Please see the [Transcriber’s Notes] at the end of this text.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

Faithfully yours

Charles T. Porter

Engineering Reminiscences
CONTRIBUTED TO
“Power” and “American Machinist”

BY

CHARLES T. PORTER

Honorary Member of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers

Author of “A Treatise on the Richards Steam-engine Indicator
and the Development and Application of Force in the
Steam-engine,” 1874; “Mechanics and Faith,” 1885

REVISED AND ENLARGED

FIRST EDITION
FIRST THOUSAND

NEW YORK
JOHN WILEY & SONS
London: CHAPMAN & HALL, Limited
1908

Copyright 1908
BY
CHARLES T. PORTER

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF
MY FATHER AND MOTHER

My Father

My Mother

PREFACE

A word of explanation seems due to both the reader and myself.

The idea of writing these reminiscences did not originate with me. I was invited to write them by Mr. F. R. Low, the editor of Power. This invitation I declined, saying that I felt averse to writing a story in which I must be the central figure. Mr. Low replied that I should regard it as a duty I owed to the profession. Engineers demanded to know the origin and early development of the high speed system of steam engineering. I was the only person who could meet this demand; no one else possessed the necessary information.

I felt obliged to yield to this view, and can only ask the reader to imagine that I am writing about somebody else.

C. T. P.

Montclair, N. J.,
December, 1907.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF FULL-PAGE HALF-TONE PORTRAITS

ENGINEERING REMINISCENCES

CHAPTER I

Birth, Parentage and Education. Experience in the Practice of Law. Introduction to Centrifugal Force. Invention and Operation of a Stone-dressing Machine.

I was born in Auburn in the State of New York, January 18th, 1826. My parents were both of New England descent. My father, John Porter, was born in Hadley, Mass. His father, William Porter, was the son of Eleazer Porter and his wife Susannah, one of the daughters of Jonathan Edwards. My father’s mother was Lois Eastman. My mother was born in Middletown, Conn. Her maiden name was Abigail Phillips. Her ancestry in the maternal line is traced back to Governors Saltonstall, Dudley and the two Winthrops.

I graduated at Hamilton College, New York, in 1845, read law in my father’s office, and in the fall of 1847 was admitted to the bar. Practiced my profession for six or seven years, first in Rochester, N.Y., afterwards in New York City.

My knowledge of mechanics may be illustrated by a story I once heard in England of a man who had been prosecuted for selling adulterated tobacco. He got off by proving that there was no tobacco at all in the article that he sold. But this illustration hardly does the case justice.

I had some mechanical ideas, but they were exactly wrong. For example, I could not see any difficulty in perpetual motion. All one had to do was to pump up water, which by its fall would furnish power to run the pump. This, however, was no more absurd than were two inventions which were brought out in England while I was there. One of these was corrugating the faces of the piston, so as to present more extended surfaces for the steam pressure to be exerted upon. The other was a device for utilizing that half of the force of the steam which had been wasted against the cylinder heads. Both of these were published with commendatory remarks in the Mechanics’ Magazine. The last, if I recollect rightly, was the original bottom feature of the Wells balance-engine. My error was that I made no account of friction, which must be overcome before motion can take place. We shall see before long the same disregard of friction by men who ought to have known better.

My utter ignorance of everything mechanical at that time is capable of proof. I stepped right into one of those “springes to catch woodcocks” which were being set in those days, and proved myself to be about as green a gosling mechanically as ever was plucked.

I had a client by the name of Searle, who was a “dead-beat.” He owed me about $100, which I could not collect. He finally called upon me and told me frankly that he could not pay me one red cent, because he had no money; but he could put me in the way of making a fortune, and he was anxious in that way to discharge the great obligation which he felt himself under to me.

A new invention had appeared, called the Gwynne & Sawyer static-pressure engine, that was bound to revolutionize all applications of power. It was, he told me, attracting great attention in engineering circles, and there had been a hot discussion over its theoretical principles, but its advocates had successfully vanquished all their antagonists and now the invention was established on a perfectly sound scientific basis. If I would give him a receipt in full for the money that he owed me and put another $100 into this enterprise, he was in a position to secure for me a number of rights to use the machine. He kindly offered to introduce me to Mr. Sawyer. Mr. Gwynne was unfortunately absent from home at the time. (I learned afterwards that he was in jail.) Mr. Sawyer received me most graciously. I think he had been told by Mr. Searle about how much taffy I might be expected to swallow, but he must have ventured far beyond his instructions. He told me that he was delighted to make my acquaintance; he had frequently heard of me through our mutual friend, Mr. Searle, and of my triumphs at the bar, and had come to feel a great admiration for me, and was proud to show this great invention to a man so eminently capable of appreciating it. He told me that the invention was a practical method of utilizing that wonderful power known as centrifugal force. This force could be obtained in any amount. In fact, it was the force that kept the universe in motion. It had lain unutilized for so long a time because engineers had never been able to apply it practically. This difficulty had been completely overcome in this great invention, and this wonderful power was now to be made available for the world. He gave me quite an oration on the subject, saying, “We do not antagonize the forces of nature, we utilize them and apply them to beneficial purposes; consequently all nature co-operates with us,” and more to the same effect. He was able to show me a working model of this great invention; was very sorry that he could not put it in motion for me that day, as it happened to be a little out of order; but I would be able to see the principle of its operation very distinctly. I was flattered into believing that I saw the principle, with the result that Mr. Sawyer saw the principal, and with the further result that after that I never saw or heard of either principal or interest. Our mutual friend, Mr. Searle, also disappeared.

This was my first lesson in mechanics, given to me by a master of his art. I am not sure, on the whole, but that in one way and another it has been worth the trifle it cost me.

Had any one at that time told me that the expression “centrifugal force” is entirely misleading, that in reality there is no such force, that what goes by this name is not a force at all, nothing but a resistance, the resistance which a body revolving around an exterior point opposes to being continually deflected from a straight line of motion, and which ceases the instant the deflecting force ceases, when the body merely moves on in a straight line tangent to the circle, and in bodies revolving around their own axes or centers of gravity is the same resistance of their atoms, he would probably have had about the same success in making me see it that I long afterwards had with some engineering friends.

It is difficult at the present day to conceive the confusion of thought which then prevailed on this subject. The language of text-books was vague in the extreme.

The coincidence is not without interest, that my first mechanical experience, though in this ridiculous fashion, should have been with what was to become so prominent a feature of the high speed governors and engine.

I had for some time felt a growing disgust with the profession of the law. The contrast between the glorious science of human rights and the art of its practical application was very forcibly presented to my mind. I realized the fitness of the protest of Bryant, who described himself as being “forced to drudge for the dregs of men.” I was a regular reader of the Evening Post, in which an article appeared one day, written by John Bigelow, then the editor of the Post, laudatory of a certain judge whose term on the bench had lately closed, and who then retired from the profession. On this act Mr. Bigelow warmly congratulated him. Among a number of pungent expressions in the article I was particularly struck by this one: “The association of lawyers is mostly with knaves and fools.” My own experience bore witness to the truth of this statement. A few legal successes, which cost me incredible labor, interspersed of course with disappointments, weighed nothing compared with the daily association which I seemed compelled to endure. I formed a scheme for establishing a conciliation office for the amicable settlement of disputes, but found every man prepared to compromise on the extreme verge of his own position. So I gave that up.

I had another client, a Mr. Hastings, who had invented a stone-dressing machine, which he had patented, and the patent for which he wanted to dispose of. He had a working model of his invention, which was operated for visitors in the shop where it was built. He invited me to go and see it, which I did, and it certainly worked very well indeed. I recalled afterwards that the stone was carefully bedded on the table of the machine. I was quite fascinated with it and took some friends to see it, who were equally captivated, and the result was that we bought the patent. To make sure of its value, however, I first called with Mr. Hastings on Mr. Munn, his patent solicitor, and received Mr. Munn’s assurance that he had a very high opinion of it.

I gradually abandoned my law business, and devoted myself to the exploitation of this invention. I put into it all the money I had and all that I could borrow. After a while a large working machine was completed for us, the drawings for which I had made by a German draftsman, and which was built under my direction at the works of Mott & Ayers, near the foot of West Twenty-sixth Street. When this machine was finished the parties in interest assembled at these works to see it tried.

One experiment was enough. I had put into the machine a stone that was quite a foot thick and which was supported at two points. At the first cut made across this stone it broke in two in the middle. I found myself, in the words of President Cleveland, “confronted not by a theory but by a condition.” The machine was absurd. The patent was worthless. The enterprise was a failure. Our money had all been thrown into the sea. Nothing could be done unless I did it; and I knew nothing of mechanics, of machine design or construction, or of mechanical drawing, except the little that I had picked up in the works of Mott & Ayers while this machine was in process of construction. I should say, however, that the head draftsman in that establishment had given me some instruction in mechanical drawing, so that I knew the use of the instruments and what kind of ink to use.

I cannot recollect that I was in the least cast down or discouraged. I cannot now account for my confidence. I believed that the fundamental features of this machine were correct. These were: cutting stone by a blow given by a hammer moving in an inclined direction, and which was thrown up by a cam and thrown down by springs. The more I reflected upon it the more I became convinced that a successful stone-dressing machine could be made on those general lines, and in no other way; and I also became impressed with what seems the almost absurd conviction that I could make it.

The machine that broke the stone had a broad hammer—a cast-iron plate with tongues on the sides running in grooves in a frame, and to the end of which a long steel blade was bolted. My first idea was to divide the single broad hammer into several hammers working side by side and striking their blows successively; the second was to separate the hammers from the tool-holders, the third, to employ the same tools that were used by stone-cutters, namely, the point, tooth-chisel and drove, and to give them as nearly as possible the same blow that was given to them by the workman, and the fourth, to give to the tools only the blow necessary to do their work.

I infused my own enthusiasm into my associates to such a degree that they agreed to put up the money and let me try the experiment. That also is something that I now wonder at.

The most influential member of this devoted band was George T. Hope, President of the Continental Fire Insurance Co., a gentleman whom I shall have frequent occasion to mention, and who remained my steadfast friend till his death, which occurred soon after the close of my engineering career.

I set about my work in this manner. My house, on the south side of Twenty-second Street west of Seventh Avenue, had been arranged in its construction to use the extension room back of the parlor as a dining-room. That left the front basement available for me. This I equipped for a drawing-office, and set myself at work to learn mechanical drawing, and at the same time to design this machine. I bought a Scotch instruction book, and a sheet of “antiquarian” drawing-paper. In those days all drawings were made on white linen paper, and this was nearly the largest size that was made, and cost 75 cents a sheet. My principal drawing-implement was india-rubber. As my plans grew in my mind I had to rub out my preceding sketches. I spent a great deal of my time in visiting the large engineering works on the East River—the Allaire Works, the Morgan Works and the Novelty Works—and studying tools and machines and principles and methods of construction. I tried to get my mind saturated with mechanics. I finally succeeded in producing the design, this vertical section of which I have sketched from memory after fifty years.

It will be seen that this machine was massive in its construction. This was required on account of the speed—300 rotations of the shaft per minute—at which I had determined to run it. This was my first employment of high speed.

George T. Hope

The original model of the machine made 60 strokes per minute. In the machine that broke the stone I had increased the speed to 100 strokes per minute. In designing the successful machine I made the great jump to 300 revolutions of the cam-shaft per minute. This was done after much study of practical requirements. I observed carefully the speed of planing-machines. I had also the opportunity of witnessing the operation of the first wood-moulding machine, and was much impressed by the speed of the rotary cutters and the rapidity with which the work was turned out. I wanted a motion of 40 inches a minute for the stone table, which would make the output of the machine satisfactory; 300 revolutions would give this motion, the table advancing .133 of an inch at each blow.

Side frame not shown, except Channels
for Elevating Screws

My First Mechanical Drawing.
Longitudinal Section of my Stone-dressing Machine.

The machine contained six hammers, each 6 inches wide and weighing about 200 pounds, which ran in a suspended frame. The front member of this frame was a wrought-iron bar 6 inches square, with a projection on the lower side, as [shown]. At the ends this bar was first reduced to 5 inches square, the corners rounded to 1 inch radius, and mortised into cast-iron side-bars 4 inches thick, one of which is shown in the sectional view. Beyond these side-bars the wrought-iron bar was turned down to journals 3¹⁄₂ inches in diameter, which turned in the heads of large screws, one of which is represented. Beyond those journals it was further reduced to 2 inches diameter, and the ends threaded. These projections extended through slots in the main framing, and nuts on the outside provided with long handles enabled the whole to be bound fast in its position, when that had been determined.

