The boys' book of engine-building; . end of the walking beam which carriedthe weight was connected to a pump and hencethe Newcomen engine came to be largely used inEngland for pumping water out of mines. The Boy Who Made It Self-Acting.—As youcan imagine the piston of Newcomens engineworked very slowly and the steam and watervalves had to be opened and closed by hand. Asit was light, though tedious, work to do this, aboy was usually given the job and a youngsternamed Humphrey Potter happened to be one ofthem. Now Humphrey was a boy of genius, andgenius and humdrum work are seldom on speak-ing
The boys' book of engine-building; . end of the walking beam which carriedthe weight was connected to a pump and hencethe Newcomen engine came to be largely used inEngland for pumping water out of mines. The Boy Who Made It Self-Acting.—As youcan imagine the piston of Newcomens engineworked very slowly and the steam and watervalves had to be opened and closed by hand. Asit was light, though tedious, work to do this, aboy was usually given the job and a youngsternamed Humphrey Potter happened to be one ofthem. Now Humphrey was a boy of genius, andgenius and humdrum work are seldom on speak-ing terms. So he bethought him to rig up somelevers worked by strings tied to the walkingbeam to open and close the valves and his inven- The First Engines 9 tion worked like a charm. He was in a fair way,at least it seemed so to him, to draw his sixpencea day while the engine worked automatically. Instead his genius threw himself and all theother valve boys in England out of their jobs, andall he ever got out of it was undying Fig. 5. Potters Self-Acting Engine Humphreys invention was at once improvedupon by one Henry Beighton who connected arod to the walking beam to work the valves andit is quite likely that, being a man, he profitedby it. Watt Puts on the Flywheel.—In your young io The Boys9 Book of Engine-Building lifetime you have heard enough of James Watt,of Glasgow, Scotland, to believe, probably, thathe was the inventor of the steam engine, but youhave seen that Papin and Newcomen and Potter
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpub, booksubjectsteamengines
