AN IMPROVED METHOD OF ACTING UPON MACHINERY
Year: 1814

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, WILLIAM
MOULT, of Bedford Square, in the County of Middlesex, send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Third did, by
His Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, bearing date at Westminster, the Twenty-third day of
May, in the fifty-fourth year of His reign, give and grant unto me, the said
William Moult, my exors, adiñiors, and assigns, His especial licence, full power,
sole privilege and authority, that I, the said William Moult, my exors, adiñors,
and assigns, should and lawfully might, during the term of years therein men-
tioned, make, use, exercise, and vend, within England, Wales, and the Town
of Berwick-upon-Tweed, my Invention of "AN IMPROVED METHOD OF ACTING
UPON MACHINERY;" in which said Letters Patent there is contained a proviso
that I, the said William Moult, shall not particularly describe and ascertain
the nature of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be per-
formed, by an instrument in writing under my hand and seal, and cause the
same to be inrolled in His Majesty's High Court of Chancery within six
months next and immediately after the date of the said Letters Patent, that
then the said Letters Patent, and all liberties and advantages whatsoever
thereby granted, shall utterly cease, determine, and become void, as in and by
the same (relation being thereunto had) may more fully and at large appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
William Moult, do hereby declare that my said Invention is described in the
manner following (that is to say):—

page_text: It is applicable to all kinds of machinery which is acted upon by steam to
produce motion or mechanical power, and which I cause to act in an im-
proved manner by the intervention of water or other ponderous fluid. It may
be applied in lieu of a cylinder and piston to an engine having the same kind
of boiler, paralel motion, working beam, air pump, and condenser, crank, and
fly wheel, and other parts which are ordinarily used in steam engines. These
parts, or others which are frequently substituted for them, need not be described
here, being generally understood, and forming no part of my Invention, which
is as follows:-
In lieu of the cylinder containing a moving piston, I employ a vessel of
equal or greater capacity than- the ordinary cylinder, and, attached to the beam
or other moving part of the engine, so that the alternate ascent and descent of
this vessel will put the beam and machinery in motion. The vessel is immersed
in water or other ponderous fluid, which has an entrance to and exit from the
vessel at an opening made in the inferior part, so as to fill or empty the capacity
of the said vessel when it rises and falls. A steam pipe or tube proceeding from
the boiler of the engine is carried beneath the fluid in which the moving vessel
is immersed, then turning up beneath the lower or open end of the moving vessel
it terminates with an orifice considerably above the surface of the said fluid.
In some accessible part of this pipe a steam valve or cock is placed to shut off
the passage, but this being opened, the steam has free passage from the boiler
to the interior capacity of the moving vessel. Another pipe is conducted from
the condenser of the engine, and turning up under the moving vessel in the
same manner as the steam pipe, serves to convey the steam from the moving
vessel to the condenser; it has also a cock or valve, which I call the exhausting
valve or cock, to cutt off the communication at pleasure. The opposite end of
the beam of the engine must have a counter weight sufficient to draw up the
moving vessel when the steam is admitted into it. The manner of action in
the engine is as follows:-The steam being raised in the boiler, the steam
valve is to be opened; this admits the steam into the interior of the moving
vessel, and expels the air from it; then opening the exhausting valve, and the
steam will likewise pass into the condensor and through the air pump, for the
purpose of expelling the air. (Note, this operation which is called blowing
through, is the same as any other steam engine.) Now shut both valves and
open the injection cock to admit a jet of cold water into the condenser; this
by condensing the steam it contains, causes a partial vacuum therein. The
moving vessel is now full of steam, and on opening the exhausting valve,
the contained steam will pass off into the condenser, and being condensed
as it goes, will cause a vacuum in the vessel. The pressure of the atmosphère

