The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-21 00:00:00

Patriarchal Engines at South Kensington.

In an obscure corner of the South Kensington
Museum a collection of Models of patented and
other machinery is to be found, packed away for
want of space much as goods are packed away at
the Pantechnicon or other places for storing furni-
ture. Products of mental effort—nay, of anguish of
mind, unparalleled in any other branch of human I
labour are found stacked away one upon another
as bricks are stacked away in a builder's yard. We
refer to those patriarchal engines upon which 'the
greatness of modern England is founded—the tools
with which we move _the world, plough the water,
traverse the earth, and annihilate space and time;
the first steam-engine of Watt, the first engine of the
first steamvessel, and the first practical locomotive
for goods and passenger traffic. Amid the smaller
deer of the inventive mind these great-engines, rude
and rough, yet containing the germs of the wonder-
ful motive powers which have changed the face of
Europe, tower like material giants, and suggest to
the mind almost limited ideas of power. At the
further end of the room we recognise in the great
rocking beam with circular ends hung with chains
the old Newcomen engine in what Watt made his
first grand improvement, and in fact inaugurated
the modern steam-engine. This was the " fire
engine". of the old pattern, in which Watt intro-
duced, after many trials and failures, the separate
condenser and air-pump. One cannot look at this
formidable-looking engine towering above one's
head without feeling that we are in the presence of
ideas which separate old from young England—the
slow, solid past with the vigorous, rapid England of
the present day, which in some sense seems to be
changing even the character of her people. At the
time Watt introduced his happy idea of withdraw-
ing the steam from the cylinder and condensing it
in a separate receptacle the working of the old
Newcomen engine was becoming quite inade-
quate to master the water in the Cornish mines.
The great expense of coal, wasted as it was in
these ineffectual engines, in which the cylinder was
cooled every stroke by the injection of the con-
densing water, was fast rendering the working of
the mines impossible ; and it was the happy thought
that flashed through the mind of this great man,
crossing the Glasgow-green—the separate condenser
—which alone saved the proprietors of the greater
number of them from insolvency. It is just possible
that the difficulties with which Dr. Roebuck, the
friend and financial-ally of the inventor, had to con-
tend, just as this improved engine was coming into
existence, were the cause of its success. " There would
have been no Watt had there been no Boulton" has
been well said ; for without the resources of the great
establishment at Soho it is doubtful if this engine
could ever have been got to work. Its original cylin-
der was not true in the casting ; the boring engines
of those days did not work from a fixed rest, but
followed with the hand the inequalities of the metal.
It was the happy discovery of Mr. Wilkinson's boring
lathes, whichbored from a fixed rest with exact truth,
which enabled the inventor to make his engine work
with accuracy and economy. This engine was em-
ployed for many years at Soho in pumping water. At
the date of its invention the steam-engine did not pro-
duce a circular motion. Its rectilinear action was
converted into a rotary one in a secondary manner
only. The pumped-up water turned a wheel—and
thus, at second hand, millwork of all kinds was put
in motion. The simple idea of a crank appears
never to have been thought of by the earlier im-
provers of the steam-engine, although it had been
in existence from the earliest time. But of this pre-
sently. The " Old Bess" engine, as this relic of
antiquity was called—for what ages seem to separate
us from the time of Newcomen, and what prodigies
of labour and what mighty changes have been
wrought since its creation, and these not mere
years in the true measure of time !—was in its day
the grand show of Birmingham. The " fire-engine"
formed the attraction of many crowned heads
and great personages from all parts of Elrope. It
turned an organ in the presence of George 111. to
show its delicacy of touch as well as great power,
and it aided in grinding and polishing the shoe-
buckles and buttons of the past generation. It was
at work until very lately as an auxiliary engine to
the more perfect " sun and planet engine," now in
the Museum, at the opposite side of the room ; and
finally, when it was removed from Soho, it was stowed
away under a railway arch at Birmingham, where
any person wanting a piece of good old " yron" used

