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Secret from Glauber.

[Book IV.

as

the chief authors of the steam-engine, others condemn the "Century' a mass of absurdities, and deny his ever having constructed a steam-machine at all. Those persons however who entertain the latter opinion, evince as much credulity as others, for they cannot deny that he has described the peculiar properties of the great chef d'œuvre of human ingenuity (a high-pressure steam-engine) with a degree of accuracy of which history affords no parallel; and hence, if he lacked truth he possessed prescience, and while they reject him as an inventor, they must admit him as a prophet.

In the annals of the arts, there is not to be found a more singular example of devotion to their improvement, either as regards the number of years or the amount of treasure spent, the importance of the results or the ardor with which they were pursued, and the efforts made to excite public attention to them. Whatever others may have done before him, they left no account of their labors. Worcester is the first to communicate with the public by means of the press, and to give a tangible description (although an intentionally obscure one) of his discoveries-(for we do not reckon either the device of Branca or Decaus among such.) On this account alone he is entitled to the praise of every modern engineer; and had he but fulfilled his promise of leaving detailed accounts illustrated with engravings, his fame would have endured as long as the steam-engine itself. If he were not the great magician who evoked the mighty spirit that lay dormant in steam-who pointed out its power and the means of employing it—who revived the project of Garay and embodied and extended the apparatus of Porta-it may be asked who was? And although none of his machines are extant, nor any of his immediate successors have had the candor to acknowledge their obligations to him, it is not less the duty of historians to uphold his claims until evidence shall be adduced to establish those of another-until some older and clearer fountain than his Century of Inventions shall be discovered-from which streams equally unacknowledged have been drawn. We cannot but hope that the obloquy and uncertainty under which his name is yet shrouded will eventually be dispersed, when he will be esteemed one of the most remarkable mechanicians of modern times, and be associated with the Dædaluses and Archytases of antiquity.

How similar to Worcester's manner of announcing his discoveries, is the following one from Glauber, an older writer! It appears, at the first glance, as absurd as any thing in the Century. "A certain secret by the help whereof wines are easily transported from mountainous places, remote from rivers and destitute of other conveniences of carriage, so that the carrying of ten vessels is of cheaper price than, otherwise, the carrying of one." This passage, he observes, offended many both learned and unlearned, who "believed the thing impossible, and nothing but dreams and fancies." He was so much quizzed about it as to regret having mentioned it "Many judge this thing incredible because of the want of winged carts, that need not horses! confirming one the other in unbeliefe, leading one another after the manner of the blind." His plan was to take the juice of the grape before fermentation commenced, and concentrate it by boiling till it became of "the consistence of honey." The water being thus evaporated reduced the wine to less than one tenth of its former bulk and weight, while it still retained the strength and virtue of the whole; for new wine decocted and inspissated before its fermentation loseth nothing of its virtues:" hence it could be transported at one tenth the expense. When used, it was to be diluted with the same quantity of water as was evaporated from it. (Treatise on Philos. Furnaces: Lond. 1651, p. 353.)

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Chap. 7.]

Anecdote of Cromwell.

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The adoption of some mode of concentrating wines as above, would produce an immense saving in their freight and carriage over the globe, and would consequently greatly reduce their cost. It would also defeat the enormous frauds that are practiced in the manufacture of artificial wines-mixtures in which not a drop of the juice of the grape is said to enter. Glauber says, "the new wine is not to be inspissated in cauldrons," on account of the taste which it would contract from the metal.

CHAPTER VII.

Hautefeuille, Huyghens and Hooke-Moreland-His table of cylinders-His pumps worked by a cylindrical high-pressure steam-engine-He made no claim to a steam-engine in England-Simple device by which he probably worked his plunger pumps-Inventions of his at Vauxhall-Anecdote of him from Evelyn's Diary-Early steam projectors courtiers-Ridiculous origin of some honors-Edict of Nantes-Papin-Digesters-Safety valve-Papin's plan to transmit power through pipes by means of air-Cause of its failure-Another plan by compressed air-Papin's experiments to move a piston by gunpowder and by steam-The latter abandoned by him-The safety valve improved, not invented by Papin-Mercurial safety valves-Water lute-Steam machine of Papin for raising water and imparting motion to machinery.

