Steam Steel and Electricity

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Steam Steel and Electricity

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Title: Steam Steel and Electricity
Author: James W. Steele
Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7886] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on May 30, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
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STEAM STEEL AND ELECTRICITY
By
JAMES W. STEELE

CONTENTS
THE STORY OF STEAM.
What Steam is.--Steam in Nature.--The Engine in its earlier forms.--Gradual explosion.--The Hero engine.--The Temple-door machine.--Ideas of the Middle Ages.--Beginnings of the modern engine.--Branca's engine.--Savery's engine.--The Papin engine using cylinder and piston.--Watt's improvements upon the Newcomen idea.--The crank movement.--The first use of steam expansively.--The "Governor."--First engine by an American Inventor.--Its effect upon progress in the United States.--Simplicity and cheapness of the modern engine.--Actual construction of the modern engine.--Valves, piston, etc., with diagrams.
THE AGE OF STEEL.
The various "Ages" in civilization.--Ancient knowledge of the metals.--The invention and use of Bronze.--What Steel is.--The "Lost Arts."--Metallurgy and chemistry.--Oriental Steel.--Modern definition of Steel.--Invention of Cast Steel.--First iron-ore discoveries in America.--First American Iron-works.--Early methods without steam.--First American casting.--Effect of iron industry upon independence.--Water-power.--The trip-hammer.--The steam-hammer of Nasmyth.--Machine-tools and their effects.--First rolling-mill.--Product of the iron industry in 1840-50.--The modern nail, and how it came.--Effect of iron upon architecture.--The "Sky-Scraper."--Gas as fuel in iron manufactures.--The Steel of the present.--The invention of Kelley.--The Bessemer process.--The "Converter."--Present product of Steel.--The Steel-mill.
THE STORY OF ELECTRICITY.
The oldest and the youngest of the sciences.--Origin of the name.--Ancient ideas of Electricity.--Later experiments.--Crude notions and wrong conclusions.--First Electric Machine.--Frictional Electricity.--The Leyden Jar.--Extreme ideas and Fakerism.--Franklin, his new ideas and their reception.--Franklin's Kite.--The Man Franklin.--Experiments after Franklin, leading to our present modern uses.--Galvani and his discovery.--Volta, and the first "Battery."--How a battery acts.--The laws of Electricity, and how they were discovered.--Induction, and its discoverer.--The line at which modern Electricity begins.--Magnetism and Electricity.--The Electro-Magnet.--The Molecular theory.--Faraday, and his Law of Magnetic Force.
MODERN ELECTRICITY.
CHAPTER I.
The Four great qualities of Electricity which make its modern uses possible.--The universal wire.--Conductors and non conductors.--Electricity an exception in the ordinary Laws of Nature.--A dual nature: "Positive" and "Negative."--All modern uses come under the law of Induction.--Some of the laws of this induction.--Magnets and Magnetism.--Relationship between the two.--Magnetic "poles."--Practical explanation of the action of induction.--The Induction Coil.--Dynamic and Static Electricity.--The Electric Telegraph.--First attempts.--Morse, and his beginnings.--The first Telegraph Line.--Vail, and the invention of the dot-and-dash alphabet.--The old instruments and the new.--The final simplicity of the telegraph.
CHAPTER II.
The Ocean Cable.--Differences between land lines and cables.--The story of the first cable.--Field and his final success.--The Telephone.--Early attempts.--Description of Bell's invention.--The Telautograph.--Early attempts and the idea upon which they were based.--Description of Gray's invention.--How a Telautograph may be made mechanically.
CHAPTER III.
The Electric Light.--Causes of heat and light in the conductor of a current.--The first Electric Light.--The Arc Light, and how constructed.--The Incandescent.--The Dynamo.--Date of the invention.--Successive steps.--Faraday the discoverer of its principle.--Pixü's machine.--Pacinatti.--Wilde.--Siemens' and Wheatstone.--The Motor.--How the Dynamo and Motor came to be coupled.--Review of first attempts.--Kidder's battery.--Page's machine.--Electric Railroads.--Electrolysis.--General facts.--Electrical Measurements.--"Death Current."--Instruments of Measurement.--Electricity as an Industry.--Medical Electricity.--Incomplete possibilities.--What the "Storage Battery" is.
CHAPTER IV.
Electrical Invention in the United States.--Review of the careers of Franklin, Morse, Field, Edison and others.--Some of the surprising applications of Electricity.--The Range-Finder.--Cooking and heating by Electricity.

THE STORY OF STEAM
That which was utterly unknown to the most splendid civilizations of the past is in our time the chief power of civilization, daily engaged in making that history of a new era that is yet to be written in words. It has been demonstrated long since that men's lives are to be influenced not by theory, or belief, or argument and reason, so much as by that course of daily life which is not attempted to be governed by argument and reason, but by great physical facts like steam, electricity and machinery in their present applications.
The greatest of these facts of the present civilization are expressed in the phrase, Steam and Steel. The theme is stupendous. Only the