A History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine Part 4

The machine was thus made capable of working uninterruptedly for a period of time only limited by its own decay.

Savery never fitted his boilers with safety-valves, although it was done earlier by Papin; and in deep mines he was compelled to make use of higher pressures than his rudely-constructed boilers could safely bear.

Savery's engine was used at a number of mines, and also for supplying water to towns; some large estates, country houses, and other private establishments, employed them for the same purpose. They did not, however, come into general use among the mines, because, according to Desaguliers, they were apprehensive of danger from the explosion of the boilers or receivers. As Desaguliers wrote subsequently: "Savery made a great many experiments to bring this machine to perfection, and did erect several which raised water very well for gentlemen's seats, but could not succeed for mines, or supplying towns, where the water was to be raised very high and in great quant.i.ties; for then the steam required being boiled up to such a strength as to be ready to tear all the vessels to pieces." "I have known Captain Savery, at York's buildings, to make steam eight or ten times stronger than common air; and then its heat was so great that it would melt common soft solder, and its strength so great as to blow open several joints of the machine; so that he was forced to be at the pains and charge to have all his joints soldered with spelter or hard solder."

Although there were other difficulties in the application of the Savery engine to many kinds of work, this was the most serious one, and explosions did occur with fatal results. The writer just quoted relates, in his "Experimental Philosophy," that a man who was ignorant of the nature of the engine undertook to work a machine which Desaguliers had provided with a safety-valve to avoid this very danger, "and, having hung the weight at the further end of the steelyard, in order to collect more steam in order to make his work the quicker, he hung also a very heavy plumber's iron upon the end of the steelyard; the consequence proved fatal; for, after some time, the steam, not being able, with the safety-c.o.c.k, to raise up the steelyard loaded with all this unusual weight, burst the boiler with a great explosion, and killed the poor man." This is probably the earliest record of a steam-boiler explosion.

Savery proposed to use his engine for driving mills; but there is no evidence that he actually made such an application of the machine, although it was afterward so applied by others. The engine was not well adapted to the drainage of surface-land, as the elevation of large quant.i.ties of water through small heights required great capacity of receivers, or compelled the use of several engines for each case. The filling of the receivers, in such cases, also compelled the heating of large areas of cold and wet metallic surfaces by the steam at each operation, and thus made the work comparatively wasteful of fuel. Where used in mines, they were necessarily placed within 30 feet or less of the lowest level, and were therefore exposed to danger of submergence whenever, by any accident, the water should rise above that level. In many cases this would result in the loss of the engine, and the mine would remain "drowned," unless another engine should be procured to pump it out. Where the mine was deep, the water was forced by the pressure of steam from the level of the engine-station to the top of the lift. This compelled the use of pressures of several atmospheres in many cases; and a pressure of three atmospheres, or about 45 pounds per square inch, was considered, in those days, as about the maximum pressure allowable. This difficulty was met by setting a separate engine at every 60 or 80 feet, and pumping the water from one to the other. If any one engine in the set became disabled, the pumping was interrupted until that one machine could be repaired. The size of Savery's largest boilers was not great, their maximum diameter not exceeding two and a half feet. This made it necessary to provide several of his engines, usually, for a single mine, and at each level. The first cost and the expense of repairs were exceedingly serious items. The expense and danger, either real or apparent, were thus sufficient to deter many from their use, and the old method of raising water by horse-power was adhered to.

The consumption of fuel with these engines was very great. The steam was not generated economically, as the boilers used were of such simple forms as only could then be produced, and presented too little heating surface to secure a very complete transfer of heat from the gases of combustion to the water within the boiler. This waste in the generation of steam in these uneconomical boilers was followed by still more serious waste in its application, without expansion, to the expulsion of water from a metallic receiver, the cold and wet sides of which absorbed heat with the greatest avidity. The great ma.s.s of the liquid was not, however, heated by the steam, and was expelled at the temperature at which it was raised from below.

