Part 14

The first voyage of this year was of the most discouraging character. Chancellor Livingston, who had, by his own experiments, approached as near to success as any other person who, before Fulton, had endeavored to navigate by steam, and who had furnished all the capital necessary for the experiment, had plans and projects of his own. These he urged into execution in spite of the opposition of Fulton. The boiler furnished by Watt and Boulton was not adapted to the object. Copied from those used on the land, it required that its fireplace and flues should be constructed of masonry. These added so much weight to the apparatus, that the rebuilt boat would hardly have floated had they been retained. In order to replace this boiler, Livingston had planned a compound structure of wood and copper, which he insisted should be tried.

It is only necessary for us to say, that this boiler proved a complete failure. Steam began to issue from its joints a few hours after the "Clermont" left New York. It then became impossible to keep up a proper degree of tension, and the passage was thus prolonged to forty-eight hours. These defects increased after leaving Albany on the return, and the boiler finally gave way altogether within a few miles of New York. The time of the downward passage was thus extended to fifty-six hours. Fulton was, however, thus relieved from all further interference; this fruitless experiment was decisive as to his superiority over his colleague in mechanical skill. He therefore immediately planned and directed the execution of a new boiler, which answered the purpose perfectly; and although there are many reasons why boilers of a totally different form and of subsequent invention should be preferred, it is, for its many good properties, extensively used, with little alteration, up to the present day. But a few weeks sufficed to build and set this boiler, and in the month of June the regular passages of the "Clermont" were renewed.

In observing the hour appointed for departure, both from New York and Albany, Fulton determined to insist upon the utmost regularity. It required no little perseverance and resolution to carry this system of punctuality into effect. Persons accustomed to be waited for by packet-boats and stages, assented with great reluctance to what they conceived to be a useless adherence to precision of time. The benefits of this punctuality were speedily perceptible; the whole system of internal communication of the State of New York was soon regulated by the hours of arrival and departure of Fulton's steamboats; and the same system of precision was copied in all other steamboat lines. The certainty of conveyance at stated times being thus secured, the number of travellers was instantly augmented; and before the end of the second summer, the boat became far too small for the passengers, who crowded to avail themselves of this novel, punctual, and unprecedentedly rapid method of transport.

Such success, however, was not without its alloy. The citizens of Albany and the river towns saw, as they thought, in the steamboat, the means of enticing their customers from their ancient marts to the more extensive market of the chief city; the skippers of the river mourned the inevitable loss of a valuable part of their business; and innumerable projectors beheld with envy the successful enterprise of Fulton.

Among the latter class was one who, misled by false notions of mechanical principles, fancied that in the mere oscillations of a pendulum lay a power sufficient for any purpose whatever. Availing himself of a well-constructed model, he exhibited to the inhabitants of Albany a pendulum which continued its motions for a considerable time, without requiring any new impulse, and at the same time propelled a pair of wheels. These wheels, however, did not work in water. Those persons who felt themselves aggrieved by the introduction of steamboats, quickly embraced this project, prompted by an enmity to Fulton, and determined, if they could not defeat his object, at least to share in the profits of its success.

It soon appeared, from preliminary experiments, made in a sloop purchased for the purpose, that a steam-engine would be required to give motion to the pendulum; and it was observed that the water-wheels, when in connection with the pendulum, had a very irregular motion. A fly-wheel was therefore added, and the pendulum was now found to be a useless incumbrance. Enlightened by these experiments, the association proceeded to build two boats; and these were exact copies, not only of the hull and all the accessories of the "Clermont," but the engine turned out to be identical in form and structure with one which Fulton was at the very time engaged in fitting to his second boat, "The Car of Neptune."

The pretence of bringing into use a new description of prime mover was of course necessarily abandoned, and the owners of the new steamboats determined boldly to test the constitutionality of the exclusive grant to Fulton. Fulton and Livingston, in consequence, applied to the Court of Chancery of the State of New York for an injunction, which was refused. On an appeal to the Court of Errors this decision of the Chancellor was reversed; but the whole of the profits which might have been derived from the business of the year were prevented from accruing to Livingston and Fulton, who, compelled to contend in price with an opposition supported by popular feeling in Albany, were losers rather than gainers by the operations of the season.

