“John Elder we may look upon as the father of multiple-expansion engines. He, together with his partner Charles Randolph, was trained in the marine school of Mr. Robert Napier, Vulcan Foundry, Glasgow. In 1852 they commenced business, and by 1856 had constructed several four-cylinder compound engines. Randolph, Elder and Co. entered into a contract for a set of engines, the coal for which, on trial, would not exceed 3 lb. per indicated horse-power per hour. The trial ... worked out at 2¹⁹⁄₂₀ lb.” In regard to coal consumption, the Pacific Steam Navigation Company’s boats _Callao_, _Lima_, and _Bogota_, after being brought home from the Pacific coast to be re-engined, all showed a consumption of from 2 to 2¹⁄₂ lb. (per indicated horse-power) of best Welsh coal. The _Bogota’s_ speed with the old engines was 9·75 knots and the coal consumption not less than 38 cwts. per hour. On her outward voyage with new engines she “gave a mean speed of 10·47 knots with 19 cwts. of coal per hour.” The steam-pressure was 22 lb. and the horse-power was about 950 indicated. “These early fathers seemed to see into the future. Walter N. Neilson, in his Presidential Address (1859), refers to the ‘three grand requirements (of marine engines) as--a safe and suitable boiler for 100 lb. and upwards; a good arrangement of engine to receive the initial force of the steam without shock or liability to derangement, and carry out expansion to the greatest practical limits; and, lastly, an efficient surface condenser. “John Elder was among the first to adopt the surface condenser and the cylindrical boiler, and he thus in the ’fifties brought to a successful issue these three grand requirements. We must go back to these early days to realise what it meant to make a boiler which would be safe for 100 lb.; steel plates of the present day weighing tons were then represented by puddled iron plates weighing hundredweights. This led John Elder to try a water-tube boiler, practically the modern Yarrow boiler, also a spiral tube boiler, but probably none of these was successful owing to the salt-water difficulty, evaporators not being introduced till many years afterwards.”