to knock off a link of its piston chain. From this
slow process of demolition it was rescued by the
authorities of the Museum;by whom it was obtained
as a gift from Messrs. Branson and Gwyther, the
contractors. The patent of this engine was taken
out in 1769, but it was then in far from a working
condition, and had made no adequate returns to the
Soho firm. The terms of the patent were, however,
extended in 1775 for 25 years, to enable them to
reap the benefit of their long years of labour and
great expenditure.
Let us now pass from this improved Newcomen
engine, which was, in fact, but the steam engine in
a state of transition—an old wedded to a young
idea, a giant with one arm tied behind him, for the
steam only acted on one side of the piston, the
weight of the pump rods producing the up-stroke,
and only having one motion—to the equally antique-
looking machine opposite, but one which, in fact,
embodies all the principles of a modern engine.
The patent for the " sun and planet engine"
was taken out in 1782. Watt had long seen
the necessity of giving a " rotative" action to his
machine. It was while scheming this movement
that the great piracy took place, which seems
to have annoyed Watt more than anything else
in his inventive career, and which caused the
application of the particular invention which gave
the name to the machine. According to his own
account he had made a model with a crank action,
but, having neglected to take out a patent imme-
_ diately, the application of the crank was stolen from
him by a workman and communicated to an engi-
neer named Wasborough, who patented it and ap-
plied it to a steam rolling mill, which at the time
attracted much attention. Watt bitterly complained
of this theft, and the fact that the workman, Cart-
wright, was afterwards hanged seems to have
afforded some relief to his mind. "Watt, writing
to Mr. Boulton in this year, says the real inventor
of the crank rotative motion,was the man who first
contrived the common foot-lathe. The ap-
plying it to the engine was merely taking a knife
to cut cheese which had been made to cut butter."
This was perfectly true, but it applied to Watt's
application of the invention as well as to Wasbo-
rough's. The latter, though guilty of appropriating
Watt's idea, must certainly be credited with intro-
ducing the flywheel into his engine, the value of
which Watt himself did not see at first, but after-
wards adopted it. Precluded from using the crank,
Watt had to scheme some other means of effecting
his Purpose. He invented five methods of accom-
Plishing this, of which he selected the sun and planet
motion as the best, and introduced it for the first
tune into the engine now in the Museum, the patent
lOT which
bears date 1781. This engine contains
various appliances f rwhich
at a later date,
o patents were taken out
thef
, such as the parallel motion,
patented in 1784 ;
and the method regulator or governor balls,
sides of the piztono applying the steam on both
contains the germo alritetanted in 1782 ; indeed, it
with the exception of the CT modern improvements,
motion probably being reatnak., the sun and planet
because, by its
peculiar action of one co retained
edon the connecting
rod working into another on the
axis of the fly-
wheel, two revolutions were obtained for eby
the crank action. This engine was known one
the
lap engine," and was employed until three
years
ago in grinding and polishing steel good, in the
original works at Soho, where it had been left, ex-
posed to the weather, in a roofless room, after the
breaking up of that establishment. The workman-
ship is rough, and the whole appearance of the en-
gine, with its rocking-beam, reminds us of times
when timber trees were used for that purpose in-
stead of cast iron; but no Englishman can look
upon this machine with its wonderful contrivances
without veneration, for in it he beholds the first of
its kind. Like the mighty infant Hercules, this
creation was dandled by numberless handmaids
while still battling for existence, but to Watt alone
is due the calling forth its vigour and its subtle and

delicate action. There are many precious things in

the adjoining Museum of Art and Science, but we
question if there are any to be compared, where re-
sults are taken into consideration, with these two
old rusty fabrics of iron rescued from deserted work-

_
rooms and old dry arches by the authorities of the
Patent-office Museum. When a proper apartment
has been provided for this department of the Patent-
office a very valuable relic of the great inventor is
promised by his great grandson—nothing less than
the contents of the little workshop in which he la-

boured up to within a few weeks of his death. This
shop was next to his bedroom at Heathfield, where,
since his death in 1819, they have remained as he
left them, no one having entered the room or dis-

turbed a thing since his decease until very lately,

when Mr. Woodcroft and Mr. Pettit Smith were

allowed to explore it.

This place, we are told, is

a touching memento of the great engineer ; the

tools are as he left them ; the lathe at which
he was last at work is covered with chips ; the
copying or diminishing machine stopped by the
hand of death, leaving unfinished little works
of art, in which he • had been " searching for
beautiful forms into the heart of marbles, andbring-

ing them out into full daylight ;" his tools most of

his own invention, and numberless contrivances
which the world knows little of. There are yet

other relics of Watt in the Museum—the model

steam-engine which he employed to turn his lathe ;
the workmanship is beautiful, and it has all the
great improvements. The Commissioners should
obtain the very instructive model of the locomotive
which Mr. Murdock constructed in 1784 upon the

principles set forth by Watt, intended to run upon
the common road. Most of our readers will remem-
ber it in the machinery-room of the International
Exhibition of 1851, where they will recollect it was
placed by way of contrast upon the magnificent ma-
rine engine of 700-horse power manufactured by
Messrs. James Watt and Co. for the 91 gun screw
steamship James Watt. This model is interesting,
inasmuch as it was the first ever made by an Eng-
lishman, preceding that by Trevethic in this museum

by many years. Watt, however, always thought
thelocomotive on the commonroad was a vain thing,
but he clearly foresaw the advent and success of the
locomotive engine running upon a rail. In 1813,
for instance, before a single public line had been
thought of—in fact, in the year when Headley put
the first locomotive upon the Wylam Colliery rails,
writing to a friend he says, " I have always thought
that steam would become the universal lord, and
that in time we should scorn post horses. An iron
railroad would be a cheaper thing than a road on
the common construction."