The hammers had two faces; the upper faces struck on this 6-inch square bar, the lower faces struck the backs of the heavy tool-holders. These tool-holders were held in position in the manner [shown]. At the extreme back end they rocked downward upon a heavy cross-bar. At the front they rose against the 6-inch cross-bar. They were made with a heavy hook at the back, which prevented them from coming forward further than the projection at the bottom of this cross-bar permitted. A curved spring held them up to the cross-bar when the weight of the hammer was removed. Between the 6-inch cross-bar and the tool-holders and the hammer faces I introduced a sheet of heavy leather belting, which deadened the force of the blow. A stone-cutter uses a wooden mallet to drive the tooth-chisels and droves, because the impact of iron on iron has a disintegrating effect upon the stone, which the stone-cutters call “stunning the stone.” It produces a vibration in the body of the stone to a depth of perhaps ¹⁄₈ inch, and, however well the surface of the stone may appear when it is finished, after a while the outside will flake off to the depth to which these vibrations have extended. This leather buffer served the purpose of the wooden mallet, completely avoiding this difficulty. Incidentally also it made the building habitable, by transforming the blow into a dull thud, which at the rate of 1800 blows per minute from the six hammers was itself quite important to be done.

The large screws on each side of the machine at the front were provided at the top with long nuts resting on a cross-bar and combined with worm-wheels. A shaft carrying two worms engaging with these wheels extended across the top of the machine, so that the nuts were rotated identically, and the front of the suspended frame was raised or lowered as the thickness of the stone or depth of the cut required. The machine could cut stone from the thinnest ashlar up to a thickness of about 3 feet. The hammers ran on rollers as [shown]. At the back the frame and hammers were carried on similar rollers on the same shaft. The ends of this shaft also turned in square heads of screws, and by a mechanism similar to that already described the back of the frame could be elevated or depressed to the height required and be set at any desired angle.

The six tool-holders were made in the following manner: I got from England a bar of steel long enough to make them all. This was planed into the form shown in the [section], and the sockets for the shanks of the tools were finished to an equal depth and perfectly in line. It was then parted, and the ends of each finished in a slotting-machine.

The blows struck by the hammers were very effective. The cams had a throw of 1¹⁄₄ inches, but they threw the hammers back against the springs 1¹⁄₄ inches further, making their fall 2¹⁄₂ inches. This I ascertained by holding a piece of thin board edgeways between the upper end of a hammer and the cross-bar at the back, when the hammer crushed it up to this height.

We never ran over the stone with the points but once. They made everything before them fly. On the other hand, the droves merely dusted the surface, to take out the marks of the tooth-chisels. All surplus force in the blow was received on the 6-inch cross-bar. The tools stood motionless unless pushed back by the stone, when they received a sufficient portion of the blow to drive them forward to their position.

The feed motion was powerful, being imparted by a worm engaging in a worm-wheel 24 inches in diameter, while the run back was swift, quite 100 feet in a minute.

The sides of the steel tool-holders, rubbing against each other, became after a while badly abraded. I was obliged to plane them off and dovetail thin strips of hardened steel into them. These prevented any further trouble. The sides of the end tool-holders, however, which rubbed against the cast-iron side-bars, I observed, were polished without sensible wear.

This was a very important observation. These surfaces all rubbed together dry. The pressure was only the side thrust, which was very trifling. Under these conditions the molecules of the same material interlocked, while those of the different materials did not. These two materials were, however, extremely different in their constituent features. Perhaps this point of freedom of some different materials from interlocking was still better illustrated by the set-screws, where this difference of molecular structure did not exist in the same degree. These were made of Ulster iron, a superior quality of American iron then largely used in New York City for bolts. They were ⁵⁄₈-inch screws, and were also used dry, no oil being allowed anywhere over the stones. Each tool-holder contained three of these set-screws. The outside ones were tightened and loosened sixty times every day. The middle ones, where only the points were used, were tightened and loosened twenty times every day and at other times stood loose in their threads. The tool-holders being massive, and the blows of the hammers also coming on the leather cushion, there was no vibration. At the end of the two years’ running the outer bolts were all perfect fits. The middle ones were loose, but still held the tools perfectly.

The rollers on which the hammers ran were hardened and turned on hardened shafts. The hammers themselves had chilled faces, and their surfaces running on the rollers were also chilled. The surfaces of the tool-holders and of the bar on which these rocked were provided with hardened strips to the extent that they came in contact with each other. The cams and rollers and their pins were also hardened.

When built this machine was found to require only a single alteration. I had welded the cams onto the shaft, the welds being guaranteed by the smith to be perfectly sound. No appearance of unsoundness could be detected when the shaft was finished, but after running a week or two the cams became loose. This also gave me a useful lesson. I was obliged to send to England for blocks of steel, which were bored, finished and keyed on the shaft in the manner [shown], and the working surfaces of the cams were hardened. This required the substitution of new hammers, because the cams could not be threaded through the old ones. The hubs of these cams were 6 inches long, covering the shaft.

Our company, being satisfied from its design that the machine when finished would prove a success, rented from Mr. Astor a large lot on the south side of Fourteenth Street, west of Ninth Avenue, extending through to Thirteenth Street, and erected and equipped a building and established a stone-yard, where the machine ran successfully for two seasons, principally employed in facing ashlar, as the flat-faced stones of buildings are termed. It turned out with ease 600 square feet of finished surface per day, which was the work of thirty men, and it never broke a stone, however thin.

For facing in the machine the stones were set on bars 2 inches thick and 4 inches high, cast on the surface of sliding tables. These were both longitudinal and cross bars, and were provided with holes ³⁄₄ inch in diameter and about 3 inches apart. There were two tables, each 16 feet in length.

Several pieces of ashlar were set upon each table and held by dogs and wedges on these bars. They were wedged up very easily by skilled workmen, so that they would finish at the same level. At one side of the ways on which the tables moved, near each end, was placed a swing-crane, which was double- and triple-geared, so that by means of it any stone that the machine was adapted to cut could be lifted by two men. The operations of cutting the stones on one table and removing the stones and setting others on the other table went on simultaneously, so that the cutting was never interrupted, except to change the tools and the tables. This last was done as follows: Each table, when the work on it was completed, was run rapidly backward or forward to attach it to the other table. It was then connected with this by a couple of hooks, and, the motion being reversed, pulled it into place under the tools, and in doing this took its own place under a crane, so that the work of removing the finished stones and setting rough ones went on continuously at one end or the other of the ways.

In addition to the machine I designed the building and the whole plant and the plan of its operation, which moved like clockwork. I made every drawing myself. The cranes I obtained in Rochester, N. Y., of a pattern which the builders made for railroads for handling heavy freight.

I bought from a stone-dressing company that had failed a rubbing machine called the Jenny Lind rubber, from the fact that it was started the same year in which that songstress was brought to the United States by Mr. Barnum. This rubbing-machine was quite a success. From a central vertical spindle a jointed arm extended in three lengths, each about 12 feet long. The sections of this arm were very deep, so that there was no sag at the end, where the rubbing-plate was driven by belting and could be moved from stone to stone around a circle of 36 feet radius. Half of this circle was sufficient for our use. I made only one change in this machine. The pulleys, two pairs on each joint, one at the top and one at the bottom, about two feet in diameter by three inches face, were of course horizontal. The makers were afraid the belts would fall off; so they made these pulleys with two square grooves, ¹⁄₂ inch wide by ¹⁄₄ inch deep, in their faces, and had corresponding strips of leather sewn on the belts to run in these grooves. I threw all these away and substituted ordinary pulleys with their faces slightly crowning. Never had the least trouble. Indeed, these pulleys did better than I expected. I supposed the belts would need to be taken up occasionally, on account of becoming stretched, but they did not. Perhaps they would have done so if the strain on them had been greater. This rubbing machine resembled the stone-dressing machine in one respect: everything about it was arranged for continuous operation and the largest output.

The business was carried on the first season under the management of Mr. John McClave, a master stone-cutter, and the second season under the management of the firm of Brown & Young, stone-cutters. Mr. Hugh Young, of this firm, has since been prominent in the stone-cutting business in New York.

The machine was found to possess a remarkable advantage over hand work. The sun was called by stone-cutters “the great revealer.” When its rays fell at a small angle on a surface finished by hand they showed very considerable irregularities. The same test showed work in the machine to be true planes. It won a high reputation; stone-cutters were anxious to get their surfaces done in the machine, and we had more work offered us than we could do.

The following incident illustrates the favorable impression made by the machine upon everyone who witnessed its operation:

At a meeting of the Directors of the Company at which I was present Mr. Daniel S. Miller, a gentleman somewhat prominent in financial New York, was late. He made the following explanation. “I thought that before the meeting I would visit the stone yard and see how the work was going on. I stayed longer than I had intended, and I want five thousand dollars more of the stock of this company.”

We were much elated over our success, and plans were made for enlarging the business. I completed the drawings for an additional machine, wide enough to take in platforms, for which provision had been made by me in the plan of the building. The only change suggested by our two years’ experience was the use of air-cushions behind the hammers in place of steel springs.

But the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, the poet tells us,

“Gang aft a-gley;

And leave us naught but grief and pain

For promised joy.”

Our plans were suddenly ruined. A change in the method of facing ashlar was introduced and soon became universally adopted. Instead of being faced by hand, it began to be sawn out of large blocks. I have since wondered why this had not been done long before. Blocks of marble had been sawn into slabs by gang-saws no one knows how long, and all that had to be done was to apply the same system to blocks of building-stone. It was found to cost no more to saw ashlar than it had done to split it out at the quarry. All the cost of facing and much stone were saved. Our stone-cutting machine became useless, and I learned that disappointments were not confined to the legal profession.

The speed of 300 revolutions per minute had proved to be admirably suited for the machine. Familiarity with this speed in the running of the stone-dressing machine made me alive to the value of high rotative speeds in all cases to which they are adapted.

In looking back over this period I see that the success of the stone-dressing machine was due to the following causes:

First, I went about the work of facing stone by machinery in the natural way.

Second, the machine was superabundantly strong and substantial in every part.

Third, it was made with absolute mechanical truth.

Fourth, the speed was splendid.

Fifth, the blow was peculiar. In the Hastings machine the cutting-tool was driven into the stone. In mine it rested on the stone and was moved back horizontally by the feed. This changed slightly the angular position of the tool-holder, so that the blow was received by it at the lower edge of its back. This gave to the tool a motion forward and upward, so that the vertical effect on the stone was trifling.

This was the vital feature of my improvement, and that in a double sense; for it was only by convincing my associates beforehand that a machine operating in this manner could not break the stone that I was able to obtain their financial support.

Sixth, the two-faced hammer saved the stone from all unnecessary force of the blow.

The final cause of its success was the two-table system. The two operations of setting and cutting occupied each about the same time, and twenty tables each averaging thirty square feet of surface, measured after being squared up, were easily finished in a day of ten hours.

A description of some of the constructive methods employed by me may be interesting:

The bar of steel which was to be made into six separate tool-holders had to have eighteen sockets mortised in it. These were 1 inch square. I had made the tools with square shanks so as to insure their proper position. These mortises must be absolutely in line and of equal depth. These objects were accomplished as follows: A cast-iron angle-bar with planed surfaces was first bolted on the table of the drilling-machine, and for drilling the holes the bar of steel was kept in contact with this angle-bar. A uniform depth was insured by employing a bottoming-drill with a collar formed on the shank. The drilling was finished when this collar rubbed on the steel bar.

I had this work done by Mr. Joseph Banks, whose shop was in a large building at the corner of Second Avenue and Twenty-second Street. Mr. A. S. Cameron, the inventor and manufacturer of the celebrated Cameron steam-pumps, was then an apprentice in that shop. Mr. Banks was an excellent mechanic, and I was greatly indebted to him for the accuracy of the work that I procured. He devised an expanding-drill to cut a groove at the bottom of these sockets, in which the chips from the slotting-tool made in squaring the holes would come off. The finishing slotting-tool I designed myself. I had noticed in all slotting-machines that came under my observation at that time that the tool would spring off a little at the commencement of the cut, so that a full square angle was never obtained. To avoid this defect and to size the slots equally I made a slotting-tool to cut on opposite sides. The cutting edges were each about ¹⁄₈ inch long and the corners rounded. The bar for the tool-holders had to be set three times on account of its length. It was set in contact with the same angle-bar, which was bolted on this table parallel with its transverse feed. This finishing-tool being once set, the upper and lower faces of all the sockets were thus readily finished in perfect line and with square edges. The tool being then turned at right angles to its first position, for which purpose its shank had been planed square, finished the sides of the sockets. These were identical in every respect, and any tool could go anywhere.

The springs behind the hammers were prepared with great care. I had large bars of spring steel reduced under a tilt-hammer to a section ³⁄₈ inch square. These were coiled with only ¹⁄₄ inch space between the coils, so that in case a spring broke within the hammer it could not get out of place. These springs were exceptionally durable. We took off the back cross-bar occasionally—perhaps once a month—to examine for broken springs, and sometimes we found one, which was replaced with a new one because we assumed that it was fatigued, but the hammers worked just as well with broken springs as they did with whole ones. The springs, having considerable initial compression, did not become loose.

