celebrated
Huyghens, then resident in that city, he made rapid progress. He would,
doubtless, have risen to great distinction in his own country, but for
the circumstance of his being a Protestant. To escape the persecutions
to which all members of that persuasion were then subject, Papin fled
from France in 1681, together with thousands of his countrymen, a few
years before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He took refuge in
London, where he was welcomed by men of science, and more especially by
the celebrated Boyle, under whose auspices he was introduced to the Royal
Society, of which he was appointed Curator at an annual salary.
It formed part of Papin’s duty, in connection with his new office,
to produce an experiment at each meeting of the Society. He was thus
induced to prosecute the study of physical science; and in order to
stimulate the interest of the members, he sought to introduce new subjects
from time to time to their notice. One of the greatest novelties of
his “entertainments” was the production of his well-known Digester,
which excited a considerable degree of interest; and on one occasion
a philosophical supper, cooked by the Digester, was served up to the
Fellows, of which Evelyn gives an amusing account in his Diary.
He was led to the invention of the Digester by certain experiments which
he made for Boyle. He discovered that if the vapour of boiling water could
be prevented escaping, the temperature of the water would be raised much
above the boiling point; and it occurred to him to employ this increased
heat in more effectually extracting nutritious matter from the bones of
animals, until then thrown away as useless. The great strength required
for his Digester, and the means he was obliged to adopt for the purpose
of securely confining the cover, must have early shown him what a powerful
agent he was experimenting on. To prevent the bursting of the vessel from
the internal pressure, he was led to the invention of the safety-valve,
which consisted of a small moveable plate, or cylinder, fitted into an
opening in the cover of the boiler, and kept shut by a lever loaded with
a weight, capable of sliding along it in the manner of a steel yard. The
pressure of the weight upon the valve could thus be regulated at pleasure.
When the pressure became so great as to endanger the safety of the boiler,
the valve was forced up, and so permitted the steam to escape. Although
Papin was thus the inventor of the safety-valve, it is a curious fact that
he did not apply it to the steam-machine which he subsequently invented,
but adopted another expedient.
The reputation of Papin having extended to Germany, he was, in 1687,
invited to fill the office of Professor of Mathematics in the University
of Marburg, and accepted the appointment. He continued, however, to
maintain a friendly correspondence with his scientific friends in England,
and communicated to the Royal Society the results of the experiments
in physics which he continued to pursue. In the same year in which he
settled at Marburg, he submitted to the Society an important paper, which
indicated the direction in which his thoughts were then running. It had
occurred to him, as it had before done to Hautefeuille, that the explosion
of gunpowder presented a ready means of producing a power to elevate a
piston in a tube or cylinder, and that, when so raised, a vacuum could
be formed under the piston by condensing the vapour, and so ensuring its
return by the pressure of the atmosphere. He thought that he might thus be
enabled to secure an efficient moving force. But it was found in practice,
that the proposed power was too violent as well as uncertain, and it was
shortly given up as impracticable.
Papin next inquired whether his proposed elastic force and subsequent
vacuum might not better be produced by means of steam. He accordingly
entered upon a series of experiments, which gradually led him to the
important conclusions published in his celebrated paper on “A New Method
of Obtaining very Great Moving Powers at Small Cost,” which appeared in
the ‘Acta Eruditorum’ of Leipsic, in 1690. “I felt confident,” he there
observes, “that machines might be constructed wherein water, by means of
no very intense heat, and at small cost, might produce that perfect vacuum
which had failed to be obtained by means of gunpowder.” He accordingly
contrived a machine to illustrate this idea, but it was very imperfect and
slow in its action, as may well be imagined from the circumstance that to
produce the condensation he did not apply cold, but merely took away the
fire! Still he was successfully working out, step by step, the important
problem of steam power. He clearly perceived that a piston might be raised
in a cylinder by the elastic force of steam, and that on the production
of a vacuum by its condensation, the piston might be driven home again by
the pressure of the atmosphere. The question was, how was this idea to be
realised in a practicable working machine? After many experiments, Papin
had the courage to make the attempt to pump water by atmospheric pressure
on a large scale. He was employed to erect machines after his principle,
for the purpose of draining mines in Auvergne and Westphalia; but from
the difficulty he experienced in procuring and preserving a vacuum, and
the tediousness of the process, his enterprise proved abortive.
