STEAM IN CAPTIVITY
For the beginnings of the enslavement of steam, that mighty giant whose work has changed the world we live in, we must return to the times of Benjamin Franklin.James Watt, the accredited father of the modern steam engine, was a contemporary of Franklin, and his engine was twenty-one years old when Franklin died.The discovery that steam could be harnessed and made to work is not, of course, credited to James Watt.The precise origin of that discovery is unknown.The ancient Greeks had steam engines of a sort, and steam engines of another sort were pumping water out of mines in England when James Watt was born.James Watt, however, invented and applied the first effective means by which steam came to serve mankind.And so the modern steam engine begins with him.
The story is old, of how this Scottish boy, James Watt, sat on the hearth in his mother's cottage, intently watching the steam rising from the mouth of the tea kettle, and of the great role which this boy afterwards assumed in the mechanical world.It was in 1763, when he was twenty-eight and had the appointment of mathematical-instrument maker to the University of Glasgow, that a model of Newcomen's steam pumping engine was brought into his shop for repairs.One can perhaps imagine the feelings with which James Watt, interested from his youth in mechanical and scientific instruments, particularly those which dealt with steam, regarded this Newcomen engine.Now his interest was vastly.quickened.He set up the model and operated it, noticed how the alternate heating and cooling of its cylinder wasted power, and concluded, after some weeks of experiment, that, in order to make the engine practicable, the cylinder must be kept hot, "always as hot as the steam which entered it." Yet in order to condense the steam there must be a cooling of the vessel.The problem was to reconcile these two conditions.
At length the pregnant idea occurred to him--the idea of the separate condenser.It came to him on a Sunday afternoon in 1765, as he walked across Glasgow Green.If the steam were condensed in a vessel separate from the cylinder, it would be quite possible to keep the condensing vessel cool and the cylinder hot at the same time.Next morning Watt began to put his scheme to the test and found it practicable.He developed other ideas and applied them.So at last was born a steam engine that would work and multiply man's energies a thousandfold.
After one or two disastrous business experiences, such as fall to the lot of many great inventors, perhaps to test their perseverance, Watt associated himself with Matthew Boulton, a man of capital and of enterprise, owner of the Soho Engineering Works, near Birmingham.The firm of Boulton and Watt became famous, and James Watt lived till August 19, 1819--lived to see his steam engine the greatest single factor in the new industrial era that had dawned for English-speaking folk.
Boulton and Watt, however, though they were the pioneers, were by no means alone in the development of the steam engine.Soon there were rivals in the field with new types of engines.One of these was Richard Trevithick in England; another was Oliver Evans of Philadelphia.Both Trevithick and Evans invented the high-pressure engine.Evans appears to have applied the high pressure principle before Trevithick, and it has been said that Trevithick borrowed it from Evans, but Evans himself never said so, and it is more likely that each of these inventors worked it out independently.Watt introduced his steam to the cylinder at only slightly more than atmospheric pressure and clung tenaciously to the low-pressure theory all his life.Boulton and Watt, indeed, aroused by Trevithick's experiments in high-pressure engines, sought to have Parliament pass an act forbidding high pressure on the ground that the lives of the public were endangered.Watt lived long enough, however, to see the high-pressure steam engine come into general favor, not only in America but even in his own conservative country.
Less sudden, less dramatic, than that of the cotton gin, was the entrance of the steam engine on the American industrial stage, but not less momentous.The actions and reactions of steam in America provide the theme for an Iliad which some American Homer may one day write.They include the epic of the coal in the Pennsylvania hills, the epic of the ore, the epic of the railroad, the epic of the great city; and, in general, the subjugation of a continental wilderness to the service of a vast civilization.
The vital need of better transportation was uppermost in the thoughts of many Americans.It was seen that there could be no national unity in a country so far flung without means of easy intercourse between one group of Americans and another.The highroads of the new country were, for the most part, difficult even for the man on horseback, and worse for those who must travel by coach or post-chaise.Inland from the coast and away from the great rivers there were no roads of any sort; nothing but trails.Highways were essential, not only for the permanent unity of the United States, but to make available the wonderful riches of the inland country, across the Appalachian barrier and around the Great Lakes, into which American pioneers had already made their way.
Those immemorial pathways, the great rivers, were the main avenues of traffic with the interior.So, of course, when men thought of improving transportation, they had in mind chiefly transportation by water; and that is why the earliest efforts of American inventors were applied to the means of improving traffic and travel by water and not by land.