It seems proper to add that, except the help from Mr. Banks, I did not in designing the machine or organizing the work receive assistance or suggestion from anyone.

With these details I bid a final good-by to you, my old schoolmaster. I have a warm place in my heart for you. You set me my first lessons in mechanics. Your life was short. You were not ordained to cut much of a figure in the world. But you were faithful. You always did your work and did it well.

CHAPTER II

The Evolution and Manufacture of the Central Counterpoise Governor. Introduction of Mr. Richards.

When the stone-dressing machine was started a difficulty presented itself. The governor was in constant motion a short distance up and down, causing the engine to oscillate, running alternately too fast and too slow. There was nothing that should have caused this action, so far as I could observe. The load on the engine was constant. However the work done on the stone may have varied, the work of the engine was to lift the hammers, and these, being lifted successively, presented a uniform resistance. The oscillation was not very great, as nearly as I can remember about 12 per cent. of the speed; which would give to each hammer a variation of thirty-six blows per minute. This, however, produced a waving surface on the stone. The more rapid the blow, the stronger it was and the deeper the cut. These waves were slight, only about ¹⁄₅₀ of an inch variation in depth, but yet it was not possible for our rubbing-machine to grind them off without great loss of time. So we had to employ three or four stone-cutters to chisel off these ridges, which were about 4 inches apart.

It was evident that this oscillation must be stopped. I tried to remedy it by changing the pressure of the steam, and then by changing the pulleys so as to run the engine faster, the speed of the governor, however, necessarily remaining the same. But these had no effect. Having exhausted my own stock of ignorance on the subject, I applied to professional experts for more, and I got it. Three persons, who I supposed ought to know, and who probably did know, all that was then known on the subject, gave me the same advice. It was that I should get a larger engine and a great deal larger fly-wheel. This advice did not seem to me reasonable. I knew that the engine was large enough, because while the governor was in the lowest position, in which it did not open the throttle entirely by any means, the machine ran too fast. They then told me I must have a heavier fly-wheel at any rate, and they explained to me that the fly-wheel performed two offices—one to carry the crank over its dead centers with an approximately uniform motion, and the other to give the governor time to act. I replied that the engine passed its dead centers with absolute uniformity then, as nearly as I could see, and as was shown by the surface of the stone, and consequently for that purpose the fly-wheel I had must be sufficient. The oscillations were regular, occupying about 30 revolutions of the machine, or 6 seconds of time, and had no connection with the dead centers, and I did not see why the governor should require any time to act. They told me that all governors required time to act, of course.

I then examined the governor more critically, and made up my mind that its action was hindered by friction in the driving-joints at the top of the spindle. These joints were about 4 inches apart, on opposite sides of the spindle, and were of a character in which the force transmitted through them to drive the balls produced a pinch between the broad faces of the joints. The governor could not act until by change of its speed it had accumulated force enough to overcome this pinch, and then it moved too far. Again I applied to my authorities for some way of getting rid of this friction. They told me that was easy enough. All I had to do was to put a yoke on the governor spindle, through which the governor arms were threaded and by which the driving pressure was applied close to the balls. So for the first time I took their advice and had a yoke put on the governor. I could not discover that this helped the matter at all. The improvement was too trifling to be noticed. I also saw clearly enough why this was so. The pressure applied was lighter than that applied through the joints, but it was also applied at a correspondingly increased distance from the axis, so that the effect in retarding the action of the governor was substantially the same.

I saw that if I got any relief I must find a way to it myself. So I began studying the subject of governors. My engineering library at that time consisted of Haswell’s Engineers’ Pocket Book. What little book-knowledge I had respecting mechanics I had learned from Haswell. I turned to Haswell and read what he had to say about governors. I learned that they were conical pendulums and made half as many revolutions in a minute as the vibrations of a pendulum whose length was equal to the height of the cone, the base of which was the plane in which the center of oscillation of the balls and arms revolved, and its apex the point of intersection of the axes of the arms, if produced upward, and that their revolutions varied inversely as the square root of the height of this cone. I did not see that this got me out of my difficulty at all. I then referred to the subject of centrifugal force, with which I had made some acquaintance before, and I read this champion mind-muddler: “All bodies moving around a center or fixed point have a tendency to fly off in a straight line. This is termed centrifugal force.” This did not help me any more, nor interest me much at that time.

But I read further that the centrifugal force of a body revolving in any given circle varies as the square of the speed. “Thus a body making 10 revolutions per minute will exert four times as much centrifugal force as will be exerted by the same body making 5 revolutions per minute.” The governor on my engine was making 50 revolutions per minute, and in thinking the matter over it occurred to me that if the governor could be run as fast as my machine, namely, at 300 revolutions per minute, the centrifugal force of one pound would be as great as that exerted by 36 pounds at 50 revolutions per minute. I cried, “Eureka! I have found it.” One-pound balls in place of 36-pound balls would be easily driven. I told my experts of the great find that I had made, and they laughed at me. They told me I ought to know that the momentum of the balls increased in the same ratio with their centrifugal force, MV² being the expression common to both, so, in the same circle, while the centrifugal force of the balls at 300 revolutions per minute would be 36 times greater than at 50 revolutions, it would require also 36 times the force to drive them, and that I would gain nothing by my proposed change, but instead I would have to rotate also the weight that I would need to use to hold the small balls down, and the last case would be worse than the first. This staggered me, and I pondered awhile what I should do.

I had a friend living near by on Fourteenth Street, west of Seventh Avenue—a Mr. Thompson, a mathematician and the author of a series of mathematical books then largely used. So I called upon him and stated my trouble and asked his advice. He illuminated the subject to me as follows: “You seem to be a persevering young man; keep hard at it and you will solve the difficulty by and by.”

In my despair I just had before me this one thought: The friction must be cured at any rate. After a time I thought that if I made a long joint at the top embracing the center of gyration of the counterpoise, so that the pressure required to drive the balls and counterpoise would be applied at some distance from the axis of the spindle and for that reason would be much lighter, and also would be normal to the surface of the joint-pin instead of being a pinch between opposite faces, the difficulty would be cured, as the force to overcome the friction would be exerted at the ends of levers 50 or 100 times the radius of the pin. I felt so sure of this that I risked making a governor with a single joint at the apex of the cone, as originally employed by Watt, thus making the governor more sensitive, as the height of the cone would not be changed at both ends, still fortunately holding to my little balls and high speed, though I cannot tell why. The joint at the top I made 6 inches in length.

When this governor was started, the trouble absolutely vanished. The engine ran with perfect uniformity while the load was constant. I use the adjective “perfect” advisedly, for the governor slide was as motionless on the spindle as if it were screwed tight, and the governor proved to be the most sensitive possible index of the variations of speed. When the belt was thrown off to the loose pulley the engine ran idle. The counterpoise then rose promptly but gently to its fixed highest position, and stood there motionless until the belt was thrown on and the hammers were started, when it moved as gently but promptly down to its lower position and stood there again motionless so long as the hammers were running. We could not detect by the eye the variation in speed that caused this action of the governor. The heaviest load on the engine, however, was dragging rapidly the two tables loaded with stone. This caused the governor to settle still further, but always the motion of the engine seemed to be the same so far as I could detect. The surface produced on the stone left nothing to be desired. The machine cut true planes, free from any windage, and the surfaces were left so smooth that the rubbing-machine had but little to do, and kept up with the cutting-machine very easily. The governor fascinated everybody who witnessed its operation.

The First Porter Governor.

I first made the drawing for the governor with the weight hanging to the slide. Mr. John McLaren, a machinist who had done good work for me, when I showed it to him said, “Why don’t you turn your weight upside down and put it between the arms?” I was not long in acting upon this suggestion, and that made the Porter governor complete. I had it described and illustrated in the Scientific American. They took a photograph of it as photographs were taken in those days—that is, they sent their artist up to make a sketch of it, and this sketch (shown [here]) and description will be found in the Scientific American of October 9, 1858. This governor has never been changed by me except in the shape of the counterpoise.

I believed the mathematics of my advisers to be sound, and that the perfect action of the governor was obtained entirely by the long driving-joint, which I supposed would have enabled the 36-lb. balls at 50 revolutions per minute to do just as well as 1-lb. balls at 300 revolutions, but I never tried the experiment.

In that belief I remained for 50 years. Now, at the age of over 80 years, after long rest from business activities, in revising these reminiscences for publication, the idea has first occurred to me, and has grown into a conviction, that my advisers were wrong here as they had been in every other respect. They overlooked the fact that the angular velocity of the driving-joint increased equally with that of the balls, so that the ratio between them would remain constant. The law that the driving force required increases as the square of the speed imparted applies only to the original source of power, as, to the force of the steam exerted in the cylinder of an engine, the motion of the piston remaining the same, and to the transmitting belts or gears whose speed also remains the same. At all these points the force exerted must increase as the square of the speed imparted; but this does not apply to the pressure exerted in the governor joint. Its speed does not remain the same, but increases with that of the balls. So, while the centrifugal force of the balls, changes in which produce the vertical movements of the counterpoise, varies as the square of the speed, the force required to be exerted in this joint to drive the balls, and which produces the friction to retard these movements, does not increase at all, whatever the speed of revolution may be. This fact, unobserved by me or any one else so far as I ever heard, has all the time been the secret, a pretty open secret when once seen, of the surprising combination of sensitiveness and stability in the action of this governor which has led to its general use, and at which I myself have never ceased to wonder because I was ignorant of its cause. This, however, was not the only time that I builded better than I knew.

I can imagine some persons, after having read the above explanation, to say, some of them perhaps flippantly, and some possibly sneeringly, “To a properly educated engineer this is obvious at a glance.” I think it will be so hereafter, but has it been so hitherto? If any one will produce the record of its observation I will cheerfully yield to him the priority and will congratulate him upon it.

Some things, however, make me doubt if this observation has ever been made. At the London Exhibition of 1862 this governor attracted much attention from its novel appearance, rapid rotation and remarkable action. Many engineers spoke to me about it. In their conversation I observed two things: first, no one ever asked me a question, but every one explained its action to me; and second, while each had an explanation of his own to make, they all agreed in a fundamental respect. Their minds ran in the same groove. They considered the governor only in its theoretical action. No one ever took notice of the incident of friction, which was the controlling factor. An improved governor was in their view one contrived in some way to free the governor from the limitation to its action, which is imposed by the law of the conical pendulum, and every one explained to me how my governor was adapted to do this.

The following illustrates this universal view among English engineers:

In the Appendix to the 10th edition of Rankine’s “Manual of the Steam-engine and other Prime Movers,” published in 1882, one reads as follows: “Isochronous governors. The ordinary governor is not isochronous; for when, in order to adapt the opening of the regulating-valve to different loads, it rotates with its revolving pendulums at different angles to the vertical axis, the altitude of the cone assumes different values, corresponding to different speeds. The following are expedients for diminishing or removing this defect.

1. Loaded Governor (Porter’s).—From the balls of the common governor, whose collective weight is (say) A, let there be hung by a pair of links of lengths equal to the pendulum arms, a load, B, capable of sliding up and down the spindle, and having its center of gravity on the axis of rotation. Then the centrifugal force is that due to A alone, and the effect of gravity that due to A + 2B; consequently the altitude for a given speed is increased in the ratio A + 2B : A, as compared with that of a simple revolving pendulum; and a given absolute variation of altitude in moving the regulating-valve produces a smaller proportionate variation of speed than in the common governor.”

That is the whole of it. Respecting this I have to say:

1st. The vertical motion of the counterpoise (variation of altitude), if the links had also a single joint at the bottom, could not be either more or less than twice that of the balls, which equal lengths of the arms and links give also in the common governor, so in this respect the governor is no improvement.

2d. No notice is taken of the small size of the balls or of the speed of rotation.

3d. Professor Rankine is not responsible for this absurd piece of reasoning.

4th. It only shows how far the English engineering mind has been from considering the subject of hindrance to the governor action from friction.

My governor works within the law of the conical pendulum. I never dreamed of attempting in this form of governor to avoid it. In fact it is this law which gives to the governor its action. A change of speed is necessary to produce a motion of the counterpoise. But as the governor was designed by me, this change of speed is very small, probably no more than is required for stability, and is not sensible in any way except in the motion of the counterpoise itself, which is simultaneous with the most minute changes of speed.

Quite a variety of modifications of this governor are being made in this country, but I think not elsewhere. The makers have been kind enough to invent the name “the central counterpoise governor.” For this I feel greatly obliged, as I should be mortified to find my name attached to any of them. Their action is always more or less unsatisfactory, sometimes very much so. But I do not think it likely that the secret of the remarkable action of the Porter governor has been detected by any of these people.

I am glad that this was not explained to me at first; if it had been I might not have thought of the single long driving-joint, which is a valuable feature.