The parent engine of steam navigation stands in
a glass case in the middle of the room. What a con-
trast it presents to the model of the engine of the
Great Eastern close at hand. This engine was con-
structed in 1788 for Mr. Patrick Miller, of Dal-
swinton, and propelled a vessel at the rate of nearly
seven miles an hour on the lake at•his place. How
such a speed could have been got out of such a con-
struction, the cylinders of which are not much bigger
than the barrels of a beer-engine, we cannot con-

ceive, especially as the rotary motion was very
clumsily and wastefully given to the paddlewheels
by a chain passing round their axles. As Watt had
converted the rectilinear action of the piston-rod
into a rotary one seven years before that date, and
Wasborough had, indeed, appropriated and patented
the crank, it is inconceivable that Symington, its en-
gineer, should have adopted such a feeble•means of
translating motion, unless, in his ignorance, he
thought his own patent as good as the others. This,
although the first trial to propel a vessel through the
water which was ever made, never could have been

a success. In the same glass case is Mr. Miller's own
model of a double ship, with paddlewheels between
them, which he caused to be worked from the deck
by capstan turned by men. If Mr. Miller had pur-
sued his idea of moving boats by steam power, he
might, by means of the more advanced ideas on the
subject daily coming before the public, have had
the honour of introducing the first practical passen-
ger boat on this system, but he seems to have been
content to discard his engineer, and to lay up his
engine in his drawing-room as an ornament. Syming-
ton, however, really introduced the first practical
steamboat, as his vessel, the Charlotte Dundas, was
propelled by a well-constructed engine, and her first
effort was to draw after her two barges, each of 72
tons, and tow them at the rate of three and a quarter
miles an hour along the Forth and Clyde Canal.

This was certainly a practical test of the value of
the steam vessel, and we scarcely see how Syming-
ton can be robbed of the merit of the invention,

seeing that Fulton did not commence running his
vessels in America untillBo7, and then after having
obtained drawings of Symington's engine, which,
with some alterations, were worked out by Messrs.
Boulton and Watt at their works at Soho. We do
not wish, however, to pursue this vexed question ;
it is quite clear that Symington, from adverse cir-
cumstances, did not follow up his success, and it was
left for Mr.. Bell to inaugurate in Europe the first
steam passage-boat, the Comet, which plied between
Glasgow, Greenock, and Helensburg for passengers
only. The old engine of a most primitive construe-

tion is in the Museum. It has been burnt out ol
one place, where it did duty as a stationary engine,
and was rescued from a blacksmith's shop in Glasgow
by the owner, Mr. Robert Napier, and by him pre-
sented to the Commissioners of Patents. The con-
struction of this engine was certainly not so effec-
tive as Symington's second engine patented 10 years
before, but it was started under happier auspices,
and continued in operation long enough to establish
the principle of propulsion by steam upon the water,
which henceforth became general throughout Europe.
In a small glass case a very unpretending model
of a ship, with a screw propeller cut out of wood,
carries the history of steam navigation up to its
present condition. To Mr. Pettit Smith, the pre-
sent curator of the Patent-office Museum, belongs
the credit of placing the screw propeller in the dead
wood of the ship, the only spot in which it can
work effectually, and of asserting the value of the
new principle so long and so loudly as to force it
upon the attention of the Admiralty.
The screw of the Rattler, which in the water
tournament so signally defeated the paddle steamer
Alecto, is close at hand. With this simple instru-
ment the inventor may be said, like Gulliver, to
have dragged the whole British fleet after him.
Were the paddle our only means of propulsion, our
naval force would be reduced to a nullity. Hostile
gunners would wing a steamer as effectually as a
spotsman wings a bird, and all the plating in the
world would only render a ship so propelled a mere
helpless log upon the water. We wish Mr. Smith
had beenbetter treated by the Government. The en-
gineer of the Napoleon, 90-gun ship, was rewarded
by the French Academy with a prize of 30,000 f. for
the mere successful application of the invention,
which they frankly place to the credit of a "fernier
de Middlesex," alluding to the early occupation of
our countryman, Mr. Francis Pettit Smith, who,
with the exception of a small pension, goes alto-
gether unrewarded to this day for services which
have conferred immense benefits upon the naval and
mercantile marine of England.
But to return once more to land. What is this
locomotive that we see rigged with iron beams and
rods, which liken it almost to a ship? This is the
premier locomotive—a machine which heralded
changes almost as momentous as the steam-engine
itself. Compared with one of the splendid engines
of the Great Western
of Wm.
Billy," the brainwork the" WPayffilanmg
Colliery viewer, and thehandiworkthe
of
twoJo termsnathan
Foster, the engineer or smith (for
were almost synonmous in the yearn
s l
iBp u
1 03) ,tof whichlooks
but
a poor, bungling piece of workmanship
it would seem hopeless to expec., 1-• any good results.
from the day she was
Yet this very engine was at work drawing eight
waggonloads
eoa
sin shipping of
pow eo
n 1 day by day from Leamington
taken off work for
the
set Tyne,rolling
ueightnt
il milesthe
momentdistant,
this
transferred t3c:
great features which Museum.the In
tthhiespeunrycisse
steam blast up the chimney were first applied made . locomotive
smooth rail and whe el sufficiency for traction of the
engine
a ot
success
uec beingctwes so
and the application of the
IljuleY.* The sufficiency of the

