Full text: The steam engine: its invention and progressive improvement, an investigation of its principles, and its application to navigation, manufactures, and railways (Vol. 1)

2 
THE HISTORY OF 
[sect. I. 
employed, and for which alone it has become valuable, it appears to be mere 
trifling to search for authorities, and absolutely unworthy of occupying the time 
or attention of a man of real science. The blast of an eolipile is certainly not a 
mode of employing steam capable of producing the species of useful effect which is 
obtained by a steam engine, and, as a proof of its inefficiency, the same principle 
of action (that is, by impulse) has never been rendered applicable to produce 
mechanical power for useful purposes in a steam engine. 
It is not my object, therefore, to inquire when it was first ascertained that steam 
has force; but, to endeavour to trace the history of its suggestion in a practical 
form, and of its employment in the arts and manufactures; to develop the various 
changes and improvements the steam engine has received; and to exhibit, among 
the host of projectors, those who have really advanced our knowledge, either 
regarding the principles, the construction, or the arrangement of this powerful 
prime mover. 
It is easy to perceive that I have assigned myself a difficult task, but it is equally 
evident that if it be accomplished in a judicious and candid manner, it will form 
a valuable addition to an interesting and useful branch of mechanical science; 
hence, I am encouraged to proceed, and trust to leave my reader with an impres 
sion, that I have been just in deciding between the claimants of the invention of 
each of the parts of the steam engine. 
1663. Marquis of Worcester, died 1667. 
4. The idea of employing the impulsive force of the eolipile seems to be the 
only one which had been formed for using steam as a source of motion before the 
time of the Marquis of Worcester; and he, in a little work entitled ‘A Century of 
the Names and Scantlings of Inventions,’ undoubtedly describes a method of 
employing the pressure of steam for raising water to great heights. 1 His work was 
first published in 1663, and under the sixty-eighth invention we have the following 
name and scantling:— 
“ lxvin. A Fire Water Work.—An admirable and most forcible way to drive 
up water by fire, not by drawing or sucking it upwards; for that must be, as the 
philosopher calleth it, infra sphreram activitatis, which is but at such a distance. 
But this way hath no bounder if the vessels be strong enough; for I have taken a 
piece of a whole cannon, whereof the end was burst, and filled it three-quarters 
full of water, stopping and screwing up the broken end, as also the touchhole, and, 
1 Another engine, which the marquis terms a “ Water-commanding Engine,” seems to have been 
the one for which he obtained an act of parliament, allowing him the monopoly of the profits 
arising from its use.
	        
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