With his paper skull,
Tried hard to make a machine
That should go against wind and tide:
But he, like an ass,
Couldn’t bring it to pass,
So at last was ashamed to be seen.”[49]
Not much more is known of Jonathan Hulls’s history. In 1754 he published, in conjunction with two others, a treatise on ‘The Art of Measuring made Easy, by the help of a new Sliding-rule;’ and shortly after ‘The Malt-maker’s Instructor;’ but nothing more was heard of Jonathan Hulls’s steam-boat.
We return to the Newcomen engine, which became increasingly employed as a pumping power in all the mining districts. Borlase, writing in 1758, says that “fire-engines” were then in regular use at North Downs near Redruth, Pitt-louarn, Polgooth, Wheal-rith, Pool, Dolcoath, Herland, and many other places.[50] Indeed there was scarcely a tin or copper mine of any importance in Cornwall that had not one or more of Newcomen’s engines at work. They were also in general use in Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Northumberland. In the latter counties, where they were principally used for pumping water out of the coal mines, fuel was ready at hand, cheap and abundant. But in Cornwall it was otherwise. The coal had to be brought thither from a great distance, partly by sea and partly by land, and the cost of carriage was very heavy. It, therefore, became an object of much importance to reduce the consumption of fuel, to prevent the profits of the mines being absorbed by the heavy cost of working the pumps. This, indeed, was the great objection to Newcomen’s engine, especially in Cornwall. The consumption of fuel at some mines was so enormous, that it was doubtful whether the cost of steam did not exceed that of an equal amount of horse power, and it became more and more difficult to realise even a bare margin of profit. The two engines at Wheal Rose and Wheal Busy, near Chacewater, of 66 and 72 inches diameter, consumed each about thirteen tons of coal daily. To relieve the mining interest, in some measure, from this charge, government allowed a drawback of five shillings a chaldron on coal; but in some cases this was found insufficient, and it began to be complained that the consumption of coal was so great, that the mines were barely paying.
Invention, however, was constantly at work, and new improvements were from time to time introduced, with the object of economising fuel and increasing the efficiency of the engine. Among the ingenious men who devoted themselves to this work, were Payne, Brindley, and Smeaton. Of these, the last especially distinguished himself by his improvements of the Newcomen engine, which he may be said to have carried to the highest perfection of which it was capable. His famous Chacewater engine was the finest and most powerful work of the kind which had until then been constructed, and it remained unrivalled until superseded by the invention of Watt, to whose life and labours we now proceed to direct the attention of the reader.