Savery quaintly relates the action of his machine in "The Miner's Friend," and so exactly, that a better description could scarcely be asked: "The steam acts upon the surface of the water in the receiver, which surface only being heated by the steam, it does not condense, but the steam gravitates or presses with an elastic quality like air, and still increasing its elasticity or spring, until it counterpoises, or rather exceeds, the weight of the column of water in the force-pipe, which then it will necessarily drive up that pipe; the steam then takes some time to recover its power, but it will at last discharge the water out at the top of the pipe. You may see on the outside of the receiver how the water goes out, as well as if it were transparent; for, so far as the steam is contained within the vessel, it is dry without, and so hot as scarcely to endure the least touch of the hand; but so far as the water is inside the vessel, it will be cold and wet on the outside, where any water has fallen on it; which cold and moisture vanish as fast as the steam takes the place of the water in its descent."

After Savery's death, in 1716, several of these engines were erected in which some improvements were introduced. Dr. Desaguliers, in 1718, built a Savery engine, in which he avoided some defects which he, with Dr. Gravesande, had noted two years earlier. They had then proposed to adopt the arrangement of a single receiver which had been used by Savery himself, as already described, finding, by experiment on a model which they had made for the purpose, that one could be discharged three times, while the same boiler would empty two receivers but once each. In their arrangement, the steam was shut back in the boiler while the receiver was filling with water, and a high pressure thus acc.u.mulated, instead of being turned into the second receiver, and the pressure thus kept comparatively low.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 14.--Papin's Two-Way c.o.c.k.]

In the engine built in 1718, Desaguliers used a spherical boiler, which he provided with the lever safety-valve already applied by Papin, and adopted a comparatively small receiver--one-fifth the capacity of the boiler--of slender cylindrical form, and attached a pipe leading the water for condensation into the vessel, and effected its distribution by means of the "rose," or a "sprinkling-plate," such as is still frequently used in modern engines having jet-condensers.

This subst.i.tution of jet for surface-condensation was of very great advantage, securing great promptness in the formation of a vacuum and a rapid filling of the receiver. A "two-way c.o.c.k" admitted steam to the receiver, or, being turned the other way, admitted the cold condensing water. The dispersion of the water in minute streams or drops was a very important detail, not only as securing great rapidity of condensation, but enabling the designer to employ a comparatively small receiver or condenser.

The engine is shown in Fig. 15, which is copied from the "Experimental Philosophy" of Desaguliers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 15.--Engine built by Desaguliers in 1718.]

The receiver, _A_, is connected to the boiler, _B_, by a steam-pipe, _C_, terminating at the two-way c.o.c.k, _D_; the "forcing-pipe," _E_, has at its foot a check-valve, _F_, and the valve _G_ is a similar check at the head of the suction-pipe. _H_ is a strainer, to prevent the ingress of chips or other bodies carried to the pipe by the current; the cap above the valves is secured by a bridle, or stirrup, and screw, _I_, and may be readily removed to clear the valves or to renew them; _K_ is the handle of the two-way c.o.c.k; _M_ is the injection-c.o.c.k, and is kept open during the working of the engine; _L_ is the chimney-flue; _N_ and _O_ are gauge-c.o.c.ks fitted to pipes leading to the proper depths within the boiler, the water-line being somewhere between the levels of their lower ends; _P_ is a lever safety-valve, as first used on the "Digester" of Papin; _R_ is the reservoir into which the water is pumped; _T_ is the flue, leading spirally about the boiler from the furnace, _V_, to the chimney; _Y_ is a c.o.c.k fitted in a pipe through which the rising-main may be filled from the reservoir, should injection-water be needed when that pipe is empty.

Seven of these engines were built, the first of which was made for the Czar of Russia. Its boiler had a capacity of "five or six hogsheads,"

and the receiver, "holding one hogshead," was filled and emptied four times a minute. The water was raised "by suction" 29 feet, and forced by steam pressure 11 feet higher.

