. The conquest of nature. probable,then, that the very first engines were without the auto-matic valve gear, and there is no inherent reason whya quick-witted youth may not have been the first todiscover and remedy the defect. According to the Report of the Department of Scienceand Arts of the South Kensington Museum: ^^Theadoption of Newcomens engine was rapid, for, commen-cing in 1711 with the engine at Wolverhampton, oftwenty-three inch diameter and six foot stroke, they werein common use in English collieries in 1725; and Smea-ton foimd in 1767 that, in the neighborhood of New-castle alone
. The conquest of nature. probable,then, that the very first engines were without the auto-matic valve gear, and there is no inherent reason whya quick-witted youth may not have been the first todiscover and remedy the defect. According to the Report of the Department of Scienceand Arts of the South Kensington Museum: ^^Theadoption of Newcomens engine was rapid, for, commen-cing in 1711 with the engine at Wolverhampton, oftwenty-three inch diameter and six foot stroke, they werein common use in English collieries in 1725; and Smea-ton foimd in 1767 that, in the neighborhood of New-castle alone there were fifty-seven at work, ranging insize from twenty-eight inch to seventy-five inch cylinderdiameter, and giving collectively about twelve hundredhorse-power. As Newcomen obtained an evaporationof nearly eight pounds of water per pound of coal, theincrease of boiler efiiciency since his time has neces-sarily been but slight, although in other requisites ofthe steam generator great improvements are noticeable. [92]. A MODEL OF THE NEWCOMEN ENGINE. This^engine has particular interest not only because it was a practical pumpingengine, but also because it was while repairing an engine of this type that Wattwas led to the experiments that resulted in his epoch-making discovery. CAPTIVE MOLECULES THE COMING OF JAMES WATT The Newcomen engine had low working efficiency ascompared with the modem engine; nevertheless, someof these engines are still used in a few coUieries wherewaste coal is available, the pressure enabling the steamto be generated in boilers unsafe for other great importance of the Newcomen engine, how-ever, is historical; for it was while engaged in repairinga model of one of these engines that James Watt wasled to invent his plan of condensing the steam, not in theworking cylinder itself, but in a separate vessel,—the principle upon which such vast improvements in thesteam engine were to depend. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjec, booksubjectmachinery
