Engine

“ The engine is a soul to me—soul of the quiet face thundering past—leading its troop of glories echoing along the hills, telling it to the flocks in the fields and the birds in the air, telling it to the trees and the buds and the little, trembling growing things, that the might of the spirit of man has passed that way. ”

“ What if your engine is barely capable of forty miles an hour, that miraculously fast stretch magically carries you at the easiest fifty. If you have a big powerful engine, you forget that ordinarily you dislike whizzing across the surface of the earth, and for just this once—even though you think of it more in terror than in joy—you are approaching the raceway of America, and you, too, are going to race!
“We must be sure that everything is in perfect running order,” you exclaim excitedly as you picture your car leaping out of Omaha and shooting to Denver while scarcely turning over its engine. ”

“ The engine is an engine before the motive power is applied. The bolts, bars, pistons, cranks, shafts, and wheels, are all there. The parts designed to move are ready for action. But all is silent and still. Apply the steam, and it springs, as it were, into a thing of life, and gives forth all its marvelous exhibitions of celerity and power.
So with man. When the breath of life was imparted, which, as we have seen was given in common to all the animal creation, that simply was applied which set the machine in motion. ”

“ An engine is a she—as distinctly feminine as a ship or a mine. Here stands the Echo, her wheels off, resting on blocks, her underside machinery taken out, and her side scrawled with mysterious hieroglyphics in chalk. An enormous green-painted iron harness-rack bears her piston and eccentric rods, and a neatly painted board shows that such and such Englishmen are the fitter, assistant, and apprentice engaged in editing that Echo. An engine seen from the platform and an engine viewed from underneath are two very different things. The one is as unimpressive as a cart ”

“ When I see an engineer watching his engine closely while running, I am most certain to see another commendable feature in a good engineer, and that is, when he stops his engine he will pick up a greasy rag and go over his engine carefully, wiping every working part, watching or looking carefully at every point that he touches. If a nut is working loose, he finds it; if a bearing is hot, he finds it; if any part of his engine has been cutting, he finds it. ”

“ During the time the engine is under steam with a train, everything seen, heard, felt and smelt is capable of affording a lesson.
On the engine the eye is trained to distinguish different colors at considerable distances. If one is color-blind he cannot be a good engineer.
On the engine the ear learns to detect the slightest variation in the beats and knocks about the machinery—to distinguish the difference between the knock of an axle box and the knock of a journal. ”

“ Let us enter the engine-room of a big liner, and see for ourselves. It is a triumph of engineering. Still, at first, you cannot understand anything of the complicated mass of machinery. Then you notice three large cylinders—for these are triple-expansion engines—with pistons shooting in and out downwards, and attached by connecting rods to the cranks of the propeller shaft below. The cranks are bent at different angles so that they can never all be in the same position at once. There is a maze of machinery and shining rods, bewildering to the uninitiated eye. ”

“ When an inventor builds an engine to drive a huge ship across the sea, he has created a motor vastly larger than his own frame, but much inferior in economy. At a temperature little higher than that of a summer breeze the human mechanism transmutes the energy of fuel into mechanical toil: for the same duty, less efficiently discharged, the steam engine demands a blaze almost fierce enough to melt grate bars of iron. ”

“ There was a huge engine in the wall which was in full play, with wheels and cylinders resembling our own steam-engines, except that it was richly ornamented with precious stones and metals, and appeared to emanate a pale phosphorescent atmosphere of shifting light. ”

“ You could not say, as you pointed to a steam-engine, "The usual power of that engine is two hundred horses; but once or twice it has surprised us all by working up to two thousand." No; the engine is always of nearly the power of two thousand horses, if it ever is. But what we have been supposing as to the engine is just what many men have done. ”

“ The simplest form of an engine, however, requires of the operator a certain amount of brains and a willingness to do that which he knows should be done; and if you will follow the instructions you have already received, you can run your engine as successfully as any one can wish as long as your engine is in order, and, as I have just stated, it is not liable to get out of order, except from constant wear, and this wear will appear in the boxes, journals and valve. ”

“ The first engineer would be at the engine himself, gray with nervous excitement. Down in the engine-room, where they knew nothing at all, they would strain their ears painfully for any sound, and all to no purpose. ”

“ But original and comprehensive as were the views out of which these fundamental inventions arose, the exquisite and inexhaustible ingenuity which the engine, as finally perfected by him, displays in every part of its subordinate mechanism, is calculated to strike us perhaps with scarcely less admiration. It forms undoubtedly the best exemplification that has ever been afforded of the number and diversity of services which a piece of machinery may be made to render to itself, by means solely of the various application of its first moving power, when that has once been called into action. ”

“ He studies the mechanism of every engine, examines the most trifling parts, measures the degree of steam-pressure, tries the balance-valves, studies the action of the pistons and gearing; he seeks eagerly to discover the central motive power, the invisible reservoir of force. ”

“ An engine which forms the head of a pin, has, in reality, as much importance as an engine for raising water, or for manufacturing cloth; for in these cases the three machines have the same object, which is merely that of abridging manual labour. ”

“ He had drifted over to America, and had been working for several years at the factory that had built the engine for the Skipper’s plane.
When the factory head had received the order for a specially built engine for a particularly long non-stop flight, he had sent for Billings and told him that here was an engine that must be watched through all its construction, from the tiniest nut and bolt, to the moment of its great trial. Nothing must be overlooked. Everything must be tested and re-tested. ”

