. Bulletin. Science. Figure lO.—Watt's "parallel ; En- gine's working beam is pivoted at A. Pivot F is attached to the engine frame. From Dyonysius Lardner, The Steam Engine (Phila- delphia, 1852), pi. 5 (American ed. 5 from London ed. 5). I am more proud of the parallel motion than of any other mechanical invention I have ever ;^^ The Watt four-bar linkage was employed 75 years after its inception by the American Charles B. Richards when, in 1861, he designed his first high- speed engine indicator (fig. 11). Introduced into England the following year, the Richards I
. Bulletin. Science. Figure lO.—Watt's "parallel ; En- gine's working beam is pivoted at A. Pivot F is attached to the engine frame. From Dyonysius Lardner, The Steam Engine (Phila- delphia, 1852), pi. 5 (American ed. 5 from London ed. 5). I am more proud of the parallel motion than of any other mechanical invention I have ever ;^^ The Watt four-bar linkage was employed 75 years after its inception by the American Charles B. Richards when, in 1861, he designed his first high- speed engine indicator (fig. 11). Introduced into England the following year, the Richards Indicator was an immediate success, and ixiany thousands were sold over the next 20 or 30 years.^^ In considering the order of synthetic abihty required to design the straight-line linkage and to combine it with a pantograph, it should be kept in mind that this was the first one of a long line of such * Once the idea was abroad, it was only to be expected that many variations and alternative solutions should appear. One wonders, however, what direction the subsequent work would have taken if Watt had not so clearly pointed the way. In 1827 John Farey, in his exhaustive study of the steam engine, wrote perhaps the best contem- porary view of Watt's work. Farey as a young man had several tiraes talked with the aging Watt, and he had reflected upon the nature of the intellect that had caused Watt to be recognized as a genius, even within his own lifetime. In attempting to explain Watt's genius, Farey set down some observations that are pertinent not only to kinematic synthesis but to the currently fashionable term "; In Farcy's opinion Watt's inventive faculty was. Figure 11.—Richards high-speed engine indi- cator of 1861, showing application of the Watt straight-hne linkage. {USNM 307515; Smith- sonian photo 46570). in the direction of its length; and contrivances, by which such alternate rectilinear motions are converted into continuous rotato
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