As no appeal was taken from this last decision, the waters of the State of New York remained in the exclusive possession of Fulton and his partner, until the death of the former. This exclusive possession was not, however, attended with all the advantages that might have been anticipated. The immense increase of travel which the facilities of communication created, rendered it imperative upon the holders of the monopoly to provide new facilities by the construction of new vessels. The cost of these could not be defrayed out of the profits. Hence new and heavy debts were necessarily contracted by Fulton, while Livingston, possessed of an ample fortune, required no pecuniary aid beyond what he was able to meet from his own resources.

The most formidable opposition which was made to the privileges of Fulton, was founded upon the discoveries of Fitch. We have seen, that he constructed a boat which made some passages between Trenton and Philadelphia; but the method which he used, was that of paddles, which are far inferior to the paddle-wheel. Of the inferiority of the method of paddles, had any doubt remained, positive evidence was afforded in the progress of this dispute; for in order to bring the question to the test of a legal decision, a boat propelled by them was brought into the waters of the State of New York. The result of the experiment was so decisive, that when the parties engaged in the enterprise had succeeded in their designs, they made no attempt to propel their boats by any other method than that of wheels.

Fulton, assailed in his exclusive privileges derived from State grants, took, for his further protection, a patent from the general government. This is dated in 1809, and was followed by another, for improvements upon it, in 1811. It now appeared, that the very circumstance in which the greatest merit of his method consists, was to be the obstacle to his maintaining an exclusive privilege. Discarding all complexity, he had limited himself to the simple means of adapting paddle-wheels to the crank of Watt's engine; and, under the patent laws, it seems hardly possible that such a simple yet effectual method could be guarded by a specification. As has been the case with many other important discoveries, the most ignorant conceived that they might themselves have discovered it; and those unacquainted with the history of the attempts at navigation by steam, were compelled to wonder that it had been left for Fulton to bring it into successful operation.

Before the death of Fulton, the steamboats on the Hudson River were increased in number to five. A sixth was built under his direction for the navigation of the Sound; and, this water being rendered unsafe by the presence of an enemy's[14] squadron, the boat plied for a time upon the Hudson. In the construction of this boat he had, in his own opinion, exhausted the power of steam in navigation, having given it a speed of nine miles an hour; and it is a remarkable fact, which manifests his acquaintance with theory and skill in calculation, that he in all cases predicted with almost absolute accuracy, the velocity of the vessels he caused to be constructed. The engineers of Great Britain came, long after, to a similar conclusion in respect to the maximum of speed.

It is now, however, well known, that, with a proper construction of prows, the resistance to vessels moving at higher velocities than nine miles an hour, increases in a much less ratio than had been inferred from experiments made upon wedge-shaped bodies; and that the velocity of the pistons of steam-engines may be conveniently increased beyond the limit fixed by the practice of Watt.

For these important discoveries the world is indebted principally to Robert L. Stevens. That Fulton must have reached them in the course of his own practice can hardly be doubted, had his valuable life been spared to watch the performance of the vessels he was engaged in building at the time of his premature death.[15] These were, a large boat intended for the navigation of the Hudson, to which the name of his partner, Chancellor Livingston, was given, and one planned for the navigation of the ocean. The latter was constructed with the intention of making a passage to St. Petersburg; but this scheme was interrupted by his death, which took place at the moment he was about to add to his glory, as the first constructor of a successful steamboat, that of being the first navigator of the ocean by this new and mighty agent.

X.

GEORGE STEPHENSON AND THE LOCOMOTIVE.

"What I say is this," said Nahum, "that all your Vesuvius dividends, and all your pickers and slobbers, and shirtings at four cents, and all the rest of your great cotton victory, depend on railroads. If your father could not go to Lewiston and see his foreman and people, and come back before you can say Jack Robinson, there would be no mills at Lewiston such as there are. There might be a poor little sawmill making shingles, as you free-traders want." This with scorn at Fergus, perhaps, or some one else suspected of views unfavorable to protection.

Then Nahum shook hands with Uncle Fritz, and apologized for his zeal, adding: "I am telling the boys why I want to go to Altoona, and to become a railroad man. I say that the new plant in India might knock cotton higher than a kite, and that people might learn to live without novels or magazines, but that they must have transportation all the same. And I am going into the railroad business. I am going to hew down the mountains and fill up the valleys." The boy was fairly eloquent in his enthusiasm.

"It is in your blood, my brave fellow," said Uncle Fritz. "People thought your grandfather was crazy when he said it, sixty years ago. But it proved he was the seer and the prophet, and they were the fools."

"And who invented railroads?" asked Blanche.