page_text: will now act upon the surface of the surrounding fluid, and cause it to ascend
into the moving vessel a height proportioned to its specific gravity and to
the load or resistance to the motion of the engine, thus suspending in the
moving vessel a column of the fluid of such an altitude that its weight will
press down the moving vessel into the fluid with a force proportioned to
its area and gravity. (Note, the length or perpendicular altitude of the
moving vessel must exceed the perpendicular altitude of the said column
as much as the stroke of the engine or quantity of motion the vessel is
intended to have, so that when the vessel has descended as low as it is to go,
the fluid will fill the whole of its capacity.) The exhausting valve is now to
be shut, and at the same instant the steam valve being opened, it will admit
fresh steam to enter the vessel, and the counter weight will draw it up ready
to repeat the stroke. To simplify the engine, the air pump and condenser may
be omitted, and in lieu thereof the exhausting pipe may be made an injecting
pipe, to carry cold water from a reservoir into the moving vessel itself to
form a jet when the cock or valve is opened, and thus condense the steam con-
tained in it, which will cause the vacuum and produce the same effects I have
described; but it will in this case be necessary to provide the means off
carrying the injection water; this, when the fluid in which the vessel works
is water, may be suffered to mix with it, and will pass off without trouble, or
in other cases, where another kind of fluid is employed, a pipe must be
applied in the same manner as what is called the eduction pipe in steam
engines, where the injection is thrown into the cylinder itself, which pipe descends
from the interior of the vessel to some sink or hot well, at a sufficient depth
below to cause the water to flow off when the steam is admitted to the
vessel; but to prevent the return of the water when the vacuum is formed, the
end of the pipe is to be covered with a valve opening outwards.
A snifting
valve, or valve opening outwards from the vessel to the open air, is also to be
applied in the top or other convenient part of it, for the purpose of evacuating
the air the vessel may contain when the steam first enters the vessel, but the
closing of the valve will prevent the entrance of the air when the vacuum is
formed within the vessel. The condensation may be produced without injec-
tion by causing a shower of cold water to fall upon the outside of the moving
vessel, and thus produce a sufficient cold within it to effect the condensation of
the steam, but this plan must be confined to small engines. As this will be
only a single-acting engine, two such vessels may be applied at the opposite
end of the working beam to act alternately, and in this way the counter
weight will be unnecessary. To diminish the quantity of the fluid in which
the moving vessel is to be submerged, the pit or reservoir which contains it

page_text: may be made only just large enough to admit the said vessel to go down into
it, and it may have fixed within it a solid mass of any proper materials which
will as nearly as possible fill the internal cavity of the moving vessel which is
to descend into the space between the said pit and the solid mass within it,
which space alone is filled with the fluid and may therefore be very small.
The fluids I use are spirits, oils, water, saline solutions, mercury, or any
other metals or mixture of metals which are fluid at the temperature of
boiling water, and in all cases due regard must be had to apportioning the
length of the moving vessel to the specific gravity of the fluid, and the pressure
which the atmosphere is intended to exert upon the top of the vessel.
Another form of this Invention is where, instead of a cylinder to work
the engine, I place two vessels at the opposite extremities of the working beam,
and having a communication between them, a sufficient quantity of water or
other ponderous fluid is introduced to fill one of them; then by means of
steam I cause the fluid to be expelled from the vessel at that end of the
beam which is depressed, and by the communication it will occupy the vessel,
that is, at the elevated end of the beam. This operation of alternately transfer-
ring the ponderous fluid from the depressed to the elevated end of the beam
gives a preponderating power to work the engine. The steam is made to
operate in this engine as follows:-A pipe is conducted from the boiler, and
passing through the axis of the beam with a turning joint, proceeds to the
vessel at one end of the beam, which vessel is closed, and I call it the steam
vessel; it has a free communication by a pipe conducted along the beam
with the other vessel, which is open at top. The turning joint of the steam pipe
at the axis of the beam may be made in the manner of a cock, so as to open
and shut when the beam vibrates on its center, and is so arranged that it
will open the passage whenever that end of the beam which carries the steam
vessel is below the horizontal position, but in all other positions the
passage will be shut. There must be likewise an elevated reservoir to supply in-
jection when necessary, by letting fall a shower of cold water upon the outside
of the steam vessel. To explain the action of this engine, suppose the above
close steam vessel in the depressed position, and full of the fluid, the engine
being at rest, then the steam coming from the boiler and entering the vessel
will displace the fluid from it, and force it up the communicating pipe into the
open vessel, which is then at the clevated end of the beam; the weight of the
fluid being thus transformed to that end of the beam, causes it to preponderate.
When the beam comes to the horizontal position, the passage of the steam is
shut off, and the motion continues till the steam vessel becomes the most ele-
vated end of the beam, and the open vessel and the depressed end, the shower

page_text: of cold water being let fall upon the steam vessel condenses the contained
steam, and causes a vacuum. The pressure of the atmosphere upon the
surface of the fluid in the open vessel causes it to mount up through the com-
municating pipe, and occupy the steam vessel, which being at the elevated end
of the beam causes it to preponderate in its turn, and gives motion to the engine;
when it has descended to the horizontal position the hollow axis of the beam
admits the steam into the steam vessel again, by which means its fluid is forced
back to the open vessel, and a constant reciprocation is thus kept up to work
the engine. The condensation may be made by admitting a jet of cold water
into the steam vessel in lieu of letting a shower fall upon the outside of it.
In witness whereof, I, the said William Moult, have hereunto set my
hand and seal, this Twenty-second day of November, in the year of
our Lord One thousand eight hundred and fourteen.