. Morton memorial; a history of the Stevens institute of technology, with biographies of the trustees, faculty, and alumni, and a record of the achievements of the Stevens family of engineers. is ever the open sea. It was now as a builder of steamships that Robert Stevens made himselffamous, each successive boat being faster until in 1832, with the handsome NorthAmerica, using forced draft, he attained a speed of fifteen miles an hour. For aquarter of a century, and while he gave his chief attention to that line of work, A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS 85 he stood at the head of the naval engineering pr
. Morton memorial; a history of the Stevens institute of technology, with biographies of the trustees, faculty, and alumni, and a record of the achievements of the Stevens family of engineers. is ever the open sea. It was now as a builder of steamships that Robert Stevens made himselffamous, each successive boat being faster until in 1832, with the handsome NorthAmerica, using forced draft, he attained a speed of fifteen miles an hour. For aquarter of a century, and while he gave his chief attention to that line of work, A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS 85 he stood at the head of the naval engineering profession in this country; and hisinventions and improvements up to 1840 were so valuable and numerous that abare catalogue would fill pages. We may specify, for example, the invention, asearly as 1818, of the cam-board cut-off, being the first use of steam expansivelyfor navigation purposes; the universally prevalent forms of ferry-boat and ferry-slip, the overhanging guards, the fenders, the spring piling; the adoption of thewalking-beam in 1821; the invention of the split water-wheel in 1826; the inven-tion of the balance valve for beam engines in 1831; the location of the steamboat. The Original John Stevens Boat Engine of 1804 Now in the National Museum, Washington, D. C. boilers on the wheel-guards; the increase of strength in the boilers until theycould stand fifty pounds to the square inch, although English naval engineers hadgot no further than five pounds as late as 1848. Nothing could be sharper than the ordinary contrast between the lines of asteamboat and those of a fine clipper, yet it was Robert L. Stevens Avho designedand built in 1844 the Maria, a yacht literally as fast as his steamers. She wasthe conqueror of the America just before the latter went across the Atlantic tocapture, in the Solent, the famous cup which now gleams on Uncle Sams side-board, for the British an object of, apparently, as hopeless a quest as that for the 86 THE STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHN
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