Part 14

This is the most surprising invention of modern times, and of the greatest importance to a commercial people; by means of it intelligence is conveyed from one end of the kingdom to another, in the twinkling of an eye. A company was fully organised for the carrying out this invention, which commenced its operations in 1848, and established a system of no ordinary complication and extent. Their wires stretch from Glasgow on the north, to Dorchester, on the south, from the east coast, at Yarmouth, to the west, at Liverpool. These have brought upwards of one hundred and fifty towns into instant communication with each other. The wires set up for the use of the public alone are upwards of nine thousand eight hundred miles in length, and extend over a distance of two thousand and sixty miles, and, exclusive of those running underground, and through tunnels or rivers, are stretched on no fewer than sixty-one thousand eight hundred posts, varying from sixteen to thirty feet in height, and of an average square of eight inches, with an expensive apparatus of insulators and winders attached to each. As the most trifling derangement of the wires or apparatus will stop the communication, it is obvious that the utmost care and watchfulness is requisite to prevent and detect accidents. Accordingly, the whole distance is divided into districts, each district having a superintendent, and under him several inspectors, and a staff of workmen, batterymen, and mechanics, more or less numerous, according to the extent over which he presides.--When we consider these things, in conjunction with the central staff of engineers, secretaries, &c., at the head-establishment in London, a maximum charge of one penny per mile cannot be considered an exorbitant demand for the accommodation afforded to the public in keeping open so many receiving stations, and the maintenance of the expensive establishments. The telegraphic system is designed for important and urgent messages, and it may be safely averred that not one despatch in a hundred has been as yet forwarded by it, which has not been by many times worth more than the sum paid by the sender. A commercial house in Liverpool will scarcely grudge 8s. 6d. for a communication by which a necessary payment may be made, an important order given, or a profitable operation facilitated in London; and the message from Glasgow, which traverses a distance of five hundred and twenty miles in an instant, to summon a son from the metropolis, it may be, to the bedside of a dying parent, cannot be judged exorbitant at a charge of 14s., considerably less than one halfpenny per mile.

Messrs. Wilmer and Smith, of Liverpool, publishers of the “European Times,” have arranged the most admirable code of signals in the world; and by the use of forty-eight letters are capable of transmitting intelligence equal to half a column of an ordinary newspaper. The telegraphic company disapprove of this species of short-hand, and, therefore, charge for the forty-eight letters 13s. This Messrs. Wilmer and Smith consider excessive, as they have forwarded similar messages by telegraph, four thousand miles in America, for 8s., and from Philadelphia to New York for 1s. These gentlemen, therefore, consider they have cause to find fault with the company in reference to charges for communications in cipher.

STEAM-ENGINES.

The Steam-Engine is one of the most important of human discoveries, and is certainly one of those which afford the greatest portion of ease and advantage to the human species, as well in the operation of its cause, as in its ultimate effects. The most powerful of machines had its origin from the single idea of one individual of our own nation. It has been, from time to time, improved by different individuals, also natives of Britain, the precise period of which improvements can be traced, and their effects fortunately ascertained.

Although we should observe, that the first principle of this mechanical power was discovered by some of the ancient nations, many ages before that which gave the origin to the present practised invention, but from the state of information, it is conceived, to answer no purpose of utility. It may be said to have occurred in a small machine which the ancients called an _Æolipila_ (the bull of Æolus) consisting of a hollow ball of metal, with a slender neck, or pipe, also of metal, having a small orifice entering into the ball, by means of a screw; this pipe being taken out, the ball being filled with water, and the pipe again screwed in, the ball is heated--there issues from the orifice, when sufficiently hot, a vapour, with great violence and noise; care was required that this should not be by accident stopped, if it were, the machine would infallibly burst, and perhaps, to the danger of the lives of all in its vicinity, so immense is its power.

Another way of introducing the water was first to heat the ball when empty, and then suddenly to immerse it in water. Descartes, in particular, has used this instrument to account for the natural generation of winds. Chauvin thinks it might be employed instead of bellows, to blow a fire. It would admirably serve to fumigate a room, being filled with perfume instead of common water. It is said to have been applied to clear chimneys of their soot, a practice still alleged to be common in Italy. Dr. Plott, in his “History of Staffordshire,” records this singular custom, where the Æolipila is used to blow the fire. “The lord of the mannor of Essington is bound by his tenure to drive a goose, every New Year’s day, three times round the hall of the Lord of Hilton, while Jack of Hilton, a brazen Æolipila, blows the fire.” The last circumstance we shall mention of this instrument, has relation to an antique one, discovered whilst digging the Basingstoke canal, representing a grotesque metallic figure, in which the blast proceeded from the mouth. This figure is now in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries of London. In this instrument, the uncommon elastic force of steam was recognised before the suggestion of the Marquis of Worcester, which follows:

