Great Inventions and Discoveries

by Willis Duff Piercy

For a long time, owing to a lack of money, he had difficulty in establishing the merits of his improvements. Finally he formed a partnership with Matthew Boulton, a wealthy and energetic man who lived at Birmingham, England. They began the manufacture of steam engines at Birmingham, under the firm name of Boulton and Watt. This partnership was very successful. Watt supplied the inventions; Boulton furnished the money and attended to the business.

Before the time of Watt, the steam engine was exclusively a steam pump—slow, cumbrous, wasteful of fuel, and very little used. Watt made it a quick, powerful, and efficient engine, requiring only a fourth as much fuel as before. Under his first patent the engine was still used only as a steam pump; but his later improvements adapted it for driving stationary machinery of all kinds and, save in a few respects, left it essentially what it is to-day. Prior to Watt's inventions, the mines of Great Britain were far from thriving. Many were even on the point of being abandoned, through the difficulty of removing the large quantities of water that collected in them. His improvements made it possible to remove this water at a moderate cost, and this gave many of the mines a new lease of life. The commercial success of his engine was soon fully established.

Watt paid practically no attention to the use of steam for purposes of transportation. In one of his patents he described a steam locomotive; but he offered little encouragement when his chief assistant, Murdoch, who was the inventor of gas lighting, made experiments with steam for locomotion. The notion then was to use a steam carriage on ordinary roads. Railroads had not been thought of. When the idea of using steam on railways began to take shape in the later days of Watt, he refused to encourage the plan. It is said that he even put a clause in a lease of his house, providing that no steam carriage should ever approach it under any pretext whatever.

Besides developing the steam engine, Watt made other inventions, including a press for copying letters. He also probably discovered the chemical composition of water. He died at Heathfield, England, on the nineteenth of August, 1819.

It is denied many men to see the magnitude of their achievements. Moses died on Pisgah, in sight of the "Promised Land," toward which for forty years he had led the children of Israel through the wilderness. Wolfe gave up his life on the plains of Quebec just as the first shouts of the routed French greeted his ears. Columbus was sent home in chains from the America he had discovered, not dreaming he had given to civilization another world. Lincoln's eyes were closed forever at the very dawn of peace, after he had watched in patience through the long and fearful night of the Civil War. It never appeared to James Watt that the idea which flashed into his mind that Sunday afternoon while he was walking in the streets of Glasgow, would transform human life; that like a mighty multiplier it would increase the product of man's power and give him dominion, not over the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, but over tide and wind, space and time.

Victor Hugo calls locomotives "these giant draft horses of civilization." But man never harnessed these wonderful iron animals until the time of George Stephenson, less than a hundred years ago.

Stephenson was born at Wylam, near Newcastle, England, June 9, 1781. His father was a fireman of a coal-mine engine at that place. In boyhood George was a cowherd, but he spent his spare time making clay models of engines and other objects of a mechanical nature. When he was fourteen years old, he became assistant to his father in firing the engine at the colliery, and three years later he was advanced to engine driving. At this time he could not even read; but, stimulated by a strong desire to know more of the engines made by Boulton and Watt, he began in his eighteenth year to attend a night school. He learned rapidly. During most of this time he studied various experiments with a view to making a successful steam locomotive.

Modern railways had their origin in roads called tramways, which were used for hauling coal from the mines of England to the sea. At first ordinary dirt roads were used for this purpose; but as the heavy traffic wore these roads away, it become the practice to place planks or timbers at the bottoms of the ruts. Afterwards wooden rails were laid straight and parallel on the level surface. The rails were oak scantlings held together with cross timbers of the same material, fastened by means of large oak pins. Later strips of iron were nailed on the tops of the wooden rails. Over these rails, bulky, four-wheeled carts loaded with coal were pulled by horses.

Stephenson made what he called a traveling engine for the tramways leading from the mines where he worked to the sea, nine miles distant. He named his engine "My Lord." On July 25, 1814, he made a successful trial trip with it.

The successful use of steam in hauling coal from the mines led thoughtful persons to consider its use for carrying merchandise and passengers. At this time freight was transported inland by means of canals. This method was slow; thirty-six hours were required for traveling fifty miles. Passengers were conveyed by coaches drawn by horses. In 1821 a railroad for the transportation of merchandise and passengers was opened between Stockton and Darlington in England. The line, including three branches, was thirty-eight miles long. The plan was to use animal power on this road, but George Stephenson secured permission to try on it his steam locomotive.