Another engine built at about this time, to raise water 29 feet "by suction," and to force it 24 feet higher, made 6 "strokes" per minute, and, when forcing water but 6 or 8 feet, made 8 or 9 strokes per minute. Twenty-five years later a workman overloaded the safety-valve of this engine, by placing the weight at the end and then adding "a very heavy plumber's iron." The boiler exploded, killing the attendant.

Desaguliers says that one of these engines, capable of raising ten tons an hour 38 feet, in 1728 or 1729, cost 80, exclusive of the piping.

Blakely, in 1766, patented an improved Savery engine, in which he endeavored to avoid the serious loss due to condensation of the steam by direct contact with the water, by interposing a cushion of oil, which floated upon the water and prevented the contact of the steam with the surface of the water beneath it. He also used air for the same purpose, sometimes in double receivers, one supported on the other. These plans did not, however, prove satisfactory.

Rigley, of Manchester, England, soon after erected Savery engines, and applied them to the driving of mills, by pumping water into reservoirs, from whence it returned to the wells or ponds from which it had been raised, turning water-wheels as it descended.

Such an arrangement was in operation many years at the works of a Mr.

Kiers, St. Pancras, London. It is described in detail, and ill.u.s.trated, in Nicholson's "Philosophical Journal," vol. i., p. 419.

It had a "wagon-boiler" 7 feet long, 5 wide, and 5 deep; the wheel was 18 feet in diameter, and drove the lathes and other machinery of the works. In this engine Blakely's plan of injecting air was adopted. The injection-valve was a clack, which closed automatically when the vacuum was formed.

The engine consumed 6 or 7 bushels of good coals, and made 10 strokes per minute, raising 70 cubic feet of water 14 feet, and developing nearly 3 horse-power.

Many years after Savery's death, in 1774, Smeaton made the first duty-trials of engines of this kind. He found that an engine having a cylindrical receiver 16 inches in diameter and 22 feet high, discharging the water raised 14 feet above the surface of the water in the well, making 12 strokes, and raising 100 cubic feet per minute, developed 2-2/3 horse-power, and consumed 3 hundredweight of coals in four hours. Its duty was, therefore, 5,250,000 pounds raised one foot per bushel of 84 pounds of coals, or 62,500 "foot-pounds" of work per pound of fuel. An engine of slightly greater size gave a duty about 5 per cent. greater.

When Louis XIV. revoked the edict of Nantes, by which Henry IV. had guaranteed protection to the Protestants of France, the terrible persecutions at once commenced drove from the kingdom some of its greatest men. Among these was Denys Papin.

It was at about this time that the influence of the atmospheric pressure on the boiling-point began to be observed, Dr. Hooke having found that the boiling-point was a fixed temperature under the ordinary pressure of the atmosphere, and the increase in temperature and pressure of steam when confined having been shown by Papin with his "Digester."

Denys Papin was of a family which had attached itself to the Protestant Church; but he was given his education in the school of the Jesuits at Blois, and there acquired his knowledge of mathematics. His medical education was given him at Paris, although he probably received his degree at Orleans. He settled in Paris in 1672, with the intention of practising his profession, and devoted all his spare time, apparently, to the study of physics.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Denys Papin.]

Meantime, that distinguished philosopher, Huyghens, the inventor of the clock and of the gunpowder-engine, had been induced by the linen-draper's apprentice, Colbert, now the most trusted adviser of the king, to take up his residence in Paris, and had been made one of the earliest members of the Academy of Science, which was founded at about that time. Papin became an a.s.sistant to Huyghens, and aided him in his experiments in mechanics, having been introduced by Madame Colbert, who was also a native of Blois. Here he devised several modifications of the instruments of Guericke, and printed a description of them.[25] This little book was presented to the Academy, and very favorably noticed. Papin now became well known among contemporary men of science at Paris, and was well received everywhere. Soon after, in the year 1675, as stated by the _Journal des Savants_, he left Paris and took up his residence in England, where he very soon made the acquaintance of Robert Boyle, the founder, and of the members of the Royal Society. Boyle speaks of Papin as having gone to England in the hope of finding a place in which he could satisfactorily pursue his favorite studies.

