Steam engine

“ We are obviously as yet on the bare threshold of chemical discovery and mechanical contrivance for the benefit of Man. The inventor of the steam engine still lived within the memory of many of us; yet even he never dreamed of the stupendous improvements already made on his invention, and the infinite adaptations to human wants of which it is fully proved susceptible. A first-class North River or Sound Steam-boat, much more an Atlantic Steam-ship, would have astounded even him. ”

“ Among the various ways in which the steam engine has ministered to the social progress of our race, none is more important and interesting than the aid it has afforded to navigation. Before it lent its giant powers to that art, locomotion over the waters of the deep was attended with a degree of danger and uncertainty, which seemed so necessary and so inevitable, that, as a common proverb, it became the type and representative of everything else which was precarious and perilous. ”

“ The steam-engine is the finest example of the mechanical art. A thousand parts make up the whole, all of which move together in harmony. The most violent storm never disorders them. The piston moves, the crank turns, the steam rises, and is condensed. It is nothing but the Marquis of Worcester's kettle boiling over, Papin's rod or piston, Watt's crank, improved by later inventors. ”

“ When a new form of steam-engine is likely to be introduced, if at all, can be scarcely even conjectured. It seems evident that its success is to be secured, if a revolution is ever to occur, by the adoption of high steam-pressures, of great piston speeds, by care and skill in design, by the use of exceptionally excellent materials of construction, [481] by great perfection of workmanship, and by intelligence in its management. ”

“ A steam-engine, doing the same work, would be ready for action at all times, could be applied, when not driving the vessel, to raising the anchor, working the pumps, and to ventilating the ship, while the fire would also serve to cook with. The engine would occupy less space and weight than the men, would require less aliment, and that of a less expensive kind, etc. He would make the boiler safe against explosions by bands of iron ”

“ The superior simplicity and lightness of the high-pressure engine must now be apparent, and these qualities recommend it strongly for all purposes in which the engine itself must be moved from place to place.
The steam-engine therefore consists of two distinct parts,—the boiler, which is at once the generator and magazine of steam, and the cylinder with its piston, which is the instrument by which this power is brought into operation and rendered effective. ”

“ Without the steam engine there would be little work available for electricity, but the appearance of this, the latest and most useful handmaid of steam, has given the engine work to do in an uncounted number of new fields, has called in the inventor once more to adapt steam to its new work. ”

“ It is one of the remarkable things in the history and development of mechanism, that in this day of perfected steam engines, the inventors of our time should go back and utilize the principles employed in the first recorded steam engine, namely, the turbine. Instead of pressure exerting a force against a piston, as in the reciprocating engine, the steam acted by impacting against a moving surface, and by obtaining more or less reaction from air-resistance against a freely discharging steam jet or jets. ”

“ The steam engine to-day is of vastly greater importance than it has ever been before, especially in its use for furnishing the motive power for cotton and woolen factories, and for all kinds of manufacturing establishments. What should we do to-day without the steam engine? Long before the beginning of this century Erasmus Darwin sang as follows:
"Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam! ”

“ The DUTY of an engine is another term, which has been adopted to express the load which may be raised a given perpendicular height, by the combustion of a given quantity of fuel.
When steam engines were first introduced, they were commonly applied to work pumps or mills which had been previously wrought by horses. It was, therefore, convenient, and indeed necessary, in the first instance, to be able to express the performance of these machines by reference to the effects of animal power, to which manufacturers, miners, and others, had been long accustomed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A new type of engine can, if at all, probably only supersede the common form when engineers can employ steam of very high pressure, and adopt much greater range of expansion than is now usual. Great velocity of piston and high speed of rotation are also essential in the attempt to make any revolution in steam-engine construction a success. ”

“ The now well-known principle of a steam-engine is this: there is a cylinder with its rod fixed to one end of a lever, which is worked by the combined pressure of the atmosphere and the steam upon a piston, a temporary vacuum being made below it by suddenly condensing the steam, which had been let into the cylinder where this piston works, by a jet of cold water thrown into it. ”

“ Before the era marked by the discoveries of James Watt, the steam engine, which has since become an object of such universal interest, was a machine of extremely limited power, greatly inferior in importance to most other mechanical contrivances used as prime movers. ”

“ The steam motor of ordinary type cannot be conveniently designed to carry with it fuel [Pg 18] and water supplies adequate for very long journeys. On the other hand, the steamer has the great advantage of being able to exert tremendous power at low road speeds. The steam engine is more flexible and more capable of standing a heavy overload than the internal combustion engine. ”

