Steam Steel and Electricity

Steam Steel and Electricity

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Title: Steam Steel and Electricity
Author: James W. Steele
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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