When the stone-dressing machine proved to be valueless, as already described, I found myself out of business; but the governor had attracted so much attention and had been so favorably received that I thought I could establish a business of manufacturing these governors, and I am proud to say that the gentlemen already associated with me and who had lost their money in the abandonment of the stone-dressing machine were so decidedly of the same opinion, and I had won their confidence to such an extent, that they furnished the money to enable me to establish this manufacture.

I rented a shop on the second floor of a triangular building on Thirteenth Street, at the junction of Hudson Street and Ninth Avenue, owned by Mr. Herring, the safe-manufacturer, the lower part of which was occupied by him for his own business. This was a large room and had light on three sides.

I proceeded to equip this shop with the necessary tools, some of which I purchased of Mr. Freeland, then considered the best toolmaker in the United States, and who had gone to England and worked for some years as a journeyman in the celebrated Whitworth Works, in Manchester, for the purpose of learning everything that was known there. Those which Mr. Freeland could not supply I obtained from Geo. S. Lincoln & Co., of Hartford, Conn.

During the time these tools were building I was waited upon by Mr. Chas. B. Richards, who was then removing from Hartford to New York to establish himself as a designer of machinery, and who brought me a letter from Geo. S. Lincoln & Co. I was at that time engaged in scheming as well as I could a machine for drilling the arms and balls and counterweight and spindle of my governor, and immediately employed Mr. Richards to assist me in getting out the drawings for this machine. This he did quite to my satisfaction, and the machine was made by Geo. S. Lincoln & Co., Mr. Pratt, for so many years head of the firm of Pratt & Whitney, afterwards the Pratt & Whitney Company, being then their foreman; so that all my tools from that concern were made by Mr. Pratt. He also cut for me superb iron patterns for the governor gears.

This machine always interested me very much. It solved every problem which was involved in the perfect and rapid performance of these operations. It had two parallel spindles running horizontally in the same plane, one fixed and the other adjustable. Distance pieces laid between the spindle heads insured the equal length of the arms of all governors of the same size. The table was made with a back to it, so that, a parallel block being laid on the table behind the arms, these were always brought in position parallel with its back. The arms were supported on blocks of proper height. These provisions insured that the joint-holes, which were drilled simultaneously, should intersect the axes of the arms and of the balls and spindle at right angles. This machine fitted up all the governors that I ever made. I gradually built up an excellent business in their manufacture, on account of the extreme pains taken to produce perfect work, so that the governors always gave the highest satisfaction.

I think of only one instance to the contrary. I sold a governor to Mr. Winslow, of Troy, afterwards of the firm of Corning & Winslow, the first manufacturers of Bessemer steel rails in this country under the inspiration of Mr. Alexander L. Holley. Soon after this governor had been shipped I received a letter from Mr. Winslow telling me that the governor would not answer at all, and I should come and see about it. I found the governor had been placed on a second-hand Burden engine, which was a well-known type of horizontal engine at that time, made in Brooklyn. The engine had been built to make 50 revolutions per minute, but being a great deal too large for their use they had reduced the speed to 25 revolutions per minute, and the complaint was that every time the crank passed its centers the governor dropped to its seat. I told them what I thought the difficulty was; that any one could see that the engine very nearly stopped as the crank passed its centers, and the governor had to drop. To show them this action, I disconnected the governor from the valve and throttled the engine by hand, and showed them that the governor, when not connected with the throttle-valve, rose and dropped on every stroke, in the same way as when connected. They asked me what I was going to do about it. I told them I should do nothing about it; that I presumed they might possibly get a governor somewhere that would stand that alternation of speed without winking, but they had better send mine back, because it was not made for any such service.

Charles B. Richards
A.D. 1858

The following is an amusing illustration, doubtless an extreme one, of the degree in which the lay mind may be incapable of mechanical perception. My governors were usually set on the engine bed of horizontal engines near the shaft, and were connected with the throttle-valve over the cylinder by means of a bell-crank lever and a long rod. One day a gentleman called to make a personal examination of the governor and its manufacture, with a view to investing in the business. I showed him a governor in action on the testing platform, and a woodcut on my circular which represented the governor in its position, as above described, with a short piece of the connecting-rod attached to the lever. He looked at this cut intently for some time, and then, putting his finger on the broken-off end of the little rod, said, “Ah, I see; the steam enters there.” I made no reply, and he was so much pleased with his own penetration that he invested at once.

I know of only one case in which this governor needed the help of a dash-pot or controlling vessel. In the great plate-mill of the Otis Works, in Cleveland, when the enormous mass of steel struck the rolls, the governor dropped sharply to its seat, and jumped as sharply to the upper limit of its action when this mass was shot out. Mr. Wellman, their general manager, suggested to me an elegant arrangement of air-chambers at the top and bottom of a cylinder, which permitted free motion to the governor through its whole range of action, but cushioned it on confined air at the ends.

For several years I made the counterpoise of the governor in the form of a vase. The present form with hemispherical top was suggested by Mr. Whitworth in 1866, and shown by me in the Paris Exposition of 1867. It has three advantages. It is more readily turned with a circular tool-rest, and it contains more metal and looks more mechanical.

I exhibited the governor in operation at a fair of the American Institute held on Fourteenth Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, New York City (where the armory of the Twelfth Regiment now stands), making an arrangement with an exhibitor of an engine for that purpose. I remember that Mr. George H. Reynolds, then an engineer in the works of Mr. Delamater at the foot of West Thirteenth Street, as he passed it with a friend a day or two after it was started, remarked in my hearing, “It will take a horse-power to drive that governor.” It would not do to let any such nonsense get around as the opinion of an engineer, so the next morning the governor was driven by a belt ⁵⁄₈ of an inch wide, and continued to be so through the fair. I was sorry afterwards that I did not use a half-inch belt, which would have driven it just as well, and indeed I think even a narrower belt would have done, as the foot of the spindle was of hardened steel, a segment of a sphere, running in a puddle of oil in a hardened step cupped to a larger radius.

The funniest application of the governor I ever made was the following: The Civil War had just broken out, and every Yankee was making some warlike invention. The most ridiculous of all was a centrifugal gun. A company was formed for its manufacture. The shot, about an inch in diameter, was fed in at the center of a swiftly revolving wheel and thrown out through a barrel at the periphery, with a velocity that, it was estimated by the inventor, would carry it about two miles. This velocity was to be got up in about one second. The governor would not act quickly enough, and the engine was stopped. The parties heard of my governor, and ordered one, offering to pay for it in a tempting amount of their stock. I preferred the cash and got it. The governor filled the bill, the shot was delivered, the velocity of revolution not falling sensibly, but we judged by the sharp fall of the counterpoise that it required not less than twenty horse-powers to do it.

The gun was tried on the bank of the Hudson, the Palisades opposite being the target. The inventor declared that every shot hit the mark, but some evil-minded persons insisted that they fell into the water within a quarter of a mile of the shore from which they were fired.

About the same time the absurdity of sending into the field a tank of water, a boiler, an engine and the gun, on separate wheels, connected by pipes or belting, which would be ruined by the least damage to anything, began to dawn on the enthusiasts, and the thing was abandoned.

I furnished one of my first governors to Mr. James Horner to regulate a rolling-mill near Boonton, N. J., a sale which is worth recording. This mill was employed in rolling steel pretty high in carbon into rods for making gimlets, and the three-high train had not yet issued from the brain of Mr. Fritz. The rolling was slow work. The resistance brought down the speed of the engine before the governor could act, and they could have only one pass in the rolls at a time. The workmen had to carry the end of the rod around and insert it in the next groove after it had run out of the former one. The rod would be black before it was finished, and often it was difficult to get it finished at all. I do not know of any change that so much impressed me at the time as did that which followed the putting of my governor on this engine. The full speed was kept up, the billets seemed to rush through the rolls, two and even three passes could be in them at the same time, and the rods were still at a dull red heat when finished.

This success induced me to make a raid on Pittsburg. I found there very different conditions. They then rolled nothing but iron, so far as I saw or heard. In the first mill I visited, after I had discussed the subject with one of the proprietors, an old man came up to me and said, “Do you see that chair? I have sat in that chair twenty-four years.” The chair corroborated his story. “I watch the rolls; when a bar enters them, I turn on more steam; when it goes out I shut it off. If you put in a governor that will do as well, I shall be discharged. I don’t know how to do anything else; I have a family dependent on me, and I don’t know what I should do.” I did not hesitate long about what I should do. I could not improve on the old man’s action. He regulated the speed perfectly. The only result of my success would be to beggar him. Superseding hand labor by machinery I did not in this particular case care to be responsible for. I concluded that the Pittsburg way was good enough for them, and took the next train for home.

The first governor I sold was to Mr. William Moller for his sugar-refinery on Vandam Street. The engine to be regulated was an old-fashioned beam-engine. The governor was to be set on a bracket that we had to bolt to the wall, and a pulley some 3 feet or more in diameter had to be made in halves and put on the shaft. To make sure that no mistake would be made, I went down myself to make a gauge of that shaft. I took a ³⁄₈-inch steel rod bent to span the shaft, and made of this an outside gauge with great care. Now this was not what I wanted, but I did not know it. I wanted an inside gauge, representing the diameter of the shaft, and what I did make was useful only to compare the two.

I returned highly satisfied with my work, leaving the real gauge to be made in the shop, where it could not be compared with the shaft. What might reasonably have been expected to happen did happen. In some unaccountable way something happened to my gauge, and when we went to install the governor we found the pulley had been bored ¹⁄₄ inch too small. We had to work hard all night, and got through only just in time for the engine to start at its usual hour in the morning. If I had sent a man who knew his business to make this gauge I should have avoided a lot of trouble, but I should not have learned anything.

In preparing for the establishment of the governor manufacture I visited the works of Geo. S. Lincoln & Co., in Hartford, and saw twist-drills in use, cutting chips instead of scraping. They attracted my attention and I inquired about them, and was told that they made them themselves. They kindly took me into the smith-shop and had one made for me to witness the operation. The smith heated a round bar of steel and swaged channels in it on opposite sides. They had quite a set of top and bottom swages for different-sized channels. He then took another heat on the bar and twisted it by hand, giving a gradually increasing twist, which at the end was quite rapid. An increasing twist was obtained in this way. The drill was held in a vise, so that only the projecting end of it could receive the amount of twist then being imparted. The drill had to be moved in the vise of course a number of times. The channels were smoothed out with files, and when the drill was turned in the lathe sharp cutting edges were developed, which needed only to be backed off by grinding. I took one of these drills home with me to serve as a pattern and equipped my shop with them. They were of the highest use to me. The small ones drilled the holes for the governor joints, and the large ones drilled the counterpoise and the column for the governor spindle. I suppose the twist-drill had its origin in these Hartford works.

I never saw any twist-drills in England except at Mr. Whitworth’s, and these I thought were the funniest things I ever did see. They were twisted by the blacksmith out of square bars and with a uniform quick twist, were left rough, and did not fill the hole, and the ends were flattened out in the form of the common drill to scrape, and not to cut.

When I returned from England in 1868 twist-drills were coming into general use in this country. After 1876 the firm of Smith & Coventry introduced them in England.

At that time almost everything in machine-shops was done in the old-fashioned way, and accuracy depended entirely on the skill of the workman. The tool work left much to be done by the fitter. Interchangeability was unknown, even in screw-threads. For example, when nuts were removed from a cylinder head, pains had always to be taken that each nut was replaced on its own bolt, as no two were exactly of a size. This condition developed a class of very skillful all-round workmen; but my earliest observation showed me that in manufacturing it was important that so far as possible the personal factor should be eliminated. I adopted the rule that in mechanical work there was only one way to insure that anything should always be done right, and that was to make it impossible that it should be done wrong. For example, in my governor gears their true running required that the bore should be absolutely correct, both in position and in direction. I had seen many gears bored. They were held in the jaws of a chuck and trued by marking their projecting side when running with a piece of chalk. It was evident that absolute truth could hardly ever be reached in this way, and the approximation to it depended wholly on the skill and pains of the workman. Besides, much time was lost in setting each wheel. These objections were much aggravated in the case of bevel-gears.

I met these difficulties in this way. In standardizing my governors I found it necessary to make eight sizes, but managed to use only three different pairs of gears. I made a separate chuck for each of these six wheels, the faces of which were turned to fit the top and inner ends of the teeth, the same surfaces to which I had seen the chalk applied. When the castings were received from the foundry the first operation on them was to bed them to their chucks, which were covered with a thin coating of red lead for this purpose. The workman was careful to remove only projecting imperfections without touching the true surfaces of the teeth. After this the gears, being held firmly to their chucks by means of a yoke, were bored rapidly and always with absolute truth. Result: their running was practically noiseless.

Mr. Freeland taught me the secret of producing true cylindrical surfaces by grinding with a wheel. It was to let the swiftly revolving wheel traverse the surface as it rotated, touching only the highest points, and these very lightly. This avoided the danger of errors from the springing of either the piece or the wheel, which under strong pressure is sure to take place to some extent, even in the best grinding-machines. I have found this delicacy of touch to be a most difficult thing to teach the ordinary workmen. They often manage to produce by grinding a surface more imperfect than it was before.