The truth is, that fertile though Papin was in conception, he laboured
under the greatest possible disadvantage in not being a mechanic. The
eyes and hands of others are not to be relied on in the execution of new
and untried machines. Unless eyes and hands be disciplined by experience
in skilled work, and inspired by intelligence, they are comparatively
useless. The chances of success are vastly greater when mind, eyes, and
hands, are combined in one person. Hence the unquestionable fact that
though the motive power of steam had long been the subject of ingenious
speculation and elaborate experiment amongst scientific men, it failed
to be adopted as a practicable working power until it was taken in
hand by mechanics--by such men as Newcomen, the blacksmith; Potter, the
engine-driver; Brindley, the millwright; and, above all, by James Watt,
the mathematical instrument maker.
The sagacious foresight of Papin as to the extensive applicability of
steam-power as a motive agent, is strikingly shown by the following
passage in the paper above referred to:--“If any one,” says he, “will
consider the magnitude of the forces to be obtained in this way (_i. e._,
by the atmospheric high-pressure engine he was suggesting), and the
trifling expense at which a sufficient quantity of fuel can be procured,
he will certainly admit that this very method is far preferable to the use
of gunpowder above spoken of, especially as in this way a perfect vacuum
is obtained, and so the inconveniences above recounted are avoided. In
what manner that power can be applied to draw water or ore from mines,
to discharge iron bullets to a great distance, to propel ships against
the wind, and to a multitude of other similar purposes, it would be too
long here to detail; but each individual, according to the particular
occasion, must select the construction of machinery appropriate to his
purpose.” This last was, however, the real difficulty to be overcome.
Steam, doubtless, contained a power to do all these things; but as for
the machine that would work quietly, docilely, and effectively, in pumping
water, discharging bullets, or propelling ships, the mechanic had not yet
appeared that was able to make one.
Papin was, however, a man of great perseverance; and, strong in his faith
as to the power of steam to propel ships, he gradually worked his way
to the contrivance of a model steamboat. When in London, he had seen an
experiment tried by the Prince Palatine Rupert on the Thames, in which
a boat fitted with revolving paddles attached to the two ends of an
axle which received its motion from a trundle working on a wheel turned
round by horses, went with such rapidity as to leave the king’s barge,
manned by sixteen rowers, far behind in the race. The idea which occurred
to Papin was, to apply a steam machine to drive the paddles, and thus
ensure a ship’s motion independent of wind or tide. For this purpose, it
was necessary to convert the alternate motion of the piston-rod into a
continuous rotary one; and this he proposed to effect “by having the rods
of the pistons fitted with teeth, which would force round small wheels,
toothed in like manner, fastened to the axis of the paddles.”
[Illustration: ANCIENT PADDLE-BOAT.]
The use of paddle-wheels in propelling boats had long been known.
The Harleian MSS. contain an Italian book of sketches, attributed to
the fifteenth century, in which there appears the annexed sketch of a
paddle-boat. This boat was evidently intended to be worked by two men
turning the crank by which the paddles were made to revolve. There were
many other early schemes of paddle-boats, some of which were proposed
to be worked by horse-power. The name of Blasco Garay has often been
mentioned as the first who applied the power of steam to the driving
of paddle-boats; but for this there is not the slightest foundation. M.
Bergenroth informs us that he has carefully examined all the documents
relating to the trials of Blasco Garay in the archives at Simancas, but
has found no reference whatever to steam as the power employed in causing
the paddles to revolve.[20] The experiments were made at Malaga and
Barcelona respectively, in the years 1540 and 1543: in one the vessel was
propelled by a paddle-wheel on each side worked by twenty-five men, and
in the other by a paddle-wheel worked by forty men.
