Fig. 392.
Hero's steam-engine. a. The boiler in which steam is produced, and then passes through the hollow support b, from which there is no outlet but through the two apertures, c c. The reaction of the air on the issuing steam produces a rotatory motion in the jets, c c, attached to a centre but hollow axle.
It is a remarkable circumstance that Sir Isaac Newton applied the same principle in a little ball, mounted on wheels, containing boiling water, and provided with a small orifice; and in his description he says: "And if the ball be opened, the vapours will rush out violently one way, and the wheels and the ball at the same time will be carried the contrary way." From the time of Hero, there does not appear to be any record or mention made of steam apparatus till the year 1002, when, in a work called "Malmesbury's History," mention is made of an organ in which the sounds were produced by the escape of air (query, steam) by means of heated water. It is strange that, in these days of steam application, the Calliope, or steam organ, should be an important feature at the present moment at the Crystal Palace; and it only shows how the same ideas are reproduced as novelties in the ever-recurring cycles of years.
On the revival of classical learning throughout Gothic Europe, the work of Hero began to attract attention, and it was translated and printed in black letter, and most likely first from the Arabic character, as in the year 1543 the first fruits appeared in Spain, where Blasco de Garay, a sea captain, propelled a ship of 200 tons burden, at the rate of three miles per hour, before certain commissioners appointed by the Emperor Charles the Fifth. Alas for inquisitorial Spain! had she looked deeper into the matter, and performed her auto-da-fées on the boilers of steam engines instead of the bodies of poor human beings, what lasting glories would have been her reward. The invention made its début in Spain, the commissioners reported, the worthy inventor was rewarded, but the mighty giant invoked was put to sleep again for at least 150 years. The steam giant was disturbed with dreams; one Mathias, in 1563, gave him a nightmare; Solomon de Caus, in 1624, nearly woke him up; Giovanni Bianca, in 1629, did more; and the Marquis of Worcester, in the middle of the seventeenth century, as the evil genius of Spain, carried off the giant bodily and made him the slave of England; at least, he experimented, and wrote such wondrous tales of his new motive power, that in 1653 we read of steam being fairly tethered to its work, and set to draw water out of the Thames at Vauxhall; and Cosmo de Medici, a foreigner who inspected the apparatus in 1653, says, "It raises water more than forty geometrical feet by the power of one man only, and in a very short space of time will draw up full vessels of water through a tube or channel not more than a span in width, on which account it is considered to be of greater service to the public than the other machine near Somerset House, which last one was driven by two horses."
What would the Marquis of Worcester and Cosmo de Medici have thought of Blasco de Garay on the ocean, and ruling 12,000 steam horses? Write the name of the brave and prudent Captain Harrison, in the good ship Great Eastern, date 1859, instead of that of the gallant Spaniard, and our brief history is finished.
The first really useful steam-engine was made, not by a plain Mr., but again by a captain—namely, Captain Savery, who appears to have been the first inventor who thoroughly understood and applied the vacuum principle. (Fig. 393.)
Fig. 393.
Savery's engine.