I took extreme pains to insure that the axes of the joint pins should intersect the axis of the governor spindle and those of the governor balls, and should be equidistant from the center of the counterpoise, these parts of the joints having been turned to true spherical forms by means of a circular tool-rest. For this purpose I employed a feeling-gauge, consisting of a cylindrical stem fitting the hole as drilled, with a curved arm projecting from this stem and terminating in a point that would rub on the external surface of the balls. By this means we almost always detected some slight inaccuracy, which was remedied by the use of a round file. The joint holes were afterwards finished with long reamers, the cutting portion of which was in the middle of their length. The front end of the reamer fitted the drilled hole and extended quite through the joint, so guiding the cutting edges as they entered, and the back end of the reamer filled the hole that had been reamed.

I finally tested their alignment by bringing the last of the five joints together after the others had been united, when the forked link should swing freely to the ball without the least tendency in either direction from its exact place. This it always did.

Some time afterwards I adopted the plan of dispensing with heads and washers on the joint pins, reaming the holes in the central portions of the joint slightly smaller than those in the arms and making the pin a hard fit in the former. There was never any tendency for a pin to get loose in the running of the governor. I also at a later date cut the counterpoise in two a short distance above the joints, so that the mass of its weight did not need to be started and stopped when the speed of the governor changed. I could not see, however, that this was of any advantage, although when the governor balls were pulled around by hand no motion was imparted to the mass of the counterpoise. The action was apparently quite perfect before.

CHAPTER III

Invention and Application of my Marine Governor.

I was anxious from the first to produce a governor capable of being used on marine engines—which the governor already described could not be, as it needed to stand in a vertical position—and also one that should be free from the limitations of the conical pendulum. I gave a great deal of study to the subject, and after worrying about it—I am ashamed to say how long, for the principle when once seen is found to be exceedingly simple, being merely maintaining a constant ratio between the compression of the spring and the radius of the circle of revolution of the balls—I finally perfected my marine governor and tried it in my shop, running it from a hand-driven pulley, and found it perfectly isochronous. It was capable of being adjusted to be as nearly isochronous as we thought expedient consistent with stability of position.

This governor is represented in the [cut] that follows. The motion imparted was small, from ³⁄₄ to 1¹⁄₂ inches in the different sizes, but the governor was very strong. The balls are shown half expanded. Before expansion their circle of revolution is 10 inches diameter; when fully expanded it is 15 inches diameter; increase in diameter, and so in centrifugal force, 50 per cent. The spring has an initial compression given by the nut of 2 inches; additional compression imparted by the expansion of the balls, 1 inch, giving an increase of 50 per cent. in the resistance. So in every position of the balls the two forces are in equilibrium, at a constant number of revolutions per minute.

My friend Mr. McLaren had the job of making repairs on the vessels of the newly started North German Lloyd Line, and feeling confident that my governor was what that line needed very much, he obtained from the agents in New York an order for me to put one on the steamer “New York” on a guarantee of perfect performance. This was the first steamship of this line. The chief engineer of the vessel, an Englishman, Mr. Sparks, told me in conversation that I could have no idea how anxious they were in the engineering department for my governor to be a success, because they had to throttle the ship by hand, and it seemed sometimes as though their arms would drop off before the end of their watch; but he was sorry to say that I could not do it, and he would tell me why. “We know when the screw is coming out of the water by the rising of the stern of the vessel, and we shut the steam off beforehand, and so when the stern goes down we know that it is going down into the sea and admit the steam to the engine beforehand. Now, your governor cannot tell what is going to happen. It cannot act until a change of motion has taken place which will be too late, and so I am sorry to say that you cannot succeed.” But in spite of his want of faith I obtained authority to attach the governor.

On returning from his first voyage with it, Mr. Sparks said to me: “I have nothing to say, Mr. Porter, except that we have sat quietly in our chairs all the voyage, which has been a very stormy one, and watched the engine moving as regularly as a clock, while the governor has been in a state of incessant activity.”

The captain joined with him in giving me the following testimonials:

“Steamship ‘New York,’
“Pier 30, North River.

“To Mr. Chas. T. Porter:

“Sir: It affords me sincere pleasure to acknowledge the perfect success of your patent marine governor, as applied to the engines of the above ship.

“On our passage from Southampton we had an excellent opportunity of testing its merits fully, and I can assure you it had complete control over the engines at all times. Not the slightest racing occurred, nor any of those sudden shocks that happen with the best hand-throttling. It closed the valve at the right moment, and as freely opened it again, thus maintaining a uniform speed throughout.

“To the proprietors of steamships, or engineers having charge of marine engines, I can confidently recommend this most valuable invention, wishing it the success so perfect a governor deserves.

“I am
“Respectfully yours,
“H. Sparks,
“Chief Engineer.

“May 30, 1861.”

“I cordially concur in the approbation of Mr. Porter’s governor, contained in the foregoing letter of the chief engineer. We had several days of bad weather on the last passage, and the ship, being very lightly laden, pitched excessively, so as to throw the screw at times entirely out of the water.

“The motion of the engines and ship was at all times perfectly steady; scarcely a jar was felt in the ship more than in calm weather.

“I would strongly recommend to all masters and engineers of screw steamships to use this governor.

“G. Wenke,
“Master of the S. S. ‘New York.’

“New York, June 1, 1861.”

It may be supposed that with such an unqualified endorsement we would have no difficulty in obtaining many orders. In fact, so long as simple engines were used a good business was done in the manufacture of these governors, but when compounding came into use it was found that they regulated no more. The intermediate receiver held steam enough when admitted to the low-pressure cylinder to run the engine away when the screw came out of the water, and the use of marine governors entirely ceased, and the engines have ever since been allowed to race without any attempt to control them.

This governor was not, however, to vanish like the stone-dressing machine. About the time when the patent on it expired, its principle came to be utilized in shaft governors. I do not know by whom this application of it, which afterwards became so extensive, was first made.

The Porter Marine Governor.

On the “New York” I made my first and only observation on the subject of electrolysis. I was required to put in a special valve to be operated by the governor. I put in a throttle valve of steam metal in a cast-iron chamber. The spindle was of steel, 2 inches diameter, and the valve was secured on it by three steel taper pins ⁵⁄₈ inch diameter at one end and ¹⁄₂ inch at the other. For some reason, what it was I have now no idea, on the return of the ship I took this valve chamber out of the pipe, and found something I was not looking for. The projecting ends of these pins, fully ¹⁄₂ inch long, had been completely eaten away in one round trip. I had to replace them with composition pins, which I always used afterwards.

Directly after the success of my marine governor on the “New York” I went West to attempt its introduction on propellers running on the Great Lakes. This journey resulted in the same financial success that I had achieved at Pittsburg; but some incidents make it interesting to me.

On taking my seat in a car for Albany I found my companion to be Mr. Hiram Sibley, afterwards the founder of Sibley College of the Mechanic Arts in Cornell University. When I lived in Rochester Mr. Sibley was sheriff of Monroe County, of which Rochester is the capital or shire town, and as a lawyer I was occasionally brought into some relations with him. We had not met in eleven years, but we instantly recognized each other. He was then enjoying the triumphant outcome of his amazing foresight and boldness, and he loved to talk about his experience, especially with an old Rochester man who had known his associates there. In fact, he entertained me all the way to Albany.

On the first burst of enthusiasm over the invention of the telegraph, companies had been incorporated in many of the States for the establishment of lines. These companies, it was found directly, could not even pay their running expenses, because their operations were confined to their respective States. Mr. Sibley was the man for the hour. He conceived the plan of buying up the stock of all these companies, which could be got for very little, and after this had been secured incorporating a company to operate throughout the United States. It is difficult now to put ourselves back to that time, when the vastness of such a scheme would take men’s breath away. Mr. Sibley succeeded in interesting the financial men of Rochester in the enterprise, and the Western Union Telegraph Company was formed. The story of his struggles to hold his subscribers, resisting the appeals of some of them for the sake of their families to be released from their obligations, was very amusing. He was obdurate and enriched them all.

A few years later Mr. Sibley conceived a plan for a telegraph line to San Francisco, and at his request a meeting was held of parties holding large interests in the Western Union Telegraph Company to consider the proposition. This was referred to a committee, who in their report pronounced the scheme utterly visionary, and indulged in considerable merriment over its absurdity, and the proposal was unanimously rejected. Mr. Sibley then got up and said, “Gentlemen, if I were not so old a man I would build the line myself.” This declaration was received with peals of laughter. Then he got mad and shouted over the din, “Damn it, gentlemen, I’ll bar the years and do it”; and now he had done it. “And this very day,” said he, “I have been solicited by merchants in New York to let them have shares in California telegraph stock at the rate of five dollars for one, men whom I had almost on my knees begged in vain for help to build the line; but they could not get the stock.” I asked him, “Don’t you have trouble from the Indians?” to which he replied: “The Indians are the best friends we have got. They believe the Great Spirit is in that wire; in fact, they know it, for they have seen him. The linemen had shown them the electric sparks. The only trouble we have had has been from the border ruffians of Missouri. We are now building a line through Iowa, around the State of Missouri.”

On arriving at Buffalo I called first upon the firm of Shepard & Company, who were the largest builders of engines for the lake steamers. I did not succeed in persuading them that it would be for their advantage to add to the cost of the engines they were building, but they were very courteous and advised me to apply to the companies owning the boats. I did not make much progress with them, but the matter was left open for further consideration on my return from Chicago. An official of one of the transportation companies showed me over a new boat. I saw a valve in the steam-pipe at some little distance from the engine, and asked him what it was. He told me that was the cut-off. I asked him, “Why not place it on the boiler?” He did not see the humor of the question, but replied to me quite seriously, “Because it is a part of the engine.”

At the Shepard Works I said to the gentleman who conducted me over the works, “I see you use the Corliss valve.” “Corliss valve, indeed!” said he. “Come with me.” He then showed me their own engine driving the shop, and fitted with the same valve, cutting off, of course, at a fixed point. He said to me: “That engine has been running in that very spot more than twenty years. Mr. Corliss once visited these works, and I showed him around just as I am showing you around. He was very much interested in the valves we were making, and asked me a great many questions about them. It was not very long afterwards that we began to hear from Providence about the Corliss valve.”

I went on to Chicago, arriving on a Saturday afternoon. I went to the house of an uncle, the Rev. Jeremiah Porter, who was a man of some local prominence, having been the first missionary sent by the American Home Missionary Society to Fort Dearborn, which stood where Chicago is before Chicago was. I expected to set out Monday morning to look for customers, but I changed my mind, for that morning the telegraph brought the news of the battle of Bull Run, which had been fought the day before, while I was in church hearing my uncle preach. I did not think any one would have much heart for business for some time to come, so hurried back home as fast as steam could take me, not stopping in Buffalo.

Some years afterwards I had an amusing experience in attempting to introduce my governor into the British navy. I called upon Mr. John Penn, to whom I had sold one of my stationary governors for his own works and who had become very much interested in the Richards indicator, and I thought he would surely adopt my marine governor. He told me, however, that he must set his face against it like a flint, and explained as follows: “I do business entirely with governments, principally the English government, and I come in contact with the official mind, and I have to adapt myself to it. Should I put one of your governors on an engine, my competitors would say: ‘Mr. Penn is afraid to send his engines to sea without a governor, they are made so delicately. Our engines, gentlemen, do not require any governor,’ and they would take all the orders.”

Marine-engine builders generally did not seem to appreciate this governor. While in Manchester I had an inquiry from Caird & Co. of Greenock, the builders of the engines for the “New York,” and indeed of the entire ship. They asked the price of my smallest marine governor. I inquired the size of the vessel for which it was wanted. Their reply was brief. “None of your business. We would like an answer to our question.”

Some months after I received a letter from my foreman in New York: “Mr. Porter, what in the name of common sense did you put such a little governor on the ‘America’ for?” Caird & Co. had performed their contract to supply a Porter governor, and had left a suitable one to be ordered from my shop in New York.

Soon after the first arrival of the steamer “Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse,” about 1900 (I forget the year), I obtained a letter of introduction to the chief engineer of that vessel, and called upon him for the purpose of asking him to favor me with indicator diagrams from its engines. In the course of conversation I said to him: “I have rather a partiality for this line, for I put my first marine governor on its first vessel, the old ‘New York,’ in ’61.” He replied to me: “I remember that very well, Mr. Porter; I was an oiler on that ship.” He had risen from that position to be chief engineer of the line. At that time the Germans were commencing to form a steam marine. They had not only to procure their vessels abroad, but also engineers to run the machinery. They set in earnest about this development, and took out of their polytechnic schools the brightest young men to put them on foreign-built vessels and in foreign shops to learn the business, with the wonderful results we are now witnessing, and the chief engineer was one of those lads. He said to me: “I have an acquaintance in your town, Montclair—Mr. Clemens Herschel,” a prominent civil engineer. “He was an old friend and fellow student of mine in the polytechnic.” About the diagrams, he said he would take a set for me on their next voyage. He kept his promise. I have the diagrams now, and very instructive ones they are.

