At this exhibition the Bell telephone was first shown to a select company, among which were President Grant and Dom Pedro, the last emperor of Brazil. This exhibition was given on Sunday, that being the only day when silence could be had. Human speech, both in talking and singing, was transmitted through the whole length of the main building, about 1800 feet; it has since been transmitted somewhat further.
The exhibitors of hand pumps all talked about the ease with which their own pumps could be worked; one man touched bottom in this respect. He had set his pump so that the spout was nearly on a level with the surface of the pool from which it drew its water; he boldly claimed that his pumps required no power at all. I was invited, as I suppose multitudes were, to take hold of the handle and see for myself that his claim was true. I never heard of but one man who I think would be satisfied with this demonstration; that was the engineering editor of the New York Tribune. Shortly before this he had published an account of a wonderful pump invented by a Mr. George, which he concluded by saying that the superiority of Mr. George’s pump lay in the fact that at each stroke not the whole column of water had to be lifted, but only that which was to be discharged. We had a waterfall maintained by a centrifugal pump, which received its water on one side only; the maker evidently knowing nothing about the method of balancing these pumps by admitting the water equally on the opposite sides.
The boiler-makers abounded. My old acquaintance, the Harrison boiler, turned up. Mr. Allen urged a favorable award to Mr. Harrison because of the motives of humanity by which he knew Mr. Harrison was actuated in designing that boiler. A Mr. Pierce invited all the judges to visit his boiler and hear him explain it. He informed us that this boiler had been the subject of three scientific tests by Professor Thurston, but he did not tell us the results of those tests.
As we were coming away Professor Reuleaux said to me: “That is foolishness, isn’t it?”
An inventor named Smith came several times to our judges’ room to urge upon us the merits of his boiler. He had two on exhibition, one in use in the boiler-house and the other in Machinery Hall; these were quite different from each other. One day not long after the close of the exhibition I received a note from a stranger requesting me to call upon him at the Astor House. I thought, “This man doubtless wants an engine, but his time is too precious to come out to Newark,” so at the hour appointed I was there. When I entered the room the first object I saw was a sectional model of this Smith boiler, and I found that the gentleman wanted to know our reasons for overlooking that boiler. I replied to him that I had a question to which I would like an answer at his earliest convenience; we observed that the two boilers exhibited by Mr. Smith were quite different from each other, and I saw that this model differed in essential details from both of them, and I would like to know which one he wished us to approve of and bade him good afternoon.
One day afterwards I happened to be in Mr. Holley’s office in New York when a man came in with a drawing of a boiler which he wished Mr. Holley to recommend. Mr. Holley turned him over to me, and he explained to me that the great novel feature of his boiler was that the feed-water was admitted by spraying it into the steam space, thus avoiding the cooling of any part of the boiler by its admission at one point; so I found one freak boiler that was not at the exhibition.
We had a fine exhibit of steam fire-engines. I think every maker in this country was represented, and we had a trial of these engines lasting three or four days. The committee desired to make a thorough comparative test of their performance, but the man (a lieutenant in the navy) appointed to keep the record put down so few items that we found we had no record at all. We could only guess how he came to do this.
An exhibitor from Canada brought an engine that presented a very fine appearance; it was made up of a collection of what he believed to be the best features of every steam-engine made in the United States. The experts looked his machine over and saw where he had got every one of them, but his different appropriations did not work well together; his engine broke down every day and he worked all night to be ready for the next day’s trial. It afforded a good commentary on the narrow-minded laws of Canada, which forbade a citizen of the United States from taking out a patent there.
The show of steam-engines was not large, and the indicator was not applied to any engines, so I had no use for the indicators I had imported from England. If I remember rightly, we had only two engines from abroad, one of these sent by the Government of Brazil. This was what was called a “table” engine, in which the cylinder stands on a table in a vertical position and two connecting-rods extend down from the cross-head and connect with the crank under the table. It was copied from a Scotch elementary drawing-book from which I learned mechanical drawing. One of these engines had been made by Mr. Hoe to drive the press of the New York Daily Times when that paper was started in 1851 or 1852. The other foreign engine was made by a Brussels manufacturer with the assistance of the Belgian Government. It had an American cut-off which was used by Mr. Delamater on his engines, and it had the eccentric between the main bearing and the crank, giving to the latter therefore three or four inches of unnecessary overhang; it had my condenser, which I learned was then coming into considerable use on the Continent.
