Steam Steel and Electricity | Page 8

to-day. The reason of the delay it is
difficult to account for on any other grounds than lack of boldness, for
unquestionably the early experimenters knew that such an engine could
be made. They were afraid of the power they had evoked. Such a
machine may have seemed to them a willful toying with disaster. Their
efforts were bent during many years toward rendering a treacherous
giant useful, yet entirely harmless. Their boilers, greatly improved over
those I have mentioned, never were such as were afterwards made to
suit the high pressures required by the audacity of Hopkins. This
audacity was the mother of the locomotive, and of that engine which
almost from that date has been used for nearly every purpose of our
modern life that requires power. The American innovation may have
passed unnoticed at the time, but intentionally or otherwise it was
imitated as a preliminary to all modern engines. Nearly a century
passed between the making of the first practical engine and that one
which now stands as the type of many thousands. But now every little
saw-mill in the American woods could have, and finally did have, its
little cheap, unscientific, powerful and non-vacuum engine, set up and
worked without experience, and maintained in working order by an
unskilled laborer. A thousand uses for steam grew out of this
experiment of a Yankee who knew no better than to tempt fate with a
high-pressure and speed and recklessness that has now become almost
universal.
There was with Watt and his contemporaries apparently a fondness for
cost and complications. Most likely the finished Watt engine was a
handsome and stately machine, imposing in its deliberate movements.
There is apparently nothing simpler than the placing of the head of the
piston-rod between two guide-pieces to keep it in line and give it
bearing. Yet we have only to turn back a few years and see the
elaborate and beautiful geometrical diagram contrived by Watt to
produce the same simple effect, and known as a "parallel motion." It
kept its place until the walking-beam was cast away, and the American
horizontal engine came into almost universal use.
The object of this chapter so far has been to present an idea of
beginnings; of the evolution of the universal and indispensable machine

of civilization. The steam-engine has given a new impetus to industry,
and in a sense an added meaning to life. It has made possible most that
was ever dreamed of material greatness. It has altered the destiny of
this nation, and other nations, made greatness out of crude beginnings,
wealth out of poverty, prosperity upon thousands of square miles of
uninhabitable wilderness. It was the chiefest instrumentality in the
widening of civilization, the bringing together of alien peoples, the
dissemination of ideas. Electricity may carry the idea; steam carries the
man with the idea. The crude misconceptions of old times existed
naturally before its time, and have largely vanished since it came.
Marco Polo and Mandeville and their kind are no longer possibilities.
Applied to transportation, locomotion alone, its effects have been
revolutionary. Applied to common life in its minute ramifications these
effects could not have been believed or foretold, and are incredible. The
thought might be followed indefinitely, and it is almost impossible to
compare the world as we know it with the world of our immediate
ancestors. Only by means of contrasts, startling in their details, can we
arrive at an adequate estimate, even as a moral farce, of the power of
steam as embodied in the modern engine in a thousand forms.
* * * * *
Perhaps it might be well to attempt to convey, for the benefit of the
youngest reader, an idea of the actual working of the machine we call a
steam-engine. There are hundreds of forms, and yet they are all alike in
essentials. To know the principle of one is to know that of all. There is
probably not an engine in the world in effective common use--the odd
and unusual rotary and other forms never having been practical
engines--that is not constructed upon the plan of the cylinder and piston.
These two parts make the engine. If they are understood only
differences in construction and detail remain.
Imagine a short tube into which you have inserted a pellet, or wad of
any kind, so that it fits tolerably, yet moves easily back and forth in the
bore of the tube. If this pellet or wad is at one end of the tube you may,
by inserting that end in your mouth and putting air-pressure upon it,
make it slide to the other end. You do not touch it with anything; you

may push it back and forth with your breath as many times as you wish,
not by blowing