“ We have now closed for an engine complete, of the power of twelve mules at a time, with suitable duplicates, chains, &c., for 210l. I very much wish for your engine to be set to work by your own workmen, to show the planters the simplicity and easy management of the machine, and also save the expense of an engineer, which will tend to promote their use. The engine will be set to work before it is sent off, and every possible care taken to execute it in the most perfect order. ”

“ The motor is the great dominating factor in the world of industry. Every wheel and spindle; every shaft and loom, and every piece of mechanism which has motion, derives it from some sort of motor.
The term motor has a wider significance than any other word. A steam engine is a motor, and so, also, is a dynamo, a water wheel or a wind mill. ”

“ If, in any engine, a reversal effects complete inversion of all the physical and mechanical details of its operation, it is a perfect engine, and produces maximum effect with any given quantity of heat and with any fixed limits of range of temperature. ”

“ For wise men it is no more difficult to think of a growing engine than of a growing oak. What if to-morrow an engineer should plant a cannon ball. Having watered it well and kept the ground loose through hoe or spade, suppose that when a few weeks have passed the outline of a smokestack should push through the soil, to be followed a little later by a rudimentary steam whistle, the outlines of a boiler, and, rising through the sod, rude drive-wheels, piston-rods and cylinders, until after six months the great engine should stand forth in full completion. ”

“ As regards the construction of the engine as a piece of mechanism, the principles and practice of good engineering are precisely the same, whether applied in the designing of the compound or of the ordinary type of steam-engine. ”

“ There are two classes of persons whose attention may be attracted by a treatise on such a subject as the Steam Engine. One consists of those who, by trade or profession, are interested in mechanical science, and who therefore seek information on the subject of which it treats, as a matter of necessity, and a wish to acquire it in a manner and to an extent which may be practically available in their avocations. ”

“ To this day the mechanical means by which his famous gold paint is produced remains a secret. The machinery is driven by a steam-engine in an adjoining room; and into the room where the automatic machinery is at work none but the inventor and his assistants have ever entered. When a sufficient quantity of work is done, a bell is rung to give notice to the engine-man to stop the engine ”

“ The high pressure steam engine, in whatever form it exists, consists of a frame or bed plate carrying two distinct mechanisms, first, the driving or power-transmitting mechanism, and second, the valve gear or valve motion, and to these are added such other mechanisms as the nature of the duty the engine is to perform may require. ”

“ In the present perfect state of the engine it appears a thing almost endowed with intelligence. It regulates, with perfect accuracy and uniformity, the number of its strokes in a given time, counting, or recording them moreover, to tell how much work it has done, as a clock records the beats of its pendulum; it regulates the quantity of steam admitted to work; the briskness of the fire; the supply of water to the boiler; the supply of coals188 to the fire; it opens and shuts its valves with absolute precision as to time and manner; it oils its joints ”

“ Engine Accessories.—While the steam engine is merely a device for utilizing the expansive force of steam, and thus push a cylinder back and forth, its successful operation, from the standpoint of economy, depends on a number of things, which are rarely ever heard of except by users and engineers. ”

“ Uniformity and steadiness in the rate at which machinery works, are essential both for its effect and its duration. The first illustration which presents itself is that beautiful contrivance, the governor of the steam-engine, which must immediately occur to all who are familiar with that admirable engine. Wherever the increased speed of the engine would lead to injurious or dangerous consequences, this is applied ”

“ At last, after a century of improvement on pumping engines, there remained nothing but the very obvious stage of getting the engine that had been developed on wheels and out upon the ways of the world. ”

“ Q.--Having now described the most usual and approved forms of engines applicable to numerous miscellaneous purposes for which a moderate amount of steam power is required, will you briefly recapitulate what amount of work of different kinds an engine of a given power will perform, so that any one desiring to employ an engine to perform a given amount of work, will be able to tell what the power of such engine should be? ”

“ These engines are made with endless diversities of details, though in most such simplicity of arrangement is secured, that a labourer of ordinary intelligence may, after a little instruction, be trusted with the charge of the engine; while their economy of fuel, efficiency, and cheapness are not exceeded in any other class of steam engine. ”

“ Consider what you want an engine for. If it is a stationary engine, consider the work to be done, the space it is to occupy, and what conveniences will save your time. Remember, TIME IS MONEY, and that means that SPACE IS ALSO MONEY. Choose the kind of engine that will be most convenient for the position in which you wish to place it and the purpose or purposes for which you wish to use it. If buying a traction engine, consider also the roads and an engine’s pulling qualities. ”

“ A third phase is to be distinguished when in the eighties a new type of engine came into use, an engine in which the expansive force of an explosive mixture replaced the expansive force of steam. The light, highly efficient engines that were thus made possible were applied to the automobile, and developed at last to reach such a pitch of lightness and efficiency as to render flight—long known to be possible—a practical achievement. ”

“ Suppose you are on the road with your engine and load, and you have a stretch of nice road. You are carrying a good head of steam and running with lever back in the corner or lower notch. Now your engine will travel along its regular speed, and say you run a mile this way and fire twice in making it. ”

“ The engine is, indeed, a beautiful working model, moving with its strong arm the entire machinery used throughout the building, yet so quiet that, without seeing it, you would hardly know it was in motion. In the same room is the boiler, of the locomotive tubular pattern, large enough not only to furnish steam for the engine, but also for heating the entire factory, and furnishing heat for all things requisite in the building. ”