[25] "Nouvelles Experiences du Vuide, avec la description des Machines qui servent a le faire." Paris, 1674.

Boyle himself had already been long engaged in the study of pneumatics, and had been especially interested in the investigations which had been original with Guericke. He admitted young Papin into his laboratory, and the two philosophers worked together at these attractive problems. It was while working with Boyle that Papin invented the double air-pump and the air-gun.

Papin and his work had now become so well known, and he had attained so high a position in science, that he was nominated for membership in the Royal Academy, and was elected December 16, 1680. He at once took his place among the most talented and distinguished of the great men of his time.

He probably invented his "Digester" while in England, and it was first described in a brochure written in English, under the t.i.tle, "The New Digester." It was subsequently published in Paris.[26] This was a vessel, _B_ (Fig. 16), capable of being tightly closed by a screw, _D_, and a lid, _C_, in which food could be cooked in water raised by a furnace, _A_, to the temperature due to any desired safe pressure of steam. The pressure was determined and limited by a weight, _W_, on the safety-valve lever, _G_. It is probable that this essential attachment to the steam-boiler had previously been used for other purposes; but Papin is given the credit of having first made use of it to control the pressure of steam.

[26] "La maniere d'amollir les os et de faire cuire toutes sortes de viandes," etc.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 16.--Papin's Digester, 1680.]

From England, Papin went to Italy, where he accepted membership and held official position in the Italian Academy of Science. Papin remained in Venice two years, and then returned to England. Here, in 1687, he announced one of his inventions, which is just becoming of great value in the arts. He proposed to transmit power from one point to another, over long distances, by the now well-known "pneumatic"

method. At the point where power was available, he exhausted a chamber by means of an air-pump, and, leading a pipe to the distant point at which it was to be utilized, there withdrew the air from behind a piston, and the pressure of the air upon the latter caused it to recede into the cylinder, in which it was fitted, raising a weight, of which the magnitude was proportionate to the size of the piston and the degree of exhaustion. Papin was not satisfactorily successful in his experiments; but he had created the germ of the modern system of pneumatic transmission of power. His disappointment at the result of his efforts to utilize the system was very great, and he became despondent, and anxious to change his location again.

In 1687 he was offered the chair of Mathematics at Marburg by Charles, the Landgrave of Upper Hesse, and, accepting the appointment, went to Germany. He remained in Germany many years, and continued his researches with renewed activity and interest. His papers were published in the "Acta Eruditorum" at Leipsic, and in the "Philosophical Transactions" at London. It was while at Marburg that his papers descriptive of his method of pneumatic transmission of power were printed.[27]

[27] "Recueil des diverses Pieces touchant quelques Nouvelles Machines et autres Sujets Philosophiques," M. D. Papin. Ca.s.sel, 1695.

In the "Acta Eruditorum" of 1688 he exhibited a practicable plan, in which he exhausted the air from a set of engines or pumps by means of pumps situated at a long distance from the point of application of the power, and at the place where the prime mover--which was in this case a water-wheel--was erected.

After his arrival at the University of Marburg, Papin exhibited to his colleagues in the faculty a modification of Huyghens's gunpowder-engine, in which he had endeavored to obtain a more perfect vacuum than had Huyghens in the first of these machines. Disappointed in this, he finally adopted the expedient of employing steam to displace the air, and to produce, by its condensation, the perfect vacuum which he sought; and he thus produced _the first steam-engine with a piston_, and the first piston steam-engine, in which condensation was produced to secure a vacuum. It was described in the "Acta" of Leipsic,[28] in June, 1690, under the t.i.tle, "Nova Methodus ad vires motrices validissimas leri pretio comparandeo" ("A New Method of securing cheaply Motive Power of considerable Magnitude"). He describes first the gunpowder-engine, and continues by stating that, "until now, all experiments have been unsuccessful; and after the combustion of the exploded powder, there always remains in the cylinder about one-fifth its volume of air." He says that he has endeavored to arrive by another route at the same end; and "as, by a natural property of water, a small quant.i.ty of this liquid, vaporized by the action of heat, acquires an elasticity like that of the air, and returns to the liquid state again on cooling, without retaining the least trace of its elastic force," he thought that it would be easy to construct machines in which, "by means of a moderate heat, and without much expense," a more perfect vacuum could be produced than could be secured by the use of gunpowder.

