[80] “I have now (April, 1765) almost a certainty of the _facturum_ of the fire-engine, having determined the following particulars: The quantity of steam produced; the ultimatum of the lever engine; the quantity of steam destroyed by the cold of its cylinder; the quantity destroyed in mine; and if there be not some devil in the hedge, mine ought to raise water to 44 feet with the same quantity of steam that theirs does to 32 (supposing my cylinder as thick as theirs), which I think I can demonstrate. I can now make a cylinder 2 feet diameter and 3 feet high, only a 40th of an inch thick, and strong enough to resist the atmosphere; _sed tace_. In short, I can think of nothing else but this machine.”--Watt to Dr. Lind, quoted in Muirhead’s ‘Life of Watt,’ 94–5. While he was occupied with this difficulty, and striving to overcome it by the adoption of new expedients, such as leather collars and improved workmanship, he wrote to a friend, “My old white-iron man is dead;” the old white-iron man, or tinner, being his leading mechanic. Unhappily, also, just as he seemed to have got the engine into working order, the beam broke, and having great difficulty in replacing the damaged part, the accident threatened, together with the loss of his best workman, to bring the experiment to an end. But though discouraged by these misadventures, he was far from defeated, but went on as before, battling down difficulty inch by inch, and holding good the ground he had won, becoming every day more strongly convinced that he was in the right track, and that the important uses of the invention, could he but find time and means to perfect it, were beyond the reach of doubt. But how to find the means! Watt himself was a comparatively poor man; having no money but what he earned by his business of mechanical instrument making, which he had for some time been neglecting through his devotion to the construction of his engine. What he wanted was capital, or the help of a capitalist willing to advance him the necessary funds to perfect his invention. To give a fair trial to the new apparatus would involve an expenditure of several thousand pounds; and who on the spot could be expected to invest so large a sum in trying a machine so entirely new, depending for its success on physical principles very imperfectly understood? There was no such help to be found in Glasgow. The tobacco lords, though rich, took no interest in steam power, and the manufacturing class, though growing in importance, had full employment for their little capital in their own concerns. CHAPTER VIII. WATT’S CONNEXION WITH DR. ROEBUCK--WATT ACTS AS SURVEYOR AND ENGINEER.