"As to that, the man invented a railroad who first put two boards down over two ruts to make a cart run easier. Almost as soon as there were mines, there must have been some sort of rail for the use of the wagons which brought out the ore. These rails became so useful that they were continued from the mine to the high-road, whatever it was. But it was not till the first quarter of this century, that rails were laid for general use. The earliest railroad in the United States was laid at the quarries in Quincy, in Massachusetts, in 1825."

Uncle Fritz was so well pleased at their eagerness that he brought out for them some of the old books, and some of the new. In especial he bade them all read Smiles's "Life of Stephenson" before they came to him again. For to George Stephenson, as they soon learned, more than to any one man, the world owes the step forward which it made when locomotives were generally used on railroads. Since that time the improvements in both have gone on together.

Before they met again, at Uncle Fritz's suggestion, Fergus and Hester prepared this sketch of the details of Stephenson's earlier invention, purposely that Uncle Fritz might use it when these papers should be printed together.

GEORGE STEPHENSON.

An efficient and economical working locomotive engine still remained to be invented, and to accomplish this object Stephenson now applied himself. Profiting by what his predecessors had done,--warned by their failures and encouraged by their partial successes,--he began his labors. There was still wanting the man who should accomplish for the locomotive what James Watt had done for the steam-engine, and combine in a complete form the best points in the separate plans of others, embodying with them such original inventions and adaptations of his own, as to entitle him to the merit of inventing the working locomotive, as James Watt is to be regarded as the inventor of the working condensing-engine. This was the great work upon which George Stephenson now entered, though probably without any adequate idea of the ultimate importance of his work to society and civilization.

He proceeded to bring the subject of constructing a "Travelling Engine," as he denominated the locomotive, under the notice of the lessees of the Killingworth Colliery,[16] in the year 1813. Lord Ravensworth, the principal partner, had already formed a very favorable opinion of the new colliery engine-wright from the improvements which he had effected in the colliery engines, both above and below ground; and after considering the matter, and hearing Stephenson's explanations, he authorized him to proceed with the construction of a locomotive, though his lordship was by some called a fool for advancing money for such a purpose. "The first locomotive that I made," said Stephenson, many years after, when speaking of his early career at a public meeting in Newcastle, "was at Killingworth Colliery, and with Lord Ravensworth's money. Yes, Lord Ravensworth and partners were the first to intrust me, thirty-two years since, with money to make a locomotive engine. I said to my friends, there was no limit to the speed of such an engine, if the works could be made to stand."

Our engine-wright had, however, many obstacles to encounter before he could get fairly to work upon the erection of his locomotive. His chief difficulty was in finding workmen sufficiently skilled in mechanics and in the use of tools to follow his instructions, and embody his designs in a practical shape. The tools then in use about the colliery were rude and clumsy, and there were no such facilities, as now exist, for turning out machinery of any entirely new character. Stephenson was under the necessity of working with such men and tools as were at his command, and he had in a great measure to train and instruct the workmen himself. The new engine was built in the workshops at the West Morr, the leading mechanic being John Thirlwall, the colliery blacksmith,--an excellent mechanic in his way, though quite new to the work now intrusted to him.

In this first locomotive, constructed at Killingworth, Stephenson to some extent followed the plan of Blenkinsop's engine. The wrought-iron boiler was cylindrical, eight feet in length and thirty-four inches in diameter, with an internal flue-tube twenty inches wide passing through it. The engine had two vertical cylinders, of eight inches diameter and two feet stroke, let into the boiler, which worked the propelling gear with cross-heads and connecting-rods. The power of the two cylinders was combined by means of spur-wheels, which communicated the motive power to the wheels supporting the engine on the rail. The engine thus worked upon what is termed the second motion. The chimney was of wrought-iron, round which was a chamber extending back to the feed-pumps, for the purpose of heating the water previous to its injection into the boiler. The engine had no springs, and was mounted on a wooden frame supported on four wheels. In order to neutralize as much as possible the jolts and shocks which such an engine would necessarily encounter, from the obstacles and inequalities of the then very imperfect plate-way, the water-barrel, which served for a tender, was fixed to the end of a lever and weighted; the other end of the lever being connected with the frame of the locomotive carriage. By this means the weight of the two was more equally distributed, though the contrivance did not by any means compensate for the total absence of springs.

