A History of the Growth of the Steam-EngineThurston, Robert Henry
History
A History of the Growth of the Steam-Engine
Thurston, Robert Henry
Steam-engines -- History
Such an arrangement was in operation many years at the works of a Mr.
Kiers, St. Pancras, London. It is described in detail, and
illustrated, 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.
[Illustration: Denys Papin.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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