CHAPTER IV

Engineering conditions in 1860. I meet Mr. Allen. Mr. Allen’s inventions. Analysis of the Allen link.

Before resuming my narrative, it seems desirable to present a brief sketch of steam engineering conditions forty years ago.

The science of thermodynamics had been established on the foundation laid in the experiments of Joule, determining with precision the rate at which, through the medium of water, heat is converted into dynamical force. This science was, however, as yet without practical results. The condensation of steam in the cylinder from the conversion of its heat into mechanical energy was unregarded. The same was true also respecting the far greater loss from the changing temperatures of the surfaces with which the steam comes in contact in alternately entering and leaving the cylinder. The action of these surfaces in transmitting heat from the entering to the exhaust steam without its doing any work was imagined by very few.

In the United States economy of steam was sought only by mechanical means—by cutting off the admission of the steam at an early point of the stroke in a single cylinder and permitting the confined steam to complete the stroke by its expansion. By this means a large saving of steam over that consumed in earlier practice was effected, and with this gain the universal disposition was to rest content.

America was eminently the land of the cut-off system, an early application of which was on steamboats. The earliest device for this purpose was the elegant Stevens cut-off, which still keeps its position on the class of boats to which it was first applied, though commonly modified by the Sickles improvement. In this system the exhaust and the admission valves are operated by separate eccentrics on opposite sides of the engine, and all the valves have the amount and rapidity of their opening and closing movements increased by the intervention of wiper cams, those for the admission valves being very long and giving a correspondingly greater enlargement of opening. The valves were double poppet valves, moving nearly in equilibrium in directions vertical to their seats. This cut-off was found to be capable of improvement in one important respect. The closing motion of the valve grew slower as the valve approached its seat, and while the piston was moving most rapidly much steam passed through the ports at a lower pressure, and so a great part of its expansive value was lost. This was technically termed “wire-drawing.” To remedy this defect Mr. Sickels invented his celebrated trip cut-off. The valve, lifted by the Stevens wiper, was liberated by tripping the mechanism, and fell quickly to its seat, which it was prevented from striking forcibly, being caught by water in a dash-pot. The steam was thus cut off sharply and the economy was much improved. The pressure used in this system was only about 25 pounds, the vacuum being relied upon for the larger portion of the power.

On the Great Lakes a pressure of 60 pounds was commonly employed, and the valves were the four cylindrical rotating slide valves afterwards adopted by Mr. Corliss. What was called the cut-off was made by a separate valve located in the steam-pipe somewhere between the engine and the boiler.

On the Mississippi and its tributaries, much higher pressures were carried, condensers were not used, and the admission and release of the steam were generally effected by four single poppet valves, lifted by cams against the pressure of the steam.

On land engines Mr. Sickels’ invention of the trip cut-off stimulated inventors to a multitude of devices for working steam expansively. Of these the one of enduring excellence proved to be that of Mr. Corliss. He applied the trip cut-off to the rotating slide valve, and arrested the motion of the liberated valve by an air-cushion. This proved a satisfactory method, as the valve, moving in directions parallel to its seat, did not need to be stopped at a determinate point. Mr. Corliss applied the governor to vary the point of liberation of the valve, and so produced a variable cut-off, which effected a large saving of steam and regulated the motion of the engine more closely than could be done by a throttle valve outside the steam-chest. This was by far the most prominent of the numerous forms of automatic variable cut-offs, to all of which it was supposed that the liberating feature was essential.

In England, when the steam was worked expansively, it was cut off by a separately driven valve on the back of the main slide valve, the point of cut-off being fixed; and the regulation was effected by means of the throttle. This system was also largely employed in this country.

The compound engine was unknown in the United States. I once saw at some place in New York City, now forgotten, a Wolff engine—a small beam-engine, which had been imported from England. It was visited as a curiosity by several engineers, and I remember Mr. Horatio Allen, then president of the Novelty Iron Works, remarking, “It is only a cut-off.”

In the south of England the Wolff system was used to a limited extent. I was much interested in the McNaught system, devised, I think, by the same Scotchman who first applied a rotating paper drum to the Watt indicator. The cotton and woolen mills, as their business grew, felt the need of additional power, but dared not employ higher steam pressures in their cylinders, because the beam centers of their engines would not stand the additional stress. McNaught provided an additional cylinder to carry a higher pressure, and applied this pressure directly to the connecting-rod end of the beam. The exhaust from this cylinder was taken into the old cylinder at the old pressure. This latter cylinder then exerted the same power it always had done. The stresses on the beam centers were not increased, but the power of the engine was doubled, and only a little more steam was used than before. This method of compounding was known as McNaughting, and became common in the manufacturing districts of England and Scotland.

There was one feature which was common to all engines in America and Europe, both ashore and afloat, and of whatever make or name, except locomotives. That was the piston speed, which varied only from 200 to 300 feet per minute. This last was the maximum speed, to which every new engine, however novel in other respects, was made to conform.

I come now to the turning-point in my career, and the reflection forces itself upon me, how often in the course of my life incidents trivial in themselves have proved afterwards to have been big with consequences; and how events, sometimes chains of events, beyond my control, of which indeed I had no knowledge, have determined my course. The same must be the case in the lives of many persons, and the thoughtful mind cannot look back on them without being impressed by the mysterious interrelations of our being.

One morning in the winter of 1860-61, Mr. Henry A. Hurlbut, of the firm of Swift, Hurlbut & Co., wholesale dealers in hats at No. 65 Broadway, and who was interested in my governor manufacture, called upon me to tell me that a friend of his, Mr. Henry A. Burr, manufacturer of felt hat bodies at the corner of Frankfort and Cliff streets in New York, had been having trouble with his engine. He thought my governor was just what he needed, and asked me to accompany him to Mr. Burr’s office, where he would give me the advantage of his personal introduction. In the interview with Mr. Burr which followed, I did not have an opportunity to say a word. After Mr. Hurlbut had explained the object of our visit, Mr. Burr replied that he had had a great deal of trouble with the regulation of his engine, and had thought seriously of getting a Corliss engine in the place of it; but two or three weeks before the builders of the engine had sent him a very skillful engineer, and since he came there had been no further trouble, so he should not need my governor. He invited us to see his engine, in which—since it had been taught to behave itself—he evidently took much pride. We found a pair of beam-engines of 5 feet stroke, running at 25 revolutions per minute, made by Thurston & Gardiner of Providence. They had the usual poppet valves and the Sickels cut-off. This was made adjustable, and was regulated by the governor. At the time of our entrance, Mr. Allen, the new engineer, was engaged on the scaffold. Mr. Burr called him and he came down, and at Mr. Burr’s request explained to us the variable liberating mechanism and what he had done to make it work satisfactorily. The regulation did not appear to me to be very close, and I made a determined effort to induce Mr. Burr to substitute one of my governors. I showed him a cut of the governor, and pointed out its combination of power and sensitiveness, but all in vain. He was satisfied with things as they were, and I went away crestfallen, having lost not only the sale of a governor, but also an opportunity for a triumph in a very important place. But I did not know to whom I had in fact been talking.

As we were leaving, Mr. Allen asked me if I would call some time and see him—he had something he thought I would be interested in. I called soon after. He told me he had a plan for a variable cut-off with positive movements, which he thought would avoid defects in the liberating gear. He had had it in his mind a good while, but did not think it could be used, because the governor could not handle the block in his link so as to maintain uniform motion, and he had been inclined to abandon the idea; but when he heard me describing my governor to Mr. Burr, it occurred to him that that governor would do it, and he would like to explain his plan to me. He had no drawing, not a line; the design existed only in his mind. He put down his ideas, as he fitly expressed it, with chalk on the engine-room floor, and that rude sketch represented the perfect system.

When his plan came to be analyzed, it was found that everything had been thought out and provided for, with a single exception afterwards provided by Mr. Allen, as will be described. But the wonder did not stop there. Mr. Allen had remedied the defect in the link motion of making a narrow opening for admission when cutting off early, by employing a four-opening admission valve of unique design at each end of the cylinder, and also by greatly enlarging the opening movements.

The four-opening valve required four seats in one plane, and it was important that these should be as narrow as possible. For this purpose Mr. Allen employed the Corliss wrist-plate movement to reduce the lap of the valve, and, by an elegant improvement on this movement, he made it available also to enlarge the openings. This improvement consisted in the employment of two rockers having a common axis and separate driving-arms, as well as driven arms, for each valve. The driving-arms were made to vibrate a long way towards their dead points, and the increased opening movement in arc thus obtained was imparted directly to the valve. This combination of an enlarged opening with a reduced lap was perhaps the most surprising feature of Mr. Allen’s system.

The four-opening equilibrium valve, afterwards invented by Mr. Allen and since 1876 always employed, requires but two seats in one plane. These could therefore be made wider. The division of the driving-arm was then dispensed with, and the enlarged openings were obtained by increasing the length of the driven arms.

That this remarkable system of ports and movements should have been elaborated in the mind of a man who had no knowledge of mechanics except what he had absorbed in engine-rooms must stand among the marvels of inventive power.

The accompanying diagram represents the lines put down by Mr. Allen on his engine-room floor and since retained, except that it is now adapted to the more simple movement, with a single driving-arm on the rocker, as previously described.

The eccentric is formed on the shaft coincident with the crank of the engine, so that the two arrive at their dead points simultaneously.

The angular vibration of the line connecting the center of the eccentric with the trunnions of the link is the same as that of the connecting-rod.

The connecting-rod of the length always used by me, namely, six cranks, makes the piston velocity at the head end of the cylinder 40 per cent. greater than at the crank end. By this construction the valve velocities were made to vary in the same ratio.

A connecting-rod five cranks in length would increase this difference in piston velocities to 50 per cent., and one four cranks in length would increase it to 66 per cent.

After Mr. Allen had explained his plan to me, I expressed my confidence that my governor would meet its requirements, and observed that it would enable a variable cut-off engine to be run as fast as a locomotive. Somewhat to my surprise, he replied that he wanted his cut-off compared with the liberating cut-off turn for turn; that it had an advantage which he thought would cause it to be generally preferred at the same speed.

The Diagram Drawn by Mr. Allen on his Engine-room Floor.

John F. Allen

I was then ignorant of his state of mind on that subject, or of what had produced it. I learned these afterwards, and will state them here. In one of our interviews, in reply to my question as to what had led him to make this invention, he told me it was his experience when he was engineer of the propeller “Curlew,” a freight-boat running on Long Island Sound, between New York and Providence, which had a Corliss engine. He became impressed with what he thought to be a serious defect in the liberating system. The governor did not control the point of cut-off, but the point of release; this point being at the beginning of the closing movement of the valve, while the cut-off took place near the end of that movement. When the engine was worked up to nearly its capacity, as was the case in a ship, the port was opened wide, and quite an appreciable time elapsed between the release and the cut-off. During this interval the piston advanced considerably, and if the engine ran fast enough it might get to the very end of the stroke before the cut-off took place. He said that in smooth water they had no trouble, but in the open ocean, going around Point Judith, it was always rough, and sometimes in stormy weather the screw would be thrown quite out of the water, and the engine, having no fly-wheel, would race most furiously. The faster it ran the further the steam would follow, and was pumped out of the boiler very rapidly. Springs were employed to accelerate the closing movement of the valves, but in these cases they seemed to be of little use, and were continually breaking. He saw that this difficulty could be avoided only by a positive motion gear which would enable the governor to control the point of cut-off itself; and, accordingly, he set himself to work to devise such a system. We know now that this judgment, formed from observations made under very exceptional conditions, was not well founded. The difficulty in question does not practically exist in engines having fly-wheels and the present improved liberating gear, and running at moderate speeds; but the experience naturally made a deep impression upon Mr. Allen’s mind, and led to the invention of the positive motion system.

This he did not tell me at the time, so that I was at a loss to understand his reluctance to admit what was really the great value of his invention. However, I told him I would be willing to attempt its introduction, provided he would allow me to apply it at once to a high-speed engine; that being a field into which the liberating system could not enter. We had quite an argument on this point. I told him his invention interested me only because it would enable two or three times the power to be obtained from a given engine without additional stress on any part, the fly-wheel to be reduced in size, and the means for getting up the speed of machinery to be largely dispensed with. I represented to him also that a high-speed engine ought to be more economical and to give a more nearly uniform motion.

He finally agreed to my condition, and I took him directly to the office of Mr. Richards and engaged him to make an analysis and drawing of Mr. Allen’s system under his direction, and soon afterwards gave him an order for the plans for an experimental engine, 6×15 inches, to make 160 revolutions per minute.

