THE STEAM-ENGINE—continued.
Fig, 391.
The first steam-boat, the Comet, built by Henry Bell, in 1811, who brought steam navigation into practice in Europe.
"So shalt thou instant reach the realm assign'd
In wondrous ships, self-mov'd, instinct with mind.
Though clouds and darkness veil the encumbered sky.
Fearless, through darkness and through clouds they fly,
Tho' tempests rage,—tho' rolls the swelling main,
The seas may roll, the tempests swell in vain;
E'en the stern god that o'er the waves presides,
Safe as they pass, and safe repass the tides,
With fury burns; while careless they convey,
Promiscuous, ev'ry guest to ev'ry bay."
These lines, from Pope's translation of the "Odyssey," were very aptly quoted twenty-five years ago by Mr. M. A. Alderson, in his treatise on the steam-engine, for which he received from Dr. Birkbeck, the originator of Mechanics' Institutions, the prize of 20l., being the gift of the London Mechanics' Institution, and these lines seem to indicate some sort of rude anticipation by the ancients of that free passage of the ocean by the agency of steam which has rendered ships almost independent of wind and weather.
Homer's description, as above, of the Phœnician fleet of King Alcinous, in the eighth book of the "Odyssey," is certainly an ancient record of an idea, but nothing more. In a work written by Hero of Alexandria, about a hundred years b.c., and entitled "Spiritalia seu Pneumatica," a number of contrivances are mentioned for raising liquids and producing motion by means of air and steam, so that the first steam-engine is usually ascribed to Hero; and the annexed cut displays the apparatus. (Fig. 392.)
