A History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine

by Robert Henry Thurston

Fig. 10.—
Huyghens’s
Engine,
1680.

Huyghens, in 1680, in a memoir presented to the Academy of Sciences, speaks of the expansive force of gunpowder as capable of utilization as a convenient and portable mechanical power, and indicates that he had designed a machine in which it could be applied.

This machine of Huyghens is of great interest, not simply because it was the first gas-engine and the prototype of the very successful modern explosive gas-engine of Otto and Langen, but principally as having been the first engine which consisted of a cylinder and piston. The [sketch] shows its form. It consisted of a cylinder, A, a piston, B, two relief-pipes, C C, fitted with check-valves and a system of pulleys, F, by which the weight is raised. The explosion of the powder at H expels the air from the cylinder. When the products of combustion have cooled, the pressure of the atmosphere is no longer counterbalanced by that of air beneath, and the piston is forced down, raising the weight. The plan was never put in practice, although the invention was capable of being made a working and possibly useful machine.

At about this period the English attained some superiority over their neighbors on the Continent in the practical application of science and the development of the useful arts, and it has never since been lost. A sudden and great development of applied science and of the useful arts took place during the reign of Charles II., which is probably largely attributable to the interest taken by that monarch in many branches of construction and of science. He is said to have been very fond of mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, and natural history, and to have had a laboratory erected, and to have employed learned men to carry on experiments and lines of research for his satisfaction. He was especially fond of the study and investigation of the arts and sciences most closely related to naval architecture and navigation, and devoted much attention to the determination of the best forms of vessels, and to the discovery of the best kinds of ship-timber. His brother, the Duke of York, was equally fond of this study, and was his companion in some of his work.

Great as is the influence of the monarch, to-day, in forming the tastes and habits and in determining the direction of the studies and labors of the people, his influence was vastly more potent in those earlier days; and it may well be believed that the rapid strides taken by Great Britain from that time were, in great degree, a consequence of the well-known habits of Charles II., and that the nation, which had an exceptional natural aptitude for mechanical pursuits, should have been prompted by the example of its king to enter upon such a course as resulted in the early attainment of an advanced position in all branches of applied science.

The appointment, under Sir Robert Moray, the superintendent of the laboratory of the king, of Master Mechanic, was conferred upon Sir Samuel Morland, a nobleman who, in his practical knowledge of mechanics and in his ingenuity and fruitfulness of invention, was apparently almost equal to Worcester. He was the son of a Berkshire clergyman, was educated at Cambridge, where he studied mathematics with great interest, and entered public life soon after. He served the Parliament under Cromwell, and afterward went to Geneva. He was of a decidedly literary turn of mind, and wrote a history of the Piedmont churches, which gave him great repute with the Protestant party. He was induced subsequently, on the accession of Charles II., to take service under that monarch, whose gratitude he had earned by revealing a plot for his assassination.

He received his appointment and a baronetcy in 1660, and immediately commenced making experiments, partly at his own expense and partly at the cost of the royal exchequer, which were usually not at all remunerative. He built hand fire-engines of various kinds, taking patents on them, which brought him as small profits as did his work for the king, and invented the speaking-trumpet, calculating machines, and a capstan. His house at Vauxhall was full of curious devices, the products of his own ingenuity.

He devoted much attention to apparatus for raising water. His devices seem to have usually been modifications of the now familiar force-pump. They attracted much attention, and exhibitions were made of them before the king and queen and the court. He was sent to France on business relating to water-works erected for King Charles, and while in Paris he constructed pumps and pumping apparatus for the satisfaction of Louis XIV. In his book,[18] published in Paris in 1683, and presented to the king, and an earlier manuscript,[19] still preserved in the British Museum, Morland shows a perfect familiarity with the power of steam. He says, in the latter: “Water being evaporated by fire, the vapors require a greater space (about two thousand times) than that occupied by the water; and, rather than submit to imprisonment, it will burst a piece of ordnance. But, being controlled according to the laws of statics, and, by science, reduced to the measure of weight and balance, it bears its burden peaceably (like good horses), and thus may be of great use to mankind, especially for the raising of water, according to the following table, which indicates the number of pounds which may be raised six inches, 1,800 times an hour, by cylinders half-filled with water, and of the several diameters and depths of said cylinders.”