The Steam Engine Explained and Illustrated (Seventh Edition) / With an Account of Its Invention and Progressive Improvement, and Its Application to Navigation and Railways; Including Also a Memoir of Watt

by Dionysius Lardner

(100.)

It appears, therefore, that supposing the steam used in an engine to receive no additional heat after it leaves the boiler, however it may be changed in its density by subsequent expansion, it will still retain its character of common steam, and cannot lose any portion of heat, however small, without suffering partial condensation. The mechanical force also exerted by such steam, after expansion, must be computed in the same manner as if it were raised immediately.

(101.)

(102.)

Fig. 30.

In the year 1781, Hornblower conceived the notion of working an engine with two cylinders of different sizes, by allowing the steam to flow freely from the boiler until it fills the smaller cylinder, and then permitting it to expand into the greater one, employing it thus to press down two pistons in the following manner.

Let C, [fig. 30.], be the centre of the great working-beam, carrying two arch heads, on which the chains of the piston rods play. The distances of these arch heads from the centre C must be in the same proportion as the length of the cylinders, in order that the same play of the beam may correspond to [Pg175] the plays of both pistons. Let F be the steam-pipe from the boiler, and G a valve to admit the steam above the lesser piston. H is a tube by which a communication may be opened by the valve I, between the top and bottom of the lesser cylinder B. K is a tube communicating by the valve L, between the bottom of the lesser cylinder B and the top of the greater cylinder A. M is a tube communicating, by the valve N, between the top and bottom of the greater cylinder A; and P a tube leading to the condenser by the exhausting valve O.

At the commencement of the operation, suppose all the valves opened, and steam allowed to flow through the engine until the air be completely expelled, and then let all the valves be closed. To start the engine, let the exhausting valve O and the steam valves G and L be opened, as in [fig. 30.] The steam will flow freely from the boiler, and press upon the lesser piston, and at the same time the steam below the greater piston will flow into the condenser, leaving a vacuum in the greater cylinder. The valve L being opened, the steam which is under the piston in the lesser cylinder will flow through K, and press on the greater piston, which, having a vacuum beneath it, will consequently descend. At the commencement of the motion, the lesser piston is as much resisted by the steam below it, as it is urged by the steam above it; but after a part of the descent has been effected, the steam below the piston, in the lesser cylinder, passing into the greater, expands into an increased space, and therefore loses part of its elastic force. The steam above the lesser piston retaining its full force by having a free communication with the boiler by the valve G, the lesser piston will be urged by a force equal to the excess of the pressure of this steam above the diminished pressure of the expanded steam below it. As the pistons descend, the steam which is between them is continually increasing in its bulk, and therefore decreasing in its pressure, from whence it follows, that the force which resists the lesser piston is continually decreasing, while that which presses it down remains the same, and therefore the effective force which impels it must be continually increasing. [Pg176]