“In 1655, or subsequent thereto, the Marquis of Worcester published the earliest account of the application of this power for the purposes of utility, and suggested it as applicable to raising water. ‘Sixty-eight. An admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire; not by drawing or sucking it upwards, for that would be what the philosopher calleth it, _intra spherum actroctatis_, which is, but at such a distance. But this way has no bounder, if the vessel be strong enough; for I have taken a whole piece of cannon, whereof the end was burst, stopping and screwing up the broken end, as also the touch-hole; and making a constant fire under it, within twenty-four hours it burst and made a great crack: so that having a way to make my vessels, so that they are strengthened by the force within them, and the one to fill after the other, I have seen the water run like a constant fountain stream, forty feet high; one vessel of cold water being consumed, another begins to force and refill with cold water, and so successively; the fire being tended and kept constant, which the self-same person may likewise abundantly perform, in the interim between the necessity of turning the cocks.’”

The marquis’s ingenuity did not, it appears, meet with that attention which it deserved, from those to whom his communication was addressed. In the article of steam it has been since very much improved, and is acted upon for the most useful of purposes; also his ideas for short-hand telegraphs, floating baths, escutcheons for locks, moulds for candles, and a mode to disengage horses from a carriage, after they have taken fright; which, with several others, proclaim the originality and ingenuity of the mind of this nobleman--an honour which very few of the British nobility aspire to.

Since his time, another design upon the same principle has been projected by Captain Thomas Savery, a commissioner of sick and wounded, who in the year 1691 obtained a patent for “a new invention for raising water, and occasioning motion to all sorts of mill-work, by the impellant force of fire.” This patent bears date the 25th of July, sixteenth of William III., A. D. 1698. The patent states that the invention will be of great use for drawing of mines, serving towns with water, and working all sorts of mills. “Mr. Savery, June 14th, 1699, entertained the Royal Society with showing a model of his engine for raising water by help of fire, which he set to work before them; the experiment succeeded according to expectation.”

The above memoir is accompanied with a copperplate figure, with references by way of description; from whence it appears, that the engine then shown by Captain Savery was for raising water, not only by the expansive force of steam, like the Marquis of Worcester’s, but also by the condensation of steam, the water being raised by the pressure of a rarified atmosphere to a given height, by the expansive force of steam, in the same manner as the Marquis proposed. This action was performed alternately in two receivers, so that while the vacuum formed in one was drawing up water from the well, the pressure of steam in the other was forcing up water into the reservoir; but both receivers being supplied by one suction-pipe and one forcing-pipe, the engine could be made to keep a continual stream, so as to suffer very little interruption. This engine of Captain Savery’s displays much ingenuity, and is almost as perfect in its contrivance as the same engine has been made since his time. We regret, that without a figure we cannot supply a perfect description of it.

However, it appears that it was necessary to have two boilers, or vessels of copper, one large and the other smaller: those boilers have a gauge-pipe inserted into the smaller boiler, within about eight inches of its bottom, and about the centre of the side of the larger boiler; the small boiler must be quite full of water, and the larger one only about two-thirds full. The fire is then to be lighted beneath the larger boiler, to make the water boil, by which means the steam being confined, will be greatly compressed, and will, therefore, on opening a way for it to issue out (which is done by pushing the handle of a regulator from the operator), rush with great violence through a steam-pipe into a receiver, driving out all the air before it, sending it up into a force-pipe through a clack, as may be perceived from its noise; when the air is expelled, the receiver will be very much heated by the steam. When it is thoroughly emptied of atmospheric air, and grown very hot, which may be both seen and felt, then the handle of the regulator is to be drawn towards the operator, by which means the first steam-pipe will be stopped, so that no more steam can rise into the first receiver, by which means a second receiver will be filled in like manner. Whilst this is doing, some cold water must be poured on the first receiver, by which means the steam in it will be cooled, and thereby condensed into smaller room: consequently the pressure in the valve, or cock, at the bottom of the receiver--there being nothing to counterbalance the atmospheric pressure at the surface of the receiver in the inner part of the sucking-pipe, it will be pressed up into the receiver, driving up before it the valve at the bottom, which afterwards falling again, prevents the descent of the water that way. Then the first receiver being, at the same time, emptied of its air, push the handle of the regulator, and the steam which rises from the boiler will act upon the surface of the water contained in the first receiver, where the force or pressure on it still increasing its elasticity, till it exceeds the weight of a column of water in another receiving-pipe, then it will necessarily drive up through the passage into the force-pipe, and eventually discharge itself at the top of the machinery.