[20] M. Bergenroth says the documents at Simancas consist of--1. A
holograph letter of Blasco Garay to the Emperor, dated Malaga,
10th Sept., 1540, containing his report on the trial trip of
one of his paddle-wheel ships; 2. The report of the Captain
Antonio Destigarura on the same trial trip; 3. The report of
the Provcedores of Malaga concerning the same trip, dated 27th
July, 1540; 4. The report of Blasco Garay to the Emperor, dated
6th July, 1543, concerning the trial trip of another of his
paddle-wheel ships made at Barcelona in June, 1543; 5. A letter
of Blasco Garay to Carrs, dated 20th June, 1543. In none of
these is there to be found any reference to steam-power; but
only to the power of men employed in driving the paddle-wheels.
This is confirmed by the independent examination of the same
documents by J. Macgregor, Esq., of the Temple, who gives the
result in a Letter to Bennet Woodcroft, Esq., inserted as a
note to the ‘Abridgments of the Specifications relating to Steam
Propulsion,’ pp. 105–7.
It appears probable that although others before Papin had speculated
as to the possibility of constructing a boat to be driven by the power
of steam, he was the first to test the theory by actual experiment; the
first to construct a model steamboat. His first experiments were doubtless
failures. The engine contrived by himself was found inapplicable to the
driving of ships, as it had been to the pumping of mines; and it was
not until he saw the model of Savery’s engine exhibited to the Royal
Society of London, in 1698, and witnessed the trial of the same inventor
s paddle-wheel boat on the Thames in the course of the same year that it
occurred to him to combine the two contrivances in one, and apply Savery’s
engine to drive Savery’s paddle-wheels. Returning to Marburg, he proceeded
with his experiments, and informed Liebnitz that he had employed both
suction and pressure by steam; that he had made a model of a carriage
propelled by this force, which succeeded; and he hoped that the same
power would answer for boats. Papin prosecuted his idea with great zeal,
trying many expedients, encountering many difficulties, and meeting with
many disappointments. At length, after about fifteen years’ labour, he
succeeded in constructing a model engine, fitted in a boat--“une petite
machine d’un vaisseau à roues”--which worked to his satisfaction. His next
object was to get his model transported to London, to exhibit it on the
Thames. “It is important,” he writes to Liebnitz (7th July, 1707), “that
my new construction of vessel should be put to the proof in a seaport like
London, where there is depth enough to apply the new invention, which,
by means of fire, will render one or two men capable of producing more
effect than some hundreds of rowers.” Papin had considerable difficulty
in obtaining the requisite permission from the authorities to enable his
model to pass from the Fulda to the Weser; but at length he succeeded,
and the little vessel reached Münden, when, to Papin’s great grief, it
was seized by the boatmen of the river, and barbarously destroyed.
The year after this calamity befell Papin’s machine he wrote an urgent
letter to his old friends of the Royal Society at London, asking them to
advance him sufficient money to construct another engine “and to fit it so
that it might be applied for the rowing of ships.” The Society, however,
did not see their way to assisting Papin in the manner proposed, most
likely because of the expense as well as uncertainty of the experiment.
Two years later, worn out by work and anxiety, the illustrious exile died;
and it was left for other labourers to realise the great ideas he had
formed as to locomotion by steam-power.
The apparently resultless labours of these men will serve to show what a
long, anxious, and toilsome process the invention of the steam-engine has
been. The early inventors had not the gratification of seeing their toils
rewarded by even the faintest glimmering of practical success. One after
another, they took up the subject, spent days and nights of study over
it, and, laying down their lives, there left it. To many the study brought
nothing but anxiety, toil, distress, and sometimes ruin; while some fairly
broke their hearts over it. But it was never abandoned. Disregarding
the fate of their predecessors, one labourer after another resumed
the investigation, advancing it by further stages, until at length the
practicable working steam-engine was invented, presenting, perhaps, the
most remarkable illustration of the power of human skill and perseverance
to be found in the whole history of civilisation.