In the United States, instances are not wanting of the successful
operation of high steam; of which the engine at the mint is a
conspicuous example. There can, indeed, be no good reason why
this great power should not be employed to an extent within the
limits of safety, if more economical and convenient. If boilers
can bear (as they are usually made of iron) 500 pounds, there can
be no danger in using them with fifty; and this gives an increase
of power, with a condenser, fourfold, or makes a ten horse power
forty. The economy, therefore, of high steam, hardly admits of a
question. It seems unphilosophical to neglect a power so great,
merely because it is so.
Mr. Watt was desirous of an improvement by which to obtain a direct
rotatory motion. His experiments, resembling those of Curtis, at
New-York, were not found permanently practicable.
It was probably perceived to be a great object to get rid of
a reciprocating movement of large masses, on the well-known
mechanical principle, that it consumes power to check momentum, as
well as to give it--to drag an inert mass into motion rapidly, in
opposite directions. And in engines for navigation this is more
disadvantageous than for land uses, as the foundation of the engine
cannot be perfectly substantial.
An engine, therefore, that possesses the cylinder and other
members of Watt's engine, working with or without a condenser,
at pleasure--having a rotatory movement--requiring no ponderous
balance-wheel--adapted to high steam--attended by no inconvenience
from the rapidity of its stroke or movement--having no inert mass
of machinery to move reciprocally--more powerful, proportionately,
from its using steam as strong as that in the boiler--of a simple
and durable construction, and by a combination of two similar
machines attached to the same common intermediate axis, operating
so as to give nearly an equal power at every moment of its
operation, seems to combine every thing desirable in an engine for
the purposes of navigation. Such appears to be the revolving engine
invented by Mr. Morey.
When those who are acquainted with steam-engines of the atmospheric
kind only, are told that Morels cylinder revolves, their
imaginations may suppose a moving mass as large as the enormous
cylinders they have been accustomed to see: but it is not so; the
elastic force of steam requires machinery but of comparatively
small dimensions.
The revolving engine makes up in activity what in other engines is
supplied by magnitude.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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