Wealth, experience and skill have marked this first era of steam, and
though combined, they utterly failed. Both Mr. Prosser and the Western
Transportation Co. were owners of fleets of splendid lake propellers, and
were wealthy, with interests intimately identified with canals. It is
evident there was no want, either of money, mechanical resources, or
knowledge of canal business as basis of their failures with steam.
Capital flowed into the steam enterprise from various resources, and
ambition multiplied experiments, but with no appreciable success.
The difficulties lay beyond the reach of capital and beyond the reach of
known resources, and no adequate knowledge had been developed to solve the
problem. Therefore, after suffering failures for several years, the State
wisely volunteered to add extraordinary inducements by a large
appropriation to encourage success. It could not have been to encourage the
reproduction of former failures by the repetition of former trials.
The inquiry is therefore proper, as a lesson from the history of the early
era of steam, what are the difficulties? Why has steam failed so absolutely
and so universally? Why did the State subsequently offer a large bounty to
foster and develop steam.
Obviously there is some hidden difficulty, some unknown inability, because
steam is the arbiter of the age, it is the great supreme motor of man's
agencies throughout the world, hence we come from the sublime to the
ridiculous when we use it to load boats at Buffalo, to be towed 350 miles
by horses.
The lessons of the early era are worthless for repetition. There is no
better screw-propelling machinery known than was then tried and abandoned;
but the lessons are of value to discover the difficulties which must be
remedied; to teach that the success of steam lies beyond the reach of
publicly known mechanical resources.
The trials establish plainly and incontrovertibly that the failures were
owing to the want of _mechanical adaptation_ to required duty; to a
_mechanical inability_ to utilize the power of the steam; to a _mechanical
waste_ of power beyond their ability to control or remedy; and that the
wasted power was extravagantly large and the utilized insignificantly
small. A very intelligent captain of one of the best and most powerful
steamers known to the Erie Canal, who had a full and carefully-kept log,
stated that when his engine _exceeded_ a hundred horse-power of steam, he
could only equal twelve horses on the tow-path. Thus over seven-eighths of
his power was wastefully developed in order to render one-eighth useful.
But this occurred when he was moving only two loaded boats--the steamer and
one in tow--but when moving four boats--three in tow--the _percentage of
utility_ was lessened, and he could not exceed eight to ten per cent. of
his steam, as shown in slower movement, when fewer horses on the tow-path
could equal him.
The steamer is a reservoir, and its rotatory power is free to be developed
"_inversely as its resistances_." Hence, when fastened to a pier, it is all
developed in its receding currents, and _per contra_ when moving; if its
machinery had a perfect fulcrum, it would all be developed in the run of
the boat; consequently, on rivers and lakes, with fine-lined steamers, that
cut the water like a knife, it is like standing in a small boat and pushing
from a large one, but on canals, with their full bows, it is like standing
in a large boat and pushing from a small one; the little one runs away with
the power. The more than 100 square feet area of immersed section of the
full bow represents the large boat, and the dozen square feet effective
area of propeller blades, set at an easy angle for spiral motion and
recession velocity, is the little one that squanders the power so
extravagantly. Increase in number of boats increases this contrast. The
propeller blades of a good canaller will move twelve to fifteen miles, in
their line of spiral movement, to get two to three miles headway for the
boat.
_A correct scientific analysis_ can trace the developments of the
eighty-five to ninety per cent. of the inherent power of the steam that is
wasted on the common canal-boat, and that has no resultant effect whatever
in the motion of the boat, just as positively as it can trace the
co-developments of fifteen to ten per cent. that is utilized and that moves
the boat.
The practical man sees the truths of these statements. He sees steam used
with small, medium and large engines for canal purposes, and sees them all
fail to meet the economy of transportation established by horses; but he
would just as soon put men on the tow-path to compete with horses as to put
horses into his elevators to compete with steam; and that, because in the
elevators the power of the steam is chiefly utilized, whilst on the canal
it is chiefly wasted.
It is therefore conclusive that there is an absolute necessity for a NEW
MECHANICAL SYSTEM, for a radically different system of transmissive
mechanism, for a system that can develop a considerable portion of the
power of the steam in the movement of boats.
The variations of the old systems of propulsion that are being continuously
tried are worthless, in the very nature of the case, because they are in no
sense a remedy for existing inabilities, and because they do not, in any
sense whatever, meet the difficulties.