[15] Fulton died Feb. 24, 1815; he was born in 1765.
[16] Killingworth is a town some seven or eight miles north of Newcastle, in Northumberland. George Stephenson was at this time the engine-wright of the colliery. It may be said here that the principal use for which the early locomotive engines and railroads were designed was to convey coal from the pit to a market. It was not till the success of the mining and quarrying railways led to the building of the Liverpool and Manchester Road, between two great cities, that the value of the railroad for the transfer of passengers was recognized.
[17] It had been generally the opinion that cog-wheels must be used which should fit into cogs in the rail. Otherwise it was imagined the wheels would revolve without proceeding.
[18] "The private risk is the public benefit."
[19] It had a sort of resemblance to a grasshopper, caused by the angle at which the piston and cylinder were placed.
[20] Mr. Henry Booth, secretary to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, suggested to Mr. Stephenson the idea of a multitubular boiler.
[21] This letter is dated Nov. 24, 1793.
[22] This was in 1812, twenty years after the invention of the gin. The saving in 1885 is enormously greater.
[23] Napoleon III., under whose protection Bessemer had been experimenting in projectiles when his attention was turned to the manufacture of iron.
[24] In Grüner's text-book on steel, he says: "In its properties, as well as in its manufacture, steel is comprised between the limits of cast and wrought iron. It cannot even be said where steel begins or ends. It is a series which begins with the most impure black pig iron, and ends with the softest and purest wrought iron. [Karsten stated this in these words in 1823.] Cast-iron passes into hard steel in becoming malleable (natural steel for wire-mills, the 'Wildstahl' of the Germans); and steel, properly so called, passes into iron, giving in succession mild steel, steel of the nature of iron, steely iron, and granular iron."