As the diagram of the link motion was at first drawn, the center of the trunnions vibrated in an arc which terminated at points on the line connecting the center of the engine shaft with the ends of the rocker arms, and which in the [diagram] on page 48 is named “radius of link.”

I determined to work out this link motion myself on a large scale. For this purpose I drew a diagram in which the throw of the eccentric was 4 inches, and the distance from the center of the shaft to that of the trunnions of the link in their mid-position was 12 inches. I made a three-point beam compass. Two of these points were secured permanently on the beam, 12 inches apart. As one of these points traversed the path of the center of the eccentric, the other could be made to traverse the arc of vibration of the trunnions of the link.

I divided the former into 40 equal divisions measured from its dead points, making needle-holes in the circle, in which the taper compass-points would center themselves accurately. The paper was firm and the points of division were fixed with extreme care; and they lasted through all my experiments. I then set out 20 corresponding divisions in the arc of vibration of the center of the trunnions. These showed distinctly the modification of the motion at the opposite ends of this vibration as already described.

The third point was adjustable on a hinged beam which could be secured in any position. I drew two arcs representing the lead lines of the link, or the lines on which the link would stand when the eccentric was on its dead points. The third point was now secured on its beam at any point on one of the lead lines, when the other points stood, one on the dead point of the eccentric and the other at the end of the trunnion vibration.

The apparatus was now ready for use, the corresponding points on the circle and the arc being numbered alike. By setting the first two points in any corresponding holes, the third point would show the corresponding position of that point of the link at which it was set. I thus set out the movements of six different points of the link, the highest being 12 inches above the trunnions. These represented the movements of the valves of the engine when the block was at these points in the link. The apparatus being firm, it worked with entire precision. To my surprise, it showed much the larger valve opening at the crank end of the cylinder, where the movement of the piston was slowest. That would not do; we wanted just the reverse.

I called Mr. Allen in and showed him the defect. After considering it a few minutes, he said he thought it would be corrected by lowering the trunnions, so that their arc of vibration would coincide with the line of centers at its middle point, instead of terminating on it. This was done, and the result was most successful. The lead was now earlier and the opening wider at the back end of the cylinder, as the greater velocity of the piston at that point required, and the cut-offs on the opposite strokes more equal. The link has always been set in this way, as shown in the [diagram].

From this description of the link motion, it will be seen that the correct vertical adjustment of the trunnions of the link was an important matter. To enable this adjustment to be made with precision, and to be corrected, if from wear of the shaft-bearings or other cause this became necessary, I secured the pin on which these trunnions were pivoted to the side of the engine bed in the manner shown in the following [figure]. To hold the wedge securely, the surface of the bed below was reduced, so that the wedge was seized by the flange. The correct position of this pin was determined by the motions given to the valves.

VERTICAL ADJUSTMENT
OF SUSTAINING PIN
FOR TRUNNIONS
OF THE ALLEN LINK

I now took a more prominent part myself in steam-engine design. I had got an idea from Mr. Sparks that took full possession of my mind. This was the exceedingly unmechanical nature of the single or overhanging crank. The engines of the “New York,” built by Caird & Co., of Greenock, were among the first of the direct inverted-cylinder engines applied to screw propulsion. They were then known as the steam-hammer engines, their leading feature being taken from Mr. Nasmyth’s invention. I am not sure but Caird & Co. were the first to make this application. The forward engine had a single crank. The vital defect of this construction became especially apparent in these vertical engines of large power. The stress on the cap bolts during the upward strokes and the deflection of the shaft alternately in opposite directions over the pillow-block as a fulcrum were very serious. Mr. Sparks told me that on his very first voyage he had a great deal of trouble with this forward bearing, and it caused him continual anxiety. He got into such a state of worry and apprehension that as soon as he reached New York he wrote to the firm: “For God’s sake, never make another pair of engines without giving a double crank to the forward engine.” The reply he got was, to mind his own business: they employed him to run their engines; they would attend to the designing of them. He told me not long after that he had the satisfaction of seeing every ship they built except his own disabled, either by a broken shaft or broken pillow-block bolts. He attributed the escape of the “New York” from a like disaster to his own extreme care. They did, however, adopt his suggestion on all future vessels, and, moreover, added a forward crank and pillow-block to the engines already built. This they evidently found themselves compelled to do. I saw this addition afterwards on the “Bremen,” sister ship to the “New York.” The added pillow-block was supported by a heavy casting bolted to the forward end of the bedplate.

I went everywhere visiting engines at work and in process of construction, to observe this particular feature of the overhanging crank, which was universal in horizontal engines. In this class of engines, running slowly, its defective nature was not productive of serious consequences, because no stress was exerted on the cap bolts and the shaft was made larger in proportion to the power of the engine, as it had to carry the fly-wheel. But I was astonished to see the extent to which the overhang of the single crank was allowed. Builders seemed to be perfectly regardless of its unmechanical nature. First, the crank-pin was made with a length of bearing surface equal to about twice its diameter; then a stout collar was formed on the pin between its bearing surface and the crank. The latter was made thick and a long hub was formed on the back of it. I was told that the long hub was necessary in order to give a proper depth of eye to receive the shaft. This being turned down smaller than the journal, so that the crank might be forced on up to a shoulder, the eye needed to be deep or the crank would not be held securely. Finally, the journal boxes were made with flanges on the ends, sometimes projecting a couple of inches. Altogether, the transverse distance from the center line of the engine to the solid support of the shaft in the pillow-block was about twice what it needed to be. I also saw in some cases the eccentric placed between the crank and the pillow-block. Fifteen years later I saw a large engine sent from Belgium to our 1876 Exhibition which was made in this manner.

I determined at once that such a construction would not do for high-speed engines, and proceeded to change every one of these features. The single crank could not be avoided, but its overhang could be much reduced.

OLD AND NEW CRANKS
AND JOURNAL BOXES.

THE CRANKS ARE SHOWN IN
THE VERTICAL POSITION.

CRANKS AND TOP AND BOTTOM
BOXES ARE SHOWN IN SECTION.

The following [sketches] show the changes which were then made, and all of which have been retained. The inside collar on the crank-pin was dispensed with and the diameter of the pin was made greater than its length, the projected area being generally increased. The shank of the pin was made larger and shorter, and was riveted at the back. Instead of turning the shaft down smaller than the journal to receive the crank, I made it with a large head for this purpose. The keyway could then be planed out and the key fitted above the surface of the journal, and the joint was so much further from the axis that but little more than one half the depth was required in the crank-eye.

Mr. Corliss had already discarded the flanged boxes. He also first made this bearing in four parts. The wear in the horizontal direction, the direction of the thrust, could then be taken up. For this purpose he used two bolts behind the front side box only. I modified his construction by making the side boxes wider and taking up their wear by wedges behind both of them, thus preserving the alignment. One wedge could also be placed close to the crank. The dotted lines show the width of the side boxes and the location of the wedges. The shaft was made with a collar to hold the bearings in place, and was enlarged in its body. The substitution in place of the crank of the entire disk carrying a counterweight completed these changes. This was the fruit of my first lesson in high-speed engine designing, which had unconsciously been given to me by Mr. Sparks. The oil passage in the pin was added later, as will be described.

I had another piece of good luck. I happened one day to see in the Novelty Iron Works the hubs being bored for the paddle-wheels of the new ship for the Collins line—the “Adriatic.” These were perhaps the largest castings ever made for such a purpose. I observed that they were bored out only half-way around. The opposite side of the hole had been cored to about half an inch greater radius, and three key-seats were cored in it, which needed only to be finished in the key-seating machine. The idea struck me that this would be an excellent way to bore fly-wheels and pulleys. As commonly bored, so that they could be put on the shaft comfortably they were bored too large, their contact with the shaft could then be only on a line opposite the key, and the periphery could not run perfectly true.

I adopted the plan of first boring to the exact size of the shaft and then shifting the piece about an eighth of an inch, and boring out a slender crescent, the opposite points of which extended a little more than half-way around. The keyway was cut in the middle of this enlargement. The wheel could then be readily put on to the shaft, and when the key was driven up contact was made over nearly one half the surface and the periphery ran dead true. I remember seeing this feature much admired in London, and several times heard the remark, “I should think the key would throw it some.”

To prevent fanning I made the fly-wheel and pulley with arms of oval cross-section. These have always been used by me. They have done even better than I expected. They are found to impart no motion to the air, however rapidly they may be run.

Flanges on the Eccentric.

Flanges on the Strap.

As already stated, the Allen valve-gear required the position of the eccentric to coincide with that of the crank, so that these should pass their dead points simultaneously. To insure this and to make it impossible for the engineer to advance his eccentric, which he would be pretty sure to do if he could, I made the eccentric solid on the shaft. This also enabled me to make it smaller, the low side being brought down nearly to the surface of the shaft. The construction, moreover, was substantial and saved some work.

All eccentrics that I had seen were flanged on each side to keep the strap in place. I observed the oil to work out freely between the flanges and the strap. This action would of course be increased in high-speed engines. So I reversed the design, as shown in the above sections of these two bearings at the top of the eccentric, putting the flanges on the strap instead of on the eccentric.

It will be seen that the more rapid the speed the more difficult it becomes to keep the oil in the first bearing, and the more difficult it becomes for it to get out of the second one. I ought to have adopted the same construction for the main shaft journal, but in all the years I was making engines it never occurred to me. I contented myself with turning a groove in the hub of the crank, as shown to prevent the oil from getting on the disk.

The problem of crank-pin lubrication at high speed at once presented itself and had to be met. I finally solved it in the manner [partially shown] on page 54. A wiper was bolted on the back of the crank, and from it a tube entered the diagonal hole in the pin. This always worked perfectly. This wiper and the oil cup are shown on page 230. Other devices have been employed by various makers of high-speed engines, but I always adhered to this one. It has the advantage of being equally applicable to double-crank engines. Aside from the above features, the design for my exhibition engine was made by Mr. Richards.

CHAPTER V

Invention of the Richards Indicator. My Purchase of the Patent. Plan my London Exhibition. Engine Design. Ship Engine Bed to London, and sail myself.

The subject of an indicator directly presented itself. Mr. Allen invited Mr. Richards and myself to his engine-room, and took diagrams for us with a McNaught indicator. This was the first indicator that either of us had ever seen. Indicators were then but little known in this country. The Novelty Iron Works made a very few McNaught indicators, almost the only users of which were the Navy Department and a few men like Mr. Ericsson, Mr. Stevens, Mr. Sickels, and Mr. Corliss. I told Mr. Richards that we must have a high-speed indicator and he was just the man to get it up for us. He went to work at it, but soon became quite discouraged. He twice gave it up. He could not see his way. I told him I was not able to make any suggestion, but the indicator we must have, and he had to produce it. After some months he handed me a drawing of an indicator which has never been changed, except in a few details. This important invention, which has made high-speed engineering possible, came from the hands of Mr. Richards quite complete. Its main features, as is well known, are a short piston motion against a short, stiff spring; light multiplying levers, with a Watt parallel motion, giving to the pencil very nearly a straight line of movement; and a free rotative motion of the pencil connections around the axis of the piston, which itself is capable of only the slight rotation caused by the compression or elongation of the spring. Elegant improvements have since been made, adapting the indicator to still higher engine speeds; but these have consisted only in advancing further on the lines struck out by Mr. Richards. In fact, this was all that could be done—giving to the piston a little less motion, lightening still further the pencil movement, and making the vertical line drawn by the pencil more nearly a straight line.

DIAGRAM TAKEN SEPTEMBER 13, 1861,
FROM THE FIRST ALLEN ENGINE
BY THE FIRST RICHARDS INDICATOR.
ENGINE, 6 INCHES BY 15 INCHES,
MAKING 160 REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE.
THIS CARD WAS RUN OVER TWENTY TIMES.

I took Mr. Richards’ drawing to the Novelty Iron Works and had an indicator ready for use when the engine was completed. The engine was made by the firm of McLaren & Anderson, on Horatio Street, New York, for their own use. It was set up by the side of their throttle-valve engine, and was substituted for it to drive their machinery and that of a kindling-wood yard adjoining for which they furnished the power. It ran perfectly from the start, and saved fully one half of the fuel. In throttle-valve engines in those days the ports and pipes were generally so small that only a part of the boiler pressure was realized in the cylinder, and that part it was hard to get out, and nobody knew what either this pressure or the back pressure was. I have a diagram taken from that engine, which is here reproduced.

The indicator was quickly in demand. One day when I was in the shop of McLaren & Anderson, engaged in taking diagrams from the engine, I had a call from the foreman of the Novelty Iron Works. He had come to see if the indicator were working satisfactorily, and if so to ask the loan of it for a few days. The Novelty Iron Works had just completed the engines for three gunboats. These engines were to make 75 revolutions per minute, and the contract required them to be run for 72 consecutive hours at the dock. They were ready to commence this run, and were anxious to indicate the engines with the new indicator.

