PART SECOND.
A NEW CENTURY OF
Inventions.
INTRODUCTION.
In the progress of a work like the present, no competent reason could have been assigned for omitting to bring forward my System of Toothed Wheels, the Patent for which has lately expired:—a System which a few years ago, excited in this town, so much interest, aroused so much animosity, and was treated with so much illiberality:—But which, also, was fostered with so much public spirit, tried with so much candour, and adopted with so much confidence. It was I say, incumbent on me to bring the merits of this System into public view, had it only been to justify myself for proposing, and my friends for adopting it. But stronger reasons point now to the same measure. From the intimate connection the System holds with the subjects of this essay, it must be often adverted to; and I have been already obliged to speak of it in terms which can hardly have been understood by those readers who had not previously considered the general Subject. I should therefore be still in danger of filling these Pages with unintelligible assertions, did I not begin by marking out the foundations on which my statements are built; or by explaining to a certain degree, the Principles of the new System. Without then abandoning the tacit engagement I have taken with my unlearned readers—not to entangle them in too much theory, I think it indispensable to quote the Memoir I read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, in December, 1815; which small work will form the basis of the practical remarks I shall have to make on the subject, as this work proceeds. The Memoir is thus introduced in the transactions of that learned body:
MEMOIR
ON A NEW SYSTEM OF
COG OR TOOTHED WHEELS,
By Mr. James White, Engineer.[1]
COMMUNICATED BY T. JARROLD, M. D.
(Read December 29th, 1815.)