History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 4 (of 4)Lindsay, W. S. (William Schaw)
History
History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 4 (of 4)
Lindsay, W. S. (William Schaw)
Commerce -- History; Shipping -- History; Steam navigation -- History
[29] 1. The middle beam. 2. The end with iron bars wherein the strength
of the ship lyeth both ends alike. 3. Rudder of the ship. 4. The keel.
5. Iron bolts with screws. 6. Depth of the inner beam. 7. The wheel
that goeth round it hath its motion. 8. The scuttles or hatchways. 9.
The gallery where they walk.
[30] “Specifications relating to Marine Propulsion,” Woodcroft, Part I.
p. 29.
[31] Woodcroft, Part I. p. 51; and see Drawings, “Repository of Arts,”
vol. i. (second series), p. 11.
[32] “He was a foolish man,” says Dr. Arnott, “who thought he had
found the means of commanding always a fair wind for his pleasure
boat by erecting an immense bellows in the stern. The bellows and the
sails acted against each other, and there was no motion: indeed, in a
perfect calm, there would be a little backward motion, because the sail
would not catch all the wind from the bellows.”—Arnott, “Elements of
Physics,” p. 120.
[33] “Specifications of Marine Propulsion,” Woodcroft, vol. i. pp. 16
and 17.
[34] Papin was driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, and was associated with Robert Boyle in many of his experiments
on the air-pump—he was elected F.R.S. in 1681, and was for a time, the
secretary of the society. He was invited to Germany by the Landgrave
of Hesse, was some years Professor of Mathematics at Marburg and
died there, 1710; he seems the first to have clearly discerned the
necessity of the vacuum under the cylinder, and that the pressure of
the atmosphere alone is enormous. (A cylinder 1 foot in diameter, has
a surface of 113 square inches, hence, the atmospheric pressure in it
is 113 ⨉ 15 = 1695 lbs.). Papin first proposed to exhaust the air by
pumps, and in 1687 laid this plan before the Royal Society; but such a
plan would only have been a transference of power, the effect being the
same in character as that of lifting the water to the water-wheel. His
most important invention was that of a method of producing a vacuum by
the condensation of steam—the reversal, in fact, of the process of the
previous machines of De Caus and Lord Worcester. He drew the inference
that, if water in its conversion into steam swelled many hundred
times, it must follow that steam reconverted into water would shrink
into its primitive dimensions. He was also the first to suggest the
safety-valve, but he did not, strange to say, apply it to the machine
subsequently invented. It has been asserted, though not proved, by some
writers that Papin derived many of his ideas from Otto von Guericke,
who had invented an air-pump as early as 1654.
[35] The “Miners’ Friend,” &c. A paper published by Savery in 1702.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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