Steam Steel and Electricity | Page 2

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 most
prominent of its facts can be given in small space, and those only in
outline. The subject is also old, yet to every boy it must be told again,
and the most ordinary intelligence must have some desire to know the
secrets, if such they are, of that which is unquestionably the greatest
force that ever yielded to the audacity of humanity. It is now of little
avail to know that all the records that men revere, all the great epics of
the world, were written in the absence of the characteristic forces of
modern life. A thousand generations had lived and died, an immense
volume of history had been enacted, the heroes of all the ages, and
almost those of our own time, had fulfilled their destinies and passed
away, before it came about that a mere physical fact should fill a larger
place in our lives than all examples, and that the evanescent vapor
which we call steam should change daily, and effectively, the courses
and modes of human action, and erect life upon another plane.
It may seem not a little absurd to inquire now "what is steam?"
Everybody knows the answer. The non-technical reader knows that it is
that vapor which, for instance, pervades the kitchen, which issues from
every cooking vessel and waste-pipe, and is always white and visible,
and moist and warm. We may best understand an answer to the
question, perhaps, by remembering that steam is one of the three
natural conditions of water: ice, fluid water, and steam. One or the
other of these conditions always exists, and always under two others:

pressure and heat. When the air around water reaches the temperature
of thirty-two degrees by the scale of Fahrenheit, or ° or zero by the
Centigrade scale, and is exposed to this temperature for a time, it
becomes ice. At two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit it becomes
steam. Between these two temperatures it is water. But the change to
steam which is so rapid and visible at the temperature above mentioned
is taking place slowly all the time when water, in any situation, is
exposed to the air. As the temperature rises the change becomes more
rapid. The steam-making of the arts is merely that of all nature,
hastened artificially and intentionally.
The element of pressure, mentioned above, enters into the proposition
because water boils at a lower temperature, with less heat, when the
weight of the atmosphere is less than normal, as it is at great elevations,
and on days when, as we now express it, there is a low barometer. Long
before any cook could explain the fact it was known that the water
boiling quickly was a sign of storm. It has often been found by
camping-parties on mountains that in an attempt to boil potatoes in a
pot the water would all "boil away," and leave the vegetables uncooked.
The heat required to evaporate it at the elevation was less than that
required to cook in boiling water. It is one of the instances where the
problems of nature intrude themselves prominently into the affairs of
common life without previous notice.
This universal evaporation, under varying circumstances, is probably
the most important agency in nature, and the most continuous and
potent. There was only so much water to begin with. There will never
be any less or any more. The saltness of the sea never varies, because
the loss by evaporation and the new supply through condensation of the
steam--rain--necessarily remain balanced by law forever. The surface
of our world is water in the proportion of three to one. The extent of
nature's steam-making, silent, and mostly invisible, is immeasurable
and remains an undetermined quantity. The three forms of water
combine and work together as though through intentional partnership,
and have, thus combined, already changed the entire land surface of the
world from what it was to what it is, and working ceaselessly through
endless cycles will change it yet more. The exhalations that are steam

become the water in a rock-cleft. It changes to ice with a force almost
beyond measurement in the orderly arrangement of its crystals in
compliance with an immutable law for such arrangement, and rends the
rock. The process goes on. There is no high mountain in any land
where water will not freeze. The water of rain and snow carries away
the powdered remains from year to year, and from age to age. The
comminuted ruins of mountains have made the plains and filled up and
choked the mouth of the Mississippi. The soil