THE ENGINE-ROOM.
The Corliss Engine. -- A Thing of Grace and Power. -- The Growth of
Two Thousand Years. -- From Hero to Watt. -- Its Duty as a
School-master. -- The Interdependence of the Ages. -- The School in
Epitome.
Let us enter the Ideal School building and take a bird’s-eye view of the
visible processes of the new education.
The first object that attracts attention is the engine. It is a
“Corliss,” fifty-two horse-power, and makes that peculiar kind of noise
which conveys to the mind of the observer an impression of restrained
power. When the student, upon entering the school, is shown this
beautiful machine he is told that it, like all other inventions, is a
growth--the growth of at least two thousand years; that the power of
steam was known to the ancients--the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; that
Hero, a philosopher of Alexandria, invented a crude steam-engine before
the beginning of the Christian era, and that the engine before us, which
throbs and trembles under the pressure of its battery of steel boilers
in doing duty as a school-master, is the latest development of Hero’s
conception. The educational idea underlying this fact is the
interdependence of the ages; each generation is a link between the past
and the future. “To show,” as Philarète Chasles says, “that man can only
act efficiently by association with others, it has been ordained that
each inventor shall only interpret the first word of the problem he sets
himself to solve, and that every great idea shall be the _résumé_ of
the past at the same time that it is the germ of the future.”
The first word of the solution of the steam-power problem came from Hero
down the ages, through Decans, Papin, Savory, Newcomen, Breighton, and
Smeaton, to Watt. To Watt is awarded the honor of the invention of the
modern steam-engine; but the first conception of his engine was derived
from an atmospheric machine through the accident of it having been
placed in his hands for repairs. Smeaton was the inventor of that
atmospheric engine, and his mind was one of the links in the chain of
intelligences extending back to Egypt, through whose united agency the
steam-engine became a real thing of power in the cunning hands of James
Watt, of whom the late Dr. Draper said, “He conferred on his native
country more solid benefits than all the treaties she ever made and all
the battles she ever won.” This law governing great achievements is full
of encouragement to the student of mechanics, for while the thought of
compassing any great discovery or invention may well appall even the
boldest, the most humble may hope through studious industry to
contribute something to the sum of human knowledge.
The engine-room of our school is neater than that of the ordinary
machine-shop, but the furnace roars like any other, its open mouth shows
a bank of glowing coals, and the “stoker,” with grimy hands, wipes the
sweat from his sooty brow. The whole school is here seen in epitome: the
“stoker” typifies the student toiling at the forge, and in the polished
engine, exhibiting both grace and power in its automatic action, we see
the student’s graduating project, a machine, the joint creation of
brain, eye, and hand.