[28] "Acta Eruditorum," Leipsic, 1690.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 17.--Papin's Engine.]

The first machine of Papin (Fig. 17) was very similar to the gunpowder-engine already described as the invention of Huyghens. In place of gunpowder, a small quant.i.ty of water is placed at the bottom of the cylinder, _A_; a fire is built beneath it, "the bottom being made of very thin metal," and the steam formed soon raises the piston, _B_, to the top, where a latch, _E_, engaging a notch in the piston-rod, _H_, holds it up until it is desired that it shall drop.

The fire being removed, the steam condenses, and a vacuum is formed below the piston, and the latch, _E_, being disengaged, the piston is driven down by the superinc.u.mbent atmosphere and raises the weight which has been, meantime, attached to a rope, _L_, pa.s.sing from the piston-rod over pulleys, _T T_. The machine had a cylinder two and a half inches in diameter, and raised 60 pounds once a minute; and Papin calculated that a machine of a little more than two feet diameter of cylinder and of four feet stroke would raise 8,000 pounds four feet per minute--i. e., that it would yield about one horse-power.

The inventor claimed that this new machine would be found useful in relieving mines from water, in throwing bombs, in ship-propulsion, attaching revolving paddles--i. e., paddle-wheels--to the sides of the vessel, which wheels were to be driven by several of his engines, in order to secure continuous motion, the piston-rods being fitted with racks which were to engage ratchet-wheels on the paddle-shafts.

"The princ.i.p.al difficulty," he says, answering antic.i.p.ated objections, "is that of making these large cylinders."

In a reprint describing his invention, in 1695, Papin gives a description of a "newly-invented furnace," a kind of fire-box steam-boiler, in which the fire, completely surrounded by water, makes steam so rapidly that his engine could be driven at the rate of four strokes per minute by the steam supplied by it.

Papin also proposed the use of a peculiar form of furnace with this engine, which, embodying as it does some suggestions that very probably have since been attributed to later inventors, deserves special notice. In this furnace, Papin proposed to burn his fuel on a grate within a furnace arranged with a _down-draught_, the air entering above the grate, pa.s.sing _down_ through the fire, and from the ash-pit through a side flue to the chimney. In starting the fire, the coal was laid on the grate, covered with wood, and the latter was ignited, the flame, pa.s.sing downward through the coal, igniting that in turn, and, as claimed by Papin, the combustion was complete, and the formation of smoke was entirely prevented. He states, in "Acta Eruditorum," that the heat was intense, the saving of fuel very great, and that the only difficulty was to find a refractory material which would withstand the high temperature attained.

This is the first fire-box and flue boiler of which we have record.

The experiment is supposed to have led Papin to suggest the use of a hot-blast, as practised by Neilson more than a century later, for reducing metals from their ores.

Papin made another boiler having a flue winding through the water-s.p.a.ce, and presenting a heating surface of nearly 80 square feet. The flue had a length of 24 feet, and was about 10 inches square. It is not stated what were the maximum pressures carried on these boilers; but it is known that Papin had used very high pressures in his digesters--probably between 1,200 and 1,500 pounds per square inch.

In the year 1705, Leibnitz, then visiting England, had seen a Savery engine, and, on his return, described it to Papin, sending him a sketch of the machine. Papin read the letter and exhibited the sketch to the Landgrave of Hesse, and Charles at once urged him to endeavor to perfect his own machine, and to continue the researches which he had been intermittently pursuing since the earlier machine had been exhibited in public.