* It is but fair to state that the invention of the steam-
blast is claimed by the builder of the Sanspareil, and was
said to have been first applied to the Royal George, built in
1827; but how this can invalidate Mr. Headley's claim for
the same appliance to the Wylam engine in 1812 we cannot
conceive.

smooth rail and wheel for traction was, indeed, the
great principle the establishment of which rescued the
locomotive from oblivion. The only means by which

heavy loads could be drawn by locomotive power be-
fore Headley's time was by the employment of the
toothed wheel and the racked rail, as employed by

Blenkinsop and Trevethick, but the " pull" tore up

the racked rail, and consequently this system had to
be abandoned for horses. It was in the year 1812,
when the price of corn and all kinds of horse pro-
vender was so dear, that the necessity of substitut-
ing mechanical power for living muscle again thrust
itself upon the attention of the Wylam viewer.
Unless some saving could be made in the working

of the colliery the works must be closed, and himself

and family thrown out of bread. Thus stimulated
to exertion, he brought out his plan of weighting
the engine and of coupling the wheels so as to pre-

vent any of them slipping. He proved this could be
done experimentally
.by constructing a waggon,
weighting it with iron, and then propelling it by the
power of several men seated upon it and working
winches. The carriage thus weighted drew several
loaded waggons well enough. In order to prove

that it was the weight which caused the wheels to
bite, in place of the iron load, he substituted a num-
ber of men who, at a given signal, left off working

at the winches and jumped to the ground, when the
wheels immediately began to slip round. The model

of this experimental waggon, with the connected
wheels, which thus solved the problem of making

the smooth wheel adhere to the smooth rail, or, to

use thelanguage of Stephenson, of making 4‘ man and
wife" of them, is in the Museum beside Puffing Billy,
and fully establishes the claim of William Headley
to the discovery of this all-important principle.

It does seem extraordinary that engineers should

have taken it for granted that the wheels must
necessarily slip up to the time of this experiment,
and thatbefore Headley's time no experiments should
have been made. Surely, the weighting an engine
to produce sufficient friction for the purpose was a

very simple idea that ought to have occurred to our
engineers. We suspect, however, that even so late as
the year 1813 the knowledge of our practical en-

gineers was limited to rule of thumb work. The
Wylom engine is certainly an extraordinary looking

machine, as rude and rough-looking in appearance
as could well be conceived, and placed as it isbeside
the Rocket, the premier engine on the Liverpool and
Manchester Railway, i 1 looks like a collier beside a
gentleman. But it must be remembered that between

the dates of construction of those two engines 14
years have elapsed, a period during which the locomo-
tive had grown from childhood to manhood, if we may
use such terms to inanimate objects. The Rocket
which, in the most momentous race the world has

ever seen, wrested the £BOO prize from the Sans-
pareil and the Novelty was the production of a loco.
motive factory which Stephenson, with the aid a

