The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1888-01-21
AN HISTORICAL MODEL.
A Steam Engine Built in 1909 Still in Per
feet Running Order.


feet Running Order.
Retained in perfect running order in
the United States Steamboat Inspectors
Office in this city is an osciliating en-
CINE constructed in 1909 by Daniel
French. It is only of model size and
is probably the first engine of the kind
ever constructed. It's description is
simple. Having its piston-rod attached
directly to the crank-pin, as the crank
revolves the cylinder oscillates upon
trunnions, one on each side of it,
through which the steam enters and
leaves the steam-chest. The valves
are within the steam-chest, oscillating
with the cylinder. 1t is perhaps as sat-
isfactory an engine of this class as has
ever been built, for it is well known
that the mechanism actuating the valves
in oscillating steam engines has seldom
proved perfectly satisfactory in its
operation.
The inventor, whose son carried on
ship-yard for years at Jacksonville and
was well known to many of the older
citizens of the city, was contemporaries
Gus with Robert Fulton, who built
steamboat on the Seine in 1903 with
Chancellor Livingston, and who, in
1906, with Livingston, had boat built
On the Hudson in which he placed ma
chinery claimed to have been made by
Boulton & Watt in England.
Daniel French had litigation with
Fulton about this steamboat, claiming
that the latter had appropriated his in
vention, but Fulton was backed by Liv-
ingston's influence and capital, and,
though the case was before the courts
for many years in one form or another,
French was finally defeated. Although
the oscillating engine on exhibition in
the Steamboat Inspectors Office was not
built till 1909, it was by no means the
first attempt French had made to invent
an engine applicable for steam naviga-
ton. He had been known as an inven-
tor for a quarter of d century before,
and his numerous inventions of different
kinds had given him an extensive and
esteemed reputation. Those who knew
him were wont to say that he was half
a century ahead of the time in which he
lived.
1t is not improbable that Fulton was
familiar with French's experiments
with steam. 1t is an historical fact that
in connection with his profession as an
engineer he had passed years in the
scientific experiments the result of
which forever identified his name with
steamboat navigation. 1t is not to be
doubted, therefore, that he was &C
quainted with the efforts of every expert
menter of the power of steam in this
direction, from the time that Blanco de
Garay is supposed to have actually ap-
piled steam to the propulsion of a ship
at Barcelona, in the year 1913, up to the
time when, in 1863, William Henry, of
Chester County, Pennsylvania, tried his
model steamboat on the Conestoga
river. Fulton witnessed that expert
ment, and it is matter of record that
he was familiar with the work of the
contemporary inventors in
America, and had visited England, |
where he found others at work on the |
same problem. But with this invention,
as with all others, though the claimants
may be numerous, the credit attaches to
the one most successful in bringing it |
before the public. Courier
Journal.