From the heated brick to the steam engine: A dual history of harnessing thermal energy

“ First I take an axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy night it needed a divining-rod to find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. ”

“ You lie with your feet or legs curled up, waiting for the morning, the sheets shining with frost about your mouth. Water left by the stove is frozen thick, and what you sprinkle in bathing falls on the floor, ice. The house plants are all frozen, and soon droop and turn black. I look out on the roof of a cottage covered a foot deep with snow, wondering how the poor children in its garret, with their few rags, contrive to keep their toes warm. ”

“ In July you rush panting into the pond to cool yourself in the tepid water, when the stones on the bank are so heated that you cannot hold one tightly in your hand, and horses are melting on the road.—Now you walk on the same pond frozen, amid the snow, with numbed fingers and feet, and see the water target bleached and stiff in the ice.
Dec. 27, 1858. Talk of Fate! How little one can know what is fated to another! What he can do and what he cannot do. I doubt whether one can give or receive any very pertinent advice. In all important crises, one can only consult his genius. ”

“ When patients become restless and nervous they may often be made more comfortable by rearranging the bed clothes, by fanning, by changing position, by rubbing the back and legs, by putting hot water bags at the feet, back and neck, or small of back. In summer try very cold water instead of hot water in the bags. Cold compresses may be applied to the back of the neck, the spine, the forehead, or wherever they may give comfort. A foot bath, a hot or cool sponging will not only quiet restlessness but will often make a patient sleepy. ”

“ A bag of hot salt—that is to say, powdered table salt—put either into the oven or into a frying-pan, and thus made hot, and placed in a flannel bag, and then applied, as the case may be, either to the stomach or to the bowels. Hot salt is an excellent remedy for these pains. 2. An india-rubber hot water bottle, half filled with hot water—it need not be boiling—applied to the stomach or to the bowels will afford great comfort. Every house where there are children ought to have one of these india-rubber hot water bottles. ”

“ When breathing is restored, rub the limbs upwards with firm grasping pressure and energy, to drive the blood along the veins to the heart, using handkerchiefs, flannels, etc. Apply hot flannels, hot bottles, bladders of hot water, or heated bricks to the pit of the stomach, the armpits, between the thighs and to the soles of the feet, or, if these are not available, cover the limbs when dried and rubbed warm, with coats, waistcoats, or any articles of clothing to hand. On the restoration of vitality a teaspoonful of warm water should be given, and then small quantities of warm coffee. ”

“ Never fill a hot water bag more than two-thirds full. The water should not be hot enough to scald a patient if the bag should spring a leak. Before putting in the cork, expel the air by twisting the upper part between the neck and the level of the water before putting in the cork. Be sure to cork tightly. If the bag is to be where the patient will bear the weight, put in a very little water and renew from time to time. Where there is no hot water bag, stone bottles may be used, or bags of salt or sand may be heated in the oven. ”

“ In the operation of the steam-engine we find illustrated many of the most important principles and facts which constitute the physical sciences. The steam-engine is an exceedingly ingenious, but, unfortunately, still very imperfect, machine for transforming the heat-energy obtained by the chemical combination of a combustible with the supporter of combustion into mechanical energy. But the original source of all this energy is found far back of its first appearance in the steam-boiler. It had its origin at the beginning, when all Nature came into existence. ”

“ The wonderful progress of the present century is, in a very great degree, due to the invention and improvement of the steam-engine, and to the ingenious application of its power to kinds of work that formerly taxed the physical energies of the human race. We cannot examine the methods and processes of any branch of industry without discovering, somewhere, the assistance and support of this wonderful machine. Relieving mankind from manual toil, it has left to the intellect the privilege of directing the power, formerly absorbed in physical labor, into other and more profitable channels. ”

“ To construct a machine which shall, in the most perfect manner possible, convert the kinetic energy of heat into mechanical power, the heat being derived from the combustion of fuel, and steam being the receiver and the conveyer of that heat. ”