Mr. Pease, had established four years before at
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Mr. Stephenson, when he
introduced the locomotive to public notice on the
opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway a
few years before, saw clearly enough that it was

not sufficient to establish sound principles of work-
ing, if the means of carrying them out were defi-
cient. Good engineering principles, like good laws

require good machinery to give them effect, and
colliery millwrights and smiths were clearly not
up to the work of making locomotives the good
working of which depended upon the accuracy
with which their • parts were fitted. The es-
tablishment of the locomotive factory did more,

perhaps, towards establishing Stephenson's fame
than anything else. If it could be said that without
Boulton there would have been no Watt, with still
greater truth might it be said that without Pease
there would have been no Stephenson. It was the
accurate workmanship of the Rocket, resulting
from the trained hands in the Newcastle Locomotive
Works, that stood Stephenson in such good stead
on the day of trial. Both the Sanspareil, which
by some was considered as good an engine
as its successful rival, and the Novelty broke

down in the course of the trial at Rainhill through
some small defect in workmanship, and in the eyes
of the whole -world Stephenson's name henceforth
became mainly associated with the locomotive. The
Rocket presents very little difference in outward
appearance from the engines of the present day,
except in its small size. All the rods and working
machinery, which heretofore, even in the Darling-
ton engines, were carried high in the air over the
boiler, were now placed lower down on either side of

it near the centre of gravity, the cylinders being
plpeed o,t, an angle of 45, and acting directly upon
the driving wheels, the spokes and fellies of which,
strangely enough, are of wood ! The Sanspareil,
built by the late Timothy, of Darlington, has only
just arrived in the Museum, having been presented
by his son, Mr. John Hackworth. This engine,
after its defeat in the great trial, was purchased by
the Leeds and Manchester Railway Company, and
was afterwards employed in the conveyance of pas-
sengers and general traffic on the Bolton and
Leigh Railway until the year 1844, when, being
found short of power for the rapidly increasing
traffic, it was removed to Mr. Hargreaves's colliery
at Cappul, near Chorley, where it was used as a
fixed engine in winding and pumping. This work it
did most satisfactorily until the end of the year 1863,
when it was removed in consequence solely of the pit
being exhausted. The engine is very similar in appear-
ance to Mr. Headley's old Wylam engine, but ithas
one great improvement—the coupling of the wheels,
instead of being accomplished by the cog-wheel
arrangement underneath the boiler, was produced
by a simple coupling-rod fixed upon the two wheels.
In the perpendicular position of the cylinders, high
up over the boiler, it resembled the Wylam engine,
but the pistons worked from their undersides, and
in fixed slides, being a grand improvement on the
complicated system of rods in that old engine. Pos-
sibly the Novelty, which was driven on the occasion
of the trial by the present Sir Charles Fox, may also
come here. The Commissioners then would only
want Stephenson's first Killingworth engine and
No. 1 Darlington engine, at present on a pedestal
at the Darlington Station, to possess the most inte-
resting group of locomotives in the world. There is
one feature in the old Wylam engine which is worthy
of notice. The fire-tube doubles upon itself, the
chimney coming out beside the furnace door. This
length of heating surface gave it an immense ad-
vantage over all previous colliery engines ; indeed,
neither Stephenson's Killingworth engines, nor those
that worked the Darlington line were so constructed,
and consequently were so far deficient in powers of
getting up steam. In the Rocket, however,
Stephenson, on the suggestion of the secretary of
the Liverpool and Manchester line, adopted the
tubular boiler, a plan of rapidly producing steam
long before known, but which was now in a happy
moment again employed with the best effect. It
seems to be expected that the visitor who stops to
inspect this interesting engine will be more struck
with the fact that it killed Mr. Huskisson, of which
he is informed by a written ticket attached, than
that it inaugurated the first great passenger railway
line, as if it were a more momentous feat to kill a
great statesman than to annihilate space and time.
Under a glass case is a small model of a loco-
motive intended for the common road, patented in
1802 by Richard Trevethic and Andrew Vivian.
This is supposed to be the first model in existence
zuPaotteivnte-Ooffifeleonagt Ppriarisor tdahetree,
of a locomotive. But in the museum of the
no
no
g-
in modelan ofa adjoining
isanda
church, now appropriated as a kind of hospital for
old decayed engines, is the original locomotive that
actually ran upon the road, but • d •
oing so killed a
man, and subjected the inventor to imprisonment.
In this case, however, the engine came to the man,
and not the man to the engine, as was the case with
Mr. fluskisson.
Scarcely less interesting than these great carriers
of the cotton goods of Manchester is the group of
worm-eaten old spinning-machines invented in 1769
by Richard Arkwright, the introduction of which,
having caused such an enormous increase of the
cotton manufacture, may be said to have led to the
introduction of the improved locomotive upon the
Livt?rpool and Manchester line. The greater part
of tlese machines are made of wood, now so rotten
and decayed that they can scarcely hold together.
The first machine was made by a watchmaker
named. King, of Warrington, and it is recorded that
he hesitated long before he undertook the employ-
ment,. 130 doubtful was the appearance of the inven-