A Historical Account of Useful Inventions and Scientific Discoveries: Being a manual of instruction and entertainment.Grant, George
History
A Historical Account of Useful Inventions and Scientific Discoveries: Being a manual of instruction and entertainment.
Grant, George
Inventions -- History
The description of the engine formerly mentioned is transcribed from
Mr. Savery’s publication, “The Miner’s Friend,” and which had a
subsidiary boiler, with water of a boiling heat, always ready to supply
the large boiler; and the power of steam raised in it is employed to
force the water into the larger boiler, to replace the waste occasioned
by evaporation from that boiler; by this means the transposition of
the feeding water is not only speedily performed, but being itself of
a boiling heat, it is instantly ready to produce steam for carrying
on the work. There is also one more grand improvement in the modern
machine: the first engine was worked by four separate cocks, which the
operator was compelled to turn separately at every change of stroke;
if he turned them wrong, he was not only liable to damage the engine,
but he prevented its effect, and, at the same time, lost a part of
the operation: whereas, in the improved engine, the communications
are made by a double sliding valve, or, as it has since been termed,
regulator; that is, a brass plate, shaped like a fan, and moving on a
centre within the boiler, so as to slide horizontally in contact with
the under surface of the cover of the boiler, to which it is accurately
fitted by grinding, and thus, at pleasure, opens or shuts the orifices,
or entries, to the steam pipes of the two receivers alternately. This
regulator acts with less friction than a cock of equal bore, and, by
the motion of a single handle backwards, at once opens the proper steam
pipe from one receiver, and closes that which belongs to the other
receiver. Captain Savery, in his publication before noticed, describes
the uses to which this machine may be applied, besides those before
described, viz.--1, to serve water for turning all sorts of mills; 2,
for supplying palaces, noblemen and gentlemen’s houses with water, and
affording the means for extinguishing fires therein, by the water so
raised; 3, the supplying cities and towns with water; 4, draining fens
and marshes; 5, for ships; 6, for draining mines of water; and 7, for
preventing damps in mines.
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