“ Lead-water is also frequently used with benefit, lime-water also appears to be of use, but the various powders and salves sold in stores rarely help the patient much. The best thing after all is soap and water as hot as it can be borne; and ordinarily the itching and inflammation will disappear in four or five days, followed by scaling. ”

“ Society is a strong solution of books. It draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. ”

“ Always boil the nozzle and clean out the bottle when the atomizer is to be put away. Keep it in a box where dust will not reach it.
Inhalations are useful to relieve difficult breathing and for loss of voice or hoarseness. Fill a pitcher, bowl, or basin, two-thirds full of boiling water. Wrap with a towel to prevent burning if it should touch a patient. Usually drugs such as peppermint spirits, oil of eucalyptus, or tincture of benzoin, in dose of a teaspoonful to the hot water contained in the receptacle, is enough. ”

“ Unconscious, perhaps, of the remote tendency of his own labours, he undermined that doctrine of material heat, which he seemed to support. For, by his advocacy of latent heat, he taught that its movements constantly baffle, not only some of our senses, but all of them; and that, while our feelings make us believe that heat is lost, our intellect makes us believe that it is not lost. Here, we have apparent destructibility, and real indestructibility. To assert that a body received heat without its temperature rising, was to make the understanding correct the touch, and defy its dictates. ”

“ It is a remarkable evidence of the greatness of the progress in this direction which has been effected in our time, that even the second edition of the 'History of the Inductive Sciences,' which was published in 1846, contains no allusion either to the general view of the 'Correlation of Forces' published in England in 1842, or to the publication in 1843 of the first of the series of experiments by which the mechanical equivalent of heat was correctly ascertained. [I] ”

“ The kinetic heat-energy developed in the furnace of the steam-boiler is partly transmitted through the metallic walls which inclose the steam and water within the boiler, there to evaporate water, and to assume that form of energy which exists in steam confined under pressure, and is partly carried away into the atmosphere in the discharged gaseous products of combustion, serving, however, a useful purpose, en route, by producing the draught needed to keep up combustion. ”

“ This sketch of the greatest of all the inventors of the steam-engine has been given no greater length than its subject justifies. Whether we consider Watt as the inventor of the standard steam-engine of the nineteenth century, as the scientific investigator of the physical principles upon which the invention is based, or as the builder and introducer of the most powerful known instrument by which the “great sources of power in Nature are converted, adapted, and applied for the use and convenience of man,” he is fully entitled to preëminence. ”

“ High temperature of furnace, also, favors complete combustion. We hence conclude that, in the steam-boiler furnace, fuel should be burned completely in a chamber having non-conducting walls, and with the smallest air-supply compatible with thorough combustion; and, further, that the air should be free from moisture, that greatest of all absorbents of heat, and that the products of combustion should be removed from the furnace before beginning to drain their heat into the boiler. ”

“ Scientific research, as we have seen, has proved that, in all known varieties of heat-engine, a large loss of effect is unavoidable from the fact that we cannot, in the ordinary steam-engine, reduce the lower limit of temperature, in working, below a point which is far above the absolute zero of temperature—far above that point at which bodies have no heat-motion. ”

“ Steam must enter the machine at the highest possible temperature, must be protected from waste, and must retain, at the moment before exhaust, the least possible amount of heat. He whose inventive genius, or mechanical skill, contributes to effect either the use of higher steam with safety and without waste, or the reduction of the temperature of discharge, confers a boon upon mankind. ”

“ It began then to be generally understood that expansion of steam produced economy, and mechanics and inventors vied with each other in the effort to obtain a form of valve-gear which should secure the immense saving which an abstract consideration of the expansion of gases according to Marriotte’s law would seem to promise. The counteracting phenomena of internal condensation and reëvaporation, of the losses of heat externally and internally, and of the effect of defective vacuum, defective distribution of steam, and of back-pressure, were either unobserved or were entirely overlooked. ”

“ Engines of the class just described are especially well fitted, by their simplicity, compactness, and solidity, to work at the high piston-speeds which are gradually becoming generally adopted in the effort to attain increased economy of fuel by the reduction of the immense losses of heat which occur in the expansion of steam in the metallic cylinders through which we are now compelled to work it. ”