The wheels of the locomotive were all smooth, Stephenson having satisfied himself by experiment that the adhesion between the wheels of a loaded engine and the rail would be sufficient for the purposes of traction.[17]

The engine was, after much labor and anxiety, and frequent alterations of parts, at length brought to completion, having been about ten months in hand. It was placed upon the Killingworth Railway on the 25th of July, 1814, and its powers were tried on the same day. On an ascending gradient of 1 in 450, the engine succeeded in drawing after it eight loaded carriages, of thirty tons weight, at about four miles an hour; and for some time after it continued regularly at work.

Although a considerable advance upon previous locomotives, "Blucher" (as the engine was popularly called) was nevertheless a somewhat cumbrous and clumsy machine. The parts were huddled together. The boiler constituted the principal feature; and, being the foundation of the other parts, it was made to do duty not only as a generator of steam, but also as a basis for the fixings of the machinery and for the bearings of the wheels and axles. The want of springs was seriously felt; and the progress of the engine was a succession of jolts, causing considerable derangement to the working. The mode of communicating the motive power to the wheels by means of the spur-gear also caused frequent jerks, each cylinder alternately propelling or becoming propelled by the other, as the pressure of the one upon the wheels became greater or less than the pressure of the other; and when the teeth of the cog-wheels became at all worn, a rattling noise was produced during the travelling of the engine.

As the principal test of the success of the locomotive was its economy as compared with horse-power, careful calculations were made with the view of ascertaining this important point. The result was, that it was found the working of the engine was at first barely economical; and at the end of the year the steam-power and the horse-power were ascertained to be as nearly as possible upon a par in point of cost.

We give the remainder of the history of George Stephenson's efforts to produce an economical working locomotive in the words of his son Robert, as communicated to Mr. Smiles in 1856, for the purposes of his father's "Life."

"A few months of experience and careful observation upon the operation of this (his first) engine convinced my father that the complication arising out of the action of the two cylinders being combined by spur-wheels would prevent their coming into practical application. He then directed his attention to an entire change in the construction and mechanical arrangements, and in the following year took out a patent, dated Feb. 28, 1815, for an engine which combined in a remarkable degree the essential requisites of an economical locomotive,--that is to say, few parts, simplicity in their action, and great simplicity in the mode by which power was communicated to the wheels supporting the engine.

"This second engine consisted, as before, of two vertical cylinders; which communicated directly with each pair of the four wheels that supported the engine by a cross-head and a pair of connecting-rods. But in attempting to establish a direct communication between the cylinders and the wheels that rolled upon the rails, considerable difficulties presented themselves. The ordinary joints could not be employed to unite the engine, which was a rigid mass, with the wheels rolling upon the irregular surface of the rails; for it was evident that the two rails of the line of railway could not always be maintained at the same level with respect to each other,--that one wheel at the end of the axle might be depressed into a part of the line which had subsided, while the other would be elevated. In such a position of the axle and wheels it was clear that a rigid communication between the cross-head and the wheels was impracticable. Hence it became necessary to form a joint at the top of the piston-rod where it united with the cross-head, so as to permit the cross-head always to preserve complete parallelism with the axle of the wheels with which it was in communication.

"In order to obtain the flexibility combined with direct action, which was essential for insuring power and avoiding needless friction and jars from irregularities in the rail, my father employed the 'ball and socket joint' for effecting a union between the ends of the cross-heads, where they were united with the crank-pins attached to each driving-wheel. By this arrangement the parallelism between the cross-head and the axle was at all times maintained, it being permitted to take place without producing jar or friction upon any part of the machine.

"The next important point was to combine each pair of wheels by some simple mechanism, instead of the cog-wheels which had formerly been used. My father began by inserting each axle into two cranks, at right angles to each other, with rods communicating horizontally between them. An engine was made upon this plan, and answered extremely well. But at that period (1815) the mechanical skill of the country was not equal to the task of forging cranked axles of the soundness and strength necessary to stand the jars incident to locomotive work; so my father was compelled to fall back upon a substitute which, though less simple and less efficient, was within the mechanical capabilities of the workmen of that day, either for construction or repair. He adopted a chain, which rolled over indented wheels placed on the centre of each axle, and so arranged that the two pairs of wheels were effectually coupled and made to keep pace with each other. But these chains after a few years' use became stretched, and then the engines were liable to irregularity in their working, especially in changing from working back to forward again. Nevertheless, these engines continued in profitable use upon the Killingworth Colliery Railway for some years. Eventually the chain was laid aside, and the wheels were united by rods on the _outside_ instead of rods and crank-axles inside, as specified in the original patent; and this expedient completely answered the purpose required, without involving any expensive or difficult workmanship.