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
"Some months since, we visited the little garret at Heathfield in
which Watt pursued the investigations of his later years. The room had
been carefully locked up since his death, and had only once been swept
out. Everything lay very much as he left it. The piece of iron which
he was last employed in turning, lay on the lathe. The ashes of the
last fire were in the grate; the last bit of coal was in the scuttle.
The Dutch oven was in its place over the stove, and the frying-pan in
which he cooked his meals was hanging on its accustomed nail. Many
objects lay about or in the drawers, indicating the pursuits which had
been interrupted by death--busts, medallions, and figures, waiting to
be copied by the copying-machine--many medallion-moulds, a store of
plaster-of-Paris, and a box of plaster casts from London, the contents
of which do not seem to have been disturbed. Here are Watt's ladles
for melting lead, his foot-rule, his glue-pot, his hammer. Reflecting
mirrors, an extemporized camera with the lenses mounted on pasteboard,
and many camera-glasses laid about, indicate interrupted experiments
in optics. There are quadrant-glasses, compasses, scales, weights, and
sundry boxes of mathematical instruments, once doubtless highly
prized. In one place a model of the governor, in another of the
parallel-motion, and in a little box, fitted with wooden cylinders
mounted with paper and covered with figures, is what we suppose to be
a model of his calculating-machine. On the shelves are minerals and
chemicals in pots and jars, on which the dust of nearly half a century
has settled. The moist substances have long since dried up; the putty
has been turned to stone, and the paste to dust. On one shelf we come
upon a dish in which lies a withered bunch of grapes. On the floor, in
a corner, near to where Watt sat and worked, is a hair-trunk--a
touching memorial of a long-past love and a long-dead sorrow. It
contains all poor Gregory's school-books, his first attempts at
writing, his boy's drawings of battles, his first school-exercises
down to his college-themes, his delectuses, his grammars, his
dictionaries, and his class-books--brought into this retired room,
where the father's eye could rest upon them. Near at hand is the
sculpture-machine, on which he continued working to the last. Its
wooden frame is worm-eaten, and dropping into dust, like the hands
that made it. But though the great workman is gone to rest, with all
his griefs and cares, and his handiwork is fast crumbling to decay,
the spirit of his work, the thought which he put into his inventions,
still survives, and will probably continue to influence the destinies
of his race for all time to come."
The visitor to Westminster Abbey will find neither monarch, nor
warrior, nor statesman, nor poet, honored with a nobler epitaph than
that which is inscribed on the pedestal of Chantrey's monument to
Watt:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account