I was glad to have it used, and he took it away. I got it back after two or three weeks, with the warmest praise; but none of us had the faintest idea of the importance of the invention.

I remember that I had to go to the Novelty Works for the indicator, and was asked by Mr. Everett, then president of the company, if we had patented it, for if we had they would be glad to make them for us. The idea had not occurred to me, but I answered him promptly that we had not, but intended to. I met Mr. Allen at Mr. Richards’ office, and told them Mr. Everett’s suggestion, and added, “The first question is, who is the inventor, and all I know is that I am not.” Mr. Allen added, “I am not.” “Then,” said Mr. Richards, “I suppose I shall have to be.” “Will you patent it?” said I. “No,” he replied; “if I patent everything I think of I shall soon be in the poorhouse.” “What will you sell it to me for if I will patent it?” I asked. “Will you employ me to obtain the patent?” he replied. “Yes.” “Well, I will sell it to you for a hundred dollars.” “I will take it, and if I make anything out of it will pay you ten per cent. of what I get.” This I did, so long as the patent remained in my hands.

The success of the stationary and the marine governors and of the engine and the indicator fired me, in the summer of 1861, with the idea of taking them all to the London International Exhibition the next year. The demonstration of the three latter seemed to have come in the very nick of time. For this purpose I fixed upon an engine 8 inches diameter of cylinder by 24 inches stroke, to make 150 revolutions per minute, and at once set Mr. Richards at work on the drawings for it. I thought some of speeding it at 200 revolutions per minute, but feared that speed would frighten people. That this would have been a foolish step to take became afterwards quite apparent.

Joseph E. Holmes

That summer I made application for space in the London Exhibition of 1862, and soon after was waited upon by the Assistant United States Commissioner, Mr. Joseph E. Holmes. So far as the engine to be exhibited was concerned, I had nothing to show Mr. Holmes. The drawings were scarcely commenced. I, however, took him to McLaren & Anderson’s shop and showed him the little engine at work there and took diagrams from it in his presence, and expatiated on the revolution in steam-engineering that was there inaugurated, but which has not yet been realized to the extent I then dreamed of. It was evident that Mr. Holmes was much impressed with the assurance of the success of the new system that the perfect running of this first little engine seemed to give. I told him that the engine for the exhibition would certainly be completed, and on that assurance he accepted my entire proposed exhibit. I did not see him again until we met the next spring in London, under the somewhat remarkable circumstances hereafter to be related.

In spite of all efforts it was found impossible to complete the engine and have it tested before shipment as I had intended. Indeed, as the time approached after which no further exhibits would be received, two things grew more and more doubtful. One was whether the engine could be got off at all, and the other whether I could obtain the means to make the exhibit. Finally I managed to get the engine bed finished and immediately shipped it by a mail steamer.

A small, slow steamer chartered by the United States Commission and loaded with exhibits had sailed previously, carrying the assistant commissioner and a number of exhibitors and their representatives, who, until they reached their destination, remained in blissful ignorance of what happened directly after their departure.

But to return to my own movements. Mr. Hope one day said to me: “I understand you shipped your engine bed last Saturday; what did you do that for? You don’t know yet whether you can go yourself.” I replied: “If I had not shipped it then, I should lose my space and would have to abandon the exhibition altogether. If I find that I can’t go, the bed can come back.” I redoubled my exertions to get the remaining parts of the engine completed and to raise the necessary funds. The next Saturday I shipped everything that was ready. On the following Monday, by making a large sacrifice, I realized a sum that could be made to answer, and on Wednesday I sailed on the Cunard steamer “Africa,” leaving to my reliable clerk, Alexander Gordon, long President of the Niles Tool Works, and now Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Niles-Bement-Pond Company, the responsibility of seeing that everything still wanting should follow as rapidly as possible.

I left, not knowing an Englishman in the whole island, to have the parts of an engine, the first one from the drawings and the first engine I ever made, brought together for the first time by I had no idea whom, and assembled and put in motion before the eyes of the world. But I had no misgivings. The engine had been built in my own shop, under my constant supervision, and by workmen trained to the greatest accuracy. The crank-pin I had hardened and ground by my friend Mr. Freeland. I knew the parts would come together perfectly. The result justified my confidence.

One incident of the voyage is worth recording. As we were leaving port we passed the “China,” the first screw steamer of the Cunard fleet, coming in on her maiden voyage.

We had some rough weather, sometimes with a following sea. I was much interested at such times in watching the racing of the engines, when occasionally both paddle-wheels would be revolving in the air in the trough of the sea. The feature that especially attracted my notice was that the faster the engines ran the more smoothly they ran. It was certainly a fascinating sight to see these ponderous masses of metal, the parts of great side-lever engines, gliding with such velocity in absolute silence. The question what caused them to do so it did not occur to me to ask.

Alexander Gordon

Being anxious to reach London as quickly as possible, after a tedious voyage of twelve days, I left the steamer at Cork, to go through with the mail. The custom-house inspectors first interested me. On the little boat by which the mail is transferred from the ship to the shore, two of the representatives of Queen Victoria were anxious to know if I had any liquor or tobacco in my trunk, these being the only dutiable articles. They were quite satisfied with my reply in the negative. A personal examination they never thought of. Truthful themselves, I moralized, they do not suspect untruth in others. Their next question was, “Have you got the price of a glass of beer about you?” I made them happy with a half crown, several times their modest request, and they stamped me as an American free with his money. I purchased a first-class ticket to London, and received the assurance that I should go through with the mail. I was the only passenger on the train of two coaches, besides the mail-van. It was late at night. The regular passenger-train had gone some hours before. Not being up in the English ways, I did not know how I might make myself comfortable, but sat up all night, dozing as I could. I did not sleep after two o’clock. In that high latitude it was already light enough to see fairly well.

After that hour the railroad ran through a farming country all the way to Dublin. I was amused with the queer shapes of the fields. These were generally small, and running into sharp corners, regardless of convenience in cultivation. They were separated always by hedges and ditches. A ditch was dug some two feet deep and three or four feet wide, the dirt was thrown up into a bank to correspond on one side, and on this bank was planted a hedge of hawthorn—“quick-set” they commonly called it. These hedges were of all ages, from those young and well kept to those in all stages of growth and dilapidation. I could have passed everywhere from field to field through breaks in the hedges, sometimes wide ones. I could not see of what use they were except for hunters to jump over. Saw occasionally a laborer’s cabin, sometimes a group of them. When an Irishman came out to sun himself, he always stood higher than the eaves of his thatched roof. Occasionally a more pretentious house would appear. These were all alike, painted white, full of windows, very thin from front to back, and looked like waffles set on edge. Never did I see a tree or a bush about a house to relieve the appearance of barrenness, but there were often small trees in the hedge-rows.

The railway station on one side of Dublin was about four miles from the station on the opposite side, from which a short railway ran to Kingston, a point a little distance south of Dublin, from which the channel boats crossed to Holyhead. There being no other means of conveyance, I rode through Dublin in an open van sitting on the mail-bags. At the Kingston station an empty train stood waiting for the mails. The regular passenger-train had gone some time before, but the boat at Kingston was also waiting for the mail. I got into a carriage, having ordered my trunk put into the baggage-van, but was ordered out by the guard. I showed him my ticket, and was told that I would have to see the superintendent. That official appeared, and told me this train was for the mails. It had an empty passenger-coach. I showed him my ticket and told him the assurance on which I had bought it, that I should go through with the mails. He replied that the passenger-train had gone, I should have been here to take it. Said he was very sorry, but it was impossible. I got mad. My trunk stood on the platform. As nobody would touch it, I took it up and put it into the open door of the baggage-van myself. The superintendent ordered two men to take it out, which they did. I told him of my great anxiety to reach London that afternoon. All the reply he made was to repeat that he was very sorry, but it was impossible, and I was compelled to stand there and see that train move off, and fool away the whole day in Dublin. Does the reader want to know what the matter was? If he does not know already, he is as green as I was. I had not given the superintendent two and sixpence. But I had more yet to learn about England and the English, and much more serious.

CHAPTER VI

Arrival in London. Conditions I found there. Preparations and Start.

I reached London very early next morning, and drove directly to the lodgings of my friend, Mr. Wellington Lee, the only American resident in London whom I knew. These were on a short street extending from the Strand down to the river, a short distance west of Temple Bar, the ancient city gate, which was then standing. Who was Mr. Lee and what was he doing in London? These were questions in which I had an interest of which I was as yet entirely ignorant. The firm of Lee & Larned were the first successful designers of steam fire-engines in this country. More than seventy of these steamers had been built from their plans and under their direction by the Novelty Iron Works in New York, and the fire department of that city was completely equipped with them. One of their engines had been sold to the city of Havre, and Mr. Lee had gone over with it to test it publicly on its guaranteed performance. Mr. Amos, one of the senior members of the great London engineering firm of Easton, Amos & Sons, went over to Havre to witness this trial, with a view to the manufacture of these steam fire-engines in London. He was so much pleased that he determined to make the fire-engines, and engaged Mr. Lee to take the direction of their manufacture. So it came to pass that at this particular time Mr. Lee was in London superintending the first manufacture of his steam fire-engines by this firm.

After our salutations Mr. Lee said: “First of all I have something to tell you.” Before relating this, I must mention something that I knew before I sailed. About the time when the cargo of United States exhibits started, the well-known Mason and Slidell incident occurred. These gentlemen, commissioners sent by the Confederacy to represent their cause before European governments, had sailed on a British vessel flying the British flag. This vessel was overhauled on the high seas by one of our cruisers, and the commissioners were taken off and brought prisoners to New York. Mr. Lincoln made haste to disavow this illegal proceeding, so singularly inconsistent with our own principles of international law, and to make all the reparation in his power. But a bitter feeling towards England was then growing in the Northern States, and in a moment of resentment Congress hastily passed a resolution repealing the law creating the Exhibition Commission and making an appropriation for its expenses, and Secretary Seward issued a proclamation dissolving the commission. The vessel carrying the exhibits had been gone scarcely more than a day when this action of Congress and Mr. Seward surprised the country.

I now take up Mr. Lee’s narrative. The news of this action, carried by a mail steamer, had reached London several days before the arrival of the exhibits. Under the pressure of an urgent demand the Royal Commission confiscated the space allotted to the United States and parceled it out to British exhibitors. Mr. Holmes on his arrival found not a spot in the Exhibition buildings on which to set his foot. But he was a man of resources. He went before the commission with an eminent Queen’s counsel, who made the point that they had received no official notification of any such action by the United States Government, but had proceeded on a mere newspaper rumor, which they had no right to do; and there was the United States assistant commissioner with his credentials and a shipload of exhibits, and they must admit him.

The commissioners yielded most gracefully. They said: “Now, Mr. Holmes, the American space is gone; we cannot restore that to you, but there are unoccupied spots all over the Exhibition, and you may take up any of these, and we will undertake that your whole exhibit shall be well placed.” Upon this Mr. Holmes had gone to work and had been able to find locations for every exhibit, except my engine.

Wellington Lee

“But only yesterday,” said Mr. Lee, “Mr. Holmes learned that an engine ordered by the commission to drive the British exhibit of looms, of which there were thirty-three exhibitors, had been condemned by the superintendent of machinery, Mr. Daniel Kinnear Clark, and ordered out of the building.” He added that Mr. Holmes went directly to Mr. Clark and applied for the place for my engine, the bedplate of which, thanks to my precipitate action, had arrived and was then on a truck, in England called a lurry, waiting to be unloaded. In answer to Mr. Clark’s questions, Mr. Holmes had given him his personal assurance that I would be there, and the rest of the engine would be there in ample time, and it would be all that he could possibly desire; and on that assurance he had got the place for me.

I informed Mr. Lee that I also had something to tell him. I then gave him the situation as already related. He looked very grave. When I had finished he said: “Well, you are in a hole, sure enough; but come, let us get some breakfast, and then we will see what Easton & Amos can do for you.” After eating my first English mutton-chop in a chop-house on the Strand, I accompanied Mr. Lee to their works in the Borough, a long distance away, on the south or Surrey side of the Thames, to reach which we crossed the Southwark bridge.

None of the partners had yet reached the office. Very soon Mr. James Easton arrived. He was a young man about my own age. Mr. Lee introduced me and told my story. The instant he finished Mr. Easton came across the room and grasped my hand most cordially. “That’s the kind of pluck I like,” said he; “we will see you through, Mr. Porter; we will build this engine for you, whatever else may have to wait.” Directly he added: “We have a good deal of ‘red tape’ here, but it won’t do in this case. There will be no time to lose. Come with me.” He then took me through the shops and introduced me to every foreman, telling them what he had undertaken to do, and gave each of them the same instruction, as follows: “Mr. Porter will come directly to you with his orders. Whatever he wants done, you are to leave everything else so far as may be necessary, and do his work as rapidly as possible.”