After the same manner, though alternately, is the first receiver filled and emptied of water, and by this means a regular stream kept continually running out of the top of a force-pipe, and so the water is raised very often from the bottom of a mine, to the place where it is meant to be discharged.

It should be added, that after the machine begins to work, and the water has risen into and filled the force-pipe, it fills also a little cistern, and by that means fills another pipe, called the condensing-pipe, which may be turned either way, over any of the receivers, when either is thoroughly heated by, the steam, to condense it within, thereby producing a vacuum, which absorbs the water out of the well into the receiver, on the principle of a syphon. Also a little above the cistern goes another pipe to convey the water from the force-pipe into the lesser boiler, for the purpose of replenishing the great boiler, when the water in it begins to be almost consumed. Whenever there is occasion for this, the cock is to be turned which communicates between the force-pipe and the lesser boiler, to close it effectually; at the same time having put a little fire beneath the small boiler, which will grow hot; its own steam, which has no vent to escape, pressing on its surface, will force the water up another pipe, through an aperture in the great boiler, and so long will it run, till the surface of the water gets so low as to be beneath the bottom of the pipe of communication--then the steam and water running together, will cause the valve (called a clack) to strike, which will intimate to the operator that it has discharged itself into the greater boiler, and carried in as much water as is then necessary; after which, by turning a cock, as much fresh water is let in as may be necessary; and then, by turning another cock, new fresh water is let out of a recipient into the less boiler as before; and thus the engine is supplied without fear of decay, or any delay in the operations; and proper attention in the workmen is only necessary to prevent disorder in a machine so expensive and complicated.

Also, to know when the great boiler wants replenishing, turn the gauge-cock; if water comes out, it does not need a supply; but if steam alone, then the want of water is certain. The like with the cock with which the lesser boiler is prepared for the same purpose, when the same state will be marked by like results. In working this engine, very little skill, and less labour is required: _Attention_ is the chief requisite; it is only to be injured by want of due care, extreme stupidity, or wilful neglect.

The engine described above, does not differ essentially from that first designed by the inventor, Captain Savery; the chief alteration which now occurs, is only in some few slight particulars. For example, the original engine had only one boiler, and there was no ready means for supplying it with water, to remedy the waste occasioned by evaporation of steam, without stopping the action of the engine, whenever the boiler was emptied to such a degree as to risk burning the vessel. After it was replenished the machine had to remain idle till the steam was raised, thus causing an immense loss of time; which is remedied by the application of a second boiler.

The description of the engine formerly mentioned is transcribed from Mr. Savery’s publication, “The Miner’s Friend,” and which had a subsidiary boiler, with water of a boiling heat, always ready to supply the large boiler; and the power of steam raised in it is employed to force the water into the larger boiler, to replace the waste occasioned by evaporation from that boiler; by this means the transposition of the feeding water is not only speedily performed, but being itself of a boiling heat, it is instantly ready to produce steam for carrying on the work. There is also one more grand improvement in the modern machine: the first engine was worked by four separate cocks, which the operator was compelled to turn separately at every change of stroke; if he turned them wrong, he was not only liable to damage the engine, but he prevented its effect, and, at the same time, lost a part of the operation: whereas, in the improved engine, the communications are made by a double sliding valve, or, as it has since been termed, regulator; that is, a brass plate, shaped like a fan, and moving on a centre within the boiler, so as to slide horizontally in contact with the under surface of the cover of the boiler, to which it is accurately fitted by grinding, and thus, at pleasure, opens or shuts the orifices, or entries, to the steam pipes of the two receivers alternately. This regulator acts with less friction than a cock of equal bore, and, by the motion of a single handle backwards, at once opens the proper steam pipe from one receiver, and closes that which belongs to the other receiver. Captain Savery, in his publication before noticed, describes the uses to which this machine may be applied, besides those before described, viz.--1, to serve water for turning all sorts of mills; 2, for supplying palaces, noblemen and gentlemen’s houses with water, and affording the means for extinguishing fires therein, by the water so raised; 3, the supplying cities and towns with water; 4, draining fens and marshes; 5, for ships; 6, for draining mines of water; and 7, for preventing damps in mines.