Towards the latter part of Worcester's life, a young Frenchman was fast rising into notice. This was John Hautefeuille, the son of a baker at Orleans, and one of the most brilliant mechanicians of the age. He was in his twentieth year when Worcester died. The device for regulating the vibration of the balance in watches by a spring, whence arose the name of pendulum watches, was invented by him, and was subsequently improved by Huyghens. Hautefeuille entered the church and became an abbé. He wrote several tracts on subjects connected with mechanics. In 1678 he proposed steam as a source of power, and applied it to give motion to a piston. Instead of aqueous vapor he also proposed the alternate evolution and condensation of the vapor of alcohol, in such a manner that none should be wasted; and both he and Huyghens gave motion to pistons, by exploding small charges of gunpowder in cylinders. In 1678, Dr. Hooke proposed a steam-engine on the atmospheric principle, but the only information respecting it is in a memorandum to that effect found among the papers of Dr. Robison, the author of the treatise on Mechanical Philosophy.

These examples of imparting motion to a piston by aëriform fluids are interesting, inasmuch as they show that the device was not very novel in the middle of the 17th century, and that mechanics in different countries were familiar with it.

We must now refer to another member of the English court, a contemporary of Worcester, and like him actively engaged in the politics of the times, but who on the other hand adhered to the commonwealth until the latter part of Cromwell's administration. We are told that one evening, near midnight, an interview took place between Cromwell and Thurloe,

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Moreland's

[Book IV. his secretary, at the house of the latter, on some state business that required the utmost secrecy. It was not till the matter had been opened that the Protector becaine aware of a third person being in the room, when he is said to have drawn his dagger, and would have dispatched the supposed intruder, had not Thurloe guaranteed silence on the part of his sleeping attendant. This was Samuel Moreland, the inventor of the plunger pump. He was then employed by and in the confidence of the secretary, and was asleep, or affected to be so, during the interview. On this or some other occasion, he overheard the discussion of a plan to take off the exiled king; to whom he disclosed the whole, and was rewarded with a title at the restoration.

It is not known when Moreland first turned his attention to mechanics: probably not till the restoration. As a favorite of Charles II, and a groom of the privy chamber, he must often have met Worcester at court; while from their congenial habits and pursuits as mechanicians, they were most likely on familiar terms with each other. As master of mechanics to the king, Moreland was no doubt one of those who visited and examined the machine erected by Worcester at Vauxhall, and as a matter of course he often perused the Century of Inventions. He has not however had the ingenuousness to mention any of these things; but notwithstanding this, we cannot believe so far as his applications of steam are concerned, that he was not indebted either to the machine itself, to the Century, or to personal intercourse with Worcester, and probably to them all. The first invention of Moreland that we hear of is the pump that he patented in 1675, and on which, according to one writer, he had previously spent twelve years. This carries the date back to about 1663, the year in which the Century was published. It is not at all unlikely that this famous pamphlet first induced Moreland (as well as many others) to turn his attention to mechanical discoveries, and furnished him with materials to work upon. In the manuscript volume presented by him to the French king in 1683, (see page 273) and now preserved in the British museum, there is a very short chapter on fire or steam engines, of which the following is a translation :

"The Principles of the new Force of Fire, invented by the Chevalier Moreland, in the year 1682, and presented to his most Christian Majesty, 1683. "Water being evaporated by the force of fire, these vapors immediately require a greater space (about two thousand times) than the water occupied before, and too forcible to be always imprisoned, will burst a piece of cannon. But being governed according to the rules of statics, and reduced by science to measure, weight and balance, then they will ably carry their burden, (like good horses) and thus become of great use to mankind; particularly to raise water according to the following table, which shows the number of pounds which can be raised 1800 times per hour to six inches in height, by cylinders half filled with water, as well as the different diameters and depths of those cylinders:

peace

As this is all that Moreland has left on the subject, it is difficult if not impossible to ascertain the precise construction of his apparatus. He is as silent respecting the manner and details by which the object was accomplished as Worcester himself, and hence the steam-engine of one is quite as much a riddle as that of the other. Were these " cylinders" generators of steam-boilers? or were they separate vessels for the reception of water, and from which it was expelled by the vapor, as from the receivers of Savery? or, working cylinders, whose pistons were moved by the expansive force of steam? or, lastly, were they pump chambers, by which the liquid was raised? We suppose they were the last. Had they acted on the principle of Savery's receivers, they could never have been filled and discharged thirty times a minute, or 1800 times an hour. Then as Moreland speaks only of high steam, it can hardly be imagined that he used or thought of using its expansive force to move pistons in the largest cylinders he has named, or made calculations for the employment of ninety of them. Where could he have got a boiler sufficiently strong and capacious to supply a cylinder twelve feet long and six in diameter, to say nothing of the difficulty of making such cylinders? Yet he speaks of them as nothing extraordinary. Now there was no difficulty in making them of all the dimensions named for his plunger pumps, (see No. 123 of our illustrations) for the simple reason that they were not required to be bored; as the piston or plunger worked in contact only with the collar of leathers or stuffing box at the top. That it is to these he refers appears also from the terms, "reduced by science to measure, weight and balance," these being the very same that he used when he claimed, by the invention of this pump, to have "reduced the raising of water to weight and measure," viz. by comparing the weight of the loaded plunger to the quantity of water displaced from the cylinder by its descent, (see page 273)-and thence the number of pounds raised by each cylinder in the preceding table, would be the sum of the weights on each plunger. The term "six inches" probably arose from that being the length of stroke of his experimental plunger; the length of the other cylinders and their effects being calculated from it. The cylinders being only "half filled with water,' would then refer to that quantity, or about that, being expelled at each

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Moreland's Steam-Engine.

[Book IV. stroke, because the plungers would occupy one half only of the interior capacities of the cylinders. See the figure of one on page 272.

If this view of Moreland's project be correct, then he merely used steam to work his plunger pump; and therefore could not justly claim in 1682 to have invented, but only to have applied, the force of fire." That he employed a simple form of a high-pressure engine, in other words moved a piston by the elasticity of the vapor, like Hautefeuille and Worcester, we have little doubt. His language intimates that steam was then rendered so manageable as to be applicable to numerous operations "for the benefit of mankind," of which the raising of water was the only one under his consideration. He obviously was in possession of the means of imparting motion to solids by steam, and thus making it peaceably to carry burdens, or overcome resistances, "like good horses :"-Indeed, one might almost suppose from his apparent carelessness in not mentioning the mode in which the steam was applied, viz. in giving motion to a piston, that explanation on this point was then no longer

necessary.

It is singular that Moreland made no claim for this invention in England. Why was this, if he had any? Does it not imply that he did not invent the steam part of the apparatus ?-else why not have patented it as well as the pump for the object deserved it, and the prospects of remuneration were as promising at home as in France. The fact is, he could not claim the piston steam-engine where the labors of Worcester and others were still in remembrance, and where some of their machines were probably extant. As an educated man and an enlightened mechanic, Moreland was not ignorant of the labors of Ramseye, Fludd, Hautefeuille and Worcester. It is pretty clear that he lit his candle at the lamps of these men, and particularly the latter; for in the short chapter on steam quoted above, he has copied both the ideas and the language of the author of the Century of Inventions. One observation is highly creditable to him, if he was the author of the experiments from which it was deduced, viz. the relative volume of steam and water. A quantity of the latter when converted into the former occupies, he observes, 2000 times its former space: modern experiments make it between 1800 and 1900 times.

Of several simple modes by which Moreland may have applied steam to work his pumps, we shall mention one :-Let a small steam-cylinder, open at the top, be placed under the same end of a vibrating beam as the plunger of the pump; the piston rods of both cylinders being connected to the beam: then, by turning a three-way steam-cock, the vapor would rush into the bottom of the steam-cylinder, and pushing up the piston, would raise the beam and the loaded plunger of the pump; and by then turning the cock so as to close the communication between the cylinder and the boiler, and to open one between the former and the external air, the steam would escape, and the weights on the plunger would cause it, with the beam and steam-piston, to descend. By turning the steam-cock as before, the stroke would be repeated. The only objection to such a device is, that it is too crude to be attributed to Moreland; for, from the advantages he possessed in knowing all that had been previously done, there can be little doubt that he was in possession of a self-acting engine, and of the knowledge of increasing its energy according to the different sized pumps required to be worked by it.

Moreland possessed a natural turn for mechanics, and during the latter half of his life devoted himself almost exclusively to the invention and improvement of useful machinery. Were a description of his and Worcester's workshops now extant, it would possess more real interest than