Thirty-four years later, Dr. J. T. Desaguliers, F.R.S., and Chaplain to His Royal Highness, Frederick, late Prince of Wales, &c., published his “Course of Experimental Philosophy,” in two volumes, quarto, 1763. His 13th section is a discourse on the “Fire-engine,” as the steam-engine was then designated. And the following lecture treats largely on the Marquis of Worcester’s present article in the “Century,” which he quotes and then observes:—
“Captain Savery, having read the Marquis of Worcester’s book, was the first who put in practice the raising Water by Fire, which he proposed for the draining of mines. His Engine is described in Harris’s Lexicon (on the word Engine), which being compared with the Marquis of Worcester’s description, will easily appear to have been taken from him; though Captain Savery denied it, and the better to conceal the matter, bought up all the Marquis of Worcester’s books that he could purchase in Pater-Noster-Row, and elsewhere, and burned them in the presence of the gentleman his friend, who told me this. He said that he found out the power of steam by chance, and invented the following story to persuade people to believe it, viz., that having drank a flask of Florence at a tavern, and thrown the empty flask upon the fire, he called for a bason of water to wash his hands, and perceiving that the little wine left in the flask had filled up the flask with steam, he took the flask by the neck, and plunged the mouth of it under the surface of the water in the bason, and the water of the bason was immediately driven up into the flask by the pressure of the air.”
Desaguliers doubts the veracity of this bottle story, and we may well agree with him, when we find that in another version the discovery is attributed to a tobacco-pipe.
He proceeds:—“Captain Savery made a great many experiments to bring this machine to perfection, and did erect several, which raised water very well for gentlemen’s seats; but could not succeed for mines, or supplying towns, where the water was to be raised very high, and in great quantities: for then the steam required being boiled up to such a strength, as to be ready to tear all the vessels to pieces. I have known Captain Savery, at York-Buildings, make steam eight or ten times stronger than common air; and then its heat was so great, that it would melt common soft solder; and its strength so great as to blow open several of the joints of his machine: so that he was forced to be at the pains and charge to have all his joints soldered with spelter or hard solder.”—Pp. 464–467.
The serious accusation made against Savery of deriving all his information from the Marquis of Worcester’s invention, and destroying all he could procure relating to the Marquis, rests solely on the authority of Desaguliers, to whom it was related by one of Savery’s friends! In 1699, the Marquis’s Act had yet 63 years unexpired, had the Duke of Beaufort felt disposed to investigate how far Savery’s engine interfered with his father’s invention; but no such interest was excited, nor had Savery at any time so much success as to induce such an inquiry. But, in 1699, the Marquis had only been dead 32 years, and we have proof that his engine was in existence in 1670, reducing the space of time to 29 years; by no means an unlikely period for Savery to find parts of the large engine, or models of a small one, or drawings, or MS. descriptions, or verbal details from eye-witnesses, from among some of the many visitants to Vauxhall, if, indeed, not directly from descendants of the “incomparable workman,” Kaltoff.
Savery’s connection with the mining interests of the country would appear to have first drawn his attention to the value of a scheme, proposing to raise vast bodies of water by the aid of a most stupendous power. He might, when a mere youth, have heard enough of the Marquis’s invention, however vaguely communicated, to excite his curiosity, and decide him on a course of action whenever an opportunity should occur.
After a lapse of more than a century and a half, Savery’s claim is not likely to be materially disturbed; but it will always be a matter of interest to observe the close similarity there is between the simple model he exhibited before the Royal Society, and the Marquis of Worcester’s brief summary of the parts and nature of his own engine. And it is not very favourable to a belief in Savery’s independence of the Marquis’s invention, that the former should be the sole inventor of a single marvellous production of ingenuity, without producing any novelty either before or afterwards, or displaying any particular inventive ability to improve on this early effort, which he left as at first produced.
“The Miners Friend” is not unlike an imitation of the “Exact and true definition of the most Stupendous Water-commanding Engine;” for example:—
The Marquis’s invention is recommended “to every individual, if he either have surrounded Marsh-ground to drain, or dry land to improve.”
Savery recommends the Engine he proposes:—