“All and every of these, by height of Art, Industry, and Experiment, working the same individual and intrinsical effect, without disturbance one to the other; and yet by these absolutely contrary motions, so performed, most strange and incredible effects may be brought to pass, to the admiration of even the greatest mathematicians.
“The knowledge of these things rendering all things as feasible to him that is master of this art, as it is to make a circle with a pair of compasses, or a straight line with a square or ruler; they being a direct abstract of arithmetic contrived by me.”
No. 98 may be read as a second notice of his steam engine; No. 68, developing the broad principle of its source of action, while the above indicates the working parts. He may allude to the facility of communicating motion to levers, forces, pistons, or plungers, in any direction, by turning on steam to variously arranged pipes, so that to his mind it appeared as though it were something of super-human origin. While the beauty, novelty, and success of his new design overawed his own mind, it was a matter of infinite surprise to him that he could not immediately impress others with a sense of the immense value and unbounded importance of an invention which superseded animal power: placing at man’s disposal a greater and more controllable mechanical agent than even the elements of nature, under the most favourable circumstances, had ever supplied.
He expressed his own solemn impression, on seeing the successful issue of this great work, when he said—“I call this a semi-omnipotent engine, and do intend that a model thereof be buried with me.”
99.
How to make one pound weight to raise an hundred as high as one pound falleth, and yet the hundred pound[8] descending doth[9] what nothing less then one hundred pound[8] can effect.
Footnotes
[8]pounds. P.
[9]to do.
[A most admirable way to raise Weights.] In his MS. of a select number of his inventions, we have, in No. 6, the following earlier reading of the above:—