This machine always interested me very much. It solved every problem which was involved in the perfect and rapid performance of these operations. It had two parallel spindles running horizontally in the same plane, one fixed and the other adjustable. Distance pieces laid between the spindle heads insured the equal length of the arms of all governors of the same size. The table was made with a back to it, so that, a parallel block being laid on the table behind the arms, these were always brought in position parallel with its back. The arms were supported on blocks of proper height. These provisions insured that the joint-holes, which were drilled simultaneously, should intersect the axes of the arms and of the balls and spindle at right angles. This machine fitted up all the governors that I ever made. I gradually built up an excellent business in their manufacture, on account of the extreme pains taken to produce perfect work, so that the governors always gave the highest satisfaction.
I think of only one instance to the contrary. I sold a governor to Mr. Winslow, of Troy, afterwards of the firm of Corning & Winslow, the first manufacturers of Bessemer steel rails in this country under the inspiration of Mr. Alexander L. Holley. Soon after this governor had been shipped I received a letter from Mr. Winslow telling me that the governor would not answer at all, and I should come and see about it. I found the governor had been placed on a second-hand Burden engine, which was a well-known type of horizontal engine at that time, made in Brooklyn. The engine had been built to make 50 revolutions per minute, but being a great deal too large for their use they had reduced the speed to 25 revolutions per minute, and the complaint was that every time the crank passed its centers the governor dropped to its seat. I told them what I thought the difficulty was; that any one could see that the engine very nearly stopped as the crank passed its centers, and the governor had to drop. To show them this action, I disconnected the governor from the valve and throttled the engine by hand, and showed them that the governor, when not connected with the throttle-valve, rose and dropped on every stroke, in the same way as when connected. They asked me what I was going to do about it. I told them I should do nothing about it; that I presumed they might possibly get a governor somewhere that would stand that alternation of speed without winking, but they had better send mine back, because it was not made for any such service.
Charles B. Richards
A.D. 1858
The following is an amusing illustration, doubtless an extreme one, of the degree in which the lay mind may be incapable of mechanical perception. My governors were usually set on the engine bed of horizontal engines near the shaft, and were connected with the throttle-valve over the cylinder by means of a bell-crank lever and a long rod. One day a gentleman called to make a personal examination of the governor and its manufacture, with a view to investing in the business. I showed him a governor in action on the testing platform, and a woodcut on my circular which represented the governor in its position, as above described, with a short piece of the connecting-rod attached to the lever. He looked at this cut intently for some time, and then, putting his finger on the broken-off end of the little rod, said, “Ah, I see; the steam enters there.” I made no reply, and he was so much pleased with his own penetration that he invested at once.
I know of only one case in which this governor needed the help of a dash-pot or controlling vessel. In the great plate-mill of the Otis Works, in Cleveland, when the enormous mass of steel struck the rolls, the governor dropped sharply to its seat, and jumped as sharply to the upper limit of its action when this mass was shot out. Mr. Wellman, their general manager, suggested to me an elegant arrangement of air-chambers at the top and bottom of a cylinder, which permitted free motion to the governor through its whole range of action, but cushioned it on confined air at the ends.
For several years I made the counterpoise of the governor in the form of a vase. The present form with hemispherical top was suggested by Mr. Whitworth in 1866, and shown by me in the Paris Exposition of 1867. It has three advantages. It is more readily turned with a circular tool-rest, and it contains more metal and looks more mechanical.
I exhibited the governor in operation at a fair of the American Institute held on Fourteenth Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, New York City (where the armory of the Twelfth Regiment now stands), making an arrangement with an exhibitor of an engine for that purpose. I remember that Mr. George H. Reynolds, then an engineer in the works of Mr. Delamater at the foot of West Thirteenth Street, as he passed it with a friend a day or two after it was started, remarked in my hearing, “It will take a horse-power to drive that governor.” It would not do to let any such nonsense get around as the opinion of an engineer, so the next morning the governor was driven by a belt ⁵⁄₈ of an inch wide, and continued to be so through the fair. I was sorry afterwards that I did not use a half-inch belt, which would have driven it just as well, and indeed I think even a narrower belt would have done, as the foot of the spindle was of hardened steel, a segment of a sphere, running in a puddle of oil in a hardened step cupped to a larger radius.
The funniest application of the governor I ever made was the following: The Civil War had just broken out, and every Yankee was making some warlike invention. The most ridiculous of all was a centrifugal gun. A company was formed for its manufacture. The shot, about an inch in diameter, was fed in at the center of a swiftly revolving wheel and thrown out through a barrel at the periphery, with a velocity that, it was estimated by the inventor, would carry it about two miles. This velocity was to be got up in about one second. The governor would not act quickly enough, and the engine was stopped. The parties heard of my governor, and ordered one, offering to pay for it in a tempting amount of their stock. I preferred the cash and got it. The governor filled the bill, the shot was delivered, the velocity of revolution not falling sensibly, but we judged by the sharp fall of the counterpoise that it required not less than twenty horse-powers to do it.
The gun was tried on the bank of the Hudson, the Palisades opposite being the target. The inventor declared that every shot hit the mark, but some evil-minded persons insisted that they fell into the water within a quarter of a mile of the shore from which they were fired.