application of the power of steam to useful work, effected a beginning which, looked upon from a point of view which exhibits its importance as the first step toward the wonderful results to-day familiar to every one, appears in its true light, and entitles those great men to even greater honor than has been accorded them. The results actually accomplished, however, were absolutely insignificant in comparison with those which marked the period of development just described. Yet even the work of Watt and of his contemporaries was but a mere prelude to the marvellous advances made in the succeeding period, to which we are now come, and, in extent and importance, was insignificant in comparison with that accomplished by their successors in the development of all mechanical industries by the application of the steam-engine to the movement of every kind of machine.

The first of the two periods of application saw the steamengine adapted simply to the elevation of water and the drainage of mines; during the second period it was adapted to every variety of useful work, and introduced wherever the muscular strength of men and animals, or the power of wind and of falling water, which had previously been the only motors, had found application. A history of the development of industries by the introduction of steam-power during this period, would be no less extended and hardly less interesting than that of the steam-engine itself.

The way had been fairly opened by Boulton and Watt; and the year 1800 saw a crowd of engineers and manufacturers entering upon it, eager to reap the harvest of distinction and of pecuniary returns which seemed so promising to all. The last year of the eighteenth century was also the last of the twenty-five years of partnership of Boulton & Watt, and, with it, the patents under which that firm had held the great monopoly of steam-engine building expired. The right to manufacture the modern steam-engine was common to all. Watt had, at the commencement of the new cen

tury, retired from active business-life. Boulton remained in business; but he was not the inventor of the new engine, and could not retain, by the exercise of all his remaining power, the privileges previously held by legal authorization.

The young Boulton and the young Watt were not the Boulton & Watt of earlier years; and, had they possessed all of the business talent and all of the inventive genius of their fathers, they could not have retained control of a business which was now growing far more rapidly than the facilities for manufacturing could be extended in any single establishment. All over the country, and even on the Continent of Europe, and in America, thousands of mechanics, and many men of mechanical tastes in other professions, were familiar with the principles of the new machine, and were speculating upon its value for all the purposes to which it has since been applied; and a multitude of enthusiastic mechanics, and a larger multitude of visionary and ignorant schemers, were experimenting with every imaginable device, in the vain hope of attaining perpetual motion, and other hardly less absurd results, by its modification and improvement. Steam-engine building establishments sprang up wherever a mechanic had succeeded in erecting a workshop and in acquiring a local reputation as a worker in metal, and many of Watt's workmen went out from Soho to take charge of the work done in these shops. Nearly all of the great establishments which are to-day most noted for their extent and for the importance and magnitude of the work done in them, not only in Great Britain, but in Europe and the United States, came into existence during this second period of the application of the steam-engine as a prime

mover.

The new establishments usually grew out of older shops of a less pretentious character, and were managed by men who had been trained by Watt, or who had had a still more awakening experience with those who vainly strove to make

up, by their ingenuity and by great excellence of workmanship, for advantages possessed at Soho in a legal monopoly and greater experience in the business.

It was exceedingly difficult to find expert and conscientious workmen, and machine-tools had not become as thoroughly perfected as had the steam-engine itself. These difficulties were gradually overcome, however, and thenceforward the growth of the business was increasingly rapid.

Every important form of engine had now been invented. Watt had perfected, with the aid of Murdoch, both the pumping-engine and the rotative steam-engine for application to mills. He had invented the trunk engine, and Murdoch had devised the oscillating engine and the ordinary slide-valve, and had made a model locomotive-engine, while Hornblower had introduced the compound engine. The application of steam to navigation had been often proposed, and had sometimes been attempted, with sufficient success to indicate to the intelligent observer an ultimate triumph. It only remained to extend the use of steam as a motor into all known departments of industry, and to effect such improvements in details as experience should prove desirable.

The engines of Hero, of Porta, and of Branca were, it will be remembered, non-condensing; but the first plan of a non-condensing engine that could be made of any really practical use is given in the "Theatrum Machinarum Οι Leupold, published in 1720. This sketch is copied in Fig. 41. It is stated by Leupold that this plan was suggested by Papin. It consists of two single-acting cylinders, r s, receiving steam alternately from the same steam-pipe through a "four-way cock,” x, and exhausting into the atmosphere. Steam is furnished by the boiler, a, and the pistons, ed, are alternately raised and depressed, depressing and raising the pump-rods, kl, to which they are attached by the beams, hg, vibrating on the centres, i i. The water from the pumps, op, is forced up the stand-pipe, q, and discharged at its top. The alternate action of the steam-pistons is se

cured by turning the "four-way cock," a, first into the position shown, and then, at the completion of the stroke, into the reverse position, by which change the steam from the

boiler is then led into the cylinder, s, and the steam in r is discharged into the atmosphere.'

Leupold states that he is indebted to Papin for the suggestion of the peculiar valve here used. He also proposed to use a Savery engine without condensation in raising water. We have no evidence that this engine was ever built.

The first rude scheme for applying steam to locomotion on land was probably that of Isaac Newton, who, in 1680, proposed the machine shown in the accompanying figure (42), which will be recognized as representing the scientific

1 Vide "Theatrum Machinarum," vol. iii., Tab. 30.

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toy which is found in nearly every collection of illustrative philosophical apparatus. As described in the "Explanation of the Newtonian Philosophy," it consists of a spherical boiler, B, mounted on a carriage. Steam issuing from the

pipe, C, seen pointing directly backward, by its reaction upon the carriage, drives the latter ahead. The driver, sitting at A, controls the steam by the handle, E, and cock, F. The fire is seen at D.

When, at the end of the eighteenth century, the steamengine had been so far perfected that the possibility of its successful application to locomotion had become fully and very generally recognized, the problem of adapting it to locomotion on land was attacked by many inventors.

Dr. Robison had, as far back as in 1759, proposed it to James Watt during one of their conferences, at a time when the latter was even more ignorant than the former of the principles which were involved in the construction of the steam-engine, and this suggestion may have had some influence in determining Watt to pursue his research; thus setting in operation that train of thoughtful investigation and experiment which finally earned for him his splendid fame.

In 1765, that singular genius, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, whose celebrity was acquired by speculations in poetry and philosophy as well as in medicine, urged Matthew Boulton -subsequently Watt's partner, and just then corresponding with our own Franklin in relation to the use of steam-power -to construct a steam-carriage, or "fiery chariot," as he