Steam Steel and Electricity | Page 6

all acquired by the tedious
experience of a past that is distinguished by a few great names whose

owners knew in their time perhaps one-tenth part as much as the
modern inventor does, who is unconsciously using the facts learned by
old experience. But the others began at the beginning.
[Illustration: EARLY NEWCOMEN PUMPING ENGINE.
STEAM-COCK, COLD WATER COCK AND WASTE-SPIGOT ALL
WORKED BY HAND.]
In 1711, almost a hundred years after the arrival at Jamestown and
Plymouth of the fathers of our present civilization, the steam-engine
that is called Newcomen's began to be used for the pumping of water
out of mines. This engine, slightly modified, and especially by the boy
who invented the automatic cut-off for the steam valves, was a most
rude and clumsy machine measured by our ideas. There appears to have
been scarcely a single feature of it that is now visible in a modern
engine. The cylinder was always vertical. It had the upper end open,
and was a round iron vessel in which a plunger moved up and down.
Steam was let in below this plunger, and the walking-beam with which
it was connected by a rod had that end of it raised. When raised the
steam was cut off, and all that was then under the piston was condensed
by a jet of cold water. The outside air-pressure then acted upon it and
pushed it down again. In this down-stroke by air-pressure the work was
done. The far end of the walking-beam was even counter-weighted to
help the steam-pressure. The elastic force of compressed steam was not
depended upon, was hardly even known, in this first working and
practical engine of the world. Every engine of that time was an
experimental structure by itself. The boiler, as we use it, was unknown.
Often it was square, stayed and braced against pressure in a most
complicated way. Yet the Newcomen engine held its place for about
seventy-five years; a very long time in our conception, and in view of
the vast possibilities that we now know were before the science.
[Footnote: As late as 1880, the steam-engine illustrated and described
in the "natural philosophy" text books was still the Newcomen, or
Newcomen-Watt engine, and this while that engine was almost
unknown in ordinary circumstances, and double-acting high-pressure
engines were in operation everywhere. This last, without which not
much could be done that is now done, was evidently for a long time

after it came into use regarded as a dangerous and unphilosophical
experiment, hardly scientific, and not destined to be permanently
adopted.]
In the year 1760, James Watt, who was by occupation what is now
known as a model-maker, and who lived in Glasgow, was called upon
to repair a model of a Newcomen engine belonging to the university.
While thus engaged he was impressed with the great waste of steam, or
of time and fuel, which is the same thing, involved in the alternate
heating and cooling of Newcomen's cylinder. To him occurred the idea
of keeping the cylinder as hot as the steam used in it. Watt was
therefore the inventor of the first of those economies now regarded as
absolute requirements in construction. He made the first
"steam-jacket," and was, as well, the author of the idea of covering the
cylinder with a coat of wood, or other non-conductor. He contrived a
second chamber, outside of the cylinder, where the then indispensable
condensation should take place. Then he gave this cylinder for the first
time two heads, and let out the piston-rod through a hole in the upper
head, with packing. He used steam on the upper side of the piston as
well as the lower, and it will be seen that he came very near to making
the modern engine.
Yet he did not make it. He was still unable to dispense with the
condensing and vacuum and air-pressure ideas. Acting for the first time
in the line of real efficiency, he failed to go far enough to attain it. He
made a double-acting engine by the addition of many new parts; he
even attained the point of applying his idea to the production of circular
motion. But he merely doubled the Newcomen idea. His engine became
the Newcomen-Watt. He had a condensing chamber at each end of the
stroke and could therefore command a reciprocating movement. The
walking-beam was retained, not for the purpose for which it is often
used now, but because it was indispensable to his semi-atmospheric
engine.
[Illustration: THE PERFECTED NEWCOMEN-WATT ENGINE.]
It may seem almost absurd that the universal crank-movement of an
engine was ever the subject of a patent. Yet such was the case. A man

named Pickard anticipated Watt, and the latter then applied to his
engines the "sun-and-planet" movement, instead of the crank, until