Every-day Science: Volume 6. The Conquest of Nature

by Henry Smith Williams; Edward Huntington Williams

Such an apparatus seems crude enough, yet it incorporates the essential principles, and required but the use of ingenuity in elaborating details of the mechanism, to make a really efficient steam engine. It would appear, however, that Papin was chiefly interested in the theoretical, rather than in the really practical side of the question, and there is no evidence of his having produced a working machine of practical power, until after such machines worked by steam had been constructed elsewhere.

THOMAS NEWCOMEN'S IMPROVED ENGINE

As has happened so often in other fields, Englishmen were the first to make practical use of the new ideas. In 1705 Thomas Newcomen, a blacksmith or ironmonger, and John Cawley, a plumber and glazier, patented their atmospheric engine, and five years later, in the year 1710, namely, Newcomen had on the market an engine which is described in the Report of the Department of Science and Arts of the South Kensington Museum, as "the first real pumping engine ever made."

The same report describes the engine as "a vertical steam cylinder provided with a piston connected at one end of the beam, having a pivot or bearing in the middle of its length, and at the other end of the beam pump rods for working the pump. The cylinder was surrounded by a second cylinder or jacket, open at the top, and cold water could be supplied to this outer cylinder at pleasure. The single or working cylinder could be supplied with steam when desired from a boiler below it. There was a drain pipe from the bottom of the working cylinder, and one from the outer cylinder. For the working of the engine steam was admitted to the working cylinder, so as to fill it and expel all the air, the piston then being at the top, owing to the weight of the pump rods being sufficient to lift it; then the steam was shut off and the drain cocks closed and cold water admitted to the outer cylinder, so that the steam in the working cylinder condensed, and, leaving a partial vacuum of pressure of the atmosphere, forced the piston down and drew up the pump rods, thus making a stroke of the pump. Then the water was drawn off from the outer cylinder and steam admitted to the working cylinder before allowing the piston to return to the top of its stroke, ready for the next down stroke."

It will be observed that this machine adopts the principle, with only a change of mechanical details, of the Papin engine just described. A later improvement made by Newcomen did away with the outer cylinder for condensing the steam, employing instead an injection of cold water into the working cylinder itself, thus enabling the engine to work more quickly. It is said that the superiority of the internal condensing arrangement was accidentally discovered through the improved working of an engine that chanced to have an exceptionally leaky piston or cylinder. Many engines were made on this plan and put into practical use.

Another important improvement was made by a connection from the beam to the cocks or valves, so that the engine worked automatically, whereas in the first place it had been necessary to have a boy or man operate the valves,—a most awkward arrangement, in the light of modern improvements. As the story is told, the duty of opening and closing the regulating and condensing valves was intrusted to boys called cock boys. It is said that one of these boys named Humphrey Potter "wishing to join his comrades at play without exposing himself to the consequences of suspending the performance of the engine, contrived, by attaching strings of proper length to the levers which governed the two cocks, to connect them with the beam, so that it should open and close the cocks as it moved up and down with the most perfect regularity."

This story has passed current for almost two centuries, and it has been used to point many a useful moral. It seems almost a pity to disturb so interesting a tradition, yet it must have occurred to more than one iconoclast that the tale is almost too good to be true. And somewhat recently it has been more than hinted that Desaguliers, with whom the story originated, drew upon his imagination for it. A print is in existence, made so long ago as 1719, representing an engine erected by Newcomen at Dudley Castle, Staffordshire, in 1712, in which an automatic valve gear is clearly shown, proving that the Newcomen engine was worked automatically at this early period. That the admirable story of the inventive youth, whose wits gave him leisure for play, may not be altogether discredited, however, it should be added that unquestionably some of the early engines had a hand-moved gear, and that at least one such was still working in England after the middle of the nineteenth century. It seems probable, then, that the very first engines were without the automatic valve gear, and there is no inherent reason why a quick-witted youth may not have been the first to discover and remedy the defect.

According to the Report of the Department of Science and Arts of the South Kensington Museum: "The adoption of Newcomen's engine was rapid, for, commencing in 1711 with the engine at Wolverhampton, of twenty-three inch diameter and six foot stroke, they were in common use in English collieries in 1725; and Smeaton found in 1767 that, in the neighborhood of Newcastle alone there were fifty-seven at work, ranging in size from twenty-eight inch to seventy-five inch cylinder diameter, and giving collectively about twelve hundred horse-power. As Newcomen obtained an evaporation of nearly eight pounds of water per pound of coal, the increase of boiler efficiency since his time has necessarily been but slight, although in other requisites of the steam generator great improvements are noticeable."