[3] Mr. Mushet described it as "a wonderful discovery," and one of the "most novel and beautiful improvements in his time." Professor Gregory of Aberdeen characterized it as "the greatest improvement with which he was acquainted." Mr. Jessop, an extensive English iron manufacturer, declared it to be "of as great advantage in the iron trade as Arkwright's machinery was in the cotton-spinning trade"; and Mr. Fairbairn, in his contribution on "Iron" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, says that it "has effected an entire revolution in the iron industry of Great Britain, and forms the last era in the history of this material."
[4] The invention of the tubular air-vessels and the water-tuyere belongs, we believe, to Mr. John Condie, sometime manager of the Blair Iron Works.
[5] Mr. Mushet says, "The greatest produce in iron per furnace with the Black Band and cold blast never exceeded 60 tons a-week. The produce per furnace now averages 90 tons a-week. Ten tons of this I attribute to the use of raw pit-coal, and the other twenty tons to the use of hot blast." [Papers on Iron and Steel, 127.] The produce per furnace is now 200 tons a-week and upwards. The hot blast process was afterwards applied to the making of iron with the anthracite or stone coal of Wales; for which a patent was taken out by George Crane in 1836. Before the hot blast was introduced, anthracite coal would not act as fuel in the blast-furnace. When put in, it merely had the effect of putting the fire out. With the aid of the hot blast, however, it now proves to be a most valuable fuel in smelting.
[6] It is stated in the North British Review for Nov. 1845, that "As in Scotland every furnace—with the exception of one at Carron—now uses the hot blast the saving on our present produce of 400,000 tons of pig-iron is 2,000,000 tons of coals, 200,000 tons of limestone, and #650,000 sterling per annum." But as the Scotch produce is now above a million tons of pig-iron a year, the above figures will have to be multiplied by 2 1/2 to give the present annual savings.
[7] Papers read by Mr. Ralph Moore, Mining Engineer, Glasgow, before the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, Edin. 1861, pp. 13, 14.
CHAPTER X.
MECHANICAL INVENTIONS AND INVENTORS.
"L'invention nest-elle pas la poesie de la science? . . . Toutes les grandes decouvertes portent avec elles la trace ineffacable d'une pensee poetique. Il faut etre poete pour creer. Aussi, sommes-nous convaincus que si les puissantes machines, veritable source de la production et de l'industrie de nos jours, doivent recevoir des modifications radicales, ce sera a des hommes d'imagination, et non point a dea hommes purement speciaux, que l'on devra cette transformation."—E. M. BATAILLE, Traite des Machines a Vapeur.
Tools have played a highly important part in the history of civilization. Without tools and the ability to use them, man were indeed but a "poor, bare, forked animal,"—worse clothed than the birds, worse housed than the beaver, worse fed than the jackal. "Weak in himself," says Carlyle, "and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, Jest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use tools, can devise tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unvarying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without tools: without tools he is nothing; with tools he is all." His very first contrivances to support life were tools of the simplest and rudest construction; and his latest achievements in the substitution of machinery for the relief of the human hand and intellect are founded on the use of tools of a still higher order. Hence it is not without good reason that man has by some philosophers been defined as A TOOL-MAKING ANIMAL.
Tools, like everything else, had small beginnings. With the primitive stone-hammer and chisel very little could be done. The felling of a tree would occupy a workman a month, unless helped by the destructive action of fire. Dwellings could not be built, the soil could not be tilled, clothes could not be fashioned and made, and the hewing out of a boat was so tedious a process that the wood must have been far gone in decay before it could be launched. It was a great step in advance to discover the art of working in metals, more especially in steel, one of the few metals capable of taking a sharp edge and keeping it. From the date of this discovery, working in wood and stone would be found comparatively easy; and the results must speedily have been felt not only in the improvement of man's daily food, but in his domestic and social condition. Clothing could then be made, the primitive forest could be cleared and tillage carried on; abundant fuel could be obtained, dwellings erected, ships built, temples reared; every improvement in tools marking a new step in the development of the human intellect, and a further stage in the progress of human civilization.