“ Judging from the rapid strides the steam-engine has made during the last forty years to become a universal first-mover, and from the experience that has arisen from that extension, we feel convinced that every invention which diminishes its size without impairing its power brings it a step nearer to the assistance of the ‘world’s great laborers,’ the husbandman and the peasant, for whom, as yet, it performs but little. ”

“ The steam engine was applied to spinning, weaving, and countless other operations which previously had been performed by hand. Steam engines could not of course be installed in every small cottage; hence a number of machines were put in one factory to be run by one steam engine. ”

“ If the effect which this machine has had on commerce and the wealth of nations raise our astonishment, the means by which this effect has been produced will not less excite our admiration. The history of the Steam Engine presents a series of contrivances, which, for exquisite and refined ingenuity, stand without a parallel in the annals of human invention. ”

“ The steam-engine and propelling apparatus of the modern ocean-steamer have now become almost exclusively the compound or double-cylinder engine, driving the screw. The form and the location of the machinery in the vessel vary with the size and character of the ship which it drives. Very small boats are fitted with machinery of quite a different kind from that built for large steamers, and war-vessels have usually been supplied with engines of a design radically different from that adopted for merchant-steamers. ”

“ Note.—This invention was of great historical importance as it covered all the essential detail of modern practice in steam engine building and constituted the fundamental principle of all steam engines.
Improvements have been made in form and construction, necessitated by new adaptations which have been constantly developed. The requirements for higher speed, increased pressure which implies greater power, and the constant desire for greater economy in fuel have produced a variety of changes in detail but have not altered the fundamental idea. ”

“ The engine is usually attached to the boiler, and the feed-pump is generally attached to the engine. The whole machine is carried on wheels, and is moved from one place to another, usually by horses, but sometimes by its own engine, which is coupled by an engaging and disengaging apparatus to the rear-wheels. English builders have usually excelled in the construction of this class of steam-engine, although it is probable that the best American engines are fully equal to them in design, material, and construction. ”

“ The method by which steam is used in the single-acting steam engine of Watt is, in all respects, similar, except that the piston, instead of being urged downwards by the force of the atmosphere, is pressed by steam of a force equal to the atmospheric pressure. ”

“ The steam-engines in motor-cars are not very different from the engines used to run locomotives, factory machinery, or street-rollers, but they are much lighter and, of course, smaller—very much smaller in proportion to the power they produce. It will be seen how compact and efficient these little steam plants are when a ten-horse-power engine, boiler, water-tank, and gasoline reservoir holding enough to drive the machine one hundred miles, are stored in a carriage with a wheel-base of less than seven feet and a width of five feet, and still leave ample room for four passengers. ”

“ The purpose of a steam engine is to convert into usefully applicable power the hidden energy of fuel, stored ages ago in the earth, by transformation, through the action of vegetation, from the original form, the heat of the sun, into an available form for reconversion, through thermodynamic operations. In this process of reconversion, whatever the nature of the machine used in the operation, there are invariably wastes, both of heat required for conversion into power and of the power thus produced. ”

“ Railways are in progress between the points of greatest intercourse in the United Kingdom, and travelling steam engines are in preparation for the common turnpike roads; the practicability and utility of that application of the steam engine having not only been established by experiment to the satisfaction of their projectors, but proved before the legislature in a committee of inquiry on the subject. ”

“ I desired to try my powers in making a more powerful steam-engine than I had as yet attempted to construct, in order to drive the large turning-lathe and the other tools and machinery of his small foundry. I accordingly set to work and constructed a direct-acting, high-pressure steam-engine, with a cylinder four inches in diameter. I use the term direct acting, because I dispensed with the beam and parallel motion, which was generally considered the correct mode of transferring the action of the piston to the crank. ”

“ I mention this fact to show that the engines are exceedingly light, and that when compared with simple engines their power should be computed on the same basis. It will, therefore, be seen that if we do not take into consideration the steam supply or the amount of fuel and water necessary, the simple steam engine is an exceedingly light motor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To illustrate the great advantages possessed [136] by the steam-engine, even in its rudest state, over every other species of prime mover yet enumerated, it may now be advisable to examine its effective force when employed in the working of pumps. It has been found that one hundred weight of coals burned in an engine on the old construction, would raise at least twenty thousand cubic feet of water twenty-four feet high; an engine with a twenty-four inch cylinder doing the work of seventy four horses. ”

“ The application of the steam-engine has in modern times almost entirely displaced the use of either water or wind as sources of power in machinery, and most of the saw-mills now in action, especially those on a large scale, are worked by steam. ”