THE STEAM-ENGINE, AND ITS APPLICATION TO LOCOMOTION BY LAND AND WATER.

WATT, STEPHENSON, FULTON, AND BELL.

"IF a man were to propose to convey us regularly to Edinburgh in coaches in seven days, and bring us back in seven more, should we not vote him to Bedlam? Or if another were to assert he would sail to the East Indies in six months, should we not punish him for practising on our credulity?"

These words were spoken in the House of Commons by a certain worthy member, Sir Henry Herbert, in 1671. What would he have thought if he had been told that within one hundred and sixty years the journey from London to Edinburgh, instead of occupying seven days, would not occupy much more than seven hours; and that, within the same pe- . riod, a voyage from this country to India which occupied six months would be reckoned unconscionably tedious? In Herbert's time the chance of the means of locomotion becoming so rapid certainly appeared very remote, and his incredulity was doubtless amply justified by the facts before him. There is not, however, the same excuse for the early opponents of the railway system, some of whose utterances appear very strange when read in the light of subsequent events. In 1825 the Quarterly Review wrote: "The gross exaggeration of the powers of the locomotive steam-engine, or, to speak more plainly, the steam-carriage, may delude for a time, but must end in the mortification of those concerned. It is certainly some consolation to those who are to be whirled at the rate of eigh teen or twenty miles an hour, by means of the high-pressure

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Early Notices of Steam as an Agent.

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engine, to be told that they are in no danger of being sea-sick while they are on shore, that they are not to be scalded to death nor drowned by the bursting of the boiler, and that they need not mind being shot by the scattered fragments, or dashed in pieces by the flying off or the breaking of a wheel. But with all these assurances we should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off by one of Congreve's ricochet rockets, as trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate. . . . We will back old Father Thames against the Woolwich Railway for any sum." The Quarterly by no means stood alone in its opinions; indeed, it may safely be said that, so far as its views on railways are concerned, it represented the great majority of the nation. Like all those who introduce great improvements, the early promoters of railways had many disappointments and difficulties to contend with; many obstacles beset their path which were none the less real and harassing to them, because they appear in rather a ludicrous light to us.

The history of the steam-engine, which gave us our railways, and has been the mainspring of most of the material progress of our country during the last hundred years, reaches very far back. The ancients—at least the few of them who dabbled in physics-were not without some knowledge of the wonderful properties and powers of steam. Hero of Alexandria, who lived about two hundred years before the Christian era, gives an account of a rather ingenious toy, of which steam was the motive power. From his time till 1615 the notices we find of steam as an agent are scanty and comparatively unimportant. In that year Solomon de Caus, a French engineer, published a work on "Moving Forces," in which he describes a method of raising water by partially heating it; that is, by converting at portion of it into steam, and, by its expansive force, driving the rest of the fluid through the tube connected with the reservoir. More important than De Caus's were the inventions of Edward Somerset, the ingenious Marquis of Worcester. In his "Century of the Names and Scantlings of Inventions," published in

1663 (which Hume, in one of the notes to his "History of England," very unjustly describes as "a ridiculous compound of lies, chimeras, and impossibilities, showing what might be expected from such a man "), he describes " an admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by fire." Worcester's machine was actually used for the purpose of elevating water at Vauxhall, and hence he is entitled to due honor as having been the first of those who contrived steam-engines to reduce his invention to practice. Though it had been proved to be useful, his machine was regarded with no favor, and never came into general use. Macaulay, describing the state of society in England in the seventeenth century, writes: "They were not, it is true, quite unacquainted with that power which has produced an unprecedented revolution in human affairs. The Marquis of Worcester had recently observed the expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After many experiments, he had succeeded in constructing a rude steam-engine, which he called a fire-water-work, and which he pronounced to be an admirable and most forcible instrument of propulsion. But the marquis was suspected to be a madman, and known to be a Papist; his invention, therefore, found no favorable reception."

The next great name in the history of the steam-engine is that of Denis Papin, well known as the inventor of Papin's Digester. He was born in 1647, at Blois, where a statuewhich was unveiled on Sunday, August 29, 1880-has been erected in his honor. To Papin, whom we shall afterward have occasion to refer to when treating of the application of the steam-engine to locomotion by water, we owe the invention of the safety-valve, although he did not apply it to the steam-engine. The first in England to manufacture steamengines which came into general use was Thomas Savery, who was born at Shilston, about 1650. After many experiments, he succeeded in making an engine in whose powers he had such confidence that he exhibited it before William III. and his court, at Hampton Court, in 1698. Its performances gave such satisfaction that he obtained a patent for it without de