THE CORNISH PUMPING ENGINE. 
3 
cessors had marked out for it, yet it was to the purpose of raising water that Watt 
first and most extensively applied his inventions, and in so doing reaped his most 
ample reward. And finally, it is in furtherance of this object that the latest great 
improvements, those which we are about to describe, have been made; improve 
ments which have raised the engine to its highest grade in the scale of utility, and 
which, by the interest they have excited, we may hope will not much longer be 
confined to the district where they have originated, and to the solitary purpose to 
whose necessities they owe their rise. 
HISTORY BEFORE THE INTRODUCTION OF WATT’S IMPROVEMENTS, 1700 TO 1775. 
5. It is now something more than a century since the power of steam was first 
applied to the purpose of draining the mines of Cornwall. 
Before the period of its introduction, the miners made use of both animal and 
water power to clear their works from the influx of the springs. If the depth was 
small, the common lift or force pump was employed; while for deeper excavations, 
the water was drawn out in buckets or barrels, which were raised to the surface by 
means of a whim worked by horses. The chain pump, or as it was called, the “ rag 
and chain,” was also in request: several of these, fixed on stages at different depths 
in the shaft of a mine, and worked by men, would extract a considerable quantity of 
water; at, however, an enormous expense, and attended with great injury to the 
health, and frequently with risk to the life, of the men employed. 
6. Water power, where it could be obtained, furnished a much cheaper and more 
effective method of draining. Water wheels were erected where practicable, whose 
axes or shafts were fitted with cranks, giving motion, by the intervention of rods 
and levers, or “ bobs,” to large and powerful pumps fixed in the shafts of the 
mine. 2 
Great exertions were made, and much ingenuity displayed, in taking advantage of 
every running stream that could be turned to useful account. Water courses were 
intercepted, and the water conveyed, at as high a level as possible, in conduits or 
aqueducts, often many miles in length, to the situations where it would be most 
2 Water wheels are at present very extensively employed on the mines, sometimes for pumping, in 
which the arrangement still remains the same, but principally for giving motion to machinery for 
stamping and dressing the ore. The water is used, after having passed the wheels, for the purposes 
of washing the minerals, &c. Conduits similar to those mentioned in the text may be seen in almost all 
parts of the county where mining operations are carried on. 
Curious laws and customs yet exist in some parts of the district, giving a right of property to the 
streams of water, entirely independent of that vested in the land over which they flow.