Dr. Desaguliers, we conceive, ungenerously attacked Captain Savery’s reputation, by alleging that this was not an original invention, and that he was indebted for the first idea to the previously mentioned plan of the Marquis of Worcester. Dr. Rees, with a generous liberality worthy his great critical discrimination, scientific skill, and general erudition, has, we think, ably defended the captain’s character, by proving his ideas to have originated with himself; we have only an opportunity to notice the most prominent features in this justification, where Dr. Rees thus expresses himself. “We know that the Marquis of Worcester gave no hint concerning the _contractibility or condensation of steam, upon which all the merit of the modern engine depends_. The Marquis of Worcester’s engine was actuated wholly by the elastic power of steam, which he either found out, or proved by the bursting of cannon in part filled with water; and not the least hint that steam so expanded, is capable of being so far contracted in an instant, as to leave the space it occupied in a vessel, and occasion, in a great measure, a vacuum.”

Subsequent to the Marquis of Worcester’s, and Captain Savery’s original ideas, and also, subsequent to the perfection the captain had brought his machine to, M. Amonton, a native of France, invented a machine which he called a fire-wheel; but it does not appear that it was ever brought to that perfection to be conducive to real utility, although it was certainly very ingenious.

Also, M. Papin, a native of Germany, made some pretensions to what he alleged was an invention of his own, only it happened to appear, unfortunately for his claim, that he was in London, and present at the time when Captain Savery exhibited the model of his steam-engine to the Royal Society. He made some unsuccessful experiments, by order of his patron, the Landgrave of Hesse, which sufficiently proved that, if he was the inventor, he did not understand the nature of his own machine.

Not long after Savery had invented his engine, Thomas Newcomen, an ironmonger, and John Calley, a glazier, began to direct their attention to the employment of steam as a mechanic power. Their first engine was constructed about the year 1711. This machine still acted on the principle of condensing the steam by means of cold water, and the pressure of the atmosphere on the piston. It was found of great value in pumping water from deep mines; but the mode of its construction, the great waste of fuel, the continued cooling and heating of the cylinder, and the limited capacities of the atmosphere in impelling the piston downward, all tended to circumscribe its utility.

The steam-engine was in this state, when it happily attracted the attention of Mr. Watt, to whom the merit and honour is due, of having first rendered this invention available as a mechanical agent. We cannot illustrate the improvements of this ingenious individual better than by giving a short biographical sketch of him to whom the world is so much indebted.

James Watt was born at Greenock, an extensive seaport in the west of Scotland, on the 19th of January, 1736. His father was a merchant, and also one of the magistrates of that town. He received the rudiments of his education in his native place; but his health being then extremely delicate, as it continued to be to the end of his life, his attendance at school was not always very regular. He amply made up, however, for what he lost in this way, by the diligence with which he pursued his studies at home, where, without any assistance, he succeeded, at a very early age, in making considerable proficiency in various branches of knowledge. Even at this time it is said his favourite study was mechanical science, to a love of which he was probably in some degree led by the example of his grandfather and his uncle, both of whom had been teachers of mathematics, and had left a considerable reputation for learning and ability in that department. Young Watt, however, was not indebted to any instruction of theirs for his own acquirements in science, the former having died two years before, and the latter one year after he was born. At the age of eighteen he was sent to London, to be apprenticed to a maker of mathematical instruments; but in little more than a year the state of his health forced him to return to Scotland; and he never received any further instruction in his profession. A year or two after this, however, a visit which he paid to some relations in Glasgow, suggested to him the plan of attempting to establish himself in that city, in the line for which he had been educated. In 1757, he accordingly removed thither, and was immediately appointed mathematical instrument maker to the College. In this situation he remained for some years, during which, notwithstanding almost constant ill health, he continued both to prosecute his profession, and to labour in the general cultivation of his mind, with extraordinary ardour and perseverance. Here also he enjoyed the intimacy and friendship of several distinguished persons, who were then members of the University, especially of the celebrated Dr. Black, the discoverer of the principle of latent heat, and Dr. Robison, so well known by his treatises on mechanical science, who was then a student, and about the same age as himself. Honourable, however as his present appointment was, and important as were many of the advantages to which it introduced him, he probably did not find it a very lucrative one; and therefore, in 1763, when about to marry, he removed from his apartments in the University, to a house in the city, and entered upon the profession of a general engineer.

For this his genius and scientific attainments most admirably qualified him. Accordingly he soon acquired a high reputation, and was extensively employed in making surveys and estimates for canals, harbours, bridges, and other public works. His advice and assistance were sought for in almost all the important improvements of this description, which were now undertaken or proposed in his native country. But another pursuit, in which he had been for some time privately engaged, was destined ere long to withdraw him from this line of exertion, and to occupy his whole mind with an object still more worthy of its extraordinary powers.